JOHNSON IN FEMALE COMPANY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 15

JOHNSON IN FEMALE COMPANY

TO TEE EDITOB Or THE PEERS. Sir, —In his lively and informative review of a new Life of Fanny Burney, recently, Mr R. G. C. McNab mentioned it as one of her advantages over Boswell as biographer of Johnson that, while he “never saw Johnson unbend in female company,” she, both in her own home and in Mrs Thrale’s, had often been “the delighted witness and object of his teasing jocosity.” “Never” is a big word, and too big for the evidence. Boswell was not wholly denied the frequentprivilege of Fanny Burney. In the “Journal of a Tour,” for example, under date Monday, September 27, there is this agreeable paragraph: This evening one of our married ladies, a lively -pretty little woman, good-humouredly sat down upon Dr. Johnson’s knee, and, being encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round his neck and kissed him.—“Do it again, (said he,) atid let us see who will tire first.”—He kept her on his knee some time, while he and she drank tea. He was now like a buck indeed. All the company were much entertained to find him so easy and pleasant. To me it was highly comick, to see the grave philosopher,—the Rambler, —toying with a Highland beauty.

He must have been in high feather at this period. The very next day, “while the punch went round. Dr. Johnson kept a close whispering conference with Mrs M’Kinnon” —it was about the escape of Prince Charlie. The company, “entertained and pleased to observe it,” waxed “merry with Corrichatachin, on Dr. Johnson’s whispering with his wife”;

She, perceiving this, humourously cried, "I am in love with him. What is it to live and not to love?” Upon her saying something, which I did not hear, or cannot recollect, he seized her hand eagerly, and kissed it.

A “poring fellow,” I fancy, might find a little more; but a “never” like that breaks at one good tap.— Yours, etc., CHEESEMONGER. Paroa, January 23, 1937.