Piozzi, Mrs Hester (Salusbury)
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
- Title
- Piozzi, Mrs Hester (Salusbury)
- Full Text of Entry
-
(1741 - 1821), writer, dau. of John Salusbury of Bachycraig, Flint.; m. 1 1763 Henry Thrale (d. 1781), 2 1784 Gabriel Piozzi (1740 - 1809).
1784 - 6 Turin (Oct. 1784), Genoa, Milan (Oct. - 6 Apr. 1785), Cremona, Mantua, Verona (11 Apr.), Vicenza, Padua (13 Apr.), Venice (22 Apr. - 21 May), Padua (21 May), Ferrara, Bologna, Florence (15 Jun. - 12 Sep.), Lucca, Pisa, Leghorn, Pisa ( - 17 Oct.), Rome (24 Oct. - Nov.), Naples (Nov. 1785 - 22 Feb. 1786), Rome (27 Feb. - 19 Apr.), Spoleto, Bologna (27 Apr. - 2 May), Padua, Venice (8 May - 12 Jun.), Padua, Mantua, Verona, Milan (21 Jun. - 22 Sep.), Verona (27 Sep.) [London Mar. 1787]
Mrs Piozzi went to Italy with a profound sense of relief. Her morose first husband, a wealthy brewer, had died suddenly in 1781 leaving her with five daughters, and the increasingly infirm Dr Samuel Johnson had then become an adoring but irksome presence. Defying convention, she had married Gabriel Piozzi, her daughters' music master, an Italian Catholic from the Veneto; they were the same age and it was a marriage founded on real affection. Within three months they set out to tour the Continent and particularly Italy. Piozzi took a portable harpsichord which fitted beneath a carriage seat and Mrs Piozzi prepared to write copiously of their travels.1
She was resolved to like her husband's country and they first spent six carefree months in Milan, which Piozzi considered his home. They took spacious rooms in the Casa Fidele and soon attracted homage from minor Italian writers and church dignitaries. Mrs Piozzi had an inordinate love of praise: 'the Women kiss me, & the Men write Verses about me', she told her daughter Hester (25 Feb. 1785). Mutual affection and frequent journeying prevented serious discomforts, but Mrs Piozzi had some difficulties with her Protestantism and over the choice of a cicisbeo (finally selecting an eighty-year-old priest), and there were to be occasions when social etiquette (as maintained, for example, by the aged Horace Mann in Florence) prevented Piozzi himself being invited to gatherings of the nobility. In December 1784 they learned of Dr Johnson's death and soon Mrs Piozzi began to compile her Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson (published in London in March 1786).
In April 1785 they went to Venice, sailing down the Brenta from Padua accompanied by music from Piozzi's little piano. Mrs Piozzi was entranced by Venice, the people, the architecture and the pictures which 'are all known in England I believe, but nothing can give one a just Idea of them except the Sight' (22 Apr. 1785). On 21 May they left for Florence, on their way visiting Bologna, where Mrs Piozzi was greatly taken by the paintings of the Carracci and Guercino. They spent three months in Florence, meeting a number of English people, of whom the Greatheeds, William Parsons and Robert Merry became close companions. Italian writers were constant guests and all collaborated on the production of The Florence Miscellany (published by November 1785), a collection of poems in English and Italian, written, as Mrs Piozzi explained in the preface, 'to divert ourselves, and to say kind things of each other'. She appears not to have recognised the radical undertones of the contents. Greatheed, Parsons and Merry were young men of liberal views, who sympathised with those nationalist and liberal-minded Italian poets whose academy, the Accademia della Crusca, had been repressed in 1783 by the Grand Duke (who then founded and took control of a new Accademia Fiorentina). Towards the end of their stay in Florence Mrs Piozzi was stricken with fever which hastened their departure on 12 September. But they then met swarms of gnats in Lucca and moved on to Pisa and then Leghorn, where the Johnson Anecdotes were completed. They took a villa near Pisa, at the Bagni di Pisa under the Apennines, before Piozzi too fell ill, a circumstance which led to their departure for Rome on 17 October.
Rome she found somewhat disappointing. The mixture of squalor and splendour disturbed her; it was like Rembrandt's pictures, 'composed of the strongest lights and darkest shadows possible' (4 Nov. 1785). She could not understand how the Palaces should have entrances serving as Necessary Houses, or how the rich could allow their servants to hire out their coaches, 'dress other Men's Dinners, & hang wet Rags out of Windows which if you look into, will exhibit scenes of enormous Wealth & Imperial Luxury'.2 After a month they moved on to Naples where they were greeted with a thunderstorm and an angry Vesuvius, but they were soon enjoying English company - the Duke of Cumberland's party, the Greatheeds, George Coxe, the Robert Tighes and Jervises. 'At Naples', Mrs Piozzi reflected, 'the people seem all merry and fat, dirty rude, and savage like their Prince; who rides, & rows, and catches Fish and sells it, and eats Macaroni with his Fingers' (Thraliana, 2:654 - 5). They returned to Rome at the end of Carnival week, in February 1786, and stayed for seven weeks. Mrs Piozzi returned to her 'old Employment of seeing Palaces & Churches; examining Statues, Pictures &c.' 'I passed two mornings in looking at the pictures of Sasso Ferrato and Andrea Mantegna, Names which I used to know only in Books: the Works of Guido Reni ... give one the real, & true, & unaffected Delight which that Art can afford', she told her daughter Hester (4 Mar. 1786). She sat for her portrait to an unidentified artist (NPG), 'as a Red-haired old Hag in a white Bedgown' (27 Sep.1786) and bought a 'Canaletti' of the Piazza S.Marco.
On 19 April they left for Venice. Their coach broke down at Spoleto in the Apennines, but they were rescued by two English travellers, Leonard Chappelow and Charles Shard, with whom they progressed slowly to Bologna. There Mrs Piozzi made the detour to Cento to see Guercino's birthplace, before proceding to Padua where they again met the Greatheeds. She bought more pictures in Venice, including a sketch by Guido Reni for his celebrated Aurora and works by Salviati, Domenichino, Amigoni and 'Bassano'. On 12 June, as the heat grew oppressive, they left for Milan, passing through Padua, Mantua and Verona, which she came to regard as the epitome of all she liked best in Italy. On 21 June they returned to Milan after an absence of fourteen months. They passed some time at Varese and then stayed with Count Borromeo at his palace on Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore. On 22 September the Piozzis finally left Milan to return to England through Germany.
At the close of her Italian travels Mrs Piozzi reflected that 'The Works of Man may be great & lovely: Apollo de Belvedere however, or Venus de Medici soon fade from one's Remembrance, & leave the Cascade of Terni, and Gloom of Pozzuoli indelibly impressed' (Thraliana, 2:639). Although she found Italy 'a Sink of Sin; and whoever lives long in it, must be a little tainted' (ibid., 640), yet she expected to regret it '& particularly Venice & Milan - for all the Pleasures of which two Places I can think of nothing in London that is to make me amends: excepting a Muffin in the Morning, & Mrs Siddons at Night' (ibid., 673). Meanwhile her 'little Talents' had been respected 'much beyond their Deserts: my Conduct extolled far above its Merit, & my Conversation sought from the mere Prevalence of true Admiration and Esteem' (ibid., 676). In 1789 Mrs Piozzi published her Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany (a German translation appeared in 1790).
1. See J.L. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi, 235 - 58, 277 - 92, which summarises the Piozzi Letters, 1:114 - 231, and Thraliana, 2:612 - 78. 2. Rylands Lib., Manchester, Eng.MS 618 (Mrs Piozzi, Italian Journey MSS).