In a letter to Levet, dated Lleweny, in Denbighshire, August 16, 1774, printed by Boswell, is this sentence:  “Wales, so far as I have yet seen of it, is a very beautiful and rich country, all enclosed and planted.”  Her marginal note is:  “Yet to please Mr. Thrale, he feigned abhorrence of it.”

I am indebted to an intelligent and accurate in-formant for a curious incident of the Welsh tour: 

“Dr. Johnson was taken by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale to dine at Maesnynan, with my relation, Mr. Lloyd, who, with his pretty young daughter (motherless), received them at the door.  All came out of the carriage except the great lexicographer, who was crouching in what my uncle jokingly called the Poets’ Corner, deeply interested evidently with the book he was reading.  A wink from Mrs. Thrale, and a touch of her hand, silenced the host.  She bade the coachman not move, and desired the people in the house to let Mr. Johnson read on till dinner was on the table, when she would go and whistle him to it.  She always had a whistle hung at her girdle, and this she used, when in Wales, to summon him and her daughters[1], when in or out of doors.  Mr. Lloyd and all the visitors went to see the effect of the whistle, and found him reading intently with one foot on the step of the carriage, where he had been (a looker-on said) five minutes.”

[Footnote 1: 

  “He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
  For he knew when he pleas’d he could whistle them back.”]

“This scene is well told by Miss Burney, in her ’Camilla’[1] ex relatione Mrs. Williams (Lady Cotton’s sister, who was present) and Beata Lloyd, whose brother, Colonel Thomas Lloyd, of the Guards, was the Brummell of his day, celebrated for his manly beauty and accomplishments.  I heard Lord Crewe say that Colonel Lloyd’s horse, and his graceful manner of mounting him, used to attract members of both Houses (he among them) to turn out to see him mount guard; and the Princesses were forbidden, when driving out, to go so often that way and at that time.”

[Footnote 1:  Book viii. chap, iv., Dr. Orkborne is described standing on the staircase of an inn absorbed in the composition of a paragraph whilst the party are at dinner.]

Their impressions of one another as travelling companions were sufficiently favourable to induce the party (with the addition of Baretti) to make a short tour in France in the autumn of the year following, 1775, during part of which Johnson kept a diary in the same laconic and elliptical style.  The only allusion to either of his friends is: 

“We went to Sansterre, a brewer.  He brews with about as much malt as Mr. Thrale, and sells his beer at the same price, though he pays no duty for malt, and little more than half as much for beer.  Beer is sold retail at sixpence a bottle.”

In a letter to Levet, dated Paris, Oct. 22, 1775, he says: 

“We went to see the king and queen at dinner, and the queen was so impressed by Miss, that she sent one of the gentlemen to inquire who she was.  I find all true that you have ever told me at Paris.  Mr. Thrale is very liberal, and keeps us two coaches, and a very fine table; but I think our cookery very bad.  Mrs. Thrale got into a convent of English nuns, and I talked with her through the grate, and I am very kindly used by the English Benedictine friars.”