THE SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR
Once—so runs the story—when Miss Burney was dining with Sir Joshua
Reynolds at that pleasant villa upon Richmond Hill which had been built
for him by Chambers the architect, she chanced to see him looking at her
in a peculiar way. “I know what you are thinking about,”—she said.
“Ay,” he replied, “you may come and sit to me now whenever you please.”
He had at last caught her special attitude,—her distinctive phase. “I
hope he will take your picture,” “Daddy” Crisp had said, when she first
made the artist’s acquaintance;—“who knows, but the time may come when
your image may appear . . . like Garrick with the Comic and Tragic Muse
contending for you?” Thalia and Melpomene were certainly to contend for
the author of _Evelina_, and that at no distant date. There is however
no picture of Fanny Burney in the Reynolds Gallery. Hoppner painted her
later; but Hoppner is not Sir Joshua. Her best likeness, one of two from
the same hand, is by her cousin, Edward Burney, who, it is hinted,
surveyed his model—
“in the light
Of tender personal regards,”—
and—it is also hinted—possibly slightly flattered her.
Edward Burney’s portrait, which is prefixed to the _Diary and Letters_
of 1842-6, had been mezzotinted two years earlier by Charles Turner on a
larger scale. It is said to represent Miss Burney at the age of thirty,
having been painted at Chessington in August 1782. She wears a hat and
feathers; and her hair is frizzed out in the approved fashion of the
day. Her attitude is conventional:—she sits demurely erect, with
formally posed hands. But her eyes are brimming with latent animation;
and the corners of the lips are lifted with a lurking sense of fun. Of
the sitter’s stature the picture gives little indication. She is
reported, however, to have been extremely slight and frail of make—“a
small cargo for the Chessington coach,” said Mr. Crisp. It was perhaps
owing to this that she preserved so long her youthful and almost girlish
appearance. As to her eyes, which, in the portrait, look large and
luminous, we have her own assurance that they were greenish gray; and
from the fact that she was called “the dove” by one of her Tunbridge
friends, we must assume that they resembled those of Mrs. Delany, who is
praised by her adoring husband for “what Solomon calls ‘dove’s eyes.’”
Her complexion was brown; and she is affirmed to have been rather
French-looking. Beautiful of feature, perhaps, she could scarcely be
called. But it is admitted that she had great charm of expression, and a
countenance which was quick to betray every passing emotion. “Poor
Fanny’s face”—said her father—“tells us what she thinks whether she
will or no”; and she confirms this herself by lamenting her lack of
power to command her features. She “rouged” readily—to use her own
euphemism for blushing. For the rest, she was all her life ailing and
delicate. But like many valetudinarians, she succeeded in surviving her
robuster relatives. She out-lasted all her sisters except one; and she
lived to the age of eighty-seven.[36]
When Dr. Burney fetched his daughter from Chessington, it had been
arranged that they should stop at Streatham Place on their way back to
town. This they did; and Fanny’s diary gives a full account of what she
pronounces to be “the most consequential day she had spent since her
birth.” Mrs. Thrale was very gracious, and very discreet, only
mentioning _Evelina_ in order to refer to Dr. Johnson’s genuine
admiration for the book. Mr. Seward, whom we remember as one of the
visitors to St. Martin’s Street, was not by any means so considerate,
bluntly blurting out his praises in the most embarrassing manner. At
dinner a place was left next Miss Burney for Dr. Johnson, who presently
appeared. The Doctor was as delicate as Mrs. Thrale, only touching
indirectly and circuitously upon the burning topic. Asked by Mrs. Thrale
to have some little pies of mutton, he declared gallantly that sitting
next Miss Burney made him too proud to eat mutton. Later, after some
rambling talk about the wear and tear of Garrick’s face, he went on to
speak of Dr. Burney’s rival, Sir John Hawkins, whom he can scarcely be
said to have extolled. He believed him “an honest man at the bottom; but
to be sure,” he continued, “he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must
be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness,
that cannot easily be defended.” Giving an instance of Sir John’s
“_unclubbable_” character, he added that it reminded him of a lady with
whom he had once travelled, who, stopping at an inn in her own coach and
four, called for—a pint of ale! quarrelling moreover with the waiter
for not giving full measure. And here came in another adroit allusion to
_Evelina_. “Mme. Duval”—said the Doctor—“could not have done a grosser
thing!”—a sentiment which of course convulsed the company, and threw
the young person at his side into the most delicious confusion.
Altogether the visit was delightful; and when Fanny and her father got
into the chaise to go, it was a settled thing that she was to come again
to Streatham, and for a much longer stay.
When she reached St. Martin’s Street, there were further honours in
store for her. Hetty had lately met Frances Reynolds, who was full of
the new novel, “though without a shadow of suspicion as to the
scribbler.” This, of itself, was not much; but Miss Reynolds also
announced that her brother, Sir Joshua, having begun it when “he was too
much engaged to go on with it, was so much caught, that he could think
of nothing else, and was quite absent all the day, not knowing a word
that was said to him; and, when he took it up again, found himself so
much interested in it, that he sat up all night to finish it!” He would
give fifty pounds, he had subsequently declared, to know the author, and
other people were equally inquisitive. After this interesting piece of
intelligence, Fanny thought she would herself go to Mr. Thomas Lowndes,
and ascertain in what way that gentleman was satisfying the eagerness of
enquirers. As she could not trust herself to speak, her step-mother went
with her. They began by buying a copy, and then asked Mr. Lowndes—a
pompous and consequential personage who happened to be in the shop—if
he could tell them who wrote it. No, he replied, he did not know
himself. Pressed further, he said that the author was a gentleman of the
other end of the town; and, in response to renewed cross-questioning on
Mrs. Burney’s part, affirmed that he was a master of his subject, and
well versed in the manners of the times. Moreover, that he (Mr. Lowndes)
had at first thought _Evelina_ was by Horace Walpole, who had once
published a book in the same “snug manner,”[37] but he did not think so
now. (Other people, it may be noted, had attributed it to Christopher
Anstey of the _New Bath Guide_, then some dozen years old,—a work which
Miss Anville and Lord Orville peruse together at Mrs. Beaumont’s.)
Finally, out of sheer inability to satisfy his interrogator, Mr. Lowndes
hinted darkly, “with a most important face,” that he had been told that
the authorship of _Evelina_ was a piece of real secret history, which
could consequently never be known. This final piece of information was
too much for the listener, who “was obliged to look out at the
shop-door” for the remainder of the interview. To the modern student
Fanny’s investigations would have been more satisfying if they had
thrown some definite light on the progress of the book from the
publisher’s point of view. In spite of various statements to the
contrary, it seems clear that when, in August, 1778, she and her
step-mother went to Fleet Street, Mr. Lowndes was still selling the
first impression. The second edition is dated 1779; and in October,
1796, the author wrote that “the first edition of _Evelina_ was of eight
hundred, the second of five hundred, and the third of a thousand”
copies. On the other hand, Lowndes, who should certainly have been
acquainted with the facts, informed Dr. Burney, in an unpublished letter
of 1782, that he only printed a first edition of five hundred. Whichever
be the correct version of the story, it is pretty clear that the sale
for the first twelve months can scarcely be regarded as
extraordinary.[38]
Before the end of August Mrs. Thrale called at St. Martin’s Street, and
carried off her new friend to Streatham Place; and at Streatham Place
Fanny practically remained for the rest of 1778. The inviting white
house with its wooded park, or enclosure, where—to use Susan Burney’s
expression—the “cattle, poultry, and dogs all ran freely about without
annoying each other,” has now long been a thing of the past, having been
pulled down in 1863. Its site was the southern side of the lower common
between Streatham and Tooting. It was a three-storied building, with
many cheerful rooms which Fanny’s records make familiar to us. The
saloon was hung with sky blue; and there was a parlour for the more
crowded dinner parties, decorated with prints by Hogarth and others
which, probably inaccurately, are described as being “pasted” on the
walls. The library, also used frequently as a breakfast room, had been
built by Mr. Thrale about 1773, and was kept stocked with books by
Johnson, who here—said Mrs. Thrale—“talked Ramblers,” while she read
aloud the last proofs of the _Lives of the Poets_. Above the book-cases,
hung the famous Thrale Gallery, dispersed in 1816,—portraits by Sir
Joshua of Johnson, of Burke, of the artist himself, of Goldsmith,
Garrick, Murphy, Baretti, Dr. Burney and other visitors to the house.
Over the fireplace, and also by Reynolds, was the double picture of Mrs.
Thrale and Queenie, which was exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery in
1884. In the grounds, besides plantations, and high-walled kitchen
gardens with ice-houses and pineries, there was an encircling shrubbery
which bordered a gravelled walk of nearly two miles. There was also a
spring pond, dug by Thrale, which, apparently in imitation of Duck
Island in St. James’s Park, boasted its Dick’s Island; and there was “a
cool summer-house,” where Johnson wrote and studied, and Fanny read, or
essayed to read, _Irene_. It must have been a most delightful
country-house, meriting fully the Doctor’s grateful eulogy that “none
but itself could be its parallel.” “I have found nothing,” he wrote from
Lichfield in 1767, “that withdraws my affections from the friends whom I
left behind, or which makes me less desirous of reposing at that place
which your kindness and Mr. Thrale’s allows me to call my _home_.”
“These are as good people,” he said to Miss Burney in the first days of
her visit, “as you can be with; you can go to no better house; they are
all good nature; nothing makes them angry.”
He himself seems to have softened with his environment. Although, as
Fanny says, the freedom with which he condemned what he disapproved was
astonishing, and his strength of language would to most persons be
intolerable, he presented, upon the whole, a far more benignant aspect
than that in which he is usually exhibited by Boswell. He is Johnson in
clover, and _en belle humeur_; happier and more at ease than he is
elsewhere, and therefore more agreeable. To the yet undisclosed author
of _Evelina_ he is especially gracious, and even affectionate. He kisses
her hand; makes her sit by him; pays her elaborate compliments; and no
one, when he pleased, could do that better. “Harry Fielding,” he
protested, “never drew so good a character” as her Mr. Smith. “Such a
fine varnish of low politeness!—such a struggle to appear a gentleman!
Madam [to Mrs. Thrale], there is no character better drawn anywhere—in
any book, or by any author”—an extravagance which almost leads one
particular author present to “poke herself under the table.” He bursts
out with sudden quotations from _Evelina_:—with Miss Branghton’s, “Only
think, Polly! Miss has danced with a Lord!”—he rallies poor Mr. Seward
on his resemblance to the Holborn beau.—“Why you only want a tambour
waistcoat, to look like Mr. Smith!” Then he is heard grumbling to
himself over a letter from Fanny’s medical adviser, Dr. Jebb, whose
penmanship is that of a tradesman. “Mr. Branghton would have written his
name with just such beastly flourishes!” But perhaps the acme of his
amiable speeches is his frank comparison of “dear little Burney,” as he
comes to call her, with Fielding and Richardson. “Richardson,” he said,
“would have been really afraid of her; there is merit,” he went on, “in
_Evelina_ which he could not have borne. No; it would not have done!
unless, indeed, she would have flattered him prodigiously. Harry
Fielding, too, would have been afraid of her; there is nothing so
delicately finished in all Harry Fielding’s works as in _Evelina_.”
Then, shaking his head at her, he exclaimed, “O, you little
character-monger you!”—an appellation which must be admitted to be
singularly appropriate. On another occasion, he declared that she was
his “hero.” “Dr. Goldsmith was my last; but I have had none since his
time, till my little Burney came.”[39] “I admire her”—he said again,
and to her face—“for her observation, for her good sense, for her
humour, for her discernment, for her manner of expressing them, and for
all her writing talents.” Decidedly it was good to be praised by
Johnson; and one may well forgive Miss Burney for doubting whether she
could possibly live up to his laudation.
Visitors to Streatham Place came and went so freely that it is difficult
to chronicle them. Among the rest was that accomplished _esprit fort_,
Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, to whom Mrs. Thrale could not deny herself the
pleasure of exhibiting her own special prize and discovery, the author
of _Evelina_. Mrs. Montagu came to Streatham by invitation, accompanied
by her friend, Miss Gregory. Dr. Johnson was very anxious that “Burney”
should attack the “Queen of the Blue Stockings,” much as, in his own hot
youth, he had hawked at all established wits. But Mrs. Thrale, finding
that Mrs. Montagu knew nothing of _Evelina_, disclosed the secret of the
authorship so abruptly, that Fanny fairly took to her heels and fled.
Hence she saw less of the great lady than she would otherwise; and
between the extreme blame of “Daddy” Crisp and the extreme praise of
Mrs. Thrale, was not perhaps greatly prepossessed in favour of Mrs.
Montagu, who, moreover, had been so ill-advised as never to have heard
of _Evelina_. But Mrs. Montagu was very well-bred and polite; and easily
fell in with Dr. Johnson’s suggestion that Miss Burney should accompany
the rest of those present to the housewarming with which she hoped
shortly to open her new abode in Portman Square,—that famous mansion of
the feather-hangings celebrated by Cowper’s—
“The Birds put off their every hue
To dress a room for Montagu.”
It was in reference to a suggestion by Mrs. Montagu that Fanny’s
dedication was good enough to have been written by her father—a
suggestion which, with all her filial affection, Fanny could scarcely be
expected to welcome very warmly—that Johnson uttered one of his
common-sense deliverances on criticism. “You must not mind that”—he
said of Mrs. Montagu’s impolitic remark,—“for such things are always
said where books are successful. There are three distinct kinds of
judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know
no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings;
the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are
those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should
wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise
those opinions that are formed by the rules.” Of this second class, his
own “Dick Minim” is an admirable exemplification.[40]
In January, 1779, Miss Burney was again at St. Martin’s Street, her
sister Susan being from home. St. Martin’s Street has a mysterious visit
from “a square old gentleman, well-wigged, formal, grave and important,”
who suddenly asks her if she is not _Evelina_, and turns out to be Dr.
Francklin, chaplain to the Royal Academy. Then she is invited to Sir
Joshua’s to meet Mrs. and Miss [Mary] Horneck (Goldsmith’s “Jessamy
Bride”), soon to be married to Colonel Gwyn. The ladies had said that
they would walk a hundred and sixty miles to see her, so there was
nothing to excuse her for not stepping across the Fields to No. 47. Here
she met another admirer, Peg Woffington’s witty and eccentric sister,
Mrs. Cholmondeley; and Lord Palmerston, father of the Victorian premier;
and Burke’s brother William, the “honest William” of Goldsmith’s
_Retaliation_. All, and especially Sir Joshua, were most cordial, though
Mrs. Cholmondeley’s “pointed speeches,” Duval _Ma foi’s_, and references
to _Evelina_ generally, would have been embarrassing, even to a less
nervous person than the author. Mrs. Cholmondeley, among other things,
had been to Lowndes for information, getting nothing from that windbag
but intelligence that a gentleman had betted that the writer of
_Evelina_ was a man, while she, Mrs. Cholmondeley, felt equally
convinced it was a woman. “But now”—she added—“we are both out; for
it’s a girl!”—which must be accepted as unanswerable testimony to
Fanny’s youthful appearance at six-and-twenty.
This interview with Mrs. Cholmondeley, who had been one of the book’s
earliest and most energetic trumpeters (it was she, indeed, who had
first recommended it “among the wits”), was of course, followed by an
invitation, which proved a most important one. For at Mrs.
Cholmondeley’s in Hertford Street she met, not only the beautiful “St.
Cecilia” of Reynolds, with her almost equally beautiful sister, Miss
Linley; but she met “St. Cecilia’s” husband, the all-conquering author
of the recently-produced _School for Scandal_ and manager of Drury Lane,
Richard Brinsley Sheridan himself, of whom she writes admiringly. He has
“a good though I don’t think a handsome face. He is tall, and very
upright, and his appearance and address are at once manly and
fashionable, without the smallest tincture of foppery or modish graces.
In short, I like him vastly, and think him every way worthy his
beautiful companion,”—to whom, Fanny adds, he was manifestly much
devoted. By and by, Sheridan introduced himself to Miss Burney, and was
most agreeable. He had been telling her father, he said, that he had
long expected to see in her “a lady of the gravest appearance, with the
quickest parts.” He expressed the highest admiration for _Evelina_,
adding that he hoped she (Miss Burney) did not intend to throw away her
pen. He was very curious to know what she was about, and Sir Joshua
observed that she must succeed in “anything in the dialogue way.” Mr.
Sheridan assented. He thought “she should write a comedy.” “And you,”
said the kind Sir Joshua presently, “would take anything of hers, would
you not?—unsight, unseen?” “Yes,” he answered with quickness, “and make
her a bow and my best thanks into the bargain.” Here was a piece of news
to post off to Susan!
As a matter of fact, Miss Burney was already engaged upon a dramatic
essay. Both her father and “Daddy” Crisp were anxious that, before
interest cooled, she should follow up her first success by some other
work; and from the date of Mrs. Thrale’s first letter to Dr. Burney,[41]
that lady had been pressing her to write for the stage. She had the same
conviction as Reynolds that something “in the dialogue way” would suit
her young friend. _Evelina_—Mrs. Thrale thought—ran so naturally into
conversations that it absolutely and plainly pointed that path to her.
If she could not do better than Hannah More, who got nearly four hundred
pounds for her foolish play,[42] she deserved to be whipped—said this
kindly enthusiast. Dr. Johnson, after see-sawing immoderately, proposed,
in a fit of untimely levity, that her first work should be entitled,
_Streatham: A Farce_; but he, too, heartily approved. Mrs. Montagu, who
was consulted, though she was sympathetic, was not so sure. She advanced
the case of Fielding, who failed upon the stage. And “Daddy” Crisp was
still more half-hearted. He wrote to Fanny an admirable letter upon the
subject. While he was urgent that she should do something, he was by no
means satisfied that the something in question should be a comedy. In a
second letter he developed his ideas. She had gained much: she had much
to lose. And play-writing—for her—had its peculiar difficulties. Her
delicacy (and she was a prude, she knew herself) would debar her from
those frequent lively freedoms without which comedy would lose
wonderfully of its salt and spirit. All the same he would evidently not
have her try the bloodless and prevalent sentimental comedy. About
Fielding, he agreed with Mrs. Montagu. Finally, though he did not wholly
desire to discourage her from the attempt, he thought that, in entering
upon it, she must surrender a part of her strength. And here we may use
his actual words:—“In these little entertaining elegant histories [such
as _Evelina_], the writer has his full scope; as large a range as he
pleases to hunt in—to pick, cull, select whatever he likes: he takes
his own time—he may be as minute as he pleases, and the more minute the
better, provided that taste, a deep and penetrating knowledge of human
nature and the world, accompany that minuteness. When this is the case,
the very soul, and all its most secret recesses and workings, are
developed and laid as open to the view, as the blood-globules
circulating in a frog’s foot, when seen through a microscope. The
exquisite touches such a work is capable of (of which _Evelina_ is,
without flattery, a glaring instance), are truly charming. But of these
great advantages, these resources, you are strangely curtailed the
moment you begin a comedy. There, everything passes in dialogue,—all
goes on rapidly—narrative and descriptive, if not extremely short,
becomes intolerable. The detail which in Fielding, Marivaux, and
Crébillon, is so delightful, on the stage would bear down all patience.
There all must be compressed into quintessence; the moment the scene
ceases to move on briskly, and business seems to hang, sighs and groans
are the consequence. Dreadful sound!—In a word, if the plot, the story
of the comedy does not open and unfold itself in the easy, natural,
unconstrained flow of the dialogue—if that dialogue does not go on with
spirit, wit, variety, fun, humour, repartee,—and all in short into the
bargain—_serviteur!_—good-bye t’ ye!”
This is excellently said, and shows once again how precept may excel
practice,—though, to be sure, “Daddy” Crisp’s _Virginia_ was a tragedy,
and not a comedy. In a later letter Fanny’s Mentor modified his views to
the extent of admitting that it was possible, with due contrivance and
dexterity, to display light principles without light expressions; but he
stuck to the proposition that he would never allow his Fannikin “to
sacrifice a grain of female delicacy for all the wit of Congreve and
Vanbrugh put together,”—and in this she was entirely of his mind. These
letters preceded the interview with Sheridan; and as we have already
said, she had probably begun to work on a comedy still earlier.[43]
When, in February, she got back to Streatham, she made the acquaintance
of Arthur Murphy, in whose _Way to Keep Him_ she had acted at Barborne
Lodge. He, too, volunteered the suggestion that she should write for the
stage. Comedy, in his opinion, was the forte of _Evelina_, and he
offered his skilled assistance. He subsequently gave her some rules by
which she was too far advanced in her work to profit—rules which,
Johnson consolingly told her, she would do just as well without. In May
her play is finished, though “on account of the various Maecenases who
would expect to be consulted,” the greatest secrecy is observed. Murphy
applauds; and so does Mrs. Thrale. Johnson apparently was not consulted.
But when it is carried off by Dr. Burney to “Daddy” Crisp, the verdict
of Fanny’s “highest court” is unfavourable. Indeed, in what she calls a
“hissing, groaning, cat-calling epistle,” they go as far as to recommend
its suppression. Not only did it recall the _Femmes Savantes_ of Molière
(which Fanny had never read), but they regarded the plot and incidents
as insufficient to hold the attention of the audience. Fanny took her
disappointment bravely, and at once threw her work aside. Later on, when
it became necessary to explain matters to Sheridan, there was some talk
of remodelling, and with this object the fourth act was almost entirely
re-written. But Crisp, who was appealed to, stood to his guns. He
thought the capital defect of an ill-planned fable beyond remedy, though
he admitted the wit of the play.
Here the matter seems to have rested; and all we know of the suppressed
piece is, that it was entitled _The Witlings_, and that the _dramatis
personae_ included, among others, a quotation-loving Lady Smatter (in
whom Mrs. Thrale professed to recognise her own portrait), Mrs. Voluble,
Mrs. Wheedle, Mrs. Sapient, Dabbler, Censor, and a “great oaf, Bobby.”
There was also—and the point is memorable in view of the title of Miss
Burney’s next novel—a Cecilia, the loss and restoration of whose
fortune were matters in debate. Whether Dr. Burney and his friend were
right in their judgment of _The Witlings_, cannot now be affirmed or
denied in the absence of the MS. Probably they were right; though they
do not seem to have borne in mind how material a part the acting bears
in the success of a piece; and at Sheridan’s theatre, Miss Burney’s
comedy would certainly have been splendidly represented. King, Dodd,
Palmer, Parsons, Mrs. Abington, and Miss Pope—would all probably have
taken part in it. But Fanny’s advisers, it is clear, were also actuated
by another reflection, of which Murphy knew nothing: they feared the
effect upon the author of a possible _fiasco_. “My great scruple all
along has been the consideration of the great stake you are playing
for,”—writes Mr. Crisp,—“how much you have to lose, and how unequal
your delicate and tender frame of mind would be to sustain the shock of
a failure of success, should that be the case.” This is perhaps not a
critical reason; but, at the same time, it is a reason beyond criticism.
And “Daddy” Crisp shows plainly that it was _The Witlings_ he
doubted,—not Fanny’s ability to produce comedy. For, in an earlier
letter, he had suggested to her a fresh effort, based upon certain of
her own experiences as narrated to her father.
It was early in 1779 that Miss Burney made the acquaintance of Sheridan
at Mrs. Cholmondeley’s; and it was not until the beginning of 1780 that
_The Witlings_ was practically abandoned. In the interim, at Streatham
and elsewhere, Fanny seems to have spent her time very agreeably. In
May, she went with the Thrales to Brighton, returning, apparently, early
in June, owing to the sudden illness of Mr. Thrale. But in October they
were again at Brighton, taking Knole Park (Lord Dorset’s) and its
magnificent galleries in their way, and making a short stay at Tunbridge
Wells, where Miss Burney pours scorn upon the famous Pantiles as a
fashionable pleasure walk. “It has no beauty in itself, and borrows none
from foreign aid, as it has only common houses at one side, and little
millinery and Tunbridge-ware shops at the other, and at each end is
choked up by buildings that intercept all prospect.” At Brighton, no
doubt in the interests of _Evelina_, Mrs. Thrale at once inscribed their
names at the booksellers’ shops upon the Steyne. At this date there were
no great notabilities at Brighthelmstone, as Fanny styles the place,
save “that celebrated wit and libertine,” the Hon. Mr. Beauclerk, and
his wife, Lady Di; Cumberland the dramatist and his family; and Mrs.
Musters, whose son married Byron’s first love, Mary Chaworth. The Miss
Cumberlands were reckoned “the flashers of the place,” and Fanny gives
an account of their father which reads like a scene from the _Critic_.
“Sir Fretful Plagiary” was already prejudiced against her on account of
her success; and when he called on Mrs. Thrale, he showed it. As soon as
she had quitted the room he said to Mrs. Thrale, with a spiteful tone of
voice,
“‘Oh, that young lady is an author, I hear!’
“‘Yes,’ answered Mrs. Thrale, ‘author of _Evelina_.’
“‘Humph—I am told it has some humour!’
“‘Ay, indeed! Johnson says nothing like it has appeared for years!’
“‘So,’ cried he, biting his lips, and waving uneasily in his chair, ’so,
so!’
“‘Yes,’ continued she; ‘and Sir Joshua Reynolds told Mr. Thrale he would
give fifty pounds to know the author!’
“‘So, so—oh, vastly well!’ cried he, putting his hand on his forehead.
“‘Nay!’ added she, ‘Burke himself sat up all night to finish it!’
“This seemed quite too much for him; he put both his hands to his face,
and waving backwards and forwards, said, ‘Oh, vastly well!—this will do
for anything!’ with a tone as much as to say, Pray, no more! Then Mrs.
Thrale bid him good night, longing, she said, to call Miss Thrale first,
and say, ‘So you won’t speak to my daughter?—why, she is no author.’”
Some of the persons sketched in Miss Burney’s journal are less known to
fame than those who have been mentioned, but they are not less cleverly
drawn. There is Mr. Seward, one of the Streatham _habitués_, and the
later author of _Biographiana_. Mr. Seward is a brewer’s son, who
dabbles in letters, and seems like an earlier real-life version of Sir
Charles Coldstream in _Used Up_. With “Mr. Dry,” as Miss Burney calls
him, she playfully proposes to collaborate in a comedy, to be entitled
_Everything a Bore_. There is a real tragic author, Dr. John Delap, who,
while as absent-minded and as ignorant of the world as Parson Adams, is
engaged upon a play called _Macaria_,[44] on the story of the wife and
daughter of Hercules, which Fanny has to read and criticise—or rather
eulogise. There is a very musical, precocious, and semi-French
ten-year-old schoolgirl, Miss Birch, who sings sentimental airs from
French operas, and says to her friends, “_Que je vous adore!”—“Ah,
permettez que je me mette à vos pieds!_” etc., with a dying languor that
is equally delightful and preposterous. And there is that finished and
fascinating coquette of coquettes, Miss Sophy Streatfield of Tunbridge
Wells, who knows Greek as well as Miss Elizabeth Carter or Mrs. Buller,
is as lovely as Mrs. Crewe or Mrs. Sheridan, and has moreover a faculty
for shedding tears so becoming to her lackadaisical cast of beauty that
she is periodically required (like the water works at Vauxhall) to
display her unique gift for the public delectation. Fanny’s description
of Miss Streatfield’s mechanical _grandes eaux_ is too good to be
neglected. We must imagine her surrounded by attentive spectators, with
Mrs. Thrale (like Mrs. Jarley) for exhibitor. “‘Yes, do cry a little,
Sophy [_in a wheedling voice_], pray, do! Consider, now, you are going
to-day, and it’s very hard if you won’t cry a little; indeed, S. S., you
ought to cry.’ Now for the wonder of wonders. When Mrs. Thrale, in a
coaxing voice, suited to a nurse soothing a baby, had run on for some
time—while all the rest of us, in laughter, joined in the request—two
crystal tears came into the soft eyes of the S. S., and rolled gently
down her cheeks! Such a sight I never saw before, nor could I have
believed.[45] She offered not to conceal or dissipate them: on the
contrary, she really contrived to have them seen by everybody. She
looked, indeed, uncommonly handsome, for her pretty face was not like
Chloe’s [in Prior], blubbered; it was smooth and elegant, and neither
her features nor complexion were at all ruffled; nay, indeed, she was
smiling all the time.” It is melancholy to think that a lady who
possessed in such perfection the attributes of Venus Victrix, should die
unmarried. Yet this was the untoward fate of the “S. S.” “Everybody’s
admiration, and nobody’s choice,” as one of her friends said, she
survived until 1835, an ancient maiden lady, concerning whom we do not
even know whether—like Pope’s Patty Blount—she retained to the last
the charm of her wonderful blue eyes.
But Miss Streatfield is not the person upon whom Miss Burney
concentrates her fullest powers of description. That honour is reserved
for an unidentified Mr. B——y, to whom she devotes several pages. Mr.
B——y, or “The General,” as she styles him, is an Irishman. He has been
a Commissary in Germany; is between sixty and seventy, but means to pass
for thirty; a professed admirer of the sex, whom he invariably calls
“fair females”; garnishes his speech with French tags of the most
hackneyed kind; quotes often and inaccurately; and although Fanny,
afraid of painting too much _en noir_, declares him to be worthy and
moral at bottom, seems to outward view to be nothing but a blundering,
prejudiced, puffing, domineering busybody and bore. He is enraged with
Reynolds for charging seventy guineas “to scratch out a head”; he is
enraged with Garrick for living like a person of quality; he is enraged
with Agujari for getting fifty pounds for a mere song; he is equally
enraged with Rauzzini because the “fair females” sigh over him, and make
a man sick. But the General’s standing topic is his health; his rooted
antipathy, physicians; and his favourite story—which he tells three or
four times a day—in this wise:—“‘Some years ago,’—he says—‘let’s
see, how many? in the year ’71—ay, ’71, ’72—thereabouts—I was taken
very ill, and, by ill luck, I was persuaded to ask the advice of one of
these Dr. Gallipots:—oh, how I hate them all! Sir, they are the vilest
pickpockets,—know nothing, sir! Nothing in the world! poor ignorant
mortals! and they pretend—in short, sir, I hate them all; I have
suffered so much by them, sir—lost four years of the happiness of my
life—let’s see, ’71, ’72, ’73, ’74—ay, four years, sir!—mistook my
case, sir!—and all that kind of thing. Why, sir, my feet swelled as big
as two horses’ heads! I vow I will never consult one of these Dr.
Gallipot fellows again! lost me, sir, four years of the happiness of my
life!—why, I grew quite an object!—you would hardly have known
me!—lost all the calves of my legs!—had not an ounce of flesh
left!—and as to the rouge—why, my face was the colour of that
candle!—those Gallipot fellows!—why they robbed me of four years—let
me see, ’71, ’72—’
“And then it all goes over again!
“This story is always _a-propos_; if health is mentioned, it is
instanced to show its precariousness; if life, to bewail what he has
lost of it; if pain, to relate what he has suffered; if pleasure, to
recapitulate what he has been deprived of; but if a physician is hinted
at, eagerly indeed is the opportunity seized of inveighing against the
whole faculty.”
There is more, especially of the General grumbling over the newspaper;
but enough has been given. In all these pictures, it may be noted, Miss
Burney insists upon her fidelity to fact. “I never mix truth and
fiction,” she tells “Daddy” Crisp. “I have other purposes for imaginary
characters than filling letters with them.” “The world, and especially
the Great world, is so filled with absurdity of various sorts, now
bursting forth in impertinence, now in pomposity, now giggling in
silliness, and now yawning in dullness, that there is no occasion for
invention to draw what is striking in every possible species of the
ridiculous.” As time went on, her opportunities for study rather
increased than decreased. At the beginning of 1780, as already related,
the question of her comedy was again partly revived. Then there were
proposals for a tour in Italy with the Thrales which was afterwards
abandoned. But in April she went with her friends to Bath, making
acquaintance _en route_, at the Bear at Devizes, with the hostess’s
clever son, who afterwards became Sir Thomas Lawrence. At Bath they
lodge (like Smollett’s Mr. Bramble) in the South Parade, with Allen’s
Prior Park, the meadows, and “the soft flowing Avon” in view; and are
speedily absorbed in the fashionable diversions of the place. Prelates
were preaching at the Abbey and St. James’s Churches; there were public
breakfasts in the Spring Gardens; the Pump Room was crowded with company
and the Walks with promenaders; Mrs. Siddons was playing Belvidera at
Mr. Palmer’s Theatre in Orchard Street; and life was one endless round
of fiddles, dinners, concerts, assemblies, balls, card-parties and
scandal. Miss Burney’s canvas becomes more and more crowded, and less
detailed, affording space only for occasional vignettes such as the
following: “In the evening we had Mrs. L——, a fat, round, panting,
short-breathed old widow; and her daughter, a fubsy, good-humoured,
laughing, silly, merry old maid. They are rich folks, and live together
very comfortably, and the daughter sings—not in your fine Italian
taste! no, that she and her mother agree to hold very cheap—but all
about Daphne, and Chloe, and Damon, and Phillis, and Jockey!” Or
this,—on the same page,—“Mrs. K—— is a Welsh lady, of immense
fortune, who has a house in the Crescent, and lives in a most
magnificent style. She is about fifty, very good-humoured, well-bred,
and civil, and her waist does not measure above a hogshead. She is not
very deep, I must own; but what of that? If all were wits, where would
be the admirers at them?”
Dr. Johnson did not take part in the Bath expedition. He would, indeed,
have come; but Mrs. Thrale had discouraged his doing so, feeling sure
that a watering-place life would have horribly wearied him, which is not
only possible but extremely probable. Literature—that is to say the
literature of 1780—was nevertheless fairly represented in Bladud’s
ancient City. First and foremost there was Mrs. Thrale’s rival, Mrs.
Montagu, with her attendant train of blue-stockings; there was Anstey of
the _New Bath Guide_, whom—as we have seen—wiseacres had credited with
_Evelina_; there was Mrs. Susannah Dobson, the translator of _Petrarch_;
there was Melmoth of Pliny’s _Letters_; there was Miss Elizabeth Carter
of Epictetus; there was Lady Miller of Batheaston and the famous
Frascati vase wherein—according to Macaulay—“fools were wont to put
bad verses,” but which, however, at this precise moment of time, was not
_en fonction_.[46] To the failings of her _confrères_ and _consœurs_,
Miss Burney, it must be confessed, in her capacity of “faithful
historian” is not always “very kind.” Of poor Lady Miller, who died a
year later, she writes, “She is a round, plump, coarse-looking dame of
about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of
fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common
life, with fine clothes on. Her habits are bustling, her air is
mock-important, and her manners very inelegant.” Of Mrs. Dobson, she
reports that “though coarse, low-bred, forward, self-sufficient, and
flaunting, she seems to have a strong and masculine understanding, and
parts that, had they been united with modesty, or fostered by education,
might have made her a shining and agreeable woman; but she has evidently
kept low company, which she has risen above in literature, but not in
manners.” Of Miss Carter, on the contrary, then growing old, Miss Burney
says, that she “never saw age so graceful in the female sex yet, her
whole face seems to beam with goodness, piety and philanthropy.” Anstey
she finds not very agreeable—“shyly important, and silently proud,” and
moreover unable to forget that he is the author of a popular work; while
_Pliny_ Melmoth is written down as “intolerably self-sufficient.”
Some of the Bath visitors were naval officers who—it should be
observed—did not at all accept Captain Mirvan’s portrait as typical of
their profession. One of them, Mrs. Thrale’s cousin, Captain Cotton,
pretended “in a comical and good-humoured way” to resent it highly; and
so—he told the author—did all the Captains in the Navy. Admiral Byron,
too,—the Byron of the “narrative” in _Don Juan_,—though he admired
_Evelina_, was “not half pleased with the Captain’s being such a brute.”
But Miss Burney herself is unconvinced and impenitent. “The more I see
of sea-captains, the less reason I have to be ashamed of Captain Mirvan;
for they have all so irresistible a propensity to wanton mischief,—to
roasting beaux, and detesting old women, that I quite rejoice I showed
the book to no one ere printed, lest I should have been prevailed upon
to soften his character.” What the sea-captains, and the Bathonians
generally thought of their critic, is not related, save in a sentence
from _Thraliana_:—“Miss Burney was much admired at Bath (1780); the
puppy-men said, ‘She had such a drooping air and such a timid
intelligence’; or ‘a timid air,’ I think it was, and ‘a drooping
intelligence’; never sure was such a collection of pedantry and
affectation as filled Bath when we were on that spot.” The almost
imperceptible feline touch in this passage serves to remind us that, in
the padlocked privacy of her personal records, Mrs. Thrale did not
scruple (like Dr. Johnson) to mingle praise with blame when occasion
required. From other entries in _Thraliana_, Fanny seems to have
sometimes vexed her friend by her prudish punctiliousness and dread of
patronage, as well as by her perhaps more defensible preference for her
own family. “What a blockhead Dr. Burney is to be always sending for his
daughter home so! what a monkey! is she not better and happier with me
than she can be anywhere else?” . . . “If I did not provide Fanny with
every wearable—every wishable, indeed—it would not vex me to be served
so; but to see the impossibility of compensating for the pleasures of
St. Martin’s Street, makes one at once merry and mortified.” There were
other reasons, as we shall learn presently, why Dr. Burney was anxious
that Fanny should come back.[47]
Meanwhile, early in June, the Bath visit came to a premature conclusion.
Returning from a visit to Lady Miller, Mrs. Thrale received intelligence
of the Gordon riots. Her house in the Borough had been besieged by the
mob, and only saved from destruction by the assistance of the Guards and
the presence of mind of the superintendent, Mr. Perkins. Streatham Place
was also threatened, and emptied of its furniture. What was worse, Mr.
Thrale, then in a very unsatisfactory state of health, had been falsely
denounced as a papist; and as there were also rioters at Bath, Mrs.
Thrale and Fanny decided that it would be best to quit that place, and
travel about the country. They started for Brighton; but before they got
to Salisbury, London was again, in Dr. Burney’s words, “the most secure
residence in the kingdom.” For the remainder of the year 1780, Fanny
seems to have stayed quietly at St. Martin’s Street and Chessington. In
March, 1781, she came to town to find the Thrales settled for the time
in a hired house in Grosvenor Square and talking vaguely of continental
travel—to Spa, to Italy, and elsewhere. But Mr. Thrale was obviously
growing worse; and in April he died suddenly of apoplexy, “on the
morning of a day on which half the fashion of London had been invited to
an intended assembly at his house.” His death threw an infinity of
additional care upon his already over-burdened widow; but, as soon as
she was able, she again summoned Miss Burney to Streatham Place, where
off and on, she lived until September. Then “Daddy” Crisp, descending
from his Surrey retreat, bore her away perforce to Chessington; and at
Chessington she continued to stay until the beginning of 1782, when she
returned to Newton House in order to be present at her sister Susan’s
marriage at St. Martin’s Church to Captain Molesworth Phillips of the
Marines, a comrade, in Cook’s last voyage, of James Burney. After this,
Fanny remained for some time quietly at home.
The reason why Dr. Burney wished to get his daughter away from Streatham
Place, and why, at last, Mr. Crisp fetched her thence,—may perhaps be
guessed. She had begun to work upon another novel; and her long absences
from home seriously interfered with its progress. During the latter half
of 1780, she had written steadily; but, in the following year, her
renewed intercourse with Mrs. Thrale once more interrupted her labours;
and her two fathers grew anxious that she should lose no further time.
Of the advantages up to a certain point of her connection with the
Streatham circle, both of them had been fully aware—Crisp especially.
“Your time,” he had written to her in April, 1780, “could not be better
employed, for all your St. Martin’s daddy wanted to retain you for some
other purpose. You are now at school, the great school of the world,
where swarms of new ideas and new characters will continually present
themselves before you,—
‘which you’ll draw in,
As we do air, fast as ’tis ministered.’”[48]
But there must be a limit, even to schooling; and that limit, in the
opinion of Dr. Burney and his friend, had now been reached. So Fanny saw
no more of Streatham or Mrs. Thrale till her new book was finished.
-----
[36] Edward Francis Burney, 1760-1848, the artist referred to in the
above paragraph, was a frequent contributor to the Royal Academy between
1780 and 1793. His solitary “portrait of a Lady,” 1785, _may_ have been
his cousin’s picture. His first exhibits (418-20) were three “stained
Drawings” for _Evelina_, in which Mme. Duval, Captain Mirvan, Mr.
Villars, the heroine and her father, were all introduced. The Evelina of
these designs is said to have strongly resembled the beautiful Sophy
Streatfield; and an artful compliment was paid to Johnson by hanging his
portrait in Mr. Villars’ parlour. Archdeacon Burney has one of these
delicate little pictures.
[37] No doubt _The Castle of Otranto_, which Lowndes himself had
published in 1764.
[38] The bibliography of Miss Burney’s first book is extremely
perplexing. In the “Advertisement” to _Cecilia_, the author says that
_Evelina_ (which, it will be remembered, appeared in January, 1778)
passed “through Four Editions in one year.” In the _Memoirs of Dr.
Burney_, she implies that it went through three editions in five months
(ii. p. 135). But the second and third editions are both dated 1779; and
it must have been in the first months of that year that the sale was
most active. In May, 1779, comes a reference to the fourth edition as on
the stocks. “_Evelina_ continues to sell in a most wonderful manner; a
fourth edition is preparing, with cuts [it should be copper plates],
designed by Mortimer just before he died, and executed by Hall and
Bartolozzi” (_Diary and Letters_, 1892, i. p. 139). John Hamilton
Mortimer, A.R.A., the artist indicated, died 4th February, 1779. His
drawings, which cost £73, still exist. It may here be added that Mrs.
Chappel, of East Orchard, Shaftesbury, possesses a copy of the second
edition of _Evelina_ (1779), presented to Dr. Burney,—whose name is
filled up in the heading of the dedicatory verses,—“From his dutiful
scribler,” _i.e._ “F. B.”
[39] This phrase of “Little Burney”—or more generally “dear little
Burney”—to the sensitive Fanny’s “infinite _frettation_” got into
print. A certain Rev. George Huddesford embodied it in a rhymed satire
upon the camp which fears of French invasion had established at Warley
Common in Essex, and which King George and Queen Charlotte visited in
October, 1778. Johnson had gone there earlier, as the guest of Bennet
Langton, who was a Captain in the Lincolnshire militia.
[40] _Idler_, June 9 and 16, 1759.
[41] See _ante_, p. 86.
[42] Miss Hannah More’s successful tragedy of _Percy_ was produced at
Covent Garden, 10 December, 1777.
[43] See _Diary and Letters_, 1892, i. p. 48.
[44] Probably that afterwards produced at Drury Lane in 1781 as _The
Royal Suppliants_, and based upon the _Heraclidæ_ of Euripides.
[45] Miss Burney here forgets that she had already assisted at a private
view of Miss Streatfield’s performance (_Diary and Letters_, 1892, i. p.
135-6).
[46] There is an account of the Batheaston Thursday Parnassus in a
letter from Walpole to Conway, 15 January, 1775. The historical urn no
longer exists. But the verses cannot have been all bad. Garrick was
responsible for some of them, and Graves of _The Spiritual Quixote_.
Another contributor was Anstey, who wrote his _Election Ball_ for Lady
Miller.
[47] _Autobiography, etc. of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale)_, by A. Hayward, 1861,
(2nd edn.), i. pp. 125, 126.
[48] _Cymbeline_, Act 1. Sc. i.