The Brothers Boswell
First published in the United States of America in 2009 by Soho Press.
This edition first published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Corvus, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.
Copyright © Philip Baruth 2009. All rights reserved.
The moral right of Philip Baruth to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously.
First eBook Edition: January 2010
ISBN: 978-0-857-89060-3
Corvus
An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd
Ormond House
26-27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ
TO JOE CHANEY
,
the sort of friend you call when it becomes
necessary to go to Scotland.
Contents
PART ONE
The
Riverine Excursion
Saturday 30 July
Mr. Johnson and I took a boat and sailed down the silver Thames. I asked him if a knowledge of the Greek and Roman languages was necessary. He said, “By all means; for they who know them have a very great advantage over those who do not. Nay, it is surprising what a difference it makes upon people in the intercourse of life which does not appear to be much connected with it.” “And yet,” said I, “people will go through the world very well and do their business very well without them.” “Why,” said he, “that may be true where they could not possibly be of any use; for instance, this boy rows us as well without literature as if he could sing the song which Orpheus sung to the Argonauts, who were the first sailors in the world.”
He then said to the boy, “What would you give, Sir, to know about the Argonauts?” “Sir,” said he, “I would give what I have.” The reply pleased Mr. Johnson much, and we gave him a double fare. “Sir,” said Mr. Johnson, “a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every man who is not debauched would give all that he has to get knowledge.”
We landed at the Old Swan and walked to Billingsgate, where we took oars and moved smoothly along the river. We were entertained with the immense number and variety of ships that were lying at anchor. It was a pleasant day, and when we got clear out into the country, we were charmed with the beautiful fields on each side of the river.
—From
Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763
London, England
Saturday, the 30th of July, 1763
11:42
A.M.
I
N THE RARE
event that one man must follow two others without being observed, follow them closely from first light to summer dusk, certain conditions are best met. Those being followed should stand out vividly from the world passing around them; he who follows, of course, should not. And the following itself should occur in the thick of a crowd as alien and uncaring as is practicable.
All of which is to say that conditions today are very near the ideal.
Having shaken off its morning torpor, Fleet Street has moved without interval into the irritability of early afternoon. Carters jostle peddlers, and servants swarm the lane between shop windows and the row of posts protecting them from the street. Everyone seems to be wrestling some greasy package home, or if not, then envying his neighbor’s. A coach comes rocking out of Hen-and-Chicken Court and drives straight at the crowd, only to have the ranks suddenly part and reform, swallowing it whole. Sullen chairmen jog by bearing their sedans, beggars sprawled against the wall pull in their ankles only at the last instant, and neither party seems aware of the interaction, or lack thereof. All is one general fabric of gray and brown discontent, no particle detachable from the whole.
Until I spot the two of them, coming along in the distance.
They are framed momentarily by the thick stone arch of Temple Bar, and the effect is uncanny, like the first seconds of a magic lantern show, when the pretty pictures suddenly begin to crawl in the candlelight. It is not just the movement that strikes one, but the
meaning.
For once the painted emblems have started into motion, there is a palpable significance, a meaning, an inevitability to their progress. One understands intuitively that the images will not stop until the catastrophe. And therein lies the viewer’s chief satisfaction.
Of course in this case, given that the plot and the catastrophe are of my own composition, my satisfaction in watching the pair advance is at least doubled.
Once the two of them make their way beneath the Temple arch, though, once their movements are no longer properly framed, they are simply two gentlemen again, picking their way along down Fleet. But two gentlemen such as the City has never seen before and will never see again. There is no mistaking them for anyone else, you may take my word. Especially with the larger, older, and testier of the two so very much larger and older and testier. Even plagued as he is by phantom pains in his back and his legs, Samuel Johnson bulls forward through the Saturday morning crowd, not walking his oaken stick but brandishing it.
He is fifty-four years of age, a large-boned, large-nosed, large-eyed, big-bellied man, and the smaller and less determined catch sight of him at the last second and scatter as he comes. Here is what they see bearing down on them just before they jump: the vast body is packed into a rusty brown suit of clothes, waistcoat creaking at the buttons, flashing the dull white shirt beneath. Black worsted stockings and old black shoes, shoes rarely wiped and currently spattered, silver buckles half the size of the prevailing fashion because small buckles are at once conservative and cheap. A small unpowdered wig, brown and shriveled, rides the head like a
mahout.
Johnson’s mood seems cheerful enough this morning, for Johnson,
and he carries this good humor truculently along with him as he comes.
The younger man striding brilliantly alongside seems small only by way of comparison. In his own right he is brutishly healthy, leaning but never quite toppling to fat. Of just under middling height, maybe five feet six inches all told. The complexion is dark by City standards, but tinged with rose at his neck and plump cheeks. And he is radiantly happy, anyone can perceive this, no matter the distance.
The importance of the day’s outing to the younger man shows in every considered detail of his appearance: he is wearing his own hair, but meticulously dressed, powdered, and tied back with sober black silk; snowy stockings; a military cock to his hat that he has affected rather than earned; and a smart, silver-hilted, five-guinea blade got by hoaxing Mr. Jefferys, sword-cutter to His Majesty. He wears his genteel new violet frock suit, with its matching violet button, as though it were a coronation outfit. And his shoes have been wiped to within an inch of their lives. This is James Boswell, age twenty-two.
And what makes you simply want to murder the pair of them, more than anything else, is the perfectly ludicrous way they seem to complete one another. Not quite opposites, but different in a thousand complementary ways. Two odd human fractions who have stumbled somehow onto the secret of the whole number.
It is this sense of
completion
that draws heads around as they saunter down Fleet, not the barking volume of their talk, which is high enough, of course. And it is this wholeness that brings the occasional snicker, from the coal-heavers and the milk-women and the bankers. Those doing the snickering tell themselves and one another that they’ve never seen such a mismatched pair in all their lives,
sweet Jesus
, but this is a thin attempt at self-comfort. If, rather than matched, these two men are mismatched, then north is south, hot cold, and our own lots in life momentarily less meager.
The truth is easier to see, but a great deal harder to recognize, and to accept: these two men have one another suddenly, and don’t seem much to need anybody else. Their friendship of two months could not be any more clearly destined to last two lifetimes.
The sight of them suggests a completion we all seek in our friendships, our whole lives long, and do not find; at a deeper, blacker level, it is what we seek from the cradle each inside ourselves, and never discover. We are fragments scattered about loose in the world, yet in some way now these two men are not, not any longer.