DOCTOR JOHNSON 103 



character of roadside village. A good deal earlier than 

 Dr. Samuel Johnson's visits to Streatham and Thrale 

 Place, the village had quite a rosy chance of becoming 

 another Tunbridge Wells or Cheltenham, for in the 

 early vears of the eighteenth centurv it became known 

 as a Spa, and real and imaginary invalids flocked to 

 drink the disagreeable waters issuing from what 

 quaint old Aubrey calls the " sower and weeping 

 ground ' by the Common. Whether the waters were 

 too nasty, or not nasty enough, does not appear, but 

 it is certain that the rivalry of Streatham to those 

 other Spas was neither long-continued nor serious. 



Streatham is content to forget its waters, but the 

 memory of Dr. Johnson will not be dropped, for if it 

 were, no one knows to what quarter Streatham could 

 turn for any history or traditions at all. As it is, the 

 mind's-eye picture is cherished of that grumbling, 

 unwieldy figure coming down from London to Thrale's 

 house, to be lionised and indulged, and in return to 

 give Mrs. Thrale a reflected glory. The lion had the 

 manners of a bear, and, like a dancing bear, performed 

 clumsy evolutions for buns and cakes ; but he had a 

 heart as tender as a child's, and a simple vanity as 

 engaging, beneath that unpromising exterior and those 

 pompous ways. Wig awry and singed in front from 

 his short-sighted porings over the midnight oil, clothes 

 shabby, and linen that journeyed only at long intervals to 

 the wash-tub, his was not the aspect of a carpet-knight, 

 and those he met at the literary-artistic tea-table of 

 Thrale Place murmured that he was an "original." 



He met a brilliant company over those teacups : 

 Reynolds and Garrick, and Fanny Burney— the 

 readiest hand at the " management " of one so difficult 

 and intractable — and many lesser lights, and partook 

 there of innumerable cups of tea, dispensed at that 

 hospitable board by Mrs. Thrale. That historic tea- 

 pot is still extant, and has a capacity of three quarts ; 

 specially chosen, doubtless, in view of the Doctor's 

 visits. Ye gods ! what floods of Bohea were consumed 

 within that house in Thrale Park ! 



