The Brothers Boswell Read Free Page B

a ragged wedge of swans. And there is something ancient and timeless, something Grecian about the sight of him there in the current, the fine wet brow crowned with swans.
    He blows me a kiss.
    The waterman heaves another rock, and the lark’s head vanishes in the chaos of white wings.
    It is good to know the snippet of talk about the Argonauts. No doubt James is already thinking about how to frame this bit of classical chat in his journal. He is keeping a journal of his year in London, oh yes, he certainly is, with entries for every day down to the most insipid. He has become really quite fanatical about keeping it up, and he has read me some of the entries of which he was particularly proud. Once or twice he has given me a handful of pages to read for myself, just a snippet he cannot resist sharing.
    He has never let me read through the thick packet on my own, although I know he has friends who have seen the lot. Friends who receive regular installments through the post, like a serial novel written at a penny a word.
    And I will admit, I envy him that bundle, because this journal ofhis gives him the chance to take the stuff of his life and spread it all out carefully in his mind and then cherry-pick it, rearrange it, and lay it all calmly together again. What is fine, what is extraordinary, what is brilliant becomes more so; what is ugly and unwanted is cast aside.
    He can make of himself just such a character as he pleases in the romance of his own life. And he can pick his readers as he might his servants.
    This scene today, though, needs no touching up after the fact: the two of them sailing down the Thames, as Johnson instructs his young prodigy in the shape of human history and knowledge—this is just as James would have it, but exactly, to a tittle. Which is to say that James has done all of the important scene-shaping in his own mind, long before he proposed the jaunt to Johnson, long before he prompted the conversation about the usefulness of ancient languages. All so that tonight or tomorrow he may tell his journal an entirely true story about playing Plato to Johnson’s Socrates. He has found a way not merely to write a true romance but to live it as well, and I do envy that.
    And so I imagine him stepping off the sculler now, relentlessly searching the Old Swan Stairs for choice bits with which to flesh out tonight’s entry. He is repeating Johnson’s phrases over and over to himself, no doubt, rehearsing them so he cannot forget, God forbid.
    Above all, he is avidly watching himself live out the most perfect day of his life, which means that the most perfect day of his life has only half his attention in the doing of it, something that strikes me as ironic and sad.
    But the ironies do not end there, of course. Although there is no way for James to know it, the fact is that he may not himself be the one to record today’s outing in his London journal. I may be doing so in his stead, depending on the directions the day’s events take. And so today I am on the lookout for choice bits as well. Everything rests on the outcome of today’s excursion.
    If matters work out favorably, Johnson and James and I may share a pleasant ride together back to London this evening. If not, I may return by water alone, certainly not an outcome to be wished, but a real and unpleasant possibility. In which case, I will use my copy of James’s key to let myself into his Downing Street lodgings. The bundle of manuscript I will pull from the little mahogany tea-chest that James purchased last November to hold it, then unknot the twine binding it. Then I will take a glass of negus and record this day, down to the wash of insignificant details that have given the morning its savor: the extra dish of chocolate, the bit of mercenary chat with the boy rowing the sculler, not excepting the Argo Knights themselves. And in addition I will include even those snippets that James—who includes everything, no matter how seamy or silly—