Porter, the widow of a mercer at Birmingham, and daughter of William
Jervis, Esq. of Great Peatling, in Leicestershire. This woman, who was
twenty years older than himself, and to whose daughter he had been an
unsuccessful suitor, brought him eight hundred pounds; but, according to
Garrick's report of her, was neither amiable nor handsome, though that
she was both in Johnson's estimation appears from the epithets
"formosae, cultae, ingeniosae," which he inscribed on her tombstone.
Their nuptials were celebrated at Derby, and to that town they went
together on horseback from Birmingham; but the bride assuming some airs
of caprice on the road, like another Petruchio he gave her such
effectual proofs of resolution, as reduced her to the abjectness of
shedding tears. His first project after his marriage was to set up a
school; and, with this intention, he hired a very commodious house, at
the distance of about two miles from Lichfield, called Edial Hall, which
has lately been taken down, and of which a representation is to be seen
in the History of Lichfield, by Mr. Harwood. One of my friends, who
inhabited it for the same purpose, has told me that an old countryman
who lived near it, and remembered Johnson and his pupil Garrick, said to
him, "that Johnson was not much of a scholar to look at, but that master
Garrick was a strange one for leaping over a stile." It is amusing to
observe the impressions which such men make on common minds.
Unfortunately the prejudice occasioned by Johnson's unsightly exterior
was not confined to the vulgar, insomuch that it has been thought to be
the reason why so few parents committed their children to his care, for
he had only three pupils. This unscholarlike appearance it must have
been that made the bookseller in the Strand, to whom he applied for
literary employment, eye him archly, and recommend it to him rather to
purchase a porter's knot. But, as an old philosopher has said, every
thing has two handles. It was, perhaps, the contrast between the body
and the mind, between the incultum corpus, and the ingenium, which