"I have often 1768. they passed into the mouths of others. "desired Mr. Johnson not to call me Goldy," was his Et. 40. complaint to Davies.* It was a courteous way of saying, "I wish you wouldn't call me Goldy, whatever Mr. "Johnson does." The comedy was played ten consecutive nights: their majesties commanding it on the fifth night (a practice not unwise, though become unfashionable); and the third, sixth, and ninth, being advertised as appropriated to the author. But though this seems a reasonably fair success, there is no reason to doubt Cooke's statement, that, even with the sacrifice of the bailiffs, it rather dragged, than supported itself buoyantly, through the remainder of the season. Shuter gave it an eleventh night, a month later, by selecting it for his benefit; when Goldsmith, in a fit of extravagant good nature, sent him ten guineas (perhaps at the time the last he had in the world) for a box ticket. It was again, after an interval of three years, played three nights; and it was selected for Mrs. Green's benefit the second year after that, when the bailiffs re-appeared. This is all I can discover of its career upon the stage while the author yet lived to enjoy it. "Thursday, Oct. 14, 1773. * I quote Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides. When "Dr. Johnson awaked this morning, he called 'Lanky!' having, I suppose, been "thinking of Langton, but corrected himself instantly, and cried, 'Bozzy!' He "has a way of contracting the names of his friends. Goldsmith feels himself so "important now, as to be displeased at it. I remember one day, when Tom "Davies was telling that Doctor Johnson said, 'We are all in labour for a name "to Goldy's play,' Goldsmith cried, 'I have often desired him not to call me "Goldy." Boswell, v. 40. Some Account of the Stage, v. 307. But the reader may judge with what chance of better success, when the ponderous Bensley had replaced Powell in the hero, and Lofty, now played by a Mr. Kniveton, profited no longer by the whim and eccentricity of Woodward. CHAPTER II. 1768. Et. 40. SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS, HUMBLE CLIENTS, AND SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAYS. On the stage, then, the success of Goldsmith's comedy of the Good Natured Man was far from equal to its claims of character, wit, and humour; yet its success, in other respects, very sensibly affected its author's ways of life. His three nights had produced him nearly £400; Griffin had paid him £100 more; and for any good fortune of this kind, his past fortunes had not fitted him. So little, he would himself say, was he used to receive money "in a lump," that when Newbery made him his first advance of twenty guineas, his embarrassment was as great as Captain Brazen's in the play, whether he should build a privateer or a play-house with the money.* He now took means hardly less effective to disembarrass himself of the profits of his comedy. "He "descended from his attic story in the Staircase, Inner Temple," says Cooke (who here writes somewhat hastily, one descent from the "attic" having already been made), "and purchased chambers in Brick-court, Middle Temple, "for which he gave four hundred pounds." They were 1768. number two on the second floor, on the right hand ascending the staircase; and consisted of two reasonably-sized old- Et. 40. fashioned rooms, with a third smaller room or sleeping-closet, which he furnished handsomely, with "Wilton" carpets, "blue"morine-covered" mahogany sofas, blue morine curtains, chairs corresponding, chimney glasses, Pembroke and card tables, and tasteful book-shelves.* Thus, and by payment for the lease of the chambers, the sum Cooke mentions would seem to have been expended; and with it began a system of waste and debt, involving him in difficulties he never surmounted. The first was in the shape of money borrowed from Mr. Edmund Bott, a barrister who occupied the rooms opposite his, on the same floor; who remained very intimate with him for the rest of his life; and whose treatise on the Poor Laws is supposed to have received revision and improvement from his pen. Exactly below Goldsmith's were the chambers of Mr. Blackstone; and the rising lawyer, at this time finishing the fourth volume of his Commentaries, is reported to have made frequent complaint of the distracting social noises that went on above. A Mr. Children succeeded him, and made the same complaint. The nature of the noises may be presumed from what is stated on the authority of a worthy Irish merchant settled in London (Mr. Seguin), to two of whose children Goldsmith stood godfather; and whose intimacy with the poet descended as an heirloom to his family, by whom every tradition of it has been carefully cherished. Members of this family recollected also other Irish friends (a Mr. Pollard, of Castle Pollard, and his wife) who visited London at this time, and were entertained by Goldsmith.t They 1768. remembered dinners at which Johnson, Percy, Bickerstaff, Et. 40. Kelly," and a variety of authors of minor note," were guests. They talked of supper parties with younger people, as well in the London chambers as in suburban lodgings; preceded by blind man's buff, forfeits, or games of cards; and where Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk. They related how he would sing all kinds of Irish songs; with what special enjoyment he gave the Scotch ballad of Johnny Armstrong (his old nurse's favourite); how cheerfully he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way to the general amusement; and to what accompaniment of uncontrollable laughter he "danced a "minuet with Mrs. Seguin." Through all the distance of time may not one see even yet, moving through the steps of the minuet, that clumsy little figure, those short thick legs, those plain features, all the clumsier and plainer for the satin-grain coat, the garter-blue silk breeches, the gold sprig buttons, and the rich strawcoloured tamboured waistcoat,-yet with every sense but of honest gladness and frank enjoyment lost in the genial good nature, the beaming mirth and truth of soul, the childlike glee and cordial fun, which turns into a cheerful little hop the austere majesty of the stateliest of all the dances? Nor let me omit from these agreeable memories a delightful anecdote which the same Mr. Ballantyne who has told us of the Wednesday-club pleasantly preserves for us in his Mackliniana. It introduces to us the scene of another "cheerful little hop," which, at about this time also, Macklin the actor gave at his house, when "Doctor Goldsmith, the facetious Doctor Glover, "Fenton the accomplished Welsh bard, and the humane Tom King the comedian, were of the party." On this occasion so entirely happy was Goldsmith, that he danced and threw up his wig to the ceiling, and cried out that "men were never so "much like men as when they looked like boys!" Little of the self-satisfied importance which Boswell is most fond of connecting with him, is to be discovered in recollections like these. And they are confirmed by Cooke's more precise account of scenes he witnessed at the Wednesday-club, where Goldsmith's more intimate associates seem now to have attempted to restrain the too great familiarity he permitted to the humbler members. An amusing instance is related. The fat man who sang songs had a friend in a certain Mr. B, described as a good sort of man and an eminent pig-butcher; who piqued himself very much on his good fellowship with the author of the Traveller, and whose constant manner of drinking to him was, "Come, Noll, "here's my service to you, old boy!" Repeating this one night after the comedy was played, and when there was a very full club, Glover went over to Goldsmith, and said in a whisper that he ought not to allow such liberties. "Let "him alone," answered Goldsmith, "and you'll see how civilly I'll let him down." He waited a little; and, on the next pause in the conversation, called out aloud, with a marked expression of politeness and courtesy, “Mr. B, I "have the honor of drinking your good health." "Thanke'e, "thanke'e, Noll," returned Mr. B, pulling his pipe out of his mouth, and answering with great briskness. "Well, where's the advantage of your reproof?" asked Glover. "In truth," remarked Goldsmith, with an air of good-humoured disappointment, intended to give greater force to a stroke of meditated wit, "I give it up; I ought to have known before now, there is no putting a pig in the right way." 66 66 1768. Æt. 40. |