Sir," was the reply, "we were too much awed to laugh." It was a marked feature in Johnson's character that he was fond of female society; so fond, indeed, that on coming to London he was obliged to be on his guard against the temptations to which it exposed him. He left off attending the Green Room, telling Garrick, "I'll come no more behind your scenes, Davy; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities." The proneness of his imagination to wander in this forbidden field is unwittingly betrayed by his remarking at Sky, in support of the doctrine that animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable: "I have often thought that, if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, or cotton, I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silks: you cannot tell when it is clean: it will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so; linen detects its own dirtiness." His virtue thawed instead of becoming more rigid in the North. "This evening," records Boswell of their visit to an Hebridean chief, one of our married ladies, a lively pretty little woman, good-humouredly sat down upon Dr. Johnson's knee, and being encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round his neck and kissed him. 'Do it again,' said he, and let us see who will tire first.' He kept her on his knee some time whilst he and she drank tea." 66 The Rev. Dr. Maxwell relates in his "Collectanea," that "Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. 'Come,' said he, 'you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject:' which they did, and after dinner he took one of them upon his knee, and fondled her for half an hour together." * Women almost always like men who like women; or as the phenomenon is explained by Pope "Lust, through some certain strainers well refined, Johnson, despite of his unwieldy figure, scarred features and uncouth gestures, was a favourite with the fair, and talked of affairs of the heart as things of which he was entitled to speak from personal experience as confidently as of any other moral or social topics. He told Mrs. Thrale, without the smallest consciousness of presumption or what Mr. Square would term the unfitness of things, of his and Lord Lyttleton's having contended for Miss Boothby's preference with an emulation that occasioned hearty disgust and ended in lasting animosity. "You may see," he added, when the Lives of the Poets were printed, "that dear "Amongst his singularities, his love of conversing with the prostitutes he met in the streets, was not the least. He has been known to carry some of these unfortunate creatures into a tavern, for the sake of striving to awaken in them a proper sense of their condition. I remember, he said, once asking one of them for what purpose she supposed her Maker had bestowed on her so much beauty. Her answer was, 'To please the gentlemen, to be sure; for what other purpose could it be given me?" (Johnsoniana.) He once carried one, fainting from exhaustion, home on his back. Boothby is at my heart still. She would delight in that fellow Lyttleton's company though, all that I could do, and I cannot forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like hers.” * Mr. Croker surmises that "Molly Aston," not "dear Boothby," must have been the object of this rivalry † ; and the surmise is strengthened by Johnson's calling Molly the loveliest creature he ever saw; adding (to Mrs. Thrale), "My wife was a little jealous, and happening one day when walking in the country to meet a fortunehunting gipsy, Mrs. Johnson made the wench look at my hand, but soon repented of her curiosity, for,' says the gipsy, 'your heart is divided between a Betty and a Molly: Betty loves you best, but you take most delight in Molly's company.' When I turned about to laugh, I saw my wife was crying. Pretty charmer, she had no reason." This pretty charmer was in her forty-eighth year when he married her, he being then twenty-seven. He told Beauclerc that it was a love match on both sides; and Garrick used to draw ludicrous pictures of their mutual fondness, which he heightened by representing her as short, fat, tawdrily dressed, and highly rouged. 66 On the question whether "Molly Aston" or dear In point of personal advantages the man of rank and fashion and the scholar were nearly on a par. "But who is this astride the pony, So long, so lean, so lank, so bony? † See "Croker's Boswell," p. 672, and Malone's note in the prior edition. Boothby" was the cause of his dislike of Lyttleton, one of Mrs. Piozzi's marginal notes is decisive. "Mrs. Thrale (says Boswell) suggests that he was offended by Molly Aston's preference of his lordship to him." She retorts: "I never said so. I believe Lord Lyttleton and Molly Aston were not acquainted. No, no: it was Miss Boothby whose preference he professed to have been jealous of, and so I said in the Anecdotes."" One of Rochefoucauld's maxims is: "Young women who do not wish to appear coquette, and men of advanced years who do not wish to appear ridiculous, should never speak of love as of a thing in which they might take part." Mrs. Thrale relates an amusing instance of Johnson's adroitness in escaping from the dilemma: "As we had been saying one day that no subject failed of receiving dignity from the manner in which Mr. Johnson treated it, a lady at my house said, she would make him talk about love; and took her measures accordingly, deriding the novels of the day because they treated about love. It is not,' replied our philosopher, 'because they treat, as you call it, about love, but because they treat of nothing, that they are despicable: we must not ridicule a passion which he who never felt, never was happy, and he who laughs at, never deserves to feel a passion which has caused the change of empires, and the loss of worldsa passion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice.' He thought he had already said too much. A passion, in short,' added he, with an altered tone, 'that consumes me away for my pretty Fanny here, 6 and she is very cruel,' speaking of another lady (Miss Burney) in the room." As the high-flown language which he occasionally employed in addressing or discussing women, has originated a theory that the basis or essence of his character was romance, it may be as well to contrast what he said in soberer moods on love. He remarked to Dr. Maxwell, that "its violence and ill-effects were much exaggerated; for who knows any real sufferings on that head, more than from the exorbitancy of any other passion?" On Boswell asking him whether he did not suppose that there are fifty women in the world with any of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular, he replied, “Ay, Sir, fifty thousand. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord-chancellor upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances without the parties having any choice in the matter." On another occasion he observed that sensible men rarely married for love. These peculiarities throw light on more questions than one relating to Johnson's prolonged intimacy and alleged quarrel with Mrs. Thrale. His gallantry, and the flattering air of deferential tenderness which he threw into his commerce with his female favourites, may have had little less to do with his domestication at Streatham than his celebrity, his learning, or his wit. The most submissive wife will manage to dislodge an inmate who is displeasing to her, Aye, a marriage, man," said Bucklaw to his led captain, "but wherefore droops thy mighty 66 |