Royal Visit to Weymouth—Lyndhurst—Village Loyalty—Arrival at Weymouth—
Bathing to Music—Mrs. Gwynn—Mrs. Siddons—The Royal Party at the Rooms—
First Sight of Mr. Pitt—The Marquis of Salisbury—Royal Tour—Visit to
Longleat—Mrs. Delany—Bishop Ken—Tottenham Park—Return to Windsor—
Progress of the French Revolution—Colonel Digby’s Marriage—Miss
Burney’s Situation—A Senator—Tax on Bachelors—Reading to the Queen—
Miss Burney’s Melancholy—Proposal for her Retirement—Her Tedious
Solitude—Her Literary Inactivity—Her Declining Health—A Friendly
Cabal—Windham and the Literary Club—James Boswell—Miss Burney’s
Memorial to the Queen—Leave of Absence Proposed—The Queen and Mrs.
Schwellenberg—Serious Illness of Miss Burney—Discussions on her
Retirement—A Day at the Hastings Trial—The Defence—A Lively Scene—The
Duke of Clarence—Parting with the Royal Family—Miss Burney receives a
Pension—Her Final Retirement.
On the 25th of June the Court set out on a progress from Windsor to
Weymouth. Miss Burney and Miss Planta, as was usual on these occasions,
were of the suite; the Schwellenberg, as usual, remained behind. ‘The
crowds increased as we advanced, and at Winchester the town was _one
head_.’ At Romsey, on the steps of the Town Hall, a band of musicians,
some in coarse brown coats and red neckcloths, some even in
smock-frocks, made a chorus of ‘God save the King,’ in which a throng of
spectators joined with shouts that rent the air. ‘Carriages of all sorts
lined the roadside—chariots, chaises, landaus, carts, waggons, whiskies,
gigs, phaetons—mixed and intermixed, filled within and surrounded
without by faces all glee and delight.’ On the verge of the New Forest
the King was met by a party of foresters, habited in green, with bows
and bugles, who, according to ancient custom, presented him with a pair
of milk-white greyhounds, wearing silver collars, and led by silken
cords.
Arrived at Lyndhurst, he drove to the old hunting-seat of Charles II.,
then tenanted by the Duke of Gloucester. “It is a straggling,
inconvenient old house,” writes Fanny, “but delightfully situated in a
village—looking, indeed, at present, like a populous town, from the
amazing concourse of people that have crowded into it.... During the
King’s dinner, which was in a parlour looking into the garden, he
permitted the people to come to the window; and their delight and
rapture in seeing their monarch at table, with the evident hungry
feeling it occasioned, made a contrast of admiration and deprivation
truly comic. They crowded, however, so excessively, that this can be
permitted no more. They broke down all the paling, and much of the
hedges, and some of the windows, and all by eagerness and multitude, for
they were perfectly civil and well-behaved.... We continued at Lyndhurst
five days.... On the Sunday we all went to the parish church; and after
the service, instead of a psalm, imagine our surprise to hear the whole
congregation join in ‘God save the King!’ Misplaced as this was in a
church, its intent was so kind, loyal, and affectionate, that I believe
there was not a dry eye amongst either singers or hearers.”
On the 30th of June the royal party quitted Lyndhurst, and arrived at
Weymouth in the course of the evening. ‘The journey was one scene of
festivity and rejoicing.’ The change of air, the bustle of travelling,
the beauty of the summer landscapes, the loyalty of the population, had
restored Fanny’s tone, and brought back the glow she had experienced at
the time of the King’s convalescence. Her enthusiasm lent a touch of
enchantment to everything she saw. Salisbury and Blandford welcomed
their sovereign with displays and acclamations that fairly carried her
away. At Dorchester the windows and roofs of the quaint old houses
seemed packed with eager faces. ‘Girls, with chaplets, beautiful young
creatures, strewed the entrance of various villages with flowers.’
Nor were the good people of Weymouth and Melcomb Regis a whit behind in
loyalty, though greatly at a loss how to vary the expression of their
feelings. “Not a child could we meet that had not a bandeau round its
head, cap or hat, of ‘God save the King’; all the bargemen wore it in
cockades; and even the bathing-women had it in large coarse girdles
round their waists. It is printed in golden letters upon most of the
bathing-machines, and in various scrolls and devices it adorns every
shop, and almost every house, in the two towns.... Nor is this all.
Think but of the surprise of his Majesty when, the first time of his
bathing, he had no sooner popped his royal head under water than a band
of music, concealed in a neighbouring machine, struck up, ‘God save
great George our King’! One thing, however, was a little unlucky:—When
the mayor and burgesses came with the address, they requested leave to
kiss hands. This was graciously accorded; but the mayor advancing in a
common way, to take the Queen’s hand, as he might that of any lady
mayoress, Colonel Gwynn, who stood by, whispered:
“‘You must kneel, sir.’
“He found, however, that he took no notice of this hint, but kissed the
Queen’s hand erect. As he passed him, in his way back, the Colonel said:
“‘You should have knelt, sir!’
“‘Sir,’ answered the poor Mayor, ‘I cannot.’
“‘Everybody does, sir.’
“‘Sir,—I have a wooden leg!’
“But the absurdity of the matter followed—all the rest did the same;
taking the same privilege, by the example, without the same or any
cause!”
Miss Burney’s way of life at Weymouth seems to have been much the same
as if she had belonged to a private party. “I have here a very good
parlour, but dull from its aspect. Nothing but the sea at Weymouth
affords any life or spirit. My bedroom is in the attics. Nothing like
living at a Court for exaltation. Yet even with this gratification,
which extends to Miss Planta, the house will only hold the females of
the party.... It is my intention to cast away all superfluous complaints
into the main ocean, which I think quite sufficiently capacious to hold
them; and really my little frame will find enough to carry and manage
without them.... His Majesty is in delightful health, and much improved
in spirits. All agree he never looked better.... The Queen is reading
Mrs. Piozzi’s ‘Tour’ to me, instead of my reading it to her. She loves
reading aloud, and in this work finds me an able commentator. How like
herself, how characteristic is every line!—Wild, entertaining, flighty,
inconsistent, and clever!” As at Cheltenham, much of the stiffness of
Windsor etiquette was thrown aside. The King and his family spent most
of their time in walking or riding, and the Queen required but little
attendance. Now and again the royal party varied the usual amusements of
a watering-place by a visit to the _Magnificent_ line-of-battle ship,
stationed at the entrance of the bay, by a cruise in the _Southampton_
frigate, which lay further in, or by an excursion to Dorchester,
Lulworth Castle, or Sherborne Castle. During these intervals, the
Robe-Keeper was left to her own occupations. She passed much of her
leisure with the wife of the equerry, Mrs. Gwynn, Goldsmith’s ‘Jessamy
Bride,’ who had many stories to tell of her old admirer,[102] and could
exchange anecdotes with Fanny of Johnson, Baretti, the Thrales, Sir
Joshua and his nieces. Strolling with this acquaintance one morning on
the sands, Miss Burney “overtook a lady of very majestic port and
demeanour, who solemnly returned Mrs. Gwynn’s salutation, and then
addressed herself to me with similar gravity. I saw a face I knew, and
of very uncommon beauty, but did not immediately recollect it was Mrs.
Siddons. Her husband was with her, and a sweet child. I wished to have
tried if her solemnity would have worn away by length of conversation:
but I was obliged to hasten home.”
The great actress, as she told Fanny, had come to Weymouth solely for
her health; but she could not resist the royal command to appear at the
little theatre, where Mrs. Wells and Quick were already performing. “The
King,” says the Diary, “has taken the centre front box for himself, and
family, and attendants. The side boxes are too small. The Queen ordered
places for Miss Planta and me, which are in the front row of a box next
but one to the royals. Thus, in this case, our want of rank to be in
their public suite gives us better seats than those _high_ enough to
stand behind them!
“JULY 29TH.—We went to the play, and saw Mrs. Siddons in Rosalind. She
looked beautifully, but too large for that shepherd’s dress; and her
gaiety sits not naturally upon her—it seems more like disguised gravity.
I must own my admiration for her confined to her tragic powers; and
there it is raised so high that I feel mortified, in a degree, to see
her so much fainter attempts and success in comedy.”
A few days later we read that Mrs. Siddons, as Lady Townly, in her looks
and the tragic part was exquisite; and again: “Mrs. Siddons performed
Mrs. Oakley. What pity thus to throw away her talents! But the Queen
dislikes tragedy; and the honour to play before the Royal Family binds
her to the little credit acquired by playing comedy.
“SUNDAY, AUGUST 9TH.—The King had a council yesterday, which brought
most of the great officers of State to Weymouth. This evening her
Majesty desired Miss Planta and me to go to the rooms, whither they
commonly go themselves on Sunday evenings; and after looking round them,
and speaking where they choose, they retire to tea in an inner apartment
with their own party, but leave the door open, both to see and be seen.
The rooms are convenient and spacious: we found them very full. As soon
as the royal party came, a circle was formed, and they moved round it,
just as before the ball at St. James’s, the King one way, with his
Chamberlain, the new-made Marquis of Salisbury,[103] and the Queen the
other, with the Princesses, Lady Courtown, etc. The rest of the
attendants planted themselves round in the circle. I had now the
pleasure, for the first time, to see Mr. Pitt; but his appearance is his
least recommendation; it is neither noble nor expressive.”
Three days later occurs a significant entry:
“WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12TH.—This is the Prince of Wales’s birthday; but it
has not been kept.”
On the 13th the royal party left Weymouth for Exeter, where they arrived
to a late dinner. Two days afterwards they proceeded through a fertile
and varied country to Saltram, the seat of Earl Morley, a minor. All
along the route, the enthusiasm of loyalty which had accompanied the
King from Windsor continued undiminished. Arches of flowers were erected
at every town, with such devices as rustic ingenuity could imagine, to
express the welcome of the inhabitants. Everywhere there were crowds,
cheers, singing, peals of bells, rejoicings, garlands, and decorations.
The view from Saltram commanded Plymouth Sound, Mount Edgecombe, and a
wide stretch of the fine adjacent country. Visits were made from this
noble house to the great naval port, to the beauties of the famous
Mount, to the woods and steeps of Maristow, and the antique curiosities
of Cothele on the banks of the Tamar. On the 27th the Court quitted
Saltram for Weymouth, and in the middle of September finally departed
from Weymouth on its return to Windsor. Two nights and the intervening
day were spent at Longleat, the seat of the Marquis of Bath. “Longleat,”
writes Miss Burney, “was formerly the dwelling of Lord Lansdowne, uncle
to Mrs. Delany; and here, at this seat, that heartless uncle, to promote
some political views, sacrificed his incomparable niece, at the age of
seventeen, marrying her to an unwieldy, uncultivated country esquire,
near sixty years of age, and scarce ever sober—his name Pendarves. With
how sad an awe, in recollecting her submissive unhappiness, did I enter
these doors!—and with what indignant hatred did I look at the portrait
of the unfeeling Earl, to whom her gentle repugnance, shown by almost
incessant tears, was thrown away, as if she, her person, and her
existence, were nothing in the scale, where the disposition of a few
boroughs opposed them! Yet was this the famous Granville—the poet, the
fine gentleman, the statesman, the friend and patron of Pope, of whom he
wrote:
‘What Muse for Granville can refuse to sing?’
_Mine_, I am sure, for one.”
The house, at the time of this visit, though magnificent, and of an
immense magnitude, was very much out of repair, and by no means cheerful
or comfortable. Gloomy grandeur, Fanny thought, was the character of the
building and its fitting-up. “My bedroom,” she says, “was furnished with
crimson velvet, bed included, yet so high, though only the second story,
that it made me giddy to look into the park, and tired to wind up the
flight of stairs. It was formerly the favourite room, the housekeeper
told me, of Bishop Ken, who put on his shroud in it before he died. Had
I fancied I had seen his ghost, I might have screamed my voice away,
unheard by any assistant to lay it; for so far was I from the rest of
the mansion, that not the lungs of Mr. Bruce could have availed me.” The
last place at which the King stopped on his homeward journey was
Tottenham Park, the seat of the Earl of Ailesbury. Here occurred an
instance of the enormous expense to which the great nobles sometimes
went in entertaining their sovereign. ‘The good lord of the mansion put
up a new bed for the King and Queen that cost him £900.’
On September 18 the Court arrived at Windsor. ‘Deadly dead sank my
heart’ is our traveller’s record of her sensation on re-entering the
detested dining-room. Nothing happened during the remainder of the year
to raise her spirits. In October, the days began to remind her of the
terrible miseries of the preceding autumn. She found ‘a sort of
recollective melancholy always ready to mix’ with her thankfulness for
the King’s continued good health. And about the same time disquieting
news came from over the water of the march to Versailles, the return to
Paris, and the shouts of the hungry and furious _poissardes_ proclaiming
the arrival of ‘the baker, his wife, and the little apprentice.’ Events
of this kind could not but excite uneasiness at any Court, however
popular for the time. These shadows were presently succeeded by another,
equally undefined, but of a more personal character. In the middle of
November, Fanny was told by Miss Planta, in confidence, that Mr. Digby
had written to acquaint his royal patrons with his approaching marriage.
‘I believed not a syllable of the matter,’ says the Diary; ‘but I would
not tell her that.’ Only a few days later, however, the same kind friend
informed Miss Burney that ‘it was all declared, and that the Princesses
had wished Miss Gunning joy at the Drawing-Room.’ ‘Now first,’ says
Fanny, ‘my belief followed assertion;—but it was only because it was
inevitable, since the Princesses could not have proceeded so far without
certainty.’ The wedding took place early in January; and from this time
the bridegroom appeared no more at Court, which became to one of the
attendants an abode of unrelieved gloom.
Some of her friends were frank enough in their comments on her
situation. There was something, no doubt, in Miss Burney’s aspect which
drew such remarks as these from the wife of an Irish bishop: “Well; the
Queen, to be sure, is a great deal better dressed than she used to be;
but for all that, I really think it is but an odd thing for you!—Dear, I
think it’s something so out of the way for you!—I can’t think how you
set about it. It must have been very droll to you at first. A great deal
of honour, to be sure, to serve a Queen, and all that; but, I dare say a
lady’s-maid could do it better.... It must be a mighty hurry-scurry
life! You don’t look at all fit for it, to judge by appearances, for all
its great honour, and all that.” Colonel Digby had previously accused
her of being _absent_ in her official occupation, and she had owned that
she had at first found attention _unattainable_. “She had even,” she
added, “and not seldom, handed the Queen her fan before her gown, and
her gloves before her cap!” The Vice-Chamberlain thought this very
likely, and observed that such matters did not seem trifles to her
Majesty.
The Diary for the earlier months of 1790 contains little more than what
the writer calls ‘loose scraps of anecdotes,’ of which we can find room
for only one or two specimens. Here is an account of a conversation with
Colonel Manners, who, besides being an equerry, was also a Member of
Parliament:
“I had been informed he had once made an attempt to speak, during the
Regency business, last winter; I begged to know how the matter stood,
and he made a most frank display of its whole circumstances.
“‘Why, they were speaking away,’ he cried, ‘upon the Regency, and so—
and they were saying the King could not reign, and recover; and Burke
was making some of his eloquence, and talking; and, says he, ‘hurled
from his throne’—and so I put out my finger in this manner, as if I
was in a great passion, for I felt myself very red, and I was in a
monstrous passion I suppose, but I was only going to say ‘Hear! Hear!’
but I happened to lean one hand down upon my knee, in this way, just
as Mr. Pitt does when he wants to speak; and I stooped forward, just
as if I was going to rise up and begin; but just then I caught Mr.
Pitt’s eye, looking at me so pitifully; he thought I was going to
speak, and he was frightened to death, for he thought—for the thing
was, he got up himself, and he said over all I wanted to say; and the
thing is, he almost always does; for just as I have something
particular to say, Mr. Pitt begins, and goes through it all, so that
he don’t leave anything more to be said about it; and so I suppose, as
he looked at me so pitifully, he thought I should say it first, or
else that I should get into some scrape, because I was so warm and
looking so red.’
“Any comment would disgrace this; I will therefore only tell you his
opinion, in his own words, of one of our late taxes.[104]
“‘There’s only one tax, ma’am, that ever I voted for against my
conscience, for I’ve always been very particular about that; but that
is the _bacheldor’s_ tax, and that I hold to be very unconstitutional,
and I am very sorry I voted for it, because it’s very unfair; for how
can a man help being a _bacheldor_, if nobody will have him? and,
besides, it’s not any fault to be taxed for, because we did not make
ourselves _bacheldors_, for we were made so by God, for nobody was
born married, and so I think it’s a very unconstitutional tax.’”
Miss Burney’s desultory journals for this year contain few notices of
her life at Court. We hear, indeed, in the spring, of her being summoned
to a new employment, and called upon four or five times to read a play
before the Queen and Princesses. But this proved a very occasional break
in the routine of drudgery which she could no longer support with
cheerfulness. Henceforth she seems to avoid all mention of other
engagements and incidents at Windsor or Kew as matters too wearisome to
think of or write about. We have, instead, accounts of days spent at the
Hastings trial, where, as before, she spent much time in conversing with
Windham. The charges were now being investigated in detail, and it was
often difficult to make up an interesting report for her mistress.
Sometimes, however, when evidence weighed the proceedings down, Burke
would speak from time to time, and lift them up; or Windham himself,
much to Fanny’s satisfaction, would take part in the arguments. But
Westminster Hall was attractive mainly by contrast to the palace; in the
Great Chamberlain’s Box there was no danger of receiving a summons to
the Queen, no fear of being late for an attendance in the royal
dressing-room. During the recess, when there was no trial to attend,
Miss Burney’s thoughts were a good deal occupied by the illness and
death of a faithful man-servant, and with the subsequent disposal of his
savings, which caused her some trouble.
Once, at the end of May, she had an opportunity of unburdening her mind
to her father. They met in Westminster Abbey at one of the many
commemorations of Handel which occurred about this time; and, neither of
them caring very much for the great master’s music, they spent three
hours chiefly in conversation. For four years they had not been so long
alone together. Dr. Burney happened to mention that some of the French
exiles wished him to make them acquainted with the author of ‘Cecilia,’
and repeated the astonished speech of the Comtesse de Boufflers on
learning that this was out of his power: ‘Mais, monsieur, est-ce
possible! Mademoiselle votre fille n’a-t-elle point de vacances?’ Such
an opening was just what Fanny wanted, and she availed herself of it to
pour out her whole heart. With many expressions of gratitude for the
Queen’s goodness, she owned that her way of life was distasteful to her;
she was lost to all private comfort, dead to all domestic endearment,
worn with want of rest and laborious attendance. Separated from her
relations, her friends, and the society she loved, she brooded over the
past with hopeless regret, and lived like one who had no natural
connections. “Melancholy was the existence, where happiness was
excluded, though not a complaint could be made! where the illustrious
personages who were served possessed almost all human excellence—yet
where those who were their servants, though treated with the most
benevolent condescension, could never in any part of the live-long day,
command liberty, or social intercourse, or repose!” “The silence of my
dearest father,” she adds, “now silencing myself, I turned to look at
him; but how was I struck to see his honoured head bowed down almost
into his bosom with dejection and discomfort! We were both perfectly
still a few moments; but when he raised his head I could hardly keep my
seat to see his eyes filled with tears! ‘I have long,’ he cried, ‘been
uneasy, though I have not spoken; ... but ... if you wish to resign—my
house, my purse, my arms, shall be open to receive you back!’”
It cannot fairly be said that, during the preceding four years, Miss
Burney had been debarred from literary work. The conditions of her lot
were hard, and it may have been one of them that she should publish
nothing while in the Queen’s service; but she certainly had enjoyed
considerable leisure for composition. Witness the full and
carefully-written journal which she had kept during the greater part of
her tenure of office. Perhaps the frequent interruptions to which she
was liable hindered her from concentrating her thoughts on the
production of a regular narrative. Indefatigable as she was with her
pen, we can see that she was far less strenuous when much intellectual
exertion was required. When she was offered her post, her Muse was at a
standstill, as she told the King; and since she entered the household,
she had written nothing capable of being printed, except two or three
small copies of verses not worth printing, and the rough draft of a
tragedy. She had begun this tragedy during the King’s illness, in order
to distract her attention; and after laying it aside for sixteen months,
she resumed her task in the spring of 1790, and completed the play in
August. Well or ill done, she was pleased, she told her sisters, to have
done something ‘at last—she who had so long lived in all ways as
nothing.’ In the early part of this year the newspapers announced, as
they had done several times before, that the distinguished novelist, who
had so long been silent, had at length finished a new tale ready for the
press. As often as this rumour appeared, a flutter of apprehension ran
through the ante-rooms of the Upper and Lower Lodges. Fanny’s genius for
seizing the points of a character, and presenting them in a ludicrous
light, could not fail to be recognised wherever she went. Years before,
the fiery Baretti had warned her that if she dared to put him in a book,
she should feel the effects of an Italian’s vengeance.[105] Joseph
Baretti, who had stilettoed his man, and who lived to libel Mrs. Piozzi,
was the very person to fulfil a promise of this kind. But for his
threat, his tempting eccentricities might have exposed him to
considerable peril. But the carpet-knights and waiting-women of Windsor
stood in no immediate danger. ‘There is a new book coming out, and we
shall all be in it!’ exclaimed the conscience-stricken Mr. Turbulent.
The colonels frowned, bit their lips, and tried not to look
uncomfortable. ‘Well, anybody’s welcome to me and my character!’ cried
poor Miss Planta, whom Fanny used to patronize. ‘Never mind! she’s very
humane!’ observed one of the Willises, well aware that, whoever else
might suffer, he and his family were exempt from ridicule. Miss Burney
smiled demurely at the tributes paid to her power. Full well she knew
that, so far as the characters of her colleagues were worth preserving,
she had them all safe, under lock and key, in her Diary. But not a line
of the dreaded novel had been written. The passion, which possessed her
in her early days, for planning a story, and contriving situations for
the actors in it, had faded away as the freshness of youth departed.
The months rolled on, and her spirits did not improve, while her health
steadily declined. Some of her female friends—Mrs. Gwynn, Miss
Cambridge, Mrs. Ord—saw her at Windsor or Kew after the close of the
London season, and were painfully impressed with the alteration which
they noted in her. The reports which these ladies carried up to town
were speedily known throughout her father’s circle of acquaintances. The
discontent that had been felt at her seclusion increased tenfold when it
was suspected that there was danger of the prisoner’s constitution
giving way. A sort of cabal was formed to bring influence to bear upon
Dr. Burney. The lead in this seems to have been taken by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, who, despite his failing eyesight and his Academic troubles,
was zealous as ever in the cause of his old favourite. Dr. Burney had
yielded to Fanny’s wish of retiring; but he was not in affluent
circumstances, he had expected great things from the Court appointment,
his daughter had not much worldly wisdom, and in dread of the censure
that awaited him in high quarters, if he suffered her to throw away a
competency without visible necessity, he was for putting off the evil
day of resignation as long as possible. It was therefore important that
friends whose approbation he valued should unite to make him understand
that the case, in their judgment, called for prompt determination. He
was much worked upon in the autumn by a letter from Horace Walpole to
Frances, in which the writer, with a touch of heartiness quite unusual
to him, lamented her confinement to a closet at Court, and asked whether
her talents were given to be buried in obscurity? About the same time,
he was warned by his daughter, Mrs. Francis, that Windham, her neighbour
in Norfolk, who had observed for himself the change in Fanny’s
appearance, was meditating an attack on him as soon as they should meet
in town. The politician had already sounded Burney to little purpose;
‘it is resolution,’ he told Charlotte, ‘not inclination, the Doctor
wants.’ ‘I will set the Literary Club upon him!’ he cried. ‘Miss Burney
has some very true friends there, and I am sure they will all eagerly
assist. We will present him an address.’
The general feeling infected James Boswell, though not very intimate
with the Burney family. In this same autumn, Boswell was on a visit to
the Dean of Windsor, who was also Bishop of Carlisle. Miss Burney met
him one morning at the choir-gate of St. George’s Chapel:
“We saluted with mutual glee: his comic-serious face and manner have
lost nothing of their wonted singularity; nor yet have his mind and
language, as you will soon confess.
“‘I am extremely glad to see you indeed,’ he cried, ‘but very sorry to
see you here. My dear ma’am, why do you stay?—it won’t do, ma’am! you
must resign!—we can put up with it no longer. I told my good host the
Bishop so last night; we are all grown quite outrageous!’ Whether I
laughed the most, or stared the most, I am at a loss to say; but I
hurried away, not to have such treasonable declarations overheard, for
we were surrounded by a multitude. He accompanied me, however, not
losing one moment in continuing his exhortations: ‘If you do not quit,
ma’am, very soon, some violent measures, I assure you, will be taken.
We shall address Dr. Burney in a body; I am ready to make the harangue
myself. We shall fall upon him all at once.’
“I stopped him to inquire about Sir Joshua; he said he saw him very
often, and that his spirits were very good. I asked about Mr. Burke’s
book. ‘Oh,’ cried he, ‘it will come out next week: ’tis the first book
in the world, except my own, and that’s coming out also very soon;
only I want your help.’ ‘My help?’ ‘Yes, madam; you must give me some
of your choice little notes of the Doctor’s; we have seen him long
enough upon stilts; I want to show him in a new light. Grave Sam, and
great Sam, and solemn Sam, and learned Sam—all these he has appeared
over and over. Now I want to entwine a wreath of the graces across his
brow; I want to show him as gay Sam, agreeable Sam, pleasant Sam: so
you must help me with some of his beautiful billets to yourself.’”
Fanny evaded this request by declaring that she had not any stores at
hand; she could not, she afterwards said, consent to print private
letters addressed to herself. The self-satisfied biographer followed her
to the Queen’s Lodge, continuing his importunity, and repeating his
exhortations to her to resign at once. At the entrance, he pulled out a
proof-sheet of the First Book in the world, and began to read from it a
letter of Dr. Johnson to himself. ‘He read it,’ says the Diary, ‘in
strong imitation of the Doctor’s manner, very well, and not caricature.
But Mrs. Schwellenberg was at her window, a crowd was gathering to stand
round the rails, and the King and Queen and Royal Family now approached
from the Terrace. I made rather a quick apology, and with a step as
quick as my now weakened limbs have left in my power, I hurried to my
apartment.’
By what representations Dr. Burney was brought to view his daughter’s
condition in its true light we are not distinctly informed. We find,
however, that, before October ended, a memorial to the Queen, written by
Fanny in her father’s name and her own, requesting permission for the
Robe-Keeper to resign, had been approved by the Doctor, who expressed
his desire that it should be presented at the first favourable
opportunity. Then came a pause: the invalid was taking bark, which for a
short time recruited her strength; and she cherished the hope of
obtaining a ship for her brother James before she left the Court. But
her hopes both for her brother and herself proved illusory. In December,
her loss of health became so notorious that no part of the house could
wholly avoid acknowledging it. ‘Yet,’ she writes, ‘was the terrible
piquet the catastrophe of every evening, though frequent pains in my
side forced me, three and four times in a game, to creep to my own room
for hartshorn and for rest.’ The remaining members of the household were
more considerate than the mistress of the card-table. The ladies had the
fellow-feeling of fellow-sufferers; even Mr. Turbulent frankly
counselled Miss Burney to retreat before it was too late. A general
opinion prevailed that she was falling into a decline, and that, at
best, she was reduced to a choice between her place and her life. “There
seemed now,” she says, “no time to be lost; when I saw my dear father he
recommended to me to be speedy, and my mother was very kind in urgency
for immediate measures. I could not, however, summon courage to present
my memorial; my heart always failed me, from seeing the Queen’s entire
freedom from such an expectation; for though I was frequently so ill in
her presence that I could hardly stand, I saw she concluded me, while
life remained, inevitably hers.” Fanny’s nervousness, in fact, had made
her less anxious to deliver her letter than her father was to have it
delivered, and some further persuasion from him was required before the
paper reached her Majesty’s hands.
At length it was presented, and the result was exactly what the writer
had anticipated. The Schwellenberg stormed, of course: to resign was to
return to nothingness; to forfeit the protection of the Court was to
become an outcast; to lose the beatific vision of the Sovereign and his
consort was hardly less than to be excluded from heaven. The Queen
thought the memorial very modest and proper, but was surprised at its
contents. Indomitable herself, she could not understand how anyone else
could suffer from more than passing illness. She therefore proposed that
her sick attendant should have six weeks’ leave of absence, which, with
change of air and scene, and the society of her family, the Locks and
the Cambridges, would ensure a perfect cure. This proposal was duly
communicated to Dr. Burney. The good man’s answer arrived by return of
post. With much gratitude for the royal goodness, he declared, on
medical authority, that nothing short of an absolute retirement gave any
prospect of recovery. “A scene almost horrible ensued,” says Miss
Burney, “when I told Cerbera the offer was declined. She was too much
enraged for disguise, and uttered the most furious expressions of
indignant contempt at our proceedings. I am sure she would gladly have
confined us both in the Bastille, had England such a misery, as a fit
place to bring us to ourselves, from a daring so outrageous against
imperial wishes.”
The Queen herself betrayed a blank disappointment at Dr. Burney’s
inflexibility, but neither exhibited displeasure nor raised any further
obstacle. Yet the prisoner’s liberation was still at a distance. In
January, 1791, she was prostrated by an attack of some acute illness
which lasted through the two following months. On returning to her duty,
she found that search was being made for a suitable person to succeed
her. But the selection proved difficult, and her Majesty, of course,
could not be pressed. It was at length arranged that Miss Burney should
be set free soon after the celebration of the King’s birthday in June.
This matter settled, her position grew easier. Her colleague not only
laid aside asperity of manner, but became even ‘invariable in kindness.’
And Fanny now began to do the old lady more justice than she had ever
done before. She acknowledged, in short, that Cerbera’s bark was worse
than her bite; that though selfish, harsh, and overbearing, she was not
unfriendly; that she was even extremely fond of her junior’s society,
when the latter could force herself to appear gay and chatty. On such
occasions the morose German would melt, and tell the Queen: ‘The Bernar
bin reely agribble.’ ‘Mrs. Schwellenberg, too,’ adds the Diary, ‘with
all her faults, is heart and soul devoted to her royal mistress, with
the truest faith and loyalty.’ As for this mistress, she treated her
retiring servant with all her former confidence, clouded only by a
visible, though unavowed, regret at the prospect of their separation.
Thus the closing weeks of this life at Court were spent in comparative
tranquillity, though there were intervals of great weakness and
depression.
“On the opening of this month,” says the Diary for June, “her Majesty
told me that the next day Mr. Hastings was to make his defence, and
warmly added, ‘I would give the world you could go to it!’” There was no
resisting such an appeal, and accordingly, under date of June 2nd, we
read: “I went once more to Westminster Hall, which was more crowded than
on any day since the trial commenced, except the first. Peers,
commoners, and counsel, peeresses, commoneresses, and the numerous
indefinites, crowded every part, with a just and fair curiosity to hear
one day’s defence, after seventy-three of accusation.” Miss Burney heard
the accused read his vindication, and listened with an interest which
she knew would be shared by the King and Queen; she heard something also
about herself, which she did not communicate to their Majesties. She
attended to the story of Hastings when told by himself as she had never
attended to it before; her sympathy followed him when he expressed
disdain of his persecutors, when he arraigned the late Minister, Lord
North, of double-dealing, and the then Minister, Mr. Pitt, of cowardly
desertion. She shared his indignation when the Managers interrupted him;
she exulted when the Lords quelled the interruption by cheering the
speaker, and when Lord Kenyon, who presided in the place of the
Chancellor, said, ‘Mr. Hastings, proceed.’ She contrasted the fortitude
of the defendant, who for so many days had been silent under virulent
abuse, with the intemperate eagerness of his assailants, who could not
exercise the like self-control even for three brief hours. In short, she
felt as warm-hearted women always have felt, and as it is suspected that
even icy politicians, men of light and leading on their respective
sides, occasionally do feel in the present enlightened age. “The
conclusion of the defence,” continues this excited partisan, “I heard
better, as Mr. Hastings spoke considerably louder from this time: the
spirit of indignation animated his manner, and gave strength to his
voice. You will have seen the chief parts of his discourse in the
newspapers; and you cannot, I think, but grow more and more his friend
as you peruse it. He called pathetically and solemnly for instant
judgement; but the Lords, after an adjournment, decided to hear his
defence by evidence, and in order, the next Session. How grievous such
continued delay to a man past sixty, and sighing for such a length of
time for redress from a prosecution as yet unparalleled in our annals!”
When it was over, Windham approached her, and ‘in a tone of very deep
concern, and with a look that fully concurred in it,’ said, ‘Do I see
Miss Burney? Indeed,’ he went on, ‘I was going to make a speech not very
gallant.’ ‘But it is what I should like better,’ cried the lady; ‘for it
is kind, if you were going to say I look miserably ill, as that is but a
necessary consequence of feeling so, and miserably ill I have felt this
long time past.’ She prevented more by going on to say how happy she was
that he had been absent from the Managers’ Box, and had not joined in
the attempt made by his fellow-managers to disconcert Mr. Hastings.
‘Indeed, I was kept in alarm to the very last moment; for at every
figure I saw start up just now—Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, Mr. Grey—I concluded
yours would be the next.’ ‘You were prepared, then,’ cried he with no
little malice, ‘for a “voice issuing from a distant pew.”’ This
unexpected quotation from Cecilia “put me quite out,” says Fanny,
“whereupon he seized his opportunity to put himself in. For, after a
little laugh at his victory, he very gravely, and even almost solemnly,
said, ‘But there is another subject—always uppermost with me—which I
have not ventured to speak of to you; though to others you know not how
I have raved and raged! But I believe, I am sure, you know what I allude
to.’ ’Twas impossible, thus challenged, to dissemble. ‘Yes,’ I answered;
‘I own, I believe I understand you; and, indeed, I should be tempted to
say further—if you would forget it when heard, and make no implications—
that, from what has come round to me from different quarters, I hold
myself to be very much obliged to you....’ When we came home I was
immediately summoned to her Majesty, to whom I gave a full and fair
account of all I had heard of the defence; and it drew tears from her
expressive eyes, as I repeated Mr. Hastings’ own words, upon the
hardship and injustice of the treatment he had sustained.” At night, the
reporter was called upon to repeat her narrative to the King, to whom
she was equally faithful, “sparing nothing of what had dropped from the
persecuted defendant relative to the Ministers of the Crown.”
Two days afterwards came the King’s birthday, and Miss Burney was well
enough to enjoy a lively scene—the last that she was to witness at
Court:
“At dinner Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnificently. Miss
Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stainforth, Messrs. de Luc and Stanhope dined with
us; and, while we were still eating fruit, the Duke of Clarence
entered. He was just risen from the King’s table, and waiting for his
equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you an idea of
the energy of his Royal Highness’s language, I ought to set apart a
general objection to writing, or rather intimating, certain forcible
words, and beg leave to show you, in genuine colours, a royal sailor.
We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two gentlemen
placed themselves behind their chairs, while the footmen left the
room; but he ordered us all to sit down, and called the men back to
hand about some wine. He was in exceeding high spirits, and in the
utmost good humour. He placed himself at the head of the table, next
Mrs. Schwellenberg, and looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport
and mischief, yet clever withal as well as comical. ‘Well, this is the
first day I have ever dined with the King at St. James’s on his
birthday. Pray, have you all drunk his Majesty’s health?’ ‘No, your
Roy’l Highness: your Roy’l Highness might make dem do dat,’ said Mrs.
Schwellenberg. ‘O, by —— will I! Here, you (to the footman); bring
champagne! I’ll drink the King’s health again, if I die for it! Yet, I
have done pretty well already: so has the King, I promise you! I
believe his Majesty was never taken such good care of before. We have
kept his spirits up, I promise you; we have enabled him to go through
his fatigues: and I should have done more still, but for the ball and
Mary—I have promised to dance with Mary!’ Princess Mary made her first
appearance at Court to-day: she looked most interesting and
unaffectedly lovely: she is a sweet creature, and perhaps, in point of
beauty, the first of this truly beautiful race, of which Princess Mary
may be called _pendant_ to the Prince of Wales. Champagne being now
brought for the Duke, he ordered it all round. When it came to me, I
whispered to Westerhaults to carry it on: the Duke slapped his hands
violently on the table, and called out, ‘O, by ——, you shall drink
it!’ There was no resisting this. We all stood up, and the Duke
sonorously gave the royal toast.”
The indefatigable diarist, says Thackeray, continues for pages reporting
H.R.H.’s conversation, and indicating, with a humour not unworthy of the
clever little author of ‘Evelina,’ the increasing excitement of the
young Sailor Prince, who drank more and more champagne, stopped old Mrs.
Schwellenberg’s remonstrances by kissing her hand, and telling her to
shut her potato-trap, and who did not keep ‘sober for Mary.’ Mary had to
find another partner that night, for the royal William Henry could not
keep his legs. When the Princess afterwards told Miss Burney of her
brother’s condition at the ball, and Fanny accounted for it by relating
what had passed at the attendants’ dinner-table, she found that she had
been anticipated by the Duke himself. ‘Oh!’ cried the Princess; ‘he told
me of it himself the next morning, and said: “You may think how far I
was gone, for I kissed the Schwellenberg’s hand!”’ The lady saluted was
duly sensible of the honour paid her. ‘Dat Prince Villiam,’ she observed
to her junior—‘oders de Duke of Clarence—bin raelly ver merry—oders vat
you call tipsy.’
Mademoiselle Jacobi,[106] Fanny’s destined successor, arrived in the
first days of July, and the prison door was now thrown open. Miss Burney
imagined that, as the day of her discharge approached, the Queen’s
manner to her became rather less cordial, and betokened an inward
feeling that the invalided servant ought, at every hazard, to have
remained with her employer. This, we believe, is a common opinion among
mistresses in all ranks of life, when called upon to surrender a trusted
dependent. The King, with that weakness which the better-half always
despises, was disposed to be much more indulgent. As if to compensate
for his consort’s vexation, he showed himself increasingly courteous and
kind at every meeting, making opportunities to talk over Boswell’s book,
which had recently appeared, and listening to Fanny’s anecdotes of
Johnson with the utmost complacency and interest. The Princesses did not
conceal their sorrow at the impending change. ‘Indeed,’ says the Diary,
‘the most flattering marks of attention meet me from all quarters. Mrs.
Schwellenberg has been forced to town by ill-health; she was very
friendly, even affectionate, in going!’ And before the hour of parting
arrived, the light cloud passed away from her Majesty’s face. It has
been asked, Why should she have grieved at losing an attendant, who, as
the Queen used to complain, could never tie the bow of her royal
necklace without tying her royal hair in with it? But, in Miss Burney,
Queen Charlotte was losing much more than an unskilful tire-woman, or a
nervous reader, who, as we know on the same unimpeachable authority,
‘had the misfortune of reading rather low.’ She was losing one whom she
declared to be ‘true as gold,’ and who had a much larger share of mind
than commonly fell to the official lot; a familiar friend who was as far
as possible from being a learned lady, and yet capable of entertaining
her mistress with clever and stimulating talk such as her Majesty loved.
No retiring pension had been asked for in the petition for leave to
resign, and when the subject was mentioned by the Queen, the petitioner
hastened to disavow all claim and expectation of that kind. She found,
however, that the question of what the occasion demanded had been
already considered and decided. Though the term of service had been
short, the character of the servant, and the notorious failure of her
health, made it imperative that she should receive some provision. The
Queen therefore announced her intention of continuing to her second
Robe-Keeper in retirement one-half of the annual salary which had been
paid to her in office. ‘It is but her due,’ said the King. ‘She has
given up five years of her pen.’[107] Two days after this matter was
settled, Miss Burney took leave of the Royal Family. Emotional as one of
her own heroines, she could not control her feelings in bidding farewell
to the Queen, and was unable even to look at the King when he came to
say ‘Good-bye.’ She quitted the Court on July 7, 1791, having been a
member of the royal house-hold for five years all but ten days. Burke
recalled the satisfaction with which he had hailed her appointment; and,
owning that he had never been more mistaken in his life, observed that
the story of those five years would have furnished Johnson with another
vivid illustration for his ‘Vanity of Human Wishes.’
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Footnote 102:
“His coffin was re-opened at the request of the Jessamy Bride, that a
lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwynn’s possession
when she died, after nearly seventy years.”—Forster’s “Goldsmith.”
Footnote 103:
James, seventh Earl of Salisbury, was advanced in August, 1789, to the
title of Marquis.
Footnote 104:
In 1785, Mr. Pitt introduced an increase in the tax paid on
men-servants, when they were kept by bachelors.
Footnote 105:
Diary, vol. ii., p. 581.
Footnote 106:
Macaulay asserts that, shortly after her release, Miss Burney “visited
her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the
grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a
sprained ankle, and a nervous fever.” This is a strange misstatement.
Mademoiselle Jacobi had leave of absence to nurse her sprain: it was
not “in the old dungeon” that Miss Burney saw her on the occasion
referred to, but in a small room at Brompton, where she was sitting
with her leg on bolsters, and unable to put her foot to the ground.
Fanny, in January, 1792, took a turn of duty at St. James’s, by the
Queen’s request, because “Mademoiselle Jacobi was still lame.” Diary,
vol. iii., pp. 385-87. However, we read afterwards that, towards the
end of 1797, Mademoiselle Jacobi “retired to Germany, ill and
dissatisfied with everything in England.” She, as well as Miss Burney,
received a pension.
Footnote 107:
Memoirs, iii. 118 n.
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