Boswellian Antipathies

To William Temple, 6 April 1791 [London]

I . . . called on old [in his nineties] [Charles] Macklin the Comedian whom I found with a mind active and cheerful in his ninety second or third year. I could not but wonder while he related theatrical stories sixty years old . . . Here sat I forty years younger than him, listless and desponding, and unable to rid my mind of a disagreeable sensation as if I had been sitting in Edinburgh. I really my dear Temple believe that as much pain may be suffered from antipathies, as from almost any cause. Would it not torture you to be again at Professor Hunter's eating jeel. The possibility of a disturbed imagination reducing me to the mode of existence in my youth frightens me. Alas! what real advances have I made above that state! How delusive is this low-spirited thought!--But indeed I much fear that to a speculating and very feeling mind all that life affords will at times appear of no effect. When I recall the infinite variety of scenes through which I have passed, in my moment of sound sensation, I am elated; but in moments of depression, I either forget them all, or they seem indifferent.

My Life of Johnson is at last drawing to a close. I am correcting the last sheet, and have only to write an Advertisement, to make out a note of Errata and to correct a second sheet of contents, one being done. I really hope to publish it on the 25 current. My old and most intimate friend may be sure that a copy will be sent to him. I am at present in such bad spirits, that I have every fear concerning it--that I may get no profit, nay may lose--that the public may be disappointed and think that I have done it Poorly--that I may make many enemies, and even have quarrels. -- Yet perhaps the very reverse of all this may happen . . . .

[James Boswell]

-from The Essential Boswell: Selections from the Writings of James Boswell selected and edited by Peter Martin. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003) p. 319-320

Boswell to his Wife Margaret

3 July 1786 [London]

My Dearest Life, That I am very selfish you have told me, and I have acknowledged it. But I am not so excessively selfish as to resist your very strong and persuasive letter of the 23 June, in which you describe the uneasiness it would give you should our family be removed to London and the desolation of Auchinleck so feelingly, that I yield to you. . .

For some time past, my constitutional melancholy has been grievous. The solitude of this house has frightened me into constant dissipation. I do not mean vice but a perpetual succession of company; and my mind has been quite unhinged. My anxiety about you and the children has been dreary, and I have upbraided myself for neglecting you.

I am now convinced that there is no probability of my getting great practice at the English bar; and therefore there is not an adequate reason for putting you and my children into a state of inferiority and running the risk of their being estranged from Auchinleck.

The difficult question then is, what should be done? Lady Forbes says that if you are assured that I will return with you to Scotland in the spring you will have no objection to come to London and bring Veronica and Phemie and pass the winter; and your mind being relieved from the imagination of being banished forever from your country and friends, that much of London would do you no harm and then I shall have made a fair trial of my chance in Westminster Hall. But, in truth, I already see clearly that I have so poor a chance that it is not advisable to persist. Mr Malone thinks otherwise, and I am loath to contradict his opinion. Yet is is shocking to me, who have been used to have a competent share of practice, to be altogether without it, and I am impatient and fretful. Lady Forbes and Sir William are full of your kind attention to them last winter, and have proposed that as it may be better for Sandy to be at the High School while we are in London, he shall be at their house as one of their own sons. How agreeable is it to be so well with them! My next consideration is Dr Johnson's Life, which it is necessary I should get ready for the press soon, that the public attention may not be diverted to some other object; and as I have collected a great variety of materials, it will probably be a work of considerable value. Mr Malone thinks I can write it nowhere but in London. But I feel that it is almost impossible for me to settle to it here on account of the agitation to which I have been used; and, especially in the present state of my mind, how can I settle to it, when I am in a kind of fever to think of my absence from her I love, and who is my own, and with whose illness I was lately so deeply alarmed? . . .

[James Boswell]

-from The Essential Boswell: Selections from the Writings of James Boswell selected and edited by Peter Martin. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003) p. 289-290.

James Boswell and She Stoops

To Oliver Goldsmith, 29 March 1773 [Edinburgh]

Dear Sir,

I sincerely wish you joy on the great success of your comedy, She Stoops to Conquer or The Mistakes of A Night. The English nation was just falling into a lethargy. Their blood was thickened and their minds creamed and mantled like a standing pool; and no, the wonder--when their comedies which should enliven them, like sparkling champagne, were become mere syrup of poppies, gentle soporific draughts. Had there been no interruption to this, our audiences must have gone to the theatres with their nightcaps. In the opera houses abroad, the boxes are fitted up for tea-drinking. Those at Drury Lane and Covent Garden must have been furnished with settees and commodiously adjusted for repose. I am happy to hear that you have waked the spirit of mirth which has long lain dormant, and revived natural humour and hearty laughter. It gives me pleasure that our friend Garrick has written the prologue for you. It is at least lending you a postilion, since you have not his coach; and I think it is a very good one, admirably adapted both to the subject and to the author of the comedy.

You must know my wife was safely delivered of a daughter the very evening that She Stoops to Conquer first appeared. I am fond of the coincidence. My little daughter is a fine, healthy, lively child and, I flatter myself, shall be blessed with the cheerfulness of your comic muse. She has nothing of that wretched whining and crying which we see children so often have; nothing of the comedie larmoyante. I hope she shall live to be an agreeable companion and to diffuse gaiety over the days of her father, which are sometimes a little cloudy.

I intend being in London this spring and promise myself great satisfaction in sharing your social hours. In the meantime, I beg the favour of hearing from you. I am sure you have not a warmer friend or steadier admirer. While you are in the full glow of theatrical splendour, while all the great and the gay in the British metropolis are literally hanging upon your smiles, let me see that you can stoop to write to me.

[James Boswell]

-from The Essential Boswell: Selections from the Writings of James Boswell selected and edited by Peter Martin. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003) p. 164-65.

Boswell in Utrecht

To John Johnston of Grange

23 September 1763 {Utrecht}

I set out upon my travels with a kind of gloom upon my mind. My enthusiastic love of London made me leave it with a heavy heart. It might not have been the case had I been setting out on an immediate tour through the gay regions of Italy and France. But to comply with my father's inclinations I had agreed to pass my first winter at Utrecht, a Dutch university town of which I had received the most disagreeable prepossessions. Mr. Samuel Johnson honoured me with his company to Harwich, where he saw me embark and set sail from Britain. I was sick and filled with a crowd of different ideas. But we had a good passage, and landed on Sunday the 7 of August, at twelve noon . . . I began to turn low-spirited, and set out for Utrecht. I travelled between Leyden and Utrecht nine hours in a sluggish trek schuit [barge] without any companion, so that I brooded over my own dismal imaginations. I arrived at Utrecht on a Saturday evening. I went to the Nouveau Chateau d'Anyers. I was shown up to a high bedroom with old furniture, where I had to sit and be fed by myself. At every hour the bells of the great tower played a dreary psalm tune. A deep melancholy seized upon me. I groaned with the idea of living all winter in so shocking a place. I thought myself old and wretched and forlorn. I was worse and worse next day. All the horrid ideas that you can imagine, recurred upon me. I sunk quite into despair. I thought that at length the time was come that I should grow mad. I actually believed myself so. I went out to the streets, and even in public could not refrain from groaning and weeping bitterly. I said always, 'Poor Boswell! Is it come to this? Miserable wretch that I am! what shall I do?'

Boswell

-from The Essential Boswell: Selections from the Writings of James Boswell selected and edited by Peter Martin. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003) p. 58-59.