Fanny Burney

“ There was a pause before the elder sister said quite pathetically:
“My poor Fanny! I wonder if you have not been treated shabbily among us.”
“Not. I, my Hettina. I have always been treated fairly. I have had as many treats as any of you; when you were learning so much in Paris I have been learning quite a number of things at home. And one of the most important things I learned was that so brilliant a person as Signor Rauzzini could never be happy if married to so insignificant a person as Fanny Burney.” ”

“ Kendal,” said Fanny. “But what would life be without Mr. Garrick?”
“It would be more real, I trust,” said her stepmother. “He would have us believe that life is a comedy, and that human beings are like the puppets which Mr. Foote put on his stage for the diversion of the town a few years ago.”
Fanny Burney became grave; the longer she was living in the world, the more impressed was she becoming with the idea that life was a puppet-show; only when the puppets began to dance on their wires in a draught of wind from another world the real comedy began. ”

“ FANNY BURNEY TO MRS. BURNEY. Windsor, Dec. 17
My dearest Hetty,
I am sorry I could not more immediately write; but I really have not had a moment since your last.
Now I know what you next want is, to hear accounts of kings, queens, and such royal personages. O ho! do you so? Well.
Shall I tell you a few matters of fact?—or, had you rather a few matters of etiquette? Oh, matters of etiquette, you cry! for matters of fact are short and stupid, and anybody can tell, and everybody is tired with them. ”

“ FANNY BURNEY to DR. BURNEY.
The fatal knell, then, is knolled, and down among the dead men sink the poor “Witlings”—for ever, and for ever, and for ever!
I give a sigh, whether I will or not, to their memory! for, however worthless, they were mes enfans. You, my dear sir, who enjoyed, I really think, even more than myself, the astonishing success of my first attempt, would, I believe, even more than myself, be hurt at the failure of my second ”

“ Cousins Richard and Edward were younger sons of Uncle Richard Burney, of Worcester. Edward was successful as an artist, especially as a book- illustrator. He painted the portrait of Fanny Burney, a reproduction of which forms the frontispiece to the present volume. Some of his work may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. Chesington, where we shall presently find Fanny on a visit to Mr. Crisp, was an old roomy mansion, standing in the midst of a lonely common in Surrey, between Kingston and Epsom. ”

“ Was there ever so angelic a man?”
And little Miss Burney, who had also her eyes fixed upon the singer, felt that little Mrs. Thrale was not merely an angel, but a goddess. She expressed her opinion to this effect in her next letter to Mr. Crisp.
She listened in a dream to the singing that no one could hear and remain unmoved, even though one had not the advantage of looking at the singer at the same time. Fanny Burney was too shortsighted to be able to distinguish one face from another at such a distance ”

“ MISS BURNEY'S ADMIRATION OF MADAME DE STAEL. (Fanny Burney to Dr. Burney.) Mickleham, February 29, 1793 Have you not begun, dearest sir, to give me up as a lost sheep? Susanna's temporary widowhood, however, has tempted me on, and spelled me with a spell I know not how to break. It is long, long since we have passed any time so completely together; her three lovely children only knit us the closer. ”

“ Somebody told me (but not your father) that the Opera singers would not be likely to get any money out of Sheridan this year. “Why that fellow grows fat,” says I, “like Heliogabalus, upon the tongues of nightingales.” Did I tell you that bright thing before?—Mrs. Thrale to Fanny Burney.
SISTER AUTHORESSES.
(Fanny Burney to Mrs. Philips, late Miss Susan Burney.) ”

“ The levity shown by Fanny Burney and the flippancy of her phrases did not wholly conceal from her sisters all that she was feeling on the subject of the proposal to which she had referred with such lightness. She knew that while her father and her stepmother would not treat her with any marked disfavour on account of her rejection of the worthy young man who was ready to offer her a home, still Mrs. Burney at least regarded with great disfavour the nature of the answer which she had to send to the Poultry, and Fanny was very well aware of the ease with which so conscientious a guardian as Mrs. ”

“ With Johnson dead, and Crisp dead, and Mrs. Piozzi alienated by her marriage, life—it may be imagined—must, in these days, have seemed unusually gloomy to Fanny Burney. But fortunately, though her feelings were strong, her temperament was elastic. And the successful author of Cecilia had now troops of friends, both new and old. To those she respected, it was her nature to grow rapidly and devotedly attached. ”

“ She put an arm about Susy, saying:
“You have spoken the truth, my dear sister. I have no right to give myself airs until we find out exactly [207] how we stand. But if Fanny Burney, the dunce, should find out to-morrow that Sir Joshua has not really been kept out of his bed in order to read ‘Evelina’ by Fanny Burney, the writer, the first Fanny will feel dreadfully mortified.”
“One thing I can promise you,” said Susy, “and this is that Susannah Burney will not be kept out of her bed any longer talking to Fanny Burney about Fanny Burney’s novel, whether Fanny Burney be mortified or not. ”

“ 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 father for the development of her intellect ”

“ Burney, without seeing him, knew that, as he himself would phrase it, he had tipped Fanny a wink. She turned quickly round upon him, and if she had previously any doubt on this point, it was at once dispelled by the solemnity of his face.
Dr. Burney gave a laugh.
“The influence of Mr. Garrick is like that of the air we breathe,” said he. “It is not to be resisted by the age we live in, leaving family matters out of the question altogether: the Burney family must inhale as much of the spirit of Mr. Garrick as the rest of the town-they cannot help themselves, ces pauvres Burneys! ”

“ And now the beautiful Esther Burney was toying with the contents of her sister Fanny's work-basket, talking about her husband and his prospects, and inquiring what Mr. Garrick and James had to talk about in the room downstairs.
“Pray speak in French to Fanny,” said Mrs. Burney. “I cannot get Lottie and Susan to do so as frequently as I could wish. You must remember that poor Fanny has had none of your advantages, and I do not want her to be talked of as the dunce of the family. She really is not a dunce, you know; in spite of her bad sight she really has done some very pretty sewing.” ”

“ Your love to your Fannikin, I well know, makes all trash interesting to you that seems to concern her; and I have no greater pleasure, when absent, than in letting you and my dear Susan be acquainted with my proceedings. I don't mean by this to exclude the rest of the dear Chesington set—far from it—but a sister and a daddy must come first.
God bless and restore you, my most dear daddy! You know not how kindly I take your thinking of me, and inquiring about me, in an illness that might so well make you forget us all ”

“ After all there is no more womanly trait than that of fleeing from a lover; but Fanny Burney was yielding to its impulse without an attempt to analyse it, and without being consoled by the reflection of the woman of the younger world, that if it is woman's instinct to fly from a lover, it is a lover's instinct to pursue. ”

“ Thrale said to him, “Sir, Miss Burney wonders at your patience with such stuff, but I tell her you are used to me, for I believe I torment you with more foolish questions than anybody else dares do.”
“No, madam,” said he; “you don't torment me;—you teaze me, indeed, sometimes.”
“Ay, so I do, Dr. Johnson, and I wonder you bear with my nonsense.”
“No, madam, you never talk nonsense; you have as much sense and more wit, than any woman I know.”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Thrale, blushing, “it is my turn to go under the table this morning, Miss Burney!” ”

“ Fanny Burney knew Mrs. Brooke’s books, and had indeed made her personal acquaintance, both in the studio of Miss Catherine Reid, the “English Rosalba,” and at the Opera House in the Haymarket, of which Mrs. Brooke was co-lessee with the actress, Mary Ann Yates. “Mrs. Brooke is very short and fat, and squints”—writes Fanny of their first interview, “but has the art of showing agreeable ugliness. She is very well bred, and expresses herself with much modesty upon all subjects; which in an authoress, a woman of known understanding, is extremely pleasing.” ”

“ I parted most reluctantly with my dear Mrs. Thrale, whom, when or how I shall see again heaven only knows! but in sorrow we parted—on my side in real affliction.
[Towards the end of July in this year, Mrs. Thrale's second marriage took place with Mr. Piozzi, and Miss Burney went about the same time to Norbury Park, where she passed some weeks with Mr and Mrs. Locke. The following “sketch” of a letter, and memorandum of what had recently passed between Mrs. Piozzi and herself, is from the journal of that period.]
FANNY BURNEY to MRS. PIOZZI Norbury Park,
Aug. 10, 1784. ”

“ Of the king and queen we know few things which are more to their credit than that they should have been able to inspire Fanny with a regard so obviously sincere. But even Fanny, with all her loyal partiality, could make no more of them than a well-meaning couple, whose conversation never rose above the commonplace. After all, we can hardly help feeling that the whole of this Court Diary, entertaining as it is, would be well exchanged for the description, in Fanny's animated style, of a few more dinner-parties at Sir Joshua's, a few more conversations with Edmund Burke. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fanny Burney has kept her room here in my house seven days, with a fever or something that she calls a fever; I gave her every medicine and every slop with my own hand; took away her dirty cups, spoons, etc.; moved her tables; in short, was doctor, nurse, and maid—for I did not like the servants should have additional trouble, lest they should hate her for it. And now, with the true gratitude of a wit, she tells me that the world thinks the better of me for my civility to her. It does? ”

“ Martin's Street, and finding Dr. Burney and his daughter from home, left a card on which he had written these words:—“Mr. Burke, to congratulate upon the honour done by the Queen to Miss Burney,—and to herself.” The office which Fanny shared with that “old hag,” Mrs. Schwellenberg, was that of keeper of the robes, and she entered upon her new duties in the month Of July, 1786. Dress had always been one of the last subjects about which she troubled herself, and her want of experience in this all-important matter was graciously taken into consideration by the queen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MRS. PIOZZI to FANNY BURNEY Wellbeck-st., NO, 33, Cavendish-sq.,
Friday, Aug. 13, 1784.
Give yourself no serious concern, sweetest Burney. All is well, and I am too happy myself to make a friend otherwise; quiet your kind heart immediately, and love my husband if you love his and your H. L. Piozzi.
N.B.—To this kind note, F. B. wrote the warmest and most affectionate and heartfelt reply; but never received another word! And here and thus stopped a correspondence of six years of almost unequalled partiality, and fondness on her side ”

“ In July, 1782, when Cecilia was published, Fanny Burney was thirty,—that critical age before which, according to a discouraging dictum, those who are not doomed to failure, must have contrived to succeed. ”

“ He darted from her with the same rapidity, though wide from the same ferocity, as that with which he had at first approached her: vain was every soft appeal, lost was every gentle blandishment; in an instant he was out of sight, out of hearing,—she scarcely saw him go ere he was gone. Faithful creature! she cried, 'tis surely his master who calls! A new tie may excite his benevolence; none can shake his fidelity, nor slacken his services.
Alone and unaided, she had now to pierce a passage through the thicket, uncertain whither it might lead, and filled with apprehensions. ”