such as I never knew, fastened on his fingers, distorting them into
every dreadful shape.... A little girl, shown to him as a musical
wonder of five years old, said, 'Pray, Sir, why are your fingers
wrapped up in black silk so?' 'My dear,' replied he, 'they are in
mourning for my voice.' 'Oh, me!' cries the child, '_is she dead?_'
He sung an easy song, and the baby exclaimed, 'Ah, Sir! you are very
naughty--you tell fibs!' Poor dears! and both gone now!"
"When life was gradually, but perceptibly, closing round him at Bath,
in 1808, I asked him if he would wish to converse with a Romish
priest,--we had full opportunity there. 'By no means,' said he. 'Call
Mr. Leman of the Crescent.' We did so,--poor Bessy ran and fetched
him. Mr. Piozzi received the blessed Sacrament at his hands; but
recovered sufficiently to go home and die in his own house."
He died of gout at Brynbella in March 1809, and was buried in a vault
constructed by her desire in Dymerchion Church. There is a portrait
of him (period and painter unknown) still preserved amongst the
family portraits at Brynbella. It is that of a good-looking man of
about forty, in a straight-cut brown coat with metal buttons, lace
frill and ruffles, and some leaves of music in his hand. There are
also two likenesses of Mrs. Piozzi: one a three-quarter length
(kit-kat), taken apparently when she was about forty; the other a
miniature of her at an advanced age. Both confirm her description of
herself as too strong-featured to be pretty. The hands in the
three-quarter length are gloved.
Brynbella continued her headquarters till 1814, when she gave it up
to Sir John Salusbury. From that period she resided principally at
Bath and Clifton, occasionally visiting Streatham or making summer
trips to the seaside.
That she and her eldest daughter should ever be again (if they ever
were) on a perfect footing of confidence and affection, was a moral
impossibility. Estrangements are commonly durable in proportion to
the closeness of the tie that has been severed; and it is no more
than natural that each party, yearning for a reconciliation and not
knowing that the wish is reciprocated, should persevere in casting
the blame of the prolonged coldness on the other. Occasional sarcasms
no more prove disregard or indifference, than Swift's "only a woman's
hair" implies contempt for the sex.
Miss Thrale's marriage with Lord Keith in 1808 is thus mentioned in
"Thraliana":
"The 'Thraliana' is coming to an end; so are the Thrales. The eldest
is married now. Admiral Lord Keith the man; a _good_ man for ought I
hear: a _rich_ man for ought I am told: a _brave_ man we have always
heard: and a _wise_ man I trow by his choice. The name no new one,
and excellent for a charade, _e.g_.
"A Faery my first, who to fame makes pretence;
My second a Rock, dear Britannia's defence;
In my third when combined will too quickly be shown
The Faery and Rock in our brave Elphin-stone."
Her way of life after Piozzi's death may be collected from the
Letters, with the exception of one strange episode towards the end.
When nearly eighty, she took a fancy for an actor named Conway, who
came out on the London boards in 1813, and had the honour of acting
Romeo and Jaffier to the Juliet and Belvidera of Miss O'Neill (Lady
Becher). He also acted with her in Dean Milman's fine play, "Fazio."
But it was his ill fate to reverse Churchill's famous lines:
"Before such merits all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high."
Conway was six feet high, and a very handsome man to boot; but his
advantages were purely physical; not a spark of genius animated his
fine features and commanding figure, and he was battling for a
moderate share of provincial celebrity, when Mrs. Piozzi fell in with
him at Bath. It has been rumoured in Flintshire that she wished to
marry him, and offered Sir John Salusbury a large sum in ready money
(which she never possessed) to give up Brynbella (which he could not
give up), that she might settle it on the new object of her
affections. But none of the letters or documents that have fallen in
my way afford even plausibility to the rumour, and some of the
testamentary papers in which his name occurs, go far towards
discrediting the belief that her attachment ever went beyond
admiration and friendship expressed in exaggerated terms.[1]
[Footnote 1: Since the appearance of the first edition of this work,
it has been stated on the authority of a distinguished man of letters
that Conway shewed the late Charles Mathews a letter from Mrs.
Piozzi, offering marriage.--_New Monthly Magazine_ (edited by Mr.
Harrison Ainsworth) for April, 1861.]
Conway threw himself overboard and was drowned in a voyage from New
York to Charleston in 1828. His effects were sold at New York, and
amongst them a copy of the folio edition of Young's "Night Thoughts,"
in which he had made a note of its having been presented to him by
his "dearly attached friend, the celebrated Mrs. Piozzi." In the
preface to "Love Letters of Mrs. Piozzi, Written when she was Eighty,
to William Augustus Conway," published in London in 1842, it is
stated that the originals, seven in number, were purchased by an
American "lady," who permitted a "gentleman" to take copies and use
them as he might think fit. What this "gentleman" thought fit, was to
publish them with a catchpenny title and an alleged extract by way of
motto to sanction it. The genuineness of the letters is doubtful, and
the interpolation of three or four sentences would alter their entire
tenor. But taken as they stand, their language is not warmer than an
old woman of vivid fancy and sensibility might have deemed warranted
by her age. "Tell Mr. Johnson I love him exceedingly," is the mission
given by the old Countess of Eglinton to Boswell in 1778. _L'age n'a
point de sexe_; and no one thought the worse of Madame Du Deffand for
the impassioned tone in which she addressed Horace Walpole, whose
dread of ridicule induced him to make a most ungrateful return to her
fondness.[1] Years before the formation of this acquaintance, Mrs.
Piozzi had acquired the difficult art of growing old; _je sais
vieillir_: she dwells frequently but naturally on her age: she
contemplates the approach of death with firmness and without
self-deception: and her elasticity of spirit never for a moment
suggests the image of an antiquated coquette. Of the seven letters in
question, the one cited as most compromising is the sixth, in which
Conway is exhorted to bear patiently a rebuff he had just received
from some younger beauty:
[Footnote 1: "The old woman's fancy for Mr. Conway represents a
relation of warm friendship that is of every-day occurrence between
youth and age that is not crabbed."--_The Examiner_, Feb. 16, 1861.]
"'Tis not a year and a quarter since, dear Conway, accepting of my
portrait sent to Birmingham, said to the bringer, 'Oh if _your lady_
but retains her friendship: oh if I can but keep _her_ patronage, I
care not for the rest.' And now, when that friendship follows you
through sickness and through sorrow; now that her patronage is daily
rising in importance: upon a lock of hair given or refused by une
petite Traitresse, hangs all the happiness of my once high-spirited
and high-blooded friend. Let it not be so. EXALT THY LOVE: DEJECTED
HEART--and rise superior to such narrow minds. Do not however fancy
she will ever be punished in the way you mention: no, no; she'll
wither on the thorny stem dropping the faded and ungathered
leaves:--a China rose, of no good scent or flavour--false in apparent
sweetness, deceitful when depended on--unlike the flower produced in
colder climates, which is sought for in old age, preserved _even
after death_, a lasting and an elegant perfume,--a medicine, too, for
those whose shattered nerves require _astringent remedies_.
"And now, dear Sir, let me request of you--to love yourself--and to
reflect on the necessity of not dwelling on any _particular subject_
too long, or too intensely. It is really very dangerous to the health
of body and soul. Besides that our time here is but short; a mere
preface to the great book of eternity: and 'tis scarce worthy of a
reasonable being not to keep the end of human existence so far in
view that we may tend to it--either directly or obliquely in every
step. This is preaching--but remember how the sermon is written at
three, four, and five o'clock by an octogenary pen--a heart (as Mrs.
Lee says) twenty-six years old: and as H.L.P. feels it to be,--ALL
YOUR OWN. Suffer your dear noble self to be in some measure benefited
by the talents which are left _me_; your health to be restored by
soothing consolations while _I remain here_, and am able to bestow
them. All is not lost yet. You _have_ a friend, and that friend is
PIOZZI."
Conway's "high blood" was as great a recommendation to Mrs. Piozzi as
his good looks, and he vindicated his claim to noble descent by his
conduct, which was disinterested and gentlemanlike throughout.
Moore sets down in his Diary, April 28, 1819: "Breakfasted with the
Fitzgeralds. Took me to call on Mrs. Piozzi; a wonderful old lady;
faces of other times seemed to crowd over her as she sat,--the
Johnsons, Reynoldses, &c. &c.: though turned eighty, she has all the
quickness and intelligence of a gay young woman."
Nichol, the bookseller, had said that "Johnson was the link that
connected Shakespeare with the rest of mankind." On hearing this,
Mrs. Piozzi at eighty exclaimed, "Oh, the dear fellow, I must give
him a kiss for that idea." When Nichol told the story, he added, "I
never got it, and she went out of the world a kiss in my debt."
One of the most characteristic feats or freaks of this extraordinary
woman was the celebration of her eightieth birthday by a concert,
ball, and supper, to between six and seven hundred people, at the
Kingston Rooms, Bath, on the 27th January, 1820. At the conclusion of
the supper, her health was proposed by Admiral Sir James Sausmarez,
and drunk with three times three. The dancing began at two, when she
led off with her adopted son, Sir John Salusbury, dancing (according
to the author of "Piozziana," an eye-witness) "with astonishing
elasticity, and with all the true air of dignity which might have
been expected of one of the best bred females in society." When fears
were expressed that she had done too much, she replied:--"No: this
sort of thing is greatly in the mind; and I am almost tempted to say
the same of growing old at all, especially as it regards those of the
usual concomitants of age, viz., laziness, defective sight, and
ill-temper."
"So far from feeling fatigued or exhausted on the following day by
her exertions," remarks Sir James Fellowes in a note on this event,
"she amused us by her sallies of wit, and her jokes on 'Tully's
Offices,' of which her guests had so eagerly availed themselves.".
Tully was the cook and confectioner, the Bath Gunter, who provided
the supper.
Mrs. Piozzi died in May, 1821. Her death is circumstantially
communicated in a letter from Mrs. Pennington, the lady mentioned in
Miss Seward's correspondence as the beautiful and agreeable Sophia
Weston:--
"Hot Wells, May 5th, 1821.
"Dear Miss Willoughby,--It is my painful task to communicate to you,
who have so lately been the kind associate of dearest Mrs. Piozzi,
the irreparable loss we have all sustained in that incomparable woman
and beloved friend.
"She closed her various life about nine o'clock on Wednesday, after
an illness of ten days, with as little suffering as could be imagined
under these awful circumstances. Her bed-side was surrounded by her
weeping daughters: Lady Keith and Mrs. Hoare arrived in time to be
fully recognised[1]; Miss Thrale, who was absent from town, only just
before she expired, but with the satisfaction of seeing her breathe
her last in peace.
"Nothing could behave with more tenderness and propriety than these
ladies, whose conduct, I am convinced, has been much misrepresented
and calumniated by those who have only attended to _one_ side of the
history: but may all that is past be now buried in oblivion!
Retrospection seldom improves our view of any subject. Sir John
Salusbury was too distant, the close of her illness being so rapid,
for us to entertain any expectation of his arriving in time to see
the dear deceased. He only reached Clifton late _last_ night. I have
not yet seen him; my whole time has been devoted to the afflicted
ladies."
[Footnote 1: On hearing of their arrival she is reported to have
said, "Now, I shall die in state."]
Mrs. Pennington told a friend that Mrs. Piozzi's last words were: "I
die in the trust and the fear of God." When she was attended by Sir
George Gibbes, being unable to articulate, she traced a coffin in the
air with her hands and lay calm. Her will, dated the 29th March,
1816, makes Sir John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury heir to all her real
and personal property with the exception of some small bequests, Sir
James Fellowes and Sir John Salusbury being appointed executors.
A Memorandum signed by Sir James Fellowes runs thus:--"After I had
read the Will, Lady Keith and her two sisters present, said they had
long been prepared for the contents and for such a disposition of the
property, and they acknowledged the validity of the Will."
* * * * *
In any endeavour to solve the difficult problem of Mrs. Piozzi's
conduct and character, it should be kept in view that the highest
testimony to her worth has been volunteered by those with whom she
passed the last years of her life in the closest intimacy. She had
become completely reconciled to Madame D'Arblay, with whom she was
actively corresponding when she died, and her mixed qualities of head
and heart are thus summed up in that lady's Diary, May, 1821:
"I have lost now, just lost, my once most dear, intimate, and admired
friend, Mrs. Thrale Piozzi, who preserved her fine faculties, her
imagination, her intelligence, her powers of allusion and citation,
her extraordinary memory, and her almost unexampled vivacity, to the
last of her existence. She was in her eighty-second year, and yet
owed not her death to age nor to natural decay, but to the effects of
a fall in a journey from Penzance to Clifton. On her eightieth
birthday she gave a great ball, concert, and supper, in the public
rooms at Bath, to upwards of two hundred persons, and the ball she
opened herself. She was, in truth, a most wonderful character for
talents and eccentricity, for wit, genius, generosity, spirit, and
powers of entertainment.
"She had a great deal both of good and not good, in common with
Madame de Staël Holstein. They had the same sort of highly superior
intellect, the same depth of learning, the same general acquaintance
with science, the same ardent love of literature, the same thirst for
universal knowledge, and the same buoyant animal spirits, such as
neither sickness, sorrow, nor even terror, could subdue. Their
conversation was equally luminous, from the sources of their own
fertile minds, and from their splendid acquisitions from the works
and acquirements of others. Both were zealous to serve, liberal to
bestow, and graceful to oblige; and both were truly high-minded in
prizing and praising whatever was admirable that came in their way.
Neither of them was delicate nor polished, though each was flattering
and caressing; but both had a fund inexhaustible of good humour, and
of sportive gaiety, that made their intercourse with those they
wished to please attractive, instructive, and delightful; and though
not either of them had the smallest real malevolence in their
compositions, neither of them could ever withstand the pleasure of
uttering a repartee, let it wound whom it might, even though each
would serve the very person they goaded with all the means in their
power. Both were kind, charitable, and munificent, and therefore
beloved; both were sarcastic, careless, and daring, and therefore
feared. The morality of Madame de Staël was by far the most faulty,
but so was the society to which she belonged; so were the general
manners of those by whom she was encircled."
There is one real point of similarity between Madame de Staël and
Mrs. Piozzi, which has been omitted in the parallel. Both were
treated much in the same manner by the amiable, sensitive, and
unsophisticated Fanny Burney. In Feb. 1793, she wrote to her father,
then at Paris, to announce her intimacy with a small "colony" of
distinguished emigrants settled at Richmond, the cynosure of which
was the far-famed daughter of Necker. He writes to caution her on the
strength of a suspicious _liaison_ with M. de Narbonne. She replies
by declaring her belief that the charge is a gross calumny. "Indeed,
I think you could not spend a day with them and not see that their
commerce is that of pure, but exalted and most elegant, friendship. I
would, nevertheless, give the world to avoid being a guest under
their roof, now that I have heard even the shadow of such a rumour."
If Mr. Croker was right, she was then in her forty-second year; at
all events, no tender, timid, delicate maiden, ready to start at a
hint or semblance of impropriety; and she waved her scruples without
hesitation when they stood in the way of her intercourse with M.
D'Arblay, whom she married in July 1793, he being then employed in
transcribing Madame de Staël's Essay on the Influence of the
Passions.
As to the parallel, with all due deference to Madame D'Arblay's
proved sagacity aided by her personal knowledge of her two gifted
friends, it may be suggested that they present fewer points of
resemblance than any two women of at all corresponding celebrity.[1]
The superiority in the highest qualities of mind will be awarded
without hesitation to the French woman, although M. Thiers terms her
writings the perfection of mediocrity. She grappled successfully with
some of the weightiest and subtlest questions of social and political
science; in criticism she displayed powers which Schlegel might have
envied while he aided their fullest development in her "Germany"; and
her "Corinne" ranks amongst the best of those works of fiction which
excel in description, reflection, and sentiment, rather than in
pathos, fancy, stirring incident, or artfully contrived plot. But her
tone of mind was so essentially and notoriously masculine, that when
she asked Talleyrand whether he had read her "Delphine," he answered,
"Non, Madame, mais on m'a dit que-nous y sommes tous les deux
déguisés en femmes."[2] This was a material drawback on her
agreeability: in a moment of excited consciousness, she exclaimed,
that she would give all her fame for the power of fascinating; and
there was no lack of bitterness in her celebrated repartee to the man
who, seated between her and Madame Recamier, boasted of being between
Wit and Beauty, "Oui, et sans posséder ni l'un ni l'autre."[3] The
view from Richmond Park she called "calme et animée, ce qu'on doit
être, et que je ne suis pas."
[Footnote 1: Lady Morgan and Madame de Genlis have been suggested as
each presenting a better subject for a parallel.]
[Footnote 2: "To understand the point of this answer," says Mr.
Mackintosh, "it must be known that an old countess is introduced in
the novel full of cunning, finessing, and trick, who was intended to
represent Talleyrand, and Delphine was intended for herself."--_Life
of Sir James Mackintosh_, vol. ii. p. 453.]
[Footnote 3: This _mot_ is given to Talleyrand in Lady Holland's Life
of Sydney Smith. But it may be traced to one mentioned by Hannah More
in 1787, as then current in Paris. One of the _notables_ fresh from
his province was teased by two _petits maîtres_ to tell them who he
was. "Eh bien donc, le voici: je suis ni sot ni fat, mais je suis
entre les deux."--_Memoirs of Hannah More_, vol. ii. p. 57.]
In London she was soon voted a bore by the wits and people of
fashion. She thought of convincing whilst they thought of dining.
Sheridan and Brummell delighted in mystifying her. Byron complained
that she was always talking of himself or herself[1], and concludes
his account of a dinner-party by the remark:--"But we got up too soon
after the women; and Mrs. Corinne always lingers so long after
dinner, that we wish her--in the drawing-room." In another place he
says: "I saw Curran presented to Madame de Staël at Mackintosh's; it
was the grand confluence between the Rhone and the Saône, and they
were both so d--d ugly that I could not help wondering how the best
intellects of France and England could have taken up respectively
such residences." He afterwards qualifies this opinion: "Her figure
was not bad; her legs tolerable; her arms good: altogether I can
conceive her having been a desirable woman, allowing a little
imagination for her soul, and so forth. She would have made a great
man."
[Footnote 1: Johnson told Boswell: "You have only two topics,
yourself and myself, and I am heartily sick of both."]
This is just what Mrs. Piozzi never would have made. Her mind,
despite her masculine acquirements, was thoroughly feminine: she had
more tact than genius, more sensibility and quickness of perception
than depth, comprehensiveness, or continuity of thought. But her very
discursiveness prevented her from becoming wearisome: her varied
knowledge supplied an inexhaustible store of topics and
illustrations; her lively fancy placed them in attractive lights; and
her mind has been well likened to a kaleidoscope which, whenever its
glittering and heterogeneous contents are moved or shaken, surprises
by some new combination of colour or of form. She professed to write
as she talked; but her conversation was doubtless better than her
books: her main advantages being a well-stored memory, fertility of
images, aptness of allusion, and _apropos_.
Her colloquial excellence and her agreeability are established by the
unanimous testimony of her cotemporaries. Her fame in this respect
rests on the same basis as that of all great wits, all great actors,
and many great orators. To question it for want of more tangible and
durable proofs, would be as unreasonable as to question Sydney
Smith's humour, Hook's powers of improvisation, Garrick's Richard, or
Sheridan's Begum speech. But _ex pede Herculem_. Marked indications
of her quality will be found in her letters and her books. "Both,"
remarks an acute and by no means partial critic[1], "are full of
happy touches, and here and there will be found in them those deep
and piercing thoughts which come intuitively to people of genius."
[Footnote 1: The Athenæum. Jan. 26th, 1861.]
Surely these are happy touches:
"I hate a general topic as a pretty woman hates a general mourning
when black does not become her complexion."
"Life is a schoolroom, not a playground."
In allusion to the rage for scientific experiment in 1811: "Never was
poor Nature so put to the rack, and never, of course, was she made to
tell so many lies."
"Science (i.e. learning), which acted as a sceptre in the hand of
Johnson, and was used as a club by Dr. Parr, became a lady's fan,
when played with by George Henry Glasse."
"Hope is drawn with an anchor always, and Common Sense is never
strong enough to draw it up."
"The poppy which Nature sows among the corn, to shew us that sleep is
as necessary as bread." [1]
[Footnote 1: Or to shew us that the harvest diminishes with sloth,
and that what we gain in sleep we lose in bread. But _qui dort,
dine_.]
"The best writers are not the best friends; and the last character is
more to be valued than the first by cotemporaries: after fifty years,
indeed, the others carry away all the applause."
This is the reason why posterity always takes part with the famous
author or man of genius against those who witnessed his meanness or
suffered from his selfishness; why fresh apologists will constantly
be found for Bacon's want of principle and Johnson's want of manners.
In the course of his famous definition or description of wit, Barrow
says: "Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in
seasonable application of a trivial saying: sometimes it playeth in
words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense
or the affinity of their sound." If this be so, she possessed it in
abundance. In a letter, dated Bath, 26th April, 1818,--about the time
when Talleyrand said of Lady F.S.'s robe: "_Elle commence trop tard
et finit trop tôt_,"--she writes: