Thomas Stothard's "As my eldest son was bred for a scholar, I determined to send him to town" for Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield"

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As my eldest son was bred for a scholar, I determined to send him to town

Artist: Thomas Stothard

1792

Copper-engraving

11.5 cm high by 8.9 cm wide

Source: Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, facing page 11.

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.

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Oliver Goldsmith (homepage)

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: George Primrose sets out for London

As my eldest son was bred a scholar, I determined to send him to town, where his abilities might contribute to our support and his own. The separation of friends and families is, perhaps, one of the most distressful circumstances attendant on penury. The day soon arrived on which we were to disperse for the first time. My son, after taking leave of his mother and the rest, who mingled their tears with their kisses, came to ask a blessing from me. This I gave him from my heart, and which, added to five guineas, was all the patrimony I had now to bestow. 'You are going, my boy,' cried I, 'to London on foot, in the manner Hooker, your great ancestor, travelled there before you. Take from me the same horse that was given him by the good Bishop Jewel, this staff, and take this book too, it will be your comfort on the way: these two lines in it are worth a million, I have been young, and now am old; yet never saw I the righteous man forsaken, or his seed begging their bread. Let this be your consolation as you travel on. Go, my boy; whatever be thy fortune let me see thee once a year; still keep a good heart, and farewell.' [Chapter III, "A Migration. The Fortunate Circumstances of Our Lives are Generally Found at last to be our own Procuring," p. 11]

Comment

Since Dr. Charles Primrose, the Vicar of the parish of Wakefield, has had to face what he refers to as "beggary" as a result of the loss of his investments, he determines to settle all minor debts, then take up the post as curate in a distant neighbourhood in the west of England for a stipend of fifteen pounds per annum. Out of four thousand pounds invested, only four hundred is left as he and his family set out on the seventy-mile journey, and the eldest son, George, departs to make his own fortune in London, where, trained as a scholar, he hopes for preferment in the Anglican Church. The main plot, the loss of the Primrose inheritance, is connected to George's loss of his fiancée on the very eve of his wedding to wealthy Arabella Wilmot, whose parsimonious father has abruptly cancelled it. The Vicar's losses are the direct result the bankruptcy of his business agent, who has left town abruptly to avoid facing his creditors, including the kindly but impractical Vicar.

Related Illustrations by George Cruikshank (1832)

Bibliographical Note

The 1766 edition, bound in calfskin, consisted of two slender volumes, neither illustrated. The 1793 single-volume edition (two volumes bound as one and numbered continuously) retains the two-volume notation, but includes six illustrations of Dr. Primrose and his family, the Vicar himself being present in each illustration. Later readers, however, are probably familiar only with the twenty-five full-page illustrations by Arthur Rackham for the 1929 edition by George G. Harrap, London. The illustrations in the most important Victorian illustrated edition, those by Thomas Mulready, are more natural but less harmonious than Stothard's:

In 1840 Mulready was commissioned to illustrate the book and produced 32 drawings, one for each chapter head. The etchings were conceived by John Thompson who was one of the best wood-engraver in England. This was the most extensively illustrated version to date, following earlier editions illustrated by Daniel Dodd (1780), Thomas Stothard (1792), Thomas Uwins (1812), Thomas Rowlandson (1817) and George Cruikshank (1830, 1832). Only the volume illustrated by Rowlandson with twenty-four aquatints approached Mulready’s in sheer quantity of illustration. ["Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries"]

Sir Walter Scott’s appreciation of the book was shared British readers generally throughout the nineteenth century: "We read [it] in youth and in age, we return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature . . . the wreath of Goldsmith is unsullied; he wrote to exalt virtue and expose vice."

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.

Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries. "William Mulready RA (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 6 March 2018