A Georgian Pageant

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Which” (the earnest inquirer said) “I felt was very wise,

but I didn't understand it.”

It was in regard to this consultation as to the best defence to be made out for Baretti that Johnson admitted to have opposed Burke simply for the sake of showing the rest of the company that he could get the better of Burke in an argument. “Burke and I,” he said, “should have been of one opinion if we had had no audience.” Such a confession! There was the life of his friend Baretti trembling in the balance, and yet Johnson, solely for the sake of “showing off,” opposed the wisdom and ingenuity Burke exercised to save from the gallows a man whom Johnson professed to admire!

But if we are to believe Boswell, Johnson cared very little whether his friend was hanged or not. As for Boswell himself, he always detested Baretti, and is reported to have expressed the earnest hope that the man would be hanged. However, the “consultations” went merrily on, and doubtless contributed in some measure to a satisfactory solution of the vexed question as to whether Johnson or Burke was the more brilliant talker. They formed a tolerably valid excuse for the uncorking of several bottles, and perhaps these friends of Baretti felt that even though he should die, yet the exchange of wit in the course of these happy evenings would live for ever in the memory of those present, so that after all, let the worst come to the worst, Baretti should have little cause for complaint.

It is reported that the prisoner, upon the occasion of his receiving a visit from Johnson and Burke, cried: “What need a man fear who holds two such hands?” It may here be mentioned, however, that although it was asserted that Johnson and Murphy were responsible for the line of defence adopted at the trial, yet in after years Baretti was most indignant that it should be suggested that credit should be given to any one but himself for his defence; and he ridiculed the notion that Johnson or Burke or Murphy or even Boswell—himself an aspirant to the profession of law in which he subsequently displayed a conspicuous lack of distinction—had anything to do with the instruction either of solicitors or barristers on his behalf.

At any rate, the “consultations” came to an end, and the friends of the accused awaited the trial with exemplary patience. Mr. Boswell seems suddenly to have become the most sympathetic of the friends; for three days before the event he took a journey to Tyburn to witness the hanging of several men at that place, and though it is known that the spectacle of a hanging never lost its charm for him, yet it is generous to assume that upon this occasion he went to Tyburn in order to qualify himself more fully for sympathising with Baretti, should the defence assigned to him break down.

Another ardent sympathiser was Mr. Thomas Davies the bookseller, a gentleman whose chief distinction in the eyes of his contemporaries consisted—if we are to believe one of the wittiest of his associates—in the fact that he had an exceedingly pretty wife; but whose claim to the gratitude of coming generations lies in the circumstance of his having introduced Boswell to Johnson. Tom Davies was terribly cut up at the thought of the possibility of Baretti's being sentenced to be hanged. Boswell, on the day before the trial, after telling Johnson how he had witnessed the executions at Tyburn, and expressing his surprise that none of the wretches seemed to think anything of the matter, mentioned that Foote, the actor, had shown him a letter which he had received from Tom Davies, and in which the writer affirmed that he had not had a wink of sleep owing to his anxiety in respect of “this sad affair of Baretti,” and begging Foote to suggest some way by which he could be of service to the accused, adding that should Mr. Foote be in need of anything in the pickle line, he could strongly recommend him to an industrious young man who had lately set up in that business.

Strange to say, Johnson was not impressed with this marked evidence of Mr. Davies' kind heart.

“Ay, sir, here you have a specimen of human sympathy,” he cried. “A friend hanged and a cucumber pickled! We know not whether Baretti or the pickle man has kept Davies from sleep; nor does he know himself.”

This was rather sweeping, but his dictum showed that he was rather a poor analyser of human emotion. In the minds of the people of to-day who read of Tom Davies' bad nights there is no manner of doubt whatever that the sequence of his emotions was to be attributed to his intimacy with the industrious young pickle maker. Tom had indulged rather too freely in some of the specimens of his art presented to him by the pickler, and the result was a melancholy night; and, being melancholy, he was led to think of the most melancholy incident that had recently come under his notice. When a man is full of mixed pickles he is liable to get a little mixed, and so in the morning he attributed his miserable night to his thoughts about Baretti, instead of knowing that his thoughts about Baretti were the natural result of his miserable night. If he had been acquainted with an industrious young onion merchant he might have passed the night in tears.