OCCASIONAL WRITINGS.
Some two months after the publication of the _Deserted Village_, when
its success had been well assured, Goldsmith proposed to himself the
relaxation of a little Continental tour; and he was accompanied by
three ladies, Mrs. Horneck and her two pretty daughters, who doubtless
took more charge of him than he did of them. This Mrs. Horneck, the
widow of a certain Captain Horneck, was connected with Reynolds, while
Burke was the guardian of the two girls; so that it was natural that
they should make the acquaintance of Dr. Goldsmith. A foolish attempt
has been made to weave out of the relations supposed to exist between
the younger of the girls and Goldsmith an imaginary romance; but there
is not the slightest actual foundation for anything of the kind.
Indeed the best guide we can have to the friendly and familiar terms
on which he stood with regard to the Hornecks and their circle, is the
following careless and jocular reply to a chance invitation sent him
by the two sisters:--
"Your mandate I got,
You may all go to pot;
Had your senses been right,
You'd have sent before night;
As I hope to be saved,
I put off being shaved;
For I could not make bold,
While the matter was cold,
To meddle in suds,
Or to put on my duds;
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt
And Baker and his bit,
And Kauffman beside,
And the Jessamy bride;
With the rest of the crew,
The Reynoldses two,
Little Comedy's face
And the Captain in lace.
* * * * *
Yet how can I when vext
Thus stray from my text?
Tell each other to rue
Your Devonshire crew,
For sending so late
To one of my state.
But 'tis Reynolds's way
From wisdom to stray,
And Angelica's whim
To be frolic like him.
But, alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser,
When both have been spoiled in to-day's _Advertiser_?"
* * * * *
"The Jessamy Bride" was the pet nickname he had bestowed on the
younger Miss Horneck--the heroine of the speculative romance just
mentioned; "Little Comedy" was her sister; "the Captain in lace" their
brother, who was in the Guards. No doubt Mrs. Horneck and her
daughters were very pleased to have with them on this Continental
trip so distinguished a person as Dr. Goldsmith; and he must have been
very ungrateful if he was not glad to be provided with such charming
companions. The story of the sudden envy he displayed of the
admiration excited by the two handsome young Englishwomen as they
stood at a hotel-window in Lille, is so incredibly foolish that it
needs scarcely be repeated here; unless to repeat the warning that, if
ever anybody was so dense as not to see the humour of that piece of
acting, one had better look with grave suspicion on every one of the
stories told about Goldsmith's vanities and absurdities.
Even with such pleasant companions, the trip to Paris was not
everything he had hoped. "I find," he wrote to Reynolds from Paris,
"that travelling at twenty and at forty are very different things. I
set out with all my confirmed habits about me, and can find nothing on
the Continent so good as when I formerly left it. One of our chief
amusements here is scolding at everything we meet with, and praising
every thing and every person we left at home. You may judge therefore
whether your name is not frequently bandied at table among us. To tell
you the truth, I never thought I could regret your absence so much, as
our various mortifications on the road have often taught me to do. I
could tell you of disasters and adventures without number, of our
lying in barns, and of my being half poisoned with a dish of green
peas, of our quarrelling with postilions and being cheated by our
landladies, but I reserve all this for a happy hour which I expect to
share with you upon my return." The fact is that although Goldsmith
had seen a good deal of foreign travel, the manner of his making the
grand tour in his youth was not such as to fit him for acting as
courier to a party of ladies. However, if they increased his troubles,
they also shared them; and in this same letter he bears explicit
testimony to the value of their companionship. "I will soon be among
you, better pleased with my situation at home than I ever was before.
And yet I must say, that if anything could make France pleasant, the
very good women with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I
could say more about that, but I intend showing them this letter
before I send it away." Mrs. Horneck, Little Comedy, the Jessamy
Bride, and the Professor of Ancient History at the Royal Academy, all
returned to London; the last to resume his round of convivialities at
taverns, excursions into regions of more fashionable amusement along
with Reynolds, and task-work aimed at the pockets of the booksellers.
It was a happy-go-lucky sort of life. We find him now showing off his
fine clothes and his sword and wig at Ranelagh Gardens, and again shut
up in his chambers compiling memoirs and histories in hot haste; now
the guest of Lord Clare, and figuring at Bath, and again delighting
some small domestic circle by his quips and cranks; playing jokes for
the amusement of children, and writing comic letters in verse to their
elders; everywhere and at all times merry, thoughtless, good-natured.
And, of course, we find also his humorous pleasantries being mistaken
for blundering stupidity. In perfect good faith Boswell describes how
a number of people burst out laughing when Goldsmith publicly
complained that he had met Lord Camden at Lord Clare's house in the
country, "and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an
ordinary man." Goldsmith's claiming to be a very extraordinary person
was precisely a stroke of that humorous self-depreciation in which he
was continually indulging; and the Jessamy Bride has left it on record
that "on many occasions, from the peculiar manner of his humour, and
assumed frown of countenance, what was often uttered in jest was
mistaken by those who did not know him for earnest." This would appear
to have been one of those occasions. The company burst out laughing at
Goldsmith's having made a fool of himself; and Johnson was compelled
to come to his rescue. "Nay, gentlemen, Dr. Goldsmith is in the right.
A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith; and I
think it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected him."
Mention of Lord Clare naturally recalls the _Haunch of Venison_.
Goldsmith was particularly happy in writing bright and airy verses;
the grace and lightness of his touch has rarely been approached. It
must be confessed, however, that in this direction he was somewhat of
an Autolycus; unconsidered trifles he freely appropriated; but he
committed these thefts with scarcely any concealment, and with the
most charming air in the world. In fact some of the snatches of verse
which he contributed to the _Bee_ scarcely profess to be anything else
than translations, though the originals are not given. But who is
likely to complain when we get as the result such a delightful piece
of nonsense as the famous Elegy on that Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary
Blaize, which has been the parent of a vast progeny since Goldsmith's
time?
"Good people all, with one accord
Lament for Madam Blaize,
Who never wanted a good word,
From those who spoke her praise.
"The needy seldom passed her door,
And always found her kind;
She freely lent to all the poor,--
Who left a pledge behind.
"She strove the neighbourhood to please,
With manners wondrous winning;
And never followed wicked ways,--
Unless when she was sinning.
"At church, in silks and satins new,
With hoop of monstrous size,
She never slumbered in her pew,--
But when she shut her eyes.
"Her love was sought, I do aver,
By twenty beaux and more;
The king himself has followed her,--
When she has walked before.
"But now her wealth and finery fled,
Her hangers-on cut short all;
The doctors found, when she was dead,--
Her last disorder mortal.
"Let us lament, in sorrow sore,
For Kent Street well may say,
That had she lived a twelvemonth more,--
She had not died to-day."
The _Haunch of Venison_, on the other hand, is a poetical letter of
thanks to Lord Clare--an easy, jocular epistle, in which the writer
has a cut or two at certain of his literary brethren. Then, as he is
looking at the venison, and determining not to send it to any such
people as Hiffernan or Higgins, who should step in but our old friend
Beau Tibbs, or some one remarkably like him in manner and speech?--
"While thus I debated, in reverie centred,
An acquaintance, a friend as he called himself, entered;
An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow was he,
And he smiled as he looked at the venison and me.
'What have we got here?--Why this is good eating!
Your own, I suppose--or is it in waiting?'
'Why, whose should it be?' cried I with a flounce;
'I get these things often'--but that was a bounce:
'Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation,
Are pleased to be kind--but I hate ostentation.'
'If that be the case then,' cried he, very gay,
'I'm glad I have taken this house in my way.
To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me;
No words--I insist on't--precisely at three;
We'll have Johnson, and Burke; all the wits will be there;
My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare.
And now that I think on't, as I am a sinner!
We wanted this venison to make out the dinner.
What say you--a pasty? It shall, and it must,
And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust.
Here, porter! this venison with me to Mile End;
No stirring--I beg--my dear friend--my dear friend!'
Thus, snatching his hat, he brushed off like the wind,
And the porter and eatables followed behind."
We need not follow the vanished venison--which did not make its
appearance at the banquet any more than did Johnson or Burke--further
than to say that if Lord Clare did not make it good to the poet he did
not deserve to have his name associated with such a clever and
careless _jeu d'esprit_.