'This,' said Miss Corke, as we emerged from a dark little alley occupied by two unmuzzled small boys and a dog into a dingy rectangle, where the London light came down upon unblinking rows of windows in walls of all colours that get the worse for wear--'this is Gough Court. Dr. Johnson lived here until the death of his wife. You remember that he had a wife, and she died?'
'I have not the least doubt of it,' I replied.
'I've no patience with you!' cried Miss Corke, fervently. 'Well, when she died he was that disconsolate, in spite of his dictionaries, that he couldn't bear it here any longer, and moved away.'
'I don't think that was remarkable,' I said, looking round; to which Miss Corke replied that it was a fine place in those days, and Johnson paid so many pounds, shillings, and pence rent for it every Lady Day. 'I am waiting,' she said, with ironical resignation, 'for you to ask me which house.'
'That yellowish one, at the end, idjit!' said Peter, with exasperation. 'Now, if you please, we'll go!'
I took one long and thoughtful look at the yellowish house at the end, and tried to imagine the compilation of lexicons inside its walls about the year 1748, and turned away feeling that I had done all within my personal ability for the memory of Dr. Johnson. Miss Corke, however, was not of that opinion. 'He moved to Johnson's Court somewhat later,' she said, 'which you must be careful to remember was not named from him. We'll just go there now.'
'Is it far?' I asked; 'because there must be other celebrities----'
'Far!' repeated Miss Corke, with a withering accent; 'not ten minutes' walk! Do the trams run everywhere in America? There may be other celebrities--London is a good place for them--but there's only one Samuel Johnson.'
We went through various crooked ways to Johnson's Court, Miss Corke explaining and reviling at every step. 'We hear' she remarked with fine scorn, 'of intelligent Americans who come over here and apply themselves diligently to learn London! And I've never met a citizen of you yet,' she went on, ignoring my threatening parasol, 'that was not quite satisfied at seeing one of Johnson's houses--houses he lived in! You are a nation of tasters, Miss Mamie Wick of Chicago!' At which I declared myself, for the honour of the Stars and Stripes, willing to swallow any quantity of Dr. Johnson, and we turned into a little paved parallelogram seven times more desolate than the first. Its prevailing idea was soot, relieved by scraps of blackened ivy that twisted along some of the window-sills. I once noticed very clever ivy decorations in iron upon a London balcony, and always afterwards found some difficulty in deciding between that and the natural vine, unless the wind blew. And I would not like to commit myself about the ivy that grew in Johnson s Court. 'Dear me!' said I; 'so he lived here, too! 'I do not transcribe this remark because it struck me as particularly clever, but because it seems to me to be the kind of thing anybody might have said without exciting indignation. But Peter immediately began to fulminate again. 'Yes,' she said, 'he lived here too, miss, at No. 7, as you don't appear to care to know. A little intelligent curiosity.' she continued, apparently appealing to the Samuel Johnson chimneys, 'would be gratifying!'