Toulonnese till which, probably, no decision will be formed
whether the constitutionals in England will be employed or not.
[M. d’Arblay’s offer of serving in the expedition to Toulon was not accepted, and the reasons for which it was declined do not appear.]
MADAME D’ARBLAY ON HER MARRIAGE.
(Madame d’Arblay to mrs. —— .)
The account of your surprise, my sweet friend, was the last thing to create mine: I was well aware of the general astonishment, and of yours in particular. My own, however, at my very extraordinary fate, is singly greater than that of all my friends united. I had never made any vow against marriage, but I had long, long been firmly persuaded it was for me a state of too much hazard and too little promise to draw me from my individual plans and purposes. I remember, in playing -at questions and commands, when I was thirteen, being asked when I intended to marry? and surprising my playmates by solemnly replying) “When I think I shall be happier than I am in being single.” It is true, I imagined that time would never arrive - and I have pertinaciously adhered to trying no experiment upon any other hope - for, many and mixed as are the ingredients which form what is generally considered as happiness, I was always fully convinced [hat social sympathy of character and taste could alone have any chance with me; all else I always thought, and now know, to be immaterial. I have only this peculiar, — that what many contentedly assert or adopt in theory, I have had the courage to be guided by in practice.
We are now removed to a very small house in the suburbs of a very small village called Bookham. We found it rather inconvenient to reside in another person’s dwelling, though our own apartments were to ourselves. Our views are not so beautiful as from Phenice farm, but our situation is totally free from neighbours and intrusion. We are about a mile and a half from Norbury Park, and two miles from Mickleham. I am become already so stout a walker, by use, and with the help of a very able supporter, that I go to those places and return home on foot without fatigue, when the weather is kind. At other times I condescend to accept a carriage from Mr. Locke; but it is always reluctantly, I so much prefer walking where, as here, the country and prospects are inviting.
I thank you for your caution about building: we shall certainly undertake nothing but by contract - however, it would be truly mortifying to give up a house in Norbury Park we defer the structure till the spring, as it is to be so very slight, that Mr. Locke says it will be best to have it hardened in its first stage by the summer’s sun. It will be very small, merely an habitation for three people, but in a situation truly beautiful, and within five minutes of either Mr. Locke or my sister Phillips: it is to be placed just between those two loved houses.
My dearest father, whose fears and drawbacks have been my Sole subject of regret, begins now to see I have not judged rashly, or with romance, in seeing my own road to my own felicity. And his restored cheerful concurrence in my constant principles, though new station, leaves me, for myself, without a wish. L’ennui, which could alone infest our retreat, I have ever been a stranger to, except in tiresome company, and my companion has every possible resource against either feeling or inspiring it.
As my partner is a Frenchman, I conclude the wonder raised by the connexion may spread beyond my own private circle; but no wonder upon earth can ever arrive near my own in having found such a character from that nation. This is a prejudice certainly, impertinent and very John Bullish, and very arrogant but I only share it with all my countrymen, and therefore must needs forgive both them and myself. I am convinced, however, from your tender solicitude for me in all ways, that you will be glad to hear that the queen and all the royal family have deigned to send me wishes for my happiness through Mrs. Schwellenberg, who has written me what you call a very kind congratulation.
[In the year 1794, the happiness of the “Hermitage” was increased by the birth of a son,(105) who was christened Alexander Charles Louis Piochard d’Arblay; receiving the names of his father, with those of his two godfathers, the Comte de Narbonne and Dr. Charles Burney.]
MR. CANNING.
(Madame d’Arblay to Doctor Burney) Bookham, February 8, 1794. The times are indeed, as my dearest father says, tremendous, and reconcile this retirement daily more and more to my chevalier- -chevalier every way, by birth, by his order, and by his character; for to-day he has been making his first use of a restoration to his garden in gathering snowdrops for his fair Dulcinea — you know I must say fair to finish the phrase with any effect.
I am very sorry for the sorrow I am sure Mr. Burke will feel for the loss of his brother, announced in Mr. Coolie’s paper yesterday. Besides, he was a comic, good-humoured, entertaining man, though not bashful.(106 What an excellent opening Mr. Canning has made at last! Entre nous soit dit, I remember, when at Windsor, that I Was told Mr. Fox came to Eton purposely to engage to himself that young man, from the already great promise of his rising abilities - and he made dinners for him and his nephew, Lord Holland, to teach them political lessons. It must have had an odd effect upon him, I think, to hear such a speech from his disciple.(107)
Mr. Locke now sends us the papers for the debates every two or three days; he cannot quicker, as his own household readers are so numerous. I see almost nothing of Mr. Windham in them; which vexes me: but I see Mr. Windham in Mr. Canning.
TALLEYRAND’s LETTERS OF ADIEU.(108)
(M. de Talleyrand to Mrs. Philips.)
Londres, 1794.
Madame, — Il faut qu’il y ait eu de l’impossibilit pour que ce
matin je n’aie pas eu l’honneur de vous voir; mais l’im possibilit la plus forte m’a priv du dernier plaisir que je pouvois avoir en Europe. Permettez moi, madame, de vous remercier encore une fois do toutes vos bonts, de vous demander un peu de part dans votre souvenir, et laissez moi vous dire que mes voeux se porteront dans tous les terns de ma vie vers vous, vers le capitaine, vers vos enfans. Vous allez avoir en Amrique un serviteur bien zl; je ne reviendrai pas en Europe sans arriver dans le Surrey: tout ce qui, pour mon esprit et pour mon coeur, a quelque valeur, est l .
Voulez-vous bien prsenter tous mes complimens au capitaine?(109)
(M. de Talleyrand to M. and Madame d’Arblay.) Londres, 2 Mars, 1794. Adieu, mon cher D’Arblay: je quitte votre pays jusqu’au moment o il n’appartiendra plus aux petites passions des hommes. Alors j’y reviendrai; non, en vrit, pour m’occuper d’affaires, car il y a long tems que je les ai abandonnes pour jamais; mais pour voir les excellens habitans du Surrey, J’espre savoir assez d’Anglais pour entendre Madame d’Arblay; d’ici quatre mois je ne vais faire autre chose que l’tudier: et pour apprendre le beau et bon langage, c’est “Evelina” et “Cecilia” qui sont mes livres d’tude et de plaisir. Je vous souhaite, mon cher ami, toute espce de bonheur, et vous tes on position de remplir tous mes souhaits. je ne sais combien de tems je resterai en Amrique: s’il se rfroit quelque chose de raisonnable et de stable pour notre malheureux pays, je reviendrois; si l’Europe s’abme dans la campagne prochaine, je prparerai en Amrique des asyles tous nos amis Adieu: mes hommages Madame d’Arblay et Madame phillips, je vous en prie: je vous demande et vous promets amiti pour la vie.(110)
M. D’ARBLAY’s HORTICULTURAL PURSUITS.
(Madame d’Arblay to Doctor Burney.) Bookham, March 22, 1794. My dear father. — I am this Moment returned from reading your most welcome and kind letter at our Susanna’s. The account of your better health gives me a pleasure beyond all words; and it is the more essential to my perfect contentment on account of your opinion of our retreat. I doubt not, my dearest father, but you judge completely right, and I may nearly say we are both equally disposed to pay the most implicit respect to your counsel. We give up, therefore, all thoughts of our London excursion for the present, and I shall write to that effect to our good intended hostess very speedily. I can easily conceive far more than you enlarge upon in this counsel: and, indeed, I have not myself been wholly free from apprehension of possible embarras, should we, at this period, v
isit London; for though M. d’Arblay not only could stand, but would court, all personal scrutiny, whether retrospective or actual, I see daily the extreme susceptibility which attends his very nice notions of honour, and how quickly and deeply his spirit is wounded by whatever he regards as injustice. Incapable, too, of the least trimming or disguise, he could not, at a time such as this, be in London without suffering or risking perhaps hourly, something unpleasant. Here we are tranquil, undisturbed and undisturbing. Can life, he often says, he more innocent than ours, or happiness more inoffensive? He works in his garden, or studies English and mathematics, while I write. When I work at my needle, he reads to me; and we enjoy the beautiful country around us in long and romantic strolls, during which he carries under his arm a portable garden chair, lent us by Mrs. Locke, that I may rest as I proceed. He is extremely fond, too, of writing, and makes, from time to time, memorandums of such memoirs, poems, and anecdotes as he recollects, and I wish to have preserved. These resources for sedentary life are certainly the first blessings that can be given to man, for they enable him to be happy in the extremest obscurity, even after tasting the dangerous draughts of glory and ambition.
The business of M. de Lafayette(111) has been indeed extremely bitter to him. It required the utmost force he could put upon himself not to take some public part in it. He drew up a short but most energetic defence of that unfortunate general, in a letter, which he meant to print and send to the editors of a newspaper which had traduced him, with his name at full length. But after two nights’ sleepless deliberation, the hopelessness of serving his friend, with a horror and disdain of being mistaken as one who would lend any arms to weaken government at this crisis, made him consent to repress it. I was dreadfully uneasy during the conflict, knowing, far better than I can make him conceive, the mischiefs that might follow any interference at this moment, in matters brought before the nation, from a foreigner. But, conscious of his own integrity, I plainly see he must either wholly retire, or come forward to encounter whatever he thinks wrong. Ah — better let him accept your motto, and cultiver son jardin! He is now in it, notwithstanding our long walk to Mickleham, and working hard and fast to finish some selfset task that to-morrow, Sunday, must else impede. page 87
M. d’Arblay, to my infinite satisfaction, gives up all thoughts of building, in the present awful state of public affairs. To show you, however, how much he is “ of your advice “ as to son jardin, he has been drawing a plan for it, which I intend to beg, borrow, or steal (all one), to give you some idea how seriously he studies to make his manual labours of some real utility.
This sort of work, however, is so totally new to him, that he receives every now and then some of poor Merlin’s “disagreeable compliments;” for, when Mr. Locke’s or the captain’s gardeners favour our grounds with a visit, they commonly make known that all has been done wrong. Seeds are sowing in some parts when plants ought to be reaping, and plants are running to seed while they are thought not yet at maturity. Our garden, therefore, is not yet quite the most profitable thing in the world; but M. d’A. assures me it is to be the staff of our table and existence.
A little, too, he has been unfortunate; for, after immense toil in planting and transplanting strawberries round our hedge, here at Bookham, he has just been informed they will bear no fruit the first year, and the second we may be “over the hills and far away!” Another time, too, with great labour, he cleared a considerable compartment of weeds, and, when it looked clean and well, and he showed his work to the gardener, the man said he had demolished an asparagus-bed! M. d’A. protested, however, nothing could look more like des mauvaises herbes.
His greatest passion is for transplanting. Everything we possess he moves from one end of the garden to another, to produce better effects. Roses take place of jessamines, jessamines of honeysuckles, and honeysuckles of lilacs, till they have all danced round as far as the space allows; but whether the effect may not be a general mortality, summer only can determine.
Such is our horticultural history. But I must not omit that we have had for one week cabbages from our own cultivation every day! O, you have no idea how sweet they tasted! We agreed they had a freshness and a got we had never met with before. We had them for too short a time to grow tired of them, because, as I have already hinted, they were beginning to run to seed before we knew they were eatable. . .
April. Think of our horticultural shock last week, when Mrs.
Bailey, our landlady, “entreated M. d’Arblay not to Spoil her fruit-trees!” — trees he had been pruning with his utmost skill and strength. However, he has consulted your “Millar” thereupon, and finds out she is very ignorant, which he has gently intimated to her.
MRS. PIOZZI.
(Madame d’Arblay to Dr. Burney.) Bookham, April, 1794. What a charming letter was your last, my dearest father How full of interesting anecdote and enlivening detail! The meeting with Mrs. Thrale, so surrounded by her family, made me breathless; and while you were conversing with the Signor, and left me in doubt whether you advanced to her or not, I almost gasped with impatience and revived old feelings, which, presently, you reanimated to almost all their original energy How like my dearest father to find all his kindness rekindled when her ready hand once more invited it! I heard her voice in, “Why here’s Dr. Burney, as young as ever!” and my dear father in his parrying answers.(112) No scene could have been related to me more interesting or more welcome. My heart and hand, I am sure, would have met her in the same manner. The friendship was too pleasant in its first stage, and too strong in its texture, to be ever obliterated, though it has been tarnished and clouded. I wish few things more earnestly than again to meet her.
M. D’ARDLAY AS A GARDENER.
(Madame d’Arblay to Dr. Burney.)(113)
Bookham, August, ‘94.
It is just a week since I had the greatest gratification of its
kind I ever, I think, experienced : — so kind a thought, so sweet a surprise as was my dearest father’s visit! How softly and soothingly it has rested upon my mind ever since!
“Abdolomine”(114) has no regret but that his garden was not in better order; he was a little piqu, he confesses, that you said it was not very neat — and, to be shor!-0-but his passion is to do great works: he undertakes with pleasure, pursues with energy, and finishes with spirit; but, then, all is over! He thinks the business once done always done; and to repair, and amend, and weed, and cleanse — O, these are drudgeries insupportable to him!
However, you should have seen the place before he began his operations, to do him justice; there was then nothing else but mauvaises herbes; now, you must at least allow there is a mixture of flowers and grain! I wish you had seen him yesterday, mowing down our hedge — with his sabre, and with an air and attitudes so military, that, if he had been hewing down other legions than those he encountered — ie., of spiders — he could scarcely have had a mien more tremendous, or have demanded an arm more mighty. Heaven knows, I am “the most contente personne in the world” to see his sabre so employed!
A NOVEL AND A TRAGEDY.
You spirited me on in all ways; for this week past I have taken tightly to the grand ouvrage.(115) If I go on so a little longer, I doubt not but M. d’Arblay will begin settling where to have a new shelf for arranging it! which is already in his rumination for Metastasio;(116) I imagine you now .,Seriously resuming that work; I hope to see further sample ere long.
We think with very great pleasure of accepting my mother’s and your kind invitation for a few days. I hope and mean, if possible, to bring with me also a little sample of something less in the dolorous style than what always causes your poor shoulders a little Shrug.(117) . . .
How truly grieved was I to hear from Mr. Locke of the death of young Mr. Burke!(118) What a dreadful blow upon his Page 90 father and mother! to come at the instant of the son’s highest and most honourable advancement, and of the father’s retreat to the bosom of his family from public life! His brother, too, gone so la
tely! I am most sincerely sorry, indeed, and quite shocked, as there seemed so little suspicion of such an event’s approach, by your account of the joy caused by Lord Fitzwilliam’s kindness. Pray tell me if you hear how poor Mr. Burke and his most amiable wife endure this calamity, and how they are. . . .
(Madame d’Arblay to Mrs. —— .) Bookham, April 15, 1795. So dry a reproof from so dear a friend! And do you, then, measure my regard of heart by my remissness of hand? Let me give you the short history of my tragedy,(119) fairly and frankly. I wrote it not, as your acquaintance imagined, for the stage, nor yet for the press. I began it at Kew palace, and, at odd moments, I finished it at Windsor; without the least idea of any species of publication.
Since I left the royal household, I ventured to let it be read by my father, Mr. and Mrs. Locke, my sister Phillips, and, of course, M. d’Arblay, and not another human being. Their opinions led to what followed, and my brother, Dr. Charles, showed it to Mr. Kemble while I was on my visit to my father last October. He instantly and warmly pronounced for its acceptance, but I knew not when Mr. Sheridan would see it, and had not the smallest expectation of its appearing this year. However, just three days before my beloved little infant came into the world, an express arrived from my brother, that Mr. Kemble wanted the tragedy immediately, in order to show it to Mr. Sheridan, who had just heard of it, and had spoken in the most flattering terms of his good will for its reception.
Still, however, I was in doubt of its actual acceptance till three weeks after my confinement, when I had a visit from my brother, who told me he was, the next morning, to read the piece in the green-room. This was a precipitance for which I was every way unprepared, as I had never made but one copy of the play, and had intended divers corrections and alterations. Absorbed, however, by my new charge and then growing ill, I had a sort of indifference about the matter, which, in fact, has lasted ever since.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 629
