In the last blog I mentioned Dr. Johnson’s play ‘Irene’ that his friend Garrick offered to stage for him at the Drury Lane theatre in 1749, and how Johnson fought against Garrick’s suggestions for editing and then gave in reluctantly. Boswell tells us that ‘On occasion of this play being brought upon the stage, Johnson had a fancy that as a dramatic author his dress should be more gay than what he ordinarily wore; he therefore appeared behind the scenes, and even in one of the side boxes, in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold laced hat.’ [Bless him.]
The play was not liked by the audience and Boswell attempts to analyse it in his Life of Johnson. He says: ‘Irene, considered as a poem, is entitled to the praise of superior excellence. Analysed into parts, it will furnish a rich store of noble sentiments, fine imagery, and beautiful language; but it is deficient in pathos, in that delicate power of touching the human feelings, which is the principal end of the drama. [A comment made by one of Johnson’s contemporaries about the play echoes Boswell’s feelings, saying that the play had a ‘‘… strong sense ungraced by sweetness or decorum.’’] Boswell continues, ‘Indeed Garrick has complained to me, that Johnson not only had not (awful phrase), the faculty of producing impressions of tragedy, but that he had not the sensibility to perceive them.’ That’s a curious finding in the face of Johnson’s swooning regard for Richard Savage, whom he speaks about with almost cloying melodrama and sentiment.
Anyhow when all was said and done and the play failed, Johnson realised that he had little talent for writing plays, and never attempted to do it again. It’s possible that he’d realised it a long time ago anyway and never discussed it with anyone, because he’d written most of Irene in 1736. It’s interesting that at that time a friend, having read it, said ‘‘how can you possibly contrive to plunge her into deeper calamity!’’ So it seems as if Johnson’s treatment of his fictional female character was felt to be cold, or lacking in compassion perhaps, by those who saw the play.
When Johnson was questioned about how he felt at the failure of the play he said ‘‘a man … who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals, must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions.’’
Despite the failure of the play, ‘His necessary attendance while his play was in rehearsal, and during its performance, brought him acquainted with many of the performers of both sexes, which produced a more favourable opinion of their profession than he had harshly expressed in his Life of Savage.’
It seemed he used to hang around the Green Room talking to the actors and Boswell says that he ‘… seemed to take delight in dissipating his gloom, by mixing in the sprightly chit-chat of the motley circle then to be found there.’ Apparently he finally gave this up, explaining to Garrick that ‘‘I’ll come no more behind your scenes, David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.’’
Where was Tetty?
In 1750, Johnson began to write a twice weekly periodical called ‘The Rambler’ which was not a walkers’ magazine, but a series of articles on morality, [good], society, politics and religion written in what was described as elevated prose. Perhaps this periodical was more weighty and intellectual than those it followed such as The Spectator and The Tatler. It lasted two years, and closed on 17th March 1752. Boswell quotes from Johnson that ‘‘A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.’’ Boswell remarks that Johnson carried on with The Rambler without assistance for two years ‘notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary.’
Joshua Reynolds once asked Johnson how come he had such a command of language, such ‘extraordinary accuracy and flow of language.’ Johnson, according to Boswell, ‘told him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company: to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him.’
Well, I couldn’t think of any better advice for a writer than that. These days all that writers seem to be able to produce if asked what advice they’d give to would-be writers, are lame and often repeated remarks [no pun intended], like ‘read, read, read.’ Whereas in fact what writers who care about language, and that doesn’t cover all of us, I realise, need to do is to attempt to ever improve the quality of their writing, or at least to strive to do that.
So here is one of Johnson’s elegantly written pieces for The Rambler on the business of marriage, he himself being married of course to… what’s her name?
THE RAMBLER Saturday May 19th 1750.
THERE is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution had withheld from it.
This general unhappiness has given occasion to many sage maxims among the serious, and smart remarks among the gay; the moralist and the writer of epigrams have equally shewn their abilities upon it; some have lamented, and some have ridiculed it; but as the faculty of writing has been chiefly a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has been always thrown upon the women, and the grave and the merry have equally thought themselves at liberty to conclude either with declamatory complaints, or satirical censures, of female folly or fickleness, ambition or cruelty, extravagance or lust.
Led by such a number of examples, and incited by my share in the common interest, I sometimes venture to consider this universal grievance, having endeavoured to divest my heart of all partiality, and place myself as a kind of neutral being between the sexes, whose clamours being equally vented on both sides with all the vehemence of distress, all the apparent confidence of justice, and all the indignation of injured virtue, seem entitled to equal regard. The men have, indeed, by their superiority of writing, been able to collect the evidence of many ages, and raise prejudices in their favour by the venerable testimonies of philosophers, historians, and poets; but the pleas of the ladies appeal to passions of more forcible operation than the reverence of antiquity. If they have not so great names on their side, they have stronger arguments: it is to little purpose that Socrates, or Euripides, are produced against the sighs of softness, and the tears of beauty. The most frigid and inexorable judge would at least stand suspended between equal powers, as Lucan was perplexed in the determination of the cause, where the deities were on one side, and Cato on the other.
But I, who have long studied the severest and most abstracted philosophy, have now, in the cool maturity of life, arrived at such command over my passions, that I can hear the vociferations of either sex without catching any of the fire from those that utter them. For I have found, by long experience, that a man will sometimes rage at his wife, when in reality his mistress has offended him; and a lady complain of the cruelty of her husband, when she has no other enemy than bad cards. I do not suffer myself to be any longer imposed upon by oaths on one side, or fits on the other; nor when the husband hastens to the tavern, and the lady retires to her closet, am I always confident that they are driven by their miseries; since I have sometimes reason to believe, that they purpose not so much to soothe their sorrows, as to animate their fury. But how little credit soever may be given to particular accusations, the general accumulation of the charge shews, with too much evidence, that married persons are not very often advanced in felicity; and, therefore, it may be proper to examine at what avenues so many evils have made their way into the world.
