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Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale 1776-1809: Volume II: 1784-1809
A scholarly edition of a work by Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.
644 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1951
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About the author
Hester Lynch Piozzi
178 books8 followersHester Lynch Piozzi, née Salusbury, also called (1763 - 84) Harriet Lynch Thrale, byname Mrs. Thrale, English writer and friend of Samuel Johnson.
In 1763 she married a wealthy brewer named Henry Thrale. In January 1765 Samuel Johnson was brought to dinner, and the next year, following a severe illness, Johnson spent most of the summer in the country with the Thrales. Gradually, he became part of the family circle, living about half the time in their homes. A succession of distinguished visitors came there to see Johnson and socialize with the Thrales.
In 1781 Thrale died, and his wife was left a wealthy widow. To everyone’s dismay, she fell in love with her daughter’s music master, Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian singer and composer, married him in 1784, and set off for Italy on a honeymoon. Dr. Johnson openly disapproved. The resulting estrangement saddened his last months of life.
When news reached her of Johnson’s death, she hastily compiled and sent back to England copy for Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., during the last Twenty Years of his Life (1786), which thrust her into open rivalry with James Boswell. The breach was further widened when, after her return to England in 1787, she brought out a two-volume edition of Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1788). Although less accurate in some details than Boswell’s, her accounts show other aspects of Johnson’s character, especially the more human and affectionate side of his nature.
When many old friends remained aloof, Mrs. Piozzi drew around her a new artistic circle, including the actress Sarah Siddons. Her pen remained active, and thousands of her entertaining, gossipy letters have survived. She retained to the end her unflagging vivacity and zest for life.
In 1763 she married a wealthy brewer named Henry Thrale. In January 1765 Samuel Johnson was brought to dinner, and the next year, following a severe illness, Johnson spent most of the summer in the country with the Thrales. Gradually, he became part of the family circle, living about half the time in their homes. A succession of distinguished visitors came there to see Johnson and socialize with the Thrales.
In 1781 Thrale died, and his wife was left a wealthy widow. To everyone’s dismay, she fell in love with her daughter’s music master, Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian singer and composer, married him in 1784, and set off for Italy on a honeymoon. Dr. Johnson openly disapproved. The resulting estrangement saddened his last months of life.
When news reached her of Johnson’s death, she hastily compiled and sent back to England copy for Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., during the last Twenty Years of his Life (1786), which thrust her into open rivalry with James Boswell. The breach was further widened when, after her return to England in 1787, she brought out a two-volume edition of Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1788). Although less accurate in some details than Boswell’s, her accounts show other aspects of Johnson’s character, especially the more human and affectionate side of his nature.
When many old friends remained aloof, Mrs. Piozzi drew around her a new artistic circle, including the actress Sarah Siddons. Her pen remained active, and thousands of her entertaining, gossipy letters have survived. She retained to the end her unflagging vivacity and zest for life.
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December 21, 2021
Hester Lynch Piozzi is one of the iconic figures of the late eighteenth century, a sharp and witty Welshwoman who bestrode the incestuous world of English letters like a fiery little colossus, and whose own life highlighted so many contemporary attitudes both good and bad.
Although she published several books herself – in subjects as diverse as linguistics, memoir and history – her main presence is in the lives of others and, indeed, as a prolific diarist and letter-writer herself. As Hester Thrale, she is a huge figure in Samuel Johnson's life – one of his closest confidantes, whom he respected and loved dearly, and who clearly exerted a kind of influence on him that Boswell deeply resented, a resentment that comes across in his Life. (Hester wrote her own book about Johnson's life, which was published first, and Boswell resented that, too.)
She was also one of the first to encourage Frances Burney as a writer, and the two of them were, for a time, close friends. Later, Boswell liked to pretend that they were all there mainly to see her husband, Henry Thrale. The truth was that it was Hester who was the driving force behind their social life. Her husband, a rich brewer, was useful for the activity he allowed her in London society, though there had never been any huge attraction between them, as she remembers here, thinking back on their wedding day:
Which was more than some could say. Still, things were quite otherwise with her second husband, whom she married three years after Thrale's death with genuine passion. He was an Italian music teacher who had taught the Thrales' children, and was judged unsuitable by London society on three grounds: for being foreign, Catholic, and penniless. Newspapers lamented how poor Thrale could never have imagined ‘his wife's disgrace, by eventually raising an obscure and penniless Fiddler into sudden Wealth’, and Hester's friends and family cut her dead more or less overnight. Reading about the way Johnson and Burney behaved to her is an important check to any excessive admiration of these figures. Much later, when she and Piozzi are about to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary, she is still thinking back on the fuss everyone made about
It's obvious that in a later age, she would have been a major writer in her own right – I mean, she almost already was, but there were clearly too many social obstacles to overcome to really present herself publicly the way she wanted. Sometimes she comments on this kind of thing in the diaries – noting, for instance, the success so many female musicians had had recently, including
This is not to say that she takes much objection to social mores. On the contrary, she's a fundamentally conservative voice who is outraged by the spread of democracy following the French Revolution, and who frets constantly about sexual gossip, wishing that gay men could be thrown into a volcano and writing so often about rumours of ‘sapphism’ (a new word) in the wider world that one can't help psychoanalysing a little. For herself, ideas about sex are things that she has to work out periodically, sometimes puzzling over literary references – ‘one cannot ask Men about such Stuff,’ she notes matter-of-factly.
By the nineteenth century, she seems something like a survivor from a lost civilisation, looking around her in grim dissatisfaction at the state of the world: ‘Wars rage abroad, Taxes increase at Home, Atheism & Methodism divide our Island, & Buonaparte threatens to Invade it,’ she comments in 1803. And she shakes her head over the latest Gothic tastes in literature:
But she was still as sharp as ever, taking up the study of Biblical Hebrew in her sixties just for the sheer hell of it. These diaries – given to her as a set of empty journals by her first husband – end in 1809 with the death of her second. Though she never kept a serious journal again, Hester herself lived on for another twelve years, and occasional letters survive to show her still in good form for all that time. ‘In An Age of Genius,’ it says on the plaque by her grave, ‘She Ever Held a Foremost Place’. Her diaries are an endlessly fascinating and revealing portrait of the time, from the kind of perspective that history does not usually afford us. Let's hope Penguin or Oxford brings out a Selected version sometime for wider audiences – she deserves it.
Although she published several books herself – in subjects as diverse as linguistics, memoir and history – her main presence is in the lives of others and, indeed, as a prolific diarist and letter-writer herself. As Hester Thrale, she is a huge figure in Samuel Johnson's life – one of his closest confidantes, whom he respected and loved dearly, and who clearly exerted a kind of influence on him that Boswell deeply resented, a resentment that comes across in his Life. (Hester wrote her own book about Johnson's life, which was published first, and Boswell resented that, too.)
She was also one of the first to encourage Frances Burney as a writer, and the two of them were, for a time, close friends. Later, Boswell liked to pretend that they were all there mainly to see her husband, Henry Thrale. The truth was that it was Hester who was the driving force behind their social life. Her husband, a rich brewer, was useful for the activity he allowed her in London society, though there had never been any huge attraction between them, as she remembers here, thinking back on their wedding day:
…'twas on that Evening when we retired together that I was first alone with Mr Thrale for five Minutes in my whole Life. Ours was a Match of mere Prudence; and common good Liking, without the smallest Pretensions to Passion on either Side: I knew no more of him than of any other Gentleman who came to the House, nor did he ever profess other Attachment to me, than such as Esteem of my Character, & Convenience from my Fortune, produced. I really had never past five whole Minutes Tête a Tête with him in my Life till the Evening of our Wedding Day,—& he himself has said so a Thousand Times. yet God who gave us to each other, knows I did love him dearly; & what honour I can ever do to his Memory shall be done, for he was very generous to me.
Which was more than some could say. Still, things were quite otherwise with her second husband, whom she married three years after Thrale's death with genuine passion. He was an Italian music teacher who had taught the Thrales' children, and was judged unsuitable by London society on three grounds: for being foreign, Catholic, and penniless. Newspapers lamented how poor Thrale could never have imagined ‘his wife's disgrace, by eventually raising an obscure and penniless Fiddler into sudden Wealth’, and Hester's friends and family cut her dead more or less overnight. Reading about the way Johnson and Burney behaved to her is an important check to any excessive admiration of these figures. Much later, when she and Piozzi are about to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary, she is still thinking back on the fuss everyone made about
this formidable Foreigner, whom my Daughters & my Friends said was to ruin my Fortune, & change my Religion, and use me I know not how ill besides. He certainly has been a faithful & tender Husband to me notwithstanding their Denunciations now for 19 Years…
It's obvious that in a later age, she would have been a major writer in her own right – I mean, she almost already was, but there were clearly too many social obstacles to overcome to really present herself publicly the way she wanted. Sometimes she comments on this kind of thing in the diaries – noting, for instance, the success so many female musicians had had recently, including
Madame Gautherot's wonderful Execution on the Fiddle;—but say the Critics a Violin is not an Instrument for Ladies to manage, very likely! I remember when they said the same Thing of a Pen.
This is not to say that she takes much objection to social mores. On the contrary, she's a fundamentally conservative voice who is outraged by the spread of democracy following the French Revolution, and who frets constantly about sexual gossip, wishing that gay men could be thrown into a volcano and writing so often about rumours of ‘sapphism’ (a new word) in the wider world that one can't help psychoanalysing a little. For herself, ideas about sex are things that she has to work out periodically, sometimes puzzling over literary references – ‘one cannot ask Men about such Stuff,’ she notes matter-of-factly.
By the nineteenth century, she seems something like a survivor from a lost civilisation, looking around her in grim dissatisfaction at the state of the world: ‘Wars rage abroad, Taxes increase at Home, Atheism & Methodism divide our Island, & Buonaparte threatens to Invade it,’ she comments in 1803. And she shakes her head over the latest Gothic tastes in literature:
We are returning to the old Scandinavian Taste of Witches Dæmons &c. Sad Stuff! … The World is in his Dotage I suppose, & pleased with a Rattle as in Infancy. The Theatres are all haunted with Spectres, our Novels with Incantations, & nothing pleases that does not make you afraid to turn your Head when alone. Impression is the Cant Word, & tis to be made at any Expence…
But she was still as sharp as ever, taking up the study of Biblical Hebrew in her sixties just for the sheer hell of it. These diaries – given to her as a set of empty journals by her first husband – end in 1809 with the death of her second. Though she never kept a serious journal again, Hester herself lived on for another twelve years, and occasional letters survive to show her still in good form for all that time. ‘In An Age of Genius,’ it says on the plaque by her grave, ‘She Ever Held a Foremost Place’. Her diaries are an endlessly fascinating and revealing portrait of the time, from the kind of perspective that history does not usually afford us. Let's hope Penguin or Oxford brings out a Selected version sometime for wider audiences – she deserves it.
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