A Groatsworth of Goldsmith

It is characteristic of this specialized age that appreciation for Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) seems to have declined over the past century. And yet it is the very eclecticism of his undertakings that make Goldsmith extraordinary: playwright, novelist, poet, historian, biographer, natural historian, and (many believe) also a children’s author.

Like Smollett, Goldsmith was trained to be a medical doctor; like Sheridan, he was from a church family (both his father and a grandfather were men of the cloth). Born and raised in Ireland he attended Trinity College, where he was expelled for taking part in a riot. That didn’t prevent them from erecting a statue there in his honor some time later. I visited it in 2013.

Goldsmith’s later studies were at the University of Edinburgh. He was a desultory student and a bit of a bounder, known for a generous nature as well as a gambling problem. Many thought him a fool, for he liked to play one. And he and his money were soon parted. He began scratching out a living as a writer in the late 1750s. Samuel Johnson recognized his talent and took him under his wing, otherwise it’s quite possible no one ever would have learned his name.

Theatre being our core bailiwick here, we lead with mention of his best known play, ironically one of his very last literary productions. She Stoops to Conquer, written in 1771 and produced by David Garrick two years later. This hilarious comedy of manners about a very bashful suitor being tricked into thinking his prospective father-in-law’s manor is an inn, is (along with Sheridan’s The Rivals and The School for Scandal) one of the few plays of its era to enter the permanent theatrical canon, with frequent productions right down to the present day. I’m not alone in thinking that the young Hugh Grant would have been the perfect Charles Marlow in this comedy, but I can’t find any account of him having ever done so. Compared with She Stoops, Goldsmith’s first play The Good Natur’d Man (1768) has fallen by the wayside, however. It’s perfectly respectable, but not pull-out-the-stops funny as She Stoops to Conquer, which one detects a great deal of the author in (much as one detects the real Oscar Wilde’s voice in many of his plays)

Just prior to trying his luck on the stage, Goldsmith produced his classic novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). After knowing about it all my life I finally buckled down to read it a few weeks ago, and was surprised (thought I oughtn’t to have been) at how “basic” it felt. It was popular among the Victorians, so I think I had a subconscious expectation of a Victorian book, with a bit more depth and soul to it. And it has that Job arc to it, an impossible barrage of bad things happening to the titular hero and his family before the requisite happy ending. One would anticipate an experience deeply felt. But Goldsmith, while playful in form, and certainly witty, skims along the surface. Clearly he was a natural born playwright. He was great at making people say clever things. But a novelist, not so much.

Victorians also loved the 1765 children’s book The History of Little Goody Shoes, the main character of which became a byword for cloyingly sweet and obedient virtue signalers, not to mention an Adam Ant song. Tradition holds that Goldsmith wrote it, though the original published edition credited no author. But, though it’s never been proven, it’s logical and maybe even likely that it came from Goldsmith’s pen.

Goldsmith’s poetry, while lesser known to the general public, is worthy of exploration. In the manner of Pope, much of the poetry of Goldsmith’s day was composed in a utilitarian spirit, exercises in argument as much as architecture. Goldsmith’s most celebrated is probably “The Deserted Village” (1770), an almost chilling portrait of a country town whose inhabitants have all moved away (likely moved to America), with the entire area roundabout slated to be razed to make way for some wealthy man’s country estate. It is an early critique of capitalism, full of evocative imagery of a world that no longer makes room for human beings. His earlier “The Traveller” (1764) put Goldsmith on the literary map, a portrait of the various European nations through which he had roamed on his own pedestrian wanderings years before.

One of Goldsmith’s first notable literary works was a 1758 translation of the memoir of Huguenot galley slave Jean Marteilhe. He also wrote The Life of Richard Nash (1762, about Beau Nash, master of ceremonies of Bath), multi-volume histories of England and Rome, and a textbook on natural history. At the time of his death, he left behind a prospectus for an encyclopedia which would have included articles by follow members of “The Club”, including Johnson, Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Adam Smith.

Goldsmith’s sudden death of an illness at age 45 deprived the public, no doubt, of many future works of brilliance. Tradition holds that he misdiagnosed his own kidney infection. He died around the time of The Intolerable Acts, thus missing the excitement and drama that would upset London at the time of the American Revolution. Goldsmith had his American fans. Chief among them was Washington Irving, who penned a biography of the writer in 1840, in the middle period between his books on Columbus and George Washington. And, at a certain point, none other than Mel Brooks was developing a film adaptation of She Stoops to Conquer! For real!