Adoption of John Salusbury Piozzi—The Canterbury Tales—Bath Riots, 1800—Chancery suit with Miss Thrale—Bach-y-graig restored—Retrospection published, 1801—The Blagdon controversy—Political epigram.

The Piozzis were at Bath on Christmas Day, when she invites Mrs. Pennington to their lodgings for the New Year. The date of the next letter indicates that their visit lasted about four months.

Brynbella, Sunday, Mar. 10, 1799.

First of friends in every sense of the word, dear and kind Mrs. Pennington! what a charming letter have you written me! and how consoling it was to receive such a compensation—although a small one—for the converse I have so great reason to regret.

Our journey was excellent, and mended on us ev'ry Stage, till the sun lighted up our lovely Vale of Clwydd, and never seen before ascending the last hill, has smiled upon us ever since.

I shall not begin work till after Easter, we have enough to employ us now in surveying our sweet place, and recounting the Braave alteraations, as the Fool said to Mr. Whalley....

Are not you sorry for the poor tricked and betrayed, but ever courageous Neapolitans; of which those were happiest who left their dead bodies in the street, defending their lovely city to the last? Vesuvius seems to have half a mind to save further disgrace on that country, and will perhaps swallow it up, from the French, or with the French; who knows?

Well! I got dear Dr. Randolph's blessing, and a kind squeeze by the hand of his amiable Lady, before we left Bath: and then I resolved to mind my own business, and let the Public think of its own affairs. They mingle so with mine however, that I cannot separate them, as Siddons does. Her little girl seemed bent upon shewing me, that day we dined at Miss Lee's, and made our Partenza, how well you were versed in the knowledge of her family character. She is sure enough no common child, no healthy child, and no good-humoured child. If she remains at Belvedere House, she will not long be a spoiled child; for those Ladies have the way, and will make her a charming creature. We parents meantime seldom think our nestlings can be improved. It is therefore very seldom, (never I think,) that we feel obliged to those who bring our Babies into what the world calls good order. I should think it happiness for Cecilia to remain where she is, and felicity for Miss Lees to return her safe home again in April....

Mrs. Mostyn sent the old Nurse I told you of, over here in a Post Chaise, to see Brynbella while we were away. "What a place!" exclaimed she, "and what fools the builders to plan a thing it is impossible they should live to finish. But they have an heir now, come from Italy I find." This is the only domestic news which could interest you; and I know Mr. Pennington is kind enough to care about whatever concerns us and our little boy....

As far back as October 1798 King Ferdinand of Naples had raised an army to act under the Austrian General Mack, for the expulsion of the French. Nelson's arrival in December encouraged him to make an expedition against Rome which was, for the moment, successful; but in a short time the French retook it, and marched on Naples, which they occupied in January, after sixty-four hours street fighting with the Lazzaroni, the regular troops being away. The King took refuge on Nelson's ship and escaped to Palermo, General Mack and the army had to surrender, and the territory became, for a short time, the Parthenopean Republic.

The Rev. Francis Randolph, D.D., Prebendary of Bristol, and afterwards Vicar of Banwell, was a preacher of some note, and for some time acted as chaplain and tutor in English to the Duchess of Kent, at the little Court of Amorbach, shortly before the birth of the Princess Victoria.

One result of the disturbances in Italy was the bringing over to England and adoption of a son of Mr. Piozzi's brother Gianbatista, merchant of Brescia, born in 1783, and christened John Salusbury. He assumed the additional surname of Salusbury in 1813, and was knighted while High Sheriff of Denbigh a few years later. On his marriage Mrs. Piozzi gave him Brynbella and her Welsh estate, a proceeding which probably completed the estrangement of her daughters, though they had been well provided for by their father's will, and Miss Thrale had declined the offer of it as a dowry for herself.

Brynbella, 5 Apr. 1799.

My dear Mrs. Pennington's letters are always delightful, and the little gleam of sunshine given by the Archduke's victory strikes across the middle of your last so prettily! So like the darling brightness that illuminates our valley just now, with gloom and gathering storm all round it....

You see [Mrs. Jackson's] conjectures about the Play were right after all. Mrs. Radcliffe owns herself Author, as Susan Thrale writes me word, and Jane de Montfort will come out immediately. She says not a syllable of Mr. Whalley's performance. Lord bless me, my dear! His unfortunate niece, cydevant Fanny Sage, sent to me yesterday for £20; and said she was detain'd, (for debt I trow,) at our poor, petty town of St. Asaph, two miles off. A tall, ill-looking man on horseback brought the letter, but will not, I hope, revenge my refusal of his Lady's request, when Dumouriez shall have set all the wild Irish at full liberty. I was half afraid, sure enough, yet little disposed to give what would make 40 honest cottagers happy, to a gay lass whom I never liked in her best days, and who never had any claims on my friendship, which she now talks so loudly of.

Well! and your little favourite John Salusbury! Susanna Thrale has been to Streatham on purpose, I fancy, to gratify hers and her family's curiosity. So she saw a little boy with my name, and my husband's face; and I know not which was the greatest recommendation of the two—to her....

With regard to public affairs, our domestic traytors terrify me most; but if French valour should, by this late victory, get into discredit abroad, perhaps it would not be so much the Ton to imitate their proceedings here at home, and we should remember Hannah More's prediction of the Crane-neck-turn. If they can be made to run they will find no place that will receive them I believe. All honest men, and women too, are their natural enemies: and a Grison girl said to a gentleman I know something of—"Why, dear Sir, what should we sit still for, like figures made of Papier-machée, till our houses are burned down, our parents mangled and our free will violated? Better go out with the troops, and sell our lives at least at as high a price as we can." The same gentleman wrote his sister word that the high roads were covered with female corpses, which he gallop'd over. These are, far as my reading goes, new notions, and new occurrences....

The victory was no doubt that won against Jourdan and the French army of the Rhine, by a vastly superior force under the Archduke Charles, at Stockach. His despatch is dated 25th March, but the full account did not reach England till April.

Miss Thrale's information about the new play was not quite accurate. De Montfort, a Tragedy of Hate, was one of a series of Plays on the Passions by Joanna Baillie, but it was published anonymously, and several well-known writers, including Sir Walter Scott, were suspected of its authorship. There is a note about it in Mrs. Piozzi's Commonplace Book as follows: "I remember a knot of Literary Characters met at Miss Lees' House in Bath, deciding—contrary to my own judgement—that a learned man must have been the author; and I, chiefly to put the Company in a good humour, maintained it was a woman. Merely, said I, because both the heroines are Dames Passées, and a man has no notion of mentioning a female after she is five and twenty. What a goose Joanna must have been to reveal her sex and name! Spite and malice have pursued her ever since.... She is a Zebra devoured by African Ants—the Termites Bellicosus."

Wensday 29 May 1799.

Not one Oak in Leaf.

On the very evening of the day I receive your last kind letter, dear Friend, I write to acknowledge both. The home post will tell you nothing you like tho', except that our accounts of little Salusbury are all good: but poor Uncle is always having a bad foot, and as you say, if it were not for the comfortable news from Italy, he would be low enough.

This blowing, blighting weather ruins us all; my poor cottagers are sick, with Agues chiefly, and Dropsies; with broken hearts too, poor things, when their horses drop under even empty carts, for full ones they cannot drag. Our Hay here has been at one Penny o'pound, our Beef at ten Pence. This approaches very near to famine, but may justly be termed scarcity; and the same dreadful wind which retards the growth of all vegetation, and restrains the hand of industry in our own Island, has driven our protecting fleet from Cadiz harbour, and let the French and Spaniards form a junction.

Meanwhile charming Hannah More was right in her conversation, as in her book; there has been a Crane-neck-turn, as she expressed it, and things are certainly mending on the Continent. If Ireland should come to her senses, and unite with us in abhorrence of French principles and French seducers, who could promise them assistance and never carry it, but go on another scheme, while the rebels there were waiting the Fleet's arrival—it might be lucky that Lord Bridport did let them escape. Poor fellow! how you do hate that man! Very comically, and very unreasonably indeed; for when we saw him he was, as the phrase is, out of his element, and looked to be sure something like a fish out of water. But I never heard anything amiss of him in my life, and believe he will not be found, at the critical moment, to carry "Two Faces under a Hood."

Have you seen Dr. and Mrs. Randolph lately? What do they say about these Riflers of Sweets that we hear so much of? Bath has been a scene of odd robberies by gay Lotharios, "who scorn to ask the lordly owners' leave." It makes me only laugh, but I trust Hannah More would say, like Benvolio, "No, Coz, I rather weep."[13] Glorious creature! How she writes! Finding new reasons to enforce old Virtues, and adorning her sacred sentiments with brilliancy that throws rays round all her periods. It would be doing her too much wrong to suppose her capable of regarding the nonsense talked against her by Misses mad to see their Mammas reading the new book with approbation, and looking at them over their spectacles at every interesting passage. She must be invulnerable to wounds from such weak hands, sure. The old heroes in Homer,

By Pallas guarded thro' the dreadful field,

Saw swords beside them innocently play,

While darts were bid to turn their points away.

All they can say and do only contributes to shew how greatly such a book was wanted. Mr. Whalley's thinking he has contributed to Siddons's fame is pretty enough; she thinks her contribution useful to him, no doubt. The writer of Pizarro is censured for giving her part to Mrs. Jordan....

The intelligence concerning Mrs. Radcliffe's having written that play on hatred seems to have been premature. Oh, how your account of Mrs. Jackson's domestic situation presses Hannah More's book upon one's heart! The Italians have a proverb to say that there are only three things worth caring about, La Salute, l'Anima, and la Borsa; one's Soul, one's Health, and one's Purse. We risque all three to make our fair daughters accomplish'd. Doctor Johnson said that whoever found their mothers admired and reverenced by that circle which forms a little silk-worm world round every individual, would add their admiration and reverence, merely because they saw other people pay them theirs. "I cared," says he, "nothing for my parents, because nobody cared for them." Mrs. Jackson's children cannot make that their excuse. She has been a woman—since I have known her—particularly petted by her friends, and those friends have been people eminent for good taste and good sense.

Are the Canterbury Tales come out yet? Nobody has sent them me, and I will not write again to Harriet Lee till I have read them. Sophia is in town with her little protégée, who, if she cannot conjure down

The pale moon from the sapphire sky,

May draw Endymion from the moon,

perhaps; and I really wish her good luck. Tickell's Ætherial Spirit is a new med'cine much in fashion, it is so finely dephlegmated, the Apothecaries say. I think there is as much pure spirit, and as little phlegm about the tiny Bath Belle as can be imagined. Some rich man may take her, I hope.

Have you felt an interest in these African discoveries? They are things of prodigious curiosity, rate them at the lowest. I think very seriously about them for my own part, but none of my correspondents seem caring much concerning that subject, unless 'tis Miss Thrale, from whom I get about 4 or 5 letters in a year,—and she has been ill this Spring. So has everybody. I watch the weathercock all day, but the cold blight continues. The leaves which try to come out look like fry'd Parsley round a dish of Soles....

In April 1797, when it was expected that the Spanish and French fleets would effect a junction, Lord St. Vincent was ordered to blockade the former at Cadiz. He held his post under many difficulties, caused by the mutinous spirit which had spread from the Nore and Spithead, through 1798, but broke down under the strain, and in June 1799 resigned his command to Baron, afterwards Viscount Keith, and husband of Hester Thrale. Meanwhile the French fleet was blockaded in Brest by Lord Bridport, now Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Squadron, but in April the French slipped out and sailed for the Mediterranean, while Bridport went to look for them off the coast of Ireland.

Mr. Whalley's play was a five-act tragedy called The Castle of Montval, performed "with universal applause" at Drury Lane. The British Critic reviewer, though he had not seen the performance, thought it interesting enough to deserve a permanent place on the stage. But the measure of success it obtained was due to the acting of Mrs. Siddons as the Countess, which the author acknowledged by dedicating the second edition to her.

Elizabeth Anne Tickell, the pupil whom Sophia Lee evidently expected to make a sensation in London society, was the daughter of Richard Tickell the dramatist and Mary Linley, the sister of Mrs. Sheridan, who had died in 1787. With regard to her beauty there was little difference of opinion, but Sally Siddons, who knew her well, describes her as an "every-day character," without talent or originality, and "never heard anything so tiresome" as her singing. She was never "taken," but died unmarried in 1860.

The "Ethereal Anodyne Spirit" was a quack medicine invented by William Tickell, a surgeon, who also lived at Bath, and may have been a relation of Richard.

Brynbella, Wensday 17 Jul. 1799.

Your letter, dearest Mrs. Pennington, is like yourself, full of true friendship, honest loyalty and sound criticism. Freedom from prejudices, as principals are called now o' days, we must not come to you for.... I do believe you were right in that unjustifiable conjecture of yours concerning the death of those Deputies at Rastadt.... But Retrospect of past ages can shew no perfidy beyond that, if so it should prove upon investigation. The Archduke now seems to act with his hands untied, and co-operates with Suwarrow in everything, yet I suspect something behind the curtain still. The Emperor is willing enough to see Italy freed, but does not want Louis Dixhuit on his throne again, I suppose; whereas the Russians and English are trying to accomplish y^t purpose with all their might, and no lasting peace can be obtained but by his restoration. We shall see how 'twill end.

You are droll indeed in your account of the New Canterbury Tales, I have not read them yet.... When Romances first were written they went by the name of Incredibilities; but people soon found out that Fiction looks best the more she endeavour to resemble Truth. It grows however a mighty tedious thing, after a certain age, to keep filling one's head with flitting dreams so, turning one's mind into a Magic Lanthorn for Shadows and Ombres Chinoises to pass over. If incredibilities are desirable, we can hear enough of Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn. As that Lady told you at some place that Mrs. Moyston, as she called her, made all the talk,—and so she does, God knows.

Well, any nonsense but dishonourable nonsense, disgraceful folly such as Honoria Gubbins has exhibited. You know I always said she looked like a Bacchante Girl, but she admired nothing except Siddons I remember. In good time. Dear, charming Siddons! How triumphantly must she have looked in the first and last scene of Pizarro! And what a happy contrast Sheridan has made between her artificial character, and Cora's natural one! Yet I cannot seriously approve of a Heroic Tragedy in prose. Domestic Tragedy, George Barnwell, or the Gamester, or the Stranger, would lose the interest they now gain in our hearts, if they spoke any but colloquial and domestic language. Poetry is made on purpose to adorn the lofty sentiments of Rolla, and Cora's song is the sweetest thing in the whole play,—only because 'tis verse.

Poor Cora! She is not of your mind, that love is of no consequence compared with a hundred other things; and that she should have completely no other idea present to her mind, makes her so natural, so interesting, and so adorable. What is stranger than love itself, and love is strange enough too,—is that one should never have done admiring that selfish passion when represented in works of fancy. I remember an old Alderman of London, who, when there was loud talk of invasion 20 years ago or more, said among a dozen people once at my house: "Well! I care not, for my part, if the Island was devoured to-morrow, so as my wife and child were safe, and I had enough to keep them with." This patriotic sentiment met with no approbation at all from an old Alderman in real life; yet this is the sentiment that Cora expresses all through five acts, and not only her auditors in the Pit and Boxes, but Rolla himself likes her the better for it. So you see Fiction may resemble Truth in some things, while if Truth resembles Fiction we hiss her out of doors.

Poor dear old Mr. Jones is very bad, and like to die, or has been like to die, and I am very sorry indeed; for though there's but little poetry or criticism about old Mr. Jones, he is a good friend and a valuable member of society, and wishes well to my Master and to me....

Mrs. Siddons goes to Edinburgh, I hear, but by what you say of Sally, I trust she cannot be of the party. Miss Thrale is in Scotland, and will have the pleasure of seeing her, as I saw her at Bath. No letter have I ever received from Marlbro' Street but one, and that was from the Master of the Mansion....

The little boy comes next week, next month I mean, with Davies.

Austria, having signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, and received unexpectedly favourable terms from Napoleon, agreed to hold a conference at Rastadt, and (by secret articles) to induce the German States to cede the left bank of the Rhine to France. While the conference was proceeding the Directory had occupied Switzerland, though Massena, Jourdan, and Scherer had all suffered defeats. The French envoys were ordered to leave the town, and were murdered on the road by Austrian hussars. The Emperor expressed deep abhorrence of a crime which aroused general indignation, and helped the Directory to fill up their depleted armies.

Alexander Vasilievitch Suvoroff or Suwarrow, a Russian general, had been sent to help the Austrians. He took command of the army in Italy, where he beat Moreau, Macdonald, and Joubert, but owing to jealousy he was transferred to Switzerland, and believing himself betrayed by the Austrians, he retired to Russia, and died in disgrace.

Brynbella, 21 Aug. 1799.

My dear Friend,—Your letter is like yourself, wise and kind, and I am willing to join in your wish for early meeting this year, but not for an early winter. Oh! little do you Towns folk know how prejudicial is this weather to Country Farmers, Labourers, etc. The Shoemaker and his apprentice at Bristol make so many more boots and clogs, and some Bath Chairmen get a few shillings extra: but my honest neighbours have but just barely bread, in the strictest sense; mere bread, and that made of Barley too, for their families, during such winters as this cruel summer will infallibly produce. Mr. Piozzi and I shall scarce be suffered to get thro' the Village, they will so cling and cry round us, and beg we will stay another month, another week, etc.

When the Gardener came yesterday, scratching his head, and saying there would be no wall-fruit this year, I could hardly answer him civilly; but I did say, "For God's sake, think about the hay and corn, and hang the fine people and their wall-fruit." The produce of whole meadows may be seen swimming down our over-flooded River to the sea this moment, and carrying with it the subsistence of hundreds of innocents.

May this fine Expedition make amends for all! It will, if peace and abatement of necessary exertion be its consequences. English pride will be bravely swelled, that's certain, if we can thus give law and order and happiness to Europe. Are such blessings within hope? People say they are almost within grasp. Meanwhile let us try to live that we may see these good days. Mrs. Bagot, the Bishop's wife's death has affected my spirits strangely. I got a pain in my stomach on the instant Allen told me the news, and it has never wholly left me since. She din'd here in high spirits on our Wedding day, three weeks ago, and expired on Saturday morning. The Ton men and Ton women bear these things without concern, and prove that fashion can do more than philosophy towards hardening one's heart, but my nervous fingers shake while I write about it....

To divert thought I took up the Canterbury Tales which Mr. Gillon had just brought me. Harriet's management of the pretty Mamma making the man miserable so unconsciously is very good, and in this age, scarcely violates probability. The other story is too romantic, and the ghost part too in-artificial, one sees it could be only Carey. For love, it abounds but little with that, I think. Julia keeps her passion very quiet; one is most interested about Agnes and Carey.

Real life meanwhile affords stranger occurrences than any novel can show. Mr. Conant, the London Magistrate, told Mr. Gillon, who told us, the following tale not a fortnight ago. Some little London shopkeepers sent out their girl of eleven years old, with a baby 8 months old in her arms, upon some errand, I forget what, but no further off than the short street's end. A young woman, genteely dress'd, stop't the girl, and beg'd her to cross over and ask the price of a gay coloured handkerchief hanging at a window, promising that she would hold the infant till his sister returned. When she came back however, both little boy and young woman were vanish'd; and the girl ran back, half wild, to her parents, and told the story. They flew from the Counter in search of the thief, and desperate with rage and terror, exhibited to the neighbours a certainty that the shop might be easily plundered while their distress employed every thought. Accordingly the man returning home at night, found his poor dwelling robbed of many valuable articles, while the girl, to whom all this confusion was owing, had hid herself under the bed for fear of a beating, and the father was persuaded she too was lost. The mother, parting from her husband, who had wandered over six parishes, swore she would never see home again without her baby, and remained out the whole day and the whole night in search. Morning found her, much exhausted, at a chandler's shop door in Edgeware Road, and when it opened she went in to buy a bit of cheese. A little wench went in with her, and the mistress of the house, seeing her anguish, kindly asked the cause. "I've lost my child," said she, "my dear little boy." "My mammy has found one," says the wench, "and don't know what to do with it." They ran together to a Green-stall, and found Baby safe in that woman's possession, who said a young gentlewoman had pretended to buy Sellery of her, and while she went backwards to look for some, threw down the infant, and was seen no more. Mr. Conant was applied to, and found a cause for all. The well-dress'd lady was a Chambermaid, who had a child for whose maintenance she was paid, altho' it died during the first week; and the father had resolved, that hapless day, to see his son. Molly had nothing for it but to borrow one, and when the purpose was served, to rid her hands on't, and no Novel can bring to a reader's fancy more perfect distress than these poor parents suffered. Their girl, however, who lay concealed till mother and brother returned, told her tale so well that a subscription was raised, and all went better than before in the little shop in Silver Street, Carnaby Market.

So instead of our best com^s to Dr. and Mrs. Randolph, instead of affec^te regards to Mr. Pennington, or Bon Mots of our little John Salusbury, here's a page from y^e Romance of Real Life, unadorned by your true friend H. L. Piozzi, and for this you will pay 8d.

Brynbella, 17 Oct. 1799.

Do you know, dear Mrs. Pennington, that Mrs. Randolph and I are in correspondence? We are indeed, and 'tis all about Bath, and Laura Place, and No. 1, and Christmas Holidays, and our dear Friend from Dowry Square: and not a word of the dismal, the more than dismal gloom, which these last accounts from abroad have thickened round us once again on approach of foggy November....

We are at this instant trembling from apprehension that the French will fall upon Milan, and make an example of those that called in their enemies. I'm glad my little boy is far away from them all. I think you will find him improved, unless he falls off this half-year, and begins to change his nice little teeth, etc.... All the Jacobins will be up now, and happy I suppose; but let them remember we have taken Surinam in one Continent, and Seringapatam in another. The money is ours, and the Commodities (which their friends the French must buy,) are all ours; and the very warehouses in every port are too little to hold our riches. Few of them are thinkers deep enough to know that wealth, at such a moment as this, is a mere invitation to plunder; and I wish not to remind them of so fatal a truth, tho' I scruple not to tell it to you. While it can purchase Russians to find them in employment, the money is useful however, and well bestow'd: and I would rather hire foreign troops with it than send out our own, who will be necessary when the war draws nearer. And I feel sorry the Ministers did not make more bustle in London about the capture of Surinam, for it is undoubtedly fair to rejoyce when we reap solid advantages from a war whence no other Country, not even that of the Victors, gains any advantages at all. Said I well and wisely?

Mrs. Siddons's situation does not please me, for her sake; for my own 'tis well enough, for we are the more likely to meet at Bath. Being at Doncaster so late in the year is a dull thing indeed. I wish she had some method of getting paid at Drury Lane, because seceders, if they are not called back to their seats, only look silly: and when Mr. Garrick left London for his health one year, when in the fulness of public favour, I remember he was disgusted at his return, to find the receipts of the theatre had suffered nothing at all, during an absence he thought would have broken all our hearts....

The bad news from abroad doubtless related to the Dutch expedition, in which the English troops had suffered a good deal. On 10th October the Duke of York reported the conclusion of an armistice with the French, on the conditions of withdrawing the English and Russian troops, surrendering the fortress of Helder, and restoring the French prisoners.

Seringapatam had been taken in the spring by General Harris, under whom Colonel Arthur Wellesley was serving, and Tippoo Sahib was slain. The despatch giving the details, dated 7th May, appeared in the Gazette of 14th September.

Sheridan's habitual unpunctuality in the matter of payments had at last driven Mrs. Siddons to revolt. She writes on 18th September: "I have just received a letter, in the usual easy style, from Mr. Sheridan, who, I fancy, thinks he has only to issue his Sublime Commands, and that they will of course be obeyed. This time I believe, however, he will find himself mistaken, for Sid [her husband,] does at last seem resolutely determined not to let me play till he has sufficient satisfaction, at least for the money which is my due; and unless something is immediately done to that end, I shall go to Doncaster to play at the Races—they begin the 24th of this month." This decisive step soon brought Sheridan to reason; there was only one Siddons, and before long she was back again, practically on her own terms.

[P.M. Bath.] Saturday Night. [Dec. 1799.]

I shall expect and prepare for my dear Mrs. Pennington, to begin what her company will make it, a happy commencement of 1800.... I shall feel glad this year to see December close upon me, which for some time has carried with it a sensation more awful than pleasing. When the sand was high in the hour-glass, I well remember longing for a New Year as if it had been a new gown; and there was a gloss on every 1st January then, that seem'd as if all misfortune would slip over and not stain it....

We leave our little boy with Davies because he himself (Mr. Davies,) said that staying at Streatham in holyday time, when he could attend and tutor him with personal and undivided care, would bring him forward, and I call that true regard: but everybody must be allowed to love their own babies their own way....

With regard to the people in power, I firmly believe they do their best, neither interest nor ambition can be gratified by failure; and tho' a dapper Postilion may injure those in the chaise by driving to an inch, for a wager or for a frolic, I'll trust a Coachman, because he runs equal risque with myself....

I wish this embargo on Levantine goods was over tho', for people bring none from Turkey now: true Mocha coffee sells for 12s. the pound, it was at 3s. three years ago....

The expected meeting was for a time deferred on account of Mrs. Pennington's ill-health. Save for one or two notes of no particular interest, the correspondence ceases till the Piozzis return to Wales.

Brynbella, Sunday 9 Mar. 1800.

I hasten to fulfil my promise to dear Mrs. Pennington. We came home but last night, and I write to say that we are come home well, and find our Household well too, and truly glad of our safe and early return.

The time past at Shrewsbury was full of amusement; Miss Owen feasted and fondled us, and called all the people round to feast us and fondle us, and detain us till Thursday, which had been long bespoke, and Fryday beside, by the charming Cottagers in Llangollen Vale. They asked me much after that Mrs. Pennington who writes such beautiful letters, and insisted on my describing your person to them, and said they knew Miss Seward esteemed you highly, though all intimacy between you was at an end. The unaccountable knowledge those Recluses have of all living books and people and things is like magic; one can mention no one of whom the private history is unknown to them....

Let me therefore talk of Mr. Pennington, and ask how he does. You may be certain how I do, and what I do. Looking out my books, setting my places to rights, ladling out the soup to 30 families round, feeding the dogs with what they leave, mixed up with Potatoe peelings and so forth, is mine and my Master's and Abbiss's employment; whilst Allen blows her nose in consequence of cold catch'd in a damp bed at Worcester—and thanks God the evil ends there.

The little three-legged cur jumps into my lap, licks my face, and runs to his Master to tell the good news, how the family is come home to the Hall, and everybody and everything looks pleased to see us.... I have had a civil letter from Susan Thrale, who bids me direct to Cumberland Street, and makes commonplace lamentations concerning the times, but nothing further, nothing I mean tending towards confidence or communication.

We broke our chaise between Llangollen and Ruthyn,—no wonder! Such roads! 'Tis really frightful: but neither Mr. Piozzi nor I were hurt.

Here are no Members of Parliament, no Franks of course, so I shall write very seldom; for the joke is a good one two or three times o' year, but no oftener, when 14d. is to pay for 44 lines about nothing: and friendship is a fine thing, but so is fourteen Pence....

There is a Lady at Shrewsbury, born the last day of 1699, and she is very well, and plays upon the Piano e forte, as you describe Mr. Whalley's mother to do; but poor Mrs. Montague's sun is setting apace I hear. She has left her fine house, and retired into a smaller, giving up the grandeur to her Nephew, and Lady Oakley said, the estate too, but I hope she has had more wit than that. Lady Oakley is very agreeable.... I saw her in a robe embroider'd (as she said,) with the wings of an Indian Fly; there is no describing its beauty or lustre....

Mrs. Montagu does not appear to have left Montagu House permanently, for she died there the following August. Lady Oakley was the wife of Charles Oakley, Governor of Madras, who was created a Baronet in 1790.

Needless to say Mrs. Piozzi's economical fit in the matter of letters did not last long, the correspondence continues much as usual; but as a matter of fact the letters from Wales to Bristol only cost the recipient 8d., not 1s. 2d.

There is no date or postmark to the next letter, but Mrs. Pennington assigns it to April 1800.

What in the world, dear Mrs Pennington, has been doing at Bath? I wrote to Dr. Randolph about a book of his which I wanted, and his letter in return has affected me very deeply. Yours gave a hint of something like a riot, but nobody seems sensible that we live out of the world here, and know nothing of what passes in it. The newspaper we take, though it swelled and raved so about Mr. King's fire, said nothing of this, or so little we quite disregarded it: and yet Dr. Randolph says that our quarter of the Town was saved by miracle from being even now a heap of cinders.

Thank God we were come home. The slight shock of earthquake that usher'd in our Fast Day here, and frighted many of our neighbours, not us, is a light matter compared with mobs and insurrections. Let us, as King David said of old, fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of men. The noise accompanying even this trifle of a concussion was such as to alarm Mrs. Griffiths exceedingly. She said it was like a hundred carts of lime stone overturned close by her bed. Mr. Piozzi and I never waked to hear or feel it.

Miss Thrale had not then (as now,) kept our eyes wholly sleepless by a new and violent attack on our feelings and property: sending, without notice or introduction, to our Oxfordshire Tenant, a requisition to pay her the rent I have hitherto received for 19 years since my first husband's death, in consequence of the Marriage Settlement signed by him in 1763, confirmed again by Will in 1781, and claim'd now, A.D. 1800, with threats (to our afflicted friend Mr. Gillon,) of making me refund all I have unjustly taken from my daughters. It will be soon refunded. No ass, as Moses says, of theirs did I ever take, nor no present at their hands for bribe. How cruel 'tis to sit down and accuse me so! Miss Thrale says Streatham was given me to make up £400 o' year, but that Crowmarsh is not liable. Now it will turn out upon examination that Crowmarsh is first liable, and that if my due from that estate is not paid me, I have a right to make forcible entry, and take it, without impeachment of waste. This, being provided in the Marriage Settlement, I understand must be secure, so do not you nor dear Mr. Pennington be uneasy; we shall lose nothing but appetite and sleep. And I was so well after the Bath waters! and proposed being so diligent at the Book: and now nothing but law, and letters, and Chancery suits, and false accusations and every evil plague.

No news from abroad yet that we can depend upon. Will it be good when it arrives? The times, as Dr. Randolph says, are signally aweful, and I verily think that Daemons are roaming about among us, with enlarged permission both to tempt and terrify. God preserve us! even from our own bad passions, He only can. Mine are sometimes ready to run away with me now, for Welsh blood heats over a fire of sharp thorns thus, till it boyls again. Oh dear! how dreadful are these days! A Lady in this neighbourhood made a grand entertainment on the Fast appointed by Government, by way of spiting that Government. They must leave off appointing such solemnities: the time is over when they did any good....

I wish Miss Case would tell me what they have suffer'd at Bath, and what they have escaped, for I cannot now make it clearly out. If harm comes to Hannah More we are all undone, her health is a public concern....

This earthquake was not so slight a thing as I thought it; some houses at Conway and Caernarvon were much injured, and it spread a general alarm from the unfrequency of the thing. Yet to people who have lived much in Italy, an earthquake that did not wake one seems laughable enough....

Much may, and probably much will happen this summer, to give us a little further insight into what's coming in earnest. The best is our seasonable and salutary change of weather; had we corn to sow, the ground will be in fine order for putting it in. I am glad Buonaparte sends us no corn, I was afraid of contagion in the sacks; and the thought of an expedition to Egypt and Syria frights me, lest some pestilential disease should be brought home from places so constantly infected....

Brynbella, 1st May 1800.

My dear Mrs. Pennington is too apt to be right. You do not, I perceive, think us safe from this new attack upon our property, and we are not safe....

Thus it stands. If we litigate, such is the dubious position of Mr. Thrale's words in my old Marriage Settlement, that years will roll away, and Empires be overthrown, before the affair can be decided, and in the meantime Crowmarsh rents will be retained till the decision. A circumstance very unpleasing to us for every reason; the strongest of all, because to Miss Thrale the estate must go at my death, so that unless my life is prolonged beyond the usual limits of humanity, Mr. Piozzi can hope for nothing from a law dispute, except Attorney's Bills to pay with a diminished income. Of all this our fair enemy cannot be ignorant, and does not profess to desire anything but profit from the contest; so we may be sure she will make great terms for herself. The parley of eloquence on Mr. Gillon's side, supported by Butler's Opinion concerning our Case, is held to-day I think. The best thing is that Mr. Thrale confirmed his Marriage Settlement by his Will, adding the bequests in that Will to what formerly was provided in the other Instrument; but nothing has been worded so as to preclude discussion among eager disputants, diligent to catch and cavil, and endowed with Marianne's powers and delight in wrangling. We are in a Wasps' nest, and must make haste out, and be stung as little as we can. Resistance is vain, and will be impolitic, in my mind....

That people are quiet, and the fires accidental, I would willingly perswade myself, but cannot. That your friend Paul, Emperor of all the Russias, is a true friend and firm ally, may now reasonably enough be doubted. He wants an excuse for falling upon Turkey, and takes that of quarrelling with Great Britain. It is exceedingly offensive to be forced into submission to his caprices; but I suppose George the III at close of life will not find new enemies a good thing any more than poor H. L. P. does, or will be able, any better than H. L. P., to find supplies for a new contest which, like her's, can terminate in no advantage, and will be attended with certain loss abroad, increase of poverty, and of course ill-humour, at home. You may see how spiteful the people are, even by their opposition to his private conveniency in making a new road to Windsor from London. No want of spite in this world, I'll warrant, either to princes or to people; my Book will have proved that new and wise remark by this time next year. If we go to London with it, I shall vote for an apartment in the Adelphi Hotel; such a place will do well enough for November, and our income must be reduced, and I will not suffer my business or pleasures to retard my husband's long projected happiness of not having a debt in the world. The very journey is expense enough. We shall be near Mr. Gillon there, and I shall not have an acquaintance in London but Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Holman, perhaps not the first even of those, as the seasons seem to change so; everybody makes it Summer till after Christmas, and Winter to July.

There is great talk of a new book written by Hannah More, The Progress of Pilgrim Good-intent through the Land of Jacobinism; have you read it? and is it charming?...

The Rheumatism has caught my shoulder before Gout seized my Master's toe this year. I was to have gone in the Cold Bath this morning, but the pain prevents me....

After the battle of the Nile, England, Russia, and Turkey had entered into an alliance against France. But the Emperor Paul, annoyed at his treatment by Austria, and accusing the allies of treachery, came to terms with Bonaparte, with whom he concerted a plan for a joint invasion of India.

Sat. 16 May, Brynbella.

My last letter was a wretch: how could you, dearest Friend, commend it so? If I remember anything about it, it was low, cold, and flat. The usage I had received sunk my nerves down, they were not irritated. Use of the cold bath, meant to strengthen them, threw me all out in nettle-stings. And now, for crowning of all, my poor Master's torment, villainous Gout, has, as you once observed of Mr. Pennington's, watched the due time, and thrown in his assistance to the fair Ladies' cause. Their cause is cold though, and notwithstanding our defenders cannot bring matters to a decision yet, they give us hopes that little will be lost, except the arrears, worth, Mr. Gillon says, £1000. He has behaved divinely to be sure, and deserves all your generous praises of him. Nobody applauds Miss Thrale's proceedings I think. Mrs. Holman and you inveigh loudest against her, and it was a cruel thing to fly so upon that estate, which her Father would never have left her at all, had I not so requested him, because I thought it was unfair that, from accumulation of fortune after they lost him, the youngest daughter would be richer than the eldest: but I meant her to have Crowmarsh after my death, and so he meant it too. Well! one has always heard some nonsense how two negatives make an affirmative, so I suppose in Law, when a man gives a thing twice over, it turns out no gift at all. Mr. Thrale tried three times to secure his Oxfordshire property for me, and if I miss it at last, no blame can attach to him. The flaw was in the Settlement you see, and the Will confirms the Settlement, so God knows how 'twill end at last. The Mr. Butler employed on our side has a high character in his profession as Chamber Council, etc. Being a Roman Catholic he cannot reach the honours of his calling, but rests contented with the profits....

Here's much to do with Hate and more with Love,[14] as Juliet says in Shakespear. Apropos to Hatred, I am delighted that we know the author of De Montfort: she must be a fine creature, and will excite no small share of the hatred she describes. I felt it was a woman's writing, no man makes female characters respectable—no man of the present day I mean, they only make them lovely. We must except Dr. Moore: his Mrs. Barnett and his Laura Sedlitz are all that women ought to wish to be.

Don't you admire at my sitting here to criticize Plays and Novels, like Miss Seward, while my Husband is lame, my fortune is crippled, and my favourite dog has but three legs?

Farewell, dear Friend, ... 'tis five o'clock in the morning, I was up at four, shall call the men and maids at six, send away this scrawl at seven, jump into the bath at 8, breakfast at 9, work at the book till 1, walk till 3, have dined by 4, fret over Gillon's dispatches and Piozzi's misery all the rest of the day: a pretty biographical sketch of your literally poor H. L. P.