Thoughts on Boswell

Boswell's reputation--he was once called the stupidest man ever to write a great book--is well known. Indeed I suspect he was a more likeable man in person that he comes across in print--or even than he came across in person to many people who ran across him. The publication of his journals with the salacious details of his adventures with women of the town, which as you can imagine have not been neglected by modern scholars, when contrasted with his strident and at times rather buffoonish adherence to conservative positions and religious propriety in his published writings, does not contribute to his making an attractive figure in the eyes of posterity. Even the portraits and drawings of him which remain make him look a little ridiculous, some no doubt by design; he is often drawn as stiff-necked man of unimposing height with a three-cornered hat rather overwhelming his oddly bland-featured, unprofound face. Even when he complains of melancholy, it appears he is really complaining of boredom, for he only appears to be afflicted by it when he has to work or is apart from the social life of London. When he is at a dinner party or a romp he always seems to be in excellent spirits, which certainly is not usually the case with people given to what I would consider severe fits of depression.

On the other hand he had some genuinely unique qualities in an author, as well as good luck in his subject, that served him well in his undertaking. He obviously had what we would now call personality, and if his learning was considered only so-so among the highest circles, he must have possessed a fair degree of amusing quick-wittedness at least, as he maintained intimate ties with a very intellectually and socially demanding crowd for many years. He reminds me in many ways of one of my own old friends, who was not the most diligent student but was intelligent, witty, had legitimate and serious intellectual interests if not the work ethic to make a figure in academia, loved pleasure and had the ability to converse with almost anyone who had some interest in common with him in an entertaining manner regardless of background. I suspect Boswell had many of these qualities. Boswell also seemed to have the combination, very rare among educated men in our time, of social skills without needing to be the Great Man or the center of attention in every instance. By all appearances Johnson loved him, a little bit like a son perhaps, as much or more so as a comrade or fellow adventurer in the life of the mind, as well as the life of the world. I cannot think of another prominent biographer (though I am sure there must be some) who held such personal status in his relationship with his subject. Of course it helped considerably that Johnson was so socially accessible for a great man, and not too much committed to grand undertakings as to sever his connection to the activities and rhythms of ordinary but still vital life, as great people often appear to be today.

I was surprised in reading the book at how much attention was given to Johnson's illnesses and the rather excruciating treatments he underwent in the last few years of his life, which demonstrate if nothing else how much it takes to kill a human being, or at least one with a strong native constitution. These accounts take up a sizable portion of the book.

The passage where Johnson takes his last leave of Boswell in the carriage the summer before his death and totters solemnly down the alley to his apartment is extremely affecting and in fact caused me to cry a little. The only other time tears have overcome me in such reading is during the deathbed scene in Don Quixote, which is interestingly another book largely about the friendship of grown men, one of whom is this case is known mainly for his addiction to reading. I wonder if I sense some kind of void in my own life. Certainly the vigor and largely shared spiritedness of the Johnson/Boswell relationship accounts for the success of that work down to our time above any other feature.

There was one more topic I wanted to address with regard to Johnson. There was a recent novel (1999) called England, England by Julian Barnes, the premise of which is that some large swath of old Blighty has been turned into a historical theme park with thatched roofs, afternoon tea, cricket, black cabs, etc, which naturally all the tourists, as well as many English people, prefer to the real, modern, relevant, messy England that exists outside the park. Among the attractions of the park is an actor in the character of Samuel Johnson that drinks with the tourists in a traditional pub and presumably regales them with colorful examples of English wit. The choice of Johnson for this character is quite an interesting, and a telling one. One could readily think of other possibilities for this entertainment: Dickens, Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, Tennyson, perhaps a Byron character who drank and seduced women, maybe even a watered-down Americanized or globalized Shakespeare. All of these authors have been or remain to a certain degree popular abroad, especially perhaps in America, often as much for their personalities or what they represent as for a deep understanding of their work. Johnson, who is often viewed in the U.S. as something of a counterpart to Benjamin Franklin, who was his exact contemporary, appears to have attained somewhat to this iconic status without his work or his nature being particularly well known, and even among those who have studied him, I suspect our author Mr Barnes would say, many rush to make a claim of intellectual and temperamental affinity with the man that is, to say the least, most implausible. Many of the famous quotes--"A man who is tired of London is tired of life"; "to be a hero, one must drink brandy"; "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"--are deployed quite frequently, and often by people who give little indication of either deep learning or interest in the subjects addressed (And regarding the London quote: it is 230 or so years old. London happily remains a vital place, but I'm sure somebody once said the same thing about Babylon). What is more, I sense that Johnson's status, or maybe it is just the sense of his relevance, is at an all time low among his own countryman, who seem to see him, especially when repeating one of his aphorisms, as much a blubbering, sententious old fool as one of the sages of the nation. When I went to Johnson's birthplace the man working at the desk (there is some kind of tension going on between me and the people who work at these museums; See "The Game of Art, Part I) asked me why Americans liked Johnson so much, and said that Americans were the only people who ever came in the place. He did not betray any warm feelings for the great lexicographer himself. I had not been aware of this phenomenon at the time, and had to say that I knew nothing about it, that I was merely a fan of an old book. But going back to the Barnes novel, I think there is a sense that Johnson, who once represented something substantial and real, has been allowed to become via certain American and global, Non-European appropriation of the stories and the mythology of European and more specifically English literary and cultural history a cartoon figure of a literary man, by a world that hasn't the foggiest idea of what that entails. I have certainly felt a part of such processes myself, though in fairness these have also always been present in literary history, and the English of Johnson's time into the Romantic and Victorian periods, vis-a-vis the Greeks and Romans and their primitive forbears in Britain, were among the more extravagant makers of caricatures who ever lived, yet still produced worthwhile achievements of their own driven by these imperfect understandings of the past. We like in our age to have, or have access to, full philosophical and historical understanding of figures and societies of the past; that an artist need only detect something beautiful or noble in the composition of a story or a ruin and have it still be of great value to him, and direct him to interesting and pleasing works of his own though at a far remove from intellectual pureness or authenticity as regards his influence, seems to be a difficult idea for us to accept. However I think there is evidence that our non-acceptance of it is strangling our ability to see ourselves as artistic beings and to "create" new works certainly in the traditional forms.

This idea is not really brought to a conclusion but I am tired now and wish to let it go.