Windsor. The dinner was over. The old lady was taking a nap. Her
grand-niece, a little girl of seven, was playing at some Christmas
game with the visitors, when the door opened, and a stout gentleman
entered unannounced, with a star on his breast, and “What? what? what?”
in his mouth. A cry of “the king” was set up. A general scampering
followed. Miss Burney owns that she could not have been more terrified
if she had seen a ghost. But Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty
to her royal friend, and the disturbance was quieted. Frances was then
presented, and underwent a long examination and cross-examination about
all that she had written and all that she meant to write. The queen
soon made her appearance, and his majesty repeated, for the benefit of
his consort, the information which he had extracted from Miss Burney.
The good-nature of the royal pair could not but be delightful to a
young lady who had been brought up a Tory. In a few days the visit
was repeated. Miss Burney was more at ease than before. His majesty,
instead of seeking for information, condescended to impart it, and
passed sentence on many great writers, English and foreign. Voltaire
he pronounced a monster. Rousseau he liked rather better. “But was
there ever,” he cried, “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?”
[Sidenote: She enters the queen’s service.]
... Frances was fascinated by the condescending kindness of the two
great personages to whom she had been presented. Her father was even
more infatuated than herself. The result was a step of which we cannot
think with patience.... A German lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one
of the keepers of the queen’s robes, retired about this time, and her
majesty offered the vacant post to Miss Burney.... What was demanded of
her was, that she should consent to be almost as completely separated
from her family and friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost
as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to jail for a libel; that
with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living
minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff and sticking
pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting-woman’s bell to a
waiting-woman’s duties; that she should pass her whole life under the
restraints of paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was
ready to swoon with hunger, should sometimes stand till her knees gave
way with fatigue; that she should not dare to speak or move without
considering how her mistress might like her words and gestures. Instead
of those distinguished men and women, the flower of all political
parties, with whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of
equal friendship, she was to have for her perpetual companion the chief
keeper of the robes, an old hag from Germany, of mean understanding,
of insolent manners, and of temper which, naturally savage, had now
been exasperated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Frances might
console herself for the loss of Burke’s and Windham’s society, by
joining in the “celestial colloquy sublime” of his majesty’s equerries.
And what was the consideration for which she was to sell herself into
this slavery? A peerage in her own right? A pension of two thousand a
year for life? A seventy-four for her brother in the navy? A deanery
for her brother in the church? Not so. The price at which she was
valued was her board, her lodging, the attendance of a man-servant, and
two hundred pounds a year.
LORD MACAULAY: ‘Essay on Mme. D’Arblay.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Life as Second Keeper of the Robes.]
I rise at six o’clock, dress in a morning gown and cap, and wait my
first summons, which is at all times from seven to near eight, but
commonly in the exact half hour between them. The queen never sends
for me till her hair is dressed. This, in a morning, is always done
by her wardrobe-woman, Mrs. Thielky. The queen’s dress is finished by
Mrs. Thielky and myself. No maid ever enters the room while the queen
is in it. Mrs. Thielky hands the things to me, and I put them on. ’Tis
fortunate for me I have not the handing them! I should never know which
to take first, embarrassed as I am, and should run a prodigious risk of
giving the gown before the hoop, and the fan before the neckerchief.
By eight o’clock, or a little after, for she is extremely expeditious,
she is dressed.... I then return to my own room to breakfast. I make
this meal the most pleasant part of the day; I have a book for my
companion, and I allow myself an hour for it. At nine o’clock I send
off my breakfast things, and relinquish my book, to make a serious
and steady examination of every thing I have upon my hands in the way
of business--in which preparations for dress are always included, not
for the present day alone, but for the court-days, which require a
particular dress; for the next arriving birthday of any of the royal
family, every one of which requires new apparel; for Kew, where the
dress is plainest; and for going on here, where the dress is very
pleasant to me, requiring no show nor finery, but merely to be neat,
not inelegant, and moderately fashionable.
That over, I have my time at my own disposal till a quarter before
twelve, except on Wednesdays, when I have it only to a quarter before
eleven. My rummages and business sometimes occupy me uninterruptedly to
those hours. When they do not, I give till ten to necessary letters ...
and from ten to the times I have mentioned, I devote to walking.
These times mentioned called me to the irksome and quick-returning
labors of the toilette. The hour advanced on the Wednesdays and
Saturdays is for curling and craping the hair, which it now requires
twice a week.
A quarter before one is the usual time for the queen to begin dressing
for the day. Mrs. Schwellenberg then constantly attends; so do I; Mrs.
Thielky, of course, at all times. We help her off with her gown, and
on with her powdering things, and then the hair-dresser is admitted.
She generally reads the newspapers during that operation.... She never
forgets to send me away while she is powdering, with a consideration
not to spoil my clothes, which one would not expect belonged to her
high station. I finish, if anything is undone, my dress, she then takes
‘Baretti’s Dialogues,’ or some such disjointed matter, for the few
minutes that elapse ere I am again summoned. I find her then always
removed to her state dressing-room. Then, in a very short time, her
dress is finished. She then says she won’t detain me, and I hear and
see no more of her till bedtime.
It is commonly about three o’clock when I am thus set at large. And
I have then two hours quite at my own disposal; but, in the natural
course of things, not a moment after! At five, we have dinner. Mrs.
Schwellenberg and I are commonly _tête-à-tête_: when there is anybody
added, it is from her invitation only. When we have dined, we go up
stairs to her apartment, which is directly over mine. Here we have
coffee till the _terracing_ is over: this is at about eight o’clock.
Our _tête-à-tête_ then finishes, and we come down again to the
eating-room. There the equerry, whoever he is, comes to tea constantly,
and with him any gentleman that the king or queen may have invited for
the evening; and when tea is over, he conducts them, and goes himself,
to the concert-room. This is commonly about nine o’clock.
From that time, 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 moment I have
put out my candle and laid down my head.
FRANCES BURNEY: ‘Diary and Letters.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: An explanatory analysis.]
The ‘Diary’ reveals an exceptionally warm heart and a disposition
very strangely compounded of good sense and sensitiveness, quick
impulse and persistent loyalty, strong powers of judgment coupled with
an almost morbid self-distrust, and tastes so simple and domestic
that, in spite of all her friends felt at the time, and critics have
written since, about the years she wasted at court, it is difficult to
escape the conviction that wherever Frances Burney’s lot had fallen,
her quick womanly sympathies and active interest in the affairs of
life would have hindered her from giving her best time and energy to
literary work. She might have found a happier slavery, perhaps, in her
father’s house or in a home of her own than in the royal household,
but a slave to other people’s whims and fancies, as well as to their
tempers and serious necessities, she would probably have been wherever
she had lived, for the simple reason that she was above all things
affectionate, and cared more for the goodwill of those about her than
for any other worldly consideration. She wrote ‘Evelina’ because the
world amused her, and she was too shy to say in any other way how
much it amused her. She wrote ‘Cecilia’ because the world told her it
was amused by her, and that she could make her fortune by going on
amusing it. But even in this second book there were indications that
the natural spring was pretty nearly exhausted, while a deterioration
of style betrayed the fact that her mastery of the means of literary
expression was not sufficient to keep her works up to the mark when the
vivacity of the first spontaneous impulse should be spent. She might
have overcome this disadvantage by laborious training of her talent;
but for this she had no inclination, or at any rate not inclination
enough to conquer her fears of the contemporary prejudice against
learned women. Even in the house of Mrs. Thrale, she describes herself
as hiding a book under a chair-cushion, so as not to be caught in the
unfeminine act of reading; and when Johnson began to teach her Latin,
she was weak enough to back out of the lessons, fearing that they would
win her the reputation of a blue-stocking. Johnson liked her none
the less for her timidity, and neither need we. But it is as well to
remember these things when apportioning the blame for her falling away
from literature. She used her literary talent first as an outlet for
her surplus wit and wisdom, and next as a means of making money; but
she had not sufficient love of literature to induce her to sacrifice to
it a jot of even conventional esteem.
MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE: ‘Miss Burney’s Novels,’ in _Contemporary
Review_, December, 1882.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Frances’ ill health.]
The health of poor Frances began to give way; and all who saw her
pale face, her emaciated figure, and her feeble walk, predicted that
her sufferings would soon be over. Frances uniformly speaks of her
royal mistress and of the princesses with respect and affection. The
princesses ... were, we doubt not, most amiable women. But “the sweet
queen,” as she is constantly called in these volumes, is not by any
means an object of admiration to us.... She seems to have been utterly
regardless of the comfort, the health, the life of her attendants,
when her own convenience was concerned. Weak, feverish, hardly able
to stand, Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress
the sweet queen, and sit up till midnight, in order to undress the
sweet queen.... The whisper that she was in a decline spread through
the court. The pains in her side became so severe that she was
forced to crawl from the card-table of the old fury to whom she was
tethered, three or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking
harts-horn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have
excused her from work. But her majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day
the accursed bell still rang.... Horace Walpole wrote to Frances to
express his sympathy. Boswell, boiling over with good-natured rage,
almost forced an entrance into the palace to see her. Burke and
Reynolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause. Windham
spoke to Dr. Burney.... At last paternal affection, medical authority,
and the voice of all London crying shame, triumphed over Dr. Burney’s
love of courts. He determined that Frances should write a letter of
resignation.... In return for all the misery which she had undergone,
and for the health which she had sacrificed, an annuity of one hundred
pounds was granted to her, dependent on the queen’s pleasure. Then the
prison was opened, and Frances was free once more.... Happy days and
tranquil nights soon restored the health which the queen’s toilette
and Madame Schwellenberg’s card-table had impaired.
LORD MACAULAY: ‘Essay on Mme. D’Arblay.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: M. D’Arblay described.]
He is tall, and a good figure, with an open and manly countenance;
about forty, I imagine.... He seems to me a true _militaire,
franc et loyal_--open as the day--warmly affectionate to his
friends--intelligent, ready, and amusing in conversation, with a great
share of _gaieté de cœur_, and at the same time of _naïveté_ and _bonne
foi_.
SUSAN BURNEY (Mrs. Phillips): _Letters to Frances Burney_, in the
latter’s ‘Diary and Letters.’
* * * * *
M. D’Arblay is one of the most singularly interesting characters
that can ever have been formed. He has a sincerity, a frankness, an
ingenuous openness of nature, that I had been unjust enough to think
could not belong to a Frenchman. With all this, which is his military
portion, he is passionately fond of literature, a most delicate critic
in his own language, well versed in both Italian and German, and a
very elegant poet. He has just undertaken to become my French master
for pronunciation, and he gives me long daily lessons in reading. Pray
expect wonderful improvements! In return, I hear him in English.
FRANCES BURNEY: _Letter to Dr. Burney_, February, 1793, in ‘Diary and
Letters.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: At work on ‘Camilla,’ after her marriage.]
I have a long work, which a long time has been in hand, that I mean to
publish soon--in about a year. Should it succeed ... it may be a little
portion to our Bambino. We wish, therefore, to print it for ourselves
in this hope; but the expenses of the press are so enormous, so raised
by these late Acts, that it is out of all question for us to afford
it. We have, therefore, been led by degrees to listen to counsel of
some friends, and to print it by subscription. This is in many--many
ways unpleasant and unpalatable to us both; but the real chance of real
use and benefit to our little darling overcomes all scruples, and,
therefore, to work we go!
FRANCES D’ARBLAY: _Letter to a friend_, 1795, in ‘Diary and Letters.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Its success.]
I am quite happy in what I have escaped of greater severity [from the
reviews], though my mate cannot bear that the palm should be contested
by ‘Evelina’ and ‘Cecilia’; his partiality rates the last as so much
the highest.... The essential success of ‘Camilla’ exceeds that of the
elders. The sale is truly astonishing. Five hundred only remain of four
thousand, and it has appeared scarcely three months.
FRANCES D’ARBLAY: Letter to Dr. Burney, 1796, in ‘Diary and Letters.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Walpole’s criticism.]
I will only reply by a word or two to a question you seem to ask; how I
like ‘Camilla’? I do not care to say how little. Alas! she has reversed
experience, which I have long thought reverses its own utility by
coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author
knew the world and penetrated characters before she had stepped over
the threshold; and, now she has seen so much of it, she has little or
no insight at all.
HORACE WALPOLE: _Letter to Hannah More_, 1796.
* * * * *
Dr. Burney asked me about deplorable ‘Camilla.’ Alas! I had not
recovered of it enough to be loud in its praise.
HORACE WALPOLE: _Letter to Miss Berry_, 1796. ‘The Letters of Horace
Walpole, Earl of Oxford.’ London: Henry G. Bohn, 1867.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ‘The Hermitage,’ West Hamble.]
We are going immediately to build a little cottage for ourselves. We
shall make it as small and as cheap as will accord with its being warm
and comfortable. We mean to make this a property salable or lettable
for our Alex.
FRANCES D’ARBLAY: _Letter to Dr. Burney_, 1796, in ‘Diary and Letters.’
* * * * *
I need not say how I shall rejoice to see you again, nor how charmed we
shall both be to make a nearer acquaintance with Mr. Broome; but, for
Heaven’s sake, my dear girl, how are we to give him a dinner?--unless
he will bring with him his poultry, for ours are not yet arrived; and
his fish, for ours are still at the bottom of some pond we know not
where; and his spit, for our jack is yet without one; not to mention
his table-linen;--and not to speak of his knives and forks, some ten of
our poor original twelve having been massacred in M. D’Arblay’s first
essays in the art of carpentering;--and to say nothing of his large
spoons, the silver of our plated ones having feloniously made off under
cover of the whitening brush;--and not to talk of his cook, ours being
not yet hired;--and not to start the subject of wine, ours, by some odd
accident, still remaining at the wine-merchants!
With all these impediments, however, to convivial hilarity, if he will
eat a quarter of a joint of meat (his share, I mean), tied up by a
packthread, and roasted by a log of wood on the bricks, and declare no
potatoes so good as those dug by M. D’Arblay out of our garden--and
protest our small beer gives the spirits of champagne--and pronounce
that bare walls are superior to tapestry--and promise us the first
sight of his epistle upon visiting a new-built cottage--we shall be
sincerely happy to receive him in our Hermitage.
FRANCES D’ARBLAY: _Letter to Mrs. Francis_, 1797, in ‘Diary and
Letters.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Poverty.]
[Sidenote: Generosity.]
For a considerable time the income on which she, her husband, and her
child subsisted, did not exceed £125 a year. They were too independent
in spirit to accept assistance from friends; too upright to rely on
contingencies; and Madame D’Arblay pursued, in all the minutiæ of
domestic life, a course of self-denial such as, she wrote to her
Susanna, “would make you laugh to see, though perhaps cry to hear.”
With all this, her mind and thoughts were never shut up in her economy.
It was at this period that she originated the invitation sent by her
and M. D’Arblay to his friend the Comte de Narbonne, to make their
cottage his home; and it was also during these straitened circumstances
that she withdrew her comedy of ‘Love and Fashion’ from rehearsal,
in dutiful compliance with the wishes of her father; although the
management of Covent Garden had promised her £400 for the manuscript.
[Sidenote: Fidelity.]
Queen Charlotte’s expression, that she was “true as gold,” was
abundantly verified in her friendship.
SARAH CHAUNCEY WOOLSEY, Edr.: ‘Diary and Letters of Frances Burney,
Mme. D’Arblay.’
* * * * *
The novels give an impression of a singularly keen, clever, observant
woman, with a sense of the ridiculous too much developed to be a very
sympathetic, or even safe, friend....
She is seen to best advantage in the book where she appears as
daughter, sister, friend, servant (there is really no other word for
the position she held at court), and finally wife and mother. In the
‘Diary and Letters’ we not only learn how largely voluntary were the
restrictions she imposed upon her literary work, but how much her
private life gained in charm and usefulness by the subordination of the
author’s part; and, learning this, we forgive her the more easily for
having partially hidden the talent which, well husbanded, might have
given us more ‘Evelinas’ and ‘Cecilias.’... Delightful as ‘Evelina’ and
‘Cecilia’ are to those whose taste they suit, it is doubtful whether
we should get more enjoyment out of a dozen novels of the same quality
than we do out of these two. And ... at the present moment these two
are more than enough for most people.
MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE: ‘Miss Burney’s Novels.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her old age.]
I attended her during the last twenty years of her long life. She
lived in almost total seclusion from all but a few members of her own
family; changed her lodgings more frequently than her dresses and
occupied herself laboriously in composing those later works which
retain so little of the charm of her earlier writings. Mr. Rogers was
the only literary man who seemed to know of her existence.
SIR HENRY HOLLAND: ‘Recollections of Past Life.’ New York: D. Appleton
& Co., 1872.
* * * * *
Was introduced by Rogers to Mme. D’Arblay, the celebrated authoress of
‘Evelina’ and ‘Cecilia’--an elderly lady, with no remains of personal
beauty, but with a simple and gentle manner, a pleasing expression of
countenance, and apparently quick feelings.
SIR WALTER SCOTT: _Diary_, November, 1826, in ‘Memoirs,’ by J. G.
Lockhart.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Miss Mitford’s criticism.]
I do not think very highly of Mme. D’Arblay’s books. The style is
so strutting. She does so stalk about on Dr. Johnson’s old stilts.
What she says wants so much translating into common English, and when
translated would seem so commonplace, that I have always felt strongly
tempted to read all the serious parts with my fingers’ ends.... A novel
should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece
of wax-work. Mme. D’Arblay has much talent, but no taste. Another fault
is the sameness of her characters; they all say one thing twenty times
over.... They have but one note.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letters to Sir W. Elford_, in ‘Life,’ edited by
Rev. A. G. L’Estrange. London: Richard Bentley, 1870.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ‘A very woman.’]
Madame D’Arblay is quite of the old school, a mere common observer of
manners, and also a very woman. It is this last circumstance which
forms the peculiarity of her writings. She is a quick, lively, and
accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them
with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which
it is the particular business and interest of women to observe them.
There is little in her works of passion or character, or even manners,
in the most extended sense of the word, as implying the sum total of
our habits and pursuits; her _forte_ is in describing the absurdities
and affectations of external behavior, or _the manners of people in
company_. Her characters, which are ingenious caricatures, are, no
doubt, distinctly marked, and well kept up; but they are slightly
shaded, and exceedingly uniform. Her heroes and heroines, almost all
of them, depend upon the stock of a single phrase or sentiment, and
have certain mottoes or devices by which they may always be known.
They form such characters as people might be supposed to assume for a
night at a masquerade.... The Braughtons are the best. Mr. Smith is an
exquisite city portrait. ‘Evelina’ is also her best novel, because it
is the shortest; that is, it has all the liveliness in the sketches of
character, and smartness of comic dialogue and repartee, without the
tediousness of the story, and endless affectation of sentiment which
disfigures the others.
WILLIAM HAZLITT: _Lecture on the English Novelists_, in ‘Lecture on
the English Poets, and the English Comic Writers,’ edited by Wm. Carew
Hazlitt. London: Bell & Daldy, 1869.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Accused of superficiality.]
She is sometimes accused of being superficial, because she dares
so little in the direction of the stronger and deeper passions and
interests of human nature. But this criticism is itself superficial:
the truer word for her is _reserved_. She shut the door upon the whole
range of bold speculation and unconventional feeling, because she
considered these things unfit for the novelist, and especially for the
female novelist, to treat of. But her own feelings were deep, and her
own interests and sympathies were wide; and in drawing her characters,
though she seldom attempts to paint much--save in conventional
outline--that goes below the surface, she yet shows at all times, by
the firmness and consistency of her creations, that she possessed the
root of the matter in understanding, if not in creative power and
courage of execution.
MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE: ‘Miss Burney’s Novels.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her art not the highest.]
We are forced to refuse Madame D’Arblay a place in the highest rank of
art; but we cannot deny that, in the rank to which she belonged, she
had few equals, and scarcely any superior. The variety of humors which
is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the talk of each
person separately is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony,
but a very lively and agreeable diversity. Her plots are rudely
constructed and improbable, if we consider them in themselves. But they
are admirably framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking groups of
eccentric characters, each governed by his own peculiar whim, each
talking his own peculiar jargon, and each bringing out by opposition
the peculiar oddities of all the rest.