'Many Instances of His Active Benevolence'

Dr. Johnson preached the virtue of charity. More importantly, he practiced it. He was no Mrs. Jellyby, that pioneering virtue-signaler. Nor was he saintly. He knew from self-study that human motives can be complicated and contradictory. Boswell reports him saying: “No, Sir; to act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.” He invited needy, eccentric or otherwise maladjusted people into his home, and often they stayed for years. Think of Frank Barber, Anna Williams and Robert Levet. As Joseph Epstein writes of Johnson in his review of Leo Damrosch’s The Club: “He was, more important to note, a genuinely good Christian, a man who took in desolate people off the streets and brought them home to live with him for extended stays at his lodgings at Bolt Court.” In a letter he wrote after the death of Williams, who was blind and notably difficult for much of her life, Johnson applies Epstein’s word “desolate” to himself:

“Her curiosity was universal, her knowledge was very extensive, and she sustained forty years of misery with steady fortitude. Thirty years and more she has been my companion, and her death has left me very desolate.”

On this date, March 27, in 1775, Boswell relates a story revealing Johnson’s inveterate sense of kindness: “Mr. [William] Strahan [Johnson’s printer] had taken a poor boy from the country as an apprentice, upon Johnson’s recommendation. Johnson having enquired after him, said, ‘Mr. Strahan, let me have five guineas on account, and I’ll give this boy one. Nay if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it is sad work. Call him down.’”

Boswell tells us Johnson “talked alike to all people,” meaning he didn’t patronize or talk down to others, even children. He meets the boy, who is working in the print shop for Strahan, and gives him a guinea and vintage Johnsonian advice:   

“‘Well, my boy, how do you go on?’—‘Pretty well, Sir; but they are afraid I an’t [sic] strong enough for some parts of the business.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, I shall be sorry for it; for when you consider with how little mental power and corporeal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear — take all the pains you can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life for you. There’s a guinea.’”

Boswell is impressed and amused by his friend’s beneficence:  

“Here was one of the many, many instances of his active benevolence. At the same time, the slow and sonorous solemnity with which, while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy’s aukwardness [sic] and awe, could not but excite some ludicrous emotions.”