Baron Stonybroke

By SIMON RAVEN

That he was a coxcomb and a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who were acquainted with him. That he could not reason, that he had no wit, no humour, no eloquence, is apparent from his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely to be read as long as English exists, either as a living or a dead language.

Taus Macaulay of Boswell. And thus, one might add, Boswell of Boswell. For not only do his own journals bear out Macaulay's esti- mate of him, both for good and ill, as a writer, they also confirm every charge which Macaulay levels against him as a man and several more which the prudery of the age forbade Macaulay from citing.

Now, of all men living the one who must know most about Boswell's journals is Professor Frederick A. Pottle of the University of Yale, for he has been editing them, with devoted scholar- ship, for close on forty years; and since this noble task has been recently completed, Profes- sor Pottle is free at last to make use of his un- rivalled knowledge to write the biography of Boswell which from as far back as 1929, he tells us, he has cherished in prospect as his `Rachel.' And so what emerges? Macaulay's nosy and cringing chatterbox? The drunken lecher whom Boswell himself describes for us with such con- scientious care? The tuft-hunter whom his con- temporaries patronised and snubbed, the fortune- hunter whom the heiresses teased and spurned, the poetaster whom the critics rent?

All of these and yet none; for while Professor Pottle can hardly ignore these aspects of his subject, it is his declared aim not only to cele- brate Boswell as author but, pace Macaulay and Boswell himself, to rehabilitate Boswell as a human being : to maintain that when all is said and done he was a loyal Scot, solicitous for the family honour and well-being, `not an idler nor a man of leisure' but a hard-working lawyer 'for whom people in 1769 were still predicting a brilliant future'; that Boswell, in short, was really a dutiful and even a lovely person who had, alas, to contend with certain . . . unfortunate . . . characteristics.

In this first volume,* which starts with Bos- well's ancestors and ends with his marriage to Margaret Montgomerie, Professor Pottle makes a truly gallant effort to bring us to his view. His !Ityle, if undistinguished, is pleasant and easy, Ideal for the long distance he must cover. His humour, while it seldom runs to wit, is lively and often sceptical. His tolerance is extensive but extends neither to naivety nor to indifference; his moral judgments are never inflated by cant. It is, above all things, a fair book. Yet somewhere • JAMES BOSWELL: THE EARLIER YEARS 1740- 1769. By Frederick A. Pottle, (Heinemann, 84s.) something has gone wrong. There is a persistent feeling that Boswell dead, like Boswell alive, is taking advantage, that he is abusing Professor Pottle's good nature.

For although every relevant fact is stated (Pottle the scholar sees to that) the most trivial good is made resplendent whereas the ill, plain as it be on the page, is rendered oddly innocuous. It is not disguised, no undue excuses are found for it, and yet, like the ball which shatters the youngest child's stumps at beach cricket, it is somehow deemed `not to have counted'—and Boswell may bat on unabashed. Apart from any- thing else, Boswell is allowed the first words in his own voice, the initial chapter of this volume being a sketch of his early life, written by himself, for Jean Jacques Rousseau; and this sketch, in which the confessions of masturbation, though candid to the last degree, are nevertheless almost lost amidst the declarations of religious integrity, sets the tone for much of what is subsequently written by Professor Pottle.

There is, it seems at first sight, almost nothing which Professor Pottle's charity will not embrace. Consider, for example, Boswell's disgraceful courtship of Miss Catherine Blair. This was con- ducted at the same time as Boswell, in the inter- vals between three swingeing goes of gonorrhoea, was busy getting his jolly mistress, Mrs Dodds, pregnant for the second time; but Professor Pottle still accepts, without question, the sincerity of Boswell's passion for his `Princess,' and this although Boswell himself dwells gloatingly on the subject of the Princess's money-box.

And yet the curious thing is that while the Professor appears to have been so thoroughly taken in he still sees right through Boswell and out the other side. Boswell the delicate child, subject to melancholia? Scrimshanking, says Professor Pottle—though not in quite so few words. Boswell the Catholic proselyte? A few flattering words from my Lord Eglinton soon put a stop to that. Well then, Boswell the aspirant officer? Aspirant popinjay : all he wanted was to prance round the palace in a tarty red coat. Boswell's love of the theatre? Genuine, yes in- deed—as genuine as his itch for actresses. Boswell the friend and correspondent of Rousseau? Bos- well the seducer of Therese. Boswell the would- be converter of Voltaire? Boswell the presump- tuous ass.

The answer is, of course, that Professor Pottle has not exactly been taken in, he has been charmed. This comes out best in his account of Boswell's travels, during which the Professor trots along behind him, so to speak, -like a loyal old family tutor, alternating between bouts of amused indulgence, privileged remonstrance, hilarity ?naive lui, and sheer despair. All this attention to Roman monuments is very well in its way—if only Master Jamie would behave with tke gravitas which such survivals are thought to induce. The silliness of him! He's just bespoke an historical painting for hundreds of guineas (which must come from the old laird's purse), and yet he's too stingy to allow meals of meat to his valet.

And then his snobbery : he's had himself put up before the Pope as `Baron' Boswell. Well, so be it, a good Scottish Esquire is the equal of a Roman Baron any day of the year, but he can't play the role through for two seconds together. He's been taken up as guide to the antiquities by the young Lord Mountstuart (heir to the Earl of Bute), and one minute he's kissing his lordship's feet, the next he's slanging him like a fishwife, and the third he's danced him off to a bawdy house, where my lord has catched such a clap (after going with the same slut as Master Jamie) as we shall never hear the last of it.

In Corsica the same mixture of exasperation and love prevails. On the one hand, Boswell is attempting something courageous and out of the ordinary; on the other, he makes a fool of himself by climbing mountains in his best clothes, gold lace and all, and in most unsuitable boots. But the nub of the matter is this: how will the insurgent leader, Paoli, receive the young laird's addresses?

General Paoli is a grave and committed man of notably chaste habit; it is hardly to be supposed that he will be as indulgent as Professor Pottle. But of course nobody need have worried. The very same charm that does for Pottle does for Paoli; eternal friendship is sworn, handsome gifts are given (including a huge mountain dog), and 'Corsica' Boswell returns in triumph (maltreating the dog en route).

How did he do it? How did Macaulay's weak, vain, garrulous coxcomb succeed in charming Paoli, Pitt, Johnson, Eglinton and dozens more, to say nothing of Professor Pottle? As we have seen, they were none of them wholly taken in— certainly Johnson wasn't, and nor, I have main- tained, is Professor Pottle. They were for ever being exploited by him—and well they knew it— they were often let down, they were sometimes vilely betrayed. And yet they all seem to have loved him: like Professor Pottle, they all saw his vices and yet decided that somehow 'they didn't really count.' There can only be one solution : Boswell was in large part a buffoon, a clown, and as we all know a clown's vices aren't really vicious, they're simply funny. `Baron' Boswell—the ridiculous alliteration at once excuses the grotesque snobbery. The man that cuckolded Rousseau with his stupid and middle-aged mistress—what else can he be but a joke? High-quality slapstick, that's what he is. Not Baron Boswell—Baron Stonybroke.

In short, Boswell made them all laugh. He impressed them in other ways as well, he was original, adventurous, perceptive and not ill read, but they only noticed all that after they had stopped laughing. In so far as Professor Pottle likes and forgives him on that account, he is entirely justified; in so far, however, as he seeks to rehabilitate Boswell as a dedicated and domesticated character, who is to be admired for his probity and industry at the Scottish bar, he cuts no ice with me.

That side of Boswell (money-grubbing over parish-pump causes) is his least attractive; it is not%for nothing that his friendship with Doctor Johnson started when he was a young man at large and thereafter flourished only during his vacations.