Empire: World History - 58. Dr Johnson's Black Heir

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Dr Johnson is one of the most famous Brits to ever exist. A raucous, genius of a giant, he is remembered for writing the dictionary. Much less is known about his black servant and heir, Francis Barber. Listen as William and Anita are joined this week by Peter Moore to discuss the life of Francis Barber. Sign up to The Knowledge here: www.theknowledge.com/empire/ LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Drupal. You're having breakfast, Courtney Corn Flakes? I've got a cup of coffee, actually. No poshese leader.

No musino granola. Just checking because we just want to make sure whether we can identify any of this. I have had breakfast and a very nice almond cross-off. I don't think it knows. Public demand to know. Do not laugh special guests yet. You've not been introduced and you'll only encourage him. Listen, we are delighted.

Today is going to be a really very fascinating episode of Empire. Most people listening to this, most people in Britain, and indeed in the world, will know the name of Samuel Johnson, famous essayist, playwright. lexicographer, biographer, critic, man about town. They call him arguably the most distinguished man of letters that England has ever produced. So people know about Samuel Johnson, but what they don't know, perhaps, is about one man who figured large in Johnson's life, and he is the man we are talking about today, isn't he, William?

Who are we talking about? Absolutely is. Francis Barber, who I'm ashamed to say, having taken an interest in Johnson all my life, and having very recently, when I was in the Hebrides last week, read the journal of his journey with Boswell's Hebrides, I had no idea existed. Although having now read and researched him for this thing, of course we know the probable picture of him by Reynolds, which is enormously familiar, and he's like this sort of unspoken presence that threads through so many familiar stories.

Well, I mean, you mentioned you were reading Boswell, and we're going to come to this. I'm going to introduce our special guest who sort of like has already giggled. You know him by giggle, but we're going to introduce him by name any second now. But Boswell, well, let's introduce our guest, actually. It's high time, isn't it? Welcome to Empire, Peter Moore. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me on.

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. In my case, this is a return favour as we met originally on a podcast when my anarchy came out, and you very sweetly interviewed me for that. Yeah, yeah, that was 1764. So chronologically, we're in a similar place. But you're older than you look. You did that podcast in 1764. you're wearing it lightly.

We went back to the year 1764 to talk about what the East India Company were up to in India. And this was actually in 2019, if I remember correctly. Right. Okay. Well, we like to straighten all this out. You then sent me a copy of your book Endeavour, which was one of my favourite books. I chose instantly as my book of the year. An extraordinary biography of the ship Endeavour from an acorn to a wreck, which is just the most

brilliant way of tackling great sweets favour, but with the focus, obviously, being on Captain Cook and the whole discovery of America. And a walk-on part for my forebear, Alexander de Ripple, who you treat very nicely. He's normally regarded as a grumpy old sod. Well, Dalrymple, yeah, I thought he might appeal to this reading, this reading of him. He, and I was looking back at my notes from that book, and I found a line which said that maybe the person who named Endeavour, Endeavour because it was a shifting in name throughout the ship's life. It was originally called Yerla Pembroke. It turned into a Endeavour before it went off on that voyage. I reckon that Alexander Dalrymple is a prime candidate for the selector of the name Endeavour. And because he also mapped out

the parameters of the voyage to some extent, you should, I suppose, look back a little bit fondly on your forebear. We've always believed in the family that he was a guy that really discovered Australia, but you don't quite take that far in your book. We should explain who he is. Just quick, actually, we never go down rabbit holes ever on this, on this programme. We just have to give a quick shout out to Alexander Ripple. The one minute Alexander Ripple sketch, please, Peter Moore. All right, okay, Alexander Dalrymple was perfectly enough in the employee of the East India Company as a young man.

He was full of ambition and the impulses of the Enlightenment. And I think he went to Madras, if I remember correctly. And he was working there in a very junior position. But his handwriting wasn't very good, so he could not progress. I'm not sure if this is still a problem for the Del Ripples today. But he had this notion that there was a great big landmass at the bottom of the world, which he got very interested in this romantic notion of counterpoise, that the same amount of landmass had to be at the north and the southern parts of the equator

to keep the earth spinning in perfect balance. This is a very enlightenment idea of proportionate balance. And so he spent a lot of time advocating in 1760s to get a ship, to go off down there, to find this thing to prove the theory. Didn't quite work out. He discovered he wasn't in charge. And so had a half of the docks, didn't he? And then this minor collier called James Cook got to lead the voyage. Yeah, exactly.

So he was replaced by a very anonymous character from Yorkshire called James Cook, who later became Captain Cook, changed the world. This is a massive subject. Definitely a subject for the future. We'll get you back, Peter. Yeah, you could say the Dalrymples lit the fuse, if you like. Can I just say, I mean, you've done your one minute sketch of this Dalrymple. Can I do even shorter sketch of all Dalrymples? The Dalrymples, the wears wallies of all human history.

They're all over the bloody place. And can I just say there are very few people, apart from you, William, who can have a forebear, who in a podcast about Francis Barber, and we've just talked about Samuel Johnson, knocks them both off the stage. Thank you for that. Thank you very much. Back to the subject. Paul William chokes on his coffee.

So look, can I just read this quote from, you know, the lesser known Samuel Johnson man of letters if I could squeeze that poor. It plays a minor role in the life of Alexander Deroom. Make a little space for this poor unknown man. Look, he once wrote this. poem, okay? Has heaven reserved in pity to the poor, no pathless waste, no undiscovered shore, no secret island in the boundless main, no peaceful desert yet unclaimed by Spain? And when you look at that, I mean, sort of on the surface of it, it looks like an anti-colonial treaties. Was he

anti-colonial always, or was it the meeting with the man we're going to really talk about in this podcast, Francis Barber, that formulates his thoughts on colonialism? Brilliant question. So Johnson and was always highly suspicious of the whiggish enterprises of the 18th century. These things, this kind of the easy optimism, the bland acceptance of fashion that he thought was sweeping free society. So the 18th century was a time, the Enlightenment was a time that everyone could see of huge progress. So there was material progress and was the rise of political movements like democracy.

You had things like freedom of conscience, which had come from the 17th century. but more than anything, there was this great emphasis upon trade. And the money was flowing into Britain by the time Johnson was a young boy, and as his life progressed and he came to London, he could see this firsthand. But what really worried Johnson was that while it was all this progress, he thought there was a separate question of moral progress. And he thought that Britain actually was not improving in its morals. And a lot of the essays that he writes,

I quite like that description of him as an essay, at the beginning. He actually saw himself as a moralist, someone who made people think about their moral duties. The 18th century is often seen by political scientists as the century of rights, so the right to liberty, the right to happiness, Jefferson and all the rest of it. Johnson's philosophy was much more about duties, duties of one person to another. So when Johnson looked out on the streets of London, he saw the destitute, he saw prostitutes, he saw people who really had been left behind by often these great schemes. So while there was all the excitement of the projects, you know, you could go off and plant a colony at the far side of the world. Is it actually

making people happier? That was his question. And he came to the conclusion that it wasn't. There's a great moment in the 1750s where Johnson is sent a map of North America, new map of North America, which came along with this description of the landscape and so forth. And he reviewed it. And, well, the purpose of the map, and we all know that maps are hugely political objects. They're made as objects of power to invite people to go and speculate and so forth. And Johnson's review is really interesting because the author of this map said, well, we could go to this particular region of the Ohio, which is going to be particularly rich, for silk weavers.

You know, it's going to create lots of silk, which we can bring back to Britain, it's going to create more wealth. So this is a particular, this is classic wig progress project. Johnson said, oh, wow, well, we can have more silk. So let's all go off to Ohio. No worries, we can all have all the silk we need.

And you can see the irony that drips from the page. We're so, I suppose, given as humans to stake so much on up whim. And we don't actually think of the consequences of our actions. We think of Johnson today as much as we do, though, probably because he's a wit, isn't he? He has more sort of aphorisms than anyone else in 18th century England attributed to him. I think we think of him in that sense because of Boswell's life of Johnson, which is the greatest biography of all time. Most people would agree just because of when it was written, who wrote this, the kind of content that went into it.

Boswell did write with an agenda, and he's presented. a slightly cartoonish character of Johnson to us today, which we all love. I mean, it's, it is great. But it's a lot of my career as a writer has been trying to get past these caricatures with Captain Cook last time. I tried to get past that by never using the formulation Captain Cook in that Endeavour book, which is something I wanted to do. But in this, in this one, I wanted to go and find a real Johnson. And we have to remember that with Boswell, he only knew Johnson from 1763 onwards. There was a younger, more insecure, quite tortured, character and poorer and more marginal too. Yeah, you're very much on the fringes.

I mean, speaking of Boswell, and I sort of mentioned this, I mean, you may have forgotten when we did the Dalrymple tour, but Boswell, a lot of the material, an important source for him was this man, Francis Barber. Can we start with Barber's origin story, if you like? I mean, on those powerful maps, one of the most powerful places burgeoning with the potential for trade and wealth is Jamaica at this time. So tell us about the Jamaica where Barber starts his life. Should I tell you about Jamaica in the British mind? And I think this is what my best contribution will be about the way Britain's think about the world at this point, because I think this will explain a few missing pieces of the puzzle, because you've covered slavery really

well so far. But in the British mind, Jamaica in the early 18th century is a place of huge excitement. There's this idea that it's become a more civilised landscape. So where before it might have been rough and wild and silver covered with trees, it has now been kind of reduced to these profitable plantations, which for again, this is going back to this idea of the projector and progressive Whig philosophy is a great thing. And people were to remove from Jamaica. So people did not know what was happening over there. All the people knew, is that it was creating a huge amount of wealth. These ships would go out and wealth would come back.

Similar to India in the sense at that time, that very few people who no one could get there unless they had an East India Company passport. And so you only have East India Company people there and only getting occasional whistleblowers from within reporting from it. Yeah. I think that's very true. And this is again why Barb is such an interesting character, because he bridges these world. he sees the best of the Enlightenment and the worst.

This is what makes his story so interesting. But he is born in Jamaica, on the northern coast of the island, on the Orange River estate. He was one of about 150 slaves owned by a man called Colonel Bathurst. We don't know a tremendous amount about his early life, but we do know a bit. And I should say at this point, the best biographical work on Francis Barber has been done over the past decade, in particular has been a sparkling biography of him by a man called Michael Bundock, which I would recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who's listening to this. And with fragmented evidence, you have to do a lot of assembling.

And through this process of assembling, we've worked out that his most likely name before he came to England, which I'll get on to in a moment, was Quashi, which was a very typical name for a slave. So he was born maybe 1743, four, that kind of time. His name was probably quashi. We can't say for sure. But I'll tell you why we can probably say that with some certainty. Now let me see. So when the Orange River estate was sold in 1749, the equipment, the sugar, the molasses and the slaves were all sold.

And it was put onto a big deed. And four of the 150 slaves were held back. one was described as a mulatto child of Collias. Then there was a man named Shadrach, and then there was a woman named Nancy. At this point, it might be useful if I say that some of the language I'm going to quote from and use during the episode might seem rather bruscan to some people even offensive, but I'm trying to take the past on its own terms and to describe it in that way. but please take that as a warning.

The fourth one was just described as a negro boy called Quashi. And because of Francis Barber's skin colour and his age, a cross-tabulation of the two means that he could only have been one of those four. So we can say with, I suppose, a good degree of certainty, that Quashi is actually Francis Barber's birth name. Right. Which in a way connects him to earlier histories, because Quasiada is the Akhan Day name for Sunday,

so we can see a connection there to an earlier culture. And that's a very familiar name for slaves in this time. Can we assume that he was born a slave, or was he, do you think, that he was taken and brought as a child? I think it's almost certain that he was born in Jamaica, and we can say that, I think, with a good degree of certainty. I should say actually Quasiada, I was thinking the other day as a name, if you think of Quasi Quarteng today,

you can still see that echo of the Akhan day name Quasi in there. It's echoing through history. It's really interesting. This is in modern terms, a Garnayan name. Yeah, Garnan name. So this is the best connection you have to the deeper histories. But I think all slaves, and I know you're going to get on to the story of Equiano later, have these multiple identities.

So Equiano is obviously known as Gustavus Vassa for much of his life. A name he fights against at the beginning, a name he refuses to answer to you until he's beaten into taking it. Exactly. But there's other moments on different ships where he'll be given another name for a short period of time and he has to work with that. And so there's this layered identity that slaves have. And I think looking at slave names is very instructive. I just want to stick with Barber for a second, because we know very little because people with no power have very little ability to leave behind traces of themselves. Do we know about the condition on the Bathurst estate?

Do we know what life would have been like for him in his early years? No, we don't. We know in general terms what life was like on the plantations of Jamaica. I know you've talked before about Thistlewood and his. famous diary. Now, I'm not suggesting that all plantation owners acted in the same way that he did. But what we can say for absolutely sure is that Francis Barber grew up in a social and violent environment where violence was the norm, where life changed very little, where small infractions were punished with great severity. Regular whippings being kind of everyday. Even to small

children? I mean, yes, does that also take place? What is the treatment of small children who are born on these estates? That is very difficult to say. What small children did is they were also treated as workers. So from the age that they could walk, they would be going into the fields, gathering up weeds and rubbish in little baskets and working as part of these slave gangs that used to cross the fields. So he would have known, he would have been an active part of all of that plantation life. And I suppose, you know, I've got a six, six year old boy myself. And if you think about all the formative experience that he's had in his life so far up to this point, which have formed his personality, hopefully in a good way, all of that in Barber's case was

plantation slavery. That's all he knew. Okay. So that's his early life. in Jamaica, do we know more about how he came to Britain and when he came to Britain and what happens to him next? We do. We know this in more detail because the link is again with Johnson and Johnson is as well studied as Barber is not. And Johnson had a friend who was one of his closest friends called Dr. Batturst. And he makes this pronouncement, I think, to Boswell. I think this appears in Boswell at Boswell, that Batthurst was the man that he loved more than any other. He was a young doctor of about... Relation of Colonel Battlest? I mean, are they family? He was the son, yeah. So he was the son. And Batthurst talked about his childhood because he'd been brought up on the

plantation, on the Orange River in Jamaica. And he'd been so disgusted by what he'd seen that he'd left Jamaica as soon as he could. He came to Peterhouse in Cambridge, where he stood. He became a medical doctor, but he was quite an ill-starred character and never really found a settled profession. But what he did do, he talked to Johnson about the excreble region of Jamaica. And so here again, I mean, Willie, you spoke before about whistleblowers. I think we can look at this Richard Battis as a bit of a whistleblower in those terms because his father owned the plantation. he felt implicated in it because it was his family's plantation.

He got away, but he had to keep going back. And in 1749, there's this moment where the plantation collapses. And Basshurst, rather than being sad that his family's wealth is being dissipated and is gone, actually celebrates because he says, this is a great thing, because no longer are my family going to be under the temptation of keeping slaves. The next year, 1750, his father, Colonel Wilson, Battirst arrives in England and with him is a little black boy called Francis Barber. So he, oh, the name is, so is he still Quashi or is he, when does he become Francis Barber?

There's something on the voyage, like with Equiano, where he's renamed on the sea. I suppose I didn't explain that very well, actually. He becomes Francis Barber very shortly after he arrives in London. So I suppose we'll leave him as Quashi on the voyage. But something very significant happens after he arrives in Britain. and this is that he is baptized. He's taken to a church, and he emerges from that ceremony with a new name, a new identity. He's a member of the Church of England.

So there's all sorts of questions which loom large here. Why did Colonel Batturst bring one slave out of 150 back with him across the Atlantic? Why did he then take him into a church? I mean, I should point out here that churches were not a consideration for the slaves on the plantations in Jamaica. There was no idea of them having souls that need saving. They were seen as beyond, I mean, again, it's an insight into how they were perceived by the plantation owners. They were not not seen as equals. And Michael Bondock suggests that maybe Quasi or Quashi was a household slave rather than one working in the plantations if he was the one that was brought back. Is that a

likely supposition, do you think? Quite possibly. The honest answer is we don't know. There may well had been some incidents and Battert felt beholden. Maybe he was discharging a promise to someone. Maybe Francis had some kind of favourite status. We have to leave that one as an unknown. Now, wait a minute. I'm not going to leave it because favourite status, being baptized, being kept in the house. I mean, all of this suggests and tell me if this is madly wrong, that he is very definitely Colonel Bathe's son. What does it say to you? Which is another possibility. We simply have to just put it there in the list of options, I suppose. We can't know. But what I suppose you're guessing at here is what is the motive? And there's this really interesting side point here, which actually to

Quashi or Barber or I have a Will Tour Mem at this point is of importance. He's still young, But among slaves, in particular at this time, there's a belief that baptism equals freedom. Now, legally, it doesn't. This has been tested in English law. And it was something that greatly worried slave owners at the time. Because, you know, they might escape, run off to the church, get baptized, and they've lost property. But it's still a significant step. But not all slave owners would necessarily favoritize their children, bizarrely.

as it may seem to us, in the Thistlewood Diaries, again, there's one of Thistelwood's children, isn't there, who gets treated much like anyone else in the fields? Yeah, I mean, this is, it's just such a difficult area for us to go into, as historians, this interrelationship between the slaves themselves and the slaves and the masses. We do not know much about Colonel Battar's character. We know more about his son, Richard, who seems to have this social conscience. But what his relationship with Quashi, I think that really,

that really has to remain a great puzzle. Well, look, I think it's a really good time to take a break. So the young Quashi has now come to England. He's now been baptized. He is now Francis Barber, which is the name that will make him in some ways immortal. In other ways, not immortal enough. Because thanks to you, Peter, we're getting to talk about him. Join us after the break when we find out what happens to the newly baptized Francis Barber.

Welcome back. So we are talking in this episode of, empire about Francis Barber. And it's an extraordinary story that has so far taken us from the plantations of Jamaica to the shores of Great Britain where a young boy called Quashi has been baptized as Francis Barber. And at this point, he gets sent to Rishi Sudak's constituency in a rather improbable moment. He sent up to the north riding of Yorkshire, to the village of Barton near Richmond. What's going on there? Well, yeah, it's quite a long way to, I think, we have these ideas of do the boys' hall and Yorkshire boarding schools from Dickens and

children getting sent away? I went to a Dickensian Yorkshire boarding school. I haven't branded on my soul. A very cold place to spend the winter is the north riding of Yorkshire. I can tell you at the moors. Yeah, and probably made all the more of a contrast when you've recently arrived from Jamaica. So if you can imagine for a moment what this experience must have been like for a young boy of eight or nine. I suppose one thing we've not really spoken about at this point is that he's decisively been taken away from any parents that he had, or any siblings indeed. So he's very alone in the world and it's still very, very young, just not yet ten perhaps. And Colonel Battest sends him up to Yorkshire to this school. And again, we're left with these puzzles of motive. What's going on here?

he's had him baptized, he's sending him off for some redimentary education at least. I mean, if you were to be really charitable, you could say that he's trying to integrate him into British society. If you were not, you could say he's trying to get him out of the way because he's some sort of embarrassment, I don't know. Well, I mean, whichever way it is, I can't imagine it would be easy in Richmond, Yorkshire for one, eight-year-old. Again, it's heartbreaking, God an eight-year-old. Can't bear this thought. But of a, the only black face. Was he the only black face?

I mean, what was it like in Yorkshire, in Richmond at the time? Even today, there's not many black faces in Richmond. Well, that's the exact. So when I was writing the book, I had this conversation with my editor. And they pointed out to me that even today, Richmond is not a bastion of racial diversity. Multiculturalism. Possibly the barracks. The barracks at Richmond might have.

He's moved in not just across the Atlantic Ocean, but he's moved from a world which was full of. black people that looked like him to a world completely full of white people. So he's conspicuous. Everywhere he goes, he must have attracted a huge amount of attention. And again, I mean, if you add all of these things up together, you have the idea of the displacement, the dehumanization of the slavery that he's witnessed, the disorientation of an Atlantic crossing. One, I think we always have to look for parallel experiences here to get inside the mind of these people. I remember in the Endeavour book writing about Tupaya, who was a Polynesian star navigator,

who arrived in Batavia and just going mad when he was confronted with all of this technology, and he ran around wild. It was time travelling. It's a wonderful passage in your book. Yeah. And I think Barber must have, I suppose, been caught between awe and terror. Okay. So, I mean, he's he's, he's. He's learning how to read and write. He's learning how to become literate, which is unusual for a young black boy in Britain at that time. Where does his path cross with the man of letters? He's learning his letters, the man of letters, Samuel Johnson. What is the trajectory of that? Because Johnson isn't in Yorkshire. He's not in Richmond. So what happens here? So this is the extraordinary moment, I suppose, in Barber's story. Until now, you could always say there were many plantations. owners who came back to Britain and brought a slave with them.

They, you know, this was not unheard of. And the status of the slave might be strange, but they would follow them around in London. Benjamin Franklin, for example, when he comes across from America in 1757, brings two slaves to serve him in London. There's a merchant ivory film about Franklin at that period, isn't there, with his two slave, the slave girls, I think there, aren't they? No, they're both, they're both male, but there's a really interesting story about them, which I might return to in a bit. But what happens to Barber in 1752? So this is two years after he's arrived in Britain. It's just extraordinary because Johnson at this point is working on this colossal project,

the dictionary. This is the thing we all know him for. He's out of time. He's out of money. He's living in this big house in Goff Square just off Fleet Street. And he's having a lot of domestic problems because his wife, who was older than him, quite considerably older than him, has become. come ill and in the March of 1752 she dies. Johnson is thrown into agonies of grief. One of his friends

is Richard Bateshurst, you might remember earlier. And by this point, Francis has arrived back from Yorkshire. He's in London with Richard Bateshurst and Batshurst comes up with a plan. The idea is that maybe, you know, I suppose we could all empathise with this idea that when someone is is shrouded in grief. Sometimes a change of atmosphere is a really good thing for them. So the idea which is hatched for Johnson is, well, let's give Francis to Sam Johnson and perhaps he will charge his spirits up in some way. As a slave. I mean, like gift him as a slave to Johnson. Well, here we're into ambiguities of both legal ambiguities and practical ones because Johnson would not have understood the relationship as being that of a slave.

We can say that with a lot of confidence because of the kind of character that Johnson was. Johnson saw Barber more as part of his extended family as a servant, or as a young boy in need, perhaps. How Barber saw the arrangement is quite different, because the only thing he'd known in his life was being owned by someone else. We got this bewildering sequence of events. He's been in Barton. He's been schooled in Yorkshire. And now he's given to this quite, I don't know, even where to begin with Johnson. He's one of the most eccentric characters you could imagine.

Very tall. He's blind in one eye. He's scarred with scrofula. He shouts and he smiles and he rolls down hills. He's just a... In contemporary medical language, some people speculate he may have had Tourette's syndrome. Isn't that right? Well, I don't know.

I think these kind of diagnoses on the past are difficult. the great tragedy of Johnson's young life is that he had to drop out of Oxford University without taking his degree. And I mean, he was plunged into the depths of depression after this. He thought his life had been a failure. And this is another complicated area I can't get into. But afterwards, he started to manifest these ticks. And again, in Boswell, they're seen as part of his character, his, I suppose, eccentricities. And he, anyone who met him for the first time, I mean, there's an interesting description of Hogarth,

him for the first time and thinking that he was an idiot because he was just like kind of convulsed all the time. But yeah, Johnson had some serious trauma that he was trying to deal with. So again, what Barber made of all of this and cast into this household, which was full of grief as well. Grief and also, I mean, he must have thought he was slightly with a madman. There's another very lovely portrait of Johnson at this time, which I think is quite charming, but it's also very graphic, which is a friend of his. Bo Clerk is walking home. You know this one. He's walking home. It's the early

hours of the morning. They're all drunk as lords. And they've got this idea of let's wake up, Johnson. Let's take him on a pub crawl. You know, the most grumpy man in Britain at this time. You know, with good reason, as you say. So they wrap violently on Johnson's door to say, look, come on out. Come on out

with us. Johnson appears in his night shirt with a little black wig on top of his head. And a poker in his hand. and a poker in his hand and when he sees it it's his friends who say hey Johnson come out with us Samuel Samuel Sammy Sam come on

and he just says What is it you dogs I'll have a frisk with you and then waves his poker at them So I mean like you know This is the house that Barbara is entering If I may take that story further It progresses from the poker being waved out of the window

All the way through London This is a kind of I don't know Jack Greelish You know they just know go mad, they end up having breakfast at Billingsgate, which sounds like an 18th century movie. And, yeah, Johnson, everyone knew this about Johnson. He was a very serious, grave character who could be sunk in indeciction. But if you could rouse his spirit somehow, he had more child life playfulness than just about anyone.

Bunduck says at this point he looks like a boxer past his prime, that he's this sort of quite formidable physical presence. Oh yeah, well, there's lots of stories of him squaring up to the robbers and the footpads and they kind of jump out at Johnson and they soon run away when they see him. He is a formidable overbearing present, dogmatic and in conversation as well as physically.

In Blackadder he's played by Robbie Coltrade. We have that huge thing. Brilliant, I know. He leaves sausage out as a dictionary, doesn't he? That's right. So look, does he ever at this stage, I mean on all the things that he wrote, does he ever say, actually, I've got now a new black boy in my household, his name is Francis Barber. When do we first hear Francis Barber creep into the writing of Johnson, or does he not at all? Well, again, we turn to Boswell at this point, because Boswell's chronicle of his life is so full. And you see the references from this point forward to Frank, which is generally how Boswell refers to Barber. And yeah, I think in Johnson's own work, he's there in letters.

He often mentions Barber. But this is from later on, maybe there's a moment later on in the 1750s, but specifically in the 1770s. He talks all about Barbara in his letters. But again, it's only in passing, like give my love to Francis. I hope Francis is well. Things like that. That's nice.

That's really nice, actually. The household, though, I don't think we've done it justice. because is it true? It is pretty much a madhouse. You've got a blind housekeeper who Johnson keeps on. You've got a visiting physician who is paralytically drunk most of the time. I mean, what do we know about the circumstances and the wildness of the Johnson? Shea Johnson.

I mean, that actually works, doesn't it? Shea Johnson. How wild is it at the Johnson residents? Take that, as you will, in a contemporary or ancient way. What's it like? Well, you can still visit Goff Square today, if you like. It's just, it's one of the great surviving buildings of that area because, of course, it was carpet bombed by the Luftwaffe in the Blitz, and used to be able to see all the way down to St. Paul's

without interruption. But somehow they missed a Goff Square, and it stands proudly still. And you can get a sense of what the household was like by looking at the architecture, but the people inside it, yeah, were, they were described as being people out of the common run of life, which is a wonderful 18th century expression. So there was animal. Williams, who was the blind housekeeper. So she was often in conflict with Francis Bar, but they didn't particularly get on. There was Levitt, who was the, he was a practitioner of physics among the lower types, I think, Johnson referred to him to. They used to go on his wandering rounds, and one of these 18th century characters, again, who really never made much money. And Johnson said he was one of the few people who was

ever drunk three motives of temperance because his patients often wouldn't be able to pay him for his work and they'd pay him in kind with a little bit of gin or something like that. And so he'd turn up rather drunk. And so Leavitt was very silent. Anna Williams was, I suppose, if you know her life, it's understandable. She was quite short-tempered. Francis, this young boy bewildered, I suppose, is the best way to explain him. And Johnson, in the middle of the more, carrying on. And there was a revolving cast of others who came in and out all the time. And Johnson himself often depressed. I mean, he would have periods when he would sink very low. Absolutely, yeah. He famously used that term black dog, which lots of people think of as a Churchillian.

Is that him originally? He came out and that was Churchill. No, so you can find that term. And he, I mean, he was very complex. I mean, one of the great studies of Johnson, I always think is Walter Jackson Bates' life of Samuel Johnson, one of the great biographies of the 20th century, and he portrays Johnson as this heroic figure battling against pretty severe mental illness throughout his life. And so I think one of the nice things about 1752, which is a real year of crisis for Johnson, he's behind on the dictionary, he hasn't got any money, his wife has just died. But out of the death of his wife, he begins this new relationship with Francis, which is like the closest to a father-son relationship you will ever have. So it's a strange

twist of fate. What does Frank do for me? I kind of like the idea of Little Frank. I mean, that's warmth. To me, that's kind of, that's nice. I'm not changing your name. This is the name you've come to me with, but I'd say it's a, it's a sweet diminutive. Well, he's around 10, I suppose, when he first arrives. So nine, ten. Yeah. And the jobs he does are the, the running of errands, the passing of messages. His Johnson's printer was just around the corner of William Strawn. So you can imagine

that Francis would be going around there with copy for the dictionary, things like this. But there is, I mean, Johnson makes several attempts to continue young Frank's schooling. I'm picking up on your cue there. It's cute there, isn't it?

I like it. Yeah. And so I think that's very very suggestive again that he's is Barbara is someone who has potential to improve. And we could talk about attitudes towards race and, I suppose, the philosophy of what British people thought about black people in a moment. But it's very significant that Johnson makes that decision. We've talked before about how almost no one in Britain in the 1750s is complaining at all about plantation slavery. Does that translate into vilely racist attitudes on the streets of

London, and is Samuel Johnson's benevolent attitude unusual, or even very, very unusual? So Johnson was always known for his compassion to people. He's one of these people who wouldn't turn someone away, and he wasn't just going to walk on by, if we can put it in those terms. So attitudes towards race, so interesting today, and I think we might as well look at this squarely now. For your listeners, there's two real big ways that people thought about race. in say 1750. The first of them you can broadly term the degeneracy theory, okay? And both of these are within the wider, broader framework of Christian worldview, okay? But the degeneracy theory is there's been a single act of creation,

but some races of people have sunk due to social and environmental factors. And you can see that in the writing of the time, people say, well, the sun makes people lazy, for example. That's prevalent everywhere, these kind of things. I'd say, say that was the most popular attitude that you would come across at this time but there is a more virulent form of racism which is growing at the time which is known as

the polygenesis or the polygenesis theory depending on how you pronounce it which is that there's been separate acts of creation to create different types of being and this is very dangerous David Hume is one person who at least flirts with this idea so Hume the fame

Enlightenment philosopher yeah exactly and so this is the idea that And I should also point out that it's always the white Britons who are at the top of the pyramid, if you like, in these conceptions of the world. But in this polygenesis, if you like, black people have been made by a different act of creation, and they've been made out of poorer materials than the white people. Lesser clay. Children of a lesser clay somehow. Exactly.

And so therefore, they don't have the potential to progress, so you wouldn't educate them. Do you see what I mean? So there's a connection here with what happens to Francis Barber, because Johnson's making a statement here. He's being really radical. And what he's done also is he's given a degree of freedom to a boy who has never known any. So, you know, I'm just thinking of the idea, the notion of a 10-year-old boy running to the printers, running back, doing errands in a city, being free to wander without being manicled, shackled, monitored. He's free to move, which is amazing. Exactly. And not free to move anywhere, free to move around Fleet Street and the Strand. These are the most exciting streets.

Exactly, the place to be. Yeah, this is the kind of the most exciting streets in Britain, if perhaps not in the Western world at this point. I mean, anyone would like a stroll along Fleet Street. And this is what? When a man is bored of London, he's bored of the world. This is true. And this was Barber's new life. So he must have been intoxicated. And we know that he did forge a very, very deep emotional bond. with Johnson, they were very close. Peter, can we, I mean, we've talked at such great length, and there's so much more to talk about, because we haven't even started on Francis, Little Frank, Francis Barber's, relationship with the big work, Johnson's big work, and the dictionary. So join us again on Thursday. We're going to pick this up, and we're going to find out what happens to this boy with his

eyes wide open in so many ways with one of the most exciting benefactors. that England has ever had to offer. We should say that Peter has an absolutely fantastic book out on this topic called Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness, Britain, The American Dream, which will be out next week. But before that, we've got the second part of this episode coming out on Thursday. Till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arndon. And goodbye from me, William Durember.