"In the evening we had a large company in the drawing-room; several ladies, the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Percy, Mr Chamberlayne of the Treasury, &c., &c. Somebody said, the life of a mere literary man could not be very entertaining. Johnson: 'But it certainly may. This is a remark which has been made, and repeated without justice; why should the life of a literary man be less entertaining than the life of any other man? Are there not as interesting varieties in such a life? As a literary life it may be very entertaining.' Boswell: 'But it must be better surely, when it is diversified with a little active variety—such as his having gone to Jamaica; or—his having gone to the Hebrides.' Johnson was not displeased at this.
"Talking of a very respectable author, he told us a curious circumstance in his life, which was, that he had married a printer's devil. Reynolds: 'A printer's devil, Sir! Why, I thought a printer's devil was a creature with a black face and in rags.' Johnson: 'Yes, Sir. But I suppose he had her face washed, and put clean clothes on her. (Then looking very serious and very earnest.) And she did not disgrace him;—the woman had a bottom of good sense.' The word bottom, thus introduced, was so ludicrous, when contrasted with his gravity, that most of us could not forbear tittering and laughing; though I recollect that the Bishop of Killaloe kept his countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss Hannah More slily hid her face behind a lady's back who sat on the same settee with her. His pride could not bear that any expression of his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it; he therefore resolved to assume and exercise despotic power, glanced sternly around, and called out, in a strong tone, 'Where's the merriment?' Then collecting himself, and looking awful, to make us feel how he could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, 'I say the woman was fundamentally sensible'; as if he had said, hear this now, and laugh if you dare. We all sat composed as at a funeral.
"He and I walked away together; we stopped a little while by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. 'Ay, Sir,' said he tenderly, 'and two such friends as cannot be supplied.'"
Hannah More spent many months with Mrs Garrick—the winter at Hampton, the spring in the Adelphi—after the death of the celebrated player, and from her letters written in the Adelphi, we obtain several passages of note, apart from that of the famous dinner party of April 20, 1781. Thus, early in 1779, soon after Garrick's decease, we find that the widow and her friend were visited by various ladies: "Mrs Montague and Mrs Vesey have spent one afternoon with us; and these with Ladies Bathurst, Edgecombe, and Spencer, are all we have seen." She then goes on to describe her way of life as being "very different" from what it used to be in Garrick's time. "After breakfast, I go to my own apartment for several hours, where I read, write, and work; very seldom letting anybody in, though I have a room for separate visitors, but I almost look on a morning visit as an immorality. At four we dine. We have the same elegant table as usual, but I generally confine myself to one single dish of meat. I have taken to drink half a glass of wine. At six we have coffee; at eight tea, when we have, sometimes, a dowager or two of quality. At ten we have sallad and fruits. Each has her book, which we read without any restraint, as if we were alone, without apologies or speech-making." During this visit, her play, The Fatal Falsehood, was produced at Covent Garden, but, as already recorded, was not a success. It lacked the guiding hand of her old friend. "We have stolen away for a few days to town," she writes in 1781, "but I am now so habituated to quiet, that I have scarcely the heart to go out, though I am come here on purpose. As to poor Mrs Garrick, she keeps herself as secret as a piece of smuggled goods, and neither stirs out herself, or lets any body in. The calm of Hampton is such fixed repose, that an old woman crying fish, or the postman ringing at the door, is an event which excites attention."
PEPYS' LIBRARY, BUCKINGHAM STREET, ADELPHI.
A little later on, Mrs Garrick and Hannah More were invited to an assembly at Mrs Thrale's. "Just as my hair was dressed, came a servant to forbid our coming, for that Mr Thrale was dead. A very few hours later, and he would have died in this assembly. What an awful event. He was in the prime of life, but had the misfortune to be too rich, and to keep too sumptuous a table, at which he indulged too freely. He was a sensible and respectable man. I am glad the poor lady has, in her distress, such a friend as Dr Johnson; he will suggest the best motives of consolation." A few days after this event, "we were a small and very choice party at Bishop Shipley's. Lord and Lady Spencer, Lord and Lady Althorpe, Sir Joshua, Langton, Boswell, Gibbon, and, to my agreeable surprise, Dr Johnson, were there." This was the first meeting between Johnson and Mrs Garrick since the latter's bereavement, and, on the next morning, Johnson paid a lengthy visit to the ladies at No. 5 Adelphi Terrace. "On Mrs Garrick's telling him she was always more at her ease with persons who had suffered the same loss with herself, he said that was a comfort she could seldom have, considering the superiority of his [Garrick's] merit, and cordiality of their union. He bore his strong testimony to the liberality of Garrick. He reproved me with pretended sharpness for reading Les Pensées de Pascal, or any of the Port Royal authors; alleging that, as a good Protestant, I ought to abstain from books written by Catholics. I was beginning to stand upon my defence, when he took me with both hands, and with a tear running down his cheeks, 'Child,' said he, with the most affecting earnestness, 'I am heartily glad that you read pious books, by whomsoever they may be written.'" Then came the famous dinner party which Dr Johnson attended, and that was his last visit to the Adelphi, for, during Hannah More's visits to town in the subsequent years, prior to Johnson's death in 1784, the Doctor was ailing. So, with this picture in the mind's eye of the worthy Doctor, in sentimental mood, now lecturing Hannah More, anon entertaining Mrs Garrick and her friends, and, finally, looking across the Adelphi railings at the Thames, as he thought tenderly of his dead friends, we take leave of Samuel Johnson.
Mrs Garrick, who was a Catholic, be it said, was by no means prejudiced, and she gave way to Hannah More's religious scruples: "It is very considerate in Mrs Garrick, to decline asking company on Sunday on my account; so that I enjoy the whole day to myself. I swallow no small portion of theology of different descriptions, as I always read, when visiting, such books as I do not possess at home. After my more select reading I have attacked South, Atterbury, and Warburton. In these great geniuses, and original thinkers, I see many passages of scripture presented in a striking and strong light. I think it right to mix their learned labours with the devout effusions of more spiritual writers, Baxter, Doddridge, Hall, Hopkins, Jeremy Taylor (the Shakespeare of divinity), and the profound Barrow in turn. I devour much, but, I fear, digest little. In the evening, I read a sermon and prayers to the family, which Mrs G. much likes." She frequently went from the Adelphi to the Church of St Clement Dane's, in the Strand. It gave her "peculiar pleasure to think" that she "there partook of the holy sacrament with Johnson the last time he ever received it in public."