'Of Link-Boys Vile, and Watermen Obscene'

“There is in the world a certain class of mortals, known, and contentedly known, by the appellation of passionate men, who imagine themselves entitled by that distinction to be provoked on every slight occasion, and to vent their rage in vehement and fierce vociferations, in furious menaces and licentious reproaches.”

We know what Dr. Johnson means – that ever-growing population of men and women fueled by that renewable source of energy, anger. Anger comes with two faces. For the angry one it is addictive, a rush unlike any other. For the rest of us consigned to watching the snot fly, it’s a tiresome spectacle. In The Rambler essay published on this date, April 24, in 1750, Johnson continues:

“Their rage, indeed, for the most part, fumes away in outcries of injury, and protestations of vengeance, and seldom proceeds to actual violence, unless a drawer or linkboy falls in their way; but they interrupt the quiet of those that happen to be within the reach of their clamours, obstruct the course of conversation, and disturb the enjoyment of society.”

Johnson’s understanding of human psychology is acute. Anger amounts on most occasions to more noise than substance. But the amateurs among the “passionate men” choose their targets carefully, usually picking on “a drawer or linkboy,” someone weaker and less able to defend himself. Call them bullies. But what is a “linkboy”? I turned first to Johnson’s own Dictionary: “a boy that carries a torch to accommodate passengers with light.” The OED definition is nearly identical: “a boy employed to carry a link to light passengers along the streets.” And link? “A torch made of tow and pitch (? sometimes of wax or tallow), formerly much in use for lighting people along the streets.”

Linkboys are yet another occupation rendered obsolete by technology. In 1763, the City Corporation of London began lighting the streets with some 5,000 glass oil lamps. Gas lighting was introduced in 1811. Grosvenor Square, the last London street or square still lit by oil, was fitted for gas lighting in 1842. I find no mention of linkboys in Henry Mayhew’s four-volume London Labour and London Poor (1851). Perhaps the job was already extinct.

The OED cites Pepys, John Gay, Dickens and Thackeray (The Newcomes: “Link-boys with their torches lighted the beaux over the mud,” 1854-55). Swift gives us “Twenty watchmen to clear the way, with link-boys lighting them on each side.” In 1773, Johnson’s friend Sir Joshua Reynolds painted “Cupid As a Link Boy.” In The Dunciad, Pope includes a prayer to Cloacina, goddess of the sewers:

“Oft had the Goddess heard her servant’s call,

From her black grottos near the Temple-wall,

List’ning delighted to the jest unclean

Of link-boys vile, and watermen obscene;

Where as he fish’d her nether realms for Wit,

She oft had favour’d him, and favours yet.”