The World in Thirty-Eight Chapters or Dr Johnson's Guide to Life Read online

  For Marina

  Contents

  1. An inscription over the door, to show what kind of a Book this is

  2. Of personal oddity, which is no obstacle to personal authority

  3. The community of pains and pleasures – our subject’s Origins and Upbringing, with some speculations on what we may learn from them

  4. The description of a young man’s disappointment, with some sidelights courtesy of a certain Switzer, Dr Jung

  5. A philosophical meditation upon the nature and rewards of Accident, in which are used the strange words ‘Galilean serendipity’

  6. In which Samuel Johnson, being entrusted with a mission of Love, proceeds to execute it; with what success will hereinafter appear

  7. The mournful truth of London life: or, an author embarks upon the sea of Literature (with but a smattering of wormy cliché)

  8. In which we observe the peculiarities of Friendship, manifest in Samuel Johnson’s association with the notorious Mr Richard Savage

  9. A resting-place – where the reader may take refreshment, and where vexed matters are resolved

  10. Of Genius, with sundry other scenes from the farce of life

  11. In which the craft of literary biography is expounded

  12. An excursion to the Theatre, with some brief diversions into other arts

  13. In which we ponder the making of a Dictionary – with thoughts on the true meaning of lexicography and the particular flavours of its solitude

  14. A chapter about Grief (for one word must serve where in truth no assemblage of words will be sufficient)

  15. Containing some essential points of information on the life of reading, whereamong are the most fugacious mentions of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu and even Mr Stephen King

  16. A chapter that reflects on the uses of Sickness, and of Patrons

  17. An essay, or ‘loose sally of the mind’, upon the methods of a moralist, in which are considered prose style and its higher functions

  18. Some further thoughts on the Rambler and the intricacies of ordinary life

  19. A short musing, upon exemption from oblivion (or what is otherwise called Memory)

  20. Containing much to exercise the reader’s thoughts upon the questions of Fear and Sanity

  21. A chapter one might, in a more facetious spirit, have chosen to label ‘Shakespeare matters’

  22. In which Samuel Johnson idles, to some avail, not least by enquiring into the soul of advertisement and our artificial passions

  23. Of tea and Abyssinia – a chapter about Choices, in which we have chosen to include the word ‘lumbersome’ (a curio you may reasonably think a mistake for ‘cumbersome’)

  24. In which the definition of network provides an opportunity to appraise certain marvels of the twenty-first century, not least the inventions of Mr Mark Zuckerberg

  25. On the business of a Club – being not ‘a heavy stick; a staff intended for offence’ but rather ‘an assembly of good fellows’ (where the staff may cause offence, without intent)

  26. A chapter upon Samuel Johnson’s lawyerly inclinations, in which we may wonder at the conduct of Signor Giuseppe Baretti and the philosophy of Dr George Berkeley – of whom, we can be sure, only the latter was fit to be a bishop

  27. In which at last we attend to the life and loves of Hester Thrale, a foisonous fund of Anecdote

  28. Some ruminations upon scepticism, amid which appear the names of both Sir Thomas Browne and Scratching Fanny

  29. A short chapter on politics and public life, wherein the radical John Wilkes does rear his head

  30. Containing a sketch of Dr Johnson’s visit to the Caledonian regions – and matters pertinent thereunto

  31. On the fleeting nature of Pleasure and the state of Felicity

  32. In which thought is applied to an awkward question: whether Dr Johnson subscribed to the doctrines of S****ism

  33. Upon Charity – whether it be cold, and how it is performed

  34. A chapter about Boredom, which may serve to remind us that there are no truly uninteresting things

  35. Of Johnson among the Bluestockings – though it behoves us to remark that he did not refer to them thus, and that we might now be wise to forswear this somewhat disdainous appellation

  36. One of our longer chapters, directed with no little incongruity to the matter of life’s brevity

  37. Some thoughts upon the business of Cultural Legislation, which is less atrocious than it sounds

  38. In which this account of the great Johnson is concluded, with a Farewell to the reader

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  Notes

  1

  An inscription over the door, to show what kind of a Book this is

  A scrap of land, a speck in the sea’s breath. On an October evening, a Tuesday, two travellers arrive after dark. The sea has been rough, and their craft’s four oarsmen can find no easy place to disembark; it seems they must carry the visitors to dry land, though one of them chooses to spring into the water and wade ashore. In the moonlight the two figures embrace. It is late to be inspecting monuments, so they retire for the night – sleeping fully clothed in a barn, nestled in the hay, using their bags as pillows.

  The next day they explore the island. Its buildings have been battered by storms and stripped by locals needing materials for their homes; now they are ruins, caked in filth. The old nunnery is a garden of weeds, and the chapel adjoining it a cowshed. The two men walk along a broken causeway – once a street flanked by good houses – and arrive at the roofless abbey. Its altar is damaged; islanders have carried off chunks of the white marble, believing that they afford protection against fire and shipwreck. A few intricately carved stone crosses still stand.

  Later, the visitors will write about what they saw. One will comment that the island used to be ‘the metropolis of learning and piety’ and wonder if it ‘may be sometime again the instructress of the Western Regions’. The other will reflect that ‘the solemn scenes of piety never lose their sanctity and influence’: ‘I hoped that, ever after having been in this holy place, I should maintain an exemplary conduct. One has a strange propensity to fix upon some point of time from whence a better course of life may begin.’

  This is a sketch of Iona, where in AD 563 the energetic Irish exile St Columba founded a monastery. Today, the island’s great sites have been restored and are often mobbed with day trippers – a mix of Christian pilgrims and happy-snapping tourists. Yet in 1773, when Samuel Johnson and James Boswell visited, few people went there. It was Johnson who reflected on the island’s lost role as ‘the metropolis of learning and piety’, recalling how, as he experienced its decay but also its tranquillity, he was transported into the past – to a time when it was ‘the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion’. This was a place where earth and heaven seemed only a finger’s width apart. Somehow it cheered the soul.

  ‘Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses,’ Johnson wrote, ‘and makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.’ This is a rallying cry, an appeal for historical understanding. He doesn’t mean that we should refuse to live in the moment, ignoring the pith of the present to spend our lives dwelling on how idyllic the past was or how ambrosial the future might be. Instead he is arguing that we are dignified by our ability, through the operations of our minds, to transcend our circumstances, to reach beyond the merely local, to appreciate di
fference.

  It is an insight typical of Samuel Johnson, a heroic thinker whose intelligence exerted itself in a startling number of directions. A poet and a novelist, a diarist and editor and translator, as well as the author of numerous prefaces and dedications, he produced the first really good dictionary of English, invented the genre of critical biography, and shaped the common understanding of what is meant by ‘English literature’. He would not have recognized the term ‘Renaissance man’; not until half a century after his death did English import the word Renaissance, and Renaissance man is a twentieth-century coinage. But that is what he was: an astonishing all-rounder. A great moralist and essayist, he also practised the virtues he preached.

  Today Johnson is not an obvious role model, for we live in an age when anyone laying claim to that title is expected to be golden – attractive and infallible. He wasn’t the sort of person that modern media companies lionize. His Instagram feed would be wack. Diet tips? Forget it. Although his Twitter might deliver a bit more sizzle, he’d be an infrequent tweeter, what with his lethargy and dejection. Yet he has a lot to say to us. For instance, about role models: ‘Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.’ This is a maxim for the era of social media, if ever there was one. Not least because, inside the designer heels or sleek sports shoes, the golden idol has feet of clay. Humanity is flawed, and if we allow ourselves to believe that any specimen of it is wholly unblemished, we see only a persona, not the person. Glossy role models conceal reality from us, rather than helping us navigate it.

  Seeking a better example of how to live, we might not be quick to choose someone with several gruesome features. But faults are part of our magic. A person is stitched together out of both charms and imperfections, and we can only be inspired – really and deeply inspired – by someone whose virtues cohabit with weaknesses.

  Samuel Johnson was precisely such a person. His achievements made him famous – a public figure who, in the words of his friend William Maxwell, took on the role of an ‘oracle, whom everybody thought they had a right to visit and consult’. Vividly present in his own writings, he appeared even more colourfully in what others wrote about him: imposing and unkempt, quirky yet robust, courageous in his honesty, a supporter of the neglected and the needy, cutting through the thickets of trumpery and going down into all the dark places of the soul.

  His days were full of crisis and suffering. He spent countless weeks and even years lost in what he called ‘the maze of indolence’, worried that he could not exclude the ‘black dog’ of depression (his words) from his home and his head. Dramatically, and alarmingly, he pictured himself ‘suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life’. Much of the time, he regarded himself as a failure. His many difficulties meant he had to be an expert at finding ways to handle misery and pain. Not all of these were good: in the belief that it would ease his breathing, he was often bled, and he made use of opium, valerian and the sea onion known as squill (a diuretic, otherwise employed as rat poison). But he put greater faith in what seemed to him the most effective natural painkillers: humour and friendship.

  It was the humour that I found especially appealing when I got to know him, at nineteen, through Boswell’s Life of Johnson. I had a vague awareness that he was famed for his wit, yet was surprised by what I found: not the dry superiority that frequently passes for bel esprit, but something more daring, a vibrant candour. Often, reading about Johnson, there was the simple pleasure of sampling his verve, as when he wrote to his great friend Hester Thrale, ‘I received in the morning your magnificent fish, and in the afternoon your apology for not sending it.’ Sometimes he might raise a smile that was close to being a wince by squashing some fond notion or ambition, for instance informing Boswell, ‘As to your History of Corsica, you have no materials which others have not, or may not have. You have, somehow or other, warmed your imagination . . . Mind your own affairs, and leave the Corsicans to theirs.’ But what I saw above all was his belief in the utility of humour – as a social lubricant, and also as a means of negotiating the world’s incongruities and accessing the truth.

  Johnson’s capacity for laughter – for exciting it, and for sharing in it – was essential to his closest relationships. He loved being able to ‘compare minds’, and the warm glow of intimacy eased his psychological burdens. It pleased me then, as it has often pleased me since, to think of friendship as a connection that at once enriches and disencumbers us. I was impressed, too, by the words of one of those nearest to him, the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds: ‘He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish.’ The verb brushed is so unexpected and immediate, and the second half of Reynolds’s sentence captures a significant function of friends: we rely on them to sweep away our drossy ideas and free us from fatuous preoccupations.

  As I read further, venturing beyond Boswell, I admired Johnson’s independence and incisiveness, his ability to finish a mighty judgement with a little twist of idiosyncrasy. I enjoyed the precision of his attacks on flattery, sophistry and the tendency of shallow people ‘to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend’. But I grew to understand that he has a greater gift to offer: in diagnosing the mind’s bad habits, which he does by reference to his own, he invites us to confront the less noble parts of ourselves.

  I had in fact come across him before – and been less appreciative. Aged sixteen, embarking on my A-levels, I’d been given the Cambridge Guide to English Literature; the front cover reproduced a head and shoulders painting of a grave-looking man, and on investigation I found that this was Samuel Johnson. But the first encounter had been two or three years earlier, when a tetchy version of him turned up in the sitcom Blackadder. I’ve several times revisited the episode, in which Dr Johnson, having completed his Dictionary of the English Language, solicits the patronage of the Prince Regent, a fop who pronounces himself ‘as thick as a whale omelette’. This deliciously daft half hour of TV doesn’t pretend to be historically accurate (Jane Austen is said to be a huge Yorkshireman with a beard), but in my experience it has played a large part in shaping popular ideas of who Johnson was, right down to his failure to include the word sausage in the Dictionary – although in reality it’s there, ‘a roll or ball made commonly of pork . . . minced very small’. Blackadder contributes to an image of the good doctor as a pedantic grump. Certainly it’s common to picture him as cantankerous, a thunderingly patriotic champion of monarchy and hierarchy, and it is possible to find things he said that support such a reading. Some of his devotees, keen to correct this simplistic take, choose instead to present him as an out-and-out progressive or an agitator who spurned the authority of institutions. This, too, lacks nuance. Although it is true that some of his attitudes – to women’s education, for instance, and to race – were enlightened by the standards of his day, it’s fanciful to claim for him some sort of revolutionary now-ness.

  This book is animated by different ideas: that the dead do not vanish completely, that we aren’t obliged to embroider the past or sex it up to make it pertinent to our world, and that great writers and thinkers speak in eternity. In parts it is microscopically biographical, because to understand how to live we need to look at life as it is actually experienced, or as it has actually been experienced. In an essay for his periodical the Rambler, Johnson wrote in praise of biography: ‘no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation . . . since none can be more delightful or more useful, none can more certainly enchain the heart by irresistible interest, or more widely diffuse instruction to every diversity of condition’. Everyone ‘in the mighty mass of the world’ will find great numbers of people in a condition similar to theirs, for whom an account of their ‘mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use’.

  In the pages that follow I offer a chronological account of Johnson’s life – the playful chapter titles redolent, I hope, of those eighteenth-century no
vels that luxuriate in the details of an individual’s day-to-day existence. But each chapter is also an exploration. What, to borrow his phrasing, are the immediate and apparent uses of Johnson? How does swimming among his thoughts and experiences enable a better, more reflective approach to living? How might the service he performed for Reynolds – that vital task of brushing rubbish from the mind – be something he can do for all of us? I present him as an example of how to act or think; occasionally his role is the opposite, as an illustration of how not to; and often I draw attention to something he wrote or said that perfectly condenses an important truth.

  He is a quotable commentator on so many departments of life: ‘All distant power is bad’, ‘Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel’, ‘We are more pained by ignorance, than delighted by instruction’, ‘This is one of the disadvantages of wine: it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.’ Often his judgements make us pause. I can remember faltering the first time I came across his statement that ‘No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures’. It took me a moment to catch what it meant, namely that our amusements show our true character. His most astute judgements reward a second or third reading. ‘All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.’ ‘The tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.’ ‘It is seldom that we are otherwise, than by affliction, awakened to a sense of our own imbecility.’ ‘It is the practice of good nature to overlook faults which have already, by the consequences, punished the delinquent.’

  ‘How he does talk! Every sentence is an essay,’ observed a Miss Beresford, an American living in Worcestershire, when she shared a coach with Johnson and Boswell one summer’s day in 1784. The assessment is itself pleasantly quotable – and perceptive. The remarks that inform our sense of the quotable Dr Johnson are often fragments of longer sentences, or of more substantial utterances. He is not so much an aphorist as a perpetual essayist, even in speech. In his Dictionary he defined aphorism as ‘an unconnected position’ – a statement, that is, detached from context and even its source. It is thus rather like an oxbow lake, a free-standing pool (of thought) cut off from the flow of the river (of conversation or prose) where it originated. He has the aphorist’s crispness, the verbal artistry required to reinvigorate familiar ideas or respond ingeniously to other people’s coarser generalities. He has, too, the aphorist’s prudent irony.