Black Dog

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Black Dogs, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 2 April 2014

He came from Malta; and Eumelus says
He had no better dog in all his days.
We called him Bull; he went into the dark.
Along those roads we cannot hear him bark.

Tymnes: The Dog from Malta, of uncertain date, perhaps third century BC (?): from The Greek Anthology, translated by Edmund Blunden in Halfway House: A Miscellany of New Poems, 1932

On 17 June 1783, Samuel Johnson, long afflicted with poor circulation, suffered a stroke. He wrote to a neighbor, James Allen, that he had lost the power of speech. Two days later, after doctors had been brought in, he was again able to speak. Still Johnson feared he was dying. In his diary he wrote:

The black dog I hope always to resist, and in time to drive [off], though I am deprived of almost all those that used to help me. The neighbourhood is impoverished. I had once Richardson and Lawrence in my reach. Mrs. Allen is dead. My house has lost Levet, a man who took interest in everything, and therefore ready at conversation. Mrs. Williams is so weak that she can be a companion no longer. When I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it, from breakfast to dinner he continues barking, except that Dr. Brocklesby for a little keeps him at a distance. Dinner with a sick woman you may venture to suppose not much better than solitary. After dinner, what remains but to count the clock, and hope for that sleep which I can scarce expect. Night comes at last, and some hours of restlessness and confusion bring me again to a day of solitude. What shall exclude the black dog from an habitation like this?

Judy looks for UFOs in Stoneybatter: photo by Bruners, 23 September 2009

In his final years Johnson the diarist was in the habit of recording in detail his multiple physical and psychological symptoms, scrutinizing his state of soul and body to a fine point, noting everything down, inscribing the more intimately personal entries in Latin. His troubled hours in the dark are often the subject of these entries. The scruples, spiritual misgivings and self-questionings that had long haunted him now continually hovered over his meditations. He toiled to keep his mind clear, and to trust in Providence. Still... night must fall.

IMG_8807 (dogs, Xoloscuintle): photo by locaburg, 7 December 2005

The black dog was keeping an unwanted watch at his door.

DSCF8927 (Playa Trocones): photo by locaburg, 22 December 2013

He was vexed by gout and asthma, and too by dropsy (edema), chronic complaints for which he consumed squills, a diuretic herb then commonly employed to relieve the discomfort caused by fluid retention. He also self-medicated with diacodium, a syrup extracted from opium poppies. The opium became an increasingly necessary palliative. Still the release into sleep often eluded him. In the late summer of 1784 his distress was acute. On the night of 26 July he noted the presence of a "tristitia gravissima," or terrible sadness, weighing him down awfully.

Samuel Johnson diary page, 26 July 1784 (facsimile): from the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Houghton Library, Harvard

By the end of the year he was failing. There was now serious difficulty in breathing. He sat up in a chair through sleepless nights, deeply uneasy, labouring to get the thick air into his clogged lungs. Anxious friends insisted he hire a man to stay up with him. The man proved "sleepy as a dormouse"; while he dozed off, the restless Johnson watched; characteristically generous, he paid the useless man anyway. 

 Dog (Los Angeles): photo bymichaelj1998, 7 April 2014

His last literary activity was a kind of therapeutic doodling: he passed the trying nocturnal hours by translating poems from the Greek Anthology into Latin verse; the schoolmaster in him had never been far from the mischievous schoolboy. Was one of these the epigram of Tymnes?

He came from Malta; and Eumelus says
He had no better dog in all his days.
We called him Bull; he went into the dark.
Along those roads we cannot hear him bark.

His attempts to rise and move about by day, a stubborn bid to retain something of himself -- "I will be conquered. I will not capitulate" -- had come to an end by the beginning of December. He dictated a will and insisted on having many private records and papers, including the two quarto volumes containing his careful history of his own life, put to the fire. On 12 December he ordered a surgeon to lance his legs to drain fluid to relieve the dropsy which was now affecting his feet. When the surgeon declined to cut deeply enough to satisfy him, Johnson managed to get hold of scissors, and had a go himself, sustaining heavy bleeding in the process.  

snowhere: photo by Jordi Huisman, 5 May 2010

The next evening, as he drifted into delirium with the falling of the early London darkness, was the black dog following him at a distance, coming close then hanging back, vigilant and alert, always waiting now again outside his door for the solitary call?

Black dog, liquid metal (Ocean Grove, New Jersey): photo by nosha, 29 December 2013

Black strong and handsome - what a dog! #blackdog: image via frank ferreira @Bleu1995, 3 October 2014