fair notion of the footing on which Johnson stood there, and the
manner in which the interchange of mind was carried on between him
and the hostess. This visit took place in October, 1769, four years
after Johnson's introduction to her; and Boswell's absence from
London, in which he had no fixed residence during Johnson's life,
will hardly account for the neglect of his illustrious friend in not
procuring him a privilege which he must have highly coveted and would
doubtless have turned to good account.
"On the 6th of October I complied with this obliging invitation; and
found, at an elegant villa, six miles from town, every circumstance
that can make society pleasing. Johnson, though quite at home, was
yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by affection, and seemed to be
equally the care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced at seeing him so
happy."
"Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He attacked him
powerfully; said he wrote of love like a man who had never felt it;
his love verses were college verses: and he repeated the song,
'Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains,' &c. in so ludicrous a manner, as
to make us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such
fantastical stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her guns with great courage,
in defence of amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at
last silenced her by saving, 'My dear lady, talk no more of this.
Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense.'
"Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay poetry;
and, as a specimen, repeated his song in 'Florizel and Perdita,' and
dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line:--
"'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'
"_Johnson._--'Nay, my dear lady, this will never do. Poor David!
Smile with the simple!--what folly is that? And who would feed with
the poor that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and
feed with the rich.'" Boswell adds, that he repeated this sally to
Glarrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a
little irritated by it; on which Mrs. Thrale remarks, "How odd to go
and tell the man!"
The independent tone she took when she deemed the Doctor
unreasonable, is also proved by Boswell in his report of what took
place at Streatham in reference to Lord Marchmont's offer to supply
information for the Life of Pope:
"Elated with the success of my spontaneous exertion to procure
material and respectable aid to Johnson for his very favourite work,
'the Lives of the Poets,' I hastened down to Mr. Thrale's, at
Streatham, where he now was, that I might insure his being at home
next day; and after dinner, when I thought he would receive the good
news in the best humour, I announced it eagerly: 'I have been at work
for you to-day, Sir. I have been with Lord Marchmont. He bade me tell
you he has a great respect for you, and will call on you to-morrow at
one o'clock, and communicate all he knows about Pope.' _Johnson._ 'I
shall not be in town to-morrow. I don't care to know about Pope.'
_Mrs. Thrale_ (surprised, as I was, and a little angry). 'I suppose,
Sir, Mr. Boswell thought that as you are to write Pope's Life, you
would wish to know about him.' _Johnson._ 'Wish! why yes. If it
rained knowledge, I'd hold out my hand; but I would not give myself
the trouble to go in quest of it.' There was no arguing with him at
the moment. Sometime afterwards he said, 'Lord Marchmont will call
upon me, and then I shall call on Lord Marchmont.' Mrs. Thrale was
uneasy at this unaccountable caprice: and told me, that if I did not
take care to bring about a meeting between Lord Marchmont and him, it
would never take place, which would be a great pity."
The ensuing conversation is a good sample of the freedom and variety
of "talk" in which Johnson luxuriated, and shows how important a part
Mrs. Thrale played in it:
"Mrs. Thrale told us, that a curious clergyman of our acquaintance
(Dr. Lort is named in the margin) had discovered a licentious stanza,
which Pope had originally in his 'Universal Prayer,' before the
stanza,--
"'What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns us not to do,' &c.
It was this:--
"'Can sins of moment claim the rod
Of everlasting fires?
And that offend great Nature's God
Which Nature's self inspires."
and that Dr. Johnson observed, it had been borrowed from _Guarini_.
There are, indeed, in _Pastor Fido_, many such flimsy superficial
reasonings as that in the last two lines of this stanza.
"_Boswell_. 'In that stanza of Pope's, "_rod of fires_" is certainly
a bad metaphor.' _Mrs. Thrale_. 'And "sins of _moment_" is a faulty
expression; for its true import is _momentous_, which cannot be
intended.' _Johnson_. 'It must have been written "of _moments_." Of
_moment_, is _momentous_; of _moments, momentary_. I warrant you,
however, Pope wrote this stanza, and some friend struck it out.'
"Talking of divorces, I asked if Othello's doctrine was not
plausible:--
"'He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen,
Let him not know't, and he's not robb'd at all.'
Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale joined against this. _Johnson_. 'Ask any
man if he'd wish not to know of such an injury.' _Boswell_. 'Would
you tell your friend to make him unhappy?' _Johnson_. 'Perhaps, Sir,
I should not: but that would be from prudence on my own account. A
man would tell his father.' _Boswell_. 'Yes; because he would not
have spurious children to get any share of the family inheritance.'
_Mrs. Thrale_. 'Or he would tell his brother.' _Boswell_. 'Certainly
his _elder_ brother.... Would you tell Mr. ----?' (naming a gentleman
who assuredly was not in the least danger of so miserable a disgrace,
though married to a fine woman). _Johnson_. 'No, Sir: because it
would do no good; he is so sluggish, he'd never go to Parliament and
get through a divorce.'" _Marginal Note_: "Langton."
There is every reason to believe that her behaviour to Johnson was
uniformly marked by good-breeding and delicacy. She treated him with
a degree of consideration and respect which he did not always receive
from other friends and admirers. A foolish rumour having got into the
newspapers that he had been learning to dance of Vestris, it was
agreed that Lord Charlemont should ask him if it was true, and his
lordship with (it is shrewdly observed) the characteristic spirit of
a general of Irish volunteers, actually put the question, which
provoked a passing feeling of irritation. Opposite Boswell's account
of this incident she has written, "Was he not right in hating to be
so treated? and would he not have been right to have loved me better
than any of them, because I never did make a Lyon of him?"
One great charm of her companionship to cultivated men was her
familiarity with the learned languages, as well as with French,
Italian, and Spanish. The author of "Piozziana" says: "She not only
read and wrote Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, but had for sixty years
constantly and ardently studied the Scriptures and the works of
commentators in the original languages." She did not know Greek, and
he probably over-estimated her other acquirements, which Boswell
certainly underestimates when he speaks slightingly of them on the
strength of Johnson's having said: "It is a great mistake to suppose
that she is above him (Thrale) in literary attainments. She is more
flippant, but he has ten times her learning: he is a regular scholar;
but her learning is that of a school-boy in one of the lower forms."
If this were so, it is strange that Thrale should cut so poor a
figure, should seem little better than a nonentity, whilst every
imaginable topic was under animated discussion at his table; for
Boswell was more ready to report the husband's sayings than the
wife's. In a marginal note on one of the printed letters she says:
"Mr. Thrale was a very merry talking man in 1760; but the distress of
1772, which affected his health, his hopes, and his whole soul,
affected his temper too. Perkins called it being planet struck, and I
am not sure he was ever completely the same man again." The notes of
his conversation during the antecedent period are equally meagre.[1]
He is described by Madame D'Arblay as taking a singular amusement in
hearing, instigating, and provoking a war of words, alternating
triumph and overthrow, between clever and ambitious colloquial
combatants.
[Footnote 1: "Pray, Doctor, said a gentleman to Johnson, is Mr.
Thrale a man of conversation, or is he only wise and silent?' 'Why,
Sir, his conversation does not show the _minute_ hand; but he
generally strikes the hour very correctly.'"--_Johnsoniana_.]
No one would have expected to find her as much at home in Greek and
Latin authors as a man of fair ability who had received and profited
by an University education, but she could appreciate a classical
allusion or quotation, and translate off-hand a Latin epigram.
"Mary Aston," said Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit
and a whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty; and so I made
this epigram upon her. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw!
"'Liber ut esse velim, suasisti, pulchra Maria,
Ut maneam liber, pulchra Maria, vale!'
"Will it do this way in English, Sir? (said Mrs. Thrale)--
"'Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you,
If freedom we seek, fair Maria, adieu."
Mr. Croker's version is:--
"'You wish me, fair Maria, to be free,
Then, fair Maria, I must fly from thee.'
Boswell also has tried his hand at it; and a correspondent of the
"Gentleman's Magazine" suggests that Johnson had in his mind an
epigram on a young lady who appeared at a masquerade in Paris,
habited as a Jesuit, during the height of the contention between the
Jansenists and Molinists concerning free will:--
"On s'étonne ici que Calviniste
Eût pris l'habit de Moliniste,
Puisque que cette jeune beauté
Ôte à chacun sa liberté,
N'est ce pas une Janséniste."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 376. Edition of 1716. Equally
happy were Lord Chesterfield's lines to a young lady who appeared at
a Dublin ball, with an orange breastknot:--
Mrs. Thrale took the lead even when her husband might be expected to
strike in, as when Johnson was declaiming paradoxically against
action in oratory: "Action can have no effect on reasonable minds. It
may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument." _Mrs. Thrale_.
"What then, Sir, becomes of Demosthenes' saying, Action, action,
action?" _Johnson_. "Demosthenes, Madam, spoke to an assembly of
brutes, to a barbarous people." "The polished Athenians!" is her
marginal protest, and a conclusive one.
In English literature she was rarely at fault. In
"Pretty Tory, where's the jest
To wear that riband on thy breast,
When that same breast betraying shows
The whiteness of the rebel rose?"
White was adopted by the malcontent Irish as the French emblem.
Johnson's epigram may have been suggested by Propertius:
"Nullus liber erit si quis amare volet."]
reference to the flattery lavished on Garrick by Lord Mansfield and
Lord Chatham, Johnson had said, "When he whom everybody else
flatters, flatters me, then I am truly happy." _Mrs. Thrale_. "The
sentiment is in Congreve, I think." _Johnson_. "Yes, Madam, in 'The
Way of the World.'
"'If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see
The heart that others bleed for, bleed for me.'"
When Johnson is reported saying, "Those who have a style of
distinguished excellence can always be distinguished," she objects:
"It seems not. The lines always quoted as Dryden's, beginning,
'To die is landing on some silent shore,'
are Garth's after all." Johnson would have been still less pleased at
her discovery that a line in his epitaph on Phillips,
"Till angels wake thee with a note like thine,"
was imitated from Pope's
"And saints embrace thee with a love like mine."
In one of her letters to him (June, 1782) she writes: "Meantime let
us be as _merry_ as reading Burton upon _Melancholy_ will make us.
You bid me study that book in your absence, and now, what have I
found? Why, I have found, or fancied, that he has been cruelly
plundered: that Milton's first idea of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso'
were suggested by the verses at the beginning; that Savage's speech
of Suicide in the 'Wanderer' grew up out of a passage you probably
remember towards the 216th page; that Swift's tale of the woman that
holds water in her mouth, to regain her husband's love by silence,
had its source in the same farrago; and that there is an odd
similitude between my Lord's trick upon Sly the Tinker, in
Shakspeare's 'Taming of the Shrew,' and some stuff I have been
reading in Burton."
It would be easy to heap proof upon proof of the value and variety of
Mrs. Thrale's contributions to the colloquial treasures accumulated
by Boswell and other members of the set; and Johnson's deliberate
testimony to her good qualities of head and heart will far more than
counterbalance any passing expressions of disapproval or reproof with
her mistimed vivacity, or alleged disregard of scrupulous accuracy in
narrative, may have called forth. No two people ever lived much
together for a series of years without many fretful, complaining,
dissatisfied, uncongenial moments,--without letting drop captious or
unkind expressions, utterly at variance with their habitual feelings
and their matured judgments of each other. The hasty word, the
passing sarcasm, the sly hit at an acknowledged foible, should count
for nothing in the estimate, when contrasted with earnest and
deliberate assurances, proceeding from one who was commonly too proud
to flatter, and in no mood for idle compliment when he wrote.
"Never (he writes in 1773) imagine that your letters are long; they
are always too short for my curiosity. I do not know that I was ever
content with a single perusal.... My nights are grown again very
uneasy and troublesome. I know not that the country will mend them;
but I hope your company will mend my days. Though I cannot now expect
much attention, and would not wish for more than can be spared from
the poor dear lady (her mother), yet I shall see you and hear you
every now and then; and to see and hear you, is always to hear wit,
and to see virtue."
He would not suffer her to be lightly spoken of in his presence, nor
permit his name to be coupled jocularly with hers. "I yesterday told
him," says Boswell, when they were traversing the Highlands, "I was
thinking of writing a poetical letter to him, on his return from
Scotland, in the style of Swift's humorous epistle in the character
of Mary Gulliver to her husband, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, on his
return to England from the country of the Houyhnhnms:--
"'At early morn I to the market haste,
Studious in ev'ry thing to please thy taste.
A curious _fowl_ and _sparagrass_ I chose;
(For I remember you were fond of those:)
Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats;
Sullen you turn from both, and call for OATS.'
He laughed, and asked in whose name I would write it. I said in Mrs.
Thrale's. He was angry. 'Sir, if you have any sense of decency or
delicacy, you won't do that.' _Boswell_. 'Then let it be in Cole's,
the landlord of the Mitre tavern, where we have so often sat
together.' _Johnson_. 'Ay, that may do.'"
Again, at Inverary, when Johnson called for a gill of whiskey that he
might know what makes a Scotchman happy, and Boswell proposed Mrs.
Thrale as their toast, he would not have _her_ drunk in whiskey.
Peter Pindar has maliciously added to this reproof:--
"We supped most royally, were vastly frisky,
When Johnson ordered up a gill of whiskey.
Taking the glass, says I, 'Here's Mistress Thrale,'
'Drink her in _whiskey_ not,' said he, 'but _ale_.'"
So far from making light of her scholarship, he frequently accepted
her as a partner in translations from the Latin. The translations
from Boethius, printed in the second volume of the Letters, are their
joint composition.
After recapitulating Johnson's other contributions to literature in
1766, Boswell says, "'The Fountains,' a beautiful little fairy tale
in prose, written with exquisite simplicity, is one of Johnson's
productions; and I cannot withhold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of
being the author of that admirable poem 'The Three Warnings.'"
_Marginal note_: "How sorry he is!" Both the tale and the poem were
written for a collection of "Miscellanies," published by Mrs.
Williams in that year. The character of Floretta in "The Fountains"
was intended for Mrs. Thrale, and she thus gracefully alludes to it
in a letter to Johnson in Feb. 1782:
"The newspapers would spoil my few comforts that are left if they
could; but you tell me that's only because I have the reputation,
whether true or false, of being a _wit_ forsooth; and you remember
_poor Floretta_, who was teased into wishing away her spirit, her
beauty, her fortune, and at last even her life, never could bear the
bitter water which was to have washed away her wit; which she
resolved to keep with all its consequences."
Her fugitive pieces, mostly in verse, thrown off from time to time at
all periods of her life, are numerous; and the best of them that have
been recovered will be included in these volumes. In a letter to the
author of "Piozziana," she says:--"When Wilkes and Liberty were at
their highest tide, I was bringing or losing children every year; and
my studies were confined to my nursery; so, it came into my head one
day to send an infant alphabet to the 'St. James Chronicle':--
"'A was an Alderman, factious and proud;
B was a Bellas that blustered aloud, &c.'
"In a week's time Dr. Johnson asked me if I knew who wrote it? 'Why,
who did write it, Sir?' said I. 'Steevens,' was the reply. Some time
after that, years for aught I know, he mentioned to me Steevens's
veracity! 'No, no;' answered H.L.P., anything but that;' and told my
story; showing him by incontestable proofs that it was mine. Johnson
did not utter a word, and we never talked about it any more. I durst
not introduce the subject; but it served to hinder S. from visiting
at the house: I suppose Johnson kept him away."
It does not appear that Steevens claimed the Alphabet; which may have
suggested the celebrated squib that appeared in the "New Whig Guide,"
and was popularly attributed to Mr. Croker. It was headed "The
Political Alphabet; or, the Young Member's A B C," and begins:
"A was an Althorpe, as dull as a hog:
B was black Brougham, a surly cur dog:
C was a Cochrane, all stripped of his lace."
What widely different associations are now awakened by these names!
The sting is in the tail:
"W was a Warre, 'twixt a wasp and a worm,
But X Y and Z are not found in this form,
Unless Moore, Martin, and Creevey be said
(As the last of mankind) to be X Y and Z."
Amongst Miss Reynolds' "Recollections" will be found:--"On the
praises of Mrs. Thrale, he (Johnson) used to dwell with a peculiar
delight, a paternal fondness, expressive of conscious exultation in
being so intimately acquainted with her. One day, in speaking of her
to Mr. Harris, author of 'Hermes,' and expatiating on her various
perfections,--the solidity of her virtues, the brilliancy of her wit,
and the strength of her understanding, &c.--he quoted some lines (a
stanza, I believe, but from what author I know not[1]), with which he
concluded his most eloquent eulogium, and of these I retained but the
two last lines:--
'Virtues--of such a generous kind,
Pure in the last recesses of the mind.'"
[Footnote 1: Dryden's Translation of Persius.]
The place assigned to Mrs. Thrale by the popular voice amongst the
most cultivated and accomplished women of the day, is fixed by some
verses printed in the "Morning Herald" of March 12th, 1782, which
attracted much attention. They were commonly attributed to Mr.
(afterwards Sir W.W.) Pepys, and Madame d'Arblay, who alludes to them
complacently, thought them his; but he subsequently repudiated the
authorship, and the editor of her Memoirs believes that they were
written by Dr. Burney. They were provoked by the proneness of the
Herald to indulge in complimentary allusions to ladies of the demirep
genus:
"Herald, wherefore thus proclaim
Nought of women but the _shame_?
Quit, oh, quit, at least awhile,
Perdita's too luscious smile;
Wanton Worsley, stilted Daly,
Heroines of each blackguard alley;
Better sure record in story
Such as shine their sex's glory!
Herald! haste, with me proclaim
Those of literary fame.
Hannah More's pathetic pen,
Painting high th' impassion'd scene;
Carter's piety and learning,
Little Burney's quick discerning;
Cowley's neatly pointed wit,
Healing those her satires hit;
Smiling Streatfield's iv'ry neck,
Nose, and notions--_à la Grecque!_
Let Chapone retain a place,
And the mother of her Grace[1],
Each art of conversation knowing,
High-bred, elegant Boscawen;
Thrale, in whose expressive eyes
Sits a soul above disguise,
Skill'd with-wit and sense t'impart
Feelings of a generous heart.
Lucan, Leveson, Greville, Crewe;
Fertile-minded Montagu,
Who makes each rising art her care,
'And brings her knowledge from afar!'
Whilst her tuneful tongue defends
Authors dead, and absent friends;
Bright in genius, pure in fame:--
Herald, haste, and these proclaim!"
[Footnote 1: Mrs. Boscawen was the mother of the Duchess of Beaufort
and Mrs. Leveson Gower:
"All Leveson's sweetness, and all Beaufort's grace."]
These lines merit attention for the sake of the comparison they
invite. An outcry has recently been raised against the laxity of
modern fashion, in permitting venal beauty to receive open homage in
our parks and theatres, and to be made the subject of prurient gossip
by maids and matrons who should ignore its existence. But we need not
look far beneath the surface of social history to discover that the
irregularity in question is only a partial revival of the practice of
our grandfathers and grandmothers, much as a crinoline may be
regarded as a modified reproduction of the hoop. Junius thus
denounces the Duke of Grafton's indecorous devotion to Nancy Parsons:
"It is not the private indulgence, but the public insult, of which I
complain. The name of Miss Parsons would hardly have been known, if
the First Lord of the Treasury had not led her in triumph through the
Opera House, even in the presence of the Queen." Lord March
(afterwards Duke of Queensberry) was a lord of the bedchamber in the
decorous court of George the Third, when he wrote thus to Selwyn: "I
was prevented from writing to you last Friday, by being at Newmarket
with my little girl (Signora Zamperini, a noted dancer and singer). I
had the whole family and Cocchi. The beauty went with me in my
chaise, and the rest in the old landau."
We have had Boswell's impression of his first visit to Streatham; and
Madame D'Arblay's account of hers confirms the notion that My
Mistress, not My Master, was the presiding genius of the place.
"_London, August_ (1778).--I have now to write an account of the most
consequential day I have spent since my birth: namely, my Streatham
visit.
"Our journey to Streatham was the least pleasant part of the day, for
the roads were dreadfully dusty, and I was really in the fidgets from
thinking what my reception might be, and from fearing they would
expect a less awkward and backward kind of person than I was sure
they would find.
"Mr. Thrale's house is white, and very pleasantly situated, in a fine
paddock. Mrs. Thrale was strolling about, and came to us as we got
out of the chaise.
"She then received me, taking both my hands, and with mixed
politeness and cordiality welcomed me to Streatham. She led me into
the house, and addressed herself almost wholly for a few minutes to
my father, as if to give me an assurance she did not mean to regard
me as a show, or to distress or frighten me by drawing me out.
Afterwards she took me up stairs, and showed me the house, and said
she had very much wished to see me at Streatham, and should always
think herself much obliged to Dr. Burney for his goodness in bringing
me, which she looked upon as a very great favour.
"But though we were some time together, and though she was so very
civil, she did not _hint_ at my book, and I love her much more than
ever for her delicacy in avoiding a subject which she could not but
see would have greatly embarrassed me.