Chapter XI: Part 11

When Savage got a guinea, he commonly spent it in a tavern at a sitting; and referring to the memorable morning when the "Vicar of Wakefield" was produced, Johnson says: "I sent him (Goldsmith) a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him." Mrs. Piozzi continues:

"But Doctor Johnson had always some story at hand to check extravagant and wanton wastefulness. His improviso verses made on a young heir's coming of age are highly capable of restraining such folly, if it is to be restrained: they never yet were printed, I believe.

"'Long expected one-and-twenty,
Lingering year, at length is flown;
Pride and pleasure, pomp and plenty,
Great Sir John, are now your own.

Loosen'd from the minor's tether,
Free to mortgage or to sell,
Wild as wind, and light as feather,
Bid the sons of thrift farewell.

Call the Betseys, Kates, and Jennies,
All the names that banish care;
LAVISH of your grandsire's guineas,
Show the spirit of an heir.

All that prey on vice or folly
Joy to see their quarry fly;
There the gamester light and jolly,
There the lender grave and sly.

Wealth, my lad, was made to wander,
Let it wander as it will;
Call the jockey, call the pander,
Bid them come and take their fill.

When the bonny blade carouses,
Pockets full, and spirits high--
What are acres? what are houses?
Only dirt or wet or dry.

Should the guardian friend or mother
Tell the woes of wilful waste;
Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother--
You can hang or drown at last.'"

These verses were addressed to Thrale's nephew, Sir John Lade, in August, 1780. They bear a strong resemblance to some of Burns' in his "Beggar's Sonata," written in 1785:--

"What is title, what is treasure,
What is reputation's care;
If we lead a life of pleasure,
Can it matter how or where?"

Boswell's "Life of Johnson" was published in May, 1791. It is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":--

"_May_, 1791.--Mr. Boswell's book is coming out, and the wits expect me to tremble: what will the fellow say? ... that has not been said already."

No date, but previous to 25th May, 1791.--"I have been now laughing and crying by turns, for two days, over Boswell's book. That poor man should have a _Bon Bouillon_ and be put to bed ... he is quite light-headed, yet madmen, drunkards, and fools tell truth, they say ... and if Johnson was to me the back friend he has represented ... let it cure me of ever making friendship more with any human being."

"_25th May_, 1791.--The death of my son, so suddenly, so horribly produced before my eyes now suffering from the tears then shed ... so shockingly brought forward in Boswell's two guinea book, made me very ill this week, very ill indeed[1]; it would make the modern friends all buy the work I fancy, did they but know how sick the _ancient_ friends had it in their power to make me, but I had more wit than tell any of 'em. And what is the folly among all these fellows of wishing we may know one another in the next world.... Comical enough! when we have only to expect deserved reproaches for breach of confidence and cruel usage. Sure, sure I hope, rancour and resentment will at least be put off in the last moments: ... sure, surely, we shall meet no more, except on the great day when each is to answer to other and before other.... After _that_ I hope to keep better company than any of them."

[Footnote 1: The death of her son is not unkindly mentioned by Boswell. See p. 491, roy. oct. edit. But the imputations on her veracity rest exclusively on his prejudiced testimony.]

In 1801, Mrs. Piozzi published "Retrospection; or a Review of the Most Striking and Important Events, Characters, Situations, and their Consequences, which the Last Eighteen Hundred Years have presented to the View of Mankind." It is in two volumes quarto, containing rather more than 1000 pages. A fitting motto for it would have been _De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis._ The subject, or range of subjects, was beyond her grasp; and the best that can be said of the book is that a good general impression of the stream of history, lighted up with some striking traits of manners and character, may be obtained from it. It would have required the united powers and acquirements of Raleigh, Burke, Gibbon, and Voltaire to fill so vast a canvass with appropriate groups and figures; and she is more open to blame for the ambitious conception of the work than for her comparative failure in the execution. In 1799 she writes to Dr. Gray: "The truth is, my plans stretch too far for these times, or for my own age; but the wish, though scarce hope, of my heart, is to finish the work I am engaged in, get you to look it over for me, and print in March 1801." She published it in January 1801, but it was not looked over by her learned correspondent. Some slight misgiving is betrayed in the Preface:

"If I should have made improper choice of facts, and if I should be found at length most to resemble Maister Fabyan of old, who writing the life of Henry V. lays heaviest stress on a new weathercock set-up on St. Paul's steeple during that eventful reign, my book must share the fate of his, and be like that forgotten: reminding before its death perhaps a friend or two of a poor man (Macbean) living in later times, that Doctor Johnson used to tell us of; who being advised to take subscriptions for a new Geographical Dictionary, hastened to Bolt Court and begged advice. There having listened carefully for half-an-hour, 'Ah, but dear Sir,' exclaimed the admiring parasite, 'if I am to make all this eloquent ado about Athens and Rome, where shall we find place, do you think, for Richmond, or Aix La Chapelle?'"

Writing from Bath, December 15th, 1802, she says:

"The 'Gentleman's Magazine' for July 1801 contained my answer to such critics as confined themselves to faults I could have helped committing--had they been faults. Those who merely told disagreeable truths concerning my person, or dress, or age, or such stuff, expected, of course, no reply. There are innumerable press errors in the book, from my being obliged to print on new year's day--during an insurrection of the printers. These the 'Critical Review' laid hold of with an acuteness sharpened by malignity."

Moore, who was staying at Bowood, sets down in his diary for April, 1823: "Lord L. in the evening, quoted a ridiculous passage from the Preface to Mrs. Piozzi's 'Retrospections,' in which, anticipating the ultimate perfection of the human race, she says she does not despair of the time arriving when 'Vice will take refuge in the arms of impossibility.' Mentioned also an ode of hers to Posterity, beginning, 'Posterity, gregarious dame,' the only meaning of which must be, a lady _chez qui_ numbers assemble--a lady at _home_."[1]

[Footnote 1: Memoirs, &c., vol. iv. p. 38.]

There is no such passage in the Preface to "Retrospection," and the ode is her "Ode to Society," who is not improperly addressed as "gregarious."

"I repeated," adds Moore, "what Jekyll told the other day of Bearcroft saying to Mrs. Piozzi, when Thrale, after she had repeatedly called him Mr. Beercraft: 'Beercraft is not my name, Madam; it may be your trade, but it is not my name.'" It may always be questioned whether this offensive description of repartee was really uttered at the time. But Bearcroft was capable of it. He began his cross-examination of Mr. Vansittart by--"With your leave, Sir, I will call you Mr. Van for shortness." "As you please, Sir, and I will call you Mr. Bear."

Towards the end of 1795, Mrs. Piozzi left Streatham for her seat in North Wales, where (1800 or 1801) she was visited by a young nobleman, now an eminent statesman, distinguished by his love of literature and the fine arts, who has been good enough to recall and write down his impressions of her for me:

"I did certainly know Madame Piozzi, but had no habits of acquaintance with her, and she never lived in London to my knowledge. When in my youth I made a tour in Wales--times when all inns were bad, and all houses hospitable--I put up for a day at her house, I think in Denbighshire, the proper name of which was Bryn, and to which, on the occasion of her marriage I was told, she had recently added the name of Bella. I remember her taking me into her bed-room to show me the floor covered with folios, quartos, and octavos, for consultation, and indicating the labour she had gone through in compiling an immense volume she was then publishing, called 'Retrospection.' She was certainly what was called, and is still called, blue, and that of a deep tint, but good humoured and lively, though affected; her husband, a quiet civil man, with his head full of nothing but music.

"I afterwards called on her at Bath, where she chiefly resided. I remember it was at the time Madame de Stael's 'Delphine,' and 'Corinne,' came out[1], and that we agreed in preferring 'Delphine,' which nobody reads now, to 'Corinne,' which most people read then, and a few do still. She rather avoided talking of Johnson. These are trifles, not worth recording, but I have put them down that you might not think me neglectful of your wishes; but now _j'ai vuide mon sac_."

[Footnote 1: "Delphine" appeared in 1804; "Corinne," in 1806.]

Her mode of passing her time when she had ceased writing books, with the topics which interested her, will be best learned from her letters. Her vivacity never left her, and the elasticity of her spirits bore up against every kind of depression. A lady who met her on her way to Wynnstay in January, 1803, describes her as "skipping about like a kid, quite a figure of fun, in a tiger skin shawl, lined with scarlet, and _only_ five colours upon her head-dress--on the top of a flaxen wig a bandeau of blue velvet, a bit of tiger ribbon, a white beaver hat and plume of black feathers--as gay as a lark."

In a letter, dated Jan. 1799, to a Welsh neighbour, Mrs. Piozzi says:

"Mr. Piozzi has lost considerably in purse, by the cruel inroads of the French in Italy, and of all his family driven from their quiet homes, has at length with difficulty saved one little boy who is now just turned of five years old. We have got him here (Bath) since I wrote last, and his uncle will take him to school next week; for as our John has nothing but his talents and education to depend upon, he must be a scholar, and we will try hard to make him a very good one.

"My poor little boy from Lombardy said as I walked him across our market, 'These are sheeps' heads, are they not, aunt? I saw a basket of men's heads at Brescia.'

"As he was by a lucky chance baptized, in compliment to me, John Salusbury, five years ago, when happier days smiled on his family, he will be known in England by no other, and it will be forgotten he is a foreigner. A lucky circumstance for one who is intended to work his way among our islanders by talent, diligence, and education."

She thus mentions this event in "Thraliana," January 17th, 1798:

"Italy is ruined and England threatened. I have sent for one little boy from among my husband's nephews. He was christened John Salusbury: he shall be naturalised, and then we will see whether he will be more grateful and natural and comfortable than Miss Thrales have been to the mother they have at length driven to desperation."

She could hardly have denied her husband the satisfaction of rescuing a single member of his family from the wreck; and they were bound to provide handsomely for the child of their adoption. Whether she carried the sentiment too far in giving him the entire estate (not a large one) is a very different question; on which she enters fearlessly in one of the fragments of the Autobiography. In a marginal note on one of the printed letters in which Johnson writes: "Mrs. Davenant says you regain your health,"--she remarks: "Mrs. Davenant neither knew nor cared, as she wanted her brother Harry Cotton to marry Lady Keith, and I offered my estate with her. Miss Thrale said she wished to have nothing to do either with my family or my fortune. They were all cruel and all insulting." Her fits of irritation and despondency never lasted long.

Her mode of bringing up her adopted nephew was more in accordance with her ultimate liberality, than with her early intentions or professions of teaching him to "work his way among our islanders." Instead of suffering him to travel to and from the University by coach, she insisted on his travelling post; and she is said to have remarked to the mother of a Welsh baronet, who was similarly anxious for the comfort and dignity of her heir, "Other people's children are baked in coarse common pie dishes, ours in patty-pans."

She was misreported, or afterwards improved upon the thought; for, in June 1810, she writes to Dr. Gray: "He is a boy of excellent principle. Education at a private school has an effect like baking loaves in a tin. The bread is more insipid, but it comes out _clean_; and Mr. Gray laughed, when at breakfast this morning, our undercrusts suggested the comparison."

In the Conway Notes, she says:

"Had we vexations enough? We had certainly many pleasures. The house in Wales was beautiful, and the Boy was beautiful too. Mr. Piozzi said I had spoiled my own children and was spoiling his. My reply was, that I loved spoiling people, and hated any one I could not spoil. Am I not now trying to spoil dear Mr. Conway?"

When she talks of spoiling, she must not be understood literally. In 1817 she writes from Bath to Dr. Gray:

"Sir John and Lady Salusbury staid with me six or seven weeks, and made themselves most beloved among us. They are very good young creatures.... My children read your _Key_ to each other on Sunday noons: the _Connection_ on Sunday nights. You remember me hoping and proposing to make dear Salusbury a gentleman, a Christian, and a scholar; and when one has succeeded in the first two wishes, there is no need to fret if the third does fail a _little_. Such is my situation concerning my _adopted_, as you are accustomed to call him."

Before she died she had the satisfaction of seeing him sheriff of his county; and on carrying up an address, he was knighted and became Sir John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury. Miss Williams Wynn has preserved a somewhat apocryphal anecdote of his disinterestedness:

"When I read her (Mrs. P.'s) lamentations over her poverty, I could not help believing that Sir J. Salusbury had proved ungrateful to his benefactress. For the honour of human nature I rejoice to find this is not the case. When he made known to his aunt his wish to marry, she promised to make over to him the property of Brynbella. Even before the marriage was concluded she had distressed herself by her lavish expenditure at Streatham. I saw by the letters that Gillow's bill amounted to near 2,400_l_., and Mr. (the late Sir John) Williams tells me she had continually very large parties from London. Sir John Salusbury then came to her, offered to relinquish all her promised gifts and the dearest wish of his heart, saying he should be most grateful to her if she would only give him a commission in the army, and let him seek his fortune. At the same time he added that he made this offer because all was still in his power, but that from the moment he married, she must be aware that it would be no longer so, that he should not feel himself justified in bringing a wife into distress of circumstances, nor in entailing poverty on children unborn.[1] She refused; he married; and she went on in her course of extravagance. She had left herself a life income only, and large as it was, no tradesman would wait a reasonable time for payment; she was nearly eighty; and they knew that at her death nothing would be left to pay her debts, and so they seized the goods."

[Footnote 1: If the estate was settled in the usual manner, he would have only a life estate; and I believe it was so settled.]

When Fielding, the novelist, rather boastingly avowed that he never knew, and believed he never should know, the difference between a shilling and sixpence, he was told: "Yes, the time will come when you will know it--when you have only eighteen pence left." If the author of "Tom Jones" could not be taught the value of money, we must not be too hard on Mrs. Piozzi for not learning it, after lesson upon lesson in the hard school of "impecuniosity." Whilst Piozzi lived, her affairs were faithfully and carefully administered. Although they built Brynbella, spent a good deal of money on Streatham, and lived handsomely, they never wanted money. He had a moderate fortune, the produce of his professional labours, and left it, neither impaired nor materially increased, to his family. With peculiar reference probably to her habits of profuse expenditure, he used to say that "white monies were good for ladies, yellow for gentlemen." He took the guineas under his especial charge, leaving only the silver to her. This was a matter of notoriety in the neighbourhood, and the tenants, to please her or humour the joke, sometimes brought bags of shillings and sixpences in part payment of their rents.

In the Conway Notes she says:

"Our head-quarters were in Wales, where dear Piozzi repaired my church, built a new vault for my old ancestors, chose the place in it where he and I are to repose together.... He lived some twenty-five years with me, however, but so punished with gout that we found Bath the best wintering-place for many, many seasons.--Mrs. Siddons' last appearance there he witnessed, when she played Calista to Dimond's Lothario, in which he looked _so_ like Garrick, it shocked us _all three_, I believe; for Garrick adored Mr. Piozzi, and Siddons hated the little great man to her heart. Poor Dimond! he was a well-bred, pleasing, worthy creature, and did the honours of his own house and table with peculiar grace indeed. No likeness in private life or manner,--none at all; no wit, no fun, no frolic humour had Mr. Dimond:--no grace, no dignity, no real unaffected elegance of mien or behaviour had his predecessor, David,--whose partiality to my fastidious husband was for that reason never returned. Merriment, difficult for _him_ to comprehend, made no amends for the want of that which no one understood better,--so he hated all the wits but Murphy."

There is hardly a family of note or standing within visiting distance of their place, that has not some tradition or reminiscence to relate concerning them; and all agree in describing him as a worthy good sort of man, obliging, inoffensive, kind to the poor, principally remarkable for his devotion to music, and utterly unable to his dying day to familiarise himself with the English language or manners. It is told of him that being required to pay a turnpike toll near the house of a country neighbour whom he was on his way to visit, he took it for granted that the toll went into his neighbour's pocket, and proposed setting up a gate near Brynbella with the view of levying toll in his turn.

In September, 1800, she wrote from Brynbella to Dr. Gray:

"Dear Mr. Piozzi, who takes men out of misery so far as his power extends in this neighbourhood, feels flattered and encouraged by your very kind approbation. He has been getting rugs for the cottagers' beds to keep them warm this winter, while we are away, and they all take me into their sleeping rooms when I visit them _now_, to show how comfortably they live. As for the old hut you so justly abhorred, and so kindly noticed--it is knocked down and its coarse name too, Potlicko: we call it Cottage-o'-the-Park. Some recurrence to the original derivation in soup season will not, however, be much amiss I suppose."

"Amongst the company," says Moore, "was Mrs. John Kemble. She mentioned an anecdote of Piozzi, who upon calling upon some old lady of quality, was told by the servant, she was 'indifferent.' 'Is she indeed?' answered Piozzi, huffishly, 'then pray tell her I can be as indifferent as she;' and walked away."[1]

[Footnote 1: Moore's Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 329.]

Till he was disabled by the gout, his principal occupation was his violin, and it was her delight to listen to him. She more than once observed to the vicar, "Such music is quite heavenly." "I am in despair," cried out the village fiddler, "I may now stick my fiddle in my thatched roof, for a greater performer is come to reside in the parish." The existing superstition of the country is that his spirit, playing on his favourite instrument, still haunts one wing of Brynbella. If he designed the building, his architectural taste does not merit the praises she lavishes on it. The exterior is not prepossessing; but there is a look of comfort about the house; the interior is well arranged: the situation, which commands a fine and extensive view of the upper part of the valley of the Clywd, is admirably chosen; the garden and grounds are well laid out; and the walks through the woods on either side, especially one called the Lovers' Walk, are remarkably picturesque. Altogether, Brynbella may be fairly held to merit the appellation of a "pretty villa." The name implies a compliment to Piozzi's country as well as to his taste; for she meant it to typify the union between Wales and Italy in his and her own proper persons. She says in the Conway Notes:

"Mr. Piozzi built the house for me, he said; my own old chateau, Bachygraig by name, tho' very curious, was wholly uninhabitable; and we called the Italian villa he set up as mine in the Vale of Cluid, Brynbella, or the beautiful brow, making the name half Welsh and half Italian, as _we_ were."

Dr. Burney, in a letter to his daughter, thus described the position and feelings of the couple towards each other in 1808:

"During my invalidity at Bath I had an unexpected visit from your Streatham friend, of whom I had lost sight for more than ten years. She still looks very well, but is graver, and candour itself; though she still says good things, and writes admirable notes and letters, I am told, to my granddaughters C. and M., of whom she is very fond. We shook hands very cordially, and avoided any allusion to our long separation and its cause. The _caro sposo_ still lives, but is such an object from the gout, that the account of his sufferings made me pity him sincerely; he wished, she told me, 'to see his old and worthy friend,' and _un beau matin_ I could not refuse compliance with his wish. She nurses him with great affection and tenderness, never goes out or has company when he is in pain."

In the Conway Notes she says:

"Piozzi's fine hand upon the organ and pianoforte deserted him. Gout, such as I never knew, fastened on his fingers, distorting them into every dreadful shape.... A little girl, shown to him as a musical wonder of five years old, said, 'Pray, Sir, why are your fingers wrapped up in black silk so?' 'My dear,' replied he, 'they are in mourning for my voice.' 'Oh, me!' cries the child, '_is she dead?_' He sung an easy song, and the baby exclaimed, 'Ah, Sir! you are very naughty--you tell fibs!' Poor dears! and both gone now!"

"When life was gradually, but perceptibly, closing round him at Bath, in 1808, I asked him if he would wish to converse with a Romish priest,--we had full opportunity there. 'By no means,' said he. 'Call Mr. Leman of the Crescent.' We did so,--poor Bessy ran and fetched him. Mr. Piozzi received the blessed Sacrament at his hands; but recovered sufficiently to go home and die in his own house."

He died of gout at Brynbella in March 1809, and was buried in a vault constructed by her desire in Dymerchion Church. There is a portrait of him (period and painter unknown) still preserved amongst the family portraits at Brynbella. It is that of a good-looking man of about forty, in a straight-cut brown coat with metal buttons, lace frill and ruffles, and some leaves of music in his hand. There are also two likenesses of Mrs. Piozzi: one a three-quarter length (kit-kat), taken apparently when she was about forty; the other a miniature of her at an advanced age. Both confirm her description of herself as too strong-featured to be pretty. The hands in the three-quarter length are gloved.

Brynbella continued her headquarters till 1814, when she gave it up to Sir John Salusbury. From that period she resided principally at Bath and Clifton, occasionally visiting Streatham or making summer trips to the seaside.

That she and her eldest daughter should ever be again (if they ever were) on a perfect footing of confidence and affection, was a moral impossibility. Estrangements are commonly durable in proportion to the closeness of the tie that has been severed; and it is no more than natural that each party, yearning for a reconciliation and not knowing that the wish is reciprocated, should persevere in casting the blame of the prolonged coldness on the other. Occasional sarcasms no more prove disregard or indifference, than Swift's "only a woman's hair" implies contempt for the sex.

Miss Thrale's marriage with Lord Keith in 1808 is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":

"The 'Thraliana' is coming to an end; so are the Thrales. The eldest is married now. Admiral Lord Keith the man; a _good_ man for ought I hear: a _rich_ man for ought I am told: a _brave_ man we have always heard: and a _wise_ man I trow by his choice. The name no new one, and excellent for a charade, _e.g_.

"A Faery my first, who to fame makes pretence;
My second a Rock, dear Britannia's defence;
In my third when combined will too quickly be shown
The Faery and Rock in our brave Elphin-stone."

Her way of life after Piozzi's death may be collected from the Letters, with the exception of one strange episode towards the end. When nearly eighty, she took a fancy for an actor named Conway, who came out on the London boards in 1813, and had the honour of acting Romeo and Jaffier to the Juliet and Belvidera of Miss O'Neill (Lady Becher). He also acted with her in Dean Milman's fine play, "Fazio." But it was his ill fate to reverse Churchill's famous lines:

"Before such merits all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high."

Conway was six feet high, and a very handsome man to boot; but his advantages were purely physical; not a spark of genius animated his fine features and commanding figure, and he was battling for a moderate share of provincial celebrity, when Mrs. Piozzi fell in with him at Bath. It has been rumoured in Flintshire that she wished to marry him, and offered Sir John Salusbury a large sum in ready money (which she never possessed) to give up Brynbella (which he could not give up), that she might settle it on the new object of her affections. But none of the letters or documents that have fallen in my way afford even plausibility to the rumour, and some of the testamentary papers in which his name occurs, go far towards discrediting the belief that her attachment ever went beyond admiration and friendship expressed in exaggerated terms.[1]

[Footnote 1: Since the appearance of the first edition of this work, it has been stated on the authority of a distinguished man of letters that Conway shewed the late Charles Mathews a letter from Mrs. Piozzi, offering marriage.--_New Monthly Magazine_ (edited by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth) for April, 1861.]

Conway threw himself overboard and was drowned in a voyage from New York to Charleston in 1828. His effects were sold at New York, and amongst them a copy of the folio edition of Young's "Night Thoughts," in which he had made a note of its having been presented to him by his "dearly attached friend, the celebrated Mrs. Piozzi." In the preface to "Love Letters of Mrs. Piozzi, Written when she was Eighty, to William Augustus Conway," published in London in 1842, it is stated that the originals, seven in number, were purchased by an American "lady," who permitted a "gentleman" to take copies and use them as he might think fit. What this "gentleman" thought fit, was to publish them with a catchpenny title and an alleged extract by way of motto to sanction it. The genuineness of the letters is doubtful, and the interpolation of three or four sentences would alter their entire tenor. But taken as they stand, their language is not warmer than an old woman of vivid fancy and sensibility might have deemed warranted by her age. "Tell Mr. Johnson I love him exceedingly," is the mission given by the old Countess of Eglinton to Boswell in 1778. _L'age n'a point de sexe_; and no one thought the worse of Madame Du Deffand for the impassioned tone in which she addressed Horace Walpole, whose dread of ridicule induced him to make a most ungrateful return to her fondness.[1] Years before the formation of this acquaintance, Mrs. Piozzi had acquired the difficult art of growing old; _je sais vieillir_: she dwells frequently but naturally on her age: she contemplates the approach of death with firmness and without self-deception: and her elasticity of spirit never for a moment suggests the image of an antiquated coquette. Of the seven letters in question, the one cited as most compromising is the sixth, in which Conway is exhorted to bear patiently a rebuff he had just received from some younger beauty:

[Footnote 1: "The old woman's fancy for Mr. Conway represents a relation of warm friendship that is of every-day occurrence between youth and age that is not crabbed."--_The Examiner_, Feb. 16, 1861.]

"'Tis not a year and a quarter since, dear Conway, accepting of my portrait sent to Birmingham, said to the bringer, 'Oh if _your lady_ but retains her friendship: oh if I can but keep _her_ patronage, I care not for the rest.' And now, when that friendship follows you through sickness and through sorrow; now that her patronage is daily rising in importance: upon a lock of hair given or refused by une petite Traitresse, hangs all the happiness of my once high-spirited and high-blooded friend. Let it not be so. EXALT THY LOVE: DEJECTED HEART--and rise superior to such narrow minds. Do not however fancy she will ever be punished in the way you mention: no, no; she'll wither on the thorny stem dropping the faded and ungathered leaves:--a China rose, of no good scent or flavour--false in apparent sweetness, deceitful when depended on--unlike the flower produced in colder climates, which is sought for in old age, preserved _even after death_, a lasting and an elegant perfume,--a medicine, too, for those whose shattered nerves require _astringent remedies_.

"And now, dear Sir, let me request of you--to love yourself--and to reflect on the necessity of not dwelling on any _particular subject_ too long, or too intensely. It is really very dangerous to the health of body and soul. Besides that our time here is but short; a mere preface to the great book of eternity: and 'tis scarce worthy of a reasonable being not to keep the end of human existence so far in view that we may tend to it--either directly or obliquely in every step. This is preaching--but remember how the sermon is written at three, four, and five o'clock by an octogenary pen--a heart (as Mrs. Lee says) twenty-six years old: and as H.L.P. feels it to be,--ALL YOUR OWN. Suffer your dear noble self to be in some measure benefited by the talents which are left _me_; your health to be restored by soothing consolations while _I remain here_, and am able to bestow them. All is not lost yet. You _have_ a friend, and that friend is PIOZZI."

Conway's "high blood" was as great a recommendation to Mrs. Piozzi as his good looks, and he vindicated his claim to noble descent by his conduct, which was disinterested and gentlemanlike throughout.

Moore sets down in his Diary, April 28, 1819: "Breakfasted with the Fitzgeralds. Took me to call on Mrs. Piozzi; a wonderful old lady; faces of other times seemed to crowd over her as she sat,--the Johnsons, Reynoldses, &c. &c.: though turned eighty, she has all the quickness and intelligence of a gay young woman."

Nichol, the bookseller, had said that "Johnson was the link that connected Shakespeare with the rest of mankind." On hearing this, Mrs. Piozzi at eighty exclaimed, "Oh, the dear fellow, I must give him a kiss for that idea." When Nichol told the story, he added, "I never got it, and she went out of the world a kiss in my debt."

One of the most characteristic feats or freaks of this extraordinary woman was the celebration of her eightieth birthday by a concert, ball, and supper, to between six and seven hundred people, at the Kingston Rooms, Bath, on the 27th January, 1820. At the conclusion of the supper, her health was proposed by Admiral Sir James Sausmarez, and drunk with three times three. The dancing began at two, when she led off with her adopted son, Sir John Salusbury, dancing (according to the author of "Piozziana," an eye-witness) "with astonishing elasticity, and with all the true air of dignity which might have been expected of one of the best bred females in society." When fears were expressed that she had done too much, she replied:--"No: this sort of thing is greatly in the mind; and I am almost tempted to say the same of growing old at all, especially as it regards those of the usual concomitants of age, viz., laziness, defective sight, and ill-temper."

"So far from feeling fatigued or exhausted on the following day by her exertions," remarks Sir James Fellowes in a note on this event, "she amused us by her sallies of wit, and her jokes on 'Tully's Offices,' of which her guests had so eagerly availed themselves.". Tully was the cook and confectioner, the Bath Gunter, who provided the supper.

Mrs. Piozzi died in May, 1821. Her death is circumstantially communicated in a letter from Mrs. Pennington, the lady mentioned in Miss Seward's correspondence as the beautiful and agreeable Sophia Weston:--

"Hot Wells, May 5th, 1821.

"Dear Miss Willoughby,--It is my painful task to communicate to you, who have so lately been the kind associate of dearest Mrs. Piozzi, the irreparable loss we have all sustained in that incomparable woman and beloved friend.

"She closed her various life about nine o'clock on Wednesday, after an illness of ten days, with as little suffering as could be imagined under these awful circumstances. Her bed-side was surrounded by her weeping daughters: Lady Keith and Mrs. Hoare arrived in time to be fully recognised[1]; Miss Thrale, who was absent from town, only just before she expired, but with the satisfaction of seeing her breathe her last in peace.

"Nothing could behave with more tenderness and propriety than these ladies, whose conduct, I am convinced, has been much misrepresented and calumniated by those who have only attended to _one_ side of the history: but may all that is past be now buried in oblivion! Retrospection seldom improves our view of any subject. Sir John Salusbury was too distant, the close of her illness being so rapid, for us to entertain any expectation of his arriving in time to see the dear deceased. He only reached Clifton late _last_ night. I have not yet seen him; my whole time has been devoted to the afflicted ladies."

[Footnote 1: On hearing of their arrival she is reported to have said, "Now, I shall die in state."]

Mrs. Pennington told a friend that Mrs. Piozzi's last words were: "I die in the trust and the fear of God." When she was attended by Sir George Gibbes, being unable to articulate, she traced a coffin in the air with her hands and lay calm. Her will, dated the 29th March, 1816, makes Sir John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury heir to all her real and personal property with the exception of some small bequests, Sir James Fellowes and Sir John Salusbury being appointed executors.

A Memorandum signed by Sir James Fellowes runs thus:--"After I had read the Will, Lady Keith and her two sisters present, said they had long been prepared for the contents and for such a disposition of the property, and they acknowledged the validity of the Will."

* * * * *

In any endeavour to solve the difficult problem of Mrs. Piozzi's conduct and character, it should be kept in view that the highest testimony to her worth has been volunteered by those with whom she passed the last years of her life in the closest intimacy. She had become completely reconciled to Madame D'Arblay, with whom she was actively corresponding when she died, and her mixed qualities of head and heart are thus summed up in that lady's Diary, May, 1821:

"I have lost now, just lost, my once most dear, intimate, and admired friend, Mrs. Thrale Piozzi, who preserved her fine faculties, her imagination, her intelligence, her powers of allusion and citation, her extraordinary memory, and her almost unexampled vivacity, to the last of her existence. She was in her eighty-second year, and yet owed not her death to age nor to natural decay, but to the effects of a fall in a journey from Penzance to Clifton. On her eightieth birthday she gave a great ball, concert, and supper, in the public rooms at Bath, to upwards of two hundred persons, and the ball she opened herself. She was, in truth, a most wonderful character for talents and eccentricity, for wit, genius, generosity, spirit, and powers of entertainment.

"She had a great deal both of good and not good, in common with Madame de Stael Holstein. They had the same sort of highly superior intellect, the same depth of learning, the same general acquaintance with science, the same ardent love of literature, the same thirst for universal knowledge, and the same buoyant animal spirits, such as neither sickness, sorrow, nor even terror, could subdue. Their conversation was equally luminous, from the sources of their own fertile minds, and from their splendid acquisitions from the works and acquirements of others. Both were zealous to serve, liberal to bestow, and graceful to oblige; and both were truly high-minded in prizing and praising whatever was admirable that came in their way. Neither of them was delicate nor polished, though each was flattering and caressing; but both had a fund inexhaustible of good humour, and of sportive gaiety, that made their intercourse with those they wished to please attractive, instructive, and delightful; and though not either of them had the smallest real malevolence in their compositions, neither of them could ever withstand the pleasure of uttering a repartee, let it wound whom it might, even though each would serve the very person they goaded with all the means in their power. Both were kind, charitable, and munificent, and therefore beloved; both were sarcastic, careless, and daring, and therefore feared. The morality of Madame de Stael was by far the most faulty, but so was the society to which she belonged; so were the general manners of those by whom she was encircled."

There is one real point of similarity between Madame de Stael and Mrs. Piozzi, which has been omitted in the parallel. Both were treated much in the same manner by the amiable, sensitive, and unsophisticated Fanny Burney. In Feb. 1793, she wrote to her father, then at Paris, to announce her intimacy with a small "colony" of distinguished emigrants settled at Richmond, the cynosure of which was the far-famed daughter of Necker. He writes to caution her on the strength of a suspicious _liaison_ with M. de Narbonne. She replies by declaring her belief that the charge is a gross calumny. "Indeed, I think you could not spend a day with them and not see that their commerce is that of pure, but exalted and most elegant, friendship. I would, nevertheless, give the world to avoid being a guest under their roof, now that I have heard even the shadow of such a rumour."

If Mr. Croker was right, she was then in her forty-second year; at all events, no tender, timid, delicate maiden, ready to start at a hint or semblance of impropriety; and she waved her scruples without hesitation when they stood in the way of her intercourse with M. D'Arblay, whom she married in July 1793, he being then employed in transcribing Madame de Stael's Essay on the Influence of the Passions.

As to the parallel, with all due deference to Madame D'Arblay's proved sagacity aided by her personal knowledge of her two gifted friends, it may be suggested that they present fewer points of resemblance than any two women of at all corresponding celebrity.[1] The superiority in the highest qualities of mind will be awarded without hesitation to the French woman, although M. Thiers terms her writings the perfection of mediocrity. She grappled successfully with some of the weightiest and subtlest questions of social and political science; in criticism she displayed powers which Schlegel might have envied while he aided their fullest development in her "Germany"; and her "Corinne" ranks amongst the best of those works of fiction which excel in description, reflection, and sentiment, rather than in pathos, fancy, stirring incident, or artfully contrived plot. But her tone of mind was so essentially and notoriously masculine, that when she asked Talleyrand whether he had read her "Delphine," he answered, "Non, Madame, mais on m'a dit que-nous y sommes tous les deux deguises en femmes."[2] This was a material drawback on her agreeability: in a moment of excited consciousness, she exclaimed, that she would give all her fame for the power of fascinating; and there was no lack of bitterness in her celebrated repartee to the man who, seated between her and Madame Recamier, boasted of being between Wit and Beauty, "Oui, et sans posseder ni l'un ni l'autre."[3] The view from Richmond Park she called "calme et animee, ce qu'on doit etre, et que je ne suis pas."

[Footnote 1: Lady Morgan and Madame de Genlis have been suggested as each presenting a better subject for a parallel.]

[Footnote 2: "To understand the point of this answer," says Mr. Mackintosh, "it must be known that an old countess is introduced in the novel full of cunning, finessing, and trick, who was intended to represent Talleyrand, and Delphine was intended for herself."--_Life of Sir James Mackintosh_, vol. ii. p. 453.]

[Footnote 3: This _mot_ is given to Talleyrand in Lady Holland's Life of Sydney Smith. But it may be traced to one mentioned by Hannah More in 1787, as then current in Paris. One of the _notables_ fresh from his province was teased by two _petits maitres_ to tell them who he was. "Eh bien donc, le voici: je suis ni sot ni fat, mais je suis entre les deux."--_Memoirs of Hannah More_, vol. ii. p. 57.]

In London she was soon voted a bore by the wits and people of fashion. She thought of convincing whilst they thought of dining. Sheridan and Brummell delighted in mystifying her. Byron complained that she was always talking of himself or herself[1], and concludes his account of a dinner-party by the remark:--"But we got up too soon after the women; and Mrs. Corinne always lingers so long after dinner, that we wish her--in the drawing-room." In another place he says: "I saw Curran presented to Madame de Stael at Mackintosh's; it was the grand confluence between the Rhone and the Saone, and they were both so d--d ugly that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and England could have taken up respectively such residences." He afterwards qualifies this opinion: "Her figure was not bad; her legs tolerable; her arms good: altogether I can conceive her having been a desirable woman, allowing a little imagination for her soul, and so forth. She would have made a great man."

[Footnote 1: Johnson told Boswell: "You have only two topics, yourself and myself, and I am heartily sick of both."]

This is just what Mrs. Piozzi never would have made. Her mind, despite her masculine acquirements, was thoroughly feminine: she had more tact than genius, more sensibility and quickness of perception than depth, comprehensiveness, or continuity of thought. But her very discursiveness prevented her from becoming wearisome: her varied knowledge supplied an inexhaustible store of topics and illustrations; her lively fancy placed them in attractive lights; and her mind has been well likened to a kaleidoscope which, whenever its glittering and heterogeneous contents are moved or shaken, surprises by some new combination of colour or of form. She professed to write as she talked; but her conversation was doubtless better than her books: her main advantages being a well-stored memory, fertility of images, aptness of allusion, and _apropos_.

Her colloquial excellence and her agreeability are established by the unanimous testimony of her cotemporaries. Her fame in this respect rests on the same basis as that of all great wits, all great actors, and many great orators. To question it for want of more tangible and durable proofs, would be as unreasonable as to question Sydney Smith's humour, Hook's powers of improvisation, Garrick's Richard, or Sheridan's Begum speech. But _ex pede Herculem_. Marked indications of her quality will be found in her letters and her books. "Both," remarks an acute and by no means partial critic[1], "are full of happy touches, and here and there will be found in them those deep and piercing thoughts which come intuitively to people of genius."

[Footnote 1: The Athenaeum. Jan. 26th, 1861.]

Surely these are happy touches:

"I hate a general topic as a pretty woman hates a general mourning when black does not become her complexion."

"Life is a schoolroom, not a playground."

In allusion to the rage for scientific experiment in 1811: "Never was poor Nature so put to the rack, and never, of course, was she made to tell so many lies."

"Science (i.e. learning), which acted as a sceptre in the hand of Johnson, and was used as a club by Dr. Parr, became a lady's fan, when played with by George Henry Glasse."

"Hope is drawn with an anchor always, and Common Sense is never strong enough to draw it up."

"The poppy which Nature sows among the corn, to shew us that sleep is as necessary as bread." [1]

[Footnote 1: Or to shew us that the harvest diminishes with sloth, and that what we gain in sleep we lose in bread. But _qui dort, dine_.]

"The best writers are not the best friends; and the last character is more to be valued than the first by cotemporaries: after fifty years, indeed, the others carry away all the applause."

This is the reason why posterity always takes part with the famous author or man of genius against those who witnessed his meanness or suffered from his selfishness; why fresh apologists will constantly be found for Bacon's want of principle and Johnson's want of manners.

In the course of his famous definition or description of wit, Barrow says: "Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying: sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense or the affinity of their sound." If this be so, she possessed it in abundance. In a letter, dated Bath, 26th April, 1818,--about the time when Talleyrand said of Lady F.S.'s robe: "_Elle commence trop tard et finit trop tot_,"--she writes:

"A genteel young clergyman, in our Upper Crescent, told his mamma about ten days ago, that he had lost his heart to pretty Miss Prideaux, and that he must absolutely marry her or die. _La chere mere_ of course replied gravely: 'My dear, you have not been acquainted with the lady above a fortnight: let me recommend you to see more of her.' 'More of her!' exclaimed the lad, 'why I have seen down to the fifth rib on each side already.' This story will serve to convince Captain T. Fellowes and yourself, that as you have always acknowledged the British Belles to _exceed_ those of every other nation, you may now say with truth, that they _outstrip_ them."

On the 1st July, 1818:

"The heat has certainly exhausted my faculties, and I have but just life enough left to laugh at the fourteen tailors who, united under a flag with '_Liberty and Independence_' on it, went to vote for some of these gay fellows, I forget which, but the motto is ill chosen, said I, they should have written up, '_Measures not Men_'"

Her verses are advantageously distinguished amongst those of her blue-stocking contemporaries by happy turns of thought and expression, natural playfulness, and an abundant flow of idiomatic language. But her facility was a fatal gift, as it has proved to most female aspirants to poetic fame, who rarely stoop to the labour of the file. Although the first rule laid down by Goldsmith's connoisseur[1] is far from universally applicable to productions of the pencil or the pen, all fruitful writers would do well to act upon it, and what Mrs. Piozzi could do when she took pains is decisively proved by her "Streatham Portraits."

[Footnote 1: "Upon my asking him how he had acquired the art of a conoscente so very suddenly, he assured me that nothing was more easy. The whole secret consisted in an adherence to two rules: the one always to observe that the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino."--_The Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx.]

She was wanting in refinement, which very few of the eighteenth century wits and authors possessed according to more modern notions; and she abounded in vanity, which, if not necessarily a baneful or unamiable quality, is a fruitful source of folly and peculiarly calculated to provoke censure or ridicule. In her, fortunately, its effects were a good deal modified by the frankness of its avowal and display, by her habits of self-examination, by her impulsive generosity of character, and by her readiness to admit the claims and consult the feelings of others. To seek out and appreciate merit as she appreciated it, is a high merit in itself.

Her piety was genuine; and old-fashioned politicians, whose watchword is Church and King, will be delighted with her politics. Literary men, considering how many curious inquiries depend upon her accuracy, will be more anxious about her truthfulness, and I have had ample opportunities of testing it; having not only been led to compare her narratives with those of others, but to collate her own statements of the same transactions or circumstances at distant intervals or to different persons. It is difficult to keep up a large correspondence without frequent repetition. Sir Walter Scott used to write precisely the same things to three or four fine-lady friends, and Mrs. Piozzi could no more be expected to find a fresh budget of news or gossip for each epistle than the author of "Waverley." Thus, in 1815, she writes to a Welsh baronet from Bath:

"We have had a fine Dr. Holland here.[1] He has seen and written about the Ionian Islands; and means now to practise as a physician, exchanging the Cyclades, say we wits and wags, for the Sick Ladies. We made quite a lion of the man. I was invited to every house he visited at for the last three days; so I got the _Queue du lion_ despairing of _le Coeur_."

[Footnote 1: Sir Henry Holland, Bart., who, with many other titles to distinction, is one of the most active and enterprising of modern travellers.]

Two other letters written about the same time contain the same piece of intelligence and the same joke. She was very fond of writing marginal notes; and after annotating one copy of a book, would take up another and do the same. I have never detected a substantial variation in her narratives, even in those which were more or less dictated by pique; and as she generally drew upon the "Thraliana" for her materials, this, having been carefully and calmly compiled, affords an additional guarantee for her accuracy.