A Welcome Cello, Minster Pool, the Swan of Lichfield

 Yesterday afternoon, as I drew near Minster Pool, I became aware of a beautiful sound – rich, deep and plangent – surely a cello? It was indeed: a young man was seated by the pool, playing a Bach cello suite, with his cello case out in front of him for donations. This was a wonderful surprise, as the buskers here rarely venture into the classics, and if they do the results are usually dire. I murmured something to the effect of 'beautiful' as I bent to drop a pound into his cello case, and he stopped playing to engage me in conversation – well, only a brief chat, in the course of which I learned that he'd been a music student in Manchester. I should have asked how he is earning his living now – surely not only by busking – but we got talking about Bach and the cello suites. He offered to go back to the beginning of the suite and play it through for me, but unfortunately I was in a hurry, so had to leave it at that. I continued on my way along the side of Minster Pool, which I learn (from a piece in the Johnson Society Transactions of 2008) owes its present pleasing form to none other than the poetess Anna Seward, the 'Swan of Lichfield'. It was she who in 1773 proposed to the Town Clerk (Thomas Levett, who was family friend) that the pool should be 'serpentined' into an elegantly curved shape, with parts of it dug out to a greater depth and the spoil piled on the far bank (the cathedral bank) to form a mound, which was duly planted with trees and shrubs. This not only stopped the pool silting up and flooding almost every year, but created, once the vegetation had bedded in, one of the finest cathedral views in England – so, even if her literary endeavours are now all but forgotten,  Anna Seward has one lasting legacy which continues to give delight.
  Less to her credit is Seward's hostility to and constant denigration of Lichfield's greatest son, Samuel Johnson. His habit of dominating conversation, 'talking to win' and verbally pummelling all opposition into the ground was anathema to her, probably because, with Johnson present, she was no longer able to hold the floor herself. The Swan of Lichfield described the Great Cham as 'an overrated ranter, who received uncritical adulation', regarded his religious beliefs as 'gloomy bigotry', 'malign and violent', and believed that his disparagement of some who had achieved more success than himself was due to simple jealousy. For his part, Johnson could not avoid encountering the Swan on his visits to Lichfield, where he often dined at the Bishop's Palace, the Sewards' family residence – but, understandably enough, he never sought her out, nor she him. Boswell, being Boswell, had a crack at Seward, a handsome woman with striking auburn hair, and came quite close to initiating an affair, but in the end she said 'no', later characterising the great biographer as 'nought but a Scottish coxcomb'. One of the more ridiculous stories put about, presumably, by Anna Seward's allies, was that Johnson was so intimidated by her that he would tremble in her presence. It is certainly hard to imagine Johnson trembling in anyone's presence, except perhaps that of his Maker.