Volume 1 — OLIVER GOLDSMITH. (continued 2)

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.

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."

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.

It is pleasant to find the author of The Traveler and Deserted Village, amid all his labors, ever and anon escaping to the country, which no man more profoundly enjoyed. It is delightful to imagine with what intense pleasure he must have traversed the groves of Ilam, and the lovely scenes of Dove Dale. He made similar rambles into Hampshire, Sussex, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire. When he wanted at once to enjoy country retirement and hard work, he would "abscond" from his town associates without a word, dive into some queer, obscure retreat, often on the Harrow or Edgeware Roads, and not be visible for two or three months together. One of these retreats is said to be a small wooden cottage on the north side of the Edgeware Road, about a mile from Paddington, near what is called Kilburn Priory. At such places it was his great luxury, when tired of writing, to stroll along the shady hedge sides, seating himself in the most agreeable spots, and occasionally setting down thoughts which arose for future use. When he was in a more sociable mood, he got up parties for excursions into the neighborhood of London, in which he and his companions had a good long ramble among the villages, dined at the village inn, and so home again in the evening. These he called "tradesmen's holidays," and thus were Blackheath, Wandsworth, Fulham, Chelsea, Hampstead, Highgate, Highbury, &c., explored and enjoyed. On those occasions Goldsmith gave himself up to all his love of good fellowship, and of generously seeing others happy. He made it a rule that the party should meet and take a splendid breakfast at his rooms. The party generally consisted of four or five persons; and was almost sure to include some humble person, to whom such a treat would never come from any other quarter. One of the most constant of these was his poor amanuensis, Peter Barlow. Peter had his oddities, but with them a spirit of high independence. He always wore the same dress, and never would pay more than a certain sum, and that a trifle, for his dinner; but that he would insist on paying. The dinner always costing a great deal more, Goldsmith paid the difference, and considered himself well reimbursed by the fund of amusement Peter furnished to the party. One of their frequent retreats was the well-known Chelsea Bun-house. Another of these companions was a Dr. Glover, a medical man and author of no great note, who once took Goldsmith into a cottage in one of their rambles at West End, Hampstead, and took tea with the family as an old acquaintance, when he actually knew no more of the people than Goldsmith did, to his vast chagrin on discovering the fact.

A temporary retreat of Goldsmith's was a cottage near Edgeware, in the vicinity of Canons. There he lived, in conjunction with his friend Bott, and here he worked hard at his Roman History. It had been the retreat of a wealthy shoemaker of Piccadilly, and having a pleasant garden, they christened the place "The Shoemaker's Paradise." The last country lodging which he had was at Hyde, on the Edgeware Road. It is described by Prior as "of the superior order of farm-houses, and stands upon a gentle eminence in what is called Hyde Lane, leading to Kenton, about three hundred yards from the village of Hyde, on the Edgeware Road, and commands a view of an undulating country directly opposite, diversified with wood, in the direction of Hendon." From Mr. Selby, the occupier of the property, Mr. Prior obtained this information. He was himself a lad of sixteen at the time Goldsmith lodged there, and remembered him perfectly. He had only one room there, up one flight of stairs, to the right of the landing. There he wrote She Stoops to Conquer. He boarded with the family, but commonly had his meals sent up to his own apartment. When he had visitors to tea—for his friends used to come out from London, take tea, and then drive home—he had the use of the parlor immediately under his own room. Occasionally he would wander into the kitchen, and stand with his back toward the fire, apparently absorbed in thought. Sometimes he strolled about the fields, or was seen loitering and musing under the hedges, or perusing a book. In the house he usually wore his shirt-collar open, in the manner represented in the portrait by Sir Joshua. Occasionally he read much in bed, and his mode of extinguishing his candle when out of immediate reach was to fling his slipper at it, which in the morning was found near the overturned candlestick bedaubed with grease.

There, then, Goldsmith spent the last days of his life, except what he spent on his sick-bed, in the full enjoyment of those two great charms of his existence, nature and books. Occasionally he would indulge in a jovial pause—have a dance got up among his visitors, and on one occasion took the young people of the house in a carriage to Windsor, to see a company of strolling players, and made himself and his juvenile party very merry by his remarks on the performance. From these quiet enjoyments and field musings, death called him away. He returned to town, and died in his lodgings in the Temple. He was privately interred in the Temple burying-ground, and a tabular monument to his honor placed on the walls of Westminster Abbey. That great and noble building does not hold the remains of a nobler or better heart. Oliver Goldsmith was a true Irishman, generous, impulsive, and improvident; but he was more, he was a true man and true poet. Whether we laugh with him or weep with him, we are still better for it.