Upon the death of this liberal and honourable old friend, the Doctor
re-opened a correspondence with his faithful and most deservedly
cherished favourite, Pacchierotti, which the difficulties of
communication from the irruption of Buonaparte into Italy, had
latterly impeded, though not broken.
The answer of Pacchierotti to the account of his loss of this his
earliest and greatest benefactress in England, was replete with the
lamentation and sorrow to which his susceptible heart was a prey, upon
every species of affliction that assailed either himself or those to
whom he was attached; and for Lady Mary, his gratitude and regard
were the most devoted; for though he saw, with keen perception, her
singularities, he had too much sense to let them outweigh in his
estimation her benevolence, and her many good qualities.
He knew, also, for she published it dauntlessly to the world, with
what energy she admired him; and he suffered not his gratitude to lose
any of its respect from the ridicule which he saw excited when they
appeared together in public; though frequently and anxiously he wished
and sought to withdraw from the general gaze which her notice of him
attracted. And he often spoke with serious simplicity of concern to
Dr. Burney, of the mannish air, and stride, and mien, with which she
would defyingly turn short upon any under-bred scoffer, who looked at
her with vulgar curiosity, when he had the honour to accompany her on
the public walks. And once, in the zeal of his attachment, upon her
asking him, in her abrupt manner, to tell her, unreservedly, what he
thought of her; he took hold, he said, of that affable inquisition to
frankly, in his peculiar English, answer: “Why, madam, if I must, to be
sincere,—I think your ladyship is rather too much of the masculine.”
“No?—you don’t say so?” cried she, with the utmost surprise, but
without taking the smallest offence. “And I am of the opinion,” added
Pacchierotti, in relating the anecdote to Dr. Burney, “that she was not
at all of my advice in that observation; for she ever thinks she does
nothing but the common; though certainly it is of the other nature; for
it must to be confessed, that, with all her goodness, she is not one of
the literature.”
The letter upon the information of Lady Mary’s death, is the last from
Pacchierotti that is preserved in the collection of the Doctor; and,
probably, the last that was received; for the troubles of Italy made
all commerce with it dangerous, save for those who could write with
unqualified approbation of _the powers that were_, be they of what
class they might.
Not such was the correspondence of Dr. Burney with Pacchierotti. They
each wrote with the freedom of sincerity, and the kindness of sympathy,
upon every subject, mental, literary, or political, that occurred to
them: and while Pacchierotti could bemoan without danger the invasion
and oppression of his country, it was soothing to his disturbance to
deposit his apprehensions with so wise a friend: while to Dr. Burney it
was a real pleasure to keep alive an intercourse so full of endearing
recollections. Nevertheless, from the year 1808, the correspondence was
wholly cut off by political dangers.
Amongst the few remaining persons to whom Pacchierotti may still from
memory, not tradition, be known, there are none, probably, who will
not hear with satisfaction, that he finished his long career in the
serene enjoyment of well-merited, and elaborately-earned independence.
Modestly, and wisely, he had retired from the instability of popular
favour, and the uncertainty of public remuneration, while yet his fame
was at its height; sparing thus his sensitive mind from the dangers
of caprice, inconstancy, jealousy, or neglect. His residence was at
Padua; his dwelling was a palazza, elegantly furnished, and rendered a
delicious abode to him by spacious and beautiful gardens.
He lived to the year 1824, and was some time past eighty when he
expired.[70]
1805.
Fortunately for Dr. Burney, another year was not permitted wholly to
wane away, ere circumstances occurred of so much movement and interest,
that they operated like a species of amnesty upon the sufferings of the
year just gone by; and enabled him to pass over submissively his heavy
privations; and, once again, to go cheerfully on in life with what yet
remained for contentment.
The chief mover to this practical philosophy was the indefatigable Mrs.
Crewe; who by degrees, skilful and kind, so lured him from mourning
and retirement to gratitude and society, that his seclusion insensibly
ended by enlisting him in more diffuse social entertainments, than any
in which he had heretofore mixed.
His accepted dinner appointments of this time, enroll in his
pocket-book the following names—
Mrs. Crewe
Mr. Windham
Mr. Rogers
Mr. Malone
Mr. Courtney
Sir Joseph Bankes
Lady Salisbury
Duke and Duchess of Leeds
Duke of Portland
Marquis of Aylesbury
Lord and Lady Lonsdale
Lord and Lady Bruce
Marquis and Marchioness Thomond
Lady Melbourne
Sir Geo. and Lady Beaumont
Lady Manvers
Lady Cork
Bishop of Winchester
Mr. Wilbraham
Miss Shepley
Mr. Angerstein
Mrs. Ord
Mrs. Waddington
Mr. Hammersley
Mr. Thompson
Mr. Walker
And the Right Hon. George Canning.
He rarely missed the Concert of Ancient Music.
He generally dined at the appointed meetings of THE Club;
where he has peculiarly noted a still brilliant assemblage, in naming
Earl Spencer
Sir Joseph Bankes
Sir William Scott[71]
The Dean of Westminster
The Master of the Rolls
Mr. Ellis
Mr. Marsden
Mr. Frere
Dr. Lawrence
Mr. Malone
Mr. Windham
Mr. Canning
And Charles Fox in the Chair.
But the climax of these convivial honours was dining with his Royal
Highness the Prince of Wales.[72]
Of this, as it will appear, he wrote largely, with intention to be
copied precisely.
And about this time, Dr. Burney received a splendid mark of filial
devotion to which he was truly sensible, and of which—who shall
wonder?—he was justly proud, from his son Dr. Charles.
This was a request to possess the Doctor’s bust in marble.
Such a wish was, of course, frankly acceded to; and Nollekens was the
sculptor fixed upon for its execution; not only from the deserved
height to which the fame of that artist had risen, but from old regard
to the man, which the Doctor always believed to be faithfully and
gratefully returned; conceiving him, though under-bred and illiterate,
to be honest and worthy; yet frequently remarking how strikingly he
exemplified the caprice, or locality, of taste, as well as of genius,
which in one point could be truly refined, while in every other it was
wanting.
Thirty casts of this bust, for family, friends, or favourites, were
taken off; and the first of them Dr. Charles had the honour of laying
at the feet of the Prince of Wales: who, when next he saw Dr. Burney,
smilingly said: “I have got your bust, Dr. Burney, and I’ll put it
on my organ. I got it on purpose. I shall place it there instead of
Handel.”
In the month of May, 1805, Dr. Burney, through a private hand,
re-opened, after a twelvemonth’s mournful silence, his correspondence
with his absent daughter, by the following kind and cheering, though
brief and politically cautious lines:
“TO MADAME D’ARBLAY.
“_Chelsea College, May, 1805._
“My dear Fanny,
“The notice I received of our good friend, Miss
Sayr’s,[73] departure for the continent, has been
communicated to me so short a time before its taking
place, that I am merely able to give you _signe de vie_;
and tell you that, cough excepted, I am in tolerable
health, for an _octogenaire_; with the usual infirmities
in eyes, ears, and memory.
“God bless you, my dear daughter. Give my kindest love to
our dear M. d’Arblay, and to little Alexander.
“Your ever affectionate father,
“CHAS. BURNEY.
“As blind as a beetle, as deaf as a post, Whose
longevity now is all he can boast.”
The following is a paragraph of another letter to Paris, written about
the same time, but conveyed by another private hand:
“I passed some days very pleasantly at Bulstrode Park in
the Easter week. The good Duke of Portland came himself
to invite me, and sat nearly an hour by my fireside,
conversing in the most open and unreserved manner
possible upon matters and things. Our party at Bulstrode
had the ever-admirable Lady Templeton, her two younger
daughters,[74] and their brother Greville,[75] who is
an excellent musician, and a very charming young man,
&c. &c. The Duke’s daughters, Lady Mary Bentinck and
Lady Charlotte Greville, did the honours very politely;
and Lord William Bentinck,[76] one of the Duke’s son,
who was in Italy with Marshal Suwarrow, and has since
been in Egypt, was also there; and he and I are become
_inkle-weavers_. I like him much; and we are to meet
again in town. We never sat down less than thirty each
day at dinner; and _we_ danced, and _we_ sung, and _we_
walked, and _we_ rode, and _we_ prayed together at
chapel, and were so sociable and agreeable ‘_you’ve no
notion_,’ as Miss Larolles would say.”
What will now follow, will be copied from the memoir book of Dr. Burney
of this month of May; which, after a dreary winter of sorrow, seemed
to have been hailed as genially by the Historian of Music, as by the
minstrelsy of the woods.
“1805.—In May, at a concert at Lady Salisbury’s, I
was extremely pleased, both with the music and the
performance. The former was chiefly selected by the
Prince of Wales. * * * I had not been five minutes in
the concert room, before a messenger, sent to me by his
Royal Highness, gave me a command to join him, which I
did eagerly enough; when his Royal Highness graciously
condescended to order me to sit down by him, and kept me
to that high honour the whole evening. Our ideas, by his
engaging invitation, were reciprocated upon every piece,
and its execution. After the concert, Lady Melbourne,
who, when Miss Milbanke, had been one of my first
scholars on my return to London from Lynn, obligingly
complained that she had often vainly tried to tempt me to
dine with her, but would make one effort more now, by his
Royal Highness’s permission, that I might meet, at Lord
Melbourne’s table, with the Prince of Wales.
“Of course I expressed, as well as I could, my sense of
so high and unexpected an honour; and the Prince, with a
smile of unequalled courtesy, said, ‘Aye, do come, Dr.
Burney, and bring your son with you.’ And then, turning
to Lady Melbourne, he added,—‘It is singular that the
father should be the best, and almost the only good judge
of music in the kingdom; and his son the best scholar.’
* * * * *
“Nothing, however, for the present, came of this: but,
early in July, at a concert at Lady Newark’s, I first
saw, to my knowledge, their Royal Highnesses the Dukes
of Cumberland and Cambridge. These Princes had lived so
much abroad, that I thought I had never before beheld
them; till I found my mistake, by their both speaking
to me, when I stood near them, not only familiarly, but
with distinction; which I attribute to their respect to
the noble graciousness they might have observed in their
august brother; whose notice had something in it so
engaging as always to brighten as well as honour me.
“But I heard nothing more of the projected dinner, till
I met Lady Melbourne at an assembly at the Dowager Lady
Sefton’s; when I ventured to tell her Ladyship that I
feared the dinner which my son and I were most ambitious
should take place, was relinquished. ‘By no means,’
she answered, ‘for the Prince really desired it.’ And,
after a note or two of the best bred civility from her
Ladyship, the day was settled by his Royal Highness, for—
“_July 9th._—The Prince did not make the company wait at
Whitehall, (Lord Melbourne’s,); he was not five minutes
beyond the appointed time, a quarter past six o’clock:
though he is said never to dine at Carlton House before
eight. The company consisted, besides the Prince and the
Lord and Lady of the house, with their two sons and two
daughters, of Earls Egremont and Cowper, Mr. and Lady
Caroline Lamb, Mr. Lutterel, Mr. Horner, and Mr. Windham.
“The dinner was sumptuous, of course, &c.
“I had almost made a solemn vow, early in life, to quit
the world without ever drinking a _dry dram_; but the
heroic virtue of a long life was overset by his Royal
Highness, through the irresistible temptation to hobbing
and nobbing with such a partner in a glass of cherry
brandy! The spirit of it, however, was so finely subdued,
that it was not more potent than a dose of peppermint
water; which I have always called a dram.
“The conversation was lively and general the chief part
of the evening; but about midnight it turned upon music,
on which subject his Royal Highness deigned so wholly to
address himself to me, that we kept it up a full half
hour, without any one else offering a word. We were,
generally, in perfect tune in our opinions; though once
or twice I ventured to dissent from his Royal Highness;
and once he condescended to come over to my argument:
and he had the skill, as well as nobleness, to put me
as perfectly at my ease in expressing my notions, as I
should have been with any other perfectly well-bred man.
“The subject was then changed to classical lore; and here
his Royal Highness, with similar condescension, addressed
himself to my son, as to a man of erudition whose ideas,
on learned topics, he respected; and a full discussion
followed, of several literary matters.
“When the Prince rose to go to another room, we met Lady
Melbourne and her daughter, just returned from the opera;
to which they had been while we sat over the wine, (and
eke the cherry brandy); and from which they came back
in exact time for coffee! The Prince here, coming up to
me, most graciously took my hand, and said, ‘I am glad
we got, at last, to our favourite subject.’ He then made
me sit down by him, close to the keys of a piano-forte;
where, in a low voice, but face to face, we talked again
upon music, and uttered our sentiments with, I may safely
say, equal ease and freedom; so politely he encouraged my
openness and sincerity.
“I then ventured to mention that I had a book in my
possession that I regarded as the property of his
Royal Highness. It was a set of my Commemoration of
Handel, which I had had splendidly bound for permitted
presentation through the medium of Lord St. Asaph; but
which had not been received, from public casualties.
His Royal Highness answered me with the most engaging
good-humour, saying that he was now building a library,
and that, when it was finished, mine should be the first
book placed in his collection. Nobody is so prompt
at polite and gratifying compliments as this gracious
Prince. I had no conception of his accomplishments. He
quite astonished me by his learning, in conversing with
my son, after my own musical _tête à tête_ dialogue with
him. He quoted Homer in Greek as readily as if quoting
Dryden or Pope in English: and, in general conversation,
during the dinner, he discovered a fund of wit and humour
such as demonstrated him a man of reading and parts, who
knew how to discriminate characters. He is, besides, an
incomparable mimic. He counterfeited Dr. Parr’s lisp,
language, and manner; and Kemble’s voice and accent, both
on and off the stage, so accurately, so nicely, so free
from caricature, that, had I been in another room, I
should have sworn they had been speaking themselves. Upon
the whole, I cannot terminate my account of this Prince
better than by asserting it as my opinion, from the
knowledge I acquired by my observations of this night,
that he has as much conversational talent, and far more
learning than Charles the Second; who knew no more, even
of orthography, than Molière’s _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_.
“My next great concert was at Mr. Thomson’s, in
Grosvenor-square. Before I arrived, from not knowing
there was a Royal motive for every one to be early, I
found the crowd of company so excessively great, that I
was a considerable time before I could make my way into
the music-room; which I found also so full, that not only
I could not discern a place where I might get a seat,
(and to stand the whole night in such a heat would have
been impossible for me;) but also I could not discover
a spot where I might look on even for a few minutes,
to see what was going forwards, without being bodily
jammed; except quite close to the orchestra; where alone
there seemed a little breathing room left. To gain this
desirable little opening, I ventured to follow closely,
as if of their party, two very fine ladies, who made
their way, heaven knows how, to some sofa, I fancy,
reserved for them. But what was my surprise, and shame,
when, upon attaining thus my coveted harbour, I found I
came bounce upon the Prince of Wales! from respect to
whom alone no crowd had there resorted! I had no time,
however, for repentance, and no room for apology; for
that gracious and kind Prince laughed at my exploit, and
shook me very heartily by the hand, as if glad to see me
again; and obliged me to sit down by him immediately. Nor
would he suffer me to relinquish my place, even to any
of the Princes, his brothers, when they came to him! nor
even to any fine lady! always making a motion to me, that
was a command, to be quiet. We talked, as before, over
every piece and performance, with full ease of expression
to our thoughts: but how great was my gratification,
when, upon going into a cooler room, between the acts,
he put his hat on his seat, and said ‘Dr. Burney, will
you take care of my place for me?’ thus obviating from my
stay all fear of intrusion, by making it an obedience.
And his notions about music so constantly agree with my
own, that I know of no individual, male or female, with
whom I talk about music with more sincerity, as well as
pleasure, than with this most captivating Prince.
“Another time, at the Opera, the Prince of Wales,
perceiving me in the pit, sent for me to his splendid
box; and, making me take a snug seat close behind his
Royal Highness, entered, with his usual vivacity, into
discussions upon the performance; and so re-_jeunied_
me by his gaiety and condescension, joined to his
extraordinary judgment on musical subjects, that I held
forth in return as if I had been but five-and-twenty!
“Soon after these festivities, I went to Bulstrode Park,
where I had the grief to find the Duke more feeble and
low-spirited than he had been in town. He could not
hear the motion of a carriage, and was seldom able to
dine at the table. He merely walked a little in the
flower-garden. There was no company, except one day
at dinner; and for one night Lord and Lady Darnley.
They came in while I was dressing, and I had not heard
their names, and knew not who they were. Unacquainted,
therefore, with the bigoted devotion to the exclusive
merit of Handel that I had to encounter, I got into a hot
dispute that I should else, at the Duke’s house, have
certainly avoided. The expression, ‘modern refinements,’
happened to escape me, which both my lord and his lady,
with a tone of consummate contempt, repeated: ‘Modern
refinements, indeed!’ ‘Well, then,’ cried I, ‘let us
call them modern changes of style and taste; for what
one party calls refinements, the other, of course,
constantly calls corruption and deterioration.’ They
were quite irritated at this; and we all three then
went to it ding-dong! I made use of the same arguments
that I have so often used in my musical writings,—that
ingenious men cannot have been idle during a century; and
the language of sound is never stationary, any more than
that of conversation and books. New modes of expression;
new ideas from new discoveries and inventions, required
new phrases: and in the cultivation of instruments, as
well as of the voice, emulation would produce novelty,
which, above all things, is wanted in music. And to say
that the symphonies of Haydn, and the compositions of
Mozart and Beethoven, have no merit, because they are
not like Handel, Corelli, and Geminiani;—or to say that
the singing of a Pacchierotti, a Marchese, a Banti, or
a Billington, in their several styles, is necessarily
inferior to singers and compositions of the days of
Handel, is supposing time to stand still—
“I was going on, when the kind Duke, struck, I doubt
not, by a view of the storm I was incautiously brewing,
contrived to whisper in my ear, ‘You are upon tender
ground, Dr. Burney!’
“I drew back, with as troublesome a fit of coughing as I
could call to my aid; and during its mock operation, his
Grace had the urbanity to call up a new subject.”