Born [Hester Lynch Salusbury], at Bodvel, Carnarvonshire, 16 Jan. 1741. Contrib. to “St. James’s Chronicle” while still a young girl. Married to Henry Thrale, 11 Oct. 1763. Friendship with Johnson begun, 1764. Husband died, 4 April 1781. Intimacy with Gabriel Piozzi begun, 1780; married to him in London (at Roman Catholic Church), 23 July, in Bath (at Anglican Church), 25 July 1784. In Italy, 1784–87. Lived at Streatham, 1787–95; in Wales, 1795 to 1809. Husband died, March 1809; after that she resided mainly in Bath. Died, 2 May 1821. Works: “Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson,” 1786; “Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson,” 1788; “Observations and Reflections made in the course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany” (2 vols.), 1789 (another edn. same year); “British Synonymy,” 1794; “Retrospection” (2 vols.), 1801. Posthumous: “Two Letters … to W. A. Conway,” 1843; “Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains,” ed. by A. Hayward (2 vols.), 1861 (2nd edn. same year). She edited: “The Arno Miscellany,” 1784. Life: by L. B. Seeley, 1891.

Personal

  Madam,—If I interpret your letter aright, 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.

  The party was select and very agreeable, but rendered especially interesting by the announcement in the evening of “Mrs. Piozzi.” It seemed almost as if a portrait by Sir Joshua had stepped out of its frame, when the little old lady, dressed point de vice in black satin, with dark glossy ringlets under her neat black hat, highly roughed, not the end of a ribbon or lace out of its place, with an unfaltering step entered the room. And was this really “the Mrs. Thrale,” the stage monitress of “The Three Warnings,” the indefatigable tea-maker of the Great Insatiable? She was instantly the center on which every eye was fixed, engrossing the attention of all. I had the satisfaction of a particular introduction to her, and was surprised and delighted with her vivacity and good-humour. The request that she would read to us from Milton was readily complied with, and I was given to understand she piqued herself on her superiority in giving effect to the great poet’s verse.

  She was, in truth, a most wonderful character for talents and eccentricity, for wit, genius, generosity, spirit, and powers of entertainment. She had a great deal both of good and not good, in common with Madame de Staël Holstein. They had the same sort of highly superior intellect, the same depth of learning, the same general acquaintance with science, the same ardent love of literature, the same thirst for universal knowledge, and the same buoyant animal spirits, such as neither sickness, sorrow, nor even terror, could subdue. Their conversation was equally luminous, from the sources of their own fertile minds, and from their splendid acquisitions from the works and acquirements of others. Both were zealous to serve, liberal to bestow, and graceful to oblige; and both were truly high-minded in prizing and praising whatever was admirable that came in their way. Neither of them was delicate nor polished, though each was flattering and caressing; but both had a fund inexhaustible of good humour, and of sportive gaiety, that made their intercourse with those they wished to please attractive, instructive, and delightful; and though not either of them had the smallest real malevolence in their compositions, neither of them could ever withstand the pleasure of uttering a repartee, let it wound whom it might, even though each would serve the very person they goaded with all the means in their power. Both were kind, charitable, and munificent, and therefore beloved; both were sarcastic, careless, and daring, and therefore feared.

  The world was most wrong in blaming Mrs. Thrale for marrying Piozzi; he was a very handsome, gentlemanly, and amiable person, and made her a very good husband. In the evening he used to play to us most beautifully on the piano. Her daughters never would see her after that marriage; and (poor woman) when she was at a very great age, I have heard her say that “she would go down upon her knees to them, if they would only be reconciled to her.”

  She was a woman of great vivacity and independence of character. She had a sensitive and passionate, if not a very tender nature, and enough literary culture to appreciate Johnson’s intellectual power, and on occasion to play a very respectable part in conversation. She had far more Latin and English scholarship than fell to the lot of most ladies of her day, and wit enough to preserve her from degenerating like some of the “blues,” into that most offensive of beings—a feminine prig.

  The public sentiment of Great Britain has never got over the sense of outrage it experienced when it was discovered that the widow of an English brewer had actually had the audacity to take for her second husband an Italian music master.

General

  Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi’s “Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.”—I am lamentably disappointed—in her, I mean; not in him. I had conceived a favourable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high-varnished preface to a heap of rubbish, in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago. Her panegyric is loud in praise of her hero; and almost every fact she relates disgraces him.

  Read the first volume of Mrs. Piozzi’s “Travels in Italy.” Tolerably amusing, but for a pert flippancy and ostentation of learning.

  Her mind, despite her masculine acquirements, was thoroughly feminine, she had more tact than genius, more sensibility and quickness of perception than depth, comprehensiveness, or continuity of thought. But her very discursiveness prevented her from becoming wearisome; her varied knowledge supplied an inexhaustible store of topics and illustrations; her lively fancy placed them in attractive lights; and her mind has been well likened to a kaleidoscope which, whenever its glittering and heterogeneous contents are moved or shaken, surprises by some new combination of color or of form. She professed to write as she talked; but her conversation was doubtless better than her books; her main advantages being a well-stored memory, fertility of images, aptness of allusion, and apropos.

  There were no morbid sensibilities in Mrs. Piozzi’s composition. She can tell all her sorrows without ever a tear. A mark of exclamation looks better than a blot. And yet she had suffered; but it had been with such suffering as makes the soul hard rather than tender. The pages with which she ends this narrative of her life are curiously characteristic.

  She was a minute and clever observer of men and manners, but deficient in judgment, and not particular as to the accuracy of her relations.

  Of Mrs. Piozzi’s verses, by far the best-known and best-written are to be found in “The Three Warnings,” a tale so neatly told that Johnson was credited by some with a share in its production. There never was any real reason for thus robbing the authoress of credit, and even Boswell writes that he “cannot withhold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of being the author of that admirable poem, ‘The Three Warnings.’” The piece first appeared along with Johnson’s fairy-tale called “The Fountains,” in the “Miscellanies” published by Mrs. Williams in 1766.

  Mrs Piozzi wrote wittily, describing scenes vividly, relating anecdotes with humor and point, never allowing her English prejudices to interfere with her judgment or to spoil her enjoyment of the scenes so new to her. Her knowledge of Italian must have been very thorough, she detected so readily the slightest differences in the dialect of each of the cities she visited. Her book remains a most valuable record of Italian society in the eighteenth century. It is delightfully written, and leaves an impression of extreme accuracy. It still remains for our nineteenth century to produce a book which will read as well a hundred years hence.