with the use of them? I know, if you can oblige us, you will make
no bones of it; if you cannot, it shall break none betwixt us. We
might ask somebody else; but we do not like the bones of any
strange animal. We should be welcome to dear Mrs. Liston's, but
then she is so plump, there is no getting at them. I should prefer
Miss Iver's--they must be ivory I take it for granted--but she is
married to Mr. ----, and become bone of his bone, consequently can
have none of her own to dispose of. Well, it all comes to this,--if
you can let us have them, you will, I dare say; if you cannot, God
rest your bones. I am almost at the end of my bon-mots.
C. LAMB.
9th _July_, 1819.
This characteristic note in Lamb's best punning manner ("I fancy I
succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns and that nonsense") may be
regarded as a prologue to the drama played ten days later, the whole
occupying but the space of a single day.
[Illustration: Dear Miss Kelly,--
If your Bones are not engaged on Monday night, will you favor us with
the use of them? I know, if you can oblige us, you will make no bones of
it; if you cannot, it shall break none betwixt us. We might ask somebody
else, but we do not like the bones of any strange animal. We should be
welcome to dear Mrs. Listons, but then she is so plump, there is no
getting at them. I should prefer Miss Iver's--they must be ivory I take
it for granted--but she is married to Mr. ----, and become bone of his
bone, consequently can have none of her own to dispose of. Well, it all
comes to this,--if you can let us have them, you will, I dare say; if
you cannot, God rest your bones. I am almost at the end of my bon-mots.
C Lamb
9th July, 1819]
And now the curtain is lifted on the play in which Lamb and Miss Kelly
are the chief actors. Lamb is in his lodgings in Great Russell Street,
Covent Garden, the individual spot he likes best in all London. Bow
Street Police Court can be seen through the window, and Mary Lamb seated
thereby, knitting, glances into the busy street as she sees a crowd of
people follow in the wake of a constable, conducting a thief to his
examination. Lamb is seated at a table, writing. We, unseen, may glance
over his shoulder and see the letter which he has just finished.
DEAR MISS KELLY,--
We had the pleasure, _pain_ I might better call it, of seeing you
last night in the new Play. It was a most consummate piece of
acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at a time when your
heart is sore from real sorrow! It has given rise to a train of
thinking which I cannot suppress.
Would to God you were released from this way of life; that you
could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and
throw off forever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither
expect nor wish you to take notice of this which I am writing, in
your present over-occupied & hurried state.--But to think of it at
your pleasure. I have quite income enough, if that were to justify
me for making such a proposal, with what I may call even a handsome
provision for my survivor. What you possess of your own would
naturally be appropriated to those for whose sakes chiefly you have
made so many hard sacrifices. I am not so foolish as not to know
that I am a most unworthy match for such a one as you, but you have
for years been a principal object in my mind. In many a sweet
assumed character I have learned to love you, but simply as F. M.
Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these shadows
of existence, & come & be a reality to us? Can you leave off
harassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know
nothing of you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?
As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse assent in
some feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It
is impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me
at once, that the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that
I should ever think of molesting you with idle importunity and
persecution after your mind [is] once firmly spoken--but happier,
far happier, could I have leave to hope a time might come when our
friends might be your friends; our interests yours; our
book-knowledge, if in that inconsiderable particular we have any
little advantage, might impart something to you, which you would
every day have it in your power ten thousand fold to repay by the
added cheerfulness and joy which you could not fail to bring as a
dowry into whatever family should have the honor and happiness of
receiving _you_, the most welcome accession that could be made to
it.
In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I subscribe
myself
C. LAMB.
20 _July_, 1819.
No punning or nonsense here. It is the most serious letter Lamb ever
wrote--a letter so fine, so manly, so honorable in the man who wrote it,
so honoring to the woman to whom it was addressed, that, knowing Lamb as
we do, it can hardly be read without a lump in the throat and eyes
suffused with tears.
The letter is folded and sealed and sent by a serving-maid to the lady,
who lives hard by in Henrietta Street, just the other side of Covent
Garden--and the curtain falls.
Before the next act we are at liberty to wonder how Lamb passed the time
while Miss Kelly was writing her reply. Did he go off to the "dull
drudgery of the desk's dead wood" at East India House, and there busy
himself with the prices of silks or tea or indigo, or did he wander
about the streets of his beloved London? I fancy the latter. In any
event the curtain rises a few hours later, and Lamb and his sister are
seen as before. She has laid aside her knitting. It is late afternoon.
Lamb is seated at the table endeavoring to read, when a maid enters and
hands him a letter; he breaks the seal eagerly. Again we look over his
shoulder and read:--
HENRIETTA STREET, _July_ 20th, 1819.
An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from
whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it, but
while I thus frankly & decidedly decline your proposal, believe me,
I am not insensible to the high honour which the preference of such
a mind as yours confers upon me--let me, however, hope that all
thought upon this subject will end with this letter, & that you
henceforth encourage no other sentiment towards me than esteem in
my private character and a continuance of that approbation of my
humble talents which you have already expressed so much and so
often to my advantage and gratification.
Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself
Your obliged friend
F. M. KELLY.
Lamb rises from his chair and attempts to walk over to where Mary is
sitting; but his feelings overcome him, and he sinks back in his chair
again as the curtain falls.
It moves quickly, the action of this little drama. The curtain is down
but a moment, suggesting the passage of a single hour. When it is
raised, Lamb is alone; he is but forty-five, but looks an old man. The
curtains are drawn, lighted candles are on the table. We hear the rain
against the windows. Lamb is writing, and for the last time we intrude
upon his privacy.
Now poor Charles Lamb, now dear Charles Lamb, "Saint Charles," if you
will! Our hearts go out to him; we would comfort him if we could. But
read slowly one of the finest letters in all literature: a letter in
which he accepts defeat instantly, but with a smile on his face; tears
there may have been in his eyes, but she was not to see them. See Lamb
in his supreme rôle--_of a man_. How often had he urged his friends to
play that difficult part--which no one could play better than he. The
letter reads:--
DEAR MISS KELLY,--
_Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle._ I feel myself in a
lackadaisical no-how-ish kind of a humor. I believe it is the rain,
or something. I had thought to have written seriously, but I fancy
I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns & that nonsense. You
will be good friends with us, will you not? Let what has past
"break no bones" between us. You will not refuse us them next time
we send for them?
Yours very truly,
C. L.
P.S. Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name?
N.B. Do not paste that last letter of mine into your book.
We sometimes, mistakenly, say that the English are not good losers. To
think of Charles Lamb may help us to correct that opinion.
All good plays of the period have an epilogue. By all means this should
have one; and ten days later Lamb himself provided it. It appeared in
"The Examiner," where, speaking of Fanny Kelly's acting in "The
Hypocrite," he said,--
"She is in truth not framed to tease or torment even in jest, but to
utter a hearty Yes or No; to yield or refuse assent with a noble
sincerity. We have not the pleasure of being acquainted with her, but we
have been told that she carries the same cordial manners into private
life."
The curtain falls! The play is at an end.
[Illustration: Charles and Mary Lamb]
VI
JAMES BOSWELL--HIS BOOK
Sitting one evening with my favorite book and enjoying the company of a
crackling wood fire, I was interrupted by a cheerful idiot who, entering
unheard, announced himself with the remark, "This is what I call a
library." Indifferent to a forced welcome, he looked about him and
continued, "I see you are fond of Boswell. I always preferred Macaulay's
'Life of Johnson' to Boswell's--it's so much shorter. I read it in
college."
Argument would have been wasted on him. If he had been alone in his
opinion, I would have killed him and thus exterminated the species; but
he is only one of a large class, who having once read Macaulay's essay,
and that years ago, feel that they have received a peculiar insight into
the character of Samuel Johnson and have a patent to sneer at his
biographer.
Having a case of books by and about the dear old Doctor, I have acquired
a reputation that plagues me. People ask to see my collection, not that
they know anything about it, or care, but simply to please me, as they
think. Climbing to unusual intellectual heights, when safe at the top,
where there is said to be always room, they look about and with a
knowing leer murmur, "Oh! rare Ben!" I have become quite expert at
lowering them from their dangerous position without showing them the
depths of their ignorance. This is a feat which demands such skill as
can be acquired only by long practice.
Macaulay's essay is anathema to me. If it were a food-product, the
authorities would long since have suppressed it on account of its
artificial coloring matter; but prep.-school teachers and college
professors go on "requiring" its reading from sheer force of habit; and
as long as they continue to do so, the true Samuel Johnson and the real
James Boswell will both remain unknown.
Out of a thousand who have read this famous essay and remember its
wonderfully balanced sentences, which stick in the memory like burrs in
the hair, perhaps not more than one will be able to recall the
circumstances under which it was written. Purporting to be a review of a
new edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," edited by John Wilson
Croker, it is really a personal attack on a bitter political enemy.
Written at a time when political feeling ran high, it begins with a lie.
Using the editorial "We," Macaulay opens by saying, "We are sorry to be
obliged to say that the merits of Mr. Croker's performance are on a par
with those of a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined while
travelling from London to Oxford, and which he, with characteristic
energy, pronounced to be as bad as could be."
[Illustration: JAMES BOSWELL OF AUCHINLECK, ESQR.
_Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by John Jones_]
Let us see how sorry Macaulay really was. In a letter written to his
sister just before Croker's book appeared he writes: "I am to review
Croker's edition of Bozzy.... I detest Croker more than cold boiled
veal.... See whether I do not dust the varlet's jacket in the next
number of the 'Edinburgh Review.'" And he did, and the cloud of dust he
then raised obscured Johnson, settled on Boswell, and for a time almost
smothered him.
I suspect that Macaulay prepared himself for writing his smashing
article by reading Croker's book through in half a dozen evenings,
pencil in hand, searching for blemishes. After that, his serious work
began. Blinded by his hatred of the editor, he makes Johnson grotesque
and repulsive, and grossly insults Boswell. He started with the premise
that Boswell was mean, but that his book was great. Then the proposition
defined itself in his mind something like this: Boswell was one of the
smallest men that ever lived, yet his "Life of Johnson" is one of the
greatest books ever written. Boswell was always laying himself at the
feet of some eminent man, begging to be spit upon and trampled upon, yet
as a biographer he ranks with Shakespeare as a dramatist; and so he goes
on, until at last, made dizzy by the sweep of his verbal seesaw and the
lilt of his own brutal rhetoric, he finally reaches the conclusion that,
_because_ Boswell was a great fool, he was a very great writer.
Absurdity can go no further. Well may we ask ourselves what Boswell had
done to be thus pilloried? Nothing! except that he had written a book
which is universally admitted to be the best book of its kind in any
language.
What manner of a man was James Boswell? He was, more than most men, a
mass of contradictions. It would never, I think, have been easy to
answer this question. Since Macaulay answered it, in his cocksure way,
and answered it wrongly, to answer it rightly is most difficult. It is
so easy to keep ringing the changes on Macaulay. Any fool with a pen can
do it. Some time ago, apropos of the effort being made to preserve the
house in Great Queen Street, in London, in which Boswell lived when he
wrote the biography, some foolish writer in a magazine said, "Boswell
shrivels more and more as we look at him.... It would be absurd to
preserve a memorial to him alone."--"Shrivels!" Impossible! Johnson and
Boswell as a partnership have been too long established for either
member of the firm to "shrivel." Unconsciously perhaps, but consciously
I think, Boswell has so managed it that, when the senior partner is
thought of, the junior also comes to mind. Johnson's contribution to the
business was experience and unlimited common sense; Boswell made him
responsible for output: the product was words, merely spoken words,
either of wisdom or of wit. Distribution is quite as important as
production--any railroad man will tell you so. Boswell had a genius for
packing and delivering the goods so that they are, if anything, improved
by time and transportation.
Let me have one more fling at Macaulay. He missed, and for his sins he
deserved to miss, two good things without which this world would be a
sad place. He had no wife and he had no sense of humor. Either would
have told him that he was writing sheer nonsense when he said, "The very
wife of his [Boswell's] bosom laughed at his fooleries." What are wives
for, I should like to know, if not to laugh at us?
But reputation is like a pendulum, and it is now swinging from Macaulay.
James Boswell is coming into his own. The biographer will outlive the
essayist, brilliant and wonderful writer though he be; and I venture the
prophecy that, when the traveler from New Zealand takes his stand on the
ruined arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, he will
have a pocket edition of Boswell with him, in which to read something of
the lives of those strange people who inhabited that vast solitude when
it was called London.
* * * * *
James Boswell was born in 1740. His father was a Scottish judge, with
the title of Lord Auchinleck. Auchinleck is in Ayrshire, and the estate
had belonged to the Boswells for over two hundred years when the
biographer of Johnson was born. As a young man, he was rather a trial to
his father, and showed his ability chiefly in circumventing the old
man's wishes. The father destined him for the law; but he was not a good
student, and was fond of society; so the choice of the son was for the
army.
We, however, know Boswell better than he knew himself, and we know that
when he fancied that he heard the call to arms, what he really wanted
was to parade around in a scarlet uniform and make love to the ladies.
But even in those early days there must have been something attractive
about him, for when he and his father went up to London to solicit the
good offices of the Duke of Argyle to secure a commission for him, the
duke is reported to have declined, saying, "My Lord, I like your son.
The boy must not be shot at for three shillings and six-pence a day."
Boswell was only twenty when he first heard of the greatness of Samuel
Johnson and formed a desire to meet him; but it was not until several
years later that the great event occurred. What a meeting it was! It
seems almost to have been foreordained. A proud, flippant, pushing young
particle, irresponsible and practically unknown, meets one of the most
distinguished men then living in London, a man more than thirty years
his senior and in almost every respect his exact opposite, and so
carries himself that, in spite of a rebuff or two at the start, we find
Johnson a few days later shaking him by the hand and asking him why he
does not come oftener to see him.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DR. JOHNSON BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, PROBABLY
IDEALIZED. THE DOCTOR IS WEARING A TIE-WIG AND HOLDS A COPY OF "IRENE"
_Engraved by Zobel_]
The description of the first meeting between Johnson and Boswell,
written many years afterwards, is a favorite passage with all good
Boswellians. "At last, on Monday, the 16th of May[10] [1763], when I was
sitting in Mr. Davies' back parlour, after having drunk tea with him
and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr.
Davies, having perceived him through the glass-door in the room in which
we were sitting, advancing toward us,--he announced his aweful approach
to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when
he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, 'Look, my
Lord, it comes!'"
This is a good example of Boswell's style. In the fewest possible words
he creates a picture which one never forgets. We not only hear the talk,
we see the company, and soon come to know every member of it.
Without this meeting the world would have lost one of the most
delightful books ever written, Boswell himself would probably never have
been heard of, and Johnson to-day would be a mere name instead of being,
as he is, next to Shakespeare, the most quoted of English authors. As
Augustine Birrell has pointed out, we have only talk _about_ other
talkers. Johnson's is a matter of record. Johnson stamped his image on
his own generation, but it required the genius of Boswell to make him
known to ours, and to all generations to come. "Great as Johnson is,"
says Burke, "he is greater in Boswell's books than in his own." That we
now speak of the "Age of Johnson" is due rather to Boswell than to the
author of the "Dictionary," "Rasselas," and endless "Ramblers."
Someone has said that the three greatest characters in English
literature are Falstaff, Mr. Pickwick, and Dr. Johnson. Had James
Boswell created the third of this great trio, he would indeed rank with
Shakespeare and with Dickens; but Johnson was his own creation, and
Boswell, posing as an artist, painted his portrait as mortal man has
never been painted before. In his pages we see the many-sided Johnson,
the great burly philosopher, scholar, wit, and ladies' man--Boswell
makes him a shade too austere--more clearly than any other man who ever
lived. As a portrait-painter, Boswell is the world's greatest artist;
and he is not simply a portrait-painter--he is unsurpassed at
composition, atmosphere, and color. His book is like Rembrandt's Night
Watch--the canvas is crowded, the portraits all are faultless and
distinct, but there is one dominating figure standing out from the
rest--one masterly, unsurpassed, and immortal figure.
Boswell, when he first met Johnson, was twenty-two years of age. A year
later he writes him: "It shall be my study to do what I can to render
your life happy; and if you die before me, I shall endeavor to do honor
to your memory." He kept his word. From that hour almost to the time of
Johnson's death (I say almost, for just before the end there seems to
have fallen upon their friendship a shadow, the cause of which has never
been fully explained), they were unreservedly friends. Superficially
they had little in common, but in essentials, all that was important;
and they supplemented each other as no two men have ever done before or
since. Reading the Life casually, as it is usually read, one would
suppose that they were very much together; but such is not the case.
Birkbeck Hill, Boswell's most painstaking editor, has calculated that,
including the time when Boswell and Johnson were together in the
Hebrides, they could have seen each other only for 790 days in all; and
this on the assumption that Boswell, when in London, was always in
Johnson's company, which we know was not the case; moreover, when they
were apart there were gaps of years in their correspondence.
Boswell, however, weaves the story of Johnson's life so skillfully that
we come to have the feeling that whenever Johnson was going to say
anything important, Boswell was at his side. Johnson, in speaking of his
Dictionary once said, "Why, Sir, I knew very well how to go about it and
have done it very well." Boswell could have said the same of his great
work. We had no great biography before his, and in comparison we have
had none since. The combination of so great a subject for portraiture
and so great an artist had never occurred before and may never occur
again. Geniuses ordinarily do not run in couples.
Boswell hoped that his book would bring him fame. Over it he labored at
a time when labor was especially difficult for him. For it he was
prepared to sacrifice himself, his friends, anything. Whatever would add
to his book's value he would include, at whatever cost. A more careful
and exact biographer never lived. Reynolds said of him that he wrote as
if he were under oath; and we all remember the reply he made to Hannah
More, who, when she heard he was engaged in writing the life of her
revered friend, urged him to mitigate somewhat the asperities of his
disposition: "No, madam, I will not cut his claws or make my tiger a cat
to please anyone."
And for writing this book Boswell has been held up to almost universal
scorn. His defenders have been few and faint-hearted. I have never
derived much satisfaction from Boswell's rescue (the word is Lowell's)
by Carlyle. That unhappy old dyspeptic, unable to enjoy a good dinner
himself, could not forgive Boswell his gusto for the good things of
life.
What were Boswell's faults above those of other men, that stones should
be thrown at him? He drank too much! True, but what of it? Who in his
day did not? Johnson records that many of the most respectable people in
his cathedral city of Lichfield went nightly to bed drunk.
He was an unfaithful husband! Admitted; but Mrs. Boswell forgave him,
and why should not we?
He was proud! He was, but the pride of race is not unheard of in the
scion of an old family; nor did he allow his pride to prevent his
attaching himself to an old man who admitted that he hardly knew who was
his grandfather.
He had a taste for knowing people highly placed! He had, and he came to
number among his friends the greatest scholar, the greatest poet, the
greatest painter, the greatest actor, the greatest historian, and most
of the great statesmen of his day; and these men, though they laughed
with him frequently, and at him sometimes, did not think him altogether
a fool.
He was vain and foolish! Yes, and inquisitive; yet while neither wise
nor witty himself, he had an exquisite appreciation of wit in others. He
carried repartees and arguments with accuracy. Mrs. Thrale very cleverly
said that his long-head was better than short-hand; yet, as some one has
pointed out, to follow the hum of conversation with so much intelligence
required unusual quickness of apprehension and cannot be reconciled with
the opinion that he was simply endowed with memory.
He lived beyond his means and got into debt! I seem to have heard
something of this of other men whose fathers were not enjoying a
comfortable estate and whose children were not adequately provided for.
Let there be an end to a discussion of the weaknesses of Boswell. They
have been sufficiently advertised and his good qualities overlooked. If
a man is a genius, let his personal shortcomings be absorbed in the
greatness of his work. The worst that can be fairly said of Boswell is
that he was vain, inquisitive, and foolish. Let us forget the silly
questions he sometimes put to Johnson, and remember how often he started
something which made the old Doctor perform at his unrivaled best.