The dinner was over. The old lady was taking a nap. Her grandniece,
a little girl of seven, was playing at some Christmas game with
the visitors, when the door opened, and a stout gentleman entered
unannounced, with a star on his breast, and “What? what? what?” in his
mouth. A cry of “The King!” was set up. A general scampering followed.
Miss Burney owns that she could not have been more terrified if she had
seen a ghost. But Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty to her royal
friend, and the disturbance was quieted. Frances was then presented, and
underwent a long examination and cross-examination about all that she
had written and all that she meant to write. The Queen soon made her
appearance, and his Majesty repeated, for the benefit of his consort,
the information which he had extracted from Miss Burney. The good
nature of the royal pair might have softened even the authors of the
Probationary Odes, and could not but be delightful to a young lady who
had been brought up a Tory. In a few days the visit was repeated. Miss
Burney was more at ease than before. His Majesty, instead of seeking
for information, condescended to impart it, and passed sentence on many
great writers, English and foreign. Voltaire he pronounced a monster.
Rousseau he liked rather better. “But was there ever,” he cried, “such
stuff as great part of Shakspeare? Only one must not sav so. But what
think you? What? Is there not sad stuff? What? What?”
The next day Frances enjoyed the privilege of listening {278}to some
equally valuable criticism uttered by the Queen touching Goethe and
Klopstock, and might have learned an important lesson of economy from
the mode in which her Majesty’s library had been formed. “I picked the
book up on a stall,” said the Queen. “Oh, it is amazing what good books
there are on stalls!” Mrs. Delany, who seems to have understood from
these words that her Majesty was in the habit of exploring the booths
of Moorfields and Holywell Street in person, could not suppress an
exclamation of surprise. “Why,” said the Queen, “I don’t pick them up
myself. But I have a servant very clever; and, if they are not to be
had at the booksellers, they are not for me more than for another.” Miss
Burney describes this conversation as delightful; and, indeed we cannot
wonder that, with her literary tastes, she should be delighted at
hearing in how magnificent a manner the greatest lady in the land
encouraged literature.
The truth is, that Frances was fascinated by the condescending kindness
of the two great personages to whom she had been presented. Her father
was even more infatuated than herself. The result was a step of which we
cannot think with patience, but which, recorded as it is, with all its
consequences, in these volumes, deserves at least this praise, that it
has furnished a most impressive warning.
A German lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one of the keepers of the
Queen’s robes, retired about this time; and her Majesty offered the
vacant post to Miss Burney. When we consider that Miss Burney was
decidedly the most popular writer of fictitious narrative then living,
that competence, if not opulence, was within her reach, and that she
was more than usually happy in her domestic circle, and when we compare
{279}the sacrifice which she was invited to make with the remuneration
which was held out to her, we are divided between laughter and
indignation.
What was demanded of her was that she should consent to be almost as
completely separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to
Calcutta, and almost as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to gaol
for a libel; that with talents which had instructed and delighted the
highest living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff
and sticking pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting woman’s bell
to a waiting woman’s duties; that she should pass her whole life under
the restraints of a paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was
ready to swoon with hunger, should sometimes stand till her knees gave
way with fatigue; that she should not dare to speak or move without
considering how her mistress might like her words and gestures. Instead
of those distinguished men and women, the flower of all political
parties, with whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of equal
friendship, she was to have for her perpetual companion the chief
keeper of the robes, an old hag from Germany, of mean understanding, of
insolent manners, and of temper which, naturally savage, had now been
exasperated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Frances might console
herself for the loss of Burke’s and Windham’s society, by joining in the
“celestial colloquy sublime” of his Majesty’s Equerries.
And what was the consideration for which she was to sell herself to this
slavery? A peerage in her own right? A pension of two thousand a year
for life? A seventy-four for her brother in the navy? A deanery for her
brother in the church? Not so. The price at which she was valued was her
board, her lodging, the {280}attendance of a manservant, and two hundred
pounds a year.
The man who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells his birthright for
a mess of pottage, is unwise. But what shall we say of him who parts
with his birthright, and does not get even the pottage in return? It is
not necessary to inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation
for the sacrifice of bodily and mental freedom; for Frances Burney paid
for leave to be a prisoner and a menial. It was evidently understood as
one of the terms of her engagement, that, while she was a member of the
royal household, she was not to appear before the public as an author:
and, even had there been no such understanding, her avocations were such
as left her no leisure for any considerable intellectual effort. That
her place was incompatible with her literary pursuits was indeed frankly
acknowledged by the King when she resigned. “She has given up,” he said,
“five years of her pen.” That during those five years she might, without
painful exertion, without any exertion that would not have been a
pleasure, have earned enough to buy an annuity for life much larger than
the precarious salary which she received at court, is quite certain. The
same income, too, which in Saint Martin’s Street would have afforded her
every comfort, must have been found scanty at Saint James’s. We cannot
venture to speak confidently of the price of millinery and jewellery;
but we are greatly deceived if a lady who had to attend Queen Charlotte
on many public occasions, could possibly save a farthing out of a salary
of two hundred a year. The principle of the arrangement was, in short,
simply this, that Frances Burney should become a slave, and should be
rewarded by being made a beggar. {281}With what object their Majesties
brought her to their palace, we must own ourselves unable to conceive.
Their object could not be to encourage her literary exertions; for they
took her from a situation in which it was almost certain that she would
write, and put her into a situation in which it was impossible for her
to write. Their object could not be to promote her pecuniary interest;
for they took her from a situation where she was likely to become rich,
and put her into a situation in which she could not but continue poor.
Their object could not be to obtain an eminently useful waiting maid;
for it is clear that, though Miss Burney was the only woman of her time
who could have described the death of Harrel, thousands might have been
found more expert in tying ribands and filling snuff boxes. To grant
her a pension on the civil list would have been an act of judicious
liberality honourable to the court. If this was impracticable, the
next best thing was to let her alone. That the King and Queen meant her
nothing; but kindness, we do not in the least doubt. But their kindness
was the kindness of persons raised high above the mass of mankind,
accustomed to be addressed with profound deference, accustomed to see
all who approach them mortified by their coldness and elated by their
smiles. They fancied that to be noticed by them, to be near them, to
serve them, was in itself a kind of happiness; and that Frances Burney
ought to be full of gratitude for being permitted to purchase, by the
sacrifice of health, wealth, freedom, domestic affection, and literary
fame, the privilege of standing behind a royal chair, and holding a pair
of royal gloves.
And who can blame them? Who can wonder that princes should be under
such a delusion, when they are encouraged in it by the very persons who
suffer {282}from it most cruelly? Was it to be expected that George
the Third and Queen Charlotte should understand the interest of Frances
Burney better, or promote it with more zeal than herself and her father?
No deception was practised. The conditions of the house of bondage were
set forth with all simplicity. The hook was presented without a bait;
the net was spread in sight of the bird: and the naked hook was greedily
swallowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle herself in the net.
It is not strange indeed that an invitation to court should have caused
a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. But it was
the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on
one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the
other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honourable
distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of
Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of himself with delight. Not
such are the raptures of a Circassian father who has sold his pretty
daughter well to a Turkish slavemerchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable
man, a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the world. But
he seems to have thought that going to court was like going to heaven;
that to see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision; that
the exquisite felicity enjoyed by royal persons was not confined to
themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflection
to all who were suffered to stand at their toilettes, or to bear their
trains. He overruled all his daughter’s objections, and himself escorted
her to her prison. The door closed. The key was turned. She, looking
back with tender regret on all that she had {283}left, and forward with
anxiety and terror to the new life on which she was entering, was unable
to speak or stand; and he went on his way homeward rejoicing in her
marvellous prosperity.
And now began a slavery of five years, of five years taken from the best
part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or in recreations duller
than even menial drudgery, under galling restraints and amidst
unfriendly or uninteresting companions. The history of an ordinary day
was this. Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she
might be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after seven.
Till about eight she attended in the Queen’s dressing room, and had
the honour of lacing her august mistress’s stays, and of putting on
the hoop, gown, and neckhandkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in
rummaging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then
the Queen was to be powdered and dressed for the day. Twice a week her
Majesty’s hair was curled and craped; and this operation appears to
have added a full hour to the business of the toilette. It was generally
three before Miss Burney was at liberty. Then she had two hours at her
own disposal. To these hours we owe great part of her Diary. At five
she had to attend her colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old
toad-eater, as illiterate as a chambermaid, as proud as a whole German
Chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to conduct
herself with common decency in society. With this delightful associate,
Frances Burney had to dine, and pass the evening. The pair generally
remained together from five to eleven, and often had no other company
the whole time, except during the hour from eight to nine, when {284}the
equerries came to tea. If poor Frances attempted to escape to her own
apartment, and to forget her wretchedness over a hook, the execrable old
woman railed and stormed, and complained that she was neglected.
Yet, when Frances stayed, she was constantly assailed with insolent
reproaches. Literary fame was, in the eyes of the German crone, a
blemish, a proof that the person who enjoyed it was meanly born, and out
of the pale of good society. All her scanty stock of broken English was
employed to express the contempt with which she regarded the author of
Evelina and Cecilia. Frances detested cards, and indeed knew nothing
about them; but she soon found that the least miserable way of
passing an evening with Madame Schwellenberg was at the cardtable, and
consented, with patient sadness, to give hours, which might have called
forth the laughter and the tears of many generations, to the king of
clubs and the knave of spades. Between eleven and twelve the bell
rang again. Miss Burney had to pass twenty minutes or half an hour in
undressing the Queen, and was then at liberty to retire, and to dream
that she was chatting with her brother by the quiet hearth in Saint
Martin’s Street, that she was the centre of an admiring assemblage at
Mrs. Crewe’s, that Burke was calling her the first woman of the age, or
that Dilly was giving her a cheque for two thousand guineas.
Men, we must, suppose, are less patient than women; for we are utterly
at a loss to conceive how any human being could endure such a life,
while there remained a vacant garret in Grub Street, a crossing in want
of a sweeper, a parish workhouse, or a parish vault. And it was for
such a life that Frances Burney had given up liberty and peace, a
happy fireside, {285}attached friends, a wide and splendid circle of
acquaintance, intellectual pursuits in which she was qualified to excel,
and the sure hope of what to her would have been affluence.
There is nothing; new under the sun. The last great master of Attic
eloquence and Attic wit has left us a forcible and touching description
of the misery of a man of letters, who, lured by hopes similar to those
of Frances, had entered the service of one of the magnates of Rome.
“Unhappy that I am,” cries the victim of his own childish ambition:
“would nothing content me but that I must leave mine old pursuits and
mine old companions, and the life which was without care, and the sleep
which had no limit save mine own pleasure, and the walks which I was
free to take where I listed, and fling myself into the lowest pit of
a dungeon like this? And, O God! for what? Was there no way by which I
might have enjoyed in freedom comforts even greater than those which I
now earn by servitude? Like a lion which has been made so tame that men
may lead him about by a thread, I am dragged up and down, with broken
and humbled spirit, at the heels of those to whom, in mine own domain, I
should have been an object of awe and wonder. And, worst of all, I feel
that here I gain no credit, that here I give no pleasure. The talents
and accomplishments, which charmed a far different circle, are here out
of place. I am rude in the arts of palaces, and can ill bear comparison
with those whose calling, from their youth up, has been to flatter and
to sue. Have I, then, two lives, that, after I have wasted one in the
service of others, there may yet remain to me a second, which I may live
unto myself?”
Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed {286}the wretched
monotony of Frances Burney’s life. The court moved from Kew to Windsor,
and from Windsor back to Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and
another dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant made a
blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding: between the gentlemen
and the ladies. A half witted French Protestant minister talked oddly
about conjugal fidelity. An unlucky member of the household mentioned
a passage in the Morning Herald, reflecting on the Queen; and forthwith
Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad English, and told him that he
made her “what you call perspire!”
A more important occurrence was the King’s visit to Oxford. Miss Burney
went in the royal train to Nuneham, was utterly neglected there in the
crowd, and could with difficulty find a servant to show the way to her
bedroom, or a hairdresser to arrange her curls. She had the honour of
entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages which formed
the royal procession, of walking after the Queen all day through
refectories and chapels, and of standing, half dead with fatigue and
hunger, while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold
collation. At Magdalene College, Frances was left for a moment in a
parlour, where she sank down on a chair. A goodnatured equerry saw that
she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread, which
he had wisely put into his pockets. At that moment the door opened; the
Queen entered; the wearied attendants sprang up; the bread and fruit
were hastily concealed. “I found,” says poor Miss Burney, “that our
appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the same moment that our
strength was to be invincible.” {287}Yet Oxford, seen even under such
disadvantages, “revived in her,” to use her own words, “a consciousness
to pleasure which had long lain nearly dormant.” She forgot, during one
moment, that she was a waiting maid, and felt as a woman of true
genius might be expected to feel amidst venerable remains of antiquity,
beautiful works of art, vast repositories of knowledge, and memorials of
the illustrious dead. Had she still been what she was before her father
induced her to take the most fatal step of her life, we can easily
imagine what pleasure she would have derived from a visit to the noblest
of English cities. She might, indeed, have been forced to travel in a
hack chaise, and might not have worn so fine a gown of Chambéry gauze as
that in which she tottered after the royal party; but with what delight
would she have then paced the cloisters of Magdalene, compared the
antique gloom of Merton with the splendour of Christ Church, and looked
down from the dome of Radcliffe Library on the magnificent sea of
turrets and battlements below! How gladly would learned men have laid
aside for a few hours Pindar’s Odes and Aristotle’s Ethics, to escort
the author of Cecilia from college to college! What neat little
banquets would she have found set out in their monastic cells! With
what eagerness would pictures, medals, and illuminated missals have been
brought forth from the most mysterious cabinets for her amusement! How
much she would have had to hear and to tell about Johnson, as she walked
over Pembroke, and about Reynolds in the antechapel of New College! But
these indulgences were not for one who had sold herself into bondage.
About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another event
diversified the wearisome life which Frances led {288}at court. Warren
Hastings was brought to the bar of the House of Peers. The Queen and
Princesses were present when the trial commenced, and Miss Burney was
permitted to attend. During the subsequent proceedings a day rule for
the same purpose was occasionally granted to her; for the Queen took the
strongest interest in the trial, and, when she could not go herself to
Westminster Hall, liked to receive a report of what had passed from a
person who had singular powers of observation, and who was, moreover,
acquainted with some of the most distinguished managers. The portion
of the Diary which relates to this celebrated proceeding is lively and
picturesque. Yet we read it, we own, with pain; for it seems to us to
prove that the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to
feel the pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as incompatible
with health of mind as the air of the Pomptine marshes with health
of body. From the first day she espouses the cause of Hastings with a
presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty
and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders when Burke enters
the Hall at the head of the Commons. She pronounces him the cruel
oppressor of an innocent man. She is at a loss to conceive how the
managers can look at the defendant, and not blush. Windham comes to her
from the manager’s box, to offer her refreshment. “But,” says she, “1
could not break bread with him.” Then, again, she exclaims, “All, Mr.
Windham, how came you ever engaged in so cruel, so unjust a cause?”
“Mr. Burke saw me,” she says, “and he bowed with the most marked
civility of manner.” This, be it observed, was just after his opening
speech, a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which,
certainly, {289}no other orator that ever lived could have made. “My
curtsy,” she continues, “was the most ungrateful, distant, and cold;
I could not do otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a
cause.” Now, not only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but
the very last act which he performed on the day on which he was turned
out of the Pay Office, about four years before this trial, was to make
Doctor Burney organist of Chelsea Hospital. When, at the Westminster
election, Doctor Burney was divided between his gratitude for this
favour and his Tory opinions, Burke in the noblest manner disclaimed
all right to exact a sacrifice of principle. “You have little or no
obligations to me,” he wrote; “but if you had as many as I really wish
it were in my power, as if is certainly in my desire, to lay on you, I
hope you do not think me capable of conferring them, in order to subject
your mind or your affairs to a painful and mischievous servitude.”
Was this a man to be uncivilly treated by a daughter of Doctor Burney,
because she chose to differ from him respecting a vast and most
complicated question, which he had studied deeply during many years, and
which she had never studied at all? It is clear, from Miss Burney’s own
narrative, that when she behaved so unkindly to Mr. Burke, she did not
even know of what Hastings was accused. One thing, however, she must
have known, that Burke had been able to convince a House of Commons,
bitterly prejudiced against himself, that the charges were well founded,
and that Pitt and Dundas had concurred with Fox and Sheridan, in
supporting the impeachment. Surely a woman of far inferior abilities to
Miss Burney might have been expected to see that this never could have
happened unless there had been a strong case {290}against the late
Governor General. And there was, as all reasonable men now admit, a
strong case against him. That there were great public services to be set
off against his great crimes is perfectly true. But his services and his
crimes were equally unknown to the lady who so confidently asserted his
perfect innocence, and imputed to his accusers, that is to say, to all
the greatest men of all parties in the state, not merely error, but
gross injustice and barbarity.
She had, it is true, occasionally seen Mr. Hastings, and had found his
manners and conversation agreeable. But surely she could not be so weak
as to infer from the gentleness of his deportment in the drawing room,
that he was incapable of committing a great state crime, under the
influence of ambition and revenge. A silly Miss, fresh from a boarding
school, might fall into such a mistake; but the woman who had drawn the
character of Mr. Monckton should have known better.
The truth is that she had been too long at Court. She was sinking into
a slavery worse than that of the body. The iron was beginning to enter
into the soul. Accustomed during many months to watch the eye of a
mistress, to receive with boundless gratitude the slightest mark
of royal condescension, to feel wretched at every symptom of royal
displeasure, to associate only with spirits long tamed and broken in,
she was degenerating into something fit for her place. Queen Charlotte
was a violent partisan of Hastings, had received presents from him,
and had so far departed from the severity of her virtue as to lend
her countenance to his wife, whose conduct had certainly been as
reprehensible as that of any of the frail beauties who were then rigidly
excluded from the English Court. {291}The King, it was well known, took
the same side. To the King and Queen all the members ol the household
looked submissively for guidance. The impeachment, therefore, was an
atrocious persecution; the managers were rascals; the defendant was the
most deserving and the worst used man in the kingdom. This was the cant
of the whole palace, from Gold Stick in Waiting, down to the Table
Deckers and Yeomen of the Silver Scullery; and Miss Burney canted like
the rest, though in livelier tones, and with less bitter feelings.