No one had charms to soothe a Savage beast

Paul Johnson

DR JOHNSON AND MR SAVAGE by Richard Holmes Hodder & Stoughton, £19.99, pp. 260 Dr Johnson's friendship with the self- destructive poet and literary hack, Richard Savage, is one of the most intriguing episodes of the Doctor's life. It fascinated James Boswell and many others since. Savage, born around 1697, was the illegiti- mate son of the 4th Earl Rivers by Lady Macclesfield, a heartless woman who repu- diated her offspring. Burdened with this grievance, Savage led a disreputable life, punctuated by flashes of creativity. In 1727 he was convicted of murder but pardoned by virtue of his connection with the nobili- ty. Despite many attempts by admirers to put him on his feet, he died penniless in a Bristol gaol in 1743.

The redeeming episode of Savage's life

was his friendship, lasting only two years, with Johnson, then a young schoolmaster of 27 come to London to seek his fortune. Johnson commemorated it in his remark- able Life of Savage, published the year after his death and reprinted in his Lives of the Poets. This work has a strong claim to be considered the first modern biography in English and was in some ways the proto- type of Johnson's own Life by Boswell. Johnson seems to have been able to do little for Savage, except posthumously, but Savage was clearly an important influence in Johnson's sensibilities. Richard Holmes, our most original and resourceful literary biographer, has now produced a study of the connection, which provides a brilliant illumination of the literary life of London in the second quarter of the 18th century. As he points out, the Savage-Johnson friendship 'lacks all the normal biographi- cal sources'. There are

no authenticated letters between the two men, no mention of each other in private journals, not even a single surviving account from an eyewitness of seeing the two in each other's company.

Hence his book is not a biography of either man but 'the fragment of two lives brought together for a period of two years'.

Johnson's later friends found it difficult to understand the appeal of Savage to a (as they saw him) stately moralist like Johnson. Holmes unravels the mystery. It is true that Savage was a monster of ingratitude, a fail- ing the doctor particularly disliked. Savage was repeatedly befriended by Lord Tyrcon- nel, who even allowed him to live in his house in fashionable Arlington Street. The poet responded by bringing tavern com- panions and harlots home. He would, as Johnson put it, assume the Government of the House, and order the Butler in an imperious Manner to set the best Wine in the Cellar before his Company, who often drank till they forgot the Respect due to the House in which they were entertained, indulged themselves in the utmost Extravagance of Merriment, practised the most licensious Frolics, and committed all the Outrages of Drunkenness.

When Tyrconnel remonstrated, complain- ing also of being landed with Savage's unpaid bills, the poet responded with insults. Boswell managed to find a letter Savage sent to the Lord, beginning 'Right Honourable Brute and Booby', and ending

defy and despise you. I am, your deter- mined adversary, R.S.'

Johnson did not exactly excuse such behaviour; rather, he relished it. It is a fact that literary ingrats, who bite the hand that feeds — one thinks of Dylan Thomas and Malcolm Lowry or, more recently, the late Henry Fairlie — never lack for compan- ions, defenders and even benefactors. We feel that such people are never actually going to behave badly to us — until it happens, of course. I recall John Raymond saying complacently of John Davenport, a risky tavern-companion in the Savage mould, 'Everyone gets the Davenport he deserves' only the day before Davenport knocked him down, with a dismissive 'Take that, you little short-arsed swine'. No doubt Johnson thought everyone got the Savage they deserved, Tyrconnel having in addi- tion the provocative label, in Johnson's eyes, of 'patron'. . Much of Savage's undoubted wit was directed at the powerful. Johnson clearly savoured his excoriation of Sir Robert Walpole, the archetype Whig: 'The whole Range of his Mind was from Obscenity to Politics, and from Politics to Obscenity'. Unfortunately Savage's targets were often fellow Grub Street denizens, including those who had paid for his drinks. He wrote anonymously a venomous pamphlet, An Author to be Let (1730), attacking his own tribe. It contained, as Johnson put it

many secret Histories of the petty Writers of that Time, but sometimes mixed with ungen- erous Reflections on their Birth, their Cir- cumstances, or those of their Relations.

He even accused Savage of

making use of the Confidence which he gained by a seeming Kindness, to discover Failings and expose them.

At times he was a Private Eye-type source, secretly supplying Alexander Pope with 'lit- tle stories and idle tales' about personali- ties, to be used in the Dunciad.

Johnson forgave or excused all this because Savage, paradoxically, had a high, Poetic regard for friendship, at any rate on his own terms. Here again he reminds one of Henry Fairlie who while exploiting his friends ruthlessly, deceiving them with their Wives and, indeed, deceiving the wives with each other, could also write on the subject of friendship in a manner to bring tears to the eyes. One of the great merits of Holmes's delightful book is that he has res- urrected from near oblivion Savage's 1729 Poem, The Wanderer, which he quotes at length and expounds movingly. As Holmes says,

The great, positive value celebrated through- out the poem is that of companionship in suf- fering, the intimacy of talk, the consolation of friendship.

This was Savage's real appeal to Johnson: he might not practise what he preached, but he discoursed so eloquently on the virtues of friendship that it became the leading principle of the Doctor's life, his remedy for all ills, his message to mankind and the subject of his most valued piece of advice: 'Friendships should be kept in con- stant repair'.