Goldsmith does not use the word picnic, but two such episodes in The Vicar of Wakefield exist. They are so obvious that in English Picnics, Georgina Battiscombe credits with the first “picnics” in English literature. If only he had used the word!
Goldsmith was fluent in French, and in “Retaliation” (1774), he includes a definition of pique-nique for those unfamiliar with its meaning: “Of old when Scarron his companions invited,/ Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united;/ If our landlord supplies us with beef, and with fish,/ Let each guest bring himself, and he brings the best dish.”
The Primroses, the Vicar’s family, enjoy their leisure and have light refreshments in a garden arbor covered with hawthorn and honeysuckle; another time, they sit in a hayfield. They usually visit the arbor in the evening “to enjoy an extensive landscape, in the calm of the evening. Here too, we drank tea, which now was become an occasional banquet; and as we had it but seldom, it diffused a new joy, the preparations for it being made with no small share of bustle and ceremony.” Sometimes, they read, recite poetry, or sing accompanied by a guitar. Although it is a scene of harmony, ironically, it’s in the arbor that Olivia Primrose (an impressionable eighteen) meets Squire Edward Thornhill, a bad man who almost ruins her and begets many tribulations for Primroses (that, fortunately, all end happily).
Among the picnic are often illustrated; among the best are by Thomas Rowlandson and Arthur Rackham, though he omits the arbor. Keeping with modern usage, John Massey Wright’s arbor scene is titled “The Vicar’s Innocent Little Pastoral Picnic Interrupted.”
Thomas Rowlandson. The Fair Penitent (1817)
See Georgina Battiscombe. English Picnics. London: The Harvill Press Limited, 1949; Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale. London B. Collins, 1766;
Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation; a poem (London: G. Kearsley, 1774); http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/cpwog10.txt; For a copy of the text with Rowlandson’s illustrations see http://books.google.com/books?id=LYkTAAAAIAAJ&vq=fiar+penitent&source=gbs_navlinks_s; John Massey Wright, “The Vicar’s Innocent Little Pastoral Picnic Interrupted.” In Oliver Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield (1903), watercolor on paper. The Courtauld Institute of Art; http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/gallery/cfee7a08.html?ixsid=VS1CLGADBSJ