GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY.
The appearance of the _Good-natured Man_ ushered in a halcyon period
in Goldsmith's life. The _Traveller_ and the _Vicar_ had gained for
him only reputation: this new comedy put £500 in his pocket. Of course
that was too big a sum for Goldsmith to have about him long.
Four-fifths of it he immediately expended on the purchase and
decoration of a set of chambers in Brick Court, Middle Temple; with
the remainder he appears to have begun a series of entertainments in
this new abode, which were perhaps more remarkable for their mirth
than their decorum. There was no sort of frolic in which Goldsmith
would not indulge for the amusement of his guests; he would sing them
songs; he would throw his wig to the ceiling; he would dance a minuet.
And then they had cards, forfeits, blind-man's-buff, until Mr.
Blackstone, then engaged on his _Commentaries_ in the rooms below, was
driven nearly mad by the uproar. These parties would seem to have been
of a most nondescript character--chance gatherings of any obscure
authors or actors whom he happened to meet; but from time to time
there were more formal entertainments, at which Johnson, Percy, and
similar distinguished persons were present. Moreover, Dr. Goldsmith
himself was much asked out to dinner too; and so, not content with the
"Tyrian bloom, satin grain and garter, blue-silk breeches," which Mr.
Filby had provided for the evening of the production of the comedy, he
now had another suit "lined with silk, and gold buttons," that he
might appear in proper guise. Then he had his airs of consequence too.
This was his answer to an invitation from Kelly, who was his rival of
the hour: "I would with pleasure accept your kind invitation, but to
tell you the truth, my dear boy, my _Traveller_ has found me a home in
so many places, that I am engaged, I believe, three days. Let me see.
To-day I dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Dr. Nugent, and the
next day with Topham Beauclerc; but I'll tell you what I'll do for
you, I'll dine with you on Saturday." Kelly told this story as against
Goldsmith; but surely there is not so much ostentation in the reply.
Directly after _Tristram Shandy_ was published, Sterne found himself
fourteen deep in dinner engagements: why should not the author of the
_Traveller_ and the _Vicar_ and the _Good-natured Man_ have his
engagements also? And perhaps it was but right that Mr. Kelly, who was
after all only a critic and scribbler, though he had written a play
which was for the moment enjoying an undeserved popularity, should be
given to understand that Dr. Goldsmith was not to be asked to a
hole-and-corner chop at a moment's notice. To-day he dines with Mr.
Burke; to-morrow with Dr. Nugent; the day after with Mr. Beauclerc. If
you wish to have the honour of his company, you may choose a day
after that; and then, with his new wig, with his coat of Tyrian bloom
and blue silk breeches, with a smart sword at his side, his
gold-headed cane in his hand, and his hat under his elbow, he will
present himself in due course. Dr. Goldsmith is announced, and makes
his grave bow; this is the man of genius about whom all the town is
talking; the friend of Burke, of Reynolds, of Johnson, of Hogarth;
this is not the ragged Irishman who was some time ago earning a crust
by running errands for an apothecary.
Goldsmith's grand airs, however, were assumed but seldom; and they
never imposed on anybody. His acquaintances treated him with a
familiarity which testified rather to his good-nature than to their
good taste. Now and again, indeed, he was prompted to resent this
familiarity; but the effort was not successful. In the "high jinks" to
which he good-humouredly resorted for the entertainment of his guests
he permitted a freedom which it was afterwards not very easy to
discard; and as he was always ready to make a butt of himself for the
amusement of his friends and acquaintances, it came to be recognised
that anybody was allowed to play off a joke on "Goldy." The jokes,
such of them as have been put on record, are of the poorest sort. The
horse-collar is never far off. One gladly turns from these dismal
humours of the tavern and the club to the picture of Goldsmith's
enjoying what he called a "Shoemaker's Holiday" in the company of one
or two chosen intimates. Goldsmith, baited and bothered by the wits of
a public-house, became a different being when he had assumed the
guidance of a small party of chosen friends bent on having a day's
frugal pleasure. We are indebted to one Cooke, a neighbour of
Goldsmith's in the Temple, not only for a most interesting description
of one of those shoemaker's holidays, but also for the knowledge that
Goldsmith had even now begun writing the _Deserted Village_, which was
not published till 1770, two years later. Goldsmith, though he could
turn out plenty of manufactured stuff for the booksellers, worked
slowly at the special story or poem with which he meant to "strike for
honest fame." This Mr. Cooke, calling on him one morning, discovered
that Goldsmith had that day written these ten lines of the _Deserted
Village_:--
"Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church, that topt the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made!"
"Come," said he, "let me tell you this is no bad morning's work; and
now, my dear boy, if you are not better engaged, I should be glad to
enjoy a shoemaker's holiday with you." "A shoemaker's holiday,"
continues the writer of these reminiscences, "was a day of great
festivity to poor Goldsmith, and was spent in the following innocent
manner. Three or four of his intimate friends rendezvoused at his
chambers to breakfast about ten o'clock in the morning; at eleven they
proceeded by the City Road and through the fields to Highbury Barn to
dinner; about six o'clock in the evening they adjourned to White
Conduit House to drink tea; and concluded by supping at the Grecian or
Temple Exchange coffee-house or at the Globe in Fleet Street. There
was a very good ordinary of two dishes and pastry kept at Highbury
Barn about this time at tenpence per head, including a penny to the
waiter; and the company generally consisted of literary characters, a
few Templars, and some citizens who had left off trade. The whole
expenses of the day's fete never exceeded a crown, and oftener were
from three-and-sixpence to four shillings; for which the party
obtained good air and exercise, good living, the example of simple
manners, and good conversation."
It would have been well indeed for Goldsmith had he been possessed of
sufficient strength of character to remain satisfied with these simple
pleasures, and to have lived the quiet and modest life of a man of
letters on such income as he could derive from the best work he could
produce. But it is this same Mr. Cooke who gives decisive testimony as
to Goldsmith's increasing desire to "shine" by imitating the
expenditure of the great; the natural consequence of which was that he
only plunged himself into a morass of debt, advances, contracts for
hack-work, and misery. "His debts rendered him at times so melancholy
and dejected, that I am sure he felt himself a very unhappy man."
Perhaps it was with some sudden resolve to flee from temptation, and
grapple with the difficulties that beset him, that he, in conjunction
with another Temple neighbour, Mr. Bott, rented a cottage some eight
miles down the Edgware Road; and here he set to work on the _History
of Rome_, which he was writing for Davies. Apart from this hack-work,
now rendered necessary by his debt, it is probable that one strong
inducement leading him to this occasional seclusion was the progress
he might be able to make with the _Deserted Village_. Amid all his
town gaieties and country excursions, amid his dinners and suppers and
dances, his borrowings, and contracts, and the hurried literary
produce of the moment, he never forgot what was due to his reputation
as an English poet. The journalistic bullies of the day might vent
their spleen and envy on him; his best friends might smile at his
conversational failures; the wits of the tavern might put up the
horse-collar as before; but at least he had the consolation of his
art. No one better knew than himself the value of those finished and
musical lines he was gradually adding to the beautiful poem, the
grace, and sweetness, and tender, pathetic charm of which make it one
of the literary treasures of the English people.
The sorrows of debt were not Goldsmith's only trouble at this time.
For some reason or other he seems to have become the especial object
of spiteful attack on the part of the literary cut-throats of the day.
And Goldsmith, though he might listen with respect to the wise advice
of Johnson on such matters, was never able to cultivate Johnson's
habit of absolute indifference to anything that might be said or sung
of him. "The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons," says
Lord Macaulay--speaking of Johnson, "did their best to annoy him, in
the hope that he would give them importance by answering them." But
the reader will in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick
or Campbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on
vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a
detestable Latin hexameter--
'Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum.'
But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, both from
his own observation and from literary history, in which he was deeply
read, that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not
by what is written about them, but by what is written in them; and
that an author whose works are likely to live, is very unwise if he
stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He
always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up
only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward, and which would
soon fall if there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener in
his mouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever
written down but by himself.
It was not given to Goldsmith to feel "like the Monument" on any
occasion whatsoever. He was anxious to have the esteem of his friends;
he was sensitive to a degree; denunciation or malice, begotten of envy
that Johnson would have passed unheeded, wounded him to the quick.
"The insults to which he had to submit," Thackeray wrote with a quick
and warm sympathy, "are shocking to read of--slander, contumely,
vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and
actions: he had his share of these, and one's anger is roused at
reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child
assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle, and weak,
and full of love should have had to suffer so." Goldsmith's revenge,
his defence of himself, his appeal to the public, were the
_Traveller_, the _Vicar of Wakefield_, the _Deserted Village_; but
these came at long intervals; and in the meantime he had to bear with
the anonymous malignity that pursued him as best he might. No doubt,
when Burke was entertaining him at dinner; and when Johnson was openly
deferring to him in conversation at the Club; and when Reynolds was
painting his portrait, he could afford to forget Mr. Kenrick and the
rest of the libelling clan.
The occasions on which Johnson deferred to Goldsmith in conversation
were no doubt few; but at all events the bludgeon of the great Cham
would appear to have come down less frequently on "honest Goldy" than on
the other members of that famous coterie. It could come down heavily
enough. "Sir," said an incautious person, "drinking drives away care,
and makes us forget whatever is disagreeable. Would not you allow a man
to drink for that reason?" "Yes, sir," was the reply, "if he sat next
_you_." Johnson, however, was considerate towards Goldsmith, partly
because of his affection for him, and partly because he saw under what
disadvantages Goldsmith entered the lists. For one thing, the
conversation of those evenings would seem to have drifted continually
into the mere definition of phrases. Now Johnson had spent years of his
life, during the compilation of his Dictionary, in doing nothing else
but defining; and, whenever the dispute took a phraseological turn, he
had it all his own way. Goldsmith, on the other hand, was apt to become
confused in his eager self-consciousness. "Goldsmith," said Johnson to
Boswell, "should not be for ever attempting to shine in conversation; he
has not temper for it, he is so much mortified when he fails.... When he
contends, if he gets the better, it is a very little addition to a man
of his literary reputation: if he does not get the better, he is
miserably vexed." Boswell, nevertheless, admits that Goldsmith was
"often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the
lists with Johnson himself," and goes on to tell how Goldsmith, relating
the fable of the little fishes who petitioned Jupiter, and perceiving
that Johnson was laughing at him, immediately said, "Why, Dr. Johnson,
this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little
fishes talk, they would talk like WHALES." Who but Goldsmith would have
dared to play jokes on the sage? At supper they have rumps and kidneys.
The sage expresses his approval of "the pretty little things;" but
profoundly observes that one must eat a good many of them before being
satisfied. "Ay, but how many of them," asks Goldsmith, "would reach to
the moon?" The sage professes his ignorance; and, indeed, remarks that
that would exceed even Goldsmith's calculations; when the practical
joker observes, "Why, _one_, sir, if it were long enough." Johnson was
completely beaten on this occasion. "Well, sir, I have deserved it. I
should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question."
It was Johnson himself, moreover, who told the story of Goldsmith and
himself being in Poets' Corner; of his saying to Goldsmith
"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis,"
and of Goldsmith subsequently repeating the quotation when, having
walked towards Fleet Street, they were confronted by the heads on
Temple Bar. Even when Goldsmith was opinionated and wrong, Johnson's
contradiction was in a manner gentle. "If you put a tub full of blood
into a stable, the horses are like to go mad," observed Goldsmith. "I
doubt that," was Johnson's reply. "Nay, sir, it is a fact well
authenticated." Here Thrale interposed to suggest that Goldsmith
should have the experiment tried in the stable; but Johnson merely
said that, if Goldsmith began making these experiments, he would never
get his book written at all. Occasionally, of course, Goldsmith was
tossed and gored just like another. "But, sir," he had ventured to
say, in opposition to Johnson, "when people live together who have
something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they
will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard, 'You may
look into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest
inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject." Here,
according to Boswell, Johnson answered in a loud voice, "Sir, I am not
saying that _you_ could live in friendship with a man from whom you
differ as to one point; I am only saying that _I_ could do it." But
then again he could easily obtain pardon from the gentle Goldsmith for
any occasional rudeness. One evening they had a sharp passage of arms
at dinner; and thereafter the company adjourned to the Club, where
Goldsmith sate silent and depressed. "Johnson perceived this," says
Boswell, "and said aside to some of us, 'I'll make Goldsmith forgive
me'; and then called to him in a loud voice, 'Dr. Goldsmith, something
passed to-day where you and I dined: I ask your pardon.' Goldsmith
answered placidly, 'It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill.'
And so at once the difference was over, and they were on as easy terms
as ever, and Goldsmith rattled away as usual." For the rest, Johnson
was the constant and doughty champion of Goldsmith as a man of
letters. He would suffer no one to doubt the power and versatility of
that genius which he had been amongst the first to recognise and
encourage. "Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comic writer,
or as an historian," he announced to an assemblage of distinguished
persons met together at dinner at Mr. Beauclerc's, "_he stands in the
first class_." And there was no one living who dared dispute the
verdict--at least in Johnson's hearing.