1741. She was an only child, very precocious, with a retentive memory.
She soon became the plaything of the elderly people around her, who
called her "Fiddle." Her father had the reputation of being a scamp,
and it fell to her uncle's lot to direct, somewhat, her education.
Handed from one relation to another, she quickly adapted herself to her
surroundings. Her mother taught her French; a tutor, Latin; Quin, the
actor, taught her to recite; Hogarth painted her portrait; and the
grooms of her grandmother, whom she visited occasionally, made her an
accomplished horsewoman. In those days education for a woman was highly
irregular, but judging from the results in the case of Mrs. Thrale and
her friends, who shall say that it was ineffective? We have no Elizabeth
Carters nowadays, good at translating Epictetus, and--we have it on high
authority--better at making a pudding.
Study soon became little Hester's delight. At twelve years she wrote for
the newspapers; also, she used to rise at four in the morning to study,
which her mother would not have allowed had she known of it. I have a
letter written many years afterwards in which she says: "My mother
always told me I ruined my Figure and stopt my Growth by sitting too
long at a Writing Desk, though ignorant how much Time I spent at it.
Dear Madam, was my saucy Answer,--
"Tho' I could reach from Pole to Pole
And grasp the Ocean with my Span,
I would be measur'd by my Soul.
The Mind's the Standard of the Man."
She is quoting Dr. Watts from memory evidently, and improving, perhaps,
upon the original.
But little girls grow up and husbands must be found for them. Henry
Thrale, the son of a rich Southwark brewer, was brought forward by her
uncle; while her father, protesting that he would not have his only
child exchanged for a barrel of "bitter," fell into a rage and died of
an apoplexy. Her _dot_ was provided by the uncle; her mother did the
courting, with little opposition on the part of the lady and no
enthusiasm on the part of the suitor. So, without love on either side,
she being twenty-two and her husband thirty-five, she became Mrs.
Thrale. "My uncle," she records in her journal, "went with us to the
church, gave me away, dined with us at Streatham after the ceremony, and
then left me to conciliate as best I could a husband who had never
thrown away five minutes of his time upon me unwitnessed by company till
after the wedding day was done."
[Illustration: EXTRACT FROM MS. LETTER OF MRS. THRALE]
More happiness came from this marriage than might have been expected.
Henry Thrale, besides his suburban residence, Streatham, had two other
establishments, one adjoining the brewery in Southwark, where he lived
in winter, and another, an unpretentious villa at the seaside. He also
maintained a stable of horses and a pack of hounds at Croydon; but,
although a good horsewoman, Mrs. Thrale was not permitted to join her
husband in his equestrian diversions; indeed, her place in her husband's
establishment was not unlike that of a woman in a seraglio. She was
allowed few pleasures, and but one duty was impressed upon her, namely,
that of supplying an heir to the estate; to this duty she devoted
herself unremittingly.
In due time a child was born, a daughter; and while this was of course
recognized as a mistake, it was believed to be one which could be
corrected.
Meanwhile Thrale was surprised to find that his wife could think and
talk--that she had a mind of her own. The discovery dawned slowly upon
him, as did the idea that the pleasure of living in the country may be
enhanced by hospitality. Finally the doors of Streatham Park were thrown
open. For a time her husband's bachelor friends and companions were the
only company. Included among these was one Arthur Murphy, who had been
_un maître de plaisir_ to Henry Thrale in the gay days before his
marriage, when they had frequented the green rooms and Ranelagh
together. It was Murphy who suggested that "Dictionary Johnson" might be
secured to enliven a dinner-party, and then followed some discussion as
to the excuse which should be given Johnson for inviting him to the
table of the rich brewer. It was finally suggested that he be invited to
meet a minor celebrity, James Woodhouse, the shoemaker poet.
Johnson rose to the bait,--Johnson rose easily to any bait which would
provide him a good dinner and lift him out of himself,--and the dinner
passed off successfully. Mrs. Thrale records that they all liked each
other so well that a dinner was arranged for the following week, without
the shoemaker, who, having served his purpose, disappears from the
record.
And now, and for twenty years thereafter, we find Johnson enjoying the
hospitality of the Thrales, which opened for him a new world. When he
was taken ill, not long after the introduction, Mrs. Thrale called on
him in his stuffy lodgings in a court off Fleet Street, and suggested
that the air of Streatham would be good for him. Would he come to them?
He would. He was not the man to deny himself the care of a young, rich,
and charming woman, who would feed him well, understand him, and add to
the joys of conversation. From that time on, whether at their residence
in Deadman's Place in Southwark, or at Streatham, or at Brighton, even
on their journeys, the Thrales and Johnson were constantly together; and
when he went on a journey alone, as was sometimes the case, he wrote
long letters to his mistress or his master, as he affectionately called
his friends.
Who gained most by this intercourse? It would be hard to say. It is a
fit subject for a debate, a copy of Boswell's "Life of Johnson" to go to
the successful contestant. Johnson summed up his obligations to the lady
in the famous letter written just before her second marriage, probably
the last he ever wrote her. "I wish that God may grant you every
blessing, that you may be happy in this world ... and eternally happy in
a better state; and whatever I can contribute to your happiness I am
ready to repay for that kindness which soothed twenty years of a life
radically wretched."
On the other hand, the Thrales secured what, perhaps unconsciously, they
most desired, social position and distinction. At Streatham they
entertained the best, if not perhaps the very highest, society of the
time. Think for a moment of the intimates of this house, whose
portraits, painted by Reynolds, hung in the library. There were my Lords
Sandys and Westcote, college friends of Thrale; there were Johnson and
Goldsmith; Garrick and Burke; Burney, and Reynolds himself, and a number
of others, all from the brush of the great master; and could we hear the
voices which from time to time might have been heard in the famous room,
we should recognize Boswell and Piozzi, Baretti, and a host of others;
and would it be necessary for the servant to announce the entrance of
the great Mrs. Siddons, or Mrs. Garrick, or Fanny Burney, or Hannah
More, or Mrs. Montagu, or any of the other ladies who later formed that
famous coterie which came to be known as the Blue-Stockings?
But Johnson was the Thrales' first lion and remained their greatest. He
first gave Streatham parties distinction. The master of the house
enjoyed having the wits about him, but was not one himself. Johnson
said of him that "his mind struck the hours very regularly but did not
mark the minutes." It was his wife who, by her sprightliness and her wit
and readiness, kept the ball rolling, showing infinite tact and skill in
drawing out one and, when necessary, repressing another; asking--when
the Doctor was not speaking--for a flash of silence from the company
that a newcomer might be heard.
But I am anticipating. All this was not yet. A salon such as she created
at Streatham Park is not the work of a month or of a year.
If Mrs. Thrale had ever entertained any illusions as to her husband's
regard for her, they must have received a shock when she discovered, as
she soon did, that Mr. Thrale had previously offered his hand to several
ladies, coupling with his proposal the fact that, in the event of its
being accepted, he would expect to live for a portion of each year in
his house adjoining the brewery. The famous brewery is now Barclay &
Perkins's, and still stands on its original site, where the Globe
Theatre once stood, not far from the Surrey end of Southwark Bridge. A
more unattractive place of residence it would be hard to imagine, but
for some reason Mr. Thrale loved it.
On the other hand, Streatham was delightful. It was a fine estate,
something over an hour's drive from Fleet Street in the direction of
Croydon. The house, a mansion of white stucco, stood in a park of more
than a hundred acres, beautifully wooded. Drives and gravel-walks gave
easy access to all parts of the grounds. There was a lake with a
drawbridge, and conservatories, and glass houses stocked with fine
fruits. Grapes, peaches, and pineapples were grown in abundance, and Dr.
Johnson, whose appetite was robust, was able for the first time in his
life to indulge himself in these things to his heart's content. In these
delightful surroundings the Thrales spent the greater part of each year,
and here assembled about them a coterie almost, if not quite, as
distinguished as that which made Holland House famous half a century
later.
A few years ago Barrie wrote a delightful play, "What Every Woman
Knows"; and I hasten to say, for the benefit of those who have not seen
this play, that what every woman knows is how to manage a husband. In
this respect Mrs. Thrale had no superior. Making due allowance, the play
suggests the relationship of the Thrales. A cold, self-contained, and
commonplace man is married to a sprightly and engaging wife. With her to
aid him, he is able so to carry himself that people take him for a man
of great ability; without her, he is utterly lost. To give point to the
play, the husband is obliged to make this painful discovery. Mrs.
Thrale, mercifully, never permitted her husband to discover how
commonplace he was. Could he have looked in her diary he might have read
this description of himself, and, had he read it, he would probably have
made no remark. He spoke little.
"Mr. Thrale's sobriety, and the decency of his conversation, being
wholly free from all oaths, ribaldry and profaneness, make him
exceedingly comfortable to live with; while the easiness of his temper
and slowness to take offence add greatly to his value as a domestic man.
Yet I think his servants do not love him, and I am not sure that his
children have much affection for him. With regard to his wife, though
little tender of her person, he is very partial to her understanding;
but he is obliging to nobody, and confers a favor less pleasingly than
many a man refuses one."
Elsewhere she refers to him as the handsomest man in London, by whom she
has had thirteen children, two sons and eleven daughters. Both sons and
all but three of the daughters died either in infancy or in early
childhood. Constantly in that condition in which ladies wish to be who
love their lords, Mrs. Thrale, by her advice and efforts, once, at
least, saved her husband from bankruptcy, and frequently from making a
fool of himself. She grew to take an intelligent interest in his
business affairs, urged him to enter Parliament, successfully
electioneered for him, and in return was treated with just that degree
of affection that a man might show to an incubator which, although
somewhat erratic in its operations, might at any time present him with a
son.
* * * * *
Such was the household of which Dr. Johnson became a member, and which,
to all intents and purposes, became his home. Retaining his lodgings in
a court off Fleet Street, he established in them what Mrs. Thrale
called his menagerie of old women: dependents too poor and wretched to
find asylum elsewhere. To them he was at all times considerate, if not
courteous. It was his custom to dine with them two or three times each
week, thus insuring them an ample dinner; but the library at Streatham
was especially devoted to his service. When he could be induced to work
on his "Lives of the Poets," it became his study; but for the most part
it was his arena, where, in playful converse or in violent discussion,
he held his own against all comers.
In due time, under the benign influence of the Thrales, he overcame his
repugnance to clean linen. Mr. Thrale suggested silver buckles for his
shoes, and he bought them. As he entered the drawing-room, a servant
might have been seen clapping on his head a wig which had not been badly
singed by a midnight candle as he tore the heart out of a book. The
great bear became bearable. One of his most intimate friends, Baretti, a
highly cultivated man, was secured as a tutor for the Thrale children,
of whom the eldest, nicknamed "Queenie," was Johnson's favorite.
Henry Thrale's table was one of the best in London. By degrees it became
known that at Streatham one might always be sure of an excellent dinner
and the best conversation in England. Dr. Johnson voiced, not only his
own, but the general opinion, that to smile with the wise and to feed
with the rich was very close upon human felicity; and he would have
admitted, had his attention been called to it, that there was at least
one house in London in which people could enjoy themselves as much as at
a capital inn.
[Illustration: TITLE OF MISS BURNEY'S "EVELINA." First Edition]
And people did. For the best description of life at Streatham we must
turn to the pages of Fanny Burney (Madame d'Arblay). Her diary is a work
of art, but that part of it which pleases most is where the art is so
concealed that one feels that the daily entries are intended for no
other eye than the writer's. It is its confidential character which is
its greatest charm. As the years pass, it loses this quality, and to the
extent that it does so it becomes less interesting to us. "Evelina" has
just been published and Fanny has become a welcome guest at the Thrales'
when the record opens. "I have now to write an account of the most
consequential day I have spent since my birth; namely, my Streatham
visit," is an early entry. Johnson is there and "is very proud to sit by
Miss Burney at dinner." Mrs. Thrale, described as a very pretty woman,
gay and agreeable, without a trace of pedantry, repeats some lines in
French, and Dr. Johnson quotes Latin which Mrs. Thrale turns into
excellent English.
Then the talk is of Garrick, who, some one says, appears to be getting
old, on which Johnson remarks that it must be remembered that his face
has had more wear and tear than any other man's. Then Mrs. Montagu is
mentioned, and the merits of her book on Shakespeare are discussed, and
Reynolds and his art, and finally the talk drifts back again to
"Evelina," and Dr. Johnson, stimulated by the gayety of an excellent
dinner in such surroundings, cries, "Harry Fielding never drew so good a
character.... There is no character better drawn anywhere--in any book,
by any author"; and Fanny pinches herself in delight, under the table,
as she had a right to do, for was not the great Cham of literature
praising her?
And so with talks and walks and drives and dinners and tea-drinkings
unceasing, with news, gossip, and scandal at retail, wholesale, and for
exportation, it was contrived that life at Streatham was as delightful
as life can be made to be. Occasionally there was work to be done. Dr.
Johnson was called on for an introduction to something, or the
proof-sheets of "The Lives of the Poets" arrived, and it became Mrs.
Thrale's duty to keep the Doctor up to his work--no easy task when a
pretty woman was around, and there were always several at Streatham.
Breakfast was always served in the library, and tea was pouring
incessantly. Thanks to Boswell and to "Little Burney," we know this life
better than we know any other whatever; and what life elsewhere is so
intimate and personal, so well worth knowing?
[Illustration: MRS. THRALE'S BREAKFAST-TABLE]
One morning Mrs. Thrale, entering the library and finding Johnson there,
complained that it was her birthday, and that no one had sent her any
verses. She admitted to being thirty-five, yet Swift, she said, fed
Stella with them till she was forty-six. Thereupon Johnson without
hesitation began to compose aloud, and Mrs. Thrale to write at his
dictation,--
"Oft in danger, yet alive,
We are come to thirty-five;
Long may better years arrive,
Better years than thirty-five.
Could philosophers contrive
Life to stop at thirty-five,
Time his hours should never drive
O'er the bounds of thirty-five.
High to soar, and deep to dive,
Nature gives at thirty-five.
Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
Trifle not at thirty-five;
For howe'er we boast and strive,
Life declines from thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by thirty-five;
And all who wisely wish to wive
Must look on Thrale at thirty-five,"--
adding, as he concluded, "And now, my dear, you see what it is to come
for poetry to a dictionary-maker. You may observe that the rhymes run in
alphabetical order exactly."
But life is not all cakes and ale. Mr. Thrale's ample income was
constantly in jeopardy from his business speculations. He was led by a
charlatan to spend a fortune in the endeavor to brew without hops; this
failing, he sought to recoup himself by over-brewing, despite the
protests of his wife, seconded by Dr. Johnson, who was becoming an
excellent man of affairs. Listen to the man whose boast was that he was
bred in idleness and the pride of literature. "The brewhouse must be the
scene of action.... The first consequence of our late trouble ought to
be an endeavor to brew at a cheaper rate, an endeavor not violent and
transient, but steady and continual, prosecuted with total contempt of
censure or wonder, and animated by resolution not to stop while more can
be done. Unless this can be done, nothing can help us; and if this is
done we shall not want help. Surely there is something to be saved;
there is to be saved whatever is the difference between vigilance and
neglect, between parsimony and profusion."
It is proper to observe that it is Dr. Johnson, and not Andrew Carnegie,
who is speaking, and in Mrs. Thrale's copy of the Dictionary, which I
happen to own, his gift to her, there is pasted in the book a letter in
Dr. Johnson's autograph written about this time, one paragraph of which
reads, "I think it very probably in your power to lay up eight thousand
pounds a year for every year to come, increasing all the time, what
needs not be increased, the splendour of all external appearance; and
surely such a state is not to be put in yearly hazard for the pleasure
of keeping the house full, or the ambition of outbrewing Whitbread.
Stop now and you are safe--stop a few years and you may go safely on
thereafter, if to go on shall seem worth the while."
Meanwhile, Mr. Thrale was quietly digging his grave with his teeth.
Warned by his physician and his friends that he must exercise more and
eat less, he snapped his fingers at them, I was going to say; but he did
nothing so violent. He simply disregarded their advice and gave orders
that the best and earliest of everything should be placed upon his table
in profusion. His death was the result, and at forty Mrs. Thrale found
herself a widow, wealthy, and with her daughters amply provided for.
She, with Dr. Johnson and several others, was an executor of the estate,
and promptly began to grapple with the problems of managing a great
business. Not long after Thrale's death we find this entry in her
journal: "I have now appointed three days a week to attend at the
counting-house. If an angel from Heaven had told me twenty years ago
that the man I knew by the name of Dictionary Johnson should one day
become partner with me in a great trade, and that we should jointly or
separately sign notes, drafts, etc., for three or four thousand pounds,
of a morning, how unlikely it would have seemed ever to happen! Unlikely
is not the word, it would have seemed incredible, neither of us then
being worth a groat, and both as immeasurably removed from commerce as
birth, literature, and inclination could get us."
The opinion was general that Mrs. Thrale had been a mere sleeping
partner, and her friends were amazed at the insight the sparkling little
lady showed in the management of a great business. "Such," says Mrs.
Montagu, "is the dignity of Mrs. Thrale's virtue, and such her
superiority in all situations of life, that nothing now is wanting but
an earthquake to show how she will behave on that occasion."
But this state of things was not long to continue. A knot of rich
Quakers came along, and purchased the enterprise for a hundred and
thirty-five thousand pounds. Dr. Johnson was not quite clear that the
property ought to be sold; but when the sale was finally decided upon,
he did his share toward securing a good price. Capitalization of earning
power has never been more succinctly described than when, in going over
the great establishment with the intending purchasers, he made his
famous remark, "We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats,
but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."
For Mrs. Thrale and her daughters the affair was a matter of great
moment; excitement ran high. Fanny Burney was staying at Streatham while
the business was pending, and it was arranged that on the day the
transaction was to be consummated, if all went well, Mrs. Thrale would,
on her return from town, wave a white pocket-handkerchief out of the
coach window. Dinner was at four; no Mrs. Thrale. Five came, and no Mrs.
Thrale. At last the coach appeared and out of the window fluttered a
handkerchief.
[Illustration: THE BEST-KNOWN PORTRAIT OF DR. JOHNSON, BY SIR JOSHUA
REYNOLDS. ORIGINALLY IN THE LIBRARY AT STREATHAM. SOLD IN 1816 FOR £378.
PASSED EVENTUALLY INTO THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
_Engraved by Doughty_]
Mrs. Thrale's own notes are amusing. She was glad to bid adieu to the
brewhouse and to the Borough--the business had been a great burden. Her
daughters were provided for, and she did not much care for money for
herself. By the bargain she had purchased peace, and, as she said,
"restoration to her original rank in life"; recording in her journal,
"Now that it is all over I'll go to church and give God thanks and
forget the frauds, follies and inconveniences of commercial life; as for
Dr. Johnson, his honest heart was cured of its incipient passion for
trade by letting him into _some_ and _only some_ of its mysteries."
A final word on the subject of the Thrale brewhouse, which still exists.
A year or two ago I spent a morning looking for Deadman's Place, which
has disappeared, but the great enterprise dominates the whole district,
which is redolent with the odor of malt and hops. Johnson's connection
with the business is immortalized by his portrait--the famous one so
generally known--being used as its trademark. The original picture is in
the National Gallery, but an excellent copy hangs in the directors' room
of the brewery. The furnishings of this room are of the simplest. I
doubt if they would fetch at auction a five-pound note, were it not for
the fact that Johnson's chair and desk are among them. In this room a
business running annually into millions is transacted. The English love
to leave old things as they are. With them history is always in the
making.
[Illustration: MS. INSCRIPTIONS BY MRS. THRALE]
Not many Sundays after Mrs. Thrale's thanksgiving she had a visitor at
Streatham--a visitor who, when he left, carried with him as a token of
her regard two little calf-bound volumes, in one of which was the
inscription, "These books written by Dr. Samuel Johnson were presented
to Mr. Gabbrielle Piozzi by Hester-Lynch Thrale. Streatham, Sunday 10
June, 1781"; with a further note in an equally clear and flowing hand:
"And Twenty Eight Years after that Time presented again to his Nephew
John Piozzi Salusbury by Hester Lynch Piozzi. Brynbella 1st August,
1809."
[Illustration: TITLE OF "THE PRINCE OF ABISSINIA" ("RASSELAS"). First
Edition]
I am able to be exact in this small matter, for the volumes in question
were given me not long ago by a friend who understands my passion for
such things. The book was the first edition of the "Prince of Abissinia"
(it was not known as "Rasselas" until after Dr. Johnson's death), and
Mrs. Thrale at the time did not know Piozzi sufficiently well to spell
his name correctly; but she was soon to learn, and to learn, too, that
she was in love with him and he with her.