penance. His play had not been hooted from the boards. It had, on the
contrary, been better received than many very estimable performances
have been, than Johnson’s Irene, for example, or Goldsmith’s Goodnatured
Man. Had Crisp been wise, he would have thought himself happy in having
purchased selfknowledge so cheap. He would have relinquished, without
vain repinings, the hope of poetical distinction, and would have turned
to the many sources of happiness which he still possessed. Had he been,
on the other hand, an unfeeling and unblushing dunce, he would have gone
on writing scores of bad tragedies in defiance of censure and derision.
But he had too much sense to risk a second defeat, yet too little sense
to bear his first defeat like a man. The fatal delusion that he was a
great dramatist, had taken firm possession of his mind. His failure he
attributed to every cause except the true one. He complained of the ill
will of Garrick, who appears to have done for the play every thing that
ability and zeal could do, and who, from selfish motives, would, of
course, have been well pleased if Virginia {264}had been as successful
as the Beggar’s Opera. Nay, Crisp complained of the languor of the
friends whose partiality had given him three benefit nights to which he
had no claim. He complained of the injustice of the spectators, when, in
truth, he ought to have been grateful for their unexampled patience. He
lost his temper and spirits, and became a cynic and a hater of mankind.
From London he retired to Hampton, and from Hampton to a solitary and
long deserted mansion, built on a common in one of the wildest tracts
of Surrey. No road, not even a sheepwalk, connected his lonely dwelling
with the abodes of men. The place of his retreat was strictly concealed
from his old associates. In the spring he sometimes emerged, and was
seen at exhibitions and concerts in London. But he soon disappeared, and
hid himself, with no society but his books, in his dreary hermitage.
He survived his failure about thirty years. A new generation sprang up
around him. No memory of his bad verses remained among men. His very
name was forgotten. How complete the world had lost sight of him,
will appear from a single circumstance. We looked for him in a copious
Dictionary of Dramatic Authors published while he was still alive, and
we found only that Mr. Henry Crisp, of the Custom House, had written a
play called Virginia, acted in 1754. To the last, however, the unhappy
man continued to brood over the injustice of the manager and the pit,
and tried to convince himself and others that he had missed the highest
literary honours, only because he had omitted some fine passages in
compliance with Garrick’s judgment. Alas, for human nature, that the
wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much longer than the
wounds of affection! Few people, we believe, whose nearest friends and
relations died {265}in 1754, had any acute feeling of the loss in 1782.
Dear sisters, and favourite daughters, and brides snatched away before
the honeymoon was passed, had been forgotten, or were remembered only
with a tranquil regret. But Samuel Crisp was still mourning for
his tragedy, like Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be
comforted. “Never,” such was his language twenty-eight years after his
disaster, “never give up or alter a tittle unless it perfectly coincides
with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my sorrow and my cost.
But mum!” Soon after these words were written, his life, a life which
might have been eminently useful and happy, ended in the same gloom in
which, during more than a quarter of a century, it had been passed.
We have thought it worth while to rescue from oblivion this curious
fragment of literary history. It seems to us at once ludicrous,
melancholy, and full of instruction.
Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys. To them alone
was confided the name of the desolate old hall in which he hid himself
like a wild beast in a den. For them were reserved such remains of his
humanity as had survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he
regarded as his daughter. He called her his Fannikin; and she in return
called him her dear Daddy. In truth, he seems to have done much more
than her real parents for the development of her intellect; for though
he was a bad poet, he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent
counsellor. He was particularly fond of the Concerts in Poland Street.
They had, indeed, been commenced at his suggestion, and when he visited
London he constantly attended them. But when he grew old, and when gout,
brought on partly by mental irritation, confined him to his retreat, he
was desirous of having a glimpse of that gay {266}and brilliant world
from which he was exiled, and he pressed Fannikin to send him full
accounts of her father’s evening parties. A few of her letters to
him have been published; and it is impossible to read them without
discerning in them all the powers which afterwards produced Evelina and
Cecilia, the quickness in catching every odd peculiarity of character
and manner, the skill in grouping, the humour, often richly comic,
sometimes even farcical.
Fanny’s propensity to novel writing had for a time been kept down. It
now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales
which had perished in the flames, were still present to the eye of her
mind. One favourite story, in particular, haunted her imagination. It
was about a certain Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful damsel who made an
unfortunate love match, and died, leaving an infant daughter. Frances
began to image to herself the various scenes, tragic and comic, through
which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side, meanly
connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal things,
good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid, young
orphan; a coarse sea captain; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb
court dress; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow
Hill, and tricked out in secondhand finery for the Hampstead ball; an
old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a
miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar French
and vulgar English; a poet lean and ragged, with a broad Scotch accent.
By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and stronger consistence; the
impulse which urged Frances to write became irresistible; and the result
was the history of Evelina. {267}Then came, naturally enough, a wish,
mingled with many fears, to appear before the public; for, timid as
Frances was, and bashful, and altogether unaccustomed to hear her
own praises, it is clear that she wanted neither a strong passion for
distinction, nor a just confidence in her own powers. Her scheme was to
become, if possible, a candidate for fame without running any risk of
disgrace. She had not money to bear the expense of printing. It was
therefore necessary that some bookseller should be induced to take the
risk; and such a bookseller was not readily found. Dodsley refused even
to look at the manuscript unless he were intrusted with the name of
the author. A publisher in Fleet Street, named Lowndes, was more
complaisant. Some correspondence took place between this person and
Miss Burney, who took the name of Grafton, and desired that the letters
addressed to her might be left at the Orange Coffeehouse. But, before
the bargain was finally struck, Fanny thought it her duty to obtain her
father’s consent. She told him that she had written a book, that she
wished to have his permission to publish it anonymously, but that she
hoped that he would not insist upon seeing it. What followed may serve
to illustrate what we meant when we said that Dr. Burney was as bad a
father as so goodhearted a man could possibly be. It never seems to have
crossed his mind that Fanny was about to take a step on which the whole
happiness of her life might depend, a step which might raise her to an
honourable eminence, or cover her with ridicule and contempt. Several
people had already been trusted, and strict concealment was therefore
not to be expected. On so grave an occasion, it was surely his duty to
give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, to prevent
her from {268}exposing herself if her book were a bad one, and, if it
were a good one, to see that the terms which she made with the publisher
were likely to be beneficial to her. Instead of this, He only stared,
burst out a laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as she liked,
and never even asked the name of her work. The contract with Lowndes was
speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were given for the copyright, and were
accepted by Fanny with delight. Her father’s inexcusable neglect of his
duty happily caused her no worse evil than the loss of twelve or fifteen
hundred pounds.
After many delays Evelina appeared in January, 1778. Poor Fanny was sick
with terror, and durst hardly stir out of doors. Some days passed before
any thing was heard of the book. It had, indeed, nothing but its own
merits to push it into public favour. Its author was unknown. The house
by which it was published, was not, we believe, held in high estimation.
No body of partisans had been engaged to applaud. The better class of
readers expected little from a novel about a young lady’s entrance into
the world. There was, indeed, at that time a disposition among the most
respectable people to condemn novels generally: nor was this disposition
by any means without excuse; for works of that sort were then almost
always silly, and very frequently wicked.
Soon, however, the first faint accents of praise began to be heard. The
keepers of the circulating libraries reported that everybody was asking
for Evelina, and that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author.
Then came a favourable notice in the London Review; then another still
more favourable in the Monthly. And now the book found its way to tables
which had seldom been polluted by marble {269}covered volumes. Scholars
and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of romances to
Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that
they could not tear themselves away from Evelina. Fine carriages and
rich liveries, not often seen east of Temple Bar, were attracted to the
publisher’s shop in Fleet Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the
author, but was himself as much in the dark as any of the questioners.
The mystery, however, could not remain a mystery long. It was known to
brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins: and they were far too proud
and too happy to be discreet. Dr. Burney wept over the book in rapture.
Daddy Crisp shook his fist at his Fannikin in affectionate anger at not
having been admitted to her confidence. The truth was whispered to Mrs.
Thrale; and then it began to spread fast.
The book had been admired while it was ascribed to men of letters long
conversant with the world, and accustomed to composition. But when it
was known that a reserved, silent young woman had produced the best
work of fiction that had appeared since the death of Smollett,
the acclamations were redoubled. What she had done was, indeed,
extraordinary. But, as usual, various reports improved the story till
it became miraculous. Evelina, it is said, was the work of a girl of
seventeen. Incredible as this tale was, it continued to be repeated down
to our own time. Frances was too honest to confirm it. Probably she was
too much a woman to contradict it; and it was long before any of her
detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of
low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her first
appearance. There was the envious Kenrick {270}and the savage Wolcot,
the asp George Steevens, and the polecat John Williams. It did not,
however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order
that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age.
That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of our own
time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials
for a worthless edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, some sheets of
which our readers have doubtless seen round parcels of better books.
But we must return to our story. The triumph was complete. The timid and
obscure girl found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame. Great men,
on whom she had gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed
her with admiration, tempered by the tenderness due to her sex and age.
Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were among her most ardent
eulogists. Cumberland acknowledged her merit, after his fashion,
by biting his lips and wriggling in his chair whenever her name was
mentioned. But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the highest
perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the sweets of
friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of prosperity and
popularity, with gay spirits, quick wit, showy though superficial
acquirements, pleasing though not refined manners, a singularly amiable
temper, and a loving heart, felt towards Fanny as towards a younger
sister. With the Thrales Johnson was domesticated. He was an old friend
of Dr. Burney; but he had probably taken little notice of Dr. Burney’s
daughters, and Fanny, we imagine, had never in her life dared to speak
to him, unless to ask whether he wanted a nineteenth or a twentieth cup
of tea. He was charmed by her tale, and preferred it to the novels of
Fielding, to {271}whom, indeed, he had always been grossly unjust. He
did not, indeed, carry his partiality so far as to place Evelina by the
side of Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; yet he said that his little
favourite had done enough to have made even Richardson feel uneasy. With
Johnson’s cordial approbation of the book was mingled a fondness, half
gallant half paternal, for the writer; and this fondness his age and
character entitled him to show without restraint. He began by putting
her hand to his lips. But he soon clasped her in his huge arms, and
implored her to be a good girl. She was his pet, his dear love, his dear
little Burney, his little character-monger. At one time, he broke forth
in praise of the good taste of her caps. At another time he insisted on
teaching her Latin. That, with all his coarseness and irritability, he
was a man of sterling benevolence, has long been acknowledged. But how
gentle and endearing his deportment could he, was not known till the
Recollections of Madame D’Arblay were published.
We have mentioned a few of the most eminent of those who paid their
homage to the author of Evelina. The crowd of inferior admirers would
require a catalogue as long as that in the second book of the Iliad. In
that catalogue would be Mrs. Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things,
and Seward, much given to yawning, and Baretti, who slew the man in the
Haymarket, and Paoli, talking broken English, and Langton, taller by the
head than any other member of the club, and Lady Millar, who kept a vase
wherein fools were wont to put bad verses, and Jerningham, who wrote
verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar, and Dr. Franklin,
not, as some have dreamed, the great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who
could not then have paid {272}his respects to Miss Burney without much
risk of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the less.
[Illustration: 0286]
It would not have been surprising if such success had turned even a
strong head, and corrupted even a generous and affectionate nature. But,
in the Diary, we can find no trace of any feeling inconsistent with a
truly modest and amiable disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof
that Frances enjoyed with an intense, though a troubled, joy, the
honours which her genius had won; but it is equally clear that her
happiness sprang from the happiness of her father, her sister and her
dear Daddy Crisp. While flattered by the great, the opulent, and the
learned, while followed along the Steyne at Brighton, and the Pantiles
at Tunbridge Wells, by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart seems
to have been still with the little domestic circle in Saint Martin’s
Street. If she recorded with minute diligence all the compliments,
delicate and coarse, which she heard wherever she turned, she recorded
them for the eyes of two or three persons who had loved her from
infancy, who had loved her in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the
purest and most exquisite delight. Nothing can be more unjust than to
confound these outpourings of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy,
with the egotism of a bluestocking, who prates to all who come near her
about her own novel or her own volume of sonnets.
It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney’s first venture
should tempt her to try a second. Evelina, though it had raised her
fame, had added {273}nothing to her fortune. Some of her friends urged
her to write for the stage. Johnson promised to give her his advice as
to the composition. Murphy, who was supposed to understand the temper of
the pit as well as any man of his time, undertook to instruct her as
to stage effect. Sheridan declared that he would accept a play from her
without even reading it. Thus encouraged, she wrote a comedy named The
Witlings. Fortunately it was never acted or printed. We can, we think,
easily perceive, from the little which is said on the subject in the
Diary, that The Witlings would have been damned, and that. Murphy and
Sheridan thought so, though they were too polite to say so. Happily
Frances had a friend who was not afraid to give her pain. Crisp, wiser
for her than he had been for himself, read the manuscript in his lonely
retreat, and manfully told her that she had failed, that to remove
blemishes here and there would be useless, that the piece had abundance
of wit but no interest, that it was bad as a whole, that it would remind
every reader of the _Femmes Savantes_, which, strange to say, she had
never read, and that she could not sustain so close a comparison with
Moliere. This opinion, in which Dr. Burney concurred, was sent to
Frances, in what she called “a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle.”
But she had too much sense not to know that it was better to be hissed
and catcalled by her Daddy, than by a whole sea of heads in the pit of
Drury Lane Theatre: and she had too good a heart not to be grateful for
so rare an act of friendship. She returned an answer, which shows
how well she deserved to have a judicious, faithful, and affectionate
adviser. “I intend,” she wrote, “to console myself for your censure by
this greatest proof I have ever received of {274}the sincerity, candour,
and, let me add, esteem, of my dear daddy. And as I happen to love
myself more than my play, this consolation is not a very trifling one.
This, however, seriously I do believe, that when my two daddies put
their heads together to concert that hissing, groaning, catcalling
epistle they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor little Miss Bayes as
she could possibly do for herself. You see I do not attempt to repay
your frankness with an air of pretended carelessness. But, though
somewhat disconcerted just now, I will promise not to let my vexation
live out another day. Adieu, my dear daddy, I won’t he mortified, and
I won’t be _downed_; but I will be proud to find I have, out of my own
family, as well as in it, a friend who loves me well enough to speak
plain truth to me.”
Frances now turned from her dramatic schemes to an undertaking far
better suited to her talents. She determined to write a new tale, on a
plan excellently contrived for the display of the powers in which her
superiority to other writers lay. It was in truth a grand and various
picture gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of men and
women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice
and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, morbid
restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious
silence, a Democritus to laugh at every thing, and a Heraclitus to
lament over every thing. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months
was completed. It wanted something of the simplicity which had been
among the most attractive charms of Evelina; but it furnished ample
proof that the four years, which had elapsed since Evelina appeared, had
not been unprofitably spent. Those who {275}saw Cecilia in manuscript
pronounced it the best novel of the age. Mrs. Thrale laughed and wept
over it. Crisp was even vehement in applause, and offered to insure
the rapid and complete success of the book for half a crown. What Miss
Burney received for the copyright is not mentioned in the Diary; but we
have observed several expressions from which we infer that the sum
was considerable. That the sale would be great nobody could doubt; and
Frances now had shrewd and experienced advisers, who would not suffer
her to wrong herself. We have been told that the publishers gave her two
thousand pounds, and we have no doubt that they might have given a still
larger sum without being losers.
Cecilia was published in the summer of 1782. The curiosity of the town
was intense. We have been informed by persons who remember those days
that no romance of Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently awaited, or
more eagerly snatched from the counters of the booksellers. High as
public expectation was, it was amply satisfied; and Cecilia was placed,
by general acclamation, among the classical novels of England.
Miss Burney was now thirty. Her youth had been singularly prosperous;
but clouds soon began to gather over that clear and radiant dawn. Events
deeply painful to a heart so kind as that of Frances followed each other
in rapid succession. She was first called upon to attend the deathbed of
her best friend, Samuel Crisp. When she returned to St. Martin’s Street,
after performing this melancholy duty, she was appalled by hearing that
Johnson had been struck with paralysis; and, not many months later, she
parted from him for the last time with solemn tenderness. He wished to
look on her once more; and on the day before his {276}death she long
remained in tears on the stairs leading to his bedroom, in the hope
that she might be called in to receive his blessing. He was then sinking
last, and though he sent her an affectionate message, was unable to see
her. But this was not the worst. There are separations far more cruel
than those which are made by death. She might weep with proud affection
for Crisp and Johnson. She had to blush as well as to weep for Mrs.
Thrale.
Life, however, still smiled upon Frances. Domestic happiness,
friendship, independence, leisure, letters, all these things were hers;
and she flung them all away.
Among the distinguished persons to whom she had been introduced, none
appears to have stood higher in her regard than Mrs. Delany. This lady
was an interesting and venerable relic of a past age. She was the niece
of George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, who, in his youth, exchanged verses
and compliments with Edmund Waller, and who was among the first to
applaud the opening genius of Pope. She had married Dr. Delany, a
man known to his contemporaries as a profound scholar and an eloquent
preacher, but remembered in our time chiefly as one of that small circle
in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tortured by disappointed ambition,
by remorse, and by the approaches of madness, sought for amusement and
repose. Doctor Delany had long been dead. His widow, nobly descended,
eminently accomplished, and retaining, in spite of the infirmities
of advanced age, the vigour of her faculties and the serenity of her
temper, enjoyed and deserved the favour of the royal family. She had a
pension of three hundred a year; and a house at Windsor, belonging to
the crown, had been fitted up for her accommodation. At this house the
King and Queen sometimes {277}called, and found a very natural pleasure
in thus catching an occasional glimpse of the private life of English
families.