Bruce Alexander - Murder in Grub Street

Looking about, I spied Sir John alone at a corner table and beckoned Dr. Johnson to follow. The place was not near as crowded as it would be. The table given us would do well for the sort of quiet tete-a-tete which the magistrate wished. Yet Dr. Johnson was unaccustomed to quiet; and if noise were in short supply, he could provide it in plenty. He barked out a greeting in a voice loud enough to frighten off a footpad.

Heads turned. The nearest serving girl, pot in hand, stopped sudden as a shying horse, slopping coffee on a floor often slopped before.

“Dr. Johnson, though I may be blind, I am not deaf,” said Sir John, with a smile meant to soften the sharpness of his words. “But do please sit down, so that we may discuss this matter I mentioned in my letter.”

“Has you baffled, has it? You wish my counsel in it?”

“Your counsel is always welcome. Yet what is most needed is your knowledge.” Sir John raised his hand then in hope of being seen by the serving girl. “Let us have coffee first to sharpen our minds.”

She was there in a trice, setting two cups and pouring three. I grabbed mine up at once, sipping it hot, sore in need of the stimulation it would give. My day had begun much too early.

“My knowledge, you say, sir?”

“Yes, your knowledge of this man, John Clayton. I sought you out since you seem to know, or know of, nearly every literary man in London.”

“That may be, sir, yet your man Clayton has happened merely to be in London. He is not of it-if you will honor my distinction.”

“Certainly,” said Sir John. “Nevertheless you do know him?”

“After a fashion,” said Dr. Johnson. “We met but a scant twelvemonth past upon the occasion of his first book’s publication. A collection of verse it was. And Mr. Crabb invited me, among others, to his bookshop to meet this remarkable discovery of his.”

“Remarkable, you say. In what way? You said it as if there were something quite unique about him.

“Indeed there seemed to be,” said Dr. Johnson. “Crabb presented him as a ‘peasant poet.’ ” At that point he broke off, screwing his powerful features into a great frown. “And now poor Crabb is dead, murdered. Is it so?”

“No question of it.”

“The lad gave me quite a graphic account- six victims, dear God!” He shook his head solemnly. “Ezekiel Crabb could be quite a contentious man, but he had standards. He published only what he deemed of value. He certainly made the reputation, if not the fortune, of John Clayton. As I say, he presented the fellow as a ‘peasant poet.’ And it is true that Clayton had a distinct rural background-a farm laborer from some benighted parish in Somersetshire. Can you imagine it? He’s had little formal education, yet there is no doubt, sir, that he has a poetic genius of sorts.”

“Of sorts?”

“Well, yes. His verse is not altogether to my liking. He glories in nature, yet glories in it for nature’s own sake. I should say that there is no better writer of descriptive verse in England today, if one is to judge from that first book of his-yet it is merely descriptive. He does not go beyond that to philosophy, and much less to wisdom. The poet’s duty is to draw lessons from nature, and not simply to portray it. That, however, may be too much to ask of a peasant poet, or perhaps in particular of a peasant poet’s first collection of verses.”

“I see,” said Sir John. “Yet you would say that John Clayton is possessed of a true poetic talent?”

“Oh, without doubt, sir. I have brought with me a copy of that first book of his, by name The Countryman* Calendar and Other Ve/vej.” Thus saying, he dove deep into the voluminous pocket of his coat and pulled from it a small volume that fit easily into his large hand. “One may open this book to any page and find phrases of particular charm, some quite brilliant. But here, let me demonstrate.”

Dr. Johnson brought it within inches of his poor eyes, shuffled a leaf or two, and stopped. “This will do,” said he. “It is a section of the longer poem which provides title to the rest. This one is given as ‘February.’ “

And then he read, his loud voice filling the listening room: ‘ ‘When winter heaves a sigh and makes to go / From country lands and fields all ripe with snow

He lowered the book then and looked from Sir John to me. Conversation resumed around us. “Such words as these,” said he, ” ‘fields all ripe with snow,’ may make no literal sense — snow does not grow from the earth; it is not a crop-yet they present a firm and definite picture to the mind. Clayton’s verse is full of arresting figures in this mode. He is, truly enough, a poet. Perhaps he will develop so as to give such phrases greater meaning.”

Sir John lowered his head and leaned across the table toward his partner in conversation. “My inquiries of this man,” said he, “have brought back to me the suggestion that he may also be a mad poet. Do you know anything of this?”

Dr. Johnson’s attitude changed quite abruptly. I noted him straighten and stiffen in his chair. He said nothing for a moment, and when at last he did speak, it was in a quiet, somewhat guarded manner: “Sir, why do you ask me that?”

(His sensitivity regarding this matter may be explained by rumors bruited since his death, that he was at this very time himself experiencing bouts of severe melancholia and had fears for his sanity.)

“Because,” said Sir John, “as I have said, you have special knowledge of these men and their humors. Take no offense, Dr. Johnson, but was it not Plato who said that all poets were mad and should therefore be banished?”

“He meant that, sir, in a hypothetical sense: be banished, that is, from an ideal republic. Besides, Plato was half a poet himself and guilty of vagaries of overstatement.”

“That is as it may be, but what of this man Clayton?”

Both men had of a sudden become a bit tetchy.

“Well, what of him?” demanded Dr. Johnson. “The man is a bumpkin, sir — he talks as a bumpkin, mispronouncing some words, and he moves about as one. He is shy, well-meaning, respectful, yet as tall as I and quite strong from years of labor in the field. He is, in short, a peasant, quite unexceptional in all ways but one, and that is, he is also a poet — which makes him something of a freak. It was as a freak he was presented to us by Crabb, and thus his book was sold and sold remarkablv well. I have heard that there is a second on the way. It is quite difficult to see how such a man, which is to say the man I met briefly, could be held in suspect for a crime such as has been described to me. And as for madness, I … well, indeed, I …”

At this point, Dr. Johnson’s vociferous response sputtered in anticlimax. Sir John did not prompt nor question; he simply waited until that great master of words had found the proper ones with which to continue, and eventually he did:

“Indeed, I did hear something at a dinner some months ago from a Somerset gentleman of no special consequence. Having nothing in common with the man, I made a remark on the sudden success of John Clayton and his descriptions of the beauty of his native place. The man responded in rather mean fashion, saying that as far as he knew, Clayton was not much respected there, that he had a reputation as a toper thereabouts, and other such irrelevant slander. But then, sir, he capped his recital by telling me that he had heard that a few years past, long before the ‘peasant poet’ had even begun to achieve some degree of renown, he had been confined for a period of weeks in the shire’s mad hospital. Quite frankly, I did not credit the report. I considered it false and malicious gossip, inspired by the envy of the gentry for the sudden fame of one of a much lower station. I have never repeated it until now, and I give it no more credit at this moment than I did at the time I first heard it. But since you asked, sir, I suppose I was bound to tell.”