The Brothers Boswell

by Philip Baruth

  Boswell had heard stories about painted men, but on faraway islands, or brought like tame animal acts through London, not keeping shop on the Leith.

  “How much does it hurt?” he asked.

  “Like bein’ roasted alive.”

  “Can a man have a word, rather than a thing?”

  “Have the Bible itself, ye like.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “Till the Devil gives ye yer dixie.”

  It took three more shilly-shallying visits to the wonder-shop, a Wednesday afternoon and two Saturday mornings, but there was never any chance that Boswell would decide not to do this thing, now that he knew it could be done.

  Of course, he worried obsessively over the details—if discovered, this was something that would shock his family and friends—and he narrowed his message, REMEMBER YOUR VOW OF CHASTITY, TO THE SINGLE WORD CHASTITY.

  When it became clear that even a single word with eight letters would be far too visible for comfort, he’d sweated his entire text down into two letters, maybe six strokes of the pouncing tool. And that was how he finally found himself in the wonder-shop one morning in late September, chilly rain puddling the holes scattered over the Leith, left foot propped on a display case as the shopkeeper briefly scourged his flesh.

  It hurt much more than a pinprick, and much less than being burned alive.

  It was just enough pain, in fact, to allow Boswell to favor his left leg all the way back up the Edinburgh High Street home to Parliament Square. He favored the foot affectionately, carrying it home in the rain, and he would dress the wound in secret for the next two and a half weeks. Not until May 1791, on the twenty-eighth anniversary of his meeting with Samuel Johnson, when he first held a bound two-quarto set of The Life of Johnson in his own hands, would any fragment of his own composition manage to wedge itself closer to his heart.

  And yet, set even into his very flesh, the vow had proved shockingly easy to throw over. The shopkeeper’s ink bought him three years, no more.

  At nineteen, he’d met an Edinburgh actress named Mrs. Cowper, a Catholic actress, and flirted with the possibility of a secret marriage. His father had somehow sensed the thing brewing, though, and abruptly sent Boswell to finish his schooling in Glasgow, a grimmer city by far, where they took their laws against the theater seriously.

  It was only a matter of weeks before he reached his breaking point. On a clear night in early March, he fled to London on horseback, intent on converting to Roman Catholicism. Boswell saw mass celebrated there for the first time, and the spectacle of it brought actual tears to his eyes. It was a height of devotion such as he had never known.

  But just two nights later, as though he had no true conscious control over the legs carrying him along, Boswell found himself contacting a friend of his Edinburgh friend Gentleman: one Samuel Derrick. Derrick was a would-be playwright who knew the subtler twists and turns of London after dark.

  And, not incidentally, Derrick also knew where Boswell might try this thing he had worked so assiduously to avoid trying for the past seven and a half years.

  That was how Boswell found himself at twenty years of age in a cold room at the Blue Periwig, Southampton Street, Strand, cradled expertly between the legs of a young girl named Sally Forrester, a sweet freckled unhurried sort whose skin was pale but whose hair and brows and nipples were all the color of rain-soaked shale.

  When the frenzy was over and Boswell lay coolly back, Sally Forrester burrowed immediately into his side for sleep with a wife-like intimacy. He lay there with his arm around her, dumb with amazement: he hadn’t thought even once of the chastity vow, from the time Derrick had squired him down the Strand to the moment he’d poured himself helplessly into this creature dozing beside him.

  That was what he marveled over, when all was said and done. Not the sheer impact of female nakedness, though that was more powerful even than he had expected. No, what he came back to over and again was this newly revealed capacity of his own mind: to obtain its desires by damping and shaping awareness itself.

  It frightened and impressed him simultaneously to think of it. Still, he was certain he had felt the force of the Divine in his desire for Sally. There had been something heartbreaking and holy in the spray of freckles across her chest, the shell of her ear.

  And if in fact, this new sensuality was itself somehow a part of God’s design, then God had proven Himself a far more understanding and loving Father than Boswell had ever dared to hope.

  Boswell had returned to Edinburgh that June with a reluctance so great it was only just distinguishable from outright refusal. With him, however, the young man brought a plan of action: to secure a commission in the King’s Guards and spend the rest of his life in a red coat, as a gentleman–soldier and a Londoner, writing and romancing and defending the Capital from nonexistent armies.

  BOSWELL HAS PULLED on his clothes for the early part of the day—loose and easy, hair not yet tied up, breeches not yet tied down—and has rung the dining-room bell to let Molly know that he is prepared now for his tea and toast. This breakfast Molly delivers, and Boswell thanks her with a nod. The ankle remains unspoken between them.

  Alone in the dining room, as he dunks crusts one after the other into his milky tea, Boswell hums to himself and completes a sort of idle self-inventory that marks his first hour of consciousness each morning. Since childhood, James Boswell has come out of sleep the way a wealthy man exits a thick crowd: patting his various pockets of memory, to see if they’ve been picked. This morning he has been thinking of chastity, in part because of the plans already in motion with Louisa for later this morning.

  Today is a critical juncture not just in his pursuit of Louisa, but in his pursuit of a commission in the King’s Guards—so critical, in fact, that he has left nothing to chance in the planning. First cup of tea finished, his hand goes instinctively to his waistcoat.

  The waistcoat pocket is surprisingly deep, and Boswell’s thickish fingers have to navigate familiar clutter—broken peppermints, a torn concert ticket, a snapped watch fob, itself containing a fragment of a uniform stained with what the schoolmate selling it swore was the blood of Bonnie Prince Charlie himself—before locating the first of the two memoranda he wrote for himself prior to climbing into bed last night.

  He has a habit of scribbling himself quick little instructions each night, to be read the next morning; but as this is no ordinary day, the first memorandum is no quick scribble. The octavo page has been so intricately folded that it feels to his fingers like a small square of pasteboard. He hauls it up through the trifles and unfolds it. And then the note begins to speak to him:

  Breakfast alone, and enjoy English jam. These twenty-four hours may well decide the three grand enterprises you set in motion weeks ago. ’Tis now time to carry them smartly to conclusion.

  Enterprise the First: After breakfast, dress in Bath coat and old grey suit and stick; to Park, walk the Parade. Think seriously on what it means to soldier. Then sally to Louisa just as a free-spirited blade, but speak calmly, of poetry and the Scriptures. Above all, be warm with her, press her home. Today, today she must make you blessed. Never again in the history of this world will there be another morning such as this, etc.

  Enterprise the Second: Take your dinner in Holburn, at cheesemongers, neat and quiet out of public notice. Then return home, dress in new pink suit. Use money saved on victuals to take sedan chair to Northumberland House. Savour this ride; consider that you are borne to the House of the noble Percy, for a private party of but twenty-five picked people to which you are now weekly invited. This marks you as a favourite. Be comfortable, yet genteel. Speak slowly, distinctly, best fine English only. There will be two there who can grease your commission. Push fair with both. You deserve to be a soldier, and you deserve to live in London. The Guards offer you all.

  Enterprise the Third: Tomorrow you will at long last meet the great Samuel Johnson. See second note, other pocket, for particular instructions.

&
nbsp; Boswell refolds the page, slipping the edges each cunningly inside the other, re-pockets the resulting square. He will check the memorandum six or seven times more during the day, but his satisfaction with it will never be as encompassing and profound as it is just now. Reading it gives him the sensation that someone is watching out for him, actively authoring the Boswell he has determined to be, and that—as good luck would have it—this someone is himself.

  Boswell looks out at the chancy winter sky over Downing Street and feels that he is precisely, to the quarter-inch, where he should be. He heaves a contented sigh, and it feels so good that he immediately heaves another.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, wearing the Bath coat and grey suit, and walking the stick he has directed himself to carry, Boswell strolls out his landlord’s front door and heads up Downing to Parliament Street. There is always a delicious frisson of recognition associated with living out each day as he has pre-planned it, particularly in the early morning, before the day has inserted its own cumulative realities.

  After a short two blocks, he hooks sharply left, and the Parade Grounds open up to the west. As always, Boswell feels a martial swelling in his heart when he looks out over the playground of the king’s own Horse Guards.

  Boswell paces to the very center of the large packed-earth space and stands erect. Slowly, he closes his eyes and tries his best—for a full twenty or thirty seconds—to seriously consider what it means to soldier. As he has done since childhood, Boswell imagines the violent day in 1513 when his ancestor Thomas Boswell died defending James IV at Flodden. In his imagination, the battle is always engulfed in a driving rain, cannon fire echoes, and Thomas Boswell fights thigh-deep in muck, giving no quarter, never surrendering, a cry torn from his lips, lifeless body falling finally between the enemy and his Sovereign.

  Boswell opens his eyes. City life rumbles on about him.

  Suddenly Boswell flexes his own stout upper body inside his coat, enjoying the answering tightness of his muscles. The winter air is bracing, and a part of him wants nothing more than to run screaming down a hillside, rain wetting his face. He wants to brandish a sword, charge an enemy, open throats, save a king.

  He feels vital enough this morning to tear his stockings by flexing his calves.

  12

  LOUISA’S LIVING SITUATION has been thoughtfully and delicately put together, and Boswell never fails to appreciate it when he makes his now-daily visits to King Street. Her landlady, a very plump, quiet woman purported to be hard of hearing—but who has seemed in fact to hear perfectly well the several times Boswell has met her—lives up two flights of stairs. Louisa has one small room in this same flat, where she dines and reads, but takes two additional rooms up another small half-flight of stairs to the back of the building, where she sits with company and takes her rest.

  Technically, the two ladies live together, protecting one another’s good names; practically speaking, Louisa is a handsome, once-married, now-amicably-separated Covent Garden actress with an independent existence, as Boswell likes to sum it up.

  At a little after eleven, he climbs the narrow stairs to the flat, and the maid walks him through the cramped lower floor of the flat to the private back stair. At the top of the stair stands Louisa, and Boswell stares up at her with a momentary helplessness.

  She has apparently just come from an appointment, or a walk in the Park of her own: rather than the wadded morning dresses he has become accustomed to seeing, she wears a yellow satin gown, substantially hooped, and a small black cape still hanging from her hand. Never has she looked more stylish, more of the city of London, and Boswell feels a quick, disquieting flutter of self-doubt.

  “Do come up, Mr. Boswell. It is good of you to stop in. You will never guess my news,” she says, when he has reached the top of the stairs. “I’ve just come from the managers of the theater, and they talk of bringing me into the lead this coming year.”

  “It is too long in coming,” Boswell says, kissing her hand, “should it happen today, Mrs. Lewis.”

  Louisa nods. “A compliment very much appreciated. I knew there was some reason I invited you to tea.” Her fingers brush his arm to punctuate the joke, and the sensation stays with him when the fingers are removed.

  She smiles and quickly searches his face, then his eyes, one after the other, as though for flaws. He cannot but examine her own face in return: the very dark brows framing intensely dark eyes, and the fine aquiline nose. Between the snapping eyes and the wry mouth, she gives Boswell the odd impression that she has known and been furious with him in the long-distant past, but has recently begun to exchange the anger for amusement. Her skin is fair and healthy, a girl’s skin still, perhaps twenty-five at the outside. He smells roses and lemons, suspects even the darker hint of jasmine.

  And the expanse of pale skin now visible above the satin bodice of her dress—here in the early dead of winter, when London has piled on all of its infinite coats and wraps—hits Boswell like a cudgel-blow.

  “I am delighted to hear your news,” Boswell begins, and Louisa’s expression brightens at the mention of it, “and delighted to know that I am taking tea this morning with such a rapidly rising star.”

  She waves a hand. “Please do take it with a grain of salt, Mr. Boswell. The managers did not say anything absolutely. Still, I am glad to know they value me enough even to promise by halves.”

  “Of course, I am happy both for you, and for myself.”

  “Oh? And why so, sir?”

  “As it makes me feel your intimate acquaintance, to share in it.”

  Louisa nods. “I hope we are intimate in that way, just to share our triumphs and our small troubles alike.”

  Boswell smiles but cannot avoid the memory of the previous Monday. He had come to Louisa’s directly after breakfast, only to find her in a transparently bad humor: a tradesman had sent to her for a trifling back debt, and she had applied in turn to a close friend for a loan, only to be shifted. Boswell insisted on knowing the amount she needed and then, when he found to his delight that it was only two guineas, loaned her the money himself.

  He’d been ecstatic at first to come in some small way to her rescue, but in the days following he has found himself wondering, replaying the situation in his mind. Was the whole scene manufactured, merely an artful way for money to change hands? To have the income of a courtesan without necessarily admitting it, even to herself?

  “Our triumphs and our troubles—exactly,” Boswell continues. “London has held everything for me but that since I arrived, that sense of having a place to share one’s thoughts with an understanding woman. You take my meaning, I hope.”

  He sees that she is listening complacently, and instinctively he tries another, deeper key. “I look forward to the married state for that reason perhaps above all.”

  Louisa—who has been, and remains married in law—gives a small laugh and shakes her head sharply. She is suddenly animated. “You must be careful there, Mr. Boswell. You show your naïveté there, I’m afraid. Not all marriages consist of tea and genteel conversation. Or agreeable companionship.”

  “Surely many do.”

  “Surely most do not,” she says without hesitation, and then tries deliberately to strike a sunnier note. “However, where marriage and good tempers chance to come together, man and woman may do very well. I think, however, that meeting just as you and I do now—as two persons, rather than as two who have had lawyers draw settlements—is the key to easiness. We know that we have license to leave one another at a moment’s notice. And so we study one another’s happiness.”

  Boswell fixes her with an eye, finds that she does not shrink from the scrutiny. “Nay, I know this must be a pose. You cannot be such an enemy of marriage.”

  “Not an enemy of marriage, sir,” Louisa replies, “but once a victim. And so forevermore a skeptic, until such time as I may be proven wrong.”

  “You have never told me how you and Mr. Lewis came to— part ways.”

  She cocks he
r head at Boswell and narrows an eye. “Do we know one another well enough for that, I wonder?”

  “I hope we know one another well enough for anything.” With that, Boswell moves to the end of the settee closest her chair. He is within easy distance of her hand, but he restrains himself, his own folded carefully on his knee. “I have told you that my affections are engaged to you. And you have told me you are no Platonist. I have hopes—you have encouraged me to hope—that you will allow us to put aside the arbitrary rules of the public. Allow us to do so, even this morning. This morning like no other.”

  “Mr. Boswell, you know that I have said the thing is fraught with more trouble than it may be worth, for you as well as for myself.”

  “I like my pleasures fraught. The more fraught, the better.”

  “Do not make light.”

  “I have never been more in earnest.”

  Boswell finally gets the grudging smile he’s been probing for, and he reaches out only now to take her hand. Louisa watches as he does so—the two of them watch him take it—but seems more than agreeable. And once he has her hand, Boswell holds it in both his own, clasping it, saying nothing for a moment.

  Finally, he speaks. “But truly, madam, you must allow our feelings for one another to take their most intense expression. It is impossible otherwise to know the destiny of a passion such as ours. You will make me blessed, Mrs. Lewis.”

  “It may be known, sir.”

  “Or it may remain a tender secret between careful lovers.”

  “A thousand circumstances may be troublesome.”

  “Or none in the least.”

  There is a considered pause, as Louisa smiles softly to herself. She lifts her eyes to him, and the smile deepens, takes on what seems at first to be an outright coyness.

  And then, almost as readily as he might pick up a scent entering the air, Boswell understands that it would be a serious mistake to treat the smile as encouragement. It is, in point of emerging fact, much nearer the opposite. He can see that his appeals have brought him as close to this woman beside him as he may come under his own power; the next single hint of entreaty will move her two steps away, or ten, he is suddenly certain. Not only that, but she will rebuke him—out of nowhere; harshly, perhaps—should he pursue the matter another inch.