Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D Part 4

For shame! leave off such foppish lamentations, and study to relieve those whose distresses are real."

With advising others to be charitable, however, Dr. Johnson did not content himself. He gave away all he had, and all he ever had gotten, except the two thousand pounds he left behind; and the very small portion of his income which he spent on himself, with all our calculation, we never could make more than seventy, or at most four-score pounds a year, and he pretended to allow himself a hundred. He had numberless dependents out of doors as well as in, who, as he expressed it, "did not like to see him latterly unless he brought 'em money." For those people he used frequently to raise contributions on his richer friends; "and this," says he, "is one of the thousand reasons which ought to restrain a man from drony solitude and useless retirement. Solitude," added he one day, "is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appet.i.te; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember," concluded he, "that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superst.i.tious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air." It was on this principle that Johnson encouraged parents to carry their daughters early and much into company: "for what harm can be done before so many witnesses? Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient pa.s.sions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, it is the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy, vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can just soothe, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared.

He who buzzes in her ear at court or at the opera must be contented to buzz in vain." These notions Dr. Johnson carried so very far, that I have heard him say, "If you shut up any man with any woman, so as to make them derive their whole pleasure from each other, they would inevitably fall in love, as it is called, with each other; but at six months' end, if you would throw them both into public life, where they might change partners at pleasure, each would soon forget that fondness which mutual dependence and the paucity of general amus.e.m.e.nt alone had caused, and each would separately feel delighted by their release."

In these opinions Rousseau apparently concurs with him exactly; and Mr.

Whitehead's poem, called "Variety," is written solely to elucidate this simple proposition. Prior likewise advises the husband to send his wife abroad, and let her see the world as it really stands:--

"Powder, and pocket-gla.s.s, and beau."

Mr. Johnson was indeed unjustly supposed to be a lover of singularity.

Few people had a more settled reverence for the world than he, or was less captivated by new modes of behaviour introduced, or innovations on the long-received customs of common life. He hated the way of leaving a company without taking notice to the lady of the house that he was going, and did not much like any of the contrivances by which ease had lately been introduced into society instead of ceremony, which had more of his approbation. Cards, dress, and dancing, however, all found their advocate in Dr. Johnson, who inculcated, upon principle, the cultivation of those arts which many a moralist thinks himself bound to reject, and many a Christian holds unfit to be practised. "No person," said he one day, "goes under-dressed till he thinks himself of consequence enough to forbear carrying the badge of his rank upon his back." And in answer to the arguments urged by Puritans, Quakers, etc., against showy decorations of the human figure, I once heard him exclaim, "Oh, let us not be found, when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues! Let us all conform in outward customs, which are of no consequence, to the manners of those whom we live among, and despise such paltry distinctions. Alas, sir!"

continued he, "a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither sooner in a grey one." On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms at Brighthelmstone, he made this excuse, "I am not obliged, sir," said he to Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting, "to find reasons for respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other visible mark. What are stars and other signs of superiority made for?"

The next evening, however, he made us comical amends, by sitting by the same n.o.bleman, and haranguing very loudly about the nature and use and abuse of divorces. Many people gathered round them to hear what was said, and when my husband called him away, and told him to whom he had been talking, received an answer which I will not write down.

Though no man, perhaps, made such rough replies as Dr. Johnson, yet n.o.body had a more just aversion to general satire; he always hated and censured Swift for his unprovoked bitterness against the professors of medicine, and used to challenge his friends, when they lamented the exorbitancy of physicians' fees, to produce him one instance of an estate raised by physic in England. When an acquaintance, too, was one day exclaiming against the tediousness of the law and its partiality: "Let us hear, sir," said Johnson, "no general abuse; the law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public."

As the mind of Dr. Johnson was greatly expanded, so his first care was for general, not particular or petty morality; and those teachers had more of his blame than praise, I think, who seek to oppress life with unnecessary scruples. "Scruples would," as he observed, "certainly make men miserable, and seldom make them good. Let us ever," he said, "studiously fly from those instructors against whom our Saviour denounces heavy judgments, for having bound up burdens grievous to be borne, and laid them on the shoulders of mortal men." No one had, however, higher notions of the hard task of true Christianity than Johnson, whose daily terror lest he had not done enough, originated in piety, but ended in little less than disease. Reasonable with regard to others, he had formed vain hopes of performing impossibilities himself; and finding his good works ever below his desires and intent, filled his imagination with fears that he should never obtain forgiveness for omissions of duty and criminal waste of time. These ideas kept him in constant anxiety concerning his salvation; and the vehement pet.i.tions he perpetually made for a longer continuance on earth, were doubtless the cause of his so prolonged existence: for when I carried Dr. Pepys to him in the year 1782, it appeared wholly impossible for any skill of the physician or any strength of the patient to save him. He was saved that time, however, by Sir Lucas's prescriptions; and less skill on one side, or less strength on the other, I am morally certain, would not have been enough. He had, however, possessed an athletic const.i.tution, as he said the man who dipped people in the sea at Brighthelmstone acknowledged; for seeing Mr.

Johnson swim, in the year 1766, "Why, sir," says the dipper, "you must have been a stout-hearted gentleman forty years ago."

Mr. Thrale and he used to laugh about that story very often: but Garrick told a better, for he said that in their young days, when some strolling players came to Lichfield, our friend had fixed his place upon the stage, and got himself a chair accordingly; which leaving for a few minutes, he found a man in it at his return, who refused to give it back at the first entreaty. Mr. Johnson, however, who did not think it worth his while to make a second, took chair and man and all together, and threw them all at once into the pit. I asked the Doctor if this was a fact. "Garrick has not _spoiled_ it in the telling," said he, "it is very _near_ true, to be sure."

Mr. Beauclerc, too, related one day how on some occasion he ordered two large mastiffs into his parlour, to show a friend who was conversant in canine beauty and excellence how the dogs quarrelled, and fastening on each other, alarmed all the company except Johnson, who seizing one in one hand by the cuff of the neck, the other in the other hand, said gravely, "Come, gentlemen! where's your difficulty? put one dog out at the door, and I will show this fierce gentleman the way out of the window:" which, lifting up the mastiff and the sash, he contrived to do very expeditiously, and much to the satisfaction of the affrighted company. We inquired as to the truth of this curious recital. "The dogs have been somewhat magnified, I believe, sir," was the reply: "they were, as I remember, two stout young pointers; but the story has gained but little."

One reason why Mr. Johnson's memory was so particularly exact, might be derived from his rigid attention to veracity; being always resolved to relate every fact as it stood, he looked even on the smaller parts of life with minute attention, and remembered such pa.s.sages as escape cursory and common observers. "A story," says he, "is a specimen of human manners, and derives its sole value from its truth. When Foote has told me something, I dismiss it from my mind like a pa.s.sing shadow: when Reynolds tells me something, I consider myself as possessed of an idea the more."

Mr. Johnson liked a frolic or a jest well enough, though he had strange serious rules about it too: and very angry was he if anybody offered to be merry when he was disposed to be grave. "You have an ill-founded notion," said he, "that it is clever to turn matters off with a joke (as the phrase is); whereas nothing produces enmity so certain as one persons showing a disposition to be merry when another is inclined to be either serious or displeased."

One may gather from this how he felt when his Irish friend Grierson, hearing him enumerate the qualities necessary to the formation of a poet, began a comical parody upon his ornamented harangue in praise of a cook, concluding with this observation, that he who dressed a good dinner was a more excellent and a more useful member of society than he who wrote a good poem. "And in this opinion," said Mr. Johnson in reply, "all the dogs in the town will join you."

Of this Mr. Grierson I have heard him relate many droll stories, much to his advantage as a wit, together with some facts more difficult to be accounted for; as avarice never was reckoned among the vices of the laughing world. But Johnson's various life, and spirit of vigilance to learn and treasure up every peculiarity of manner, sentiment, or general conduct, made his company, when he chose to relate anecdotes of people he had formerly known, exquisitely amusing and comical. It is indeed inconceivable what strange occurrences he had seen, and what surprising things he could tell when in a communicative humour. It is by no means my business to relate memoirs of his acquaintance; but it will serve to show the character of Johnson himself, when I inform those who never knew him that no man told a story with so good a grace, or knew so well what would make an effect upon his auditors. When he raised contributions for some distressed author, or wit in want, he often made us all more than amends by diverting descriptions of the lives they were then pa.s.sing in corners unseen by anybody but himself; and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the out-pensioners, and of whom he said most truly and sublimely that--

"In misery's darkest caverns known, His useful care was ever nigh, Where hopeless anguish pours her groan, And lonely want retires to die."

I have forgotten the year, but it could scarcely I think be later than 1765 or 1766, that he was called abruptly from our house after dinner, and returning in about three hours, said he had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor could he step out of doors to offer it to sale. Mr.

Johnson therefore set away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and desiring some immediate relief; which when he brought back to the writer, he called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pa.s.s their time in merriment.

It was not till ten years after, I dare say, that something in Dr.

Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an idea that he was the very man, and then Johnson confessed it was so; the novel was the charming "Vicar of Wakefield."

There was a Mr. Boyce, too, who wrote some very elegant verses printed in the magazines of five-and-twenty years ago, of whose ingenuity and distress I have heard Dr. Johnson tell some curious anecdotes, particularly that when he was almost perishing with hunger, and some money was produced to purchase him a dinner, he got a piece of roast beef, but could not eat it without ketchup, and laid out the last half- guinea he possessed in truffles and mushrooms, eating them in bed, too, for want of clothes, or even a shirt to sit up in.

Another man, for whom he often begged, made as wild use of his friend's beneficence as these, spending in punch the solitary guinea which had been brought him one morning; when resolving to add another claimant to a share of the bowl, besides a woman who always lived with him, and a footman who used to carry out pet.i.tions for charity, he borrowed a chairman's watch, and p.a.w.ning it for half-a-crown, paid a clergyman to marry him to a fellow-lodger in the wretched house they all inhabited, and got so drunk over the guinea bowl of punch the evening of his wedding- day, that having many years lost the use of one leg, he now contrived to fall from the top of the stairs to the bottom, and break his arm, in which condition his companions left him to call Mr. Johnson, who, relating the series of his tragi-comical distresses obtained from the Literary Club a seasonable relief.

Of that respectable society I have heard him speak in the highest terms, and with a magnificent panegyric on each member, when it consisted only of a dozen or fourteen friends; but as soon as the necessity of enlarging it brought in new faces, and took off from his confidence in the company, he grew less fond of the meeting, and loudly proclaimed his carelessness _who_ might be admitted, when it was become a mere dinner club. I _think_ the original names, when I first heard him talk with fervour of every member's peculiar powers of instructing or delighting mankind, were Sir John Hawkins, Mr. Burke, Mr. Langton, Mr. Beauclerc, Dr. Percy, Dr.

Nugent, Dr. Goldsmith, Sir Robert Chambers, Mr. Dyer, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom he called their Romulus, or said somebody else of the company called him so, which was more likely: but this was, I believe, in the year 1775 or 1776. It was a supper meeting then, and I fancy Dr.

Nugent ordered an omelet sometimes on a Friday or Sat.u.r.day night; for I remember Mr. Johnson felt very painful sensations at the sight of that dish soon after his death, and cried, "Ah, my poor dear friend! I shall never eat omelet with _thee_ again!" quite in an agony. The truth is, n.o.body suffered more from pungent sorrow at a friend's death than Johnson, though he would suffer no one else to complain of their losses in the same way; "for," says he, "we must either outlive our friends, you know, or our friends must outlive us; and I see no man that would hesitate about the choice."

Mr. Johnson loved late hours extremely, or more properly hated early ones. Nothing was more terrifying to him than the idea of retiring to bed, which he never would call going to rest, or suffer another to call so. "I lie down," said he, "that my acquaintance may sleep; but I lie down to endure oppressive misery, and soon rise again to pa.s.s the night in anxiety and pain." By this pathetic manner, which no one ever possessed in so eminent a degree, he used to shock me from quitting his company, till I hurt my own health not a little by sitting up with him when I was myself far from well; nor was it an easy matter to oblige him even by compliance, for he always maintained that no one forbore their own gratifications for the sake of pleasing another, and if one _did_ sit up it was probably to amuse oneself. Some right, however, he certainly had to say so, as he made his company exceedingly entertaining when he had once forced one, by his vehement lamentations and piercing reproofs, not to quit the room, but to sit quietly and make tea for him, as I often did in London till four o'clock in the morning. At Streatham, indeed, I managed better, having always some friend who was kind enough to engage him in talk, and favour my retreat.

The first time I ever saw this extraordinary man was in the year 1764, when Mr. Murphy, who had been long the friend and confidential intimate of Mr. Thrale, persuaded him to wish for Johnson's conversation, extolling it in terms which that of no other person could have deserved, till we were only in doubt how to obtain his company, and find an excuse for the invitation. The celebrity of Mr. Woodhouse, a shoemaker, whose verses were at that time the subject of common discourse, soon afforded a pretence, and Mr. Murphy brought Johnson to meet him, giving me general cautions not to be surprised at his figure, dress, or behaviour. What I recollect best of the day's talk was his earnestly recommending Addison's works to Mr. Woodhouse as a model for imitation. "Give nights and days, sir," said he, "to the study of Addison, if you mean either to be a good writer, or what is more worth, an honest man." When I saw something like the same expression in his criticism on that author, lately published, I put him in mind of his past injunctions to the young poet, to which he replied, "that he wished the shoemaker might have remembered them as well." Mr. Johnson liked his new acquaintance so much, however, that, from that time he dined with us every Thursday through the winter, and in the autumn of the next year he followed us to Brighthelmstone, whence we were gone before his arrival; so he was disappointed and enraged, and wrote us a letter expressive of anger, which we were very desirous to pacify, and to obtain his company again, if possible. Mr. Murphy brought him back to us again very kindly, and from that time his visits grew more frequent, till in the year 1766 his health, which he had always complained of, grew so exceedingly bad, that he could not stir out of his room in the court he inhabited for many _weeks_ together--I think _months_.

Mr. Thrale's attentions and my own now became so acceptable to him, that he often lamented to us the horrible condition of his mind, which he said was nearly distracted; and though he charged _us_ to make him odd solemn promises of secrecy on so strange a subject, yet when we waited on him one morning, and heard him, in the most pathetic terms, beg the prayers of Dr. Delap, who had left him as we came in, I felt excessively affected with grief, and well remember my husband involuntarily lifted up one hand to shut his mouth, from provocation at hearing a man so wildly proclaim what he could at last persuade no one to believe, and what, if true, would have been so very unfit to reveal.

Mr. Thrale went away soon after, leaving me with him, and bidding me prevail on him to quit his close habitation in the court and come with us to Streatham, where I undertook the care of his health, and had the honour and happiness of contributing to its restoration. This task, though distressing enough sometimes, would have been less so had not my mother and he disliked one another extremely, and teased me often with perverse opposition, petty contentions, and mutual complaints. Her superfluous attention to such accounts of the foreign politics as are transmitted to us by the daily prints, and her willingness to talk on subjects he could not endure, began the aversion; and when, by the peculiarity of his style, she found out that he teased her by writing in the newspapers concerning battles and plots which had no existence, only to feed her with new accounts of the division of Poland, perhaps, or the disputes between the States of Russia and Turkey, she was exceedingly angry, to be sure, and scarcely, I think, forgave the offence till the domestic distresses of the year 1772 reconciled them to and taught them the true value of each other, excellent as _they both_ were, far beyond the excellence of any other man and woman I ever yet saw. As her conduct, too, extorted his truest esteem, her cruel illness excited all his tenderness, nor was the sight of beauty, scarce to be subdued by disease, and wit, flashing through the apprehension of evil, a scene which Dr. Johnson could see without sensibility. He acknowledged himself improved by her piety, and astonished at her fort.i.tude, and hung over her bed with the affection of a parent, and the reverence of a son. Nor did it give me less pleasure to see her sweet mind cleared of all its latent prejudices, and left at liberty to admire and applaud that force of thought and versatility of genius, that comprehensive soul and benevolent heart, which attracted and commanded veneration from all, but inspired peculiar sensations of delight mixed with reverence in those who, like her, had the opportunity to observe these qualities stimulated by grat.i.tude, and actuated by friendship. When Mr. Thrale's perplexities disturbed his peace, dear Dr. Johnson left him scarce a moment, and tried every artifice to amuse as well as every argument to console him: nor is it more possible to describe than to forget his prudent, his pious attentions towards the man who had some years before certainly saved his valuable life, perhaps his reason, by half obliging him to change the foul air of Fleet Street for the wholesome breezes of the Suss.e.x Downs.

The epitaph engraved on my mother's monument shows how deserving she was of general applause. I asked Johnson why he named her person before her mind. He said it was "because everybody could judge of the one, and but few of the other."

_Juxta sepulta est_ HESTERA MARIA _Thomae Cotton de Combermere baronetti Cestriensis filia_, _Johannis Salusbury armigeri Flintiensis uxor_.

_Forma felix, felix ingenio_: _Omnibus jucunda_, _suorum amantissima_.

_Linguis artibusque ita exculta_ _Ut loquenti nunquam deessent_ _Sermonis nitor_, _sententiarum flosculi_, _Sapientiae gravitas_, _leporum gratia_: _Modum servandi adeo perita_, _Ut domestica inter negotia literis oblectaretur_.

_Literarum inter delicias_, _rem familiarem sedulo curaret_, _Multis illi multos annos precantibus_ _diri carcinomatis veneno contabuit_, _nexibusque vitae paulatim resolutis_, _e terris_--_meliora sperans_--_emigravit_.

_Nata_ 1707. _Nupta_ 1739. _Obiit_ 1773.

Mr. Murphy, who admired her talents and delighted in her company, did me the favour to paraphrase this elegant inscription in verses which I fancy have never yet been published. His fame has long been out of my power to increase as a poet: as a man of sensibility perhaps these lines may set him higher than he now stands. I remember with grat.i.tude the friendly tears which prevented him from speaking as he put them into my hand.

Near this place Are deposited the remains of HESTER MARIA, The daughter of Sir Thomas Cotton of Combermere, in the county of Cheshire, Bart., the wife of John Salusbury, of the county of Flint, Esquire. She was born in the year 1707, married in 1739, and died in 1773.

A pleasing form, where every grace combined, With genius blest, a pure enlightened mind; Benevolence on all that smiles bestowed, A heart that for her friends with love o'erflowed: In language skilled, by science formed to please, Her mirth was wit, her gravity was ease.

Graceful in all, the happy mien she knew, Which even to virtue gives the limits due; Whate'er employed her, that she seemed to choose, Her house, her friends, her business, or the muse.

Admired and loved, the theme of general praise, All to such virtue wished a length of days.

But sad reverse! with slow-consuming pains, Th' envenomed cancer revelled in her veins; Preyed on her spirits--stole each power away; Gradual she sank, yet smiling in decay; She smiled in hope, by sore affliction tried, And in that hope the pious Christian died.

The following epitaph on Mr. Thrale, who has now a monument close by hers in Streatham Church, I have seen printed and commended in Maty's Review for April, 1784; and a friend has favoured me with the translation:--

Hic conditur quod reliquum est HENRICI THRALE, Qui res seu civiles, seu domesticas, ita egit, Ut vitam illi longiorem multi optarent; Ita sacras, Ut quam brevem esset habiturus praescire videretur.

Simplex, apertus, sibique semper similis, Nihil ostentavit aut arte fictum aut cura Elaboratum.

In senatu, regi patriaeque Fideliter studuit; Vulgi obstrepentis contemptor animosus, Domi inter mille mercaturae negotia Literarum elegantiam minime neglexit.

Amicis quocunque modo laborantibus, Conciliis, auctoritate, muneribus adfuit.

Inter familiares, comites, convivas, hospites, Tam facili fuit morum suavitate Ut omnium animos ad se alliceret; Tam felici sermonis libertate Ut nulli adulatus, omnibus placeret.

Natus 1724. Ob. 1781.

Consortes tumuli habet Rodolphum patrem, strenuum fortemque virum, et Henric.u.m filium unic.u.m, quem spei parentum mors inopina decennem praeripuit.

Ita Domus felix et opulenta, quam erexit Avus, auxitque pater, c.u.m nepote decidit.

Abi viator!

Et vicibus rerum humanarum perspectis,

AEternitatem cogita!

Here are deposited the remains of HENRY THRALE, Who managed all his concerns in the present world, public and private, in such a manner as to leave many wishing he had continued longer in it; And all that related to a future world, as if he had been sensible how short a time he was to continue in this.

Simple, open, and uniform in his manners, his conduct was without either art or affectation.

In the senate steadily attentive to the true interests of his king and country, He looked down with contempt on the clamours of the mult.i.tude: Though engaged in a very extensive business, He found some time to apply to polite literature And was ever ready to a.s.sist his friends labouring under any difficulties, with his advice, his influence, and his purse.

To his friends, acquaintance, and guests, he behaved with such sweetness of manners as to attach them all to his person: So happy in his conversation with them, as to please all, though he flattered none.

He was born in the year 1724, and died in 1781.

In the same tomb lie interred his father, Ralph Thrale, a man of vigour and activity, And his only son Henry, who died before his father, Aged ten years.

Thus a happy and opulent family, Raised by the grandfather, and augmented by the father, became extinguished with the grandson.

Go, Reader!