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The Chris Hodgkins QuartetBoswell's London JournalChris Hodgkins - TRUMPET
1. The Machine (3.09)
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 Order Boswell's London Journal by the Chris Hodgkins Quartet from Jazz CDs 
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ALL TITLES COMPOSED BY Chris Hodgkins and Eddie Harvey
PUBLISHED BY Paul Rodriguez Music Ltd (PRS)
ARRANGEMENTS by Eddie Harvey
PRODUCED AND ENGINEERED by Malcolm Creese and BobWhitney at audio-b.com
Website: www.chrishodgkins.co.uk Email: chris@bellcds.com
BELLCD 512
Chris’ most ambitious project to date is the album Boswell’s London Journal, a suite of 15 tunes co-composed by Chris Hodgkins and Eddie Harvey (who also did the arrangements). James Boswell, best known as the biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson, kept a daily diary between the years 1762 and 1763; this account of a very different London to today, as seen through the eyes of a 22 year old Scot, provides the inspiration for the album.
Boswell’s London Journal includes a piece entitled London, evoking Boswell’s arrival at Highgate Hill and his first view of the capital city. The Meeting commemorates Boswell’s not entirely successful first encounter with Dr Johnson on 16 May 1763. Friendship flourished however, and High Exultation documents the evening of 25 June 1763 on which Boswell and Dr Johnson wine, dine and discuss such things as ghosts, poetry, fathers and sons, and going abroad; Boswell retiring home ‘in high exultation’. Greenwich Excursion was inspired by Boswell and Johnson’s boat trip down the Thames to Greenwich; Most Miserably Melancholy charts one of the author’s recurring bouts of depression. Boswell’s London Journal offers an emotionally charged landscape that amply illustrates the human condition, from the low and the vulgar to profound conversations with Samuel Johnson; the real-life incidents in the London Journal offered the composers a wealth of rich material for the album’s 15 original tunes.
Reviews
01/01/2009 Jack Massarik
...talented trumpeter, Chris Hodgkins, who plays in the unfashionable classic style of Ruby Braff and the great Louis Armstrong... this is his best album yet... a tuneful tribute to Dr Johnson's biographer, craftily arranged and gracefully played
Jack Massarik on Boswell’s London Journal, Evening Standard Jazz CD of the Week
Sleeve Notes by Terence Hawkes:
1. The Machine (22 April 1763)
Planning a jaunt to Oxford, Boswell took himself to the Blue Bell and Crown in Holborn, where what he called "the machine" - a stagecoach - pulled up. He ordered a room for the night and was hurt at the bed's "not being so neat and agreeable as my own." It hardly made much difference. Between five and six a.m. the next day the machine set out. It took twelve hours.
2. Most Miserably Melancholy (12 March 1763)
Sometimes depression took its toll. "This was one of the blackest days that I ever passed. I was most miserably melancholy." Boswell thought of going abroad to Spain, to France, to Italy. Then he thought of changing his lodgings. He even "looked up and down the bottom of Holborn and towards Fleet Ditch for an out-of-the-way-place. How very absurd are such conceits". In the end he went to visit Lady Betty and Lady Anne, had supper, drinks and spoke of ghosts. By then he was too frightened to go home and stayed with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, a bashful, indolent, and out-of-funds officer, also subject to fits of depression.
3. Wilkes (Tuesday 24 May 1763)
Boswell met John Wilkes through the author Bonnell Thornton. Famously dissolute, the cross-eyed, ugly Wilkes was the M.P. for Aylesbury and violently against the government of Lord Bute. He edited an anti-administration pamphlet called The North Briton where, in issue number 45, he denounced the King's speech and was arrested. He was then expelled from Parliament for publishing an obscene libel, The Essay on Women. He retired to Paris. From there he was on three occasions elected M.P. for Middlesex, although in each case his election was annulled. He finally acquired the seat in 1774 and was also made Lord Mayor. A popular hero in the cause of freedom, he advocated many important legal rights, including the freedom of the press. Boswell liked this "lively, facetious" man and his witty meeting with his old friend Dr. Johnson on 15 May 1776 was ably recorded by him.
4. Auchinleck (11 December 1762)
Boswell was the son of Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, a Scottish judge whose family estate derived from Ayrshire. On his father's death 1782, Boswell inherited the home and buildings at Auchinleck House. He was extremely fond of the place and wanted to end his days there: "...by laying up agreeable ideas to feast upon in recollection. Thus shall I perhaps enjoy a serene felicity at the delightful Auchinleck, the ancient seat of a long line of worthy ancestors." His last years were devoted to The Life of Samuel Johnson LI.D which appeared in 1791, and he hopes to deposit his diary in the archives: "I told Mr. Johnson that I put down all sorts of little incidents in it." "Sir", said he. "there is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible."
5. King's Birth Night (4 June 1763)
On the night of the King's birthday, wearing his oldest suit, with "a little round hat with tarnished silver lace belonging to a disbanded officer of the Royal Volunteers", he armed himself with an "old oaken stick" and pretended to be "a complete blackguard". Still, he remained sure that in spite of his dress, he "was always taken for a gentleman in disguise". He "came home about two o'clock, much fatigued"
6. Repent at Leisure (19-20 January 1763)
A jolly party with friends, some wine, some beefsteak, and a lively visit to a theatre. All this looked promising. But Boswell, who thought he had taken a cold, found himself sadly in the presence, indeed in the grip, of Signor Gonorrhoea. Presumably its source - he had unwisely been boasting to his companions - was "my ideal lady". This was, horror of horrors, Louisa.
7. The Meeting (16 May 1763)
Boswell's first encounter with Dr. Johnson was almost a disaster. Introduced as a Scot he said "Mr. Johnson indeed
I come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." Johnson was unmerciful. "Sir" he replied, "that, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help." A well-placed knee in the groin might have been a proper riposte, but Boswell was made of sterner stuff. He remarked that "I shall mark what I remember of his conversation", whilst commenting that Johnston was "a man of most dreadful appearance ... troubled with sore eyes, the palsy, and the King's evil". This meant he had scrofula. But true friendship prospered none the less. Nowadays, the Scottish Parliament would probably have had Johnson locked up as a danger to public health.
8. Greenwich Excursion (30 July 1763)
Boswell and Johnson took a boat and "sailed down the silver Thames" eventually to Greenwich. There Boswell celebrated Johnson's London: a Poem by reading the passage devoted to the banks of the Thames. Then he literally "kissed the consecrated earth" on which the two of them stood. It seems he had prepared the scene and had a copy of the poem in his pocket. Johnson said nothing. Then he changed the subject. Oh dear.
9. Vauxhall Gardens (13 June 1763)
A riotous night in the park at Vauxhall Gardens. These were on the Surrey side of the Thames, a short distance from Vauxhall Bridge. The bright lights, the pomaded walks, the music, the food and drink, were all "quite delicious", and Boswell light-heartedly joined a quarrel between a customer and a waiter. It ended with a constable arriving to sort out the riot and Boswell seizing the officer's baton and tapping people on the head with the cry "A ring - a ring".
He was not arrested.
10. London (19 November 1762)
Arriving at Highgate Hill, Boswell suddenly had his first view of the capital city. It almost overwhelmed him: "I was all life and joy" he said, whilst the glare of shops and signs "agreeably confused" him. He drove wildly along Water Lane and Fleet Street and composed a fitting song to match his spirits:
"She gave me this, I gave her that; And tell me, had she not tit for tat"
A young man's fancy has never been better defined. Or his downfall.
11. Peggy Doig (28 July 1763)
"I should also have mentioned some time ago that Peggy Doig, the mother of my little boy, is in town." Yes he should have. Boswell received word that he was a father in November 1762, soon after his arrival in London. But this is the only time he mentions the mother's full name. He met her in Edinburgh in January, 1762, calling her "the most curious young little pretty" but he left Scotland before the birth. The boy was called Charles. He was given to a foster-mother and supplied with a nurse. Boswell claimed that the baby "shall always find me an affectionate father". But in fact he never saw Charles, as the boy died in February 1764.
12. Turk's Head Conversations (22 July 1763)
You could never shut Dr. Johnson up, particularly at the The Turk's Head Coffee House. It was just off the Strand, near Covent Garden and he found "better entertainment there" than at the Mitre. All aspects of life drew his attention. He loved, he said, the acquaintance of young people because young men have more virtue than old men ... I love the young dogs of this age: they have more wit and humour and knowledge of life than we had. But then the dogs are not so good scholars . ." He insisted that men recognised social status, those "fixed, invariable external rules of distinction of rank, which create no jealousy, as they are allowed to be accidental." He claims to have remarked to one woman that "I was quite a convert to her republican system, and thought mankind all upon a footing; and I begged her that her footman might be allowed to dine with us. She has never liked me since". When Boswell complained of his hereditary melancholy, "He advised me to have constant occupation of mind, to take a good deal of exercise, and to live moderately; especially to shun drinking at night." Melancholy people, he said, "are apt to fly to intemperance, which gives a momentary relief but sinks the soul much lower in misery." There is no record that Boswell followed this counsel.
13. Louisa (14 December 1762)
Louisa has no memorial other than in Boswell's diary. She was an actress, and played the Queen in Hamlet, and Mrs. Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor. But although Boswell enjoyed "free-hearted ladies of all kinds" Louisa really bowled him over. He called to see her. They chatted about this and that. She invited him to tea. He jumped at the chance: "I fixed Thursday, and left her, very well satisfied with my first visit".
14. High Exultation (2 June 1763)
An evening spent with Dr. Johnson, first at dinner, when he got into a dispute about black people with an Irishman, and then at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street, when they considered such things as ghosts, poetry, fathers and sons, and going abroad. Johnson recommended that Boswell should visit Spain where his "useful observations" might be valued. Boswell was delighted by this interest in him: "We sat till between one and two and finished a couple of bottles of port. I went home in high exultation."
15. Roaring Psalms (15 May 1763)
Boswell attended a service in Ludgate church "with patience and satisfaction". However, after a meal with friends he went to Dr. Fordyce's meeting in Monkwell Street to hear Dr. Blair preach. Sadly, "Blair's New Kirk delivery and the Dissenters roaring out the Psalms sitting on their backsides, together with the extempore prayers" had the reverse effect. In truth, "the whole vulgar idea of the Presbyterian worship made me very gloomy". Boswell hastened to St. Paul's where the conclusion of the service "had my mind set right again"
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