Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  “How come you to bring me so particular a gift, child?” enquired he.

  “’Tis from the Sassenach lady,” whispered the girl.

  Dr. Johnson turned it about in his hand. There was a crackle of paper. In a trice he had out a crumpled billet, and was smoothing it upon the table.

  “Who told them on St. Kilda, Dr. Johnson was in the Hebrides?” I puzzled.

  “Me, sir,” said the catechist proudly.

  Dr. Johnson read out the words on the paper:

  “They’ve carried me off to St. Kilda. I pray you send a boat to take me off, for I’m nigh seven months gone and tho I’m well serv’d the life is hard. Say nothing to Jamie Grange. I’ll have a word with him when I see Edinboro again.

  EMELINA GRANGE”

  Before Johnson could speak, Coirechatachan had ordered up his boat, well manned, for the voyage to St. Kilda, and the unfortunate lady was brought off. Though exhausted by hardship, she told her strange story. She could say no more, than that she had been seized by night at Kincardon, and driven hard night and day till they took ship for St. Kilda.

  “’Tis pity,” exclaimed the roly-poly matron, “that you left Geordie upon St. Kilda, for he was an amusing rustick, and I had taught him a vast deal about piquet.”

  “Ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson, “you amaze me.”

  In that mood we left her and set sail for Coll, leaving her to the care of her son, come in hot haste from Fort George.

  We heard no more of the Boon Park heiress until we were once more in Edinburgh. There, alas, we received a melancholy communication from the young lieutenant. Kincardon’s heir had been prematurely born, and both mother and child had perished. He saved less melancholy intelligence for a postscriptum:

  “Grandfather has had in Mr. Bathgate the surgeon, and writes himself out of all measure recovered. The 37th sails for India this day week. Adieu!”

  Silently my friend handed me the ill-omened missive.

  “Pray tell me, ma’am,” says he off hand to my dear wife, “how go on the mad Kincardon and his heiress wife?”

  “They continue their sullen life in the Canongate,” she replied. “The lady keeps close; and ’tis rumoured she will soon go down to Kincardon to be brought to bed in the country.”

  “Is it so?” rejoined Dr. Johnson. “Well, Bozzy, you and I must once more wait on this friend of yours.”

  “To what end?” I enquired.

  “’Twas an ill document the lady signed. She shall sign a better, before she brings Kincardon an heir.”

  I stared.

  “Bring him an heir?” I stammered.

  “Even so,” said my friend, “for when all is known, by hook or by crook she will bring him an heir. To what end was all this plot, save to make it seem that the heiress disowned young Ballinger, thus bringing the entail to light on Kincardon’s child? So, by fair means or foul, Kincardon must have a child; and how long, think you, will his pretended wife live, after an heir is found?”

  “You are right,” I confessed, “we must go down to the Canongate.”

  Dr. Johnson knocked loudly with his heavy oaken cudgel. Red-headed Saunders admitted us. After a space Kincardon came to us in the dingy sitting-room.

  “How does your lady?” enquired Dr. Johnson courteously.

  “Indifferently,” said Kincardon suspiciously. “We think to go down to Kincardon for the country air.”

  “Do so,” replied Dr. Johnson cordially. “But first, my friend Boswell desires to clear up the little irregularities of your lady’s conveyance. He has prepared a new paper—”

  “What ails the old one?” demanded Kincardon truculently.

  “A mere matter of falsehood, sir,” replied my friend cheerfully.

  Kincardon half rose, then thought better of it.

  “Saunders,” said Dr. Johnson, “pray summon the lady.”

  Katharine Boon came accordingly, muffled in a loose bedgown that neither concealed secrets nor revealed the lack of them.

  “We witnessed a document for you some months gone, Miss Boon,” the thin woman looked up at the name—“Pray be so good as to affix your signature—I crave pardon, your mark—to this one. Mr. Boswell will read it out for you.”

  Katharine Boon opened her mouth, but no sound came. I unfolded the paper with a snap, and read out:

  “I, Katharine Boon, do confess and declare, that coming into this kingdom with my cousin and mistress, Emelina Boon, wife of James Grange of Kincardon, I did plot and covenant with the said James Grange: to kidnap the said Emelina and hold her in seclusion until the birth of her child, the heir of Kincardon; by supplying her room to make it appear as if she affixed her signature—”

  “Only you could not write, but must make your mark,” said Dr. Johnson. “I should have had warning from that.”

  “—make it appear as if she affixed her signature to a document—” (“And a beggarly fustian document,” I interjected) “designed to prove her eldest son no true heir, and so secure the reversion to Kincardon; upon her delivery to procure the murder of the said Emelina Boon—”

  “No! No!” cried the woman wildly.

  “—and to supply her room in perpetuity.”

  “’Tis false,” cried Katharine Boon, “I was only to sign the document, and take her place until her return with the child.”

  “You are a dupe after all,” said my penetrating friend in disgust. “She would have died when the child was born, and you before your false ‘lying-in’ was over. How else could Kincardon gain control of the money?”

  Jamie Grange sat like a man of stone under Katharine Boon’s startled gaze.

  “Cancel the last article,” said Dr. Johnson. “What did Kincardon promise you, Miss Boon?”

  “A sum of money,” she said, “and a competence when he should have got the handling of the old man’s fortune.”

  “He’d have given you six feet of earth at Kincardon,” said Dr. Johnson grimly. “Proceed, Mr. Boswell.”

  “And I further state, that if I die while in the house and under the protection of the said James Grange of Kincardon, I denounce him as my murderer, and pray that justice may be done upon him.”

  “She’ll not stay in my house,” uttered Kincardon between his teeth, “nor will I protect her.”

  “I think you will, sir,” said Dr. Johnson. “If she seeks other protection, how will you stop her mouth?”

  I wrote “Katharine Boon” under our extraordinary document:

  “Pray affix your mark here, Miss Boon.”

  She did so with shaking fingers.

  With a sudden clumsy surge Kincardon fell upon me, snatching at the paper. There was a sharp crack of wood against bone as my powerful friend felled him with one mighty blow. I put the table between us as I bestowed the paper in safety.

  Slowly Kincardon rose to his feet, his face black with baffled rage.

  “I bid you good day, sir,” said Dr. Johnson as I backed towards the door.

  He looked into the two faces.

  “I wish you much joy of one another.”

  As he gently closed the door behind him, I heard his quiet laugh.

  The Great Seal of England

  On the night of March 23, 1784, the Great Seal of England was stolen out of Lord Chancellor Thurlow’s house in Great Ormonde Street, and was never seen again. In August of that year, Lord Chancellor Thurlow very graciously intimated to the friends of Dr. Johnson that that learned philosopher might draw against him at need for as much as £600.

  The connexion between these two events forms a part of secret history. In that history I, James Boswell of Auchinleck, advocate, played a not inconsiderable part; and my learned friend, Sam: Johnson, displayed at large his inimitable powers of ratiocination and penetration, the more that he was then confined to his dwelling with a dropsical condition, complicated by asthma, that was soon to prove mortal.

  In early March I was at York, and in two minds whether to press on to London or to retreat to Edinburgh. News that Pa
rliament was about to be prorogued, with a general election to follow, inclined one of my broad principles to return to my home port to weather the storm; but then I should miss seeing Mannering hang. Mannering was the last of the Tyburn hangings, a gallant and a duellist, and he was to hang for spitting his man and missing the French packet.

  I sat long in the ordinary at York, weighing my principles against the last of the Tyburn shows; and in the end I rode post for London to be in at the death. I rode up to Tyburn as dawn was breaking, and saw all from the spectator’s gallery.

  Had I not done so, I had missed the greatest of Dr. Johnson’s feats of ratiocination. For coming away from the gallows while the mob was still shouting, I encountered George Selwyn in the press, and he carried me in his coach as far as St. James’s Street; and there I met Lord Chancellor Thurlow coming out of Brooks’s arm in arm with Charles James Fox; and that in itself was a portent of stranger things to come.

  The Tory Chancellor was composed and sardonick. His swarthy skin was cool and his black eyes were watchful under their bushy brows. The Whig leader was deucedly foxed, his usual condition at that hour of any morning. He was rumpled and bleary, and his bushy hair stood on end. He was also in a complaining frame of mind.

  “Look at him,” he complained, gesturing at Thurlow in a way that threatened him with immersion in the kennel. “Look at ’m. Been standing by the gaming tables all night long. Wha’s he got? Got his pockets full, tha’s what. Looka me. Been standing by him all night long. Gaming? No. Mustn’t game, Mrs. Armistead says. Gaming’s ruin. Me, I been drinking. Stanning right by him, he’s gaming, I’m drinking. Wha’s he got? Got his pockets full. Wha’ve I got? Got my snout full, Armistead’s all wrong. Never make that mistake again. Whoosh.”

  A final windmill gesture set him on his broad rump on the pavement. His grievances continued to run through his head.

  “Pocket full o’ money, and going to pro—prorogue Parliament tomorrow an’ send all the Whigs home to stay.”

  “You say true, Mr. Fox,” replied Thurlow icily, “for there’s not a borough in England will return a Whig to the new Parliament.”

  Fox slewed him a quick look. It occurred to me that he was not so incapacitated as he seemed.

  “A wager,” he cried. “A rump and dozen that I’m returned for Westminster. Guineas to shillings Parliament an’t prorogued. My head to a turnip you lose the seals, you trimming half-faced Tory.”

  He swayed to his feet. His contorted face was diabolick in the red light of dawn. Then it dissolved into a silly grin. He wagged his head to himself.

  “These proposals,” says Thurlow, still calmly, “would hardly meet the approval of Mrs. Armistead.”

  “Keep your tongue off Armistead,” said Fox surlily. “Who are you to talk?”

  Thurlow’s eyebrows went up; then he shrugged and turned his back.

  “A night at Brooks’s,” he remarked, “is a night wasted among Whigs and scoundrels; and a pocketful of guineas off the gaming tables is poor enough pay. Pray, Mr. Boswell, will you ride along with me to Great Ormonde Street and break your fast?”

  I accepted with alacrity; and so it fell out that I played a part in the strange events of secret history which I am about to narrate. The Chancellor entered his coach, and we were carried at a smart pace towards Great Ormonde Street.

  As I drove along at Thurlow’s side, I reflected with some awe on the inscrutable ways of Providence, that I, a poor Scotch advocate, should be breaking my fast on terms of intimacy with the Lord Chancellor of England and the Keeper of the Great Seal. I thought with indescribable emotion of the sacred nature of the Great Seal, and I resolved to beg a sight of it, that I might record for posterity the feelings of a man of sensibility on beholding that awful symbol of kingly authority.

  Accordingly I led the discourse subtly in that direction.

  “Pray, my Lord,” I began, “inform me whether the Great Seal is not necessary to the dissolution of Parliament?”

  “It is always affixed to the King’s writ of whatever kind,” replied Thurlow. “Ha! ’Twill seal the fate of the d– –d dastardly Whigs, I promise you.”

  Lord Thurlow is noted for his profane swearing. I ignored it, and followed him as he stepped from his carriage and mounted his elegant stair in Great Ormonde Street.

  “Pray, my Lord,” I continued as best I could for climbing, “could you not gratify me with a sight of the Great Seal, for I have never seen it?”

  “Nothing is easier,” replied Thurlow, “for when all is said and done ’tis no more than a handful of soft metal, and I always keep it by me. Pray step this way.”

  I followed the saturnine Chancellor into a study on the first floor. The walls were lined with elegant authors in calf bindings. Opposite the door stood a graceful writing-bureau, its drawer half open. Beside it stood something covered with a green baize cloth. Thurlow twitched away the cloth, and with an easy movement handed me a heavy club surmounted by a crown. My wrist snapped with its weight.

  “’Tis the Mace!” I cried between awe and delight.

  “’Tis the Mace,” assented Thurlow carelessly, “and well it is that ’tis borne before the Chancellor by a bravo with a porter’s knot, for I’ve known many a d– –d puny little monkey of a Lord Keeper who could not have wielded it to save his life. Now the Seal is lighter.”

  He drew out the half-open drawer, and his face changed. A sickly green came up in his swarthy cheeks, and his voice dried in his throat. I made bold to peer over his shoulder. The drawer was empty.

  Or rather, not quite empty. In it lay two bags, turned back and tossed down like carelessly drawn-off gloves. One bag was of leather; the other was a precious and costly purse of silk, richly embroidered and bejewelled.

  Both bags were empty. The Great Seal was gone.

  The Lord Chancellor stood like one struck to stone while one might have counted to three. Then he damned the Whigs. He damned them for a thieving, scoundrelly pack of highway robbers, with no fear of their God or their King. He damned them for breaking and entering, for debauching the electorate, and for picking pockets. He promised to have them pilloried, lampooned, and disfranchised. All the time he was turning out the drawers of the bureau and searching the room. ’Twas useless. The Great Seal of England was gone.

  “Boswell,” cried Thurlow, “do you mount guard here, lest the d– –d thieving Whigs come back for the Mace. I charge you, don’t stir for your life. If the dogs are in the house, I’ll rout them out.” With a solemn sense of responsibility, I kept close watch over the sacred symbol of majesty.

  I thought long till Thurlow returned. The house was quiet as the grave. Once I thought someone stood in the doorway behind me; but when I whirled, there was nothing. Once I thought Thurlow had apprehended the Whigs indeed, for there was a great clatter below-stairs and the sound of Thurlow swearing. But again the solemn silence supervened; and in a few moments more the troubled Chancellor returned.

  “All is clear, Boswell,” said he, his old truculent composure restored. “The miscreants have escaped. Come with me.”

  He dusted the rusty streaks from his palms, locked the drawers of the cabinet, and led me below to the domestick offices. There he showed me how the bars of the back kitchen window had been wrenched loose. I looked at the loosened bars lying in the court below under the open window, and shook my head over the pools of plaster lying on the kitchen floor.

  “With bars at every window, surely a man ought to be safe from the d– –d Whigs,” he muttered.

  “This is dearly a matter for the philosophical mind of Dr. Johnson,” I cried. “I will wait upon him at once.”

  “’Tis a matter for the bailiffs,” responded Thurlow surlily, “they shall wait upon the b– –y b– – –y Whigs at once.”

  I wondered if he meant Mr. Fox, and so my mind turned to Parliamentary affairs.

  “What will come of this?” I queried. “How is Parliament to be prorogued?”

  “I’ll prorogue ’em,”
cried Thurlow grimly. “I’ll find a way to send the scoundrels home. But I must search out precedents. I’ll go straight off to Downing Street and consult Pitt.”

  “And I,” said I, “will go straight off to Bolt Court and consult Dr. Johnson.”

  “Do so,” responded Thurlow, “and I’ll come after you as swiftly as I may.”

  I found Dr. Johnson lying late in his bedgown, with a kerchief on his grizzled head. He stared as I burst into his chamber.

  “Bozzy!” he exclaimed. “What brings you to London? ’Pon my life, ’tis some weighty affair of state. By the bulging of your eyes, you are big with news of the great world. Well, well, I will hear it.”

  The tone of raillery piqued me. Composing my countenance, therefore, I seated myself and enquired politely for my venerable friend’s state of health.

  “The indisposition is abated,” replied Johnson impatiently. “Come, Bozzy, your news! What brings you to London?”

  “To see Mannering hang.”

  JOHNSON: “And did he hang with a good grace?”

  BOSWELL: “He did not hang.”

  JOHNSON: “So you were cheated of your entertainment after all.”

  BOSWELL: “No, sir, my entertainment was very well. All the world and his wife was there, with my Lady Lanchester that Mannering fought for supported by three gallants in the forefront, and the dead man’s brothers glowering at the gallows foot. ’Twas a noble sight to see Mannering smile on them and never turn a hair, with his arms bound at his sides and the man of God mumbling beside him and the cart ready to move off and leave him dangling.”

  JOHNSON: “Why, is not this better than turning a man off hugger-mugger at Newgate, as the new law requires? Why must we do without the procession to Tyburn? The publick is gratified with the procession; the criminal is supported by it. Why must it be swept: away?”

  BOSWELL: “I know not; but so it must be.”

  JOHNSON: “But come, Bozzy, be not so close-mouthed. How came Mannering so near the other world, and yet remains in this?”

  I own I was tired of my tale, and longed to astound my friend with the grave news which was agitating me. I had no more time for Mannering.

  “Why, sir,” said I, “thus it was. At the very point, when Mannering had perforce to give over his strutting and his ogling and let the handkerchief fall, comes a cry from the crowd A reprieve, a reprieve; though ’twas in truth no reprieve, but the King’s pardon engrossed at large with the yellow wax on the tapes; and Mannering kissed the boy that had brought it, and rode away in his coach as he had come, with never a glance at my Lady Lanchester. As for her, she let out a screech and fell into a swoon; and ’tis all the talk that it has come to mortal hatred between them, and that the dead man’s brothers will kill Mannering sure if he remains in England.”