Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/620

612 Mr. Barclay the Quaker, and her old friend Mr. Perkins, the head clerk; the dwelling-house in the Borough being thrown in at the last as a gift from Mrs. Thrale to Mrs. Perkins.

For fifteen years Johnson had called Streatham his home. The white house on the common had come to be dear and familiar to the old man beyond what he or the world knew; and he would willingly have continued a fixture there to his life's end. Any change was for him simple loss. His dear "mistress," saddened but not quite broken-hearted, with the pretty Queeney growing into womanhood at her side, and himself in her cosiest easy-chair, or presiding among the wits and notables at her sumptuous board:—this was the pleasant picture he had drawn for himself of what might still be. "Let us pray for one another," he had written to her in the early days of her widowhood; "when we meet, we may try what fidelity and tenderness will do for us." The sale of the brewery and subsequent retrenchments disturbed to a considerable degree the magnanimity of Johnson's sorrow. His dream-fabric tottered visibly. "The diminution of the estate, though unpleasing and unexpected, must," he said, "be borne, because it cannot be helped." He and she were to make good resolutions before they met, which on his side he hoped to keep; but such hopes are very deceitful, and "I would not willingly think the same of all hopes," he added, very ambiguously. From Lichfield, with poor dying Lucy Porter at his side, palsied Mrs. Aston, and other aged and ailing friends, he wrote to her:—"There is little of the sunshine of life, and my own health does not gladden me. But, to scatter the gloom, I went last night to the ball, where, you know, I can be happy even without you. On the ball, which was very gay, I looked a while, and went away." What dreams of the preposterously happy, what visions of far-off sunny Streatham, filled the old man's mind as he stood watching the dancers through dim half-closed eyes on that last night of October 1781, are not now to be recorded. The little widow's replies to his constant letters are sprightly and trim, with here and there a touch of filial tenderness, or of half-concealed pain, as when she says, "Come home, however, for 'tis dull living without you You are not happy away, and I fear I shall never be happy again in this world between one thing and another." Their reunion at the close of the year did not bring to either the comfort they expected. Signor Piozzi the singer, sent for by the queen of France, had also been absent, and was now also returned, "loaded with presents, honours, and emoluments." "When he comes, and I come," Johnson had said in one of his letters, "you will have two about you that love you; and I question if either of us heartily care how few more you have." The philosopher was already jealous; and still more so when Mrs. Thrale's pleasure in Piozzi's society increased day by day. To make matters more difficult, Johnson, now in his seventy-third year, was already sinking into an unhealthy old age. The huge frame was tortured by symptoms of asthma, dropsy, and other painful diseases, partly inherited, partly the result of unwholesome habits of living. His rich, full mind and big heart had as much of vitality as ever, or more; but the temper, never a gentle one, had become, to those who loved him most, captious, fretful, and extortionate. He had reached a period in his life when the most unfit companion for him in the world was a lady, herself weighed down with suffering and domestic anxiety, but with a spirit of joy in her that rebelled at the prospect of sorrow. By a process too natural to require explanation, Johnson's residence at Streatham became less habitual than formerly. But he continued to write from the dusky retreat of Bolt Court, dunning, as she expressed it, his old friend for kindness, wishing himself back with her at Streatham, detailing his complaints and medicines, and peevishly repining at his own old age. The tie of many years was hard to break; and, when Streatham Park was let on lease, in 1782, to Lord Shelburne, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, Dr. Johnson accompanied Mrs. Thrale and her family to Brighton, returning with them in the winter to Argyle Street, London, where Boswell found him, very ill but kindly tended, in the following March.

Between this last date, however, and June 17th, 1783, an irremediable break had occurred in the friendship of Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. No sooner had her husband been laid at rest beside his little son in Streatham Church than the gossips had set themselves to map out his widow's future. She was angry enough at them for fancying her "such an amorous idiot." Lord Loughborough, Sir Richard Jebb, Mr. Piozzi, Mr. Selwyn, Dr. Johnson, every man that came to the house, she complained, was put in the papers for her to marry. She wrote to the Morning Herald, begging it to say no more about