head as I go along."
"But they're quite as interesting as the things that do happen to real
people," argued the devoted Susan. "More interesting, I think. I don't
know any real person who interests me as much as Caroline in Fanny's
story."
Mrs. Burney smiled. She had no wish to be harsh, but she had very
decided ideas as to what was and what was not proper for young ladies
to do. She was a bustling, sociable person, and she considered that
Fanny was altogether too shy and reserved. She wanted to make her more
like her other sisters, Esther and Charlotte, both of whom were very
popular with the many visitors who came to see the celebrated Dr.
Burney.
"It's for your own good," she said finally. "I shan't tell your father,
but I know he wouldn't approve of your spending your time in this way."
"I know," said Fanny slowly. "I know what people think of a young woman
who writes. I oughtn't to do it, but the temptation was too strong for
me. I'll give it up, mother, and not steal off here by myself. I'll try
to be more the way you and father want me."
"That's the right spirit, Fanny. You know we're all very proud of you
anyway." Stooping down Mrs. Burney kissed her stepdaughter, and then
left the sisters alone.
For some time there was silence while Fanny stared at the big pile of
closely written sheets which lay in front of her and Susan looked at
her sister. Then with a sigh the older girl rose and gathered the
papers in her arms. "Mother is right. It is wrong of me," said she.
"Would you mind, Susan, coming down into the yard with me?"
"What are you going to do, Fanny?" asked her sister in alarm.
"I've made up my mind what's best to be done, and I'm going to do it.
Come down-stairs, please."
Fanny led the way with the papers, and Susan came after her. They went
down the three flights, through a hall, and out into a paved court at
the rear of the house.
"Will you watch them a minute, please?" said Fanny, as she laid the
papers on the bricks.
She went indoors and soon was back again, with some sticks of wood,
some straw, and a lighted taper in her hand. She laid the sticks
together, stuffed some straw in among them, and then placed the pile of
papers on top.
"Oh, Fanny," cried her sister, "you're not going to burn up all the
story? Oh, poor Caroline! Don't do it, Fanny; think how long it took to
write it and how good it is!"
"I must," said Fanny, very decidedly.
"Oh, please, please don't! It's almost like murder. It's a shame,
Fanny, it is, it's a terrible shame!"
"It hurts me most," said Fanny, "but it's the only way to settle
Caroline once for all." With a very grim face she held the taper to the
straw until it caught fire. In a moment a page of the manuscript was
curling up in flames.
"Oh, Fanny, Fanny!" cried Susan, tears coming to her eyes. She looked
beseechingly at her sister, but the latter's purpose was inflexible. A
few minutes more and the papers were all burning brightly.
The two girls stood there until the fire had burnt itself out, and then
turned to each other. Tears stood in Fanny's eyes and also in those of
the sympathetic Susan. "Poor Caroline Evelyn," sighed Fanny, "I'm going
to be ever and ever so lonely without her."
Susan slipped her arm about her sister's waist, and they went indoors
to get ready for supper. The young authoress was very quiet when the
family met at table a little later, and had very little appetite, but
the family were quite used to Fanny's reserve, and none of them thought
anything about it except the faithful Susan, who threw tender
reproachful glances across the table at Fanny from time to time.
The father of these girls, Dr. Charles Burney, was the fashionable
music-master of the day in London. He had made a great success, and had
so many pupils that he had to begin his round of lessons as early as
seven o'clock in the morning, and often was not through with them until
eleven at night. Many a time he dined in a hackney coach on sandwiches
and a glass of sherry and water as he drove from one house to another.
Among his friends were all sorts of people, musicians, actors,
scholars, famous beaux and belles, and as he was most hospitable his
children grew up familiar with many different types of men and women of
the great world of London. The other girls and the boys were like their
father in taking part in all the entertainments that went on, but
Fanny, the second daughter, although she was admitted to be very
bright, was unusually quiet and retiring. Her teacher called her "the
silent, observant Miss Fanny," and that described her well, because she
was always watching the people about her, and remembering their
peculiar tricks of manner and speech.
But she had a mind of her own and could speak up on occasion. When she
was ten years old her father lived in a house on Poland Street, next
door to a wig-maker, who supplied perukes to the judges and lawyers of
London. The children of the wig-maker and the Burney children played
together in a little garden behind the former's house, and one day they
went into the wig-maker's house, and each put on one of the fine wigs
he had for sale. Then they began to play in the garden until one of the
perukes, which was very fine and worth over ten guineas, fell into a
tub of water and lost all its curl. The wig-maker came out, fished out
the peruke, and declared it was entirely ruined. With that he spoke
very angrily to his children, when suddenly the quiet Fanny stepped
forth, and with the manner of an old lady said, "What is the use of
talking so much about an accident? The wig is wet, to be sure, and it
was a very good wig, but words will do no good, because, sir, what's
done can't be undone." The wig-maker listened in great surprise, and
then made Fanny a little bow. "Miss Burney speaks with the wisdom of
ages," he said, and without another word went into the house.
Among all their father's friends the Burney children thought there was
no one quite so amusing as the great actor David Garrick. He would drop
in at all hours of the day, and always playing some new part. Sometimes
he would sit still and listen to Dr. Burney talk on the history of
music, and gradually his face and manner would change until the
children could scarcely believe he was the same man who had entered the
room a short time before. He would seem to become an old crafty man
before their very eyes, or a villain from the slums of London, or a
Spanish grandee for the first time in England. Sometimes he would
appear at the house in disguise and give a new name to the maid and
appear in the dining-room as a stranger to the family. Once he arrived
at the door in an old, ill-fitting wig and shabby clothes and the
servant refused to admit him, taking him for a beggar. "Egad, child,"
he said to the maid, "you don't guess whom you have the happiness to
see! Do you know that I am one of the first geniuses of the age? You
would faint away upon the spot if you could only imagine who I am!" The
maid, very much startled, let him pass, and he shambled into the house,
again pretending to be a beggar. The children were always delighted to
have him come, and Fanny in particular, because she had a talent for
mimicking people herself, and she liked to study him. He often sent
them tickets to see him act at Drury Lane Theatre, and there they saw
their friend play the greatest rôles of the English stage as no actor
had ever played them before.
Fanny's particular friend was a Mr. Samuel Crisp, a curious man who had
once been very popular in London, but had retired to a lonely life in
the country at a place called Chesington Hall. He was very fond of the
Burneys and often had them visit him at his country home. Fanny called
him "her dearest daddy," and loved to walk across the meadows with him,
and tell him of the curious people she had met at her father's house in
town. He understood her better than any one else, and it was to him
that she confided the story of how she had burned the manuscript of her
novel. "It was very hard, Daddy," she said. "I know I oughtn't to want
to keep on scribbling, but somehow I can't help it. I think of so many
things, and I want to make them real, and the only way is to put them
down on paper. People tell me young ladies shouldn't be writing
stories, that it's not genteel, but how can I help myself?"
"You can tell them to me, Fanny, and no one shall ever know you made
them up."
So she unburdened her heart to him, told him of her friend Caroline
Evelyn, the dear child of her brain, of the suitors that young lady
had, and how she treated them, and of her elopement to Gretna Green,
and of the funny people she was continually meeting. Mr. Crisp listened
and smiled, surprised at the girl's powers of description and humor.
Finally he said to her, "It seems to me, Fanny, that young lady's
career is more interesting to you than your own."
"So it is," she answered. "I think more about her than about any one
else."
"Then," said Mr. Crisp, "in spite of your mother's good advice and your
own judgment I predict that Caroline rises in time from the flames."
"Do you think so, Daddy? Oh, if she only might! It's well there's no
paper and ink here or I'd begin her over again right on the spot."
Mr. Crisp was right in his prediction. That summer the Burneys went to
the little town of King's Lynn, where Fanny had been born. There Fanny
shut herself up in a summer-house which was called "The Cabin," and
began to rewrite her book. She seized upon every scrap of white paper
that she could find and bore it off with her. She worked secretly,
inventing numberless excuses for the hours she spent by herself.
Gradually the story took shape again, changed in many ways from its
first telling, and with the heroine rechristened Evelina.
Meantime Dr. Burney had started to prepare his great History of Music,
and asked the help of his daughters to copy it for him. Fanny wrote the
best hand and was the most reliable, so her father made her his chief
secretary, and day after day she worked with him, having to postpone
her own book from week to week. But each time she came back to it more
ardently and each time her pen flew faster as she sat at her table in
the little summer-house. At last she told Susan about it, and Susan was
delighted, and when Fanny read some of it to her she declared that it
was a thousand times better than the story of Caroline had been.
When her father's History of Music appeared in print it made a great
success, and this stirred the youthful Fanny with the desire to see
what London would think of "Evelina." She was determined, however, to
keep its authorship unknown, and so she carefully recopied the
manuscript in an assumed handwriting in order that no publisher or
printer who had seen her handwriting in any of the manuscripts she had
copied for her father should recognize the same hand in this. But
"Evelina" had grown to be a very long novel, and by the time she had
copied out two volumes of it she grew tired, and so she wrote a letter,
without any signature, to a publisher, offering to send him the
completed part of her novel at once, and the rest of it during the next
year. This publisher replied that he would not consider the book unless
he were told the author's name. Fanny showed the letter to Susan, and
they talked it over, but decided that she ought not to send her name.
She then wrote to another publisher, making the same offer as she had
made to the first. He said he would like to see the manuscript.
Thereupon Fanny decided to take her brother Charles into the secret and
have him carry the work to the publisher. Charles agreed, and Fanny and
Susan muffled him up in a greatcoat so that he looked much older than
he was, and sent him off. He was not recognized, and when he called
later for an answer he was told that the publisher was pleased with the
book, but could not agree to print it until he should receive the whole
story. That discouraged Fanny, and she let the book lie by for some
time, but finally plucked up courage, and copied out the third volume.
In the meantime Fanny began to wonder if it would be fair for her to
publish a novel without telling her father, and she decided she ought
to go to him. She caught him just as he was leaving home on a trip, and
said, with many blushes and much confusion, that she had written a
little story and wanted to have it printed without giving her name. She
added that she would not bother him with the manuscript in any way and
begged that he wouldn't ask to see it. The Doctor was very much amused
as well as surprised, and he told her to go ahead and see what would
come of the story.
Better satisfied now that she had her father's consent Fanny sent the
third volume to the publisher, who accepted the book and paid her
twenty pounds for it.
[Illustration: FANNY BURNEY]
At length "Evelina" was published. The first Fanny knew of it was when
her stepmother opened a paper one morning at the breakfast table and
read aloud an advertisement announcing the appearance of a new novel
entitled "Evelina; or, A Young Lady's Entrance into the World." Susan
smiled across the table at Fanny, and Charles winked at her, but she
sat very still, her cheeks a fiery red. They did not give her secret
away to the rest of the family, nor mention who the author was to any
of their friends. Shortly afterward Fanny was ill and went out to
Chesington to recuperate. She took the three volumes of "Evelina" with
her, and read them aloud to Mr. Crisp, who pretended that he had no
idea who the author might be and listened with the most flattering
interest to chapter after chapter. "It reminds me of something," he
said one day.
"And what may that be, dear Daddy?" she asked.
"I can't think, but it's prodigiously finer than what I'm trying to
recall," he answered.
By the time she returned home all London was talking about the new
novel and wondering as to the author. Wherever Dr. Burney went he found
people discussing the same subject. The great Dr. Samuel Johnson
declared that it was uncommonly fine, and the Doctor was the accepted
judge of all literary matters. Like all the others he was sure that the
writer was a man, and made many guesses as to which of the lights of
London it might be, but although one man after another was credited
with the honor of having written it each had to decline the
satisfaction. Sir Joshua Reynolds declared he would give fifty pounds
to know the author and meant to find him, and Sheridan vowed he must
get the clever man, whoever he was, to write him a play.
In the meantime Fanny and Susan were enjoying the mystery tremendously.
It was very delightful to hear all the visitors at their house talking
of "Evelina" without the faintest notion that the author was sitting
there listening to all they had to say. But the time came when Dr.
Burney learned the secret, and his pride in Fanny's accomplishment
could not keep him silent. He told the story to several of his friends
and they, very much amazed, passed it on to others. Then Mrs. Thrale, a
friend of the Burneys, gave a dinner, and told her guests that they
should have the pleasure of meeting the author of "Evelina" there. When
they came they were presented to the shy, quiet young woman whom they
had often seen at Dr. Burney's house. She was overwhelmed with
congratulations, and when the party came to an end Sir Joshua Reynolds,
with a most courtly bow, bent over her hand, and hoped that he might
shortly have the pleasure of entertaining her at his home in Leicester
Square. When she went home Fanny said to Susan, "The joke of it is that
the people spoke as if they were afraid of me, instead of my being very
much afraid of them."
"Evelina" made Fanny Burney famous. She became a well-known figure in
London life, and wrote other novels, "Cecilia, "Camilla," and "The
Wanderer." She wrote a life of Dr. Burney, and she kept many diaries,
all of which were filled with witty and humorous descriptions of the
people of her age. In time she was appointed a Lady in Waiting to Queen
Charlotte, wife of George III, and took a prominent part at court.
Later she married the French Chevalier D'Arblay, and went with him to
France, where she had many exciting adventures during the Reign of
Terror. She afterward described these adventures in her diary and it
gives a most interesting account of those thrilling times.
So it was that "the silent, observant Miss Fanny" became one of the
great figures of England at the close of the eighteenth century, and it
was the fact that she could not give up her love of writing and had to
tell the story of her heroine Evelina that first brought her to the
notice of the world and made her famous.