Biographer Biographied

WRITING THE BIOGRAPHY of James Boswell, whose Life of Johnson is by common consent the greatest biography ever written, is a task that appears to damn the writer before his ink meets paper. All the more so if one considers that Frank Brady's new book on Boswell's later years completes the cycle started with the 1966 study of Boswell's early years by Federick Pottle, the most esteemed Boswell scholar in literary history. Yet Johnson, who himself overcame a lifetime of adversity, might well have admired a man who persevered despite such an intimidating legacy. Brady's years spent scrutinizing the Boswell papers at Yale, his close association with Pottle, and his obvious affection for the much maligned Boswell make for a thorough and often scintillating biography.

The youthful Boswell was the consummate rake. The young Scot visited London and spent his days gaping at sights and groveling for favor from potential wealthy patrons, and his evenings copulating beneath London Bridge or lying in bed suffering the ravages of venereal disease. But, as Brady strives to make clear, Boswell's rapacious libido represented only a portion of the make-up of a man whose life also included a vibrant spectrum of people, events, pressures, pleasures and misfortunes.

Brady makes a point of de-emphasizing the vaunted sexuality that most other similar works have assigned Boswell. Boswell once remarked, "I am too many, as the phrase is, for one woman." Brady, however, wants us to place the lasciviousness in the proper perspective, and he notes, "Boswell's behavior, his drinking and womanizing was as commonplace in his time as it is today." Indeed, he begins his study unequivocally: "decency, discretion, propriety--Boswell had struck a new note." Brady's Boswell is a man of no uncertain complication or genius.

Throughout this book, Brady traces the maturation of a man who always hungered for things that were only partially available to him. The two most profound influences were his relationships with his natural father Lord Auchinleck and with his adopted father Samuel Johnson. Lord Auchinleck was "upright, hardworking, shrewd, practical and totally unimaginative." To take a ridiculous modern example, his relationship with James was akin to that of Oliver Barrett III and his conservative, wealthy father in Eric Segal's Love Story. Boswell felt the same mixture of perverse joy in defying Lord Auchinleck that Oliver feels in resisting his father. Lord Auchinleck resented the son he deemed irresponsible, and he forced James to suffer a life plagued by financial insecurity and feelings that he could never quite measure up to his father's standards.

To make up for the void created by his father, Boswell took solace in his relationship with Johnson, the most intellectually dynamic man of his age. Some of the most moving sections of the book describe the intimate rapport between Johnson and Boswell. Here we see them analyzing Boswell's prospects for entering Johnson's famed literary club, there the two are commiserating after a rare argument. The intellectual stimulation offered by Johnson and his circle warmed Boswell.

LOCATIONS COMPLEMENT paternal preferences. Boswell was a lawyer by trade, and although Brady describes several fascinating cases that found the kneejerking Boswell scurrying to the defence, mostly he hated the tepid legal routine. Further, he lacked the instincts of a lawyer. Although Boswell did settle down some after marrying his beloved wife Margaret, Edinburgh in the shadow of his father and the law was never a pleasant home for him. "Only in London were his talents and personality appreciated at their full value. Only in London did mere existence blossom into life." In London was Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith along with the usual "whirlwind of executions, dinner and girls," Boswell's appetite for adventure stagnated in Edinburgh as he yearned for the big city.

Unfortunately Brady does not always adequately make the connection between Boswell's personality and his surroundings. We don't get too much of an idea of what Boswell's Edinburgh or London were like, an odd characteristic given Brady's argument that London played a significant role in determining Boswell's mood. And the little bit of London that we do see finds Brady slipping into the same trap that misleads all too many 18th century scholars. London may have had many sordid aspects, the extensive prostitution as an example, but there was also much beauty to the city, a beauty to which Boswell certainly was exposed and which helped to shape his character.

The London Boswell--he settled there after his father died--is an interesting fellow, because it was in London that the character of Boswell as writer and socialite fully evolves. Brady does a good job of presenting a man who endured both hyperactive and melancholy tendencies. Boswell had an abundance of faults. For instance he drank too much; for this Johnson called him a man "without skill in inebriation." He was also intensely proud. Enamored of his strong stomach, he once stuffed himself aboard ship only to become violently ill with alacrity.

Despite his vanity and predilection for the bottle, Boswell above all, as Carlyle said of him, had a good heart. As long as he could refrain from showing off and writing newspaper squibs about himself, he was a first-rate journalist. Boswell scrutinized everything around him and his works, the lively tour of the Hebrides and his biography of Johnson, brought a plethora of fascinating minutiae to light. Explaining Boswell's literary brilliance, Brady notes, "like Johnson he made acute observations about others because he relentlessly observed himself." And when this man--who wanted everyone to like him, who ardently sought literary fame, and who suffered from increasing moodswings in later life--repressed it all and concentrated on his work, he was a thesis writer's dream of productivity. In one record day, he set down 52 pages of the life of Johnson.

BRADY'S OBSERVATION that Boswell "collected experiences the way others collect furniture or coins" is not an original one, yet it is amply borne out throughout the book. Boswell's break with Burke, his discussions with the dying Hume, and all his other encounters with the intellectual elite of the day are deftly depicted. There is also an abundance of Johnsonian anecdotes, though sometimes too many. The section on 1784, for instance, deals more with Johnson than it does Boswell, which is fine, except that Brady is attempting to dispel the prevalent image of Boswell as merely Johnson's sycophantic foil. There are already plenty of good biography's of Johnson, including Boswell's own.

A few other difficulties mar Brady's work, such as his tendency to rely on too much direct quotation from Boswell's compendious papers, as opposed to paraphrasing or explicating it. To nitpick, one feels another shortcoming is the dearth of illustrations accompanying the text to enliven the famous names. Many prominently mentioned members of Boswell's circle, Goldsmith, Burke, Temple, and most egregiously Boswell's father, wife and children, are not included. Neither, of course, are paintings of London or Edinburgh.

These problems aside, Brady's achievement bulks large indeed, as get a poignant portrait of this troubled, brilliant writer. As the author desired, we do come away with an impression of Boswell as a powerful and interesting personality in his own right, far away from the shadow of his brilliant mentor. We understand better the mind that absorbed and synthesized detail like no other and consistently entertained Samuel Johnson, the most demanding of conversationalists. And we take satisfaction in a book that should set the standard for biographies of Boswell, as Boswell's own work set the standard 200 years ago.