Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi Part 27

"I saw _Master Pepys_[1] too and Mrs. Ord; and only see how foolish and how mortified the people do but look."

[Footnote 1: This is Sir W. Pepys mentioned _ante_, p. 252.]

"Barclay and Perkins live very genteelly. I dined with them at our brewhouse one day last week. I felt so oddly in the old house where I had lived so long."

"The Pepyses find out that they have used me very ill.... I hope they find out too that I do not care, Seward too sues for reconcilement underhand ... so they do all; and I sincerely forgive them--but, like the linnet in 'Metastasio'--

"'Cauto divien per prova Ne piu tradir si fa.'

"'When lim'd, the poor bird thus with eagerness strains, Nor regrets his torn wing while his freedom he gains: The loss of his plumage small time will restore, And once tried the false twig--it shall cheat him no more.'"

"1790, _July_ 28_th_.--We have kept our seventh wedding day and celebrated our return to _this house_[1] with prodigious splendour and gaiety. Seventy people to dinner.... Never was a pleasanter day seen, and at night the trees and front of the house were illuminated with coloured lamps that called forth our neighbours from all the adjacent villages to admire and enjoy the diversion. Many friends swear that not less than a thousand men, women, and children might have been counted in the house and grounds, where, though all were admitted, nothing was stolen, lost, or broken, or even damaged--a circ.u.mstance almost incredible; and which gave Mr. Piozzi a high opinion of English grat.i.tude and respectful attachment."

[Footnote 1: Streatham.]

"1790, _December 1st_.--Dr. Parr and I are in correspondence, and his letters are very flattering: I am proud of his notice to be sure, and he seems pleased with my acknowledgments of esteem: he is a prodigious scholar ... but in the meantime I have lost Dr. Lort."[1]

[Footnote 1: He died November 5th, 1790.]

In the Conway Notes, she thus sums up her life from March 1787 to 1791:

"On first reaching London, we drove to the Royal Hotel in Pall Mall, and, arriving early, I proposed going to the Play. There was a small front box, in those days, which held only two; it made the division, or connexion, with the side boxes, and, being unoccupied, we sat in it, and saw Mrs. Siddons act Imogen, I well remember, and Mrs.

Jordan, Priscilla Tomboy. Mr. Piozzi was amused, and the next day was spent in looking at houses, counting the cards left by old acquaintances, &c. The lady-daughters came, behaved with cold civility, and asked what I thought of _their_ decision concerning Cecilia, then at school. No reply was made, or a gentle one; but she was the first cause of contention among us. The lawyers gave her into my care, and we took her home to our new habitation in Hanover Square, which we opened with music, cards, &c., on, I think, the 22nd March. Miss Thrales refused their company; so we managed as well as we could. Our affairs were in good order, and money ready for spending. The World, as it is called, appeared good-humoured, and we were soon followed, respected, and admired. The summer months sent us about visiting and pleasuring, ... and after another gay London season, Streatham Park, unoccupied by tenants, called us as if _really home_. Mr. Piozzi, with more generosity than prudence, spent two thousand pounds on repairing and furnis.h.i.+ng it in 1790;--and we had danced all night, I recollect, when the news came of Louis Seize's escape from, and recapture by, his rebel subjects.'"

The following are some of the names most frequently mentioned in her Diary as visiting or corresponding with her after her return from Italy: Lord Fife, Dr. Moore, the Kembles, Dr. Currie, Mrs. Lewis (widow of the Dean of Ossory), Dr. Lort, Sir Lucas Pepys, Mr. Selwin, Sammy Lysons (_sic_), Sir Philip Clerke, Hon. Mrs. Byron, Mrs.

Siddons, Arthur Murphy, Mr. and Mrs. Whalley, the Greatheads, Mr.

Parsons, Miss Seward, Miss Lee, Dr. Barnard (Bishop of Killaloe, better known as Dean of Derry), Hinchcliffe (Bishop of Peterborough), Mrs. Lambert, the Staffords, Lord Huntingdon, Lady Betty Cobb and her daughter Mrs. Gould, Lord Dudley, Lord Cowper, Lord Pembroke, Marquis Araciel, Count Marteningo, Count Meltze, Mrs. Drummond Smith, Mr.

Chappelow, Mrs. Hobart, Miss Nicholson, Mrs. Locke, Lord Deerhurst.

Resentment for her imputed unkindness to Johnson might have been expected to last longest at his birthplace. But Miss Seward writes from Lichfield, October 6th, 1787:

"Mrs. Piozzi completely answers your description: her conversation is indeed that bright wine of the intellects which has no lees.... I shall always feel indebted to him (Mr. Perkins) for eight or nine hours of Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi's society. They pa.s.sed one evening here, and I the next with them at their inn."

Again to Miss Helen Williams, Lichfield, December, 25th, 1787:

"Yes, it is very true, on the evening he (Colonel Barry) mentioned to you, when Mrs. Piozzi honoured this roof, his conversation greatly contributed to its Attic spirit. Till that day I had never conversed with her. There has been no exaggeration, there could be none, in the description given you of Mrs. Piozzi's talents for conversation; at least in the powers of cla.s.sic allusion and brilliant wit."

Mrs. Piozzi's next publication was "Letters To and From the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., &c." In the Preface she speaks of the "Anecdotes" having been received with a degree of approbation she hardly dared to hope, and exclaims, "May these Letters in some measure pay my debt of grat.i.tude! they will not surely be the _first_, the _only_ thing written by Johnson, with which our nation has not been pleased." ... "The good taste by which our countrymen are distinguished, will lead them to prefer the native thoughts and unstudied phrases scattered over these pages to the more laboured elegance of his other works; as bees have been observed to reject roses, and fix upon the wild fragrance of a neighbouring heath."

Whenever Johnson took pen in hand, the chances were, that what he produced would belong to the composite order; the unstudied phrases were reserved for his "talk;" and he wished his Letters to be preserved.[1] The main value of these consists in the additional ill.u.s.trations they afford of his conduct in private life, and of his opinions on the management of domestic affairs. The lack of literary and public interest is admitted and excused:

[Footnote 1: "Do you keep my letters? I am not of your opinion that I shall not like to read them hereafter."--_Letters_, vol. i. p. 295.]

"None but domestic and familiar events can be expected from a private correspondence; no reflexions but such as they excite can be found there; yet whoever turns away disgusted by the insipidity with which this, and I suppose every correspondence must naturally and almost necessarily begin--will here be likely to lose some genuine pleasure, and some useful knowledge of what our heroic Milton was himself contented to respect, as

"'That which before thee lies in daily life.'

"And should I be charged with obtruding trifles on the public, I might reply, that the meanest animals preserved in amber become of value to those who form collections of natural history; that the fish found in Monte Bolca serve as proofs of sacred writ; and that the cart-wheel stuck in the rock of Tivoli, is now found useful in computing the rotation of the earth."

In "Thraliana" she thus refers to the reception of the book:

"The Letters are out. They were published on Sat.u.r.day, 8th of March.

Cadell printed 2,000 copies, and says 1,100 are already sold. My letter to Jack Rice on his marriage (Vol. i. p. 96), seems the universal favourite. The book is well spoken of on the whole; yet Cadell murmurs. I cannot make out why."

This entry is not dated; the next is dated March 27th, 1788.

"This collection," says Boswell, "as a proof of the high estimation set on any thing that came from his pen, was sold by that lady for the sum of 500_l_." She has written on the margin: "How spiteful."

Boswell states that "Horace Walpole thought Johnson a more amiable character after reading his Letters to Mrs. Thrale, but never was one of the true admirers of that great man." Madame D'Arblay came to an opposite conclusion; in her Diary, January 9th, 1788, she writes:

"To-day Mrs. Schwellenberg did me a real favour, and with real good nature, for she sent me the letters of my poor lost friends, Dr.

Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, which she knew me to be almost pining to procure. The book belongs to the Bishop of Carlisle, who lent it to Mr. Turbulent, from whom it was again lent to the Queen, and so pa.s.sed on to Mrs. S. It is still unpublished. With what a sadness have I been reading! What scenes has it revived! What regrets renewed! These letters have not been more improperly published in the whole than they are injudiciously displayed in their several parts.

She has given all, every word, and thinks that perhaps a justice to Dr. Johnson, which, in fact, is the greatest injury to his memory.

"The few she has selected of her own do her, indeed, much credit; she has discarded all that were trivial and merely local, and given only such as contain something instructive, amusing, or ingenious."

She admits only four of Johnson's letters to be worthy of his exalted powers: one upon Death, in considering its approach, as we are surrounded, or not, by mourners; another upon the sudden death of Mrs. Thrale's only son. Her chief motive for "almost pining" for the book, steeped as she was in egotism, may be guessed:

"Our name once occurred; how I started at its sight! 'Tis to mention the party that planned the first visit to our house."

She says she had so many attacks upon "her (Mrs. Piozzi's) subject,"

that at last she fairly begged quarter. Yet nothing she could say could put a stop to, "How can you defend her in this? how can you justify her in that? &c. &c." "Alas! that I cannot defend her is precisely the reason I can so ill bear to speak of her. How differently and how sweetly has the Queen conducted herself upon this occasion. Eager to see the Letters, she began reading them with the utmost avidity. A natural curiosity arose to be informed of several names and several particulars, which she knew I could satisfy; yet when she perceived how tender a string she touched, she soon suppressed her inquiries, or only made them with so much gentleness towards the parties mentioned, that I could not be distressed in my answers; and even in a short time I found her questions made in so favourable a disposition, that I began secretly to rejoice in them, as the means by which I reaped opportunity of clearing several points that had been darkened by calumny, and of softening others that had been viewed wholly through false lights. To lessen disapprobation of a person, and so precious to me in the opinion of another, so respectable both in rank and virtue, was to me a most soothing task, &c."

This is precisely what many will take the liberty to doubt; or why did she shrink from it, or why did she not afford to others the explanations which proved so successful with the Queen?

The day following (Jan. 10th), her feelings were so worked upon by the harsh aspersions on her friend, that she was forced, she tells us, abruptly to quit the room; leaving not her own (like Sir Peter Teazle) but her friend's character behind her:

"I returned when I could, and the subject was over. When all were gone, Mrs. Schwellenberg said, 'I have told it Mr. Fisher, that he drove you out from the room, and he says he won't do it no more.'

"She told me next, that in the second volume I also, was mentioned.

Where she may have heard this I cannot gather, but it has given me a sickness at heart, inexpressible. It is not that I expect severity; for at the time of that correspondence, at all times indeed previous to the marriage with Piozzi, if Mrs. Thrale loved not F. B., where shall we find faith in words, or give credit to actions. But her present resentment, however unjustly incurred, of my constant disapprobation of her conduct, may prompt some note, or other mark, to point out her change of sentiment. But let me try to avoid such painful expectations; at least not to dwell upon them. O, little does she know how tenderly at this moment I could run into her arms, so often opened to receive me with a cordiality I believed inalienable.

And it was sincere then, I am satisfied; pride, resentment of disapprobation, and consciousness if unjustifiable proceedings--these have now changed her; but if we met, and she saw and believed my faithful regard, how would she again feel all her own return! Well, what a dream I am making!"

The ingrained worldliness of the diarist is ill-concealed by the mask of sensibility. The correspondence that pa.s.sed between the ladies during their temporary rupture (_ante_, p. 230) shews that there was nothing to prevent her from flying into her friend's arms, could she have made up her mind to be seen on open terms of affectionate intimacy with one who was repudiated by the Court. In a subsequent conversation with which the Queen honoured her on the subject, she did her best to impress her Majesty with the belief that Mrs.

Piozzi's conduct had rendered it impossible for her former friends to allude to her without regret, and she ended by thanking her royal mistress for her forbearance.

"Indeed," cried she, with eyes strongly expressive of the complacency with which she heard me, "I have always spoken as little as possible upon this affair. I remember but twice that I have named it: once I said to the Bishop of Carlisle that I thought most of these letters had better have been spared the printing; and once to Mr. Langton, at the drawing-room I said, 'Your friend Dr. Johnson, Sir, has had many friends busy to publish his books, and his memoirs, and his meditations, and his thoughts; but I think he wanted one friend more.' 'What for, Ma'am?' cried he. 'A friend to suppress them,' I answered. And, indeed, this is all I ever said about the business."

Hannah More's opinion of the Letters is thus expressed in her Memoirs:

"They are such as ought to have been written but ought not to have been printed: a few of them are very good: sometimes he is moral, and sometimes he is kind. The imprudence of editors and executors is an additional reason why men of parts should be afraid to die.[1] Burke said to me the other day, in allusion to the innumerable lives, anecdotes, remains, &c. of this great man, 'How many maggots have crawled out of that great body!'"

[Footnote 1: In reference to the late Lord Campbell's "Lives of the Lord Chancellors," it was remarked, that, as regards persons who had attained the dignity, the threatened continuation of the work had added a new pang to death. I am a.s.sured by the Ex-Chancellor to whom I attributed this joke, that it was made by Sir Charles Wetherell at a dinner at Lincoln's-Inn.]

Miss Seward writes to Mrs. Knowles, April, 1788:

"And now what say you to the last publication of your sister wit, Mrs. Piozzi? It is well that she has had the good nature to extract almost all the corrosive particles from the old growler's letters. By means of her benevolent chemistry, these effusions of that expansive but gloomy spirit taste more oily and sweet than one could have imagined possible."