'And Oh, ’Tis True, ’Tis True'

“He repeated with great spirit a poem, consisting of several stanzas, in four lines, in alternate rhyme, which he said he had composed some years before, on occasion of a rich, extravagant young gentleman's coming of age; saying he had never repeated it but once since he composed it, and had given but one copy of it.” 

The date was November 30, 1784, two weeks before Dr. Johnson’s death. His final days mingled grotesquery with nobility. He suffered from general circulatory disease made evident six months earlier by a stroke; chronic bronchitis and emphysema, accompanied by growing breathlessness; congestive heart failure, the cause of Johnson’s fluid retention; and rheumatoid arthritis. The recipient of the “one copy” was Hester Thrale (Piozzi), who would publish it in her collection British Synonymy in 1794. The passage above is from the final chapter of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. The poem begins:

 

“Long-expected one-and-twenty, 

  Ling’ring year, at length is flown:          

Pride and pleasure, pomp and plenty,     

  Great . . . . . . ., are now your own.”

 

Because of the poem’s satirical thrust, Johnson was cagey about the identity of its addressee. In a letter to Thrale dated August 8, 1780, Johnson had written:

 

“You have heard in the papers how [--] is come to age. I have enclosed a short song of congratulation which you must not shew to anybody. It is odd that it should come into anybody’s head. I hope you will read it with candour; it is, I believe, one of the author’s first essays in that way of writing, and a beginner is always to be treated with tenderness.”

 

Scholars have identified the young man as Sir John Lade, born on August 1, 1759, thus turning twenty-one on that date in 1780. He was the nephew and ward of Mrs. Thrale’s first husband. According to Abraham Hayward in his Life of Piozzi, Lade asked Johnson if he should marry. Johnson replied: “I would advise no man to marry, Sir, who is not likely to propagate understanding.” Hayward adds that Lade “married a woman of the town, became a celebrated member of the Four-in-Hand Club, and contrived to waste the whole of a fine fortune before he died.” He obviously ignored Johnson’s advice and even spent time in debtor’s prison.

 

Don’t get too self-righteous when judging Lade. How many of us, turning twenty-one, could say with a straight face that we were prudent, mature and possessed common sense? By my twenty-first birthday I had been using a fake ID for three years. After work that day I stopped by the liquor store to arm myself for that evening’s party, and was excited to use my legitimate ID (“long-expected”) for the first time. They didn’t card me and I was immensely disappointed. Nor did I heed the “wise man” in A.E. Housman’s poem from A Shropshire Lad (1896):

 

“When I was one-and-twenty

I heard a wise man say,

‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas

       But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

       But keep your fancy free.’

But I was one-and-twenty,

       No use to talk to me.

 

“When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard him say again,

‘The heart out of the bosom

       Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty

       And sold for endless rue.’

And I am two-and-twenty,

       And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.”