ELIZA (FARREN), COUNTESS OF DERBY, 1797
From a print in the British Museum
Streatham Park, Wed. 26 April 1797.
I have long promised myself the pleasure of sitting down to send dear Mrs. Pennington a long letter, but long things and little people ill agree, and I never could find time till to-night....
Of charming Siddons every Paper can inform you. I really never saw her so charming; but she has a mind to exhibit age, avarice, and bitter disappointment instigating the most horrible crimes, for her Benefit, when Lillo's Fatal Curiosity will be acted. Miss Farren is bride-expectant, and everybody appears to applaud Lord Derby's choice. The Greatheeds are going to Germany next Summer on their son's account; Buonaparte is there already—on his own. His Banditti have committed dreadful ravages in the Venetian State, and among the rest of their exploits, have frighted Mr. Piozzi's good old Father out of what remained of life at fourscore years of age. Dreadful deeds I must confess, and horrible times in every sense of the word. But as we were speaking of individuals, I must add that Helen Williams is given up here by her most steady adherents. I am sorry....
I have been told that Cecilia Mostyn and her husband are at Bath, but since she wrote Mr. Piozzi a letter with heavy charges against me in it, we have ceased corresponding. If you meet with her, tell me how she looks, and if there are hopes of a child; it would be the likeliest means of assuring her domestick happiness. My husband is more hurt than I am at her accusations of him for setting her horse to plough, and of her mother for wearing her clothes, and charging them as accountable to herself, besides a general charge of penurious niggardliness observed in her education, which one knows not how to contradict but by a general appeal to her own accomplishments,—and to her own high-bred horse,—most incapable of being set to plough. Mothers and daughters remind one of poor Lady Pitches, who dropt down dead in earnest conversation with one of her young ladies' sweethearts, or the father of one of them, the other day. I did not do so with Drummond, tho' very near it I do think in Milsom Street, Bath. So you see I am better off than some of my neighbours. The Three Thrales are at Brighthelmstone, refreshing from the fatigues of a gay winter by sea-bathing. Sophia hinted that they should like a country house near Town for summer residence, and Mr. Piozzi has requested them to accept ours, which he could have easily have let, I trust, for £500 o'year; but generously—as I think—preferred the future possessors as present inhabitants of old Streatham Park, which will not now look melancholy because we live in Wales. And when all debts are paid we may perhaps return; but my own heart being fixed on my own Country, I shall never more wish to leave it, except for a short visit to Bath and Hot Wells, a happiness I still keep in sight for a motive to go forward.
As this is a letter of all fact and no sentiment, I will tell you that poor old Flo died since we came hither, and lies buried under the tree that has a seat round it. Not only a dog the fewer as you used to say, but in his tomb lie my affections buried; I feel that I shall never fondle dogs again. Belle went to live with Mrs. Mostyn long ago, old Loup is dead, and Brown Fox struck by the palsy;—Phyllis alone remains, and is no more a parlour favourite. So fade away one's pleasures and one's plagues; but Mr. Piozzi still retains his gout, and so I dare say does Mr. Pennington.
My health is much as usual, and 'tis the speech to say that I look very well. Let me hear good from you; from individuals we may yet hope to find some, public calamities go on increasing in velocity and strength, like a wheel downhill. A stone or hillock may stop it for a moment, but to the bottom it must go at last.
The Lord Derby here referred to was Edward, the twelfth Earl, who created considerable sensation in fashionable society by marrying, within two months of his first wife's death, the popular actress Eliza Farren.
By this time Bonaparte had accomplished his invasion of Austria from Italy, and the Emperor, seeing his capital threatened by French troops, was compelled to cede Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. On his return to Italy an insurrection in Venice gave him a pretext for replacing the ruling oligarchy by a republican form of government, while the territory of Genoa was transformed into the Ligurian Republic. It was no doubt the confusion consequent on these changes which hastened the end of Mr. Piozzi's aged father.
Streatham Park, 1 June 1797.
My dear Mrs. Pennington,—I feel your good-natured expressions very sensibly, and so does our poor dear Master; he is grown a sad invalid, always having the Gout, and crying out with pain. But the sick people live, whilst the well people dye, you know; so sings the sublime Mrs. Piozzi in her Journey to Italy, and so experience teaches.
Your Brother came here one morning last week, and brought some gentlemen with him to see the pictures in our Library. He is not altered in person, perhaps not in anything. I think character never changes; the Acorn becomes an Oak, which is very little like an Acorn to be sure, but it never becomes an Ash: and if Mrs. Mostyn is, as Miss Lees say, the same Cecilia, I may add that that same Cecilia never cared a pin for me nor my husband,—and cares not now. I have not done caring for her however; somebody says she is at Bristol, tell me if 'tis for health or pleasure she goes there, and how she looks, ... and whether her husband is with her or no, and how they live together. I can trust your information and your friendship....
I have been to the Exhibition. Lawrence is the Painter of the day; and to prove that he can shine equally in describing a rising and a fallen Angel, he has seated Mrs. Siddons at Lucifer's feet. There is a little thing of somebody's, I forget who, representing Cassandra predicting the fall of Troy, which few admire as I do, but it bears the true marks of genius and of taste. The next best thing I saw was a drawing of Pellegrini's, and no inelegant or worthless portrait of the Queen for la Duchesse de Wirtemberg.
Mr. Piozzi's state of health has hindered my waiting upon Lady Derby, but we met her in a Phaeton one day, and she stopt and spoke very prettily and kindly indeed. All the world seems pleased with her good fortune, and Lord Deerhurst's, to whom an old, distant relation has left no less than £80,000. It came at a nice moment to comfort them, for Lady Pitches, who I perhaps never told you, dropt down dead as she was stirring the fire, about six or eight weeks ago, and the breaking up of that house was a sad thing upon all her children....
When we go hence, Miss Thrales will enliven the spot, they are to succeed us in old Streatham Park. Whenever a loose half-crown lies in our pockets, it pays a mile's Postage towards the Hot Wells, you may assure yourself. Mrs. Siddons will see you first however, for Sally says her plan is to meet her husband and children at Mr. Whalley's, when she has been at two or three places alone. The little Baby Cecilia is the most extraordinary of all living babies; many have I seen, but none of such premature intellect. It is a wonderful infant, seriously....
George William Coventry, then Lord Deerhurst, afterwards seventh Earl of Coventry, married in 1783 Peggy, daughter of Sir Abraham Pitches, Knt., a neighbour of the Piozzis at Streatham. The Lady Pitches here mentioned was therefore his mother-in-law.
Lawrence's great picture of Satan summoning his Legions, exhibited this year, is now the property of the Royal Academy. Contemporary opinions differed widely as to its merits. His admirers pronounced it sublime, but Pasquin described it as "a mad Sugar Baker dancing naked in a conflagration of his own treacle." Fuseli branded it as "a damned thing certainly, but not the Devil"; but Lawrence turned the laugh against him by proving, from his sketch-book, that the idea of Satan was taken from Fuseli himself, while posing on a rock near Bristol. Nearly thirty years afterwards Mrs. Pennington saw it exhibited at Bristol, but it failed to impress her. "It is only monstrous in my mind," she writes, "it gives no idea of Lucifer son of the morning."
Mrs. Piozzi's interest in the "Baby Cecilia" is, to some extent, accounted for by the fact that she was her godchild; but her portrait by Lawrence, drawn this year, certainly suggests a remarkable and precocious infant. She was the only one of Mrs. Siddons' daughters to survive her mother.