A Georgian Pageant

by Frank Frankfort Moore

The vehicles drew up in the courtyard of the hotel in the square, and Dr. Goldsmith, after dismounting and helping the ladies to dismount, gave orders in French to the landlord in respect of the luggage, and made inquiries as to the table d'hôte. Shown to their respective rooms, the members of the party did not meet again for some time, and then it was in the private salle which they had engaged, looking out upon the square. The two girls were seated at a window, and their mother was writing letters at a table at one side.

When Dr. Goldsmith entered we may be pretty sure that he had exchanged his travelling dress for a more imposing toilet, and we may be equally certain that these two girls had something merry to say about the cut or the colour of his garments—we have abundant record of their badinage bearing upon his flamboyant liking for colour, and of his retorts in the same spirit. We have seen him strutting to and fro in gay apparel, obtrusively calling attention to the beauty of his waistcoat and speaking in solemn exaggeration of its importance. The girls were well aware of this form of his humour; they appreciated it to the full, and responded to it in their merriment.

Then there came the sound of martial music from the square, and the elder of the girls, opening the window on its hinges, looked out. A regiment of soldiers was turning into the square and would pass the hotel, she said. The two girls stood at one window and Goldsmith at another while the march past took place. It was not surprising that, glancing up and seeing the beautiful pair at the window, the mounted officers at the head of the regiment should feel flattered by the attention, nor was it unlikely that the others, taking the pas from their superiors, should look up and exchange expressions in admiration of the beauty of the young ladies. It is recorded that they did so, and that, when the soldiers had marched off, the little man at the other window walked up and down the room in anger “that more attention had been paid to them than to him.”

These are the words of Boswell in concluding his account of the episode, which, by the way, he printed with several other stories in illustration of the overwhelming vanity and extraordinary envy in Goldsmith's nature. As if any human being hearing such a story of the most complete curmudgeon would accept the words as spoken seriously! And yet Boswell printed it in all solemnity, and hoped that every one who read it would believe that Goldsmith, the happy-go-lucky Irishman, was eaten up with envy of the admiration given to the two exquisite girls on whom, by the way, be conferred immortality; for so long as English literature remains the names of the Jessamy Bride and Little Comedy will live. Yes, and so long as discriminating people read the story of Goldsmith's envious outburst they will not fail to see the true picture of what did actually take place in that room in the Lisle hotel—they will see the little man stalking up and down, that solemn face of his more solemn than ever, but the twinkle in his eyes revealing itself all the more brightly on this account, while he shakes his fists at the ladies and affirms that the officers were dolts and idiots to waste their time gazing at them when they had a chance “of seeing me, madam, me—me!” Surely every human being with the smallest amount of imagination will see the little man thumping his waistcoat, while the Miss Hornecks hold up their hands and go into fits of laughter at that whimsical Dr. Goldsmith, whom they had chosen to be their companion on that tour of theirs through France with their mother.

And surely every one must see them in precisely the same attitude, when they read the story in Boswell's Life of Johnson, and notice what interpretation has been put upon it by the Scotsman—hands uplifted in amazement and faces “o'er-running with laughter” at the thought of how Mr. Boswell has, for the thousandth time, been made a fool of by some one who had picked up the story from themselves and had solemnly narrated it to Boswell. But in those days following the publication of the first edition of the Life, people were going about with uplifted hands, wondering if any man since the world began had ever been so befooled as Boswell.

When the story appeared in Johnson's Life the two girls had been married for several years; but one of them at least had not forgotten the incident upon which it was founded; and upon its being repeated in Northcote's Life of Reynolds, she wrote to the biographer, assuring him that in this, as well as in other stories of the same nature, the expression on Goldsmith's face when he professed to be overcome by envy was such as left no one in doubt that he was jesting. But Croker, in spite of this, had the impudence to sneer at the explanation, and to attribute it to the good-nature of the lady. Mr. Croker seems to have had a special smile of his own for the weaknesses of ladies. This was the way he smiled when he was searching up old registries of their birth in his endeavour to prove that they had made themselves out to be six months younger than they really were. (Quite different, however, must his smile have been when he read Macaulay's Essay on Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson). But, unhappily for poor Goldsmith, Mr. Boswell was able to bring forward much stronger evidence of the consuming Vanity, the parent of Envy, with which his “honest Dr. Goldsmith” was afflicted. There was once an exhibition of puppets in Panton Street, and on some member of the distinguished company in which he, curiously enough for such a contemptible lout, constantly found himself, admiring the dexterity with which the wooden figure tossed a halbert, Goldsmith, we are gravely told, appeared annoyed and said: “Pshaw! I could do it as well myself!” Supposing that some one had said to Boswell, “After all, sir, perhaps Dr. Goldsmith could have done it as well himself,” would the man have tried to explain that the question was not whether Goldsmith or the puppet was the more dexterous, but whether it was possible to put any other construction upon Goldsmith's exclamation than that assumed by Mr. Boswell?

Yet another instance is given of Goldsmith's envy, and this time the object of it is not a wooden figure, but Shakespeare himself. He could not bear, Dr. Beattie tells us, that so much admiration should be given to Shakespeare. Hearing this, we feel that we are on quite a different level. There is no jealousy rankling this time in Goldsmith's heart against a mere puppet. It is now a frantic passion of chagrin that Shakespeare should still receive the admiration of a chosen few!

But such vanity as that so strikingly illustrated by this last told story, is, one must confess with feelings of melancholy, not yet wholly extinct among literary men. It would scarcely be believed—unless by Boswell or Beattie—that even in America a man with some reputation as a writer should deliberately ask people to assume that he himself was worthy of a place in a group that included not merely Shakespeare, but also Milton and Homer. “Gentlemen,” said this egregious person at a public dinner, “Gentlemen, think of the great writers who are dead and gone. There was Shakespeare, he is dead and gone; and Milton, alas! is no longer in the land of the living; Homer has been deceased for a considerable time, and I myself, gentlemen, am not feeling very well to-night.”

What a pity it is that Beattie has gone the way of so many other great writers. If he could only have been laid on to Mark Twain we should have the most comic biography ever written.

Goldsmith was, according to the great Boswell and the many lesser Boswells of his day, the most contemptible wretch that ever wrote the finest poem of the century, the finest comedy of the century, the finest romance of the century. He was a silly man, an envious man, an empty-headed man, a stuttering fool, an idiot (of the inspired variety), an awkward lout, a shallow pedant, and a generally ridiculous person; and yet here we find him the chosen companion of two of the most beautiful and charming young ladies in England on their tour through France, and on terms of such intimacy with them and their brother, an officer in the Guards and the son-in-law of a peer, that nicknames are exchanged between them. A singular position for an Irish lout to find himself in!