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During the eight years of Boswell's life between the ages of forty-two and fifty, several important events happened beside the publication of the 'Tour to the Hebrides.'
It is unfortunate that for the greater part of this period we have no letters from Boswell to Temple. If there was any correspondence between them, none has been preserved between the dates November 3rd, 1780, and January 5th, 1787. And so we hear no private utterances about the death of Boswell's father, by which he became Laird of Auchinleck, or about the death of Johnson.
It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of Boswell about the first event. There can have been no great sorrow as there had been no great affection; and there must have been no little pleasure in becoming the head of an ancient family and a man of property. It is a sad thing if the records of this period have indeed been lost, for they ought to have been peculiarly rich in extravagant and pompous sayings.
Of Johnson's value to Boswell we have already spoken. It would be impossible to suppose that Boswell did not realise his loss. He must have felt when he visited London, as he continued to do in BEREAVEMENTS spite of his Scotch inheritance, that the central figure was gone, and with it much of the zest of life in his London circle. There was no doubt a yearning sometimes for that rude strength, which had so much of tenderness besides, and a lasting grief.
Of Boswell's sorrows in later life, of his failure to realise those 'towering hopes,' and consequent disappointment, something has been said already in these pages. It was not apparently until the autumn of 1789 that Boswell began to see that he was not destined to succeed in the manner he wished—in politics and in the law. The letters at this time were more frequent than usual, and we are able to see how, earlier in the year, he was quite hopeful about the future, but later became despondent.
A further reason depressed Boswell's spirits at this time: in the summer of 1789 he lost his wife.[3] It is greatly to the credit of Boswell that he was very deeply affected by her death—to his credit, not because as a husband he was able to retain affection for his wife (for affections are not completely under our control), but because he was able to appreciate a woman who from his own accounts must have been a sensible, kind woman, and one who treated him with a patient consideration.
Boswell was not a good husband, because he never became in the ordinary sense domesticated; his home was never to him the predominant interest. During her last illness he seems to have realised that he might have behaved better towards his wife, and to have felt a true remorse:
No man ever had a higher esteem or a warmer love for a wife than I have for her. You will recollect, my Temple, how our marriage was the result of an attachment truly romantic; yet how painful is it to me to recollect a thousand instances of inconsistent conduct. I can justify my removing to the great sphere of England, upon a principle of laudable ambition; but the frequent scenes of what I must call dissolute conduct are inexcusable; and often and often when she was very ill, in London have I been indulging in festivity with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Courtenay, Malone, &c., and have come home late, and disturbed her repose. Nay, when I was last at Auchinleck, on purpose to soothe and console her, I repeatedly went from home; and both on those occasions, and when neighbours visited me, drank a great deal too much wine.[4]
He was remorseful too after the death of his wife that he had not been present to comfort her at the end. And there was good reason. She, as he remarked, would not have treated him so. But Boswell must not be blamed too severely for this serious omission. His wife was suffering with a disease from which, though it was certain she would not recover, there was no immediate prospect of release. Boswell GRIEF seems to have expected from the medical opinion that her life would linger on longer than actually it did: and, if it was not for pressing duties that he left his wife, it was not for pleasure, but for the kind of activity incident to the career he had chosen.