It was the young traveller whom he censured, not the mature traveller or travelling in general. It was characteristic of him to say, “I never like young travellers; they go too raw to make any great remarks.” Indeed, so grave was his sense of the value of travel that he took it upon himself to rebuke Boswell, as Boswell records: “Dr. Johnson expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the Wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really believed I should go and see the Wall of China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. ‘Sir,’ (said he), ‘by doing so you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times as the children of a man who had gone to view the Wall of China. I am serious, sir.’”
In his college days Johnson may not have had the same reasons as the young poet Keats for going “wonder-ways,” but reasons he had. With the Doctor, perhaps even more truly than with Keats, curiosity was “the first passion and the last.” While an undergraduate he was heard to say, “I have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning. I’ll go and visit the universities abroad. I’ll go to France and Italy. I’ll go to Padua.” Twice he urged Boswell “to perambulate Spain,” and of their tour to the Hebrides everybody knows. There was talk of his going to Iceland, and for a time the great Doctor discussed travelling around the world with two friends.
Of the existence of the journal of Johnson’s tour in North Wales even Boswell did not know. This journey was begun by the Thrales and the Doctor leaving Streatham at eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning of July 15, 1774. On their way they stopped at Litchfield at the house of Dr. Darwin, psychologist, poet, and grandfather of Charles Darwin, of whose roses Mrs. Piozzi wrote, “I have no roses equal to those at Litchfield, where on one tree I recollect counting eighty-four within my own reach; it grew against the house of Dr. Darwin.”
After passing through several towns on their route to North Wales they came, a party of four, Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, little Queenie and Johnson, to Chester on July twenty-seventh. Of Chester the Doctor made short work. He was more interested in a grammar school held in part of the Abbey refectory than in aught else, and wrote particularly, “The Master seemed glad to see me.” Of course the Master was glad, for was not Johnson the greatest man of his day? There is not one word for the quiet beauty of the Dee, no mention of Cheshire cheese, and nothing about Chester ale, which perhaps Johnson found as bad as did Sion Tudor. Of their sojourn in Chester we get a more lively picture from Mrs. Thrale’s comment on the entry in the Doctor’s journal than from the journal itself. Johnson wrote, “We walked round the walls, which are compleat.” Mrs. Piozzi observed, “Of those ill-fated walls Dr. Johnson might have learned the extent from any one. He has since put me fairly out of countenance by saying, ‘I have known my mistress fifteen years, and never saw her fairly out of humour but on Chester wall’; it was because he would keep Miss Thrale beyond her hour of going to bed to walk on the wall, where from the want of light, I apprehended some accident to her,—perhaps to him.” Probably nine-year-old “Miss Thrale” did not mind being kept beyond her hour of going to bed by a stout gentleman who was her devoted slave!
The next day they entered Wales, dined at Mold and came to Llewenni. Mrs. Thrale’s cousin, Robert Cotton, was living at Llewenni Hall, which in 1817, after having been one thousand years in possession of the family, was torn down. At Whitchurch, a few miles away, is an alabaster altar monument to one of the Salusbury’s who owned this hall, Sir John, or Syr John y Bodiau (“Sir John of the Thumbs”). This ancestor of Mrs. Piozzi was not only distinguished by two thumbs on either hand, but also by a giant’s strength. With his bare fist he is supposed to have slain a white lioness in the Tower of London. Since then white lionesses have all disappeared. Sir John of the Thumbs also killed a mythical beast in a lair below a near-by castle, and overthrew a famous giant. Is it any wonder that Mrs. Thrale, with such a forefather, should sometimes have painted things plus beau que le vérité, and that, even as her ancestor was fond of pulling up trees by the roots when he had nothing better to do, his descendant should once in a while give truth a little tug?
But if Mrs. Thrale had a distinguished progenitor, she had an even more distinguished ancestress, for there at Llewenni Hall lived “Mam Cymru,” the Mother of Wales. This Catherine de Berain’s first husband was a Salusbury, her second husband was Sir Richard Clough. The second daughter of the second marriage married Salusbury of Bachycraig, and from this marriage Mrs. Piozzi was descended. Later, Catherine de Berain became the third wife of Maurice Wynne, who was her third husband. It is said that on the way home from the funeral of her first husband, Wynne asked her to marry him. She had to refuse, however, as Sir Richard Clough had asked her on the way to the church. But she assured him that she was not superstitious about the number 3, and agreed to give Wynne the next opportunity. She kept her word.
When the Welsh used to speak of a rich person, they did not say “rich as Crœsus” but “rich as a Clough.” On July thirtieth, Johnson and the Thrales visited a remarkable house built by Sir Richard, the second husband of “Mam Cymru.” On the thirty-first day they drove to the Cathedral of St. Asaph, once the even smaller church of Llanelwy, to which Giraldus Cambrensis in his tour in 1188 referred as “paupercula.” About that time this tiny cathedral was changed from wickerwork or wood to stone. On the same day they saw the Chapel of Llewenni, founded by one of the Salusburys, where Johnson was surprised because the service, read thrice on Sundays, was read only once in English.
GATEWAY OF CARNARVON CASTLE
From an engraving by Cuitt