FullReads

One of the most pathetic of his entries is the following, on September 18, 1768:

“This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy. On this I purpose to deliberate; I know not whether it may not too much disturb me.”

From time to time there have been stupid or malicious people who have said that Johnson’s marriage with a homely woman twenty years older than himself was not a love match. For instance, Mr. E.W. Howe, of Atchison, Kan., in most respects an amiable and well-conducted philosopher, uttered in Howe’s Monthly (May, 1918) the following words, which (I hope) he will forever regret:

“I have heard that when a young man he (Johnson) married an ugly and vulgar old woman for her money, and that his taste was so bad that he worshiped her.”

Against this let us set what Johnson wrote in his notebook on March 28, 1770:

This is the day on which, in 1752, I was deprived of poor dear Tetty. When I recollect the time in which we lived together, my grief of her departure is not abated; and I have less pleasure in any good that befalls me, because she does not partake it. On many occasions, I think what she would have said or done. When I saw the sea at Brighthelmstone, I wished for her to have seen it with me. But with respect to her, no rational wish is now left but that we may meet at last where the mercy of God shall make us happy, and perhaps make us instrumental to the happiness of each other. It is now 18 years.

Let us end the memorandum with a less solemn note. On Good Friday, 1779, he and Boswell went to church together. When they returned the good old doctor sat down to read the Bible, and he says, “I gave Boswell Les Pensees de Pascal, that he might not interrupt me.” Of this very copy Boswell says: “I preserve the book with reverence.” I wonder who has it now?

So let us wish Doctor Johnson many happy returns of the day, sure that as long as paper and ink and eyesight preserve their virtue he will bide among us, real and living and endlessly loved.