Now why did Dr. Johnson take this attitude about his ancestry, so contrary to the spirit that guided him where other people’s genealogical trees were concerned? It was certainly not indifference to family ties, because Brother Birkbeck Hill publishes many interesting letters written by Johnson in old age, when finding that he had a certain sum of money to bequeath, he looked around to see if there were any of his own kin living. The number of letters the old man wrote, inquiring for this or that kinsman, are quite pathetic. It seems to me that it was really due to an ignorant vagueness as to his family history. During his early years his family had passed from affluence to penury. They were of a type very common in England, but very rare in Scotland and Ireland, that take no interest whatever in pedigrees, and never discuss any but their immediate relations, with whom, in the case of the Johnsons, very friendly terms did not prevail. I think we should be astonished if we were to go into some shops in London of sturdy prosperous tradesmen in quite as good a position as old Michael Johnson, and were to try and draw out one or other individual upon
his ancestry. We should promptly come against a blank wall.
What then do we know of Johnson’s father from the ordinary sources? That he was a bookseller at Lichfield, and that he was Sheriff of that city in the year that his son Samuel was born; that he feasted the citizens, as Johnson tells us, in his Annals, with “uncommon magnificence.” He is described by Johnson as “a foolish old man,” because he talked with too fond a pride of his children and their precocious ways. He was a zealous High Churchman and Jacobite. We are told by Boswell further, on the authority of Mr. Hector of Birmingham, that he opened a bookstall once a week in that city, but lost money by setting up as a maker of parchment. “A pious and most worthy man,” Mrs. Piozzi tells us of him, “but wrong-headed, positive and affected with melancholia.” “I inherited a vile melancholy from my father,” Johnson tells us, “which has made me mad all my life.” When he died in 1731 his effects were estimated at £20. “My mother had no value for his relations,” Johnson tells us. “Those we knew were much lower than hers.” Of Michael Johnson’s
brother, Andrew, Johnson’s uncle, we know still less. From the various Johnson books we only cull the story mentioned in Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes. She relates that Johnson, after telling her of the prowess of his uncle, Cornelius Ford, at jumping, went on to say that he had another uncle, Andrew—“my father’s brother, who kept the ring at Smithfield for a whole year, and was never thrown or conquered. Here are uncles for you, Mistress, if that is the way to your heart.” Mr. Reade has supplemented this by showing us that not only was Andrew Johnson a skilful wrestler, but that he was a very good bookseller. For a time he assisted his brother in the conduct of the business at Lichfield. Later, however, he settled as a bookseller at Birmingham, which was to be his home until his death over thirty years later. Here he published some interesting books; the title-pages of some of these are given by Mr. Reade, who reproduces of course his will. He had a son named Thomas who fell on evil days. You will find certain letters to Thomas in Birkbeck Hill’s edition; Dr. Johnson frequently helped him with money.
Of more interest, however, than Andrew
Johnson was Catherine, the one sister of Michael and Andrew, an aunt of Samuel’s, who was evidently for some unknown reason ignored by her two brothers. Here we are not on absolutely firm ground, but it seems to me clear that Catherine Johnson married into a position far above her brothers. A fortnight before his death Dr. Johnson wrote to the Rev. William Vyse, Rector of Lambeth; a letter in which he asked him to find out “whether Charles Skrymsher”—he misspelt it “Scrimshaw”—“of Woodseaves”—he misspelt it “Woodease”—“in your neighbourhood, be now alive,” and whether he could be found without delay. He added that “it will be an act of great kindness to me,” Charles Skrymsher being “very nearly related.” Charles Skrymsher was not found, and Johnson told Dr. Vyse that he was disappointed in the inquiries that he had made for his relations. This particular relation, indeed, had been twenty-two years dead when Dr. Johnson, probably with the desire of leaving him something in his will, made these inquiries. His mother, Mrs. Gerald Skrymsher, was Michael Johnson’s sister. One of her daughters became the wife of Thomas
Boothby. Boothby was twice married, and his two wives were cousins, the first, Elizabeth, being the daughter of one Sir Charles Skrymsher, the second, Hester, as I have said, of Gerald Skrymsher, Dr. Johnson’s uncle. Hence Johnson had a cousin by marriage who was a potentate in his day, for it is told of Thomas Boothby of Tooley Park, grand-nephew of a powerful and wealthy baronet, that he was one of the fathers of English sport. An issue of The Field newspaper for 1875 contains an engraving of a hunting horn then in the possession of the late Master of the Cheshire Hounds, and upon the horn is the inscription: “Thomas Boothby, Esq., Tooley Park, Leicester. With this horn he hunted the first pack of fox hounds then in England fifty-five years.” He died in 1752. His eldest son took the maternal name of Skrymsher, and under the title of Thomas Boothby Skrymsher became M.P. for Leicester, and an important person in his day. His wife was Anne, daughter of Sir Hugh Clopton of New Place, Stratford-on-Avon. Admirers of Mrs. Gaskell will remember the Clopton legend told by her in Howett’s Visits to Remarkable Places.
I wish that I had time to follow Mr. Reade through all the ramifications of an interesting family history, but I venture to think that there is something pathetic in Dr. Johnson’s inquiries a fortnight before his death as to cousins of whose life story he knew nothing, whose well-known family home of Woodseaves he—the great Lexicographer—could not spell correctly, and of whose very name he was imperfectly informed. Yet he, the lover of family trees and of ancestral associations, was all his life in ignorance of these wealthy connexions and their many substantial intermarriages.
Before Mr. Reade it was known that Johnson’s father was a manufacturer of parchment as well as a bookseller; but it was supposed that only in his last few years or so of life did he undertake this occupation which ruined him. Mr. Reade shows that he had been for thirty years engaged in this trade in parchment. Brother Birkbeck Hill quotes Croker, who hinted that Johnson’s famous definition of Excise as “a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the Common Judge of Property but by wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid,” was
inspired by recollections of his father’s constant disputes with the Excise officers. Mr. Reade has unearthed documents concerning the crisis of this quarrel, when Michael Johnson in 1718 was indicted “for useing ye Trade of a Tanner.” The indictment, which is here printed in full, charges him, “one Michael Johnson, bookseller,” “that he did in the third year of the reign of our Lord George by the Grace of God now King of Great Britain, for his own proper gain, get up, use and exercise the art, mystery or manual occupation of a Byrseus, in English a Tanner, in which art, mystery or manual occupation of a Tanner the said Michael Johnson was not brought up or apprenticed for the space of seven years, an evil example of all others offending in such like case.” Michael’s defence was that he was “tanned for” and did not tan himself, he being only “a merchant in skins tradeing to Ireland, Scotland and the furthermost parts of England.” The only known example of Michael Johnson’s handwriting is this defence. Michael was committed for trial but acquitted. It is probable, however, that this prosecution laid the foundation of his ruin.