heart by giving it.
"When Queen Mary took the resolution of sheltering herself in
England, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, attempting to dissuade her,
attended on her journey; and when they came to the irremeable
stream[1] that separated the two kingdoms, walked by her side into
the water, in the middle of which he seized her bridle, and with
earnestness proportioned to her danger and his own affection pressed
her to return. The Queen went forward.--If the parallel reaches thus
far, may it go no farther.--The tears stand in my eyes.
"I am going into Derbyshire, and hope to be followed by your good
wishes, for I am, with great affection,
"Your, &c.
"Any letters that come for me hither will be sent me."
[Footnote 1: Queen Mary left the Scottish for the English coast, on
the Firth of Solway, in a fishing-boat. The incident to which Johnson
alludes is introduced in "The Abbot;" where the scene is laid on the
sea-shore. The unusual though expressive term "irremeable," is
defined in his dictionary, "admitting no return." His authority is
Dryden's Virgil:
"The keeper dream'd, the chief without delay
Pass'd on, and took th' irremeable way."
The word is a Latin one anglicised:
"Evaditque celer ripam irremeabilis undæ."]
In a memorandum on this letter, she says:--"I wrote him (No. 6) a
very kind and affectionate farewell."
Before calling attention to the results of this correspondence, I
must notice a charge built upon it by the reviewer, with the
respectable aid of the foul-mouthed and malignant Baretti:
"This letter is now printed for the first time by Mr. Hayward. But he
has omitted to notice the light which is thrown on it by Baretti's
account of the marriage. That account is given in the 'European
Magazine' for 1788. It is very circumstantial, and too long to
transcribe, but the upshot is this: He says that, in order to meet
her returning lover, she left Bath with her daughters as for a
journey to Brighton; quitted them on some pretence at Salisbury, and
posted off to town, _deceiving Dr. Johnson, who continued to direct
to her at Bath as usual_.[1] 'In London she kept herself concealed
for some days in my parish, and not very far distant from my own
habitation, ... in Suffolk Street, Middlesex Hospital.' 'In a _few
weeks_,' he adds, 'she was in a condition personally to resort to Mr.
Greenland (her lawyer) to settle preliminaries, then returned to Bath
with Piozzi, and there was married.' Now Baretti was a libeller, _and
not to be believed except upon compulsion_; but if he does speak the
truth, then the date, 'Bath, June 30,' of her circular letter, is a
mystification; so is the passage in her letter to Johnson of July
_4_, about 'sending it by the coach to prevent his coming.' Of course
she was mortally afraid of the Doctor's coming, for if he had come he
would have found her flown. According to this supposition, she did
not return to Bath at all, but remained perdue in London, with her
lover, during the whole 'Correspondence.' Is it the true one?
"We cannot but suspect that it is, and that the solution of the whole
of this little domestic mystery is to be found in a passage in the
'Autobiographical Memoir,' vol. i. p. 277. There were _two_
marriages:--
"'Miss Nicholson went with us to Stonehenge, Wilton, &c., _whence I
returned to Bath_ to wait for Piozzi. He was here on the eleventh day
after he got Dobson's letter. In twenty-six more we were married _in
London_ by the Spanish ambassador's chaplain, and returned hither to
be married by Mr. Morgan, of Bath, at St. James's Church, July 25,
1784.'
"Now in order to make this account tally with Baretti's we must allow
for a slight exertion of that talent for 'white lies' on the lady's
part, of which her friends, Johnson included, used half playfully and
half in earnest to accuse her. And we are afraid Baretti's story does
appear, on the face of it, the more probable of the two. It does seem
more likely, since they were to be married in London (of which
Baretti knew nothing), that she met Piozzi secretly in London on his
arrival, than that she performed the awkward evolutions of returning
from Salisbury to Bath to wait for him there, then going to London in
company with him to be married, and then back to Bath to be married
over again. But if this be so, then the London marriage most likely
took place almost immediately on the meeting of the enamoured couple,
and while the 'Correspondence' was going on. In which case the words
in the 'Memoir' 'in twenty-six days,' &c., were apparently intended,
by a little bit of feminine adroitness, to appear to apply to this
first marriage,--of the suddenness of which she may have been
ashamed,--while they really apply to the conclusion of the whole
affair by the _second_. Will any one have the Croker-like curiosity
to inquire whether any record remains of the dates of marriages
celebrated by the Spanish ambassador's chaplain?"[2]
[Footnote 1: These words, italicised by the reviewer, contain the
pith of the charge, which has no reference to her visit to London six
weeks before.]
[Footnote 2: Edinb. Review, No. 230, p. 522.]
Why Croker-like curiosity? Was there anything censurable in the
curiosity which led an editor to ascertain whether a novel like
"Evelina" was written by a girl of eighteen or a woman of twenty-six?
But Lord Macaulay sneered at the inquiry[1], and his worshippers must
go on sneering like their model--_vitiis imitabile_. The certificate
of the London marriage (now before me) shews that it was solemnised
on the 23rd July, by a clergyman named Richard Smith, in the presence
of three attesting witnesses. This, and the entries in "Thraliana,"
prove Baretti's whole story to be false. "Now Baretti was a libeller,
and not to be believed except upon compulsion;" meaning, I suppose,
without confirmatory evidence strong enough to dispense with his
testimony altogether. He was notorious for his _black_ lies. Yet he
is believed eagerly, willingly, upon no compulsion, and without any
confirmatory evidence at all.
[Footnote 1: The following passage is reprinted in the corrected
edition of Lord Macaulay's Essays:--"There was no want of low minds
and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her (Miss Burney's)
first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage
Wolcot; the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did
not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in
order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed
her age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer
of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him
with materials for a worthless edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson,
some sheets of which our readers have doubtless seen round parcels of
better books." There is reason to believe that the entry Mr. Croker
copied was that of the baptism of an elder sister of the same name
who died before the birth of the famous Fanny.]
The internal evidence of the improbability of the story has
disappeared in the reviewer's paraphrase. Baretti says that at
Salisbury "she suddenly declared that a letter she found of great
importance demanded her immediate presence _in London_.... But
Johnson did not know the least tittle of this transaction, and he
continued to direct his letters to Bath as usual, expressing, no
doubt, an immense wonder _at her pertinacious silence_." So she told
her daughters that she was going to London, whilst she deceived
Johnson, who was sure to learn the truth from them; and he was
wondering at her pertinacious silence at the very time when he was
receiving letters from her, dated Bath! Why, having formally
announced her determination to marry Piozzi, she should not give him
the meeting in London if she chose, fairly passes my comprehension.
Whilst the reviewer thinks he is strengthening one point, he is
palpably weakening another. She would not have been "mortally afraid
of the Doctor's coming," if she had already thrown him off and
finally broken with him? That she was afraid, and had reason to be
so, is quite consistent with my theory, quite inconsistent with Lord
Macaulay's and the critic's. Johnson's letter (No. 3) is that of a
coarse man who had always been permitted to lecture and dictate with
impunity. Her letter (No. 4) is that of a sensitive woman, who, for
the first time, resents with firmness and retorts with dignity. The
sentences I have printed in italics speak volumes. "Never did I
oppose your will, or control your wish, nor can your unmitigated
severity itself lessen my regard." There is a shade of submissiveness
in her reply, yet, on receiving it, he felt as a falcon might feel if
a partridge were to shew fight. Nothing short of habitual deference
on her part, and unrepressed indulgence of temper on _his_, can
account for or excuse his not writing before this unexpected check as
he wrote after it. If he had not been systematically humoured and
flattered, he would have seen at a glance that he had "no pretence to
resent," and have been ready at once to make the best return in his
power for "that kindness which soothed twenty years of a life
radically wretched." She wrote him a kind and affectionate farewell;
and there (so far as we know) ended their correspondence. But in
"Thraliana" she sets down:
"_Milan, 27th Nov_. 1784.--I have got Dr. Johnson's picture here, and
expect Miss Thrale's with impatience. I do love them dearly, as ill
as they have used me, and always shall. Poor Johnson did not _mean_
to use me ill. He only grew upon indulgence till patience could
endure no further."
In a letter to Mr. S. Lysons from Milan, dated December 7th, 1784,
which proves that she was not frivolously employed, she says:
"My next letter shall talk of the libraries and botanical gardens,
and twenty other clever things here. I wish you a comfortable
Christmas, and a happy beginning of the year 1785. Do not neglect Dr.
Johnson: you will never see any other mortal so wise or so good. I
keep his picture in my chamber, and his works on my chimney."
"Forgiveness to the injured doth belong,
But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong."
What he said of her can only be learned from her bitter enemies or
hollow friends, who have preserved nothing kindly or creditable.
Hawkins states that a letter from Johnson to himself contained these
words:--"Poor Thrale! I thought that either her virtue or her vice
(meaning her love of her children or her pride) would have saved her
from such a marriage. She is now become a subject for her enemies to
exult over, and for her friends, if she has any left, to forget or
pity."
Madame D'Arblay gives two accounts of the last interview she ever had
with Johnson,--on the 25th November, 1784. In the "Diary" she sets
down:
"I had seen Miss T. the day before."
"'So,' said he, 'did I.'
"I then said, 'Do you ever, Sir, hear, from her mother?'
"'No,' cried he, 'nor write to her. I drive her quite from my mind.
If I meet with one of her letters, I burn it instantly.[1] I have
burnt all I can find. I never speak of her, and I desire never to
hear of her name. I drive her, as I said, wholly from my mind.'"
[Footnote 1: If this was true, it is strange that he did not destroy
the letter (No. 4) which gave him so sudden and mortifying a check.
Miss Hawkins says in her Memoirs: "It was I who discovered the
letter. I carried it to my father; he enclosed and sent it to her,
_there never having been any intercourse between them_." Anything
from Hawkins about Streatham and its inmates must therefore have been
invention or hearsay.]
In the "Memoirs," describing the same interview, she says:--"We
talked then of poor Mrs. Thrale, but only for a moment, for I saw him
greatly incensed, and with such severity of displeasure, that I
hastened to start another subject, and he solemnly enjoined me to
mention that no more."
This was only eighteen days before he died, and he might be excused
for being angry at the introduction of any agitating topic. It would
stain his memory, not hers, to prove that, belying his recent
professions of tenderness and gratitude, he directly or indirectly
encouraged her assailants.
"I was tempted to observe," says the author of "Piozziana," "that I
thought, as I still do, that Johnson's anger on the event of her
second marriage was excited by some feeling of disappointment; and
that I suspected he had formed some hope of attaching her to himself.
It would be disingenuous on my part to attempt to repeat her answer.
I forget it; but the impression on my mind is that she did not
contradict me." Sir James Fellowes' marginal note on this passage is:
"This was an absurd notion, and I can undertake to say it was the
last idea that ever entered her head; for when I once alluded to the
subject, she ridiculed the idea: she told me she always felt for
Johnson the same respect and veneration as for a Pascal."[1]
[Footnote 1: When Sheridan was accused of making love to Mrs.
Siddons, he said he should as soon think of making love to the
Archbishop of Canterbury.]
On the margin of the passage in which Boswell says, "Johnson wishing
to unite himself with this rich widow was much talked of, but I
believe without foundation,"--she has written, "I believe so too!!"
The report sufficed to bring into play the light artillery of the
wits, one of whose best hits was an "Ode to Mrs. Thrale, by Samuel
Johnson, LL.D., on their approaching Nuptials," beginning:
"If e'er my fingers touched the lyre,
In satire fierce, in pleasure gay,
Shall not my Thralia's smiles inspire,
Shall Sam refuse the sportive lay?
"My dearest lady, view your slave,
Rehold him as your very _Scrub_:
Ready to write as author grave,
Or govern well the brewing tub.
"To rich felicity thus raised,
My bosom glows with amorous fire;
Porter no longer shall be praised,
'Tis I Myself am _Thrale's Entire_."
She has written opposite these lines, "Whose fun was this? It is
better than the other." The other was:
"Cervisial coctor's viduate dame,
Opinst thou this gigantick frame,
Procumbing at thy shrine,
Shall catinated by thy charms,
A captive in thy ambient arms
Perennially be thine."
She writes opposite: "Whose silly fun was this? Soame Jenyn's?"
The following paragraph is copied from the note-book of the late Miss
Williams Wynn[1], who had recently been reading a large collection of
Mrs. Piozzi's letters addressed to a Welsh neighbour:
[Footnote 1: Daughter of Sir Watkyn Wynn (the fourth baronet) and
granddaughter of George Grenville, the Minister. She was
distinguished by her literary taste and acquirements, as well as
highly esteemed for the uprightness of her character, the excellence
of her understanding, and the kindness of her heart. Her journals and
note-books, carefully kept during a long life passed in the best
society, are full of interesting anecdotes and curious extracts from
rare books and manuscripts. They are now in the possession of her
niece, the Honourable Mrs. Rowley.]
"_London, March_, 1825.--I have had an opportunity of talking to old
Sir William Pepys on the subject of his old friend, Mrs. Piozzi, and
from his conversation am more than ever impressed with the idea that
she was one of the most inconsistent characters that ever existed.
Sir William says he never met with any human being who possessed the
talent of conversation in such a degree. I naturally felt anxious to
know whether Piozzi could in any degree add to this pleasure, and
found, as I expected, that he could not even understand her.
"Her infatuation for him seems perfectly unaccountable. Johnson in
his rough (I may here call it brutal) manner said to her, 'Why Ma'am,
he is not only a stupid, ugly dog, but he is an old dog too.' Sir
William says he really believes that she combated her inclination for
him as long as possible; so long, that her senses would have failed
her if she had attempted to resist any longer. She was perfectly
aware of her degradation. One day, speaking to Sir William of some
persons whom he had been in the habit of meeting continually at
Streatham during the lifetime of Mr. Thrale, she said, not one of
them has taken the smallest notice of me ever since: they dropped me
before I had done anything wrong. Piozzi was literally at her elbow
when she said this."
The reviewer quotes the remark, "She was perfectly aware of her
degradation," as resting on the personal responsibility of Miss Wynn,
"who knew her in later life in Wales." The context shews that Miss
Wynn (who did not know her) was simply repeating the impressions of
Sir William Pepys, one of the bitterest opponents of the marriage, to
whom she certainly never said anything derogatory to her second
husband. The uniform tenor of her letters and her conduct shew that
she never regarded her second marriage as discreditable, and always
took a high and independent, instead of a subdued or deprecating,
tone with her alienated friends. A bare statement of the treatment
she received from them is surely no proof of conscious degradation.
In a letter to a Welsh neighbour, near the end of her life, some time
in 1818, she says:
"Mrs. Mostyn (her youngest daughter) has written again on the road
back to Italy, where she likes the Piozzis above all people, she
says, _if they were not so proud of their family_. Would not that
make one laugh two hours before one's own death? But I remember when
Lady Egremont raised the whole nation's ill will here, while the
Saxons were wondering how Count Bruhle could think of marrying a lady
born Miss Carpenter. The Lombards doubted in the meantime of my being
a gentlewoman by birth, because my first husband was a brewer. A
pretty world, is it not? A Ship of Fooles, according to the old poem;
and they will upset the vessel by and by."
This is not the language of one who wished to apologise for a
misalliance.
As to Piozzi's assumed want of youth and good looks, Johnson's
knowledge of womankind, to say nothing of his self-love, should have
prevented him from urging this as an insuperable objection. He might
have recollected the Roman matron in Juvenal, who considers the world
well lost for an old and disfigured prize-fighter; or he might have
quoted Spenser's description of one--
"Who rough and rude and filthy did appear,
Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye,
Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear,
When fairer faces were bid standen by:
Oh! who can tell the bent of woman's phantasy?"
Madame Campan, speaking of Caroline of Naples, the sister of Marie
Antoinette, says, she had great reason to complain of the insolence
of a Spaniard named Las Casas, whom the king, her father-in-law, had
sent to persuade her to remove M. Acton[1] from the conduct of
affairs and from about her person. She had told him, to convince him
of the nature of her sentiments, that she would have Acton painted
and sculptured by the most celebrated artists of Italy, and send his
bust and his portrait to the King of Spain, to prove to him that the
desire of fixing a man of superior capacity could alone have induced
her to confer the favour he enjoyed. Las Casas had dared to reply,
that she would be taking useless trouble; that a man's ugliness did
not always prevent him from pleasing, and that the King of Spain had
too much experience to be ignorant that the caprices of a woman were
inexplicable. Johnson may surely be allowed credit for as much
knowledge of the sex as the King of Spain.
[Footnote 1: M. Acton, as Madame Campan calls him, was a member of
the ancient English family of that name. He succeeded to the
baronetcy in 1791, and was the grandfather of Sir John E.E. Dalberg
Acton, Bart., M.P., &c.]
Others were simultaneously accusing her of marrying a young man to
indulge a sensual inclination. The truth is, Piozzi was a few months
older than herself, and was neither ugly nor disagreeable. Madame
D'Arblay has been already quoted as to his personal appearance, and
Miss Seward (October, 1787) writes:
"I am become acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi. Her conversation is
that bright wine of the intellects which has no lees. Dr. Johnson
told me truth when he said she had more colloquial wit than most of
our literary women; it is indeed a fountain of perpetual flow. But he
did not tell me truth when he asserted that Piozzi was an ugly dog,
without particular skill in his profession. Mr. Piozzi is a handsome
man, in middle life, with gentle, pleasing, unaffected manners, and
with very eminent skill in his profession. Though he has not a
powerful or fine-toned voice, he sings with transcending grace and
expression. I am charmed with his perfect expression on his
instrument. Surely the finest sensibilities must vibrate through his
frame, since they breathe so sweetly through his song."
The concluding sentence contains what Partridge would call a _non
sequitur_, for the finest musical sensibility may coexist with the
most commonplace qualities. But the lady's evidence is clear on the
essential point; and another passage from her letters may assist us
in determining the precise nature of Johnson's feelings towards Mrs.
Piozzi, and the extent to which his later language and conduct
regarding her were influenced by pique:
"Love is the great softener of savage dispositions. Johnson had
always a metaphysic passion for one princess or another: first, the
rustic Lucy Porter, before he married her nauseous mother; next the
handsome, but haughty, Molly Aston; next the sublimated, methodistic
Hill Boothby, who read her bible in Hebrew; and lastly, the more
charming Mrs. Thrale, with the beauty of the first, the learning of
the second, and with more worth than a bushel of such sinners and
such saints. It is ridiculously diverting to see the old elephant
forsaking his nature before these princesses:
"'To make them mirth, use all his might, and writhe,
His mighty form disporting.'
"_This last and long-enduring passion for Mrs. Thrale was, however,
composed perhaps of cupboard love, Platonic love, and vanity tickled
and gratified, from morn to night, by incessant homage_. The two
first ingredients are certainly oddly heterogeneous; but Johnson, in
religion and politics, in love and in hatred, was composed of such
opposite and contradictory materials, as never before met in the
human mind. This is the reason why folk are never weary of talking,
reading, and writing about a man--
"'So various that he seem'd to be,
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.'"
After quoting the sentence printed in italics, the reviewer says: "On
this hint Mr. Hayward enlarges, nothing loth." I quoted the entire
letter without a word of comment, and what is given as my "enlarging"
is an _olla podrida_ of sentences torn from the context in three
different and unconnected passages of this Introduction. The only one
of them which has any bearing on the point shews, though garbled,
that, in attributing motives, I distinguished between Johnson and his
set.
Having thus laid the ground for fixing on me opinions I had nowhere
professed, the reviewer asks, "Had Mr. Hayward, when he passed such
slighting judgment on the motives of the venerable sage who awes us
still, no fear before his eyes of the anathema aimed by Carlyle at
Croker for similar disparagement? 'As neediness, and greediness, and
vain glory are the chief qualities of most men, so no man, not even a
Johnson, acts, or can think of acting, on any other principle.
Whatever, therefore, cannot be referred to the two former categories,
Need and Greed, is without scruple ranged under the latter.'"[1]
[Footnote 1: Edinb, Review, No. 230, p. 511.]
This style of criticism is as loose as it is unjust; for one main
ingredient in Miss Seward's mixture is Platonic love, which cannot be
referred to either of the three categories. Her error lay in not
adding a fourth ingredient,--the admiration which Johnson undoubtedly
felt for the admitted good qualities of Mrs. Thrale. But the lady was
nearer the truth than the reviewer, when he proceeds in this strain: