Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of Women by Kate Chisholm - Review

Henry Hitchings10 April 2012

Wits & Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of Women

The 18th-century polymath Samuel Johnson is an author known chiefly through his quotations. This skews the popular understanding of his character and attitudes. We are often reminded of his remark that "a woman's preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all." This line, together with a hazy awareness that he was a less than perfect husband, informs the belief that Johnson had little time for women and was possibly a misogynist.

As Kate Chisholm shows in this engaging book, the reality was very different. Having previously written an authoritative biography of Fanny Burney (a novelist to whom Johnson gave gentle encouragement), Chisholm examines in detail Johnson's friendships with women. She is by no means the first person to highlight his patronage of female authors and his attempts to mediate between the sexes. But she capitalises clear-sightedly on existing scholarship while imbuing her account with a colour that is partly her own and partly an effect of the many telling quotations.

Chisholm argues that Johnson's female friendships depended on "mutual give-and-take", a frankness that could be bracing but also consoling. The most important of these candid, somewhat needy connections was with Hester Thrale, the shrewd and ambitious wife of a rich Southwark brewer. Mrs Thrale compensated for the shortcomings of her marriage by gathering around her a coterie of interesting figures, and Johnson was the most electrifyingly articulate. The relationship was touched by darkness; in some of the letters between them there are hints of a sadomasochistic dimension, though Chisholm counsels against feasting on subtexts.

Mrs Thrale was one of several women Johnson latched on to after the death of his wife Elizabeth (known as Tetty). That marriage does not emerge here with much more credit than is usual. When Johnson attached himself to the
46-year-old widow, he was 25. They looked an unlikely couple, and it was hard to see what interests they shared. Among Johnson's nicest aphorisms is the observation that second marriages are "the triumph of hope over experience". Chisholm suggests that when he said this the hope he had in mind was Tetty's. She also emphasises how many of the gossipy claims about the marriage - such as the suggestion that Tetty was an opium addict - were fuelled by the malice of acquaintances. It was common to envy Johnson's literary success, which had been achieved despite his corrosive melancholy and troubled private life.

Chisholm has a sensitive, sometimes fastidious way with detail. She is good on Johnson's friendship with Frances Reynolds, sister of the painter Sir Joshua. He shared his anxieties with her and critiqued her efforts in both portraiture and prose. Classical scholar Elizabeth Carter was another whom Johnson encouraged to be more forthcoming. And the pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft drew from Johnson's respectful treatment of her beliefs the confidence to focus on writing.

It would be going too far to describe Johnson as radically progressive. Yet he was certainly not the stuffy reactionary of popular myth. True, he wanted women to be pure and pious, but, unlike many of his contemporaries, he also wanted them to be able to exercise their intellectual and creative powers on equal terms with men. His benevolent spirit comes across strongly in Kate Chisholm's accessible, affectionate book.

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