“It was,” says the author of that famous work, “a year and a half after he had entered college, at the commencement of 1747, his father suddenly died. The scanty sums required for his support had often been intercepted; but this stopped them altogether. It may have been the least and most trifling loss connected with that sorrow; but ‘squalid poverty,’ relieved by occasional gifts, according to his small means, from Uncle Contarine, by petty loans from Bryanton or Beatty, or by desperate pawning of his books of study, was Goldsmith’s lot henceforward. Yet even in the depths of that despair arose the consciousness of faculties reserved for better fortune than continual contempt and failure. He would write street ballads to save himself from actual starving; sell them at the Reindeer repository in Mountrath Court for five shillings apiece, and steal out of the college at night to hear them sung.
“Happy night, to him worth all the dreary days! Hidden by some dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill-lighted streets, this poor neglected sizar watched, waited, lingered, listened there, for the only effort of his life which had not wholly failed. Few and dull perhaps the beggar’s audience at first, but more thronging, eager, and delighted as he shouted forth his newly-gotten ware; cracked enough, I doubt not, were those ballad singing tunes; nay, harsh, extremely discordant, and passing from loud to low without meaning or melody; but not the less did the sweetest music which this earth affords fall with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces, pleased old men, stopping by the way; young lads, venturing a purchase with their last remaining farthing; why here was a world in little with its fame at the sizar’s feet! ‘The greater world will be listening one day,’ perhaps he muttered as he turned with a lighter heart to his dull home.”
Johnson’s sympathy with Goldsmith was, no doubt, warmed and quickened by the remembrance of his own early struggles with the foul fiend impecuniosity. He remembered well enough his first London lodging in Exeter Street, Strand, when, as he said, “I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine Apple in New Street fast by. Several of them had travelled, they expected to meet every day; but they did not know one another’s names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.”
Johnson used to relate of an Irish painter, that he, the painter, practically realised a theory that £30 a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed £10 for clothes and linen. He said, “A man might live in a garret at eighteen pence a week. Few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did it was easy to say, ‘Sir, I am to be found at such a place.’ By spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean shirt day he could go abroad and pay visits.”
I have already quoted the Doctor’s views on the subject of impecuniosity, and this reminds me of a very suggestive incident of his life, which perhaps will prove better than anything else the non-desirability of want of means. It is unquestionable that in his marvellous dictionary, there are parts that are much superior to others, which has been accounted for by the fact that he was paid for the work as it progressed—the publisher paying him as his “copy” was delivered. Consequently, when his purse was full, he worked away con amore, and produced the best result; but on the purse growing empty, as those mercenary creditors will do, the Doctor worked hurriedly, aiming at making as much “copy” as possible, so as to replenish his failing treasury.
Thomas Cooper, author of the ‘Purgatory of Suicides,’ who also found out by severe experience the cheapest way of living in London, tells in his autobiography how, after having been at Lincoln as reporter, journalist, and miscellaneous literary man, he with his wife left that city for London. He says:
“On the 1st of June, 1839, we got on the stage-coach with our boxes of books at Stamford, and away I went to make my first venture in London. We lodged in Elliott’s Row, Southwark; I earned five pounds by contributing reviews and prose sketches to some papers having but an ephemeral existence. I had other ventures and adventures in a small way; but it would weary any mortal man to recite; and the recital would only be one which has been often told already, by poor literary adventurers. The very little I could bring to London was soon gone, and then I had to sell my books. I happily turned into Chancery Lane and asked Mr. Lumley to buy my beautifully-bound ‘Tasso’ and ‘Don Belleanis of Greece,’ a small quarto black-letter romance, which I had bought of an auctioneer in Gainsboro’, who knew nothing of its value. Mr. Lumley gave me liberal prices, wished I could bring him more such books, and conversed with me very kindly. We were often at ‘low-water mark’ now in our fortunes; but my dear wife and I never suffered ourselves to sink into low spirits. Our experience, we cheerily said, was a part of London adventure, and who did not know that adventurers in London often underwent great trials before success was reached? We strolled out together in the evenings all over London, making ourselves acquainted with its highways and byways, and always finding something to interest us in its streets and shop-windows. Every book I brought from Lincolnshire, and I had had about 500 volumes great and small, had been sold by degrees, and at last I was obliged to enter a pawnshop. Spare articles of clothing, and my father’s old silver watch, ‘went up the spout,’ as the experience goes of those who most sorrowfully know what it means. Travelling-cloak, large box, hat-box, and every box or movable that could be spared in any possible way, had ‘gone to our uncle’s,’ and we saw ourselves on the very verge of being reduced to threadbare suits when deliverance came. I had been in London from the evening of 11th June, 1839, until near the end of March, 1840, when I answered an advertisement respecting the editorship of a country paper printed in London. I went to the printing office in Great Windmill Street, Haymarket, and was engaged at a salary of £3 per week; the paper was the Kentish Mercury.”
Very similar was the experience of Robert Southey, who, disowned by friends, and without money, came to London seeking literary employment, in which alone he found content and happiness.
“For it,” say his biographers, Messrs. Austin and Ralph, “he sacrificed proffered rank and power; and joyfully devoted to its service a toiling life of unexampled industry. Yet this man so wedded to his absorbing vocation, in the social capacity of husband, father, relative, and friend, stands above reproach.
“His life is one emphatic denial of the daring falsehood, that genius and virtue are incompatible.