Johnson of London Part one "James Boswell"

 

JOHNSON OF LONDON

 

 

 

The story of SAMUEL JOHNSON              

 

TETTY JOHNSON                  It was an unusual match.  Tetty was older than Johnson, and she stood by him in the difficult years when he was slowly becoming known.

 

JAMES BOSWELL                  He first met Johnson in 1763 when he was 22 and Johnson 53, and he became Johnson’s friend and companion. Most importantly for us, he wrote Johnson’s biography, “A Life of Samuel Johnson”. He had an ability to record whole conversations like a tape recorder. This book is impossible to put down, and many readers go back to it year after year for solace, help and enjoyment.  Like Africa, it always provides something new.      

 

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS      He was the most famous portrait painter of the age.  He painted Johnson three times. With Johnson, he founded The Club, about which more later.

 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH           His play “She Stoops to Conquer” has been acted, read and enjoyed from his time to ours.  He was also a novelist and a poet.  A friend of Johnson and a member of The Club.

 

ROBERT LEVET                   A hard-working doctor living in Johnson’s house as a permanent lodger. Johnson seemed to collect lonely people who needed help.  When Boswell asked Goldsmith how Levet came to live with Johnson, Goldsmith replied, “He is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough to Johnson.”  Levet’s patients were the poor who lived around Fleet Street. Read Johnson’s tribute ‘On the death of Dr Robert Levet’.  Read it.  It won’t take you long. This is how an elegy should be written. Levet was a rough diamond who lacked all social graces but Johnson respected him for the work he did with his patients day in day out.

written.

 

MISS WILLIAMS                     Anna Williams was another of Johnson’s permanent lodgers.  One evening Goldsmith told Boswell, “I go to tea with Miss Williams” to show that with this honour he was part of Johnson’s inner circle of friends.  Boswell later had the same honour.

 

 

HENRY and HESTER THRALE                   Henry Thrale was a wealthy brewery owner and he and his wife Hester became good friends to Johnson. He often stayed at their house in Streatham which became for him a retreat of calm and comfortable living.  Just as he helped his lodgers so the Thrales helped him.

 

 

BENNET LANGTON               Though much younger than Johnson, Langton became a close friend. In 1752 he and Beauclerk knocked loudly on the door of Johnson’s house at 3 o’clock in the morning. “What is it you, you dogs? I’ll have a frisk with you!” shouted Johnson from his bedroom window, and thus began a night of carousing in Covent Garden and the neighbouring taverns.  They carried on well into the next day.

 

 

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK          He became a friend of Johnson through Bennet Langton.  Like Langton, he was an original member of The Club.

 

 

JOHN TAYLOR                He was at with Johnson at Pembroke College. He remained a friend for the rest of Johnson’s life.

 

 

TOM DAVIES                         A bookseller and friend of Johnson.  On

May 16, 1763, at Davies’ bookshop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, Boswell met Johnson for the first time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not too much must be made of Johnson’s nervous tics or there is the danger that he will be reduced to little more than a comic figure.   He had odd mannerisms, such as not walking on the cracks of the pavement or not going out of a door on a certain foot.  These are common symptoms of various types of neurosis, and Johnson was not the first, nor will be the last to suffer from them.

 

What does matter is his continuous struggle against mental imbalance, physical ill health and poverty.  He made a success of his life by sheer strength of will and by persevering against the odds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part one

 

JAMES BOSWELL

 

 

 

Boswell, sitting on the side of the stage, is writing at a small, round table.  On the table is a lighted candle, a bottle of red wine and a glass, which Boswell refills frequently.

 

BOSWELL  (finishing a letter)

I remain,

Your humble servant,

James Boswell

 

(Repeats, self-satisfied, to himself)

Yes, James Boswell. I think that people will remember James Boswell.  Thanks to Johnson, I shall go down in history!

(To audience).  I know this is Johnson’s story but you can’t keep me out of it for long.  My profession is hanging on to great people, and I’m really very good at it.  I am also a lawyer in Scotland, but that’s by the bye.  I met Voltaire in France in 1763.  Over 20 years ago now.  I met Jean-Jacques Rousseau, yes the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in 1764.  Yes, I am a great meeter!  I met the Corsican patriot, Pasquale Paoli, the year after, in 1765, and I wrote a book about him.  But now I am back here, in London.  London!  “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life!” I didn’t say that, he did.  No, not Rousseau or Pasquale Paoli but Johnson.  “The full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross!”  That’s Johnson again.  He says these things and I just write them down.  I’m just a scribe really, but still without me how much of his conversation would have been lost!

 

He is a great man., the greatest of my great men.  A pity you never heard him!  You’ve heard of him probably.  Have you?  Be honest now! The name rings a bell, does it? But not much more? Well, I’ll soon put that right! You never heard him talk though.  I remember seeing him in his room at midday.  He hadn’t been up long, his clothes needed sewing here and there, they didn’t seem to fit quite right, his wig was awry but when he started to talk, none of that mattered! Yes, you never heard him talk. That’s what comes of not living in the 18^th century! You’ve missed it all by coming later. How strange are the things that happened before we were born.  We accept them and we know they happened, but they really don’t mean much to us.  We can’t feel them, can we! Yes, it’s a pity that you missed out on the 18^th century! Not that you could help it!  We can’t choose our entrances any more than we can choose our exits. But you are unlucky not to have coincided with Johnson.

 

Still, you have me!  I’m doing my best!  I’m writing it all down.  I’m writing his life, you see and it’s taking me a lot longer than I thought it would.  It’s a promise I made to myself and, in a way, to him too.   I think it will be worthwhile.  The world ought to know what sort of man he was.  Yes, I think I’ll be leaving something valuable behind when I finish this.

 

Where are we?  (Finding his place in his writing)  Yes, that’s it. (He writes) May 27^th 1768.  Anno aetatis suae 59.  “Anno aetatis suae”, the year of his age, how old he is.  Latin!  How Latin has declined since then!  If you had lived in the 18^th century, you would have had to do something about your Latin.  Every educated person knew Latin then.  When Johnson wanted to tell his doctor in Lichfield about the state of his mind he analysed his own case and sent his doctor the details of the symptoms in Latin!   

 

Now nobody understands Latin!  Alas!  O tempora, o mores!  What times we live in, what…! Oh, never mind! Forget it!

 

Where was I?  Ah yes, May 27^th 1768. Friday.  He is now the Johnson of history.  Famous.  He has produced his great dictionary.  He has written his one-man periodical, ‘The Rambler’.  He has written ‘Rasselas’. Everyone recognizes him as he lurches down Fleet Street, as he sits in the coffee house, and as he drinks in the Mitre Tavern but it wasn’t always like that.  It was a long hard climb, a very long and very hard climb indeed.

 

Now, to put you in the picture, but I promise I won’t bore you with all the details. They’re in the book anyway.  He was born in Lichfield.  That’s the city with the cathedral with three spires. It’s worth a visit. So, like Shakespeare, he was from the Midlands, and like Shakespeare he was pulled to the great magnet of London when he was young. His parents were… but you aren’t interested in all that.  I’m not interested in all that.  I put it all here in the book but I didn’t spend long on it.  I want to get on with the later part, the part where I come in. So we can skip a little.  (He turns over the early pages of what he has written).  Oh, this bit is important. (He looks up)  Oxford!