Empire: World History - 59. Francis Barber: Abolition, the Navy, and the Enlightenment

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Francis Barber is established in Dr Johnson's household. He is his servant, but he is more than that. Their relationship is more akin to father-son, than master-servant. So how did this impact Dr Johnson? And will things remain this way? Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Peter Moore to discuss the second part of Francis Barber's life 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. Welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnund. And me, William Durhampool. Can I just say, can I annotate that pause? That pause was because you were doing an email. True, right?

I'm sending you actually a message if you look at your phone. You're sending me a message? Oh, that's so sweet. Is it lovely? Oh, okay. Great. Look, our very special guest today, it's a very sweet message. Thank you, William.

And yes, I'll have two sugars, if that's all right. Look, our very, very special guest today, talking about Francis Barber. We started by talking about him on Tuesday. But we have the very excellent Peter Moore with us. We do. Thank you so much, Peter, for joining us again. And we should say right at the start that your fantastic book, Life, Liberty and the Peseech of Happiness, Britain and American Dream, is out a week today in the UK. Yeah, your timing is impeccable.

On Tuesday, we were talking about Goff Square being a complicated social space. But I'm not sure it's as complicated as this podcast dream with all the crumpets going. off and emails flying around. In some ways, in some ways it's very similar, I think, probably. It is filled with lunatics. I think I think you've hit on something there. Now, we were really very taken by this attitude of Samuel Johnson,

which is almost as a parent to this young boy who comes to him at the age of eight, nine, ten, ish. And he sort of opens the world to him, takes an interest in him. that is not like the owner-slave or even owner-servant relationship in many ways. And that is where we left last. I suppose, William, what we ought to do is really plunge into the meat of the matter, which is Johnson's greatest work, which is the dictionary, and Barber's part in it. Yes.

So, Peter, at this point, what Johnson has got as far as Kay in the dictionary, where is he at the point that Francis Barbara arrives in his life? Well, he's in that familiar position that many writers find themselves in, which is behind on a deadline. I'm sure that we can all empathize. And running out of cash. Yeah. Running out of cash. Yeah, we've all been there before.

Yeah, he's slogging his way through. The whole dictionary story in itself is worth a book. But essentially, it's a story of a very, very slow start and a very, very quick finish, which actually is what happens with a lot of my own books. He thought he could do it in three years. It took him eight. Isn't that the story? Yeah, yeah. All these things just go.

It'll sound so familiar, doesn't it? What you put on a proposal to your publisher? By December next year. Yeah, and here's the moon on a stick, and you'll get it in next Christmas. Yeah, it didn't quite work out. I mean, writing a dictionary of the English language as he set out to do is horrendously complicated. And this is in an age before. all of the organizational aids that we might have today.

He had to do it. And I don't know, suppose you can remember the, my grandfather worked on these bibliographies years ago. We have these stories of bits of paper being pinned up around the house as he tried to catalogue everything. And Johnson's own experience must have been that times 10,000, because he was trying to find all these different words, find their etymologies, define their meanings.

There's lots of very famous definitions in the dictionary. which I don't know if you know the one-foot-out and Scotland, which is worth looking at that. Go on. If you're Scottish, I'm trying to remember it off the top of my head. It's something which in England is fed to the horses, but in Scotland sustains the people. This could be why McCauley said that Johnson was a shocking bad etymologist, didn't he? Johnson was very, a whole sub-genre here about Johnson and the Scots. He loved teasing Boswell about being.

Scottish and he was very anti-Scottish. And didn't he say that the finest thing as a Scotsman ever sees is a high road to England. But it's thanks to Boswell that we get some picture of Francis. He writes about him and also

seems to be the major source for Boswell. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely that is true and we can get onto it. But before I do Boswell, let's just like, I'll tell you something about Barber and the dictionary, which I think what you're aiming at. And this relates to an extraordinary discovery which was made in the 1990s by a scholar who was working on scraps

of paper that were left over from this dictionary composition. And as I said before, there were all sorts of mounds of paper which were auctioned off as curiosities later in the 18th century. And in the 1990s, in I believe Yale University's rare books room, a scholar was looking through these and they found handwriting, which we think, I'm pretty sure, belongs to Francis Barber. And this is the name Francis Barber being written out in the most beautiful 18th century handwriting. Another word is Antigua, I think. And he's writing the word England, England.

And I kind of dwelt on this in my own book because I thought there was something quite poetic about Johnson trying to define the English language. But at the same time, Francis Barber being there in the same room as Johnson was undergoing this great enterprise, but him trying to define who he was. Because you can see with those words, he's reaching for some sort of clarity. He's doing what all children have done before them, just practice their signature. I mean, it's so poetic and it's lovely.

I wonder if at that time, Dr. Johnson, Samuel Johnson, looks upon Francis as somebody who might be able to be helpful. I mean, he might see him scribbling in a corner because he does decide to send him to school again, doesn't he? I mean, it's not a, it's an aborted scholastic experience. Tell us about that. Well, there's repeated attempts to send, to send Francis to school.

The first one fails very quickly because he becomes ill on the first day and has to drop out. The second one. Smallpox, though, less. It's smallpox, yeah, not just any illness. Yeah, he's very young. Thank you for reminding me exactly the ailment. It's just smallpox on the first day. Then he goes to Orange Court, which is near St. Martin's in the field, so I believe.

And he studies there under a kind of. writing master, Mr. Demullins, and who's a connection of Johnson's. And I think this is probably tallies with the handwriting that I was talking about then. You can imagine Francis trying to practice at home what he's been learning at school. Again, something we're very familiar with. Later on, when Francis is actually in his late 20s, almost early 30s, he's sent away again by Johnson, who sends him to Bishop Stoughtford to, this is when Johnson has established his reputation. He's got money, he's got his famous pension from the king of £300 a year. So he's got a bit more money to spend. And he again sends young Frank, if we call him that, off to school in Bishop

Storfford. And Bishop Storff is what in Essex, a bit north of London. So a boarding arrangement again. So you can see there's four different schools we've talked about for... A very young child, yeah, and he's still young as well. This isn't a short space of time. Well, for the first three, for sure, yeah, exactly. And he, so this isn't giving up on someone. This isn't thinking they're hopeless. This isn't someone who hasn't got the ability to progress. Again, it's a point that needs to be made. So, I mean, we ought to remind ourselves that the reason he has Francis, or young Frank, has been brought into the Johnson household, is to support this intellectual giant who, you know, lives in chaos, he's broken by grief. You know, he needs something

to steady his ship. And Francis Barber is that, isn't he? He is. He just becomes a part and an important part of Johnson's life. I think this is what we just have to emphasize. And anyone who reads Boswell today, probably in parallel with the biography of him that we now have, can just see that Francis is a touchstone. Johnson prays with him. So there's a moment later on in his life when he has a stroke, the first person that he tells in the morning is Francis when he comes in to see him. So there's that like kind of level of intimacy. He opens the door. When Boswell comes to meet Johnson for the first time. The person who opens a door to him is Francis Barber.

He's just ubiquitous, all the little moments in a person's day. That's Barber. But in time, he begins to help alter Johnson's views of the world. And Johnson's views on slavery, on abolition, on plantations, on this whole racial panorama is effectively changed by having Francis with him. and in the household. I think that's a very strong argument because one thing that you've said before, and we mentioned earlier on in this conversation,

was that Jamaica was a long way away. It happened in another room. People could ignore it, but you can't ignore the evidence that's in front of your face. And this was an advantage that Johnson had over almost everybody else in London who was, you know, of his literary bent, should we say. And by 1756, this is four years after. Barbara arrived at Goth Square, he writes of Jamaica as being a place of great wealth and dreadful

wickedness, a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves. Later on, this is from Boswell, let me tell you this one. So Johnson had always been very zealous against slavery in every form, in which I, with all deference, thought that he discovered zeal without knowledge. Upon one occasion when in company with some very grave men at Oxford, his toast was, here's to the next insurrection of the Negroes in the West Indies. And his violent prejudice against all of our West Indian and American settlers appeared whenever there was an opportunity. So in 1775, on the cusp of the American Revolution, this is something I've written about.

He writes this famous line, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? We know that one person who read that, for sure, was Thomas Jefferson, who was on the point of writing the Declaration of Independence. So Johnson's... So this is how far Barber's influence spread, if you want me to put it in that way. He informed an attitude that became known, not just in Britain, but across the Anglo-American world.

Did it actually make a difference? I mean, you said Jefferson heard it. Jefferson went back and he wrote some amazing things and, you know, some may say was one of the driving forces behind the liberation of his own country from British colonial rule, but kept slaves till the day he died. And fathered children from them, if I'm not wrong. Indeed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what about others who heard, you know, Johnson is a pillar of society at this point. Are people commenting like what's gone on with you or are they just ignoring it? La, la, la, la, I can't hear what you're saying. I mean, what is the reaction to what he's saying? Yeah, this is perhaps we've reached the nub of what you're trying to get at here because your question is essentially what was going on with British thoughts in the mid-17th century

and why were people not challenging a practice, which today to us is so clearly a moral crime. Johnson comes a little bit before the beginning of the formal abolition movement, which you might say begins in 1787 with the formation of the abolition society. Before that you have Clarkson. Before that you have this fabulous character called Granville Sharpe. He's another real pioneer of the movement. Johnson's writing is even earlier. We're back in the 1550s now. And if you actually, you mentioned a poem London before, that's in the 1730s. And there's lots of instances in the 1750s when he's writing in in periodicals like the idler when he's saying that there are too many blacks who are repining

under English cruelty at this moment. What about the Negroes who were shot down in wanton merriment for the amusement of a few people? And all of the, it's a theme which he keeps repeating. But what Johnson doesn't do until that moment when he writes taxation, no tyranny, which is the message we were talking about that Jefferson reads, he doesn't really write squarely about slavery. Maybe it's not all put into a pamphlet which is on slavery by Samuel Johnson. And perhaps today we look back and we say, well, that's a missed opportunity because someone with such presence, with such authority, I mean, he was almost impossible to be in argument and certainly everyone listened. It would have made a difference. So why did he not do it?

Why do you think? Why do you think? I think sometimes the concerns that we have today are not the concerns of people at the time. Johnson saw himself as fighting injustice, as trying to steer people towards living the moral, the good life. I think slavery was one thing that he found abhorrent, but he equally found other things really distasteful. He wrote widely, often without too much focus. And so I suppose it's for us today to assemble this picture from his writing. Also, does this question, which I think we have to be honest at taking the past on its own terms, something that I know you want to do in this podcast.

To most people, and this is what I've got from reading the work of people like James Wolvin, you say most people in the 18th century found slavery morally neutral. It wasn't something they saw, even the people who were in massive proximity to it. So you have someone like the slaver who, let's think of the slaver John Newton, who sits at Sandy Point, Onscent Kitts in 1754, having just sold a boatload of slaves. And this is after being on one of those horrendous middle, passage crossings. You know, the sharks used to follow the slave ships because they knew that the corpses of dead Africans would be thrown overboard. The smell of these slave ships could be smelt for

five or six miles down wind. And yet there is John Newton, who's known today as the author of the words to Amazing Grace, sitting, kicking his heels on the harbour side, talking about salvation and the Christian soul. He just doesn't see it. Benjamin Franklin brings two slaves to London with him. But before that, he advertised slaves for sale in the Philadelphia Gazette. He doesn't see that there's anything wrong with this. We could go through countless examples that are similar. And so you have to put Johnson next to these. He's seen as an eccentric, I suppose. What about Johnson's immediate circle, people like Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter who actually paints Francis, we think? He also has this idea that there's no inherent difference

between different races. Yeah, I mean, he writes interestingly about conceptions of beauty from the artist's point of view. So that's where maybe he interacts most with this subject. There's also, there is the stories, I think there's a story involving Reynolds and a black servant of his. I might be mistaken here, but his black servant is assaulted out on the streets of London, which was no strange thing. He was robbed.

and Reynolds kind of turns on the servants and says, well, you know, this is kind of your fault. I mean, there's a lot of ambiguity here. The point I'm trying to make is that Johnson was probably seen a little bit as an eccentric, even among friends. The eyebrows go off. Off he goes again. This is another of his things. And, you know, he's always championing slightly obscure causes.

Right. I mean, it's a shame they wrote it off because some of the writing, I mean, you created a bit of inwant merriment. a little while ago, which is very critical of the Portuguese, particularly in the Portuguese slave trade. May I just read a bit more from that passage? Because I think it's, again, I mean, it's not a pamphlet that says against slavery, but it's the most directly critical thing of England's involvement in slavery that I've read in this period, I think. He says, we are openly told that they had the less scruple concerning the treatment of the savage people because they scarcely considered them as distinct from beasts.

And indeed, the practice of all European nations, and among others of the English barbarians that cultivate the southern islands of America, the West Indies, proves that this opinion, however absurd and foolish, however wicked and injurious, still continues to prevail. Interest and pride harden the heart, and it is in vain to dispute against avarice and power. And what stands out to me is the use of the phrase

English barbarians, because that is not how, a lot of people living around Goff Square with the money who go to similar clubs and drink in similar places will think of themselves at all, is it? Exactly. People prided themselves on their civility at this time. That's an important word for the period. Anyone who knows the period talks about this. Cultivation of civility, which is to take people away from, I suppose if you think of a spectrum, you have the savage and the civilised. and the British particularly saw themselves as being a civilised nation, which was evidenced in their trade, in their buildings, in their beautiful constitution, political constitution,

which sets it apart from everywhere else, even France and places like this. And I think probably one of a comparison for the British mind here, I think, is with Mary Beard's episode you had before on the Romans and slavery, because it's really important at the time to see Britain as an expanding empire. They feel invincible and they see themselves very much as the inheritors of the Romans, this kind of masculinity, this brute power. There's a moment. It's not for me to bring up the Battle of Preston Pans in the presence of Mr. Dalrymple,

but there's a piece of newspaper journalism I found after that defeat. 75. Yeah, exactly. You get the sense of the British. They can't call it. comprehend that they've been beaten by anyone. And they say that the Romans were never more Roman than when they responded to a defeat. So there was a brutal edge to British society at this time for sure.

And there's been work on this by historians recently like Thomas Ricks and so on. So if that moral neutrality is an English malaise at the time, can we say something as basic and bald as Francis Barber was the cure to that malady in the Johnson household, that looking upon a boy who loved you, was kind to you, looked up to you, helped you up when you stumbled, was the antidote to that moral neutrality that others were inflicted with? I think you're correct. And this is the conclusion I came to when I was writing, because it's very easy to explain Barbara away as just a peripheral character, because he doesn't really have any great accomplishments of himself. He doesn't have what the 18th century would say, great genius about him. But what he does is he brings experience in a way which is almost unique

from the plantations, the most brutal plantation society right to the heart of literary London. And that's a story that I do not know replicated anywhere else. Johnson, as we've said before, by temperament was very compassionate. And I think he was always going to respond to that. And we can see him doing so in his writing. So you mentioned 7045 Preston Pans, but it's 1756 that's the year that everything changes between Johnson and Frank. Oh yes, that's right. I mean, that's a big year for him. So we, I mean, we haven't really even got into this very much, but there's still a bit of ambiguity about Barber's status. Johnson perhaps sees him as a servant. Barber very much sees himself as probably being a slave still or somehow being on loan from Colonel Bates.

because he's still a young man. And by that point in 1756, Bateshurst has died. And by the terms of his will, he gives Barber his freedom and a small amount of money. All of this, I suppose, supports your contention earlier that perhaps there was some connection, maybe father-son connection between Bateshurst and Barber. I don't know.

He leaves him £12. What kind of money is that in 18th century terms? Oh, financial comparisons are always the worst questions to be asked. But I think if you were to say that a servant's wage would be £50 a year, okay? And I don't know how much you'd pay a servant in 2023 to do a proportion of that. It would be like the equivalent of a good few thousand pounds today. I think there's I mean there's an equivalence I've seen, which is with Weakwana, who we're going to talk about in a future episode that he had to buy his freedom for some £40, which equates, I think,

to about £10,000 in now money. which even for somebody who has no money and no income is an impossible dream. Look, it's a good place to take a break. Join us after the break when we learn more about the freed Francis Barber. We're talking to Peter Moore in this extraordinary story of Samuel Johnson and his black servant, Francis, who is at the heart of literary London, having been born into a plantation in the West Indies. Now, his former owner on the plantation, Bathurst, has just died. He's granted Barber his freedom legally and left him £12.

But what's his status in the Johnson House? Because Johnson's actually been paying him a wage at this point, seven shillings a week. Yeah, so there we go. That's evidence of how Johnson sees things. Barber is going to look at things rather differently. He's a young man, most dangerous creatures on the planet, as we all know. And he has his freedom, which is beyond the dreams of many slaves or ex-slaves. And he decides he's going to use this. And so we have in the second part of the 1750s for Barber,

an extraordinary adventurous foray into the life of London. But hang on a minute, he decides to leave Johnson. I mean, that's the first thing. As soon as he gets his freedom, he decides he's leaving Goff Square. I mean, I suppose it's been a bit of a nut house for a few, for a few years, but there's affection and security and kindness there. What does that do to Johnson that he suddenly decides he's going to leave him? Well, Johnson's distraught by what he sees as perhaps a moment of rashness on Barber's behalf. Barber, I think we have to look at this from his point of view. He sees himself as being free. He's got a bit of money and he wants to explore life. I mean, he's had this period of four years of early adolescence in Johnson's house.

We know that his relations are really poor with Anna Williams in particular, who's the blind housekeeper we mentioned before. And I think Johnson's laconic way of describing the situation was that the household disgusted him, he said. And I think that comes down to lots of arguments they were having below stairs or whatever. But anyway, he wants to go out and establish himself. or explore his own identity. And shall I tell you a couple of the things that he does?

The first thing is that he goes to an apothecary in Cheapside, and he spends a couple of years there. And then this is the period of the seven years war, he joins the Royal Navy. And this is the ultimate moment of adventure, you know, the questing, seafaring life, Robert Lewis Stevenson kind of stuff. But for Johnson, it's the worst decision a man could make.

We think of the 18th century Navy as the most brutal possible place. But for Barber, was this a place of equality and a place where he could establish himself, do you think? Well, I suppose it's worth here just lingering on perhaps the black population of London at this point. So to give you a sense of comparison, that may well have been between 5,000 and 10,000 black people in London at this point. The numbers are very difficult to get up. But one thing we do know is there was perhaps a higher percentage on board ships at this time. So Barber may well have felt he may have been suffering from prejudice and he may well have gone searching for kinship, I suppose, aboard the ships.

The ship was in a way an environment where people were cared for because even though it was a very dangerous place to be, there was a routine to it and it was regulated and you had your income. But one thing that was attracting lots of people at this time to see was the lure of prize money. And we can find lots of people rushing off to see during this period. Thomas Payne being one of them, who memorably joined HMS Terror under Captain Death and came back with lots of prize money. But this is another motive for Barber, perhaps. Was there ever any chance for those black people who did sign up and go on ships to be re-enslaved, you know, for the crew to suddenly say, we're going to sell you because we need some money.

All the way through to, I think 1772 when there's a famous judgment in the English courts called the Somerset case, there's a great deal of peril for Barber because English law is not settled. So let me just frame the legal dilemma very quickly. Yeah, this is a very important point. Yeah. So you're a slave in Jamaica. You're brought to England. What is your legal status? And by long custom, the British had thought slavery was not, or the English perform, thought that it was not something the English did. There's a line in Elizabethan archives, I think,

which says that the air is too pure in England for slavery to exist or something. But apart from that, there's not real clarity on the issue. And we know that, so people like Franklin, for example, were bringing slaves and they did treat them as slaves in Britain. And I think Michael Bundock shows us in his book, that there were adverts for slaves that were placed in the newspapers in Britain. There were slaves seen in slave collars on the streets of Britain in Georgian Britain.

And there was a great deal of trades. So this is Nether Netherland, really. If you're unlucky, you do, I suppose, run the risk of being grabbed by some planter, bundled on board a ship and being taken away. I think this maybe happens to Equiano. This is also, though, the age of press gangs in general. So even if you're sitting in the east end, sitting outside a pub at night, you're quite likely to be rounded up and shoved into the hold of a ship. Yeah, so a great deal of peril, but that was the 18th century world.

It was a very, very dangerous place, very easy for people to fail in the 18th century. You always have to remember that. And if anyone wants to see an example of that, I'd just tell them to go and read Benjamin Franklin's wonderful autobiography, one of my favorite books. There's always talked about as an example of great success, full of failure. people could fail and fall and get bankrupt or disappear off. And Barber was just one of those who confronted these challenges. Yeah, and he was 16. Let's not forget.

We're talking about a 16-year-old boy who is, you know, more vulnerable than most. We've kind of taken our gaze off Johnson, who's grieving him leaving. Johnson is adamant. He wants him back. And then something happens in Johnson's life that makes him absolutely crave Barber's company. Again, it's the death of his mother, isn't it? So what does he try and do to try and get Barber to come back, come back home to him, or young Frank, as he would know him? Yeah. So really, Johnson's attempts to retrieve Barber have been ongoing ever since Barber left. And that's another ambiguous word. Lots of people write about Barber running away, which isn't quite right, because he was free to do what he wanted.

Johnson writes that doesn't. He says, my boy has run away, and I know not whom to send. And this all has overtones of Dickens. This is the runaway boy on the streets of the dangerous city and all that kind of trope. But really, Barber could do what he liked because he was a free young man out of the world. Johnson could be quite overbearing, and I think that's really important to note as well. So he wanted Barber back. He had influential contacts. By this point, he was a very, very well-known, very well-known man.

And he basically pulled all the, you know, kind of tricks he could. He wrote, there's a particular letter he wrote to John Wilkes, who's another character I've written about in my new book, and Wilkes, who has more connections, manages to get Barber discharged from the Navy. It all happens very quickly. But we should say in the interim that Barber was at sea in the Royal Navy in 1759, which, if you talk to any people who are interested in the British Navy, this is really exciting because this is a Battle of Kiboran Bay, the time when the French were going to invade Britain. Is he at the Battle of Kiboran Bay? This is when the British burst into the bay where the French Navy is south of Brittany, and they managed to destroy the, it's like the kind of Pearl Harbor of the 18th century, isn't it? Exactly. So he's not their name, but he's in a channel. And so he's involved in a way in this huge military moment, even if it is tangentially.

But then all of a sudden, he's back at Goff Square in 1760 with Johnson again. So I'm really conflicted about this, because if you, I mean, if you love somebody, then set them free because they are legitimately free, but he's kind of exercising, I don't know, would you classify it as ownership or would you classify as that paternalistic magnet that means, you know, my mum still doesn't like it when I leave to go back to my house, you know, is it that or is it something else? Yeah, I think this is a point where we can be critical of Johnson. He doesn't let him go and he wants him back. You mentioned before there's this maybe catalytic moment when his mother dies in 1759 and

Johnson, I mean, there's a sense of history repeating itself after his wife's death. Barber comes maybe he's a comfort to him then. Maybe he's looking for some kind of solace again from Barber after the death of his mother. I don't know. I think there's something very powerful in the emotional bond between the two of them, but I certainly feel as Johnson being the elder of the two, he wants Barber in his own way. And that is too much, I think, sometimes. But the Johnson language is, again, it is paternalistic rather than overbearing.

He writes to Smollett that Barber was, and this is a quote, a sickly lad of very delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for His Majesty's service. He gets sore throat, so he has to leave the Navy. It's like it's one of those notes to get you out of PE. Sorry, my child is far too ill to do games today. Could he please come home?

But written by Samuel Johnson. Ignore that housemaster. So he's actually discharged from the Navy, is it? 1760. Yeah. So do we know how Francis felt about this, sort of being, you know, sacked from a job he might like and sent back home?

Very exciting to be at Kiboran Bay or nearby. He grumbles later to Boswell, I believe, and he makes it plain that it was not quite his decision to leave. to leave. But he's brought back. So again, we're in this, I suppose, liminal zone between ownership, which is the central theme of maybe what you're looking at in this series. And Johnson, for me, is overbearing here. He could have let Barbara go, but he doesn't seem to be able to do without him. But he doesn't. And Barbara in turn, I mean, I suppose if he was really adamant about leaving, he would have left again, but he doesn't. He does stay, doesn't. There is loyalty

and I would suggest maybe love there because when he does have a child he does name that child after Samuel Johnson, doesn't he? So three of the 1760s into 1770s is there with Johnson, apart from the short break when Johnson sends him off to Bishop Storkeford,

but he's soon back again. And there's a sense that I think that it's a harmonious relationship. It's certainly a devoted one, but the first, the marriage, which I should get on to you, I should say that Barber was known for his good looks. And one of the, one of the things that was always known about Barber is that he was

quite good with the women. So that was a verdict which I think Boswell repeats. Well, look at the Joshua Reynolds. He's four in that. I mean, he's a good-looking guy. Yeah. Is Boswell, he's jealous of him? Because Boswell's continually frustrated with the women, isn't he? Or it has to go continually to prostitutes. If you want to do, if you want to talk about Boswell and women will need another few hours, I think. But we'll leave that one to one side of the way. But yeah, he, he, he, he, um, he, he, Johnson says no one has ever taken the Empire of Cupid quite so far as Francis Barber. So again, it's an interesting insight into how a black man can be received in Georgia in London. He's not completely ostracized by prejudice.

He's accepted to some degree and probably seen from that quote as something who's a little bit, I suppose, again, like Johnson, a bit of an eccentric difference to the normal run. the things. Anyway, he does get married in the 1770s, has a child. To a white woman? I mean, he's married to a white woman. Like Equiano will come to that. You know, to a white woman. Elizabeth Paul is their name, isn't it? That's correct. And so the first child is born shortly afterwards in 1774. He's named Samuel, but he dies very quickly. And that's the normal 18th century thing. You often name people after your patron. It doesn't necessarily indicate love or affection. It's often a way of establishing a sort of godfatherly relationship with someone rich or powerful? Yeah, I think that's correct.

Everyone in India at that period is being named Hastings after Warren Hastings. Well, yeah, I think that's a fair point. But also there's another boy which comes along subsequently, which is called Samuel again and as a girl. So Barbara is part of a growing family, and that's subject to lots of gossipy asides in Boswell, about how this family with a black man and a white woman and their various children are cohabiting with Johnson and Lovett and Anna Williams who are still there in Johnson's old age. So it continues in the same eccentric way. And what's Paulsville's attitude to Barbara? Does he also show great affection and call him young Frank or is he a rival for Johnson's affection?

He really likes Bobby. He does. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I should also catch this with a bit of explanation because Boswell is, as we know, he would have been a great Fleet Street journalist. And Boswell knows a good source when he sees one. And who is the best source on Johnson's domestic life, Francis Barber? And actually, when there's a famous scene, Johnson's death is well publicised and Boswell's account of it in 1784 is hugely consumed. And it's, the ultimate deathbed scene in a way. How does he die? We haven't said.

I mean, what happens to Johnson? Oh, well, his body collapses under there's numerous ailments that he has by this point. In December of 1784, he has tumours and he has dropsy. And he's already had a stroke. He can't speak, can he? He's had an area of stroke. There's a lot wrong with him. But he retains his kind of mind to the end.

But the accounts of, Boswell's account of Johnson's death, comes from Barber because Barber was interviewed afterwards and he was there with him at his bedside when he died and I should say as well in those final days and they were really agonising days when Johnson was clearly going to die but hadn't quite died yet his primary concern or one of his great troubles well let's say had two great troubles

one was burning the papers which had any incriminating information about his early life, and he did that with Francis Barber. The second thing Johnson was very worried about was providing for Francis after his death. Again, it's like a father and son. So there's this writing of a will, which is a torturous process that goes on for a fortnight before Johnson finally dies. And Barber ends up being what they called at the same at the time, the principal legatee, the great benefactor. Yeah. Yeah. And how much? I mean, I'm sorry to be crass. I don't mean to but how much did he leave him?

I understand it's like a whopping amount. There's a lot, well, there's two things. There's an annuity of £70 a year, which Johnson secures for him the rest of his life. There's a nice quote when Johnson asks one of his friends, how much should I leave a servant? And the friend says, 50 pounds is the expected amount. And Johnson says, well, I'll be noblestissimo or something.

He's at Warden and nobleman is the word. uses. I'm going to give him 70 pounds. But on top of that is a lump sum. And beyond that, all of Johnson's possessions, little trinkets, books that belong to him. I love this because, I mean, one of the figures, I think it must be your figure, actually, Peter, £1,500, which is the equivalent of 138 years of Barber's salary if he'd stayed in the Navy. So, I mean, that's, that's a lot of money. I think that figure comes from John Hawkins, who was a kind of enemy of Barber. In fact, quite a big enemy of Barber. But it just gives you a sense of the sum of money. I think probably more like half that amount Barber got, staggering amount of money. And the other staggering thing

about it is how quickly Barber went through it after Johnson's death. Because as I said before, it was very easy to fail in the 18th century world. And we see Barber as a kind of shadow figure in the years after Johnson's died. He moves up to Litchfield. He becomes a member of the civic community there. This is where Johnson was brought up and born, wasn't there, Litchfield? You're still a Dr. Johnson house there, I think. Very pretty city with a beautiful cathedral.

The Gospels of St. Chad sitting there. Exactly, yeah, you're right. There's a man in Litchfield today called John Winterton, who's very interested in Barber's life and he sent me a picture of Stowe Pool which is one of Johnson's favourite places in Litchfield's when he was a boy and in this picture

there's a figure in the distance fishing in the pool and we know that Barbie used to like going fishing in this pool and he said I look at this picture and I think of Francis Barber in the 1790s living up there in Litchfield So I mean he goes through money quickly he's got a life and he's got respect

it sounds like if his part of the sort of civic community. What happens towards the end of Barber's life? Because he does die, I mean, by our terms very early, 57, 58 years old, by those times, I suppose that the average. Quite normal. So, I mean, what happens? Yeah, well, one thing of great significance that I should mention before today, because

it relates to something I might talk about in a moment, is that he tries to set up, Barber tries to set up a school in a neighbouring village called Burntwood, just outside of Litchfield. And that, I mean, it's a claim that is very difficult to substantiate, but lots of people now think that Francis Barber is Britain's first ever black schoolmaster because of that short-lived school. But really, the picture of him in the 1790s is of someone in ever-reduced circumstances. the money that Johnson left him, he hoped, would be sufficient to sustain Barber. But it wasn't. I think Barber lived beyond his means. And by the end of the 1790s, we see him selling off these little treasures that Johnson

have given him, which is a very sad spectacle. And you know, you see him giving away watches and canes and treasured books and all the rest of it. Again, as we alluded to before, he was never really in the best of health. I think one of his great expenses during these years was his medical bills, and he pays an enormous sum of money to doctors. And he also, he spends a lot of money on the education of his children because he wants them to grow up in the world to cut a figure and so on. The year 1800, he's in Stafford Infirmary. We know that he undergoes an operation, which isn't a success. And in January of 1801, he dies.

He's buried late in the month there in an end. a unmarked grave, I suppose. I don't think we know where his grave is, but he ends in Stafford. And so closes Francis Barber's story. An unmarked grave? Oh. That is sad. Yeah, that is sad. There's no way to visit and put some flowers. That's very sad. How does this fit into your wider book? This is an important component of it, but how does it fit into a book that's about ideas going from Britain to America? Well, I stretched the book in three. So I thought with that phrase of Jefferson's which is probably, I suppose, the most famous line in American political history, I could use that one line to tell the story of a generation, what their hopes were.

And the three sections in the book are life, liberty and happiness. And I wanted to write about Barber in the perspective of what life meant to people in the 18th century. Now, I'm very ambivalent about the Enlightenment. I think it was a great movement in so many respects. It took a lot of people out of pain, prolonged life. It brought people leisure time. It allowed people to experience things that they could never have experienced in earlier centuries. But as Johnson realized, and as I realized as I was working on it, there was problems here.

It was a morally suspect time when a lot of the progress was coming at a price. And Barber just symbolized that price more than anyone else I could think of. so I wanted to include his story. We mentioned earlier David Hume, who of course is one of the great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and has just had his tower removed from Edinburgh University because of his racist views and his comments on matters of race. This is the, I'm reading from the official Edinburgh University decision. Is that typical of the Enlightenment, that someone who had such extraordinary views on freedom

and philosophy could also hold racial views like this. Absolutely, of course. And you look at Jefferson, the author of the draft of the Declaration of Independence. It's a classic example. He wrote the most famous document about liberty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in June of 1776,

whilst he was being served by an enslaved man called Robert Hemings, who was probably in the same room as him at the very moment. So you have to see these two things. living side by side. There's the mother of his children who's also called Hemings. Sally Hemmings. Sally Hemmings, yeah. Yeah.

Well, there's lots to say on that. I don't know if we have time today. But I mentioned to you, we were talking about the Endeavour book right at the beginning of this. There was two black servants on Endeavour. There was Francis Barber in the room when the dictionary of the English language is being written.

There was a black slave from Monticello in the room when the Declaration of Independence is being written. This is everywhere. It's the good and the bad, coexisting side by side. And I wanted to reflect that. And I think it would be a pretty bad kind of jingoistic book that didn't. And Barber, you know, for me, is a character that tells us so much about the 18th century world. It has been such a journey and you have been, you know, just a formidable guide. Well, I wanted to just add two things, perhaps. One, that anyone who goes to Litchfield today can for the first time, in a couple of hundred years see Francis Barber in the street. He's not there in person

of course, he's there in the presence of a plaque that was erected on the side of a building in May, which honours his contribution to Johnson's life, but also his place in English society at the time. And second of all, do you want me to say something about the... Yeah, yes, I do, of course, please.

Wonderful Reynolds' portrait. Yeah, there's a portrait by Joshua Reynolds, which has long been enigmatic to all sorts of historians of the periods in the history of art. We do not know if it's Francis Barber, but it's offered on the front of biographies about him, and it's there. It's in my book in the plate section, for example, because it represents a black man at that time in that circle. And the other day, I mean, I'm not sure what to make of this discovery yet, but I was looking through the newspapers from 1792, in preparation for this.

podcast, in fact. And I found a list of portraits that were in Reynolds's studio at the time of his death. The first listed portrait was, oh my, a native of Polynesia. This has just been bought by the National Portrait Gallery for about £50 million. The second item listed was of Francis Barber, a Negro slave. Oh, you've done it. You've done it. You've done it. You've join the dots. I mean, does that not proof? We, I do not know, but it's one which I think is worth pursuing.

It's the earliest connection we have with Barber and the figure we think that's in that portrait. Well done you, because I did say earlier, I did say earlier, I said four, I think he's a very good looking man in that, and I've always thought that is Francis

Barber. Yeah, describe it, will he? I've got a picture of it in front of me now and he is a young man in this picture of about 30, handsome, wearing a high 18th century neck chief and swathed in a kind of classical shawl around him with a wonderful sort of marmalade red colour. And he's looking upwards. It's a classic Reynolds portrait of this figure shown heroically, I think. Noble. He looks noble and he looks looking to the distance, yeah. A determined face. Well, I love that you found that line. I think that's that's incredible. We'll have to report back on this.

Nothing's conclusive, but it's exciting. Well, you are always welcome on this podcast and especially if you come back with more evidence about that. Peter Moore, it's been an absolute delight having you on Empire. Thank you so much. We would love to have you back. Yes, and also with the wonderful, oh, your wonderful Endeavour book. We need a special series on that, I think, is such a, one of my favorite, favorite books. And if anyone is looking for something to read, go and get Peter Moore's Endeavour, as well as buying its new wonderful book. That is all from us this week. Do join us again next week when we'll be delving into the life of somebody we've mentioned a few times in this podcast. Olauda Equiano, similar trajectories, similar timelines, very different experiences. Till then,

it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Durenpool.