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Title: The Family Letters of Oliver Goldsmith
       A Paper Read Before the Bibliographical Society, October 15th, 1917

Author: Ernest Clarke

Release Date: June 13, 2020 [EBook #62390]

Language: English

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  THE FAMILY LETTERS OF
  OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

  A PAPER READ BEFORE THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY,
  OCTOBER 15, 1917.


  BY
  SIR ERNEST CLARKE, M.A., F.S.A.


  LONDON:
  REPRINTED BY BLADES, EAST & BLADES, FROM
  THE SOCIETY’S _TRANSACTIONS_.

  1920.




THE FAMILY LETTERS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.


BY SIR ERNEST CLARKE, M.A., F.S.A.

_Read 15 October, 1917._


In a paper which I was privileged to read before this honourable
Society three years ago as to “New Lights on Chatterton,” I mentioned
incidentally that the researches of which that paper was the outcome
had arisen out of the examination by me of a large bundle of papers
that had been collected by Bishop Percy of Dromore, the editor of
the famous _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_, and had apparently remained
unexplored since his death in 1811. The Chatterton documents were by no
means the most important and were certainly the least puzzling of the
array of miscellaneous papers included in this bundle, which contained
not only a variety of notes about Shakespeare and other subjects which
had engaged the Bishop’s attention, but chiefly and most interestingly
a large quantity of original letters written by and about Oliver
Goldsmith.

To discuss in detail the whole of the questions arising out of these
Goldsmith papers would really amount to writing a new life of that
poet, which I have no intention of doing. There exist already many
biographies of Oliver by writers of the first rank, and no fact of
salient importance concerning himself remains to be revealed, whatever
may be said as to his writings. There are, it is true, side-lights of
some literary interest and value afforded by the papers that have come
unexpectedly my way through the kindness and generosity of the great
grand-daughter of the Bishop by whose favour you have the advantage
of personally inspecting the original letters which I shall presently
describe: but this is not the occasion for minutiæ concerning them.

What therefore with your permission I propose now to do is to deal only
with the letters written by Oliver Goldsmith at various periods of
his life to members of his own family and old friends of his boyhood
resident in his native province, and to deduce from them some general
reflections as to the warmth of his affections and the simplicity of
his typically Irish character.

Thomas Percy, to whom we mainly owe the preservation of these letters,
was almost an exact contemporary of Oliver Goldsmith. The latter was
born on 10 November, 1728; Percy on 13 April, 1729. They first met
on Wednesday, 21 February, 1759, as fellow-guests of Dr. Grainger,
the author of the “Sugar Cane,” at the Temple Exchange Coffee House,
Temple Bar. Percy was then a bachelor clergyman with a college living
at Easton Maudit in Northamptonshire, but with literary associations
that kept him much in London; and Goldsmith was just emerging from
the chrysalis stage of hack-work for the reviews and was lodging in a
garret at Green Arbour Court near the Old Bailey. Percy met Goldsmith
again on 26 February, at Dodsley’s, for whom Oliver was preparing his
“Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe,” and on
Saturday, 3 March, before returning to Easton Maudit, he paid a visit
to Goldsmith at Green Arbour Court with the result expressed thus in
Percy’s own words:

“The Doctor was writing his Enquiry, etc., in a wretched dirty room in
which there was but one chair, and when he from civility offered it to
his visitant, himself was obliged to sit in the window. While they were
conversing, someone gently rapped at the door, and being desired to
come in, a poor ragged little girl of very decent behaviour, entered,
who dropping a curtsie, said ‘My mamma sends her compliments and begs
the favour of you to lend her a chamber-pot full of coal.’” (Percy
Memoir, p. 61.)

Percy was introduced by Goldsmith to Dr. Johnson on 31 May, 1761, and
the acquaintance with the great lexicographer and his literary friends
soon ripened and grew more intimate. “The Club” founded by Johnson
and Reynolds in 1764 included Goldsmith from the first: Percy and two
others were admitted to the charmed circle rather later (15 February,
1768). When Goldsmith died in April, 1774, the general impression seems
to have been that Johnson would write a biography of him for his “Lives
of the Poets”; but difficulties of one or another sort--chiefly perhaps
Johnson’s inertia, for he was then a man of 65--intervened to prevent
this: and eleven years afterwards, when Johnson himself was dead, Percy
was stimulated by Edmond Malone to undertake the task himself.

It is not improbable that he had in his own mind long before this
that something of the kind might have to be done by him, for there is
evidence in the papers confided to me for examination that Percy had
commissioned an inpecunious younger brother of the poet named Maurice
Goldsmith to collect for him all the procurable letters written by
Oliver to members of his family.

The biographers and commentators on Goldsmith have made much of an
extract from a letter from Percy to Malone which is printed on page 237
of Vol. VIII (1858) of Nichols’ _Literary Illustrations_; but they have
been unaware of the letter from Malone to which it is a reply. This
original letter of Malone is amongst those in the bundle which I have
been exploring. It is dated from London on 2 March, 1785, and gives
some interesting particulars as to Johnson’s affairs. The essential
parts as to Goldsmith are as follows:

“Soon after the death of poor Dr. Johnson, I mentioned to one of the
executors that I had formerly given him a letter from Dr. Wilson, a
fellow of the college of Dublin, relative to Dr. Goldsmith, who was
his classfellow. I did not then know Dr. Johnson as well as I did
afterwards, and improvidently gave him the original instead of a copy.
I therefore requested, if it should be found among his papers, it might
be sent to me. I suppose Dr. Scott, to whom I talked on the subject,
did not exactly recollect what I had mentioned, for about a fortnight
ago, a parcel of papers was sent to me marked at the outside ‘Dr.
Goldsmith,’ as I imagine from the Executors (for I received no note
with them), who conceived they belonged to me. On inspecting them, I
found they consisted of some very curious materials collected by your
Lordship for the life of Goldsmith, which I shall take great care of
till I hear from you on the subject. I often pressed Dr. Johnson to
write his life, and he would have done so, had not the booksellers from
some clashing of interests in the property of his works excluded them
from their great collection of English Poetry. It is a great pity that
these materials should be lost. Why will not your lordship, who knew
Goldsmith so well, undertake the arranging of them.... Dr. J. used to
say that he never could get an accurate account of Goldsmith’s history
while he was abroad.... Goldsmith’s letters are surely characteristick
and worth preserving.”

Percy no doubt asked for this bundle of papers to be sent to him in
Ireland; and when it was received, he wrote from Dublin on 16 June,
1785, the letter to Malone which, as stated above, is printed in Vol.
VIII of Nichols’ _Literary Illustrations_:

“I have long owed you my very grateful acknowledgments for a most
obliging letter, which contained much interesting information,
particularly with respect to Goldsmith’s memoirs. The paper which you
have recovered in my own handwriting, giving dates and many interesting
particulars relating to his life, was dictated to me by himself one
rainy day at Northumberland House, and sent by me to Dr. Johnson,
which I had concluded to be irrevocably lost. The other memoranda on
the subject were transmitted to me by his brother and others of his
family, to afford materials for a Life of Goldsmith, which Johnson was
to write and publish for their benefit. But he utterly forgot them and
the subject.... Goldsmith has an only brother living, a cabinet maker,
who has been a decent tradesman, a very honest worthy man, but he has
been very unfortunate, and is at this time in great indigence. It has
occurred to such of us here as were acquainted with the Doctor to print
an edition of his poems, chiefly under the direction of the Bishop of
Killaloe[1] and myself, and prefix a new correct life of the author,
for the poor man’s benefit; and to get you and Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr.
Steevens, etc., to recommend the same in England, especially among the
members of The Club. If we can but subsist this poor man at present,
and relieve him from immediate indigence, Mr. Orde, our Secretary of
State, has given us hope that he will procure him some little place
that will make him easy for life; and then we shall have shown our
regard for the departed Bard by relieving his only brother, and so far
as I hear, the only one of his family that wants relief.”

A scheme for publication of Goldsmith’s _Poetical Works_ was set on
foot in Dublin about this time, as appears from the following printed
document found amongst the Bishop’s papers:

                                                  “Dublin, June 1, 1785.

“PROPOSALS for Printing by Subscription, The Poetical Works of Dr.
Oliver Goldsmith; For the Benefit of his only surviving Brother, Mr.
Maurice Goldsmith, to which will be prefixed, A NEW LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.
In this will be Corrected Innumerable Errors of Former Biographers,
From Original Letters of the Doctor and his Friends, but Chiefly from
An Account of Dr. Goldsmith’s Life, Dictated by Himself to A Gentleman,
who is in Possession of the Manuscript.”

The subscription price was to be a guinea, and subscriptions would be
received by the publisher, L. White, No. 86, Dame Street. What happened
to the money received for the subscriptions is not known; probably
Maurice Goldsmith drew cash “on account” for most of it. Anyhow the
book was never published.

If it had been set about at once, and been limited as proposed to
Goldsmith’s _Poetical Works_, and a Life of him compiled from the
original materials collected by Percy, it would doubtless have
been a success. As it was, the Bishop’s episcopal duties and other
preoccupations appear to have disinclined him to undertake the
work himself, and he therefore placed it in other hands, with very
unfortunate results to himself and to those members of the Goldsmith
family for whose benefit it was intended. Maurice Goldsmith no doubt
told his relatives of the pecuniary advantages that were in store for
him when the work came out, and appeals for help reached the Bishop
from the daughter of Henry Goldsmith, from the widow of Maurice, from
Charles Goldsmith, and from a son of Charles named John Goldsmith.
In the absence of the published work these appeals had to be met out
of the Bishop’s private purse, and involved him in much distressing
correspondence with the impoverished relatives of his dead friend.

At what period Percy formed the idea of expanding the publication so
as to include all Goldsmith’s known works--prose as well as poetry--is
not clear. Probably he was more concerned to see the Life written or
at least in preparation. It must be remembered that he was exceedingly
badly placed for now attempting work of this kind. He was in a remote
part of Ireland where the posts were irregular and the magazines did
not reach him till months after their issue. Writing to Malone on 16
June, 1785, he said: “I see publications about as soon as they would
reach the East Indies.” (_Lit. Ill._, VIII, 237.)

He seems to have attempted to shift the burden of compilation of the
biography on to a somewhat fulsome correspondent, Dr. Thomas Campbell,
Rector of Clones. When, after a long interval, Campbell’s efforts
proved unsatisfactory, the Bishop tried as collaborator the Rev. E.
H. Boyd, the translator of Dante, with equally disappointing results,
Boyd, like Campbell, having no personal knowledge of Goldsmith.
Eventually he had to set to work himself on a thorough revision; but
troubles arose after he had sent the manuscript to the publishers in
London (Cadell & Davies). Evidently that firm, to give local colour to
the narrative, got Samuel Rose to add some particulars about Goldsmith
(not always complimentary) from Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_. Percy,
who was not consulted, dissented from these “interpolations,”[2] and
eventually repudiated all responsibility for the work, which did not
actually see the light of day until it appeared in four volumes in
1801. Percy let his correspondents who wrote to him about Goldsmith
know how badly he was being treated, and they replied softly to him,
except George Steevens, who wrote on 9 September, 1797:

“Thus my Lord, you are left to make the best of your bargain; for if
you cannot intimidate you must submit. It is true that the works of
Goldsmith will always be sought after; but with equal truth it may be
observed that in this kingdom you will discover little zeal to promote
the welfare of his needy relatives, hundreds of objects here having a
superior claim to publick charity.” (_Litt. Ill._, VII, 1848, pp. 30-1.)

After Percy’s death in 1811 the major part of his voluminous
correspondence with literary and other friends appears to have
descended to his elder daughter Barbara, who had married in 1795 Mr.
Samuel Isted, of Ecton, Northamptonshire. It probably consisted not
so much of Percy’s own letters, which were doubtless retained in most
cases by their recipients, as of his correspondents’ letters to him,
with drafts of his replies to the more important of them. John Nichols,
the antiquarian printer who managed the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, was
a great friend and frequent correspondent of Percy, and the sixth
volume (1831) of the well-known _Literary Illustrations_ contained a
short memoir and portrait of Percy, with a selection of his letters
partly derived from William Upcott, Assistant Librarian of the London
Institution (p. viii of Introduction). The 856 pages of the next Volume
VII of the _Illustrations_, which was not published till seventeen
years later (1848), were practically entirely devoted to letters from
and to Percy--mostly the latter. This correspondence, according to the
“Advertisement” by J. B. Nichols, the editor, “was not in my possession
at the completion of the sixth volume, but has been acquired since by
public sale.”[3] Even this huge book did not contain all the Percy
letters, for the eighth and final volume of the _Illustrations_, not
published till 1858, was, so far as the letterpress (436 pages) is
concerned, wholly taken up with the rest of the “Percy correspondence.”
There are many references to Goldsmith and to the long-delayed “Memoir”
of 1801 in these letters, but nothing of great importance, and I
therefore have to fall back on the bundle of “Goldsmithiana” which has
happily been preserved in the other branch of the Percy family--the
Meades.

The story of the incubation, preparation and final publication of the
Edition of 1801 is long, complicated and tedious. It does not however
particularly concern us here, except in so far as we are indebted
to Bishop Percy for having collected practically all the original
letters written by Goldsmith to members of his family, and for having
in his disappointment after they were published, put them away with
the other documents concerning the publication, in a bundle which has
been practically unexplored ever since. Setting aside therefore any
questions as to the merits or demerits of what has been consistently
labelled by subsequent commentators as the “Percy Memoir,” we are
left with the consideration of the point to which I had intended to
address myself exclusively, the epistolary style of Oliver Goldsmith
himself. Percy could not resist the temptation of editing his friend’s
letters--not much, it is true, but still enough to induce us to turn
to the originals, as we are now enabled to do through the kindness of
their present possessor, Miss Constance Meade.

Now whilst Percy, as I have indicated, was an ardent and industrious
letter writer, Oliver Goldsmith emphatically was not.

One of Percy’s most frequent correspondents, James Grainger, M.D.
(1724-1766), who was, as already mentioned, the first to introduce
Percy and Goldsmith to each other, wrote to the former on 24 March,
1764: “When I taxed little Goldsmith for not writing as he promised me,
his answer was that he never wrote a letter in his life, and faith, I
believe him, except to a bookseller for money.” (Nichols’ _Literary
Illustrations_, Vol. VII, 286.) The letters written by Goldsmith
to members of his family and Irish friends of his youth which were
collected from various quarters at the instance of Percy after the
poet’s death show him to have had a great power of expressing his
feelings in simple and moving language, all the more interesting as the
writer could not possibly have imagined that they would ever be seen
in the cold light of print. Such letters divide themselves naturally
into three categories, viz.: those written (1) whilst he was a student
in Scotland and abroad; (2) after he had returned to England and was
a struggling hack-writer; (3) when he had achieved success in the
literary world. It will be convenient to consider these three series of
letters separately.


STUDENT LETTERS.

I omit from consideration the letter Oliver is alleged, on no evidence
at all, to have written to his mother in 1751 after his adventures in
Ireland and attempted voyage to America. This is obviously a hash-up
by some later pen of the story which was written out after the poet’s
death by his sister Mrs. Catherine Hodson for the purposes of the
“Percy Memoir,” the original of which in Mrs. Hodson’s own writing
and spelling is among the papers which I exhibit. The earliest of
Goldsmith’s own letters which is known to have survived was that
written from Edinburgh by Oliver to his benefactor Uncle Contarine on 8
May, 1753. This was unearthed by Sir James Prior at a later period of
his investigations, having been “long though vainly sought in various
quarters,” and is published in his Vol. I, 1837, pp. 145-7. What has
happened to it since I have not been able to discover. Oliver describes
in it his progress with his medical studies, and winds up thus: “How I
enjoy the pleasing hope of returning with skill, and to find my friends
stand in no need of my assistance! How many happy years do I wish you!
and nothing but want of health can take from you happiness, since you
so well pursue the paths that conduct to virtue.”

There is another letter of about the same period addressed by Oliver
from Edinburgh to his brother-in-law, Daniel Hodson of Lissoy, of which
only a fragment now exists. It was formerly in the Rowfant collection
of the late Mr. Locker-Lampson, but now belongs to Mr. F. R. Halsey of
New York. In it Oliver speaks of his attending the public lectures:
“I am in my lodging. I have hardly any society but a folio book, a
skeleton, my cat and my meagre landlady. I read hard, which is a thing
I never could do when the study was displeasing.” He refers to his
impecunious position and to the sacrifices his relations had made on
his behalf. He asks his dear Dan to remember him to every friend.
“There is one on whom I never think without affliction, but conceal it
from him.” (This apparently refers to Uncle Contarine). “Direct to me
at Surgeon Sinclairs in the Trunk Close, Edinburgh.”

The next letter of this student series is to his school-friend and
companion, Robert Bryanton of Ballymahon, dated from Edinburgh “Sepr.
ye 26th 1753.” The original of this letter is the earliest in point of
date which I am able to exhibit to you this afternoon. Oliver commences
by a humorous apology for not having written before. “I might allege
that business had never given me time to finger a pen: but I suppress
those and twenty others equally plausible and as easily invented, since
they might all be attended with a slight inconvenience of being known
to be lies. Let me then speak truth: an hereditary indolence (I have it
from the mother’s side) has hitherto prevented my writing to you, and
still prevents my writing at least twenty five letters more, due to my
friends in Ireland: no turn-spit dog gets up into his wheel with more
reluctance than I sit down to write: yet no dog ever loved the roast
meat he turns better than I do him I now address.”

This letter was a long one, with clever references to the Scottish
scenery and people, the relations of the sexes, the characteristics of
the Scotch women, and other light hearted topics. It was published by
Percy in the Edition of 1801, with a number of genteel emendations,
such as “mouth puckered up so as scarcely to admit a pea” in
replacement of “mouth puckered up to the size of an Issue,” and the
omission of the last paragraph and also the postscript: “Give my
sincere regards (not compliments do you mind) to your agreeable family,
and give my service to my mother if you see her: for as you express it
in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her still. Direct to me,
Student of Physick in Edinburgh.”

The next letter in order of date is a second one to Uncle Contarine,
not dated but ascribed to the close of 1753 or January, 1754. It was
retrieved by Prior for his Life of 1837 (I, 154), but its present
whereabouts is unknown. It announces Oliver’s intention to go to France
in the following February, to spend the spring and summer in Paris, and
go to Leyden at the beginning of the next winter. He sends his earnest
love to his cousin Jenny (Mrs. Lawder) and her husband, asks after “my
poor Jack” (doubtless his youngest brother), and describes himself as
“dear Uncle, Your most devoted Oliver Goldsmith.”

The next letter is an important and very interesting one, and describes
Oliver’s compulsory change of plans. It was sent from Leyden some time
in the summer of 1754, and is written on three pages of a foolscap
sheet of unusually large size, 15 × 9-3/4 inches. The fourth page
has, as you will see, this address upon it: “To | the Revd. Mr. Thos.
Contarine, at Kilmore near | Carrick on Shannon in Ireland,” with the
words added “This letter is chargd. 1s. 8d.” It appears therefrom that
he embarked from Edinburgh on board a Scotch ship bound for Bordeaux
and that a storm drove them into Newcastle, where he was arrested.

“Seven men and me were one day on shore, and the following evening, as
we were all verry merry, the room door bursts open; enters a Sergeant
and Twelve Grenadiers with their bayonets screwd, and puts us all under
the King’s arrest. It seems my Company were Scotch men in the French
service. I endeavoured all I could to prove my innocence: however, I
remained in prison with the rest a Fortnight and with difficulty got
off even then. Dr. Sr. keep this all a secret, or at least say it was
for debt: for it were once known at the university I should hardly get
a degree.”

As to his future movements, Goldsmith says in this letter from Leyden:

“Physic is by no means taught so well as in Edinburgh.... I am not
certain how long my stay here will be: however I expect to have the
happiness of seeing you at Kidmore, if I can, next March.”

Oliver describes in much humorous detail the scenery of the country and
characteristics of the Dutch people. He says:

“The downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in Nature. Upon
a head of lank hair he wears a half-cockd narrow-leav’d hat, lacd with
black ribon: no coat but seven waistcoats and nine pairs of breeches
so that his hips reach almost up to his arm-pits. This well cloathed
vegetable is now fit to see company or make love: but what a pleasing
creature is the object of his appetite: why she wears a large friez cap
with a deal of flanders lace and for every pair of breeches he carries,
she puts on two petticoats. Is it not surprizing how things shoud ever
come close enough to make it a match?”

Bishop Percy prints the whole of this letter, except that he delicately
bowdlerised one or two phrases in it, and from the Percy version it has
reappeared in every one of the succeeding biographies.


EARLY LETTERS FROM LONDON.

The second series of letters begins after Oliver had returned to
England about a couple of years, and was “by a very little practice
as a physician and a very little reputation as a poet making a shift
to live,” as he describes it in a letter to his brother-in-law Daniel
Hodson, dated from the Temple Exchange Coffee House, on 27 December,
1757. His brother Charles Goldsmith had paid Oliver a visit in London,
and had informed him “of the fatigue you were at in soliciting a
subscription to relieve me, not only among my friends and relations,
but acquaintance in general. Tho my pride might feel some repugnance
at being thus relieved, yet my gratitude can suffer no diminution....
Whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pairs of stairs
high, I still remember them [my friends] with ardour, nay my very
country comes in for a share of my affection. Unaccountable fondness
for country, this maladie du Pays, as the french call it.” He hopes
that if he can be absent six weeks from London next summer “to spend
three of them among my friends in Ireland. My design is purely to
visit, and neither to cut a figure nor levy contributions--neither to
excite envy nor solicit favour: in fact my circumstances are adapted to
neither. I am too poor to be gazed at, and too rich to need assistance.”

Percy here omits what he calls “some mention of private family
matters.” The letter is at this point frayed and imperfect, but these
words can be made out:

“Charles is furnished with everything necessary, but why ... stranger
to assist him. I hope he will be improved in his ... against his return
[from Jamaica]. Poor Jenny! But it is what I expected. My mother too
has lost Pallas! My dear Sir, these things give me real uneasiness, and
I could wish to redress them. But at present there is hardly a Kingdom
in Europe in which I am not a debtor” etc.

After an interval, Goldsmith had what was for him a real bout of
letter-writing to a number of his kinsfolk and friends, to solicit
their assistance in getting subscriptions for his “Enquiry into the
Present State of Polite Learning in Europe” on which he was engaged,
and which was about to be published. On 7 August, 1758, he wrote to his
cousin and school-fellow Edward Mills that his “Essay on the Present
State of Taste and Literature in Europe,” as it was then called, was
“now printing in London, and I have requested Mr. Radcliff, Mr. Lawder,
Mr. Bryanton, my brother Mr. Henry Goldsmith, and my brother-in-law Mr.
Hodson, to circulate my proposals among their acquaintances.”

The letter to Dr. Radcliff is unknown: the date of that to Mrs. Lawder,
asking her husband’s help, is 15 August, 1758; that to Bryanton is
14 August, 1758; the letter to Henry Goldsmith is lost, but a second
letter to him on the same subject says “I shall the beginning of next
month send over two hundred and fifty books.” As the work was published
on 2 April, 1759, the date of this second letter to the Revd. Henry
Goldsmith was probably February, 1759. (It has been preserved, but is
not actually dated.)

Taking these several communications in the order of their date, the
letter of 7 August, 1758, to Edward Mills, which I exhibit to-day,
is a frank appeal for help in circulating the prospectus of Oliver’s
new book, but otherwise contains nothing of importance. “Every book
published here [London] the printers in Ireland republish there,
without giving the Author the least consideration for his coppy. I
would in this respect disappoint their avarice, and have all the
additional advantages that may result from the sale of my performance
there to myself.”

Neither Mills nor Lawder (to whom a similar request was made through
the medium of his wife on the 15th of the same month of August, 1758)
appears to have taken any notice of it, and in writing to his brother
Henry at a later date--about February, 1759--Oliver says “The behaviour
of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lawder is a little extraordinary: however, their
answering neither you nor me is a sufficient indication of their
disliking the employment which I assignd them. As their conduct is
different from what I had expected so I have made an alteration in
mine. I shall the beginning of next month send over two hundred and
fifty books, which are all that I fancy, can be well sold among you.”

The next letter, that dated 14 August, 1758, addressed to Robert
Bryanton is only known to us through its appearance for the first time
in Prior’s _Life_ (I, 263). It complains of not having heard from
Bryanton or of his doings, gives an amusing prophecy of his own future
fame 200 years onwards as the author of the Essay on Polite Learning
“a work well worth its weight in diamonds,” and then descends suddenly
to earth with “Oh! Gods! Gods! here in a garret writing for bread and
expecting to be dunned for a milk-score! However, dear Bob, whether in
penury or affluence, serious or gay, I am ever thine. Give the most
warm and sincere wish you can conceive to your mother, Mrs. Bryanton,
to Miss Bryanton, to yourself: and if there be a favourite dog in the
family, let me be remembered to it.”

The letter to Mrs. Lawder of 15 August, 1758, is a good deal more
guarded, as his relations with his cousin and her husband appear not
to have been at that time of a very cordial nature. The original
has passed through several hands, and has been reproduced more than
once in facsimile. I believe it is now the property of Mr. Sabin of
Bond Street. Oliver says he had written to Kilmore (Mrs. Lawder’s
address) from Leyden, from Louvain and from Rouen, but had received no
answer. “To what could I attribute this, please, but displeasure or
forgetfulness?”... “I heartily wish to be rich, if it were only for
this reason to say without a blush how much I esteem you, but alas I
have many a fatigue to encounter, before that happy time comes: when
your poor old simple friend may again give a loose to the luxuriance of
his nature, sitting by Kilmore fireside, recount the various adventures
of an hard-fought life, laugh over the follies of the day, join his
flute to your harpsicord and forget that he ever starv’d in those
streets where Butler and Otway starv’d before him.” After a pathetic
allusion to the decaying mental powers of his uncle Contarine, Oliver
then makes his appeal as to the “Polite Learning,” but “whether this
request is complied with or not, I shall not be uneasy.”

The second letter to Daniel Hodson, which I exhibit, is provisionally
dated by the modern authorities about November, 1758. It was published
by Percy in the edition of 1801, with the family matters omitted, and
some few alterations and excisions. The letter really begins “You
can’t expect regularity in _a correspondence with_ one who is regular
in nothing.” Later, Goldsmith says: “You imagine, I suppose, that
every author by profession lives in a garret, wears shabby cloaths and
converses with the meanest company; _but I assure you such a character
is_ entirely chimerical.” The family matters omitted by Percy may as
well be restored:

“I am very much pleasd with the accounts you send me of your little
son; if I do not mistake that was his hand which subscrib’d itself
Gilbeen Hardly. There is nothing could please me more than a letter
filld with all the news of the country, but I fear you will think that
too troublesome, you see I never cease writing till a whole sheet of
paper is wrote out. I beg you will immitate me in this particular
and give your letters good measure. You can tell me, what visits you
receive or pay, who has been married or debauch’d, since my absence,
what fine girls you have starting up and beating of the veterans of my
acquaintance from future conquest. I suppose before I return I shall
find all the blooming virgins I once left in Westmeath shrivelled
into a parcel of hags with seven children apiece tearing down their
petticoats. Most of the Bucks and Bloods whom I left hunting and
drinking and swearing and getting bastards I find are dead. Poor devils
they kick’d the world before them. I wonder what the devil they kick
now.” [End of first sheet of letter.]

On a fresh sheet:

“Dear Sister I wrote to Kilmore [where the Lawders lived]. I wish you
would let me know how that family stands affected with regard to me.
My Brother Charles promised to tell me all about it but his letter
gave me no satisfaction in those particulars. I beg you and Dan would
put your hands to the oar and fill me a sheet with somewhat or other,
if you can’t get quite thro your selves lend Billy or Nancy the pen
and let the dear little things give me their nonsense. Talk all about
your selves and nothing about me. You see I do so. I do not know how
my desire of seeing Ireland which had so long slept, has again revived
with so much ardour....” “I ... brother Charles is settled to business.
I see no probability of ... any other proceeding.” [Here follow sixteen
lines of writing, which have been very effectually blotted out with ink
of another tint, probably by the recipient, who sent the letter to be
read by a neighbour.]

The letter ends thus (it is not signed):

“Pray let me hear from my Mother since she will not gratify me herself
and tell me if in any thing I can be immediately serviceable to her.
Tell me how my Brother Goldsmith and his Bishop agree. Pray do this for
me for heaven knows I would do anything to serve you.” [ends.]

The back page is blank, except the address in Goldsmith’s writing:
“Daniel Hodson Esq^r. at Lishoy near | Ballymahon | Ireland.”

We come now to the one letter to his brother the Revd. Henry Goldsmith
which has been preserved. It bears no date, and was doubtless written
about February, 1759. After speaking about the “Polite Learning” book,
Oliver goes on to describe his own difficulties:

“You scarce can conceive how much eight years of disappointment anguish
and study have worn me down. Imagine to yourself a pale melancholly
visage with two great wrinkles between the eye-brows, with an eye
disgustingly severe and a big wig, and you may have a perfect picture
of my present appearance.”

He then discusses and approves as judicious and convincing his
brother’s proposals for “breeding up your son as a scholar.” “Preach
then my dear Sir, to your son not the excellence of human nature
nor the disrespect of riches, but endeavour to teach him thrift and
economy. Let his poor wandering uncle’s example be placed in his eyes.
I had learned from books to love virtue before I was taught from
experience the necessity of being selfish.” (The Percy Memoir of 1801
prunes and waters down this passage.)

After references to his mother and other members of the family,
Oliver mentions the imminent publication of his “catchpenny” life of
Voltaire, which has brought him in £20, and quotes some phrases of the
“heroicomical poem” on the design of which he had asked his brother’s
opinion in a previous letter (now lost).

These are the well-known lines commencing

  The window, patch’d with paper lent a ray,
  That feebly show’d the state in which he lay

with the subsequent references to the “sanded floor” the “humid wall”
the game of goose, “the twelve rules the royal martyr drew,” etc. These
lines with a different setting reappeared in Letter XXX of the Citizen
of the World, which first appeared in the _Public Ledger_ for 2 May,
1760, and some of them were worked afterwards into lines 227-36 of the
Deserted Village, 1770, where they are improved by the addition of:

  “The Chest contriv’d a double debt to pay
  A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.”

Following his usual practice when he does set to work on a letter,
Oliver writes on to the extreme bottom of the page, and finishes thus:
“I am resolved to leave no space, tho I should fill it up only by
telling you what you very well know already, I mean that I am your most
affectionate friend and brother, Oliver Goldsmith.”


LATER LETTERS.

There is now a long gap in the letters to his family, only in fact
broken by two communications, one to his nephew Henry dated 7 June,
1768, condoling with him on the death of his father the Revd. Henry,
and the other to his own brother Maurice despatched about January,
1770, in response to the latter’s request for financial assistance.

The first of these two letters has only just come to light, having been
recently purchased through a dealer who got it from Nova Scotia by Mr.
William Harris Arnold of Nutley, New Jersey, U.S.A., to whose kindness
I owe a transcript of it. It is a letter of deep feeling at the death
of his brother, and contains a promise to help the nephew if possible.

The second letter to Maurice Goldsmith--the last of the series on which
I propose to comment--makes over to him a legacy of £15 which Uncle
Contarine had left to Oliver in his will, and regrets his inability to
help Maurice further. “I am not fond of thinking of the necessities of
those I love, when it is so very little in my power to help them. I am
sorry to find you are still every way unprovided for, and what adds to
my uneasiness is that I have received a letter from my sister Johnson
by which I learn that she is pretty much in the same circumstances.” It
is true that the King has made him Professor of Ancient History to the
newly established Royal Academy of Arts (1768), “but there is no salary
annexed, and I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than
any benefit to myself. Honours to one in my situation are something
like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt.” Oliver sends kind messages
to members of the family, and asks specifically for particulars about
them. “A sheet of paper occasionally filled with news of this kind
would make me very happy and would keep you nearer my mind. As it is
my dear brother believe me to be Yours most affectionately, Oliver
Goldsmith.”

The remaining letters printed in the Percy Memoir do not concern
Goldsmith’s family, but it may be mentioned incidentally that they are
all in the bundle of Goldsmithiana left by the Bishop. They are (1) a
letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds written from France in 1770 when Oliver
acted as escort to Mrs. Horneck and her two charming daughters the
Jessamy Bride and Little Comedy. (2) A letter by Goldsmith to Bennet
Langton dated 7 September, 1771 (with, it may be added, the letter
from Langton--not printed in the Memoir--to which it is a reply). (3)
Letters to Goldsmith from General Oglethorp (no date), Thomas Paine
(21 December, 1772), John Oakman (a begging letter in verse, dated 27
March, 1773), and other miscellanea.


MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS.

I should be sorry if I left you with the impression that the letters
from which I have been reading extracts were the only original
documents connected with the poet and his works included in Dr.
Percy’s manuscript bundle of “Goldsmithiana.” The contrary is the
case: but the time available to me this afternoon is too short to
enable me to discuss the various interesting points that they raise.
I feel, however, I must refer in the briefest manner possible to some
miscellaneous papers of different kinds which I found therein relating
to the preliminaries for and the production of that delightful and
ever-fresh comedy of “She Stoops to Conquer,” first given to the world
on Monday, 15 March, 1773. There are a letter from the Prompter dated
“Sunday evening” (no doubt 14 March, 1773), saying he had taken the
necessary steps for changing the name of the play from “The Mistakes
of a Night”; orders for boxes for subsequent performances; requests
for free seats; congratulations and criticism on its success; a full
account in Percy’s writing of Goldsmith’s personal chastisement of
Evans the bookseller for Kenrick’s malicious article in the _London
Packet_ of Wednesday, 24 March, 1773 (endorsed in the Bishop’s hand
“The termination of the affray with Evans, as first intended, but
afterwards altered out of tenderness to Dr. G’s Memory”); a printed
copy of the _London Packet_ of Friday, 26 March, containing its own
account of the encounter with Evans; George Coleman’s original letter
of 23 March, 1773, begging Goldsmith to “take him off the rack of the
newspapers”; manuscript copies (not in Goldsmith’s writing) of two
rejected Epilogues to the play; and other documents of great human
interest.

As I have consistently tried in this address to avoid indulging in
theories, and to limit myself to demonstrable facts, I refrain from a
discussion as to why these documents of 1773 are in such force in the
resuscitated bundle of Percy papers, whereas there are comparatively
few and scattered documents of earlier date. I should not, however, be
surprised if Goldsmith, dreading that the commotion caused and public
comment excited by his scuffle with Evans might involve him in further
disagreeable consequences, had himself collected these papers and
consulted Percy personally thereon, with the result that they remained
in the latter’s custody.

When nearly a quarter of a century later, Percy put his hand to the
preparation of the Memoir of his friend, he may have thought that the
discreditable incidents obscuring the memory of a great public success
were best buried in oblivion; and he therefore confined himself in the
published work to the statement that “She Stoops to Conquer” “added
very much to the author’s reputation, and brought down upon him a
torrent of congratulatory addresses and petitions from less fortunate
bards whose indigence compelled them to solicit his bounty, and of
scurrilous abuse from such of them, as being less reduced, only envied
his success.” (_Memoir_, p. 101.)

Percy could not, it is true, resist the temptation of placing on
record in the Memoir “Tom Tickle’s” attack on Goldsmith in the _London
Packet_: but, says he, “we would not defile our page with this
scurrilous production, so shall insert it in the margin.” (pp. 103-5,
notes.)

It seems to me not unlikely that Percy’s opinion was sought as to the
wording of the defence or disclaimer by Goldsmith “To the Public” which
appeared in the _Daily Advertiser_ of 31 March, 1773, as this also is
printed _in extenso_ in the Memoir of 1801 (pp. 107-8). Dr. Johnson
had certainly no hand in its preparation, for on Saturday, 3 April,
in response to an enquiry by the obsequious Boswell, he said: “Sir,
Dr. Goldsmith would no more have asked me to have wrote such a thing
as that for him, than he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon,
or to do anything else that denoted imbecility.... He has indeed done
it very well, but it is a foolish thing well done.” Percy says in the
Memoir (p. 107): “The subject of this dispute was long discussed in the
public papers, which discanted on the impropriety of attacking a man in
his own house: and an action was threatened for the assault: which was
at length compromised”: and here he leaves it, as we may well do.

One other matter connected with “She Stoops to Conquer” I must ask your
permission to touch upon before I conclude. Four attempts were made
at an Epilogue for the play, and the Percy documents enable us for
the first time to understand the sequence of these. Two of them were
printed (not quite textually) in Vol. II of the Memoir of 1801, and
Percy, who set great store by them, complains to his correspondents
that enough credit was not given to him by the publishers for them. He
told Dr. Robert Anderson:

“The Dr. had likewise given him two original Poems that had never been
printed. These are the two Epilogues printed in the second Volume, viz:
that spoken by Mrs. Bulkley and Miss Catley, and that intended for Mrs.
Bulkley. The latter [it] is said in a Note, was given in Manuscript to
Dr. Percy by the Author, but no such mention is made of the former,
tho’ it was also so given by him and delivered to the Publishers in his
own writing.”

Percy was a little in doubt about the second of these Epilogues
(which in the edition of 1801 he cut down from 58 lines to 42), for
he invited George Steevens on 10 September, 1797, to ask Mrs. Bulkley
if she remembered for what play it was intended: “He [Goldsmith] gave
it me among a parcel of letters and papers, some written by himself,
and some addressed to him, but with not much explanation” (_Literary
Illustrations_, VII, 31). Steevens’ reply of 14 September, 1797, was in
his usual caustic vein: “The lady you would have interrogated ceased
to be at least seven years ago: and what would the public say could
it be known that your Lordship, a Protestant Bishop, was desirous to
send your sober correspondents into the other world a harlot-hunting?”
(_Ibid_, 32).

It is a little surprising that the Bishop should not have at once
recognised its obvious associations with “She Stoops to Conquer,” in
view of the two lines at the end of the Epilogue:

  “No high-life scenes, no sentiment: the creature
  “Still stoops among the low to copy nature.”

But all these points, in their way interesting and even absorbing, are
rather beyond the object with which I embarked upon this paper, viz.:
to do justice to the affectionate side of Goldsmith’s warm Irish nature
by bringing into relief the letters which, despite his repugnance to
correspondence, he from time to time addressed to members of his own
family with ardent and even pitiful appeals for news from Ireland.
These appeals, it is to be feared, had no satisfactory response from
the recipients of the letters which after their many adventures I have
now had the privilege of exhibiting to you, and which I think serve to
illustrate the truth of Dr. Johnson’s dictum: “Goldsmith was a man of
such variety of powers and such felicity of performance, that he always
seemed to do best that which he was doing: a man who had the art of
being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose
language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint and
easy without weakness.”




APPENDIX.

_Biographical particulars as to the members of Oliver Goldsmith’s
family, partly from unpublished sources._


Oliver Goldsmith died on 4 April, 1774. Although there was some talk
of a biography of him being undertaken by Johnson, it appears to have
become a common understanding, soon after the death, amongst the
members of The Club and their associates that the work of collecting
and preparing the materials for the biography would be done by Thomas
Percy. At that time Percy had achieved a certain reputation in literary
circles, but was by no means the important person in the ecclesiastical
sense that he afterwards became. He was then mainly resident in London
as Chaplain and Secretary to the Duke of Northumberland and as one
of the Chaplains of the King. It was not until 1778 that he was made
Dean of Carlisle, from which position he was promoted in 1782 to the
Bishopric of Dromore in Ireland.

Percy had already written out in his own hand a Memorandum dictated to
him by Goldsmith himself “one rainy day at Northumberland House” (28
April, 1773) giving dates and many interesting particulars relating
to his life, and this Memorandum is still in existence. Too much
importance must not be attached to it. Percy no doubt regarded it as
a Memorandum only, which might prove useful under future conditions
that had not then arisen, and how much of it is Goldsmith and how much
Percy must for ever remain unknown. The Statement was communicated to
Johnson; not used by him: returned by his executors to the wrong person
(Malone), sent by him to Percy, and apparently not used textually by
him for the purpose of his Memoir of his friend. In any case, there is
not much in it about the members of Oliver’s family.

Sir James Prior was ignorant of the existence of this Memorandum,
when preparing his _Life of Goldsmith_ (Murray, 1837): but with his
praiseworthy carefulness, he set about whilst he was in Ireland in the
early part of the nineteenth century to dig up such particulars as he
could discover about Oliver’s parentage; and what he says concerning
“the Goldsmith Family” in his first Chapter is the fullest and most
authoritative history of the poet’s forebears that was capable of
being written within half a century of Goldsmith’s death and with the
information at that time available.

It is not necessary for present purposes to go further back than
Oliver’s grandfather, whose name was Robert Goldsmith of Ballyoughter
(not John, as in Dr. Percy’s Statement). The following facts are known
about this ancestor of the poet.


1. ROBERT GOLDSMITH OF BALLYOUGHTER.

(Oliver’s Grandfather.)

Robert, elder of two sons of the Revd. John Goldsmith, of Newton, Co.
Meath, and Jane Madden, of Donore, Co. Dublin, does not appear to
have gone to College or to have exercised any profession. He “married
Catherine, daughter of Thomas Crofton, D.D., Dean of Elphin, and
settled down at Ballyoughter, near the residence of his father-in-law”
(Prior I, 5). By his wife, “who enjoyed a moderate fortune, he had a
family of thirteen children, nine sons and four daughters.” Several of
them died young. John, the eldest son of Robert, “who had been educated
at Trinity College preparatory to studying for the bar, settled down
on the family property at Ballyoughter” (Prior I, 5). The second son
Charles, who also went to Trinity College, was the father of the poet
(_see_ § 2). One of the daughters, Jane, married the Rev. Thomas
Contarine of Oran (_see_ § 4).


2. THE REVD. CHARLES GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Father.)

Charles Goldsmith entered Trinity College as a pensioner on the 16
June, 1707. He was described in the Register as born and educated
“prope Elphin,” as the son of Robert, and as aged 17. He was born
therefore in 1690. His earlier career is obscure, but in a family Bible
he is described as “Charles Goldsmith of Ballyoughter” (the family
residence) and as “married to Mrs. Ann Jones ye 4th of May 1718” (Prior
I, 14), when therefore he was 28 years of age. “This union was not
approved by the friends of either: he was destitute of the means of
providing for a family, and the father of his wife having a son and
three other daughters to provide for, her portion was small” (Prior I,
7). Ann Jones was daughter of the Revd. Oliver Jones of Smith Hill,
master of the diocesan school at Elphin, where Charles had received his
preliminary education, and where the attachment commenced. Her uncle,
named Green, who was rector of Kilkenny West, provided the young couple
with a house about six miles distant from himself, at a place called
Pallas, in the adjoining county of Longford. “Here they took up their
abode, and continued for a period of twelve years [1718 to 1730], Mr.
Goldsmith officiating partly in the church of his uncle, and partly
in the parish in which he resided.” At Pallas therefore five of their
eight children (including Oliver) were born: the other three were born
at Lissoy, to which the family removed in 1730, when Charles Goldsmith,
by the death of his wife’s uncle, succeeded to the Rectory of Kilkenny
West.

The family Bible referred to by Prior (I, 14) records the names and
dates of birth of the several children as under: _Margaret_, born 22
August, 1719 (of whom nothing seems to be known); _Catherine_, born
13 January, 1721, married to Daniel Hodson (_see_ § 5); _Jane_, born
9 February, 17[4] (_see_ § 6); _Henry_, born 9 February, 17[4] (_see_
§ 7); _Oliver_, born 10 November, 1728; _Maurice_, born 7 July, 1736
(_see_ § 11); _Charles_, born 16 August, 1737 (_see_ § 12); _John_,
1740 (to whom there is only the briefest reference in Oliver’s letter
to his uncle Contarine written from Edinburgh at the close of 1753
and first printed by Prior in 1837 (I, 154): “How is my poor Jack
Goldsmith? I fear his disorder is of such a nature he won’t easily
recover.” He is said by Percy (MS. statement) to have “died young
_aet._ 12.”)

The loveable character of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith has been depicted
for all time in incomparable language in his wayward son’s works. He
is the father of “the man in black” of “the Citizen of the World,” the
preacher in “The Deserted Village” and Dr. Primrose in “the Vicar of
Wakefield.” He died suddenly early in 1747 in the fifty-seventh year of
his age (Prior I, 73), the induction of his successor, the Revd. Mr.
Wynne, taking place in March of that year.

  “Remote from towns he ran his goodly race
  Nor e’er had changed, nor wished to change, his place.”


3. ANN GOLDSMITH, _née_ JONES.

(Oliver’s Mother.)

The death of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith in 1747 made a considerable
change for the worse in the fortunes of his widow and her children.

“The wealth of the family, never great or well husbanded, necessarily
suffered a serious diminution: the means of the widow were little
more than sufficient to provide the necessaries of life for the other
branches of the family: remittances to Oliver therefore ceased, and his
prospects became darker than ever” (Prior I, 73, 74).

Ann Goldsmith had to remove in her straitened circumstances to a
cottage at Ballymahon, and there Oliver seems to have idled away his
time between 1749 to 1751, when he drifted off with the intention
of going to America. Probably things were not made very comfortable
for him at home. Anyhow the mother appears to have been disgusted
and disappointed at his waywardness, and spoke to him sharply when
he returned penniless. He does not seem to have again resided at
Ballymahon, but to have gone to stay with his brother Henry, and
afterwards with his constant friend and benefactor, Uncle Contarine,
before he went off to Edinburgh, never to see his mother again. When
writing from the Scottish capital on 16 September, 1753, to his boon
companion, Robert Bryanton of Ballymahon, Oliver says in a postscript:
“Give my service to my mother if you see her: for as you express it in
Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her still.” After his return
from his Continental wanderings, he writes twice to his brother-in-law
Daniel Hodson about his mother. On 27 December, 1757, he says: “My
mother too has lost Pallas! My dear Sir, these things give me real
uneasiness, and I should wish to redress them.” And in November, 1758,
he writes to Hodson: “Pray tell me how my mother is since she will not
gratify me herself and tell me if in anything I can be immediately
serviceable to her.” (This and other similar phrases in the letters
of 1757 and 1758 are omitted from the 1801 publication as relating to
“private family affairs.”) In Oliver’s letter to his brother Henry of
February, 1758, he says: “My mother I am informed is almost blind: even
tho I had the utmost inclination to return home, I could not behold her
in distress without a capacity of relieving her from it, it would be
too much to add to my present splenetic habit.”

Later still in January, 1770, Oliver begs his brother Maurice to give
him particulars about the family: “Tell me about my mother, my brother
Hodson and his son, ... what is become of them, where they live and
what they do.” Mrs. Goldsmith died in Ireland later in the same year,
and in Mr. William Filby’s tailor’s bills against Goldsmith is the
entry of £5:12:0 for “a suit of mourning” (doubtless for her) dated 8
September, 1770 (Prior I, 233).


4. THE CONTARINES.

(Oliver’s Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin.)

As already stated, one of the daughters of Robert Goldsmith named
Jane married the Revd. Thomas Contarine, Vicar of Oran. She bore him
a daughter Jane, the playmate of Oliver’s childhood, and died in her
sixty-third year on the 12 June, 1744 (Prior I, 55, note). “Uncle
Contarine” was the best, kindest and most consistent friend of Oliver
Goldsmith in his boyhood and student days; and Oliver had a deep sense
of gratitude to him. He wrote to Contarine two letters from Edinburgh
in 1753 (printed in Prior I, 145 and 154), and a third letter from
Leyden in 1754, which is fortunately preserved.

The following incident, illustrative of Oliver’s affection for his
generous uncle, is copied into the Memoir of 1801 (page 33) from
Percy’s own manuscript. Oliver had borrowed some money from an Irish
friend at Leyden “with which he determined to quit Holland and to
visit the adjacent countries. But unfortunately his curiosity led him
to view a garden, where the choicest flowers were reared for sale.
Poor Goldsmith, recollecting that his uncle was an admirer of such
rarities, without reflecting on the reduced state of his own finances,
was tempted to purchase some of these costly flower roots to be sent as
a present to Ireland, and thereby left himself so little cash that he
is said to have set out on his travels with only one clean shirt and no
money in his pocket.”

Later Oliver wrote to Contarine’s daughter, Mrs. Lawder, on 15 August,
1758, from the Temple Exchange Coffee House an affectionate letter
apologising for his long silence, but explaining that he wrote to
Kilmore from Leyden, Louvain and Rouen and received no answer, and
referring thus to his uncle: “he is no more that soul of fire as when
I once knew him. His mind was too active an inhabitant not to disorder
the feeble mansion of its abode, for the richest jewels soonest wear
their settings. Yet who but a fool would lament his condition, he now
forgets the calamities of life, perhaps indulgent heaven has given
him a foretaste of that tranquillity here which he so well deserves
hereafter.”

Mr. Contarine died a few months after the date of this letter, aged
about 74, and left Oliver a legacy of £15, which he eventually made
over to his impecunious brother Maurice. In announcing this decision
(in January, 1770) Oliver says to Maurice: “The kindness of that good
couple to our poor shattered family demands our sincerest gratitude,
and though they have almost forgot me yet if good things at last
arrive, I hope one day to return, and encrease their good humour by
adding to my own. I have sent my cousin Jenny [Mrs. Lawder] a miniature
picture of myself as I believe it is the most acceptable present I can
offer.”

Contarine’s daughter Jane married James Lawder, a well-to-do resident
of Kilmore, near Carrick on Shannon. To her Oliver addressed on 15
August, 1758, the affectionate letter already quoted dwelling on the
past and signing himself “Your affectionate and obliged Kinsman.” It
seems to have provoked no reply.

The end of the Lawders was tragic. The husband was treacherously
murdered by his servants and labourers, who carried off the plate in
the house and about £300 in money. For this crime no less than six of
them were executed. The wife, who narrowly escaped being murdered also,
died in Dublin about 1790 (Prior I, 130, note).


5. CATHERINE GOLDSMITH (MRS. DANIEL HODSON).

(Sister of Oliver.)

Catherine was born 13 January, 1721. It was her private marriage with
Daniel Hodson, “the son of a gentleman of good family residing at St.
John’s near Athlone,” who was at the time of the engagement a pupil
of Henry Goldsmith, that led to Oliver’s entering Trinity College as
a sizar instead of as a pensioner like Henry. Her father, the Revd.
Charles Goldsmith, was greatly indignant at this marriage, and in order
to give his daughter a marriage portion of £400, sacrificed his tithes
and rented land.

To his brother-in-law Hodson, Oliver wrote two very cordial letters
on 27 December, 1757, and November, 1758, the second containing a
paragraph: “Dear Sister, I wrote to Kilmore (the residence of the
Lawders). I wish you would let me know how that family stands affected
with regard to me.” It is curious that in Oliver’s letter to Maurice of
January, 1770, he does not ask after his sister Catherine, though he
enquires about “my mother, my brother Hodson and his son, my brother
Harry’s son and daughter” and other members of the family. After
Oliver’s death, however, Catherine Hodson, appealed to by Maurice,
wrote out a full and very sympathetic account, running to twelve
foolscap pages, of Oliver’s youthful adventures, terminating with his
being sent to Edinburgh in 1753 “for the studdy of Physick. From this
date I am a stranger to what happened him: he wrote severall letters to
his friends from Switzerland, Germany and Italy.”

With reference to Oliver’s enquiry quoted above as to “my Brother
Hodson and his son,” it may be mentioned that the poet befriended this
nephew in London in 1772 to the extent of allowing him to run up a bill
for £35:3:0 with his tailor William Filby. It is to be feared this bill
was still unpaid at Oliver’s decease (Forster II, 173).


6. JANE GOLDSMITH, AFTERWARDS JOHNSON.

(Born 9 February, 1722. Sister of Oliver.)

As the family Bible entries from which were copied into Prior’s _Life_
(I, 14) gave as the date of the births of Henry and Jane Goldsmith
the same day 9 February, 17-- (leaf torn), Forster surmised and with
much plausibility that they were twins, born on the 9 February, 1722
(I, 9). Jane married one Johnson, a farmer at Athlone, and appears to
have written to Oliver in 1769 about her impoverished condition, which
Oliver in his letter to Maurice of January, 1770, regrets his inability
to relieve.


7. THE REVD. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Elder Brother.)

Very little is known about the eldest son of the Revd. Charles
Goldsmith, Henry, who was born at Pallas on the 9 February, 1722 (Prior
I, 14). He was educated at Dr. Neligan’s school at Elphin, afterwards
matriculating at Trinity College, Dublin, on 4 May, 1741 (Prior I, 34,
note). He was elected a scholar on Trinity Monday, 1743: “but returning
home in the succeeding vacation, flushed probably with his recent
triumph, he indulged a youthful passion and married” (Prior I, 35).

All that the Percy Memoir of 1801 (I, 3) says about Henry is: “Of his
eldest son the Revd. Henry Goldsmith, to whom his brother dedicated
_The Traveller_, their father had formed the most sanguine hopes, as
he had distinguished himself both at school and at College, but he
unfortunately married at the early age of nineteen: which confined him
to a Curacy, and prevented him rising to preferment in the Church.”
As he was born at Pallas in February, 1722, Henry must, if this
statement be accurate, have become a married man in 1741, about the
time he matriculated at Trinity College. There is evidently inaccuracy
somewhere as to Henry’s age, and it may be doubted whether his marriage
took place before or after his election as a scholar of his College on
Trinity Monday, 1743. From some guarded words used by Prior (the most
painstaking investigator into the family history) it is possible the
marriage was a secret one, as Prior suggests that when it took place
“he must have been three years older [than stated above], or have
formed this connexion previous to entering the University. To some men
this tie becomes a stimulus to exertion: to others it seems a clog upon
every effort at rising in life” (I, 35). Prior seems to decide that
in Henry’s case it was a clog. He speaks of Henry having “indulged
a youthful passion and married,” and continues shortly afterwards:
“Finding residence in College no longer eligible, the advantages of
his scholarship were sacrificed: he retired, as appears from the
college books, to the country: established a school in his father’s
neighbourhood: and in this occupation added to that of curate at ‘forty
pounds a year,’ though possessed of talents and character, he passed
the remainder of life.” (Prior I, 35.)

It is nowhere very clearly stated, that it would seem that Henry
acted as curate to his father at Kilkenny West, and perhaps after his
father’s death in 1747 he continued in office under the new Rector,
the Revd. Mr. Wynne (Prior I, 73). John Forster says (I, 427): “In
his early life Dr. Strean succeeded Henry Goldsmith in the curacy of
Kilkenny West, which the latter occupied at the period of his death
(1768) and as he is careful to tell us, in its emoluments of £40 a
year, which was not only his salary but continued to be the same when I
[Strean] a successor, was appointed to that parish.”

The two brothers Henry and Oliver had a strong and abiding affection
for one another. Oliver had corresponded with his brother whilst he
was abroad, though none of his letters have been preserved. Part of
_The Traveller_ had been sent to Henry from Switzerland, and when it
was completed and published at the end of 1764, the poem was dedicated
to him. The opening paragraph contained this sentence: “It will throw
a light upon many parts of it when the reader understands that it is
addressed to a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early
to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.” And
the opening lines of the poem itself contain the familiar phrase:

  “Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see,
  “My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee:
  “Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain
  “And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”

Later on there is the well-known description of the village preacher:

  “A man he was to all the country dear,
  “And passing rich with forty pounds a year.”

There is only one letter from Oliver to Henry known to exist: that
addressed “about 1759” to Henry at “Lowfield, near Ballymore in
Westmeath Ireland” seeking his assistance in the disposal of copies of
his book on “Polite learning” describing his own physical looks, giving
Henry advice as to the education of his son, asking about his mother
and other members of the family, and ending up: “by telling you what
you very well know already, that I am your most affectionate friend and
brother Oliver Goldsmith.”

Henry was the subject of Oliver’s solicitude when he was granted an
interview with the Earl of Northumberland (Dr. Percy’s friend) who
was about to proceed to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. We owe the report
of this interview to the unsympathetic pen of Sir John Hawkins in
his _Life of Johnson_ (p. 419). In answer to the Earl’s remark that
he was going to Ireland and hearing that Goldsmith was a native of
that country he would be glad to do him any kindness, Oliver is made
to reply: “I would say nothing but that I had a brother there, a
clergyman, that stood in need of help.” Hawkins’ sour comment was:
“thus did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his
fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.”

The Revd. Henry Goldsmith died at Athlone at the end of May, 1768, at
the age of forty-five. A suit of mourning for him ordered of Oliver’s
tailor William Filby cost £5:12:6 (Forster II, 113). The brother
seems to have at once written a letter of affectionate sympathy with
the family--probably to the widow, and to his nephew Henry he sent a
separate letter which has only just come to light in North America,
having doubtless been preserved till now by descendants of the original
recipient. It is now the property of Mr. William Harris Arnold of
Nutley, New Jersey, to whose kindness I owe permission for its
reproduction:

                                                 London, June 7th, 1768.

  My dear Henry,

  Your dear father’s death has afflicted me deeply. The news of this
  dreadful event only reached me yesterday and though I have already
  sent my love and condolences in a letter which you will see I pen
  this further line to my dear Nephew to express the hope that you and
  your Brother, young as you both are, will bear yourselves as the sons
  of such a man should. As to your own future I shall not rest until I
  hit upon some means of serving you; and it may be that through the
  influence of some of my friends here you may procure a situation
  suited to your talents.

  Meanwhile attend diligently to your studies, neglect nothing that
  can advance your interest when an opening occurs. Are you still
  inclined towards a military career? That would necessitate, besides a
  certain temper and constitution, a considerable sum of ready money.
  Something, however, might be managed abroad--in the Indies or in
  America.

  Let me hear from you, my dear Henry, and with much love to you both

                                       Believe me,
                                           Your affectionate Uncle,
                                                       Oliver Goldsmith.

  Mr. Henry Goldsmith
    In Care of Mrs. Hodson,
        Athlone,
          Ireland.


I find no mention whatever in any document (published or unpublished)
that I have come across of a second son of the Revd. Henry. Oliver at
the time of his brother’s death was at work on the _Deserted Village_
at a summer retreat in a cottage eight miles from the Edgware Road
(Forster II, 124), was visited there in May, 1768, by Cooke, who marks
the date as exactly two years before the poem appeared in print (May,
1770), and tells us that the writing of it, and its elaborate revision,
extended over the whole interval of twenty-four months.

Is it permissible to suggest that Oliver, with his head full of other
things, was a little dubious about the sex of the other child of his
brother, and spoke of a son where he should have said daughter? Writing
to his brother Maurice in January, 1770, with anxious enquiries about
the several members of the family, Oliver says: “Tell me about my
mother, my brother Hodson and his son: _my brother Harry’s son and
daughter_, my sister Johnson, the family of Ballyoughter, what is
become of them, where they live and how they do. You talked of being my
only brother, I don’t understand you--Where is Charles?” (_Memoir_, p.
89.)

Here it will be observed, Oliver makes tender enquiries after Henry’s
“son and daughter.” He says nothing of the widow or of a second son. In
the only letter of Oliver’s to his brother that is now extant, ascribed
by Percy to “about 1759,” Oliver thus refers to the son: “The reasons
you have given me for breeding your son a scholar are judicious and
convincing.... Preach then my dear Sir, to your son not the excellence
of human nature nor the disrespect of riches, but endeavour to teach
him thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering Uncle’s example be
placed in his eyes. I had learned from books to love virtue, before I
was taught from experience the necessity of being selfish.”

I quote from the original holograph letter, not from the somewhat
bowdlerised version of it that Percy printed in the _Memoir_ of 1801,
and that has since been copied in all subsequent biographies.

It remains therefore to consider what happened to those whom Henry left
behind him in 1768 of whom there is any record. There was a widow,
of whose parentage and maiden name, or of the circumstances of her
widowhood nothing seems to be known, his son Henry, and his daughter
Catherine.


8. HENRY GOLDSMITH’S WIDOW.

It was in all probability Mrs. Henry Goldsmith of whom Johnson wrote to
George Steevens on 25 February, 1777, as recorded by Boswell in Volume
III, Chapter III:

  “Mr. Steevens ... joined Dr. Johnson in Kind assistance to a female
  relation of Dr. Goldsmith, and desired that on her return to Ireland
  she would procure authentic particulars of the life of her relation.
  Concerning her is the following letter:

                                            “To George Steevens Esq.

                                                    “February 25th 1777.

  “Dear Sir,

  “You will be glad to hear that from Mrs. Goldsmith whom we lamented
  as drowned, I have received a letter full of gratitude to us all,
  with promises to make the enquiries which we recommended to her. You
  will tell the good news,

                                               “I am, Sir,
                                                  “Your most etc.
                                                          “Sam Johnson.”

Prior (II, 562) expands this incident, assigning it definitely to the
widow of the Revd. Henry, but gives no new facts, except to add that
“being but slenderly provided for, she accepted the situation of Matron
to the Meath Infirmary at Navan.”


9. HENRY, SON OF THE REVD. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Nephew.)

Henry, the son, Prior describes as “distinguished for spirit,
intelligence and personal beauty.... A commission being obtained for
him in the army, he quitted Ireland for North America about the year
1782.” A constant friend and correspondent of his, the Revd. Thomas
Handcock wrote on 7 October, 1799 (Prior II, 564) that Henry had been
a lieutenant in the 54th Regiment, and that “with an uncommon flow
of spirits (he) possesses a large portion of his uncle’s genius.” He
married an American lady from Rhode Island and “after the peace settled
with her somewhere in Nova Scotia.”

“He plunged through unheard of distresses and difficulties until
very lately, when accident made our young Prince, the Duke of Kent,
acquainted with his person and history: and His Royal Highness lost
no time in raising him, a wife and ten children, considerably above
want, as I learn by a letter from Goldsmith within these last six
weeks. I had ... received his rent and managed his affairs, and in
his distresses he often urged me to sell his interest in the Deserted
Village [Lissoy] which I continued to avoid, to his present very great
satisfaction.”

The particular way in which Henry Goldsmith’s needs were brought under
the notice of the Duke of Kent is not recorded, but His Royal Highness
had been sent to Canada in 1791, and was Commander-in-Chief of the
forces in British North America in 1799-1800. What Mr. Handcock says
in his letter is confirmed by an unpublished letter written by Henry’s
sister Catherine to Bishop Percy on 6 January, 1802, apropos of her
uncle Charles’ statement to the Bishop that “the name is extinct except
in his family”:

“He never considered,” said she, “that I had cousins in this country
that had male heirs, as also a much lov’d brother now residing at
Halifax in North America, who has ten children, and has either four or
five sons lawfully by an amiable wife. From my brother’s account, his
Children possess uncommon abilities. His eldest son Henry he intends
for the Bar: his second son is a midshipman, and his third son Oliver,
he mention’d in a letter to me he would have educated in Ireland. The
Duke of Kent, my brother’s particular Patron and Friend, has got him
the place of Assistant Engineer at Halifax, and means to provide for
him in a better way when opportunity offers.”

A letter by Henry Goldsmith to a kinsman dated 20 March, 1808, brings
the story of this Nova Scotian family up to a somewhat later date.

“I am fixed here in the Commissariat Department and have a family
of nine children, five sons and four daughters. The eldest Henry,
follows the profession of the law: Hugh Colvill is I hope ere this, a
lieutenant in the Navy: Oliver is with a merchant at Boston: Charles is
a midshipman on this station, and Benjamin a boy. The daughters Ann,
Catherine, Eliza and Jane are at home with me, and promise to be all I
wish them.” (Prior II, 568.)

Hugh Colvill Goldsmith (1789-1841) referred to in his father’s letter,
merits a passing mention as being the young sailor who on 8 April,
1824, shocked Cornish susceptibilities by displacing the famous rocking
Logan Stone at the Land’s End, and had to arrange for its replacement
later in that year (29 October to 2 November) in its original position,
which as the weight of the stone is variously given as 60 to 80 tons,
was no easy matter. Doubtless because of this foolhardy exploit, he has
a niche in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, being in fact the
only member of the Goldsmith family other than the poet who is thus
honoured. He was born at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, on 2 April, 1789,
and was at the time of the Logan Rock incident a Naval Lieutenant in
command of the “Nimble” revenue cutter off the coast of Cornwall. He
was never promoted, and died at sea off St. Thomas in the West Indies
on 8 October, 1841. An incidental reference to Charles Goldsmith (also
referred to in his father’s letter of 1808 as a midshipman) shows that
he was afterwards a Commander in the Navy. His dates are 1795-1854.


10. CATHERINE, DAUGHTER OF THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Niece.)

The facts as to the daughter of Henry Goldsmith are easier to piece
together, as Bishop Percy drew up when in London in July, 1800, a
memorandum as to her case which has fortunately been preserved in
manuscript, and gives incidentally some particulars as to other members
of the Goldsmith family.

There are a number of pitiful letters from this poor little lonely and
suffering soul addressed to the Bishop at dates ranging from 1794 to
March, 1803, with drafts of two of the Bishop’s replies, mercifully
modified before despatch, referring to his monetary advances already
made to her, and speaking of the “constant source of plague and
vexation” which the question of the publication of the _Memoir_ had
been to him. The end came in July, 1803, when one McDonnell wrote
to the Bishop’s secretary that Catherine had died “after a painful
illness to which her dependant and helpless situation must have greatly
contributed.” McDonnell had seen to her being decently buried, and
thought 8 or 9 guineas would reimburse the total cost. No doubt the
Bishop sent him this.


11. MAURICE GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Brother.)

Maurice, the next child of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith after Oliver,
was born on 7 July, 1736, and was followed a year later (16 August,
1737) by Charles, and in 1740 by a fourth son John. Maurice was
not therefore, as stated erroneously in a note on page 86 of the
Percy _Memoir_ “our poet’s youngest brother.” He first emerges from
obscurity early in 1770, when he was in his thirty-fourth year, and
wrote to Oliver a letter from the Lawder’s house at Kilmore asking for
assistance. Oliver’s reply has fortunately been preserved. It bears no
date, but Percy ascribes it to “January 1770,” which is about right, as
endorsed upon it is Maurice’s receipt dated 4 February, 1770, £15, the
amount of a legacy left by Uncle Contarine to Oliver which he made over
to his brother (I, 89).

According to Prior (II, 519), Sir Joshua Reynolds undertook after
the death of the poet on 4 April, 1774, “to superintend his affairs
until the arrival from Ireland of such of his relatives as should be
authorised to receive them.” For answer Maurice Goldsmith appeared in
London “a plain unlettered man, too homely it seems in appearance
and manners to command much consideration from his late brother’s
accomplished friends” (Prior II, 524). The still surviving Mrs. Gwyn
(the “Jessamy Bride”) told Prior long years after that:

“Being in a small party in the house of Sir Joshua when the latter
was summoned downstairs, he returned after a considerable absence
and whispered her that he had been below with Goldsmith’s brother,
but thinking a little beer or spirits there better adapted to his
taste than tea in the drawing room, he had entertained him in what he
considered the most appropriate manner. She, with the usual kindness of
her sex, thought his behaviour scarcely becoming in the President to so
near a relative of his departed friend.” (II, 524.)

Doubtless it was at this time that Sir Joshua gave Maurice the
subjoined (undated) note of introduction to the “Revd. Dr. Percy
Northumberland House” still preserved amongst the Percy papers:

“Sir Joshua Reynolds’s compliments and begs leave to introduce to Dr.
Percy Mr. Goldsmith brother of his late friend Dr. Goldsmith.”

As the next of kin, Maurice was entitled to administer his brother’s
affairs, and there is at Somerset House the formal Probate granted on
28 June, 1774, to “Maurice Goldsmith, the natural and lawful brother
and next of kin to the said deceased.” As Oliver died in debt, there
was nothing for Maurice to administer or receive, and he left London
on 10 June, 1774, writing to Mr. Hawes, the apothecary who attended
his brother, his “most sincere thanks for your kind behaviour to me
since my arrival here,” and for his “care, assiduity and diligence with
respect to my brother Doctor Goldsmith.”

No doubt Percy improved the occasion, when Maurice came to see him
at Northumberland House with Sir Joshua’s note of introduction in
his pocket, by giving him some sound advice, with perhaps a cash
contribution on account, and certainly with an admonition to collect
all his brother’s letters to members of the family in Ireland that he
could manage to pick up. For on 15 July, 1776, Maurice wrote to Percy
as under:

                                                          July 15, 1776.

  Revd. Sir,

  When I last had the honour of seeing you at your Chambers in
  Northumberland House you most kindly told me you wod willingly serve
  me, I have Sir according to your Order collected in this Country all
  the Letters and a few anecdotes of my Brother, the late Dr. Goldsmith
  that I cod procure which I assure you Sir are entirely Jenuine, the
  Anecdotes wrote by his Sister who ware both inseperable Companions in
  their youth.

  I am much concernd that two of these Letters which I send are not
  entirely Legibl and that it will cost som pains to make them and the
  Memoirs fitt for the press; So Dr Sir to your goodness and protection
  I commit them thoroughly satisfied you will serve the Brother of a
  Man who really lovd and Esteemd you.

  I can assure you Sir I have gon several Miles to collect them and as
  my circumstances at present are not very affluent a small assistance
  wod be gratefully accepted, shd any accrue from these papers wich
  with what my good Friend Sr. Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Garrick promisd
  to supply, will not be deemd I hope unworthy of yr publication which
  you and Sir Joshua told me you wod get affected.

  I am Sir with the greatest respect Sir your verry Obet. Humble Servant

                                                       Maurice Goldsmith

  I hope you will do me the honour to let me know if you receivd. these
  by directing to me at Charles Town near Elphin Ireland.

There is nothing to show that anything definite followed this appeal
for money: and perhaps on that account, Maurice next addressed himself
to Dr. Johnson, to whom he wrote at Bolt Court an undated letter
bearing the Elphin post-mark as under:

      “To Doctor Johnson at his house in Bolt Court Fleet Street London.

  “I lately had the Honour to receive a letter from my good Friend the
  Revd. Docr. Percy, who from som Papers I had sent him did intend
  writing the life of the Late Docr. Goldsmith: he tells me that from
  the esteem you have had for the poor Docr. you have determind to
  take the work under your protection and that you had also promised
  to use your interest with the booksellers to let one impression be
  printed of all his poetical writings.... Your taking the trouble to
  write and set of(f) the life of the Docr. by your able judicious and
  highly esteemed pen will be a lasting honour to his memory and to his
  Family.”

In a note to the print of Oliver’s letter to Maurice of “January 1770,”
Percy gives the following further information about Maurice (p. 86).
“Having been bred to no business, he upon some occasion complained
to our bard, that he found it difficult to live like a gentleman, on
which Oliver begged he would, without delay, quit so unprofitable a
trade and betake himself to some handycraft employment. Maurice wisely
took the hint, and bound himself apprentice to a cabinet maker. He
had a shop in Dublin, when the Duke of Rutland was Lord Lieutenant:
who at the instance of Mr. Orde, then principal secretary of state
(now Lord Bolton) out of regard to his brother’s memory, made him
an inspector of the licences in that city. He was also appointed
mace-bearer on the erection of the Royal Irish Academy: both of them
places very compatible with his business. In the former he gave proof
of great integrity by detecting a fraud committed on the revenue in his
department, by which probably he might himself have profited, if he had
not been a man of principle. He died without issue, about seven years
ago.”

As a matter of fact, Maurice died early in the winter of 1792-3,
as appears from a letter written by Dr. Thomas Campbell, who first
attempted Oliver’s biography, to the Bishop of Dromore--then in
London--on 12 June, 1793 (Nichols’ _Literary Illustrations_, VII, 790).
Campbell says: “Alas! poor Maurice, He is to receive no comfort from
your Lordship’s labours in his behalf. He departed from a miserable
life early last winter, and luckily has left no children: but he has
left a widow, and faith a very nice one, who called on me one of the
few days I spent in Dublin after Christmas, so that you will not want
claimants.”

The numerous letters from Maurice to the Bishop which have been
preserved appear to show that he had really made sustained efforts to
collect in Ireland such of the original letters written by Oliver to
his relatives as were procurable. One such letter, and that of the
greatest interest, viz.: the letter written to Uncle Contarine from
Leyden in 1754 was not retrieved until nine years after the letter of
15 July, 1776, already quoted, for Maurice writes to the Bishop on 9
June, 1785, “I send your Lordship a letter from my brother to his
Uncle Contarine dated from Lydon.”

Vol. VIII of Nichols’ _Literary Illustrations_ (published in 1858)
contains at pp. 236-240, extracts from correspondence between the
Bishop and Edmund Malone from which it appears that on 16 June, 1785,
Percy was urging that the Members of the Club (of which Oliver was
an original Member) should show “our regard for the departed Bard by
relieving his only brother, and so far as I hear, the only one of his
family that wants relief.” (This was by no means the case, as Percy was
afterwards to learn by bitter experience.) He wrote again to Malone
on 17 October, 1786, “I must entreat you to exert all your influence
among the gentlemen of The Club, and particularly urge it on Sir Joshua
Reynolds, to procure subscriptions for the relief of poor Maurice
Goldsmith, who is suffering great penury and distress being not only
poor but very unhealthy.... A guinea a piece from the members of the
Club would be a great relief to him.”

Maurice’s subsequent appointment in 1787 as the Mace-bearer to the
Royal Irish Academy and his place in the Licence Office appears to have
eased somewhat the final years of his chequered life, but when he died
in 1792, a new appeal for the Bishop’s help came from his widow, Esther
Goldsmith.


11_a_. ESTHER GOLDSMITH, WIDOW OF MAURICE.

All that is known about her is that she is described in a Petition to
the Lord Lieutenant (the draft of which in Percy’s writing was left
amongst his papers) as “the daughter of a respectable clergyman,”
and as “left wholly destitute” by the death of her husband Maurice
Goldsmith. She got various grants from a fund in the gift of the Lord
Lieutenant known as the Concordatum, and on the last page of Prior’s
_Life_ (Vol. II, 576) is a letter from her dated Rushport, Elphin, 19
June, 1793, to Mr. J. C. Walker asking his influence in favour of her
appointment as housekeeper to the Royal Irish Academy.

There are two unpublished later letters (1794) from Rushport to Bishop
Percy, in one of which Esther wants to know about the subscription to
the _Memoir_, and in the other she thanks the Bishop for £15 which
she had received from the Concordatum Fund. A later letter dated 17
October, 1801, from Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry Goldsmith,
to the Bishop seems to show that Esther had remarried. “She thinks she
is as well entitled to the money arising from the publication of my
Uncle’s works as I am, but there I must beg leave to differ in opinion
with her.” Catherine gives some more particulars which she thinks the
Bishop ought to know, but “if Mrs. Goldsmith knew the information came
to your Lordship through me, ’twou’d bring her tongue upon me, which
she can use well.”


12. CHARLES GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Brother.)

Charles Goldsmith (born 1717, died 1805) the youngest but one of the
Revd. Charles Goldsmith’s children, comes on the scene earlier than
the others. Encouraged by the accounts which had reached Ireland of
his brother Oliver’s arrival in England and growing literary fame, he
ventured to the Metropolis in the year 1757, and as Northcote says in
his _Life of Reynolds_ (I, 332-3): “Having heard of his brother Noll
mixing in the first society in London, he took it for granted that his
fortune was made, and that he could soon make a brother’s also: he
therefore left home without notice: but soon found, on his arrival in
London, that the picture he had formed of his brother’s situation was
too highly coloured, that Noll could not introduce him to his great
friends, and in fact that, although out of a jail, he was often out of
a lodging.”

The garret where Goldsmith then wrote and slept is supposed to have
been one of the courts near Salisbury Square. His letters were
addressed from the neighbouring Temple-exchange coffee-house near
Temple Bar, and the secret of the lodging is said to have been won from
the coffee-house waiter “George” to whom Charles Goldsmith confided his
relationship. (Forster I, 124.)

Thus disappointed, Charles quitted London in a few days, suddenly and
secretly as he had entered it, “in a humble capacity it is said, for
Jamaica”: whence says Forster (I, 125) “he did not return till after
four-and-thirty years to tell this anecdote, and to be described by
Malone as not a little like his celebrated brother in person, speech
and manner.”

When Charles came back to this country in 1791 it was to arrange for
his ultimate settlement with his family in England: but after the peace
of Amiens (1802), he sold his house, and with his wife (a Creole), a
daughter and a son named Oliver (born in England), migrated to the
South of France. In consequence of Buonaparte’s order for detaining
British subjects, he again returned to England in 1803 by way of
Holland, much reduced in circumstances, and died about 1805 at humble
lodgings in Ossulston Street, Somers Town.

In an original letter of Charles himself, dated 2 September, 1795, in
the Percy bundle of Goldsmithiana, he says specifically: “I paid in
1791 a visit to my native country: on my arrival I found the greatest
part of my relations and old friends had paid the debt of Nature: my
brother Maurice remained: he gave me a pleasing account of the great
benefits you had been pleased to bestow on him.” As Maurice had died,
Charles put in a plea for help for himself in view of the necessity
of supporting “a wife and five children.” These were of course the
offspring of his Jamaica marriage with a Creole, and Charles said
nothing about any former marriage. Percy is not known to have answered
the letter: but on 8 December, 1801, Charles made another appeal.
Before answering this the Bishop made some cautious enquiries of
another member of the family, Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry,
who was already (since 1794) a candidate for his charity. She replied
on 28 December, 1801, that “there are some parts of his [Charles’]
letter true, and many others not so. He is indeed a most delightful
companion, abounds with wit and humour, and is perfectly the gentleman,
but he does not possess the steadiness or benevolent heart that my
much respected father or Uncle Oliver did. At the same time I think
he has a much better claim than my Uncle Maurice’s widow, for she was
left a very handsome fortune of near two hundred a year, and more than
a thousand pounds in ready money. I think she has no title at all to
receive anything from the sale of the Poems.” Later, Catherine wrote
again to the Bishop on 6 January, 1802, saying she had information that
her Uncle (Charles) “had a great deal of money in the Funds, that he
had some children and the most of them natural children. I assure you,
my Lord, he has a great deal of art and duplicity.” Percy wrote Charles
in 1802 some sort of letter, which the latter says he never received.
This was very possibly the case, in view of his migration to France
after the peace of Amiens.

Through the exertions of Edmund Malone, Charles was discovered to be
back in London, and he wrote to the Bishop in 1803 some details of his
experiences in France, following this up later in 1804 with a fuller
statement which is very readable and quite interesting.

The last letter preserved from Charles Goldsmith is dated 24 March,
1805, and is in a shaky hand, saying he is afraid “my poor little son
Oliver will soon be left fatherless and without a friend.” Probably
Charles died soon after, and according to the letter of a neighbour,
Mr. R. C. Roffe, dated 12 February, 1821, “almost in a state of second
childhood. His wife, with a son (Oliver) he had by her in England,
went to the West Indies”: and according to a quotation given by Prior
(II, 574) from a Jamaica newspaper, this Oliver died at Belmont on 21
October, 1828, in the thirty-second year of his age.

It must be added to the above that before Percy had heard from Charles,
he had in 1794 received a letter from one John Goldsmith, a sergeant of
the South Cork Militia, claiming to be Charles’s son. At first Percy
evidently thought the man an impostor. On one of John’s letters the
Bishop had pencilled “natural son of Charles Goldsmith,” and has marked
as “not true” a story of the marriage of his parents by “my uncle Henry
Goldsmith, who was then Rector of the Parish they lived in,” and
the reception of such parents by the grandmother Ann Goldsmith and
Catherine Hodson his aunt. John told the Bishop on 2 October, 1808, “I
did not imagine my father Charles Goldsmith was in existence, as I did
not either see or hear from him since I saw your Lordship in Dublin in
the year 1793, nor did I ever hear of his being married a second time.”
As there are amongst the Percy papers receipts dated in October, 1808,
May, 1809, and September, 1810, for a total of £35 in all for money
disbursed by the Bishop for the benefit of this John Goldsmith, Percy
may have considered there was something in his story after all.

As to what subsequently happened to this John Goldsmith and the eight
children on whose behalf he appealed to the generosity of Dr. Percy,
there seems to be no information available, but Prior (II, 574)
mentions that “a person named Goldsmith, and claiming to be a nephew
of the poet, died in the Cholera Hospital in Bristol in 1833: he was
in a state of destitution and may have had no just right to the honour
he assumed.” He may have been this John Goldsmith, son (legitimate or
otherwise) of Charles Goldsmith.


THE PROFITS OF THE PERCY MEMOIR.

The original design of Bishop Percy in undertaking the _Memoir_ of his
friend Goldsmith was to benefit Maurice. Then Catherine, daughter of
Henry, was added as a participant in the assumed profits: afterwards
(when Maurice died and Charles revealed himself) Charles Goldsmith,
the sole then remaining brother of Oliver. Percy’s ultimate decision,
when the work took shape and he had made his agreement with Cadell
and Davies in 1797, was for 125 of the 250 free copies of the work
given to him by Cadell and Davies for disposal to be sold through
White the bookseller of Fleet Street for the benefit of Charles, and
the remaining 125 copies to be sold through Archer the bookseller of
Dublin for the benefit of Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry. The
London copies seem to have gone off fairly well. Percy in a Memorandum
dated Dromore, 24 May, 1808, explaining the affair long after the
event to Dr. R. Anderson (_Literary Illustrations_, VII, 189-192),
says that from Charles “the Bishop frequently heard, informing him
that the payments were duly made, and whatever copies he desired were
delivered to him to dispose of among his friends for his own benefit.
He believes Mr. Charles Goldsmith is since dead, but the account is
still open with his family, to whom Mr. White must account for any that
may have remained of the 125 copies delivered to him.” The case of the
125 Irish copies was less satisfactory. “It was principally on account
of Catherine Goldsmith, who had been reduced to indigence, that the
Bishop had applied in 1800 to Messrs. Cadell and Davies to afford some
present relief, to alleviate the distress occasioned by the delay of
the publication: which being refused by them, the Bishop had supplied
the same himself, and continued to do so till her death, which took
place before Mr. Archer had come to a settlement for the 125 copies
transmitted to him. Part of these are still unsold.... Whatever arises
from this sale, or remains of Mr. Archer’s balance that was unpaid to
or for the niece, shall be delivered to any relative of Dr. Goldsmith
who shall be found a proper object of the same.” (Nichols’ _Literary
Illustrations_, VII, 191.)

[Illustration]




FOOTNOTES:


[1] Dr. Thomas Bernard (1728-1806), who was also--like Percy--a member
of The Club.

[2] _See_ letter from Malone to Percy, 28 Sept., 1807, in _Litt. Ill._,
VIII, 240.

[3] I have ascertained that it is not now in the possession of the
Nichols family. E. C.

[4] The last two figures are torn away.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Superscript characters are preceded by a carat character: Esq^r.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.





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