praise proffered him by a pretty actress (Miss Wilford, just become Mrs. Bulkley, of whom more hereafter), who played Miss Richland. What stood him most in stead, however, was the unwavering kindness of Johnson, who not only wrote the prologue he had promised, but went to see the comedy rehearsed; and as, some half century before, Swift had stood by Addison's side at the rehearsal of his tragedy, wondering to hear the drab that played Cato's daughter laughing in the midst of her passionate part, and crying out What's next? one may imagine the equal wonder with which the kind-hearted sage by Goldsmith's side heard the mirth he so heartily admired, and had himself so loudly laughed at, rehearsed with doleful anticipations. The managerial face appears to have lengthened in exact proportion as the fun became broad; and when, against the strongest remonstrance, it was finally determined to retain the scene of the bailiffs, Colman afterwards told his friends that he had lost all hope. The eventful night arrived at last; Friday the 29th of January. It was not a club night, though the evening of meeting was ultimately altered from Monday to this later day to suit a general convenience; but a majority of the members, following Johnson's and Burke's example, attended the theatre, and agreed to close the evening in Gerrard-street. Cooke, now Goldsmith's neighbour in the Temple, and whom he had lately introduced to his Wednesday club, was also present; and has spoken of what befell. Mr. Bensley, a stage lover of portentous delivery, seems to have thrown into the heavy opening of Johnson's prologue, Prest by the load of life, the weary mind a ponderous gloom, which, at the outset, dashed the spirits of the audience. Nor did Mr. Powell's Honeywood mend matters much, with the more cheerful opening of the play. He had complained, at the rehearsals, that the part gave him "no opportunity of "displaying his abilities ;" and this it now became his care to make manifest. "Uniform tameness, not to say insipidity," was his contribution to the illustration of Honeywood. "He seemed, "from the beginning to the end, to be a perfect disciple of Zeno.” Shuter, on the other hand, going to work with Croaker after a different fashion, soon warmed the audience into his own enjoyment, and shocked the sentimentalists among them with the boisterous laughter he sent ringing through the house; nor was he ill seconded by the Lofty of Woodward, another excellent comedian, the effect of whose "contemptuous patronage" of Honeywood was long remembered. But then came the bailiffs; on whom, being poorly acted, and presenting no resistance that way, the disaffected party were able to take full revenge for what they thought the indelicacy of all such farcical mirth. Accordingly, when good Mr. Twitch described his love for humanity, and Little Flanigan cursed the French for having made the beer threepence half-penny a pot, Cooke tells us that he heard people in the pit cry out this was "low" ("language uncommonly low," said the worthy London Chronicle in its criticism), and disapprobation was very loudly expressed. The comedy, in short, was not only trembling in the balance, but the chances were decisively adverse, when Shuter came on with the "incendiary letter" in the last scene of the fourth act, and read it with such inimitable humour that it carried the fifth act through. To be composed at so truly comic an exhibition, says Cooke, "must have exceeded all power of face; 66 even the rigid moral-mongers joined the full-toned roar of "approbation." Poor Goldsmith, meanwhile, had been suffering exquisite distress; had lost all faith in his comedy, and in himself; and, when the curtain fell, could only think of his debt of gratitude to Shuter. He hurried round to the green-room, says Cooke; "thanked him in his honest, sincere manner, before all the 66 performers; and told him he had exceeded his own idea of "the character, and that the fine comic richness of his colouring "made it almost appear as new to him as to any other person in "the house." Then, with little heart for doubtful congratulations, he turned off to meet his friends in Gerrard-street. By the time he arrived there, his spirits had to all appearance returned. He had forgotten the hisses. The members might have seen that he ate no supper, but he chatted gaily, as if nothing had happened amiss. Nay, to impress his friends still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sung his favourite song, which he never consented to sing but on special occasions, about An Old Woman tossed in a Blanket seventeen times as high as the Moon; and was altogether very noisy and loud. But some time afterwards, when he and Johnson were dining with Percy at the chaplain's table at St. James's, he confessed what his feelings this night had really been; made, said Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, a very comical and unnecessarily exact recital of them; and told how the night had ended. "All this while," he said, "I was suffering horrid tortures; and "verily believe that if I had put a bit into my mouth it would "have strangled me on the spot, I was so excessively ill; but I "made more noise than usual to cover all that, and so they never "perceived my not eating, nor I believe at all imaged to themselves "the anguish of my heart. But when all were gone except "Johnson here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore by that I "would never write again." Johnson sat in amazement while Goldsmith made the confession, and then confirmed it. "All 66 which, Doctor," he said, "I thought had been a secret between "would not have said anything "about it, for the world." is very certain. That No man so unlikely as Johnson, when he had a friend's tears to wipe away, critically to ask himself, or afterwards discuss, whether or not they ought to have been shed; but none so likely, if they came to be discussed by others, to tell you how much he despised them. What he says must thus be taken with what he does, more especially in all his various opinions of Goldsmith. When Mrs. Thrale asked him of this matter, he spoke of it with contempt, 66 and said that "no man should be expected to sympathise with the sorrows of vanity." But he had sympathised with them, at least to the extent of consoling them. Goldsmith never flung himself in vain on that great, rough, tender heart. The weakness he did his best to hide from even the kindly Langton, from the humane and generous Reynolds, was sobbed out freely there; nor is it difficult to guess how Johnson comforted him. "Sir," he said to Boswell, when that ingenious young gentleman, now a practising Scotch advocate, joined him a month or two later at Oxford, and talked slightingly of the Good-natured Man; "it is "the best comedy that has appeared since the Provoked Husband. "There has not been of late any such character exhibited on the "stage as that of Croaker. False Delicacy is totally devoid of "character." Who can doubt that Goldsmith had words of reassurance at the least as kindly as these to listen to, as he walked home that night from Gerrard-street with Samuel Johnson? Nor were other and substantial satisfactions wanting. His comedy was repeated with increased effect on the removal of the bailiffs, and its announced publication excited considerable interest. Griffin was the publisher; paid him 50l. the day after its appearance; and in announcing a new edition the following week, stated that the whole of the first "large impression" had been sold on the second day. But perhaps Goldsmith's greatest pleasure in connection with the printed comedy was, that he could "shame "the rogues" and print the scene of the bailiffs. Now-a-days it is difficult to understand the objection which condemned it, urged most strongly, as we find it, by the coarsest writers of the time. When such an attempt as Honeywood's to pass off the bailiffs for his friends, gets condemned as unworthy of a gentleman, comedy seems in sorry plight indeed. "The town will not bear Gold"smith's low humour," writes the not very decent Hoadly, the bishop's son, to Garrick, "and justly. It degrades his Good"natur'd Man, whom they were taught to pity and have a sort of respect for, into a low buffoon; and, what is worse, into a "falsifier, a character unbecoming a gentleman." Happily for us, 66 It had been Goldsmith printed the low humour notwithstanding. cut out in the acting, he said, in deference to the public taste, 66 'grown of late, perhaps, too delicate ;" and was now replaced in deference to the judgment of a few friends, "who think in a "particular way." The particular way became more general, when his second comedy laid the ghost of sentimentalism; and one is glad to know that, though it was but the year before his death, he saw his well-beloved bailiffs restored to the scene, of which they have ever since, in that piece, been the most popular attraction. With the play, the prologue of course was printed; and here Goldsmith had another satisfaction, in the alteration of a line that had been laughed at. "Don't call me our LITTLE bard," he said to Johnson, and "our anxious bard" was good-naturedly substituted. But what Boswell interposes on this head simply shows us how uneasy he was, not when Johnson's familiar diminutives, more fond than respectful, were used by himself, but when they passed into the mouths of others. "I have often desired "Mr. Johnson not to call me Goldy," was his complaint to Davies. It was a courteous way of saying, "I wish you wouldn't "call me Goldy, whatever Mr. Johnson does." The comedy was played ten consecutive nights: their majesties commanding it on the fifth night (a practice not unwise, though become unfashionable); and the third, sixth, and ninth, being advertised as appropriated to the author. But though this seems a reasonably fair success, there is no reason to doubt Cooke's statement, that, even with the sacrifice of the bailiffs, it rather dragged, than supported itself buoyantly, through the remainder of the season. Shuter gave it an eleventh night, a month later, by selecting it for his benefit; when Goldsmith, in a fit of extravagant good nature, sent him ten guineas (perhaps at the time the last he had in the world) for a box ticket. It was again, after an interval of three years, played three nights; and it was selected for Mrs. Green's benefit the second year after that, when the bailiffs reappeared. This is all I can discover of its career upon the stage while the author yet lived to enjoy it. CHAPTER II. SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS, HUMBLE CLIENTS, AND 1768. ON the stage, then, the success of Goldsmith's comedy of the Good-natured Man was far from equal to its claims of character, wit, and humour; yet its success, in other respects, Et. 40. very sensibly affected its author's ways of life. His three nights had produced him nearly 400l.; Griffin had paid him 100l. more; and for any good fortune of this kind, his past fortunes had not fitted him. So little, he would himself say, was he used to receive "money in a lump," that when Newbery made him his first advance of twenty guineas, his embarrassment was as great as Captain Brazen's in the play, whether he should build a privateer or a play-house with the money. He now took means hardly less effective to disembarrass himself of the profits of his comedy. "He descended "from his attic story in the Staircase, Inner Temple," says Cooke (who here writes somewhat hastily, one descent from the "attic" having already been made), " and purchased chambers in Brick66 court, Middle Temple, for which he gave four hundred pounds." They were number two on the second floor, on the right hand ascending the staircase: and consisted of two reasonably-sized oldfashioned rooms, with a third smaller room or sleeping-closet, which he furnished handsomely, with "Wilton" carpets, "blue"morine-covered" mahogany sofas, blue morine curtains, chairs corresponding, chimney glasses, Pembroke and card tables, and tasteful book-shelves. Thus, and by payment for the lease of the chambers, the sum Cooke mentions would seem to have been expended; and with it began a system of waste and debt, involving him in difficulties he never surmounted. The first was in the shape of money borrowed from Mr. Edmund Bott, a barrister who occupied the rooms opposite his, on the same floor; who remained very intimate with him for the rest of his life; and whose treatise on the Poor Laws is supposed to have received revision and improvement from his pen. Exactly below Goldsmith's were the chambers of Mr. Blackstone; and the rising lawyer, at this time finishing the fourth volume of his Commentaries, is reported to have made frequent complaint of the distracting social noises that went on above. A Mr. Children succeeded him, and made the same complaint. |