1766 It was on this day, and in this year, that the archetypal ‘sentimental’ novel in English literature was published, in two volumes, at 6s apiece, by the Paternoster Row printer, F. Newbery. The work was immediately successful, has never been out of print, and was much imitated (it still is: the popular TV serial, The Vicar of Dibley, is a distant offspring). The year of publication has, however, always been somewhat mysterious.
It is known that Oliver Goldsmith completed the work at least four years earlier. It was Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith’s patron, who urged him (along with the gift of a guinea) to publish the work when the notoriously improvident author declared himself in acute financial distress (his usual condition). His landlady was threatening him with debtors’ prison. When he went round to see Goldsmith, Johnson found that his guinea had been expended on a bottle of Madeira (a suitably expensive tipple – no gin for Oliver). Johnson replaced the cork in the bottle, and began to ‘talk to him about the means he might be extricated’:
He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.
Johnson was a friend in need if not the astutest of literary agents. The sale ranks with Milton’s £10 for Paradise Lost as one of the worst deals in literary history.
Money is, as it happens, at the heart of the novel’s plot. Dr Primrose is a country vicar. He outlines his benign philosophy of life in the opening sentences:
I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population. From this motive, I had scarce taken orders a year before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface but such qualities as would wear well.
Mrs Primrose not only wears, but bears well. They have six children (‘the offspring of temperance’, Dr Primrose is in haste to assure us) and the family lives comfortably, if modestly, off the father’s invested wealth. His £35 a year stipend would not keep his church mice in crumbs. Disaster hits when his little fortune is lost through the malfeasance of a City merchant (who leaves ‘not a shilling in the pound’ for his investors). Job-like tribulation ensues. Adversity serves not to destroy, but to ennoble further the hero and his family.
The gentle comedy of Goldsmith’s novel, and its uplifting faith in the essential goodness of human nature, has charmed readers of every subsequent generation.