“12th October, 1781.—­Yesterday was my wedding-day; it was a melancholy thing to me to pass it without the husband of my youth.

  “’Long tedious years may neither moan,
      Sad, deserted, and alone;
  May neither long condemned to stay
      Wait the second bridal day!!!’[1]

“Let me thank God for my children, however, my fortune, and my friends, and be contented if I cannot be happy.”

[Footnote 1:  Note by Mrs. T.:  “Samuel Wesley’s verses, making part of an epithalamium.”]

“15th October, 1781.—­My maid Margaret Rice dreamed last night that my eldest daughter was going to be married to Mr. Crutchley, but that Mr. Thrale himself prevented her.  An odd thing to me, who think Mr. Crutchley is his son.”

Although the next day but one after Thrale’s death Johnson carried Boswell to dine at the Queen’s Arms’ Club, his grief was deep and durable.  Indeed, it is expressed so often and so earnestly as to rebut the presumption that “my mistress” was the sole or chief tie which bound him to Streatham.  Amongst his Prayers and Meditations is the following: 

“Good Friday, April 13th, 1781.—­On Wednesday, 11th, was buried my dear friend Thrale, who died on Wednesday, 4th; and with him were buried many of my hopes and pleasures.  About five, I think, on Wednesday morning, he expired.  I felt almost the last flutter of his pulse, and looked for the last time upon the face that for fifteen years had never been turned upon me but with respect or benignity.  Farewell.  May God, that delighteth in mercy, have had mercy on thee!  I had constantly prayed for him some time before his death.  The decease of him, from whose friendship I had obtained many opportunities of amusement, and to whom I turned my thoughts as to a refuge from misfortunes, has left me heavy.  But my business is with myself.”

On the same paper is a note:  “My first knowledge of Thrale was in 1765.  I enjoyed his favours for almost a fourth part of my life.”

On the 20th March, 1782, he wrote thus to Langton: 

“Of my life, from the time we parted, the history is mournful.  The spring of last year deprived me of Thrale, a man whose eye for fifteen years had scarcely been turned upon me but with respect or tenderness; for such another friend, the general course of human things will not suffer man to hope.  I passed the summer at Streatham, but there was no Thrale; and having idled away the summer with a weakly body and neglected mind, I made a journey to Staffordshire on the edge of winter.  The season was dreary, I was sickly, and found the friends sickly whom I went to see.”

There is ample evidence that he neither felt nor suspected any diminution of kindness or regard, and continued, till their final departure from Streatham, to treat it as his home.

In November she writes, “Do not forget Streatham and its inhabitants, who are all much yours;” and he replies: