HESTER PIOZZI AND PENELOPE PENNINGTON.* THE letters in this ample
collection do not begin till after the period in which Mrs. Thrale lives in literary history, She became Mrs. Piozzi in 1784. Johnson died within a few months. She compiled her Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson in 1786, and the first of the letters to Sophia Penelope Weston, after- wards Mrs. Pennington, was written nearly three years later. It is her intimacy with Dr. Johnson that has made her famous in literary history. Her "Anecdotes" are valuable only because every record of Johnson is valuable, and Boswell has immorta- lized them by his malice. Her poems and her prose-writings are the works of an amiable and sensible, rather than a highly talented, amateur. She was a member of the brilliant coterie to which Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, and Mrs. Carter belonged, but if these ladies esteemed her for her vivacity, they were disposed to find fault with the "colloquialism" of her literary style. Boswell, when he first mentions her, strains his generosity by describing her as "a lady of lively talents, improved by education," but he quotes with evident relish Dr. Johnson's remark : "Her learning is that of a school-boy in one of the lower forms." But it is certain that Johnson availed himself to the utmost of her hospitality; that he was stimulated by her vivacity, and, as Boswell tells us, gratified by her admiration; and that he proved very irksome to her at the time when she contemplated her second marriage.
But these troubles were all over at the time when these letters to an intimate friend begin, excepting in so far as they are reflected by the lasting estrangement of her daughters, who never completely forgave her for marrying a foreigner and a Papist. At the same time, the persons of whom she constantly speaks are no longer public characters like Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and Garrick. Mrs. Siddona and her interesting daughters still belong to her intimate circle; Murphy is still alive; and Madame D'Arblay, "always smooth, always alluring," appears from time to time. Mrs. Piozzi writes familiarly of matters not pecu- liarly interesting in themselves, and not expressed so felicitously that they become interesting by her treatment. Her own health, Piozzi's health, Cecilia's health, the weather, the scenery, and household affairs are discussed so often and • II...Intimate Letters of Hester Piaui and Penelope Pennington. 1785'2821. Editedby Oswald O. Knapp. Illustrated. London: Jobe Lane. [lee. net.]
so fully that they become wearisome, But we need not agree' with Mrs. Pennington's conventional opinion expressed in a turgid obituary notice: "If some incline to condemn a colloquial style, which perhaps she was too fond of indulging, ell must admire the power of genius and splendour of talent she displayed." On the contrary, it is her colloquial style rather than her "power of genius" which we are disposed to admire. Mrs. Pennington is more to the point when she says that her friend's letters "were always novel, and had the peculiar tact of always supplying matter for a reply."
This was no small merit at a time when, we most remember, letter-writing was not only regarded as an accomplishment, if not a fine art, but was also a means of disseminating news about public matters, and to some extent fulfilled a function which the modern newspaper has usurped. If Mrs. Piozzi's com- ments upon personal friends and household events are little more than the gossip of an affable, shrewd, vivacious, and warm-hearted woman, her reports of public events have the value of contemporary evidence. We see bow news was handed round from person to person, and then transmitted by letter to a friend, who showed it to yet other friends :—
"lady Inchiquin, who met us at Mr. Macnamara's yesterday, has seen a letter from Miss Edgeworth, sister to the late King of France's Confessor. Her brother told her that the poor injured Sovereign said, when they drowned his voice on hie attempt to harangue his subjects from the scaffold, ' They will not listen, well! I shall be heard in Heaven,' and so to prayers."
There is much talk, of course, about the French Revolution —" What strange times are these, with our false Christs too, and false Prophets "—about the rise in the prices of food, and the expected chastisement of the French. Mrs. Piozzi discusses also the new books that come out and the new plays. But her interests ere evidently still with her old eighteenth-century circle. In the later letters there is no mention of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, llazlitt, or any of the most original of the new writers, thought it is only fair to say that a hiatus in the letters from 1804 to 1819 partly accounts for this neglect, She was not interested in Scott's novels, but admired hie poems, and Lord Byron was too considerable a social per- sonage not- to have come within her ken. he "book is so seducing, so amusing, and so cheap, it will soon be in every hand that can hold one." But she objected to his flippant treatment of religion : "As Carter said, my religion is my freehold estate, and whoever tries to shake my title to it ie an enemy."
The letters are mainly interesting as a running comment upon public events written by a woman well informed—in spite of Boswell's strictures on her inaccuracy—intelligent, and observant. They reveal her as a kindly, generous, enthusiastic woman, whose gift for gossip might easily be mistaken for wit. Mr. Oswald Knapp has spared no pains in explaining the lettere and filling in the narrative, and if we have any com- plaint against his editing it is only that he might have omitted many pages from Mrs. Piozzi's correspondence which are not likely to enhance her " Johnsonian" reputation.
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