Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay)

Upon the dissolution of the Whig Ministry at the close of 1783, Burke, as Paymaster General, appointed Dr. Burney organist of Chelsea Hospital Chapel, at an increased salary of £50 per annum. It was not much, but it was enhanced by the courteous way in which it was done. In her father’s absence, Burke himself informed Miss Burney of what he styled his “last act in office.” Earlier – in the same year, 1783 – had come her first serious bereavement since she had lost her mother, – the death of her kind old Mentor at Chessington. By this time, Mr. Crisp was seventy-six, and had long been a martyr to the gout to which he finally succumbed. During his last illness, Fanny wrote to him frequently and affectionately; and, when it grew grave, hastened to his bed-side. She was “the dearest thing to him on earth,” he told her with his last breath; and her sorrow at his loss was for the time overwhelming. In what was once the picturesque and rustic, but is now the “restored” and “enlarged” church at Chessington, is a mural tablet to his memory, with an epitaph in verse by Dr. Burney, which his daughter has printed.53 To Fanny the loss of “Daddy” Crisp was incalculable, for he had been at once her most judicious admirer and her most stimulating critic, never failing to mingle blame with his praise – blame against which, after the manner of the criticised, she generally at first protested. He was a better counsellor than her father, who was too eager for publication to be always mindful of the necessity for finish. Yet, at the same time, Crisp was urgent that his favourite should trust her own instincts. “Who[m]soever you think fit to consult, let their talents and tastes be ever so great, hear what they say, allowed! – agreed! – but never give up or alter a tittle merely on their authority, nor unless it perfectly coincides with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my sorrow and to my cost. But mum!” Which last injunction was no doubt a reference to his own ill-starred Virginia.

More than a year later took place what may almost be regarded as another bereavement, – the second marriage of Mrs. Thrale. With this much-discussed event, – perplexed, moreover, by no little piqué and wounded feeling, – we are concerned only in so far as it relates to Miss Burney. Gabriele Piozzi, who is sometimes contemptuously and erroneously described as a merely obscure “fiddler,” was a musician and professional singer of exceptional ability, who, according to contemporary prints, was earning some £1,200 per annum by his talents. He was a Roman Catholic, a handsome man “with gentle, pleasing, unaffected manners,” of unimpeachable integrity, and about six months older than Mrs. Thrale, who, at her husband’s death, was forty. The Thrales first made his acquaintance at Brighton in 1780, and he speedily became a “prodigious favourite.” After her husband’s death, Mrs. Thrale’s liking for him gradually increased until it became a passion. Meanwhile, in 1782, with Johnson’s full concurrence, Streatham Place was let for three years to Lord Shelburne; and after leaving it in October of that year, the Doctor went with her for six weeks to her Brighton house – a fact which takes off something from the pathetic poignancy of the famous adieux to Streatham, regretful and melancholy as they must of necessity have been. Before 1782 had closed Mrs. Thrale had determined to marry Piozzi. But her daughters – to whom their father had left £20,000 each – were against the match; and after much mental perplexity, she decided to bid her lover farewell, and did so in January 1783. The sacrifice, however, proved beyond her powers; her health began to suffer; and a year later, with the tacit consent of her children, Piozzi was recalled from Milan, and she was married to him on the 23rd July, 1784, according to the rites of the Romish Church, by the Chaplain of the Spanish Ambassador. A second marriage followed on the 25th at St. James’s Church, Bath. Her correspondence with Johnson, upon what he regarded as this “ignominious” union, has been printed by Mr. Hayward, and her letters should be read as well as those of the Doctor.54

In all these proceedings, between Fanny’s affection for Mrs. Thrale and her affection for Dr. Johnson, she played a delicate and a difficult part. According to Mrs. Thrale, it was Fanny who had first introduced Piozzi to her as “a man likely to lighten the burden of life to her.” In October, 1782, Mrs. Thrale writes in Thraliana that that “dear little discerning creature, Fanny Burney,” says she is in love with Piozzi; and she then goes on to argue the pros and cons with herself. At Brighton, just before the first farewell to Piozzi, Mrs. Thrale admits that Fanny’s “interest as well as judgment goes all against my marriage” – a view which is fully confirmed by Miss Burney’s absolute refusal to approve the course proposed, although at the same time she found it difficult to restrain her indignation at Queenie’s heartless attitude to her mother. Later still, she said decidedly that Mrs. Thrale must either marry Piozzi instantly or give him up, otherwise her reputation would be lost. In May, 1784, Mrs. Thrale having decided to marry Piozzi, came to London to consult Miss Burney about details. The meeting, as may be divined, was embarrassing to Fanny, who, in Mrs. Thrale’s words, was as much “pained as delighted by her visit.” Nevertheless she gave her time wholly to her old friend, and her father was also consulted. Dr. Burney, a brother professional himself, regarded the matter more philosophically than some of his nicely sensitive contemporaries. “No one” – he said – “could blame Piozzi for accepting a gay young widow. What could he do better?” Then came the marriage, with a sequel which might have been foreseen. Mrs. Thrale considered that Fanny’s congratulations upon a step “which she had uniformly, openly, and with deep and avowed affliction, thought wrong” – were insufficiently cordial. The Diary only contains a sketch of Miss Burney’s answer to this impeachment – an answer by which Mrs. Piozzi, preoccupied with her own happiness, could scarcely be gravely disturbed. She besought her “sweetest Burney” to give herself no serious concern in the matter, to “quiet her kind heart,” and to love Mr. Piozzi, if she loved his wife. To this “F. B.” sent “the warmest and most heartfelt” rejoinder. And there the six years’ correspondence ended. Miss Burney may have been right in connecting its cessation with resentment on Piozzi’s part, “when he was informed of her constant opposition to the union,” but there were surely reasons enough in the circumstances of the case to make further intercourse difficult, if not impracticable.

A heavier loss, however, than that of Mrs. Thrale, was in store for Fanny Burney. Johnson, who was now seventy-four, had for some time been perceptibly failing. In the middle of 1783 he had a stroke; and at the end of the same year, he had been very ill with spasmodic asthma. “Ah! priez Dieu pour moi!” – he had said suddenly to her, as she sat by him; and he had been “quite touchingly affectionate.” She was his “dearest of all dear ladies,” – he declared. A year later he was manifestly nearing his end; and on Thursday, the 25th November, 1784, Fanny saw him for the last time. Though exceedingly ill, he received her; and they had a long conversation in the old way, – about his dead wife – about Queenie Thrale, who had been to visit him, – about Queenie’s mother, from whom he never hears, and to whom he never writes. “I drive her,” he said, “quite from my mind. If I meet with one of her letters, I burn it instantly. I have burnt all I can find. I never speak of her, and I desire never to hear of her more. I drive her, as I said, wholly from my mind.”55 Fanny quickly changed the subject; and he went on to talk of the “Bristol milk-woman,” Ann Yearsley, a local poetess whom Hannah More befriended, – of Shakespeare and his Caliban, and other topics. At length, seeing he grew visibly worse, she rose to go; and, for the first time she could remember, he did not oppose it. But kindly pressing both her hands, he begged her to come again – to come soon, and to remember him in her prayers. She never saw him afterwards, although she more than once essayed to do so. When, two days before his death, Dr. Burney called, the old man spoke of her tenderly, reiterated his request about her prayers; and then, brightening for a moment, said, almost archly, “I think I shall throw the ball at Fanny yet!” Apparently also, he asked to see her. But although, on the following morning, she waited tearfully in the cold little parlour at Bolt Court, and lingered on the stairs that led to the back room where he lay, no summons came from the sick man. At length arrived Bennet Langton with a faltering message. The Doctor hoped she would excuse him; but he felt himself too weak for such an interview.

With Johnson dead, and Crisp dead, and Mrs. Piozzi alienated by her marriage, life – it may be imagined – must, in these days, have seemed unusually gloomy to Fanny Burney. But fortunately, though her feelings were strong, her temperament was elastic. And the successful author of Cecilia had now troops of friends, both new and old. To those she respected, it was her nature to grow rapidly and devotedly attached. Even for some weeks before Johnson’s fatal illness, her letters had been dated from Norbury – a charming country-house upon a hill-slope in Surrey, looking southward across the Mole and the beautiful Vale of Mickleham, to Dorking and Box Hill. Here – in addition to a park with a Druids’ Grove of yews that dated from Domesday Book, and a saloon with trellised ceiling, where the landscapes of George Barret cunningly completed the magnificent view from the windows – she enjoyed the companionship of a host and hostess, who, if not as remarkable as her Streatham friends, were at least as cultured and as kind. Mr. Locke of Norbury was a genuine connoisseur, who had brought the Discobolus of Myron to England, while his son William, a youth of seventeen, was to become a capable historical artist. Mrs. Locke, – the “dearest Fredy” of the Diary, according to Miss Burney, was “sweet and most bewitching.” At Norbury, where, on fine days, they wandered in the grounds; or on wet days, read Mme. de Sévigné and Captain Cook aloud in the picture room, Fanny seems to have been thoroughly content to “stay till she must go,” driving unpleasant thought away like “a wasp near an open window.” What was more, she was in a sense en pays de connaissance, for Norbury was only six miles from that other regretted “place of peace, ease, freedom and cheerfulness,” Chessington Hall. During the next few months her visits to the Lockes were frequent; and in later years, she was to know them even better still. Meanwhile, to her delight, her sister Susan made Mickleham her residence, occupying with her husband and family a little cottage on the high road at the very foot of Norbury Park.

But besides her relations with the Lockes of Norbury, she formed, at this date, another friendship, of which the consequences, during the years that immediately followed, were of no small importance. Early in 1783, she had been taken by Mrs. Chapone to visit the venerable Mrs. Delany (the widow of Swift’s friend, Dr. Patrick Delany), then living in London at St. James’s Place. At this time, Mrs. Delany was eighty-three, a charming and accomplished old lady, with a reputation for cutting out the ingenious “paper Mosaiks” now in the British Museum; a great favourite with King George and Queen Charlotte; and the bosom friend of another old lady and grande dame, Prior’s “Peggy,” the Dowager Duchess of Portland. Both Mrs. Delany and her friend (who arrived shortly after Fanny reached St. James’s Place) had been prejudiced against Cecilia, – the Duchess chiefly from recollections of the cruel depression into which she had been thrown by the tedium and the tragedy of Richardson’s Clarissa. But they had both succumbed to Fanny’s book; they knew its characters by heart; told stories how lords and prelates had discussed the incidents and the characters, and finally crowned their commendations by praising its excellent tone and morality. “No book” – said Mrs. Delany – “ever was so useful as this, because none other that is so good was ever so much read.” And the Duchess and Mrs. Chapone said ditto to Mrs. Delany. Mrs. Chapone, by the way, told an interesting anecdote. Someone, she said, had been protesting that there could be no such character as Briggs, whom not only Queen Charlotte but Mrs. Thrale had regarded as exaggerated.56 Thereupon “a poor, little mean city man” in company had “started up, and said – ‘But there is though, for I’se one myself.’ ”

The friendship thus inaugurated speedily became enduring; and Fanny’s record for 1784 contains more than one reference to days spent at St. James’s Place, sometimes en tête-à-tête, when she was allowed to rummage Mrs. Delany’s correspondence with Swift and Young or listen to her old stories of the notabilities of the first half of the century. In July, 1785, the Duchess of Portland died; and the loss drew Fanny closer to her new friend. Another result of the Duchess’s death was, that it deprived Mrs. Delany of the summer quarters which she had for so many years enjoyed at Bulstrode, the seat of the Portlands near Beaconsfield. Upon learning this, the King and Queen, whose affection for Mrs. Delany seems to have been of the most genuine kind, offered her a small house near the gate of Windsor Castle, which, with the greatest forethought, they immediately stocked and put in order for her, the King himself personally superintending the workmen. They also gave her a pension of £300 a year, which, in order that it might escape taxation, the good-natured Queen herself was accustomed to hand to her half-yearly in a pocket-book. Pending Mrs. Delany’s removal to Windsor, Fanny was often in attendance on her, either as companion or sympathiser. When, at last, she departed, Fanny went to Norbury, and elsewhere. But in November, 1785, she was again “domesticated” with Mrs. Delany at Windsor.

One of the first things which she heard upon her arrival was, that Their Majesties had been expecting her. All the Princesses were coming to see her – she was told. Moreover, the Queen, stimulated by Mme. de Genlis’ praises of Miss Burney, had been re-reading Cecilia, or rather having it read to her by one of her readers, the Swiss geologist, M. de Luc. (As M. de Luc could hardly speak four words of English, this must have been unfortunate for Cecilia.) The book had also been read to the Princess Elizabeth. These announcements, and the particular inquiries which the King and Queen did not cease to make about her of Mrs. Delany, naturally filled Fanny with all her customary trepidations, real and imaginary. Owing, however, to the illness of the Princess Elizabeth and other causes, the meeting did not at once take place. Then suddenly, on Friday, December 16, “a large man, in deep mourning,” and with a star glittering on his breast, made sudden apparition in Mrs. Delany’s drawing room, throwing its occupants into petrified confusion. It was King George himself. He spoke very kindly to Miss Burney, showing much benevolent consideration for her nervousness; but overwhelmed her presently by questions after the “What! What!” fashion, made familiar by the Probationary Odes and the irreverent performances of “Peter Pindar.” How did she write Evelina– and why? Why did she not tell her father? How was it printed? Why had she done nothing more since Cecilia? To which last Fanny answered demurely and hesitatingly that she believed she had exhausted herself, – a reply which was received in the light of a bon mot. During the progress of this inquisition, which is recorded with extreme minuteness, arrived Queen Charlotte, to whom His Majesty forthwith carefully recapitulated his conversation with Miss Burney. The Queen, who was very soft-voiced and gracious, was equally curious. She wished much to know if there was to be “nothing more”; and she was good enough to express a desire that there should be something. From what had been done, she thought there was a power to do good. And good to young people was so very good a thing, that she could not help wishing it could be. Thereupon the King – as one behind the scenes – proceeded to assure her that Miss Burney had made no vow not to write; – it was only a question of inclination – was it not? They were, both of them, evidently prepossessed in favour of Mrs. Delany’s young friend, who, on her side, does ample justice to the unaffected, gentle dignity of Queen Charlotte; the bonhomie, good spirits, and friendly kindness of the King; and the fondness of the royal couple for one another.

A few days later, the King came again to tea, chatting very freely in his discursive way of many things, – of Mme. de Genlis’ knowledge of English; of the “monster” Voltaire; of the pride and ingratitude of Rousseau (to whom His Majesty had given a pension). But here Miss Burney was able to acquaint him, on her father’s authority, that M. Jean-Jacques kept His Majesty’s portrait over his chimney at Paris. Then the King passed to the recent death of Kitty Clive;57 and the merits of Mrs. Siddons, whom he ranked above Garrick – an opinion from which Fanny could of course only mutely dissent. Shakespeare came next; and His Majesty – as is known – had the courage of his opinions. “Was there ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? only one must not say so! – But what think you? – What? – Is there not sad stuff? – What? – What?” And he instanced several plays and characters in support of his heresies. Fanny told him how Mme. de Genlis had declared that no woman ought to go to any of the English comedies, – an aspersion of the national stage which was resented with much animation by the discerning critic who had twice ordered the representation of She Stoops to Conquer. In a further “private conference” with his consort, there was more talk of Mme. de Genlis, who, it seems, always sent her “moral page” to Queen Charlotte; – of the Sorrows of Werther, which neither she nor Fanny admired as the great Napoleon did; – of an unnamed but meritorious work picked up for her upon a stall by one of her servants. “It is amazing what good books there are on stalls” – said the Queen – an utterance which should canonise her for ever with the book-hunter. She afterwards spoke of Klopstock’s Messiah, criticising the author’s engraftments upon the sacred story; and then gave an account of the Protestant nunneries in Germany, to one of which she had belonged, – of the rigid rules of entrance, – of the internal economy, – of the costume. The record of the interview breaks off abruptly; but it leaves a pleasant impression of Queen Charlotte’s amenity, humour, and conversational powers.

This meeting took place on December 20th, 1785, after which Miss Burney went home. She paid another visit to Windsor in the May following with her father, who was anxious to obtain the then-vacant post of Master of the King’s Band. To this end he was recommended to show himself to the King, when he walked upon the Terrace at Windsor; but not to make direct solicitation. Unhappily, the place had already been promised by the Lord Chamberlain; and though both the King and Queen spoke amiably to Miss Burney, the expedition was without effect. Very shortly afterwards, by the resignation of Mrs. Haggerdorn, Second Keeper of Robes, a vacancy occurred in the Royal Household. Mrs. Haggerdorn’s place was much sought after, even by persons of fashion and rank. But the Queen had taken a fancy to Mrs. Delany’s visitor, and offered it to Miss Burney. By Fanny herself the proposition was received with consternation. The separation from her family circle, the close confinement to the Court, the permanent character of an engagement so made, the wearisome “life of attendance and dependence” – we are using her own words – all these things she considered were unsuited to her inclinations, and unfavourable to her happiness. But her friends – who, it is only fair to remember, knew her literary limitations, and were better instructed as to her literary gains than some of her earlier critics – took a different view of the matter. The Lockes and her sister, Mrs. Phillips, had, indeed, always expected some such development of her Windsor visits: Mrs. Delany – a courtier in grain – was naturally transported; while her father (in whose hands she dutifully placed herself), and even Burke, regarded the royal offer as affording a certain prospect of an honourable and advantageous establishment for life. It was accordingly accepted, after an interview with the Queen, who, in the face of all the Windsor place-hunters, had made her own choice. “I was led to think of Miss Burney” – Her Majesty told Mrs. Delany – “first by her books; then by seeing her; then by always hearing how she was loved by her friends; but chiefly by your friendship for her.” Of Fanny herself, Queen Charlotte asked no questions, only saying pleasantly – “I am sure we shall do very well together.”