Reports of Fanny’s ‘indisposition’ and imminent departure from Mickleham brought Monsieur d’Arblay to the Phillipses’ cottage in person, eager to see her once more and ascertain whether he could continue to send her thèmes. These tokens of his concern and the affecting farewell note he sent her the same day – ‘my feelings are too strong – farewell my dear Master!’35 – must have made the parting from Mickleham even more wrenching. Fanny went back to joyless Chelsea, to her disgruntled father, ailing stepmother and the shared room with Sarah, wondering if anything would come of this extraordinary ignition of feeling, or if the Surrey idyll was already over.
Fanny continued to plead the cause of Madame de Staël at home, and thought (unlikely though it was) that she was slowly converting her father and stepmother to her own point of view. At the same time, she moved quickly to limit any damage done to her reputation, getting an audience with the Queen within days and arranging to dine with Mrs Ord and spend an evening with Lady Hesketh. Feeling against Madame de Staël was strong in London, and Fanny had to endure the congratulations of people like Hutton who felt she had done well ‘to forsake those Devilisms’.36 She used the thèmes to sound out d’Arblay on the subject: ‘Opinion here’, she wrote, dramatising her own trouble coming to terms with the dilemma, ‘says she is neither an emigrée nor banished – – M. de N[arbonne] has seduced her away from her Husband and Children! – – in vain I point out the difference in customs; the reply is always “She is a Woman, she is a Mother!”’37 This was an implicit challenge to d’Arblay to declare his attitudes to marriage and adultery, whether or not he was going to reveal to Fanny his revered friend Narbonne’s secrets, which he undoubtedly knew. His answer was delicate and diplomatic, carefully shifting the ground of the argument to avoid what he knew would alienate Fanny, open discussion of Madame de Staël’s sexual morals. He reminded her instead of Madame de Staël’s outstanding personal qualities: ‘Nothing can match her charitableness, humanity and generosity and the need that she feels to exercise them.‘38 Madame de Staël’s marriage had not been happy, like many other marriages of convenience among the French aristocracy, but, he pointed out, it would not only be wrong but barbaric to blame her for that. Not everyone could aspire to the domestic happiness presented by the Lockes, although d’Arblay made it clear that he aspired to it. As for the question of the nature of the relations between Madame de Staël and Narbonne, he answered, doubly negative, that though he couldn’t swear that it had never been ‘the most intimate possible’, he could assure Fanny that at present it was nothing but ‘the most respectable friendship’. Presumably d’Arblay knew or suspected that two of Madame de Staël’s children were fathered by Narbonne, but of course he was never going to tell this to Fanny. It is also unlikely that he thought the affair was over (Madame de Staël’s letters of the period prove that it wasn’t). Perhaps he hoped that the phrase ‘the most respectable friendship’ could be stretched to describe their public behaviour, which was certainly decorous. D’Arblay was a man of fine conscience, and would not have relished telling this half-truth to the woman he wanted to marry, but neither would he have wanted to betray Narbonne’s trust or break up the friendship between Fanny and Madame de Staël, whose society, he vowed on his honour, he could recommend ‘to my wife, or my sister’.39
The problem over how to treat Madame de Staël acquired a new urgency when the whole Juniper Hall party arrived in town in the second week of March 1793. Madame de Staël called, naturally enough, at Chelsea College to see Fanny, who was at her recently widowed sister Charlotte’s house in Sloane Street, probably trying to dodge the meeting. Convention dictated (to conventional people, at any rate) that a visitor wait in her carriage until her compliments, or simply her name, had been acknowledged by the person she had come to visit. Madame de Staël overrode this formality and gained entrance to the College, where a stunned Mrs Burney (reputedly even more of an anti-liberal than her husband) had to make conversation with her for a quarter of an hour, the minimum that politeness demanded. Unfortunately, while Madame de Staël was still in the Burneys’ apartment, Mrs Ord called (but was not introduced). Going on to Sloane Street subsequently, Mrs Ord was horrified to find Madame de Staël’s carriage there ahead of her again, proof that Fanny was still on good terms with the scandalous Frenchwoman. She refused to go into the house, but sent her name in via the servant and waited outside, rather preposterously, for the duration of the ‘adulterous demoniac’s visit. Fanny was galled to think the whole story would quickly reach the Queen’s ears (undoing the benefit of her recent audience), but couldn’t help warming to Madame de Staël again as soon as they were together: ‘this poor ardent woman – who was so charming, so open, so delightful herself, that, while with me, I forgot all the mischiefs that might follow, & that threatened with a broad aspect’.
The chief mischief that might follow from Fanny falling out of favour with the Queen would have been the loss of her pension, her sole dependable income now that she was only making about £20 a year from the invested profits of Cecilia. This small independence, approximately reckoned (by Mr Locke) as what a curate could just about live on, had suddenly taken on a new importance to Fanny, and it is not surprising that she became extremely anxious to protect it. D’Arblay had no money at all. All his property (‘something immense, but I never remember the number of hundred thousand livres’, as Susan had reported40) had been seized by the Convention in 1792 and he had been living off his friends ever since, presumably with some small pocket-money from Narbonne, who dramatically swore he would share his last pound with his faithful companion. Narbonne had been offering his (and d’Arblay’s) services to all the people of influence they met, the latest being ‘the Royal highness the duck of glocester’, as d’Arblay informed Fanny in one of his thèmes. ‘We have not the foolish opinion – to be very interesting defensors of this happy country, but we want to pay our debt for the kind reception we receive’.41 They also, naturally enough, wanted some kind of financial security.
Without such security, d’Arblay was honour-bound not to press his suit with Fanny any further, and he did not make any attempt to call on her while he was in London with Madame de Staël’s party. His feelings seeped through in the thèmes he kept writing, however: ‘Pray you, my dear Master in all,’ he wrote on 23 March, ‘to be convinced that your exercises give me very much pleasure, and never any trouble. Let us be blessed with our friendship and never vexed by it.’ Relations between Fanny and d’Arblay looked in danger of stalling just at the point when d’Arblay might have been expected to declare himself. What she did next – which was to offer to lend him £100 without interest – brought events to a head rather rapidly. No doubt she intended the gesture to seem casual and truly without interest; it also implied that she had lots of money to spare (and could therefore support both of them in the future). D’Arblay, of course, could not accept her offer, nor the £10 banknote and coins sent with it, but if his pride was hurt (and it is hard to see how it could not have been) he did not allow any sense of that to taint his reply. Instead he wrote her an account of his latest effort at finding gainful employment, a proposal to set up a ‘Corps d’artillerie à Cheval’ to help defend the English coast, which he hoped the government would accept. Mr Locke had tried to indicate to d’Arblay the extreme unlikeliness of this happening, and that the best he could hope for would be an appointment as Agent for one of the French corps recruiting in England at the time. Locke understood far better than his artless friend that the position of the Juniper émigrés not only precluded any government-sponsored job, but presented an extremely risky prospect to any prospective employer or patron, with, at the very least, the possibility of the situation in France changing at any moment and the émigré aristocrats all decamping without ceremony to reclaim their property. The prospects for d’Arblay were truly unpromising. Unless by some miracle he found a job in England, his only means of survival would be to follow Narbonne around.
D’Arblay himself was th
e last person, figuratively and literally, to see his situation in these stark terms, and his letter to Fanny of 31 March about his prospects is unaffectedly optimistic. He thought that if the cavalry plan could be proposed to Pitt, and if Fanny exerted her influence at Court, his worries would be over. What, he asked, in hesitant phrases, did Fanny think of this proposal, on which his hopes of gaining independence in England rested? It was, as Fanny was in no doubt, d’Arblay’s roundabout way of proposing marriage.
‘O my dearest dear Susan!’ Fanny wrote in delighted turmoil to her sister, ‘what would I not give to have you with me at this moment! You to whom alone I could open my Heart – labouring at this instant with feelings that almost burst it.’ She had sent only a short friendly note to d’Arblay, playing for time. What she needed was to talk the whole situation over with her sister. The money problem was not, surprisingly, on her mind at all:
I will be quite – quite open – & tell you that Everything upon Earth I could covet for the peculiar happiness of my peculiar mind seems here united – were there not one scruple in the way which intimidates me from listening to the voice of my Heart – Can you not guess what it is? – I wish him a younger Partner. I do not wish myself richer – grander – more powerful, or higher born, – one of his first attractions with me is his superiority to all these considerations – no, I wish myself only to be younger: I should then, I believe, with difficulty start a single objection, thinking of him as I think – His nobleness of character – his sweetness of disposition – his Honour, Truth, integrity – with so much of softness, delicacy, & tender humanity – except my beloved Father & Mr Lock, I have never seen such a man in this world, though I have drawn such in my Imagination.42
Susan thought the age question of no real moment. She had gathered that d’Arblay was thirty-nine (actually he was still thirty-eight until May 1793), and anyway, ‘his appearance makes him judged much older’.43 Susan was delighted at the prospect of this romantic match, but foresaw that their father might oppose it: ‘But – but – but – You do not wish yourself richer you say! – Ah my Fanny! – but that wd be essentially requisite in such a union – your single £100. per ann – his – Alas! his NOTHING – How wd it be possible for you to live?’44 Fanny’s reply was ardent and immediate: the high romance of the sacrifice necessary was very appealing to her: ‘Were he secure of only Bread & Water, I am very sure I should gaily partake them with him. How the World would blame me at first, I well know; but his worth, in time, would make its own way, & be my vindication. This, however, is all Utopian now – & I must not let him divine it.’45
Throughout the early weeks of April, d’Arblay and Fanny kept missing each other at the Lockes’ and at Charlotte’s house in Sloane Street, but Fanny thought it just as well, as she anticipated the difficulties of behaving normally in company. Nothing between her and d’Arblay was properly agreed at this point, and she felt that ‘repressing all personal discussions’46 would allow him to back out without shame if he changed his mind. D’Arblay had no such scruples and was desperate to talk to Fanny, turning up uninvited at Chelsea College on a series of pretexts, which caused some raising of eyebrows among the family (especially Sarah, who was immediately intrigued by the French visitor). During one of these tête à têtes, in which Fanny had been trying unsuccessfully to stop him saying anything at all, d’Arblay asked as a special favour for her tablettes, the erasable notebook made of bound ivory sheets in which she jotted down drafts of letters and memoranda. He must have noticed these at Juniper Hall, for she had thought of it already, and bought him a brand-new set. But d’Arblay didn’t want the new one, he wanted the one she had used, which he received with delight. Like his gift to her soon afterwards of an old pen, it showed a certain sensuality. It also reflected his perception of Fanny as a writer, specifically as the author of Cecilia, which several of the Juniperians had read. He had heard her referred to as ‘Cecilia’ (probably by Madame de Staël) and wanted her to inscribe it on his tablets. ‘So that isn’t your real name?’ he said ‘drolly’ when she declined,47 reminding us that though he presumably knew Miss Burney’s Christian name, he had never yet had the opportunity to use it.
D’Arblay was keen to meet Dr Burney, and Fanny could not refuse, though she knew it would be extremely painful to see her father snub him. She got the Doctor’s grudging permission to be introduced that evening, after a dinner at the Lockes’ to which both she and d’Arblay were invited. A situation as nicely problematic as any in Fanny’s novels arose when d’Arblay asked to ride back to Chelsea in the carriage with Fanny alone. She agreed, very hesitantly, but alert to the impropriety of travelling alone with a man in a carriage, tried to get away without him. D’Arblay caught up with her, however, before she reached the carriage steps:
I had already taken hold of Oliver’s arm – &, the instant I was in, he began putting up the steps! [—]
‘Ah ha!,’ cried M. D’Arblay, – &, leaping over them, got into the Coach, seating himself opposite to me.
I believe Oliver’s surprise was equal to my queerness! [—]
‘Where is he to go, Ma’am?’ cried he.
‘To Chelsea,’ I answered. – And the door was shut – & off we drove.48
Monsieur d’Arblay was in a very emotional mood, and alarmed Fanny by saying how impossible he would find it not to speak his mind to her father. She had only just persuaded him of the folly of doing any such thing when he was off on the subject of the joys of a retired life in the country with une personne, to which Fanny was ‘obliged to make him no answer at all, but say something quite foreign’.
‘Mais! mais! he cried, a little impatiently, laissez moi parler! – laissez – permettez – –’
‘Non! non! non! non!’ I kept crying – but, for all that – he dropt on one knee – which I was fain to pretend not to observe – & held up his hands folded, & went on –
I begged him to say no more then quite fervently.49
Poor d’Arblay took this as evidence that Fanny had had a change of heart, and ‘flung’ himself back in the carriage’s furthest corner. However, he was not one to brood, and was soon ‘bending from his little Boudoir’, as Fanny comically described it in her journal, and laughing at an idea he had had to evade her strictures. She had forbidden him to speak to her intimately in French:
‘– ainsi – I will speak English! &, in this language – I may pray you – you can’t refuse me I pray you – that you be –’
‘O oui! oui! oui!’ cried I, laughing too, parlons d’autre chose! –’
‘Non! non! cried he, – be – be – My dear Friend! – My dear -EST! –’
Their mutual laughter, the acknowledgement that they were playing a game and the surreal detail of the lovers having reversed languages, give this scene in the carriage peculiar charm. Fanny had been waiting all her life for someone as open, earnest and romantic as this, but had never imagined such a gentle hero. Where another more worldly or ill-intentioned man might have taken advantage (almost on principle) of the absence of any chaperone, d’Arblay’s conduct was wildly innocent, ardent without being in the least threatening. The middle-aged sweethearts emerged from the carriage at Chelsea College causing just as much surprise to the Burneys’ servant as they had done to the Lockes’, but now this was a detail which Fanny could enjoy observing, rather than tremble at. She knew her behaviour was above reproach, and she had decided to marry d’Arblay.
While her father could hardly prevent her from marrying, the with-holding of his approval inevitably overshadowed the prospect for her. In the section of the Memoirs dealing with this period, Fanny lets slip that religion, politics and ‘the dread of pecuniary embarrassment’ were not her father’s only objections: he also nursed ‘a latent hope and belief in a far more advantageous connexion’.50 Whether he had any particular suitor in mind is not clear, but it is possible he harboured hopes of William Windham, whose admiration for Fanny was obvious and who had been corresponding with Dr Burney for some years.
/> When d’Arblay invited himself to tea at Chelsea College, Charles Burney did not hide his grudgingness: ‘[He] prepared himself, drily, & sans commentaire: my Mother was taciturn, but oddly smiling […] Sarah was flightily delighted’.51 No doubt Sarah, who was to introduce into her first novel, Clarentine, a character named the Chevalier de Valcour, clearly based on d’Arblay, was enjoying the occasion in her own way. D’Arblay was on top form, ‘light, gay & palpably in inward Spirits’, as Fanny reported to Susan, and either unaware of his hosts’ antagonism or too happy to be received into the bosom of Fanny’s family to care. But Charles Burney, who had been such a good-hearted and good-natured guest himself at so many dinner tables, had the grace to recognise d’Arblay’s efforts (and genuine pleasure). He melted a little as the evening went on and fetched out various treasures from his library to share with the enthusiastic foreigner. It is impossible not to feel sorry for Burney, faced with the loss of his most devoted daughter to a Roman Catholic liberal Frenchman, or for Fanny, given this glimpse of their compatibility: ‘Ah, my dearest Susanna! – with a Mind thus formed to meet mine – would my dearest Father listen ONLY TO HIMSELF, how blest would be my lot!’52
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