651. London’s Golden Age: Sex and Scandal in Georgian Britain (Part 2)

Summary

The Rest Is History – Episode 651

London’s Golden Age: Sex and Scandal in Georgian Britain (Part 2)

Date: March 12, 2026
Hosts: Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the colorful, extravagant, and contradictory world of Georgian London, centering on James Boswell’s arrival from Scotland and his adventures—both high and low—in the capital. Through Boswell’s own vivid diaries, Tom and Dominic explore friendship, fame, love, morality, and scandal, using his journey and his relationship with Samuel Johnson as a lens to understand mid-18th-century London society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

James Boswell: Portrait of a Georgian Libertine

• The double life of Boswell: Boswell is depicted as a man torn between hedonistic pursuits and sincere moral aspirations.
  • "What a curious, inconsistent thing is the mind of man... I was laying plans for having women, and yet I had the most sincere feelings of religion." – Dominic (01:41, quoting Boswell)
• Arrival in London:
  • Boswell’s journey from Edinburgh is fraught but exhilarating; London is "the promised land" and a symbol of glamour and opportunity.
    • “When we came upon Highgate Hill and had a view of London, I was all life and joy. And he had given three huzzahs.” – Tom (03:27)
• Celebrity hunting and clubs: Boswell revels in London’s social and cultural life, attending exclusive clubs like the Beefsteak Club.
  • “We had nothing to eat but Beefsteaks and had wine and punch in plenty and freedom. We had a number of songs.” – Tom (05:26)

Sex, Scandal, and Prostitution

• Boswell’s carnal exploits: His journals lay bare his pursuit of pleasure, especially his encounters with prostitutes, and his battles with sexually transmitted diseases (notably the "clap" – gonorrhea).
  • “From the splendid madam at 50 guineas a night down to the civil nymph… for a pint of wine at a shilling.” – Tom (07:19, quoting Boswell)
• Complexity and contradiction: Boswell is at once shameless and wracked with guilt, seeking both pleasure and moral guidance.
  • “He is, as his journal makes clear, a compound of contradictions and incompatibilities.” – Tom (08:13)

The Search for a Mentor: Enter Samuel Johnson

• Fathers and father figures: Boswell’s difficult relationship with his actual father (Lord Auchinleck) drives him to seek a moral and intellectual “sheet anchor” in Johnson.
  • “He has this fantasy that in a sense, Johnson can provide him with the kind of father figure that his own father doesn’t.” – Tom (09:32)
• Contrasts between Johnson and Boswell’s father: Johnson is a literary Tory and Anglican, Lord Auchinleck a judgmental Whig and Presbyterian.
• Johnson as mentor and moral guide: Johnson’s robust, sometimes bearish advice becomes a touchstone for Boswell, helping him cope with his failures and anxieties.
  • “Consider, sir, how insignificant this will appear a 12 month hence.” – Johnson, quoted by Tom (25:26)

The Louisa Affair: Comedy and Tragedy

• Romantic misadventures: Boswell’s affair with Louisa, an actress, is recounted with humor and self-mortification—a blend of “mad novel,” erotic confession, and social farce.
  • “Five times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture… I patrolled up and down Fleet street, thinking on London, the seat of Parliament and the seat of pleasure…” – Tom (16:00, 17:00, quoting Boswell)
• Consequences: The affair quickly cools, ends in STD infection, social awkwardness, and an embarrassing attempt to reclaim borrowed money.

Boswell’s Descent and Redemption

• Depression and dissipation: Failed ambitions and illness (from gonorrhea) plunge Boswell into melancholy and renewed licentiousness, despite attempts at self-control (such as making vows and using early condoms, or “armor”).
  • “He surrenders to what he calls the foul fiend of the genitals.” – Tom (20:15)
• The first meetings with Johnson: Despite all, Boswell persists in seeking Johnson’s company, growing emotionally reliant on his counsel.

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The Grand Tour: Celebrity Encounters across Europe (34:39–49:01)

• Legal studies in Utrecht: Boswell’s attempt to reform himself through “an inviolable plan” fails amid boredom and loneliness.
  • “You are now determined to form yourself into a man.” – Tom (35:14, quoting Boswell)
• Germany: Unsuccessful attempt to meet Frederick the Great, self-parody with his Scottish bonnet.
• Switzerland: Boswell’s relentless charm lands him in the company of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which he records in detail—providing invaluable primary-source insights for historians.
  • “If he’d had a smartphone, he would so have recorded it all and put it on social media.” – Tom (39:41)
• Voltaire: Similar bravura in meeting Voltaire, with Boswell delighting in the “fair opposition” between himself and “the most famous infidel in Europe.”
  • “‘Monsieur de Voltaire and I remained in the drawing room with the great Bible before us and if ever two mortal men disputed with vehemence, we did…’” – Tom (41:32, quoting Boswell)
• Italy and Corsica: Boswell idolizes Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican revolutionary, adopting his cause and costume and using both for self-promotion back in Britain.
  • “He returns from the island with a full outfit of Corsican clothes and Paoli has given him a pair of pistons, so he’s got those as well.” – Tom (47:09)
• Boswell as early advocacy tourist: Comparison to modern activists and "gap year" adventurers.

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Boswell’s Return and The Shadow of Johnson (49:01–64:15)

• Back to London: Boswell’s exotic travels and activism garners him mild fame (“Corsica Boswell”) and social cachet, but the fantasy fades with the collapse of Corsican independence.
  • “It is fine to have such a character as I have. I enjoy it much.” – Tom (54:08, quoting Boswell)
• Johnson’s growing impatience with Corsica:
  • “Empty your head of Corsica, which I think has filled it rather too long.” – Dominic (58:51, quoting Johnson)
• Entrance to ‘The Club’: Johnson arranges for Boswell’s membership in the most exclusive society—a circle of luminaries including Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke.
  • “It is such a society as can seldom be found.” – Tom (61:58, quoting Boswell)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Boswell’s paradoxical mindset:
  • “He is, as his journal makes clear, a compound of contradictions and incompatibilities.” – Tom (08:13)
• Boswell’s style of celebrity hunting:
  • “If he’d had a smartphone, he would so have recorded it all and put it on social media.” – Tom (39:41)
• Johnson on Scottish travel:
  • “Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.” – Johnson, quoted by Tom (24:34)
• Boswell’s self-awareness:
  • “I just sat and hugged myself in my own mind.” – Tom (62:02, quoting Boswell)
• Johnson’s advice, mixing wit and care:
  • “Consider, sir, how insignificant this will appear a 12 month hence.” – Johnson, quoted by Tom (25:26)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:41 – Boswell in church planning sexual exploits (Dominic reads from Boswell’s diary)
• 04:41 – Boswell’s arrival in London and first impressions
• 07:00–09:00 – Boswell on London’s sex trade, his sexual contradictions
• 13:29–19:33 – The affair with Louisa: escalation, anticlimax, disease, and parting
• 20:15–22:24 – Boswell’s downward spiral into dissipation and depression; first Johnson encounter
• 23:12–27:10 – Johnson’s advice and Boswell’s growing reverence for him; the Greenwich excursion
• 34:39–41:46 – Boswell’s European tour: Utrecht, Germany, Rousseau, Voltaire
• 43:47–49:01 – Boswell with Paoli in Corsica and his return home
• 49:01–62:05 – Boswell’s return; activism for Corsica; integration into London’s elite; Johnson/Boswell dynamic
• 64:15–64:25 – Johnson decides to visit Scotland: “The adventure is on.”

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Tone and Style

Tom and Dominic maintain their trademark blend of scholarly expertise, wry humor, and affection for their eccentric subjects. The episode’s tone is lively, candid, and often self-satirizing, mirroring Boswell’s own literary style.

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Conclusion & Next Episode Teaser

The episode ends with Johnson finally agreeing to visit Scotland, setting up the next great adventure and hinting at further exploration of their famous friendship, personal growth, and eventual parting.

“Samuel Johnson is coming to Scotland and the most famous literary expedition in British history is about to begin.” – Tom (64:16)

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For Further Exploration

Rest Is History Club:
Mentioned several times as a tongue-in-cheek echo of the Georgian club culture.

Next episode:
Promised to cover the “tremendous expedition” to Scotland, the deepening of Johnson and Boswell’s bond, and the final fate of Georgian Britain’s most unlikely double act.

Transcript

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

Sunday, 28th of November, I breakfasted with Mr. Douglas. I went to St. James's Church and heard service and a good sermon on by what means shall a young man learn to order his ways, in which the advantages of early piety were well displayed. What a curious, inconsistent thing is the mind of man in the midst of divine service. I was laying plans for having women, and yet I had the most sincere feelings of religion. So that was James Boswell writing in his journal six months before his fateful meeting with Samuel Johnson, the hero of this story in in Thomas Davis Bookshop. So Boswell had begun this great journal, one of the most glittering, scintillating records of life in the 18th century ever written. Arguably the most complete record of what it's like to live in the 18th century. He'd begun this enormous project two weeks earlier. But who was this young man who was sitting in church having all these fantasies about having women during the sermon of all moments?

[Tom Holland]

Shocking.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tom, tell all.

[Tom Holland]

Well, as people will be able to tell from your accent, James Boswell is a Young Scot. He's 22 years old at this point. He's stocky in build and there's a hint of fleshiness, I think, in his face, perhaps a precursor of how he will look in middle age. But he's very kind of mobile in expression. People always comment on this. And he has a face that many years later, a judge who had known him would describe as impossible to look upon without being moved by the comicality which always rained upon it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He looks fun.

[Tom Holland]

Not only does he look fun, but he is fun. People like him very, very instinctively. And he's just arrived in London when he put it down, that journal entry that you read from Edinburgh. And honestly, he couldn't be more thrilled about it. So the journey from Edinburgh down to London had taken him three days. It had been quite brutal. They kind of lost a wheel outside Berwick and so on. And so when they arrive, Boswell, well, he writes in his journal, when we came upon Highgate Hill and had a view of London, I was all life and joy. And he had given three huzzahs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, lovely.

[Tom Holland]

We love a man who gives three huzzahs when he's happy, I think.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So just to remind people what this story is, it's the story of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. It's a brilliant window into friendship, into 18th century London, into 18th century Britain. This country that at this point is teeming with life and energy and excitement. It is becoming the most modern and the most powerful country in the world. And we're using their story as a way into telling that story. So actually, London, he's giving the three Hussars, isn't he? Because London to Boswell, represents the promised land. It's everything he's ever hoped for.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So it offers him glamour and Boswell loves glamour. So he takes rooms in the very centre of things, in Downing street, where the Prime Minister lives now. But he's using it as a base for all kinds of things. So he's using it as a base for shopping. He goes out and buys what he describes as a genteel violet coloured frock suit. So he loves clothes. He meets lots of celebrities. We said in the previous episode how Boswell is a great celebrity hunter. So he's hanging out with actors and poets and politicians and lords and all kinds of people like that. And he goes to lots of exclusive clubs and of course, the 18th century loves a club and he goes to one. The Beefsteak Club. Yeah, we had nothing to eat but Beefsteaks and had wine and punch in plenty and freedom. We had a number of songs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So it's very like the Rest is History Club, which people, if they're interested, they can head to the restishistory.com to sign up and they will get similar quantities of Beefsteaks and songs especially. The rest is History Festival, which is this July at Hampton Court Palace.

[Tom Holland]

That is so expertly done. But Dominic, just to go back to the history, you did an episode on Beefsteak, didn't you?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Beef and liberty.

[Tom Holland]

So this is the kind of the dimension of London that Boswell, although a Scot, is very enthusiastically entering this notion of England as a home of liberty. London also represents to Boswell a sense of escape and opportunity. So he's just up in Edinburgh, his father is the law lord, very determined that Boswell is going to become a lawyer. Boswell has scraped through his law examinations, but he's come to London basically because he's hoping for a much more glamorous career. Namely he wants to enter the guards and kind of taz around London in a bright red coat and all of that. That's also a crucial part of what has brought him to the Capitol. But there is another aspect as well which was hinted at. Well, more than hinted at. I mean, he's absolutely drawing attention to it in that sermon. And this is what Boswell, elsewhere in his journal describes as the wars of the Paphian Queen, by which he essentially means having lots of sex. So the Paphian Queen is Venus. And Boswell in particular has a kind of, one could describe it perhaps as a bent for prostitutes. London, of course at this point has multitudes of prostitutes. Many of them are disease ridden. And Boswell himself has already, as a result of this, caught the clap at gonorrhea.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And so he's nervous about getting it again. And in the early weeks of his arrival in London, he's actually incredibly impressed with what he describes as his own wonderful continence. On the 14th of December, just a month or so after his arrival in London. It is very curious to think that I have now been in London several weeks without ever enjoying the delightful sex. Although I am surrounded with numbers of free hearted ladies of all kinds. From the splendid madam at 50 guineas a night to down to the civil nymph with white thread stockings who tramps along the strand and will resign her engaging person to your honour for a pint of wine at a shilling.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I feel like the pint of wine element would be off putting for me. I feel like somebody who's, who's advertising their wares for a pint of wine is poor on all sides.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, I think the point is that Boswell is willing to go with whatever class of prospect he can pick up.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So this makes Boswell sound a very Bad man. However, he is simultaneously desperate for moral guidance. I mean, he's fantasizing about women in church, but he is in church. What he really wants, I think, is someone to put him on the straight and narrow.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, he just wants to be loved.

[Tom Holland]

So he is, as his journal makes clear, a compound of contradictions and incompatibilities. And he traces these incompatibilities right the way through his journal. So he's a very open, gregarious, friendly man, but at the same time, he's very prone to deep melancholy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

He's very bumptious and self regarding. So he's always making comments in his journal like, I am one of the most engaging men that ever lived and clearly means it. But he's also very lacking in self confidence. And as we've said, he's a prodigious womanizer, but he is looking to reform himself. And this, I think, is a crucial part of his fascination with great men, which will be a theme of this episode. It's not just that he's a celebrity hunter, it's more than that. He is looking for someone who can serve him as a mentor, as a kind of moral sheet anchor, if you like, stopping him from drifting and straying all over the place.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And the person that he has long cast in that role is Samuel Johnson, who he talked about in the last episode, the great polymath man of letters from Lichfield in the West Midlands. And Boswell has looked up to him since he was a child.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So his father, who we will find out doesn't really approve of Johnson, nevertheless had copies of his moral essays in his library, and Boswell had read them, and they had given him this kind of idea of London as the home of this tremendous sage. And so I think that is also part of why Boswell has come to London. He has this fantasy that in a sense, Johnson can provide him with the kind of father figure that his own father doesn't.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

Because his father, Lord Affleck, this Scottish law lord, is a very intimidating man. And he's actually the opposite to Johnson. He doesn't really have much time for kind of literary men, which Johnson is. Lord Affleck is a Whig and Johnson is a Tory. Lord Affleck is a Presbyterian and Johnson is an Anglican. And so there's a sense, I think, that Boswell coming to London, it's an overt act of rebellion against his father, really.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, he's proud of his, you know, his father, his lineage, all that kind of thing. Isn't he, Boswell? He's not completely rebelling against the Boswells.

[Tom Holland]

No, I mean, just the opposite. And this is another way in which Boswell is such a complicated man. Even as he's coming to London looking for a father figure, he remains incredibly proud of his father and inordinately proud of the entire Boswell name, as you suggest. So the Boswells are an ancient noble family. Boswell has a forefather who had died for the Scottish king at Flodden, and he has a mother who, in a very tangential sense that Boswell is always harping upon, has a kind of relationship, a distant relationship to the Scottish monarchy. And he is particularly sentimental about the ancestral seat of the Boswells, which is this place, Affleck, which I'd always thought it was pronounced as it's spelt, Auchinleck, but apparently it is Affleck. And this is set south of Glasgow, the rolling green hills of Ayrshire, north of Dumfries, and it has this tremendously romantic keep on a kind of gorge above the meeting place of two rivers. And even though Lord Affleck has just completed a very kind of fancy classical mansion, which is still standing there to this day, Boswell's heart is always going to be lying with the ruins. I felt a classic enthusiasm in the romantic shades of our family seat. So Boswell is kind of. He's a snob, but he's a romantic snob.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So he's born in 1740, so, you know, he's one of the first generations, I guess, to be really infused with the spirit of Romanticism in some ways, that kind of nostalgic kind of sentimentality when you're looking at old ruins and

[Tom Holland]

all of that stuff, which his father absolutely is not. His father does not approve of people who have, you know, lively imaginations and romantic leanings, or indeed Toryism. And Lord Affleck is just unbelievably impatient with what he sees as his son's frivolity. So Boswell, we've said he's gregarious. Lord Affleck thinks he's much too gregarious, that he talks too much, that he laughs too loudly, that he's a show off. Lord Affleck, I'm afraid to say, is not a fan of impersonations and impressions.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The lowest and meanest kind of wit.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, terrible. And obviously Lord Affleck is not amused by the fact that Boswell is already in debt, that he's having all these affairs, that he's having these periodic doses of the clap. This is not going down at all well with the Presbyterian law, Lord. And so you can see, I think, why Boswell, even as he loves his father and admires him, might be looking around for someone slightly, slightly less challenging perhaps. Although actually the man he ends up with is also going to prove quite challenging.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Pretty challenging if he's going to twitch at you. So the person he's got his heart set on is Samuel Johnson, who is obviously the opposite of his father in every way. He's kind of warm and. Well, he's warm in his own way, I suppose, but he's a character, shall we say. But for the time being, Boswell puts his energies into, what does he call it, the wars of the Paphian Queen? He does because he's been abstemious for the first few weeks, but eventually his resistance collapses and he becomes particularly interested in an actress at the Covent Garden Theatre and he gives her the pseudonym of Louisa.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, and the point about Louisa is that she's the daughter of quite well bred born parents. And so Boswell assumes that not, you know, I mean, her beauty is obviously very important to him, but so also is the very strong probability that she won't have gonorrhea.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

He thinks, I'm going to play it safe. I'm not going to go, you know, roaming around the streets. I'm going to stick with this beautiful actress.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Sensible. From him, I think it's the first

[Tom Holland]

great tour de force in his journal, his account of this relationship with Louisa. It reads like a kind of mad novel and it's kind of variously erotic, but also full of completely mortifying behavior on the part of Boswell, all of which he details.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

Without any sense of kind of inhibition at all. And I think it's worth looking at in some detail because it gives you a real sense not just of Boswell's character, but of his kind of genius as a writer of journals. So he's met up with Louisa and in due course he is admitted into her rooms and he finds her, as he describes it, in a pleasing, undressed. At this point, both of them are kind of pretending to be shy, but both commit to future meetings. And so Boswell duly comes back, they sit down and they have a very titillating discussion about the different ways in which English and French men pursue amorous escapades. And of course, now it's starting to get a bit more titillating.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, a bit spicy, but it's still

[Tom Holland]

kind of protracted courtship. You know, there are more meetings, but Boswell makes certain at their Next meeting, as he puts it, to inform her by my looks of my passion for her. And I don't quite know what that would mean.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He looks at her in a smouldering way. If you know how to do it, you know how to do it, Tom. What can I say? Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So the visits continue and on one of them, Boswell suddenly feels what he describes as the fine delirium of love. So he is, he's now absolutely committed.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And on his next meeting, Louisa says, look, I'm a bit skint. Would you lend me two guineas?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, that's a red flag for me.

[Tom Holland]

And Boswell, feeling very gall, does so. And then the next time, he kisses her with great warmth. She received this very genteelly. I had a delicacy in presuming too far, lest it should look like demanding goods for my money. I resumed the subject of love. So there's a certain caginess there. Louisa doesn't want to seem like, you know, she's selling herself and Boswell doesn't want to look like that's what he thinks she's doing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But at this point they agree to meet in two days time where the affair will be consummated. And so Boswell arrives full of excitement. But then, disaster. I felt the tormenting anxiety of serious love. He can't perform.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, no way.

[Tom Holland]

So he sits down beside her in despair. I would have given a good deal to be out of the room. And he gets up to go and he's about to leave. Then suddenly saluting her with warmth. My powers were excited. I felt myself vigorous.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. He's become more Scottish as he's become more excited, which is interesting.

[Tom Holland]

She's smart. She plays him along, you know, she's still not surrendering to him and she tells him such a thing requires time to consider of. And Boswell, of course, you know, she knows exactly what she's doing. Boswell is now he finds himself really violently in love with Louisa. And the climax of this affair arrives at last on the 12th of January. Boswell's had a three week courtship. And it's a long and very voluptuous night. Five times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture. And there's a lot more of that kind of thing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And then the next morning, I love this. I patrolled up and down Fleet street, thinking on London, the seat of Parliament and the seat of pleasure, and seeming to myself as one of the wits in King Charles II's time. So he's imagining himself as a restoration rake and it's so Boswell that he's always kind of watching himself playing out roles. There's a sense in which the journal is operating on two levels. There's what Boswell is doing, and then there's Boswell watching himself, often in a state of kind of wonder at how brilliant he is.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Slightly, disappointingly for Boswell, despite the five moments of rapture, almost immediately he decides that actually he's a bit sick of Louisa. I observed an affectation about her which disgusted me. That's strong. After all that. Geez.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, again, you get the kind of the classic sense that the chase was all. And now he's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's caught his quarry. He's not as interested. But the fair goes on until then. On 20 January, there is a disaster because he's been feeling a kind of pain in his nether regions. And he goes to the doctor and he is diagnosed with that distemper with which Venus, when Cross takes it into her head to plague her votaries, he's got the clap.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, Louise has let herself down.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. And so he. He goes to Louisa and she says, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm not infected, I promise. And then she finally says, well, I did have it three years ago, but I'm completely cured. And Boswell is furious. But he then tells her, look, I'm not going to blacken your name by this. And he feels so pleased with himself for doing this. During all this conversation, I really behaved with a manly composure and polite dignity that could not fail to inspire an awe.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, that's good from him. But the next thing that happens, however, slightly undermines, though.

[Tom Holland]

So, yeah, so he's incredibly pleased with his kind of moral forbearance when he's with Louisa. But he then goes away and he starts to fulminate about it and get more and more irate. And then he starts thinking, I lent her two guineas, she's got the guineas, I want my guineas back. And so he writes her this incredibly priggish letter. Send the money sealed up, I have nothing more to say to you. And Louisa then returns it. Yeah, she had genuinely borrowed it. And so all Boswell's darkest thoughts are shown to be false, and he is briefly mortified. I felt a strange kind of mixed confusion. My tender heart relented. I thought I had acted too harshly with her. And so he's feeling ashamed. But then the next day, he mentions the whole story to a friend. He said it was just a piece of deep artifice in her I resolved to think no more on the matter and was glad that I had come off two guineas better than I expected.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, to be fair to Louisa, she did give him the money back.

[Tom Holland]

Exactly.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I don't think she comes out badly from this story particularly.

[Tom Holland]

No, but I mean, her gesture had made Boswell feel bad about himself, and so he's now looking for reasons not to feel bad about himself, and he finds one. And what's incredible about this is that he writes it all down in incredible detail so that we, two and a half centuries on, can exactly track the appalling way, an incredibly human way, in which he's responded to the whole shenanigans.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So this was in January, all this, and the months have passed, or the weeks have passed, and he's been feeling increasingly miserable, no doubt because of the after effects of the gonorrhea as much as anything. So he's actually just got sick of London, hasn't he? He thought London was brilliant and now he's changed his mind.

[Tom Holland]

Yep. And what always happens with Boswell when he's depressed is that he. He basically goes on a kind of spree, right? He surrenders to what he calls the foul fiend of the genitals.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That is a foul fiend. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And he's been walled up in his room, you know, getting over his gone and rear. Now he's come out and he's determined not to get it again. So when he goes out on the town, he wears what he calls armor. That is a kind of primitive condom.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And he's roaming St. James's park, where all the most glamorous prostitutes are to be picked up on the Haymarket. And on one occasion, he actually takes a girl from the Haymarket down to Westminster Bridge simply for the excitement of having sex with her with the Thames rolling below us. He says. It amused me much. So he's.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's easily pleased.

[Tom Holland]

Well, I think a man who likes to spice up his pleasures in all kinds of strange ways, but this is a kind of index of his unhappiness. And he's depressed as well. Not just that, he's sinking into kind of dissipation, as he puts it. I mean, he. He doesn't feel great about what he's doing. He's still doing it, but he doesn't feel great about it. But he's depressed as well that he has failed to secure a commission in the guards. You know, he's not going to be tazzing around in a red coat. And this means essentially that he is going to have to pursue a career in the law, which is what his father had always intended for him. And so he's highly suspicious that it is Lord Affleck, his father, who has pulled strings and denied him his chance to be in the guards.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. And this is what sets the scene for the meeting with Samuel Johnson that we described at the beginning of the last episode. And, you know, this is the moment to which he's looked forward for so long, but actually that foul fiend is still on his shoulder. Right. Because just after he meets Johnson, he's back out on the streets and he's forgotten his armor. Yeah, poor from Boswell.

[Tom Holland]

It doesn't stop him. So, you know, he's playing riskily.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But it's clear, I think, that despite this, or maybe because of this, he's still very keen to have Johnson's advice, his friendship and above all, I think, his moral guidance. And although Johnson had been quite bearish with him, you know, he'd been very rude about him being Scottish and so on.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Boswell plucks up courage, and one week after his first meeting with Johnson, he goes to meet the great man in his chambers in a temple lane. And Boswell has a brilliant description of how Johnson received him. He received me very courteously, but it must be confessed that his apartment and furniture and morning dress were sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty. He had on a little old shrivelled, unpowdered wig which was too small for his head. His shirt, neck and knees of his breeches were loose, his black worsted stockings ill drawn up, and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment that he began to talk.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he dresses like Boris Johnson, actually, sort of slovenly, almost ostentatiously slovenly. But actually, the more that Boswell goes to see him, the slovenliness is overlooked. He really falls in love with Johnson, doesn't he? Don't you think? I mean, he was primed for it before he went, but he becomes, you know, he starts to think, actually, Johnson really does like me. He's giving him maybe a bit less. Maybe some of the barbs about Scotland have a little less poison than they did beforehand.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, the barbs continue. I think what Boswell does feel that Johnson likes him. And Indy, of course, Johnson will say this specifically, but I think there's the kind of the magic of Johnson's conversation. And Boswell finds in Johnson a Kind of a great champion of conversation. It's like watching a tremendous sports star taking on all comers. And that, I think is a crucial part of the thrill of it for Boswell. So he's, you know, he gives a couple of instances of Johnson's conversation in the kind of the early meetings, which illustrates this. So on one occasion there's a critic who's written a bad review of a tragedy and the critic is saying, ah, well, actually, maybe I shouldn't have given the bad review, because who am I? I can't write a tragedy. And Johnson's very contemptuous of this. Why no, sir, this is not just reasoning. You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's not wrong.

[Tom Holland]

That's the critic flattened. And then there's another Scot, not Boswell, who is talking to Johnson. But Boswell is listening. And this Scot insists that his country had many noble prospects. And Johnson comes back, sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England. Boswell, Right. This unexpected and pointed Sally produced a roar of applause.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This is tremendous banter, massive banter.

[Tom Holland]

But this makes the fact that Johnson seems to like Boswell all the more kind of glorious for Boswell. And Johnson starts to give him exactly the kind of comfort and moral guidance that Boswell had been looking for. So Boswell gets evicted from his rooms in Downing street because he's been having a late night party. And Johnson, unlike Lord Affleck, would have torn his head off at this. Johnson doesn't. He says, consider, sir, how insignificant this will appear a 12 month hence.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's good advice.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it's such good advice. It's such good advice. And then when in due course, Lord Affleck says, you are going to become a lawyer to his son. And Boswell says, okay, but maybe I could I go and study law in Utrecht in the Low Countries? And Lord Affleck says, yes, okay, I'll pay you to do that. And Boswell's kind of initially happy about this, but then he, he starts to worry, isn't Utrecht going to be very boring? He's going to have to leave London. He's going to have to leave Dr. Johnson. And he really becomes quite depressed about this. And Johnson recognize it. And because he knows that the two of them are going to have to part, he suggests a trip to Greenwich. So downriver from London, and they take a boat and they talk and they talk and they talk. Boswell's entire description of this day is wonderful, but just to give some. Some highlights from it. So they're talking about whether learning matters. Boswell says, of course. Everybody should learn. And Johnson says, well, you know, there are lots of people who don't need learning for their job. I don't think that it matters to them at all. And he then turns to the boy who is rowing them in the boat, and he says, this boy rows us as well, without learning, as if he could sing the song of Orpheus to the Argonauts, who were the first sailors. So he. He doesn't need to know about Jason and the Argonauts to row the boat. He then called to the boy, what would you give, my lad, to know about the Argonauts, sir? Said the boy, I would give what I have. Now, that's contradicting what Johnson had argued, but Boswell says Johnson was much pleased with his answer, and we gave him a double fare. So Johnson loves the fact that there is an appetite for learning about Greek mythology, even in the, you know, the taxi boats of London and what do

[Dominic Sandbrook]

they make of Greenwich? They're actually slightly underwhelmed. No.

[Tom Holland]

Well, no, they kind of walk in the park, and they both agree that it's very beautiful. When Johnson asks Boswell, you know, is it not very fine? Boswell answers, yes, sir, but not equal of Fleet Street. And Johnson says, you are right, sir. Johnson much prefers a bustling thoroughfare to a kind of, you know, a load of trees. And they return so late in the evening. They've been having such a great time that Boswell shivers the whole way because, you know, it's quite cold. Johnson, whose robust frame was not in the least affected by the cold, scolded me as if my shivering had been a paltry effeminacy. They arrive back in London, they head to the Strand, and they end up at the Turk's Head coffee house. They're still talking, and by now Boswell is feeling that he's ready to share all kinds of intimacies and confidences with Johnson. And so he tells him about the castle at Affleck, and Johnson says one day that he will see it. And they then talk more and more about, you know, the looming departure. Boswell is clearly very, very unhappy to be leaving. He's nervous. And Johnson says, I must see thee out of England. I will accompany you to Harwich. And Harwich is where he'll be sailing to the Low Countries. And this was, as Boswell absolutely recognized, a signal mark of honour. This is not the kind of thing Johnson would normally have done. And Boswell writes, it filled me with gratitude. And then. So Boswell and vanity.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, that's fair, though. I mean.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it's so true, though, isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No one would go to Harwich voluntarily. I mean, it is a proper honour from Johnson. But Boswell is still a little bit gloomy, isn't he, about going? And then it's nice because Johnson, who suffers himself from depression and melancholy, can see this and sort of is sympathetic.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. He roused me by manly and spirited conversation, which I think is great. I mean, who wouldn't respond to some manly and spirited conversation when a bit depressed?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And they head off in the coach from London towards Harwich. And the whole way, Johnson is, you know, very effectively rallying his spirits. And they stop the night at Colchester, you know, having a meal, and they've got candles flickering in front of them on their table, and there's a moth, and the moth flutters around the candle and burns itself. And Boswell writes about this. Johnson laid hold of this little incident to admonish me, saying with a sly look and in a solemn but a quiet tone, that creature was its own tormentor. And I believe its name was Boswell.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. What did Boswell make of this? He liked it.

[Tom Holland]

He did like it. I mean, that's why he recorded it. And the next day they arrive at Harwich and they load Boswell's luggage onto the packet boat. And then they go to the church, and Johnson admonishes him to pray, now that you are going to leave your native country, recommend yourself to the protection of your Creator and Redeemer. And then that done, they head to the beach, they embrace and they part. I hope, sir Boswell said, you will not forget me in my absence. Nay, sir Johnson replied, it is more likely that you should forget me than that I should forget you. And Boswell boards the ship and it pulls out of the harbour and it sets sails for the Low Countries. And Johnson is still there watching. And Boswell writes as the vessel put out to sea, I kept my eyes upon him for a considerable time while he remained rolling his majestic frame in his usual manner. And at last I perceived him walk back into the town. And he disappeared.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, that's very sweet. So will they ever see each other again? That's the question on everybody's minds, because we're ending on a Tremendous cliffhanger. Boswell has gone off to Holland. Is he going to turn into a Dutchman or will he return and rekindle his relationship with Samuel Johnson? We'll find out after the break.

[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

Yes, Dominic. I've always been fascinated by the question of how humans came to make and use fire. How did that originate? And a tremendous discovery was announced just last year that the place where it seems fire was invented was Suffolk.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, you know, one of the things that makes history so fascinating is the kind of back and forth between sources to try and explain these great mysteries and, and you know, what's built for that kind of thinking. Claude is built for that way of thinking. It doesn't smooth things over. It helps you dig into the disagreement to reveal something new and anthropic. Just committed to not running adverts in Claude. So your thinking stays yours.

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[Anita Anand]

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[William Durand]

To others, he's a brutal despot accused of presiding over more civilian deaths than either Stalin or Hitler.

[Anita Anand]

Mao Zedong has one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Yet he started life as a rural boy in a muddy provincial village.

[William Durand]

A rebel son who hated his father survived a 6,000 mile walk across China and rose to become a figure of titanic proportions from empire.

[Anita Anand]

The Goal Hanger World History Show. I'm Anita Anand.

[William Durand]

And I'm William Durand.

[Anita Anand]

In this six part series, we're joined by world renowned expert Rana Mitter to explore the life of the father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

[William Durand]

We'll track his rise from a bookstore owner to a guerrilla commander. And we'll witness his ruthless elimination to secure total power.

[Anita Anand]

We'll explore the greatest famine in human history, a catastrophe where Mao himself predicted that half of China may well have to die.

[William Durand]

And we'll descend into the dark experiment of the Cultural Revolution, a time when ancient temples were burnt, children denounced their parents, and a nation worshipped a mango as a sacred relic.

[Anita Anand]

And we'll play a clip from the series at the end of this episode for you to listen to.

[William Durand]

At every hour, the bells of the

[Dominic Sandbrook]

great tower played a dreary psalm tune. A deep melancholy seized upon me. I groaned at the idea of living all winter in so shocking a place. I thought myself old and wretched and forlorn. So that could be any number of travellers who've spent time in the Netherlands. It's actually James Boswell, and he's writing to Samuel Johnson on 23 September 1763. And Boswell basically finds you trekked, just as he had feared, unbelievably dreary and boring.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I mean, he hates it. He absolutely hates it. Incredibly dull. There's nothing else to do except study law. And he can't even go out and haunt the streets because he has made a solemn vow that he's going to behave as well as possible in emulation of his new hero, Samuel Johnson, and to stop being, as he puts it, a frivolous and ludicrous fellow. And so he's written up an inviolable plan to be read over frequently, in which he writes, for some years past, you have been idle, dissipated, absurd and unhappy. Let those years be thought of no more. You are now determined to form yourself into a man.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, well, that's inspiring.

[Tom Holland]

No, but it isn't, because it's terrible. You know, he's. We've said he's bored, he's lonely. It just, you know, he's oppressed by religious doubts and fear of death. And Johnson isn't on hand. In fact, there are no great men on hand. And he just has a terrible time. But then by the summer of 1764, you know, his year of legal studies is over and things begin to perk up and because he's completed his law degree, and Lord Affleck is very pleased by this, you know, maybe a little bit surprised. Lord Affleck says, look, before you come back, go on a tour of the various courts of Germany and I will pay for it. And Boswell, you know, doesn't need to be told. Second time, he's straight off, he loves traveling, so he sets off to Germany. This is a time you know, Germany isn't a unified country. It's full of mad little courts all over the place. And Boswell is a great hit. We've said, you know, he's great fun. People like him and hanging out in courts, kind of meeting princes in opulent surroundings. This is exactly the kind of thing Boswell loves. And the princes and their courtiers all think he's great as well. You know, he's fun, he dresses well, he's amusing, he's got just the right degree of interest in philosophy, so just enough to show the Germans that he's a serious person, but not so much that he becomes a bit boring. The only disappointment in Germany is he doesn't get to meet Frederick the Great. He hangs around in Berlin for a month, and he ends up so desperate that he takes out his Ayrshire bonnet, which he's brought with him, and he puts it on his head and kind of stands in a prominent place when Frederick the Great is on parade, hoping that Frederick the Great will see it and take an interest in it. And Frederick does notice it, but doesn't like it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's surely not tall enough for Frederick the Great and not sufficiently interested in military parades.

[Tom Holland]

I think that we've said that Boswell's face is not that of a man who's interested in military parades.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, definitely not.

[Tom Holland]

Which is also another reason why it's very lucky for him. I think he didn't get into the guards. I think he'd been hopelessly ill suited to it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Once he's finished faffing around in Germany, you might think, well, it's time to go back to Scotland or indeed to London to see Dr. Johnson again. But no, he goes on, doesn't he, to Switzerland, because now he's in his slab hunting vein and there's. Well, there's a couple of celebrities in particular. And one of these people is one of the worst men who's ever lived.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, it's Jean Jacques Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau is the first of these two celebrities that Boswell's gonna meet. Like Johnson, he's more than a celebrity. He's a great moralist, or at least so it seems at this point. He's also a philosopher, he's a novelist. He has very novel views on sex, on religion, on society, particularly on education. He's very, very keen on the notion that parents should take good care of their children and bring them up responsibly. And for all of these reasons, I think Boswell, as he had done when he arrived in London, is looking for someone who can provide him with moral guidance. And so he goes to the village where Rousseau is living and he writes to him begging for a meeting. And Rousseau replies, I am ill, in pain, really, in no state to receive visits.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, you'd expect that from him.

[Tom Holland]

And this would probably put most people off, but it doesn't put Boswell off.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, you know, he.

[Tom Holland]

He turns up at the door. Rousseau's housekeeper, who inevitably is also his mistress, in fact has given him five children, comes down the stairs. She's a French woman called Therese le Vasseur. Boswell absolutely charms her, sweet talks her into allowing her in. He goes upstairs and there is Rousseau sitting in the kitchen. And Rousseau is famously grouchy. And he periodically tries to get rid of Boswell by saying that he needs to use his chamber pot. But Boswell, oh, don't stand on ceremony

[Dominic Sandbrook]

with me, you know, go on, crack on. Yeah, don't worry about me.

[Tom Holland]

But basically, Boswell is not remotely put off by Rousseau needing to use his chamber pot at all. Hangs around and Rousseau ends up being completely charmed by him. And they do end up having a series of really quite lengthy chats over the course of five days. And this, for biographers of Rousseau, is an incredible resource. So Peter Martin, who's written the definitive biography of Boswell, says that Boswell's account of Rousseau's speech is accepted as the most vivid known to exist.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Wow.

[Tom Holland]

Boswell, I mean, if he'd had a smartphone, he would so have recorded it all and put it on social media. And that's effectively what he's doing with, you know, he, he talks to Rousseau, he rushes back to his. His inn, he writes it all up. And so there you have. What is the closest we will ever have to a recording of Rousseau's conversation?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And Boswell is deliriously happy about this. And again, there's this sense when he writes it up in his journal of kind of watching himself as the hero of his journal.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So he writes, gods, am I now then really the friend of Rousseau? I suppose the parcel of young fellows saying, come, Boswell, you'll dine with us today. No, gentlemen, excuse me, I'm engaged. I dine today with Rousseau. The sense of pride is so comical, but I think so engaging.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And if there's one person, I mean, there's probably only one person who's even more famous than Rousseau among francophone philosophers and wits and sort of scholars and thinkers and whatnot, and that is Voltaire. Yeah. And once again, Boswell, I mean, we don't have the chamber pot trick. But Boswell basically talks himself into Voltaire's company, doesn't he?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So Voltaire's just down the road from Rousseau. He's in Switzerland as well. And again Boswell turns up, he's told, no, Monsieur, Voltaire doesn't want to see you. Boswell hangs around. Eventually Voltaire comes down in his dressing gown, Boswell pounces on him. And again Voltaire is kind of seduced by Boswell's charm. And again Boswell writes it up in such a kind of entertainingly self regarding way. Monsieur de Voltaire and I remained in the drawing room with the great Bible before us and if ever two mortal men disputed with vehemence, we did, yes, upon that occasion he was one individual and I another. For a certain portion of time there was a fair opposition between Voltaire and Boswell.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It would be interesting to hear Voltaire's version of that conversation to see if it was exactly the same.

[Tom Holland]

I mean the context for this is that Voltaire is the most famous infidel in Europe and Boswell is turning up and casting himself as, you know, the person who's going to convert Rousseau back to orthodoxy and so on. And again, I think it's so revealing about exactly why Boswell loves meeting these great men. It's not just about celebrity, it's about getting moral guidance of people who he recognizes are much profounder, much more brilliant thinkers than he is actually in his heart of hearts. So I think there is an element of self mockery in that description of Voltaire and Boswell being intellectual equals.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And while this has been going on, his father, Lord Affleck has been pestering him, saying, what on earth are you doing? You were meant to come home after you finished your studies in the Utrecht and you're going further and further away from Scotland, not towards it.

[Tom Holland]

And Voltaire and Rousseau, I mean these are not the kind of people that a Scottish, Presbyterian, Whig would in any way approve of. And so he is absolutely saying to Boswell, come home now. And Boswell predictably, completely ignores it because there is one further celebrity he's going to meet. And this is going to be the most incredible drama of all. So from Switzerland Boswell goes to Italy where he, as we will see, misbehaves himself very badly. And then from Italy he sets sail for Corsica and almost everybody tells him, you are mad to be going there. So the Corsicans are in the throes of an independent struggle against Genoa, who is the imperial mistress. So there's, you know, lots of guns going off all over the place. And that's what Corsica's like anyway. People are always firing guns in Corsica, even if they're not in a war. It's just a very, very violent place. And on the crossing, there are kind of Corsican sailors. And they tell Boswell any attempt to debauch a Corsican woman will result in instant death. So this is something that Boswell, to

[Dominic Sandbrook]

give him credit, that's bad news for Boswell.

[Tom Holland]

He does take on board. So he lands. He knows that if he even so much as looks as a woman, he's going to get, you know, killed. So that's alarming. And then he has to make a very perilous journey across wild, mountainous, rocky country to join the freedom fighters. But Boswell absolutely loves it. He admires the primitive character of the Corsicans, which he identifies with the. The virtue of the. The ancient Greeks and Romans. And the chief object of this kind of hero worship of the Corsicans is the general who is leading the Corsican fight for independence. And this is Pasquale Paoli.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So we talked about him in our episode about the young Napoleon. So back in the days when Napoleon had a Corsican sort of Genoese style accent, he was greatly enamored of this guy Paoli, who left a massive shadow not just over Corsica, but actually over Europe. He was the kind of Che Guevara, the romantic folk hero of the late 18th century, wasn't he?

[Tom Holland]

Completely. He is possibly the kind of the most admired political figure in Europe in this stretch of the 18th century. And Boswell plays a key role in promoting him as that, because Boswell thinks Pauli is amazing. And actually he hero worships Pauli even more than he hero worships Johnson, because he associates Pauli again with kind of ancient history. He sees him as someone stepped from the pages of Plutarch or something. And he describes Paoli, he's a tall, strong and well made of a fair complexion, a sensible, free and open countenance, and a manly and noble carriage. This is a man who is fighting for freedom, who's laid his life on the line. And Boswell is all over this now. Paoli is completely bewildered by Boswell. Boswell is the first hero worshipper that Paoli has met, and he can't fathom why Boswell has turned up. But as with Rousseau, as with Voltaire, his suspicions are gradually melted by Boswell's charm. And before long as ever, Boswell is getting on with Paoli tremendously well. And Boswell stays with Paoli for two months. And as they part after this two month stay. Paoli takes him by the hand and shakes it. As Paoli says, as a friend or. Boswell couldn't be more delighted at this. I dare not transcribe from my private notes the feelings which I had at this interview. I should perhaps appear too enthusiastic. So if Boswell is nervous about seeming too enthusiastic, I mean, he must be about to explode. And so he returns to Italy absolutely aglow with zeal for the Corsican cause. And I would say that Boswell is probably the first in a long line of Europeans who travel to the scene of a freedom fight and come back absolutely enamored with it. You said he's like Che Guevara. I mean, Boswell would absolutely have put up a Che Guevara poster. That's what he's all about. But actually, I mean, he goes much further than that. So he's. While again, this is quite student on a gap year. Ish. He returns from the island with a full outfit of Corsican clothes and Paoli has given him a pair of pistons, so he's got those as well.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He must look absolutely ridiculous walking around London in these Corsican trousers with his pistols.

[Tom Holland]

Well, we will see. He does unfurl his Corsican costume when he's back in England in due course, when he's returned from Corsica, he's on the Continent. He starts writing unsigned letters to English newspapers, talking about Boswell in the third person, hinting that he's been to Corsica on a kind of secret mission on behalf of the British government. And his aim in doing this is to whip up interest in Britain on behalf of Corsican independence, to try and pressure the British government to swing behind Paoli, you know, to kind of back him. It's a bit like, I suppose, you know, people in America trying to get Trump to back Zelensky. It's that kind of thing. But also, of course, it's always to a degree about Boswell himself. He's trying to present himself in these letters as a kind of a man of mystery.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he's the kind of man who would. I can picture him walking across Afghanistan and then writing a book about it. Can you picture that? This has been hanging over the story from the beginning, hasn't it? The Alastair Campbell Royster, Dr. Johnson. Boswell parallels.

[Tom Holland]

Well, perhaps in Build. Yeah, I mean, what I will say about Boswell is that he is much, much readier to confess in every lurid detail, everything that he's thinking and doing than Rory. Well, I think than pretty much anyone today. To be honest. Anyway, so Boswell is now returning home because Lord Affleck, you know, I mean, absolutely dyspeptic by this point, has sent him a letter saying, come back. Don't bother seeing anything in France. There is nothing to be learned by traveling in France. He knows he's been there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And so Boswell heads back. He's had this brilliant time. He's been hanging out with Rousseau, he's been hanging out with Voltaire. He's been freedom fighter in Corsica. And now he has, you know, he faces the prospect of returning home and becoming an Edinburgh lawyer. However, on the bright side, going back to Britain does have one positive. And that positive, of course, is Samuel Johnson. And Boswell has not forgotten Johnson while he was on his travels. He's thrilled to have met Rousseau, he's thrilled to have met Voltaire. But the whole way through, Johnson remains Boswell's moral touchstone. And throughout his journals, whenever he feels that he's slumping into depression or he's tempted to, you know, go out on the streets spending money on prostitutes, he kind of reins himself in by saying, resemble Johnson. Your mind will strengthen. And this is kind of, you know, he's always telling himself, be like Johnson. Do what Johnson would do. And he's kind of pumping these kind of staccato imperatives.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He has. Has done what Dr. Johnson has done because ever since he left Johnson at Harwich, he has been able to fend off the foul feed of the genitals. No.

[Tom Holland]

Well, he had in Holland, which is one of the reasons why he was so depressed. And in Germany and in Switzerland, when he talks to Rousseau, it's obvious that he has been trying to think of a way to square the circle. How can you have lots of sex with multiple women while remaining a Christian? And so he points out to Rousseau that in Genesis, the biblical patriarchs seem to have had lots of concubines. And so he says to Rousseau, well, wouldn't this be a possibility? I mean, couldn't I just keep a harem like Abraham did? And he's obviously hoping that Rousseau will back him on this. And Rousseau does not, actually. So he's a bit disappointed by that. And then I said, he arrives in Italy and misbehaves, and he cracks very, very badly. So in Naples, he'd written, I was truly libertine. I ran after girls without restraint. And in Rome, he writes to Rousseau, I sallied forth of an evening like an imperious lion. He says, the sun is hot. It's inflamed my blood. I can't help myself.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, what about Paris? So he gets to Paris. Does he behave himself in Paris? So this is 1766. He's 26 years old, or about to turn 26.

[Tom Holland]

No, he doesn't. And in fact, things take a very dark turn because he's been in Paris a week or so and he picks up a Scottish newspaper that he finds there and he reads, to his horror, that his mother is dead. And he'd loved his mother.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So he's devastated by this, and so he vents this feeling of despair in a classic Boswell way, by going to a brothel. That's how he copes with it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course he does.

[Tom Holland]

Also in Paris, amazingly, is Rousseau's mistress, Theresa le Vasseur, who we last met in Switzerland. And she is in Paris because she is heading on to England and specifically to Chiswick in West London, where Rousseau has settled. And the reason that he settled there is that he's been driven out of Switzerland by outraged locals. And the principal reason for their outrage is the fact that Rousseau, a man who, as we mentioned, is very keen and insistent on good parenting, has recently been outed as having had these five children by his mistress and dumping them all in an orphanage.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Don't tell me that Russo, of all people, has been exposed as a hypocrite.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. And so he's been driven out of Switzerland and he's gone to take refuge in England, and Therese is now traveling there to join him. And so Rousseau has asked Boswell, will you escort Therese and bring her to me? And Boswell does. And inevitably they have sex. Initially, Boswell can't perform because he's so nervous about having sex with Rousseau's mistress. But then he manages. It goes in hard. So Therese says, listen, I'll give you some lessons. And so they have 12 lessons between 12 lessons on the journey, on the journey from Paris to Dover. And Therese is incredibly pleased with herself. Boswell finds it really dull. And he gallantly compares Therese to a bad rider galloping downhill.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So neither is satisfied. Both of them have let themselves down. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So it's probably with some relief that Boswell drops Therese off with Rousseau and Chiswick and then goes rushing off to be reunited with Samuel Johnson.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, you could never accuse Dr. Johnson of being either too flaccid or lacking art, could you? He's got all the arts he has.

[Tom Holland]

And also he has this human kindness beneath his bearish exterior.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And he's delighted to see Boswell and greets him with much kindness. Boswell says, but at the same time, Johnson is bearish. He gives Boswell the occasional mauling. Boswell is talking all about his holidays and going on about how he's met Rousseau. Yeah. Johnson explodes. I mean, Rousseau is so not Samuel Johnson. So he says, Russo, sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations. To which Boswell, who, who's become very good at basically kind of coaxing Johnson along so that he'll come out with ever more outrageous statements, says, sir, do you think Rousseau was bad a man as Voltaire? To which Johnson replies, why, sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, Dr. Johnson, I think I said this in the last episode, he would have made a tremendous columnist for the Daily Express.

[Tom Holland]

He'd have a wonderful podcast, wouldn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think, but very splenetic podcast. Oh, completely, yeah.

[Tom Holland]

He'd be robust in his views. I mean, they question. Well, and so, I mean, as an example of this, Boswell, after Johnson has dismissed Voltaire, then tries one of Voltaire's infidel sallies on Johnson, to which Johnson responds, this now is such stuff as I used to talk to my mother when I first began to think myself a clever fellow and she ought to have whipped me for it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he basically thinks that Voltaire's a teenager.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. And then Boswell starts moaning on about how he's got to become a lawyer. He defines being a lawyer as being excelled by plodding blockheads. So I don't know what our legal listeners will make of that. And Johnson again is, you know, he has no time for this now for any self pity.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

Tells Boswell to man up.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, but I mean, Boswell does have to man up now because the legal hell is opening up before him.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, I mean, basically from this point on, Boswell is going to be locked into a legal career. There's going to be no more tazzing around Corsica or meeting infidel philosophers. So he heads back to Scotland. He's been away for three and a half years, but from now on, you know, his job is going to be to practice as an advocate. And he does it regularly, he does it reliably. He's actually quite good at it. So I think it helps that actually in Scotland, the Court of Sessions, before which Boswell is appearing as an advocate, it only sits for six months a year. So that gives Boswell quite a lot of time to do other things, pursue other interests, other dreams, and the most public of these remains his activism on behalf of Corsican independence. So he gets back, he hasn't forgotten Corsica. And to give him credit, he makes representations to various British ministers, including William Pitt the Elder, who's a very significant player. And Pitt says, yeah, I'll see what I can do. And, of course, does nothing. Boswell also, he writes up his Travels in Corsica as a book, and it's published and it's a great success and it wins him the nickname of Corsica Boswell, which he absolutely loves, and he writes about it in his journal. It is fine to have such a character as I have. I enjoy it much. Very pleased with himself. And, Dominic, you asked about this outfit of Corsican clothes that he's brought back with him and does he ever wear it? He does. And the opportunity comes in September 1769. Johnson's old friend David Garrick, the greatest actor of his day, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day, stages a Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford upon Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, nice.

[Tom Holland]

And it's going to be a great celebration of the Bard, and it's scheduled to last for three days. And in fact, it has an enormous impact in kind of what becomes Bardolatry, this notion of Shakespeare as the supreme genius. Garrick's Jubilee plays a key role in that, despite the fact that actually it's all. I mean, it's literally a washout, because on the second day, so much rain falls that the third day simply has to be cancelled and everyone's kind of tramping around in mud, the tarpaulins fall down, all of that. You know, the live shows have to be cancelled, but Boswell, who has gone there, has a lovely time because he has turned up in his Corsican costume and there he is with his guns and his, you know, his sash and all that kind of stuff. I mean, very proto, Byron. And he reads out a poem that he has written himself about Corsican liberty, and he wrote about it. I was as much a favourite as I could desire. In other words, Shakespeare Jubilee's a washout. But Boswell's been brilliant, of course.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course.

[Tom Holland]

So there are only two shadows on this kind of Corsica. Boswell, heaven. The first is that actually the dream of Corsican liberty is conclusively over now because Jenner is no longer the mistress of Corsica, because the French have now invaded. And of course, this is now, you know, this is crucial because this explains why, in the long run, Napoleon, a Corsican, will End up the emperor of the French. So it's a momentous development. And poor General Paoli, he has to flee. He goes into exile, and he turns up in London a few days after the Jubilee to claim political asylum. Boswell again, to give him credit, he's really good. He introduces Paoli to Johnson and to all his friends and to as many people as he can. And Paoli remains, I think, the kind of the purest hero in Boswell's pantheon, because Johnson.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Johnson's sick of this Corsican business, isn't he? I mean, you get a sense of actually what other people made of Boswell in his Corsican trousers. What does Johnson say? Empty your head of Corsica, which I think has filled it rather too long. See, I'm giving him the proper Midlands accent that he would have had.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, too much of Corsica.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He also says to Boswell, shut up about Corsica.

[Tom Holland]

But Boswell knows that this kind of abrasiveness, you know, it comes with the territory. This is what Johnson's all about. And there's this kind of wonderful account that Boswell writes up. A year before the Shakespeare jubilee, Boswell had dined with Johnson and various others in this pub on the Strand, the Crown and Anchor, and Johnson, the whole evening had been in particularly rambunctious form. And Boswell writes, when I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. Well, said he. We had good talk. Boswell. Aye, sir. You tossed and gored several persons. And that sense that Johnson's conversation often is about tossing and goring people, I think is part of what makes him such a compelling spectacle for Boswell. He kind of enjoys it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But Johnston doesn't really toss and gore Boswell too much, does he? Because they remain tremendous friends. And there's an underlying kind of affection there, isn't there?

[Tom Holland]

I think the two aren't mutually exclusive. Johnson does toss and gore Boswell if he feels that he deserves it, but he's always ready to show Boswell that he loves him. Johnson can tell that Boswell not only loves him, but reveres him. And Johnson is human, and he likes this. Even after Boswell gets married in 1769, he can't bear to kind of abandon Johnson, to abandon London. And so he makes these regular trips down to the capital. He feels a bit guilty about it, but not guilty enough to stop doing it. And Boswell's friendship with Johnson means that even though he's now a Scottish lawyer, he does kind of remain at the heart of London. Literary life. This continues to make Boswell unbelievably happy. So there's a kind of wonderful moment in 1772. He's sitting with Johnson and with Johnson's friend Oliver Goldsmith, who's a very celebrated Irish poet, novelist, playwright, she stoops to conquer. And as he had done with Rousseau, as he'd done with Voltaire, Boswell hugs himself. I mean, he says, he writes, he felt a completion of happiness. I just sat and hugged myself in my own mind. I think that's such a great. A great phrase. And the following spring, the seal is set on this kind of sense of joy, of hugging himself in his mind. When Johnson proposes Boswell for membership of the single most exclusive society in the country, and it's known simply as the club. And this had been founded in 1764 by Johnson, by Joshua Reynolds, the great painter, by Edmund Burke, the politician. And by the time that Boswell gets elected in. In 1773, Oliver Goldsmith, who we just mentioned, he's a member. David Garrett, the actor, is a member. Subsequent members will include Edward Gibbon, the historian Sir Joseph Banks, who went with Captain Cook and was the first Englishman to go surfing. As Boswell puts it, after his election, it is such a society as can seldom be found.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So we talked about that in our very first episode for our rest is History Club members, when we were talking about the Inspiration and history's greatest clubs.

[Tom Holland]

And here we are. Yeah, and here we are with our very own club.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

We've got more members than they had.

[Tom Holland]

That's true. Maybe not quite as exclusive, but we're just as exclusive.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I was about to say, we've got more members, and I think we've got a higher quotient of red trousers than they had. But as Tabby rightly says, we always want more. More members because we haven't got the best people. We want even better people.

[Tom Holland]

We do.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, so let's finish with. Get back away from the club. To Johnson and Boswell, a striking thing is that this is an unbalanced friendship. So it's always Boswell who is sort of importuning Johnson, not vice versa. Right. It's Boswell who is paying court to the great man. It's never the great man who is paying court to Boswell.

[Tom Holland]

Or is it? It's true Johnson has never been to Scotland, and of course, his quips about Scotland are notorious. So in his dictionary, he had notoriously defined oats as a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people. You know, you said Does Johnson ever toss and gore Boswell? Well, he does so on one occasion, Boswell had commented, sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desert. To which Johnson had retorted, sir, you have desert enough in Scotland. Oh, that's great, great banter. But we used the word performative in our previous episode and I think that's the mo. Just. Johnson is actually intrigued by Scotland and he's been telling Boswell right from the beginning, I would actually like to come and see, you know, the castle on your estate, and saying, I would love to go to the Hebrides in particular, because he'd been reading about them since he was a boy. Now, by 1773, which is the year that Boswell gets elected to the club, the prospects for such a jaunt must have seemed incredibly faint, because Johnson is 64, he's got an inflamed eye, he's enormously fat, he's sunk in a kind of melancholy. But it seems that it's precisely this melancholy which resolved him that summer of 1773, that actually, yeah, I am going to give in to Boswell's kind of urgings. I will go to Scotland. And so on the 3rd of August, he wrote to Boswell in Edinburgh, sir, I shall set out from London on Friday the 6th of this month and propose not to loiter much, by the way. So the adventure is on.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Crikey.

[Tom Holland]

Samuel Johnson is coming to Scotland and the most famous literary expedition in British history is about to begin.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

God, what excitement. What a cliffhanger. Unbelievable. So next week we will be exploring the story of this tremendous expedition which dwarfs anything accomplished by the great explorers of history, the conquistadors and so on. We'll be doing that next week and in our final episode, we'll be telling the story of how the friendship came to an end and what happened to Boswell and Johnson. Now, we've mentioned that club a few times, I think not inappropriately, and I think very, very subtly and judiciously, I'm just going to mention it one more time because if you would like to join our equivalent of the club, the club that was formed by Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke, if you would like to join luminaries of a very, very similar nature, then you can join the [e-mail] and you can hear next week's episodes right now. You don't have to wait. You don't have to bite your nails and gnash your teeth over the weekend waiting for the next episodes. You can join that club. You can feel part of a like minded community of polymaths, scholars and libertines and everything will be tremendous and you'll be much happier for it. So Tom, thank you very much and we'll see you in Scotland.

[Tom Holland]

Bye bye. Bye bye.

[William Durand]

Hello, it's William Drimple again from Empire. Here is a clip from our recent six part series on Mao Zedong.

[Empire Podcast Historian]

The great leaf forward was supposed to be on its face, a kind of highly rationalized bureaucratic system of working out what China could produce and then, you know, working upwards so that you would produce, you know, enough food for everyone to, to eat and crops that could then be exported to increase China's GDP and everything would be great. But basically because all the figures are being fiddled by officials who are too terrified to give the real information in case they get arrested or you know, kind of fired from their jobs, they pass on statistics upwards saying yes, it's all going great and we're kind of producing huge amounts of grain and products and up, you know, in the cities and then, you know, beyond that to Beijing, the guys at the top are saying, oh well, this is great. When that case we can export lots to the Soviet Union. So you have the kind of obscenity of out in the countryside there isn't enough food for people to eat while the grain is being seized and exported from the country to bring in money for the state. This is very much a rural phenomenon. And that's significant because of course, shortly before this, the system which still exists today was started up in China of a sort of Soviet style internal passport system. It's called the hukou or household registration scheme. And it basically means that you can't just simply wander around wherever you want in China. You have to sort of have internal permission. So people in the cities were no longer really kind of interacting that much with the countryside. They're kind of almost separated off. And while people in the cities, you know, found there was a certain amount of deprivation, the devastation was really out in the countryside where essentially it turned into mass starvation. About 1959, 1960, 61, it became clear in the countryside there simply wasn't enough food to go around. But when the news came through to the top leadership, including Mao, he basically chose to ignore it. He didn't exactly deny it, but he basically said, well, you know, we need to keep going. And he said something like, if things are not going so well, then let's just not say anything about it and keep going. And that led to one of the great confrontations of that period, which is the Conference Communist Party Top level conference held at Lushan.

[William Durand]

We hope you enjoyed that clip. To listen to the full series, search Empire World History Wherever you get your

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