“You must pardon me if I give you an old-fashioned reception, for I know
nothing new.” And she saluted me. I did not, as with Mrs. Walsingham,
retreat from her.
“Can you forgive, Miss Burney,” she continued, “this great liberty I
have taken with you, of asking for your company to dinner? I wished
so impatiently to see one from whom I have received such extraordinary
pleasure, that, as I could not be alone this morning, I could not bear
to put it off to another day; and, if you had been so good to come in
the evening, I might, perhaps, have had company; and I hear so ill that
I cannot, as I wish to do, attend to more than one at a time; for age
makes me stupid even more than I am by nature; and how grieved and
mortified I must have been to know I had Miss Burney in the room, and
not to hear her!”
She then mentioned her regret that we could not stay and spend the
evening with her, which had been told her in our card of accepting her
invitation, as we were both engaged, which, for my part, I heartily
regretted.
“I am particularly sorry,” she added, “on account of the Duchess dowager
of Portland, who is so good as to come to me in an evening, as she knows
I am too infirm to wait upon her grace myself: and she wished so much to
see Miss Burney. But she said she would come as early as possible.”
Soon after we went to dinner, which was plain, neat, well cooked,
and elegantly served. When it was over, I began to speak; and now, my
Chesington auditors, look to yourselves!
“Will you give me leave, ma'am, to ask if you remember any body of the
name of Crisp?”
“Crisp?” cried she, “What! Mrs. Ann Crisp?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“O surely! extremely well! a charming, an excellent woman she was; we
were very good friends once; I visited her at Burford, and her sister
Mrs. Gast.”
Then came my turn, and I talked of the brother---but I won't write what
I said. Mrs. Delany said she knew him but very little; and by no means
so much as she should have liked. I reminded her of a letter he wrote
her from abroad, which she immediately recollected.
This Chesingtonian talk lasted till we went upstairs, and then she
shewed me the new art which she had invented. It is staining paper
of all possible colours, and then cutting it out, so finely, and
delicately, that when it is pasted on paper or vellum, it has all the
appearance of being pencilled, except that, by being raised, it has
still a richer and more natural look. The effect is extremely beautiful.
She invented it at twenty-five! She told me she did four flowers the
first year; sixteen the second; and the third, one hundred and sixty;
and after that many more. They are all from nature, and consist of the
most curious flowers, plants, and weeds, that are to (be found. She
has been supplied with patterns from all the great gardens, and all the
great florists in the kingdom. Her plan was to finish one thousand; but,
alas! her eyes now fail her though she has only twenty undone of her
task.
About seven o'clock, the Duchess dowager of Portland came. She is not
near so old as Mrs. Delany; nor, to me, is her face by any means so
pleasing; but yet there is sweetness, and dignity, and intelligence in
it. Mrs. Delany received her with the same respectful ceremony as if it
was her first visit, though she regularly goes to her every evening. But
what she at first took as an honour and condescension, she has so much
of true humility of mind, that no use can make her see in any other
light. She immediately presented me to her. Her grace courtesied and
smiled with the most flattering air of pleasure, and said she was
particularly happy in meeting with me. We then took our places, and Mrs.
Delany said,--
“Miss Burney, ma'am, is acquainted with Mr. Crisp, whom your grace knew
so well; and she tells me he and his sister have been so good as to
remember me, and to mention me to her.”
The duchess instantly asked me a thousand questions about him--where he
lived, how he had his health, and whether his fondness for the polite
arts still continued. She said he was one of the most ingenious and
agreeable men she had ever known, and regretted his having sequestered
himself so much from the society of his former friends.
In the course of this conversation I found the duchess very charming,
high-bred, courteous, sensible, and spirited; not merely free from
pride, but free from affability--its most mortifying deputy.
After this she asked me if I had seen Mrs. Siddons, and what I thought
of her. I answered that I admired her very much.
“If Miss Burney approves her,” said the duchess, “no approbation, I am
sure, can do her so much credit; for no one can so perfectly judge of
characters or of human nature.”
“Ah, ma'am,” cried Mrs. Delany, archly, “and does your grace remember
protesting you would never read 'Cecilia?'”
“Yes,” said she, laughing, “I declared that five volumes could never be
attacked; but since I began I have read it three times.”
“O terrible!” cried I, “to make them out fifteen.”
“The reason,” continued she, “I held out so long against reading them,
was remembering the cry there was in favour of 'Clarissa' and 'Sir
Charles Grandison,' when they came out, and those I never could read.
I was teased into trying both of them; but I was disgusted with their
tediousness, and could not read eleven letters, with all the effort I
could make: so much about my sisters and my brothers, and all my uncles
and my aunts!”
“But if your grace had gone on with 'Clarissa,'” said Mrs. Chapone, “the
latter part must certainly have affected you, and charmed you.”[176]
“O, I hate any thing so dismal! Every body that did read it had
melancholy faces for a week. 'Cecilia' is as pathetic as I can bear, and
more sometimes; yet, in the midst of the sorrow, there is a spirit in
the writing, a fire in the whole composition, that keep off that heavy
depression given by Richardson. Cry, to be sure, we did. Mrs. Delany,
shall you ever forget how we cried? But then we had so much laughter to
make us amends, we were never left to sink under our concern.”