Hester Maria, born 1762, known in her childhood as Queeny, a name given her by Dr. Johnson, who supervised her education, and with whom she was a great favourite. She inherited much of her father's strong, but cold and reserved character, and was never on very affectionate or sympathetic terms with her mother. She married at Ramsgate, 10th January 1808, Admiral Lord Keith, G.C.B., then a widower, son of the tenth Lord Elphinstone, and who was created Viscount Keith in 1814. She died at 110 Piccadilly, 31st March 1857, leaving an only daughter, the Hon. Augusta Henrietta Elphinstone, who married twice, but left no issue.
Susannah Arabella, born 1770; who died unmarried at Ashgrove, Knockholt, 5th November 1858, and was buried at Streatham.
Sophia, born 23rd July 1771; who married, 13th August 1807, Henry Merrick Hoare, son of Sir Richard Hoare of Barn Elms, Bart. She died at Sandgate, 8th November 1824, leaving no issue, and was buried at Streatham.
Cecilia Margaretta, born 1777. She married, 1795, John Meredith Mostyn of Segrwyd, who died 19th May 1807. She survived him half a century, dying at Sillwood House, Brighton, 1st May 1857. They had three sons, of whom the eldest was christened John Salusbury, but all died unmarried.
Her widowhood, 1781-4, was the most stormy period of Mrs. Piozzi's life. Her first anxiety was to dispose of the brewery, which neither she nor the executors felt competent to carry on. After some negotiation it was purchased by the Barclays for £135,000, and so provided a respectable portion for each of the girls. Bach-y-graig, her ancestral abode, had come to her on the death of her mother, and Thrale had left her Streatham Park for life, but the one was ruinous and the other expensive, and on the score of economy she determined to let Streatham and live at Bath. This course also had the advantage—in her eyes at least—of removing her somewhat farther from Johnson's sphere of influence. His eccentric habits and domineering temper had for many years been somewhat of a trial to her, though delight in his conversation, admiration for his talents, and regard for his character had hitherto induced her to bear them with patience. She was anxious to avoid a rupture with him, but it was more than probable that, both as an old friend and as one of her husband's executors, he would strongly disapprove of the second marriage which she was now beginning to contemplate with Signor Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian musician and singer.
He had been recommended to her in 1780 as a man "likely to lighten the burden of life to her, and just a man to her natural taste," by Fanny Burney; but it is recorded that on the first occasion on which they met in company, when he played and sang at Dr. Burney's in 1777, Mrs. Thrale stood behind him as he sat at the piano, and mimicked his gestures and manner, to the mingled amusement and embarrassment of the company. From this unpromising beginning grew a friendship which gradually ripened into love, and in 1783 it was apparent that Piozzi was seriously courting the widow, and that she was not ill-disposed to his suit. Then the storm burst. Mrs. Thrale was in no sense a public character, but she was violently attacked in the public prints, which had previously amused themselves by announcing her engagement to Crutchley, to Seward, and even to Johnson himself. Her friends were horror-struck, and remonstrated each after their kind. Johnson went so far at last as to charge her with abandoning her children and her religion, and with forfeiting both her fame and her country. But, as might be expected, her worst foes were those of her own household, and the opposition of her children, and more particularly of Hester, was the hardest thing she had to bear. It is somewhat difficult for us who are so far removed from the controversy to grasp the reason of all this outcry. But it must be remembered that Piozzi was a Papist, a foreigner, and a singer, a combination which to the average Englishman of the eighteenth century meant an untrustworthy and contemptible mountebank. The irony of the situation was that Piozzi met with similar objections from his own family, who were scandalised at his proposed alliance with a heretic, and could not conceive that a brewer's widow could be a lady, or a fit mate for a member of an old and well-connected family. Years afterwards, when Cecilia was travelling on the Continent, she made the acquaintance of the Piozzis, and wrote that she "liked them above all people, if only they were not so proud of their family." "Would not that make one laugh two hours before one's death?" is her mother's comment in 1818.
For some time she held out, but at last the combined opposition was too much for her; Piozzi was dismissed, gave up her letters, and went abroad. But the strain was too great, her health gave way, and her physician, considering her condition serious, recommended that Piozzi should be recalled, as the only hope of saving her life. Miss Thrale reluctantly acquiesced, and they were shortly afterwards married in London, according to the Roman rite, on 23rd July, and in St. James' Church, Bath, on 25th July, 1784. From this date her worst troubles were over, and she entered on what she describes as twenty years of unalloyed happiness. Having made what she considered suitable arrangements for her daughters, by providing a trustworthy companion for Miss Thrale, and placing the younger ones in a school at Streatham, she started, with her husband, on a long-projected Italian tour. Hayward says that Cecilia accompanied them, but this is contradicted by Mrs. Piozzi's own statements in the Autobiography. They had not long left England when Miss Thrale removed her sisters to another school, dismissed her companion, and retired with an old nurse to the Brighton house, where she shut herself up and spent her time in the study of Hebrew and mathematics. Shortly afterwards, on coming of age, she rented a house in town, and took her younger sisters to live with her.
Meantime the Piozzis travelled via Paris, Lyons, Turin, and Genoa to Milan, where they wintered, being everywhere well received both by Italian friends and by the English colony, including the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland; a fact which probably had a good deal to do with the attitude of society at home on their return to England. The following summer they spent at Florence in the company of Merry, Greatheed, and the other Della Cruscans, to whose Florence Miscellany, published in 1785, she contributed some verses. Her literary instincts, long repressed, were at last encouraged, and Johnson being now dead she compiled at Leghorn in 1786 her Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson during the last twenty years of his Life; much to the annoyance of Boswell, who regarded everything relating to his hero as his own peculiar preserve, and resented her refusal to add her reminiscences to Johnson's Pyramid, as he styled his own great work. The book, for which she got £300, was well received, the whole edition being sold out in three days, and four editions appeared the same year; but Boswell's strictures on her alleged inaccuracy led to a lively "Bozzy and Piozzi" controversy, with accompanying caricatures, which amused the town, and doubtless helped to keep the author in the public eye. The Piozzis returned to England through Germany in 1787, and lived for a time in Hanover Square with Cecilia, the elder daughters at first keeping aloof, though they often met in public. But society had forgiven her if her children had not, and sooner or later the old friends who had protested most loudly took the opportunity of making their peace.
