The Piozzi Letters: Correspondence of Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1784-1821 (formerly Mrs. Thrale).

The Piozzi Letters: Correspondence of Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1784-1821
(formerly Mrs. Thrale). Vol. 5. 1811-1816. Ed. by Edward A. Bloom and
Lillian D. Bloom. Assoc. ed.: O. M. Brack, Jr, intro. by Gay W. Brack.
Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated
University Presses. 1999. 603 pp. [pound]55.

'I may too get out of Debt next July, and then I might be tempted (with a freed Income) to take a comfortable House here and end my Days -- an old Bath Cat -- Snappish at the Card Table, sullen at the Conversation Parties -- and passionate with the Maids at home -- following them up and down Stairs with a Cambrick Handkerchief in hope of finding Dust on the Mahogany Bannisters' (p. 397). So wrote Hester Piozzi to her friend Lady Margaret Williams from Bath in August 1815, touching with her characteristic sly frankness upon most of the key items of the phase of her life covered by the letters in this fascinating and informative volume. Debt-management and emotional string-pulling are the two activities that dominate: debt, with her first husband Henry's great house and its estate at Streatham eating up thousands of pounds in repairs and no reliable tenant to be found; and, with Brynbella, her and the late Gabriel's own home in North Wales, given to her adopted son John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury, fruitless emotional pressure to try to make the young man, recently married and now a father, respond to the tactics she had been accustomed to adopt towards him ever since his childhood: 'I received Dear Salusbury's Letter with the more Delight as I began to think it long in coming, for altho' surrounded like yourself with Attentions and Compliments -- My Heart will turn more than it ought to do, -- more at least than I wish it to turn to those for whom I am leading this out-of-the-way Life; [. . .] But 'tis Time to wish you a happy New Year among the amiable Friends that you preferred to all of us' (pp. 314-15).

In between, she still found time, as always in her remarkable, lifelong schedule, to continue quarrelling with her daughters (the youngest, Cecy, now Mrs Mostyn, left England for the continent in 1816 without a goodbye and only returned six years after her mother had died) and worrying about Bonaparte: from Bath, a fortnight after Waterloo, she writes that 'when the Mails come in, People run to hear what has happened, and every body looked displeased this Morning to think that Buonaparte has escaped again, -- Although no one took Care to keep him from escaping' (p. 376); and in August, with considerable relief, that 'Buonaparte is sent -- apparently to Extinction. He has made the World his Pedestal long enough; Himself the Sole Figure, and Mankind the Lookers-on -- There will be nobody to look at him in Saint Helena but Rats; with which the little Place so swarms, that they Grow no Corn; We send them Wheat from England. -- A Lady here -- who passed Three Months upon the Island, says he will be horror-stricken at his first Arrival, and either kill himself or die distracted' (pp. 396-97). But these activities were to a purpose: Bath. Once Streatham was eventually disposed of, sold for the remainder of her lifetime (the house and estate were in fact to revert to the daughters under the terms of Henry Thrale's will) to a rope merchant from Wapping, the way was clear for permanent residence in the city where she had determined to live out her days. The volume opens with her fear that Napoleon is about to take over Wales ('how are you not afraid of the Phantom our Folks here have conjured up concerning Lucien Buonaparte's making himself a Favourite in Wales -- and selling our 13 Counties to his Brother who is to step over from Ireland and take ready Possession' (p. 71)). It closes, on Christmas Day, 1816, with her distress at 'War in the Streets of London and Famine in the Fields' (p. 548), but with her personal situation, and personal satisfaction as 'an old Bath Cat', more secure than for many years past.