_Chesington._
* * * * *
“My dear Mr. Crisp.
“At the Knight of Plympton’s house, on Richmond Hill, next to the Star
and Garter, we were met by the Bishop of St. Asaph, who stands as high
in general esteem for agreeability as for worth and learning; and by
his accomplished and spirited daughter, Miss Shipley. My father was
already acquainted with both; and to both I was introduced by Miss
Palmer.
“No other company was mentioned; but some smiling whispers passed
between Sir Joshua, Miss Palmer, and my father, that awakened in me a
notion that the party was not yet complete; and with that notion an
idea that Mr. Burke might be the awaited chief of the assemblage; for as
they knew I had long had as much eagerness to see Mr. Burke as I had
fears of meeting his expectations, I thought they might forbear naming
him to save me a fit of fright.
“Sir Joshua who, though full of kindness, dearly loves a little
innocent malice, drew me soon afterwards to a window, to look at the
beautiful prospect below; the soft meandering of the Thames, and the
brightly picturesque situation of the elegant white house which Horace
Walpole had made the habitation of Lady Diana Beauclerk and her fair
progeny; in order to gather, as he afterwards laughingly acknowledged,
my sentiments of the view, that he might compare them with those of Mr.
Burke on the same scene! However, I escaped, luckily, falling, through
ignorance, into such a competition, by the entrance of a large, though
unannounced party, in a mass. For as this was only a visit of a day,
there were very few servants; and those few, I suppose, were preparing
the dinner apartment; for this group appeared to have found its own way
up to the drawing-room, with an easiness as well suited to its humour,
by the gay air of its approach, as to that of Sir Joshua; who holds
ceremony almost in horror, and who received them without any form or
apology.
“He quitted me, however, to go forward, and greet with distinction a
lady who was in the set. They were all familiarly recognized by the
Bishop and Miss Shipley, as well as by Miss Palmer; and some of them by
my father, whose own face wore an expression, of pleasure, that helped
to fix a conjecture in my mind that one amongst them, whom I peculiarly
signalised, tall, and of fine deportment, with an air at once of
Courtesy and Command, might be Edmund Burke.
“Excited as I felt by this idea, I continued at my picturesque window,
as all the company were strangers to me, till Miss Palmer gave her
hand to the tall, suspected, but unknown personage, saying, in a half
whisper, “Have I kept my promise at last?” and then, but in a lower
tone still, and pointing to the window, she pronounced “Miss Burney.”
As this seemed intended for private information, previously to an
introduction, be the person whom he might, though accidentally it
was overheard, I instantly bent my head out of the window, as if not
attending to them: yet I caught, unavoidably, the answer, which was
uttered in a voice the most emphatic, though low, “Why did you tell me
it was Miss Burney? Did you think I should not have known it?”
“An awkward feel, now, from having still no certainty of my surmise, or
of what it might produce, made me seize a spying glass, and set about
re-examining the prospect; till a pat on the arm, soon after, by Miss
Palmer, turned me round to the company, just as the still unknown, to
my great regret, was going out of the room with a footman, who seemed
to call him away upon some sudden summons of business. But my father,
who was at Miss Palmer’s elbow, said, “Fanny—Mr. Gibbon!”
This, too, was a great name; but of how different a figure and
presentation! Fat and ill-constructed, Mr. Gibbon has cheeks of such
prodigious chubbyness, that they envelope his nose so completely, as to
render it, in profile, absolutely invisible. His look and manner are
placidly mild, but rather effeminate; his voice,—for he was speaking
to Sir Joshua at a little distance—is gentle, but of studied precision
of accent. Yet, with these Brobdignatious cheeks, his neat little feet
are of a miniature description; and with these, as soon as I turned
round, he hastily described a quaint sort of circle, with small quick
steps, and a dapper gait, as if to mark the alacrity of his approach,
and then, stopping short when full face to me, he made so singularly
profound a bow, that—though hardly able to keep my gravity—I felt
myself blush deeply at its undue, but palpably intended obsequiousness.
This demonstration, however, over, his sense of politeness, or project
of flattery, was satisfied; for he spoke not a word, though his gallant
advance seemed to indicate a design of bestowing upon me a little
rhetorical touch of a compliment. But, as all eyes in the room were
suddenly cast upon us both, it is possible he partook a little himself
of the embarrassment he could not but see that he occasioned; and was
therefore unwilling, or unprepared, to hold forth so publicly upon—he
scarcely, perhaps, knew what!—for, unless my partial Sir Joshua should
just then have poured it into his ears, how little is it likely Mr.
Gibbon should have heard of Evelina!
But at this moment, to my great relief, the Unknown again appeared; and
with a spirit, an air, a deportment that seemed to spread around him
the glow of pleasure with which he himself was visibly exhilarated. But
speech was there none; for dinner, which I suppose had awaited him, was
at the same instant proclaimed; and all the company, in a mixed, quite
irregular, and even confused manner, descended, _sans ceremonie_, to
the eating parlour.
The Unknown, however, catching the arm and the trumpet of Sir Joshua,
as they were coming down stairs, murmured something, in a rather
reproachful tone, in the knight’s ear; to which Sir Joshua made no
audible answer. But when he had placed himself at his table, he
called out, smilingly, “Come, Miss Burney!—will you take a seat
next mine?”—adding, as if to reward my very alert compliance, “and
then—Mr. Burke shall sit on your other side.”
“O no, indeed!” cried the sprightly Miss Shipley, who was also next to
Sir Joshua, “I sha’n’t agree to that! Mr. Burke must sit next me! I
won’t consent to part with him. So pray come, and sit down quiet, Mr.
Burke.”
Mr. Burke—for Mr. Burke, Edmund Burke, it was!—smiled, and obeyed.
“I only proposed it to make my peace with Mr. Burke,” said Sir Joshua,
passively, “by giving him that place; for he has been scolding me all
the way down stairs for not having introduced him to Miss Burney;
however, I must do it now—Mr. Burke!—Miss Burney!”
We both half rose, to reciprocate a little salutation; and Mr. Burke
said: “I have been complaining to Sir Joshua that he left me wholly to
my own sagacity,—which, however, did not here deceive me!”
Delightedly as my dear father, who had never before seen Mr. Burke in
private society, enjoyed this encounter, I, my dear Mr. Crisp, had a
delight in it that transcended all comparison. No expectation that
I had formed of Mr. Burke, either from his works, his speeches, his
character, or his fame, had anticipated to me such a man as I now
met. He appeared, perhaps, at this moment, to the highest possible
advantage in health, vivacity, and spirits. Removed from the impetuous
aggravations of party contentions, that, at times, by inflaming his
passions, seem, momentarily at least, to disorder his character, he
was lulled into gentleness by the grateful feelings of prosperity;
exhilarated, but not intoxicated, by sudden success; and just risen,
after toiling years of failures, disappointments, fire, and fury, to
place, affluence, and honours; which were brightly smiling on the
zenith of his powers. He looked, indeed, as if he had no wish but to
diffuse philanthropy, pleasure, and genial gaiety all around.
His figure, when he is not negligent in his carriage, is noble; his
air, commanding; his address, graceful; his voice clear, penetrating,
sonorous, and powerful; his language, copious, eloquent, and
changefully impressive; his manners are attractive; his conversation is
past all praise!
You will call me mad, I know;—but if I wait till I see another Mr.
Burke for such another fit of ecstacy—I may be long enough in my very
sober good senses!
Sir Joshua next made Mrs. Burke greet the new comer into this select
circle; which she did with marked distinction. She appears to be
pleasing and sensible, but silent and reserved.
Sir Joshua then went through the same introductory etiquette with Mr.
Richard Burke, the brother; Mr. William Burke, the cousin; and young
Burke, the son of THE Burke. They all, in different ways, seem lively
and agreeable; but at miles, and myriads of miles, from the towering
chief.
How proud should I be to give you a sample of the conversation of Mr.
Burke! But the subjects were, in general, so fleeting, his ideas so
full of variety, of gaiety, and of matter; and he darted from one of
them to another with such rapidity, that the manner, the eye, the air
with which all was pronounced, ought to be separately delineated to do
any justice to the effect that every sentence, nay, that every word
produced upon his admiring hearers and beholders.
Mad again! says my Mr. Crisp; stark, staring mad!
Well, all the better; for “There is a pleasure in being mad,” as I have
heard you quote from Nat Lee, or some other old play-wright, “that none
but madmen know.”
I must not, however, fail to particularize one point of his discourse,
because ’tis upon your own favourite hobby, politics: and my father
very much admired its candour and frankness.
In speaking of the great Lord Chatham while he was yet Mr. Pitt, Mr.
Burke confessed his Lordship to have been the only person whom he, Mr.
Burke, did not name in parliament without caution. But Lord Chatham,
he said, had obtained so preponderating a height of public favour,
that though, occasionally, he could not concur in its enthusiasm, he
would not attempt to oppose its cry. He then, however, positively, nay
solemnly, protested, that this was the only subject upon which he did
not talk with exactly the same openness and sincerity in the house as
at the table.
He bestowed the most liberal praise upon Lord Chatham’s second son, the
_now_ young William Pitt, with whom he is acting; and who had not only,
he said, the most truly extraordinary talents, but who appeared to be
immediately gifted by nature with the judgment which others acquire by
experience.
“Though judgment,” he presently added, “is not so rare in youth as is
generally supposed. I have commonly observed, that those who do not
possess it early are apt to miss it late.”
But the subject on which he most enlarged, and most brightened, was
Cardinal Ximenes, which was brought forward, accidentally, by Miss
Shipley.
That young lady, with the pleasure of youthful exultation in a literary
honour, proclaimed that she had just received a letter from the famous
Doctor Franklin.
Mr. Burke then, to Miss Shipley’s great delight, burst forth into
an eulogy of the abilities and character of Dr. Franklin, which he
mingled with a history the most striking, yet simple, of his life; and
a veneration the most profound for his eminence in science, and his
liberal sentiments and skill in politics.
This led him, imperceptibly, to a dissertation upon the beauty, but
rarity, of great minds sustaining great powers to great old age;
illustrating his remarks by historical proofs, and biographical
anecdotes of antique worthies;—till he came to Cardinal Ximenes, who
lived to his ninetieth year. And here he made a pause. He could go, he
said, no further. Perfection rested there!
His pause, however, producing only a general silence, that indicated no
wish of speech but from himself, he suddenly burst forth again into an
oration so glowing, so flowing, so noble, so divinely eloquent, upon
the life, conduct, and endowments of this Cardinal, that I felt as if I
had never before known what it was to listen! I saw Mr. Burke, and Mr.
Burke only! Nothing, no one else was visible any more than audible. I
seemed suddenly organized into a new intellectual existence, that was
wholly engrossed by one single use of the senses of seeing and hearing,
to the total exclusion of every object but of the figure of Mr. Burke;
and of every sound but of that of his voice. All else—my dear father
alone excepted—appeared but amalgamations of the chairs on which they
were seated; and seemed placed round the table merely as furniture.
I cannot pretend to write you such a speech—but such sentences as I
can recollect with exactitude, I cannot let pass.
The Cardinal, he said, gave counsel and admonition to princes and
sovereigns with the calm courage and dauntless authority with which he
might have given them to his own children: yet, to such noble courage,
he joined a humility still more magnanimous, in never desiring to
disprove, or to disguise his own lowly origin; but confessing, at
times, with openness and simplicity, his surprise at the height of the
mountain to which, from so deep a valley, he had ascended. And, in the
midst of all his greatness, he personally visited the village in which
he was born, where he touchingly recognised what remained of his kith
and kin.
Next, he descanted upon the erudition of this exemplary prelate; his
scarce collection of bibles; his unequalled mass of rare manuscripts;
his charitable institutions; his learned seminaries; and his stupendous
University at Alcala. “Yet so untinged,” he continued, “was his
scholastic lore with the bigotry of the times; and so untainted with
its despotism, that, even in his most forcible acts for securing the
press from licentiousness, he had the enlargement of mind to permit
the merely ignorant, or merely needy instruments of its abuse,
when detected in promulgating profane works, from being involved
in their destruction; for though, on such occasions, he caused the
culprits’ shops, or warehouses, to be strictly searched, he let
previous notice of his orders be given to the owners, who then privily
executed judgment themselves upon the peccant property; while they
preserved what was sane, as well as their personal liberty: but—if
the misdemeanour were committed a second time, he manfully left the
offenders, unaided and unpitied, to its forfeiture.
“To a vigour,” Mr. Burke went on, “that seemed never to calculate upon
danger, he joined a prudence that seemed never to run a risk. Though
often the object of aspersion—as who, conspicuous in the political
world, is not?—he always refused to prosecute; he would not even
answer his calumniators. He held that all classes had a right to stand
for something in public life! “We,” he said, “who are at the head,
Act;—in God’s name let those who are at the other end, Talk! If we are
Wrong, ’tis our duty to hearken, and to mend! If we are Right, we may
be content enough with our superiority, to teach unprovoked malice its
impotence, by leaving it to its own fester.”
“So elevated, indeed,” Mr. Burke continued, “was his disdain of
detraction, that instead of suffering it to blight his tranquillity, he
taught it to become the spur to his virtues!”
Mr. Burke again paused; paused as if overcome by the warmth of his
own emotion of admiration; and presently he gravely protested, that
the multifarious perfections of Cardinal Ximenes were beyond human
delineation.
Soon, however, afterwards, as if fearing he had become too serious,
he rose to help himself to some distant fruit—for all this had
passed during the dessert; and then, while standing in the noblest
attitude, and with a sudden smile full of radiant ideas, he vivaciously
exclaimed, “No imagination—not even the imagination of Miss
Burney!—could have invented a character so extraordinary as that of
Cardinal Ximenes; no pen—not even the pen of Miss Burney!—could have
described it adequately!”
Think of me, my dear Mr. Crisp, at a climax so unexpected! my eyes, at
the moment, being openly rivetted upon him; my head bent forward with
excess of eagerness; my attention exclusively his own!—but now, by
this sudden turn, I myself became the universally absorbing object! for
instantaneously, I felt every eye upon my face; and my cheeks tingled
as if they were the heated focus of stares that almost burnt them alive!
And yet, you will laugh when I tell you, that though thus struck I
had not time to be disconcerted. The whole was momentary; ’twas like
a flash of lightning in the evening, which makes every object of a
dazzling brightness for a quarter of an instant, and then leaves all
again to twilight obscurity.
Mr. Burke, by his delicacy, as much as by his kindness, reminding me
of my opening encouragement from Dr. Johnson, looked now everywhere
rather than at me; as if he had made the allusion by mere chance; and
flew from it with a velocity that quickly drew back again to himself
the eyes which he had transitorily employed to see how his superb
compliment was taken: though not before I had caught from my kind Sir
Joshua, a look of congratulatory sportiveness, conveyed by a comic nod.
My dear Mr. Crisp will be the last to want to be told that I received
this speech as the mere effervescence of chivalrous gallantry in Mr.
Burke:—yet, to be its object, even in pleasantry,—O, my dear Mr.
Crisp, how could I have foreseen such a distinction? My dear father’s
eyes glistened—I wish you could have had a glimpse of him!
“There has been,” Mr. Burke then, smilingly, resumed, “an age for all
excellence; we have had an age for statesmen; an age for heroes; an age
for poets; an age for artists;—but This,” bowing down, with an air of
obsequious gallantry, his head almost upon the table cloth, “This is
the age for women!”
“A very happy modern improvement!” cried Sir Joshua, laughing; “don’t
you think so, Miss Burney?—but that’s not a fair question to put to
you; so we won’t make a point of your answering it. However,” continued
the dear natural knight, “what Mr. Burke says is very true, now. The
women begin to make a figure in every thing. Though I remember, when I
first came into the world, it was thought but a poor compliment to say
a person did a thing like a lady!”
“Ay, Sir Joshua,” cried my father, “but, like Moliere’s physician,
_nous avons changé tout cela!_”
“Very true, Dr. Burney,” replied the Knight; “but I remember the
time—and so, I dare say, do you—when it was thought a slight, if not
a sneer, to speak any thing of a lady’s performance: it was only in
mockery to talk of painting like a lady; singing like a lady; playing
like a lady—”
“But now,” interrupted Mr. Burke, warmly, “to talk of writing like a
lady, is the greatest compliment that need be wished for by a man!”
Would you believe it, my daddy—every body now, himself and my father
excepted, turned about, Sir Joshua leading the way—to make a little
playful bow to ... can you ever guess to whom?
Mr. Burke, then, archly shrugging his shoulders, added, “What is left
now, exclusively, for US; and what we are to devise in our own defence,
I know not! We seem to have nothing for it but assuming a sovereign
contempt! for the next most dignified thing to possessing merit, is an
heroic barbarism in despising it!”