But from these brilliant gifts, as instruments of advantage, they turned captiously aside; as if the exquisite powers, vocal and dramatic, which were severally intrusted to their charge, had been qualities that, in any view of utility, they ought to shrink from with secrecy and shame.
Yet Dr. Burney always believed Mrs. Sheridan herself to be inherently pure in her mind, and elegantly simple in her taste; though first from the magnetism of affection, and next from the force of circumstances, she was drawn into the same vortex of dissipation and extravagance, in which the desires and pursuits of her husband unresistedly rolled.
Every thing, save rank and place, was theirs; every thing, therefore, save rank and place, seemed beneath their aim.
If, in withdrawing his fair partner from public life, the virtues of moderation had bestowed contentment upon their retreat, how dignified had been such a preference, to all the affluence attendant upon a publicity demanding personal exhibition from a delicate and sensitive female!
Such was the light in which this act of Mr. Sheridan, upon its early adoption, had appeared to Dr. Johnson; and as such it obtained the high sanction of his approbation. But to no such view was the subsequent conduct of this too aspiring and enchanting couple respondent. They assumed the expenses of wealth, while they disclaimed the remuneration of talents; and they indulged in the luxuries of splendour, by resources not their own.
Not such, had he lived to witness the result, had been the sanction of Dr. Johnson. He had regarded the retirement from public exhibition as a measure of primitive temperance and philosophic virtue. The last of men was Dr.. Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity, by nullifying the labours of talents.
The unhappy delusion into which this high-wrought and misplaced self-appreciation betrayed them, finished its fatal fanaticism by dimming their celebrity, mocking their ambition, and hurling into disorder and ruin their fortune, their reputation, their virtues, and their genius.
At the head of the female worthies, who gratified Dr. Burney with eager good wishes on the return of the memorialist, stood Mrs. Montague. And still the honourable corps was upheld by Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Garrick, and Miss Mote — though, alas, the last mentioned lady is now the only one of that distinguished set still spared to the world.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS;
But a catastrophe of the most sorrowing sort soon afterwards cast a shade of saddest hue upon this happy and promising period, by the death of the friend to whom, after his many deprivations, Dr. Burney had owed his greatest share of pleasure and animation — Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Deeply this loss affected his spirits. Sir Joshua was the last of the new circle with whom his intimacy had mellowed into positive friendship. And though with many, and indeed with, most of the literary club, a connexion was gradually increasing which might lead to that heart-expanding interest in life, friendship, — to part with what we possess while what we wish is of uncertain attainment, leaves a chasm in the feelings of a man of taste and selection, that he is long nearly as unwilling as he may be unable to re-occupy.
With Mr. Burke, indeed, with the immortal Edmund Burke, Dr. Burney might have been as closely united in heart as he was charmed in intellect, had circumstances offered time and opportunity for the cultivation of intimacy. Political dissimilarity of sentiment does not necessarily sunder those who, in other points, are drawn together by congeniality of worth; except where their walk in life compels them to confront each other with public rivalry.
But Mr. Burke, in whose composition imagination was the leading feature, had so genuine a love of rural life and rural scenery, that he seldom came voluntarily to the metropolis but upon parliamentary business; and then the whole powers of his ardent mind were absorbed by politics, or political connexions: while Sir Joshua, whose equanimity of temper kept his imagination under controul, and whose art was as much the happiness as it was the pride of his prosperity finding London the seat of his glory, judiciously determined to make it that of his contentment His loss, therefore, to Dr. Burney was hot only that of an admired friend, with whom emulously he might reciprocate and enlighten ideas; but, also, of that charm to current life the most soothing to its cares, a congenial companion always at hand.
And more particularly was he affected at this time by the departure of this valuable friend, from the circumstance of having just brought to bear the return home of the memorialist, for which Sir Joshua, previously to a paralytic attack, had been the most eager and incessant pleader. The Doctor, therefore, had looked forward with the gayest gratification to the renewal of those meetings which, alike to himself, to his daughter, and to the knight, had invariably been productive of glee and pleasure.
But gone, ere arrived that renewal, was the power of its enjoyment! A meeting, indeed, took place, and with unalterable friendship on both sides. Immediately after the western tour, Dr. Burney carried the memorialist to Leicester-square; first mounting to the drawing-room himself, td inquire whether Sir Joshua were well enough for her admission. Assent was immediate; and she felt a sprightly renovation of strength in again ascending his stairs.
Miss Palmer came forward to receive her with warm greeting cordiality; but she rapidly hastened onward to shake hands with Sir Joshua. He was now all but quite blind. He had a green, bandage over one eye, and the other was shaded by a green half bonnet He was playing at cards with Mr. William Burke, and some others. He attempted to rise, to welcome a long lost favourite; but found himself too weak, He was even affectingly kind to her, but serious almost to melancholy. “I am glad, indeed,” he emphatically said, though in a meek voice, and with a dejected accent, “to see you again! and I wish I could see you better! But I have only one eye now, — and hardly that!”
She was extremely touched; and knew not how to express either her concern for his altered situation since they had last met, or her joy at being with him again; or her gratitude for the earnest exertions he had made to spur Dr. Burney to the step that had been taken.
The Doctor, perceiving the emotion she both felt and caused, hurried her away. And once more only she ever saw the English Raphael again. And then he was still more deeply depressed: though Miss Palmer, good-humouredly, drew a smile from him, by gaily exclaiming, “Do pray, now, uncle, ask Miss Burney to write another book directly! for we have almost finished Cecilia again — and this is our sixth reading of it?”
The little occupation, Miss Palmer said, of which Sir Joshua was then capable, was carefully dusting the paintings in his picture gallery, and placing them in different points of view.
This passed at the conclusion of 1791; on the February of the following year, this friend, equally amiable and eminent, was no more!
Dr. Burney, extremely unwell at that period himself, could not attend the funeral; which, under the direction of Mr. Burke, the chief executor, was conducted with the splendour due to the genius, and suitable to the fortune, of the departed. Dr. Charles Burney was invited in the place of his father, and attended at the obsequies for both.
MR. HAYES.
Another last separation; long menacing, yet truly grievous to the Doctor, was now almost momentarily impending. His good, gay-hearted, and talented old friend, Mr. Hayes, had had a new paralytic seizure, which, in the words of Dr. Burney, “deprived him of the use of one side, and greatly affected his speech, eyes and ears; though his faculties were still as good and as sound as his heart.”
This account had been addressed, the preceding year, to George Earl of Oxford, by desire of the poor invalid.
Pitiable as was this species of existence, Mr. Hayes long lingered in it, with a patience and cheerfulness that kept him still open to the kind offices, as well as to the compassion, of his friends: and Dr. Burney held, a regular correspondence with Lord Orford upon this subject, till it ceased with a calamitous catastrophe; not such as was daily expected to the ancient invalid, though then bedridden, and past eighty years of age, but to the earl himself, from an attack of insan
ity.
EARL OF ORFORD.
This was a new grief. Lord Orford had been not only an early patron, but a familiar friend of the Doctor, during the whole of his sojourn in Norfolk.
This truly liberal, though, as has been acknowledged, not faultless nobleman, attached himself to all that was literary or scientific that came within reach of his kindness at Haughton Hall; yet without suffering this intellectual hospitality to abridge any of the magnificence of the calls of fair kindred aristocracy, which belonged to his rank and fortune. His high appreciation of Mr. Bewley has been already mentioned; and his value of the innate, though unvarnished worth of Mr. Hayes, sprang from the same genuine sense of intrinsic merit Nearly in the meridian of his life, Lord Orford had been afflicted with a seizure of madness, occasioned by an unreflecting application of some repelling plaster or lotion to an eruption on the forehead, that had broken out just before one of the birthdays of the king, upon which, as his lordship was then first lord of the bedchamber in waiting, his attendance at St James’s had seemed indispensable.
This terrible malady, after repeated partial recoveries, and disappointing relapses, had appeared to be finally cured by the same gifted medical man who blessedly had restored his sovereign to the nation, Dr. Willis. Lord Orford, from that happy lucid interval, resided chiefly at Ereswell, his favourite villa. And here, once more, Dr. Burney had had the cordial pleasure of passing a few days with this noble friend; who delighted to resort to that retirement from the grandeur and tumult of Haughton Hall.
It had been nineteen years since they had met; and the flow of conversation, from endless reminiscences, kept them Up nearly all the first night of this visit And Dr. Burney declared that he had then found his lordship’s head as clear, his heart as kind, and his converse as pleasing, as at any period of their early intercourse.
The relapse, by which, not three weeks after this meeting, the earl again lost his senses, had two current reports for its cause: the first of which gave it to a fall from his horse; the second to the sudden death of Mrs. Turk, his erst lovely Patty; “to whom,” says the Doctor in a letter, after his Ereswell visit, that was addressed to Mrs. Phillips, “he was more attached than ever, from her faithful and affectionate attendance upon him during the long season of his insanity; though, at this time, she was become a fat and rather coarse old woman.”
MR. BURKE.
Upon the publication of the celebrated treatise of Mr. Burke on the opening of the French revolution, Dr. Burney had felt re-wakened all his first unqualified admiration of its author, from a full conviction that error, wholly free from malevolence, had impelled alike his violence in the prosecution of Mr. Hastings, and his assertions upon the incurability of the malady of the king: while a patriotism, superior to all party feeling, and above all considerations but the love of his country, had inspired every sentence of the immortal orator in his new work.
The Doctor had interchanged some billets with Mr. Burke upon this occasion; and once or twice they had met; but only in large companies. This the Doctor lamented to Mrs. Crewe; who promised that, if he would spend three or four days at her Hampstead little villa, she would engage for his passing one of them with Mr. Burke; though she should make, she added, her own terms; namely, “that you are accompanied, Mr. Doctor, by Miss Burney.”
Gladly the invitation and the condition were accepted; and the editor hopes to be pardoned, if again she spare herself the toil of recommitting to paper an account of this meeting, by copying one written at the moment to her sister Susanna. Egotistic in part it must inevitably be; yet not, she trusts, offensively; as it contains various genuine traits of Mr. Burke in society, that in no graver manner than in a familiar epistle could have been detailed.
“To Mrs. Phillips.
“At length, my Susan, the re-meeting so long-suspended, with Mr. Burke, has taken place. Our dearest father was enchanted at the prospect of spending so many hours with him; and of pouring forth again and again the rapturous delight with which he reads, and studies, and admires, the sublime new composition of this great statesman.
“But — my satisfaction, my dear Susan, with all my native enthusiasm for Mr. Burke, was not so unmingled. If such a meeting, after my long illness, and long seclusion, joined to my knowledge of his kind interest in them, had taken place speedily after that on Richmond Hill, at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, where I beheld him with an admiration that seemed akin to enchantment; and that portrayed him all bright intelligence and gentle amenity; — instead of succeeding to the scenes of Westminster Hall; where I saw him furious to accuse, — implacable not to listen — and insane to vanquish! his respiration troubled, his features nearly distorted, and,’ his countenance haggard with baneful animosity; while his voice, echoing up to the vaulted roof in tremendous execrations, poisoned the heated air with unheard-of crimes! — Oh! but for that more recent recollection, his sight, and the expectation of his kindness, would have given me once again a joy almost extatic.
“But now, from this double reminiscence, my mind, my ideas — disturbed as much as delighted — were in a sort of chaos; they could coalesce neither with pleasure nor with pain.
“Our dear father was saved all such conflicting perplexity, as he never attended the trial; and how faint are the impressions of report, compared with those that are produced by what we experience or witness! He was not, therefore, like me, harassed by the continual inward question: ‘shall I see once more that noble physiognomy that, erst, so fascinated my fancy? or, am I doomed to behold how completely it is expression, not feature, that stamps the human countenance upon human view?’ “The little villa at Hampstead is small, but commodious. We were received by Mrs. Crewe with great kindness, which you will easily believe was the last thing to surprise us. Her son was with her; a silent and reserved, but, I think, sensible young man, though looking — so blooming is she still — rather like her brother than her son. He is preparing to go to China with Lord Macartney. Her daughter we had ourselves brought from town, where she had been on a visit to the lovely Emily Ogilvie, at the Duchess Dowager of Leinster’s. She, Miss Crewe, is become an intelligent and amiable adolescent; but so modest, that I never heard her uncourted voice.
“Mr. Burke was not yet arrived, but young Burke, who, when I lived in the midst of things, was almost always at my side, like my shadow, wherever we met, though never obtrusively, was the first person I saw. I felt very glad to renew our old acquaintance; but I soon perceived a strangeness in his bow, that marked a decided change from fervent amity to cold civility.
“This hurt me much for this very estimable young man; but alarmed me ten thousand times more for his father, whose benevolent personal partiality — blame him as I may for one or two public acts — I could not forfeit without the acutest mortification, pain, and sorrow. obvious and the fair, but the most obscure and irrelevant, to prosecute to infamy and persecute to death — have a countenance of such marked hones “But it now oppressively occurred to me, that perhaps young Mr. Burke, studiously as in whatever is political I always keep in the back ground, had discovered my antipathy to the state trial; for though I felt satisfied that Mr. Windham, to, whom so openly I had revealed it, had held sacred, as he had promised, my secret — for how could honour and Mr. Windham be separated? — young Burke, who was always in the managers’ box, must unavoidably have observed how frequently Mr. Windham came to converse with me from the great chamberlain’s; and might even, perhaps, have so been placed at times, in the House of Commons’ partition, as to overhear my unrestrained wishes for the failure of the prosecution, from my belief in its injustice — and if so, how greatly must he have been offended for his reverenced father! to whom, also, he might, perhaps, have made known my sentiments!
“This idea demolished in a moment all my hope of pleasure in the visit; and I became more uncomfortable than I can describe.
“Our dear father did not perceive my disturbance. Always wisely alive to the present moment, he was occupied exclusively with young Mr. Crewe
, at the motion of our fair hostess; who, after naming Lord Macartney’s embassy, said: “Come, Dr. Burney, you, who know every thing, come and tell us all about China.”
“Soon after entered Mrs. Burke, who revived in me some better hopes; for she was just the same as I have always seen her; soft, serene, reasonable, sensible, and obliging; and we met, I think, upon just as good terms as if so many years had not parted us.
“Next appeared — for all the family inhabit, at present, some spot at Hampstead — Mr. Richard Burke, that original, humorous, flashing, and entertaining brother of THE Burke, whom we have so often met, but whom we have never liked, or, at least, understood well enough to associate with for himself: nor yet liked ill enough to shirk when we have met him with others. From him I could develope nothing of my great point of inquietude, i.e. how I stood with his great brother; for! Had put myself into a place, in my old way, in the back ground, with Miss Crewe, Miss French, a lively niece of Mr. Burke’s, and a very pleasing Miss Townshend; and Mr. R. Burke did not recollect, or, probably, see me. But my father, immediately leaving young Crewe, and Lord Macartney, and the whole empire of China in the lurch, darted forward to expatiate with Mr. Richard upon his brother’s noble essay.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 424
