Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/39

 Gilbert Walmsley, whom he describes with warm gratitude in the ‘Life of Edmund Smith.’ He also was on friendly terms with Miss Hill Boothby [q. v.], to whom he wrote affectionate letters in her last illness (first published in Piozzi's Letters), and with Miss ‘Molly Aston,’ the loveliest creature he ever saw (, i. 83;, Anecd. p. 157). He now tried for some scholastic employment, though the dates are rather confused, and was (probably in the first part of 1732) usher at Market Bosworth school. On 30 Oct. 1731 he describes himself as ‘still unemployed,’ having failed in an application for an ushership at his old school at Stourbridge. On 16 July (apparently 1732) he says that he walked to Market Bosworth (, i. 84–5), and on 27 July he had recently left the house of Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the Bosworth school. He can hardly have been usher, as Hawkins says, under Anthony Blackwall [q. v.], who died 8 April 1730. His life at Bosworth, whatever the date, was miserable. Dixie, to whom he acted as chaplain, treated him harshly, and he always spoke of the monotonous drudgery with ‘the strongest aversion, and even a degree of horror.’ A letter from Addenbrooke, dean of Lichfield, recommending him for a tutorship about this time, is given in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th ser. x. 421. He gave up the place after a few months, and went to live with an old schoolfellow, Hector, who was boarding at Birmingham with a Mr. Warren, the chief bookseller of the place and publisher of the ‘Birmingham Journal.’ Johnson is said to have contributed to this paper, besides giving other help to Warren. He translated Lobo's ‘Voyage to Abyssinia,’ for which Warren gave him five guineas. It was published in 1735. About 1734 he returned to Lichfield, and there made proposals for publishing Politian's Latin poems, with notes and a life. He addressed a letter to Edward Cave [q. v.] from Birmingham, dated 25 Nov. 1734, proposing to write a ‘literary article’ for the ‘Gentleman's Magazine.’

Johnson had been introduced by Hector to a Henry Porter, a mercer at Birmingham. He was brother-in-law of Johnson's old master, Hunter (, Lit. Illustr. vii. 363). Porter was buried on 3 Aug. 1734, leaving a widow (born 4 Feb. 1688–9), whose maiden name was Jarvis, with a daughter, Lucy (baptised 8 Nov. 1715), and two sons. Miss Seward told Boswell that Johnson had been in love with the daughter, whom she identified as the object of some verses written by him at Stourbridge. Hector emphatically denied this (see controversy in Gent. Mag. vols. liii. and liv., partly reprinted in Lit. Illustr. vii. 321–64). After Porter's death Johnson married Mrs. Porter, 9 July 1735. It was, as he told Beauclerk, ‘a love marriage on both sides,’ and, though outsiders mocked, the strength of Johnson's affection was unsurpassable. Though his face was scarred, his ‘huge structure of bones … hideously striking, his head wigless, ‘his gesticulations grotesque,’ Mrs. Porter at once recognised him as the ‘most sensible man’ she had ever seen. She was twenty years his senior. Her appearance is chiefly known from Garrick's comic descriptions to Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi. She was, he told Boswell, fat, with red painted cheeks, fantastic dress, and affected manners. Mrs. Piozzi, however, to whom he described her as a ‘little painted puppet,’ saw a picture of her at Lichfield, ‘very pretty,’ and, according to her daughter, ‘very like.’ The pair rode from Birmingham to be married at St. Werburgh's Church, Derby, and on the way Johnson showed his bride, by refusing to alter his pace at her bidding, that he would not be treated like a dog, which she had learnt from ‘the old romances’ to be the correct mode of behaving to lovers. The author of ‘Memoirs … of Johnson’ (1785) says that she brought him 700l. or 800l., and Mr. Timmins (‘Dr. Johnson in Birmingham,’ from Transactions of Midland Institute, 1876) shows that she had 100l. in the hands of an attorney. Mrs. Johnson's small fortune probably enabled him to take a house at Edial, near Lichfield, where, as an advertisement announced in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for 1736, ‘young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Greek and Latin languages by Samuel Johnson.’ Johnson's impatience, irregular habits, and uncouth appearance were hardly likely to conciliate either parent or pupils. Objections to these peculiarities prevented him from obtaining the mastership of Solihull school in August 1735, and an ushership at Brewood school in 1736 (Notes and Queries, 6th ser. x. 465;, Lit. Anecd. iii. 333). According to Boswell his only boys at Edial were ‘David and George Garrick and one other.’ Hawkins says that the number ‘never exceeded eight.’ The school collapsed, and Johnson resolved to try his fortunes in London. He left Lichfield on 3 March 1737, in company with Garrick—Johnson, as he said jokingly, having twopence halfpenny in his pocket, and Garrick three halfpence in his. The pair had also a letter from Walmsley to John Colson [q. v.], then master of a school at Rochester. Walmsley expected that Johnson would turn out ‘a fine tragedy-writer.’ He had written three acts of ‘Irene’ at Edial. Johnson left his wife at Lichfield, lodged at a staymaker's