CHAPTER IX
It is remarkable, as we have observed, in view of his personal animosities, and of his determination to prove Dr. Johnson to be both a greater and a better man than would appear from previous accounts, and to be an extremely dignified man as fitted his own conception of him, that Boswell should have presented a complete picture of Johnson—that he should have mentioned all the incidents from which he might appear both a less important and a less pleasant man—all the circumstances that might detract from his dignity.
The explanation which seems so simple and involves, when we come to understand all that it means, not only the exact shades of what the author said, but many things that he refrained from saying, is that Boswell in this particular sphere, the sphere of the biographer, was entirely truthful. And truth meant far more than that he did not distort the facts and did not suppress them; it involved in him the capacity for creating, the essential quality of his genius. Boswell had in fact the scientific spirit and applied it to the greatest of all subjects, to human nature. He was, in the first place, extremely accurate both in observing and recording; he watched attentively and often; and he described patiently what he had seen and heard. The biographer's own pen has given us a short account of his qualifications, as they appeared to him, for the task of writing the life of Johnson:
'As I had the honour and happiness of enjoying his friendship for upwards of twenty years; as I had the scheme of writing his life constantly in view; as he was well apprised of this circumstance, and from time to time obligingly satisfied my inquiries, by communicating to me the incidents of his early years; as I acquired a facility in recollecting and was very assiduous in recording his conversation, of which the extraordinary vigour and vivacity constituted one of the first features of his character; and as I have spared no pains in obtaining materials concerning him, from every quarter where I could discover that they were to be found, and have been favoured with the most liberal communications by his friends; I flatter myself that few biographers have entered upon such a work as this, with more advantages; independent of literary abilities, in which I am not vain enough to compare myself with some great names who have gone before me in this kind of writing.'[1]
With this statement we may heartily agree; but all that it really says is that Boswell had opportunities, and acquired a faculty, for recording. He had, besides, a quite remarkable faculty of acute observation. POWERS OF OBSERVATION All that he says of Johnson's appearance, his clothes, his walk, that truly horrible paragraph about his nails and knuckles, is admirable, because he tells us in a few words exactly what is most characteristic. The event of his first visit to Dr. Johnson was naturally an occasion for Boswell to describe his hero:
His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers.
That is all! And what more or what less could anyone want? In the 'Tour to the Hebrides' it is recorded that
He wore ... a very wide brown cloth great-coat, with pockets which might have almost held the two volumes of his folio 'Dictionary'; and he carried in his hand a large English oak stick.
What a difference it makes to our knowledge of Johnson that we know these details! Boswell compels us to see Johnson. Plenty of men would have noticed what he noticed, but few would have presented it so vividly. Boswell's superiority depends upon his powers as an observer; he saw things clear and strong, and so they are clear and strong for his readers.
And Boswell excelled not only in painting the mere exterior; he often alludes to the spirit that it expresses with the same dexterity. 'Generally,' he says, speaking of Johnson in the course of a dispute, 'when he had finished a period, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a whale. This I suppose was a relief to his lungs; and seemed in him to be a contemptuous mode of expression, as if he had made the arguments of his opponents fly like chaff before the wind.' We are told the physical details, but so much more! The whole attitude of Johnson is described. Similarly all the little touches, as when Johnson 'sprung away with a kind of pathetick briskness,' reveal his feelings with startling fidelity. Perhaps most remarkable of all is the account of Johnson's behaviour to his cat:
I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature.... I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend, smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, 'Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this'; and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, 'but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.'
We are pleased to find that Boswell has preserved for us the motive of Johnson, 'lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature.'[2] This is characteristic and interesting. But how deeply satisfying it is to discover that poor Hodge, as it appeared to Johnson, was 'out of countenance.'
It is not, however, only because he observed so accurately what was obviously relevant, as the appearance of Johnson, or that he saw exactly what his motives were, that Boswell was a good observer; the range of his observation is equally remarkable. He observed everything; no detail was too insignificant for his attention. It was of vital importance for him to record (in the 'Tour to the Hebrides') 'I slept in the same room with Dr. Johnson. Each had a neat bed, with Tartan curtains, in an upper chamber,' and it is well that he did so; it is highly agreeable to imagine Johnson and Boswell in this situation. It is also interesting to know that Boswell, on the following morning, found upon the table in their room a slip of paper, on which Dr. Johnson had written these words: 'Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum'; and that when Johnson turned his cup at Aberbrothick, where they drank tea, he muttered 'Claudite jam rivos pueri.' And what an invaluable devotion it was that has preserved for us so small a fact as this—that the book which Johnson presented to a Highland lass was 'Cocker's Arithmetic'!
These details are ours not by the fortune of a naturally endowed memory, but by the labour and patience and attention that trained a mind to a point of excellence. Miss Burney has left us an admirable account of Boswell's deportment when in the act of 'memorandising' Dr. Johnson's conversation, and from this we may see something of what it cost him to observe and record and remember:
In truth, when he met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything that was said, or attending to anything that went forward, lest he should miss the smallest sound from that voice to which he paid such exclusive, though merited, homage. But the moment that voice burst forth, the attention which it excited in Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leant his ear almost on the shoulder of the Doctor; and his mouth dropped open to catch every syllable that might be uttered; nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing, as if hoping from it, latently or mystically, some information.
Miss Burney had no admiration for Boswell, and the effect of this description is merely grotesque. It is probable that Boswell was not so wholly unconscious of self in this performance as Miss Burney seems to have thought. His behaviour appears to have been absurd, in a degree unnecessary alike to his curious character and his extraordinary task. It is possible that Boswell, aware that his minute attention to Dr. Johnson was a rather laughable affair, tried by a sort CONCENTRATION of buffoonery to avoid the natural consequence. Boswell, when he imitates Dr. Johnson in his presence, and when his eyes goggle with eagerness, was perhaps attempting to divert the company by caricaturing what was already ridiculous.
But however that may be, Miss Burney's account is no doubt faithful enough as regards the original motive of the biographer's behaviour; his eyes goggled with a genuine eagerness. That exclusive attention was the attention of one who had a difficult task to perform and was extremely anxious to perform it.
Boswell's infinite capacity for concentration in observing and recording, and for patience in collecting and preserving the smallest facts, is indeed an essential part of his genius; for genius, whenever it achieves anything, implies devotion, implies the relentless pursuit of its object, however small the actual result of the moment may seem when compared to the trouble which has been expended upon it. And this capacity for concentration enabled Boswell not merely to observe and record what he saw and heard, but to seek continually for any information, however it was to be obtained, which might be of value to him.
It is easy to see from many passages in the early portion of the 'Life'—the portion, that is, which deals with Johnson before Boswell made his acquaintance, and which naturally required the greatest labour, in collecting and investigating material, on the part of the biographer—how much trouble Boswell took. In order to obtain a copy of the famous letter to Lord Chesterfield he tells us:
I for many years solicited Johnson to favour me with a copy of it, that so excellent a composition might not be lost to posterity. He delayed from time to time to give it me; till at last, in 1781, when we were on a visit at Mr. Dilly's, at Southill in Bedfordshire, he was pleased to dictate it to me from memory. He afterwards found among his papers a copy of it, which he had dictated to Mr. Baretti, with its title and corrections in his own handwriting. This he gave to Mr. Langton; adding that if it were to come into print, he wished it to be from that copy. By Mr. Langton's kindness, I am enabled to enrich my work with a perfect transcript of what the world has so eagerly desired to see.
It appears that, though he had at last succeeded in obtaining a copy from Johnson, he was willing to take the further trouble of getting Mr. Langton's copy, which was more likely to be absolutely accurate. Still more remarkable is the manner in which he discovered the facts about Johnson's pension:
Lord Bute told me[3] that Mr. Wedderburne, now Lord Loughborough, was the person who first mentioned this subject to him. Lord Loughborough told me that the pension was granted solely as a reward of his literary merit.... Mr. Thomas Sheridan and Mr. Murphy, COLLECTING MATERIAL who then lived a good deal both with him and Mr. Wedderburne, told me, that they previously talked with Johnson on this matter.... Sir Joshua Reynolds told me that Johnson called on him.
The mere number of names consulted is sufficiently imposing. Boswell in fact was collecting evidence for a case. He must examine all the witnesses: also he must examine them in such a way that the truth might be discovered.
Mr. Murphy and the late Mr. Sheridan severally contended for the distinction of having been the first who mentioned to Mr. Wedderburne that Johnson ought to have a pension. When I spoke of this to Lord Loughborough, wishing to know if he recollected the prime mover in the business, he said: 'All his friends assisted,' and when I told him that Mr. Sheridan strenuously asserted his claim to it, his Lordship said: 'He rang the bell.' And it is but just to add, that Mr. Sheridan told me that when he communicated to Dr. Johnson that a pension was to be granted him he replied in a fervour of gratitude.... When I repeated this to Dr. Johnson he did not contradict it.
The profusion of information about this particular point may seem to us unnecessary—it is of course controversial, and the controversy has lost much of its interest. But it shows in any case not only the great number of questions Boswell was willing to ask in order to find out exactly what had taken place and the scale upon which his investigations were conducted, but also the minute and detailed care with which he preserved the truth.
Boswell has himself said something of the labour it cost him to compile the 'Life':
The labour and anxious attention with which I have collected and arranged the materials of which these volumes are composed, will hardly be conceived by those who read them with careless facility. The stretch of mind and prompt assiduity by which so many conversations were preserved, I myself, at some distance of time, contemplate with wonder; and I must be allowed to suggest, that the nature of the work in other respects, as it consists of innumerable detached particulars, all of which, even the most minute, I have spared no pains to ascertain with a scrupulous authenticity, has occasioned a degree of trouble far beyond that of any other species of composition. Were I to detail the books which I have consulted, and the inquiries which I have found it necessary to make by various channels, I should probably be thought ridiculously ostentatious. Let me only observe, as a specimen of my trouble, that I have sometimes been obliged to run half over London in order to fix a date correctly.[4]
Something of all that Boswell meant by this can be seen more nearly in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's essay upon Boswell's Proof-sheets:
A delay was sometimes caused by his desire to 'ascertain particulars with scrupulous authenticity.' 'Sheet 777,' he wrote, 'is with Mr. Wilkes to look at a note.' ... A short delay is caused in ascertaining BOSWELL'S PROOF SHEETS the number of years the Rev. Mr. Vilette had been Ordinary of Newgate. A blank had been left in the text. On the margin Boswell wrote: 'Send my note to Mr. Vilette in the morning and open the answer. Or inquire of Mr. Akerman (the keeper of Newgate) for the number of years. Get it somehow.' ... On page 505 of the second volume Boswell writes: 'I could wish that the forme in which page 512 is were not thrown off till I have an answer from Mr. Stone, the gentleman mentioned in the note, to tell me his Christian name, that I may call him Esq.' ... In the margin of the passage in which he quotes the inscription on a gold snuff-box given to Reynolds by Catherine II., he writes, 'Pray be very careful in printing the words of the Empress of all the Russias.' ... Opposite the long note where he quotes the anonymous editor of 'Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian,' he writes in the margin: 'This page must not be laid on till I hear from Dr. Parr whether his name may be mentioned.' Accordingly he wrote to him requesting 'to have by return of post if I may say or guess that Dr. Parr is the editor.'
The success of these inquiries was far from certain. Dr. Parr's name does not appear.
Boswell was more fortunate in obtaining a name for another entry, which had originally stood: 'He was in this like ... who, Mr. Daines Barrington told me, used to say: 'I hate a cui bono man!' In the margin he filled up the blank with 'a respectable person'; but before the sheet was 'laid on,' he learnt this respectable person's name. In the published text he figures as 'Dr. Shaw, the great traveller.'[5]
The proof-sheets which Dr. Birkbeck Hill was so fortunate as to see were not the first sheets, but only 'revises': in the earlier stages there must have been many more minute facts for Boswell to find out. But they are undoubtedly documents of great interest, and the point which stands out most clearly from the essay we have quoted is the extraordinary minuteness of Boswell's care and attention.
.....
The devotion of Boswell to his biographical work is illustrated not so much by the prodigious toil it cost him—for many men have this power of sustained labour when they have found the right object for it—as by the reckless disregard of conventions and people to which it led him.
The admirable account in the 'Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft'[6] of how Boswell obtained from Mr. Lowe a copy of one of Johnson's letters shows how attentive he could be even to a man whom, it would seem, he rather despised, when there was a chance of acquiring any document or information which might be of use to him. Lowe had requested Johnson to write him a letter, which Johnson did, and Boswell came in while it was writing; his attention was immediately fixed. Lowe took the letter, retired, and was followed by Boswell.
MR LOWE 'Nothing,' said Lowe, 'could surprise me more. Till that moment he had so entirely overlooked me that I did not imagine he knew there was such a creature in existence, and he now accosted me with the most overstrained and insinuating compliments possible. "How do you do, Mr. Lowe? I hope you are well, Mr. Lowe? Pardon my freedom, Mr. Lowe, but I think I saw my dear friend Dr. Johnson writing a letter for you." "Yes, sir." "I hope you will not think me rude, but if it would not be too great a favour, you would infinitely oblige me if you would just let me have a sight of it; everything from that hand, you know, is so inestimable." "Sir, it is on my own private affairs, but——." "I would not pry into a person's affairs, my dear Mr. Lowe, by any means. I am sure you would not accuse me of such a thing, only, if it were no particular secret——" "Sir, you are welcome to read the letter." "I thank you, my dear Mr. Lowe, you are very obliging. I take it exceedingly kind." ... (Having read): "It is nothing I believe, Mr. Lowe, that you would be ashamed of——" "Certainly not." "Why, then, my dear sir, if you would do me another favour you would make the obligation eternal. If you would but step to Peele's coffee-house with me and just suffer me to take a copy of it I would do anything in my power to oblige you." 'I was so overcome,' said Lowe, 'by this sudden familiarity and condescension, accompanied with bows and grimaces, I had no power to refuse. We went to the coffee-house. My letter was presently transcribed, and as soon as he had put his document in his pocket Mr. Boswell walked away as erect and as proud as half an hour before. I ever after was unnoticed. Nay, I am not certain,' added he sarcastically, 'whether the Scotchman did not leave me, poor as he knew I was, to pay for my own dish of coffee.'[7]
Miss Burney also gives an amusing account of how she was pressed to give her recollections of Johnson.
Boswell met her at the gate of St. George's chapel, and since the lady relates 'Mr. Turbulent brought him to me,' it would seem that the anxious biographer sought the mediation of a friend so as to have a better reception. Miss Burney, however, found the occasion unsuitable; she was on the way to the 'Queen's Lodge'; a Queen's lady has to reflect the aloofness of royalty, and a conversation with Mr. Boswell would not add to her dignity. Her assistance is sought in most eloquent terms:
Yes, madam; you must give me some of your choice little notes of the Doctor's; we have seen him long enough upon stilts; I want to show him in a new light. Grave Sam, and great Sam, and solemn Sam, and learned Sam—all these he has appeared over and over. Now I want to entwine a wreath of the graces across his brow; I want to show him as gay Sam, agreeable Sam, pleasant Sam; so you must help me with some of his beautiful billets to yourself.
Miss Burney apparently had no wish that her 'choice little notes' should appear in the 'Life.' Boswell did his best in vain. 'I evaded this by declaring I had not any stores at hand. He proposed a MISS BURNEY thousand curious expedients to get at them, but I was invincible....'
But Boswell was not easily to be dismissed; he must glean what he may from Miss Burney; she must, at least, give judgment on the style of the work.
He then told me his 'Life of Dr. Johnson' was nearly printed, and took a proof-sheet out of his pocket to show me, with crowds passing and repassing, knowing me well, and staring well at him: for we were now at the iron rails of the Queen's Lodge.
I stopped; I could not ask him in: I saw he expected it, and was reduced to apologise, and tell him I must attend the Queen immediately....
But finding he had no chance for entering, he stopped me again at the gate, and said he would read me a part of his work.
There was no refusing this: and he began, with a letter of Dr. Johnson's to himself. He read it in strong imitation of the Doctor's manner, very well, and not caricature. But Mrs. Schwellenberg was at her window, a crowd was gathering to stand round the rails, and the King and Queen and Royal Family now approached from the Terrace.
It is a delightful scene—the enthusiastic Boswell oblivious of Royalty as he declaims the sonorous words of the Doctor, and Miss Burney anxious only to effect an escape. The whole account shows how importunate Boswell could become in the cause of his art and for his 'sacred love of truth.'
[1:] Life of Johnson, i, 25-6.
[2:] So also Mrs. Piozzi.
[3:] The italics throughout are of course mine.
[4:] Life of Johnson, Advertisement to First Edition.
[5:] Johnson Club Papers, pp. 58-60. The proof-sheets were in 1893 possessed by Mr. R. B. Adam, Barnstaple, Cape Cod.
[6:] Quoted in the introduction to Mr. Birrell's edition of the Life.
[7:] Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft, iii, 29-31.