The essays of virginia w.., p.45
The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5, page 45
Thus Greville treated the Burneys as his equals, and came to their house, though his visits were often interrupted by the violent quarrels which he managed to pick even with the amiable Dr Burney himself. Indeed, as time went on there was nobody with whom Greville did not quarrel. He had lost heavily at the gambling-tables. His prestige in society was sunk. His habits were driving his family from him. Even his wife, by nature gentle and conciliatory, though excessive thinness made her seem fitted to sit for a portrait ‘of a penetrating, puissant and sarcastic fairy queen’, was wearied by his infidelities. Inspired by them she had suddenly produced that famous Ode to Indifference, ‘which had passed into every collection of fugitive pieces in the English language’ and (it is Madam D’Arblay who speaks) ‘twined around her brow a garland of wide-spreading and unfading fragrance’. Her fame, it may be, was another thorn in her husband’s side; for he, too, was an author. He himself had produced a volume of Maxims and Characters; and having ‘waited for fame with dignity rather than anxiety, because with expectation unclogged with doubt’, was beginning perhaps to become a little impatient when fame delayed. Meanwhilefnl he was fond of the society of clever people, and it was largely at his desire that the famous party in St Martin’s Street met together that very cold night.
II
In those days, when London was so small, it was easier than now for people to stand onfnm an eminence which they scarcely struggled to keep, but enjoyed by unanimous consent. Everybody knew and remembered when they saw her that Mrs Greville had written an Ode to Indifference; everybody knew that Mr Bruce had travelled in Abyssinia; so, too, everybody knew that there was a house at Streatham presided over by a lady called Mrs Thrale. Without troubling to write an Ode, without hazarding her life among savages, without possessing either high rank or vast wealth, Mrs Thrale was a celebrity. By the exercise of powers difficult to define – for to feel them one must have sat at table and noticed a thousand audacities and deftnesses and skilful combinations which die with the moment – Mrs Thrale had the reputation of a great hostess. Her fame spread far beyond her house. People who had never seen her discussed her. People wanted to know what she was like; whether she was really so witty and so well read; whether it was a pose; whether she had a heart; whether she loved her husband the brewer, who seemed a dull dog; why she had married him; whether Dr Johnson was in love with her – what, in short, was the truth of her story, the secret offnn her power. For power she had – that was indisputable.
Even then, perhaps, it would have been difficult to say in what it consisted. For she possessed the one quality which can never be named; she enjoyed the one gift which never ceases to excite discussion. Somehow or other she was a personality. The young Burneys, for instance, had never seen Mrs Thrale or been to Streatham, but the stir which she set going round her had reached them in St Martin’s Street. When their father came back from giving his first music lesson to Miss Thrale at Streatham they flocked about him to hear his account of her mother. Was she as brilliant as people made out? Was she kind? Was she cruel? Had he liked her? Dr Burney was in high good temper – in itself a proof of his hostess’s power – and he replied, not, we may be sure, as Fanny rendered it, that she was a ‘star of the first constellation of female wits: surpassing, rather than equalising the reputation which her extraordinary endowments, and the splendid fortune which made them conspicuous, had blazoned abroad’ – that was written when Fanny’s style was old and tarnished, and its leaves were fluttering and falling profusely to the ground; the doctor, we may suppose, answered briskly that he had enjoyed himself hugely; that the lady was a very clever lady; that she had interrupted the lesson all the time; that she had a very sharp tongue – there was no doubt of that; but he would go to the stake for it that she was a good-hearted woman at bottom. Then they must have pressed to know what she looked like. She looked younger than her age – which was about forty. She was rather plump, very small, fair with very blue eyes, and had a scar or cut on her lip. She painted her cheeks, which was unnecessary, because her complexion was rosy by nature. The whole impression she made was one offno bustle and gaiety and good temper. She was, he said, a woman ‘full of sport’,fn4 whom nobody could have taken for a creature that the doctor could not bear, a learned lady. Less obviously, she was very observant, as her anecdotes were to prove; capable of passion, though that was not yet visible at Streatham; and, while curiously careless and good-tempered about her dues as a wit or a blue-stocking, had an amusing pride in being descended from a long line of Welsh gentry (whereas the Thrales were obscure), and drew satisfaction now and then from the reflection that in her veins ran the blood, as the College of Heralds acknowledged, of Adam of Salzburg.
Many women might have possessed these qualities without being remembered for them. Mrs Thrale possessed besides one that has given her immortality: the power of being the friend of Dr Johnson. Without that addition, her life might have fizzled and flamed to extinction, leaving nothing behind it. But the combination of Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale created something as solid, as lasting, as remarkable in its way as a work of art. And this was an achievement that called for much rarer powers on the part of Mrs Thrale than the qualities of a good hostess. When the Thrales first met Johnson he was in a state of profound gloom, crying out such lost and terrible words that Mr Thrale put his hand before his mouth to silence him. Physically, too, he was afflicted with asthma and dropsy; his manners were rough; his habits were gross; his clothes were dirty; his wig was singed; his linen was soiled; and he was the rudest of men. Yet Mrs Thrale carried this monster off with her to Brighton and then domesticated him in her house at Streatham, where he was given a room to himself, and where he spent habitually some days in the middle of every week. This might have been, it is true, butfnp the enthusiasm of a curiosity hunter, ready to put up with a host of disagreeables for the sake of having at her house the original Dr Johnson, whom anybody in England would gladly pay to see. But it is clear that her connoisseurship was of a finer type. She understood – her anecdotes prove it – that Dr Johnson was somehow a rare, an important, an impressive human being whose friendship might be a burden but was certainly an honour. And it was not by any means so easy to know this then as it is now. What one knew then was that Dr Johnson was coming to dinner. And when Dr Johnson came to dinner one had to ask one’s self who was coming too? Forfnq if it was a Cambridge man there might be an outburst. If it was a Whig there would certainly be a scene. If it was a Scotsman anything might happen. Such were his whims and prejudices. Next one would have to bethink one, what food had been orderedfnr for dinner? For the food never went uncriticised; and even when one had provided him with young peas from the garden, one must not praise them. Were not the young peas charming, Mrs Thrale asked once? and he turned upon her, after gobbling down masses of pork and veal pie with lumps of sugar in it, and snapped, ‘Perhaps they would be so – to a pig’. Then what would the talk be about – that was another cause for anxiety. Iffns it got upon painting or music he was apt to dismiss it with scorn, for both arts were indifferent to him. Then if a traveller told a tale he was sure to pooh-pooh it, because he believed nothing that he had not seen himself. Then if anyone were to express sympathy infnt his presence it might well draw down upon one a rebuke for insincerity.
When, one day, I lamented the loss of a cousin killed in America: ‘Prithee, my dear,’ said he, ‘have done with canting: how would the world be the worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations were at once spitted like larks, and roasted for Presto’s supper?’fn5
In short, the meal would be strewn with difficulties; the whole affair might run upon the rocks at any moment.
Had Mrs Thrale been a shallow curiosity hunter she would have shown him for a season or so and then let him drop. But Mrs Thrale realised even at the moment that one must submit to be snubbed and bullied and irritated and offended by Dr Johnson because – well, what was the force that sent an impudent and arrogant young man like Boswell slinking back to his chair like a beaten boy when Johnson bade him? Why did she herself sit up till four in the morning pouring out tea for him? There was a force in him that awed even a competent woman of the world, that subdued even a thick-skinned, conceited boy. He had a right to scold Mrs Thrale for inhumanity, when she knew that he spent only seventy pounds a year on himself and with the rest of his income supported a houseful of decrepit and ungrateful lodgers. If he gobbled at table and tore the peaches from the wall, he went back punctually to London to see that his wretched inmates had their three good meals over the week-end. Moreover, he was a warehouse of knowledge. If the dancing-master talked about dancing, Johnson could out-talk him. He could keep one amused by the hour with his tales of the underworld, of the topers and scallywags who haunted his lodgings and claimed his bounty. He said things casually that one never forgot. But what was perhaps more engaging than all this learning and virtue, was his love of pleasure, his detestation of the mere bookworm,fnu his passion for life and society. And then, as a woman would, Mrs Thrale loved him for his courage – that he had separated two fierce dogs that were tearing each other to pieces in Mr Beauclerc’s sitting-room; that he had thrown a man, chair and all, into the pit of a theatre; that, blind and twitching as he was, he rode to hounds on Brighthelmstone Downs, and followed the hunt as if he had been a gay dog instead of a huge and melancholy old man. Moreover, there was a natural affinity between them. She drew him out: she made him say what without her he would never have said; indeed, he had confessed to her some painful secret of his youth which she never revealed to anybody. Above all, they shared the same passion. Of talk they could neither of them ever have enough.
Thus Mrs Thrale could always be counted on to produce Dr Johnson; and it was, of course, Dr Johnson whom Mr Greville most particularly wished to meet. At it happened, Dr Burney had renewed his acquaintance with Dr Johnson after many years, when he went to Streatham to give his first music lesson, and Dr fnv Johnson had been there, ‘wearing his mildest aspect’. For he remembered Dr Burney with kindness. He remembered a letter that Dr Burney had written to him in praise of the dictionary; hefnw remembered, too, that Dr Burney having called upon him, years ago, and found him out, had dared to cut some bristles from the hearth broom to send to an admirer. When he met Dr Burney again at Streatham, he had instantly taken a liking to him; soon he was brought by Mrs Thrale to see Dr Burney’s books; it was quite easy, therefore, for Dr Burney to arrange that on a certain night in the early spring of 1777 or 1778, Mr Greville’s great wish to meet Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale should be gratified. A day was fixed and the engagement was made.
Whatever the day was it must have been marked in the host’s calendar with a note of interrogation. Anything might happen. Any extreme of splendour or disaster might spring from the meeting of so many marked and distinguished characters. Dr Johnson was formidable. Mr Greville was domineering. Mrs Greville was a celebrity in one way; Mrs Thrale was a celebrity in another. Then it was an occasion. Everybody felt it to be so. Wits would be on the strain; expectation on tiptoe. Dr Burney foresaw these difficulties and took steps to avert them, but there was, one vaguely feels, something a little obtuse about Dr Burney. The eager, kind, busy man, with his head full of music and his desk stuffed with notes, lacked discrimination. The precise outline of people’s characters was covered with a rambling pink haze. To his innocent mind music was the universal specific. Everybody must share his own enthusiasm for music. If there was going to be any difficulty, music could solve it. He therefore asked Signor Piozzi to be of the party.fnx
The night arrived and the fire was lit. The chairs were placed and the companyfny arrived. As Dr Burney had foreseen, the awkwardness was great. Things indeed seemed to go wrong from the start. Dr Johnson had come in his worsted wig, very clean and prepared evidently for enjoyment. But after one look at him, Mr Greville seemed to decide that there was something formidable about the old man; it would be better not to compete; it would be better to play the fine gentleman, and leave it to literature to make the first advances. Murmuring, apparently, something about having the toothache, Mr Greville ‘assumed his most supercilious air of distant superiority and planted himself, immovable as a noble statue, upon the hearth’. He said nothing. Then Mrs Greville, though longing to distinguish herself, judged it proper for Dr Johnson to begin, so that shefnz said nothing. Mrs Thrale, who might have been expected to break up the solemnity, felt, it seemed, that the party was not her party and, waiting for the principals to engage, resolved to say nothing either.fnaa Mrs Crewe, the Grevilles’ daughter, lovely and vivacious as she was, had come to be entertained and instructed and therefore very naturally she, too, said nothing. Nobody said anything. Complete silence reigned. Herefnbb was the very moment for which Dr Burney in his wisdom had prepared. He nodded to Signor Piozzi; and Signor Piozzi stepped to the instrument and began to sing. Accompanying himself on the pianoforte, he sang an aria parlante. He sang beautifully, he sang his best. But far from breaking the awkwardness and loosing the tongues, the music increased the constraint. Nobody spoke. Everybody waited for Dr Johnson to begin. There, indeed, they showed their fatal ignorance, for if there was one thing that Dr Johnson never did, it was to begin. Somebody had always to start a topic before he consented to pursue it or to demolish it. Now he waited in silence to be challenged. But he waited in vain. Nobody spoke. Nobody dared speak. The roulades of Signor Piozzi continued uninterrupted. As he saw his chance of a pleasant evening’s talk drowned in the rattle of a piano, Drfncc Johnson sank into silent abstraction and sat with his back to the piano gazing at the fire. The aria parlante continued uninterrupted. At last the strain became unendurable. At last Mrs Thrale could stand it no longer. It was the attitude of Mr Greville, apparently, that roused her resentment. There he stood on the hearth in front of the fire ‘staring around him at the whole company in curious silence sardonically’. What right had he, even if he were the descendant of the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, to despise the company and absorb the fire? Her own pride of ancestry suddenly asserted itself. Did not the blood of Adam of Salzburg run in her veins? Was it not as blue as that of the Grevilles and far more sparkling? Giving rein to the spirit of recklessness which sometimes bubbled in her, she rose, and stole on tiptoe to the pianoforte. Signor Piozzi was still singing and accompanying himself dramatically as he sang. She began a ludicrous mimicry of his gestures: she shrugged her shoulders, she cast up her eyes, she reclined her head on one side just as he did. At this singular display the company began to titter – indeed, it was a scene that was to be described ‘from coterie to coterie throughout London, with comments and sarcasms of endless variety’. People who saw Mrs Thrale at her mockery that night never forgot that this was the beginning of that criminal affair, the first scene of that ‘most extraordinary drama’ which lost Mrs Thrale the respect of friends and children, which drove her in ignominy from England, and scarcely allowed her to show herself in London again – this was the beginning of her most reprehensible, her most unnatural passion for one who was not only a musician but a foreigner. But allfndd this still lay on the laps of the gods. Nobody yet knew of what iniquity the vivacious lady was capable. She was still the respected wife of a wealthy brewer. Happily, Dr Johnson was staring at the fire, and knew nothing of the scene at the piano. But Dr Burney put a stop to the laughter instantly. He was shocked that a guest, even if afnee foreigner and a musician, should be ridiculed behind his back, and stealing to Mrs Thrale he whispered kindly but with authority in her ear that if she had no taste for music herself she should consider the feelings of those who had. Mrs Thrale took the rebuke with admirable sweetness, nodded her acquiescence and returned to her chair. But she had done her part. After that nothing more could be expected from her. Let them now do what they chose – she washed her hands of it, and seated herself ‘like a pretty little Miss’, as she said afterwards, to endure what yet remained to be endured ‘of one of the most humdrum evenings that she had ever passed’.fn6
If no one had dared to tackle Dr Johnson in the beginning, it was scarcely likely that they would dare now. He had apparently decided that the evening was a failure so far as talk was concerned. If he had not come dressed in his best clothes he might have had a book in his pocket which he could have pulled out and read. As it was, nothing but the resources of his own mind were left him; but these were huge; and these he explored as he sat with his back to the piano looking the very image of gravity, dignity, and composure.
At last the aria parlante came to an end. Signor Piozzi indeed, finding nobody to talk to, fell asleep in his solitude. Even Dr Burney by this time must have been aware that music is not an infallible specific; but there was nothing for it now. Since people would not talk, the music must continue. He called upon his daughters to sing a duet. And then, when that was over, there was nothing for it but that they must sing another. Signor Piozzi still slept, or still feigned sleep. Dr Johnson explored still further the magnificent resources of his own mind. Mr Greville still stood superciliously upon the hearthrug. And the night was cold.
