“And passing rich with forty pounds a year.”
There is only one letter from Oliver to Henry known to exist: that addressed “about 1759” to Henry at “Lowfield, near Ballymore in Westmeath Ireland” seeking his assistance in the disposal of copies of his book on “Polite learning” describing his own physical looks, giving Henry advice as to the education of his son, asking about his mother and other members of the family, and ending up: “by telling you what you very well know already, that I am your most affectionate friend and brother Oliver Goldsmith.”
Henry was the subject of Oliver’s solicitude when he was granted an interview with the Earl of Northumberland (Dr. Percy’s friend) who was about to proceed to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. We owe the report of this interview to the unsympathetic pen of Sir John Hawkins in his Life of Johnson (p. 419). In answer to the Earl’s remark that he was going to Ireland and hearing that Goldsmith was a native of that country he would be glad to do him any kindness, Oliver is made to reply: “I would say nothing but that I had a brother there, a clergyman, that stood in need of help.” Hawkins’ sour comment was: “thus did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.”
The Revd. Henry Goldsmith died at Athlone at the end of May, 1768, at the age of forty-five. A suit of mourning for him ordered of Oliver’s tailor William Filby cost £5:12:6 (Forster II, 113). The brother seems to have at once written a letter of affectionate sympathy with the family—probably to the widow, and to his nephew Henry he sent a separate letter which has only just come to light in North America, having doubtless been preserved till now by descendants of the original recipient. It is now the property of Mr. William Harris Arnold of Nutley, New Jersey, to whose kindness I owe permission for its reproduction:
London, June 7th, 1768.
My dear Henry,
Your dear father’s death has afflicted me deeply. The news of this dreadful event only reached me yesterday and though I have already sent my love and condolences in a letter which you will see I pen this further line to my dear Nephew to express the hope that you and your Brother, young as you both are, will bear yourselves as the sons of such a man should. As to your own future I shall not rest until I hit upon some means of serving you; and it may be that through the influence of some of my friends here you may procure a situation suited to your talents.
Meanwhile attend diligently to your studies, neglect nothing that can advance your interest when an opening occurs. Are you still inclined towards a military career? That would necessitate, besides a certain temper and constitution, a considerable sum of ready money. Something, however, might be managed abroad—in the Indies or in America.
Let me hear from you, my dear Henry, and with much love to you both
Believe me,
Your affectionate Uncle,
Oliver Goldsmith.Mr. Henry Goldsmith
In Care of Mrs. Hodson,
Athlone,
Ireland.
I find no mention whatever in any document (published or unpublished) that I have come across of a second son of the Revd. Henry. Oliver at the time of his brother’s death was at work on the Deserted Village at a summer retreat in a cottage eight miles from the Edgware Road (Forster II, 124), was visited there in May, 1768, by Cooke, who marks the date as exactly two years before the poem appeared in print (May, 1770), and tells us that the writing of it, and its elaborate revision, extended over the whole interval of twenty-four months.
Is it permissible to suggest that Oliver, with his head full of other things, was a little dubious about the sex of the other child of his brother, and spoke of a son where he should have said daughter? Writing to his brother Maurice in January, 1770, with anxious enquiries about the several members of the family, Oliver says: “Tell me about my mother, my brother Hodson and his son: my brother Harry’s son and daughter, my sister Johnson, the family of Ballyoughter, what is become of them, where they live and how they do. You talked of being my only brother, I don’t understand you—Where is Charles?” (Memoir, p. 89.)
Here it will be observed, Oliver makes tender enquiries after Henry’s “son and daughter.” He says nothing of the widow or of a second son. In the only letter of Oliver’s to his brother that is now extant, ascribed by Percy to “about 1759,” Oliver thus refers to the son: “The reasons you have given me for breeding your son a scholar are judicious and convincing.... Preach then my dear Sir, to your son not the excellence of human nature nor the disrespect of riches, but endeavour to teach him thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering Uncle’s example be placed in his eyes. I had learned from books to love virtue, before I was taught from experience the necessity of being selfish.”
I quote from the original holograph letter, not from the somewhat bowdlerised version of it that Percy printed in the Memoir of 1801, and that has since been copied in all subsequent biographies.
It remains therefore to consider what happened to those whom Henry left behind him in 1768 of whom there is any record. There was a widow, of whose parentage and maiden name, or of the circumstances of her widowhood nothing seems to be known, his son Henry, and his daughter Catherine.