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| Illustration for S. Richardson's 'Pamela'. |
Showing posts with label Dr Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr Johnson. Show all posts
Wednesday, 29 May 2019
Free Preview of Vignettes!
Friday, 13 November 2015
Dr Johnson's House
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| 17 Gough Square |
In 1755, twenty years before Jane Austen was born, Samuel
Johnson’s Dictionary was published.
According to its preface, this mammoth undertaking rescued the English language,
‘hitherto neglected’ from the corruption of ignorance, and caprices of
innovation’.
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| The parlour |
We know from Henry Austen’s Biographical Notice of his sister that Dr Johnson was Jane’s
favourite moral writer in prose. Northanger
Abbey contains a well-known reference to Johnson and his Dictionary: Henry Tilney’s joking
reproof to Catherine Morland.
When Catherine (not the brightest of Austen’s heroines) discusses her favourite novel with her friend Eleanor Tilney and her brother, she asks: ‘Do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?’
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| The powdering closet in the parlour. |
Henry replies: ‘The nicest: by which I suppose you mean the
neatest. That must depend upon the binding’.
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| Johnson's chair from the Cock Tavern. |
‘Henry’, said Miss Tilney, ‘you
are very impertinent. Miss Morland…the word “nicest”, as you used it, did not
suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be
overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way’.
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| The first floor. |
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| The author in 18th century dress. Without the heels! |
Like Jane Austen, I love Johnson’s wit and wisdom, and I was
thrilled when I finally got a chance to visit his house at 17 Gough Square. It’s
packed with memorabilia, portraits and prints, and a fabulous library of 18th
century works. I even got a chance to dress up as an eighteenth-century lady! The
wig was very hot, I assure you.
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| The first floor. |
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| Mrs Thrale's tea set. |
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Happy Birthday Mansfield Park!
As Fanny grows up, she falls in love with her cousin Edmund;
but he only has eyes for pretty, witty Mary Crawford. At first Mary, who is on
the look-out for a rich husband, sets her sights on Tom. She ‘had felt an early
presentiment that she should like the eldest best. She knew it was her way’.
But when she turns her attention to Edmund, she is surprised
and alarmed because he plans to earn his living as a clergyman: ‘There is
generally an uncle or a grandfather to leave a fortune to the second son’.
Meanwhile, Fanny is growing up. Her first ball at Mansfield
Park was: ‘the thought only of the afternoon, built on the late acquisition of
a violin player in the servants’ hall, and the possibility of raising five
couple’. It was, however, ‘a very happy one’ for Fanny as she danced four times
with her cousin Edmund.
Mansfield Park is the most obviously Johnsonian of Jane Austen’s works. Dr Johnson’s uncompromising moral outlook and Fanny Price’s are strikingly similar at times, although the timid heroine, unlike Johnson, usually shrinks from making her true feelings clear. Moralising has acquired ‘priggish,’ dull overtones for many modern readers, who find Fanny difficult to empathise with.
But in the more religious age that Austen lived in, thinking
and talking about people’s moral values was far more common, and Jane received some favourable comments on Fanny's character from friends and family. Near the end of
the novel, Edmund Bertram comments: ‘Fanny is the only one who has judged
rightly throughout, who has been consistent’.
Will the worldly Mary Crawford marry Edmund? Will her handsome brother Henry seduce Fanny’s affections from Edmund? You’ll have to read the novel to find out...
Will the worldly Mary Crawford marry Edmund? Will her handsome brother Henry seduce Fanny’s affections from Edmund? You’ll have to read the novel to find out...
Illustration: A young man proposes marriage. Pocket
Magazine, 1820.
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