(January 1843) _Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay. Five vols. 8vo.
London: 1842._
|THOUGH the world saw and heard little of Madame D’Arblay during the
last forty years of her life, and though that little did not add to her
fame, there were thousands, we believe, who felt a singular emotion
when they learned that she was no longer among us. The news of her death
carried the minds of men back at one leap over two generations, to the
time when her first literary triumphs were won. All those whom we had
been accustomed to revere as intellectual patriarchs seemed children
when compared with her; for Burke had sate up all night to read her
writings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, when
Rogers was still a schoolboy, and Southey still in petticoats. Yet more
strange did it seem that we should just have lost one whose name had
been widely celebrated before anybody had heard of some illustrious men,
who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and splendid
career, borne with honour to the grave. Yet so it was. Frances Burney
was at the height of fame and popularity before Cowper had published
his first volume, before Porson had gone up to college, before Pitt had
taken his seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine had
been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the appearance of her first
work, sixty-two years had passed; and this interval had been crowded,
not only with political, but also with intellectual revolutions.
Thousands of reputations had, during that period, sprung up, bloomed,
withered, and disappeared. New kinds of composition had come into
fashion, had gone out of fashion, had been derided, had been forgotten.
The fooleries of Della Crusca, and the fooleries of Kotzebue, had for a
time bewitched the multitude, and had left no trace behind them; nor
had misdirected genius been able to save from decay the once flourishing
schools of Godwin, of Darwin, and of Radcliffe. Many books, written for
temporary effect, had run through six or seven editions, and had then
been gathered to the novels of Afra Behn, and the epic poems of Sir
Richard Blackmore. Yet the early works of Madame D’Arblay, in spite of
the lapse of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of the
popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued to hold
a high place in the public esteem. She lived to be a classic. Time set
on her fame, before she went hence, that seal which is seldom set except
on the fame of the departed. Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale, she
survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of posterity.
Having always felt a warm and sincere, though not a blind admiration for
her talents, we rejoiced to learn that her Diary was about to be made
public. Our hopes, it is true, were not unmixed with fears. We could not
forget the fate of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which were published ten
years ago. That unfortunate book contained much that was curious and
interesting. Yet it was received with a cry of disgust, and was speedily
consigned to oblivion. The truth is, that it deserved its doom. It was
written in Madame D’Arblay’s later style, the worst style that has
ever been known among men. No genius, no information, could save from
proscription a book so written. We, therefore, opened the Diary with no
small anxiety, trembling lest we should light upon some of that peculiar
rhetoric which deforms almost every page of the Memoirs, and which it
is impossible to read without a sensation made up of mirth, shame, and
loathing. We soon, however, discovered to our great delight that this
Diary was kept before Madame D’Arblay became eloquent. It is, for the
most part, written in her earliest and best manner, in true woman’s
English, clear, natural, and lively. The two works are lying side by
side before us; and we never turn from the Memoirs to the Diary without
a sense of relief. The difference is as great as the difference between
the atmosphere of a perfumer’s shop, fetid with lavender water and
jasmine soap, and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May. Both
works ought to be consulted by every person who wishes to be well
acquainted with the history of our literature and our manners. But to
read the Diary is a pleasure; to read the Memoirs will always be a task.
We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to our readers, if we
attempt, with the help of these two books, to give them an account of
the most important years of Madame D’Arblay’s life.
She was descended from a family which bore the name of Macburney,
and which, though probably of Irish origin, had been long settled in
Shropshire, and was possessed of considerable estates in that county.
Unhappily, many years before her birth, the Macburneys began, as if of
set purpose and in a spirit of determined rivalry, to expose and ruin
themselves. The heir apparent, Mr. James Macburney, offended his father
by making a runaway match with an actress from Goodman’s Fields. The old
gentleman could devise no more judicious mode of wreaking vengeance on
his undutiful boy than by marrying the cook. The cook gave birth to a
son named Joseph, who succeeded to all the lands of the family, while
James was cut off with a shilling. The favourite son, however, was so
extravagant, that he soon became as poor as his disinherited brother.
Both were forced to earn their bread by their labour. Joseph turned
dancing-master, and settled in Norfolk. James struck off the Mac from
the beginning of his name, and set up as a portrait painter at Chester.
Here he had a son named Charles, well known as the author of the
History of Music, and as the father of two remarkable children, of a
son distinguished by learning, and of a daughter still more honourably
distinguished by genius.
Charles early showed a taste for that art, of which, at a later period,
he became the historian. He was apprenticed to a celebrated musician in
London, and applied himself to study with vigour and success. He soon
found a kind and munificent patron in Fulk Greville, a highborn
and highbred man, who seems to have had in large measure all the
accomplishments and all the follies, all the virtues and all the vices,
which, a hundred years ago, were considered as making up the character
of a fine gentleman. Under such protection, the young artist had every
prospect of a brilliant career in the capital. But his health failed.
It became necessary for him to retreat from the smoke and river fog of
London, to the pure air of the coast. He accepted the place of organist,
at Lynn, and settled at that town with a young lady who had recently
become his wife.
At Lynn, in June 1752, Frances Burney was born. Nothing in her childhood
indicated that she would, while still a young woman, have secured for
herself an honourable and permanent place among English writers. She
was shy and silent. Her brothers and sisters called her a dunce, and not
without some show of reason; for at eight years old she did not know her
letters.
In 1760, Mr. Burney quitted Lynn for London, and took a house in Poland
Street; a situation which had been fashionable In the reign of Queen
Anne, but which, since that time, had been deserted by most of its
wealthy and noble inhabitants. He afterwards resided in Saint Martin’s
Street, on the south side of Leicester Square. His house there is still
well known, and will continue to be well known as long as our island
retains any trace of civilisation; for it was the dwelling of Newton,
and the square turret which distinguishes it from all the surrounding
buildings was Newton’s observatory.
Mr. Burney at once obtained as many pupils of the most respectable
description as he had time to attend, and was thus enabled to
support his family, modestly indeed, and frugally, but in comfort and
independence. His professional merit obtained for him the degree of
Doctor of Music from the University of Oxford; and his works on subjects
connected with his art gained for him a place, respectable, though
certainly not eminent, among men of letters.
The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her ninth to her
twenty-fifth year, well deserves to be recorded. When her education
had proceeded no further than the hornbook, she lost her mother, and
thenceforward she educated herself. Her father appears to have been as
bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet tempered man
can well be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to have
occurred to him that a parent has other duties to perform to children
than that of fondling them. It would indeed have been impossible for
him to superintend their education himself. His professional engagements
occupied him all day. At seven in the morning he began to attend his
pupils, and when London was full, was sometimes employed in teaching
till eleven at night. He was often forced to carry in his pocket a tin
box of sandwiches, and a bottle of wine and water, on which he dined in
a hackney coach, while hurrying from one scholar to another. Two of his
daughters he sent to a seminary at Paris; but he imagined that Frances
would run some risk of being perverted from the Protestant faith if she
were educated in a Catholic country, and he therefore kept her at home.
No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was provided for
her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write; and, before she was
fourteen, she began to find pleasure in reading.
It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed,
when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very
small. When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the
most celebrated works of Voltaire and Moliere; and, what seems still
more extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill,
who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is
particularly deserving of observation that she appears to have been
by no means a novel-reader. Her father’s library was large; and he had
admitted into it so many books which rigid moralists generally exclude
that he felt uneasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to
examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single
novel, Fielding’s Amelia.
An education, however, which to most girls would have been useless, but
which suited Fanny’s mind better than elaborate culture, was in constant
progress during her passage from childhood to womanhood. The great book
of human nature was turned over before her. Her father’s social position
was very peculiar. He belonged in fortune and station to the middle
class. His daughters seemed to have been suffered to mix freely with
those whom butlers and waiting-maids call vulgar. We are told that they
were in the habit of playing with the children of a wig-maker who
lived in the adjoining house. Yet few nobles could assemble in the most
stately mansions of Grosvenor Square or Saint James’s Square, a society
so various and so brilliant as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney’s
cabin. His mind, though not very powerful or capacious, was restlessly
active; and, in the intervals of his professional pursuits, he had
contrived to lay up much miscellaneous information. His attainments,
the suavity of his temper, and the gentle simplicity of his manners, had
obtained for him ready admission to the first literary circles. While
he was still at Lynn, he had won Johnson’s heart by sounding with honest
zeal the praises of the English Dictionary. In London the two friends
met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously. One tie, indeed,
was wanting to their mutual attachment. Burney loved his own art
passionately; and Johnson just knew the bell of Saint Clement’s church
from the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; and on winter
nights their conversations were sometimes prolonged till the fire
had gone out, and the candles had burned away to the wicks. Burney’s
admiration of the powers which had produced Rasselas and The Rambler
bordered on idolatry. Johnson, on the other hand, condescended to growl
out that Burney was an honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible not
to like.
Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street and Saint Martin’s
Street. That wonderful actor loved the society of children, partly from
good-nature, and partly from vanity. The ecstasies of mirth and terror,
which his gestures and play of countenance never failed to produce in a
nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of mature critics.
He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the
little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a
ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in Saint Luke’s, and then at
once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made
them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks.
But it would be tedious to recount the names of all the men of letters
and artists whom Frances Burney had an opportunity of seeing and
hearing. Colman, Twining, Harris, Baretti, Hawkesworth, Reynolds,
Barry, were among those who occasionally surrounded the tea-table and
supper-tray at her father’s modest dwelling. This was not all. The
distinction which Dr. Burney had acquired as a musician, and as the
historian of music, attracted to his house the most eminent musical
performers of that age. The greatest Italian singers who visited
England regarded him as the dispenser of fame in their art, and exerted
themselves to obtain his suffrage. Pachierotti became his intimate
friend. The rapacious Agujari, who sang for nobody else under fifty
pounds an air, sang her best for Dr. Burney without a fee; and in
the company of Dr. Burney even the haughty and eccentric Gabrielli
constrained herself to behave with civility. It was thus in his power
to give, with scarcely any expense, concerts equal to those of the
aristocracy. On such occasions the quiet street in which he lived
was blocked up by coroneted chariots, and his little drawing-room
was crowded with peers, peeresses, ministers, and ambassadors. On one
evening, of which we happen to have a full account, there were present
Lord Mulgrave, Lord Bruce, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Carrington from
the War Office, Lord Sandwich from the Admiralty, Lord Ashburnham, with
his gold key dangling from his pocket, and the French Ambassador, M. De
Guignes, renowned for his fine person and for his success in gallantry.
But the great show of the night was the Russian Ambassador, Count
Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze with jewels, and in
whose demeanour the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might be discerned
through a thin varnish of French politeness. As he stalked about the
small parlour, brushing the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered
to each other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he was the
favoured lover of his august mistress; that he had borne the chief part
in the revolution to which she owed her throne; and that his huge hands,
now glittering with diamond rings, had given the last squeeze to the
windpipe of her unfortunate husband.
With such illustrious guests as these were mingled all the most
remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind of game which is
hunted in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardour and
perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen
with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk
about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the
assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love songs,
such as those with which Oberea charmed her Opano.
With the literary and fashionable society, which occasionally met under
Dr. Burney’s roof, Frances can scarcely be said to have mingled. She was
not a musician, and could therefore bear no part in the concerts.
She was shy almost to awkwardness, and scarcely ever joined in the
conversation. The slightest remark from a stranger disconcerted her;
and even the old friends of her father who tried to draw her out could
seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. Her figure was small, her face
not distinguished by beauty. She was therefore suffered to withdraw
quietly to the background, and, unobserved herself, to observe all that
passed. Her nearest relations were aware that she had good sense,
but seem not to have suspected that, under her demure and bashful
deportment, were concealed a fertile invention and a keen sense of
the ridiculous. She had not, it is true, an eye for the fine shades of
character. But every marked peculiarity instantly caught her notice and
remained engraven on her imagination. Thus, while still a girl, she had
laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix
much in the world are able to accumulate during a long life. She had
watched and listened to people of every class, from princes and great
officers of state down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar
with subterranean cookshops. Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed
in review before her, English, French, German, Italian, lords and
fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres, travellers
leading about newly caught savages, and singing women escorted by deputy
husbands.
So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances by the society
which she was in the habit of seeing and hearing, that she began to
write little fictitious narratives as soon as she could use her pen
with case, which, as we have said, was not very early. Her sisters were
amused by her stories: but Dr. Burney knew nothing of their existence;
and in another quarter her literary propensities met with serious
discouragement. When she was fifteen, her father took a second wife.
The new Mrs. Burney soon found out that her stepdaughter was fond of
scribbling, and delivered several good-natured lectures on the subject.
The advice no doubt was well meant, and might have been given by the
most judicious friend; for at that time, from causes to which we may
hereafter advert, nothing could be more disadvantageous to a young lady
than to be known as a novel-writer. Frances yielded, relinquished her
favourite pursuit, and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts. [There is
some difficulty here as to the chronology. “This sacrifice,” says the
editor of the Diary, “was made in the young authoress’s fifteenth year.”
This could not be; for the sacrifice was the effect, according to the
editor’s own showing, of the remonstrances of the second Mrs. Burney;
and Frances was in her sixteenth year when her father’s second marriage
took place.]
She now hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner with scrupulous
regularity. But the dinners of that time were early; and the afternoon
was her own. Though she had given up novel-writing, she was still
fond of using her pen. She began to keep a diary, and she corresponded
largely with a person who seems to have had the chief share in the
formation of her mind. This was Samuel Crisp, an old friend of her
father. His name, well known, near a century ago, in the most splendid
circles of London, has long been forgotten. His history is, however,
so interesting and instructive, that it tempts us to venture on a
digression.
Long before Frances Burney was born, Mr. Crisp had made his entrance
into the world, with every advantage. He was well connected and well
educated. His face and figure were conspicuously handsome; his manners
were polished; his fortune was easy; his character was without stain; he
lived in the best society; he had read much; he talked well; his taste
in literature, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, was held in
high esteem. Nothing that the world can give seemed to be wanting to
his happiness and respectability, except that he should understand the
limits of his powers, and should not throw away distinctions which were
within his reach in the pursuit of distinctions which were unattainable.
“It is an uncontrolled truth,” says Swift, “that no man ever made an ill
figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.”
Every day brings with it fresh illustrations of this weighty saying; but
the best commentary that we remember is the history of Samuel Crisp. Men
like him have their proper place, and it is a most important one, in the
Commonwealth of Letters. It is by the judgment of such men that the rank
of authors is finally determined. It is neither to the multitude, nor to
the few who are gifted with great creative genius, that we are to look
for sound critical decisions. The multitude, unacquainted with the best
models, are captivated by whatever stuns and dazzles them. They deserted
Mrs. Siddons to run after Master Betty; and they now prefer, we have no
doubt, Jack Sheppard to Von Artevelde. A man of great original genius,
on the other hand, a man who has attained to mastery in some high
walk of art, is by no means to be implicitly trusted as a judge of the
performances of others. The erroneous decisions pronounced by such men
are without number. It is commonly supposed that jealousy makes them
unjust. But a more creditable explanation may easily be found. The very
excellence of a work shows that some of the faculties of the author have
been developed at the expense of the rest; for it is not given to the
human intellect to expand itself widely in all directions at once, and
to be at the same time gigantic and well proportioned. Whoever becomes
pre-eminent in any art, in any style of art, generally does so by
devoting himself with intense and exclusive enthusiasm to the pursuit of
one kind of excellence. His perception of other kinds of excellence is
therefore too often impaired. Out of his own department he praises
and blames at random, and is far less to be trusted than the mere
connoisseur, who produces nothing, and whose business is only to judge
and enjoy. One painter is distinguished by his exquisite finishing. He
toils day after day to bring the veins of a cabbage leaf, the folds of
a lace veil, the wrinkles of an old woman’s face, nearer and nearer to
perfection. In the time which he employs on a square foot of canvas,
a master of a different order covers the walls of a palace with gods
burying giants under mountains, or makes the cupola of a church alive
with seraphim and martyrs. The more fervent the passion of each of these
artists for his art, the higher the merit of each in his own line, the
more unlikely it is that they will justly appreciate each other. Many
persons who never handled a pencil probably do far more justice to
Michael Angelo than would have been done by Gerard Douw, and far more
justice to Gerard Douw than would have been done by Michael Angelo.
It is the same with literature. Thousands, who have no spark of the
genius of Dryden or Wordsworth, do to Dryden the justice which has
never been done by Wordsworth, and to Wordsworth the justice which,
we suspect, would never have been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson,
Richardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great body of
intelligent and well informed men. But Gray could see no merit in
Rasselas; and Johnson could see no merit in the Bard. Fielding thought
Richardson a solemn prig; and Richardson perpetually expressed contempt
and disgust for Fielding’s lowness.
Mr. Crisp seems, as far as we can judge, to have been a man eminently
qualified for the useful office of a connoisseur. His talents and
knowledge fitted him to appreciate justly almost every species of
intellectual superiority. As an adviser he was inestimable. Nay, he
might probably have held a respectable rank as a writer, if he would
have confined himself to some department of literature in which nothing
more than sense, taste, and reading was required. Unhappily he set his
heart on being a great poet, wrote a tragedy in five acts on the death
of Virginia, and offered it to Garrick, who was his personal friend.
Garrick read, shook his head, and expressed a doubt whether it would
be wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation, which stood high, on the
success of such a piece. But the author, blinded by ambition, set in
motion a machinery such as none could long resist. His intercessors were
the most eloquent man and the most lovely woman of that generation.
Pitt was induced to read Virginia, and to pronounce it excellent. Lady
Coventry with fingers which might have furnished a model to sculptors,
forced the manuscript into the reluctant hand of the manager; and, in
the year 1754, the play was brought forward.
Nothing that skill or friendship could do was omitted. Garrick wrote
both prologue and epilogue. The zealous friends of the author filled
every box; and, by their strenuous exertions, the life of the play
was prolonged during ten nights. But, though there was no clamorous
reprobation, it was universally felt that the attempt had failed. When
Virginia was printed, the public disappointment was even greater than
at the representation. The critics, the Monthly Reviewers in particular,
fell on plot, characters, and diction without mercy, but, we fear, not
without justice. We have never met with a copy of the play; but, if we
may judge from the scene which is extracted in the Gentleman’s Magazine,
and which does not appear to have been malevolently selected, we should
say that nothing but the acting of Garrick, and the partiality of the
audience, could have saved so feeble and unnatural a drama from instant
damnation.
The ambition of the poet was still unsubdued. When the London season
closed, he applied himself vigorously to the work of removing blemishes.
He does not seem to have suspected, what we are strongly inclined to
suspect, that the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages
which were meant to be fine, were, in truth, bursts of that tame
extravagance into which writers fall, when they set themselves to be
sublime and pathetic in spite of nature. He omitted, added, retouched,
and flattered himself with hopes of a complete success in the following
year; but in the following year, Garrick showed no disposition to bring
the amended tragedy on the stage. Solicitation and remonstrance were
tried in vain. Lady Coventry, drooping under that malady which
seems ever to select what is loveliest for its prey, could render
no assistance. The manager’s language was civily evasive; but his
resolution was inflexible.
Crisp had committed a great error; but he had escaped with a very slight
penance. His play had not been hooted from the boards. It had, on the
contrary, been better received than many very estimable performances
have been, than Johnson’s Irene, for example, or Goldsmith’s
Good-natured Man. Had Crisp been wise, he would have thought himself
happy in having purchased self-knowledge so cheap. He would have
relinquished, without vain repinings, the hope of poetical distinction,
and would have turned to the many sources of happiness which he still
possessed. Had he been, on the other hand, an unfeeling and unblushing
dunce, he would have gone on writing scores of bad tragedies in defiance
of censure and derision. But he had too much sense to risk a second
defeat, yet too little sense to bear his first defeat like a man. The
fatal delusion that he was a great dramatist, had taken firm possession
of his mind. His failure he attributed to every cause except the true
one. He complained of the ill-will of Garrick, who appears to have done
for the play everything that ability and zeal could do, and who, from
selfish motives, would, of course, have been well pleased if Virginia
had been as successful as the Beggar’s Opera. Nay, Crisp complained of
the languor of the friends whose partiality had given him three benefit
nights to which he had no claim. He complained of the injustice of the
spectators, when, in truth, he ought to have been grateful for their
unexampled patience. He lost his temper and spirits, and became a cynic
and a hater of mankind. From London he retired to Hampton, and from
Hampton to a solitary and long deserted mansion, built on a Common in
one of the wildest tracts of Surrey. No road, not even a sheep-walk,
connected his lonely dwelling with the abodes of men. The place of his
retreat was strictly concealed from his old associates. In the spring he
sometimes emerged, and was seen at exhibitions and concerts in London.
But he soon disappeared, and hid himself with no society but his books,
in his dreary hermitage. He survived his failure about thirty years.
A new generation sprang up around him. No memory of his bad verses
remained among men. His very name was forgotten. How completely the
world had lost sight of him, will appear from a single circumstance.
We looked for him in a copious Dictionary of Dramatic Authors published
while he was still alive, and we found only that Mr. Henry Crisp, of the
Custom House, had written a play called Virginia, acted in 1754. To the
last, however, the unhappy man continued to brood over the injustice of
the manager and the pit, and tried to convince himself and others that
he had missed the highest literary honours, only because he had omitted
some fine passages in compliance with Garrick’s judgment. Alas for human
nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much longer
than the wounds of affection! Few people, we believe, whose nearest
friends and relations died in 1754, had any acute feeling of the loss
in 1782. Dear sisters, and favourite daughters, and brides snatched away
before the honeymoon was passed, had been forgotten, or were remembered
only with a tranquil regret. But Samuel Crisp was still mourning for
his tragedy, like Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be
comforted. “Never,” such was his language twenty-eight years after his
disaster, “never give up or alter a tittle unless it perfectly coincides
with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my sorrow and my cost.
But mum!” Soon after these words were written, his life, a life which
might have been eminently useful and happy, ended in the same gloom in
which, during more than a quarter of a century, it had been passed.
We have thought it worth while to rescue from oblivion this curious
fragment of literary history. It seems to us at once ludicrous,
melancholy, and full of instruction.
Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys. To them alone
was confided the name of the desolate old hall in which he hid himself
like a wild beast in a den. For them were reserved such remains of his
humanity as had survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he
regarded as his daughter. He called her his Fannikin; and she in return
called him her dear Daddy. In truth, he seems to have done much more
than her real parents for the development of her intellect; for though
he was a bad poet, he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent
counsellor. He was particularly fond of the concerts in Poland Street.
They had, indeed, been commenced at his suggestion, and when he visited
London he constantly attended them. But when he grew old, and when gout,
brought on partly by mental irritation, confined him to his retreat, he
was desirous of having a glimpse of that gay and brilliant world from
which he was exiled, and he pressed Fannikin to send him full accounts
of her father’s evening parties. A few of her letters to him have been
published; and it is impossible to read them without discerning in
them all the powers which afterwards produced Evelina and Cecilia, the
quickness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and manner,
the skill in grouping, the humour, often richly comic, sometimes even
farcical.
Fanny’s propensity to novel-writing had for a time been kept down. It
now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales
which had perished in the flames, were still present to the eye of her
mind. One favourite story, in particular, haunted her imagination. It
was about a certain Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful damsel who made an
unfortunate love-match, and died, leaving an infant daughter. Frances
began to image to herself the various scenes, tragic and comic, through
which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side, meanly
connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings,
good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid, young
orphan; a coarse sea captain; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb
court dress; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow
Hill, and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball; an
old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a
miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar French
and vulgar English; a poet lean and ragged, with a broad Scotch accent.
By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and stronger consistence; the
impulse which urged Frances to write became irresistible; and the result
was the History of Evelina.
Then came, naturally enough, a wish, mingled with many fears, to
appear before the public; for, timid as Frances was, and bashful, and
altogether unaccustomed to hear her own praises, it is clear that she
wanted neither a strong passion for distinction, nor a just confidence
in her own powers. Her scheme was to become, if possible, a candidate
for fame, without running any risk of disgrace. She had not money to
bear the expense of printing. It was therefore necessary that some
bookseller should be induced to take the risk; and such a bookseller was
not readily found. Dodsley refused even to look at the manuscript unless
he were intrusted with the name of the author. A publisher in Fleet
Street, named Lowndes, was more complaisant. Some correspondence took
place between this person and Miss Burney, who took the name of Grafton,
and desired that the letters addressed to her might be left at the
Orange Coffee-house. But, before the bargain was finally struck, Fanny
thought it her duty to obtain her father’s consent. She told him that
she had written a book, that she wished to have his permission to
publish it anonymously, but that she hoped that he would not insist upon
seeing it. What followed may serve to illustrate what we meant when we
said that Dr. Burney was as bad a father as so good-hearted a man could
possibly be. It never seems to have crossed his mind that Fanny was
about to take a step on which the whole happiness of her life might
depend, a step which might raise her to an honourable eminence, or cover
her with ridicule and contempt. Several people had already been trusted,
and strict concealment was therefore not to be expected. On so grave
an occasion, it was surely his duty to give his best counsel to his
daughter, to win her confidence, to prevent her from exposing herself
if her book were a bad one, and, if it were a good one, to see that the
terms which she had made with the publisher were likely to be beneficial
to her. Instead of this, he only stared, burst out a-laughing, kissed
her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and never even asked the name
of her work. The contract with Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty
pounds were given for the copyright, and were accepted by Fanny with
delight. Her father’s inexcusable neglect of his duty happily caused her
no worse evil than the loss of twelve or fifteen hundred pounds.
After many delays Evelina appeared in January 1778. Poor Fanny was sick
with terror, and durst hardly stir out of doors. Some days passed before
anything was heard of the book. It had, indeed, nothing but its own
merits to push it into public favour. Its author was unknown. The house
by which it was published was not, we believe, held in high estimation.
No body of partisans had been engaged to applaud. The better class of
readers expected little from a novel about a young lady’s entrance into
the world. There was, indeed, at that time a disposition among the most
respectable people to condemn novels generally: nor was this disposition
by any means without excuse; for works of that sort were then almost
always silly, and very frequently wicked.
Soon, however, the first faint accents of praise began to be heard. The
keepers of the circulating libraries reported that everybody was asking
for Evelina, and that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author.
Then came a favourable notice in the London Review; then another still
more favourable in the Monthly. And now the book found its way to tables
which had seldom been polluted by marble-covered volumes. Scholars and
statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss
Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that they
could not tear themselves away from Evelina. Fine carriages and rich
liveries, not often seen east of Temple Bar, were attracted to the
publisher’s shop in Fleet Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the
author, but was himself as much in the dark as any of the questioners.
The mystery, however, could not remain a mystery long. It was known to
brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins: and they were far too proud
and too happy to be discreet. Dr. Burney wept over the book in rapture.
Daddy Crisp shook his fist at his Fannikin in affectionate anger at not
having been admitted to her confidence. The truth was whispered to Mrs.
Thrale; and then it began to spread fast.
The book had been admired while it was ascribed to men of letters long
conversant with the world, and accustomed to composition. But when it
was known that a reserved, silent young woman had produced the best
work of fiction that had appeared since the death of Smollett,
the acclamations were redoubled. What she had done was, indeed,
extraordinary. But, as usual, various reports improved the story till
it became miraculous. Evelina, it was said, was the work of a girl of
seventeen. Incredible as this tale was, it continued to be repeated down
to our own time. Frances was too honest to confirm it. Probably she was
too much a woman to contradict it; and it was long before any of her
detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of
low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her first
appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the
asp George Steevens, and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however,
occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they
might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly
chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of our own time,
whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials for a
worthless edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, some sheets of which our
readers have doubtless seen round parcels of better books.
But we must return to our story. The triumph was complete. The timid and
obscure girl found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame. Great men,
on whom she had gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed
her with admiration, tempered by the tenderness due to her sex and age.
Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were among her most ardent
eulogists. Cumberland acknowledged her merit, after his fashion,
by biting his lips and wriggling in his chair whenever her name was
mentioned. But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the highest
perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the sweets of
friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of prosperity and
popularity, with gay spirits, quick wit, showy though superficial
acquirements, pleasing though not refined manners, a singularly amiable
temper, and a loving heart, felt towards Fanny as towards a younger
sister. With the Thrales Johnson was domesticated. He was an old friend
of Dr. Burney; but he had probably taken little notice of Dr. Burney’s
daughters, and Fanny, we imagine, had never in her life dared to speak
to him, unless to ask whether he wanted a nineteenth or a twentieth cup
of tea. He was charmed by her tale, and preferred it to the novels of
Fielding, to whom, indeed, he had always been grossly unjust. He did
not, indeed, carry his partiality so far as to place Evelina by the
side of Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; yet he said that his little
favourite had done enough to have made even Richardson feel uneasy. With
Johnson’s cordial approbation of the book was mingled a fondness, half
gallant half paternal, for the writer; and this fondness his age and
character entitled him to show without restraint. He began by putting
her hand to his lips. But he soon clasped her in his huge arms, and
implored her to be a good girl. She was his pet, his dear love, his dear
little Burney, his little character-monger. At one time, he broke forth
in praise of the good taste of her caps. At another time he insisted on
teaching her Latin. That, with all his coarseness and irritability, he
was a man of sterling benevolence, has long been acknowledged. But how
gentle and endearing his deportment could be, was not known till the
Recollections of Madame D’Arblay were published.
We have mentioned a few of the most eminent of those who paid their
homage to the author of Evelina. The crowd of inferior admirers would
require a catalogue as long as that in the second book of the Iliad. In
that catalogue would be Mrs. Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things,
and Seward, much given to yawning, and Baretti, who slew the man in the
Haymarket, and Paoli, talking broken English, and Langton, taller by the
head than any other member of the club, and Lady Millar, who kept a
vase wherein fools were wont to put bad verses, and Jerningham who wrote
verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar, and Dr. Franklin,
not, as some have dreamed, the great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who
could not then have paid his respects to Miss Burney without much risk
of being hanged, drawn and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the less,=
```Aias
```Meion outi todos ge dsos Telamonios Aias
```Alla polu meion.=
It would not have been surprising if such success had turned even a
strong head, and corrupted even a generous and affectionate nature. But,
in the Diary, we can find no trace of any feeling inconsistent with a
truly modest and amiable disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof
that Frances enjoyed with an intense, though a troubled joy, the honours
which her genius had won; but it is equally clear that her happiness
sprang from the happiness of her father, her sister, and her dear Daddy
Crisp. While flattered by the great, the opulent, and the learned, while
followed along the Steyne at Brighton, and the Pantiles at Tunbridge
Wells, by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart seems to have been
still with the little domestic circle in Saint Martin’s Street. If she
recorded with minute diligence all the compliments, delicate and coarse,
which she heard wherever she turned, she recorded them for the eyes of
two or three persons who had loved her from infancy, who had loved her
in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite
delight. Nothing can be more unjust than to confound these outpourings
of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a
bluestocking, who prates to all who come near her about her own novel or
her own volume of sonnets.
It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney’s first venture
should tempt her to try a second. Evelina, though it had raised her
fame, had added nothing to her fortune. Some of her friends urged her to
write for the stage. Johnson promised to give her his advice as to the
composition. Murphy, who was supposed to understand the temper of the
pit as well as any man of his time, undertook to instruct her as to
stage effect. Sheridan declared that he would accept a play from her
without even reading it. Thus encouraged, she wrote a comedy named The
Witlings. Fortunately it was never acted or printed. We can, we think,
easily perceive, from the little which is said on the subject in the
Diary, that The Witlings would have been damned, and that Murphy, and
Sheridan thought so, though they were too polite to say so. Happily
Frances had a friend who was not afraid to give her pain. Crisp, wiser
for her than he had been for himself, read the manuscript in his lonely
retreat, and manfully told her that she had failed, that to remove
blemishes here and there would be useless, that the piece had abundance
of wit but no interest, that it was bad as a whole, that it would remind
every reader of the Femmes Savantes, which, strange to say, she had
never read, and that she could not sustain so close a comparison with
Moliere. This opinion, in which Dr. Burney concurred, was sent to
Frances, in what she called “a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle.”
But she had too much sense not to know that it was better to be hissed
and cat-called by her Daddy, than by a whole sea of heads in the pit of
Drury Lane Theatre: and she had too good a heart not to be grateful for
so rare an act of friendship. She returned an answer, which shows
how well she deserved to have a judicious, faithful, and affectionate
adviser. “I intend,” she wrote, “to console myself for your censure by
this greatest proof I have ever received of the sincerity, candour, and,
let me add, esteem, of my dear daddy. And as I happen to love myself
more than my play, this consolation is not a very trifling one. This,
however, seriously I do believe, that when my two daddies put their
heads together to concert that hissing, groaning, cat-calling epistle
they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor little Miss Bayes as she
could possibly do for herself. You see I do not attempt to repay your
frankness with an air of pretended carelessness. But, though somewhat
disconcerted just now, I will promise not to let my vexation live out
another day. Adieu, my dear daddy, I won’t be mortified, and I won’t
be downed, but I will be proud to find I have, out of my own family, as
well as in it, a friend who loves me well enough to speak plain truth to
me.”
Frances now turned from her dramatic schemes to an undertaking far
better suited to her talents. She determined to write a new tale, on a
plan excellently contrived for the display of the powers in which her
superiority to other writers lay. It was in truth a grand and various
picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of men and
women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice
and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, morbid
restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious
silence, a Democritus to laugh at everything, and a Heraclitus to lament
over everything. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months was
completed. It wanted something of the simplicity which had been among
the most attractive charms of Evelina; but it furnished ample proof that
the four years, which had elapsed since Evelina appeared, had not been
unprofitably spent. Those who saw Cecilia in manuscript pronounced it
the best novel of the age. Mrs. Thrale laughed and wept over it. Crisp
was even vehement in applause, and offered to ensure the rapid and
complete success of the book for half-a-crown. What Miss Burney received
for the copyright is not mentioned in the Diary; but we have observed
several expressions from which we infer that the sum was considerable.
That the sale would be great nobody could doubt; and Frances now had
shrewd and experienced advisers, who would not suffer her to wrong
herself. We have been told that the publishers gave her two thousand
pounds, and we have no doubt that they might have given a still larger
sum without being losers.
Cecilia was published in the summer of 1782. The curiosity of the town
was intense. We have been informed by persons who remember those days
that no romance of Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently awaited, or
more eagerly snatched from the counters of the booksellers. High as
public expectation was, it was amply satisfied; and Cecilia was placed,
by general acclamation, among the classical novels of England.
Miss Burney was now thirty. Her youth had been singularly prosperous;
but clouds soon began to gather over that clear and radiant dawn. Events
deeply painful to a heart so kind as that of Frances followed each other
in rapid succession. She was first called upon to attend the deathbed
of her best friend, Samuel Crisp. When she returned to Saint Martin’s
Street, after performing this melancholy duty, she was appalled by
hearing that Johnson had been struck by paralysis; and, not many months
later, she parted from him for the last time with solemn tenderness.
He wished to look on her once more; and on the day before his death she
long remained in tears on the stairs leading to his bedroom, in the hope
that she might be called in to receive his blessing. He was then sinking
fast, and though he sent her an affectionate message, was unable to see
her. But this was not the worst. There are separations far more cruel
than those which are made by death. She might weep with proud affection
for Crisp and Johnson. She had to blush as well as to weep for Mrs.
Thrale.
Life, however, still smiled upon Frances. Domestic happiness,
friendship, independence, leisure, letters, all these things were hers;
and she flung them all away.
Among the distinguished persons to whom she had been introduced, none
appears to have stood higher in her regard than Mrs. Delany. This lady
was an interesting and venerable relic of a past age. She was the niece
of George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, who, in his youth, exchanged verses
and compliments with Edmund Waller, and who was among the first to
applaud the opening genius of Pope. She had married Dr. Delany, a
man known to his contemporaries as a profound scholar and an eloquent
preacher, but remembered in our time chiefly as one of that small circle
in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tortured by disappointed ambition,
by remorse, and by the approaches of madness, sought for amusement and
repose. Doctor Delany had long been dead. His widow, nobly descended,
eminently accomplished, and retaining, in spite of the infirmities
of advanced age, the vigour of her faculties and the serenity of her
temper, enjoyed and deserved the favour of the royal family. She had a
pension of three hundred a year; and a house at Windsor, belonging to
the Crown, had been fitted up for her accommodation. At this house the
King and Queen sometimes called, and found a very natural pleasure
in thus catching an occasional glimpse of the private life of English
families.
In December 1785, Miss Burney was on a visit to Mrs. Delany at Windsor.
The dinner was over. The old lady was taking a nap. Her grandniece,
a little girl of seven, was playing at some Christmas game with
the visitors, when the door opened, and a stout gentleman entered
unannounced, with a star on his breast, and “What? what? what?” in his
mouth. A cry of “The King!” was set up. A general scampering followed.
Miss Burney owns that she could not have been more terrified if she had
seen a ghost. But Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty to her royal
friend, and the disturbance was quieted. Frances was then presented, and
underwent a long examination and cross-examination about all that she
had written and all that she meant to write. The Queen soon made her
appearance and his Majesty repeated, for the benefit of his consort, the
information which he had extracted from Miss Burney. The good-nature of
the royal pair might have softened even the authors of the Probationary
Odes, and could not but be delightful to a young lady who had been
brought up a Tory. In a few days the visit was repeated. Miss Burney
was more at ease than before. His Majesty, instead of seeking for
information, condescended to impart it, and passed sentence on many
great writers, English and foreign. Voltaire he pronounced a monster.
Rousseau he liked rather better. “But was there ever,” he cried, “such
stuff as great part of Shakspeare? Only one must not say so. But what
think you? What? Is there not sad stuff? What? What?”
The next day Frances enjoyed the privilege of listening to some equally
valuable criticism uttered by the Queen touching Goethe and Klopstock,
and might have learned an important lesson of economy from the mode in
which her Majesty’s library had been formed. “I picked the book up on a
stall,” said the Queen. “Oh, it is amazing what good books there are on
stalls!” Mrs. Delany, who seems to have understood from these words that
her Majesty was in the habit of exploring the booths of Moorfields
and Holywell Street in person, could not suppress an exclamation of
surprise. “Why,” said the Queen, “I don’t pick them up myself. But
I have a servant very clever; and, if they are not to be had at the
booksellers, they are not for me more than for another.” Miss Burney
describes this conversation as delightful; and, indeed, we cannot wonder
that, with her literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing
in how magnificent a manner the greatest lady in the land encouraged
literature.
The truth is, that Frances was fascinated by the condescending kindness
of the two great personages to whom she had been presented. Her father
was even more infatuated than herself. The result was a step of which we
cannot think with patience, but which, recorded as it is, with all its
consequences, in these volumes, deserves at least this praise, that it
has furnished a most impressive warning.
A German lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one of the keepers of the
Queen’s robes, retired about this time; and her Majesty offered the
vacant post to Miss Burney. When we consider that Miss Burney was
decidedly the most popular writer of fictitious narrative then living,
that competence, if not opulence, was within her reach, and that she was
more than usually happy in her domestic circle, and when we compare the
sacrifice which she was invited to make with the remuneration which was
held out to her, we are divided between laughter and indignation.
What was demanded of her was that she should consent to be almost as
completely separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to
Calcutta, and almost as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to gaol
for a libel; that with talents which had instructed and delighted the
highest living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff
and sticking pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting-woman’s bell
to a waiting-woman’s duties; that she should pass her whole life under
the restraints of a paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was
ready to swoon with hunger, should sometimes stand till her knees gave
way with fatigue; that she should not dare to speak or move without
considering how her mistress might like her words and gestures. Instead
of those distinguished men and women, the flower of all political
parties, with whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of equal
friendship, she was to have for her perpetual companion the chief
keeper of the robes, an old hag from Germany, of mean understanding, of
insolent manners, and of temper which, naturally savage, had now been
exasperated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Frances might console
herself for the loss of Burke’s and Windham’s society, by joining in the
“celestial colloquy sublime” of his Majesty’s Equerries.
And what was the consideration for which she was to sell herself to this
slavery? A peerage in her own right? A pension of two thousand a year
for life? A seventy-four for her brother in the navy? A deanery for her
brother in the church? Not so. The price at which she was valued was
her board, her lodging, the attendance of a man-servant, and two hundred
pounds a year.
The man who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells his birthright for
a mess of pottage, is unwise. But what shall we say of him who parts
with his birthright, and does not get even the pottage in return? It is
not necessary to inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation
for the sacrifice of bodily and mental freedom; for Frances Burney paid
for leave to be a prisoner and a menial. It was evidently understood as
one of the terms of her engagement, that, while she was a member of the
royal household, she was not to appear before the public as an author;
and, even had there been no such understanding, her avocations were such
as left her no leisure for any considerable intellectual effort. That
her place was incompatible with her literary pursuits was indeed frankly
acknowledged by the King when she resigned. “She has given up,” he said,
“five years of her pen.” That during those five years she might, without
painful exertion, without any exertion that would not have been a
pleasure, have earned enough to buy an annuity for life much larger than
the precarious salary which she received at Court, is quite certain. The
same income, too, which in Saint Martin’s Street would have afforded her
every comfort, must have been found scanty at Saint James’s. We cannot
venture to speak confidently of the price of millinery and jewellery;
but we are greatly deceived if a lady, who had to attend Queen Charlotte
on many public occasions, could possibly save a farthing out of a salary
of two hundred a year. The principle of the arrangement was, in short,
simply this, that Frances Burney should become a slave, and should be
rewarded by being made a beggar.
With what object their Majesties brought her to their palace, we must
own ourselves unable to conceive. Their object could not be to encourage
her literary exertions; for they took her from a situation in which it
was almost certain that she would write, and put her into a situation in
which it was impossible for her to write. Their object could not be to
promote her pecuniary interest; for they took her from a situation where
she was likely to become rich, and put her into a situation in which
she could not but continue poor. Their object could not be to obtain an
eminently useful waiting-maid; for it is clear that, though Miss Burney
was the only woman of her time who could have described the death of
Harrel, thousands might have been found more expert in tying ribands and
filling snuff-boxes. To grant her a pension on the civil list would have
been an act of judicious liberality, honourable to the Court. If this
was impracticable, the next best thing was to let her alone. That the
King and Queen meant her nothing but kindness, we do not in the least
doubt. But their kindness was the kindness of persons raised high above
the mass of mankind, accustomed to be addressed with profound deference,
accustomed to see all who approach them mortified by their coldness and
elated by their smiles. They fancied that to be noticed by them, to be
near them, to serve them, was in itself a kind of happiness; and that
Frances Burney ought to be full of gratitude for being permitted
to purchase, by the surrender of health, wealth, freedom, domestic
affection, and literary fame, the privilege of standing behind a royal
chair, and holding a pair of royal gloves.
And who can blame them? Who can wonder that princes should be under
such a delusion, when they are encouraged in it by the very persons who
suffer from it most cruelly? Was it to be expected that George the Third
and Queen Charlotte should understand the interest of Frances Burney
better, or promote it with more zeal than herself and her father? No
deception was practised. The conditions of the house of bondage were set
forth with all simplicity. The hook was presented without a bait; the
net was spread in sight of the bird: and the naked hook was greedily
swallowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle herself in the net.
It is not strange indeed that an invitation to Court should have caused
a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. But it was
the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on
one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the
other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honourable
distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of
Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of himself with delight. Not
such are the raptures of a Circassian father who has sold his pretty
daughter well to a Turkish slave-merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an
amiable man, a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the
world. But he seems to have thought that going to Court was like going
to heaven; that to see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific
vision; that the exquisite felicity enjoyed by royal persons was not
confined to themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious efflux
or reflection to all who were suffered to stand at their toilettes, or
to bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter’s objections, and
himself escorted her to her prison. The door closed. The key was turned.
She, looking back with tender regret on all that she had left, and
forward with anxiety and terror to the new life on which she was
entering, was unable to speak or stand; and he went on his way homeward
rejoicing in her marvellous prosperity.
And now began a slavery of five years, of five years taken from the best
part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or in recreations duller
than even menial drudgery, under galling restraints and amidst
unfriendly or uninteresting companions. The history of an ordinary day
was this. Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she
might be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after seven.
Till about eight she attended in the Queen’s dressing-room, and had
the honour of lacing her august mistress’s stays, and of putting on
the hoop, gown, and neckhandkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in
rummaging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then
the Queen was to be powdered and dressed for the day. Twice a week her
Majesty’s hair was curled and craped; and this operation appears to
have added a full hour to the business of the toilette. It was generally
three before Miss Burney was at liberty. Then she had two hours at her
own disposal. To these hours we owe great part of her Diary. At five
she had to attend her colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old
toadeater, as illiterate as a chambermaid, as proud as a whole German
Chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to conduct
herself with common decency in society. With this delightful associate,
Frances Burney had to dine, and pass the evening. The pair generally
remained together from five to eleven, and often had no other company
the whole time, except during the hour from eight to nine, when the
equerries came to tea. If poor Frances attempted to escape to her own
apartment, and to forget her wretchedness over a book, the execrable old
woman railed and stormed, and complained that she was neglected.
Yet, when Frances stayed, she was constantly assailed with insolent
reproaches. Literary fame was, in the eyes of the German crone, a
blemish, a proof that the person who enjoyed it was meanly born, and out
of the pale of good society. All her scanty stock of broken English was
employed to express the contempt with which she regarded the author of
Evelina and Cecilia. Frances detested cards, and indeed knew nothing
about them; but she soon found that the least miserable way of passing
an evening with Madame Schwellenberg was at the card-table, and
consented, with patient sadness, to give hours, which might have called
forth the laughter and the tears of many generations, to the king of
clubs and the knave of spades. Between eleven and twelve the bell
rang again. Miss Burney had to pass twenty minutes or half an hour in
undressing the Queen, and was then at liberty to retire, and to dream
that she was chatting with her brother by the quiet hearth in Saint
Martin’s Street, that she was the centre of an admiring assemblage at
Mrs. Crewe’s, that Burke was calling her the first woman of the age, or
that Dilly was giving her a cheque for two thousand guineas.
Men, we must suppose, are less patient than women; for we are utterly at
a loss to conceive how any human being could endure such a life, while
there remained a vacant garret in Grub Street, a crossing in want of a
sweeper, a parish workhouse, or a parish vault. And it was for such
a life that Frances Burney had given up liberty and peace, a happy
fireside, attached friends, a wide and splendid circle of acquaintance,
intellectual pursuits in which she was qualified to excel, and the sure
hope of what to her would have been affluence.