A spectre at the feast
President Paul Brown reflects on our first seminar of the new millennium
Some say that an anonymous spectre hung over the proceedings of this year's JSA seminar. It was that of the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), the author of An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), come to hear the oration of his venerator, Professor Roger Short.
Malthus would have been highly satisfied with what he heard. Professor Short corrected historical misunderstandings of Malthus' essay, whose pessimistic proposition was that population increases at a geometric rate, while the food supply increases only at an arithmetic rate. This leads to widespread poverty and starvation, checked only by disease, infant mortality, famine and war.
Malthus' message that "the power of the population is infinitely greater than the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man" has been an unpopular one.
Professor Short told us that Malthus' intention was to debunk contemporary post-revolutionary utopian fantasy. However, despite repeated scientific support, Malthus has been subject to continuous and irrational misrepresentation.
Notions of progress have won out, strengthened by the impact of each subsequent war and revolution. Malthus' proposition of a "strong and constantly operating check on population" has, of course, not been borne out. The question thus remains how to help those less fortunate than us.
Returning to the seminar:
John Wiltshire continued his highly diverting account of the relationship between Johnson and Garrick and Barrie Sheppard examined conceptions of time and change, now and in the 18th Century.
In the seminar breaks, book lovers were whispering in the aisles brandishing their most recent bargain book purchases - no doubt wanting to be out of earshot of that noble bookseller Anthony Marshall. Fortunately Anthony was too busy make last-minute changes to his most entertaining talk Getting to Know the Doctor: a Bookseller Sees the Light.
Johnson's political writings at an affordable price
An attractive and affordable edition of the complete Political Writings of Johnson has just become available, reports JSA Editor Paul Tankard.
It's a reprint of Donald Greene's 1977 edition which was published as Vol 10 of the Yale Edition of Johnson's Works. This reprint, by the Liberty Fund, is a sewn paperback on alkaline paper.
It comprises 24 pieces, including the four substantial pamphlets that Johnson wrote late in life. The only other modern collection of Johnson's political writings, by J.P. Hardy (1968), included only eight items and is out of print.
The work of the Liberty Fund is subsidised by philanthropic Americans and the book costs only $US12 (as against the Yale hardback which can still be bought new for $75). The Liberty Fund can be contacted by fax on 317 577 9067; mail at 8335 Allison Pointe Trail #300, Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684, USA; email webmaster@libertyfund.org.
News about Boswell
Restoration of the Boswell family seat, Auchinleck House, in Ayshire has begun under the auspices of Britain's Landmark Trust and with lottery and charity support., according to the recently-received Annual newsletter of the Boswell Society of Auchinleck.
The newsletter reports that our Patron, Viscountess Eccles (a former president of the Auchinleck Boswell Society) and the Landmark Trust invited the Society's chairman, Sheriff Neil Gow, QC, to join them in a visit to Auchinleck House to inspect progress on the restoration work.
The newsletter also reports that a magnificent Chinese Armorial porcelain dinner service, believed to have been originally ordered by James Boswell from the China traders in the Honorable East India Company and kept for many years at Auchinleck House, was recently offered for sale by the London auction house, Bonham's. The dinner service was made in China during the Quian Long dynasty and dated circa 1790, Each piece is decorated in Famille Rose enamel underglaze, and with the Boswell family crest above the JB monogram.
Another item in the newsletter mentions the premiere in Perth (Scotland) of another theatrical piece about Boswell and Johnson, centred on the pair's visit to Auchinleck in 1773 and the famous altercation between Johnson and Lord Auchinleck in the library there.
Johnson's books no sacred objects
JSA member Roy Lanigan has passed on an interesting comment he came across in reading Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print, by Alvin Kernan (Princeton University Press, 1987). It's something that those of us who tend to regard books as a little like holy relics might ponder. Discussing Johnson's attitude to his own books, Kernan writes:
"Books were not sacred objects, reverentially treated by Johnson. They were, instead, what print had made them, articles for use, and he seems to have had few favorite books. Mrs Thrale tells us that there were three books of which he never tired, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress and Don Quixote, the last a cautionary tale for an age of reading. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was, he said, the only book he would rise early to read. Perhaps something of his complex attitude towards books is caught in what Boswell saw when he visited what he considered the sanctum sanctorum of Johnson's library: 'a number of good books, but very dusty and in great confusion. The floor was strewed with manuscript leaves, in Johnson's own handwriting...' "
Johnson and Boswell:
A jaundiced view
Not everyone has regarded Samuel Johnson and James Boswell as figures to be cherished. JSA member Ian Simmonds, reading Kenneth Roberts' Northwest Passage recently writes:
The author seems to have been something of a Johnson scholar. The story is told in the first person by Langdon Towne, the painter. He and Robert Rogers spend some time in England and apparently meet with Burke, Reynolds, Dr Campbell, Fizherbert etc. At one point, while the discussion is on Johnson, Dr Campbell says:
"If he'd talk less and put the talk he saved into books, there'd be no room for my books on the shelf at the British Museum. Johnson's would fill the place to overflowing. Look at the time he wasted answering idiotic questions from that little squirt Boswell! He made his voice mealy and vapid. 'Oh, Sir, if you could have a third arm, where would it be placed?'
"Good God! Think of the murdered literature that lies at the door of that little drunken ass!" He hitched his stomach into a more comfortable position.
Welcome to 12 new members
Since the end of the 1998-1999 membership year, the JSA has acquired these 12 new members:
- Elizabeth Langley
- Genevieve Gough
- John Spark
- Brian Bell
- The Rev Robert J Willson
- Maurice Wirth
- Susan Hudson
- Tony Thomas
- Basil L Stafford
- Basil Stafford, sen
- Sam Reid
Total membership of the JSA now stands at 107
Notes from the Western Idler
Fleeman's Johnson Bibliography a monumental piece of scholarship
At long last, David Fleeman's great work A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson has appeared. Published by Oxford in two octavo volumes, each of 1000 pages, this monumental piece of scholarship treats the published works of Johnson from the beginning to 1984.
At $540 this great work is unfortunately beyond the reach of most. Only 500 copies on acid-free paper have been printed by Oxford. One can only hope there is some truth in the rumour that a cheaper American edition will appear late this year or early in the next. I have not yet seen any reviews of the work but in a recent catalogue from Howes Bookshop the cataloguer commented: "Booksellers, librarians and collectors, who have long regretted the absence of an adequate Johnson bibliography, will soon wonder how they ever managed without it.."
The tragedy for a bibliographer is that his intention to produce the perfect work in doomed to failure. In his introduction, David Fleeman writes: "The trouble with a bibliography is that it is all too evident what it ought to be; it is the achievement that is the problem."
What the collector does, on receiving a new bibliography, is to go through his collection in the hope that he can find that one item which is not recorded. It is no back-handed complement to Fleeman for some collector to be able to note some gem in his collection as "not in Fleeman." The sheer volume of information recorded in this work is staggering and it will be a rare item indeed which is not recorded. The entries for Rasselas alone occupy 196 pages of which 46 are concerned with translations of Johnson's only novel into other languages.
The collectors among you will recall that in the last issue of The Southern Johnsonian I mentioned that a Johnsonian catalogue was expected from Howes Bookshop. That catalogue, No 286, has been published and I commend it to you. I purchased seven items, including a first edition of Birkbeck Hill's edition of Rasselas, 1887 and a copy of To Think of Tea by Agnes Repplier. Agnes Repplier was greatly admired by A.Edward Newton, the famous American collector of Johnson. Following the publication of To Think of Tea in 1932, Miss Repplier drank tea in Newton's famous library at Oak Knoll. The tea was poured from Johnson's own teapot, which was then in the custody of A.E.N. A photo of this occasion appears in the catalogue for the sale of Newton's library. The teapot now resides in the library of our Patron, Lady Eccles. To Think of Tea contains much about Johnson's love of his favorite beverage and a wealth of other Johnson anecdotage.
The work at "the Boswell factory" at Yale continues. Bruce Redford has recently had published Volume 2 of the research edition of James Boswell's Life of Johnson. The new edition will be completed in four volumes and is mean to be read in conjunction with the Hill Powell edition published by Oxford.
All Johnsonians will know of Johnson's attempt to save the life of "the Macaroni parson", Dr Dodd, who was hanged for forgery in 1777. During the 1920s, Oxford at the Clarendon Press published a number of fine facsimiles of some of Johnson's minor and scarce works. In 1926 450 copies of a collection of Papers written by Dr Johnson and Dr Dodd in 1777 was published with an introduction by Chapman. The facsimile was printed from the originals in the possession of A.E. Newton. I have just purchased a beautigul copy from Kay Craddock who continues to find for me things that I must have in my library.
Finally, how good it was to see so many of you at the seminar. I thought the paper from Professor Short was nothing less than outstanding and I find myself constantly referring to it in conversation. It seems to me that whilst our society continues to provide its members with such intellectual stimulation and such great fellowship it cannot help but prosper.