'More Friends in the Other World'

“On Wednesday, May 19 [1784], I sat a part of the evening with him, by ourselves. I observed, that the death of our friends might be a consolation against the fear of our own dissolution, because we might have more friends in the other world than in this.”

Whether or not this represents his heartfelt conviction, we can admire Boswell’s attempt to console his ailing friend. In Dr. Johnson’s final months, he suffered from general circulatory disease, made obvious the previous year by a stroke; chronic bronchitis and emphysema, accompanied by increasing breathlessness; congestive heart failure, the cause of Johnson’s fluid retention; and rheumatoid arthritis. Boswell continues in his Life:

“He perhaps felt this a reflection upon his apprehension as to death; and said, with heat, ‘How can a man know where his departed friends are, or whether they will be his friends in the other world? How many friendships have you known formed upon principles of virtue? Most friendships are formed by caprice or by chance, mere confederacies in vice or leagues in folly.’”

Contrary to the end. This is more cynical about the nature of friendship than was customary with Johnson, as when he wrote, “Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.” Death and the torments of the afterlife, like the fear of imminent madness, plagued Johnson throughout his life. Boswell goes on:

“We talked of our worthy friend Mr. [Bennet] Langton. He said, ‘I know not who will go to Heaven if Langton does not. Sir, I could almost say, Sit anima mea cum Langtono.’ [May my soul be with Langton].’ I mentioned a very eminent friend as a virtuous man. Johnson: ‘Yes, Sir; but —— has not the evangelical virtue of Langton. ———, I am afraid, would not scruple to pick up a wench.’”

Nicely ironic, knowing what we know about Boswell the wench-picker-upper (and V.D.-picker-upper). Boswell continues: “He however charged Mr. Langton with what he thought want of judgement upon an interesting occasion. ‘When I was ill, (said he) I desired he would tell me sincerely in what he thought my life was faulty. Sir, he brought me a sheet of paper, on which he had written down several texts of Scripture, recommending Christian charity.’” Leslie Stephen, in his biographical sketch of Bennet, describes the Biblical citations as “texts enjoining mildness of speech.” In other words, what Coleridge described as Johnson’s “bow wow manner.”

Boswell goes on quoting Johnson:

“‘And when I questioned him what occasion I had given for such an animadversion, all that he could say amounted to this, — that I sometimes contradicted people in conversation. Now what harm does it do to any man to be contradicted?’ Boswell: ‘I suppose he meant the manner of doing it; roughly, — and harshly.’ Johnson: ‘And who is the worse for that?’ Boswell: ‘It hurts people of weaker nerves.’ Johnson: “I know no such weak-nerved people. Mr. [Edmund] Burke, to whom I related this conference, said, ‘It is well, if when a man comes to die, he has nothing heavier upon his conscience than having been a little rough in conversation.’”

 Johnson’s friend and first biographer, Sir John Hawkins, reports his final coherent words were Iam moriturus (“I who am about to die”), an echo of the gladiators’ salute to Caesar: “Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant.” In Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author (1998), Lawrence Lipking describes the scene shortly before his death:

“Bloated with dropsy [edema], Johnson tries to discharge the water by stabbing his legs with a lancet and scissors until the bedclothes are covered with blood. He even reproaches his surgeon for not daring to delve far enough.”

Johnson was dead seven months after the conversation recounted by Boswell, on December 13, 1784. Boswell died on this date, May 19, in 1795.