Part 31

Here the woman related that Goldsmith's landlord having fallen into difficulties, was at length arrested; and Goldsmith, who owed a small sum of money for rent, being applied to by his wife to assist in the release of her husband, found that, although without money, he did not want resources. A new suit of clothes was consigned to the pawnbroker, and the amount raised, proving much more than sufficient to discharge his own debt, was handed over for the release of the prisoner. What is most singular is, that this effort of active benevolence to rescue a debtor from jail, gave, in all probability, rise to a charge against him of dishonesty. As we have said, Goldsmith, proposing to go out to India, took his examination at Surgeon's Hall. To make a creditable appearance there, he had borrowed money of Griffiths, the bookseller, for a new suit of clothes. These clothes Griffiths soon afterward discovered hanging at a pawnbroker's door. As Goldsmith had lost the situation he had boasted of when he borrowed this money, and kept his own not very flattering secret of the cause of the loss--his rejection at Surgeon's Hall--Griffiths, a man of coarse mind, at once jumped to the conclusion that it was all a piece of trickery. He demanded an explanation of Goldsmith; Goldsmith refused to give it. He demanded the return of his money; Goldsmith, of course, had it not. They came to a fierce and violent, and, as it proved, irreconcilable quarrel, and Goldsmith disdaining to explain the real circumstances, long bore the disgrace of duplicity as the result of his generous act.

There is one more anecdote connected with his residence here, and it is characteristic. A gentleman, inquiring whether he was within, was shown up to his room without further ceremony, when, soon after having entered it, a noise of voices, as if in altercation, was heard by the people below, the key of the door at the same moment being turned within the room. Doubtful of the nature of the interview, the attention of the landlady was excited, but both voices being distinguished at intervals, her suspicions of personal violence were lulled, and no further notice taken. Late in the evening the door was unlocked, a good supper ordered by the visitor from the neighboring tavern, and the gentlemen, who met so ungraciously at first, spent the remainder of the evening in great good humor. The explanation given of this scene was, that the poet being behind-hand with certain writings for the press, and the stated period of publication arrived, the intruder, who was a printer or publisher, probably Hamilton or Wilkie, for both of whom he wrote at that time, would not quit the room till they were finished; and for this species of durance inflicted on the author, the supper formed the apology.

In those apartments, little indebted as we may believe to the labors of the housemaid, he is said to have observed the predatory habits of the spider, and drawn up that paper on the subject which appeared in the fourth number of the Bee, reprinted in the Essays, and given in substance in the History of Animated Nature. In these lodgings he wrote a Memoir of the Life of Voltaire, and a Translation of The Henriade; an Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe; besides a multitude of Reviews and other articles in the Bee, the Busybody, and other magazines of the day. He wrote also his Chinese Letters, and newspaper articles at least two a week, at the rate of a guinea per article. In 1760 he quitted Green-arbor Court, and took respectable lodgings in Wine-office Court, Fleet-street, where he continued about two years in the house of an acquaintance, a relative of the friendly bookseller, Newbery, predecessor of Hunter, corner of St. Paul's churchyard, and since of Harris. Here he had a large literary acquaintance among men of all grades of reputation and talent. Among them Dr. Percy was a frequent visitor, and here it was that Dr. Johnson was introduced to him by Dr. Percy, at a large party which Goldsmith gave to persons chiefly literary. Johnson went dressed in his highest style; and on Percy's remarking it as they went along, "Why, sir," said Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example." From the first moment of meeting, these two great men took vastly to each other, and continued firm friends till Goldsmith's death.

During Goldsmith's residence in Wine-office Court, he was busily employed on a pamphlet on the Cock-lane Ghost; a History of Mecklenburg; The Art of Poetry on a New Plan; An Abridgment of Plutarch; Additions to English History; a Life of Beau Nash; and contributions to the Christian Magazine: most of these being written for Newbery. To relieve the tedium of his drudgery, he was in the habit of frequenting the Monday evening meetings of the Robin Hood Debating Society, held at a house of that name in Butcher Row, whither it had been removed from the Essex Head, in Essex-street, in the Strand. The payment of sixpence formed the only requisite for admission, three halfpence of which were said to be put by for the purposes of charity. The annual number of visitors averaged about 5000. A gilt chair indicated the presiding authority, and all questions, not excepting religion and politics, were open to discussion. In these discussions Goldsmith used even to take part, but his great delight was to listen to the harangues of an eloquent baker, at the conclusion of one of which Goldsmith exclaimed to his companion Derrick, "That man was meant by nature for a lord-chancellor;" to which Derrick replied, "No, no, not so high; he was only intended for _master of the rolls_." The man actually became a magistrate in Middlesex, and, as was said, a first-rate one.

In 1762 Goldsmith quitted Wine-office Court, and took lodgings in the house of a Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, in Islington. This was to be near his friend and publisher, Mr. Newbery, who resided at Canonbury House, near to Mrs. Fleming's. Here he continued till 1764, chiefly employed upon job-work for his friend Newbery; among the most important, the Letters of a Nobleman to his Son, and the History of England. He used to relieve the monotony of his life by weekly visits to the Literary Club, of which Johnson, Burke, and Sir Joshua Reynolds were principal members, and which was held at the Turk's Head, Gerrard-street, Soho.

Here, there is every reason to believe, occurred the event already alluded to, the threat of his arrest, and the sale of the manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, by Johnson, to liberate him. Of this story there have been various versions; Mrs. Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, Cumberland, and Boswell, all relate it, all profess to have heard it from Johnson, and yet each tells it very differently. In all these stories, however, there is a landlady demanding arrears of rent, and bailiffs waiting to arrest if the money were not forthcoming. All agree that Goldsmith was drinking, most of them say Madeira, to drown his vexation; and Cumberland adds, that the landlady proposed the alternative of payment or marriage. Whether the latter point were really included in the demand, is not likely ever to be known; but that Mrs. Fleming, who went by the name of Goldsmith's hostess, and is thus painted by Hogarth, was the woman in question, I think there can be little doubt, though Prior, the biographer, would fain exempt her from the charge, and suppose the scene to occur in some temporary lodging. There does not appear the smallest ground for such a supposition. All facts point to this place and person. Goldsmith had been here for at least a year and a half, for Prior himself gives the particulars of this landlady's bill reaching to June 22d. As it occurred in this year, and about this time--for it is expressly stated that the Vicar of Wakefield was kept about two years by the bookseller unpublished, and it was not published till the end of March, 1766--it could not possibly happen any where else. He could not have left Mrs. Fleming, or if he had, he could not have been away long enough to accumulate any alarming score. Here, on the contrary, every thing indicates that he was in debt and difficulty. He had been at least a year and a half here, and might, and probably had, run a good way into his landlady's books. The biographer states expressly that Goldsmith _was_ in great difficulties, and for some months was invisible--said to have made a trip into Yorkshire. The biographer also shows that Newbery, the bookseller, generally paid the landlady for Goldsmith; but it comes out that Goldsmith was now got also very far behind with Newbery, owing him no less than £111; and next comes an obvious dislocation with Newbery himself. It is a fact which does not seem to have struck the biographer, that when Johnson sold the manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, he did not sell it to Newbery, though Newbery was not only Goldsmith's publisher, but his own. He went and sold it to a nephew of Newbery's, Mr. Francis Newbery, of Paternoster Row. Now there must have been a reason for this, and what so likely as that Goldsmith having run too deep into debt, had alarmed Newbery--publishers are careful men--that he had not only refused to advance more, but had withdrawn his guarantee to the landlady. This being the case, Goldsmith would be at his wit's end. With long arrears of rent and board, for Mrs. Fleming found that too, the security withdrawn by Newbery, she would be alarmed, and insist on Goldsmith's paying. To Newbery he could not fly, and, in his despair, he sent for Johnson. Johnson sold the novel, but not to John Newbery. With him it would only have gone to reduce the standing claim, with another it could bring what was wanted, instant cash. What confirms this view of the case is, moreover, the fact that immediately after this Goldsmith did quit his old landlady, and returned to London.

Canonbury Tower, or Canonbury House, as it is indifferently called, is often said to have been a residence of Goldsmith, and the room is shown which he used to occupy, and where it is said he wrote The Deserted Village. The reason given for Goldsmith's going to live at Islington is, that it was a pleasant, rural situation, and that there he would be near Newbery, his publisher, who engaged with Goldsmith's landlady to pay the rent. Newbery had apartments in Canonbury House, and here Goldsmith visited him. Anon, as his difficulties increased, he used to hide from his creditors in the tower, where he lay concealed for days and weeks. Very probably he was there all the time he was said to be gone into Yorkshire.

As to his having written The Deserted Village there, that is quite likely. It is equally probable that he might write there The Traveler, which was published at the end of the very year he left Islington. The Deserted Village was not published for five years afterward, or in 1769; and was, if written at Canonbury, the fruit of a subsequent residence there in 1767. His fixed abode was then in the Temple, but he had apartments for part of the summer in Canonbury House, and was visited there by most of his literary friends. On many of these occasions they adjourned to a social dinner at the Crown Tavern in the Lower Road, where tradition states them to have been very jovial. It is not improbable that he wrote part of The Vicar of Wakefield at Islington too, having, as we see, completed it at the time of his threatened arrest, that is, at the close of his residence at Islington.

Canonbury Tower, at the time Goldsmith used to frequent it, was a fine, airy place, in a sweet, rural neighborhood. Geoffrey Crayon says: "It is an ancient brick tower, hard by 'merry Islington,' the remains of a hunting seat of Queen Elizabeth, where she took the pleasure of the country when the neighborhood was all woodland. What gave it particular interest in my eyes was the circumstance that it had been the residence of a poet. It was here Goldsmith resided when he wrote his Deserted Village. I was shown the very apartment. It was a relic of the original style of the castle, with paneled wainscot and Gothic windows. I was pleased with its air of antiquity, and its having been the residence of poor Goldy." Irving located his "Poor Devil Author" in this room of Goldsmith's, but represents him as soon driven away by the troops of Londoners. "Sunday came, and with it the whole city world, swarming about Canonbury Castle. I could not open my window but I was stunned with shouts and noises from the cricket-ground; the late quiet road beneath my windows was alive with the tread of feet and the clack of tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely a 'show-house,' being shown to strangers at sixpence a head. There was a perpetual tramping up stairs of citizens and their families, to look about the country from the top of the tower, and to take a peep at the city through the telescope, to try if they could discern their own chimneys."

The reason why Irving located his "Poor Devil Author" in Canonbury Tower, no doubt, was because it had been the resort of several such, as well as of men of greater note: Smart; Chambers, author of the Cyclopædia; Humphries, author of Canons, a poem, Ulysses, an opera, &c.

"Here Humphries breathed his last, the Muses' friend, And Chambers found his mighty labors end."

"See on the distant slope, majestic shows Old Canonbury's tower, an ancient pile To various fates assigned; and where, by turns, Meanness and grandeur have alternate reigned. Thither, in latter days, hath genius fled From yonder city to repine and die. There the sweet Bard of Auburn sat, and tuned The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. There learned Chambers treasured lore for _man_, And Newbery there his A B C for _babes_."

One of these citizens, who took a particular pleasure in a visit to Canonbury Tower, was William Hone. The view of the tower in his Every Day Book is very correct, except that there is now an iron balustrade round the top, for greater security of those who ascend it for the prospect. His account of it is as follows:

"Canonbury Tower is sixty feet high, and seventy feet square. It is part of an old mansion, which appears to have been erected, or, if erected before, much altered about the reign of Elizabeth. The more ancient edifice was erected by the priors of the Canons of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, and hence was called Canonbury, to whom it appertained until it was surrendered with the priory to Henry VIII.; and when the religious houses were dissolved, Henry gave the mansion to Thomas, lord Cromwell. It afterward passed through other hands, till it was possessed by Sir John Spencer, an alderman and lord-mayor of London, known by the name of 'rich Spencer.' While he resided at Canonbury, a Dunkirk pirate came over in a shallop to Barking Creek, and hid himself with some armed men in Islington Fields, near the path Sir John usually took from his house in Crosby Place to this mansion, with the hope of making him prisoner; but as he remained in town that night, they were glad to make off for fear of detection, and returned to France disappointed of their prey, and of the large ransom they calculated on for the release of his person. His sole daughter and heiress, Elizabeth,[29] was carried off in a baker's basket from Canonbury House by William, the second Lord Compton, lord-president of Wales. He inherited Canonbury, with the rest of Sir John Spencer's wealth, at his death, and was afterward created Earl of Northampton; in this family the manor still remains."

In Hone's time, a Mr. Symes, the bailiff of the manor under Lord Northampton, was residing in the tower. He had lived there for thirty-nine years. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Evans, wife to the former bailiff, told Mr. Symes that her aunt, Mrs. Tapps, a seventy-year inhabitant of the tower, was accustomed to talk much about Goldsmith and his apartment. It was an old oak room on the first floor. Mrs. Tapps affirmed that he there wrote his Deserted Village, and slept in a large press bedstead placed in the eastern corner. Since Goldsmith's time, the room has been much altered and subdivided. The house is still the residence of the bailiff of the manor.

Poor Hone lamented sorely over the changes going on in this once sweet neighborhood. "I ranged the old rooms, and took, perhaps, a last look from the roof. The eye shrunk from the wide havoc below. Where new buildings had not covered the sward, it was embowelling for bricks, and kilns emitted flickering fire and sulphurous stench. Surely the dominion of the brick-and-mortar king will have no end, and cages for commercial spirits will be there instead of every green thing."

"So, Canonbury, thou dost stand a while; Yet fall at last thou must; for thy rich warden Is fast 'improving;' all thy pleasant fields Have fled, and brick-kilns, bricks, and houses use At his command: the air no longer yields A fragrance--scarcely health; the very skies Grow dim and town-like; a cold, creeping gloom Steals into thee, and saddens every room; And so realities come unto me, Clouding the chambers of my mind, and making me--like thee."

One-and-twenty years have passed since Hone took this melancholy view of the changes going on round Canonbury Tower. There has been no pause in the process of housification since then. The whole neighborhood is fast ingulfing in one overflowing London. What a change since Queen Elizabeth used to come to this solitary tower, to hunt in the far-spreading woodlands around; or to take a view from its summit of her distant capital, and of the far-off winding Thames! What a change even since Goldsmith paced this old tower, and looked over green fields, and thick woods, and over the whole airy scene, full of solitude and beauty! There are still old gardens with their stately cedars, and lanes that show that they were once in a rural district, and that Canonbury was a right pleasant place. But the goodly house of Sir Walter Raleigh, who grew enamored of the spot from attending his royal mistress thither, is degraded to the Pied Bull, and long terraces of new houses extinguish one green field rapidly after another. Every thing seems in a state of spreading and active advance, except the great tavern near the tower, whose cricketers and revelers used to din Washington Irving so much, and that now stands empty and ruinous; the very Sunday roisterers from the city have sought some more greenly suburban resort.

The last residences of Goldsmith in London were within the precincts of the Temple; but here he made two removes. He first took apartments on the library staircase, No. 2 Garden Court. This is now pulled down, and, I suppose, on the site stands the new library; for, on going into the court, you now find no No. 2, but only Nos. 3 and 4, looking odd and puzzling enough to the inquirer. Hence he removed to the King's-bench Walk, but the particular house does not appear to be known. Lastly, he removed to No. 2 Brick Court. His lodgings were on the second floor, on the right hand ascending the staircase, and are said to consist of three rooms, sufficiently airy and pleasant. With an imprudence which brought upon him deep anxiety, and probably hastened his end, he borrowed of the booksellers, and of the occupier of the opposite rooms, Mr. Edmund Bott, a literary barrister, who was much esteemed by him, and became his principal creditor at his death, and the possessor of his papers, four hundred pounds, with which he furnished these apartments in an expensive manner. Below Goldsmith, on the first floor, lived Sir William Blackstone, who is said there to have written his Commentaries. There were other barristers, especially a Mr. William Cooke, author of a work on Dramatic Genius, and called Conversation Cooke, living in the Temple, with whom Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy; and here he occasionally gave very expensive suppers to his literary friends. Here he was visited by almost every man of note of the time: Johnson with his Boswell, Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Percy, Sir Philip Francis, &c. Almost twenty years after his death these rooms became the scene of a tragical adventure, by a Miss Broderick shooting in them a Mr. Eddington, with whom she had formerly lived, and who took this desperate means of punishing his desertion.

These rooms are at the lower end of Brick Court, at the corner of the range of buildings on your right hand as you descend the court from Fleet-street. There seems to be a considerable mistake in Prior's account of them. Nearly all that he says appears to apply much more naturally to his rooms in Garden than in Brick Court. In Garden Court they most likely would be airy and pleasant. There, too, the anecdote of his watching the rooks might take place; it could not in Brick Court. It is thus given: "The view toward the gardens supplied him with an observation given in Animated Nature, respecting the natural history of the rooks. I have often amused myself with observing their plan of policy from my window in the Temple, that looks upon a grove where they have made a colony in the midst of the city," &c.

Now there is no view toward the garden. The court is built all round with buildings as old as Goldsmith's time, and older. In his rooms in Garden Court he could have full view of the elms in the garden, the probable scene of the rookery in question.

During Goldsmith's life here, he was in the habit of meeting his literary friends often in the evening at the Miter Tavern, Fleet-street; at a card club at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, not now existing; at the Globe Tavern, also near there, now gone too; and at Jack's Coffee-house, now Walker's Hotel, Dean-street, corner of Queen-street, Soho. It was here that Goldsmith confounded the gravity of Johnson with one of his off-hand and simple jokes. They were supping tête-à-tête on rumps and kidneys. Johnson observed, "Sir, these rumps are pretty little things, but they require a good many to satisfy a man." "Ay! but," said Goldsmith, "how many of these would reach to the moon?" "To the moon! ay, sir, I fear that exceeds your calculation." "Not at all, sir," said Goldsmith; "I think I could tell." "Pray, then, let us hear." "Why, _one_, if it were long enough." Johnson growled at this reply for some time, but at last recollecting himself, "Well, sir, I have deserved it; I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question."

This house, in 1770, was the oldest tavern in London but three, and is now probably the oldest. Mr. Walker, the present landlord of this hotel, who has lived in it fifty years, and has now reached the venerable age of ninety, is proud of the ancient honors of the house. On his card he duly informs his friends that it was here that "Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, and other literary characters of eminence" used to resort. The house is old, spacious, and quiet, and well adapted for the sojourn of families from the country, who are glad to escape the noise of more frequented parts of the city. By permission of Mr. Walker, I present at the head of this article a view of the room once honored by Johnson and Goldsmith.