I was as ugly as a tawney;
For she a better fish could hook,
The rich and gallant knight, Sir Sawney.
We might suppose that Boswell in spite of his cheerfulness would have been at heart rather dejected by these events; but he writes to Temple, 'My mind is now twice as enlarged as it has been for some months. You cannot say how fine a woman I may marry; perhaps a Howard or some other of the noblest in the kingdom.'
The realities were hardly so elevated as these dreams, for in the following spring (1768), it is Zelide again, and not she alone. 'Zelide may have had her faults but is she always to have them? May not time have altered her for the better as it has altered me? But you will tell me that I am not so greatly altered, as I have still many unruly passions. To confess to you at once Temple, I have, since my last coming to town been as wild as ever.' But flowers were to be fresh at last in the month of August. 'I am exceedingly lucky in having escaped the insensible Miss Bosville and the furious Zelide, for I have now seen the finest creature that ever was formed, la belle Irlandaise. Figure to yourself, Temple, a young lady just sixteen, formed like a Grecian nymph, with the sweetest countenance full of sensibility....' Everything was favourable. 'Here every flower is united.' The diplomat who LA BELLE IRLANDAISE had been fatigued before by the restraint of a wise cautiousness is resolved that this time there shall be no reserve. 'Ah, my friend, I am now as I ought to be; no reserved prudent conduct as with Miss Bosville. No! all youthful, warm, natural, in short, all genuine love.' And the ardent hunter seems to have been more successful than the wily angler. 'I repeated my fervent passion to her again and again; she was pleased and I could swear that her little heart beat. I carved the first letter of her name on a tree; I cut off a lock of her hair, male pertinax. She promised not to forget me, nor to marry a lord before March.' Moreover, the unspoilt joy of advance without contest was more pleasant than the doubts and hopes of expectation, while a puritanical idealism and the solemnity of an oath were a welcome change for less spiritual delights.
This is the most agreeable passion I ever felt; sixteen, innocence, and gaiety make me quite a Sicilian swain. Before I left London I made a vow in St. Paul's Church that I would not allow myself in licentious connections of any kind for six months, I am hitherto firm to my vow, and already feel myself a superior being ... in short, Maria has me without any rival; I do hope the period of my perfect felicity, as far as this state can afford, is now in view.
Whether this 'perfect felicity' was attained and how long it lasted we do not know. Maria no doubt had her day like the others; the sequel to the vow in St. Paul's we may conjecture. Boswell, if his name endured for no other talents, would remain with us for ever as an incomparable genius for reviving affection. In December we learn: 'Miss Blair is Miss Blair still,'—still a fit subject for this curious pastime. 'I was two or three times at Adamtown, and, upon my word, the old flame was kindled.' Miss Blair apparently had been piqued because her suitor had made such a joke of his love for the heiress in every company. 'Temple, to a man again in love, this was engaging. I walked whole hours with the princess; I kneeled; I became truly amorous.' These brief sentences adequately describe the last recorded love-scene. If Boswell corresponded with Temple between December 1768 and May 1770 the letters have been lost; and so the outrageous story ends abruptly—and it is fortunate perhaps for the readers of this book, for it is a story so fascinating and so absurd and so richly human that no part of it can be omitted.
Boswell in fact was destined to be married to his cousin, Miss Montgomerie. The Montgomeries were an aristocratic family related to Lord Eglinton, and Boswell was proud of the connection: he speaks in a published pamphlet of 'having the honour and happiness to be married to his Lordship's relation, a true Montgomerie.' We know very little about Mrs. Boswell. Johnson's curt judgment in a letter to Mrs. Thrale is probably right in placing her with the great bulk of MISS MONTGOMERIE mediocre humanity: 'Mrs. B—— has the mien and manners of a gentlewoman; and such a person and mind as would not be in any place either admired or contemned. She is in a proper degree inferior to her husband: she cannot rival him, nor can he ever be ashamed of her.' But if undistinguished, as in Johnson's view a good wife should be, the lady had some excellent qualities; and Johnson himself would have been the first to praise them. If he urged Boswell on more than one occasion to be considerate of his home, it was because he knew that the home was both pleasant and valuable to his friend: 'I need not tell you what regard you owe to Mrs. Boswell's entreaties; or how much you ought to study the happiness of her who studies yours with so much diligence, and of whose kindness you enjoy such good effects.' Boswell, too, loudly sings the praise of his wife: 'I am fully sensible,' he writes to Temple, 'of my happiness in being married to so excellent a woman, so sensible a mistress of a family, so agreeable a companion, so affectionate and peculiarly proper helpmate for me.' After her death he writes: 'I had no occasion almost to think concerning my family, and every particular was thought of by her better than I could'; and he refers to her in the 'Life of Johnson' as 'my very valuable wife, and the very affectionate mother of my children, who, if they inherit her good qualities, will have no reason to complain of their lot.'
That Mrs. Boswell had in abundance the matronly virtues is sufficiently clear. She had besides considerable intellectual gifts. Boswell calls her, 'A lady of admirable good sense and quickness of understanding'; he kept a common-place book, 'Uxoriana,' to preserve her witty sayings, and after her death regretted her 'admirable conversation.' From her own expressed opinion of her husband's friendship with Dr. Johnson we are obliged to think well of her intelligence: it was a female opinion, as Boswell remarks, with something of resentment for the intrusion of this uncomfortable guest: 'His irregular hours and uncouth habits, such as turning the candles with their heads downwards, when they did not burn bright enough, and letting the wax drop upon the carpet, could not but be disagreeable to a lady.' And no doubt she failed to appreciate the devotion of Boswell to this ungainly and unpleasing animal. But her observation, in the manner of the times, is admirably pointed: 'I have seen many a bear led by a man, but I never before saw a man led by a bear.'