Piozzi, Hester Lynch
PIOZZI, HESTER LYNCH (1741-1821), English writer, well known as the friend (Mrs Thrale) of Samuel Johnson (q.v.), was born on the 16th of January 1741, her father being John Salusbury of Bobbel, Carnarvonshire. Her maternal uncle, Sir Robert Salusbury Cotton, contemplated providing for his niece, but he died without having carried out his intention. She and her mother lived in London, and amongst her childish recollections were meetings with James Quin and David Garrick. She received a solid education, for she was acquainted with Latin as well as with French, Italian and Spanish. In 1763 she was married to Henry Thrale, a rich Southwark brewer, whose house was at Streatham on the south-east corner of Tooting Bee Common. There was very little sympathy between the lively girl and Thrale, who was thirteen years her senior, but gradually she drew round her a distinguished circle of friends. She was introduced to Samuel Johnson in 1765 by Arthur Murphy, who was an old friend of her husband's. In 1766 Johnson paid a long visit to Streatham, and from that time was more or less domesticated with the Thrales. In time it became his custom to spend the middle of the week at Streatham, devoting the remaining days to his own heterogeneous " family." He was genuinely attached to his hostess, and thoroughly appreciated the luxury in which the Thrales lived. They were able to soften some of his eccentricities, and they certainly made him happy. He travelled with them in Wales in 1774, and in France in 1775. Dr Burney gave lessons to one of the Miss Thrales, and in 1778 he brought his daughter Fanny to Streatham. She became a warm friend of Mrs Thrale, and has left an account of the Streatham household in her diary. This friendship was by no means always unclouded. Fanny Burney was very sensitive, and sometimes thought that Mrs Thrale gave herself airs of patronage. Meanwhile, in 1772, Thrale's business was seriously injured, and he was threatened with bankruptcy. The situation was saved by his wife's efforts, and in the next year Thrale travelled, leaving her in charge of his affairs. He was twice returned for the borough of Southwark, chiefly through her efforts. In 1781 Mr Thrale died, and Dr Johnson helped the widow with her business arrangements, advising her to keep on the brewery, until she " cured his honest heart of its incipient passion for trade, by letting him into some, and only some, of its mysteries." The brewery was finally sold for 135,000. Mrs Thrale had met Gabriele Piozzi, an Italian musician, in 1780. Johnson was now in failing health, and soon began to feel himself slighted. His suspicions were definitely aroused when she laid aside her mourning for Thrale in 1782, and the Streatham house was sold. In 1783 her engagement to Piozzi was announced. The objections of her daughters and her friends induced her to break it off for a time, but it was soon resumed, and in 1784 they were married. Johnson told Miss Burney that he drove the memory of Mrs Thrale from his mind, burning every letter of hers on which he could lay his hand. The Piozzis presently left England to travel in Italy. At Florence they fell in with Robert Merry and the other " Delia Cruscan" writers ridiculed by William Gifford in his Maeviad and Baviad, and she contributed some verses to their Florence Miscellany in 1785. In 1786 she published Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, during the last twenty years of his life, which was severely criticized by BoswelL She was ridiculed by " Peter Pindar " in Bozzy and Piozzi; or Hie British Biographers, A Town Eclogue (1786). But though Miss Burney and some others held aloof, the Piozzis found plenty of friends when they returned to London in 1787. Piozzi died at Brynbella, a villa he had built on his wife's Carnarvonshire estate in 1809, and Mrs Piozzi gave up her Welsh property to her husband's son, and spent most of the rest of her life at Bath and Clifton. When long past seventy she took a fancy to William Augustus Conway, the actor. She retained her vivacity to the last, celebrating her 8oth birthday by a ball to six or seven hundred people at Bath. She died at Clifton on the 2nd of May 1821.
From 1776 to 1809 she kept a note-book which she called " Thraliana." Her well-known poem of the "Three Warnings" is to be found in many popular collections. Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson appeared in 1788; Observations and Reflections made in the course of a Journey, through France, Italy and Germany, in 1789; and in 1 80 1 she published Retrospection; or a review of the most striking and important events, characters, and situations "... which the last eighteen hundred years have presented to the view of mankind (1801).
See Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs Piozzi (Thrale), edited with notes and an Introductory Account of her Life and Writings by A. Hayward (1861); Piozziana; or Recollections of the late Mrs Piozzi by a Friend (1833), the anonymous friend being Edward Mangin (1772-1852); L. B. Seeley, Mrs Thrale, afterwards Mrs Piozzi . . . (1891), and G. Birkbeck Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897). Also works noted in bibliography to JOHNSON, SAMUEL PIPE, a term used of a musical wind-instrument of tubular form, and hence of any cylindrical hollow tube. The original application of the term is to the musical instrument (see PIPE AND TABOR below), and the source is to be found in Lat. pipare, to chirp, of a bird. The general meaning of " pipe," in the sense of a tube for such purposes as carrying water, gas, sewage, etc., is treated under TUBE. Among specific uses of the word are those for the hollow stem of clay, wood or other material with a bowl at one end in which tobacco is smoked (see below) ; for the metal or wooden sound tubes in an organ (q.v.) ; and for various forms of cylindrical veins, hollows, channels, etc., in mining and geology. The Great Roll of the Exchequer was known as the "Pipe Roll "; this contained the various " pipes" or enrolled accounts of the sheriffs, etc., which were so called either from being sent in a cylindrical case or as resembling a pipe in shape when rolled (see RECORDS).
Tobacco Pipe. The smoking of tobacco in pipes is a custom which prevailed in America for a period of unknown duration previous to the discovery of that continent by Columbus. The most ancient pipes of which remains exist have been found in mounds or tumuli called pipe mounds, principally in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. These mound pipes, which are carved in porphyry and other hard stones, are very uniform in type. The pipe, cut out of a single piece of stone, consists of a slightly convex platform or base, generally from 3 to 4 in. in length, and about an inch broad, with the bowl on the centre. A fine hole is pierced from one end of the platform to the bottom of the bowl, the opposite end being obviously for holding in the hand while the pipe is being smoked. In the commonest forms the bowl is a simple cylinder or urn (fig. i), but in many cases remarkable artistic skill has been displayed in carving the bowls into miniature figures of birds,mammals,reptiles and human heads, often grotesque and fantastic, but always vigorously expressed (fig. 2). These mound or platform pipes with carved humanandanimal formsare objects of the highest ethnographic interest and im- FIG. i. " Monitor " Pipe.
portance, being among the FIG. 2. Heron Pipe.
most characteristic remains of the ancient inhabitants of the Mississippi valley. The wide area over which they, as well as remains of baked clay pipes, are found throughout the American continent testifies to the universal prevalence of smoking in the pre-Columbian era. Many of the ancient clay pipes found in Mexico, etc., are elaborately moulded and ornamented, while others show considerable similarity to the early clay pipes of Europe. Among the North-American Indian tribes the tobacco pipe occupies a position of peculiar symbolic significance in connexion with the superstitious rites and usages of the race. The calumet, peace pipe or medicine pipe, is an object of the most profound veneration, entrusted to the care of a highly honoured official, and produced and smoked with much ceremony only on occasions of great importance and solemnity. It is remarkable that, whilst the most ancient American pipes had no separate stem, it is the stem only of the medicine pipe which is the object of veneration among the Indians, the bowl used being a matter of indifference. The favourite material for Indian pipe bowls is the famous red pipe stone (catlinite), a fine-grained easily-worked stone of a rich red colour of the Coteau des Prairies, west of the Big Stone Lake in S. Dakota. The quarries were formerly neutral ground among the warring Indian tribes, many sacred traditions being associated with the locality and its product.
It is disputed whether pipes for smoking were at all known in Europe previous to the discovery of America. That tobaccosmoking was unknown is certain; but pipes of iron, bronze and clay have been so frequently found associated with Roman remains and other antiquities as to lead many authorities to maintain that such pipes must have been anciently used for burning incense or for smoking aromatic herbs or hemp. Throughout Great Britain and Ireland small clay pipes are frequently dug up, in some instances associated with Roman relics. These are known amongst the people as elfin, fairy or Celtic pipes, and in some districts supernatural agencies have been called in to account for their existence. The elfin pipes have commonly flat broad heels in place of the sharp spur now found on clay pipes, and on that flat space the mark or initials of the maker is occasionally found. There is no reason to believe that these pipes are older than the 17th century. The introduction of the tobacco pipe into Europe is generally ascribed to Ralph Lane, first governor of Virginia, who in 1586 brought an Indian pipe to Sir Walter Raleigh, and taught that courtier how to use the implement. The pipe-makers of London became an incorporated body in 1619, and from England the other nations of Europe learned the art of making clay pipes.
The habit of smoking with pipes spread with incredible rapidity; and among the various peoples the pipe assumed special characteristics, and its modifications became the medium of conveying social, political and personal allusions, in many cases with no little artistic skill and humour. The pipe also became the object of much inventive ingenuity, and it varied as greatly in material as in form wood, hern, bone, ivory, stone, precious and other metals, amber, glass, porcelain and, above all, clay being the materials employed in various forms. By degrees pipes of special form and material came to be associated with particular people, e.g. the elongated painted porcelain bowls and pendulous stem of the German peasantry, the red clay bowl and long cherry wood stem of the Turk, and the very small metallic bowl and cane stem of the Japanese, etc. Among other kinds of pipe which have been popular at various times are the " corn-cob," where the bowl is made of the cob of maize or Indian corn, and the " calabash " with the bowl of a small gourd. The " churchwarden " is a clay pipe with a slender stem, some 16 or 20 in. long. The most luxurious and elaborate form of pipe is the Persian kalytin, hookah or water tobacco pipe. This consists of three pieces, the head or bowl, the water bottle or base, and the snake or long flexible tube ending in the mouthpiece. The tobacco, which must be previously prepared by steeping in water, is placed in the head and lighted with live charcoal, a wooden stem passes from its bottom down into the water which fills the base, and the tube is fitted to a stem which ends in the bottle above the water. Thus the smoke is cooled and washed before it reaches the smoker by passing through the water in the bottle, and by being drawn through the coil of tube frequently some yards in length. The bottles are in many cases made of carved and otherwise ornamented coco-nut shells, whence the apparatus is called ndrglla, from nargU, a coconut. Silver, gold, damascened steel and precious stones are freely used in the making and decoration of these pipes for wealthy smokers.
Pipe Manufacture. The regular pipe-making industries divide into many branches, of which the more important are the clay pipe, meerschaum (real and artificial), and wooden bowl trades. Clay pipes are made in prodigious numbers by hand labour with an iron mould and a steel wire for forming the tube of the stem. Pipemoulding is a very simple operation in pottery, and the work is performed with astonishing celerity. A number of machines have been devised for automatic pipe-moulding; but the manual operations are so rapid and inexpensive that there is little margin for saving by the substitution of machinery. The pipes are very slightly fired so as to keep them soft and porous; and so cheaply made are they that the commoner kinds can be retailed at a profit for a farthing each. The principal early centres of the clay-pipe industry were at Broseley in Staffordshire, where the trade has been established since the early part of the 17th century, and at Amesbury in Wiltshire. The manufacture is still carried on at Broseley. Meerschaum pipes (see MEERSCHAUM) are the luxury of the European smoker. The favourite wooden pipe generally known as a briarwood or briar-root pipe is really made from the roots of the tree heath, Erica arborea (Fr. bruyere), principally obtained on the hills of the Maremma and taken thence to Leghorn. There the roots are shaped into blocks each suitable for a pipe, the cutting of the wood so as to avoid waste requiring considerable skill. These blocks are simmered in a vat for twelve hours, which gives them the much-appreciated yellowish-brown hue of a good " briar-root." So prepared the blocks are exported for boring and finishing. Many devices have been invented for the purpose of preventing the nicotine liquor from reaching the smoker's mouth or collecting in and fouling the pipe.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
