CHAPTER X.

For the next two days Goldsmith was fully occupied making such changes in his play as were suggested to him in the course of the rehearsals. The alterations were not radical, but he felt that they would be improvements, and his judgment was rarely at fault. Moreover, he was quick to perceive in what direction the strong points and the weak points of the various members of the company lay, and he had no hesitation in altering the dialogue so as to give them a better chance of displaying their gifts. But not a line of what Colman called the “pot-house scene” would he change, not a word of the scene where the farm servants are being trained to wait at table would he allow to be omitted.

Colman declined to appear upon the stage during the rehearsals. He seems to have spent all his spare time walking from coffee house to coffee house talking about the play, its vulgarity, and the certainty of the fate that was in store for it. It would have been impossible, had he not adopted this remarkable course, for the people of the town to become aware, as they certainly did, what were his ideas regarding the comedy. When it was produced with extraordinary success, the papers held the manager up to ridicule daily for his false predictions, and every day a new set of lampoons came from the coffee-house wits on the same subject.

But though the members of the company rehearsed the play loyally, some of them were doubtful about the scene at the Three Pigeons, and did not hesitate to express their fears to Goldsmith. They wondered if he might not see his way to substitute for that scene one which could not possibly be thought offensive by any section of playgoers. Was it not a pity, one of them asked him, to run a chance of failure when it might be so easily avoided?

To all of these remonstrances he had but one answer: the play must stand or fall by the scenes which were regarded as ungenteel. He had written it, he said, for the sake of expressing his convictions through the medium of these particular scenes, and he was content to accept the verdict of the playgoers on the point in question. Why he had brought on those scenes so early in the play was that the playgoers might know not to expect a sentimental piece, but one that was meant to introduce a natural school of comedy, with no pretence to be anything but a copy of the manners of the day, with no fine writing in the dialogue, but only the broadest and heartiest fun.

“If the scenes are ungenteel,” said he, “it is because nature is made up of ungenteel things. Your modern gentleman is, to my mind, much less interesting than your ungenteel person; and I believe that Tony Lumpkin when admirably represented, as he will be by Mr. Quick, will be a greater favourite with all who come to the playhouse than the finest gentleman who ever uttered an artificial sentiment to fall exquisitely on the ear of a boarding-school miss. So, by my faith! I'll not interfere with his romping.”

He was fluent and decisive on this point, as he was on every other point on which he had made up his mind. He only stammered and stuttered when he did not know what he was about to say, and this frequently arose from his over-sensitiveness in regard to the feelings of others—a disability which could never be laid to the charge of Dr. Johnson, who was, in consequence, delightfully fluent.

On the evening of the third rehearsal of the play with the amended cast, he went to Reynolds's house in Leicester Square to dine. He knew that the Horneck family would be there, and he looked forward with some degree of apprehension to his meeting with Mary. He felt that she might think he looked for some explanation of her strange words spoken when he was by her side at the Pantheon. But he wanted no explanation from her. The words still lay as a burden upon his heart, but he felt that it would pain her to attempt an explanation of them, and he was quite content that matters should remain as they were. Whatever the words might have meant, it was impossible that they could mean anything that might cause him to think of her with less reverence and affection.

He arrived early at Reynolds's house, but it did not take him long to find out that he was not the first arrival. From the large drawingroom there came to his ears the sound of laughter—such laughter as caused him to remark to the servant—

“I perceive that Mr. Garrick is already in the house, Ralph.”

“Mr. Garrick has been here with the young ladies for the past half-hour, sir,” replied Ralph.

“I shouldn't wonder if, on inquiry, it were found that he has been entertaining them,” said Goldsmith.

Ralph, who knew perfectly well what was the exact form that the entertainment assumed, busied himself hanging up the visitor's hat.

The fact was that, for the previous quarter of an hour, Garrick had been keeping Mary Horneck and her sister, and even Miss Reynolds, in fits of laughter by his burlesque account of Goldsmith's interview with an amanuensis who had been recommended to him with a view of saving him much manual labour. Goldsmith had told him the story originally, and the imagination of Garrick was quite equal to the duty of supplying all the details necessary for the burlesque. He pretended to be the amanuensis entering the room in which Goldsmith was supposed to be seated working laboriously at his “Animated Nature.”

“Good morning, sir, good morning,” he cried, pretending to take off his gloves and shake the dust off them with the most perfect self-possession, previous to laying them in his hat on a chair. “Now mind you don't sit there, Dr. Goldsmith,” he continued, raising a warning finger. A little motion of his body, and the pert amanuensis, with his mincing ways, was transformed into the awkward Goldsmith, shy and self-conscious in the presence of a stranger, hastening with clumsy politeness to get him a chair, and, of course, dragging forward the very one on which the man had placed his hat. “Now, now, now, what are you about?”—once more Garrick was the amanuensis. “Did not I warn you to be careful about that chair, sir? Eh? I only told you not to sit in it? Sir, that excuse is a mere quibble—a mere quibble. This must not occur again, or I shall be forced to dismiss you, and where will you be then, my good sir? Now to business, Doctor; but first you will tell your man to make me a cup of chocolate—with milk, sir—plenty of milk, and two lumps of sugar—plantation sugar, sir; I flatter myself that I am a patriot—none of your foreign manufactures for me. And now that I think on't, your laundress would do well to wash and iron my ruffles for me; and mind you tell her to be careful of the one with the tear in it”—this shouted half-way out of the door through which he had shown Goldsmith hurrying with the ruffles and the order for the chocolate. Then came the monologue of the amanuensis strolling about the room, passing his sneering remarks at the furniture—opening a letter which had just come by post, and reading it sotto voce. It was supposed to be from Filby, the tailor, and to state that the field-marshal's uniform in which Dr. Goldsmith meant to appear at the next masked ball at the Haymarket would be ready in a few days, and to inquire if Dr. Goldsmith had made up his mind as to the exact orders which he meant to wear, ending with a compliment upon Dr. Goldsmith's good taste and discrimination in choosing a costume which was so well adapted to his physique, and a humble suggestion that it should be worn upon the occasion of the first performance of the new comedy, when the writer hoped no objection would be raised to the hanging of a board in front of the author's box with “Made by Filby” printed on it.

Garrick's reading of the imaginary letter, stumbling over certain words—giving an odd turn and a ludicrous misreading to a phrase here and there, and finally his turning over the letter and mumbling a postscript alluding to the length of time that had passed since the writer had received a payment on account, could not have been surpassed. The effect of the comedy upon the people in the room was immeasurably heightened by the entrance of Goldsmith in the flesh, when Garrick, as the amanuensis, immediately walked to him gravely with the scrap of paper which had done duty as the letter, in his hand, asking him if what was written there in black and white about the field-marshal's uniform was correct, and if he meant to agree to Filby's request to wear it on the first night of the comedy.

Goldsmith perceived that Garrick was giving an example of the impromptu entertainment in which he delighted, and at once entered into the spirit of the scene, saying-“Why, yes, sir; I have come to the conclusion that more credit should be given to a man who has brought to a successful issue a campaign against the prejudices and stupidities of the manager of a playhouse than to the generalissimo of an army in the field, so why should not I wear a field-marshal's uniform, sir?”

The laugh was against Garrick, which pleased him greatly, for he knew that Goldsmith would feel that he was sharing in the entertainment, and would not regard it as a burlesque upon himself personally. In an instant, however, the actor had ceased to be the supercilious amanuensis, and became David Garrick, crying—

“Nay, sir, you are out of the play altogether. You are presuming to reply to the amanuensis, which, I need scarcely tell a gentleman of your experience, is a preposterous idea, and out of all consistency with nature.”

Goldsmith had shaken hands with all his friends, and being quite elated at the success of his reply to the brilliant Garrick, did not mind much what might follow.

At what did actually follow Goldsmith laughed as heartily as any one in the room.

“Come, sir,” said the amanuensis, “we have no time to waste over empty civilities. We have our 'Animated Nature' to proceed with; we cannot keep the world waiting any longer; it matters not about the booksellers, 'tis the world we think of. What is this?”—picking up an imaginary paper—“'The derivation of the name of the elephant has taxed the ingeniousness of many able writers, but there can be no doubt in the mind of any one who has seen that noble creature, as I have, in its native woods, careering nimbly from branch to branch of the largest trees in search of the butterflies, which form its sole food, that the name elephant is but a corruption of elegant, the movements of the animal being as singularly graceful as its shape is in accordance with all accepted ideas of symmetry.' Sir, this is mighty fine, but your style lacks animation. A writer on 'Animated Nature' should be himself both animated and natural, as one who translates Buffon should himself be a buffoon.”

In this strain of nonsense Garrick went on for the next ten minutes, leading up to a simulated dispute between Goldsmith and his amanuensis as to whether a dog lived on land or water. The dispute waxed warmer and warmer, until at last blows were exchanged and the amanuensis kicked Goldsmith through the door and down the stairs. The bumping of the imaginary man from step to step was heard in the drawing-room, and then the amanuensis entered, smiling and rubbing his hands as he remarked—

“The impertinent fellow! To presume to dictate to his amanuensis! Lord! what's the world coming to when a common literary man presumes to dictate to his amanuensis?”

Such buffoonery was what Garrick loved. At Dr. Burney's new house, around the corner in St. Martin's street, he used to keep the household in roars of laughter—as one delightful member of the household has recorded—over his burlesque auctions of books, and his imitations of Dr. Johnson.

“And all this,” said Goldsmith, “came out of the paltry story which I told him of how I hired an amanuensis, but found myself dumb the moment he sat down to work, so that, after making a number of excuses which I knew he saw through, I found it to my advantage to give the man a guinea and send him away.”