Hester Thrale

Biography

Hester was born at Bodvel Hall, Caernarvonshire, Wales, the only daughter of Hester and John Salusbury. As a member of the powerful Salusbury Family, she belonged to one of the most illustrious Welsh land-owning dynasties of the Georgian era. Through her father's line she was a direct descendant of Katheryn of Berain.

After her father had gone bankrupt in an attempt to invest in Halifax, Canada, she married the rich brewer Henry Thrale on 11 October 1763, at St. Anne's Chapel, Soho, London. They had 12 children and lived at Streatham Park. The marriage often was strained, however, her husband frequently felt slighted by members of the court and may well have married to improve his social status. The Thrales' eldest daughter, Hester, became a viscountess.

After her marriage, Mrs. Thrale was liberated and free to associate with whom she pleased. Due to her husband's financial status, she was able to enter London society, as a result of which she met Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Bishop Thomas Percy, Oliver Goldsmith, and other literary figures, including the young Fanny Burney, whom she took with her to Gay Street, Bath.

In July 1774 Johnson visited Wales in Mrs. Thrale's company, during which time they visited Hester's uncle Sir Lynch Cotton at Combermere in Denbighshire. Frances, the wife of Sir Lynch's son Robert "found Johnson, despite his rudeness, at times delightful, having a manner peculiar to himself in relating anecdotes that could not fail to attract old and young. Her impression was that Mrs. Thrale was very vexatious in wishing to engross all his attention, which annoyed him much."

Johnson wrote two verses for Hester Thrale in 1775, the first in celebration of her 35th birthday, and another in Latin to honour her.

Fanny Burney, in her diary, describes the conversations at several of Mrs. Thrale's soirées, including one in 1779 about a young woman named Miss Sophy Streatfeild (1755–1835), who was a favourite of both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thrale, rather to the chagrin of Hester, who commented that Sophy "had a power of captivation that was irresistible... her beauty joined to her softness, her caressing manners, her tearful eyes, and alluring looks, would insinuate her into the heart of any man she thought worth attacking." The touch of understandable spite hereby revealed in Mrs. Thrale's nature is tempered by her wry humour in remarking (after another of her male guests had professed devotion to Sophy and the desire to "soothe" her): "I would ensure her power of crying herself into any of your hearts she pleased. I made her cry to Miss Burney, to show how beautiful she looked in tears" and (on being rebuked about this) "Oh but she liked it... Miss Burney would have run away but she came forward on purpose to show herself. Sophy Streatfeild is never happier than when tears trickle down from her fine eyes in company."

The Thrales were in Bath in 1780 at the time of the Gordon Riots, when a Roman Catholic chapel was set on fire, although the greater worry was whether Mr. Thrale's brewery in Southwark would escape being ransacked, which it narrowly did.

Fanny records Hester's distress on losing her husband (4 April 1781), referring to her as "sweet Mrs. Thrale" and sympathising with the "agitation" she was under in having to sell the brewery and wind up his affairs. Fanny was there to congratulate and cheer Hester when the business was concluded.

During the ensuing years, Hester fell in love with Gabriel Mario Piozzi, an Italian music teacher, and married him on 25 July 1784. She complained: "I see the English newspapers are full of gross Insolence towards me," with one commenting how Thrale could not have imagined "his wife's disgrace, by eventually raising an obscure and penniless Fiddler into sudden Wealth." This caused a rift with Johnson, which was only perfunctorily mended shortly before his death. The levelling marriage also earned her the disapproval of Fanny (who would herself marry in 1793 the impoverished, Catholic émigré Alexandre D'Arblay) and her cousins the Cottons. With her second husband, Hester retired to Brynbella, a specially built country house on her Bach y Graig estate in the Vale of Clwyd, near Tremeirchion village in north Wales. During this time she began to reflect heavily on her ancestry, and for a time became obsessed with the idea of reclaiming her father's Canadian lands in Herring Cove, an enclave of Nova Scotia.

After Johnson's death, she published Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786) and their letters to each other (1788). Fanny Burney, who considered both Johnson and Hester to be among her dearest friends, read the unpublished manuscript with much interest, but disapproved of the decision to publish, noting, "She has given all – every word – and thinks that, perhaps, a justice to Dr. Johnson, which, in fact, is the greatest injury to his memory." Together with Hester Thrale's diaries, which were known as Thraliana, and were not published until 1949, these sources help to fill out the biased picture of Johnson often presented in Boswell's Life. Johnson often stayed with the Thrale household and had his own room above the library at Streatham, in which he worked. Hester's papers provide more insight into his composition process.

Her Retrospection: or a review of the most striking and important events, characters, situations, and their consequences which the last eighteen hundred years have presented to the view of mankind was an attempt at a popular history of that period, but it was not received well by critics, some of whom patently resented female intrusion into the male preserve of history. Posterity has been kinder. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "it has since been seen as a feminist history, concerned to show changes in manners and mores in so far as they affected women; it has also been judged to anticipate Marxian history in its keen apprehension of reification: 'machines imitated mortals to unhoped perfection, and men found out they were themselves machines'."

Death and legacy

Hester Piozzi died at No. 10 (now 20) Sion Row, Clifton, Bristol, of complications after a fall, and was buried on 16 May 1821 near Brynbella in the churchyard of Corpus Christi Church, Tremeirchion, next to Piozzi. A marble inside the church was erected in 1909 inscribed with the words

Near this place are interred the remains of

Hester Lynch Piozzi.
"Doctor Johnson's Mrs Thrale"
Born 1741. Died 1821.
Witty. Vivacious and Charming. In an Age of Genius
She Ever Held a Foremost Place
This Tablet is Erected by Orlando Butler Fellowes
Grand-Son of Sir James Fellowes. The Intimate Friend of
Mrs. Piozzi and her Executor.
Assisted by Subscriptions

Fanny Burney eulogised her, going so far as to make a comparison with Germaine de Staël.

From the time of her death to nearly the present, she was referred to by scholars as Johnson had referred to her as "Mrs. Thrale" or "Hester Thrale." However, she is now often referred to as either "Hester Lynch Piozzi" or "Mrs. Piozzi."

Samuel Beckett would draw on Thrale's diaries and Anecdotes to dramatize her and Samuel Johnson's relationship in one of his earliest plays, Human Wishes. The play was abandoned after the completion of the first act.

Author Lillian de la Torre featured Mrs. Thrale in the story "The Stolen Christmas Box," part of her series featuring Samuel Johnson as a detective.