From the time of this happy return, the Memorialist passed at Chelsea
College every moment that she could tear from personal calls that, most
unopportunely yet imperiously, then demanded her attention.
Shut up nevertheless, as the Doctor was now from the general world and
its commerce, the seclusion of his person was by no means attended
with any seclusion of kindness; or any exemption from what he deemed a
parental devoir.
When, on the 12th day of the following year, 1813, his returned
daughter, though her first enjoyment was her restoration to his
society, excused herself from accompanying her son to the College;
and the Doctor gathered that that day, the 6th of January, and the
anniversary of the lamented loss of their mutual darling, Susanna, had
been yearly devoted, since that privation, to meditative commemoration;
he sent his confidential housekeeper to the Memorialist’s apartment
with the following lines:
“Few individuals have lost more valuable friends than
myself,—Twining, Crisp, poor Bewley, Dr. Johnson,
Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds—If I were to keep an
anniversary for all these severally, I should not have
time allowed me for diminishing the first excess of my
affliction for each.”
It may, perhaps, be superfluous, and yet seems unavoidable to mention,
that again, as after the death of Mr. Crisp, she hastened to him with
her grateful acknowledgments for this exhortation; and that she has
ever since refused herself that stated sad indulgence.
Still, also, the epistolary pen of the Doctor not only retained its
kind, but kept alive its fanciful flow; as witness the following
extract from a letter, written in his eighty-seventh year, three months
later than the date of the last copied billet, and in answer to a
letter from the Memorialist, written during a visit to Mrs. Locke,
senior, at Norbury Park;
“_Chelsea College, April, 1813._
“Why, my dear F. B. d’Arblay! what a happy effect has
the kindness of your dear, accomplished, and elegant
friend, Mrs. Locke, produced! She has poured balm into
all your mental wounds, and healed every sore, which,
having had no leonine tincture of March in it, now only
breathes zephyrs, and the comforts of Favonius; after
your anxiety for the success of Alexander’s election[94],
your own feeble state of health, and your uneasiness at
the alarming silence of your kind and worthy husband.
“I thought the weather was about to mend its manners! but
to-day it has been more wet and blustering than for some
time past. For the rain, however, as April is begun, it
is to be hoped it will bring forth May flowers: and as to
the fury of the wind, it seems to have purified the air
of its noxious vapours, which have been supposed to have
produced the symptoms of influenza.”
&c. &c.
1814.
Nothing new, either of event or incident, occurred thenceforward that
can be offered to the public reader; though not a day passed that
teemed not with circumstance, or discourse, of tender import, or bosom
interest, to the family of the Doctor, and to his still surviving and
admitted friends.
That Dr. Burney would have approved the destruction, or suppression of
the voluminous records begun under his sickly paralytic depression,
and kept in hand for occasional additions to the last years of his
life, his Biographer has the happy conviction upon her mind, from the
following paragraph, left loose amongst his manuscript hoards.
It is without date; but was evidently written after some late perusal
of the materials which he had amassed for his Memoirs; and which, from
their opposing extremes of amplitude and deficiency, had probably,
upon this accidental examination, struck his returning judgment with a
consciousness, that he had rather disburthened his memory for his own
ease and pastime, than prepared or selected matter from his stores for
public interest.
The following is the paragraph:
“These records of the numerous invitations with which I have
been honoured, entered, at the time, into my pocket-books,
which served as ledgers, must be very dry and uninteresting,
without relating the conversations, _bon mots_, or
characteristic stories, told by individuals, who struck fire
out of each other, producing mirth and good-humour: but when
these _entries_ were made, I had not leisure for details—and
now—memory cannot recall them!”
What next—and last—follows, is copied from the final page of Dr.
Burney’s manuscript journal: and closes all there is to offer of his
written composition.
Sir Joshua Reynolds desired that the last name he should pronounce
in public should be that of Michael Angelo: and Dr. Burney seems to
purpose that the last name he should transmit—if so allowed—through
his annals, to posterity, should be that of Haydn.
“Finding a blank leaf at the end of my Journal, it may
be used in the way of postscriptum, in speaking of the
prelude, or opening of Haydn’s Creation, to observe, that
though the generality of the subscribers were unable
to disentangle the studied confusion in delineating
chaos, yet, when dissonance was tuned, when order was
established, and God said,
“‘Let there be light!—and there was light!’ ‘_Que la lumière soit!—et la
lumière fut!_’ the composer’s meaning was felt by the whole audience,
who instantly broke in upon the performers with rapturous applause
before the musical period was closed.”
1814.
Little or no change was perceptible in the health of Dr. Burney, save
some small diminution of strength, at the beginning of this memorable
year; which brought to a crisis a state of things that, by analogy,
might challenge belief for the most improbable legends of other times;
a state of things in which history seemed to make a mockery of fiction,
by giving events to the world, and assorting destinies to mankind, that
imagination would have feared to create, and that good taste would have
resisted, as a mass of wonders fit only for the wand of the magician,
when waved in the fancied precincts of chivalrous old romance—all
brought to bear by the unimaginable manoeuvre of the starting of an
unknown individual from Corsica to Paris; who, in the course of a few
years, without any native influence, or interest, or means whatsoever,
_but of his own devising_, made Kings over foreign dominions of three
of his brothers; a Queen of one his sisters; a Cardinal of an uncle;
took a daughter of the Cæsars for his wife; proclaimed his infant son
King of Rome; and ordered the Pope to Paris, to consecrate and crown
him an Emperor![95]
An epoch such as this, unparalleled, perhaps, in hope, dread, danger,
and sharp vicissitude, could even still call forth the energies of Dr.
Burney through his love of his country; his enthusiasm for those who
served it; the warmth of his patriotism for its friends, and the fire
of his antipathy for its foes, could still animate him into spirited
discourse; bring back the tint of life into his pallid cheek; dart into
his eyes a gleam of almost lustrous intelligence; and chase the nervous
hoarseness from his voice, to restore it to the native clearness of his
younger days.
* * * * *
The apprehension of a long death-bed agony had frequently disturbed
the peace of Dr. Burney; but that, at least, he was spared. It was
only three days previous to his final dissolution, that any fears were
excited of a fast approaching end.
To avoid going over again the same melancholy ground, since nothing
fresh recurs to give any advantage to a new statement, the Memorialist
will venture to finish this narration, by copying the account of the
closing scene which she drew up for General d’Arblay, who was then in
Paris.[96]