The Johnson Birthplace Museum holds a letter (2001.94) dated 21 March 1752 in which “Mary Aston” writes to an unidentified lawyer about a loan of £700 at 4% interest which she is going to receive from “Lady Sidney”, on the security of a title deed which originally accompanied the letter and an additional bond.
Mary Aston is identified in the Museum’s catalogue as Dr Johnson’s friend Molly Aston (1706–1775), the woman about whom he said that the happiest part of his life was “that year in which he spent one whole evening with M[oll]y A[sto]n”: it was not happiness but rapture.
Lady Sidney was Molly’s first cousin Mary Norris (1700–1766), heiress of Speke Hall near Liverpool. She was orphaned very young and brought up with Molly and her sisters at Aston Hall in Cheshire. Thanks to her substantial inheritance she married Lord Sidney Beauclerk (1703–1744), a grandson of Charles II and Nell Gwyn. As a widow, she managed her own property in Lancashire and the inheritance of her son Topham Beauclerk (1739–1780) at Windsor. The £700 which she lent to Molly was drawn from Topham’s account at Hoare’s Bank.
Three days before the loan, Molly bought herself a house in London. It was in Park Street close to Hyde Park with a garden running west to Park Lane, an area of new development at the time. It was not yet the ultra-fashionable district which it became later, but it was a big investment for an unmarried woman in her thirties. Five days after writing the letter, Molly mortgaged her new house to Mary. It was really a bridging loan.
Molly’s fortunes had been transformed by the recent death of her mother. Probate of her mother’s will was granted on 16 May 1752, and on 28 July Mary received full payment of the £700 and all interest. Molly had become a woman of property with at least £14,000 of her own. She did not remain single for long: in 1753 she married David Brodie (c.1709–1787), a retired naval officer who had lost an arm in action in the Caribbean.
Johnson’s evening with Molly took place in the 1730s, after which he probably lost contact with her.
In 1759 he met Topham Beauclerk, who was then a student at Oxford. They quickly became great friends, and Johnson was introduced to Beauclerk’s mother, about whom he later said: “she had no notion of a joke; had come late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding”. He probably knew Mary from his past contacts with the Aston family. If not, he must soon have found out that she was Molly’s cousin.
Through this new friendship, Johnson was reconnected to Molly’s world (she lived in London until moving to Bath in 1766).
Boswell was told by Topham Beauclerk about a meeting between them but did not understand that Molly was involved. He only knew that Johnson was at a dinner party, probably at Mary’s house, with “a Captain Brodie who had married a relation of Beauclerk’s”. After dinner, Johnson paced the room and didn’t join in the gentlemen’s drinking, which annoyed Brodie, who said: “Sir, if you be for dancing a minuet, had not you better go to the ladies?” Johnson sat down with Beauclerk and said to him: “Don’t you think this Brodie a very coarse fellow?”
Boswell completely missed the point. Johnson was pacing the room because he had been back in the company of “the loveliest creature I ever saw”, as he described her to Mrs Thrale, perhaps no longer so lovely after 25 years or so. His little outburst against Brodie was probably due to a belief that Molly had married the wrong man!
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A close up of the letter sent from Molly to Lady Sidney:
If you’d like to find out more about the women in Johnson’s world, please join us on Sunday 28 April 2019 when Sue Bray will host our Behind Every Great Man workshop. The workshop starts at 2pm and tickets cost £4.00, including a behind the scenes archive visit. More information can be found on our events page.
Contributor: Dr David Noy is an Honorary Associate in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Open University, as well as the Honorary General Editor of Buckinghamshire Record Society.He has published nine books, including a biography of Topham Beauclerk, and numerous articles.David also runs the Winslow History Project.