ionate and polite. 'Tis over now, tho', and I'll clear my head
of it and all that belongs to it; I will go to church, give God
thanks, receive the sacrament and forget the frauds, follies, and
inconveniences of a commercial life this day."

Madame D'Arblay was at Streatham on the day of the sale, and gives a
dramatic colour to the ensuing scene:

"_Streatham, Thursday_.--This was the great and most important day to
all this house, upon which the sale of the brewery was to be decided.
Mrs. Thrale went early to town, to meet all the executors, and Mr.
Barclay, the Quaker, who was the _bidder_. She was in great agitation
of mind, and told me, if all went well she would wave a white
pocket-handkerchief out of the coach window.

"Four o'clock came and dinner was ready, and no Mrs. Thrale. Five
o'clock followed, and no Mrs. Thrale. Queeny and I went out upon the
lawn, where we sauntered, in eager expectation, till near six, and
then the coach appeared in sight, and a white pocket-handkerchief was
waved from it. I ran to the door of it to meet her, and she jumped
out of it, and gave me a thousand embraces while I gave my
congratulations. We went instantly to her dressing-room, where she
told me, in brief, how the matter had been transacted, and then we
went down to dinner. Dr. Johnson and Mr. Crutchley had accompanied
her home."

The event is thus announced to Langton by Johnson, in a letter
printed by Boswell, dated June 16, 1781: "You will perhaps be glad to
hear that Mrs. Thrale is disencumbered of her brewhouse, and that it
seemed to the purchaser so far from an evil that he was content to
give for it 135,000_l_. Is the nation ruined." _Marginal note_: "I
suppose he was neither glad nor sorry."

Thrale died on the 4th April, 1781, and Mrs. Thrale left Streatham on
the 7th October, 1782. The intervening eighteen months have been made
the subject of an almost unprecedented amount of misrepresentation.
Hawkins, Boswell, Madame D'Arblay, and Lord Macaulay have vied with
each other in founding uncharitable imputations on her conduct at
this period of her widowhood; and it has consequently become
necessary to recapitulate the authentic evidence relating to it. As
Piozzi's name will occur occasionally, he must now be brought upon
the scene.

He is first mentioned in "Thraliana" thus:

"_Brighton, July_, 1780.--I have picked up Piozzi here, the great
Italian singer. He is amazingly like my father. He shall teach
Hester."