: with the precise description of qualities required by the emergency clearness of judgment, high principle, firmness, and energy. She could not take up her abode with either of her guardians, one a bachelor under forty, the other the prototype of Briggs, the old miser in "Cæcilla." She could not accept Johnson's hospitality in Bolt Court, still tenanted by the survivors of his menagerie; where, a few months later, she sat by his deathbed and received his blessing. She therefore called to her aid an old nurse-maid, named Tib, who had been much trusted by her father, and with this homely but respectable duenna, she shut herself up in the house at Brighton, limited her expenses to her allowance of £200 a year, and resolutely set about the course of study which seemed best adapted to absorb attention and prevent her thoughts from wandering. Hebrew, Mathematics, Fortification, and Perspective have been named to me by one of her trusted friends as specimens of her acquirements and pursuits. "There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, In that solitary abode at Brighton, and in the companionship of Tib, may have been laid the foundation of a character than which few, through the changeful scenes of a long and prosperous life, have exercised more beneficial influence or inspired more genuine esteem. On coming of age, and being put into possession of her fortune, she hired a house in London, and took her two eldest sisters to live with her. They had been at school whilst she was living at Brighton. The fourth and youngest, afterwards Mrs. Mostyn, had accompanied the mother. On the return of Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi, Miss Thrale made a point of paying them every becoming attention, and Piozzi was frequently dining with her. Latterly, she used to speak of him as a very worthy sort of man, who was not to blame for marrying a rich and distinguished woman who took a fancy to him. The other sisters seem to have adopted the same tone; and, so far as I can learn, no one of them is open to the imputation of filial unkindness, or has suffered from maternal neglect in a manner to bear out Dr. Burney's forebodings by the result. Occasional expressions of querulousness are matters of course in family differences, and are seldom totally suppressed by the utmost exertion of good feeling and good sense. On the 19th October, 1784, she writes to Mr. Lysons from Turin: "We are going to Alexandria, Genoa, and Pavia, and then to Milan for the winter, as Mr. Piozzi finds friends everywhere to delay us, and I hate hurry and fatigue; it takes away all one's attention. Lyons was a delightful place to me, and we were so feasted there by my husband's old acquaintances. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland too paid us a thousand caressing civilities where we met with them, and we had no means of musical parties neither. The Prince of Sisterna came yesterday to visit Mr. Piozzi, and present me with the key of his box at the opera for the time we stay at Turin. Here's honor and glory for you! When Miss Thrale hears of it, she will write perhaps; the other two are very kind and affectionate." "Milan, Dec. 7. "I correspond constantly and copiously with such of my daughters as are willing to answer my letters, and I have at last received one cold scrap from the eldest, which I instantly and tenderly replied to. Mrs. Lewis too, and Miss Nicholson, have had accounts of my health, for I found them disinterested and attached to me: those who led the stream, or watched which way it ran, that they might follow it, were not, I suppose, desirous of my correspondence, and till they are so, shall not be troubled with it." Miss Nicholson was the lady left with the daughters, and Mrs. Piozzi could have heard no harm of her from them or others when she wrote thus. The same inference must be drawn from the allusions to this lady at subsequent periods. "Once more," she continues, "keep me out of the newspapers if you possibly can; they have given me many a miserable hour, and my enemies many a merry one; but I have not deserved public persecution, and am very happy to live in a place where one is free from unmerited insolence, such as London abounds with. "Illic credulitas, illic temerarius error.' God bless you, and may you conquer the many-headed monster which I could never charm to silence." The license of our press is a frequent topic of complaint. But here is a woman who had never placed herself before the public in any way so as to give them a right to discuss her conduct or affairs, not even as an author, made the butt of every description of offensive personality for months, with the tacit encouragement of the first moralist of the age. On July 27th, 1785, she writes from Florence: "We celebrated our wedding anniversary two days ago with a magnificent dinner and concert, at which the Prince Corsini and his brother the Cardinal did us the honor of assisting, and wished us joy in the tenderest and politest terms. Lord and Lady Cow. per, Lord Pembroke, and all the English indeed, dote on my husband, and show us every possible attention." "I was tempted to observe," says the author of "Piozziana,” "that I thought, as I still do, that Johnson's anger on the event of her second marriage was excited by some feeling of disappointment; and that I suspected he had formed some hope of attaching her to himself. It would be disingenuous on my part to attempt to repeat her answer. I forget it; but the impression on my mind is that she did not contradict me." Sir James Fellowes's marginal note on this passage is: "This was an absurd notion, and I can undertake to say it was the last idea that ever entered her head; for when I once alluded to the subject, she ridiculed the idea: she told me she always felt for Johnson the same respect and veneration as for a Pascal." On the margin of the passage in which Boswell says, "Johnson's wishing to unite himself with this rich widow was much talked of, but I believe without foundation," she has written, "I believe so too!!" The report, however, was enough to bring into play the light artillery of the wits, one of whose best hits was an "Ode to Mrs. Thrale, by Samuel Johnson, LL. D., on their approaching Nuptials," beginning : — "If e'er my fingers touched the lyre, "My dearest lady, view your slave, Ready to write as author grave, Or govern well the brewing tub. "To rich felicity thus raised, My bosom glows with amorous fire; 'Tis I Myself am Thrale's Entire." She has written opposite these lines, "Whose fun was this? It is better than the other." The other was: "Cervisial coctor's viduate dame, Opinst thou this gigantick frame, She writes opposite: "Whose silly fun was this? Soame Jenyn's?" If the notion ever crossed Johnson's mind, it must have been dismissed some time prior to her marriage, which took place four months before his death in his seventy-sixth year. But the threatened loss of a pleasant house may have had a good deal to do with the sorrowing indignation of his set. Her meditated social extinction amongst them might have been commemorated in the words of the French epitaph "Ci git une de qui la vertu Etait moins que la table encensée; Which may be freely rendered: : "Here lies one who adulation By dinners more than virtues earned; Whose friends mourned not her reputation - The following paragraph is copied from the note-book of the late Miss Williams Wynn,* who had recently been reading a large collection of Mrs. Piozzi's letters to a Welsh neighbor: *Daughter of Sir Watkyn Wynn (the fourth baronet) and granddaughter of George Grenville, the Minister. She was distinguished by her literary taste and acquirements, as well as highly esteemed for the uprightness of her character, "London, March, 1825.- I have had an opportunity of talking to old Sir William Pepys on the subject of his old friend, Mrs. Piozzi, and from his conversation am more than ever impressed with the idea that she was one of the most inconsistent characters that ever existed. Sir William says he never met with any human being who possessed the talent of conversation in such a degree. I naturally felt anxious to know whether Piozzi could in any degree add to this pleasure, and found, as I expected, that he could not even understand her. "Her infatuation for him seems perfectly unaccountable. Johnson in his rough (I may here call it brutal) manner said to her, 'Why, Ma'am, he is not only a stupid, ugly dog, but he is an old dog too.' Sir William says he really believes that she combated her inclination for him as long as possible; so long, that her senses would have failed her if she had attempted to resist any longer. She was perfectly aware of her degradation. One day, speaking to Sir William of some persons whom he had been in the habit of meeting continually at Streatham during the lifetime of Mr. Thrale, she said, not one of them has taken the smallest notice of me ever since: they dropped me before I had done anything wrong. Piozzi was literally at her elbow when she said this." The hearsay of hearsay cannot be set against the uniform and concurrent testimony of her written professions and her conduct; which show that she never regarded her second marriage as a degradation, and always took a high and independent, instead of a subdued or deprecating, tone with her alienated friends. In a letter to a Welsh neighbor, near the end of her life, some time in 1818, she says: "Mrs. Mostyn (her youngest daughter) has written again on the road back to Italy, where she likes the Piozzis above all people, she says, if they were not so proud of their family. Would not that make one laugh two hours before one's own death? But I remember when Lady Egremont raised the whole nation's illthe excellence of her understanding, and the kindness of her heart. Her journals and note-books, carefully kept during a long life passed in the best society, are full of interesting anecdotes and curious extracts from rare books and manuscripts. They are now in the possession of her niece, the Honorable Mrs. Rowley. |