136 Thrale's Health Improves. and come back as opportunity offers, or necessity requires, and keep yourself airy, and be a sunny little thing.' On July 30 Miss Burney wrote to her friend Crisp: 'I have the pleasure to tell you that Mr. Thrale is as well as ever he was in health, though the alarming and terrible blow he so lately received has, I fear, given a damp to his spirits that will scarce ever be wholly conquered. Yet he grows daily rather more cheerful; but the shock was too rude and too cruel to be ever forgotten.'† At the time of the brewer's seizure, his wife was expecting to become a mother for the thirteenth time. 'A quarrel among the clerks,' she wrote afterwards, 'which I was called to pacify, made a complete finish of the child, and nearly of me. The men were reconciled, though, and my danger accelerated their reconcilement.' Early in October the family went to their house at Brighton, taking Fanny Burney with them, and stopping to visit Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells by the way. Johnson remained in London, in better spirits than usual, though suffering a little from gout, and harassed by the dissensions in his household. On October 28 he wrote: 'I eat meat seldom, and take physic often, and fancy that I grow light and airy. A man that does not begin to grow light and airy at seventy is certainly losing time, if he intends ever to be light and airy.' The news from Sussex helped to keep him cheerful: I hear from everybody that Mr. Thrale grows better. He is columen domus; and if he stands firm, little evils may be overlooked.'§ He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on November 7: My master, I hope, hunts and walks and courts the belles, and shakes Brighthelmstone. When he comes back, frolic and active, we * 'Piozzi Letters,' ii. 56. 'Piozzi Letters,' ii. 73. Mme. d'Arblay's 'Diary,' i. 167. § Ibid., ii. 77. Mrs. Thrale was suffering from toothache. Dissensions in Bolt Court. 137 will make a feast, and drink his health, and have a noble day. Have you any assemblies at this time of the year? And does Queeney dance? And does Burney dance too? I would have Burney dance with C-,* and so make all up. Discord keeps her residence in this habitation, but she has for some time been silent. We have much malice, but no mischief. Levet is rather a friend to Williams, because he hates Desmoulins more. A thing that he should hate more than Desmoulins is not to be found.' Again nine days later he says: 'At home we do not much quarrel; but perhaps the less we quarrel the more we hate. There is as much malignity amongst us as can well subsist, without any thoughts of daggers or poisons.'‡ His correspondent wrote after his death: 'He really was oftentimes afraid of going home, because he was so sure to be met at the door with numberless complaints; and he used to lament pathetically to me that they made his life miserable from the impossibility he found of making theirs happy, when every favour he bestowed on one was wormwood to the rest. If, however, I ventured to blame their ingratitude, and condemn their conduct, he would instantly set about softening the one and justifying the other, and finished commonly by telling me that I knew not how to make allowances for situations I had never experienced.'§ The improvement in Thrale's health appears to have continued to the end of the year, but there were occasional fluctuations which caused his wife much uneasiness. At one moment she conceived the idea of inducing her husband to vest his business in trustees, and to remove Cumberland, who was then at Brighton, and of course jealous of the author of Evelina.' 138 Dislike of the Borough. with his family to the West-end. One motive which she assigned for these proposals was fear of embarrassment from expensive additions which the sick brewer was tempted to make to his premises. In the letter last quoted from, Johnson comments on her scheme with his customary freedom of language: "I do not see who can be trustee for a casual and variable property, for a fortune yet to be acquired. The trade must be carried on by somebody who must be answerable for the debts contracted. This can be none but yourself; unless you deliver up the property to some other agent, and trust the chance both of his prudence and his honesty. Do not be frighted; trade could not be managed by those who manage it, if it had much difficulty. Their great books are soon understood, and their language 'If speech it may be call'd, that speech is none is understood with no very laborious application. . What Mr. Scrase says about the Borough is true, but is nothing to the purpose. A house in the square will not cost so much as building in Southwark; but buildings are more likely to go on in Southwark if your dwelling is at St. James's. Everybody has some desire that deserts the great road of prosperity, to look for pleasure in a bye-path. I do not view with so much. indignation Mr. Thrale's desire of being the first Brewer, as your despicable dread of living in the Borough. . . . Of this folly let there be an end-at least, an intermission.'* This plain-speaking had its effect for the time; and the Thrales spent the winter in Southwark as usual. Meanwhile the lady continued to be vexed by jealousy *Piozzi Letters,' ii. 92. Sophy Streatfield Again. 139 of the fair S. S. Here is Sophy Streatfield again,' she wrote, 'handsomer than ever, and flushed with new conquests; the Bishop of Chester* feels her power, I am sure; she showed me a letter from him. I repeated to her out of Pope's Homer: "Very well, Sophy," cried I: 666 Range undisturbed among the hostile crew, But touch not Hinchcliffe,+ Hinchcliffe is my due." 'Miss Streatfield,' says my master, 'could have quoted these lines in the Greek; his saying so piqued me, and piqued me because it was true. I wish I understood Greek! Mr. Thrale's preference of her to me never vexed me so much as my consciousness—or fear, at least -that he has reason for his preference. She has ten times my beauty, and five times my scholarship; wit and knowledge she has none.'‡ 'This incomprehensible girl,' as Mrs. Thrale called her, harassed the latter down to the time of her husband's death, and afterwards. Thrale fondled her when he was well; she sat by his sick-bed; when he was gone she teased the widow with tales of his passion for her; and then went in quest of fresh admirers. No one ever impugned Sophy's character; she was engaged for many years to a clergyman; but she finally died an old maid. She was everybody's admiration, and nobody's choice. * Dr. Porteous, afterwards Bishop of London. + For Hector. Hinchcliffe was Bishop of Peterborough CHAPTER VI. Mr. Thrale has a Second Fit-Recruits at Bath-Anxiety about him-Society at Bath-Melmoth-An Election in Prospect-Mrs. Thrale visits Southwark -Her Activity-1hnson Flattered-The Life of Congreve-The Gordon Ritts-Alarm at Bath-The Brewery Saved-Address of Perkins-The Thrales Flee from Bath-Quiet Restored in London-Zeal of John Wilkes-Anecdotes-Perkins Rewarded-Johnson and Queeney- Mrs. Cholmondely-Seventy-Two-Bolt Court-Thrale Loses his Seat-His Health Declines-The Streatham Portraits-Verses on Them by Mrs. Thrale-The Lil rary at Streatham Park-Grosvenor Square-Conversazione -Other Entertainments-A Foreign Tour Projected-Signs of DangerVoracious Appetite-Sudden Death-Johnson's Grief-He Comforts the Widow-The Wal-The Executors-Distress of Mrs. Thrale-The Trade to be Carried on-Johnson's Mercantile Ardour-The Brewery Sold-The Barclays The Summer at Streatham-Johnson and Pepys-Piozzi and Sacchini-Mrs Thrale and Fanny Burney. MR. THRALE never completely recovered from his first attack of apoplexy. His appetite, at all times immoderate, became morbidly voracious. 'Cibus omnis in illo Causa cibi est; semperque locus fit inanis edendo,"* was the quotation, more apt than feeling, by which his wife afterwards described his state at this time. He was incapable of self-control, and would suffer no remonstrance. Nobody,' says Baretti, 'ever had spirit enough to tell him that his fits were apoplectic: such is the blessing of being rich, that nobody dares to speak out.' He had a second seizure at his house in the Borough, towards the end of February, 1780: was bled till he fainted; and after a prolonged struggle, rallied, contrary Ovid, Met., viii. 841, 842. |
