Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/32

20 senior and must have looked on them as mere girls. Miss Reynolds delighted them by proposing to take them to visit Dr. Johnson in his own house at Bolt Court, where he had given shelter to a broken-down surgeon and three destitute ladies, one of them, Anna Williams, an old friend of his late wife, being blind, and with such a temper that he paid half-a-crown a week extra to the servants to put up with her.

Sally More thus describes the visit:—

After having had a call from Dr. Percy, the Collector of the Reliques of Poetry—quite a sprightly modern, not a rusty antique, as I expected—Miss Reynolds ordered the coach to take us to Dr. Johnson's very own house. Yes, Abyssinia's Johnson! Dictionary's Johnson! Rambler's, Idler's, and Irene's Johnson! Can you picture to yourselves the palpitation of our hearts as we approached his mansion. The conversation turned on a new work of his just going to the press (The Tour to the Hebrides), and his old friend Richardson. Mrs. Williams, the blind poet, who lives with him, was introduced to us. She is engaging in her manner, her conversation lively and entertaining. Miss Reynolds told the Doctor of all our rapturous exclamations on the road. He shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said, "She was a silly thing." When our visit was ended he called for his hat (as it was raining) to attend us down a very long entry to our coach, and not Rasselas could have acquitted himself more en cavalier. We are engaged with him at Sir Joshua's, Wednesday evening. What do you think of us?

I forgot to mention that, not finding Johnson in his little parlour when we came in, Hannah seated herself in his great chair, hoping to catch a little of his genius; when he heard it he laughed heartily, and told her it was a chair on which he never sat. He said it reminded him of Boswell and himself when they stopped a night at the spot (as they imagined) where the weird Sisters appeared to Macbeth; the idea so worked on their enthusiasm that it quite deprived them of rest. However, they learnt the next morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were quite in another part of the country.