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FLORIDA BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY
SOFT- HEARTED SAM
20 March 2005
Samuel Johnson. The "Great Cham of Literature," according to Tobias Smollett. In eighteenth century Britain Johnson was the equivalent of a media super-star, and more. Author or compiler of the monumental Dictionary of the English Language, essayist, poet, critic, playwright, journalist; he was the most famous man in England, after the King. The image we have of him today is of an intimidating presence, a large, physically uncouth man of enormous intellect and strong Tory leanings, a political conservative who suffered fools not at all. His great chronicler James Boswell tells us that "he talked for victory," and "all his life habituated himself to consider conversation as a trial of intellectual vigor and skill." The Johnson we know best is opinionated, argumentative, unyielding in his insistence on intellectual and moral integrity and demanding of the same in his friends.
Today I want to talk to you about another facet of this complex and difficult man. We might admire the Samuel Johnson whose morality and logic we follow in The Rambler essays, whose poetic gifts overwhelm us in his London: A Poem and The Vanity of Human Wishes, whose critical and analytical skills dazzle us in the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare. However, we must love the Sam Johnson who filled his days not merely with writing and blustering, but with acts of kindness, generosity, even selflessness, that remind us that our own shortcomings are not merely intellectual.
Let me refresh your recollection of Johnson's story. He was born in Lichfield, in 1709, the son of a bookseller, respectable, but poor. A small bequest to his mother and some charity allowed him to enroll at Pembroke College, Oxford, but his stay was cut short after only thirteen months for want of money. Following a few failed efforts to work as a teacher, he set off for London to try his luck as a writer in 1737, leaving his new wife behind. He was desperately poor. His wife, a widow, had brought some money into the marriage, but it had been lost in a failed effort to establish a school. Until 1762, when his powerful friends arranged for the by-then famous Johnson to receive a pension of 300 pounds annually from the King, he lived in near poverty. Although the rich and famous formed his circle of acquaintances, Johnson knew what it was to have nothing - once, in 1756, he was even arrested for debt.
Johnson was highly critical of others for failings of every sort, and was cynical or at least skeptical enough to observe that some sentiments ought always be suspect - for example, he warned that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," and that second marriages represent "the triumph of hope over experience." He was also most highly critical of himself, and his private thoughts, reflected in prayers and other writings, show a man struggling to find some inner peace, and recognizing in himself habits of sloth, indolence and lack of application and piety that he found intolerable. "Human life is everywhere," he told us, "a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed."
The public Johnson was a celebrity; London society vied for his favor; leading hostesses sought him out, and from Edmund Burke to Sir Joshua Reynolds he moved in a rarified atmosphere. And yet he did not. Let me tell you now about the opposite end of London's social, intellectual, and moral spectrum. Let me tell you about the blind beggar, the prostitute, the impoverished widow, the quack, the criminal, the freed slave, the charlatan, the enemies of the King, that Sam Johnson supported, protected, and defended, and why he did, and what he got in return.
We begin with Zachariah Williams, a penniless Welshman and sometime physician, who pursued learning and science all his life in an unsuccessful quest to strike it rich. In 1713 Parliament had offered a prize to anyone who could invent a way to determine longitude at sea, and winning the prize became Williams' obsession. Widowed, he brought his daughter Anna to London with him in 1727 to seek the help of sponsors in perfecting and submitting his prize proposals, and interested on his behalf such eminent people as Edmund Halley, of Halley's Comet, and even Sir Isaac Newton. His efforts came to naught however, and with the recommendation of friends he was admitted as a pensioner of the Charterhouse in Clerkenwell - the poorhouse. Increasingly without resources, he languished in filth and cold, as his daughter Anna sought to make some small money with her needlework. Unfortunately, as a result of cataracts, she became totally blind by 1740, with substantially diminished earning potential as a seamstress. Their situation deteriorated, and in 1748 Williams, and Anna, who, in violation of the rules, had been living in the poorhouse caring for him, were evicted from Clerkenwell.
Through mutual friends the Williams met the Johnsons, probably around 1749. Johnson was always interested in mechanical and scientific projects, and found Williams intriguing. Anna Williams, now blind, but well educated, intelligent and particularly pious, became a companion to Johnson's wife Elizabeth, or Tetty. Three years older than Johnson, Anna Williams was interested in literature, and extraordinarily organized and efficient, gifts no doubt necessarily enhanced by her blindness. Let's leave the Williams for a minute, desperately poor, living hand to mouth, but supported emotionally, and even financially, by the only slightly less poor Johnsons.
When Tetty Johnson's health failed she tried taking a room in Hampstead, in the country, for the cleaner air. There she often had a companion, Elizabeth Swynfen, a friend from her younger days in the Midlands. In fact Miss Swynfen's father had been Johnson's god-father, and it was through the Swynfens that Johnson had met the widow Tetty Porter. As Tetty's health deteriorated Elizabeth Swynfen was a constant comfort to both husband and wife. Tetty, Johnson's senior by twenty years, had long denied him access to her bed and her body. As Tetty's companion, part of Miss Swynfen's duty was to warm Johnson's bed at night when he visited his wife in the country. When Miss Swynfen had finished with the warming pan Johnson would quickly get into bed, and have her sit with him. Many years later Boswell interviewed her about those chores, and pressed her about what else might have happened. Although she acknowledged that Johnson had stroked and kissed her - "something different from a father's kiss" she admitted - responding to Boswell's question about whether Johnson always "conquered his violent inclination," Elizabeth Swynfen reported that he had, that in those moments suddenly, "He'd push me from him and cry 'Get you gone.' " Remember Miss Swynfen. She will return, with Anna Williams, who also was a frequent visitor to the failing Tetty in the country.
Slavery was not abolished in England until 1833. During the earlier years of empire, Englishmen owned slaves around the globe, and often brought them back to England. In Jamaica, in 1742, a slave of the plantation owner Richard Bathurst gave birth to a son. When Bathurst returned to England in 1750 to live with his own son, he brought the boy with him. The two Bathursts sent the boy, now ten, to school, with a new name, Francis Barber. When Tetty Johnson died in March of 1752 it was a devastating blow to the Bathursts' friend Samuel Johnson. He had loved his wife truly and deeply, to the dismay of his sophisticated friends, who saw in her only an older woman, wearing excessive make-up, and given to opium, liquors, and a taste for the high life far beyond her husband's modest means. Yet his friends understood that for Johnson, who feared solitude and madness, and nothing else in life, Tetty's loss would be excruciating. So it was.
Johnson was unable to sleep or work, and wandered through the streets most nights. The Bathursts revered Johnson, and he them, in particular young Dr. Bathurst. Johnson late in life referred to him as ". . . my dear dear Bathurst, whom I loved better than ever I loved any human creature." They shared much. Dr. Bathurst was Johnson's physician, and they were both among the earliest and staunchest anti-slavery advocates in England. Their politics were in complete agreement; Johnson said of him, "Dear Bathurst . . . was a man to my very heart's content: he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a whig; he was a very good hater."
Dr. Bathurst felt there was nothing else to be done but, two weeks after Tetty's death, to send young Francis Barber to live with Johnson, to help him, and with his presence, cheer Johnson with his gentle disposition and happy personality. Johnson never owned his own home, renting lodgings, he moved frequently, often necessitated by his financial condition. In 1752, working on the Dictionary, he was living at No. 17 Gough Square when Francis Barber arrived. Feeling little need for a personal servant, and being concerned about Francis' own interests, Johnson sent him almost at once to a nearby school. Only a day later Francis fell ill with smallpox, and was returned home to Johnson. When he had recovered sufficiently, Johnson sent him off to study at the Birmingham Free School, run by a Mr. Desmoulins, who had just married Tetty's old friend and Johnson's god-father's daughter, Elizabeth Swynfen. But Johnson was not then left alone at 17 Gough Square.
Prior to Tetty's death Johnson had used his influence to arrange for the senior surgeon of Guy's Hospital, who was also the leading English authority on cataracts, to operate on Miss Williams. She had moved to Johnson's house from her own miserable lodgings so that the surgery could at least be done in clean, reliable comfortable quarters, where she could convalesce in some comfort. The surgery was attempted, but it failed. Anna Williams stayed on however, and took charge of the household. Thus, when Francis Barber first arrived, and then returned from school, it was to quarters in Gough Square already crowded with Miss Williams, who had taken charge with an iron hand, if a blind eye, of Johnson's chaotic living arrangements, including Johnson himself, a maid servant, and a cook.
In addition to giving her a home, Johnson did everything he could to help Miss Williams. He tried to influence a publisher to bring out a book she was compiling, a dictionary of philosophical terms, but to no avail. More successful was Johnson's effort to have his friend David Garrick, the great actor/producer and owner of the Drury Lane Theatre, stage a play one evening for her benefit. It produced about 200 pounds, which Johnson invested in her name, yielding a very small interest, but providing Anna Williams with her first dependable income. Much later, in 1766, Johnson bullied Tom Davies - who had introduced him to Boswell - into printing another literary effort by Anna Williams, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, a work so thin it was padded with several pieces by Johnson himself, and one he solicited from Hester Thrale, his wealthy, aristocratic, and intimate friend. The book sold poorly, but what little it produced was invested along with the proceeds from the benefit performance ten years before.
At about the time Francis Barber had returned from Mr. Desmoulins' school in 1756, the elder Mr. Bathurst died. His will gave Francis his freedom and twelve pounds. However, Francis had nowhere to go but to Johnson's rooms on Gough Square, and while he was happy enough to stay on as Johnson's servant, Johnson, after all, demanded little of him, he could not abide the tyrannical Miss Williams. Francis soon ran away, and found work as an apothecary's assistant, but he frequently visited Johnson, and finding life outside too demanding, after two years asked if he could return. Miss Williams was by now even more firmly in control, and so Francis, after a few weeks, ran away again, this time to enlist in the navy in 1758.
While Johnson admired the military profession, it was the British Army officer, not the lowly seaman, usually impressed, who earned his approval. About the navy Johnson said:
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail, for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. . . . A man in jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.
It took Johnson over two years to get Francis discharged, but he did, and brought him home in October of 1760. In part because Johnson truly wished Francis to better himself and in part because of the hostility between Miss Williams and young Mr. Barber, he eventually sent Francis back to school, in 1767. By now in his twenties, he was an unlikely scholar in an English boarding school, and although he mastered reading and writing English, he struggled with Latin and Greek. Nonetheless, apart from visits home, Johnson kept him there until 1772.
By this time another penniless denizen of the London streets was regularly finding shelter in Johnson's quarters. Robert Levett was almost five years older than Johnson, and as a young man had wandered through England, France and Italy, working as a servant and a waiter. Buying a few medical books when he could, and attending some lectures on anatomy and pharmacy in France, he returned to England and, neither surgeon nor physician nor even apothecary, he began to minister to the needs of the street people. An unattractive, brusque man, Levett was married, briefly, to a prostitute who believed him to be a physician, while he believed her to be an heiress wrongfully deprived of her inheritance. Quickly realizing their mutual mistakes, the marriage ended almost as soon as it began, and in 1762 Levett too became a permanent member of Johnson's household. He could contribute nothing - his "patients" often paid him nothing but a swallow of gin - but his company with Johnson at breakfast. Since Levett often roamed the streets late at night ministering to the sick, while Johnson roamed them ministering to his own soul, they would both sleep until noon or later, and take their tea and toast from Anna Williams and the maid of all works, Mrs. White, before they went their separate ways.
After Levett the next to move in was Poll Carmichael. Let us listen to Boswell explain how she arrived:
Coming home late one night, he found a poor woman lying in the street, so much exhausted that she could not walk; he took her upon his back, and carried her to his house, where he discovered that she was one of those wretched females who had fallen into the lowest state of vice, poverty, and disease. Instead of hastily upbraiding her, he had her taken care of with all tenderness, for a long time, at considerable expense. . . .
The novelist Fanny Burney records in her diary the following further explanation, a conversation between her friends Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, inquiring about the members of his household, where Mrs. Thrale, with her aristocratic delicacy, was loath to visit:
Mrs. T. "But pray sir, who is the Poll you talk of? She that you used to abet in her quarrels with Mrs. Williams, and call out, At her again Poll! Never flinch, Poll!"
Dr. J. "Why I took to Poll very well at first, but she won't do upon nearer examination."
Mrs. T. "How came she among you sir?"
Dr. J. "Why I don't rightly remember, but we could spare her very well from us. Poll is a stupid slut; I had some hopes of her at first; but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical."
Yet she stayed, and like Francis, and Miss Williams, received an allowance from Johnson's none-too-healthy income.
And so did Mrs. Desmoulins, and her daughter, who came to share a crowded room with Poll Carmichael. Who was Mrs. Desmoulins? You've met her before. She was once the young Elizabeth Swynfen, daughter of Johnson's god-father, friend of his wife, and preparer of his bed long ago. Now the widow of Francis Barber's former schoolmaster, nearly penniless, she and her daughter had nowhere to go but to Johnson. Although she fought constantly with Miss Williams, and contributed nothing to the running of the house, she and her daughter received food, shelter and half a guinea a week.
And what did Johnson get in return from them all? From Levett and Miss Williams he did get some companionship, Levett at his late breakfasts, and midnight tea with Anna Williams whenever he returned home, but from the whole household what he got was collective misery. As he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:
Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them.
And we know how Francis and Miss Williams felt about each other. Francis, by now married, did even less than before. When Johnson's old cat Hodge was so sick he could only eat oysters, Johnson himself went to do the shopping so that, according to Mrs. Thrale, Francis' "delicacy might not be hurt at seeing himself employed for the convenience of a quadruped."
Johnson's life after 1765 and until Henry Thrale's death in 1781 was in fact lived mostly with the Thrales at their country house, Streatham Park where he had a room of his own. Not only was he happy and cared for there, his own lodgings on Gough Square and elsewhere, and, after 1776 at No. 8 Bolt Court, were full of what Thomas Macaulay later called a "menagerie" and Johnson himself jokingly referred to as a "seraglio." Mrs. Thrale described it as including "A Blind woman and her Maid, a Blackmoor and his Wife, a Scotch Wench [Poll Carmichael, that would be] a Woman whose Father once lived in Litchfield . . . - and a Superannuated Surgeon," Mrs. Thrale neglecting to mention both Mrs. Desmoulins' daughter and Mrs. White, the cook, but also mentioning a poor cousin of Johnson's in the country, and another cousin, a lunatic in an asylum, to both of whose support he contributed. Mrs. Thrale tells us that:
He really was oftentimes afraid of going home, because he was sure to be met at the door with numberless complaints; and he used to lament parenthetically to me, . . . that they made his life miserable from the impossibility of making theirs happy, when every favor bestowed on one was wormwood to the rest. If however I ventured to blame their ingratitude, and condemn their conduct, he would instantly set about softening the one and justifying the other; and finished commonly by telling me, that I Knew not how to make allowances for situations I never experienced.
Mrs. Thrale also tells us that:
He 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 save them.
Johnson's literary executor and early biographer John Hawkins, of whom Johnson famously said he was "a most unclubable man," tells us that when asked "how he could bear to be surrounded by such necessitous and undeserving people as he had about him, his answer was 'if I did not assist them, no one else would, and they must be lost for want.' " In fact Johnson's sympathy for the poor reflected a profound understanding of the limits of their lives. Mrs. Thrale's journal records the following:
What signifies . . . giving money to common Beggars? They lay it out only in Gin or Tobacco - and why should they not says our Dr. why should everybody else find Pleasure necessary to their Existence and deny the poor every possible Avenue to it? - Gin & Tobacco are the only Pleasures in their Power, - let them have the Enjoyments within their reach without Reproach.
Why? Why did Johnson observe to his friend William Maxwell that "a decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization?" In part, of course because he himself had been so poor for so long. Perhaps a more important explanation is that while Johnson feared only solitude and madness in life, he dreaded damnation after death. He lived in fear that he had wasted his life, that damnation would be his reward. The only good quality he would admit to having was his inclination towards charity. Sir Joshua Reynolds' sister, Francis, reports Johnson admitting to her that wandering the streets in the early morning hours "he often saw poor children asleep on thresholds and stalls, and that he used to put pennies into their hands to buy them a breakfast." In his diary he often noted small gifts to anonymous people he sees on the street. And in his Idler, Essay No. 4, he defines a charity as "tenderness for the poor, which is . . . inseparable from piety." His great Dictionary defines piety as "discharge of duty to God." And in his diary, reflecting on a year past, he notes that he had maintained Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, observing, "other good of myself I know not where to find, except a Little Charity."
If we conclude from this that he saw his acts of charity selfishly, as his only hope for salvation, we would be shortsighted indeed. Johnson was able to argue - and did, often for fun - any side of anything, but despite the contradictions we find in his writings and reported conversation, he was essentially an absolutist. He believed fervently in right and wrong. Surely right conduct could bring the rewards of a just God, but it is clear that he also believed in right for its own sake, as in his opposition to slavery, or to cruelty to animals. He was, after all, not only a pioneer abolitionist but a pioneer anti-vivisectionist. Does this indicate soft-heartedness - or tough-mindedness? Judge for yourselves from another example, this time a rather obscure one.
The French-Indian wars in the mid-eighteenth century were vicious. As the British struggled with the despised French for control of north-eastern North America few tactics were deemed too extreme. The great British hero of the Seven Years War was Jeffrey, 1st Baron Amherst, who was in charge of the British expedition against the French in Canada, and who captured Louisburg, Ticonderoga and Montreal. His success however, was due, in part at least, to weakening the native American Indian allies of the French by sending them small-pox infected blankets, against which they had no resistance. Johnson joined his countrymen in his extreme contempt, if not hatred, for the French - some things never change, do they. For example, consider the famous exchange between Johnson and his friend Dr. William Adams, as Johnson began his work on the Dictionary in 1748, predicting its completion in three years:
Dr. Adams. "But Sir, how can you do this in three years?
Johnson. "Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years."
Adams. "But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their dictionary."
Johnson. "Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three is to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."
Despite this attitude, widespread in England, in 1758 during the height of the Seven Years War, several notable London gentlemen organized a charity to provide relief for French prisoners of war held throughout the British Empire. In 1760 the committee managing the charity published its report of its highly successful efforts. The managers of the Committee persuaded Johnson to write an introduction.
He did. First, he began by placing a Latin motto from Terence on the title page: Homo sum, humani; nihil a me alienum puto. "I am a man and think that there is no human problem which does not concern me." Johnson's introduction to the Committee Report then anticipates and demolishes the arguments against helping the despised French when "there remain many Englishmen unrelieved." Warming to his subject, Johnson concludes with these extraordinary words:
That charity is best, of which the consequences are most extensive: the relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection; to soften the acrimony of adverse nations, and dispose them to peace and amity: in the meantime, it alleviates captivity, and takes away something from the miseries of war. The rage of war, however mitigated, will always fill the world with calamity and horror: let it not then be unnecessarily extended; let animosity and hostility cease together; and no man be longer deemed an enemy, than while his sword is drawn against us.
The effects of these contributions may, perhaps, reach still farther. Truth is best supported by virtue: we may hope from those who feel or see our charity, that they shall no longer detest as heresy our religion, which makes its professors the followers of HIM, who has commanded us to "do good to them that hate us."
Soft-hearted Sam? Or tough-minded man of principle? He famously said "No man but a block-head ever wrote except for money," and he was paid five shillings for his introduction. Do you doubt that he meant it, nonetheless?
Let us conclude this superficial review of the lesser-known Johnson with the story of the Reverend William Dodd. Perhaps you do not recognize his name, but let me introduce him by saying he was the progenitor of a type that reached fruition with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart. Of no particular beginnings, Dodd managed to graduate from Cambridge and later received an appointment as a curate, although he originally had come to London as a writer - a literary hack, just as Johnson had. He continued his literary work, one of which, The Beauties of Shakespeare, ultimately served as Goethe's introduction to Shakespeare. Good with words, and politics, he dedicated his books to those who could advance his career, and he received an appointment as chaplain to King George III. Dodd first became widely known in connection with his frequent sermons delivered at Magdalen House.
Here is how Dodd begins his An Account of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the Magdalen Charity, first published in 1761:
. . . that in the present disordered state of things, there will always be brothels and prostitutes, is a fact but too indisputable, however unpleasing. Any attempt to prevent this evil, would be no less impossible than impolitic. . . .
Thus it was, Dodd reports, that in 1758 seven gentlemen raised 3000 pounds and opened Magdalen House, where, with eight "unhappy objects" it began to receive these women for rehabilitation. By 1763, 483 had been received, and 370 discharged to better lives as wives, servants or, in fewer numbers, to death or for "faults and irregularities." Dodd's Sunday sermons to these women became quite the thing to attend; Horace Walpole took Prince Edward and other society notables to hear him in 1760, and reported that Dodd:
. . . harangu[ed] entirely in the French style, and very eloquently and touchingly. He apostrophized the lost sheep, who sobbed and cried from their souls - so did my Lady Hertford and Fanny Pelham. . . .
Another visitor reported that he had "difficulty to get tolerable seats . . ., the crowd of genteel people was so great."
Dodd's fame and contacts and ambition raised him high and then brought him low. He developed a taste for the good life, wearing long perfumed silk robes and a large diamond ring when he was in the pulpit, and living in a country house hung with paintings by Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens when he was not. He was appointed tutor to Philip Stanhope, godson of the famous Earl of Chesterfield; young Stanhope himself became the fifth earl on his god-father's death. Living beyond his means, Dodd was lucky for a time; his wife, of humble origins, unexpectedly inherited 1500 pounds, and then won 1000 pounds more in a lottery. An interesting story in itself, Mrs. Dodd had gone with her inheritance to bid on something at an auction. When she found herself bidding against a member of the aristocracy, she withdrew. The titled lady, in gratitude then invited her to tea and gave her a lottery ticket, which, as it happened, was a winner.
This was the acme of the rise of the Dodds. Using his wife's money, Dodd attempted to bribe the Lord Chancellor to name him to the prominent and well-paying living of St. George's Church in Hanover Square. The Lord Chancellor was not so easily bought off, and when the attempt was made public, Dodd, in 1774, was removed from the King's chaplains list. As his means shrunk, his debts grew, and his creditors pressed. Now desperate, Dodd, in February of 1777, forged a bond in the amount of 4200 pounds, and sought to cash it, Boswell tells us, "flattering himself with hopes that he might be able to repay its amount without being detected." Let us have Boswell tell us more:
The person whose name he thus rashly and criminally presumed to falsify, was the Earl of Chesterfield, to whom he had been tutor, and who, he perhaps, in the warmth of his feelings, flattered himself would have generously paid the money in case of an alarm being taken, rather than suffer him to fall a victim to the dreadful consequences of violating the law against forgery, the most dangerous crime in a commercial country; but the unfortunate divine had the mortification to find that he was mistaken. His noble pupil appeared against him, and he was capitally convicted.
No doubt it did not help Dodd that he was originally brought to be charged before the unclubable John Hawkins. Hawkins, a magistrate, was, despite Johnson's characterization of him, a charter member of The Club organized by Johnson in 1764. The Club was exclusive and its members were the most notable men of London. And, in 1764, Dodd was in his glory. Soon thereafter he had privately made it known that he wished to become a member of The Club. Hawkins reports that Dodd then ". . . dwelt with his wife in an obscure corner near a village called Warton; but kept, in a back lane near him, a girl." Sir John goes on to explain that when this and other "particulars respecting his character and manner of living" became known to the member of The Club, "all opposition to his admission became unnecessary." Thus by 1777 when Dodd was brought before him, Hawkins had long ago made up his mind about him, and lost no time binding him over for the trial. A week later Dodd was found guilty, and the sensitive forger fainted away, as the huge crowd of spectators wept at the verdict.
Dodd was shrewd enough to know that his powers of persuasion would not be up to the task of saving his own life, however many souls he claimed to have saved. Relying once again on his highly placed contacts, he had the Countess of Harrington write to Johnson, whom he himself had met only once, some 27 years earlier, to enlist his help. Johnson read the letter, "seemed much agitated" to the man who had delivered it, but finally said, "I will do what I can." We will never know what decided Johnson to act in favor of a man who represented the hypocrisy and "cant" Johnson so despised, but it is worth considering that Johnson had long opposed the death penalty, believing that it was not proportionate punishment for anything less morally heinous than intentional murder. We might also note that Johnson's own younger brother, Nathaniel, had died under mysterious circumstances some forty years earlier, hounded by creditors, perhaps guilty of forgery himself. In any event Johnson threw himself into his defense of Dodd - from a distance, and with his pen. "Blockhead" or not, Johnson took up his pen with no expectation of payment.
On May 16, 1777 Dodd was to appear before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield for sentencing. Horace Walpole characterized Mansfield as "inexorable," and wrote that he "never felt pity, and never relented unless terrified." The support of the public was not likely to help either, for, as Walpole reports, "Lord Mansfield . . . hated the popular party as much as he loved security." Johnson's first piece on Dodd's behalf was a plea for mercy and a statement of remorse for Dodd to deliver before sentencing. That day, however eloquent, it fell on the wrong ears, and Lord Mansfield, no doubt to the satisfaction of John Hawkins, pronounced a sentence of death. Johnson then produced a remarkable series of writings, mostly anonymous, on Dodd's behalf. His letters written for Dodd to send to Mansfield, the Chief Justice, and to the Lord Chancellor had no effect.
Johnson also drafted a letter for Dodd to send to the King. It begins with a plea that the King not be offended by a request from "the most miserable of men," and confesses to the crime of forgery, but then ingeniously dresses the request as a plea to preserve the honor and reputation of the church and the clergy, a particular concern of Johnson's. Here is some of what Johnson wrote for Dodd to send to the King:
[I] humbly hope that public security may be established, without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets, to a death of infamy, amidst the derision of the profligate and profane; and that justice may be satisfied with irrevocable exile, perpetual disgrace, and hopeless penury.
My life, Sir, has not been useless to mankind. I have benefited many. But my offences against God are numberless, and I have had little time for repentance. Preserve me, Sir, by your prerogative mercy, from the necessity of appearing unprepared at that tribunal, before which kings and subjects must stand at last together. Permit me to hide my guilt in some obscure corner of a foreign country, where, if I can ever attain confidence to hope that my prayers will be heard, they shall be poured with all the fervour of gratitude for the life and happiness of your Majesty.
Johnson himself, as I have said, felt strongly about protecting the reputation of the Church and its messengers. In his own name therefore Johnson simultaneously wrote to Charles Jenkinson, prominent in government and friend of the King, asking for consideration because, as he wrote:
[Dodd] is, so far as I can recollect, the first clergyman of our church who has suffered public execution for immorality; and I do not know whether it would not be more for the interest of religion to bury such an offender in the obscurity of perpetual exile, than to expose him in a cart, and on the gallows, to all who for any reason are enemies to the clergy.
In his cover letter to Dodd sending the letter he had written for the King, Johnson had been careful to warn Dodd "not to let it be known at all that I have written this letter. . . . I hope, I need not tell you, that I wish it Success. - But do not indulge Hope. - Tell nobody." Sir Nathanial Walpole, a member of Parliament, wrote contemporaneously that:
The King felt the strongest impulse to save him . . . To the firmness of the Lord Chief Justice . . . his execution was due, for no sooner had he pronounced his decided opinion that no mercy ought be extended, than the King, taking up the pen, signed the death warrant.
Johnson was not through. He wrote a Petition for the City of London and its Council to send to the King asking clemency, and published newspaper articles supporting a petition for clemency (which he also wrote) presented to the Secretary of State by Earl Percy, and signed by 23,000 people. He wrote a pathetic letter to the Queen for Mrs. Dodd herself to deliver. And he wrote a most remarkable example - perhaps the most remarkable example - of a genre now long disappeared: the "Condemned Sermon."
It was then the custom for a prisoner under sentence of death at Newgate Prison to deliver a final sermon addressed to an audience usually composed of three groups, fellow prisoners also under sentence of death, other prisoners, and the general public, who attended these events, as they did executions, in large numbers. Johnson's composition for Dodd drew as its text on the Acts of the Apostles, 16:23 "What must I do to be saved?" Under the title "The Convict's Address to His Unhappy Brethren" it was reprinted many times. In fact a version was studied the night before his own execution and speech to his fellow condemnees by one of the Bounty mutineers in 1792.
In order to be saved, Johnson has Dodd say, three things must be done - exert faith, perform obedience, and exercise repentance. The passages on faith and obedience were unexceptional in their substance, although markedly Johnsonian in their eloquence. In the passages on exercising repentance Johnson soars. After discussing the need to truly have a change of heart, to accept what cannot be avoided, to forgive others, to repair whatever injury was caused to the extent possible, and to confess all of the crimes of which the condemned has been guilty, Johnson writes an extraordinary passage about how to die. It is worth repeating to you - forgive its length:
What we can do, is commonly nothing more than to leave the world an example of contrition. On the dreadful day, when the sentence of the law has its full force, some will be found to have affected a shameless bravery, or negligent intrepidity. Such is not the proper behavior of a convicted criminal. To rejoice in tortures is the privilege of a martyr; to meet death with intrepidity is the right only of innocence, if in any human being innocence could be found. Of him, whose life is shortened by his crimes, the last duties are humility and self-abasement. We owe to God sincere repentance; we owe to man the appearance of repentance. We ought not to propagate an opinion that he who lived in wickedness can die with courage.
This extraordinary passage represents what one commentator has called Johnson's "most delicate act of consolation for Dodd." What he refers to of course, is the reference to the unlikeliness that any of us are innocent, thus reconciling the condemned man to the rest of humanity. Yet, as another wise commentator has said, "There is analogy, but an equation would be fiction." Johnson offers comfort to Dodd - soft-hearted Sam - but not exculpation; whatever his common humanity, "he who lived in wickedness" has no right to die with a show of courage.
Johnson also sent Dodd one last personal letter of comfort. In it he said, in part:
Be comforted: your crime, morally or religiously considered, has no very deep dye or turpitude. It corrupted no man's principles; it attacked no man's life. It involves only a temporary and reparable injury. . . .
In requital of those well-intended offices which you are pleased so emphatically to acknowledge, [Dodd having written Johnson to thank him profusely for his efforts] let me beg that you make in your devotions one petition for my eternal welfare. I am, dear Sir,
Your most affectionate servant
Sam: Johnson
Johnson's friends were not all pleased by his efforts for Dodd, a reprobate with no personal claim on his good offices. Nor did they find it seemly that Johnson asked the wrong-doer Dodd to pray for him. Our friend John Hawkins observed, probably with Johnson as much as anyone in mind, that the public, by:
. . . the insertion of his name in public papers, with such palliatives as he and his friends could invent, never without the epithet of unfortunate, . . . were betrayed into such an enthusiastic commiseration of his case, as would have led a stranger to believe, that himself had been no accessory to his distress, but they were the inflictions of Providence.
Hawkins goes on to remark on what he calls an "inconsistency" in Johnson in this case. According to Hawkins, Johnson:
. . . assisted in the solicitations for his pardon, yet, in his private judgment, he thought him unworthy of it, having been known to say, that had he been the advisor of the King, he should have told him that, in pardoning Dodd, his justice . . . would have been called in question.
Another writer called Johnson's efforts for Dodd, once disclosed after Dodd's execution, a "prostitution . . . of so singular a nature, that it would be difficult to select an adequate motive for it out of the mountainous heap of conjectural causes of human passions or human caprice." Unless, suggests this critic slyly, he might "have some consciousness, that he himself had incurred some guilt of the same kind." Johnson's friend Arthur Murphy said of this charge that "In all the schools of sophistry is there to be found so vile an argument? In the purlieus of Grub-street is there such another mouthful of dirt? In the whole quiver of Malice is there so envenomed a shaft?" Actually, Johnson went to some length, originally, to conceal his efforts on Dodd's behalf, at least until after the execution. In fact, when Mr. William Seward, a friend of Johnson's, expressed the view before Dodd's execution that "The Convict's Address" was too good to have been written by Dodd, Johnson, dissembling a little, said, famously, "Depend upon it, Sir. When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
Francis Reynolds, sister of Sir Joshua, the great painter and friend of Johnson, explains Johnson's asking Dodd to pray for him in his last letter by Johnson's acceptance of the sincerity of Dodd's repentance, and by the certainty that writing to Dodd on the last night of his life, Johnson "was so soften'd with pitty [sic] and compassion . . . he probably did not think of his former transgressions, or thought, perhaps, that he ought not to remember them, when the offender was so soon to appear before the Supreme Judge of Heaven and Earth." Perhaps Miss Reynold's further explanation of Johnson's efforts for Dodd is the most satisfactory, in that reflects Johnson's view that people, after the fall, are naturally corrupt. She explains:
No man, I believe, was ever more desirous of doing good than Dr. Johnson, whether propel'd by Nature or by Reason; by both I should have thought, had I not heard him so often say, that "Man's Chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature."
In fact, she tell us, that to those who claimed that nature, reason and virtue were inherent, indivisible principles in man, he would reply that " 'If man is by nature prompted to act virtuously and right, all the divine precepts of the Gospel, all its denunciations, all the laws enacted by man to restrain man from evil had been needless."
Or, perhaps the explanation is simpler. In fact, might his defense of Dodd, his efforts for the French prisoners, his charity toward the poor, be only the manifestations of the real tenderness of this hard-headed and intimidating man? We find a clue in an anecdote reported by the Rev. Hastings Robinson, who tells of a conversation at which he was present between Anna Seward, the so-called "Swan of Lichfield," Johnson's home town, and Johnson, on a visit there two months after Dodd's execution. Speaking of Johnson's direct personal request for mercy for Dodd in Johnson's letter to Charles Jenkinson, she said:
Miss Seward: I think, Dr. Johnson, you applied . . .to Mr. Jenkinson on [Dodd's behalf].
Johnson: Why yes Madam; I knew it was a man having no interest, writing to a man who had no interest; but I thought with myself, when Dr. Dodd comes to the place of execution, he may say "Had Dr. Johnson written in my behalf, I had not been here," and (with great emphasis) I could not bear the thought!
Judge for yourselves. Johnson, the "Great Cham" of literature, the unblinking moralist, or simply a man, as his friend Arthur Murphy said, whose "humanity and generosity . . . were unbounded."
Thank you.
Paul T. Ruxin
© 2005 Paul T. Ruxin
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