“Fleet Street is full of memories of Dr. Johnson. He had many dwelling places, but however often he moved, he never went far from Fleet Street.”
Godmother now led the way up a narrow alley called Bolt Court, and in a moment they came to a little enclosure in which one or two of the houses were of the kind Betty had seen in the Temple, old, square, and built of dark red bricks, while others were quite modern business places.
“This is Gough Square, and here is Dr. Johnson’s house,” Godmother said, stopping opposite one of the old houses with the tiniest little garden in front of it. “For years it was used as an office for printers, and it would have been pulled down by now if a gentleman called Mr. Cecil Harmsworth had not bought it and given it to the nation to be kept for ever in memory of Dr. Johnson. Now we’ll ring the bell and go in, and you shall see what the inside of an eighteenth-century house was like. For this one has been arranged as nearly as possible as it was in Dr. Johnson’s time.”
Betty was delighted with the panelled rooms, with the quaint deep cupboards in the walls, one of which, as the interesting housekeeper who showed the place told her, was a powder closet, where the gentlemen’s wigs and the ladies’ hair were powdered before they went to parties or “routs,” and “assemblies,” as in eighteenth-century days, parties were called. Upstairs there was a big attic stretching the length of the house, and here it was that Dr. Johnson worked at his great and famous Dictionary. But every room was full of memories of him in the shape of letters or books arranged in glass cases, or in pictures on the walls.
“Here is the picture I told you about, showing Dr. Johnson and his friend Goldsmith together,” said Godmother, pointing to one of them. “It’s very interesting because the scene it represents, took place over there in Wine Office Court,”—she pointed out of the window to an opposite street,—“where at one time Goldsmith lived.”
“What are they doing?” asked Betty, looking at the painting. “That’s Goldsmith in the funny night-cap, I suppose?”
The caretaker, who seemed to know everything that was to be known about the house and its belongings, began to tell her the following story of the picture.
“Though he was the kindest-hearted man in the world, Oliver Goldsmith was so careless and happy-go-lucky that he was always in debt, and one morning before he was dressed, he sent over a messenger to this house in which you are standing, to borrow a guinea from his neighbour, Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson crossed this little Square which you see from the window, and went to his friend’s lodgings opposite, to find out what was the matter. The picture shows you why Goldsmith wanted the money. There is his angry landlady waiting to be paid, and there is Goldsmith in his night-cap and dressing-gown with Dr. Johnson sitting opposite to him, looking over some sheets of writing.”
“Why is he doing that?” Betty asked.
“Well, he knows that his friend is penniless, and even though he now has the money to pay his landlady, he must have some more to go on with. So he has asked him if he has written anything that might possibly be sold. Goldsmith, you see, has been rummaging in that box into which he has thrown stories he has written from time to time, and the manuscript he has just handed to Dr. Johnson is no other than The Vicar of Wakefield!