HE occupied one room in the farmhouse--the guest-chamber it had
probably been called when the farm was young. It was a pretty spacious
apartment up one pair of stairs and to the right of the landing,
and from its window there was a pleasing prospect of a paddock with
wheat-fields beyond; there was a drop in the landscape in the direction
of Hendon, and here was a little wood. The farmer's name was Selby,
a married man with a son of sixteen, and younger children, and the
farmhouse was the nearest building to the sixth milestone on the Edgware
Road in the year 1771.
He was invariably alluded to as “The Gentleman,” and the name did very
well for him, situated as he was in the country; in the town and among
his acquaintances it would serve badly as a means of identification. He
was never referred to as “The Gentleman” of his circle. In his room in
the farmhouse there was his bed and table--a large table littered with
books; it took two chaises to carry his books hither from his rooms in
the Temple. Here he sat and wrote the greater part of the day, and when
he was very busy he would scarcely be able to touch the meals which were
sent up to him from the kitchen. But he was by no means that dignified
type of the man of letters who would shrink from fellowship with the
farmer or his family. He would frequently come down his stairs into
the kitchen and stand with his back to the fire, conversing with the
housewife, and offering her his sympathy when she had made him aware of
the fact that the privilege of being the wife of a substantial farmer,
though undoubtedly fully recognised by the world, carried many troubles
in its train, not only in connection with the vicissitudes of churning,
but in regard to the feeding of the calves, which no man could attend
to properly, and the making of the damson and cowslip wine. He told
her that the best maker of cowslip wine whom he had ever met was a
Mrs. Primrose; her husband had at one time occupied the Vicarage of
Wakefield--he wondered if Mrs. Selby had ever heard of her. Mrs. Selby's
knowledge did not go so far, but she thought that Mrs. Primrose's recipe
must be a good one indeed if it brought forth better results than her
own; and the gentleman said that although he had never tasted Mrs.
Selby's he would still have no hesitation in backing it for flavour,
body, headiness, and all other qualities associated with the
distillation of the cowslip, against the Primrose brand.
And then he would stare at the gammon in the rafter and mutter some
words, burst into a roar of laughter, and stumble upstairs to his
writing, leaving the good woman to thank Heaven that she was the wife of
a substantial farmer and not of an unsubstantial gentleman of letters,
who could not carry on a simple conversation without having some queer
thought fly across his brain for all the world like one of the swallows
on the water at Hendon, only maybe a deal harder to catch. She knew that
the gentleman had hurried to his paper and ink to complete the capture
of that fleet-flitting thought which had come to him when he had
cast his eyes toward the gammon, though how an idea worth putting on
paper--after a few muttered words and a laugh--could lurk about a common
piece of hog's-flesh was a mystery to her.
And then upon occasions the gentleman would take a walk abroad; the
farmer's son had more than once come upon him strolling about the fields
with his hands in his pockets and his head bent toward the ground, still
muttering fitfully and occasionally giving a laugh that made the grey
pad in the paddock look up slowly, still munching the grass. Now and
again he paid a visit to his friend Mr. Hugh Boyd at the village of
Kenton, and once he returned late at night from such a visit, without
his shoes. He had left them in a quagmire, he said, and it was only with
a struggle that he saved himself from being engulfed as well. That
was the story of his shoes which young Selby remembered when he was no
longer young. And there was another story which he remembered, but it
related to his slippers. The fact was that the gentleman had acquired
the bad habit of reading in bed, and the table on which his candlestick
stood being several feet away from his pillow, he saved himself the
trouble of rising to extinguish it by flinging a slipper at it. In the
morning the overturned candle was usually found side by side on the
floor with an unaccountably greasy slipper. This method of discharging
an important domestic duty differed considerably from Johnson's way of
compassing the same end. Johnson, being extremely short-sighted, was
compelled to hold the candle close to the book when reading in bed, so
that he had no need to use his slipper as an extinguisher. No, but he
found his pillow very handy for this purpose. When he had finished his
reading he threw away the book and went asleep with his candle under his
pillow.
The gentleman at the farm went about a good deal in his slippers, and
with his shirt loose at the collar--the latter must have been but one
of his very customary negligences, or Sir Joshua Reynolds would not
have painted him thus. Doubtless the painter had for long recognised the
interpretative value of this loosened collar above that of the velvet
and silk raiment in which the man sometimes appeared before the
wondering eyes of his friends.
But if the painter had never had an opportunity of studying the
picturesqueness of his negligence, he had more than one chance of doing
so within the farmhouse.
Young Selby recollected that upon at least one occasion Sir Joshua, his
friend Sir William Chambers, and Dr. Johnson had paid a visit to the
gentleman who lodged at the farm. He remembered that for that reception
of so distinguished a company the farmhouse parlour had been opened and
tea provided. There must have been a good deal of pleasant talk between
the gentleman and his friends at this time, and probably young Selby
heard an astonishingly loud laugh coming from the enormous visitor with
the brown coat and the worsted stockings, as the gentleman endeavoured
to tell his guests something of the strange scenes which he was
introducing in the comedy he was writing in that room upstairs. It was
then a comedy without a name, but young Selby heard that it was produced
the following year in London and that it was called _She Stoops to
Conquer_.
This was the second year that the gentleman had spent at the farm. The
previous summer he had been engaged on another work which was certainly
as comical as the comedy. It was called _Animated Nature_, and it
comprised some of the most charmingly narrated errors in Natural History
ever offered to the public, and the public have always been delighted
to read pages of fiction if it is only called “Natural History.” This is
one of the best-established facts in the history of the race. After all,
_Animated Nature_ was true to half its title: every page was animated.
It was while he was so engaged, with one eye on Buffon and another on
his MS., that he found Farmer Selby very useful to him. Farmer Selby
knew a great deal about animals--the treatment of horses under various
conditions, and the way to make pigs pay; he had probably his theories
respecting the profit to be derived from keeping sheep, and how to
feed oxen that are kept for the plough. All such knowledge he must have
placed at the disposal of the author, though the farmer was possibly too
careless an observer of the simple incidents of the fields to be able to
verify Buffon's statement, reproduced in Animated Nature, to the effect
that cows shed their horns every two years; he was probably also
too deficient in the spirit in which a poet sets about the work of
compilation to be able to assent to the belief that a great future
was in store for the zebra when it should become tame and perform the
ordinary duties of a horse. But if the author was somewhat discouraged
in his speculations now and again by Farmer Selby, he did not allow his
fancy as a naturalist to be wholly repressed. He had heard a story of
an ostrich being ridden horsewise in some regions, and of long journeys
being accomplished in this way in incredibly short spaces of time, and
forthwith his imagination enabled him to see the day when this bird
would become as amenable to discipline as the barn-door fowl, though
discharging the tasks of a horse, carrying its rider across England with
the speed of a racer!
It was while he was engaged on this pleasant work of fancy and
imagination that Mr. Boswell paid him a visit, bringing with him as a
witness Mr. Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad. “The Gentleman” had
gone away for the day, Mrs. Selby explained; but she did not know Mr.
Boswell. She could not prevent him from satisfying his curiosity in
respect of Dr. Goldsmith. He went upstairs to his room, and he was fully
satisfied. He found the walls all scrawled over with outline drawings of
quite a number of animals. Having thus satisfied himself that the author
of _Animated Nature_ was working in a thoroughly conscientious manner he
came away. He records the incident himself, but he does not say whether
or not he was able to recognise any of the animals from their pictures.
But now it was a professed and not an unconscious comedy that occupied
Dr. Goldsmith. Whatever disappointment he may have felt at the
indifferent success of the first performance of _The Good-Natured
Man_--and he undoubtedly felt some--had been amply redeemed by the money
which accrued to him from the “author's rights” and the sale of the
play; and he had only awaited a little encouragement from the managers
to enable him to begin another comedy. But the managers were not
encouraging, and he was found by his friends one day to be full of
a scheme for the building of a new theatre for the production of new
plays, in order that the existing managers might not be able to carry
on their tyranny any longer. Such a scheme has been revived every decade
since Goldsmith's time, but never with the least success. Johnson,
whose sound sense was rarely at fault, laughed at the poet's project for
bringing down the mighty from their seats, upon which Goldsmith cried:
“Ay, sir, this matter may be nothing to you who can now shelter yourself
behind the corner of your pension,” and he doubtless went on to describe
the condition of the victims of the tyranny of which he complained; but
it is questionable if his doing so effected more than to turn Johnson's
laughter into another and a wider channel.
But Goldsmith spoke feelingly. He was certainly one of the ablest
writers of the day, but no pension was ever offered to him, though on
every hand bounties were freely bestowed on the most indifferent and
least deserving of authors--men whose names were forgotten before
the end of the century, and during the lifetime of the men themselves
remembered only by the pay clerk to the almoner.
Of course, the scheme for bringing the managers to their senses never
reached a point of serious consideration; and forthwith Goldsmith began
to illustrate, for the benefit of posterity, the depths to which the
stupidity of the manager of a play-house can occasionally fall. The
public have always had abundant proofs of the managers' stupidity
afforded them in the form of the plays which they produce; but the
history of the production of the most brilliant comedy of the eighteenth
century is practically unique; for it is the history of the stupidity of
a manager doing his best to bring about the failure of a play which he
was producing at his own theatre. He had predicted the failure of the
piece, and it must strike most people that the manager of a theatre who
produces for a failure will be as successful in compassing his end as
a jockey who rides for a fall. Colman believed that he was in the
fortunate position of those prophets who had the realisation of their
predictions in their own hands. He was mistaken in this particular
case. Although he was justified on general principles in assuming his
possession of this power, yet he had made no allowance for the freaks
of genius. He was frustrated in his amiable designs by this incalculable
force--this power which he had treated as a _quantité négligeable_. A
man who has been accustomed all his life to count only on simple ability
in the people about him, is, on suddenly being brought face to face with
genius, like an astronomer who makes out his tables of a new object on
the assumption that it is a fixed star, when all the time it is a comet,
upsetting by its erratic course all his calculations, and demanding to
be reckoned with from a standpoint that applies to itself alone.
The stars of Colman's theatrical firmament were such as might safely be
counted on; but Goldsmith's genius was not of this order. The manager's
stupidity lay in his blunt refusal to recognise a work of genius when it
was brought to him by a man of genius.
It has been said that the central idea of the plot of _She Stoops to
Conquer_ was suggested by an incident that came under Goldsmith's notice
before he left Ireland. However this may be, it cannot be denied
that the playing of the practical joke of Tony Lumpkin upon the two
travellers is “very Irish.” It would take a respectable place in the
list of practical jokes of the eighteenth century played in Ireland. In
that island a collector of incidents for a comedy during the past two
centuries would require to travel with a fat notebook--so would the
collector of incidents for a tragedy. Goldsmith's task may not have been
to invent the central idea, but to accomplish the much more difficult
duty of making that incident seem plausible, surrounding it with
convincing scenery and working it out by the aid of the only characters
by which it could be worked out with a semblance of being natural. This
was a task which genius only could fulfil. The room whose walls bore
ample testimony to its occupant's sense of the comedy of a writer's
life, witnessed the supreme achievement in the “animated nature” of
_She Stoops to Conquer_. It contains the two chief essentials to a true
comedy--animation and nature.
It is certain that the play was constructed and written by Goldsmith
without an adviser. He was possibly shrewd enough to know that if
he were to take counsel with any of his friends--Garrick, Johnson,
Reynolds, or Colman--he would not be able to write the play which he had
a mind to write. The artificial comedy had a vogue that year, and though
it may have been laughed at in private by people of judgment, yet few of
those within the literary circle of which Johnson was the acknowledged
centre, would have had the courage to advise a poet writing a piece in
hopes of making some money, to start upon a plot as farcical as Nature
herself. At that period of elegance in art everything that was natural
was pronounced vulgar. Shakespeare himself had to be made artificial
before he could be played by Garrick. Goldsmith must have known that his
play would be called vulgar, and that its chances of being accepted and
produced by either of the managers in London would be doubtful; but, all
the same, he wrote the piece in accordance with his own personal views,
and many a time during the next two years he must have felt that he was
a fool for doing so.
However this may be, the play was finished some time in the summer
of 1771; and on September 7th the author was back at his rooms in the
Temple and writing to his friend Bennet Langton, whom he had promised
to visit at his place in Lincolnshire. “I have been almost wholly in the
country at a farmer's house, quite alone, trying to write a comedy. It
is now finished, but when or how it will be acted, or whether it will be
acted at all, are questions I cannot resolve,” he told Langton.
[Illustration: 0241]
The misgivings which he had at this time were well founded. He
considered that the fact of his having obtained from Colman a promise to
read any play that he might write constituted an obligation on his part
to submit this piece to Colman rather than to Garrick. He accordingly
placed it in Colman's hands; but it is impossible to say if the work of
elaborate revision which Goldsmith began in the spring of 1772 was
due to the comments made by this manager on the first draft or to the
author's reconsideration of his work as a whole. But the amended version
was certainly in Colman's hands in the summer of this year (1772).
The likelihood is that Colman would have refused point-blank to have
anything to do with the comedy after he had read the first draft had it
not been that just at this time Goldsmith's reputation was increased
to a remarkable extent by the publication of his Histories. It would be
difficult to believe how this could be, but, as usual, we are indebted
to Mr. Boswell for what information we have on this point. Boswell had
been for some time out of London, and on returning he expressed his
amazement at the celebrity which Goldsmith had attained. “Sir,” he cried
to Johnson, “Goldsmith has acquired more fame than all the officers last
war who were not generals!”
“Why, sir,” said Johnson, “you will find ten thousand fit to do what
they did before you find one who does what Goldsmith has done”--a bit of
dialogue that reminds one of the reply of the avaricious _prima donna_
when the Emperor refused to accede to her terms on the plea that were
he to pay her her price she would be receiving more than any of his
marshals. “Eh bien, mon sire. Let your marshals sing to you.”
At any rate, Colman got the play--and kept it. He would give the author
no straightforward opinion as to its prospects in his hands. He refused
to say when he would produce it--nay, he declined to promise that he
would produce it at all. Goldsmith was thus left in torment for month
after month, and the effect of the treatment that he received was to
bring on an illness, and the effect of his illness was to sink him to a
depth of despondency that even Goldsmith had never before sounded. The
story told by Cooke of his coming upon the unhappy man in a coffeehouse,
and of the latter's attempt to give him some of the details of the plot
of the comedy, speaks for itself. “I shook my head,” wrote Cooke,
“and said that I was afraid the audience, under their then sentimental
impressions, would think it too broad and farcical for comedy.” This was
poor comfort for the author; but after a pause he shook the man by the
hand, saying piteously: “I am much obliged to you, my dear friend, for
the candour of your opinion, but it is all I can do; for alas! I find
that my genius, if ever I had any, has of late totally deserted me.”
This exclamation is the most piteous that ever came from a man of
genius; and there can be no doubt of the sincerity of its utterance,
for it was during these miserable months that he began a new novel, but
found himself unable to get further than a few chapters. And all this
time, when, in order to recover his health, he should have had no
worries of a lesser nature, he was being harassed by the trivial
cares of a poor, generous man's life--those mosquito vexations which,
accumulating, become more intolerable than a great calamity.
He had once had great hopes of good resulting from Colman's taking up
the management of Covent Garden, and had written congratulations to him
within the first week of his entering into possession of the theatre.
A very different letter he had now to write to the same man. Colman had
endeavoured to evade the responsibility of giving him a direct answer
about the play. He clearly meant that the onus of refusing it should lie
at the door of some one else.
“Dear Sir,” wrote the author in January, 1773, “I entreat you'll release
me from that state of suspense in which I have been kept for a long
time. Whatever objections you have made or shall make to my play I will
endeavour to remove and not argue about them. To bring in any new judges
either of its merits or faults I can never submit to. Upon a former
occasion when my other play was before Mr. Garrick he offered to bring
me before Mr. Whitehead's tribunal, but I refused the proposal with
indignation. I hope I shall not experience as hard treatment from you
as from him.... For God's sake take the play and let us make the best
of it, and let me have the same measure at least which you have given as
bad plays as mine.”
Upon receiving this letter, Colman at once returned to him the
manuscript of the play, and on the author's unfolding it he found that
on the back of almost every page, on the blank space reserved for
the prompter's hieroglyphs, some sneering criticism was scrawled. To
emphasise this insult Colman had enclosed a letter to the effect that if
the author was still unconvinced that the piece would be a failure, he,
Colman, would produce it.
Immediately on receipt of this contemptible effort at contempt Goldsmith
packed up the play and sent it to Garrick at Drury Lane. That same
evening, however, he met Johnson and told him what he had done; and
Johnson, whose judgment on the practical side of authorship was rarely
at fault, assured him that he had done wrong and that he must get the
manuscript back without delay, and submit to Colman's sneers for the
sake of having the comedy produced. Upon Johnson's promising to
visit Colman, and to urge upon him the claims of Goldsmith to his
consideration, the distracted author wrote to Drury Lane:
“Upon more mature deliberation and the advice of a sensible friend,
I begin to think it indelicate in me to throw upon you the odium of
confirming Mr. Colman's sentence. I therefore request that you will send
my play by my servant back; for having been assured of having it acted
at the other house, though I confess yours in every respect more to my
wish, yet it would be folly in me to forgo an advantage which lies in
my power of appealing from Mr. Colman's opinion to the judgment of the
town.”
Goldsmith got back the play, and Johnson explained to him, as he did
some years later to Reynolds, that the solicitations which he had made
to Colman to put it in rehearsal without delay amounted almost to force.
At any rate, the play was announced and the parts distributed to the
excellent company which Colman controlled. It was soon proved that he
controlled some members of this company only too well. The spirit in,
which he set about the discharge of his duties as a manager was apparent
to every one during the earliest rehearsals. Johnson, writing to an
American correspondent, mentioned that Colman made no secret of his
belief that the play would be a failure. Far from it. He seems to have
taken the most extraordinary trouble to spread his belief far and wide;
and when a manager adopts such a course, what chance, one may ask, has
the play? What chance, the players could not but ask, have the players?
This was possibly the only occasion in the history of the English drama
on which such questions could be asked. If managers have a fault at
all--a question which is not yet ripe for discussion--it has never
been in the direction of depreciating a play which they are about to
produce--that is, of course, outside the author's immediate circle. It
is only when the play has failed that they sometimes allow that it was
a bad one, and incapable of being saved even by the fine acting of the
company and the sumptuous mounting.
But Colman controlled his company all too well, and after a day or two
it was announced that the leading lady, the accomplished Mrs. Abington,
had retired from the part of Miss Hardcastle; that Smith, known as
Gentleman Smith, had refused to play Young Marlow; and that Woodward,
the most popular comedian in the company, had thrown up the part of Tony
Lumpkin.
Here, in one day, it seemed that Colman had achieved his aims, and the
piece would have to be withdrawn by the author. This was undoubtedly
the managerial view of the situation which had been precipitated by
the manager, and it was shared by those of the author's friends who
understood his character as indifferently as did Colman. They must all
have been somewhat amazed when the author quietly accepted the situation
and affirmed that he would rather that his play were damned by bad
players than merely saved by good acting. One of the company who had the
sense to perceive the merits of the piece, Shuter, the comedian, who was
cast for the part of old Hardcastle, advised Goldsmith to give Lewes,
the harlequin, the part of Young Marlow; Quick, a great favourite with
the public, was to act Tony Lumpkin; and, after a considerable amount
of wrangling, Mrs. Bulkley, lately Miss Wilford, who had been the
Miss Richland of _The Good-Natured Man_, accepted the part which the
capricious Mrs. Abington resigned.
Another start was made with the rehearsals of the piece, and further
efforts were made by Colman to bring about the catastrophe which he
had predicted. He refused to let a single scene be painted for the
production, or to supply a single new dress; his ground being that the
money spent in this way would be thrown away, for the audience would
never allow the piece to proceed beyond the second act.
But happily Dr. Johnson had his reputation as a prophet at stake as well
as Colman, and he was singularly well equipped by Nature for enforcing
his views on any subject. He could not see anything of what was going
on upon the stage; but his laugh at the succession of humorous things
spoken by the company must have had an inspiring effect upon every
one, except Colman. Johnson's laugh was the strongest expression of
appreciation of humour of which the century has a record. It was epic.
To say that Johnson's laugh at the rehearsals of _She Stoops to Conquer_
saved the piece would perhaps be going too far. But can any one question
its value as a counteracting agent to Colman's depressing influence on
the stage? Johnson was the only man in England who could make Colman
(and every one else) tremble, and his laugh had the same effect upon
the building in which it was delivered. It was the Sirocco against a wet
blanket. When one thinks of the feeling of awe which was inspired by
the name of Dr. Johnson, not only during the last forty years of
the eighteenth century, but well into the nineteenth, one begins to
appreciate the value of his vehement expression of satisfaction upon
the people on the stage. Goldsmith dedicated his play to Johnson, and
assuredly the compliment was well earned. Johnson it was who compelled
Colman to produce the piece, and Johnson it was who encouraged the
company to do their best for it, in spite of the fact that they were
all aware that their doing their best for it would be resented by their
manager.
Reynolds also, another valuable friend to the author, sacrificed several
of his busiest hours in order to attend the rehearsals. His sister's
sacrifices to the same end were perhaps not quite so impressive, nor
were those made by that ingenious “country gentleman,” Mr. Cradock,
referred to by Walpole. Miss Horneck, his beautiful “Jessamy Bride,”
and her sister, lately married to Mr. Bunbury, bore testimony to the
strength of their friendship for the poet, by accompanying him daily to
the theatre.
But, after all, these good friends had not many opportunities of
showing their regard for him in the same way; for the play must have had
singularly few rehearsals. Scarcely a month elapsed between the date of
Colman's receiving the manuscript on its being returned by Garrick and
the production of the piece. It is doubtful if more than ten rehearsals
took place after the parts were recast. If the manager kept the author
in suspense for eighteen months respecting the fate of his play, he
endeavoured to make up for his dilatoriness now. It was announced for
Monday, March 15th, and, according to Northcote, it was only on the
morning of that day that the vexed question of what the title should be
was settled. For some time the author and his friends had been talking
the matter over. “We are all in labour for a name to Goldy's play,”
wrote Johnson. _The Mistakes of a Night, The Old House a New Inn, and
The Belle's Stratagem_ were suggested in turn. It was Goldsmith himself
who gave it the title under which it was produced.
On the afternoon of this day, March 15th, the author was the guest at
a dinner-party organised in his honour. It is easy to picture this
particular function. The truth was that Colman's behaviour had broken
the spirit not only of the author, but of the majority of his friends
as well. They would all make an effort to cheer up poor Goldsmith; but
every one knows how cheerless a function is one that is organised with
such charitable intentions. It is not necessary that one should have
been in a court of law watching the face of the prisoner in the dock
when the jury have retired to consider their verdict in order to
appreciate the feelings of Goldsmith when his friends made their attempt
to cheer him up. The last straw added on to the cheerlessness of the
banquet was surely to be found in the accident that every one wore
black! The King of Sardinia had died a short time before, and the Court
had ordered mourning to be worn for some weeks for this potentate.
Johnson was very nearly outraging propriety by appearing in coloured
raiment, but George Steevens, who called for him to go to the dinner,
was fortunately in time to prevent such a breach of etiquette. “I would
not for ten pounds have seemed so retrograde to any general observance,”
cried Johnson in offering his thanks to his benefactor. Happily the
proprieties were saved; but what must have been the effect of the
appearance of these gentlemen in black upon the person whom they meant
to cheer up!
Reynolds told his pupil, Northcote, what effect these resources of
gaiety had upon Goldsmith. His mouth became so parched that he could
neither eat nor drink, nor could he so much as speak in acknowledgment
of the well-meant act of his friends. When the party after this
entertainment set out for the theatre they must have suggested, all
being in black, a more sombre procession than one is accustomed to
imagine when conjuring up a picture of an eighteenth-century theatre
party.
And Goldsmith was missing!
Unfortunately Boswell was not present, or we should not be left in doubt
as to how it happened that no one thought of taking charge of Goldsmith.
But no one seemed to think of him, and so his disappearance was never
noticed. His friends arrived at the theatre and found their places,
Johnson in the front row of the boxes; and the curtain was rung up,
and Goldsmith was forgotten under the influence of that comedy which
constitutes his greatest claim to be remembered by theatre-goers of
to-day.
He was found by an acquaintance a couple of hours later wandering in the
Mall of St. James's Park, and was only persuaded to go to the theatre by
its being represented to him that his services might be required should
it be found necessary to alter something at the last moment.
Now, among the members of that distinguished audience there was a man
named Cumberland. He was the author of _The West Indian_ and several
other plays, and he was regarded as one of the leaders of the
sentimental school, the demise of which was satirised in the prologue to
this very play which was being performed. Cumberland was a man who could
never see a particle of good in anything that was written by another. It
was a standing entertainment with Garrick to “draw him on” by suggesting
that some one had written a good scene in a play, or was about to
produce an interesting book. In a moment Cumberland was up, protesting
against the assumption that the play or the book could be worth
anything. So wide a reputation had he for decrying every other author
that when Sheridan produced _The Critic; or, the Tragedy Rehearsed_, his
portrait was immediately recognised in Sir Fretful Plagiary.
What must have been the feelings of this man when, from the first, the
play, which he had come to wreck, was received by the whole house with
uproarious applause? Well, we don't know what he felt like, but we know
what he looked like. One of the newspapers described him as “looking
glum,” and another contained a rhymed epigram describing him as weeping.
Goldsmith entered the theatre by the stage door at the beginning of the
fifth act, where Tony Lumpkin and his mother appear close to their
own house, and the former pretends that the chaise has broken down on
Crackscull Common. He had no sooner got into the “wings” than he heard
a hiss. “What's that, sir?” he whispered to Colman, who was beside him.
“Psha, sir! what signifies a squib when we have been sitting on a barrel
of gunpowder all night?” was the reply. The story is well known; and
its accuracy has never been im peached. And the next day it was well
known that that solitary hiss came from Cumberland, the opinion that
it was due to the malevolence of Macpherson, whose pretensions to the
discovery of _Ossian_ were exposed by Johnson, being discredited.
But the effect of Colman's brutality and falsehood into the bargain had
not a chance of lasting long. The hiss was received with cries of “Turn
him out!” and, with an addition to the tumultuous applause of all the
house, Goldsmith must have been made aware in another instant of the
fact that he had written the best comedy of the day and that Colman had
lied to him. From the first there had been no question of sitting on a
barrel of gunpowder. Such applause could never greet the last act of a
play the first four acts of which had been doubtful. He must have felt
that at last he had conquered--that he had by one more achievement
proved to his own satisfaction--and he was hard to satisfy--that those
friends of his who had attributed genius to him had not been mistaken;
that those who, like Johnson and Percy and Reynolds, had believed in
him before he had written the work that made him famous, had not been
misled.
The next day all London was talking of _She Stoops to Conquer_ and of
Colman. Horace Walpole, who detested Goldsmith, and who found when
he went to see the play that it was deplorably vulgar, mentioned in a
letter which he wrote to Lady Ossory on the morning after the production
that it had “succeeded prodigiously,” and the newspapers were full of
epigrams at the expense of the manager. If Colman had had the sense to
keep to himself his forebodings of the failure of the piece, he would
not have left himself open to these attacks; but, as has been said, he
took as much pains to decry the coming production as he usually did to
“puff” other pieces. It would seem that every one had for several
days been talking about nothing else save the coming failure of Dr.
Goldsmith's comedy. Only on this assumption can one now understand the
poignancy of the “squibs”--some of them partook largely of the character
of his own barrel of gunpowder--levelled against Colman. He must have
been quite amazed at the clamour that arose against him; it became too
much for his delicate skin, and he fled to Bath to get out of the way
of the scurrilous humourists who were making him a target for their
pop-guns. But even at Bath he failed to find a refuge. Writing to Mrs.
Thrale, Johnson said: “Colman is so distressed with abuse that he has
solicited Goldsmith to take him off the rack of the newspapers.”
It was characteristic of Goldsmith that he should do all that was
asked of him and that he should make no attempt, either in public or in
private, to exult in his triumph over the manager. The only reference
which he made to his sufferings while Colman was keeping him on the rack
was in a letter which he wrote to his friend Cradock, who had written an
epilogue for the play, to explain how it was that this epilogue was not
used at the first representation. After saying simply, “The play has
met with a success beyond your expectation or mine,” he makes his
explanation, and concludes thus: “Such is the history of my stage
adventure, and which I have at last done with. I cannot help saying
that I am very sick of the stage, and though I believe I shall get
three tolerable benefits, yet I shall on the whole be a loser, even in
a pecuniary light; my ease and comfort I certainly lost while it was in
agitation.”
Goldsmith showed that he bore no grudge against Colman; but the English
stage should bear him a grudge for his treatment of one of the few
authors of real genius who have contributed to it for the benefit of
posterity. If _She Stoops to Conquer_ had been produced when it first
came into the manager's hands, Goldsmith would certainly not have
written the words just quoted. What would have been the result of
his accepting the encouragement of its production it is, of course,
impossible to tell; but it is not going too far to assume that the
genius which gave the world _The Good-Natured Man_ and _She Stoops to
Conquer_ would have been equal to the task of writing a third comedy
equal in merit to either of these. Yes, posterity owes Colman a grudge.