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Book review
Dr Johnson's London
~ by Liza Picard
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000
Reviewed by Dennis Nutt
In Dr Johnson’s London, Liza Picard has sought to portray ‘real people
going about their daily lives …’. She has recognised that recorded history of
the scholarly type is about great men and women and their times, and not about ordinary
people. The legacy of buildings and works of art has tended to focus attention on the rich
at the expense of an understanding of the lives of the poor: consequently this book has as
its deliberate intent an examination of those areas of life most often omitted from
history books. As Picard confesses, she is not an historian: she is an enthusiastic
amateur who wanted to satisfy her curiosity. The way she has done it has provided us with
a very useful tool to understand the cultural background of the middle to late 18th
century.
I enjoyed this book. Its arrangement is simple and logical. Picard has
divided her material into four main divisions. It opens with Part I: ‘The Place’
and closes with Part IV: ‘The Rich’. The two central parts are focussed on
‘The Poor’ and ‘The Middling Sort’. Each division is itself divided
into chapters, each with a particular focus. This makes the content of the book readily
accessible. The order she follows says something of her priorities.
Picard has been very deliberate in the sources used. For example, she
has chosen to use the comments on London of overseas visitors because she is inclined to
believe that they are more likely to be impartial. That may be so, but it is also possible
that an overseas commentator may lack a real understanding of what is going on and of the
real meaning of what he or she observes. The Gentleman’s Magazine features
prominently, because it published, according to Picard, the kind of interesting items the
ordinary middle-class person liked to read. The poor could not have read it, let alone
afforded it.
The chief beauty of this book is that it is not taken up with heavy
analytical argument, but is largely descriptive. Analysis there is, but it is not allowed
to predominate over the description of the various topics Picard chooses to introduce. The
footnoting is adequate for the author’s purpose. A bibliography would have added to
the book’s worth. Clearly this is a work aimed at the general reader, but the more
academic reader can also gain much from it.
Chapters often begin with a question. Chapter 5, ‘Green
Spaces’, begins with ‘How did Londoners get away from the traffic?’ Chapter
8, ‘The Welfare System’, begins with ‘What happened to the very poor?’
The content of each chapter then sets about answering the question. Another device used to
capture our attention is to start a section with a quotation from Dr Johnson’s Dictionary
that is germane to the topic under discussion.
Some of the collocations are surprising. For example, Religion is
placed with Childhood and Schooling. One might get the impression that the author feels
that religion was not for adults. It was an age of quite interesting religious movement,
yet religion is given about the same amount of space as paving and lighting. It does not
appear in the index. Moreover, it is placed in her discussion of the ‘middling
sort’. Yet religion was a factor that influenced all levels of the society of the day
and played a significant role in the amelioration of many of the social ills that Picard
examines.
What makes this book interesting is that it takes us on a journey into
aspects of the culture of the time that are largely foreign to us. It broadens the scope
of understanding and allows a better comprehension of the background to the literature of
the period.
Nearly three quarters of the book is given over to matters relating to
the poor and the middle class. The rich warrant only fourteen pages. While I recognise
that Picard’s focus is on the ordinary people, this seems somewhat out of balance if
we are to be given a proper account of Dr Johnson’s London.
On the whole the book is accurate, although I think that Henry VIII
would have been somewhat bemused to find that his father, Henry VII (died 1509), had built
St. James’s Palace in the 1530s (p. 50).
One can sense the enjoyment that Picard had in writing this book. It
comes out in her easy, simple, lucid style and the many flashes of humour. In talking of
the surplus of women that there had always been, she refers to Henry VIII going ‘in
for serial marriage, but not every man has his capacity to dispose of unwanted
wives’.
The book is well illustrated, both in black and white and colour, with
pictures appropriate to each division of the book. They are thoughtfully chosen and their
reproduction is of high quality. They certainly add to the value of the work. The text is
very readable and the research has been thorough. Dr Johnson’s London is
certainly a valuable contribution to our understanding of the social conditions of the
period.
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