Volumes would be required to contain a list of his numerous and various acquaintance, none of whom he ever forgot.... He associated with persons the most widely different in manners, abilities, rank and accomplishments. He was at once the companion of the brilliant Colonel Forrester of the Guards ... and of the aukward and uncouth Robert Levet; of Lord Thurlow[16], and Mr Sastres, the Italian master; and has dined one day with the beautiful, gay, and fascinating Lady Craven, and the next with good Mrs Gardiner, the tallow-chandler, on Snow-hill."
In the company of "social friends" Johnson found his greatest pleasure. His own definition of a club was: "An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions," and it is characteristic of him that he was the inventor of the word clubable.
For, in Johnson's day, clubs were not luxurious halls where conversation was carried on in undertones; vigorous talking (with some eating and drinking) was the chief object of the company that gathered round the tavern table.
Of Johnson's talk we need not say much here. It was, and is, his chief title to fame. In his lifetime a roomful of people would wait in expectant silence for him to begin; to-day his conversation remains the chief attraction of Boswell's Life and of the many other books, great and small, that have been written about him.
Johnson looked upon conversation as a serious art and said that a good talker should have knowledge, command of words, imagination and a resolution not to be overcome by failures. This last he considered essential; and he certainly was not often overcome himself, for he could not bear to be worsted in argument, "even when he had taken the wrong side." Hence his habit of "talking for victory."
But Johnson could not talk his best if the dinner had not been good. "For my part," he said in his blunt way "I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully."
"I never knew any man" says Boswell "who relished good eating more than he did. When at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment; his looks seemed rivetted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite, which was so fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. To those whose sensations were delicate, this could not but be disgusting.... It must be owned that Johnson, though he could be rigidly abstemious, was not a temperate man either in eating or drinking. He could refrain, but he could not use moderately."
Johnson realised this well enough. So from 1736 to 1757 and for the last twenty years of his life he drank no wine at all[17], except on special occasions. Once or twice he persuaded Boswell also to be "a water-drinker, upon trial"; but it is to be feared that Boswell found it as hard to refrain as to use moderately—he had many a morning headache.
Wine or no wine, Johnson saw no reason why he should be abstemious over the tea-cups. In a famous review of an Essay on Tea he described himself as "a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morning."
After pouring out his sixteenth cup, a hostess once asked him if a small basin would not save him trouble. "'I wonder, Madam,' answered he roughly, 'why all the ladies ask me such questions. It is to save yourselves trouble, Madam, and not me.' The lady was silent and resumed her task."