BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Boswell and Zelide
Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764. Edited by Frederick A. Pottle. (Heinemann. 25s.) " Boswell when cool and sedate fixes rules for Boswell to live by in the common course of life, when perhaps Boswell might be dissi- pated and forget the distinctions between right and wrong, between propriety and impropriety.
" I own to you that this method of living according to a plan may sometimes be inconvenient and may even cause me to err. When such a man as I am employs his great judgement to regulate small matters, methinks he resembles a giant washing teacups or threading a needle, both of which operations would be much better performed by a pretty little miss. There now is a pompous affectation of dignity ; you must expect a good deal of this from me."
THAT is from a letter to Belle de Zuylen, later Madame de Charriere, familiar to all who have read Geoffrey Scott's enchanting Portrait of Zelide. And it is well that such a passage, so full of humour directed against himself, should greet our eyes after reading the notes for the journal which has, alas, disappeared ; otherwise we might be tempted to think this young Boswell of twenty-three an unutterable prig, so watchful of self, issuing daily orders to himself, living—except when the flesh was weak—according to an " Inviolable Plan, To be read over frequently," constantly adjuring himself to be calm, to be retenu, to be Johnson, for he had already fallen under the spell of the colossus Whose biographer he was to be. Yet a feeling consideration of all it was about gives a rather different picture.
These documents, memoranda, themes, letters, verses, cover the eleven months immediately following the period of Boswell's London Journal, that time of riotous and somewhat disgraceful living which had come to disgust Boswell, and which he looked back upon as " idle, dissipated, absurd, and unhappy." Now he was going to pull himself together, follow his father's wishes, remember that he was born to the duties of a laird of Auchinleck. Supported by Johnson as he left the shore, he bravely, though with " a kind of gloom upon his mind," faced a winter at Utrecht. -But when he got there he was appalled. He fell into one of his deepest fits of hypo- chondria ; he thought he would go mad ; he fled to Rotterdam " in a condition that he shuddered to recollect." Yet he summoned all his moral forces, returned to Utrecht, drew up his Inviolable Plan. Thus, read from one point of view, this journal is the frank, unaffected story of a gallant fight against neurasthenic melancholia.
It is remarkable ; it is absorbing ; it is entertaining. One finds oneself fighting Boswell's battle with him. One rejoices at such an entry as : " Friday 10 February. Yesterday you did very well. On Wednes- day you sat up very late, being all agitated with love and fiery imagination. You sprung out of bed and upon yciur bare knees swore not to speak of yourself, except to Madame Geelvinck, for eight days. You forgot this once or twice yesterday. However, you'll keep to it more and more. You was hurt by want of rest."
We feel we are getting on. But there are sad relapses : " Friday 13 April. Yesterday you awaked shocked, having dreamt you was condemned to be hanged. You lay dozing long. You was so sad that old Cirkz bid you not take thought. You was weak and mean and childish and infidel. . . . This day rouse. Mem., you've not owned. If so, you do no harm. You'll be strong. Be on guard."
By the time Boswell left Holland to go with Lord Marsichal to Berlin, he had more or less conquered-himself.
Luckily there are some threads of story to connect the register of plans, of failures and successes, of French themes and Dutch themes, or readings of the law, of nightly writings of the ten lines of Verse, sometimes gay, but sometimes couched in such terms as : " The cruel Spleen torments me now again And its foul vapours sheds upon my brain."
There were his ponderings upon marriage and his love affair with the beautiful young widow, la veuve, Madame Geelvinck, to whom he once made a declaration, but who later—such was his avowed inconsistency—came much second to Zelide, who does not appear in the record so often as her importance in his mind demands. Fairly early we read, after a somewhat depressing entry : " You're engaged next assembly with Mademoiselle de Zuylen ; cheer up."
It was the queerest affair ; they were great friends, spoke un- restrainedly with each other, discussed marriage, religion, people, anything and everything, but not till they parted did each observe in the other an " agitation " which could mean only one thing. Caution, however, restrained him ; she was an " angelic creature " —but wasn't she rather too intellectual ? He was certainly in love ; but all that happened was the exchange of a few remarkable letters, which, as Professor Pottle says, " may safely be called one of the oddest series of love letters ever written." But these must be read with the memoranda as a background, memoranda which in this " popular " edition of the Boswell papers have been selected, arranged, annotated and explained inimitably well. If we might perhaps wish that the French documents had been left in French, well, we have only to wait for the " research " edition which will some day give us all the documents in full. In the meantime we can be enormously grateful for so rich, varied and revealing a glimpse into the mind of a man part of whose nature we must all of us admit
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