"'My Dear Sir,—Your saying you would play my Good-Natured Man makes me wish it. The money you advanced me upon Newbery's note I have the mortification to find is not yet paid, but he says he will in two or three days. What I mean by this letter is to lend me sixty pound, for which I will give you Newbery's note, so that the whole of my debt will be an hundred, for which you shall have Newbery's note as a security. This may be paid either from my alteration if my benefit should come to so much, but at any rate I will take care you shall not be a loser. I will give you a new character in my comedy and knock out Lofty, which does not do, and will make such other alterations as you direct.—I am yours,
"'Oliver Goldsmith.
"'I beg an answer.'
"This letter is indorsed in Garrick's handwriting as 'Goldsmith's parlaver.' But though it would thus appear to have inspired but little sympathy or confidence, and the sacrifice of Lofty had come too late and been too reluctant, Garrick's answer, begged so earnestly, was not unfavourable. He evaded the altered comedy; spoke of the new one already mentioned between them; and offered the money required on Goldsmith's own acceptance.... The second note exhibits such manifest improvement in the writing as a sudden removal of a sore anxiety might occasion; but the writer's usual epistolary neatness is still absent. It is hastily folded up in three-cornered shape, is also sealed with wafer, and also indorsed by Garrick, 'Goldsmith's parlaver.'
"'My Dear Friend, I thank you! I wish I could do something to serve you. I shall have a comedy for you in a season or two at furthest, that I believe will be worth your acceptance, for I fancy I will make it a fine thing. You shall have the refusal. I wish you would not take up Newbery's note, but let Waller' [probably a mistake for Wallis, Garrick's solicitor] 'tease him, without, however, coming to extremities; let him haggle after him and he will get it. He owes it and will pay it. I'm sorry you are ill. I will draw upon you one month after date for sixty pound, and your acceptance will be ready money, part of which I want to go down to Barton with. May God preserve my honest little man, for he has my heart.—Ever,
"'Oliver Goldsmith.'"
A final reminiscence of Garrick and this neighbourhood shows the actor soliciting the Adam brothers on behalf of Andrew Becket, who, when the Adelphi was being erected, had a bookseller's shop in the Strand. He was the son of Thomas Becket, the Pall Mall bookseller, whose establishment was frequented by Garrick. He must have been a precocious youth, for, at the age of fourteen, he had written a comedy founded on Rousseau's Emile, and a poem entitled Theodosius and Constantia. Born in 1749, he died in 1843. He was a frequent contributor to the chief magazines of his day. He had a great grievance against Ralph Griffiths, the proprietor of the Monthly Review, for having given him only forty-five pounds for nearly five years' work—280 articles, the result of reading and condensing 590 volumes. In Shakespeare Himself Again, Andrew Becket "released the original text from much muddy nonsense of commentators."[40]
ST MARY ROUNCEVAL (THE ORIGINAL SITE OF NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE).
Garrick besought the corner house of Adam Street for his friend, a request that was granted. He asked for this "corner blessing," and addressed the architects as his "dear Adelphi." The house was No. 73 Strand, at the north-east corner of Adam Street. It was destroyed by fire on June 28, 1822, but rebuilt according to the original plan. Garrick, in the course of his letter to the Adams, said: "Pray, my dear and very good friends, think a little of this matter, and if you can make us happy, by suiting all our conveniences, we shall make his shop, as old Jacob Tonson's was formerly, the rendezvous of the first people in England. I have a little selfishness in this request—I never go to a coffee-house, seldom to taverns, and should constantly (if this action takes place) be at Becket's at one at noon and six at night." Garrick, no doubt, meant what he said, but there is no trace of his having visited Andrew Becket in this "corner blessing." The shop is now occupied by a firm of silversmiths.
Samuel Foote, who hated Garrick, is said to have related a story in which I have little faith. But, as it concerns the great actor and the Adelphi, I give it for what it is worth. "Garrick," said Foote, "lately invited Hurd to dine with him in the Adelphi, and after dinner, the evening being very warm, they walked up and down in front of the house. As they passed and repassed the dining-room windows, Garrick was in a perfect agony, for he saw that there was a thief in one of the candles which was burning on one of the tables; and yet Hurd was a person of such consequence that he could not run away from him to prevent the waste of his tallow." This story was put into print by Samuel Rogers, who was a boy of sixteen at the time of Garrick's death. Foote died in 1777, when Richard Hurd was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry.