'A Loss Not to Be Repaired'

“We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and untaught. He had a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches, and a yellow uncurled wig; and his countenance had the ruddiness which betokens one who is in no haste to ‘leave his can.’ He drank only ale.” 

Boswell and his friend are in Lichfield, Johnson’s birthplace, on March 23, 1776. Among his other failings, Boswell proves himself yet again an insufferable snob. He takes pleasure in cataloging Harry Jackson’s sartorial blunders and suggests Johnson’s old friend is a drunk. “Coarse” is a favorite adjective of disparagement among snobs. The rollcall of failure continues:   

 

“He had tried to be a cutler at Birmingham, but had not succeeded; and now he lived poorly at home, and had some scheme of dressing leather in a better manner than common; to his indistinct account of which, Dr. Johnson listened with patient attention, that he might assist him with his advice.”

 

Which is precisely what an old friend does – listens indulgently, at least for a little while, at least as long as patience permits. Boswell retracts nothing he has said of Jackson but recognizes Johnson’s benevolent spirit:

 

“Here was an instance of genuine humanity and real kindness in this great man, who has been most unjustly represented as altogether harsh and destitute of tenderness. A thousand such instances might have been recorded in the course of his long life; though that his temper was warm and hasty, and his manner often rough, cannot be denied.”

 

In conversation, Johnson could display what Coleridge called his “bow-wow manner” but sometimes, especially among equals, that’s appropriate. John Wain in his biography of Johnson writes:

 

“In a man of such tender-heartedness, faithfulness to old friends and old associations was to be expected. Johnson never let go of a friend. He might have said of himself what he wrote of Alexander Pope. ‘It does not appear that he lost a single friend by coldness or by injury; those who loved him once, continued their kindness.’”

 

In 1777, Johnson learns that Jackson has died. He writes in a letter to Boswell: “When I came to Lichfield, I found my old friend Harry Jackson dead. It was a loss, and a loss not to be repaired, as he was one of the companions of my childhood. I hope we may long continue to gain friends, but the friends which merit or usefulness can procure us, are not able to supply the place of old acquaintance, with whom the days of youth may be retraced, and those images revived which gave us the earliest delight.”

 

Johnson was born on this date 313 years ago, on September 18, 1709.