Three months after Johnson had moved to London to attempt to become a ‘dramatick writer,’ he returned to Lichfield where he had left Tetty, and took her back to London with him. Tetty’s daughter who had been living with her was left with relatives in the country. Boswell remarks that, ‘As there is something pleasingly interesting, to many, in tracing so great a man through all his different habitations, I shall before this work is concluded, present my readers with an exact list of his lodgings and houses, in order of time, which in placid condescension to my respectful curiosity, he one evening dictated to me, but without specifying how long he lived at each.’ So Boswell writes that the Johnsons on arrival in London first lived near Hanover Square and then afterwards in Castle Street, Cavendish-square, close to where I once lived myself.
Johnson had been writing a play called ‘Irene’ for a long while and having finally finished it, took it to Mr Fleetwood at Drury Lane Theatre, who turned it down, and so it was not acted until 1749 when David Garrick, his friend, became manager of the theatre – it’s not what you know, but who you know.
He began writing for The Gentleman’s Magazine, and that remained his primary way of making money for many years. Boswell thinks it was probably a tolerable livelihood, but goes on to describe his work at this time, which included translation from Italian and French, as ‘ [Johnson] was employed during some of the best years of his life, as a mere literary labourer ‘‘for gain, not glory,’’ solely to obtain an honest support. But he did however write ‘London, a Poem, in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal’ which was published in 1738. Boswell writes Johnson pretended he hadn’t written it himself and that he ‘offers to allow the printer to ‘‘alter any stroke of the satire which he might dislike.’’ The ‘printer’ was in fact Mr Cave, who owned The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Boswell says that if any part of it was altered that we ‘could not but feel an indignant regret; but how painful it is to see that a writer of such vigorous powers of mind was actually in such distress, that the small profit which so short a poem, however excellent, could yield, was courted as a ‘‘relief.’’ As Johnson, in his humble letter to Mr Cave, had written that its publication, [and therefore payment] would relieve distress.
Apparently – but Boswell didn’t know if this is true or not– Johnson had offered it to several booksellers, who used to pay by the line for literature, and they all turned him down.
At a much later stage in The Life of Samuel Johnson, Boswell tells us about another of Johnson’s peculiarities, and it’s one we’re probably all familiar with now in modern life: ‘he had another particularity, of which none of his friends even ventured to ask an explanation. It appeared to me some superstitious habit, which he had contracted early, and from which he had never called upon his reason to disentangle him. This was his anxious care to go out or in at a door or passage, by a certain number of steps from a certain point, or at least so that either his right or his left foot, (I am not certain which), should consistently make the first actual movement when he came close to the door or passage. Thus I conjecture; for I have, upon innumerable occasions, observed him stop, and then seem to count his steps with a deep earnestness; and when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and, having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and join his companion.’ That is just one of his behaviours; others come out later and are described simply and accurately by Boswell.
Although he was struggling to survive as a writer, regarding his poem London Boswell was told that, ‘Every body was delighted with it; and there being no name to it, the first buz of the literary circle was, ‘‘here is an unknown poet, greater even than Pope.’’ The Gentleman’s Magazine in which it was published, ‘got to the second edition in the course of a week.’
Boswell thought the poem to be ‘one of the noblest productions in our language, both for sentiment and expression’ and despite some small imperfections, he found in the poem ‘the most spirited invectives against tyranny and oppression…’ He remarks upon the fact that Johnson was then only twenty nine and ‘had been so little in the ‘‘busy haunts of men’’ yet had written as if he was much older.
However, despite the poem’s success and his own sudden fame, Johnson was unable to take advantage of his situation and ‘such was his inflexible dignity of character, that he could not stoop to court the great; without which any man has made his way to a high station.’ Not much has changed then.
Boswell thought that Johnson would be unlikely to produce another poem of such excellence and because he ‘felt the hardships of writing for bread’ he decided to try to teach again so that at least he could have a moderate income. So Johnson, like some writers these days ‘gave up his day job’ to try to establish himself as a writer, and then thought better of it.
