'Burn a Large Quantity of Assafoetida'

On July 6, 1763, Boswell was to host a dinner for Dr. Johnson and others at his lodgings on Downing-street, Westminster. The night before, Boswell’s landlord “behaved very rudely” to him, and he resolved to move out immediately. (Boswell omits specifics but we can assume the infraction involved alcohol and at least one woman of dubious morals.) He apologized for moving the gathering to the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street, but Johnson laughed and replied, “Consider, Sir, how insignificant this will appear twelvemonth hence.” Boswell said he intended not to pay rent for the balance of his one-year lease. He writes: 

“The fertility of Johnson’s mind could shew itself even upon so small a matter as this. . . . ‘[If] your landlord could hold you to your bargain, and the lodgings should be yours for a year, you may certainly use them as you see fit. So, Sir, you may quarter two life-guardsmen upon him; or you may send the greatest scoundrel  you can find into your apartments; or you may say that you want to make some experiments in natural philosophy, and you may burn a large quantity of assafoetida in his house.’”

 

Here we glimpse an unaccustomed perspective on the lexicographer – Johnson the vandal, the anarchist, the brains behind a protection scheme. Boswell first met Johnson less than two months earlier and must have been gratified that the older man already trusted him sufficiently to share his gift for comedy. Johnson is too often judged exclusively as a real stiff, a humorless monument to gravitas. “Life-guardsmen” were elite troops in the British Army. Assafoetida – today, customarily spelled “asafoetida” -- is the dried resinous gum of a plant native to Iran and Afghanistan. Used for centuries as a spice, when burned it produces a sulfurous stench. A comparable act today would be burning automobile tires in the kitchen.

 

The passage for July 6, 1763, is one of the longer, one-day entries in Boswell’s book. Johnson gets into a protracted political tug-of-war with the often-obnoxious Oliver Goldsmith, who, Boswell says, “as usual, endeavoured, with too much eagerness, to shine.”  It was on this day that Johnson uttered one of his best-known quips: “The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!”