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CHAPTER VIII.

A VISIT TO PARIS. 1770.

1770.

GOLDSMITH had quitted London on a visit to Paris in the middle of July. "The Professor of History," writes Mary Moser, the daughter of the keeper of the Academy,-telling Fuseli, Et. 42. at Rome, how disappointed the literary people connected with the new institution had been, not to receive diplomas of membership like the painters,-" is comforted by the success of "his Deserted Village, which is a very pretty poem, and has lately "put himself under the conduct of Mrs. Horneck and her fair "daughters, and is gone to France; and Doctor Johnson sips "his tea and cares not for the vanity of the world." Goldsmith himself, with most pleasant humour, has described in a letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds what happened to the party up to their lodgment in Calais, at the Hôtel d'Angleterre. They had not arrived many hours when he sent over this fragment of a dispatch, merely to satisfy him of the safe arrival of Mrs. Horneck, the young ladies, and himself, "My dear Friend," he wrote,

We had a very quick passage from Dover to Calais, which we performed in three hours and twenty minutes, all of us extremely sea-sick, which must necessarily have happened, as my machine to prevent sea-sickness was not completed. We were glad to leave Dover, because we hated to be imposed upon; so were in high spirits at coming to Calais, where we were told that a little money would go a great way. Upon landing two little trunks, which was all we carried with us, we were surprised to see fourteen or fifteen fellows all running down to the ship to lay their hands upon them; four got under each trunk, the rest surrounded, and held the hasps; and in this manner our little baggage was conducted, with a kind of funeral solemnity, till it was safely lodged at the custom-house. We were well-enough pleased with the people's civility till they came to be paid: when every creature that had the happiness of but touching our trunks with their finger, expected sixpence; and had so pretty, civil a manner of demanding it, that there was no refusing them. When we had done with the porters, we had next to speak with the custom-house officers, who had their pretty civil way too. We were directed to the Hôtel d'Angleterre, where a valet de place came to offer his service; and spoke to me ten minutes before I once found out that he was speaking English. We had no occasion for his service, so we gave him a little money because he spoke English, and because he wanted it. I cannot help mentioning another circumstance. I bought a new ribbon for my wig at Canterbury, and the barber at Calais broke it in order to gain sixpence by buying

me a new one.

This was not a very promising beginning; but the party, con

tinuing to carry with them the national enjoyment of scolding everything they met with, passed on through Flanders, and to Paris

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CSTARFIELD. KIA:

by way of Lisle. The latter city was the

scene of an incident afterwards absurdly misrelated. Standing at the window of their hotel to see a company of soldiers in the square, the beauty of the sisters Horneck drew such marked admiration, that Goldsmith, with an assumption of solemnity to heighten drollery which was generally a point in his humour, and as often was very solemnly misinterpreted, turned off from the window with the remark that elsewhere, he, too, could have his admirers. The Jessamy Bride, Mrs. Gwyn, was asked about the occurrence not many years ago remembered it as a playful jest; and said how shocked she had subsequently been "to see it adduced in print as a proof of his "envious disposition." The readers of Boswell will remember that it is so related by him. "When accompanying two beautiful young "ladies with their mother on a tour in France, he was seriously "angry that more attention was paid to them than to him!"

At Lisle another letter to Reynolds was begun, but laid aside, because everything they had seen was so dull that the description would not be worth reading. Nor had matters much improved when they got to Paris. Alas! Goldsmith had discovered a change in himself since he traversed those scenes with only his youth and his poverty for companions. Lying in a barn was no disaster then. Then, there were no postilions to quarrel with, no landladies to be cheated by, no silk coat to tempt him into making himself look like a fool. The world was his oyster in those days, which with his flute he opened. He expressed all this very plainly in a letter to Reynolds soon after their arrival, dated from Paris on the 29th of July. He is anxious to get back to what Gibbon, when he became a member of the club, called the relish of manly conversation, and the society of the brown table. He is getting nervous about his arrears of work. He dares not think of another holiday yet, though Reynolds had proposed, on his return, a joint excursion into Devonshire. He is already planning new labour. He is even thinking of another comedy; and is therefore glad that Colman's suit in chancery has ended by confirming his right as acting manager (the whole quarrel was made up the following year by Mr. Harris's quarrel with Mrs. Lessingham). But here is the letter, as printed from the original in possession of Mr. Singer, and very pleasant are its little references to those weaknesses of his own which he well knew had never such kindly interpretation as from Reynolds: as where he whimsically protests that it never can be natural in himself to be stupid, where he reports himself saying as a good thing a thing which was not understood, and where he describes the silk coat he has purchased which makes him look like a fool!

MY DEAR FRIEND, I began a long letter to you from Lisle giving a description of all that we had done and seen, but finding it very dull, and knowing that you would show it again, I threw it aside and it was lost. You see by the top of this letter that we are at Paris, and (as I have often heard you say) we have brought our own amusement with us, for the ladies do not seem to be very fond of what we have yet seen.

With regard to myself I find that travelling at twenty and at forty are very different things. I set out with all my confirmed habits about me, and can find nothing on the Continent so good as when I formerly left it. One of our chief amusements here is scolding at every thing we meet with, and praising every thing and every person we left at home. You may judge therefore whether your name is not frequently bandied at table among us. To tell you the truth I never thought I could regret your absence so much as our various mortifications on the road have often taught me to do. I could tell you of disasters and adventures without number, of our lying in barns, and of my being half-poisoned with a dish of green peas, of our quarrelling with postilions and being cheated by our landladies, but I reserve all this for an happy hour which I expect to share with you upon my return.

I have little to tell you more but that we are at present all well, and

expect returning when we have staid out one month, which I should not care if it were over this very day, I long to hear from you all how you yourself do, how Johnson, Burke, Dyer, Chamier, Colman, and every one of the club do. I wish I could send you some amusement in this letter, but I protest I am so stupified by the air of this country (for I am sure it can never be natural) that I have not a word to say. I have been thinking of the plot of a comedy which shall be entitled A Journey to Paris, in which a family shall be introduced with a full intention of going to France to save money. know there is not a place in the world more promising for that purpose. for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, and though we pay two good shillings an head for our dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less time with my knife than my picktooth. I said this as a good thing at table, but it was not understood. I believe it to be a good thing.

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As for our intended journey to Devonshire I find it out of my power to perform it, for, as soon as I arrive at Dover I intend to let the ladies go on, and I will take a country lodging somewhere near that place in order to do some business. I have so outrun the constable, that I must mortify a little to bring it up again. For God's sake the night you receive this take your pen in your hand and tell me something about yourself, and myself, if you know of anything that has happened. About Miss Reynolds, about Mr. Bickerstaff, my nephew, or anybody that you regard. I beg you will send to Griffin the bookseller to know if there be any letters left for me, and be so good as to send them to me at Paris. They may perhaps be left for me at the porter's lodge opposite the pump in Temple-lane. The same messenger will do. I expect one from Lord Clare from Ireland. As for others I am not much uneasy about.

Is there anything I can do for you at Paris? I wish you would tell me. The whole of my own purchases here, is one silk coat which I have put on, and which makes me look like a fool. But no more of that. I find that Colman has gained his lawsuit. I am glad of it. I suppose you often meet. I will soon be among you, better pleased with my situation at home than I ever was before. And yet I must say, that if anything could make France pleasant, the very good women with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I could say more about that, but I intend showing them this letter before I send it away. What signifies teasing you longer with moral observations when the business of my writing is over. I have one thing only more to say, and of that I think every hour in the day, namely, that I am your most Sincere and most affectionate friend,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Direct to me at the Hôtel de Danemarc,

Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germains.

Little more is to be added of this excursion.

It was not made

more agreeable to Goldsmith by an unexpected addition to the party in the person of Mr. Hickey (the "special attorney" who is niched into Retaliation), who joined them at Paris, and whose habit of somewhat coarse raillery was apt to be indulged too freely at Goldsmith's expense. One of the stories Hickey told on his return, however, seems to have been true enough. Goldsmith sturdily maintained that a certain distance from one of the fountains at Versailles was within reach of a leap, and tumbled into the water in his attempt to establish that position. He also made his friends smile by protesting that all the French parrots he

had heard spoke such capital French that he understood them perfectly, whereas an English parrot, talking his own native Irish, was quite unintelligible to him. It was also told of him, in proof of his oddity, that on Mrs. Horneck desiring him more than once, when they had no place of protestant worship to attend, to read them the morning service, his uniform answer was, "I should be 66 happy to oblige you, my dear madam, but in truth I do not "think myself good enough." This, however, we may presume to think perhaps less eccentric than his friends supposed it to be.

Goldsmith did not stay in Dover as he had proposed. He brought the ladies to London. Among the letters forwarded to him in Paris had been an announcement of his mother's death. Dead to any consciousness or enjoyment of life, she had for some time been; blind, and otherwise infirm; and hardly could the event have been unexpected by him, or by any one. Yet are there few, however early tumbled out upon the world, to whom the world has been able to give any substitute for that earliest friend. Not less true than affecting is the saying in one of Gray's letters : "I have discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in "one's whole life one never can have any more than a single "mother." The story (which Northcote tells) that would attribute to Goldsmith the silly slight of appearing in half-mourning at this time, and explaining it as for a distant" relation, would not be credible of any man of common sensibility; far less of him. Mr. William Filby's bills enable us to speak with greater accuracy. in the instance of his brother's death, they contain an entry of a "suit of mourning," sent home on the 8th of September.

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But indulgence of sorrow is one of the luxuries of the idle; and whatever the loss or grief that might afflict him, the work that waited Goldsmith must be done.

CHAPTER IX.

THE HAUNCH OF VENISON AND GAME OF CHESS. 1770-1771.

1770.

EIGHT days after he put on mourning for his mother's death, on the 16th of September 1770, Goldsmith was signing a fresh agreement with Davies for an Abridgment of his Et. 42. Roman History in a duodecimo volume: for making which, "and for putting his name thereto," Davies undertook to pay fifty guineas. The same worthy bibliopole had published in the summer his Life of Parnell, to which I formerly referred. It

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