She was cheerful when she returned to the carriage, so much so that she was moved to kiss the sniffling Queeney on both cheeks. Johnson was ready to explode; any unwarranted delay on their journey to Lichfield caused him agitation.
They spent the night at Dunstable, in an inn close by the parish church. The accommodation was far from pleasing, the rooms unclean and the food served up on scratched plate. The service, too, was tardy, owing to the landlord being deficient of a leg, which loss, so he would have them believe, he had suffered when the ship on which he had served his country had run aground near Providence, Rhode Island, and been attacked by patriots.
Queeney’s cold now gathering strength – she coughed and sneezed in rotation – Mrs Thrale was anxious to put her to bed. She had not brought female servants and was obliged to attend to the child herself. This was not as irksome as it might have been, for Johnson was wearying them all with his knowledge of the town, informing them that its name was derived from the wool market or ‘staple’ established in the region of the chalk downs by Augustine monks in the twelfth century. Neither skirmishes in North America nor weaving in Bedfordshire arousing her interest, she retired, leaving the talkative Johnson in the company of a comatose Henry Thrale.
The following morning it was past ten o’clock before the party left Dunstable. Johnson, who the night before had insisted on a departure not later than six o’clock, failed to rise for a further four hours. Nor did he apologise, though Mrs Thrale could tell by the way he left his breakfast roll untouched that he felt discomforted.
It was moonlit midnight when their coach clattered into the yard of the Swan Inn, Lichfield.
When Queeney awoke, Mrs Thrale brought her a dish of warm bread and milk. Owing to a prodigious sneeze, the milk slopped on to the quilt. Anxious to appear well – her mother was a great advocate of dosing and purging – the child subdued her cough and professed to feeling quite herself again. In spite of this, Mrs Thrale swore she detected an obstruction in her breathing and warned that an application of goose fat to the chest might be necessary.
Dressed, and about to descend the stairs, Mrs Thrale was surprised to spy Mr Johnson pacing the hall below. Seeing her, he bounded upwards and, fiercely studying her garments, cried out, ‘No, no, it will not do.’ On her enquiring what was wrong, he informed her that the morning gown she was wearing was of too dark a colour, and that she must change into something more gay and splendid. For one so poorly sighted, and one, moreover, so slovenly in his own dress, it was astonishing how critical he could be of the apparel of others.
Cross, but bearing in mind that he wished her to make an impression on his Lichfield acquaintances, Mrs Thrale did as he bid and presently returned in a hooped gown of blue silk edged with swan feathers. Her husband murmured that it was inappropriate, the weather being unsettled and the inhabitants of Lichfield more than likely rustic in attire.
‘I cannot please everyone,’ she said, exasperated, to which Thrale replied, ‘It is fortunate I am a good-natured man.’
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Mrs Thrale turned pale, the phrase having been used for the title of a play by poor Goldsmith, who had died, submerged in debt and in great torment of mind, earlier that year. Hand to her heart, she looked anxiously at Johnson. Conscious of her concern, he said gruffly, ‘I loved Goldy, but though I can say I miss him, I cannot swear to feeling it.’
Much relieved at his attitude, for had he descended into a gloom their visit to Lichfield would have been past mending, the Thrales followed him out of the inn.
They had scarcely set foot in the street before Johnson was waylaid by numerous passers-by, all of whom claimed to have known him intimately in his youth. Some had splashed with him in Stowe Pool or else daydreamed beside him on the school bench; others had stood guard while he raided the orchard in George Lane, run whooping at his elbow as the cattle swayed home from the darkening meadows. He was clearly gratified at the respect shown to him, though in an aside he confessed he did not know from Adam many who so vigorously shook his hand.
To reward Queeney, who, in order to deflect Mamma’s medical attentions, was conducting herself with great fortitude, Johnson first took them to Mr Green’s Museum behind the cathedral. Here they viewed a curious collection of natural and artificial rarities, chief among them the skeleton of an Oronuto savage from Ethiopia, his bones sprouting porcupine quills. This wondrous monstrosity, it was asserted, was the only one of its kind in the world.
Mr Green was absent when they arrived. Word being sent, he came on the trot and greeted Johnson with great civility, indeed, fussed over his visitors to such an extent that after barely a quarter of an hour Henry Thrale declared himself fatigued and was escorted to Mr Green’s inner sanctum, where he lay down on an ancient couch believed to have belonged to the Emperor Nero.
Queeney was enchanted with a statue of the dog Cerberus, minus two of its heads, seated beside an enthroned Hades, and insisted on fondling its chipped ears. According to her, the remaining head bore a resemblance to Belle, being equally bad-tempered about the snout. She told Mr Johnson it was a pity her cabinet was not large enough to hold a similar object, Brighthelmstone shells and Mr Pope’s snippet being but poor substitutes for such rarities. He agreed and promised to search for something equally exotic, if smaller in size, when next in Oxford. Mrs Thrale pinched Queeney for being so outspoken and hurried her away from the statue, for its accompanying written information dwelt in some detail on the lord of the underworld’s rape of Persephone.
Johnson, although not in Mr Green’s hearing, grew heated at the labelling of the Oronuto savage as a monstrosity, wondrous or not. He argued that if the poor wretch had indeed had the misfortune to grow quills instead of hair, then it would have been better to have buried him six foot under rather than expose his remains to the gaze of an ignorant populace. Nor was he convinced of the authenticity of the exhibit, having seen the very same phenomenon on show at Mr Leary’s establishment in Hampstead. ‘It is a copy,’ he shouted, rattling the skeleton with his stick, ‘and one inferior in every degree.’
He grew so red in the face that Mrs Thrale felt alarm, the more so because she understood the reason for his outburst; hadn’t Johnson himself, from an early age, been an object of curiosity? Tears filling her eyes at the thought of his boyhood misery, she pretended an interest in the intestine of a sturgeon. Queeney, watching as always, noticed the way she clenched on her lip to avoid yawning.
Next they visited the cathedral, where Henry Thrale, complaining of a stiffness in the joints, said he preferred to stroll about the Close and view the Bishop’s Palace. Queeney begged to accompany him, but Mamma wouldn’t hear of it.
‘You must see inside the Minster’, she said, ‘and gaze upon the spot where Mr Johnson, when a child, nearly perished from a collapse of the roof. Imagine the scene … the din of masonry, the screams … the volume of dust billowing outwards … and small Samuel, hands like talons, scrambling upwards to leap from a window.’
Hearing this, Johnson shook his head in mock despair. ‘As is the way of women, Sweeting, and of Mamma in particular, her account is beset with inaccuracies. The falling of a roof, or rather the dropping of a few pieces of mortar and stone, took place at St Mary’s church in the Market Square—’
‘This church, that church,’ cried Mrs Thrale, ‘what does it signify?’
‘—after which mild disturbance my father took me by the hand and walked me through the door.’
‘It is the nub of the story that matters,’ persisted Mrs Thrale, an assertion which Johnson was strenuously about to dispute when he was approached by the Subchanter of the cathedral, a sober gentleman who miraculously made no reference to a schoolyard encounter and merely evinced a knowledge of his reputation.
Queeney, trailing in their wake, presently lagged so far behind that she found herself alone. At once she turned tail and sped out of the doors in search of her father. At her headlong arrival in the Close crows lifted from the
trees and soared croaking into the heavens. The clapping of wings was so clamorous that she stopped on the path and stuffed her fingers in her ears; in her head stones spilled from the skies. Just then she spied Papa, approaching from the west corner of the Bishop’s Palace. He was smiling. She ran to him; Papa had a beautiful smile, one that always took away her fright. He told her that he had met a comical old man, a beater of silver who vowed he was yet another friend of Mr Johnson when young.
‘Did you believe him?’ asked Queeney. ‘Did he tell you that he had swum with him in the pool, or had shared the same Grammar in school?’
‘Neither learning nor water was mentioned,’ said Papa, ‘only that Sam was a prodigious climber of trees.’
The sun sailing free of the clouds, he led her to a convenient seat, where they lolled companionably together in its golden rays and amused themselves with the recitation of nursery rhymes. Though she considered herself far too old for such childish entertainment, Queeney submitted to it for Papa’s sake. It was not a chore, for he made her giggle when he stuck his thumb in his mouth and played at being Little Jack Horner.
An hour later Mrs Thrale and Mr Johnson emerged from the cathedral. Engaged in bidding farewell to the Subchanter, they dallied so long on the steps that Thrale, patience fast fading, shouted out brusquely, ‘Come, Hester, the morning is almost gone.’
Mr Johnson, with considerably more alacrity than Mrs Thrale, hurried towards him. Puffing, he asked if curiosity would persuade him to view the house in which he had first drawn breath, to which Thrale replied kindly enough, ‘Love, not mere curiosity, will dance me there, Sam. Be so good as to lead the way.’
They were walking the short distance to the Market Square when Queeney uttered a yelp of pain. Her mother, scurrying behind, had trodden on her heel. ‘Keep up,’ urged Mrs Thrale, and forged on.
The street now becoming more crowded, Johnson looked round to make sure his companions were close. Seeing the hopping Queeney, he retraced his steps and asked what was wrong. Tearfully she told him Mamma had struck her shoe against her heel, and indeed there was a small stain of crimson on her stocking.
‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.
‘Yes it does,’ she wailed, ‘the more so because Mamma did not say she was sorry.’ She stared resentfully ahead at the figure of Papa weaving his way between the market stalls, chased by the bobbing feathers of Mamma’s bonnet.
Mr Johnson said, ‘Would the hurt go away if Mamma expressed sorrow?’
‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but at least Mamma would know what she had done.’
‘What advantage is there if injury has to be spelt out?’ he demanded.
‘It is not you who have been trodden on,’ she retorted.
‘That is true,’ he allowed, ‘which is why we must keep it from Mamma, for should she learn of the wound she will most certainly insist on returning to the inn to attend to it. Such a fuss will hinder the excursion to my birthplace.’
‘It is not a wound,’ Queeney admitted, ‘merely a scraping.’
‘Quite so … and Mamma does not always have a gentle touch, particularly when anxious.’
Observing him, Queeney was aware of the trembling of his large lips, of the expression of dismay in his oyster eyes. He was not, after all, as arrogant as he would have one believe.
She said, ‘Heaven forbid I should be a hindrance,’ and, limping, followed him across the square. He and Mamma have much in common, she thought, for both are selfish.
The house in which Johnson had been born faced St Mary’s church and the Market Hall. It had been built by his father, the bookseller, and Johnson still held the lease. Miss Porter, daughter of Tetty by a previous marriage, had lived here until the death of his mother; inheriting money from an uncle, she had then moved to a residence of her own. It was presently occupied by an impoverished schoolmaster who, given notice of the arrival of his landlord, had seen fit to absent himself for the day.
Mrs Thrale was surprised at the size of the building; she had understood Johnson came from humble beginnings. Unwisely, she said as much, at which he snapped, ‘In regard to myself, Madam, the word humble, implying acceptance of one’s station, is not one I would choose. Straitened circumstances is the phrase best illustrative of my father’s later years.’
At that moment, fortunately for Mrs Thrale, he noticed that a section of the railing encircling the cellar steps had rusted away. His vexation diverted, he stood there, muttering and gesticulating, as though such a loss of ironwork would cause the house to totter on its foundations. It was Thrale who took him by the arm and marched him to the door.
As he conducted his friends from room to room, Johnson regaled them with childhood reminiscences. For instance, on a certain step on the stairs his brother Nathaniel – little Natty – in pursuit of a mouse had tumbled over and bumped to the bottom, where he lay bleeding from a cut above the eyebrow. The blow was superficial, but he had feigned insensibility. On aping a return to consciousness his piteous moans and tragic glances had rivalled those of a Davy Garrick. This recollection was firm in Johnson’s memory on account of his mother blaming him for Natty’s mishap and shutting him in the coal-hole for several hours by way of punishment. He emerged, so he said, as dusky of hue as Frank Barber, and not only on the outside; in suffering such an injustice his heart had turned black.
In the cellar kitchen he pointed a finger at the self-same stool on which he had sat reading Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and, coming to the scene in which the shade of the dead King appeared, had found it so scary that he had flung the book aside and rushed up into the street to be rid of ghosts. ‘Nightly in the adjacent room’, he continued, ‘my father closed his account books and leaving behind an outer door rotting on its hinges, climbed the stairs to bolt the front entrance against thieves.’
The recalling of these last two incidents, the one, as he acknowledged, induced by an excess of imagination, the other from an absence of it, caused him to shake with laughter.
‘I do not think a heart can turn black,’ Queeney said, ‘not unless the blood is disordered.’
Catching Henry Thrale regarding him with something like alarm – he was a man made uncomfortable by extremes of feeling – Johnson strove valiantly to control himself. Dashing the water from his eyes, he spluttered, ‘There is something in the cadence of the words, Adieu, adieu, Remember me, that to this day strikes a chill to my soul.’
Mrs Thrale, understanding the ambiguity of his mood, smiled reassuringly. Merriment often seized him inappropriately, due to a surplus of emotion.
She was glad his sight was deficient, for the place was in a sorry state, woodwork dull, ceilings stained with damp and not a rug on the floor free from the attentions of moth. As if he read her thoughts, Johnson said, ‘It does not appear that the schoolmaster is a man much given to the pursuit of cobwebs.’ Leaping into the air he struck out with his stick, and added, ‘But then, no more am I,’ which was indeed the truth.
‘I have heard’, said Mrs Thrale, clawing at her cheek to remove a gossamer strand, ‘that spiders make very good mothers,’ a remark which tickled Queeney and provoked giggles.
In spite of herself, Mrs Thrale began to feel uneasy as she traipsed about the house, a sensation which threatened to overwhelm her upon entering the room in which Johnson’s mother had given him life. He had confided in her so many details of his beginnings that here the ghosts of yesterday came crowding in, for the bed was still there, the same on which he and little Natty had lain while their mother read to them of Hell-fire.
Above the bedhead a square of wall was scorched, as though a candle flame had flared too close. Attempts had been made to rub it clean, and merely enlarged the discoloration. Gaze fixed upon the mark, it seemed to her that it took on the form of a child’s face, mouth open in a wail of silent terror. Outside, rain fell, blurring the outline of the church in which Johnson had been christened; in the tiny spatterings against the window glass she heard the crackle of flames.
Tur
ning faint, she sank on to a chair, one of whose castors was missing, causing it to lurch sideways. Johnson protested this was not the time for her to grow lethargic – she had not yet seen the upstairs rooms once inhabited by Dr Swinfen, player of the violin and father of Mrs Desmoulins.
Anxious to disguise her feelings, Mrs Thrale told him she was taking in the sounds of the market place, as he must have done as a child.
‘What sounds?’ he probed.
‘The bellowing of an animal in pain,’ she improvised, for just then Queeney succumbed to a fit of coughing. ‘Similar to the tortured bear in the Market Square.’
‘What bear?’ he demanded.
‘The one Mrs Desmoulins spoke of,’ she said, ‘the time Dr Delap fled down the stairs and we fetched you home from Johnson’s Court.’
‘You talk in riddles,’ he thundered. ‘There were never bears in Lichfield Market, tormented or otherwise, only bulls.’
They left the house soon after, being expected, so he told them, at Miss Porter’s a little before noon. Mrs Thrale demurred at going on foot in the rain, but Johnson said she would look foolish travelling so short a distance in a carriage. She protested he must at least allow her to return to the Swan Inn to put on overshoes. He said she couldn’t; growing irritable, he flapped his hand at her as though shooing away a fly. She thought he was possibly agitated at the prospect of introducing her to Miss Porter and held her tongue.
The number of pedestrians thronging the narrow thoroughfare forced the party into a straggling procession. Mrs Thrale was much inconvenienced by the width of her hooped gown. When the cathedral bells rang out to mark the hour, crows pecking at the garbage-strewn cobblestones surged upwards and flew so close to her bonnet that she shrieked. Repeatedly she had to look over her shoulder to make sure Queeney was safely keeping to the wall; the child had refused to walk ahead and was limping to draw attention to herself.
They found Miss Porter sitting at cards with three elderly ladies, sisters to one another, and a gentleman with a patch over his eye. The ladies openly studied Mrs Thrale from head to foot; indeed, one was ignorant enough to rise from the table and encircle her.
According to Queeney Page 9