A Possible Glimpse of Samuel Johnson

READERS of Boswell’s Johnson are aware of a strange gap in the life, extending over the whole of the years 1745 and 1746. Johnson’s “ Proposals for a New Edition of Shakespear ” appeared at the beginning of 1745, and with that exception, no single event is known, no anecdote recorded, no publication mentioned, no letter preserved. Yet those years were full of material for an author and a talker. Boswell reminds us — as who would not ? — that in those years Charles Edward raised the Stewart flag in Scotland, invaded England, eluded two armies of King George, marched to a point only one hundred and twenty-seven miles from London, won two pitched battles over the royal forces, and was defeated only after keeping the whole country in anxiety for eight months.

The author of the article on Johnson in the National Dictionary of Biography sneers at the suggestion of Boswell that his hero might have been connected with the Pretender’s expedition. But where is the absurdity ? Johnson was notoriously a passionate partisan of the Stewarts. Lichfield, his birthplace, his mother’s residence, the home that never lost his affection, was a chief station of the Duke of Cumberland’s army, and the Pretender’s line of march came within twenty miles of it ; while all around it the Staffordshire folk were considered the most intensely Jacobite part of the English people. If Johnson had visited his native town, or even had letters from his mother and his stepdaughter in those years, he must have had his thoughts full of the invasion. Preston, Falkirk, and Culloden must have interested him as much as any man in England. Did he really know nothing about it all ? Or did he know too much, that we find no more mention of “ the ’45 ” in his life than if he had been six years old instead of thirty-six ? For all that those years with their events and memories show us of him, he might have been on the Continent, in prison, or confined with a broken leg.

Johnson himself was so very obscure in these years, his talents slowly struggling into recognition, that it is not strange that his name appears so seldom in correspondence ; yet as one repository after another of family papers becomes unlocked, the key to his more than obscurity in these eventful years may yet be disclosed. Whether the notes now offered to the reader really afford that key may be questioned; they are fragmentary, and I have no right, if I had the power, to expand them. Such as they are they may at least give shape to interesting conjecture as to the whereabouts of a man, every incident of whose career is more studied, now that he has been for more than a century in his grave, than ever it was while he walked the earth.

A short time ago a noble family, which had long maintained a spacious residence in one of the older but still aristocratic quarters of London, determined to let that house, and live exclusively in the country. Such a move, after long years of occupation, is almost sure to bring to light papers, hastily stored, never examined, and all but forgotten. That interesting old letters should be found in unsuspected repositories of a family mansion such as I mention was every way to be expected. Through an old and pleasant acquaintance with several members of this family, amounting to close intimacy with one honored and loved by all who knew him, — now, alas ! deceased, — I feel justified in laying before the public a copy of some bits of correspondence. Nothing, however, has been published by the owners of the papers, and perhaps never will be. I have no right to mention their name, nor to present any portions of the letters beyond what have a purely literary and historical interest. That name has been known and respected in England for many centuries.

I am not able even to present these extracts with the garniture of eighteenth-century spelling and capitals. The copyist has not seen fit to reproduce those quaintnesses of dress ; and, after all, I do not know that we enter into the thoughts and feelings of Chesterfield or of Johnson any better by seeing that they wrote “ Cloaths ” and not “ clothes.”

Many of the letters from which I present extracts appear to be from members of the family of the Drummonds, the great banking house, several of whom intermarried with the nobility, and especially with the family to which I allude. If a conjecture were allowable as to how the papers I have mentioned came to their recent place of deposit, it would be that in some of the not very remote London riots, which raged in the immediate neighborhood of Drummonds’ bank, the family papers were hastily removed to the house I have mentioned, which was at no very great distance, yet out of rioters’ range, and in which they would be sure of being preserved with care and interest.

The family of Drummond is one of the most ancient in the nobility of Scotland. It gave a queen to one of the early Stewart kings, and its members have always stood by that royal line. In the time of James II., the heads of the house were devoted to the king’s interest, and shared his exile to the utter wreck of their estates at home. But a cadet of the family had the shrewdness to retrieve his fortunes by a process unfamiliar to the Scottish feudal aristocracy. He came to London and founded the great banking house of “ Drummonds ” still flourishing. It would appear from the correspondence given here that the Scotch fidelity to “ kith ” kept the London Drummonds in communication with their exiled cousins. One letter appears to be from Lord John Drummond, son of the (titular) Duke of Perth, who joined the Chevalier’s army in Scotland, and was with it in the march to Derby : —

“ You were right, my dear kinsman, in your warning that our forces would receive no accession from the king’s friends in England. We have been wholly deceived in this matter. Lancashire, reported so full of loyal gentlemen, has sent us hardly a soldier, and the like is true of Staffordshire. We were, however, Cameron tells me, joined by one recruit last night from Lichfield. He is devotedly loyal, and full of valuable information about the well-disposed, both hereabouts and in London ; but apart from this, I know not what we can do with him. He is of herculean stature, but entirely without use of arms, and it is hard to make a soldier of a raw recruit, who appears nearer forty than thirty. Besides, he is most averse to discipline, and although he has been but eighteen hours in camp, has already contradicted everybody he has met. Yet I am desirous to see him, for Cameron says he is an Oxford scholar, a perfect mine of learning. I asked his name, and Cameron said he certainly understood it to be Johnstone, but when he asked the monster if he was of Lord Annandale’s family, he pretended not to understand ; but on being called ‘ Mr. Johnstone,’ replied, ‘ Sir, that is not my name ’ so savagely that Cameron inquired no further.”

The next fragment is from a letter from the Marquis of Granby, afterwards so renowned as a general, in 1745 a young regimental officer in the Duke of Cumberland’s army. His grandson, the Duke of Rutland, had a very severe fire at Belvoir Castle some seventy years later. One might guess that this and other family letters were hastily rescued, and sent, while the castle was rebuilding, to the Drummonds, between whom and the house of Manners there was a family connection : —

“You may perhaps have heard that we had a skirmish with the Pretender’s rear-guard at Penrith, in which, I am sorry to say, several officers were killed, wounded, or taken. Among the latter was a captain in my regiment. He was not held long among them, for they are marching northwards so hurriedly that they do not keep a very close guard over their prisoners. On his return he told a curious story of his experiences among them. It was so lively that I can write it down for you almost exactly in his own words : —

“ They treated me very civilly, and I dined with the Pretender’s chief engineer officer, a Frenchman. He did his best to give his table, which was scarcely luxurious, something of a French air. The Scotch officers were thorough gentlemen, if they did wear petticoats ; so was the host; not so an odd creature, in a nondescript dress, neither soldier nor bourgeois. He ate very coarsely, drank deep, and strove to engross the entire talk, hardly giving anybody else a chance, except when gorging himself. I first noticed him growling out, ‘ Ariosto gives a strange account of the Scotch ; he makes them allies of a king of England and Charlemagne against the Saracens,’ and then down went his monstrous head over his plate again. I have dipped into Ariosto, but I cannot recall his Scotchmen, and the queer mixture of learning and grossness made me look at this person again. I seemed to remember him. Presently he was in a full French talk with our host ; the accent was extraordinary, sounding to me somewhat Irish ; the words so slowly uttered, that they could easily be followed, and as regular and correct as if printed. I cannot undertake to give the French, but the sense was plain; he declaimed against the Scotch, declared they had neither religion nor cleanliness (he had nothing to boast of on that article himself), neither breeches nor loyalty. The French officer very civilly suggested they were proving their loyalty to their rightful king. ‘ Monsieur,’ said the oddity, firing the word out of his great jaws ; they may seem loyal to his Royal Highness now, but they only want him as a cat’s paw to pull off their own land of beggars ’ —pays de gueux, he called it — ‘ from ours, and have a king of their own; they forced him back when he was on the high road to victory ; they sold his great-grandfather, and they would sell him, if the Elector were not too stingy to offer them their price.’ ”

All students of history know how bitterly unjust this insinuation was; a reward of thirty thousand pounds could not allure a single Scotchman to reveal Charles Edward’s hiding-place, after his hopeless defeat. The extract goes on :

“ Knowing that Scotch gentlemen were often familiar with French, I was on thorns for fear of an outbreak, and thought it best to turn the talk if I could. ‘ Pardon me, sir,’ I cried, ‘ is not your name Jackson ? I fancy I have seen you at the table of my kinsman, the Earl of Chesterfield.’ ‘ Sir,’ said the ogre, turning on me, ‘ my name is not Jackson.’ ‘ I ask pardon again,’ said I. ‘ I saw many guests there, and have not always retained their names ; but I could hardly forget your person, as I saw few so learned as yourself.’ ‘ Sir, I do not know whether you saw more learned men or more fools at the table of my Lord Chesterfield, — I suppose you expect me to say his Excellency, as he now represents the Elector of Hanover at Dublin; but, I assure you, I remember neither your name nor your person.’

“ ‘ I could not have supposed, sir, that you would recall either ; but being Lord Chesterfield’s kinsman, and privileged to meet his guests ’ —

“ ' Sir, it is a privilege which in my case you could have had but once ; my Lord has obviously forgotten botli my name and my person, and has never repeated his invitation.’ You may conceive I did not obtrude myself on him farther.”

The last extract is from a member of the family in whose house this correspondence is understood to have been found ; known, however, in 1746 by the name he had assumed on marrying an heiress : — “ You know that Oxford and the Church have not destroyed my interest in all that relates to my former profession, so learning that my old regiment was in the Duke’s army, I determined to see what a rebellion is like. I found them at Carlisle. They had just reduced the unhappy garrison which the Pretender left behind as he retreated into Scotland. The Colonel and officers all received me with open arms ; wished I would drop my gown and sport the cockade again. The Colonel told me his plans, and added : —

“ ' You ’re the very man I want, Harry. We have captured a mob of poor devils here — Oh, I keep forgetting you ’re a parson now — whom I think that d—d — saving your reverence —■ Pretender left on purpose, knowing we should take the place. I suppose nothing can save the fighting men ; but there are some non-combatants that it would be a shame to hang. I ’m a humane man myself; but the Duke — Well! ’ Here he paused, and hemmed.

' Now I do wish you would talk to some of them, and find out something in their favor. There is one particular big fellow I ’ll send in to you directly, for the Scots tell me he is an Englishman, who has been wrangling ever since he joined them ; a scholar and no soldier.’

“ He left me, and there was brought in almost immediately a big fellow indeed, very shabbily clothed, but with a strange look of defiance. When he saw me, he flushed suddenly up to his eyes. I knew him ! It was — But on the whole, I won’t tell you his name, and you will see why. I knew him at Lichfield, when my regiment was quartered there, and he has been in my house in London.

“ ‘ I see you remember me, Mr.—— said I, ' we are old friends.’

“' You were indeed my friend, Mr. Aston, when you bore another name and another coat. I suppose you expect my compliments on your present circumstances.’

“ ‘ I expect nothing,’ said I, ' but that you shall tell me, for old friendship’s sake, how you came into this position.’

“ ’I know well, sir, that one who has served in the forces of the Elector of Hanover will despise the call of loyalty to his rightful king.’

“ ' Oh, you and I have fought out that battle long ago ; but your Scottish friends seem to have taken their Prince, and left you to perform what you believe a loyal subject’s duty by yourself.’

“ You should have seen the strange convulsion that passed over his whole frame as I spoke; it seemed as if the veins in his forehead would burst. ' Sir, the Scots ’ — he broke out, and then his voice subsided into a strange grumble.

“ ‘ Never mind the Scots,’ I said, ' but whether they are here or there, you know the destiny that awaits you ? ’

“ ' I shall be hanged,’ he said in a terribly calm voice.

“ ' I intend you shall not,’ I replied ; ‘ you have, I know, a mother and a wife who need you. The Colonel tells me he means to send a recruiting party to the Midlands. You will be put in their hands as a prisoner. They will go through Lichfield, and there they will lose sight of you. I know every man in my old regiment, and can make my word good. You will, for your mother’s and your wife’s sake, and for mine,' I added, looking him fixedly in the face, ' remain absolutely quiet till this rising is over, and in all your after life never mention this excursion of yours. In this way I can save you ; if you do not do as I say, you will indeed meet the fate you have named.’

“ ‘ Sir,’ he said in another uncouth convulsion, ‘ I shall give no pledge ’ —

“ ‘ I ask none,’ said I, ' but I am sure you will do as I say all the same.’

“ He was removed ; the Colonel agreed to get him a decent suit, — no easy matter for so enormous a frame, — and I saw him no more. You see at once that it would be a risk to name him.”

And these are all the notes there are to offer. It would be going too far to say they certainly point to Samuel Johnson. That name is not actually given; Lord John Drummond and Lord Granby only report what others told them; the Irish accent is most unlike Johnson, nor do we know definitely of any dealings he had with Lord Chesterfield before 1747, though the celebrated letter does not absolutely preclude an earlier acquaintance. Mr. Aston says he saw a person whose description tallies with Johnson’s; but he does not name him; nor is there any evidence that the three writers, or any two, meant the same man. The utmost we can venture to say is, that these scattered notes may give a hint to clear up the Egyptian darkness which now covers two years in the life of one who has since become one of the world’s heroes, but who was not in the least such to the two noblemen, and a long way from such distinction even to his friend Mr. Aston. They would certainly have formed quite enough basis of fact for Stevenson to work up into a novel portraying Johnson in the Jacobite army.

William Everett.