But the lady receiving news of his supposed death in France was married when he returned.
Fleet Street, still the centre of the newspaper and printing industries, is reminiscent of the literary associations of many decades. It takes its name from Fleet Brook which once crossed it at its eastern end. The stream still exists and now in the form of a great sewer flows under Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, emptying into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge. It was through Fleet Street in 1448 that Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, walked on her way to St. Paul's bareheaded, bearing a lighted candle as penance for having made a waxen figure of the king, that melted before a fire as she would have had his life slowly waste away.
At the east end of Fleet Street, surrounded by buildings is St. Bride's Church. It is only a few steps from Fleet Street if you happen to be familiar with any of the narrow ways that pierce into the centre of the block. But if you do not know the mystery of the block you will walk all around the church within sight of its two hundred and odd feet high steeple without coming to it. The church was built by Wren in 1680. In the centre aisle is the grave of Samuel Richardson the author who lived close by in Salisbury Square and who died in 1761. Beside the church in the present St. Bride's Lane Milton lived with a tailor named Russell. He moved here in 1640, and here wrote his treatises "Of Practical Episcopacy," "Of Reformation" and some others.
From 76 Fleet Street Salisbury Court is entered communicating direct with Salisbury Square. In the house numbered 9 at the southwest corner of the Square Samuel Richardson, the printer-novelist author of "Clarissa Harlowe," had his printing office and here Oliver Goldsmith for a time acted as a reader for him. Johnson was a friend of Richardson and often came to his printing shop, as did Hogarth the great satirist.
Tudor Street cuts through the very centre of the district once called "Alsatia" occupying the space between the river and Fleet Street. This was a cant name for Whitefriars. The neighbourhood had certain privileges of sanctuary derived from an old convent of the Carmelites or White Friars and was the abode of lawless classes. Scott immortalised it in the "Fortunes of Nigel."
Wine Office Court opens from Fleet Street and a few yards from the entrance is the Cheshire Cheese, the famous low-ceilinged, sanded-floored dining place of Dr. Johnson, looking doubtless much as it did in the days when Johnson and Goldsmith so often dined here together.
Goldsmith lived for a long time in Wine Office Court at No. 6 and it is here he is said to have written the "Vicar of Wakefield." His house has been replaced by a modern structure and the old Vicar and his daughters Olivia and Sophia would hardly feel at home now.
At the top of Wine Office Court is Gough Square and in a corner house numbered 17 may be found a tablet telling that Dr. Samuel Johnson once lived within. That was almost one hundred and fifty years ago but the house is very little changed outwardly. Within it is wholly given up to business. Of all the houses Johnson occupied in London this is the only one still standing. Here the greater part of his dictionary was written and here Mrs. Johnson died.
In Bolt Court the last years of Dr. Johnson's life were spent in the house No. 8, long since demolished. Here he died in 1784.