Why I am a Johnsonian

I have just realised as I sit down with a glass of port (already I've failed the good Doctor's "heroic" test) to write a few words about some friends, that it is May 16, precisely 233 years since James Boswell walked into the parlor of Tom Davies to meet Samuel Johnson.

I lived in London for five years in the 1970s (eking out a living as a Grub Street writer and editor), and I had a natural curiosity about any scribe who lived near Fleet Street (I should add that Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas and Spike Milligan were also of more than passing interest). Besides, for a time I lived in Hampstead, not far from where Tetty Johnson idled her time away.

Somewhere in my collection of Ektachrome slides there is a shot of me standing in Dr Johnson's Gough Square doorway. I'm looking suitable respectful, a a Mild Colonial Boy might. I'd just spent an hour in a Fleet Street pub pondering what it must have been like in the mid-18th Century. Poo plumbing, to be sure, but to have heard Dr Johnson tossing and goring all and sundry would almost be as exciting as watching Mozart perform.

But, I have a confession to make, dear fellow Johnsonians: I must admit to being just as interested in James Boswell, without whom the world's interest in the great lexicographer might not have been so keen (a fact often overlooked?)

I picture Dr Johnson working on the Dictionary (we have a facsimile edition via The New Yorker in 1980); Dr Johnson at the Mitre Tavern; Boswell meeting Voltaire; Sam Johnson at Pembroke College (Dudley Moore says Oxford is the most beautiful place on earth, and he's right); Dr Johnson mourning Henry Thrale's son; chatting with Bennet Langton or Topham Beauclerk--this man of great humanity and compassion, but above all, a towering intellect.

We read of Johnson and Boswell's failure to tire of London, despite the difference in age and nationality (the nastiness at Culloden had occurred only 18 years before they met); and their delightful ramble to the Hebrides.

I love re-reading this stuff because it tells of real heroic time; an era when intellect, courage and loyalty mattered.

Besides, the story of the discovery of the journals is one of the most extraordinary yarns of all literary time. Like Dr Johnson, I'm a tad lukewarm about loving all American, but Ralph Isham, Fred Pottle, E.B. White and Duke Ellington pass the test.

My wife, Tara and I have learned much through the wit and wisdom of Johnson and Boswell. They would be obvious choices for that all-time dinner guest list (plus Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde) and I'd like to include our Philip Adams just for fun. I won't rest until Mr Adams (surely a man of Johnsonian intellect and principles) joins our happy can, even if he faxes through an occasional appearance.

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