Anecdotes of Johnson | Page 3

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ANECDOTES OF THE LATE SAMUEL JOHNSON BY HESTHER
LYNCH PIOZZI.

INTRODUCTION

Mrs. Piozzi, by her second marriage, was by her first marriage the Mrs.
Thrale in whose house at Streatham Doctor Johnson was, after the year
of his first introduction, 1765, in days of infirmity, an honoured and a
cherished friend. The year of the beginning of the friendship was the
year in which Johnson, fifty-six years old, obtained his degree of LL.D.
from Dublin, and--though he never called himself Doctor--was
thenceforth called Doctor by all his friends.
Before her marriage Mrs. Piozzi had been Miss Hesther Lynch
Salusbury, a young lady of a good Welsh family. She was born in the
year 174O, and she lived until the year 1821. She celebrated her
eightieth birthday on the 27th of January, 182O, by a concert, ball, and
supper to six or seven hundred people, and led off the dancing at the
ball with an adopted son for partner. When Johnson was first
introduced to her, as Mrs. Thrale, she was a lively, plump little lady,
twenty-five years old, short of stature, broad of build, with an animated
face, touched, according to the fashion of life in her early years, with
rouge, which she continued to use when she found that it had spoilt her
complexion. Her hands were rather coarse, but her handwriting was
delicate.
Henry Thrale, whom she married, was the head of the great brewery
house now known as that of Barclay and Perkins. Henry Thrale's father
had succeeded Edmund Halsey, who began life by running away from
his father, a miller at St. Albans. Halsey was taken in as a
clerk-of-all-work at the Anchor Brewhouse in Southwark, became a
house-clerk, able enough to please Child, his master, and handsome
enough to please his master's daughter. He married the daughter and
succeeded to Child's Brewery, made much money, and had himself an
only daughter, whom he married to a lord. Henry Thrale's father was a
nephew of Halseys, who had worked in the brewery for twenty years,
when, after Halsey's death, he gave security for thirty thousand pounds
as the price of the business, to which a noble lord could not succeed. In
eleven years he had paid the purchase-money, and was making a large

fortune. To this business his son, who was Johnson's friend, Henry
Thrale, succeeded; and upon Thrale's death it was bought for 15O,OOO
pounds by a member of the Quaker family of Barclay, who took
Thrale's old manager, Perkins, into partnership.
Johnson became, after 1765, familiar in the house of the Thrales at
Streatham. There was much company. Mrs. Thrale had a taste for
literary guests and literary guests had, on their part, a taste for her good
dinners. Johnson was the lion-in-chief. There was Dr. Johnson's room
always at his disposal; and a tidy wig kept for his