of Dr. Burney, Fanny's father. On this occasion she had taken advantage
of his back being turned to mimic him as he sat at the piano. For this
she was reprimanded by Dr. Burney, and she must have felt that she
deserved the correction, for she took it in good part and behaved with
great decorum during the rest of the evening.
After a year in her widow's weeds,--which must have tormented Johnson,
for he hated the thought of death and liked to see ladies dressed in gay
colors,--she laid aside her severe black and began to resume her place
in society. The newspapers marked the change, and every man who entered
her house was referred to as a possible husband for the rich and
attractive widow. Finally she was obliged to write to the papers and ask
that they would let the subject alone.
But it soon became evident to Johnson and to the rest of the world that
Piozzi was successfully laying siege to the lady; as why should he not?
The fact that he was a Catholic, an Italian, and a musician could hardly
have appeared to him as reasons why he should not court a woman of rare
charm and distinction, with whom he had been on terms of friendship for
several years; a woman who was of suitable age, the mistress of a fine
estate and three thousand pounds a year, and whose children were no
longer children but young ladies of independent fortune. That she
should marry some one seemed certain. Why not Piozzi? Her daughters
protested that their mother was disgracing herself and them, and the
world held up its hands in horror at the thought; the co-executors of
the estate became actually insulting, and Fanny Burney was so shocked at
the idea that she finally gave up visiting Streatham altogether. Society
ranged itself for and against the lady--few for, many against.
There were other troubles, too: a lawsuit involving a large sum was
decided against her, and Johnson, ill, querulous, and exacting, behaved
as an irritable old man would who felt his influence in the family
waning. I am a Johnsonian,--Tinker has called me so and Tinker may be
depended upon to know a Johnsonian when he sees one,--but I am bound to
admit that Johnson had behaved badly and was to behave worse. Johnson
was very human and the lady was very human, too. They had come to a
parting of the ways.
It was inevitable that the life at Streatham must be terminated. Its
glory had departed, and the expense of its upkeep was too great for the
lady; so a tenant was secured and Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson prepared
to leave the house in which so many happy years had been spent. Dr.
Johnson was once more to make his lodgings in Bolt Court, and Mrs.
Thrale, after a visit to Brighton, was to go to Bath to repose her
purse. The engagement, or understanding, or whatever it was, with Piozzi
was broken off, and Italy was proposed as a place of residence for him.
Broken hearts there were in plenty.
Life for Mrs. Thrale at Bath proved to be impossible. If concealment did
not feed on the damask of her cheek, love did, and at last it became
evident, even to the young ladies, that their mother was pining away for
Piozzi, and they gave their consent that he be recalled.
He came at once. Mrs. Thrale, on his departure, had sent him a poem
which reached him at Dover. She now sent him another which was designed
to reach him on his return, at Calais.
Over mountains, rivers, vallies,
See my love returns to Calais,
After all their taunts and malice,
Ent'ring safe the gates of Calais.
While Delay'd by winds he dallies,
Fretting to be kept at Calais,
Muse, prepare some sprightly sallies
To divert my dear at Calais;
Say how every rogue who rallies
Envies him who waits at Calais
For her that would disdain a Palace
Compar'd to Piozzi, Love and Calais.
Pretty poor poetry those who know tell me; but if Piozzi liked it, it
served its purpose. And now Mrs. Thrale announced her engagement in a
circular letter to her co-executors under the Thrale will, sending, in
addition, to Johnson a letter in which she says, "The dread of your
disapprobation has given me some anxious moments, and I feel as if
acting without a parent's consent till you write kindly to me."
Johnson's reply is historic:--
MADAM,--If I interpret your letter right, you are ignominiously
married: if it is yet undone, let us once more talk together. If
you have abandoned your children and your religion, God forgive
your wickedness; if you have forfeited your fame and your country,
may your folly do no further mischief. If the last act is yet to
do, I who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served
you, I who long thought you the first of womankind, entreat that,
before your fate is irrevocable, I may once more see you. I was, I
once was, Madam, most truly yours,
SAM JOHNSON.
_July 2, 1784._
It was a smashing letter, and showed that the mind which had composed
the famous letter to Chesterfield and another, equally forceful, to
Macpherson had not lost its vigor. But those letters had brought no
reply. His letter to Mrs. Thrale did, and one at once dignified and
respectful. The little lady was no novice in letter-writing, and I can
imagine that upon the arrival of her letter the weary, heartsick old man
wept. Remember that his emotions were seldom completely under his
control, and that he had nothing of the bear about him but its skin.
Sir [she wrote]; I have this morning received from you so rough a
letter in reply to one which was both tenderly and respectfully
written, that I am forced to desire the conclusion of a
correspondence which I can bear to continue no longer. The birth of
my second husband is not meaner than that of my first; his
sentiments are not meaner; his profession is not meaner; and his
superiority in what he professes acknowledged by all mankind. Is
it want of fortune, then, that is ignominious? The character of the
man I have chosen has no other claim to such an epithet. The
religion to which he has been always a zealous adherent will, I
hope, teach him to forgive insults he has not deserved; mine will,
I hope, enable me to bear them at once with dignity and patience.
To hear that I have forfeited my fame is indeed the greatest insult
I ever yet received. My fame is as unsullied as snow, or I should
think it unworthy of him who must henceforth protect it.
Johnson, she says, wrote once more, but the letter has never come to
light; the correspondence, which had continued over a period of twenty
years, was at an end. An interesting letter of Thomas Hardy on this
subject came into my possession recently. In it he says, "I am in full
sympathy with Mrs. Thrale under the painful opposition to her marriage
with Piozzi. The single excuse for Johnson's letter to her on that
occasion would be that he was her lover himself, and hoped to win her,
otherwise it was simply brutal." I do not think that Johnson was her
lover, and I am afraid I must agree that Johnson was brutal. In
extenuation I urge that he was a very weary, sick old man.
At the time Mrs. Thrale's detractors were many and her defenders few.
Two dates were given as to the time of her marriage, which started some
wandering lies, much to her disadvantage. The fact is that both dates
were correct, for she was married to Piozzi once by a Catholic and
several weeks later by a Church of England ceremony. In her journal she
writes under date of July 25, 1784, "I am now the wife of my faithful
Piozzi ... he loves me and will be mine forever.... The whole Christian
Church, Catholic and Protestant, all are witnesses."
For two years they traveled on the continent. No marriage could have
been happier. Piozzi, by comparison with his wife, is a rather shadowy
person. He is described as being a handsome man, a few months older than
she, with gentle, pleasant, unaffected manners, very eminent in his
profession; nor was he, as was so frequently stated, a man without a
fortune. The difference in their religious views was the cause of no
difficulty. Each respected the religion of the other and kept his or her
own. "I would preserve my religious opinions inviolate at Milan as my
husband did his at London," is an entry in her journal.
She was staying at Milan when tidings of Johnson's death reached her.
All of her correspondents hastened to apprize her of the news. I have a
long letter to her from one Henry Johnson,--who he was, I am unable to
determine,--written one day after the funeral, describing the procession
forming in Bolt Court; the taking of mourning coaches in Fleet Street
and "proceeding to Westminster Abbey where the corpse was laid close to
the remains of David Garrick, Esquire."
That Madam Piozzi, as we must now call her, was deeply affected, we
cannot doubt. Only a few days before the news of his death reached her,
we find her writing to a friend, urging him not to neglect Dr. Johnson,
saying, "You will never see any other mortal so wise or so good. I keep
his picture constantly before me." Before long she heard, too, that
several of her old friends had engaged to write his life, and Piozzi
urged her to be one of the number. The result was the "Anecdotes of the
late Samuel Johnson during the last Twenty Years of his Life." It is not
a great work, but considering the circumstances under which it was
written, her journals being locked up in England while she was writing
at Florence, greater faults than were found in it could have been
overlooked. It provided Boswell with some good anecdotes for his great
book, and it antedated Hawkins's "Life of Johnson" by about a year.
The public appetite was whetted by the earlier publication of Boswell's
"Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides," in which he had given a taste of
his quality, and the "Anecdotes" appeared at a time when everything
which related to Johnson had a great vogue. The book was published by
Cadell, and so great was the demand, that the first edition was
exhausted on the day of publication; so that, when the King sent for a
copy in the evening, on the day of its publication, the publisher had to
beg for one from a friend.
Bozzy and Piozzi thus became rival biographers in the opinion of the
public, and the public got what pleasure it could out of numerous
caricatures and satires with which the bookshops abounded, many of these
being amusing and some simply scurrilous, after the fashion of the
time.
Meanwhile, the Piozzis had become tired of travel and wished again to
enjoy the luxury of a home. "Prevail on Mr. Piozzi to settle in
England," had been Dr. Johnson's parting advice. It was not difficult to
do so, and on their return, after a short stay in London, they took up
residence in Bath.
Here Madam Piozzi, encouraged by the success of the "Anecdotes," devoted
herself to the publication of two volumes of "Letters to and from the
late Samuel Johnson." Their preparation for the press was somewhat
crude: it consisted largely in making omissions here and there, and
substituting asterisks for proper names; but the copyright was sold for
five hundred pounds, and the letters showed, if indeed it was necessary
to show, how intimate had been the relationship between the Doctor and
herself.
As time went on, there awakened in Madam Piozzi a longing for the larger
life of Streatham, and her husband, always anxious to accomplish her
wishes, decided that she should return to the scene of her former
triumphs; but Dr. Johnson, the keystone of her social arch, was gone,
and there was no one to take his place. Her husband was a cultured
gentleman, but he was not to the English manner born.
The attempt was made, however, and on the seventh anniversary of their
wedding day Streatham was thrown open. Seventy people sat down to
dinner, the house and grounds were illuminated, and the villagers were
made welcome. A thousand people thronged through the estate. One might
have supposed that a young lord had come into his own.
It was a brave effort, but it was soon seen to be unavailing. A man's
fame may be like a shuttle-cock, having constantly to be struck to
prevent its falling; but not a woman's. She had lost caste by her
marriage. It was not forgotten that her husband was "a foreigner," that
he had been a "fiddler"; while his wife had been the object of too much
ridicule, the subject of too many lampoons.
But the lady had resources within herself; she was an inveterate reader
and she had tasted the joys of authorship. She now published a volume of
travels and busied herself with several other works, the very names of
which are forgotten except by the curious in such matters.
While she was thus engaged a bitter and scandalous attack was made upon
her by Baretti. Now, Baretti was a liar, and in proof of her good sense
and forgiving disposition, I offer in evidence the entry that she made
in her journal when she heard of his death. "Baretti is dead. Poor
Baretti!... he died as he lived, less like a Christian than a
philosopher, leaving no debts (but those of gratitude) undischarged and
expressing neither regret for the past nor fear for the future.... A wit
rather than a scholar, strong in his prejudices, haughty in spirit,
cruel in anger. He is dead! So is my enmity."
On another occasion she contrived to quiet a hostile critic who had
ridiculed her in verse; much damage may be done by a couplet, as she
well knew, and the lines,--
See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam
And bring in pomp laborious nothings home,--
were not nice, however true they might be. Madam Piozzi determined to
take him in hand. She contrived at the house of a friend to get herself
placed opposite to him at a supper-table, and after observing his
perplexity with amusement for a time, she raised her wine-glass to him
and proposed the toast, "Good fellowship for the future." The critic was
glad to avail himself of the dainty means of escape from an awkward
situation.
However, it was evident that life at Streatham could not be continued on
the old scale. Funds were not as plentiful as in the days of the great
brewmaster; so after a few years, when her husband suggested their
retiring to her native Wales, she was glad to fall in with the idea. A
charming site was selected, and a villa built in the Italian style after
her husband's design. It was called "Brynbella," meaning beautiful brow;
half Welsh and half Italian, like its owners. I fancy their lives were
happier here than they had been elsewhere, for they built upon their own
foundation. Piozzi had his piano and his violin, and the lady busied
herself with her books; while the monotony of existence was pleasantly
broken by occasional visits to Bath, where they had many friends.
And during these years, letters and notes, comment and criticism,
dropped from her pen like leaves from a tree in autumn. She lived over
again in memory her life in London, reading industriously, and busy in
the pleasant and largely profitless way which tends to make days pass
into months and months into years and leave no trace of their passing.
She must always have had a pen in her hand: it goes without saying that
she had kept a diary; in those days everyone did, and most had less than
she to record. It was Dr. Johnson who suggested that she get a little
book and write in it all the anecdotes she might hear, observations she
might make, or verse that might otherwise be lost. These instructions
were followed literally, but no little book sufficed. She filled many
large quarto volumes, six of which, entitled "Thraliana," passed through
the London auction rooms in 1908, bringing £2050. One volume, which
perhaps does not belong to the series, but which in every way accords
with Dr. Johnson's suggestion, formed part of the late A. M. Broadley's
collection until, at his death, it passed with several other items, into
that of the writer.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE, MUCH REDUCED IN SIZE, OF THE LAST PAGE OF MRS.
THRALE'S "JOURNAL OF A TOUR IN WALES," UNDERTAKEN IN THE COMPANY OF DR.
JOHNSON IN THE SUMMER OF 1774.]
Mr. Broadley took an ardent interest in everything that related to Mrs.
Thrale, and published, a few years ago, her "Journal of the Welsh Tour,"
undertaken in the summer of 1774. Dr. Johnson also kept a diary on this
journey, but his is bald and fragmentary, while that of the lady is an
intimate and consecutive narrative. The original manuscript volume, in
its original dark, limp leather binding is before me. It comprises
ninety-seven pages in Mrs. Thrale's beautiful hand, beginning, "On
Tuesday, 5th July, 1774, I began my journey through Wales. We set out
from Streatham in our coach and four post horses, accompanied by Dr.
Johnson and our eldest daughter. Baretti went with us as far as London,
where we left him and hiring fresh horses they carried us to the Mitre
at Barnet"; and so on throughout the whole tour, until she made this,
her final entry:--
September 30th. When I rose Mr. Thrale informed me that the
Parliament was suddenly dissolved and that all the world was
bustle; that we were to go to Southwark, not to Streatham, and
canvass away. I heard the first part of this report with pleasure,
the latter with pain; nothing but a real misfortune could, I think,
affect me so much as the thoughts of going to Town thus to settle
for the Winter before I have had any enjoyment of Streatham at all;
and so all my hopes of pleasure blow away. I thought to have lived
in Streatham in quiet and comfort, have kissed my children and
cuffed them by turns, and had a place always for them to play in;
and here I must be shut up in that odious dungeon, where nobody
will come near me, the children are to be sick for want of air, and
I am never to see a face but Mr. Johnson's. Oh, what a life that
is! and how truly do I abhor it! At noon however I saw my Girls and
thought Susan vastly improved. At evening I saw my Boys and liked
them very well too. How much is there always to thank God for! But
I dare not enjoy poor Streatham lest I should be forced to quit it.
I value this little volume highly, as who, interested in the lady, would
not? It is an unaffected record of a journey, of interesting people who
met interesting people wherever they went, and its publication by
Broadley was a pious act. But that the Broadley volume, published a few
years ago, gets its chief value from the sympathetic introduction by
Thomas Seccombe, must, I think, be admitted.
It is no longer the fashion to "blush as well as weep for Mrs. Thrale."
This silly phrase is Macaulay's. Rather, as Sir Walter Raleigh remarked
to me in going over some of her papers in my library, "What a dear,
delightful person she was! I have always wanted to meet her." In the
future, what may be written of Mrs. Thrale will be written in better
taste. At this time of day why should she be attacked because she
married a man who did not speak English as his mother tongue, and who
was a musician rather than a brewer? One may be an enthusiastic admirer
of Dr. Johnson--I confess I am--and yet keep a warm place in one's heart
for the kindly and charming little woman. Admit that she was not the
scholar she thought she was, that she was "inaccurate in narration":
what matters it? She was a woman of character, too. She was not
overpowered by Dr. Johnson, as was Fanny Burney, to such a degree that
at last she came to write like him, only more so. Mrs. Thrale, by her
own crisp, vigorous English, influenced the Doctor finally to write as
he talked, naturally, without that undue elaboration which was
characteristic of his earlier style.
If Johnson mellowed under the benign influence of the lady, she was the
gainer in knowledge, especially in such knowledge as comes from books.
It was Mrs. Thrale rather than her husband who formed the Streatham
library. Her taste was robust, she baulked at no foreign language, but
set about to study it. I have never seen a book from her library--and I
have seen many--which was not filled with notes written in her clear and
beautiful hand. These volumes, like the books which Lamb lent Coleridge,
and which he returned with annotations tripling their value, are
occasionally offered for sale in those old book-shops where our
resolutions not to be tempted are writ in so much water; or they turn up
at auction sales and astonish the uninitiated by the prices they bring.
Several of these volumes are in the collection of the writer: her
Dictionary, the gift of Dr. Johnson, for instance, and a "Life of
Psalmanazar," another gift from the same source; but the book which,
above all others, every Johnsonian would wish to own is the property of
Miss Amy Lowell of Boston, a poet of rare distinction, a critic, and
America's most distinguished woman collector. Who does not envy her the
possession of the first edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," filled
with the marginalia of the one person in the world whose knowledge of
the old man rivaled that of the great biographer himself? And to hear
Miss Lowell quote these notes in a manner suggestive of the charm of
Madam Piozzi herself, is a delight never to be forgotten.
[Illustration: MISS AMY LOWELL, OF BOSTON, POET, CRITIC, AND AMERICA'S
MOST DISTINGUISHED WOMAN COLLECTOR]
About the time of the Piozzis' removal to Wales, they decided to
adopt a nephew, the son of Piozzi's brother, who had met with financial
reverses in Italy. The boy had been christened John Salusbury in honor
of Mrs. Piozzi, and she became greatly attached to the lad and decided
to leave him her entire fortune. He was brought up as an English boy,
and his education was a matter which gave her serious concern.
Meanwhile, the years that had touched the lady so lightly had left their
impress upon her husband, who does not seem to have been strong. He was
a great sufferer from gout, and finally died, and was buried in the
parish church of Tremeirchion, which years before he had caused to be
repaired, and had built there a burial vault in which his remains were
placed. They had lived in perfect harmony for twenty-five years, thus
effectually overturning the prophecies of their friends. She continued
to reside at Brynbella until the marriage of her adopted son, when she
generously gave him the estate and removed to Bath, that lovely little
city where so many celebrities have gone to pass the closing years of
eventful lives.
As a "Bath cat" she continued her interest in men, women, and books
until the end. Having outlived all her old friends, she proceeded to
make new; and when nearly eighty astonished everyone by showing great
partiality for a young and handsome actor,--and, if reports be true, a
very bad actor,--named Conway. There was much smoke and doubtless some
fire in the affair: letters purporting to be hers to him were published
after her death. They may not be genuine, and if they are they show
simply, as Leslie Stephen says, that at a very advanced age she became
silly.
On her eightieth birthday she gave a ball to six or seven hundred people
in the Assembly Rooms at Bath, and led the dancing herself with her
adopted son (who by this time was Sir John Salusbury Piozzi), very much
to her satisfaction.
A year later she met with an accident, from the effects of which she
died. She was buried in Tremeirchion Church beside her husband. A few
years ago, on the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Johnson, a
memorial tablet was erected in the quaint old church, reading,--
_Near this place are interred the remains of_
HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI
DR. JOHNSON'S MRS. THRALE
_Born 1741, died 1821_
Mrs. Piozzi's life is her most enduring work. Trifles were her serious
business, and she was never idle. Always a great letter-writer, she set
in motion a correspondence which would have taxed the capacity of a
secretary with a typewriter. To the last she was a great reader, and
observing a remark in Boswell on the irksomeness of books to people of
advanced age, she wrote on the margin, "Not to me, at eighty." Her
wonderful memory remained unimpaired until the last. She knew English
literature well. She spoke French and Italian fluently. Latin she
transcribed with ease and grace; of Greek she had a smattering, and she
is said to have had a working knowledge of Hebrew; but I suspect that
her Hebrew would have set a scholar's hair on end. With all these
accomplishments, she was not a pedant, or, properly speaking, a
Blue-Stocking, or if she was, it was of a very light shade of blue. She
told a capital story, omitted everything irrelevant and came to the
point at once; in brief, she was a man's woman.
And to end the argument where it began,--for arguments always end where
they begin,--I came across a remark the other day which sums up my
contention. It was to the effect that, in whatever company Mrs. Piozzi
found herself, others found her the most charming person in the room.
[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON]