BOS WELL REVEALED
By S. C. ROBERTS (Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge)
N exhibition recently held at the Grolier Club, New York, is a reminder that few authors have been so gradually, yet so dramatically, discovered as James Boswell. On his death in 1795 he left his manuscripts to his three friends Sir William Forbes, William • Johnston Temple and Edmund Malone with a "discretionary power to publish more or less." Forbes and Malone discussed the question, but decided to "do nothing at present." James Boswell the younger died in 1822, and a few manuscripts and proof-sheets belonging to his father were sold with his library ; it was then believed, and for too years continued to be believed, that the great mass of Boswell papers had been destroyed.
Round about 1840 a certain Major Stone was making a few purchases in the shop of Madame Noel at Boulogne. Observing that the paper in which his purchases were wrapped was the fragment of an English letter, he made enquiry and found that Madame was using a whole bundle of such letters as wrapping-paper. Major Stone bought the bundle which was found to contain about too letters written by Boswell to his friend W. J. Temple. These letters were published in 1856.
Of the small collection of manuscripts dispersed at the sale of the younger Boswell's library, a few came into the hands of collectors and were subsequently printed. Among these were Boswelliana, a scrap-book which came into the hands of Lord Houghton ; a certain number of proof-sheets of the Life of Johnson and Boswell's Note- Book of 1776-77, which were eventually bought by the late R. B. Adam. This Note-Book, containing Boswell's 'notes on Johnson's early life, was edited by Dr. R. W. Chapman in 1925, and even at that time it was still generally believed that it was one of the very few fragments of Boswell's archives that had escaped destruction. Meanwhile Professor Tinker, of Yale, the pioneer of Modem Boswellian scholarship, had published his essays on The Young Boswell (1922) and was engaged on an edition of Boswell's Letters which appeared two years later. About this time rumours began to circulate that the Boswell manuscripts had not, after all, been destroyed, but were reposing at Malahide Castle, Co. Dublin, the home of Lord Talbot de Malahide, a great-great-grandson, on his mother's side, of James l3osivell. By 1926 these rumours were substantiated, and on a memorable June afternoon in that year the late Lord Talbot showed me a few samples from the collection- Boswell's record of his interview with George III, Goldsmith's reply
• to Boswell's letter of congratulation on the production of She Stoops to Conquer, and other delectable documents—samples only, but enough to show that the collection was beyond the dreams of literary avarice.
A little later Colonel Ralph Isham (an American enthusiast who had served in the British Army) arrived at Malahide ; by the end of 1927 he had arranged to buy the 'Whole collection. , But it was not the whole collection. In 1930 an ancient croquet-box found in a cupboard in Malahide Castle was opeaed ; it contained, not mallets and hoops,' but the manuscript of A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. In the same year Professor C. C. Abbott visited Fetter-
cairn House in search of material relating to James Beattie, whose life had been written by the Sir William Forbes who was one of Boswell's literary executors. Boxes and bundles were laid out for Professor Abbott's inspection. At the bottom of one pile was a bundle bearing the legend "My Journal "—the handwriting was James Boswell's ; in another were wads of letters from Dr. Johnson ; in a sack in an attic was a collection of letters to Boswell and another portion of his Journal, the whole amounting to some 1,600 documents. The ownership of these documents, however, was not clear and became the subject of a lawsuit. The court finally awarded a half- interest in the papers to Colonel Isham, in view of his contract with Lord Talbot de Malahide, and the other half was granted to the Cumberland Infirmary as the residuary legatee of Boswell's grand- daughter. Eventually Colonel Isham arranged to purchase this half-interest, and the whole Fettercairn collection is now his.
Here, indeed, was God's plenty, but it was not the end. An out- building in the grounds of Malahide Castle yielded yet another hoard of Boswellian letters and manuscripts, and this was secured by Colonel Isham in 1946. Such, in briefest outline, is the astonishing history of the discovery of the Boswell papers. Boswell the biographer sprang Immediately into fame ; it has taken 150 years to discover Boswell the man.
What may be called the first Malahide find was published in a magnificently printed, but prohibitively expensive, series of eighteen volumes between 1928 and 1934 under the editorship of the late Geoffrey Scott and afterwards of Professor Pottle. A " trade " edition of these private papers has long been promised and is eagerly awaited by all serious students of Johnson and Boswell. Now, how- ever, that such a rich addition has been made to the manuscript material, a fresh survey of publication plans will no doubt be neces- sary. Of the Fettercairn papers we have at present nothing more than the catalogue published by Professor Abbott in 1936. Samples of these papers, together with some of the latest Malahide finds, have recently been shown by Colonel Isham at the Grolier Club, New York, and svc h brief accounts of the exhibition as are available are sufficient to quicken the pulse of the most sluggish Johnsonian. The new documents include, for instance, several of Boswell's journals, one of them containing the account of his first meeting with Johnson in Tom Davies' back-parlour ; letters between Boswell and Garrick, Burke, Wilkes, Reynolds, Rousseau and many others ; more than a hundred of Johnson's own letters as well as some poems hitherto un- known; manuscripts of Sir Joshua Reynolds of the first importance in any fresh assessment of his literary quality ; and 1,300 pages of the
original draft of the Life of Samuel Johnson. How all this new material will be edited and how long the editing will take is at present a matter of conjecture. One visitor at the Grolier Club exhibition is said to have remarked: "There is enough here to keep fifty scholars busy fifty years." Let us remember the conversation between
Johnson and Dr. Adams when the Dictionary was going forward:
ADAMS: This is a great work, Sir. . . . How can you do this in three years?
JOHNSON: Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. ADAMS: But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary.
JOHNSON: Sir, thus it is ; this is the proportion. Let me see ; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.
Exoriatur aliquis.
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