LOVE AFFAIRS--LITERARY CLUB. 1766-73
'How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away.'--GAY.
'Love,' wrote Madame de Stael, 'is with man a thing apart, 'tis woman's
whole existence.' This is not true at least of Boswell, for his love
affairs fill as large a part in his life as in that of Benjamin
Constant. A most confused chapter withal, and one that luckily was not
known to Macaulay, whose colours would otherwise have been more
brilliant. We find Bozzy paying his addresses at one and the same time
to at least eight ladies, exclusive as this is of sundry minor
divinities of a fleeting and more temporary nature not calling here for
allusion. His first divinity was the grass-widow of Moffat, and here
Temple had been compelled to remonstrate in spite of all the lover's
philandering about her freedom from her husband, who had used her ill.
Were she unfaithful, he declares her worthy to be 'pierced with a
Corsican dagger,' but in March he has found it too much like a 'settled
plan of licentiousness,' discovering her to be an ill-bred rompish girl,
debasing his dignity, without refinement, though handsome and lively.
Then there is the quarrel and the reconciliation, she vowing she loved
him more than ever she had done her husband, but meeting with opposition
from his brother David and others, who furnished the love-sick heart of
her adorer with examples of her faithlessness such as made him recoil.
He vows now his frailties are at an end, and he resolves to turn out an
admirable member of society. He had broken with her as with the
gardener's daughter a year ago--an everlasting lesson to him.
By March 1767 the reigning favourite was Miss Bosville of Yorkshire. But
his lot being cast in Scotland would be an objection to the beauty; then
we hear of a young lady in the vicinity of whose claims Lord Auchinleck
approved, because their lands lay happily together for family extension.
She was just eighteen, pious, good-tempered and genteel, and for four
days she had been on a visit to 'the romantick groves' of his ancestors,
when suddenly the scene is changed for the Sienese _signora_ of whom we
heard upon his travels. 'My Italian angel,' he cries, 'is constant; I
had a letter from her but a few days ago, which made me cry.' He
conjures his friend Temple to come to him, and 'on that Arthur Seat
where our youthful fancies roved abroad shall we take counsel together.'
The local divinity we learn is Miss Blair of Adamtown; he has been
drinking her health, and aberrations from sobriety and virtue have
ensued, but he thought things would be brought to a climax were Temple
to visit her. A long letter of commission follows, the envoy is
instructed to appear as his old friend, praising him to Miss Blair for
his good qualities. Temple is adjured to dwell upon his odd, inconstant,
impetuous nature, how he is accustomed to women of intrigue, and he is
to ask of the fair one if she does not think there is insanity in the
Boswell family. She is to hear of his travels, his acquaintance with
foreign princes, Voltaire and Rousseau, his desire to have a house of
his own; and then he diverges into practicality when he desires his
friend to 'study the mother,' and take notes of all that passed, as it
might have the effect of fixing the fate of the lover. Temple, it may be
imagined, did not interpret his commission in such a literal spirit, and
inconstancy and insanity could hardly be recommendations in Miss Blair's
eyes. That such should be the case,--outside the confessions of Mr
Rochester in _Jane Eyre_,--would appear to the commissioner an obvious
fact.
A silence followed on Temple's departure from the divinity. Boswell
dreaded a certain nabob, 'a man of copper,' as his rival. Then he
believed the fair offended by his own Spanish stateliness and gravity;
and again a letter, 'written with all the warmth of Italian affection,'
restores the _signora_ to the first place, from which she is deposed by
a note from Miss Blair, explaining that his letter had been delayed a
week at the Ayr post-office. Then fresh ravings, clouded by the belief
that she is cunning and sees his weakness, for three people at Ayr have
assured him she is a jilt, and he is shocked at the risk he has run, a
warning for the future to him against 'indulging the least fondness for
a Scotch lass.' He has, he feels, a soul of a more Southern frame, and
some Englishwoman ought to be sensible of his merit, though the Dutch
translator of his _Tour_, Mademoiselle de Zuyl, has been writing to him.
Random talking is his dread, he must guard against it, and Miss Blair
revives. 'I must have her learn the harpsichord,' he cries, 'and French;
she shall be one of the finest women in the island.' Later on they have
had a long meeting, of which space only prevents the inimitable
reproduction,--'squeezing and kissing her fine hand, while she looked at
me with those beautiful black eyes.' He meets her at the house of Lord
Kames, he sees her at _Othello_--she was in tears at the affecting
scenes, and 'rather leaned' to him (he thought), and 'the jealous Moor
described my own soul.' But true love did never yet run smooth; he has
been 'as wild as ever. Trust me in time coming; I will give you my word
of honour.' Then--curious psychological trait--'to-morrow I shall be
happy with my devotions.'
By the beginning of 1768 he fears all is over. A rumour--a false one as
it proved--had reached him that the divinity was to be married to Sir
Alexander Gilmour, M.P. for Midlothian. He gets friendly with the nabob,
warms him with old claret, and bewails with him their hapless devotion.
They agree to propose in turn, and, being in turn rejected, he feels
sure that 'a Howard, or some other of the noblest in the kingdom' is to
be his fate. The Dutch translator again holds the field, to be soon
dismissed for her frivolity and her infidelity. Then Miss Dick of
Prestonfield reigns with solid qualifications--she lacks a fortune, but
is fine, young, healthy, and amiable. A visit to Holland, to finally
decide on the Mademoiselle's claims, was proposed, but his father,
warned in time, would not consent. Temple, too, was against this, and
'Temple thou reasonest well,' he cries, and thinks his abnegation will
be a solace to his worthy father on his circuit. Freed now from Miss
Blair and the Dutch divinity, he is devoted to _la belle Irlandaise_,
'just sixteen, with the sweetest countenance and a Dublin education.'
Never till now had he been so truly in love; every flower is united, and
she is a rose without a thorn. Her name 'Mary Anne' he has carved upon a
tree, and cutting off a lock of her hair she had promised Bozzy not to
marry a lord before March, or forget him. 'Sixteen,' he says; 'innocence
and gaiety make me quite a Sicilian swain.'
His book had dissipated his professional energies, and he had even taken
to gaming. Incidentally we learn that he had lost more than he could
pay, and that Mr Sheridan had advanced enough to clear him, on a promise
that he should not engage in play for three years. Mary Anne has added
to his complications by her forgetfulness, and the local candidate Miss
Blair reappears. Favoured as she was by his father, it would have been
easy to bring things to a climax, but on her mother's part there was
some not unnatural coldness over his indiscreet talk about his love of
the heiress. Bozzy was a convivial knight-errant in what was called
'Saving the ladies.' At clubs and gatherings any member would toast his
idol in a bumper, and then another champion would enter his peerless
Dulcinea in two bumpers, to be routed by the original toper taking off
four. The deepest drinker 'saved his lady,' as the phrase ran; though,
says George Thomson speaking of the old concerts in St Cecilia's Hall,
at the foot of Niddry's Wynd, which were maintained by noblemen and
gentlemen, the bold champion had often considerable difficulty in
_saving himself_ from the floor, in his efforts to regain his seat! Miss
Burnet of Monboddo, celebrated by Burns, and Miss Betty Home, he
describes as the reigning beauties of the time deeply involved in thus
causing the fall of man. Boswell was not behind, and he ascribes his
aberrations to the 'drinking habit which still prevails in Scotland,'
renewing good intentions, only to be broken in the same letter that
reveals the Moffat lady again, 'like a girl of eighteen, with the finest
black hair,' whom he loves so much that he is in a fever. '_This_,' he
adds truly enough, '_is unworthy of Paoli's friend_.'
The May of 1769 saw him in Ireland, where his relations in County Down
secured his entry into the best society. A dispatch to the _Public
Advertizer_, of July 7th, informed the public that 'James Boswell, Esq.,
dined with His Grace the Duke of Leinster at his seat at Carton. He went
by special invitation to meet the Lord Lieutenant; came next morning
with his Excellency to the Phoenix Park, where he was present at a
review of Sir Joseph Yorke's dragoons; he dined with the Lord Mayor, and
is now set out on his return to Scotland.' The _belle Irlandaise_ had
forgotten him, but it is to this occasion that we may refer some verses
that were published by his son Sir Alexander. Chambers thinks they refer
to his cousin, but the general belief tends in the direction of the
notorious Margaret Caroline Rudd, the associate in later years of the
brothers Perreau, who were executed for forgery. In the _Life of
Johnson_ we find Boswell, in 1776, expressing to his companion a desire
to be introduced to this person, so celebrated for her address and
insinuation, and later on he is shewn, on his own confession, to have
visited her, 'induced by the fame of her talents and irresistible power
of fascination,' and to have sent an account of this interview to his
wife, but to have offered its perusal first, 'as it appeared to me
highly entertaining,' to Temple, who was indignant over it. It would
appear, then, that Boswell did not reveal to Johnson his former
flirtation with this notorious woman, but we think that the obvious
marks of the brogue in the verses shew conclusively that either the
feeling was imitative and based on an earlier Irish song, or that the
verses were judged by Boswell's son, not too devoted, as we shall find,
to his father's memory, to be free from offence.
'O Larghan Clanbrassil, how sweet is thy sound,
To my tender remembrance as Love's sacred ground;
For there Marg'ret Caroline first charm'd my sight,
And fill'd my young heart with a flutt'ring delight.
When I thought her my own, ah! too short seemed the _day_
For a jaunt to Downpatrick, or a trip on the _sea_;
To express what I felt, then all language was vain,
'Twas in truth what the poets have studied to feign.
But, too late, I found even she could _deceive_,
And nothing was left but to sigh, weep, and _rave_;
Distracted, I flew from my dear native shore,
Resolved to see Larghan Clanbrassil no more.
Yet still in some moments enchanted I find
A ray of her fondness beams soft on my mind;
While thus in bless'd fancy my angel I see,
All the world is a Larghan Clanbrassil to me.'
On this journey with Boswell there was a Margaret--his own cousin, and
it is curious to find him in this mood of sentimental philandering, were
it no worse, when we have now to see Bozzy at the end of his love
affairs. When his great work was completed in 1791, its author
contributed to the _European Magazine_ for May and June a little sketch
of himself, in order to give a fillip to its circulation. There he
describes jauntily his Irish tour, and after what we know of his erratic
course, it is delightful to come across this sage chronicler of his dead
wife, circulating testimonials to her excellences, to which no doubt he
was oblivious in her lifetime. 'They had,' he writes, 'from their
earliest years lived in the most intimate and unreserved friendship.'
His love of the fair sex has been already mentioned (he had quoted the
song of 'the Soapers' in our first chapter), and she was the constant
yet prudent and delicate _confidante_ of all his '_egarements du coeur
et de l'esprit_.' This we may doubt, and the gracefully allusive French
quotation reminds us of Mr Pepys' use of that language when his wife
was in his mind. This jaunt was the occasion of Mr Boswell's resolving
at last to engage himself in that connection to which he had always
declared himself averse. In short, he determined to become a married
man. He requested her, with her excellent judgment and more sedate
manners, to do him the favour of accepting him with all his faults, and
though he assures his readers he had uniformly protested that a large
fortune had been with him a requisite in the fair, he was yet 'willing
to waive that in consideration of her peculiar merit!'
Hearts are caught in the rebound, and Bozzy had solaced his loss of the
_belle Irlandaise_ with the sympathy of his fellow-traveller. Having let
his fancies roam so far abroad as Siena and Holland, the lover had now
returned like the bird at evening to the nest from which it flew. She
had no fortune, and 'the penniless lass wi' the lang pedigree,' related
as she was to the Eglintoun branch and other high families, had not in
the eyes of his father the landed qualifications of Miss Blair, whose
property lay so convenient for the extension of the Boswell acres. This
may have been the cause of the paternal anger and the separate marriages
on the same day. The wives of literary men have ever been a fruitful
source of disquisition to the admirers of their heroes, and Terentia,
Gemma Donati, and Anne Hathaway, have divided the biographers of Cicero,
Dante, and Shakespeare. To us it seems that, like his father, she had
much to bear, hampered by their domestic difficulties through her
husband's constant dependence on that father for his income, and eyed
with undeserved suspicion by the judge and his second wife as a Mordecai
in the gate, penniless and yet supposed to be the cause of Boswell's
pecuniary embarrassments and indiscretions. The marriage was deferred
till after the Stratford Jubilee, and the newly married pair took up
their house in Chessel's Buildings in the Canongate. For a year and a
half after his marriage his correspondence with Johnson underwent an
entire cessation, and in the August of 1771 General Paoli made a tour in
Scotland, which, for a time, called forth the best organizing abilities
of his friend. From the _London Magazine_ of the day, in an account
contributed by our hero, we learn how Paoli had paid 'a visit to James
Boswell, Esq., who was the first gentleman of this country who visited
Corsica, and whose writings have made the brave islanders and their
general properly known over Europe.' Boswell waited on the exile and the
Polish Ambassador at Ramsay's Inn, at the foot of St Mary's Wynd,
visiting with them Linlithgow and Carron, 'where the general had a
prodigious pleasure in viewing the forge where were formed the cannon
and war-like stores' sent to Corsica by his Scottish admirers. At
Glasgow they were entertained by the professors, and saw 'the elegant
printing of the Scottish Stephani, the Messrs Foulis,' and no doubt
their guide managed to remind their excellencies of a certain _Tour in
Corsica_ emanating thence. Auchinleck was visited to 'the joy of my
worthy father and me at seeing the Corsican Hero in our romantick
groves,' as he tells Garrick, and on their return to Glasgow the freedom
of the city was conferred on Paoli by Lord Provost Dunlop.[A] At
Edinburgh 'the general slept under the roof of his ever grateful
friend.' The whole forms a favourable specimen of Boswell's organizing
capacities, and viewed in relation to the friendly intercourse he is
found maintaining with prominent and influential persons, our regret is
but increased that in the interests of his wife and children his
abilities were not exercised in a more strictly professional channel.
London he visited in the March of 1772 over an appeal to the Lords from
the Court of Session. Johnson was now in good health, and was eager 'to
see Beattie's College.' In the _Scots Magazine_ for February 1773 there
is mentioned a masked ball, attended by seventy persons of quality,
given in Edinburgh by Sir Alexander Macdonald and his wife, Miss
Bosville of Yorkshire, one of Boswell's loves. Croker says that the
masquerade for which he was rallied by Johnson was given by the Dowager
Countess of Fife, and that Bozzy went as a dumb conjurer; but from the
expression of the _Magazine_, 'an entertainment little known in this
part of the Kingdom,' coupled with the words employed by Johnson, there
can be no doubt that Croker is wrong, and that the host on this occasion
was the churlish chief, whose inhospitable ways they were to experience
in Skye. He was now near the great honour of his life, admission to that
Literary Club, of which, said Sir William Jones, 'I will only say that
there is no branch of human knowledge on which some of our members are
not capable of giving information.' Never was honour better deserved or
better repaid. Without his record the fame of that club would have
passed away, surviving at best in some sort of hazy companionship with
the Kit-Cat, Button's, Will's, and other clubs and assemblies. Never was
there a club of which each member was better qualified to take care of
his own fame with posterity. None of Johnson's associates would have
hesitated in declaring an extended date of renown for the _Rambler_; and
perhaps he himself would have staked the reputation assured, as Cowper
said, by the tears of bards and heroes in order to immortalize the dead,
on his _Rasselas_ or the _Dictionary_. Yet he and most members of that
club, apart from the record of Boswell, would be but names to the
literary antiquary, and be by the mass of readers entirely forgotten.
He had canvassed the members. Johnson wrote, on April 23rd, to
Goldsmith, who was in the chair that evening, to consider Boswell as
proposed by himself in his absence. On the night of the ballot, April
30th, Boswell dined at Beauclerk's, where, after the company had gone to
the club, he was left till the fate of his election should be announced.
After Johnson had taken the thing in hand there was not much danger, yet
poor Bozzy 'sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming
conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate.' There
he received the tidings of his election, and he hastened to the place of
meeting. Burke he met that night for the first time, and on his
entrance, Johnson, 'with humorous formality, gave me a _charge_,
pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of the club.'
That charge we can believe Forster to be right in suspecting to be a
caution against publishing abroad the proceedings and the talk of the
members.
In the autumn of the year, as they drew near to Monboddo, Johnson, we
should think with excessive rudeness, told him 'several of the members
wished to keep you out. Burke told me, he doubted if you were fit for
it: but, now you are in, none of them are sorry. Burke says, that you
have so much good humour naturally, it is scarce a virtue.' The faithful
Bozzy replied, 'They were afraid of you, sir, as it was you who proposed
me;' and the doctor was prone to admit that if the one blackball
necessary to exclude had been given, they knew they never would have got
in another member. Yet even from this rebuff he managed to deftly
extract a compliment. Beauclerk, the doctor said, had been very earnest
for the admission, and Beauclerk, replied Boswell, 'has a keenness of
mind which is very uncommon.' The witty Topham, along with Reynolds,
Garrick, and others, is immortalized in the pages of the man who was not
thought by the wits of Gerrard Street fit for their club.
[A] By the Town Clerk Depute of Glasgow, R. Renwick,
Esq., we are informed that no notice of this enrolment of
General Paoli was entered at the time, pursuant to the custom of
the Register over honorary burgesships.