Lady Hales was the mother of Miss Coussmaker, having been twice married, the second time to Sir Thomas Pym Hales, Bart., who died in 1773. They were intimate friends of the Burneys.
7 Dr. Burney had brought the work under the notice of Mrs. Thrale. Mrs. Cholmondeley was a sister of the famous actress, Peg Woffington. Her husband, the Hon. and Rev. Robert Cholmondeley, was the second son of the Earl of Cholmondeley, and nephew of Horace Walpole.
8 The sum originally paid for “Evelina” was twenty pounds, to which ten Pounds more were added after the third edition. “Evelina” passed through four editions within a year.
9 Mrs. Greville, the wife of Dr. Burney’s friend and early patron, Fulke Greville, was Fanny’s godmother, and the author of a much admired “Ode to Indifference.”
10 Her cousin, Charles Rousseau Burney–Hetty’s husband.
11 A French authoress, who wrote about the middle of the eighteenth century. Her novels, according to Dunlop “A History of Fiction,” (chap. xiii.), “are distinguished by their delicacy and spirit.” Her best works ar: “Miss Jenny Salisbury,” “Le Marquis de Cressy,” “Letters of Lady Catesby,” etc.
12 Mrs. Williams, the blind poetess, who resided in Dr. Johnson’s house. She had written to Dr. Burney, requesting the loan of a copy of “Evelina.”
13 William Seward “a great favourite at Streatham,” was the son of an eminent brewer, Mr. Seward, of the firm of Calvert and Seward, and was born in 1747. He was not yet a “literary lion,” but he published some volumes—“Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons”—at a later date. He died in 1799.
14 Miss Frances Reynolds—Dr. Johnson’s “Renny”—was the sister of the great Sir Joshua, and a miniature painter of some talent.
15 Her brother.
16 Bennet Lampton, of Langton in Lincolnshire, was an old and much loved friend of Dr. Johnson, and is frequently mentioned in Boswell’s “Life.” He was born about 1737, was educated at Oxford, was a good Greek scholar, and, says Boswell, “a gentleman eminent not only for worth, and learning but for an inexhaustible fund of entertaining conversation.” He succeeded Johnson, on the death of the latter, as Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy, and died in 1801. Boswell has printed a charming letter, written by Johnson, a few months before his death, to Langton’s little daughter Jane, then in her seventh year.
17 “My master” was a Common appellation for Mr. Thrale,—and one which he seems, in earnest, to have deserved. “I know no man,” said Johnson, “who is more master of his wife and family than Thrale, he but holds up a finger, he is obeyed.” (Boswell.)
18 Suspirius the Screech Owl. See “Rambler” for Oct. 9, 1750. (This is unjust to Goldsmith. The general idea of the character of Croaker, no doubt, closely resembles that of Suspirius, and was probably borrowed from Johnson; but the details which make the part so diverting are entirely of Goldsmith’s invention, as anyone may see by comparing “The Good-natured Man” with “The Rambler.”)
19 Mrs. Thrale tells a good story of Johnson’s irrational antipathy to the Scotch. A Scotch gentleman in London, “at his return from the Hebrides, asked him, with a firm tone of voice, ‘what he thought of his country?’ ‘That it is a very vile country, to be sure, sir,’ returned for answer Dr. Johnson. ‘Well sir!’ replies the other, somewhat mortified, ‘God made it!’ ‘Certainly he did,’ answers Mr. Johnson, again, ‘but we must always remember that He made it for Scotchmen; and—comparisons are odious.” Mr. S.—“but God made hell!”—(Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson)
20 Fanny’s step-mother.
21 Boswell prints these lines as follows:
“When first I drew my vital breath, A little minikin I came upon earth And then I came from a dark abode, Into this gay and gaudy world,”
22 Malone gives some further particulars about Bet Flint in a note to Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.” She was tried, and acquitted, at the Old Bailey in September, 1758, the prosecutrix, Mary Walthow, being unable to prove “that the goods charged to have been stolen (a counterpane, a silver spoon, two napkins, etc.) were her property. Bet does not appear to have lived at that time in a very genteel style; for she paid for her ready-furnished room in Meard’s-court, Dean-street, Soho, from which these articles were alleged to be stolen, only five shillings a week.”
23 Margaret Caroline Rudd was in great notoriety about the year 1776, from the fame of her powers of fascination, which, it was said, had brought a man to the gallows. This man, her lover, was hanged in January, 1776, for forgery, and the fascinating Margaret appeared as evidence against him. Boswell visited her in that year, and to a lady who expressed her disapprobation of such proceedings, Johnson said: “Nay, madam, Boswell is right: I should have visited her myself, were it not that they have got a trick of putting every thing into the newspapers.”
24 Kitty Fisher—more correctly, Fischer, her father being a German—an even more famous courtesan, who enjoyed the distinction of having been twice painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds
25 The blind poetess, and inmate of Dr. Johnson’s house.
26 Michael Lort, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and subsequently Greek Professor. He was born in 1725, and died in 1799.
27 “I wished the man a dinner and sat still.”—Pope.
28 The Miss Palmers were the nieces of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Mary, the elder, married, in 1792, the Earl of Inchiquin, afterwards created Marquis of Thomond; the younger, Theophila (“Offy”), married Robert Lovell Gwatkin, Esq. One of Sir Joshua’s most charming pictures (“Simplicity”) was painted, in 1788, from Offy’s little daughter. Lady Ladd was the sister of Mr. Thrale.
29 Miss Thrale.
30 Edmund Burke, our “greatest man since Milton,” as Macaulay called him.
31 At Sir Joshua’s town house, in Leicester Square. The house is now occupied by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, the auctioneers.
32 “de Mullin” is Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter of Johnson’s godfather, Dr. Swinfen, a physician in Lichfield. Left in extreme indigence by the deaths of her father and husband, she found for many years an asylum in the house of Dr. Johnson, whom she survived.
33 Macbean was sometime Johnson’s amanuensis. His “Dictionary of Ancient Geography” was published in 1773, with a Preface by Johnson.
34 Robert Levett—not Levat, as Fanny writes it—was a Lichfield man, “an obscure practiser in physick amongst the lower people,” and an old acquaintance of Dr. Johnson’s, in whose house he was supported for many years, until his death, at a very advanced age, in 1782, “So ended the long life of a very useful and very blameless man,” Johnson wrote, in communicating the intelligence to Dr. Lawrence.
35 Boswell tells us nothing of Poll, except that she was a Miss Carmichael. Domestic dissensions seem to have been the rule with this happy family, but Johnson’s long-suffering was inexhaustible, On one occasion he writes Mrs. Thrale, “Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, who does not love
