VII. HANWAY'S TRAVELS
ONE hot day in Holborn, – one of those very hot days when, as Mr. Andrew Lang or M. Octave Uzanne has said, the brown backs buckle in the fourpenny boxes, and you might poach an egg on the cover of a quarto, – the incorrigible bookhunter who pens these pages purchased two octavo volumes of 'Beauties of the Spectators, Tatlers and Guardians, Connected and Digested under Alphabetical Heads.' That their contents were their main attraction would be too much to say. For the literary 'Beauties' of one age, like those other are not always the 'Beauties' of another. Where the selector of to-day would put Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Wimble, the Everlasting Club, or the Exercise of the Fan, the judicious gentlemen in rusty wigs and inked ruffles who managed the 'connecting' and 'digesting' department for Messrs. Tonson in the Strand, put passages on Detraction, Astronomy, Chearful-ness (with an 'a'), Bankruptcy, Self-Denial, Celibacy, and the Bills of Mortality. They must have done a certain violence to their critical convictions by including, in forlorn isolation, such flights of imagination as the 'Inkle and Yarico' of Mr. Steele and the 'Hilpah and Shalum' of Mr. Addison. The interest of this particular copy is, however, peculiar to itself. It is bound neatly in full mottled calf, with stamped gold roses at the corners of the covers; and at the points of a star in the centre are printed the letters E, G, C, G. An autograph inscription in the first volume explains this mystery. They are the initials of the 'Twin Sisters
'Beauties reckoned
So killing – under George the Second,'
Miss Elizabeth, & Miss Caroline Grigg,' to whom are addressed the votive couplets that follow: —
'Freedom & Virtue, Twin born from Heaven came.
And like two Sisters fair, are both the same.
On Thee Elizabeth may Virtue smile!
And Thou, sweet Caroline, Life's cares beguile.
May Gracious Providence protect & guide,
That Days & Years in peace may slide;
And bring You Bliss, in Parents love,
Till You shall reach the bliss above.'
After this comes – 'Thus prays Your very true friend & affectionate Servant J. Hanway,' – a signature which proves that one may be a praiseworthy philanthropist and a copious Pamphleteer and yet write no better verse than the Bellman. For without consulting the records at the Marine Society in Bishopsgate Street, there is little doubt that the writer of these lines was the once well-known Jonas Hanway of the Ragged Schools, the Magdalen Hospital, and half a hundred other benevolent undertakings. Indeed the circumstance that the book is addressed to two ladies is, of itself, almost proof of this, since, either from bachelor caution, or from some other obscure cause, Hanway always attaches a Dingley to his Stella. His 'Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston' is addressed to two ladies; so also is his famous 'Essay on Tea.' But there is stronger confirmation still. He was in the habit of giving away copies of this very book – in fact of this very edition – as presents to his friends and protégés. Not long ago, in a second-hand bookseller's catalogue, was advertised another pair of the same volumes, in 'old English red morocco, elaborately tooled,' which had been given by Hanway to his 'young friend Master John Thomson.' It was dated from Red Lion Square in 1772, the same year in which his verses to the Demoiselles Grigg were written. Master Thomson's initials were also impressed upon the sides of this copy; and although the Muses had not been invoked in his behalf, the book contained a holograph letter of nine pages of useful advice, by the aid of which, coupled with the 'Beauties,' he was to learn 'to attain the treasures of health, wealth, peace, and happiness.' But from the excellent condition of the volumes in both instances, it must be inferred that neither of the twin sisters nor Mr. Hanway's 'young friend' acted upon Johnson's precept and gave their days and nights to the periods of Addison.
Of Hanway himself, Johnson said, in his memorable way, 'that he acquired some reputation by travelling abroad, but lost it all by travelling at home.' His 'Historical Account of the British Trade on the Caspian Sea' (generally called 'Travels in Persia'), 1753, 4 vols., quarto, did indeed once enjoy a considerable reputation, and his adventures were adventurous enough. Beginning life as a Lisbon merchant, he subsequently accepted a partnership in a St. Petersburgh house. At this date the Russo-Persian trade had recently been established by Captain John Elton, who afterwards, to the disgust of the St. Petersburgh factors, took service under Nadir Shah. Hanway accompanied a caravan of woollen goods to Persia; and here began his experiences. He found Astrabad in rebellion, and the caravan was plundered. Thereupon, after many privations and narrow escapes, he made his way to Nadir Shah, who ordered restitution of the goods, – a restitution which was more easy to order than to execute, although something was restored. But the traveller's troubles were by no means at an end. In the Caspian, on the return voyage, his ship was attacked by the Ogurtjoy pirates, and he himself afterwards fell seriously ill. To this succeeded, in consequence of the presence of plague at Cashan, the amenities of a long quarantine on an island in the Volga, in the final stage of which the unhappy travellers 'were required to strip themselves entirely naked in the open air [this was in a Russian October], and go through the unpleasant ceremony of having each a large pail of warm water thrown over them, before they were permitted to depart.' Alien Hanway at last reached Moscow, he found that the opportune death of a relative had placed him in possession 'of pecuniary advantages, much exceeding any he could expect from his engagement in Caspian affairs.' He nevertheless stayed five years and a half more at St. Petersburgh; and then, returning to England, took up his abode in London, where he proceeded to prepare his travels for the press. Being laudably unwilling that any publisher should run the risk of losing money by him, the first edition was printed at his own expense; but the book proved a great success, passing speedily into many libraries (into Gray's among others), and Andrew Millar ultimately purchased the copyright. The remainder of Hanway's life was spent in philanthropy and pamphleteering. He helped Sir John Fielding and others to set on foot the still existent Marine Society for training boys for the sea; he helped to remodel 'Captain Coram's Charity,' of which he was a Governor; he founded the Magdalen Hospital; he advocated the interests of Sunday-Schools and Ragged Schools, of chimney-sweeps and the infant poor. Not the least important of his services to the community was his vindication, in the teeth of the chairmen and hackney coachmen, of the use, by men, of the umbrella, hitherto confined to the weaker sex. * As a pamphleteer he was unwearied, and the mere titles of his efforts in this way occupy four columns of Messrs. Stephen and Lee's great dictionary. He wrote on the Naturalization of the Jews; he wrote on Vails-Giving, on the American War, on Pure Bread, on Solitary
* 'Good housewives all the winter's rage despise,
Defended by the riding-hood's disguise:
Or underneath th' umbrella's oily shed,
Safe thro' the wet, on clinking pattens tread.'
Gay's Trivia, 1716, i. 209-212.
Confinement; he wrote 'Earnest Advice' and 'Moral Reflections' to Everybody on Everything. To misuse Ben Jonson's words of Shakespeare, 'He flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.' One entire pamphlet on bread was dictated in the space of a forenoon, says his secretary and biographer Pugh. When it is further explained that it consisted of two hundred law sheets, or ninety octavo pages, it is obvious that the excellent author's powers as a pamphleteer must have been preternatural. But it is hardly surprising to find even his admirer admitting that his ideas were not well arranged, and that his style was undeniably diffuse.
This latter quality is aptly illustrated by a volume which lies before us, being in fact the identical record of those travels in England by which Johnson asserted that Mr. Hanway had lost the celebrity he had acquired by his 'Travels in Persia.' The very title of the book – a privately printed quarto – is as long as that of 'Pamela.' It runs thus, – 'A Journal of Eight Days Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston upon Thames; through South-am ton, Wiltshire, etc. With Miscellaneous Thoughts, Moral and Religious; in a Series of Sixty-four Letters: Addressed to two Ladies of the Partie. To which is added, An Essay on tea, considered as 'pernicious to Health, obstructing Industry, and impoverishing the Nation: With an Account of its Growth, and great Consumption in these Kingdoms. With several political Reflections; and Thoughts on Public Love. In Twenty-five Letters to the same Ladies. By a Gentleman of the Partie. London: H. Woodfall, 1756.' The 'Partie,' by the way, if we are to trust Wale's emblematic frontispiece, must have been limited to the writer and these two ladies, discreetly disguised in the 'Contents' as 'Mrs. D.' and 'Mrs. O.'
Why, as remarked by an ingenious 'Monthly Reviewer,' it should be necessary to tell 'Mrs. D.' and 'Mrs. O.' (whom the artist shows us conversing agreeably with Mr. Hanway under an awning in a two-oared boat) what, having been of the 'Partie,' they probably knew quite as well as he did, is not explained. But on the other hand, it may be contended that he really tells them very little, since the 'Moral and Religious' reflections almost entirely swallow up the Travels. 'On every occurrence,' says the critic quoted, 'he expatiates, and indulges in reflection. The appearance of an inn upon the road suggests… an eulogium on temperance; the confusion of a disappointed Landlady gives rise to a Letter on Resentment; and the view of a company of soldiers furnishes out materials for an Essay on War.' The company of soldiers was Lord George Bentinck's regiment of infantry on their march to Essex; and one sighs to think with what a bustle of full-blooded humanity – what a 'March to Finchley' of incident – the author of a 'Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon' would have filled the storied page. But Mr. Hanway is not the least penitent; rather is he proud of his reticence. He specially expresses his gratitude to the hostess 'who gave occasion for my thoughts on resentment, a subject far more interesting than whether a battle was fought at this, or any other place, five hundred years ago.' (If 'Mrs. D.' and 'Mrs. O.' were really of this opinion, they must have been curiously constituted.) 'Can you bear with this medley of both worlds?' he asks them on another occasion, and it is not easy to reply except by saying that there is too much of one and too little of the other. To pass Bevis Mount with the barest mention of Lord Peterborough; to come to Amesbury and 'Prior's Kitty' and be fobbed off with 'a pious rhapsody;' to stop at Stockbridge for which Steele was member when he was expelled from Parliament, only to enter upon fifty pages of indiscriminate reflections on Public Love, Self-examination, the Vanity of Life, and half a dozen other instructive but irrelevant subjects, – these things, indeed, are hard to bear, especially as they are not recommended by any particular distinction of matter or manner. 'Tho' his opinions are generally true,' says the critic already quoted, 'and his regard for virtue seems very sincere, yet these alone are not, at this day, sufficient to defend the cause of truth; stile, elegance, and all the allurements of good writing, must be called in aid: especially if the age be in reality, as it is represented by this Author, averse to everything that but seems to be serious.' 'Novelty of thought,' he says again, 'and elegance of expression, are what we chiefly require, in treating on topics with which the public are already acquainted: but the art of placing trite materials in new and striking lights, cannot be reckoned among the excellencies of this Gentleman; who generally enforces his opinions by arguments rather obvious than new, and that convey more conviction than pleasure to the Reader.'
Why, with the book before us, we should borrow from an anonymous writer in the 'Monthly Review,' requires a word of explanation. The reviewer was Oliver Goldsmith, at this time an unknown scribbler, working as 'general utility man' to Mr. Ralph Griffiths the bookseller, who owned the magazine. Goldsmith devotes most of his notice to the 'Essay on Tea,' the scope of which is sufficiently indicated by its title. But the 'Essay on Tea' also engaged the attention of a better known though not greater critic, Samuel Johnson, whose 'corruption was raised' (as the Scotch say) by this bulky if not weighty indictment of his darling beverage. Johnson's critique was in the 'Literary Magazine.' At the outset he makes candid and characteristic profession of faith. 'He is,' he says, 'a hardened and shameless Tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool, who with Tea amuses the evening, with Tea solaces the midnight, and with Tea welcomes the morning.' The arguments on either side are now of little moment, though Hanway, as a merchant, is better worth hearing on the commercial aspect of the Tea question than on things in general. But the review greatly irritated him. An unfortunate remark dropped by Johnson about the religious education of the children in the Foundling stung him into an angry retort in the 'Gazetteer,' – a retort to which (according to Boswell) Johnson made the only rejoinder he is ever known to have offered to anything that was written against him. As may be expected, it was not a document from which his opponent could extract much personal gratification; but it is not otherwise remarkable.
That the criticism of Johnson and Goldsmith was not wholly undeserved must, it is feared, be conceded. Even in days less book-burdened, and more patient of tedium than our own, to string half a dozen pamphlets of platitudes upon the slenderest of threads, and call it the 'Journal of a Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston-upon-Thames,' could scarcely have been tolerable. Yet Johnson allowed to the author the 'merit of meaning well.' Hanway's benevolence was, in truth, unquestioned. His sincerity was beyond suspicion, and his services to his fellow-creatures were considerable. His misfortune was that, like many excellent persons, his sense of humour was imperfect, and his infirmity of digression chronic. He was, moreover, the victim of the common delusion that to teach and to preach are interchangeable terms. His biographer Pugh, who admits that, with all his good qualities, he had a 'certain singularity of thought and manners,' gives some curious details as to his habits and costume. In order to be always ready for polite society, he usually appeared in dress clothes, including a large French bag (which duly figures in Wale's frontispiece) and a chapeau bras with a gold button. 'When it rained, a small parapluie defended his face and wig.' His customary garb was a suit of rich dark brown, lined with ermine, to which he added a small gold-hilted sword. He was extremely susceptible to cold, and habitually wore three pairs of stockings. He was an active pedestrian, although he possessed an equipage called a 'solo' (which we take to be the equivalent of Sterne's Désobligeante). Among his other characteristics was the embellishment of his house in Red Lion Square in such a way as to prompt and promote improving conversation in those unhappy intermissions of talk which come about while the card-tables are being set, and so forth. The decorations in the drawing-room were not without a certain mildly-moral ingenuity. They consisted of portraits of Adrienne Le Couvreur and five other famous beauties, in frames united by a carved and gilded ribbon inscribed with passages in praise of beauty. Above these was placed a statue of Humility; below, a mirror just convex enough to reduce the female spectator to the scale of the portraits, and round the frame of this was painted, —
'Wert thou, my daughter, fairest of the seven;
Think on the progress of devouring Time,
And pay thy tribute to Humility.'
Hanway died in 1786, aged seventy-four. He is buried at Hanwell, and he has a bust in Westminster Abbey.
VIII. A GARRET IN GOUGH SQUARE
NOT very far from 'streaming London's central roar' – or, in plain words, about midway in Fleet Street, on the left-hand side as you go toward Ludgate Hill – is a high and narrow archway or passage over which is painted in dingy letters the words 'Bolt Court.' To the lover of the 'Great Cham of Literature,' the name comes freighted with memories. More than a hundred years ago 'the ponderous mass of Johnson's form,' to quote a poem by Mrs. Barbauld, must often have darkened that contracted approach, when, in order to greet with tea the coming day ('veniente die'), 14 and to postpone if possible that 'unseasonable hour at which he had habituated himself to expect the oblivion of repose,' he rolled across from the Temple to Miss Williams's rooms. Where the blind lady lodged, no Society of Arts tablet now reveals to us; but as soon as the pilgrim has traversed the dark and greasy entrance-way, and finds himself in the little court itself, with its disorderly huddle of buildings, and confusion of tip-cat playing children, he is in Johnson's land, and only a few steps from the actual spot on which Johnson's last hours were spent. Fronting him, in the farther angle of the enclosure, is the Stationers' Company's School, and the Stationers' Company's School stands upon the site of No. 8 Bolt Court, formerly Bensley's Printing Office, 15 but earlier still the last residence of Dr. Johnson, who lived in it from 1776 to 1784.
It was in the backroom of its first floor that, on Monday, the 13th December in the latter year, at about seven o'clock in the evening, his black servant Francis Barber and his friend Mrs. Desmoulins, who watched in the sick-chamber, 'observing that the noise he made in breathing had ceased, went to the bed, and found that he was dead.'
Standing in Bolt Court to-day, before the unimposing façade of the school which now occupies the spot, it is not easy to reconstruct that quiet parting-scene; nor is it easy to realize the old book-burdened upper floors, or the lower reception chamber, where, according to Sir John Hawkins, were given those 'not inelegant dinners' of the good Doctor's more opulent later years. Least of all is it possible to conceive that, somewhere in this pell-mell of bricks and mortar, was once a garden which the famous Lexicographer took pleasure in watering; and where, moreover, grew a vine from which, only a few months before he died, he gathered 'three bunches of grapes.' But if Bolt Court prove unstimulating, you have only to take a few steps to the right, and you arrive, somewhat unexpectedly, in a little parallelogram at the back, known as Gough Square. Here, in the north-west corner, still stands one of the last of those sixteen residences in which Johnson lived in London. It is at present a place of business; but the tenants make no difficulty about your examination of it, and when you inquire for the well-known garret you are at once invited to inspect it. The interior of the house, of course, is much altered, but there is still a huge chain at the front door, which dates from Johnson's day, and the old oak-balustraded staircase remains intact. As you climb its narrow stages, you remember that, sixty years since, Thomas Carlyle must have made that ascent before you; 16 and you wonder how Johnson, with his bad sight and his rolling gait, managed to steer up it at all.
The flight ends in the garret itself, upon which you emerge at present, as in a hay-loft. But it is not in the least such a 'sky-parlour' as Hogarth assigns to his 'Distressed Poet.' It occupies the whole width and breadth of the building; it is sufficiently lighted by three windows in front, and two dormers at the sides; and the pitch of the roof is by no means low. Here you are actually in Johnson's house; and as you turn to look at the stairway you have just quitted, it is odds if you do not expect to see the shrivelled wig, the seared, blinking face, and the heavy shoulders of the Doctor himself rising slowly above the aperture with a huge volume under his arm. For it was in this very garret in Gough Square, within sound of the hammers of that famous clock of St. Dunstan's, to which Cowper refers in the 'Connoisseur,' 17 that the great Dictionary was compiled.
Here laboured Shiels, the amanuensis, and his five companions, ceaselessly transcribing the passages which had been marked for them to copy, and probably going 'odd man or plain Newmarket' for beer as soon as ever their employer's back was turned; here, also, at the little fire-place in the corner, must often have sat Johnson himself, peering closely (much as Reynolds shows him in the portrait of 1778) at the proofs that were going to long-suffering Andrew Millar. It was in this identical garret that Joseph Warton once visited him to pay a subscription; here came Roubiliac and Sir Joshua; and here, when the room had grown to be dignified by the title of the 'library,' Johnson received Dr. Burney, who found in it 'five or six Greek folios, a deal writing-desk, and a chair and a half.' The half-chair must have been that mentioned by Miss Reynolds; and it is evident that long experience or repeated misadventure had made Johnson both skilful and cautious in manipulating it. 'A gentleman,' she says, 'who frequently visited him whilst writing his "Idlers" [the 'Idler' was partly composed in Gough Square in 1758] constantly found him at his desk, sitting on a chair with three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked that Dr. Johnson never forgot its defect, but would either hold it in his hand or place it with great composure against some support, taking no notice of its imperfection to his visitor.' 'It was remarkable in Dr. Johnson,' she goes on, 'that no external circumstances ever prompted him to make any apology, or to seem even sensible of their existence.'
In Gough Square Johnson lived from 1749 to 1759. 'I have this day moved my things,' he writes to his step-daughter, Miss Porter, on the 23rd of March in the latter year, 'and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn.' These ten years were among the busiest and most productive of his life. No pension had as yet made existence easier to him; no Boswell was at hand to seduce him to port and the Mitre; and the Literary Club, as yet unborn, existed only in embryo at a beefsteak shop in Ivy Lane. Besides the 'Idler' and the Dictionary, which latter was published in the middle of his sojourn at Gough Square, he sent forth from his garret 'Irene' and the 'Vanity of Human Wishes,' the 'Rambler,' and the essays in Hawkesworth's 'Adventurer.' It was here that he drew up those proposals for that belated edition of Shakespeare of which Churchill said:
He for Subscribers baits his hook,
And takes their cash – but where's the Book?
and here, early in 1759, he wrote his 'Rasselas.' It was in Gough Square, on the 16th of March, 1756, that he was arrested for £5 18s., and only released by a prompt loan from Samuel Richardson; it was while living in Gough Scpiare that he penned that noble letter to Chesterfield, of which Time seems to intensify rather than to attenuate the manly dignity and the independent accent. 'Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Publick should consider me as owing that to a Patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.'
'Till I am solitary, and cannot impart it.'
The same thought recurs in the closing words of the preface to his magnum opus, which, little more than two months after the date of the above letter, appeared in a pair of folio volumes.
'I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave; and success and miscarriage are empty sounds.' It needs no Boswell to tell us that the reference here is to the death, three years before, of his wife, – that fantastic 'Tetty,' to himself so beautiful, to his friends so unattractive, whom he loved so ardently and so faithfully, and whose name, coupled with so many 'pious breathings,' is so frequently to be found in his 'Prayers and Meditations.' 'This is the day,' he wrote, thirty years afterwards, 'on which, in 1752, dear Tetty died. I have now uttered a prayer of repentance and contrition; perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her. Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me.' In her epitaph at Bromley he styles her 'formosa, culta, ingeniosa, pia.' In a recently discovered letter she is his 'charming Love,' his 'most amiable woman in the world,' and (even at fifty) his 'dear Girl.' He preserved her wedding ring, says Boswell, 'as long as he lived, with an affectionate care, in a little round wooden box, in the inside of which he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as follows: 'Eheu! Eliz. Johnson, Nuptay Jul. 9° 1736, Mortua, eheu! Mart. 17° 1752.' 18
Her loss was not the only bereavement he suffered in Gough Square. Two months before he left it, in 1759, his mother died at Lichfield, – 'one of the few calamities,' he had told Lucy Porter, 'on which he thought with terror.' Confined to London by his work, he was not able to close her eyes; but he wrote to her a last letter almost too sacred in its wording for the profanation of type, and he consecrated an 'Idler' to her memory. 'The last year, the last day, must come,' he says mournfully. 'It has come, and is past. The life which made my own life pleasant is at an end, and the gates of death are shut upon my prospects.' To pay his mother's modest debts, and to cover the expenses of her funeral, he penned his sole approach to a work of fiction, – the story of 'Rasselas.'
Who now reads Johnson? If he pleases still,
'Tis most for Dormitive or Sleeping Pill, —
one might say, in not inappropriate parody of Pope. His strong individuality, his intellectual authority, his conversational power, must live for ever; but his books! – who, outside the fanatics of literature, – who reads them now? Macaulay, we are told by Lord Houghton, once quoted 'London' at a dinner-table, but then he was talking to Dean Milman; and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his novel of 'A Mortal Antipathy,' refers to the Prince of Abyssinia.
Browning, says Mrs. Sutherland Orr, qualified himself for poetry in his youth by a diligent perusal of the Dictionary; and it may perhaps be said of him, in those words of Horace which Johnson himself applied to Prior, that 'the vessel long retained the scent which it first received.' But who now, among the supporters of the circulating libraries, ever gets out the 'Rambler,' or 'Irene,' or the 'Vanity of Human Wishes' (beloved of Scott and Byron), or 'Rasselas,' – 'Rasselas,' once more popular than the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 19 – 'Rasselas,' which despite such truisms as 'What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted,' is full of sagacious 'criticism of life'!
The honest answer must be, 'Very few.' Yet a day may come when the Johnsonese of Johnson's imitators will be forgotten, and people will turn once more to the fountain-head to find, with surprise, that it is not so polluted with Latinisms after all, and that it abounds in passages direct and forcible. 'Of all the writings which are models,' says Professor Earle, 'models I mean in the highest sense of the word, models from which the spirit of genuine true and wholesome diction is to be imbibed (not models of mannerism of which the trick or fashion is to be caught), I have no hesitation in saying that there is one author unapproachably and incomparably the best, and that is Samuel Johnson.' And this is the 'deliberate conclusion' of an expert who has given almost a lifetime to the comparative study of English prose.