“MY LORD,
“Not finding an opportunity of speaking yesterday to Lord
Hertford, in favour of Mr. Burney, I spoke to my lady, and
told her the whole case. She already knows Mr. Burney, and
has an esteem for him. She said it gave her great uneasiness,
and was sure it would do so to my lord, that he was already
engaged, and, she believed, to the Duke of York.
“It occurred to me, that his Royal Highness’s application
might, also, be in favour of Mr. Burney; in which case the
matter is easy. If not, it is probable your Lordship may
engage his Royal Highness to depart from his application; for
really Mr. Burney’s case, independently of his merit, is very
hard and cruel.
“I have the honour to be,
“My Lord, your Lordship’s
“Most humble and most obedient servant,
“DAVID HUME.”
“P. S. If your Lordship honour me with an answer in the
forenoon, please send it to General Conway’s, in Little Warwick
Street; if in the afternoon, at Miss Elliot’s, Brewer Street,
Golden Square.”
A reclamation such as this, from a man who was then almost universally
held to be at the head of British literature, could not be read
unmoved; and an opinion so positive of the justice and merits of the
case, manifested by two directions for an immediate reply, both given
for the same day, and without any apology for such precipitancy, shewed
a warmth of personal zeal and interest for the welfare of Mr. Burney,
that was equally refreshing to his spirits, and stimulating to his
hopes.
The place, however, was decidedly gone. The first word from the Duke
had fixed its fate; though, from the real amenity of the character of
the prince, joined to the previous favour he had shewn to Mr. Burney,
there cannot be a doubt that, had the history of the affair reached the
ear of his Royal Highness, he would have been foremost himself, as Mr.
Hume suggested, to have nominated Mr. Burney.
Here the matter dropped; and the expressed regret and civilities of
the Countess, with the implied ones of the Earl, somewhat softened the
infliction: but the active services, and manly appeal of David Hume,
conduced far more to awaken and to fortify the philosophy that so
unexpected a mortification required.
* * * * *
In mingling again with the world upon its common terms of cultivating
what was good, and supporting what was evil, Mr. Burney now, no
longer bewitched by beauty, nor absorbed by social sympathies, found
literature and its pursuits without rival in his estimation; yet,
in missing those vanished delights, he deemed that he had the world
to re-begin: for though prosperity met his professional toils with
heightened reputation and reward, they were joyless, however essential,
since participation was gone!
The time had arrived, and now was passed, for the long-settled project
of Mr. Burney of conveying to Paris his second and, then, youngest
daughters, Frances and Charlotte, to replace his eldest and his third,
Esther and Susanna; now both returned thence, with every improvement
that a kind parent could reasonably desire.
The time had arrived—and was passed.—But if no man can with certainty
pronounce what at any stated period he will perform, how much less is
he gifted with fore-knowledge of what, at any stated period, he may
wish!
Six heartless, nearly desolate, years of lonely conjugal chasm, had
succeeded to double their number of nearly unparalleled conjugal
enjoyment—and the void was still fallow and hopeless!—when the yet
very handsome, though no longer in her bloom, Mrs. Stephen Allen, of
Lynn, now become a widow, decided, for promoting the education of her
eldest daughter, to make London her winter residence.
Mr. Burney was, of course, applied to for assistance in the musical
line; and not less called upon as the most capable judge and counsellor
in every other.
The loss that had been sustained by Mrs. Allen was that of a very
worthy man, whom she esteemed, but to whom she had been married by
her parents early in life, without either choice or aversion. In her
situation, therefore, and that of Mr. Burney, there was no other
affinity than that each had been widowed by the hand of death.
Highly intellectual, and fond even to passion of books, Mrs. Allen
delighted in the conversation of Mr. Burney; and the hour for his
instructions to Miss Allen was fixed to be that of tea-time; to the end
that, when he was liberated from the daughter, he might be engaged with
the mother.
The superior grief of Mr. Burney, as deep as it was acute, was not
more prominent than the feeling admiration that it inspired in Mrs.
Allen: and if moved by his sorrows, while charmed by his merit, Mrs.
Allen saw him with daily increasing interest, Mr. Burney was not less
moved by her commiseration, nor less penetrated by her sympathy; and
insensibly he became solaced, while involuntarily she grew grateful,
upon observing her rising influence over his spirits.
To the tender sentiments of the heart, the avenues are as infinite
for entrance as they are difficult for escape; but there are none so
direct, and, consequently, none so common, as those through whose
gentle mazes soft pity encounters soothing sensibility.
The task of consoling the sorrower seems, to its participator, nearly a
devout one; and the sorrower, most especially where beauty and spirit
meet in that participator, would think resistance to such benevolence
might savour of ingratitude.
Those who judge of the sincerity of pristine connubial tenderness
merely by its abhorrence of succession, take a very unenlightened,
if not false, view of human grief; unless they limit their stigma to
an eager or a facile repetition of those rites which, on their first
inauguration, had seemed inviolable and irreplaceable.
So still, in fact, they may faithfully, though silently continue, even
under a subsequent new connexion. The secret breast, alive to memory
though deprived of sympathy, may still internally adhere to its own
choice and fondness; notwithstanding the various and imperious calls
of current existence may urge a second alliance: and urge it, from
feelings and from affections as clear of inconstancy as of hypocrisy;
urge it, from the best of motives, that of accommodating ourselves to
our lot, with all its piercing privations; since our lot is dependent
upon causes we have no means to either evade or fathom; and as remote
from our direction as from our wishes.
If, by any exertion of which mortal man is capable, or any suffering
which mortal man can sustain, Mr. Burney could have called back his
vanished Esther to his ecstatic consciousness, labour, even to
decrepitude, endurance even to torture, he would have borne, would have
sought, would have blessed, for the most transient sight of her adored
form. But she was taken away from him by that decree against which
there is no appeal.
He who loses a parent, a brother, a sister, a friend, however deeply
and deservedly they may be lamented, is never branded with want of
feeling if he seek another counsellor and guide, if he accept another
companion and favourite. It is but considered to be meeting his destiny
as a man who knows he must not choose it; it is but consenting to
receive such good as is attainable, while bowing down submissively to
such evil as is unavoidable.
Succession is the law of nature; and, as far as her laws are obvious,
it is that which stands foremost.
The angel whom Mr. Burney had lost—for an angel both without and
within she had seemed to him—had the generous disinterestedness, on
the bed of death, to recommend to her miserable husband that he would
marry again; well knowing that the tenderness of female friendship
would come nearest,—however distant,—to the softness of consolation:
and, maternally weighing, no doubt, that a well chosen partner might
prove a benediction to her poor children. And this injunction, though
heard at the time with agony scarcely supportable, might probably,
and strongly, influence his future conduct, when the desperation of
hopelessness was somewhat worn away by all-subduing time, joined to
forced exertions in business.
His Esther had even named to him the lady whom she thought most capable
to suit him as a companion, and most tenderly disposed to becoming a
mother to his children,—Miss Dorothy Young, who was her most valued
friend. Mrs. Allen, Dorothy’s nearest competitor, was not then a widow.
But Mr. Burney, sacred as he held the opinions and the wishes of his
Esther, was too ardent an admirer of beauty to dispense, in totality,
with that attractive embellishment of the female frame. He honoured and
esteemed, with a brother’s affection, the excellent Dorothy Young: but
those charms which awaken softer sensations, were utterly and unhappily
denied to that estimable woman, through her peculiarly unfortunate
personal defects.
Not early, and not easily, did Mr. Burney and Mrs. Allen reveal their
mutual partiality. The wounded heart of Mr. Burney recoiled from such
anodyne as demanded new vows to a new object: and Mrs. Allen, at
that period, lived in a state of affluence that made such a marriage
require severe worldly sacrifices. Only, however transiently; for by
an unfortunate trust in an unfortunate, though honourable speculatist,
Dr. King, she completely lost all that, independently, was at her own
disposal of fortune. And the noble disinterestedness of Mr. Burney upon
this occasion, rivetted to him her affections, with the highest esteem.
Yet even when these scruples were mutually overwhelmed by increasing
force of regard, so many unlooked for obstacles stood in the way of
their union, that, wearied by delays that seemed at once captious and
interminable, Mr. Burney earnestly entreated that an immediate private
marriage might avert, at least, a final breach of their engagement:
solemnly promising, at the same time, that they should keep the
alliance secret, and still live apart, till all prudential exactions
should be satisfied.
As they were each wholly independent, save from the influence of
opinion,—which, however, is frequently more difficult to subdue than
that of authority,—Mrs. Allen saw no objection of sufficient force to
counteract her pleasure in compliance.
Their plan was confided to four persons, indispensably requisite for
its execution; Mrs., afterwards Lady Strange, Miss Young, Mr. Crisp,
and the Rev. Mr. Pugh, curate of St. James’s church.
Mr. Pugh, who was of very long standing a friend of Mr. Burney,
aided personally in promoting such measures as secured secrecy with
success; and in St. James’s church, Mr. Pugh tied that indissoluble
knot, which, however fairly promising, is inevitably rigorous, since
it can be loosened only by Crime or by Death: but which, where it
binds the destinies of those whose hearts are already knit together by
reciprocated regard, gives a charm to captivity that robs liberty of
regret.
At the porch of St. James’s church, Mrs. Strange and Mr. Pugh whispered
their congratulations to the new married couple, as they entered a
prepared post-chaise; which, in a very few hours, galloped them to the
obscure skirts of the then pathless, and nearly uninhabited, Chesington
common; where Mr. Crisp had engaged for them a rural and fragrant
retreat, at a small farm-house in a little hamlet, a mile or two from
Chesington Hall.
The secret, as usual in matrimonial concealments, was faithfully
preserved, for a certain time, by scrupulous discretion in the
parties, and watchful circumspection in the witnesses: but, as usual
also, error and accident were soon at work to develop the transaction;
and the loss of a letter, through some carelessness of conveyance,
revealed suddenly but irrevocably the state of the connexion.
This circumstance, however, though, at the time, cruelly distressing,
served ultimately but to hasten their own views; as the discovery was
necessarily followed by the personal union for which their hands had
been joined.
Mrs. Burney,—now no longer Mrs. Stephen Allen—came openly to town to
inhabit, for a while, a house in Poland-street, a few doors from that
of her husband; while alterations, paintings, and embellishments were
progressively preparing the way for her better reception at his home.
The two families, however, awaited not the completion of these
improvements for a junction. The younger branches, who already, and
from their birth, were well known to one another, were as eager as
their parents for a general union; and the very amiable Miss Allen,[32]
the most important personage in the juvenile group, conducted herself
upon the disclosure of the marriage, with a generous warmth of kindness
that quickened the new establishment. And her example would forcibly
have weighed with her deserving brother, Stephen Allen,[33] had such
example been wanting; but he entertained so true and affectionate a
respect for Mr. Burney, that he required neither duty nor influence to
reconcile him to the match.
The four daughters of Mr. Burney,—Esther, Frances, Susan, and
Charlotte,—were all earnest to contribute their small mites to the
happiness of one of the most beloved of parents, by receiving, with the
most respectful alacrity, the lady on whom he had cast his future hopes
of regaining domestic comfort.
The Paris scheme for the two daughters, who were to have followed the
route of their sisters, long remitted, from the fluctuating affairs
and feelings of Mr. Burney, was now finally abandoned. The youngest
daughter, Charlotte, was sent to a school in Norfolk. The second,
Frances, was the only one of Mr. Burney’s family who never was placed
in any seminary, and never was put under any governess or instructor
whatsoever. Merely and literally self-educated, her sole emulation for
improvement, and sole spur for exertion, were her unbounded veneration
for the character, and affection for the person, of her father; who,
nevertheless, had not, at the time, a moment to spare for giving her
any personal lessons; or even for directing her pursuits.[34]