Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) by Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

M >> Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi >> Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

Her colloquial excellence and her agreeability are established by the
unanimous testimony of her cotemporaries. Her fame in this respect
rests on the same basis as that of all great wits, all great actors,
and many great orators. To question it for want of more tangible and
durable proofs, would be as unreasonable as to question Sydney
Smith's humour, Hook's powers of improvisation, Garrick's Richard, or
Sheridan's Begum speech. But _ex pede Herculem_. Marked indications
of her quality will be found in her letters and her books. "Both,"
remarks an acute and by no means partial critic[1], "are full of
happy touches, and here and there will be found in them those deep
and piercing thoughts which come intuitively to people of genius."

[Footnote 1: The Athenaeum. Jan. 26th, 1861.]

Surely these are happy touches:

"I hate a general topic as a pretty woman hates a general mourning
when black does not become her complexion."

"Life is a schoolroom, not a playground."

In allusion to the rage for scientific experiment in 1811: "Never was
poor Nature so put to the rack, and never, of course, was she made to
tell so many lies."

"Science (i.e. learning), which acted as a sceptre in the hand of
Johnson, and was used as a club by Dr. Parr, became a lady's fan,
when played with by George Henry Glasse."

"Hope is drawn with an anchor always, and Common Sense is never
strong enough to draw it up."

"The poppy which Nature sows among the corn, to shew us that sleep is
as necessary as bread." [1]

[Footnote 1: Or to shew us that the harvest diminishes with sloth,
and that what we gain in sleep we lose in bread. But _qui dort,
dine_.]

"The best writers are not the best friends; and the last character is
more to be valued than the first by cotemporaries: after fifty years,
indeed, the others carry away all the applause."

This is the reason why posterity always takes part with the famous
author or man of genius against those who witnessed his meanness or
suffered from his selfishness; why fresh apologists will constantly
be found for Bacon's want of principle and Johnson's want of manners.

In the course of his famous definition or description of wit, Barrow
says: "Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in
seasonable application of a trivial saying: sometimes it playeth in
words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense
or the affinity of their sound." If this be so, she possessed it in
abundance. In a letter, dated Bath, 26th April, 1818,--about the time
when Talleyrand said of Lady F.S.'s robe: "_Elle commence trop tard
et finit trop tot_,"--she writes:

"A genteel young clergyman, in our Upper Crescent, told his mamma
about ten days ago, that he had lost his heart to pretty Miss
Prideaux, and that he must absolutely marry her or die. _La chere
mere_ of course replied gravely: 'My dear, you have not been
acquainted with the lady above a fortnight: let me recommend you to
see more of her.' 'More of her!' exclaimed the lad, 'why I have seen
down to the fifth rib on each side already.' This story will serve to
convince Captain T. Fellowes and yourself, that as you have always
acknowledged the British Belles to _exceed_ those of every other
nation, you may now say with truth, that they _outstrip_ them."

On the 1st July, 1818:

"The heat has certainly exhausted my faculties, and I have but just
life enough left to laugh at the fourteen tailors who, united under a
flag with '_Liberty and Independence_' on it, went to vote for some
of these gay fellows, I forget which, but the motto is ill chosen,
said I, they should have written up, '_Measures not Men_'"

Her verses are advantageously distinguished amongst those of her
blue-stocking contemporaries by happy turns of thought and
expression, natural playfulness, and an abundant flow of idiomatic
language. But her facility was a fatal gift, as it has proved to most
female aspirants to poetic fame, who rarely stoop to the labour of
the file. Although the first rule laid down by Goldsmith's
connoisseur[1] is far from universally applicable to productions of
the pencil or the pen, all fruitful writers would do well to act upon
it, and what Mrs. Piozzi could do when she took pains is decisively
proved by her "Streatham Portraits."

[Footnote 1: "Upon my asking him how he had acquired the art of a
conoscente so very suddenly, he assured me that nothing was more
easy. The whole secret consisted in an adherence to two rules: the
one always to observe that the picture might have been better if the
painter had taken more pains; and the other to praise the works of
Pietro Perugino."--_The Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx.]

She was wanting in refinement, which very few of the eighteenth
century wits and authors possessed according to more modern notions;
and she abounded in vanity, which, if not necessarily a baneful or
unamiable quality, is a fruitful source of folly and peculiarly
calculated to provoke censure or ridicule. In her, fortunately, its
effects were a good deal modified by the frankness of its avowal and
display, by her habits of self-examination, by her impulsive
generosity of character, and by her readiness to admit the claims and
consult the feelings of others. To seek out and appreciate merit as
she appreciated it, is a high merit in itself.

Her piety was genuine; and old-fashioned politicians, whose watchword
is Church and King, will be delighted with her politics. Literary
men, considering how many curious inquiries depend upon her accuracy,
will be more anxious about her truthfulness, and I have had ample
opportunities of testing it; having not only been led to compare her
narratives with those of others, but to collate her own statements of
the same transactions or circumstances at distant intervals or to
different persons. It is difficult to keep up a large correspondence
without frequent repetition. Sir Walter Scott used to write precisely
the same things to three or four fine-lady friends, and Mrs. Piozzi
could no more be expected to find a fresh budget of news or gossip
for each epistle than the author of "Waverley." Thus, in 1815, she
writes to a Welsh baronet from Bath:

"We have had a fine Dr. Holland here.[1] He has seen and written
about the Ionian Islands; and means now to practise as a physician,
exchanging the Cyclades, say we wits and wags, for the Sick Ladies.
We made quite a lion of the man. I was invited to every house he
visited at for the last three days; so I got the _Queue du lion_
despairing of _le Coeur_."

[Footnote 1: Sir Henry Holland, Bart., who, with many other titles to
distinction, is one of the most active and enterprising of modern
travellers.]

Two other letters written about the same time contain the same piece
of intelligence and the same joke. She was very fond of writing
marginal notes; and after annotating one copy of a book, would take
up another and do the same. I have never detected a substantial
variation in her narratives, even in those which were more or less
dictated by pique; and as she generally drew upon the "Thraliana" for
her materials, this, having been carefully and calmly compiled,
affords an additional guarantee for her accuracy.

Her taste for reading never left her or abated to the last. In
reference to a remark (in Boswell) on the irksomeness of books to
people of advanced age, she writes: "Not to me at eighty years old:
being grieved that year (1819) particularly, I was forced upon study
to relieve my mind, and it had the due effect. I wrote this note in
1820."

She sometimes gives anecdotes of authors. Thus, in the letter just
quoted, she says: "Lord Byron protests his wife was a fortune without
money, a belle without beauty, and a blue-stocking without either wit
or learning." But her literary information grew scanty as she grew
old: "The literary world (she writes in 1821) is to me terra
incognita, far more deserving of the name, now Parry and Ross are
returned, than any part of the polar regions:" and her opinions of
the rising authors are principally valuable as indications of the
obstacles which budding reputations must overcome. "Pindar's fine
remark respecting the different effects of music on different
characters, holds equally true of genius: so many as are not
delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder
either recognises it as a projected form of his own being, that moves
before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a
spectre."[1] The octogenarian critic of the Johnsonian school recoils
from "Frankenstein" as from an incarnation of the Evil Spirit: she
does not know what to make of the "Tales of my Landlord"; and she
inquires of an Irish acquaintance whether she retained recollection
enough of her own country to be entertained with "that strange
caricature, Castle Rack Rent." Contemporary judgments such as these
(not more extravagant than Horace Walpole's) are to the historian of
literature what fossil remains are to the geologist.

[Footnote 1: Coleridge, "Aids to Reflection."]

Although perhaps no biographical sketch was ever executed, as a
labour of love, without an occasional attack of what Lord Macaulay
calls the _Lues Boswelliana_ or fever of admiration, I hope it is
unnecessary for me to say that I am not setting up Mrs. Piozzi as a
model letter-writer, or an eminent author, or a pattern of the
domestic virtues, or a fitting object of hero or heroine worship in
any capacity. All I venture to maintain is, that her life and
character, if only for the sake of the "associate forms," deserve to
be vindicated against unjust reproach, and that she has written many
things which are worth snatching from oblivion or preserving from
decay.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.

NEW-STREET SQUARE

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23