Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous Part 5

About this time a sepulchral-looking man called to ask that a "Requiem"

be written on the death of the wife of an Austrian n.o.bleman, who was to be considered the author, and thus his intense grief be shown, though manifested through a lie. Mozart consulted with his wife, as was his custom, and, as she indorsed it, he accepted the commission for fifty dollars. Overworked, hara.s.sed by debts which he could not pay, hurt at the jealousies and intrigues of several musicians, disappointed at the reception of his new opera at Prague, his hopeful nature forsook him, and he told Constance that the "Requiem" would be written for himself.

In the midst of this wretchedness their sixth child was born. The poor wife forgot her own sorrows, and prevailed upon him to give up work for a time; but the active brain could not rest, and he wrote as he lay on his sick-bed. On the day before he died, Dec. 4, 1791, at two o'clock, he persisted in having a portion of the "Requiem" sung by the friends who stood about his bed, and, joining with them in the alto, burst into tears, saying, "Did I not say that I was writing the 'Requiem' for myself?" Soon after he said, "Constance, oh that I could only hear my 'Flauto Magico!'" and a friend playing it, he was cheered.

A messenger now arrived to tell him that he was appointed organist at St. Stephen's Cathedral, a position for which he had longed for years; but it came too late. Death was unwelcome to him. "Now must I go," he said, "just as I should be able to live in peace; I must leave my family, my poor children, at the very instant in which I should have been able to provide for their welfare." Cold applications were ordered by the physicians for his burning head; he became delirious for two hours, and died at midnight, only thirty-five years old. Constance was utterly prostrated, and threw herself upon his bed, hoping to die also.

Mozart's body was laid beside his piano, and then, in a pouring rain, buried in a "common grave," in the plainest manner possible, with n.o.body present except the keepers of the cemetery. Weeks after, when the wife visited the spot, she found a new grave-digger, who could not tell where her beloved husband was buried, and to this day the author of fourteen Italian operas, seventeen symphonies, and dozens of cantatas and serenades, about eight hundred compositions in all, sleeps in an unknown grave. The Emperor Leopold aided her in a concert to raise fifteen hundred dollars to pay her husband's debts, and provide a little for herself. Eighteen years afterward she married the Danish councillor, Baron von Missen, who educated her two sons, four other children having died. Salzburg waited a half-century before she erected a bronze statue to her world-renowned genius, in the Square of St. Michael; and, seventy years after his death, Vienna built him a monument in the Cemetery of St. Mark. History scarcely furnishes a more pathetic life. He filled the world with music, yet died in want and sorrow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL JOHNSON.]

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

In a quaint old house in Lichfield, England, now used as a draper's shop, Samuel Johnson, son of a poor bookseller and bookbinder, was born.

Here, as in Westminster Abbey, a statue is erected to his memory. Near by is the schoolhouse where Addison and Garrick studied.

When Samuel was two and a half years old, diseased with scrofula, his good mother, with ten dollars sewed in her skirt so that n.o.body could steal it, took him to London that, with two hundred others, he might be touched by Queen Anne, and thus, as superst.i.tious people believed, be healed. On this journey she bought him a silver cup and spoon. The latter he kept till his dying-day, and parted with the cup only in the dire poverty of later years.

The touch of the Queen did no good, for he became blind in one eye; with the other he could not see a friend half a yard off, and his face was sadly disfigured. Being prevented thus from sharing the sports of other boys, much time was spent in reading. He was first taught at a little school kept by Widow Oliver, who years after, when he was starting for Oxford, brought him a present of gingerbread, telling him he was the best scholar she ever had. After a time he studied Latin under a master who "whipped it into him." The foolish teacher would ask the boy the Latin word for candlestick, or some unexpected thing, and then whip him, saying, "This I do to save you from the gallows!"

Naturally indolent, Samuel had to struggle against this tendency. He had, however, the greatest ambition to excel, and to this he attributed his later success. He was also inquisitive, and had a wonderful memory.

When he wore short dresses, his mother gave him the Prayer-Book one day, and, pointing to the Collect, said, "You must get this by heart." She went up stairs, but no sooner had she reached the second floor than she heard him following. He could repeat it perfectly, having looked it over but twice. He left school at sixteen, spending two years at home in helping his parents, and studying earnestly. One day, his father, being ill, asked him to go to a neighboring town and take his place in selling books at a stall on market-day. He was proud, and did not go. Fifty years afterward, in his greatness, then an old man, he went to this stall, and, with uncovered head, remained for an hour in the rain where his father had formerly stood, exposed to the sneers of the bystanders and the inclemency of the weather. It showed the repentance of a n.o.ble soul for disobedience to a parent.

At nineteen, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he acted as servant. He used to go daily to his friend Taylor, and get lectures second-hand, till his feet, showing through his worn-out shoes, were perceived by the students, and he ceased going. A rich young man secretly put a pair of new shoes at his door, which he indignantly threw out of the window. He was willing to work and earn, but would not receive charity. At the end of three years he became so poor that he was obliged to leave college, his father dying soon after.

After various experiences, he sought the position of usher at a school, but was refused because it was thought that the boys would make fun of his ugliness. He finally obtained such a place, was treated with great harshness, and left in a few months. Strange to say, the poor, lonely scholar, only twenty-six, now fell in love with a widow forty-eight years old. After obtaining his mother's consent, he married her, and the union proved a most happy one. With the little money his wife possessed, he started a school, and advertised for pupils; but only three came, and the school soon closed. In despair he determined to try London, and see if an author could there earn his bread. In that great city he lived for some time on nine cents a day. One publisher to whom he applied suggested to him that the wisest course would be to become a porter and carry trunks.

A poem written at this time, ent.i.tled "London," for which he received fifty dollars, one line of which was in capital letters,

"SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,"

attracted attention; and Pope, who was then at the height of his fame, asked Dublin University to give to the able scholar the degree of M.A., that he might thus be able to take the princ.i.p.als.h.i.+p of a school, and earn three hundred dollars a year; but this was refused. Out of such struggles come heroic souls.

When he was forty, he published the "Vanity of Human Wishes," receiving seventy-five dollars, a.s.serted by many to be the most impressive thing of its kind in the language. The lines,

"There mark what ills the scholar's life a.s.sail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"

show his struggles. A drama soon after, played by the great actor, David Garrick, brought him nearly a thousand dollars; but the play itself was a failure. When asked by his friends how he felt about his ill success, he replied, "Like the monument," meaning that he continued firm and unmoved, like a column of granite. Fame was coming at last, after he had struggled in London for thirteen years--and what bitterness they had brought!

For two years he worked almost constantly on a paper called the "Rambler." When his wife said that, well as she had thought of him before, she had never considered him equal to this, he was more pleased than with any praise he ever received. She died three days after the last copy was published, and Johnson was utterly prostrated. He buried himself in hard work in his garret, a most inconvenient room; but he said, "In that room I never saw Mrs. Johnson." Her wedding-ring was placed in a little box, and tenderly kept till his death.

Three years afterward, his great work, his Dictionary, appeared, for which he received eight thousand dollars; but, as he had been obliged to employ six a.s.sistants for seven years, he was still poor, but now famous. The Universities of Oxford and Dublin, when he no longer needed their a.s.sistance, hastened to bestow their degrees upon him. Even George III. invited him to the royal palace,--a strange contrast to a few years before, when Samuel Johnson was under arrest for a debt of thirty dollars! When asked by Reynolds how he had obtained his accuracy and flow of language in conversation, he replied, "By trying to do my best on every occasion and in every company." About this time his aged mother died, and in the evenings of one week, to defray her funeral expenses, he wrote "Ra.s.selas," and received five hundred dollars for it. He wrote in his last letter to her, "You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted to do well." His last great work was "The Lives of the Poets."

He received now a pension of fifteen hundred dollars a year, for his valuable services to literature, but never used more than four hundred dollars for himself. He took care of a blind woman of whom he said, "She was a friend to my poor wife, and was in the house when she died, she has remained in it ever since," of a mother and daughter dependent upon an old family physician, and of two men whom n.o.body else would care for.

Once when he found a poor woman on the street late at night, he took her home, and kept her till she was restored to health. His pockets were always filled with pennies for street Arabs; and, if he found poor children asleep on a threshold, he would slip money into their hands that, when they awakened, they might buy a breakfast. When a servant was dying who had been in the family for forty-three years, he prayed with her and kissed her, the tears falling down his cheeks. He wrote in his diary, "We kissed and parted--I humbly hope to meet again, and part no more." He held, rightly, that Christianity levels all distinctions of rank.

He was very tender to animals. Once, when in Wales, a gardener brought into the house a hare which had been caught in the potatoes, and was told to give it to the cook. Dr. Johnson asked to have it placed in his arms; then, taking it to the window, he let it go, shouting to it to run as fast as possible. He would buy oysters for his cat, Hodge, that the servants, from seeing his fondness for it, might be led to treat it kindly.

He died at the age of seventy-five, such men as Burke and Reynolds standing by his bedside. Of the latter, he begged that he would "read his Bible, and never paint on Sundays." His last words were to a young lady who had asked his blessing: "G.o.d bless you, my dear!" He was buried with appropriate honors in Westminster Abbey, and monuments are erected to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, and at Lichfield. The poor boy, nearly blind, became "the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

On a low slab in a quiet spot, just north of the Church of Knight Templars, in London, are the simple words, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith."

The author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" needs no grander monument; for he lives in the hearts of the people.

Oliver Goldsmith was born in Pallas, Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor minister, who, by means of tilling some fields and a.s.sisting in a parish outside his own, earned two hundred dollars a year for his wife and seven children! When about six years old, Oliver nearly died of smallpox, and his pitted face made him an object of jest among the boys.

At eight he showed great fondness for books, and began to write verses.

His mother pleaded for a college education for him, but there seemed little prospect of it. One day, when a few were dancing at his uncle's house, the little boy sprang upon the floor and began to dance. The fiddler, to make fun of his short figure and homely face, exclaimed, "aesop!" The boy, stung to the quick, replied:--

"Heralds, proclaim aloud! all saying, 'See aesop dancing and his monkey playing;'"

when, of course, the fiddler became much chagrined.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH.]

All his school life Oliver was painfully diffident, but a good scholar.

His father finally earned a better salary, and the way seemed open for college, when, lo! his sister, who had the opportunity of marrying a rich man, was obliged--so thought the public opinion of the day--to have a marriage portion of $2,000, and poor Oliver's educational hopes were blasted. He must now enter Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar (servant), wear a coa.r.s.e black gown without sleeves, a red cap,--the badge of servitude,--sweep the courts, carry dishes, and be treated with contempt, which nearly crushed his sensitive nature.

A year and a half later his father died, and his scanty means ceased from that source. To keep from starving he wrote ballads, selling them to street musicians at $1.25 apiece, and stole out at night to hear them sung. Often he shared this pittance with some one more wretched than himself. One cold night he gave his blankets to a person with five children, and crawled into the ticking of his bed for warmth. When a kind friend, who often brought him food, came in the morning, he was obliged to break in the door, as Goldsmith could not extricate himself from his bed.

Obtaining a small scholars.h.i.+p, he gave a little party in his room in honor of the event. A savage tutor appeared in the midst of the festivities, and knocked him down. So incensed was Goldsmith that he ran away from college, and with twenty-five cents in his pocket started for Cork. For three days he lived on eight cents a day, and, by degrees, parted with nearly all his clothes for food.

Though wholly unfitted for the ministry, Goldsmith was urged by his relatives to enter the church, because he would then have a living. Too young to be accepted, he remained at home for two years, a.s.sisting his brother Henry in the village school; and then offering himself as a candidate, was refused, it was said, because he appeared before the right reverend in scarlet trousers! After being tutor for a year, his uncle gave him $250, that he might go to Dublin and study law. On arriving, he met an old friend, lost all his money in playing cards with him, and, ashamed and penniless, returned and begged the forgiveness of his relative.

A little more money was given him, and with this he studied medicine in Edinburgh for over a year, earning later some money by teaching.

Afterward he travelled in Italy and France, begging his way by singing or playing on his flute at the doors of the peasants, returning to England at twenty-eight years of age without a cent in his pocket.

Living among the beggars in Axe Lane, he asked to spread plasters, or pound in the mortars of the apothecaries, till, finally, a chemist hired him out of pity. Through the aid of a fellow-student, he finally opened a doctor's office, but few came to a stranger, and these usually so poor as to be unable to pay.

Attending one day upon a workman, he held his hat close to his breast, so as to cover a big patch in his second-hand clothes, while he felt the patient's pulse. Half guessing the young doctor's poverty, the sick man told him about his master, the author of the famous old novel, "Clarissa Harlowe," and how he had befriended writers. Goldsmith at once applied for work, and became press corrector in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street.

Later he was employed as a reviewer on a magazine. Being obliged to submit all his reviews to an illiterate bookseller and his wife, the engagement soon came to an end. He lived now in a garret, was dunned even for his milk-bill, wrote a book for a college friend, under whose name it was published, and began a work of his own, "Polite Learning in Europe," writing to a wealthy relative for aid to publish, which letter was never answered, though it was greatly regretted after Goldsmith became famous.

With no hope in London, he was promised a position in the East Indies.

Life began to look bright, though his Fleet Street garret, with one chair, was surrounded by swarms of children and dirt. The promise was not kept, and he applied for the position of hospital mate. His clothes being too poor for him to be seen on the streets, he pledged the money to be received for four articles, bought a new suit, went up to the court of examiners, and was rejected! Had any of these positions been obtained, the world, doubtless, would never have known the genius of Oliver Goldsmith.

He went back to his garret to write, p.a.w.ned his clothes to pay the landlady, who was herself to be turned out of the wretched lodgings, sold his "Life of Voltaire" for twenty dollars, and published his "Polite Learning in Europe," anonymously. The critics attacked it, and Goldsmith's day of fame had dawned at last. "The Citizen of the World,"

a good-natured satire on society, next appeared, and was a success. Dr.

Johnson became his friend, and made him a member of his club with Reynolds, Burke, and other noted men. The "Traveller" was next published, with an immense sale. Goldsmith now moved into the buildings which bear his name, near Temple Church, and, for once, had flowers and green gra.s.s to look out upon.

He was still poor, doubtless spending what money he received with little wisdom. His landlady arrested him for room-rent, upon hearing which, Dr.

Johnson came at once to see him, gave him money, took from his desk the ma.n.u.script of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it to a publisher for three hundred dollars. This was the fruit of much labor, and the world received it cordially. Some of his essays were now reprinted sixteen times. What a change from the Fleet Street garret!