feelings of Johnson. Rude, uncouth, arrogant as he was--spoilt as he
was, which is far worse, by flattery and toadying and the silly
homage of inferior worshippers--selfish as he was in his eagerness
for small enjoyments and disregard of small attentions--that which
lay at the very bottom of his character, that which constitutes the
great source of his power in life, and connects him after death with
the hearts of all of us, is his spirit of imaginative romance. He was
romantic in almost all things--in politics, in religion, in his
musings on the supernatural world, in friendship for men, and in love
for women."
* * * * *
"Such was his fancied 'padrona,' his 'mistress,' his 'Thralia
dulcis,' a compound of the bright lady of fashion and the ideal
Urania who rapt his soul into spheres of perfection."
Imaginative romance in politics, in religion, and in musings on the
supernatural world, is here only another term for prejudice,
intolerance, bigotry, and credulity--for rabid Toryism, High Church
doctrines verging on Romanism, and a confirmed belief in ghosts.
Imaginative romance in love and friendship is an elevating,
softening, and refining influence, which, especially when it forms
the basis of character, cannot co-exist with habitual rudeness,
uncouthness, arrogance, love of toadying, selfishness, and disregard
of what Johnson himself called the minor morals. Equally
heterogeneous is the "compound of the bright lady of fashion and the
ideal Urania." A goddess in crinoline would be a semi-mundane
creature at best; and the image unluckily suggests that Johnson was
unphilosophically, not to say vulgarly, fond of rank, fashion, and
their appendages.
His imagination, far from being of the richest or highest kind, was
insufficient for the attainment of dramatic excellence, was
insufficient even for the nobler parts of criticism. Nor had he much
to boast of in the way of delicacy of perception or sensibility. His
strength lay in his understanding; his most powerful weapon was
argument: his grandest quality was his good sense.
Thurlow, speaking of the choice of a successor to Lord Mansfield,
said, "I hesitated long between the intemperance of Kenyon, and the
corruption of Buller; not but what there was a d----d deal of
corruption in Kenyon's intemperance, and a d----d deal of
intemperance in Buller's corruption." Just so, we may hesitate long
between the romance and the worldliness of Johnson, not but what
there was a d----d deal of romance in his worldliness, and a d----d
deal of worldliness in his romance.
The late Lord Alvanley, whose heart was as inflammable as his wit was
bright, used to tell how a successful rival in the favour of a
married dame offered to retire from the field for _5001_., saying, "I
am a younger son: her husband does not give dinners, and they have no
country house: no _liaison_ suits me that does not comprise both." At
the risk of provoking Mr. Carlyle's anathema, I now avow my belief
that Johnson was, nay, boasted of being, open to similar influences;
and as for his "ideal Uranias," no man past seventy idealises women
with whom he has been corresponding for years about his or their
"natural history," to whom he sends recipes for "lubricity of the
bowels," with an assurance that it has had the best effect upon his
own.[1]
[Footnote 1: Letters, vol. ii. p. 397. The letter containing the
recipe actually begins "My dear Angel." Had Johnson forgotten Swift's
lines on Celia? or the repudiation of the divine nature by Ermodotus,
which occurs twice in Plutarch? The late Lord Melbourne complained
that two ladies of quality, sisters, told him too much of their
"natural history."]
Rough language, too, although not incompatible with affectionate
esteem, can hardly be reconciled with imaginative romance--
"Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,
But why did you kick me down stairs?"
"His ugly old wife," says the reviewer, "was an angel." Yes, an angel
so far as exalted language could make her one; and he had always
half-a-dozen angels or goddesses on his list. "_Je change d'objet,
mais la passion reste_." For this very reason, I repeat, his
affection for Mrs. Piozzi was not a deep, devoted, or absorbing
feeling at any time; and the gloom which settled upon the evening of
his days was owing to his infirmities and his dread of death, not to
the loosening of cherished ties, nor to the compelled solitude of a
confined dwelling in Bolt Court. The plain matter of fact is that,
during the last two years of his life, he was seldom a month together
at his own house, unless when the state of his health prevented him
from enjoying the hospitality of his friends. When the fatal marriage
was announced, he was planning what Boswell calls a jaunt into the
country; and in a letter dated Lichfield, Oct. 4, 1784, he says: "I
passed the first part of the summer at Oxford (with Dr. Adams);
afterwards I went to Lichfield, then to Ashbourne (Dr. Taylor's), and
a week ago I returned to Lichfield."
In the journal which he kept for Dr. Brocklesby, he writes, Oct. 20:
"The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books to
which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir
Joshua told me long ago that my vocation was to public life; and I
hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me _Go in peace_."
Boswell reports him saying about this time, "Sir, I look upon every
day to be lost when I do not make a new acquaintance."
After another visit to Dr. Adams, at Pembroke College, he returned on
the 16th Nov. to London, where he died on the 13th Dec. 1784. The
proximate cause of his death was dropsy; and there is not the
smallest sign of its having been accelerated or embittered by
unkindness or neglect.
Whoever has accompanied me thus far will be fully qualified to form
an independent opinion of Lord Macaulay's dashing summary of Mrs.
Piozzi's imputed ill-treatment of Johnson:
"Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmities of age
were coming fast upon him. That inevitable event of which he never
thought without horror was brought near to him; and his whole life
was darkened by the shadow of death. He had often to pay the cruel
price of longevity. Every year he lost what could never be replaced.
The strange dependants to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, in
spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by habit, dropped off
one by one; and, in the silence of his home, he regretted even the
noise of their scolding matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no
more; and it would have been well if his wife had been laid beside
him. But she survived to be the laughing-stock of those who had
envied her, and to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved
her beyond any thing in the world, tears far more bitter than he
would have shed over her grave.
"With some estimable, and many agreeable qualities, she was not made
to be independent. The control of a mind more steadfast than her own
was necessary to her respectability. While she was restrained by her
husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to her taste in
trifles, but always the undisputed master of his house, her worst
offences had been impertinent jokes, white lies, and short fits of
pettishness ending in sunny good humour. But he was gone; and she was
left an opulent widow of forty, with strong sensibility, volatile
fancy, and slender judgment. She soon fell in love with a
music-master from Brescia, in whom nobody but herself could discover
anything to admire. Her pride, and perhaps some better feelings,
struggled hard against this degrading passion. But the struggle
irritated her nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered her
health. Conscious that her choice was one which Johnson could not
approve, she became desirous to escape from his inspection. Her
manner towards him changed. She was sometimes cold and sometimes
petulant. She did not conceal her joy when he left Streatham: she
never pressed him to return; and, if he came unbidden, she received
him in a manner which convinced him that he was no longer a welcome
guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read,
for the last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in the library
which had been formed by himself. In a solemn and tender prayer he
commended the house and its inmates to the Divine protection, and,
with emotions which choked his voice and convulsed his powerful
frame, left for ever that beloved home for the gloomy and desolate
house behind Fleet Street, where the few and evil days which still
remained to him were to run out.
"Here, in June 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however,
he recovered, and which does not appear to have at all impaired his
intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick upon him. His
asthma tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made their
appearance. While sinking under a complication of diseases, he heard
that the woman whose friendship had been the chief happiness of
sixteen years of his life, had married an Italian fiddler; that all
London was crying shame upon her; and that the newspapers and
magazines were filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron and the
two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently said that he would try to
forget her existence. He never uttered her name. Every memorial of
her which met his eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from
the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land
where she was unknown, hastened across Mount Cenis, and learned,
while passing a merry Christmas of concerts and lemonade-parties at
Milan, that the great man with whose name hers is inseparably
associated, had ceased to exist."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Encyclopædia Britannica," last edition. The Essay on
Johnson is reprinted in the first volume of Lord Macaulay's
"Miscellaneous Writings."]
"Splendid recklessness," is the happy expression used by the
"Saturday Review" in characterising this account of the alleged
rupture with its consequences; and no reader will fail to admire the
rhetorical skill with which the expulsion from Streatham with its
library formed by himself, the chapter in the Greek testament, the
gloomy and desolate home, the music-master in whom nobody but herself
could see anything to admire, the few and evil days, the emotions
that convulsed the frame, the painful and melancholy death, and the
merry Christmas of concerts and lemonade parties, have been grouped
together with the view of giving picturesqueness, impressive unity,
and damnatory vigour to the sketch. "Action, action, action," says
the orator; "effect, effect, effect," says the historian. Give
Archimedes a place to stand on, and he would move the world. Give
Fouché a line of a man's handwriting, and he would engage to ruin
him. Give Lord Macaulay the semblance of an authority, an insulated
fact or phrase, a scrap of a journal, or the tag end of a song, and
on it, by the abused prerogative of genius, he would construct a
theory of national or personal character, which should confer undying
glory or inflict indelible disgrace.
Johnson was never driven or expelled from Mrs. Piozzi's house or
family: if very intelligible hints were given, they certainly were
not taken; the library was not formed by him; the Testament may or
may not have been Greek; his powerful frame shook with no convulsions
but what may have been occasioned by the unripe grapes and hard
peaches; he did not leave Streatham for his gloomy and desolate house
behind Fleet Street; the few and evil days (two years, nine weeks)
did not run out in that house; the music-master was generally admired
and esteemed; and the merry Christmas of concerts and
lemonade-parties is simply another sample of the brilliant
historian's mode of turning the abstract into the concrete in such a
manner as to degrade or elevate at will. An Italian concert is not a
merry meeting; and a lemonade-party, I presume, is a party where
(instead of _eau-sucrée_ as at Paris) the refreshment handed about is
lemonade: not an enlivening drink at Christmas. In a word, all these
graphic details are mere creations of the brain, and the general
impression intended to be conveyed by them is false, substantially
false; for Mrs. Piozzi never behaved otherwise than kindly and
considerately to Johnson at any time.
Her life in Italy has been sketched in her best manner by her own
lively pen in the "Autobiography" and what she calls the "Travel
Book," to be presently mentioned. Scattered notices of her
proceedings occur in her letters to Mr. Lysons, and in the printed
correspondence of her cotemporaries.
On the 19th October, 1784, she writes to Mr. Lysons from Turin:
"We are going to Alexandria, Genoa, and Pavia, and then to Milan for
the winter, as Mr. Piozzi finds friends everywhere to delay us, and I
hate hurry and fatigue; it takes away all one's attention. Lyons was
a delightful place to me, and we were so feasted there by my
husband's old acquaintances. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland too
paid us a thousand caressing civilities where we met with them, and
we had no means of musical parties neither. The Prince of Sisterna
came yesterday to visit Mr. Piozzi, and present me with the key of
his box at the opera for the time we stay at Turin. Here's honour and
glory for you! When Miss Thrale hears of it, she will write perhaps;
the other two are very kind and affectionate."
In "Thraliana":
"_3rd November_, 1784.--Yesterday I received a letter from Mr.
Baretti, full of the most flagrant and bitter insults concerning my
late marriage with Mr. Piozzi, against whom, however, he can bring no
heavier charge than that he disputed on the road with an innkeeper
concerning the bill in his last journey to Italy; while he accuses me
of murder and fornication in the grossest terms, such as I believe
have scarcely ever been used even to his old companions in Newgate,
whence he was released to scourge the families which cherished, and
bite the hands that have since relieved him. Could I recollect any
provocation I ever gave the man, I should be less amazed, but he
heard, perhaps, that Johnson had written me a rough letter, and
thought he would write me a brutal one: like the Jewish king, who,
trying to imitate Solomon without his understanding, said, 'My father
whipped you with whips, but I will whip you with scorpions.'"
"Milan, Dec. 7.
"I correspond constantly and copiously with such of my daughters as
are willing to answer my letters, and I have at last received one
cold scrap from the eldest, which I instantly and tenderly replied
to. Mrs. Lewis too, and Miss Nicholson, have had accounts of my
health, for I found _them_ disinterested and attached to me: those
who led the stream, or watched which way it ran, that they might
follow it, were not, I suppose, desirous of my correspondence, and
till they are so, shall not be troubled with it."
Miss Nicholson was the lady left with the daughters, and Mrs. Piozzi
could have heard no harm of her from them or others when she wrote
thus. The same inference must be drawn from the allusions to this
lady at subsequent periods. After stating that she "dined at the
minister's o' Tuesday, and he called all the wise men about me with
great politeness indeed"--"Once more," she continues, "keep me out of
the newspapers if you possibly can: they have given me many a
miserable hour, and my enemies many a merry one: but I have not
deserved public persecution, and am very happy to live in a place
where one is free from unmerited insolence, such as London abounds
with.
"'Illic credulitas, illic temerarius error.'
God bless you, and may you conquer the many-headed monster which I
could never charm to silence." In "Thraliana," she says:
"_January_, 1785.--I see the English newspapers are full of gross
insolence to me: all burst out, as I guessed it would, upon the death
of Dr. Johnson. But Mr. Boswell (who I plainly see is the author)
should let the _dead_ escape from his malice at least. I feel more
shocked at the insults offered to Mr. Thrale's memory than at those
cast on Mr. Piozzi's person. My present husband, thank God! is well
and happy, and able to defend himself: but dear Mr. Thrale, that had
fostered these cursed wits so long! to be stung by their malice even
in the grave, is too cruel:--
"'Nor church, nor churchyards, from such fops are free.'"[1]--POPE.
[Footnote 1: Probably misquoted for--
"No place is sacred, not the church is free."
_Prologue to the Satires_.]
The license of our press is a frequent topic of complaint. But here
is a woman who had never placed herself before the public in any way
so as to give them a right to discuss her conduct or affairs, not
even as an author, made the butt of every description of offensive
personality for months, with the tacit encouragement of the first
moralist of the age.
January 20th, 1785, she writes from Milan:--"The Minister, Count
Wilsick, has shown us many distinctions, and we are visited by the
first families in Milan. The Venetian Resident will, however, be soon
sent to the court of London, and give a faithful account, as I am
sure, to all their _obliging_ inquiries."
In "Thraliana":
"_25th Jan_., 1785.--I have recovered myself sufficiently to think
what will be the consequence to me of Johnson's death, but must wait
the event, as all thoughts on the future in this world are vain. Six
people have already undertaken to write his life, I hear, of which
Sir John Hawkins, Mr. Boswell, Tom Davies, and Dr. Kippis are four.
Piozzi says he would have me add to the number, and so I would, but
that I think my anecdotes too few, and am afraid of saucy answers if
I send to England for others. The saucy answers _I_ should disregard,
but my heart is made vulnerable by my late marriage, and I am certain
that, to spite me, they would insult my husband.
"Poor Johnson! I see they will leave _nothing untold_ that I laboured
so long to keep secret; and I was so very delicate _in trying to
conceal his [fancied][1] insanity_ that I retained no proofs of it,
or hardly any, nor even mentioned it in these books, lest by my dying
first _they_ might be printed and the secret (for such I thought it)
discovered. I used to tell him in jest that his biographers would be
at a loss concerning some orange-peel he used to keep in his pocket,
and many a joke we had about the lives that would be published.
Rescue me out of their hands, my dear, and do it yourself, said he;
Taylor, Adams, and Hector will furnish you with juvenile anecdotes,
and Baretti will give you all the rest that you have not already, for
I think Baretti is a lyar only when he speaks of himself. Oh, said I,
Baretti told me yesterday that you got by heart six pages of
Machiavel's History once, and repeated them thirty years afterwards
word for word. Why this is a _gross_ lye, said Johnson, I never read
the book at all. Baretti too told me of you (said I) that you once
kept sixteen cats in your chamber, and yet they scratched your legs
to such a degree, you were forced to use mercurial plaisters for some
time after. Why this (replied Johnson) is an unprovoked lye indeed; I
thought the fellow would not have broken through divine and human
laws thus to make puss his heroine, but I see I was mistaken."
[Footnote 1: Sic in the MS. See _antè_, p. 202.]
On February 3rd, 1785, Horace Walpole writes from London to Sir
Horace Mann at Florence:--"I have lately been lent a volume of poems
composed and printed at Florence, in which another of our exheroines,
Mrs. Piozzi, has a considerable share; her associates three of the
English bards who assisted in the little garland which Ramsay the
painter sent me. The present is a plump octavo; and if you have not
sent me a copy by our nephew, I should be glad if you could get one
for me: not for the merit of the verses, which are moderate enough
and faint imitations of our good poets; but for a short and sensible
and genteel preface by La Piozzi, from whom I have just seen a very
clever letter to Mrs. Montagu, to disavow a jackanapes who has lately
made a noise here, one Boswell, by Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. In a day
or two we expect another collection by the same Signora."
Her associates were Greathead, Merry, and Parsons. The volume in
question was "The Florence Miscellany." "A copy," says Mr. Lowndes,
"having fallen into the hands of W. Grifford, gave rise to his
admirable satire of the 'Baviad and Moeviad.'"
In his Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides, Boswell makes Johnson say
of Mrs. Montagu's "Essay on Shakespeare": "Reynolds is fond of her
book, and I wonder at it; for neither I, nor Beauclerc, nor Mrs.
Thrale could get through it." This is what Mrs. Piozzi wrote to
disavow, so far as she was personally concerned. In a subsequent
letter from Vienna, she says: "Mrs. Montagu has written to me very
sweetly." The other collection expected from her was her "Anecdotes
of the late Samuel Johnson, during the last Twenty Years of his Life.
Printed for T. Cadell in the Strand, 1786."
She opened the matter to Mr. Cadell in the following terms:
"Florence, 7th June, 1785.
"_Sir_.,--As you were at once the bookseller and friend of Dr.
Johnson, who always spoke of your character in the kindest terms, I
could wish you likewise to be the publisher of some Anecdotes
concerning the last twenty years of his life, collected by me during
the many days I had opportunity to spend in his instructive company,
and digested into method since I heard of his death. As I have a
large collection of his letters in England, besides some verses,
known only to myself, I wish to delay printing till we can make two
or three little volumes, not unacceptable, perhaps, to the public;
but I desire my intention to be notified, for divers reasons, and, if
you approve of the scheme, should wish it to be immediately
advertized. My return cannot be in less than twelve months, and we
may be detained still longer, as our intention is to complete the
tour of Italy; but the book is in forwardness, and it has been seen
by many English and Italian friends."
On July 27th, 1785, she writes from Florence:
"We celebrated our wedding anniversary two days ago with a
magnificent dinner and concert, at which the Prince Corsini and his
brother the Cardinal did us the honour of assisting, and wished us
joy in the tenderest and politest terms. Lord and Lady Cowper, Lord
Pembroke, and _all_ the English indeed, doat on my husband, and show
us every possible attention."
On the 18th July, 1785, she writes again to Mr. Cadell:--"I am
favoured with your answer and pleased with the advertisement, but it
will be impossible to print the verses till my return to England, as
they are all locked up with other papers in the Bank, nor should I
choose to put the key (which is now at Milan) in any one's hand
except my own."
She therefore proposes that the "Anecdotes" shall be printed first,
and published separately. On the 20th October, 1785, she writes from
Sienna:
"I finished my 'Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson' at Florence, and taking
them with me to Leghorn, got a clear transcript made there, such as I
hope will do for you to print from; though there may be some errors,
perhaps many, which have escaped me, as I am wholly unused to the
business of sending manuscripts to the press, and must rely on you to
get everything done properly when, it comes into your hands."
Such was the surviving ascendency of Johnson, or such the placability
of her disposition, that, but for Piozzi's remonstrances, she would
have softened down her "Anecdotes" to an extent which would have
destroyed much of their sterling value.
Mr. Lysons made the final bargain with Cadell, and had full power to
act for her. She writes thus to Cadell:
"Rome, 28th March, 1786.
"SIR,--I hasten to tell you that I am perfectly pleased and contented
with the alterations made by my worthy and amiable friends in the
'Anecdotes of Johnson's Life.' Whatever is done by Sir Lucas Pepys is
certainly well done, and I am happy in the thoughts of his having
interested himself about it. Mr. Lysons was very judicious and very
kind in going to the Bishop of Peterboro', and him and Dr. Lort for
advice. There is no better to be had in the world, I believe; and it
is my desire that they should be always consulted about any future
transactions of the same sort relating to, Sir, your most obedient
servant,
"H. L. PIOZZI."[1]
[Footnote 1: The letters to Mr. Cadell were published in the
"Gentleman's Magazine" for March and April, 1852.]