"'
[288] See _post_, 1739.
[289] Mrs. Johnson was born on Feb. 4, 1688-9. MALONE. She was married
on July 9, 1735, in St. Werburgh's Church, Derby, as is shewn by the
following copy of the marriage register: '1735, July 9, Mar'd Sam'll
Johnson of ye parish of St Mary's in Litchfield, and Eliz'th Porter of
ye parish of St Phillip in Burmingham.' _Notes and Queries_, 4th S. vi.
44. At the time of their marriage, therefore, she was forty-six, and
Johnson only two months short of twenty-six.
[290] The author of the _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr.
Johnson_, 1785, p. 25, says:--'Mrs. Porter's husband died insolvent, but
her settlement was secured. She brought her second husband about seven
or eight hundred pounds, a great part of which was expended in fitting
up a house for a boarding-school.' That she had some money can be almost
inferred from what we are told by Boswell and Hawkins. How other-wise
was Johnson able to hire and furnish a large house for his school?
Boswell says that he had but three pupils. Hawkins gives him a few more.
'His number,' he writes (p. 36) 'at no time exceeded eight, and of those
not all were boarders.' After nearly twenty months of married life, when
he went to London, 'he had,' Boswell says, 'a little money.' It was not
till a year later still that he began to write for the _Gent. Mag_. If
Mrs. Johnson had not money, how did she and her husband live from July
1735 to the spring of 1738? It could scarcely have been on the profits
made from their school.
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