PAGE 6
Samuel Johnson
by
And then mayhap we do as Emerson did–go out into the woods, and all the trees say, “Why so hot, my little man?”
Garrick, disappointed and undone at the thought of defeat in his chosen profession, turned to commercial life and then to the theater. At his first stage appearance he trembled with diffidence and all but fled in fright. He persevered, for he could do nothing else. He arose step by step, and honors, wealth and fame were his. Love came to him: he wedded the woman of his choice. And after his death she survived for forty-three years. She lived one hundred years, lacking two. Garrick was born in Seventeen Hundred Sixteen; and his wife died in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two, which seems to bring the times of Johnson pretty close home to us. Throughout her long life, she lived in the memory of the love that had been hers; cherishing and protecting, idolizing, as did Mary Shelley, the one name and that alone.
Johnson and Garrick thoroughly respected and admired each other, yet they often quarreled–they quarreled to the last. But when Davy had lain him down in his last sleep, aged sixty-three, it was Johnson, aged seventy, who wrote his epitaph, introducing into it the deathless sentence * * * “by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.”
* * * * *
Three months in London and Johnson succeeded in getting a place on the editorial staff of “The Gentleman’s Magazine.” Prosperity smiled, not exactly a broad grin; but the expression was something better than a stony, forbidding stare.
He made haste to go back to Lichfield after his “Letty,” which name, by the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy–being baby-talk for Elizabeth.
They took modest lodgings in a third floor back, off Fleet Street, and Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt, never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth–with the weapons of his dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved; jeered and praised; feared and idolized.
Coming out of his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when one of her exclamations caught his ear.
“Sir,” said the woman, “I am an old struggler!”
“Madam,” replied Johnson, “so am I!” And he gave her his last sixpence.
But life in London was cheap in those days–it is now if you know how to do it, or else have to. Johnson used to maintain that for thirty pounds a year one could live like a gentleman, and as proof would quote an imaginary acquaintance who argued that ten pounds a year for clothes would keep a man in good appearance; a garret could be hired for eighteen pence a week, and if any one asked your address you could reply, “I am to be found in such a place,” Threepence laid out at a coffeehouse would enable one to pass some hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for sixpence, and supper you could do without. On clean-shirt day you could go abroad and call on your lady friends. Among Johnson’s first literary tasks in London was the work of reporting the debates in Parliament. In order that the best possible results might be obtained, he resorted to the rather unique, but not entirely original, method of not attending Parliament at all. Two or three young men would be sent to listen to the debates; they would make notes giving the general drift of the argument, and Johnson would write out the speech. His style was exactly suited to this kind of work, being eminently rhetorical. And as at the time no public record of proceedings was kept and Parliament did not allow the press the liberty it now possesses–all being as it were clouded in mysterious awe–these reports of debates were eagerly sought after. To evade the law, a fictitious name was given the speaker, or his initials used in such a way that the individual could be easily recognized by the reading public.