On Friday,March 22,having set out early from Henley,where we had lain the preceding night,we arrived at Birmingham about nine o'clock,and,after breakfast,went to call on his old schoolfellow Mr.Hector.A very stupid maid,who opened the door,told us,that 'her master was gone out;he was gone to the country;she could not tell when he would return.'In short,she gave us a miserable reception;and Johnson observed,'She would have behaved no better to people who wanted him in the way of his profession.'He said to her,'My name is Johnson;tell him I called.Will you remember the name?'She answered with rustick simplicity,in the Warwickshire pronunciation,'I don't understand you,Sir.'--'Blockhead,(said he,)I'll write.'I never heard the word blockhead applied to a woman before,though I do not see why it should not,when there is evident occasion for it.He,however,made another attempt to make her understand him,and roared loud in her ear,'Johnson,'and then she catched the sound.
We next called on Mr.Lloyd,one of the people called Quakers.He too was not at home;but Mrs.Lloyd was,and received us courteously,and asked us to dinner.Johnson said to me,'After the uncertainty of all human things at Hector's,this invitation came very well.'We walked about the town,and he was pleased to see it increasing.
Mr.Lloyd joined us in the street;and in a little while we met Friend Hector,as Mr.Lloyd called him.It gave me pleasure to observe the joy which Johnson and he expressed on seeing each other again.Mr.Lloyd and I left them together,while he obligingly shewed me some of the manufactures of this very curious assemblage of artificers.We all met at dinner at Mr.Lloyd's,where we were entertained with great hospitality.Mr.and Mrs.Lloyd had been married the same year with their Majesties,and like them,had been blessed with a numerous family of fine children,their numbers being exactly the same.Johnson said,'Marriage is the best state for a man in general;and every man is a worse man,in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.'
Dr.Johnson said to me in the morning,'You will see,Sir,at Mr.
Hector's,his sister,Mrs.Careless,a clergyman's widow.She was the first woman with whom I was in love.It dropt out of my head imperceptibly;but she and I shall always have a kindness for each other.'He laughed at the notion that a man never can be really in love but once,and considered it as a mere romantick fancy.
On our return from Mr.Bolton's,Mr.Hector took me to his house,where we found Johnson sitting placidly at tea,with his first love;who,though now advanced in years,was a genteel woman,very agreeable,and well-bred.
Johnson lamented to Mr.Hector the state of one of their school-fellows,Mr.Charles Congreve,a clergyman,which he thus described:'He obtained,I believe,considerable preferment in Ireland,but now lives in London,quite as a valetudinarian,afraid to go into any house but his own.He takes a short airing in his post-chaise every day.He has an elderly woman,whom he calls cousin,who lives with him,and jogs his elbow when his glass has stood too long empty,and encourages him in drinking,in which he is very willing to be encouraged;not that he gets drunk,for he is a very pious man,but he is always muddy.He confesses to one bottle of port every day,and he probably drinks more.He is quite unsocial;his conversation is quite monosyllabical:and when,at my last visit,I asked him what a clock it was?that signal of my departure had so pleasing an effect on him,that he sprung up to look at his watch,like a greyhound bounding at a hare.'When Johnson took leave of Mr.Hector,he said,'Don't grow like Congreve;nor let me grow like him,when you are near me.'
When he again talked of Mrs.Careless to-night,he seemed to have had his affection revived;for he said,'If I had married her,it might have been as happy for me.'BOSWELL.'Pray,Sir,do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world,with any one of whom a man may be as happy,as with any one woman in particular?'
JOHNSON.'Ay,Sir,fifty thousand.'BOSWELL.'Then,Sir,you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other;and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts?'JOHNSON.'To be sure not,Sir.Ibelieve marriages would in general be as happy,and often more so,if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor,upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances,without the parties having any choice in the matter.'
I wished to have staid at Birmingham to-night,to have talked more with Mr.Hector;but my friend was impatient to reach his native city;so we drove on that stage in the dark,and were long pensive and silent.When we came within the focus of the Lichfield lamps,'Now (said he,)we are getting out of a state of death.'We put up at the Three Crowns,not one of the great inns,but a good old fashioned one,which was kept by Mr.Wilkins,and was the very next house to that in which Johnson was born and brought up,and which was still his own property.We had a comfortable supper,and got into high spirits.I felt all my Toryism glow in this old capital of Staffordshire.I could have offered incense genio loci;and Iindulged in libations of that ale,which Boniface,in The Beaux Stratagem,recommends with such an eloquent jollity.
Next morning he introduced me to Mrs.Lucy Porter,his step-daughter.She was now an old maid,with much simplicity of manner.
She had never been in London.Her brother,a Captain in the navy,had left her a fortune of ten thousand pounds;about a third of which she had laid out in building a stately house,and making a handsome garden,in an elevated situation in Lichfield.Johnson,when here by himself,used to live at her house.She reverenced him,and he had a parental tenderness for her.
We then visited Mr.Peter Garrick,who had that morning received a letter from his brother David,announcing our coming to Lichfield.