The Brothers Boswell

by Philip Baruth

  Of course, it was also precisely the sort of configuration the loaded bowls had been designed to rake through, and Boswell did just that, chucking two of John’s bowls out of play, even blasting one all the way to the facing ditch. It was as though the world had been upended.

  They played the remaining game with John in an increasing funk. As his mood deteriorated, so did his accuracy. When they’d finished, John cursed and kicked the canvas. And then he turned to give Boswell an utterly hopeless look, the look that younger brothers give when the conspiracy against them is revealed to be more far-reaching even than they’d imagined.

  They walked home along the Cowgate in silence, passing the very novelty store itself. This last was too much for Boswell, and he tried to salve his conscience by buying the two of them fruit-filled Bath buns, a new treat in town and one of his brother’s current favorites. But John wouldn’t have it. He pitched the thick bun at the gutter and trudged on in silence.

  Two mornings later, as the chaise containing Boswell and his tutor rolled away from Parliament Square for Moffat, neither Boswell’s father nor John was there to see him off. Only his mother and his youngest brother David waved good-bye, and Boswell couldn’t help but wonder if a man had to continue throughout his life to cast family members away like ballast, in order to keep his own new self above the waves.

  14

  BOSWELL FINDS THAT, without thinking, he has removed the little watch fob from his coat pocket and opened it up to reveal the bit of cloth with the dark dab that might or might not be Stuart blood, might or might not be the juice of a roast beef. When he was sixteen, Boswell had paid half a crown for the fragment, and he has since alternated between considering himself gullible and blessed.

  He is stroking it absently when he feels the sedan slow and dive abruptly toward the ground. In another second, the top of the chair is lifted off, and with it goes the pensive mood. Night sky and cold air flood the chair, and he almost laughs out loud at the shock, the excitement.

  Boswell steps down just at the mouth of the Strand, fifteen feet from the central stone arch of Northumberland House. As always, he is infused with a childlike awe, and he feels an impulse to bow, even to kneel. But he contents himself with an actual tip of his hat to the Percy lion perched high up on the long Gothic front of Northumberland House.

  Before he’s reached the street entrance, a servant in elegant livery steps out of the shadows and bows. “Mr. Boswell? You are expected, sir. Please do follow me.”

  An upstart would have his servants challenge each guest and demand a name, Boswell gloats to himself as he falls into step a touch behind the man, but the servant of a Percy would simply know.

  Boswell is led by turns through the inner courtyard, then into the vast vestibule of the house itself. Broad marble staircases curl gently up and away to either side, leading to the apartments themselves, but these the servant ignores and steers Boswell down a newer wing, to the Lady Northumberland’s picture gallery.

  If the truth were known, Boswell has surreptitiously paced off the picture gallery—at the tail end of his first visit, with the footman gone to fetch his hat and coat—and he knows it to be well over a hundred feet long. He measured it because he is in love with the Northumberland picture gallery, and has been for weeks now.

  The infatuation is based only in part on the impressive amount of gilt covering the cornice and frieze, the columns framing the tall windows. More to the point is the room’s stunning narrative assault: paintings are angled and positioned to catch the eye no matter where in the room one turns. Wall-sized panoramas; historical allegories; Douglas and Percy family groupings, down to and including favored Douglas and Percy pets. But finally Boswell is in love with the picture gallery because every time he enters it, it is packed to the gilded roof with Londoners more powerful nearly than he can imagine. And in his short experience of it, Boswell’s luck is good in this room.

  Tonight is no exception. Lady Northumberland glances up from her tea table and then actually rises to come and meet him, trailing satin and lace, leaving behind an assortment of well-heeled guests, including an earl and a slight, pasty man Boswell recognizes as a director of the East India Company.

  As the countess makes her way across the room to him, Boswell forces himself to see her realistically, rather than as his patroness, rather than as the living representative of the ancient House of Percy.

  The reality is this: the countess is a medium-stout married woman of forty-six who manages to look fifty-six, with a weak chin, pudgy fingers, and kind hangdog eyes.

  But her wardrobe inevitably makes up for her own lack of physical presence. The gown tonight is a masterpiece of conspicuous consumption, and Boswell appreciates it fully: cream-white satin padded with ornamented robings at her sides and thick showy satin flounces at her feet. This display is offset by a dainty cap of French lace, the hair beneath piled and only lightly powdered.

  Her heavy face too has been whitened—even Boswell can see this—and her cheeks and lips expertly reddened. The powder on her face is so fine and so carefully applied that he can find the wrinkles there only by searching them out, like footpaths beneath a fall of new snow.

  While she is not attractive in any conventional sense, Boswell always feels a powerful unfocused emotional rush in Lady Northumberland’s presence. It is as though his mind and body have no established categories for exceptionally powerful older women and can only respond with the closest approximations: deep filial deference, alternating with a confused excitement nearly indistinguishable from sexual desire.

  “Mr. Boswell,” the countess says, extending her arm to him, rather than just her hand, “you favor us again. I am glad, truly. This is now three Friday evenings in a row! More than we had a right to hope from a young man upon the Town.”

  “I told you once, madam, that I should run about this house just like a tame spaniel.” Boswell bows over the soft white thickish fingers. “It is not in the heart of a spaniel to miss a party, and a fire in the grate.”

  “Of course it is not. But you are no spaniel, sir, by my reckoning.”

  “A terrier, then, if her Ladyship pleases.”

  He sees the unrestrained amusement come into her face, one of the things she seems openly to relish about his company. “Nay, a noble greyhound, if you will insist on canine distinctions. How do your family, then, sir? All are well at home, I hope? Your father and mother and younger brothers?”

  “All are very well indeed, madam.”

  “And your father’s new house at the family estate goes forward?”

  “It is nearly finished, from what I understand. My father has apparently ordered his books carried into the library.”

  As he says this, Lady Northumberland’s tired eyes glance about the room, but they then come back to rest on Boswell. She has clearly missed his reply, but smiles good-naturedly in any event. “Well, if he is fitting up the library, that is to say a great deal. Your father would never trust the volumes there if the place were less than complete. He is a man who dotes on a book. That is fine, then, fine, fine. Even the old families such as ours, Mr. Boswell,” she says, patting his arm, “must renew their settings occasionally.”

  This flattering comparison of their two families—combined with the thrumming consciousness that others in the room are now glancing their way—strikes Boswell nearly speechless with pride. Later tonight he will set these words down verbatim in his journal, and he silently repeats them twice, fixing them like night moths to the velvet board of his mind.

  But there is no time for a suitably modest reply, because Lady Northumberland suddenly takes a half-step closer, and her voice drops an octave. He can smell her perfume, a honeyed fragrance like hyacinth.

  “You will note,” she tells him softly, “that the Duke of Queensberry is standing just now at the fire. As luck would have it, he was the first to arrive this evening, and I have already put him in mind of your commission. I have not been idle, sir.”

  Boswell ta
kes in the duke with a controlled cock of his head, and lowers his own voice an octave. “I spoke with the duke at breakfast several weeks back. He was difficult to read, I thought. But he promised to speak with Lord Ligonier, who is Commander-in-Chief, as your Ladyship knows.”

  Lady Northumberland raises her eyes to Boswell’s and then runs her glance over his face, his eyebrows, his ears, his lips. He watches her eyes parse his countenance. It is just this sort of on-again, off-again attention that continues Boswell in his confused and tentative gallantry.

  But apparently she has only been searching his face for signs of naïveté. Her voice is amused: “This is just his way, to represent the thing as Lord Ligonier’s to give. Should he choose to accommodate you—and me—it will seem that he has done something extraordinary. Should he choose to shift you, then it is but a cruel whim of Ligonier’s. But you may trust that my Lord Queensberry has it in his power to do the thing tonight, if he would.”

  “Has he, indeed.”

  “Oh, this instant, sir, if he would.” She pats Boswell’s arm twice, raises her weak chin to search his face again, the same blunt yet idle inventory, this time taking in the cut of his new jacket as well, the showy knot at his throat. “You keep the Guards firmly fixed in your sight, whatever may be said by way of appearance in getting to it.”

  Boswell cannot help but bow, this time not out of ceremony but because he feels that he genuinely wants to bow to her. And when he lifts his head and speaks, the feelings of gratitude and reverence make the common courtesies audibly resonant, in a way that brings her attention fully to him for a last few moments. “I am your Ladyship’s most obedient servant. You are good to me. Indeed, I set a higher value on the countenance you show me than anybody else could do, truly.”

  Lady Northumberland shies a hand at him, but she is pleased.

  “I know that you and my father are friends of long standing, and that many favors have passed between you over the years. And I am honored to be a part of that friendly economy, madam.” Boswell straightens his back and gives her a coy look. “But I am also vain enough to hope that some one particle of your favor may be directed at the son in his own right.”

  Boswell sees dimples appear in her heavy cheeks, and he is charmed by them. Lady Northumberland searches the top of her head tentatively with her hands, checking the seat of her lace cap before answering. “More than one particle, sir,” she assures him, “more than one. Of that you may be certain.”

  Boswell nods. And then, more or less because he cannot resist, he follows up: “Perhaps more than two, madam?”

  Yet by the time Boswell works his way through the small crowd to the fireplace, the signal has gone out for cards, and the invited have begun several distinct waves of movement toward the real amusement of the evening. Servants are steering guests to tables arranged in a loose semicircle about the fire—deeper players facing deeper players, novices deftly herded together—and breaking seals on decks.

  The room takes on a new electricity: the mere scent of money has become the actual prospect of money.

  There is a moment during which Boswell sees his way to a vacant seat at Queensberry’s table, but he hesitates: he is under a strict promise to his friend Thomas Sheridan—who relieved him of a gambling debt in Edinburgh, to the tune of five guineas—not to gamble for as many years. Four years of the promise remain, and Boswell supposes he means to keep it. It is not the vow, exactly, that holds Boswell true to his word. Rather, he is too superstitious to sit down beside the duke, for he has the distinct sense that breaking his vow to Sheridan will knock whatever luck he has tonight straight into a cocked hat.

  As luck would have it, though, Boswell is the only guest to avoid the tables. For a moment he panics, standing nearly frozen a few feet behind the countess, instinctively turning in her radius.

  Then Boswell rallies, and for the next twenty or thirty minutes he convinces himself that he can actually turn the spectacle of his own virtue to advantage. Who better to defend the king than a man who does not play, a man in control of his pleasures?

  But finally it is clear that those playing cards are involved in playing cards.

  Boswell excuses himself to no one in particular and heads a bit miserably to the gardens for a taste of fresh air, although the night is cold, the gardens facing the river will be blasted and dead, and the air itself will taste of obscurity.

  THERE, IN THE hoar-frosted gardens, Boswell faces the river and draws out his small calfskin edition of Johnson, a book he has nearly always about him. The great man’s writing has always spoken to him in an oddly comforting way, from childhood. More than once during an average day, he will haul out the essays and read an appropriate passage, the way a man far more devout than himself might lean on the Bible.

  Now, with just moonlight enough, ice vapor trailing from his lips, he thumbs his way to an essay he’s resisted rereading to this point, although he’s gone over the other essays in the volume three or four times in the last weeks. It is Johnson on sorrow, and the first time Boswell read the passage, he pulled back instinctively from its fatalism and lugubrious tone. But now, in this flat moment at the tail end of this day of his own design, he opens himself up to the voice:

  The other passions are diseases indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure. A man at once feels the pain, and knows the medicine. … But for sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled.

  With this last line, Boswell is again standing on his mark at the Heriot bowling green, the trick bowl heavy in his hand. Then Boswell is moving forward once more in memory, swinging the bowl to the flattened sod, where it leaves his fingers and angles quickly away, striking his brother’s careful set up like nothing so much as a curse.

  That is the very worst of it, Boswell realizes, Johnson now forgotten, the wind off the Thames stinging his fingers in dark December 1762: had he allowed his younger brother to take the Moffat waters with him five years ago—as a precaution, if nothing else—John might not be languishing in the Plymouth Hospital tonight.

  Boswell hears a distant bell away down the Strand and lifts his head. He turns and finds the gravel path again, slowly weaves the short way back through the evergreen hedge nearest Northumberland House. Just on the other side of the hedge stands a small nondescript man muffled up in a greatcoat, his face nearly hidden beneath a longish wig and an elegant, oversized, fur-lined hat. A clay pipe pokes from beneath the hat brim.

  “Good evening, Mr. Boswell,” the man offers as Boswell passes in the dark, and he realizes with a start that the figure is the Duke of Queensberry.

  “My Lord,” Boswell manages. He searches for words, finds only the weather. “You are a certainly a brave man to leave the fire. There is a bite of snowfall in the air.”

  The wind carries smoke back into the duke’s face, and he repositions himself but mumbles contentedly around the stem, like a man who has waited for his pipe two or three hands of cards beyond his limit. “You were braver still, I see, and went halfway down to the water.” He hums softly over the pipe, then speaks again, a little cunning in his voice: “If I may inquire, what book was it you took up out in the garden there?”

  Without thinking, Boswell draws the volume from his pocket. “It is Johnson’s Rambler, sir. An old favorite of mine. Excellent in the odd moment here or there.”

  The duke actually reaches out a hand and takes the well-thumbed volume, inspects the spine, hands it back. He returns his hands to the folds of the greatcoat, mumbles again at the pipe. “I’ve lost a wager with myself, then. I thought it must certainly be a novel. Richardson at best, and perhaps, for a young man like yourself,” he narrows an eye at Boswell, taking his measure, “perhaps Mrs. Haywood at the worst.”

  In the silence that follows,
Boswell can hear the wind cracking frost in the bushes, the muffled scrape of coach wheels on the Strand. And then, almost before he is aware of it, Boswell hears himself broaching the subject of his commission directly.

  “Sir, you will excuse me, I pray, for speaking to something so near my own interests, but I cannot see you without being put in mind of my great desire to serve the king in his Guards. Since we last discussed it, I have spoken at length with my Lady Northumberland, and she has confirmed me in my sense that I must hold out for nothing less than this from Fate—and from you, sir. Pray excuse my mentioning it.”

  The duke purses his lips about his pipe, but not—as far as Boswell can see—out of annoyance. His sense is that the duke has been expecting this subject since he left the House and first recognized Boswell standing on the lawn. The pursed lips and the drawn eyebrows, he sees, are meant to conceal what is actually a distinct form of pleasure—the pleasure of deliberating over a young man’s future to the young man’s face.

  With an almost imperceptible shake of the head, the duke says finally, “It is a difficult thing—I tell you this honestly, when a man is not to purchase. It is a system of each man dipping his cup, after all, is the Army.”

  “Of course, my Lord.”

  “Others must be satisfied, on down a long line. This makes it a vastly difficult thing to manage, sir. I tell you nothing, I am sure, that you don’t already know.”

  Boswell relies heavily on his intuitions, and he has developed an almost limitless faith in them. When he so chooses, he can render himself agreeable simply by receiving the acute impressions of need that underlie conversation, any conversation—he does this a hundred times a day without effort. And when he must, Boswell can focus these intuitions more actively, to the limits of his own perception and understanding. But more rarely still, when pressed to the utmost, when his own inner needs take complete possession of him, Boswell’s intuitions will urge him out well beyond the calculable, beyond any recognizable social logic. With very little warning, he will hear himself begin to say things that should not, properly speaking, be said. These things will be dictated entirely by intuition, and framed in language almost before Boswell himself— his waking, calculating self—can censor or suppress them.