Patrick Comerford
The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (13 December) has been commemorating Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a pious Anglican throughout his life, but is best remembered as a writer of dictionaries and a literary editor.
Johnson, who was known as ‘The Great Moralist’, was a High Church Anglican and deeply committed to the Church of England since his younger days when he read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.
It is almost 250 years since Samuel Johnson took his friend James Boswell to Lichfield in 1776 to show him ‘genuine civilised life in an English provincial town’. Later Johnson would recall: ‘I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield.’
They stayed at the Three Crowns in Breadmarket Street, beside the house on the corner of Market Square where Johnson was born and spent his childhood.
When Bosswell asked Johson why the people of Lichfield seemed to lack industry, Johnson famously replied that the people of Lichfield were philosophers: ‘Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.’
Lichfield has grown considerably in the two and a half centuries since that visit, from 4,000 people in Samuel Johnson’s days, to almost 35,000 people today. It is one of England’s smallest cities, but retains its civilised charm, and I returned to Johnson’s ‘city of philosophers’ – as I do so often – for a personal, three-day retreat last weekend.
Samuel Johnson was a key figure in shaping the English language as we use it today. Indeed, he has been described as ‘arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history’ and his biography by Boswell has been described as ‘the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature.’
Although Johnson began his literary career as a ‘Grub Street’ journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
But why did Samuel Johnson describe Lichfield ‘a city of philosophers’?
In the decades before Johnson’s birth, Lichfield had been badly battered in the English Civil War. But the first sign of faith in its future was the decision by Bishop John Hacket to rebuild Lichfield Cathedral immediately after the Caroline Restoration.
Writers and cultural figures associated with Lichfield in the immediate aftermath of the Cromwellian era include: Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), whose legacy lives on in the Asmolean Museum in Oxford; Bishop John Fell (1625-1686), remembered in rhyme that opens ‘I do not like thee Doctor Fell’, and the son of a Dean of Lichfield; and Lancelot Addison (1632-1703), Dean of Lichfield and father of the essayist Joseph Addison (1672-1719).
It is easy to understand how, by the 18th century, Lichfield was a centre of genteel society, so that Daniel Defoe considered it the best town in the area for ‘good conversation and good company.’ There was little industry in Lichfield, but the place prospered thanks to both the wealth of the clergy in the Close, and to its place as coaching city on the main route to the north-west and Ireland.
The 18th century became a period of great intellectual activity, and Lichfield was home to many figures of intellect and culture, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward, prompting Johnson’s observation that Lichfield was ‘a city of philosophers’.
I spent some time on Sunday afternoon browsing the second-hand book stall in the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, the five-storey house at the west end of the Market Square where Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709.
Samuel Johnson married the widowed Elizabeth Porter in 1735, when he was 25 and she was 46 and the mother of three children. Two years later, Johnson and 20-year-old David Garrick set off for London in 1737 in search of fame and fortune. They survived many difficulties, and eventually Johnson became the leading literary figure of his generation and Garrick the leading actor.
Johnson’s fortunes took a dramatic turn in 1746 when a publisher commissioned him to compile a dictionary of the English language – a contract that was worth 1,500 guineas. Johnson claimed he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had 40 scholars who would spend 40 years completing its French dictionary. Eventually, it took Johnson nine years to complete his Dictionary of the English Language.
Johnson’s Dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. But it remained the standard, definitive and pre-eminent English dictionary for 150 years, until the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1928. His Dictionary offers insights into the 18th century, providing ‘a faithful record of the language people used.’ It has been described as ‘one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship.’ As a work of literature, it has had a far-reaching impact on modern English.
The first edition of Johnson’s Dictionary is a huge book. The pages are almost 18 inches tall, and the book is 20 inches wide when opened. It contains 42,773 entries, and sold for £4 10s, the equivalent of about £350 today. An important innovation was his use of around 114,000 literary quotations to illustrate meanings. The authors most frequently cited include Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was a generation younger than Johnson. He had a medical practice close to the cathedral, between the Close and Beacon Street, from 1757 until 1781, and was a member of the Lunar Society, which met sometimes in his house in Lichfield, from 1765 to 1813. The inner circle included Darwin, James Watt, Matthew Bolton, Joseph Priestley and Josiah Wedgwood, while others involved included the engineer James Brindley, the botanist Joseph Banks, American polymath Benjamin Franklin, astronomer William Herschel, printer and designer James Baskerville and artist Joseph Wright of Derby.
During the weekend, I also took time to revisit some other Johnson legacies in Lichfield: the Johnson statue in Market Square; his monument in a corner of the south transept of Lichfield Cathedral; John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural on a wall on a corner of Bird Street, opposite New Minster House; and ‘Johnson’s Willow’ on the north shore of Stowe Pool.
I have been familiar with the willow trees at this location for over 50 years, and the present willow tree is the fifth there since Johnson’s days.
The first willow there was probably planted around 1700, and became famous for two reasons: its great size, and its connections with Samuel Johnson.
When Johnson was young, the willow was close to his father’s parchment factory. When he returned to Lichfield in later years, he never failed to visit the tree, passing it on his way to visit his friends the Aston sisters who lived at the two large houses on Stowe Hill. He is said to have described the willow as ‘the delight of his early and waning life’.
The willow also attracted the interest of the Lichfield poet Anna Seward (1742-1809) and the American poet Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (1737-1801). Fergusson wrote two long ‘Odes on the Litchfield (sic Willow’, in which she celebrated Johnson and other cultural figures who might have walked beneath the willow’s boughs.
Fergusson also used this tree, along with its ancestors and descendants, to symbolise the spread of civilisation from the ancient world to modern Britain and America.
Because of the willow’s association with Johnson, many later visitors to Lichfield came to see it. The original tree eventually became decayed, and in 1829 it was blown down. But it has been replaced by many of its descendants ever since.
A second willow, grown from a cutting of the original, was planted on the same site in 1830. It too was blown down in a great storm in 1881.
The third willow – again a true descendant – was not planted beside Stowe Pool until 1898. In 1956 it was found to be unsafe, and was felled after cuttings had been taken to raise a new tree.
The fourth willow was planted in 1959 during the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Johnson’s birth.
Because of decay, the fourth willow was pollarded in 2014, 2016 and 2018, and it was finally felled on 8 October 2021. However, cuttings had been taken, and one of these was planted on the same site by Stowe Pool on 2 November 2021 to become the fifth willow. The ceremony included a reading of a poem about Johnson’s Willow by Sarah Dale, the winning entry in the Johnson Society’s Willow poetry competition.
Johnson’s Willow remains a part of Lichfield’s heritage and a much-loved link with Johnson and his age.
On his last visit to church, the walk strained Samuel Johnson. However, while there he wrote a prayer for his friends, the Thrale family: ‘To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.’
In his last prayer, on 5 December 1784, before receiving Holy Communion and eight days before he died, Samuel Johnson prayed:
Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ our Saviour and Redeemer. Grant, O Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in his merits, and his mercy; enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this commemoration available to the confirmation of my faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my charity; and make the death of thy Son Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption. Have mercy on me, and pardon the multitude of my offences. Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men. Support me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
As he lay dying, Samuel Johnson’s final words were: ‘Iam Moriturus’ (‘I who am about to die’). He fell into a coma and died at 7 p.m. on 13 December 1784 at the age of 75. He was buried at Westminster Abbey a week later.
Johnson’s life and work are celebrated in a stained glass window in Southwark Cathedral, he has monuments in Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Lichfield Cathedral, and he is named in the calendar of the Church of England on this day as a modern Anglican saint.
