Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

“I stood by the black-browed Tory from ten in the evening till daylight, and ’tis a task that’s ill-paid at a hundred guineas.”

  “One question more: how knew you that I was employed in the matter?”

  Fox smiled blandly.

  “Nothing Thurlow does,” he replied, “is unknown to the Whig leaders; and at this very moment, I’ll lay a guinea, someone is telling Thurlow that Fox has called at Bolt Court.”

  “Well, sir,” says Dr. Johnson, “I will serve you, if I may serve justice at the same time.”

  “’Tis all I ask,” replied Fox, “for indeed whether the old curmudgeon has made away with it himself, and blames the Whigs, or whether a thief has it indeed, and Thurlow has put about this Whig story to turn it to his own ends, ’tis all one to me; the Whigs have it not.”

  “You may set your mind at rest, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson; and the Whig leader took his leave.

  “What, Bozzy,” exclaimed Dr. Johnson, peering into my face as he gave me welcome, “you’re again great with news.”

  “That is so, sir,” I exclaimed eagerly as we mounted the stair.

  “Stop, I will tell you,” said Dr. Johnson, “there was a felonious entry at the Petty Bag in Rolls Yard last night.”

  “There was indeed,” said I, dumbfounded, “but—”

  “But nothing was taken,” finished Dr. Johnson.

  But I still had a couple of crumbs.

  “’Tis thought,” I told him, “that they looked to find the Great Seal there, for ’tis there they have the engrossing of pardons and such-like; but they had their labour for their pains, and so went away to the Chancellor’s house, and there fared better.”

  “Do you say so?” said Dr. Johnson politely.

  “Furthermore,” I concluded triumphantly at the drawing-room door, “Lee, the receiver of stolen goods, is taken, and will be arraigned for purchasing the stolen Seal. ’Tis said he had it of a woman for forty guineas.”

  “So the Seal is found!” exclaimed Johnson, thunderstruck.

  “No, sir. ’Tis feared it is into the melting-pot already.”

  Johnson opened the panelled door, and we entered the room. I bent low over Catharine Thurlow’s hand. She had been crying, but she was more beautiful than ever with a last tear sparkling in her eye, and her glossy dark hair in little ringlets all over her proud little head. She reminded me of an ancient statue—or a portrait—what was it?—something I had seen recently.

  Dr. Johnson was most assiduous in his attentions to both the ladies. The Whig maccaroni fondled his muff and smiled at vacancy. I had my mouth open to sound the opinion of the Great Cham on the strange events just passed, when Francis Barber announced Lord Thurlow, the latter coming in briskly on his heels with a leathern bag in his hand.

  “Now, sir,” says Thurlow, “we’ll prorogue ’em,” he brandished the leathern bag, “we’ll prorogue ’em and send the d– –d dog-stealing Whigs back to their kennels. Here’s the little beauty will do it.”

  “The new Seal!” I exclaimed.

  “Ay,” said Thurlow, handing the leathern bag to my learned friend, “the new Great Seal. ’Tis a replica of the old one, and equally as handsome, brass though it may be.”

  My nearsighted friend carried the bags to the window. The leathern bag yielded a silk purse of exquisite workmanship; the silk purse yielded a heavy disk of yellow metal.

  “You say true,” remarked Dr. Johnson, hunching his shoulders as he peered at it in the light from the sky, “this is not to be told from goldsmith’s work.”

  He passed the heavy thing to me, and I at last beheld, albeit of brass and hastily constructed, the GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND.

  I gazed with indescribable emotion on the sacred person of George III, represented as seated on a charger; on the obverse the same, seated in state. I handed the heavy metal disk to the young ladies. Caroline regarded it with wondering eyes; but Catharine shrugged her slim shoulders.

  “This is no nine-days’ wonder,” she said indifferently. “’Tis no different from the other one.”

  She yielded it back to my friend.

  “Francis,” called Dr. Johnson from the passage, bagging the Great Seal the while, “pray let us have our tea.”

  “I cannot drink tea with you,” said Thurlow instantly, “for I am on my way to Downing Street with the new Seal; but my daughters may do so, and I will send the carriage back for them.”

  “Very well, my Lord,” responded Dr. Johnson, “I rejoice that the crisis is happily over, and we may drink our tea with light hearts.”

  “So?” says Thurlow. “Have you, then, given over your determination to lay the Great Seal in my hand?”

  “Sir,” says Dr. Johnson, “the Great Seal is but metal, till the King’s will gives it life; and so I hold that the disk you carry there in its bag is in very truth the Great Seal and no other; and in that belief I rest from my labours.”

  “Now,” says Thurlow, “you speak like a man of sense. Sir, I am obliged to you. Pray command me. Give me the pleasure of serving you to requite your trouble in this matter.”

  “I thank you, my Lord,” replied Dr. Johnson. “I have but one request: freedom for Lee the receiver.”

  “Freedom? For the tool of the Whigs? The man who melted up the Great Seal of England? Sure, sir, you jest.”

  “Not so, my Lord. I counsel you, Lee must not be brought to trial.”

  “Not? When twenty witnesses stand ready against him?”

  “No, sir. There might come a twenty-first witness you would not wish to hear.”

  Thurlow looked sharply at Johnson. Then he lifted his shoulders.

  “I can see,” he remarked, “that I am in your debt indeed. Lee shall go free.”

  “I thank your lordship,” said Dr. Johnson; and Thurlow took his departure. I attended him into Fleet Street and so we parted.

  As the Lord Chancellor mounted his coach, I took note of a young man who was lounging in front of the Dolphin, smoking a church-warden and watching the mouth of Bolt Court. No sooner had the Lord Chancellor driven off, than he shook out his pipe and put himself in motion. To my surprize he caught me up at Dr. Johnson’s door. I stared at him. It was Mannering.

  Mannering had elected to hang in peach-coloured velvet, picked out with gold. He was still in peach-coloured velvet, and he was still smiling.

  “Exit the heavy father,” he murmured; “enter the lover. We should all make our fortunes at Drury Lane. Pray sir, is this the right stair for Dr. Johnson? And who are you?”

  “James Boswell, at your service, Mr. Mannering. Pray come with me.”

  “Oons, nothing like hanging to get oneself known,” drawled Mannering, mounting the stairs before me. There was no handsomer man in England. He carried himself like a grenadier; his handsome sallow face was like a player’s, melancholy and sentimental, with shades of sensibility constantly playing over it.

  Like a player he threw open the drawing-room door and stood motionless on the threshold. He got his effect.

  The languid Durban leaped to his feet, crying:

  “Tom! Stap me, ’tis Tom!”

  Catharine Thurlow applauded softly, saying,

  “Bravo, well timed, Tom!”

  But Caroline Thurlow crossed the room in one motion, and threw herself on his breast. Dr. Johnson peered at the newcomer, who seemed to be mightily relishing the scene.

  “Permit me,” said Catharine sedately, “to make Mr. Mannering known to Dr. Johnson.” Though Caroline’s head was pressed tight against the peach-coloured chest, Mannering managed a graceful salutation.

  He touched Caroline’s dark hair gently.

  “Be satisfied, little one,” he said, “they can’t hurt Tom Mannering.” He set her gently in her chair.

  “How come you so pat, Tom?” said Durban.

  It was Catharine who answered.

  “I sent to him,” she said, “by Francis, when he bespoke the chickens at the ordinary.”

  “And I,” said Mannering, “came when dusk fel
l. I have enemies in England.”

  “Had you but come a little sooner,” says Caroline in a dreamy voice, “you might have thanked Papa for your pardon.”

  “Papa!” cried Mannering. “Trust me, I will give Papa a wide berth.”

  “Pray, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “be seated and take a dish of tea with us.”

  “I thank you, no. I ride for Dover in an hour, and so over into France. ’Tis safer so, I think.”

  He looked directly at Catharine Thurlow.

  “I had not looked to speak before an audience,” he said (I thought he minded us little enough), “but time presses. I thank you for my life. Will you marry me and come with me into France?”

  Catharine Thurlow returned as level a look.

  “I have not changed my mind,” she said. “I couldn’t see you hang; but I will not marry you, Tom, tonight or ever.”

  Mannering scowled.

  “You’ll be the death of me,” he said. “Whose fault was the Lanchester affair?”

  “I’ve made amends, I think, for driving you into her arms,” replied Catharine. “Go over into France, Tom, and God take care of you, for I won’t again.”

  Caroline stood up. “I’ll come with you, Tom.”

  Mannering looked at her.

  “No, no, little one, you’re too young and tender. I’ll go alone.” He touched her hand; looked a long moment at Catharine’s vivid face; bowed, and was gone.

  Catharine Thurlow went to her sister and set an arm about her shoulders.

  “Catharine,” said Caroline wonderingly, “what did he mean, about Papa?”

  “Why, you little goose,” cried Catharine, “where did you think I went, when I left you weeping your heart out in the darkness and went off dressed like a link-boy?”

  “You said you were going to fight a duel,” said Caroline doubtfully.

  “That was to keep you quiet, you little moppet,” said her elder sister. “I lay there in the dark listening to your sobs, and wished I could have got father to save Tom; and it came over me that if I were bold enough I could do it myself.”

  “How?” said Caroline.

  “By sealing a pardon and carrying it myself. It wasn’t hard. I carried the Seal to Rolls Yard, and engrossed a pardon in form as best I could. ’Twas a botch, but a bold botch. I sealed it with yellow wax, and then I had to run all the way to get there in time. The hangman never looked at it; how could he, with the press shouting A reprieve, a pardon, and Tom Mannering getting into his coach as cool as a cucumber.”

  I stared at the intrepid girl.

  “All had gone well,” she continued, “had my father not taken a freak to look at the Seal at six o’clock in the morning.”

  “’Twas I,” I said, “who took that freak.”

  “You have given me a bad day, Mr. Boswell,” she replied; “but all’s well that ends well.”

  “Yet give me leave,” I begged, “to know the answer to a question or two. Pray how had you a boy’s suit by you?”

  “I had gone to the masquerade as a link-boy.”

  “Did your father know of this?”

  “Not when ’twas done; but like Dr. Johnson he saw that ’twas not the work of a thief, but of a member of his household. Therefore he wrenched out the bars of the kitchen window, that it might look the more like a housebreaking.”

  “And therefore he was so fierce against the Whigs?” I added.

  “No, sir; he is fierce against the Whigs from long practice.”

  “Pray, Dr. Johnson, was this known to you?”

  “Sir, by little and by little. At your first account I saw plainly, from the rust on his palms, from the clatter below-stairs, from the plaster inside the window though the bars had been cast outside, that ’twas Lord Thurlow himself who had breached his own defenses. Therefore I summoned to me all who lived above-stairs, and learned that all had been in company with others till nigh on dawn. I was puzzled to know which of the young people had abstracted the Seal upon their return home, and why. Then I mentioned Mannering’s pardon, and father and daughter immediately lied in concert. Lord Thurlow pretended to have sealed Mannering’s pardon and Miss Catharine to have served as chaffwax. Obviously both lied, for Lord Thurlow was at Brooks’s all night long, though he knew not that I knew it, and Miss Catharine was at the masquerade. Then Mannering’s pardon was forged. And by whom? Not Lord Thurlow—he could have procured a genuine pardon, had he so wished. Therefore Miss Catharine was the forger; Lord Thurlow guessed so much, and lied to cover her. ’Twas all news to Miss Caroline that Mannering had got off; she fainted away with the revulsion of feeling.”

  “Pray, Miss Thurlow,” I enquired, “did you indeed steal £35 and two silver sword-hilts?”

  “No, indeed, Mr. Boswell. I now hear this accusation for the first time.”

  “’Twas a detail your father invented to lend verisimilitude to his version of the housebreaking,” explained Dr. Johnson, pouring his fifth cup of tea.

  “Now sir,” said I rallying him, “what’s this supping of tea? Did you not swear not to rest nor recruit until you had laid the Seal in Lord Thurlow’s hand?”

  “Why, sir,” returned Dr. Johnson, “you saw me do so.”

  I stared.

  “Why, Bozzy,” exclaimed Dr. Johnson, “did you think I would let the King’s writ pass under base metal? Here is the brass one.” He drew it from the capacious old-fashioned pocket of his snuff-coloured suit.

  I continued to stare.

  “But, sir, how came you by it,” I exclaimed, “without stirring out at the door all day?”

  “I detected its hiding-place, and asked for it.”

  “Where—?”

  Catharine Thurlow laughed aloud.

  “Pray, Mr. Boswell, is it the custom in Scotland for ladies of the ton to wear a made head before breakfast? ’Tis not so here; but when a lady has chopped off her hair in a hurry to pass for a boy by daylight, she must needs don a wig; and what better hiding-place for a thing she must conceal on her person till the hue and cry is over than the inner reaches of that same wig?”

  “Pray, Mr. Boswell,” said Dr. Johnson, “accept of the brass seal as a memento of this day’s transactions. As for me I desire no better reward than to have saved a lady from the consequences of her rashness.”

  In fine, Dr. Johnson was true to his word; for though all became known to the Chancellor through the agency of his younger daughter and though he made the proffer with the utmost delicacy, Dr. Johnson was steadfast not to touch Lord Thurlow’s £600.

  Notes on Historical Background

  Each one of the nine stories in this book is embroidered upon the fabric of history. For those readers who, like myself, prize fact equally with fancy, I here append a few brief notes distinguishing the one from the other as they are woven into my tales.

  The Waxwork Cadaver pictures Mrs. Salmon’s famous WaxWork as it was during the interregnum (1760–65) of Dr. Clarke the surgeon. Dr. Clarke died in 1765, needless to say in less sensational circumstances. His fate, which I have invented, springs naturally from the locale and the association of surgery and working in wax. I have taken minor liberties with Boswellian chronology in order to place Boswell on the spot at the right time. With the opening handbill, which is abridged from a real one, I have also taken liberties; the idea of immortalizing criminals in wax was not Dr. Clarke’s, but Mme. Tussaud’s, several decades later.

  Of all my stories, The Second Sight of Dr. Sam: Johnson contains the most pure, unadulterated Boswell. First published in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides were the description of Dr. Johnson; the conversation about the second sight; the fox and the cave. Into the actual events of Dr. Johnson’s visit to Raasay I have embroidered only the sinister Kelpie Pool and what was found in it.

  It was in conversation with Professor Frank Krutzke of Colorado College that I first suggested the “detector” possibilities of Dr. Sam: Johnson. In this story those possibilities were first exploited. It and every suploited. It and story o
we much to Professor Krutzke’s criticism and suggestions.

  “Robberies,” lamented the Annual Register for 1761, “were never perhaps more frequent about this city.… One highwayman in particular, by the name of The Flying Highwayman, engrosses the conversation …” The rather drab career of this real rapscallion I have enlivened with details culled with lavish hand from a century of famous highwaymen.

  “A highwayman,” records the same Annual Register, “having committed several robberies on the Highgate road … two thief-takers, in hopes of entrapping the highwayman … set out … in a post-chaise, like travellers, upon the same road, with a view of being attacked by the highwayman at the usual place …”

  The thief-takers bungled the job. Needless to say, they were not Johnson and Boswell. Neither were they attached to the horse patrol of the famous “blind beak of Bow Street,” a heroic figure of eighteenth-century London who deserves to be better remembered.

  In The Monboddo Ape Boy I have invented a story calculated to display Dr. Johnson’s impatience with the eccentric evolutionary and alimentary theories of the inimitable James Burnet, Lord Monboddo. The character of Monboddo is drawn from the life; it transcends invention. He anticipated not only the Darwinian theory, but also modern linguistic science. He did not, however, anticipate the atom, nor was he suspected of alchemy. He was fascinated by Memmie Le Blanc and Peter the Wild Boy, both of them real people; but he never really had the good fortune to acquire a real wild boy of his own.

  The Manifestations in Mincing Lane duplicate those which Dr. Johnson investigated in Cock Lane. I have made a new story, because the outcome of the Cock Lane investigation is so well known that I wished to offer a new and entirely different solution. In case any reader finds the denouement incredible, I would refer him to The Newgate Calendar, where many such cases are chronicled.

  Although there is no record that Dr. Johnson ever found Prince Charlie’s Ruby, he really did visit Flora Macdonald in the Isle of Skye; he really did sleep in Prince Charlie’s bed with its tartan curtains; he really did see most of the Jacobite relics described in the story; and he really did hear from Flora Macdonald the moving story of the days of the ’45. The rest of the story is invention, carefully framed upon hints in history: Prince Charlie’s visits in disguise to his lost kingdom, the rumoured birth of his son and heir, his brother’s actual possession of a pair of fabulous matched rubies.