Book review: Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of Women

THE 18th-century polymath Samuel Johnson is known chiefly through his quotations. This skews the popular understanding of his character and attitudes.

We are often reminded of his remark that “a woman’s preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” This line, together with a hazy awareness that he was a less than perfect husband, informs the belief that Johnson was possibly a misogynist.

As Kate Chisholm shows, the reality was different. Having written an authoritative biography of Fanny Burney (a novelist to whom Johnson gave gentle encouragement), she argues that Johnson’s female friendships depended on “mutual give-and-take”, a frankness that could be bracing but also consoling. The most important of these connections was with Hester Thrale, the shrewd wife of a rich Southwark brewer. The relationship was touched by darkness; in some of the letters between them there are hints of a sadomasochistic dimension, though Chisholm counsels against feasting on subtexts.

Thrale was one of several women Johnson latched on to after the death of his wife Elizabeth (known as Tetty), a marriage that does not emerge here with much more credit than is usual. When Johnson attached himself to the 46-year-old widow, he was 25. Among Johnson’s nicest aphorisms is that second marriages are “the triumph of hope over experience”. Chisholm suggests that when he said this the hope he had in mind was Tetty’s.

Chisholm has a sensitive, sometimes fastidious way with detail. She is good on Johnson’s friendship with Frances Reynolds, sister of the painter Sir Joshua. He shared his anxieties with her and critiqued her efforts in both portraiture and prose. Classical scholar Elizabeth Carter was another whom Johnson encouraged to be more forthcoming. And the pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft drew much from Johnson’s respectful treatment of her beliefs the confidence to focus on writing.

It would be going too far to describe Johnson as radically progressive. But he wanted women to exercise their creative powers on equal terms with men. His benevolent spirit comes across strongly in Kate Chisholm’s accessible, affectionate book.

Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of Women

by Kate Chisholm

Chatto & Windus, 304pp, £25