CHAP, vill.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS.
" blind woman in your house ? " asked Beauclere. " Wliv,
" sir," answered Johnson, " she was a friend to nly poor
" wife, and was in the house with her when she died. She
" has remained in it ever since, sir."
Beauclerc's friendships with women were not of the kind
to help his appreciation of such gallantly as this ; though he
seems to have known none, in even the circles of fashion, so
distinguished, that he did not take a pride in showing them
Ms rusty-coated philosopher-Mend. The then reader of the
Temple, Mr. Maxwell, has described the levees at Inner
Temple-lane. He seldom called at twelve o'clock in the day,
he says, without finding Johnson in bed, or declaiming over
his tea to a party of morning visitors, chiefly men of letters,
among whom Goldsmith, Murphy, Hawkesworth (an old
friend and fellow-worker under Cave), and Langion, are
named as least often absent. Sometimes learned ladies were
there, too; and particularly did he remember a French lady
of wit and fashion doing him the honour of a visit. It was
in the summer of this year: and the lady was no other than
the famous Countess de Boufflers, acknowledged leader of
French society, mistress of the Prince of Conti, aspiring to
be his wife, and of course, in the then universal fashion of
the savantes, philosophes, and beaux esprits of Paris, an
Anglomane. She had even written a tragedy in English
and see 28-9. Poll was a Miss Garmiehael, who, with Mrs. Desmoulins and her
daughter, Miss "Williams and Mr. Levett, formed what Miss Hawkins calls the
"inmates of the upper floors,7' and Mrs. Thrale "the whole nests" of people,
who were indebted for their only home to the charity of Johnson. "He used to
" lament pathetically to me," adds the little lady, in one of the most delightful of
her Anecdotes (213), ''that they made his life miserable from the impossibility he
'' found of making theirs happy. . . . If, however, I ventured to blame their ingrati-
'' tude and condemn their conduct, he would instantly set about softening the one
'' and justifying the other ; and finished commonly by telling me that I knew not
"how to make allowances for situations I never experienced." Such was his
humanity, and such his generosity, exclaims JBoswell, "that Mrs. Desmoulins
"herself told me he allowed her half-a-guinea a week. Let it be remembered,
1' that this was above a twelfth part of his pension." Life, vii. 50.