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- [00:00]
Tom Holland
Foreign this episode is brought to you
- [00:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
by Claude by Anthropic Now, Tom, you and I, when we're together, we always argue about one thing, don't we? It's the existence or otherwise of the Loch Ness Monster. But you foolishly are skeptical. And you don't think that there is a monster beneath the freezing waters of that Scottish lock.
- [00:23]
Tom Holland
Because as I know from AI, a plesiosaur would not be able to survive in Scottish waters because they'd just be too cold for it.
- [00:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, Tom, this back and forth is what makes studying history so fun. And actually, Claude was made for this kind of thinking.
- [00:35]
Tom Holland
The Deep Research feature can pull from dozens of sources at once. It can surface contradictions between them, and it can give you a full breakdown with citations so that you can trace the evidence yourself. It's like having a research partner who's read literally everything and wants to chat about what it actually means. So very like Dominic. Actually.
- [00:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Try Claude for free at Claude AI Restishistory.
- [01:02]
Advertiser/Commercial Voice
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- [01:32]
Tom Holland
Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case.
- [01:37]
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- [01:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
last name, the Snake Dream Team.
- [01:42]
Tom Holland
Pick new habitats.
- [01:43]
Advertiser/Commercial Voice
Zootopia has a secret reptile population.
- [01:46]
Tom Holland
You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney. Rated PG. And right now you can get Disney and Hulu for just $4.99 a month for three months. The special limited time offer ends March 24. After three months, Plan Auto renews at $12.99 a month. Terms apply.
- [02:13]
Dominic Sandbrook
Most honored Madam, since while I'm staying in your house, I'm obliged to spend several hours a day in the strictest solitude. Tell me, I beg you, whether you wish me to submit fully to this isolation or else to do so within limits set by you, and supposing that you wish me to stay confined to my bedroom, then do not, I beg you, require me to serve as my own sentry, but rather take steps yourself to make sure that I cannot leave my room. This will cost you no more trouble than the Turning of a key in the door twice a day. I submit to you as my mistress, so that I may be bolstered in my weakness by your judgment and your vigilance. I wish my patroness always to be sensible of that authority which you wield over me, and to be held by you in that slavery which you know so well how to make a happy one. So that was a letter written by Samuel Johnson, a man, of course, of the Midlands, as people can tell from that reading. But he wrote it originally in French, and he wrote it a few months before he left on his tour to the Hebrides with James Boswell in August 1773. So listeners who have followed us in this epic series will know that on that tour, Johnson was in splendid form. There was a lot of Caledonian ribaldry, there was a lot of general banter, there was a lot of sulking while riding down mountains on ponies. There was a lot of actually him being surprisingly nice about Scolom, which is something we always try to do on. The rest is history. But this Dr. Johnson in his letter, this is a very different character. He's back to his old eccentric ways. He's a bit awkward, isn't he? And he's very submissive. So what's going on here, Tom? Why is he like this? And to whom is he writing?
- [04:13]
Tom Holland
Well, I think that letter is a reminder that the Johnson that we get from Boswell is not the only Johnson. That there are people who actually are seeing Johnson far more often than Boswell does, and that these people perhaps are aware of entire aspects of Johnson's character that Boswell at this point can really only guess at. And of all the people who knew Johnson, Samuel Johnson in the final decades of his life, the one who knew him probably well, not probably, I mean, certainly knew him best, was the recipient of that letter which you read out so sonorously and splendidly. And this is a woman who was over 30 years younger than Johnson and she was called Mrs. Thrale. And there are people who complain that there is far too much Welsh history on this podcast, but I'm afraid that sometimes it just can't be helped because Mrs. Thrale was Welsh and she was born Hester Lynch Salisbury, and she belonged to one of the most kind of illustrious property owning families in Wales. Very distinguished pedigree, in fact, so distinguished that the Salisbury's claimed descent from Henry vii, who was of course famously Welsh. So there is a slight kind of Jane Austen narrative, however, with the young Hester Thrale in her Childhood, because her parents, although they have this pedigree, are starting to run out of money. Her father is very grand, but very incompetent with cash. And so, of course, what do you do in a situation like that if you're the mother? You start looking around for a suitable husband. And so this is what Mrs. Salisbury does. She goes the full Mrs. Bennet, and she finds a suitable husband for her young daughter in the form of a guy called Henry Thrale, who is the son of a London brewer. And the brewery stood in south, pretty much directly on the site of what had been Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, so right on the banks of the Thames. And Thrale was a very cold, reserved man. He was over a decade older than Hester, but saliently, from Mrs. Salisbury's point of view, he's fabulously rich. You know, he has great expectations. Hester herself, I mean, you know, she's not remotely attracted to him. She barely met him. And her father's appalled because he doesn't want his daughter marrying someone in trade, particularly not in brewing. But he dies very abruptly before he can stop the marriage negotiations. Mrs. Salisbury is absolutely determined because she doesn't want to lose all her cash. And so the marriage goes ahead. Hester Salisbury becomes Hester Thrale, marries this guy, this brewer.
- [07:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
And so today's episode, we're going to be exploring the tangled relationship of Samuel Johnson and Mrs. Thrale and indeed, James Boswell.
- [07:16]
Tom Holland
Yes, she's very funny and she has the kind of humour that just occasionally goes to perhaps the limits and occasionally over it.
- [07:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's the best kind of humor.
- [07:25]
Tom Holland
And she's also very, very smart, so she's very widely read. She's fluent in French, Spanish and Italian. And her fluency in Italian will be a detail that people perhaps should keep in mind. She's also very familiar with the classics, so Latin and Greek to a degree that's unusual for women at the time. And of course, Samuel Johnson, you know, he's. He's a great Latinist in particular, so. So lots of scope there for chat. And she's locked in this, essentially, it's pretty unhappy marriage. I think there isn't any great spark between her and her husband. And Mr. Thrale, he's simultaneously a philanderer, so he has lots of mistresses, but also he's just endlessly keeping his wife pregnant. I mean, she ends up having 12 pregnancies, so you can see why she might think, oh, you know, I'd like to spread my wings, I would like to meet new people, to have discussions that don't revolve around beer. And it has to be said, actually, that Henry Thrale is notably taciturn, but he also is keen to kind of elevate himself. And so when Mrs. Thrale gets an opening, she meets Samuel Johnson, who is probably by this point the most famous person in London, and she invites him to come and have dinner with them on a Thursday evening in their house in Southwark, next to the brewery. And Johnson's delighted to come. It's not far, just cross the Thames from Fleet street and you're there. And he is delighted. He thinks Mrs. Thr is great. I mean, he's this great kind of awkward, shambling man in his 50s, kind of twitching and everything. And here is this very attractive, very charming young woman in her 20s, who also has a sensational chef in the house, so can provide him with lots of amazing food. So he thinks he's onto an absolute winner. Johnson, of course, is a great conversationalist. Henry Thrale is famously not a great conversationalist. But because Johnson feels grateful towards Both the Thrales, Mr. Thrale as well as Mrs. Thrale, he doesn't make a great song and dance about this. And actually he's, for Johnson, quite polite about it. So he says about Henry Thrale, his conversation may not show the minute hand, but he strikes the hour very correctly, which I think is admirably expressed.
- [09:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
So he's going every Thursday to dinner. And Johnson's quite lonely. He's constantly troubled by depression. He's always in danger of falling into the sort of the black pit, isn't he? And is this a way of staving that off, do you think?
- [09:56]
Tom Holland
I think almost certainly, because this is a period in his life where he seems to be sinking back into the mood of extreme melancholy that had characterised his mood after he'd left Oxford. So when he was much younger, a period when he had been worried about going mad, that he was so depressed that he might kind of end up killing himself. And this is a period where he seems burdened by very dark emotions of guilt and regret and his tics, his OCD is becoming really, really very obvious to everyone. So he, you know, he walks down a street, he's got a stick. He cannot walk down the street without touching every kind of post or bol yard along the street. And if he misses one, he has to go back. If he walks through a doorway into a room and then back out again, he has to do it in exactly the same number of steps. If he's peeling an orange, then he has to keep the peel and put it in his pocket. So, I mean, these are all kind of very, very striking for his friends. It's alarming to them because he does seem. He seems unhappy. But the thing about Johnson is that he's not someone for sharing his unhappiness. He puts on a brave front. And this is a period you say he's. He's lonely, I mean, maybe, but at the same time, he's going out to the club, he's dining with all his friends. He's a very clubbable man, all of this. But I think in private, he is worried that he might be going mad to the extent that he worries that he will end up in an asylum, chained up, which is what happens to lunatics, as they're called in this period. You go to bedlam and, you know, they're kind of part of the tourism industry. Go and have a gawp at them. And there's a wonderful biography of Johnson, not by Boswell, but by a great American scholar, Walter Jackson Bate. And he describes it, he says, finally, in exhausted despair, Johnson bought fetters and padlocks, lest the enemy that seemed to be winning against him pass beyond control. So his depression, it was a sign not only of shattered self confidence, but of a fearful self condemnation.
- [11:57]
Dominic Sandbrook
So he's almost gonna chain and padlock himself.
- [12:00]
Tom Holland
I think he's worried that he may end up so mad that he's going to need someone to padlock him up. That's exactly what he's worrying about.
- [12:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
And Boswell comes back from his great tour in February 1766. But even though they're great pals, Johnson doesn't confide in him. There's no sort of better help aspect to the Johnson Boswell friendship?
- [12:21]
Tom Holland
No. Well, we said. I mean, Johnson is not a man for going on about his bad mental health. He keeps quiet about it.
- [12:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
Princes William and Harry would not approve of him.
- [12:29]
Tom Holland
No, I don't think they would. But he does talk about. He kind of hints about his unhappiness to his new friends, the Thrales. And remember, Boswell is barely with Johnson. He comes back, he meets up, they go around, and then Boswell is back to Scotland. But Johnson is going to see the Thrales every Thursday. So there's a kind of regularity there. And I think he does confess to them something of his unhappiness. And one morning, the Thrales, you know, they cross from Southwark and they go to his rooms, which are just off Fleet street. And they go in and there they find him on his knees in the grip of a full blown breakdown. He's kneeling before a clergyman who is standing there looking kind of mortified and embarrassed, doesn't really know what to do. And he is kind of babbling and sobbing and almost he seems on the verge of insanity, I guess you could say.
- [13:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
And he's accusing himself of things. No, isn't it? There's no. He's lambasting himself about supposed sins or crimes he's committed or whatever these might be.
- [13:35]
Tom Holland
Well, he's kind of hinting at all sorts of dark secrets. And the Thrales walk in, the clergyman says, oh, thank God you're here and basically rushes out. And the fact that the Thrales are there and Johnson obviously trusts them means that he is ready to unburden himself, perhaps in a way that he hadn't even been with the clergyman. But he's still not really making sense. He's kind of gabbling over his words. Very unusual for Johnson. And Mrs. Thrale would later, you know, she'd write this incident up and she said, I felt excessively affected with grief. And well remember my husband involuntarily lifted up one hand to shut his mouth. You know, he's talking so wildly. And Mr. Thrale can't stay because he's got business demands. But before he leaves Johnson's quarters and goes back out into the street, he tells his wife, bring Johnson not to our townhouse, so the house in Southwark, but bring him out of London to our country retreat. And so this is what Mrs. Thrale does.
- [14:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
And where is this delightful country retreat?
- [14:35]
Tom Holland
Well, it's in the picturesque little village of Streatham, right. Which is charming, delightful trees, cows, all of that. Anyone who lives in South London today will know that Streatham High street won an award as Britain's ugliest street. So there's been quite a, quite a change since then.
- [14:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [14:54]
Tom Holland
But back then it's very kind of sylvan and beautiful. And the Thrales live in this gorgeous house. It's kind of massive three story mansion called Streatham Park. It's got 100 acres of land, it's got spreading lawns, it's got gardens, it's got greenhouses, all kinds of fruit is growing there, so melons and peaches and this for Johnson, I mean, it's mind blowing. You know, this is a guy who's lived all his life basically in poverty. And what the Thrales are giving him is an experience of seclusion and essentially luxury that is something that he's never experienced before.
- [15:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
So he's a valued house guest, isn't he? He's not a patient. He's given the best food he can, you know, charge about the house and gardens to his heart's content.
- [15:39]
Tom Holland
Eat peaches. He loves peaches.
- [15:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
As many peaches as you could eat.
- [15:43]
Tom Holland
Well, also, peaches don't have peel.
- [15:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, so you're fine with your OCD. And crucially, Mrs. Thrale, he has a real sort of fondness for Mrs. Thrale, doesn't he?
- [15:51]
Tom Holland
A tonderess. Yes.
- [15:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
And she, you know, he can do no wrong for her. Like as eccentric and as weirdly as he behaves. She will sit up late with him and she'll bring him tea and she isn't something to do with his wig. He almost sets his wig on fire.
- [16:10]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So the servants will bring him candles and he'll kind of become so attentive, the book he's reading, that his wig will drop forward and burst into flames. And so they fix it that a servant will stand outside the door holding his wig and then if he needs it again, they, you know, he can call for it. So they're very, kind of, very attentive. They even provide him with, you know, a coach. If he wants to go back into London, he can use that. And so, unsurprisingly, he does start to recover his spirits and as the months and then the years go by, he starts to think of Streatham Place almost as a kind of home. I mean, he's not there all the time. He's still got his rooms, you know, back in London off Fleet Street. But he is starting to become a real fixture. He has his own room and he feels wanted and admired and so obviously that cheers him up. I mean, of course it would.
- [16:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
They invite all his mates out for dinner, don't they? All the people from the club. So Burke and Garrick and Joshua Reynolds. And this is good news for the Thrales, because basically the Thrales have got Johnson there, that their dining table has become one of the most celebrated in England.
- [17:12]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Because Johnson is the great literary lion of London. And for Mr. Thrill in particular, who, you know, never says anything, it's amazing to have.
- [17:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, wow.
- [17:21]
Tom Holland
Burke and Johnson, Garrick and Reynolds and all these kind of tremendous wits around his table.
- [17:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [17:28]
Tom Holland
Basically, it's a quid pro quo. Johnson gets loads of peaches and has someone to hold his wig outside his window and Mr. Thrale becomes the host of this incredible social circle. It's obvious, I think, that it's not just the home comforts that Johnson loves. He also loves the sense of family, because he hadn't had any children himself, and Mrs. Thrale has hundreds of children. And in fact, Johnson seems to have got on better with Mrs. Thrale's enormous brood of children than Mrs. Thrale did herself. So she was kind of erratically affectionate. She might suddenly kind of, you know, smother a child with kisses. But I think most of the time, she found her children very boring. Johnson, by contrast, thinks they're great. I mean, he's like the best godfather you could possibly have. You know, he'll kind of crawl around on his hands and knees. He'll allow them to clamber over him. So Bate wonderfully, just wonderfully describes the Thrale children. They viewed him as a combination of. And a sort of toy elephant.
- [18:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
I love that.
- [18:34]
Tom Holland
Johnson's favorite among the Thrale children is the eldest, who is also called Hester, after her mother. And Johnson nicknames her Queen Esther. So Esther is the biblical heroine who marries the king of Persia. And so in that way, she comes to be nicknamed Queenie. And Johnson's birthday is one day after Queenie's, and so they always share a birthday party. So there's Johnson in his party hat, and there's Queenie in her party hat.
- [19:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's fun.
- [19:02]
Tom Holland
Yeah, it's fun and affecting.
- [19:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
But there's one person who's not so keen on this, and this is somebody else who has a. Feels a bit possessive about Johnson, and this, of course, is Boswell, because Boswell has always thought of himself as the number one Johnson superfan.
- [19:17]
Tom Holland
Yes.
- [19:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
And suddenly he's got to share Johnson with all these other people who, you know, maybe they're ticking other boxes. I mean, Boswell's not going to climb over him and, like, wear party hats, is he?
- [19:29]
Tom Holland
No. And I think because Boswell is basically stuck up in Scotland a lot of the time, it does take him time to realize just what a rival for, you know, his hero's affections he has in Mrs. Thrale. We talked in our second episode about this great Shakespeare jamboree that David Garrick, Johnson's old friend and, you know, the most famous actor of his day, that he stages in Stratford in 1769. And when Boswell goes there, he's amazed to find that Johnson isn't there, because Garrick is Johnson's old friend, but also Johnson is the most famous Shakespearean scholar of his day. He'd published this very famous preface to Shakespeare four years previously. And so Boswell had completely taken for granted that he'd be there. And he says, well, where is Johnson?
- [20:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [20:21]
Tom Holland
And he discovers that Johnson has gone to Brighton on holiday with the Thrales. Every day he's going swimming, and if he's not swimming, he's going hunting with Mr. Thrale. And Mr. Thrale, who's kind of galloping around for 50 miles, Johnson, is determined to show that he can do this as well. He doesn't really like hunting, but he's. He's galloping around as well. And there's one occasion they go out for an incredibly long ride, and Mr. Thrale is determined to show that he. You know, he's. He's untired. And so he jumps over a stool. And Johnson then jumps over a stool. And he's not a man who should be jumping over a stool, but he kind of gets away with it.
- [20:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
So for Boswell, Boswell presumably thinks, you know, I know Johnson. I own Johnson. I understand Johnson. He's lost the plot, and he's hanging around with his new friends. He's not himself.
- [21:09]
Tom Holland
Swimming, hunting, jumping over stools. What the hell's going on?
- [21:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, it's as though you were to meet somebody, Tom, and go off clubbing in Ibiza or something and not doing podcasts with you. Yeah. Or I'm trying to think of another analogy. What would you do that would be totally. I'll tell you what it is. If you took up video games, you stopped calling them computer games, and you called them video games.
- [21:31]
Tom Holland
Yeah. My new friend.
- [21:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. With your new friend, if you were like, oh, I'm. I'm playing loads of FIFA these days, I'd be like, what? What's going on?
- [21:38]
Tom Holland
Yeah, I think that is what's going on. And the fact that Boswell has now realized that Johnson would rather go swimming in Brighton than attend a Shakespeare festival in Stratford kind of completely opens his eyes to Mrs. Thrale's hold on Johnson. And so he feels, well, I haven't, you know, I need to make the best of a bad job. I clearly can't really prize them apart. And Mrs. Thrale, to give her credit, I mean, she's pretty magnanimous. You know, she's installed herself now as the new number one superfan. But she's very kind to Boswell. She doesn't kind of rub his nose in the fact that he's been slightly so she's regularly inviting Boswell to Streatham Place, sometimes not even when Johnson's there. And on one occasion, when the three of them are having breakfast together, she leans forward and whispers in his ear, there are many who admire and respect Mr. Johnson, but you and I love him. And of course, Boswell records this, and so it's proof that, you know, he's happy. Happy to be told this, I think
- [22:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
so to go to stick on Boswell for a second. Mrs. Thrale is instrumental in Johnson going to Scotland, isn't she? She says to Johnson, you should go on this trip with Boswell. That's very magnanimous of her.
- [22:51]
Tom Holland
It is magnanimous. It's also a little bit weird. So he wrote that letter in the summer of 1773, so a few weeks before he leaves for Edinburgh and his tour with Boswell around the Highlands and the Hebrides, he is very miserable again at this point. This is partly because he's got a bad eye infection, but it's also because he feels himself neglected by Mrs. Thrale. And it's not unreasonable for Mrs. Thrale to be neglecting him. Because her mother is dying, her husband has made an imprudent investment. And so Mrs. Thrale is pulling every string she can to try and stave off the bankruptcy of the brewery, which she is very successful in doing. So the brewery actually turns out to be fine. And also, of course, she's got all these multitudes of children to look after, so she feels very harried. She doesn't have time to give Johnson the attention that she normally does. And so Johnson, finding himself neglected as he sees it, writes this letter that you quoted. And it's partly a reproach, I think. You know, it's. It's like a kind of almost like a child feeling neglected by his mother, but it's also a request for a reassurance that he is not in her way, you know, and if she doesn't want him, then, you know, he will go. And Mrs. Thrale replies to it, what care can I promise, my dear Mr. Johnson, that I have not already taken what tenderness that he has not already experienced? And she says, why don't you go to the Hebrides? I believe Mr. Boswell will be your best physician. I mean, it's very sensible. Go and have a holiday. Go and, you know, ride a horse around the Highlands, whatever, spend time with Boswell. And she. Then I said that there's something of a kind of a child tugging on the skirts of his Mother, about that letter, maybe I should say describing Mrs. Thrale as his governess, because that is how she describes herself. So she writes to Johnson as he's about to leave for Scotland. Farewell and be good and do not quarrel with your governess for not using the rod enough.
- [24:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
So she sent him on his travels, as it were, and he's gone off to Scotland. And over the course of that journey here, Boswell, of course, have become very close, although they have had the odd row, haven't they? And Boswell has been writing down Johnson's conversation. And this is the point, of course, at which Boswell is formulating the great biography, you know, that's taking shape in his mind, isn't it?
- [25:22]
Tom Holland
Yeah, I think he's already, you know, he's been planning to do it before that. But one of the reasons that he's wanted to go on this trip with Johnson is it gives him a chance not just to record conversation, but also to ask Johnson details about his life before he met Boswell. And so that's also what Boswell is doing.
- [25:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
But then Boswell loses control. When Johnston goes Back to London, Mrs. Thrale is back in the. In the driver's seat, as it were.
- [25:48]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And of course, Boswell is now worrying that actually perhaps Mrs. Thrale is better placed to write this great biography than he is, and his mood is not improved the following year, when Johnson goes with the Thrales on a tour not of Scotland but of Wales, you know, Mrs. Thrale's native land. And Johnson tries to reassure him Wales is so little different from England that it offers nothing to the speculation of the traveller.
- [26:14]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's something for our Welsh listeners to bear in mind.
- [26:18]
Tom Holland
It has to be said, Boswell doesn't entirely believe this, and so he remains anxious and frankly, a little bit jealous.
- [26:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
Can't believe Johnson is dissing Wales in that way. Poor.
- [26:28]
Tom Holland
Well, he also goes with them to Paris and is similarly disobliging about Paris, I think, to try and cheer Boswell up. And basically, for the next six years, Johnson remains at Mrs. Thrale's, and he is so often at Streatham Place, and he's so patently devoted to Mrs. Thrale that Boswell, when in due course he comes to write his great biography, barely bring himself to mention it. So you could read Boswell's biography and barely be aware that he'd been spending most of his time in these years with the Thrales.
- [26:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
But everything changes, doesn't it, in 1781, April 1781 Henry Thrale, who never speaks. Anyway. So how does anyone notice he has a massive stroke? Apoplexy. And that's the end of him. He's dead.
- [27:13]
Tom Holland
That is the end of him.
- [27:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
And Boswell does a very weird thing. He writes a poem in which he imagines Johnson basically in a state of erotic ecstasy that he can finally marry Mrs. Thrale with delight in the keen aphrodisian spasm. Shall we reciprocate all night. That's mad. Boswell is writing Johnson erotica and he's
- [27:39]
Tom Holland
so pleased with it that he goes around, he's down to London, goes around reading it out to all his friends.
- [27:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
There's something very weird going on there.
- [27:47]
Tom Holland
It's so odd. The reality couldn't be more different because Johnson, now that Mr. Thrale is dead, is really worried what the future is going to hold. And so again he keeps writing to Mrs. Thrale for reassurance. Do not neglect me nor relinquish me. Nobody will ever love or honor you more. But this time, Mrs. Thrale doesn't write back and say, they're there. I'll always be there for you. Because she's is thinking, well, I no longer have this taciturn, philandering husband. That means that I'm, you know, I could find someone new. I could find someone much better, better even than Johnson. Well, I mean, Johnson by now is 71 years old.
- [28:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
How old is Mrs. Thrale?
- [28:27]
Tom Holland
So she must be in her early 40s now, late 30s, early 40s. Johnson, you know, he's still got his spasmodic twitches. He's still demanding that she stay up late with him, drinking tea, pockets full of orange peel. And he's apparently also becoming quite smelly. Oh, wow. So all of these are reasons why that a certain distance starts to open up between Johnson and Mrs. Thrale in the wake of Mr. Thrale's death and in the autumn of 1782, so that's a year after Thrale's death, Mrs. Thrale rents Streatham Place out. And it's obvious to Johnson that, you know, he's not going to be going back there. And so he's incredibly distraught. And shortly before leaving Streatham Place forever, he sits in the beautiful little church in the gorgeous little village of Streatham, and he prays for the Thrales. To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family, bless, guide and defend them. But the good Lord, I'm afraid, does not bless, guide and defend them, because Mrs. Thrale has fallen spectacularly in love, and it's not with Johnson, but with her children's music teacher, who's a very handsome young Italian called Gabrielle Piozzi. And of course, we mentioned that Mrs. Thrale speaks Italian, so, you know, it's. It's looking good for them, but it's not looking good, basically, for anyone else.
- [29:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So Piozzi is not terribly popular, is he, with Mrs. Thrale's friends or her children? Yeah. Do you think Piozzi is a bit of a gold digger or a bad sort, generally?
- [30:00]
Tom Holland
I think that is what her friends think. It's also, as we will see, what the press think. And I think it's also what Queenie in particular thinks, who by now is 18.
- [30:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
Hester. Yeah.
- [30:10]
Tom Holland
Yes, Hester, she's very formidable and she leads the opposition to her mother's affair. And for a while she succeeds in breaking it up and she gets PZ to leave England and go back to Italy. But Mrs. Thrale then goes into a very ostentatious decline, says that she's going to die unless Piozzi comes back. So Piozzi does return. And so on the 25th of July, 1784, Mrs. Hester Thrale, the former wife of the very respectable brewer Mr. Thrale, becomes Mrs. Hester Piozzi, the wife of an Italian music teacher. And the reaction now is vituperative, because it is open to the world. So I said that the press were negative. They write editorials fulminating against Mrs. Piozzi because by raising an obscure and penniless fiddler into sudden wealth, she has brought disgrace on her family, on Britain, on
- [31:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Wales, most importantly, absolute shocker.
- [31:07]
Tom Holland
And Mrs. P's daughters agree and they come to believe that their mother had made her second marriage. And I quote from one of them, from original and persevering dislike and real hatred of us all, and from her hatred of her father. So they're really not taking it well. And Mrs. Piozzi responds to this by condemning her daughters as SA and ungrateful and nicknaming them Regan and Goneril after the monstrous daughters in King Lear. And essentially the whole family breaks up and Queenie never forgives her. She ends up, interestingly, marrying Lord Keith, who featured in our series on Lord Nelson.
- [31:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
He had very sound views on Emma Hamilton.
- [31:48]
Tom Holland
Yeah. He clearly doesn't approve of headstrong marriages, I think it's fair to say.
- [31:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
But crucially, what does Johnson make of all this? Because he is he, surely he's gutted that Mrs. Thrale has become Mrs. Piozzi.
- [32:01]
Tom Holland
He's completely devastated. So right up to the end, he is hoping that it won't happen. And then Mrs. Thrale, as she still is at this point, writes him a letter saying, look, I'm going to be tying the knot with Signor Piozzi. And Johnson's so devastated that he writes there a very an uncharacteristically cruel response. If you have abandoned your children and your religion, God forgive your wickedness. And moment he sent it, he's kind of repenting it. And he writes her a second letter, kind of retracting these angry words. But it's too late. Their friendship is over. They will never see each other again. And by now Samuel Johnson is 75 years old. He is in palpable physical decline. He's had a stroke a few months earlier, and he's bereft of this family with which he had been so intimate for 15 very happy years. And so he's never felt so alone, so heartbroken.
- [32:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Samuel Johnson is alone. Or is he? Because after the break, we will be digging into the extraordinary story of Samuel Johnson's now at the Home Depot. Receive 12 months special financing and free basic installation on carpet projects with lifeproof Lifeproof with pet Proof technology, home decorators collection and traffic Master carpets. Bring a new look to your floors or give them a durable surface that stands up to life's tough messes. Get 12 months special financing on installed carpet projects right now at the Home Depot. Offer valid March 12 through March 29, 2026. Exclusions and additional charges may apply for licenses, see homedepot.com licensenumbers so good, so good, so good.
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Tom Holland
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- [34:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Secret Son. Okay. Welcome back to the Rest Is History. What a cliffhanger. We left Samuel Johnson in the shadow of his rupture with the former Mrs. Thrale, who's now disgraced herself and let Wales down by becoming PC. So there'll be no more trips to the paradise of Streatham. But I tantalize you, dear listeners, with the talk of Samuel Johnson's secret Son. And we'll be getting into that, won't we, Tom? But first of all, you know, there's always been this tension with Johnson. There's the clubable side, sociable side, the Johnson who surrounds himself with Garrick and Burke and Joshua Reynolds and Boswell. And then there's the sort of melancholy, solitary man who's bottling up his mental health anguish and not subscribing to BetterHelp and talking to Prince Harry. So where is he now? He's 75. You said he's developed a terrible stench, but is. Yeah.
- [35:34]
Tom Holland
Is he? I don't think it's a terrible stench. I think. I think it's just maybe palpable. If you've been tipped off,
- [35:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
it's mildly off putting.
- [35:46]
Tom Holland
Well, the thing is, it's not sufficiently off putting that his friends don't want to see him. He remains this word clubbable, which is a word that Johnson has coined. He originally used it to describe Boswell, as it happens. And even though he's been staying with the Thrales all these past years, he has continued to see all his friends. I mean, he's, you know, they are still very much part of his social circuit. And even if he's in his. His kind of, you know, his rooms off Fleet Street, Bolt Court, he's now moved to, which is very near Gough Square, which you can still go and visit to this day. He's not alone there either. Listeners may remember in the very first episode we had our first mention of Mrs. Thrale and I quoted her as saying about Johnson that he loved the poor as I never saw anyone else do. And what makes her say this was the memory of all the waifs and strays that he was always giving shelter to in his rooms. So to quote her, she wrote how for years he'd nursed whole nests of people in his house where the lame, the blind, the sick and the sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils whence his little income could secure them. He also has with him this man who is nominally his manservant, but had in effect come to rank as his son. So you were slightly, slightly overemphasizing the element of scandal there. His secret son, his adoptive son, and apologies to listeners who may feel cheated of that. And this is a guy called Francis Barber, Frank Barber, and he was a one time slave and orphan who at the age of 10 had been brought from Jamaica by his owner to England where he'd been set free. And Frank Barber had ended up in Johnson's charge. And Johnson thought he was wonderful and essentially fathered him, paid for his schooling. Frank then went and signed up to the Royal Navy, which to Johnson was an absolutely mad thing to do. Johnson thought that you were better off in prison than in the Royal Navy because at least in prison you couldn't drown. And so Johnson pulls strings to get Frank out of the Navy and Frank comes back and kind of operate kind of as Johnson's man servant, but I mean, he's really his companion. And Johnson ends up writing Frank into his will as his residual heir. And in due course, when Johnson dies, Barber will inherit most of his, you know, the property that hasn't been given to other people. And he moves to Litchfield. So Johnson's native home, he uses the legacy to set up a draper shop. He marries a local woman, and I gather that his descendants live in Litchfield to this day.
- [38:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
And Frank or Francis Barber, to be clear, you know, you said he was formerly a slave, he's black, he's of African descent.
- [38:33]
Tom Holland
Yes, he is.
- [38:34]
Dominic Sandbrook
Johnson has always been an abolitionist, hasn't he? That's why he was down on the American tax rebels, because he pointed out their hypocrisy in wittering on about liberty when they were some of the most terrible people who ever lived.
- [38:45]
Tom Holland
Yes. So he essentially has an adoptive black son. He also has another series of companions. One of the series of companions is probably the most famous of all the creatures who lived with Johnson in his rooms, human or non human. And this companion was dead by 1784. But since he's the only one who has his own statue, I think it would be remiss not to mention him. And again, anyone who wants to see the statue, it's in Gough Square. It's a very handsome statue and it's a statue of Hodge. And Hodge was one of a number of cats kept by Johnson, but the only one that we know by name, thanks to Boswell specifically mentioning him in his life of Johnson. And in fact, Boswell himself hated cats and had been criticized for it by Rousseau. When Boswell had been to meet Rousseau. Rousseau thought cats were great. He said, the cat is free and will never consent to become a slave. And I think Johnson probably agreed with that. It was maybe one of the few things that Johnson and Rousseau would actually have agreed on. Johnson adored cats, and he adored Hodge and would go out to buy him oysters, as Boswell says, lest the servants, having that trouble, should take a dislike to the poor creature.
- [39:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
The cat ate oysters. Do cats eat oysters?
- [40:01]
Tom Holland
Yeah, clearly. I mean, oysters were much more common then than they are now. It was a kind of working class food rather than going to a posh restaurant. But even so, Johnson is obviously spoiling Hodge. There's this. This kind of very touching, sad story that Boswell narrates. It was a ludicrous account. Boswell writes of the despicable state of a young gentleman of good family. Sir Johnson says, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats. And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favorite cat and said, but Hodge shan't be shot. No, no, Hodge shall not be shot. And you can imagine him kind of tickling Hodge under his chin.
- [40:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
So what's happened to Hodge? Hodge is dead. Is he? Have we killed off Hodge?
- [40:45]
Tom Holland
Hodge has longed since died. But there's probably another cat we don't know, because Boswell doesn't like cats, so he doesn't keep us up to speed that.
- [40:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
So Mrs. Thrale is morally dead because she's married an Italian fiddler. Hodge is physically dead.
- [40:57]
Tom Holland
He's gone.
- [40:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
But Boswell is very much alive.
- [41:00]
Tom Holland
Yeah, he's still on the scene. And of course, by the summer of 1784, he is the only one of those two great Johnsonians, Mrs. Thrale and Boswell himself, who is still left standing. Now, there are times when even Johnson has grown impatient with Boswell's adulation. So at one point he brilliantly said, you have but two topics, yourself and me, and I'm sick of both. But he does, you know, he knows that he is loved and revered by Boswell. And obviously, in the wake of the implosion of his relationship with Mrs. Thrale, this counts for a great deal. And so that summer of 1784, Johnson arrives in London on 5 May, and he spends two months there, and most of his time is spent with Johnson. I think Boswell has a sense that this might be the last time that he will see Johnson. And the highlight of his stay is a trip to Oxford. And going to Oxford is a jaunt that has become something of a tradition when Boswell is down in London with Johnson. And actually those trips to Oxford had provided Boswell with some great moments which he records in his life. So there were times when Johnson had really shocked him. So you mentioned how Johnson is a very keen abolitionist. And so Boswell records an occasion when in company with some very grave men at Oxford, his toast was, here's to the next insurrection of the Negroes in the West Indies. So he's saying, here's to the next slave rebellion. And Boswell is shocked because he is completely unbothered by slavery and sees Johnson's opposition to it as what he describes as a mere violent prejudice against our West Indian and American settler.
- [42:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
So he thinks that Johnson's abolitionism is basically a little bit of a veneer, that Johnson is pretending to be woke, but in reality he's just anti American.
- [42:48]
Tom Holland
I think that is probably what he's saying because one of the reasons that Johnson is against the American Revolution, as we mentioned in our first episode, is that he sees the American revolutionaries as hypocrites. Conversely, Boswell is all in favor of the American Revolution. You know, he sees the Americans as being like the Corsicans and George Washington as being a kind of New Pauli. So that's something that they definitely disagree on, on, but it's not, you know, when they go to Oxford, it's not all kind of arguments about politics or whatever. So it's a perfect opportunity for Boswell to do some research, to find out about Johnson's early years and to meet people who had known Johnson while he was a student. So in 1778 there's a famous incident. Johnson meets with a guy called Oliver Edwards, an old fellow collegian of Johnson's. And Johnson hadn't seen this guy since 1729. And Johnson, of course is famous. So this guy Edwards comes up to him and says, oh, brilliant to see you. And Johnson has no idea who he is. And then suddenly he remembers and they have this kind of great conversation and Edwards reveals that he'd been. He'd practiced as a solicitor, he'd then retired to the country. Boswell describes him as a decent looking elderly man in grey clothes and a wig of many clothes. And it's evident that Edwards is a really charming man. So he has this very famous comment, you are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher, but I don't know how. Cheerfulness was always breaking in. This was one of the favourite quotations of Leonard Cohen.
- [44:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Hold on when was cheerfulness breaking with Leonard Cohen? Surely the answer? Never.
- [44:22]
Tom Holland
Also, he misattributed it to Ben Johnson, the Jacobean playwright.
- [44:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, for God's sake. You know who doesn't like Leonard Cohen?
- [44:30]
Tom Holland
Who?
- [44:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Our producer, Tabby. She says in the chat, he's such a moaner.
- [44:35]
Tom Holland
He's such a moaner. Well, I tell you, someone who isn't a Mona, even though he's very depressed, is by this point, Johnson. He is pretty down at this point, but he. He remains as fluent as ever. So on the carriage going up to Oxford in 1784, they meet with two American ladies, and they hear him talking, and they go, my, my, how he does talk. Every sentence is an essay.
- [44:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
And Johnson is polite to these ladies. I mean, they're Americans. So does he not incredibly rude to them in some way?
- [45:01]
Tom Holland
I think. I think actually they have. They're going to Worcestershire, and I think they have Worcestershire accents.
- [45:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, really?
- [45:07]
Tom Holland
So I think maybe he doesn't appreciate that. But having said that, Johnson is clearly oppressed, not just by a sense of his own mortality, but by a sense of what may happen to him after his death. He has dinner with another old college friend of his, a guy called Dr. Adams who'd been the Master of Pembroke, and they start talking about death and what happens to people after death. And Johnson says, I am afraid I may be one of those who shall be damned. And Boswell, in his stage direction, says, looking dismally, Dr. Adams, what do you mean by damned, Johnson? Passionately and loudly sent to hell, sir, and punished everlastingly.
- [45:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
Is this because Johnson is troubled by things like his own lusts? They're always on his mind. He doesn't like to go and see the actresses because they'll excite his passions, all of that.
- [45:57]
Tom Holland
Boswell certainly finds it unsettling that Johnson is this nervous about the destination of his soul. And this is partly because Boswell's own faith is shaky. And so he needs Johnson to serve as an example of kind of unshakable Christian orthodoxy. And if Johnson is worried he's going to be damned, then you know, what the hell's going to happen to Boswell? And I think you're right that there may be a sexual dimension to this,
- [46:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
because, like, what else has Johnson conceivably done that would get him into hell? I mean, he's not going to get into hell because he's written the dictionary or been rude about the Scots, but if there's private stuff that's going on in his head, it's like Jimmy Carter committing adultery in his heart many times. You think, there's that.
- [46:40]
Tom Holland
Let's come to that in a minute. Let's just look at Boswell and Johnson's parting and what happens then? So Boswell leaves London on the 1st of July, 1784, and the evening before, he had gone with Johnson to Sir Joshua Reynolds for a kind of private dinner. So just the three of them. And at the end of the evening, Reynolds lends Johnson his carriage to take him back to Bolt Court on Fleet Street. And Boswell goes with him and helps Johnson out of the carriage and sees him to the passageway which leads from Fleet street to Bolt Court. Boswell remembered this parting. When he had got down upon the foot pavement. He called out farewell, and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetic briskness, which I think is a wonderful phrase. Johnson goes back into his rooms, and waiting for him, there is the fatal letter from Mrs. Thrale announcing her intention to marry Signor Piozzi. So all of that kind of nightmare is now kind of unleashed for Johnson. Boswell, meanwhile, has gone back to Scotland, and he keeps writing to Johnson, saying, you know, how are you? I'm very worried. How anxious you seemed about the fate of your eternal soul. Tell me all about it. And Johnson's furious. He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to put up with Boswell's nagging. And so he writes back to Boswell. Write to me often, but write like a man. Then on the 3rd of November, he does something that he never does. He complains to Boswell about his health. He says, I feel unwell. I feel short of breath. I'm finding it hard to walk. Early December, he draws up his will. He burns a few papers, maybe suggestive, and he falls increasingly to prayer. And on the evening of the 13th of December, he dies. And he's found the next morning in his bed. And his passing is marked as a very solemn national occasion. He's buried in Westminster Abbey. Joshua Reynolds is among the pallbearers, and the eulogy is delivered by Edmund Burke. Boswell is not at the service. He is up in Scotland. The news reaches him four days after Johnson's death, and he is thrown utterly into misery. And eight days after Johnson's funeral, say, that's the 28th of December, he can still write in his journal his sense of disbelief that Johnson is dead, but he also feels now under the most massive pressure because everyone knows that he has been preparing notes for a biography of Johnson. And I think that Boswell Himself feels that his entire life up until this moment had been preparation for that great task. And so publishers are aware of this, and they write to him and say, you know, can you get us something? Immediately, It's December. One publisher says, you know, get me 400 pages by February.
- [49:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
And I guess there are a couple of reasons for this. One is that he wants to produce a memorial to his great friend. You know, he feels this task has been appointed to him. He'll sell more copies the closer it is to Johnson's death.
- [49:29]
Tom Holland
This is peak fame, but people will start to forget Johnson.
- [49:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, people forget. But also there might be competitors, other rivals working on Johnson books.
- [49:38]
Tom Holland
Yeah, of course, Mrs. Piozzi chief among them. So Boswell is very anxious about this, and he thinks, well, probably the best thing for me to do is to go down to London and start work there. Which is terrible plan, because, of course, the moment Boswell arrives in London, he starts behaving as Boswell does in London. So he goes out to watch a hot air balloon. He goes to Bedlam, interestingly, the place where the lunatics are chained up. And he ends up singing a song with an inmate that Boswell himself describes as having been very pretty.
- [50:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
Boswell is such a dog, isn't he?
- [50:10]
Tom Holland
He then gets drunk with a couple of prostitutes who are wearing red coats in the churchyard of St Paul' he's so drunk that he doesn't notice his pocket being picked. He falls over and he has to be helped home by a pair of strangers. And none of this is helping him to write his biography. And it goes on like this, and the months pass and then the years, and Boswell's life begins to fall apart at the seams, as he had worried it would with Johnson gone. So he ends up leaving Edinburgh altogether, trying to set up as a barrister in London. And it's a disaster. You know, he doesn't know English law. It's absolutely hopeless. He tries to secure a seat in Parliament and he ends up humiliated by the aristocrat that he'd been hoping would serve as his patron.
- [50:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
Tragic.
- [50:54]
Tom Holland
And his wife falls ill with tuberculosis, and Boswell neglects her. She then dies, and he's then prostrated with grief and guilt. And while all this is going on, all these kind of catastrophic developments in Boswell's life on the publishing front, it's exactly as the booksellers had feared. Lots of biographies of Johnson start appearing, and the first of these, which was published in spring 1786, was by Mrs. Piozzi. And it was very waspish and pretty embittered. And it reflected the breakdown in her relations with Johnson, you know, and therefore it has the hint of gossip. And so it's, you know, it's pretty popular.
- [51:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [51:34]
Tom Holland
And then in 1787, there's a very pompous formal biography which is claimed to be definitive. And that was written by one of the executors of Johnson's will, a lawyer by the name of Sir John Hawkins. And, you know, it's, it's very stiff. But again, this, the fact that it's being marketed as definitive, it's a massive, you know, anxiety for boswell. And the 1780s become the 1790s. And still from Boswell there is no sign of this long promised, long anticipated life of Johnson. And so both his friends and his enemies are endlessly, you know, the friends are saying, get a move on. His enemies are saying, ha, ha ha, you're useless, you're an old drunk, you're never going to publish it. And it's true that the chaos of his own life, you know, the, the whoring and the drinking and the growing debts.
- [52:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, he is drinking a lot, isn't he?
- [52:23]
Tom Holland
Massive amounts by this point. I mean, these are clearly factors why he's finding it hard to finish his book. But I think it is also due to something more, and that is a sense that actually with his biography, he is on the verge of something great, that everything else in his life is a disaster. But if he can get this biography right, then that will be his memorial, you know, he will have achieved something wonderful. And his ambition is as simple as it's hubristic, to write a biography of a kind that has never been written for, to portray Johnson in the words that he ends up putting in his introduction to the biography more completely than any man who has ever yet lived.
- [53:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
So he makes Robert Carrow, who writes these 6,000 page books about the life of Lyndon Johnson, he makes him look like a mere pamphleteer, doesn't he? Because Boswell wants to check every fact. He wants to talk to every associate of Johnson's. He wants to write the complete life, definitive, no question, unasked or unanswered.
- [53:25]
Tom Holland
Boswell's the life of Johnson is not as long as Robert Carrow's, but Robert Carrow is definitely the heir, heir of Boswell. And essentially everyone who writes a biography today is Boswell's heir because he has established the template that every detail matters. Yeah, you have to be sure of every detail. You can't just repeat hearsay. So that takes a lot of Work and effort. But I think also you were talking about Boswell worrying about why is Johnson thinking he's damned in the final months of his life? And Boswell is worried about that, I think, as a biographer as well as a friend. And so he is trying to work. You know, if his biography is going to be complete, then he can't veil that. He needs to kind of get to grips with that. And so he's kind of roving in his mind all kinds of possibilities. So had Johnson's faith, for instance, been wavering in the final months of his life? You know, was he worrying that he might go insane, might become a lunatic? Or as you suggested, was it the memory of something sexual, perhaps, which had been causing him shame and making him worry that he might be damned? And Boswell doesn't discount any of these possibilities because he's been doing his research, and he knows that as a young man, actually, Johnson had had religious doubts. So David Garrick, the great writer, Boswell's oldest friend, he'd said Johnson did have religious doubts as a young man. We've seen how Johnson did indeed dread being plunged into madness. And also it's evident, even from things that Johnson said himself, often making a kind of jest out of it, that he did feel a constant tension between his sense of morality and his sexual desire. So you. You mentioned that wonderful line about him going backstage and telling Garrick, I'm not going to become here, because what is it? The white bosoms and silk stockings of your actresses arouse my amorous propensities. But he also had this kind of wonderful phrase, if I had no duties and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post chaise with a pretty woman. So Boswell's own hunch, he. He ends up deciding that actually this is what Johnson had been worrying about. And so he. He writes in the biography that his suspicion that as a young man, Johnson had turned to prostitutes, or as Boswell himself puts it, had been led into some indulgences which occasioned much distress to his virtuous mind. So, I mean, that's one way of putting it, I guess. But there is another possibility, and this is one that came to light in 1949 when a scholar called Katherine Balderstone suggested that perhaps what was on Johnson's mind were memories of a sadomasochistic relationship that he had had with Mrs. Thrale. So there have been hints of that being dropped throughout this episode. So in that opening letter, Johnson had spoken of that slavery which you know so well how to make a happy one. And Mrs. Thrale had written to him, sending him on his way to. To join Boswell for their tour of the Hebrides. Do not quarrel with your governess for not using the rod enough. Now, that padlock and chain that Johnson had bought, he made a gift of that to Mrs. Thrale. And Mrs. Thrale made a note in her diary, says Johnson, a woman has such power between the ages of 25 and 45 that she may tie a man to a post and whip him if she will. And she then goes on to say, well, I know for a fact that Johnson is aware of this and just kind of leaves that hanging. So is it a possibility? I mean, I think it's not anachronistic to say it might have been.
- [56:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
La vice galoise, the. The Welsh vice rears its head again.
- [56:59]
Tom Holland
No. The Marquis de Sade is on the scene in France even as Mrs. Thrale is writing that.
- [57:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
What's going on here is this. I think this is bonker. I think this is just three unrelated things. Padlock metaphors yoked together.
- [57:13]
Tom Holland
I agree. And I think that even. Even if there was an element of that to it, I think it was unacted on. I also think that Johnson didn't sleep with prostitutes as a young man, but I think that, like Jimmy Carter, he felt lust in his heart and felt guilty about that. And it's beyond Boswell's ability to comprehend that someone might feel guilty about wanting to go with prostitutes because Boswell doing it literally every day. So I think Boswell is misreading what Johnson felt guilty about. Myself.
- [57:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
But doesn't Boswell see Johnson's torments as signs? Not that he's screwed up in some way, but signs of reminders of just how great his imagination is. The fact that he can be tormented by doubt about something that he didn't even do. Basil has this wonderful metaphor, doesn't he? A very, very Tom Holland metaphor about the Coliseum in Rome.
- [58:13]
Tom Holland
Yeah, it's such a beautiful, powerful metaphor. His mind resembled the vast amphitheatre, the Coliseum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgment, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him after a conflict. He drove them back into their dens, but not killing them, they were still assailing him. So this is a fight that Johnson is undertaking his entire life. And I think the groundbreaking achievement of the biography that Boswell ends up writing of Johnson is that readers of that biography do not need to take this on trust because Boswell's portrayal of Johnson ends up being so capacious, so detailed, so empathetic, so compassionate, so rich that readers of the Life can feel that for themselves. It's why it's such a moving book. You feel the flaws of Johnson and how he overcame them. That's what his greatness lies in.
- [59:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's immersive, it's compelling, it's internally coherent in a way that biographies up to that point were not. It's psychologically acute, but it has room for contradiction and for complexity and for eccentricity and all of those kinds of things. So you do feel. I agree with you, you feel like you're getting the picture of a complete, rounded, complicated human being rather than the sort of slightly simplistic streamlined portraits that people had done up to this point, including kind of classical portraits and whatnot. There's no sense of caricature about it, is there?
- [59:56]
Tom Holland
No. And on top of that, it is insanely entertaining. I mean, Johnson's compensation is brilliant and Boswell has preserved it. And so you can read page after page after page. It's like, I mean, it is so enjoyable. And so when it comes out, you know, it's been a seven year wait for this, this biography, and everyone says this is brilliant. I mean, this is, this is incredible. We've never read anything like that. And I think we're so habituated to the form that biography has taken today that perhaps it can be hard to recapture the sense of excitement and disbelief and enjoyment that people felt on reading it. And Boswell almost overnight was enshrined as the kind of the Shakespeare, the goat of biographers.
- [60:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
Just one question about the time that it comes out. It came out in 1791 and it is the portrait of the ultimate Englishman, somebody who almost self consciously incarnates the pragmatism, the common sense sense, the small c conservatism that people like to equate with the English character. Do you think it makes a difference to its reception that it comes out two years after the French Revolution has begun and two years before? I think it is Britain is going to end up in war with revolutionary France and that a portrait of an Englishman of this kind would resonate with people in a way that might not have done at a different point?
- [61:17]
Tom Holland
I think that must be the case. I think that Johnson is an intellectual, funny, warm hearted John Bull and that's exactly what people in Britain over England perhaps more particularly want. And that's what Boswell has given them. You know, it's not just down to Johnson. It is also down to Boswell. And I think that that's what makes them, you know, as a pair, such kind of irresistible subjects for a history podcast. Because Johnson, I mean, he continues to live. There are lots of people who have been like Johnson, kind of great literary lions. Nobody remembers them, but he continues to live thanks to Boswell in a way that, in my opinion, no one in history before that biography lives today. He is the oldest complete portrait of a person that we have.
- [62:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, I was about to say it's the completeness that's the thing, isn't it? I mean, there are great characters in history. There's, I don't know, Augustus or Henry VIII or Oliver Cromwell or whoever it might be, but we only see them, you know, we see very partial pictures of them at best. But Johnson, you feel like, you know, the man, you feel like he could be your friend, like, you know him that well.
- [62:30]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And it's not just Johnson, of course, because, you know, we're also seeing the people that he's dining with, you know, in private dinners or in London taverns or on the hobrodys or whatever. And these scenes are so vivid. So Adam Sisman, who's written a wonderful book, Boswell's Presumptuous Task, about how Boswell went, set about writing this biography, he's written brilliantly on how Boswell frames these scenes of kind of Johnson having conversations with his friends as scenes in a play and why he took such care over them. And Sisman writes, he knew that they were what made his biography distinct from any other. But I think that. That, you know, we can push that analogy perhaps even further, because in the episode we did on the tour of the Hebrides, we cast Boswell as a kind of documentary maker. And I think that reading these scenes of Johnson talking is as close to having fly on the wall documentary footage from the 18th century as we get. It's that incredible to read. And these are not scenes from a play because they actually happened. Boswell recorded them and put them in his journals and reworked them, and you can read them, and there they are.
- [63:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
And it's not just. It's a tribute, not just to Johnson, though, but to Boswell, right?
- [63:48]
Tom Holland
Yeah, completely.
- [63:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, you say they're scenes from a documentary. I mean, they're not, because they're literary constructs. And Boswell is a great writer. I mean, Boswell is a brilliant writer with a brilliant judgment of you know, when to stop, the anecdote, how much detail to go into all of those kinds of things. I mean, he's obviously recreating conversations from memory. Memory.
- [64:07]
Tom Holland
And he seems to have amazing memory for that.
- [64:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
But also Boswell. I mean, Boswell's a pretty bad man in some ways, but he has a great enthusiasm for life, doesn't he? He loves being himself and being alive and the world, and he takes such boyish pleasure in it that it's irrepressible. You can disapprove of his conduct, which is often pretty poor, while at the same time, you know, finding him fun and finding his world really fun.
- [64:35]
Tom Holland
And also, of course, reflect the fact that we only know how badly Boswell behaves because he actually writes it down in these journals. So these journals were lost. People didn't even know they existed for a century and more, and then they were found in very weird circumstances in the 20th century. And people who want to know more about that, more about how Boswell might have recorded all the details that goes into the life of Johnson. I will be talking to Adam Sissel on a bonus. In fact, by the time you listen to this, it may already have gone out. But just to end by saying that, I think that, you know, there are kind of amazing literary duo. So Don Quixote or Sancho Panzer or Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and Johnson and Boswell are up there in that kind of pantheon. But the amazing thing is they're real, they're not invented, but they have that kind of character of kind of timeless archetypes. And I think that to read Boswell's Life of Johnson, essentially, is to come as close as is humanly possible to overhearing the 18th century, and to read it is to experience a form of time travel.
- [65:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, to think about Johnston Boswell always reminds me of. I once saw a lecture online by Neil Ferguson, the sometimes controversial historian, and it's a sort of welcome lecture that he does for students. He's talking about his love of history, and he says, people who I think of as great friends of mine have been dead for 200 years, and I've encountered them through studying history and the pages of history. And I feel like I know them better than I know people I see every day. And I love them, and I love, you know, being reacquainted with them and being in their company. And that's one of the beauties of history. And Johnson and Buzzwell are like that, aren't they? They're such irresistible characters that you feel, you know, them and you relish every moment that you spend in their company.
- [66:25]
Tom Holland
Absolutely. And if this series encourages anybody to read Boswell's Life of Johnson or even some of his journals, then it won't have been in vain.
- [66:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, it definitely won't have been in vain, Tom. So that is Johnson and Boswell. What a wonderful story. And we're going to be doing something completely different next time. So next time we will be venturing back to 19th century America for the rather darker story of the Ku Klux Klan. So Tom, thank you so much. What an immersive journey into Georgian London that was. And indeed to Scotland and most of all to Wales. So on that Welsh bombshell, we say thank you very much and goodbye.
- [67:11]
Tom Holland
Bye Bye. Foreign.
- [67:22]
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