Chapter 19

"Upon mentioning this story to my friend Mr. Wilkes," adds Boswell, "he pleasantly matched it with the following sentimental anecdote. He was invited by a young man of fashion at Paris to sup with him and a lady who had been for some time his mistress, but with whom he was going to part. He said to Mr. Wilkes that he really felt very much for her, she was in such distress, and that he meant to make her a present of 200 louis d'ors. Mr. Wilkes observed the behaviour of Mademoiselle, who sighed indeed very piteously, and assumed every pathetic air of grief, but ate no less than three French pigeons, which are as large as English partridges, besides other things. Mr. Wilkes whispered the gentleman, 'We often say in England, "Excessive sorrow is exceeding dry," but I never heard "Excessive sorrow is exceeding hungry." Perhaps one hundred will do. The gentleman took the hint." Mrs. Piozzi's marginal ebullition is: "Very like my hearty supper of larks, who never eat supper at all, nor was ever a hot dish seen on the table after dinner at Streatham Park."

Two instances of inaccuracy, announced as particularly worthy of notice, are supplied by "an eminent critic," understood to be Malone, who begins by stating, "I have often been in his (Johnson's) company, and never _once_ heard him say a severe thing to any one; and many others can attest the same." Malone had lived very little with Johnson, and to appreciate his evidence, we should know what he and Boswell would agree to call a severe thing. Once, on Johnson's observing that they had "good talk" on the "preceding evening," "Yes, Sir," replied Boswell, "you tossed and gored several persons." Do tossing and goring come within the definition of severity? In another place he says, "I have seen even Mrs. Thrale stunned;" and Miss Reynolds relates that "One day at her own table he spoke so very roughly to her, that every one present was surprised that she could bear it so placidly; and on the ladies withdrawing, I expressed great astonishment that Dr. Johnson should speak so harshly to her, but to this she said no more than 'Oh, dear, good man.'"

One of the two instances of Mrs. Piozzi's inaccuracy is as follows:--"He once bade a very celebrated lady (Hannah More) who praised him with too much zeal perhaps, or perhaps too strong an emphasis (which always offended him) consider what her flattery was worth before she choaked _him_ with it."

Now, exclaims Mr. Malone, let the genuine anecdote be contrasted with this:

"The person thus represented as being harshly treated, though a very celebrated lady, was _then_ just come to London from an obscure situation in the country. At Sir Joshua Reynolds's one evening, she met Dr. Johnson. She very soon began to pay her court to him in the most fulsome strain. 'Spare me, I beseech you, dear Madam,' was his reply. She still _laid it on_. 'Pray, Madam, let us have no more of this,' he rejoined. Not paying any attention to these warnings, she continued still her eulogy. At length, provoked by this indelicate and _vain_ obtrusion of compliments, he exclaimed, 'Dearest lady, consider with yourself what your flattery is worth, before you bestow it so freely.'

"How different does this story appear, when accompanied with all those circumstances which really belong to it, but which Mrs. Thrale either did not know, or has suppressed!"

How do we know that these circumstances really belong to it? what essential difference do they make? and how do they prove Mrs. Thrale's inaccuracy, who expressly states the nature of the probable, though certainly most inadequate, provocation.

The other instance is a story which she tells on Mr. Thrale's authority, of an argument between Johnson and a gentleman, which the master of the house, a nobleman, tried to cut short by saying loud enough for the doctor to hear, "Our friend has no meaning in all this, except just to relate at the Club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day; this is all to do himself honour." "No, upon my word," replied the other, "I see no honour in it, whatever you may do." "Well, Sir," returned Mr. Johnson sternly, "if you do not see the honour, I am sure I feel the disgrace." Malone, on the authority of a nameless friend, asserts that it was not at the house of a nobleman, that the gentleman's remark was uttered in a low tone, and that Johnson made no retort at all. As Mrs. Piozzi could hardly have invented the story, the sole question is, whether Mr. Thrale or Malone's friend was right. She has written in the margin: "It was the house of Thomas Fitzmaurice, son to Lord Shelburne, and Pottinger the hero."[1]

"Mrs. Piozzi," says Boswell, "has given a similar misrepresentation of Johnson's treatment of Garrick in this particular (as to the Club), as if he had used these contemptuous expressions: 'If Garrick does apply, I'll blackball him. Surely one ought to sit in a society like ours--

"'Unelbow'd by a gamester, pimp, or player.'"

The lady retorts, "He did say so, and Mr. Thrale stood astonished." Johnson was constantly depreciating the profession of the stage.[2]

[Footnote 1: "Being in company with Count Z----, at Lord ----'s table, the Count thinking the Doctor too dogmatical, observed, he did not at all think himself honoured by the conversation.' And what is to become of me, my lord, who feel myself actually disgraced?"--_Johnsoniana_, p. 143, first edition.]

[Footnote 2: "_Boswell_. There, Sir, you are always heretical, you never will allow merit to a player. _Johnson_. Merit, Sir, what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer or a ballad-singer?"--_Boswell's Life of Johnson_, p. 556.]

Whilst finding fault with Mrs. Piozzi for inaccuracy in another place, Boswell supplies an additional example of Johnson's habitual disregard of the ordinary rules of good breeding in society:--

"A learned gentleman [Dr. Vansittart], who, in the course of conversation, wished to inform us of this simple fact, that the council upon the circuit of Shrewsbury were much bitten by fleas, took, I suppose, seven or eight minutes in relating it circumstantially. He in a plenitude of phrase told us, that large bales of woollen cloth were lodged in the town-hall; that by reason of this, fleas nestled there in prodigious numbers; that the lodgings of the council were near the town-hall; and that those little animals moved from place to place with wonderful agility. Johnson sat in great impatience till the gentleman had finished his tedious narrative, and then burst out (playfully however), 'It is a pity, Sir, that you have not seen a lion; for a flea has taken you such a time, that a lion must have served you a twelve-month.'"

He complains in a note that Mrs. Piozzi, to whom he told the anecdote, has related it "as if the gentleman had given the natural history of the mouse." But, in a letter to Johnson she tells _him_ "I have seen the man that saw the mouse," and he replies "Poor V----, he is a good man, &c.;" so that her version of the story is the best authenticated. Opposite Boswell's aggressive paragraph she has written: "I saw old Mitchell of Brighthelmstone affront him (Johnson) terribly once about fleas. Johnson, being tired of the subject, expressed his impatience of it with coarseness. 'Why, Sir,' said the old man, 'why should not Flea bite o'me be treated as Phlebotomy? It empties the capillary vessels.'"

Boswell's Life of Johnson was not published till 1791; but the controversy kindled by the Tour to the Hebrides and the Anecdotes, raged fiercely enough to fix general attention and afford ample scope for ridicule: "The Bozzi &c. subjects," writes Hannah More in April 1786, "are not exhausted, though everybody seems heartily sick of them. Everybody, however, conspires not to let them drop. _That_, the Cagliostro, and the Cardinal's necklace, spoil all conversation, and destroyed a very good evening at Mr. Pepys' last night." In one of Walpole's letters about the same time we find:

"All conversation turns on a trio of culprits--Hastings, Fitzgerald, and the Cardinal de Rohan.... So much for tragedy. Our comic performers are Boswell and Dame Piozzi. The cock biographer has fixed a direct lie on the hen, by an advertisement in which he affirms that he communicated his manuscript to Madame Thrale, and that she made no objection to what he says of her low opinion of Mrs. Montagu's book. It is very possible that it might not be her real opinion, but was uttered in compliment to Johnson, or for fear he should spit in her face if she disagreed with him; but how will she get over her not objecting to the passage remaining? She must have known, by knowing Boswell, and by having a similar intention herself, that his 'Anecdotes' would certainly be published: in short, the ridiculous woman will be strangely disappointed. As she must have heard that _the whole first impression of her book was sold the first day_, no doubt she expected on her landing, to be received like the governor of Gibraltar, and to find the road strewed with branches of palm. She, and Boswell, and their Hero, are the joke of the public. A Dr. Walcot, _soi-disant_ Peter Pindar, has published a burlesque eclogue, in which Boswell and the Signora are the interlocutors, and all the absurdest passages in the works of both are ridiculed. The print-shops teem with satiric prints in them: one in which Boswell, as a monkey, is riding on Johnson, the bear, has this witty inscription, 'My Friend _delineavit_.' But enough of these mountebanks."

What Walpole calls the absurdest passages are precisely those which possess most interest for posterity; namely, the minute personal details, which bring Johnson home to the mind's eye. Peter Pindar, however, was simply labouring in his vocation when he made the best of them, as in the following lines. His satire is in the form of a Town Eclogue, in which Bozzy and Madame Piozzi contend in anecdotes, with Hawkins for umpire:

BOZZY.

"One Thursday morn did Doctor Johnson wake, And call out 'Lanky, Lanky,' by mistake-- But recollecting--'Bozzy, Bozzy,' cry'd-- For in _contractions_ Johnson took a pride!"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"I ask'd him if he knock'd Tom Osborn down; As such a tale was current through the town,-- Says I, 'Do tell me, Doctor, what befell.'-- 'Why, dearest lady, there is nought to _tell_; 'I ponder'd on the _proper'st_ mode to _treat_ him-- 'The dog was impudent, and so I beat him! 'Tom, like a fool, proclaim'd his fancied wrongs; '_Others_, that I belabour'd, held their tongues.'"

"Did any one, that he was _happy_, cry-- Johnson would tell him plumply, 'twas a lie. A Lady told him she was really so; On which he sternly answer'd, 'Madam, no! 'Sickly you are, and ugly--foolish, poor; 'And therefore can't he happy, I am sure. ''Twould make a fellow hang himself, whose ear 'Were, from such creatures, forc'd such stuff to hear.'"

BOZZY.

"Lo, when we landed on the Isle of Mull, The megrims got into the Doctor's skull: With such bad humours he began to fill, I thought he would not go to Icolmkill: But lo! those megrims (wonderful to utter!) Were banish'd all by tea and bread and butter!"

At last they get angry, and tell each other a few home truths:--

BOZZY.

"How could your folly tell, so void of truth, That miserable story of the youth, Who, in your book, of Doctor Johnson begs Most seriously to know if cats laid eggs!"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"_Who_ told of Mistress Montagu the lie-- So palpable a falsehood?--Bozzy, fie!"

BOZZY.

"_Who_, madd'ning with an anecdotic itch, Declar'd that Johnson call'd his mother _b-tch?_"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"_Who_, from M'Donald's rage to save his snout, Cut twenty lines of defamation out?"

BOZZY.

"_Who_ would have said a word about Sam's wig, Or told the story of the peas and pig? Who would have told a tale so very flat, Of Frank the Black, and Hodge the mangy cat?"

MADAME PIOZZI.

"Good me! you're grown at once confounded _tender_; Of Doctor Johnson's fame a _fierce_ defender: I'm sure you've mention'd many a pretty story Not much redounding to the Doctor's glory. _Now_ for a _saint_ upon us you would palm him-- First _murder_ the poor man, and then _embalm him!_"

BOZZY.

"Well, Ma'am! since all that Johnson said or wrote, You hold so sacred, how have you forgot To grant the wonder-hunting world a reading Of Sam's Epistle, just before your _wedding_: Beginning thus, (in strains not form'd to flatter) 'Madam, '_If that most ignominious matter 'Be not concluded_'--[1] Farther shall I say? No--we shall have it from _yourself_ some day, To justify your passion for the _Youth_, With all the charms of eloquence and truth."

MADAME PIOZZI.

"What was my marriage, Sir, to _you_ or _him?_ _He_ tell me what to do!--a pretty whim! _He_, to _propriety_, (the beast) _resort!_ As well might _elephants preside_ at _court_. Lord! let the world to _damn_ my match _agree;_ Good God! James Boswell, what's _that world_ to _me?_ The folks who paid respects to Mistress Thrale, Fed on her pork, poor souls! and swill'd her ale, May _sicken_ at Piozzi, nine in ten-- Turn up the nose of scorn--good God! what then? For _me_, the Dev'l may fetch their souls so _great_; _They_ keep their homes, and _I_, thank God, my meat. When they, poor owls! shall beat their cage, a jail, I, unconfin'd, shall spread my peacock tail; Free as the birds of air, enjoy my ease, Choose my own food, and see what climes I please. _I_ suffer only--if I'm in the wrong: So, now, you prating puppy, hold your tongue."

[Footnote 1: This evidently referred to the "adumbration" of Johnson's letter (No. 4), _antè_, p. 239.]

Walpole's opinion of the book itself had been expressed in a preceding letter, dated March 28th, 1786:

"Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. I am lamentably disappointed--in her, I mean: not in him. I had conceived a favourable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high-varnished preface to a heap of rubbish in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago. . . The Signora talks of her doctor's _expanded_ mind and has contributed her mite to show that never mind was narrower. In fact, the poor woman is to be pitied: he was mad, and his disciples did not find it out[1], but have unveiled all his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his worst conundrums as humour. Judge! The Piozzi relates that a young man asking him where Palmyra was, he replied: 'In Ireland: it was a bog planted with palm trees.'"

[Footnote 1: See _antè_, p. 202 and 270.]

Walpole's statement, that the whole first impression was sold the first day, is confirmed by one of her letters, and may be placed alongside of a statement of Johnson's reported in the book. Clarissa being mentioned as a perfect character, "on the contrary (said he) you may observe that there is always something which she prefers to truth. Fielding's Amelia was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances; but that vile broken nose never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book, which, being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night."

When the king sent for a copy of the "Anecdotes" on the evening of the publication, there was none to be had.

In April, 1786, Hannah More writes:

"Mrs. Piozzi's book is much in fashion. It is indeed entertaining, but there are two or three passages exceedingly unkind to Garrick which filled me with indignation. If Johnson had been envious enough to utter them, she might have been prudent enough to suppress them."

In a preceding letter she had said:

"Boswell tells me he is printing anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, not his _life_, but, as he has the vanity to call it, his _pyramid_, I besought his tenderness for our virtuous and most revered departed friend, and begged he would mitigate some of his asperities. He said roughly, he would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat to please anybody." The retort will serve for both Mrs. Piozzi and himself.

Mrs. Piozzi writes from Venice, May 20th, 1786: "Cadell says he never yet published a work the sale of which was so rapid, and that rapidity of so long continuance. I suppose the fifth edition will meet me at my return."

"Milan, July 6th, 1786.

"If Cadell would send me some copies, I should be very much obliged to him. _'Tis like living without a looking-glass never to see one's own book so_."

The copy of the "Anecdotes" in my possession has two inscriptions on the blank leaves before the title-page. The one is in Mrs. Piozzi's handwriting: "This little dirty book is kindly accepted by Sir James Fellowes from his obliged friend, H.L. Piozzi, 14th February, 1816;" the other: "This copy of the 'Anecdotes' was found at Bath, covered with dirt, the book having been long out of print[1], and after being bound was presented to me by my excellent friend, H.L.P. (signed) J.F."

[Footnote 1: The "Anecdotes" were reprinted by Messrs. Longman in 1856, and form part of their "Traveller's Library."]

It is enriched by marginal notes in her handwriting, which enable us to fill up a few puzzling blanks, besides supplying some information respecting men and books, which will be prized by all lovers of literature.

One of the anecdotes runs thus: "I asked him once concerning the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted. 'He talked to me at the Club one day (replies our Doctor) concerning Catiline's conspiracy; so I withdrew my attention, and thought about Tom Thumb.'"

In the margin is written "Charles James Fox." Mr. Croker came to the conclusion that the gentleman was Mr. Vesey. Boswell says that Fox never talked with any freedom in the presence of Johnson, who accounted for his reserve by suggesting that a man who is used to the applause of the House of Commons, has no wish for that of a private company. But the real cause was his sensitiveness to rudeness, his own temper being singularly sweet. By an odd coincidence he occupied the presidential chair at the Club on the evening when Johnson emphatically declared patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Again: "On an occasion of less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord Bolingbroke in the rooms of Brighthelmstone, he made this excuse: 'I am not obliged, Sir,' said he to Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting, 'to find reasons for respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other visible mark: what are stars and other signs of superiority made for?' The next evening, however, he made us comical amends, by sitting by the same nobleman, and haranguing very loudly about the nature, and use, and abuse, of divorces. Many people gathered round them to hear what was said, and when my husband called him away, and told him to whom he had been talking, received an answer which I will not write down."

The marginal note is: "He said: 'Why, Sir, I did not know the man. If he will put on no other mark of distinction, let us make him wear his horns.'" Lord Bolingbroke had divorced his wife, afterwards Lady Diana Beauclerc, for infidelity.

A marginal note naming the lady of quality (Lady Catherine Wynne) mentioned in the following anecdote, verifies Mr. Croker's conjectural statement concerning her:

"For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat in Wales, with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a rougher denunciation: 'That woman,' cries Johnson, 'is like sour small beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she lives in: like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled.' It was in the same vein of asperity, and I believe with something like the same provocation, that he observed of a Scotch lady, 'that she resembled a dead nettle; were she alive,' said he, 'she would sting.'"

From similar notes we learn that the "somebody" who declared Johnson "a tremendous converser" was George Grarrick; and that it was Dr. Delap, of Sussex, to whom, when lamenting the tender state of his _inside_, he cried out: "Dear Doctor, do not be like the spider, man, and spin conversation thus incessantly out of thy own bowels."

On the margin of the page in which Hawkins Browne is commended as the most delightful of conversers, she has written: "Who wrote the 'Imitation of all the Poets' in his own ludicrous verses, praising the pipe of tobacco. Of Hawkins Browne, the pretty Mrs. Cholmondeley said she was soon tired; because the first hour he was so dull, there was no bearing him; the second he was so witty, there was no bearing him; the third he was so drunk, there was no bearing him." [1]

[Footnote 1: Query, whether this is the gentleman immortalised by Peter Plymley: "In the third year of his present Majesty (George III.) and in the thirtieth of his own age, Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown, then upon his travels, danced one evening at the court of Naples. His dress was a volcano silk, with lava buttons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing under Saint Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known; but Mr. Brown danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigour, that he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which terminated in a miscarriage, and changed the dynasty of the Neapolitan throne."]

In the "Anecdotes" she relates that one day in Wales she meant to please Johnson with a dish of young peas. "Are they not charming?" said I, while he was eating them. "Perhaps," said he, "they would be so--to a pig;" meaning (according to the marginal note), because they were too little boiled. Pennant, the historian, used to tell this as having happened at Mrs. Cotton's, who, according to him, called out, "Then do help yourself, Mr. Johnson." But the well-known high breeding of the lady justifies a belief that this is one of the many repartees which, if conceived, were never uttered at the time.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have heard on good authority that Pennant afterwards owned it as his own invention.]

When a Lincolnshire lady, shewing Johnson a grotto, asked him: "Would it not be a pretty cool habitation in summer?" he replied: "I think it would, Madam, _for a toad_." Talking of Gray's Odes, he said, "They are forced plants, raised in a hotbed; and they are poor plants: they are but cucumbers after all." A gentleman present, who had been running down ode-writing in general, as a bad species of poetry, unluckily said, "Had they been literally cucumbers, they had been better things than odes." "Yes, Sir," said Johnson, "_for a hog_."

To return to the Anecdotes:

"Of the various states and conditions of humanity, he despised none more, I think, than the man who marries for maintenance: and of a friend who made his alliance on no higher principles, he said once, 'Now has that fellow,' it was a nobleman of whom we were speaking, 'at length obtained a certainty of three meals a day, and for that certainty, like his brother dog in the fable, he will get his neck galled for life with a collar.'" The nobleman was Lord Sandys.