Mrs Williams, smelling the burning wax, approached the table and blew out the candle. Mrs Desmoulins pulled a rude face, but said nothing. The old man, now invisible, coughed again; the coals hissed as he spat out his phlegm.
‘I have Miss Thrale with me,’ announced Mrs Williams.
‘So we saw’, replied Mrs Desmoulins, ‘until you dropped us into the dark.’
‘We are looking for the cat,’ Mrs Williams said.
‘My mamma wished me to see it,’ said Queeney, disconcerted by the shouts and hysterical laughter coming from the scullery beyond. ‘Then Mamma must be obeyed,’ murmured Mrs Desmoulins, a note of sarcasm in her voice. All the same, Queeney liked her best, for she was the most ordinary, being neither blind nor black, nor prone to spitting; she was relieved when Mrs Desmoulins left the table to join in the hunt for the cat.
The animal was run to earth in the scullery, preening itself some yards distant from a young woman in considerable disarray, who was dashing her head against the area door and wailing.
‘Kitty, Kitty,’ called Mrs Williams, sniffing the air, at which moment the young woman uttered a piercing scream, causing the cat to streak away down the passage.
‘Poll,’ Mrs Williams cried. ‘Behave yourself, we have company.’
Poll took no notice; sticking out her tongue she again dashed her forehead against the door, and now the skin on her forehead split open and blood trickled down the side of her nose.
‘What is wrong with her?’ asked Queeney.
‘Toothache,’ said Mrs Williams tersely.
‘Drink and men,’ contradicted Mrs Desmoulins, eyes glittering.
Prodding Queeney in the back, Mrs Williams propelled her from the room.
There are more ways than one of banishing bad memories, reasoned Queeney, fingering her throat in search of the amber necklace.
Two days before Queeney’s birthday Mrs Thrale was delivered of her eighth child. Though shut in the school-room, Queeney heard her mother squealing on the floor above; the sounds were those of a sow caught by the hind leg. Bent over her Italian grammar, Queeney promised God she would be a patient girl for ever if only Mamma wouldn’t die. Mr Baretti, noticing the child’s pallor, sang very loudly a Corsican ballad about a milkmaid seduced by a goatherd.
At three o’clock Mr Thrale came home, by which time the infant was two hours old. It was a girl, black in the face and unable to breathe properly, and it died before midnight. Mr Baretti said it was not to be wondered at, given the worries Mrs Thrale had been burdened with in the preceding months. ‘Your mother’, he told Queeney, ‘has had the mending of the Brewery to contend with, the discharge from Lucy’s ear and the nursing of your grandmother. You must endeavour to be thoughtful to her and not cause her agitation.’
Queeney took notice of his words, for generally he was critical of Mrs Thrale, thinking her too severe with her children and too frivolous in every other respect. Accordingly, when allowed to see Mamma, she had crept into the bedroom and kissed her most tenderly. Mamma smelt bad, but she stroked Queeney’s cheek and murmured she loved her more than all the world. The dead infant, sprinkled with herbs, lay in its crib at the end of the bed, face covered with a muslin cloth. It was to have been christened Penelope, but would never hear its name.
For a full week afterwards Queeney was kind to her brother and sisters, even Susannah, who had crooked legs and an umbilical rupture which rendered her so irritable that she was known as Little Crab, though Papa, on account of her pointy nose, called her Gilly, from Gilhouter, the Cheshire word signifying an owl.
Mr Johnson stayed away at Lichfield, mostly, so Mrs Thrale said, because he reckoned she would be too weak to give him her full attention, but Mr Baretti said he was working on a revised edition of his Dictionary. He did, however, dispatch Frank Barber to Streatham with the cabinet intended for the storing of curios which he had long promised his Sweeting.
It was a splendid piece of furniture comprising four large drawers within a door, topped by a smaller cabinet containing twelve compartments. Queeney had to stand on a chair to reach the upper cabinet; she filled two of the little drawers with shells gathered from the shore at Brighthelmstone. Mamma had not yet fetched the monkey’s paw from Grandmamma’s, but Papa gave her a tuft of hair believed to have belonged to Mr Pope, and Mrs Williams sent a poem written without the help of Mr Johnson.
Queeney didn’t care for either the poem or the snip of hair, the former being all about a sunset and relying too much on the colour crimson, the latter having the appearance of being plucked from the rump of a squirrel. After some thought, she rummaged in New Nurse’s work-basket and taking out a length of ribbon labelled it as belonging to Frances Thrale, born September 1765, died October 6th, 1765. Once, she had indeed had a sister of that name, but so long ago that she now qualified as a curiosity.
In November Mr Johnson wrote Queeney a letter, in which he asked after the health of his pet hen and acquainted her with the death of Miss Porter’s black cat. So things come and go, he mused. Generations, as Homer says, are but like leaves, and you now see the faded leaves falling about you.
When Mamma read the letter she said that Mr Johnson was merely being civil. Guests, she said, frequently engaged in correspondence with the children of their hosts; it was a means of conveying gratitude without too explicit a show of subservience. Strenuous expressions of gratitude implied need, something which no gentleman cared to demonstrate. His letter, she explained, was therefore to be taken as addressed to herself, in appreciation of the care he enjoyed under her roof. He would not expect a reply, far less want to be troubled with the scribblings of a child.
Mrs Thrale having gone up to town to discuss Brewery business with Perkins, Queeney approached Papa in his study and enquired if it was not impolite to ignore letters from Mr Johnson. Papa, purple in the face, two bottles of port at his elbow, was slumped over the remains of a large turkey; she knew it was the trouble caused by the bank that made him so hungry.
‘What do you wish to tell Samuel?’ Papa asked.
‘That I am sorry about Miss Porter’s cat,’ she said. ‘And to ask for things for the cabinet.’
‘And why is Mamma against it?’
‘On account of his being important.’
‘No more than the truth,’ Papa said, wiping the grease from his mouth.
‘So I should not send it?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Papa, ‘it could be that you are of equal importance … which Mamma knows,’ after which he smiled, though his eyes did not look merry. Telling her he would see to it that Mr. Johnson got her letter, he filled his glass with wine and gulped it down as though but recently returned from a desert; it was the trouble caused by the bank that made him so thirsty.
Two weeks later a second letter arrived for Queeney. Mamma was displeased at its contents, though she pretended otherwise. Mr Johnson complained that Mrs Thrale had used them both very sorrily when she had hindered Queeney from writing to him. He wrote that when he came home they would all have good sport playing together and that none of them would cry, not even Lucy, and ended by declaring himself to be her most humble servant.
In December Johnson left Lichfield and came back to London. Though he dined at Southwark with Henry Thrale and sometimes stayed the night in his old rooms above the counting house, he was not encouraged to return to Streatham. On the few occasions Mrs Thrale visited the Brewery she seemed pleased to see him, yet did not suggest he should come home and he was too proud to ask. He had to be content with her letters, which told him that Mr Baretti and Queeney were the best of friends and that the Italian lessons went forward with satisfaction to both sides. At first Queeney had been given vocabulary lists – nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions and articles – but so rapidly had she improved that her teacher had now embarked on a series of dialogues to do with imaginary discussions between the goats and hens in the barnyard. On Baretti’s calling these dialogues ‘bubbles of air’, Queeney, wicked child, had prom
ptly bested him and proclaimed them ‘empty bladders all’. The letter also told him that Lucy’s ear was worse and that Mrs Salusbury was now so ill she could no longer be left in the house in Dean Street and must be cared for at Streatham Park. He took this to mean that his presence would be an added burden and was envious of Baretti for so quickly assuming importance.
His lot in London was not a cheerful one, for his frequent absences from Johnson’s Court had made him less tolerant of its bickering residents; Mrs Williams hated everybody, Levet despised Mrs Desmoulins and did not love Mrs Williams; Poll cared for no one and was a stupid slut besides. In such company, as the weeks passed, his spirits sank and his temper worsened. His one solace was Dr Levet, who, detested by all three women, sat with him while he took his breakfast. Neither bread nor tea passed the gaunt doctor’s lips, his stomach generally in a turmoil after imbibing the liquid recompense he received for his nightly ministrations to the wretched inhabitants of Houndsditch. He was not required to stand out or to make conversation, his purpose being closer to that of an old and once useful piece of furniture, which, settled in a fixed position and gathering dust, had become so familiar as to fade from vision.
Johnson’s visitors, those who called at the prescribed hour, did not find Levet so easy to ignore, his appearance giving every indication of a man scorched by life. Indeed, as Mrs Desmoulins once acutely observed, he could have sat for the portrait of an alchemist’s apprentice, his complexion mottled as if he had breathed in the fumes of the crucible, his clothes singed as though exposed to the sparks of a furnace. For a medical man, his rasping cough fell short of inspiring confidence; nevertheless, Johnson was fond of him. He was poor yet honest, which, as Goldsmith reminded the perplexed members of the Club, was recommendation enough for Samuel.
One particular mid-day, noting Johnson’s gloomy countenance and listening to his oft-repeated sighs, Levet enquired if he was dissatisfied with the book he was perusing.
‘I cannot tell,’ came the reply, ‘for I am unable to take in its meaning.’
‘I have heard that knowledge can sometimes be a source of unhappiness,’ Levet said. He was not often stirred into speech, but concern forced him to find words.
‘That knowledge in some cases can produce unhappiness, I allow,’ said Johnson, ‘but upon the whole, knowledge per se is certainly an object which every man would wish to attain, although, perhaps, he may not take the trouble necessary for attaining it.’
‘Why cannot you take in the meaning?’ persisted Levet.
‘Enough, Sir,’ shouted Johnson, ‘let me be,’ and almost on the instant jumped up from the table and, patting Levet on the shoulder, apologised for speaking so roughly.
‘Write to her,’ urged Levet. ‘Tell her it is important you return.’
‘You talk in riddles,’ bellowed Johnson, and glowered with such lasting severity that Levet fell silent, and shortly after went about his business.
For a further month Johnson waited for a summons from Hester Thrale. He spent his days in the company of Hawkins and Arthur Murphy, or else supped at the Mitre tavern and did battle with Goldsmith and Bennet Langton. He was not feeling well and fretted over an infection in his good eye. Besides, he was enraged by a scandalous item in the newspaper on the tables of the Turk’s Head, which stated that an eminent Brewer was very jealous of a certain Author in Folio, and perceived a strong resemblance to him in his eldest son. Not one of the members of the Club was reckless enough to comment on this slander, not even the tactless Goldsmith, but he boiled within. Three rainswept nights in succession he perambulated about the town with James Boswell and saw nothing in the crowded streets that did not provide proof of the misery and decadence of humanity.
On the fourth evening, dining with Boswell at the house of General Paoli, he became entangled in a discussion as to whether the state of marriage was natural to man. It was his opinion that it was not, and he expressed it with some force, declaring that of the two inducements to marriage, the one being love, the other money, the first was unwise and the second ignoble. The General then proposed that the union of a man and woman in a state of nature would be more conducive to happiness than one conducted in a civilised society, for it would be free of the restraints deemed necessary to hold it together. This foolish supposition so irritated him that he cried out, ‘A savage man and a savage woman would be so unrestrained, Sir, that when the man saw another woman that pleased him better he would leave the first forthwith.’
He was aware of the glances exchanged between Boswell and the General, and fancied they took his outburst to mean that he had been dissatisfied with dear, dead Tetty. In speaking so fiercely it was Levet he had in mind, who, following a dusky courtship in a coal-hole in Fetter Lane, had shackled himself to a woman later arrested for the picking of pockets. Lacking neither patience nor inclination to set his listeners straight, and angry both with himself and them, he quit the table immediately.
In Fleet Street he was overtaken by a horse ridden at such speed and with such disregard for those in its path that he was forced to jump for safety. Unbidden, a memory surfaced of his wedding day and of the ride to the church with his bride. Tired of her controlling the pace, first trotting ahead, then lagging behind, he had booted his horse’s flank and, galloping out of sight round a bend in the road, waited in the shade of an oak tree; a gnat had bitten him on the little finger of his left hand. When Tetty caught up with him he had seen the shimmer of tears on her sun-dappled cheeks.
Pondering on the sensitivity of women, he continued on his way, and soon the image of his wife receded, replaced by thoughts of Hester Thrale.
Arriving at Johnson’s Court, he stood for a while on the steps of his house, peering upwards at the smoke-filled heavens. At Streatham Park the night would be full of stars, bright as the shine in his dear mistress’s eyes. How he longed to bask in the light of her smile.
A cat, not his, stalked the Court in pursuit of a rat, belly scraping the cobblestones. With a sudden surge of terror he remembered what he had once written for the final issue of the Idler on the subject of endings: ‘In every life there are pauses and interruptions … points of time where one course of action ends and another begins; and by vicissitude of fortune, or alteration of employment, by change of place or loss of friendship, we are forced to say of something, this is the last.’
Entering the dark house, he climbed the stairs to his chamber, where, abandoning pride, he put pen to paper and begged Mrs Thrale to receive him. He could not wait, he wrote, to be with his Dear Lady, and hoped to give her some little comfort and amusement. A sudden draught extinguished the candle on his desk. He took it for an omen and paced his room in torment.
Not for the first time, it weighed on him that his progress through life had been ill directed, that he had disappointed himself more than others. Fame would not be heard beneath the tomb. His days and years had leaked away in common business and common amusements, and he had suffered his purposes to sleep until the time of action was past. When he compared what he had done, those articles, poems, that poorly received play which Davy Garrick had struggled to promote, his criticism of Shakespeare, the compilation of his Dictionary, with what he had left undone, he felt the effect which must always follow the comparison of imagination with reality – contempt for idleness, disgust at lack of resolve.
He would leave behind him no evidence of his having been, nothing which could be added to the system of life, had glided from youth to age among a flattering crowd, without any effort for distinction.
Worse, he had disregarded his father’s wishes, squandered his time at Oxford, ignored his brother’s pleas for help, spent Tetty’s money, failed to attend his mother’s funeral, allowed his mind to be polluted by impure thoughts, doubted the existence of a life beyond the grave.
Even now, as he got to his knees in an attitude of prayer, his body betrayed him and he experienced a stirring of lust he was powerless to subdue. Excitement mounting, he conjured up a flurry of skir
ts, a bulge of thigh, the exclamation mark of a scar above a pouting lip. As he gave way to this compulsion, raised hands lowering to pleasure himself, he discerned that it was not so much madness that disordered him but rather the human condition. Man’s spiritual self, he reasoned, panting, trailed far behind the physical.
Mrs Thrale sent her coach for him the following week.
Mrs Salusbury, though weak, her breast horribly swollen and black in hue, insisted on coming downstairs every day, an unsteady descent she often accomplished without the help of the servants.
‘I am not yet helpless,’ she told her daughter, who, considerably alarmed and stepping backward, went before her with arms spread wide. Twice Mrs Salusbury fainted, though fortunately on the lowest step, where she was caught in the embrace of Mr Baretti.
Johnson was not present on these tottering occasions, being abed until noon. He was suffering from a persistent cough and the infection in his eye had grown worse. For some years past he had been reconciled to Mrs Salusbury, indeed, had grown fond, yet he could not help regarding her as a rival now that the attentions of her daughter were so diverted from himself. Mrs Thrale knew the best of him did not want to be a trouble, but his was a need not sufficiently seen to in childhood.
Nor were there others in the household who could distract him. Baretti had been charged with keeping the younger children out of the way of their dying grandmother, and Henry Thrale, the only man who held sway over Johnson, had absconded to Southwark, detesting sickness in women. Save for a brief visit from Frances Reynolds and a tedious one from a rustic pair of Streatham neighbours, company no longer came to the house. Johnson continued to instruct Queeney in Latin, but the pain of his eye shortened his temper and he grew weary of begging her pardon.
He took to following Mrs Thrale from room to room, endeavouring to engage her in conversation. If she did not answer him immediately or her gaze wandered from his face, he showed his displeasure by stamping his foot. When she hid in her chamber and did not answer his peevish knocking, he paced the passage outside, muttering aloud between bouts of coughing.
According to Queeney Page 7
