Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi Part 11

"She is sadly faded, and looked disturbed and unhappy but still beautiful, though no longer blooming; and still affectionate, though absent and evidently absorbed. We had a little chat together about the Thrales. In mentioning our former intimacy with them, 'Ah, those,' she cried, 'were happy times!' and her eyes glistened. Poor thing! hers has been a lamentable story!--Imprudence and vanity have rarely been mixed with so much sweetness, and good-humour, and candour, and followed with more reproach and ill success. We agreed to renew acquaintance next winter; at present she will be little more in town."

In a letter to Madame D'Arblay, Oct. 20, 1820, Mrs. Piozzi says: "Fell, the bookseller in Bond Street, told me a fortnight or three weeks ago, that Miss Streatfield lives where she did in his neighbourhood, Clifford Street, S.S. still." On the 18th January, 1821: "'The once charming S.S. had inquired for me of Nornaville and Fell, the Old Bond Street book-sellers, so I thought she meditated writing, but was deceived."

The story she told the author of "Piozziana," in proof of Johnson's want of firmness, clearly refers to this lady:

"I had remarked to her that Johnson's readiness to condemn any moral deviation in others was, in a man so entirely before the public as he was, nearly a proof of his own spotless purity of conduct. She said, 'Yes, Johnson was, on the whole, a rigid moralist; but he could be ductile, I may say, servile; and I will give you an instance. We had a large dinner-party at our house; Johnson sat on one side of me, and Burke on the other; and in the company there was a young female (Mrs.

Piozzi named her), to whom I, in my peevishness, thought Mr. Thrale superfluously attentive, to the neglect of me and others; especially of myself, then near my confinement, and dismally low-spirited; notwithstanding which, Mr. T. very unceremoniously begged of me to change place with Sophy ----, who was threatened with a sore throat, and might be injured by sitting near the door. I had scarcely swallowed a spoonful of soup when this occurred, and was so overset by the coa.r.s.eness of the proposal, that I burst into tears, said something petulant--that perhaps ere long, the lady might be at the head of Mr. T.'s table, without displacing the mistress of the house, &c., and so left the apartment. I retired to the drawing-room, and for an hour or two contended with my vexation, as I best could, when Johnson and Burke came up. On seeing them, I resolved to give a _jobation_ to both, but fixed on Johnson for my charge, and asked him if he had noticed what pa.s.sed, what I had suffered, and whether allowing for the state of my nerves, I was much to blame? He answered, "Why, possibly not; your feelings were outraged." I said, "Yes, greatly so; and I cannot help remarking with what blandness and composure you _witnessed_ the outrage. Had this transaction been told of others, your anger would have known no bounds; but, towards a man who gives good dinners &c., you were meekness itself!" Johnson coloured, and Burke, I thought, looked foolish; but I had not a word of answer from either.'"

The only excuse for Mr. Thrale is to be found in his mental and bodily condition at the time, which made it impossible for Johnson or Burke to interfere without a downright quarrel with him, nor without making matters worse. This, however, is not the only instance in which Johnson witnessed Thrale's laxity of morals without reproving it. Opposite the pa.s.sage in which Boswell reports Johnson as palliating infidelity in a husband by the remark, that the man imposes no b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on his wife, she writes: "Sometimes he does.

Johnson knew a man who did, and the lady took very tender care of them."

Madame D'Arblay was not uniformly such a source of comfort to her as that lady supposed. The entries in "Thraliana" relating to her show this:

"_August,_ 1779.--f.a.n.n.y Burney has been a long time from me; I was glad to see her again; yet she makes me miserable too in many respects, so restlessly and apparently anxious, lest I should give myself airs of patronage or load her with the shackles of dependance.

I live with her always in a degree of pain that precludes friends.h.i.+p--dare not ask her to buy me a ribbon--dare not desire her to touch the bell, lest she should think herself injured--lest she should forsooth appear in the character of Miss Neville, and I in that of the widow Bromley. See Murphy's 'Know Your Own Mind.'"

"f.a.n.n.y Burney has kept her room here in my house seven days, with a fever or something that she called a fever; I gave her every medicine and every slop with my own hand; took away her dirty cups, spoons, &c.; moved her tables: in short, was doctor, and nurse and maid--for I did not like the servants should have additional trouble lest they should hate her for it. And now,--with the true grat.i.tude of a wit, she tells me that the world thinks the better of me for my civilities to her. It does? does it?"

"Miss Burney was much admired at Bath (1780); the puppy-men said, 'She had such a drooping air and such a timid intelligence;' or, 'a timid air,' I think it was,' and a drooping intelligence;' never sure was such a collection of pedantry and affectation as rilled Bath when we were on that spot. How everything else and everybody set off my gallant bishop. 'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna Cupressi.' Of all the people I ever heard read verse in my whole life, the best, the most perfect reader, is the Bishop of Peterboro' (Hinchcliffe.)"[1]

[Footnote 1: In a marginal note on Boswell, she says: "The people (in 1783) did read shamefully. Yet Mr. Lee, the poet, many years before Johnson was born, read so gracefully, the players would not accept his tragedies till they had heard them from other lips: his own (they said) sweetened all which proceeded from them." Speaker Onslow equally was celebrated for his manner of reading.]

"_July 1st_, 1780.--Mrs. Byron, who really loves me, was disgusted at Miss Burney's carriage to me, who have been such a friend and benefactress to her: not an article of dress, not a ticket for public places, not a thing in the world that she could not command from me: yet always insolent, always pining for home, always preferring the mode of life in St. Martin's Street to all I could do for her. She is a saucy-spirited little puss to be sure, but I love her dearly for all that; and I fancy she has a real regard for me, if she did not think it beneath the dignity of a wit, or of what she values more--the dignity of Dr. Burnett's daughter--to indulge it. Such dignity! the Lady Louisa of Leicester Square![1] In good time!"

[Footnote 1: Alluding to a character in "Evelina."]

"1781.--What a blockhead Dr. Burney is to be always sending for his daughter home so! what a monkey! is she not better and happier with me than she can be anywhere else? Johnson is enraged at the silliness of their family conduct, and Mrs. Byron disgusted; I confess myself provoked excessively, but I love the girl so dearly--and the Doctor, too, for that matter, only that he has such odd notions of superiority in his own house, and will have his children under his feet forsooth, rather than let 'em live in peace, plenty, and comfort anywhere from home. If I did not provide f.a.n.n.y with every wearable--every wishable, indeed,--it would not vex me to be served so; but to see the impossibility of compensating for the pleasures of St. Martin's Street, makes one at once merry and mortified.

"Dr. Burney did not like his daughter should learn Latin even of Johnson, who offered to teach her for friends.h.i.+p, because then she would have been as wise as himself forsooth, and Latin was too masculine for Misses. A narrow-souled goose-cap the man must be at last, agreeable and amiable all the while too, beyond almost any other human creature. Well, mortal man is but a paltry animal! the best of us have such drawbacks both upon virtue, wisdom, and knowledge."

In what his daughter calls a doggrel list of his friends and his feats, Dr. Burney has thus mentioned the Thrales:

"1776.--This year's acquaintance began with the Thrales, Where I met with great talents 'mongst females and males, But the best thing it gave me from that time to this, Was the freedom it gave me to sound the abyss, At my ease and my leisure, of Johnson's great mind, Where new treasures unnumber'd I constantly find."

Highly to her credit, Mrs. Thrale did not omit any part of her own duties to her husband because he forgot his. In March, 1780, she writes to Johnson:

"I am willing to show myself in Southwark, or in any place, for my master's pleasure or advantage; but have no present conviction that to be re-elected would be advantageous, so shattered a state as his nerves are in just now.--Do not you, however, fancy for a moment, that I shrink from fatigue--or desire to escape from doing my duty;--spiting one's antagonist is a reason that never ought to operate, and never does operate with me: I care nothing about a rival candidate's innuendos, I care only about my husband's health and fame; and if we find that he earnestly wishes to be once more member for the Borough--he _shall_ be member, if anything done or suffered by me will help make him so."

In the May following she writes: "Meanwhile, Heaven send this Southwark election safe, for a disappointment would half kill my husband, and there is no comfort in tiring every friend to death in such a manner and losing the town at last."

This was an agitating month. In "Thraliana ":

"_20th May_, 1780.--I got back to Bath again and staid there till the riots[1] drove us all away the first week in June: we made a dawdling journey, cross country, to Brighthelmstone, where all was likely to be at peace: the letters we found there, however, shewed us how near we were to ruin here in the Borough: where nothing but the astonis.h.i.+ng presence of mind shewed by Perkins in amusing the mob with meat and drink and huzzas, till Sir Philip Jennings Clerke could get the troops and pack up the counting-house bills, bonds, &c. and carry them, which he did, to Chelsea College for safety,--could have saved us from actual undoing. The villains _had_ broke in, and our brewhouse would have blazed in ten minutes, when a property of 150,000 would have been utterly lost, and its once flouris.h.i.+ng possessors quite undone.

"Let me stop here to give G.o.d thanks for so very undeserved, so apparent, an interposition of Providence in our favour.

"I left Mr. Thrale at Brighthelmstone and came to town again to see what was left to be done: we have now got arms and mean to defend ourselves by force if further violence is intended. Sir Philip comes every day at some hour or another--good creature, how kind he is! and how much I ought to love him! G.o.d knows I am not in this case wanting to my duty. I have presented Perkins, with my Master's permission, with two hundred guineas, and a silver urn for his lady, with his own cypher on it and this motto--Mollis responsio, Iram avert.i.t."

[Footnote 1: The Lord George Gordon Riots.]

In the spring of 1781, "I found," says Boswell, "on visiting Mr.

Thrale that he was now very ill, and had removed, I suppose by the solicitation of Mrs. Thrale, to a house in Grosvenor Square." She has written opposite: "Spiteful again! He went by direction of his physicians where they could easiest attend to him."

The removal to Grosvenor Square is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":

"_Monday, January 29th_, 1781.--So now we are to spend this winter in Grosvenor Square; my master has taken a ready-furnished lodging-house there, and we go in to-morrow. He frighted me cruelly a while ago; he would have Lady Shelburne's house, one of the finest in London; he would buy, he would build, he would give twenty to thirty guineas a week for a house. Oh Lord, thought I, the people will sure enough throw stones at me now when they see a dying man go to such mad expenses, and all, as they will naturally think, to please a wife wild with the love of expense. This was the very thing I endeavoured to avoid by canva.s.sing the borough for him, in hopes of being through that means tyed to the brewhouse where I always hated to live till now, that I conclude his const.i.tution lost, and that the world will say _I_ tempt him in his weak state of body and mind to take a fine house for me at the flashy end of the town." "He however, dear creature, is as absolute, ay, and ten times more so, than ever, since he suspects his head to be suspected, and to Grosvenor Square we are going, and I cannot be sorry, for it will doubtless be comfortable enough to see one's friends commodiously, and I have long wished to quit _Harrow Corner_, to be sure; how could one help it? though I did

"'Call round my casks each object of desire'

all last winter: but it was a heavy drag too, and what signifies resolving _never_ to be pleased? I will make myself comfortable in my new habitation, and be thankful to G.o.d and my husband."

On February 7, 1781, she writes to Madame D'Arblay:

"Yesterday I had a conversazione. Mrs. Montagu was brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgment, critical in talk. Sophy smiled, Piozzi sung, Pepys panted with admiration, Johnson was good humoured, Lord John Clinton attentive, Dr. Bowdler lame, and my master not asleep.

Mrs. Ord looked elegant, Lady Rothes dainty, Mrs. Davenant dapper, and Sir Philip's curls were all blown about by the wind. Mrs. Byron rejoices that her Admiral and I agree so well; the way to his heart is connoisseurs.h.i.+p it seems, and for a background and contorno, who comes up to Mrs. Thrale, you know."

In "Thraliana":

"_Sunday, March 18th_, 1781.--Well! Now I have experienced the delights of a London winter, spent in the bosom of flattery, gayety, and Grosvenor Square; 'tis a poor thing, however, and leaves a void in the mind, but I have had my compting-house duties to attend, my sick master to watch, my little children to look after, and how much good have I done in any way? Not a sc.r.a.p as I can see; the pecuniary affairs have gone on perversely: how should they chuse [an omission here] when the sole proprietor is incapable of giving orders, yet not so far incapable as to be set aside! Distress, fraud, folly, meet me at every turn, and I am not able to fight against them all, though endued with an iron const.i.tution, which shakes not by sleepless nights or days severely fretted.

"Mr. Thrale talks now of going to Spa and Italy again; how shall we drag him thither? A man who cannot keep awake four hours at a stroke &c. Well! this will indeed be a tryal of one's patience; and who must go with us on this expedition? Mr. Johnson!--he will indeed be the only happy person of the party; he values nothing _under_ heaven but his own mind, which is a spark _from_ heaven, and that will be invigorated by the addition of new ideas. If Mr. Thrale dies on the road, Johnson will console himself by learning how it is to travel with a corpse: and, after all, such reasoning is the true philosophy--one's heart is a mere inc.u.mbrance--would I could leave mine behind. The children shall go to their sisters at Kensington, Mrs. c.u.myns may take care of them all. G.o.d grant us a happy meeting some _where_ and some _time_!

"Baretti should attend, I think; there is no man who has so much of every language, and can manage so well with Johnson, is so tidy on the road, so active top to obtain good accommodations. He is the man in the world, I think, whom I most abhor, and who _hates_ and _professes_ to _hate me_ the most; but what does that signifie? He will be careful of Mr. Thrale and Hester whom he _does_ love--and he won't strangle _me_, I suppose. Somebody we _must_ have. Croza would court our daughter, and Piozzi could not talk to Johnson, nor, I suppose, do one any good but sing to one,--and how should we _sing songs in a strange land_? Baretti must be the man, and I will beg it of him as a favour. Oh, the triumph he will have! and the lyes he will tell!" Thrale's death is thus described in "Thraliana":

"On the Sunday, the 1st of April, I went to hear the Bishop of Peterborough preach at May Fair Chapel, and though the sermon had nothing in it particularly pathetic, I could not keep my tears within my eyes. I spent the evening, however, at Lady Rothes', and was cheerful. Found Sir John Lade, Johnson, and Boswell, with Mr. Thrale, at my return to the Square. On Monday morning Mr. Evans came to breakfast; Sir Philip and Dr. Johnson to dinner--so did Baretti. Mr.

Thrale eat voraciously--so voraciously that, encouraged by Jebb and Pepys, who had charged me to do so, I checked him rather severely, and Mr. Johnson added these remarkable words: "Sir, after the denunciation of your physicians this morning, such eating is little better than suicide." He did not, however, desist, and Sir Philip said, he eat apparently in defiance of control, and that it was better for us to say nothing to him. Johnson observed that he thought so too; and that he spoke more from a sense of duty than a hope of success. Baretti and these two spent the evening with me, and I was enumerating the people who were to meet the Indian amba.s.sadors on the Wednesday. I had been to Negri's and bespoke an elegant entertainment.

"On the next day, Tuesday the 3rd, Mrs. Hinchliffe called on me in the morning to go see Webber's drawings of the South Sea rareties. We met the Smelts, the Ords, and numberless _blues_ there, and displayed our pedantry at our pleasure. Going and coming, however, I quite teazed Mrs. Hinchliffe with my low-spirited terrors about Mr. Thrale, who had not all this while one symptom worse than he had had for months; though the physicians this Tuesday morning agreed that a continuation of such dinners as he had lately made would soon dispatch a life so precarious and uncertain. When I came home to dress, Piozzi, who was in the next room teaching Hester to sing, began lamenting that he was engaged to Mrs. Locke on the following evening, when I had such a world of company to meet these fine Orientals; he had, however, engaged Roncaglia and Sacchini to begin with, and would make a point of coming himself at nine o'clock if possible. I gave him the money I had collected for his benefit--35_l_. I remember it was--a banker's note--and burst out o'

crying, and said, I was sure I should not go to it. The man was shocked, and wondered what I meant. Nay, says I, 'tis mere lowness of spirits, for Mr. Thrale is very well now, and is gone out in his carriage to spit cards, as I call'd it--sputar le carte. Just then came a letter from Dr. Pepys, insisting to speak with me in the afternoon, and though there was nothing very particular in the letter considering our intimacy, I burst out o' crying again, and threw myself into an agony, saying, I was sure Mr. Thrale would dye.

"Miss Owen came to dinner, and Mr. Thrale came home so well! and in such spirits! he had invited more people to my concert, or conversazione, or musical party, of the next day, and was delighted to think what a show we should make. He eat, however, more than enormously. Six things the day before, and eight on this day, with strong beer in such quant.i.ties! the very servants were frighted, and when Pepys came in the evening he said this could not last--either there must be _legal_[1] restraint or certain death. Dear Mrs. Byron spent the evening with me, and Mr. Crutchley came from Sunning-hill to be ready for the morrow's flash. Johnson was at the Bishop of Chester's. I went down in the course of the afternoon to see after my master as usual, and found him not asleep, but sitting with his legs up--_because_, as he express'd it. I kissed him, and said how good he was to be so careful of himself. He enquired who was above, but had no disposition to come up stairs. Miss Owen and Mrs. Byron now took their leave. The Dr. had been gone about twenty minutes when Hester went down to see her papa, and found him on the floor. What's the meaning of this? says she, in an agony. I chuse it, replies Mr.

Thrale firmly; I lie so o' purpose. She ran, however, to call his valet, who was gone out--happy to leave him so particularly _well_, as he thought. When my servant went instead, Mr. Thrale bid him begone, in a firm tone, and added that he was very well and chose to lie so. By this time, however, Mr. Crutchley was run down at Hetty's intreaty, and had sent to fetch Pepys back. He was got but into Upper Brook Street, and found his friend in a most violent fit of the apoplexy, from which he only recovered to relapse into another, every one growing weaker as his strength grew less, till six o'clock on Wednesday morning, 4th April, 1781, when he died. Sir Richard Jebb, who was fetched at the beginning of the distress, seeing death certain, quitted the house without even prescribing. Pepys did all that could be done, and Johnson, who was sent for at eleven o'clock, never left him, for while breath remained he still hoped. I ventured in once, and saw them cutting his clothes off to bleed him, but I saw no more."

[Footnote 1: (_Note_ by Mrs. T.). "I rejected all propositions of the sort, and said, as he had got the money, he had the best right to throw it away.... I should always prefer my husband, to my children: let him do his _own_ way."]

We learn from Madame D'Arblay's Journal, that, towards the end of March, 1781, Mr. Thrale had resolved on going abroad with his wife, and that Johnson was to accompany them, but a subsequent entry states that the doctors condemned the plan; and "therefore," she adds, "it is settled that a great meeting of his friends is to take place before he actually prepares for the journey, and they are to encircle him in a body, and endeavour, by representations and entreaties, 'to prevail with him to give it up; and I have little doubt myself but, amongst us, we shall be able to succeed." This is one of the oddest schemes ever projected by a set of learned and accomplished gentlemen and ladies for the benefit of a hypochondriac patient. Its execution was prevented by his death. A hurried note from Mrs. Thrale announcing the event, beginning, "Write to me, pray for me," is endorsed by Madame D'Arblay: "Written a few hours after the death of Mr. Thrale, which happened by a sudden stroke of apoplexy, on the morning of a day on which half the fas.h.i.+on of London had been invited to an intended a.s.sembly at his house in Grosvenor Square." These invitations had been sent out by his own express desire: so little was he aware of his danger.

Letters and messages of condolence poured in from all sides. Johnson (in a letter dated April 5th) said all that could be said in the way of counsel or consolation:

"I do not exhort you to reason yourself into tranquillity. We must first pray, and then labour; first implore the blessing of G.o.d, and those means which He puts into our hands. Cultivated ground, has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret.

"We read the will to-day; but I will not fill my first letter with any other account than that, with all my zeal for your advantage, I am satisfied; and that the other executors, more used to consider property than I, commended it for wisdom and equity. Yet, why should I not tell you that you have five hundred pounds for your immediate expenses, and two thousand pounds a-year, with both the houses and all the goods?

"Let us pray for one another, that the time, whether long or short, that shall yet be granted us, may be well spent; and that when this life, which at the longest is very short, shall come to an end, a better may begin which shall never end."

On April 9th he writes:

"DEAREST MADAM,--That you are gradually recovering your tranquillity, is the effect to be humbly expected from trust in G.o.d. Do not represent life as darker than it is. Your loss has been very great, but you retain more than almost any other can hope to possess. You are high in the opinion of mankind; you have children from whom much pleasure may be expected; and that you will find many friends, you have no reason to doubt. Of my friends.h.i.+p, be it worth more or less, I hope you think yourself certain, without much art or care. It will not be easy for me to repay the benefits that I have received; but I hope to be always ready at your call. Our sorrow has different effects; you are withdrawn into solitude, and I am driven into company. _I_ am afraid of thinking what I have lost. I never had such a friend before. Let me have your prayers and those of my dear Queeny.