Envisioning the Smaller World of the Great Dr. Johnson

At one point in literary history, writers seemed so obsessed with the necessity of “making it new,” that readers suffered from a sense of vertigo after being hurled so precipitately into the future (or, at any rate, the avant-garde).

Yet over the last few decades, an increasing number of novelists, American and British, have been turning to the historical past in search of inspiration and material: Gore Vidal (“Burr,” “Lincoln,” “1876”), E.L. Doctorow (“Ragtime,” “World’s Fair”), Peter Ackroyd (“Hawksmoor,” “Chatterton”) and Hilary Mantel (“The Giant, O’Brien,” “A Place of Greater Safety”), to name a few.

Among the notable practitioners of this genre is British novelist Beryl Bainbridge, who started out in her teens as an actress, publishing her first novel in her 30s.

Black comedy, bizarre crimes and odd narrative viewpoints were some of the hallmarks of her early novels, and when she turned her attention to historical subjects, from “Young Adolf” (Hitler, that is) to Capt. Scott’s polar expedition (“The Birthday Boys”), her flair for impersonation and dramatization found yet another outlet.

Her latest effort, “According to Queeney,” is based on the relationship between the illustrious 18th century man of letters, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Hester Thrale, the charming, sharp-tongued wife of a wealthy brewer.

The “Queeney” in question is the Thrales’ oldest daughter, a clever, observant girl who is not easily impressed by anything or anyone: not even the great Johnson and certainly not her own mother.

Although the book’s title might lead one to suppose that the story is told entirely from Queeney’s perspective, only parts of it are. What Bainbridge has given us here is a group portrait with a shrewd sense of the interplay among the group’s members.

When Johnson became acquainted with the Thrales in 1765 (two years after he first met his friend, admirer and future biographer, James Boswell), he was a famous man in his 50s: The long years of obscurity and struggle were behind him. But he was also a melancholy widower who sorely missed his wife.

The Thrales welcomed him at their handsome, well-appointed home, where he became a frequent houseguest. Mrs. Thrale would pen her “Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson” not long after their relationship had ended, in the wake of Mr. Thrale’s death and her marriage to an Italian singer named Piozzi, which did not please Johnson at all.

The man who wrote “The Vanity of Human Wishes” is an apt focus for Bainbridge’s deft portrait of a motley group of individuals whose desires and expectations are usually at cross-purposes with one another’s.

First and foremost, there is Johnson, who would never think of dishonoring his friend Thrale, but who clearly enjoys the feminine attentions he gets from Mrs. Thrale.

Then, we have the little group of people who share Johnson’s lodgings, including two ladies who have a tendresse for him and a keen dislike of one another: the practical Mrs. Desmoulins and the blind poetess Anna Williams. Both seem to have some hope that he may still turn to them. Indeed, although Mrs. Thrale does not seem to want Johnson for herself even after she loses her husband, the mere rumor that Johnson was once interested in Anna Williams distresses her. Johnson, meanwhile, is appalled to realize that the widow Thrale plans to bestow herself upon Piozzi.

The “pernicious” notion that the world has “a great deal to offer” is, according to Bainbridge’s Johnson, “an expectation taken from fiction rather than fact.” (It’s not, however, an expectation fostered by most of Bainbridge’s own fiction.) But although Bainbridge clearly feels an affinity for Johnson’s pessimistic view of the world, one cannot accuse her of putting the worst construction on the characters and events she treats in this novel.

Certainly, it is not a pretty picture she paints: Most of the adults in the Johnson-Thrale circle seem foolish and vain, the self-possessed Queeney is a chilly little thing, and Johnson is often self-absorbed to the point of dottiness. But Bainbridge has not stooped to sensationalizing her material, nor has she taken any outrageous liberties with the facts. Her dialogue and descriptions subtly and skillfully convey a sense not only of the period but of the personalities.

Johnson’s greatness is the one thing she fails to convey. If her novel has a theme, it is not greatness, but human limitations: Her characters are beset by vanity, self-delusion, foolishness, envy, sickness, depression, anxiety and sorrow. Aptly enough, however, it is a theme Johnson himself might have approved.