With Sophie at Doctor Johnson's House, Gough Square
I read Boswell's Life of Johnson in an attic room in Highgate - I'd taken to smoking a pipe, and I read the two Everyman editions with great joy - I loved the language, the humanity, the wit - I was reading Medieval and Modern History at University College - it was said that one of my tutors had a revolver in his desk, left over from the Spanish Civil War - I gawped at Jeremy Bentham in his cupboard - I learned something about the infinite nuances of social class in England -
But, when I was reading Bozzy's accounts of boozy dinners in The Mitre, I felt truly happy - I forgot my loneliness - I poured myself a bumper and lost myself in elegant sentences -
A world later, I went to Doctor Johnson's House in Gough Square with Sophie - the square was near the brutalist labyrinth of the City - yet, still retained a calming, gentle, power -
There was a sleek statue of Hodge - I stroked his neat ears - inside the house, wooden floors creaked under our feet - in the downstairs parlour, the panelling was of a dark colour - this, we were told, was because of the sea coal smoke - flecks of soot would fill the air from thousands of London chimneys -
The decor of the upper floors was lighter - pale green or cream painted walls - gracious fireplaces - portraits of Johnson and his contemporaries -
In the cellar, you we were warned not to sit on a wooden chest that had belonged to Garrick - in the attics you saw where the lexicographers had scribbled -
Sophie frowned over a book, next to the opened Dictionary - I added some notes to my moleskine - there was a white bookcase behind me, full of volumes about Johnson and his circle -
There was a stained glass window portraying Johnson - built like a wrestler, I thought - I looked at his high forehead, his intent gaze -
What had it been like, I wondered, to live in a time when you were convinced of the existence of God? - even Bozzy speaks of the certainty of salvation - I'm not so sure that Johnson was always so utterly convinced of this - it makes me love him all the more -
I read Boswell's Life of Johnson in an attic room in Highgate - I'd taken to smoking a pipe, and I read the two Everyman editions with great joy - I loved the language, the humanity, the wit - I was reading Medieval and Modern History at University College - it was said that one of my tutors had a revolver in his desk, left over from the Spanish Civil War - I gawped at Jeremy Bentham in his cupboard - I learned something about the infinite nuances of social class in England -
But, when I was reading Bozzy's accounts of boozy dinners in The Mitre, I felt truly happy - I forgot my loneliness - I poured myself a bumper and lost myself in elegant sentences -
A world later, I went to Doctor Johnson's House in Gough Square with Sophie - the square was near the brutalist labyrinth of the City - yet, still retained a calming, gentle, power -
There was a sleek statue of Hodge - I stroked his neat ears - inside the house, wooden floors creaked under our feet - in the downstairs parlour, the panelling was of a dark colour - this, we were told, was because of the sea coal smoke - flecks of soot would fill the air from thousands of London chimneys -
The decor of the upper floors was lighter - pale green or cream painted walls - gracious fireplaces - portraits of Johnson and his contemporaries -
In the cellar, you we were warned not to sit on a wooden chest that had belonged to Garrick - in the attics you saw where the lexicographers had scribbled -
Sophie frowned over a book, next to the opened Dictionary - I added some notes to my moleskine - there was a white bookcase behind me, full of volumes about Johnson and his circle -
There was a stained glass window portraying Johnson - built like a wrestler, I thought - I looked at his high forehead, his intent gaze -
What had it been like, I wondered, to live in a time when you were convinced of the existence of God? - even Bozzy speaks of the certainty of salvation - I'm not so sure that Johnson was always so utterly convinced of this - it makes me love him all the more -
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