DINNER AT GENERAL OGLETHORPE’S—ANECDOTES OF THE GENERAL—DISPUTE ABOUT DUELING—GHOST STORIES
We have mentioned old General Oglethorpe as one of Goldsmith’s aristocratical acquaintances. This veteran, born in 1698, had commenced life early, by serving, when a mere stripling, under Prince Eugene, against the Turks. He had continued in military life, and been promoted to the rank of major-general in 1745, and received a command during the Scottish rebellion. Being of strong Jacobite tendencies, he was suspected and accused of favoring the rebels; and though acquitted by a court of inquiry, was never afterward employed; or, in technical language, was shelved. He had since been repeatedly a member of parliament, and had always distinguished himself by learning, taste, active benevolence, and high Tory principles. His name, however, has become historical, chiefly from his transactions in America, and the share he took in the settlement of the colony of Georgia. It lies embalmed in honorable immortality in a single line of Pope’s:
“One, drivenby strong benevolence of soul,Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.”
The veteran was now seventy-four years of age, but healthy and vigorous, and as much the preux chevalier as in his younger days, when he served with Prince Eugene. His table was often the gathering-place of men of talent. Johnson was frequently there, and delighted in drawing from the general details of his various “experiences.” He was anxious that he should give the world his life. “I know no man,” said he, “whose life would be more interesting.” Still the vivacity of the general’s mind and the variety of his knowledge made him skip from subject to subject too fast for the lexicographer. “Oglethorpe,” growled he, “never completes what he has to say.”
Boswell gives us an interesting and characteristic account of a dinner party at the general’s (April 10, 1772), at which Goldsmith and Johnson were present. After dinner, when the cloth was removed, Oglethorpe, at Johnson’s request, gave an account of the siege of Belgrade, in the true veteran style. Pouring a little wine upon the table, he drew his lines and parallels with a wet finger, describing the positions of the opposing forces. “Here were we—here were the Turks,” to all which Johnson listened with the most earnest attention, poring over the plans and diagrams with his usual purblind closeness.
In the course of conversation the general gave an anecdote of himself in early life, when serving under Prince Eugene. Sitting at table once in company with a prince of Wurtemberg, the latter gave a fillip to a glass of wine, so as to make some of it fly in Oglethorpe’s face. The manner in which it was done was somewhat equivocal. How was it to be taken by the stripling officer? If seriously, he must challenge the prince; but in so doing he might fix on himself the character of a drawcansir. If passed over without notice, he might be charged with cowardice. His mind was made up in an instant. “Prince,” said he, smiling, “that is an excellent joke; but we do it much better in England.” So saying, he threw a whole glass of wine in the prince’s face. “Il a bien fait, mon prince,” cried an old general present, “vouz l’avez commencé.” (He has done right, my prince; you commenced it.) The prince had the good sense to acquiesce in the decision of the veteran, and Oglethorpe’s retort in kind was taken in good part.
It was probably at the close of this story that the officious Boswell, ever anxious to promote conversation for the benefit of his note-book, started the question whether dueling were consistent with moral duty. The old general fired up in an instant. “Undoubtedly,” said he, with a lofty air; “undoubtedly a man has a right to defend his honor.” Goldsmith immediately carried the war into Boswell’s own quarters, and pinned him with the question, “what he would do if affronted?” The pliant Boswell, who for the moment had the fear of the general rather than of Johnson before his eyes, replied, “he should think it necessary to fight.” “Why, then, that solves the question,” replied Goldsmith. “No, sir,” thundered out Johnson; “it does not follow that what a man would do, is therefore right.” He, however, subsequently went into a discussion to show that there were necessities in the case arising out of the artificial refinement of society, and its proscription of any one who should put up with an affront without fighting a duel. “He then,” concluded he, “who fights a duel does not fight from passion against his antagonist, but out of self-defense, to avert the stigma of the world, and to prevent himself from being driven out of society. I could wish there were not that superfluity of refinement; but while such notions prevail, no doubt a man may lawfully fight a duel.”
Another question started was, whether people who disagreed on a capital point could live together in friendship. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the idem velle atque idem voile—the same liking and aversions. Johnson rejoined that they must shun the subject on which they disagreed. “But, sir,” said Goldsmith, “when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Blue Beard: ‘you may look into all the chambers but one’; but we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject.” “Sir,” thundered Johnson, in a loud voice, “I am not saying thatyoucould live in friendship with a man from whom you differ as to some point; I am only saying thatIcould do it.”
Who will not say that Goldsmith had not the best of this petty contest? How just was his remark! how felicitous the illustration of the blue chamber! how rude and overbearing was the argumentum ad hominem of Johnson, when he felt that he had the worst of the argument!
The conversation turned upon ghosts! General Oglethorpe told the story of a Colonel Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marlborough’s army, who predicted among his comrades that he should die on a certain day. The battle of Malplaquet took place on that day. The colonel was in the midst of it but came out unhurt. The firing had ceased, and his brother officers jested with him about the fallacy of his prediction. “The day is not over,” replied he, gravely, “I shall die notwithstanding what you see.” His words proved true. The order for a cessation of firing had not reached one of the French batteries, and a random shot from it killed the colonel on the spot. Among his effects was found a pocketbook in which he had made a solemn entry, that Sir John Friend, who had been executed for high treason, had appeared to him, either in a dream or vision, and predicted that he would meet him on a certain day (the very day of the battle). Colonel Cecil, who took possession of the effects of Colonel Prendergast, and read the entry in the pocketbook, told this story to Pope, the poet, in the presence of General Oglethorpe.
This story, as related by the general, appears to have been well received, if not credited, by both Johnson and Goldsmith, each of whom had something to relate in kind. Goldsmith’s brother, the clergyman in whom he had such implicit confidence, had assured him of his having seen an apparition. Johnson also had a friend, old Mr. Cave, the printer, at St. John’s Gate, “an honest man, and a sensible man,” who told him he had seen a ghost: he did not, however, like to talk of it, and seemed to be in great horror, whenever it was mentioned. “And pray, sir,” asked Boswell, “what did he say was the appearance?” “Why, sir, something of a shadowy being.”
The reader will not be surprised at this superstitious turn in the conversation of such intelligent men, when he recollects that, but a few years before this time, all London had been agitated by the absurd story of the Cock Lane ghost; a matter which Dr. Johnson had deemed worthy of his serious investigation, and about which Goldsmith had written a pamphlet.
MR. JOSEPH CRADOCK—AN AUTHOR’S CONFIDINGS—AN AMANUENSIS—LIFE AT EDGEWARE—GOLDSMITH CONJURING—GEORGE COLMAN—THE FANTOCCINI
Among the agreeable acquaintances made by Goldsmith about this time was a Mr. Joseph Cradock, a young gentleman of Leicestershire, living at his ease, but disposed to “make himself uneasy,” by meddling with literature and the theater; in fact, he had a passion for plays and players, and had come up to town with a modified translation of Voltaire’s tragedy of Zobeide, in a view to get it acted. There was no great difficulty in the case, as he was a man of fortune, had letters of introduction to persons of note, and was altogether in a different position from the indigent man of genius whom managers might harass with impunity. Goldsmith met him at the house of Yates, the actor, and finding that he was a friend of Lord Clare, soon became sociable with him. Mutual tastes quickened the intimacy, especially as they found means of serving each other. Goldsmith wrote an epilogue for the tragedy of Zobeide; and Cradock, who was an amateur musician, arranged the music for the Threnodia Augustalis, a lament on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, the political mistress and patron of Lord Clare, which Goldsmith had thrown off hastily to please that nobleman. The tragedy was played with some success at Covent Garden; the Lament was recited and sung at Mrs. Cornelys’ rooms—a very fashionable resort in Soho Square, got up by a woman of enterprise of that name. It was in whimsical parody of those gay and somewhat promiscuous assemblages that Goldsmith used to call the motley evening parties at his lodgings “little Cornelys.”
The Threnodia Augustalis was not publicly known to be by Goldsmith until several years after his death.
Cradock was one of the few polite intimates who felt more disposed to sympathize with the generous qualities of the poet than to sport with his eccentricities. He sought his society whenever he came to town, and occasionally had him to his seat in the country. Goldsmith appreciated his sympathy, and unburdened himself to him without reserve. Seeing the lettered ease in which this amateur author was enabled to live, and the time he could bestow on the elaboration of a manuscript, “Ah! Mr. Cradock,” cried he, “think of me that must write a volume every month!” He complained to him of the attempts made by inferior writers, and by others who could scarcely come under that denomination, not only to abuse and depreciate his writings, but to render him ridiculous as a man; perverting every harmless sentiment and action into charges of absurdity, malice, or folly. “Sir,” said he, in the fullness of his heart, “I am as a lion bated by curs!”
Another acquaintance which he made about this time, was a young countryman of the name of M’Donnell, whom he met in a state of destitution, and, of course, befriended. The following grateful recollections of his kindness and his merits were furnished by that person in after years:
“It was in the year 1772,” writes he, “that the death of my elder brother—when in London, on my way to Ireland—left me in a most forlorn situation; I was then about eighteen; I possessed neither friends nor money, nor the means of getting to Ireland, of which or of England I knew scarcely anything, from having so long resided in France. In this situation I had strolled about for two or three days, considering what to do, but unable to come to any determination, when Providence directed me to the Temple Gardens. I threw myself on a seat, and, willing to forget my miseries for a moment, drew out a book; that book was a volume of Boileau. I had not been there long when a gentleman, strolling about, passed near me, and observing, perhaps, something Irish or foreign in my garb or countenance, addressed me: ‘Sir, you seem studious; I hope you find this a favorable place to pursue it.’ ‘Not very studious, sir; I fear it is the want of society that brings me hither; I am solitary and unknown in this metropolis’; and a passage from Cicero—Oratio pro Archia—occurring to me, I quoted it; ‘Haec studia pronoctant nobiscum, perigrinantur, rusticantur.’ ‘You are a scholar, too, sir, I perceive.’ ‘A piece of one, sir; but I ought still to have been in the college where I had the good fortune to pick up the little I know.’ A good deal of conversation ensued; I told him part of my history, and he, in return, gave his address in the Temple, desiring me to call soon, from which, to my infinite surprise and gratification, I found that the person who thus seemed to take an interest in my fate was my countryman, and a distinguished ornament of letters.
“I did not fail to keep the appointment, and was received in the kindest manner. He told me, smilingly, that he was not rich; that he could do little for me in direct pecuniary aid, but would endeavor to put me in the way of doing something for myself; observing, that he could at least furnish me with advice not wholly useless to a young man placed in the heart of a great metropolis. ‘In London,’ he continued, ‘nothing is to be got for nothing; you must work; and no man who chooses to be industrious need be under obligations to another, for here labor of every kind commands its reward. If you think proper to assist me occasionally as amanuensis, I shall be obliged, and you will be placed under no obligation, until something more permanent can be secured for you.’ This employment, which I pursued for some time, was to translate passages from Buffon, which was abridged or altered, according to circumstances, for his Natural History.”
Goldsmith’s literary tasks were fast getting ahead of him, and he began now to “toil after them in vain.”
Five volumes of the Natural History here spoken of had long since been paid for by Mr. Griffin, yet most of them were still to be written. His young amanuensis bears testimony to his embarrassments and perplexities, but to the degree of equanimity with which he bore them:
“It has been said,” observes he, “that he was irritable. Such may have been the case at times; nay, I believe it was so; for what with the continual pursuit of authors, printers, and booksellers, and occasional pecuniary embarrassments, few could have avoided exhibiting similar marks of impatience. But it was never so toward me. I saw him only in his bland and kind moods, with a flow, perhaps an overflow, of the milk of human kindness for all who were in any manner dependent upon him. I looked upon him with awe and veneration, and he upon me as a kind parent upon a child.
“His manner and address exhibited much frankness and cordiality, particularly to those with whom he possessed any degree of intimacy. His good-nature was equally apparent. Ton could not dislike the man, although several of his follies and foibles you might be tempted to condemn. He was generous and inconsiderate; money with him had little value.”
To escape from many of the tormentors just alluded to, and to devote himself without interruption to his task, Goldsmith took lodgings for the summer at a farmhouse near the six-mile stone on the Edgeware road, and carried down his books in two return post-chaises. He used to say he believed the farmer’s family thought him an odd character, similar to that in which the “Spectator” appeared to his landlady and her children: he was “The Gentleman.” Boswell tells us that he went to visit him at the place in company with Mickle, translator of the Lusiad. Goldsmith was not at home. Having a curiosity to see his apartment, however, they went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a black lead pencil.
The farmhouse in question is still in existence, though much altered. It stands upon a gentle eminence in Hyde Lane, commanding a pleasant prospect toward Hendon. The room is still pointed out in which She Stoops to Conquer was written; a convenient and airy apartment, up one Sight of stairs.
Some matter-of-fact traditions concerning the author were furnished, a few years since, by a son of the farmer, who was sixteen years of age at the time Goldsmith resided with his father. Though he had engaged to board with the family, his meals were generally sent to him in his room, in which he passed the most of his time, negligently dressed, with his shirt collar open, busily engaged in writing. Sometimes, probably when in moods of composition, he would wander into the kitchen, without noticing any one, stand musing with his back to the fire, and then hurry off again to his room, no doubt to commit to paper some thought which had struck him.
Sometimes he strolled about the fields, or was to be seen loitering and reading and musing under the hedges. He was subject to fits of wakefulness and read much in bed; if not disposed to read, he still kept the candle burning; if he wished to extinguish it, and it was out of his reach, he flung his slipper at it, which would be found in the morning near the overturned candlestick, and daubed with grease. He was noted here, as everywhere else, for his charitable feelings. No beggar applied to him in vain, and he evinced on all occasions great commiseration for the poor.
He had the use of the parlor to receive and entertain company, and was visited by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hugh Boyd, the reputed author of Junius, Sir William Chambers, and other distinguished characters. He gave occasionally, though rarely, a dinner party; and on one occasion, when his guests were detained by a thunder shower, he got up a dance, and carried the merriment late into the night.
As usual, he was the promoter of hilarity among the young, and at one time took the children of the house to see a company of strolling players at Hendon. The greatest amusement to the party, however, was derived from his own jokes on the road and his comments on the performance, which produced infinite laughter among his youthful companions.
Near to his rural retreat at Edgeware, a Mr. Seguin, an Irish merchant, of literary tastes, had country quarters for his family, where Goldsmith was always welcome.
In this family he would indulge in playful and even grotesque humor, and was ready for anything—conversation, music, or a game of romps. He prided himself upon his dancing, and would walk a minuet with Mrs. Seguin, to the infinite amusement of herself and the children, whose shouts of laughter he bore with perfect good-humor. He would sing Irish songs, and the Scotch ballad of Johnny Armstrong. He took the lead in the children’s sports of blind man’s buff, hunt the slipper, etc., or in their games at cards, and was the most noisy of the party, affecting to cheat and to be excessively eager to win; while with children of smaller size he would turn the hind part of his wig before, and play all kinds of tricks to amuse them.
One word as to his musical skill and his performance on the flute, which comes up so invariably in all his fireside revels. He really knew nothing of music scientifically; he had a good ear, and may have played sweetly; but we are told he could not read a note of music. Roubillac, the statuary, once played a trick upon him in this respect. He pretended to score down an air as the poet played it, but put down crotchets and semi-breves at random. When he had finished, Goldsmith cast his eyes over it and pronounced it correct! It is possible that his execution in music was like his style in writing; in sweetness and melody he may have snatched a grace beyond the reach of art!
He was at all times a capital companion for children, and knew how to fall in with their humors. “I little thought,” said Miss Hawkins, the woman grown, “what I should have to boast, when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Jill by two bits of paper on his fingers.” He entertained Mrs. Garrick, we are told, with a whole budget of stories and songs; delivered the Chimney Sweep with exquisite taste as a solo; and performed a duet with Garrick of Old Rose and Burn the Bellows.
“I was only five years old,” says the late George Colman, “when Goldsmith one evening, when drinking coffee with my father, took me on his knee and began to play with me, which amiable act I returned with a very smart slap in the face; it must have been a tingler, for I left the marks of my little spiteful paw upon his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked up by my father in an adjoining room, to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably. At length a friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy; it was the good-natured doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed until I began to brighten. He seized the propitious moment, placed three hats upon the carpet, and a shilling under each; the shillings, he told me, were England, France, and Spain. ‘Hey, presto, cockolorum!’ cried the doctor, and, lo! on uncovering the shillings, they were all found congregated under one. I was no politician at the time, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but, as I was also no conjurer, it amazed me beyond measure. From that time, whenever the doctor came to visit my father,
“‘I pluck’d his gown to share the good man’s smile’;
a game of romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows.”
Although Goldsmith made the Edgeware farmhouse his headquarters for the summer, he would absent himself for weeks at a time on visits to Mr. Cradock, Lord Clare, and Mr. Langton, at their country-seats. He would often visit town, also, to dine and partake of the public amusements. On one occasion he accompanied Edmund Burke to witness a performance of the Italian Fantoccini or Puppets, in Panton Street; an exhibition which had hit the caprice of the town, and was in great vogue. The puppets were set in motion by wires, so well concealed as to be with difficulty detected. Boswell, with his usual obtuseness with respect to Goldsmith, accuses him of being jealous of the puppets! “When Burke,” said he, “praised the dexterity with which one of them tossed a pike, ‘Pshaw,’ said Goldsmithwith some warmth, ‘I can do it better myself.’” “The same evening,” adds Boswell, “when supping at Burke’s lodgings, he broke his shin by attempting to exhibit to the company how much better he could jump over a stick than the puppets.”
Goldsmith jealous of puppets! This even passes in absurdity Boswell’s charge upon him of being jealous of the beauty of the two Misses Horneck.
The Panton Street puppets were destined to be a source of further amusement to the town, and of annoyance to the little autocrat of the stage. Foote, the Aristophanes of the English drama, who was always on the alert to turn every subject of popular excitement to account, seeing the success of the Fantoccini, gave out that he should produce a Primitive Puppet-show at the Haymarket, to be entitled the Handsome Chambermaid, or Piety in Pattens: intended to burlesque thesentimental comedywhich Garrick still maintained at Drury Lane. The idea of a play to be performed in a regular theater by puppets excited the curiosity and talk of the town. “Will your puppets be as large as life, Mr. Foote?” demanded a lady of rank. “Oh, no, my lady,” replied Foote, “not much larger than Garrick.”
BROKEN HEALTH—DISSIPATION AND DEBTS—THE IRISH WIDOW—PRACTICAL JOKES—SCRUB—A MISQUOTED PUN—MALAGRIDA—GOLDSMITH PROVED TO BE A FOOL—DISTRESSED BALLAD SINGERS—THE POET AT RANELAGH
Goldsmith returned to town in the autumn (1772), with his health much disordered. His close fits of sedentary application, during which he in a manner tied himself to the mast, had laid the seeds of a lurking malady in his system, and produced a severe illness in the course of the summer. Town life was not favorable to the health either of body or mind. He could not resist the siren voice of temptation, which, now that he had become a notoriety, assailed him on every side. Accordingly we find him launching away in a career of social dissipation; dining and supping out; at clubs, at routs, at theaters; he is a guest with Johnson at the Thrales, and an object of Mrs. Thrale’s lively sallies; he is a lion at Mrs. Vesey’s and Mrs. Montagu’s, where some of the high-bred blue-stockings pronounce him a “wild genius,” and others, peradventure, a “wild Irishman.” In the meantime his pecuniary difficulties are increasing upon him, conflicting with his proneness to pleasure and expense, and contributing by the harassment of his mind to the wear and tear of his constitution. His Animated Nature, though not finished, had been entirely paid for, and the money spent. The money advanced by Garrick on Newbery’s note still hangs over him as a debt. The tale on which Newbery had loaned from two to three hundred pounds previous to the excursion to Barton has proved a failure. The bookseller is urgent for the settlement of his complicated account; the perplexed author has nothing to offer him in liquidation but the copyright of the comedy which he has in his portfolio; “Though to tell you the truth, Frank,” said he, “there are great doubts of its success.” The offer was accepted, and, like bargains wrung from Goldsmith in times of emergency, turned out a golden speculation to the bookseller.
In this way Goldsmith went on “outrunning the constable,” as he termed it; spending everything in advance; working with an overtasked head and weary heart to pay for past pleasures and past extravagance, and at the same time incurring new debts, to perpetuate his struggles and darken his future prospects. While the excitement of society and the excitement of composition conspire to keep up a feverishness of the system, he has incurred an unfortunate habit of quacking himself with James’ powders, a fashionable panacea of the day.
A farce, produced this year by Garrick, and entitled The Irish Widow, perpetuates the memory of practical jokes played off a year or two previously upon the alleged vanity of poor, simple-hearted Goldsmith. He was one evening at the house of his friend Burke, when he was beset by a tenth muse, an Irish widow and authoress, just arrived from Ireland, full of brogue and blunders, and poetic fire and rantipole gentility. She was soliciting subscriptions for her poems; and assailed Goldsmith for his patronage; the great Goldsmith—her countryman, and of course her friend. She overpowered him with eulogiums on his own poems, and then read some of her own, with vehemence of tone and gesture, appealing continually to the great Goldsmith to know how he relished them.
Poor Goldsmith did all that a kind-hearted and gallant gentleman could do hi such a case; he praised her poems as far as the stomach of his sense would permit: perhaps a little further; he offered her his subscription, and it was not until she had retired with many parting compliments to the great Goldsmith that he pronounced the poetry which had been inflicted on him execrable. The whole scene had been a hoax got up by Burke for the amusement of his company, and the Irish widow, so admirably performed, had been personated by a Mrs. Balfour, a lady of his connection, of great sprightliness and talent.
We see nothing in the story to establish the alleged vanity of Goldsmith, but we think it tells rather to the disadvantage of Burke; being unwarrantable under their relations of friendship, and a species of waggery quite beneath his genius. Croker, in his notes to Boswell, gives another of these practical jokes perpetrated by Burke at the expense of Goldsmith’s credulity. It was related to Croker by Colonel O’Moore, of Cloghan Castle, in Ireland, who was a party concerned. The colonel and Burke, walking one day through Leicester Square on their way to Sir Joshua Reynolds’, with whom they were to dine, observed Goldsmith, who was likewise to be a guest, standing and regarding a crowd which was staring and shouting at some foreign ladies in the window of a hotel. “Observe Goldsmith,” said Burke to O’Moore, “and mark what passes between us at Sir Joshua’s.” They passed on and reached there before him. Burke received Goldsmith with affected reserve and coldness; being pressed to explain the reason. “Really,” said he, “I am ashamed to keep company with a person who could act as you have just done in the Square.” Goldsmith protested he was ignorant of what was meant. “Why,” said Burke, “did you not exclaim as you were looking up at those women, what stupid beasts the crowd must be for staring with such admiration at thosepainted Jezebels, while a man of your talents passed by unnoticed?” “Surely, surely, my dear friend,” cried Goldsmith, with alarm, “surely I did not say so?” “Nay,” replied Burke, “if you had not said so, how should I have known it?” “That’s true,” answered Goldsmith, “I am very sorry—it was very foolish:I do recollect that something thing of the kind passed through my mind, but I did not think I had uttered it.”
It is proper to observe that these jokes were played off by Burke before he had attained the full eminence of his social position, and that he may have felt privileged to take liberties with Goldsmith as his countryman and college associate. It is evident, however, that the peculiarities of the latter, and his guileless simplicity, made him a butt for the broad waggery of some of his associates; while others more polished, though equally perfidious, are on the watch to give currency to his bulls and blunders.
The Stratford jubilee, in honor of Shakespeare, where Boswell had made a fool of himself, was still in every one’s mind. It was sportively suggested that a fete should be held at Lichfield in honor of Johnson and Garrick, and that the Beaux’ Stratagem should be played by the members of the Literary Club. “Then,” exclaimed Goldsmith, “I shall certainly play Scrub. I should like of all things to try my hand at that character.” The unwary speech, which any one else might have made without comment, has been thought worthy of record as whimsically characteristic. Beauclerc was extremely apt to circulate anecdotes at his expense, founded perhaps on some trivial incident, but dressed up with the embellishments of his sarcastic brain. One relates to a venerable dish of peas, served up at Sir Joshua’s table, which should have been green, but were any other color. A wag suggested to Goldsmith, in a whisper, that they should be sent to Hammersmith, as that was the way toturn-em-green(Turnham-Green). Goldsmith, delighted with the pun, endeavored to repeat it at Burke’s table, but missed the point. “That is the way tomake‘em green,” said he. Nobody laughed. He perceived he was at fault. “I mean that is theroadto turn ‘em green.” A dead pause and a stare; “whereupon,” adds Beauclerc, “he started up disconcerted and abruptly left the table.” This is evidently one of Beauclerc’s caricatures.
On another occasion the poet and Beauclerc were seated at the theater next to Lord Shelburne, the minister, whom political writers thought proper to nickname Malagrida. “Do you know,” said Goldsmith to his lordship, in the course of conversation, “that I never could conceive why they called you Malagrida,forMalagrida was a very good sort of man.” This was too good a trip of the tongue for Beauclerc to let pass: he serves it up in his next letter to Lord Charlemont, as a specimen of a mode of turning a thought the wrong way, peculiar to the poet; he makes merry over it with his witty and sarcastic compeer, Horace Walpole, who pronounces it “a picture of Goldsmith’s whole life.” Dr. Johnson alone, when he hears it bandied about as Goldsmith’s last blunder, growls forth a friendly defense: “Sir,” said he, “it was a mere blunder in emphasis. He meant to say, I wonder they should use Malagrida as a term of reproach.” Poor Goldsmith! On such points he was ever doomed to be misinterpreted. Rogers, the poet, meeting in times long subsequent with a survivor of those days, asked him what Goldsmith really was in conversation. The old conversational character was too deeply stamped in the memory of the veteran to be effaced. “Sir,” replied the old wiseacre, “he was a fool. The right word never came to him. If you gave him back a bad shilling, he’d say, Why, it’s as good a shilling as ever wasborn. You know he ought to have saidcoined.Coined, sir, never entered his head.He was a fool, sir.”
We have so many anecdotes in which Goldsmith’s simplicity is played upon that it is quite a treat to meet with one in which he is represented playing upon the simplicity of others, especially when the victim of his joke is the “Great Cham” himself, whom all others are disposed to hold so much in awe. Goldsmith and Johnson were supping cozily together at a tavern in Dean Street, Soho, kept by Jack Roberts, a singer at Drury Lane, and a protege of Garrick’s. Johnson delighted in these gastronomical tete-a-tetes, and was expatiating in high good-humor on rumps and kidneys, the veins of his forehead swelling with the ardor of mastication. “These,” said he, “are pretty little things; but a man must eat a great many of them before he is filled.” “Ay; but how many of them,” asked Goldsmith, with affected simplicity, “would reach to the moon?” “To the moon! Ah, sir, that, I fear, exceeds your calculation.” “Not at all, sir; I think I could tell.” “Pray, then, sir, let us hear.” “Why, sir, one,if it were long enough!” Johnson growled for a time at finding himself caught in such a trite schoolboy trap. “Well, sir,” cried he at length, “I have deserved it. I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question.”
Among the many incidents related as illustrative of Goldsmith’s vanity and envy is one which occurred one evening when he was in a drawing-room with a party of ladies, and a ballad-singer under the window struck up his favorite song of Sally Salisbury. “How miserably this woman sings!” exclaimed he. “Pray, doctor,” said the lady of the house, “could you do it better?” “Yes, madam, and the company shall be judges.” The company, of course, prepared to be entertained by an absurdity; but their smiles were wellnigh turned to tears, for he acquitted himself with a skill and pathos that drew universal applause. He had, in fact, a delicate ear for music, which had been jarred by the false notes of the ballad-singer; and there were certain pathetic ballads, associated with recollections of his childhood, which were sure to touch the springs of his heart. We have another story of him, connected with ballad-singing, which is still more characteristic. He was one evening at the house of Sir William Chambers, in Berners Street, seated at a whist table with Sir William, Lady Chambers, and Baretti, when all at once he threw down his cards, hurried out of the room and into the street. He returned in an instant, resumed his seat, and the game went on. Sir William, after a little hesitation, ventured to ask the cause of his retreat, fearing he had been overcome by the heat of the room. “Not at all,” replied Goldsmith; “but in truth I could not bear to hear that unfortunate woman in the street, half singing, half sobbing, for such tones could only arise from the extremity of distress; her voice grated painfully on my ear and jarred my frame, so that I could not rest until I had sent her away.” It was in fact a poor ballad-singer, whose cracked voice had been heard by others of the party, but without having the same effect on their sensibilities. It was the reality of his fictitious scene in the story of the “Man in Black”; wherein he describes a woman in rags with one child in her arms and another on her back, attempting to sing ballads, but with such a mournful voice that it was difficult to determine whether she was singing or crying. “A wretch,” he adds, “who, in the deepest distress, still aimed at good-humor, was an object my friend was by no means capable of withstanding.” The Man in Black gave the poor woman all that he had—a bundle of matches. Goldsmith, it is probable, sent his ballad-singer away rejoicing with all the money in his pocket.
Ranelagh was at that time greatly in vogue as a place of public entertainment. It was situated near Chelsea; the principal room was a rotunda of great dimensions, with an orchestra in the center and tiers of boxes all round. It was a place to which Johnson resorted occasionally. “I am a great friend to public amusements,” said he, “for they keep people from vice.” [Footnote: “Alas, sir!” said Johnson, speaking, when in another mood, of grand houses, fine gardens, and splendid places of public amusement; “alas, sir! these are only struggles for happiness. When I first entered Ranelagh it gave an expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experienced anywhere else. But, as Xerxes wept when he viewed his immense army, and considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterward, so it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go home and think.”] Goldsmith was equally a friend to them, though perhaps not altogether on such moral grounds. He was particularly fond of masquerades, which were then exceedingly popular, and got up at Ranelagh with great expense and magnificence. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had likewise a taste for such amusements, was sometimes his companion, at other times he went alone; his peculiarities of person and manner would soon betray him, whatever might be his disguise, and he would be singled out by wags, acquainted with his foibles, and more successful than himself in maintaining their incognito, as a capital subject to be played upon. Some, pretending not to know him, would decry his writings, and praise those of his contemporaries; others would laud his verses to the skies, but purposely misquote and burlesque them; others would annoy him with parodies; while one young lady, whom he was teasing, as he supposed, with great success and infinite humor, silenced his rather boisterous laughter by quoting his own line about “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” On one occasion he was absolutely driven out of the house by the persevering jokes of a wag, whose complete disguise gave him no means of retaliation.
His name appearing in the newspapers among the distinguished persons present at one of these amusements, his old enemy, Kenrick, immediately addressed to him a copy of anonymous verses, to the following purport.
“How widely different, Goldsmith, are the waysOf doctors now, and those of ancient days!Theirs taught the truth in academic shades,Ours in lewd hops and midnight masquerades.So changed the times! say, philosophic sage,Whose genius suits so well this tasteful age,Is the Pantheon, late a sink obscene,Become the fountain of chaste Hippocrene?Or do thy moral numbers quaintly flow,Inspired by th’Aganippeof Soho?Do wisdom’s sons gorge cates and vermicelli,Like beastly Bickerstaffe or bothering Kelly?Or art thou tired of th’ undeserved applauseBestowed on bards affecting Virtue’s cause?Is this the good that makes the humble vain,The good philosophy should not disdain?If so, let pride dissemble all it can,A modern sage is still much less than man.”
Goldsmith was keenly sensitive to attacks of the kind, and meeting Kenrick at the Chapter Coffee-house, called him to sharp account for taking such a liberty with his name, and calling his morals in question, merely on account of his being seen at a place of general resort and amusement. Kenrick shuffled and sneaked, protesting that he meant nothing derogatory to his private character. Goldsmith let him know, however, that he was aware of his having more than once indulged in attacks of this dastard kind, and intimated that another such outrage would be followed by personal chastisement.
Kenrick having played the craven in his presence, avenged himself as soon as he was gone by complaining of his having made a wanton attack upon him, and by making coarse comments upon his writings, conversation and person.
The scurrilous satire of Kenrick, however unmerited, may have checked Goldsmith’s taste for masquerades. Sir Joshua Reynolds, calling on the poet one morning, found him walking about his room in somewhat of a reverie, kicking a bundle of clothes before him like a football. It proved to be an expensive masquerade dress, which he said he had been fool enough to purchase, and as there was no other way of getting the worth of his money, he was trying to take it out in exercise.
INVITATION TO CHRISTMAS—THE SPRING VELVET COAT—THE HAYMAKING WIG—THE MISCHANCES OF LOO—THE FAIR CULPRIT—A DANCE WITH THE JESSAMY BRIDE
From the feverish dissipations of town, Goldsmith is summoned away to partake of the genial dissipations of the country. In the month of December, a letter from Mrs. Bunbury invites him down to Barton, to pass the Christmas holidays. The letter is written in the usual playful vein which marks his intercourse with this charming family. He is to come in his “smart spring-velvet coat,” to bring a new wig to dance with the haymakers in, and, above all, to follow the advice of herself and her sister (the Jessamy Bride), in playing loo. This letter, which plays so archly, yet kindly, with some of poor Goldsmith’s peculiarities, and bespeaks such real ladylike regard for him, requires a word or two of annotation. The spring-velvet suit alluded to appears to have been a gallant adornment (somewhat in the style of the famous bloom-colored coat) in which Goldsmith had figured in the preceding month of May—the season of blossoms—for, on the 21st of that month we find the following entry in the chronicle of Mr. William Filby, tailor:To your blue velvet suit, £21 10s. 9d. Also, about the same time, a suit of livery and a crimson collar for the serving man. Again we hold the Jessamy Bride responsible for this gorgeous splendor of wardrobe.
The new wig no doubt is a bag-wig and solitaire, still highly the mode, and in which Goldsmith is represented as figuring when in full dress, equipped with his sword.
As to the dancing with the haymakers, we presume it alludes to some gambol of the poet, in the course of his former visit to Barton; when he ranged the fields and lawns a chartered libertine, and tumbled into the fish-ponds.
As to the suggestions about loo, they are in sportive allusion to the doctor’s mode of playing that game in their merry evening parties; affecting the desperate gambler and easy dupe; running counter to all rule; making extravagant ventures; reproaching all others with cowardice; dashing at all hazards at the pool, and getting himself completely loo’d, to the great amusement of the company. The drift of the fair sisters’ advice was most probably to tempt him on, and then leave him in the lurch.
With these comments we subjoin Goldsmith’s reply to Mrs. Bunbury, a fine piece of off-hand, humorous writing, which has but in late years been given to the public, and which throws a familiar light on the social circle at Barton.
“Madam—I read your letter with all that allowance which critical candor could require, but after all find so much to object to, and so much to raise my indignation, that I cannot help giving it a serious answer. I am not so ignorant, madam, as not to see there are many sarcasms contained in it, and solecisms also. (Solecism is a word that comes from the town of Soleis in Attica, among the Greeks, built by Solon, and applied as we use the word Kidderminster for curtains from a town also of that name—but this is learning you have no taste for!)—I say, madam, there are many sarcasms in it, and solecisms also. But not to seem an ill-natured critic, I’ll take leave to quote your own words, and give you my remarks upon them as they occur. You begin as follows: