_August 20._
... O my beloved Susan, 'tis a refractory heart I have to deal
with!--it struggles so hard to be sad--and silent--and fly from you
entirely, since it cannot fly entirely to you. I do all I can to conquer
it, to content it, to give it a taste and enjoyment for what is still
attainable: but at times I cannot manage it, and it seems absolutely
indispensable to my peace to occupy myself in anything rather than in
writing to the person most dear to me upon earth!... If to you alone I
show myself in these dark colours, can you blame the plan that I have
intentionally been forming, namely, to wean myself from myself--to
lessen all my affections--to curb all my wishes--to deaden all my
sensations? This design, my Susan, I formed so long ago as the first
day my dear father accepted my offered appointment: I thought that what
demanded a complete new system of life, required, if attainable, a new
set of feelings for all enjoyment of new prospects, and for lessening
regrets at what were quitted, or lost. Such being my primitive idea,
merely from my grief of separation, imagine but how it was strengthened
and confirmed when the interior of my position became known to me!--when
I saw myself expected by Mrs. Schwellenberg, not to be her colleague,
but her dependent deputy! not to be her visitor at my own option, but
her companion, her humble companion, at her own command! This has given
so new a character to the place I had accepted under such different
auspices, that nothing but my horror of disappointing, perhaps
displeasing, my dearest father, has deterred me from the moment that I
made this mortifying discovery, from soliciting his leave to resign.
But oh my Susan,--kind, good, indulgent as he is to me, I have not the
heart so cruelly to thwart his hopes--his views--his happiness, in the
honours he conceived awaiting my so unsolicited appointment. The queen,
too, is all sweetness, encouragement, and gracious goodness to me, and
I cannot endure to complain to her of her old servant. You see, then, my
situation; here I must remain!--The die is cast, and that struggle is
no more.--To keep off every other, to support the loss of the dearest
friends, and best society, and bear, in exchange, the tyranny, the
exigeance, the ennui, and attempted indignities of their greatest
contrast,--this must be my constant endeavour.
Amongst my sources of unhappiness in this extraordinary case is, the
very favour that, in any other, might counteract it--namely, that of the
queen: for while, in a manner the most attractive, she seems inviting
my confidence, and deigning to wish my happiness, she redoubles my
conflicts never to shock her with murmurs against one who, however to
me noxious and persecuting, is to her a faithful and truly devoted old
servant. This will prevent my ever having my distress and disturbance
redressed; for they can never be disclosed. Could I have, as my dear
father conceived, all the time to myself, my friends, my leisure, or
my own occupations, that is not devoted to my official duties, how
different would be my feelings, how far more easily accommodated to my
privations and sacrifices! Little does the queen know the slavery I must
either resist or endure. And so frightful is hostility, that I know not
which part is hardest to perform.
MADAME DE GENLIs DISCUSSED.
_Windsor, Monday Evening._--Madame de la Fite, who calls upon me daily,
though I am commonly so much engaged I can scarce speak to her for a
moment, came to desire I would let her bring me M. Argant,[215] who was
come to Windsor to show some experiment to the king.
Madame de la Fite has long pressed me with great earnestness to write
to Madame de Genlis, whose very elegant little note to me I never have
answered. Alas! what can I do? I think of her as of one of the first
among women--I see her full of talents and of charms--I am willing to
believe her good, virtuous, and dignified;--yet, with all this, the
cry against her is so violent and so universal, and my belief in her
innocence is wholly unsupported by proof in its favour, or any other
argument than internal conviction, from what I observed of her conduct
and manners and conversation when I saw her in London, that I know
not how to risk a correspondence with her, till better able to satisfy
others, as well as I am satisfied myself: most especially, I dare
not enter into such an intercourse through Madame de la Fite, whose
indiscreet zeal for us both would lead her to tell her successful
mediation to everybody she could make hear her. Already she has greatly
distressed me upon this subject. Not content with continual importunity
to me to write, ever since my arrival, which I have evaded as gently
as possible, to avoid giving her my humiliating reasons, she has now
written Madame de Genlis word that I am here, belonging to the same
royal household as herself; and then came to tell me, that as we were
now so closely connected, she proposed our writing jointly, in the same
letter.
All this, with infinite difficulty, I passed over,--pleading my little
time; which indeed she sees is true. But when M. Argant was here, she
said to me, in French, “M. Argant will immediately wait upon Madame de
Genlis, for he is going to Paris; he will tell her he saw us together,
and he will carry her a letter' from me; and surely Miss Burney will not
refuse M. Argant the happiness of carrying two lines from one lady so
celebrated to another?” I was quite vexed; a few lines answer the same
purpose as a few sheets; since, once her correspondent, all that I am
hesitating about is as completely over, right or wrong, as if I wrote to
her weekly.
As soon as they left me, I hastened to my dear Mrs. Delany, to consult
with her what to do. “By all means,” cried she, “tell the affair of
your difficulties whether to write to her or not, to the queen: it will
unavoidably spread, if you enter into such a correspondence, and the
properest step you can take, the safest and the happiest, is to have her
opinion, and be guided by it. Madame de Genlis is so public a character,
you can hardly correspond with her in private, and it would be better
the queen should hear of such an intercourse from yourself than from any
other.”
I entirely agreed in the wisdom of her advice, though I very much
doubted my power to exert sufficient courage to speak, unasked, upon any
affair of my own. You may be sure I resolved to spare poor Madame de la
Fite, in my application, if I made it: “to write, or not to write,” was
all I wanted to determine; for the rest, I must run any risk rather than
complain of a friend who always means well....
An opportunity offered the next morning, for the queen again commanded
me to follow her into her saloon; and there she was so gentle, and so
gracious, that I ventured to speak of Madame de Genlis.
It was very fearfully that I took this liberty. I dreaded lest she
should imagine I meant to put myself under her direction, as if
presuming she would be pleased to direct me. Something, I told her, I
had to say, by the advice of Mrs. Delany, which I begged her permission
to communicate. She assented in silence, but with a look of the utmost
softness, and yet mixed with strong surprise. I felt my voice faltering,
and I was with difficulty able to go on,--so new to me was it to beg to
be heard, who, hitherto, have always been begged to speak. There is no
absolutely accounting for the forcible emotions which every totally new
situation and new effort will excite in a mind enfeebled, like mine, by
a long succession of struggling agitations. I got behind her chair, that
she might not see a distress she might wonder at: for it was not this
application itself that affected me; it was the novelty of my own
situation, the new power I was calling forth over my proceedings, and
the--O my Susan!--the all that I was changing from--relinquishing-of the
past--and hazarding for the future!
With many pauses, and continual hesitation, I then told her that I had
been earnestly pressed by Madame de Genlis to correspond with her; that
I admired her with all my heart, and, with all my heart, believed all
good of her; but that, nevertheless, my personal knowledge of her was
too slight to make me wish so intimate an intercourse, which I had
carefully shunned upon all occasions but those where my affection as
well as my admiration had been interested; though I felt such a request
from such a woman as Madame de Genlis as an honour, and therefore not to
be declined without some reason stronger than my own general reluctance
to proposals of that sort; and I found her unhappily, and I really and
sincerely believed undeservedly, encircled with such powerful enemies,
and accused with so much confidence of having voluntarily provoked
them, that I could not, even in my own mind, settle if it were right
to connect myself with her so closely, till I could procure information
more positive in her favour, in order to answer the attacks of those
who asperse her,[216] and who would highly blame me for entering into a
correspondence with a character not more unquestionably known to me. I
had been desirous to wait, suspended, till this fuller knowledge might
be brought about; but I was now solicited into a decision, by M. Argant,
who was immediately going to her, and who must either take her a letter
from me or show her, by taking none, that I was bent upon refusing her
request.
The queen heard me with the greatest attention, and then said, “Have you
yet writ to her?”
No, I said; I had had a little letter from her, but I received it just
as the Duchess of Portland died, when my whole mind was so much occupied
by Mrs. Delany, that I could not answer it.
“I will speak to you then,” cried she, “very honestly; if you have not
yet writ, I think it better you should not write. If you had begun, it
would be best to go on; but as you have not, it will be the safest way
to let it alone. You may easily say, without giving her any offence,
that you are now too much engaged to find time for entering into any new
correspondence.”
I thanked her for this open advice as well as I was able, and I felt the
honour its reliance upon my prudence did me, as well as the kindness of
permitting such an excuse to be made.
The queen talked on, then, of Madame de Genlis with the utmost
frankness; she admired her as much as I had done myself, but had been so
assaulted with tales to her disadvantage, that she thought it unsafe and
indiscreet to form any connection with her. Against her own judgment,
she had herself been almost tormented into granting her a private
audience, from the imprudent vehemence of one of Madame de G.'s friends
here, with whom she felt herself but little pleased for what she had
done, and who, I plainly saw, from that unfortunate injudiciousness,
would lose all power of exerting any influence in future. Having thus
unreservedly explained herself, she finished the subject, and has
never started it since. But she looked the whole time with a marked
approbation of my applying to her.
Poor Madame de Genlis! how I grieve at the cloud which hovers over so
much merit, too bright to be hid but not to be obscured.