Johnson's Household

During Johnson's 1732-33 residence in Birmingham, he befriended Harry and Elizabeth Porter, and often visited their home. He had since returned to Lichfield, but went to Birmingham on learning that Harry had fallen ill in the summer of 1734, and spent many hours at his bedside before Harry died at the age of 43. Less than a year later, Johnson would marry Harry Porter's widow, Elizabeth. It was a match that provoked widespread murmuring, as well as open opposition from Elizabeth's children and Johnson's mother Sarah. "Tetty" was twenty years Johnson's senior, and brought the considerable fortune of £600 to the marriage, while Johnson was penniless and without prospects. For his part, though, Johnson insisted that the marriage was "a love match on both sides." Johnson's only surviving letter to Tetty dates from a time in which they lived apart, their relationship strained. Johnson, having nearly exhausted Tetty's money in his failed attempt to start a school, was in Lichfield to arrange a mortgage on his mother's house, from which he received £20. Having heard that Tetty had fallen and injured her leg, Johnson writes back wracked with guilt: "I shall be very uneasy till I know that You are recovered, and beg that You will omit nothing that can contribute to it ... You have already suffered more than I can bear to reflect upon, and I hope more than either of us shall suffer again." Elizabeth Johnson died on March 25, 1752, just days after inscribing this copy of the just-published Rambler. The copy later passed into the hands of Elizabeth Barber, the wife of Johnson's servant Frank.