Shared memories

When the great Samuel Johnson was 30 months old, his mother took him to be touched by Queen Anne in a ceremony thought to alleviate the King’s Evil, a tubercular affliction. His confused memory was of “a lady in diamonds and a long black hood” and, more clearly, of a dog called Chops “that leaped over a stick”. He then reflected: “I know not whether I remember the thing, or the talk of it.” Scientists would think his caution wise, for a new study of 6,000 early memories finds that 40 per cent are erroneous or impossible. A memory of a pram, typically, may come from photos or family conversation. That may not be so bad. Later memories will be true, but if the earliest come from family influence, then, for good or ill, they place us among the very people from whom we took ideas and life itself.