Multiplied

by Sparrow and illustrations by Mike Dubisch, March 11, 2009

 

Marco,
Today I realized I would like to live with many people—a very numerous household. But I want quiet individuals: many, silent people. Perhaps these roommates of mine will not speak English. Thus, I will not be disturbed by their conversation. Albanians would be perfect.

They are quiet, muttering, and often Muslim. I would like to share my life with soft-spoken and devotional Albanians.

I began thinking this while reading Macaulay’s essay on Samuel Johnson.

Johnson was poor (a scholarship student at Oxford) for 30 years. Twice in the year after he published his dictionary he was “arrested and carried to spunging-houses” (which I think are “poorhouses”) for indebtedness. However, in 1762 “a great change in his circumstances took place.” George III ascended to the throne, and provided him a pension of three hundred pounds a year.

Soon after, Johnson formed a little commune—”the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together.” Macaulay explains: “At the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an old lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange menagerie. All these poor creatures were at constant war with each other, and with Johnson’s negro servant Frank.”

We see gold so often—perhaps every day. Yet if you add up all the gold you have seen—earrings, the edges of books, Russian icons, wedding rings, gold-plated candlesticks—in your whole life, that is less than a pound of gold.

Watchfully,
Sparrow