Richard Savage (1697 or 1698 – 1743) was a English poet who claimed to
be the illegitimate son of an earl and a titled lady. There’s some support for
the claim, although nothing really definitive. He made his name through a
series of poems, including one entitled “The Bastard”
that was aimed at embarrassing and humiliating his mother (which it did) and
gaining him some hush money in the form of a pension (which it also did). In
1727, Savage was arrested with several friends and tried for the murder of a
man in a coffeehouse which doubled as a brothel. Savage was found guilty but a
few weeks later was pardoned by the king. His notoriety gained him access to
all kinds of circles, both literary and aristocratic.
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| A drawing of Richard Savage |
He
also had a most unlikely friendship with the young Samuel Johnson, he of the
great dictionary, subject of one of the world’s most famous biographies, and
the man who helped save the plays of William Shakespeare from oblivion.
Savage
was one of the first people Johnson met when he arrived in London in 1737. They
made an odd pair of friends, the older and rather refined-looking Savage and
the younger and physically ungainly Johnson. For almost two years, they spent
considerable time together, especially walking London’s residential squares
late at night. During those walks, Savage would describe his life, his
parentage, his poetry, his passions, and his prejudices. When Johnson published
“London,” some believed (and some academics still do) that the main character
in the narrative poem was a thinly disguised Savage. Johnson later denied it,
but the question remains. Certainly Savage was an influence on the poem.
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| Samuel Johnson |
Savage
eventually fell on hard times, left London (aided by friends like Alexander Pope) for Wales,
and died in 1743 in the Bristol jail, where he had been imprisoned for three
years for non-payment of debts. Johnson was commissioned to write Savage’s
biography.
As
described by Richard Holmes in Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage, what Johnson
created with this work was more than a standard biography. An Account of the Life of Richard Savage
(1744) changed the nature of biographical writing, almost creating a new genre,
something between biography and fiction. Johnson didn’t always get his facts
right, but he wrote beautifully and entertainingly. Holmes also makes a good
case for Johnson writing much of himself into the story of Savage.
The
biography established Johnson. A year after its publication, he was
commissioned to produce the dictionary. His growing reputation attracted a wide
circle of admirers, and Johnson soon found himself part of the literary and
social establishment.
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| Richard Holmes |
Holmes, retired professor
of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., is the
author of numerous works on the Romantic poets and their era, including Shelley:
The Pursuit (2003); The
Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and
Terror of Science (2010); Coleridge:
Early Visions and Coleridge:
Darker Reflections (2011 reissues of the earlier two-volume biography);
The
Romantic Poets and Their Circle (2014), a companion guide to an
exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London; and two literary
research memoirs, Footsteps:
Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1996) and Sidetracks
(2011 reissue).
Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage is a fine account and informed
reconstruction of the relationship between two men, one of whom slipped into obscurity
but powerfully influenced the other and indirectly helped to establish his
fame.
Related:
Lexicographer
Samuel Johnson: Bookended by Poetry – at Tweetspeak Poetry. (This post is a
revised version of the Tweetspeak Poetry article.)
Top illustration: An antique map of
London in 1730.
