THE QUEEN’S DRESSER
On the 6th of July, 1786, the _Public Advertiser_ announced that—“Miss
Burney, daughter of Dr. Burney, is appointed Dresser to the Queen, in
the room of Mrs. Hoggadore, gone to Germany.” The last three words were
premature, for further notifications, with much pleasing and ingenious
variation of Mrs. Haggerdorn’s name, made it clear that the lady in
question only took leave of the Queen on the 13th, and retired to her
native Mecklenburg on the 17th. She is described in the public print
aforesaid as Her Majesty’s “confidential companion and dresser”; but in
the Court Register she figures as one of two “Keepers of Robes,” the
Senior Keeper being a Mrs. Schwellenberg (or Schwellenbergen), who, with
Mrs. Haggerdorn, had accompanied the Queen from Germany five and twenty
years earlier. To Mrs. Haggerdorn’s post, with some modification of
duties, Miss Burney now succeeded, entering upon her office on the 17th
July. As—for lack of repairs—Windsor Castle had been for some years
uninhabitable, the Royal Family were at this time domiciled in two
temporary buildings, described indifferently by topographers as
“mansions” and “barracks.” These had been built for the King by Sir
William Chambers. The larger, the Upper or Queen’s Lodge,[58] so called
from its occupying the site of a former Queen Anne’s Lodge, was
appropriated to Queen Charlotte, King George and the two elder
Princesses—the Princess Royal and the Princess Augusta. It stood to the
south east of the Castle, almost facing the South Terrace. Behind it was
a large walled garden, where Herschel exhibited newly discovered comets
to the Court; and at the end of this garden was the second or Lower
Lodge, allotted to the younger branches of the Royal Family. Both these
structures were of stuccoed red brick, with embattled copings. They were
draughty and cold in winter. Miss Burney’s apartments, a bed-room and a
large drawing-room, were on the ground-floor in the Upper Lodge. The
drawing-room looked on the Round Tower and the Terrace; and was probably
at the eastern corner, as she speaks of its opening at the farther side,
from the windows, to the Little Park, which lay to the north and east of
the Castle. The bed-room (which was entered from the sitting-room)
looked into the garden. Immediately above her were the rooms of her
colleague, Mrs. Schwellenberg. Fanny describes her quarters as “airy,
pleasant, clean and healthy,” “delightfully independent of all the rest
of the house,” and as containing “everything I can desire for my
convenience and comfort.” Mrs. Delany was not fifty yards away; and she
could readily obtain access to the South Terrace by a special flight of
steps. At Kew, to which Their Majesties frequently migrated, she had
also her special accommodation, rather contracted, after the fashion of
the place, but “tidy and comfortable enough”; and at St. James’s Palace
she occupied rooms, one of which looked over the Park. From other
indications, it appears that she had her special man-servant; and, in
common with Mrs. Schwellenberg, the use of a carriage. Her salary was
£200 a year.
After a week, she began to realise her position and to draw up “a
concise abstract of the general method of passing the day.” Concise
though it be, it is too detailed to be reproduced entire, but must be
further summarised as follows:—She rose at six, awaiting her first
summons, which generally came at half-past seven, after the Queen’s hair
had been dressed by Mrs. Thielky, her wardrobe-woman. Then, with Mrs.
Thielky’s aid, she dresses the Queen, Mrs. Thielky’s office being to
hand Fanny the things as they are required,—a fortunate detail, since,
as she says, she might run “a prodigious risk of giving the gown before
the hoop, or the fan before the neckerchief.” By eight the dressing is
ended, and the Queen, with the King and Princesses, proceeds to the
King’s Chapel to prayers, while Fanny goes to breakfast, dawdling
meanwhile over a book—for the moment, Gilpin’s _Observations_ on the
Lake District, which Mrs. Delany has lent her. At nine she meditates
upon her next immediate business, which generally resolves itself into
questions of costume. This done, she is generally her own mistress until
a quarter to twelve, occupying the time, if it be not absorbed by the
aforesaid questions of costume, in writing or walking. At a quarter
before one the Queen usually dresses for the day, when Mrs.
Schwellenberg, as well as the “inferior priestesses,” is present. The
Queen is powdered by her hairdresser, during which time she reads the
newspaper. “When she observes that I have run to her but half dressed,
she constantly gives me leave to return and finish as soon as she is
seated. If she is grave, and reads steadily on, she dismisses me,
whether I am dressed or not; but at all times she never forgets to send
me away while she is powdering, with a consideration not to spoil my
clothes, that one would not expect belonged to her high station. Neither
does she ever detain me without making a point of reading some little
paragraph aloud.”
After a short time Fanny is again summoned, and her further attendance,
transferred to the state dressing-room (“if any room in this private
mansion can have the epithet of state”), lasts until about three, after
which she sees no more of the Queen until bed-time. At five, dinner _en
tête-à-tête_ with Mrs. Schwellenberg follows in the eating-room, after
which coffee in that lady’s apartment takes until eight. At eight,
descent once more to the eating-room, when the Equerry in Waiting,
together with any friend invited by the King or Queen, arrives for tea,
which takes till nine. “From that time,”—continues Fanny—“if Mrs.
Schwellenberg is alone, I never quit her for a minute till I come to my
little supper at near eleven. Between eleven and twelve my last summons
usually takes place, earlier and later occasionally. Twenty minutes is
the customary time then spent with the Queen: half an hour, I believe,
is seldom exceeded. I then come back and after doing whatever I can to
forward my dress for the next morning, I go to bed—and to sleep, too,
believe me: the early rising, and a long day’s attention to new affairs
and occupations, cause a fatigue so bodily, that nothing mental stands
against it, and to sleep I fall the moment I have put out my candle and
laid down my head.” To these details, it is only necessary to add that
the summonses in question were made by a bell (which seems at first to
have given Fanny a good deal of annoyance); and that it was also a part
of her duties to mix the Queen’s snuff,—a task which she is recorded to
have performed extremely well.
From the above account, it may be gathered that attendance on Queen
Charlotte was by no means the most onerous of Miss Burney’s functions.
Occupying chiefly the middle of the day, it could only have been on
Wednesdays and Saturdays (when there were special duties) that it
extended to more than four hours, besides which Her Majesty seems to
have been laudably solicitous, at all times, to spare her new and very
untried attendant. But in Fanny’s _carte du jour_ there is decidedly an
“intolerable deal” of Schwellenberg. Six mortal hours of daily
intercourse with this estimable lady, in addition to collaborating with
her in what Fanny calls “the irksome and quick-returning labours” of the
royal toilette, must have been a cruel penance, only made bearable by
Mrs. Schwellenberg’s frequent absences on sick leave. Had Mrs.
Schwellenberg been a Mrs. Delany, it would not have mattered so much.
But she was simply a peevish old person of uncertain temper and impaired
health, swaddled in the buckram of backstairs etiquette, captious,
arrogant, ignorant, and accustomed—like Mrs. Slipslop—to console
herself for her servility to her betters by her rudeness to those
beneath her. She was blindly devoted to the Royal Family; but of taste
and education she had nothing. Novels and romances she professed to
regard as “what you call stuff”;[59] and the only book she was known to
favour was Josephus, which was “quoted to solve all difficulties.” Her
chief enthusiasm was for a pair of pet frogs which croaked when she
tapped her snuff-box. “When I only go so . . . knock, knock, knock, they
croak all what I please,” she would cry in an ecstasy; and she never
wearied of dilating upon their “endearing little qualities” and their
healthy appetite for the live flies caught for them by M. de Luc.
Although she had been a quarter of a century in England, she still spoke
a broken jargon, irresistible to the mimic. She was without
conversational gifts, yet she could not endure a moment’s silence; she
was without resources or power of attraction, yet she was furious at the
least suspicion of neglect. Moreover, she seems to have lived in
perpetual apprehension of obscure impending spasms, which could only be
dissipated by cards. And Fanny hated cards. In moments of irritation,
the old lady was capable of the meanest petty tyrannies; in her hours of
ease, her amiability to her “good Miss Bernar” was as profuse as it was
unpalatable. Several of her objectionable acts are narrated in the
_Diary_; but it is needless to recall them; and the situation was
obviously complicated by a perhaps intelligible jealousy on the part of
the elder woman. Years afterwards, when the _Diary_ was first published,
the Duke of Sussex thought that its writer was “rather hard on poor old
Schwellenberg”; and it is not impossible that Miss Burney may have
somewhat heightened her delineation of a character which afforded so
many inviting aspects of attack. Yet, though “Cerbera” or “La
Présidente”—as Fanny calls her—may not have been as black as she is
painted, it would be hopeless to attempt to decorate her with wings; and
there can be little doubt that the happiest hours of the Junior Keeper
were those when her untuneable colleague was safely laid up in London or
Weymouth with the gout.
Fortunately for Miss Burney all her associates were not of the
Schwellenberg type. Miss Planta, English teacher to the two elder
Princesses; Miss Goldsworthy (familiarly “Goully”), the sub-governess;
Mme. la Fite, who read French to the Queen; and Mme. de Luc, the wife of
the fly-catcher, were all amiable enough. And several of the successive
Equerries in Waiting, if not actually qualified to regale Mrs.
Haggerdorn’s successor with that “celestial colloquy sublime,” to which
Lord Macaulay makes reference, were at least English gentlemen, with
pleasant idiosyncrasies of their own, not wholly unworthy of study.
There was Miss Goldsworthy’s brother, Colonel Philip Goldsworthy, a wag
in his way, who relates how the King ineffectually endeavoured to make
him carouse on barley water after a hard day’s hunting; and who gave a
dismally picturesque account of winter service in the ill-constructed
Queen’s Lodge, where there must have been as many distinct and several
draughts as there are smells in the City of Cologne. There is the
“Colonel Welbred” of the record,—Colonel Fulke Greville,—quiet, polite
and undemonstrative; there is Colonel Manners, a good-humoured, careless
rattle, who says whatever comes into his head, and thinks he might
manage to sing the 104th Psalm if he could only keep from running into
“God Save the King”; there is the “Jessamy Bride’s” handsome husband,
Colonel Gwyn; there is Major Price; there is the Queen’s Vice
Chamberlain, the Hon. Stephen Digby (“Colonel Fairly”), grave,
scrupulous, diffident, gentle, sentimental, and “assiduously attentive
in his manners.” He is at present married to Lord Ilchester’s daughter,
by whom he has four children; but is soon to be a widower. Lastly,
absorbing many pages of the record, is “Mr. Turbulent,” otherwise the
Rev. Charles de Guiffardière or Giffardier, the Queen’s French reader, a
_farceur_ of the first order, who, apparently to indemnify himself for
the penitential monotony of his past relations with Mrs. Haggerdorn,—a
molluscous personage whom he contemptuously styles “the
Oyster,”—indulges Miss Burney with the most fantastic disquisitions,
flights of rodomontade and mock adoration. Macaulay roundly writes this
gentleman down “half witted,” which is too sweeping; while the
charitable Croker opines that he was laughing at Fanny. Miss Burney’s
own later verdict upon “Mr. Turbulent” is, that he was “here and there a
little eccentric, but, in the main, merely good-humoured and
high-spirited.”[60]
In thus bringing some of the personages of the _Diary_ before the
reader, it has naturally been necessary to anticipate. The narrative of
Miss Burney’s life at Court is excessively minute; and the chronicle,
interesting as it may be in its place, does not always concern what is
the prime object of this volume,—the story of her life. One of the
first things, for instance, which she has to set down—indeed it
happened before she had been three weeks in office—is mad Peg
Nicholson’s attempt on the King’s life, an event which, of course,
belongs to history. But Miss Burney’s pages add to the story some of
those vivid minor details which the daughter of Mnemosyne forgets. She
shows us the admirable composure of King George amid his terrified and
tearful household; she shows him cheerfully insisting on the usual
terrace walk with a single equerry,—on the usual evening concert. But
“nothing was listened to,”—says Miss Burney of this latter,—“scarce a
word was spoken; the Princesses wept continually; the Queen, still more
deeply struck, could only, from time to time, hold out her hand to the
King, and say ‘I have you yet.’” To this we may oppose another and more
smiling passage. A few days later came the birthday of the little
Princess Amelia; and Fanny’s account gives a good idea of one of the
popular “terracings” above referred to. “It was really a mighty pretty
procession,” she says. “The little Princess, just turned of three years
old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white
gloves, and a fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted in the
parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed:
for all the terracers stand up against the walls to make a clear passage
for the Royal Family, the moment they come in sight.” Then followed the
pleased King and Queen with the remainder of the Princesses,—the
Princess Royal, the Princesses Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia, and
their attendants; then, at a little distance, Major Price, the Equerry
in Waiting, bringing up the rear to keep off the crowd.
Miss Burney was on the terrace with Mrs. Delany, who had been carried in
her chair to the foot of the steps. At sight of Fanny’s companion, “the
King instantly stopped to speak to her. The Queen, of course, and the
little Princess, and all the rest, stood still, in their ranks. They
talked a good while with the sweet old lady, during which time the King
once or twice addressed himself to me. I caught the Queen’s eye, and saw
in it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure to see me of
the party. The little Princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is
very fond, and behaved like a little angel to her: she then, with a look
of enquiry and recollection, slowly, of her own accord, came behind Mrs.
Delany to look at me. ‘I am afraid,’ said I, in a whisper, and stooping
down, ‘your Royal Highness does not remember me?’ What think you was her
answer? An arch little smile, and a nearer approach, with her lips
pouted out to kiss me. I could not resist so innocent an invitation; but
the moment I had accepted it I was half afraid it might seem, in so
public a place, an improper liberty; however, there was no help for it.
She then took my fan, and having looked at it on both sides, gravely
returned it to me, saying, ‘O, a brown fan!’ The King and Queen then bid
her curtsey to Mrs. Delany, which she did most gracefully, and they all
moved on; each of the Princesses speaking to Mrs. Delany as they passed,
and condescending to curtsey to her companion.”
One of the next things related is a royal visit to Nuneham (Lord
Harcourt’s), which included excursions to Oxford and Blenheim. Miss
Burney was one of the party, but—to use a phrase of Horace Walpole—did
not greatly feel the joy of it, owing to the many discomforts and
fatigues arising out of the defective arrangements which had been made
for the Royal Suite. Mrs. Schwellenberg had assured her that she should
“appear for nobody,” and the assurance was very literally carried out.
It was in connection with this Nuneham trip that occurred the incident
of the gown which has so much exercised some of Fanny’s biographers.
Just before the visit took place, Mrs. Schwellenberg informed “Miss
Bernar,” with much patronising importance, that she was to have a gown,
as the Queen said she was not rich. Fanny protested that [like Dogberry]
she had two gowns, and did not need another. “Miss Bernar,” said the
scandalised old lady, “I tell you once, when the Queen will give you a
gown, you must be humble, thankful, when [even if] you are Duchess of
Ancaster,”—_i.e._ Mistress of the Robes. Further, she was not to be
allowed to thank the Queen herself. “When I give you the gown,” added
Mrs. Schwellenberg, “I will tell you when you may make your
curtsey”—and then for the time the disagreeable conversation stopped.
It does not appear that Fanny got her gown in time for Nuneham, as she
went in a Chambéry gauze of her own. But it is an error to say—as Lord
Macaulay does—that Queen Charlotte’s promise was “never performed,” for
a few days later, in September, we find her wearing her “memorable
present-gown” in honour of the birthday of the Princess Royal. It was “a
lilac tabby,” we are told; and the King professed to admire it greatly,
calling out that “Emily [_i.e._ the Princess Amelia] should see Miss
Burney’s gown now, and she would think her fine enough.” But from a
subsequent entry, it appears that it had been given through Mrs.
Schwellenberg, for Miss Burney refers to the far greater pleasure that
she received from a gift of violets presented to her by the Queen
herself. Lord Macaulay, in his unwillingness to believe that Miss Burney
obtained any “extraordinary benefactions” from Their Majesties, also
overlooked the fact that, both in 1787, and 1788, Miss Burney received
(though always through Mrs. Schwellenberg) New Year’s presents from the
Queen. On the first occasion it was “a complete set of very beautiful
white and gold china for tea, and a coffee-pot, tea-pot, cream-jug, and
milk-jug of silver, in forms remarkably pretty.” In 1788 it was a gift
of plate.[61]
Life at Court, whether at Kew, Windsor, or London, was not riotously
eventful, and it has often been described. The usual humdrum routine
repeated itself, diversified only by concerts, birthdays, and change of
equerries. During much of the latter part of 1786, Mrs. Schwellenberg
was ill, and Fanny reigned in her stead over the Windsor tea-table.
Early in 1787, the Court went to London, taking up its abode at St.
James’s Palace. During this time, Miss Burney also was occasionally ill,
and went home for change. Once she visited Drury Lane with the Royal
Family; and was startled by a complimentary reference to herself in the
Epilogue to Holcroft’s _Seduction_—“a very clever piece,”—she
says,—“but containing a dreadful picture of vice and dissipation in
high life.” The reference was to “sweet _Cecilia_,”—
“Whose every passion yields to Reason’s laws,”[62]—
and seems to have delighted her Royal Master and Mistress as much as—we
are assured—it embarrassed and disconcerted herself. “I took a peep at
you!” said the kind King later,—“I could not help that. I wanted to see
how you looked when your father first discovered your writing—and now I
think I know!” Not very long subsequently, she had a compliment on the
subject of _Cecilia_ from another quarter. Mrs. Siddons, who was staying
in the neighbourhood of Windsor, was ordered to the Lodge to read a
play; and Fanny was requested by the Queen to receive her. Almost the
first thing the other Queen—the stage Queen—said to Miss Burney was,
that “there was no part she had ever so much wished to act as that of
Cecilia.” Notwithstanding this most conciliatory speech, Mrs.
Siddons—stately and beautiful as she was—does not appear to have
impressed _Cecilia’s_ author. “I found her”—says Fanny—“the Heroine of
a Tragedy,—sublime, elevated, and solemn. In face and person, truly
noble and commanding; in manners, quiet and stiff; in voice, deep and
dragging; and in conversation, formal, sententious, calm and dry. I
expected her to have been all that is interesting; the delicacy and
sweetness with which she seizes every opportunity to strike and to
captivate upon the stage had persuaded me that her mind was formed with
that peculiar susceptibility which, in different modes, must give equal
powers to attract and to delight in common life. But I was very much
mistaken.” The play Mrs. Siddons read was Vanbrugh and Cibber’s
_Provoked Husband_. As Fanny did not hear it, we have no account of its
effect. But it would be interesting to know whether the entire absence
of applause on these occasions, which so paralysed the mercurial
Garrick, had the same effect on the majestic Mrs. Siddons.
In this way, what Fanny calls the “dead and tame life I now lead,”—of
which the above was one of the rare variations,—went on as before,
although there are signs in her Journal now and then, that it was
sometimes less irksome to her. Indeed, on one occasion she goes so far
as to write that she has now thoroughly formed her mind to her
situation. “I even think”—she adds—“I now should do ill to change it;
for though my content with it has been factitious, I believe it, in the
main, suited to save me from more disturbance than it gives me.” With
ampler space, it would be easy to fill a considerable number of pages by
the vagaries of “Mr. Turbulent,” the divers humours of the equerries,
and the whims of Mrs. Schwellenberg, who vacillates between endeavouring
to kill her colleague by making her sit in a draught of a carriage
window, and to conciliate her by the premature legacy of a sedan chair.
But in the limits assigned to this chapter we can only hope to chronicle
the more important events.
One of these was the trial of Warren Hastings, which began in February,
1788, in Westminster Hall. The Queen gave Fanny two tickets for the box
of the Grand Chamberlain (Sir Peter Burrell), where she was just above
the prisoner, whose pale and harassed face she could see distinctly with
her glass when he looked up. Concerning the “high crimes and
misdemeanours” alleged against him, she knew nothing, regarding the
whole matter “as a party affair.” But her sympathies, like those of the
Royal Household, were provisionally with Hastings, whom she had met two
years earlier at the Cambridges at Twickenham, and had
liked,—circumstances which she found somewhat embarrassing when
presently she saw her other friend, Burke, with knit brows and scroll in
hand, making portentous entry at the head of the Committee for the
Prosecution. Great part of the first day’s proceedings was taken up by
the interminably tedious over-reading of the charges; but Mr. Windham,
one of the Committee, and her sister Charlotte’s neighbour in
Norfolk,[63] speedily asked to be presented to her; and, from time to
time, visited the Grand Chamberlain’s box, pointing out the different
notabilities,—among the rest, Hastings’ arch-enemy, Philip Francis. Mr.
Windham, who was a man of the world and a brilliant talker, made himself
extremely agreeable, though he was probably not so convincingly
impressed by Miss Burney’s instinctive conviction of the innocence of
the late Governor General of Bengal as she imagined. A little later, she
went again to Westminster Hall to hear Burke, her companion upon this
occasion being her brother James. It was the second day of Burke’s
speech,—the first she had not heard. What she did hear surpassed her
expectations; and what she says is confirmed by other auditors of that
splendid oratory. She notes its inequality,—its digressions. But, she
goes on—not without a touch of the Johnsonian “triptology”—“when he
narrated, he was easy, flowing and natural; when he declaimed,
energetic, warm and brilliant. The sentiments he interspersed were as
nobly conceived as they were highly coloured; his satire had a poignancy
of wit that made it as entertaining as it was penetrating; his allusions
and quotations, as far as they were English and within my reach, were
apt and ingenious; and the wild and sudden flights of his fancy,
bursting forth from his creative imagination in language fluent,
forcible, and varied, had a charm for my ear and my attention wholly new
and perfectly irresistible.” In fact, she continues, “the whirlwind of
his eloquence nearly drew me into its vortex.” Upon a third occasion,
she heard Charles Fox raging for five hours at the Lords, who, in the
opinion of the Committee, were favouring the accused. But Fanny thought
Fox’s face looked hard and callous, and that Burke’s method of speaking
was more gentleman-like, scholar-like, and fraught with true genius than
that of Fox. On each of these visits, it should be added, she had much
talk with Mr. Windham, who, for further recommendation, had been one of
Johnson’s devotees; and she made careful report of her impressions to
Queen Charlotte.
Another person to whom her accounts of the first scenes of the Great
Trial had been specially welcome was now soon to be lost to her. On the
15th of April, 1788, not long after the above events, died Mrs. Delany.
Her death was a serious blow to Fanny, who had resorted to her freely
for sympathy when things went wrong either with the Senior Keeper, or in
the “nice conduct” of the Equerries’ tea-table. In the July following,
the King, whose health had hitherto been of the best, showed the first
indications of that malady which was afterwards to be of so serious a
character. As a consequence, it was decided that, in company with the
Queen and the three elder Princesses, he should go to Cheltenham to
drink the waters,—carrying with him the Royal household in concentrated
form. Fanny and Miss Planta were of the party; Colonel Gwyn was the
Equerry in Waiting; and Colonel Digby attended in his capacity of
Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain. They were domiciled at Fauconberg Hall (Bay’s
Hill Lodge), which was charmingly situated, but ridiculously restricted
in point of accommodation. At Cheltenham, King George repeated his usual
simple life, promenading daily in the Walks to the delight of the
lieges; and from time to time making flying visits in the neighbourhood
from which Miss Planta and Miss Burney were, of necessity, excluded. One
result of these proceedings was to throw Miss Burney very much into the
society of Colonel Digby, now a recently bereft and melancholy widower
with a young family. The Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain was ten years older
than Miss Burney; and rumour was already connecting his name with that
of his eventual second wife, Miss Charlotte Gunning, a pretty Maid of
Honour, who figures in the _Diary_ as “Miss Fuzelier,” and was the
eldest daughter of a baronet. Meanwhile, in the contracted limits of
Bay’s Hill Lodge, both Colonel Digby and Miss Burney—like
fellow-sufferers upon a raft—seem to have discovered that they had much
in common. They exchanged ideas upon many subjects, staidly discussing
religion and the affections, and particularly the second volume of a
work with the “injudicious” title of _Original Love Letters_.[64] Fanny
was admittedly much “flattered” by the Colonel’s attraction to her
little parlour; and in her _Diary_ the record of this pleasant oasis in
her pilgrimage has all the aspect of a decorous sentimental idyll.
Unhappily, practical confirmation of the doleful Colonel’s standing
topic—“the assured misery of all stations and all seasons in this vain
and restless world”—arrived suddenly with a fit of the gout. This
effectually put a stop to any further study of Akenside’s _Odes_ and
Falconer’s _Shipwreck_; and on the 8th of August Colonel Digby was
forced to obtain sick leave, and departed. Almost immediately
afterwards, and not entirely without Fanny’s good offices,—he was
appointed to the vacant Mastership of St. Catherine’s Hospital, a
sinecure in the Queen’s gift. With this, what Fanny styles, in a double
sense, “the Cheltenham episode” drew to an end; and the Royal Household
went back to the “set, gray life” of old. To make matters worse, before
a few weeks were over, the King was again indisposed. In October those
about him were vaguely uneasy; and in the night of the 20th, he was
alarmingly ill. This attack however passed off; and on the 25th the
Court moved from Kew to Windsor. On that day Miss Burney had “a sort of
conference” with the King, which she explains to mean that she “was the
object to whom he spoke.” Though he was as gracious and kind as usual,
she was shocked at the hoarseness, volubility, and even vehemence of his
speech. The next day she met him again in the passage from the Queen’s
room. “He stopped me, and conversed upon his health near half an hour,
still with that extreme quickness of speech and manner that belongs to
fever; and he hardly sleeps, he tells me, one minute all night; indeed,
if he recovers not his rest, a most delirious fever seems to threaten
him. He is all agitation, all emotion, yet all benevolence and goodness,
even to a degree that makes it touching to hear him speak. He assures
everybody of his health; he seems only fearful to give uneasiness to
others, yet certainly he is better than last night. Nobody speaks of his
illness, nor what they think of it.”
For the next few days, notwithstanding that the King seemed sometimes
better than at other times, he grew steadily worse. He became
appreciably weaker; he walked like a gouty man; he had talked away all
his voice, and his hoarseness was pitiful to hear. Nevertheless he was
as amiable as ever:—“he seemed to have no anxiety but to set the Queen
at rest, and no wish but to quiet and give pleasure to all around him.”
In the meantime the poor Queen is overcome with nameless apprehension;
walks up and down the room without uttering a word, shaking her head in
manifest distress and irresolution. So matters wear on until the 3rd
November when Dr. Heberden is called in, “for counsel [it is announced],
not that His Majesty is worse.” Yet on the following day the Queen is in
deeper distress than before; the King is in a state almost
incomprehensible; and all the household is uneasy and alarmed. On the
5th, His Majesty goes out for an airing with the Princess Royal; and the
Prince of Wales arrives from Brighton. Then between six and seven, an
inexplicable stillness comes upon the Upper Lodge, as if something had
happened. No one stirs; no one speaks. The evening concert is stopped.
The equerries are gloomy and uncommunicative, though it is vaguely
understood that the King is much worse, and that the Queen herself has
been taken ill. At last Miss Burney learns the truth from the
Vice-Chamberlain. At dinner His Majesty had broken into a positive fit
of delirium, and the Queen had been in violent hysterics. “All the
Princesses were in misery, and the Prince of Wales had burst into
tears.[65] No one knew what was to follow—no one could conjecture the
event.”
What did follow has been told and retold, and much of it belongs to
history. But Miss Burney’s _Diary_ reveals the domestic details of the
story as it is not recorded in the periods of the politician, or in the
professional evidence of the doctors She depicts the wearing suspense of
the household, the confusion and clash of conjectures, the grief and
agony of the Queen, the waiting rooms and passages filled with silent
pages and attendants, the thick, depressing November fog, the hoarse
voice of the King, talking, talking, talking incessantly,—but still
breathing nothing but consideration for those about him.[66] Then comes,
by order of the physicians, to whom a third has now been added, the
separation of the wife and husband. This was on the 6th. On the morning
of the next day Miss Burney hears the Prince of Wales tell the Queen
what had happened the night before. The King had got up, and insisted
upon going into the next room, which to his amazement, he found crowded
with members of the household ranged in dead silence around it on chairs
and sofas. He inquired what they did there, spoke fondly of his
favourite son, the Duke of York (then present, but not seen) and finally
penned Sir George Baker [the Queen’s physician] into a corner, calling
him an old woman, who did not understand his complaint, which was only
nervous. During all this, no one dared approach him. At last Colonel
Digby (who, in his own family, had some experience of demented persons)
took him by the arm, and begged him to go back to bed. The King refused,
and asked him who he was. “I am Colonel Digby, Sir”—he answered—“and
your Majesty has been very good to me often, and now I am going to be
very good to you, for you must come to bed, Sir, it is necessary to your
life.” The King was so surprised that he let himself be drawn away like
a child.
In the fortnight that followed, things passed from bad to worse for the
dwellers in the Upper Lodge. To add to the general disquiet and
apprehension, Mrs. Schwellenberg arrived from Weymouth “all spasm and
horror.” Then, by order of the Prince of Wales, intercourse with the
outer world was practically suspended. As the King’s condition did not
alter, the physicians told Mr. Pitt plainly that his ailment was lunacy;
and on the 28th it was decided that he should be transferred to Kew, a
place he detested, but where it was possible for him to take exercise
without observation. Accordingly, on that day, the Queen and Princesses
made precipitate and miserable exodus to Kew, amid the tears of the
sorrowing household,—even the sentinels crying bitterly as they looked
on. Then came the difficult task of persuading the King to follow, which
he eventually did, being induced thereto by the promise that he should
see the Queen,—a promise which was not kept, with the result that the
night which ensued was one of the most violently bad of any yet passed.
And so, “in all its dark colours, dark as its darkest prognostics,”
began the “Kew campaign” from which, as usual, Mrs. Schwellenberg was
not absent.
To recapitulate the discomforts of the cold and carpetless building at
Kew, never intended for a winter residence, and lacking sadly both in
space and accommodation, is here needless. But, notwithstanding Miss
Burney’s “darkest prognostics,” a brighter day was happily dawning. New
doctors were added to the old; and the new were better. Dr. Francis
Willis and his son, both of whom had special experience in mental
disease, henceforth, and much to the satisfaction of the household, took
practical charge of the case. Honest, open, cheerful and high-minded,
their moral influence over their patient, in combination with a gentler
and more humane method of treatment, was not slow to produce its effect.
The King began to walk regularly in the gardens; and hopes of his
recovery fitfully revived. But while his health vacillated, the world
outside was agitating for a Regency. The Willises—of whom there were
now three—persevered no less with their regimen. And so,—omitting many
immaterial things,—we come to the 2nd February, a day memorable in
Fanny’s annals. For the sake of her health, she had been advised to walk
daily either at Richmond or at Kew, according to the report she received
of the King’s whereabouts. On this particular day, she had been told
that His Majesty would walk in Richmond Park, and she therefore directed
her steps to Kew Gardens. It had been arranged that if, on any occasion,
the King chanced to see her, she was to be allowed to run off. By some
misapprehension, he _was_ in the Gardens, and at once detected her
presence. What was worse, she soon heard him hurrying after her, calling
hoarsely “Miss Burney! Miss Burney!” Terrified beyond measure, she
continued to run until she was peremptorily bidden to stop by the
Willises, as His Majesty was doing himself harm. “When they were within
a few yards of me,” she writes, “the King called out, ‘Why did you run
away?’” Making a violent effort to regain her composure, she turned to
meet him, when to her astonishment, the poor invalid, with “all his
wonted benignity,” despite the wildness still in his eyes, put both his
hands round her shoulders, and kissed her on the cheek, going on to
exhibit such delight at seeing her again, that she straightway lost all
her fear. A long, disconnected conversation ensued. He rallied her about
Mrs. Schwellenberg. She was not to mind: he (King George) was her
friend. He talked about the pages; about her father; about Handel, some
passages of whose Oratorios he tried to sing—hoarsely. He spoke also,
with tears in his eyes, of Mrs. Delany. At length, after repeated
injunctions on the part of his medical attendants, he let her go—his
last words being to reassure her upon the subject of Mrs. Schwellenberg.
All this—some of the Schwellenberg part excepted—Fanny recounted
faithfully to the Queen on her return.
Not long after, the King’s state began to amend, greatly to the dismay
of the advocates of the Regency Bill. Before that measure could be read
a third time, he was almost himself again; and at the end of February
was able personally to assure Miss Burney of his convalescent condition.
She found him in the Queen’s dressing room, where he had waited on
purpose to see her. “I am quite well now”—he said; “I was nearly so
when I saw you before—but I could overtake you better now.” Ten days
later, at the time of the general rejoicing, when the Queen had had a
special transparency painted for Kew Palace by her favourite Biagio
Rebecca, the little Princess Amelia led her father to the front window
to see the illuminations, dropping first upon her knees with a copy of
congratulatory verses, which had been expressly composed for the
occasion by the Junior Keeper of Robes. Miss Burney was as “ill at these
numbers” as most manufacturers of metrical loyalty; but her postscript
“The little bearer begs a kiss
From dear Papa, for bringing this”—
was naturally not spoken in vain. On the next day the King, reinstated
in all his dignities, received, in person, the Address of the Lords and
Commons upon his restoration to health.
Over the further progress of that restoration we may pass rapidly. By
this date, March 11th, 1789, Miss Burney had been more than two years
and a half in the Queen’s service, and her stay was to be prolonged for
two years more. But it is needless to pursue its story with equal
detail. After the Royal Family quitted Kew, they went to Weymouth, their
progress to that watering-place being one continued scene of loyal and
very genuine rejoicing. At Weymouth, where they were domiciled in
Gloucester House, Miss Burney renewed her acquaintance with Mrs.
Siddons, whom she saw as Rosalind, but considered “too large for that
shepherd’s dress,” and as Lady Townly in the _Provoked Husband_ which
she had read at Windsor. Fanny thought her gaiety was only gravity
disguised, and though she praises her as Cibber’s heroine, evidently
preferred the “great Sarah” of the Georgian Era in tragedy. She also,
and for the first time, beheld Mr. Pitt; but did not admire his
appearance, which she affirms was neither noble nor expressive. She
spent much of her time with the beautiful “Jessamy Bride,” Mrs. Gwyn;
and among other places, visited the Plymouth Dockyard, describing the
forging of an anchor there with something of that later fine writing
which was so effectually to ruin her style. “While we were seeing the
anchor business, which seemed performed by Vulcanic demons, so black
they looked, so savage was their howl in striking the red-hot iron, and
so coarse and slight their attire”—is quite in the perverse manner of
the coming _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_. In returning from Weymouth, the
Royal party stopped at Longleat, which gives her an opportunity of
moralising,—in Bishop Ken’s bed-room,—upon the cruelty of Longleat’s
former tenant, “Granville the polite,” in forcing her old friend Mrs.
Delany, to marry _en premières noces_, that extremely undesirable
suitor, Mr. Pendarves of Roscrow. And so, by Tottenham Park, where the
Earl of Aylesbury had put up a new bed for the King and Queen which cost
him £900, they got back to Windsor in September. By this time the King
had completely lost all traces of his indisposition.
Once again at Windsor, the Court sank back into its old jog-trot tedium,
and with it sank Fanny’s heart. There was now no Mrs. Delany to
sympathise when Schwellenbergism reached a more acute stage than usual;
and there was shortly to be no Colonel Digby with whom to deplore the
vicissitudes of a vale of tears, or to discuss, “in his genteel
roundabout way,” the improving _Night Thoughts_ of Dr. Young. Colonel
Digby, who, from time to time, had renewed at Windsor the old readings,
tea-drinkings, and semi-confidential conversations, had not taken a very
prominent part in the Weymouth expedition. But he had apparently been
permitting himself other distractions; and about November his connection
with the Court was interrupted by his approaching marriage to Miss
Gunning, with whom—and even by the King during his insanity—his name,
as we have said, had already been associated. There is no doubt that
Miss Burney had been impressed by him, if only as the most refined and
amiable of her colleagues; and there can also be no doubt that on his
part he must have found her sympathy and companionship especially
grateful in his newly bereaved condition. However this may be—and Miss
Burney could not have behaved better if she had been Cecilia
herself—this last event manifestly added its quota to the growing
burden of her life; and it was not in her nature to conceal her
discomforts, either mental or physical. Her health declined visibly; the
Schwellenberg card-table grew more wearisome than ever; and her
condition began to cause anxiety to her friends. At last she took
advantage of an accident to speak frankly to her father. She told him
plainly that, kind and considerate as were the King and Queen, the
situation had grown insupportable; and that she “could never, in any
part of the live-long day, command liberty, or social intercourse, or
repose.”[67] Dr. Burney himself had for some time not been wholly happy
about her position; and he of course opened his arms to her return. But
he was not rich, and he was manifestly so much upset at the thought of
her retirement that, for the moment, the matter was allowed to drop.
Meanwhile the months once more rolled on monotonously. To divert her
thoughts, she took up a tragedy which she had begun during the King’s
illness; and the rumour that she had again her pen in hand—upon a
satirical novel, as it was supposed—sent a flutter of apprehension
through the Windsor dove-cotes. Her friends continued to carry dismal
accounts to London of her failing condition, and loudly exclaimed
against Dr. Burney’s irresolution. Walpole asked whether her talents
were given to be buried in obscurity. Windham, whom she saw occasionally
during the further dilatory progress of the Hastings trial, threatened
to set the Literary Club on her father, who was a member of that
community. Busybody Boswell—another member—also interested himself
(not perhaps without ulterior views of his own as regards her Johnson
material) in her behalf. “We shall address Dr. Burney in a body,” he
said; and then he asked her to give him some of Dr. Johnson’s “choice
little notes,”—a request she with difficulty evaded. At last a joint
Memorial was drawn up by Dr. Burney and his daughter, praying that she
might be permitted to resign, and it was arranged to put it forward on
the most favourable opportunity. But the opportunity did not arise, and
still time went on. She grew worse, having constantly, in the course of
the obnoxious card parties, to crawl to her room for hartshorn and a few
moments of rest. By and by the presentation of the memorial grew
imperative. To the horror of Mrs. Schwellenberg, for whom such a
proceeding was sheer self-destruction, it was hesitatingly handed in.
The Queen, to whom it is difficult to believe that the matter was wholly
unexpected, was visibly surprised and disturbed. She, however, expressed
the hope that a long holiday might set Miss Burney right. But with this
Miss Burney’s father—now thoroughly alive to the exigencies of the
case,—could not agree; and to Her Majesty’s disappointment, and the
unconcealed disgust of Mrs. Schwellenberg, it was decided she must go.
When her departure was definitely settled, a Martin’s summer seems to
have followed, in which even “Cerbera” softened somewhat—admitting, in
her favourite phrase, that “The Bernan bin reely agribble.” Fanny had a
short illness, which helped to strengthen her case; and then, in July,
1791, five years after she had entered the Upper Lodge, she quitted the
Court for ever, being too much affected to bid her royal Master a final
farewell.
Much ink has been expended on that portion of Fanny Burney’s career
which forms the subject of this chapter. Exceptionally clever and gifted
she was, without doubt; but with all her abilities, it must be admitted
that, neither by her antecedents nor her experiences, was she suited for
the post she was called upon to fill. The merely mechanical part of it
she might perhaps have acquired,—though it seems she never did.
Etiquette and formality she heartily detested; she was unmethodical; she
was negligent in her dress; she was not always (in the presentation of
petitions and the like) entirely judicious and tactful. Nevertheless,
there is nothing to show that, save for the death of Mrs. Delany, the
terrible tension of the King’s illness, the defection of Colonel Digby,
and, above all, the unrelieved infliction of Mrs. Schwellenberg’s
company and caprices,—the “one flaw” in her lot, she calls it,—she
might not gradually have grown reconciled to her court life. If she were
not (and it was no shame to her!) as good a Queen’s Dresser as Mrs.
Haggerdorn, she was certainly—although, perhaps from her weak voice and
short sight, she practically failed as a reader—an infinitely better
“Confidential Companion.” The “Oyster” would have been utterly
incompetent to report the Hastings trial, or to scribble a royal copy of
verses to the Master of the Horse, or to delight the Queen by a
circumstantial and picturesque account of the interview with the King in
the gardens at Kew. And whatever Miss Burney’s dislike may have been to
one or two of her colleagues, her own personal good qualities and
intellectual capacity were always cordially recognised by all the Royal
Family.[68] As to the enforced suspension of her literary labours, not
only is that a grievance which she herself never felt or advanced; but
when she came to Windsor in 1786, she had absolutely written nothing for
four years. Nor were there any indications that she was likely to write
anything. Her most stimulating friend and critic, “Daddy” Crisp, was
dead; and she professed, or affected to profess (like a greater writer
after _The Newcomes_),[69] that her vein had run dry with her latest
book. Moreover, we now know what her first critics did not know, namely,
that so far from receiving two thousand pounds for _Cecilia_, she had
only—after more than a year’s hard work—received two hundred and fifty
pounds. The deserts of genius are not easily assessed; but looking to
all the circumstances, those who, in this particular instance, regarded
two hundred a year for life, with accommodation and other advantages, as
an offer worth considering by a diffident and delicate woman of four and
thirty, whose entire gains by two popular novels, making eight volumes,
had not exceeded two hundred and eighty pounds—can scarcely be said to
have been wholly unwise in their generation. That there would be
compensating drawbacks of tedium and restraint, they no doubt expected;
but that the accidents of the employment would make the post untenable,
was a result they could not possibly foresee.
-----
[58] There is a large oval print by James Fittler, after George
Robertson, dated 28th July, 1783, showing the Queen’s Lodge from the
South Terrace, on which the Royal Party are taking their evening
promenade. In the background, to the left, at the garden end, the Lower
Lodge is to be distinguished. Both Lodges were pulled down in 1823; and
their site is now partly occupied by the Royal Stables.
[59] In this she probably only slavishly copied her royal Mistress, who
(says Miss Burney) “has a settled aversion to almost all novels, and
something very near it to almost all novel-writers” (_Diary and
Letters_, 1892, ii. 178).
[60] He was, at all events, clever enough to write, in 1798, a _Cours
Élémentaire d’Histoire Ancienne_, a copy of which is exhibited at Kew.
It is dedicated to Queen Charlotte, and was intended for the use of the
Princesses. On the title-page the author is described as Minister of the
King’s French Chapel [in the Middle Court of St. James’s Palace], and
Prebendary of Salisbury. He was a married man.
[61] _Diary and Letters_, 1892, ii. 189, 213, 277, 439. Several writers
have pointed out this unaccountable lapse in the famous _Edinburgh_
essay on Madame D’Arblay. It may be added that another gift from the
Queen, a gold watch set with pearls, is in the possession of Mrs.
Chappel of East Orchard, Shaftesbury.
[62] Miss Burney probably quoted from memory, as the couplet in the
Epilogue to the printed play runs as follows:—
“And oft let soft _Cecilia_ win your praise;
While Reason guides the clue, in Fancy’s maze.”
[63] Charlotte Burney was by this time married to Clement Francis, a
surgeon practising at Aylsham, about five miles from Windham’s seat at
Felbrigge. Mrs. Ellis, quoting from “a family account,” says “Clement
Francis had been Secretary to Warren Hastings in India, and while there
he read, and was so charmed with _Evelina_, that he was seized with a
desire to make the authoress his wife, and, with that intent, came home
from India and obtained an introduction to Dr. Burney and his family,
but the result was that he married the younger sister—Charlotte”
(_Early Diary_, 1889, ii. 273 n.).
[64] This was by the copious William Combe, author of _Dr. Syntax_. The
full title is—_Original Love Letters, between a Lady of Quality and a
Person of Inferior Condition_, Dublin, 1794, two vols.
[65] Not of pity, but of fear. According to his own after-account at
Lord Jersey’s table, the King, under some sudden impatience of control,
had seized him by the collar, and thrust him violently against the wall.
[66] “Upon one occasion he is said to have talked unceasingly for
sixteen hours” (_Auckland Correspondence_, ii. 244, quoted in Jesse’s
_Life and Reign of George III._, 1867, iii. 58).
[67] At a later date she puts the matter in a nutshell. “I am
inexpressibly grateful to the Queen, but I burn to be delivered from
Mrs. Schwellenberg.” She argued, and argued justly, that, unless the
desire of further intercourse was reciprocal, she ought only to belong
to Mrs. Schwellenberg officially, and at official hours. But “Cerbera”
was an old and faithful servant of the Royal Family; and it was
obviously difficult to explain the state of affairs to Her Majesty, one
of whose objects moreover had been to give Mrs. Schwellenberg a pleasant
companion in her old age.
[68] This appreciation she never lost. She speaks of herself later as
“having resigned royal service without resigning royal favour” (_Diary
and Letters_, 1892, iv. 7).
[69] “I have exhausted all the types of character with which I am
familiar”—Thackeray told the Rev. Whitwell Elwin in 1856. “I can’t jump
further than I did in _The Newcomes_” (_Some XVIII^{th} Century Men of
Letters_, 1903, i. 156).