I cannot help thinking that the Doctor’s literary reputation, rather than a review of his pecuniary circumstances at this time, led to this assumption, and believe that a much humbler dwelling sufficed for Mrs. Johnson’s summer lodging than that which the well-known and well-to-do architect would choose for his suburban residence; and I ground my belief on the statement of Dr. Johnson himself, who says: ‘I wrote the _first seventy lines_ in the “Vanity of Human Wishes” in that _small house_ beyond the church, Hampstead; the whole number were composed before I threw a single couplet upon paper’—under pressure, probably, of fair, frivolous, pretty Mrs. Johnson’s requirements, real or imaginary, who, with her perpetual ailments and perpetual opium, was always craving for country air—a craving sometimes gratified at great inconvenience to her husband. At the period in question he was so poor that, in order to afford his wife a change of air, he was obliged to dispense with a town lodging for himself; and for want of means to pay the coach fare to Hampstead, the roads to which were dangerous after dark, had nothing left to him but to walk about till daylight, or, as in the old times with Savage, to sleep on a bulk. Under the circumstances, we have to judge whether the expression ‘that small house beyond the church’ could apply to the ‘last house in Frognal southward.’ This reference to the Doctor is as eloquent as a volume in exemplifying the exigeant selfishness of his wife’s character, and the self-sacrificing kindness of his own, for with all his roughness and ‘bear-like growl,’ as Northcote calls it, there was a fine strain of compassionate tenderness in his nature. I am afraid he found material for the ‘Vanity of Human Wishes’ not far from home, for notwithstanding his generous indulgence of his wife’s love of Hampstead air, ‘nice living and unsuitable expense,’ Mrs. Desmoulins[87] tells us that she did not ‘always treat him with becoming complacency.’ It was very vexatious, with her fastidious love of cleanliness, which her husband has borne witness to, to see him walking about in linen the complexion of which Sir John Hawkins said _shamed her_, and it was not less vexatious, perhaps, to have her personal wishes frustrated; for, having hair as blond as a babe’s, we are told that she was always endeavouring to dye it black, much to the great Khan of Literature’s dissatisfaction. But with all her pitiful little failings, when death had dulled the fair hair and stilled the querulous lips for ever, her husband, we are told, sincerely mourned her loss.[88]