From the very day of this happy inauguration of his daughter at
Streatham, the Doctor had the parental gratification of seeing her
as flatteringly greeted there as himself. So vivacious, indeed, was
the partiality towards her of its inhabitants, that they pressed him
to make over to them all the time he could spare her from her home;
and appropriated an apartment as sacredly for her use, when she could
occupy it, as another, far more deservedly, though not more cordially,
had, many years previously, been held sacred for Dr. Johnson.
The social kindness for both father and daughter, of Mrs. Thrale, was
of the most endearing nature; trusting, confidential, affectionate. She
had a sweetness of manner, and an activity of service for those she
loved, that could ill be appreciated by others; for though copiously
flattering in her ordinary address to strangers, because always
desirous of universal suffrage, she spoke of individuals in general
with sarcasm; and of the world at large with sovereign contempt.
Flighty, however, not malignant, was her sarcasm; and ludicrous more
frequently than scornful, her contempt. She wished no one ill. She
would have done any one good; but she could put no restraint upon wit
that led to a brilliant point, or that was productive of laughing
admiration: though her epigram once pronounced, she thought neither of
that nor of its object any more; and was just as willing to be friends
with a person whom she had held up to ridicule, as with one whom she
had laboured to elevate by panegyric.
Her spirits, in fact, rather ruled than exhilarated her; and were
rather her guides than her support. Not that she was a child of nature.
She knew the world, and gaily boasted that she had studied mankind
in what she called its most prominent school-electioneering. She was
rather, therefore, from her scoff of all consequences, a child of witty
irreflection.
The first name on the list of the Streatham coterie at this time, was
that which, after Dr. Johnson’s, was the first, also, in the nation,
Edmund Burke. But his visits now, from whatever cause, were so rare,
that Dr. Burney never saw him in the Streatham constellation, save as
making one amongst the worthies whom the pencil of Sir Joshua Reynolds
had caught from all mundane meanderings, to place there as a fixed star.
Next ranked Sir Joshua Reynolds himself, and Mr. Garrick.
Dr. Goldsmith, who had been a peculiar favourite in the set, as much,
perhaps, for his absurdities as for his genius, was already gone;
though still, and it may be from this double motive, continually
missed and regretted: for what, in a chosen coterie, could be more
amusing,—many as are the things that might be more edifying,—than
gathering knowledge and original ideas in one moment, from the man who
the next, by the simplicity of his egotism, expanded every mouth by the
merriment of ridicule?
Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Boscowen, Mrs. Crewe, Lord Loughborough, Mr.
Dunning,[28] Lord Mulgrave, Lord Westcote, Sir Lucas and Mr. Pepys[29]
Major Holroyd,[30] Mrs. Hinchcliffe, Mrs. Porteus, Miss Streatfield,
Miss Gregory,[31] Dr. Lort, the Bishops of London and Peterborough
(Porteus and Hinchcliffe), with a long _et cætera_ of visitors less
marked, filled up the brilliant catalogue of the spirited associates of
Streatham.