John Hawkins (author)

• 1. Introduction

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  Sir John Hawkins was at the bedside of Dr Samuel Johnson when the great man died, a distinction his better-known rival biographer could never claim. James Boswell had been in Scotland for some months. Hawkins was born on the 29th of March 1719 and died on the 21st of May 1789. In his lifetime he worked as a solicitor, served as a magistrate, received a knighthood, and wrote books that outlived him. Yet his name sits in the shadow of other men. Why did a writer who knew Johnson so well lose the contest for posterity? How did an architect's son end up writing a vast history of music? And did the verdict of his own age hold up?

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• 2. Architect to Solicitor

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  John Hawkins grew up expecting to follow his father into architecture. That plan did not last. Before the age of 30, he had built a successful business as a solicitor, a lawyer who handles the affairs of private clients.

  In 1759 he retired from every professional occupation. The cause was a death in his wife's family. Her brother had died, and she received a large inheritance. That windfall made it possible for Hawkins to step away from paid work while still in his forties.

  The next place he settled would put him close to Horace Walpole, a neighbour who also counted among his friends.

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• 3. Highways and Shakespeare

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  Twickenham, in 1760, was where the Hawkins household settled, near the home of Horace Walpole. There Hawkins published an edition of Walton's The Complete Angler; Or, Contemplative Man's Recreation: Being a Discourse On Rivers, Fish-Ponds, Fish, and Fishing.

  In 1763 he put out a document on the state of the Highways. It has since been regarded as the basis for the Highway Act 1835, which came seventy-two years later. A retired solicitor had written something that shaped law long after his own lifetime.

  The year 1771 brought a commission of the peace, and Hawkins began acting as a magistrate for the county of Middlesex. In 1772 he was knighted for his services. He later served as Chairman of the Middlesex Quarter Session.

  The year 1773 added another credit to his name, when he provided the notes for a new Shakespeare edition. A far larger work of his was about to reach print in 1776.

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• 4. Sixteen Years of Music

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  A General History of the Science and Practice of Music cost Hawkins 16 years of work. It appeared in 1776, and readers at first treated it with some respect.

  That respect did not last, because Charles Burney was publishing a rival work. His General History of Music came out in volumes between 1776 and 1789. Burney's version gradually pushed Hawkins aside.

  Dr Callcott helped the process along by composing a mocking song against Hawkins. Ridicule set to music proved a powerful way to damage a book.

  Later generations reversed the judgment. Hawkins's music history came to be seen as the better of the two, and readers were invited to compare the 1875 edition of his work. Burney's treatment of Handel and Bach was viewed as particularly inadequate.

  Another major book of Hawkins's, this one written for a friend, would soon meet a similar fate.

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• 5. Johnson's Circle

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  Dr Samuel Johnson's various clubs counted Hawkins among their members. He was a friend of Johnson himself, and moved in the same literary world as Horace Walpole.

  The Literary Club was where that closeness came apart. Hawkins left it after a disagreement with some of Johnson's other friends. The quarrel was with that wider circle, not with Johnson.

  Johnson's own friendship with Hawkins carried on regardless. When the time came to settle Johnson's affairs, his will named Hawkins as one of its executors.

  Johnson's death would soon bring Hawkins a second, more public task.

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• 6. The First Life

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  Thomas Cadell and William Strahan approached Hawkins only hours after Johnson died. They wanted two things from him: a biography and an edition of Johnson's works.

  Hawkins delivered the Life of Samuel Johnson in 1787. It was the first full-length biography of its subject.

  Boswell's book of the same title appeared four years later. It was much longer and livelier, and it has largely eclipsed Hawkins's version for everyone except specialists.

  But Hawkins had known Johnson since the 1740s, roughly twice as long as Boswell had. Boswell borrowed from his predecessor freely. Hawkins also handled some aspects of Johnson better, particularly the strongly religious side of the man.

  Hawkins's household produced at least one more published writer, and she was not a biographer.

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• 7. Sidney and the Children

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  In 1753 Hawkins married the heiress Sidney Storer. She lived from 1726 to 1793 and was the second daughter of the attorney Peter Storer.

  The couple had four children who lived to be named in the record, though two daughters died in infancy. The surviving children were two sons, John Sidney Hawkins and Henry, and a daughter, Laetitia Hawkins. Laetitia became a novelist.

  Sidney outlived her husband by four years, dying in 1793.

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