Written in the margin of the last entry—"We shall go to London about the affairs, and there be married in the Romish Church."
"25th July, 1784.—I am returned from church the happy wife of my lovely faithful Piozzi ... subject of my prayers, object of my wishes, my sighs, my reverence, my esteem.—His nerves have been horribly shaken, yet he lives, he loves me, and will be mine for ever. He has sworn, in the face of God and the whole Christian Church; Catholics, Protestants, all are witnesses."
In one of her memorandum books she has set down:
"We were married according to the Romish Church in one of our excursions to London, by Mr. Smith, Padre Smit as they called him, chaplain to the Spanish Ambassador.... Mr. Morgan tacked us together at St. James's, Bath, 25th July, 1784, and on the first day I think of September, certainly the first week, we took leave of England."
When her first engagement with Piozzi became known, the newspapers took up the subject, and rang the changes on the amorous disposition of the widow, and the adroit cupidity of the fortune-hunter. On the announcement of the marriage, they recommenced the attack, and people of our day can hardly form a notion of the storm of obloquy that broke upon her, except from its traces, which have never been erased. To this hour, we may see them in the confirmed prejudices of writers like Mr. Croker and Lord Macaulay, who, agreeing in little else, agree in denouncing "this miserable mésalliance" with one who figures in their pages sometimes as a music-master, sometimes as a fiddler, never by any accident in his real character of a professional singer and musician of established reputation, pleasing manners, ample means, and unimpeachable integrity. The repugnance of the daughters to the match was reasonable and intelligible, but to appreciate the tone taken by her friends, we must bear in mind the social position of Italian singers and musical performers at the period. "Amusing vagabonds" are the epithets by which Lord Byron designates Catalani and Naldi, in 1809[1]; and such is the light in which they were undoubtedly regarded in 1784. Mario would have been treated with the same indiscriminating illiberality as Piozzi.
[1]
"Well may the nobles of our present race
Watch each distortion of a Naldi's face;
Well may they smile on Italy's buffoons,
And worship Catalani's pantaloons."