h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not sure you know what a debt we owe to James Boswell that 'singular man'. He is the pre-eminent observer and much much more importantly the number one diarist of the 18th century, no one comes close to his output or his extant journals and papers: The Boswell Papers reside in America(like most important English 'stuff(why do you let it slip beyond your grasp?))and they are constantly popping up all over the place, indeed , I did my first and one and only 'QI' here a year or two ago on just that subject.

It ended up involving;Sex, disease,ribaldry in extremis, fish wrapped in personal letters courtesy of an 1840's Parisian old wife selling the stuff,First World War dashing American officers and oddly enough a hermit-ish T.E.Lawrence eking out an existence incognito in India(If I remember correctly), American millionaire benefactors, Irish aristocracy and their castles, Prim and prudish Scottish aristocrats, Catholic seminaries in England,the Grand Tour, Lowland universities, Hapsburg grandee's and their courts, Italian(or rather the parts of it that were to become it's sum) aristocratic wives tumbling in the visitors bed, revolutionaries and Imperial French foreign policy indifference,Voltaire,Rousseau,Hume,Johnston,the Hanoverian kings, Cowper,Gay,Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds,Garrick, Prostitutes and women...always women and more women,Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks,Catholics,Presbyterian's, stern members of the Kirk, pious and sneaky Anglicans, Corsica and women(always women), sublime poetry, and the recording of everything above and more...much much more.

You might not know it but we owe a great great debt of gratitude to this 'singular man' who suffered at the hands of churlish 19th century historians and it's not till recently(the last 60/70 years)that his reputation has been picked up/dissected /shaken about/put under the microscope of damned revisionists and given the in depth study it deserves and the opening up to scholars of this amazing man who began his young life in pain and spent his early years under the stern and humourless hand of his Scottish Laird and circuit Judge father who's other sons died or became inmates of Bedlam and then he...


Well,I'm rambling now as I warm to my subject of study and reading for the last few years.

Pointyheaded indeed, please excuse me.

God bless your wee pointy head!
There is nothing so wonderful as a mind overflowing!

You've just told me more about Boswell than I have ever
known and far more than I ever suspected. A brilliantly
concise synopsis of what must have been a Grand Life
on the Grand Tour.

My education had him fixed as a one dimensional character,
almost a plain-jane scribe and nothing more than a side-kick
and lackey to the great gout-ridden doctor. A Watson to his
Holmes, the Tonto to his Lone Ranger...

No doubt you may have read Dame Beryl Bainbridge's novel
'According to Queeney' a 'fictionalised' account of Johnson's
last 20 years which had struck me as a sweetly sinful counter
point to everything in Boswell's diary record. It brought dear
Dr Sam to a 'real' Life.

In searching for a reference I have just discovered she died
2 years ago and there is an archived BBC Four program on
her adventures into Johnson which is not 'currently' available
on BBC iPlayer but has an interesting text description of what
I am now sorely missing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074m6b

BTW: Your observation that the Boswell Papers reside in America
and your question of why such cultural jewels go astray to forrin
lands is possibly a telling case of viewing the whirled through the
blind eye or the wrong end of the telescope. The British Museum
holds in its dank vaults the treasures of the globe and many tribes
and nations are wondering the same thing about their ancestral
bones and marbles.

And let's face it, some yank paid a pretty penny to dismantle Ye
Olde London Bridge and ship it stateside - in broad daylight.


~jwf~