Oliver Goldsmith Part 3

He may have laughed as he said the words. He must have shuddered. The laugh was a selfless sacrifice. The shudder was real and to the very last too true, for painful memory was vivid. We cannot tell whether, like Shakespeare, he held the reins of horses, standing outside taverns and theatres; or whether he carried bags for pence, ran errands, gambled for his bread, or begged for shelter. Here was a sweet, weak, pure, and gentle, sympathetic lad, only a boy in heart and strength, and not even a child in that hardness life demands, stepping he knew not whither, meeting the world in an actual and visible solitude, and a loneliness of soul beyond the force of words to tell. There are those who, having pa.s.sed their twentieth year, are already men of mark and power. Not such a one was poor Noll. Through ceaseless dependence and uncertainty in both his purpose and his position in life, he tardily gained that dignity and validity that attends the realisation of man's estate.

With Goldsmith now one eager and despairing quest for work followed hard upon another, and disappointments in rapid and relentless succession. After wandering on from door to door, and hope to its scattering, and chance to its dispelling, he obtained his first situation as a dispenser in a chemist's shop. He lost opportunities and failed to create confidence, more than anything through the forlornness of his appearance, and the too obvious simplicity of his bearing. Then he heard of an old friend, a warm-hearted Edinburgh student, a certain Dr. Sleigh. To this generous man he bent his steps.

As soon as he was recognized, he was received into the home of his former companion, and welcomed with all that brotherliness of which sterling friendship is capable.

The old apothecary, with whom Goldsmith worked as a dispenser for a time, deserves the grateful honour that we now can pay his kindly heart. His name was Jacobs. He appears to have been an old man of benign mien and inclination. He recognized the superior learning and credentials of his young a.s.sistant. He thought that a qualified doctor should not be serving drugs in a shop, but in greater dignity visiting his patients. Largely through this man's kindly exertions, and also with a little help from Dr. Sleigh, who soon left London and was lost to his former friend, and with the sympathy and good wishes of more than one old Edinburgh comrade, remembered and met again, Goldsmith was set up in a mean and meagre manner as a physician, in a very poor and dingy neighbourhood--Bank Side, Southwark. The whole prospect was neither pleasant nor propitious. Hidden in his desolute obscurity, friends lost, for a time at all events, all thought of Goldsmith. The poor doctor soon seemed quite alone, and, what was worse, forgotten.

From the moment that Oliver Goldsmith entered London, penury and meanness had dogged his steps. It is piteous to dwell upon these squalid scenes. We need not recall the second-hand wardrobe that decked him out as a physician in this practice, unimaginably poor and dark and dingy. Fancy cannot conceive a greater dreariness or deeper dest.i.tution. He was so poor that his poorest patients felt compa.s.sion for his even greater poverty. Seeing one day his doctor's pockets bulging with papers, so that he looked like the man of letters in a then clever and popular caricature, an invalid, a journeyman printer, who had sought this physician's aid and advice, now feelingly commended him to Samuel Richardson, his own master and employer, with at first, at all events, apparently auspicious results. Leaving his dubious practice, Goldsmith became proof reader to the printer, publisher, and novelist who had also in his own good time befriended the great Dr. Johnson. No ultimate advantage, however, accrued to Goldsmith from this distinguished a.s.sociation with and employment by one of the most successful authors of the day.

He met the poet Young, and other men. He never wrote for Richardson, and soon left this place of books and business. His position can have been neither dignified nor lucrative. The wanderer bent his weary feet, neither knowing whither his steps might tend nor with the wherewithal to meet the journey. He was almost starving in the streets, when one day he met young Milner, another Edinburgh student, who carried Noll off to his father, a learned Presbyterian divine, who kept a school. Goldsmith then had, it seems, some vague dream about being sent to the East to decipher ancient inscriptions, but in the end he found occupation in Peckham, and not Palestine.

There is no particular reason, however wayward his studies, to question that Goldsmith was, in the lighter order of that day, a qualified physician. When he landed in England from the Continent in all probability he had secreted in some loose pocket a foreign medical diploma. Besides this certificate, granting him the right to practise, but not the power to succeed, as a doctor, he carried other papers--parts of poems, essays, notes for plays, and perhaps even then the opening of a novel. He set great store on these precious papers.

He may have lost his diploma. He became an usher in Dr. Milner's school at Peckham. He hated this work. In _The Vicar of Wakefield_, in a few striking sentences, he shows the humiliations of the position.

Wherever we find him, he is always the same in the matter of worldly prudence, and in his fondness for making those about him bright. He spent his salary in giving treats to his pupils. The kindly schoolmaster's wife said that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. Dear Noll was full of fun and fine humour for the boys about him, doing all he could for their delight, and loving some like a brother. When years had pa.s.sed and he had attained his fame, he met one of his old scholars, knew him in an instant, and although the lad had become a married man, was anxious, as in the old days, to treat him at an apple-stall. Then suddenly he said:

"Sam, have you seen my picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds? Have you seen it, Sam? Have you got an engraving?"

Sam had not yet procured the picture.

"Sam," said Goldsmith, "if your picture had been published, I should not have waited an hour without having it."

Despite his pranks with his pupils, this time was no happy period. The unpleasantness of the office and the severities of the scorned and profitless labours weighed sorely on him. Every collection of schoolboys has its share of ineffaceable sn.o.bs. These were a trial to the teacher. Amid his practical jokes with William the footboy, and one merry-maker and another, there is still an underlying earnestness in all and a reverence for the pure sentiment of the heart. At this time, when asked whom he held the best commentator on the Scriptures, Goldsmith replied very simply, "Common Sense."

The princ.i.p.al of the school, Dr. Milner, was one of the most sincere of Goldsmith's friends. At the house of this good man, Griffiths, the publisher, meeting Goldsmith, detected his abilities at once, and found him the first opening for his literary labours. He gave him mere hack-work on the _Monthly Review_. This was the Whig journal of the day, and opposed later by its Tory rival, the _Critical Review_, edited by Smollet, also physician, novelist, and historian. Leaving Peckham, Goldsmith now lived for a while over the shop of his employer in Paternoster Row, gaining shelter of a sort and board and lodging.

Poor as may have been the fare, and mean as must have been the livelihood under the roof of Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, Oliver Goldsmith, escaping from these conditions of life, entered others that were for a time, at all events, far worse. One cannot tell what he did, or where he went, or how he lived. Near Salisbury Square some squalid garret sheltered him. He tried to shun the common gaze and hide his very whereabouts. He turned to translating, chance criticisms, and any drudgery that came his way, and all to little purpose. He lived in wretchedness and obscurity, bearing the weight of an increasing poverty, until at last the very hope of bare subsistence perished.

On one dark and misty day, as Goldsmith, in his tattered and threadbare clothes, sat pensive and dejected in his dingy, miserable garret, rich in fancies and very poor in food, a merry rap upon the door aroused the poet from his meditations. A young countryman, all hope and health, had briskly announced his advent. This comer was not one to wait without and need a bidding for his entrance. Oliver could not hide himself completely. He was tracked down at last, and by none other than his younger brother Charles. To the youth the emaciated apparition of poor Oliver was indeed astounding. Charles had pictured him already a prosperous and influential man of letters, who had but to raise and wave his hand to confer work, wealth, and position, and the possibilities of fame upon anyone whom he might lovingly patronise and befriend. Imagine the disappointment.

"All in good time, my dear boy," said Oliver. "I shall be richer by-and-by. Besides, you see, I am not in positive want. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his poem of 'The Campaign' in a garret in the Haymarket, three storeys high, and you see I am not come to that yet, for I have only reached the second storey."

Some days later, just as suddenly as he had come, the younger brother vanished. He had brought Oliver a breath of the old home. Charles made his way to Jamaica, in all likelihood as a common sailor, and proved a rover to the last. Darker shadows were to fall upon poor Noll through still deeper experience of deprivation, misadventure and despair. The days of doubt were pa.s.sed at last, and in the end successes were achieved in every sphere, unrivalled alike in their sublime heights and vast variety.

CHAPTER V

"THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD"

Goldsmith's first victory was the _Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning_.

The _Inquiry_ was written at a time when its author had suffered from the tyranny and the mercilessness of booksellers. This explains his onslaught upon this then ungenerous craft. Injury had been heaped on insult. Disappointment and despair were tearing and gnawing at the poor man's heart. The demon imp of petty poverty first starved him and then laughed at his insufficing fare, reduced him to rags and ridiculed his wretchedness.

The _Inquiry_ was published by Dodsley. Upon this work the poor author placed all his hopes, and was not disappointed. He had sailed his little boat to the sea at last. The hardships, however, that he had pa.s.sed through held to the end their sway upon his heart.

The _Inquiry_ was for its author the first triumphant advance. Its consequences had their obverse aspect. The criticism of actor-managers drew forth Garrick's indignation. The results of this were to be realised later in Goldsmith's career. The judicial severities levelled against the tribe of publishers gathered black clouds.

Griffiths took the onslaught on his craft as personal, and thundered out a libellous retort, that, wanting much, was lacking nothing in spite, which failing in taste found its fruition in malice. Griffiths was one of those mean men who can never forgive, and whose deeds in sober truth do test the force of our own capacity to pardon and forget. Even when Goldsmith was dead, Griffiths still tried to cast vituperations on the poor man's memory.

At this time Noll engaged to furnish two brightly written articles each week for the _Public Ledger_, of which paper Newbery was the proprietor. These serial articles appeared under the t.i.tle of _The Citizen of the World_. A large concourse of readers looked forward to the welcome advents of the cheerful and clever Citizen. The character became a household word. This was Goldsmith's first really great popular hit. Apart, however, from the appreciation of the general public, it must be considered that, more than anything hitherto, these articles brought their author to the knowledge and gained the admiration of the men of letters of his day. The _Citizen_ figures in a popular and lively light, yet still with a charming and a moving manner. Here we see the writer in his fairest freedom and delight, ruling a little philosophic realm and social world all his own. Up to that time nothing quite like it had been done before. There is, as the name implies, a world of difference between Addison, the Spectator; Steele, the Tatler; Johnson, the Rambler; and Goldsmith, the Citizen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Rischgitz Collection._]

DR. JOHNSON, BOSWELL AND GOLDSMITH, AT THE MITRE TAVERN.

(From the painting by Eyre Crowe.)]

_The Citizen of the World_ is a capital collection of essays, possessed of an imperishable interest and significance, and a charm as faultless and unfailing as that compa.s.sion and consuming charity which never pa.s.s from the page, and never deserted the heart of their gentle author. Still, this spirit touches and moves the heart. He saw the wrongs and the goodness, the truth and the untruth, and he knew the minds of men. This cosmopolitan saw Russia, the enemy of the peace of Europe, and foresaw its vast advancing, aggressive power. He warned the English how insecure was their then faulty hold upon the American colonies. In these essays we find vigorous and thrilling protests against cruelty to animals. These appeals then were rare indeed, and even now are only revealed in any earnestness through a slowly dawning purer spirit. The greatest men of that age, and the best, loved Goldsmith like a brother. Very soon we see Dr. Johnson marching down Fleet Street arm-in-arm with Percy to take supper with Dr. Goldsmith.

The lexicographer has on a new suit of clothes and a wig finely powdered, and looks uncommon through this unexpected scrupulosity of costume. Percy is impertinent enough to inquire the cause of this finery.

"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."

This amusing incident marks the foundation of a great friendship. If ever Goldsmith had a friend, that friend was Johnson; if Johnson ever had a friend, that friend was Goldsmith. The story does not proclaim dear Noll a dandy this time. Doubtless his care or carelessness in garment kept pace, step by step, with varying moods. There is evidence enough to tell us how much he doted on finery and fashionable raiment in those bills from his tailor, which to the very last remained unpaid. Filby could afford the loss. It will be gathered from all this that with a change in fortune there had also been a departure from those scanty quarters in Green Arbour Court. His new apartments in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, were not elaborately furnished, nor dignified in themselves or their situation, but they were the sign of better days. For all Fame brings its rich rewards. For Goldsmith the greatest of these was Johnson's friendship and esteem. The bond that bound these two was this, that they were always the last to abandon the poor and the worthless. Tired out with failure or importunity, other men of kindly heart might leave the incorrigible to their fate, but not Samuel Johnson nor Oliver Goldsmith. A better basis for friendship could not be.

No sooner was Goldsmith known, than a bright devoted band of loving spirits cl.u.s.tered round, loving the life of the man and feeling the help and the hope that it gave. Simplicity sways its sceptre. Purity of heart is a Divine power. Not through his position and achievements, but for himself, men and women loved and honoured him. Burke and Reynolds became his devoted friends and constant allies. Fairest of all the bonds was that dreamy sympathy with the sweet little Jessamy Bride. He loved the poor. In this affection it might be said that his very life was dedicated to all who bore the burden of sad necessity, and needed help or solace in their suffering. For the most part his intimacies were with men, but n.o.ble women whose names have pa.s.sed away must have honoured him and found that hour a happy one that brought the comforting and kindly and enkindling soul within the circle of the home. He loved children and understood them. He longed to have them for his readers. In a picturesque succession the old lady who taught Charles Lamb his letters was patted on her curly head by Goldsmith when she was a little child.

CHAPTER VI

THE LITERARY CLUB

Goldsmith's income accrued, not through royalties upon his few great and immortal works, but from arduous and endless ephemeral tasks. This ceaseless taxation of the mental faculties probably represents the most exhausting of all the processes of gaining a decent livelihood.

Never the strongest of men, these relentless intellectual exactions gave the brain no rest, and kept the physical frame in a condition of constant nervous weakness. Writing from a bed of sickness, he tells his employer almost pitifully, amid the strain of things, that he cannot complete his translations from Plutarch. Without a pension or a sinecure in some office of the State, literary life at that time was fraught with such incalculable difficulties that it demanded the maximum of prudence to achieve the minimum of subsistence. Men of letters lived, and by some miracle enjoyed themselves. The commercial basis of their being, and their professional and economic relationship with both the booksellers and the public, were as unsatisfactory as can be imagined. The sum received by Milton for "Paradise Lost"

indicates the usage of an earlier day. Things had not much improved.

Newbery gave five guineas for the copyright of _The Citizen of the World_ and fourteen guineas for _The Life of Beau Nash_. A struggle consequent upon the combination of very little means, and still less practical prudence, soon began in Goldsmith's case. His mode of life, if not luxurious, was easier than it had been. It bore the semblance of secure prosperity. He left his chambers in Wine Office Court for a more commodious set of apartments in Canonbury, then a delightful village. Newbery made all the arrangements. From him Goldsmith's landlady received her quarterly due for the board and lodging of this celebrated author. However precautious this plan of payment may have been, it probably led to Noll spending more on incidental outlays than he otherwise would have done with a weekly reckoning to meet. His cares never came from personal profusion or self-indulgence, but from the warmth and impulse of his too generous heart and lavish love of giving. With him the purpose of money was not its preservation for a rainy day, but its distribution on a fine one. He never found much fun in making guineas come, or hilarity in keeping them. It was a vast delight to make them fly. At this feat no one was ever more accomplished. Here we have the man and his mistakes, and the troubles that came, and came to stay. Some might have grown rich from his financial opportunities. Whilst making the most and the worst of his prudential incompetence, it is easy to estimate too highly his rewards. It is an exaggeration to speak of his having made in his time thousands of pounds.

All he earned very hardly he squandered most carelessly. This foreshadows that fierce stream of fatality in which he proved powerless to the end. Underlying currents of embarra.s.sments were as constant as the grace and purity and beauty of his heart, and more close to him than that they could not be. Those men of business who never had their dues met, were better able to bear the losses than would have been the poor pensioners whom Goldsmith's compa.s.sion enriched. His was never the philanthropy of reasoned prudence, but that of impotent prodigality. He scattered guineas as heedless of himself as he was careless of his creditors. He was at this time most industrious. In 1763 and 1764 he produced countless miscellaneous articles and essays. He composed a _History of England_ in a series of letters written after the manner of a n.o.bleman to his son, and through this mistakenly attributed to Lord Chesterfield. He may have penned "Goody Two-Shoes"--it is too late to tell. Subsequently came another and more responsible _History of England_, used until recently in many of our public schools. Oliver Goldsmith had become one of the men of his time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _It is agreed between Oliver Goldsmith M. B on one hand and James Dodsley on the other that Oliver Goldsmith shall write for James Dodsley a book called a Chronological history of the lives of eminent persons of Great Britain and Ireland or to that effect, consisting of about two volumes 8^vo about the same size and letter with the universal history published in 8^vo for the writing of which and compiling the same James Dodsley shall pay Oliver Goldsmith three guineas for every printed sheet, so that the whole shall be delivered complete in the s.p.a.ce of two years at farthest James Dodsley however shall print the above book in whatever manner or size he shall think fit only the universal history above mentioned shall be the standard by which Oliver Goldsmith shall expect to be paid. Oliver Goldsmith shall be paid one moiety upon delivery of the whole copy complete, and the other moiety one half of it at the conclusion of six months and the other half at the expiration of twelve months next after the publication of the work, James Dodsley giving however upon the delivery of the whole copy two notes for the money left unpaid. Each volume of the above intended work shall not contain more than five and thirty sheets and if they should contain more the surplus shall not be paid for by James Dodsley. Oliver Goldsmith shall print his name to the said work._

_Oliver Goldsmith_ _Mar 31 1763_ _Jas Dodsley_

_Rischgitz Collection._] [_British Museum._

FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN GOLDSMITH AND DODSLEY, MARCH 31, 1763.]

Nothing can be more interesting in every period in the history of literature, art, science, and philosophy than the manner in which, thrown together by the mysterious magnetism of mutually alluring greatness and power, the first and highest minds of all epochs grow inevitably a.s.sociated. We find this now in the formation of the Literary Club, of which many of the most moving minds of that day in which Goldsmith lived were members. The Club met on Monday evenings in the Turk's Head Tavern, Soho. It was in working order in 1764. Sir Joshua Reynolds was its founder. Goldsmith's membership of the Literary Club, happy as it was, marks great misunderstandings involved in that misguided judgment pa.s.sed upon the man by his contemporaries, which posterity has been content too easily to accept. It was thought that Oliver Goldsmith had no learning to substantiate his position, and that he had no wit for conversation, but only for writing. There is so little to support these ideas that it is surprising that they should have arisen, and for any period, or in any mind, have persisted. Horace Walpole, in his graceful way, called Goldsmith an inspired idiot. Garrick told us that "Dear Noll wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll." Johnson said: "No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand." The charge that Goldsmith was incapable of collected thought in conversation falls to the ground if we recall one gentle utterance: "It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill." These words from one who had suffered an indescribably teasing impertinence at the hands of Johnson are the most collected conceivable. They are not less chivalrous. In _The Retaliation_ Johnson alone is spared. To this friend nothing could shake Goldsmith's admiring and unalterable faithfulness and affection.

There is a certain spirit in expression that must stand inevitably a.s.sociated with the collected mind. When it was wondered why Johnson cared for some unhappy mortal who had no charm or talent, Goldsmith said, in his quiet and reflective way: "The man is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough for Johnson." Concerning one who was undeserving, according to the manner of the world, who had no honour, and had forfeited all claim to character, yet still retained Johnson's compa.s.sion, Goldsmith rejoined: "This man has become miserable, and that ensures the protection of Johnson." Goldsmith, who could so readily reply to protests with answers at once as felicitous and as reflective as these, could not have been an uncollected conversationalist. Not merely the words, but also the manner that one must a.s.sociate with their utterance preclude the possibility.

Goldsmith is supposed to have had no learning because one day he called upon Gibbon, who gulled him. He questioned the author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" upon some historic issue, and the historian led him grotesquely astray. Who would not have accepted anything Gibbon said without criticism? Who would have expected this great personage capable of indulging in a school-boy prank?

Goldsmith's writings prove him well instructed and widely read, and show his mind as curiously stored and equipped as its whole genius was charming and gracious. If he could not talk, but could only write, then the pen in his hand is taken as an instrument capable of exerting hypnotic force, and converting by magic a fool into a wit.

In his own time, from some unaccountable cause, it became a habit to treat Goldsmith with a form of moral and intellectual patronage. This has never entirely pa.s.sed away. Carlyle, following Horace Walpole's idea, writing of Johnson, thus speaks of Goldsmith: "An inspired idiot hangs strangely about him. Yet on the whole there is no evil in the gooseberry fool, but rather much good--of a fine, if of a weaker sort than Johnson's--and all the more genuine that he himself could never become conscious of it."

In the sphere of the high-minded of that period, with the possible but not the clear and certain exception of Johnson himself, not one in all that circle, ill.u.s.trious as it was, so impressed the kindred spirits of that time and age as Oliver Goldsmith did. His impressiveness swayed its force and influence over all. This was due first to the winning grace, but partly to the greatness of the man. "Dr.

Goldsmith," said Johnson, "is one of the first men we now have as an author, and he is a very worthy man, too." At another time he said: "As a writer he was of the most distinguished abilities. Whatever he composed he did it better than any other man could, and whether we consider him as a poet, as a comic writer, or as a historian, so far as regards his power of composition he was one of the finest writers of his time, and will ever stand in the foremost cla.s.s." These words were uttered shortly after Goldsmith's death. One can imagine the looking back with love upon the companionship and the conversation of one friend at least who would never be forgotten. All natures in some sphere, touch the infinite. In the silence of his great heart, the radiance of his intellect, and in his uttered word, the very soul of Goldsmith's genius lies in a loving understanding. In this man there flows and shines the very grace of the very Christ. Unfailing gentleness lives lighted by divinity.

Those were happy days pa.s.sed in heart-to-heart friendships and affections, and they were merry hours that sped so swiftly at the Literary Club. The great are never greater than in the hearts of their homes and the simplicities of their friendships. At this club the G.o.ds forgot their power and high beings laid aside their loftiness. In the midst we find the man they teased the man most welcome; that one that all affected to despise, each in his inmost heart unfeignedly respected. The man most laughed at was most loved. Oliver Goldsmith made the mirth of things. He was always forbearing, and to this pa.s.sive pleasingness he added that finest of activities, unfailing kindliness. If it is no wonder that they loved him, it is no marvel that they laughed at him as well.