Francis Barber
In later years he had acted as Johnson's assistant in revising his famous Dictionary of the English Language and other works.
He served as a "landsman" aboard various ships, received regular pay and good reports, saw the coast of Britain from Leith to Torbay, and acquired a taste for tobacco.
He was discharged "three days before George II died", in other words on 22 October 1760, and returned to London and to Johnson to be his servant.
[3] Barber's brief maritime career is known from James Boswell's Life of Johnson: His negro servant, Francis Barber, having left him, and been some time at sea, not pressed as has been supposed, but with his own consent, it appears from a letter to John Wilkes, Esq., from Dr. Smollet, that his master kindly interested himself in procuring his release from a state of life of which Johnson always expressed the utmost abhorrence.
His black servant, whose name is Francis Barber, has been pressed on board the Stag Frigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress.
He says the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for his Majesty's service.
He was humble enough to desire my assistance on this occasion, though he and I were never cater-cousins; and I gave him to understand that I would make application to my friend Mr. Wilkes, who, perhaps, by his interest with Dr. Hay and Mr. Elliot, might be able to procure the discharge of his lacquey.
It would be superfluous to say more on the subject, which I leave to your own consideration; but I cannot let slip this opportunity of declaring that I am, with the most inviolable esteem and attachment, dear Sir, Your affectionate, obliged, humble servant,
Mr. Wilkes, who upon all occasions has acted, as a private gentleman, with most polite liberality, applied to his friend Sir George Hay, then one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty; and Francis Barber was discharged, as he has told me, without any wish of his own.
From Boswell's Life: His sincere regard for Francis Barber, his faithful negro servant, made him so desirous of his further improvement, that he now placed him at a school at Bishop Stortford, in Hertfordshire.
Johnson, in fact, left £750 (equivalent to £116,000 in 2023) in the trust of his friend Bennet Langton from which he was expected to pay an annuity.
[8] Barber moved with his family to a rented terrace house in Lichfield, Johnson's birthplace, where – as a Gentleman's Magazine correspondent reported – he spent his time "in fishing, cultivating a few potatoes, and a little reading".
