In 1751 Johnson was still compiling his dictionary while continuing to work on the Rambler periodicals. At the same time he wrote a preface to a book written by William Lauder in which Milton is accused of plagiary. Boswell reasons that Johnson can’t have known anything about this alleged stealing of material. More importantly, a year later when Johnson had written the last article for the Rambler, Tetty Johnson died aged 63. Boswell writes that ‘Her wedding-ring, when she became his wife, was, after her death, preserved by him, as long as he lived, with an affectionate care, in a little round wooden box…’
A bit of gossip now – there was a time, I mentioned it in blog 9, when Tetty was living at Hampstead – ‘Mrs. Johnson, for the sake of country air, had lodgings at Hampstead, to which he [Johnson] resorted occasionally, and there the great part, if not the whole, of this Imitation was written.’ Well, apparently Boswell spoke to a Mrs. Desmoulins who lived with Tetty in Hampstead before her own marriage, and she said of Tetty that ‘she indulged herself in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expence, while her husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no means treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in a wife.’ I take ‘complacency’ here to mean calmness rather than indifference. Of course, thinking back wasn’t Johnson at that point still hanging out with Richard Savage? Perhaps he didn’t want to go home to Tetty.
Boswell is quick to respond to Mrs. Desmoulins statement, saying this: ‘But all this is perfectly compatible with his fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high opinion of her understanding, and that the impressions which her beauty, real or imaginary, had originally made upon his fancy, being continued by habit, had not been effaced, though she herself was doubtless much altered for the worse.’ I’m not quite sure what to make of this statement. It seems that he’s saying he continued to be devoted to her… but perhaps was blind to what was happening to her, [and that she was disintegrating, perhaps with the help of cordials.] I suspect that Johnson didn’t look after her properly; he didn’t spend enough time with her. There is something a little ambiguous in what Boswell says above. So perhaps while Johnson loved Tetty in a slavish, possibly childish way, he never understood any of his responsibilities towards her, and so neglected her. Anyhow, that difference in their ages might have tilted the relationship into more of a mother and son type of connection. Certainly when a Dr. Taylor visited Johnson on the night of Tetty’s death he found him ‘in tears and in extreme agitation.’
A couple of weeks after Tetty’s death Francis Barber, who was brought to England from Jamaica in 1750 as a slave, joined Johnson’s household as a servant.
Francis agreed with others that Johnson’s sufferings at the death of Tetty were more severe than in Boswell’s words ‘what are commonly endured.’
But is it reasonable to measure a man’s love for his wife by how he behaves when she dies? He might have been crying for himself. Also, it has to be remembered, and Boswell does, that he was a depressive. Boswell says ‘These sufferings were aggravated by the melancholy inherent in his constitution; and although he probably was not oftener in the wrong than she was, in the little disagreements which sometimes troubled his married state, during which, he owned to me, that the gloomy irritability of his existence was more painful to him than ever, he might very naturally, after her death, be tenderly disposed to charge himself with slight omissions and offences, the sense of which would give him much uneasiness.’ Heck! Makes you wonder then if he wasn’t ‘disposed to charge himself with slight omissions and offences’ when she was alive.
Because Boswell was such a user-up of women himself, I guess he understood Johnson’s giving way to temptations, and perhaps he admired that Johnson felt guilty about his behaviour, as from what I have read about Boswell, he certainly did not. Apparently, about a year after Tetty’s death, Johnson wrote ‘‘O Lord, who givest the grace of repentance, and hearest the prayers of the penitent, grant that by true contrition I may obtain forgiveness of all the sins committed, and of all duties neglected, in my union with the wife whom thou has taken from me.’’
This plea suggests to me that he might well have been neglecting her, and he only truly realised it after she was dead. And here’s an interesting statement from Boswell which acknowledges that Johnson had a temper and that he thought his wife was in Limbo – ‘The kindness of his [Johnson’s] heart, notwithstanding the impetuosity of his temper, is well known to his friends, and I cannot trace the smallest foundation for the following dark and uncharitable assertion by Sir John Hawkins: ‘‘The apparition of his departed wife was altogether of the terrifick kind, and hardly afforded him a hope that she was in a state of happiness.’’ I don’t know if this means the way she died, or how she looked when she died, but it was generous of Boswell to include it in The Life of Dr. Johnson if he didn’t believe it himself. Further, Johnson had written to God asking that Tetty be received to ‘eternal happiness,’ and that she should be granted whatever was best for her ‘in her present state’ [Limbo].
She was buried in Bromley in Kent, only Boswell describes it this way:- ‘He [Johnson] deposited the remains of Mrs. Johnson in the church of Bromley in Kent…’ Curious phrase, I thought.
However, although Tetty died, Johnson was surrounded by friends, including Joshua Reynolds the painter, and he was still working on his dictionary. One of Johnson’s friends in particular seems to have caught Boswell’s attention. He talks about Mr. Robert Levet, ‘an obscure practiser in physick amongst the lower people’ who charged people only what they could afford and whose patients lived across a wide area of London, from Houndsditch to Marylebone. From what Boswell wrote about Robert Levet, although quite subtle, I get the sense that he, again, was slightly puzzled by Johnson’s adoration of Levet. Boswell says ‘It appears from Johnson’s diary, that their acquaintance commenced about the year 1746; and such was Johnson’s predilection for him, [Levet], and fanciful estimation of his moderate abilities, that I have heard him say he should not be satisfied, though attended by all the College of Physicians, unless he had Mr. Levet with him. Ever since I was acquainted with Dr. Johnson, and many years before, as I have been assured by those who knew him earlier, Mr. Levet had an apartment in his house, or his chambers, and waited upon him every morning, through the whole course of his late and tedious breakfast. He was of a strange grotesque appearance, stiff and formal in his manner, and seldom said a word while any company was present.
Mr. Robert Levet, friend to Dr. Johnson for 36 years.
