not endure Hester's father with the red-hot
temper, getting into scrapes and duels and all
sorts of difficulties. Anna Maria died, aged
forty-one, of dropsy. Uncle Thomas—Sir
Thomas—loved horses and little Hester, then
thirteen years old. Her verses and translations
he showed to the young men by whom the place
was haunted, and her skill on horseback all
could see. Doctor Collier, Hester's chief
instructor, had been and was a constant guest.
Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, when
her uncle Thomas's age was sixty-four, court
was made to the child by young men whom she
dealt with as so many suitors. Uncle Sir
Thomas loved Hester and her mother, but the
peace of his home was broken by his brother
John, and he was thus driven to seek consolation
in the smiles of a willing widow. "We
should have made home more agreeable," says
the autobiographer.

Lord Halifax being made Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland, John Salusbury joined the danglers in
his lordship's train through Wales. Hester and
mamma were alone at Offley, uncle Thomas's
seat, doing the honours. Doctor Collier was in
London on business. Uncle Thomas was gone
off to London for a night or two, hoping to see
his widow, when—momentous the day—Sir
Thomas returned, Mrs. Piozzi writes in her old
age, "to tell us what an excellent, what an
incomparable young man he had seen, who was,
in short, a model of perfection, and a real sportsman.
Seeing me disposed to laugh, he looked
very grave; said he expected us to like him,
and that seriously. The next day, Mr. Thrale
followed his eulogist, and applied himself so
diligently to gain my mother's attention—aye, and
her heart, too,—that there was little doubt of
her approving the pretensions of so very showy
a suitor—if suitor he was to me, who certainly
had not a common share in the compliments he
paid to my mother's wit, beauty, and elegance.
His father, he said, was born in our village at
Offley, of mean parents, but had made a
prodigious fortune by his merits; and the people
all looked with admiration at his giving five
shillings to a poor boy who lay on the bank,
because he was sure his father had been such a
boy. In a week's time the country catched the
notion up, that Miss Salusbury's husband had
been suddenly found by meeting Sir Thomas at
the house of Mr. Levinz, a well-known bon
vivant of those days, who kept a gay house and
a gay lady at Brompton, where he entertained
the gay fashionists of 1760." This young
brewer was, indeed, the husband picked out by
Sir Thomas, who made Hester's marriage with
him the condition of his favour. But Hester's
father, prompted by the chaplain at Offley, who
was not without an ambition of his own, swore
that his child should not be exchanged for a
barrel of porter. The brothers quarrelled and
met no more. John carried his wife and child
away to London, where Mr. Thrale still visited,
and seemed to court only mamma; where
mamma was miserable and papa was violent,
and whither a note soon came from Doctor
Collier to Hester, written in Latin, to say that
Sir Thomas, lord of all their expectations,
certainly would marry his friend, the widow, on
the Sunday following.

Hester was not to break the dreadful news
herself. The doctor himself would come, after
the event, and manage that. But Hester's face
told a sad tale. Papa, accusing her of clandestine
dealings with Mr. Thrale, worried her for
hours until she fainted, took the letter from her
bosom, and then the calamity was known to all;
after which they were all sitting up, miserable
together, until four o'clock in the morning.
They rose at nine, all of them ill. John Salusbury
went to ask counsel of a brother-in-law,
Hester, meanwhile, wrote a note to invite their
doctor to dine with them. Before the doctor
came, or the dinner was dished, John Salusbury
of Bachycraig was brought back into the house
a corpse.

His will left his Bachycraig house to his wife,
charged with a portion of five thousand pounds
to his daughter. Uncle Thomas, whose education
John in old days had paid for, and who
had lost John's family a farm with a hundred
a year by neglect while he was courting Anna
Maria, made the five thousand ten. With that
fortune, and expectations of course, Mrs. Piozzi
wrote, "Mr. Thrale deigned to accept my
undesired hand, and in ten months from my poor
father's death were both the marriages he feared
accomplished. My uncle went himself with me
to church, dined with us at Streatham Park,
returned to Hertfordshire, wedded the widow, and
then scarce ever saw or wrote to either of us;
leaving me to conciliate as I could, a husband
who was indeed much kinder than I counted on,
to a plain girl, who had not the attraction in his
eyes, and on whom he never had thrown five
minutes of his time away, in any interview
unwitnessed by company, even until after our
wedding-day was done." At the age of three-
and-twenty, Hester Salusbury, short, plump, and
brisk, with features too decided to be pretty,
very learned for a girl, and a clever talker by
virtue both of ready wit and a good memory
for quotations, married, for his wealth, the
eminent predecessor of Messrs. Barclay, Perkins,
and Co., the tall, reserved, and handsome Mr.
Thrale. Dr. Fitzpatrick, a sickly old Roman
Catholic physician, friend of the elder Thrale,
lived with the newly married couple, and from
him Hester learnt why her husband had made
up his mind to marry her. "He had," the
doctor said, "asked several women," naming
them, " but all except me refused to live in the
Borough, to which and to his business he
observed that Mr. Thrale was as unaccountably
attached now, as he had been in his father's time
averse from both." Of course nothing was more
natural than that a brewer should have a doctor
for his household friend and confidant. There
are not a few hints scattered about the memoirs
showing that Mr. Thrale was not entirely satisfied
with malt and hops as the sole sources of
beer. Before his death, in fact, he was muddling
away his money with experiments, that on one