From a print in the Collection of A. M. Broadley, Esq.
The following winter Mr. Whalley (as appears from his published Letters) spent in her house. Writing to him in October with regard to his proposed visit, she tells him that she has for some time given up public and private parties. Pennington is tolerably well, "but we are both fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. I do not find my mind get older in proportion to my body. I have as keen a relish for intellectual enjoyments as ever I had. My spirits are rising in anticipation" of the visit and conversations to which she was looking forward with great pleasure. Her subsequent letters to Maria Brown are full of laments for the loss of such intellectual enjoyments, owing to the continual growth of Bristol, and the gradual decay of the Hot Wells as a health resort. The last of them was written in April 1827, when she had just had a severe illness, and on 1st August she died, aged seventy-five years, as stated on her mourning ring.
It is somewhat remarkable that neither her children, who showed so much attention to their mother's oldest friend, nor her heir, who handsomely acknowledged on paper his obligations to his aunt, cared to perpetuate Mrs. Piozzi's memory by any kind of monument. Perhaps they thought it needed no such artificial aid. It was reserved for the present century, and for a descendant of her other executor, to erect a simple white marble slab in Tremeirchion (formerly Dymerchion) Church, with the following inscription:
NEAR THIS PLACE ARE INTERRED THE REMAINS OF
HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI,
"DOCTOR JOHNSON'S MRS. THRALE."
BORN 1741. DIED 1821.
WITTY, VIVACIOUS AND CHARMING, IN AN AGE OF GENIUS
SHE EVER HELD A FOREMOST PLACE.
THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY ORLANDO BUTLER FELLOWES,