Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05: Little Journeys to the Homes of English AuthorsHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05: Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors
Hubbard, Elbert
Authors, English -- Homes and haunts -- Great Britain; English literature -- History and criticism
This absent-mindedness and habit of reading on the street affords the
Sport (another college type) great opportunity for the playing of pranks.
It is very funny to walk along in front of a Grind who is reading as he
walks, and then suddenly stop and stoop, and let the Grind fall over you;
for the innocent Grind, thinking he has been at fault, is ever profuse in
apologies.
Many years ago there was a Grind. A party of Sports saw him approaching,
deeply immersed in his book. "Look you," quoth the chief of the
Sports—"look you and observe him fall over me."
And they looked.
Onward blindly trudged the Grind, reading as he came. The Sport stepped
ahead of him, stooped, and —— one big foot of the Grind shot out and
kicked him into the gutter. Then the Grind continued his walk and his
reading without saying a word.
This incident is here recorded for the betterment of the Young, to show
them that things are not always what they seem.
Samuel Johnson, I have said, was a Grind of the pure type. He was so
nearsighted that he fell over chairs in drawing-rooms, and so awkward that
his long arms occasionally brushed the bric-a-brac from mantels. No lady's
train was safe if he was in the room. At gatherings of young people, if
Johnson appeared, his presence was at once the signal for mirth, of which
he was, of course, the unconscious object.
Johnson's face was scarred by the King's Evil, which even the touch of
Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself—a
privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would
grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking
sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a
tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and
then a low humming sound, backed up by a vacant non-compos-mentis smile.
Another odd whim of Johnson's was, that he would never pass a lamp-post
without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an
omission. Surely great wit to madness is near allied.
This most strange young man was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Porter, when
her husband was alive, and the husband and boarder had been fast
friends—drawn together by a bookish bias.
Very naturally, when the husband passed away, the boarder sought to
console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long
years after, Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match
on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and
ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the
endearments of Johnson and his "pretty creature"—so the admiring husband
called her—Garrick many years later added to his artistic reputation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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