Content. Introduction. Chapter. I. Samuel Johnson and his biography

Friendships and household

In 1763 Johnson met the 22-year-old James Boswell, who would go on to make him the subject of the best-known and most highly regarded biography in English. The first meeting with this libertine son of a Scottish laird and judge was not auspicious, but Johnson quickly came to appreciate the ingratiating and impulsive young man. Boswell kept detailed journals, published only in the 20th century, which provided the basis for his biography of Johnson and also form his own autobiography.Johnson participated actively in clubs. In 1764 he and his close friend Sir Joshua Reynolds founded The Club (later known as The Literary Club), which became famous for the distinction of its members. The original nine members included the politician Edmund Burke, the playwright Oliver Goldsmith, and Sir John Hawkins, the historian of music whom Johnson was to call “unclubable.” Boswell, whose 1768 account of the Corsican struggle against Genoese rule and its revolutionary leader, General Pasquale Paoli, earned him a reputation throughout Europe, was admitted in 1773. Other members elected later included Garrick, the historian Edward Gibbon, the dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith, and the Orientalist Sir William Jones. In 1749 Johnson had been one of 10 members of the Ivy Lane Club, and the year before his death he founded The Essex Head Club. These clubs, at which he often “talked for victory,” provided the conversation and society he desired and kept him from the loneliness and insomnia that he faced at home. This is not to say that his house was empty after the death of his wife. He had living with him at various times Anna Williams, a blind poet; Elizabeth Desmoulins, the daughter of his godfather Dr. Samuel Swynfen, and her daughter; Poll Carmichael, probably a former prostitute; “Dr.” Robert Levett, a medical practitioner among the poor; Francis Barber, Johnson’s black servant, whom he treated in many ways like a son and made his heir; and Barber’s wife Betsy. They were at once recipients of Johnson’s charity and providers of company, but the relationship among them was not always amicable. In a letter of 1778 Johnson says, “We have tolerable concord at home, but no love. Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them.”In 1765 Johnson established a friendship that soon enabled him to call another place “home.” Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and member of Parliament for Southwark, and his lively and intelligent wife, Hester, opened their country house at Streatham to him and invited him on trips to Wales and, in 1775, to France, his only tour outside Great Britain. Their friendship and hospitality gave the 56-year-old Johnson a new interest in life. Following her husband’s death in 1781 and her marriage to her children’s music master, Gabriel Piozzi, Hester Thrale’s and Johnson’s close friendship came to an end. His letters to Mrs. Thrale, remarkable for their range and intimacy, helped make him one of the great English letter writers.