Biographical particulars as to the members of Oliver Goldsmith’s family, partly from unpublished sources.

Oliver Goldsmith died on 4 April, 1774. Although there was some talk of a biography of him being undertaken by Johnson, it appears to have become a common understanding, soon after the death, amongst the members of The Club and their associates that the work of collecting and preparing the materials for the biography would be done by Thomas Percy. At that time Percy had achieved a certain reputation in literary circles, but was by no means the important person in the ecclesiastical sense that he afterwards became. He was then mainly resident in London as Chaplain and Secretary to the Duke of Northumberland and as one of the Chaplains of the King. It was not until 1778 that he was made Dean of Carlisle, from which position he was promoted in 1782 to the Bishopric of Dromore in Ireland.

Percy had already written out in his own hand a Memorandum dictated to him by Goldsmith himself “one rainy day at Northumberland House” (28 April, 1773) giving dates and many interesting particulars relating to his life, and this Memorandum is still in existence. Too much importance must not be attached to it. Percy no doubt regarded it as a Memorandum only, which might prove useful under future conditions that had not then arisen, and how much of it is Goldsmith and how much Percy must for ever remain unknown. The Statement was communicated to Johnson; not used by him: returned by his executors to the wrong person (Malone), sent by him to Percy, and apparently not used textually by him for the purpose of his Memoir of his friend. In any case, there is not much in it about the members of Oliver’s family.

Sir James Prior was ignorant of the existence of this Memorandum, when preparing his Life of Goldsmith (Murray, 1837): but with his praiseworthy carefulness, he set about whilst he was in Ireland in the early part of the nineteenth century to dig up such particulars as he could discover about Oliver’s parentage; and what he says concerning “the Goldsmith Family” in his first Chapter is the fullest and most authoritative history of the poet’s forebears that was capable of being written within half a century of Goldsmith’s death and with the information at that time available.

It is not necessary for present purposes to go further back than Oliver’s grandfather, whose name was Robert Goldsmith of Ballyoughter (not John, as in Dr. Percy’s Statement). The following facts are known about this ancestor of the poet.

1. ROBERT GOLDSMITH OF BALLYOUGHTER.

(Oliver’s Grandfather.)

Robert, elder of two sons of the Revd. John Goldsmith, of Newton, Co. Meath, and Jane Madden, of Donore, Co. Dublin, does not appear to have gone to College or to have exercised any profession. He “married Catherine, daughter of Thomas Crofton, D.D., Dean of Elphin, and settled down at Ballyoughter, near the residence of his father-in-law” (Prior I, 5). By his wife, “who enjoyed a moderate fortune, he had a family of thirteen children, nine sons and four daughters.” Several of them died young. John, the eldest son of Robert, “who had been educated at Trinity College preparatory to studying for the bar, settled down on the family property at Ballyoughter” (Prior I, 5). The second son Charles, who also went to Trinity College, was the father of the poet (see § 2). One of the daughters, Jane, married the Rev. Thomas Contarine of Oran (see § 4).

2. THE REVD. CHARLES GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Father.)

Charles Goldsmith entered Trinity College as a pensioner on the 16 June, 1707. He was described in the Register as born and educated “prope Elphin,” as the son of Robert, and as aged 17. He was born therefore in 1690. His earlier career is obscure, but in a family Bible he is described as “Charles Goldsmith of Ballyoughter” (the family residence) and as “married to Mrs. Ann Jones ye 4th of May 1718” (Prior I, 14), when therefore he was 28 years of age. “This union was not approved by the friends of either: he was destitute of the means of providing for a family, and the father of his wife having a son and three other daughters to provide for, her portion was small” (Prior I, 7). Ann Jones was daughter of the Revd. Oliver Jones of Smith Hill, master of the diocesan school at Elphin, where Charles had received his preliminary education, and where the attachment commenced. Her uncle, named Green, who was rector of Kilkenny West, provided the young couple with a house about six miles distant from himself, at a place called Pallas, in the adjoining county of Longford. “Here they took up their abode, and continued for a period of twelve years [1718 to 1730], Mr. Goldsmith officiating partly in the church of his uncle, and partly in the parish in which he resided.” At Pallas therefore five of their eight children (including Oliver) were born: the other three were born at Lissoy, to which the family removed in 1730, when Charles Goldsmith, by the death of his wife’s uncle, succeeded to the Rectory of Kilkenny West.

The family Bible referred to by Prior (I, 14) records the names and dates of birth of the several children as under: Margaret, born 22 August, 1719 (of whom nothing seems to be known); Catherine, born 13 January, 1721, married to Daniel Hodson (see § 5); Jane, born 9 February, 17[4] (see § 6); Henry, born 9 February, 17[4] (see § 7); Oliver, born 10 November, 1728; Maurice, born 7 July, 1736 (see § 11); Charles, born 16 August, 1737 (see § 12); John, 1740 (to whom there is only the briefest reference in Oliver’s letter to his uncle Contarine written from Edinburgh at the close of 1753 and first printed by Prior in 1837 (I, 154): “How is my poor Jack Goldsmith? I fear his disorder is of such a nature he won’t easily recover.” He is said by Percy (MS. statement) to have “died young aet. 12.”)The loveable character of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith has been depicted for all time in incomparable language in his wayward son’s works. He is the father of “the man in black” of “the Citizen of the World,” the preacher in “The Deserted Village” and Dr. Primrose in “the Vicar of Wakefield.” He died suddenly early in 1747 in the fifty-seventh year of his age (Prior I, 73), the induction of his successor, the Revd. Mr. Wynne, taking place in March of that year.

3. ANN GOLDSMITH, nÉe JONES.

(Oliver’s Mother.)

The death of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith in 1747 made a considerable change for the worse in the fortunes of his widow and her children.

“The wealth of the family, never great or well husbanded, necessarily suffered a serious diminution: the means of the widow were little more than sufficient to provide the necessaries of life for the other branches of the family: remittances to Oliver therefore ceased, and his prospects became darker than ever” (Prior I, 73, 74).

Ann Goldsmith had to remove in her straitened circumstances to a cottage at Ballymahon, and there Oliver seems to have idled away his time between 1749 to 1751, when he drifted off with the intention of going to America. Probably things were not made very comfortable for him at home. Anyhow the mother appears to have been disgusted and disappointed at his waywardness, and spoke to him sharply when he returned penniless. He does not seem to have again resided at Ballymahon, but to have gone to stay with his brother Henry, and afterwards with his constant friend and benefactor, Uncle Contarine, before he went off to Edinburgh, never to see his mother again. When writing from the Scottish capital on 16 September, 1753, to his boon companion, Robert Bryanton of Ballymahon, Oliver says in a postscript: “Give my service to my mother if you see her: for as you express it in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her still.” After his return from his Continental wanderings, he writes twice to his brother-in-law Daniel Hodson about his mother. On 27 December, 1757, he says: “My mother too has lost Pallas! My dear Sir, these things give me real uneasiness, and I should wish to redress them.” And in November, 1758, he writes to Hodson: “Pray tell me how my mother is since she will not gratify me herself and tell me if in anything I can be immediately serviceable to her.” (This and other similar phrases in the letters of 1757 and 1758 are omitted from the 1801 publication as relating to “private family affairs.”) In Oliver’s letter to his brother Henry of February, 1758, he says: “My mother I am informed is almost blind: even tho I had the utmost inclination to return home, I could not behold her in distress without a capacity of relieving her from it, it would be too much to add to my present splenetic habit.”

Later still in January, 1770, Oliver begs his brother Maurice to give him particulars about the family: “Tell me about my mother, my brother Hodson and his son, ... what is become of them, where they live and what they do.” Mrs. Goldsmith died in Ireland later in the same year, and in Mr. William Filby’s tailor’s bills against Goldsmith is the entry of £5:12:0 for “a suit of mourning” (doubtless for her) dated 8 September, 1770 (Prior I, 233).

4. THE CONTARINES.

(Oliver’s Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin.)

As already stated, one of the daughters of Robert Goldsmith named Jane married the Revd. Thomas Contarine, Vicar of Oran. She bore him a daughter Jane, the playmate of Oliver’s childhood, and died in her sixty-third year on the 12 June, 1744 (Prior I, 55, note). “Uncle Contarine” was the best, kindest and most consistent friend of Oliver Goldsmith in his boyhood and student days; and Oliver had a deep sense of gratitude to him. He wrote to Contarine two letters from Edinburgh in 1753 (printed in Prior I, 145 and 154), and a third letter from Leyden in 1754, which is fortunately preserved.

The following incident, illustrative of Oliver’s affection for his generous uncle, is copied into the Memoir of 1801 (page 33) from Percy’s own manuscript. Oliver had borrowed some money from an Irish friend at Leyden “with which he determined to quit Holland and to visit the adjacent countries. But unfortunately his curiosity led him to view a garden, where the choicest flowers were reared for sale. Poor Goldsmith, recollecting that his uncle was an admirer of such rarities, without reflecting on the reduced state of his own finances, was tempted to purchase some of these costly flower roots to be sent as a present to Ireland, and thereby left himself so little cash that he is said to have set out on his travels with only one clean shirt and no money in his pocket.”

Later Oliver wrote to Contarine’s daughter, Mrs. Lawder, on 15 August, 1758, from the Temple Exchange Coffee House an affectionate letter apologising for his long silence, but explaining that he wrote to Kilmore from Leyden, Louvain and Rouen and received no answer, and referring thus to his uncle: “he is no more that soul of fire as when I once knew him. His mind was too active an inhabitant not to disorder the feeble mansion of its abode, for the richest jewels soonest wear their settings. Yet who but a fool would lament his condition, he now forgets the calamities of life, perhaps indulgent heaven has given him a foretaste of that tranquillity here which he so well deserves hereafter.”

Mr. Contarine died a few months after the date of this letter, aged about 74, and left Oliver a legacy of £15, which he eventually made over to his impecunious brother Maurice. In announcing this decision (in January, 1770) Oliver says to Maurice: “The kindness of that good couple to our poor shattered family demands our sincerest gratitude, and though they have almost forgot me yet if good things at last arrive, I hope one day to return, and encrease their good humour by adding to my own. I have sent my cousin Jenny [Mrs. Lawder] a miniature picture of myself as I believe it is the most acceptable present I can offer.”

Contarine’s daughter Jane married James Lawder, a well-to-do resident of Kilmore, near Carrick on Shannon. To her Oliver addressed on 15 August, 1758, the affectionate letter already quoted dwelling on the past and signing himself “Your affectionate and obliged Kinsman.” It seems to have provoked no reply.

The end of the Lawders was tragic. The husband was treacherously murdered by his servants and labourers, who carried off the plate in the house and about £300 in money. For this crime no less than six of them were executed. The wife, who narrowly escaped being murdered also, died in Dublin about 1790 (Prior I, 130, note).

5. CATHERINE GOLDSMITH (MRS. DANIEL HODSON).

(Sister of Oliver.)

Catherine was born 13 January, 1721. It was her private marriage with Daniel Hodson, “the son of a gentleman of good family residing at St. John’s near Athlone,” who was at the time of the engagement a pupil of Henry Goldsmith, that led to Oliver’s entering Trinity College as a sizar instead of as a pensioner like Henry. Her father, the Revd. Charles Goldsmith, was greatly indignant at this marriage, and in order to give his daughter a marriage portion of £400, sacrificed his tithes and rented land.

To his brother-in-law Hodson, Oliver wrote two very cordial letters on 27 December, 1757, and November, 1758, the second containing a paragraph: “Dear Sister, I wrote to Kilmore (the residence of the Lawders). I wish you would let me know how that family stands affected with regard to me.” It is curious that in Oliver’s letter to Maurice of January, 1770, he does not ask after his sister Catherine, though he enquires about “my mother, my brother Hodson and his son, my brother Harry’s son and daughter” and other members of the family. After Oliver’s death, however, Catherine Hodson, appealed to by Maurice, wrote out a full and very sympathetic account, running to twelve foolscap pages, of Oliver’s youthful adventures, terminating with his being sent to Edinburgh in 1753 “for the studdy of Physick. From this date I am a stranger to what happened him: he wrote severall letters to his friends from Switzerland, Germany and Italy.”

With reference to Oliver’s enquiry quoted above as to “my Brother Hodson and his son,” it may be mentioned that the poet befriended this nephew in London in 1772 to the extent of allowing him to run up a bill for £35:3:0 with his tailor William Filby. It is to be feared this bill was still unpaid at Oliver’s decease (Forster II, 173).

6. JANE GOLDSMITH, AFTERWARDS JOHNSON.

(Born 9 February, 1722. Sister of Oliver.)

As the family Bible entries from which were copied into Prior’s Life (I, 14) gave as the date of the births of Henry and Jane Goldsmith the same day 9 February, 17— (leaf torn), Forster surmised and with much plausibility that they were twins, born on the 9 February, 1722 (I, 9). Jane married one Johnson, a farmer at Athlone, and appears to have written to Oliver in 1769 about her impoverished condition, which Oliver in his letter to Maurice of January, 1770, regrets his inability to relieve.

7. THE REVD. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Elder Brother.)

Very little is known about the eldest son of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith, Henry, who was born at Pallas on the 9 February, 1722 (Prior I, 14). He was educated at Dr. Neligan’s school at Elphin, afterwards matriculating at Trinity College, Dublin, on 4 May, 1741 (Prior I, 34, note). He was elected a scholar on Trinity Monday, 1743: “but returning home in the succeeding vacation, flushed probably with his recent triumph, he indulged a youthful passion and married” (Prior I, 35).All that the Percy Memoir of 1801 (I, 3) says about Henry is: “Of his eldest son the Revd. Henry Goldsmith, to whom his brother dedicated The Traveller, their father had formed the most sanguine hopes, as he had distinguished himself both at school and at College, but he unfortunately married at the early age of nineteen: which confined him to a Curacy, and prevented him rising to preferment in the Church.” As he was born at Pallas in February, 1722, Henry must, if this statement be accurate, have become a married man in 1741, about the time he matriculated at Trinity College. There is evidently inaccuracy somewhere as to Henry’s age, and it may be doubted whether his marriage took place before or after his election as a scholar of his College on Trinity Monday, 1743. From some guarded words used by Prior (the most painstaking investigator into the family history) it is possible the marriage was a secret one, as Prior suggests that when it took place “he must have been three years older [than stated above], or have formed this connexion previous to entering the University. To some men this tie becomes a stimulus to exertion: to others it seems a clog upon every effort at rising in life” (I, 35). Prior seems to decide that in Henry’s case it was a clog. He speaks of Henry having “indulged a youthful passion and married,” and continues shortly afterwards: “Finding residence in College no longer eligible, the advantages of his scholarship were sacrificed: he retired, as appears from the college books, to the country: established a school in his father’s neighbourhood: and in this occupation added to that of curate at ‘forty pounds a year,’ though possessed of talents and character, he passed the remainder of life.” (Prior I, 35.)

It is nowhere very clearly stated, that it would seem that Henry acted as curate to his father at Kilkenny West, and perhaps after his father’s death in 1747 he continued in office under the new Rector, the Revd. Mr. Wynne (Prior I, 73). John Forster says (I, 427): “In his early life Dr. Strean succeeded Henry Goldsmith in the curacy of Kilkenny West, which the latter occupied at the period of his death (1768) and as he is careful to tell us, in its emoluments of £40 a year, which was not only his salary but continued to be the same when I [Strean] a successor, was appointed to that parish.”

The two brothers Henry and Oliver had a strong and abiding affection for one another. Oliver had corresponded with his brother whilst he was abroad, though none of his letters have been preserved. Part of The Traveller had been sent to Henry from Switzerland, and when it was completed and published at the end of 1764, the poem was dedicated to him. The opening paragraph contained this sentence: “It will throw a light upon many parts of it when the reader understands that it is addressed to a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.” And the opening lines of the poem itself contain the familiar phrase:

Later on there is the well-known description of the village preacher:

There is only one letter from Oliver to Henry known to exist: that addressed “about 1759” to Henry at “Lowfield, near Ballymore in Westmeath Ireland” seeking his assistance in the disposal of copies of his book on “Polite learning” describing his own physical looks, giving Henry advice as to the education of his son, asking about his mother and other members of the family, and ending up: “by telling you what you very well know already, that I am your most affectionate friend and brother Oliver Goldsmith.”

Henry was the subject of Oliver’s solicitude when he was granted an interview with the Earl of Northumberland (Dr. Percy’s friend) who was about to proceed to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. We owe the report of this interview to the unsympathetic pen of Sir John Hawkins in his Life of Johnson (p. 419). In answer to the Earl’s remark that he was going to Ireland and hearing that Goldsmith was a native of that country he would be glad to do him any kindness, Oliver is made to reply: “I would say nothing but that I had a brother there, a clergyman, that stood in need of help.” Hawkins’ sour comment was: “thus did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.”

The Revd. Henry Goldsmith died at Athlone at the end of May, 1768, at the age of forty-five. A suit of mourning for him ordered of Oliver’s tailor William Filby cost £5:12:6 (Forster II, 113). The brother seems to have at once written a letter of affectionate sympathy with the family—probably to the widow, and to his nephew Henry he sent a separate letter which has only just come to light in North America, having doubtless been preserved till now by descendants of the original recipient. It is now the property of Mr. William Harris Arnold of Nutley, New Jersey, to whose kindness I owe permission for its reproduction:

London, June 7th, 1768.

My dear Henry,

Your dear father’s death has afflicted me deeply. The news of this dreadful event only reached me yesterday and though I have already sent my love and condolences in a letter which you will see I pen this further line to my dear Nephew to express the hope that you and your Brother, young as you both are, will bear yourselves as the sons of such a man should. As to your own future I shall not rest until I hit upon some means of serving you; and it may be that through the influence of some of my friends here you may procure a situation suited to your talents.

Meanwhile attend diligently to your studies, neglect nothing that can advance your interest when an opening occurs. Are you still inclined towards a military career? That would necessitate, besides a certain temper and constitution, a considerable sum of ready money. Something, however, might be managed abroad—in the Indies or in America.

Let me hear from you, my dear Henry, and with much love to you both

Believe me,
Your affectionate Uncle,
Oliver Goldsmith.

Mr. Henry Goldsmith
In Care of Mrs. Hodson,
Athlone,
Ireland.

I find no mention whatever in any document (published or unpublished) that I have come across of a second son of the Revd. Henry. Oliver at the time of his brother’s death was at work on the Deserted Village at a summer retreat in a cottage eight miles from the Edgware Road (Forster II, 124), was visited there in May, 1768, by Cooke, who marks the date as exactly two years before the poem appeared in print (May, 1770), and tells us that the writing of it, and its elaborate revision, extended over the whole interval of twenty-four months.

Is it permissible to suggest that Oliver, with his head full of other things, was a little dubious about the sex of the other child of his brother, and spoke of a son where he should have said daughter? Writing to his brother Maurice in January, 1770, with anxious enquiries about the several members of the family, Oliver says: “Tell me about my mother, my brother Hodson and his son: my brother Harry’s son and daughter, my sister Johnson, the family of Ballyoughter, what is become of them, where they live and how they do. You talked of being my only brother, I don’t understand you—Where is Charles?” (Memoir, p. 89.)

Here it will be observed, Oliver makes tender enquiries after Henry’s “son and daughter.” He says nothing of the widow or of a second son. In the only letter of Oliver’s to his brother that is now extant, ascribed by Percy to “about 1759,” Oliver thus refers to the son: “The reasons you have given me for breeding your son a scholar are judicious and convincing.... Preach then my dear Sir, to your son not the excellence of human nature nor the disrespect of riches, but endeavour to teach him thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering Uncle’s example be placed in his eyes. I had learned from books to love virtue, before I was taught from experience the necessity of being selfish.”

I quote from the original holograph letter, not from the somewhat bowdlerised version of it that Percy printed in the Memoir of 1801, and that has since been copied in all subsequent biographies.It remains therefore to consider what happened to those whom Henry left behind him in 1768 of whom there is any record. There was a widow, of whose parentage and maiden name, or of the circumstances of her widowhood nothing seems to be known, his son Henry, and his daughter Catherine.

8. HENRY GOLDSMITH’S WIDOW.

It was in all probability Mrs. Henry Goldsmith of whom Johnson wrote to George Steevens on 25 February, 1777, as recorded by Boswell in Volume III, Chapter III:

“Mr. Steevens ... joined Dr. Johnson in Kind assistance to a female relation of Dr. Goldsmith, and desired that on her return to Ireland she would procure authentic particulars of the life of her relation. Concerning her is the following letter:

“To George Steevens Esq.
“February 25th 1777.

“Dear Sir,

“You will be glad to hear that from Mrs. Goldsmith whom we lamented as drowned, I have received a letter full of gratitude to us all, with promises to make the enquiries which we recommended to her. You will tell the good news,

“I am, Sir,
“Your most etc.
“Sam Johnson.”

Prior (II, 562) expands this incident, assigning it definitely to the widow of the Revd. Henry, but gives no new facts, except to add that “being but slenderly provided for, she accepted the situation of Matron to the Meath Infirmary at Navan.”

9. HENRY, SON OF THE REVD. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Nephew.)

Henry, the son, Prior describes as “distinguished for spirit, intelligence and personal beauty.... A commission being obtained for him in the army, he quitted Ireland for North America about the year 1782.” A constant friend and correspondent of his, the Revd. Thomas Handcock wrote on 7 October, 1799 (Prior II, 564) that Henry had been a lieutenant in the 54th Regiment, and that “with an uncommon flow of spirits (he) possesses a large portion of his uncle’s genius.” He married an American lady from Rhode Island and “after the peace settled with her somewhere in Nova Scotia.”

“He plunged through unheard of distresses and difficulties until very lately, when accident made our young Prince, the Duke of Kent, acquainted with his person and history: and His Royal Highness lost no time in raising him, a wife and ten children, considerably above want, as I learn by a letter from Goldsmith within these last six weeks. I had ... received his rent and managed his affairs, and in his distresses he often urged me to sell his interest in the Deserted Village [Lissoy] which I continued to avoid, to his present very great satisfaction.”

The particular way in which Henry Goldsmith’s needs were brought under the notice of the Duke of Kent is not recorded, but His Royal Highness had been sent to Canada in 1791, and was Commander-in-Chief of the forces in British North America in 1799-1800. What Mr. Handcock says in his letter is confirmed by an unpublished letter written by Henry’s sister Catherine to Bishop Percy on 6 January, 1802, apropos of her uncle Charles’ statement to the Bishop that “the name is extinct except in his family”:

“He never considered,” said she, “that I had cousins in this country that had male heirs, as also a much lov’d brother now residing at Halifax in North America, who has ten children, and has either four or five sons lawfully by an amiable wife. From my brother’s account, his Children possess uncommon abilities. His eldest son Henry he intends for the Bar: his second son is a midshipman, and his third son Oliver, he mention’d in a letter to me he would have educated in Ireland. The Duke of Kent, my brother’s particular Patron and Friend, has got him the place of Assistant Engineer at Halifax, and means to provide for him in a better way when opportunity offers.”

A letter by Henry Goldsmith to a kinsman dated 20 March, 1808, brings the story of this Nova Scotian family up to a somewhat later date.“I am fixed here in the Commissariat Department and have a family of nine children, five sons and four daughters. The eldest Henry, follows the profession of the law: Hugh Colvill is I hope ere this, a lieutenant in the Navy: Oliver is with a merchant at Boston: Charles is a midshipman on this station, and Benjamin a boy. The daughters Ann, Catherine, Eliza and Jane are at home with me, and promise to be all I wish them.” (Prior II, 568.)

Hugh Colvill Goldsmith (1789-1841) referred to in his father’s letter, merits a passing mention as being the young sailor who on 8 April, 1824, shocked Cornish susceptibilities by displacing the famous rocking Logan Stone at the Land’s End, and had to arrange for its replacement later in that year (29 October to 2 November) in its original position, which as the weight of the stone is variously given as 60 to 80 tons, was no easy matter. Doubtless because of this foolhardy exploit, he has a niche in the Dictionary of National Biography, being in fact the only member of the Goldsmith family other than the poet who is thus honoured. He was born at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, on 2 April, 1789, and was at the time of the Logan Rock incident a Naval Lieutenant in command of the “Nimble” revenue cutter off the coast of Cornwall. He was never promoted, and died at sea off St. Thomas in the West Indies on 8 October, 1841. An incidental reference to Charles Goldsmith (also referred to in his father’s letter of 1808 as a midshipman) shows that he was afterwards a Commander in the Navy. His dates are 1795-1854.

10. CATHERINE, DAUGHTER OF THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Niece.)

The facts as to the daughter of Henry Goldsmith are easier to piece together, as Bishop Percy drew up when in London in July, 1800, a memorandum as to her case which has fortunately been preserved in manuscript, and gives incidentally some particulars as to other members of the Goldsmith family.There are a number of pitiful letters from this poor little lonely and suffering soul addressed to the Bishop at dates ranging from 1794 to March, 1803, with drafts of two of the Bishop’s replies, mercifully modified before despatch, referring to his monetary advances already made to her, and speaking of the “constant source of plague and vexation” which the question of the publication of the Memoir had been to him. The end came in July, 1803, when one McDonnell wrote to the Bishop’s secretary that Catherine had died “after a painful illness to which her dependant and helpless situation must have greatly contributed.” McDonnell had seen to her being decently buried, and thought 8 or 9 guineas would reimburse the total cost. No doubt the Bishop sent him this.

11. MAURICE GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Brother.)

Maurice, the next child of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith after Oliver, was born on 7 July, 1736, and was followed a year later (16 August, 1737) by Charles, and in 1740 by a fourth son John. Maurice was not therefore, as stated erroneously in a note on page 86 of the Percy Memoir “our poet’s youngest brother.” He first emerges from obscurity early in 1770, when he was in his thirty-fourth year, and wrote to Oliver a letter from the Lawder’s house at Kilmore asking for assistance. Oliver’s reply has fortunately been preserved. It bears no date, but Percy ascribes it to “January 1770,” which is about right, as endorsed upon it is Maurice’s receipt dated 4 February, 1770, £15, the amount of a legacy left by Uncle Contarine to Oliver which he made over to his brother (I, 89).

According to Prior (II, 519), Sir Joshua Reynolds undertook after the death of the poet on 4 April, 1774, “to superintend his affairs until the arrival from Ireland of such of his relatives as should be authorised to receive them.” For answer Maurice Goldsmith appeared in London “a plain unlettered man, too homely it seems in appearance and manners to command much consideration from his late brother’s accomplished friends” (Prior II, 524). The still surviving Mrs. Gwyn (the “Jessamy Bride”) told Prior long years after that:

“Being in a small party in the house of Sir Joshua when the latter was summoned downstairs, he returned after a considerable absence and whispered her that he had been below with Goldsmith’s brother, but thinking a little beer or spirits there better adapted to his taste than tea in the drawing room, he had entertained him in what he considered the most appropriate manner. She, with the usual kindness of her sex, thought his behaviour scarcely becoming in the President to so near a relative of his departed friend.” (II, 524.)

Doubtless it was at this time that Sir Joshua gave Maurice the subjoined (undated) note of introduction to the “Revd. Dr. Percy Northumberland House” still preserved amongst the Percy papers:

“Sir Joshua Reynolds’s compliments and begs leave to introduce to Dr. Percy Mr. Goldsmith brother of his late friend Dr. Goldsmith.”

As the next of kin, Maurice was entitled to administer his brother’s affairs, and there is at Somerset House the formal Probate granted on 28 June, 1774, to “Maurice Goldsmith, the natural and lawful brother and next of kin to the said deceased.” As Oliver died in debt, there was nothing for Maurice to administer or receive, and he left London on 10 June, 1774, writing to Mr. Hawes, the apothecary who attended his brother, his “most sincere thanks for your kind behaviour to me since my arrival here,” and for his “care, assiduity and diligence with respect to my brother Doctor Goldsmith.”

No doubt Percy improved the occasion, when Maurice came to see him at Northumberland House with Sir Joshua’s note of introduction in his pocket, by giving him some sound advice, with perhaps a cash contribution on account, and certainly with an admonition to collect all his brother’s letters to members of the family in Ireland that he could manage to pick up. For on 15 July, 1776, Maurice wrote to Percy as under:

July 15, 1776.

Revd. Sir,

When I last had the honour of seeing you at your Chambers in Northumberland House you most kindly told me you wod willingly serve me, I have Sir according to your Order collected in this Country all the Letters and a few anecdotes of my Brother, the late Dr. Goldsmith that I cod procure which I assure you Sir are entirely Jenuine, the Anecdotes wrote by his Sister who ware both inseperable Companions in their youth.

I am much concernd that two of these Letters which I send are not entirely Legibl and that it will cost som pains to make them and the Memoirs fitt for the press; So Dr Sir to your goodness and protection I commit them thoroughly satisfied you will serve the Brother of a Man who really lovd and Esteemd you.

I can assure you Sir I have gon several Miles to collect them and as my circumstances at present are not very affluent a small assistance wod be gratefully accepted, shd any accrue from these papers wich with what my good Friend Sr. Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Garrick promisd to supply, will not be deemd I hope unworthy of yr publication which you and Sir Joshua told me you wod get affected.

I am Sir with the greatest respect Sir your verry Obet. Humble Servant

Maurice Goldsmith

I hope you will do me the honour to let me know if you receivd. these by directing to me at Charles Town near Elphin Ireland.

There is nothing to show that anything definite followed this appeal for money: and perhaps on that account, Maurice next addressed himself to Dr. Johnson, to whom he wrote at Bolt Court an undated letter bearing the Elphin post-mark as under:

“To Doctor Johnson at his house in Bolt Court Fleet Street London.

“I lately had the Honour to receive a letter from my good Friend the Revd. Docr. Percy, who from som Papers I had sent him did intend writing the life of the Late Docr. Goldsmith: he tells me that from the esteem you have had for the poor Docr. you have determind to take the work under your protection and that you had also promised to use your interest with the booksellers to let one impression be printed of all his poetical writings.... Your taking the trouble to write and set of(f) the life of the Docr. by your able judicious and highly esteemed pen will be a lasting honour to his memory and to his Family.”

In a note to the print of Oliver’s letter to Maurice of “January 1770,” Percy gives the following further information about Maurice (p. 86). “Having been bred to no business, he upon some occasion complained to our bard, that he found it difficult to live like a gentleman, on which Oliver begged he would, without delay, quit so unprofitable a trade and betake himself to some handycraft employment. Maurice wisely took the hint, and bound himself apprentice to a cabinet maker. He had a shop in Dublin, when the Duke of Rutland was Lord Lieutenant: who at the instance of Mr. Orde, then principal secretary of state (now Lord Bolton) out of regard to his brother’s memory, made him an inspector of the licences in that city. He was also appointed mace-bearer on the erection of the Royal Irish Academy: both of them places very compatible with his business. In the former he gave proof of great integrity by detecting a fraud committed on the revenue in his department, by which probably he might himself have profited, if he had not been a man of principle. He died without issue, about seven years ago.”

As a matter of fact, Maurice died early in the winter of 1792-3, as appears from a letter written by Dr. Thomas Campbell, who first attempted Oliver’s biography, to the Bishop of Dromore—then in London—on 12 June, 1793 (Nichols’ Literary Illustrations, VII, 790). Campbell says: “Alas! poor Maurice, He is to receive no comfort from your Lordship’s labours in his behalf. He departed from a miserable life early last winter, and luckily has left no children: but he has left a widow, and faith a very nice one, who called on me one of the few days I spent in Dublin after Christmas, so that you will not want claimants.”

The numerous letters from Maurice to the Bishop which have been preserved appear to show that he had really made sustained efforts to collect in Ireland such of the original letters written by Oliver to his relatives as were procurable. One such letter, and that of the greatest interest, viz.: the letter written to Uncle Contarine from Leyden in 1754 was not retrieved until nine years after the letter of 15 July, 1776, already quoted, for Maurice writes to the Bishop on 9 June, 1785, “I send your Lordship a letter from my brother to his Uncle Contarine dated from Lydon.”Vol. VIII of Nichols’ Literary Illustrations (published in 1858) contains at pp. 236-240, extracts from correspondence between the Bishop and Edmund Malone from which it appears that on 16 June, 1785, Percy was urging that the Members of the Club (of which Oliver was an original Member) should show “our regard for the departed Bard by relieving his only brother, and so far as I hear, the only one of his family that wants relief.” (This was by no means the case, as Percy was afterwards to learn by bitter experience.) He wrote again to Malone on 17 October, 1786, “I must entreat you to exert all your influence among the gentlemen of The Club, and particularly urge it on Sir Joshua Reynolds, to procure subscriptions for the relief of poor Maurice Goldsmith, who is suffering great penury and distress being not only poor but very unhealthy.... A guinea a piece from the members of the Club would be a great relief to him.”

Maurice’s subsequent appointment in 1787 as the Mace-bearer to the Royal Irish Academy and his place in the Licence Office appears to have eased somewhat the final years of his chequered life, but when he died in 1792, a new appeal for the Bishop’s help came from his widow, Esther Goldsmith.

11a. ESTHER GOLDSMITH, WIDOW OF MAURICE.

All that is known about her is that she is described in a Petition to the Lord Lieutenant (the draft of which in Percy’s writing was left amongst his papers) as “the daughter of a respectable clergyman,” and as “left wholly destitute” by the death of her husband Maurice Goldsmith. She got various grants from a fund in the gift of the Lord Lieutenant known as the Concordatum, and on the last page of Prior’s Life (Vol. II, 576) is a letter from her dated Rushport, Elphin, 19 June, 1793, to Mr. J. C. Walker asking his influence in favour of her appointment as housekeeper to the Royal Irish Academy.

There are two unpublished later letters (1794) from Rushport to Bishop Percy, in one of which Esther wants to know about the subscription to the Memoir, and in the other she thanks the Bishop for £15 which she had received from the Concordatum Fund. A later letter dated 17 October, 1801, from Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry Goldsmith, to the Bishop seems to show that Esther had remarried. “She thinks she is as well entitled to the money arising from the publication of my Uncle’s works as I am, but there I must beg leave to differ in opinion with her.” Catherine gives some more particulars which she thinks the Bishop ought to know, but “if Mrs. Goldsmith knew the information came to your Lordship through me, ’twou’d bring her tongue upon me, which she can use well.”

12. CHARLES GOLDSMITH.

(Oliver’s Brother.)

Charles Goldsmith (born 1717, died 1805) the youngest but one of the Revd. Charles Goldsmith’s children, comes on the scene earlier than the others. Encouraged by the accounts which had reached Ireland of his brother Oliver’s arrival in England and growing literary fame, he ventured to the Metropolis in the year 1757, and as Northcote says in his Life of Reynolds (I, 332-3): “Having heard of his brother Noll mixing in the first society in London, he took it for granted that his fortune was made, and that he could soon make a brother’s also: he therefore left home without notice: but soon found, on his arrival in London, that the picture he had formed of his brother’s situation was too highly coloured, that Noll could not introduce him to his great friends, and in fact that, although out of a jail, he was often out of a lodging.”

The garret where Goldsmith then wrote and slept is supposed to have been one of the courts near Salisbury Square. His letters were addressed from the neighbouring Temple-exchange coffee-house near Temple Bar, and the secret of the lodging is said to have been won from the coffee-house waiter “George” to whom Charles Goldsmith confided his relationship. (Forster I, 124.)Thus disappointed, Charles quitted London in a few days, suddenly and secretly as he had entered it, “in a humble capacity it is said, for Jamaica”: whence says Forster (I, 125) “he did not return till after four-and-thirty years to tell this anecdote, and to be described by Malone as not a little like his celebrated brother in person, speech and manner.”

When Charles came back to this country in 1791 it was to arrange for his ultimate settlement with his family in England: but after the peace of Amiens (1802), he sold his house, and with his wife (a Creole), a daughter and a son named Oliver (born in England), migrated to the South of France. In consequence of Buonaparte’s order for detaining British subjects, he again returned to England in 1803 by way of Holland, much reduced in circumstances, and died about 1805 at humble lodgings in Ossulston Street, Somers Town.

In an original letter of Charles himself, dated 2 September, 1795, in the Percy bundle of Goldsmithiana, he says specifically: “I paid in 1791 a visit to my native country: on my arrival I found the greatest part of my relations and old friends had paid the debt of Nature: my brother Maurice remained: he gave me a pleasing account of the great benefits you had been pleased to bestow on him.” As Maurice had died, Charles put in a plea for help for himself in view of the necessity of supporting “a wife and five children.” These were of course the offspring of his Jamaica marriage with a Creole, and Charles said nothing about any former marriage. Percy is not known to have answered the letter: but on 8 December, 1801, Charles made another appeal. Before answering this the Bishop made some cautious enquiries of another member of the family, Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry, who was already (since 1794) a candidate for his charity. She replied on 28 December, 1801, that “there are some parts of his [Charles’] letter true, and many others not so. He is indeed a most delightful companion, abounds with wit and humour, and is perfectly the gentleman, but he does not possess the steadiness or benevolent heart that my much respected father or Uncle Oliver did. At the same time I think he has a much better claim than my Uncle Maurice’s widow, for she was left a very handsome fortune of near two hundred a year, and more than a thousand pounds in ready money. I think she has no title at all to receive anything from the sale of the Poems.” Later, Catherine wrote again to the Bishop on 6 January, 1802, saying she had information that her Uncle (Charles) “had a great deal of money in the Funds, that he had some children and the most of them natural children. I assure you, my Lord, he has a great deal of art and duplicity.” Percy wrote Charles in 1802 some sort of letter, which the latter says he never received. This was very possibly the case, in view of his migration to France after the peace of Amiens.

Through the exertions of Edmund Malone, Charles was discovered to be back in London, and he wrote to the Bishop in 1803 some details of his experiences in France, following this up later in 1804 with a fuller statement which is very readable and quite interesting.

The last letter preserved from Charles Goldsmith is dated 24 March, 1805, and is in a shaky hand, saying he is afraid “my poor little son Oliver will soon be left fatherless and without a friend.” Probably Charles died soon after, and according to the letter of a neighbour, Mr. R. C. Roffe, dated 12 February, 1821, “almost in a state of second childhood. His wife, with a son (Oliver) he had by her in England, went to the West Indies”: and according to a quotation given by Prior (II, 574) from a Jamaica newspaper, this Oliver died at Belmont on 21 October, 1828, in the thirty-second year of his age.

It must be added to the above that before Percy had heard from Charles, he had in 1794 received a letter from one John Goldsmith, a sergeant of the South Cork Militia, claiming to be Charles’s son. At first Percy evidently thought the man an impostor. On one of John’s letters the Bishop had pencilled “natural son of Charles Goldsmith,” and has marked as “not true” a story of the marriage of his parents by “my uncle Henry Goldsmith, who was then Rector of the Parish they lived in,” and the reception of such parents by the grandmother Ann Goldsmith and Catherine Hodson his aunt. John told the Bishop on 2 October, 1808, “I did not imagine my father Charles Goldsmith was in existence, as I did not either see or hear from him since I saw your Lordship in Dublin in the year 1793, nor did I ever hear of his being married a second time.” As there are amongst the Percy papers receipts dated in October, 1808, May, 1809, and September, 1810, for a total of £35 in all for money disbursed by the Bishop for the benefit of this John Goldsmith, Percy may have considered there was something in his story after all.

As to what subsequently happened to this John Goldsmith and the eight children on whose behalf he appealed to the generosity of Dr. Percy, there seems to be no information available, but Prior (II, 574) mentions that “a person named Goldsmith, and claiming to be a nephew of the poet, died in the Cholera Hospital in Bristol in 1833: he was in a state of destitution and may have had no just right to the honour he assumed.” He may have been this John Goldsmith, son (legitimate or otherwise) of Charles Goldsmith.

THE PROFITS OF THE PERCY MEMOIR.

The original design of Bishop Percy in undertaking the Memoir of his friend Goldsmith was to benefit Maurice. Then Catherine, daughter of Henry, was added as a participant in the assumed profits: afterwards (when Maurice died and Charles revealed himself) Charles Goldsmith, the sole then remaining brother of Oliver. Percy’s ultimate decision, when the work took shape and he had made his agreement with Cadell and Davies in 1797, was for 125 of the 250 free copies of the work given to him by Cadell and Davies for disposal to be sold through White the bookseller of Fleet Street for the benefit of Charles, and the remaining 125 copies to be sold through Archer the bookseller of Dublin for the benefit of Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry. The London copies seem to have gone off fairly well. Percy in a Memorandum dated Dromore, 24 May, 1808, explaining the affair long after the event to Dr. R. Anderson (Literary Illustrations, VII, 189-192), says that from Charles “the Bishop frequently heard, informing him that the payments were duly made, and whatever copies he desired were delivered to him to dispose of among his friends for his own benefit. He believes Mr. Charles Goldsmith is since dead, but the account is still open with his family, to whom Mr. White must account for any that may have remained of the 125 copies delivered to him.” The case of the 125 Irish copies was less satisfactory. “It was principally on account of Catherine Goldsmith, who had been reduced to indigence, that the Bishop had applied in 1800 to Messrs. Cadell and Davies to afford some present relief, to alleviate the distress occasioned by the delay of the publication: which being refused by them, the Bishop had supplied the same himself, and continued to do so till her death, which took place before Mr. Archer had come to a settlement for the 125 copies transmitted to him. Part of these are still unsold.... Whatever arises from this sale, or remains of Mr. Archer’s balance that was unpaid to or for the niece, shall be delivered to any relative of Dr. Goldsmith who shall be found a proper object of the same.” (Nichols’ Literary Illustrations, VII, 191.)