The other entries referring to the Thrales are: 

“August 22.—­We went to visit Bodville, the place where Mrs. Thrale was born, and the churches called Tydweilliog and Llangwinodyl, which she holds by impropriation.”

“August 24.—­We went to see Bodville.  Mrs. Thrale remembered the rooms, and wandered over them, with recollections of her childhood.  This species of pleasure is always melancholy....  Mr. Thrale purposes to beautify the churches, and, if he prospers, will probably restore the tithes.  Mrs. Thrale visited a house where she had been used to drink milk, which was left, with an estate of 200_l._ a year, by one Lloyd, to a married woman who lived with him.”

“August 26.—­Note.  Queeny’s goats, 149, I think.”

Without Mr. Duppa’s aid this last entry would be a puzzle for commentators.  His note is: 

“Mr. Thrale was near-sighted, and could not see the goats browsing on Snowdon, and he promised his daughter, who was a child of ten years old, a penny for every goat she would show him, and Dr. Johnson kept the account; so that it appears her father was in debt to her one hundred and forty-nine pence. Queeny was an epithet, which had its origin in the nursery, by which (in allusion to Queen Esther) Miss Thrale (whose name was Esther) was always distinguished by Johnson.”  She was named, after her mother, Hester, not Esther.

On September 13, Johnson sets down:  “We came, to Lord Sandys’, at Ombersley, where we were treated with great civility.”  It was here, as he told Mrs. Thrale, that for the only time in his life he had as much wall fruit as he liked; yet she says that he was in the habit of eating six or seven peaches before breakfast during the fruit season at Streatham.  Swift was also fond of fruit:  “observing (says Scott) that a gentleman in whose garden he walked with some friends, seemed to have no intention to request them to eat any, the Dean remarked that it was a saying of his dear grandmother: 

  “’Always pull a peach
  When it is within your reach;’

and helping himself accordingly, his example was followed by the whole company.”  Thomson, the author of the “Castle of Indolence,” was once seen lounging round Lord Burlington’s garden, with his hands in his waistcoat pockets, biting off the sunny sides of the peaches.

Johnson’s dislike to the Lyttletons was not abated by his visit to Hagley, of which he says, “We made haste away from a place where all were offended.”  Mrs. Thrale’s explanation is:  “Mrs. Lyttelton, ci-devant Caroline Bristow, forced me to play at whist against my liking, and her husband took away Johnson’s candle that he wanted to read by at the other end of the room.  Those, I trust, were the offences.”

He was not in much better humour at Combermere Abbey, the seat of her relative, Sir Lynch Cotton, which is beautifully situated on one of the finest lakes in England.  He commends the place grudgingly, passes a harsh judgment on Lady Cotton, and is traditionally recorded to have made answer to the baronet who inquired what he thought of a neighbouring peer (Lord Kilmorey):  “A dull, commonplace sort of man, just like you and your brother.”