Reading Boswell
Sep. 19th, 2006 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAnother thing I aquired on my tour through England and Scotland was yet another volume of James Boswell’s journals. Which gave me all kind of crazy ideas (for example, Boswell meeting the Pirates of the Caribean characters would be a riot, and it might even fit with the very vague hints we get as to when the hell PotC is supposed to take place), and most of all made me want to do what things we’re enthusiastic about always do to us: spread the enthusiasm.
So, Boswell, James Boswell.. Who is he, and why should you bother reading his diaries? For starters and most obviously because they’re great fun and offer a look at the 18th century sans hindsight, 21st century glasses or censorship. Boswell was and is most famous because he wrote what is probably the most famous biography in the English language, the Life of Samuel Johnson; said biography had already managed to eclipse its subject’s work in the 19th century. People quoting Johnson were quoting him from the aphorisms he spouts in the Life, not from his own works. Johnson went from being one of the most famous writers of his day to being A Character; meanwhile, Boswell went from being Johnson’s Disreputable Sidekick (Macauly in the 19th century write a particularly vicious diatribe about what an unworthy, disgusting toadying fellow Boswell was and how the greatness of the Life came by sheer accident and certainly not due to any skill of Boswell’s) to The Literary Discovery (when his journals began to be edited, which started in the 1950s and ended in the 1990s; Boswell really wrote a lot of journals).
A lot of the charm of Boswell and his diaries lies in the contradictions. He was very observant (well, duh) and yet introspective; he could be enthusiastic as hell one minute and depressed in the next; he was a passionate Tory with a sneaking fondness for revolutions and rebels (hence was rooting for the Americans, saw Rousseau and Voltaire when he was visiting the Continent, which from the pov of both his father and Dr. Johnson, i.e. the men he revered most, was like visiting the devil), a lawyer who was never that successful because he invariably chose the cases no one else cared about, clients who hardly had any money – horse thieves, sheep thieves, drunken and unemployed veterans, conscripts who made it back to England from Australia and got caught – and yet was pro-slavery because he couldn’t see anything wrong with the system; a Scotsman proud of his heritage and simultaneously ashamed because everyone ridiculed Sots in those days; a man who wanted to be respected desperately and yet when things got boring invariably clowned around (once he imitated a cow in a theatre where the audience waited and waited for the curtain to rise); deeply in love with his wife and yet, the first three years of their marriage aside, unable to remain faithful to her; and so on, and so forth. Boswell describes figures of world history with the same detail and intensity he gives to descriptions of people we’d never heard about otherwise and who are insignificant to history, like his client John Reid (whom he saved from being hanged for stealing sheep the first time around but could not save the second time) or his children. (Boswell, who had a rather severe father, was himself a very enthusiastic one, and it amused but didn’t surprise me to find out in the Edinburgh journals that when his little daughter Veronica shocked him by declaring God didn’t exist, he did what one associates more with parents of the 20th than the 18th century – he consulted a guidebook. In vain, btw; it didn’t cover religious doubts. Boswell then didn’t reprimand Veronica but talked to her to find out how she got the idea.) Oh, and his sexual encounters and/or romances. One reason we’re lucky the journals didn’t get published before the 20th century – they would have been hopelessly cut otherwise, because of Boswell’s sex life.
And now I’m going to let the man speak for himself – and for some of his contemporaries:
As I said, Boswell was hopelessly torn about being a Scot – hence his famous first exchange with Dr. Johnson, who was known to have a prejudice against Scots – “Indeed I am from Scotland, but I cannot help it” “That, Sir, is what I find a great many of your countrymen cannot help” – and he was absolutely and completely in love with London in particular and the idea of English greatness in general, but every now and then, English disdain for Scots was just too much for him, and we get scenes like this one:
Wednesday 8 December 1762: At night I went to Covent Gardin and saw Love in a Village, a new comic opera, for the first night. I liked it very much. I saw it from the gallery, but I was first in the pit. Just before the overture began to be played, two Highland officers came in. The mob in the upper gallery roared out, “No Scots! No Scots! Out with them!”, hissed and pelted them with apples. My heart warmed to my countrymen, my Scotch blood boiled with indignation. I jumped up on the benches, roared out, “Damn you, rascals!” hissed and was in the greatest rage. I am very sure at that time I should have been the most distinguished of heroes. I hated the English; I wished from my soul the Union was broke and that we might give them another battle of Bannockburn. I went close to the officers and asked them of what regiment they were of. They told me Lord John Murray’s, and that they were just come from the Havana. “And this,” said they, “is the thanks that we get – to be hissed when we come home. If it was French, what could they do worse?”
Mostly, though, what was on his mind that winter of 1762 was this:
Indeed, in my mind, there cannot be higher felicity on earth enjoyed by man than the participation of genuine reciprocal amorous affection with an amiable woman. (…) I am therefore walking about with a healthful stout body and a cheerful mind, in search of a woman worthy of my love, and who thinks me worthy of hers, without any interested views, which is the only sure way to find out if a woman really loves a man.
He started to court an actress whom he calls Louisa in his journal, but when she finally gave in and agreed to have sex, there was a little difficulty, which leads to one of the funniest passages of the first journal:
I approached Louisa with a kind of an uneasy tremor. I sat down. I toyed with her. Yet I was not inspired by Venus. I felt rather a delicate sensation of love than a violent amorous inclination for her. I was very miserable. I thought myself feeble as a gallant, although I had experienced the reverse many a time. Louisa knew not my powers. She might imagine me impotent! I sweated almost with anxiety, which made me worse. She behaved extremely well; did not seem to remember the occasion of our meeting at all. I told her I was very dull. Said she, “People cannot always command their spirits.” The time of church was almost elapsed when I began to feel I was still a man. I fanned the flame by pressing her alabaster breasts and kissing her delicious lips. I then barred the door of her dinning-rom, led her all fluttering into her bedchamber, and was just making a triumphal entry when we heard her landlady coming up. “Oh Fortune why did it happen thus?” would have been the exclamation of a Roman bard. We were stopped most suddenly and cruelly from the fruition of each other. She ran out and stopped the landlady from coming up. Then returned to me in the dining-room. We fell into each other’s arms, sighing and panting. “O dear, how hard this is.” “O Madam, see what you can contrive for me.” “Lord, Sir, I am so frightened.”
Back to the problem of being a Scot and having met Johnson:
“Ogilvie then said Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects. “Sir,” said Johnson, “I believe you have a great many noble wild prospects. Norway too has some noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, I believe the noblest prospect that a Scotsman ever sees is the road which leads him to England!”
We gave a roar of applause to this most excellent sally of strong humour. At the same time, I could not help thinking that Mr. Johnson showed a want of taste in laughing at the wild grandeur of nature. (…) Have I not experienced the full force of this when gazing at thee, O Arthur Seat, thou venerable mountain! Whether in the severity of winter thy brow has been covered with snow or wrapped in mist; or in the gentle mildness of summer the evening sun has shone upon thy verdant sides diversified with rugged moss-clad rocks. Beloved hill, the admiration of my youth! Thy noble image shall ever fill my mind!”
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artaxastra said, in the romantic era, everyone was emo, and Boswell more than most. (Johnson, otoh, solidly was a classicist.) The emo god of the romantics was of course none other than Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Boswell, who had trouble of the concept of the word “no”, went to Switzerland to see the old man and actually managed to get himself invited back a few times. Which gives us several transcriptions of conversations with one of the two most famous philosophers of the era. Here’s an excerpt. The romantic version of “let’s talk about sex”:
BOSWELL: For instance, I should like to have thirty women. Could I not satisfy that desire?
ROUSSEAU: Ha! Ha! If Mademoiselle were not here, I would give you a most ample reason why.
BOSWELL: But consider: if I am rich, I can take a number of girls; I get them with child; propagation is thus increased. I give them dowries, and I marry them off to good peasants who are very happy to have them. Thus they become wives at the same age as would have been the case if they had remained virgins and I, on my side, have had the benefit of enjoying a great variety of women.
ROUSSEAU: Oh, you will be landed in jealousies, betrayals and treachery.
BOSWELL: But cannot I follow the Oriental usage?
ROUSEAU: In the Orient the women are kept shut up, and that means keeping slaves. And, mark you, their women do nothing but harm, whereas ours do much good, for they do a great deal of work.
BOSWELL: Still, I should like to follow the example of the old Patriarchs, worthy men whose memory I hold in respect.
ROUSSEAU: But are you not a citizen? You must not pick and choose one law here and another law there, you must take the laws of your own society. Do your duty as a citizen, and if you hold fast, you will win respect. I should not talk about it, but I should do it. (…)
BOSWELL: And pray tell me how I can expiate the evil I have done?
ROUSSEAU: Oh, Sir, there is no expiation for evil except good. (…)
BOSWELL: Yesterday I thought of asking a favour of you, to give me credentials as your ambassador to the Corsicans. Will you make me his Excellency? Are you in need of an ambassador? I offer you my services: Mr. Boswell, Ambassador Extraordinary of Monsieur Rousseau to the Isle of Corsica.
ROUSSEAU: Perhaps you would rather be King of Corsica?
BOSWELL: On my word! Not I. It exceeds my powers (with a low bow). All the same, I can now say, “I have refused a crown”.
ROUSSEAU: Do you like cats?
BOSWELL: No.
ROUSSEAU: I was sure of that. It is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like cats because the cat is free and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as other animals do.
BOSWELL: Nor a hen, either.
ROUSSEAU: A hen would obey your orders if you could make her understand them. But a cat will understand your perfectly and not obey them.
Boswell did go to Corsica – and wrote a book about the cause of the Corsicans as a result – but went to visit the other greatest philosopher of the age and arch-rival of Rousseau first, Voltaire. Here are some of his notes of his interview with Voltaire:
VOLTAIRE: Shakespeare has often two good lines, never six. A madman, by G-d, a buffoon at Bartholommew Fair. No play of his own, all old stories.
Chess. “I shall lose, by G-d, by all the saints in Paradise. Ah, here I am risind on a black ram, like a whore as I am. –
Falstaff from the Spaniards.
BOSWELL: I’ll tell you why we admire Shakespeare.
VOLTAIRE: Because you have no taste.
BOSWELL: But, Sir –
VOLTAIRE: Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos – all Europe is against you. So you are wrong.
BOSWELL: But this is because we have the most grand imagination.
VOLTAIRE: The most wild.
(…)
BOSWELL: What do you think of our comedy?
VOLTAIRE: A great deal of wit, a great deal of plot, and a great deal of bawdy-houses. (…)
BOSWELL: Johnson is a most orthodox man, but very learned; has much genius and much worth.
VOLTAIRE: He is then a dog. A superstitious dog. No worthy man was ever superstitious.
BOSWELL: He said the King of Prussia wrote like your footboy.
VOLTAIRE. He is a sensible man.
With his Corsican book under his belt and back to England, it was time for Boswell to settle down. His father wanted him to make a good (i.e. rich) marriage. Boswell had the best intentions of doing so, courting, among others, an Irish heiress, but as if his life was a novel, true love intervened, as he wrote to his friend Temple:
I must tell you I am accompanied by my cousin Miss Montgomerie, whom I believe you saw at Edinburgh, and she perhaps may and perhaps ought to prevent my Hibernian nuptials. You must know that she and I have always been in the greatest intimacy. I have proved her on a thousand occasions and have found her sensible, agreeable and generous. When I was not in love with some one or the other of my numerous flames, I have been in love with her; and during the intervals of all my passions Margaret has been constantly my mistress as well as my friend. Allow me to add that her person is to me the most desirable that I ever saw. Often have I thought of marrying her, and often told her so. But we talked of my wonderful inconstancy, were merry, and perhaps in two days after the most ardent professions I came and told her I was desperately in love with another woman. Then she smiled, was my confidante, and in time I returned to herself. She is with all this, Temple, the most honest, undesigning creature that ever existed. Well, Sir, being my cousin, she accompanies me on my Irish expedition. I found her both by sea and land the best companion I ever saw. I am exceedingly in love with her. I highly value her. If ever a man had his full choice of a wife, I would have it in her. But the objections are that she is two years older than I. She has only a thousand pounds. My father would be violent against my marrying her, as she would bring neither money nor interest. I, from a desire to aggrandize my family, think somewhat in the same manner. And all my gay projects of bringing homes some blooming young lady and making an éclat with her brilliant fortune would be gone.
But, on the other hand, my cousin is of a fine, firm, lively temperament, and never can be old. She may have as many children as I wish, and from what she has already done as an aunt I am sure she would make a very good mother. Would not my children be more obliged to me for such a mother than for many thousands? (…) And what weighs much with me, Temple, is that amidst all this merriment and scheming, I really imagine she truly loves me, that by my courting her so often she is so attached to me that she would silently suffer severely if she saw me irrevocably fixed to another.
To his father’s fury, he married his cousin Margaret (“Peggie”, or, as she shows up later in the journals, “my excellent wife”, “my valuable spouse”), and by and large, it was a very happy marriage. The one unhappy aspect was his fault. As mentioned before, after three years, he relapsed into his habit of having casual sex with other women, felt bad about, but couldn’t stop it. One such Boswellian thought on the matter was, after sex with a whore:
I thought of my valuable spouse with the highest regard and warmest affection, but had a confused notion that my corporeal connection with whores did not interfere with my love for her. Yet I considered that I might injure my health, which there could be no doubt was an injury to her. This is an exact state of my mind at the time. It shocks me to review it.
She forgave him, though. One last excerpt regarding his marriage, after said marriage had already lasted for more than a decade. Dr. Johnson had just met his first love, Mrs. Carless again.
When he (Johnson) again talked of Mrs. Carless tonight, he semed to have had his affection revived, for he said to this purpose: “If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me.” “I suppose,” said I, “there are fifty women with whom a man may be as happy as with any one in particular?” “Ay, fifty thousand,” said he. I doubted if he was right. I have a strong imagination that I could not have been so happy in marriage with any other woman as with my dear wife. I cannot tell why, so as to give any rational explanation to others. I only know or fancy that there are qualities and compositions of qualities (to talk in musical metaphor) which in the course of our lives appear to me in her that please me more than what I have perceived in any other woman, and which I cannot separate from her identity.
One of Boswell’s more attractive features was that he cared about the downtrodden and unlucky as much as about the rich and famous whom he met, and like I said, this meant that he could never make much of a fortune as a lawyer. Perhaps the case that affected him most was John Reid, who had been his first client and eight years later was his client again, but this time was condemmed to death for sheep stealing. Boswell tried to get him a pardon (in vain) and visited him daily in his cell until the execution:
He seemed quite composed, and said he had no hopes of life on account of the dreams which he had. That he deamt he was riding on one white horse and leading another. “That,” said he, “was too good a dream, and dreams are contrary.” He said he also dreamt a great deal of being on the seashore and of passing deep waters. “However,” said he, “I always get through them.” “Well,” said I, “John, I hope that shall not be contrary; but that you shall get through the great deep of death.” I called for a dram of whisky. I had not thought how I should drink to John till I had the glass in my hand, and I felt some embarrassment. I could not say, “your good health”: and “Here’s to you” was too much in the style of hearty fellowship. I said, “John, I wish you well,” or words pretty much the same, as “Wishing you well” – or some such phrase. The painter and Mr. Ritchie tasted the spirits. Richard the jailer makes it a rule never to taste them within the walls of the prison. John seemed to be the better of a dram.
In 1777, Boswell landed what a biographer had referred to as the journalistic scoop of the 18th century. He had been friends with the sceptic philosopher David Hume (who described him in a letter as “very agreeable, very brave and very mad”) for quite a while, and visited Hume shortly before Hume’s death.
I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes. I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist. I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state. He answered that it was possible that a piece of coal pt upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist forever. That immortality, if it were at all, must be general; that a great proportion of the human race has hardly any intellectual qualities; that a great proportion dies in infancy before being possessed of reason; yet all these must be immortal; that the trash of every age must be preserved and that new universes must be created to contain such infinite numbers. This appeared to me an unphilosophical objection, and I said: “Mr. Hume, you know spirit does not take up space.” (…) I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not in the least; no more than the thought he had not been, as Lucretius observes. “Well,” said I, “Mr. Hume, remember you are not to pretend that you was joking with all this infidelity.” No, no,” said he. “But I shall have been so long there before you come that it will be nothing new.” In this style of good humour and levity did I conduct the conversation. Perhaps it was wrong on so awful a subject. But as nobody was present, I thought it could have no bad effect. I however felt a degree of horror, mixed with a sort of wild, strange, hurrying recollections of my excellent mother’s pious instructions, of Dr. Johnson’s noble lessons. I was like a man in sudden danger eagerly seeking his defensive arms; and I could not but be assailed by momentary doubts while I had actually before me a man of such strong abilities and extensive enquiry dying in the persuasion of being annihilated.
By 1789, most of Boswell’s friends were dead, and the world was very changed; the Johnson biography had been a great success, but the decision to move from Edinburgh to London on a permanent basis (as opposed to visiting London a few weeks each year) proved to be fatal, because due to his lack of a career as a barrister, he was dependent on patronage, and his patron, Lord Lonsdale, appears to have been a true bastard. Because of him, Boswell wasn’t with his wife when she died, something he never forgave himself for and which permanently took his high spirits away. So, the last excerpt, which is about her death, written to his friend Temple again:
My two boys and I posted from London to Auchinleck night and day, in sixty four hours and one quarter, but alas! Our haste was in all in vain. The fatal stroke had taken place before we set out. It was very strange that we had no intelligence whatever upon the road, not even in our own parish, not till my second daughter came running out from our house and announced to us the dismal event in a burst of tears. O! my Temple! But to have but one week, one day, in which I might again hear her admirable conversation and assure her of my fervent attachment notwithstanding all my irregularities. It was some relief to me to be told that she had after I was set out mentioned what I think I wrote to you, that she had pressed me to go up and show my zeal for Lord Lonsdale. But when on my return before the cause came on, I found that by my going away at that unlucky time I had not been with her to soothe her last moments, I cried bitterly and upbraided myself for leaving her, for she would not have left me. (..) To see my excellent wife, and the mother of my children, and that most sensible, lively woman, lying cold and pale and insensible, I could not help doubting that it was a deception. I could hardly bring myself to agree that the body should be removed, for it was still a consolation to me to go and kneel by it and talk to my dear, dear Peggie.
So, Boswell, James Boswell.. Who is he, and why should you bother reading his diaries? For starters and most obviously because they’re great fun and offer a look at the 18th century sans hindsight, 21st century glasses or censorship. Boswell was and is most famous because he wrote what is probably the most famous biography in the English language, the Life of Samuel Johnson; said biography had already managed to eclipse its subject’s work in the 19th century. People quoting Johnson were quoting him from the aphorisms he spouts in the Life, not from his own works. Johnson went from being one of the most famous writers of his day to being A Character; meanwhile, Boswell went from being Johnson’s Disreputable Sidekick (Macauly in the 19th century write a particularly vicious diatribe about what an unworthy, disgusting toadying fellow Boswell was and how the greatness of the Life came by sheer accident and certainly not due to any skill of Boswell’s) to The Literary Discovery (when his journals began to be edited, which started in the 1950s and ended in the 1990s; Boswell really wrote a lot of journals).
A lot of the charm of Boswell and his diaries lies in the contradictions. He was very observant (well, duh) and yet introspective; he could be enthusiastic as hell one minute and depressed in the next; he was a passionate Tory with a sneaking fondness for revolutions and rebels (hence was rooting for the Americans, saw Rousseau and Voltaire when he was visiting the Continent, which from the pov of both his father and Dr. Johnson, i.e. the men he revered most, was like visiting the devil), a lawyer who was never that successful because he invariably chose the cases no one else cared about, clients who hardly had any money – horse thieves, sheep thieves, drunken and unemployed veterans, conscripts who made it back to England from Australia and got caught – and yet was pro-slavery because he couldn’t see anything wrong with the system; a Scotsman proud of his heritage and simultaneously ashamed because everyone ridiculed Sots in those days; a man who wanted to be respected desperately and yet when things got boring invariably clowned around (once he imitated a cow in a theatre where the audience waited and waited for the curtain to rise); deeply in love with his wife and yet, the first three years of their marriage aside, unable to remain faithful to her; and so on, and so forth. Boswell describes figures of world history with the same detail and intensity he gives to descriptions of people we’d never heard about otherwise and who are insignificant to history, like his client John Reid (whom he saved from being hanged for stealing sheep the first time around but could not save the second time) or his children. (Boswell, who had a rather severe father, was himself a very enthusiastic one, and it amused but didn’t surprise me to find out in the Edinburgh journals that when his little daughter Veronica shocked him by declaring God didn’t exist, he did what one associates more with parents of the 20th than the 18th century – he consulted a guidebook. In vain, btw; it didn’t cover religious doubts. Boswell then didn’t reprimand Veronica but talked to her to find out how she got the idea.) Oh, and his sexual encounters and/or romances. One reason we’re lucky the journals didn’t get published before the 20th century – they would have been hopelessly cut otherwise, because of Boswell’s sex life.
And now I’m going to let the man speak for himself – and for some of his contemporaries:
As I said, Boswell was hopelessly torn about being a Scot – hence his famous first exchange with Dr. Johnson, who was known to have a prejudice against Scots – “Indeed I am from Scotland, but I cannot help it” “That, Sir, is what I find a great many of your countrymen cannot help” – and he was absolutely and completely in love with London in particular and the idea of English greatness in general, but every now and then, English disdain for Scots was just too much for him, and we get scenes like this one:
Wednesday 8 December 1762: At night I went to Covent Gardin and saw Love in a Village, a new comic opera, for the first night. I liked it very much. I saw it from the gallery, but I was first in the pit. Just before the overture began to be played, two Highland officers came in. The mob in the upper gallery roared out, “No Scots! No Scots! Out with them!”, hissed and pelted them with apples. My heart warmed to my countrymen, my Scotch blood boiled with indignation. I jumped up on the benches, roared out, “Damn you, rascals!” hissed and was in the greatest rage. I am very sure at that time I should have been the most distinguished of heroes. I hated the English; I wished from my soul the Union was broke and that we might give them another battle of Bannockburn. I went close to the officers and asked them of what regiment they were of. They told me Lord John Murray’s, and that they were just come from the Havana. “And this,” said they, “is the thanks that we get – to be hissed when we come home. If it was French, what could they do worse?”
Mostly, though, what was on his mind that winter of 1762 was this:
Indeed, in my mind, there cannot be higher felicity on earth enjoyed by man than the participation of genuine reciprocal amorous affection with an amiable woman. (…) I am therefore walking about with a healthful stout body and a cheerful mind, in search of a woman worthy of my love, and who thinks me worthy of hers, without any interested views, which is the only sure way to find out if a woman really loves a man.
He started to court an actress whom he calls Louisa in his journal, but when she finally gave in and agreed to have sex, there was a little difficulty, which leads to one of the funniest passages of the first journal:
I approached Louisa with a kind of an uneasy tremor. I sat down. I toyed with her. Yet I was not inspired by Venus. I felt rather a delicate sensation of love than a violent amorous inclination for her. I was very miserable. I thought myself feeble as a gallant, although I had experienced the reverse many a time. Louisa knew not my powers. She might imagine me impotent! I sweated almost with anxiety, which made me worse. She behaved extremely well; did not seem to remember the occasion of our meeting at all. I told her I was very dull. Said she, “People cannot always command their spirits.” The time of church was almost elapsed when I began to feel I was still a man. I fanned the flame by pressing her alabaster breasts and kissing her delicious lips. I then barred the door of her dinning-rom, led her all fluttering into her bedchamber, and was just making a triumphal entry when we heard her landlady coming up. “Oh Fortune why did it happen thus?” would have been the exclamation of a Roman bard. We were stopped most suddenly and cruelly from the fruition of each other. She ran out and stopped the landlady from coming up. Then returned to me in the dining-room. We fell into each other’s arms, sighing and panting. “O dear, how hard this is.” “O Madam, see what you can contrive for me.” “Lord, Sir, I am so frightened.”
Back to the problem of being a Scot and having met Johnson:
“Ogilvie then said Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects. “Sir,” said Johnson, “I believe you have a great many noble wild prospects. Norway too has some noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, I believe the noblest prospect that a Scotsman ever sees is the road which leads him to England!”
We gave a roar of applause to this most excellent sally of strong humour. At the same time, I could not help thinking that Mr. Johnson showed a want of taste in laughing at the wild grandeur of nature. (…) Have I not experienced the full force of this when gazing at thee, O Arthur Seat, thou venerable mountain! Whether in the severity of winter thy brow has been covered with snow or wrapped in mist; or in the gentle mildness of summer the evening sun has shone upon thy verdant sides diversified with rugged moss-clad rocks. Beloved hill, the admiration of my youth! Thy noble image shall ever fill my mind!”
As
artaxastra said, in the romantic era, everyone was emo, and Boswell more than most. (Johnson, otoh, solidly was a classicist.) The emo god of the romantics was of course none other than Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Boswell, who had trouble of the concept of the word “no”, went to Switzerland to see the old man and actually managed to get himself invited back a few times. Which gives us several transcriptions of conversations with one of the two most famous philosophers of the era. Here’s an excerpt. The romantic version of “let’s talk about sex”:BOSWELL: For instance, I should like to have thirty women. Could I not satisfy that desire?
ROUSSEAU: Ha! Ha! If Mademoiselle were not here, I would give you a most ample reason why.
BOSWELL: But consider: if I am rich, I can take a number of girls; I get them with child; propagation is thus increased. I give them dowries, and I marry them off to good peasants who are very happy to have them. Thus they become wives at the same age as would have been the case if they had remained virgins and I, on my side, have had the benefit of enjoying a great variety of women.
ROUSSEAU: Oh, you will be landed in jealousies, betrayals and treachery.
BOSWELL: But cannot I follow the Oriental usage?
ROUSEAU: In the Orient the women are kept shut up, and that means keeping slaves. And, mark you, their women do nothing but harm, whereas ours do much good, for they do a great deal of work.
BOSWELL: Still, I should like to follow the example of the old Patriarchs, worthy men whose memory I hold in respect.
ROUSSEAU: But are you not a citizen? You must not pick and choose one law here and another law there, you must take the laws of your own society. Do your duty as a citizen, and if you hold fast, you will win respect. I should not talk about it, but I should do it. (…)
BOSWELL: And pray tell me how I can expiate the evil I have done?
ROUSSEAU: Oh, Sir, there is no expiation for evil except good. (…)
BOSWELL: Yesterday I thought of asking a favour of you, to give me credentials as your ambassador to the Corsicans. Will you make me his Excellency? Are you in need of an ambassador? I offer you my services: Mr. Boswell, Ambassador Extraordinary of Monsieur Rousseau to the Isle of Corsica.
ROUSSEAU: Perhaps you would rather be King of Corsica?
BOSWELL: On my word! Not I. It exceeds my powers (with a low bow). All the same, I can now say, “I have refused a crown”.
ROUSSEAU: Do you like cats?
BOSWELL: No.
ROUSSEAU: I was sure of that. It is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like cats because the cat is free and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as other animals do.
BOSWELL: Nor a hen, either.
ROUSSEAU: A hen would obey your orders if you could make her understand them. But a cat will understand your perfectly and not obey them.
Boswell did go to Corsica – and wrote a book about the cause of the Corsicans as a result – but went to visit the other greatest philosopher of the age and arch-rival of Rousseau first, Voltaire. Here are some of his notes of his interview with Voltaire:
VOLTAIRE: Shakespeare has often two good lines, never six. A madman, by G-d, a buffoon at Bartholommew Fair. No play of his own, all old stories.
Chess. “I shall lose, by G-d, by all the saints in Paradise. Ah, here I am risind on a black ram, like a whore as I am. –
Falstaff from the Spaniards.
BOSWELL: I’ll tell you why we admire Shakespeare.
VOLTAIRE: Because you have no taste.
BOSWELL: But, Sir –
VOLTAIRE: Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos – all Europe is against you. So you are wrong.
BOSWELL: But this is because we have the most grand imagination.
VOLTAIRE: The most wild.
(…)
BOSWELL: What do you think of our comedy?
VOLTAIRE: A great deal of wit, a great deal of plot, and a great deal of bawdy-houses. (…)
BOSWELL: Johnson is a most orthodox man, but very learned; has much genius and much worth.
VOLTAIRE: He is then a dog. A superstitious dog. No worthy man was ever superstitious.
BOSWELL: He said the King of Prussia wrote like your footboy.
VOLTAIRE. He is a sensible man.
With his Corsican book under his belt and back to England, it was time for Boswell to settle down. His father wanted him to make a good (i.e. rich) marriage. Boswell had the best intentions of doing so, courting, among others, an Irish heiress, but as if his life was a novel, true love intervened, as he wrote to his friend Temple:
I must tell you I am accompanied by my cousin Miss Montgomerie, whom I believe you saw at Edinburgh, and she perhaps may and perhaps ought to prevent my Hibernian nuptials. You must know that she and I have always been in the greatest intimacy. I have proved her on a thousand occasions and have found her sensible, agreeable and generous. When I was not in love with some one or the other of my numerous flames, I have been in love with her; and during the intervals of all my passions Margaret has been constantly my mistress as well as my friend. Allow me to add that her person is to me the most desirable that I ever saw. Often have I thought of marrying her, and often told her so. But we talked of my wonderful inconstancy, were merry, and perhaps in two days after the most ardent professions I came and told her I was desperately in love with another woman. Then she smiled, was my confidante, and in time I returned to herself. She is with all this, Temple, the most honest, undesigning creature that ever existed. Well, Sir, being my cousin, she accompanies me on my Irish expedition. I found her both by sea and land the best companion I ever saw. I am exceedingly in love with her. I highly value her. If ever a man had his full choice of a wife, I would have it in her. But the objections are that she is two years older than I. She has only a thousand pounds. My father would be violent against my marrying her, as she would bring neither money nor interest. I, from a desire to aggrandize my family, think somewhat in the same manner. And all my gay projects of bringing homes some blooming young lady and making an éclat with her brilliant fortune would be gone.
But, on the other hand, my cousin is of a fine, firm, lively temperament, and never can be old. She may have as many children as I wish, and from what she has already done as an aunt I am sure she would make a very good mother. Would not my children be more obliged to me for such a mother than for many thousands? (…) And what weighs much with me, Temple, is that amidst all this merriment and scheming, I really imagine she truly loves me, that by my courting her so often she is so attached to me that she would silently suffer severely if she saw me irrevocably fixed to another.
To his father’s fury, he married his cousin Margaret (“Peggie”, or, as she shows up later in the journals, “my excellent wife”, “my valuable spouse”), and by and large, it was a very happy marriage. The one unhappy aspect was his fault. As mentioned before, after three years, he relapsed into his habit of having casual sex with other women, felt bad about, but couldn’t stop it. One such Boswellian thought on the matter was, after sex with a whore:
I thought of my valuable spouse with the highest regard and warmest affection, but had a confused notion that my corporeal connection with whores did not interfere with my love for her. Yet I considered that I might injure my health, which there could be no doubt was an injury to her. This is an exact state of my mind at the time. It shocks me to review it.
She forgave him, though. One last excerpt regarding his marriage, after said marriage had already lasted for more than a decade. Dr. Johnson had just met his first love, Mrs. Carless again.
When he (Johnson) again talked of Mrs. Carless tonight, he semed to have had his affection revived, for he said to this purpose: “If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me.” “I suppose,” said I, “there are fifty women with whom a man may be as happy as with any one in particular?” “Ay, fifty thousand,” said he. I doubted if he was right. I have a strong imagination that I could not have been so happy in marriage with any other woman as with my dear wife. I cannot tell why, so as to give any rational explanation to others. I only know or fancy that there are qualities and compositions of qualities (to talk in musical metaphor) which in the course of our lives appear to me in her that please me more than what I have perceived in any other woman, and which I cannot separate from her identity.
One of Boswell’s more attractive features was that he cared about the downtrodden and unlucky as much as about the rich and famous whom he met, and like I said, this meant that he could never make much of a fortune as a lawyer. Perhaps the case that affected him most was John Reid, who had been his first client and eight years later was his client again, but this time was condemmed to death for sheep stealing. Boswell tried to get him a pardon (in vain) and visited him daily in his cell until the execution:
He seemed quite composed, and said he had no hopes of life on account of the dreams which he had. That he deamt he was riding on one white horse and leading another. “That,” said he, “was too good a dream, and dreams are contrary.” He said he also dreamt a great deal of being on the seashore and of passing deep waters. “However,” said he, “I always get through them.” “Well,” said I, “John, I hope that shall not be contrary; but that you shall get through the great deep of death.” I called for a dram of whisky. I had not thought how I should drink to John till I had the glass in my hand, and I felt some embarrassment. I could not say, “your good health”: and “Here’s to you” was too much in the style of hearty fellowship. I said, “John, I wish you well,” or words pretty much the same, as “Wishing you well” – or some such phrase. The painter and Mr. Ritchie tasted the spirits. Richard the jailer makes it a rule never to taste them within the walls of the prison. John seemed to be the better of a dram.
In 1777, Boswell landed what a biographer had referred to as the journalistic scoop of the 18th century. He had been friends with the sceptic philosopher David Hume (who described him in a letter as “very agreeable, very brave and very mad”) for quite a while, and visited Hume shortly before Hume’s death.
I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes. I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist. I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state. He answered that it was possible that a piece of coal pt upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist forever. That immortality, if it were at all, must be general; that a great proportion of the human race has hardly any intellectual qualities; that a great proportion dies in infancy before being possessed of reason; yet all these must be immortal; that the trash of every age must be preserved and that new universes must be created to contain such infinite numbers. This appeared to me an unphilosophical objection, and I said: “Mr. Hume, you know spirit does not take up space.” (…) I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not in the least; no more than the thought he had not been, as Lucretius observes. “Well,” said I, “Mr. Hume, remember you are not to pretend that you was joking with all this infidelity.” No, no,” said he. “But I shall have been so long there before you come that it will be nothing new.” In this style of good humour and levity did I conduct the conversation. Perhaps it was wrong on so awful a subject. But as nobody was present, I thought it could have no bad effect. I however felt a degree of horror, mixed with a sort of wild, strange, hurrying recollections of my excellent mother’s pious instructions, of Dr. Johnson’s noble lessons. I was like a man in sudden danger eagerly seeking his defensive arms; and I could not but be assailed by momentary doubts while I had actually before me a man of such strong abilities and extensive enquiry dying in the persuasion of being annihilated.
By 1789, most of Boswell’s friends were dead, and the world was very changed; the Johnson biography had been a great success, but the decision to move from Edinburgh to London on a permanent basis (as opposed to visiting London a few weeks each year) proved to be fatal, because due to his lack of a career as a barrister, he was dependent on patronage, and his patron, Lord Lonsdale, appears to have been a true bastard. Because of him, Boswell wasn’t with his wife when she died, something he never forgave himself for and which permanently took his high spirits away. So, the last excerpt, which is about her death, written to his friend Temple again:
My two boys and I posted from London to Auchinleck night and day, in sixty four hours and one quarter, but alas! Our haste was in all in vain. The fatal stroke had taken place before we set out. It was very strange that we had no intelligence whatever upon the road, not even in our own parish, not till my second daughter came running out from our house and announced to us the dismal event in a burst of tears. O! my Temple! But to have but one week, one day, in which I might again hear her admirable conversation and assure her of my fervent attachment notwithstanding all my irregularities. It was some relief to me to be told that she had after I was set out mentioned what I think I wrote to you, that she had pressed me to go up and show my zeal for Lord Lonsdale. But when on my return before the cause came on, I found that by my going away at that unlucky time I had not been with her to soothe her last moments, I cried bitterly and upbraided myself for leaving her, for she would not have left me. (..) To see my excellent wife, and the mother of my children, and that most sensible, lively woman, lying cold and pale and insensible, I could not help doubting that it was a deception. I could hardly bring myself to agree that the body should be removed, for it was still a consolation to me to go and kneel by it and talk to my dear, dear Peggie.
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Date: 2006-09-20 05:56 am (UTC)