Letter to Chesterfield Johnson\'s Letter

Letter to Chesterfield

Johnson's Letter to Lord Chesterfield -- a scholar writes to an absent patron and lord

During the 18th century, before the introduction of formal copyright laws and cheap mass production of books, it was extremely difficult for a writer to make a living without a patron. Samuel Johnson, one of the great writers of the era, was not a high-born individual. However, for much of his career, Johnson did support his literary efforts through the publication of his own works and charging his readers for regular subscriptions to his periodicals such as the Rambler. Yet even Johnson sought patronage for one his more extended literary works, his massive seven-year project of creating a comprehensive dictionary of the English language. His own attitude towards patronage and the uncomfortable tension between patron and author can be seen a comparison of the definition of patron in the final version of his Dictionary of the English Language, where Samuel Johnson first defines the word as "One who countenances, supports or protects [Shakespeare]," in contrast to how he uses the term in his Letter to Lord Chesterfield. Johnson hoped Chesterfield would become a patron of the Dictionary, but Chesterfield was more generous with praise than with funds.

Johnson's Dictionary definition is almost curiously silent on the subject of money, as the secondary definitions merely add that the poet Spencer defines a patron as "a guardian saint," that a patron can be an "advocate, defender, vindicator [Hooker] "or "one who has donation or ecclesiastical preferment [Wesley]" (528). Support, even saintly support, is the ideal of the patron. But Johnson casts himself in a different light in his Letter, as he notes how during the writing of the Dictionary he: "waited in your [Chesterfield's] outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance

1), one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before." Johnson stresses to Chamberlain that he never needed a patron before, and only sought a patron because of the great difficulties entailed by the project of creating a dictionary, which diverted his attention from more lucrative forms of writing. Johnson's anger reveals the frustrations inherent to any relationship based on patronage and his wording suggests as if being treated unjustly is inevitable for a writer. Financially, the only assistance Chesterfield gave to him after his original promise was that of ten pounds (according to Johnson biographer Samuel Boswell's footnote to the letter, this amount was not even sufficient for Johnson to mention: "so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find a place in a letter of the kind.")

Lord Chesterfield was, in short, no patron saint, no "angel" to use Johnson's own dictionary definition of a patron (and a term occasionally used today for backers of a show or other donors to charitable organizations. Johnson stresses ironically the social and financial distance between himself and Chesterfield, all the while underlining his hard-won success in the absence of real financial patronage, the kind that would have been helpful for him when writing the Dictionary. When he heard of Chesterfield's rhetorical support of the published Dictionary, a project Chesterfield originally promised to back Johnson tartly says "I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of the World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship" although he is "very little accustomed to favours from the great." In other words, Johnson survived without patronage for many years as a writer, including the years he spent writing the Dictionary, and his particular surprise at Chesterfield's praise comes from Chesterfield's lack of promised support, when it would have 'counted' during the years of writing the work. Only after the work proved successful did Chesterfield praise the Johnson in print, and Johnson notes that this may often be the fate of all individuals patronized by a lord.

The reference to 'favors from the great' highlights Johnson's frequent use of the word 'lord' in reference to Chesterfield. Although this was Chesterfield's actual title, some of Johnson's animosity towards Chesterfield's lack of aid may be lingering in the final product. According to the Dictionary, a lord is "a monarch, ruler, governor, [Milton] Master, supreme person [Shakespeare]; a tyrant, an oppressive ruler, [Hayward]; a husband, [Pope] One who is at the head of any business, an overseer [Turner]; a nobleman [Shakespeare]; a general name for a peer of England [King Charles]; a baron; an honorary title applied to officers, as lord chief justice, lord mayor, lord chief baron; a ludicrous title given by the vulgar to a hump-backed person, traced, however, to the Greek crooked (439). Johnson, not a lord, is a man who calls himself a humble scholar. He uses his posture supposed humility ironically before Chesterfield, as he does the term patron: "When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little."

Johnson thus contrasts his humility as a scholar with that of a lord -- but a lord defined as a tyrant, overseer, even head of a business or ironically titled hump-back, suggesting the power of a lord to be both cruel or kind, and he can use his position for great or nefarious purposes. The ability to use the term ironically to someone ugly or poor seems reversed the letter -- the great but humbly born and poor writer Johnson calls Chesterfield 'lord,' even while he savages the lord's two-faced nature and highlights his own scholarly determination to bring his writing project to fruition. A scholar, in contrast, is less ambiguously defined in the Dictionary as "one who learns to be a master, a disciple [Hooker]; a man of letters [Wilkins]; a pedant, a man of books [Hooker]; One who has a lettered education [Shakespeare]; One who in our English universities belongs to the foundation of a college and who has a portion of its revenues [Warton]" (640). Johnson openly calls himself a scholar and proudly wears the title, even though he conceals (or highlights) his status by stressing his humility. Like his ironic thanks for Lord Chesterfield's support in print once the Dictionary was published and lauded, versus the lord's parsimonious attitude as a backer, Johnson says on his first meeting he was admittedly "overpowered" but even this word suggests being overpowered by a dictatorial figure, rather than a benevolent force.