Dr Johnson and Mr Savage. Richard Holmes
any one particular in his life. This person was Mr Richard Savage …’2
James Boswell, in a moment of rare agreement with Hawkins, thought much the same: ‘Richard Savage: a man, of whom it is difficult to speak impartially, without wondering that he was for some time the intimate companion of Johnson; for his character was marked by profligacy, insolence, and ingratitude …’3
One of the few facts that can be stated without contradiction about Richard Savage was that he died in 1743. So one might begin with his obituary.
Mr Richard Savage, Gent. Report has just reached us in the Bristol mails, of the Demise of Mr Richard Savage, son of the late Earl Rivers, in the debtor’s Confinements of Bristol Newgate gaol. Mr Savage will be recalled as the unhappy Poet and author of ‘The Wanderer’, convicted at the Old Bailey on a capital charge of Murder, and sometimes Volunteer Laureate to her Gracious Majesty Queen Caroline.
Much obscurity attends the Passage of his early life. We have it on his own Authority that he was born in the parish of St Andrew’s, Holborn, in 1698, the bastard Son of the present Mrs Anne Brett, then Lady Macclesfield (though she never acknowledged his Claim), and the late 4th Earl Rivers of Rivers House, Great Queen Street, Holborn. These Circumstances are obliquely referred to in his memorable poem ‘The Bastard’ first given to the World shortly after his Trial in 1728.
Mr Savage first came to Notice with two Spanish dramas, and his Tragedy of ‘Sir Thomas Overbury’ produced at Drury Lane by Mr Cibber in 1723. He was befriended by the essayist Sir Richard Steele, and published a number of poetical Works in The Plain Dealer magazine of Mr Aaron Hill, who proclaimed his Merits and drew attention to his Plight. He became associated with Mr Alexander Pope of Twickenham, and is rumoured to have supplied many of the Scurrilities that furnished the latter’s poetical Satire of ‘The Dunciad’.
As a frequenter of the Coffeehouse, the Salon, and the Green Room, Mr Savage found his Name connected with many of the illustrious Ladies of the day, including the actress Mrs Anne Oldfield, the poetess Martha Sansom, and that assiduous writer of Scandalous romances, Mrs Eliza Haywood.
In November 1727, in consequence of an Affray at Robinson’s Coffeehouse, Charing Cross, he was arrested on a capital charge of Wounding and Murder, found guilty by a Grand Jury Court at the Old Bailey under the direction of Judge Page, and condemned to suffer execution at Tyburn. His Case became celebrated among the Literati and Beau Monde of the capital, and in consequence of the Intercession of his kinsman Lord Tyrconnel and the renowned Patroness of poets my Lady Hertford, he received the Royal Pardon in February 1728.
In relating his Misfortunes, it is remarkable that Mr Savage always afterwards stated that his Mother Mrs Anne Brett, the former Lady Macclesfield, had unaccountably urged the Execution of his sentence against all representations of Mercy, and that it was only the gracious Intercession of her Majesty Queen Caroline which saved him from the Hangman’s Noose. Mr Savage immediately thereafter tasted the delights of Celebrity, and applied precipitously for the position of Poet Laureate; which, failing to obtain, he appointed himself ‘Volunteer Laureate’ to the Queen thereby obtaining an Allowance of £50 per annum until her majesty’s death in 1737. These Facts we have on the Authority of Mr Thomas Birch of the Royal Society.
Mr Savage now came under the Patronage of his generous kinsman Lord Tyrconnel, to whom his poem ‘The Wanderer’ is dedicated. But in consequence of some Misunderstanding, he shortly reverted to his previous condition of Poverty, and with the Cessation of the Queen’s allowance, he was thrown once more upon his Wits and his Friends, in the Town. He once again began to publish a number of poetical Works, in the new Gentleman’s Magazine of Mr Edward Cave at St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, among which was his poem ‘Of Public Spirit’ (1737); but was menaced with a charge of Obscene Libel for his poem ‘The Progress of a Divine’.
The condition of his Poverty being unrelieved, he threw himself with increasing confidence on the Generosity of his many friends, among whom Mr Solomon Mendez of Hackney, and Mr James Thomson, the distinguished author of ‘The Seasons’, at Richmond; though it is to be feared that some Nights were passed in the Cellars and on the Bulks of Covent Garden, in the company of Beggars, Thieves, and other Denizens of Grub Street.
Mr Savage had for some time revolved a plan of Retirement to the country, where he hoped to re-write and refurbish his original Tragedy of ‘Sir Thomas Overbury’. Accordingly through the Generosity of Mr Alexander Pope, a Subscription of £50 per annum was organized among his friends, and in the summer of 1739 Mr Savage departed for Wales. Here he settled at Swansea and its Environs, where he is supposed to have met his Friend the poet Mr John Dyer, and paid court to the celebrated Beauty of Llanelli, Mrs Bridget Jones. But his Funds once again running low, Mr Savage returned to Bristol to write his Tragedy and informed his Friends of his imminent Return to the Capital, at which much of his Subscription was unaccountably discontinued.
In January 1743 Mr Savage was precipitately arrested for Debt, and conveyed to the Newgate Prison in Bristol, where he received the personal Attentions of the Gaoler Mr Dagge, and died suddenly in his Room on 1st August 1743, being buried at Mr Dagge’s expense in St Peter’s Churchyard, six feet from the south Door of the church.
Mr Richard Savage never married, and had no known Off-spring, though he is survived by his reputed mother Mrs Anne Brett, the former Lady Macclesfield, of Old Bond Street, London. His personal Papers have been obtained by his editor Mr Edward Cave, of the Gentleman’s Magazine.
The facts, and even the rumours, given here accurately represent the public knowledge of Richard Savage’s career at the time of his death, and are indeed historically correct as far as they go. But the obituary itself is a biographer’s fiction. Nothing like it can be found in the memorial columns of the contemporary journals of 1743. I have simply invented it.
This imaginary obituary suggests some of the mysteries and questions that always surrounded Savage’s life. But it is forced to omit the single most surprising fact, because at that time it had not become true. Among the ‘Denizens of Grub Street’ whom Savage encountered in the late 1730s was an unknown young literary novice called Samuel Johnson, who assured his own fame by writing Savage’s biography a year later in 1744.
A life like Savage’s is mysterious in itself, but also mysterious in the way it came to be told and reinterpreted, one version layered upon another, like a piece of complex geology. Its stratified truth was not ready to emerge immediately on his own death, or even in his own century. It depends on the series of its tellers or excavators, of whom our imaginary obituarist of 1743 is one; Samuel Johnson in 1744 is another; Johnson’s own biographers, Sir John Hawkins (1787) and James Boswell (1791), are a third and fourth; and so on down a line of scholars, Victorian antiquarians and modern academics to our own time. Through these rich and varied workings of research and story-telling the buried figure of Savage slowly rises back to life again.
The subject of this book is one particular version, the ‘original’ version, Johnson’s Savage. But it is also the question of versions itself. It is the biography of a biography. It concerns the kind of human truth, poised between fact and fiction, which a biographer can obtain as he tells the story of another’s life, and thereby makes it both his own (like a friendship) and the public’s (like a betrayal). It asks what we can know, and what we can believe, and finally what we can love.
If there was no official obituary of Savage in 1743, it is still possible to discover how his contemporaries felt about him very close to the time of his death, from public knowledge about his scandalous reputation and from popular hearsay. This must be the start, or first layer, of the investigation.
What emerges initially is a tale of controversy, sensationalism, disputed facts, and a good deal of eighteenth-century moralising about social justice and personal cruelty. Three documents vividly substantiate this: a poem, a letter, and an advertiser’s announcement. Each of these is an early example of the memorial process at work, by which a private life begins to take its place in a nation’s history.
Savage’s life was seen from the start as containing