PIOTRKOW 



PIPE 



191 



that may be necessary. One is selected from each 

 company. Instead of a ride each carries a saw- 

 backed sword, an axe, and two gun-spikes, other 

 necessary tools being distributed among them. 



Cavalry Pioneers, one from each troop, are in- 

 structed at the School of Military Engineering, 

 Chatham, in the best method of rapidly destroy- 

 ing railways, telegraph lines, &c., and carry 

 gun-cotton and the tools necessary for this pur- 

 pose. 



Piotrkow (Ger. Petrikuu), a town of Russian 

 Poland, HI miles by rail SW. of Warsaw. Cotton 

 anil wool spinning is largely prosecuted. It is one 

 of the oldest Pwish towns ; here in the 15th an 

 16th centuries diets were held and the kings 

 elected. Pop. 24,866. The government has an area 

 of 4730 sq. m. and a jmpulation of ( 1891 ) 1,200,197, 

 *nd is a centre of the cotton and woollen industries, 

 of brandy-distilling, and of corn-milling. 



Pio/./i. Mits, more famous as MRS THRALE, and 

 by that name to l>e remembered until Dr Samuel 

 jiilinson is forgotten. Her maiden name was 

 Hester Lynch Salisbury, and she was born of a 

 good \Veish family at Bodvel in Carnarvonshire, 

 January 27, 1741. She early gave promise of quick 

 parts and lively di-pusition, and received an edu- 

 cation that extended even to Latin as well as 

 French, Spanish, and Italian. Early introduced 

 into the fashionable world of London, in Octol>er 

 1763 she married Henry Thrale, a prosperous 

 Suuthwark brewer, thirteen years her senior. He 

 was an honest man, and made an indulgent, if 

 somewhat indifferent, husband ; but he was uncom- 

 municative and phlegmatic in temperament. Mrs 

 Thrali 1 made Johnson's acquaintance through the 

 kind otliees of Murphy in January 1765, and one 

 of the most interesting friendships in the history 

 of letters at once l>egan. The sage quickly con- 

 eei\e<l an extraordinary affection for his ' mistress," 

 was domesticated in her house at Streatham 

 Place for over sixteen years, and for her sake 

 learned to soften many of the eccentricities of his 

 speech, dress, and behaviour. Of all his friend- 

 ships this was the one most valuable to him, for 

 Mrs Tliralc's warm woman's heart and constant 

 cheerfulness henceforward brightened many a 

 L'l'ioniy hour in a life that hail known but little 

 happiness. Thrale also had a solid esteem for 

 Johnson, carried him with the family to Brighton, 

 to Wales in 1774, and to France in 1775, and left 

 him 200 as one of his four executors. He was 

 returned for Southwark at a by-election in the 

 eml of 1765, and sat continuously until the election 

 of 1780. Boswell first visited Streatham in October 

 1769, Fanny Bnrney in August 1778. In 1772 

 Thrale's affairs became embarrassed, but his wife's 

 tact and energy and the timely advances of friends 

 enabled him to tide over the crisis. Thrale died 

 in April I7H1, and three years later the brewery 

 was sold for 1 35.000. Mrs Thrale had borne him 

 twelve children, but her only son died in 1776, and 

 she had but five daughter* living at her husband's 

 death. I)r Johnson s health was now declining, 

 and he soon began to feel himself slighted as the 

 widow's affection for the Italian musician Piozzi 

 Ix'L'an to occupy her heart. Their acquaintance 

 hail l>egiin only in 1780, though they hail met three 

 Injure. The proposed match met with the 

 Tignl oppoiition from Mrs Thrale's daughters 

 and from Johnson, whose disapproval, in spite of 

 slandering tongues, was in nowise due to personal 

 disappointment. She left Streatham for Bath in 

 October 1782, and a few letters on the subject of 

 the marriage passed betwixt Johnson and herself 

 in which it must be confessed that the woman 

 shows to more advantage than the sage. But 

 where Johnson loved he loved deeply, and that 



with a love that could bear no rival near the 

 throne. ' A friendship of twenty years,' he writes, 

 'is interwoven with the texfu.c of life. A friend 

 may be often found and Jos' ^ut an old friend 

 never can lie found, and ustqre has provided that 

 he cannot easily be lost.' The marriage, for some 

 time postponed, actually took place at Bath, 25th 

 July 1784, and the pair next travelled through 

 France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium, returning 

 to England "early in 1787. Piozzi proved .an in- 

 offensive husband, managed their finances with 

 prudence, and her daughters were at length re- 

 conciled the eldest, Dr Johnson's 'Queenie,' 

 married Lord Keith in 1808. Mrs Piozzi returned 

 to Streatham in 1790, but soon after built Bryn- 

 bella on the banks of the Clwyd. Here Piozzi died 

 in 1809, and here his widow remained till 1814, living 

 thereafter at Bath, Clifton, and Penzanee. When 

 past seventy she formed a sentimental attachment 

 tor William Augustus Conway, a handsome young 

 actoi, who drowned himself crossing the Atlantic 

 in 1828. Fourteen years after his death seven 

 letters from Mrs Piozzi to him were published. 

 Their genuineness is doubtful, but, as Hayward 

 points out, even taken as they stand, they do not 

 amount to very much, while the change of two 

 or three sentences would alter their entire tenor. 

 In May 1821 Mrs Piozzi broke her leg while travel- 

 ling from Penzanee to Clifton, and died after ten 

 days of sullering. She was buried beside Piozzi in 

 the little church of Dynierchion in Flintshire. 



Mrs ThirJe '.vr.s vivacious, frank, witty, thoroughly 

 feminine, .'.ml charming, if somewhat wanting in 

 refinement. She was pretty, if hardly beautiful 

 her face pive Hogarth his model in 'The Lady's 

 Last Stake,' but the best portrait is that by Sir 

 Joshua Reynolds. Baretti, Boswell, Peter Pindar, 

 and Horace Walpole all abused her; but she lives 

 secure of immortality in the love of Samuel John- 

 son, and in the happiness she brought into nearly 

 twenty years of a life ' radically wretched.' 



Mrs Piozzi had a fatal facility in composition, but two of 

 her books at least live through their subject, and indeed 

 are only less interesting than lioswell himself : Anecdotes 

 of Dr Samuel Johnum ilnrintj the last Twenty Years of 

 hit Life (1786; reprinted in Mrs Napier's Johnxoniana, 

 1884), and Ltttir* In uml from Dr Samuel. Johnson (2 

 vols. 1788). Her Observations and Reflections made in a 

 Ji, HI-HI n throniih f'ranrr, llul<i, anil (lermaii// (2 vols. 

 1789), British' x.Hiio //<// (2 vols. 1791), nil Retrospec- 

 tion, or a Jltriew of the most striking and important 

 Erente, <tv. (2 vols. 1801) are long forgotten. Of her 

 poems the 'Three Warnings' survives- it was first printed 

 in the Miscellanies of .Miss Williams (1766), a volume 

 containing a prose-tale of Johnson'*, 'The Fountains,' 

 the heroine of which. Floretta, was a study of Mrs Tlirale. 

 Her notes to Wraxall's H istorical Memoirs were reprinted 

 in the 1884 edition of that work, as well as in Hayward ; 

 her Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains, by 

 Abraham Hayward, in 1861 (2 vols.). See the Kev. E<1. 

 Mangin's Piozziana (1833), Boswell's Life of Joliitri'it, 

 Madame D Arblay's Diary, Mr Hayward's Introduction, 

 and L. R Seeley's Mrs I'/irale (1891). 



Pip is the name by which various diseases in 

 lx>th fowls and pheasants were once known, but 

 since the affections of birds have been studied, and 

 more accurate knowledge arrived at, this term is 

 no longer in use. See ROUP. 



Pipa. a genus of amphibians, of which the best 

 known is the Surinam toad. See AMPHIBIA. 



Pipal, a species of fig. See PlitPUL. 



Pipe, a measure of quantity commonly employed 

 in Portugal, Spain, France, England, and in some 

 other countries, used almost exclusively for wine 

 and oil. In England it is also called a butt, and is 

 equal to two hogsheads. But the capacity varies 

 with the locality as well as with the description of 

 wine the cask contains : a pipe of port is 137 



