HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL
If we were not quite such a business people, and had not so fully
satisfied ourselves that the making of money is the chief end of
existence, we should put up a statue to Dr. Johnson in Fleet Street, even
if we had to knock down a house or two to find room for it. The statue by
Mr. Percy Fitzgerald that has been erected in St. Clement Danes
Churchyard, in the Strand, is better than nothing, but it is too
insignificant in appearance, and stands in the wrong place. Johnson is
still so far removed from death that he is more alive to-day than when he
was living, and Fleet Street, and the courts and alleys opening out of
Fleet Street, are his proper kingdom. Other great spirits haunt the same
ground, but he overshadows them all.
At one time or another during the later forty-seven years of his life
Johnson had sixteen different addresses in London, and six of them were in
Fleet Street byways. On his first visit to town, in 1737, he had lodgings
at Exeter Street, Strand, and made some short stay at Greenwich, whence he
wrote to Cave, the publisher, offering to contribute to his _Gentleman's
Magazine_. Next year he and his wife finally removed from Lichfield, and
lodged first in Woodstock Street, Hanover Square, and then in Castle
Street, Cavendish Square. Presently he flitted to the Strand; to Bow
Street; to Holborn; to Fetter Lane; to Holborn again; then to Gough
Square, at the top of Wine Office Court, where he lived for ten years;
then to Staple Inn; to Gray's Inn; to No. 1 Inner Temple Lane; to No. 7
Johnson's Court (so named before his time, as Boswell Court was before
Boswell's); and thence to Bolt Court, where, in 1784, he died.
Of all these homes of Johnson's, only two are now surviving--that in
Staple Inn, which cannot be identified (we know only that it was one of
the houses in the square); and that in Gough Square, which, next to the
Bolt Court house, was the most interesting of his sixteen residences--and
one is grateful that, mainly owing to the good offices of Mr. Cecil
Harmsworth, it has been saved from demolition, and is now opened as a
Johnson museum.
Johnson was still a bookseller's hack and a comparatively unknown man
when, in 1747, at the age of thirty-eight, he started work on his
_Dictionary_. He was then living in Holborn; but next year he moved into
Gough Square, and it was here that most of this colossal work was done.
And to-day, when you visit that house, you find that all the teeming life
of the last hundred and sixty years has drained out of it completely, and
nothing remains in the old rooms but memories of Johnson and his friends.
He works there for ever now in the study that used to be his, poring
short-sightedly over books and papers; and in the queer, sloping-ceilinged
garret above are his six assistants, copying, hunting out references for
the _Dictionary_, and busy with all the mechanical part of the
undertaking. You have only to stand there and think of it, and, if you
have read Boswell and Hawkins, the life of the household as it was in
those ten years long past refashions itself around you in the magic,
old-world atmosphere of the place.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO STAPLE INN.]
Five publishers joined in commissioning Johnson to compile the
_Dictionary_, and arranged to pay him a sum of £1575, out of which he had
to engage his assistants. "For the mechanical part," writes Boswell, "he
employed six amanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North
Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them
were of that country. There were two Messieurs Macbean; Mr. Shiels; Mr.
Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at Edinburgh; and a Mr.
Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was Mr. Peyton, who, I
believe, taught French, and published some elementary tracts." That upper
room in Gough Square was fitted up like a counting-house, and each of the
six workers in it was allotted his separate task. Boswell goes on to
describe Johnson's method: "The words, partly taken from other
dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been first written
down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their
etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were
copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages with
a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have
seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that
they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was
so attentive in the choice of the passages in which words were authorised
that one may read page after page of his _Dictionary_ with improvement
and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved that he has quoted no
author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and
morality.... He is now to be considered as 'tugging at his oar,' as
engaged in a steady, continued course of occupation, sufficient to employ
all his time for some years, and which was the best preventive of that
constitutional melancholy which was ever lurking about him, ready to
trouble his quiet."
In after years, with his natural, large kindness of disposition, Johnson
retained a sympathetic interest in those six assistants of his. The elder
of the two Macbeans fell at length into great poverty, and Johnson helped
him by writing a preface to his _System of Ancient Geography_, and
afterwards influenced Lord Thurlow in getting him admitted as a Poor
Brother of the Charterhouse. He had Shiel, who was dying of consumption,
to help him with his _Lives of the Poets_; and when Peyton died almost
destitute, it was Johnson who paid his funeral expenses.
Whilst he was "tugging at his oar" and making steady headway with the
_Dictionary_, Johnson sought recreation in founding one of his many
literary clubs--an informal little club that met of evenings in Ivy Lane,
Paternoster Row, and numbered among its members Hawkesworth, who succeeded
Johnson as compiler of Parliamentary debates for the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, and later edited and wrote most of a bi-weekly, _The
Adventurer_; Dr. Bathurst, who with Johnson and Warton contributed to that
_Adventurer_; and Hawkins, who in due course became one of Johnson's
executors and biographers. He had published his satire, _London_, eleven
years before this; but it was whilst he was living in Gough Square, with
the _Dictionary_ in full progress, that he wrote and published his only
other great satire, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, with its references to
the hope deferred, the hardships of his own life, and the obscurity and
poverty from which he was but now gradually beginning to emerge:--
"When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:
O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread,
And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head.
Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth,
And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth!
Yet should thy soul indulge the generous heat,
Till captive science yields her last retreat;
Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray
And pour on misty doubt resistless day;
Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;
Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,
And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart;
Should no disease thy torpid veins invade
Nor melancholy's phantom haunt thy shade;
Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from learning to be wise:
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
If dreams yet flatter, yet again attend,
Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end."
Had the Gough Square house been memorable only as the birthplace of the
_Dictionary_, it would have been enough to have given it immortality; for,
as Carlyle says (and Carlyle once went reverently over these rooms, and
wrote a record of his visit), "Had Johnson left nothing but his
_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine
man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity,
honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all
dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
there like a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically
complete; you judge that a true builder did it." But, still while the
_Dictionary_ was going on, shortly after the publication of _The Vanity of
Human Wishes_, which yielded him £15, Garrick produced his tragedy of
_Irene_ at Drury Lane. It was a failure on the stage; the audience
shrieked "Murder! murder!" when the bowstring was placed round the
heroine's neck; but Johnson, feeling that a dramatic author should be more
gaily dressed than it was his wont to appear, sat in a box on the first
night in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat,
and accepted his failure with unruffled calmness; and Dodsley paid him
£100 for the right to publish the play as a book.
Still while he was in the thick of the _Dictionary_, he set himself, in
1750, to start _The Rambler_, and you may take it that he was sitting in
his Gough Square study one night when he wrote that prayer before
publishing his first number:--
"Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour
is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is folly; grant, I
beseech Thee, that in this undertaking Thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld
from me, but that I may promote Thy glory, and the salvation of myself and
others. Grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen."
[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS]
His first number was printed on the 20th March 1750, and he issued it
every Saturday and Tuesday afterwards for two years. "This," as Boswell
has it, "is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that 'a
man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it'; for,
notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits,
and his labour in carrying on his _Dictionary_, he answered the stated
calls of the press twice a week, from the stores of his mind, during all
that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10,
by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Miss Catherine Talbot; No. 97,
by Mr. Samuel Richardson; and Nos. 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter."
He was so pressed for time that he wrote a good many of the essays in such
haste that he had no opportunity even to read them through again before
they were printed. One thing that particularly gratified Johnson in
connection with the _Rambler_ was that his wife said to him, after she had
read a few numbers, "I thought very well of you before, but I did not
imagine you could have written anything equal to this."
Gough Square is hallowed, too, with sadder memories of Johnson's wife, for
she died here in March 1752; and to the end of his days he never forgot
her or ceased to sorrow for her. She was a plain-featured woman some
years older than himself, but he always spoke of her with a wonderful
tenderness and love, and as of one who had been beautiful to look upon.
How deeply he felt her loss is evident not merely from some of his
sayings, but from his letters, and from those _Prayers and Meditations_,
in which he set down his most intimate thoughts and feelings. After his
death, this written prayer was found among his papers, dated in the month
after her passing:--
"_April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th._
"O Lord! Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and
departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to
minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of
me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and
ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in
any other manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption,
enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, grant
me the blessed influences of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen."
[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE. GOUGH SQUARE.]
You may stand in the Square to-night, after twelve at night, when all the
windows of all the other houses are dark, as they were in that night of
1752, and look up at the window in which the solitary light burned then,
whilst, within, the grief-stricken Johnson sat alone in his study writing
down that humble, mournful aspiration, and as you look the same light
kindles there and glimmers desolately again for all who have eyes to see
it. Nor was this the only record of his sorrow that was written in that
room, for you find these notes in his journal a year later:--
"_March 28, 1753._ I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death,
with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her
conditionally, if it were lawful."
"_April 23, 1753._ I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain
longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when
I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy
interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will,
however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of
devotion."
Boswell tells us that he preserved her wedding-ring reverently as long as
he lived, keeping it in "a little round wooden box, in the inside of which
he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as
follows:--
'Eheu!
Eliz. Johnson,
Nupta Jul. 9º, 1736,
Mortua, eheu!
Mart. 17º, 1752.'"
Some thought of her, indeed, rises again and again thereafter in those
_Prayers and Meditations_ of his, and so makes this house peculiarly
reminiscent of her. Before Mrs. Johnson's death, Mrs. Anna Williams had
become a constant visitor at the house here. She was a poetess in a small
way, daughter of a Welsh physician, and was in London having both her eyes
treated for cataract. After his wife's death, Johnson gave Mrs. Williams
accommodation in Gough Square whilst her eyes were operated upon; and,
the operation failing and complete blindness following it, with his usual
big-hearted humanity he allowed her an apartment in this and each of his
subsequent homes; and you remember Boswell's complaint of how his
fastidious susceptibilities were outraged by the way in which she felt
round the edges of the cups to see if they were full, when she presided
over the tea-table. In the same spirit, Johnson gave house-room here also,
and elsewhere, to that simplest and most kindly of medical practitioners,
Dr. Robert Levett, on whose death, several years later, he wrote the best
of his shorter poems.
You get a good idea of his general manner of life in Gough Square from the
note that Boswell obtained from Francis Barber, Johnson's black servant,
who wrote that on his wife's death Johnson was "in great affliction. Mrs.
Williams was then living in his house, which was in Gough Square. He was
busy with the _Dictionary_. Mr. Shiels and some others of the gentlemen
who had formerly written for him used to come about the house. He had then
little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in
distress. The friends who visited him at that time were chiefly Dr.
Bathurst, and Mr. Diamond, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington
Gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday.
There were also Mr. Cave; Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Rydal, merchant on Tower
Hill; Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave; Mrs. Carter; and
sometimes Mrs. Macaulay; also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on
Snow Hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir
Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Miller; Mr. Dodsley; Mr. Bouquet; Mr. Payne, of
Paternoster Row, bookseller; Mr. Strachan the printer; the Earl of Orrery;
Lord Southwell; Mr. Garrick."
[Illustration: JAMES BOSWELL]
It was shortly after the conclusion of _The Rambler_ that Johnson first
made the acquaintance of Bennet Langton. He had taken lodgings in a house
that was frequently visited by Dr. Levett; and, with Johnson's permission,
Levett one day brought Langton to Gough Square, and, says Boswell:--
"Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He
had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner.
From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent,
well-dressed--in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of
which, down from his bed-chamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge
uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head,
and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich,
so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved."
In 1753 Johnson "relieved the drudgery of his _Dictionary_" by writing
essays for Hawkesworth's _Adventurer_, and in this and the next two years
did a lot of reviewing and varied hack-work for the magazines and
miscellanies of his time; and in February 1775 he wrote that nobly
scathing and touching letter to Lord Chesterfield, that is too well known
to need reprinting, but must needs be reprinted here, because it was
written from Gough Square, and would make any house from which it was
written an honoured and sacred place to all who value the dignity of
literature and glory in the emancipation of the literary man from the
condescending benevolence of the private patron:--
"MY LORD,--I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The
World_, that two papers in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the
public were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an
honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great,
I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
"When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship,
I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of
your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself
_Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_--that I might obtain that
regard for which I saw the whole world contending; but I found my
attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would
suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in
public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man
is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
"Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on with my work through difficulties, of which it is useless
to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
expect, for I never had a patron before.
"The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been
delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.
"Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
so much exultation,
"My lord, your lordship's most humble,
"Most obedient servant,
"SAM. JOHNSON."
A few months after this the _Dictionary_ was finished. There had been many
delays; it was long behind the stipulated time, and the patience of the
publishers was exhausted; but at last Johnson sent the last sheets of the
great work to Mr. Miller, the Strand bookseller, who was chiefly
concerned in the venture, and when the messenger returned from Miller's
shop Johnson asked him, "Well, what did he say?" "Sir," answered the
messenger, "he said, 'Thank God I have done with him.'" "I am glad,"
replied Johnson, with a smile, "that he thanks God for anything."
The publication of the _Dictionary_ made him at once the most famous man
of letters in London; but he had already spent the money that was paid for
his labour, and had still to work hard with his pen to make "provision for
the day that was passing over him." In 1757 he took up again a scheme for
an elaborate edition of Shakespeare with notes, and issued proposals and
invited subscriptions for it; but it was another nine years before his
Shakespeare made its appearance. Among his many visitors in 1758, Dr.
Charles Burney, the father of Fanny Burney, called and "had an interview
with him in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was
introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner, Mr. Johnson
proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which, being
accepted, he there found about five or six Greek folios, a deal
writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving his guest the entire
seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm. Here he
gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's history, and showed him some volumes of
Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest." They
proceeded to criticise Shakespeare's commentators up there, and to discuss
the controversy then raging between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke in
connection with an unauthorised publication of certain of Bolingbroke's
letters to Pope, who was recently dead. And in the April of this same year
Johnson began to write his essays for _The Idler_.
[Illustration: JOHNSON'S CORNER. THE CHESHIRE CHEESE.]
Here, then, you have a varied and intimate series of pictures, a sort of
panoramic view of the life that Johnson lived in his Gough Square house,
and amid his old surroundings are able to recreate him for yourself in all
his varying circumstances and changing moods--working there at his
_Dictionary_ and his multifarious writings; sorrowing for his wife;
entertaining his friends; sallying forth morning and evening to walk along
Fleet Street to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand, assuming
that he kept the resolution to do so that is entered at this date in his
journal; and, almost every Sunday afternoon, coming staidly down the steps
with Mrs. Williams, and setting out to dine with Mr. Diamond, the
apothecary of Cork Street; on many evenings strolling along Wine Office
Court, to forgather with friends in the parlour of the "Cheshire Cheese,"
where the seat traditionally occupied by him and Goldsmith is still to be
seen; or going farther to a meeting of his club in Ivy Lane. There is a
capital story told by Hawkins of how one night at that club a suggestion
was made that they should celebrate the publication of Mrs. Lennox's first
novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart_, with a supper at the Devil Tavern, in
Fleet Street. Johnson threw himself heart and soul into the proposal, and
declared that they would honour the event by spending the whole night in
festivity. On the evening fixed, at about eight o'clock, Mrs. Lennox and
her husband, and some twenty friends and members of the club, gathered at
the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and, by Johnson's orders, a magnificent hot
apple-pie adorned with bay leaves formed a principal item of the menu. He
himself crowned Mrs. Lennox with laurel; and, true to his resolve, he kept
the feast going right through the night. "At 5 A.M.," says Hawkins,
"Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been
only lemonade." The day was beginning to dawn when they all partook of a
"second refreshment of coffee," and it was broad daylight and eight
o'clock before the party broke up, and Johnson made his way back up Fleet
Street, round into Gough Square, and to the prosaic resumption of work on
the _Dictionary_.
Soon after starting _The Idler_, Johnson left Gough Square and took rooms
in Staple Inn, where he presently wrote _Rasselas_ in the evenings of one
week, and so raised £100, that "he might defray the expenses of his
mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left."
All these things had happened, and Johnson had risen into fame and become
"the great Cham of letters," before Boswell had made his acquaintance. The
historic meeting between these two did not come about until 1763, and then
it took place at No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden--another famous house
that is fortunately still in existence. It was then occupied by Thomas
Davies, the actor, who had retired from the stage and opened a
bookseller's shop there. He knew Johnson, who frequently visited him, and
on his invitation Boswell was there several times in hopes of meeting the
great man; again and again it happened that on the days when he was in
waiting Johnson failed to appear, but in the end his patience was
rewarded, and this is his own account of the interview, taken from notes
he made of it on the very day of its occurrence:--
"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's
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
towards us, he announced his awful 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!' I found that
I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait of him
painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his
_Dictionary_, in the attitude of sitting in his easy-chair in deep
meditation. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me
to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the
Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell where I
come from.' 'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' said
I, 'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' He retorted,
'That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot
help.' This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I
felt myself not a little embarrassed and apprehensive of what might come
next. He then addressed himself to Davies: 'What do you think of Garrick?
He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he
knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three
shillings.' Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I
ventured to say, 'O sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a
trifle to you.' 'Sir,' said he, with a stern look, 'I have known David
Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to
me on the subject.' Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather
presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the
justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now
felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope which I had
long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted." But he sat on
resolutely, and was rewarded by hearing some of Johnson's conversation, of
which he kept notes, that are duly reproduced in the _Life_.
[Illustration: WHERE BOSWELL FIRST MET JOHNSON.]
"I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation,"
he concludes his account of the meeting, "and regretted that I was drawn
away from it by an engagement at another place. I had for a part of the
evening been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation
now and then, which he received very civilly; so I was satisfied that,
though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his
disposition. Davies followed me to the door; and when I complained to him
a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly
took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy; I can see he
likes you very well.'"
Davies's shop is kept nowadays by a Covent Garden salesman. Instead of
being lined with books, it is filled with baskets of fruit and sacks of
potatoes, and the parlour wall and that glass-panelled parlour door are
thrown down, and parlour and shop are all one. But the upper part of the
house remains practically unaltered, and with a little imagining you can
restore the lower to what it was when these walls held the gruff rumbling
of the Doctor's voice, and looked down on the humiliation of Boswell under
the roguish eyes of Davies and his pretty wife.
Another house that has glamorous associations with Johnson is No. 5
Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived, and where he died, in a back room on
the first floor, in 1779. Two years later Johnson was one of a party that
dined there with Mrs. Garrick, and one cannot do better than repeat the
indispensable Boswell's report of the event:--
"On Friday, April 20, I spent with him one of the happiest days that I
remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick,
whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as
wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the
first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with
her. The company was: Mrs. Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she
called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself. We found ourselves very
elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi, where I have passed
many a pleasing hour with him 'who gladdened life.' She looked well,
talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his
portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said that 'death was now the
most agreeable object to her.'... We were all in fine spirits; and I
whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, 'I believe this is as much as can be made of
life.'" After recording the conversation of Johnson and divers of the
others, Boswell goes on: "He and I walked away together. We stopped a
little by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to
him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost
who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. 'Ay,
sir,' said he tenderly, 'and two such friends as cannot be supplied.'"
[Illustration: BOSWELL'S HOUSE. GREAT QUEEN STREET.]
In the summer of 1784 Boswell was in London as usual, and saw Johnson,
then an old man of seventy-five, for the last time. On the 30th June, he
and Johnson dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds in Leicester Square, and when
Johnson went home Boswell accompanied him in Sir Joshua's coach to the
entry of Bolt Court, in Fleet Street, and was so affected at parting that
he would not accompany him to the house, and they bade each other an
affectionate adieu in the carriage. Johnson stepped out on to the
pavement, and, walking briskly, vanished into the yawn of Bolt Court, and,
for Boswell, into the jaws of death, for he never saw him again. He went
home to the north two days after, and in December Johnson died.
On his annual visits to London Boswell lived in various lodgings; but in
or about 1786 he rented the house, still standing, at 56 Great Queen
Street, and brought his wife to town with him. They occupied this place
for some two years; and it is evident from his letters to Bishop Percy and
the Rev. T. W. Temple that, whilst residing there, he wrote most of the
last seven years of his _Life of Johnson_. Boswell died in London, in
1795, at No. 122 (formerly 47) Great Portland Street.