Their circle of acquaintances grew as the weeks advanced, the Abbé François and the Benedictine Father Wilkes being worthy of mention. There were also two Italian counts, one of whom, Manucci, introduced by Baretti, paid particular attention to Mrs Thrale.
When they were not dining in or out, the company spent far too short a time inspecting the King’s Library and that of the Sorbonne, and far too long going to operas, fairs and pleasure gardens. The amount of attention wasted on egg races, rope-walkers and shopping would have tried the patience of the saints, most of whom appeared to have been interred in Paris.
Thrale suggested to Hester that she leave the ‘studious Mr Johnson’ to his own devices, but it had little effect. Wherever she went he felt obliged to follow, on account of his allegedly churlish behaviour on the road to St Denys.
On one of their many excursions to places of worship they suffered a second falling out concerning his insistence that they should leave before the elevation of the Host. Had they stayed they must have got to their knees, a the atrical gesture which Mrs Thrale professed herself perfectly willing to undertake and one for which he, rather than comply, would have gone to the scaffold.
Johnson’s reasons for flight had not been as pure in motive as he would have her believe. They had sat close by the choir stall, so close that his hearing was undimmed; it was not the first time he had been disturbed by the effects of music on the emotions. The workings of the mind, he conjectured, were as aimless as the motes of dust drifting within the rays of sunlight illuminating the nave. As the angelic voices soared heavenwards, his thoughts had dwelt upon the mother who had failed to understand him, the wife he had neglected, the temperament that had condemned him to idleness. Dashing the sudden tears from his eyes, he had blundered his way from the church.
Hester had delayed following him due to her straying into a side chapel and coming upon the statue of an angel bearing a child in its arms, at the sight of which she had tripped, so she said, and hurt her foot. He had rebuked her for keeping him waiting, and she, eyes glittering, had termed him an impossible man. There was also some reference to Count Manucci and the recalling of an exquisite delicacy of manner.
Later that afternoon, when Queeney had gone with her father and Baretti to the theatre, she had softened towards him and described the terror she had experienced upon seeing the statue. At once he warned her not to give way to such fancies, and urged her to talk out her fears.
‘The child in its arms’, she told him, voice unsteady, ‘bore a distinct likeness to Harry. As I approached, I almost fell … and yet there was nothing in the way to cause me to stumble. And it was then that I was seized with such a heavy sense of dread that I all but fainted.’
‘No doubt from the pain in your foot,’ he reasoned, but she cried out, ‘No … no … it was the thought … the premonition that some ill had befallen Harry. Why, when an old man passed by and I enquired to whom the chapel was dedicated, he replied that it was to the guardian angel of children.’
‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘that is all to the good, is it not?’
‘You have often spoken of bad omens,’ she protested. ‘Think of the time the clock stopped in Perkins’s office, two days before the discovery of Henry’s near bankruptcy … think of when Frances Reynolds threatened to break Sir Joshua’s head with the bust of Pope—’
‘They could scarcely be called omens,’ he interrupted, ‘the one being an example of mechanical failure, the other of a woman’s temper. Besides, there are good omens as well as bad ones, and I would suppose a guardian angel to be among the former. Harry is a strong and healthy boy and you must rid your mind of such morbid thoughts.’ It had taken more of the same to restore her, but before nightfall she smiled again.
Afterwards, to show her renewed fondness for him she chose to take breakfast each morning – mercifully at a late hour – in his chamber on the second floor of the house in the rue Jacob. She said it was the change of air that caused her to lie abed so long, and how companionable it was that both could now be classed as Sleepy Heads.
Together, they often leant on the windowsill to watch the spectacle in the narrow street below. So near was the house opposite that they could plainly see a man with a tuft of hair under his nose and a nightcap on his head, sitting up in bed. At first they had pretended not to notice him, but he had taken to waving to them in a cheery manner and had once, in full view, even made use of his close stool, at which Hester had burst out laughing; both had agreed that the French were remarkably free of reticence in regard to bodily functions, and possibly with good sense.
Standing so close to her, elbow to elbow, he was enchanted by the dazzle of light on her bare arms, the primrose hue of her small mouth; as her breath, with its odour of warm chocolate, blew against his cheek he was convinced that he knew happiness.
One morning, watching her capering free of slippers about the room, he was moved to sink to his knees and seize her tiny foot in his hands, the better to examine it. It resembled, he thought, in its warmth and softness, a pink and newborn creature whose fur had not yet grown. She misunderstood his gesture, or else his lips tickled her, for she shook him off so violently that both lost their balance, he falling on to his back and she on all-fours – at which moment Queeney entered the room complaining of a sourness to her breakfast milk.
On October 18th Mrs Thrale rose from her bed and immediately encountered vexations. Entering her daughter’s room to make sure she was being dressed as instructed, she grew aggravated and alarmed at the child’s constant squirming and scratching as she suffered the maid to brush her hair.
Until that morning their stay in France, save for the horrid accident on the way to Paris, had been remarkably free of upsets and petty quarrels. It was true that Johnson had caused them to spend many hours in dusty libraries, but he had declared himself more than satisfied both with his visit to the Sèvres porcelain works and his introduction to Mrs Femore, Abbess of the Austin Nuns of the English Convent in the rue St Victoire, she who had known Mr Pope and not liked him, though for what reason she would not say. He had been even more intrigued by the mechanical table they had seen at Choisie, which could rise up out of the floor and sink again. Count Manucci had told them it was for the use of the King when he wanted to dine in private with his mistresses, but Sam had argued that nothing so ingenious could have been invented merely to further the seduction of women. ‘A draught of wine’, he had said, ‘and a finger up the petticoats would have sufficed,’ an indelicate summation which had astonished his audience, for he was a man known to despise talk of a bawdy nature.
‘Worms,’ deduced Mrs Thrale, studying the wriggling Queeney, and at once ordered that she be purged, followed by the swallowing of patent pills. Scarce five minutes later the sly girl ran to Mr Baretti and told him of her ordeal, at which the Italian, wigless and wrapped in a morning gown of lurid colours, stormed into the Thrales’ marital chamber and accused Hester of endangering the child’s health by the administration of a physic he considered dangerous. ‘Those damned tin pills are as likely to kill as to cure,’ he thundered. ‘The scales settle equally between life and death.’
At such moments of conflict Mrs Thrale detested Baretti, yet, in the arrogance of his manner and the quickness of his temper, she could not but affectionately recall her dead father. ‘I am in full charge of my own offspring,’ she countered, pointing a scornful finger at Henry, who lay in his bed as though ready for the graveyard, ‘and am prepared to take the consequences.’
In the middle of this exchange, Johnson, attired in a nightgown much soiled from the spilling of some brown liquid down its front, appeared in the doorway demanding to know why she had not yet come to his chamber to break her fast. A week before, anxious to show her gratitude for a kindness he had done her, she had twice drunk chocolate with him, a ritual she fancied he now took to be fixed in stone. Pushing him from the room, she shut the door in his face.
It was upsetting that such a disagreement should aris
e before undertaking the coach ride to the château of Fontainebleau. King Louis and his court having retired there for six weeks of hunting, the estimable Count Manucci had obtained a pass for his new friends that would admit them to the royal apartments, a circumstance – so Mrs Thrale excitedly babbled – beyond her wildest dreams. Now, with Baretti in a huff and Queeney disordered, she did not imagine the journey could be accomplished without storms, and was pleasantly surprised. No sooner had they rattled into the rue de Richelieu than Baretti laid a wager with the occupants of the carriage as to how many hours they would spend on the road. She herself staked fifteen livres, Johnson a louis and Thrale treble the two amounts, which put the Italian in a good humour as he appeared mightily confident of winning.
They arrived in the hamlet of Fontainebleau in late afternoon, having travelled through countryside reminiscent of the approach to Tunbridge Wells – though more rocky – and took up rooms in an inn procured through the offices of dear Manucci. Had this wretched accommodation not been recommended by the charming young nobleman, Mrs Thrale might have fallen into a sulk. As it was, she ignored the unclean linen on the beds and the scamperings of mice beneath the floorboards and dined in high spirits. Henry, possibly due to an absence of other members of the female sex, paid her much attention, and Baretti, who had won his wager – there were those among them who suspected he had made the journey before – was sweet as honey.
It was he who turned the evening sour, though it was surely unintentional. Observing a fly drowning in his wine, he elaborated on the suicidal behaviour of scorpions, which, so he said, placed in a circle of coals in the squares of Italy, ran round and round in extreme pain, until, rather than suffer longer, like true Stoics they coiled up and darted stings into their own heads.
Johnson held this was nonsense, maintaining that the turning of a tail to the head was merely a convulsion brought about by heat. ‘No creature’, he said, ‘has so miserable an existence that it seeks its own destruction, for what may follow is not to be contemplated.’ At this, Mrs Thrale tried to divert the conversation, for talk of death would likely cause Johnson to dwell on his own extinction. ‘I believe’, she began, ‘that the gardens of Fontainebleau are famed for their beauty—’
‘I take it’, said Baretti, ‘that you are in disagreement with Roman law and do not consider suicide to be a legitimate choice of rational men?’
‘No man takes his own life in a rational state of mind,’ shouted Johnson. ‘The fear of death is so natural to a rational man, Sir, that the whole of life is but keeping away the thought of it.’ Here Baretti opened his mouth to argue further, at which his opponent bellowed, ‘No, Sir, let it alone. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.’
Later that night when Hester had gone to her bed, Henry Thrale, sitting in candlelight with Baretti and the morose Johnson, confessed that he was feeling unwell. Baretti held it was not to be wondered at … had not the physician attending him at St Germain expressed astonishment that he still breathed?
Thrale shook his head, and after much prevarication acknowledged that his disorder was possibly due to an old infection, one no doubt venereal, seeing a swelling of the right testicle could not wholly be explained by his unfortunate ejection into the chalk pit outside St Denys. Johnson questioned him as to other symptoms, and after some thought made reference to a publication whose pages he had riffled through in a bookseller’s shop next door to the saddler’s in the rue Jacob.
‘In regard to a diagnosis?’ asked Thrale.
‘Not so,’ Johnson said. ‘It had more to do with the avoidance of ill effects, its subject being onanism and its subtitle, “A Treatise Upon the Dangerous Effect of Excessive Venery”. I did not agree with its premise, as it appears to me that onanism has much to recommend it, in that it does away with the mingling of harmful fluids.’
‘It does away with many things,’ argued Baretti. ‘Not least a woman’s heat.’
‘Such heat, Sir,’ rebuked Johnson, ‘is the root of the problem. It would be wiser to practise onanism rather than engage in other than lawful congress.’
‘Practise … practise,’ cried Thrale. ‘I have been adept at the habit since my seventh year … and scarcely need practice. Besides, I was tossed enough on my way through France,’ a remark which provoked such an outbreak of merriment that Johnson burst the buttons on his waistcoat.
The next morning he found himself wedged between Thrale and Baretti amid a murmuring line of onlookers intent on observing a man and woman eating in the gilded chamber beneath. He was shocked at himself for watching so common a ritual with such a degree of reverence.
A procession of footmen entered from the left bearing silver platters and waited their turn while a major-domo lifted the covers and sniffed at the contents. Waved on, four other footmen approached the table and set about the serving. The first course consisted of five dishes, of which the Queen tasted nothing but a quantity of pie under a crust; her companion partook heartily of whatever was put before him, save for a mess of pottage which he poked with his knife and appeared reluctant to shovel into his mouth.
A buzz of excitement raged through the gallery at this exception, for though the actors on stage spoke not a word it was as if the spectators were privy to some play in which poisoning was suspected. A stink of fish, riddled with garlic, seeped upwards. Even Henry Thrale was driven to pinch his nostrils together.
Johnson was dazzled by the reflections of silver plate in the multiplicity of mirrors lining the walls. He could see that the King was stout, but could not discern his features. Marie Antoinette, as far as he could tell, was pretty, in that she was slender enough not to spill from the confines of her chair. A stream of sunlight from the end window caught her elaborate hairpiece and spun it gold. But a few yards to the left of her chair, at the front of a gawping crowd, he spied Queeney and Mrs Thrale.
Peering down at Hester, it occurred to him that it was impossible to have both affection and veneration for one and the same person, and that if it came to a choice the former sentiment must inevitably triumph, not least in regard to his dear mistress. There was, he pondered, much in her character to inspire love and little deserving of respect. Even as he scrutinised her, she said something to Queeney that caused the child to wilt. He could not make out her expression, but the girl’s shoulders slumped.
Turning, he was confronted by an image of himself in the vast mirror on the gallery wall and did not recognise his features. It was as though the shaving glasses at Streatham Park and Johnson’s Court, deceived by familiarity, had presented a false portrait, for here the mouth that he had privately considered generous appeared licentious in its fullness, and his large eyes, at home seemingly so expressive of candour, were lit with a sly regard, as of a man fixed on himself.
He would have nudged Baretti for a denial of such an interpretation had he and the Italian still ploughed the same furrow, but following Thrale’s brush with death, Baretti had been less than respectful: only the previous night, when buttons had gone missing, he had stayed sluggishly in his chair and neglected to join in the search.
Just then Henry. Thrale took Johnson by the elbow and urged him to come outside. ‘I may fall asleep if I stay much longer,’ he grumbled. ‘That the King feeds himself with his left hand as we do does not greatly add to my knowledge of his character, nor does it add to the gaiety of my stomach to see Marie Antoinette refuse so many dishes.’
Together they descended the stairs to the lower floors. They had intended to go into the back courtyard and the grounds beyond, but instead found themselves lost in a maze of passageways and steps. Once, during their many twists and turns, they came face to face with two ancient liveried footmen, both of whom proved too intoxicated to be of help.
After further minutes of aimless wandering Henry thrust open the door to a storeroom, whose casements overlooked a yard in which a number of horses could be seen at exercise. There being no other means of exit, he promptly heaved open the nearest window and clamb
ered out.
Johnson was about to follow when he noticed a bulky shape lying in the far corner, partially hidden under a damask cloth. Intrigued, he approached and tugging aside the covering saw it was the sculpture of a naked man, arms spread wide, the wrists manacled and lengths of marble chain trailing the dusty floor. He imagined it must be a likeness of Prometheus, though the rock was absent.
For some time, looking upon that face, mouth carved in a rictus of agony, his mind remained vacant; he saw rather than recorded. Then, like bubbles in a glass, his thoughts rose upwards, and with their surfacing the sculptured features began to dissolve and reconstruct themselves … and now he stared down at a different countenance, one known to him from long ago. Gradually he grew conscious of a dreadful emptiness, as though his inner being had been sucked from his body and what remained was hollow darkness. But for the thumping of his heart, loud as drum beats, he might have imagined himself dead. With a gigantic effort of will he switched his gaze to the chain in the dust and, link by marble link, dragged himself back to life. At last, shuddering, he flung the cloth over those blind, accusing eyes, and quite forgetting the open window, stumbled from the room.
Once again he wandered the numerous passages, until, climbing some stairs and putting his shoulder to a door mercifully unlocked, he emerged into the dappled sunlight of a deserted avenue lined with stately trees, leaves ablaze in autumnal glory.
I, too, he thought, am about to encounter the fire before the fall, and still in the grip of terror and remorse he set off at speed towards the horizon. Above his jogging head, like sails in a blue sea, white clouds flapped the heavens.
The spectacle of the royal dinner concluded, Mrs Thrale, accompanied by Baretti and Queeney, spent an hour or more searching for her husband and Johnson. It was upsetting that she could not find them immediately, for she had momentous news to impart – no less a person than Marie Antoinette had commented on the prettiness of Queeney and asked who she was. This thrilling information had been passed on by darling Count Manucci, who had given assurances that he had answered such an enquiry with the right amount of reserve and discretion. No, he had not supplied the address of their lodgings in the rue Jacob, but he had let it be known that the Thrales were visiting France in the company of the eminent Samuel Johnson.
According to Queeney Page 13