Had dared to read, and dared to say she read,
Not the last novel, not the new born play,
Not the mere trash and scandal of the day;
But (though her young companions felt the shock)
She studied Berkeley, Bacon, Hobbes and Locke.
The one who perhaps made herself most notorious was Harriet Martineau,
and in spite of her disagreeable egotism it is still a pleasure to read
some of her less controversial writings. Her _Feats on the Fiord_, for
example, is really a classic. But I can never quite forgive Harriet
Martineau in that she spoke contemptuously of East Anglian scenery,
scenery which in its way has charms as great as any part of Europe can
offer. No, in this roll of famous women, the two I am most inclined to
praise are Sarah Austin and Fanny Burney. Mrs. Austin was, you will
remember, one of the Taylors of Norwich, married to John Austin, the
famous jurist. She was one of the first to demonstrate that her sex
might have other gifts than a gift for writing fiction, and that it was
possible to be a good, quiet, domestic woman, and at the same time an
exceedingly learned one. Even before Carlyle she gave a vogue to the
study of German literature in this country; she wrote many books, many
articles, and made some translations, notably what is still the best
translation of von Ranke's _History of the Popes_. In the muster-roll of
East Anglian worthies let us never forget this singularly good woman,
this correspondent of all the most famous men of her day, of Guizot, of
Grote, of Gladstone, and one who also, as a letter-writer, showed that
she possessed the faculty that seems, as I have said, to be peculiar to
the soil of East Anglia. Still less must we forget Fanny Burney, who,
born in King's Lynn, lived to delight her own generation by _Evelina_ and
by the fascinating _Diary_ that gives so pleasant a picture of Dr.
Johnson and many another of her contemporaries. _Evelina_ and the
_Diary_ are two of my favourite books, but I practise self-restraint and
will say no more of them here.
I now come to my ninth, and last, name among those East Anglian worthies
whom I feel that we have a particular right to canonize--George
Crabbe--"though Nature's sternest painter yet the best," as Byron
described him. Now it may be frankly admitted that few of us read Crabbe
to-day. He has an acknowledged place in the history of literature, but
there pretty well even well-read people are content to leave him. "What
have our literary critics been about that they have suffered such a
writer to drop into neglect and oblivion?" asks a recent Quarterly
Reviewer. He does not live as Cowper does by a few lyrics and ballads
and by incomparable letters. Scarcely a line of Crabbe survives in
current conversation. If you turn to one of those handy volumes of
reference--Dictionaries of Quotation, as they are called--from which we
who are journalists are supposed to obtain most of the literary knowledge
that we are able to display on occasion, you will scarcely find a dozen
lines of Crabbe. And yet I venture to affirm that Crabbe has a great and
permanent place in literature, and that as he has been a favourite in the
past, he will become a favourite in the future. Crabbe can never lose
his place in the history of literature, a place as the forerunner of
Wordsworth and even of Cowper, but it would be a tragedy were he to drop
out of the category of poets that are read. A dainty little edition in
eight volumes is among my most treasured possessions. I have read it not
as we read some so-called literature, from a sense of duty, but with
unqualified interest. We have had much pure realism in these latter
days; why not let us return to the most realistic of the poets. He was
beloved by all the greatest among his contemporaries. Scott and
Wordsworth were devoted to his work, and so also was Jane Austen. At a
later date Tennyson praised him. We have heard quite recently the story
of Mr. James Russell Lowell in his last illness finding comfort in
reading Scott's _Rob Roy_. Let us turn to Scott's own last illness and
see what was the book he most enjoyed, almost on his deathbed:--
"Read me some amusing thing," said Sir Walter, "read me a bit of
Crabbe." "I brought out the first volumes of his old favourite that I
could lay hand on," says Lockhart, "and turned to what I remembered
was one of his favourite passages in it. He listened with great
interest. Every now and then he exclaimed, "Capital, excellent,
excellent, very good."
Cardinal Newman and Edward FitzGerald at the opposite poles, as it were,
of religious impressions, agree in a devotion to Crabbe's poetry.
Cardinal Newman speaks of _Tales of the Hall_ as "a poem whether in
conception or in execution one of the most touching in our language," and
in a footnote to his _Idea of a University_ he tells us that he had read
the poem thirty years earlier with extreme delight, "and have never lost
my love of it," and he goes on to plead that it is an absolute _classic_.
Not to have read Crabbe, therefore, is not to know one of the most
individual in the glorious muster-roll of English poets, and Crabbe was
pre-eminently an East Anglian, born and bred in East Anglia, and taking
in a peculiar degree the whole character of his environment, as only
Shakspere, Cowper and Wordsworth among our great poets, have done.
In conclusion, let me recapitulate that the names of Marryat, Sir Thomas
Browne, George Borrow, Margaret Paston, Horace Walpole, Sarah Austin,
Fanny Burney, Edward FitzGerald, and George Crabbe are those that I
prefer to associate with East Anglian Literature. We are well aware that
literature is but an aspect of our many claims on the gratitude of those
Englishmen who have not the good fortune to be East Anglians. We have
given to the Empire a great scholar in Porson, a great statesman in Sir
Robert Walpole, a great lawyer in Sir Edward Coke, great ecclesiastics in
Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Parker, great artists in Gainsborough,
Constable and Crome, and perhaps above all great sailors in Sir
Cloudesley Shovel and the ever memorable Lord Nelson. Personally I
admire a certain rebel, Kett the Tanner, as much as any of those I have
named.
Of all these East Anglian worthies the praise has often been sung, but
let me be pardoned if, on an occasion like this, I have dwelt rather at
length on the less familiar association of East Anglia with letters. That
I have but touched the fringe of the subject is obvious. What might not
be said, for example, concerning Norwich as a literary centre under
Bishop Stanley--the Norwich of the Taylors and the Gurneys, possessed of
as much real intellectual life as London can boast of to-day. What,
again, might not be said of the influence upon writers from afar. Read
Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_, Mr. Swinburne's _Midsummer Holiday_,
Charles Dickens' description of Yarmouth and Goldsmith's poetical
description in his _Deserted Village_, where clearly Houghton was
intended. {153} These, and a host of other memories touch the heart of
all good East Anglians, but that East Anglians do not forget the living
in doing honour to the dead is indicated by this gathering to-night. We
are grateful to Dr. Augustus Jessopp, to Mr. Walter Rye, to Mr. Edward
Clodd, and to our guest of this evening, Mr. William Dutt, for keeping
alive the folk-lore, the literary history, the historical tradition of
that portion of the British Isles to which we feel the most profound
attachment by ties of residence or of kinship.
VI. DR. JOHNSON'S ANCESTRY
A paper read before the members of the Johnson Club of London at
Simpson's Restaurant in the Strand.
There is, I believe, a definite understanding among our members that we,
the Brethren of the Johnson Club, have each and all of us read every line
about Dr. Johnson that is in print, to say nothing of his works. It is
particularly accepted that the thirteen volumes in which our late
brother, Dr. Birkbeck Hill, enshrined his own appreciation of our Great
Man, are as familiar to us all as are the Bible and the Book of Common
Prayer. For my part, with a deep sense of the responsibility that must
belong to any one who has rashly undertaken to read a paper before the
Club, I admit to having supplemented these thirteen volumes by a
reperusal of the little book entitled _Johnson Club Papers_, by Various
Hands, issued in 1899 by Brother Fisher Unwin. I feel as I reread these
addresses that there were indeed giants in those days, although my
admiration was moderated a little when I came across the statement of one
Brother that Johnson's proposal for an edition of Shakspere "came to
nothing"; and the statement of another that "Goldsmith's failings were
almost as great and as ridiculous as Boswell's;" while my bibliographical
ire was awakened by the extraordinary declaration in an article on "Dr.
Johnson's Library," that a first folio edition of Shakspere might have
realized 250 pounds in the year 1785. Still, I recognize the talent that
illuminated the Club in those closing years of the last century. Happily
for us, who love good comradeship, most of the giants of those days are
still in evidence with their polished armour and formidable spears.
What can I possibly say that has not already been said by one or other of
the Brethren? Well, I have put together these few remarks in the hopes
that no one of you has seen two books that are in my hands, the first,
_The Reades of Blackwood Hill_, _with Some Account of Dr. Johnson's
Ancestry_, by Aleyn Lyell Reade; the other, _The Life and Letters of Dr.
Birkbeck Hill_, by his daughter Mrs. Crump. The first of these is
privately printed, although it may be bought by any one of the Brethren
for a couple of guineas. As far as I am able to learn, Brother Augustine
Birrell is the only one of the Brethren who has as yet purchased a copy.
The other book, our Brother Birkbeck Hill's biography, is to be issued
next week by Mr. Edward Arnold, who has kindly placed an early copy at my
disposal. In both these volumes there is much food for reflection for
all good Johnsonians. Dr. Johnson's ancestry, it may be, makes little
appeal to the crowd, but it will to the Brethren. There is no more
favourite subject for satire than the tendency to minute study of an
author and his antecedents. But the lover of that author knows the
fascination of the topic. He can forgive any amount of zeal. I confess
that personally I stand amazed at the variety and interest of Mr. Reade's
researches. Let me take a sample case of his method before coming to the
main issue. In the opening pages of Boswell's _Johnson_ there is some
account of Mr. Michael Johnson, the father. The most picturesque
anecdote told of Johnson Senior is that concerning a young woman of Leek
in Staffordshire, who while he served his apprenticeship there conceived
a passion for him, which he did not return. She followed him to
Lichfield, where she took lodgings opposite to the house in which he
lived, and indulged her hopeless flame. Ultimately she died of love and
was buried in the Cathedral at Lichfield, when Michael Johnson put a
stone over her grave. This pathetic romance has gone unchallenged by all
Boswell's editors, even including our prince of editors, Dr. Birkbeck
Hill. Mr. Reade, it seems to me, has completely shattered the story,
which, as all Johnsonian students know, was obtained by Boswell from Miss
Anna Seward. Mr. Reade is able to show that Michael Johnson had been
settled in Lichfield for at least eleven years before the death of
Elizabeth Blaney, that for five years she had been the much appreciated
domestic in a household in that city. Her will indicates moreover a
great affection for her mistress and for that mistress's son; she leaves
the boy a gold watch and his mother the rest of her belongings. The only
connexion that Michael Johnson would seem to have had with the woman was
that he and his brother were called in after her decease to make an
inventory of her little property. I think that these little facts about
Mistress Blaney, her five years' residence at Lichfield apparently in a
most comfortable position, her omission of Michael Johnson from her will,
and the fact that he had been in Lichfield at least six months before she
arrived, are conclusive.
There is another picturesque fact about Michael Johnson that Mr. Reade
has brought to light. It would seem that twenty years before his
marriage to Sarah Ford, he had been on the eve of marriage to a young
woman at Derby, Mary Neyld; but the marriage did not take place, although
the marriage bond was drawn out. Mary was the daughter of Luke Neyld, a
prominent tradesman of Derby; she was twenty-three years of age at the
time and Michael twenty-nine. Even Mr. Reade's industry has not been
able to discover for us why at the very last moment the marriage was
broken off. It explains, however, why Michael Johnson married late in
life and his melancholia. The human romance that Mr. Reade has unveiled
has surely a certain interest for Johnsonians, for had Michael Johnson
brought his first love affair to a happy conclusion, we should not have
had the man described twenty years later as "possessed of a vile
melancholy," who, when his wife's tongue wagged too much, got upon his
horse and rode away. There would have been no Samuel Johnson, and there
would have been no Johnson Club--a catastrophe which the human mind finds
it hard to conceive of. Two years after the breaking off of her
engagement with Michael Johnson, I may add, Mary Neyld married one James
Warner.
Mr. Reade also calls in question another statement of Boswell's, that
Michael Johnson was really apprenticed at Leek in Staffordshire; our only
authority for this also is the excellent Anna Seward. Further, it is
sufficiently curious that the names of two Samuel Johnsons are recorded
as being buried in one of the churches at Lichfield, one before our
Samuel came into the world, the other three years later: of these, one
died in 1654, the other in 1712. But these points, although of a certain
interest, have nothing to do with Dr. Johnson's ancestry. Now before we
left our homes this evening, each member of the Johnson Brotherhood, as
is his custom, turned up Brother Birkbeck Hill's invaluable index to see
what Johnson had to say upon the subject of ancestry. We know that the
Doctor was very keen upon the founding of a family; that when Mr. Thrale
lost his only son Johnson's sympathies went out to him in a double way,
and perhaps in the greater degree because as he said to Boswell, "Sir,
don't you know how you yourself think? Sir, he wished to propagate his
name." Johnson himself, Boswell tells us, had no pretensions to blood.
"I here may say," he said, "that I have great merit in being zealous for
subordination and the honours of birth; for I can hardly tell who was my
grandfather." Johnson further informed Mrs. Thrale that he did not
delight in talking much of his family: "There is little pleasure," he
says, "in relating the anecdotes of beggary." He constantly deprecated
his origin. According to Miss Seward, he told his wife before he married
her that he was of mean extraction; but the letter in which Miss Seward
gives her version of Johnson's courtship is worth recalling, although I
do not believe a single word of it:--
The rustic prettiness and artless manners of her daughter, the present
Mrs. Lucy Porter, had won Johnson's youthful heart, when she was upon
a visit at my grandfather's in Johnson's school-days. Disgusted by
his unsightly form, she had a personal aversion to him, nor could the
beautiful verses he addressed to her teach her to endure him. The
nymph at length returned to her parents at Birmingham, and was soon
forgotten. Business taking Johnson to Birmingham on the death of his
own father, and calling upon his coy mistress there, he found her
father dying. He passed all his leisure hours at Mr. Porter's,
attending his sick bed, and in a few months after his death, asked
Mrs. Johnson's consent to marry the old widow. After expressing her
surprise at a request so extraordinary--"No, Sam, my willing consent
you will never have to so preposterous a union. You are not twenty-
five, and she is turned fifty. If she had any prudence, this request
had never been made to me. Where are your means of subsistence?
Porter has died poor, in consequence of his wife's expensive habits.
You have great talents, but, as yet, have turned them into no
profitable channel." "Mother, I have not deceived Mrs. Porter: I have
told her the worst of me; that I am of mean extraction; that I have no
money, and that I have had an uncle hanged. She replied, that she
valued no one more or less for his descent; that she had no more money
than myself; and that, although she had not had a relation hanged, she
had fifty who deserved hanging."
Now why did Dr. Johnson take this attitude about his ancestry, so
contrary to the spirit that guided him where other people's genealogical
trees were concerned? It was certainly not indifference to family ties,
because Brother Birkbeck Hill publishes many interesting letters written
by Johnson in old age, when finding that he had a certain sum of money to
bequeath, he looked around to see if there were any of his own kin
living. The number of letters the old man wrote, inquiring for this or
that kinsman, are quite pathetic. It seems to me that it was really due
to an ignorant vagueness as to his family history. During his early
years his family had passed from affluence to penury. They were of a
type very common in England, but very rare in Scotland and Ireland, that
take no interest whatever in pedigrees, and never discuss any but their
immediate relations, with whom, in the case of the Johnsons, very
friendly terms did not prevail. I think we should be astonished if we
were to go into some shops in London of sturdy prosperous tradesmen in
quite as good a position as old Michael Johnson, and were to try and draw
out one or other individual upon his ancestry. We should promptly come
against a blank wall.
What then do we know of Johnson's father from the ordinary sources? That
he was a bookseller at Lichfield, and that he was Sheriff of that city in
the year that his son Samuel was born; that he feasted the citizens, as
Johnson tells us, in his _Annals_, with "uncommon magnificence." He is
described by Johnson as "a foolish old man," because he talked with too
fond a pride of his children and their precocious ways. He was a zealous
High Churchman and Jacobite. We are told by Boswell further, on the
authority of Mr. Hector of Birmingham, that he opened a bookstall once a
week in that city, but lost money by setting up as a maker of parchment.
"A pious and most worthy man," Mrs. Piozzi tells us of him, "but wrong-
headed, positive and affected with melancholia." "I inherited a vile
melancholy from my father," Johnson tells us, "which has made me mad all
my life." When he died in 1731 his effects were estimated at 20 pounds.
"My mother had no value for his relations," Johnson tells us. "Those we
knew were much lower than hers." Of Michael Johnson's brother, Andrew,
Johnson's uncle, we know still less. From the various Johnson books we
only cull the story mentioned in Mrs. Piozzi's _Anecdotes_. She relates
that Johnson, after telling her of the prowess of his uncle, Cornelius
Ford, at jumping, went on to say that he had another uncle, Andrew--"my
father's brother, who kept the ring at Smithfield for a whole year, and
was never thrown or conquered. Here are uncles for you, Mistress, if
that is the way to your heart." Mr. Reade has supplemented this by
showing us that not only was Andrew Johnson a skilful wrestler, but that
he was a very good bookseller. For a time he assisted his brother in the
conduct of the business at Lichfield. Later, however, he settled as a
bookseller at Birmingham, which was to be his home until his death over
thirty years later. Here he published some interesting books; the title-
pages of some of these are given by Mr. Reade, who reproduces of course
his will. He had a son named Thomas who fell on evil days. You will
find certain letters to Thomas in Birkbeck Hill's edition; Dr. Johnson
frequently helped him with money.
Of more interest, however, than Andrew Johnson was Catherine, the one
sister of Michael and Andrew, an aunt of Samuel's, who was evidently for
some unknown reason ignored by her two brothers. Here we are not on
absolutely firm ground, but it seems to me clear that Catherine Johnson
married into a position far above her brothers. A fortnight before his
death Dr. Johnson wrote to the Rev. William Vyse, Rector of Lambeth; a
letter in which he asked him to find out "whether Charles Skrymsher"--he
misspelt it "Scrimshaw"--"of Woodseaves"--he misspelt it "Woodease"--"in
your neighbourhood, be now alive," and whether he could be found without
delay. He added that "it will be an act of great kindness to me,"
Charles Skrymsher being "very nearly related." Charles Skrymsher was not
found, and Johnson told Dr. Vyse that he was disappointed in the
inquiries that he had made for his relations. This particular relation,
indeed, had been twenty-two years dead when Dr. Johnson, probably with
the desire of leaving him something in his will, made these inquiries.
His mother, Mrs. Gerald Skrymsher, was Michael Johnson's sister. One of
her daughters became the wife of Thomas Boothby. Boothby was twice
married, and his two wives were cousins, the first, Elizabeth, being the
daughter of one Sir Charles Skrymsher, the second, Hester, as I have
said, of Gerald Skrymsher, Dr. Johnson's uncle. Hence Johnson had a
cousin by marriage who was a potentate in his day, for it is told of
Thomas Boothby of Tooley Park, grand-nephew of a powerful and wealthy
baronet, that he was one of the fathers of English sport. An issue of
_The Field_ newspaper for 1875 contains an engraving of a hunting horn
then in the possession of the late Master of the Cheshire Hounds, and
upon the horn is the inscription: "Thomas Boothby, Esq., Tooley Park,
Leicester. With this horn he hunted the first pack of fox hounds then in
England fifty-five years." He died in 1752. His eldest son took the
maternal name of Skrymsher, and under the title of Thomas Boothby
Skrymsher became M.P. for Leicester, and an important person in his day.
His wife was Anne, daughter of Sir Hugh Clopton of New Place, Stratford-
on-Avon. Admirers of Mrs. Gaskell will remember the Clopton legend told
by her in Howett's _Visits to Remarkable Places_.
I wish that I had time to follow Mr. Reade through all the ramifications
of an interesting family history, but I venture to think that there is
something pathetic in Dr. Johnson's inquiries a fortnight before his
death as to cousins of whose life story he knew nothing, whose well-known
family home of Woodseaves he--the great Lexicographer--could not spell
correctly, and of whose very name he was imperfectly informed. Yet he,
the lover of family trees and of ancestral associations, was all his life
in ignorance of these wealthy connexions and their many substantial
intermarriages.