LATER LETTERS.
There is now a long gap in the letters to his family, only in fact broken by two communications, one to his nephew Henry dated 7 June, 1768, condoling with him on the death of his father the Revd. Henry, and the other to his own brother Maurice despatched about January, 1770, in response to the latter’s request for financial assistance.
The first of these two letters has only just come to light, having been recently purchased through a dealer who got it from Nova Scotia by Mr. William Harris Arnold of Nutley, New Jersey, U.S.A., to whose kindness I owe a transcript of it. It is a letter of deep feeling at the death of his brother, and contains a promise to help the nephew if possible.
The second letter to Maurice Goldsmith—the last of the series on which I propose to comment—makes over to him a legacy of £15 which Uncle Contarine had left to Oliver in his will, and regrets his inability to help Maurice further. “I am not fond of thinking of the necessities of those I love, when it is so very little in my power to help them. I am sorry to find you are still every way unprovided for, and what adds to my uneasiness is that I have received a letter from my sister Johnson by which I learn that she is pretty much in the same circumstances.” It is true that the King has made him Professor of Ancient History to the newly established Royal Academy of Arts (1768), “but there is no salary annexed, and I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit to myself. Honours to one in my situation are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt.” Oliver sends kind messages to members of the family, and asks specifically for particulars about them. “A sheet of paper occasionally filled with news of this kind would make me very happy and would keep you nearer my mind. As it is my dear brother believe me to be Yours most affectionately, Oliver Goldsmith.”
The remaining letters printed in the Percy Memoir do not concern Goldsmith’s family, but it may be mentioned incidentally that they are all in the bundle of Goldsmithiana left by the Bishop. They are (1) a letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds written from France in 1770 when Oliver acted as escort to Mrs. Horneck and her two charming daughters the Jessamy Bride and Little Comedy. (2) A letter by Goldsmith to Bennet Langton dated 7 September, 1771 (with, it may be added, the letter from Langton—not printed in the Memoir—to which it is a reply). (3) Letters to Goldsmith from General Oglethorp (no date), Thomas Paine (21 December, 1772), John Oakman (a begging letter in verse, dated 27 March, 1773), and other miscellanea.
MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS.
I should be sorry if I left you with the impression that the letters from which I have been reading extracts were the only original documents connected with the poet and his works included in Dr. Percy’s manuscript bundle of “Goldsmithiana.” The contrary is the case: but the time available to me this afternoon is too short to enable me to discuss the various interesting points that they raise. I feel, however, I must refer in the briefest manner possible to some miscellaneous papers of different kinds which I found therein relating to the preliminaries for and the production of that delightful and ever-fresh comedy of “She Stoops to Conquer,” first given to the world on Monday, 15 March, 1773. There are a letter from the Prompter dated “Sunday evening” (no doubt 14 March, 1773), saying he had taken the necessary steps for changing the name of the play from “The Mistakes of a Night”; orders for boxes for subsequent performances; requests for free seats; congratulations and criticism on its success; a full account in Percy’s writing of Goldsmith’s personal chastisement of Evans the bookseller for Kenrick’s malicious article in the London Packet of Wednesday, 24 March, 1773 (endorsed in the Bishop’s hand “The termination of the affray with Evans, as first intended, but afterwards altered out of tenderness to Dr. G’s Memory”); a printed copy of the London Packet of Friday, 26 March, containing its own account of the encounter with Evans; George Coleman’s original letter of 23 March, 1773, begging Goldsmith to “take him off the rack of the newspapers”; manuscript copies (not in Goldsmith’s writing) of two rejected Epilogues to the play; and other documents of great human interest.
As I have consistently tried in this address to avoid indulging in theories, and to limit myself to demonstrable facts, I refrain from a discussion as to why these documents of 1773 are in such force in the resuscitated bundle of Percy papers, whereas there are comparatively few and scattered documents of earlier date. I should not, however, be surprised if Goldsmith, dreading that the commotion caused and public comment excited by his scuffle with Evans might involve him in further disagreeable consequences, had himself collected these papers and consulted Percy personally thereon, with the result that they remained in the latter’s custody.
When nearly a quarter of a century later, Percy put his hand to the preparation of the Memoir of his friend, he may have thought that the discreditable incidents obscuring the memory of a great public success were best buried in oblivion; and he therefore confined himself in the published work to the statement that “She Stoops to Conquer” “added very much to the author’s reputation, and brought down upon him a torrent of congratulatory addresses and petitions from less fortunate bards whose indigence compelled them to solicit his bounty, and of scurrilous abuse from such of them, as being less reduced, only envied his success.” (Memoir, p. 101.)
Percy could not, it is true, resist the temptation of placing on record in the Memoir “Tom Tickle’s” attack on Goldsmith in the London Packet: but, says he, “we would not defile our page with this scurrilous production, so shall insert it in the margin.” (pp. 103-5, notes.)