Besides, there is a handsome chambermaid who cheers him on the way to and from his wife. And on one of his trips to Auchinleck he has the gout, or some trouble with his toe; and he easily finds in the post-chaise an "agreeable young widow" who is happy to hold his foot in her lap.
These little amours are the byplay of idle moments. They don't weigh on his mind or fill it. He aspires for distinction at the English bar. He is trying to attract the attention of Lord Chatham. He would like to be English commissioner in Corsica. He is giving dinner parties and dining out daily with the most exciting groups of the most stimulating people, and sitting from 8:30 to 3 in the morning at the Turk's Head Tavern, gathering material for "the most entertaining book you ever read"—and it is only now and then in a spare moment that his mind wanders to his debts and to his "valuable spouse" who, far away in Auchinleck, is dying of consumption, as he rather fears from the physician's report of her "severe cough, sweatings and swelled legs."
Up to the time of his wife's death, Boswell felt, like another great man, that "he had come to the ring, and now he must hop." He was hopping in the London ring when his "valuable wife," who had repeatedly warned him that she was about to do it, died, uncheered by his presence. He had tarried, with apparent callousness, till it was just too late, and then had posted to Auchinleck to find her beyond the reach of his belated consolation. Feebly, at first, he recognized what had happened. Her countenance was so little disfigured that he almost felt it must all be a deception. "But alas, to see my excellent wife, and the mother of my children, and that most sensible lively
