Fanny Burney

“ Their majesties went to Nuneham to breakfast. Miss Planta and myself were not to follow till after an early dinner. Princess Elizabeth, in a whisper, after the rest left the room,—advised me to go and lie down again as soon as they were gone. And, indeed, I was sufficiently fatigued to be glad to follow the advice.
My dear Mrs. Delany came to sit with me while I packed up. What a pleasure to me is her constant society, and the reciprocal confidence of all our conversations! She intrusts me with every thing in the world—I intrust her with every thing that now happens to me. ”

“ Write me a comforting and strengthening letter, my dearest Miss Cambridge. I have no heart to write to Mickleham, or Norbury. I know how they will grieve:—they have expected me to spend the whole summer with them. My greatest terror is, lest the queen, from what Mr. Smelt hinted, should make me promise myself to her for a length of years. What can I do to avoid that? Anything that has a period is endurable but what can I object that will not sound ungrateful, to the honour she is doing me and meaning me? ”

“ 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 surrender of health, wealth, freedom, domestic affection and literary fame, the privilege of standing behind a royal chair and holding a pair of royal gloves. ”

“ What a point blank question! who but Sir Joshua would have ventured it!
“Yes,” answered Mr. Sheridan, with quickness, “and make her a bow and my best thanks into the bargain.”
Now my dear Susy, tell me, did you ever hear the fellow to such a speech as this! it was all I could do to sit it.
“Mr. Sheridan,” I exclaimed, “are you not mocking me?”
“No, upon my honour! this is what I have meditated to say to you the first time I should have the pleasure of seeing you.”
To be sure, as Mrs. Thrale says, if folks are to be spoilt, there is nothing in the world so pleasant as spoiling! ”

“ Johnson, as Burke observed, might have added a striking page to his “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 card-table had impaired. Kind and anxious faces surrounded the invalid. Conversation the most polished and brilliant revived her spirits. ”

“ We had a noble dinner, and a most elegant dessert. Dr. Johnson, in the middle of dinner, asked Mrs. Thrale what were some little pies that were near him.
“Mutton,” answered she, “so I don't ask you to eat any, because I know you despise it.”
“No, madam, no,” cried he, “I despise nothing that is so good of its sort; but I am too proud now to eat of it. Sitting by Miss Burney makes me very proud to-day!”
“Miss Burney,” said Mrs. Thrale, laughing, “you must take care of your heart if Dr. Johnson attacks it for I assure you he is not often successless.” ”

“ Every day brings with it fresh illustrations of this weighty saying; but the best commentary that we remember is the history of Samuel Crisp. Men like him have their proper place, and it is a most important one, in the Commonwealth of Letters. It is by the judgment of such men that the rank of authors is finally determined. It is neither to the multitude, nor to the few who are gifted with great creative genius, that we are to look for sound critical decisions. The multitude, unacquainted with the best models, are captivated by whatever stuns and dazzles them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All I saw of both was the most perfect good humour, good spirits, ease, and pleasantness.
Their behaviour to each other speaks the most cordial confidence and happiness. The king seems to admire as much as he enjoys her conversation, and to covet her participation in everything he either sees or hears. The queen appears to feel the most grateful regard for him, and to make it her chief study to raise his consequence with others, by always marking that she considers herself, though queen to the nation, only to him, the first and most obedient of subjects. ”

“ There are separations far more cruel than those which are made by death. Frances 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 her. Domestic happiness, friendship, independence, leisure, letters, all these things were hers; and she flung them all away.
Among the distinguished persons to whom Miss Burney 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. ”

“ 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 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 neck-handkerchief. ”

“ And it was for such a life that Frances Burney had given up liberty and peace, a happy fireside, 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, lulled by hopes similar to those of Frances, had entered the service of one of the magnates of Rome. ”

“ At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our Country. No class of works is more honourably distinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of Madame D'Arblay have equalled her; two, we think, have surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; for, in truth, we owe to her not only “Evelina,” “Cecilia,” and “Camilla,” but also “Mansfield Park” and “The Absentee.”
DIARY AND LETTERS OF MADAME D'ARBLAY. ”

“ Let two men, one with genius, the other with none, look at an overturned waggon; he who has no genius, will think of the waggon only as he sees it, overturned, and walk on; he who has genius, will paint it to himself before it was overturned—standing still, and moving on, and heavy loaded, and empty; but both must see the waggon, to think of it at all.”
He then animated, and talked on, upon this milk-woman, upon a once as famous shoemaker, and upon our immortal Shakspeare, with as much fire, spirit, wit, and truth of criticism and judgment, as ever yet I have heard him. ”

“ A crying wife will never do!”
“Oh, yes,” cried he, “the pleasure of soothing her would make amends.”
“Ah,” cried Mrs. Thrale, “I would insure her power of crying herself into any of your hearts she pleased. I made her cry to Miss Burney, to show how beautiful she looked in tears.”
“If I had been her,” said Mr. Seward, “I would never have visited you again.”
“Oh, but she liked it,” answered Mrs. T., “for she knows how well she does it. Miss Burney would have run away, but she came forward on purpose to show herself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Was it to be expected that George III. 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 woman. ”

“ At Magdalene college, Frances was left for a moment in a parlour, where she sank down on a chair. A good-natured 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.” ”

“ Our early dinner was with Mrs. Schwellenberg and Miss Mawer. We set out at three o'clock, and took with us Mrs. Thielky, the queen's wardrobe woman, and the comfort of my life in the absence of Mrs. Schwellenberg, for she is the real acting person, though I am the apparent one: and she is also a very good sort of woman,—plain, sensible, clear-headed, mild-mannered, sedate, and steady. I found her in this journey of infinite service, for she not only did almost every thing for the queen, but made it her business to supply also the place of maid to me, as much as ever I would suffer her. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I was in an agitation that half killed me, that shook all nerves, and made me unable to sleep at nights, from the suspense I was in! but I could not cry, for excess of eagerness.”
“I only wish,” said the duchess, “Miss Burney could have been in some corner, amusing herself with listening to us, when Lord Weymouth, and the Bishop of Exeter, and Mr. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Delany, and I, were all discussing the point—of the name. So earnest we were, she must have been diverted with us. Nothing, the nearest our own hearts and interests, could have been debated more warmly. ”

“ 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 Pontine 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. ”

“ 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 [15] 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. ”

“ Thrale, “he has always taken me in; he seemed to me the humblest creature I knew; always speaking so ill of himself—always depreciating all that belongs to him.”
“Why, I did not say,” quoth I, “that he had more vanity than other men; on the contrary, I think he has none.”
“Well distinguished,” cried she; “a man may be proud enough, and yet have no vanity.”
“Well, but what is this pride?” cried Mr. Crutchley; “what is it shown in?—what are its symptoms and marks?”
“A general contempt,” answered I, undaunted, “of every body and of every thing.”
“Well said, Miss Burney!” ”

“ Seward has a great deal of vanity and no pride, Mr. Crutchley a great deal of pride and no vanity.”
“Just, and true, and wise!” said dear Mrs. Thrale, “for Seward is always talking of himself, and always with approbation; Mr. Crutchley seldom mentions himself, and when he does, it is with dislike. And which have I, most pride or most vanity?”
“Oh, most vanity, certa!” quoth I.
At Supper we had only Sir Philip and Mr. Crutchley. The conversation of the morning was then again renewed.—
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Thrale, “what a smoking did Miss Burney give Mr. Crutchley!” ”