The Story of Westminster Abbey

by Violet Brooke-Hunt

More than once he talked of retiring, for the strain of his life was heavy, and he looked forward to years of restful enjoyment with his "sweet wife," who had been before her marriage the celebrated dancer Mademoiselle Violette. But the very mention of such an idea raised a storm of excitement. Once even the king intervened when David had taken an unusually long holiday, and his Majesty requested Mr. Garrick to shortly appear again. The night when, thus commanded, he reappeared in "The Beggar's Opera," was one of his greatest triumphs; again "the town went half mad," and the theatre was crowded to an alarming extent. All ideas of retirement vanished from David's mind; the old magic had not lost its spell, and for more than ten years longer he went on with his work as vigorously as ever.

His fame became even more widespread, his public loved him even more dearly, and from far-away country places people journeyed to London so that they might boast of once having seen the great Mr. Garrick.

But in 1776, an illness, which he had long kept at bay, made itself felt, and he was the first to recognise that the time had nearly come for the curtain to fall. He gave a series of his greatest representations, ending with Richard II. "I gained my fame in Richard," he said, "and I mean to close with it."—Though he confessed to being in agonies of pain, in the eyes of his enraptured audience he was as great as he had ever been in his palmiest days of success, as graceful, as winsome, and as gay. His real farewell play, however, was "The Wonder," in which he took his favourite part, that of Don Felix, and "as his grand eyes wandered round the crowded house, he saw a sea of faces, friends, strangers, even foreigners, a boundless amphitheatre representing most affectionate sympathies and exalted admiration. He played as he had never played before. When the last note of applause had died away, the other actors left the stage and he stood there alone. The house listened in awe-struck silence. At first he tried in vain to speak; for once the ready words would not come for his calling. When at last he went on to thank his friends for their wonderful kindness to him, he broke down, and his tears fell fast. Sobs rang through the theatre. "Farewell! Farewell!" was cried in many a quivering voice. Mrs. Garrick wept bitterly in her box, and David slowly walked off the stage with one last wistful glance at the sea of faces all around him.

His interest in his theatre did not cease after he had left it, and he was disturbed at finding that the new manager, Sheridan, was sadly easy-going and unbusiness-like. But there was not much time left for such things to trouble him. Though he kept up his merry heart and his sprightly manner to the end, and though he delighted in the undisturbed companionship of his wife, the disease gained rapidly and he suffered much pain. Gradually a stupor crept over him, and though it sometimes lifted, so that with his old sweet smile he had a jest or a word of welcome for his friends, it never cleared, and he passed gently away in the early dawn of a January morning, 1779, "leaving that human stage where he had played with as much excellence and dignity as ever he had done on his own."

So ended a prosperous, pleasant life, and rarely was a man better liked by his fellows, or more genuinely mourned. Dr. Johnson, in this moment, forgot all his later coldness towards the Davy he had once so loved. He left a card on Mrs. Garrick, and "wished some endeavours of his could enable her to support a loss which the world cannot repair;" while he wrote those well-known words, which Mrs. Garrick had engraved on her husband's memorial monument in Lichfield Cathedral, and which form an inscription more appropriate than that on the Abbey tomb:—"I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."

David's devoted wife outlived him for over forty years, keenly interested to the last in all matters theatrical, and a well-known figure in the Abbey, where, little and bent, she often made her way to the tomb which held him she had so loved, and standing there would readily recount over and over again to willing listeners the triumphs of "her Davy."

Johnson, as we have seen, settled down in London with the intention of making literature pay. "No man but a blockhead," he said in his strongest manner, "ever wrote except for money." Perhaps it was for opinions such as these that his wife, more than twenty years older than himself, declared him to be the most sensible man that lived. A curious figure he must have seemed to those booksellers of whom he demanded work as a translator, mightily tall and broadly made, with a face which he twirled and twisted about in a strange fashion, features scarred by disease, eyes which were of little use to him, and a manner pompous and overbearing, though redeemed by a kindliness of heart not to be concealed. But he managed to struggle along, writing squibs or pamphlets, reporting speeches in Parliament, trying his hand at plays or poetry, and all the while working away at his Great Dictionary, for which when finished he was to receive £1500, he out of that sum paying his copyists and assistants. He founded a club at which he began to make his reputation as a talker, and out of those conversations with his special friends there came to him the idea of starting a newspaper on the lines of Addison's Spectator. But Johnson's heavy hand, his love of long discourses, and the natural melancholy of his nature, did not fit him for work such as this. His Rambler only lasted for two years, and certainly made him no fortune, though it may have helped him to exist during that time. His Dictionary, when it was at last completed, gave him a surer position in the literary world of London, and he was paid the sum of £100 for his story of "Rasselas," but most of this went in paying for the last illness and funeral of his mother, and Johnson seems to have been sadly in need of money. Through the influence of some friends, the king, George III. who declared that he was most anxious to offer "brighter prospects to men of literary merit," proposed to give Johnson a pension of £300 a year. At first he would not hear of accepting it—indeed, there was a rather formidable difficulty in the way, for in his Dictionary he had defined the word pension as being "generally understood to mean pay given to a State hireling for treason to his country." However, the explanations and persuasions of his friends at last overcame the obstacle, and from that time forward he became one of the best known public characters. A favourite such as David Garrick he could never have aspired to be, and to fashionable folks, especially to ladies, he was an untidy, conceited, rugged old man, who ate enormous meals, drank sometimes twenty-five cups of tea at one sitting, wore slovenly and dirty clothes, half-burnt wigs, and slippers almost in tatters. Then he contradicted flatly, and his anger was of a very vehement kind; though he always declared himself to be a "most polite man," and was occasionally ceremonious to a wonderful degree. And yet as he discoursed, men listened to him with such pleasure that they forgot entirely his many monstrous failings. His power of argument was magnificent; never could man so slay an adversary by his words as could this vigorous, quarrelsome, brilliant talker, and though he hit hard, he did not hit cruelly. There was no venom in his words, and however violently he argued, he never seems to have lost a friend through it. On the contrary his circle of admirers constantly grew, and cheerfully submitted to whatever demands he made upon them. Chief among those friends, of course, stands the faithful Boswell, who idolised him with a worship that must have been very wearisome. If Johnson so much as opened his mouth Boswell bent forward wild with eagerness, terrified lest one precious word should escape him; he sat as close to him as he could get, he hung around him like a dog, and no amount of snubbing could damp his ardour. He delighted in asking his master a series of such questions as these:—"What would you do if you were shut up in a castle with a new-born baby?" Or, "Why is a cow's tail long?"

"I will not be baited with what and why," Johnson would answer impatiently. "You have only two subjects, yourself and me. I am sick of both. If your presence does not drive a man out of his house, nothing will."

Johnson's daily life seems to have been mapped out in this wise. He lay in bed late into the morning, surrounded by an admiring circle of men friends, who consulted him on every particular, and listened respectfully to all his opinions. He only rose in time for a late dinner at some tavern which occupied most of the afternoon, as other circles of friends came to listen to him. Then he would drink tea at some house, frequently spending the rest of the evening there, unless he was supping with other acquaintances. Except for his "Lives of the Poets," he wrote but little at this period of his life, and said in excuse, "that a man could do as much good by talking as by writing."

Johnson was generally melancholy, the result of his miserable health to a great extent. Yet his pessimism never affected his wonderfully tender heart. Of his pension he barely spent a third on himself. His house became, after the death of his wife, the haven for a variety of unfortunate and homeless people, and there lived in it Miss Williams, a blind lady, whose temper was not sweet; Levett, a waiter, who had become a quack doctor; Mrs. Desmoulins, and her daughter, old Lichfield acquaintances, and a certain Miss Carmichael. Needless to say there was very little peace in that household, and the poor old Doctor often dreaded going home. "Williams hates everybody," he wrote to his really good friends, the Thrales. "Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll Carmichael loves none of them."