сл it may favours by putting the firere wer write last I shall for the future вре likely to have a protector who de cline, taking advantage of their dependent Intuation, and forms that empottance which 1767. Æt. 39. 1767. Æt. 39. may be acquired by writthing with their anxieties. am Dear Sir with the greatest esteem your most obedient humble servant; Having taken this decisive step, Goldsmith wrote on the following day to the now rival manager, who had left town for Litchfield; and, though his letter shows the coolness which had arisen between them, it is a curious proof of his deference to the sensitiveness of Garrick that he should use only the name of the old Covent Garden patentee, and put forth what he had recently done with his play under cover of his original intention in respect to it. His letter is dated London, July 20, 1767, and runs thus. "Mr. Beard renewed his claim to the piece which I had "Sir, A few days ago 1767. "written for his stage, and had as a friend submitted to your “perusal. As I found you had very great difficulties about Et. 39. "that piece, I complied with his desire; thinking it wrong to 66 66 take up the attention of my friends with such petty concerns as mine, or to load your good nature by a compliance rather "with their requests than my merits. I am extremely sorry 66 that you should think me warm at our last meeting; your "judgment certainly ought to be free, especially in a matter “which must in some measure concern your own credit and "interest. I assure you, sir, I have no disposition to differ with you on this or any other account, but am with an high "opinion of your abilities and a very real esteem, sir, your "most obedient humble servant, OLIVER GOLDSMITH." this Garrick answered by a letter, dated five days later from Litchfield, in these terms. Sir, I was at Birmingham when your letter came to this place, or I should have answered "and thanked you for it immediately. I was indeed much "hurt that your warmth at our last meeting mistook my "sincere and friendly attention to your play, for the remains To " of a former misunderstanding which I had as much forgot as 66 66 if it had never existed. What I said to you at my own house I now repeat, that I felt more pain in giving my sentiments than you possibly would in receiving them. It has been "the business, and ever will be, of my life, to live on the best "terms with men of genius; and I know that Dr. Gold"smith will have no reason to change his previous friendly 66 disposition towards me, as I shall be glad of every future opportunity to convince him how much I am his obedient "servant and well-wisher, D. GARRICK." * Thus fairly launched was this great theatrical rivalry; which These letters are in the supplementary Garrick MSS. now in Mr. Colburn's possession. 1767. received even additional zest from the spirit with which Et. 39. Foote was now beginning his first regular campaign in the Haymarket, by right of the summer patent the Duke of York had obtained for him (some compensation for the accident at Lord Mexborough's the preceding summer, when a practical joke of the Duke's cost Foote his leg), and with help of the two great reinforcements already secured for Drury Lane, of Barry and his betrothed Mrs. Dancer, afterwards his wife. They played in a poor and somewhat absurd tragedy called the Countess of Salisbury, which had made a vast sensation in Dublin; and it is related of Goldsmith, as an instance of the zeal with which he had embarked against the Drury Lane party, that he took whimsical occasion during its performance of suddenly turning a crowded and till then favourable audience against the tragical Countess and her representative, by ludicrous allusion to another kind of actress then figuring on a wider stage. He had sat out four foolish acts with great calmness and apparent temper; but as the plot thickened in the fifth, and the scene became filled with "blood" and slaughter," he got up from his seat in a great hurry, cried out very audibly," Brownrigg! Brownrigg! by God!" and left the theatre. It may have been partizanship, but it was also very pardonable wit. 66 Nor, if partizanship may be justified at any time, was it here without its excuses. He had reason to think Colman * He had pulled down the old theatre in the recess, and having rebuilt it as it now stands, opened it in May 1767 with "an occasional prelude." Bee's Life of Foote, prefixed to the Works, i. cxxiv. The original theatre had been appropriated to the performance of French plays, at that time a highly fashionable amusement. I copy from a newspaper of 15th December 1720 the announcement of its first opening: "At the New Theatre in the Haymarket, between Little Suffolk-street and "James-street, which is now completely finished, will be performed a French "comedy, as soon as the rest of the actors arrive from Paris." + Davies's Life of Garrick, ii. 156. embarked in a good work, and for which, whether knowingly 1767. or not, he had made an unexampled sacrifice. On the Et. 39. death of stingy old Lord Bath three years before, he had left his enormous wealth (upwards of £1,200,000) to an old brother he despised, with a sort of injunction that his nephew was to have part in its ultimate disposition; and the Covent Garden arrangements had not long been completed when General Pulteney died, leaving Colman a simple fourhundred a-year. His connection with Miss Ford the actress had been displeasing to the general; but the unpardonable offence was his having secretly turned manager of a theatre.* Miss Ford was the mother of the younger Colman, now a child, yet already old enough to feel, as he remembered when he wrote his Random Records, the impression at this time made upon him by the poet's simple and playful manners, and by that love of children which had attended Goldsmith through life, which was noted everywhere, and made itself felt at even the small dinner parties of pompous Hawkins. "I little thought what I should have to boast," says Miss Hawkins, describing her experiences when she used to sit upon the carpet in the drawing-room till dinner was announced, "when “Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Gill by two bits "of paper on his fingers." This lady observed, too, a distinction between Johnson's and Garrick's way with children, which the younger Colman partly confirms in contrasting 66 Walpole's Letters to Mann, i. 366. + Miss Hawkins's Anecdotes (1822), 7. "Garrick had a frown, and spoke impetuously-Johnson was slow and kind "in his way to children." Miss Hawkins's Anecdotes, 23. It is in an earlier part of the same book (not her Memoirs, which were not published till a few years later) she describes very pleasantly her childish recollection of Garrick: "I see "him now, in a dark blue coat, the button-holes bound with gold, a small cocked. "hat laced with gold, his waistcoat very open, and his countenance never at rest, "and, indeed, seldom his person . . . sometimes sitting on a table, and then, if " he saw my brothers at a distance on the lawn, shooting off like an arrow out of bow in a spirited chase of them round the garden." Anecdotes, 23. 66 3 |