"Had we vexations enough? We had certainly many pleasures. The house in Wales was beautiful, and the Boy was beautiful too. Mr. Piozzi said I had spoiled my own children and was spoiling his. My reply was, that I loved spoiling people, and hated any one I could not spoil. Am I not now trying to spoil dear Mr. Conway?"
When she talks of spoiling, she must not be understood literally. In 1817 she writes from Bath to Dr. Gray:
"Sir John and Lady Salusbury staid with me six or seven weeks, and made themselves most beloved among us. They are very good young creatures.... My children read your Key to each other on Sunday noons: the Connection on Sunday nights. You remember me hoping and proposing to make dear Salusbury a gentleman, a Christian, and a scholar; and when one has succeeded in the first two wishes, there is no need to fret if the third does fail a little. Such is my situation concerning my adopted, as you are accustomed to call him."
Before she died she had the satisfaction of seeing him sheriff of his county; and on carrying up an address, he was knighted and became Sir John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury. Miss Williams Wynn has preserved a somewhat apocryphal anecdote of his disinterestedness:
"When I read her (Mrs. P.'s) lamentations over her poverty, I could not help believing that Sir J. Salusbury had proved ungrateful to his benefactress. For the honour of human nature I rejoice to find this is not the case. When he made known to his aunt his wish to marry, she promised to make over to him the property of Brynbella. Even before the marriage was concluded she had distressed herself by her lavish expenditure at Streatham. I saw by the letters that Gillow's bill amounted to near 2,400l., and Mr. (the late Sir John) Williams tells me she had continually very large parties from London. Sir John Salusbury then came to her, offered to relinquish all her promised gifts and the dearest wish of his heart, saying he should be most grateful to her if she would only give him a commission in the army, and let him seek his fortune. At the same time he added that he made this offer because all was still in his power, but that from the moment he married, she must be aware that it would be no longer so, that he should not feel himself justified in bringing a wife into distress of circumstances, nor in entailing poverty on children unborn.[1] She refused; he married; and she went on in her course of extravagance. She had left herself a life income only, and large as it was, no tradesman would wait a reasonable time for payment; she was nearly eighty; and they knew that at her death nothing would be left to pay her debts, and so they seized the goods."
[1] If the estate was settled in the usual manner, he would have only a life estate; and I believe it was so settled.
When Fielding, the novelist, rather boastingly avowed that he never knew, and believed he never should know, the difference between a shilling and sixpence, he was told: "Yes, the time will come when you will know it—when you have only eighteen pence left." If the author of "Tom Jones" could not be taught the value of money, we must not be too hard on Mrs. Piozzi for not learning it, after lesson upon lesson in the hard school of "impecuniosity." Whilst Piozzi lived, her affairs were faithfully and carefully administered. Although they built Brynbella, spent a good deal of money on Streatham, and lived handsomely, they never wanted money. He had a moderate fortune, the produce of his professional labours, and left it, neither impaired nor materially increased, to his family. With peculiar reference probably to her habits of profuse expenditure, he used to say that "white monies were good for ladies, yellow for gentlemen." He took the guineas under his especial charge, leaving only the silver to her. This was a matter of notoriety in the neighbourhood, and the tenants, to please her or humour the joke, sometimes brought bags of shillings and sixpences in part payment of their rents.
In the Conway Notes she says:
"Our head-quarters were in Wales, where dear Piozzi repaired my church, built a new vault for my old ancestors, chose the place in it where he and I are to repose together.... He lived some twenty-five years with me, however, but so punished with gout that we found Bath the best wintering-place for many, many seasons.—Mrs. Siddons' last appearance there he witnessed, when she played Calista to Dimond's Lothario, in which he looked so like Garrick, it shocked us all three, I believe; for Garrick adored Mr. Piozzi, and Siddons hated the little great man to her heart. Poor Dimond! he was a well-bred, pleasing, worthy creature, and did the honours of his own house and table with peculiar grace indeed. No likeness in private life or manner,—none at all; no wit, no fun, no frolic humour had Mr. Dimond:—no grace, no dignity, no real unaffected elegance of mien or behaviour had his predecessor, David,—whose partiality to my fastidious husband was for that reason never returned. Merriment, difficult for him to comprehend, made no amends for the want of that which no one understood better,—so he hated all the wits but Murphy."
There is hardly a family of note or standing within visiting distance of their place, that has not some tradition or reminiscence to relate concerning them; and all agree in describing him as a worthy good sort of man, obliging, inoffensive, kind to the poor, principally remarkable for his devotion to music, and utterly unable to his dying day to familiarise himself with the English language or manners. It is told of him that being required to pay a turnpike toll near the house of a country neighbour whom he was on his way to visit, he took it for granted that the toll went into his neighbour's pocket, and proposed setting up a gate near Brynbella with the view of levying toll in his turn.