Young Mr. Johnson.
And now what a different man we come upon, living just abreast of him in that rich English century and that beautiful English country! We go into Staffordshire and to the old town of Lichfield, to find the boy who afterward became the great lexicographer[20] and the great talker. The house in which he was born is there upon a corner of the great broadened street, opposite St. Mary's Church. We get a pleasant glimpse of the house on a page of Our Old Home, by Hawthorne; and another glimpse of the colossal figure of Dr. Johnson, seated in his marble chair, upon that Lichfield market-place.
His father was a bookseller; held, too, some small magistracy; was eminently respectable; loved books as well as sold them, and had a corresponding inaptitude for business. The son added to indifferent schooling, here and there, a habit of large browsing along his father's shelves; was a great, ungainly lout of a boy, but marvellously quick-witted. With some help from his father, and some from friends, and with a reputation for making verses, and tastes ranging above bookstalls, he entered at Oxford when nineteen; but the stings of poverty smote him there early; and after three years of irregular attendance, he left—only to find his father lapsing into bankruptcy and a fatal illness. On the settlement of the old bookseller's estate, £20 only was the portion of the son. Then follow some dreary years; he is hypochondriac and fears madness; he is under-teacher in a school; he offers to do job-work for the book-makers; he translates the narrative of a Portuguese missionary about Abyssinia; he ponders over a tragedy of Irene. Not much good comes of all this, when—on a sudden, our hero, who is now twenty-six, marries a widow—who admired his talents—who is twenty years his senior and has £800. Johnson was not a person to regard closely such little discrepancies as that difference in age—nor she, I suppose.
The bride is represented as not over-comely, and as one—of good judgment in most matters—who resorted to some vulgar appliances for making the most of her "good looks." Lord Macaulay[21] uses a very rampant rhetoric in his encyclopædic mention of the paint she put upon her cheeks. With the aid of her £800, Johnson determined to set up a boarding-school for young gentlemen; a gaunt country-house three miles out of Lichfield was rented and equipped and advertised; but the young gentlemen did not come.
How could they be won that way? The mistress frowsy, simpering, ancient, painted, and becurled; and Mr. Johnson, gaunt, clumsy, squinting—one side of his face badly scarred with some early surgical cut; one eye involved and drooping, and a twitchy St. Vitus's dance making all uglier. What boy would not dread a possible whipping from such a master, and what mamma would not tremble for her boy? Yet I do not believe he ever whipped hard, when he had occasion; he was kind-hearted; but his scolds at a false syntax must have been terrific and have made the floors shiver.
Among the boys who did venture to that Edial school was one David Garrick, whose father had been a friend of the elder Johnson; and when the school broke up—as it did presently—Johnson and David Garrick set out together for London, to seek their fortune—carrying letters to some booksellers there; and Johnson carrying that half-written tragedy of Irene in his pocket. Garrick's rise began early, and was brilliant, but of this we cannot speak now. Johnson knocked about those London streets—translating a little, jobbing at books a little, starving and scrimping a great deal. He fell in early with a certain Richard Savage,[22] a wild, clever, disorderly poet, as hard pinched as Johnson. According to his story, he was the son of the Countess Macclesfield, but disowned by her—he only coming to knowledge of his parentage through accident, when he was grown to manhood. Johnson tells the pathetic tale of how Savage paced up and down, at night, in sight of his mother's palatial windows, gazing grief-smitten at them, and yearning for the maternal recognition, which the heartless, dishonored woman refused. So, this castaway runs to drink and all deviltries; Johnson staying him much as he can—walking with him up and down through London streets till midnight—talking poetry, philosophy, religion; hungry both of them, and many a time with only ten pence between them.
Well, at last, Savage kills his man in a tavern broil; would have been hung—the mother countess (as the story runs) hoping it would be so; but he escapes, largely through the influence of that Queen Caroline, to whom Jeanie Deans makes her eloquent plea in Scott's ever-famous novel of The Heart of Mid-Lothian. Savage escapes, but 'tis only to go to other bad ways, and at last he died in a Bristol jail.
All this offered material for a pathetic story, and Johnson made the most of it in his Life of Savage—afterward incorporated in his Lives of the Poets, but first published in 1744, about seven years after his coming to London. The book appeared anonymously; but its qualities gave it great vogue; and its essential averments formed the basis of all biographic and encyclopædic[23] notices for nearly a century thereafter.
But was the story true? There were those who doubted at the time, and had an unpleasant sense that Johnson had been wheedled by an adventurer; but demonstration of the imposture of Savage did not come till the middle of the present century. The investigations of Moy Thomas[24] would go to show that the Savage friend of Johnson's early days in London was the most arrant of impostors; and that of all the shame that rests upon him, he can only justly be relieved of that which counts him a child of such a woman as the Countess of Macclesfield. I have dwelt upon the Savage episode, not alone because it provoked one of Johnson's best pieces of prose work, but because it shows how open were his sympathies to such tales of distress, and how quick he was to lift the rod of chastisement upon wrong-doers of whatever degree.
In London, too, that imitative classic poem, there shone in a glitter of couplets (which provoked Pope's praises) the same righteous indignation, and the stings—pricking through all his big Staffordshire bulk—of supperless-days and of shortened means:—
"By numbers here from shame or censure free
All crimes are safe, but hated Poverty;
This, only this, the rigid Law pursues,
This, only this, provokes the snarling muse.
"The sober trader at a tattered cloak
Wakes from his dream, and labors for a joke;
With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze
And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways."
Better than this was that poem (Vanity of Human Wishes) in which, even now, some of us—admiringly—
"In full flown dignity see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand."
And the couplet leads on through Wolsey's story to the poet's coupleted sermon, with its savors of a church-bell—
"Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
Safe in his power whose eye discerns afar
The secret ambush of a specious prayer;
Implore his aid, in his decisions rest,
Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best.
*****
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned;
*****
For faith, that, panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat."
We must note also that famous Prologue, spoken at Drury Lane in 1747, when the theatre came first under control of his old friend, Garrick. Never had the stage, before nor since, a nobler summons in worthier verse: it closes—
"Then prompt no more the follies you decry,
As Tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die:
'Tis yours, this night, to bid the reign commence
Of rescued Nature and reviving Sense:
To chase the charms of Sound, the pomp of Show,
For useful Mirth and salutary Woe:
Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age
And Truth diffuse her radiance from the Stage."
Garrick must have been proud to act under such banner of song as that. The tragedy of Irene came to its first representation a short time afterward; and surely it would have been worth one's while to see the stout, awkward gerund-grinder of forty, slipping into a side-box, or even behind the scenes "in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace and a gold-laced hat!" The play, however, did not prove a great success either then or thereafter. The Dictionary, for which proposals had already been issued, promised better things. That Dictionary did ultimately give him a great lift—as it has to a good many, since. The ponderous volume furnished very many New England households seventy years ago; and I can remember sitting upon it, in my child-days, to bring my head properly above the level of the table. An immense and long-continued toil went to the Dictionary. Lord Chesterfield,[25] the finished orator and the elegant man—not unwilling to have so great a work bear his name—called attention to the book and the author, when nearly ready; but Johnson was too sore with hope deferred to catch that bait; he writes an indignant letter (not published until 1790) to the elegant Chesterfield:—
"Seven years have now passed, my Lord, since I waited in your outward-rooms, or was repulsed from your door—during which time I have been pushing on my work, thro' difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor.... The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors—had it been early—had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary [his wife dead now] and cannot impart it, till I am known and do not want it."
This does not show the stuff which went to the making of such a man as Walpole!
The Rambler, too, it must be remembered, is making its periodic visits in those early days of the Dictionary toil. Heavy it is, like the master; and his prejudices as arrant Churchman and sturdy Tory do indeed break through its piled-up pages; but never insidiously: he sounds a trumpet before he strikes. Perhaps a little over-fond of trumpeting; loving so much his long sonorous roll of Ciceronian vocables.
But I have not the same dislike of long Johnsonian periods that a good many people have—provided always there is a Johnson to utter them. They belong to him; they match with their wordy convolutions his great billowy make of mind; and short, sharp sentences would be as incongruous as a little spurting jet d'eau where great waves come rocking on the beach.
In fact, I have a large unbelief in much of current pedagogic talk about style, and "getting a good style," and "reforming style," and "Saxon style," and so on. To be thoroughly possessed of one's own thought, and then to tell it, in the clearest possible way, is the best law I know for a good style; and a proper following of it will give to every mind that has any color of its own a style of its own. To putter about the rhetorics in search of fine phrases to wrap your thoughts in, is like going in masquerade; furbish it as you will, people will see the smear of old wear in the tinsel trappings, and smell it too.
If short, homely Saxon will serve one's purpose best in giving sharp, shrewd expression to thought, as most times it will, use Saxon; but if a Latin derivation will hit the very shade of your thinking more aptly, do not affect to scorn the Latin. Even if a French word—provided always it be at once and easily comprehensible by all whom you address—shall touch the very eye of your purpose better than another, do not scruple to use it.
But we must ask pardon for this intrusion of small school-mastery talk, while the great master of the Dictionary and of the Rambler waits. As yet we have followed him through only half of his career; a stalwart man, still in the full prime of his years; and I see grouping about him at the Turk's Head many another whom we wish to follow; a Boswell and a Burke; Reynolds and Beauclerk and Goldsmith—these all are in waiting. But for a fuller and nearer view of these old club-men of more than a century ago, we open upon another chapter of these Lands and Letters.
[1] Whoso would take measure, of his scholarly thoroughness, his reach, his pertinacity, and his capacity for striking sharp blows, should struggle through his Dissertation on Phalaris.
[2] Swift, Addison, Steele, Gay, et al., in preceding volume of Lands, Letters, and Kings ("Elizabeth to Anne")
[3] He lived for many years in the Palazzo Muti near to the church of the SS. Apostoli, in Rome; his disorderly life there made it a Regio Palazzo!
[4] Lands and Letters: "From Elizabeth to Anne," p. 100.
[5] Lands and Letters: "Elizabeth to Anne."
[6] This is one contemporary account of it—adopted by Thackeray; but Wraxall (1st vol., pp. 384-385 American reprint, Lea & Blanchard) says that the Duke of Dorset was commissioned to carry the news; but some little time being required to make himself ready, the Duchess was sent in advance. She arrived at Kew (where the Prince was staying) just as that Prince had gone to bed, as was his wont, after dinner. The Princess undertook the announcement—though demurring at the duty, and anticipating a brutal reception for one who should disturb his after-dinner nap; he was in a huff and did make the comment, noted in the text; but it was not (says Wraxall) to a messenger in jack-boots, but to the Princess of Wales herself.
[7] Richardson: b. 1689; d. 1761. Various editions of his works. Known quite generally to buyers of cheap books in our day by an abbreviated issue of Clarissa Harlowe (Routledge & Sons).
[8] Henry Fielding: b. 1707; d. 1754. Editions of his works have been edited by Arthur Murphy, William Roscoe, and Leslie Stephen; (10 vols., 1882-1883.) Life by Sir Walter Scott in Ballantyne Library; more trustworthy one is that by Austin Dobson.
[9] It is perhaps to be doubted if the bare-faced coarsenesses of Fielding (much as they are to be condemned) would provoke pruriency so much as the sentimental and sensuous languors of Richardson.
[10] History of Pendennis, Household Ed., Boston: Chap. xxix.
[11] It was in virtue of some altercations growing out of Fielding's plays that British censorship was established in 1737, and (perhaps) Fielding thereby diverted to the study of Law.
[12] James Thomson, b. 1700; d. 1748. Various editions of his poems; a very elegant one, illustrated by the Etching Club, published 1842-62.
[13] The Jubilee of the Constitution, a discourse delivered by request of the New York Historical Society, April 30, 1839, and repeated shortly after in the old "Ludlow" Church, (now "Dime Theatre"), in Church Street, New Haven.
[14] Thomas Gray, b. 1716; d. 1771. See Gosse's recent biography for critical as well as sympathetic account of his life and writings. See also Mitford's edition of his works, with life, London, 1836.
[15] Horace Walpole, b. 1717; d. 1785. The enumeration of his books, pamphlets, and of titles relating thereto fill a dozen columns of Lowndes. His letters give best measurement of the man.
[16] It purported to be a translation from the Italian of Onuphrio Muralto.
[17] Peter Cunningham Edition. London, 1857-1859. See also Horace Walpole and His World, by L. B. Seeley. 1884.
[18] Rev. William Mason, b. 1725; d. 1797; author of The English Garden, published at intervals (its successive books) between 1772 and 1782. It has little merit—Walpole to the contrary.
[19] Wet Days at Edgewood, p. 239.
[20] Samuel Johnson, b. 1709; d. 1784. Boswell's the standard life of him, and Birkbeck Hill's the best edition of that life. We miss in it, indeed, some of the "Croker" notes, which made such inviting quarry for the sharp huntsmanship of Macaulay. But the editing is done with a love and a tirelessness which are as winning as they are rare. See, also, Leslie Stephen's sketch—which is the best short life.
[21] Ency. Britannica; Art. Johnson.
[22] B. 1698; d. 1743. Poet and dramatist. Collected edit. of his writings published in 1775. His largest claim to distinction is due to the Life of Richard Savage, by Samuel Johnson; first published 1744.
[23] Vide old edition of Ency. Britannica, also Strahan's Biographical Dictionary of 1784; Biographie Universelle, et al.
[24] See Notes and Queries, November and December, 1858.
[25] Philip Dormer Stanhope (Earl of Chesterfield), b. 1694; d. 1773, best known by his Letters to His Son, first published in 1774. Johnson said they taught "the morals of a courtesan, and the manners of a dancing-master." This was perhaps over-severe. People who do not love to disport in fashionable waters are apt to be severe upon those who spend their faculties upon the coquetries of bathing costume.
It was a little after the middle of the last century that our story opens again. George II., whose virtues and vices were clock-like in their regularities, was on the throne; Queen Caroline, whom he had always abused and always venerated, was in her grave for twelve or more years past. Outside politics were ripening for that French and English war—in which a Montcalm and a Wolfe figured upon our side the water, and which has been put in picturesque array by Francis Parkman; the geraniums and oleanders were blossoming over the Portuguese grave of Harry Fielding; Thomson had sung his last notes in his Castle of Indolence and was laid to rest—not in Kelso, or Dryburgh, where his body should have mouldered—but in a little Richmond Church, within gunshot of the "Star and Garter." Gray was still studying the scholarly measures of the Bard, in his beloved Cambridge; Horace Walpole playing the élégant was fattening on his revenues at Strawberry Hill; while Dr. Johnson—notwithstanding the Dictionary and the Rambler—had been latterly (1756) in such sore straits as to appeal to his friend Richardson for the loan of a few guineas to save him from jail; and Richardson, fresh then in his triumphs from Clarissa Harlowe and the great Grandison, was not slow to grant the request,[1] and to enjoy all the more his Kingship among the women, in his great house out at Hammersmith.
London streets.
A sharp walk of a quarter of an hour from St. Paul's would, in that time, take one into the green fields that lay in Islington; and beyond, upon the Waltham road, were the hedges, pikes, and quiet paddocks, through which went galloping—at a little later day—that citizen of "credit and renown," John Gilpin, instead of the clattering suburbs that now stretch nearly all the way between Cheapside and the "Bell" at Edmonton.
Of the many bridges which now span the Thames, only two[2] representatives were in existence; the old Westminster was there in its first freshness, and ferrymen quarrelling with it, because it spoiled their carrying trade to Vauxhall and parts adjacent; and the old London Bridge was cumbered by lumbering houses, held up by trusses and cross-beams, while its openings were so low and its piers so many as to make, at certain stages of the tide, furious cascades which drove great wheels geared to cumbrous pumping machinery, to throw up water for the behoof of London citizens. The old Fleet Prison was in existence, and its smudgy stifling air hung over all that low region above which now leap the great arches of the Holborn Viaduct; and round the corner, in the reek and smoke of Fleet Street, half way between the spire of St. Bride's and the spire of St. Clement's Danes—up a grimy court that is, very likely, just as grimy to-day, lived that Leviathan of a man, Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Johnson and Rasselas.
Rasselas.
He had passed through his green days, and the nights when he strolled supperless about London with that poor wretch of a poet Richard Savage. The school at Edial with its three pupils was well behind him; so was the dining behind the screen at Cave's (the bookseller who presided over the Gentleman's Magazine, with St. John's Gate on the cover then, and on the cover now): so was his age of sentiment ended.
His wife Tetty had gone the way of all flesh (1752) and he had mourned her truly: in proof of this may be counted the presence under his roof of a certain old lady, Miss Williams, who is peevish, who is tempestuous, who is blind, who tests the tea with her fingers, who will talk, and then again, she won't talk; yet Johnson befriends her, pensions her—when he has money,—sends home sweetbreads from the tavern for her; and when his friends ask why he tolerates this vixen, he gives the soundest reason that he has—"she was a friend of Tetty; she was with poor Tetty when she died!"
And his brain was as big, or bigger, than his heart; it had made itself felt all over England by long, honest work—by brave, loud speech. He had snubbed the elegant Lord Chesterfield, who would have liked to see his name upon the first page of the great Dictionary. Not an outcast of the neighborhood but had heard of his audacious kindness; not a linkboy but knew him by the chink of his half-pence; not a beggar but had been bettered by his generous dole; not a watchman but knew him by his unwieldy hulk, and his awkward, intrepid walk; and we know him—if we know him at all—not by his Rambler and his Rasselas, so much as by the story of his life. Who rates Rasselas among his or her cherished books of fiction?
What an unlikely, and what a ponderous beginning it has!
"Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia!"
When, in days long past, I have read thus far in this elephantine novelette to my children, they were pretty apt to explode upon me with—"Please try something else!" Yet this elephantine novelette has a host of excellent and eloquent moral reflections in it, shouldering and elbowing themselves out from its flimsy dress of fiction. Shall I give a hint of the scheme of this old story? An Abyssinian prince living in the middle of a happy valley, walled in by mountains that are beautiful, and watered by rivers that are musical, in the enjoyment of all luxuries, does at last become restless—as so many people do—not so much from a want, as from the want of a want. So he conspires with Imlac, a poet, to escape from the thraldom of complete ease: a sister of the prince and her handmaid steal away with them; and with plenty of jewels the party enter upon their exploration of the ways of outside life. They encounter hermits whose solitude does not cure their pains, and shepherds whose simplicities do not conquer misfortune, and philosophers whose philosophy does not relieve their anxieties, and scholars whose learning does not make them happy.
Imlac, the poet, sums up their findings in saying—"You will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own." This is its whole philosophy. There are interlarded discourses upon learning, and marriage, and death, and riches, which might have been cut from a Rambler or from a sermon. They travel through upper Egypt, and sojourn in the grand Cairo; but there is no shimmer of the desert, and no flash of crescent or scimitar, and no dreamy orientalism; its Eastern sages talk as if they might have thundered their ponderous sentences from the pulpit of St. Bride's. As a finality—if the tale can be said to have any finality—the princess thinks she would like—of all things—Knowledge: the poor handmaid, who has had her little adventure, by being captured by a Bedouin chief, thinks she would like best a convent on some oasis in the desert; while the prince would like a miniature kingdom whose rule he might administer with justice as easily as one might wind a watch; but all agree that, when the Nile flood favors, they will go contentedly back to the happy valley from which they set out upon their wanderings. It is interesting to know that the story was written by Dr. Johnson on the evenings of a single week; and written—before he had come to his pension[3]—to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral; and it is interesting further to know that the magniloquent tale did forge its way into the front rank of readers at a time when Roderick Random and Tom Jones were comparatively fresh books, and only five years after Mr. Richardson had issued from his book-shop under the shadows of St. Bride's, hardly a gunshot away from the house of Johnson, the voluminous history of Sir Charles Grandison.
The Painter and the Club.
Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Among the friends the Doctor made in those days of Ramblers and Idlers was one Joshua Reynolds,[4] some fourteen years the junior of the Doctor, but sedate and thoughtful beyond his age; with an eye, too, for the beautiful faces of young English girls which had never been opened on them before; and doing artist work that is quite different in quality and motive from that of the old stand-by Mr. Hogarth, who not long before this time had been preaching his painted sermons of the Rake's Progress.
Reynolds had made his trip to Italy, and had brought back from Rome, in addition to his studies of Raphael—an affection of the ear—caught, as he always said, in the draughty corridors of the Vatican, which obliged him ever after to carry an ear-trumpet; but his courtesy and grace and precision of speech made the awkwardness forgotten. Looking at the exquisite child's face of his little Penelope Boothby, expressing all that was most winning in girlhood for him who was so reverent of exterior graces, and looking from this to the leathern, seamy face of Johnson, and his unlaundered linen, and snuffy frills (when he wore any), and it is hard to understand the intimacy of these two men; but there was a tenderness of soul under the Doctor's slouchy ways which the keen painter recognized; and in the painter there was a resolute intellection, which Johnson was not slow to detect, and which presently—when the new Royal Academy was founded by George III.—was to have expression in the great painter's discourses on Art—discourses which for their courageous common-sense will, I think, outrank much of the art-writing of to-day.
Turks-Head Club.
In 1760 (the year after Rasselas appeared) Reynolds moved into a fine house, for that day, in Leicester Square—a quarter now given over mostly to French lodgers; but in its neighborhood one may find a marble bust of the eminent painter; and the house where he gave great steaming dinners—famous for their profusion and disorderly array—is still there, though given over to small artists and sellers of bric-à-brac. His good sister, Miss Fanny, who was his housekeeper, loved painting and poetry, and a drive in the painter's chariot, which he set up in later days, better than she loved housewifery. Over-shrewd ones said that Sir Joshua (the title came to him a few years after with the presidency of the Royal Academy) did not marry because he had wholesome dread of a wife's extravagance; certain it is that he remained a bachelor all his life, and thereby was a fitting person to discuss with the widowed Johnson the formation of a club. The Doctor was always clubably disposed; so he caught at the idea of Sir Joshua, and thence sprung that society—called "The Literary Club" afterward, which held its sessions, first at the Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street, Soho Square—on Monday evenings at the start, and afterward on Fridays—numbering among its early members Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Hawkins, Beauclerk, and Goldsmith. This famous club, though moving from place to place in the closing years of the last century, still preserved its identity; it took a new lease of life in the first quarter of the present century, and it still survives in a very quiet old age, holding its fortnightly meetings—rather sparingly attended, it is true—at Willis's Rooms, St. James's Street, in the west of London. Among recent members may be named Gladstone, Sir Frederick Leighton, Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Argyle, Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold.[5]
Some Old Club-men.
Edmund Burke.
Burke,[6] who was among the original nine members, was very much the junior of Johnson; but known to him as a sometime Irish student at law, who had written only a few years before two brilliant treatises; one on Natural Society, and the other on the Sublime and Beautiful.
Later he had done excellent historic work in connection with Dodsley's Annual Register; but he had not yet entered upon that sea of political turmoil over which he was to sweep in so grand a way and with such blaze of triumph. It is possible indeed that he was indebted to the associations of the club for some of the initiative steps toward that wonderful career whose outcome in Parliament, in the courts, and in pamphleteering, has become a component part of the literature of England. Burke, even at that early stage of his progress (his first speech was made in 1766) had all his vast resources at ready command; Johnson did not wish to meet him in debate without warning; true he was afraid of no mere eloquence; he was used to puncturing bloat of that sort; but Burke's most fiery speeches were beaded throughout with globules of thought, which must be grasped and squelched one by one, if mastery were sought. He was impetuous, too, and aggressive, but reverent of the superior age and reputation of the Doctor; and I daresay coyly avoided those American questions which later came to the front, and upon which they held views diametrically opposed. In after years it used to be said that Burke's speeches would empty the benches of the Commons—ye philosophized; and when not heated, spoke with a drawling utterance and a touch of Irish brogue flavoring his voice; indeed he talked so well he was never tired of talking; his sentences so swelled out under the amplitude of his illustrations and allusions that I think he came at last to take a pride in their very longitude, and trailed his gorgeous convolutions of speech with the delighted eagerness with which a fine woman trails her sheen of satins and velvets.
Topham Beauclerk.
Dr. Nugent, a physician of culture, father-in-law of Mr. Burke, was also one of the original members of the club—getting the preferment—as so many in all times do get preferment—simply because son-in-law, father-in-law, or nephew—to somebody else. Another noticeable member of the club was Topham Beauclerk, not by any means the man a casual observer would have taken for an associate of Johnson. He was courtly and elegant in bearing, a man of fashion, smiled upon by such as Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, and who traced his descent back through the first Duke of St. Albans to Nell Gwynne and Charles the Second. He inherited by right, therefore, gayety and humor and wit, and rare histrionic power, and Satan-ry to match. Old Dr. Johnson fairly languished in his admiration of the way in which Topham Beauclerk could tell a story. "It costs me fearful pains," he was used to say; "but this fellow trips through with an airy grace that costs him nothing."
Beauclerk was proud of his membership, and brought his own share of wit, of general information, and of cheery bonhomie to the common reckoning. He married a certain well-known and much-admired Lady Diana Bolingbroke—a divorcée of two days' standing—and treated her shamefully; that being the proper thing for a fashionable man to do, who was emulous of the domestic virtues of George II. At his death, with a large jointure in hand, she had peace; and Burke said, with a humor that was uncommon to him: "It was really enlivening to behold her placed in that sweet house, released from all her cares: £1,000 per annum at her disposal, and her husband dead! It was pleasant, it was delightful, to see her enjoyment of the situation!" Beauclerk was too fine a fellow to think well of the domesticities; there was a good deal of the blood of Charles the Second in him. Over and over we come upon such—men of parts squandered in the small interchanges of fashionable life; perpetually saying slight, good things for a dinner-table; telling a story with rare gusto; the envy of heavy talkers who can never catch butterflies on the wing; looking down upon serious duty whether in art or letters; and so, leaving nothing behind them but a pretty and not always delicate perfume.
David Garrick.
Another of the clubmen was David Garrick—not one of the original nine, but voted in a few years after. Dr. Johnson does indeed give a characteristic growl when his name is proposed—"What do we want of play-actors?" but his good nature triumphs. Little Garrick was an old scholar of his at Edial; and though he has conquered all theatric arts and won all their prizes, he is still for him, "little Garrick." A taste for splendor and dress had always belonged to him. In his boy-days he had written to his father, who was stationed at Gibraltar, "I hope, Papa, you find velvet cheap there; for some one has given me a knee-buckle, and it would go capitally with velvet breeches. Amen, and so be it!"
That love for the buckles and the velvet clung to him. When Edial school broke up, he tramped with Johnson to London—the master with the poor tragedy of Irene in his pocket, and the boy with such gewgaws and pence as he could rake together. Perhaps, also, the tragic splendor of Shakespeare's verse shimmering mistily across his visions of the future, making his finger-ends tingle and his pulse beat high.
But a legacy of £1,000 comes to the Garrick lad presently, which he invests in a wine business, in company with his staid brother, Peter Garrick, who looks after affairs in Lichfield, and who is terribly disturbed when he hears that David is taking to theatric studies;—has acted parts even!
And Davy writes back relenting, and sorry to grieve them at home; but keeps at his parts. And Peter writes more and more disconsolately, lamenting this great reproach, and David writes pretty letters of fence, and the wine business leaks away, and Peter is in despair; and Davy sends remittances which are certainly not legitimate business dividends, thus propping up the sinking wine venture; and before Peter is reconciled, has become the hero of the London boards, with a bank credit that would buy all their ports and clarets twice over.
And this wonderful histrionic genius, probably unparalleled on the English stage before or since his day, so gay, so brisk—so witty betimes—so capable of a song or a fandango, brought life to the club. Nor was there lack in him of literary qualities; his prologues were of the best, and he had the charming art of listening provocatively when the great doctor expounded.