July 9, 1735—If the dictionary he published two decades later had a word for “unlikely groom,” then Samuel Johnson could have used himself as an example to illustrate the point. At age 25, the future literary giant was not exactly Prince Charming material: poor, sickly, beset by so many twitches and tics that he was known as “The Great Convulsionary.”
In other words, think of him as a kind of 18th-century, real-life “Shrek.”
Amazingly, Johnson found his own counterpart to Princess Fiona: Elizabeth Porter, a mercer’s widow, given to painting her face even more thickly than ladies of that period usually did. Oh, and did I mention that she was more than 20 years older than Johnson?
But before you have visions of Mrs. Robinson, Susan Sarandon or Courtney Cox—you know, those associated with “cougars”—think again. “Tetty” Porter, as she was known, was short and dumpy.
So, what could have led these two lost souls together? A letter from Tetty to her daughter (who was closer in age to Johnson than her mom was), recounted in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, gives a pretty good account of matters:
Mrs. Porter noticed upon meeting Johnson his “convulsive starts and odd gesticulations [that] tended to excite at once surprize and ridicule.” She also observed a face pockmarked from scrofula, his constantly blinking eyes, his odd feet and hand movements.
But after conversing with him, she wrote her daughter, she decided that “This is the most sensible man I ever met in my life.” Johnson was, as his later friend James Boswell amply demonstrated in his epic biography, an amazing conversationalist. Less than a year later, Mrs. Porter, now widowed, married Johnson.
In 1752, after reading the first issue of his publication The Rambler, she told him: “I thought very well of you before; but I did not imagine you could write anything equal to this.”
Not that the course of their marriage ran smoothly. By the end of it, Tetty had taken to drink and opiates. The couple had stopped sleeping together a long time ago.
Nevertheless, when she passed away at age 64, Johnson was disconsolate. “Pretty creature!” he would exclaim to bewildered bystanders after her death. If you want another idea of the author and why he felt this way, think of Jack Nicholson's character Marvin in As Good As It Gets—another writer whose physical/mental infirmities would, under normal circumstances, doom him to an irrevocably isolated, misanthropic life—until, like Mrs. Porter, a single mom finds what is good and true beneath his troubled exterior.
In other words, think of him as a kind of 18th-century, real-life “Shrek.”
Amazingly, Johnson found his own counterpart to Princess Fiona: Elizabeth Porter, a mercer’s widow, given to painting her face even more thickly than ladies of that period usually did. Oh, and did I mention that she was more than 20 years older than Johnson?
But before you have visions of Mrs. Robinson, Susan Sarandon or Courtney Cox—you know, those associated with “cougars”—think again. “Tetty” Porter, as she was known, was short and dumpy.
So, what could have led these two lost souls together? A letter from Tetty to her daughter (who was closer in age to Johnson than her mom was), recounted in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, gives a pretty good account of matters:
Mrs. Porter noticed upon meeting Johnson his “convulsive starts and odd gesticulations [that] tended to excite at once surprize and ridicule.” She also observed a face pockmarked from scrofula, his constantly blinking eyes, his odd feet and hand movements.
But after conversing with him, she wrote her daughter, she decided that “This is the most sensible man I ever met in my life.” Johnson was, as his later friend James Boswell amply demonstrated in his epic biography, an amazing conversationalist. Less than a year later, Mrs. Porter, now widowed, married Johnson.
In 1752, after reading the first issue of his publication The Rambler, she told him: “I thought very well of you before; but I did not imagine you could write anything equal to this.”
Not that the course of their marriage ran smoothly. By the end of it, Tetty had taken to drink and opiates. The couple had stopped sleeping together a long time ago.
Nevertheless, when she passed away at age 64, Johnson was disconsolate. “Pretty creature!” he would exclaim to bewildered bystanders after her death. If you want another idea of the author and why he felt this way, think of Jack Nicholson's character Marvin in As Good As It Gets—another writer whose physical/mental infirmities would, under normal circumstances, doom him to an irrevocably isolated, misanthropic life—until, like Mrs. Porter, a single mom finds what is good and true beneath his troubled exterior.
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