The Family Letters of Oliver Goldsmith A Paper Read Before the Bibliographical Society, October 15th, 1917 — Key Ideas to Explore

dsmith 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.

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.