Nicola Young explores Johnson’s attitude to travel, using many of his own words, in a piece about her current display.
As the summer approaches and we begin to think about holidays, our theme for the new display at the museum is ‘Imagination and reality: Johnson and the use of travelling’.
Samuel wrote in a letter to Hester Thrale whilst in Skye in Sept 1773 that: “the use of travel is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”
Johnson’s atlas of 1649 which he owned as a child adding an index at the back, sparked his interest in the world.
Travel writing became extremely popular in the 18th century, as the world began to open up to explorers and they described what they saw in an age of curiosity.
Johnson was ambivalent about travel books, admiring the copy of ‘Travels Through Portugal and Spain’ given to him by the author Richard Twiss in 1778, but believing description to be “always fallacious”. He believed that it was not “till you have seen realities, you cannot know it to be true” .
Johnson travels were limited to local trips until moving to London, later calling the city “my element “. By this time, he had worked on translating a travel book Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia, but he still hadn’t had his own opportunity “to regulate imagination by reality”. He felt conscious of an inferiority of not yet travelled to Italy and “not having seen what a man is expected to see.”
It wasn’t until he had written the Dictionary and subsequently received an annual pension in 1762 that he had the means to travel. He even used travel metaphors to describe the process of writing the Dictionary as “a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language “
Although he regularly travelled around the country to see friends, he made only three eminent journeys, once abroad to France, once to North Wales, and finally the hundred-day trip to the Hebrides with James Boswell which he described as “the most pleasurable trip I ever made”. Boswell was a kindred spirit. “You and I do not talk from books”, Johnson declared. Travel allowed Johnson to study the human condition, stimulate new ideas, improve mental and physical health, and satisfy his own curiosity.
In his later years he spoke with regret at not having travelled more: “Is not mine a kind of life turned upside down? Fixed to a spot when I was young, and roving the world when others are contriving to sit still, I am wholly unsettled. I am a kind of ship with a wide sail, and without an anchor.” Aspirations to travel to Italy and Iceland among other countries were never fulfilled. Of a chance to go India he later said “I should have gone”
It is poignant that the year of his death coincided with the first passenger balloon trips.” I wish well to such soaring curiosity” he said.
‘Imagination and Reality’ is on display until Sunday 7th July, daily 10.30am – 4.30pm. Admission is free.