Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/623

Rh placed over her children were formally acquainted with the fact; and that the three eldest, having heard that Mr. Piozzi was coming back from Italy, had left Bath for their own house at "Brighthelmstone." But Dr. Johnson received, in addition to the "circular," the following letter:—

, June 30.

—The inclosed is a circular letter which I have sent to all the guardians, but our friendship demands somewhat more; it requires that I should beg your pardon for concealing from you a connection which you must have heard of by many, but I suppose never believed. Indeed, my dear sir, it was concealed only to save us both needless pain; I could not have borne to reject that counsel it would have killed me to take, and I only tell it you now because all is irrevocably settled and out of your power to prevent I will say, however, that the dread of your disapprobation has given me some anxious moments; and, though perhaps I am become by many privations the most independent woman in the world, I feel as if acting without a parent's consent till you write kindly to

Your faithful servant.

This was Dr. Johnson's reply: —

,—If I interpret your letter right, you are ignominiously married: if it is yet undone, let us once more talk together. If you have abandoned your children and your religion, God forgive your wickedness; if you have forfeited your fame and your country, may your folly do no further mischief. If the last act is yet to do, I who have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served you, I who long thought you the first of womankind, entreat that, before your fate is irrevocable, I may once more see you. I was, I once was, madam, most truly yours,

July 2, 1784.

I will come down if you permit it.

Mrs. Thrale lost no time, but despatched a letter by the coach, "the more speedily and effectually to prevent" the doctor's visit. She was very angry now, and bid him rather a fiery farewell. The next post brought to her a softer missive, "one more sigh of tenderness, perhaps useless, but at least sincere." Her old irascible friend did not forget, he told her, in this moment of final separation, "the kindness which had soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched." His last advice was, however, that she should induce Mr. Piozzi to settle in England, "where her fortune would be more under her own eye;" his last peroration, enforcing that advice, was an eloquent allusion to the story of Queen Mary, who had crossed the fatal Solway in spite of a similar warning, and—suffered for it.

The marriage which all the world was execrating was solemnized at Bath on July 25, 1784, and in a few weeks the Piozzis were on their way to Italy. Here, among her husband's own people and friends, Mrs. Piozzi found him popular and respected, while the proud Lombardians were at first disposed to doubt whether his wife whom he had brought to visit them could be a gentlewoman by birth, since her first husband was a brewer! The travellers were feasted and honoured wherever they went. When dukes, duchesses, marquises d'Araciel, and princes of Sisterna, showered kindness on her for Piozzi's sake, Mrs. Piozzi took good care to let her English friends hear of it. "Here's honour and glory for you!" she wrote home, in the joy of her heart. But it was not long before she had forgiven her enemies. To her children she lost no opportunity of sending presents and letters; and on December 7th, 1784, she wrote to a young law-student, Samuel Lysons, afterwards keeper of the Tower records: "Do not neglect Dr. Johnson; you will never see any other mortal so wise or so good. I keep his picture in my chamber, and his works on my chimney." A week later, and her old friend had breathed his last in his dingy home in Fleet Street, London. No sooner was the event known, and the old philosopher at rest under the stones of Westminster Abbey, than the printers were busy issuing "Anecdotes." Everybody who had a story of the dead lion was in a hurry to tell it; and of course Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi were looked to by all the world for the largest and most interesting collections. Her "Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, during the Last Twenty Years of his Life," were written in Italy immediately after the news of his death reached her, shipped off to England from Leghorn, and published in London in 1786, young Samuel Lysons making her bargain for her with Mr. Cadell the publisher.

"Judge my transport and my husband's," she wrote nearly thirty years afterwards, "when at Rome we received letters saying the book was bought with such avidity that Cadell had not one copy left when the king sent for it at ten o'clock at night, and he was forced to beg one from a friend to supply his Majesty's impatience, who sate up all night reading it." Boswell, who was preparing his "pyramid," as he called his "Life of Johnson," was outraged at this sudden flare of feminine popularity, and strove to undermine his rival's position by accusing her of inaccuracy and untruth. His efforts were in vain. The whole of