Hester, by Ian McIntyre
‘I must eat up my own heart & be quiet,’ confided Hester Thrale in her private notebook in the autumn of 1777. She was pregnant again, for the 11th time in 13 years. By then seven of her children had died, including her only and much loved son, and she was convinced that this child, too, would be taken from her. She had much to bewail. But Hester Lynch Salusbury Thrale Piozzi was indefatigable of spirit and merciless in her opinions. ‘Quiet’ was something she could never be — fortunately for us. When she died in 1821, aged 80, she left behind six large volumes of ‘loose thoughts, or casual hints, dropped by eminent men’ plus thousands of letters, as well as a number of published works including her Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson and two volumes of her endearing, sometimes frosty, always insightful, correspondence with Dr Johnson.
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