Journey to the Hebrides. Samuel Johnson
as late as 1782, from some twenty words of notes, Boswell’s astonishing memory recreated 37 pages of detail, including Johnson’s whisky-drinking, dicta on Goldsmith, Pope and others, and a brilliant account of their visit to the Duke of Argyll’s Castle at Inveraray.
The original MS journal shows Boswell’s skill in executing and recording his experiment on Johnson in an alien environment; and is part of both his biographical and autobiographical projects, with his usual sharp observation of personality and dramatic detailing of conversation. Largely written during the tour, it was occasionally posted several days in arrears, with violations of chronology: his concern for precision and fullness led him to regret that ‘what is written falls greatly short of the quantity of thought. A page of my Journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.’ (Johnson praised its style and encouraged its amplitude.) Boswell’s touristic observations testify to his accuracy and assiduity, but people rather than places were his forte; with little taste for rural beauties, he dutifully piles up facts about the romantic scenes or wild coastlines: ‘A landscape or view of any kind is defective, in my opinion, without some human figures to give it animation.’
The journal has valuable material on the 1745 rising, of which Boswell later intended to write a history; it charts the tension between accepting the Hanoverian succession and his sometimes comic nostalgia for the days of the Stewarts, the old feudal ways, and his family connection with Robert the Bruce. (Scottish pride later cost him 5/-to have a wood block for his title page with the family crest of a hooded hawk and the motto ‘Vraye Foy’.) His recurrent religious strain culminates in his resolutions at the cathedral on Iona, and his ‘serious joy’ in hearing himself read aloud a favourite sermon. He is fearful of ghosts, uneasy about witches, dreams of family deaths, and seeks out stories of the Second Sight. Such was the raw material from the tour in his ‘archive’.
Johnson died on 13 December 1784, while Boswell was in Edinburgh. Within days the London newspapers were reporting biographies in preparation; Boswell, with unique material, needed to find a way of handling it but also stake his claim in the marketplace: friends such as Hugh Blair confirmed his idea that his Hebridean journal could, almost as it stood, document the self-contained episode as a ‘Prelude’ to the Life. But he was unable to progress, making a false start on a general account, like Johnson’s, under topographic headings: the book we know really began when, having moved to London, he was encouraged by the Shakespearean scholar, Edmond Malone, his closest literary adviser for the rest of his life. Exercised about the designation of Prince Charles, he badgered George III by letter and interview, recorded with unconscious comedy in his journal: (Boswell) ‘“Pretender” may be a parliamentary expression, but it is not a gentlemanly expression; and, Sir, allow me to inform you that I am his cousin in the seventh degree.’
As far as possible Boswell used his original journal as the printer’s copy, but we have only recently discovered how much revision took place: he preserved the marked journals, substantial new copy by himself and Malone, correspondence about the text, and an almost complete set of proofs. Work for the second edition was supervised in London by Malone, as Boswell had returned to Scotland; they exchanged detailed proposals by letter. Although Boswell had won a European reputation for his Account of Corsica, he had been pilloried by reviewers for stylistic faults, especially Scotticisms: like many of his race, class and profession, he was painfully aware that the Scottish words and customs would jar on the average British reader, now represented by the fastidious Malone.
The published work is tighter than the original MS: Boswell retained the structure of the journal, writing under date lines, with introduction and conclusion added, to frame the potential conflict between the Scots and the ‘John Bull … true-born Englishman’ and finally to stress the venture’s success, Boswell’s social skill in ‘handling’ Johnson and his literary skill in writing him up. He chose to adapt his material for this trial run for the Life: especially in the second half, he cut his topography heavily; out went some material critical of others, or in doubtful taste such as Johnson on ‘little-houses’ (lavatories). The Tour remains, however, a very indiscreet book: unwelcome remarks still hit home. As autobiography becomes memoir, although sometimes comically to the fore, Boswell cuts much personal material such as his own ‘hypochondria’ (melancholy); his love of a dram in the morning; his superstitions, fear of ghosts, and melancholy imaginings. Leading characteristics of Boswell’s journals generally are his belief in the value of the precise, documented detail, and a dramatic presentation of situation, with dialogue. The published Tour retains these, although in the search for elegance which Malone encouraged, Boswell sometimes substitutes a generalisation, or formalises his language: if he tones down his tendency to literary indecent exposure, he also loses some spontaneity. Extremely faithful on the whole to his record of Johnson’s ipsissima verba, the selection, playing up circumstances where Johnson appears to advantage, and playing down the less endearing qualities, such as his repeated rudeness to and about their Scottish hosts, or his ‘taking off’ Lady Macdonald, continuously directs the reader’s response. This extensive reconstruction of Johnson for public consumption does not essentially change the central figure, but his fascinating roughness is partly rubbed away. However, as Boswell quickly discovered, his frankness ran well in advance of contemporary taste, and the Tour exposed both subject and author to ridicule and hostility. The published book has a greater sense of form and theme, while preserving the journal’s openness to experience; few of the regretted anecdotes could reasonably have stood without further hurting the living.
The dramatic later history of the Tour is briefly sketched. Publication created a sensation: it was widely reviewed, serialised in magazines, satirised in the twenty Rowlandson– Collings caricatures. In newspaper controversies Boswell had to defend his accuracy or taste: a dozen people particularly felt attacked or betrayed and he lost several friends. He learned that in what we now value – the dramatic vividness and the revelation of private conversations – he had run ahead of the literary world. For the most part, however, he enjoyed the editorial support of his friends in the press. The book sold 1000 copies in a week, so they elaborately revised for the second edition. Malone was chiefly concerned with obscurities and Scotticisms; Boswell rarely stubborn except in changes of personal or family concern, or threats to the integrity of his original record. Two major disputes ran through the autumn. Boswell had recorded Johnson’s brusque dismissal of the advocate A. F. Tytler, who had defended Fingal as genuine though he could not read Gaelic. He virtually accused Boswell of lying about his express permission to print the story; after long negotiations they agreed that there had been misunderstanding somewhere and that Tytler’s name should be suppressed; but Boswell’s impugned honour in turn exacted an apology from Tytler. He was more seriously embroiled with Sir Alexander, now Lord Macdonald: many readers had identified the anonymous butt of the already toned down criticism. In London, having decided to soften the text further, Boswell received ‘a most shocking abusive letter from Lord M. which I thought made it indispensable for me to fight him.’ This appallingly-written letter accuses Boswell of lying, forgery, and treachery to Johnson; fortunately, the threat of a duel made Macdonald back off, and the second edition softened the three main paragraphs in dispute. Boswell inserted the blind poet Dr Blacklock’s letter of complaint as an Appendix to the second edition, with a defence of his contemporary record. The much revised Tour, complete with Boswell’s crest now engraved at a cost of 10/6, was published on 24 December.
Controversy continued into 1786: ‘Peter Pindar’s’ Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle to James Boswell ridiculed his passion for minutiae, and falsely reported him altering in response to Macdonald’s threats (Rowlandson caricatured a terrified Boswell tearing out pages at sword point). A letter to the press and in the third edition refuted this; but the mud stuck. Now came a major quarrel with the former Mrs Thrale, a rival for the Johnson market. Embarrassed by a Johnson remark reported in the Tour, she maliciously attacked Boswell in her Anecdotes; he circulated widely a hard-hitting response, which became a note in his third edition. He also attacked her in anonymous newspaper verses as ‘The wife of honest Thrale the brewer’; they were joint victims in Pindar’s Bozzy and Piozzi, comic poems, and gross caricatures. At least these ‘enlivened the demand for the book. It was now out of print. I went … to hasten the third edition’. Published