But the octogenarian egotist has something to tell about beside herself. Here is a passage of interest to the student of Shakspearian localities, and bearing on a matter in dispute from the days of Malone and Chalmers.
"For a long time, then,—or I thought it such,—my fate was bound up with the old Globe Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark; the alley it had occupied having been purchased and thrown down by Mr. Thrale to make an opening before the windows of our dwelling-house. When it lay desolate in a black heap of rubbish, my Mother, one day, in joke, called it the Ruins of Palmyra; and after they had laid it down in a grass-plot, Palmyra was the name it went by, I suppose, among the clerks and servants of the brew-house; for when the Quaker Barclay bought the whole, I read that name with wonder in the Writings."—"But there were really curious remains of the old Globe Playhouse, which, though hexagonal in form without, was round within, as circles contain more space than other shapes, and Bees make their cells in hexagons only because that figure best admits of junction. Before I quitted the premises, however, I learned that Tarleton, the actor of those times, was not buried at St. Saviour's, Southwark, as he wished, near Massinger and Cower, but at Shoreditch Church. He was the first of the profession whose fame was high enough to have his portrait solicited for to be set up as a Sign; and none but he and Garrick, I believe, ever obtained that honour. Mr. Dance's picture of our friend David lives in a copy now in Oxford St.,—the character, King Richard."
Somewhat more than three years after her first husband's death, Mrs. Thrale, in spite of the opposition of her friends, the repugnance of her daughters, and the sneers of society, married Piozzi. He was a poor Italian gentleman, whose only fortune was in his voice and his musical talent. He had been for some time an admired public singer in London and Paris. There was nothing against him but the opinion of society. Mrs. Thrale set this opinion at defiance: a rash thing for a woman to do, and hardly an excusable one in her case; for she was aware that she would thus alienate her daughters, and offend her best friends. But she was in love with him; and though for a time she tried to struggle against her passion, it finally prevailed over her prudence, her pride, and such affections as she had for others. Her health suffered during the struggle, the termination of which she thus narrates in her "Abridgment." The account differs in some slight particulars from that in her "Autobiographical Memoirs"; but a comparison between the two serves rather to confirm than to impugn her general accuracy.
"I hoped," she says, "in defiance of probability, to live my sorrows out, and marry the man of my choice. Health, however, began to give way, as my Letters to Dr. Johnson testify; and when my kind physician, Dobson, from Liverpool, found it in actual and positive danger,—'Now,' said he, 'I have respected your delicacy long enough; tell me at once who he is that holds such a life in his power: for write to him I must and will; it is my sacred duty.' 'Dear Sir,' said I, 'the difficulty is to keep him at a distance. Speak to these cruel girls, if you will speak.' 'One of whose lives your assiduous tenderness,' cried he, 'saved, with my little help, only a month ago!'—and ran up-stairs to the ladies. 'We know,' was their reply, 'that she is fretting after a fellow; but where he is—you may ask her—we know not.' 'He is at Milan, with his friend the Marquis of Aracieli,' said I,—'from whom I had a letter last week, requesting Piozzi's recall from banishment, as he gallantly terms it, little conscious of what I suffer.' So we wrote; and he returned on the eleventh day after receiving the letter. Meanwhile my health mended, and I waited on the lasses to their own house at Brighthelmstone, leaving Miss Nicholson, a favorite friend of theirs, and all their intolerably insolent servants, with them. Piozzi's return accelerated the recovery of your poor friend, and we married in both Churches,—at St. James', Bath, on St. James' Day, 1784,—thirty-five years ago now that I write this Abridgment. When we came to examine Papers, however, our attorney, Greenland, discovered a suppression of fifteen hundred pounds, which helped pay our debts, discharge the mortgage, etc., as Piozzi, like Portia, permitted me not to sleep by his side with an unquiet soul. He settled everything with his own money, depended on God and my good constitution for our living long and happily together,—and so we did, twenty-five years,—said change of scenery would complete the cure, and carried me off in triumph, as he called it, to shew his friends in Italy the foreign wife he had so long been sighing for. 'Ah, Madam!' said the Marquis, when he first saluted me, 'we used to blame dear Piozzi;—now we envy him!'"
Of Mrs. Piozzi's journey on the Continent we shall speak in another article. After a residence abroad of two years and a half, she and her husband returned to London in March, 1787. Mrs. Piozzi had come home determined to resume, if it were possible, her old place in society, and to assert herself against the attacks of wits and newspapers, and the coldness of old friends. She had been hardly and unfairly dealt with by the public, in regard to her marriage. The appearance, during her absence, of her volume of "Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson" had given unfriendly critics an opportunity to pass harsh judgment upon her literary merits, and had excited the jealousy of rival biographers of the dead lion. Boswell, Hawkins, Baretti, Chalmers, Peter Pindar, Gifford, Horace Walpole, all had their fling at her. Never was an innocent woman in private life more unfeelingly abused, or her name dragged before the public more wantonly, in squibs and satires, jests and innuendoes. The women who transgress social conventionalities are often treated as if they had violated the rules of morals. But she was not to be put down in this way. Her temperament enabled her to escape much of the pain which a more sensitive person would have suffered. She hardened herself against the malice of her satirists; and in doing so, her character underwent an essential change. She was truly happy with Piozzi, and she preserved, by strength of will, an inexhaustible fund of good spirits.
On first reaching London, "we drove," she writes in the Conway MSS., "to the Royal Hotel in Pall Mall, and, arriving early, I proposed going to the Play. There was a small front box, in those days, which held only two; it made the division, or connexion, with the side boxes, and, being unoccupied, we sat in it, and saw Mrs. Siddons act Imogen, I well remember, and Mrs. Jordan, Priscilla Tomboy. Mr. Piozzi was amused, and the next day was spent in looking at houses, counting the cards left by old acquaintances, etc. The lady-daughters came, behaved with cold civility, and asked what I thought of their decision concerning Cecilia, then at school—No reply was made, or a gentle one; but she was the first cause of contention among us. The lawyers gave her into my care, and we took her home to our new habitation in Hanover Square, which we opened with Music, cards, etc., on, I think, the 22 March. Miss Thrales refused their company; so we managed as well as we could. Our affairs were in good order, and money ready for spending. The World, as it is called, appeared good-humored, and we were soon followed, respected, and admired. The summer months sent us about visiting and pleasuring, … and after another gay London season, Streatham Park, unoccupied by tenants, called us as if really home. Mr. Piozzi, with more generosity than prudence, spent two thousand pounds on repairing and furnishing it in 1790;—and we had danced all night, I recollect, when the news came of Louis Seize's escape from, and recapture by, his rebel subjects."
Poor old woman, who could thus write of her own daughters!—poor old woman, who had not heart enough either to keep the love of her children or to grieve for its loss! Cecilia was her fourth and youngest child, and her story, as her mother tells it, may as well be finished here. After speaking in her manuscript of a claim on some Oxfordshire property, disputed by her daughters, she says, in words hard and cold as steel,—"We threw it up, therefore, and contented ourselves with the plague Cecilia gave us, who, by dint of intriguing lovers, teazed my soul out before she was fifteen,—when she fortunately ran away, jumping out of the window at Streatham Park, with Mr. Mostyn of Segraid,—a young man to whom Sir Thomas Mostyn's title will go, if he does not marry, but whose property, being much encumbered, made him no match for Cecy and her forty thousand pounds; and we were censured for not taking better care, and suffering her to wed a Welsh gentleman,—object of ineffable contempt to the daughters of Mr. Thrale, with whom she always held correspondence while living with us, who indulged her in every expense and every folly,—although allowed only one hundred and forty pounds per ann. on her account."
After two or three years spent in London, the Piozzis resided for some time at Streatham,—how changed in mistress and in guests from the Streatham of which Mrs. Thrale had been the presiding genius! But after a while they removed to Wales, where, on an old family estate belonging to Mrs. Piozzi, they built a house, and christened the place with the queer Welsh-Italian compound name of Brynbella. "Mr. Piozzi built the house for me, he said; my own old chateau, Bachygraig by name, tho' very curious, was wholly uninhabitable; and we called the Italian villa he set up as mine in the Vale of Cluid, North Wales, Brynbella, or the beautiful brow, making the name half Welsh and half Italian, as we were." Here they lived, with occasional visits to other places, during the remainder of Piozzi's life. "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."
And now that we are on anecdotes of the Theatre, here is another good story, which belongs to a somewhat earlier time, but of which Mrs. Piozzi does not mention the exact date. "The Richmond Theatre at that time attracted all literary people's attention, while a Coterie of Gentlemen and Noblemen and Ladies entertained themselves with getting up Plays, and acting them at the Duke of Richmond's house, Whitehall. Lee's 'Theodosius' was the favorite. Lord Henry Fitzgerald played Varanus very well,—for a Dilettante; and Lord Derby did his part surprisingly. But there was a song to be sung to Athenais, while she, resolving to take poison, sits in a musing attitude. Jane Holman—then Hamilton—would sing an air of Sacchini, and the manager would not hear Italian words. The ballad appointed by the author was disapproved by all, and I pleased everybody by my fortunate fancy of adapting some English verses to the notes of Sacchini's song; and Jane Hamilton sung them enchantingly:—
'Vain's the breath of Adulation,
Vain the tears of tenderest Passion,
Whilst a strong Imagination
Holds the wandering Mind away;
Art in vain attempts to borrow
Notes to soothe a rooted sorrow;
Fixed to die, and die to-morrow,
What can touch her soul to-day?'