“Sir, sir,” I protested, “the antiquarian zeal of Mr. Ararat has preserved to us a previously unknown tragedy of Shakespeare, ‘Caractacus; or, the British Hero’.”
“Which little Davy Garrick is to represent in the great amphitheatre tomorrow night. Let him do so. Let us see him do so. Let us not meddle with the musty reliques of the writing desk.”
“Musty!” I cried. “Let me tell you this is no musty old dog’s-eared folio that has lost its wrappings for pyes or worse, like the ballad-writings Percy cherishes, but a manuscript as fair and unblemished, so Dr. Warton assures me, as the day it came from the bard’s own hand. By singular good luck Mr. Ararat is of antiquarian mind, and the manuscript was preserved from a noisome fate in the out-house.”
“That it was preserved for Garrick to play and Dodsley to publish, this is luck indeed; but now that the playhouse copies are taken off, it may end in the out-house for all of me,” replied my learned friend. “No, sir; let a good play be well printed and well played; but to idolize mere paper and ink is rank superstition and idolatry.”
“Why, sir, you need not adore it, nor look at it if you will not; but pray let us not disappoint Dr. Percy and his young friend.”
Dr. Johnson’s good nature was not proof against this appeal to friendship; he consented to walk along with me to Mr. Ararat’s.
I made haste to don my hat and be off before anything could supervene. As we set off on foot from the yard of the Red Lion, my revered friend peered at me with puckered eyes.
“Pray, Mr. Boswell,” he enquired in tones of forced forbearance, “what is the writing inserted in your hat?”
I doffed the article in question and gazed admiringly at the neatly inscribed legend which adorned it.
“CORSICA BOSWELL,” read off my learned friend in tones of disgust. “Corsica Boswell! Pray, what commodity are you touting, Mr. Boswell, that you advertize the world of your name in this manner?”
“A very precious commodity,” I retorted with spirit, “liberty for down-trodden Corsica. Do but attend the great masquerade tonight, you shall see how I speak for Corsica.”
“Well, sir, you may speak for whom you will, and advertize Stratford of your name as you please. For me, let me remain incognito. I should be loath to parade about Stratford as DICTIONARY JOHNSON.”
“Say rather,” I replied, “as SHAKESPEARE JOHNSON, for your late edition of the Bard must endear you to the town of his birth.”
“I come to Stratford,” remarked Dr. Johnson with finality, “to observe men and manners, and not to tout for my wares.”
“Be it so,” I replied, “here is material most proper for your observation.”
As I spoke, we were crossing the public square, which teemed with bewildered Stratfordians and jostling strangers. The center of a milling crowd, a trumpeter was splitting the air with his blasts and loudly proclaiming:
“Ladies and gentlemen! The famous Sampson is just going to begin—just going to mount four horses at once with his feet upon two saddles—also the most wonderful surprizing feats of horsemanship by the most notorious Mrs. Sampson.”
A stringy man and an Amazon of a woman seconded his efforts by giving away inky bills casting further light on their own notorious feats. As we strolled on, we met a man elbowing his way through the press beating a drum and shouting incessantly:
“The notified Porcupine Man, and all sorts of outlandish birds and other beasts to be seen without loss of time on the great meadow near the amphitheatre at so small a price as one shilling a piece. Alive, alive, alive, ho.”
Behind him came a man leading a large bin, and a jostling crowd following. Dr. Johnson smiled.
“This foolish fellow will scarce make his fortune at the Jubilee,” he remarked. “Who will pay a shilling to see strange animals in a house, when a man may see them for nothing going along the streets, alive, alive, ho?”
As we walked along, Dr. Johnson marvelled much at the elegant art of the decorations displayed about the town. The town hall was adorned with five transparencies on silk—in the center Shakespeare, flanked by Lear and Caliban, Falstaff and Pistol. The humble cottage where Shakespeare was born, gave me those feelings which men of enthusiasm have on seeing remarkable places; and I had a solemn and serene satisfaction in contemplating the church in which his body lies.
Dr. Johnson, however, took a more lively interest in the untutored artistry of the townsfolk of Stratford, who had everywhere adorned their houses, according to their understanding and fantasy, in honour of their Bard. We read many a rude legend displayed to the glorification of Shakespeare and Warwickshire. We beheld many a crude portrait intended for the great playwright, and only a few less libels on the lineaments of David Garrick, as we strolled down to Mr. Ararat’s.
“This is Garrick’s misfortune, that as steward of the Jubilee, he is man of the hour,” remarked Dr. Johnson, “for the admiration of Warwickshire has done him no less wrong than the lampoons of London.”
“In Shakespeare he has a notable fellow-sufferer,” I replied.
Johnson “You say true, Bozzy. Alack, Bozzy, do my eyes inform me true as to the nature of the small building, set apart, which someone has seen fit to adorn with the honoured features of the Bard?”
Boswell “Your eyes inform you truly. We are approaching the stationer’s shop of Mr. Ararat, whose zeal for Shakespeare extends even to adorning the exterior of his out-house with the counterfeit presentment of the Bard.”
Johnson “Better his face without than his works within.”
Boswell “Sir, the antiquarian zeal of Mr. Ararat, ’tis said, extends even so far, for he provides for the convenience of his household a pile of old accounts of wonderful and hoary antiquity. The Stratfordians are long dead and gone who bought the paper for which the reckoning still awaits a last usefulness.”
Johnson “Let Mr. Ararat keep Thomas Percy out of here. Last year he published the Earl of Northumberland’s reckonings for bread and cheese from the year 1512; next year, unless he’s watched, I’ll be bound, he’ll rush to the press with a parcel of stationer’s accounts he’s borrowed from Ararat’s out-house.”
Boswell “Sir, you wrong Thomas Percy. He’s a notable antiquarian and his works are much sought after.”
Johnson “He’s a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, and that young Irishman who’s followed him hither is no better. Sir, be it a Shakespeare manuscript or a publican’s reckoning, just so it be old, I’d watch it narrowly while Percy is about.”
Speaking thus, we turned the corner, when the full complexity of Mr. Ararat’s decorative scheme struck us at once. Limned by an unskillful hand, the characters of Shakespeare’s plays crowded the ancient facade, dominated under the gabled roof by the lineaments of the Bard, for which the portrait on the necessary-house was clearly a preliminary study. Hamlet leaned a melancholy elbow on the steep gable of the window, Macbeth and Macduff fought with claymores over the front door, a giant warrior guarded the corner post, all endued with a weird kind of life in the gray glare of the sky, for a storm was threatening.
“Ha,” said Dr. Johnson, “who is this painted chieftain? Can it be Cymbeline?”
“No, sir, this is Caractacus, hero of the new play just recovered.”
Johnson “Why has he painted himself like an Onondaga?”
Boswell “Sir, he is an ancient Briton. He has painted himself with woad.”
Johnson “Will little Davy Garrick paint himself blue?”
Boswell “I cannot say, sir, though ’tis known he means to present the character in ancient British dress.”
Johnson “This is more of your antiquarianism. Let Davy Garrick but present a man, he may despise the fribbles of the tiring-room.”
As we thus stood chatting before the stationer’s shop, a strange creature insinuated himself before us. From his shoulder depended a tray full of oddments.
“Tooth pick cases, needle cases, punch ladles, tobacco stoppers, inkstands, nutmeg graters, and all sorts of boxes,
made out of the famous mulberry tree,” he chanted.
“Pray, sir, shall we venture?”
“Nay, Bozzy, the words of the bard are the true metal, his mulberry tree is but dross. You seem determined to make a papistical idolator of me.”
“Yet perhaps this box—” I indicated a wooden affair large enough for a writing-desk—“this box is sufficiently useful in itself—”
With a resentful scowl the man snatched it rudely from my hand.
“’Tis not for sale,” he mumbled, and ran down the street with his boxes hopping.
“Are all the people mad?” quoted Dr. Johnson from the “Comedy of Errours”; and the shop bell tinkled to herald our entrance into the stationer’s shop of Mr. Ararat.
Behind the counter in the dim little shop stood a solid-built man in a green baize apron. He had a sanguine face and thin, gingery hair. This was Mr. Ararat, stationer of Stratford, Shakespearean enthusiast, and owner of the precious manuscript of “Caractacus; or, the British Hero.” He spelled out the sign on my hat and gave me a low bow.
“Welcome, Mr, Boswell, to you and your friend.”
We greeted Mr. Ararat with suitable distinction. Being made known to Dr. Johnson, he greeted him with surprised effusion.
“This is indeed an unlooked-for honour, Dr. Johnson,” cried Mr. Ararat.
“Percy is late,” I observed to Dr. Johnson.
“Dr. Percy was here, and has but stepped out for a moment,” Mr. Ararat informed us.
We whiled away the time of waiting by examining the honest stationer’s stock, and Dr. Johnson purchased some of his laid paper, much to my surprise to good advantage. As the parcel was wrapping Thomas Percy put his long nose in at the door, and followed it by his neat person attired in clerical black. He laid his parcel on the counter and took Dr. Johnson by both his hands.
“We must count ourselves fortunate,” he cried, “to have attracted Dr. Johnson hither. I had feared we could never lure you from Brighthelmstone, where the witty and fair conspired to keep you.”
“Why, sir, the witty and fair, if by those terms you mean to describe Mrs. Thrale, took a whim that the sea air gave her a megrim, and back she must post to Streatham; and I took a whim not to wait upon her whims, so off I came for Stratford.”
“We are the gainers,” cried Percy.
Dr. Johnson’s eye fell on the counter, where lay his package of paper and the exactly similar parcel Percy had laid down. He picked up the latter.
“Honest Mr. Ararat does well by us Londoners,” he remarked, “to sell us fine paper so cheap.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Percy, possessing himself of his parcel with more haste than was strictly mannerly, “you see I know how to prize new folios as well as old, ha ha.”
He gripped his parcel, and during the whole of our exciting transactions in the house of Mr. Ararat it never left his hands again.
At that moment the shop-bell tinkled to admit a stranger. I saw a fresh-faced Irishman with large spiritual eyes the colour of brook water, a straight nose long at the tip, and a delicate smiling mouth. He was shabbily dressed in threadbare black. The new-comer nodded to Percy, and made a low bow to my venerable friend.
“Your servant, Dr. Johnson,” he exclaimed in a soft mellifluous voice. “Permit me to recall myself—Edmond Malone, at your service I had the honour to be made known to you some years since by my countryman Edmund Southwell.”
“I remember it well,” replied Dr. Johnson cordially, “’Twas at the Grecian, in the Strand. I had a kindness for Southwell.”
“He will be happy to hear it,” replied Malone.
’Twas thus that I, James Boswell, the Scottish advocate, not quite twenty-nine, met Edmond Malone, the Irish lawyer, then in the twenty-eighth year of his age, who was destined to become—but I digress.
Our party being complete, we repaired into the inner room and were accommodated with comfortable chairs. Seated by the chimney-piece was a boy of about sixteen, a replica of old Mr. Ararat, with a rough red mop of hair and peaked red eyebrows. He looked at us without any expression on his round face.
“’Tis Anthony,” said his father with pride, “Anthony’s a good boy.”
“What do you read so diligently, my lad?” enquired Dr. Johnson kindly, peering at the book the boy held. “Johnson’s Shakespeare! I am honoured!”
“Nay, sir, ’tis we who are honoured,” said Malone fervently. “To inspect the Shakespeare manuscript in the company of him who knows the most in England of the literature of our country and the plays of the Bard, to read the literature of yesterday in the presence of Dictionary Johnson, who knows the age and lineage of every English word from the oldest to the word minted but yesterday, this is to savour the fine flower of scholarship.”
The red-haired boy turned his eyes toward Dr. Johnson.
“Pray, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson, “don’t cant. In restoring a lost play this worthy boy has deserved as well as I of his fellow-Englishmen.”
“Anthony’s a good boy,” said his father with pride, “he knows the plays of Shakespeare by heart, ‘Caractacus’ included.”
I looked at Anthony, and doubted it.
“Shall you make him a stationer, like his fathers before him?” enquired Dr. Percy politely.
“No, sir,” replied Ararat, “he’s prenticed to old Mr. Quiney the scrivener over the way. Here, Anthony, fetch my strong-box, we’ll show the gentleman what they came to see.”
Anthony nodded, and went quickly out of the room.
“This is a great good fortune,” said Dr. Percy eagerly, “to see the very writing of Shakespeare himself. We are your debtors that it has been preserved.”
“’Tis nothing,” but old Ararat began to swell like a turkey-cock. He launched into the story: “The first Anthony Ararat was a stationer in Stratford, like me, and Will Shakespeare was his neighbour. Anthony saved his life in the Avon, and in recompense he had of Will the manuscript of this very play, ‘Caractacus; or, the British Hero’, to be his and his children’s forever. Old Anthony knew how to value it, for he folded it in silk, and laid with it a writing of how he came by it, and laid it away with his accounts and private papers.”
“Then how came it to be lost?” enquired Dr. Percy.
“’Twas my grandmother, sir, who took the besom to all the old papers together, and bundled one with another into the shed, and there they lay over the years with the lumber and the stationer’s trash. I played in there when I was a boy, and so did Anthony after me. I remember, there was paper in there my father said his grandfather had made when he was prenticed in the paper-mills. But I never turned over the old accountings, nor paid them any heed. But to make a long story short, gentlemen, come Jubilee time I thought to turn an honest penny letting lodgings, so I bade Anthony turn out the lumber in the shed and make a place where the horses could stand. Anthony turned out a quantity of waste paper and lumber, and my mother’s marriage lines that went missing in the ’28, and the manuscript of ‘Caractacus’, wrapped in silk as the first Anthony had laid it by. He had the wit to bring it to me, and I took it over to old Mr. Quiney the engrosser, and between us we soon made out what we had. Warton of Trinity rode over from Oxford, and Mr. Garrick came down from London and begged to play it …”
The words died in his throat. I followed his gaze toward the inner door. There stood young Anthony, pale as death. Tears were streaming down his wet face. Angrily he dashed the drops from his shoulder. In his hand he held a brass-bound coffer, about the size of the mulberry-wood box the pedlar had snatched from us. Wordlessly, though his throat constricted, he held out the strong-box toward his father. It was empty. We saw the red silk lining, and the contorted metal where the lock had been forced.
The manuscript of “Caractacus” had vanished quite away.
Old Ararat was beside himself. Thomas Percy was racked between indignation and pure grief. Only Dr. Johnson maintained a philosophical calm.
“Pray, Mr. Ararat, compose yourself. Remember the pl
ayhouse copies are safely taken off. You have lost no more than a parcel of waste paper.”
“But, sir,” cried Malone, “the very hand of the Bard!”
“And a very crabbed hand too,” rejoined Johnson, “old Quiney over the way will engross you a better for a crown.”
“But, pray, Dr. Johnson,” I enquired, “is not its value enormous?”
“Its value is nil. ’Tis so well-known, and so unique, that the thief can never sell it; he can only feed his fancy, that it is now his. Let him gloat. ‘Caractacus’ is ours. Tomorrow we shall see Garrick play the British hero; the day after tomorrow it will be given to the world in an elegant edition. The thief has gained, Mr. Ararat has lost, nothing but old paper.”
But Percy and the Ararats thought otherwise. We deployed like an army through the domain of the good stationer, and left no corner unsearched. We had up the red satin lining of the coffer; we turned over the stationer’s stock-in-trade; we searched the house from top to bottom; all to no purpose. In the end we went away without finding anything, leaving young Anthony stupefied by the chimney-piece and old Ararat red with rage and searching, blaming the whole thing on the Jubilee.
We were a dreary party as we walked back to the Red Lion in the rain. Percy and Malone stalked on in heart-broken silence. Having given his parcel into Percy’s keeping, Dr. Johnson swayed along muttering to himself and touching the palings as we passed. Alone retaining my wonted spirits, I broached in vain half a dozen cheerful topicks, and at last fell silent like the rest.
Arrived in the court-yard of the Red Lion, Dr. Johnson took his parcel from Percy’s hand and vanished without a word. I lingered long enough to take a dram for the prevention of the ague. Percy and Malone were sorry company, quaffing in silence by my side, and soon by mutual consent we parted to shift our wet raiment.
In the chamber I shared with Dr. Johnson (dubbed, according to the fancy of Mr. Peyton the landlord, after one of Shakespeare’s plays, “Much Ado about Nothing”) I found my venerable friend, shifted to dry clothing, muffled in a counterpane and staring at the fire.
The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson Page 15