CHAPTER VII
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.
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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 TOUR TO THR HEBRIDES 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 INDISCRETION, NOT ILL-NATURE 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 cœur 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.
THE 'TOUR' COMPARED WITH 'LIFE'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.
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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 BEREAVEMENTS 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 GRIEF 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; INTOXICATION 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 MELANCHOLY 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.
[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.
[2:] Sir Alexander became Lord Macdonald in 1776 (Boswelliana, p. 140).
[3:] Letters to Temple, p. 246 et seq.
[4:] Letters to Temple, p. 242.
[5:] Letters to Temple, p. 253.
[6:] Letters to Temple, p. 231.
[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.
[8:] Letters to Temple, p. 255.
[9:] Ib., p. 257.