On The Height

Abstract

It was in Brussels that Merry, after his hasty departure from Florence, found congenial company and a balm for his wounded pride. Mrs. Piozzi, who a year after their separation, still found him attractive in recollection,¹ looked in on him there in February, 1787, on her return journey to England, which had included visits to Vienna and Prague,² and saw him well anchored in the midst of an agreeable circle, chief among it Lord and Lady Torrington and the Whalleys, the Piozzis’ old Bath friends. It was a life of concerts and balls, and literary conversations;³ nor had Merry been long in solacing himself for the loss of one mistress by acquiring another. This was Mrs. Hervey, “an adventurous Dame,” as Mrs. Piozzi slyly puts it, the whilom wife of Lady Hanmer’s bastard son. Attractive, but no beauty, she possessed for Merry charms greater than physical ones: she was a literary woman, and in the next few years produced her esteemed tales Melissa and Marcia and Louisa.⁴ The Rev. Dr. Whalley, as Mrs. Piozzi reproachfully reminded him many years after Merry’s death, had already formed the opinion that Della Crusca looked like a wily intriguer,⁵ but in spite of that the dandified parson did not allow the connexion to break, and it afterwards continued in England.