653. London’s Golden Age: The Shadow of the Madhouse (Part 4)
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Most honoured, madam, since while I am staying in your house I am obliged to spend several hours a day in the strictest solitude, tell me, I beg you, whether you wish me to submit fully to this isolation, or else to do so within limits set by you. and supposing that you wish me to stay confined to my bedroom, then do not, I beg you, require me to serve as my own sentry, but rather take steps yourself to make sure that I cannot leave my room. This will cost you no more trouble than the turning of a key in the door twice a day. I submit to you as my mistress, so that I may be bolstered in my weakness by your judgment and your vigilance. I wish, my patroness, always to be sensible of that authority which you wield over me, and to be held by you in that slivery which you know so well how to make a happy one.
So that was a letter written by Samuel Johnson, a man of course of the Midlands, as people can tell from that reading, but he wrote it originally in French, and he wrote it a few months before he left on his tour to the Hebrides with James Boswell in August seventeen seventy three. So Listeners who have followed us in this epic series will know that on that tour Johnson was in splendid form. There was a lot of Caledonian ribaldry, there was a lot of general banter, there was a lot of sulking while riding down mountains on ponies, there was a lot of actually him being surprisingly nice about Scotland, which is something we always try to do on the rest is history. But this Dr Johnson
In his letter, this is a very different character. He's back to his old eccentric ways. He's a bit awkward, isn't he? And he's very submissive. So what's going on here, Tom?
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