It was here
Goldsmith resided when he wrote his Deserted Village. I was shown the
very apartment. It was a relique of the original style of the castle,
with pannelled wainscots and gothic windows. I was pleased with its air
of antiquity, and with its having been the residence of poor Goldy.
"Goldsmith was a pretty poet," said I to myself, "a very pretty poet;
though rather of the old school. He did not think and feel so strongly
as is the fashion now-a-days; but had he lived in these times of hot
hearts and hot heads, he would have written quite differently."
In a few days I was quietly established in my new quarters; my books
all arranged, my writing desk placed by a window looking out into the
field; and I felt as snug as Robinson Crusoe, when he had finished his
bower. For several days I enjoyed all the novelty of change and the
charms which grace a new lodgings before one has found out their
defects. I rambled about the fields where I fancied Goldsmith had
rambled. I explored merry Islington; ate my solitary dinner at the
Black Bull, which according to tradition was a country seat of Sir
Walter Raleigh, and would sit and sip my wine and muse on old times in
a quaint old room, where many a council had been held.
All this did very well for a few days: I was stimulated by novelty;
inspired by the associations awakened in my mind by these curious
haunts, and began to think I felt the spirit of composition stirring
within me; but 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 window was alive with the tread of feet and clack of
tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was
absolutely a "show house!" the tower and its contents 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. And then, in the midst of a vein of
thought, or a moment of inspiration, I was interrupted, and all my
ideas put to flight, by my intolerable landlady's tapping at the door,
and asking me, if I would "jist please to let a lady and gentleman come
in to take a look at Mr. Goldsmith's room."
If you know anything what an author's study is, and what an author is
himself, you must know that there was no standing this. I put a
positive interdict on my room's being exhibited; but then it was shown
when I was absent, and my papers put in confusion; and on returning
home one day, I absolutely found a cursed tradesman and his daughters
gaping over my manuscripts; and my landlady in a panic at my
appearance. I tried to make out a little longer by taking the key in my
pocket, but it would not do. I overheard mine hostess one day telling
some of her customers on the stairs that the room was occupied by an
author, who was always in a tantrum if interrupted; and I immediately
perceived, by a slight noise at the door, that they were peeping at me
through the key-hole. By the head of Apollo, but this was quite too
much! with all my eagerness for fame, and my ambition of the stare of
the million, I had no idea of being exhibited by retail, at sixpence a
head, and that through a key-hole. So I bade adieu to Canonbury Castle,
merry Islington, and the haunts of poor Goldsmith, without having
advanced a single line in my labors.
My next quarters were at a small white-washed cottage, which stands not
far from Hempstead, just on the brow of a hill, looking over Chalk
farm, and Camden town, remarkable for the rival houses of Mother Red
Cap and Mother Black Cap; and so across Cruckskull common to the
distant city.
The cottage is in no wise remarkable in itself; but I regarded it with
reverence, for it had been the asylum of a persecuted author. Hither
poor Steele had retreated and lain perdue when persecuted by creditors
and bailiffs; those immemorial plagues of authors and free-spirited
gentlemen; and here he had written many numbers of the Spectator. It
was from hence, too, that he had despatched those little notes to his
lady, so full of affection and whimsicality; in which the fond husband,
the careless gentleman, and the shifting spendthrift, were so oddly
blended. I thought, as I first eyed the window, of his apartment, that
I could sit within it and write volumes.
No such thing! It was haymaking season, and, as ill luck would have it,
immediately opposite the cottage was a little alehouse with the sign of
the load of hay. Whether it was there in Steele's time or not I cannot
say; but it set all attempt at conception or inspiration at defiance.
It was the resort of all the Irish haymakers who mow the broad fields
in the neighborhood; and of drovers and teamsters who travel that road.
Here would they gather in the endless summer twilight, or by the light
of the harvest moon, and sit round a table at the door; and tipple, and
laugh, and quarrel, and fight, and sing drowsy songs, and dawdle away
the hours until the deep solemn notes of St. Paul's clock would warn
the varlets home.
