5. CATHERINE GOLDSMITH (MRS. DANIEL HODSON).
(Sister of Oliver.)
Catherine was born 13 January, 1721. It was her private marriage with Daniel Hodson, “the son of a gentleman of good family residing at St. John’s near Athlone,” who was at the time of the engagement a pupil of Henry Goldsmith, that led to Oliver’s entering Trinity College as a sizar instead of as a pensioner like Henry. Her father, the Revd. Charles Goldsmith, was greatly indignant at this marriage, and in order to give his daughter a marriage portion of £400, sacrificed his tithes and rented land.
To his brother-in-law Hodson, Oliver wrote two very cordial letters on 27 December, 1757, and November, 1758, the second containing a paragraph: “Dear Sister, I wrote to Kilmore (the residence of the Lawders). I wish you would let me know how that family stands affected with regard to me.” It is curious that in Oliver’s letter to Maurice of January, 1770, he does not ask after his sister Catherine, though he enquires about “my mother, my brother Hodson and his son, my brother Harry’s son and daughter” and other members of the family. After Oliver’s death, however, Catherine Hodson, appealed to by Maurice, wrote out a full and very sympathetic account, running to twelve foolscap pages, of Oliver’s youthful adventures, terminating with his being sent to Edinburgh in 1753 “for the studdy of Physick. From this date I am a stranger to what happened him: he wrote severall letters to his friends from Switzerland, Germany and Italy.”
With reference to Oliver’s enquiry quoted above as to “my Brother Hodson and his son,” it may be mentioned that the poet befriended this nephew in London in 1772 to the extent of allowing him to run up a bill for £35:3:0 with his tailor William Filby. It is to be feared this bill was still unpaid at Oliver’s decease (Forster II, 173).
6. JANE GOLDSMITH, AFTERWARDS JOHNSON.
(Born 9 February, 1722. Sister of Oliver.)
As the family Bible entries from which were copied into Prior’s Life (I, 14) gave as the date of the births of Henry and Jane Goldsmith the same day 9 February, 17— (leaf torn), Forster surmised and with much plausibility that they were twins, born on the 9 February, 1722 (I, 9). Jane married one Johnson, a farmer at Athlone, and appears to have written to Oliver in 1769 about her impoverished condition, which Oliver in his letter to Maurice of January, 1770, regrets his inability to relieve.
7. THE REVD. HENRY GOLDSMITH.
(Oliver’s Elder Brother.)