The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson

by Lillian de la Torre

  “At Dr. Johnson’s service, Mr. Boswell,” said the master potter, “and pray say to him, we deeply regret the accidental destruction of his mould, and desire he’ll soon commission another—”

  “Destruction!” I cried. “Is the mould destroyed, and no copy taken off?”

  “Aye, with a pox on Josh and his clumsy fingers.”

  “He deserves,” I cried, “to be soundly swinged.”

  “And swinged he shall be, when once I can lay my hands on him. Pray say so to Dr. Johnson.”

  Upon receipt of this bad news, Mistress Wright was eager to set about making a new mould; but Dr. Sam: Johnson incontinently refused.

  “No, ma’am; you’ll stop up my eyes no more.”

  Mistress Wright thereupon sulked; she sat with folded hands, and would not partake of the convivial punch which Miss Fleay that night brewed. Casting off care in the presence of my penetrating friend, I sped the hours in gallant drinking of healths; Miss Fleay and I were merry together; I felt the shadow of General B—totally withdrawn, and longed to take his place with the lady that night. But, foxed though I was, duty restrained me; I left Miss Fleay to the punch, and Mistress Wright to the care of her woman, and followed my respected friend to our chamber.

  He scowled upon me; I felt an uneasy sense of having exceeded prudence. I slumped on the bed.

  “Resume your coat, sir,” said he, “and stand up, if you can. I am uneasy for the safety of our secret, and mean to keep watch tonight.”

  We tiptoed down the stair and took up our stand in the garden under the American’s window. A light shewed, and two figures moved in the room. The curtains were drawn; in a little the light was extinguished. Then nothing, only darkness. A great drowse fell upon me. I cannot say how long I floated in it, but I know I was brought back with the jerk of a thumb in my ribs. Down the vine that rose to the window was clambering the figure of a man.

  We closed in upon the spot where the intruder must take to the ground; when with a savage leap the dark figure hurled itself down from above our heads, dashed us momentarily to the ground, and made off towards the stables.

  In a trice Johnson had recovered himself, pulled me to my feet, and reached the stable door in time to see the man leap to the bare back of Miss Fleay’s own horse and ride out at the opened door. There was nothing to do but follow suit. Johnson must have got the General’s horse—I marvelled at the agility with which he kept his seat on the mettlesome creature, holding to the halter with one hand. I followed riding loose and reckless on a less fleet creature.

  There was no sound in Paradise Row save the sound of galloping hoofs. For the moment the stranger had the start of us. Then we began to gain. At the corner of Cheyne Walk the rider ahead passed under the street-lamp, and we saw the hawk-like profile and the piercing eyes—’twas the Quakeress herself in male attire! Though she rode with reckless skill, we were still gaining as we gallopped in a string up Cheyne Walk. There were lights in the private madhouse; I shuddered to think of the wretches incarcerated there.

  “This is too dangerous,” shouted Johnson over his shoulder. “If we cannot confine the frantick rebel one way, we must try another.”

  Before I could divine his meaning he had flung his pocket knife boldly through the closed window of Driffield’s Academy. It brought the attendants to the gates in a trice; they were after us, hallooed on by Johnson, as we overhauled our quarry at the foot of Cheyne Row.

  Johnson pulled down the horse she was riding. She sat erect and impassive as the mad-house attendants came level with us. Then the boldness of Johnson’s scheam, so suddenly formed in his mind, became apparent.

  “Alack, gentlemen,” his Lichfield burr was suddenly strong, “I fear we have arouzed you late. This frantick wife of mine—” Patience Wright suddenly looked full at him with startled gaze—“this frantick poor creature should have been consigned to your care at a more reasonable hour, but that she suddenly gave us the slip at the ordinary and escaped in my attire as you see—”

  I looked at her garb. It was indeed Dr. Johnson’s second-best brown.

  “Pray conduct us to Dr. Driffield.”

  I saw defeat in the American’s eye; but I reckoned without her bold slyness. Narrowly watched by the attendants, and with one of us on each side, she was conducted through the portals of the mad-house, and the heavy door swung to behind us. Dr. Driffield received us, rubbing his fat hands.

  “Hark ye, Doctor,” said Mistress Wright, cool and collected, “a word in your ear. I am your debtor for delivering me, for yonder husband of mine—” impudently indicating Johnson—“is mad as the wind, and a sly madman he is. Coming hither to consign him to your care, he found means at the ordinary to deprive me of my attire and confine me. I gave him the slip in a suit of his cloathes, but he was nigh catching me, and it had gone hard with me but for a fortunate chance—in a fit of madness he flung a missile through your window, and so it chanced that your keepers have laid him by the heels. I beg you’ll not credit his sly lies; for yonder lies his missile—” she nodded to it where it lay on the floor—“and the better to assure you he’s mad indeed, he imagines himself in his phrenzy to be one of London’s most famous men.”

  Johnson was indeed inflating himself to thunder out a denial of this impudent fabrication.

  “Sir,” he began, “I am Samuel Johnson—”

  “Is it likely?” counters this impudent American. “Has Sam: Johnson a wife? Nay, is Sam: Johnson in London? You know from the gazettes he is gone to Oxford.”

  Dr. Driffield, alas, proved to be a great reader of the gazettes.

  “True, ma’am,” says he.

  “I am Sam: Johnson,” said my friend calmly, “and there are weighty reasons of state why this mad-woman must be confined.”

  “Be perswaded, sir,” I cried, “this is indeed the Great Lexicographer, and I am James Boswell, at your service.”

  Unfortunately our midnight dash had discommoded my vitals. I hiccupped. Mistress Wright turned to me with scorn.

  “What, Thomas!” she cried. “Is this the part of one who has been in my service, man and boy, for fourteen years! Take care, sirrah, you’ll lose my favour. You have been bought by this old reprobate, ’tis clear—”

  The hiccup did my business. Dr. Driffield used his own nose, and put me down for the drunken serving-man she made me seem.

  “Away with them, men,” says he.

  “I’ll not stir till this woman is confined,” cried Johnson stoutly.

  The fat doctor looked on him sourly. The American woman might have got clear off, had she but let well enough alone. But when one of the hulking mad-keepers laid a doubtful hand on her arm, she lost her head.

  “Touch me,” she cried defiantly, “at your peril; the Queen is my friend.”

  “You see,” said Johnson to the mad-doctor, “her brain is addled.”

  Driffield looked from one to the other of us in perplexity.

  “They’re all mad,” he decided. “Let them be confined.”

  I stared aghast as my revered friend was seized; while Johnson held the American spy in a grip of iron. Clearly so long as she was confined he had no care for us.

  For four-and-twenty hours I saw my friend no more. Dawn came on, and with it thoughts as painful as the head they filled.

  The sun was high when one of the mad-keepers gingerly thrust some hard bread and a bowl of water between the bars.

  The hours dragged on. As my head cleared from the fumes of the punch, I began to feel a savage hunger. I would gladly have devoured Mistress Wright’s roast duck, secret writings and all, if I could have come by it. The thought of the duck recalled to me the task we had set ourselves, and I rejoiced that even at this cost we had found a way to confine the frantick rebel with her secret still undivulged. Let her remain under restraint until the moment of danger should be past.

  Nevertheless, I had scarce resigned myself to a like fate for myself and my friend. As my head cleared, I resolved to strike a stroke for fre
edom. When the burly mad-keeper returned at sun-down, I was ready for him.

  “What say you,” said I perswasively through the bars, “to a handful of broad pieces?”

  I saw in his eye that the mad-keeper could be bought; but he was wary.

  “You’ve never a handful of broad pieces about you,” he muttered, measuring my garb.

  “True for you,” said I; “but hark’ee, friend, my master has a purse of golden guineas in the keeping of the landlord of the Cross Keys; how if I was to come to him and say, my master sent for ’em? We should have the dividing of ’em between us.”

  “Done,” said the mad-keeper instantly, and added slyly: “We’ll go together.”

  I could hope for no better. The mad-keeper instantly set me free, and led the way through a tangle of outbuildings towards Lawrence Street and the Cross Keys. I kept ever alert to give my conductor the slip; but he pressed along with his arm linked in mine, and I was a prisoner still. Before the Cross Keys we halted.

  “We must not enter together,” said I with firmness. “The landlord will scarce yield the bag of guineas if I come with an accomplice at my elbow. Do you go in and bespeak a pot; I’ll follow, get the swag, and join you as if by chance.”

  “Ye’ll make off, ye mean,” rasped the mad-keeper with a cunning look. “No, no, me lad; you go in, and I’ll follow. And look ye don’t get out of my sight.”

  I shrugged, and went in.

  “Hark’ee, landlord,” I began to speak quietly and hastily to the thin needle-nose little man at the bar. But for him the smoky dark-panelled room was empty. He looked at me with disfavour. I saw in his eyes as in a mirror how I must look, rumpled, pasty-faced from punch and lack of sleep, and my heart sank. Over his shoulder I saw the door open, and in came the mad-keeper. He grinned evilly at me, and took up a post of vigilance on the settle by the fire.

  The landlord listened to my muttered plea without change of expression, and then shook his head. He absolutely refused to send a messenger all the way to Whitehall. He seemed apprehensive that I was the advance guard of the running smobble.

  “Then pray, landlord,” I shifted my ground, “pray let the pot-boy be sent no further than Miss Fleay’s in Paradise Row, I’ll engage he’ll be well paid for his trouble.”

  The landlord continued to look at me, impassive.

  “The lady affects me,” I lied desperately. “’Tis an affaire du coeur, ’pon honour, landlord, do but befriend me, you’ll be well rewarded, pray let me have ink and paper and the pot-boy to carry my billet.”

  The sharp little face suddenly split in a wide smile. There was not a tooth in the grinning gums.

  “Faith, lad, if ’tis the heart is in it, I’ll befriend thee,” lisped he, “being myself a great sufferer from the tender passion.”

  He set paper and pen before me. As I dipped the quill, he set himself with relish to peer over my shoulder and enjoy the composition of my billet doux. I ground my teeth, and wrote:

  “Honour’d Madam:

  He who loves you better than life, acquaints you that our time is ripe, for my schoolmaster Mr. J. is detained in Cheyne Walk, at the Academy, whence he will scarce come off with ease. Pray be circumspect, for should Eden hear of this he would enlarge him instanter. You take my meaning. I am detained at the Cross Keys by a bailiff—[The landlord glanced at my mad-keeper, and then back to me, and shook his head commiseratingly, as if to communicate the sympathy of a fellow-sufferer equally from bailiffs and the tender passion]—but I will take what means I may to give him the slip and come to you, whereby we may have the consolation of one another’s company.

  Thine till death,

  J.B.”

  The pot-boy was rouzed from the kitchen ingle-nook, and off he went for Paradise Row. I returned willy-nilly to my mad-keeper, and told him the first tale that came to my head, that mine host had sent for the keys, and the guineas should shortly be ours. The man scowled into his pot.

  Now up comes mine host, and with a wink to me, sets out to ply the sullen mad-keeper with liquor, lacing his pots with gin with the liberal hand of a friend to lovers. Four pots later the boy returned with a verbal message: “The lady bids me say, she takes your meaning, and will deal with your schoolmaster.” The mad-keeper was too owlishly drunk to do more than blink foolishly. A few moments more, and his head dropped to the table. With a broad grin full of gums the landlord jerked his head in signal, and I was off in a trice. I came into Cheyne Walk just as Sir William Eden descended from his carriage at the mad-doctor’s door. Soon my learned friend was once more at liberty, no whit the worse for his Academic sojourn, he having born it as a philosopher.

  That day week, all danger past, we were once more at Dr. Driffield’s door, and the frantick American, still wearing Dr. Johnson’s second-best brown, was in her turn enlarged.

  “No hard feelings, ma’am,” said Dr. Johnson; “we have gained time, and time fights for the King.”

  “I’ll kiss thee farewell,” replied Mistress Wright, smiling, “in token of Christian forgiveness.”

  Dr. Johnson, magnanimous in victory, bore her Christian salute with a good grace.

  We saw no more of the American wax-worker; but as Christmas came on we had a message from her.

  “I am to say from the lady,” said the messenger, “she desires it may cast light upon your business.”

  We stared upon the message, a slab of such petrified grout as had formed the ill-fated life-mask of the Great Lexicographer.

  “This is an Egyptian message,” puzzled I as the messenger withdrew. “I can make nothing of this.”

  “It comes with the candle-message,” mused Johnson. “We shattered the candle; are we to shatter this as well?”

  Boswell: “Will it shatter like wax?”

  Johnson: “The mould was shattered. The mould … Stay, Mr. Boswell, you oversaw its making, pray detail to me the manner of it.”

  Boswell: “Well, sir, she smeared your face with grout, and braced it with a fold of linen—”

  Johnson: “A fold of linen! Why did I not hear of this?”

  Boswell: “Nay, sir, you were by.”

  Johnson: “I was by! Deafened and blinded with grout! ’Twas the message!”

  BOSWELL: “Nay, sir, the linen was blank.”

  JOHNSON: “Blank! Tschah! ’Twas writ in secret ink. The Americans have had the secret after all!”

  Angrily he dashed the slab to the hearth. It shattered. Folded within lay a strip of linen protecting a slip of paper. The paper was from that day’s gazette:

  “We are advized from New-York, that Lieutenant-general John Burgoyne—”

  “Of course,” remarked Johnson, “Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne. Who else would take a lady of Drury Lane into keeping while great events depended?”

  “—Lieutenant-general John Burgoyne with 6,000 men has surrendered to the rebels near Saratoga in the Province of New-York. This stroke has much heartened the rebels, and ’tis thought that his Majesty the King of France will now conclude an alliance …”

  Johnson threw down the item in disgust, and picked up the linen. Written on it in a curiously rusty-looking stuff was a letter from the American spy:

  “Sir,

  Pray accept of my acknowledgements for the help Dr. Johnson lately rendered the glorious cause of Liberty, in transporting with his own hand, the mould which carried that most necessary communication to Mr. Franklin, into the hands of my accomplice the potter’s boy. The comedy of the mad-house served to keep the minions of the King amused until the boy had made the best of his way out of the country. How well he did his part, this glorious victory of Saratoga attests. With the blessings of a great and grateful nation, I am,

  Sir,

  Your oblig’d humble servant,

  PATIENCE WRIGHT”

  [By growling against the rebellious Colonists, the Great Cham invited at my hands this fictitious come-uppance dealt him by a factual American spy. The Chelsea scene suggested the China Manufactory, which Johnson frequen
ted, and the mad “Academy,” which he did not.]

  SAINT-GERMAIN THE DEATHLESS

  (London, 1770)

  Saint-Germain the Deathless, that mysterious being, was heralded in the gay world of London by a gipsy’s prophecy, and given his congée by Dr. Sam: Johnson, detector of chicane; in both which events I, James Boswell of Auchinleck, played my part. But of the wizard’s advent we had as yet no premonition when upon an autumn night in the year 1770 I carried my philosophical friend to see Mrs. Cornelys’ Venetian ridotto in Soho; unless indeed my companion’s strictures on the ridotto were premonitory:

  “A publick ridotto,” declared he roundly, “is the prologue to publick mischiefs innumerable, as, wenching, gaming, coney-catching, the prig and the snatch—”

  To this proposition I did not assent, though in the light of future events I ought to have done. Instead I remarked:

  “If this is so, sir, I wonder that you give yourself the fatigue of coming hither, the more especially as you will not masque.”

  Amid Mrs. Cornelys’ Chinese silks and lacquers, that multiplied in her hundred mirrors and threw back the sparkle of her thousand candles, the sturdy philosopher stood four-square, uncompromisingly himself in snuff-coloured broadcloth, complaisant good humour twinkling in his large light-grey eyes and playing over his strong, pock-scarred visage. To my remark he replied merely:

  “Look about you, Bozzy, and wonder no longer.” I looked upon the motley rout of masquers, sailing past us, round and round, to the sounding of fiddles and flutes. “Here is man in microcosm; and man is ever my study.”

  “Man?” I was laughing at the absurd anticks of a Pegasus whose wildly flapping mechanical wings could neither get it off the ground nor impel its two tangled pairs of legs smoothly in the same direction.

  “Why, sir, man in disguise is man most revealed.”

  “How do you make that good?”

  “Consider. At the ridotto man escapes himself, to become what he would rather be. Behold James Boswell, Esq:, advocate.—” I regarded myself in the long mirror. ’Twas true, I wished the long nose shorter, the swarthy skin ruddy, the stature higher by six inches. Nonetheless, I thought it a gallant enough figure I saw reflected, decked out in ruby velvet riding-coat and snow-white buckskins. Dr. Sam: Johnson thought otherwise.