The day before yesterday I was walking around the Samuel Johnson birthplace museum with my brother and walking friends (their first time, and they were impressed). One of the interactive attractions caught my eye – 'Your Letters to Samuel Johnson'. Visitors were invited to take a sheet of paper headed 'Dear S.J.', write the great man a letter, and pin it on a dedicated board. Of those that were legible or made sense, most were not very interesting – but one stood out: this one...
'Dear S.J.
You seem like a right decent geezer.
Sincerely,
Ted Reynolds'
One might balk at the noun – and Johnson would not have known it – but this seems to me a pretty sound assessment of Johnson's character. I wasn't tempted to write a letter myself.
Yesterday we were in Tamworth, where, standing by the obelisk erected in memory of 'The Author of "Little Jim"', I treated my friends to a reading of that classic of Victorian sentimental verse. Their eyes remained resolutely dry.
And here is a literary souvenir of another walk, a couple of years back – my somewhat unnerving encounter with John Keats on a street bench in Chichester. The bench commemorates Keats's stay in that fair city in 1819, in the course of which he began work on The Eve of St Agnes.
That's a cool look you got there Nige
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