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 entire excerpt...

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?

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