the day before."
"'So,' said he, 'did I.'
"I then said, 'Do you ever, Sir, hear, from her mother?'
"'No,' cried he, 'nor write to her. I drive her quite from my mind.
If I meet with one of her letters, I burn it instantly.[1] I have
burnt all I can find. I never speak of her, and I desire never to
hear of her name. I drive her, as I said, wholly from my mind.'"
[Footnote 1: If this was true, it is strange that he did not destroy
the letter (No. 4) which gave him so sudden and mortifying a check.
Miss Hawkins says in her Memoirs: "It was I who discovered the
letter. I carried it to my father; he enclosed and sent it to her,
_there never having been any intercourse between them_." Anything
from Hawkins about Streatham and its inmates must therefore have been
invention or hearsay.]
In the "Memoirs," describing the same interview, she says:--"We
talked then of poor Mrs. Thrale, but only for a moment, for I saw him
greatly incensed, and with such severity of displeasure, that I
hastened to start another subject, and he solemnly enjoined me to
mention that no more."
This was only eighteen days before he died, and he might be excused
for being angry at the introduction of any agitating topic. It would
stain his memory, not hers, to prove that, belying his recent
professions of tenderness and gratitude, he directly or indirectly
encouraged her assailants.
"I was tempted to observe," says the author of "Piozziana," "that I
thought, as I still do, that Johnson's anger on the event of her
second marriage was excited by some feeling of disappointment; and
that I suspected he had formed some hope of attaching her to himself.
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