Part 5 (2/2)
Twenty such tricks will the faithfullest wife in the world not refuse to play, and then look astonished when the fellow fetches in a mistress.
Boarding-schools were established,” continued he, ”for the conjugal quiet of the parents. The two partners cannot agree which child to fondle, nor how to fondle them, so they put the young ones to school, and remove the cause of contention. The little girl pokes her head, the mother reproves her sharply. 'Do not mind your mamma,' says the father, 'my dear, but do your own way.' The mother complains to me of this. 'Madam,' said I, 'your husband is right all the while; he is with you but two hours of the day, perhaps, and then you tease him by making the child cry. Are not ten hours enough for tuition? and are the hours of pleasure so frequent in life, that when a man gets a couple of quiet ones to spend in familiar chat with his wife, they must be poisoned by petty mortifications? Put missy to school; she will learn to hold her head like her neighbours, and you will no longer torment your family for want of other talk.'”.
The vacuity of life had at some early period of his life struck so forcibly on the mind of Mr. Johnson, that it became by repeated impression his favourite hypothesis, and the general tenor of his reasonings commonly ended there, wherever they might begin. Such things, therefore, as other philosophers often attribute to various and contradictory causes, appeared to him uniform enough; all was done to fill up the time, upon his principle. I used to tell him that it was like the clown's answer in As You Like It, of ”Oh, lord, sir!” for that it suited every occasion. One man, for example, was profligate and wild, as we call it, followed the girls, or sat still at the gaming-table.
”Why, life must be filled up,” says Johnson, ”and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.” Another was a h.o.a.rder. ”Why, a fellow must do something; and what, so easy to a narrow mind as h.o.a.rding halfpence till they turn into sixpences.” Avarice was a vice against which, however, I never much heard Mr. Johnson declaim, till one represented it to him connected with cruelty, or some such disgraceful companion. ”Do not,”
said he, ”discourage your children from h.o.a.rding if they have a taste to it: whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appet.i.te, and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment. Such a mind may be made a good one; but the natural spendthrift, who grasps his pleasures greedily and coa.r.s.ely, and cares for nothing but immediate indulgence, is very little to be valued above a negro.” We talked of Lady Tavistock, who grieved herself to death for the loss of her husband--”She was rich, and wanted employment,” says Johnson, ”so she cried till she lost all power of restraining her tears: other women are forced to outlive their husbands, who were just as much beloved, depend on it; but they have no time for grief: and I doubt not, if we had put my Lady Tavistock into a small chandler's shop, and given her a nurse-child to tend, her life would have been saved. The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.” We were speaking of a gentleman who loved his friend--”Make him Prime Minister,” says Johnson, ”and see how long his friend will be remembered.” But he had a rougher answer for me, when I commended a sermon preached by an intimate acquaintance of our own at the trading end of the town. ”What was the subject, madam?” says Dr.
Johnson. ”Friends.h.i.+p, sir,” replied I. ”Why, now, is it not strange that a wise man, like our dear little Evans, should take it in his head to preach on such a subject, in a place where no one can be thinking of it?” ”Why, what are they thinking upon, sir?” said I. ”Why, the men are thinking on their money, I suppose, and the women are thinking of their mops.”
Dr. Johnson's knowledge and esteem of what we call low or coa.r.s.e life was indeed prodigious; and he did not like that the upper ranks should be dignified with the name of _the world_. Sir Joshua Reynolds said one day that n.o.body _wore_ laced coats now; and that once everybody wore them.
”See, now,” says Johnson, ”how absurd that is; as if the bulk of mankind consisted of fine gentlemen that came to him to sit for their pictures.
If every man who wears a laced coat (that he can pay for) was extirpated, who would miss them?” With all this haughty contempt of gentility, no praise was more welcome to Dr. Johnson than that which said he had the notions or manners of a gentleman: which character I have heard him define with accuracy, and describe with elegance. ”Officers,” he said, ”were falsely supposed to have the carriage of gentlemen; whereas no profession left a stronger brand behind it than that of a soldier; and it was the essence of a gentleman's character to bear the visible mark of no profession whatever.” He once named Mr. Berenger as the standard of true elegance; but some one objecting that he too much resembled the gentleman in Congreve's comedies, Mr. Johnson said, ”We must fix them upon the famous Thomas Hervey, whose manners were polished even to acuteness and brilliancy, though he lost but little in solid power of reasoning, and in genuine force of mind.” Mr. Johnson had, however, an avowed and scarcely limited partiality for all who bore the name or boasted the alliance of an Aston or a Hervey; and when Mr. Thrale once asked him which had been the happiest period of his past life? he replied, ”It was that year in which he spent one whole evening with M---y As--n. That, indeed,” said he, ”was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year.” I must add that the evening alluded to was not pa.s.sed tete-a-tete, but in a select company, of which the present Lord Killmorey was one. ”Molly,” says Dr. Johnson, ”was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a Whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty: and so I made this epigram upon her. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw!!!
”'Liber ut esse velim, suasisti pulchra Maria, Ut maneam liber--pulchra Maria, vale!'”
”Will it do this way in English, sir?” said I.
”Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you; If freedom we seek--fair Maria, adieu!”
”It will do well enough,” replied he, ”but it is translated by a lady, and the ladies never loved M---y As--n.” I asked him what his wife thought of this attachment? ”She was jealous, to be sure,” said he, ”and teased me sometimes when I would let her; and one day, as a fortune-telling gipsy pa.s.sed us when we were walking out in company with two or three friends in the country, she made the wench look at my hand, but soon repented her curiosity; 'for,' says the gipsy, 'your heart is divided, sir, between a Betty and a Molly: Betty loves you best, but you take most delight in Molly's company.' When I turned about to laugh, I saw my wife was crying. Pretty charmer! she had no reason!”
It was, I believe, long after the currents of life had driven him to a great distance from this lady, that he spent much of his time with Mrs. F- tzh--b--t, of whom he always spoke with esteem and tenderness, and with a veneration very difficult to deserve. ”That woman,” said he, ”loved her husband as we hope and desire to be loved by our guardian angel. F-tzh-- b--t was a gay, good-humoured fellow, generous of his money and of his meat, and desirous of nothing but cheerful society among people distinguished in _some_ way, in _any way_, I think; for Rousseau and St.
Austin would have been equally welcome to his table and to his kindness.
The lady, however, was of another way of thinking: her first care was to preserve her husband's soul from corruption; her second, to keep his estate entire for their children: and I owed my good reception in the family to the idea she had entertained, that I was fit company for F-tzh-- b--t, whom I loved extremely. 'They dare not,' said she, 'swear, and take other conversation-liberties before _you_.'” I asked if her husband returned her regard? ”He felt her influence too powerfully,” replied Mr.
Johnson; ”no man will be fond of what forces him daily to feel himself inferior. She stood at the door of her paradise in Derbys.h.i.+re, like the angel with a flaming sword, to keep the devil at a distance. But she was not immortal, poor dear! she died, and her husband felt at once afflicted and released.” I inquired if she was handsome? ”She would have been handsome for a queen,” replied the panegyrist; ”her beauty had more in it of majesty than of attraction, more of the dignity of virtue than the vivacity of wit.” The friend of this lady, Miss B--thby, succeeded her in the management of Mr. F-tzh--b--t's family, and in the esteem of Dr.
Johnson, though he told me she pushed her piety to bigotry, her devotion to enthusiasm, that she somewhat disqualified herself for the duties of _this_ life, by her perpetual aspirations after the _next_. Such was, however, the purity of her mind, he said, and such the graces of her manner, that Lord Lyttelton and he used to strive for her preference with an emulation that occasioned hourly disgust, and ended in lasting animosity. ”You may see,” said he to me, when the ”Poets' Lives” were printed, ”that dear B--thby is at my heart still. She _would_ delight in that fellow Lyttelton's company though, all that I could do; and I cannot forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like hers.” I have heard Baretti say that when this lady died, Dr. Johnson was almost distracted with his grief, and that the friends about him had much ado to calm the violence of his emotion. Dr. Taylor, too, related once to Mr.
Thrale and me, that when he lost his wife, the negro Francis ran away, though in the middle of the night, to Westminster, to fetch Dr. Taylor to his master, who was all but wild with excess of sorrow, and scarce knew him when he arrived. After some minutes, however, the Doctor proposed their going to prayers, as the only rational method of calming the disorder this misfortune had occasioned in both their spirits. Time, and resignation to the will of G.o.d, cured every breach in his heart before I made acquaintance with him, though he always persisted in saying he never rightly recovered the loss of his wife. It is in allusion to her that he records the observation of a female critic, as he calls her, in Gay's ”Life;” and the lady of great beauty and elegance, mentioned in the criticisms upon Pope's epitaphs, was Miss Molly Aston. The person spoken of in his strictures upon Young's poetry is the writer of these anecdotes, to whom he likewise addressed the following verses when he was in the Isle of Skye with Mr. Boswell. The letters written in his journey, I used to tell him, were better than the printed book; and he was not displeased at my having taken the pains to copy them all over.
Here is the Latin ode:--
”Permeo terras, ubi nuda rupes Saxeas miscet nebulis ruinas, Torva ubi rident steriles coloni Rura labores.
”Pervagor gentes, hominum ferorum Vita ubi nullo decorata cultu, Squallet informis, tigurique fumis Faeda latescit.
”Inter erroris salebrosa longi, Inter ignotae strepitus loquelae, Quot modis mec.u.m, quid agat requiro Thralia dulcis?
”Seu viri curas pia nupta mulcet, Seu fovet mater sobolem benigna, Sive c.u.m libris novitate pascit Sedula mentem:
”Sit memor nostri, fideique merces, Stet fides constans, meritoque blandum Thraliae discant resonare nomen Littora Skiae.”
On another occasion I can boast verses from Dr. Johnson. As I went into his room the morning of my birthday once, and said to him, ”n.o.body sends me any verses now, because I am five-and-thirty years old, and Stella was fed with them till forty-six, I remember.” My being just recovered from illness and confinement will account for the manner in which he burst out, suddenly, for so he did without the least previous hesitation whatsoever, and without having entertained the smallest intention towards it half a minute before:
”Oft in danger, yet alive, We are come to thirty-five; Long may better years arrive, Better years than thirty-five.
Could philosophers contrive Life to stop at thirty-five, Time his hours should never drive O'er the bounds of thirty-five.
High to soar, and deep to dive, Nature gives at thirty-five.
Ladies, stock and tend your hive, Trifle not at thirty-five: For howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five.
He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five; And all who wisely wish to wive Must look on Thrale at thirty-five.”
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