from an apprehension “that the paralytic affection under which Johnson laboured might become the object of imitation or ridicule amongst his pupils.” The appearance of the master’s wife must have been equally remarkable. “Tetty,” or “Tetsey,” as he called her, using the provincial contraction for her Christian name, Elizabeth, was twenty years his senior, and David Garrick was accustomed to describe her as extremely fat, with very red cheeks, the result of paint and the free use of cordials, “flaring and fantastic in her dress, and affected both in her speech and her general manner.” Both husband and wife presented points of singularity enough to excite the merriment of the pupils; especially when such an arch-mimic and jester as young Mr. David Garrick was on the spot to avail himself of their peculiarities, and burlesque and aggravate them at every possible opportunity.
A strange school, having a preceptor so uncouth, possessed of so little faculty for tuition, and with so much impetuosity and irritableness, want of forbearance, and difficulty of regarding anything, save from his individual point of view. And yet, kindly and large-hearted, too; lifting up all near him to the position of his friends, when it was commonly possible to do so, and holding to them afterwards with a tenacity that had something tremendous about it. The pupil, Da gd, was soon the constant companion and friend. Not raised to that post, however, by his assiduity as a scholar. While he should have been preparing exercises or studying the classics, he was busy with the scenes of a comedy. Did the example of the pupil affect the teacher? Johnson about this time commenced to write a tragedy.
He borrowed from Mr. Peter Garrick, an elder brother of David, Knolles’s “History of the Turks,” of which he wrote afterwards in the “Rambler”:—“It displays all the excellencies that narration can admit, and nothing could have sunk its author in obscurity, but the remoteness and barbarity of the people whose story he relates.” He selected for the subject of his play, the story of Irene. Was he aware that he was travelling on trodden ground?
In 1664, was published “Irena,” a tragedy, with a prologue and epilogue, but it seems not to have been acted. “It is, indeed,” says an authority, “too worthless a performance in every particular to deserve representation.” In 1708, appeared “Irene, or the Fair Greek,” a tragedy, by Charles Goring, acted at Drury Lane. This could have made little impression either, but both plays are on the same subject as Dr. Johnson’s. To his old friend, Mr. Gilbert Walmesley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court of Lichfield, he read portions of his work, as he proceeded with it. Mr. Walmesley apprehended that he had brought the heroine into great distress at too early a period of the play.
“How can you possibly contrive to plunge her into deeper calamity?”
“Sir,” answers the author, unwilling to reveal the plan of his plot, “I can put her into the Spiritual Court!”
A sly allusion, as Boswell remarks, “to the supposed oppressive proceedings of the Court, of which Mr. Walmesley was Registrar.” But Mr. Walmesley thought highly of the work, and when, very soon afterwards, Johnson gave up all idea of his school, and with Garrick set out for London, he gave the travellers letters of introduction to his friend, the Reverend Mr. Colson, an eminent mathematician, who resided at Rochester.
“The present occasion of my writing is a favour I have to ask of you. My neighbour, Captain Garrick, who is an honest, valuable man, has a son, who is a very sensible young man, and a good scholar, and whom the Captain hopes, in some two or three years, he shall send to the Temple, and breed to the bar; but at present his pocket will not hold out for sending him to the University. I have proposed your taking him, if you like well of it, and your boarding him and instructing him in the mathematics, philosophy, and human learning. He is now nineteen, of sober and good disposition, and is as ingenious and promising a young man, as ever I knew in my life. Few instructions on your side will do, and in the intervals of study he will be an agreeable companion for you.”
And afterwards he wrote further:
“He and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. S. Johnson, set out this morning for London together. Davy Garrick is to be with you early the next week; and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin, or the French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy writer. If it should anyways lay in your way, I doubt not but you would be ready to recommend and assist your countryman.”
With three acts of “Irene” in his trunk, and “two-pence halfpenny in his pocket,” as he would sometimes jestingly declare, he came up to London. Unquestionably he was poor enough, and compelled to live in the cheapest way possible. He took lodgings at the house of Mr. Norris, a staymaker, in Exeter Street, Strand, and dined daily for eightpence at the Pine Apple, in New Street. At this time, he drank only water. “A cut of meat for sixpence, and bread a penny, and a penny for the waiter; so that,” as he declared, “I was quite well served; nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing,” though their dinners cost them a shilling a-piece, as they drank wine. He is stated to have lived for some time at even a cheaper rate—“fourpence-half penny a day!” He worked for Cave, the publisher; probably also for Lintot. He took lodgings at Greenwich, and used to walk in the park, composing his last two acts. But these were slowly produced. It was not until he gave himself a holiday, and paid a summer visit to Lichfield, where he had left his wife, that he was able to complete the work.
On the 9th March, 1736, Mr. Garrick was entered as a student of Lincoln’s Inn. It is not to be supposed, however, that he embraced the profession chosen for him with. any extraordinary ardour. On the death of his father he closed his law-books—if, indeed, he had ever really opened them. He entered into partnership with his brother Peter, and they engaged in the wine trade.
