The word of the day announced at the reception of Dr. Johnson’s house was “wamble.” It seemed appropriate.
Gale-force winds were buffeting London on the day I chose to revisit one of my favorite haunts in the British capital. Storm Gareth was straining the patience of Londoners as they either tried to keep their feet by bracing themselves bent double against the unforgiving gusts, or were rushed along by the blasts, while looking over their shoulders to dodge trash and signage careening after them.
And there was also the squall of Brexit.
The great Dr. Johnson defined “wamble” as “to roll with sickness.” Later lexicographers would expand it to mean to move unsteadily or to feel nauseated. I prefer Dr. Johnson’s compression, and it fits Brexit better, for the country is lurching drunkenly and making ordinary people sick.
I had come to 17 Gough Square on the west side of the small L-shaped court in a tangle of alleyways just off Fleet Street to seek guidance from the spirit of the great writer, moralist, and essayist. Who better to consult?
Now dwarfed by glass and steel towers of global businesses such as Deloitte, Dr. Johnson’s five-story house, built by a wool merchant in the 17th century, was where I would flee as a young reporter to escape the Sturm und Drang of the newsroom in the bygone days of British print journalism.
I tended to climb the rickety stairs to the room where Johnson would labor with his amanuenses on his monumental Dictionary of the English Language. There I would breathe the bracing air of the 18th century.
I suspect Dr. Johnson would think that most politicians these days fit more neatly into his second definition for politicians, “a man of artifice; one of deep contrivance,” as opposed to the first, “one versed in the arts of government.”
I might venture he would feel a Brexiter is a man who “sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation” and who runs the risk of instigating “the populace with rage beyond the provocation,” destroying “publick” happiness by doing so.
He added in an essay for the Idler, “Few errours and few faults of government, can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to judge of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion.” But then maybe that just betrays my personal feelings and unfairly colors what Dr. Johnson might think.
So none the wiser — my channeling of Johnson is a questionable enterprise — I step out onto Fleet Street, where it all began for me 40 years ago.
And what change.
The grand Telegraph building is still there, but it’s an odd thing now. The imposing front is merely a facade for a modern tech-friendly building where accountants crunch numbers.
I hover in front and remember the dubious legend of the final departure from the building of William Michael Berry, Baron Hartwell. The Berry family had owned the paper since 1928 before it lost control in 1986 to Canadian Conrad Black.
The story goes that Baron Hartwell, no longer having the service of his chauffeur-driven car, was at a loss outside the building about how to get home. Never having had need of taxis, he didn’t know what to do and was saved by a porter who hailed a cab for the nobleman.
Across the road from the Telegraph there is now a supermarket, a Sainsbury’s Local. Four decades ago I am sure my fellow hacks would have considered that an outrageous loss of pub space. They would also have scratched their heads, no doubt, about why one earth any grocer would think he could turn a profit in an era of liquid lunches.
Jamie Dettmer is an international correspondent and broadcaster for VOA.
