Not long after, the King’s state began to amend, greatly to the dismay of the advocates of the Regency Bill. Before that measure could be read a third time, he was almost himself again; and at the end of February was able personally to assure Miss Burney of his convalescent condition. She found him in the Queen’s dressing room, where he had waited on purpose to see her. “I am quite well now” — he said; “I was nearly so when I saw you before — but I could overtake you better now.” Ten days later, at the time of the general rejoicing, when the Queen had had a special transparency painted for Kew Palace by her favourite Biagio Rebecca, the little Princess Amelia led her father to the front window to see the illuminations, dropping first upon her knees with a copy of congratulatory verses, which had been expressly composed for the occasion by the Junior Keeper of Robes. Miss Burney was as “ill at these numbers” as most manufacturers of metrical loyalty; but her postscript
“The little bearer begs a kiss
From dear Papa, for bringing this” —
was naturally not spoken in vain. On the next day the King, reinstated in all his dignities, received, in person, the Address of the Lords and Commons upon his restoration to health.
Over the further progress of that restoration we may pass rapidly. By this date, March 11th, 1789, Miss Burney had been more than two years and a half in the Queen’s service, and her stay was to be prolonged for two years more. But it is needless to pursue its story with equal detail. After the Royal Family quitted Kew, they went to Weymouth, their progress to that watering-place being one continued scene of loyal and very genuine rejoicing. At Weymouth, where they were domiciled in Gloucester House, Miss Burney renewed her acquaintance with Mrs. Siddons, whom she saw as Rosalind, but considered “too large for that shepherd’s dress,” and as Lady Townly in the Provoked Husband which she had read at Windsor. Fanny thought her gaiety was only gravity disguised, and though she praises her as Cibber’s heroine, evidently preferred the “great Sarah” of the Georgian Era in tragedy. She also, and for the first time, beheld Mr. Pitt; but did not admire his appearance, which she affirms was neither noble nor expressive. She spent much of her time with the beautiful “Jessamy Bride,” Mrs. Gwyn; and among other places, visited the Plymouth Dockyard, describing the forging of an anchor there with something of that later fine writing which was so effectually to ruin her style. “While we were seeing the anchor business, which seemed performed by Vulcanic demons, so black they looked, so savage was their howl in striking the red-hot iron, and so coarse and slight their attire” — is quite in the perverse manner of the coming Memoirs of Dr. Burney. In returning from Weymouth, the Royal party stopped at Longleat, which gives her an opportunity of moralising, — in Bishop Ken’s bed-room, — upon the cruelty of Longleat’s former tenant, “Granville the polite,” in forcing her old friend Mrs. Delany, to marry en premières noces, that extremely undesirable suitor, Mr. Pendarves of Roscrow. And so, by Tottenham Park, where the Earl of Aylesbury had put up a new bed for the King and Queen which cost him £900, they got back to Windsor in September. By this time the King had completely lost all traces of his indisposition.
Once again at Windsor, the Court sank back into its old jog-trot tedium, and with it sank Fanny’s heart. There was now no Mrs. Delany to sympathise when Schwellenbergism reached a more acute stage than usual; and there was shortly to be no Colonel Digby with whom to deplore the vicissitudes of a vale of tears, or to discuss, “in his genteel roundabout way,” the improving Night Thoughts of Dr. Young. Colonel Digby, who, from time to time, had renewed at Windsor the old readings, tea-drinkings, and semi-confidential conversations, had not taken a very prominent part in the Weymouth expedition. But he had apparently been permitting himself other distractions; and about November his connection with the Court was interrupted by his approaching marriage to Miss Gunning, with whom — and even by the King during his insanity — his name, as we have said, had already been associated. There is no doubt that Miss Burney had been impressed by him, if only as the most refined and amiable of her colleagues; and there can also be no doubt that on his part he must have found her sympathy and companionship especially grateful in his newly bereaved condition. However this may be — and Miss Burney could not have behaved better if she had been Cecilia herself — this last event manifestly added its quota to the growing burden of her life; and it was not in her nature to conceal her discomforts, either mental or physical. Her health declined visibly; the Schwellenberg card-table grew more wearisome than ever; and her condition began to cause anxiety to her friends. At last she took advantage of an accident to speak frankly to her father. She told him plainly that, kind and considerate as were the King and Queen, the situation had grown insupportable; and that she “could never, in any part of the live-long day, command liberty, or social intercourse, or repose.”[67] Dr. Burney himself had for some time not been wholly happy about her position; and he of course opened his arms to her return. But he was not rich, and he was manifestly so much upset at the thought of her retirement that, for the moment, the matter was allowed to drop.
Meanwhile the months once more rolled on monotonously. To divert her thoughts, she took up a tragedy which she had begun during the King’s illness; and the rumour that she had again her pen in hand — upon a satirical novel, as it was supposed — sent a flutter of apprehension through the Windsor dove-cotes. Her friends continued to carry dismal accounts to London of her failing condition, and loudly exclaimed against Dr. Burney’s irresolution. Walpole asked whether her talents were given to be buried in obscurity. Windham, whom she saw occasionally during the further dilatory progress of the Hastings trial, threatened to set the Literary Club on her father, who was a member of that community. Busybody Boswell — another member — also interested himself (not perhaps without ulterior views of his own as regards her Johnson material) in her behalf. “We shall address Dr. Burney in a body,” he said; and then he asked her to give him some of Dr. Johnson’s “choice little notes,” — a request she with difficulty evaded. At last a joint Memorial was drawn up by Dr. Burney and his daughter, praying that she might be permitted to resign, and it was arranged to put it forward on the most favourable opportunity. But the opportunity did not arise, and still time went on. She grew worse, having constantly, in the course of the obnoxious card parties, to crawl to her room for hartshorn and a few moments of rest. By and by the presentation of the memorial grew imperative. To the horror of Mrs. Schwellenberg, for whom such a proceeding was sheer self-destruction, it was hesitatingly handed in. The Queen, to whom it is difficult to believe that the matter was wholly unexpected, was visibly surprised and disturbed. She, however, expressed the hope that a long holiday might set Miss Burney right. But with this Miss Burney’s father — now thoroughly alive to the exigencies of the case, — could not agree; and to Her Majesty’s disappointment, and the unconcealed disgust of Mrs. Schwellenberg, it was decided she must go. When her departure was definitely settled, a Martin’s summer seems to have followed, in which even “Cerbera” softened somewhat — admitting, in her favourite phrase, that “The Bernan bin reely agribble.” Fanny had a short illness, which helped to strengthen her case; and then, in July, 1791, five years after she had entered the Upper Lodge, she quitted the Court for ever, being too much affected to bid her royal Master a final farewell.
Much ink has been expended on that portion of Fanny Burney’s career which forms the subject of this chapter. Exceptionally clever and gifted she was, without doubt; but with all her abilities, it must be admitted that, neither by her antecedents nor her experiences, was she suited for the post she was called upon to fill. The merely mechanical part of it she might perhaps have acquired, — though it seems she never did. Etiquette and formality she heartily detested; she was unmethodical; she was negligent in her dress; she was not always (in the presentation of petitions and the like) entirely judicious and tactful. Nevertheless, there is nothing to show that, save for the death of Mrs. Delany, the terrible tension of the King’s i
llness, the defection of Colonel Digby, and, above all, the unrelieved infliction of Mrs. Schwellenberg’s company and caprices, — the “one flaw” in her lot, she calls it, — she might not gradually have grown reconciled to her court life. If she were not (and it was no shame to her!) as good a Queen’s Dresser as Mrs. Haggerdorn, she was certainly — although, perhaps from her weak voice and short sight, she practically failed as a reader — an infinitely better “Confidential Companion.” The “Oyster” would have been utterly incompetent to report the Hastings trial, or to scribble a royal copy of verses to the Master of the Horse, or to delight the Queen by a circumstantial and picturesque account of the interview with the King in the gardens at Kew. And whatever Miss Burney’s dislike may have been to one or two of her colleagues, her own personal good qualities and intellectual capacity were always cordially recognised by all the Royal Family.[68] As to the enforced suspension of her literary labours, not only is that a grievance which she herself never felt or advanced; but when she came to Windsor in 1786, she had absolutely written nothing for four years. Nor were there any indications that she was likely to write anything. Her most stimulating friend and critic, “Daddy” Crisp, was dead; and she professed, or affected to profess (like a greater writer after The Newcomes),[69] that her vein had run dry with her latest book. Moreover, we now know what her first critics did not know, namely, that so far from receiving two thousand pounds for Cecilia, she had only — after more than a year’s hard work — received two hundred and fifty pounds. The deserts of genius are not easily assessed; but looking to all the circumstances, those who, in this particular instance, regarded two hundred a year for life, with accommodation and other advantages, as an offer worth considering by a diffident and delicate woman of four and thirty, whose entire gains by two popular novels, making eight volumes, had not exceeded two hundred and eighty pounds — can scarcely be said to have been wholly unwise in their generation. That there would be compensating drawbacks of tedium and restraint, they no doubt expected; but that the accidents of the employment would make the post untenable, was a result they could not possibly foresee.
[58] There is a large oval print by James Fittler, after George Robertson, dated 28th July, 1783, showing the Queen’s Lodge from the South Terrace, on which the Royal Party are taking their evening promenade. In the background, to the left, at the garden end, the Lower Lodge is to be distinguished. Both Lodges were pulled down in 1823; and their site is now partly occupied by the Royal Stables.
[59] In this she probably only slavishly copied her royal Mistress, who (says Miss Burney) “has a settled aversion to almost all novels, and something very near it to almost all novel-writers” (Diary and Letters, 1892, ii. 178).
[60] He was, at all events, clever enough to write, in 1798, a Cours Élémentaire d’Histoire Ancienne, a copy of which is exhibited at Kew. It is dedicated to Queen Charlotte, and was intended for the use of the Princesses. On the title-page the author is described as Minister of the King’s French Chapel [in the Middle Court of St. James’s Palace], and Prebendary of Salisbury. He was a married man.
[61] Diary and Letters, 1892, ii. 189, 213, 277, 439. Several writers have pointed out this unaccountable lapse in the famous Edinburgh essay on Madame D’Arblay. It may be added that another gift from the Queen, a gold watch set with pearls, is in the possession of Mrs. Chappel of East Orchard, Shaftesbury.
[62] Miss Burney probably quoted from memory, as the couplet in the Epilogue to the printed play runs as follows: —
“And oft let soft Cecilia win your praise;
While Reason guides the clue, in Fancy’s maze.”
[63] Charlotte Burney was by this time married to Clement Francis, a surgeon practising at Aylsham, about five miles from Windham’s seat at Felbrigge. Mrs. Ellis, quoting from “a family account,” says “Clement Francis had been Secretary to Warren Hastings in India, and while there he read, and was so charmed with Evelina, that he was seized with a desire to make the authoress his wife, and, with that intent, came home from India and obtained an introduction to Dr. Burney and his family, but the result was that he married the younger sister — Charlotte” (Early Diary, 1889, ii. 273 n.).
[64] This was by the copious William Combe, author of Dr. Syntax. The full title is — Original Love Letters, between a Lady of Quality and a Person of Inferior Condition, Dublin, 1794, two vols.
[65] Not of pity, but of fear. According to his own after-account at Lord Jersey’s table, the King, under some sudden impatience of control, had seized him by the collar, and thrust him violently against the wall.
[66] “Upon one occasion he is said to have talked unceasingly for sixteen hours” (Auckland Correspondence, ii. 244, quoted in Jesse’s Life and Reign of George III., 1867, iii. 58).
[67] At a later date she puts the matter in a nutshell. “I am inexpressibly grateful to the Queen, but I burn to be delivered from Mrs. Schwellenberg.” She argued, and argued justly, that, unless the desire of further intercourse was reciprocal, she ought only to belong to Mrs. Schwellenberg officially, and at official hours. But “Cerbera” was an old and faithful servant of the Royal Family; and it was obviously difficult to explain the state of affairs to Her Majesty, one of whose objects moreover had been to give Mrs. Schwellenberg a pleasant companion in her old age.
[68] This appreciation she never lost. She speaks of herself later as “having resigned royal service without resigning royal favour” (Diary and Letters, 1892, iv. 7).
[69] “I have exhausted all the types of character with which I am familiar” — Thackeray told the Rev. Whitwell Elwin in 1856. “I can’t jump further than I did in The Newcomes” (Some XVIII^{th} Century Men of Letters, 1903, i. 156).
CHAPTER VII. HALF A LIFETIME
Whatever view may be taken of the effect of Miss Burney’s life at Court upon her literary prospects, it was allowed by King George that she had sacrificed something. “It is but her due,” said that amiable monarch, referring to the Queen’s intention of granting her late Keeper of Robes a retiring allowance. “She has given up five years of her pen.” A hundred pounds per annum may not, it is true, seem much; but considering the amount of Miss Burney’s salary, and the brief duration of her service, it was not illiberal. And it came out of the Queen’s pocket. “It is solely from me to you,” — Her Majesty told her, adding other friendly expressions of farewell. This pension, or retiring allowance, — as far as we know, — Miss Burney continued to receive for the greater part of her life, which lasted forty-eight years more. That this is also the period comprised in the present chapter, may appear — at first sight — to suggest a certain hurry at the close. But the fault lies with the material, not with the limits of the volume. After Miss Burney’s resignation, and her marriage two years later, the events of her career, as well as the record of them, grow less interesting. She wrote tragedies, one of which was produced, and failed. She wrote a comedy, which was never produced at all. She wrote — mainly for money — two novels, which were commercial successes but added nothing to her reputation. Finally, in extreme old age, she wrote Memoirs of her father, which have been over-abused, but which cannot conscientiously be praised. Such are the leading facts of her literary life from the 7th July, 1791, — the day she quitted St. James’s Palace, — to her death in 1840.
For a week or two she remained at home, — home being now Chelsea College, where her father was domiciled. Then her kind friend, Mrs. Ord, carried her off on a four months’ tour to recruit. “She rambled” — in Macaulay’s picturesque phrases— “by easy journeys from cathedral to cathedral, and from watering-place to watering-place. She crossed the New Forest, and visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beautiful valley of Sidmouth. Thence she journeyed by Powderham Castle, and by the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, to Bath, and from Bath, when the winter was approaching, returned well and cheerful to London.”[70] By this time it was the middle of October. Her father had anxiously awaited her coming, not without hope that she would f
orthwith resume her literary pursuits. Resume them indeed she did, but fitfully, working chiefly at tragedies, two of which she had roughly sketched at Windsor. To these she now added a third. “I go on with various writings,” she says at the close of 1791, “at different times, and just as the humour strikes. I have promised my dear father a Christmas Box, and a New Year’s gift upon my return from Norbury Park, and therefore he now kindly leaves me to my own devices.” But social functions, as in the post-Cecilian days, began to exercise their old attraction; and, in her Diary, we frequently trace her at places which were not those haunts of study and imagination, the great and little “Grubberies” at Chelsea. She visits poor Sir Joshua, now nearly blind, with bandaged and green-shaded eyes, and fast nearing his end.[71] “‘I am very glad,’ he said, in a meek voice and 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 visits Buckingham House periodically, and even looks in upon “Cerbera,” who is unexpectedly cordial, though she has evidently not forgiven her old colleague for declining to die at her post. During the temporary lameness of her successor, Mlle. Jacobi, Miss Burney goes so far as to resume her attendance for two days, only to be amply assured, by that brief experience, of the peril she has escaped. “Indeed,” — she says,— “I was half dead with only two days’ and nights’ exertion.” She goes again to the ever-during Hastings trial,[72] renewing her relations with Windham; she goes to a public breakfast at Mrs. Montagu’s in Portman Square, and sees the Feather Room, referred to in chapter iv. “It was like a full Ranelagh by daylight,” she writes; and among other guests she meets Sophy Streatfield, no longer the peerless “S.S.” of yore, but faded, and sad, and changed. Another visit she mentions is to Mrs. Crewe at Hampstead. Mrs. Crewe, it will be remembered, was the daughter of Fanny’s godmother, Mrs. Greville. Here she listens to Burke’s praise of her dead friend, Mrs. Delany, whom he affirms to have been “a real fine lady”— “the model of an accomplished woman of former times”; and she reads with her hostess the newly published Pleasures of Memory of Mr. Samuel Rogers.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 708
