"Yon widowed, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring:
She, wretched matron, pressed in age for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread."
The brook and ditches near where her cabin stood still furnish cresses,
and several of her descendants reside in the neighborhood. The
school-house is still pointed out, but it is unfortunate for its
identity that no school-house was built then, school being taught in the
master's cottage. There is more evidence in nature of the poet's
recalling the place of his boyhood as he wrote his poem. The waters and
marshy lands, in more than one direction, gave him acquaintance with the
singular bird which he has introduced with such effect as an image of
desolation.
"Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest."
Little charm as Lissoy has at the present moment independent of
association with Oliver Goldsmith, with him and genius it possesses one
that grows upon you the more you trace the scenes made prominent in his
poem, and we leave it with regret.
There are various other places in the same part of Ireland which are
connected with the early history of Goldsmith. At the school of Paddy
Byrne he made little progress, as was to be expected, except in a
growing attachment to the marvelous. He devoured not only the romantic
stories of the schoolmaster, but of the peasantry. He listened
enthusiastically to their ballads, their fairy tales and superstitions,
of which they have in Ireland a plentiful stock. He got hold of, and
read with equal avidity, what have been called the cottage classics of
Ireland--those books which may be found in their cabins every
where--History of Witches and Ghosts; the Devil and Dr. Faustus;
Parismus and Parismenus; Montelea, knight of the Oracle; Seven Champions
of Christendom; Mendoza's Art of Boxing; Ovid's Art of Love; Lives of
celebrated Pirates; History of the Irish Rogues and Rapparees; of Moll
Flanders; of Jack the Bachelor, a notorious smuggler; of Fair Rosamond
and Jane Shore; of Donna Rosena; the Life and Adventures of James Freny,
a famous Irish Robber, &c. A precious literature for a lad, it must be
confessed. Luckily, if it excited his imagination, it failed in
corrupting his heart; and, thanks to the spread of knowledge, a better
class of books has now found its way even into Irish cabins, among which
not the least general are Chambers's Journal and Tracts. To put Oliver
under more suitable tuition, he was sent to the Rev. Mr. Griffin, of
Elphin, master of the school once taught by his grandfather. Here he
became an inmate of his uncle's house, Mr. John Goldsmith, of
Ballyoughter, in the vicinity. Displaying now much talent, which was at
once seen and cordially acknowledged by his uncle, he was destined for
the University, and preparatory to that he was sent to a school of
repute at Athlone. At this school he continued two years, when he was
removed to Edgeworthstown, under the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes,
where he continued till he went to the University.
That we may take a connected view of his homes and haunts in this part
of the country, we must include at once his life hereabout before he
went to the University, and his visits hither during an interval of two
years, between his quitting the University and his quitting Ireland, to
study physic in Edinburgh, and, in fact, never again to return to
Ireland.
There are several facts connected with his school days at Edgeworthstown
that are very interesting. He is said to have become acquainted, either
here or at Ballyoughter, with Turlogh O'Carolan, the last of the ancient
Irish bards. This popular musician and poet, whose songs have been
translated into English, and published, maintained the style and life of
the minstrel. He disdained to play for money, but went as an admired and
honored guest from house to house among the most ancient and opulent
families of Connaught. To complete his character as a harper, he was
blind, and had been so from the age of eighteen. His songs, which are
sung by the peasantry with enthusiasm, are numerous, and celebrate the
persons and families of his patrons. If they do not, in the mind of an
Englishman, appear to possess an originality equal to their fame in
Ireland, it is to be remembered that they have there all the charm of
association, their very titles being the names of lords and ladies of
old families: O'Connor Faby; Dennis O'Connor; Planxty Stafford; Nelly
Plunkett; Mrs. French; Anna M'Dermot Roe &c.
The influence which the other local poet, Laurence Whyte, had on the
mind and genius of Goldsmith, is very striking. Whyte wrote, as part of
a larger poem, The Parting Cup, or the Humors of Deoch an Doruis, in
four cantos. It is a lively picture of a Westmeath farmer's life, about
the year 1710, and shows not only how its themes had sunk into the mind
of Goldsmith as a boy when they reappeared in The Deserted Village, but
also how old and how fixed a portion of Irish history are those miseries
and outrages on the people which are at this hour the topic of public
wonder in England. The exactions of the landlords; the casting forth
from house and home the wretched tenantry; the stream of consequent
emigration; and the curse of absenteeism. Whyte's poem is very clever,
and deserves to be better known. Speaking of the better condition of the
farmers in the seventeenth century, he proceeds:
"Thus farmers lived like gentlemen,
Ere lands were raised from five to ten;
Again from ten to three times five,
Then very few could hope to thrive;
But tugged against the rapid stream,
Which drove them back from whence they came:
At length 'twas canted to a pound,
What tenant then could keep his ground?
Not knowing which, to stand or fly,
When rent-rolls mounted zenith high,
They had their choice to run away,
Or labor for a groat a day.
_Now beggared and of all bereft,
Are doomed to starve or live by theft.
Take to the mountain or the roads,
When banished from their old abodes.
Their native soil were forced to quit,
So Irish landlords thought it fit;
Who without ceremony or rout,
For their improvements turned them out._
*...*...*...*
_How many villages they razed,
How many parishes laid waste,
To fatten bullocks, sheep, and cows_,
When scarce one parish has two plows.
Their flocks do range on every plain,
That once produced all kinds of grain.
Depopulating every village,
Where we had husbandry and tillage;
Fat bacon, poultry, and good bread,
By which the poor were daily fed.
*...*...*...*
Instead of living well and thriving,
There's nothing now but leading--_driving_;
The lands are all monopolized,
The tenants racked and sacrificed;
_Whole colonies, to shun the fate
Of being oppressed at such a rate,
By tyrants who still raise their rent,
Sail to the Western Continent.
Rather than live at home like slaves,
They trust themselves to winds and waves._"
If a poet at the present hour were describing the acts and deeds of the
Gerrards, the Waterfords, and like exterminators, could he have done it
more literally? Thus, independent of the other miseries and wrongs of
Ireland, this system of turning out human creatures to make way for
bullocks has been going on exactly for a hundred years; and the Irish
aristocracy, having made themselves the scandal of the whole civilized
world, still sleep in warm beds and dream that they are Christians! and
England, the most powerful and humane nation on the earth, has
overlooked the dreadful scene, having her eyes fixed, full of tears, on
the far-off negro, the Esquimaux, and the South Sea Islander. Till this
crying iniquity and disgrace be removed out of our borders, every Bible
Society, and Missionary Society, and Society for Humanity to _Animals_,
should stop its ordinary operations, and combine each and all into a
great and omnipotent association to convert the Irish aristocracy to
Christianity, and to teach to the oppressed and trodden-on people that
there is really such a thing as "loving our neighbors as ourselves."
How unvarying are the features of the Irish gentry:
"Our squires of late through Europe roam;
Are too well bred to live at home:
Are not content with Dublin College,
But range abroad for greater knowledge;
To strut in velvets and brocades
At balls, and plays, and masquerades.
To have their rent their chiefest care is,
In bills to London and to Paris.
Their education is so nice,
They know all chances on the dice;
*...*...*...*
Those absentees we here describe
_Are chiefly of our Irish tribe_,
Who live in luxury and pleasure,
And throw away their time and treasure;
Cause poverty and devastation,
And sink the credit of the nation,"
Who has not seen their deserted homes, so picturesquely sketched here?
"Their mansions molder quite away,
And run to ruin and decay;
Left like a desert wild and waste,
Without the track of man or beast;
Where wild fowl may with safety rest,
At every gate may build a nest:
Where grass or weeds on pavements grow,
And every year is fit to mow.
No smoke from chimneys does ascend,
Nor entertainment for a friend;
Nor sign of drink, or smell of meat,
For human creatures there to eat."
To turn to a more agreeable circumstance. The chief incident in "She
Stoops to Conquer" is said to have originated in an amusing adventure of
Goldsmith's, on his last going from home to the school at
Edgeworthstown, and is thus related by Prior: "Having set off on
horseback, there being then, and indeed now, no regular wheeled
conveyance from Ballymahon, he loitered on the road, amusing himself by
viewing the neighboring gentlemen's seats. A friend had presented him
with a guinea; and the desire, perhaps, of spending it--to a
schoolboy--in a most independent manner at an inn, tended to slacken his
diligence on the road. Night overtook him in the small town of Ardagh,
about half way on his journey. Inquiring for the best house in the
place, meaning the best inn, he chanced to address, as is said, a person
named Cornelius Kelly, who boasted of having taught fencing to the
Marquis of Granby, and was then domesticated in the house of Mr.
Featherstone, a gentleman of fortune in the town; he was known as a
notorious wag, and, willing to play off a trick upon one whom he had no
doubt discovered to be a swaggering schoolboy, directed him to the house
of his patron.
"Suspecting no deception, Oliver proceeded as directed; gave
authoritative orders about the care of his horse, and, being thence
conceived by the servants to be an expected guest, was ushered into the
presence of their master, who immediately discovered the mistake. Being,
however, a man of humor, and willing to enjoy an evening's amusement
with a boy under the influence of so unusual a blunder, he encouraged
it, particularly when, by the communicative disposition of the guest, it
was found he was the son of an old acquaintance on his way to school.
Nothing occurred to undeceive the self-importance of the youth,
fortified by the possession of a sum he did not often possess; wine was
therefore ordered, in addition to a good supper, and the supposed
landlord, his wife, and daughters, were invited to partake of it. On
retiring for the night, a hot cake was ordered for breakfast the
following morning; nor was it until preparing to quit the house next day
that he discovered he had been entertained in a private family."
Ballymahon, the little foreign-looking town near his native place,
figures conspicuously in Goldsmith's early life. After his father's
death, which took place while he was at college, his mother removed
thither, and thither during vacations Oliver betook himself. Again, when
he quitted college, he spent two years among his relations, with no
fixed aim; sometimes he was with his uncle Contarine in Roscommon;
sometimes at Lissoy, where now his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, lived in
the old house; at other times he was with his brother Henry, who,
officiating as curate, lived at Pallasmore in the house where Oliver was
born, and, to eke out his small salary, kept a school, in which Oliver
assisted him. No place was so dear to him, however, as Lissoy, where he
entered into all the rural sports and occupations of his brother-in-law
with fullest enjoyment. There is no doubt that, had he had sufficient
means, he would have continued to live here a country life, and the
world would most probably have lost a poet. As it is, he has made the
life and characters of Lissoy familiar to all the world, in both The
Deserted Village and The Vicar of Wakefield. No man drew more from real,
and especially from his own past life, than Goldsmith. The last years he
spent in the country he was a tutor in the family of a country gentleman
in the county of Roscommon, of the name of Flinn; and the nature of his
impressions regarding such a situation he is supposed to have recorded
in the history of The Man in Black.
His mother's house at Ballymahon, where she lived as a widow about
twenty years, is still pointed out to the curious; it forms one corner
of the road to Edgeworthstown. Some shop accounts have been preserved,
in which Oliver, under the familiar title of Master Noll, is found
figuring as his mother's messenger for tea and sugar; it was only to the
next door. Opposite to his mother's house stood George Conway's inn,
where he used to spend many a gay and jovial evening, in the company of
those who resorted thither, and often amused them with a story or a
song. Here he was naturally a great authority in matters of learning.
From scenes and characters occurring here, it is believed he drew the
first idea of Tony Lumpkin; at all events, in such a circle he saw
traits of human life and action that would be found as old gold at the
necessary time. At Ballymulvey House, in the neighborhood, he spent many
happy hours with his friend, and quondam college and school companion,
Mr. Robert Bryanton, and also with him made excursions into the
surrounding country, sometimes shooting, sometimes fishing in the Inny,
which runs through the town. In these rambles he made himself as
familiar with nature and her wild children as he did with man in towns;
he traced the haunts of the wild fowl, and hunted the otter in the
waters that there communicate with the Shannon. There are many objects
in the neighborhood of Ballymahon still proudly pointed out as belonging
to the haunts of Goldsmith: the islets in the river; the ruins of a
mill, in his time in full activity; the places on the river side where
he used to sit and play on his flute; as well as the house of a Mr.
Gannon, where, as he himself tells us in his Animated Nature, he first
saw a seal, this gentleman having two for ten years in his house.
In this portion of his life there are many rich and amusing incidents,
which it is to be regretted we can not here introduce, particularly that
most amusing account of his visit to an old college friend, who had
often pressed him to come and "command his stable and his purse," but
who turned out as such friends often do. But we have over-stepped his
sojourn at college, and must turn back to it.
Trinity College, Dublin, is a noble structure; and, with its spacious
courts and extensive gardens, more fittingly deserving the name of
parks, one would think a place where the years of studentship
might--especially in the heart of such a city--be very agreeably spent.
But Goldsmith entered there under circumstances that were irksome to
him, and, to add to the matter, he met with a brute in his tutor. The
family income did not allow him to occupy a higher rank than that of a
sizer, or poor scholar, and this was mortifying to his sensitive mind.
The sizer wears a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves, a plain
black cloth cap without a tassel, and dines at the fellows' table after
they have retired. It was at that period far worse; they wore red caps
to distinguish them, and were compelled to perform derogatory offices:
to sweep the courts in the morning, carry up the dishes from the
kitchen to the fellows' table, and wait in the hall till they had dined.
No wonder that a mind like that of Goldsmith's writhed under the
degradation! He has recorded his own feelings and opinions on this
custom: "Sure pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges
the absurd fashion of being attended at meals, and on other public
occasions, by those poor men who, willing to be scholars, come in upon
some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at
once learning the liberal arts, and, at the same time, treated as
slaves; at once studying freedom and practicing servitude." A spirited
fellow at length caused the abolition of the practice of the sizers
acting as waiters, and that, too, on grand occasions before the public,
by flinging the dish he was carrying on Trinity Sunday at the head of a
citizen in the crowd, assembled to witness the scene, who made some
jeering remarks on the office he had to perform.
His tutor, a great brute--let his name be known: it was
Wilder--proceeded sometimes to actual corporeal castigation; and, with
Oliver's natural tendency to poetry rather than to dry classical and
mathematical studies, like many other poets, including Scott and Byron,
he cut no great figure at college; and, like the latter, detested it.
Among his cotemporaries at the college was Edmund Burke, but they appear
to have known little of each other. To add to Goldsmith's uncomfortable
position, there occurred a riot of the students, who, hearing that one
of their body had been arrested in Fleet-street, rushed to the rescue,
seized the bailiffs, dragged them to the college, and pumped them
soundly in the old cistern. They next attempted to break open Newgate,
and make a general jail delivery, but failed for want of cannon. In the
subsequent inquiry Goldsmith came in, not for any severe punishment, but
for a college censure. Feeling his self-respect deeply wounded by his
brutal tutor entering his chambers on one occasion when he had a party
of merry comrades there, and in their presence inflicting personal
chastisement upon him, he quitted college, selling his books, and set
off to Cork to embark for some foreign country; but his money failed; he
was compelled to sell his clothes from his back, and, brought to the
utmost condition of misery and starvation, he thus reached his brother's
house, who again clothed him, and brought him back to college,
endeavoring to propitiate the brutal tutor. His father dying, he was
reduced to the deepest distress. His generous uncle Contarine helped him
all he could, but, with Oliver's careless habits, he was still often
reduced to the utmost straits. He was sometimes compelled to pawn his
books, and borrow others to study from. His condition became that of
squalid poverty, and at length he was driven to the extremity of writing
street-ballads, which he found a ready sale for, at five shillings a
copy, at a shop known as the sign of the Reindeer, in Mountrath-street.
Eventually obtaining the degree of B.A., he quitted the University, and,
as we have seen, retreated to his own native neighborhood and friends.
All chance of succeeding as a clergyman, to which office he, moreover,
had an aversion, appearing out of the question, and having either no
inclination, or not sufficient spirit of plodding for the pursuit of
law, which had been recommended to him, by assistance of his friends he
crossed over to Edinburgh, and commenced in that University the study of
physic. We have no clew to the exact lodgings of Goldsmith during his
stay in Edinburgh, which was two winters. Men in the poverty of
Goldsmith, as a student, seldom record very traceably their whereabouts.
The tradition is, however, that the lodgings he chiefly occupied were in
the College Wynd; and this is very likely, both because the situation is
very convenient for the college, and because the character of the place
agrees pretty much with the sort of entertainment he describes himself
to have found in them. The College Wynd is a narrow alley of wretched
houses, now inhabited only by the lowest grade of population. It is
probable, however, that in it was the better class of lodgings which
Goldsmith occupied in this city. The house in which he located himself
at first was also a boarding-house, but of such a description that he
used, in after days, to amuse his friends in London with an account of
the economy of the table. A leg of mutton, as he told the story, dished
up in various ways by the ingenuity of his hostess, served for the
better part of dinner during a week; a dish of broth being made on the
seventh day from the bone. He soon fled from this luxurious abode, and
joined several other students, his friends and countrymen, who were
better accommodated, most likely in this College Wynd. He had the
advantage of studying under the elder Monro; he became a member of the
Medical Society; but was soon more noted for his convivial talents and
habits than for his industrious study. He made a trip into the Highlands
on a pony, he says, of the size of a ram, and wrote a humorous account
of Scotland and the people to his friend, Robert Bryanton, of
Ballymahon. Through some Irish connection he was invited to the Duke of
Hamilton's, whose duchess at that time was one of the celebrated
Gunnings; but he said he soon found himself liked rather as a _jester_
than as a companion, and he at once disdained the company of dukes on
any such terms. Among his college friends was that Lauchlan Macleane,
whom Sir David Brewster has of late again been endeavoring to prove to
be the real Junius, though his claims were long ago sifted, and rejected
by public opinion; particularly from the cogent facts that Macleane was
the private secretary of Lord Shelburne at the very time that his
lordship was violently attacked by Junius, under another signature, in
1767, according to Woodfall's evidence, which would convert Macleane
into Junius at the cost of all character; and, secondly, because
Macleane was himself ridiculed by Junius, under the signature of Vindex,
in 1771.
Having, with his usual incaution in such matters, become security for a
fellow-student, he would not have been able to quit Edinburgh had it not
been for Macleane and Dr. Joseph Fenn Sleigh, a Quaker, and afterward a
popular physician at Cork. Saved from arrest by their kindness, he
embarked for Bordeaux, but was driven into Newcastle-on-Tyne, where, the
ship proving to be engaged in enlisting soldiers for the French army, he
was seized and cast into prison for a fortnight before he could prove
his innocence. In the mean time the ship had escaped out of the harbor.
He had lost his passage, and his passage-money and luggage, but saved
his life, for the ship was wrecked, and every soul perished. He then
went over to Rotterdam, studied at Leyden for a year, but, as far as
appears, took no degree; and thence set off, on foot, on that tour of
which so much has always been said in connection with his name. With his
usual good-natured thoughtlessness, when about to set forward from
Leyden, provided with a small fund by his uncle Contarine, being struck,
in the garden of a florist, with some beautiful bulbous flowers, and
recollecting in his gratitude his uncle Contarine's admiration of those
flowers, he spent most of the money in purchasing a quantity of them to
ship to Ireland for him, as the most welcome present he could think of,
and then set out, almost penniless, on his journey. His tour extended
through Flanders; and France, at Paris attending the chemical lectures
of Rouelle, and being introduced to Voltaire; a small portion of
Germany; thence through Switzerland, visiting some of its most
celebrated scenes, and climbing some of its highest mountains, as the
Jura, into Italy, where he extended his journey to most of the northern
cities, Mantua, Milan, Padua, Florence, Verona, Venice, and the wilds of
Carinthia, but never reached Rome or Naples. His necessities became too
great to permit him to go farther. In France his flute was, among the
peasantry, as represented in his Traveler, a never-failing resource;
not so in Italy. There the higher taste for music made his rude skill
useless; but he found many of his countrymen residents in the
monasteries, and these were always ready to relieve his wants. He found
also another resource, which he relates in his Philosophic Vagabond: "My
skill in music could avail me nothing in Italy, where every peasant was
a better musician than I; but by this time I had acquired another
talent, which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill in
disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents, there are,
upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every
adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes with any
dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one
night. In this manner, then, I fought my way toward England; walked
along from city to city, examined mankind more closely, and, if I may so
express it, saw both sides of the picture."
There is no question that this hardy enterprise of making the tour of
Europe on foot, and pushing his way as he could, by his powers of
argument or his flute, though, as he observed, it made him a debtor in
almost every kingdom in Europe, yet immensely extended his knowledge of
human nature. He was the first man, through his close observation of the
French people, to predict their breaking up the despotism of the old
monarchy. "As the Swedes are making concealed approaches to despotism,
the French, on the other hand, are imperceptibly vindicating themselves
into freedom. When I consider that these Parliaments, the members of
which are all created by the court; the presidents of which can only act
by immediate direction; presume even to mention privileges and freedom,
who, till of late, received directions from the throne with implicit
humility; when this is considered, I can not help fancying that the
genius of freedom has entered that kingdom in disguise. If they have but
three weak monarchs successively on the throne, the mask will be laid
aside, and the country will certainly once more be free." This was a
remarkable prophecy; the sagacity of Goldsmith penetrated the eventful
future twelve years before the mind of Burke, by treading the same
ground, arrived at the same conclusion.
In 1756 Oliver Goldsmith reached England, destined now to the end of his
life to become the scene of his varied struggles, his poverty, and his
fame. It were a long story to follow him minutely through all his
numerous pursuits of an existence, his various changes of residence for
a long time, without much advance toward profit or reputation. The early
part of his career is lost in obscurity and conjecture. He stepped upon
the shore of England a nameless adventurer, destitute of cash, and
uncertain as to what means of livelihood he should embrace. The struggle
which now and for some time went on was for life itself. He was reduced
to the most desperate circumstances. He applied for assistance to his
relations in Ireland, but whether they could no longer help him, or
whether they now regarded his continual wanderings, and continual drain
upon them, as the confirmed signs of a thriftless vagabond, none came.
It is said that in this situation he tried the stage in a country town,
and his intimate acquaintanceship with the interior of the wretched
country play-house, as displayed in The Adventures of a Strolling
Player, and the conclusion of the story of George Primrose, renders it
very probable. He was driven by utter need, according to the by-word of
the Irishman, to be almost "any body's customer." The next resource was,
trusting to his scholastic acquirements to procure an engagement as an
usher in a country school. But his appearance must have been against
him; reference he had none in this country to give, and though he
applied to his old kind tutor in Dublin, Dr. Radcliffe, not the brute
Wilder, he requested his recommendation to be given to him under a
feigned name, being ashamed of hereafter having his present condition
associated with his own. Dr. Radcliffe was obliged to be silent.
Goldsmith held this situation, it may be supposed, under these
circumstances for no long period; but the very location of the school is
unknown; it has been said to be in Yorkshire, and also in Kent, near
Ashford or Tenterden. What sort of a life he had of it in this
"Do-the-boys Hall," wherever it was, we may learn from the curious
catechism he puts into the mouth of the cousin of one of his heroes.
"Ay, this is indeed a very pretty career that has been chalked out for
you. I have been an usher at a boarding-school myself; and may I die by
an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be under-turnkey in Newgate. I was
up early and late. I was browbeat by the master; hated for my ugly face
by the mistress; worried by the boys within, and never permitted to stir
out to receive civility abroad. But are you sure you are fit for a
school? Let me examine you a little. Have you been bred apprentice to
the business?" "No." "Then you won't do for a school. Have you had the
small-pox?" "No." "Then you won't do for a school. Can you lie three in
a bed?" "No." "Then you won't do for a school. Have you got a good
stomach?" "Yes." "Then you will by no means do for a school!"
Driven from such a purgatory even for want of a character, Goldsmith,
with The Deserted Village and The Vicar of Wakefield in his hand, was
once more wandering the streets of London amid a thousand other equally
destitute wretches. He applied to apothecary after apothecary, trusting
to his medical education, for employment with them; but, with all the
traces of vagabond indigence upon him, and without any recommendation to
show, his repulses were certain. A chemist of the name of Jacob,
residing at the corner of Monument or Bell Yard, on Fish Hill, taking
compassion on his destitute condition, at length gave him employment. It
may be supposed to be about this time that his lodgings were of that
magnificent description with which he once in after life startled a
circle of good company, breaking out suddenly in some fit of forgetful
enthusiasm with, "When I lived among the beggars in Ax Lane." His first
gleam of better fortune was finding his old Edinburgh college friend,
Dr. Sleigh, in London, who received him in all his squalor with the
warmth of true friendship, and enabled him to commence as physician in
Bankside, Southwark. It did not answer, and the next glimpse of him is
acting as a corrector of the press in the printing-office of Richardson
the novelist. The next fortunate circumstance was meeting with Mr.
Milner, one of his old Edinburgh fellow-students, whose father, Dr.
Milner, a Dissenting minister, kept a classical school at Peckham, in
Surrey. By him he was recommended to his father, to assist him in his
school duties. Dr. Milner was suffering under severe illness, and
Goldsmith's services were accepted. Here he continued for some time, it
has been said by part of the family, three years; and this connection
led to the one which brought him into the direct field of authorship.
Mr., afterward Dr. Griffiths, a bookseller of Paternoster Row, had
started the Monthly Review, and was beating up for contributors.
Goldsmith, whom he had become acquainted with at Dr. Milner's, was one
invited. The engagement is calculated to make both proprietors and
authors of the present day smile. Goldsmith was regularly boarded and
lodged in the bibliopole's house--the hired servant of literature. How
satisfactory this odd arrangement of keeping a tame author turned out,
may be guessed by the fact that the engagement for a year ended in five
months. The great fact at which Goldsmith kicked was, that not only
Griffiths, but _his wife_, was in the regular habit of acting as the
censor, and altering the articles written for the Review.
From this time to the day of his death Goldsmith was regularly lanched
into the drudgery of literature; the most wearing, feverish, uncertain,
and worst remunerating life under the sun. To live in one long anxiety,
and to die poor, was his lot, as it has been that of thousands of
others. There are innocent minds, who are filled with gladness at the
sight of a goodly library; who feast on a well-bound row of books, as
the lover of nature does on a poetical landscape or on a bank of
violets. For my part, I never see such a collection of books without an
inward pang. They remind me of a catacomb; every volume is in my eyes
but a bone in the great gathering of the remains of literary martyrs.
When I call to mind the pleasure with which many of these books were
written, followed by the agonies of disappointment they brought; the
repulses and contempt of booksellers, to whom the authors had carried
them in all the flush of their inexperience and of high hope; the cruel
malice of the critics which assailed them,
"Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame;
Bloody dissectors, worse than ten Monros:
He hacks to teach, they mangle to expose;"--_Burns._
when I think of the glorious hopes which accompanied their composition,
and the terrible undeceiving which attended their publication; when I
reflect how many of these fair tomes were written in bitterest poverty,
with the most aching hearts, in the most cheerless homes, and how many
others ruined the writers who were tolerably well off before they put
pen to paper; when I remember, on passing my eye along them, how many of
them never were raised to their present rank and occupation till the
unhappy authors were beyond the knowledge of it; when I see others which
_had_ their fame during the author's lifetime, but enriched only the
lucky bibliopole, and left the conscious producer of wealth only doubly
poor by seeing it in the enjoyment of another; when I see those works
which, while the author lived, were assailed as blasphemous and
devilish, and are now the text-books of liberty and progress; and when I
call to mind all the tears which have bedewed them, the sadness of soul,
often leading to suicide, which has weighed down the immortal spirits
which created them, I own that there is to me no such melancholy
spectacle as a fine collection of books.
Goldsmith had his full share of this baptism of literary wretchedness. I
can not follow him minutely through the years of book-drudgery and all
its attendant adventures. Suffice it that he wrote an immense mass of
articles for the periodicals; hosts of histories; plays, tales, essays,
and the like, anonymously; and which, therefore, brought him precarious
bread, but little fame. He commenced writing in the Monthly Review in
1757, and it was not till 1764 that his name was first affixed to his
first poem, The Traveler. Thus he served a seven years' apprenticeship
to anonymous authorship before he began to take that rank in English
literature which was his destined portion; exactly in ten years more he
was in his grave, having, in the mean time, given to posterity his
exquisite Deserted Village; his inimitable Vicar of Wakefield; his
Good-natured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer; besides hosts of histories,
written to make the pot boil. Histories of Animated Nature; of England,
Greece, Rome, and what not. During the whole of his career, the
pecuniary condition of Goldsmith was one of uneasiness. It is true that
his generous, improvident disposition might have left the result the
same had he won ten times the sum he did; but one can not help regarding
the sums received by him for his writings as something most humiliating,
when their real value to the booksellers of all ages is considered. We
find his life abounding with his borrowing two and three guineas of his
bookseller, and receiving such sums for articles. The Traveler brought
him _twenty guineas_! The Vicar of Wakefield, _sixty_; and for the
Deserted Village, _one hundred_; not two hundred pounds altogether, for
three of the most popular works in any language. It would be a curious
fact to ascertain, were it possible, what these three works alone have
made for the booksellers.
But if Goldsmith was not well remunerated for the works with which he
enriched the English language, he was rich in friends. Johnson, Burke,
Sir Joshua Reynolds, all the great men of the age, were his intimate
associates, and knew how to value both his genius and his unselfish
nature. The friendship of Johnson for him was beautiful. All the world
knows the story of Johnson selling "the manuscript of the Vicar of
Wakefield" to save the author from an arrest of his landlady for arrears
of rent. It has been made the subject of more than one excellent
painting; but it is not so generally known, that so uncertain were both
Johnson and the publisher of its merits, that it remained nearly two
years in the publisher's desk before he ventured to publish it. It was
the fame of The Traveler which emboldened the bibliopole to bring it
out, and the public at once received it with one instant and general
cheer.
We must now confine ourselves to a brief indication of the successive
residences and haunts of Goldsmith during his literary life in London,
first observing only, that so unpromising for a long time was the field
of authorship, that he sought several times to quit it. In 1758, he
procured the post of physician and surgeon to one of the factories on
the coast of Coromandel, but was refused his certificate at Surgeon's
Hall as not duly qualified. He tried, in 1760, to procure the situation
of secretary to the Society of Arts, as a means of permanent support;
and failing, he recurred to a wild project, which he had entertained
years before, of going out to the East to decipher the inscriptions on
the Written Mountains, though he was totally ignorant of Arabic, or the
language in which the inscriptions might be supposed to be written. His
inducement was the salary of £300 a year, which had been left for that
purpose. He proposed, in this expedition, also, to acquire a knowledge
of the arts peculiar to the East, and introduce them into Britain. When
Johnson heard of this, he said, "Why, sir, he would bring home a
grinding-barrow, which you see in every street of London, and think he
had furnished a wonderful improvement." The scheme appeared as
visionary in other quarters, and so fell through. These various plans,
however, all show what a thorny path was that of authorship to him.
We find Goldsmith first residing, after he had quitted Griffiths's roof,
about 1757, in the vicinity of Salisbury Square, Fleet-street; where
exactly, is not known. At this time he was in the habit of frequenting
the Temple Exchange Coffee-house, near Temple Bar, where he had his
letters addressed, and where he even saw, according to the fashion of
the times, his patients, when he had any. There does not appear to be
any such coffee-house now. Green-arbor Court, between the Old Bailey and
what was lately Fleet Market, was his next abode, where he located
himself toward the end of 1758. "Here," says his biographer, "he became
well known to his literary brethren, was visited by them, and his
lodgings well remembered. This house, a few years ago, formed the abode,
as it appears to have done in his own time, of laborious indigence. The
adjoining houses likewise presented every appearance of squalid poverty,
every floor being occupied by the poorest class. Two of the number fell
down from age and dilapidation; and the remainder, on the same side of
the court, including that in which the poet resided, standing on the
right-hand corner on entering from Farringdon-street by what is called,
from their steepness and number, Breakneck-steps, were taken down some
time afterward to avoid a similar catastrophe. They were four stories in
height; the attics had casement windows, and at one time they were
probably inhabited by a superior class of tenants. The site is now
occupied by a large building, inclosed by a wall running through the
court or square, intended for the stabling and lofts of a wagon office."
In the beginning of March, 1759, he was seen here, in one of his
excursions to London, by the Rev. Mr. Percy, afterward Bishop Percy, the
collector of the Reliques, and author of the Hermit of Warkworth, one
of his earliest literary friends. "The doctor," observed the prelate,
"was employed in writing his Inquiry into Polite Learning, in a
wretchedly dirty room, in which there was but one chair; and when, from
civility, this was offered to his visitant, he himself was obliged to
sit in the window. While they were conversing, some one gently rapped at
the door, and on being desired to come in, a poor, ragged little girl of
very decent behavior entered, who, dropping a courtesy, said, 'My mamma
sends her compliments, and begs the favor of your lending her a potful
of coals.'"
Mr. Prior, in 1820, going into a small shop in the Clapham Road to
purchase the first edition of Goldsmith's Essays, lying in the window,
found the woman in the shop an old neighbor of the poet's. She said she
was a near relative of the woman who kept the house in Green-arbor
Court, and, at the age of seven or eight, went frequently thither; one
of the inducements to which was the cakes and sweetmeats given to her
and other children of the family by the gentleman who lodged there.
These they duly valued at the moment, but when afterward considered as
the gift of one so eminent, the recollection became the source of pride
and boast. Another of his amusements consisted in assembling these
children in his room, and inducing them to dance to the music of his
flute. Of this instrument, as a relaxation from study, he was fond. He
was usually shut up in the room during the day, went out in the
evenings, and preserved regular hours. His habits otherwise were
sociable, and he had several visitors. One of the companions whose
society gave him particular pleasure was a respectable watchmaker,
residing in the same court, celebrated for the possession of much wit
and humor; qualities which, as they distinguish his own writings, he
professes to have sought and cultivated wherever they were to be found.
Here the woman related that Goldsmith's landlord having fallen into
difficulties, was at length arrested; and Goldsmith, who owed a small
sum of money for rent, being applied to by his wife to assist in the
release of her husband, found that, although without money, he did not
want resources. A new suit of clothes was consigned to the pawnbroker,
and the amount raised, proving much more than sufficient to discharge
his own debt, was handed over for the release of the prisoner. What is
most singular is, that this effort of active benevolence to rescue a
debtor from jail, gave, in all probability, rise to a charge against him
of dishonesty. As we have said, Goldsmith, proposing to go out to India,
took his examination at Surgeon's Hall. To make a creditable appearance
there, he had borrowed money of Griffiths, the bookseller, for a new
suit of clothes. These clothes Griffiths soon afterward discovered
hanging at a pawnbroker's door. As Goldsmith had lost the situation he
had boasted of when he borrowed this money, and kept his own not very
flattering secret of the cause of the loss--his rejection at Surgeon's
Hall--Griffiths, a man of coarse mind, at once jumped to the conclusion
that it was all a piece of trickery. He demanded an explanation of
Goldsmith; Goldsmith refused to give it. He demanded the return of his
money; Goldsmith, of course, had it not. They came to a fierce and
violent, and, as it proved, irreconcilable quarrel, and Goldsmith
disdaining to explain the real circumstances, long bore the disgrace of
duplicity as the result of his generous act.
There is one more anecdote connected with his residence here, and it is
characteristic. A gentleman, inquiring whether he was within, was shown
up to his room without further ceremony, when, soon after having entered
it, a noise of voices, as if in altercation, was heard by the people
below, the key of the door at the same moment being turned within the
room. Doubtful of the nature of the interview, the attention of the
landlady was excited, but both voices being distinguished at intervals,
her suspicions of personal violence were lulled, and no further notice
taken. Late in the evening the door was unlocked, a good supper ordered
by the visitor from the neighboring tavern, and the gentlemen, who met
so ungraciously at first, spent the remainder of the evening in great
good humor. The explanation given of this scene was, that the poet being
behind-hand with certain writings for the press, and the stated period
of publication arrived, the intruder, who was a printer or publisher,
probably Hamilton or Wilkie, for both of whom he wrote at that time,
would not quit the room till they were finished; and for this species of
durance inflicted on the author, the supper formed the apology.
In those apartments, little indebted as we may believe to the labors of
the housemaid, he is said to have observed the predatory habits of the
spider, and drawn up that paper on the subject which appeared in the
fourth number of the Bee, reprinted in the Essays, and given in
substance in the History of Animated Nature. In these lodgings he wrote
a Memoir of the Life of Voltaire, and a Translation of The Henriade; an
Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe; besides a multitude
of Reviews and other articles in the Bee, the Busybody, and other
magazines of the day. He wrote also his Chinese Letters, and newspaper
articles at least two a week, at the rate of a guinea per article. In
1760 he quitted Green-arbor Court, and took respectable lodgings in
Wine-office Court, Fleet-street, where he continued about two years in
the house of an acquaintance, a relative of the friendly bookseller,
Newbery, predecessor of Hunter, corner of St. Paul's churchyard, and
since of Harris. Here he had a large literary acquaintance among men of
all grades of reputation and talent. Among them Dr. Percy was a frequent
visitor, and here it was that Dr. Johnson was introduced to him by Dr.
Percy, at a large party which Goldsmith gave to persons chiefly
literary. Johnson went dressed in his highest style; and on Percy's
remarking it as they went along, "Why, sir," said Johnson, "I hear that
Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of
cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this
night to show him a better example." From the first moment of meeting,
these two great men took vastly to each other, and continued firm
friends till Goldsmith's death.
During Goldsmith's residence in Wine-office Court, he was busily
employed on a pamphlet on the Cock-lane Ghost; a History of Mecklenburg;
The Art of Poetry on a New Plan; An Abridgment of Plutarch; Additions to
English History; a Life of Beau Nash; and contributions to the Christian
Magazine: most of these being written for Newbery. To relieve the tedium
of his drudgery, he was in the habit of frequenting the Monday evening
meetings of the Robin Hood Debating Society, held at a house of that
name in Butcher Row, whither it had been removed from the Essex Head, in
Essex-street, in the Strand. The payment of sixpence formed the only
requisite for admission, three halfpence of which were said to be put by
for the purposes of charity. The annual number of visitors averaged
about 5000. A gilt chair indicated the presiding authority, and all
questions, not excepting religion and politics, were open to discussion.
In these discussions Goldsmith used even to take part, but his great
delight was to listen to the harangues of an eloquent baker, at the
conclusion of one of which Goldsmith exclaimed to his companion Derrick,
"That man was meant by nature for a lord-chancellor;" to which Derrick
replied, "No, no, not so high; he was only intended for _master of the
rolls_." The man actually became a magistrate in Middlesex, and, as was
said, a first-rate one.
In 1762 Goldsmith quitted Wine-office Court, and took lodgings in the
house of a Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, in Islington. This was to be near his
friend and publisher, Mr. Newbery, who resided at Canonbury House, near
to Mrs. Fleming's. Here he continued till 1764, chiefly employed upon
job-work for his friend Newbery; among the most important, the Letters
of a Nobleman to his Son, and the History of England. He used to relieve
the monotony of his life by weekly visits to the Literary Club, of which
Johnson, Burke, and Sir Joshua Reynolds were principal members, and
which was held at the Turk's Head, Gerrard-street, Soho.
Here, there is every reason to believe, occurred the event already
alluded to, the threat of his arrest, and the sale of the manuscript of
the Vicar of Wakefield, by Johnson, to liberate him. Of this story there
have been various versions; Mrs. Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, Cumberland,
and Boswell, all relate it, all profess to have heard it from Johnson,
and yet each tells it very differently. In all these stories, however,
there is a landlady demanding arrears of rent, and bailiffs waiting to
arrest if the money were not forthcoming. All agree that Goldsmith was
drinking, most of them say Madeira, to drown his vexation; and
Cumberland adds, that the landlady proposed the alternative of payment
or marriage. Whether the latter point were really included in the
demand, is not likely ever to be known; but that Mrs. Fleming, who went
by the name of Goldsmith's hostess, and is thus painted by Hogarth, was
the woman in question, I think there can be little doubt, though Prior,
the biographer, would fain exempt her from the charge, and suppose the
scene to occur in some temporary lodging. There does not appear the
smallest ground for such a supposition. All facts point to this place
and person. Goldsmith had been here for at least a year and a half, for
Prior himself gives the particulars of this landlady's bill reaching to
June 22d. As it occurred in this year, and about this time--for it is
expressly stated that the Vicar of Wakefield was kept about two years by
the bookseller unpublished, and it was not published till the end of
March, 1766--it could not possibly happen any where else. He could not
have left Mrs. Fleming, or if he had, he could not have been away long
enough to accumulate any alarming score. Here, on the contrary, every
thing indicates that he was in debt and difficulty. He had been at least
a year and a half here, and might, and probably had, run a good way into
his landlady's books. The biographer states expressly that Goldsmith
_was_ in great difficulties, and for some months was invisible--said to
have made a trip into Yorkshire. The biographer also shows that Newbery,
the bookseller, generally paid the landlady for Goldsmith; but it comes
out that Goldsmith was now got also very far behind with Newbery, owing
him no less than £111; and next comes an obvious dislocation with
Newbery himself. It is a fact which does not seem to have struck the
biographer, that when Johnson sold the manuscript of the Vicar of
Wakefield, he did not sell it to Newbery, though Newbery was not only
Goldsmith's publisher, but his own. He went and sold it to a nephew of
Newbery's, Mr. Francis Newbery, of Paternoster Row. Now there must have
been a reason for this, and what so likely as that Goldsmith having run
too deep into debt, had alarmed Newbery--publishers are careful
men--that he had not only refused to advance more, but had withdrawn his
guarantee to the landlady. This being the case, Goldsmith would be at
his wit's end. With long arrears of rent and board, for Mrs. Fleming
found that too, the security withdrawn by Newbery, she would be alarmed,
and insist on Goldsmith's paying. To Newbery he could not fly, and, in
his despair, he sent for Johnson. Johnson sold the novel, but not to
John Newbery. With him it would only have gone to reduce the standing
claim, with another it could bring what was wanted, instant cash. What
confirms this view of the case is, moreover, the fact that immediately
after this Goldsmith did quit his old landlady, and returned to London.
Canonbury Tower, or Canonbury House, as it is indifferently called, is
often said to have been a residence of Goldsmith, and the room is shown
which he used to occupy, and where it is said he wrote The Deserted
Village. The reason given for Goldsmith's going to live at Islington is,
that it was a pleasant, rural situation, and that there he would be near
Newbery, his publisher, who engaged with Goldsmith's landlady to pay the
rent. Newbery had apartments in Canonbury House, and here Goldsmith
visited him. Anon, as his difficulties increased, he used to hide from
his creditors in the tower, where he lay concealed for days and weeks.
Very probably he was there all the time he was said to be gone into
Yorkshire.
As to his having written The Deserted Village there, that is quite
likely. It is equally probable that he might write there The Traveler,
which was published at the end of the very year he left Islington. The
Deserted Village was not published for five years afterward, or in 1769;
and was, if written at Canonbury, the fruit of a subsequent residence
there in 1767. His fixed abode was then in the Temple, but he had
apartments for part of the summer in Canonbury House, and was visited
there by most of his literary friends. On many of these occasions they
adjourned to a social dinner at the Crown Tavern in the Lower Road,
where tradition states them to have been very jovial. It is not
improbable that he wrote part of The Vicar of Wakefield at Islington
too, having, as we see, completed it at the time of his threatened
arrest, that is, at the close of his residence at Islington.
Canonbury Tower, at the time Goldsmith used to frequent it, was a fine,
airy place, in a sweet, rural neighborhood. Geoffrey Crayon says: "It is
an ancient brick tower, hard by 'merry Islington,' the remains of a
hunting seat of Queen Elizabeth, where she took the pleasure of the
country when the neighborhood was all woodland. What gave it particular
interest in my eyes was the circumstance that it had been the residence
of a poet. It was here Goldsmith resided when he wrote his Deserted
Village. I was shown the very apartment. It was a relic of the original
style of the castle, with paneled wainscot and Gothic windows. I was
pleased with its air of antiquity, and its having been the residence of
poor Goldy." Irving located his "Poor Devil Author" in this room of
Goldsmith's, but represents him as soon driven away by the troops of
Londoners. "Sunday came, and with it the whole city world, swarming
about Canonbury Castle. I could not open my window but I was stunned
with shouts and noises from the cricket-ground; the late quiet road
beneath my windows was alive with the tread of feet and the clack of
tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was
absolutely a 'show-house,' being shown to strangers at sixpence a head.
There was a perpetual tramping up stairs of citizens and their families,
to look about the country from the top of the tower, and to take a peep
at the city through the telescope, to try if they could discern their
own chimneys."
The reason why Irving located his "Poor Devil Author" in Canonbury
Tower, no doubt, was because it had been the resort of several such, as
well as of men of greater note: Smart; Chambers, author of the
Cyclopædia; Humphries, author of Canons, a poem, Ulysses, an opera, &c.
"Here Humphries breathed his last, the Muses' friend,
And Chambers found his mighty labors end."
"See on the distant slope, majestic shows
Old Canonbury's tower, an ancient pile
To various fates assigned; and where, by turns,
Meanness and grandeur have alternate reigned.
Thither, in latter days, hath genius fled
From yonder city to repine and die.
There the sweet Bard of Auburn sat, and tuned
The plaintive moanings of his village dirge.
There learned Chambers treasured lore for _man_,
And Newbery there his A B C for _babes_."
One of these citizens, who took a particular pleasure in a visit to
Canonbury Tower, was William Hone. The view of the tower in his Every
Day Book is very correct, except that there is now an iron balustrade
round the top, for greater security of those who ascend it for the
prospect. His account of it is as follows:
"Canonbury Tower is sixty feet high, and seventy feet square. It is part
of an old mansion, which appears to have been erected, or, if erected
before, much altered about the reign of Elizabeth. The more ancient
edifice was erected by the priors of the Canons of St. Bartholomew,
Smithfield, and hence was called Canonbury, to whom it appertained until
it was surrendered with the priory to Henry VIII.; and when the
religious houses were dissolved, Henry gave the mansion to Thomas, lord
Cromwell. It afterward passed through other hands, till it was possessed
by Sir John Spencer, an alderman and lord-mayor of London, known by the
name of 'rich Spencer.' While he resided at Canonbury, a Dunkirk pirate
came over in a shallop to Barking Creek, and hid himself with some armed
men in Islington Fields, near the path Sir John usually took from his
house in Crosby Place to this mansion, with the hope of making him
prisoner; but as he remained in town that night, they were glad to make
off for fear of detection, and returned to France disappointed of their
prey, and of the large ransom they calculated on for the release of his
person. His sole daughter and heiress, Elizabeth,[29] was carried off in
a baker's basket from Canonbury House by William, the second Lord
Compton, lord-president of Wales. He inherited Canonbury, with the rest
of Sir John Spencer's wealth, at his death, and was afterward created
Earl of Northampton; in this family the manor still remains."
In Hone's time, a Mr. Symes, the bailiff of the manor under Lord
Northampton, was residing in the tower. He had lived there for
thirty-nine years. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Evans, wife to the former
bailiff, told Mr. Symes that her aunt, Mrs. Tapps, a seventy-year
inhabitant of the tower, was accustomed to talk much about Goldsmith and
his apartment. It was an old oak room on the first floor. Mrs. Tapps
affirmed that he there wrote his Deserted Village, and slept in a large
press bedstead placed in the eastern corner. Since Goldsmith's time, the
room has been much altered and subdivided. The house is still the
residence of the bailiff of the manor.
Poor Hone lamented sorely over the changes going on in this once sweet
neighborhood. "I ranged the old rooms, and took, perhaps, a last look
from the roof. The eye shrunk from the wide havoc below. Where new
buildings had not covered the sward, it was embowelling for bricks, and
kilns emitted flickering fire and sulphurous stench. Surely the dominion
of the brick-and-mortar king will have no end, and cages for commercial
spirits will be there instead of every green thing."
"So, Canonbury, thou dost stand a while;
Yet fall at last thou must; for thy rich warden
Is fast 'improving;' all thy pleasant fields
Have fled, and brick-kilns, bricks, and houses use
At his command: the air no longer yields
A fragrance--scarcely health; the very skies
Grow dim and town-like; a cold, creeping gloom
Steals into thee, and saddens every room;
And so realities come unto me,
Clouding the chambers of my mind, and making me--like thee."
One-and-twenty years have passed since Hone took this melancholy view of
the changes going on round Canonbury Tower. There has been no pause in
the process of housification since then. The whole neighborhood is fast
ingulfing in one overflowing London. What a change since Queen Elizabeth
used to come to this solitary tower, to hunt in the far-spreading
woodlands around; or to take a view from its summit of her distant
capital, and of the far-off winding Thames! What a change even since
Goldsmith paced this old tower, and looked over green fields, and thick
woods, and over the whole airy scene, full of solitude and beauty! There
are still old gardens with their stately cedars, and lanes that show
that they were once in a rural district, and that Canonbury was a right
pleasant place. But the goodly house of Sir Walter Raleigh, who grew
enamored of the spot from attending his royal mistress thither, is
degraded to the Pied Bull, and long terraces of new houses extinguish
one green field rapidly after another. Every thing seems in a state of
spreading and active advance, except the great tavern near the tower,
whose cricketers and revelers used to din Washington Irving so much, and
that now stands empty and ruinous; the very Sunday roisterers from the
city have sought some more greenly suburban resort.
The last residences of Goldsmith in London were within the precincts of
the Temple; but here he made two removes. He first took apartments on
the library staircase, No. 2 Garden Court. This is now pulled down, and,
I suppose, on the site stands the new library; for, on going into the
court, you now find no No. 2, but only Nos. 3 and 4, looking odd and
puzzling enough to the inquirer. Hence he removed to the King's-bench
Walk, but the particular house does not appear to be known. Lastly, he
removed to No. 2 Brick Court. His lodgings were on the second floor, on
the right hand ascending the staircase, and are said to consist of three
rooms, sufficiently airy and pleasant. With an imprudence which brought
upon him deep anxiety, and probably hastened his end, he borrowed of the
booksellers, and of the occupier of the opposite rooms, Mr. Edmund Bott,
a literary barrister, who was much esteemed by him, and became his
principal creditor at his death, and the possessor of his papers, four
hundred pounds, with which he furnished these apartments in an expensive
manner. Below Goldsmith, on the first floor, lived Sir William
Blackstone, who is said there to have written his Commentaries. There
were other barristers, especially a Mr. William Cooke, author of a work
on Dramatic Genius, and called Conversation Cooke, living in the Temple,
with whom Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy; and here he occasionally
gave very expensive suppers to his literary friends. Here he was visited
by almost every man of note of the time: Johnson with his Boswell,
Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Percy, Sir Philip Francis, &c. Almost twenty
years after his death these rooms became the scene of a tragical
adventure, by a Miss Broderick shooting in them a Mr. Eddington, with
whom she had formerly lived, and who took this desperate means of
punishing his desertion.
These rooms are at the lower end of Brick Court, at the corner of the
range of buildings on your right hand as you descend the court from
Fleet-street. There seems to be a considerable mistake in Prior's
account of them. Nearly all that he says appears to apply much more
naturally to his rooms in Garden than in Brick Court. In Garden Court
they most likely would be airy and pleasant. There, too, the anecdote of
his watching the rooks might take place; it could not in Brick Court. It
is thus given: "The view toward the gardens supplied him with an
observation given in Animated Nature, respecting the natural history of
the rooks. I have often amused myself with observing their plan of
policy from my window in the Temple, that looks upon a grove where they
have made a colony in the midst of the city," &c.
Now there is no view toward the garden. The court is built all round
with buildings as old as Goldsmith's time, and older. In his rooms in
Garden Court he could have full view of the elms in the garden, the
probable scene of the rookery in question.
During Goldsmith's life here, he was in the habit of meeting his
literary friends often in the evening at the Miter Tavern, Fleet-street;
at a card club at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, not now existing;
at the Globe Tavern, also near there, now gone too; and at Jack's
Coffee-house, now Walker's Hotel, Dean-street, corner of Queen-street,
Soho. It was here that Goldsmith confounded the gravity of Johnson with
one of his off-hand and simple jokes. They were supping tête-à-tête on
rumps and kidneys. Johnson observed, "Sir, these rumps are pretty little
things, but they require a good many to satisfy a man." "Ay! but," said
Goldsmith, "how many of these would reach to the moon?" "To the moon!
ay, sir, I fear that exceeds your calculation." "Not at all, sir," said
Goldsmith; "I think I could tell." "Pray, then, let us hear." "Why,
_one_, if it were long enough." Johnson growled at this reply for some
time, but at last recollecting himself, "Well, sir, I have deserved it;
I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a
question."
This house, in 1770, was the oldest tavern in London but three, and is
now probably the oldest. Mr. Walker, the present landlord of this hotel,
who has lived in it fifty years, and has now reached the venerable age
of ninety, is proud of the ancient honors of the house. On his card he
duly informs his friends that it was here that "Johnson, Garrick,
Goldsmith, and other literary characters of eminence" used to resort.
The house is old, spacious, and quiet, and well adapted for the sojourn
of families from the country, who are glad to escape the noise of more
frequented parts of the city. By permission of Mr. Walker, I present at
the head of this article a view of the room once honored by Johnson and
Goldsmith.
It is pleasant to find the author of The Traveler and Deserted Village,
amid all his labors, ever and anon escaping to the country, which no man
more profoundly enjoyed. It is delightful to imagine with what intense
pleasure he must have traversed the groves of Ilam, and the lovely
scenes of Dove Dale. He made similar rambles into Hampshire, Sussex,
Suffolk, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire. When he wanted at
once to enjoy country retirement and hard work, he would "abscond" from
his town associates without a word, dive into some queer, obscure
retreat, often on the Harrow or Edgeware Roads, and not be visible for
two or three months together. One of these retreats is said to be a
small wooden cottage on the north side of the Edgeware Road, about a
mile from Paddington, near what is called Kilburn Priory. At such places
it was his great luxury, when tired of writing, to stroll along the
shady hedge sides, seating himself in the most agreeable spots, and
occasionally setting down thoughts which arose for future use. When he
was in a more sociable mood, he got up parties for excursions into the
neighborhood of London, in which he and his companions had a good long
ramble among the villages, dined at the village inn, and so home again
in the evening. These he called "tradesmen's holidays," and thus were
Blackheath, Wandsworth, Fulham, Chelsea, Hampstead, Highgate, Highbury,
&c., explored and enjoyed. On those occasions Goldsmith gave himself up
to all his love of good fellowship, and of generously seeing others
happy. He made it a rule that the party should meet and take a splendid
breakfast at his rooms. The party generally consisted of four or five
persons; and was almost sure to include some humble person, to whom such
a treat would never come from any other quarter. One of the most
constant of these was his poor amanuensis, Peter Barlow. Peter had his
oddities, but with them a spirit of high independence. He always wore
the same dress, and never would pay more than a certain sum, and that a
trifle, for his dinner; but that he would insist on paying. The dinner
always costing a great deal more, Goldsmith paid the difference, and
considered himself well reimbursed by the fund of amusement Peter
furnished to the party. One of their frequent retreats was the
well-known Chelsea Bun-house. Another of these companions was a Dr.
Glover, a medical man and author of no great note, who once took
Goldsmith into a cottage in one of their rambles at West End,
Hampstead, and took tea with the family as an old acquaintance, when he
actually knew no more of the people than Goldsmith did, to his vast
chagrin on discovering the fact.
A temporary retreat of Goldsmith's was a cottage near Edgeware, in the
vicinity of Canons. There he lived, in conjunction with his friend Bott,
and here he worked hard at his Roman History. It had been the retreat of
a wealthy shoemaker of Piccadilly, and having a pleasant garden, they
christened the place "The Shoemaker's Paradise." The last country
lodging which he had was at Hyde, on the Edgeware Road. It is described
by Prior as "of the superior order of farm-houses, and stands upon a
gentle eminence in what is called Hyde Lane, leading to Kenton, about
three hundred yards from the village of Hyde, on the Edgeware Road, and
commands a view of an undulating country directly opposite, diversified
with wood, in the direction of Hendon." From Mr. Selby, the occupier of
the property, Mr. Prior obtained this information. He was himself a lad
of sixteen at the time Goldsmith lodged there, and remembered him
perfectly. He had only one room there, up one flight of stairs, to the
right of the landing. There he wrote She Stoops to Conquer. He boarded
with the family, but commonly had his meals sent up to his own
apartment. When he had visitors to tea--for his friends used to come out
from London, take tea, and then drive home--he had the use of the parlor
immediately under his own room. Occasionally he would wander into the
kitchen, and stand with his back toward the fire, apparently absorbed in
thought. Sometimes he strolled about the fields, or was seen loitering
and musing under the hedges, or perusing a book. In the house he usually
wore his shirt-collar open, in the manner represented in the portrait by
Sir Joshua. Occasionally he read much in bed, and his mode of
extinguishing his candle when out of immediate reach was to fling his
slipper at it, which in the morning was found near the overturned
candlestick bedaubed with grease.
There, then, Goldsmith spent the last days of his life, except what he
spent on his sick-bed, in the full enjoyment of those two great charms
of his existence, nature and books. Occasionally he would indulge in a
jovial pause--have a dance got up among his visitors, and on one
occasion took the young people of the house in a carriage to Windsor, to
see a company of strolling players, and made himself and his juvenile
party very merry by his remarks on the performance. From these quiet
enjoyments and field musings, death called him away. He returned to
town, and died in his lodgings in the Temple. He was privately interred
in the Temple burying-ground, and a tabular monument to his honor placed
on the walls of Westminster Abbey. That great and noble building does
not hold the remains of a nobler or better heart. Oliver Goldsmith was a
true Irishman, generous, impulsive, and improvident; but he was more, he
was a true man and true poet. Whether we laugh with him or weep with
him, we are still better for it.