MR. MASON.
He now, also, renewed into long and social meetings, at his own apartments at Chelsea college, an acquaintance of forty-six years’ standing with Mason, the poet; by whom he was often consulted upon schemes of church psalmody, with respect both to its composition and execution; as well as upon other desirable improvements in our sacred harmony; which Mr. Mason, from practical knowledge both of music and poetry, was peculiary fitted to investigate and refine.
Of this formation of intimacy, rather than renewal of acquaintance, Dr. Burney, in his Letters to the Hermits, spoke with great pleasure; though, while always admiring the talents, and esteeming the private character of that charming poet, he never lost either his regret or his blame for the truly unclerical use made of his powers of wit and humour, by the insidious, yet biting sarcasms, levelled against his virtuous Sovereign in the poetical epistle to Sir William Chambers.
Had any crime been held up to view, there might have been an exaltation of courage in not suffering the Throne to be its protector; or had any secret vice, that was undermining moral duties, been exposed, there might have been a nobleness of intrepid indignation in casting upon it the glare of public contempt. But the shaft was levelled at one who had neither crime nor vice; an exemption so rare, that it ought to have created respect for the lowest born subject in the realm; and therefore, when marking the character of a monarch, became a call, a commanding call, to every lover of virtue — be his politics what they might — for being blazoned with public applause, as an excitement to public example.
MR. MALONE.
Dr. Burney grew closely connected, also, with that indefatigable anecdote-hunter; date-ferretter; technical difficulty-solver; and collector of various readings — Mr. Malone.
HON. FRED. NORTH.
And he had the happiness of often meeting with the Hon. Frederic North, afterwards Earl of Guildford; whose pleasant wit, practical urbanity, and persevering love of enterprise, made him full of original entertainment; whilst his unvarying gaiety of good-humour enabled him to discard spleen from pain, and to banish murmuring from even the acutest fits of the gout; though maimed by them, distorted, and crippled.
Upon his first visit to Dr. Burney, at Chelsea College, Mr. Frederick North appeared there upon crutches, and with difficulty hobbled into the library; yet he advanced with a smile, saying, that though he must obsequiously beg permission to produce himself in such a plight elsewhere, he boldly felt at home in coming with wooden legs to Chelsea Hospital. o
1795.
The health of Dr. Burney was at this time most happily restored to the full exercise of all his powers of life. In a letter written to Bookham, at the close of the spring season, he says:
“I have been such an evaporé lately, that if I were near enough to accost you de vive voix, it would be with Susey’s exclamation, when she was just arrived from France, at only eleven years old, after staying at Mrs. Lewis’s till ten o’clock one night, “Queje suis libertine, papa!” And thus, “Que je suis libertin, ma fille,’”cry I. Three huge assemblies at Spencer House; two dinners at the Duke and Duchess of Leeds; two ditto at Mr. Crewe’s; two clubs; a dejeuner at Mrs. Crewe’s villa, at Hampstead; a dinner at Lord Macartney’s; ditto at Mr. Locke’s; ditto at Mr. Coxe’s; two ditto at Sir George Howard’s, at Chelsea; two philosophical conversationes at Sir Joseph Bankes’s; two operas; two professional concerts; Haydn’s benefit; Salomon’s three ancient musics; &c. &c. &c.
“What dissipating profligacy! But what argufies all this festivity. ’Tis all vanity, and exhalement of spirit. I was tired to death of it all before it was over: whilst your domestic occupations and pleasures are as fresh every morning as the roses of your garden.”
The following is the sportive conclusion of another letter, written in the season of fashionable engagements.
“When shall I have done with telling you of mes bonnes fortunes? Betty Carter, Hannah More, Lady Clarges — nay, t’other day, at Dickey Coxe’s, I met with the Miss Berrys, as lively and accomplished as ever; and I have strong invites to their cottage at Strawberry Hill. What say you to that, ma’am? —
“Torn to pieces, I declare!”
MR. ERSKINE.
The Doctor now, in truth, became so universally in fashion, that he was even sought, much to his amusement, by those against whose principles, as far as they were political, he was invariably at war; namely, sundry celebrated oppositionists.
In his letter to the Hermits he particularizes in this liberty list, Mr. Mason, Mr. Stonehewer, Sir William Jones, Mr. Hayley, Mr. Godwin, and the first Lord Lansdowne; ending with Mr. Erskine,’ whom he had met at two dinners, and to whose house he had been invited to a third convivial meeting: and here this renowned orator and new acquaintance fastened upon the Doctor with all the volubility of his eloquence, and all the exuberance of his happy good-humour, in singing his own exploits and praises, without insisting that his hearer should join in chorus; or rather, perhaps, without discovering, from his own self-absorption, that that ceremony was omitted.
CAROLINE, PRINCESS OF WALES.
The dejeuner above mentioned of Mrs. Crewe at her little villa, at Hampstead, was given in honour of Caroline, Princess of Wales. To this, in order to compliment at once the rank and the taste of her Royal Highness, Mrs Crewe invited whoever she thought most distinguished, either in situation or in talents. Under the latter class, she was not likely to forget her old friend, Dr. Burney; whose name her Royal Highness no sooner heard, than she desired Mr. Windham to bring him to her for presentation. “And then,” the Doctor in his diary relates, “she said, in very good English, ‘How do you do, Dr. Burney? You and I are not strangers. You are very well known in Germany, and often mentioned there; car, enfin, vous etes un homme celebre?”
“After which,” the Doctor’s diary goes on, “in the little colloquial debates, and playful defences of general conversation, she commonly and flatteringly referred to me for arbitration, saying: ‘Is it not so, Dr. Burney? You are a wise man, and must know of the best.’
“The next time her Royal Highness had music, I was remembered for a summons to Blackheath, forwarded to me by the very agreeable and very deserving Miss Hayman. And here the Princess had the politeness and condescension to shew me her plantations and improvements.
“The music performed was chiefly of Mozart; and her Royal Highness, on piece following piece of the same composer, cried: ‘I hope you like Mozart, Dr. Burney?’
‘No compositions can better deserve your Royal Highness’s favour, I answered; ‘for his inventions and resources are inexhaustible: and his vocal music, of which we knew nothing in England till after he was dead, surpasses in beauty even his instrumental; which had so justly, in this country, obtained him the warmest applause.’ The music was so good, and her Royal Highness was so lively, that Mrs. Crewe, whom I had the honour to accompany, could not take leave till past one o’clock in the morning; and it was past six ere my jaded horses and I reached Chelsea College.”
MRS. THRALE PIOZZI.
Chiefly cheering, however, and agreeable to the Doctor, was an unexpected re-meeting with a long favourite friend, from whom he had unavoidably, and most unpleasantly, been separated, — Mrs. Thrale; whom now, for the first time, he saw as Mrs. Piozzi.
It was at one of the charming concerts of the charming musician, Salomon, that this occurred. Dr. Burney knew not that she was returned from Italy, whither she had gone speedily after her marriage; till here, with much surprise, he perceived amongst the audience, il Signor Piozzi.
Approaching him, with an aspect of cordiality, which was met with one of welcoming pleasure, they entered into talk upon the performers and the instruments, and the enchanting compositions of Haydn. Dr. Burney then inquired, with all the interest that he most sincerely felt, after la sua consorte. Piozzi, turning round, pointed to a sofa, on which, to his infinite joy, Dr. Burney beheld Mrs. Thrale Piozzi, seated in the midst of her daughters, the four Miss Thrales.
His pleasure
seemed reciprocated by Mrs. Piozzi, who, sportively ejaculating, “Here’s Dr. Burney, as young as ever!” held out to him her hand with lively amity.
His satisfaction now expanded into a conversational gaiety, that opened from them both those fertile sources of entertainment, that originally had rendered them most agreeable to each other; the younger branches, with amiable good-humour, contributing to the spirit of this unexpected junction.
The Bookhamite Recluse, to whom this occurrence was immediately communicated, received it with true and tender delight. Most joyfully would she, also, have held out her hand to that once so dear friend, from whom she could never sever her heart, had she happily been of this Salomonic party.
METASTASIO.
Dr. Burney still, as he had done nearly from the hour that his History was finished, composed various articles for the Monthly Review. But so precarious and irregular a call upon his fertile abilities, sufficed not for their occupation; and he soon started a new work, on a subject peculiar and appropriate, that came singularly home to his business and bosom; though it was offered to him only by that fatal power which daily and unfailingly lavishes before us subjects for our discussions — and for our tears! — Death; which, some time previously to the liberation of the Doctor’s mind from the arcana of musical history, had cast the Life and Writings of the Abate Metastasio upon posterity.
No poet could be more congenial to Dr. Burney than Metastasio, the purity of whose numbers was mellifluously in concord with the purity of his sentiments; while both were in perfect unison with the taste of the Doctor. He considered it, professionally, to be even a duty, for the Historian of the Art of Music, to raise, as far as in him lay, a biographical monument to the glory of the man whose poetry, after that which is sacred, is best adapted to inspire the lyric muse with strains of genial harmony, in all the impassioned varieties that the choral shell is capable to generate for the musical enthusiast.
The first object of Dr. Burney in his visit to Vienna, at the period of his German Tour, had been to see and to converse with Metastasio; whose resplendent lyrical fame had raised him, in his own dramatic career, to a height unequalled throughout Europe.
The benign reception given to the Doctor by this amiable and venerable bard; the charm of his converse; the meekly borne honours by which he was distinguished and surrounded; and the delightful performances, and graceful attractions of his Niece, Mademoiselle Martinez, are fully and feelingly set forth in the third volume of the Musical Tours.
When decided, therefore, upon this subject for his pen and his powers, he employed himself without delay in preparatory measures for his new undertaking: and procured every edition of the Poet’s works; to glean from each all that might incidentally be interspersed of anecdote, in letters, advertisements, prefaces, or notes.
He was kindly assisted in getting over various documents from Vienna, by the late Lord Mansfield, who, while Lord Stormont, had been British Ambassador at that capital when it was visited by Dr. Burney.
The present Earl Spencer, also, liberally aided the passage to England of some works much wanted, but difficult of attainment From Haydn, with whom the Doctor was in constant commerce, and who chiefly resided at Vienna, he received considerable local and agreeable help.
And through the generous and judicious friendship of the faithful Pacchierotti, he was furnished with every species of assistance that judgment, zeal, and a perfect acquaintance with the calls of the subject, could suggest.
“In short,” says the Doctor, in a letter to Bookham, “I am prodigiously hallooed on in my Metastasio mania by all sorts of poets and critics; and, to bring all to a point, I have a letter, which I inclose for your perusal, from the enchanting Mademoiselle Martinez.”
Thus powerfully encouraged, the Doctor consigned himself to this new composition. Not, however, as when working at his History, to the sacrifice of his ease, his comfort, and his friends: with these, on the contrary, his spring and winter intercourse were now lively and frequent; and with some of them he indulged himself in spending a portion of his summer.
1795.
While he had been blessed by the preservation of Messrs. Crisp, Bewley, and Twining, he had neither inclination nor time for any diffusion that would have robbed him of their incomparably endearing and enlightening society. A few days in rotation were all that he could bestow on his many other claimants; but the two first of these heart, head, and leisure-monopolizers, Messrs. Crisp and Bewley, were gone; and had left a chasm that the third only could fill; and he, Mr. Twining, was now almost unremittingly occupied in kindly attendance upon a sick and suffering wife.
The next who, now, ranked nearest to Dr. Burney for consolation and confidence, was Mrs. Crewe; to whom he would willingly have dedicated the greatest part of his wandering holidays, but that her country residence, at Crewe Hall, in Cheshire, exacted two journeys so incommodious and fatiguing, that it was rarely, and with difficulty, they could be undertaken.
To his valuable old friend, Mr. Coxe, he gave a week or two, at his pleasant villa, near Southampton, every season. And he made rambling visits, of a few days, to Lady Mary Duncan, Sir Joseph Bankes, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, Lady Clarges, and several others.
With his two sons, and his eldest daughter, as their residences were within a few miles of his own abode, he was in constant commerce; but to his Susanna, since she had been separated from the paternal roof, he devoted a fortnight every year; and he gratified his fourth daughter, Charlotte, now resident in Norfolk, with visits rather longer, because her greater distance from Chelsea made them necessarily less frequent.
BOOKHAM.
In the first of these domestic and amical tours that were made after the marriage of his second daughter, he suddenly turned out of his direct road to take a view of the dwelling of the Hermits of Bookham; in which rural village they were temporarily settled, in a small but pleasant cottage, endeared for ever to their remembrance from having been found out for them by Mr. Locke.
It was not, perhaps, without the spur of some latent solicitude, some anxious incertitude, that Dr. Burney made this first visit to them abruptly, at an early hour, and when believed far distant; and if so, never were kind doubts more kindlily solved: he found all that most tenderly he could wish — concord and content; gay concord, and grateful content.
When he sent in his name from his post-chaise, the Hermits flew to receive him; and ere he could reach the little threshold of the little habitation, his daughter was in his arms. How long she there kept him she knows not, but he was very patient at the detention! Tears of pleasure standing in his full eyes at her rapturous reception; and at witnessing the unsophisticated happiness of two beings who, from living nearly in the front of life, nourished in retirement no wish but for its continuance.
CAMILLA; OR A PICTURE OF YOUTH.
The Memoirs of Metastasio, with all their interest to a man whose love of literary composition was so eminently his ruling passion, surmounted not — for nothing could surmount — the parental benevolence that welcomed with encouragement, and hailed with hope, a project now communicated to him of a new work, the third in succession, from the author of Evelina and Cecilia.
That author, become now a mother as well as a wife, was induced to print this, her third literary essay, by a hazardous mode of publicity, from which her natively-retired temperament had made her, in former days, recoil, even when it was eloquently suggested for her by Mr. Burke to Dr. Burney, namely, the mode of subscription.
But, at this period, she felt a call against her distate at once conjugal and maternal. Her noble-minded partner, though the most ardent of men to be himself what he thought belonged to the dignity of his sex, the efficient purveyor of his own small home and family, was despoiled, by events over which he had no control, of that post of honour.
This scheme, therefore, was adopted. Its history, however, would be here a matter of supererogation, save as far as it includes Dr. Burney in its influence and effect; for neither the author, no
r her partner in all, could feel greater delight than was experienced by Dr. Burney, from the three principal circumstances which emanated from this undertaking.
The first of these was the honour graciously accorded by her Majesty, Queen Charlotte, of suffering her august name to stand at the head of the Book, by deigning to accept its Dedication.
The second was the feminine approbation marked for the author by three ladies, equally conspicuous for their virtues and their understanding; the honourable and sagacious Mrs. Boscawen, the beautiful and zealous Mrs. Crewe, and the exemplary and captivating Mrs. Locke; who each kept books for the subscription, which the kindness of their friendship raised as highly in honour as in advantage.
And the third circumstance, to the Doctor the most touching, because now the least expected, was the energetic interest, to which the prospect of seeing this Memorialist emerge again from obscurity, re-animated the still generous feelings of the now nearly sinking, altered, gone Mr. Burke! who, on finding that his charges against Mr. Hastings were adjudged in Westminster Hall to be unfounded, though he was still persuaded himself that they were just, had retired from Parliament, wearied and disgusted; and who, on the following year, had lost his deeply attached brother; and, almost immediately afterwards, his nearly idolized son, who was “the pride of his heart, and the joy of his existence,” to use his own words in a paragraph of a letter written to the mutually respected and faithful friend of himself and of Dr. Burney, Mrs. Crewe.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 427
