_Orange Coffee-House_,
and the opening of the letter still being, Sir.
When Chesington air, kindness, and freedom, had completely chased
away every symptom of disease, Dr. Burney hastened thither himself;
and arrived in the highest, happiest spirits. He had three objects in
view, each of them filling his lively heart with gay ideas; the first
was to bring back to his own roof his restored daughter: the second,
was to tell a laughable tale of wonder to the most revered friend of
both, for which he had previously written to demand her consent: and
the third, was to carry that daughter to Streatham, and present her, by
appointment, to Mrs. Thrale, and—to Dr. Johnson!
No sooner had the Doctor reached Liberty Hall, than the two faithful
old friends were shut up in the _conjuring closet_ where Dr. Burney
rushed at once into “the midst of things,” and disclosed the author of
the little work which, for some weeks past, had occupied Chesington
Hall with quotations, conjectures, and subject matter of talk.
All that belongs, or that ever can belong, in matters of small moment,
to amazement, is short of what was experienced by Mr. Crisp at this
recital: and his astonishment was so prodigious not to have heard of
her writing at all, till he heard of it in a printed work that was
running all over London, and had been read, and approved of by Dr.
Johnson and Edmund Burke; that, with all his powers of speech, his
choice of language, and his general variety of expression, he could
utter no phrase but “Wonderful!”—which burst forth at once on the
discovery; accompanied each of its details; and was still the only vent
to the fullness of his surprise when he had heard the whole history.
That she had consulted neither of these parents in this singular
undertaking, diverted them both: well they knew that no distrust
had caused the concealment, but simply an apprehension of utter
insufficiency to merit their suffrages.
What a dream did all this seem to this Memorialist! The fear, however,
of a reverse, checked all that might have rendered it too delusive;
and she earnestly supplicated that the communication might be spread
no further, lest it should precipitate a spirit of criticism, which
retirement and mystery kept dormant: and which made all her wishes
still unalterable for remaining unknown and unsuspected.
The popularity of this work did not render it very lucrative; ten
pounds a volume, by the addition of ten pounds to the original twenty,
after the third edition, being all that was ever paid, or ever offered
to the author; whose unaffectedly humble idea of its worth had cast
her, unconditionally, upon any terms that might be proposed.
Dr. Burney, enchanted at the new scene of life to which he was
now carrying his daughter, of an introduction to Streatham, and
a presentation to Dr. Johnson, took a most cordial leave of the
congratulatory Mr. Crisp; who sighed, nevertheless, in the midst of
his satisfaction, from a prophetic anticipation of the probable and
sundering calls from his peaceful habitation, of which he thought
this new scene likely to be the result. But the object of this kind
solicitude, far from participating in these fears, was curbed from
the full enjoyment of the honours before her, by a well-grounded
apprehension that Dr. Johnson, at least, if not Mrs. Thrale, might
expect a more important, and less bashful sort of personage, than she
was sure would be found.
Dr. Burney, aware of her dread, because aware of her retired life and
habits, and her native taste for personal obscurity, strove to laugh
off her apprehensions by disallowing their justice; and was himself all
gaiety and spirit.
Mrs. Thrale, who was walking in her paddock, came to the door of the
carriage to receive them; and poured forth a vivacity of thanks to the
Doctor for bringing his daughter, that filled that daughter with the
most agreeable gratitude; and soon made her so easy and comfortable,
that she forgot the formidable renown of wit and satire that were
coupled with the name of Mrs. Thrale; and the whole weight of her
panic, as well as the whole energy of her hopes, devolved upon the
approaching interview with Dr. Johnson.
But there, on the contrary, Dr. Burney felt far greater security.
Dr. Johnson, however undesignedly, nay, involuntarily, had been the
cause of the new author’s invitation to Streatham, from being the
first person who there had pronounced the name of Evelina; and that
previously to the discovery that its unknown writer was the daughter
of a man whose early enthusiasm for Dr. Johnson had merited his warm
acknowledgments; and whose character and conversation had since won
his esteem and friendship. Dr. Burney therefore prognosticated, that
such a circumstance could not but strike the vivid imagination of Dr.
Johnson as a romance of real life; and additionally interest him for
the unobtrusive author of the little work, which, wholly by chance, he
had so singularly helped to bring forward.
The curiosity of Dr. Johnson, however, though certainly excited, was
by no means so powerful as to allure him from his chamber one moment
before his customary time of descending to dinner; and the new author
had three or four hours to pass in constantly augmenting trepidation:
for the prospect of seeing him, which so short a time before would
have sufficed for her delight, was now chequered by the consciousness
that she could not, as heretofore, be in his presence only for her own
gratification, without any reciprocity of notice.
She was introduced, meanwhile, to Mr. Thrale, whose reception of her
was gentle and gentleman-like; and such as shewed his belief in the
verity of her desire to have her authorship unmarked.
She saw also Miss Thrale,[26] then barely entered into adolescence,
though full of sense and cultivated talents; but as shy as herself, and
consequently as little likely to create alarm.
One visitor only was at the house, Mr. Seward, afterwards author of
Biographiana; a singular, but very agreeable, literary, and beneficent
young man.
The morning was passed in the library, and, to the Doctor and his
daughter was passed deliciously: Mrs. Thrale, much amused by the
presence of two persons so peculiarly situated, put forth her utmost
powers of pleasing; and though that great engine to success, flattery,
was not spared, she wielded it with so much skill, and directed it with
so much pleasantry, that all disconcerting effects were chased aside,
to make it only produce laughter and good humour; through which gay
auxiliaries every trait meant, latently, for the fearful daughter, was
openly and plumply addressed to the happy father.
“I wish you had been with us last night, Dr. Burney,” she said; “for
thinking of what would happen to-day, we could talk of nothing in the
world but a certain sweet book; and Dr. Johnson was so full of it,
that he quite astonished us. He has got those incomparable Brangtons
quite by heart, and he recited scene after scene of their squabbles,
and selfishness, and forwardness, till he quite shook his sides with
laughter. But his greatest favourite is The Holbourn Beau, as he calls
Mr. Smith. Such a fine varnish, he says, of low politeness! such
struggles to appear the fine gentleman! such a determination to be
genteel! and, above all, such profound devotion to the ladies,—while
openly declaring his distaste to matrimony!——All this Mr. Johnson
pointed out with so much comicality of sport, that, at last, he got
into such high spirits, that he set about personating Mr. Smith
himself! We all thought we must have died no other death than that of
suffocation, in seeing Dr. Johnson handing about any thing he could
catch, or snatch at, and making smirking bows, saying he was _all for
the ladies,—every thing that was agreeable to the ladies_, &c. &c.
&c., ‘except,’ says he, ‘going to church with them! and as to that,
though marriage, to be sure, is all in all to the ladies, marriage
to a man—is the devil!’ And then he pursued his personifications of
his Holbourn Beau, till he brought him to what Mr. Johnson calls his
climax; which is his meeting with Sir Clement Willoughby at Madame
Duval’s, where a blow is given at once to his self-sufficiency, by
the surprise and confusion of seeing himself so distanced; and the
hopeless envy with which he looks up to Sir Clement, as to a meteor
such as he himself had hitherto been looked up to at Snow Hill, that
give a finishing touch to his portrait. And all this comic humour of
character, he says, owes its effect to contrast; for without Lord
Orville, and Mr. Villars, and that melancholy and gentleman-like
half-starved Scotchman, poor Macartney, the Brangtons, and the Duvals,
would be less than nothing; for vulgarity, in its own unshadowed glare,
is only disgusting.”
This account is abridged from a long journal letter of the
Memorialist; addressed to Mr. Crisp; but she will hazard copying
more at length, from the same source, the original narration of her
subsequent introduction to the notice of Dr. Johnson; as it may not
be incurious to the reader, to see that great man in the uncommon
light of courteously, nay playfully, subduing the fears, and raising
the courage, of a newly discovered, but yet unavowed young author, by
unexpected sallies and pointed allusions to characters in her work;
not as to beings that were the product of her imagination, but as to
persons of his own acquaintance, and in real life.
“TO SAMUEL CRISP, ESQ.
“_Chesington, Kingston, Surrey._
* * * * *
Well, when, at last, we were summoned to dinner, Mrs. Thrale made my
father and myself sit on each side of her. I said, I hoped I did not
take the place of Dr. Johnson? for, to my great consternation, he did
not even yet appear, and I began to apprehend he meant to abscond.
‘No,’ answered Mrs. Thrale; ‘he will sit next to you,—and that, I am
sure, will give him great pleasure.’
Soon after we were all marshalled, the great man entered. I have so
sincere a veneration for him, that his very sight inspires me with
delight as well as reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities
to which, as I have told you, he is subject. But all that, outwardly,
is so unfortunate, is so nobly compensated by all that, within, is
excelling, that I can now only, like Desdemona for Othello, ‘view his
image in his mind.’
Mrs. Thrale introduced me to him with an emphasis upon my name that
rather frightened me, for it seemed like a call for some compliment.
But he made me a bow the most formal, almost solemn, in utter silence,
and with his eyes bent downwards. I felt relieved by this distance, for
I thought he had forgotten, for the present at least, both the favoured
little book and the invited little scribbler; and I therefore began to
answer the perpetual addresses to me of Mrs. Thrale, with rather more
ease. But by the time I was thus recovered from my panic, Dr. Johnson
asked my father what was the composition of some little pies on his
side of the table; and, while my father was endeavouring to make it
out, Mrs. Thrale said, ‘Nothing but mutton, Mr. Johnson, so I don’t ask
you to eat such poor patties, because I know you despise them.’
‘No, Madam, no!’ cried Doctor Johnson, ‘I despise nothing that is good
of its sort. But I am too proud now, [smiling] to eat mutton pies!
Sitting by Miss Burney makes me very proud to-day!’
“If you had seen, my dear Mr. Crisp, how wide I felt my eyes open!—A
compliment from Doctor Johnson!
‘Miss Burney,’ cried Mrs. Thrale, laughing, ‘you must take great care
of your heart, if Mr. Johnson attacks it—for I assure you he is not
often successless!’
‘What’s that you say, Madam?’ cried the Doctor; ‘are you making
mischief between the young lady and me already?’
A little while afterwards, he drank Miss Thrale’s health and mine
together, in a bumper of lemonade; and then added: ‘It is a terrible
thing that we cannot wish young ladies to be well, without wishing them
to become old women!’
‘If the pleasures of longevity were not gradual,’ said my father, ‘If
we were to light upon them by a jump or a skip, we should be cruelly at
a loss how to give them welcome!’
‘But some people,’ said Mr. Seward, ‘are young and old at the same
time; for they wear so well, that they never look old.’
‘No, Sir, no!’ cried the Doctor; ‘that never yet was, and never will
be! You might as well say they were at the same time tall and short.
Though I recollect an epitaph,—I forget upon whom, to that purpose.
“‘Miss such a one—lies buried here,
So early wise, and lasting fair,
That none, unless her years you told,
Thought her a child—or thought her old.’
My father then mentioned Mr. Garrick’s epilogue to Bonduca, which Dr.
Johnson called a miserable performance; and which every body agreed to
be the worst that Mr. Garrick had ever written.
‘And yet,’ said Mr. Seward, ‘it has been very much admired. But it is
in praise of English valour, and so, I suppose, the subject made it
popular.’
‘I do not know, Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘any thing about the subject,
for I could not read till I came to any. I got through about half a
dozen lines; but for subject, I could observe no other than perpetual
dullness. I do not know what is the matter with David. I am afraid he
is becoming superannuated; for his prologues and epilogues used to be
incomparable.’
“Nothing is so fatiguing,” said Mrs. Thrale, “as the life of a wit.
Garrick and Wilkes are the oldest men of their age that I know; for
they have both worn themselves out prematurely by being eternally on
the rack to entertain others.”
“David, Madam,” said the Doctor, “looks much older than he is, because
his face has had double the business of any other man’s. It is never at
rest! When he speaks one minute, he has quite a different countenance
to that which he assumes the next. I do not believe he ever kept the
same look for half an hour together in the whole course of his life.
And such a perpetual play of the muscles must certainly wear a man’s
face out before his time.”
While I was cordially laughing at this idea, the Doctor, who had
probably observed in me some little uneasy trepidation, and now, I
suppose, concluded me restored to my usual state, suddenly, though very
ceremoniously, as if to begin some acquaintance with me, requested
that I would help him to some broccoli. This I did; but when he took
it, he put on a face of humorous discontent, and said, ‘Only _this_,
Madam?—You would not have helped Mr. Macartney so parsimoniously!’
He affected to utter this in a whisper; but to see him directly
address me, caught the attention of all the table, and every one
smiled, though in silence; while I felt so surprised and so foolish! so
pleased and so ashamed, that I hardly knew whether he meant _my_ Mr.
Macartney, or spoke at random of some other. This, however, he soon
put beyond all doubt, by very composedly adding, while contemptuously
regarding my imputed parsimony on his plate: “Mr. Macartney, it is
true, might have most claim to liberality, poor fellow!—for how, as
Tom Brangton shrewdly remarks, should he ever have known what a good
dinner was, if he had never come to England?”
Perceiving, I suppose—for it could not be very difficult to
discern—the commotion into which this explication put me; and the
stifled disposition to a contagious laugh, which was suppressed, not to
add to my embarrassment; he quickly, but quietly, went on to a general
discourse upon Scotland, descriptive and political; but without point
or satire—though I cannot, my dear Mr. Crisp, give you one word of
it: not because I have forgotten it—for there is no remembering what
we have never heard; but because I could only generally gather the
subject. I could not listen to it. I was so confused and perturbed
between pleasure and vexation—pleasure, indeed, in the approvance of
Dr. Johnson! but vexation, and great vexation to find, by the conscious
smirks of all around, that I was betrayed to the whole party! while I
had only consented to confiding in Mrs. Thrale; all, no doubt, from
a mistaken notion that I had merely meant to feel the pulse of the
public, and to avow, or to conceal myself, according to its beatings:
when heaven knows—and you, my dear Mr. Crisp, know, that I had not the
most distant purpose of braving publicity, under success, any more than
under failure.
From Scotland, the talk fell, but I cannot tell how, upon some friend
of Dr. Johnson’s, of whom I did not catch the name; so I will call
him Mr. Three Stars, * * *; of whom Mr. Seward related some burlesque
anecdotes, from which Mr. * * * was warmly vindicated by the Doctor.
“Better say no more, Mr. Seward,” cried Mrs. Thrale, “for Mr. * * * is
one of the persons that Mr. Johnson will suffer no one to abuse but
himself! Garrick is another: for if any creature but himself says a
word against Garrick—Mr. Johnson will brow-beat him in a moment.”
“Why, Madam, as to David,” answered the Doctor, very calmly, ‘it is
only because they do not know when to abuse and when to praise him;
and I will allow no man to speak any ill of David, that he does not
deserve. As to * * *,—why really I believe him to be an honest man,
too, at the bottom. But, to be sure, he is rather penurious; and he is
somewhat mean; and it must be owned he has some degree of brutality;
and is not without a tendency to savageness, that cannot well be
defended.’
We all laughed, as he could not help doing himself, at such a curious
mode of taking up his friend’s justification. And he then related
a trait of another friend who had belonged to some club[27] that
the Doctor frequented, who, after the first or second night of his
admission, desired, as he eat no supper, to be excused paying his share
for the collation.
“And was he excused, Sir?” cried my father.
“Yes, Sir; and very readily. No man is angry with another for being
inferior to himself. We all admitted his plea publicly—for the
gratification of scorning him privately! For my own part, I was fool
enough to constantly pay my share for the wine, which I never tasted.
But my poor friend Sir John, it cannot well be denied, was but an
unclubbable man.”
How delighted was I to hear this master of languages, this awful, this
dreaded lexiphanes, thus sportively and gaily coin burlesque words in
social comicality!
I don’t know whether he deigned to watch me, but I caught a glance of
his eye that seemed to shew pleasure in perceiving my surprise and
diversion, for with increased glee of manner he proceeded.—
“This reminds me of a gentleman and lady with whom I once travelled. I
suppose I must call them gentleman and lady, according to form, because
they travelled in their own coach and four horses. But, at the first
inn where we stopped to water the cattle, the lady called to a waiter
for—a pint of ale! And, when it came, she would not taste it, till
she had wrangled with the man for not bringing her fuller measure!
Now—Madame Duval could not have done a grosser thing!”
A sympathetic simper now ran from mouth to mouth, save to mine, and to
that of Dr. Johnson; who gravely pretended to pass off what he had
said as if it were a merely accidental reminiscence of some vulgar old
acquaintance of his own. And this, as undoubtedly, and most kindly, he
projected, prevented any sort of answer that might have made the book
a subject of general discourse. And presently afterwards, he started
some other topic, which he addressed chiefly to Mr. Thrale. But if
you expect me to tell you what it was, you think far more grandly of
my powers of attention without, when all within is in a whirl, than I
deserve!
Be it, however, what it might, the next time there was a pause, we
all observed a sudden play of the muscles in the countenance of the
Doctor, that shewed him to be secretly enjoying some ludicrous idea:
and accordingly, a minute or two after, he pursed up his mouth, and, in
an assumed pert, yet feminine accent, while he tossed up his head to
express wonder, he affectedly minced out, “La, Polly!—only think! Miss
has danced with a Lord!”
This was resistless to the whole set, and a general, though a gentle
laugh, became now infectious; in which, I must needs own to you, I
could not, with all my embarrassment, and all my shame, and all my
unwillingness to demonstrate my consciousness, help being caught—so
indescribably ludicrous and unexpected was a mimicry of Miss Biddy
Brangton from Dr. Johnson!
The Doctor, however, with a refinement of delicacy of which I have
the deepest sense, never once cast his eyes my way during these comic
traits; though those of every body else in the company had scarcely for
a moment any other direction.
But imagine my relief and my pleasure, in playfulness such as this
from the great literary Leviathan, whom I had dreaded almost as much
as I had honoured! How far was I from dreaming of such sportive
condescension! He clearly wished to draw the little snail from her
cell, and, when once she was out, not to frighten her back. He seems to
understand my _queeralities_—as some one has called my not liking to
be set up for a sign-post—with more leniency than any body else.”
* * * * *
This long article of Evelina, will be closed by copying a brief one
upon the same subject, written from memory, by Dr. Burney, so late in
his life as the year 1808.
_Copied from a Memorandum-book of Dr. Burney’s, written in the year
1808, at Bath._
“The literary history of my second daughter, Fanny, now Madame
d’Arblay, is singular. She was wholly unnoticed in the nursery for any
talents, or quickness of study: indeed, at eight years old she did not
know her letters; and her brother, the tar, who in his boyhood had a
natural genius for hoaxing, used to pretend to teach her to read; and
gave her a book topsy-turvy, which he said she never found out! She
had, however, a great deal of invention and humour in her childish
sports; and used, after having seen a play in Mrs. Garrick’s box, to
take the actors off, and compose speeches for their characters; for
she could not read them. But in company, or before strangers, she
was silent, backward, and timid, even to sheepishness: and, from her
shyness, had such profound gravity and composure of features, that
those of my friends who came often to my house, and entered into the
different humours of the children, never called Fanny by any other
name, from the time she had reached her eleventh year, than The Old
Lady.
Her first work, Evelina, was written by stealth, in a closet up two
pair of stairs, that was appropriated to the younger children as a
play room. No one was let into the secret but my third daughter,
afterwards Mrs. Phillips; though even to her it was never read till
printed, from want of private opportunity. To me, nevertheless, she
confidentially owned that she was going, through her brother Charles,
to print a little work, but she besought me never to ask to see it. I
laughed at her plan, but promised silent acquiescence; and the book
had been six months published before I even heard its name; which I
learnt at last without her knowledge. But great, indeed, was then my
surprise, to find that it was in general reading, and commended in no
common manner in the several Reviews of the times. Of this she was
unacquainted herself, as she was then ill, and in the country. When
I knew its title, I commissioned one of her sisters to procure it
for me privately. I opened the first volume with fear and trembling;
not having the least idea that, without the use of the press, or any
practical knowledge of the world, she could write a book worth reading.
The dedication to myself, however, brought tears into my eyes; and
before I had read half the first volume I was much surprised, and,
I confess, delighted; and most especially with the letters of Mr.
Villars. She had always had a great affection for me; had an excellent
heart, and a natural simplicity and probity about her that wanted no
teaching. In her plays with her sisters, and some neighbour’s children,
this straightforward morality operated to an uncommon degree in one so
young. There lived next door to me, at that time, in Poland street, and
in a private house, a capital hair merchant, who furnished peruques to
the judges, and gentlemen of the law. The merchant’s female children
and mine, used to play together in the little garden behind the house;
and, unfortunately, one day, the door of the wig magazine being left
open, they each of them put on one of those dignified ornaments of the
head, and danced and jumped about in a thousand antics, laughing till
they screamed at their own ridiculous figures. Unfortunately, in their
vagaries, one of the flaxen wigs, said by the proprietor to be worth
upwards of ten guineas—in those days a price enormous—fell into a tub
of water, placed for the shrubs in the little garden, and lost all its
gorgon buckle, and was declared by the owner to be totally spoilt. He
was extremely angry, and chid very severely his own children; when my
little daughter, the old lady, then ten years of age, advancing to him,
as I was informed, with great gravity and composure, sedately says;
“What signifies talking so much about an accident? The wig is wet, to
be sure; and the wig was a good wig, to be sure; but its of no use to
speak of it any more; because what’s done can’t be undone.”
“Whether these stoical sentiments appeased the enraged peruquier, I
know not, but the younkers were stript of their honours, and my little
monkies were obliged to retreat without beat of drum, or colours
flying.”