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All the world became dim, and when the clock struck four, ten seconds later, she did not hear the last stroke. When Gwen awoke six hours after, she had the haziest recollections of the night. How it had come about that she found herself in another room, warmly covered up, and pillowed on luxury itself, with a smell of lavender in it that alone was bliss, she could infer from Ruth Thrale's report.
On one occasion the doctor detected Boswell, or Bozzy, as he called him, eavesdropping behind his chair, as he was conversing with Miss Burney at Mr. Thrale's table. "What are you doing there, sir?" cried he, turning round angrily, and clapping his hand upon his knee. "Go to the table, sir." Boswell obeyed with an air of affright and submission, which raised a smile on every face.
"She said a good deal, because I encouraged her to talk, to convince myself of her delusion.... Could I recollect some of it? I think so. Or stay I have my notes of the case." He produced a book. "Here we are. 'Mrs. Maisie Prichard, eighty-one. Has delusions. Thinks mill was her father's. It was Widow Thrale's grandfather's. Knows horses Pitt and Fox. Knows Muggeridge waggoner. Has names correct.
Johnson's age, could not have been of long duration; but he bequeathed him only two hundred pounds, which was the legacy given to each of his executors . I could not but be somewhat diverted by hearing Johnson talk in a pompous manner of his new office, and particularly of the concerns of the brewery, which it was at last resolved should be sold . Lord Lucan tells a very good story, which, if not precisely exact, is certainly characteristic: that when the sale of Thrale's brewery was going forward, Johnson appeared bustling about, with an ink-horn and pen in his button-hole, like an excise-man; and on being asked what he really considered to be the value of the property which was to be disposed of, answered, 'We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats but the potentiality of growing rich, beyond the dreams of avarice .
Nash that he had felt that absolute rest continued necessary, and that he had not been able to sanction any attempt to get Mrs. Prichard up for any length of time. Gwen turned for consolation to Widow Thrale's letter. It was a model of reserve would not say too much.
The first effect of the change was probably rather to tighten than to relax the bond of union with the Thrale family. During the winter of 1781-2, Johnson's infirmities were growing upon him. In the beginning of 1782 he was suffering from an illness which excited serious apprehensions, and he went to Mrs. Thrale's, as the only house where he could use "all the freedom that sickness requires."
Thrale's, some days before when we were talking on the same subject, he said, referring to the same idea of his wonderful facility, "That Beauclerk's talents were those which he had felt himself more disposed to envy, than those of any whom he had known ." 'On the evening I have spoken of above, at Mr.
Johnson knew that Thrale would eat like four, let physicians preach.... May be he did not know it, so little did he mind what people were doing. Though he sat by Thrale at dinner, he never noticed whether he eat much or little. A strange man! Yet in a note on p. 49, Baretti had said that Thrale's seizure was caused by 'the mere grief he could not overcome of his only son's loss.
When she got up to join Widow Thrale's and Toby's midday meal, all reference to glass-mending was at an end, and Toby was making such a noise about the relative merits of brown potatoes in their skins, and potatoes per se potatoes, that you could not hear yourself speak.
And then Gwen looked from one to the other. "Oh-h!" said she. "Then probably the man was her son.... Look here! I must read you the postscript I left out." She reopened Mrs. Thrale's letter, and read that the writer's mother had been much upset by a man who laid claim to being Mrs. Prichard's son.
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