NO. 1, ST. MARTIN’S STREET
No. 1, St. Martin’s Street, now No. 35, to which the Burneys moved early
in 1774, may fairly be described as a house with a history. We say
“now,” since it still exists,—standing to the right at the top of the
little street which opens into Leicester Square from the south; and
having on its left that Orange Street Congregational Church where, in
its Huguenot days, was wont to preach Wesley’s opponent,—the Rev.
Augustus Montague Toplady. The house itself, once red brick, but at
present stuccoed over, is not impressive, save for the distinction
conferred by a Society of Arts tablet which proclaims it to have been
formerly the residence of Newton. Miss Burney, indeed, as her father
supposed, declares that Sir Isaac built it; but this is an error. He
took it in 1710, when he was nearing seventy, and he lived in it until
1725, two years before he died at Kensington. Beyond occasional visits
to the Princess Caroline at Leicester House on the opposite side of the
Fields; and the fact that he superintended the production of two
editions of the _Principia_ during his period of residence, no very
definite traditions belong to his sojourn in St. Martin’s Street. But
Dr. Burney, who valued literary association, had a better reason for
connecting his new house with Swift, than he had for connecting him with
Queen Square. For in Newton’s house in St. Martin’s Street had certainly
dwelt one of Swift’s intimates and Newton’s relatives, the beautiful and
witty Catherine Barton,—the “_jolie nièce_” of Voltaire,—and the
“Super-intendant of his domestick Affairs” to Charles Montagu, Earl of
Halifax, to whom, it is conjectured, she was privately married. After
the death of Halifax in 1715, she became the wife of John Conduitt,
Newton’s successor as Master of the Mint; and, when in town, was
accustomed to reside with her uncle in Leicester Fields. And it is no
great stretch of imagination to assume that, at such times, though Swift
himself was in exile, she was visited by the other old friends who had
clustered around her when she was a Toast of the Kit Cats. The chairs of
Lady Worsley and Lady Betty Germaine must often have waited at the
narrow approach by which the street was then entered from the Fields,
while their mistresses “disputed Whig and Tory” with Mrs. Conduitt, or
were interrupted in a _tête-à-tête_ by Gay and the Duchess of
Queensberry.[12]
As regards situation, the change from Queen Square to St. Martin’s
Street was not entirely for the better. It was no small loss to
substitute an “unpleasant site,” “confined air,” and a “shabby immediate
neighbourhood” for the unobstructed view of “Hampstead’s breezy Heath”
which the Bloomsbury home afforded.[13] But in the way of convenience,
and a central position, the difference was great, in addition to which,
compared with its predecessor, the new residence was “large and good.”
It is true that the stairs were so steep and narrow that one of Fulke
Greville’s friends broke his sword in climbing them; but, on the other
hand, most of the rooms were panelled, and one, at least, of the
ceilings “prodigiously painted and ornamented,” not, as the Doctor was
careful to explain, by him, but by previous occupants. The chief glory
of the house, however, was the unpretentious structure at the top, which
passed for Sir Isaac’s observatory. It is perhaps safest to say
“passed,” because, between 1725 and 1774, there must have been other
dwellers in No. 1, St. Martin’s Street, and many things may have
happened. But the Burneys seem to have devoutly believed in the
small-paned, wooden turret, with the leaden roof and tiny fireplace,
which embodied so respectable a tradition. They exhibited it religiously
to their visitors; and one of its new owner’s first acts was to put it
into repair. When, four years later, it was all but whirled away by the
hurricane of 1778, he practically rebuilt it. And it was unquestionably
Fanny’s chosen retreat and _scriptorium_. “His [Newton’s] observatory is
my favourite sitting place, where I can retire to read or write any of
my private fancies or vagaries.” And then follows what—having regard to
some of her previous utterances—is more interesting than
unexpected.[14] “I burnt all up to my fifteenth year—thinking I grew
too old for scribbling nonsense, but as I am less young, I grow, I fear,
less wise, for I cannot any longer resist what I find to be
irresistible, the pleasure of popping down my thoughts from time to time
upon paper.”
Whatever may have been her exact age at the date of the famous
_auto-da-fé_ in the paved court at Poland Street, she must have been
nearing two and twenty when she “popped down” the foregoing passage; and
the moment, taken in connection with the change of scene from Bloomsbury
to Leicester Fields is a favourable one for reviewing the Burney family
circle in 1774-5. Dr. Burney’s second or German Tour, as we know, had
been published in 1773; and in the same year he had been made a Fellow
of the Royal Society. At present, in the intervals of rheumatism, he was
working, with Fanny’s aid, at his _History of Music_. By his second wife
he had two children,—Richard, and Sarah Harriet, the latter of whom
eventually, like her gifted half-sister, became a novelist. But both
Richard and Harriet, at this date, were in the nursery. Esther, or
Hetty, the eldest daughter, had been married for some time to her
cousin, Charles Rousseau Burney, afterwards of Bath, a musician and
former pupil of her father; while Maria Allen, the daughter of Dr.
Burney’s second wife, was married to a Mr. Rishton. James Burney, the
sailor, having sailed with Cook in his second voyage, and been made a
lieutenant, had now returned home. In 1775 he was serving on the North
American Station, when he was recalled to accompany Cook on his third
and fatal expedition. Of the rest, Susan and Charlotte were now grown
up, Charlotte being about fifteen, and Susan some years older. Charles,
after having enjoyed the reputation of being “the sweetest-tempered boy
in the Charterhouse School,” was now, in all probability, pursuing at
Cambridge those studies for which he was eventually to be classed with
Porson and Parr. The only one of the Queen Square frequenters no longer
to be encountered at St. Martin’s Street was “Daddy” Crisp. By this date
he was sixty-eight, and his fits of gout had become so severe, that he
had ceased to make his annual descents upon London from his Surrey
hermitage. But his interest in all that befell his friends at Leicester
Fields remained unabated; and in this he was kept carefully posted up by
his favourite “Fannikin,” who, what with acting as librarian and
amanuensis to her indefatigable father, writing periodical news-letters
of “from six to twelve large quarto pages” to Chessington, and keeping
her own voluminous journal besides—must have been very actively
employed both in the Observatory and out of it. Not without reason can
it have been that she acquired the “murtherous stooping” which her
Mentor deplored, nor was it entirely chargeable to the shortness of
sight which she shared with Charlotte Brontë. It is from her bright and
graphic despatches to Mr. Crisp that we propose to draw most of the
material for this chapter. Often these are repeated in her _Diary_, and
they are also expanded in the _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_ which she wrote in
later years; but they are at their best and freshest in her
letters,—letters which, in many cases, must have been scribbled off
immediately after the occurrence of the events they described. From one
of them it is clear that their writer thought nothing of setting to work
at what would now be considered a very lengthy epistle, when the
entertainment of the evening had come to an end.
The Queen Square circle had already been sufficiently diversified; but
it grew wider and even more varied at Leicester Fields. Some of the
Doctor’s friends were now in his immediate vicinity. The family of Mr.
(afterwards Sir Robert) Strange, the engraver,—old Paris
acquaintances,—were, for the moment, lodging close by. Reynolds, who
had just painted the beautiful Eliza Linley (Mrs. Sheridan) as “St.
Cecilia,” lived only just across the Fields at No. 47; and Garrick, in
the new house recently built for him by the brothers Adam at the
Adelphi, was not too far off to be a frequent looker-in. Another
artistic friend was the sculptor, Joseph Nollekens, whom Burney had met
in Italy. James Barry, the eccentric and pugnacious Irish painter from
Castle Street, then engaged in decorating the Meeting Room of the
Society of Arts with vast designs (in one of which Dr. Burney, in a
queue and tye-wig, figures incongruously among the nymphs of the
Thames),—was also among the familiar faces. But the majority were
naturally persons who were more or less attracted to the Historian of
Music. In this category comes James Harris of Salisbury, “a most
charming old man,”—says Fanny, not only the author of _Hermes_, but a
writer upon Music, and a composer whose pastoral of _Daphnis and
Amaryllis_ had actually been produced at Drury Lane. With him was his
wife, the delightful Mrs. Harris whose gossiping letters to her son, the
first Earl of Malmesbury, are some of the most charming in their kind.
Then there was another new friend, whom the Burney girls grew to love
almost as much as “Daddy” Crisp himself, the Rev. Thomas Twining of
Fordham, near Colchester, afterwards the translator of Aristotle’s
_Treatise on Poetry_. His acquaintance with Dr. Burney had begun over
the _German Tour_, for Twining, too, had meditated a _History of Music_,
which he abandoned in favour of Burney’s. “They were far from young when
they met,”—says Twining’s brother and biographer referring to the new
friends,—“and they could ill afford to lose time.”[15] Besides these,
there were the foreign professionals who regarded the author of the
_Tours_ as the supreme arbiter in matters musical:—the celebrated
_soprano_, Lucrezia Agujari, otherwise the _Bastardini_; the almost
equally celebrated Caterina Gabrielli, and the _Inglesina_, Cecilia
Davies; while the men were represented by the singer and composer,
Rauzzini, who is so much commended in the _German Tour_, by Gasparo
Pacchieroti and others. Finally, there were the “_Lyons_,”—as the
diarist calls them,—the Otaheitan Omai, who had come from the Society
Islands with Lieutenant Burney; and the Abyssinian traveller, James
Bruce of Kinnaird; and last, but by no means largest, for Bruce was six
feet four, the Russian “man-mountain,” Alexis Orloff, who had certainly
helped to strangle his Imperial Master, Peter III., and was also—though
not so surely—the reputed favourite of that terrible Czarina who,
according to Walpole, had even more teeth than the famous Wild Beast of
the Gévaudan. The goings and comings of these, and other notables and
notorieties,—for those mentioned by no means exhaust the list,—must
have been an unexampled school of character to a budding novelist, whose
gift lay especially in seizing upon the peculiarities of human nature,
whose perceptions were at their freshest and keenest, and whose
singularly retentive memory was not yet perplexed and bewildered by too
prolonged an experience of the very variegated patchwork of Eighteenth
Century society.
Among the first visits to St. Martin’s Street that Fanny chronicles is
one from that “most entertaining of mortals, Mr. Garrick.” He arrived,
as usual, very early in the morning, marching straight into the study
where Dr. Burney, “surrounded by books and papers innumerable,” was
having his hair dressed. Fanny was making breakfast; Charlotte reading
the paper. Nobody else was a-stir. “My father,”—says Miss Burney,—“was
beginning a laughing sort of apology for his litters, and so forth, but
Mr. Garrick interrupted him with ‘Aye now; do be in a little confusion;
it will make things comfortable!’” He then began to look gravely at the
hairdresser. (Dr. Burney, it may be stated in parenthesis wore his own
hair,—a crop so bushy and luxuriant that Frances Reynolds persisted in
regarding it as artificial.) “He (Garrick) was himself in a most odious
scratch-wig, which nobody but himself could dare to be seen in. He put
on a look in the Abel Drugger style of _envy_ and sadness, as he
examined the hairdresser’s progress; and, when he had done, he turned to
him with a dejected face, and said, ‘Pray Sir, could you touch up _this_
a little?’ taking hold of his own frightful scratch.” At which the
hairdresser only grinned, and left the room. But Garrick continued his
proceedings in the same mirthful spirit. He made enquiries as to the
progress of the _History of Music_, protesting that he was only waiting
to blow the trumpet of Fame, which he forthwith proceeded to do with a
stick, after the fashion of a Raree-Show-man. “Here is the only true
History, Gentlemen; please to buy, please to buy. Sir, I shall blow it
in the very ear of yon scurvy magistrate”—by whom he meant Sir John
Hawkins of Twickenham, whom Horace Walpole had incited to a rival
performance. His final exploit, after mimicking the Spanish traveller,
Twiss, and Dr. Arne, Burney’s old master, was to give a dramatic
rendering of an interview he had recently had with Johnson,—not yet
personally known to the young ladies. Johnson had asked Garrick to lend
him a book, and Johnson’s carelessness about books was notorious.
“‘David, will you lend me Petra[r]ca?’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ ‘David, you sigh.’
‘Sir, you shall have it.’ Accordingly, the book, finely bound, was sent,
but scarce had he received it, when uttering a Latin ejaculation (which
Mr. Garrick repeated) in a fit of enthusiasm,—over his head goes poor
Petra[r]ca,—Russia leather and all!”[16] After this the mercurial actor
bustled off to give breakfast to Boswell, promising to come soon, and
plague them again. By the Burney household Garrick was idolised; but
Miss Burney hints that where he was not on cordial terms, he could
contrive to make himself extremely disagreeable.
Other early visitors were Bruce, the already mentioned Abyssinian
traveller, and the Otaheitan Omai. We will take the traveller first. At
this time he had been twelve years abroad, four of which had been spent
in unexplored parts of Africa. “His figure is almost gigantic! he is the
tallest man I ever saw,” writes Fanny,—who adds elsewhere that he
almost frightened Mr. Twining. “I cannot say I was charmed with him; for
he seems rather arrogant, and to have so large a share of good opinion
of himself, as to have nothing left for the rest of the world but
contempt. Yet his self-approbation is not that of a _fop_; on the
contrary, he is a very manly character, and looks so dauntless and
intrepid, so that I believe he could never in his life know what fear
meant.” Despite his hauteur, Bruce seems to have taken to the Burneys.
He liked music, and he lodged in Leicester Fields, so he came often to
their social evenings. He even favoured the Doctor with two drawings, a
Theban harp and an Abyssinian lyre, which were copied for the _History
of Music_. The latter instrument prompted some rather obvious gibes
about Abyssinian _liars_ from Walpole and Selwyn. Bruce, as Johnson
said, was “not a distinct relater,” added to which his large, imperious
and rather swaggering manner prejudiced people against his stories, and
had the effect of delaying his account of his exploits until a few years
before his death in 1794. One of his last appearances at St. Martin’s
Street was in 1776, when he stayed to supper “which, you know, with us,
is nothing but a permission to sit over a table for chat, and roast
potatoes, or apples.” But “his Abyssinian Majesty,” as Fanny calls him,
neither discoursed on this occasion upon the Abyssinian lyre, nor the
merits of raw beef-steaks as a diet. He only told a long and rather
stupid story of a practical joke at a masquerade.
Omiah, Omai, Omy, or familiarly, Jack,—the other “_lyon_ of
_lyons_”—came to St. Martin’s Street upon the invitation of James
Burney, whose sister gives detailed accounts of his visits. At the time
of the first, the Society Islander, of whom, in his native state, there
is a portrait in Cook’s _Voyages_, can only have been a few months in
England. But although he had not learned English, he had already
acquired all the externals of a fine gentleman. He arrived betimes,
after a preliminary note in due form, arrayed splendidly in a Court suit
of Manchester velvet lined with white satin, a bag, laced ruffles (on
his tattooed hands), and a very handsome sword which had been given him
by King George the Third. Though not handsome, he was tall and well
proportioned. “He makes _remarkable_ good bows—not for _him_ but for
_anybody_, however long under a Dancing Master’s care,” writes Miss
Burney. “Indeed he seems to shame Education, for his manners are so
extremely graceful, and he is so polite, attentive, and easy, that you
would have thought he came from some Foreign Court,”—a sentiment which
seems later to have prompted a comparison between the lamentable failure
of Lord Chesterfield’s precepts to make of Philip Stanhope anything but
a “pedantic booby,” and the exemplary rapidity with which Otaheitan
Omiah had contrived to “cultivate the Graces.” Miss Burney saw Omiah
again before he returned to Ulietea. Upon this occasion, he obliged the
company with “a song of his own country,” which, from his subsequent
analysis, must have comprised the entire _scenario_ of a comic opera.
But his audience were too musical, and it was not a success. “So queer,
wild, strange a _rumbling of sounds_ never did I before hear, and very
contentedly can I go to the grave, if I never do again. His [Omiah’s]
_song_ is the only thing that is _savage_ about him.”[17]
But it is time—looking to the limitations of our space—to turn from
the specific to the general, and give some account of the St. Martin’s
Street musical evenings. Already at Poland Street and Queen Square these
entertainments had been the rule; and at Newton’s house, with the
Doctor’s increasing popularity, they attained their greatest importance.
Moreover, they found, as they had not before found, their faithful
chronicler in Daddy Crisp’s correspondent. The chief performers on
ordinary occasions seem to have been Esther Burney and her husband,
their _pièce de résistance_ being Müthel’s Duet for two harpsichords.
Another famous harpsichord player was the Baroness Deiden, the wife of
the Danish Ambassador, whose reputation is said to have been European.
But the “peacock’s brains” of the record was certainly the Agujari, and
Miss Burney’s enthusiasm overflows. Carestini, Farinelli, Senesino, all
Mr. Crisp’s old idols,—’twas to these only that the _Bastardini_ could
be compared. And she seems certainly to have done her best. She arrived
for tea before seven, stayed till twelve, sang almost all the time,
permitted her hearers to encore nearly every song, and sang moreover in
twenty different styles, minuets, cantabiles, church-music, bravuras and
even that popular Vauxhall _misère_, the rondeau, growing at last so
excited over an _aria parlante_ from the _Didone Abbandonata_ (“_Son
Regina, e sono Amante_”) that “she acted it throughout with great spirit
and feeling.” This was pretty well for the lady whom Macaulay qualifies
as the “rapacious” Agujari, apparently because, at this date, she was
earning fifty pounds a song—which she thoroughly deserved, since people
went to hear her and no one else—at the Oxford Street Pantheon.[18] But
she had an exceedingly appreciative audience, limited by her own request
to the Burney family; she was tired of singing at concerts, book in
hand, “_comme une petite écolière_,” and most of all, she was anxious to
give the Historian of Music, who was also all-powerful in matters
operatic, a taste of her real quality. It does not appear that she ever
repeated her performances at St. Martin’s Street, so that it would be
inaccurate to represent her as figuring habitually and gratuitously at
the Burney “conversations.”
One of the next things which Fanny recounts to Mr. Crisp is the
production, at the Opera House in the Haymarket, of that very _Didone_
of Metastasio from which Agujari had borrowed her _aria parlante_. But
the _diva_ upon this occasion (Saturday, Nov. 11, 1775) was Caterina
Gabrielli, who seems to have behaved with all her traditional caprice.
The Burney family, who occupied the front row of the first gallery, are
terribly divided as to her merits. “She was most _impertinently_ easy,”
says Fanny, “visibly took no pains, and never in the least exerted
herself.” Elsewhere she writes, “Her voice is feeble, but sweetly toned.
She has great powers of execution; but—she is no Agujari!” And
thereupon, in the contest and confusion of opinion, the writer turns to
a little concert that has just taken place in St. Martin’s Street, “at
which _assisted_ a most superb party of company.” It originated in the
desire of Dr. King, sometime chaplain to the British factory at St.
Petersburg, that the famous Prince Orloff,[19] before he left England,
should hear Hetty and her husband in Müthel’s duet. Both in her _Diary_
and Letters, Fanny has treated this exceptional entertainment at
considerable length; and she subsequently “embroidered” the record in
the Memoirs of her father. We shall depend, by preference, upon her
account to Mr. Crisp. After introducing the guests as they arrive:—Dr.
Ogle, the musical Dean of Winchester; Dr. King, who announces
consequentially that the Prince, having dined at Lord Buckingham’s, is
coming as soon as he has been to Lady Harrington’s rout; the _virtuosa_,
Lady Edgecumbe (“all condescension, _repartee_ (_and yet_) good
humour”); Mr. Charles Boone, the fine gentleman who broke his sword in
the staircase; Mrs. Brudenel; Mr. Anthony Chamier—all of whose
conversation turns upon the Gabrielli and her performance of the evening
before,—one of the _rat, tat, tats_ with which the diarist diversifies
her narrative, announces M. le Baron de Demidoff, thin, long-nosed, with
a most _triste_ and foreign countenance. M. de Demidoff travels with the
Prince, whose _avant-coureur_ he is. He brings the gratifying
intelligence that His Highness is detained at Lady Harrington’s, but may
be expected with the least possible delay. Then follow Mr. Harris of
Salisbury, Lord Bruce, a younger brother of the Duke of Montague (who
has been to St. Martin’s _Lane_ by mistake)—and so forth. At last—like
Charlemagne after his Paladins—appears Prince Orloff, accompanied by
General Bawr, a Hessian, stern, martial, who has seen service in the
Turkish war. And here we most willingly surrender the pen to Miss
Burney. “The Prince is another Mr. Bruce, being immensely tall and stout
in proportion. He is a handsome and magnificent figure. His dress was
very superb. Besides a blue Garter he had a star of diamonds of
prodigious brilliancy; he had likewise a _shoulder knot_ of the same
_precious jewels_, and a picture of the Empress hung from his neck,
which was set round with diamonds of such magnitude and lustre that,
when near the candle, they were too dazzling for the eye. His jewels,
Dr. King says, are valued at above £100,000. He was extremely gracious
and polite, and appears to be _addicted to pleasantry_. He speaks very
little English but knows French perfectly. He was received by my father
in the drawing-room. The library, where the music was, was so crowded,
he only shewed himself at the door, where he bowed to Mr. Chamier, who
had met with him elsewhere.”
The Müthel duet, which had been postponed for the Prince’s arrival, was
then played with prodigious applause, relaxing even the “sorrowful
countenance” of the Baron de Demidoff, who clapped his snuff box
rapturously, calling out in broken English, “_Dis is so pretty as ever I
heard in my life!_” Lord Bruce, turning to Prince Orloff, told him the
performers were man and wife. His Highness seemed surprised, and walking
up to Mrs. Burney, made her many compliments; and, expressing his wonder
that two such executants should chance to be united, added “_Mais, qu’a
produit tant d’Harmonie?_” To this Hetty, in a flutter, could find no
fitter reply than “_Rien, Monseigneur, que trois enfants_,”—that being
the extent of her family,—an artless and unexpected answer at which
Monseigneur laughs immoderately, and, being “addicted to pleasantry,”
retails freely to those about him, with many “droll comments and
observations” on Mrs. Burney’s words. “When the room was a good deal
_thinned_”—Fanny goes on—“Mr. Harris told me he wished some of _the
ladies_ would express a desire of seeing the _Empress’s picture_ nearer.
‘I, you know,’ said he, ‘as a _man_, cannot, but my old eyes can’t see
it at a distance.’” [The truth was, Mr. Harris wished to be able to
compare Orloff’s picture of Catherine II. with his son James’s (Lord
Malmesbury’s) portrait of the King of Spain.] “I went up to Dr. King,
and made the request to him. He hesitated some time, but afterwards
_hinted_ the demand to General Bawr, who boldly made it to the Prince.
His Highness laughed, and with great good humour, desired the General to
untie the picture from his neck, and present it to us; and he was very
facetious upon the occasion, desiring to know if we wanted anything
else? and saying that if they pleased, _the ladies_ might _strip him
entirely_! Not very elegant, methinks, his pleasantry! When we got it
there was hardly any looking at the Empress for the glare of the
diamonds. Their size is almost incredible. One of them, I am sure, was
as big as a _nut-meg_ at _least_. When we were all satisfied it was
returned, and the Prince most graciously made a bow to, and received a
curtsie from, everyone who looked at it.”[20]
In the remainder of Fanny’s letters to Mr. Crisp, she gives an account
of a further concert arising out of the famous duet. This time the
principal guest was the Count (afterwards the Duke) de Guines, the
French Ambassador, who was not only a _virtuoso_ of the first order, but
an accomplished flute-player, who had the reputation of having dared to
beard that other distinguished performer on the same instrument,
Frederick the Great. His Majesty had said to him impatiently and
impertinently—“_Je vous prie, qu’est-ce que fait votre maître quand il
ne peut pas chasser De Guisnes?_” The Count—a typical aristocrat of the
pre-Revolution days—shrugged his shoulders, and made answer, “_Il est
vrai, Sire, que mon maître n’a pas le bonheur de savoir jouer de la
flûte_,”[21] a retort more dexterous than deserved, since Frederick,
whom Dr. Burney had listened to at Potsdam, was not by any means a mere
amateur. Lady Edgecumbe had talked so much to M. de Guines about the
duet, that he expressed a great desire to hear it, and a second concert
had to be arranged. The company convened on this occasion included Lord
Ashburnham, “Groom of the Stole, and First Lord of the Bedchamber,” the
Baron and Baroness Deiden, Lord Barrington, Lord Sandwich (“Jemmy
Twitcher,” to wit), and Signor Venanzio Rauzzini, the “pius Æneas” to
the Dido of Gabrielli. Rauzzini was vainly implored to indulge the
company with a _Rondeau de sa façon_—_i.e._ from his own _Piramo e
Tisbe_; but he pleaded the professional cold. Fanny is enchanted with
the young Roman’s appearance. “He looked like an angel,” she writes.
“Nothing can be more beautiful than this youth. He has the complection
of our Dick,—the very finest white and red I ever saw: his eyes are the
sweetest in the world, at once soft and spirited: all his features are
animated and _charming_.” “‘_Avez vous une Assemblée chez vous tous les
Dimanches_,’[22] cried he, to my father. ‘_Je viendrai une autre fois
quand je pourrai chanter!_’ Only think how we were _let down_! ‘_Une
autre fois!_’ cried Hetty; ‘_Une autre fois!_’ echoed Susette; ‘_Une
autre fois!_’ still more pathetically echoed your humble servant.” But
he contributed his quota to the gossip about the Gabrielli; and when the
oft-told story was repeated as to the extraordinary ceremonial parade
she observed in quitting the Opera House on Saturdays, with first a
running footman to clear the way, then her sister, then herself, then a
page for her train, then another footman, and then a man out of livery
to carry her lap-dog in her muff,—Rauzzini interjected, “_Et puis, une
autre pour un singe, et un autre pour un perroquet!_” As to “Mrs.
Gabrielle” (for so she styled herself on her Golden Square doorplate),
it is manifest that her reputation for whim had created considerable
prejudice against her. But in the _History of Music_ Dr. Burney, who
knew her intimately, is much milder in his expressions than the more
excitable members of his family. He says that despite her low origin
(she was the daughter of a Cardinal’s cook at Rome), she had
extraordinary grace and dignity of gesture. She was, moreover he
declared, the most intelligent and best bred _virtuosa_ with whom he
ever conversed, speaking like a well-educated woman, who had seen the
world, not only on music, but on other subjects. “In youth,” he writes,
“her beauty and caprice had occasioned an universal delirium among her
young countrymen, and there were still remains of both sufficiently
powerful, while she was in England, to render credible their former
influence.”
That Fanny’s detailed despatches delighted her correspondent at
Chessington, is only to be expected. “You have produc’d such an
illustrious assembly of Princes, and generals, and lords, and ladies,
and wits, and pictures, and diamonds, and shoulder-knots, that I feel
myself shrink into nothing at the idea of them,—nay, you yourself that
made one among them, seem to be a little dazzled at their glare.” And
then Mr. Crisp rallies her upon her evident admiration of the “beautiful
Rauzzini.” In another letter there is a significant sentence. “You have
learned from that R[_ogue_] your father (by so long serving as
amanuensis, I suppose) to make your descriptions alive”—an utterance
which, while it throws some light on the vexed question of Miss Burney’s
style, also recalls us to the progress of that _History of Music_, in
which she bore so laborious a part. In March 1775 it had come to a “dead
stop” owing to Dr. Burney’s rheumatism, which prevented him from
writing; and in April it was scarcely moving. “My father’s History goes
on very slowly indeed at present. . . . He teaches from nine to nine
almost every day, and has scarce time to write a page a week.” Still, it
gradually progresses, and in October, Fanny is able to report that the
first volume is ready. “The History has been this very day, for the
first time since its long cessation, put into the press[?]. It is now
_rough_ written to the end of the first volume, Preface and Dedication
inclusive. When it is actually _published_, we intend to keep the
Carnival.” A few days before, the Dedication to the Queen had been read
by Dr. Burney to an admiring friend; and in 1776 the first volume was
issued, when, we may conclude, the Carnival was duly kept.
But of this, unhappily, no record has been preserved; and it was some
years before a second volume gave the busy Doctor opportunity for a
further jubilation.[23] Beyond the fact that the Burneys, and Fanny in
particular, made friends (through the Stranges) with the Miss Paynes,
daughters of the famous old bookseller in Castle Street, “next the Upper
Mews-Gate,” whose L-shaped shop was so well known to Eighteenth Century
bibliomaniacs,[24]—little remains of interest from the records of 1775.
For 1776 there is no journal at all, what had been written having been
“destroyed in totality,” as consisting wholly of family matters or
anecdotes; and save for a very graphic picture of the slatternly Duchess
of Devonshire in St. James’s Park, no very attractive correspondence,
although Mr. Crisp refers to a “conversation piece” which Fanny drew of
the fine company at the house of Sir James Lake, the great portrait
collector, which should have been good to read. “If specimens of this
kind had been preserved of the different _Tons_ that have succeeded one
another for twenty centuries last past,” he writes, “how interesting
would they have been! infinitely more so, than antique statues,
bas-reliefs, and intaglios.” In a fragment dated 2 December there is a
vignette of Nollekens the sculptor, “a jolly, fat, lisping, laughing,
underbred, good-humoured man as lives: his merit seems pretty much
confined to his profession, and his language is as vulgar as his works
are elegant.” Mrs. Nollekens (the very handsome daughter of Fielding’s
friend Justice Welch), his wife, is also mentioned: “a civil, obliging,
gentle sort of woman; rather too complaisant.” Then there is a
costume-piece of “Miss B—— _something_, a sister-in-law of Mr. Hayes
of the Pantheon,” and not entirely unsuggestive of Lady Louisa Larpent
in _Evelina_; “a young lady quite _à-la-mode_,—every part of her dress,
the very pink and extreme of the fashion;—her [head] erect and stiff as
any statue;—her voice low, and delicate, and mincing;—her hair higher
than twelve wigs stuck one on the other;—her waist taper, and pinched
evidently;—her eyes cast languishingly from one object to another, and
her conversation very much _the thing_.” Decidedly “Daddy” Crisp was
right in saying: “To do you justice, Fanny, you paint well!”
For the next year, 1777, there is only one letter to Mr. Crisp; but it
is an important one, since it gives Miss Burney’s account of her first
meeting with Dr. Johnson, to which accident, indeed, it owes its
preservation. Dr. Burney had for some time known Johnson slightly,—he
had written to him from Lynn with regard to the Dictionary; he had also
met him at intervals; and, as we have seen, Johnson, notwithstanding his
insensibility to music, had read and appreciated the Musical Tours.
Writing Dr. Burney’s _Memoirs_ in extreme old age, his daughter seems to
have thought that Johnson had already accompanied her father to
Winchester to put his youngest son, Richard, under the care of the then
Head Master of that day, Joseph Warton; and that he had also, before
this date, interested himself to procure Dr. Burney access to the
libraries at Oxford. But her memory must have led her astray, for both
these things, as is plain from Boswell, belong to 1778, while Miss
Burney’s “first sight” of the great man demonstrably took place on the
20th March, 1777,[25] and came about in this wise. Dr. Burney had been
invited by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale to give lessons in music to their eldest
daughter, Queenie, afterwards Viscountess Keith. Report says that the
lessons were not a great success, since Mrs. Thrale was in the habit of
interrupting them sadly in order to talk politics and literature with
the clever Historian of Music. But, as usual, Dr. Burney speedily became
a favourite with all the household; and, as Johnson was then staying at
Streatham, one of the results was a joint visit by the Doctor and Mrs.
Thrale to St. Martin’s Street, which visit was promptly reported by
Fanny for consumption at Chessington. It took place fourteen years
before Boswell’s book, and as printed in the _Early Diary_ of 1889,
exhibits a fresher version than that put forward later by the writer
herself in the _Memoirs_ of her father. No excuse therefore is needed
for giving it the preference here.
“Mrs. and Miss Thrale, Miss Owen, and Mr. Seward came long before
_Lexiphanes_. [This was a name given to Johnson in 1767, in a little
book written to burlesque his style by a Scotch purser named Campbell.]
Mrs. Thrale is a very pretty woman still; she is extremely lively and
chatty; has no supercilious or pedantic airs, and is really gay and
agreeable. Her daughter [Queenie] is about twelve years old, stiff and
proud, I believe, or else shy and reserved: I don’t yet know which.”
. . . “My sister Burney [Esther] was invited to meet and play to them.
The conversation was supported with a good deal of vivacity (N.B. my
father being at home) for about half an hour, and then Hetty and
_Susette_, for the first time _in public_, played a duet; and in the
midst of this performance Dr. Johnson was announced. He is, indeed, very
ill-favoured; is tall and stout; but stoops terribly; he is almost bent
double. His mouth is almost constantly opening and shutting, as if he
was chewing. He has a strange method of frequently twirling his fingers,
and twisting his hands. His body is in continual agitation, _see-sawing_
up and down; his feet are never a moment quiet; and, in short, his whole
person is in _perpetual motion_. His dress, too, considering the times,
and that he had meant to put on his _best becomes_, being engaged to
dine in a large company [at Mrs. Montagu’s], was as much out of the
common road as his figure; he had a large wig, snuff-colour coat, and
gold buttons, but no ruffles to his shirt, doughty fists,[26] and black
worsted stockings. He is shockingly near-sighted, and did not, till she
held out her hand to him, even know Mrs. Thrale. He _poked his nose_
over the keys of the harpsichord, till the duet was finished, and then
my father introduced Hetty to him as an old acquaintance, and he
cordially kissed her! When she was a little girl, he had made her a
present of _The Idler_.
“His attention, however, was not to be diverted five minutes from the
books, as we were in the library; he pored over them, shelf by shelf,
almost touching the backs of them with his eye-lashes, as he read their
titles. At last, having fixed upon one, he began, without further
ceremony, to read to himself, all the time standing at a distance from
the company. We were all very much provoked, as we perfectly languished
to hear him talk; but it seems he is the most silent creature, when not
particularly drawn out, in the world.
“My sister then played another duet with my father; but Dr. Johnson was
so deep in the _Encyclopédie_ that, as he is very deaf, I question if he
even knew what was going forward. When this was over, Mrs. Thrale, in a
laughing manner, said, ‘Pray, Dr. Burney, can you tell me what that song
was and whose, which Savoi sung last night at Bach’s concert, and which
you did not hear?’ My father confessed himself by no means so good a
diviner, not having had time to consult the stars, though in the house
of Sir Isaac Newton. However, wishing to draw Dr. Johnson into some
conversation, he told him the question. The Doctor, seeing his drift,
good-naturedly put away his book, and said very drolly, ‘And pray, Sir,
_who is Bach_? is he a piper?’ Many exclamations of surprise you will
believe followed this question. ‘Why, you have read his name often in
the papers,’ said Mrs. Thrale; and then she gave him some account of his
Concert, and the number of fine performances she had heard at it.[27]
“‘Pray,’ said he, gravely, ‘Madam, what is the expense?’
“‘Oh,’ answered she, ‘much trouble and solicitation to get a
Subscriber’s Ticket;—or else half a Guinea.’
“‘Trouble and solicitation,’ said he, ‘I will have nothing to do with;
but I would be willing to give eighteen pence.’
“Ha! ha!
“Chocolate being then brought, we adjourned to the drawing-room. And
here, Dr. Johnson being taken from the books, entered freely and most
cleverly into conversation; though it is remarkable he never speaks at
all, but when spoken to; nor does he ever _start_, though he so
admirably _supports_, any subject.
“The whole party were engaged to dine at Mrs. Montague’s. Dr. Johnson
said he had received the most flattering note he had ever read, or that
anybody had ever read, by way of invitation. ‘Well! so have I too,’
cried Mrs. Thrale; ‘so if a note from Mrs. Montague is to be boasted of,
I beg mine may not be forgot.’
“‘_Your_ note,’ cried Dr. Johnson, ‘can bear no comparison with _mine_;
I am _at the head of the Philosophers_, she says.’
“‘And I,’ cried Mrs. Thrale, ‘_have all the Muses in my train_!’
“‘A fair battle,’ said my father. ‘Come, compliment for compliment, and
see who will hold out longest!’
“‘Oh, I am afraid for Mrs. Thrale,’ cried Mr. Seward, ‘for I know Mrs.
Montague exerts all her forces, when she attacks Dr. Johnson.’
“‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs. Thrale, ‘she has often, I know, flattered _him_,
till he has been ready to faint.’
“‘Well, ladies,’ said my father, ‘you must get him between you to-day,
and see which can lay on the paint thickest, Mrs. Thrale or Mrs.
Montague.’
“‘I had rather,’ cried the Doctor, drily, ‘go to Bach’s Concert.’”
The talk then shifted to Garrick, who, having retired from the stage in
the previous year, had been recently reading his farce of _Lethe_ to the
King and Queen. Dr. Johnson spoke of his old friend and pupil with his
wonted candour, and not without touches of critical humour which must
have been highly relished by that still-sore author of _Virginia_ to
whom Miss Burney’s budget was addressed. Of Garrick’s popular faults
Johnson said—“Garrick is accused of vanity; but few men would have
borne such unremitting prosperity with greater, if with equal
moderation. He is accused, too, of avarice; but, were he not, he would
be accused of just the contrary; for he now lives rather as _a prince_
than an actor; but the frugality he practised, when he first appeared in
the world, and which, even then, was perhaps beyond his necessity, has
marked his character ever since; and now, though his table, his equipage
and manner of living, are all the most expensive, and equal to those of
a nobleman, yet the original stain still blots his name! Though, had he
not fixed upon himself the charge of avarice, he would long since have
been reproached with luxury and with living beyond his station in
magnificence and splendour.” Another of the Doctor’s animadversions
serves to explain an aspect of the actor’s character which has already
been illustrated in this chapter.[28] “Garrick never enters a room,” he
said, “but he regards himself as the object of general attention, from
whom the entertainment of the company is expected; and true it is, that
he seldom disappoints them; for he has infinite humour, a very just
proportion of wit, and more convivial pleasantry, than almost any other
man. But then _off_ as well as _on_ the Stage, he is always an Actor;
for he thinks it so incumbent on him to be sportive, that his gaiety
becomes mechanical from being habitual, and he can exert his spirits at
all times alike, without consulting his real disposition to
hilarity.”[29]
Previous to Dr. Johnson’s visit to St. Martin’s Street, Miss Burney had
been staying at Chessington, whence, to the disgust of Mr. Crisp, she
had been hastily recalled to meet her uncle, Mr. Richard Burney of
Worcester, whose son Charles her sister Hetty had married. She then went
on a visit to her uncle at Barborne (familiarly “Barebones”) Lodge, a
little out of Worcester; and here she took part in some private
theatricals, playing Mrs. Lovemore in what was apparently the first
three-act form of Murphy’s _Way to Keep Him_, a comedy in which there
are manifest traces of that pioneer sentimental drama, La Chaussée’s
_Préjugé à-la-mode_—the prejudice in question being, that it is a
mistake to love one’s wife. She seems, by her own account, to have been
terribly nervous (in green and gray); but to have acquitted herself
creditably in the crucial third Act. She afterwards appeared as
_Huncamunca_ in Fielding’s burlesque of _Tom Thumb_, the rival character
of Glumdalca being taken by her cousin James, and that of Lord Grizzle
by Edward Burney the artist. The Tom Thumb of the piece was the youngest
of the family, Ann or Nancy, a child of seven, the daughter of Charles
Burney and Hetty. By this time Miss Burney had entirely got over her
stage fright, and entered thoroughly into her part of Tom Thumb’s
_fiancée_.
One of the things Huncamunca has to do in _Tom Thumb_ is to express her
anxiety to be married. It is not, however, this unbecoming aspiration
(upon which Miss Burney was of course afterwards sufficiently rallied)
that prompts the “Oh! Huncamunca, Huncamunca, oh!” of Fielding’s parody
of Thomson. But the point serves to remind us that, in this chapter,
nothing has been said of Miss Burney’s admirers. Scattered through her
Journal are various fugitive references to different gentlemen, old and
young, who were evidently attracted by her vivacity and charm, shy and
demure as she professed to be. But she had not yet realised her own
ambition, and fallen seriously in love. “I am too much spoilt,” she
says, “by such men as my father and Mr. Crisp to content myself with a
character merely inoffensive.” These words were written of an
importunate suitor, with the unpromising name of Thomas Barlow, who made
his appearance early in May, 1775. He seems to have been very much in
earnest, indeed,—to use the expression of Mr. Toots, of whom he somehow
contrives to remind us,—to have been “perfectly sore” with devotion.
His ardent, or (as he terms it) “ardurous” Pen addresses to Miss Burney
several long-winded and very alembicate epistles, but she will have none
of him, although, strange to say, nearly all her family, including the
paternal Crisp,—who was particularly urgent that she should not lose a
chance of establishing herself,—favour Mr. Barlow’s pretensions. But,
as she very sensibly tells Mr. Crisp, she is “determined never to marry
without having the very highest value and esteem for the man who should
be her lord.” And Mr. Barlow, besides that he is “extremely
precipitate,” does not “hit her fancy.” So there is no more to say.
Upon the whole, when it is remembered that this retiring but observant
young lady of five-and-twenty had a travelled sailor brother, and two
sisters who had been educated at Paris;—that she had seen the town and
country both in London and King’s Lynn;—that she had read Richardson
and Marivaux and Sterne, if not Fielding;—that she knew Sir Joshua and
Nollekens, and was familiar with the acting of Garrick, both on and off
the stage;—that she had heard Agujari at her best, and the Gabrielli at
her worst;—that she had been introduced to Dr. Johnson and Mrs.
Thrale;—that she had conversed with Otaheitan Omai, eaten roast apples
with Abyssinian Bruce, and been allowed to inspect what Horace Walpole
calls the “infamous diamonds” of the veneered barbarian, Alexis
Orloff,—it will, we think, be admitted that her experience of things in
general had been of a very varied kind. If to this be added that she was
a copious and diligent diarist;—the sworn “anecdote-monger” of a
distant correspondent;—and the faithful secretary of a scribbling
father—it must also be granted that she was by no means ill-equipped
for the production of that work of fiction to the story of which the
ensuing chapter is devoted.
-----
[12] Catherine Hyde was still living in Fanny Burney’s day; and Fanny
saw her at Covent Garden Theatre in January, 1773, when Mason’s
_Elfrida_ was being acted. “I had the pleasure to see Prior’s celebrated
fair ‘Kitty, beautiful and young,’ now called Kitty, _beautiful and
old_, in the stage box.” (_Early Diary_, 1889, i. p. 184.)
[13] “There are now,” said Cunningham, writing as far back as 1849, “at
least 2 square miles of brick and mortar between it [Queen Square] and
the view.” (_Handbook for London_, ii. p. 686.)
[14] See _ante_, p. 19.
[15] In _Recreations and Studies of A Country Clergyman of the
Eighteenth Century_ [Thomas Twining], 1882, there are several letters
from Twining to Burney and _vice versa_, some of which will be hereafter
cited.
[16] “So much of his [Garrick’s] drollery belongs to his voice, looks
and manner,” says the Diary, “that _writing_ loses it almost all.” Yet
more than forty years afterwards, in her _Memoirs_ of her father (1832,
i. pp. 352-3), she expanded the above, about seven lines in the
original, to a page and three quarters. It is clear that she worked from
the _Diary_, for some of the expressions are identical. But many
decorative particulars are added to the record of Garrick’s visit, which
are not in the first account. We have preferred the earlier, if less
picturesque, narrative. Boswell, of course, has nothing of this
anecdote; which was not printed until long after his death.
[17] The fate of Cowper’s “gentle savage” was pathetic. Painted by
Reynolds and patronised by Lord Sandwich,—lionised by Lady Townshend
and the Duchess of Devonshire,—he was suffered to go back once more to
his own people, among whom he had neither status nor importance. He died
soon after, having shown himself (says Vancouver) both “vain and silly.”
And no wonder!
[18] Agujari, according to Grove’s _Dictionary of Music_, was the
highest and most extended soprano on record. Her voice reached “from the
middle of the harpsichord to two notes above it,” says Miss Burney.
[19] He is generally called “Count.” But in her letters, diary, and
_Memoirs_, Fanny styles him “Prince.”
[20] _Early Diary_, 1889, ii. 121.
[21] _Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach_, 1826, ii. 125.
[22] Dr. Burney evidently had mild qualms about these Sunday concerts.
When after the first occasion here referred to, Dr. King and Dr. Ogle
supped at St. Martin’s Street, he said that he hoped for _absolution_
from them if there was any crime in having _music on a Sunday_. To which
Dr. Ogle replied discreetly that music was an excellent thing _any and
every day_; and Dr. King evasively—“Have we not music at church?”
[23] The second volume appeared in 1782, and the third and fourth
volumes, completing the work, in 1789.
[24] In September, 1785, Miss Sally Payne married Captain James Burney,
Fanny’s brother.
[25] _Early Diary_, 1889, ii. 153; Birkbeck Hill’s _Johnson’s Letters_,
1892, ii. 5, and note.
[26] The editor of the _Early Diary_ “strongly suspects” that these
words in the altered MS. were originally “dirty fists.” There are other
indications that later corrections have somewhat modified the portrait.
[27] The Bach referred to was Bach’s son, John Christian Bach, or (as he
was called) “English” Bach. He was a famous harpsichord player, who,
with Abel of the _viol de gamba_, conducted Mrs. Cornelys’ concerts in
Soho Square.
[28] See _ante_, pp. 38-40.
[29] _Early Diary_, 1889, ii. pp. 153-60.