_CECILIA_—AND AFTER
Either from Mr. Crisp’s injunctions as to secrecy, or from suppressions
in the _Diary_ as we now have it, Miss Burney’s record contains but few
references to the progress of _Cecilia_—which was the name of the new
book. And these references occur chiefly in her letters to her critic at
Chessington. As already stated, there had been a shadowy “Cecilia,” with
an imperilled fortune, in the comedy of _The Witlings_. In December,
1779, Miss Burney had shown her “Daddy” a sketch of a fresh heroine
(then apparently called “Albina”); and he speaks of this fresh heroine’s
story in the following April as a “new and striking” idea, affording,
among other advantages, “a large field for unhackneyed characters,
observations, [and] subjects for satire and ridicule.” It further
appears that the Cecilia or Albina in question was to be “unbeautiful”
but “clever,”—a deviation from the conventional in which (whether she
carried it out or not) Miss Burney must have anticipated some of her
distinguished successors. Ten months later, in February, 1781, she is
hard at work. “I think I shall always hate this book which has kept me
so long away from you, as much as I shall always love _Evelina_, who
first _comfortably_ introduced me to you,”—she tells Mrs. Thrale.
Then,—a year later still,—after the long interruption in her task
following upon Mr. Thrale’s death, there are groanings over the labour
of transcription,—a volume (and there are five) takes a
fortnight,—impatience on her father’s part for publication,—the usual
nervous apprehensions of hopeless failure, and much defence and
discussion of detail with “Daddy” Crisp. At last,—when Mrs. Thrale has
declared that _Evelina_ was but a baby to the new venture; and the
cautious critic of Chessington, protesting that there had been nothing
like it since Fielding and Smollett, has rashly proclaimed his
willingness to ensure its rapid and universal success for
half-a-crown,—on Friday the 12th July, 1782, _Cecilia; or, Memoirs of
an Heiress: By the Author of Evelina_, price 12s. 6d., sewed, is
published by Messrs. Payne and Cadell, in five _duodecimo_ volumes. The
first edition was of two thousand copies; and the price paid to the
author for the copyright, £250.[49] As the Payne above mentioned was
none other than the friend of the family, “Honest Tom Payne” of the
Mews’ Gate, afterwards James Burney’s father-in-law, it may fairly be
assumed that this amount, trifling as it must seem,—contrasted with the
sums received modern authors addressing larger audiences under different
conditions,—was not considered inadequate by Fanny’s advisers. Indeed,
from a chance reference in the _Memoirs_ to the arrangement of “the
Cecilian business,” we may conclude that, upon this occasion, Dr. Burney
himself took charge of the negotiations.
Neither for ingenuity nor novelty had the plot of Miss Burney’s first
story been remarkable. The plot of her second attempt, though still
conventional, was somewhat more ambitious. Miss Cecilia Beverley, a
young lady in her twenty-first year, is heir, not only to ten thousand
pounds from her father, but to three thousand _per annum_ from her
uncle, the Dean of ——, to which latter inheritance is attached the
restrictive condition that, should she marry, the happy man must take
her name as well as her money. This turns out to be a very material
detail in the novel. When the story begins, the Dean of —— is just
dead; and Miss Beverley and her fortune, during the brief remainder of
her minority, are left in the hands of three guardians—a fashionable
and extravagant Mr. Harrel, a vulgar and miserly Mr. Briggs, and a very
proud and pompous Mr. Delvile (of Delvile Castle). In the first chapter
of the story, Cecilia is quitting Mrs. Charlton, with whom she has been
staying, to take up her quarters in town with the Harrels,—Mrs. Harrel,
in her green and salad days, having been the heroine’s “most favourite
young friend.” In London, where would-be suitors—most of them attracted
to the _beaux yeux de sa cassette_—cluster about her like flies round a
honey pot, she speedily becomes aware that the playmate of her youth is
terribly “translated” by the dissipations of a London life, that her
friend’s husband is an irredeemable gamester, and that both are palpably
on the down-grade. Her available means become speedily involved in
Harrel’s ever-urgent necessities; and the crisis of this part of the
narrative is reached, about the middle of volume three, by his suicide
in a very melodramatic fashion at Vauxhall Gardens, where, for the
nonce, the chief personages in the book are ingeniously assembled. After
Harrel’s death, Cecilia goes to stay at Delvile Castle. Here an
attachment already begun with the son, Mortimer Delvile, a young man at
once excitable and irresolute, is further developed. But now the dead
hand comes in. The haughty Delviles cannot bring themselves to consent
to the change of the family name, even “for a consideration” of £3000
per annum. There are consequently scenes, in one of which Mrs. Delvile,
after using extremely exaggerated expressions, exclaims “my brain is on
fire!”—and breaks a blood vessel. Eventually, after she has been
softened by illness, a suggestion is made that Cecilia shall surrender
her uncle’s fortune, with its vexatious obligations, and content herself
with her Mortimer and her patrimony of ten thousand pounds.
Unfortunately for this proposition, the ten thousand pounds in question
are now non-existent, having been absorbed by the creditors of Harrel
and others,—that is to say, by the Jews. After this, a private marriage
takes place, with the connivance of Mrs. Delvile. But Cecilia’s troubles
are not yet at an end. Fresh and very unforeseen complications arise,
and, for a brief period, she goes as mad as Clementina or Clarissa. At
length the curtain comes down upon a Johnsonian passage in which she is
left exhibiting the pensive and reluctant optimism of _Rasselas_.
If, in the foregoing rapid summary, it has not always been possible to
speak with uniform gravity, it is that, to-day, the main issue of
Cecilia’s story has become—as the author’s own Captain Aresby would now
have said—a little _démodé_. In the present year of grace, it is
difficult to comprehend the social conditions which should prevent a
sensible man from marrying the woman he loves (particularly if that
woman have £3,000 a year) simply because the concomitant surrender of
his family name would—as Mrs. Delvile puts it—bring “the blood of his
wronged ancestors into his guilty cheeks.” But when _Cecilia_ was
written, this was an other-guess matter; and the point was not only
seriously argued by bishops, peers and ladies of quality, but was
thought by no means undeserving of anxious consideration. A noble Lord,
who descended from Elfrida, and had a castle in Warwickshire, was
distinctly of opinion that the obstructive attitude of Mr. Delvile
_père_ was a correct one; while Mrs. Thrale, who dated from Adam of
Salzburg—one of the companions of the Conqueror—was equally convinced
that her mother, Mrs. Salusbury, would have done just what Mrs. Delvile
did. But this debatable point apart, Cecilia’s story is unquestionably
clever. The characters—and there are a crowd of them—are clearly drawn
and discriminated; the pictures of contemporary social life are varied
and very lively, while the famous Vauxhall episode, if it be not
precisely the tragic masterpiece which it seemed to the fond eyes of
admiring “Daddy” Crisp, certainly contrives to hold the reader in a
genuine suspense of curiosity until the final event is reached. The
discussion between the mother and son,—the other “crack scene” of the
book—that, indeed, for which the author declares she wrote the whole,
Mr. Crisp did not approve so much, and he was right. If it did not
impress him, it impresses us still less. Mrs. Delvile’s stormy heroics
seem out of all proportion to the gravity of the matter in hand, and an
unsympathetic reader, bewildered by the hail of commination, may well be
forgiven for wondering whether the cause is worthy of the clamour.
Nevertheless Miss Burney, in clinging to her convictions in regard to
“name-compelling” ills, as well as in declining to end her book “like
the hack Italian operas, with a jolly chorus that makes all parties good
and all parties happy,” was only acting in strict accordance with the
injunctions, received from more than one adviser, to rely upon her own
instincts, and not to depart from them, when her mind was made up. And
it is a feature of her character, that, notwithstanding her undoubted
distrust of her powers, she was sometimes as restive and intractable
under criticism as Richardson himself.
The two scenes above indicated are those which are most frequently
referred to by Miss Burney’s critics. But there are others which, if not
as highly-wrought, are as worthy of praise. The opera rehearsal,—at
which it was said the book always opened,—the description of the _ton_
parties, the long masquerade chapter, and the dialogue between Albany,
Briggs and Hobson on Charity (which may be compared with that on the
same subject between Parson Adams and Mr. Peter Pounce in _Joseph
Andrews_), are well worth reading. But the names remind us that Miss
Burney is, primarily, what Johnson called her, a “character-monger,” and
that her plot is subordinate to her personages. Some of these, in spite
of her protests, she had evidently seen in the flesh; some she had
half-seen or overheard; some she had wholly invented from current social
characteristics. Mr. Meadows, the absent-minded and
affectedly-indifferent, and Captain Aresby, who interlards his
conversation with French words like the coming Silver Fork School and
the lady in Thackeray’s _Almack’s Adieu_—are probably examples from the
last category. Mr. Monckton and the supercilious Sir Robert Floyer, the
caustic Mr. Gosport and the voluble Miss Larolles, she had doubtless
met; while in those days of gaming and E.O. tables, she had probably
heard of many Mr. Harrels. As to the miserly and penurious Briggs (and
the facility with which one can label Miss Burney’s characters with
defining adjectives indicates one of her limitations), the consensus of
contemporary criticism seems to have decided that he was overdrawn. But
he is certainly not more exaggerated than some of the later characters
of Dickens, and he is distinctly amusing, especially in his encounters
with “Don Pedigree,” as he calls his colleague, Mr. Delvile. Hobson the
builder, with his large and puffy presence, his red waistcoat, and his
round curled wig, is a capital specimen of the bumptious prosperous
tradesman; while the thin, mean-looking, cringing and obsequious Mr.
Simkins (the hosier) is another excellently observed and contrasted
variety. Morrice, the pushing and officious young lawyer, the versatile
Belfield, and that vivacious “agreeable Rattle” of rank, Lady Honoria
Pemberton, can only be named. Lastly—for we must omit others
altogether—comes Johnson’s favourite Albany,—a cross between Apemantus
and Solomon Eagle,—whose stagy denunciations certainly warrant the
ingenuous inquiry of Mr. Hobson whether “the gentleman might be speaking
something by heart.” There should be an original for Albany; but he has
not been definitely revealed.
_Cecilia_ is more elaborate and much more mature than _Evelina_. It is
also more skilfully constructed, and more carefully, though not so
naturally, written. But it is certainly too long; and towards the close
suggests something of the hurry imposed upon the author by her eager
father. It must also be confessed that the last chapters are scarcely as
interesting as their forerunners. As to the success of the book with its
first audience, however, there can be no doubt. Anxiously awaited, it
was welcomed with the warmest enthusiasm by numbers of readers; and by
no one more splendidly and royally than by Edmund Burke, whose
acquaintance Fanny had made at Sir Joshua’s not very long before it
appeared. When it came out, Burke wrote her a long letter, which was
reprinted with subsequent editions. Few (he told her), let their
experience in life and manners be what it might, would not find
themselves better informed concerning human nature, and their stock of
observation enriched, by reading _Cecilia_. “You have,” he went on,
“crowded into a few small volumes an incredible variety of characters;
most of them well planned, well supported, and well contrasted with each
other. If there be any fault in this respect, it is one in which you are
in no great danger of being imitated. Justly as your characters are
drawn, perhaps they are too numerous. But I beg pardon; I fear it is
quite in vain to preach economy to those who are come young to excessive
and sudden opulence.” Praising her humour, her pathos, her
“comprehensive and noble moral,” and her sagacious observations, he
concluded,—“In an age distinguished by producing extraordinary women, I
hardly dare to tell you where my opinion would place you amongst them. I
respect your modesty, that will not endure the commendations which your
merit forces from everybody.” A few months later, she met Burke at the
house of the Hon. Miss Monckton (the “Lydia White” of that age), when he
was equally kind, though he ventured upon some criticisms. He thought
the masquerade scene too long, and that something might be spared from
Harrel’s grand assembly; he did not like Morrice’s part at the
Pantheon;[50] and he wished the conclusion “either more happy or more
miserable.” With this last Fanny—as we have already seen—could not
coincide; but he promptly consoled her by another compliment. Nothing
had struck him so much as the admirable skill with which her ingenious
characters made themselves known by their own words; and he
congratulated her upon her conquest of some of the old wits, because of
the difficulty of giving satisfaction to those who piqued themselves on
being past receiving it. Also, he touched upon the amount she had
obtained from Payne and Cadell for the copyright, which he evidently
knew. “Why did you not send for your own friend out of the city [_i.e._
Mr. Briggs]? He would have taken care you should not part with it
[_Cecilia_] so much below par.”
Her older admirers were as kind. Sir Joshua was perpetually bringing her
intelligence of something which had been said to her advantage; and
Johnson came no whit behind. Instructing Susy Thrale, who had just put
up her hair, and assumed womanly garb, he directed her, with mock
solemnity, how to “increase her consequence” by censuring
_Cecilia_—much in the manner in which the author of the _Female
Quixote_ had recommended his own _Rambler_: “Tell the world how ill it
was conceived, and how ill executed. Tell them how little there is in it
of human nature, and how well your knowledge of the world enables you to
judge of the failings in that book. Find fault without fear; and if you
are at a loss for any to find, invent whatever comes into your mind, for
you may say what you please, with little fear of detection, since of
those who praise _Cecilia_ not half have read it, and of those who have
read it, not half remember it. Go to work, therefore, boldly; and
particularly mark that the character of Albany is extremely unnatural,
to your own knowledge, since you never met with such a man at Mrs.
Cummyn’s School.” A year later, his enthusiasm was still unabated.
“Sir”—he said to Boswell—“if you talk of _Cecilia_, talk on.” From
other sources came commendations as pleasant. Mrs. Chapone, who, as Miss
Mulso, had cried over _Clarissa_, could not, for very excess of
eagerness, cry at all over _Cecilia_. “I was in an agitation that half
killed me, that shook all my nerves,”—she told the author,—“and made
me unable to sleep at nights from the suspense I was in.” Mrs.
Walsingham, the witty daughter of the wit Sir Charles Hanbury Williams,
related how Queen Charlotte herself had spoken of the book, and
criticised Mr. Briggs; while, from another source, came tidings that
Gibbon had read it in a day, which was a third of the time that even
Burke had taken. But Miss Burney’s supreme and full dress laureation
came at Mrs. Ord’s in Queen Anne’s Street from that ancient _bel esprit_
and conversationist, Soame Jenyns, then nearing eighty, who, arriving by
arrangement, attired in a Court suit of apricot-coloured silk lined with
white satin, regaled the author of _Cecilia_ with a magnificent and
magniloquent harangue upon the merits of her work, to which the rest of
the distinguished company respectfully listened—standing!
But if _Cecilia_ pleased the old wit, Soame Jenyns, it did not equally
please the old wit, Horace Walpole, to whom it suggested many of the
inconvenient objections of the incorruptible. He thought it
“immeasurably long”; he disliked the end (as Burke did); he found most
of the personages _outrés_; he said (and, in this instance,
unanswerably) that they spoke too uniformly in character to be true to
the complexity of human life; and he wished Albany suppressed
altogether. The book, also, he complained, “was written in Dr. Johnson’s
unnatural phrase.” Other people—either in praise or blame—had made the
same discovery. “The particularly nervous and perspicuous style”—wrote
the _Monthly Review_—“appears to have been framed on the best model of
Dr. Johnson.” But even among Fanny’s friends, there were those to whom
this was scarcely a merit. “The writing here and there”—wrote Mr.
Twining of Colchester to Fanny’s father—“is not the better for a little
imitation (probably involuntary) of Dr. Johnson.” That there are traces
of the Johnsonian manner in _Evelina_ has already been observed,
especially where Miss Burney writes in her own person. In _Cecilia_
these evidences would naturally be more manifest, since the narrative
form is substituted for the epistolary. Still there is little of the
Doctor in the many conversations, and the point may easily be
overlaboured. There is enough, however, to warrant Boswell in claiming
Miss Burney as one of Johnson’s many imitators; and Lord Macaulay picked
out one passage in special which has the very trick and turn of the
great man’s pen. But when it led Lord Macaulay to say, as he did, that
he had not the smallest doubt that Johnson had “revised” _Cecilia_, and
“retouched the style of many passages,” he was demonstrably in error. “I
never saw one word of it before it was printed,”—the Doctor told a
gentleman who wished “to make out some credit to him from the little
rogue’s book”; and the disclaimer must surely be accepted as
decisive.[51] At the same time, Johnson was undoubtedly the reigning
model; and, consciously or unconsciously, Miss Burney copied him. “Fanny
carries bird-lime in her brains”—said her father—“for everything that
lights there sticks.” As the writer of _Evelina_, she had remembered the
writer of the _Rambler_; and nothing is more reasonable than that she
should remember him all the more in _Cecilia_, when, by personal contact
and personal admiration, she had absorbed and assimilated his method and
vocabulary. Whether she would not have done better to copy herself, is
another matter.
In July, 1782, when _Cecilia_ was published, Fanny Burney was
thirty,—that critical age before which, according to a discouraging
dictum, those who are not doomed to failure, must have contrived to
succeed. Hitherto, she _had_ succeeded; and if a bard in the _Morning
Herald_ was to be believed, had now taken her place permanently in that
galaxy of which Burke had written, for
“Little Burney’s quick discerning”
was duly bracketed with
“Carter’s piety and learning,”—
with the “pathetic pen” of Hannah More, the “pointed wit” of Mrs. Cowley
(of _The Belle’s Stratagem_), with
“Smiling Streatfield’s ivory neck,
Nose and notions—_à la Grecque_,”
and all the varied virtues of Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Thrale,
and Mrs. Montagu.[52] Her friends were naturally anxious that she should
pursue her triumphs; and “Daddy” Crisp, while piously enjoining her not
“to remit her ardour and industry to be perfect,” and sagaciously
observing “that there had been more instances than one, where writers
have wrote themselves down, by slovenliness, laziness, and presuming too
much on public favour for what is past,”—was still very practically
alive to the necessities of taking the tide at the flood. “This is the
harvest time of your life,”—he wrote; “your sun shines hot; lose not a
moment, then, but make your hay directly. ‘Touch the yellow boys,’—as
Briggs says—‘grow warm’; make the booksellers come down
handsomely—count the ready—the chink.” Nevertheless, it was fourteen
years before Miss Burney published another novel; and we must now revert
to the chronicle of her life.
There can be little doubt that the publication of _Cecilia_ largely
extended the circle of her acquaintance; and that the paternal coach
must often have been in requisition to convey her to the houses of the
“lyon-hunters.” “I begin to grow most heartily sick and fatigued”—she
writes in December, 1782—“of this continual round of visiting, and
these eternal new acquaintances.” Elsewhere there are indications that,
for one who was not able to run milliners’ bills, the question of
costume must have been an absorbing one. “Miss Burney”—said Mr.
Cambridge—“had no time to write, for she was always working at her
clothes.” Mr. Richard Owen Cambridge of Twickenham,—Walpole’s
“Cambridge the Everything,”—now an elderly gentleman, was one of the
new friends who seem to have specially attracted her; and there is an
account in the _Diary_ of a visit she made in the summer of 1783 to that
pleasant house of his in the meadows by Richmond Bridge, to which so
many old-world notabilities were wont to resort. One of the things she
recalls is her host’s testimony—in spite of the _Préjugé à la mode_—to
his love for his wife. “There is no sight so pleasing to me,” he told
her, “as seeing Mrs. Cambridge enter a room; and that after having been
married to her for forty years.” At Mrs. Vesey’s she met Cambridge’s
near neighbour, Horace Walpole, whom she found extremely entertaining.
Dr. Parr, Jonas Hanway, _Tasso_ Hoole, Benjamin West, the Wartons, Mrs.
Ord, Mrs. Buller, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Garrick, also flit through her
pages, though it would be impossible to make record of them here. But
among the “fair females”—as “the General” of the last chapter would
have said,—may be mentioned, chiefly because she must be mentioned
hereafter, Mme. de Genlis, then in this country. To this most
fascinating and insidious personage, Miss Burney was at first much
attracted. But the acquaintance—her niece and editor tells us—was not
maintained; and Fanny afterwards made nearer and dearer French friends
for whom the multifarious author of _Adèle et Théodore_ was only “_cette
coquine de Brulard_.”
Upon the dissolution of the Whig Ministry at the close of 1783, Burke,
as Paymaster General, appointed Dr. Burney organist of Chelsea Hospital
Chapel, at an increased salary of £50 per annum. It was not much, but it
was enhanced by the courteous way in which it was done. In her father’s
absence, Burke himself informed Miss Burney of what he styled his “last
act in office.” Earlier—in the same year, 1783—had come her first
serious bereavement since she had lost her mother,—the death of her
kind old Mentor at Chessington. By this time, Mr. Crisp was seventy-six,
and had long been a martyr to the gout to which he finally succumbed.
During his last illness, Fanny wrote to him frequently and
affectionately; and, when it grew grave, hastened to his bed-side. She
was “the dearest thing to him on earth,” he told her with his last
breath; and her sorrow at his loss was for the time overwhelming. In
what was once the picturesque and rustic, but is now the “restored” and
“enlarged” church at Chessington, is a mural tablet to his memory, with
an epitaph in verse by Dr. Burney, which his daughter has printed.[53]
To Fanny the loss of “Daddy” Crisp was incalculable, for he had been at
once her most judicious admirer and her most stimulating critic, never
failing to mingle blame with his praise—blame against which, after the
manner of the criticised, she generally at first protested. He was a
better counsellor than her father, who was too eager for publication to
be always mindful of the necessity for finish. Yet, at the same time,
Crisp was urgent that his favourite should trust her own instincts.
“Who[m]soever you think fit to consult, let their talents and tastes be
ever so great, hear what they say, allowed!—agreed!—but never give up
or alter a tittle merely on their authority, nor unless it perfectly
coincides with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my sorrow and
to my cost. But mum!” Which last injunction was no doubt a reference to
his own ill-starred _Virginia_.
More than a year later took place what may almost be regarded as another
bereavement,—the second marriage of Mrs. Thrale. With this
much-discussed event,—perplexed, moreover, by no little piqué and
wounded feeling,—we are concerned only in so far as it relates to Miss
Burney. Gabriele Piozzi, who is sometimes contemptuously and erroneously
described as a merely obscure “fiddler,” was a musician and professional
singer of exceptional ability, who, according to contemporary prints,
was earning some £1,200 per annum by his talents. He was a Roman
Catholic, a handsome man “with gentle, pleasing, unaffected manners,” of
unimpeachable integrity, and about six months older than Mrs. Thrale,
who, at her husband’s death, was forty. The Thrales first made his
acquaintance at Brighton in 1780, and he speedily became a “prodigious
favourite.” After her husband’s death, Mrs. Thrale’s liking for him
gradually increased until it became a passion. Meanwhile, in 1782, with
Johnson’s full concurrence, Streatham Place was let for three years to
Lord Shelburne; and after leaving it in October of that year, the Doctor
went with her for six weeks to her Brighton house—a fact which takes
off something from the pathetic poignancy of the famous _adieux_ to
Streatham, regretful and melancholy as they must of necessity have been.
Before 1782 had closed Mrs. Thrale had determined to marry Piozzi. But
her daughters—to whom their father had left £20,000 each—were against
the match; and after much mental perplexity, she decided to bid her
lover farewell, and did so in January 1783. The sacrifice, however,
proved beyond her powers; her health began to suffer; and a year later,
with the tacit consent of her children, Piozzi was recalled from Milan,
and she was married to him on the 23rd July, 1784, according to the
rites of the Romish Church, by the Chaplain of the Spanish Ambassador. A
second marriage followed on the 25th at St. James’s Church, Bath. Her
correspondence with Johnson, upon what he regarded as this “ignominious”
union, has been printed by Mr. Hayward, and _her_ letters should be read
as well as those of the Doctor.[54]
In all these proceedings, between Fanny’s affection for Mrs. Thrale and
her affection for Dr. Johnson, she played a delicate and a difficult
part. According to Mrs. Thrale, it was Fanny who had first introduced
Piozzi to her as “a man likely to lighten the burden of life to her.” In
October, 1782, Mrs. Thrale writes in _Thraliana_ that that “dear little
discerning creature, Fanny Burney,” says she is in love with Piozzi; and
she then goes on to argue the _pros_ and _cons_ with herself. At
Brighton, just before the first farewell to Piozzi, Mrs. Thrale admits
that Fanny’s “interest as well as judgment goes all against my
marriage”—a view which is fully confirmed by Miss Burney’s absolute
refusal to approve the course proposed, although at the same time she
found it difficult to restrain her indignation at Queenie’s heartless
attitude to her mother. Later still, she said decidedly that Mrs. Thrale
must either marry Piozzi instantly or give him up, otherwise her
reputation would be lost. In May, 1784, Mrs. Thrale having decided to
marry Piozzi, came to London to consult Miss Burney about details. The
meeting, as may be divined, was embarrassing to Fanny, who, in Mrs.
Thrale’s words, was as much “pained as delighted by her visit.”
Nevertheless she gave her time wholly to her old friend, and her father
was also consulted. Dr. Burney, a brother professional himself, regarded
the matter more philosophically than some of his nicely sensitive
contemporaries. “No one”—he said—“could blame Piozzi for accepting a
gay young widow. What could he do better?” Then came the marriage, with
a sequel which might have been foreseen. Mrs. Thrale considered that
Fanny’s congratulations upon a step “which she had uniformly, openly,
and with deep and avowed affliction, thought wrong”—were insufficiently
cordial. The _Diary_ only contains a sketch of Miss Burney’s answer to
this impeachment—an answer by which Mrs. Piozzi, preoccupied with her
own happiness, could scarcely be gravely disturbed. She besought her
“sweetest Burney” to give herself no serious concern in the matter, to
“quiet her kind heart,” and to love Mr. Piozzi, if she loved his wife.
To this “F. B.” sent “the warmest and most heartfelt” rejoinder. And
there the six years’ correspondence ended. Miss Burney may have been
right in connecting its cessation with resentment on Piozzi’s part,
“when he was informed of her constant opposition to the union,” but
there were surely reasons enough in the circumstances of the case to
make further intercourse difficult, if not impracticable.
A heavier loss, however, than that of Mrs. Thrale, was in store for
Fanny Burney. Johnson, who was now seventy-four, had for some time been
perceptibly failing. In the middle of 1783 he had a stroke; and at the
end of the same year, he had been very ill with spasmodic asthma. “Ah!
_priez Dieu pour moi!_”—he had said suddenly to her, as she sat by him;
and he had been “quite touchingly affectionate.” She was his “dearest of
all dear ladies,”—he declared. A year later he was manifestly nearing
his end; and on Thursday, the 25th November, 1784, Fanny saw him for the
last time. Though exceedingly ill, he received her; and they had a long
conversation in the old way,—about his dead wife—about Queenie Thrale,
who had been to visit him,—about Queenie’s mother, from whom he never
hears, and to whom he never writes. “I drive her,” he said, “quite from
my mind. If I meet with one of her letters, I burn it instantly. I have
burnt all I can find. I never speak of her, and I desire never to hear
of her more. I drive her, as I said, wholly from my mind.”[55] Fanny
quickly changed the subject; and he went on to talk of the “Bristol
milk-woman,” Ann Yearsley, a local poetess whom Hannah More
befriended,—of Shakespeare and his Caliban, and other topics. At
length, seeing he grew visibly worse, she rose to go; and, for the first
time she could remember, he did not oppose it. But kindly pressing both
her hands, he begged her to come again—to come soon, and to remember
him in her prayers. She never saw him afterwards, although she more than
once essayed to do so. When, two days before his death, Dr. Burney
called, the old man spoke of her tenderly, reiterated his request about
her prayers; and then, brightening for a moment, said, almost archly, “I
think I shall throw the ball at Fanny yet!” Apparently also, he asked to
see her. But although, on the following morning, she waited tearfully in
the cold little parlour at Bolt Court, and lingered on the stairs that
led to the back room where he lay, no summons came from the sick man. At
length arrived Bennet Langton with a faltering message. The Doctor hoped
she would excuse him; but he felt himself too weak for such an
interview.
With Johnson dead, and Crisp dead, and Mrs. Piozzi alienated by her
marriage, life—it may be imagined—must, in these days, have seemed
unusually gloomy to Fanny Burney. But fortunately, though her feelings
were strong, her temperament was elastic. And the successful author of
_Cecilia_ had now troops of friends, both new and old. To those she
respected, it was her nature to grow rapidly and devotedly attached.
Even for some weeks before Johnson’s fatal illness, her letters had been
dated from Norbury—a charming country-house upon a hill-slope in
Surrey, looking southward across the Mole and the beautiful Vale of
Mickleham, to Dorking and Box Hill. Here—in addition to a park with a
Druids’ Grove of yews that dated from Domesday Book, and a saloon with
trellised ceiling, where the landscapes of George Barret cunningly
completed the magnificent view from the windows—she enjoyed the
companionship of a host and hostess, who, if not as remarkable as her
Streatham friends, were at least as cultured and as kind. Mr. Locke of
Norbury was a genuine connoisseur, who had brought the Discobolus of
Myron to England, while his son William, a youth of seventeen, was to
become a capable historical artist. Mrs. Locke,—the “dearest Fredy” of
the _Diary_, according to Miss Burney, was “sweet and most bewitching.”
At Norbury, where, on fine days, they wandered in the grounds; or on wet
days, read Mme. de Sévigné and Captain Cook aloud in the picture room,
Fanny seems to have been thoroughly content to “stay till she _must_
go,” driving unpleasant thought away like “a wasp near an open window.”
What was more, she was in a sense _en pays de connaissance_, for Norbury
was only six miles from that other regretted “place of peace, ease,
freedom and cheerfulness,” Chessington Hall. During the next few months
her visits to the Lockes were frequent; and in later years, she was to
know them even better still. Meanwhile, to her delight, her sister Susan
made Mickleham her residence, occupying with her husband and family a
little cottage on the high road at the very foot of Norbury Park.
But besides her relations with the Lockes of Norbury, she formed, at
this date, another friendship, of which the consequences, during the
years that immediately followed, were of no small importance. Early in
1783, she had been taken by Mrs. Chapone to visit the venerable Mrs.
Delany (the widow of Swift’s friend, Dr. Patrick Delany), then living in
London at St. James’s Place. At this time, Mrs. Delany was eighty-three,
a charming and accomplished old lady, with a reputation for cutting out
the ingenious “paper Mosaiks” now in the British Museum; a great
favourite with King George and Queen Charlotte; and the bosom friend of
another old lady and _grande dame_, Prior’s “Peggy,” the Dowager Duchess
of Portland. Both Mrs. Delany and her friend (who arrived shortly after
Fanny reached St. James’s Place) had been prejudiced against
_Cecilia_,—the Duchess chiefly from recollections of the cruel
depression into which she had been thrown by the tedium and the tragedy
of Richardson’s _Clarissa_. But they had both succumbed to Fanny’s book;
they knew its characters by heart; told stories how lords and prelates
had discussed the incidents and the characters, and finally crowned
their commendations by praising its excellent tone and morality. “No
book”—said Mrs. Delany—“ever was so useful as this, because none other
that is so good was ever so much read.” And the Duchess and Mrs. Chapone
said _ditto_ to Mrs. Delany. Mrs. Chapone, by the way, told an
interesting anecdote. Someone, she said, had been protesting that there
could be no such character as Briggs, whom not only Queen Charlotte but
Mrs. Thrale had regarded as exaggerated.[56] Thereupon “a poor, little
mean city man” in company had “started up, and said—‘But there is
though, for I’se one myself.’”
The friendship thus inaugurated speedily became enduring; and Fanny’s
record for 1784 contains more than one reference to days spent at St.
James’s Place, sometimes _en tête-à-tête_, when she was allowed to
rummage Mrs. Delany’s correspondence with Swift and Young or listen to
her old stories of the notabilities of the first half of the century. In
July, 1785, the Duchess of Portland died; and the loss drew Fanny closer
to her new friend. Another result of the Duchess’s death was, that it
deprived Mrs. Delany of the summer quarters which she had for so many
years enjoyed at Bulstrode, the seat of the Portlands near Beaconsfield.
Upon learning this, the King and Queen, whose affection for Mrs. Delany
seems to have been of the most genuine kind, offered her a small house
near the gate of Windsor Castle, which, with the greatest forethought,
they immediately stocked and put in order for her, the King himself
personally superintending the workmen. They also gave her a pension of
£300 a year, which, in order that it might escape taxation, the
good-natured Queen herself was accustomed to hand to her half-yearly in
a pocket-book. Pending Mrs. Delany’s removal to Windsor, Fanny was often
in attendance on her, either as companion or sympathiser. When, at last,
she departed, Fanny went to Norbury, and elsewhere. But in November,
1785, she was again “domesticated” with Mrs. Delany at Windsor.
One of the first things which she heard upon her arrival was, that Their
Majesties had been expecting her. All the Princesses were coming to see
her—she was told. Moreover, the Queen, stimulated by Mme. de Genlis’
praises of Miss Burney, had been re-reading _Cecilia_, or rather having
it read to her by one of her readers, the Swiss geologist, M. de Luc.
(As M. de Luc could hardly speak four words of English, this must have
been unfortunate for _Cecilia_.) The book had also been read to the
Princess Elizabeth. These announcements, and the particular inquiries
which the King and Queen did not cease to make about her of Mrs. Delany,
naturally filled Fanny with all her customary trepidations, real and
imaginary. Owing, however, to the illness of the Princess Elizabeth and
other causes, the meeting did not at once take place. Then suddenly, on
Friday, December 16, “a large man, in deep mourning,” and with a star
glittering on his breast, made sudden apparition in Mrs. Delany’s
drawing room, throwing its occupants into petrified confusion. It was
King George himself. He spoke very kindly to Miss Burney, showing much
benevolent consideration for her nervousness; but overwhelmed her
presently by questions after the “What! What!” fashion, made familiar by
the _Probationary Odes_ and the irreverent performances of “Peter
Pindar.” How did she write _Evelina_—and why? Why did she not tell her
father? How was it printed? Why had she done nothing more since
_Cecilia_? To which last Fanny answered demurely and hesitatingly that
she believed she had exhausted herself,—a reply which was received in
the light of a _bon mot_. During the progress of this inquisition, which
is recorded with extreme minuteness, arrived Queen Charlotte, to whom
His Majesty forthwith carefully recapitulated his conversation with Miss
Burney. The Queen, who was very soft-voiced and gracious, was equally
curious. She wished much to know if there was to be “nothing more”; and
she was good enough to express a desire that there should be something.
From what had been done, she thought there was a power to do good. And
good to young people was so very good a thing, that she could not help
wishing it could be. Thereupon the King—as one behind the
scenes—proceeded to assure her that Miss Burney had made no vow not to
write;—it was only a question of inclination—was it not? They were,
both of them, evidently prepossessed in favour of Mrs. Delany’s young
friend, who, on her side, does ample justice to the unaffected, gentle
dignity of Queen Charlotte; the _bonhomie_, good spirits, and friendly
kindness of the King; and the fondness of the royal couple for one
another.
A few days later, the King came again to tea, chatting very freely in
his discursive way of many things,—of Mme. de Genlis’ knowledge of
English; of the “monster” Voltaire; of the pride and ingratitude of
Rousseau (to whom His Majesty had given a pension). But here Miss Burney
was able to acquaint him, on her father’s authority, that M.
Jean-Jacques kept His Majesty’s portrait over his chimney at Paris. Then
the King passed to the recent death of Kitty Clive;[57] and the merits
of Mrs. Siddons, whom he ranked above Garrick—an opinion from which
Fanny could of course only mutely dissent. Shakespeare came next; and
His Majesty—as is known—had the courage of his opinions. “Was there
ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? only one must not say
so!—But what think you?—What?—Is there not sad stuff?—What?—What?”
And he instanced several plays and characters in support of his
heresies. Fanny told him how Mme. de Genlis had declared that no woman
ought to go to any of the English comedies,—an aspersion of the
national stage which was resented with much animation by the discerning
critic who had twice ordered the representation of _She Stoops to
Conquer_. In a further “private conference” with his consort, there was
more talk of Mme. de Genlis, who, it seems, always sent her “moral page”
to Queen Charlotte;—of the _Sorrows of Werther_, which neither she nor
Fanny admired as the great Napoleon did;—of an unnamed but meritorious
work picked up for her upon a stall by one of her servants. “It is
amazing what good books there are on stalls”—said the Queen—an
utterance which should canonise her for ever with the book-hunter. She
afterwards spoke of Klopstock’s _Messiah_, criticising the author’s
engraftments upon the sacred story; and then gave an account of the
Protestant nunneries in Germany, to one of which she had belonged,—of
the rigid rules of entrance,—of the internal economy,—of the costume.
The record of the interview breaks off abruptly; but it leaves a
pleasant impression of Queen Charlotte’s amenity, humour, and
conversational powers.
This meeting took place on December 20th, 1785, after which Miss Burney
went home. She paid another visit to Windsor in the May following with
her father, who was anxious to obtain the then-vacant post of Master of
the King’s Band. To this end he was recommended to show himself to the
King, when he walked upon the Terrace at Windsor; but not to make direct
solicitation. Unhappily, the place had already been promised by the Lord
Chamberlain; and though both the King and Queen spoke amiably to Miss
Burney, the expedition was without effect. Very shortly afterwards, by
the resignation of Mrs. Haggerdorn, Second Keeper of Robes, a vacancy
occurred in the Royal Household. Mrs. Haggerdorn’s place was much sought
after, even by persons of fashion and rank. But the Queen had taken a
fancy to Mrs. Delany’s visitor, and offered it to Miss Burney. By Fanny
herself the proposition was received with consternation. The separation
from her family circle, the close confinement to the Court, the
permanent character of an engagement so made, the wearisome “life of
attendance and dependence”—we are using her own words—all these things
she considered were unsuited to her inclinations, and unfavourable to
her happiness. But her friends—who, it is only fair to remember, knew
her literary limitations, and were better instructed as to her literary
gains than some of her earlier critics—took a different view of the
matter. The Lockes and her sister, Mrs. Phillips, had, indeed, always
expected some such development of her Windsor visits: Mrs. Delany—a
courtier in grain—was naturally transported; while her father (in whose
hands she dutifully placed herself), and even Burke, regarded the royal
offer as affording a certain prospect of an honourable and advantageous
establishment for life. It was accordingly accepted, after an interview
with the Queen, who, in the face of all the Windsor place-hunters, had
made her own choice. “I was led to think of Miss Burney”—Her Majesty
told Mrs. Delany—“first by her books; then by seeing her; then by
always hearing how she was loved by her friends; but chiefly by your
friendship for her.” Of Fanny herself, Queen Charlotte asked no
questions, only saying pleasantly—“I am sure we shall do very well
together.”
-----
[49] Charlotte Burney in _Early Diary_, 1889, ii. 307. Lord Macaulay
(_Edinburgh Review_, lxxvi. 540) had been told that the publishers gave
two thousand pounds. Probably—as Mrs. Ellis does not fail to
suggest—there was some confusion on the part of Macaulay’s informant
between pounds paid and copies printed.
[50] Book iv. ch. 2.
[51] _Diary and Letters_, 1892, i. 454.
[52] The verses from which these quotations are taken appeared in the
_Morning Herald_ for 12 March, 1782. Long attributed to Sir W. W. Pepys,
they are now given to Dr. Burney. But, as regards his daughter, they
only express a general feeling.
[53] _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, 1832, ii. 323.
[54] _Autobiography, etc. of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale)_, 1861 (2nd ed.), i.
147 _et seq._
[55] This was the bitterness of the sick bed; and it is wholly
irreconcilable with the regard expressed in Johnson’s last communication
to Mrs. Piozzi and his gratitude “for that kindness which soothed twenty
years of a life radically wretched.” Luckily for her, he did not burn
_all_ her letters, for her not-undignified answer to his first rough
remonstrance was found by Miss Hawkins amongst his papers, and returned
to its writer. As already stated, it is printed by Hayward
(_Autobiography, etc._, 1861 (2nd ed.), i. 240-1, No. 4).
[56] Other people think so still. Mr. Bryce (_Studies in Contemporary
Biography_, 1903, i. 127), speaks of Briggs and Miss Larolles as “so
exaggerated, as to approach the grotesque.” Nevertheless, as is often
the case, Briggs has been more satisfactorily identified with a living
model than any other of Miss Burney’s characters. In Mrs. Ellis’s
“Preface” and Notes to _Cecilia_, she shows conclusively that,
designedly or undesignedly, Briggs reproduces many of the traits of a
personage already mentioned in these pages, Nollekens the sculptor. (See
_ante_, p. 51, and J. T. Smith’s _Nollekens and his Times_, 2 vols.
1828.)
[57] 6th December, 1785.