The deep public interest which Doctor Burney, whether as a citizen of
the world, or a sound patriot, took in the disastrous situation of
France, was ere long destined to goad yet more pungently his private
feelings, from becoming, in some measure, personal.
At the elegant mansion of the friend, whose sight she never met but
with mingled tenderness and reverence, Mr. Locke, the Doctor’s second
daughter, began an acquaintance that, imperceptibly, led to a connexion
of high esteem and genial sympathy, that no opposition could dispirit,
no danger intimidate, and no time—that impelling underminer of nearly
all things—could wither.
But though to the strong hold of an attachment of which the basis is
a believed congeniality of character, no difficulties are ultimately
unconquerable; the obstacles to this were more than commonly
formidable. M. d’Arblay was at that time so situated, that he must
perforce accompany the friend with whom he acted, Count Louis de
Narbonne, to Switzerland; or decide to fix his own abode permanently
in England, in the only manner which appeared desirable to him, a home
connexion with a chosen object.
Not a ray of hope opened then to point to any restoration in France
of Order and Monarchy with Liberty, to which M. d’Arblay inviolably
adhered; and exile from his country, his family, and his friends,
seemed to him a lot of blessedness, in comparison to joining the
murderous and regicidical republic.
Dr. Burney, it may well be believed, was startled, was affrighted,
when a proposition was made to him for the union of his daughter with
a ruined gentleman—a foreigner—an emigrant; but the proposition came
under the sanction of the wisest as well as kindest of that daughter’s
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Locke, of Norbury Park; and with the fullest
sympathies of his cherished Susanna, who already had demonstrated the
affection, and adopted the conduct, of a sister to M. d’Arblay. The
Doctor could not, therefore, turn from the application implacably; he
only hesitated, and demanded time for consideration.
The dread of pecuniary embarrassment, secretly stimulated and
heightened by a latent hope and belief in a far more advantageous
connexion, strongly opposed a free and happy consent to an alliance
which, otherwise, from all he heard or could gather of the merits, the
character, and rank in life of M. d’Arblay, he would have thought, to
use his own words, “an honour to his daughter, to himself, and to his
family.”
Fortunately, about this time, the Prince de Poix and the Comte de
Lally Tolendahl, wrote some letters, in which were interspersed their
personal attestations of the favour in which they knew M. d’Arblay to
have stood with Louis XVI.; mingled with their intimate conviction
of the spotless honour, the stainless character, and the singularly
amiable disposition for which, in his own country, M. d’Arblay had been
distinguished.
These letters, with their writers’ permission, were shewn to Dr.
Burney; whom they so touched, nay, charmed, as to conquer his prudence
of resistance: and at the village of Mickleham, in the vicinity of
Norbury Park, the marriage took place.
Mr. Locke, whose unerring judgment foresaw what would make both parties
happy; and whose exquisite sensibility made all virtuous felicity
a bosom joy to himself, took the responsible part of father to M.
d’Arblay, at the altar, where, in the absence of the Doctor, Captain
Burney gave his sister to that gentleman: who quickly, or rather
immediately, won from his honoured new relation, an esteem, a kindness,
and an affection, that never afterwards failed or faded.
Of sterner stuff than entered into the composition of Dr. Burney must
that heart have been moulded, that could have witnessed the noble
conduct of that truly loyal sufferer in the calamities of his king and
country, General d’Arblay; and could have seen the cheerful self-denial
with which he limited his expenditure to his wants, and his wants
to the mere calls of necessity; save where he feared involving his
partner in his privations,—in one word, who could have beheld him,
at the opening of his married career, in the village of Bookham, turn
instantly from the uncontrolled restlessness, and careless scorn of
foresight, of the roving military life, into a domestic character of
the most sage description; renouncing all foreign pleasures; retiring
from even martial ambition, though it had been the glory of his hopes,
and the bent of his genius, without a murmur, since he no longer
thought it coalesced with honour; for home occupations, for family
economies, for fireside enjoyments,—and not be struck by such manly
self-command, such active, such practical virtue.