excellent narrative and description, and will, we think, be as much
valued by the historians of a future age as any equal portion of Pepys’
or Evelyn’s Diaries. That account shows also how affectionate and
compassionate her nature was. But it shows also, we must say, that her
way of life was rapidly impairing her powers of reasoning and her sense
of justice. We do not mean to discuss, in this place, the question,
whether the views of Mr. Pitt or those of Mr. Fox respecting the regency
were the more correct. It is, indeed, quite needless to discuss that
question: for the censure of Miss Burney falls alike on Pitt and Fox,
on majority and minority. She is angry with the House of Commons for
presuming to inquire whether the King was mad or not, and whether there
was a chance of his recovering his senses. “A melancholy day,” she
writes; “news bad both at home and abroad. At home the dear unhappy
king still worse; abroad new examinations voted of the physicians. Good
heavens! what an insult does this seem from Parliamentary power, to
investigate and bring forth to the world every circumstance of such a
malady as is ever held sacred to secrecy in the most private families!
{292}How indignant we all feel here, no words can say.” It is proper to
observe, that the motion which roused all this indignation at Kew was
made by Mr. Pitt himself. We see, therefore, that the loyalty of the
minister, who was then generally regarded as the most heroic champion
of his Prince, was lukewarm indeed when compared with the boiling
zeal which tilled the pages of the backstairs and the women of the
bedchamber. Of the Regency bill, Pitt’s own bill, Miss Burney speaks
with horror. “I shuddered,” she says, “to hear it named.” And again,
“Oh, how dreadful will be the day when that unhappy bill takes place! I
cannot approve the plan of it.” The truth is, that Mr. Pitt, whether a
wise and upright statesman or not, was a statesman; and whatever motives
he might have for imposing restrictions on the regent, felt that in some
way or other there must be some provision made for the execution of some
part of the kingly office, or that no government would be left in the
country. But this was a matter of which the household never thought. It
never occurred, as far as we can see, to the Exons and Keepers of the
Robes, that it was necessary that there should be somewhere or other a
power in the state to pass laws, to preserve order, to pardon criminals,
to fill up offices, to negotiate with foreign governments, to command
the army and navy. Nay, these enlightened politicians, and Miss Burney
among the rest, seem to have thought that any person who considered the
subject with reference to the public interest, showed himself to be a
badhearted man. Nobody wonders at this in a gentleman usher; but it is
melancholy to see genius sinking into such debasement.
During more than two years after the King’s recovery, Frances dragged
on a miserable existence at {293}the palace. The consolations, which
had for a time mitigated the wretchedness of servitude, were one by one
withdrawn. Mrs. Delany, whose society had been a great resource when the
Court was at Windsor, was now dead. One of the gentlemen of the royal
establishment, Colonel Digby, appears to have been a man of sense,
of taste, of some reading, and of prepossessing manners. Agreeable
associates were scarce in the prison house, and he and Miss Burney
therefore naturally became attached to each other. She owns that she
valued him as a friend; and it would not have been, strange if his
attentions had led her to entertain for him a sentiment warmer than
friendship. He quitted the Court, and married in a way which astonished
Miss Burney greatly, and which evidently wounded her feelings, and
lowered him in her esteem. The palace grew duller and duller; Madame
Schwellenberg became more and more savage and insolent: and now the
health of poor Frances began to give way; and all who saw her pale face,
her emaciated figure, and her feeble walk, predicted that her sufferings
would soon be over.
Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress, and of the princesses,
with respect and affection. The princesses seem to have well deserved
all the praise which is bestowed on them in the Diary. They were,
we doubt not, most amiable women. But “the sweet queen,” as she is
constantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an object of
admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense enough to know what kind of
deportment suited her high station, and self-command enough to maintain
that deportment invariably. She was, in her intercourse with Miss
Burney, generally gracious and affable, sometimes when displeased, cold
and reserved, but never, under any circumstances, rude, {294}peevish,
or violent. She knew how to dispense, gracefully and skilfully, those
little civilities which, when paid by a sovereign, are prized at many
times their intrinsic value; how to pay a compliment; how to lend a
book; how to ask after a relation. But she seems to have been utterly
regardless of the comfort, the health, the life of her attendants, when
her own convenience was concerned. Weak, feverish, hardly able to stand,
Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress the sweet
Queen, and to sit up till midnight, in order to undress the sweet Queen.
The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not, escape the
notice of her royal mistress. But the established doctrine of the Court
was, that all sickness was to be considered as a pretence until it
proved fatal. The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from
the suspicion of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on
lacing and unlacing, till she fell down dead at the royal feet. “This,”
Miss Burney wrote, when she was suffering cruelly from sickness,
watching, and labour, “is by no means from hardness of heart; for
otherwise. There is no hardness of heart in any one of them; but it is
prejudice and want of personal experience.”
Many strangers sympathized with the bodily and mental sufferings of this
distinguished woman. All who saw her saw that her frame was sinking,
that her heart was breaking. The last, it should seem, to observe the
change, was her father. At length, in spite of himself, his eyes were
opened. In May, 1790, his daughter had an interview of three hours with
him, the only long interview which they had had since he took her to
Windsor in 1786. She told him that she was miserable, that she was worn
with attendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life,
nothing {295}to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends
were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men
remember the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labour,
the same recreations, more hateful than labour itself, followed each
other without variety, without any interval of liberty and repose.
The Doctor was greatly dejected by this news; but was too goodnatured
a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house and arms were
open to her. Still, however, he could not bear to remove her from the
Court. His veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry. It can
be compared only to the grovelling superstition of those Syrian devotees
who made their children pass through the fire to Moloch. When he induced
his daughter to accept the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained,
as she tells us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set
down in the contract of service, would be the result of her connection
with the Court. What advantage he expected we do not know, nor did
he probably know himself. But, whatever he expected, he certainly got
nothing. Miss Burney had been hired for board, lodging, and two hundred
a year. Board, lodging, and two hundred a year, she had duly received.
We have looked carefully through the Diary, in the hope of finding some
trace of those extraordinary benefactions on which the Doctor reckoned.
But we can discover only a promise, never performed, of a gown: and for
this promise Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, such as might
have suited the beggar with whom Saint Martin in the legend, divided his
cloak. The experience of four years was, however, insufficient to dispel
the illusion which had taken possession of the {296}Doctor’s mind; and,
between the dear father and the sweet Queen, there seemed to be little
doubt that some day or other Frances would drop down a corpse. Six
months had elapsed since the interview between the parent and the
daughter. The resignation was not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and
worse. She took bark; but it soon ceased to produce a beneficial effect.
She was stimulated with wine; she was soothed with opium; but in vain.
Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was in a decline spread
through the Court. The pains in her side became so severe that she
was forced to crawl from the cardtable of the old Fury to whom she was
tethered, three or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking
hartshorn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have
excused her from work. But her Majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day
the accursed bell still rang; the Queen was still to be dressed for
the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be
undressed at midnight.
But there had arisen, in literary and fashionable society, a general
feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of indignation against both
her father and the Queen. “Is it possible,” said a great French lady
to the Doctor, “that your daughter is in a situation where she is never
allowed a holiday?” Horace Walpole wrote to Frances, to express his
sympathy. Boswell, boiling over with goodnatured rage, almost forced an
entrance into the palace to see her. “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. Some
very violent measures, I assure you, will be taken. We shall address Dr.
Burney in a body.” Burke and Reynolds, though less noisy, were zealous
{297}in the same cause. Windham spoke to Dr. Burney; but found him still
irresolute. “I will set the club upon him,” cried Windham; “Miss Burney
has some very true admirers there, and I am sure they will eagerly
assist.” Indeed the Burney family seem to have been apprehensive that
some public affront, such as the Doctor’s unpardonable folly, to use the
mildest term, had richly deserved, would be put upon him. The medical
men spoke out, and plainly told him that his daughter must resign or
die.
At last paternal affection, medical authority, and the voice of all
London crying shame, triumphed over Dr. Burney’s love of courts. He
determined that Frances should write a letter of resignation. It was
with difficulty that, though her life was at stake, she mustered spirit
to put the paper into the Queen’s hands. “I could not,” so runs the
Diary, “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.”
At last with a trembling hand the paper was delivered. Then came the
storm. Juno, as in the Æneid, delegated the work of vengeance to Alecto.
The Queen was calm and gentle; but Madame Schwellenberg raved like
a maniac in the incurable ward of Bedlam! Such insolence! Such
ingratitude! Such folly! Would Miss Burney bring utter distraction on
herself and her family? Would she throw away the inestimable advantage
of royal protection? Would she part with privileges which, once
relinquished, could never be regained? It was idle to talk of health and
life.
If people could not live in the palace, the best thing {298}that could
befall them was to die in it. The resignation was not accepted. The
language of the medical men became stronger and stronger. Dr. Burney’s
parental fears were fully roused; and he explicitly declared, in a
letter meant to be shown to the Queen, that his daughter must retire.
The Schwellenberg raged like a wild cat. “A scene almost horrible
ensued,” says Miss Burney. “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
Bastile, had England such a misery, as a fit place to bring us to
ourselves, from a daring so outrageous against imperial wishes.” This
passage deserves notice, as being the only one in the Diary, so far as
we have observed, which shows Miss Burney to have been aware that she
was a native of a free country, that she could not be pressed for a
waiting maid against her will, and that she had just as good a right to
life, if she chose, in Saint Martin’s Street, as Queen Charlotte had to
live at Saint James’s.
The Queen promised that, after the next birthday, Miss Burney should
be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her Majesty
showed great displeasure at being reminded of it. At length Frances
was informed that in a fortnight her attendance should cease. I “heard
this,” she says, “with a fearful presentiment I should surely never
go through another fortnight, in so weak and languishing and painful a
state of health.... As the time of separation approached, the Queen’s
cordiality rather diminished, and traces of internal displeasure
appeared sometimes, arising from an opinion I ought rather to have
struggled on, live or die, than to quit her. Yet I am sure she saw
how poor was my own {299}chance, except by a change in the mode of life,
and at least ceased to wonder, though she could not approve.” Sweet
Queen! What noble candour, to admit that the undutifulness of people,
who did not think the honour of adjusting her tuckers worth the
sacrifice of their own lives, was, though highly criminal, not
altogether unnatural!
We perfectly understand her Majesty’s contempt for the lives of others
where her own pleasure was concerned. But what pleasure she can have
found in having Miss Burney about her, it is not so easy to comprehend.
That Miss Burney was an eminently skilful keeper of the robes is not
very probable. Few women, indeed, had paid less attention to dress. Now
and then, in the course of five years, she had been asked to read aloud
or to write a copy of verses. But better readers might easily have been
found: and her verses were worse than even the Poet Laureate’s
Birthday Odes. Perhaps that economy, which was among her Majesty’s
most conspicuous virtues, had something to do with her conduct on this
occasion. Miss Burney had never hinted that she expected a retiring
pension; and indeed would gladly have given the little that she had for
freedom. But her Majesty knew what the public thought, and what
became her own dignity. She could not for very shame suffer a woman of
distinguished genius, who had quitted a lucrative career to wait on
her, who had served her faithfully for a pittance during five years, and
whose constitution had been impaired by labour and watching, to leave
the court without some mark of royal liberality. George the Third, who,
on all occasions where Miss Burney was concerned, seems to have behaved
like an honest, goodnatured gentleman, felt this, and said plainly that
{300}she was entitled to a provision. At length, in return for all
the misery which she had undergone, and for the health which she
had sacrificed, an annuity of one hundred pounds was granted to her,
dependent on the Queen’s pleasure.
Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once mere. Johnson,
as Burke observed, might have added a striking page to his poem on the
Vanity of Human Wishes, if he had lived to see his little Burney as she
went into the palace and as she came out of it.
The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, of domestic
affection, were almost too acute for her shattered frame. But happy days
and tranquil nights soon restored the health which the Queen’s toilette
and Madame Schwellenberg’s cardtable had impaired. Kind and anxious
faces surrounded the invalid. Conversation the most polished and
brilliant revived her spirits. Travelling was recommended to her;
and she rambled by easy journeys from cathedral to cathedral, and
from watering place to watering place. She crossed the New Forest, and
visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beautiful
valley of Sidmouth. Thence she journeyed by Powderham Castle, and by the
ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to Bath, and from Bath, when the winter was
approaching, returned well and cheerful to London. There she visited
her old dungeon, and found her successor already for on the way to
the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a
sprained ankle and a nervous fever.
At this time England swarmed with French exiles driven from their
country by the Revolution. A colony of these refugees settled at Juniper
Hall, in Surrey, not far from Norbury Park, where Mr. Locke, an intimate
{301}friend of the Burney family, resided. Frances visited Norbury and
was introduced to the strangers. She had strong prejudices against them;
for her Toryism was far beyond, we do not say that of Mr. Pitt, but that
of Mr. Reeves; and the inmates of Juniper Hall were all attached to the
constitution of 1791, and were therefore more detested by the royalists
of the first emigration than Petion or Marat. But such a woman as Miss
Burney could not long resist the fascination of that remarkable society.
She had lived with Johnson and Wyndham, with Mrs Montague and Mrs.
Thrale. Yet she was forced to own that she had never heard conversation
before. The most animated eloquence, the keenest observation, the most
sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to charm her. For
Madame de Staël was there, and M. de Talleyrand. There too was M. de
Narbonne, a noble representative of French aristocracy; and with M. de
Narbonne was his friend and follower General D’Arblay, an honourable and
amiable man, with a handsome person, frank soldierlike manners, and some
taste for letters.
The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the constitutional
royalists of France rapidly vanished. She listened with rapture to
Talleyrand and Madame de Staël, joined with M. Arblay in execrating the
Jacobins and in weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French lessons
from him, fell in love with him, and married him on no better provision
than a precarious annuity of one hundred pounds.
Here the Diary stops for the present. We will, therefore, bring our
narrative to a speedy close, by rapidly recounting the most important
events which we know to have befallen Madame D’Arblay during the latter
part of her life. {302}M. D’Arblay’s fortune had perished in the general
wreck of the French Revolution: and in a foreign country his talents,
whatever they may have been, could scarcely make him rich. The task of
providing for the family devolved on his wife. In the year 1796, she
published by subscription her third novel, Camilla. It was impatiently
expected by the public; and the sum which she obtained for it was, we
believe, greater than had ever at that time been received for a novel.
We have heard that she cleared more than three thousand guineas. But
we give this merely as a rumour. Camilla, however, never attained
popularity like that which Evelina and Cecilia had enjoyed; and it
must be allowed that there was a perceptible falling off, not indeed in
humour or in power of portraying character, but in grace and in purity
of style.
We have heard that, about this time, a tragedy by Madame D’Arblay was
performed without success. We do not know whether it was ever printed;
nor indeed have we had time to make any researches into its history or
merits.
During the short truce which followed the treaty of Amiens, M. D’Arblay
visited France. Lauriston and La Fayette represented his claims to the
French government, and obtained a promise that he should be reinstated
in his military rank. M. D’Arblay, however, insisted that he should
never be required to serve against the countrymen of his wife. The First
Consul, of course, would not hear of such a condition, and ordered the
general’s commission to be instantly revoked.
Madame D’Arblay joined her husband at Paris, a short time before the war
of 1803 broke ont, and remained in France ten years, cut off from
almost all {303}intercourse with the land of her birth. At length, when
Napoleon was on his march to Moscow, she with great difficulty obtained
from his ministers permission to visit her own country, in company with
her son, who was a native of England. She returned in time to receive
the last blessing of her father, who died in his eighty-seventh year.
In 1814 she published her last novel, the Wanderer, a book which no
judicious friend to her memory will attempt to draw from the oblivion
into which it has justly fallen. In the same year, her son Alexander was
sent to Cambridge. He obtained an honourable place among the wranglers
of his year, and was elected a fellow of Christ’s College. But his
reputation at the University was higher than might be inferred from his
success in academical contests. His French education had not fitted him
for the examinations of the Senate House; but, in pure mathematics,
we have been assured by some of his competitors that he had very few
equals. He went into the church, and it was thought likely that he would
attain high eminence as a preacher; but he died before his mother. All
that we have heard of him leads us to believe that he was such a son as
such a mother deserved to have. In 1882, Madame D’Arblay published the
memoirs of her father; and on the sixth of January, 1840, she died in
her eighty-eighth year.
We now turn from the life of Madame D’Arblay to her writings. There can,
we apprehend, be little difference of opinion as to the nature of
her merit, whatever differences may exist as to its degree. She was
emphatically what Johnson called her, a character-monger. It was in the
exhibition of human passions and whims that her strength lay; and in
this department of art she had, we think, very distinguished skill.
{304}But in order that we may, according to our duty as kings at arms,
versed in the laws of literary precedence, marshal her to the exact
seat to which she is entitled, we must carry our examination somewhat
further.
There is, in one respect, a remarkable analogy between the faces and
the minds of men. No two faces are alike; and yet very few faces
deviate very widely from the common standard. Among the eighteen hundred
thousand human beings who inhabit London, there is not one who could be
taken by his acquaintance for another; yet we may walk from Paddington
to Mile End without seeing one person in whom any feature is so
overcharged that we turn round to stare at it. An infinite number
of varieties lies between limits which are not very far asunder. The
specimens which pass those limits on either side, form a very small
minority.
It is the same with the characters of men. Here, too, the variety passes
all enumeration. But the cases in which the deviation from the common
standard is striking and grotesque, are very few. In one mind avarice
predominates; in another, pride; in a third, love of pleasure; just as
in one countenance the nose is the most marked feature, while in others
the chief expression lies in the brow, or in the lines of the mouth. But
there are very few countenances in which nose, brow, and mouth do not
contribute, though in unequal degrees, to the general effect; and so
there are very few characters in which one overgrown propensity makes
all others utterly insignificant.