This summer [1764] Johnson paid a visit to Dr. Percy 1 , at his vicarage house in Easton-Mauduit, near Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire, and spent parts of the months of June, July, and August with him, accompanied by his friend Miss Williams, whom Mrs. Percy found a very agreeable companion 2 . As poor Miss Williams, whose history is so connected with that of Johnson, has not had common justice dorie her by his biogra phers 3 , it may be proper to mention, that, so far from being a constant source and disquiet and vexation to him, although she was totally blind for the last thirty years of her life, her mind was so well cultivated, and her conversation so agreeable, that she very much enlivened and diverted his solitary hours ; and though there may have happened some slight disagreements between her and Mrs. Desmoulins, which, at the moment, dis quieted him 4 , the friendship of Miss Williams contributed very much to his comfort and happiness. For, having been the intimate friend of his wife 5 , who had invited her to his house, she continued to reside with him, and in her he had always a conversible companion ; who, whether at his dinners, or at his tea-table, entertained his friends with her sensible conversation : And being extremely clean and neat in her person and habits, she never gave the least disgust by her manner of eating 6 ; and
1 Percy has written this note in the place of a sister ; her knowledge was third person. great and her conversation pleasing.'
2 Life, i. 486 ; Letters, i. 91. Letters, ii. 348. See ante, i. 114.
3 Macaulay joined these biogra- 4 The disagreements were by no phers when he describes Johnson as means slight. They troubled him ' turning his house into a place of while they lasted (Life, iii. 461 ; refuge for a crowd of wretched old Letters, ii. 107, 122, 128), but Mrs. creatures who could find no other Desmoulins did not come to live asylum,' and when he says that with him till some time after the Mrs. Williams' s ' chief recommenda- beginning of 1777, when she occu- tions were her blindness and her pied the room assigned to Boswell poverty.' Essays, i. 390 ; Biography (Life, iii. 104, 222), and Miss Wil- of Johnson, Misc. Writings, p. 388. liams died in September, 1783 (ib. See Life, i. 232, n. i, where I show iv. 235).
how untrue this statement was. In 5 Ib. i. 232.
addition to the passages cited I 6 This is an answer to Boswell,
would cite the following : ' Last who had said that Johnson would month died Miss Williams, who had ' sometimes incommode many of his been to me for thirty years in the friends, by carrying her with him to
when
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