According to Queeney

by Beryl Bainbridge

  I dreamt of him when my sister was staying with me, doubtless because he shambled through our talk of days long gone. I was in France again, in the dining hall of the royal apartments at Fontainebleau; Dr Johnson stood in the gallery above. I was twisting about between my fingers a button he had lost from his coat the night before, and my mother, aggravated by my fidgeting, stabbed me so savagely in the back with her fist that my grasp loosened and the button fell to the floor; above the buzz of the spectators watching the King and Queen at table, I heard Dr Johnson cry out, ‘My wife’s hair was golden.’ I looked down to follow the spiralling of the button across the flagstones, and of a sudden it changed into the bouncing head of Marie Antoinette, mouth curved in a smile, the sunlight leaping through the gossamer web of her wig. At this horrid moment my sister shook me awake, for I was crying out in my sleep.

  It is curious, is it not, how objects of but small significance assume importance in dreams? One of my earliest memories is of standing on the stairs at Streatham Park, holding a button up to the sunlight. I had found it in the garden and was much taken by the image of a leaping dog engraved upon it. My mother demanding to be shown what I held, I put it in my mouth, at which she boxed my ears for disobedience. Some years later, visiting Lichfield, I spied in the hall of the inn a painting of a man with a button missing from his coat, and persuaded myself it was his I had chanced upon in the garden of my childhood home. Is this not a strange confession, coming from one who professes to lack imagination?

  You write of your wish to renew your friendship with my mother, but as you rightly observe, though you have seen and judged characters all your life instinctively, hers passes all calculations and combinations.

  God bless you my dear Madame d’Arblay,

  Ever yours,

  H. M. Keith

  On Harry’s first going away to school, Dr Johnson composed him a prayer, after which recitation he stood in the drive to watch the carriage depart. Suddenly he turned to my mother and said, ‘Make your boy tell you his dreams; the first corruption that entered my heart was communicated in a dream.’ ‘What was it, Sir?’ she enquired. ‘Do not ask me,’ he replied, with such violence in his voice that she turned pale.

  1780–4

  DISSOLUTION n.f. (diſſolutio, Latin)

  1 Breach or ruin of anything compacted or united

  2 The art of breaking up an aſſembly

  3 Looſeneſs of manners; laxity; remiſſneſs; diſſipation

  An univerſal diſſolution of manners began to prevail, and a profeſſed diſregard to all fixed principles.

  Atterbury

  Henry Thrale was a changed man. That reserve of manner and good sense which had endeared him to Johnson had evaporated. There was, for instance, the matter of Sophy Streatfield, who had recently joined the Thrale circle and with whom Henry gave every sign of having fallen hopelessly in love. It was not a risqué liaison, for Miss Streatfield was virtuous and he too ill to carry it to extremes, but Mrs Thrale found his infatuation humiliating. It was as though he deliberately courted disaster; though not yet fully recovered from the effects of a second stroke, fortunately mild, he insisted on standing for re-election to Parliament, and lost. It was a blow to his vanity; he had represented Southwark for fifteen years.

  Mrs Thrale and Johnson thought his defeat had been brought about by his altered appearance and demeanour. Upon the death of Harry something had broken within him, and in his lacklustre eyes and slurred speech the damage was apparent to all. He still hunted, rode about the countryside, gambled at cards, but his enjoyment of these pursuits had waned. His one passion – Miss Streatfield apart – was food, and now his appetite, always ferocious, increased to an extent that was truly alarming. As Johnson remarked one morning after counting the discarded shells of no less than seven eggs on his breakfast plate, ‘Sir, you will soon surpass Falstaff in girth.’

  A cause of more serious anxiety was the neglect of his business, which was exacerbated by a mounting extravagance. Once again the stables at Streatham Park were undergoing enlargement; a dozen peacocks had arrived to stalk the terrace; several marble statues had been purchased from Italy to stand along the drive, two of which had fallen to the dockside on disembarkation and now lay in halves in the shrubbery; to crown it all he was in the middle of negotiating the lease of a substantial property in Grosvenor Square.

  Johnson, fearful of a financial collapse, spoke privately to Perkins, suggesting that the clerk should endeavour to persuade Thrale to place the entire running of the Brewery in his own, more capable, hands.

  Perkins took his advice and wasting no breath on preliminaries came straight to the point, indeed, some way beyond it. He said, ‘Mr Thrale, Sir, I have been thinking for some time in terms of a partnership in the business. What do you think?’ Receiving no immediate answer from the astonished Henry, he continued, ‘I would be willing to study the operative part of the trade and concern myself more with our exports … and as you are shortly to give up your house, my wife and our growing brood would be quite content to take up residence here.’

  When Henry told Mrs Thrale what the chief clerk had said, she felt anger. Perkins had several healthy sons, and it was not tactful of him to refer to their sturdy growth. Nor, though for years she had longed to quit Deadman’s Place, did she care to be edged out by a mere clerk. She too had suffered disappointment, for at the time of her husband’s first stroke she had been delivered of a boy child, perfectly formed yet stillborn. Henry had scarcely noticed such an unfortunate outcome, and but for the sweet support of Mr Piozzi, Queeney’s singing teacher, she herself might have gone into a decline.

  ‘His insight into a woman’s nature is almost feminine in its comprehension,’ she confided, unwisely, to her eldest daughter.

  ‘I allow he flutters his eyelids,’ retorted Queeney.

  ‘I have not noticed his eyelids,’ countered Mrs Thrale, ‘only his understanding.’

  ‘Last year, and all the years before,’ said Queeney, ‘it was Mr Johnson who knew best what a woman felt.’

  Mrs Thrale, endeavouring to extricate herself, found she stammered, even in her head. I have h … harmed Queeney in some way, she thought, not least by loving her too much … and must p … pay for it.

  It was Johnson who finally convinced Henry it would be advisable to relinquish the management of the Brewery to Perkins, a function the clerk was already performing, in practice if not in name. He softened the suggestion by terming it a temporary arrangement. ‘When you are fully restored in health,’ he said, ‘you shall take up the reins again.’ Observing his Master’s lips shiny with the grease of roast pig, brow dripping with perspiration, he reasoned such a time was gone for ever. Mrs Thrale was pleased at Henry’s retirement; she had grown tired of her role as ‘Lady Mashtubs’, a title bestowed on her by the dead Mrs Salusbury. When she left the house in Deadman’s Place she presented Mrs Perkins with its contents, save for Johnson’s desk, sent on to Grosvenor Square, and the nursery furniture, which she dispatched to an orphanage in Greenwich. As she explained to Mr Piozzi, she had no desire to take with her that which would only serve as a reminder of irksome happenings.

  Johnson was not happy at the thought of leaving his old rooms in the tower of the Brewery. He had reached an age when change was unwelcome, and beneath all the activity and talk of Grosvenor Square being more at the centre of things – Mrs Thrale held it was better for her husband to be closer to his doctors – he had the niggling premonition that he himself was being nudged further off. Anxious to avoid dwelling on such a dreadful prospect, he sought diversion. In involving himself in safeguarding the future of the Thrale business, he had neglected his critical essays on the poets, and now returned to the task, though without energy.

  The Thrales had no sooner settled in town than Henry revived his notion of going to Italy. Worse, he said that the breach with Signor Baretti must be mended, for no one else was capable of arranging such a trip. Mrs Thrale was in despair at the thought of being un
ited with a man she hated and one who had spread scurrilous stories about her. And how were they to drag Henry across the Continent, a man who could not keep awake for more than three hours at a stretch and who could scarce retain his faeces? When she turned to Piozzi for sympathy, he said Baretti was possibly not a bad man at heart, simply one whose earlier experiences had thinned his skin; the singing teacher’s grasp of English was so convoluted that Mrs Thrale had difficulty in making sense of this.

  Johnson, informed of the proposal, looked grave and said what Henry needed was more convivial company, more gatherings of like minds. So perturbed was he at his Master’s deterioration that his knowledge of medicine deserted him; he was able to delude himself into thinking it was Thrale’s mind that was the root of the trouble. It was a subjective diagnosis.

  Thus a round of parties began, both in London and Streatham Park. Fanny Burney was now a great favourite of Mrs Thrale, and Johnson included her in his Latin lessons with Queeney. One morning when Sir Philip Clerke and Sophy Streatfield were visiting, Mrs Thrale persuaded Sophy to perform her party piece at the breakfast table. Fanny, who was not yet aware of Thrale’s feelings for Miss Streatfield, but had heard of the young woman’s ability to shed tears at will, was taken aback at the rudeness of the request.

  ‘Sir Philip’, Mrs Thrale began, ‘has heard so much of your tears, Miss Streatfield, that he would give the universe to have a sight of them.’

  ‘Indeed I would,’ agreed Sir Philip.

  ‘Well, you shall … you’ll oblige, won’t you, my dear?’

  ‘No,’ squealed Miss Streatfield, ‘no, pray no—’

  ‘Oh pray do, Miss Sophy! Pray let him see a little of it,’ coaxed Mrs Thrale. ‘Consider, you are leaving tomorrow, and it’s very hard on him if you won’t cry a little.’

  Suddenly, two tears came into Miss Streatfield’s eyes and rolled in crystal pear drops down her cheeks; she was smiling quite beatifically. Mrs Thrale clapped her hands in admiration and cried out, ‘Such tears manifest a tenderness of disposition while increasing a beauty of countenance.’

  Fanny marvelled at Miss Streatfield’s stupidity. Was it not obvious that Mrs Thrale was out to make sport of her? Then, at dinner that evening, Miss Streatfield proved herself not such an innocent after all. Mrs Thrale was sitting at her usual place at the table when Mr Thrale shouted out to her that she must change places with Sophy, for ‘she has a sore throat and may be injured by sitting so near to the door’. Instantly, Miss Streatfield rose from her chair, at which Mrs Thrale cried out, ‘Perhaps it will not be long before the lady is head of your table,’ and burst into noisy tears, a display which, unlike that of the fair Miss Streatfield, did little to enhance her countenance. With that, she fled the room.

  Much later, when Fanny and Mr Johnson went into the drawing room, they found Mrs Thrale composed but still smarting. The moment Johnson set foot over the threshold, she asked, ‘Was I to blame for what happened?’

  He replied, ‘Why, possibly not; your feelings were outraged.’

  ‘Yes, and greatly so,’ she spat, ‘and I cannot help remarking with what blandness you witnessed the outrage. Had this transaction been told of others, your anger would have known no bounds … but towards a man who gives good dinners and allows you the freedom of his library and home, you were meekness itself.’

  After this tirade Johnson looked discomforted, and said not a word. He confided to Fanny the following day that it was Mrs Thrale’s worry over her husband’s breakdown in health, rather than his foolish cavortings with Sophy Streatfield, that had caused her outburst. When Fanny told Queeney what Mr Johnson had said, the girl observed it was merely what he wanted to believe. ‘Mamma gives not a fig for Papa’, she said, ‘and is concerned only with herself.’

  Queeney too was changing: she was neither so quick to take offence, nor so secretive. On occasions, in intuition and changes of mood, Johnson thought her very like her mother. One morning, when he was sitting drinking tea in the back parlour in Grosvenor Square, she rushed in from her singing lesson and proceeded to twirl about the room. She did not often give way to high spirits, and Johnson, who had caught snatches of her warblings, went so far as to liken the sound to the trilling of a songbird. Truth to tell, he found music intrusive, but Queeney’s lightness of heart was infectious. He wheezed as he flattered, being more than usually troubled with his habitual asthma. Queeney urged him to stand upright and throw back his shoulders, something Mr Piozzi bid her do during instruction in breathing. ‘It is important’, she babbled, ‘for the lungs to expand to their full extent.’

  Captivated by her gaiety, he stood and adopted a military stance. ‘Breathe in,’ she ordered … ‘deep … deeper.’ He attempted to obey and was promptly seized with a fearsome attack of coughing. Some moments later, leaning back in his chair, he rebuked her for thinking the act of breathing was the same for all. ‘It is as hard for me’, he complained, ‘to maintain a shallow intake of air as it would be for you to inhale a whirlwind.’

  ‘Papa will not die, will he?’ she suddenly asked.

  ‘In time’, he said, ‘we all must die … but not yet.’

  ‘Mr Garrick died before his time. I heard you say so—’

  ‘That I did,’ he said, ‘and meant it, for we were young together and I miss him.’

  ‘Do you miss Mr Baretti?’

  ‘He is not dead—’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘but you do not see him, which is almost the same. You thought him worthy of friendship, did you not?’

  Parrying her question, though understanding the reason for it, he said it was a good thing to hold people in affection, whatever the general and opposite opinion.

  ‘Mamma was wrong, was she not, to forbid him the house?’

  ‘Mamma did not forbid him. It was Mr Baretti who turned his own key in the lock.’

  Queeney fell silent. Her face was so altered, its expression of animation quite wiped away, that Johnson felt pity. Thinking to distract her, he said, ‘Mr Boswell considers himself a composer of songs. They have little in the way of melody, yet the words are catchy to those of a melancholy disposition. Last month he recited the beginnings of one. He has got no further than two lines, and those not good—’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, albeit reluctantly.

  ‘“Tis o’er, tis o’er,’” intoned Johnson, ‘“The dream is o’er, and Life’s illusion is no more …”’

  ‘Is there not more?’ Queeney asked.

  ‘No, Sweeting. What more could there be?’

  She said, ‘Mamma is good at turning keys in locks, is she not?’

  He looked at her sharply, and replied in some agitation, ‘Mamma is good at many things, not least at loving. You would do well to think of that.’

  ‘I do not wish to think she loves Mr Piozzi,’ Queeney cried, at which Johnson stood upright and, muttering to himself, head shaking from side to side as though to be rid of some stench beneath his nose, left the room. Queeney knew it was not rudeness on his part, more that being old he had doubtless remembered something previously forgotten.

  ‘Tis o’er, tis o’er,’ she sang aloud, and once more danced about the room.

  Johnson was walking along Fleet Street, his gaze directed towards the ground, when his eye chanced upon the muscular tail of a rat protruding from a litter of old newspapers blown against the doorway of a pie shop. He was thinking at that particular moment of Dryden, of whom he had written, The power that predominated in his intellectual operations was rather strong reason than quick sensibility, a sentence he had reworked several times, for it seemed to him that he was dissecting himself rather than his subject. Had not Dryden been in possession of a mind stored with principles and observations? Were not his performances always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity? Did he not compose without consideration and publish without correction? What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all he sought, for he had no love of labour …
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br />   Distracted, he stopped to observe the emergence of the rodent. Out it came, snout sniffing the air, forepaws raised. It saw, or sensed, him – and was gone in an instant.

  Almost at once he was hailed by James Boswell, yesterday returned from Scotland and on his way to Bolt Court hoping to find him at home. Puce with excitement, Boswell cried out, ‘Sir, I am happy to see you,’ and wrung his hand.

  When they had tripped through the politenesses, Johnson said, ‘The sight of an animal going about its business, seeking its food, foraging for its young – what a strange pleasure it affords us.’

  ‘True, true,’ Boswell affirmed, though he could see nothing but birds strutting the gutter.

  ‘There is only one mendacious being in the world’, continued Johnson, ‘and that is man. Every other is virtuous and sincere.’

  ‘True, true,’ repeated Boswell, and begged to be allowed to walk with him, for, he said, he had now read a great proportion of the manuscript of Critical Observations on the Poets, and longed to have talk of it. Johnson replied that he was just now in a reflective mood, but, if it would please him, he would be welcome that evening at Bolt Court.

  As they parted, he said, ‘The main reason we take so much pleasure in looking at the lower animals is because we like to see our own nature in a simplified form.’ This observation appeared to him so apt that he began to chuckle at his perspicacity, an outburst that got the better of him and developed into full-throated laughter, upon which the pigeons rose in a disordered flock and swirled about his head.