Samuel Johnson's House — and His Cat Hodge

Thursday afternoon, I had time to visit the famous London residence of Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth-century 'celebrity' after whose work this blog is named. Photos are below, but first, I've provided some information about Dr. Johnson for those of you unfamiliar with his life and works. From Wikipedia.org:


Samuel Johnson LL.D. [1709 – 1784], often referred to simply as Dr. Johnson, was one of England's greatest literary figures: a poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer and often considered the finest critic of English literature. He was also a great wit and prose stylist whose bons mots are still frequently quoted in print today.

Dr. Johnson's long-time friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted his portrait several times. One of them is shown above. For more about Johnson's life and work, click here. For more information about his house at Gough Square in London, click on the title of this post, or click here.

Some great quotations from Johnson are below. For more Johnson quotations, click here:

'As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.'

'Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.'

'Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.'

'Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.'

'Painting consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.'

'Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.'

'The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.'

'Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.'

'Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.' (attributed to Johnson)

'It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.'

'Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labour; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.'

(Click an image to enlarge)

Samuel Johnson's House at Gough Square, London.
The museum entrance is at the door on the left-hand side of the house.

The entrance to the museum, opening into the former dining room.

The 'powder cabinet' for storing powdered wigs.

The original(?) mechanism dating from the time the house was built around 1700. All the doors are fitted with these.

Stairwell entrance to the second storey (In Europe, the second storey = the first floor).

A chair from a local tavern used by Johnson.

The uppermost story of the house, where Johnson compiled his famous
English language dictionary.

Looking down the stairwell.

The cabinet at the ground-floor landing of the stairwell
used for storing the candles carried to light the way.

The main entrance to the house (not the entrance to the museum).
The window above the door is barred with iron to keep thieves from lowering small children through the opening. The chain across the door is secured to a screw-shaped hook, which prevented it from being lifted off by a thief using a long stick.

A bronze monument to Hodge, Johnson's cat,
guarding a copy of his owner's Dictionary of the English Language. Someone has dressed him for Christmas.

To more easily read the inscription, click on the image to enlarge.

James Boswell, in his Life of Samuel Johnson, wrote that Johnson loved cats, and that he bought oysters for Hodge. People leave one- and two-pence coins in the bronze Hodge's empty oyster shell. For luck? Offerings to the spirit of Johnson? Could be contributions to keep the bronze Hodge from going hungry.

Hodge, watching over his master's house.

A view (somewhat out of focus!) from Fleet Street, near Johnson's house, looking toward St. Paul's Cathedral. In Johnson's day, Fleet Street was the center of the publishing industry.

Some Entertaining, Food-Related Observations

I kind of like the dandelion and burdock, but to me it tastes like a combination of root beer and cough syrup. My sister told me that burdock is supposed to have medicinal qualities, so this makes sense.

Kit-Kats here are heavenly. Everyone seems to think so and I've tried one and they seem to be much better than American Kit-Kats. We wonder if they use a different kind of chocolate.

Dr. Pepper has a reputation for tasting strange compared to U.S. Dr. Pepper, but I can't tell the difference.

I've also tried 'ginger beer' which actually tastes like sucking on a ginger root, and it's not sweet at all. American ginger ale, by comparison, only vaguely tastes like ginger and it's very sweet.

One of the main differences between food here and in America seems to be that here, things are generally a lot less sweet or a lot less salty. Peanut butter is a good example of something less salty. I've tried two different kinds of peanut butter here and they both taste simply like pureed unsalted peanuts.

Crumpets look like what in America we'd call 'English muffins' but here they remind me of a very thick, spongy pancake. The bottom of one looks exactly like a small pancake! I haven't looked for it myself, but I have heard you cannot find maple syrup here.

Grated Parmesan cheese comes in very tiny canisters and is very expensive. It's precious like gold. There are many other varieties of cheeses here that I'm not too familiar with and have never tried, so I steer away from everything except cheddar.

Other than gerkins, 'pickle' means what I would call 'pickle relish' except that it's brown.

I haven't seen any Mexican restaurants anywhere. I have been craving a giant burrito!

No grape-flavoured anything, which I find surprising. Grapes are sold here, so people must like grapes. I wonder why there are no grape-flavoured products? Blackcurrant has a very similar taste to grape, so I imagine that there may be an organisation of blackcurrant growers who are suppressing the production of anything grape.

All eggs are brown, the shells are very crumbly and, try as I might, whenever I crack one, pieces of shell get in my egg and I have to fish them out. All eggs are English-laid, and they're very expensive relative to eggs in the U.S. -- about double the price. My theory behind this is that there are far fewer egg-producing hens in England than in the U.S., so eggs in England are a more precious commodity.

I just never knew pies or other kinds of meat-with-dough were such rage items. There is an entire aisle at the supermarket devoted to varieties of meat inside of dough. Generally, people in the U.S., when they think of pies, are thinking of dessert -- something with fruit in it, or maybe a cream pie. The exception are pot pies, which only occupy a tiny spot in the American supermarket.

My theory is that American pot pies must be a distant relative of all the different meat pies here. But I noticed that here, each different type of pie or pasty will be filled with no more than two featured ingredients (steak, steak and kidney, chicken and mushroom, pork, cheese and onion pasty, etc.) and if you want variety, it's taken for granted you'll have the steak and kidney today, and tomorrow maybe the chicken and mushroom.

In America, a pot pie is a rare treat, so "chicken pot pie" has chicken, but it also has mushrooms, carrots, peas, onions, maybe in a baked mashed-potato crust. The American pot pie is more of a self-contained full meal (at least if it's on a restaurant menu. The frozen supermarket variety are hardly enough to fill anyone up, but I think they're supposed to). But meat pies here are more like snacks or finger foods, or a very light meal, that you're supposed to eat all the time. This is my theory, anyway!

New Flickr Account

I have a new Flickr account with photos posted of my trip to Italy. Click on the 'flash badge,' or animated icon, on the right side of the page under Dr. Johnson's Links to go to my Flickr page.