`A Mind Seemingly Preying on Itself'

On the cover of Peter Martin’s Samuel Johnson: A Biography is a detail from a portrait of Johnson painted by his friend Joshua Reynolds in 1769 when the subject was in his late fifties and already esteemed as author of “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” Rasselas, the Rambler, Adventurer and Idler essays, the great dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare’s plays. The picture hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London and is perhaps the least conventionally flattering painting ever made of a great man.

Johnson appears blind. A closer look shows his eyes are open but narrowed and shadowed, as though he were looking inward. He’s not smiling, not wearing a wig, and his collar is open. His brow is vertically furrowed, apparently in concentration or distress. He’s posed so as not to appear to be posing, and seems unaware of the painter or us. He’s not currying favor. Martin writes of the portrait:

“He looks less cloaked and protected, vulnerable yet courageous, even defiantly introspective. The energy of the profile seems almost agonised, focused on troubled thoughts, wrestling with difficult ideas that lie deep within – a mind seemingly preying on itself.”

His hands suggest the Tourette syndrome some literary pathologists have posthumously diagnosed in Johnson. Friends and associates often commented on his tics, involuntary movements and peculiar sounds. He appears to be wrestling with something invisible. A young viewer might assume Johnson was brandishing an “air guitar.” Reynolds said of the portrait that Johnson’s mind was “preying on itself in a reverie, accompanied with strange antic gesticulation.” Again, Martin:

“Instead of resting inert on a table or chair, Johnson’s hands are held up prominently, gesticulating oddly, his fingers bent tensely, `as if he had been seized with the cramp.’ [from “Recollections of Dr. Johnson” by Frances Reynolds, sister of Sir Joshua] The side view also accentuates Johnson’s vitality and force, his physicality and great strength: a large, muscular frame with broad shoulders, large facial features and a massive neck.”

Unexpectedly, Reynolds’ portrait reminds me of Samuel Hollyer’s engraving of Walt Whitman, based on a Gabriel Harrison daguerreotype, used as the frontpiece for the first edition of Leaves of Grass. We see Whitman, unlike Johnson, from the front and his stance is relaxed, not agitated, but neither appears elegant or refined. Both look like working men. Martin says this is his favorite among those Reynolds painted of his friend, and adds:

“It helps make [Johnson] accessible to us not as a relic of the eighteenth century but as a man beset by problems common to us all, with important things to say about the human condition. The portrait invites us to confront tragic realities about Johnson’s life and character which Boswell and other early biographers more or less underplayed. His life was a journey of agony and courage, a struggle to survive. It was never a level playing field for him. When his wife died early in their marriage, he fell into a despondency and grief from which he really never recovered and which almost drowned him in recurring guilt for the rest of his life. And yet, the portrait also projects Johnson’s bravery and determination to overcome such fearful odds.”

Martin’s conclusions about the painting and Johnson are sound. No writer has so bravely and honestly documented and analyzed, without self-pity, his fear of insanity. The theme is everywhere. In Rasselas, Imlac speaks for the author when he says, “Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason,” and Boswell reports in his Life:

“Talking of constitutional melancholy, he observed, `A man so afflicted, Sir, must divert distressing thoughts, and not combat with them.’ Boswell: `May not he think them down, Sir?’ Johnson: `No, Sir. To attempt to think them down is madness. He should have a lamp constantly burning in his bed chamber during the night, and if wakefully disturbed, take a book, and read, and compose himself to rest. To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise...’ Boswell: `Should not he provide amusements for himself? Would it not, for instance, be right for him to take a course of chymistry?’ Johnson: `Let him take a course of chymistry, or a course of rope-dancing, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself.’”