Leo Damrosch interweaves the mini-biographies of the founding members of Turk’s Head in The Club through a biopic lens of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson’s relationship at the height of the English Enlightenment. The odd couple, as Damrosch eponymously calls Boswell and Johnson, gives a rich insight into the historical affluence of English society, not losing wit as a momentous force moving from one chapter to the next. A casual read for those interested in English intellectual thought but not the complex rigor of similar work, The Club is a treat that gleans with delectable gossip, imaginative adventuring, and sensations of “being alive in a different time.”
The first half of the book is marked by open-ended chapters that are contingent on following Johnson’s chronology. Johnson is the well-established central figure through which Damrosch creates a mixed system of anecdotal and psychoanalytical structures to bring to life the historical giant and “constantly evoke the London life he and his friends shared.”Each subsequent introduction to a new member adheres to this form that Damrosch uses to tell Johnson’s story.
Damrosch uses warm-toned prose that makes The Club an exciting adventure that illuminates the members from within, turning them inside out to examine their faults and shortcomings. Curiosity peeps in from Damrosch’s staging of Johnson’s emerging psychosexual interests from his “fond” memories of childhood beatings and an overwhelming lack of approval Johnson received from his mother, as recorded in their communications. The school-age boyhood that is the stuff of underlying trauma, finds Johnson in the pitfalls of his own despair on many occasions and impoverished before his steady stipend following the publication of the Dictionary. Damrosch does not shy away from postulating the “humors” Johnson was disposed to would be his lifelong dalliance with major depressive disorder. Johnson’s stint with the Thrales, and an alluded masochistic relationship with Hester Thrale, are presented as a treatment for Johnson’s depression. The salve that female company and friendships that Johnson would have in his life are not lost in the accounts of those women. These attachments are not disentangled from Johnson’s issues with his mother but serve as a device paralleling Boswell’s narrative.
Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson becomes a homing point for Damrosch, noting Boswell’s “mimetic” qualities as truly capable of recording the essence of conversation and personality. This mimesis is praised by Damrosch throughout the book. However, there is nowhere to hide for the seedy Boswell, whose involvement with women is often as complicated as his suspective bipolar disorder. Boswell’s narcissism is the glue that holds his relationships together, and it is the emulsifying element that forms the strongest opinions from other club members. Rousseau said to Boswell “You are irksome to me.” Boswell, the journal-phile he is, captures the strong characterization of Johnson through the uproariously philosophical conversations induced by greasy food and booze. Damrosch never strays from the biographical at the expense of noting every travel Boswell and Johnson undertook; but, he draws from the deeply personal and human aspects of his source material. The kind-hearted Johnson, with his notoriously serious demeanor and God-fearing eccentricities, is observed through the comical eyes of his friends while not denoting the importance of his authorial intention and work. Damrosch notes that Boswell and Johnson did not share similar views on colonialism; whereas Boswell is a conservative Whig, Johnson’s views are tinged with conservatism that is indicative of his Tory leaning. The later meditations on Boswell’s political career are eclipsed by what Damrosch describes as one of the “most compelling orators of all time,” Edmund Burke, to which Damrosch devotes a significant portion of the remaining book and uses as a foil to Boswell’s lack of self-reflection. While Boswell is not nearly as well known as those he shares pages with, such as Joshua Reynolds, Adam Smith, Burke, David Garrick, Edward Gibbon, Richard Sheridan, and Oliver Goldsmith, he is an interesting beast of a man with a Johnson-sized worshiping complex. This complex, Damrosch concludes, is the negative relationship between Boswell and his father morphing into a father-son projection onto Johnson. Damrosch treats this idolatry not as a fault of Boswell but as a precursor to his greatest work, The Life.
Moments of note are punctuated with art: from the domineering pieces of Reynolds, who receives a mini-biopic and resoundingly negative review from William Blake, to the almost silly cartoons of Johnson and contemporaries. Attention to the portraiture of the characters breathes life into the strong characterization forever immortalized in the squinting, half-blind paintings of Johnson who had “not seen out of that little scoundrel for a great many years.”
Damrosch’s care for portraying the club’s members is the strongest aspect of the book; however, it is one of Damrosch’s shortcomings. While Johnson is an enormous canonical figure of the eighteenth century, Damrosch does not convey the towering figures of some of the other club’s members and their lasting impact on the Enlightenment era. Damrosch provides brief, albeit succinct, understandings of these members as they pertain to Johnson. The other club members are in the shadow of Johnson, pushed to the end of the book for a brief chapter of their lives as recorded by Boswell or in other historical documents. While it is not possible for Damrosch to focus on all the members of the club, their richness and nuance are situated in Johnsonian perspectives, which may leave some readers wanting more.
This book detaches itself from academic rhetoric surrounding work for a more wholesome review of life, personality, and character, turning to a humanistic view of interactions and perceptions perfectly preserved in time. I was thoroughly delighted by the throughline of humor Damrosch expertly uses while juxtaposing death and illness as lurking at the edges of all the club members’ lives. By shaking loose the historical seriousness of canonical figures, Damrosch is capable of transportation and exploration in a sense that is remarkably human.
This review only captures the essence of the heart Damrosch put into bringing Turk Head’s establishing club members to life. The Club is a delight for readers to understand Johnson and Boswell, and some of their contemporaries, through the intense attention to personality and the very humanness of their faults. Where Damrosch shines is in the quality of storytelling, unafraid to paint all the proclivities toward the often violent, chronically ill, and life-long addictions and fancies that follow the club members through their lives
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About the author
A Fine Integration of Images and Text
The descriptive subtitle of this volume is "Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age." The "friends" include such luminaries as Burke, Reynolds, Adam Smith, Garrick and Goldsmith. all members of "The Club" a meeting of distinguished and often highly accomplished gentlemen (alas, no women). The author, Leo Damrosch, uses the interraction of these figures to further illuminate their world and their accomplishments. Imagine a room in today's London where Meryl Streep, Alan Ayckbourn, Walter Isaacson, David Hockney. and Alan Greenspan and other geniuses meet regulary over the course of thirty years. Though I am a frequent purchaser of digital books, I recommend the reader purchase a physical copy of this work. A highlight of the history is the careful selection of accompanying illustrations better appreciated in analog. These full-color and monochrome paintings, etchings and maps are integral to the prose. For example, the early life of Johnson is accompanied by a woodcut of his birthplace, a caricature of a Grub Street poet, a portrait of Johnson's wife, Tetty, a picture of a manuscript page of The Vanity of Human Wishes, and a shimmering Canaletto painting of contemporary London rendered as twin of Venice. This multi-biography is exceptionally readable, written with economy and style. Though Damrosch's subjects have been extensively studied and written about, he manages to add much to the canon which is new and interesting.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2022
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2019
Top reviews from other countries
- William C. MahaneyReviewed in Canada on December 22, 2020
Relive the conversations of Johnson's inner circle
- Jac ArandaReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 2, 2021
Gives Flavour of the Period
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