Elephant and rattlesnake
Peter Quennell
Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale: The 'Anecdotes' of Mrs Piozzi in their Original Form Edited and with an Introduction by Richard Ingrams (Chatto & Windus/The Hogarth Press £10.95)
Henry Thrale, though a notably stolid and undemonstrative character, had a generous disposition. At Streatham Place, the handsome country house he occupied just outside London, he loved to entertain his friends, chief among them, of course, being Samuel Johnson, who, early in 1765, became a regular member of the house- hold, and would remain its social and intellectual pivot for another two decades. Though Thrale's attitude towards his wife was rather less kindly and considerate than his treatment of his guests, he still re- spected her intelligence, which certainly deserved his regard – she had a quick, well-educated mind; and in September 1776, when they had been married nearly 13 years, and Hester Thrale was 35, and had borne him 11 children, he presented her with half-a-dozen splendid manuscript books, stout quarto volumes that had covers of undressed calf, each bearing the title Thraliana stamped upon a fine red label.
Johnson had long ago recommended her
to keep a daily record of her life and thoughts, and 'all the Observations I might make or hear'; and, once her husband had supplied this spacious 'Repository', she obediently set to work. She did not omit trivia or 'Nonsense new and old'; but Thraliana also included vivid sketches of herself, her stern, unloving consort and their difficult relationship, as well as her own impressions of Johnson, that, since there were some aspects of his personal existence she had studied far more closely, often provide an extremely valuable sup- plement to Boswell's majestic full-length portrait. The complete text of Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale 1776-1809 first came out in 1942; but in March 1786, Johnson having died in De- cember 1784, the elderly diarist, by that time married to the good-hearted Italian musician Gabriel Piozzi, published her Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D, a little book that proved extremely popular, delighting even George HI, and was followed in 1787 by Sir John Hawkins's somewhat pedestrian biography and by Boswell's masterpiece in 1791.
Mrs Piozzi had been abroad when she heard of her old friend's death; but she was carrying Thraliand in her luggage; and for the precious material she needed she dug into those massive volumes, and extracted enough to fill a printed book. She did not, however, always choose wisely and, as she transcribed, sometimes succumbed to the temptation of lending certain passages a statelier turn. Richard Ingrams, therefore, while he prepared the present edition of the Anecdotes, hit on the excellent plan of replacing the author's revised version with the text we find in Thraliana, thus fre- quently improving the effect of a speech she reports and giving it a more Johnsonian accent.
The tone of the speaker's voice, as it rolls across page after page, though easy to parody, is almost impossible to imitate. And what could be more characteristic of his conversational style, with its peculiar blend of wit and learning and, now and then, imaginative fancy, than his descrip- tion of a fellow conversationalist, who, besides being fat and slow, was impeded by a violent occasional stammer?
Of Colonel Bodens's Conversation I . . . heard Johnson say that it reminded him of the Aloe Tree; that blossoms once in a hundred years, & whose Shoot is attended with a cracking Noise re- sembling an Explosion; when that is over all is quiet till the return of the periodical Effort.
Dr Johnson by Mrs Thrale is an unusual- ly entertaining and nicely illustrated pro- duction; and I hope that Thraliana itself, as edited by Katherine C. Balderston, may now attract some fresh readers. An ex- traordinary combination of autobiography and anecdotage, it deals with all the main events of a long, adventurous career; from her happy childhood, when she would sit 'kicking my Heels on a Corn Binn' and watch an old coachman groom the 'four great ramping War-horses, chevaux en- tiers', that drew her paternal grand- mother's carriage, to the years of servitude she spent at Streatham Place — Johnson and Mr Thrale were both domestic bullies — and thence to her final achievement of freedom by marrying the good Piozzi, despite Johnson's pathetic remonstrances and her grown-up daughters' furious pro- tests.
A woman of spirit, she retained her courage till the end, and cracked an irreverent joke upon her death-bed. It was her spirit that had most enchanted John- son. He likened her, she tells us, to a rattlesnake: 'Many have felt your Venom, few have escaped your Attractions, and all the World knows you have the Rattle'; and she compared him to an elephant, 'whose Weight would crush the Crocodile, & whose Proboscis could from its Force and Ductility either lift up the Buffalo, or pick up the Pin'. Alas, the alliance of these two gifted and powerful creatures was to have a sad conclusion; deserted by the self-willed serpent, the noble pachyderm died broken- hearted. Nothing could console him for the loss of his 'beloved mistress'. He was doing his best, he assured Fanny Burney, to 'drive her wholly from my mind', and retreated, as death gradually approached, into a mood of 'callous stupor'.
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