It was in the city, in consequence of his wife’s connexions, that Mr.
Burney made his first essay as a housekeeper; and with a prosperity
that left not a doubt of his ultimate success. Scholars, in his musical
art, poured in upon him from all quarters of that British meridian;
and he mounted so rapidly into the good graces of those who were most
opulent and most influential, that it was no sooner known that there
was a vacancy for an organist professor, in one of the fine old fabrics
of devotion which decorate religion in the city and reflect credit on
our commercial ancestors, than the Fullers, Hankeys, and all other
great houses of the day to which he had yet been introduced, exerted
themselves in his service with an activity and a warmth that were
speedily successful; and that he constantly recounted with pleasure.
Anxious to improve as well as to prosper in his profession, he also
elaborately studied composition, and brought forth several musical
pieces; all of which that are authenticated, will be enumerated in a
general list of his musical works.
And thus, with a felicity that made toil delicious, through labour
repaid by prosperity; exertions, by comfort; fatigue, by soothing
tenderness; and all the fond passions of juvenile elasticity, by the
charm of happiest sympathy,—began, and were rolling on, equally
blissful and busy, the first wedded years of this animated young
couple;—when a storm suddenly broke over their heads, which menaced
one of those deadly catastrophes, that, by engulphing one loved object
in that “bourne whence no traveller returns,” tears up for ever by
the root all genial, spontaneous, unsophisticated happiness, from the
survivor.
Mr. Burney, whether from overstrained efforts in business; or from
an application exceeding his physical powers in composition; or from
the changed atmosphere of Cheshire, Shropshire, and Wiltshire, for
the confined air of our great and crowded city; which had not then,
as now, by a vast mass of improvement, been made nearly as sane as it
is populous; suddenly fell, from a state of the most vigorous health,
to one the most alarming, of premature decay. And to this defalcation
of strength was shortly added the seizure of a violent and dangerous
fever that threatened his life.
The sufferings of the young wife, who was now also a young mother, can
only be conceived by contrasting them with her so recent happiness.
Yet never did she permit grief to absorb her faculties, nor to
vanquish her fortitude. She acted with the same spirited force of
mind, as if she had been a stranger to the timid terrors of the heart.
She superintended all that was ordered; she executed, where it was
possible, all that was performed; she was sedulously careful that no
business should be neglected; and her firmness in all that belonged to
the interests of her husband, seemed as invulnerable as if that had
been her sole occupation; though never, for a moment, was grief away
from her side, and though perpetually, irresistibly she wept,—for
sorrow with the youthful is always tearful. Yet she strove to disallow
herself that indulgence; refusing time even for gently wiping from her
cheeks the big drops of liquid anguish which coursed their way; and
only, and hastily, almost with displeasure, brushing them off with her
hand; while resolutely continuing, or renewing, some useful operation,
as if she were but mechanically engaged.
All this was recorded by her adoring husband in an elegy of after-times.
The excellent and able Dr. Armstrong, already the friend of the
invalid, was now sent to his aid by the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Home, who
had conceived the warmest esteem for the subject of these memoirs.
The very sight of this eminent physician was medicinal; though the
torture he inflicted by the blister after blister with which he deemed
it necessary to almost cover, and almost flay alive, his poor patient,
required all the high opinion in which that patient held the doctor’s
skill for endurance.
The unsparing, but well-poised, prescriptions of this poetical
Æsculapius, succeeded, however, in dethroning and extirpating the
raging fever, that, perhaps, with milder means, had undermined the
sufferer’s existence. But a consumptive menace ensued, with all its
fearful train of cough, night perspiration, weakness, glassy eyes,
and hectic complexion; and Dr. Armstrong, foreseeing an evil beyond
the remedies of medicine, strenuously urged an adoption of their most
efficient successor, change of air.
The patient, therefore, was removed to Canonbury-house; whence, ere
long, by the further advice, nay, injunction, of Dr. Armstrong, he was
compelled to retire wholly from London; after an illness by which, for
thirteen weeks, he had been confined to his bed.
Most fortunately, Mr. Burney, at this time, had proposals made to him
by a Norfolk baronet, Sir John Turner, who was member for Lynn Regis,
of the place of organist of that royal borough; of which, for a young
man of talents and character, the Mayor and Corporation offered to
raise the salary from twenty to one hundred pounds a year; with an
engagement for procuring to him the most respectable pupils from all
the best families in the town and its neighbourhood.
Though greatly chagrined and mortified to quit a situation in which he
now was surrounded by cordial friends, who were zealously preparing
for him all the harmonical honours which the city holds within its
patronage; the declining health of the invalid, and the forcibly
pronounced opinion of his scientific medical counsellor, decided the
acceptance of this proposal; and Mr. Burney, with his first restored
strength, set out for his new destination.