Nothing in Boswell's life became him so well as his second important
publication, 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.' The event took
place in 1785, not many months after Johnson's death, and less than
twelve years after the eventful journey when Johnson was displayed
to his biographer's countrymen. The 'Tour' has already been mentioned
here as an episode in Boswell's remarkable friendship. It was an
episode, besides, in Boswell's life; it decided his destiny.
In the year 1785 Boswell was in the midst of his political schemes and
ambitions. It was exactly in this period of his life that it was most
important for him to win respect. Yet the 'Journal' revealed the
whole severity of Johnson's criticisms upon Scotland and the Scotch;
Boswell's position among his countrymen was certain to suffer, and
did suffer very much by its publication. His candour triumphed by the
event. His real self was expressed without compromise, at the expense
of the respectable self which he cherished and cultivated. It matters
very little how much Boswell foresaw the consequence. Probably he was
not altogether unsuspicious, for Malone was at his side, and Malone
was a man of the world.[1] In any case he did publish this amazing
book, and he published it at a critical time. Just when he seemed
to be deserting his genius and drifting into a world that was never
intended for him, the vital truth of Boswell proved that it was
irrepressible and saved him for Johnson, for himself, and for
posterity.
* * * * *
Johnson and Boswell were typical travellers of the eighteenth century.
They went in no romantic spirit to see the beauties of Nature in
remote corners of the earth. 'He always said,' reports Boswell of the
Doctor, 'that he was not come to Scotland to see fine places, of which
there were enough in England, but wild objects, mountains, waterfalls,
peculiar manners--in short, things which he had not seen before.
I have a notion that he at no time has had much taste for rural
beauties. I have myself very little.' This is a clear statement.
They looked at 'wild objects' because they were unusual, and eschewed
almost entirely scenery of a tamer spirit. They were interested in
'manners.' The Journal bears out this statement. Observations about
the people of the country are part of the traveller's stock-in-trade,
and they seem even to be one of the _raisons d'être_ of Boswell's
book. In the same way the Journal is filled with archæological and
historical speculations. Johnson's journey to the Western Islands is
far more so, and seems to have been written almost entirely from this
point of view. These were the absorbing interests of educated men, and
travel was expected to furnish the occasion for 'an ordered series of
learned observations.' To be convinced of the paramount importance of
these interests in the eighteenth century one has only to glance at
the periodicals of the time.
But both Johnson and Boswell, especially the latter, had, though they
may have been scarcely conscious of the fact, a far more important
interest in human nature. The Tour was admirably arranged for its
gratification. It consisted for the most part in visits to the
gentlemen of the country: the travellers occasionally put up at
an inn; but for the most part they took advantage of Highland
hospitality. Their conversation therefore would naturally be concerned
very much with the qualities of their various hosts. Now Boswell kept
an elaborate and strictly diurnal diary of which the most important
item was professedly the record of Dr. Johnson's talk. The briefest
reflection on the Doctor's manner and the nature of his remarks must
therefore reveal at once the character of Boswell's Journal.
Assuredly it is an amazing fact that this Journal was published within
twelve years of the Tour itself! As we should expect, it is full of
observations, many of them condemnatory, about men and women who were
still living. 'Nowadays,' says Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, 'we have been
regularly trained to personality by what are called the "Society
papers," in which the names of private persons as well as their doings
are recorded; still it would cause a commotion if the conversation of
some leading personage were reported, in which persons still living
were described in such fashion as this: "A---- is a poor creature;
_he has no bottom_." "B---- is a thorough donkey, talks a good deal of
what he _thinks_ to be sense," &c.'
One instance will serve to illustrate the tone of Boswell's Journal;
it shows perhaps the ultimate point of indiscretion which he reached,
but is a fair indication of his manner. One of the gentlemen who
entertained the two travellers was Sir Alexander Macdonald: he had
not, it appears, a reputation for generosity.
The penurious gentleman of our acquaintance, formerly alluded
to, afforded us a topick of conversation to-night. Dr. Johnson
said I ought to write down a recollection of the instances of
his narrowness as they almost exceeded belief.
Boswell proceeds to relate a story to the effect that the Highlander
gave to an Irish harper a valuable harp-key, because 'he could not
find it in his heart to give him any money.' Later, he discovered its
value and wished to have it back.
_Johnson_: 'I like to see how avarice defeats itself; how when
avoiding to part with money the miser gives something more
valuable.' Col said the gentleman's relations were angry at
his giving away the harp-key, for it had been long in the
family. _Johnson_: 'Sir, he values a new guinea more than an
old friend.'
One can hardly imagine anything more offensive--unless it were the
story which follows it:
Col also told us that the same person having come up with a
serjeant and twenty men, working on the high road, he entered
into discourse with the serjeant and then gave him sixpence
for the men to drink. The serjeant asked, 'Who is this
fellow?' Upon being informed, he said, 'If I had known who it
was I should have thrown it in his face.' _Johnson_: '...
he has not learnt to be a miser; I believe we must take him
apprentice.' _Boswell_: 'He would grudge giving half a guinea
to be taught.' _Johnson_: 'Nay, sir, you must teach him
_gratis_.'
If the 'Tour to the Hebrides' is uniquely indiscreet, it is only the
more typical of Boswell. He loved to be in the public eye and he was
now notorious beyond measure. The wags laughed, the injured Scotsmen
were angry, and the more respectable parts of the community were
profoundly shocked. A sheaf of cartoons did justice to the humour of
the situation. Lord Macdonald was represented with uplifted stick, and
the threatened author on his knees before him.[2] 'Johnson's
Ghost' was depicted as appearing to the terror-stricken Boswell and
mournfully reproaching him. In a series of twenty large caricatures
the biographer was represented in twenty absurd situations, and each
sketch had a quotation from his book. Boswell at all events was the
first in the field of all who intended to write about Johnson, and no
doubt he was glad that all the world was aware of the fact.
But Boswell did not mean to be notorious in this fashion. He may have
expected some ridicule, but not ill-feeling; he was too good-humoured
himself. Possibly he satisfied his malice on more than one occasion;
but as a rule he had no intention of giving pain. The admirable Dr.
Beattie calls him 'a very good-natured man,' and says he was convinced
that Bozzy meant no harm. Sir William Forbes said that he seemed sorry
for 'some parts,' and Boswell published his own apology and defence in
one of the notes of a later edition:
Having found, on a revision of the first edition of this work,
that, notwithstanding my best care, a few observations had
escaped me, which arose from the instant impression, the
publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing
the bounds of strict decorum, I immediately ordered that they
should be omitted in subsequent editions. I was pleased to
find that they did not amount in the whole to a page. If any
of the same kind are yet left, it is owing to inadvertence
alone, no man being more unwilling to give pain to others than
I am.
When Boswell says that he is unwilling to give pain we may believe
him unreservedly; there may have been particular cases when he lowered
himself to the satisfaction of a grudge, but as a general statement
it is true. That Boswell was good-natured is incontestable: it is
admitted on all hands. 'Good-nature,' wrote Mr. Courtenay, 'was highly
predominant in his character. He appeared to entertain sentiments of
benevolence to all mankind, and it does not appear to me that he ever
did, or could, injure any human being _intentionally_.' Mr. Malone
wrote a letter for the _Gentleman's Magazine_ vindicating Boswell's
character after his death. 'He had not only an inexhaustible fund
of good-humour and good-nature, but was extremely warm in his
attachments, and as ready to exert himself for his friends as any
man.' His untiring kindness to Johnson might perhaps be refused as
evidence that he was 'ready to exert himself for his friends.' Towards
Temple and his wife also, from whom he had nothing to gain, 'he always
played,' as Mr. Seccombe remarks, 'a very friendly part'; 'he made
Johnson known to them, for instance; he took Paoli down to Mamhead,
he had Temple up to town and took him and his daughter to Westminster
Hall to see the trial of Warren Hastings. He took them more than once
to Sir Joshua's studio in Leicester Square, he acted as godfather to
one of the sons, and tipped another who was at Eton.' But the most
remarkable testimony that Boswell had, as the French say, _le c[oe]ur
bon_ is his will. We shall have to pay some attention to this
document in a later chapter: it shows that Boswell could be remarkably
considerate.
Boswell wrote and published the 'Tour' with a greedy enjoyment
and uncontained expansiveness entirely typical of him, and in
amazing ignorance of some of the strongest human feelings--of the
proprietorship that men feel with respect to their own lives which
surrounds them with a sacred halo of privacy, and of their inordinate
desire to appear more virtuous and more successful than they are. He
babbled of himself as he babbled of others, not unconscious of the
folly that he committed and revealed, but not suspecting that he would
be called a fool for admitting his folly. Truth, as these pages have
already remarked, was of supreme importance to Boswell, and was not to
be suppressed. He could hardly understand that plain fact could hurt
anyone. A pamphleteer who wished to make Boswell ridiculous has
suggested his attitude in a picturesque manner: Lord Macdonald is
supposed to be threatening personal violence; Walcot writes:
Treat with contempt the menace of this Lord.
'Tis Hist'ry's province, Bozzy, to record.
There was fundamentally in Boswell's nature a desire to record
observations--a desire which overrode his conventional aims and
ambitions and, while decreasing the possibility of his being a
successful man, made it certain that he would be a great one.
All that Boswell meant by truth will be examined later in connection
with his biographical method. 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides'
must be criticised as a book along with the 'Life of Johnson' and not
apart from it. It is, in a sense, but a portion of the larger work.
The same genius, the same art, has made two incomparable books. The
later is more discreet. 'I have been more reserved,' says Boswell. But
it is not less vividly life-like: 'I have managed so as to occasion
no diminution of the pleasure my book should afford.' The 'Tour,'
however--and this is the one important difference--is concerned with
Johnson in an extraordinary phase of his life, and one which is not
treated in the larger work. Johnson is on a holiday. The journey is
called a 'jaunt.' And the atmosphere of the 'jaunt' is reflected on
every page of the Journal. The freedom, the expectancy and the high
spirits of a travelling holiday to those who very rarely enjoy
one, the increased opportunities to Boswell for observation and his
unflagging interest and pleasure in his great experiment--all these
account, and are sufficient to account, for the different effect we
feel in reading the 'Tour to the Hebrides': and most of those who
perceive this difference will agree that it is an additional charm.
* * * * *
During the eight years of Boswell's life between the ages of forty-two
and fifty, several important events happened beside the publication of
the 'Tour to the Hebrides.'
It is unfortunate that for the greater part of this period we have
no letters from Boswell to Temple. If there was any correspondence
between them, none has been preserved between the dates November 3rd,
1780, and January 5th, 1787. And so we hear no private utterances
about the death of Boswell's father, by which he became Laird of
Auchinleck, or about the death of Johnson.
It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of Boswell about the first
event. There can have been no great sorrow as there had been no great
affection; and there must have been no little pleasure in becoming the
head of an ancient family and a man of property. It is a sad thing if
the records of this period have indeed been lost, for they ought to
have been peculiarly rich in extravagant and pompous sayings.
Of Johnson's value to Boswell we have already spoken. It would be
impossible to suppose that Boswell did not realise his loss. He must
have felt when he visited London, as he continued to do in spite of
his Scotch inheritance, that the central figure was gone, and with it
much of the zest of life in his London circle. There was no doubt
a yearning sometimes for that rude strength, which had so much of
tenderness besides, and a lasting grief.
Of Boswell's sorrows in later life, of his failure to realise those
'towering hopes,' and consequent disappointment, something has been
said already in these pages. It was not apparently until the autumn of
1789 that Boswell began to see that he was not destined to succeed in
the manner he wished--in politics and in the law. The letters at
this time were more frequent than usual, and we are able to see how,
earlier in the year, he was quite hopeful about the future, but later
became despondent.
A further reason depressed Boswell's spirits at this time: in the
summer of 1789 he lost his wife.[3] It is greatly to the credit of
Boswell that he was very deeply affected by her death--to his credit,
not because as a husband he was able to retain affection for his wife
(for affections are not completely under our control), but because
he was able to appreciate a woman who from his own accounts must have
been a sensible, kind woman, and one who treated him with a patient
consideration.
Boswell was not a good husband, because he never became in the
ordinary sense domesticated; his home was never to him the predominant
interest. During her last illness he seems to have realised that he
might have behaved better towards his wife, and to have felt a true
remorse:
No man ever had a higher esteem or a warmer love for a wife
than I have for her. You will recollect, my Temple, how our
marriage was the result of an attachment truly romantic; yet
how painful is it to me to recollect a thousand instances of
inconsistent conduct. I can justify my removing to the great
sphere of England, upon a principle of laudable ambition; but
the frequent scenes of what I must call dissolute conduct are
inexcusable; and often and often when she was very ill, in
London have I been indulging in festivity with Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Courtenay, Malone, &c., and have come home late, and
disturbed her repose. Nay, when I was last at Auchinleck,
on purpose to soothe and console her, I repeatedly went from
home; and both on those occasions, and when neighbours visited
me, drank a great deal too much wine.[4]
He was remorseful too after the death of his wife that he had not been
present to comfort her at the end. And there was good reason. She, as
he remarked, would not have treated him so. But Boswell must not be
blamed too severely for this serious omission. His wife was suffering
with a disease from which, though it was certain she would not
recover, there was no immediate prospect of release. Boswell seems to
have expected from the medical opinion that her life would linger on
longer than actually it did: and, if it was not for pressing duties
that he left his wife, it was not for pleasure, but for the kind of
activity incident to the career he had chosen.
Boswell was not unlike many people inasmuch as he found out rather
late in life the true value of his wife, and was more sorry than could
have been expected when he no longer had her help and companionship;
he found perhaps that he had rated too highly by comparison the
greater intellectual stimulus of his literary circle. His sorrow in
any case, at her death, whatever the proportion of remorse to the
sense of loss, is pleasant to see. There was so much affectation in
his character, that whenever he shows that he had simple, genuine
feelings--and he had them more often than might be supposed--we must
have some regard for them, however commonplace they may be.
Boswell was evidently quite miserable at his loss; he was unrestrained
in grief as he was in enjoyment, and the tale of his woe was poured
out to Temple in the same fervid manner as the love affairs of earlier
years:
I am amazed when I look back. Though I often and often dreaded
this loss, I had no conception how distressing it would be.
May God have mercy on me! I am quite restless and feeble and
desponding.... I have an avidity for death; I eagerly wish to
be laid by my dear wife; years of life seem insupportable.
I cannot express to you, Temple [he writes in a later letter],
'what I suffer from the loss of my valuable wife and the
mother of my children. While she lived, I had no occasion to
think concerning my family; every particular was thought of
by her, better than I could. I am the most helpless of human
beings; I am in a state very much that of one in despair.'
It must not be thought that Boswell faced the world in the sad and
sometimes complaining vein in which he wrote to Temple. There was no
whining self-pity, and no pride of the grievance, as might perhaps
have been expected, in his public attitude. 'It is astonishing what
force I have put upon myself since her death, how I have entertained
company, &c., &c.'[5] He no doubt tried to be cheerful in company, and
probably he succeeded.
The weakness of Boswell was shown in a different way, by an increase
of those vices which he had been encouraged to resist by Johnson, and
also, we may suppose, by his wife. Johnson had said, long before the
bereavement: 'In losing her you would lose your sheet-anchor, and be
tost, without stability, by the waves of life.' This prediction was
fulfilled.
Boswell had always been a self-indulgent man. Before his marriage he
was, as may be seen from the letters, sexually self-indulgent. Whether
he was so in later years, or in what degree, it is difficult to
determine; he may have been alluding to this when he talks of 'little
fondnesses,' and of being 'dissipated';[6] and the fact that he says
on one occasion that he had no 'confessions' to make rather suggests
the possibility that this may not always have been the case, though he
never actually confesses.
But the particular form of his self-indulgence was drunkenness.
Besides frequent references to his habit of drinking, there are,
altogether, some half-dozen recorded instances of Boswell being drunk
or intoxicated, and as they are referred to only because they had some
curious results they suggest that this was far from being unusual.
In the letters, Boswell records on several occasions that he has been
drinking too much lately, or that he was becoming a drunkard.
His mode of resisting what he quite well saw to be an evil habit was
to take a series of vows. It is a method which seems to have had a
curious appeal for Boswell's nature. There was something to his mind
rather romantic about a vow: something heroic in taking that great
resolve, made so quickly to endure for so long, something of the
saintly penance; and there was something of the martyr about one who
had bound himself in this way. In Boswell's drunkenness, however,
there was nothing romantic; it was rather sordid; and he was neither
saint, nor hero, nor martyr, for the vows, even if they could have
made him all these, were too frequently broken. There was no doubt
some serious effort on Boswell's part; but the impulse of the moment
was always too strong for him, and the efforts which lasted too short
a time were apparently followed by grave relapses.
Boswell's drinking habits had ill effects. Johnson, when reminded of
the headache which his companion was wont to feel after sitting up
with him, exclaimed: 'Nay, Sir, it was not the _wine_ that made your
head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' But though the nature of
Johnson's sense and of Boswell's head may fortify the explanation, it
was not the common case; excess of alcohol was injurious to Boswell's
health.
It has been pointed out with justice that Boswell's melancholy was to
some extent the result of this excess. How much of it was affectation
we cannot easily tell. When Boswell first made his appearance to the
world as the young _littérateur_, he may have hoped to increase the
appearance of genius by assuming hereditary hypochondria. But it must
be remarked that he seems, as far as we can judge, to have given very
little impression of ever being morose; it is on the contrary his
gaiety and good spirits that are always emphasised. And we may at
least suppose when, as has been mentioned above, he entirely denies,
in a number of the 'Hypochondriack,' that genius and melancholy have
any particular connection, that he had by that time outgrown any
affectation there may originally have been. That one of Boswell's
great vivacity should sometimes be dejected, is really very natural,
and when we add to this his self-indulgent habits, it is not hard
to account for occasional attacks of low spirits. Sir Walter Scott
remarks:
There was a variation of spirits about James Boswell which
indicated some slight touch of insanity. His melancholy which
he so often complained of to Johnson was not affected but
constitutional, though doubtless he thought it a mark of high
distinction to be afflicted with hypochondria like his moral
patron.
Malone too denies altogether 'that he caught from Johnson a portion
of his constitutional melancholy.' 'This was not the fact,' writes
Malone. 'He had a considerable share of melancholy in his own
temperament; and though the general tenour of his life was gay and
active, he frequently experienced an unaccountable depression of
spirits.'[7] It was natural that Boswell's malady of depression should
have become worse towards the end of his life; not only because habits
of excess take their revenge upon the constitution, but because these
too are likely to grow with the disease. The result of Boswell's
sorrows when his wife had died and his ambitions were being thwarted
was that he was driven still more to drink.
I have drunk too much wine for some time past. I fly to every
mode of agitation.[8]
With grief continually at my heart, I have been endeavouring
to seek relief in dissipation and in wine, so that my life for
some time past has been unworthy of myself, of you, and of all
that is valuable in my character and connections.[9]
It is a pitiable picture this, of a man's decay; grief and
self-indulgence reacted upon each other, each of them adding something
to the causes of disappointment.
[Footnote 1: Malone saw a sheet of the _Tour to the Hebrides_
at the printer's and was so much impressed that he obtained
an introduction to Boswell; he helped him in the final stage,
both of this book and the _Life_, and was eventually Boswell's
first editor.]
[Footnote 2: Sir Alexander became Lord Macdonald in 1776
(_Boswelliana_, p. 140).]
[Footnote 3: _Letters to Temple_, p. 246 _et seq._]
[Footnote 4: _Letters to Temple_, p. 242.]
[Footnote 5: _Letters to Temple_, p. 253.]
[Footnote 6: _Letters to Temple_, p. 231.]
[Footnote 7: 'In a subsequent number of the _Gentleman's
Magazine_,' says Dr. Rogers in his _Memoir of J. B._, 'Mr.
Temple, under the signature of "Biographicus," denied a
statement by Mr. Malone that Boswell was of a melancholy
temperament; he maintained that he was quite otherwise
prior to his attachment to Dr. Johnson.' It may be remarked,
however, that Boswell might have a constitutional melancholy
without showing many signs of it before the age of
twenty-three; and that Temple after 1763 saw Boswell very
seldom. Malone's view, therefore, based upon an intimate
connection with Boswell for some years at the end of his life,
apart from the fact that it was likely to be a wiser view,
should carry more weight than that of Temple.]
[Footnote 8: _Letters to Temple_, p. 255.]
[Footnote 9: _Ib._, p. 257.]