According to Queeney

by Beryl Bainbridge

  One warm afternoon when she was resting in the drawing room – she was yet again expecting a child and her back ached – her mother dozing on the couch and Queeney reading at the table, Johnson entered on tiptoe, finger to his lips, and made an elaborate dumbshow of searching for a book left in the recess of the window. Unaware of the sleeping dog, he trod full upon it, at which Belle let out a hideous howl, causing Mrs Salusbury to start up in terror. Exasperated beyond endurance, Mrs Thrale cried out, ‘This will not do, Sir,’ and burst into noisy tears.

  She sought him out some hours later and made her peace with him. He was seated at his desk separating orange peel into heaps. She had thought he would upbraid her, but he was pathetically pleased to be forgiven and covered her hand with kisses. She was not sure she liked him abject, for his roughness of manner and strong convictions were the qualities she found exciting.

  The servant bringing up a bowl of warm water, she bathed Johnson’s eye most tenderly. ‘It is not’, she said, ‘that I hold you in less regard than formerly, merely that I am preoccupied with my mother and Lucy. My mother I know I shall lose … I pray that Lucy will be saved.’

  At this his tears ran so freely there was no need of salt. When he was able to speak, he said he had written her a letter which he wished her to read when she was alone. It was not for careless eyes and was in French.

  ‘Why French?’ she asked.

  ‘The sentiments in it’, he said, ‘are best conveyed in another language.’

  She waited until Mrs Salusbury fell asleep before reading it. It was true she was not alone, Queeney sitting on the opposite side of the bed holding her grandmother’s hand, but she felt that neither the young girl nor the old woman could be categorised as careless.

  Johnson’s words were not easy to make sense of, his sight having become so impaired that his handwriting was jagged. He began with accusations of neglect disguised beneath protestations of his own unworthiness and recognition of her sweetness of soul. As he did not want to be a nuisance, could she not invent a routine for him that would avoid putting the harmony of the house in peril? Seeing that he was expected to spend several hours a day in profound solitude, should he prescribe himself to confined limits in the house? Had he not, some time in the past, provided her with the means by which she could enforce such a restriction? It would be more befitting a mistress if she herself took the initiative and spared him the necessity of constraining himself. He would keep to his chamber … she had only to turn the key in the lock twice a day. Her inconsistency of nature had led her to forget her promises of help and forced him into repeated solicitations for her attention, provoking in him an abnegation of pride which he found horrifying. He concluded with the hope that she would continue to keep him in that slavery you know so well how to make happy.

  Having read the letter through, Mrs Thrale felt first bemusement, then anger – she crumpled the paper in her fist – then sadness, at which emotion she smoothed out the page as though calming a bird with a damaged wing. Despite its bold phrases and dictatorial tone, it was the letter of a man struck down … though, on reflection, perhaps that of a spoilt child was nearer the mark.

  She rose at once, determined to put his mind at rest, and no sooner had put foot to stair than he appeared on the landing ahead. It was now dusk and the servants had not yet lit the lamps; he was holding a candle in one hand and his shadow leapt the wall.

  Queeney, curious as to her mother’s abrupt departure from Mrs Salusbury’s bedside, followed her. She was astonished to see Mr Johnson and Mamma struggling together on the landing. They seemed to be wrestling for possession of a length of chain attached to some metal object that knocked repeatedly against the wainscotting of the window.

  Mr Johnson shouted out, ‘You will use it,’ and Mamma shouted back, ‘I will not,’ and at that moment from the nursery above came the sound of desperate crying; it was Lucy, a martyr to the infection in her ear. Mamma dropped the chain and fled higher.

  Queeney stared up at Mr Johnson. He was holding the candle flame too close to his head and a small curdle of smoke issued from the top-piece of his wig. Dashing his fist against his forehead he turned and stumbled off to his room, the chain and its attachment, like a dead dog on a leash, bouncing behind him.

  The next morning when Queeney asked what had disturbed Mr Johnson, Mamma said he was unhappy for Mrs Salusbury. ‘The thought of death frightens him,’ she explained. ‘His own as well as hers. I am trying to persuade him to accompany James Boswell to Scotland.’

  Though Queeney had not met Mr Boswell she knew he was a lawyer who was in awe of Mr Johnson, hung on his every word and desired he should go with him on a tour of his native Hebrides. Mr Garrick likened him to the buffoon Pantalone, and Mr Goldsmith said he was of no account, but Papa held he should not be so easily dismissed.

  Later that day Mrs Thrale replied to Johnson and left the letter on her work table while she attended to Mrs Salusbury. As it was not folded, Queeney read it; she found it overdone. Mamma asked what more care could she give her dear Mr Johnson that she did not already give, what tenderness that he had not already experienced? Diversion would be his best medicine and Boswell his best physician. Farewell and be good, the letter ended, and do not quarrel with your governess for not using the rod enough. Queeney reasoned this last sentence was meant to be humorous, for it was only children that got whipped.

  All the same, she thought it an odd exercise, writing to someone who lived under the same roof.

  To Miss Laetitia Hawkins,

  2 Sion Row,

  Twickenham

  December 6th, 1807

  Dear Miss Hawkins,

  You persist, and with each enquiry I am drawn back to years best forgotten. I regret I can tell you little regarding the failure of the Thrale Brewery; I was but eight years old at the time and my dear father did not think it necessary to acquaint me with the facts. Sufficient to say, that, owing to my mother’s desire for expansion, both at Streatham Park and the Brewery, my father was forced to borrow money at exorbitant rates of interest, a debt he did not shake off for a further nine years – which burden undoubtedly led to a decline in his health. At the time of the crisis, my mother, though it is to be presumed that she acted without malice, was peculiarly supportive of Perkins, chief clerk to the Brewery, who, seeking financial advantage, threatened to resign, thus causing my dear father further aggravation.

  I cannot, at this distance, remember the name of Miss Porter’s cat, the death of whom was commemorated by a candlelit ceremony conducted beneath the mulberry tree. Dr Johnson did indeed have a pet hen. It was called Socrates, on account of its persistent squawking.

  My grandmother died in her bed at Streatham, a day or so after my father had carried her in his arms to see the finishing of the library.

  The argument you mention, the one between Mr Goldsmith and Dr Johnson on the subject of the regrettable peeling of oil paint – it was the colour crimson that was at fault – from the canvases of Sir Joshua Reynolds, took place in Bolt Court. I have every reason to remember the occasion as only that morning my father had given me an amber necklace, which treasured possession I wear to this day.

  I remain,

  Yours sincerely,

  H. M. Thrale

  I do not recall Dr Johnson speaking of Francis Barber in other than the warmest of terms. Nor did he treat him as a low servant. Once, in my presence, Mrs Desmoulins referred to him as a blackamoor, at which Dr J, exceedingly vexed, told her to mind her tongue.

  1774

  YESTERDAY n.f. (from Saxon)

  The day laſt paſt; the next day before today

  To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

  To the laſt ſyllable of recorded time;

  And all our yeſterdays have lighted fools

  The way to duſty death.

  Shakeſpeare’s Macbeth

  After visiting the nursery to kiss little Ralph goodbye – his
head was very large and his mouth drooled in spite of his not yet teething – Mrs Thrale went down into the hall and stood inside the porch to watch her husband direct the loading of the carriage. Through the pale mist came the bleating of sheep and the trill of birdsong.

  ‘There is something wrong with his understanding,’ she said, to no one in particular. She was referring to the child whose fat cheek she had just pecked and in whose eyes she had seen no sparkle of wit. It crossed her mind that his shrill cries were not unlike the twitterings of young thrushes … and who could distinguish the tweetings of hunger from those of vacuity?

  She reasoned her fancies sprang from the strain of settling the children before embarking on her travels. Yesterday she had taken Sophy to lodge with her sister Susannah at Mrs Cumyns’s boarding school in Kensington. The death of Mrs Salusbury, followed so swiftly by that of dearest Lucy, had chilled her heart; she felt herself less capable of affection than before and would not miss either girl too much, Sophy being petulant and Susannah not immediately likeable.

  Harry was her main concern, for though he was content enough to attend St Thomas’s School by day, he refused to board nights and had threatened, should he not be fetched home to sleep, to run away to sea. He had inherited his father’s inordinate appetite and she feared that in her absence he would take liberties in ordering his own dinners, thus overloading his belly. He had such winning ways she did not trust the servants to disobey him, though New Nurse, who had fast become Old Nurse, swore she would thwart him.

  The carriage ready, Mr Johnson had to be sent for twice. The footman reported that he was dressed, but was having difficulty in deciding which books he should leave behind. When at last he did appear he descended the steps with speed, his face expressing great good humour. Since his jaunt to Scotland with Boswell, and the completion of his journal of the Hebridean tour – only that week he had dispatched the first sheets back to the printers – he was in favour of motion and was looking forward to introducing his dear master and mistress to his home town of Lichfield. Yet, even as the occupants of the coach shifted to make space for him, he abruptly turned and made off in the direction of the library door at the side of the house. He was dressed in his Sunday coat, but his shirt tail hung out at the back. This comical oversight prompted Henry Thrale to repeat for the benefit of Mr Baretti one of Garrick’s many anecdotes concerning Johnson’s dismal efforts, in the early days of his marriage, to run a school in Staffordshire.

  ‘There were but three pupils … Davy the oldest. Late at night … young gentlemen had the habit of peeping through keyhole of Johnson’s bedchamber. One occasion … spied Sam at table … heard Tetty’s pleas that he should come to bed. Aware of something dangling alongside his chair … Sam mistakes it for his shirt … tucks the cloth into his breeches and strides about, reciting aloud what he has just written … Tetty, shivering, tries to retrieve departing bedclothes …’

  ‘I see him, I see him,’ cried Baretti, slapping his thigh in delight.

  ‘Her complaints grow louder … Sam, misinterpreting feverish cries … discards shirt in flurry of expectation … shouts out, “I’m coming, my Tetsie, I’m coming.”’

  At this conclusion, Baretti laughed so loudly that Mrs Thrale thrust her handkerchief into his mouth. She was not a moment too soon, for just then Johnson reappeared at a run, puffed past the carriage, climbed the steps to the porch and knocked with his fist three times upon the stone head of the griffin beside the door.

  Mrs Thrale thought again of the child in the nursery; no matter how vigorously one tapped there would never be a response.

  On the journey to London, Henry Thrale and Johnson dozed on and off, neither being given to liveliness much before noon. Queeney coughed and wriggled a great deal. As they approached the river, she suddenly asked her father why Mr Garrick had peeped through keyholes and if it was not rude of him. Fortunately, Johnson was asleep and Thrale too drowsy to reply, although Baretti uttered a bellow of mirth wild enough to wake the dead. But for his presence Mrs Thrale would have slapped Queeney.

  Baretti was volatile and had odd ideas on the nurturing of children. He was forever hiding the ivory whistle she used to summon the younger ones for punishment; nor had she forgotten his snapping the nursery rod in two after she had whipped Harry for scribbling across Mr Johnson’s globe. Sometimes she reflected on how long it might be before the Italian, in one of his tempers, would resort to the fruit knife that had so nearly sent him to the gallows.

  Baretti said his goodbyes when the carriage reached Joshua Reynolds’s studio in Leicester Fields. He was to sit for his likeness, one of a series of portraits of Streatham habitués commissioned by Thrale, of which those of Garrick and dear, lost Goldsmith were already completed and could be seen displayed on the walls of his library.

  Johnson, shirt still dangling below the tails of his coat, insisted on alighting and accompanying Baretti to the top step, where, as Thrale observed, he shook his friend’s hand as though they would not meet again this side of the grave. Miss Reynolds appeared briefly in the doorway; seeing the carriage, she darted out of sight, but not before Mrs Thrale had taken notice of her dishevelled appearance; it was probable she and her brother had been indulging in yet another of their disagreements.

  Intrigued by the strange roarings and shriekings coming from the garden across the square, Queeney scrambled down into the street. She grew excited and would have run off to investigate if her mother hadn’t caught hold of her skirt.

  Returning, and learning the reason for the child’s animation, Johnson told her that John Hunter lived across the way and promised he would take her one day to visit him. The beast noises coming from the garden, he explained, were those of a tiger and a collection of gibbons, the latter being a species of monkey, grey in colour, almost hairless and possessing hind legs capable of leaping great distances. Had she been here the week before she would have heard the barking of numerous dogs, some of whose stomachs had been cut open and filled with warm milk before being hanged.

  ‘Why?’ questioned Queeney, wide-eyed.

  ‘It was an experiment to ascertain the absorption of fat through the abdominal lymphatics into the thoracic duct.’

  ‘Why?’ Queeney repeated.

  ‘In the pursuit of knowledge, Sweeting,’ Johnson said. ‘The day after, by Dr Levet’s account, Mr Hunter dissected an old man and observed that the veins of his intestines were filled with white fluid instead of red blood.’

  ‘Did Mr Hunter hang the old man?’ Queeney asked.

  ‘Come,’ ordered Mrs Thrale, frowning at Johnson and pulling Queeney into the carriage.

  Seated and addressing Mrs Thrale, Johnson acknowledged he was not acquainted with the anatomist, but had attended two of his lectures in the company of Levet and found both instructive. One had dealt with states of mind, in which it was proposed, and who could gainsay it, that the mind was often in opposition to itself, and that one state of mind, if strong, would always get the better of another state which is weak.

  ‘How true,’ murmured Mrs Thrale, thinking of Johnson’s own mind, and in particular of its perilous state when overcome by melancholy.

  ‘The second lecture’, Johnson told her, ‘had to do with sexual selection. A man, according to Hunter, has an appetite to enjoy all women; but if the mind has formed itself to any particular woman, the appetite or enjoyment can be suspended until—’ here, he caught Mrs Thrale’s reproving glance and broke off in mid-sentence. Moments later, as the coach turned out of the square, he remarked, ‘The skin is affected by feelings of shame …’

  ‘As in blushing,’ supplied Mrs Thrale.

  ‘Quite so. The secretion or even the non-secretion of the testicles takes place under certain states of the mind—’

  ‘Enough, Sir,’ barked Henry Thrale, and instantly obtained silence.

  They drove to St Albans, where they halted to enjoy an excellent dinner with Ralph Smith, a first cousin of Thrale. Mrs Smith went through the usual stages, d
isbelief followed by growing regard, experienced by those encountering Johnson for the first time. As she afterwards confided to Mrs Thrale, what with that ill-fitting wig, those tremulous hootings, that untucked shirt – not to mention the convulsive jerkings of lower limbs – she feared they had brought an idiot to sit with them at table. It was with difficulty the party got away to continue on their journey to Lichfield.

  The coach approaching Offley, Mrs Thrale grew warm with memories of times gone by. It was hereabouts she had spent girlhood summers in the house of her father’s brother, Sir Thomas Salusbury. As the carriage rolled down the country lanes and slowed to cross a timber bridge above a stream, she recalled going fishing with her father, perched on a grassy bank holding a willow twig from which dangled a length of cord with a hook tied to its end.

  ‘Cast, cast,’ her father had bidden, only her throw was too feeble and the cord sailed backwards and fell across a tussock of weed. ‘Damn you, damn you to hell,’ shouted her father, shaking his fist at the horizon. She had taken to her heels in tears, thinking it was she who made him angry, until her mother had explained it was Sir Thomas, out hunting and hill-topping in a postchaise, whom he cursed.

  ‘Stop … stop the coach,’ Mrs Thrale ordered.

  ‘Are you ill, Hester?’ called her husband, as she stepped out into the evening air. She didn’t reply, at which he followed her, though merely to piss into the hedgerow.

  Mrs Thrale, staring upwards at the racing clouds, divined in their flight across the heavens a likeness to the fleeting years. She had been fortunate, she thought, for in their swift passing there had been nothing to cause her lasting despair, not even the harvesting of her children – for death was a natural event and in accordance with God’s will.