The report of Stone's execution was unfounded; he lived, as stated above, till 1818. His brother William justified Mrs. Piozzi's prognostications, being tried for high treason along with Jackson in 1796. Horne Tooke is best known, apart from the stormy politics in which he was immersed, as the opponent of Junius, and author of The Diversions of Purley. The son of a poulterer named Horne, he took the name of Tooke in compliance with the terms of a will in 1782. He was educated at Cambridge, and entered as a student at the Inner Temple, but relinquished law to take holy orders, though he soon abandoned both the dress and duties of his office. A friend of Wilkes, he was drawn into politics, became a member of the Corresponding Society, and founded another known as the Society for Constitutional Reform. His republican and revolutionary views brought him under the notice of the Government, who decided to make an example of him. He was accordingly arrested on a charge of high treason by a warrant from the Secretary of State, and brought to trial, but was acquitted in 1794.
Streatham Park, 16 Jun. 1793.
Every letter I receive from you, my dear Friend, not only convinces me most unnecessarily of the loss I sustain in wanting your conversation, but shows me that we do not understand each other half as well at a distance. What could I ever have hinted to make you suppose I consider'd the diminution of your just dislike of Mr. Drummond as possible? He looked like a baffled Blockhead at Yaniewitz's concert; and if he had any memory might recollect what I said to him early in the business, when my tongue pronounced his fate precisely as it happened that night. "Sir," said I, "the child is but a child, and knows not what love is: she may be amused with having a Lover for aught I can tell, but in two years I shall see you pass each other in a Public Place,—she saying to her friends 'that's the man that was troublesome to me,'—you saying to yours 'that's the girl that jilted me?'" And so the matter ended....
The dear Siddons left me yesterday. She has charming daughters now, and so have I, so we can see little of each other. The currents of life draw those who delight in mutual and friendly chat apart from one another, without fault or blame of anyone's,
But busy, busy still art thou
To join the joyless, luckless vow;
The heart from pleasure to delude,
And join the gentle to the rude....
Sally is exceedingly well, and just as pretty as every pretty girl of the same age, and prettier than Maria, because her face looks cleaner.
You are lucky in Lady Asgill's friendship, the Miss I count little upon. A conversible companion of six and thirty years old is a good thing, and an infant under seven a delightful thing; but a Miss of 17 can charm nothing, as I should think, but a Master of 27. I grow too old for either, but the last is far most agreeable....
Do not you enjoy the thoughts of our late discovery that this famous Anacharsis Cloots, so well known in the National Convention for forwarding the cause of apostacy and rebellion, is no greater nor no less a man at last than Dignum, our thief, who worked on the Justitia Hulk about 15 years ago, and people used to go and see how daintily he fingered the wheelbarrow, I remember. Well! this is the hero of modern Democracy, the legislator of France, the renouncer of his baptismal vow, the champion of Atheism, and orator of the human race. Mr. Lysons came over from Putney late one evening o' purpose to tell it me, and is it not a capital anecdote?...
Not a word of poor Helena in all this long letter; that's a shame, yet I think her much more sincere than Dr. Moore, who, while he condemns every fact, justifies (you may observe,) every principle on which the facts were committed....
The identification of the English thief with the French orator, though doubtless a "capital anecdote," seems to be of the ben trovato rather than of the vero order. The individual in question was the Baron Jean Baptiste Clootz, who assumed the prenomen of Anacharsis to suggest his resemblance to the character of Anacharsis the Scythian in the Abbé Barthélemy's Romance.
The Lady Asgill here referred to would seem to be the wife of Sir Charles Asgill, who succeeded to the Baronetcy in 1788, and in the same year married Sophia, daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Ogle.
Fryday 19 Jul.
My dear Mrs. Pennington is a good Girl to write as often as she does while so many avocations call her: may the Ball turn out everything she wishes, and far away fly the Gout! Dear Siddons has had an alarm for her husband and Maria, who were overturned somewhere, and a little hurt; she keeps well herself however, and Mr. Gray, (who has been there to see,) says that she and Sally are as charming as ever....
The French are in a sad plight, but you may observe that God Almighty resolves to punish them without our meddling. The offences were certainly greater towards Him than towards us, and I perceive as yet that the combined armies have done France nothing but good. All the union they have shown among themselves has been occasioned by the Princes who invade them. Meantime it was meet, right, and our bounden duty, to oppose their principles and practice; I only mean that they will at length (as it appears,) fall by their own swords, not ours.
Mr. Este, more democrate than ever, is going to Italy, and asked me for letters. You may be sure I refused them, tho' so much obliged to him, and so full of personal good wishes for his welfare as an individual. It hurt me at the moment, but
Beyond or love, or friendship's sacred band,
Beyond myself, I prize my native land.
And so I refused letters of recommendation to a man whose only business and pleasure is the dissemination of principles I abhor, and who goes out of England only to return with those principles more firmly adhering to him. He was a delightful creature before ever he went to France, and Abate Fontana will not mend his notions in Italy. Mr. Dance the profilist is making a collection of celebrated heads; I have sate, but nobody knows me, they say, so I am to sit again. Lysons runs about with great zeal on the occasion, and I fancy they will go down to Nuneham....
Poor Barron Dillon has had his Daughter in law killed, and his house in Ireland torne down by the rabble who call themselves Defenders—I am exceeding sorry. Piozzi talks about going down with Mr. Ray, or Mr. Chappelow, or both, to see Brinbella, and come back without delay; how dull we shall be the while! Cecilia without her sisters,—they are gone to Southampton,—and I shall have lost Harriet Lee....
Here is rain at last,—we were all burn'd up till it came, and I really found London, when we dined there and took leave of our fair Daughters three nights ago, as cool, and almost as green as poor Streatham Park. No fruit, no afterpasture, no milk have we had this long time, and shall actually kill and eat the fatted calf on our wedding day next Thursday, because nobody would buy it to feed....
"Baron Dillon" was Sir John Dillon, M.P., who had a free Barony of the Holy Roman Empire conferred upon him in 1782 by the Emperor Joseph II, which title he was authorised to bear in this country. He was created a Baronet in 1801. His murdered daughter-in-law was Charlotte, daughter of John Hamilton, who had married his eldest son, Charles Drake Dillon. The "Defenders" were the Roman associations corresponding to the Protestant "Peep o' Day Boys": both were now beginning to be merged in the "United Irishmen."
The Rev. Charles Este, Reader at Whitehall Chapel, published in 1785, A Journey through Flanders, Brabant, and Germany, to Switzerland, which the British Critic describes as "chatty, and brightly written." He was subsequently proprietor of the Morning Post, the World, and the Telegraph.
MRS. PIOZZI
From an engraving by Dance, 1793, in the Collection of A. M. Broadley, Esq.