Introduction

The Brothers Boswell is such an impressive book, both for its ability to inhabit its source material and for how well it shines on its own merits.  Many novels claim to be literary thrillers, but rarely are they quite this literary and quite this thrilling.  Philip Baruth has written a remarkable work.??David Liss, author of The Whiskey Rebels

?Meticulously researched, The Brothers Boswell has a strong narrative line, psychological allure, and plenty of adventure. I recommend the book for both the general reader and the aficionado.??Frances Sherwood, author of Vindication and Night Sorrows

Praise for Philip Baruth:

?Ingenious, often hilarious . . . if you can handle a fanciful plot and an onslaught of irreverence.??The Washington Post Book World

?History won?t stand still in this clever time-travel romp.??The New York Times Book Review

?An engaging, action-filled adventure.??San Francisco Chronicle

The year is 1763.Twenty-two-year-old James Boswell of Edinburgh is eager to advance himself in London society. Today his sights are set on furthering his acquaintance with Dr. Samuel Johnson, famed for his Dictionary; they are going to take a boat across the Thames to Greenwich Palace. Watching them secretly is John Boswell, James? younger brother. He has stalked his older brother for days. Consumed with envy, John is planning to take revenge on his brother and Johnson for presumed slights. He carries a pair of miniature pistols that fire a single golden bullet each, and there is murder in his heart.

Philip Baruth is an award-winning commentator for Vermont Public Radio and a graduate of Brown University with an MA and PhD from the University of California at Irvine. His previous novel, The X President (Bantam Books, 2003) received critical acclaim. He teaches at the University of Vermont.

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

The

Riverine Excursion

part one

8

Saturday 30 July

Mr. Johnson and I took a boat and sailed down the silver Thames. I

asked him if a knowledge of the Greek and Roman languages was necessary.

He said, “By all means; for they who know them have a very great

advantage over those who do not. Nay, it is surprising what a difference

it makes upon people in the intercourse of life which does not appear to

be much connected with it.” “And yet,” said I, “people will go through the

world very well and do their business very well without them.” “Why,”

said he, “that may be true where they could not possibly be of any use;

for instance, this boy rows us as well without literature as if he could

sing the song which Orpheus sung to the Argonauts, who were the first

sailors in the world.”

He then said to the boy, “What would you give, Sir, to know about

the Argonauts?” “Sir,” said he, “I would give what I have.” The reply

pleased Mr. Johnson much, and we gave him a double fare. “Sir,” said

Mr. Johnson, “a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind;

and every man who is not debauched would give all that he has to get

knowledge.”

We landed at the Old Swan and walked to Billingsgate, where we

took oars and moved smoothly along the river. We were entertained

with the immense number and variety of ships that were lying at anchor.

It was a pleasant day, and when we got clear out into the country,

we were charmed with the beautiful fields on each side of the river.

—From Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763

London, England

Saturday, the 30th of July, 1763

11:42 A.M.

* * * * * *

In the rare event that one man must follow two others without

being observed, follow them closely from first light to summer

dusk, certain conditions are best met. Those being followed should

stand out vividly from the world passing around them; he who follows,

of course, should not. And the following itself should occur

in the thick of a crowd as alien and uncaring as is practicable.

All of which is to say that conditions today are very near the

ideal.

Having shaken off its morning torpor, Fleet Street has moved

without interval into the irritability of early afternoon. Carters

jostle peddlers, and servants swarm the lane between shop windows

and the row of posts protecting them from the street. Everyone

seems to be wrestling some greasy package home, or if not, then

envying his neighbor’s. A coach comes rocking out of Hen-and-

Chicken Court and drives straight at the crowd, only to have

the ranks suddenly part and reform, swallowing it whole. Sullen

chairmen jog by bearing their sedans, beggars sprawled against the

wall pull in their ankles only at the last instant, and neither party

seems aware of the interaction, or lack thereof. All is one general

fabric of gray and brown discontent, no particle detachable from

the whole.

1

6 PHI LI P BA R U TH

Until I spot the two of them, coming along in the distance.

They are framed momentarily by the thick stone arch of Temple

Bar, and the effect is uncanny, like the fi rst seconds of a magic

lantern show, when the pretty pictures suddenly begin to crawl in

the candlelight. It is not just the movement that strikes one, but the

meaning. For once the painted emblems have started into motion, there

is a palpable signifi cance, a meaning, an inevitability to their progress.

One understands intuitively that the images will not stop until the

catastrophe. And therein lies the viewer’s chief satisfaction.

Of course in this case, given that the plot and the catastrophe

are of my own composition, my satisfaction in watching the pair

advance is at least doubled.

Once the two of them make their way beneath the Temple arch,

though, once their movements are no longer properly framed, they

are simply two gentlemen again, picking their way along down

Fleet. But two gentlemen such as the City has never seen before

and will never see again. There is no mistaking them for anyone

else, you may take my word. Especially with the larger, older, and

testier of the two so very much larger and older and testier. Even

plagued as he is by phantom pains in his back and his legs, Samuel

Johnson bulls forward through the Saturday morning crowd, not

walking his oaken stick but brandishing it.

He is fi fty-four years of age, a large-boned, large-nosed, large-eyed,

big-bellied man, and the smaller and less determined catch sight of

him at the last second and scatter as he comes. Here is what they see

bearing down on them just before they jump: the vast body is packed

into a rusty brown suit of clothes, waistcoat creaking at the buttons,

fl ashing the dull white shirt beneath. Black worsted stockings and

old black shoes, shoes rarely wiped and currently spattered, silver

buckles half the size of the prevailing fashion because small buckles

are at once conservative and cheap. A small unpowdered wig, brown

and shriveled, rides the head like a mahout.

Johnson’s mood seems cheerful enough this morning, for Johnson,

and he carries this good humor truculently along with him as he

comes.

The younger man striding brilliantly alongside seems small only

by way of comparison. In his own right he is brutishly healthy,

leaning but never quite toppling to fat. Of just under middling

height, maybe fi ve feet six inches all told. The complexion is dark by

City standards, but tinged with rose at his neck and plump cheeks.

And he is radiantly happy, anyone can perceive this, no matter the

distance.

The importance of the day’s outing to the younger man shows

in every considered detail of his appearance: he is wearing his own

hair, but meticulously dressed, powdered, and tied back with sober

black silk; snowy stockings; a military cock to his hat that he has

affected rather than earned; and a smart, silver-hilted, fi ve-guinea

blade got by hoaxing Mr. Jefferys, sword-cutter to His Majesty.

He wears his genteel new violet frock suit, with its matching violet

button, as though it were a coronation outfi t. And his shoes have

been wiped to within an inch of their lives. This is James Boswell,

age twenty-two.

And what makes you simply want to murder the pair of them,

more than anything else, is the perfectly ludicrous way they seem

to complete one another. Not quite opposites, but different in a

thousand complementary ways. Two odd human fractions who

have stumbled somehow onto the secret of the whole number.

It is this sense of completion that draws heads around as they

saunter down Fleet, not the barking volume of their talk, which

is high enough, of course. And it is this wholeness that brings the

occasional snicker, from the coal-heavers and the milk-women and

the bankers. Those doing the snickering tell themselves and one

another that they’ve never seen such a mismatched pair in all their

lives, sweet Jesus, but this is a thin attempt at self-comfort. If, rather

than matched, these two men are mismatched, then north is south,

hot cold, and our own lots in life momentarily less meager.

The truth is easier to see, but a great deal harder to recognize,

and to accept: these two men have one another suddenly, and don’t

seem much to need anybody else. Their friendship of two months

could not be any more clearly destined to last two lifetimes.

The sight of them suggests a completion we all seek in our

friendships, our whole lives long, and do not fi nd; at a deeper, blacker

level, it is what we seek from the cradle each inside ourselves, and

never discover. We are fragments scattered about loose in the world,

yet in some way now these two men are not, not any longer.

What can all the rest of us do, then, but point them out on the

street and laugh?

James ’s delight at walking down Fleet Street with his

hero lends him an almost visible shimmer. Just as evident, though,

is his anxiety that some small thing may unexpectedly cloud the

skies of Johnson’s amiability. Even in his joy he is continually scanning

the older man’s face for weather signs.

Oh, this James is solicitous, and for this too you could murder him.

But after all, currying favor is James’s explicit purpose for coming

up to London in the fi rst place. Somehow he has secured permission

to spend the bulk of this year begging a commission in the King’s

Guard from those who would vastly prefer not to give it him. And

to that offi cial errand James has added another entirely his own:

to worm his way into the hearts and affections and appointment

books of as many full-scale London authors and notables as he can

manage in the space of nine months.

It took six of those months merely to make the acquaintance of

Johnson, author of the Dictionary itself, England’s undisputed and

ill-tempered literary lion. But having done so, James has wasted no

time parlaying the acquaintance into a friendship, and that friendship

into something now just shy of actual foster-fatherhood.

This morning, he showed up on Johnson’s Inner Temple doorstep

at just a touch past nine-thirty for their ten o’clock meeting, so

T H E B ROTHER S B O S W ELL 9

afraid was he of being thought less than punctual. He stood for a

moment, pondering. Lifted his fi st to knock, dropped it without

knocking. Then, lest he seem overeager and boyish, James strolled

around the corner, looking to kill time, looking for amusement.

I stood and watched him all the while he stood and watched

Fleet Street.

He settled his attention on the Temple Bar, as well he might: set

into cornices of the stone arch are statues of Charles I, the Stuart

martyr, and Charles II, whose itch for actresses brought women to

the English stage. And something else: on iron pikes atop the stone

pediment sit two now-desiccated heads. For reasons that no one

including James knows, James is all but addicted to the terrifying

jolt of a good hanging or dismemberment; these two skulls, circled

by fl ies and touched with the gore of history, seize and hold his

attention.

He is predictable, is James.

A sharp little shopkeeper hard by the Bar sized up the situation

and trotted out with a cheap pair of spyglasses, half-penny the

look, and James delightedly fi shed in his pocket for change. Then,

after having his sleeve pulled twice, and paying cheerfully for two

more long looks, James simply struck a bargain to buy the glasses

outright.

After another ten minutes, when he had fi nished searching

the desiccated heads for meaning, for sensations, he dropped the

glasses into his deep coat pocket and retraced his steps to #1 Inner

Temple Lane.

I followed after a moment, marveling at the endless seepage of

unforeseeable detail into even the tightest plans, the capillary action

of disaster. Who but the Lord Himself could have foreseen that

James would suddenly acquire the ability to see great distances?

The ability to search the boats before and behind him on the river

every bit as casually as he might search his own waistcoat pockets?

Not for the fi rst time, I wondered if the Lord might be plotting

against me, somehow, and I added the spyglasses to Johnson’s stick

and James’s sword, the small running mental list of objects to which

I must pay particularly close attention this day.

So here i t is now, just before noon, and they have had their

late-late-morning coffee at Child’s, and a separate dish of chocolate

for James. They have sauntered for a good twenty minutes under

the leafy trees of Hare Court, tuning up their voices and their

respective pomposities. And now they’re off for their true lark of

the day—a float down the eastern stretch of the Thames.

But of course this is Dictionary Johnson, who birthed the entire

sanctioned English lexicon from his own singularly overstuffed

vocabulary, and so a fl oat down the river cannot remain merely a

fl oat. God forbid.

A riverine excursion, they’re calling it. And it sounds so altogether

grand that I have decided to take a riverine excursion of my own.

They come down Middle-Temple Lane, a moist wind fi lling

their noses, and there, in the dark frame created by the Harcourt

Buildings, lies the silver water of the Thames. They lift their wellfed

faces at the pleasant shock of the river: the glittering length

of it just behind a line of unremarkable city roofs, coiling through

the city with all the drowsy power of a boa constrictor. And on it,

every device for fl otation known to mankind, moving everywhere

and at every speed at once: wherries and barges, sloops and fi shsmacks,

skiffs and cheap wooden bottoms and the occasional grand

racing yacht, twelve oarsmen pulling all at once. Gulls crash and tilt

and screech overhead, and the stink of fi sh and water rot comes up

sharp with the wind.

As the two men approach the Temple Stairs, and the loafi ng

watermen sense the approach of custom, a predictable form of hell

breaks loose. Everyone shouts at once, addressing their shouts to

Johnson alone because they all have the menial’s highly developed

nose for power.

Westward or Eastward, Sir! Row you straight, row you quiet!

Sculler! Sculler, maybe, gents? Sculler!

He’ll drown you, that one! Don’t be daft, Sir. Oars here now!

For all their crowding and jostling, the watermen observe a thin

protective bubble around their marks, pawing the air but never once

putting a hand to Johnson’s coat. And he points without hesitation

to a young man about fi fteen years old, standing off to one side, and

barks, “Take us out then, boy,” and the crowd of rivermen explodes

in curses and righteous indignation.

The boy leads them quickly down the center stair to the river. He

is wearing the arms of the King on his uniform, and no doubt this

is part of the reason Johnson chose him. Johnson has a pension of

300£ a year from the King, and I imagine that in some secret way

the King’s arms signify to Johnson not only the great and benevolent

power of the Crown, but the great and benevolent power of Sam

Johnson. And, too, the King’s men are watched more carefully by

the Crown, and so they are less likely to cheat you, more likely to

get you there clean and dry. Not much less, and not much more,

but a bit.

After some fi ddling, the boy draws his narrow red sculler up fl ush

to the step, and Johnson climbs ponderously aboard. The long craft

bobbles and then steadies. When Johnson is seated in the center,

James steps relatively lightly into the rear, checks his seat for water,

fi nds none, and sits.

And as they draw away, holding their hats—James’s violet

suit shrinking slowly to the size of an orchid—one of the bigger

watermen on the stair breaks off shouting curses at the boy piloting

the sculler, turns abruptly toward the spot where I’m standing, and

crooks his fi nger at me.

The big waterman has his head shorn down to the scalp.

Sweat stands from the tough brown skin as he hauls his oars. He is

forty-five maybe, or fifty. He wears the arms of the Lord Mayor, a

looser and less appetizing outfit than the King’s. A pile of smooth

river rocks stands in the bilge wash beside his own seat, just to one

side of his boot, within easy reach. He is a very strong man, outfitted

with the several weapons natural to his trade, and he pulls the

oars with just this awareness in his air.

It’s the Lord Mayor’s men that dominate the movement of

stolen merchandise on the river, and in the back of the sculler,

behind my seat, I can see a nasty set of long gaffs and hooks, these

for retrieving goods thrown from ships, these for cadging fi sh

from passing smacks when traffi c is tight. And, no doubt, for the

occasional pitched battle between boats, battles for which guns are

too loud and knives too short. Lord Mayor’s men view the river as

the sea, and the sea as a sovereign entity unto itself.

Johnson and James are a short ways ahead of us, gliding along

near the center of the river. Traffi c moves quicker there, and the

view is more pleasant. The wind is a caress, not the cuff you get

peering south from the Temple. The ride is smoother as well; no

need to row around wharves and stagnant debris and docks and

moored vessels, as you do continually nearer the banks. As my

sculler is doing at the moment.

“What do you want with ’em?” the waterman says suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What d’you want with the folk we’re pacin’ is what I mean, sir.”

I say nothing.

He keeps his head down, eyes on the mucky bit of bilge rolling

back and forth across the little hull. He could look back into the

shade under the thin green woolen canopy, but he does not. He

does not want to push too hard, does not want to risk the shilling I

have promised him. When I offered him three times the standard

fare, as long as he would shadow another boat, keep mum, and take

my lead on the water, the waterman didn’t bat an eye. “Glad to be

of service, sir,” he had said, pumped full of sudden courtesy.

But now he cannot leave it alone.

“Nothing but curious, sir,” he drawls. “A man likes to know why

he goes where, don’t he?” He scratches at his leg, then the slick crown

of his scalp. A pair of rowers passing the other way yell a sudden,

friendly volley of obscenities at him, but he shows no sign of hearing

or recognition. He continues to pull the oars and to watch the roll of

bilge water. “For a jest or to come at a shilling, is why people usually

follow people,” he continues. “Or to catch a girl’s sneakin’ about.

Always struck me there’s the couple ways of it.”

I have my eyes on the river.

The waterman is jovial now, enjoying the sound of his own

voice in the open air, and the anger gathers slowly in my chest, not

for the fi rst time this morning. I can feel it stirring abruptly inside

me, the anger, a large dog awakened by a small noise.

He clucks his tongue. “Your clothes are too swell for a footpad,

my fi ne friend. There ain’t no lady in the sculler there to follow.

And you don’t strike me as bein’ in a joking mood, you don’t mind

me saying.” He spits over the gunwale. “And so I’m curious, now,

nothing but that. A hint of why we’re running behind these two?

I’ll be close as the grave, trust me, sir.”

Again, I say nothing for a moment, and then reach into my

pocket and bring up a pair of coppers, holding them out on my

palm for an instant. And then I pitch them over the side and into

the water. Almost immediately, a young mudlark near the boat dives

to catch the coins before they can touch silt. “Your fare is tuppence

lighter, man,” I say. “The full shilling was for quiet, and following

my instructions.”

He holds up a hand to signal enough, attends to his oars, swinging

his head up and about to avoid other boats, and to keep James and

Johnson’s red sculler in sight. Although the woolen canopy keeps

off the sun, it blocks the wind, and without that breath of air the

day is hottish, a creeping late July heat. And the wool traps the light

stench of the waterman’s little boat itself, fi sh and sweat and damp

wood and river slime. But it is the sight of the two of them on their

excursion, the bigger and the slightly less big, sitting in their merry

little boat out there in the very center of the Thames, never quiet

but always talking, talking, talking that saps the pleasure from the

ride.

After only fi ve minutes or so on the river, I see their red skiff

abruptly angle through the cluttered forest of masts toward the Old

Swan Stairs. I have already told the waterman to expect as much,

and he draws quickly across the fl ow of traffi c to allow me to watch

them come in for their landing. Predictable, to a fault. Greenwich

is another long pull down the river, so why are they rowing in at

the Swan, disembarking, walking the seven crowded blocks around

London Bridge to the rank fi sh-market at Billingsgate and then

re-embarking for Greenwich?

Because, my friends, James is nobody’s hero: he has not got the

heart for the bit of white water under the spans, or the way the boat

drops away from you suddenly when you shoot the bridge. And why

else? Because they are both of them cheap. They’ll both squeeze a

crown until King George weeps, and the fare doubles at the bridge.

But as I watch them re-bobble their way heavily back out of the

sculler, I have a thought. A mudlark is treading water not so far

from us, and I wave him over.

“Hey there you, lark,” I call, as softly as one can.

He swims to me at a leisurely pace, his strong arms dipping

and fl ashing in the water. Once beside the boat, he keeps himself

suspended in the water with slow, easy movements of his thick legs

and cupped hands. Mudlarks spend hours a day in the current,

carrying and fi nding and ferreting out things that are awkward for

men on a boat or on shore to come at. No doubt this waterman

and this mudlark have worked together at some point in the past,

to move some package of something off the river before it could be

stamped and taxed, but they ignore one another now.

“See that red sculler there,” I say, “putting off passengers at the

Stair now?”

The mudlark looks, turns back. He has sharp features, good teeth,

and the articulate shoulders of a man who swims for his living. A

penny pouch hangs dripping from his neck, a rusted knife from his

belt. He narrows an eye at me, trying to fi gure out what my game

might be. “Aye. I see ’em right enough.”

“There’s a half-penny for you if you pull the coat of that boy

rowing them, and ask him what the two gentlemen talked about.

There’s a penny, though, if you remember it when you get back here

to me, remember it all exactly.”

“Penny, eh? There’s a generous man.”

“A penny if you have the details exact.”

The mudlark nods his head slowly, and then gives a wink and

rolls over in the water. His milky outline glimmers, darkens, and

then vanishes, before he sounds, like a dolphin, a good thirty feet

from the boat. In a moment his hand reaches out of the water near

the Stair, and halts the boy’s sculler.

They talk for a moment, and then the mudlark slips back into

the water and makes his way back to where the waterman holds us

still in the river.

Instead of treading water this time, the mudlark hauls himself

directly up onto the small gunwale of the boat and perches there,

bringing his feet over the edge and sliding them into the warm

bilge at the boat’s bottom. His body has long ago become a thing

of the river, sleek and beach-white, nipples dark wet sand-dollars.

His hair is slick and brown as an otter’s coat. He clucks his tongue

at the waterman, who continues to ignore him, continues to fail to

recognize him.

“Well, then,” I say. “What said he?”

The lark seems to have all the time in the world, and he examines

his water-wrinkled hands and dirty fi ngernails before speaking.

Then he rubs the muscles of his left arm, as though it is sore, before

meeting my eye. The look is direct, a bit defi ant, a bit provoking.

And then he says, “It’s to be like that, is it?”

By defi nition, to traffi c with the mudlarks is to traffi c in nonsense,

but I have no time for it this morning. I rest my hand on the hilt of

my sword and lean out of the canopy’s shade. “If you have anything

to report, friend, I have what I promised. Good as my word.”

The waterman clears his throat loudly, nudging it along, and the

lark fi nally purses his lips and nods. He rubs his hands together

briskly. “Good as your word, then. Well, sir, the boy says the two

men talked about speakin’ in old languages. All the way from

Temple Stair.”

I wait, but nothing more is forthcoming. “Old languages, you say?”

“That’s it. Like Greek or Roman. What a man should learn o’

that, and how much, and if, and so on. Like that.”

I reach into my pocket, letting the music of the coins work.

“Anything else the boy said?”

He thinks for a second, eyes on the small change now sifting in

my hand. Then he’s got it. “The big one asked the boy what he’d

give to know about the Argo Knights. The fi rst sailors in the world,

the big one said.”

“The Argonauts, you mean.”

“That’s it, sir.”

“And the boy replied?”

“The boy replied he’d give whatever he had.”

I’m amazed again at the ability of the river to teach every man on

it, no matter how young, to cant so fl awlessly. “My, what a simple,

artless thing to have said. And the big one liked that, I imagine.”

The lark gives a canny look, nods, blows water from his nose out

over the gunwale. He turns back, smirking at his own crassness.

“Boy said the big one give him a double fare for that.” There’s a

silence, and then the mudlark brushes his wet hair from his brow.

He is searching my face again, scrutinizing it. I realize he’s waiting

for his coin, and I fi sh it out of my pocket. He takes the penny,

works it into the small leather bag about his neck, gives the cord a

tug to seal it up.

And then, as though lost in an afterthought, he looks up at me

solemnly and says, “I’d give all I’ve got to know them Argonauts as

well, sir.”

“Fine, then. Give me the penny pouch there on your neck, and

I’ll teach you.”

He snorts at that and slides back into the water, leaving the

damp mark of his arms on the gunwale. As his churning legs take

him away from us, he says, very distinctly, “Well, and if you’ll kiss

my arse, sir, I’ll teach you somethin’ as well.”

With that, the waterman is up from his seat, a rock in his hand.

He cocks his arm, but the mudlark has already darted beneath the

water, so there is no way to tell whether the rock fi nds its mark

when the waterman fi res it into the Thames. In a moment the

swimmer’s head surfaces several boats away, bobbing in the center

of a ragged wedge of swans. And there is something ancient and

timeless, something Grecian about the sight of him there in the

current, the fi ne wet brow crowned with swans.

He blows me a kiss.

The waterman heaves another rock, and the lark’s head vanishes

in the chaos of white wings.

It is good to know the snippet of talk about the Argonauts. No

doubt James is already thinking about how to frame this bit of

classical chat in his journal. He is keeping a journal of his year in

London, oh yes, he certainly is, with entries for every day down

to the most insipid. He has become really quite fanatical about

keeping it up, and he has read me some of the entries of which he

was particularly proud. Once or twice he has given me a handful of

pages to read for myself, just a snippet he cannot resist sharing.

He has never let me read through the thick packet on my own,

although I know he has friends who have seen the lot. Friends who

receive regular installments through the post, like a serial novel

written at a penny a word.

And I will admit, I envy him that bundle, because this journal of

his gives him the chance to take the stuff of his life and spread it all

out carefully in his mind and then cherry-pick it, rearrange it, and

lay it all calmly together again. What is fi ne, what is extraordinary,

what is brilliant becomes more so; what is ugly and unwanted is

cast aside.

He can make of himself just such a character as he pleases in the

romance of his own life. And he can pick his readers as he might

his servants.

This scene today, though, needs no touching up after the fact:

the two of them sailing down the Thames, as Johnson instructs his

young prodigy in the shape of human history and knowledge—this

is just as James would have it, but exactly, to a tittle. Which is to say

that James has done all of the important scene-shaping in his own

mind, long before he proposed the jaunt to Johnson, long before

he prompted the conversation about the usefulness of ancient

languages. All so that tonight or tomorrow he may tell his journal

an entirely true story about playing Plato to Johnson’s Socrates. He

has found a way not merely to write a true romance but to live it as

well, and I do envy that.

And so I imagine him stepping off the sculler now, relentlessly

searching the Old Swan Stairs for choice bits with which to fl esh out

tonight’s entry. He is repeating Johnson’s phrases over and over to

himself, no doubt, rehearsing them so he cannot forget, God forbid.

Above all, he is avidly watching himself live out the most perfect

day of his life, which means that the most perfect day of his life has

only half his attention in the doing of it, something that strikes me

as ironic and sad.

But the ironies do not end there, of course. Although there is

no way for James to know it, the fact is that he may not himself be

the one to record today’s outing in his London journal. I may be

doing so in his stead, depending on the directions the day’s events

take. And so today I am on the lookout for choice bits as well.

Everything rests on the outcome of today’s excursion.

If matters work out favorably, Johnson and James and I may share

a pleasant ride together back to London this evening. If not, I may

return by water alone, certainly not an outcome to be wished, but

a real and unpleasant possibility. In which case, I will use my copy

of James’s key to let myself into his Downing Street lodgings. The

bundle of manuscript I will pull from the little mahogany tea-chest

that James purchased last November to hold it, then unknot the

twine binding it. Then I will take a glass of negus and record this

day, down to the wash of insignifi cant details that have given the

morning its savor: the extra dish of chocolate, the bit of mercenary

chat with the boy rowing the sculler, not excepting the Argo Knights

themselves. And in addition I will include even those snippets that

James—who includes everything, no matter how seamy or silly—

would decline to include.

The manuscript journal of James’s year in London will never see

print, as he now hopes, but it will be complete in every important

sense: an artistic whole. And it will be treasured in the archives at

Auchinleck for as long as I live, and after. Before I leave London, I

will do for James what he will no longer have the power to do for

himself: fashion an end to the romance he has woven of his own

ephemeral existence.

And if you knew James as I know him—as only a younger

brother can know an older—you would understand that all of this

will constitute an act of the utmost kindness. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1) The Brothers Boswell is woven around a famous — some would say infamous —
eighteenth-century autobiography: James Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763. His
real life brother, John, does not appear in that journal. In what ways does the novel seem
to unwrite that much-earlier journal, excerpts of which begin each section, in order to
create space for a fiction in the thriller mode? How, finally, does the fictional John
Boswell explain the absence of his own story from his brother’s well-documented nonfiction
account?
2) Another text, Johnson’s Dictionary, haunts the text of this novel. The Dictionary
Game, played by John and James as boys, lays the foundations for a life-long competition
fraught with resentment and envy. Clearly, language is of great concern to all the
characters in The Brothers Boswell. How do words and language in general shape the
specific characters, and how do they propel the plot?
3) In eighteenth-century England, pursuant to the law of primogeniture, the first-born
male inherited a family’s entire estate, and title if any, on the death of the father. It seems
a legal principle almost designed to stoke envy and resentment, among those members of
the family shut out of this transfer of wealth. Shakespeare’s As You Like It is just one
example of the mileage authors have gotten out of it over the centuries. How does
primogeniture, and James Boswell’s early renunciation of it in the novel, affect the
uncoiling of the plot?
4) Consider the relationship of each of the brothers to their father who was not only a
Scottish judge but also Laird of Auchinleck. Do either of them admire him or wish to
emulate him? Now consider their relationship to their mother. Has she any role in the life
of her grown sons? Does she seem to have any influence on their upbringing? In what
way? James Boswell has an illegitimate son. What kind of parent do you suppose he will
be?
5) It’s fair to say that John Boswell is an unreliable narrator — one minute detailing his
intimate friendship with Samuel Johnson, and another revealing a set of repressed
memories that would seem to rule out the possibility of such a relationship. Yet the novel
continues to supply evidence for both ways to read their relationship. What do you
believe was true? Is the story’s inability to rule out either reading an integral part of the
text?
6) Scotland and England have battled back and forth, over the centuries, almost like
brothers in a dysfunctional and occasionally violent household. How does the
eighteenth-century English view of the Scots inform the novel, and mold the central
characters?
7) While Samuel Johnson has long been lionized as a lexicographer and a moralist, James
Boswell has been occasionally mocked and underestimated — both as a man and as a
literary figure — for just as long. How sympathetic is the portrait of Boswell in the
novel? How much responsibility does he bear for his brother’s condition, even his
brother’s last violent outbursts? How does his relationship with Louisa affect your
answer?
8) In a tradition beloved by eighteenth-century readers, Brothers Boswell contains several
stories within the story. One of these embedded narratives, the story John tells to explain
the origin of his dags, draws in the history of Bonnie Prince Charlie; another, Johnson’s
tale “The Fountains,” is more purely fanciful. But the narrative comes back to each
several times, and its fair to say that certain parallels between the interior and exterior
tales inevitably begin to suggest themselves. Tease out some of these relationships.
Does the discussion of these parallels begin to alter your sense of the novel’s main
characters? Do the stories within the story begin to shape your reading of the main
narrative?
9) At various points, both brothers try to puzzle out the place of God in their own
evolving histories: James wonders if God is giving him the green-light to explore the
sensual delights of London, for instance, and John fears that God is protecting his brother
and blasting his own prospects. Each develops complex explanations for Divine presence
or absence at a given moment. What place do you assign the Divine in Brothers
Boswell? Does the novel allow the Hand of God as a shaping force in the lives of the
characters? Or is this second-guessing of Divine influence presented as a species of selfdelusion,
not unlike John’s other flights of madness?
10) At various points, both John and James tout the virtues of “multiplicity” — the ability
of a man or woman to be perceived differently at different moments, to inhabit more than
one character or identity. How does that thematic concern with the fluidity of identity tie
in with the darker, central question of Johnson’s possible hidden relationship with John?
How does John’s last sentence — “One of these men loved my brother, and one of these
men loved me, and the memory of each is sacred in its own regard” — attempt to tie up
that philosophical and plot-based discussion? Or does it?

Weblinks

»	Author's Blog

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 1 members.

Member Reviews

Rate this book