Ah, Christmas. For the Scrooges among us, it is a time of annoyance and awful credit card bills. The leading lights of the Enlightenment were not immune to the horrors of an unpaid bill.
Though Dr. Samuel Johnson, writer of the first really complete English dictionary, fed his famous cat Hodge oysters every morning, it appears the good doctor had some trouble keeping Hodge in milk. Dr. Johnson owed his milkman so much that said milkman tried to have Dr. Johnson arrested and hauled off to Debtor's prison. In reponse, Dr. Johnson put a chain across his door and then dragged his bed down the stairs to use as a barricade, all the while shouting that he would defend his citadel to the last.
The Amateur Historian would not advise adopting this method when Visa, MasterCard, request that you pay for all your Christmas shopping.
About Me
- Elyse
- Amateur Historian, William Pitt the Younger fangirl, follower of Voltaire, admirer of literature, shameless lover of 1930s and 40s costume dramas and believer of Kierkegaardian Christianity. Expect the absurd, the literary, the historical and hopefully the witty. Whether she succeeds in any of them is open to debate.
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