Consigned to the Flames VII: Samuel Johnson

From The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), by James Boswell

Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man's life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited. But although he at different times, in a desultory manner, committed to writing many particulars of the progress of his mind and fortunes, he never had persevering diligence enough to form them into a regular composition. Of these memorials a few have been preserved, but the greater part was consigned by him to the flames, a few days before his death.

Johnson had been preoccupied with his impending end for years, a perhaps not unreasonable response to the various health problems that beset him throughout his life. Even as early as Easter Week of 1775, nearly nine years before his eventual death, he wrote in one of his surviving diaries,

Of the use of time or of my commendation of myself I thought no more, but lost life in restless nights and broken days, till this week awakened my attention.

This year has passed with very little improvement, perhaps with diminution of knowledge. Much time I have not left. Infirmities oppress me. But much remains to be done.

He concluded with another of his frequent injunctions to himself to be less of a slugabed:

I hope to rise at eight or sooner in the morning.

So it is no surprise that in December of 1784, suffering from worsening emphysema, the after-effects of a stroke, and a weakening heart, Johnson began to work in earnest to put his affairs in order. Adam Sisman succinctly recounts Johnson's last days in Boswell's Presumptuous Task (2000):

He made a will, and burned some of his papers and diaries. He spent much of the time in prayer. On 13 December 1784, at about seven o'clock in the evening, he died.

We're left wondering what criteria Johnson employed in choosing what to burn. (Though perhaps Johnson scholars have answered this question?) What he did not destroy is by no means uniformly flattering. His journals are full of self-reproaches and failed resolutions, so his decisions surely weren't driven--or at least weren't solely driven--by a desire to improve posterity's view of his character. Perhaps he excised painful accounts of difficulties in his marriage to his first wife, Tetty--though Johnson claimed nothing but happiness with Tetty, contemporary accounts (which, to be fair, are themselves disputable) paint her as, at minimum, problematically awkward. Boswell notes that

her person and manner, as described to me by the late Mr. Garrick, were by no means pleasing to others.

Or perhaps he destroyed accounts of the frustrated romantic hopes that many believe he later pinned on his friend Hester Thrale. Or--treasure of treasures--perhaps he burned candid impressions of Boswell himself!

Sadly, the flames have done their work. Fortunately, however, so did Boswell, and it is he who shall accompany me and Stacey soon on a pilgrimage to Lichfield to see Johnson's birthplace. It's hard to imagine much better company.

"He speaks all his Words distinctly, half as loud again as the others."

{David Garrick as Hamlet}

In the weeks leading up to Hallowe'en, when I was writing daily about ghosts and spirits, I spent a few days on Shakespearean ghosts, including that of Hamlet's father. If only I'd read Tom Jones a couple of months earlier, I could have adduced a scene from it as evidence of just how scary Hamlet's father's ghost can be--for said ghost makes a memorable appearance in one of Tom Jones's most entertaining digressions, a trip to the theatre by Tom and his well-meaning buffoon of a servant, Partridge; that the scene also gives us a glimpse of David Garrick--whom Partridge refers to as "that little Man "--in action as Hamlet is an extra bonus:

As soon as the Play, which was Hamlet Prince of Denmark, began, Partridge was all Attention, nor did he break Silence till the Entrance of the Ghost; upon which he asked Jones, "What man that was in the strange Dress; something," said he," like what I have seen in a Picture. Sure it is not Armour, is it?" Jones answered, "That is the Ghost." To which Partridge replied, "Persuade me to that, Sir, if you can. Though I can't say I ever actually saw a Ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one, if I saw him, better than that comes to. No, no, Sir, Ghosts don't appear in such Dresses as that, neither."

Enter Garrick, and Partridge's doubts take wing, replaced by assailing fears that lead to knocking knees and trembling limbs:

"O la! Sir," said he, "I perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of any Thing; for I know it is but a Play. And if it was really a Ghost, it could do one no Harm at such Distance, and in so much Company; any yet if I was frightened, I am not the only Person." "Why, who," cries Jones, "dost thou take to be such a Coward here besides thyself?" "Nay, you may call me Coward if you will; but if that little Man there upon the Stage is not frightned, I never saw any Man frightned in my Life. Ay, ay; go along with you!

Later, Partridge graces us with a close--if naive--analysis of Garrick's technique:

[D]id you not yourself observe afterwards, when he found out it was his own Father's Spirit, and how he was murdered in the Garden, how his Fear forsook him by Degrees, and he was struck dumb with Sorrow, as it were, just as I should have been, had it been my own Case.

Yet for all this, at the end of the play, when asked for his favorite player, Partridge forsakes Garrick, choosing instead the actor who had played Claudius, for which he is reproached by one of his companions:

"Indeed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you are not of the same Opinion with the Town, for they are all agreed, that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the Stage." "He the best Player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous Sneer. "Why I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen a Ghost, I should have looked in the very same Manner, and done just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that Scene, as you called it, between him and his Mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why, Lord help me, any Man, that is, any good Man, that had such a Mother, would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me; but indeed, Madam, though I was never at a Play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the Country; and the King for my Money; he speaks all his Words distinctly, half as loud again as the others.--Any Body may see he is an actor."

Gulled by Garrick's naturalism, the yokel prefers the overwrought. Though Partridge doesn't know that he is expected to prefer Garrick, the scene nevertheless reminds me distantly of Marcel's disappointment at first seeing La Berma on stage in In Search of Lost Time: expecting the spectacular, he fails to notice nuance.

If Samuel Johnson's account of Garrick's acting is accurate, Partridge would probably not have been the only novice theatre-goer to have been fuddled by Garrick's technique. In The Life of Johnson James Boswell reports Johnson saying:

Garrick . . . was no declaimer; there was not one of his own scene-shifters who could not have spoken To be, or not to be, better than he did; yet he was the only actor I ever saw whom I could call a master both in tragedy and comedy; though I liked him best in comedy. A true conception of character, and natural expression of it, were his distinguishing excellencies.

{Garrick as Richard III}

But there are limits to naturalism for Johnson, even in the case of Garrick:

Johnson, indeed, had thought more upon the subject of acting than might be generally supposed. Talking of it one day to Mr. Kemble, he said, "Are you, sir, one of those enthusiasts who believe yourself transformed into the very character you represent?" Upon Mr. Kemble's asnwering that he had never felt so strong a persuasion himself; "To be sure not, Sir, (said Johnson;) the thing is impossible. And if Garrick really believed himself to be that monster, Richard the Third, he deserved to be hanged every time he performed it.

With which sentiments I believe Dr. Johnson would have found Partridge in strong agreement.

"I am now getting into the habit of sitting at home all the morning and reading."

{A detail from Thomas Rowlandson's Vauxhall Gardens (1784) showing Boswell, Johnson, Hester Thrale, and Oliver Goldsmith}

From James Boswell, I've learned that ever since leaving college I've unwittingly followed a Johnsonian approach to learning--with today's day off from work falling particularly in line with his precepts:

He said he would not advise a plan of study, for he had never pursued one two days. "And a man ought just to read as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good. Idleness is a disease which must be combated. A young man should read five hours every day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge."

And all along I just thought of it as the life of a curious dilettante!

Speaking of curiosity, in noting Boswell's fear of ghosts yesterday, I neglected to mention Johnson's position on the matter. Being of a cast of mind that required him to examine every conceivable question, he of course had one:

He talked of belief in ghosts; and he said that he made a distinction between what a man might find out by the strength of his imagination, and what could not possibly be found out so. "Thus, supposed I should think that I saw a form and heard a voice cry, 'Johnson! you are a very wicked fellow, and unless you repent you will certainly be punished.' This is a thought which is so deeply impressed upon my mind that I might imagine I saw and heard so and so; and therefore I would not credit this, at least would not insist on your believing it. But if a form appeared, and a voice told me such a man is dead at such a place and such an hour; if this proves true upon inquiry, I should certainly think I had supernatural intelligence given me."

I also should add some meat to my earlier note that part of what makes Boswell so much fun is his ear for the oddities of everyday speech. An account he gives of the woman who cleaned and cooked for him and his roommate ends with one of the best examples:

[Mrs. Legge] is perhaps as curious an animal as has appeared in human shape. She presents a strong idea of one of the frightful witches in Macbeth. . . . She . . . owns that she married Mr. Legge for money. He is a little queer round creature; and claiming kindred with Baron Legge, he generally goes by the name of The Baron, and fine fun we have with him. . . . To give a specimen of Mrs. Legge, who is a prodigious prater. She said to Bob this morning, "Ay, ay, Master Robert, you may talk. But we knows what you young men are. Just cock-sparrows. You can't stand it out. But the Baron! O Lord! the Baron is a staunch man. Ay, ay, did you never hear that God never made a little man but he made it up to him in something else? Yes, yes, the Baron is a good man, an able man. He laid a married woman upon the floor while he sent the maid out for a pint of porter. But he was discovered, and so I come to know of it."

One unanticipated pleasure of Boswell's journal is the passing acquaintance it gives us with David Garrick. Garrick, the most celebrated actor of the age (or any age?), is an inescapable presence in the letters, journals, biographies, and histories of the eighteenth century, and Boswell gives us occasional glimpses of both his fame and his personality. This note of Boswell's attendance at one of Garrick's performances as King Lear gives an idea of the extent of Garrick's popular success and of the power of his acting:

So very high is his reputation, even after playing so long, that the pit was full in ten minutes after four, although the play did not begin till half an hour after six. I kept my self at a distance from all acquaintances, and got into a proper frame. Mr. Garrick gave me most perfect satisfaction. I was fully moved, and I shed abundance of tears.

No Proustian dashing of too-highly-raised hopes to be found there. Meanwhile, though he and Boswell never become more than casual acquaintances, Garrick comes off well in their meetings, seeming friendly, interested, and kind. Once when Boswell calls on him at the Drury Lane Theatre, he delivers a memorable line to seal an invitation to tea:

"And pray, will you fix a day when I shall have the pleasure of treating you with tea?" I fixed next day. "Then, Sir," said he, "the cups shall dance and the saucers skip."

The pleasantly individual cast of that image helps make clear why Johnson called Garrick, "the first man in the world for sprightly conversation."

Finally, because the weekend approaches, a reminder that though the perils of drink are many, they can often be an utterly reasonable price to pay for the company to which they admit one. Following a two-bottles-of-port night with Dr. Johnson, Boswell records:

A bottle of thick English port is a very heavy and a very inflammatory dose. I felt it last time that I drank it for several days, and this morning it was boiling in my veins. Dempster came and saw me, and said I had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep company with such a man as Johnson.

Were I a more capable drinker, or had I just a tad fewer readers, I could offer individual toasts to each of you. As is, prudence dictates that I raise a single glass: here's to rambles with Boswell, which I hope you've enjoyed.