The Life of Samuel Johnson

For a time, Johnson lives in the house of Gilbert Walmsley, a leading citizen of Lichfield. Johnson professes later that he benefited greatly from Walmsley’s learning and friendship. Johnson briefly works as an assistant at a grammar school in Leicestershire, but he quits after a few months because of the harsh treatment he receives.

Still without any definite plan, Johnson is invited by a former schoolmate, Mr. Hector, to live in the Birmingham house of Mr. Warren, a bookseller. During this time Johnson writes his first prose work, a translation from French of a book called Voyage to Abyssinia. Boswell finds that Johnson’s original preface to the work already shows signs of his distinctive “brilliant and energetick” (64) literary style.

Now living on his own in Birmingham, Johnson becomes acquainted with Mr. Porter, a merchant, who is married to a woman named Elizabeth or “Tetty.” After Porter dies, Johnson marries Tetty, who is 20 years his senior and has several children. Although Johnson’s mother has reservations about the difference in their ages, she agrees to the union for her son’s sake. Johnson and Tetty’s marriage will last until Tetty’s death in 1752; Johnson tells Boswell that “it was a love-marriage upon both sides” (69).