The Arrest.
It was no doubt owing to Newbery that Goldsmith, after his return to
London, was induced to abandon, temporarily or altogether, his
apartments in Wine Office Court, and take lodgings in the house of a
Mrs. Fleming, who lived somewhere or other in Islington. Newbery had
rooms in Canonbury House, a curious old building that still exists;
and it may have occurred to the publisher that Goldsmith, in this
suburban district, would not only be nearer him for consultation and
so forth, but also might pay more attention to his duties than when he
was among the temptations of Fleet Street. Goldsmith was working
industriously in the service of Newbery at this time (1763-4); in
fact, so completely was the bookseller in possession of the hack, that
Goldsmith's board and lodging in Mrs. Fleming's house, arranged for at
£50 a year, was paid by Newbery himself. Writing prefaces, revising
new editions, contributing reviews--this was the sort of work he
undertook, with more or less content, as the equivalent of the modest
sums Mr. Newbery disbursed for him or handed over as pocket-money. In
the midst of all this drudgery he was now secretly engaged on work
that aimed at something higher than mere payment of bed and board.
The smooth lines of the _Traveller_ were receiving further polish; the
gentle-natured _Vicar_ was writing his simple, quaint, tender story.
And no doubt Goldsmith was spurred to try something better than
hack-work by the associations that he was now forming, chiefly under
the wise and benevolent friendship of Johnson.
Anxious always to be thought well of, he was now beginning to meet
people whose approval was worthy of being sought. He had been
introduced to Reynolds. He had become the friend of Hogarth. He had
even made the acquaintance of Mr. Boswell, from Scotland. Moreover, he
had been invited to become one of the original members of the famous
Club of which so much has been written; his fellow-members being
Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Hawkins, Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, and Dr.
Nugent. It is almost certain that it was at Johnson's instigation that
he had been admitted into this choice fellowship. Long before either
the _Traveller_ or the _Vicar_ had been heard of, Johnson had
perceived the literary genius that obscurely burned in the uncouth
figure of this Irishman; and was anxious to impress on others
Goldsmith's claims to respect and consideration. In the minute record
kept by Boswell of his first evening with Johnson at the Mitre Tavern,
we find Johnson saying, "Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now
have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose
in his principles, but he is coming right." Johnson took walks with
Goldsmith; did him the honour of disputing with him on all occasions;
bought a copy of the _Life of Nash_ when it appeared--an unusual
compliment for one author to pay another, in their day or in ours;
allowed him to call on Miss Williams, the blind old lady in Bolt
Court; and generally was his friend, counsellor, and champion.
Accordingly, when Mr. Boswell entertained the great Cham to supper at
the Mitre--a sudden quarrel with his landlord having made it
impossible for him to order the banquet at his own house--he was
careful to have Dr. Goldsmith of the company. His guests that evening
were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies (the actor and bookseller who had
conferred on Boswell the invaluable favour of an introduction to
Johnson), Mr. Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who
deserves our gratitude because it was his inopportune patriotism that
provoked, on this very evening, the memorable epigram about the
high-road leading to England. "Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not
got over his envy at Goldsmith's being allowed to visit the blind old
pensioner in Bolt-court, "as usual, endeavoured with too much
eagerness to _shine_, and disputed very warmly with Johnson against
the well-known maxim of the British constitution, 'The king can do no
wrong.'" It was a dispute not so much about facts as about
phraseology; and, indeed, there seems to be no great warmth in the
expressions used on either side. Goldsmith affirmed that "what was
morally false could not be politically true;" and that, in short, the
king could by the misuse of his regal power do wrong. Johnson replied,
that, in such a case, the immediate agents of the king were the
persons to be tried and punished for the offence. "The king, though he
should command, cannot force a judge to condemn a man unjustly;
therefore it is the judge whom we prosecute and punish." But when he
stated that the king "is above everything, and there is no power by
which he can be tried," he was surely forgetting an important chapter
in English history. "What did Cromwell do for his country?" he himself
asked, during his subsequent visit to Scotland, of old Auchinleck,
Boswell's father. "God, Doctor," replied the vile Whig, "_he garred
kings ken they had a lith in their necks_."
For some time after this evening Goldsmith drops out of Boswell's
famous memoir; perhaps the compiler was not anxious to give him too
much prominence. They had not liked each other from the outset.
Boswell, vexed by the greater intimacy of Goldsmith with Johnson,
called him a blunderer, a feather-brained person; and described his
appearance in no flattering terms. Goldsmith, on the other hand, on
being asked who was this Scotch cur that followed Johnson's heels,
answered, "He is not a cur: you are too severe--he is only a bur. Tom
Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of
sticking." Boswell would probably have been more tolerant of Goldsmith
as a rival, if he could have known that on a future day he was to have
Johnson all to himself--to carry him to remote wilds and exhibit him
as a portentous literary phenomenon to Highland lairds. It is true
that Johnson, at an early period of his acquaintance with Boswell, did
talk vaguely about a trip to the Hebrides; but the young Scotch
idolater thought it was all too good to be true. The mention of Sir
James Macdonald, says Boswell, "led us to talk of the Western Islands
of Scotland, to visit which he expressed a wish that then appeared to
me a very romantic fancy, which I little thought would be afterwards
realised. He told me that his father had put Martin's account of
those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was
highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St.
Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed
out of a rock; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed
his attention." Unfortunately Goldsmith not only disappears from the
pages of Boswell's biography at this time, but also in great measure
from the ken of his companions. He was deeply in debt; no doubt the
fine clothes he had been ordering from Mr. Filby in order that he
might "shine" among those notable persons, had something to do with
it; he had tried the patience of the booksellers; and he had been
devoting a good deal of time to work not intended to elicit immediate
payment. The most patient endeavours to trace out his changes of
lodgings, and the fugitive writings that kept him in daily bread, have
not been very successful. It is to be presumed that Goldsmith had
occasionally to go into hiding to escape from his creditors; and so
was missed from his familiar haunts. We only reach daylight again, to
find Goldsmith being under threat of arrest from his landlady; and for
the particulars of this famous affair it is necessary to return to
Boswell.
Boswell was not in London at that time; but his account was taken down
subsequently from Johnson's narration; and his accuracy in other
matters, his extraordinary memory, and scrupulous care, leave no doubt
in the mind that his version of the story is to be preferred to those
of Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins. We may take it that these are
Johnson's own words:-- "I received one morning a message from poor
Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his
power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as
possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I
accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady
had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I
perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle
of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle,
desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by
which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel
ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and
saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having
gone to a bookseller, sold it for £60. I brought Goldsmith the money,
and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high
tone for having used him so ill."
We do not know who this landlady was--it cannot now be made out
whether the incident occurred at Islington, or in the rooms that
Goldsmith partially occupied in the Temple; but even if Mrs. Fleming
be the landlady in question, she was deserving neither of Goldsmith's
rating nor of the reprimands that have been bestowed upon her by later
writers. Mrs. Fleming had been exceedingly kind to Goldsmith. Again
and again in her bills we find items significantly marked £0 0_s._
0_d._ And if her accounts with her lodger did get hopelessly into
arrear; and if she was annoyed by seeing him go out in fine clothes to
sup at the Mitre; and if, at length, her patience gave way, and she
determined to have her rights in one way or another, she was no worse
than landladies--who are only human beings, and not divinely appointed
protectresses of genius--ordinarily are. Mrs. Piozzi says that when
Johnson came back with the money, Goldsmith "called the woman of the
house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment."
This would be a dramatic touch; but, after Johnson's quietly corking
the bottle of Madeira, it is more likely that no such thing occurred;
especially as Boswell quotes the statement as an "extreme inaccuracy."
The novel which Johnson had taken away and sold to Francis Newbery, a
nephew of the elder bookseller, was, as every one knows, the _Vicar of
Wakefield_. That Goldsmith, amidst all his pecuniary distresses,
should have retained this piece in his desk, instead of pawning or
promising it to one of his bookselling patrons, points to but one
conclusion--that he was building high hopes on it, and was determined
to make it as good as lay within his power. Goldsmith put an anxious
finish into all his better work; perhaps that is the secret of the
graceful ease that is now apparent in every line. Any young writer who
may imagine that the power of clear and concise literary expression
comes by nature, cannot do better than study, in Mr. Cunningham's big
collection of Goldsmith's writings, the continual and minute
alterations which the author considered necessary even after the first
edition--sometimes when the second and third editions--had been
published. Many of these, especially in the poetical works, were
merely improvements in sound as suggested by a singularly sensitive
ear, as when he altered the line
"Amidst the ruin, heedless of the dead,"
which had appeared in the first three editions of the _Traveller_,
into
"There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,"
which appeared in the fourth. But the majority of the omissions and
corrections were prompted by a careful taste, that abhorred everything
redundant or slovenly. It has been suggested that when Johnson carried
off the _Vicar of Wakefield_ to Francis Newbery, the manuscript was
not quite finished, but had to be completed afterwards. There was at
least plenty of time for that. Newbery does not appear to have
imagined that he had obtained a prize in the lottery of literature. He
paid the £60 for it--clearly on the assurance of the great father of
learning of the day, that there was merit in the little
story--somewhere about the end of 1764; but the tale was not issued to
the public until March, 1766. "And, sir," remarked Johnson to Boswell,
with regard to the sixty pounds, "a sufficient price too, when it was
sold; for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it
afterwards was, by his _Traveller_; and the bookseller had such faint
hopes of profit by his bargain, that he kept the manuscript by him a
long time, and did not publish it till after the _Traveller_ had
appeared. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money."