The setting, but with glory setting, sun of Mrs. Delany, was
still glowing with all the warmth of generous friendship, all the
capabilities of mental exertion, and all the ingenuous readiness for
enjoyment of innocent pleasure,—or nearly all—that had irradiated its
brilliant rise.
She was venerated by Dr. Burney, whom most sincerely, in return, she
admired, esteemed, and liked. She has left, indeed, a lasting proof of
her kind disposition to him in her narrative of Anastasia Robinson,
Countess of Peterborough; which, at the request of Dr. Burney, she
dictated, in her eighty-seventh year, to her much-attached and faithful
amanuensis, Anna Astley; and which the Doctor has printed in the fourth
volume of his History.
Mrs. Delany had known and loved Anastasia Robinson while she was a
public concert and opera singer. The uncommon musical talents of that
songstress were seconded by such faultless and sweet manners, and a
life so irreproachable, that she was received by ladies of the first
rank and character upon terms nearly of equality; though so modest
was her demeanour, that the born distance between them was never by
herself forgotten. She was peculiarly a favourite with the bosom friend
of Mrs. Delany, the Duchess of Portland, whose mother, the Countess of
Oxford, had been the first patroness of Anastasia, and had consented
to be present, as a witness, as well as a support, at the private and
concealed marriage of that syren of her day with the famous and martial
Earl of Peterborough.
A narrative such as this, and so well authenticated, could not but
cause great satisfaction to Dr. Burney, in holding to view such
splendid success to the power of harmony, when accompanied by virtue.
This increase of intercourse with Mrs. Delany, was a source of gentle
pleasure in perfect concord with the Doctor’s present turn of mind;
and trebly welcome on account of his daughter, to whose poignant grief
for the loss of Mr. Crisp it was a solace the most seasonable. Her
description of its soothing effect, which is gratefully recorded in her
diary to her sister at Boulogne, may here, perhaps, not unacceptably be
copied for the reader, as a further picture of this venerable widow of
one of the most favourite friends of Dean Swift.
“_July 18, 1783._—I called again, my dear Susan, upon the sweet Mrs.
Delany, whom every time I see I feel myself to love even more than I
admire. And how dear, how consolatory is it to me to be honoured with
so much of her favour, as to find her always eager, upon every meeting,
to fix a time for another and another visit! How truly desirable
are added years, where the spirit of life evaporates not before its
extinction! She is as generously awake to the interests of those she
loves, as if her own life still claimed their responsive sympathies.
There is something in her quite angelic. I feel no cares when with
her. I think myself with the true image and representative of our so
loved maternal Grandmother, in whose presence not only all committal
of evil, even in thought, was impossible, but its sufferance, also,
seemed immaterial, from the higher views that the very air she breathed
imparted. This composure, and these thoughts, are not for lasting
endurance! Yet it is salubrious to feel them even for a few hours. I
wish my Susan knew her. I would not give up my knowledge of her for
the universe. I spend with her all the time I have at my own disposal;
and nothing has so sensibly calmed my mind, since our fatal Chesington
deprivation, as her society. The religious turn which kindness,
united to wisdom, in old age, gives, involuntarily, to all commerce
with it, beguiles us out of anxiety and misery a thousand times more
successfully than all the forced exertions of gaiety from dissipation.”
If such was the benefit reaped by the daughter from this animated and
very uncommon friendship, the great age of one of the parties at its
formation considered, who can wonder at the glad as well as proud
encouragement which it met with from Dr. Burney?