[3:] Ibid., vol. xlix, p. 542.
CHAPTER VI
Lord Auchinleck died in 1782. His relations with Boswell are of some interest in this place, because they exhibit Boswell in the rôle of son and incidentally raise an important question. The two never agreed very well. Was this the fault of the son? Was he deliberately unkind, or negligent, or disagreeable?
There is no reason to suppose that Boswell was culpable in any such way: indiscretion on the one hand and intolerance on the other are sufficient to account for all the friction. Lord Auchinleck had evidently a very rigid view of the career fitting for his eldest son. His ideal of progeniture seems to have assumed with a not uncommon complacency that the ego was worthy of a second edition. James Boswell must be after the pattern of his father—a Scotch lawyer, a hard-headed, practical man of affairs, a wise man of business successful in his profession.
James, however, was not made like that: and if he had practical ability he hated the Scotch law and lawyers far too much ever to use it with success. He had a taste for extravagant behaviour and liked to exhibit his high spirits. Johnson might A FATHER'S VIEWS condone this, though he disapproved of it, and love Boswell the more, because 'he was a boy longer than others.' Lord Auchinleck regarded it with alarm while Boswell was young, and with contempt when he was of a mature age. Conduct that would have been regrettable to a milder father, was to him intolerable.
It is not surprising, then, that Boswell found the company of his father extremely irksome:
We divaricate so much (he writes to Temple) that I am often hurt when I dare say he means no harm; and he has a method of treating me which makes me feel like a timid boy, which to me (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination, and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) is intolerable. I have appeared good-humoured; but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties.
The stern father had undoubtedly some good reasons for disapproving of the irresponsible James. Besides the habitual lack of restraint in Boswell's behaviour, money was a continual source of irritation. The heir to Auchinleck, it is clear, considered that he had a sort of natural right to his father's money. He found an allowance of £300 a year insufficient. He wrote to Temple in a complaining tone about his financial difficulties and his father:
He allows me £300 a year. But I find that what I gain by practice and that sum together will not support my family. I have now two sons and three daughters. I am in hopes that my father will augment my allowance to £400.