In Praise of Conversation: Communication Between Disciplines

In Praise of C onversation:tsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Communication Between Disciplines* fa m es L . C lifford Wh ENI WAS ASKED to say a few words this evening, I won­ dered why. What could a confirmed Johnson scholar have to say to an interdisciplinary group such as this? Dr. Johnson is hardly re­ membered by most people for his interest in the other arts; indeed, there are numerous stories proving just the opposite. He showed little interest in music. There are many amusing anecdotes, how authentic I cannot tell, which show him completely insensitive. He is reputed once to have asked "And pray, sir, who is Bach ? Is he a piper?”1 and when he once found a violin hanging on the wall at the home of young Francis Newbery, in whose future Johnson was much involved, he berated him sternly: "Young man, give the fid­ dle to the first beggar man you meet, or you will never be a schol­ ar.”2 Johnson refused to be impressed by skillful performances of baroque music. Once when taken to hear a famous violinist, whose pyrotechnics were universally admired, Johnson was inattentive and obviously bored. When his host tried to point out how difficult the piece was, Johnson burst forth "Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.”3 Apparently because of his very bad eyesight, he was scarcely more interested in the visual arts. As Boswell admitted, Johnson "had no taste for painting,” and Sir Joshua Reynolds recalled that, when he and his friend would come into another friend’s house, Johnson would rush to examine the backs of the books on the shelves, while Sir Joshua observed the paintings.4 At times Johnson * Presidential address delivered at the annual dinner in Los Angeles, 24 March 1972. 3 Ra c is m in t h e Eig h t e e n t h Ce n t u r y showed his disinclination to talk about other disciplines, such as politics or history. He once complained to Mrs. Thrale that at a Club meeting he had sat next to Charles James Fox, who insisted on talking at length about Catiline’s conspiracy. When Mrs. Thrale asked him what he had done, Johnson replied: "I withdrew my at­ tention, and thought about Tom Thumb.”5 Johnson was, first and foremost, an insular literary man. Proverbially he had little curios­ ity about Continental customs; he is reputed to have once agreed with a remark of an old friend who said, "For any thing I see, for­ eigners are fools.”6 But this is the folk image of Dr. Johnson—the eccentric char­ acter whom most people like to remember. It is only one side of the man. As Donald Greene and others have convincingly shown, there are other sides to Johnson which tend to be forgotten.7 Although the amusing individual anecdotes may well be true, the parochial Johnson they suggest is false. Roy Wiles has recently shown that he had inherently a strong response to beauty.8 While Johnson dis­ liked supercilious foreign visitors, one of his closest friends was an Italian, Giuseppe Baretti, who taught him a great deal about Con­ tinental literature. If Johnson was not a willing concertgoer, or a great enthusiast for Bach or Handel, one should remember that the two leading musicologists of his day, Sir John Hawkins and Dr. Charles Burney who wrote the first extensive histories of music, were among his most intimate friends. If his nearsightedness made it impossible for him to look at pictures on a wall, some of the great­ est painters and architects were his closest associates, and we now know that he served as a willing ghostwriter for groups of artists in their attempts to arrange exhibitions of their works. Indeed, he supported the aspirations of the artists in many ways. If Johnson could be bored by interminable talk about Catiline’s conspiracy, he was vitally interested in historical theory and did not scorn the past. The breadth of his interests—science, psychology, ancient litera­ tures, language—was enormous. Moreover, what is sometimes forgotten is the fact that what we usually think of as Johnson’s Club was essentially...