Mr. Burney was compelled to make his first essay of the air, situation,
and promised advantages of Lynn, without the companion to whom he owed
the re-establishment of health that enabled him to try the experiment:
his Esther, as exemplary in her maternal as in her conjugal duties, was
now indispensably detained in town by the most endearing of all ties to
female tenderness, the first offsprings of a union of mutual love; of
which the elder could but just go alone, and the younger was still in
her arms.
Mr. Burney was received at Lynn with every mark of favour, that could
demonstrate the desire of its inhabitants to attach and fix him to that
spot. He was introduced by Sir John Turner to the mayor, aldermen,
recorder, clergy, physicians, lawyers, and principal merchants, who
formed the higher population of the town; and who in their traffic, the
wine trade, were equally eminent for the goodness of their merchandize
and the integrity of their dealings.
All were gratified by an acquisition to their distant and quiet town,
that seemed as propitious to society as to the arts; the men with
respect gave their approbation to his sense and knowledge; the women
with smiles bestowed theirs upon his manners and appearance. His air
was so lively, and his figure was so youthful, that the most elegant as
well as beautiful woman of the place, Mrs. Stephen Allen, took him for
a Cambridge student, who, at that time, was expected at Lynn.
He was not insensible to such a welcome; yet the change was so great
from the splendid or elegant, the classical or amusing circles, into
which he had been initiated in the metropolis, that, in looking, he
said, around him, he seemed to see but a void.
The following energetic lament to his Esther, written about a week
after his Lynn residence, will best explain his tormented sensations at
this altered scene of life. He was but in his twenty-fourth year, when
he gave way to this quick burst of chagrin.
“TO MRS. BURNEY.
“_Lynn Regis, Monday._
“Now, my amiable friend, let me unbosom myself to thee, as if
I were to enjoy the incomparable felicity of thy presence.
And first—let me exclaim at the unreasonableness of man’s
desires; at his unbounded ambition and avarice, and at the
inconstancy of his temper, which impels him, the moment he
is in the possession of the thing that once employed all his
thoughts and wishes, to relinquish it, and to fix his “mind’s
eye” on some bauble that next becomes his point of view, and
that, if attained, he would wish as much to change for still
another toy, of still less consequence to his interest and
quiet. Oh thou constant tenant of my heart! to apply the
above to myself,—thou art the only good I have been constant
to! the only blessing I have been thankful to Providence
for! the only one, I feel, I shall ever continue to have
a true sense of! Ought I not to blush at this character’s
suiting me? Indeed I ought, and I do. Not that I think it
one peculiar to myself; I believe it would fit more than
half mankind. But it shames me to think how little I knew
myself, when I fancied I should be happy in this place. Oh
God! I find it impossible I should ever be so. Would you
believe it, that I have more than a hundred times wished I
had never heard its name? Nothing but the hope of acquiring
an independent fortune in a short space of time will keep me
here; though I am too deeply entered to retreat without great
loss. But happiness cannot be too dearly purchased. In short,
I would gladly change again for London, at any rate.
* * * * *
“The organ is execrably bad; and, add to that, a total
ignorance of the most known and common musical merits runs
through the whole body of people I have yet conversed with.
Even Sir J. T., who is the oracle of Apollo in this country,
is, in these matters, extremely shallow. Now the bad organ,
with the ignorance of my auditors, must totally extinguish
the few sparks of genius for composition that I may have,
and entirely discourage practice; for where would any pains
I may take to execute the most difficult piece of music be
repaid, if, like poor Orpheus, I am to perform to sticks and
stones?”
Ere long, however, Mr. Burney saw his prospects in a fairer point of
view. He found himself surrounded by some very worthy and amiable
persons, perfectly disposed to be his friends; and he became attached
to their kindness. The unfixed state of his health made London a
perilous place of abode for him; and his Esther pleaded for his
accommodating himself to his new situation.
He took, therefore, a pretty and convenient house, and sent for what,
next to his lovely wife, he most valued, his books; and when they came,
and when she herself was coming, he revived in his hopes and spirits,
and hastened her approach by the following affectionate rhymes—they
must not, in these fastidious days, be called verses. The austere
critic is besought, therefore, not to fall on the fair fame of the
writer, by considering them as produced for public inspection; nor as
assuming the high present character of poetry. They are inserted only
biographically, from a dearth of any further prose document, by which
might be conveyed, in the simplicity of his own veracious diction,
some idea of the sympathy and the purity of his marriage happiness, by
the rare picture which these lines present of an intellectual lover in
a tender husband.
“TO MRS. BURNEY.
“_Lynn Regis._
“Come, my darling!—quit the town;
Come!—and me with rapture crown.
* * * * *
If ’tis meet to fee or bribe
A leech of th’ Æsculapius tribe,
We Hepburn have, who’s wise as Socrates,
And deep in physic as Hippocrates.
Or, if ’tis meet to take the air,
You borne shall be on horse or mare;
And, ’gainst all chances to provide,
I’ll be your faithful ’squire and guide.
If unadulterate wine be good
To glad the heart, and mend the blood,
We that in plenty boast at Lynn,
Would make with pleasure Bacchus grin.
Should nerves auricular demand
A head profound, and cunning hand,
The charms of music to display,
Pray,—cannot _I_ compose and play?
And strains to your each humour suit
On organ, violin, or flute?
If these delights you deem too transient,
We modern authors have, or antient,
Which, while I’ve lungs from phthisicks freed,
To thee with rapture, sweet, I’ll read.
If Homer’s bold, inventive fire,
Or Virgil’s art, you most admire;
If Pliny’s eloquence and ease,
Or Ovid’s flowery fancy please;
In fair array they marshall’d stand,
Most humbly waiting your command.
To humanize and mend the heart,
Our serious hours we’ll set apart.
* * * * *
We’ll learn to separate right from wrong,
Through Pope’s mellifluous moral song.
If wit and humour be our drift,
We’ll laugh at knaves and fools with Swift.
To know the world, its follies see,
Ourselves from ridicule to free,
To whom for lessons shall we run,
But to the pleasing Addison?
Great Bacon’s learning; Congreve’s wit,
By turns thy humour well may hit.
How sweet, original, and strong,
How high the flights of Dryden’s song!
He, though so often careless found,
Lifts us so high above the ground
That we disdain terrestrial things,
And scale Olympus while he sings.
Among the bards who mount the skies
Whoe’er to such a height could rise
As Milton? he, to whom ’twas given
To plunge to Hell, and mount to Heaven.
How few like thee—my soul’s delight!
Can follow him in every flight?
La Mancha’s knight, on gloomy day,
Shall teach our muscles how to play,
And at the black fanatic class,
We’ll sometimes laugh with Hudibras.
When human passions all subside,
Where shall we find so sure a guide
Through metaphysics’ mazy ground
As Locke—scrutator most profound?
One bard there still remains in store,
And who has him need little more:
A bard above my feeble lay;
Above what wiser scribes can say.
He would the secret thoughts reveal
Of all the human mind can feel:
None e’er like him in every feature
So fair a likeness drew of Nature.
No passion swells the mortal breast
But what his pencil has exprest:
Nor need I tell my heart’s sole queen
That Shakespeare is the bard I mean.
May heaven, all bounteous in its care,
These blessings, and our offspring spare!
And while our lives are thus employ’d,
No earthly bliss left unenjoy’d,
May we—without a sigh or tear—
Together finish our career!
Together gain another station
Without the pangs of separation!
And when our souls have travelled far
Beyond this little dirty star,
Beyond the reach of strife, or noise,
To taste celestial, stable joys—
O may we still together keep—
Or may our death he endless sleep!
“_Lynn Regis, 19th Dec. 1751._”
The wife and the babies were soon now in his arms; and this generous
appreciator of the various charms of the one, and kind protector of
the infantile feebleness of the other, cast away every remnant of
discontent; and devoted himself to his family and profession, with an
ardour that left nothing unattempted that seemed within the grasp of
industry, and nothing unaccomplished that came within the reach of
perseverance.
He had immediately for his pupils the daughters of every house in Lynn,
whose chief had the smallest pretensions to belonging to the upper
classes of the town; while almost all persons of rank in its vicinity,
eagerly sought the assistance of the new professor for polishing the
education of their females: and all alike coveted his society for their
own information or entertainment.
First amongst those with whom these latter advantages might be
reciprocated, stood, as usual, in towns far off from the metropolis,
the physicians; who, for general education, learning, science, and
politeness, are as frequently the leaders in literature as they are the
oracles in health; and who, with the confraternity of the vicar, and
the superior lawyer, are commonly the allowed despots of erudition and
the belles lettres in provincial circles.
But while amongst the male inhabitants of the town, Mr. Burney
associated with many whose understandings, and some few whose tastes,
met his own; his wife, amongst the females, was less happy, though
not more fastidious. She found them occupied almost exclusively, in
seeking who should be earliest in importing from London what was newest
and most fashionable in attire; or in vying with each other in giving
and receiving splendid repasts; and in struggling to make their every
rotation become more and more luxurious.
By no means was this love of frippery, or feebleness of character among
the females, peculiar to Lynn: such, ALMOST[12] universally, is the
inheritance bequeathed from mother to daughter in small towns at a
distance from the metropolis; where there are few suspensive subjects
or pursuits of interest, ambition, or literature, that can enlist
either imagination or instruction into conversation.
That men, when equally removed from the busy turmoils of cities, or the
meditative studies of retirement, to such circumscribed spheres, should
manifest more vigour of mind, may not always be owing to possessing
it; but rather to their escaping, through the calls of business, that
inertness which casts the females upon themselves: for though many are
the calls more refined than those of business, there are few that more
completely do away with insignificancy.
In the state, however, in which Lynn then was found, Lynn will be found
no longer. The tide of ignorance is turned; and not there alone, nor
alone in any other small town, but in every village, every hamlet,
nay, every cottage in the kingdom; and though mental cultivation
is as slowly gradual, and as precarious of circulation, as Genius,
o’erleaping all barriers, and disdaining all auxiliaries, is rapid
and decisive, still the work of general improvement is advancing so
universally, that the dark ages which are rolling away, would soon be
lost even to man’s joy at their extirpation, but for the retrospective
and noble services of the press, through which their memory—if only to
be blasted—must live for ever.
There were two exceptions, nevertheless, to this stagnation of female
merit, that were flowing with pellucid clearness.
The first, Mrs. Stephen Allen, has already been mentioned. She was the
wife of a wine-merchant of considerable fortune, and of a very worthy
character. She was the most celebrated beauty of Lynn, and might have
been so of a much larger district, for her beauty was high, commanding,
and truly uncommon: and her understanding bore the same description.
She had wit at will; spirits the most vivacious and entertaining; and,
from a passionate fondness for reading, she had collected stores of
knowledge which she was always able, and “nothing loath” to display;
and which raised her to as marked a pre-eminence over her townswomen in
literary acquirements, as she was raised to exterior superiority from
her personal charms.
The other exception, Miss Dorothy Young, was of a different
description. She was not only denied beauty either of face or person,
but in the first she had various unhappy defects, and in the second
she was extremely deformed.
Here, however, ends all that can be said in her disfavour; for her mind
was the seat of every virtue that occasion could call into use; and her
disposition had a patience that no provocation could even momentarily
subdue; though her feelings were so sensitive, that tears started into
her eyes at every thing she either saw or heard of mortal sufferings,
or of mortal unkindness—to any human creature but herself.
It may easily be imagined that this amiable Dorothy Young, and the
elegant and intellectual Mrs. Allen, were peculiar and deeply attached
friends.
When a professional call brought Mr. Burney and his wife to this
town, that accomplished couple gave a new zest to rational, as well
as a new spring to musical, society. Mr. Burney, between business and
conviviality, immediately visited almost every house in the county; but
his wife, less easily known, because necessarily more domestic, began
her Lynn career almost exclusively with Mrs. Allen and Dolly Young, and
proved to both an inestimable treasure; Mrs. Allen generously avowing
that she set up Mrs. Burney as a model for her own mental improvement;
and Dolly Young becoming instinctively the most affectionate, as well
as most cultivated of Mrs. Burney’s friends; and with an attachment so
fervent and so sincere, that she took charge of the little family upon
every occasion of its increase during the nine or ten years of the Lynn
residence.[13]
With regard to the extensive neighbourhood, Mr. Burney had soon nothing
left to desire in hospitality, friendship, or politeness; and here, as
heretofore, he scarcely ever entered a house upon terms of business,
without leaving it upon those of intimacy.
The first mansions to which, naturally, his curiosity pointed, and
at which his ambition aimed, were those two magnificent structures
which stood loftily pre-eminent over all others in the county of
Norfolk, Holcomb and Haughton; though neither the nobleness of their
architecture, the grandeur of their dimensions, nor the vast expense of
their erection, bore any sway in their celebrity, that could compare
with what, at that period, they owed to the arts of sculpture and of
painting.