IDLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEL.
But Goldsmith was not in any hurry to acquire either wealth or fame.
He had a happy knack of enjoying the present hour--especially when
there were one or two boon companions with him, and a pack of cards to
be found; and, after his return to his mother's house, he appears to
have entered upon the business of idleness with much philosophical
satisfaction. If he was not quite such an unlettered clown as he has
described in Tony Lumpkin, he had at least all Tony Lumpkin's high
spirits and love of joking and idling; and he was surrounded at the
ale-house by just such a company of admirers as used to meet at the
famous Three Pigeons. Sometimes he helped in his brother's school;
sometimes he went errands for his mother; occasionally he would sit
and meditatively play the flute--for the day was to be passed somehow;
then in the evening came the assemblage in Conway's inn, with the
glass, and the pipe, and the cards, and the uproarious jest or song.
"But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be," and the
friends of this jovial young "buckeen" began to tire of his idleness
and his recurrent visits. They gave him hints that he might set about
doing something to provide himself with a living; and the first thing
they thought of was that he should go into the Church--perhaps as a
sort of purification-house after George Conway's inn. Accordingly
Goldsmith, who appears to have been a most good-natured and compliant
youth, did make application to the Bishop of Elphin. There is some
doubt about the precise reasons which induced the Bishop to decline
Goldsmith's application, but at any rate the Church was denied the aid
of the young man's eloquence and erudition. Then he tried teaching,
and through the good offices of his uncle he obtained a tutorship
which he held for a considerable time--long enough, indeed, to enable
him to amass a sum of thirty pounds. When he quarrelled with his
patron, and once more "took the world for his pillow," as the Gaelic
stories say, he had this sum in his pocket and was possessed of a good
horse.
He started away from Ballymahon, where his mother was now living, with
some vague notion of making his fortune as casual circumstance might
direct. The expedition came to a premature end; and he returned
without the money, and on the back of a wretched animal, telling his
mother a cock-and-bull story of the most amusing simplicity. "If Uncle
Contarine believed those letters," says Mr. Thackeray, "---- if
Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth related of his
going to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America; of his
having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board; of
the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage, in
a nameless ship, never to return; if Uncle Contarine and the mother at
Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a very simple
pair; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them." Indeed,
if any one is anxious to fill up this hiatus in Goldsmith's life, the
best thing he can do is to discard Goldsmith's suspicious record of
his adventures, and put in its place the faithful record of the
adventures of Mr. Barry Lyndon, when that modest youth left his
mother's house and rode to Dublin, with a certain number of guineas in
his pocket. But whether Uncle Contarine believed the story or no, he
was ready to give the young gentleman another chance; and this time it
was the legal profession that was chosen. Goldsmith got fifty pounds
from his uncle, and reached Dublin. In a remarkably brief space of
time he had gambled away the fifty pounds, and was on his way back to
Ballymahon, where his mother's reception of him was not very cordial,
though his uncle forgave him, and was once more ready to start him in
life. But in what direction? Teaching, the Church, and the law had
lost their attractions for him. Well, this time it was medicine. In
fact, any sort of project was capable of drawing forth the good old
uncle's bounty. The funds were again forthcoming; Goldsmith started
for Edinburgh, and now (1752) saw Ireland for the last time.
He lived, and he informed his uncle that he studied, in Edinburgh for
a year and a half; at the end of which time it appeared to him that
his knowledge of medicine would be much improved by foreign travel.
There was Albinus, for example, "the great professor of Leyden," as he
wrote to the credulous uncle, from whom he would doubtless learn
much. When, having got another twenty pounds for travelling expenses,
he did reach Leyden (1754), he mentioned Gaubius, the chemical
professor. Gaubius is also a good name. That his intercourse with
these learned persons, and the serious nature of his studies, were not
incompatible with a little light relaxation in the way of gambling is
not impossible. On one occasion, it is said, he was so lucky that he
came to a fellow student with his pockets full of money; and was
induced to resolve never to play again--a resolution broken about as
soon as made. Of course he lost all his winnings, and more; and had to
borrow a trifling sum to get himself out of the place. Then an
incident occurs which is highly characteristic of the better side of
Goldsmith's nature. He had just got this money, and was about to leave
Leyden, when, as Mr. Forster writes, "he passed a florist's garden on
his return, and seeing some rare and high-priced flower, which his
uncle Contarine, an enthusiast in such things, had often spoken and
been in search of, he ran in without other thought than of immediate
pleasure to his kindest friend, bought a parcel of the roots, and sent
them off to Ireland." He had a guinea in his pocket when he started on
the grand tour.
Of this notable period in Goldsmith's life (1755-6) very little is
known, though a good deal has been guessed. A minute record of all the
personal adventures that befell the wayfarer as he trudged from
country to country, a diary of the odd humours and fancies that must
have occurred to him in his solitary pilgrimages, would be of quite
inestimable value; but even the letters that Goldsmith wrote home from
time to time are lost; while _The Traveller_ consists chiefly of a
series of philosophical reflections on the government of various
states, more likely to have engaged the attention of a Fleet-Street
author, living in an atmosphere of books, than to have occupied the
mind of a tramp anxious about his supper and his night's lodging.
Boswell says he "disputed" his way through Europe. It is much more
probable that he begged his way through Europe. The romantic version,
which has been made the subject of many a charming picture, is that he
was entertained by the peasantry whom he had delighted with his
playing on the flute. It is quite probable that Goldsmith, whose
imagination had been captivated by the story of how Baron von Holberg
had as a young man really passed through France, Germany, and Holland
in this Orpheus-like manner, may have put a flute in his pocket when
he left Leyden; but it is far from safe to assume, as is generally
done, that Goldsmith was himself the hero of the adventures described
in Chapter XX. of the _Vicar of Wakefield_. It is the more to be
regretted that we have no authentic record of these devious
wanderings, that by this time Goldsmith had acquired, as is shown in
other letters, a polished, easy, and graceful style, with a very
considerable faculty of humorous observation. Those ingenious letters
to his uncle (they usually included a little hint about money) were,
in fact, a trifle too literary both in substance and in form; we could
even now, looking at them with a pardonable curiosity, have spared a
little of their formal antithesis for some more precise information
about the writer and his surroundings.
The strangest thing about this strange journey all over Europe was
the failure of Goldsmith to pick up even a common and ordinary
acquaintance with the familiar facts of natural history. The ignorance
on this point of the author of the _Animated Nature_ was a constant
subject of jest among Goldsmith's friends. They declared he could not
tell the difference between any two sorts of barndoor fowl until he
saw them cooked and on the table. But it may be said prematurely here
that, even when he is wrong as to his facts or his sweeping
generalisations, one is inclined to forgive him on account of the
quaint gracefulness and point of his style. When Mr. Burchell says,
"This rule seems to extend even to other animals: the little vermin
race are ever treacherous, cruel, and cowardly, whilst those endowed
with strength and power are generous, brave, and gentle," we scarcely
stop to reflect that the merlin, which is not much bigger than a
thrush, has an extraordinary courage and spirit, while the lion, if
all stories be true, is, unless when goaded by hunger, an abject
skulker. Elsewhere, indeed, in the _Animated Nature_, Goldsmith gives
credit to the smaller birds for a good deal of valour, and then goes
on to say, with a charming freedom,--"But their contentions are
sometimes of a gentler nature. Two male birds shall strive in song
till, after a long struggle, the loudest shall entirely silence the
other. During these contentions the female sits an attentive silent
auditor, and often rewards the loudest songster with her company
during the season." Yet even this description of the battle of the
bards, with the queen of love as arbiter, is scarcely so amusing as
his happy-go-lucky notions with regard to the variability of species.
The philosopher, flute in hand, who went wandering from the canals of
Holland to the ice-ribbed falls of the Rhine, may have heard from time
to time that contest between singing-birds which he so imaginatively
describes; but it was clearly the Fleet-Street author, living among
books, who arrived at the conclusion that intermarriage of species is
common among small birds and rare among big birds. Quoting some lines
of Addison's which express the belief that birds are a virtuous
race--that the nightingale, for example, does not covet the wife of
his neighbour, the blackbird--Goldsmith goes on to observe,--"But
whatever may be the poet's opinion, the probability is against this
fidelity among the smaller tenants of the grove. The great birds are
much more true to their species than these; and, of consequence, the
varieties among them are more few. Of the ostrich, the cassowary, and
the eagle, there are but few species; and no arts that man can use
could probably induce them to mix with each other."
What he did bring back from his foreign travels was a medical degree.
Where he got it, and how he got it, are alike matters of pure
conjecture; but it is extremely improbable that--whatever he might
have been willing to write home from Padua or Louvain, in order to
coax another remittance from his Irish friends--he would afterwards,
in the presence of such men as Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, wear sham
honours. It is much more probable that, on his finding those supplies
from Ireland running ominously short, the philosophic vagabond
determined to prove to his correspondents that he was really at work
somewhere, instead of merely idling away his time, begging or
borrowing the wherewithal to pass him from town to town. That he did
see something of the foreign universities is evident from his own
writings; there are touches of description here and there which he
could not well have got from books. With this degree, and with such
book-learning and such knowledge of nature and human nature as he had
chosen or managed to pick up during all those years, he was now called
upon to begin life for himself. The Irish supplies stopped altogether.
His letters were left unanswered. And so Goldsmith somehow or other
got back to London (February 1, 1756), and had to cast about for some
way of earning his daily bread.