It is perhaps time to cease these extracts from Boswell’s reports. The next two years were less fruitful. In 1779 Boswell was careless, though twice in London, and in 1780, he did not pay his annual visit. Boswell has partly filled up the gap by a collection of sayings made by Langton, some passages from which have been quoted, and his correspondence gives various details. Garrick died in January of 1779, and Beauclerk in March, 1780. Johnson himself seems to have shown few symptoms of increasing age; but a change was approaching, and the last years of his life were destined to be clouded, not merely by physical weakness, but by a change of circumstances which had great influence upon his happiness.
CHAPTER V. THE CLOSING YEARS OF JOHNSON’S LIFE.
In following Boswell’s guidance we have necessarily seen only one side of Johnson’s life; and probably that side which had least significance for the man himself.
Boswell saw in him chiefly the great dictator of conversation; and though the reports of Johnson’s talk represent his character in spite of some qualifications with unusual fulness, there were many traits very inadequately revealed at the Mitre or the Club, at Mrs. Thrale’s, or in meetings with Wilkes or Reynolds. We may catch some glimpses from his letters and diaries of that inward life which consisted generally in a long succession of struggles against an oppressive and often paralysing melancholy. Another most noteworthy side to his character is revealed in his relations to persons too humble for admission to the tables at which he exerted a despotic sway. Upon this side Johnson was almost entirely loveable. We often have to regret the imperfection of the records of
That best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
Everywhere in Johnson’s letters and in the occasional anecdotes, we come upon indications of a tenderness and untiring benevolence which would make us forgive far worse faults than have ever been laid to his charge. Nay, the very asperity of the man’s outside becomes endeared to us by the association. His irritability never vented itself against the helpless, and his rough impatience of fanciful troubles implied no want of sympathy for real sorrow. One of Mrs. Thrale’s anecdotes is intended to show Johnson’s harshness:— “When I one day lamented the loss of a first cousin killed in America, ‘Pr’ythee, my dear,’ said he, ‘have done with canting; how would the world be the worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto’s supper?’ Presto was the dog that lay under the table while we talked.” The counter version, given by Boswell is, that Mrs. Thrale related her cousin’s death in the midst of a hearty supper, and that Johnson, shocked at her want of feeling, said, “Madam, it would give you very little concern if all your relations were spitted like those larks, and roasted for Presto’s supper.” Taking the most unfavourable version, we may judge how much real indifference to human sorrow was implied by seeing how Johnson was affected by a loss of one of his humblest friends. It is but one case of many. In 1767, he took leave, as he notes in his diary, of his “dear old friend, Catherine Chambers,” who had been for about forty-three years in the service of his family. “I desired all to withdraw,” he says, “then told her that we were to part for ever, and, as Christians, we should part with prayer, and that I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire to hear me, and held up her poor hands as she lay in bed, with great fervour, while I prayed, kneeling by her, in nearly the following words” — which shall not be repeated here— “I then kissed her,” he adds. “She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed, with swelled eyes, and great emotion of kindness, the same hopes. We kissed and parted — I humbly hope to meet again and part no more.”
A man with so true and tender a heart could say serenely, what with some men would be a mere excuse for want of sympathy, that he “hated to hear people whine about metaphysical distresses when there was so much want and hunger in the world.” He had a sound and righteous contempt for all affectation of excessive sensibility. Suppose, said Boswell to him, whilst their common friend Baretti was lying under a charge of murder, “that one of your intimate friends were apprehended for an offence for which he might be hanged.” “I should do what I could,” replied Johnson, “to bail him, and give him any other assistance; but if he were once fairly hanged, I should not suffer.” “Would you eat your dinner that day, sir?” asks Boswell. “Yes, sir; and eat it as if he were eating with me. Why there’s Baretti, who’s to be tried for his life to-morrow. Friends have risen up for him upon every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plum-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in depressing the mind.” Boswell illustrated the subject by saying that Tom Davies had just written a letter to Foote, telling him that he could not sleep from concern about Baretti, and at the same time recommending a young man who kept a pickle-shop. Johnson summed up by the remark: “You will find these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling.” Johnson never objected to feeling, but to the waste of feeling.
In a similar vein he told Mrs. Thrale that a “surly fellow” like himself had no compassion to spare for “wounds given to vanity and softness,” whilst witnessing the common sight of actual want in great cities. On Lady Tavistock’s death, said to have been caused by grief for her husband’s loss, he observed that her life might have been saved if she had been put into a small chandler’s shop, with a child to nurse. When Mrs. Thrale suggested that a lady would be grieved because her friend had lost the chance of a fortune, “She will suffer as much, perhaps,” he replied, “as your horse did when your cow miscarried.” Mrs. Thrale testifies that he once reproached her sternly for complaining of the dust. When he knew, he said, how many poor families would perish next winter for want of the bread which the drought would deny, he could not bear to hear ladies sighing for rain on account of their complexions or their clothes. While reporting such sayings, she adds, that he loved the poor as she never saw any one else love them, with an earnest desire to make them happy. His charity was unbounded; he proposed to allow himself one hundred a year out of the three hundred of his pension; but the Thrales could never discover that he really spent upon himself more than 70l., or at most 80l. He had numerous dependants, abroad as well as at home, who “did not like to see him latterly, unless he brought ’em money.” He filled his pockets with small cash which he distributed to beggars in defiance of political economy. When told that the recipients only laid it out upon gin or tobacco, he replied that it was savage to deny them the few coarse pleasures which the richer disdained. Numerous instances are given of more judicious charity. When, for example, a Benedictine monk, whom he had seen in Paris, became a Protestant, Johnson supported him for some months in London, till he could get a living. Once coming home late at night, he found a poor woman lying in the street. He carried her to his house on his back, and found that she was reduced to the lowest stage of want, poverty, and disease. He took care of her at his own charge, with all tenderness, until she was restored to health, and tried to have her put into a virtuous way of living. His house, in his later years, was filled with various waifs and strays, to whom he gave hospitality and sometimes support, defending himself by saying that if he did not help them nobody else would. The head of his household was Miss Williams, who had been a friend of his wife’s, and after coming to stay with him, in order to undergo an operation for cataract, became a permanent inmate of his house. She had a small income of some 40l. a year, partly from the charity of connexions of her father’s, and partly arising from a little book of miscellanies published by subscription. She was a woman of some sense and cultivation, and when she died (in 1783) Johnson said that for thirty years she had been to him as a sister. Boswell’s jealousy was excited during the first period of his acquaintance, when Goldsmith one night went home with Johnson, crying “I go
to Miss Williams” — a phrase which implied admission to an intimacy from which Boswell was as yet excluded. Boswell soon obtained the coveted privilege, and testifies to the respect with which Johnson always treated the inmates of his family. Before leaving her to dine with Boswell at the hotel, he asked her what little delicacy should be sent to her from the tavern. Poor Miss Williams, however, was peevish, and, according to Hawkins, had been known to drive Johnson out of the room by her reproaches, and Boswell’s delicacy was shocked by the supposition that she tested the fulness of cups of tea, by putting her finger inside. We are glad to know that this was a false impression, and, in fact, Miss Williams, however unfortunate in temper and circumstances, seems to have been a lady by manners and education.
The next inmate of this queer household was Robert Levett, a man who had been a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris frequented by surgeons. They had enabled him to pick up some of their art, and he set up as an “obscure practiser in physic amongst the lower people” in London. He took from them such fees as he could get, including provisions, sometimes, unfortunately for him, of the potable kind. He was once entrapped into a queer marriage, and Johnson had to arrange a separation from his wife. Johnson, it seems, had a good opinion of his medical skill, and more or less employed his services in that capacity. He attended his patron at his breakfast; breakfasting, said Percy, “on the crust of a roll, which Johnson threw to him after tearing out the crumb.” The phrase, it is said, goes too far; Johnson always took pains that Levett should be treated rather as a friend than as a dependant.
Besides these humble friends, there was a Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter of a Lichfield physician. Johnson had had some quarrel with the father in his youth for revealing a confession of the mental disease which tortured him from early years. He supported Mrs. Desmoulins none the less, giving house-room to her and her daughter, and making her an allowance of half-a-guinea a week, a sum equal to a twelfth part of his pension. Francis Barker has already been mentioned, and we have a dim vision of a Miss Carmichael, who completed what he facetiously called his “seraglio.” It was anything but a happy family. He summed up their relations in a letter to Mrs. Thrale. “Williams,” he says, “hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them.” Frank Barker complained of Miss Williams’s authority, and Miss Williams of Frank’s insubordination. Intruders who had taken refuge under his roof, brought their children there in his absence, and grumbled if their dinners were ill-dressed. The old man bore it all, relieving himself by an occasional growl, but reproaching any who ventured to join in the growl for their indifference to the sufferings of poverty. Levett died in January, 1782; Miss Williams died, after a lingering illness, in 1783, and Johnson grieved in solitude for the loss of his testy companions. A poem, composed upon Levett’s death, records his feelings in language which wants the refinement of Goldsmith or the intensity of Cowper’s pathos, but which is yet so sincere and tender as to be more impressive than far more elegant compositions. It will be a fitting close to this brief indication of one side of Johnson’s character, too easily overlooked in Boswell’s pages, to quote part of what Thackeray truly calls the “sacred verses” upon Levett: —
Well tried through many a varying year
See Levett to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
In misery’s darkest cavern known,
His ready help was ever nigh;
Where hopeless anguish pour’d his groan,
And lonely want retired to die.
No summons mock’d by dull delay,
No petty gains disdain’d by pride;
The modest wants of every day,
The toil of every day supplied.
His virtues walk’d their narrow round,
Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
And sure the eternal Master found
His single talent well employed.
The busy day, the peaceful night,
Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
His frame was firm, his eye was bright,
Though now his eightieth year was nigh.
Then, with no throbs of fiery pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the easiest way.
The last stanza smells somewhat of the country tombstone; but to read the whole and to realize the deep, manly sentiment which it implies, without tears in one’s eyes is to me at least impossible.
There is one little touch which may be added before we proceed to the closing years of this tender-hearted old moralist. Johnson loved little children, calling them “little dears,” and cramming them with sweetmeats, though we regret to add that he once snubbed a little child rather severely for a want of acquaintance with the Pilgrim’s Progress. His cat, Hodge, should be famous amongst the lovers of the race. He used to go out and buy oysters for Hodge, that the servants might not take a dislike to the animal from having to serve it themselves. He reproached his wife for beating a cat before the maid, lest she should give a precedent for cruelty. Boswell, who cherished an antipathy to cats, suffered at seeing Hodge scrambling up Johnson’s breast, whilst he smiled and rubbed the beast’s back and pulled its tail. Bozzy remarked that he was a fine cat. “Why, yes, sir,” said Johnson; “but I have had cats whom I liked better than this,” and then, lest Hodge should be put out of countenance, he added, “but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.” He told Langton once of a young gentleman who, when last heard of, was “running about town shooting cats; but,” he murmured in a kindly reverie, “Hodge shan’t be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot!” Once, when Johnson was staying at a house in Wales, the gardener brought in a hare which had been caught in the potatoes. The order was given to take it to the cook. Johnson asked to have it placed in his arms. He took it to the window and let it go, shouting to increase its speed. When his host complained that he had perhaps spoilt the dinner, Johnson replied by insisting that the rights of hospitality included an animal which had thus placed itself under the protection of the master of the garden.
We must proceed, however, to a more serious event. The year 1781 brought with it a catastrophe which profoundly affected the brief remainder of Johnson’s life. Mr. Thrale, whose health had been shaken by fits, died suddenly on the 4th of April. The ultimate consequence was Johnson’s loss of the second home, in which he had so often found refuge from melancholy, alleviation of physical suffering, and pleasure in social converse. The change did not follow at once, but as the catastrophe of a little social drama, upon the rights and wrongs of which a good deal of controversy has been expended.
Johnson was deeply affected by the loss of a friend whose face, as he said, “had never been turned upon him through fifteen years but with respect and benignity.” He wrote solemn and affecting letters to the widow, and busied himself strenuously in her service. Thrale had made him one of his executors, leaving him a small legacy; and Johnson took, it seems, a rather simple-minded pleasure in dealing with important commercial affairs and signing cheques for large sums of money. The old man of letters, to whom three hundred a year had been superabundant wealth, was amused at finding himself in the position of a man of business, regulating what was then regarded as a princely fortune. The brewery was sold after a time, and Johnson bustled about with an ink-horn and pen in his button-hole. When asked what was the value of the property, he replied magniloquently, “We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” The brewery was in fact sold to Barclay, Perkins, and Co. for the sum of 135,000l., and some years afterwards it was the largest concern of the kind in the world.
The first effect of the change was probably rather to tighten than to relax the bond of union with the Thrale family. During the winter of 1781-2, Johnson’s infirmities were growing
upon him. In the beginning of 1782 he was suffering from an illness which excited serious apprehensions, and he went to Mrs. Thrale’s, as the only house where he could use “all the freedom that sickness requires.” She nursed him carefully, and expressed her feelings with characteristic vehemence in a curious journal which he had encouraged her to keep. It records her opinions about her affairs and her family, with a frankness remarkable even in writing intended for no eye but her own. “Here is Mr. Johnson very ill,” she writes on the 1st of February;…. “What shall we do for him? If I lose him, I am more than undone — friend, father, guardian, confidant! God give me health and patience! What shall I do?” There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of these sentiments, though they seem to represent a mood of excitement. They show that for ten months after Thrale’s death Mrs. Thrale was keenly sensitive to the value of Johnson’s friendship.
A change, however, was approaching. Towards the end of 1780 Mrs. Thrale had made the acquaintance of an Italian musician named Piozzi, a man of amiable and honourable character, making an independent income by his profession, but to the eyes of most people rather inoffensive than specially attractive. The friendship between Mrs. Thrale and Piozzi rapidly became closer, and by the end of 1781 she was on very intimate terms with the gentleman whom she calls “my Piozzi.” He had been making a professional trip to the Continent during part of the period since her husband’s death, and upon his return in November, Johnson congratulated her upon having two friends who loved her, in terms which suggest no existing feeling of jealousy. During 1782 the mutual affection of the lady and the musician became stronger, and in the autumn they had avowed it to each other, and were discussing the question of marriage.
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 645