Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

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  Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

  Lillian de la Torre

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  DEDICATION to G.S.M., Esq:

  Sir,

  Pray accept my Book; being, tho’ not first publish’d, yet my first Fruits; and no less yours, than she by whom ’twas writ.

  ’Tis fit, that my Tales of Dr. Sam: Johnson be address’d to him, of whom I first learned to love that great Humanist; by whom, my Invention was corrected and better’d; and in whom, his Virtues live: To enumerate which were tœdious; yet cannot I forbear adverting to his Warmth in Friendship, his Courage in Infirmity, his domestick Tenderness; his steady common Sense, his ever refresh’d Curiosity, his catholick Learning; his purging Laughter, and his humane Wisdom.

  All which, redivivus, you have these fourteen Years past display’d at large to,

  Sir,

  Your oblig’d and admiring Servant,

  LILLIAN DE LA TORRE

  CONTENTS

  ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER

  THE WAXWORK CADAVER

  THE SECOND SIGHT OF DR. SAM: JOHNSON

  THE FLYING HIGHWAYMAN

  THE MONBODDO APE BOY

  THE MANIFESTATIONS IN MINCING LANE

  PRINCE CHARLIE’S RUBY

  THE STOLEN CHRISTMAS BOX

  THE CONVEYANCE OF EMELINA GRANGE

  THE GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND

  NOTES ON HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

  DE LA TORRE’S LIFE OF JOHNSON

  ADDENDUM: THE GREAT CHAM

  PREVIEW: THE DETECTIONS OF DR. SAM JOHNSON

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Advertisement to the Reader

  The nine stories of this series take place in England and Scotland between 1763, when young James Boswell met the great Sam: Johnson in Davies’s back room in Russell Street, and 1784, when their close friendship was severed by the death of Johnson. They exhibit Dr. Johnson in a new role, a role which, though he assumed it but once, was well within his extraordinary possibilities—the role of detector of crime and chicane.

  The stories are written as from the pen of James Boswell, who so faithfully recorded Dr. Johnson’s sayings and doings in his great biography.

  I hope and believe that none of these imaginary exploits of Dr. Sam: Johnson will outrage belief. Each is abundantly possible to the man upon the quickness and accuracy of whose perceptions Boswell commented; who pursued chemical experimentation in Thrale’s kitchen garden; who had the address to tackle a man who picked his pocket, and the courage to stand off four foot-pads at once. “He expressed great indignation,” says Boswell, “at the imposture of the Cock Lane ghost, and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the cheat.”

  James Boswell will be found equally in character, as the amateur of sensation who said of himself, “I have a wonderful superstitious love of mystery;” a believer in ghosts and second sight who visited the chapel at Inchkenneth by night only to enjoy (and report) “a pleasing awful confusion;” a lawyer allured by the criminal scene to the extent that he called on Mrs. Rudd the fascinating forger and flirted with her outrageously (“This was experiment,” he noted in his account of the interview.), he resorted insatiably to Hackman the lovesick murderer, and upon one occasion at Tyburn, he mounted the condemned man’s hearse the better to see him hanged, an act which he immediately wrote up for the papers.

  Johnson and Boswell lived out their joint lives in the “full tide of human existence”—eighteenth-century London. The stories in this book are woven about the people who passed that way and the things that might have happened or that did happen in those days. Each story has as its starting-point a mysterious event, or a provocative setting, or a queer personality of the time. I have invented solutions, or personalities, or mysteries, to suit.

  In eight of the nine stories, some villain is unmasked. Four of these scoundrels are the fruit of my invention; but four of them really lived. One of the four was certainly guilty. The other three may be maligned in the positions of turpitude in which not I, but the logic of their stories, has placed them.

  The stories are as accurate in language, prose style, historical fact, and background detail as research, albeit light-hearted, can make them. To their making have gone years of closest association with Dr. Sam: Johnson in print.

  It does the heart good thus to live with Sam: Johnson. There was something heroic in this ugly, unwieldy creature with his blunted senses, his failing health, his lonely life. Over all he triumphed by sheer greatness. “So much does mind govern and even supply the deficiency of organs that his perceptions were uncommonly quick and accurate,” wrote Boswell. His intellect was strong and original; he tried out glazes in Chelsea, verified physiological theories upon himself, and tackled the Greek Testament at sixty-five. Almost as late in life he dared the very real discomforts and dangers of travelling in order to see the Western Islands of Scotland in the company of Boswell. He triumphed over loneliness by the warmth and kindness of his heart, supplying “the vacuity of life” by warm and happy friendships. He roared down sham, and laughed away nonsense.

  So deep was his sympathy for the disinherited, the poor who “wanted a dinner,” that he had none to waste on the distresses of fashionable sensibility. He gave away all the money he came by, and filled his house with the poor, the old, the friendless, and the quarrelsome—a low surgeon, a black boy, a blind woman, a prostitute. “When asked by one of his most intimate friends,” relates Hawkins, “how he could bear to be surrounded by such necessitous and undeserving people as he had about him, his answer was, ‘If I did not assist them, no one else would, and they must be lost for want.’”

  He would have been astonished by the part he plays in these pages, but I do not think he would have been angry. “Depend upon it,” he quoted to Boswell, “no man was ever written down, but by himself.”

  To write about Sam: Johnson, even with unbridled fancy, is to write him up. That in these pages, though thrust fictitiously into sensational circumstances, he still comports himself with that common sense, humour, and sense of human dignity which distinguished him in life, is the hope of

  THE AUTHOR

  The WaxWork Cadaver

  DR. CLARKE, Successor to Mrs. Salmon, and Worker in Wax to Surgeons’ Hall, displays Mrs. Salmon’s famous WAXWORKS new-furbish’d:

  INCLUDING The Royal Off Spring: Or, the Maid’s Tragedy Represented in Wax Work, with many Moving Figures and these Histories Following. King Charles I upon the Fatal Scaffold, attended by Dr. Juxon the Bishop of London, and the Lieutenant of the Tower, with the Executioner and Guards waiting on our Royal Martyr. The Royal Seraglio, or the Life and Death of Mahomet the Third, with the Death of Ireniae Princess of Persia, and the fair Sultaness Urania. Margaret Countess of Henningburgh, Lying upon a Bed of State, with her Three hundred and Sixty-Five Children, all born at one Birth, and baptiz’d by the names of Johns and Elizabeths, occasion’d by the rash Wish of a poor beggar Woman. Old Mother Shipton that Famous English Prophetess, which foretold the Death of the White King.

  LIKEWISE: Our late most august Sovereign King George II. lying in his state Robes, with two Angels supporting the Crown over his Head; also a fine Figure of Peace laying the Olive Branches at his Feet. His Majesty the King of
Prussia; with our gracious Sovereign’s chief General in Germany, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. As also those pernitious Villains and Knights of the Road Dick Turpin and James Maclaine the Gentleman Highwayman; all done to the Life in Wax by the said DR. CLARKE with so much Variety of Invention, that it is wonderfully Diverting to all Lovers of Art and Ingenuity, and may be seen at the Sign of the Salmon near St. Dunstan’s Church.

  Such is the handbill which lies among the collectanea for my account of my illustrious friend, Dr. Sam: Johnson, the great lexicographer; where in truth it sorts ill with the stately epistles, pious prayers, and learned dissertations in whose company it lies.

  No less ill, to be seen to this day at the WaxWork, sorts the waxen effigy of my learned friend with its companions; for it is menaced on the one side by the effigy of Maclaine, in the very attitude of “Stand and deliver!”; while it is flanked on the other by the waxwork cadaver of Laurence, Earl Ferrers, who was hanged and laid out in his wedding-suit, and lies thus in the WaxWork, done in wax for all to see. Between the maccaroni highwayman and the murderous Earl sits my illustrious friend in waxen contemplation. How he came to sit thus forms the substance of my tale.

  In the year 1763 I was a young springald of two-and-twenty, new come from my native Edinburgh, and on fire to explore the manifold pleasures of the metropolis. The year was made memorable, and the pleasures of the metropolis-were enhanced, by my newly formed acquaintanceship with the Great Cham of literature, Dr. Sam: Johnson the lexicographer. Though separated in age by above thirty years, we were mighty cordial together, and made up many a party of pleasure at the Mitre or on the river.

  Thus it fell out that on a day in October I burst into my friend’s lodging by Inner Temple Gate with Dr. Clarke’s broadside of the WaxWork in my hand, and desired that he would accompany me thither.

  “No, sir,” replied Johnson, “I saw the WaxWork in my salad days, and I’ll go no more; what have I to do with Dick Turpin and Mother Shipton?”

  “Come, sir,” I urged, “surely the author of Irene will not behold unmoved the waxen history of the Royal Seraglio.”

  “Sir,” said Johnson, “no man stands less in need of instruction concerning the history of the unhappy Irene. But come, Mr. Boswell, if waxworks be your fancy, be guided by me, I’ll shew you waxworks that shall astonish and instruct you. Do you but accompany me to Surgeons’ Hall, there you shall see every organ of the human frame moulded in wax and coloured to the life. I assure you, ’tis as good as seeing some culprit anatomized.”

  “I nauseate anatomies,” I exclaimed boldly. “Pray, Mr. Johnson, indulge me; for I never saw our late worthy Sovereign in the flesh, and I am ambitious to look upon him portrayed in wax.”

  “Well, well,” said my kind friend indulgently, “I see you must have your way. We’ll stay no longer, for ’tis but a step to the sign of the Salmon.”

  So saying he clapped his plain three-cornered hat over his little rusty wig, and we set out.

  We passed through Inner Temple Gate and turned east into Fleet Street. There we stood a moment admiring the bustling activity of the busy thoroughfare. To the west rose the arch of Temple Bar. I saw, and shuddered to see, the shapeless black lumps affixed on poles above it, that had been the heads of the luckless Jacobite rebels.

  It was a sunny day, but the wind was high; all up and down the street the wooden street-signs flapped and creaked on their irons over the heads of the passers-by. Past Middle Temple Gate was to be seen the antient sign of the Devil Tavern—a crude St. Dunstan with the tongs ready, and the Devil leering over his shoulder.

  “This is an antient work of art, sir,” I remarked to my companion, indicating the painting with a smile.

  “’Tis an antient house,” replied my friend. “This was Ben Jonson’s Apollo Tavern, where he lorded it over the wits; and from here by an underground way he made good his escape into the Strand when the watch came to take him for stabbing a fellow-player.”

  “Pray tell me the tale,” I begged.

  “Not so, sir,” replied Johnson, “for it has been too often rehearsed; but I’ll tell you another, which not every man knows, that shall serve for your introduction to the WaxWork.”

  “Do so, sir,” I cried eagerly.

  We turned into the wide thoroughfare just as, down the street, the giants of St. Dunstan’s Church lifted their heavy clubs and struck the quarter, wagging their heads the while.

  “’Twas during the days of the Pretender,” began Johnson, “when one night the Duke of Montague makes up a party of pleasure at the Devil Tavern, and Heidegger the Swiss Count made one. No sooner was Heidegger convinced in liquor, so that he lay like one dead, but Montague sends up the street in haste for this very Mrs. Salmon whose waxworks we are to see. She took a cast of his face, he knowing no more than the dead of what she did, and so made a mask in wax and painted it to the life. Montague, sir, turns out a friend in Heidegger’s cloathes and the waxwork mask, and carries him the very next night to the masquerade, where Heidegger was employed. Up gets the false Heidegger, and in a voice like the Bull of Bashan cries out for—the Jacobite anthem! The true Heidegger was beside himself.”

  “Is this the way of it,” I enquired curiously, “is a waxwork made thus, from a casting of the features?”

  “I cannot say,” replied my friend, “but you may soon know, for here we are at the sign of the Salmon.”

  I looked curiously at the old house, hunched against the old grey stones of St. Dunstan’s. The gilded salmon hung on its iron over our heads. A narrow deep-set doorway led to the display. Beside it was affixed a bill; I paused to read it with attention.

  My learned friend peered over my shoulder with his nearsighted eyes.

  “Here is riches,” he murmured. “The Royal Court of England, one hundred fifty figures—the Rites of Moloch—the overthrow of Queen Voaditia—come, Mr. Boswell, let us make haste to view these wonders.”

  I however, lingered to peruse the bill to its end:

  “… all new-furbish’d and exhibitted by Dr. Clarke of Chancery-lane.

  Run off from his Master, my Apprentice Jem Blount, being a tall likely Lad, fresh-colour’d, mark’d with the Small-pox, had on when last seen fustian Breeches, leather Shoes without Buckles, blue Stockings, a red Waistcoat having very particular Copper Buttons like a join’d Serpent, and a dirty Baize Apron. Any Person, who can give any Account where he is, shall have Ten Shillings Reward, to be paid by Dr. Clarke, Surgeon, of Chancery-lane, which will greatly satisfy the said Dr. Clarke.

  “Come, Mr. Boswell,” cried my friend, “you waste time in this reading; for you may depend upon it, Jemmy Blount is not a waxwork.”

  So saying, he propelled me up the narrow stair and into the exhibit of MRS. SALMON’S WAXWORK.

  I own I gazed with awe at the crowded hall. Every appurtenance of majesty adorned the waxwork presentments of the dead Kings and Queens of England. First to strike my eye was the recumbent figure of his late sacred Majesty George II, of blessed memory. Peace, laying the olives at his feet, seemed to quiver with life; the angels, suspended on wires, actually floated in the light air; bent over the bier, as if in reverent grief, a man’s figure had life in every limb. I regarded the mourner, a fine figure of a man, tall, broad in the shoulder, soberly cloathed in mulberry broadcloth, with a full light wig hiding his face.

  “What artistry!” I cried to my friend. “Does it not seem to you that these angels must stir their wings and fly away, or yonder mourner at King George’s bier rise and speak to us?”

  The words were hardly out of my mouth when the hair prickled on my scalp and a cry escaped me, for the man at the King’s bier rose slowly to his feet and faced us.

  “Your servant, sirs,” he said easily.

  I could only gape.

  “Permit me, gentlemen,” said the man in mulberry. “It is sixpence to see the waxworks, and I will be your cicerone. Dr. Clarke, gentlemen, at your service.”

  My companion tendered a shilling before I cou
ld recover from my stupor. I stared at the surgeon-turned-waxworker. I cannot say by what eccentricity or parsimony the man wore a light wig; his long face was the colour of leather, his deep-sunk eyes were dark under heavy tufts of black brow. His half-smile shewed white teeth. His brown hands were the long fine hands of a surgeon.

  He took my friend’s shilling, finished smoothing into place the robes of the waxwork king on which he had been engaged, and proceeded to display the WaxWork.

  We were like living men in the halls of the dead as we scanned the waxen faces of long-buried Turks and Romans and Englishmen. The silence was oppressive, and our voices when we spoke hardly lifted it. I wished we had visited Surgeons’ Hall instead.

  My learned companion soon tired of gazing, and began in his penetrating voice a discourse upon the philosophy of waxworks.

  “For I hold, sir,” said he argumentatively, “that to present to the eyes of the young and the untutored such effigies as these of Queen Elizabeth and the Court of England is at once to instruct and to edify them; but what useful purpose can be served, sir, by perpetuating in wax the ridiculous romantick legend of the too-prolifick Countess or the vulgar prophecies of Mother Shipton? While as to the enshrining of these two ruffians—” he waved a contemptuous hand at Turpin, standing a-straddle in his buckskins, and Maclaine, presenting his pistol, with the crape mask covering his eyes—“what is it but the enshrining crime, and reviving a bad example rightly eclipsed on Tyburn Tree?”

  “I am sorry they offend you, sir,” said Dr. Clarke candidly, “for it is my intention thus to perpetuate many another object of publick interest, however that interest may have arisen. Maclaine I have only just completed,” he eyed the effigy affectionately, “it is the best thing I have ever done; and I have in process no less a malefactor than Earl Ferrers.”

  “In process?” I cried eagerly. “Pray, sir, will you not gratify us with a sight of it, for I have a great curiosity to see how these things are made?”