Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/290

282 warmly favoured his suit of her daughter. Hester's father, as soon as he discovered the matrimonial project, proudly resented Thrale's proposal. A family quarrel followed, and Hester with her parents removed to London. Then Uncle Thomas, left to his own devices, fell in love with a gay widow, his neighbour, and the home at Offley Place was irrevocably lost The poor spendthrift father, with his family pride and red-hot temper, died in December 1762. His widow inherited Bachygraig for her life, charged with 5,000l. for Hester, to which sum her uncle added another 5,000l.; and this ten thousand, with the expectation of Offley Place, constituted her wedding-portion. She was married to Mr. Thrale, on October nth, 1763, when she was twentytwo years and nine months old. "My uncle," she says, "went himself with me to church, gave me away, dined with us at Streatham Park, returned to Hertfordshire, wedded the widow, and then scarce ever saw or wrote to either of us; leaving me to conciliate as I could a husband, who was indeed much kinder than I counted on, to a plain girl, who had not one attraction in his eyes, and on whom he had never thrown five minutes of his time away in any interview unwitnessed by company even till after our wedding-day was done."

And so was begun, quietly and sadly enough, it seems, for the only two actors at present on the stage, that memorable and fascinating comedy of real life at Streatham Park which played itself out during the next twenty years.

Thrale's father, known among the friends of the son as "old Thrale," was a son of a still remoter Thrale, a poor man of that same Offley village where Hester spent her youth, and of his wife Sukey, daughter of a miller named Halsey, at St. Albans in the same county. Sukey's brother, Edmund Halsey, had run away from his home, and in the cojurse of years acquired a fortune in Child's brewery, Southwark, and married old Child's daughter. He sent for sister Sukey's son to London, "said he would make a man of him, and did so." Halsey and his nephew, Ralph Thrale, worked together until Halsey's death, by which time Ralph was rich enough to buy the brewhouse of his cousin, Halsey's daughter and heiress, who had married Lord Cobham. He lived to amass a large fortune, and was at one time member of Parliament for Southwark. "He educated his son," says Mrs. Thrale, "and three daughters, quite in a high style. His son he wisely connected with the Cobhams and their relations—Grenvilles, Lytteltons, and Pitts—to whom he lent money, while they lent assistance of every other kind, so that my Mr. Thrale was bred up at Stowe, and Stoke, and Oxford, and every genteel place." His father allowed him, on leaving the university, a thousand a year, and sent him abroad with Lord Westcote, the rich old brewer paying the expenses of both young men, that his son might have the benefit of a lord for his travelling-companion. And so young Thrale had grown up with a taste for horses and other equally expensive pleasures, and was, "when he came down to Offley to see his father's birthplace, a very handsome and well-accomplished gentleman." When, however, the young brewer proposed to marry, he found no lady whom he could persuade to live with him in the Borough, where a dwelling-house was attached to the brewery. And Hester Salusbury might also have refused to do this, but that she never saw either the Borough house or Streatham Park until she was taken to dwell there. After her marriage she found plenty to observe and to brood over in her new home besides the dinginess of its neighbourhood. Her husband, seventeen years her senior, of a grave, taciturn disposition, and with no literary tastes, assumed with her at once the position of "master;" which epithet afterwards became a household word in the family. Her "master" forbade her old pet amusement of riding and hunting as unfeminine, and reserved the joys of his hunting-box at Croydon for his own special use. She was also forbidden to interfere in domestic matters, and was not expected to know what was for dinner until it was on the table. Her mother continued to live with her whenever they were at Streatham, removing in the winter to her own mansion in Dean Street, Soho; "and thither," says Mrs. Thrale, "I went, oh, how willingly! to visit her every day."

Among her husband's bachelor acquaintances was Mr. Arthur Murphy, of some note in the literary world as a dramatist, a thoroughly pleasant fellow, with a light heart, plenty of sense, and a considerable dash of the bon vivant. Mrs. Thrale took to him at once, and liked him better than Simon Luttrell, or Georgey,. Bodens, or the gossipping old Jesuit physician who used to tell her the family secrets. It is sufficiently plain that, by the time they had been married a year, the Thrales had forfeited many times over their claim to the traditional flitch of bacon; and never was a greater boon