DR. JOHNSON'S BIOGRAPHERS (MRS. PIOZZI, CAREY? AND BOSWELL)
From a caricature, 1786, in the Collection of A. M. Broadley, Esq.
About this time, as it would seem, she made the acquaintance of Miss Weston, now about thirty-six years of age, who had moved with her mother from Ludlow to London, and was living with a relative in Queen Square, Westminster, and therefore not far from the Piozzis. A letter she wrote to Dr. Whalley in 1789 shows that she was then in charge of a young pupil, with whom she had but little in common, as the girl was interested in nothing but dress. She adds that the kindness of dear Mrs. Piozzi towards her, on all occasions, exceeds all expression.
CHAPTER II
The Piozzis in Hanover Square—Scotch tour, 1789—Visit to Wales—Return to Streatham Park, 1790—Harriet Lee's romance—Nuneham and Mrs. Siddons, 1791—French Revolution—Cecilia's admirers—Apprehensions for Cecilia—The September massacres—Miss Weston's engagement.
In July 1788 the Piozzis took rooms at Exmouth, from which they had views "of sea and land, Lord Courtney's fine seat and Lord Lisburne's pretty grounds all facing us." But though there was "a very pretty little snug society" there, Mrs. Piozzi votes it "a dull place," where "if one is idle, one is lost." Idleness, however, was not one of her failings. Early in the year she had published her Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., which made £500, and had a large sale. Some allusions in the correspondence, more truthful than complimentary, to Joseph Baretti, who had at one time acted as tutor to Miss Thrale at Streatham, roused him to make a coarse and violent attack upon her in the European Magazine, which caused her much pain. He also satirised her in a farce entitled The Sentimental Mother, in which she figures as Lady Fantasma Tunskull, and her husband as Signor Squalici. Yet she forgave him, and when he died in the following year, sent a kindly notice of him to the World. This year too, as she records in her Commonplace Book, she wrote a dramatic masque called The Fountains, which was much admired by Miss Farren, and which Sheridan and Kemble "pretended to like exceedingly," but contrived to lose the copy. She adds: "It has often been in my head to publish it with other poems—but 'tis better let that alone." About this time she must have been engaged on a more ambitious task, the record of her continental tour, which appeared in 1789 under the title of A Journey through France, Italy, and Germany. This was well received by the general public, though some of the Blue-Stockings objected to its colloquial style. Anna Seward, for instance, gently reproved "the pupil of Dr. Johnson" for "polluting with the vulgarisms of unpolished conversation her animated pages," and wrote as follows to Miss Weston, who defended her: "You say Mrs. Piozzi's style, in conversation, is exactly that of her travels. Our interviews were only two; no vulgarness of idiom or phrase, no ungrammatic inelegance struck me then as escaping, amidst the fascination of her wit, and the gaiety of her spirit; but inaccuracies and ungraceful expressions often pass unnoticed in the quick commerce of verbal society, that are very disgusting after their deliberate passage through the pen." The critics found fault with her matter as well as her manner, as did Gifford in the often quoted lines:
"See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam,
And bring in pomp laborious nothings home."