The Brothers Boswell (24 page)

“You come to the Cross with me, sir, and I’ll go where you will. And do what you will.”

“I shall send you a coin to keep you company,” Boswell says, and then in a surplus of generosity, “as well as another coin to keep that
coin company. I have an early morning engagement. With a great man. It cannot be missed.”

“We’ve time before then,” the young woman argues, looking defiantly into his eyes, then tightening her hold on his hand. It is the sort of demanding approach that he likes best from such women, and on another night he would more than likely allow himself the pleasure of yielding, if only to some furtive, partial pleasure. But if he is certain of anything concerning the revolutions of the last half hour, it is that the very mention of Johnson’s name has done him some sort of unquantifiable good with the Duke of Queensberry, perhaps as much as secured his commission outright.

And that conviction has already begun to expand into something more extensive and profound: he can feel Johnson’s moral influence over him already beginning, feel it working in advance of their actual Christmas Day meeting, and the net effect is like a smaller, more compact iteration of his Moffat vow of chastity.

Because Boswell knows suddenly that he will deny himself this woman standing before him. He begins to suspect already that he will deny himself the consummation of his painstakingly wrought affair with Louisa as well.

When his hand is his own again, he returns it deliberately to his right coat pocket and places it on his small calfskin copy of Johnson’s
Rambler
essays, and only there and then do his fingers curl protectively.

And when he leaves the woman with a three-penny piece, at last, he does so not to buy her willingness when next he runs across her, not to keep her in some sort of vague potential readiness, as he might have done last night or last week; he does so because he believes her when she says that her legs are cold, and—in the abstemious glow of his meeting tomorrow with Samuel Johnson—Boswell would actually have her go and warm them.

As you read this note, you sit at your breakfast table, easy in loose dressing gown, the morning of the day you are to meet the celebrated Samuel Johnson. Breakfast neat in honor, toast, rolls, and butter only. Refuse all jams, to show you may forgo any distinct pleasure at will. As you eat toast, think on true London authors: men of wit, praise, pleasure, and profit.

Yesterday you brought your first and second grand enterprises fairly to the brink: your true London love affair, and your commission. Today the last enterprise of the three: attaining the acquaintance, the general good opinion, and the correspondence of the author of the dictionary of the English tongue itself.

Let no Scotticism cross your lips; talk seldom, but that
scrupulously best fine English.

Deny not your country, but hold it lightly, fondly, the way a man now astride a stallion speaks of a childhood pony.

You have committed much Johnson to memory, but while every man would have his words memorialized, no man can hear them quoted in company without affecting displeasure. Bide time; wait until alone. Then run the man’s words naturally into your own, that he may appreciate depth of his impact upon your mind, soul.

Should you have opportunity, also tell him the story of how a
word in his Dictionary angered father, gave birth to secret language between brothers. “You see, Sir,” you may remark when the story is finished, “how your work has moulded not merely a man, but a family entire.” This you may perform before the rest of the company, be they however many.

Have shoes wiped, hair powdered and dressed, sword sharpened, polished, and belted in the rakish way of a military gentleman. Better that you should enter late, as a novelty, when he has met and conversed already with the rest of the company.

Better that you should stand out clearly: a young man of family, a would-be soldier, a one-day Laird, and—above all else—a Rasselas in search of his Imlac.

Boswell finishes the morning’s third reading of the Johnson memorandum just as he rounds Drury Lane, at a bit before noon, and passes quickly into Russell Street. Although his fingers are stiff with the chill, they are well-practiced, and Boswell has no need to oversee them as they return edges to intricate folds and finally cause the sheet to disappear again into his deep fob pocket. Instead, he keeps his eye on Drury Lane Theater as he turns the corner. More than once, Boswell has stood outside Davies’s bookshop and watched actresses come and go at noontime. But none are about today.

Just beyond the Christmas quiet of the Rose Tavern, Boswell lets himself into Davies’s. Although the shop, too, is closed, Davies prefers that his guests track their dirt over the store’s planks rather than the rugs of the townhouse attached to the rear. The French door connecting the structures stands open, and Boswell can make out the play of the fire beyond and the placid movements of Davies’s guests.

He pauses in the half-lit shop for a moment, among the tables and stacks of books, breathing manuscript dust. He can’t help but feel that there is something fitting to his approaching Johnson through this gateway of the printed word, and he wants suddenly to slow the moment down.

In fact, Boswell is about to actually close his eyes when Davies— some fragment of his attention always on the shop—steps out of the house.

Even as booksellers go, Davies is disarming: the businessman’s wig is a good ten years out of date, but scrupulously powdered and tied, over a nose too large by half, the mouth always open, talking, gossiping, laughing. “Mr. Boswell!” he cries, seeing Boswell stopped out among the shelves. “Oh, but the shop is closed, my young friend, quite closed! Come in, come in!”

Coming forward and shaking hands, Boswell confides, “I was gathering my courage, Mr. Davies, here in the quiet.”

“Courage? Have you need of courage to face your friends, sir?”

“Not old friends, but new.” Boswell gives a small smile. “It was Mr. Johnson who made me hesitate.”

But at the mention of Johnson, Davies suddenly squeezes his eyes closed and looks pained. “I had meant to dash a note off to you. Johnson has gone to Oxford. He’s sent his regrets. Too bad for all of us in the company, I’m afraid.” He hesitates, and then—seeing actual, solid disappointment on Boswell’s face—maneuvers hurriedly. “But there was a line in the letter, more or less to you. He has written near the end of his note, ‘Tell your young man of prestigious family that I shall make his acquaintance as soon as I return to the City, and you shall bring us together, Davies.’ It was nicely done for him to remember you so particularly in that way, I thought.”

Boswell laughs at the praise, and follows Davies into the light and warmth of the parlor, but the news of Johnson’s absence has struck him more powerfully than he would have imagined. He is not merely disappointed, but oddly hurt, he realizes.

And so—after a round of introductions and a brief, strained attempt to share the mood of the other guests—Boswell allows himself to collapse into one of Davies’s deep armchairs, away from the small crush. The ivy hung at intervals about the room looks wilted to his eye.

Only belatedly does he realize that the companion chair is occupied as well.

“Looks like Davies has lost both his lions this year,” the other young man remarks, surveying the room contentedly.

Davies is very much the sort of host to list off his guests to other guests, and Boswell is himself the sort to remember those lists effortlessly: the man in the other armchair is one Oliver Goldsmith, maker of translations, pamphlets, letters, and also, according to Davies, both a rising poet and a so-so novelist. Goldsmith’s face is badly pockmarked and slightly popeyed, and, for a man in his early thirties who has chosen to wear his own dark hair, he has surprisingly little of it. He is bald and homely, in a pair of words, but there is a certain sleek avidity at play in his features that Boswell finds immediately intriguing.

“I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning, sir.”

“Old Sheridan was to come today, as was Johnson.” Another sly look. “Both have clearly decided to eat their Yule doughs elsewhere.”

Somewhere beneath the casual London accent, Boswell can trace the faintest suggestion of an Irish brogue, and he immediately begins to monitor his own accent more closely. “So Davies said earlier. I confess I was genuinely disappointed. I had hoped to meet Johnson today and sample the man’s world-famous conversation.”

“Infamous, I suppose you mean. You might as well regret missing a savage beating in a blind alleyway.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Goldsmith takes a sip of his wine and considers the matter, then goes on. “That Johnson’s conversation has overwhelming force, no man may doubt; but it is just the force of a cudgel, sir. He makes his point, you disagree, he shouts you deaf—
quod erat demonstrandum.
There is no true subtlety to speak of, nothing of finesse. All men agree on this as well, although not when Johnson is by,” Goldsmith adds, and winks.

“You are joking, certainly.”

“I’m afraid I must remain the authority on whether I was or was not joking, sir.”

“But Johnson’s essays and arguments have always struck me as inexpressibly subtle, as well as forcefully made.”

Goldsmith sits back and lifts his eyebrows, folding his long-fingered hands over his small belly. He picks a bit of lint from his vest and seems to choose his words with special care. “Indeed. Well, neither a man’s eyesight nor his taste are susceptible to argument, I suppose.”

Boswell is mulling this last comment—deciding whether and how to take some vague offense—when Davies suddenly raises his voice above the drone of conversation. “May I have your attention, esteemed ladies and gentlemen!” he calls loudly, then claps his hands three times. “May I have complete silence, please!”

As individual conversations are hushed, and talk dies by turn in each corner of the parlor, Goldsmith whispers to Boswell, “Now we will all of us pay for our wine.”

“How so?”

“Davies was denied his Christmas as a child in dreary Scotland, and since coming to London he has gone mad for holiday games and treats. Trust me, you shall see. We shall have the cutting of the Christmas cheese itself if we are not careful.”

Standing before the small fireplace, Davies raises his glass in the sudden quiet, and silently the company does likewise. “My friends,” Davies begins gravely, “we come now to a most solemn and ancient element of our Christmas day festivities. Our ancestors knew that revelry was crucial to a holiday such as this.”

Davies allows laughter to percolate, then continues. “And so they created an office whereby the cheer and the hijinks of their progeny might be both stimulated and regulated down through the ages. This officer they held in greatest esteem, an esteem reflected in his most terrible and noble honorific.”

“The Lord of Misrule!” the guests throw out on cue.

Davies raises a long finger in the air. “The Lord of Misrule, indeed! This Lord should be a
young
man, that his back can carry children too young to dance. He should be
merry
, that he may teach the melancholy among us to laugh. Women should burst helplessly into song when he enters a room, and he himself should have the well-turned leg of a roasted
guinea hen.
”

Through peals of laughter, the guests manage another mostly coordinated response: “The Lord of Misrule!”

Goldsmith stage-whispers, into the relative silence, “Brace yourself, my friend.”

But before Boswell can turn and ask what he means, Davies is going on with the ritual. “And for all of these excellent reasons, my dear, dear friends, I ask that you join me in summoning our young Scottish nobleman, our own excellent young friend Mr. James Boswell, Esquire, to his rightful Christmas duties!”

Boswell is genuinely stunned. A hot sweat breaks out at his hairline, and he looks quickly round to Goldsmith, but Goldsmith only raises a fist and joins the standing crowd in shouting again, “The Lord of Misrule!”

Davies pats the air for silence. When he has it, he asks solemnly, “Will you accept your charge, Mr. Boswell? It is an office of great moment, and we must be satisfied immediately as to your willingness and fitness to occupy it.”

Everyone standing has now turned to pick him out at the far reach of the room, dropped down in the refuge of the battered armchair, and Boswell has no idea what to say or do. But then his ear picks out Goldsmith’s low whisper, coaxing him along: “
Tell them it is an honor too great to be accepted. Tell them you are unworthy it.
”

“It is too great an honor, truly,” Boswell repeats slowly, after a pause. “I must confess I feel utterly unworthy it.”

The shouts of the crowd tell him that his answer is precisely what it should be. Davies too looks delighted, and presses him according
to custom. “Only the
true
Lord of Misrule believes himself unworthy of his office. All hail the one true Lord of Misrule!”

“
I accept your charge, then, with all my heart
,” Goldsmith whispers, and Boswell dutifully repeats the words aloud.

Davies applauds with the rest, and then finishes the set piece by asking, with a long low sweep of his hand, “And please, how shall we begin the revels, O Lord? What sport would please your Lordship best?”