“Mrs. Williams was a person extremely interesting; she had an uncommon firmness of mind, a boundless curiosity, retentive memory, and strong judgment: she had various powers of pleasing; her personal afflictions and slender fortune she seemed to forget when she had the power of doing an act of kindness: she was social, cheerful, and active, in a state of body that was truly deplorable. Her regard to Dr. Johnson was formed with such strength of judgment and firm esteem that her voice never hesitated when she repeated his maxims or recited his good deeds, though upon many other occasions her want of sight had led to her making so much use of her ear as to affect her speech. Mrs. Williams was blind before she was acquainted with Dr. Johnson: her account of Mrs. Johnson was, that she had a good understanding and great sensibility, but inclined to be satirical. Her first husband died insolvent: her sons were much disgusted with her for her second marriage; perhaps because they, being struggling to get advanced in life, were mortified to think she had allied herself to a man who had not any visible means of being useful to them. However, she always retained her affection for them. While they resided in Grough-court, her son, the officer, knocked at the door and asked the maid if her mistress was at home. She answered, ‘Yes, sir; but she is sick in bed.’ ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘if it is so, tell her that her son Jervas called to know how she did,’ and was going away. The maid begged she might run up and tell her mistress, and, without attending his answer, left him. Mrs. Johnson enraptured to hear her son was below, desired the maid to tell him she longed to embrace him. When the maid descended the gentleman was gone, and poor Mrs. Johnson was much agitated by the adventure: it was the only time he ever made an effort to see her. Dr. Johnson did all he could to console his wife; but told Mrs. Williams, ‘Her son is uniformly undutiful; so I conclude, like many other sober men, he might once in his life be drunk, and in that fit nature got the better of his pride.’
“Mrs. Williams was never otherwise dependent on Dr. Johnson than in that sort of association which is little known in the great world. They both had much to struggle through, and I verily believe that whichever held the purse, the other partook what want required.
“She had many resources, though none very great: with the Miss Wilkinsons she generally passed a part of the year, and received from them presents, and from the first who died a legacy of clothes and linen. The last of them, Mrs. Jane, left her an annual rent; but from the blundering manner of the will, I fear she never reaped the benefit of it. That lady left money to erect an hospital for ancient maids; but the number she had allotted being too great for the donation, the Doctor said it would be better to expunge the word maintain, and put in, to starve such a number of old maids. They asked him what name should be given it. He replied, ‘Let it be called Jenny’s Whim’ [the name of a place of popular entertainment].
“Lady Phillips made her a small annual allowance, and some other Welsh ladies, to all of whom she was related. Mrs. Montagu, on the death of Mr. Montagu, settled on her ten pounds per annum. When the first ten were sent her, they were accompanied with a letter telling her that, before she sent her that sum, she had taken care that the future payments should not depend upon her own precarious life, for that it was fixed to her by deed. Mrs. Williams’s gratitude was great and sincere: and on showing the letter before the Doctor to the present writer, and my testifying my joy at it, ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘the good lady has given Willy a treasure here, and is laying up one for herself.’
“As to her poems, she many years attempted to publish them: the half-crowns she had got towards the publication, she confessed to me went for necessaries, and that the greatest pain she ever felt was from the appearance of defrauding her subscribers: ‘But what can I do? the Doctor always puts me off with, “Well, we’ll think about it;” and Goldsmith says, “Leave it to me.”’ However, two of her friends, under her directions, made a new subscription at a crown, the whole price of the work, and in a very little time raised sixty pounds. Mrs. Carter was applied to by Mrs. Williams’s desire, and she, with the utmost activity and kindness, procured a long list of names. At length the work was published, in which is a fine-written but gloomy tale of Dr. Johnson. The money Mrs. Williams had various uses for, and a part of it was funded. As near as I can calculate, Mrs. Williams had about thirty-five or forty pounds a year. The furniture she used was her own; her expenses were small; tea and bread-and-butter being at least half of her nourishment. Sometimes she had a servant, or charwoman, to do the ruder offices of the house; but she was herself active and industrious. I have frequently seen her at work. Upon remarking one day her facility in moving about the house, searching into drawers, and finding books without the help of sight, ‘Believe me,’ said she, ‘persons who cannot do these common offices without sight, did but little while they enjoyed that blessing.’ Scanty circumstances, bad health, and blindness, are surely a sufficient apology for her being sometimes impatient; her natural disposition was good, friendly, and humane. She was in respect to morals more rigid than modern politeness admits; for she abhorred vice, and was not sparing of anger against those who threw young folks into temptation. Her ideas were very just in respect to the improvement of the mind, and her own was well stored. I have several of her letters; they are all written with great good sense and simplicity, and with a tenderness and affection that far excel all that is called politeness and elegance. I have been favoured with her company some weeks at different times, and always found her temper equal, and her conversation lively. I never passed hours with more pleasure than when I heard her and Dr. Johnson talk of the persons they valued, or on subjects in which they were much interested. One night, I remember, Mrs. Williams was giving an account of the Wilkinsons being at Paris, and having had consigned to their care the letters of Lady Wortley Montagu, on which they had bestowed great praise. The Doctor said, ‘Why, Madam, there might be great charms to them in being entrusted with honourable letters; but those who know better the world, would have rather possessed two pages of true history.’[[182]]
“One day that he came to my house to meet many others, we told him that we had arranged our party to go to Westminster Abbey, would not he go with us? ‘No,’ he replied, ‘not while I can keep out.’ Upon our saying that the friends of a lady had been in great fear lest she should make a certain match for herself, he said, ‘We that are his friends have had great fears for him.’
“He gave us an account of a lady, then lately dead, who had made a separate purse from her husband, and confessed to the sum in her last moments; but before she could tell where it was placed, a convulsion finished her. The poor man said he was more hurt by her want of confidence in him than the loss of his money. ‘I told him,’ said he, ‘that he must console himself, for perhaps the money might be found, and he was sure his wife was gone.’
“I talked to her (Mrs. Thrale) much of dear Mrs. Williams. She said she was highly born; that she was very nearly related to a Welsh Peer; but that though Dr. Johnson had always pressed her to be acquainted with her, yet she said she could not; she was afraid of her. I named her virtues: she seemed to hear me as if I had spoken of a new-discovered country.
“I think the character of Dr. Johnson can never be better summed up than in his own words in ‘Rasselas’, pp. 246, 247. He was master of an infinite deal of wit, which proceeded from depth of thought, and of a humour which he used sometimes to take off from the asperity of reproof. Though he did sometimes say very sportive things, which might be said to be playing upon the folly of some of his companions, and though he never said one that could disgrace him, yet I think, when the man is no more, the care should be to prove to steady uniformity in wisdom, virtue, and religion, and not to add those matters which could be of no force but as the occasion called them forth. His political principles ran high, both in Church and State: he wished power to the King and to the Heads of the Church, as the laws of England have established, but I know he disliked absolute power; and I am very sure of his disapprobation of the doctrines of the Church of Rome; because, about three weeks before we came abroad, he said to my Cornelia, ‘You are going where the ostentatious pomp of Church ceremonies attracts the imagination; but if they want to persuade you to change, you must remember that by increasing your faith you may be persuaded to become Turk.’ If these were not the words, I have kept up to the express meaning.
“I have no patience of the manner in which Mrs. Williams is mentioned, with insinuations of the great weight she was on Dr. Johnson. (By Mrs. Piozzi, in her ‘Anecdotes.’) She was of a very good family: her Welsh friends made her a constant allowance, and the Miss Wilkinsons were liberal to her. She got a hundred and fifty pounds by her poems. I well remember her saying one day that she would have bought some tea, but wanted the money. The Doctor replied, ‘Why did you not ask me?’ She replied, ‘I knew you had none.’ He answered, ‘But I could have borrowed it.’ She, who knew him better than any person living, once said that ‘He never denied his advice or his purse to any one that asked.’ She had strong sense, excellent principles, and a cheerful mind; but, oppressed with blindness, pain, and poverty, her temper might be soured. But who would have borne such heavy afflictions so well as she did, or have been so useful as she really was? But please to consider, when you come to narrate particulars, how, without intention, you lessen fame. You will find in some lines I have writ, that I expose the poverty of my friend, and the weaknesses that only proceeded from a state of mortality.”