THE CLOSING YEARS OF JOHNSON'S LIFE.
In following Boswell's guidance we have necessarily seen only one side
of Johnson's life; and probably that side which had least significance
for the man himself.
Boswell saw in him chiefly the great dictator of conversation; and
though the reports of Johnson's talk represent his character in spite of
some qualifications with unusual fulness, there were many traits very
inadequately revealed at the Mitre or the Club, at Mrs. Thrale's, or in
meetings with Wilkes or Reynolds. We may catch some glimpses from his
letters and diaries of that inward life which consisted generally in a
long succession of struggles against an oppressive and often paralysing
melancholy. Another most noteworthy side to his character is revealed in
his relations to persons too humble for admission to the tables at which
he exerted a despotic sway. Upon this side Johnson was almost entirely
loveable. We often have to regret the imperfection of the records of
That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
Everywhere in Johnson's letters and in the occasional anecdotes, we come
upon indications of a tenderness and untiring benevolence which would
make us forgive far worse faults than have ever been laid to his
charge. Nay, the very asperity of the man's outside becomes endeared to
us by the association. His irritability never vented itself against the
helpless, and his rough impatience of fanciful troubles implied no want
of sympathy for real sorrow. One of Mrs. Thrale's anecdotes is intended
to show Johnson's harshness:--"When I one day lamented the loss of a
first cousin killed in America, 'Pr'ythee, my dear,' said he, 'have done
with canting; how would the world be the worse for it, I may ask, if all
your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto's
supper?' Presto was the dog that lay under the table while we talked."
The counter version, given by Boswell is, that Mrs. Thrale related her
cousin's death in the midst of a hearty supper, and that Johnson,
shocked at her want of feeling, said, "Madam, it would give _you_ very
little concern if all your relations were spitted like those larks, and
roasted for Presto's supper." Taking the most unfavourable version, we
may judge how much real indifference to human sorrow was implied by
seeing how Johnson was affected by a loss of one of his humblest
friends. It is but one case of many. In 1767, he took leave, as he notes
in his diary, of his "dear old friend, Catherine Chambers," who had been
for about forty-three years in the service of his family. "I desired all
to withdraw," he says, "then told her that we were to part for ever,
and, as Christians, we should part with prayer, and that I would, if she
was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire
to hear me, and held up her poor hands as she lay in bed, with great
fervour, while I prayed, kneeling by her, in nearly the following
words"--which shall not be repeated here--"I then kissed her," he adds.
"She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever felt,
and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed,
with swelled eyes, and great emotion of kindness, the same hopes. We
kissed and parted--I humbly hope to meet again and part no more."
A man with so true and tender a heart could say serenely, what with some
men would be a mere excuse for want of sympathy, that he "hated to hear
people whine about metaphysical distresses when there was so much want
and hunger in the world." He had a sound and righteous contempt for all
affectation of excessive sensibility. Suppose, said Boswell to him,
whilst their common friend Baretti was lying under a charge of murder,
"that one of your intimate friends were apprehended for an offence for
which he might be hanged." "I should do what I could," replied Johnson,
"to bail him, and give him any other assistance; but if he were once
fairly hanged, I should not suffer." "Would you eat your dinner that
day, sir?" asks Boswell. "Yes, sir; and eat it as if he were eating with
me. Why there's Baretti, who's to be tried for his life to-morrow.
Friends have risen up for him upon every side; yet if he should be
hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plum-pudding the less. Sir,
that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in depressing the mind."
Boswell illustrated the subject by saying that Tom Davies had just
written a letter to Foote, telling him that he could not sleep from
concern about Baretti, and at the same time recommending a young man who
kept a pickle-shop. Johnson summed up by the remark: "You will find
these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They _pay_
you by _feeling_." Johnson never objected to feeling, but to the waste
of feeling.
In a similar vein he told Mrs. Thrale that a "surly fellow" like
himself had no compassion to spare for "wounds given to vanity and
softness," whilst witnessing the common sight of actual want in great
cities. On Lady Tavistock's death, said to have been caused by grief for
her husband's loss, he observed that her life might have been saved if
she had been put into a small chandler's shop, with a child to nurse.
When Mrs. Thrale suggested that a lady would be grieved because her
friend had lost the chance of a fortune, "She will suffer as much,
perhaps," he replied, "as your horse did when your cow miscarried." Mrs.
Thrale testifies that he once reproached her sternly for complaining of
the dust. When he knew, he said, how many poor families would perish
next winter for want of the bread which the drought would deny, he could
not bear to hear ladies sighing for rain on account of their complexions
or their clothes. While reporting such sayings, she adds, that he loved
the poor as she never saw any one else love them, with an earnest desire
to make them happy. His charity was unbounded; he proposed to allow
himself one hundred a year out of the three hundred of his pension; but
the Thrales could never discover that he really spent upon himself more
than 70_l_., or at most 80_l_. He had numerous dependants, abroad as
well as at home, who "did not like to see him latterly, unless he
brought 'em money." He filled his pockets with small cash which he
distributed to beggars in defiance of political economy. When told that
the recipients only laid it out upon gin or tobacco, he replied that it
was savage to deny them the few coarse pleasures which the richer
disdained. Numerous instances are given of more judicious charity. When,
for example, a Benedictine monk, whom he had seen in Paris, became a
Protestant, Johnson supported him for some months in London, till he
could get a living. Once coming home late at night, he found a poor
woman lying in the street. He carried her to his house on his back, and
found that she was reduced to the lowest stage of want, poverty, and
disease. He took care of her at his own charge, with all tenderness,
until she was restored to health, and tried to have her put into a
virtuous way of living. His house, in his later years, was filled with
various waifs and strays, to whom he gave hospitality and sometimes
support, defending himself by saying that if he did not help them nobody
else would. The head of his household was Miss Williams, who had been a
friend of his wife's, and after coming to stay with him, in order to
undergo an operation for cataract, became a permanent inmate of his
house. She had a small income of some 40_l_. a year, partly from the
charity of connexions of her father's, and partly arising from a little
book of miscellanies published by subscription. She was a woman of some
sense and cultivation, and when she died (in 1783) Johnson said that for
thirty years she had been to him as a sister. Boswell's jealousy was
excited during the first period of his acquaintance, when Goldsmith one
night went home with Johnson, crying "I go to Miss Williams"--a phrase
which implied admission to an intimacy from which Boswell was as yet
excluded. Boswell soon obtained the coveted privilege, and testifies to
the respect with which Johnson always treated the inmates of his family.
Before leaving her to dine with Boswell at the hotel, he asked her what
little delicacy should be sent to her from the tavern. Poor Miss
Williams, however, was peevish, and, according to Hawkins, had been
known to drive Johnson out of the room by her reproaches, and Boswell's
delicacy was shocked by the supposition that she tested the fulness of
cups of tea, by putting her finger inside. We are glad to know that
this was a false impression, and, in fact, Miss Williams, however
unfortunate in temper and circumstances, seems to have been a lady by
manners and education.
The next inmate of this queer household was Robert Levett, a man who had
been a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris frequented by surgeons. They
had enabled him to pick up some of their art, and he set up as an
"obscure practiser in physic amongst the lower people" in London. He
took from them such fees as he could get, including provisions,
sometimes, unfortunately for him, of the potable kind. He was once
entrapped into a queer marriage, and Johnson had to arrange a separation
from his wife. Johnson, it seems, had a good opinion of his medical
skill, and more or less employed his services in that capacity. He
attended his patron at his breakfast; breakfasting, said Percy, "on the
crust of a roll, which Johnson threw to him after tearing out the
crumb." The phrase, it is said, goes too far; Johnson always took pains
that Levett should be treated rather as a friend than as a dependant.
Besides these humble friends, there was a Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter
of a Lichfield physician. Johnson had had some quarrel with the father
in his youth for revealing a confession of the mental disease which
tortured him from early years. He supported Mrs. Desmoulins none the
less, giving house-room to her and her daughter, and making her an
allowance of half-a-guinea a week, a sum equal to a twelfth part of his
pension. Francis Barker has already been mentioned, and we have a dim
vision of a Miss Carmichael, who completed what he facetiously called
his "seraglio." It was anything but a happy family. He summed up their
relations in a letter to Mrs. Thrale. "Williams," he says, "hates
everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams;
Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them."
Frank Barker complained of Miss Williams's authority, and Miss Williams
of Frank's insubordination. Intruders who had taken refuge under his
roof, brought their children there in his absence, and grumbled if their
dinners were ill-dressed. The old man bore it all, relieving himself by
an occasional growl, but reproaching any who ventured to join in the
growl for their indifference to the sufferings of poverty. Levett died
in January, 1782; Miss Williams died, after a lingering illness, in
1783, and Johnson grieved in solitude for the loss of his testy
companions. A poem, composed upon Levett's death, records his feelings
in language which wants the refinement of Goldsmith or the intensity of
Cowper's pathos, but which is yet so sincere and tender as to be more
impressive than far more elegant compositions. It will be a fitting
close to this brief indication of one side of Johnson's character, too
easily overlooked in Boswell's pages, to quote part of what Thackeray
truly calls the "sacred verses" upon Levett:--
Well tried through many a varying year
See Levett to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
In misery's darkest cavern known,
His ready help was ever nigh;
Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retired to die.
No summons mock'd by dull delay,
No petty gains disdain'd by pride;
The modest wants of every day,
The toil of every day supplied.
His virtues walk'd their narrow round,
Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
And sure the eternal Master found
His single talent well employed.
The busy day, the peaceful night,
Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
His frame was firm, his eye was bright,
Though now his eightieth year was nigh.
Then, with no throbs of fiery pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the easiest way.
The last stanza smells somewhat of the country tombstone; but to read
the whole and to realize the deep, manly sentiment which it implies,
without tears in one's eyes is to me at least impossible.
There is one little touch which may be added before we proceed to the
closing years of this tender-hearted old moralist. Johnson loved little
children, calling them "little dears," and cramming them with
sweetmeats, though we regret to add that he once snubbed a little child
rather severely for a want of acquaintance with the _Pilgrim's
Progress_. His cat, Hodge, should be famous amongst the lovers of the
race. He used to go out and buy oysters for Hodge, that the servants
might not take a dislike to the animal from having to serve it
themselves. He reproached his wife for beating a cat before the maid,
lest she should give a precedent for cruelty. Boswell, who cherished an
antipathy to cats, suffered at seeing Hodge scrambling up Johnson's
breast, whilst he smiled and rubbed the beast's back and pulled its
tail. Bozzy remarked that he was a fine cat. "Why, yes, sir," said
Johnson; "but I have had cats whom I liked better than this," and then,
lest Hodge should be put out of countenance, he added, "but he is a very
fine cat, a very fine cat indeed." He told Langton once of a young
gentleman who, when last heard of, was "running about town shooting
cats; but," he murmured in a kindly reverie, "Hodge shan't be shot; no,
no, Hodge shall not be shot!" Once, when Johnson was staying at a house
in Wales, the gardener brought in a hare which had been caught in the
potatoes. The order was given to take it to the cook. Johnson asked to
have it placed in his arms. He took it to the window and let it go,
shouting to increase its speed. When his host complained that he had
perhaps spoilt the dinner, Johnson replied by insisting that the rights
of hospitality included an animal which had thus placed itself under the
protection of the master of the garden.
We must proceed, however, to a more serious event. The year 1781 brought
with it a catastrophe which profoundly affected the brief remainder of
Johnson's life. Mr. Thrale, whose health had been shaken by fits, died
suddenly on the 4th of April. The ultimate consequence was Johnson's
loss of the second home, in which he had so often found refuge from
melancholy, alleviation of physical suffering, and pleasure in social
converse. The change did not follow at once, but as the catastrophe of a
little social drama, upon the rights and wrongs of which a good deal of
controversy has been expended.
Johnson was deeply affected by the loss of a friend whose face, as he
said, "had never been turned upon him through fifteen years but with
respect and benignity." He wrote solemn and affecting letters to the
widow, and busied himself strenuously in her service. Thrale had made
him one of his executors, leaving him a small legacy; and Johnson took,
it seems, a rather simple-minded pleasure in dealing with important
commercial affairs and signing cheques for large sums of money. The old
man of letters, to whom three hundred a year had been superabundant
wealth, was amused at finding himself in the position of a man of
business, regulating what was then regarded as a princely fortune. The
brewery was sold after a time, and Johnson bustled about with an
ink-horn and pen in his button-hole. When asked what was the value of
the property, he replied magniloquently, "We are not here to sell a
parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond
the dreams of avarice." The brewery was in fact sold to Barclay,
Perkins, and Co. for the sum of 135,000_l_., and some years afterwards
it was the largest concern of the kind in the world.
The first effect of the change was probably rather to tighten than to
relax the bond of union with the Thrale family. During the winter of
1781-2, Johnson's infirmities were growing upon him. In the beginning of
1782 he was suffering from an illness which excited serious
apprehensions, and he went to Mrs. Thrale's, as the only house where he
could use "all the freedom that sickness requires." She nursed him
carefully, and expressed her feelings with characteristic vehemence in a
curious journal which he had encouraged her to keep. It records her
opinions about her affairs and her family, with a frankness remarkable
even in writing intended for no eye but her own. "Here is Mr. Johnson
very ill," she writes on the 1st of February;.... "What shall we do for
him? If I lose _him_, I am more than undone--friend, father, guardian,
confidant! God give me health and patience! What shall I do?" There is
no reason to doubt the sincerity of these sentiments, though they seem
to represent a mood of excitement. They show that for ten months after
Thrale's death Mrs. Thrale was keenly sensitive to the value of
Johnson's friendship.
A change, however, was approaching. Towards the end of 1780 Mrs. Thrale
had made the acquaintance of an Italian musician named Piozzi, a man of
amiable and honourable character, making an independent income by his
profession, but to the eyes of most people rather inoffensive than
specially attractive. The friendship between Mrs. Thrale and Piozzi
rapidly became closer, and by the end of 1781 she was on very intimate
terms with the gentleman whom she calls "my Piozzi." He had been making
a professional trip to the Continent during part of the period since her
husband's death, and upon his return in November, Johnson congratulated
her upon having two friends who loved her, in terms which suggest no
existing feeling of jealousy. During 1782 the mutual affection of the
lady and the musician became stronger, and in the autumn they had avowed
it to each other, and were discussing the question of marriage.
No one who has had some experience of life will be inclined to condemn
Mrs. Thrale for her passion. Rather the capacity for a passion not
excited by an intrinsically unworthy object should increase our esteem
for her. Her marriage with Thrale had been, as has been said, one of
convenience; and, though she bore him many children and did her duty
faithfully, she never loved him. Towards the end of his life he had made
her jealous by very marked attentions to the pretty and sentimental
Sophy Streatfield, which once caused a scene at his table; and during
the last two years his mind had been weakened, and his conduct had
caused her anxiety and discomfort. It is not surprising that she should
welcome the warm and simple devotion of her new lover, though she was of
a ripe age and the mother of grown-up daughters.
It is, however, equally plain that an alliance with a foreign fiddler
was certain to shock British respectability. It is the old story of the
quarrel between Philistia and Bohemia. Nor was respectability without
much to say for itself. Piozzi was a Catholic as well as a foreigner; to
marry him was in all probability to break with daughters just growing
into womanhood, whom it was obviously her first duty to protect. The
marriage, therefore, might be regarded as not merely a revolt against
conventional morality, but as leading to a desertion of country,
religion, and family. Her children, her husband's friends, and her whole
circle were certain to look upon the match with feelings of the
strongest disapproval, and she admitted to herself that the objections
were founded upon something more weighty than a fear of the world's
censure.
Johnson, in particular, among whose virtues one cannot reckon a
superiority to British prejudice, would inevitably consider the marriage
as simply degrading. Foreseeing this, and wishing to avoid the pain of
rejecting advice which she felt unable to accept, she refrained from
retaining her "friend, father, and guardian" in the position of
"confidant." Her situation in the summer of 1782 was therefore
exceedingly trying. She was unhappy at home. Her children, she
complains, did not love her; her servants "devoured" her; her friends
censured her; and her expenses were excessive, whilst the loss of a
lawsuit strained her resources. Johnson, sickly, suffering and
descending into the gloom of approaching decay, was present like a
charged thunder-cloud ready to burst at any moment, if she allowed him
to approach the chief subject of her thoughts. Though not in love with
Mrs. Thrale, he had a very intelligible feeling of jealousy towards any
one who threatened to distract her allegiance. Under such circumstances
we might expect the state of things which Miss Burney described long
afterwards (though with some confusion of dates). Mrs. Thrale, she says,
was absent and agitated, restless in manner, and hurried in speech,
forcing smiles, and averting her eyes from her friends; neglecting every
one, including Johnson and excepting only Miss Burney herself, to whom
the secret was confided, and the situation therefore explained.
Gradually, according to Miss Burney, she became more petulant to Johnson
than she was herself aware, gave palpable hints of being worried by his
company, and finally excited his resentment and suspicion. In one or two
utterances, though he doubtless felt the expedience of reserve, he
intrusted his forebodings to Miss Burney, and declared that Streatham
was lost to him for ever.
At last, in the end of August, the crisis came. Mrs. Thrale's lawsuit
had gone against her. She thought it desirable to go abroad and save
money. It had moreover been "long her dearest wish" to see Italy, with
Piozzi for a guide. The one difficulty (as she says in her journal at
the time), was that it seemed equally hard to part with Johnson or to
take him with her till he had regained strength. At last, however she
took courage to confide to him her plans for travel. To her extreme
annoyance he fully approved of them. He advised her to go; anticipated
her return in two or three years; and told her daughter that he should
not accompany them, even if invited. No behaviour, it may be admitted,
could be more provoking than this unforeseen reasonableness. To nerve
oneself to part with a friend, and to find the friend perfectly ready,
and all your battery of argument thrown away is most vexatious. The poor
man should have begged her to stay with him, or to take him with her; he
should have made the scene which she professed to dread, but which would
have been the best proof of her power. The only conclusion which could
really have satisfied her--though she, in all probability, did not know
it--would have been an outburst which would have justified a rupture,
and allowed her to protest against his tyranny as she now proceeded to
protest against his complacency.
Johnson wished to go to Italy two years later; and his present
willingness to be left was probably caused by a growing sense of the
dangers which threatened their friendship. Mrs. Thrale's anger appears
in her journal. He had never really loved her, she declares; his
affection for her had been interested, though even in her wrath she
admits that he really loved her husband; he cared less for her
conversation, which she had fancied necessary to his existence, than for
her "roast beef and plumb pudden," which he now devours too "dirtily for
endurance." She was fully resolved to go, and yet she could not bear
that her going should fail to torture the friend whom for eighteen years
she had loved and cherished so kindly.
No one has a right at once to insist upon the compliance of his friends,
and to insist that it should be a painful compliance. Still Mrs.
Thrale's petulant outburst was natural enough. It requires notice
because her subsequent account of the rupture has given rise to attacks
on Johnson's character. Her "Anecdotes," written in 1785, show that her
real affection for Johnson was still coloured by resentment for his
conduct at this and a later period. They have an apologetic character
which shows itself in a statement as to the origin of the quarrel,
curiously different from the contemporary accounts in the diary. She
says substantially, and the whole book is written so as to give
probability to the assertion, that Johnson's bearishness and demands
upon her indulgence had become intolerable, when he was no longer under
restraint from her husband's presence. She therefore "took advantage" of
her lost lawsuit and other troubles to leave London, and thus escape
from his domestic tyranny. He no longer, as she adds, suffered from
anything but "old age and general infirmity" (a tolerably wide
exception!), and did not require her nursing. She therefore withdrew
from the yoke to which she had contentedly submitted during her
husband's life, but which was intolerable when her "coadjutor was no
more."
Johnson's society was, we may easily believe, very trying to a widow in
such a position; and it seems to be true that Thrale was better able
than Mrs. Thrale to restrain his oddities, little as the lady shrunk at
times from reasonable plain-speaking. But the later account involves
something more than a bare suppression of the truth. The excuse about
his health is, perhaps, the worst part of her case, because obviously
insincere. Nobody could be more fully aware than Mrs. Thrale that
Johnson's infirmities were rapidly gathering, and that another winter or
two must in all probability be fatal to him. She knew, therefore, that
he was never more in want of the care which, as she seems to imply, had
saved him from the specific tendency to something like madness. She
knew, in fact, that she was throwing him upon the care of his other
friends, zealous and affectionate enough, it is true, but yet unable to
supply him with the domestic comforts of Streatham. She clearly felt
that this was a real injury, inevitable it might be under the
circumstances, but certainly not to be extenuated by the paltry evasion
as to his improved health. So far from Johnson's health being now
established, she had not dared to speak until his temporary recovery
from a dangerous illness, which had provoked her at the time to the
strongest expressions of anxious regret. She had (according to the
diary) regarded a possible breaking of the yoke in the early part of
1782 as a terrible evil, which would "more than ruin her." Even when
resolved to leave Streatham, her one great difficulty is the dread of
parting with Johnson, and the pecuniary troubles are the solid and
conclusive reason. In the later account the money question is the mere
pretext; the desire to leave Johnson the true motive; and the
long-cherished desire to see Italy with Piozzi is judiciously dropped
out of notice altogether.
The truth is plain enough. Mrs. Thrale was torn by conflicting feelings.
She still loved Johnson, and yet dreaded his certain disapproval of her
strongest wishes. She respected him, but was resolved not to follow his
advice. She wished to treat him with kindness and to be repaid with
gratitude, and yet his presence and his affection were full of
intolerable inconveniences. When an old friendship becomes a burden, the
smaller infirmities of manner and temper to which we once submitted
willingly, become intolerable. She had borne with Johnson's modes of
eating and with his rough reproofs to herself and her friends during
sixteen years of her married life; and for nearly a year of her
widowhood she still clung to him as the wisest and kindest of monitors.
His manners had undergone no spasmodic change. They became intolerable
when, for other reasons, she resented his possible interference, and
wanted a very different guardian and confidant; and, therefore, she
wished to part, and yet wished that the initiative should come from him.
The decision to leave Streatham was taken. Johnson parted with deep
regret from the house; he read a chapter of the Testament in the
library; he took leave of the church with a kiss; he composed a prayer
commending the family to the protection of Heaven; and he did not forget
to note in his journal the details of the last dinner of which he
partook. This quaint observation may have been due to some valetudinary
motive, or, more probably, to some odd freak of association. Once, when
eating an omelette, he was deeply affected because it recalled his old
friend Nugent. "Ah, my dear friend," he said "in an agony," "I shall
never eat omelette with thee again!" And in the present case there is an
obscure reference to some funeral connected in his mind with a meal. The
unlucky entry has caused some ridicule, but need hardly convince us that
his love of the family in which for so many years he had been an
honoured and honour-giving inmate was, as Miss Seward amiably suggests,
in great measure "kitchen-love."
No immediate rupture followed the abandonment of the Streatham
establishment. Johnson spent some weeks at Brighton with Mrs. Thrale,
during which a crisis was taking place, without his knowledge, in her
relations to Piozzi. After vehement altercations with her daughters,
whom she criticizes with great bitterness for their utter want of heart,
she resolved to break with Piozzi for at least a time. Her plan was to
go to Bath, and there to retrench her expenses, in the hopes of being
able to recall her lover at some future period. Meanwhile he left her
and returned to Italy. After another winter in London, during which
Johnson was still a frequent inmate of her house, she went to Bath with
her daughters in April, 1783. A melancholy period followed for both the
friends. Mrs. Thrale lost a younger daughter, and Johnson had a
paralytic stroke in June. Death was sending preliminary warnings. A
correspondence was kept up, which implies that the old terms were not
ostensibly broken. Mrs. Thrale speaks tartly more than once; and
Johnson's letters go into medical details with his customary plainness
of speech, and he occasionally indulges in laments over the supposed
change in her feelings. The gloom is thickening, and the old playful
gallantry has died out. The old man evidently felt himself deserted, and
suffered from the breaking-up of the asylum he had loved so well. The
final catastrophe came in 1784, less than six months before Johnson's
death.
After much suffering in mind and body, Mrs. Thrale had at last induced
her daughters to consent to her marriage with Piozzi. She sent for him
at once, and they were married in June, 1784. A painful correspondence
followed. Mrs. Thrale announced her marriage in a friendly letter to
Johnson, excusing her previous silence on the ground that discussion
could only have caused them pain. The revelation, though Johnson could
not have been quite unprepared, produced one of his bursts of fury.
"Madam, if I interpret your letter rightly," wrote the old man, "you are
ignominiously married. If it is yet undone, let us once more talk
together. If you have abandoned your children and your religion, God
forgive your wickedness! If you have forfeited your fame and your
country, may your folly do no further mischief! If the last act is yet
to do, I, who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served
you--I, who long thought you the first of womankind--entreat that before
your fate is irrevocable, I may once more see you! I was, I once was,
madam, most truly yours, Sam. Johnson."
Mrs. Thrale replied with spirit and dignity to this cry of blind
indignation, speaking of her husband with becoming pride, and resenting
the unfortunate phrase about her loss of "fame." She ended by declining
further intercourse till Johnson could change his opinion of Piozzi.
Johnson admitted in his reply that he had no right to resent her
conduct; expressed his gratitude for the kindness which had "soothed
twenty years of a life radically wretched," and implored her
("superfluously," as she says) to induce Piozzi to settle in England. He
then took leave of her with an expression of sad forebodings. Mrs.
Thrale, now Mrs. Piozzi, says that she replied affectionately; but the
letter is missing. The friendship was broken off, and during the brief
remainder of Johnson's life, the Piozzis were absent from England.
Of her there is little more to be said. After passing some time in
Italy, where she became a light of that wretched little Della Cruscan
society of which some faint memory is preserved by Gifford's ridicule,
now pretty nearly forgotten with its objects, she returned with her
husband to England. Her anecdotes of Johnson, published soon after his
death, had a success which, in spite of much ridicule, encouraged her to
some further literary efforts of a sprightly but ephemeral kind. She
lived happily with Piozzi, and never had cause to regret her marriage.
She was reconciled to her daughters sufficiently to renew a friendly
intercourse; but the elder ones set up a separate establishment. Piozzi
died not long afterwards. She was still a vivacious old lady, who
celebrated her 80th birthday by a ball, and is supposed at that ripe
age to have made an offer of marriage to a young actor. She died in May,
1821, leaving all that she could dispose of to a nephew of Piozzi's, who
had been naturalised in England.
Meanwhile Johnson was rapidly approaching the grave. His old inmates,
Levett and Miss Williams, had gone before him; Goldsmith and Garrick and
Beauclerk had become memories of the past; and the gloom gathered
thickly around him. The old man clung to life with pathetic earnestness.
Though life had been often melancholy, he never affected to conceal the
horror with which he regarded death. He frequently declared that death
must be dreadful to every reasonable man. "Death, my dear, is very
dreadful," he says simply in a letter to Lucy Porter in the last year of
his life. Still later he shocked a pious friend by admitting that the
fear oppressed him. Dr. Adams tried the ordinary consolation of the
divine goodness, and went so far as to suggest that hell might not imply
much positive suffering. Johnson's religious views were of a different
colour. "I am afraid," he said, "I may be one of those who shall be
damned." "What do you mean by damned?" asked Adams. Johnson replied
passionately and loudly, "Sent to hell, sir, and punished
everlastingly." Remonstrances only deepened his melancholy, and he
silenced his friends by exclaiming in gloomy agitation, "I'll have no
more on't!" Often in these last years he was heard muttering to himself
the passionate complaint of Claudio, "Ah, but to die and go we know not
whither!" At other times he was speaking of some lost friend, and
saying, "Poor man--and then he died!" The peculiar horror of death,
which seems to indicate a tinge of insanity, was combined with utter
fearlessness of pain. He called to the surgeons to cut deeper when
performing a painful operation, and shortly before his death inflicted
such wounds upon himself in hopes of obtaining relief as, very
erroneously, to suggest the idea of suicide. Whilst his strength
remained, he endeavoured to disperse melancholy by some of the old
methods. In the winter of 1783-4 he got together the few surviving
members of the old Ivy Lane Club, which had flourished when he was
composing the _Dictionary_; but the old place of meeting had vanished,
most of the original members were dead, and the gathering can have been
but melancholy. He started another club at the Essex Head, whose members
were to meet twice a week, with the modest fine of threepence for
non-attendance. It appears to have included a rather "strange mixture"
of people, and thereby to have given some scandal to Sir John Hawkins
and even to Reynolds. They thought that his craving for society,
increased by his loss of Streatham, was leading him to undignified
concessions.
Amongst the members of the club, however, were such men as Horsley and
Windham. Windham seems to have attracted more personal regard than most
politicians, by a generous warmth of enthusiasm not too common in the
class. In politics he was an ardent disciple of Burke's, whom he
afterwards followed in his separation from the new Whigs. But, though
adhering to the principles which Johnson detested, he knew, like his
preceptor, how to win Johnson's warmest regard. He was the most eminent
of the younger generation who now looked up to Johnson as a venerable
relic from the past. Another was young Burke, that very priggish and
silly young man as he seems to have been, whose loss, none the less,
broke the tender heart of his father. Friendships, now more
interesting, were those with two of the most distinguished authoresses
of the day. One of them was Hannah More, who was about this time coming
to the conclusion that the talents which had gained her distinction in
the literary and even in the dramatic world, should be consecrated to
less secular employment. Her vivacity during the earlier years of their
acquaintance exposed her to an occasional rebuff. "She does not gain
upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed," was one of his remarks; and it
was to her that he said, according to Mrs. Thrale, though Boswell
reports a softened version of the remark, that she should "consider what
her flattery was worth, before she choked him with it." More frequently,
he seems to have repaid it in kind. "There was no name in poetry," he
said, "which might not be glad to own her poem"--the _Bas Bleu_.
Certainly Johnson did not stick at trifles in intercourse with his
female friends. He was delighted, shortly before his death, to "gallant
it about" with her at Oxford, and in serious moments showed a respectful
regard for her merits. Hannah More, who thus sat at the feet of Johnson,
encouraged the juvenile ambition of Macaulay, and did not die till the
historian had grown into manhood and fame. The other friendship noticed
was with Fanny Burney, who also lived to our own time. Johnson's
affection for this daughter of his friend seems to have been amongst the
tenderest of his old age. When she was first introduced to him at the
Thrales, she was overpowered and indeed had her head a little turned by
flattery of the most agreeable kind that an author can receive. The
"great literary Leviathan" showed himself to have the recently published
_Evelina_ at his fingers' ends. He quoted, and almost acted passages.
"La! Polly!" he exclaimed in a pert feminine accent, "only think! Miss
has danced with a lord!" How many modern readers can assign its place to
that quotation, or answer the question which poor Boswell asked in
despair and amidst general ridicule for his ignorance, "What is a
Brangton?" There is something pleasant in the enthusiasm with which men
like Johnson and Burke welcomed the literary achievements of the young
lady, whose first novels seem to have made a sensation almost as lively
as that produced by Miss Brontë, and far superior to anything that fell
to the lot of Miss Austen. Johnson seems also to have regarded her with
personal affection. He had a tender interview with her shortly before
his death; he begged her with solemn energy to remember him in her
prayers; he apologized pathetically for being unable to see her, as his
weakness increased; and sent her tender messages from his deathbed.
As the end drew near, Johnson accepted the inevitable like a man. After
spending most of the latter months of 1784 in the country with the
friends who, after the loss of the Thrales, could give him most domestic
comfort, he came back to London to die. He made his will, and settled a
few matters of business, and was pleased to be told that he would be
buried in Westminster Abbey. He uttered a few words of solemn advice to
those who came near him, and took affecting leave of his friends.
Langton, so warmly loved, was in close attendance. Johnson said to him
tenderly, _Te teneam moriens deficiente manu_. Windham broke from
political occupations to sit by the dying man; once Langton found Burke
sitting by his bedside with three or four friends. "I am afraid," said
Burke, "that so many of us must be oppressive to you." "No, sir, it is
not so," replied Johnson, "and I must be in a wretched state indeed
when your company would not be a delight to me." "My dear sir," said
Burke, with a breaking voice, "you have always been too good to me;" and
parted from his old friend for the last time. Of Reynolds, he begged
three things: to forgive a debt of thirty pounds, to read the Bible, and
never to paint on Sundays. A few flashes of the old humour broke
through. He said of a man who sat up with him: "Sir, the fellow's an
idiot; he's as awkward as a turnspit when first put into the wheel, and
as sleepy as a dormouse." His last recorded words were to a young lady
who had begged for his blessing: "God bless you, my dear." The same day,
December 13th, 1784, he gradually sank and died peacefully. He was laid
in the Abbey by the side of Goldsmith, and the playful prediction has
been amply fulfilled:--
Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.
The names of many greater writers are inscribed upon the walls of
Westminster Abbey; but scarcely any one lies there whose heart was more
acutely responsive during life to the deepest and tenderest of human
emotions. In visiting that strange gathering of departed heroes and
statesmen and philanthropists and poets, there are many whose words and
deeds have a far greater influence upon our imaginations; but there are
very few whom, when all has been said, we can love so heartily as Samuel
Johnson.