My father confessed himself by no means so able a diviner, not having had time to consult the stars, though he lived in the house of Sir Isaac Newton. But, anxious to draw Dr. Johnson into conversation, he ventured to interrupt him with Mrs. Thrale’s conjuring request relative to Bach’s concert.
The Doctor, comprehending his drift, good-naturedly put away his book, and, see-sawing, with a very humorous smile, drolly repeated: ‘Bach, sir?—Bach’s concert? And pray, sir, who is Bach? Is he a piper?’
You may imagine what exclamations followed such a question.
Mrs. Thrale gave a detailed account of the nature of the concert, and the fame of Mr. Bach, and the many charming performances she had heard, with all their varieties, in his rooms.
When there was a pause, ‘Pray, madam,’ said he, with the calmest gravity, ‘what is the expense for all this?’
‘Oh,’ answered she, ‘the expense is much trouble and solicitation to obtain a subscriber’s ticket—or else, half a guinea!’
‘Trouble and solicitation,’ he replied, ‘I will have nothing to do with; but, if it be so fine, I would be willing to give’—he hesitated, and then finished with—‘eighteen-pence.’
Ha! ha! Chocolate being then brought, we returned to the drawing-room; and Dr. Johnson, when drawn away from the books, freely, and with social good-humour, gave himself up to conversation.
The intended dinner of Mrs. Montagu being mentioned, Dr. Johnson laughingly told us that he had received the most flattering note that he had ever read, or that anybody else had ever read, of invitation from that lady.
‘So have I, too!’ cried Mrs. Thrale. ‘So, if a note from Mrs. Montagu is to be boasted of, I beg mine may not be forgotten.’
‘Your note, madam,’ cried Dr. Johnson, smiling, ‘can bear no comparison with mine; for I am at the head of all the philosophers—she says.’
‘And I,’ returned Mrs. Thrale, ‘have all the Muses in my train.’
‘A fair battle!’ cried my father. ‘Come, compliment for compliment, and see who will hold out longest!’
‘I am afraid for Mrs. Thrale,’ said Mr. Seward; ‘for I know that Mrs. Montagu exerts all her forces when she sings the praises of Dr. Johnson.’
‘Oh yes,’ cried Mrs. Thrale, ‘she has often praised him till he has been ready to faint.’
‘Well,’ said my father, ‘you two ladies must get him fairly between you to-day, and see which can lay on the paint the thickest—Mrs. Montagu or Mrs. Thrale.’
‘I had rather,’ said the Doctor very composedly, ‘go to Bach’s concert!’ ”
Not long after the morning call described in our last extract, Johnson spent an evening in St. Martin’s Street, for the purpose of being introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Greville. The Doctor came with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. Signor Piozzi was there, invited to amuse the company by his musical skill. But the account of the second visit reads much less pleasantly than that of the first. This is due in great part to the different behaviour of the principal guests. Burney’s old patron, Greville, had for years been going steadily down hill, through indulgence in play and other extravagances. The loss of his fortune, perhaps, inclined him to assert more stiffly the claims of his rank. At any rate, in presence of the Thrales and Johnson, he thought it necessary to appear superior to the brewer’s wealth and the author’s fame. Johnson seems to have only half perceived his disdain; but the Doctor was not in a mood for talking, and Greville made no attempt to draw him out. Nor are the actors only changed on this subsequent occasion; the narrator is changed also. Instead of a letter by Fanny Burney, dashed off in the hey-day of youth and spirits, we have a formal account by her later self, Madame d’Arblay, composed in the peculiar style which makes a great part of the ‘Memoirs’ such difficult reading. However, as this account records Mrs. Thrale’s first meeting with the man who was destined to exercise a fatal influence on her after-life, we give a portion of it here:
“Mrs. Thrale, of the whole coterie, was alone at her ease. She feared not Dr. Johnson; for fear made no part of her composition; and with Mrs. Greville, as a fair rival genius, she would have been glad, from curiosity, to have had the honour of a little tilt, in full carelessness of its event; for though triumphant when victorious, she had spirits so volatile, and such utter exemption from envy or spleen, that she was gaily free from mortification when vanquished. But she knew the meeting to have been fabricated for Dr. Johnson, and, therefore, though not without difficulty, constrained herself to be passive.
“When, however, she observed the sardonic disposition of Mr. Greville to stare around him at the whole company in curious silence, she felt a defiance against his aristocracy beat in every pulse; for, however grandly he might look back to the long ancestry of the Brookes and the Grevilles, she had a glowing consciousness that her own blood, rapid and fluent, flowed in her veins from Adam of Saltsburg;[30] and, at length, provoked by the dulness of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could have been caused by a dearth the most barren of human faculties, she grew tired of the music, and yet more tired of remaining, what as little suited her inclinations as her abilities, a mere cipher in the company; and, holding such a position, and all its concomitants, to be ridiculous, her spirits rose rebelliously above her control, and, in a fit of utter recklessness of what might be thought of her by her fine new acquaintance, she suddenly but softly arose, and stealing on tip-toe behind Signor Piozzi, who was accompanying himself on the pianoforte to an animated aria parlante, with his back to the company, and his face to the wall, she ludicrously began imitating him by squaring her elbows, elevating them with ecstatic shrugs of the shoulders, and casting up her eyes, while languishingly reclining her head, as if she were not less enthusiastically, though somewhat more suddenly, struck with the transports of harmony than himself.
“This grotesque ebullition of ungovernable gaiety was not perceived by Dr. Johnson, who faced the fire, with his back to the performer and the instrument. But the amusement which such an unlooked-for exhibition caused to the party was momentary; for Dr. Burney, shocked lest the poor Signor should observe, and be hurt by this mimicry, glided gently round to Mrs. Thrale, and, with something between pleasantry and severity, whispered to her, ‘Because, madam, you have no ear yourself for music, will you destroy the attention of all who, in that one point, are otherwise gifted?’
“It was now that shone the brightest attribute of Mrs. Thrale, sweetness of temper. She took this rebuke with a candour, and a sense of its justice the most amiable; she nodded her approbation of the admonition; and, returning to her chair, quietly sat down, as she afterwards said, like a pretty little miss, for the remainder of one of the most humdrum evenings that she had ever passed.
“Strange, indeed, strange and most strange, the event considered, was this opening intercourse between Mrs. Thrale and Signor Piozzi. Little could she imagine that the person she was thus called away from holding up to ridicule, would become, but a few years afterwards, the idol of her fancy, and the lord of her destiny! And little did the company present imagine, that this burlesque scene was but the first of a drama the most extraordinary of real life, of which these two persons were to be the hero and heroine; though, when the catastrophe was known, this incident, witnessed by so many, was recollected and repeated from coterie to coterie throughout London, with comments and sarcasms of endless variety.”
15. James Harris, author of ‘Hermes; or a Philosophical Inquiry into Universal Grammar,’ and several other works. Entering Parliament in 1761, he became a Lord of the Admiralty, and subsequently a Lord of the Treasury, etc. He died in 1786.
16. Author of ‘Travels in Spain.’
17.