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).
4. THE CONTARINES.
(Oliver’s Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin.)
As already stated, one of the daughters of Robert Goldsmith named Jane married the Revd. Thomas Contarine, Vicar of Oran. She bore him a daughter Jane, the playmate of Oliver’s childhood, and died in her sixty-third year on the 12 June, 1744 (Prior I, 55, note). “Uncle Contarine” was the best, kindest and most consistent friend of Oliver Goldsmith in his boyhood and student days; and Oliver had a deep sense of gratitude to him. He wrote to Contarine two letters from Edinburgh in 1753 (printed in Prior I, 145 and 154), and a third letter from Leyden in 1754, which is fortunately preserved.
The following incident, illustrative of Oliver’s affection for his generous uncle, is copied into the Memoir of 1801 (page 33) from Percy’s own manuscript. Oliver had borrowed some money from an Irish friend at Leyden “with which he determined to quit Holland and to visit the adjacent countries. But unfortunately his curiosity led him to view a garden, where the choicest flowers were reared for sale. Poor Goldsmith, recollecting that his uncle was an admirer of such rarities, without reflecting on the reduced state of his own finances, was tempted to purchase some of these costly flower roots to be sent as a present to Ireland, and thereby left himself so little cash that he is said to have set out on his travels with only one clean shirt and no money in his pocket.”
Later Oliver wrote to Contarine’s daughter, Mrs. Lawder, on 15 August, 1758, from the Temple Exchange Coffee House an affectionate letter apologising for his long silence, but explaining that he wrote to Kilmore from Leyden, Louvain and Rouen and received no answer, and referring thus to his uncle: “he is no more that soul of fire as when I once knew him. His mind was too active an inhabitant not to disorder the feeble mansion of its abode, for the richest jewels soonest wear their settings. Yet who but a fool would lament his condition, he now forgets the calamities of life, perhaps indulgent heaven has given him a foretaste of that tranquillity here which he so well deserves hereafter.”
Mr. Contarine died a few months after the date of this letter, aged about 74, and left Oliver a legacy of £15, which he eventually made over to his impecunious brother Maurice. In announcing this decision (in January, 1770) Oliver says to Maurice: “The kindness of that good couple to our poor shattered family demands our sincerest gratitude, and though they have almost forgot me yet if good things at last arrive, I hope one day to return, and encrease their good humour by adding to my own. I have sent my cousin Jenny [Mrs. Lawder] a miniature picture of myself as I believe it is the most acceptable present I can offer.”
Contarine’s daughter Jane married James Lawder, a well-to-do resident of Kilmore, near Carrick on Shannon. To her Oliver addressed on 15 August, 1758, the affectionate letter already quoted dwelling on the past and signing himself “Your affectionate and obliged Kinsman.” It seems to have provoked no reply.
The end of the Lawders was tragic. The husband was treacherously murdered by his servants and labourers, who carried off the plate in the house and about £300 in money. For this crime no less than six of them were executed. The wife, who narrowly escaped being murdered also, died in Dublin about 1790 (Prior I, 130, note).