“Monday, January 29th, 1781.—­So now we are to spend this winter in Grosvenor Square; my master has taken a ready-furnished lodging-house there, and we go in to-morrow.  He frighted me cruelly a while ago; he would have Lady Shelburne’s house, one of the finest in London; he would buy, he would build, he would give twenty to thirty guineas a week for a house.  Oh Lord, thought I, the people will sure enough throw stones at me now when they see a dying man go to such mad expenses, and all, as they will naturally think, to please a wife wild with the love of expense.  This was the very thing I endeavoured to avoid by canvassing the borough for him, in hopes of being through that means tyed to the brewhouse where I always hated to live till now, that I conclude his constitution lost, and that the world will say I tempt him in his weak state of body and mind to take a fine house for me at the flashy end of the town.”  “He however, dear creature, is as absolute, ay, and ten times more so, than ever, since he suspects his head to be suspected, and to Grosvenor Square we are going, and I cannot be sorry, for it will doubtless be comfortable enough to see one’s friends commodiously, and I have long wished to quit Harrow Corner, to be sure; how could one help it? though I did

  “‘Call round my casks each object of desire’

all last winter:  but it was a heavy drag too, and what signifies resolving never to be pleased?  I will make myself comfortable in my new habitation, and be thankful to God and my husband.”

On February 7, 1781, she writes to Madame D’Arblay: 

“Yesterday I had a conversazione.  Mrs. Montagu was brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgment, critical in talk.  Sophy smiled, Piozzi sung, Pepys panted with admiration, Johnson was good humoured, Lord John Clinton attentive, Dr. Bowdler lame, and my master not asleep.  Mrs. Ord looked elegant, Lady Rothes dainty, Mrs. Davenant dapper, and Sir Philip’s curls were all blown about by the wind.  Mrs. Byron rejoices that her Admiral and I agree so well; the way to his heart is connoisseurship it seems, and for a background and contorno, who comes up to Mrs. Thrale, you know.”

In “Thraliana”: 

“Sunday, March 18th, 1781.—­Well!  Now I have experienced the delights of a London winter, spent in the bosom of flattery, gayety, and Grosvenor Square; ’tis a poor thing, however, and leaves a void in the mind, but I have had my compting-house duties to attend, my sick master to watch, my little children to look after, and how much good have I done in any way?  Not a scrap as I can see; the pecuniary affairs have gone on perversely:  how should they chuse [an omission here] when the sole proprietor is incapable of giving orders, yet not so far incapable as to be set aside!  Distress, fraud, folly, meet me at every turn, and I am not able to fight against them all, though endued with an iron constitution, which shakes not by sleepless nights or days severely fretted.