Chapter 4

[Footnote 1: "One day I called early at her house, and as I entered her drawing-room, she passed me, saying, 'Dear Sir, I will be with you in a few minutes; but, while I think of it, I must go to my dressing-closet and paint my face, which I forgot to do this morning.' Accordingly she soon returned, wearing the requisite quantity of bloom; which, it must be noticed, was not in the least like that of youth and beauty. I then said that I was surprised she should so far sacrifice to fashion, as to take that trouble. Her answer was that, as I might conclude, her practice of painting did not proceed from any silly compliance with Bath fashion, or any fashion; still less, if possible, from the desire of appearing younger than she was, but from this circumstance, that in early life she had worn rouge, as other young persons did in her day, as a part of dress; and after continuing the habit for some years, discovered that it had introduced a dull yellow colour into her complexion, quite unlike that of her natural skin, and that she wished to conceal the deformity."--_Piozziana_.]

Reynolds' portrait of Mrs. Thrale conveys a highly agreeable impression of her; and so does Hogarth's, when she sat to him for the principal figure in "The Lady's Last Stake." She was then only fourteen; and he probably idealised his model; but that he also produced a striking likeness, is obvious on comparing his picture with the professed portraits. The history of this picture (which has been engraved, at Lord Macaulay's suggestion, for this work) will be found in the Autobiography and the Letters.

Boswell's account of his first visit to Streatham gives a tolerably fair notion of the footing on which Johnson stood there, and the manner in which the interchange of mind was carried on between him and the hostess. This visit took place in October, 1769, four years after Johnson's introduction to her; and Boswell's absence from London, in which he had no fixed residence during Johnson's life, will hardly account for the neglect of his illustrious friend in not procuring him a privilege which he must have highly coveted and would doubtless have turned to good account.

"On the 6th of October I complied with this obliging invitation; and found, at an elegant villa, six miles from town, every circumstance that can make society pleasing. Johnson, though quite at home, was yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by affection, and seemed to be equally the care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced at seeing him so happy."

"Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He attacked him powerfully; said he wrote of love like a man who had never felt it; his love verses were college verses: and he repeated the song, 'Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains,' &c. in so ludicrous a manner, as to make us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such fantastical stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her guns with great courage, in defence of amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last silenced her by saving, 'My dear lady, talk no more of this. Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense.'

"Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay poetry; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in 'Florizel and Perdita,' and dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line:--

"'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'

"_Johnson._--'Nay, my dear lady, this will never do. Poor David! Smile with the simple!--what folly is that? And who would feed with the poor that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.'" Boswell adds, that he repeated this sally to Glarrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by it; on which Mrs. Thrale remarks, "How odd to go and tell the man!"

The independent tone she took when she deemed the Doctor unreasonable, is also proved by Boswell in his report of what took place at Streatham in reference to Lord Marchmont's offer to supply information for the Life of Pope:

"Elated with the success of my spontaneous exertion to procure material and respectable aid to Johnson for his very favourite work, 'the Lives of the Poets,' I hastened down to Mr. Thrale's, at Streatham, where he now was, that I might insure his being at home next day; and after dinner, when I thought he would receive the good news in the best humour, I announced it eagerly: 'I have been at work for you to-day, Sir. I have been with Lord Marchmont. He bade me tell you he has a great respect for you, and will call on you to-morrow at one o'clock, and communicate all he knows about Pope.' _Johnson._ 'I shall not be in town to-morrow. I don't care to know about Pope.' _Mrs. Thrale_ (surprised, as I was, and a little angry). 'I suppose, Sir, Mr. Boswell thought that as you are to write Pope's Life, you would wish to know about him.' _Johnson._ 'Wish! why yes. If it rained knowledge, I'd hold out my hand; but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it.' There was no arguing with him at the moment. Sometime afterwards he said, 'Lord Marchmont will call upon me, and then I shall call on Lord Marchmont.' Mrs. Thrale was uneasy at this unaccountable caprice: and told me, that if I did not take care to bring about a meeting between Lord Marchmont and him, it would never take place, which would be a great pity."

The ensuing conversation is a good sample of the freedom and variety of "talk" in which Johnson luxuriated, and shows how important a part Mrs. Thrale played in it:

"Mrs. Thrale told us, that a curious clergyman of our acquaintance (Dr. Lort is named in the margin) had discovered a licentious stanza, which Pope had originally in his 'Universal Prayer,' before the stanza,--

"'What conscience dictates to be done, Or warns us not to do,' &c.

It was this:--

"'Can sins of moment claim the rod Of everlasting fires? And that offend great Nature's God Which Nature's self inspires."

and that Dr. Johnson observed, it had been borrowed from _Guarini_. There are, indeed, in _Pastor Fido_, many such flimsy superficial reasonings as that in the last two lines of this stanza.

"_Boswell_. 'In that stanza of Pope's, "_rod of fires_" is certainly a bad metaphor.' _Mrs. Thrale_. 'And "sins of _moment_" is a faulty expression; for its true import is _momentous_, which cannot be intended.' _Johnson_. 'It must have been written "of _moments_." Of _moment_, is _momentous_; of _moments, momentary_. I warrant you, however, Pope wrote this stanza, and some friend struck it out.'

"Talking of divorces, I asked if Othello's doctrine was not plausible:--

"'He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen, Let him not know't, and he's not robb'd at all.'

Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale joined against this. _Johnson_. 'Ask any man if he'd wish not to know of such an injury.' _Boswell_. 'Would you tell your friend to make him unhappy?' _Johnson_. 'Perhaps, Sir, I should not: but that would be from prudence on my own account. A man would tell his father.' _Boswell_. 'Yes; because he would not have spurious children to get any share of the family inheritance.' _Mrs. Thrale_. 'Or he would tell his brother.' _Boswell_. 'Certainly his _elder_ brother.... Would you tell Mr. ----?' (naming a gentleman who assuredly was not in the least danger of so miserable a disgrace, though married to a fine woman). _Johnson_. 'No, Sir: because it would do no good; he is so sluggish, he'd never go to Parliament and get through a divorce.'" _Marginal Note_: "Langton."

There is every reason to believe that her behaviour to Johnson was uniformly marked by good-breeding and delicacy. She treated him with a degree of consideration and respect which he did not always receive from other friends and admirers. A foolish rumour having got into the newspapers that he had been learning to dance of Vestris, it was agreed that Lord Charlemont should ask him if it was true, and his lordship with (it is shrewdly observed) the characteristic spirit of a general of Irish volunteers, actually put the question, which provoked a passing feeling of irritation. Opposite Boswell's account of this incident she has written, "Was he not right in hating to be so treated? and would he not have been right to have loved me better than any of them, because I never did make a Lyon of him?"

One great charm of her companionship to cultivated men was her familiarity with the learned languages, as well as with French, Italian, and Spanish. The author of "Piozziana" says: "She not only read and wrote Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, but had for sixty years constantly and ardently studied the Scriptures and the works of commentators in the original languages." She did not know Greek, and he probably over-estimated her other acquirements, which Boswell certainly underestimates when he speaks slightingly of them on the strength of Johnson's having said: "It is a great mistake to suppose that she is above him (Thrale) in literary attainments. She is more flippant, but he has ten times her learning: he is a regular scholar; but her learning is that of a school-boy in one of the lower forms." If this were so, it is strange that Thrale should cut so poor a figure, should seem little better than a nonentity, whilst every imaginable topic was under animated discussion at his table; for Boswell was more ready to report the husband's sayings than the wife's. In a marginal note on one of the printed letters she says: "Mr. Thrale was a very merry talking man in 1760; but the distress of 1772, which affected his health, his hopes, and his whole soul, affected his temper too. Perkins called it being planet struck, and I am not sure he was ever completely the same man again." The notes of his conversation during the antecedent period are equally meagre.[1] He is described by Madame D'Arblay as taking a singular amusement in hearing, instigating, and provoking a war of words, alternating triumph and overthrow, between clever and ambitious colloquial combatants.

[Footnote 1: "Pray, Doctor, said a gentleman to Johnson, is Mr. Thrale a man of conversation, or is he only wise and silent?' 'Why, Sir, his conversation does not show the _minute_ hand; but he generally strikes the hour very correctly.'"--_Johnsoniana_.]

No one would have expected to find her as much at home in Greek and Latin authors as a man of fair ability who had received and profited by an University education, but she could appreciate a classical allusion or quotation, and translate off-hand a Latin epigram.

"Mary Aston," said Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty; and so I made this epigram upon her. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw!

"'Liber ut esse velim, suasisti, pulchra Maria, Ut maneam liber, pulchra Maria, vale!'

"Will it do this way in English, Sir? (said Mrs. Thrale)--

"'Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you, If freedom we seek, fair Maria, adieu."

Mr. Croker's version is:--

"'You wish me, fair Maria, to be free, Then, fair Maria, I must fly from thee.'

Boswell also has tried his hand at it; and a correspondent of the "Gentleman's Magazine" suggests that Johnson had in his mind an epigram on a young lady who appeared at a masquerade in Paris, habited as a Jesuit, during the height of the contention between the Jansenists and Molinists concerning free will:--

"On s'étonne ici que Calviniste Eût pris l'habit de Moliniste, Puisque que cette jeune beauté Ôte à chacun sa liberté, N'est ce pas une Janséniste."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 376. Edition of 1716. Equally happy were Lord Chesterfield's lines to a young lady who appeared at a Dublin ball, with an orange breastknot:--

Mrs. Thrale took the lead even when her husband might be expected to strike in, as when Johnson was declaiming paradoxically against action in oratory: "Action can have no effect on reasonable minds. It may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument." _Mrs. Thrale_. "What then, Sir, becomes of Demosthenes' saying, Action, action, action?" _Johnson_. "Demosthenes, Madam, spoke to an assembly of brutes, to a barbarous people." "The polished Athenians!" is her marginal protest, and a conclusive one.

In English literature she was rarely at fault. In

"Pretty Tory, where's the jest To wear that riband on thy breast, When that same breast betraying shows The whiteness of the rebel rose?"

White was adopted by the malcontent Irish as the French emblem. Johnson's epigram may have been suggested by Propertius:

"Nullus liber erit si quis amare volet."]

reference to the flattery lavished on Garrick by Lord Mansfield and Lord Chatham, Johnson had said, "When he whom everybody else flatters, flatters me, then I am truly happy." _Mrs. Thrale_. "The sentiment is in Congreve, I think." _Johnson_. "Yes, Madam, in 'The Way of the World.'

"'If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see The heart that others bleed for, bleed for me.'"

When Johnson is reported saying, "Those who have a style of distinguished excellence can always be distinguished," she objects: "It seems not. The lines always quoted as Dryden's, beginning,

'To die is landing on some silent shore,'

are Garth's after all." Johnson would have been still less pleased at her discovery that a line in his epitaph on Phillips,

"Till angels wake thee with a note like thine,"

was imitated from Pope's

"And saints embrace thee with a love like mine."

In one of her letters to him (June, 1782) she writes: "Meantime let us be as _merry_ as reading Burton upon _Melancholy_ will make us. You bid me study that book in your absence, and now, what have I found? Why, I have found, or fancied, that he has been cruelly plundered: that Milton's first idea of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' were suggested by the verses at the beginning; that Savage's speech of Suicide in the 'Wanderer' grew up out of a passage you probably remember towards the 216th page; that Swift's tale of the woman that holds water in her mouth, to regain her husband's love by silence, had its source in the same farrago; and that there is an odd similitude between my Lord's trick upon Sly the Tinker, in Shakspeare's 'Taming of the Shrew,' and some stuff I have been reading in Burton."

It would be easy to heap proof upon proof of the value and variety of Mrs. Thrale's contributions to the colloquial treasures accumulated by Boswell and other members of the set; and Johnson's deliberate testimony to her good qualities of head and heart will far more than counterbalance any passing expressions of disapproval or reproof with her mistimed vivacity, or alleged disregard of scrupulous accuracy in narrative, may have called forth. No two people ever lived much together for a series of years without many fretful, complaining, dissatisfied, uncongenial moments,--without letting drop captious or unkind expressions, utterly at variance with their habitual feelings and their matured judgments of each other. The hasty word, the passing sarcasm, the sly hit at an acknowledged foible, should count for nothing in the estimate, when contrasted with earnest and deliberate assurances, proceeding from one who was commonly too proud to flatter, and in no mood for idle compliment when he wrote.

"Never (he writes in 1773) imagine that your letters are long; they are always too short for my curiosity. I do not know that I was ever content with a single perusal.... My nights are grown again very uneasy and troublesome. I know not that the country will mend them; but I hope your company will mend my days. Though I cannot now expect much attention, and would not wish for more than can be spared from the poor dear lady (her mother), yet I shall see you and hear you every now and then; and to see and hear you, is always to hear wit, and to see virtue."

He would not suffer her to be lightly spoken of in his presence, nor permit his name to be coupled jocularly with hers. "I yesterday told him," says Boswell, when they were traversing the Highlands, "I was thinking of writing a poetical letter to him, on his return from Scotland, in the style of Swift's humorous epistle in the character of Mary Gulliver to her husband, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, on his return to England from the country of the Houyhnhnms:--

"'At early morn I to the market haste, Studious in ev'ry thing to please thy taste. A curious _fowl_ and _sparagrass_ I chose; (For I remember you were fond of those:) Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats; Sullen you turn from both, and call for OATS.'

He laughed, and asked in whose name I would write it. I said in Mrs. Thrale's. He was angry. 'Sir, if you have any sense of decency or delicacy, you won't do that.' _Boswell_. 'Then let it be in Cole's, the landlord of the Mitre tavern, where we have so often sat together.' _Johnson_. 'Ay, that may do.'"

Again, at Inverary, when Johnson called for a gill of whiskey that he might know what makes a Scotchman happy, and Boswell proposed Mrs. Thrale as their toast, he would not have _her_ drunk in whiskey. Peter Pindar has maliciously added to this reproof:--

"We supped most royally, were vastly frisky, When Johnson ordered up a gill of whiskey. Taking the glass, says I, 'Here's Mistress Thrale,' 'Drink her in _whiskey_ not,' said he, 'but _ale_.'"

So far from making light of her scholarship, he frequently accepted her as a partner in translations from the Latin. The translations from Boethius, printed in the second volume of the Letters, are their joint composition.

After recapitulating Johnson's other contributions to literature in 1766, Boswell says, "'The Fountains,' a beautiful little fairy tale in prose, written with exquisite simplicity, is one of Johnson's productions; and I cannot withhold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of being the author of that admirable poem 'The Three Warnings.'" _Marginal note_: "How sorry he is!" Both the tale and the poem were written for a collection of "Miscellanies," published by Mrs. Williams in that year. The character of Floretta in "The Fountains" was intended for Mrs. Thrale, and she thus gracefully alludes to it in a letter to Johnson in Feb. 1782:

"The newspapers would spoil my few comforts that are left if they could; but you tell me that's only because I have the reputation, whether true or false, of being a _wit_ forsooth; and you remember _poor Floretta_, who was teased into wishing away her spirit, her beauty, her fortune, and at last even her life, never could bear the bitter water which was to have washed away her wit; which she resolved to keep with all its consequences."

Her fugitive pieces, mostly in verse, thrown off from time to time at all periods of her life, are numerous; and the best of them that have been recovered will be included in these volumes. In a letter to the author of "Piozziana," she says:--"When Wilkes and Liberty were at their highest tide, I was bringing or losing children every year; and my studies were confined to my nursery; so, it came into my head one day to send an infant alphabet to the 'St. James Chronicle':--

"'A was an Alderman, factious and proud; B was a Bellas that blustered aloud, &c.'

"In a week's time Dr. Johnson asked me if I knew who wrote it? 'Why, who did write it, Sir?' said I. 'Steevens,' was the reply. Some time after that, years for aught I know, he mentioned to me Steevens's veracity! 'No, no;' answered H.L.P., anything but that;' and told my story; showing him by incontestable proofs that it was mine. Johnson did not utter a word, and we never talked about it any more. I durst not introduce the subject; but it served to hinder S. from visiting at the house: I suppose Johnson kept him away."

It does not appear that Steevens claimed the Alphabet; which may have suggested the celebrated squib that appeared in the "New Whig Guide," and was popularly attributed to Mr. Croker. It was headed "The Political Alphabet; or, the Young Member's A B C," and begins:

"A was an Althorpe, as dull as a hog: B was black Brougham, a surly cur dog: C was a Cochrane, all stripped of his lace."

What widely different associations are now awakened by these names! The sting is in the tail:

"W was a Warre, 'twixt a wasp and a worm, But X Y and Z are not found in this form, Unless Moore, Martin, and Creevey be said (As the last of mankind) to be X Y and Z."

Amongst Miss Reynolds' "Recollections" will be found:--"On the praises of Mrs. Thrale, he (Johnson) used to dwell with a peculiar delight, a paternal fondness, expressive of conscious exultation in being so intimately acquainted with her. One day, in speaking of her to Mr. Harris, author of 'Hermes,' and expatiating on her various perfections,--the solidity of her virtues, the brilliancy of her wit, and the strength of her understanding, &c.--he quoted some lines (a stanza, I believe, but from what author I know not[1]), with which he concluded his most eloquent eulogium, and of these I retained but the two last lines:--

'Virtues--of such a generous kind, Pure in the last recesses of the mind.'"

[Footnote 1: Dryden's Translation of Persius.]

The place assigned to Mrs. Thrale by the popular voice amongst the most cultivated and accomplished women of the day, is fixed by some verses printed in the "Morning Herald" of March 12th, 1782, which attracted much attention. They were commonly attributed to Mr. (afterwards Sir W.W.) Pepys, and Madame d'Arblay, who alludes to them complacently, thought them his; but he subsequently repudiated the authorship, and the editor of her Memoirs believes that they were written by Dr. Burney. They were provoked by the proneness of the Herald to indulge in complimentary allusions to ladies of the demirep genus:

"Herald, wherefore thus proclaim Nought of women but the _shame_? Quit, oh, quit, at least awhile, Perdita's too luscious smile; Wanton Worsley, stilted Daly, Heroines of each blackguard alley; Better sure record in story Such as shine their sex's glory! Herald! haste, with me proclaim Those of literary fame. Hannah More's pathetic pen, Painting high th' impassion'd scene; Carter's piety and learning, Little Burney's quick discerning; Cowley's neatly pointed wit, Healing those her satires hit; Smiling Streatfield's iv'ry neck, Nose, and notions--_à la Grecque!_ Let Chapone retain a place, And the mother of her Grace[1], Each art of conversation knowing, High-bred, elegant Boscawen; Thrale, in whose expressive eyes Sits a soul above disguise, Skill'd with-wit and sense t'impart Feelings of a generous heart. Lucan, Leveson, Greville, Crewe; Fertile-minded Montagu, Who makes each rising art her care, 'And brings her knowledge from afar!' Whilst her tuneful tongue defends Authors dead, and absent friends; Bright in genius, pure in fame:-- Herald, haste, and these proclaim!"

[Footnote 1: Mrs. Boscawen was the mother of the Duchess of Beaufort and Mrs. Leveson Gower:

"All Leveson's sweetness, and all Beaufort's grace."]