Today in fiction
On Nov. 15, 1957, Madam Emery must pay 80,000 francs by today or lose the umbrella shop.
-- "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)
by Jacques Demy, writer and director
From "The Book of Fictional Days"
Know when something that did not really happen
occurred? Send it to fictiondays@yahoo.com.
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Today in literary history
On this day in 1762, James Boswell left Edinburgh for London, beginning the eight and half month stay that would be recorded in his "London Journal." When this and most of Boswell's other journals -- some 8,000 pages of manuscript -- were discovered in the 1920s and '30s, they earned him a reputation as one of the great British diarists, to go with his "Life of Johnson" and his long-standing reputation as one of the great biographers. Read historically, the highlight of the "J"ournal might be Boswell's first meeting with Samuel Johnson, though it was not auspicious. Having sought out Johnson in his publisher's bookshop, and knowing of his "mortal antipathy at the Scotch," Boswell tried to hide his roots; when found out, he attempted a jest: "Mr. Johnson, indeed I come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." "Sir," said Johnson gloomily, "that, I find, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help."
Read as a 21-year-old's coming-of-age story, one told with candor and conviviality, the "Journal" is even better. Boswell was so excited to escape Edinburgh and his father's upper-class expectations that, seeing London from Highgate Hill, he "gave three huzzas" and burst into song. Here was "the noise, the crowd, the glare of shops and signs"; here "we may be in some degree whatever character we choose"; here was a first meeting with Oliver Goldsmith, here one with David Garrick. And here was the beautiful, 24-year-old actress, Louisa, not one of the "free-hearted ladies" with whom he was already too well-acquainted, but one who might bring "higher felicity" to a man, with "a full indulgence of all the delicate feelings and pleasures both of body and mind, while at the same time in this enchanting union he exults with a consciousness that he is a superior person." And six weeks later, here is how this early chapter in "Bright (Candle) Lights, Big City" ends:
"BOSWELL. Do you know that I have been very unhappy since I saw you?
LOUISA. How so, Sir?
BOSWELL. Why, I am afraid that you don't love me so well, nor have not such a regard for me, as I thought you had.
LOUISA. Nay, dear Sir! (Seeming unconcerned.)
BOSWELL. Pray, Madam, have I no reason?
LOUISA. No, indeed, Sir, you have not.
BOSWELL. Have I no reason, Madam? Pray think.
LOUISA. Sir!
BOSWELL. Pray, Madam, in what state of health have you been in for some time?
LOUISA. Sir, you amaze me ..."
This was Boswell's third encounter with "Signor Gonorrhoea," and though Johnson would advise him to give up this "concubinage," the journals document 15 more.
-- Steve King
To find out more about "Today in Literary History," contact Steve King.
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