Miss Thrale's information about the new play was not quite accurate. De Montfort, a Tragedy of Hate, was one of a series of Plays on the Passions by Joanna Baillie, but it was published anonymously, and several well-known writers, including Sir Walter Scott, were suspected of its authorship. There is a note about it in Mrs. Piozzi's Commonplace Book as follows: "I remember a knot of Literary Characters met at Miss Lees' House in Bath, deciding—contrary to my own judgement—that a learned man must have been the author; and I, chiefly to put the Company in a good humour, maintained it was a woman. Merely, said I, because both the heroines are Dames Passées, and a man has no notion of mentioning a female after she is five and twenty. What a goose Joanna must have been to reveal her sex and name! Spite and malice have pursued her ever since.... She is a Zebra devoured by African Ants—the Termites Bellicosus."
Wensday 29 May 1799.
Not one Oak in Leaf.
On the very evening of the day I receive your last kind letter, dear Friend, I write to acknowledge both. The home post will tell you nothing you like tho', except that our accounts of little Salusbury are all good: but poor Uncle is always having a bad foot, and as you say, if it were not for the comfortable news from Italy, he would be low enough.
This blowing, blighting weather ruins us all; my poor cottagers are sick, with Agues chiefly, and Dropsies; with broken hearts too, poor things, when their horses drop under even empty carts, for full ones they cannot drag. Our Hay here has been at one Penny o'pound, our Beef at ten Pence. This approaches very near to famine, but may justly be termed scarcity; and the same dreadful wind which retards the growth of all vegetation, and restrains the hand of industry in our own Island, has driven our protecting fleet from Cadiz harbour, and let the French and Spaniards form a junction.
Meanwhile charming Hannah More was right in her conversation, as in her book; there has been a Crane-neck-turn, as she expressed it, and things are certainly mending on the Continent. If Ireland should come to her senses, and unite with us in abhorrence of French principles and French seducers, who could promise them assistance and never carry it, but go on another scheme, while the rebels there were waiting the Fleet's arrival—it might be lucky that Lord Bridport did let them escape. Poor fellow! how you do hate that man! Very comically, and very unreasonably indeed; for when we saw him he was, as the phrase is, out of his element, and looked to be sure something like a fish out of water. But I never heard anything amiss of him in my life, and believe he will not be found, at the critical moment, to carry "Two Faces under a Hood."
Have you seen Dr. and Mrs. Randolph lately? What do they say about these Riflers of Sweets that we hear so much of? Bath has been a scene of odd robberies by gay Lotharios, "who scorn to ask the lordly owners' leave." It makes me only laugh, but I trust Hannah More would say, like Benvolio, "No, Coz, I rather weep."[13] Glorious creature! How she writes! Finding new reasons to enforce old Virtues, and adorning her sacred sentiments with brilliancy that throws rays round all her periods. It would be doing her too much wrong to suppose her capable of regarding the nonsense talked against her by Misses mad to see their Mammas reading the new book with approbation, and looking at them over their spectacles at every interesting passage. She must be invulnerable to wounds from such weak hands, sure. The old heroes in Homer,
By Pallas guarded thro' the dreadful field,
Saw swords beside them innocently play,
While darts were bid to turn their points away.
All they can say and do only contributes to shew how greatly such a book was wanted. Mr. Whalley's thinking he has contributed to Siddons's fame is pretty enough; she thinks her contribution useful to him, no doubt. The writer of Pizarro is censured for giving her part to Mrs. Jordan....
The intelligence concerning Mrs. Radcliffe's having written that play on hatred seems to have been premature. Oh, how your account of Mrs. Jackson's domestic situation presses Hannah More's book upon one's heart! The Italians have a proverb to say that there are only three things worth caring about, La Salute, l'Anima, and la Borsa; one's Soul, one's Health, and one's Purse. We risque all three to make our fair daughters accomplish'd. Doctor Johnson said that whoever found their mothers admired and reverenced by that circle which forms a little silk-worm world round every individual, would add their admiration and reverence, merely because they saw other people pay them theirs. "I cared," says he, "nothing for my parents, because nobody cared for them." Mrs. Jackson's children cannot make that their excuse. She has been a woman—since I have known her—particularly petted by her friends, and those friends have been people eminent for good taste and good sense.
Are the Canterbury Tales come out yet? Nobody has sent them me, and I will not write again to Harriet Lee till I have read them. Sophia is in town with her little protégée, who, if she cannot conjure down
The pale moon from the sapphire sky,
May draw Endymion from the moon,
perhaps; and I really wish her good luck. Tickell's Ætherial Spirit is a new med'cine much in fashion, it is so finely dephlegmated, the Apothecaries say. I think there is as much pure spirit, and as little phlegm about the tiny Bath Belle as can be imagined. Some rich man may take her, I hope.
Have you felt an interest in these African discoveries? They are things of prodigious curiosity, rate them at the lowest. I think very seriously about them for my own part, but none of my correspondents seem caring much concerning that subject, unless 'tis Miss Thrale, from whom I get about 4 or 5 letters in a year,—and she has been ill this Spring. So has everybody. I watch the weathercock all day, but the cold blight continues. The leaves which try to come out look like fry'd Parsley round a dish of Soles....
[13] Romeo and Juliet, I. i. 189.
In April 1797, when it was expected that the Spanish and French fleets would effect a junction, Lord St. Vincent was ordered to blockade the former at Cadiz. He held his post under many difficulties, caused by the mutinous spirit which had spread from the Nore and Spithead, through 1798, but broke down under the strain, and in June 1799 resigned his command to Baron, afterwards Viscount Keith, and husband of Hester Thrale. Meanwhile the French fleet was blockaded in Brest by Lord Bridport, now Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Squadron, but in April the French slipped out and sailed for the Mediterranean, while Bridport went to look for them off the coast of Ireland.
Mr. Whalley's play was a five-act tragedy called The Castle of Montval, performed "with universal applause" at Drury Lane. The British Critic reviewer, though he had not seen the performance, thought it interesting enough to deserve a permanent place on the stage. But the measure of success it obtained was due to the acting of Mrs. Siddons as the Countess, which the author acknowledged by dedicating the second edition to her.
Elizabeth Anne Tickell, the pupil whom Sophia Lee evidently expected to make a sensation in London society, was the daughter of Richard Tickell the dramatist and Mary Linley, the sister of Mrs. Sheridan, who had died in 1787. With regard to her beauty there was little difference of opinion, but Sally Siddons, who knew her well, describes her as an "every-day character," without talent or originality, and "never heard anything so tiresome" as her singing. She was never "taken," but died unmarried in 1860.
The "Ethereal Anodyne Spirit" was a quack medicine invented by William Tickell, a surgeon, who also lived at Bath, and may have been a relation of Richard.
Brynbella, Wensday 17 Jul. 1799.
Your letter, dearest Mrs. Pennington, is like yourself, full of true friendship, honest loyalty and sound criticism. Freedom from prejudices, as principals are called now o' days, we must not come to you for.... I do believe you were right in that unjustifiable conjecture of yours concerning the death of those Deputies at Rastadt.... But Retrospect of past ages can shew no perfidy beyond that, if so it should prove upon investigation. The Archduke now seems to act with his hands untied, and co-operates with Suwarrow in everything, yet I suspect something behind the curtain still. The Emperor is willing enough to see Italy freed, but does not want Louis Dixhuit on his throne again, I suppose; whereas the Russians and English are trying to accomplish yt purpose with all their might, and no lasting peace can be obtained but by his restoration. We shall see how 'twill end.
You are droll indeed in your account of the New Canterbury Tales, I have not read them yet.... When Romances first were written they went by the name of Incredibilities; but people soon found out that Fiction looks best the more she endeavour to resemble Truth. It grows however a mighty tedious thing, after a certain age, to keep filling one's head with flitting dreams so, turning one's mind into a Magic Lanthorn for Shadows and Ombres Chinoises to pass over. If incredibilities are desirable, we can hear enough of Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn. As that Lady told you at some place that Mrs. Moyston, as she called her, made all the talk,—and so she does, God knows.
Well, any nonsense but dishonourable nonsense, disgraceful folly such as Honoria Gubbins has exhibited. You know I always said she looked like a Bacchante Girl, but she admired nothing except Siddons I remember. In good time. Dear, charming Siddons! How triumphantly must she have looked in the first and last scene of Pizarro! And what a happy contrast Sheridan has made between her artificial character, and Cora's natural one! Yet I cannot seriously approve of a Heroic Tragedy in prose. Domestic Tragedy, George Barnwell, or the Gamester, or the Stranger, would lose the interest they now gain in our hearts, if they spoke any but colloquial and domestic language. Poetry is made on purpose to adorn the lofty sentiments of Rolla, and Cora's song is the sweetest thing in the whole play,—only because 'tis verse.
Poor Cora! She is not of your mind, that love is of no consequence compared with a hundred other things; and that she should have completely no other idea present to her mind, makes her so natural, so interesting, and so adorable. What is stranger than love itself, and love is strange enough too,—is that one should never have done admiring that selfish passion when represented in works of fancy. I remember an old Alderman of London, who, when there was loud talk of invasion 20 years ago or more, said among a dozen people once at my house: "Well! I care not, for my part, if the Island was devoured to-morrow, so as my wife and child were safe, and I had enough to keep them with." This patriotic sentiment met with no approbation at all from an old Alderman in real life; yet this is the sentiment that Cora expresses all through five acts, and not only her auditors in the Pit and Boxes, but Rolla himself likes her the better for it. So you see Fiction may resemble Truth in some things, while if Truth resembles Fiction we hiss her out of doors.
Poor dear old Mr. Jones is very bad, and like to die, or has been like to die, and I am very sorry indeed; for though there's but little poetry or criticism about old Mr. Jones, he is a good friend and a valuable member of society, and wishes well to my Master and to me....
Mrs. Siddons goes to Edinburgh, I hear, but by what you say of Sally, I trust she cannot be of the party. Miss Thrale is in Scotland, and will have the pleasure of seeing her, as I saw her at Bath. No letter have I ever received from Marlbro' Street but one, and that was from the Master of the Mansion....
The little boy comes next week, next month I mean, with Davies.
Austria, having signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, and received unexpectedly favourable terms from Napoleon, agreed to hold a conference at Rastadt, and (by secret articles) to induce the German States to cede the left bank of the Rhine to France. While the conference was proceeding the Directory had occupied Switzerland, though Massena, Jourdan, and Scherer had all suffered defeats. The French envoys were ordered to leave the town, and were murdered on the road by Austrian hussars. The Emperor expressed deep abhorrence of a crime which aroused general indignation, and helped the Directory to fill up their depleted armies.
Alexander Vasilievitch Suvoroff or Suwarrow, a Russian general, had been sent to help the Austrians. He took command of the army in Italy, where he beat Moreau, Macdonald, and Joubert, but owing to jealousy he was transferred to Switzerland, and believing himself betrayed by the Austrians, he retired to Russia, and died in disgrace.