"Lady Fanny, sure you know the Duke of Gloucester is desperately in love
with my Lady Waldegrave. Now don't mask your little cunning face with
ignorance, but tell me what's known. What have you heard from Horry
Walpole?"
"Nothing, your la'ship," says I, very demure.
"Well," says she, "'t is reported the King has forbid him to speak to his
fair widow, and she is gone out of town. He has given her two pearl
bracelets worth five hundred pound. That's not for nothing surely. But for
what?"
"Indeed, 't is an ambiguous gift, Madam," says I, whimsically; "and may
mean much or little. Give me leave to ask whether 't is Pursuit or
Attainment as your la'ship reads it?"
But she tossed her head, the little gossip, and off she went.
I can tell you thus much, Kitty: the Walpoles are main frightened. It may
be a cast-back to the principles of the milliner mother. And there was
never the difference between her and Sir Edward Walpole that there is
between Maria and a Prince of the Blood. Her birth is impossible. My Lady
Mary Coke asking me if the mother were not a washerwoman, says I, "I
really cannot determine the lady's profession."
Poor Lady Mary is run clean mad with jealousy and spite, for 't is not so
long since she believed herself on the way to be a Royal Duchess,
imagining the late Duke of York to be her lover--a gentleman so
passionately in love with himself as to leave no room for another. She
wore her blacks when he died, like a widow. But, spitfire as Lady Mary is,
't is too true Maria is playing with fire, and there should be nothing
between him and her mother's daughter. She is indeed more indiscreet than
becomes her. His chaise is eternally at her door; and, as my Lady Mary
says, she is lucky that anyone else countenances her at all. If they do,
't is as much from curiosity as any nobler emotion. Indeed, I fear her
reputation's cracked past repair. Meeting Horry Walpole last night at the
French Embassador's, he was plagued with staring crowds, and he made off
after braving it a while. I hear the King is highly offended and the Queen
yet more. She has a great notion of birth; and though poor, the
Mecklenburg family has as good quarterings as any Royals in Europe. For my
part, Kitty, I know not. Yet, if we seek for pedigree in horse and dog, 't
is to be supposed worth something in Adam's breed also. And this
ill-behaviour in Maria confirms me.
Yet I have visited the fair sinner, for I love her well. She can't help
neither her birth nor her beauty, but sure her kind heart is all her own.
She wept and would reveal nothing, but asked me to be so much her friend
as to think the best of her. 'T is pity her tears were wasted on a mere
woman. The drops beaded on her lashes like rain on a rose. Well, God mend
all! say I. Sure none of us have a clear conscience and if anyone was to
come up behind us and whisper, "I know when, how, and who!" 't is certain
there are few women but would die of terror. Yet I did not think Maria a
rake--though a Prince's.
'T is pity Lady Mary, the Great Wortley Montagu, is dead, that would have
relished all this talk to the full. Can I forget when I visited her two
years since just before she died--her vivacity and the tales she told of
the junketings of Queen Anne's Court and George the First's! Gracious
powers, Kitty, to think of our grandmothers' conduct and our own
excellence in comparison! I have not heard a scandal since, but I have
vied it with theirs and found it a mere caprice. 'T was almost affrighting
to see that old lady, propped up in her chair, and croaking out tales of
the grandparents of every person known to me, not forgetting my own, and
laughing with a horrid glee and a fire in her ancient eye, till I expected
to see her fly off like a witch on a broomstick. Sure, thinks I, no
respectable young woman will be seen conversing with her grandmother after
this! Mrs Montagu carried me to see her, and I could scarce thank her for
it. Lord help us! does the world grow better or worse? I must take Mr
Walpole's opinion.
1772.
Kitty, Kitty, 't is all come out! But I may say the town knew it after the
masquerade in Soho, when His Royal Highness appeared as Edward the Fourth
and Maria as Elizabeth Woodville, the pretty widow he made his Queen.
You'll allow 't was a delicate way to let the cat out of the bag. It could
not longer be kept within it, for the lady's sake and more. For there's to
be a little new claimant one day to the Crown, if all the elder stem
should fail.
They were married, Kitty, in _1766!_ Sure never was an amazing secret
better kept! And I will say she hath borne much for the Prince's sake, and
with good sense--let my Lady Mary Coke and all the Furies say what they
will. But think of it--think of it! for indeed 't is scarce credible.
Here's Maria No-name--the milliner's base-born daughter--to be Her Royal
Highness the Duchess of Gloucester, Princess of Great Britain! Was ever
human fate so surprising? 'Twas a secret even from her father and uncle,
by the Duke's command; but she has now writ her father so pretty a letter
that 'tis the town's talk, Horry Walpole having shewed it about. But
Horry--have you forgot his pride, hid always under a nonchalance as if't
was nothing? I was at Gloucester House, where she received _en
princesse_, two nights ago; and to see Horry kiss her hand and hear him
address her with, "Madam, your Royal Highness," at every word--sure no wit
of Congreve's could ever equal the comedy! But if looks were all, she
should be Queen of England--a shining beauty indeed! She wore a robe in
the French taste, of gold tissue, her hair lightly powdered, with a
bandeau of diamonds and the Duke's miniature in diamonds on her breast.
He, looking very ill at ease, as I must own, stood beside her.
The King and our little Mecklenburger Queen are distracted; the royal ire
withers all before it; but it can't be undone, though they will pass a
Marriage Act to make such escapades impossible in the future.
But the Walpole triumph! 'Tis now proved in the face of all the world that
a Walpole illegitimate is better than a German Royalty; for he might have
married where he would. No doubt but Horry Walpole always thought so, yet
'tis not always we see our family pride so bolstered.
Meagre as a skeleton, he looked the genteelest phantom you can conceive,
in puce velvet and steel embroideries. For my part, I am well content, and
wish Her Royal Highness joy without grimace. 'Tis true I laugh at Horry
Walpole, for in this town we laugh at everything, from the Almighty to
Kitty Fisher; but I have a kindness for him and for Maria, and had sooner
they triumphed than another. 'Tis not so with the town. O Kitty, the
jealousy and malice! 'Twould take fifty letters to tell you the talk, from
the Court down.
Well, Her Royal Highness gave me her hand to kiss, very gracious. She will
not let her dignity draggle in the mud, like others I could name. But
whether she would have been more easy with Portland or another, I will not
determine. The Fates alone know, and sure they can't be women, they keep
their secrets so well!
Fanny Bueney
Madame D'Arblay
1752-1840
"Send me a minute Journal of everything," begs Mr. Crisp, "and never mind
their being trifles--trifles well-dressed are excellent food, and your
cookery is with me of established reputation."
Fanny Burney's letters, full of "trifles well-dressed" are as delightful
as the novels, "Evelina," "Cecilia," and "Camilla," that made her famous.
The skill of her writing and the charm of her character, "half-and-half
sense and modesty," won her the friendship of Burke, Sheridan, Walpole,
Warren Hastings, Hannah More, the Queen, and Dr. Johnson.
"She is a real wonder," said Johnson to Mrs. Thrale.
When Queen Charlotte made her second-keeper of the robes, her
novel-reading friends protested that she had been "royally gagged and
promoted to fold muslins." After four years of it, she returned to her
home, her writing, and her marriage with General d'Arblay. With the
proceeds of her most profitable novel, she built Camilla Cottage, where,
with her good Alexandre and her gay little son, she could live and write,
"Pleasure is seated in London, joy, mirth, society; but happiness, oh, it
has taken its seat, its root, at West Humble!" She lived to be
eighty-eight.
Yet the world still thinks of her on those youthful visits at Mrs.
Thrale's in Streatham, when, if she seemed about to take her leave, Dr.
Johnson would exclaim, "Don't you go, little Burney, don't you go!"
[Illustration: Fanny Burney, Madame D'Arblay]