OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Charles Lamb came to 4, Inner Temple Lane, in 1809. Writing to Coleridge, the delightful humorist says:—"I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself; but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy. I have two rooms on the third floor, and five rooms above, with an inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, &c., for £30 a year. The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going; just now it is dry. Hare Court's trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden." In 1810 he says:—"The household gods are slow to come; but here I mean to live and die." From this place (since pulled down and rebuilt) he writes to Manning, who is in China:—"Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins with you. My best room commands a court, in which there are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent, cold—with brandy; and not very insipid without." He sends Manning some of his little books, to give him "some idea of European literature." It is in this letter that he speaks of Braham and his singing, and jokes "on titles of honour," exemplifying the eleven gradations, by which Mr. C. Lamb rose in succession to be Baron, Marquis, Duke, Emperor Lamb, and finally Pope Innocent; and other lively matters fit to solace an English mathematician self-banished to China. The same year Mary Lamb describes her brother taking to water like a hungry otter—abstaining from all spirituous liquors, but with the most indifferent result, as he became full of cramps and rheumatism, and so cold internally that fire could not warm him. It is but just to Lamb to mention that this ascetic period was brief. This same year Lamb wrote his fine essays on Hogarth and the tragedies of Shakespeare. He was already getting weary of the dull routine of official work at the India House.
GOLDSMITH'S TOMB IN 1860
Goldsmith came to the Temple, early in 1764, from Wine Office Court. It was a hard year with him, though he published "The Traveller," and opened fruitless negotiations with Dodsley and Tonson. "He took," says Mr. Forster, "rooms on the then library-staircase of the Temple. They were a humble set of chambers enough (one Jeffs, the butler of the society, shared them with him), and on Johnson's prying and peering about in them, after his short-sighted fashion flattening his face against every object he looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies broke out. 'I shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than these,' he said. 'Nay, sir,' answered Johnson, 'never mind that—nil te quæsiveris extra.'" He soon hurried off to the quiet of Islington, as some say, to secretly write the erudite history of "Goody Two-Shoes" for Newbery. In 1765 various publications, or perhaps the money for "The Vicar," enabled the author to move to larger chambers in Garden Court, close to his first set, and one of the most agreeable localities in the Temple. He now carried out his threat to Johnson—started a man-servant, and ran into debt with his usual gay and thoughtless vanity to Mr. Filby, the tailor, of Water Lane, for coats of divers colours. Goldsmith began to feel his importance, and determined to show it. In 1766 "The Vicar of Wakefield" (price five shillings, sewed) secured his fame, but he still remained in difficulties. In 1767 he wrote The Good-Natured Man, knocked off an English Grammar for five guineas, and was only saved from extreme want by Davies employing him to write a "History of Rome" for 250 guineas. In 1767 Parson Scott (Lord Sandwich's chaplain), busily going about to negotiate for writers, describes himself as applying to Goldsmith; among others, to induce him to write in favour of the Administration. "I found him," he said, "in a miserable set of chambers in the Temple. I told him my authority; I told him that I was empowered to pay most liberally for his exertions; and—would you believe it!—he was so absurd as to say, 'I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance you offer is therefore unnecessary to me.' And so I left him," added the Rev. Dr. Scott, indignantly, "in his garret."
On the partial success of The Good-Natured Man (January, 1768), Goldsmith, having cleared £500, broke out like a successful gambler. He purchased a set of chambers (No. 2, up two pairs of stairs, in Brick Court) for £400, squandered the remaining £100, ran in debt to his tailor, and borrowed of Mr. Bolt, a man on the same floor. He purchased Wilton carpets, blue merino curtains, chimney-glasses, book-cases, and card-tables, and, by the aid of Filby, enrobed him in a suit of Tyrian bloom, satin grain, with darker blue silk breeches, price £8 2s. 7d., and he even ventured at a more costly suit, lined with silk and ornamented with gilt buttons. Below him lived that learned lawyer, Mr. Blackstone, then poring over the fourth volume of his precious "Commentaries," and the noise and dancing overhead nearly drove him mad, as it also did a Mr. Children, who succeeded him. What these noises arose from, Mr. Forster relates in his delightful biography of the poet. An Irish merchant named Seguin "remembered dinners at which Johnson, Percy, Bickerstaff, Kelly, 'and a variety of authors of minor note,' were guests. They talked of supper-parties with younger people, as well in the London chambers as in suburban lodgings; preceded by blind-man's buff, forfeits, or games of cards; and where Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk. They related how he would sing all kinds of Irish songs; with what special enjoyment he gave the Scotch ballad of 'Johnny Armstrong' (his old nurse's favourite); how cheerfully he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way to the general amusement; and to what accompaniment of uncontrolled laughter he once 'danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin.'"
In 1768 appeared "The Deserted Village." It was about this time that one of Goldy's Grub Street acquaintances called upon him, whilst he was conversing with Topham Beauclerk, and General Oglethorpe, and the fellow, telling Goldsmith that he was sorry he could not pay the two guineas he owed him, offered him a quarter of a pound of tea and half a pound of sugar as an acknowledgment. "1769. Goldsmith fell in love with Mary Horneck known as the 'Jessamy Bride.' Unfortunately he obtained an advance of £500 for his 'Natural History,' and wholly expended it when only six chapters were written." In 1771 he published his "History of England." It was in this year that Reynolds, coming one day to Brick Court, perhaps about the portrait of Goldsmith he had painted the year before, found the mercurial poet kicking a bundle, which contained a masquerade dress, about the room, in disgust at his folly in wasting money in so foolish a way. In 1772, Mr. Forster mentions a very characteristic story of Goldsmith's warmth of heart. He one day found a poor Irish student (afterwards Dr. M'Veagh M'Donnell, a well-known physician) sitting and moping in despair on a bench in the Temple Gardens. Goldsmith soon talked and laughed him into hope and spirits, then taking him off to his chambers, employed him to translate some chapters of Buffon. In 1773 She Stoops to Conquer made a great hit; but Noll was still writing at hack-work, and was deeper in debt than ever. In 1774, when Goldsmith was still grinding on at his hopeless drudge-work, as far from the goal of fortune as ever, and even resolving to abandon London life, with all its temptations, Mr. Forster relates that Johnson, dining with the poet, Reynolds, and some one else, silently reproved the extravagance of so expensive a dinner by sending away the whole second course untouched.
In March, 1774, Goldsmith returned from Edgware to the Temple chambers, which he was trying to sell, suffering from a low nervous fever, partly the result of vexation at his pecuniary embarrassments. Mr. Hawes, an apothecary in the Strand (and one of the first founders of the Humane Society), was called in; but Goldsmith insisted on taking James's fever-powders, a valuable medicine, but dangerous under the circumstances. This was Friday, the 25th. He told the doctor then his mind was not at ease, and he died on Monday, April 4th, in his forty-fifth year. His debts amounted to over £2,000. "Was ever poet so trusted before?" writes Johnson to Boswell. The staircase of Brick Court was filled with poor outcasts, to whom Goldsmith had been kind and charitable. His coffin was opened by Miss Horneck, that a lock might be cut from his hair. Burke and Reynolds superintended the funeral, Reynolds' nephew (Palmer, afterwards Dean of Cashel) being chief mourner. Hugh Kelly, who had so often lampooned the poet, was present. At five o'clock on Saturday, the 9th of April, Goldsmith was buried in the Temple churchyard. In 1837, a slab of white marble, to the kindly poet's memory, was placed in the Temple Church, and afterwards transferred to a recess of the vestry chamber. Of the poet, Mr. Forster says, "no memorial indicates the grave to the pilgrim or the stranger, nor is it possible any longer to identify the spot which received all that was mortal of the delightful writer." The present site is entirely conjectural; but it appears from the following note, communicated to us by T.C. Noble, the well-known City antiquary, that the real site was remembered as late as 1830. Mr. Noble says:—