Part 11

But however deficient in courage her papa was in the matter of acquainting his wife with so ordinary an incident as was referred to in this letter, he did not shrink from what he believed to be his duty when it was made plain to him that his daughter and his wife had been working out a “plot” in real life that necessitated the forging of a letter. He promptly bundled both wife and daughter out of his house, doubtless feeling that although the other personages in the romance which his wife was hoping to weave, had by no means acted up to the parts she had meant them to play, there was no reason why he should follow their example. It must be acknowledged that as a type of the bluff old soldier, simple enough to be deceived by the inartistic machinations of a foolish wife, but inexorable when finding his credulity imposed upon, he played his part extremely well. At the same time such people as called him a ridiculous old fool for adopting so harsh a measure toward his erring child, whose tricks he had long winked at, were perhaps not to be greatly blamed.

The old Duchess of Bedford at once received the outcasts and provided them with a home; and then Mrs. Gunning had leisure to concoct a manifesto in form of an open letter to the Duke of Argyll, in which, after exhorting His Grace to devote the remainder of his life to unravelling the mystery which she affirmed (though no one else could have done so) enshrouded the whole affair of the letter, she went on to denounce the simple-hearted General for his meanness--and worse--in matters domestic. He had never been a true husband to her, she declared, and he was even more unnatural as a father. As for Captain Bowen and his wife, the writer of the manifesto showed herself to be upon the brink of delirium when she endeavoured to find words severe enough to describe their treachery. They were inhuman in their persecution of her “glorious child,” she said, and then she went on to affirm her belief that the incriminating letters had been forged by the Bowens, and the rest of the story invented by them with the aid of the General to ruin her and her “glorious child.”

Captain Bowen thought fit to reply to this amazing production. He did so through the prosaic form of a number of affidavits. The most important of these was that sworn by one William Pearce, groom to General Gunning. In this document he deposed that when he was about to start for Blenheim with the “pacquet” for the Duke of Marlborough, Miss Gunning had caught him and compelled him to hand over the “pacquet” to her, and that she had then given him another letter, sealed with black, bearing the Marlborough arms, instructing him to deliver it to her father, pretending that he had received it at Blenheim.

In spite of all this Miss Gunning continued to affirm her entire innocence, and even went the length--according to Walpole--of swearing before a London magistrate that she was innocent. “It is but a burlesque part of this wonderful tale,” adds Walpole, “that old crazy Bedford exhibits Miss every morning on the Causeway in Hyde Park and declares her _protégée_ some time ago refused General Trevelyan.” But “crazy old Bedford” went much further in her craziness than this, for she actually wrote to the Marquis of Lome trying to patch up a match between Miss Gunning and himself. Immediately afterwards the town was startled by the report that a duel was impending between Lord Lome and Lord Blandford, the former maintaining that it was his duty to uphold the honour of his cousin, which had been somewhat shaken by the course adopted by the Marlborough heir. Of course no duel took place, and the young men simply laughed when their attention was called to the statement in print.

How much further these alarums and excursions (on the Causeway) would have proceeded it would be impossible to tell, the fact being that Captain Bowen and his wife gave notice of their intention to institute proceedings against the Gunnings, mother and daughter, for libel. This brought _l'affaire Gunning_ to a legitimate conclusion, for the ladies thought it advisable to fly to France.

“The town is very dull without them,” wrote Walpole to one of the Berrys, enclosing a copy of a really clever skit in verse, after the style of “The House that Jack Built,” ridiculing the whole affair. When Mrs. Gunning and her daughter returned, after the lapse of several months, the old Duchess of Bedford took them up once more; but the town declined to take any further notice of them. It was not until her father and mother had been dead for some years that Miss Gunning married Major Plunkett, an Irish rebel, who fled after the rising in 1798. She lived with him happily enough for twenty years, endeavouring to atone for the indiscretion of her girlhood by writing novels. It is doubtful if many of her readers considered such expiation wholly adequate, considering how foolish she had been. One act of folly can hardly be atoned for by another. But her intention was good, and her faults, including her novels, have long ago been forgiven her by being forgotten.

TRAGEDY WITH A TWINKLE

IN the summer of 1770 there arrived at the town of Lisle a coach containing three ladies and one man, followed by a travelling chaise with servants and luggage. Of the ladies, one was approaching middle age, handsome and elegant; the other two were her daughters, and both were extremely beautiful and graceful girls, under twenty years of age. The man was a small, middle-aged person, with a face which one would have called plain if it had not been that the protruding of his upper lip and the twinkle in his eyes suggested not plainness, but comedy. The very soul of comedy was in the gravity of his face; but it was that sort which is not apparent to all the world. It was the soul of comedy, not the material part; and most people are disposed to deny the possibility of comedy's existing except in juxtaposition with the grin through the horse-collar. Solemnity in a face, with a twinkle in the eye--that is an expression which comedy may wear without arousing the curiosity--certainly without exciting the laughter--of the multitude. And this was exactly the form that the drama of this man's life assumed; only it was tragedy with a twinkle. Tragedy with a twinkle--that was Oliver Goldsmith.

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!

Even before he is known to fame, and familiar only with famine, he is visited in his garret by Dr. Percy, a member of the great Northumberland family at whose town house he lived. So much for the empty-headed fool who never opened his mouth except to put his foot in it, as a countryman of his said about quite another person. He was a shallow prig, and yet when “the Club” was started not one of the original members questioned his right to a place among the most fastidious of the community, although Garrick--to the shame of Johnson be it spoken--was not admitted for nine years. Boswell--to the shame of Johnson be it spoken--was allowed to crawl in after an exclusion of ten. According to his numerous detractors, this Goldsmith was one of the most objectionable persons possible to imagine, and yet we find him the closest friend of the greatest painter of the day and the greatest actor of the day. He associates with peers on the friendliest terms, and is the idol of their daughters. He is accused, on the one hand, of aiming at being accounted a Macaroni and being extravagant in his dress, and yet he has such a reputation for slovenliness in this respect that it is recorded that Dr. Johnson, who certainly never was accused of harbouring unworthy aspirations to be accounted a beau, made it a point of putting on his best garments--he may even have taken the extreme step of fastening up his garters--before visiting Goldsmith, in order, as he explained, that the latter might have no excuse for his slovenliness. We are also told that Goldsmith made a fool of himself when he got on his feet to make a speech, and yet it is known that he travelled through Europe, winning the hospitality of more than one university by the display of his skill as a disputant. Again, none of his innumerable traits of awkwardness is so widely acknowledged as his conversational, and yet the examples which survive of his impromptu wit are of the most finished type; and (even when the record is made by Boswell), when he set himself out to take opposite sides to Johnson, he certainly spoke better sense than his antagonist, though he was never so loud. It is worth noting that nearly all the hard things which Johnson is reported to have said respecting Goldsmith were spoken almost immediately after one of these disputes. Further, we are assured that Goldsmith's learning was of the shallowest order, and yet when he was appointed Professor of History to the Royal Academy we do not hear that any voice was raised in protest.

What is a simple reader to think when brought face to face with such contradictory accounts of the man and his attainments? Well, possibly the best one can do is to say, as Fanny Burney did, that Goldsmith was an extraordinary man.

Of course, so far as his writings are concerned there is no need for one to say much. They speak for themselves, and readers can form their own opinion on every line and every sentence that has come from his pen. There is no misunderstanding the character of _The Traveller_ or _The Deserted Village_ or _The Vicar of Wakefield_. These are acknowledged by the whole world to be among the most precious legacies of the eighteenth century to posterity. Who reads nowadays, except out of curiosity, such classics as _Tristram Shandy, Clarissa Harlow, Evelina, or Rasselas?_ But who has not read, and who does not still read for pleasure, _The Vicar of Wakefield?_ Johnson's laborious poem, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, now only exists as an example of the last gasp of the didactic in verse; but we cannot converse without quoting--sometimes unconsciously--from _The Deserted Village_ When the actor-manager of a theatre wishes to show how accomplished a company he has at his disposal he produces _She Stoops to Conquer_, and he would do so more frequently only he is never quite able to make up his mind whether he himself should play the part of old Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin, Young Marlow, or Diggory. But what other eighteenth-century comedy of all produced previous to the death of Goldsmith can any manager revive nowadays with any hope of success? Colman of the eighteenth century is as dead as Congreve of the seventeenth; and what about the masterpieces of Cumberland, and Kelly, and Whitehead, and the rest? What about the Rev. Mr. Home's _Douglas_, which, according to Dr. Johnson, was equal to Shakespeare at his best? They have all gone to the worms, and these not even bookworms--their very graves are neglected. But _She Stoops to Conquer_ is never revived without success--never without a modern audience recognising the fact that its characters are not the puppets of the playwright, but the creations of Nature. It is worthy of mention, too, that the play which first showed the capacity of an actress whose name was ever at the head of the list of actresses of the last generation, was founded on _The Vicar of Wakefield._ It was Miss Ellen Terry's appearance in _Olivia_ in 1878 that brought about her connection with the ever memorable Lyceum management as an associate of the greatest actor of our day.

These things speak for themselves, and prove incontestably that Goldsmith was head and shoulders above all those writers with whom he was on intimate terms. But the mystery of the contradictory accounts which we have of the man himself and his ways remains as unsolved as ever.

Yes, unless we assume one thing, namely--that the majority of the people about him were incapable of understanding him. Is it going too far to suggest that, as Daniel Defoe was sent to the pillory because his ironic jest in _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_ was taken in earnest, and as good people shuddered at the horrible proposal of Swift that Irish babies should be cooked and eaten, so Goldsmith's peculiarities of humour were too subtle to be in any degree appreciated by most of the people with whom he came in contact in England?

In Ireland there would be no chance of his being misunderstood; for there no form that his humour assumed would be regarded as peculiar. Irony is a figure of speech so largely employed by the inhabitants in some parts that people who have lived there for any length of time have heard whole conversations carried on by two or three men without the slightest divergence from this tortuous form of expression into the straight path of commonplace English. And all this time there was no expression but one of complete gravity on the faces of the speakers; a stranger had no clue whatsoever to the game of words that was being played before him.

Another fully recognised form of humour which prevails in Ireland is even more difficult for a stranger to follow; its basis consists in mystifying another person, not for the sake of getting a laugh from a third who has been let into the secret, but simply for the satisfaction of the mystifier himself. The forms that such a scheme of humour may assume are various. One of the most common is an affectation of extraordinary stupidity. It is usually provoked by the deliverance of a platitude by a stranger. The humourist pretends that he never heard such a statement before, and asks to have it repeated. When this is done, there is usually a pause in which the profoundest thought is suggested; then the clouds are seen to clear away, and the perplexity on the man's face gives way to intelligence; he has grasped the meaning of the phrase at last, and he announces his victory with sparkling eyes, and forthwith puts quite a wrong construction upon the simplest words. His chuckling is brought to a sudden stop by the amazed protest of the victim against the suggested solution of the obvious. Thus, with consummate art, the man is led on to explain at length, with ridiculous emphasis, the exact meaning of his platitude; but it is all to no purpose. The humourist shakes his head; he pretends that the cleverness of the other is too much for him to grasp all in a moment; it's a fine thing to have learning, to be sure, but these things may be best not meddled with by ignorant creatures like himself; and so he goes off murmuring his admiration for the fine display of wisdom that comes so easy-like from the man whom he has been fooling.

This form of humour is indulged in by some Irishmen simply for the satisfaction it gives them to indulge in it. They never hurry off to acquaint a neighbour with what they have done, and they are quite pleased with the thought that the person on whom they have been imposing will tell the whole story of their extraordinary obtuseness to some one else; it never strikes them that that some one else may fail to see through the trick, and actually be convinced of the existence of their obtuseness. But if such a possibility did occur to them, they would be all the better pleased: they would feel that they had fooled two instead of one.