He was dissatisfied not only with the order of Welsh services, but also with the behaviour of Welsh rivers. On this day he writes: “The rivers here are mere torrents which are suddenly swelled by the rain to great breadth and great violence, but have very little constant stream; such are the Clwyd and the Elwy.” About Welsh rivers Johnson makes a great many remarks. He is as scornful of them as an American is of the Thames. Mrs. Piozzi says that his “ideas of anything not positively large were ever mingled with contempt.” He asked of one of the sharp currents in North Wales, “Has this brook e’er a name?” “Why, dear Sir, this is the River Ustrad.” “Let us,” said Dr. Johnson, turning to his friend, “jump over it directly, and show them how an Englishman should treat a Welsh river.” Johnson was always of opinion that when one had seen the ocean, cascades were but little things. He used to laugh at Shenstone most unmercifully for not caring whether there was anything good to eat in the streams he was so fond of. “As if,” says Johnson, “one could fill one’s belly with hearing soft murmurs, or looking at rough cascades!”
It would be difficult to make a summary of all the objects Johnson called “mean” in North Wales. Among them were towns, rivers, inns, dinners, churches, houses, choirs. It is safe to say that the great Doctor could not rid himself altogether of English prejudices against the Welsh and all things Welsh. George Borrow’s experience on the summit of Snowdon was not at all unusual, except that in this instance an Englishman in the presence of English people became the champion of the Welsh. Undoubtedly Johnson was influenced in his contempt not only by his English feeling, but also by the fact that he was a true son of the eighteenth century, with all that century’s emphasis on power, on size, on utility.
Yet Johnson was not totally incapable of appreciating the romantic scenery of Wales. Some part of it, the more cultivated, he seems to have felt, for on the very next day there is this record: “The way lay through pleasant lanes, and overlooked a region beautifully diversified with trees and grass.” It mortified Mrs. Thrale because Mr. Thrale, a lover of landscapes, could not enjoy them with the great Doctor, who would say, “Never heed such nonsense, a blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another. Let us, if we do talk, talk about something; men and women are my subject of enquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left behind.” However, Johnson was certainly not insensible to the beauty of nature. In describing his emotions at the sight of Iona, he wrote: “Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.” In his tour in the Hebrides he welcomed even the inconveniences of travelling, such as wind and rain, when they meant finer scenery and more pictures for the mind.
Much on this same August second was found “mean,” including Mrs. Thrale’s gift to the romantic old clerk of the parish church of Bachycraig where Mrs. Thrale’s father was buried. The day following, on their arrival in Holywell, Johnson had to admit that the town was “neither very small nor very mean.” He was amazed and impressed by the yield of water from St. Winifred’s Well, and the number of mill wheels the water turned. But when they went down by the stream to see a prospect, Johnson adds very specifically that he “had no part” in it. He was vastly more interested in some brass and copper works, in lapis calaminaris, in pigs of copper, and in some ironworks where he saw iron half an inch thick “square-cut with shears worked by water,” and hammers that moved as quick “as by the hand.” One has a curious feeling that, were the Doctor suddenly translated to this world again, foundries would interest him vastly more than any natural panorama. In this Johnson was truly a man of his times, which were epoch-making because of their new interest in the mechanics of industry, their gigantic industrial impulse. Without a word for the singular beauties of Holywell, without reference to the legend of St. Winifred or mention of the ruins of the Abbey, he concludes his journal for August third: “I then saw wire drawn, and gave a shilling. I have enlarged my notion, though not being able to see the movements, and not having time to peep closely, I know less than I might.”
Another feature of the land impressed him favourably, the houses of country gentlemen. “This country seems full of very splendid houses,” he notes on August fourth, after visiting a Mr. Lloyd’s house near Ruthin, where he had been to see the castle. He writes quite at length on the ruins of Ruthin and ends characteristically, “Only one tower had a chimney, so that there was [little] commodity of living. It was only a place of strength.” It was on this day that the keep of the castle, when he heard that Mrs. Thrale was a native of North Wales, told her that his wife had been a Welshwoman, and had desired to be buried at Ruthin. “So,” said the man, “I went with the corpse myself, because I thought it would be a pleasant journey, and indeed I found Ruthin a very beautiful place.”
Two days later they dined at Mr. Myddleton’s, of Gwaenynog, the gentleman who raised the unwelcome monument to Johnson’s memory before the Doctor had had a chance to die, and while he still considered himself very much alive. This memorial is on the site at Gwaenynog where Johnson used to stroll up and down. It reads: “This spot was often dignified by the presence of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., whose moral writings, exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, gave ardour to Virtue and confidence to Truth.” Perhaps it is not strange that Johnson was not pleased with the monument. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale, “Mr. Myddleton’s attention looks like an intention to bury me alive. I would as willingly see my friend, however benevolent and hospitable, quietly inurned. Let him think, for the present, of some more acceptable memorial.”
To the Doctor death was always an enemy who would, he knew, outwit him in the end, a terrifying presence against which he struggled. “But who can run the race with death?” he cries despairingly. This premature memorial must have revolted everything in him, for to him “the whole of life” was but keeping away the thoughts of death. Even a dark road troubled him.