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THE INTIMATE LETTERS OF HESTER
PIOZZI & PENELOPE PENNINGTON
1788-1821
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
AN ARTIST'S LOVE STORY
[Illustration: _M^{rs}. Hester Lynch Piozzi._
_Engraved by H. Meyer_,
_from an original Drawing by J. Jackson._]
THE INTIMATE LETTERS OF
HESTER PIOZZI AND PENELOPE
PENNINGTON 1788-1821
EDITED BY OSWALD G. KNAPP
WITH THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN. MCMXIV
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
TO
MY WIFE
PREFACE
The letters included in this volume have been printed without
alteration, except that some of Mrs. Piozzi's redundant initial
capitals have been suppressed, and that her somewhat erratic
punctuation has been, to a certain extent, systematised. Her spelling,
save for the correction of obvious slips, which are very rare, has not
been altered. The omitted passages, which have been indicated wherever
they occur, mainly consist of formal "compliments" at the beginning
or end of letters, to which she was much addicted, unsavoury medical
details, or casual allusions to insignificant persons and trivial
events of no interest in themselves, and having no direct bearing on
the story of her life.
For the outline of her career before her second marriage I have
to acknowledge my indebtedness to previous writers, particularly
Hayward and Mangin, and the more recent works of Mr. Seeley and
Messrs. Broadley and Seccombe; not forgetting the indispensable
_Dictionary of National Biography_, for the identification of many
persons incidentally mentioned. I have also to express my thanks to
Miss Thrale of Croydon for interesting information respecting her
family; and above all to Mr. A. M. Broadley, not only for his generous
permission to make use of Mrs. Piozzi's unpublished Commonplace Book,
now in his possession, but also for allowing me to draw freely upon
his unrivalled collection of prints, &c., relating to this period,
from which the greater part of the illustrations has been taken.
INWOOD, PARKSTONE,
_July 1913_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Introductory--Mrs. Piozzi and the blue-stockings--Penelope
Weston--The Salusbury family--Early years and
education--Marriage to Thrale, 1763--Widowhood--Marriage to
Piozzi, 1784--Foreign travel--Return to England, 1788 1
CHAPTER II
The Piozzis in Hanover Square--Scotch tour, 1789--Visit to
Wales--Return to Streatham Park, 1790--Harriet Lee's
romance--Nuneham and Mrs. Siddons, 1791--French
Revolution--Cecilia's admirers--Apprehensions for Cecilia--The
September massacres--Miss Weston's engagement 18
CHAPTER III
Miss Weston marries Wm. Pennington, 1792--Execution of
Louis XVI--Reconciliation of Mrs. Piozzi and her daughters,
1793--Irish Rebellion--_British Synonymy_--Fleming's
prophecies--Cecilia's flirtations--Residence at Denbigh,
1794--Building of Brynbella 73
CHAPTER IV
Cecilia's engagement and marriage to Mostyn, 1795--Her
dangerous illness--Friction with the Mostyns--Disturbances
in Italy and Ireland--Death of Maria Siddons--Visit
to Bath, 1798 121
CHAPTER V
Adoption of John Salusbury Piozzi--The _Canterbury Tales_--Bath
Riots, 1800--Chancery suit with Miss Thrale--Bach-y-graig
restored--_Retrospection_ published, 1801--The Blagdon
controversy--Political epigram 169
CHAPTER VI
Attacks by reviewers--The Peace, 1801--Visit to London--South
Wales--Mrs. Pennington's troubles--Bath again--Breach
with Mrs. Pennington, 1804 218
CHAPTER VII
Renewal of friendship, 1819--Weston-super-Mare--W. A.
Conway--Birthday fête, 1820--Conway's love affair--Penzance--The
Queen's trial--More law--Land's End--Return to Clifton
and death, 1821--Mrs. Pennington's obituary notice--Her
relations with the daughters and the executors--Epitaph 270
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MRS. PIOZZI (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
_By_ Meyer, _after_ Jackson, 1811, _from the Collection of_
A. M. Broadley, Esq.
TO FACE PAGE
CATHERINE OF BERAIN 7
_By_ W. Bond, _after_ J. Allen, 1798.
SIR RICHARD CLOUGH 8
_By_ Basire, _after_ M. Griffith.
DR. JOHNSON'S BIOGRAPHERS (MRS. PIOZZI, CAREY?, AND BOSWELL) 16
_From a caricature_, 1786, _in the Collection of_ A. M.
Broadley, Esq.
STREATHAM PARK 28
_By_ J. Landseer, _after_ S. Prout, _from the Collection
of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
ANNA SEWARD 34
_By_ W. Ridley, _after_ Romney, 1797, _from a print in
the British Museum_.
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS 44
_From an engraving by_ J. Singleton, _in the British Museum_.
MRS. THRALE AT THE AGE OF FORTY 58
_From the original picture by_ Sir Joshua Reynolds,
_about_ 1781.
MRS. SIDDONS 70
_By_ R. J. Lane, _after_ Sir Thos. Lawrence.
MARIA SIDDONS 80
_By_ G. Clent, _after_ Sir Thos. Lawrence.
SARAH MARTHA SIDDONS 89
_By_ R. J. Lane, _after_ Sir Thos. Lawrence.
MRS. PIOZZI 95
_From an engraving by_ Dance, 1793, _from the Collection
of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
ARTHUR MURPHY 107
_From a print in the Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
CECILIA MOSTYN 126
_From the Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
ELIZA (FARREN) COUNTESS OF DERBY, 1797 141
_From a print in the British Museum._
CECILIA SIDDONS 144
_By_ R. J. Lane, _after_ Sir Thos. Lawrence.
JOSEPH GEORGE HOLMAN 150
_By_ W. Angus, _after_ Dodd, 1784, _from a print in the
British Museum_.
SOPHIA LEE 160
_By_ Ridley, _after_ Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1809, _from
the Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
MRS. PIOZZI (ABOUT 1800) 180
_By_ M. Bovi, _after_ P. Violet, 1800, _from the
Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
BACH-Y-GRAIG HOUSE IN 1776 199
_By_ Godfrey, _after_ J. Hooper, 1776.
HANNAH MORE 228
_By_ Scriven, _after_ Slater, 1813, _from the
Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
MRS. PIOZZI (ABOUT 1808) 250
_By_ J. Bate, _after a medallion by_ Henning, 1808,
_from the Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
WILLIAM AUGUSTUS CONWAY AS HENRY V 280
_By_ Rivers, _after_ De Wilde, 1814, _from the Collection
of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
THE LOWER (KINGSTON) ROOMS, BATH 296
_By_ W. J. White, _after_ H. O. Neill, _from the
Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
PROGRAMME OF MRS. PIOZZI'S CONCERT, 1820, WITH MS. NOTES. 299
_By_ Mrs. Pennington _and_ Maria Brown
MISS FELLOWES AS HERB STREWER AT THE CORONATION OF GEO. IV, 314
1821
_By_ M. Gauci, _after_ Mrs. Baker, _from the Collection
of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
"FRYING SPRATS" AND "TOASTING MUFFINS" 342
_From a caricature by_ Gillray, 1791, _in the Collection
of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
TICKET FOR MRS. PIOZZI'S FÊTE 355
THE BURNING OF THE KINGSTON ROOMS 355
_From a ball ticket, 1821, in the Collection of_
A. M. Broadley, Esq.
THOMAS SEDGWICK WHALLEY, D.D. 376
_By_ J. Brown, _after_ Sir Joshua Reynolds, _from a print
in the Collection of_ A. M. Broadley, Esq.
THE INTIMATE LETTERS OF HESTER
PIOZZI & PENELOPE PENNINGTON
1788-1821
THE INTIMATE LETTERS OF HESTER PIOZZI & PENELOPE PENNINGTON
CHAPTER I
Introductory--Mrs. Piozzi and the blue-stockings--Penelope
Weston--The Salusbury family--Early years and
education--Marriage to Thrale, 1763--Widowhood--Marriage to
Piozzi, 1784--Foreign travel--Return to England, 1788.
In the course of the last hundred years the horizon of woman's work
and interests has been extended so widely, and in so many directions,
religious, educational, political, economic, and social, that already
the Blue-Stockings of the eighteenth century seem almost as far
removed from us as the Précieuses Ridicules of Molière. The student of
the period takes note of them as products of a social and intellectual
movement characteristic of their day; and the general reader knows a
few of them by name, though chiefly as satellites revolving round the
greater luminaries of the age: but their works are, for the most part,
unread and forgotten. This is not, perhaps, a matter for surprise,
seeing that they were not profound or original thinkers, and even
their works of fiction are too stilted and prolix for our impatient
age. Indeed their contemporaries were probably less impressed by the
learning, even of the leaders of the movement, than by their brilliant
conversational powers, in which, perhaps, they have never been
surpassed; though this is a matter on which, from the nature of the
case, we have, for the most part, but imperfect materials with which
to form a judgment.
If there be an exception, it is to be found in the case of the writer
of the following letters. Of the literary society in which she moved
she was an acknowledged queen, who hardly yielded precedence on her
own ground to Mrs. Montagu herself. Indeed Wraxall was of opinion that
she possessed "at least as much information, a mind as cultivated, and
even more brilliancy of intellect"; while Madame D'Arblay thought that
her conversation was "more bland and more gleeful" than that of either
Mrs. Montagu or Mrs. Vesey. "To hear you," wrote Boswell (before their
great quarrel), "is to hear Wisdom, to see you is to see Virtue." It
may be said that this was merely the partiality of friendship, or
an example of the mutual admiration which was rather characteristic
of the coterie. But Anna Seward, who roundly condemned her literary
style, declared that her conversation was "the bright wine of
intellect, which has no lees"; and the great Lexicographer himself,
who was not wont to be unduly lavish of his praises, vouchsafed on one
occasion to tell her that she had "as much wit, and more talent," than
any woman he knew. And what is still more remarkable, her power of
pleasing continued, with but little diminution, to the end of her long
life. Sir William Pepys, who had known her for many years, writing
after her death, says he had "never met any human being who possessed
the talent of conversation to such a degree."
And more easily than in the case of most of her contemporaries, the
charm of her conversation can be gathered from her letters. To it
Fanny Burney's criticism seems to apply as fitly as to the record
of her Italian tour, of which it was originally written: "How like
herself, how characteristic is every line! wild, entertaining,
flighty, inconsistent, and clever!" The spontaneity and freshness of
her style is the more remarkable when we remember the taste of the
circle in which she moved, and compare her letters with the laboured
and formal productions of her friend Anna Seward, the much-admired
"Swan of Lichfield," and particularly when we recall her intimate
relations with Johnson for a period of nearly twenty years. The fact
is that he found her mind already formed, and though it was for a time
"swallowed up and lost," as she says, in his vast intellect, it was
not absorbed, but emerged later on, strengthened and clarified indeed,
but with its original characteristics little changed.
A good many of her letters have already seen the light. Those written
to Dr. Johnson she herself published after his death. Her friend,
the Rev. Edward Mangin, included about thirty, written for the most
part to himself, in his _Piozziana_; while Hayward, in the so-called
_Autobiography_, gives about a hundred and forty, of which a few
were written to the brothers Lysons, and nearly all the remainder to
Sir James Fellowes. But these differ in some important respects from
those in the present volume. They were nearly all written to men, and
though they may possibly be somewhat more brilliant, and make rather a
greater show of learning, they are hardly so frank and unaffected, and
do not reveal the personality of the writer so clearly as those which
she wrote to an intimate friend of her own sex; in whose case she had
no temptation to pose, even unconsciously, nor any lurking thought of
a reputation as a wit to be kept up.
Their recipient was fully alive to their importance, and in a letter
in Mr. Broadley's collection, dated 1821, quotes her as saying that
she had "a larger and perhaps better collection of dear Mrs. Piozzi's
letters than any other correspondent." And she backs her opinion by
that of Dr. Whalley, who had probably seen most of them, to the effect
that "was any publication intended, they would be a most rich and
valuable addition, and altogether form a collection of letters more
eagerly sought after, and more agreeable to the general public than
any that have been ever published."
The letters in question, some two hundred in number, begin in 1788,
not long after Mrs. Piozzi's second marriage, and continue (though
with a break of fifteen years) to within a few days of her death in
1821. The friend to whom they were written first appears on the scene
as Penelope Sophia Weston, a friend of Mrs. Siddons, Helen Williams,
and Anna Seward, whose published letters contain many addressed to
"the graceful and elegant Miss Weston," who was then the leading
spirit of "a knot of ingenious and charming females at Ludlow in
Shropshire," where Anna paid her a visit in 1787. She was then living
with her widowed mother, who had not much in common with the literary
proclivities of her daughter. She writes in 1782: "My mother is a very
good woman, but our minds are, unfortunately, cast in such different
moulds--our pursuits and ideas on every occasion are likewise so--that
it is of very little moment our speaking the same language. Indeed I
see very little of her; for she is either busied in domestic matters,
praying, gardening, or gossiping most part of the day; while I sit
moping over the fire with a book or pen in my hand, without stirring
(if the weather is unfavourable), for weeks together.... Remember me
to your charming Mrs. Siddons." This passage appears in the published
correspondence of her "dear cousin Tom," the Rev. T. S. Whalley, D.D.,
who was not, strictly speaking, related to her at all, but had married
her first cousin, Miss Jones of Longford. As he had a house at Bath he
may have been the means of making her acquainted with Mrs. Piozzi.
It does not fall within the scope of this work to give a detailed
account of Mrs. Piozzi's life: this has been done, though in a
somewhat piecemeal manner, by A. Hayward,[1] and more recently by
Mr. H. B. Seeley.[2] But for the better understanding of the letters
it will be necessary to give a brief outline of her career up to
the date at which they begin; and this may fitly be preceded by some
account of her family, a matter in which she was keenly interested,
and to which she frequently recurs in her correspondence.
[1] _Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi_, 2
vols., 1861.
[2] _Mrs. Piozzi: a Sketch of her Life, and Passages from her Diaries,
Letters, &c._, 1891.
Mrs. Piozzi was the last of an old knightly Welsh family, Welsh by
long residence, if not by blood, called in the early records Salbri
or Salsbri, and Englished as Salesbury or Salisbury, and in more
recent times as Salusbury. It produced a goodly number of soldiers,
scholars, and divines; the latter chiefly in a younger branch seated
at Rûg in Merioneth in the sixteenth century. Among these were William
Salesbury, "the best scholar among the Welshmen," who compiled a Welsh
dictionary, and made the first translation of the New Testament into
that language; Henry Salesbury, a noted doctor and grammarian, and
John Salesbury, a Jesuit, Superior of the English Province. In the
same century the elder or Llewenny line boasted of John Salesbury, a
Benedictine monk who forsook his vows and married, but was made by
Queen Elizabeth Bishop of Sodor and Man; Foulke Salesbury, first Dean
of St. Asaph, and Thomas Salesbury, who was executed for his share in
Babington's Plot.
In the course of centuries a goodly number of romantic legends had
attached themselves to the earlier generations, particularly in
connection with their armorial bearings, in which Mrs. Piozzi was
an enthusiastic believer. As far back as the sixteenth century the
Salesburys had claimed as their eponymous ancestor a certain Adam,
believed to be a younger son of Alexander, Duke of Bavaria, hence
known as Adam de Saltzburg, who made his way to England, and was
appointed by Henry II Captain of the castle of Denbigh. Another
and less probable version of the story, favoured by Mrs. Piozzi,
makes him a follower of William the Conqueror, and gives him a fair
estate in Lancashire, on which he built a seat called Saltsbury or
Salisbury Court. Of her descent from this Adam she says: "I showed
an abstract to the Heralds in Office at Saltzburg, when there, and
they acknowledged me a true descendant of their house, offering me all
possible honours, to the triumphant delight of dear Piozzi, for whose
amusement alone I pulled out the Schedule." This may be satisfactory
evidence for the existence of Adam, but of course the Heralds had
to take the descent on trust. The fact appears to be that Adam of
Llewenny was an Englishman who settled in Wales after its conquest
at the end of the thirteenth century, and was a member of the family
of Salesbury of Salesbury, co. Lancs. Adam's descendant, Sir Henry
Salesbury "the Black," "having taken three noble Saracens with his
own hand on the first Crusade, Cœur de Lion knighted him on the
field of battle, and to the old Bavarian lion which adorned his shield
added three crescents." This Henry is supposed to have built Llewenny
Hall. The name of another Henry, who fought in the Wars of the Roses,
"stood recorded on a little obelisk, or rather cippus, by the roadside
at Barnet, ... so long that I remember my father taking me out of
the carriage to read it, when I was quite a child. He had shown
mercy to an enemy on that occasion, who, looking on his device ...
flung himself at his feet with these words--'SAT EST PROSTRASSE
LEONI.' Our family have used that Leggenda as motto to the coat
armour ever since." The arms of the present Piozzi-Salusbury family
are: Gules, a lion rampant argent, ducally crowned or, between three
crescents of the last, a canton ermine, with motto as above.
We are on firmer ground when we arrive at Sir John Salesbury of
Llewenny, Kt., M.P. for Denbigh in the sixteenth century, and his
family of fourteen children, of whom the eldest and youngest sons
were the ancestors of Mrs. Piozzi on the maternal and paternal side
respectively. John, the eldest, married Catherine of Berain, a lady
who deserves a paragraph to herself. Their grandson, Sir Henry
Salusbury of Llewenny, was created a Baronet by James I, but this
line came to an end with his granddaughter Hester, who married Sir
Robert Cotton of Combermere Abbey, co. Chester, Bart., ancester of
Lord Combermere. Their granddaughter, Hester Maria Cotton, was Mrs.
Piozzi's mother.
[Illustration: CATHERINE OF BERAIN
_By W. Bond after J. Allen, 1798_]
Catherine of Berain above mentioned, called from her numerous
descendants Mam y Cymry, or Mam Gwalia, "Mother of Wales," was a
great-granddaughter of Fychan Tudor of Berain, a personage claimed by
Mrs. Piozzi, though not acknowledged by the genealogists, as a younger
son of Sir Owen Tudor, Kt., by Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V.
That the Mother of Wales (who would, on this hypothesis, be a cousin
of Queen Elizabeth) was a lady of great attractions, both in person
and in purse, may be gathered from the story of her four matrimonial
ventures, which cannot be better told than in the words of Pennant,
the historian and naturalist, who was himself one of her descendants.
"The tradition goes that at the funeral of her beloved spouse (Sir
John Salesbury), she was led to Church by Sir Richard (Clough), and
from Church by Morris Wynn of Gwydyr, who whispered to her his wish
of being her second. She refused him with great civility, informing
him that she had accepted the proposal of Sir Richard on her way to
Church; but assured him--and was as good as her word--that in case she
performed the same sad duty, which she was then about, to the Knight,
he might depend on being her third. As soon as she had composed this
gentleman, to show that she had no superstition about the number
three, she concluded with Edward Thelwall of Plas y Ward, Esq.,
departed this life Aug. 27, and was interred at Llanivydd on the 1st
of Sep. 1591."
For the paternal ancestry of Mrs. Piozzi we must return to Roger, the
youngest son of Sir John Salesbury, M.P. He married Anne, one of the
daughters of Catherine of Berain by her second husband, Sir Richard
Clough, Kt., another picturesque figure who deserves a separate
mention. He was the youngest son of a Denbigh glover, who became a
prosperous merchant, and was a partner of Sir Thomas Gresham, whom he
assisted to found the Royal Exchange, and whose continental business
he superintended. This necessitated a residence at Antwerp, where he
also acted as a kind of unofficial agent of the English Government.
His mercantile pursuits were not, however, so absorbing but that he
could make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was made a Knight of
the Holy Sepulchre, and thereafter bore the five crosses of Jerusalem
in his arms. During one of his brief visits to England, about 1567,
he married, as we have seen, Catherine of Berain, then widow of Sir
John Salesbury of Llewenny, and began building two mansion-houses, one
called Plas Clough and the other Bach-y-graig, both in Flintshire, and
both in the Dutch style, perhaps by means of imported workmen. The
former was inherited by his son Richard, by a former wife, an Antwerp
lady named Van Mildurt, whose descendants still possess it. The latter
he bequeathed to Anne Salesbury, one of his daughters by Catherine of
Berain. It thus became the seat of the younger line of the family down
to the time of John Salusbury, Mrs. Piozzi's father, and came to her
on the death of her parents.
Mrs. Piozzi herself was born 16th January 1740 (Old Style), or 27th
January 1741 (New Style), at Bodvel, near Pwllheli, and was christened
Hester Lynch, the names being derived from her mother, Hester Maria
Cotton (granddaughter of Hester Salusbury, the last of the elder
line), and from her maternal grandmother, Philadelphia, daughter of
Sir Thomas Lynch. Her father, John Salusbury of Bach-y-graig, left
an orphan at four years old, was high-spirited and attractive, but
careless and extravagant, and even before his marriage had succeeded
in heavily encumbering his property. His wife's fortune of £10,000
barely sufficed to pay his debts and to provide a modest cottage in
which to start housekeeping. Before long she and her only child found
a more comfortable abode at Llewenny Hall with her eldest brother,
Sir Robert Salusbury Cotton, who took a great liking for little
Hester, and being himself childless, promised to provide for her; but
his sudden death before he had carried out his intention left them
in great straits. John Salusbury had been sent out by Lord Halifax
to assist in re-settling the colony of Nova Scotia, but it was not a
lucrative employment, and his wife sought a home for her child first
at East Hyde, Beds., with her own mother, Philadelphia, then the widow
of Captain King, and afterwards at Offley Hall, Herts., the seat of
her brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Salusbury, Judge of the Admiralty Court.
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD CLOUGH
_By Basire after M. Griffith_]
So far Hester's education had been of a very desultory kind, though
she had been well grounded in French by her parents from a very early
age. At East Hyde she learnt to love and manage horses, startling,
and somewhat shocking her grandmother, by driving two of the "ramping
warhorses" who drew the family coach round the courtyard. But her
first systematic instruction she received at Offley, where she
learnt Italian and Spanish, apparently from her uncle's wife, Anna,
daughter of Sir Henry Penrice, and "Latin, Logic, Rhetoric, &c." from
a Doctor Collier, for whom she had a warm regard, and who did more,
she considered, to form her mind than anyone with whom she afterwards
came in contact, Johnson not excepted. Greek she did not learn from
him, for she laments her ignorance of it some years later, when, in
the course of her Italian tour, she was unable to read an inscription
in that language which was shown to her. So Mangin was no doubt
unconsciously exaggerating when he wrote that she had "for more than
sixty years ... studied the Scriptures ... in the original languages."
But it seems fairly certain that she acquired some knowledge of Greek,
and possibly also of Hebrew, in later life, though she makes no parade
of her acquirements. The stray words in these languages which are
found in her letters are not conclusive evidence, as they may have
been merely copied from some work which she had been reading. But in
her Commonplace Book, now in the possession of Mr. A. M. Broadley, and
written only for her own amusement, occur several Greek phrases, and
an epigram of some length, with a translation, apparently her own. And
it is noteworthy that the Greek is written with the breathings and
accents, in the clear, firm hand of one well used to the script, very
unlike the tentative efforts of a beginner.
By this time suitors for the hand of the prospective heiress began to
arrive, among whom was Henry Thrale, proprietor of a lucrative brewery
in Southwark, who commended himself to the uncle as being a "thorough
sportsman," and to the mother by his assiduous attentions to herself.
But he does not appear to have taken the trouble to be more than
barely civil to the bride elect, who naturally resented his attitude,
and heartily disliked the idea of a marriage with him. She appealed to
her father, who had now returned from America, having no aptitude or
liking for a colonial career, and who sympathised with her feelings,
but his sudden death in 1762 put an end to any hope of intervention
on his part. Her mother and uncle pressed on what they considered a
desirable match, and she was married to Thrale, 11th October 1763.
At this period, at any rate, Henry Thrale was by no means the dull,
heavy, self-indulgent being that some accounts of him in later life
might seem to suggest. His father, Ralph Thrale, a shrewd, self-made
man, used the fortune he had amassed at the Old Anchor Brewery to
give his son the best education the period could afford. Much of his
boyhood he spent at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, where his associates
belonged to a group of great county families; for Ralph Thrale's
cousin, Ann Halsey, had married Sir Richard Temple of Stowe, created
Viscount Cobham, whose sisters had married into the families of
Grenville and Lyttelton. As some of them were indebted to the father,
motives of policy may have had something to do with their friendship
for the son. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Oxford, which he
left without taking a degree, though he was afterwards created a
D.C.L. Then he was sent on the grand tour, on an allowance of £1000
a year, with William Henry Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Westcote and
Lyttelton, whose expenses were also paid by the elder Thrale, and
at the time of his marriage he was a finished "man about town."
His artistic and literary tastes are indicated by the gallery of
portraits by Reynolds which he formed at Streatham Park, and by the
literary society he loved to entertain there, from Johnson downwards.
The latter spoke of him as "a real scholar," and said that "if he
would talk more, his manner would be very completely that of a
perfect gentleman"; and he had, what Johnson entirely lacked, a keen
appreciation of natural scenery. His religious and moral principles
might be expected to be those of his associates, who at the time of
his marriage, with the exception of one Romanist, all seemed to his
wife to be professed infidels. But his outward conduct was at least
decorous, and she remarks that his conversation was wholly free from
all oaths, ribaldry, and profaneness. In 1779 she wrote in _Thraliana_
(her private diary): "Few people live in such a state of preparation
for eternity, I think, as my dear Master has done since I have been
connected with him: regular in his public and private devotions,
constant at the Sacrament, temperate in his appetites, moderate in his
passions,--he has less to apprehend from a sudden summons than any man
I have known who was young and gay, and high in health and fortune."
Their usual residence was a pleasant country house known as Streatham
Park, standing in grounds of about a hundred acres, but in winter
she was expected to live at his business premises in Deadman's
Lane, Southwark, a stipulation which had put an end to several of
Thrale's previous matrimonial negotiations. Her acceptance of it she
believed to have been the determining factor in his final choice of
a wife. He possessed also a hunting-box near Croydon, where he kept
a pack of hounds, and a house in West Street, Brighton. But with all
the comfort, and even luxury of her surroundings, she enjoyed no
confidence and little sympathy from her husband. He required a wife
to do the honours of his table and to bear his children; other forms
of activity were frowned upon or banned. Riding to hounds was too
masculine to be tolerated; she was not permitted to have any voice in
the management of her household, and she did not even know what there
was for dinner till it appeared on the table. She was not allowed to
know anything of his business affairs till a serious crisis occurred,
when she saved the situation by her promptitude in raising some
£20,000 from relatives and friends to meet pressing demands. This, and
her energetic canvassing of Southwark when Thrale was standing for
Parliament, seems to have convinced her husband of her capabilities,
and to have generated in him a certain amount of respect, if not of
affection.
The sphere of her activities being thus restricted, and having no
taste for gay society, she was driven to occupy herself with her books
and her children, of whom she had twelve, though only four survived
their childhood. While still in her teens she had contributed verses
anonymously to the _St. James' Chronicle_, but at this period she
probably had little opportunity and no encouragement to practise
composition. Thrale, however, was interested in men of letters, and
the introduction of Johnson to Streatham Park in 1764 helped to make
it a meeting-place for many literary and artistic celebrities, such
as Murphy, Reynolds, the Burneys, the Sewards, and others. Johnson
himself came to be looked upon as one of the family, having a room
reserved for him at Streatham and Southwark, and accompanying them
as a matter of course on their visits to Bath and Brighton, and on
longer expeditions to Wales in 1774 and to Paris the following year.
Thrale retired from Parliament in 1780, and died 4th April 1781, of
apoplexy, largely the result of over-indulgence at table, to which in
his later years he had become addicted. Both his sons had predeceased
him, Henry, the elder, in 1766, and Ralph in 1775; and his widow was
left with five daughters, all under age. Harriet, the youngest of
these, died at school in 1783, shortly before Mrs. Thrale's second
marriage; the four survivors were as follows.
Hester Maria, born 1762, known in her childhood as Queeny, a name
given her by Dr. Johnson, who supervised her education, and with whom
she was a great favourite. She inherited much of her father's strong,
but cold and reserved character, and was never on very affectionate
or sympathetic terms with her mother. She married at Ramsgate, 10th
January 1808, Admiral Lord Keith, G.C.B., then a widower, son of the
tenth Lord Elphinstone, and who was created Viscount Keith in 1814.
She died at 110 Piccadilly, 31st March 1857, leaving an only daughter,
the Hon. Augusta Henrietta Elphinstone, who married twice, but left no
issue.
Susannah Arabella, born 1770; who died unmarried at Ashgrove,
Knockholt, 5th November 1858, and was buried at Streatham.
Sophia, born 23rd July 1771; who married, 13th August 1807, Henry
Merrick Hoare, son of Sir Richard Hoare of Barn Elms, Bart. She died
at Sandgate, 8th November 1824, leaving no issue, and was buried at
Streatham.
Cecilia Margaretta, born 1777. She married, 1795, John Meredith Mostyn
of Segrwyd, who died 19th May 1807. She survived him half a century,
dying at Sillwood House, Brighton, 1st May 1857. They had three
sons, of whom the eldest was christened John Salusbury, but all died
unmarried.
Her widowhood, 1781-4, was the most stormy period of Mrs. Piozzi's
life. Her first anxiety was to dispose of the brewery, which neither
she nor the executors felt competent to carry on. After some
negotiation it was purchased by the Barclays for £135,000, and so
provided a respectable portion for each of the girls. Bach-y-graig,
her ancestral abode, had come to her on the death of her mother, and
Thrale had left her Streatham Park for life, but the one was ruinous
and the other expensive, and on the score of economy she determined to
let Streatham and live at Bath. This course also had the advantage--in
her eyes at least--of removing her somewhat farther from Johnson's
sphere of influence. His eccentric habits and domineering temper had
for many years been somewhat of a trial to her, though delight in his
conversation, admiration for his talents, and regard for his character
had hitherto induced her to bear them with patience. She was anxious
to avoid a rupture with him, but it was more than probable that, both
as an old friend and as one of her husband's executors, he would
strongly disapprove of the second marriage which she was now beginning
to contemplate with Signor Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian musician and
singer.
He had been recommended to her in 1780 as a man "likely to lighten
the burden of life to her, and just a man to her natural taste," by
Fanny Burney; but it is recorded that on the first occasion on which
they met in company, when he played and sang at Dr. Burney's in 1777,
Mrs. Thrale stood behind him as he sat at the piano, and mimicked his
gestures and manner, to the mingled amusement and embarrassment of
the company. From this unpromising beginning grew a friendship which
gradually ripened into love, and in 1783 it was apparent that Piozzi
was seriously courting the widow, and that she was not ill-disposed to
his suit. Then the storm burst. Mrs. Thrale was in no sense a public
character, but she was violently attacked in the public prints, which
had previously amused themselves by announcing her engagement to
Crutchley, to Seward, and even to Johnson himself. Her friends were
horror-struck, and remonstrated each after their kind. Johnson went
so far at last as to charge her with abandoning her children and her
religion, and with forfeiting both her fame and her country. But, as
might be expected, her worst foes were those of her own household,
and the opposition of her children, and more particularly of Hester,
was the hardest thing she had to bear. It is somewhat difficult for
us who are so far removed from the controversy to grasp the reason
of all this outcry. But it must be remembered that Piozzi was a
Papist, a foreigner, and a singer, a combination which to the average
Englishman of the eighteenth century meant an untrustworthy and
contemptible mountebank. The irony of the situation was that Piozzi
met with similar objections from his own family, who were scandalised
at his proposed alliance with a heretic, and could not conceive that
a brewer's widow could be a lady, or a fit mate for a member of an
old and well-connected family. Years afterwards, when Cecilia was
travelling on the Continent, she made the acquaintance of the Piozzis,
and wrote that she "liked them above all people, if only they were not
so proud of their family." "Would not that make one laugh two hours
before one's death?" is her mother's comment in 1818.
For some time she held out, but at last the combined opposition was
too much for her; Piozzi was dismissed, gave up her letters, and
went abroad. But the strain was too great, her health gave way, and
her physician, considering her condition serious, recommended that
Piozzi should be recalled, as the only hope of saving her life. Miss
Thrale reluctantly acquiesced, and they were shortly afterwards
married in London, according to the Roman rite, on 23rd July, and
in St. James' Church, Bath, on 25th July, 1784. From this date her
worst troubles were over, and she entered on what she describes as
twenty years of unalloyed happiness. Having made what she considered
suitable arrangements for her daughters, by providing a trustworthy
companion for Miss Thrale, and placing the younger ones in a school
at Streatham, she started, with her husband, on a long-projected
Italian tour. Hayward says that Cecilia accompanied them, but this is
contradicted by Mrs. Piozzi's own statements in the _Autobiography_.
They had not long left England when Miss Thrale removed her sisters to
another school, dismissed her companion, and retired with an old nurse
to the Brighton house, where she shut herself up and spent her time in
the study of Hebrew and mathematics. Shortly afterwards, on coming of
age, she rented a house in town, and took her younger sisters to live
with her.
Meantime the Piozzis travelled via Paris, Lyons, Turin, and Genoa
to Milan, where they wintered, being everywhere well received both
by Italian friends and by the English colony, including the Duke
and Duchess of Cumberland; a fact which probably had a good deal to
do with the attitude of society at home on their return to England.
The following summer they spent at Florence in the company of
Merry, Greatheed, and the other Della Cruscans, to whose _Florence
Miscellany_, published in 1785, she contributed some verses. Her
literary instincts, long repressed, were at last encouraged, and
Johnson being now dead she compiled at Leghorn in 1786 her _Anecdotes
of Dr. Johnson during the last twenty years of his Life_; much to
the annoyance of Boswell, who regarded everything relating to his
hero as his own peculiar preserve, and resented her refusal to add
her reminiscences to Johnson's Pyramid, as he styled his own great
work. The book, for which she got £300, was well received, the whole
edition being sold out in three days, and four editions appeared the
same year; but Boswell's strictures on her alleged inaccuracy led to a
lively "Bozzy and Piozzi" controversy, with accompanying caricatures,
which amused the town, and doubtless helped to keep the author in
the public eye. The Piozzis returned to England through Germany in
1787, and lived for a time in Hanover Square with Cecilia, the elder
daughters at first keeping aloof, though they often met in public. But
society had forgiven her if her children had not, and sooner or later
the old friends who had protested most loudly took the opportunity of
making their peace.
[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S BIOGRAPHERS (MRS. PIOZZI, CAREY? AND
BOSWELL)
_From a caricature, 1786, in the Collection of A. M. Broadley, Esq._]
About this time, as it would seem, she made the acquaintance of Miss
Weston, now about thirty-six years of age, who had moved with her
mother from Ludlow to London, and was living with a relative in Queen
Square, Westminster, and therefore not far from the Piozzis. A letter
she wrote to Dr. Whalley in 1789 shows that she was then in charge of
a young pupil, with whom she had but little in common, as the girl was
interested in nothing but dress. She adds that the kindness of dear
Mrs. Piozzi towards her, on all occasions, exceeds all expression.