It was this Mr. Perkins who, when the brewery was within five minutes of absolute disaster, displayed the tactics of a great general in the face of an implacable enemy, and saved the property. As a reward for his services his master authorised the presentation to him of the sum of a hundred pounds. His master's wife, however, being a more generous assessor of the value of the man's ability, ventured to present double the sum, together with a silver tea-service for Mrs. Perkins; but she did so in fear and trembling, failing to summon up sufficient courage to acquaint her husband with her extravagance until further concealment was impossible. She was so overjoyed at his sanctioning the increase that she at once wrote to her friends acquainting them with this evidence of his generosity.
This episode was certainly the most stirring in the history of Thrale's brewery. The Gordon rioters had been terrorising London for several days, burning houses in every direction, as well as Newgate and another prison, and looting street after street. They had already overthrown one brewery, and they found the incident so fascinating that they marched across the bridge to the Southwark concern, raising the cry that Thrale was a Papist. The Thrales were at this time sojourning at Bath, and were in an agony of suspense regarding their property. They had left Dr. Johnson comfortably ensconced at their Streatham house in order that they might learn in dignified language how things were going on.
This is Johnson's thrilling account of the incident:
“What has happened to your house you all know. The harm is only a few butts of beer, and I think you may be sure that the danger is over. Pray tell Mr. Thrale that I live here, and have no fruit, and if he does not interpose am not likely to have much; but I think he might as well give me a little as give all to the gardener.”
There was a double catastrophe threatening, it would appear: the burning of the brewery and the shortage in the supply of Dr. Johnson's peaches.
This is how Mrs. Thrale describes the situation:
“Nothing but the astonishing presence of mind shewed by Perkins in amusing the mob, with meat and drink and huzzas, till Sir Philip Jennings Clerke could get the troops, and pack up the counting-house, bills, bonds etc. and carry them, which he did, to Chelsea College for safety, could have saved us from actual undoing. The villains had broke in, and our brew-house would have blazed in ten minutes, when a property of £150,000 would have been utterly lost, and its once flourishing possessors quite undone.”
It seems almost incredible that Johnson, living at Streatham as the guardian of Mr. Thrale's interests, should require the lady to write to him, begging him to thank Perkins for his heroism. But so it was.
“Perkins has behaved like an Emperor,” she wrote, “and it is my earnest wish and desire—command, if you please to call it so—that you will go over to the brew-house and express your sense of his good behaviour.”
Mrs. Thrale was unreasonable. How could Johnson be expected to take any action when he was deprived of his peaches?