Thomas Stothard's "My friends, my children, and my fellow-sufferers, when I reflect on the distribution of good and evil here below" for Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield"

[

Victorian Web Home —> Visual arts —> Illustration —> Thomas Stothard —> Oliver Goldsmith —> Next]

My friends, my children, and my fellow-sufferers, when I reflect on the distribution of good and evil here below

Artist: Thomas Stothard

1792

Copper-engraving

11.5 cm high by 8.9 cm wide

Source: Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, facing page 180.

Stothard provided six monochrome copper-plate engravings for the 214-page octavo; the pages for the plates are unnumbered, there is no index of plates, and the illustrations have no captions.

Oliver Goldsmith (homepage)

[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated: Dr. Primrose's Ministry to the Prisoners

'And, my son, you shall find them. I am now raised above this world, and all the pleasures it can produce. From this moment I break from my heart all the ties that held it down to earth, and will prepare to fit us both for eternity. Yes, my son, I will point out the way, and my soul shall guide yours in the ascent, for we will take our flight together. I now see and am convinced you can expect no pardon here, and I can only exhort you to seek it at that greatest tribunal where we both shall shortly answer. But let us not be niggardly in our exhortation, but let all our fellow prisoners have a share: good gaoler let them be permitted to stand here, while I attempt to improve them.' Thus saying, I made an effort to rise from my straw, but wanted strength, and was able only to recline against the wall. The prisoners assembled according to my direction, for they loved to hear my council, my son and his mother supported me on either side, I looked and saw that none were wanting, and then addressed them with the following exhortation. [Book II, Chapter IX, "Happiness and Misery rather the Result of Prudence than of Virtue in this Life. Temporal Evils or Felicities being regarded by Heaven as Things merely in themselves trifling and unworthy its care in the Distribution," p. 179-180]

My friends, my children, and fellow sufferers, when I reflect on the distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been given man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who by suicide shew us they have nothing left to hope. In this life then it appears that we cannot be entirely blest; but yet we may be completely miserable! [Book II, Chapter X, "The Equal Dealings of Providence Demonstrated with Regard to the Happy and the Miserable here below. That from the Nature of Pleasure and Pain, the Wretched must be Repaid the Balance of their Sufferings in the Life Hereafter," p. 180]

Commentary

No wonder that Charles Dickens identified himself and his own siblings with the members of the Primrose family, for, like his father, John Dickens, the kindly Dr. Primrose is constrained for debt, not by intransigent tradesman, but by the duplicitous Squire Thornhill. The rake and seducer of young women will shortly become the recipient of poetic justice when, thinking he has duped Arabella Wilmot of her inheritance, his former confederate Jenkinson reveals that Squire Thornhill is legally married to Primrose's daughter.

In "From Patrimony to Paternity in The Vicar of Wakefield," David Aaron Murray notes that in his "Advertisement" to the novel, Oliver Goldsmith declared that his hero, the Reverend Dr. Primrose, "unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth; he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family." He is also the narrator of a story, and in all four of these positions of authority, Primrose is quixotically ineffective. Indeed,one might argue that the story ends happily in spite of Dr. Primrose's efforts, and that only the intervention of the agents of a benign Providence, Sir William Thornhill and Jenkinson, effects the positive outcome and thwarts the designs of the villainous Squire Thornhill. "Either Goldsmith is poking fun at the bourgeoisie (especially hypocritical clergymen), or he is indulging in harmless self-parody" (Murray). However, the honest Vicar's sermons and spiritual guidance of his fellow-prisoners are not partof Goldsmith's satirical nexus. Rather, Goldsmith would have us regard his preaching to his fellow sufferers as revealing his deep-seated compassion.

In a former military prison eleven miles from his parsonage in the west of England, Dr. Primrose falls prey to the machinations of his landlord, Squire Thornhill as his landlord incarcerates him for failure to pay the annual rent. Thornhill's seduction of his daughter Olivia and a recent fire which had destroyed most of his property have been compounded Dr. Primrose's misfortunes.

Related Illustrations by George Cruikshank (1832)

Bibliography

Goldsmith, Dr. [Oliver]. The Vicar of Wakefield. A Tale. Illustrated by Thomas Stothard. London: Sammells and Ritchie for E. Harding, Fleet-Street; and J. Good, New Bond-Street, 1792.

Murray, David Aaron. "From Patrimony to Paternity in The Vicar of Wakefield." Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 9, 3 (April 1997): 327-336.

Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries. "William Mulready R. A. (1786-1863). Collection of 19 drawings & 9 etchings for Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (England, c. 1840)." http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/william-mulready/48046

Last modified 7 March 2018