It was March of 1763, and Sir James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck, was drunk.
This had been happening too much lately. He signed into his cup. He had been forced to return home from London yet again after a disastrous love affair with the actress Louisa Lewis. He has entered London full of high resolutions, writing in his journal “I determined to have nothing to do with whores, as my health was of great consequence to me.”
London was the center of everything, of course. He could have anything he wanted, from “a splendid Madam at fifty guineas a night down to the civil nymph ... who tramps along the Strand and will resign her engaging person to your honour for a pint of wine and a shilling.” But unfortunately, the Laird of Auchinleck had never been a rich title, and he had never had much money. Unfortunately for Boswell, the one thing he had in spades was sexual energy—and a tendency to catch gonorrhea. He had boasted to Rousseau (yes, that Rousseau) a year prior
'If I am rich, I can take a number ofgirls. I get them with child, propagation is thus increased. I give them dowries and marry them off to good peasants who are very happy to have them. Thus they become wives at the same age as would have been the case if they had remained virgins, and I, on my side, have had the benefit ofenjoying a great variety of women. . . . I should like to follow the example of the old Patriarchs, worthy men whose memory I hold in respect.' Rousseau would have none of these ideas, telling Boswell that fleshly pleasures were ephemeral compared with spiritual ones and that virtue has its own reward, advice which the latter followed for about a month.
So, he tried to compromise. He decided he would aim a little higher than a common street prostitute and decided to seduce Miss Lewis, who he found to be a fascinating and beautiful actress. Just like everyone else, he was aware that actresses had long been mistresses to the nobility of Britain and France. He had pressed her with presents and gifts, and one day while they chatted she asked to borrow two guineas from him. “Oh my darling,” he had said, foolishly smitten “you may have all ten guineas that I have in my purse, and everything else I may own!”
He laughed bitterly into his wine, remembering what he had written in his diary the night following-- although not cheap, “it cost me as much to be cured of what I contracted from a whore, and that ten guineas was but a moderate expense for women during the winter.” After a month of gifts and visits, he finally managed to get her alone and confess his love to her, pulling her dress and petticoats close to him and felt her face close to his.
“Jamie,” as she had so often called him tenderly “what happens if I get pregnant?”
“It’s not to worry my dear Miss Lewis, I would be a gentleman and see that our child would be well taken care of and raised right.”
This was the right thing to say. She leaned in to kiss him and he kissed her in return….but nothing. Nothing. Damn cock! She cooed at him and sat on his lap, telling him to take it easy and to not stress himself out. In retrospect, it is likely she had had great familiarity with men and knew that sometimes their engines (as he called it) did not work. But eventually, he felt his flagging energies revive and 'was just making a triumphal entry when we heard her landlady coming up.' They composed themselves, met two days later in a seedy tavern and 'Five times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture', for him an unsurpassed feat of which he was extremely proud.
Six days later, however, Boswell felt 'a little heat in the members of my body sacred to Cupid', and by the next day it 'too, too plain was Signor Gonorrhoea' again. When taxed with this unpleasant fact, Louisa confessed that she had been very bad three years ago, but had felt no symptoms for ei!~hteen months, and had slept with no-one but Boswell for six. It seen1s rrtore than likely that she was telling the truth and was an unsuspecting carrier, but Boswell was naturally furious and broke off all relations. 'Thus ended my intrigue with the fair Louisa ... from which I expected at least a winter's safe copulation.
And so he found himself in Edinburgh again. Drunk. He had been living like a monk for the past few months, on bread and water and feeling great pity for himself. His friends had come by to visit him, some even teasing him 'Who in the performance of a manly part would not wish to get claps?' asked his friend, the Judge Advocate of Scotland.
But damn it, he was done. He was don’t trying to be a good person and trying to find a clean woman to call his. The past few weeks had been a blitz of various women and prostitutes in various parks and side alleys. But in each of these encounters he had been trying something new—a recent device imported from France, called a cundum. And ‘for the first time I did engage in armour, which I found but a dull satisfaction.’ Too dull. Indeed, the previous night he picked up 'a fresh agreeable young girl' and took her down a lane to 'a snug place'. 'I took out my armour, but she begged that I might not put it on, as the sport was much pleasanter without it.'
He had been a fool to agree to it, but there had been no serious consequences.
“Hey mister, what are you doing here tonight?” interrupted his thoughts. There were two young women, perhaps early 20s in front of him. He waved them away
“I don’t have coin to spend on the likes of you. If you want to spend time with me, all I offer is my wine and my company.”
They looked at each other and smiled. This was enough for them. They sat down with him. That’s where the details get hazy, he confessed to his diary. One was named Gabrielle, and the other, he could not remember.
Somehow, they ended back up in a tavern room somewhere, rolling around in bed together.
Boswell’s London Journal, PP• 49, 83-4, 89,94-5,97, 17, 139-79, 149, 155, 161. 68. 8, 227., 231,241,262-4, 272-3, 280
Lawrence Stone The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800 p. 570-80