Volume I Part 18 (1/2)
”So originated and was formed,” says Mr. Forster, ”that famous Club, which had made itself a name in literary history long before it received, at Garrick's funeral, the name of the Literary Club, by which it is now known. Its meetings were noised abroad; the fame of its conversations received eager addition, from the difficulty of obtaining admission to it; and it came to be as generally understood that Literature had fixed her social head-quarters here, as that Politics reigned supreme at Wildman's, or the Cocoa-tree. With advantage, let me add, to the dignity and worldly consideration of men of letters themselves. 'I believe Mr. Fox will allow me to say,'
remarked the Bishop of St. Asaph, when the Society was not more than fifteen years old, 'that the honour of being elected into the Turk's Head Club, is not inferior to that of being the representative of Westminster or Surrey.' The Bishop had just been elected; but into such l.u.s.ty independence had the Club sprung up thus early, that Bishops, even Lord Chancellors, were known to have knocked for admission unsuccessfully; and on the night of St. Asaph's election, Lord Camden and the Bishop of Chester were black-balled.”
Of this Club, Hawkins was a most unpopular member: even his old friend, Johnson, admitted him to be out of place here. He had objected to Goldsmith, at the Club, ”as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and translating, but little capable of original, and still less of poetical composition.” Hawkins's ”existence was a kind of pompous, parsimonious, insignificant drawl, cleverly ridiculed by one of the wits in an absurd epitaph: 'Here lies Sir John Hawkins, without his shoes and stauckins.'” He was as mean as he was pompous and conceited. He forbore to partake of the suppers at the Club, and begged therefore to be excused from paying his share of the reckoning.
”And was he excused?” asked Dr. Burney, of Johnson. ”Oh yes, for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him, and admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest man at bottom, though, to be sure, he is penurious and he is mean, and it must be owned that he has a tendency to savageness.” He did not remain above two or three years in the Club, being in a manner elbowed out in consequence of his rudeness to Burke. Still, Burke's vehemence of will and sharp impetuosity of temper constantly exposed him to prejudice and dislike; and he may have painfully impressed others, as well as Hawkins, at the Club, with a sense of his predominance. This was the only theatre open to him. ”Here only,” says Mr. Forster, ”could he as yet pour forth, to an audience worth exciting, the stores of argument and eloquence he was thirsting to employ upon a wider stage; the variety of knowledge, the fund of astonis.h.i.+ng imagery, the ease of philosophic ill.u.s.tration, the overpowering copiousness of words, in which he has never had a rival.” Miss Hawkins was convinced that her father was disgusted with the overpowering deportment of Mr.
Burke, and his monopoly of the conversation, which made all the other members, excepting his antagonist, Johnson, merely listeners.
Something of the same sort is said by that antagonist, though in a more generous way. ”What I most envy Burke for,” said Johnson, ”is, that he is never what we call humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off. Take up whatever topic you please, he is ready to meet you. I cannot say he is good at listening. So desirous is he to talk, that if one is speaking at this end of the table, he'll speak to somebody at the other end.”
The Club was an opportunity for both Johnson and Burke; and for the most part their wit-combats seem not only to have instructed the rest, but to have improved the temper of the combatants, and to have made them more generous to each other. ”How very great Johnson has been to-night!” said Burke to Bennet Langton, as they left the Club together. Langton a.s.sented, but could have wished to hear more from another person. ”Oh no!” replied Burke, ”it is enough for me to have rung the bell to him.”
One evening he observed that a hogshead of claret, which had been sent as a present to the Club, was almost out; and proposed that Johnson should write for another, in such ambiguity of expression as might have a chance of procuring it also as a gift. One of the company said, ”Dr. Johnson shall be our dictator.”--”Were I,” said Johnson, ”your dictator, you should have no wine: it would be my business cavere ne quid detrimenti respublica caperet:--wine is dangerous; Rome was ruined by luxury.” Burke replied: ”If you allow no wine as dictator, you shall not have me for master of the horse.”
Goldsmith, it must be owned, joined the Club somewhat unwillingly, saying: ”One must make some sacrifices to obtain good society; for here I am shut out of several places where I used to play the fool very agreeably.” His simplicity of character and hurried expression often led him into absurdity, and he became in some degree the b.u.t.t of the company. The Club, notwithstanding all its learned dignity in the eyes of the world, could occasionally unbend and play the fool as well as less important bodies. Some of its jocose conversations have at times leaked out; and the Society in which Goldsmith could venture to sing his song of ”An Old Woman tossed in a Blanket” could not be so very staid in its gravity. Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk were, doubtless, induced to join the Club through their devotion to Johnson, and the intimacy of these two very young and aristocratic young men with the stern and somewhat melancholy moralist. Bennet Langton was of an ancient family, who held their ancestral estate of Langton in Lincolns.h.i.+re, a great t.i.tle to respect with Johnson. ”Langton, Sir,”
he would say, ”has a grant of free warren from Henry the Second; and Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family.”
Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. When but eighteen years of age, he was so delighted with reading Johnson's _Rambler_, that he came to London chiefly with a view to obtain an introduction to the author.
Langton went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, where Johnson saw much of him during a visit which he paid to the University. He found him in close intimacy with Topham Beauclerk, a youth two years older than himself, very gay and dissipated, and wondered what sympathies could draw two young men together of such opposite characters. On becoming acquainted with Beauclerk, he found that, rake though he was, he possessed an ardent love of literature, an acute understanding, polished wit, innate gentility, and high aristocratic breeding. He was, moreover, the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, and grandson of the Duke of St. Albans, and was thought in some particulars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second. These were high recommendations with Johnson; and when the youth testified a profound respect for him, and an ardent admiration of his talents, the conquest was complete; so that in a ”short time,” says Boswell, ”the moral, pious Johnson and the gay dissipated Beauclerk were companions.”
When these two young men entered the Club, Langton was about twenty-two, and Beauclerk about twenty-four years of age, and both were launched on London life. Langton, however, was still the mild, enthusiastic scholar, steeped to the lips in Greek, with fine conversational powers, and an invaluable talent for listening. He was upwards of six feet high, and very spare. ”Oh that we could sketch him!” exclaims Miss Hawkins, in her Memoirs, ”with his mild countenance, his elegant features, and his sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other, as if fearing to occupy more s.p.a.ce than was equitable; his person inclining forward, as if wanting strength to support his weight; and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands locked together on his knee.” Beauclerk, on such occasions, sportively compared him to a stork in Raphael's cartoons, standing on one leg. Beauclerk was more a ”man upon town,” a lounger in St. James's-street, an a.s.sociate with George Selwyn, with Walpole, and other aristocratic wits, a man of fas.h.i.+on at court, a casual frequenter of the gaming-table; yet, with all this, he alternated in the easiest and happiest manner the scholar and the man of letters; lounged into the Club with the most perfect self-possession, bringing with him the careless grace and polished wit of high-bred society, but making himself cordially at home among his learned fellow-members.
Johnson was exceedingly chary at first of the exclusiveness of the Club, and opposed to its being augmented in number. Not long after its inst.i.tution, Sir Joshua Reynolds was speaking of it to Garrick. ”I like it much,” said little David, briskly, ”I think I shall be of you.” ”When Sir Joshua mentioned this to Dr. Johnson,” says Boswell, ”he was much displeased with the actor's conceit. '_He'll be of us!_'
growled he; 'how does he know we will _permit_ him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such language.”
When Sir John Hawkins spoke favourably of Garrick's pretensions, ”Sir,” replied Johnson, ”he will disturb us by his buffoonery.” In the same spirit he declared to Mr. Thrale, that if Garrick should apply for admission, he would black-ball him. ”Who, Sir?” exclaimed Thrale, with surprise: ”Mr. Garrick--your friend, your companion--black-ball him?” ”Why, Sir,” replied Johnson, ”I love my little David dearly--better than all or any of his flatterers do; but surely one ought to sit in a society like ours,
”Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player.”
The exclusion from the Club was a sore mortification to Garrick, though he bore it without complaining. He could not help continually asking questions about it--what was going on there?--whether he was ever the subject of conversation? By degrees the rigour of the Club relaxed; some of the members grew negligent. Beauclerk lost his right of members.h.i.+p by neglecting to attend. On his marriage, however, with Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, and recently divorced from Viscount Bolingbroke, he had claimed and regained his seat in the Club. The number of the members had likewise been augmented. The proposition to increase it originated with Goldsmith.
”It would give,” he thought, ”an agreeable variety to their meetings; for there can be nothing new amongst us,” said he; ”we have travelled over each other's minds.” Johnson was piqued at the suggestion. ”Sir,”
said he, ”you have not travelled over my mind, I promise you.” Sir Joshua, less confident in the exhaustless fecundity of his mind, felt and acknowledged the force of Goldsmith's suggestion. Several new members, therefore, had been added; the first, to his great joy, was David Garrick. Goldsmith, who was now on cordial terms with him, had zealously promoted his election, and Johnson had given it his warm approbation. Another new member was Beauclerk's friend, Lord Charlemont; and a still more important one was Mr., afterwards Sir William Jones, the linguist. George Colman, the elder, was a lively Club-man. One evening at the Club he met Boswell; they talked of Johnson's _Journey to the Western Islands_, and of his coming away ”willing to believe the second sight,” which seemed to excite some ridicule. ”I was then,” says Boswell, ”so impressed with the truth of many of the stories which I had been told, that I avowed my conviction, saying, ”He is only _willing_ to believe--I _do_ believe; the evidence is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle; I am filled with belief.”--”Are you?” said Colman; ”then cork it up.””
Five years after the death of Garrick, Dr. Johnson dined with the Club _for the last time_. This is one of the most melancholy entries by Boswell. ”On Tuesday, June 22 (1784), I dined with him (Johnson) at the Literary Club, the last time of his being in that respectable society. The other members present were the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord Eliot, Lord Palmerston (father of the Premier), Dr. Fordyce, and Mr.
Malone. He looked ill; but he had such a manly fort.i.tude, that he did not trouble the company with melancholy complaints. They all showed evident marks of kind concern about him, with which he was much pleased, and he exerted himself to be as entertaining as his indisposition allowed him.”
From the time of Garrick's death the Club was known as ”The Literary Club,” since which it has certainly lost its claim to this epithet. It was originally a club of authors _by profession_; it now numbers very few except t.i.tled members (the majority having some claims to literary distinction), which was very far from the intention of its founders.
To this the author of the paper in the _National Review_ demurs.
Writing in 1857, he says: ”Perhaps it now numbers on its list more t.i.tled members and fewer authors by profession, than its founders would have considered desirable. This opinion, however, is quite open to challenge. Such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne, the late Lord Ellesmere, Lords Brougham, Carlisle, Aberdeen, and Glenelg, hold their place in 'the Literary Club' quite as much by virtue of their contributions to literature, or their enlightened support of it, as by their right of rank.” [How many of these n.o.ble members have since paid the debt of nature!]
”At all events,” says Mr. Taylor, ”the Club still acknowledges literature as its foundation, and love of literature as the tie which binds together its members, whatever their rank and callings. Few Clubs can show such a distinguished brotherhood of members as 'the Literary.' Of authors proper, from 1764 to this date (1857), may be enumerated, besides its original members, Johnson and Goldsmith, Dyer and Percy, Gibbon and Sir William Jones, Colman, the two Wartons, Farmer, Steevens, Burney, and Malone, Frere and George Ellis, Hallam, Milman, Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Lord Stanhope.
”Among men equally conspicuous in letters and the Senate, what names outs.h.i.+ne those of Burke and Sheridan, Canning, Brougham, and Macaulay?
Of statesmen and orators proper, the Club claims Fox, Windham, Thomas Grenville, Lord Liverpool; Lords Lansdowne, Aberdeen, and Clarendon.
Natural science is represented by Sir Joseph Banks, in the last century; by Professor Owen in this. Social science can have no n.o.bler representative than Adam Smith; albeit, Boswell did think the Club had lost caste by electing him. Mr. N. W. Senior is the political economist of the present Club. Whewell must stand alone as the embodiment of omniscience, which before him was unrepresented.
Scholars and soldiers may be equally proud of Rennel, Leake, and Mure.