Part 10

Dr. Burney had afterwards, however, the consolation to find that Mr. Crisp had impressed even Dr. Johnson with a strong admiration of his knowledge and capacity; for in speaking of him in the evening to Mr. Thrale, who had been absent, the Doctor emphatically said, “Sir, it is a very singular thing to see a man with all his powers so much alive, when he has so long shut himself up from the world. Such readiness of conception, quickness of recollection, facility of following discourse started by others, in a man who has long had only the past to feed upon, are rarely to be met with. Now, for my part,” added he, laughing, “that _I_ should be ready, or even universal, is no wonder; for my dear little mistress here,” turning to Mrs. Thrale, “keeps all my faculties in constant play.”

Mrs. Thrale then said that nothing, to her, was so striking, as that a man who so long had retired from the world, should so delicately have preserved its forms and courtesies, as to appear equally well bred with any elegant member of society who had not quitted it for a week.

Inexpressibly gratifying to Dr. Burney was the award of such justice, from such judges, to his best and dearest loved friend.

From this time forward, Dr. Burney could scarcely recover his daughter from Streatham, even for a few days, without a friendly battle. A sportively comic exaggeration of Dr. Johnson’s upon this flattering hostility was current at Streatham, made in answer to Dr. Burney’s saying, upon a resistance to her departure for St. Martin’s-street in which Dr. Johnson had strongly joined, “I must really take her away, Sir, I must indeed; she has been from home so long.”

“Long? no, Sir! I do not think it long,” cried the Doctor, see-sawing, and seizing both her hands, as if purporting to detain her: “Sir! I would have her Always come ... and Never go!—”

* * * * *

MR. BOSWELL.

When next, after this adjuration, Dr. Burney took the Memorialist back to Streatham, he found there, recently arrived from Scotland, Mr. Boswell; whose sprightly Corsican tour, and heroic, almost Quixotic pursuit of General Paoli, joined to the tour to the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson, made him an object himself of considerable attention.

He spoke the Scotch accent strongly, though by no means so as to affect, even slightly, his intelligibility to an English ear. He had an odd mock solemnity of tone and manner, that he had acquired imperceptibly from constantly thinking of and imitating Dr. Johnson; whose own solemnity, nevertheless, far from mock, was the result of pensive rumination. There was, also, something slouching in the gait and dress of Mr. Boswell, that wore an air, ridiculously enough, of purporting to personify the same model. His clothes were always too large for him; his hair, or wig, was constantly in a state of negligence; and he never for a moment sat still or upright upon a chair. Every look and movement displayed either intentional or involuntary imitation. Yet certainly it was not meant as caricature; for his heart, almost even to idolatory, was in his reverence of Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Burney was often surprised that this kind of farcical similitude escaped the notice of the Doctor; but attributed his missing it to a high superiority over any such suspicion, as much as to his near-sightedness; for fully was Dr. Burney persuaded, that had any detection of such imitation taken place, Dr. Johnson, who generally treated Mr. Boswell as a school boy, whom, without the smallest ceremony, he pardoned or rebuked, alternately, would so indignantly have been provoked, as to have instantaneously inflicted upon him some mark of his displeasure. And equally he was persuaded that Mr. Boswell, however shocked and even inflamed in receiving it, would soon, from his deep veneration, have thought it justly incurred; and, after a day or two of pouting and sullenness, would have compromised the matter by one of his customary simple apologies, of “Pray, Sir, forgive me!”

Dr. Johnson, though often irritated by the officious importunity of Mr. Boswell, was really touched by his attachment. It was indeed surprising, and even affecting, to remark the pleasure with which this great man accepted personal kindness, even from the simplest of mankind; and the grave formality with which he acknowledged it even to the meanest. Possibly it was what he most prized, because what he could least command; for personal partiality hangs upon lighter and slighter qualities than those which earn solid approbation; but of this, if he had least command, he had also least want: his towering superiority of intellect elevating him above all competitors, and regularly establishing him, wherever he appeared, as the first Being of the society.

As Mr. Boswell was at Streatham only upon a morning visit, a collation was ordered, to which all were assembled. Mr. Boswell was preparing to take a seat that he seemed, by prescription, to consider as his own, next to Dr. Johnson; but Mr. Seward, who was present, waived his hand for Mr. Boswell to move further on, saying, with a smile, “Mr. Boswell, that seat is Miss Burney’s.”

He stared, amazed: the asserted claimant was new and unknown to him, and he appeared by no means pleased to resign his prior rights. But, after looking round for a minute or two, with an important air of demanding the meaning of this innovation, and receiving no satisfaction, he reluctantly, almost resentfully, got another chair; and placed it at the back of the shoulder of Dr. Johnson; while this new and unheard of rival quietly seated herself as if not hearing what was passing; for she shrunk from the explanation that she feared might ensue, as she saw a smile stealing over every countenance, that of Dr. Johnson himself not excepted, at the discomfiture and surprise of Mr. Boswell.

Mr. Boswell, however, was so situated as not to remark it in the Doctor; and of every one else, when in that presence, he was unobservant, if not contemptuous. In truth, when he met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything that was said, or attending to any thing that went forward, lest he should miss the smallest sound from that voice to which he paid such exclusive, though merited homage. But the moment that voice burst forth, the attention which it excited in Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leant his ear almost on the shoulder of the Doctor; and his mouth dropt open to catch every syllable that might be uttered: nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing; as if hoping from it, latently, or mystically, some information.

But when, in a few minutes, Dr. Johnson, whose eye did not follow him, and who had concluded him to be at the other end of the table, said something gaily and good-humouredly, by the appellation of Bozzy; and discovered, by the sound of the reply, that Bozzy had planted himself, as closely as he could, behind and between the elbows of the new usurper and his own, the Doctor turned angrily round upon him, and, clapping his hand rather loudly upon his knee, said, in a tone of displeasure, “What do you do there, Sir?—Go to the table, Sir!”

Mr. Boswell instantly, and with an air of affright, obeyed: and there was something so unusual in such humble submission to so imperious a command, that another smile gleamed its way across every mouth, except that of the Doctor and of Mr. Boswell; who now, very unwillingly, took a distant seat.

But, ever restless when not at the side of Dr. Johnson, he presently recollected something that he wished to exhibit, and, hastily rising, was running away in its search; when the Doctor, calling after him, authoritatively said: “What are you thinking of, Sir? Why do you get up before the cloth is removed?—Come back to your place, Sir!”

Again, and with equal obsequiousness, Mr. Boswell did as he was bid; when the Doctor, pursing his lips, not to betray rising risibility, muttered half to himself: “Running about in the middle of meals!—One would take you for a Brangton!—”

“A Brangton, Sir?” repeated Mr. Boswell, with earnestness; “What is a Brangton, Sir?”

“Where have you lived, Sir,” cried the Doctor, laughing, “and what company have you kept, not to know that?”

Mr. Boswell now, doubly curious, yet always apprehensive of falling into some disgrace with Dr. Johnson, said, in a low tone, which he knew the Doctor could not hear, to Mrs. Thrale: “Pray, Ma’am, what’s a Brangton?—Do me the favour to tell me?—Is it some animal hereabouts?”

Mrs. Thrale only heartily laughed, but without answering: as she saw one of her guests uneasily fearful of an explanation. But Mr. Seward cried, “I’ll tell you, Boswell,—I’ll tell you!—if you will walk with me into the paddock: only let us wait till the table is cleared; or I shall be taken for a Brangton, too!”

They soon went off together; and Mr. Boswell, no doubt, was fully informed of the road that had led to the usurpation by which he had thus been annoyed. But the Brangton fabricator took care to mount to her chamber ere they returned; and did not come down till Mr. Boswell was gone.

ANNA WILLIAMS.

Dr. Burney had no greater enjoyment of the little leisure he could tear from his work and his profession, than that which he could dedicate to Dr. Johnson; and he now, at the Doctor’s most earnest invitation, carried this Memorialist to Bolt Court, to pay a visit to the blind poetess, Anna Williams.

They were received by Dr. Johnson with a kindness that irradiated his austere and studious features into the most pleased and pleasing benignity. Such, indeed, was the gentleness, as well as warmth, of his partiality for this father and daughter, that their sight seemed to give him a new physiognomy.[35]

It was in the apartment—a parlour—dedicated to Mrs. Williams, that the Doctor was in this ready attendance to play the part of the master of the ceremonies, in presenting his new guest to his ancient friend and ally. Anna Williams had been a favourite of his wife, in whose life-time she had frequently resided under his roof. The merit of her poetical talents, and the misfortune of her blindness, are generally known; to these were now super-added sickness, age, and infirmity: yet such was the spirit of her character, that to make a new acquaintance thus rather singularly circumstanced, seemed to her almost an event of moment; and she had incessantly solicited the Doctor to bring it to bear.

Her look, air, voice, and extended hands of reception, evinced the most eager, though by no means obtrusive curiosity. Her manner, indeed, shewed her to be innately a gentlewoman; and her conversation always disclosed a cultivated as well as thinking mind.

Dr. Johnson never appeared to more advantage than in the presence of this blind poetess; for the obligations under which he had placed her, were such as he sincerely wished her to feel with the pleasure of light, not the oppression of weighty gratitude. All his best sentiments, therefore, were strenuously her advocates, to curb what was irritable in his temper by the generosity of his principles; and by the congeniality, in such points, of their sensibility.

His attentions to soften the burthen of her existence, from the various bodily diseases that aggravated the evil of her loss of sight, were anxious and unceasing; and there was no way more prominent to his favour than that of seeking to give any solace, or shewing any consideration to Anna Williams.

Anna, in return, honouring his virtues and abilities, grateful for his goodness, and intimately aware of his peculiarities, made it the pride of her life to receive every moment he could bestow upon her, with cordial affection; and exactly at his own time and convenience; to soothe him when he was disposed to lament with her the loss of his wife; and to procure for him whatever was in her power of entertainment or comfort.

This introduction was afterwards followed, through Dr. Johnson’s zealous intervention, by sundry other visits from the Memorialist; and though minor circumstances made her compliance rather embarrassing, it could not have been right, and it would hardly have been possible, to resist an entreaty of Dr. Johnson. And every fresh interview at his own home showed the steady humanity of his assiduity to enliven his poor blind companion; as well as to confer the most essential services upon two other distressed inmates of his charitable house, Mrs. Desmoulins, the indigent daughter of Dr. Swinfen, a physician who had been godfather to Dr. Johnson; and Mr. Levet, a poor old ruined apothecary, both of whom he housed and supported with the most exemplary Christian goodness.

HISTORY OF MUSIC.

Dr. Burney was daily more enchanted at the kindness with which his daughter was honoured by Dr. Johnson; but neither parental exaltation, nor the smiles of fortune; nor the enticing fragrance of those flowery paths which so often allure from vigorous labour to wasting repose, the votary of rising fame; could even for a day, or scarcely for an hour, draw the ardent and indefatigable musical historian to any voluntary relaxation from his self-appointed task; to which he constantly devoted every moment that he could snatch from the multitudinous calls upon his over-charged time.

MR. GARRICK.

But the year that followed this still rising tide of pleasure and prosperity to Dr. Burney, 1779, opened to him with the personal loss of a friend whom the world might vainly, perhaps, be challenged to replace, for agreeability, delight, and conviviality, Garrick!—the inimitable David Garrick! who left behind him all previous eminence in his profession beyond reach of comparison; save the Roscius of Rome, to whose Ciceronian celebrity we owe the adoption of an appropriate nomenclature, which at no period could have been found in our own dominions:—Garrick, so long the darling and unrivalled favourite of the public; who possessed resistlessly, where he chose to exert it, the power of pleasing, winning, and exhilarating all around him:—Garrick, who, in the words of Dr. Johnson, seemed “Formed to gladden life,” was taken from his resplendent worldly fame, and admiring worldly friends, by “that stroke of death,” says Dr. Johnson, “which eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the stock of harmless pleasure.”

He had already retired from the stage, and retired without waiting for failing powers to urge, or precipitate his retreat; for still his unequalled animal spirits, gaily baffling the assaults of age, had such extraordinary exuberance as to supply and support both body and mind at once; still clear, varying, and penetrating, was his voice; still full of intelligence or satire, of disdain, of rage, or of delight, was the fire, the radiance, the eloquence of his eye; still made up at will, of energy or grace, of command or supplication, was his form, and were his attitudes; his face alone—ah! “There was the rub!—” his face alone was the martyr of time: or rather, his forehead and cheeks; for his eyes and his countenance were still beaming with recent, though retiring beauty.

But the wear and tear of his forehead and cheeks, which, as Dr. Johnson had said, made sixty years in Garrick seem seventy, had rendered them so wrinkled, from an unremitting play of expression, off as well as on the stage, that, when he found neither paint nor candle-light, nor dress nor decoration, could conceal those lines, or smooth those furrows which were ploughing his complexion; he preferred to triumph, even in foregoing his triumphs, by plunging, through voluntary impulse, from the dazzling summit to which he had mounted, and heroically pronouncing his Farewell!—amidst the universal cry, echoed and re-echoing all around him, of “Stop, Garrick, stop!—yet a little longer stop!”

A brief account of the last sight of this admired and much loved friend is thus given in a manuscript memoir of Dr. Burney.

“I called at his door, with anxious inquiries, two days before he expired, and was admitted to his chamber; but though I saw him, he did not seem to see me,—or any earthly thing! His countenance that had never remained a moment the same in conversation, now appeared as fixed and as inanimate as a block of marble; and he had already so far relinquished the world, as I was afterwards told by Mr. Wallace, his executor, that nothing that was said or done that used to interest him the most keenly, had any effect upon his muscles; or could extort either a word or a look from him for several days previously to his becoming a corpse.”

Dr. Burney, in the same carriage with Whitehead, the poet laureate, the erudite Mr. Beauclerk, and Mr. Wallace, the executor, attended the last remains of this celebrated public character to their honourable interment in Westminster Abbey.

Long, and almost universally felt was this loss: to Dr. Burney it was a deprivation of lasting regret. In his doggrel chronology he has left the following warm testimony of his admiration.

1779.

“This year joy and sorrow alike put on sable For losses sustained by the stage and the table, For Garrick, the master of passion, retired, And Nature and Shakespeare together expired. Thalia’s as well as Melpomene’s magic, With him at once vanished both comic and tragic. Long, long will it be, now by Death he is slain, Before we shall see his true likeness again. Such dignified beauties he threw in each part, Such resources of humour, of passion, and art;— Hilarity missed him, each Muse dropped a tear, And Genius and Feeling attended his bier.”

* * * * *

YOUNG CROTCH.

Just as this great dramatic genius was descending to the tomb, young Crotch, a rising musical genius, was brought forward into the world with so strong a promise of eminence, that a very general desire was expressed, that Dr. Burney would examine, counsel, and countenance him; and at only three years and a half old, the child was brought to St. Martin’s-street by his mother.

The Doctor, ever ready to nourish incipient talents submitted to his investigation, saw the child repeatedly; and was so forcibly struck by his uncommon faculties, that upon communicating his remarks to the famous Dr. Hunter, who had been foremost in desiring the examination, Dr. Hunter thought them sufficiently curious to be presented to the Royal Society; where they were extremely well received, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the year 1779.

For some time after this, the Doctor was frequently called upon, by the relations and admirers of this wonderful boy, for assistance and advice; both which he cheerfully accorded to the best of his ability: till the happy star of the young prodigy fixed him at the University of Oxford, where he met with every aid, professional or personal, that his genius claimed; and where, while his education was still in progress, he was nominated, when only fourteen years of age, organist of Christ Church.

This event he communicated to Dr. Burney in a modest and grateful letter, that the Doctor received and preserved with sincere satisfaction; and kindly answered with instructive professional counsel.

In his chronological lines, the Doctor says—

“Little Crotch, a phenomenon, now first appeared, And each minstrel surprised, howe’er gray was his beard: To my learned associates who write F. R. S. Both the why and the wherefore I humbly address; And endeavour to shew them, without diminution, What truly is strange in this bard Lilliputian: What common, what wanting, to make him surpass The composers and players of every class.

* * * * *

MR. THRALE.

The event next narrated in the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, proved deeply affecting to the happiness and gaiety of his social circles; for now a catastrophe, which for some time had seemed impending, and which, though variously fluctuating, had often struck with terror, or damped with sorrow, the liveliest spirits and gayest scenes of Streatham, suddenly took place; and cut short for ever the honours and the peace of that erst illustrious dwelling.

Mr. Thrale, for many years, in utter ignorance what its symptoms were foreboding, had been harbouring, through an undermining indulgence of immoderate sleep after meals, a propensity to paralysis. The prognostics of distemper were then little observed but by men of science; and those were rarely called in till something fatal was apprehended. It is, probably, only since the time that medical and surgical lectures have been published as well as delivered; and simplified from technical difficulties, so as to meet and to enlighten the unscientific intellect of the herd of mankind, that the world at large seems to have learned the value of early attention to incipient malady.

Even Dr. Johnson was so little aware of the insalubrity of Mr. Thrale’s course of life, that, without interposing his powerful and never disregarded exhortations, he often laughingly said, “Mr. Thrale will out-sleep the seven sleepers!”

Strange it may seem, at this present so far more enlightened day upon these subjects, that Dr. Johnson, at least, should not have been alarmed at this lethargic tendency; as the art of medicine, which, for all that belongs to this world, stands the highest in utility, was, abstractedly, a study upon which he loved to ruminate, and a subject he was addicted to discuss. But this instance of complete vacuity of practical information upon diseases and remedies in Dr. Johnson, will cease to give surprise, when it is known that, near the middle of his life, and in the fullest force of his noble faculties, upon finding himself assailed by a severe fit of the gout in his ancle, he sent for a pail of cold water, into which he plunged his leg during the worst of the paroxysm—a feat of intrepid ignorance—incongruous as sounds the word ignorance in speaking of Dr. Johnson—that probably he had cause to rue during his whole after-life; for the gout, of which he chose to get rid in so succinct a manner—a feat in which he often exulted—might have carried off many of the direful obstructions, and asthmatic seizures and sufferings, of which his latter years were wretchedly the martyrs.

Thus, most unfortunately, without representation, opposition, or consciousness, Mr. Thrale went on in a self-destroying mode of conduct, till,

“Uncall’d—unheeded—unawares—”

he was struck with a fit of apoplexy.

Yet even this stroke, by the knowledge and experience of his medical advisers,[36] might perhaps have been parried, had Mr. Thrale been imbued with earlier reverence for the arts of recovery. But he slighted them all; and fearless, or, rather, incredulous of danger, he attended to no prescription. He simply essayed the waters of Tunbridge; and made a long sojourn at Bath. All in vain! The last and fatal seizure was inflicted at his own town house, in Grosvenor Square, in the spring of 1781: and at an instant when such a blow was so little expected, that all London, amongst persons of fashion, talents, or celebrity, had been invited to a splendid entertainment, meant for the night of that very dawn which rose upon the sudden earthly extinction of the lamented and respected chief of the mansion.

STREATHAM.

Changed now was Streatham! the value of its chief seemed first made known by his loss; which was long felt; though not, perhaps, with the immediate acuteness that would have been demonstrated, if, at that period, the deprivation of the female chieftain had preceded that of the male. Still Mr. Thrale, by every friend of his house and family; and by every true adherent to his wife, her interest, her fame, and her happiness, was day by day, and week by week, more and more missed and regretted.