"The lines were printed, but I lost them. 'What a wild Tragedy is this!' said I to Hannah More, who was one of the audience. 'Wild enough,' was her reply; 'but there's good Poetry in it, and good Passion, and they will always do.'
"Hannah More never goes now to a Theatre. How long is H.L. Piozzi likely to be seen there? How long will Mr. Conway keep the stage?"
In the year 1798, the family of Mr. Piozzi having suffered greatly from the French invasion of Lombardy, he sent for the son of his youngest brother, a "little boy just turned of five years old." "We have got him here," wrote Mrs. Piozzi in a letter from Bath, dated January, 1799, published by Mr. Hayward, "and his uncle will take him to school next week." "As he was by a lucky chance baptized, in compliment to me, John Salusbury, [Salusbury was her family name,] he will be known in England by no other, and it will be forgotten he is a foreigner." "My poor little boy from Lombardy said, as I walked with him across our market, 'These are sheeps' heads, are they not, aunt? I saw a hasket of men's heads at Brescia.'" Little John, though he went to school, was often at home. After writing of the troubles with her own daughters, Mrs. Piozzi says in the manuscript before us,—"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?"
Piozzi was not far from wrong in his judgment of her treatment of this boy, if we may trust to her complaints of his coldness and indifference to her. In 1814, at the time of his marriage, five years after Piozzi's death, she gave to him her Welsh estate; and it may have been a greater satisfaction to her than any gratification of the affections could have afforded, to see him, before she died, high sheriff of his county, and knighted as Sir John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury.
There was little gayety in the life at Brynbella, or at Bath,—and the society that Mrs. Piozzi now saw was made up chiefly of new and for the most part uninteresting acquaintances. The old Streatham set, with a few exceptions, were dead, and of the few that remained none retained their former relations with its mistress. But she suffered little from the change, was contented to win and accept the flattery of inferior people, and, instead of spending her faculties in soothing the "radically wretched life" of Johnson, used them, perhaps not less happily, in lightening the sufferings of Piozzi during his last years. She tells a touching story of him in these days.
"Piozzi's fine hand upon the organ and pianoforte deserted him. Gout, such as I never knew, fastened on his fingers, distorting them into every dreadful shape. … A little girl, shewn to him as a musical wonder of five years old, said,' Pray, Sir, why are your fingers wrapped up in black silk so?' 'My Dear,' replied he, 'they are in mourning for my Voice.' 'Oh, me!' cries the child, 'is she dead?' He sung an easy song, and the Baby exclaimed, 'Ah, Sir! you are very naughty,—you tell fibs!' Poor Dears! and both gone now!!"
There were no morbid sensibilities in Mrs. Piozzi's composition. She can tell all her sorrows without ever a tear. A mark of exclamation looks better than a blot. And yet she had suffered; but it had been with such suffering as makes the soul hard rather than tender. The pages with which she ends this narrative of her life are curiously characteristic.
"When life was gradually, but perceptibly, closing round him [Piozzi] at Bath, in 1808, I asked him if he would wish to converse with a Romish priest,—we had full opportunity there. 'By no means,' said he. 'Call Mr. Leman of the Crescent.' We did so,—poor Bessy ran and fetched him. Mr. Piozzi received the blessed Sacrament at his hands; but recovered sufficiently to go home and die in his own house. I sent for Salusbury, but he came three hours too late,—his master, Mr. Shephard, with him. In another year he went to Oxford, where he spent me above seven hundred pounds per annum, and kept me in continual terror lest the bad habits of the place should ruin him, body, soul, and purse. His old school-fellow, Smythe Owen,—then. Pemberton,—accompanied him, and to that gentleman's sister he of course gave his heart. The Lady and her friends took advantage of my fondness, and insisted on my giving up the Welsh estate. I did so, hoping to live at last with my own children, at Streatham Park;—there, however, I found no solace of the sort. So, after entangling my purse with new repairing and furnishing that place, retirement to Bath with my broken heart and fortune was all I could wish or expect. Thither I hasted, heard how the possessors of Brynbella, lived and thrived, but
'Who set the twigs will he remember
Who is in haste to sell the timber?'
"Well, no matter! One day before I left it there was talk how Love had always Interest annexed to it. 'Nay, then,' said I, 'what is my love for Salusbury?' 'Oh!' replied Shephard, 'there is Interest there. Mrs. Piozzi cannot, could not, I am sure, exist without some one upon whom to energize her affections; his Uncle is gone, and she is much obliged to young Salusbury for being ready at her hand to pet and spoil; her children will not suffer her to love them, and'—with a coarse laugh—'what will she do when this fellow throws her off, as he soon will?' Shephard was right enough. I sunk into a stupor, worse far than all the torments I had endured: but when Canadian Indians take a prisoner, dear Mr. Conway knows what agonies they put them to; the man bears all without complaining,—smokes, dances, triumphs in his anguish,—