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I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy interview, and that in the mean time I am incited by it to piety. I will, however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of devotion.
The passage in which these words are found applies to one day only. It is as follows: 'March 28. This day is Good Friday. It is likewise the day on which my poor Tetty was taken from me. My thoughts were disturbed in bed.
She was ill in Wales, and he, at home, wept upon her pillow, and "took it to be a sin to go to sleep." Thrifty they may call her, and accurate if they will; but she lies in Westminster Abbey, and Steele called her "your Prueship." This paper shall not be headed "Tetty."
Eighteen years after she died he could write in his private note-books that his grief for her was not abated and that he had less pleasure in any good that happened to him, because she could not share it: and in 1782 when she had been dead thirty years, and he was drawing near his own end, he prays for her and after doing so, noted "perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her.
Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury to the memory of her first love, the husband of her youth and the father of her children, to make a second marriage, why should she be precluded from a third, should she be so inclined? In Johnson's persevering fond appropriation of his Tetty, even after her decease, he seems totally to have overlooked the prior claim of the honest Birmingham trader.
Johnson, whom he used to name by the familiar appellation of Tetty or Tetsey, which, like Betty or Betsey, is provincially used as a contraction for Elizabeth, her Christian name, but which to us seems ludicrous when applied to a woman of her age and appearance. Mr.
Harwood, was every morning placed in a small blue and white china saucer which had belonged to his wife, and which he familiarly called 'Tetty. See the inscription on the saucer in the Lichfield Museum. See this subject discussed in a subsequent page, under May 3, 1779. On Feb. 17, Lord North 'made his Conciliatory Propositions. Parl. Hist. xix. 762. See ante, ii 111. See ante, ii. 312.
On this day Johnson recorded in his review of the past year: 'My nights have been commonly, not only restless, but painful and fatiguing. He adds, 'I have written a little of the Lives of the Poets, I think with all my usual vigour.... This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday.
It was almost solely the work of J. himself, and was carried on twice a week for two years. In 1752 his wife, "his dear Tetty" d., and was sincerely mourned; and in 1755 his Dictionary appeared. The work made him famous, and Oxf. conferred upon him the degree of M.A. He had become the friend of Reynolds and Goldsmith; Burke and others were soon added.
Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me."
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