began to complain of Johnson. His approval of her plan of travel showed, she thought, want of desire for her company, and she no doubt foresaw that he would object to the marriage with Piozzi, which she was beginning to contemplate. Her eldest daughter also strongly disapproved. She left Streatham in October 1782 and went to Brighton, whither Johnson followed her. She returned to London, and, after a violent scene with her eldest daughter, resolved to give up Piozzi. She told him in January that they must part (ib. i. 220). She retired to Bath, and Piozzi left for Italy (8 May 1783) at the same time. In the ‘Anecdotes’ she attributes her retreat to Bath exclusively to the desire to escape from Johnson's tyranny; but her diary (ib. i. 169, 196) shows that this was at most a very subordinate motive [see under Johnson, Samuel, 1709–1784]. Her daughters, seeing that her health was affected, finally consented to the recall of Piozzi. She was married by a catholic priest in London on 23 July, and at St. James's, Bath, according to the Anglican ritual, on 25 July 1784. A match with an Italian Roman catholic musician was naturally regarded with excessive disapproval by the society of that time. It involved a separation from her eldest daughter, of whom she speaks with coldness and resentment (Hayward, i. 305, ii. 69). They appear to have been afterwards on civil but distant terms. Cecilia, the youngest, stayed with her.
Upon her marriage she went to Italy with her husband; spent the winter at Milan, and in the next summer was at Florence, where she made friends with Robert Merry [q. v.] and the ‘Della Cruscans.’ She contributed to the ‘Florence Miscellany,’ ridiculed in Gifford's ‘Baviad’ and ‘Mæviad,’ and wrote the preface. She also wrote there her ‘Anecdotes,’ giving a very lively picture of Johnson, though it is partly coloured by a desire to defend her own conduct. It sold well, though it excited a good deal of ridicule, as indicated by Peter Pindar's ‘Bozzy and Piozzi.’ She returned to England in March 1787, and was bitterly attacked by Baretti [q. v.], who had lived for three years in her house as tutor to Miss Thrale, in the ‘European Magazine.’ He is also supposed by Mr. Hayward to have been the author of ‘The Sentimental Moth, a Comedy in Five Acts: the Legacy of an old Friend … to Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale,’ &c. (1789). She appears, however, to have been well received in society, and settled at Streatham Park, upon which she and her husband spent 2,000l. She published Johnson's letters, for which, Boswell says, she had 500l., in 1788, and some other books (see below), showing an overestimate of her own accomplishments. At the end of 1795 she left Streatham for Wales. She lived there with her husband, who repaired Bachycraig, but afterwards built a villa, called Brynhella, in the valley of the Clwyd. He died there of gout in March 1809. She adopted a nephew of his, John Piozzi, to whom she gave the Welsh property on his marriage to a Miss Pemberton. Piozzi had saved 6,000l., and left everything to his wife (Hayward, ii. 75). They spent most of their winters at Bath, and after his death she seems to have generally lived there. When nearly eighty she took a great fancy to a handsome young actor, William Augustus Conway [q. v.], and it was reported that she proposed to marry him. Her ‘love-letters’ to him, written in 1819 and published in 1843, are of doubtful authenticity, but in any case only show that she became silly in her old age. On 27 Jan. 1820 she celebrated her eightieth (or seventy-ninth?) birthday by a ball to six or seven hundred people at Bath, and led off the dances with her adopted son. She died on 2 May 1821, leaving everything to this son, who, having taken her maiden name and been knighted when sheriff of Flintshire, was now Sir John Piozzi Salusbury.
Mrs. Piozzi was a very clever woman; well read in English literature, though her knowledge of other subjects was apparently superficial. Her early experience had given her rather cynical views of life, and she seems to have been rather hard and masculine in character; but she also showed a masculine courage and energy in various embarrassments. Her love of Piozzi, which was both warm and permanent, is the most amiable feature of her character. She cast off her daughters as decidedly as she did Dr. Johnson; but it is impossible not to admire her vivacity and independence. She was short and plump, and if not regularly pretty, had an interesting face. An engraving from a miniature by Roche, taken when she was seventy-seven, is prefixed to Hayward's first volume, and an engraving of Hogarth's, ‘Lady's Last Stake,’ to the second. She ‘sate for this,’ as she says, when under fourteen (ib. ii. 309). If so, Hogarth must have idealised the picture considerably; but it appears to have been painted in 1759 [see under Hogarth, William].
Mrs. Piozzi's works are: 1. ‘Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, during the last twenty years of his Life,’ 1786. 2. ‘Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,’ 1788. 3. ‘Observations and Reflections
