The Jessamy Bride

by Frank Frankfort Moore

CHAPTER XIX.

When his visitor had gone Goldsmith seated himself in his chair and gave way to the bitter reflections of the hour.

He knew that the end of his dream had come. The straightforward words which Johnson had spoken had put an end to his self-deception—to his hoping against his better judgment that by some miracle his devotion might be rewarded. If any man was calculated to be a disperser of vain dreams that man was Johnson. In the very brutality of his straightforwardness there was, however, a suspicion of kindliness that made any appeal from his judgment hopeless. There was no timidity in the utterances of his phrases when forcing his contentions upon any audience; but Goldsmith knew that he only spoke strongly because he felt strongly.

Times without number he had said to himself precisely what Dr. Johnson had said to him. If Mary Horneck herself ever went so far as to mistake the sympathy which she had for him for that affection which alone would content him, how could he approach her family? Her sister had married Bunbury, a man of position and wealth, with a country house and a town house—a man of her own age, and with the possibility of inheriting his father's baronetcy. Her brother was about to marry a daughter of Lord Albemarle's. What would these people say if he, Oliver Goldsmith, were to present himself as a suitor for the hand of Mary Horneck?

It did not require Dr. Johnson to speak such forcible words in his hearing to enable him to perceive how ridiculous were his pretensions. The tragedy of the poet's life among men and women eager to better their prospects in the world was fully appreciated by him. It was surely, he felt, the most cruel of all the cruelties of destiny, that the men who make music of the passions of men—who have surrounded the passion of love with a glorifying halo—should be doomed to spend their lives looking on at the success of ordinary men in their loves by the aid of the music which the poets have created. That is the poet's tragedy of life, and Goldsmith had often found himself face to face with it, feeling himself to be one of those with whom destiny is only on jesting terms.

Because he was a poet he could not love any less beautiful creature than Mary Hor-neck, any less gracious, less sweet, less pure, and yet he knew that if he were to go to her with those poems in his hand which he only of all living men could write, telling her that they might plead his cause, he would be regarded—and rightly, too—as both presumptuous and ridiculous.

He thought of the loneliness of his life. Was it the lot of the man of letters to remain in loneliness while the people around him were taking to themselves wives and begetting sons and daughters? Had he nothing to look forward to but the laurel wreath? Was it taken for granted that a contemplation of its shrivelling leaves would more than compensate the poet for the loss of home—the grateful companionship of a wife—the babble of children—all that his fellow-men associated with the gladness and glory of life?

He knew that he had reached a position in the world of letters that was surpassed by no living man in England. He had often dreamed of reaching such a place, and to reach it he had undergone privation—he had sacrificed the best years of his life. And what did his consciousness of having attained his end bring with it? It brought to him the snarl of envy, the howl of hatred, the mock of malice. The air was full of these sounds; they dinned in his ears and overcame the sounds of the approval of his friends.

And it was for this he had sacrificed so much? So much? Everything. He had sacrificed his life. The one joy that had consoled him for all his ills during the past few years had departed from him. He would never see Mary Horneck again. To see her again would only be to increase the burden of his humiliation. His resolution was formed and he would abide by it.