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).