Biographies of Samuel Johnson
Sir, – H. J. Jackson, in her stimulating review of three recent books on
Samuel Johnson (August 21 & 28), describes Peter Martin’s biography of
the great man as “reliable” and “well produced, with just a few
typographical errors . . . to keep readers on their toes”. However, at least
some of the manifest errors in the edition published by the prestigious
Belknap imprint of Harvard University Press presumably appear also in the
Weidenfeld and Nicolson edition, reviewed by Professor Jackson. Together
with the concerns raised in Pat Rogers’s letter (September 18), these
defects undermine the reader’s regard for the book.
Names – including those of Bertrand H. Bronson, Bertram H. Davis, Graham
Nicholls, Paolo Sarpi, Katharine C. Balderston and Allen Reddick (“Alien”) –
are rendered incorrectly. The notes and bibliography are marred by factual
errors, typos and inconsistencies of form. On page 566, for example,
information for the Hill-Powell edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson has
mischievously attached itself to a book by E. L. McAdam, Jr – whose surname
appears there as “Adam”. Incorrect, inconsistent or misleading publication
dates are given for at least twenty-three works, including Martin’s own
biography of Boswell. Incorrect or inconsistent titles appear for at least
eighteen works, including Allen T. Hazen’s Samuel Johnson’s Prefaces and
Dedications, whose title is, in the space of a few lines, given both
correctly and with the last word transmogrified into “Dissertations”. A
citation is suddenly interrupted by the interloping running head “Notes to
Pages 000–000”. Several of Johnson’s remarks in the preface to his
Dictionary are in the tradition of lexicographers’ (not “biographers’”)
“lugubrious characterizations of their tasks and lives” (p549). The
bibliography lists the first edition of Marshall Waingrow’s important
collection of documents relating to the making of Boswell’s Life rather than
the corrected and enlarged second edition. Texts published in 2004 and 2005
in the Yale Edition of Johnson are quoted only from much older or less
informative sources. Cicero and Tully are separately indexed, with no
indication that they are one and the same. Comparing the text proper with
captions to illustrations, the reader finds inconsistent dates for two
paintings of Johnson. Moreover, a version of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s first
portrait of Johnson appeared (as Martin notes on p327) in the first edition
of Boswell’s Life, not (as a caption claims) in the first edition of the
Dictionary.
Other slips include the following. Johnson’s date of birth is correctly given
as September 7, 1709, but the reader should probably be told promptly that
“this was the Old Style dating in use in Britain until 1752; after the
adoption of the Gregorian calendar, this corresponded to 18 September –
[Johnson’s] birthday in his own estimation” (Pat Rogers, The Samuel Johnson
Encyclopedia, pp36–7). Idler essays 22 and 38, on imprisonment for debt,
were published in 1758 and 1759, respectively, not the year after Johnson’s
1756 arrest for debt (p312). Oliver Goldsmith’s birth date is given as c728
(p364), but we are later told that at his death, in April 1774, “he was
forty-four” (p440). The fourth folio edition of the Dictionary was published
in January, not March 1773 (p417). Given the uncertainty about Henry
Thrale’s date of birth, it is probably impossible to conclude that he died
“at the age of fifty-two” (p492). If we accept the view, widely held among
Johnsonians, that Robert Levet was baptized in August 1705, he was
presumably seventy-six, not seventy-seven, when he died, on January 17, 1782
(p497). In August 1782, Johnson was seventy-two, not seventy-four (p499). It
is not certain that Johnson and Hester Thrale “never saw each other again”
after April 5, 1783 (p501; see, for example, Bruce Redford’s edition of
Johnson’s Letters, iv.328–9 and n 1).
Peter Martin’s book, only portions of which I have read and which appears to
contain much good work, would also be better served if it were pruned of
some clichés (“a level playing field”, “a wake-up call”, “the final nail in
the coffin”, “go gentle into that good night”, “A new age was dawning” and
so on) and a number of misprints, catachreses and solecisms that one would
hope not to find in a Belknap book – among them, “miniscule”, “Poet’s Corner”, “comprising” for “constituting”, “mitigating” for “militating”, “as
fully than”, and “as much or more about his condition than they did”.
CRAIG T. MASON
534 North Minnesota Avenue, Morton, Illinois 61550.
Pataphysics
Sir, – The origin of Pataphysics (see Thomas Postlewait’s letter, October 30)
lies, bizarrely enough, in a lecture delivered by William Thomson (Lord
Kelvin) to the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, on May 3, 1883. In
that lecture, Thomson stated that “In physical science the first essential
step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of
numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality
connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are
speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but
when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your
knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of
knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of
Science, whatever the matter may be”. This pompous comment might have sunk
into oblivion, were it not for the fact that Thomson’s fame led to the
publication of his “popular lectures” during the period 1889–94, and his
remarks to the civil engineers found their way into Volume One (Popular
Lectures and Addresses, I: Lecture on “Electrical Units of Measurement”,
delivered in 1883. London: Macmillan and Co, 1889, pp73–74). Shortly
afterwards, a copy fell into the hands of Alfred Jarry. Appalled by what he
read, Jarry countered with “pataphysics”, which is surely the branch of
knowledge which deals with anything that cannot be measured or reproduced.
An etymology (of sorts) was provided in his posthumously published Gestes et
opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien, where we find that
“Pataphysics . . . is the science of that which is beyond metaphysics”.
STEPHEN FLETCHER
Department of Chemistry, Loughborough University, Ashby Road, Loughborough.
Potocki
Sir, – Benjamin Friedman (Letters, October 23) directs your readers to Ian
Maclean’s English translation of Jan Potocki’s Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse,
published by Penguin in 1996. Those who have revelled in Potocki’s
Matryoshka-doll style of narration, nesting stories within stories, will not
be surprised to learn that the texts traditionally presented as Potocki’s
novel actually represent a conflation of two distinctive versions of the
story. These findings were made in 2002 by the Potocki scholars Dominique
Triaire and François Rosset. Their two editions of the novel (representing
the versions of 1804 and 1810) were published in 2004 by Flammarion.
GREGORY DUBINSKY
377 Mangels Avenue, San Francisco, California 94127.
D. H. Lawrence
Sir, – Does the TLS have a problem with D. H. Lawrence? On July 17, you used
one of the best-known pictures of the bearded Lawrence – the photograph
taken by Elliot and Fry in the late summer of 1915 – and dated it “1908”.
(Lawrence had no beard in 1908.) On October 16, you added the date “c1920”
to a self-portrait which Lawrence drew in mid-June 1929.
George Simmers misrepresents the 1915 version of “England, My England”
(Letters, October 23). He says that Lawrence shows “a lack of political
awareness” in his depiction “of an unrestrained German savagely mutilating
the dead”. The German in his story slashes Evelyn’s face because “he could
not bear the clear, abstract look of the other’s face, its almost ghoulish,
slight smile, faint but so terrible in its suggestion”. It is that look
which makes the German slash the face and then run away, terrified. For
Lawrence, it is Evelyn who has grown savage and unrestrained.
JOHN WORTHEN
102 Appledore Avenue, Nottingham.
RCN
Sir, – May I point out that Richard Vinen is only partially correct in
asserting (September 25) that “Britain was saved in 1940 by the Royal Navy,
the Royal Air Force and the English Channel”. While waiting for the United
States to enter the war with its massive resources, Britain nevertheless
retained staunch allies after the fall of France. Canada declared war on
Germany on September 10, 1939, not having been attacked, to come to the
defence of Britain.
In the crisis of 1940, the Royal Canadian Navy landed troops in France, and
assisted in the evacuation. After France fell, RCN ships participated in the
protection of the western approaches to Britain. By February 1941, there
were ten RCN destroyers working with the Home Fleet.
This is to say nothing of the convoys through the North Atlantic from Halifax
and my own city of Saint John. The first of these sailed for Britain on
September 16, 1939. The corvette was designed, on the pattern of a whaler,
to assist in this work. The first fourteen were in service by the end of
1940. They were assisted by the Royal Canadian Air Force, flying
anti-submarine patrols from Gander, Newfoundland, on the western side of the
North Atlantic. The maps showing these convoy routes were still to be seen
in the Cabinet War Rooms, the last time I visited them.
DAVID G. O’BRIEN
40 Duke Street, Saint John, New Brunswick.
The truth
Sir, – Roger Matthews wonders if there is a “classical” precedent for
requesting the truth, not the facts (Letters, October 16). I can’t offer a
quotation, but the concept may go back to Homer, whose Alcinous bids
Odysseus, “Do not . . . hide with crafty intention whatever I shall ask you;
to speak out plainly is the better course . . . . Tell me this and declare
it truly: whither you have wandered” (Loeb ed., trans. Murray, rev. Dimock).
“Truly” (“accurately”, “exactly”) is atrekeos, “probably = ‘unswervingly,
without twisting’” (Stanford). Odysseus responds with his tale, and, when he
pauses in his account of Hadean ghosts, Alcinous contrasts him with liars,
saying that he speaks eloquently and wisely, and asks him to “declare it
truly” whether he saw his dead comrades. Is this not to prefer truth to
fact?
MICHAEL COMENETZ
1309 Lloyd Court, Annapolis, Maryland 21401.
‘Endgame’
Sir, – Joshua Billings, in his review of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, commented
on the mismatch of the two leads (Arts, October 23).
Did he not realize that Simon McBurney and Mark Rylance took over from Richard
Briers and Adrian Scarborough – at very short notice – due to their
unavailability?
JANE PARTRIDGE
Church Hill, Morchard Bishop, nr Crediton, Devon.
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