parchment as well as a bookseller; but it was supposed that only in his
last few years or so of life did he undertake this occupation which
ruined him. Mr. Reade shows that he had been for thirty years engaged in
this trade in parchment. Brother Birkbeck Hill quotes Croker, who hinted
that Johnson's famous definition of Excise as "a hateful tax levied upon
commodities, and adjudged not by the Common Judge of Property but by
wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid," was inspired by
recollections of his father's constant disputes with the Excise officers.
Mr. Reade has unearthed documents concerning the crisis of this quarrel,
when Michael Johnson in 1718 was indicted "for useing ye Trade of a
Tanner." The indictment, which is here printed in full, charges him,
"one Michael Johnson, bookseller," "that he did in the third year of the
reign of our Lord George by the Grace of God now King of Great Britain,
for his own proper gain, get up, use and exercise the art, mystery or
manual occupation of a Byrseus, in English a Tanner, in which art,
mystery or manual occupation of a Tanner the said Michael Johnson was not
brought up or apprenticed for the space of seven years, an evil example
of all others offending in such like case." Michael's defence was that
he was "tanned for" and did not tan himself, he being only "a merchant in
skins tradeing to Ireland, Scotland and the furthermost parts of
England." The only known example of Michael Johnson's handwriting is
this defence. Michael was committed for trial but acquitted. It is
probable, however, that this prosecution laid the foundation of his ruin.
But I must pass on to the other branch: the family of Dr. Johnson's
mother. Here Dr. Johnson did himself a great injustice, for he had a
genuine right to count his mother's "an old family," although the term is
in any case relative. At any rate he could carry his pedigree back to
1620. "In the morning," says Boswell, "we had talked of old families,
and the respect due to them. Johnson said--
"'Sir, you have a right to that kind of respect, and are arguing for
yourself. I am for supporting the principle, and I am disinterested
in doing it, as I have no such right.'"
Nevertheless, Boswell, in this opening chapter, refers to the mother as
"Sarah Ford, descended of an ancient race of substantial yeomanry in
Warwickshire," and Johnson's epitaph upon his mother's tomb describes her
as "of the ancient family of Ford." Thus one is considerably bewildered
in attempting to reconcile Johnson's attitude. The only one of his
family for whom he seems to have had a good word was Cornelius Harrison,
of whom, writing to Mrs. Thrale, he said that he was "perhaps the only
one of my relations who ever rose in fortune above penury or in character
above neglect." This Cornelius was the son of John Harrison, who had
married Johnson's aunt, Phoebe Ford. Johnson's account of Uncle John in
his _Annals_ is not flattering, but he was the son of a Rector of
Pilborough, whose father was Sir Richard Harrison, one of the gentlemen
of the King's Bedchamber, and a personality of a kind. Cornelius, the
reputable cousin, died in 1748, but his descendants seem to have been a
poor lot, whatever his ancestors may have been. Mr. Reade traces their
history with all the relentlessness of the genealogist.
Johnson's great-grandfather was one Henry Ford, a yeoman in Birmingham.
One of his sons, Henry, Johnson's grand-uncle, was born in 1628. He
owned property at West Bromwich and elsewhere, and was a fellow of
Clifford's Inn, London. Then we come to Cornelius Ford--"Cornelius Ford,
gentleman," he is styled in his marriage settlement. Cornelius died four
months before Samuel Johnson was born. Cornelius had a sister Mary, who
married one Jesson, and their only son, I may mention incidentally,
entered at Pembroke College in 1666, sixty years before his
second-cousin, our Samuel, entered the same college. Another cousin by
marriage was a Mrs. Harriots, to whom Johnson refers in his _Annals_, and
also in his _Prayers and Meditations_. The only one of Cornelius Ford's
family referred to in the biographies is Joseph Ford, the father of the
notorious Parson Ford, Johnson's cousin, of whom he several times speaks.
Joseph was a physician of eminence who settled at Stourbridge. He
married a wealthy widow, Mrs. Hickman. He was a witness to the marriage
of his sister Sarah to Michael Johnson. There can be no doubt but that
the presence of Dr. Ford and his family at Stourbridge accounts for
Johnson being sent there to school in 1725. He stayed in the house of
his cousin Cornelius Ford, not as Boswell says his _uncle_ Cornelius, at
Pedmore, about a mile from Stourbridge. He walked in every day to the
Grammar School. A connexion of the boy, Gregory Hickman, was residing
next to the Grammar School. A kinsman of Johnson and a descendant of
Hickman, Dr. Freer, still lives in the house. I met him at Lichfield
recently, and he has sent me a photograph of the very house, which stands
to-day much as it did when Johnson visited it, and wrote at twenty-two, a
sonnet to Dorothy Hickman "playing at the Spinet." Dorothy was one of
Johnson's three early loves, with Ann Hector and Olivia Lloyd. Dorothy
married Dr. John Turtin and had an only child, Dr. Turtin, the celebrated
physician who attended Goldsmith in his last illness.
I have not time to go through the record of all Dr. Johnson's uncles on
the maternal side, and do full justice to Mr. Reade's industry and
mastery of detail. I may, however, mention incidentally that the uncle
who was hanged, if one was, must have been one of his father's brothers,
for to the Fords that distinction does not seem to have belonged. Much
that is entertaining is related of the cousin Parson Ford, who, after
sharing with the famous Earl of Chesterfield in many of his profligacies,
received from his lordship the Rectory of South Luffenham. There is no
evidence, however, that Chesterfield ever knew that his at one time
chaplain and boon companion was cousin of the man who wrote him the most
famous of letters.
The mother of Cornelius Ford was a Crowley, and this brings Johnson into
relationship with London city worthies, for Mrs. Ford's brother was Sir
Ambrose Crowley, Kt., Alderman, of London, the original of Addison's Jack
Anvil. One of Sir Ambrose Crowley's daughters married Humphrey Parsons,
sometime M.P. for London and twice Lord Mayor. Thus we see that during
the very years of Johnson's most painful struggle in London one of his
distant cousins or connexions was Chief Magistrate of this City. Another
connexion, Elizabeth Crowley, was married in 1724 at Westminster Abbey to
John, tenth Lord St. John of Bletsoe. "Here are ancestors for you,
Mistress," Dr. Johnson might have said to Mrs. Thrale if he had only
known--if he had had a genealogist at his elbow as well as a pushful
biographer.
Mr. Reade prints the whole of the marriage settlement upon the union of
Johnson's mother and father. It is a very elaborate document, and
suggests the undoubted prosperity of the parties at the time. The
husband was fifty, the bride thirty-seven. Samuel was not born until
three years and three months after the marriage. The pair frequently in
early married life received assistance by convenient deaths as the
following extracts from wills indicate:--
_Cornelius Ford of Packwood in the Co. of Warwick_.
I give and bequeath unto my son-in-law Michaell Johnson the sum of
five pounds, and to his wife my daughter five and twenty pounds.
Proved May 1, 1709.
_Jane Ford of Old Turnford_, _widow of Joseph Ford_.
I do will and appoint that my son Cornelius Ford do and shall pay to
my brother-in-law, Mr. Michael Johnson and his wife and their
trustees, the sum of 200 pounds which is directed by his late father's
Will to be paid to me and in lieu of so much moneys which my said late
husband received in trust for my said brother Johnson and his wife.
Proved at Worcester, October 2, 1722.
Then "good cousin Harriotts" does not forget them:--
I give and bequeath to my cousin Sarah the wife of Michael Johnson the
like sum of 40 pounds for her own separate use, and one pair of my
best flaxen sheets and pillow coats, a large pewter dish and a dozen
of pewter plates, provided that her husband doth at the same time give
the like bond to my executor to permit his wife to dispose of the same
at her will and pleasure.
Elizabeth Harriotts of Trysall in Staff.,
October 23, 1726.
But I must leave this fascinating volume. I cannot find time to tell you
all it has to say about the Porter family. Mr. Reade is as informative
when treating of the Porters, of Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Lucy, as
he is with the family trees of which I have spoken.
I hasten on to Dr. Hill's _Life_, with which I am only concerned here at
the point where it is affected by Mr. Reade's book. The reflection
inevitably arises that it is well-nigh impossible efficiently to do work
involving research unless one has an income derived from other sources.
Your historian in proportion to the value of his work must be a rich man,
and so must the biographer. Good as Brother Birkbeck Hill's work was, it
would have been better if he had had more money. He might have had many
of these wills and other documents copied, upon the securing of which Mr.
Reade must have expended such very large sums. Dr. Hill was fully alive
to this. "If I had not some private means," he wrote to a friend in
1897, "I could never edit Johnson and Boswell; but I do not get so well
paid as a carpenter." As a matter of fact, I find that he lost exactly 3
pounds by publishing _Dr. Johnson_: _his Friends and his Critics_. He
made 320 pounds by the first four years' sale of the "Boswell." This 320
pounds, including American rights, made the bulk of his payments for his
many years' work, and the book has not yet gone into a second edition. I
think 2,000 were printed. There were between 40,000 and 50,000 copies of
Croker's editions sold, so that we must not be too boastful as to the
improved taste of the present age. 320 pounds is a mere bagatelle to
numbers of our present writers of utterly foolish fiction. Several of
them have been known to spend double that sum on a single motor-car. In
connexion with this matter I cannot refrain from giving one passage from
a letter of Brother Hill's:--
My old friend D--- lamented that the two new volumes (of my _Johnson
Miscellanies_) are so dear as to be above his reach. The net price is
a guinea. On Sunday he had eight glasses of hollands and seltzer--a
shilling each, a pint of stout and some cider, besides half a dozen
cigars or so. Two days' abstinence from cigars and liquor would have
paid for my book.
Mrs. Crump, who writes her father's life, has expressed regret to me that
there is so little in the book concerning the Johnson Club to which
Brother Hill was so devoted. She had asked me for letters, but I felt
that all in my possession were unsuited for publication, dealing rather
freely with living persons. Brother Hill was impatient of the mere
bookmaker--the literary charlatan who wrote without reading sufficiently.
There are two pleasant glimpses of our Club in the volume; I quote one.
It was of the night that we discussed _Dr. Johnson as a Radical_:--
I wish that you and Lucy could have been present last night and
witnessed my scene of triumph. I was indeed most nobly welcomed. The
scribe told me with sympathetic pride that the correspondent of the
_New York Herald_ had asked leave to attend, as he wished to telegraph
my paper out to America!!! as well as the discussion. There were some
very good speeches made in the discussion that followed, especially by
a Mr. Whale, a solicitor, who spoke remarkably well and with great
knowledge of his _Boswell_. He said that he preferred to call it, not
Johnson's radical side, but his humanitarian side. Mr. Birrell, the
_Obiter Dicta_ man, also spoke very well. He is a clever fellow. He
was equally complimentary. He maintained in opposition to Mr. Whale
that radical was the right term, and in fact that radicalism and
humanitarianism were the same. Many of them said what a light the
paper had thrown on Johnson's character. One gentleman came up and
congratulated me on the very delicate way in which I had handled so
difficult a subject, and had not given offence to the Liberal
Unionists and Tories present. Edmund Gosse, by whom I sat, was most
friendly, and called the paper a wonderful _tour de force_, referring
to the way in which I had linked Johnson's sayings. He asked me to
visit him some day at Trinity College, Cambridge, and assured me of a
hearty welcome. It is no wonder that what with the supper and the
smoke I did not get to sleep till after two. Among the guests was the
great Bonner, the Australian cricketer, whose health had been drunk
with that of the other visitors, and his praise sounded at having hit
some balls over the pavilion at Lord's. With great simplicity he said
that after seeing the way in which Johnson's memory was revered, he
would much rather have been such a man than have gained his own
greatest triumphs at cricket. He did not say it jocularly at all.
Another letter from Dr. Hill describes how he found himself at Ashbourne
in Derbyshire with the Club, or rather with a fragment of it. He wrote
from the _Green Man_ there concerning his adventures.
I have far exceeded my time, but I would like in conclusion to say how
admirably his daughter has written this book on our Brother Birkbeck
Hill. What a pleasant picture it presents of a genuine lover of
literature. His was not an analytical mind nor was he a great critic.
His views on Dante and Newman will not be shared by any of us. But, what
is far more important than analysis or criticism, he had an entirely
lovable personality and was a most clubbable man. He was moreover the
ideal editor of Boswell. What more could be said in praise of a beloved
Brother of the Johnson Club!
VII. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF FERDINAND LASSALLE {185}
Ich habe die Inventur meines Lebens gemacht.
Es war gross, brav, wacker, tapfer und glanzend genug.
Eine kunftige Zeit wird mir gerecht zu warden wissen.
--FERDINAND LASSALLE, _August_ 9, 1864.
I. The Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt.
Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau on April 11, 1825. His parents
were of Jewish race, his father a successful silk merchant. From boyhood
he was now the tyrant, now the slave of a mother whom he loved and by
whom he was adored. Heymann Lassal--his son changed the spelling during
his Paris sojourn--appears to have been irritable and tyrannical; and
there are some graphic instances in the recently published "Diary" {186}
of the differences between them, ending on one occasion in the boy
rushing to the river, where his terrified father finds him hesitating on
the brink, and becomes reconciled. A more attractive picture of the old
man is that told of his visit to his son-in-law, Friedland, who had
married Lassalle's sister. Friedland was ashamed of his Jewish origin,
and old Lassalle startled the guests at dinner by rising and frankly
stating that he was a Jew, that his daughter was a Jewess, and that her
husband was of the same race. The guests cheered, but the host never
forgave his too frank father-in-law.
Lassalle was a student at Breslau University, and later at Berlin, where
he laid the foundation of those Hegelian studies to which he owed his
political philosophy. In 1845 he went to Paris, and there secured the
friendship of Heine, being included with George Sand in the interesting
circle around the "mattress grave" of the sick poet.
Among Heine's letters {187} there are four addressed to Lassalle, now as
"Dear and best beloved friend," now as "Dearest brother-in-arms." "Be
assured," he says, "that I love you beyond measure. I have never before
felt so much confidence in any one." "I have found in no one," he says
again, "so much passion and clearness of intellect united in action. You
have good right to be audacious--we others only usurp this Divine right,
this heavenly privilege." And to Varnhagen von Ense he writes:--
My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man
of the most remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough
erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration
that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he
combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish
me. . . . In no one have I found united so much enthusiasm and
practical intelligence.
"In every line," says Brandes, "this letter shows the far-seeing student
of life, indeed, the prophet!"
Lassalle is not backward in reciprocating the enthusiasm.
"I love Heine," he declares; "he is my second self. What audacity!
what crushing eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when
it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and
destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then
all that is fiercest and most daring. He has the command of all the
range of feeling."
Lassalle's sympathy with Heine never lessened. It was Heine who lost
grasp of the intrinsically higher nature of his countryman and
co-religionist, and an acute difference occurred, as we shall see, when
Lassalle interfered in the affairs of the Countess von Hatzfeldt.
Introduced to the Countess by his friend Dr. Mendelssohn, in 1846,
Lassalle felt that here in concrete form was scope for all his enthusiasm
of humanity, and he determined to devote his life to championing the
cause of the oppressed lady. {188} The Countess was the wife of a
wealthy and powerful nobleman, who ill-treated her shamefully. He
imprisoned her in his castles, refused her doctors and medicine in
sickness, and carried off her children. Her own family, as powerful as
the Count, had often intervened, and the Count's repentances were many
but short-lived. In 1846 matters reached a crisis. The Count wrote to
his second son, Paul, asking him to leave his mother. The boy carried
this letter to the Countess; and Lassalle relates that, finding the lady
in tears, he persuaded her to a full disclosure of the facts. He pledged
himself to save her, and for nine years carried on the struggle, with
ultimate victory, but with considerable loss of reputation. He first
told the story to Mendelssohn and Oppenheim, two friends of great wealth,
the latter a Judge of one of the superior courts in Prussia. They agreed
to help him; for then, as always, Lassalle's persuasive powers were
irresistible. They went with him from Berlin to Dusseldorf, the Count
being in that neighbourhood. Von Hatzfeldt was at Aix-la-Chapelle,
caught in the toils of a new mistress, the Baroness Meyendorff. Lassalle
discovered that she had obtained from the Count a deed assigning to her
some property which should in the ordinary course have come to the boy
Paul. The Countess, hearing of the disaster which seemed likely to
befall her favourite son, made her way into her husband's presence, and
in the scene which followed secured a promise that the document should be
revoked--destroyed. But no sooner had she left him than the Count
returned to the Meyendorff influence, and refused to see his wife again.
Soon afterwards it was discovered that the woman had set out for Cologne.
Lassalle begged his friends Oppenheim and Mendelssohn, to follow her and,
if possible, to ascertain whether the momentous document had actually
been destroyed. They obeyed, and reached the hotel at Cologne about the
same time as the Baroness. Here they were guilty of an indiscretion, if
of nothing worse, for which Lassalle can surely in no way be blamed, but
which was used for many a year to tarnish his name. Oppenheim, on his
way upstairs, observed a servant with the luggage of the Baroness; among
other things a desk or casket of a kind commonly used to carry valuable
papers. Thinking only of the fact that it was desirable to obtain a
certain document from the brutal Count, he pounced upon the casket when
the servant's back was turned. But he had no luggage with him in which
to conceal it, and so handed it to Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, although
fully sensible of the blunder that had been committed, could not desert
his friend, and placed the casket in his trunk.
The whole hotel was in an uproar when the Baroness discovered her loss.
The friends fled panic-stricken in opposite directions. Suspicion
immediately fell upon Dr. Mendelssohn, because his room was seen to have
been left in confusion. He was pursued, but succeeded in escaping from a
railway carriage and fleeing to Paris, leaving his luggage in the hands
of the police. In his box some papers were found which incriminated
Oppenheim; and Oppenheim, a Judge of one of the superior courts, and the
son of a millionaire, was arrested and imprisoned for theft!
Lassalle visited Oppenheim in prison, and extracted from him a promise of
silence as to the motive for his conduct. He then threw himself
vigorously into the struggle, both in the press and in the law courts.
Here he seems to have parted company with Heine, because, as he tells us,
"the Baroness Meyendorff was a friend of the Princess de Lieven, and the
Princess de Lieven was the mistress of Guizot, and Heine received a
pension from Guizot."
Oppenheim was acquitted in 1846, and Mendelssohn, who was really innocent
of the actual robbery, naturally thought it safe to return to Germany. He
was, however, tried before the assize court of Cologne, and sentenced to
five years' imprisonment. Alexander von Humboldt obtained a reduction of
the sentence to one year, but on condition that Mendelssohn should leave
Europe. He went, after his release from prison, to Constantinople, and
when the Crimean war broke out joined the Turkish army, dying on the
march in 1854.
Meanwhile Germany rang for many years with the story of the so-called
robbery, and Lassalle's name was even more associated therewith than were
those of his more culpable friends. And this was not unnatural, because
he was engaged year after year in continuous warfare with Count
Hatzfeldt. At length, in 1854, about the time that the unfortunate Dr.
Mendelssohn died in the East, he secured for the Countess complete
separation and an ample provision.
Lassalle's friendship with this lady inevitably gave rise to scandal. But
never surely was scandal so little justified. She was twenty years his
senior, and the relation was clearly that of mother and son. In her
letters he is always "my dear child," and in his she is the confidante of
the innumerable troubles of mind and of heart of which so impressionable
a man as Ferdinand Lassalle had more than his share.
"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she
tells him, when he confides to her his passion for Helene von Donniges;
and the remark opens out a vista of confidences of which the world
happily knows but little. From the assize court of Dusseldorf, of all
places, we have a very definite glimpse of a good-looking man, likely to
be a favourite in the society of the opposite sex:--
"Ferdinand Lassalle," runs the official document, "aged twenty-three,
a civilian, born at Breslau, and dwelling recently at Berlin. Stands
five feet six inches in height, has brown curly hair, open forehead,
brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes, well proportioned nose and mouth, and
rounded chin."
He was indeed a favourite in Berlin drawing-rooms, pronounced a
"Wunderkind" by Humboldt, and enthusiastically admired on all sides. But,
assuming the story of Sophie Solutzeff to be mythical, there is no
evidence that Lassalle had ever had any very serious romance in his life
until he met Helene von Donniges.
_Es ist eine alte Geschichte_,
_Doch bleibt sie immer neu_.--HEINE.
II. Helene von Donniges