The garret where Goldsmith then wrote and slept is supposed to have been one of the courts near Salisbury Square. His letters were addressed from the neighbouring Temple-exchange coffee-house near Temple Bar, and the secret of the lodging is said to have been won from the coffee-house waiter “George” to whom Charles Goldsmith confided his relationship. (Forster I, 124.)
Thus disappointed, Charles quitted London in a few days, suddenly and secretly as he had entered it, “in a humble capacity it is said, for Jamaica”: whence says Forster (I, 125) “he did not return till after four-and-thirty years to tell this anecdote, and to be described by Malone as not a little like his celebrated brother in person, speech and manner.”
When Charles came back to this country in 1791 it was to arrange for his ultimate settlement with his family in England: but after the peace of Amiens (1802), he sold his house, and with his wife (a Creole), a daughter and a son named Oliver (born in England), migrated to the South of France. In consequence of Buonaparte’s order for detaining British subjects, he again returned to England in 1803 by way of Holland, much reduced in circumstances, and died about 1805 at humble lodgings in Ossulston Street, Somers Town.
In an original letter of Charles himself, dated 2 September, 1795, in the Percy bundle of Goldsmithiana, he says specifically: “I paid in 1791 a visit to my native country: on my arrival I found the greatest part of my relations and old friends had paid the debt of Nature: my brother Maurice remained: he gave me a pleasing account of the great benefits you had been pleased to bestow on him.” As Maurice had died, Charles put in a plea for help for himself in view of the necessity of supporting “a wife and five children.” These were of course the offspring of his Jamaica marriage with a Creole, and Charles said nothing about any former marriage. Percy is not known to have answered the letter: but on 8 December, 1801, Charles made another appeal. Before answering this the Bishop made some cautious enquiries of another member of the family, Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry, who was already (since 1794) a candidate for his charity. She replied on 28 December, 1801, that “there are some parts of his [Charles’] letter true, and many others not so. He is indeed a most delightful companion, abounds with wit and humour, and is perfectly the gentleman, but he does not possess the steadiness or benevolent heart that my much respected father or Uncle Oliver did. At the same time I think he has a much better claim than my Uncle Maurice’s widow, for she was left a very handsome fortune of near two hundred a year, and more than a thousand pounds in ready money. I think she has no title at all to receive anything from the sale of the Poems.” Later, Catherine wrote again to the Bishop on 6 January, 1802, saying she had information that her Uncle (Charles) “had a great deal of money in the Funds, that he had some children and the most of them natural children. I assure you, my Lord, he has a great deal of art and duplicity.” Percy wrote Charles in 1802 some sort of letter, which the latter says he never received. This was very possibly the case, in view of his migration to France after the peace of Amiens.
Through the exertions of Edmund Malone, Charles was discovered to be back in London, and he wrote to the Bishop in 1803 some details of his experiences in France, following this up later in 1804 with a fuller statement which is very readable and quite interesting.
The last letter preserved from Charles Goldsmith is dated 24 March, 1805, and is in a shaky hand, saying he is afraid “my poor little son Oliver will soon be left fatherless and without a friend.” Probably Charles died soon after, and according to the letter of a neighbour, Mr. R. C. Roffe, dated 12 February, 1821, “almost in a state of second childhood. His wife, with a son (Oliver) he had by her in England, went to the West Indies”: and according to a quotation given by Prior (II, 574) from a Jamaica newspaper, this Oliver died at Belmont on 21 October, 1828, in the thirty-second year of his age.
It must be added to the above that before Percy had heard from Charles, he had in 1794 received a letter from one John Goldsmith, a sergeant of the South Cork Militia, claiming to be Charles’s son. At first Percy evidently thought the man an impostor. On one of John’s letters the Bishop had pencilled “natural son of Charles Goldsmith,” and has marked as “not true” a story of the marriage of his parents by “my uncle Henry Goldsmith, who was then Rector of the Parish they lived in,” and the reception of such parents by the grandmother Ann Goldsmith and Catherine Hodson his aunt. John told the Bishop on 2 October, 1808, “I did not imagine my father Charles Goldsmith was in existence, as I did not either see or hear from him since I saw your Lordship in Dublin in the year 1793, nor did I ever hear of his being married a second time.” As there are amongst the Percy papers receipts dated in October, 1808, May, 1809, and September, 1810, for a total of £35 in all for money disbursed by the Bishop for the benefit of this John Goldsmith, Percy may have considered there was something in his story after all.
As to what subsequently happened to this John Goldsmith and the eight children on whose behalf he appealed to the generosity of Dr. Percy, there seems to be no information available, but Prior (II, 574) mentions that “a person named Goldsmith, and claiming to be a nephew of the poet, died in the Cholera Hospital in Bristol in 1833: he was in a state of destitution and may have had no just right to the honour he assumed.” He may have been this John Goldsmith, son (legitimate or otherwise) of Charles Goldsmith.
THE PROFITS OF THE PERCY MEMOIR.
The original design of Bishop Percy in undertaking the Memoir of his friend Goldsmith was to benefit Maurice. Then Catherine, daughter of Henry, was added as a participant in the assumed profits: afterwards (when Maurice died and Charles revealed himself) Charles Goldsmith, the sole then remaining brother of Oliver. Percy’s ultimate decision, when the work took shape and he had made his agreement with Cadell and Davies in 1797, was for 125 of the 250 free copies of the work given to him by Cadell and Davies for disposal to be sold through White the bookseller of Fleet Street for the benefit of Charles, and the remaining 125 copies to be sold through Archer the bookseller of Dublin for the benefit of Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry. The London copies seem to have gone off fairly well. Percy in a Memorandum dated Dromore, 24 May, 1808, explaining the affair long after the event to Dr. R. Anderson (Literary Illustrations, VII, 189-192), says that from Charles “the Bishop frequently heard, informing him that the payments were duly made, and whatever copies he desired were delivered to him to dispose of among his friends for his own benefit. He believes Mr. Charles Goldsmith is since dead, but the account is still open with his family, to whom Mr. White must account for any that may have remained of the 125 copies delivered to him.” The case of the 125 Irish copies was less satisfactory. “It was principally on account of Catherine Goldsmith, who had been reduced to indigence, that the Bishop had applied in 1800 to Messrs. Cadell and Davies to afford some present relief, to alleviate the distress occasioned by the delay of the publication: which being refused by them, the Bishop had supplied the same himself, and continued to do so till her death, which took place before Mr. Archer had come to a settlement for the 125 copies transmitted to him. Part of these are still unsold.... Whatever arises from this sale, or remains of Mr. Archer’s balance that was unpaid to or for the niece, shall be delivered to any relative of Dr. Goldsmith who shall be found a proper object of the same.” (Nichols’ Literary Illustrations, VII, 191.)