JOSEPH GEORGE HOLMAN
By W. Angus after Dodd, 1784. From a print in the British Museum
The celebrated ladies of Llangollen were Lady Eleanor Butler, sister of John, seventeenth Earl of Ormonde, who had retired from society about twenty years previously with her friend Sarah, daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, a cousin of the Earl of Bessborough. They took a cottage at Plasnewydd in the Vale of Llangollen, where they lived for half a century, and were visited by most of the celebrities of the time. About two years before this date Anna Seward wrote her poem of "Llangollen Vale" in their honour. Lady Eleanor died in 1829 and her friend in 1831.
Joseph George Holman, a member of Queen's College, Oxford, though he never took a degree, made his début on the stage in 1784 at Covent Garden, where he acted till 1800. His wife, so frequently referred to in the letters, was Jane, daughter of the Rev. the Hon. Frederick Hamilton, a scion of the Duke of Hamilton's family.
In 1795 Mungo Park started from Gambia to explore the course of the Niger, and subsequently visited the States on the southern edge of the Great Sahara, returning, via America, in 1797. An account of his expedition was drawn up for the African Association in 1798, which is probably what Mrs. Piozzi had seen, but his own detailed account was not finished till 1799.
Streatham Park, Tuesday, 27 Mar. 1798.
My dearest Mrs. Pennington is too good a woman to wish me to make promises I cannot keep, and too kind a friend not to be sorry that I have no certainty of one day after another. If we let this house as we hope to do, we may possibly, and I hope we shall be able to spend next Winter or Spring at Bath, Bristol, and its environs; perhaps we shall be able to coax you away with us to pretty Brinbella, where our final and favourite residence seems to be fixed. But everything is so uncertain. England, Europe, the whole World seems so convulsed, and so incapable of judging its own destiny for 3 or 4 years to come, that I absolutely consider it as presumption next to madness to promise anything about coming here or going there. We must all do what suits us at the time I fancy.
Dear Mr. Whalley above all people verifies the prophecy that "a man shall seek to go into a city, and shall not be able." He himself proposed setting out for Ireland as this very day, in company of Sir Walter James; but they will neither of them go now, I trust, when whole families are flocking from thence to Wales, etc. for refuge. We dined in his and Mrs. Whalley's company at Mrs. Siddons's last week, and went with them at night to the Eidouranion, a pretty Astronomical Show. Maria dined in the room, and looked (to me) as usual, yet everybody says she is ill, and in fact she was bled that very evening, while we were at the Lecture. Shutting a young half-consumptive girl up in one unchanged air for 3 or 4 months, would make any of them ill, and ill-humoured too, I should think. But 'tis the new way to make them breathe their own infected breath over and over again now, in defiance of old books, old experience, and good old common sense. Ah, my dear friend, there are many new ways,—and a dreadful place do they lead to. You should read Robinson's book, and I should translate and abridge Barruel's, if I did my duty to the Public, but I really have not time. My own long, heavy work, in which I am engaged, takes every moment that can be spared from family concerns. Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn however give me no trouble, I have neither seen nor heard anything from them these many months....
I wonder if the pretty Misses go in self coloured drawers and stockings, and Brutus Heads with you as they do here. It is a horrible sight: but no one in this part of the world is considered as ridiculous, except the Bishops and Lords who commanded the Opera Dancers to put their clothes on again, or leave the Country. My fair Daughters have made a league with the House of Siddons, which I feel rather cooler to me than usual. Never mind! Those who know the World wonder at nothing: those who do not, must learn the World, or leave it. My ever kind Mrs. Pennington is of the Old School still, and remembers the precept given by old Father Homer 3 or 4000 years ago, saying that
A gen'rous friendship no cold medium knows,
Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;
The same our views, our int'rests still should be,
My friend must hate the man that injures me.
But we will talk of public calamity, if you please, it swallows, or ought to swallow up private concerns completely. I wish you to read the True Briton of March 8. There is a letter from Venice in it which we know but too well to be genuine. I translated and printed it myself, that none might remain ignorant of the manner in which France treats those who never offended her. What are we to expect from French generosity? Let us, like the Swiss, sell our lives as dear as we can. They oppose, and are cut to pieces. Italy complies, is pillaged and undone; like what Pope says of the famous Duchess of Marlborough,
Who breaks with her provokes revenge from Hell,
But he's a bolder man who dares be well.
I wish they would put their armament in motion; 'tis possible that God Almighty may permit us to destroy it, and then the Continent may be delivered from ys dreadful scourge. Their Italian and Dutch subjects would soon rebell, and they would be driven about finely. Distress at home would follow ill success abroad, and they would end like one of their own air-balloons, set on fire, and blazing, and burning out, and falling to ground. This is our only chance—the only hope of yours ever affectly
H. L. P.
The exodus from Ireland was due to the apprehended rising of the United Irishmen, which was then preparing. The principal conspirators had just been arrested when Mrs. Piozzi wrote, and martial law was proclaimed shortly afterwards.
Mrs. Piozzi's apprehensions about Maria Siddons proved but too well founded. A change of treatment was tried soon afterwards, and she was sent to Clifton in June, in the hope that a change of air and a course of "the Waters" might benefit her complaint. For a time she obtained relief, and as her mother was unable to be with her, Mrs. Pennington undertook the charge. But the disease had progressed too far, and four months later she died, tended to the end by her sister Sally and Mrs. Pennington.
John Robinson, secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University, was an important contributor to the third edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The work alluded to was published in 1797 under the title of "Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies, collected from good Authorities." The book, which contemporary critics describe as "a hasty production," was chiefly concerned with French and German societies.