Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 21

All chance of succeeding as a clergyman, to which office he, moreover, had an aversion, appearing out of the question, and having either no inclination, or not sufficient spirit of plodding for the pursuit of law, which had been recommended to him, by a.s.sistance of his friends he crossed over to Edinburgh, and commenced in that University the study of physic. We have no clew to the exact lodgings of Goldsmith during his stay in Edinburgh, which was two winters. Men in the poverty of Goldsmith, as a student, seldom record very traceably their whereabouts.

The tradition is, however, that the lodgings he chiefly occupied were in the College Wynd; and this is very likely, both because the situation is very convenient for the college, and because the character of the place agrees pretty much with the sort of entertainment he describes himself to have found in them. The College Wynd is a narrow alley of wretched houses, now inhabited only by the lowest grade of population. It is probable, however, that in it was the better cla.s.s of lodgings which Goldsmith occupied in this city. The house in which he located himself at first was also a boarding-house, but of such a description that he used, in after days, to amuse his friends in London with an account of the economy of the table. A leg of mutton, as he told the story, dished up in various ways by the ingenuity of his hostess, served for the better part of dinner during a week; a dish of broth being made on the seventh day from the bone. He soon fled from this luxurious abode, and joined several other students, his friends and countrymen, who were better accommodated, most likely in this College Wynd. He had the advantage of studying under the elder Monro; he became a member of the Medical Society; but was soon more noted for his convivial talents and habits than for his industrious study. He made a trip into the Highlands on a pony, he says, of the size of a ram, and wrote a humorous account of Scotland and the people to his friend, Robert Bryanton, of Ballymahon. Through some Irish connection he was invited to the Duke of Hamilton's, whose d.u.c.h.ess at that time was one of the celebrated Gunnings; but he said he soon found himself liked rather as a _jester_ than as a companion, and he at once disdained the company of dukes on any such terms. Among his college friends was that Lauchlan Macleane, whom Sir David Brewster has of late again been endeavoring to prove to be the real Junius, though his claims were long ago sifted, and rejected by public opinion; particularly from the cogent facts that Macleane was the private secretary of Lord Shelburne at the very time that his lords.h.i.+p was violently attacked by Junius, under another signature, in 1767, according to Woodfall's evidence, which would convert Macleane into Junius at the cost of all character; and, secondly, because Macleane was himself ridiculed by Junius, under the signature of Vindex, in 1771.

Having, with his usual incaution in such matters, become security for a fellow-student, he would not have been able to quit Edinburgh had it not been for Macleane and Dr. Joseph Fenn Sleigh, a Quaker, and afterward a popular physician at Cork. Saved from arrest by their kindness, he embarked for Bordeaux, but was driven into Newcastle-on-Tyne, where, the s.h.i.+p proving to be engaged in enlisting soldiers for the French army, he was seized and cast into prison for a fortnight before he could prove his innocence. In the mean time the s.h.i.+p had escaped out of the harbor.

He had lost his pa.s.sage, and his pa.s.sage-money and luggage, but saved his life, for the s.h.i.+p was wrecked, and every soul perished. He then went over to Rotterdam, studied at Leyden for a year, but, as far as appears, took no degree; and thence set off, on foot, on that tour of which so much has always been said in connection with his name. With his usual good-natured thoughtlessness, when about to set forward from Leyden, provided with a small fund by his uncle Contarine, being struck, in the garden of a florist, with some beautiful bulbous flowers, and recollecting in his grat.i.tude his uncle Contarine's admiration of those flowers, he spent most of the money in purchasing a quant.i.ty of them to s.h.i.+p to Ireland for him, as the most welcome present he could think of, and then set out, almost penniless, on his journey. His tour extended through Flanders; and France, at Paris attending the chemical lectures of Rouelle, and being introduced to Voltaire; a small portion of Germany; thence through Switzerland, visiting some of its most celebrated scenes, and climbing some of its highest mountains, as the Jura, into Italy, where he extended his journey to most of the northern cities, Mantua, Milan, Padua, Florence, Verona, Venice, and the wilds of Carinthia, but never reached Rome or Naples. His necessities became too great to permit him to go farther. In France his flute was, among the peasantry, as represented in his Traveler, a never-failing resource; not so in Italy. There the higher taste for music made his rude skill useless; but he found many of his countrymen residents in the monasteries, and these were always ready to relieve his wants. He found also another resource, which he relates in his Philosophic Vagabond: "My skill in music could avail me nothing in Italy, where every peasant was a better musician than I; but by this time I had acquired another talent, which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill in disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents, there are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every advent.i.tious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night. In this manner, then, I fought my way toward England; walked along from city to city, examined mankind more closely, and, if I may so express it, saw both sides of the picture."

There is no question that this hardy enterprise of making the tour of Europe on foot, and pus.h.i.+ng his way as he could, by his powers of argument or his flute, though, as he observed, it made him a debtor in almost every kingdom in Europe, yet immensely extended his knowledge of human nature. He was the first man, through his close observation of the French people, to predict their breaking up the despotism of the old monarchy. "As the Swedes are making concealed approaches to despotism, the French, on the other hand, are imperceptibly vindicating themselves into freedom. When I consider that these Parliaments, the members of which are all created by the court; the presidents of which can only act by immediate direction; presume even to mention privileges and freedom, who, till of late, received directions from the throne with implicit humility; when this is considered, I can not help fancying that the genius of freedom has entered that kingdom in disguise. If they have but three weak monarchs successively on the throne, the mask will be laid aside, and the country will certainly once more be free." This was a remarkable prophecy; the sagacity of Goldsmith penetrated the eventful future twelve years before the mind of Burke, by treading the same ground, arrived at the same conclusion.

In 1756 Oliver Goldsmith reached England, destined now to the end of his life to become the scene of his varied struggles, his poverty, and his fame. It were a long story to follow him minutely through all his numerous pursuits of an existence, his various changes of residence for a long time, without much advance toward profit or reputation. The early part of his career is lost in obscurity and conjecture. He stepped upon the sh.o.r.e of England a nameless adventurer, dest.i.tute of cash, and uncertain as to what means of livelihood he should embrace. The struggle which now and for some time went on was for life itself. He was reduced to the most desperate circ.u.mstances. He applied for a.s.sistance to his relations in Ireland, but whether they could no longer help him, or whether they now regarded his continual wanderings, and continual drain upon them, as the confirmed signs of a thriftless vagabond, none came.

It is said that in this situation he tried the stage in a country town, and his intimate acquaintances.h.i.+p with the interior of the wretched country play-house, as displayed in The Adventures of a Strolling Player, and the conclusion of the story of George Primrose, renders it very probable. He was driven by utter need, according to the by-word of the Irishman, to be almost "any body's customer." The next resource was, trusting to his scholastic acquirements to procure an engagement as an usher in a country school. But his appearance must have been against him; reference he had none in this country to give, and though he applied to his old kind tutor in Dublin, Dr. Radcliffe, not the brute Wilder, he requested his recommendation to be given to him under a feigned name, being ashamed of hereafter having his present condition a.s.sociated with his own. Dr. Radcliffe was obliged to be silent.

Goldsmith held this situation, it may be supposed, under these circ.u.mstances for no long period; but the very location of the school is unknown; it has been said to be in Yorks.h.i.+re, and also in Kent, near Ashford or Tenterden. What sort of a life he had of it in this "Do-the-boys Hall," wherever it was, we may learn from the curious catechism he puts into the mouth of the cousin of one of his heroes.

"Ay, this is indeed a very pretty career that has been chalked out for you. I have been an usher at a boarding-school myself; and may I die by an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be under-turnkey in Newgate. I was up early and late. I was browbeat by the master; hated for my ugly face by the mistress; worried by the boys within, and never permitted to stir out to receive civility abroad. But are you sure you are fit for a school? Let me examine you a little. Have you been bred apprentice to the business?" "No." "Then you won't do for a school. Have you had the small-pox?" "No." "Then you won't do for a school. Can you lie three in a bed?" "No." "Then you won't do for a school. Have you got a good stomach?" "Yes." "Then you will by no means do for a school!"

Driven from such a purgatory even for want of a character, Goldsmith, with The Deserted Village and The Vicar of Wakefield in his hand, was once more wandering the streets of London amid a thousand other equally dest.i.tute wretches. He applied to apothecary after apothecary, trusting to his medical education, for employment with them; but, with all the traces of vagabond indigence upon him, and without any recommendation to show, his repulses were certain. A chemist of the name of Jacob, residing at the corner of Monument or Bell Yard, on Fish Hill, taking compa.s.sion on his dest.i.tute condition, at length gave him employment. It may be supposed to be about this time that his lodgings were of that magnificent description with which he once in after life startled a circle of good company, breaking out suddenly in some fit of forgetful enthusiasm with, "When I lived among the beggars in Ax Lane." His first gleam of better fortune was finding his old Edinburgh college friend, Dr. Sleigh, in London, who received him in all his squalor with the warmth of true friends.h.i.+p, and enabled him to commence as physician in Bankside, Southwark. It did not answer, and the next glimpse of him is acting as a corrector of the press in the printing-office of Richardson the novelist. The next fortunate circ.u.mstance was meeting with Mr.

Milner, one of his old Edinburgh fellow-students, whose father, Dr.

Milner, a Dissenting minister, kept a cla.s.sical school at Peckham, in Surrey. By him he was recommended to his father, to a.s.sist him in his school duties. Dr. Milner was suffering under severe illness, and Goldsmith's services were accepted. Here he continued for some time, it has been said by part of the family, three years; and this connection led to the one which brought him into the direct field of authors.h.i.+p.

Mr., afterward Dr. Griffiths, a bookseller of Paternoster Row, had started the Monthly Review, and was beating up for contributors.

Goldsmith, whom he had become acquainted with at Dr. Milner's, was one invited. The engagement is calculated to make both proprietors and authors of the present day smile. Goldsmith was regularly boarded and lodged in the bibliopole's house--the hired servant of literature. How satisfactory this odd arrangement of keeping a tame author turned out, may be guessed by the fact that the engagement for a year ended in five months. The great fact at which Goldsmith kicked was, that not only Griffiths, but _his wife_, was in the regular habit of acting as the censor, and altering the articles written for the Review.

From this time to the day of his death Goldsmith was regularly lanched into the drudgery of literature; the most wearing, feverish, uncertain, and worst remunerating life under the sun. To live in one long anxiety, and to die poor, was his lot, as it has been that of thousands of others. There are innocent minds, who are filled with gladness at the sight of a goodly library; who feast on a well-bound row of books, as the lover of nature does on a poetical landscape or on a bank of violets. For my part, I never see such a collection of books without an inward pang. They remind me of a catacomb; every volume is in my eyes but a bone in the great gathering of the remains of literary martyrs.

When I call to mind the pleasure with which many of these books were written, followed by the agonies of disappointment they brought; the repulses and contempt of booksellers, to whom the authors had carried them in all the flush of their inexperience and of high hope; the cruel malice of the critics which a.s.sailed them,

"Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame; b.l.o.o.d.y dissectors, worse than ten Monros: He hacks to teach, they mangle to expose;"--_Burns._

when I think of the glorious hopes which accompanied their composition, and the terrible undeceiving which attended their publication; when I reflect how many of these fair tomes were written in bitterest poverty, with the most aching hearts, in the most cheerless homes, and how many others ruined the writers who were tolerably well off before they put pen to paper; when I remember, on pa.s.sing my eye along them, how many of them never were raised to their present rank and occupation till the unhappy authors were beyond the knowledge of it; when I see others which _had_ their fame during the author's lifetime, but enriched only the lucky bibliopole, and left the conscious producer of wealth only doubly poor by seeing it in the enjoyment of another; when I see those works which, while the author lived, were a.s.sailed as blasphemous and devilish, and are now the text-books of liberty and progress; and when I call to mind all the tears which have bedewed them, the sadness of soul, often leading to suicide, which has weighed down the immortal spirits which created them, I own that there is to me no such melancholy spectacle as a fine collection of books.

Goldsmith had his full share of this baptism of literary wretchedness. I can not follow him minutely through the years of book-drudgery and all its attendant adventures. Suffice it that he wrote an immense ma.s.s of articles for the periodicals; hosts of histories; plays, tales, essays, and the like, anonymously; and which, therefore, brought him precarious bread, but little fame. He commenced writing in the Monthly Review in 1757, and it was not till 1764 that his name was first affixed to his first poem, The Traveler. Thus he served a seven years' apprentices.h.i.+p to anonymous authors.h.i.+p before he began to take that rank in English literature which was his destined portion; exactly in ten years more he was in his grave, having, in the mean time, given to posterity his exquisite Deserted Village; his inimitable Vicar of Wakefield; his Good-natured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer; besides hosts of histories, written to make the pot boil. Histories of Animated Nature; of England, Greece, Rome, and what not. During the whole of his career, the pecuniary condition of Goldsmith was one of uneasiness. It is true that his generous, improvident disposition might have left the result the same had he won ten times the sum he did; but one can not help regarding the sums received by him for his writings as something most humiliating, when their real value to the booksellers of all ages is considered. We find his life abounding with his borrowing two and three guineas of his bookseller, and receiving such sums for articles. The Traveler brought him _twenty guineas_! The Vicar of Wakefield, _sixty_; and for the Deserted Village, _one hundred_; not two hundred pounds altogether, for three of the most popular works in any language. It would be a curious fact to ascertain, were it possible, what these three works alone have made for the booksellers.

But if Goldsmith was not well remunerated for the works with which he enriched the English language, he was rich in friends. Johnson, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, all the great men of the age, were his intimate a.s.sociates, and knew how to value both his genius and his unselfish nature. The friends.h.i.+p of Johnson for him was beautiful. All the world knows the story of Johnson selling "the ma.n.u.script of the Vicar of Wakefield" to save the author from an arrest of his landlady for arrears of rent. It has been made the subject of more than one excellent painting; but it is not so generally known, that so uncertain were both Johnson and the publisher of its merits, that it remained nearly two years in the publisher's desk before he ventured to publish it. It was the fame of The Traveler which emboldened the bibliopole to bring it out, and the public at once received it with one instant and general cheer.

We must now confine ourselves to a brief indication of the successive residences and haunts of Goldsmith during his literary life in London, first observing only, that so unpromising for a long time was the field of authors.h.i.+p, that he sought several times to quit it. In 1758, he procured the post of physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel, but was refused his certificate at Surgeon's Hall as not duly qualified. He tried, in 1760, to procure the situation of secretary to the Society of Arts, as a means of permanent support; and failing, he recurred to a wild project, which he had entertained years before, of going out to the East to decipher the inscriptions on the Written Mountains, though he was totally ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which the inscriptions might be supposed to be written. His inducement was the salary of 300 a year, which had been left for that purpose. He proposed, in this expedition, also, to acquire a knowledge of the arts peculiar to the East, and introduce them into Britain. When Johnson heard of this, he said, "Why, sir, he would bring home a grinding-barrow, which you see in every street of London, and think he had furnished a wonderful improvement." The scheme appeared as visionary in other quarters, and so fell through. These various plans, however, all show what a th.o.r.n.y path was that of authors.h.i.+p to him.

We find Goldsmith first residing, after he had quitted Griffiths's roof, about 1757, in the vicinity of Salisbury Square, Fleet-street; where exactly, is not known. At this time he was in the habit of frequenting the Temple Exchange Coffee-house, near Temple Bar, where he had his letters addressed, and where he even saw, according to the fas.h.i.+on of the times, his patients, when he had any. There does not appear to be any such coffee-house now. Green-arbor Court, between the Old Bailey and what was lately Fleet Market, was his next abode, where he located himself toward the end of 1758. "Here," says his biographer, "he became well known to his literary brethren, was visited by them, and his lodgings well remembered. This house, a few years ago, formed the abode, as it appears to have done in his own time, of laborious indigence. The adjoining houses likewise presented every appearance of squalid poverty, every floor being occupied by the poorest cla.s.s. Two of the number fell down from age and dilapidation; and the remainder, on the same side of the court, including that in which the poet resided, standing on the right-hand corner on entering from Farringdon-street by what is called, from their steepness and number, Breakneck-steps, were taken down some time afterward to avoid a similar catastrophe. They were four stories in height; the attics had cas.e.m.e.nt windows, and at one time they were probably inhabited by a superior cla.s.s of tenants. The site is now occupied by a large building, inclosed by a wall running through the court or square, intended for the stabling and lofts of a wagon office."

In the beginning of March, 1759, he was seen here, in one of his excursions to London, by the Rev. Mr. Percy, afterward Bishop Percy, the collector of the Reliques, and author of the Hermit of Warkworth, one of his earliest literary friends. "The doctor," observed the prelate, "was employed in writing his Inquiry into Polite Learning, in a wretchedly dirty room, in which there was but one chair; and when, from civility, this was offered to his visitant, he himself was obliged to sit in the window. While they were conversing, some one gently rapped at the door, and on being desired to come in, a poor, ragged little girl of very decent behavior entered, who, dropping a courtesy, said, 'My mamma sends her compliments, and begs the favor of your lending her a potful of coals.'"

Mr. Prior, in 1820, going into a small shop in the Clapham Road to purchase the first edition of Goldsmith's Essays, lying in the window, found the woman in the shop an old neighbor of the poet's. She said she was a near relative of the woman who kept the house in Green-arbor Court, and, at the age of seven or eight, went frequently thither; one of the inducements to which was the cakes and sweetmeats given to her and other children of the family by the gentleman who lodged there.

These they duly valued at the moment, but when afterward considered as the gift of one so eminent, the recollection became the source of pride and boast. Another of his amus.e.m.e.nts consisted in a.s.sembling these children in his room, and inducing them to dance to the music of his flute. Of this instrument, as a relaxation from study, he was fond. He was usually shut up in the room during the day, went out in the evenings, and preserved regular hours. His habits otherwise were sociable, and he had several visitors. One of the companions whose society gave him particular pleasure was a respectable watchmaker, residing in the same court, celebrated for the possession of much wit and humor; qualities which, as they distinguish his own writings, he professes to have sought and cultivated wherever they were to be found.

Here the woman related that Goldsmith's landlord having fallen into difficulties, was at length arrested; and Goldsmith, who owed a small sum of money for rent, being applied to by his wife to a.s.sist in the release of her husband, found that, although without money, he did not want resources. A new suit of clothes was consigned to the p.a.w.nbroker, and the amount raised, proving much more than sufficient to discharge his own debt, was handed over for the release of the prisoner. What is most singular is, that this effort of active benevolence to rescue a debtor from jail, gave, in all probability, rise to a charge against him of dishonesty. As we have said, Goldsmith, proposing to go out to India, took his examination at Surgeon's Hall. To make a creditable appearance there, he had borrowed money of Griffiths, the bookseller, for a new suit of clothes. These clothes Griffiths soon afterward discovered hanging at a p.a.w.nbroker's door. As Goldsmith had lost the situation he had boasted of when he borrowed this money, and kept his own not very flattering secret of the cause of the loss--his rejection at Surgeon's Hall--Griffiths, a man of coa.r.s.e mind, at once jumped to the conclusion that it was all a piece of trickery. He demanded an explanation of Goldsmith; Goldsmith refused to give it. He demanded the return of his money; Goldsmith, of course, had it not. They came to a fierce and violent, and, as it proved, irreconcilable quarrel, and Goldsmith disdaining to explain the real circ.u.mstances, long bore the disgrace of duplicity as the result of his generous act.

There is one more anecdote connected with his residence here, and it is characteristic. A gentleman, inquiring whether he was within, was shown up to his room without further ceremony, when, soon after having entered it, a noise of voices, as if in altercation, was heard by the people below, the key of the door at the same moment being turned within the room. Doubtful of the nature of the interview, the attention of the landlady was excited, but both voices being distinguished at intervals, her suspicions of personal violence were lulled, and no further notice taken. Late in the evening the door was unlocked, a good supper ordered by the visitor from the neighboring tavern, and the gentlemen, who met so ungraciously at first, spent the remainder of the evening in great good humor. The explanation given of this scene was, that the poet being behind-hand with certain writings for the press, and the stated period of publication arrived, the intruder, who was a printer or publisher, probably Hamilton or Wilkie, for both of whom he wrote at that time, would not quit the room till they were finished; and for this species of durance inflicted on the author, the supper formed the apology.

In those apartments, little indebted as we may believe to the labors of the housemaid, he is said to have observed the predatory habits of the spider, and drawn up that paper on the subject which appeared in the fourth number of the Bee, reprinted in the Essays, and given in substance in the History of Animated Nature. In these lodgings he wrote a Memoir of the Life of Voltaire, and a Translation of The Henriade; an Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe; besides a mult.i.tude of Reviews and other articles in the Bee, the Busybody, and other magazines of the day. He wrote also his Chinese Letters, and newspaper articles at least two a week, at the rate of a guinea per article. In 1760 he quitted Green-arbor Court, and took respectable lodgings in Wine-office Court, Fleet-street, where he continued about two years in the house of an acquaintance, a relative of the friendly bookseller, Newbery, predecessor of Hunter, corner of St. Paul's churchyard, and since of Harris. Here he had a large literary acquaintance among men of all grades of reputation and talent. Among them Dr. Percy was a frequent visitor, and here it was that Dr. Johnson was introduced to him by Dr.

Percy, at a large party which Goldsmith gave to persons chiefly literary. Johnson went dressed in his highest style; and on Percy's remarking it as they went along, "Why, sir," said Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example." From the first moment of meeting, these two great men took vastly to each other, and continued firm friends till Goldsmith's death.

During Goldsmith's residence in Wine-office Court, he was busily employed on a pamphlet on the c.o.c.k-lane Ghost; a History of Mecklenburg; The Art of Poetry on a New Plan; An Abridgment of Plutarch; Additions to English History; a Life of Beau Nash; and contributions to the Christian Magazine: most of these being written for Newbery. To relieve the tedium of his drudgery, he was in the habit of frequenting the Monday evening meetings of the Robin Hood Debating Society, held at a house of that name in Butcher Row, whither it had been removed from the Ess.e.x Head, in Ess.e.x-street, in the Strand. The payment of sixpence formed the only requisite for admission, three halfpence of which were said to be put by for the purposes of charity. The annual number of visitors averaged about 5000. A gilt chair indicated the presiding authority, and all questions, not excepting religion and politics, were open to discussion.

In these discussions Goldsmith used even to take part, but his great delight was to listen to the harangues of an eloquent baker, at the conclusion of one of which Goldsmith exclaimed to his companion Derrick, "That man was meant by nature for a lord-chancellor;" to which Derrick replied, "No, no, not so high; he was only intended for _master of the rolls_." The man actually became a magistrate in Middles.e.x, and, as was said, a first-rate one.

In 1762 Goldsmith quitted Wine-office Court, and took lodgings in the house of a Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, in Islington. This was to be near his friend and publisher, Mr. Newbery, who resided at Canonbury House, near to Mrs. Fleming's. Here he continued till 1764, chiefly employed upon job-work for his friend Newbery; among the most important, the Letters of a n.o.bleman to his Son, and the History of England. He used to relieve the monotony of his life by weekly visits to the Literary Club, of which Johnson, Burke, and Sir Joshua Reynolds were princ.i.p.al members, and which was held at the Turk's Head, Gerrard-street, Soho.

Here, there is every reason to believe, occurred the event already alluded to, the threat of his arrest, and the sale of the ma.n.u.script of the Vicar of Wakefield, by Johnson, to liberate him. Of this story there have been various versions; Mrs. Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, c.u.mberland, and Boswell, all relate it, all profess to have heard it from Johnson, and yet each tells it very differently. In all these stories, however, there is a landlady demanding arrears of rent, and bailiffs waiting to arrest if the money were not forthcoming. All agree that Goldsmith was drinking, most of them say Madeira, to drown his vexation; and c.u.mberland adds, that the landlady proposed the alternative of payment or marriage. Whether the latter point were really included in the demand, is not likely ever to be known; but that Mrs. Fleming, who went by the name of Goldsmith's hostess, and is thus painted by Hogarth, was the woman in question, I think there can be little doubt, though Prior, the biographer, would fain exempt her from the charge, and suppose the scene to occur in some temporary lodging. There does not appear the smallest ground for such a supposition. All facts point to this place and person. Goldsmith had been here for at least a year and a half, for Prior himself gives the particulars of this landlady's bill reaching to June 22d. As it occurred in this year, and about this time--for it is expressly stated that the Vicar of Wakefield was kept about two years by the bookseller unpublished, and it was not published till the end of March, 1766--it could not possibly happen any where else. He could not have left Mrs. Fleming, or if he had, he could not have been away long enough to acc.u.mulate any alarming score. Here, on the contrary, every thing indicates that he was in debt and difficulty. He had been at least a year and a half here, and might, and probably had, run a good way into his landlady's books. The biographer states expressly that Goldsmith _was_ in great difficulties, and for some months was invisible--said to have made a trip into Yorks.h.i.+re. The biographer also shows that Newbery, the bookseller, generally paid the landlady for Goldsmith; but it comes out that Goldsmith was now got also very far behind with Newbery, owing him no less than 111; and next comes an obvious dislocation with Newbery himself. It is a fact which does not seem to have struck the biographer, that when Johnson sold the ma.n.u.script of the Vicar of Wakefield, he did not sell it to Newbery, though Newbery was not only Goldsmith's publisher, but his own. He went and sold it to a nephew of Newbery's, Mr. Francis Newbery, of Paternoster Row. Now there must have been a reason for this, and what so likely as that Goldsmith having run too deep into debt, had alarmed Newbery--publishers are careful men--that he had not only refused to advance more, but had withdrawn his guarantee to the landlady. This being the case, Goldsmith would be at his wit's end. With long arrears of rent and board, for Mrs. Fleming found that too, the security withdrawn by Newbery, she would be alarmed, and insist on Goldsmith's paying. To Newbery he could not fly, and, in his despair, he sent for Johnson. Johnson sold the novel, but not to John Newbery. With him it would only have gone to reduce the standing claim, with another it could bring what was wanted, instant cash. What confirms this view of the case is, moreover, the fact that immediately after this Goldsmith did quit his old landlady, and returned to London.

Canonbury Tower, or Canonbury House, as it is indifferently called, is often said to have been a residence of Goldsmith, and the room is shown which he used to occupy, and where it is said he wrote The Deserted Village. The reason given for Goldsmith's going to live at Islington is, that it was a pleasant, rural situation, and that there he would be near Newbery, his publisher, who engaged with Goldsmith's landlady to pay the rent. Newbery had apartments in Canonbury House, and here Goldsmith visited him. Anon, as his difficulties increased, he used to hide from his creditors in the tower, where he lay concealed for days and weeks.

Very probably he was there all the time he was said to be gone into Yorks.h.i.+re.

As to his having written The Deserted Village there, that is quite likely. It is equally probable that he might write there The Traveler, which was published at the end of the very year he left Islington. The Deserted Village was not published for five years afterward, or in 1769; and was, if written at Canonbury, the fruit of a subsequent residence there in 1767. His fixed abode was then in the Temple, but he had apartments for part of the summer in Canonbury House, and was visited there by most of his literary friends. On many of these occasions they adjourned to a social dinner at the Crown Tavern in the Lower Road, where tradition states them to have been very jovial. It is not improbable that he wrote part of The Vicar of Wakefield at Islington too, having, as we see, completed it at the time of his threatened arrest, that is, at the close of his residence at Islington.

Canonbury Tower, at the time Goldsmith used to frequent it, was a fine, airy place, in a sweet, rural neighborhood. Geoffrey Crayon says: "It is an ancient brick tower, hard by 'merry Islington,' the remains of a hunting seat of Queen Elizabeth, where she took the pleasure of the country when the neighborhood was all woodland. What gave it particular interest in my eyes was the circ.u.mstance that it had been the residence of a poet. It was here Goldsmith resided when he wrote his Deserted Village. I was shown the very apartment. It was a relic of the original style of the castle, with paneled wainscot and Gothic windows. I was pleased with its air of antiquity, and its having been the residence of poor Goldy." Irving located his "Poor Devil Author" in this room of Goldsmith's, but represents him as soon driven away by the troops of Londoners. "Sunday came, and with it the whole city world, swarming about Canonbury Castle. I could not open my window but I was stunned with shouts and noises from the cricket-ground; the late quiet road beneath my windows was alive with the tread of feet and the clack of tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely a 'show-house,' being shown to strangers at sixpence a head.

There was a perpetual tramping up stairs of citizens and their families, to look about the country from the top of the tower, and to take a peep at the city through the telescope, to try if they could discern their own chimneys."

The reason why Irving located his "Poor Devil Author" in Canonbury Tower, no doubt, was because it had been the resort of several such, as well as of men of greater note: Smart; Chambers, author of the Cyclopaedia; Humphries, author of Canons, a poem, Ulysses, an opera, &c.

"Here Humphries breathed his last, the Muses' friend, And Chambers found his mighty labors end."

"See on the distant slope, majestic shows Old Canonbury's tower, an ancient pile To various fates a.s.signed; and where, by turns, Meanness and grandeur have alternate reigned.

Thither, in latter days, hath genius fled From yonder city to repine and die.

There the sweet Bard of Auburn sat, and tuned The plaintive moanings of his village dirge.

There learned Chambers treasured lore for _man_, And Newbery there his A B C for _babes_."

One of these citizens, who took a particular pleasure in a visit to Canonbury Tower, was William Hone. The view of the tower in his Every Day Book is very correct, except that there is now an iron bal.u.s.trade round the top, for greater security of those who ascend it for the prospect. His account of it is as follows:

"Canonbury Tower is sixty feet high, and seventy feet square. It is part of an old mansion, which appears to have been erected, or, if erected before, much altered about the reign of Elizabeth. The more ancient edifice was erected by the priors of the Canons of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, and hence was called Canonbury, to whom it appertained until it was surrendered with the priory to Henry VIII.; and when the religious houses were dissolved, Henry gave the mansion to Thomas, lord Cromwell. It afterward pa.s.sed through other hands, till it was possessed by Sir John Spencer, an alderman and lord-mayor of London, known by the name of 'rich Spencer.' While he resided at Canonbury, a Dunkirk pirate came over in a shallop to Barking Creek, and hid himself with some armed men in Islington Fields, near the path Sir John usually took from his house in Crosby Place to this mansion, with the hope of making him prisoner; but as he remained in town that night, they were glad to make off for fear of detection, and returned to France disappointed of their prey, and of the large ransom they calculated on for the release of his person. His sole daughter and heiress, Elizabeth,[29] was carried off in a baker's basket from Canonbury House by William, the second Lord Compton, lord-president of Wales. He inherited Canonbury, with the rest of Sir John Spencer's wealth, at his death, and was afterward created Earl of Northampton; in this family the manor still remains."

In Hone's time, a Mr. Symes, the bailiff of the manor under Lord Northampton, was residing in the tower. He had lived there for thirty-nine years. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Evans, wife to the former bailiff, told Mr. Symes that her aunt, Mrs. Tapps, a seventy-year inhabitant of the tower, was accustomed to talk much about Goldsmith and his apartment. It was an old oak room on the first floor. Mrs. Tapps affirmed that he there wrote his Deserted Village, and slept in a large press bedstead placed in the eastern corner. Since Goldsmith's time, the room has been much altered and subdivided. The house is still the residence of the bailiff of the manor.

Poor Hone lamented sorely over the changes going on in this once sweet neighborhood. "I ranged the old rooms, and took, perhaps, a last look from the roof. The eye shrunk from the wide havoc below. Where new buildings had not covered the sward, it was embowelling for bricks, and kilns emitted flickering fire and sulphurous stench. Surely the dominion of the brick-and-mortar king will have no end, and cages for commercial spirits will be there instead of every green thing."

"So, Canonbury, thou dost stand a while; Yet fall at last thou must; for thy rich warden Is fast 'improving;' all thy pleasant fields Have fled, and brick-kilns, bricks, and houses use At his command: the air no longer yields A fragrance--scarcely health; the very skies Grow dim and town-like; a cold, creeping gloom Steals into thee, and saddens every room; And so realities come unto me, Clouding the chambers of my mind, and making me--like thee."

One-and-twenty years have pa.s.sed since Hone took this melancholy view of the changes going on round Canonbury Tower. There has been no pause in the process of housification since then. The whole neighborhood is fast ingulfing in one overflowing London. What a change since Queen Elizabeth used to come to this solitary tower, to hunt in the far-spreading woodlands around; or to take a view from its summit of her distant capital, and of the far-off winding Thames! What a change even since Goldsmith paced this old tower, and looked over green fields, and thick woods, and over the whole airy scene, full of solitude and beauty! There are still old gardens with their stately cedars, and lanes that show that they were once in a rural district, and that Canonbury was a right pleasant place. But the goodly house of Sir Walter Raleigh, who grew enamored of the spot from attending his royal mistress thither, is degraded to the Pied Bull, and long terraces of new houses extinguish one green field rapidly after another. Every thing seems in a state of spreading and active advance, except the great tavern near the tower, whose cricketers and revelers used to din Was.h.i.+ngton Irving so much, and that now stands empty and ruinous; the very Sunday roisterers from the city have sought some more greenly suburban resort.

The last residences of Goldsmith in London were within the precincts of the Temple; but here he made two removes. He first took apartments on the library staircase, No. 2 Garden Court. This is now pulled down, and, I suppose, on the site stands the new library; for, on going into the court, you now find no No. 2, but only Nos. 3 and 4, looking odd and puzzling enough to the inquirer. Hence he removed to the King's-bench Walk, but the particular house does not appear to be known. Lastly, he removed to No. 2 Brick Court. His lodgings were on the second floor, on the right hand ascending the staircase, and are said to consist of three rooms, sufficiently airy and pleasant. With an imprudence which brought upon him deep anxiety, and probably hastened his end, he borrowed of the booksellers, and of the occupier of the opposite rooms, Mr. Edmund Bott, a literary barrister, who was much esteemed by him, and became his princ.i.p.al creditor at his death, and the possessor of his papers, four hundred pounds, with which he furnished these apartments in an expensive manner. Below Goldsmith, on the first floor, lived Sir William Blackstone, who is said there to have written his Commentaries. There were other barristers, especially a Mr. William Cooke, author of a work on Dramatic Genius, and called Conversation Cooke, living in the Temple, with whom Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy; and here he occasionally gave very expensive suppers to his literary friends. Here he was visited by almost every man of note of the time: Johnson with his Boswell, Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Percy, Sir Philip Francis, &c. Almost twenty years after his death these rooms became the scene of a tragical adventure, by a Miss Broderick shooting in them a Mr. Eddington, with whom she had formerly lived, and who took this desperate means of punis.h.i.+ng his desertion.

These rooms are at the lower end of Brick Court, at the corner of the range of buildings on your right hand as you descend the court from Fleet-street. There seems to be a considerable mistake in Prior's account of them. Nearly all that he says appears to apply much more naturally to his rooms in Garden than in Brick Court. In Garden Court they most likely would be airy and pleasant. There, too, the anecdote of his watching the rooks might take place; it could not in Brick Court. It is thus given: "The view toward the gardens supplied him with an observation given in Animated Nature, respecting the natural history of the rooks. I have often amused myself with observing their plan of policy from my window in the Temple, that looks upon a grove where they have made a colony in the midst of the city," &c.

Now there is no view toward the garden. The court is built all round with buildings as old as Goldsmith's time, and older. In his rooms in Garden Court he could have full view of the elms in the garden, the probable scene of the rookery in question.

During Goldsmith's life here, he was in the habit of meeting his literary friends often in the evening at the Miter Tavern, Fleet-street; at a card club at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, not now existing; at the Globe Tavern, also near there, now gone too; and at Jack's Coffee-house, now Walker's Hotel, Dean-street, corner of Queen-street, Soho. It was here that Goldsmith confounded the gravity of Johnson with one of his off-hand and simple jokes. They were supping tete-a-tete on rumps and kidneys. Johnson observed, "Sir, these rumps are pretty little things, but they require a good many to satisfy a man." "Ay! but," said Goldsmith, "how many of these would reach to the moon?" "To the moon!

ay, sir, I fear that exceeds your calculation." "Not at all, sir," said Goldsmith; "I think I could tell." "Pray, then, let us hear." "Why, _one_, if it were long enough." Johnson growled at this reply for some time, but at last recollecting himself, "Well, sir, I have deserved it; I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question."

This house, in 1770, was the oldest tavern in London but three, and is now probably the oldest. Mr. Walker, the present landlord of this hotel, who has lived in it fifty years, and has now reached the venerable age of ninety, is proud of the ancient honors of the house. On his card he duly informs his friends that it was here that "Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, and other literary characters of eminence" used to resort.

The house is old, s.p.a.cious, and quiet, and well adapted for the sojourn of families from the country, who are glad to escape the noise of more frequented parts of the city. By permission of Mr. Walker, I present at the head of this article a view of the room once honored by Johnson and Goldsmith.

It is pleasant to find the author of The Traveler and Deserted Village, amid all his labors, ever and anon escaping to the country, which no man more profoundly enjoyed. It is delightful to imagine with what intense pleasure he must have traversed the groves of Ilam, and the lovely scenes of Dove Dale. He made similar rambles into Hamps.h.i.+re, Suss.e.x, Suffolk, Yorks.h.i.+re, Leicesters.h.i.+re, and Lincolns.h.i.+re. When he wanted at once to enjoy country retirement and hard work, he would "abscond" from his town a.s.sociates without a word, dive into some queer, obscure retreat, often on the Harrow or Edgeware Roads, and not be visible for two or three months together. One of these retreats is said to be a small wooden cottage on the north side of the Edgeware Road, about a mile from Paddington, near what is called Kilburn Priory. At such places it was his great luxury, when tired of writing, to stroll along the shady hedge sides, seating himself in the most agreeable spots, and occasionally setting down thoughts which arose for future use. When he was in a more sociable mood, he got up parties for excursions into the neighborhood of London, in which he and his companions had a good long ramble among the villages, dined at the village inn, and so home again in the evening. These he called "tradesmen's holidays," and thus were Blackheath, Wandsworth, Fulham, Chelsea, Hampstead, Highgate, Highbury, &c., explored and enjoyed. On those occasions Goldsmith gave himself up to all his love of good fellows.h.i.+p, and of generously seeing others happy. He made it a rule that the party should meet and take a splendid breakfast at his rooms. The party generally consisted of four or five persons; and was almost sure to include some humble person, to whom such a treat would never come from any other quarter. One of the most constant of these was his poor amanuensis, Peter Barlow. Peter had his oddities, but with them a spirit of high independence. He always wore the same dress, and never would pay more than a certain sum, and that a trifle, for his dinner; but that he would insist on paying. The dinner always costing a great deal more, Goldsmith paid the difference, and considered himself well reimbursed by the fund of amus.e.m.e.nt Peter furnished to the party. One of their frequent retreats was the well-known Chelsea Bun-house. Another of these companions was a Dr.

Glover, a medical man and author of no great note, who once took Goldsmith into a cottage in one of their rambles at West End, Hampstead, and took tea with the family as an old acquaintance, when he actually knew no more of the people than Goldsmith did, to his vast chagrin on discovering the fact.

A temporary retreat of Goldsmith's was a cottage near Edgeware, in the vicinity of Canons. There he lived, in conjunction with his friend Bott, and here he worked hard at his Roman History. It had been the retreat of a wealthy shoemaker of Piccadilly, and having a pleasant garden, they christened the place "The Shoemaker's Paradise." The last country lodging which he had was at Hyde, on the Edgeware Road. It is described by Prior as "of the superior order of farm-houses, and stands upon a gentle eminence in what is called Hyde Lane, leading to Kenton, about three hundred yards from the village of Hyde, on the Edgeware Road, and commands a view of an undulating country directly opposite, diversified with wood, in the direction of Hendon." From Mr. Selby, the occupier of the property, Mr. Prior obtained this information. He was himself a lad of sixteen at the time Goldsmith lodged there, and remembered him perfectly. He had only one room there, up one flight of stairs, to the right of the landing. There he wrote She Stoops to Conquer. He boarded with the family, but commonly had his meals sent up to his own apartment. When he had visitors to tea--for his friends used to come out from London, take tea, and then drive home--he had the use of the parlor immediately under his own room. Occasionally he would wander into the kitchen, and stand with his back toward the fire, apparently absorbed in thought. Sometimes he strolled about the fields, or was seen loitering and musing under the hedges, or perusing a book. In the house he usually wore his s.h.i.+rt-collar open, in the manner represented in the portrait by Sir Joshua. Occasionally he read much in bed, and his mode of extinguis.h.i.+ng his candle when out of immediate reach was to fling his slipper at it, which in the morning was found near the overturned candlestick bedaubed with grease.

There, then, Goldsmith spent the last days of his life, except what he spent on his sick-bed, in the full enjoyment of those two great charms of his existence, nature and books. Occasionally he would indulge in a jovial pause--have a dance got up among his visitors, and on one occasion took the young people of the house in a carriage to Windsor, to see a company of strolling players, and made himself and his juvenile party very merry by his remarks on the performance. From these quiet enjoyments and field musings, death called him away. He returned to town, and died in his lodgings in the Temple. He was privately interred in the Temple burying-ground, and a tabular monument to his honor placed on the walls of Westminster Abbey. That great and n.o.ble building does not hold the remains of a n.o.bler or better heart. Oliver Goldsmith was a true Irishman, generous, impulsive, and improvident; but he was more, he was a true man and true poet. Whether we laugh with him or weep with him, we are still better for it.