Poor Goldsmith had not yet, like
Dr. Johnson, acquired reputation enough to atone for his external defects
and his want of the air of good society. Miss Reynolds used to inveigh
against his personal appearance, which gave her the idea, she said, of a
low mechanic, a journeyman tailor. One evening at a large supper party,
being called upon to give as a toast the ugliest man she knew, she gave Dr.
Goldsmith, upon which a lady who sat opposite, and whom she had never met
before, shook hands with her across the table, and "hoped to become better
acquainted."
We have a graphic and amusing picture of Reynolds' hospitable but motley
establishment, in an account given by a Mr. Courtenay to Sir James
Mackintosh; though it speaks of a time after Reynolds had received the
honor of knighthood. "There was something singular," said he, "in the style
and economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good
humor, a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and
arrangement. At five o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether all the
invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably
ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two or three persons of rank or
title, and put the rest of the company out of humor by this invidious
distinction.
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