Post 1750: The Rambler

Portrait of Samuel Johnson 

by Joshua Reynolds (1775)

 

 

I.

 

1750 is something of a lucky number for me as the sum of its digits adds up to 13; a star number of great significance within many cultures, as well as the day of the month on which I was born. 

 

As a date, 1750 is often used to indicate the end of the pre-industrial era, so I suppose one might say that the modern world as we understand it - fully enframed by technology and powered by great machines - begins here. 

 

But 1750 also saw the first edition of Samuel Johnson's The Rambler ... [1] 

 

 

II.

 

For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is one of the most distinguished men of letters in English history. A poet, playwright, essayist, critic, biographer, and editor, he began his writing career on The Gentleman's Magazine, in 1737 [2]. 

 

His famous dictionary - which took him almost nine years to complete - was published in 1755 to great acclaim, but it's the series of tuppenny essays which he published twice weekly under the title of The Rambler, that most excite my interest here (I'll explain why below).

 

Between 1750 and 1752, Johnson (anonymously) wrote over 200 Rambler articles. Often on moral and religious topics, the essays tended to be more serious than the title of the series might suggest and Johnson adopted an elevated style of neoclassical prose that was in stark contrast with the colloquial language that most popular publications of the day favoured.

 

However, whilst sometimes sounding a bit like sermons, Johnson maintained a speculative approach to his subject matter and the essays mostly avoided being too didactic in character. It was always his hope, he said - echoing Ben Jonson - to mix profit with pleasure [3]. 

 

Other subjects discussed in The Rambler included literature, society and politics and Johnson liked to supplement his own thoughts with quotes from Renaissance humanists such as Erasmus and Descartes. Taken as a whole, these essays constitute Johnson's most consistent and sustained body of work.     

 

Alas, the publication was not a great success; as its author lamented in the final essay, 'I have never been much a favourite to the publick'. Having said that, there was a small band of devoted readers and The Rambler was critically respected for the quality and power of the writing [4]. 

 

 

III. 

 

So, why does all this interest me ...

 

Well, without wishing to blow my own trumpet - or compare myself to Samuel Johnson - it seems to me that Torpedo the Ark is in the tradition of The Rambler. 

 

The 1,750 published posts - which might be seen as micro-essays - are composed on an equally wide variety of topics and constitute a sustained body of work. Further, the blog also has a small but loyal readership and manages, I hope, to entertain as well as inform. 

 

The only real difference is that I don't charge readers anything - not even tuppence - to access the work on Torpedo the Ark; something which makes me foolish in Johnson's opinion: No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money ...    

  

 

Notes

 

[1] It's an amusing title in its ambiguity: does Johnson want his readers to imagine him as one who roams in the countryside of ideas, wandering from one topic to the next; or is he self-mockingly referring to himsef as one who writes at length in a slightly confused manner, blathering on about subjects almost unparalleled in range and variety, but never telling us anything of substance ...? 

 

[2] Founded in London, in 1731, by Edward Cave, The Gentleman's Magazine was a monthly publication which ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term magazine for a periodical and included commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry (rather, one might say, like Torpedo the Ark, which also aims to produce numerous pieces of such variety that it becomes impossible to provide an overview).   

 

[3] See the Prologue to Ben Jonson's play Volpone (1606). 

      This ideal has continued to unfold in our own times; the BBC, for example, declare a desire "to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain".

[4] Further, when issues of The Rambler were collected in book form (1753), the essays became more widely read and appreciated, particularly amongst members of the newly emerging middle-class who hoped to improve their knowledge in a manner that would enable them to converse more easily with the highly educated members of the aristocracy. 

      Contemporary readers can purchase a facsimile reprint of The Rambler (Kessinger Publishing, 2010) on Amazon: click here. Alternatively, Johnson's essays from The Rambler can be read on the Samuel Johnson blog published by Matt Kirkland: click here. 

 

 

Reflections on a Black Cat (In Memory of Pluto)

She is a very fine Cat; a very fine Cat indeed!  
Photo: SA / 2020

I.

Ever since she first wandered into the house and, subsequently, my affection, this beautiful black cat has brought something greater than good luck or prosperity; something that might even be described as a form of solace.

Indeed, I'm now of the view that angels have whiskers rather than wings. Or that even shape-shifting demons can bring us comfort and companionship in times of great distress, far exceeding the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere man.

II.

Of course, I'm not the first to have noticed this, or to have a particular fondness for satanic black cats. Samuel Johnson, for example, was very attached to his feline companion, Hodge, and Edgar Allan Poe also owned a sable-furred familiar, which he described as "one of the most remarkable black cats in the world - and that is saying much; for it will be remembered that black cats are all of them witches".*

Poe also wrote a very disturbing short story entitled 'The Black Cat' (1843), featuring a pussy called Pluto; "a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree", who sadly has the misfortune of having a drunken madman for an owner ...**

One night, the latter - who is also the narrator of the tale - comes home pissed out of his head as always, and takes umbrage at the fact that the cat is avoiding him. He tries to grab hold of the terrified creature, but the latter bites him. And so the man takes out a knife and, with the kind of sadistic cruelty that shamefully characterises humanity, cuts out one of the cat's eyes:

"The fury of a demon [had] possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame [...] I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity."

From that moment on, the animal understandably flees in terror at his master's approach. At first, the man, who, prior to this incident, had been very close to his cat - "Pluto was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house" - feels deep remorse and regrets his cruelty. But this feeling gives way to irritation and a spirit of perverseness:

"Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?" 
 
Thus, one day, in cold blood, he takes poor Pluto into the garden and hangs him from a tree; tears streaming from his eyes, and with the bitterest remorse eating at his heart; "because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin - a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it [...] even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God."

Strangely, that same night his house catches fire, forcing the man and his wife to flee. Returning the next day to examine the smoking ruins, he discovers an image of a gigantic cat with a rope around its neck imprinted on the single wall still standing.

Poe could, I think, have ended the story here. But he doesn't. Continuing the tale, the narrator tells us how, some time later, still feeling guilty and beginning to miss Pluto, he adopts a similar looking cat - it even has an eye missing. However, he soon regrets doing so, as the animal merely amplifies his feelings of guilt and bad conscience:

"I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but - I know not how or why it was - its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually - very gradually - I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence."

Then, one day, the cat gets under his feet causing him to nearly fall down the cellar stairs. Enraged, the man grabs an axe with the intention of killing Pluto 2. He is stopped from doing so by his wife - which is good for the cat, but bad for the woman, as, in vexed frustration and possessed by evil thoughts, he vents his murderous rage on her instead, burying the axe deep in her brain: "She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan."

He decides to conceal the body behind a brick wall in the cellar - "as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims" -  rather than bury it in the garden, for example, and run the risk of being seen by nosy neighbours.

Unfortunately, in his haste to dispose of the body, he accidently entombs the cat and when the police come to investigate the woman's reported disappearance and search his house ... Well, you can guess what happens: a loud, inhuman wailing - "half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell" - gives the game away. Tearing down the wall, the police discover the rotting corpse of the wife and the howling black cat sitting atop the body. 

Poe's tale, then, is in part a revenge fable; the revenge of the feline object. And the narrator not only deserves his fate on the gallows, but to be denied his place in heaven which, as Robert A. Heinlein once remarked, is determined by how we behave toward cats here on earth ...


Notes

* Edgar Allan Poe, 'Instinct Versus Reason - A Black Cat', in Alexander's Weekly Messenger, vol. 4, number 5, (Jan 29, 1840), p. 2. Click here to read online.

** 'The Black Cat' was first published in the August 19, 1843, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. It can be found in vol. 2 of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven Edition) and read online courtesy of Project Guttenberg: click here. 

For further reflections on the figure of the black cat, click here. 

D. H. Lawrence: The Reluctant Londoner

Unused design for the 14th International 

D. H. Lawrence Conference (London, 3-8 July 2017) 

by Stephen Alexander 

(Based on a 1929 film poster by the Stenberg Brothers)

Asked to name places associated with D. H. Lawrence and his fiction, many readers will say Italy, whilst others immediately mention Mexico. Those familiar with the novel Kangaroo often fondly recall his descriptions of the Australian bush. Mostly, however, they think back to the dreary coal mining district in the East Midlands from out of which Lawrence rather miraculously extracted himself. 

One thing's for sure: not many readers will say London - even though he and a surprising number of his characters have interesting connections to the capital. In fact, according to Lawrence scholar Catherine Brown, Lawrence visited the city around fifty times between October 1908 and September 1926 and not only did he live and work there at certain periods, he even married Frieda at a registry office in Kensington. 

Of course, given his aggressive anti-urbanism, it's not surprising to discover that Lawrence didn't much like being in the Smoke and that many of his comments and fictional portrayals of the city tend to be negative - although he does admit in a newspaper article written in 1928 to having found it exhilarating upon arrival as a young man:

"Twenty years ago, London was to me thrilling, thrilling, thrilling, the vast and roaring heart of all adventure. It was not only the heart of the world, it was the heart of the world’s living adventure. How wonderful the Strand, the Bank, Charing Cross at night, Hyde Park in the morning!"

But today, says Lawrence in the same article, all the excitement seems crushed out of the city - not least by the sheer weight of traffic, massively rolling nowhere.

Thus, I suppose Lawrence might at best be described as a reluctant Londoner; one who quickly grew tired of its charms - including the West End girls who had at one time fascinated the Eastwood boy as they paraded along Piccadilly, displaying their non-provincial beauty. Not because he was tired of life, as Samuel Johnson would have it, but, on the contrary, because he found it lacking in vitality and full of deathly dullness and the noise of endless chatter ...

And speaking of endless chatter - though hopefully it won't be deathly dull in character - the 14th International D. H. Lawrence Conference will be held in London this summer (3-8 July). Readers interested in finding out more can click here.

Notes

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Why I Don't Like Living in London', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 119-22. 

See also Catherine Brown, 'London in D. H. Lawrence's Words', which can be found as an article on her website - catherinebrown.org - or accessed directly by clicking here. 

Readers interested in a related post to this one might like to click here.