Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  At Stamford Hill Sir John Fielding awaited us, taking his ease in the keeper’s house. He turned his closed eyes towards us as we entered.

  “Well, Mr. Page,” he said, “have you had good sport, and did you take your quarry?”

  “Mr. Page is not with us, sir,” I explained regretfully, “here are only Dr. Johnson and myself, and honest Barrock, and,” I added with pride, “the Flying Highwayman, whom we have taken.”

  “Mr. Boswell is mistaken,” said Dr. Johnson instantly. “Mr. Page is of our number, as I have known from the first.”

  I stared. My companion turned to the pinioned malefactor and stripped the lace mask from the face, the wig from the head. I looked into the pink-and-white countenance of William Page Esq:, the sporting gentleman. His spirit was unbroken; he laughed in my thunderstruck face.

  Before a word was spoken, there was a diversion. Into the room strode the gypsy-face young man of the inn. He plucked off his hat to Sir John, and I saw his face. ’Twas Watchett—stained, and by the light of the candles hastily and inexpertly stained, with some dark dye—but indisputably Watchett.

  “Here’s a coil, sir,” he cried. “Here’s your phaeton left in a copse, Mr. Page, sir, and your other black gone from the traces; for though I followed you I did not follow close enough, and when I came up with the phaeton the mischief was done.”

  “The mischief was done indeed,” said Dr. Johnson grimly.

  “So,” said Sir John to our captive, “this was your scheam, eh, for coming over the barriers?”

  “By jumping?” I puzzled.

  “No, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson. “I fed him that explanation, and then gave him cause to feed it back again in his guise as the Flying Highwayman. No, sir, he passed the barrier driving his phaeton, in his character as sporting younger son. Once past, he had only to conceal the phaeton in some copse, turn his coat, change his wig, and ride off on one of his blacks. The robbery done, back to the phaeton, and whisk! the Flying Highwayman had once more flown away.”

  “Yet, pray, sir,” demanded the magistrate sternly, “how were you so foolhardy as to complain to me, that you had yourself been robbed by the Flying Highwayman? Do you hold so low an opinion of Sir John Fielding, as to court his investigation?”

  Dr. Johnson forestalled the highwayman’s answer.

  “He could do no other. Yonder hostler lad found his phaeton and his discarded cloathes hid in the copse, and made off with them. How else account for them, if the truth were not to be suspected, than to complain that they had been stolen? Nor did he single you out for his dupe, but rather complained to all he might meet.”

  BOSWELL: “Yet how could you smoak Mr. Page in this disguise?”

  JOHNSON: “Sir, I was on the look-out for a vehicle or cart which might pass the barriers unsuspected. Now in this whole affair we had no other vehicle than the phaeton. My attention was thus drawn to the victim of the robbery himself. To what end would his cloathes and phaeton be first taken, at risk to the thief, and then abandoned? But suppose they had been, not taken, but left. Then all becomes clear. I watched Mr. Page carefully. I could not prevent him drawing the charge from Mr. Boswell’s pistols; but I could, and did, devise a scheam for the harmless discharge of his pistols; which you, Mr. Boswell, thought very ill of me for carrying out.”

  BOSWELL: “How came it, that at the turnpike Mr. Page—” at the respectful appellation the detected highwayman bowed ironically—“the masquerading highwayman,” I amended, “when he described the Flying Highwayman, described Watchett to the life?”

  JOHNSON: “Why not, when Watchett in the flesh had been by so recently? I’ll ask you suddenly to describe a non-existent person, what can you do better than to limn the last stranger you have seen?”

  BOSWELL: “Yet what thought you, sir, when you beheld our highwayman to be a girlish youth with dark hair?”

  JOHNSON: “A girlish voice may be assumed; and as to dark hair, he who doffs a powdered wig may don a black one; yet cannot pass safe from detection, if he turns his greatcoat before he changes wigs, and sprinkles his shoulders with powder.”

  BOSWELL: “Dust, surely?”

  JOHNSON: “No, sir. The greatcoat was dust-coloured; ’twas the white powder of a wig that marked it so plainly. Yet the fellow wore a black wig.”

  “Yet Sir John Fielding,” I marvelled, “though he could mark none of these things, knew the man at once.”

  The great Middlesex magistrate smiled.

  “I know three thousand malefactors by ear—”

  “Yet Mr. Page did not speak.”

  “—and many more by nose. The man reeks of otto. Take him away.”

  Im fine, all was as Dr. Johnson said. The pseudo-gentleman’s first missing black was found straying under saddle by the river-side, and his highwayman’s disguise and his pistols finally came to light in the haystack where he had hidden them. Sir John was prodigiously gratified, and in deference to the request of Dr. Johnson, the Flying Highwayman was spared hanging, that plaguy dry sort of death, in favour of transportation to his Majesty’s plantations in America; where I hear he hath turned honest, and raises a numerous progeny.

  The Monboddo Ape Boy

  “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “he who affects singularity, must not complain if he becomes the object of publick curiosity.”

  I laughed, but made no comment.

  “If Lord Monboddo,” continued my learned friend severely, “avers that the ourang-outang is the cousin-german of man, he must expect the mob to believe that he peoples his estate with apes. If he speculates upon chymistry, he must put up with a rumour that he has found the philosopher’s stone and changes base metal to gold.”

  My illustrious friend’s strictures upon this original Scottish philosopher boded ill for the events of the next twenty-four hours, for as he spoke every revolution of our chaise wheels was carrying us nearer to Monboddo. Journeying northward from Edinburgh in late August of the year 1773, bound for the Highlands of Scotland, I was unwilling that Dr. Johnson should pass by Monboddo when by a short drive we might see the estate and its ingenious owner, James Burnet, a Lord of Session under the title of Lord Monboddo. It was so concerted between us, for although Dr. Johnson deprecated the infidelity of Monboddo’s speculations on the nature of man, there were several points of similarity between them: learning, clearness of head, precision of speech, and a love of research on many subjects which people in general do not investigate.

  Our road led through rolling moors devoid of any tree. The ragged grey clouds hung low. Nevertheless we drove along at a good pace, preceded by our out-rider and only attendant, my servant Joseph Ritter, a Bohemian, a fine stately fellow above six feet high, mounted on a sturdy grey; whom we presently despatched before to apprise Lord Monboddo of our coming.

  Though the day was lowering and the landscape barren, the rapid motion of the chaise imparted to Dr. Johnson that peculiar pleasure which he took in the mere state of rapid motion; and he answered with indulgence and good humour when I ventured to dispute his proposition.

  “Nay, sir,” said I, “how can the foolish inventions of rumour discommode so learned a philosopher as Monboddo?”

  “You are wrong,” returned my learned friend, “to think that the ill-conceived opinions of men may do no harm to him upon whom they are laid. You see here these two men who carry a bucking-basket between them—”

  I observed the pair with interest as the chaise came up to them. They were an ill-assorted pair, plodding along ahead of us supporting between them by means of poles a very Falstaff of a pannier. The man behind was a red-faced, pig-eyed, burly clod dressed like a countryman in dirty leather breeches and a short-skirted frieze coat. The man in the lead was a very different sort. His light eyes were half-closed in a pasty, bony, coffin-shaped face, set off by a large cocked hat and a dirty trickle of torn lace at throat and wrist. They never raised their heads as the chaise passed them in a rolling cloud of white dust.

  “I see them,” I replied, still
staring over my shoulder. “What then?”

  “Why, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “let us say that I conceive the unfounded notion that these ruffians have abducted the heiress of Lothian, and are bearing her bound hand and foot in yonder pannier to Aberdeen, where in a mock marriage the thick lout will wed her to the thin one.”

  “Then,” cried I, laughing heartily, “I should much commend your invention, and set you on to commence playwright; but the honest lads would plod on with their burden no whit discommoded by our fantastick notions.”

  “This is true,” replied Dr. Johnson, “only so long as I hold my tongue. But when once I set the story going, ’twill not be long before your honest lads are laid by the heels and brought before the Aberdeen magistrate to answer the question, ‘Where is the heiress of Lothian?’—which being unable to answer, they’ll be much discommoded before word can be brought that the lady is living peacefully at home.”

  “And when their pannier is turned out,” I added, still laughing, “’tis ten to one ’twill be found to contain Lord Elibank’s plate that they’ve stolen from Edinburgh, for if ever I saw a hanging countenance ’tis yon white face with the dirt-coloured ruffles. So I conceive that by your foolish tale they might be discommoded by the hangman in the end.”

  “Quod erat demonstrandum,” said my learned friend in high good humour.

  “Why, that yonder pair of gallows-birds won’t bear investigation is clear,” I protested in serious vein, “but sure one of the Lords of Session stands too high to be harmed by the fantastick gabble of the vulgar. No sensible man believes that Lord Monboddo has in train to wed his daughter to the Lithuanian Wild Boy.”

  “Nor,” added Dr. Johnson, “that he sits at Monboddo making gold as a cook makes pyes, and piling the ingots in the cow-shed. But that it is so believed in the streets of Edinburgh is a sharp-edged fact upon which Lord Monboddo may one day cut himself.”

  “Surely,” said I, “Lord Monboddo is not to be blamed for what the unlettered may believe.”

  “Not so,” returned Dr. Johnson, “for he makes people stare when the Court of Session rises and he walks home in the rain, followed by his wig riding in state in a sedan-chair; and the truth of this eccentrick behaviour lends colour to every fantastick tale about him. He who eats and drinks and bathes with singularity, may be believed to be singular in the chymistry and natural philosophy of his life as well.”

  Chatting thus, we reached the gates of our philosophical friend’s domain in good time. It had begun to rain, and the treeless moorland looked dreary. We were met by a spry little man in a rustick suit and a round hat. This was our host himself, who with old-fashioned courtesy had come down to his gate to greet us.

  We saw a thin man of low stature, with a sharp nutcracker face of sardonick cast. The lift of his short upper lip gave him a countenance forever upon the verge of risibility; but his sharp lower jaw, with strongly hooked nose bent down to meet it, and his sharp little eyes under grizzled tufts of brow, depicted the shrewd observer upon the multifarious activities of mankind. He was then in his fifty-ninth year, in full vigour of mind and body.

  I could not forbear contrasting the little philosopher with my companion, the learned lexicographer, as they greeted one another complaisantly. Dr. Johnson was the Scotchman’s elder by some five years; in figure he towered over him, being tall and strongly made. His thick figure was attired in a decent brown stuff suit of urban cut, with black worsted stockings and buckled shoes; on his bushy grizzled wig he had firmly planted a plain cocked hat. His heavy face was marred by the scars of scrofula; but there was benevolence in his glance, and an expression of philosophical common sense about his broad firm chin. He spoke in a loud voice with slow deliberate utterance.

  “Sir,” said he courteously to Monboddo, “you are most obliging. Pray, sir, will you not step into the chaise and ride with us to your door? You must be wetted to the marrow.”

  “No sir,” replied Lord Monboddo uncompromisingly, “I will not step into your chaise. I do not ride in chaises. I hold that man was born to ride on a horse’s back, not to be dragged at his tail in a box.”

  I looked for a stern rebuke at this new instance of our host’s affectation of singularity, but Dr. Johnson was complaisant.

  “Then, sir,” he replied instantly, “we will descend and walk with you.”

  Lord Monboddo was delighted.

  “’Tis but a step,” he said eagerly, “and on the way I will shew you my new plantations of turnips, which I have but newly introduced into Scotland.”

  The turnip plantings were devoid of interest, being bare and streaming with rain; but it was indeed not far from the gate to the house. Monboddo is a wretched place, wild and naked, with a poor old house; though there are two turrets which mark an old baron’s residence. Lord Monboddo pointed to the Douglas arms upon his house, saying that his great-grandmother was of that family.

  “In such houses,” said he in his reedy tenor, “our ancestors lived, who were better men than we.”

  This was too much for Dr. Johnson.

  “No, no, my lord,” he cried loudly, “we are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser.”

  We passed through the low doorway into a lofty, draughty old hall; but Lord Monboddo led us directly to the great kitchen, where a deep fire burned on the open hearth. There we dried our steaming cloathes, and debate on the primitive state of mankind was deferred.

  That done, Lord Monboddo set us down to a rustick feast of mutton and boiled turnips, quoting from Horace:

  “Lucullus, whom frugality could charm,

  Ate roasted turnips at the Sabine farm.”

  In true Attick style the table was strewn with late roses, and roses garlanded the flagons filled with mulsum, a kind of sweetened wine. Assisting us to more turnips, the ingenious philosopher set forth his theory of alimentation.

  “I hold,” he declared, “that man is benefitted by a nice balance of animal and vegetable nourishment. Another turnip, Mr. Boswell? We are told, that man in a state of nature subsists upon vegetable substances such as roots and berries; and ’tis very clear that man in a state of nature is man at his happiest. Another turnip, Dr. Johnson?”

  “No, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson, “I will not have another turnip. I will have another cut off the joint. Man in a state of nature is not so happy nor so wise as I am; and to my happy and wise state I hold roast meat to be a great contributor.”

  “Why, sir,” protested Monboddo, “’tis allowed, that Peter the Wild Boy was never so happy and healthy as when subsisting on the fruits of the earth, gathered by his own uninstructed endeavours, in the forests of Hannover. So also said Memmie Le Blanc, the Wild Girl, whom I saw in Paris through the good offices of M. Condamine, ’tis now eight years gone.”

  “Then,” replied Dr. Johnson, “the girl Le Blanc perceived what you would be at, and framed her answers accordingly. I’ll offer the girl Le Blanc a good cut off the joint, and you’ll offer her a turnip or a dish of berries, and we shall soon see which she will take.”

  “Would it were possible,” said Monboddo wistfully. “I offered what I could to bring Memmie Le Blanc into England, but ’twould not do. I would have brought her up at Monboddo, and taught her to speak.”

  “Had she a tail?” I enquired, knowing Monboddo’s weakness.

  “I will not say,” replied Monboddo, “that she had not the vestige of a bump upon her rump; but indeed, though primitive man had a tail, we have lost it by the attrition of long sitting on it.”

  Dr. Johnson jerked his head restlessly, and swallowed a mouthful of mutton. I was glad when the entrance of a serving-man created a diversion.

  “’Tis a pair of bumpkins, my Lord,” said he, “has brought a specimen to shew your Lordship.”

  “Admit them,” said Monboddo instantly. The servant stood aside, and into the room stepped the lout in the leather breeches and his companion in the cocked hat, which he did not remove. They set their pannier down in front of the little philosopher
.

  “What have you brought me?” demanded Monboddo eagerly.

  “’Tis an ape, like,” mumbled he of the leather breeches.

  “My man,” said Dr. Johnson, “the ape is not indigenous to Scotland.”

  “’Tis not exactly an ape neither,” said the bumpkin, “though we caught it in a tree. You may say ’tis an ape boy.”

  “An ape boy!” cried Monboddo. “Let me see it at once!”

  The lout made as if to unfasten the pannier, but the white-faced man laid a finger on his arm.

  “Now, sir,” said the bumpkin hastily, “’twas mortal hard to catch, and we ha’ carried it for miles. Sure you’ll not be stingy with us. What’s a guinea to you, my Lord? Ay, or five, or ten?”

  “So,” said the Lord of Session. “Well, I’ll buy it of you, my lads, if a guinea apiece will do it.”

  The weatherbeaten face fell.

  “Make it two apiece, my Lord,” he whined.

  “I’ll not buy an ape boy in a poke,” said Monboddo sharply. “Turn it out; if ’tis to my liking, I’ll bargain with you.”

  The ruddy man shook his head, muttering, “Two guineas apiece;” but again the coffin-faced man laid a finger on his arm. He overset the basket and unfastened the catch. Out crawled on hands and feet, dirty and touselled and emaciated, naked as the day he was born, an undeniable wild boy.

  Lord Monboddo was delighted. Without ceremony he laid hands upon the frightened creature, and proceeded to investigate his small posterior for a tail. There was none.

  “Sure, sir,” remarked Dr. Johnson, “you are a logician indeed, for I see you reason by the method.”

  “How so?” I enquired.

  “The learned advocate,” replied Johnson, “is seen to reason a posteriori.”

  The bony-faced man greeted this sally with a suppressed snort, but his weatherbeaten companion ignored all save the matter in hand.