This eText was transcribed from the 1901 Cassell and Companyedition by Les Bowler.
CASSELL andCOMPANY, Limited
london, paris, newyork & melbourne
1901
Mrs. Piozzi, by her second marriage, was by her first marriagethe Mrs. Thrale in whose house at Streatham Doctor Johnson was,after the year of his first introduction, 1765, in days ofinfirmity, an honoured and a cherished friend. The year ofthe beginning of the friendship was the year in which Johnson,fifty-six years old, obtained his degree of LL.D. from Dublin,and—though he never called himself Doctor—wasthenceforth called Doctor by all his friends.
Before her marriage Mrs. Piozzi had been Miss Hesther LynchSalusbury, a young lady of a good Welsh family. She wasborn in the year 1740, and she lived until the year 1821. She celebrated her eightieth birthday on the 27th of January,1820, by a concert, ball, and supper to six or seven hundredpeople, and led off the dancing at the ball with an adopted sonfor partner. When Johnson was first introduced to her, asMrs. Thrale, she was a lively, plump little lady, twenty-fiveyears old, short of stature, broad of build, with an animatedface, touched, according to the fashion of life in her earlyyears, with rouge, which she continued to use when she found thatit had spoilt her complexion. Her hands were rather coarse,but her handwriting was delicate.
Henry Thrale, whom she married, was the head of the greatbrewery house now known as that of Barclay and Perkins. Henry Thrale’s father had succeeded Edmund Halsey, whobegan life by running away from his father, a miller at St.Albans. Halsey was taken in as a clerk-of-all-work at theAnchor Brewhouse in Southwark, became a house-clerk, able enoughto please Child, his master, and handsome enough to please hismaster’s daughter. He married the daughter andsucceeded to Child’s Brewery, made much money, and hadhimself an only daughter, whom he married to a lord. HenryThrale’s father was a nephew of Halseys, who had worked inthe brewery for twenty years, when, after Halsey’s death,he gave security for thirty thousand pounds as the price of thebusiness, to which a noble lord could not succeed. Ineleven years he had paid the purchase-money, and was making alarge fortune. To this business his son, who wasJohnson’s friend, Henry Thrale, succeeded; and uponThrale’s death it was bought for £150,000 by a memberof the Quaker family of Barclay, who took Thrale’s oldmanager, Perkins, into partnership.
Johnson became, after 1765, familiar in the house of theThrales at Streatham. There was much company. Mrs.Thrale had a taste for literary guests and literary guests had,on their part, a taste for her good dinners. Johnson wasthe lion-in-chief. There was Dr. Johnson’s roomalways at his disposal; and a tidy wig kept for his special use,because his own was apt to be singed up the middle by closecontact with the candle, which he put, being short-sighted,between his eyes and a book. Mrs. Thrale had skill inlanguages, read Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. Sheread literature, could quote aptly, and put knowledge as well asplayful life into her conversation. Johnson’s regardfor the Thrales was very real, and it was heartily returned,though Mrs. Thrale had, like her friend, some weaknesses, incommon with most people who feed lions and wish to pass for witsamong the