“I am willing to show myself in Southwark, or in any place, for my master’s pleasure or advantage; but have no present conviction that to be re-elected would be advantageous, so shattered a state as his nerves are in just now.—­Do not you, however, fancy for a moment, that I shrink from fatigue—­or desire to escape from doing my duty;—­spiting one’s antagonist is a reason that never ought to operate, and never does operate with me:  I care nothing about a rival candidate’s innuendos, I care only about my husband’s health and fame; and if we find that he earnestly wishes to be once more member for the Borough—­he shall be member, if anything done or suffered by me will help make him so.”

In the May following she writes:  “Meanwhile, Heaven send this Southwark election safe, for a disappointment would half kill my husband, and there is no comfort in tiring every friend to death in such a manner and losing the town at last.”

This was an agitating month.  In “Thraliana “: 

“20th May, 1780.—­I got back to Bath again and staid there till the riots[1] drove us all away the first week in June:  we made a dawdling journey, cross country, to Brighthelmstone, where all was likely to be at peace:  the letters we found there, however, shewed us how near we were to ruin here in the Borough:  where nothing but the astonishing presence of mind shewed by Perkins in amusing the mob with meat and drink and huzzas, till Sir Philip Jennings Clerke could get the troops and pack up the counting-house bills, bonds, &c. and carry them, which he did, to Chelsea College for safety,—­could have saved us from actual undoing.  The villains had broke in, and our brewhouse would have blazed in ten minutes, when a property of L150,000 would have been utterly lost, and its once flourishing possessors quite undone.

“Let me stop here to give God thanks for so very undeserved, so apparent, an interposition of Providence in our favour.

“I left Mr. Thrale at Brighthelmstone and came to town again to see what was left to be done:  we have now got arms and mean to defend ourselves by force if further violence is intended.  Sir Philip comes every day at some hour or another—­good creature, how kind he is! and how much I ought to love him!  God knows I am not in this case wanting to my duty.  I have presented Perkins, with my Master’s permission, with two hundred guineas, and a silver urn for his lady, with his own cypher on it and this motto—­Mollis responsio, Iram avertit.”

[Footnote 1:  The Lord George Gordon Riots.]

In the spring of 1781, “I found,” says Boswell, “on visiting Mr. Thrale that he was now very ill, and had removed, I suppose by the solicitation of Mrs. Thrale, to a house in Grosvenor Square.”  She has written opposite:  “Spiteful again!  He went by direction of his physicians where they could easiest attend to him.”

The removal to Grosvenor Square is thus mentioned in “Thraliana”: