DR. JOHNSON’S HOMES AND HAUNTS
Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.
SHENSTONE.
It is a common belief that Fleet Street is dotted with houses which
were Dr. Johnson’s homes in later years, and with the taverns in
which he sat drinking tea and talking philosophy till the small hours
of the morning. It is not so. The Doctor’s house at No. 1 Inner
Temple Lane has given way to “Johnson’s Buildings.”
In Johnson’s Court (named after Thomas Johnson, citizen and merchant
taylor, and one of the Common Council from 1598 till his death in
1625) the Doctor lived from 1765 to 1776, and during his “journey” in
Scotland humorously described himself as “Johnson of that Ilk.” The
house (No. 7) has, however, gone the way of all bricks and mortar. In
1776 he removed to No. 8 Bolt Court, where he passed the rest of his
life. The house was demolished soon after his death. In fact there
is only one house—No. 17 Gough Square—on which we can look and say,
“Here dwelt Dr. Johnson.”
Gough Square itself has undergone inevitable alteration, but
fortunately for the devotee, at the western end the Doctor’s house,
No. 17, still stands intact. Here his wife died in 1752, and here
he completed his Dictionary in 1755. In his note book for 1831,
Carlyle mentions having paid a visit to the house and interviewed
the occupant, who was apparently under the impression that his
illustrious predecessor in the tenancy had been a schoolmaster. So
he had been, and one of his pupils, a pupil of whom any master might
have been proud, was David Garrick. But the tenant knew not that
schoolmastering had long been abandoned when the Doctor was compiling
his Dictionary in that by no means majestic abode. On the right-hand
side of the doorway the Society of Arts has placed a plaque with the
following inscription:—
[Illustration: DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON
_Author_
LIVED HERE
B. 1709. D. 1784.]