The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age

Leo Damrosch interweaves the mini-biographies of the founding members of Turk’s Head in The Club through a biopic lens of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson’s relationship at the height of the English Enlightenment. The odd couple, as Damrosch eponymously calls Boswell and Johnson, gives a rich insight into the historical affluence of English society, not losing wit as a momentous force moving from one chapter to the next. A casual read for those interested in English intellectual thought but not the complex rigor of similar work, The Club is a treat that gleans with delectable gossip, imaginative adventuring, and sensations of “being alive in a different time.”The first half of the book is marked by open-ended chapters that are contingent on following Johnson’s chronology. Johnson is the well-established central figure through which Damrosch creates a mixed system of anecdotal and psychoanalytical structures to bring to life the historical giant and “constantly evoke the London life he and his friends shared.”Each subsequent introduction to a new member adheres to this form that Damrosch uses to tell Johnson’s story.Damrosch uses warm-toned prose that makes The Club an exciting adventure that illuminates the members from within, turning them inside out to examine their faults and shortcomings. Curiosity peeps in from Damrosch’s staging of Johnson’s emerging psychosexual interests from his “fond” memories of childhood beatings and an overwhelming lack of approval Johnson received from his mother, as recorded in their communications. The school-age boyhood that is the stuff of underlying trauma, finds Johnson in the pitfalls of his own despair on many occasions and impoverished before his steady stipend following the publication of the Dictionary. Damrosch does not shy away from postulating the “humors” Johnson was disposed to would be his lifelong dalliance with major depressive disorder. Johnson’s stint with the Thrales, and an alluded masochistic relationship with Hester Thrale, are presented as a treatment for Johnson’s depression. The salve that female company and friendships that Johnson would have in his life are not lost in the accounts of those women. These attachments are not disentangled from Johnson’s issues with his mother but serve as a device paralleling Boswell’s narrative.Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson becomes a homing point for Damrosch, noting Boswell’s “mimetic” qualities as truly capable of recording the essence of conversation and personality. This mimesis is praised by Damrosch throughout the book. However, there is nowhere to hide for the seedy Boswell, whose involvement with women is often as complicated as his suspective bipolar disorder. Boswell’s narcissism is the glue that holds his relationships together, and it is the emulsifying element that forms the strongest opinions from other club members. Rousseau said to Boswell “You are irksome to me.” Boswell, the journal-phile he is, captures the strong characterization of Johnson through the uproariously philosophical conversations induced by greasy food and booze. Damrosch never strays from the biographical at the expense of noting every travel Boswell and Johnson undertook; but, he draws from the deeply personal and human aspects of his source material. The kind-hearted Johnson, with his notoriously serious demeanor and God-fearing eccentricities, is observed through the comical eyes of his friends while not denoting the importance of his authorial intention and work. Damrosch notes that Boswell and Johnson did not share similar views on colonialism; whereas Boswell is a conservative Whig, Johnson’s views are tinged with conservatism that is indicative of his Tory leaning. The later meditations on Boswell’s political career are eclipsed by what Damrosch describes as one of the “most compelling orators of all time,” Edmund Burke, to which Damrosch devotes a significant portion of the remaining book and uses as a foil to Boswell’s lack of self-reflection. While Boswell is not nearly as well known as those he shares pages with, such as Joshua Reynolds, Adam Smith, Burke, David Garrick, Edward Gibbon, Richard Sheridan, and Oliver Goldsmith, he is an interesting beast of a man with a Johnson-sized worshiping complex. This complex, Damrosch concludes, is the negative relationship between Boswell and his father morphing into a father-son projection onto Johnson. Damrosch treats this idolatry not as a fault of Boswell but as a precursor to his greatest work, The Life.Moments of note are punctuated with art: from the domineering pieces of Reynolds, who receives a mini-biopic and resoundingly negative review from William Blake, to the almost silly cartoons of Johnson and contemporaries. Attention to the portraiture of the characters breathes life into the strong characterization forever immortalized in the squinting, half-blind paintings of Johnson who had “not seen out of that little scoundrel for a great many years.”Damrosch’s care for portraying the club’s members is the strongest aspect of the book; however, it is one of Damrosch’s shortcomings. While Johnson is an enormous canonical figure of the eighteenth century, Damrosch does not convey the towering figures of some of the other club’s members and their lasting impact on the Enlightenment era. Damrosch provides brief, albeit succinct, understandings of these members as they pertain to Johnson. The other club members are in the shadow of Johnson, pushed to the end of the book for a brief chapter of their lives as recorded by Boswell or in other historical documents. While it is not possible for Damrosch to focus on all the members of the club, their richness and nuance are situated in Johnsonian perspectives, which may leave some readers wanting more.This book detaches itself from academic rhetoric surrounding work for a more wholesome review of life, personality, and character, turning to a humanistic view of interactions and perceptions perfectly preserved in time. I was thoroughly delighted by the throughline of humor Damrosch expertly uses while juxtaposing death and illness as lurking at the edges of all the club members’ lives. By shaking loose the historical seriousness of canonical figures, Damrosch is capable of transportation and exploration in a sense that is remarkably human.This review only captures the essence of the heart Damrosch put into bringing Turk Head’s establishing club members to life. The Club is a delight for readers to understand Johnson and Boswell, and some of their contemporaries, through the intense attention to personality and the very humanness of their faults. Where Damrosch shines is in the quality of storytelling, unafraid to paint all the proclivities toward the often violent, chronically ill, and life-long addictions and fancies that follow the club members through their lives

The Club is an interesting introduction to the leading literati of eighteenth century England; but it’s more well told tales than intellectually in depth biographies.The stars of the book are Samuel Johnson and, correspondingly, the first man to write a modern biography—his biographer James Boswell. The eponymous Club actually refers to an establishment where Burke, Gibbon, Boswell, Johnson, Adam Smith and others would meet and dine but it plays only a small part in the narrative.One gets a captivating picture of Johnson; struggling with mental illness yet still able to be the most interesting conversationalist of his age; not to mention the author of classics like his dictionary, introduction to Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets.Boswell comes across less flatteringly as someone who treated badly mostly everybody in his life except his beloved Johnson. But he did almost singlehandedly invent the genre of modern biography by presenting a living personality instead of a skeleton overlaid with virtues. Later readers must be thankful to him for at least that.The other great intellectuals—Burke, Smith and Gibbon—are more sketched than portrayed. If you have only scanty knowledge of these figures then TheClub reads as an entertaining account of a bygone era. But it’s not intended for those who’ve read Boswell’s biography or are already well familiar with the English Enlightenment. Recommended to those with a passion for, but not a professional interest in, intellectual history.

Fans of Doctor Johnson (and we are surprisingly many) suffer from nostalgia for 18th-century London. We forget how awful it really was, what with crime, disease, filth, public executions, and so on. What we remember is that cozy room at the Turk's Head, with a warm fire, good food and wine, and the company of some of the cleverest men that ever lived. And we wish we could have been there.For those already acquainted with Dr. Johnson and his circle, this new book by Harvard professor Leo Damrosch will be a must. Knowing that many good Johnson biographies already exist, the author has not simply written one more. On the contrary, his work, entitled “The Club,” does exactly what it says on the package: it is not a biography of Johnson—although it includes him--but rather a tour through his brilliant group. Here we find Boswell, of course, as well as such lights as Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Edward Gibbon...what a chat room! Most of them are given at least capsule biographies and descriptions, followed by anecdotes about their adventures in the Club. Some important non-club-members, such as Hester Thrale and Fanny Burney, are also given their due.A problem in Johnson studies is just why we should care about Johnson at all, as almost none of his writings are read for pleasure today. The answer is that as a personality he was not only brilliant, but also so very human. And how do we know this? We know it from Boswell. Without Boswell, there would be no Samuel Johnson today. So in my opinion, Boswell's “Life of Johnson” is the first book one should read. No other book—including this one—brings Johnson to life the way Boswell does, and it is one's personal acquaintance with Johnson that is really the point. But then, having read Boswell, one would like to know more, and that is where Prof. Damrosch comes in. His book is well written (as it must be, for anyone in contact with Johnson), plentifully researched, tastefully presented, and furnished with delightful illustrations, and it supplies all sorts of interesting information that one doesn't get from Boswell. Damrosch serves up succulent titbits, often followed by “That was another conversation that didn't get into 'The Life of Johnson.'” Boswell was selective in his reporting. He had to watch out for Johnson's reputation and his own (which in fact needed a good deal of watching), and he also had his own personal dislikes, such as that for Edward Gibbon, who appears practically not at all in the “Life.” Prof. Damrosch does a fine job of filling in the corners that Boswell left, and in the process succeeds in bringing Dr. Johnson himself even more to life—which as I mentioned, is the point of the whole thing.

Review of ‘The Club – Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age’ by Leo DamroschAs a long-time admirer of Samuel Johnson, reading Damrosch brings the crisp, enlightened weekly meetings of the ‘friends’ -artists, writers, physicians, scientists, philosophers, historians - at Turk’s Head Tavern, a London pub, into place 240 years later. Membership in ‘The Club’ was by invitation only, acceptance based on creative competition of members involved in spirited discussion of lively and contentious issues of the day. Originally only a few members orbited around Johnson, many like Boswell, Johnson’s well-known biographer, having to wait his time for acceptance. It was Joshua Reynolds, the famous artist, knowing how Johnson loved taverns and conversation over food and drink of one kind or another, invited some friends to gather on Fridays. Members came from all walks of life, some like Johnson and Goldsmith near poverty, but originally included more well-off luminaires such as Edward Gibbon, Richard Sheridan, Adam Smith, David Garrick, Edmund Burke and James Watt. New members, elected by invitation only, met for lively conversation and discussion, much of which centered around literary criticism and philosophical enquiries. Boswell, himself, generated a new form of biography, a major centerpiece of Damrosch’s magnificent work, pulling all of Johnson’s confidants into perspective, and one feels part of the conversation as they interacted with one another from time to time. This is a seminal work by a celebrated biographer who produced ‘Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World’ winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. For anyone fascinated by Johnson who wrote the first comprehensive English Dictionary – The Great Dictionary – working alone, while other nations built national dictionaries by committee, readers of ‘The Club’ will not be disappointed to interact with the personalities brought to life by Damrosch in this cultural niche of England in the mid to late 18th Century.W.C. Mahaney, author of: ‘Ice on the Equator – Quaternary Geology of Mount Kenya, East Africa’, ‘Atlas of Sand Grain Surfaces Textures and Applications’, and 'Hannibal's Odyssey: The Environmental Background to the Alpine Invasion of Italia".

Una joya de libro.

Having just finished reading this book I am left with the feeling that 'The Club' is a somewhat a ghost at the feast. Having said that I found this a very enjoyable book packed with fascinating, often amusing detail, and gossipy information gleaned from various sources. The story starts around about the inception of the regular meetings that occurred in the mid 18th Century at The Turks Head pub in Soho, London, but as it develops it tends to focus mainly on the back stories of the wonderfully talented and generous hearted Samuel Johnson, then his relationship with James Boswell who, being an avid diarist, is an animating force for this record, also the women in their lives. Other historical giants of the time who became members, get significant parts in this story. They include David Garrick, Thomas Sheriden, Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds, Edward Gibbon, Adam Smith and others. I learned a lot about these people, their families and their relationship to each other. Although the formalised 'Club' that eventually metamorphosed over the years into The London Literary Society never allowed female members, many women have interesting and significant parts in this story. The writing style is easy and enjoyable for the non specialist though I sense an academic looking for details of activities in The Club may feel frustrated. The book contains a large number of relevant illustrations, both in colour and black and white, portraits and places. Of necessity many of these are quite small so I kept a magnifying glass nearby to enjoy the detail. Finally I appreciated that the author rounded off the story of the life of each main character, thus allowing the reader to get a satisfying sense of a 'whole life', much more than would be conveyed by just minutes of meetings of The Club.

Wards and all.

Tempi perfetti, libro in ottime condizioni