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Francis Barber
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Francis Barber (ca. 1735 – 1801) was the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson's death in 1784. Johnson made him his residual heir, with £70 a year to be given him by Trustees, expressing the wish that he move from London to Lichfield in Staffordshire, Johnson's native city. After Johnson's death in 1784, Barber did this, opening a draper's shop and marrying a local woman. Barber was also left Johnson's books and papers, and a gold watch.
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Francis Barber (ca. 1735 – 1801) was the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson's death in 1784. Johnson made him his residual heir, with £70 a year to be given him by Trustees, expressing the wish that he move from London to Lichfield in Staffordshire, Johnson's native city. After Johnson's death in 1784, Barber did this, opening a draper's shop and marrying a local woman. Barber was also left Johnson's books and papers, and a gold watch. In later years he had acted as Johnson's assistant in revising his famous Dictionary and other works.
Biography
Barber was born a slave on a sugar plantation in Jamaica belonging to the Bathurst family. At the age of about 15, he was brought to England by his owner, Colonel Richard Bathhurst, whose son, also called Richard, was a close friend of Johnson. He was sent to school in Yorkshire. Johnson's wife Elizabeth Porter died in 1752, plunging Johnson into a depression that Barber later vividly described to James Boswell. The Bathursts sent Barber to Johnson as a valet, arriving two weeks after her death. Although the legal validity of slavery in England was ambiguous at this time (with the Somersett's Case of 1772 clarifying that it did not exist in England) when the elder Bathurst died two years later he gave Barber his freedom in his will, with a small legacy of £12. Johnson himself was an outspoken opponent of slavery, not just in England but in the American colonies as well.
Royal Navy
Barber then went to work for an apothecary in Cheapside but kept in touch with Johnson. He later signed up as a sailor for the Navy, until retrieved, perhaps against his wishes, by Johnson, returning to be his servant. Barber's brief maritime career is known from James Boswell's Life of Johnson:
Later Johnson put Barber, by then in his early thirties, in a school, presumably so that he could act as Johnson's assistant. From Boswell's Life:
Later years
Barber is often mentioned in James Boswell's Life of Johnson and other contemporary sources, and there are at least two versions of a portrait, one now in Dr. Johnson's House, which may be of him. Most recent art historians thought it was probably painted by James Northcote, or perhaps by Northcote's master Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was one of Barber's Trustees under the will. An alternative view, recently expressed on a BBC programme, is that it is by Reynolds himself, but of his own black servant, not Barber.
When making his will, Johnson asked Sir John Hawkins, later his first biographer, what provision he should make for Barber. Sir John said that a nobleman would give 50 pounds a year. Then I shall be "noblissimus" replied Johnson, and give him £70. Hawkins disapproved, and after Johnson's death criticised his "ostentatious bounty and favour to negroes." The bequest was indeed widely covered in the press.
Barber's life in Staffordshire was unsettled, and he was apparently given to drinking. He died in Stafford; his descendants still farm near Lichfield.
See also
External links
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