Goldsmith, William Black [fiction book recommendations txt] 📗

find a splendid stag coming slowly within sure range. But these things are not necessary to human happiness: it is possible to do without them and yet not "suffer." Even if Goldsmith had given half of his substance away to the poor, there was enough left to cover all the necessary wants of a human being; and if he chose so to order his affairs as to incur the suffering of debt, why, that was his own business, about which nothing further needs be said. It is to be suspected, indeed, that he did not care to practise those excellent maxims of prudence and frugality which he frequently preached; but the world is not much concerned about that now. If Goldsmith had received ten times as much money as the booksellers gave him, he would still have died in debt. And it is just possible that we may exaggerate Goldsmith's sensitiveness on this score. He had had a life-long familiarity with duns and borrowing; and seemed very contented when the exigency of the hour was tided over. An angry landlady is unpleasant, and an arrest is awkward; but in comes an opportune guinea, and the bottle of Madeira is opened forthwith.

In these rooms in Wine Office Court, and at the suggestion or entreaty of Newbery, Goldsmith produced a good deal of miscellaneous writing--pamphlets, tracts, compilations, and what not--of a more or less marketable kind. It can only be surmised that by this time he may have formed some idea of producing a book not solely meant for the market, and that the characters in the _Vicar of Wakefield_ were already engaging his attention; but the surmise becomes probable enough when we remember that his project of writing the _Traveller_, which was not published till 1764, had been formed as far back as 1755, while he was wandering aimlessly about Europe, and that a sketch of the poem was actually forwarded by him then to his brother Henry in Ireland. But in the meantime this hack-work, and the habits of life connected with it, began to tell on Goldsmith's health; and so, for a time, he left London (1762), and went to Tunbridge and then to Bath. It is scarcely possible that his modest fame had preceded him to the latter place of fashion; but it may be that the distinguished folk of the town received this friend of the great Dr. Johnson with some small measure of distinction; for we find that his next published work, _The Life of Richard Nash, Esq._, is respectfully dedicated to the Right Worshipful the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of Bath. The Life of the recently deceased Master of Ceremonies was published anonymously (1762); but it was generally understood to be Goldsmith's; and indeed the secret of the authorship is revealed in every successive line. Among the minor writings of Goldsmith there is none more delightful than this: the mock-heroic gravity, the half-familiar contemptuous good-nature with which he composes this Funeral March of a Marionette, are extremely whimsical and amusing. And then what an admirable picture we get of fashionable English society in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Bath and Nash were alike in the heyday of their glory--the fine ladies with their snuff-boxes, and their passion for play, and their extremely effective language when they got angry; young bucks come to flourish away their money, and gain by their losses the sympathy of the fair; sharpers on the look-out for guineas, and adventurers on the look-out for weak-minded heiresses; duchesses writing letters in the most doubtful English, and chair-men swearing at any one who dared to walk home on foot at night.

No doubt the _Life of Beau Nash_ was a bookseller's book; and it was made as attractive as possible by the recapitulation of all sorts of romantic stories about Miss S----n, and Mr. C----e, and Captain K----g; but throughout we find the historian very much inclined to laugh at his hero, and only refraining now and again in order to record in serious language traits indicative of the real goodness of disposition of that fop and gambler. And the fine ladies and gentlemen, who lived in that atmosphere of scandal, and intrigue, and gambling, are also from time to time treated to a little decorous and respectful raillery. Who does not remember the famous laws of polite breeding written out by Mr. Nash--Goldsmith hints that neither Mr. Nash nor his fair correspondent at Blenheim, the Duchess of Marlborough, excelled in English composition--for the guidance of the ladies and gentlemen who were under the sway of the King of Bath? "But were we to give laws to a nursery, we should make them childish laws," Goldsmith writes gravely. "His statutes, though stupid, were addressed to fine gentlemen and ladies, and were probably received with sympathetic approbation. It is certain they were in general religiously observed by his subjects, and executed by him with impartiality; neither rank nor fortune shielded the refractory from his resentment." Nash, however, was not content with prose in enforcing good manners. Having waged deadly war against the custom of wearing boots, and having found his ordinary armoury of no avail against the obduracy of the country squires, he assailed them in the impassioned language of poetry, and produced the following "Invitation to the Assembly," which, as Goldsmith remarks, was highly relished by the nobility at Bath on account of its keenness, severity, and particularly its good rhymes.


"Come, one and all, to Hoyden Hall,
For there's the assembly this night;
None but prude fools
Mind manners and rules;
We Hoydens do decency slight.
Come, trollops and slatterns,
Cocked hats and white aprons,
This best our modesty suits;
For why should not we
In dress be as free
As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?"


The sarcasm was too much for the squires, who yielded in a body; and when any stranger through inadvertence presented himself in the assembly-rooms in boots, Nash was so completely master of the situation that he would politely step up to the intruder and suggest that he had forgotten his horse.

Goldsmith does not magnify the intellectual capacity of his hero; but he gives him credit for a sort of rude wit that was sometimes effective enough. His physician, for example, having called on him to see whether he had followed a prescription that had been sent him the previous day, was greeted in this fashion: "Followed your prescription? No. Egad, if I had, I should have broken my neck, for I flung it out of the two pair of stairs window." For the rest, this diverting biography contains some excellent warnings against the vice of gambling; with a particular account of the manner in which the Government of the day tried by statute after statute to suppress the tables at Tunbridge and Bath, thereby only driving the sharpers to new subterfuges. That the Beau was in alliance with sharpers, or, at least, that he was a sleeping partner in the firm, his biographer admits; but it is urged on his behalf that he was the most generous of winners, and again and again interfered to prevent the ruin of some gambler by whose folly he would himself have profited. His constant charity was well known; the money so lightly come by was at the disposal of any one who could prefer a piteous tale. Moreover he made no scruple about exacting from others that charity which they could well afford. One may easily guess who was the duchess mentioned in the following story of Goldsmith's narration:--

"The sums he gave and collected for the Hospital were great,
and his manner of doing it was no less admirable. I am told
that he was once collecting money in Wiltshire's room for
that purpose, when a lady entered, who is more remarkable
for her wit than her charity, and not being able to pass by
him unobserved, she gave him a pat with her fan, and said,
'You must put down a trifle for me, Nash, for I have no
money in my pocket.' 'Yes, madam,' says he, 'that I will
with pleasure, if your grace will tell me when to stop;'
then taking an handful of guineas out of his pocket, he
began to tell them into his white hat--' One, two, three,
four, five ----' 'Hold, hold!' says the duchess, 'consider
what you are about.' 'Consider your rank and fortune,
madam,' says Nash, and continues telling--'six, seven,
eight, nine, ten.' Here the duchess called again, and seemed
angry. 'Pray compose yourself, madam,' cried Nash, 'and
don't interrupt the work of charity,--eleven, twelve,
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.' Here the duchess stormed, and
caught hold of his hand. 'Peace, madam,' says Nash, 'you
shall have your name written in letters of gold, madam, and
upon the front of the building, madam,--sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen, twenty.' 'I won't pay a farthing more,'
says the duchess. 'Charity hides a multitude of sins,'
replies Nash,--'twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three,
twenty-four, twenty-five.' 'Nash,' says she, 'I protest you
frighten me out of my wits. L--d, I shall die!' 'Madam, you
will never die with doing good; and if you do, it will be
the better for you,' answered Nash, and was about to
proceed; but perceiving her grace had lost all patience, a
parley ensued, when he, after much altercation, agreed to
stop his hand and compound with her grace for thirty
guineas. The duchess, however, seemed displeased the whole
evening, and when he came to the table where she was
playing, bid him, 'Stand farther, an ugly devil, for she
hated the sight of him.' But her grace afterwards having a
run of good luck, called Nash to her. 'Come,' says she, 'I
will be friends with you, though you are a fool; and to let
you see I am not angry, there is ten guineas more for your
charity. But this I insist on, that neither my name nor the
sum shall be mentioned.'"

At the ripe age of eighty-seven the "beau of three generations" breathed his last (1761); and, though he had fallen into poor ways, there were those alive who remembered his former greatness, and who chronicled it in a series of epitaphs and poetical lamentations. "One thing is common almost with all of them," says Goldsmith, "and that is that Venus, Cupid, and the Graces are commanded to weep, and that Bath shall never find such another." These effusions are forgotten now; and so would Beau Nash be also, but for this biography, which, no doubt meant merely for the book-market of the day, lives and is of permanent value by reason of the charm of its style, its pervading humour, and the vivacity of its descriptions of the fashionable follies of the eighteenth century. _Nullum fere genus scribendi non tetigit. Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit._ Who but Goldsmith could have written so delightful a book about such a poor creature as Beau Nash?


CHAPTER VIII.


The Arrest.

It was no doubt owing to Newbery that Goldsmith, after his return to London, was induced to abandon, temporarily or altogether, his apartments in Wine Office Court, and take lodgings in the house of a Mrs. Fleming, who lived somewhere or other