[495] Johnson, no doubt, was leaving Streatham because Mrs. Thrale was leaving it.  ‘Streatham,’ wrote Miss Burney, on Aug. 12 of this year, ’my other home, and the place where I have long thought my residence dependent only on my own pleasure, is already let for three years to Lord Shelburne.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii.151.  Johnson was not yet leaving the Thrale family, for he joined them at Brighton, and he was living with them the following spring in Argyll-street.  Nevertheless, if, as all Mrs. Thrale’s friends strongly held, her second marriage was blameworthy, Boswell’s remark admits of defence.  Miss Burney in her diary and letters keeps the secret which Mrs. Thrale had confided to her of her attachment to Mr. Piozzi; but in the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which, as Mme. D’Arblay, she wrote long afterwards, she leaves little doubt that Streatham was given up as a step towards the second marriage.  In 1782, on a visit there, she found that her father ’and all others—­Dr. Johnson not excepted—­were cast into the same gulf of general neglect.  As Mrs. Thrale became more and more dissatisfied with her own situation, and impatient for its relief, she slighted Johnson’s counsel, and avoided his society.’  Mme. D’Arblay describes a striking scene in which her father, utterly puzzled by ’sad and altered Streatham,’ left it one day with tears in his eyes.  Another day, Johnson accompanied her to London.  ’His look was stern, though dejected, but when his eye, which, however shortsighted, was quick to mental perception, saw how ill at ease she appeared, all sternness subsided into an undisguised expression of the strongest emotion, while, with a shaking hand and pointing finger, he directed her looks to the mansion from which they were driving; and when they faced it from the coach-window, as they turned into Streatham Common, tremulously exclaimed, “That house ...is lost to me... for ever."’ Johnson’s letter to Langton of March 20, 1782 (ante, p. 145), in which he says that he was ‘musing in his chamber at Mrs. Thrale’s,’ shews that so early as that date he foresaw that a change was coming.  Boswell’s statement that ‘Mrs. Thrale became less assiduous to please Johnson,’ might have been far more strongly worded.  See Dr. Burney’s Memoirs, ii. 243-253.  Lord Shelburne, who as Prime Minister was negotiating peace with the United States, France, and Spain, hired Mrs. Thrale’s house ’in order to be constantly near London.’  Fitzmaurice’s Shelburne, iii. 242.

[496] Mr. Croker quotes the following from the Rose MSS.:—­’Oct. 6, Die Dominica, 1782.  Pransus sum Streathamiae agninum crus coctum cum herbis (spinach) comminutis, farcimen farinaceum cum uvis passis, lumbos bovillos, et pullum gallinae:  Turcicae; et post carnes missas, ficus, uvas, non admodum maturas, ita voluit anni intemperies, cum malis Persicis, iis tamen duris.  Non laetus accubui, cibum modice sumpsi, ne intemperantia ad extremum peccaretur.  Si recte memini, in mentem venerunt epulae in exequiis Hadoni celebratae.  Streathamiam quando revisam?’