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The genius -- Samuel Johnson
I've lately adopted the theory that all human strivings - love, sex, fame, salvation, health, family, achievement - are really puny human efforts to forestall, eliminate, or deny death. So, in effect, people face a choice -- live for today or else fool yourself that you'll attain immortality.
Which brings us to James Boswell. If we assay the most famous works in the English language, we are drawn immediately to Shakespeare - perhaps the only person to have spoken the language who is known to virtually all contemporary English-speakers.
But there is another man whose work has lasted almost as long as Shakespeare's - in fact has grown in esteem over its lifetime. And it was produced by a man not known to be a genius (although that view is growing). He is James Boswell, the biographer who wrote the Life of Johnson, about the most brilliant man of letters - and especially the most brilliant conversationalist - of his era, Samuel Johnson.
Boswell is an unlikely immortal. He was a deeply flawed, dissatisfied, and melancholy man. Scottish born and linked to his family estate there, Boswell was by trade a lawyer. His father, who administered the Boswell property and left James a small stipend (which he regularly dissipated - the younger Boswell was always in debt), was a prestigious jurist in Edinburgh. Boswell never lived up to his father's model, or his standards. And he was perpetually cowed by his failure to do so.
Later in his life, Boswell encountered Johnson - then himself 53 - on one of his regular jaunts to London. They quickly became intimate associates, an intense intellectual, personal, and social relationship that lasted the remaining 21 years of Johnson's life (Johnson lived from 1709 to 1784).
Ironically, everyone knew Johnson to be a genius; the leading intellectual and artistic lights of that time quoted his bon mots and pugnacious intellectual judgments - Johnson's was the decisive literary and critical voice in the English language (today he is best known for creating the first English dictionary). He was a conservative, a Tory, known for strict moral judgments. But his was an expansive, adventurous, always thoughtful mind.
Boswell was drawn to Johnson by his own ambivalence and moral uncertainty. Boswell came from the stern Scottish Presbyterian church, and he constantly debated with himself free will versus determinism. The hard-headed Johnson was likely to dispense with all such irresolvable philosophical debates - most famously, in response to the claim there is no physical reality (associated with the Reverend Berkeley), Johnson uttered, "I refute Berkeley thus," and kicked a rock.
Yet Johnson was riven with guilt for making out with a chambermaid when his wife refused him sex, while Boswell spent his time whoring and cheating on his wife, whom he loved and who was devoted to him, but whom he left behind in Scotland with their five children on his forays. Boswell was in a sense guilty about his behavior (especially since he regularly got venereal disease), but he didn't internalize guilt as Johnson did.
People - then and now - often think of Boswell as a lightweight. "For the first 100 years or so after the Life of Johnson was published, critics tended to take the line that it was a great book written by a simpleton who just happened to be in the right place at the right time." (Quotes are from Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson.)
Critics don't think that now. Boswell's ample notes are available at Yale. And they reveal that quite bit of work, preparation, and thought went into creating what, in modern form, is a five-volume biography (six, including with it, as is usually done, the separately published Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, the wild Scottish islands to which Boswell and Johnson traveled together).
In fact, Boswell created a whole new genre - one that revised how biography was written, how celebrity was dealt with, and how even we think about great figures. It was Boswell's concept to record Johnson on the hoof, as it were, describing in detail his utterances, mannerisms, and attitude, while interspersing these with Johnson's letters, journals, published observations, and others' recollections of the man and his mind. Boswell didn't shirk from recording Johnson's strange mannerisms; his uncouth dress, wigs, and style of eating; his often belittling put-downs of others (including, frequently, Boswell); and his ferocious temper. This had simply never been done before - it was inconceivable.
When you do something completely original, you have to figure out how to do it. Boswell perfected a style of listening carefully to - sometimes provoking - discussions, then going home as soon as he was able (and that was often quite a bit later, after long nights of conversing, eating, and drinking) to write out the events and conversations. Of course, this recollected talking - including the formulations of Johnson's famous statements and the roles played by the others present - actually comprised set pieces that Boswell created. A lot of words are said in a 4-10 hour gathering of intensely verbal people. Crafting them into a pleasing and meaningful tableau is an art form.
Participating in - often maneuvering - these discussions, remembering and rewriting them, researching the large part of Johnson's life where Boswell wasn't present, took quite a bit of skill and effort. Although Boswell was by all reckoning a mediocre lawyer, he was greatly gifted in present communication. For one example, Johnson had known the greatest Shakespearean actor of the time, David Garrick (think along the lines of Richard Burton) all of the younger man's life. One night, a contest was held, seeing whether Garrick or Boswell could imitate Johnson better. Garrick won when reading verse as Johnson did. But Boswell's imitation of Johnson's circumlocution - including his stentorian voice, his tics, his careless manner of moving his arms and body, his loudly punctuating his put downs and declamations with a pointed "Sir" - brought the house down, so to speak, among a very discerning audience. Boswell could inhabit Johnson.
The greatness of the book was recognized immediately (although many objected to their portrayals in the volumes), even as its reputation has grown ever since then. So Boswell was a happy man, right? You see, fighting his father's disparagement, Boswell his whole life aspired to be taken seriously, to be recognized as a superior being, to leave a mark on the world. But he failed to do so in his own eyes, even after writing the greatest work of its type in the English language.
By the time the book was finished, his life was in chaos. Boswell had reached 50 without winning any of the glittering prizes he had once confidently anticipated. He had abandoned the Edinburgh bar but his career at the English bar was at a standstill. His hopes of a seat in Parliament had come to nothing. No other official post that he considered suitable to his talents had come his way, something he found difficult to explain. An arrogant and insulting patron humiliated him (Boswell was always seeking approval and support from men of higher stature). He had disgraced himself repeatedly by drinking and whoring to the distress of his family and the detriment of his health.
Let's stop here. Drinking and whoring? Boswell, when feeling down, would go on alcoholic binges, frequenting the lowest quarters of town - and seeking out the sexual attentions of the denizens there.
Following these lapses, he was usually remorseful, often confessing to his wife where he had been and what he had done. . . .distressing to her were his bouts of very heavy drinking, which led him into dangerous scrapes and which often left him hung over the next day. "It gave me much concern to be informed by my dear wife that I had been quite outrageous in my drunkenness the night before. . . .that I had cursed her in a shocking manner and even thrown a candlestick with a lighted candle at her."
What an alcoholic. Wait, what does Sisman say? "But he was not an alcoholic; these drunken bouts were punctuated by periods of sobriety of six months or more."
What? Is this guy an idiot? Doesn't he know what alcoholism looks like? Clearly, he is being misled by the image of Boswell when he really started cooking in writing the biography (which took him seven years). He would work through the day, skipping tea and food (let alone alcohol), often working into the next morning. You see, it seems it was only when involved with this great task, or the steps leading up to it (like keeping his journal) that Boswell escaped the self-loathing and emotional distress that satiated his life and caused his drinking binges and other outbursts.
Thus, the complexity of Boswell. He was a deeply flawed man driven to seek recognition, who often sought it in the wrong places. Even after he had begun his great work, "He was still dreaming of making a mark in the world, of getting into Parliament, and of becoming a great man." Against all odds, he achieved renown for eternity (or for as much of it as we mortals can comprehend). And yet, he was an unhappy man whose life ended badly - including the early death of his wife due to tuberculosis, even as he neglected her while writing the Life.
But Boswell will be known for as long as English is spoken.
Was it worth it?
I don't know.
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P.S. (January 31):
This, the next to last paragraph in Sisman's book, is simply too great a tour de force about both Johnson and Boswell to omit:
"I write therefore I am alive," the besotted, grief-stricken Johnson wrote to the dying Hill Boothby. Thought a fool in so many ways, Boswell had the wit to recognize the greatness in this sad, lonely, shabby, quick-tempered, warm-hearted, difficult man. Mrs Piozzi once remarked dismissively that Johnson's life consisted of little more than writing and talking. But Boswell conceived of Johnson's life as a drama of epic, almost mythic proportions. He depicted Johnson as a hero who defied oblivion, who strove mightily to impose meaning on chaos, illuminating the darkness through the clarity of his intellect and the force of his mind. Boswell's Johnson was a solitary genius who grappled single-handedly with the universe: often neglected, but proud, defiant, and independent. His biography shows how the life of a writer -- no less than of a soldier or a statesman -- could encompass every variety of human experience: disappointment, triumph, courage, despair, anger, tenderness, laughter, and tragedy.
