Johnson’s Birthplace has been a public Museum since 1901, but it was a place of literary pilgrimage for many years before that. In this blog post we explore some of the famous visitors that have been to the Breadmarket street house and interesting accounts from history.
James Boswell, March 1776
Samuel Johnson owned the house until the end of his life. His mother, Sarah, had run the family Bookshop after the death of Johnson’s father Michael until 1759, and family servant Catherine (Kitty) Chambers continued to run the business with Lucy Porter. After Kitty died in 1767, Johnson became a landlord, with tenants in the first two decades including bookseller William Bailye, an ironmonger named Hinde and a Mr Hinckesman, a Mercer and Draper.
When Boswell accompanied Johnson to Lichfield in March 1776, the friends stayed at Three Crowns next door. Boswell tells us in his Life of Samuel Johnson
“I went through the house where my illustrious friend was born, with a reverence with which it doubtless will long be visited”
However, Boswell’s own journal entry about his visit to the house on Sunday 24 March tells quite a different story:
“After dinner I had visited [Johnson’s] house. A beautiful, gentle, sweet maid showed it. In one of the garret rooms I kissed her, and she curtsied. I was charmed with her for the moment as with a rose or some pleasing object which makes a slight but very vivid impression”
Charles Burney, August 1797
Charles Burney writes to his novelist daughter Frances (by then Madame D’Arblay) in September 1787 with an account of his visit to Lichfield in the proceeding month. Arriving late on Saturday 26th August, Burney woke and attempted to find Francis Barber, but learned that he lived in a village outside of Lichfield (Burntwood)…
“I however, soon found the house where dear Dr Johnson was born, and his father’s shop. The house is stuccoed, has five-sash windows in front, and pillars before it. It is the best house thereabouts, near St Mary’s Church, in a broad street, and is now a grocer’s shop”
Burney also visited Garrick’s House, and tried to locate the house of Robert James, the Doctor famous for his fever powders and less well-remembered as another Dictionary writer, but was most put out that he could only find one resident who remembered that he had been a native of Lichfield! He ends at Lichfield Cathedral, locating the memorials to Johnson and Garrick in the Cathedral, describing them as beautiful.
Reverend Thomas Twining, August 1797
The classical scholar, who worked with Charles Burney on his ‘History of Music’, co-incidentally visited Lichfield as part of a tour of England and Wales in the same year. Arriving on August 18th, during his rainy visit to the city he makes a stop at a number of sites of Johnsonian interest, an indication that literary tourism was becoming established by this time:
“ I looked, of course, at the house in which Johnson was born – a house with pillars at the corner of the Market-place, now, I think, a grocer’s shop. Also visited the famous large old willow-tree, which Johnson, they say, used to kiss when he came to Lichfield… The monuments erected to Dr Johnson and Garrick, in the Cathedral, disappointed me.”
John Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, March 1826
John Jebb’s visit to Lichfield began with a tour of the collection of Canon Hugh Bailye at the Cathedral, which included items that can still be seen in the Cathedral library today including Johnson’s copy of Southey’s Sermons marked up for the Dictionary. The account of Jebb’s visit to the house evokes an interesting scene of life in the house when the business was occupied by Mr Evans’s shop. He:
“saw the shop (then a brazier’s) in which his father carried on business as a bookseller; and a small-back-parlour, in which the son is said to have studied. The room in which he was born, stands immediately over the shop: this the owner was prevented from showing, owing to the illness of one of the family.”
Charles Dickens, April 1840
Charles Dickens visited the Midlands in early April, travelling with his wife Catherine and his brother Alfred. They visit Johnson’s House in Lichfield, and Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford. There is no account of the visit apart from a note in his journal. At the time of Dickens’s visit, the shop was occupied by James Naden, another brazier.
Thomas Hardy, April 1911
Continuing the theme of great novelists, we recently located the signature of Thomas Hardy in the Museum’s visitor book. Hardy visited on 19 April 1911 with his brother Henry. They travelled to Lichfield, Worcester and Hereford to pursue a plan to visit all of the English Cathedrals.
Tolkien’s ‘Council of Lichfield’, September 1915
Geoffrey Bache Smith and Robert Quilter Gilson were two childhood friends of J.R.R Tolkien. They signed the visitor book during their visit to Lichfield with Tolkien, an especially poignant pair of signatures as it was to be the last meeting of the group of friends – Smith and Gilson both lost their lives to war in the following year. Read the full story in this excellent blog post by John Garth.
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, July 1942
A Royal visit to Lichfield took place on 16th July 1942 as part of a tour of the Midlands. The Royal couple started at Lichfield Cathedral, then walked through streets lined with crowds including soldiers, to the Birthplace Museum. The current caretakers, Agnes and Arthur Mears, hosted the visit alongside members of the Birthplace committee. Agnes’s granddaughters recall their grandparents sharing memories of the day (they are obscured by the car at right in this photograph)
Johnson has a universal appeal and famous faces continue to visit the museum all the time, including those that have been invited to become Presidents of the Johnson Society: Frank Muir, Beryl Bainbridge, Frank Skinner, Susie Dent and many more. One of our current volunteer projects is to work through our visitor books, so we will share interesting entries that we find in future blog posts.
With thanks to John Gallagher for alerting us to the fact that Thomas Hardy visited, and Marty Ross-Smith and David Robbie for starting the Tolkien trail.