A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Piozzi, or Thrale, Esther Lynch
PIOZZI, or THRALE, ESTHER LYNCH,
Distinguished for her intimacy with Dr. Johnson, was the daughter of John Salusbury, Esq., of Bodvel, in Carnarvonshire, where she was born, in 1739. In 1763, she married Henry Thrale, an opulent brewer in Southwark. Her beauty, vivacity, and intelligence made her house the resort of nearly all the literati of her time, and Dr. Samuel Johnson was almost domesticated with them, and appears to have enacted the mentor as well as the friend at Streatham, perhaps rather oftener than was quite agreeable to his lively hostess, who has, however, with perfect candour, mentioned some instances of his reproofs, in her amusing anecdotes of his life, even when the story told against herself. On one occasion, on her observing to a friend that she did not like goose,—"One smells it so while it is roasting," said she.
"But you, madam," replied the doctor, "have been at all times a fortunate woman, having always had your hunger so forestalled by indulgence, that you never experienced the delight of smelling your dinner beforehand."
On another occasion, during a very hot and dry summer, when she was naturally but thoughtlessly wishing for rain, to lay the dust, as they drove along the Surrey roads. "I cannot bear," replied he, with some asperity, and an altered look, "when I know how many poor families will perish next winter for want of that bread which the present drought will deny them, to hear ladies sighing for rain, only that their complexions may not suffer from the heat, or their clothes be incommoded by the dust. For shame! leave off such foppish lamentations, and study to relieve those whose distresses are real."
Mr. Thrale died in 1781, and his widow retired with her four daughters to Bath. In 1784, she married Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian music-master; and this caused a complete rupture between her and Johnson, who had tried in vain to dissuade her from this step. After Johnson's death, Mrs. Piozzi published, in 1786, a volume, entitled "Anecdotes of Dr. Samuel Johnson, during the last Twenty Years of his Life." Many things in this work gave great offence to Boswell and other friends of Johnson. But Mrs. Piozzi, notwithstanding, soon published another work, called "Letters to and from Johnson."
But though seemingly devoted to literature and society, she never neglected her children. In a letter to Miss Burney she says, "I have read to them the Bible from beginning to end, the Roman and English histories, Milton, Shakspere, Pope, and Young's works from head to heel; Warton and Johnson's Criticisms on the Poets; besides a complete system of dramatic writing; and classical—I mean the English classics—they are most perfectly acquainted with. Such works of Voltaire, too, as were not dangerous, we have worked at; Rollin des Belles Lettres, and a hundred more."
A friend, who, in an agreeable little work, called "Piozziana," has recorded several interesting anecdotes of the latter days of this celebrated lady, has given the following account of Mrs. Piozzi, quite late in life:—
"She was short, and, though well-proportioned, broad, and deep-chested. Her hands were muscular and almost coarse, but her writing was, even in her eightieth year, exquisitely beautiful; and one day, while conversing with her on the subject of education, she observed that 'All misses now-a-days write so like each other, that it is provoking;' adding, 'I love to see individuality of character, and abhor sameness, especially in what is feeble and flimsy.' Then spreading her hand, she said, 'I believe I owe what yon are pleased to call my good writing to the shape of this hand, for my uncle. Sir Robert Cotton, thought it too manly to be employed in writing like a boarding-school girl; and so I came by my vigorous, black manuscript.'"
"Mrs. Piozzi's nature was one of kindness," observes her friend; "she derived pleasure from endeavouring to please; and if she perceived a moderate good quality in another, she generally magnified it into an excellence; whilst she appeared blind to faults and foibles which could not have escaped the scrutiny of one possessing only half her penetration. But, as I have said, her disposition was friendly. It was so; and to such an extent, that during several years of familiar acquaintance with her, although I can recite many instances, I might say hundreds, of her having spoken of the characters of others, I never heard one word of vituperation from her lips, of any person who was the subject of discussion, except once when Baretti's name was mentioned. Of him, she said that he was a bad man; but on my hinting a wish for particulars, after so heavy a charge, she seemed unwilling to explain herself, and spoke of him no more."
She preserved, unimpaired to the last, her strength and her faculties of body and mind. When past eighty, she would describe minute features in a distant landscape, or touches in a painting, which even short-sighted young persons failed to discover till pointed out to them.
When her friends were fearful of her over-exciting herself, she would say, "This sort of thing is greatly in the mind, and I am almost tempted to say the same of growing old at all, especially as it regards those of the usual concomitants of age, viz., laziness, defective sight, and ill-temper: sluggishness of soul and acrimony of disposition, conmionly begin before the encroachments of infirmity; they creep upon us insidiously, and it is the business of a rational being to watch these beginnings, and counteract them."
On the 27th. of January, 1820, Mrs. Piozzi gave a sumptuous entertainment at the Town Assembly Rooms, Bath, to between seven and eight hundred friends, whom, assisted by Sir John and Lady Salusbury, she received with a degree of ease, cheerfulness, and polite hospitality, peculiarly her own. This filte, given upon the completion of her eightieth year, was opened by herself in person, dancing with Sir John Salusbury, with extraordinary elasticity and dignity, and she subsequently presided at a sumptuous banquet, supported by a British Admiral of the highest rank on each side, "with her usual gracious and queen-like deportment."
Mrs. Piozzi died May 2nd., 1821, aged eighty-one years. Her last words were, "I die in the trust and in the fear of God," Her remains were conveyed to North Wales, and interred in the burial-place of the Salusbury family. The following are her published works:—"Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson's Life;" "Travels," two volumes; "Retrospection, or Review of the Most Striking and Important Event which the last Eighteen Hundred Years have Presented," etc., two volumes.