The pleasures of intimacy in friendship depend far more on external circumstances than people of a sentimental turn of mind are willing to concede; and when constant companionship ceases to suit the convenience of both parties, the chances are that it will be dropped on the first favourable opportunity.  Admiration, esteem, or affection may continue to be felt for one whom, from altered habits or new ties, we can no longer receive as an inmate or an established member of the family.  Johnson was now in his seventy-fourth year, haunted by the fear of death, and fond of dwelling nauseously on his ailments and proposed remedies.  From what passed at Brighton, it would seem that there were moods in which he was positively unbearable, and could not be received in a house without driving every one else out of it.  In a roomy mansion like Streatham he might be endured, because he could be kept out of the way; but in an ordinary town-house or small establishment, such a guest would resemble an elephant in a private menagerie.

There is also a very great difference, when arrangements are to be made for the domestication of a male visitor, between a family with a male head, and one consisting exclusively of females.  Let any widow with daughters make the case her own, and imagine herself domesticated in Argyll or Harley Street with the lexicographer.  The manly authority of Thrale was required to keep Johnson in order quite as much as to steady the imputed flightiness of the lady; and his idolaters must really remember that she was a sentient being, with feelings and affections which she was fully entitled to consult in arranging her scheme of life.  When Lord Macaulay and his school tacitly assume that these are to weigh as dust in the balance against the claims of learning, they argue like sundry upholders of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, who contend that his subjects should complacently endure any amount of oppression rather than endanger (what they deem) the vital interests of the Church.  When it is maintained that the discomfort was amply repaid by the glory he conferred, we are reminded of what the Strasbourg goose undergoes for fame:  “Crammed with food, deprived of drink, and fixed near a great fire, before which it is nailed with its feet upon a plank, this goose passes, it must be owned, an uncomfortable life.  The torment would indeed be intolerable, if the idea of the lot which awaits him did not serve as a consolation.  But when he reflects that his liver, bigger than himself, loaded with truffles, and clothed in a scientific pate, will, through the instrumentality of M. Corcellet, diffuse all over Europe the glory of his name, he resigns himself to his destiny, and suffers not a tear to flow."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Almanach des Gourmands.]

Her case for a separation de corps is thus stated in the “Anecdotes “: