Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay)

After a short time Fanny is again summoned, and her further attendance, transferred to the state dressing-room (“if any room in this private mansion can have the epithet of state”), lasts until about three, after which she sees no more of the Queen until bed-time. At five, dinner en tête-à-tête with Mrs. Schwellenberg follows in the eating-room, after which coffee in that lady’s apartment takes until eight. At eight, descent once more to the eating-room, when the Equerry in Waiting, together with any friend invited by the King or Queen, arrives for tea, which takes till nine. “From that time,” – continues Fanny – “if Mrs. Schwellenberg is alone, I never quit her for a minute till I come to my little supper at near eleven. Between eleven and twelve my last summons usually takes place, earlier and later occasionally. Twenty minutes is the customary time then spent with the Queen: half an hour, I believe, is seldom exceeded. I then come back and after doing whatever I can to forward my dress for the next morning, I go to bed – and to sleep, too, believe me: the early rising, and a long day’s attention to new affairs and occupations, cause a fatigue so bodily, that nothing mental stands against it, and to sleep I fall the moment I have put out my candle and laid down my head.” To these details, it is only necessary to add that the summonses in question were made by a bell (which seems at first to have given Fanny a good deal of annoyance); and that it was also a part of her duties to mix the Queen’s snuff, – a task which she is recorded to have performed extremely well.

From the above account, it may be gathered that attendance on Queen Charlotte was by no means the most onerous of Miss Burney’s functions. Occupying chiefly the middle of the day, it could only have been on Wednesdays and Saturdays (when there were special duties) that it extended to more than four hours, besides which Her Majesty seems to have been laudably solicitous, at all times, to spare her new and very untried attendant. But in Fanny’s carte du jour there is decidedly an “intolerable deal” of Schwellenberg. Six mortal hours of daily intercourse with this estimable lady, in addition to collaborating with her in what Fanny calls “the irksome and quick-returning labours” of the royal toilette, must have been a cruel penance, only made bearable by Mrs. Schwellenberg’s frequent absences on sick leave. Had Mrs. Schwellenberg been a Mrs. Delany, it would not have mattered so much. But she was simply a peevish old person of uncertain temper and impaired health, swaddled in the buckram of backstairs etiquette, captious, arrogant, ignorant, and accustomed – like Mrs. Slipslop – to console herself for her servility to her betters by her rudeness to those beneath her. She was blindly devoted to the Royal Family; but of taste and education she had nothing. Novels and romances she professed to regard as “what you call stuff”;59 and the only book she was known to favour was Josephus, which was “quoted to solve all difficulties.” Her chief enthusiasm was for a pair of pet frogs which croaked when she tapped her snuff-box. “When I only go so.. knock, knock, knock, they croak all what I please,” she would cry in an ecstasy; and she never wearied of dilating upon their “endearing little qualities” and their healthy appetite for the live flies caught for them by M. de Luc. Although she had been a quarter of a century in England, she still spoke a broken jargon, irresistible to the mimic. She was without conversational gifts, yet she could not endure a moment’s silence; she was without resources or power of attraction, yet she was furious at the least suspicion of neglect. Moreover, she seems to have lived in perpetual apprehension of obscure impending spasms, which could only be dissipated by cards. And Fanny hated cards. In moments of irritation, the old lady was capable of the meanest petty tyrannies; in her hours of ease, her amiability to her “good Miss Bernar” was as profuse as it was unpalatable. Several of her objectionable acts are narrated in the Diary; but it is needless to recall them; and the situation was obviously complicated by a perhaps intelligible jealousy on the part of the elder woman. Years afterwards, when the Diary was first published, the Duke of Sussex thought that its writer was “rather hard on poor old Schwellenberg”; and it is not impossible that Miss Burney may have somewhat heightened her delineation of a character which afforded so many inviting aspects of attack. Yet, though “Cerbera” or “La Présidente” – as Fanny calls her – may not have been as black as she is painted, it would be hopeless to attempt to decorate her with wings; and there can be little doubt that the happiest hours of the Junior Keeper were those when her untuneable colleague was safely laid up in London or Weymouth with the gout.

Fortunately for Miss Burney all her associates were not of the Schwellenberg type. Miss Planta, English teacher to the two elder Princesses; Miss Goldsworthy (familiarly “Goully”), the sub-governess; Mme. la Fite, who read French to the Queen; and Mme. de Luc, the wife of the fly-catcher, were all amiable enough. And several of the successive Equerries in Waiting, if not actually qualified to regale Mrs. Haggerdorn’s successor with that “celestial colloquy sublime,” to which Lord Macaulay makes reference, were at least English gentlemen, with pleasant idiosyncrasies of their own, not wholly unworthy of study. There was Miss Goldsworthy’s brother, Colonel Philip Goldsworthy, a wag in his way, who relates how the King ineffectually endeavoured to make him carouse on barley water after a hard day’s hunting; and who gave a dismally picturesque account of winter service in the ill-constructed Queen’s Lodge, where there must have been as many distinct and several draughts as there are smells in the City of Cologne. There is the “Colonel Welbred” of the record, – Colonel Fulke Greville, – quiet, polite and undemonstrative; there is Colonel Manners, a good-humoured, careless rattle, who says whatever comes into his head, and thinks he might manage to sing the 104th Psalm if he could only keep from running into “God Save the King”; there is the “Jessamy Bride’s” handsome husband, Colonel Gwyn; there is Major Price; there is the Queen’s Vice Chamberlain, the Hon. Stephen Digby (“Colonel Fairly”), grave, scrupulous, diffident, gentle, sentimental, and “assiduously attentive in his manners.” He is at present married to Lord Ilchester’s daughter, by whom he has four children; but is soon to be a widower. Lastly, absorbing many pages of the record, is “Mr. Turbulent,” otherwise the Rev. Charles de Guiffardière or Giffardier, the Queen’s French reader, a farceur of the first order, who, apparently to indemnify himself for the penitential monotony of his past relations with Mrs. Haggerdorn, – a molluscous personage whom he contemptuously styles “the Oyster,” – indulges Miss Burney with the most fantastic disquisitions, flights of rodomontade and mock adoration. Macaulay roundly writes this gentleman down “half witted,” which is too sweeping; while the charitable Croker opines that he was laughing at Fanny. Miss Burney’s own later verdict upon “Mr. Turbulent” is, that he was “here and there a little eccentric, but, in the main, merely good-humoured and high-spirited.”60

In thus bringing some of the personages of the Diary before the reader, it has naturally been necessary to anticipate. The narrative of Miss Burney’s life at Court is excessively minute; and the chronicle, interesting as it may be in its place, does not always concern what is the prime object of this volume, – the story of her life. One of the first things, for instance, which she has to set down – indeed it happened before she had been three weeks in office – is mad Peg Nicholson’s attempt on the King’s life, an event which, of course, belongs to history. But Miss Burney’s pages add to the story some of those vivid minor details which the daughter of Mnemosyne forgets. She shows us the admirable composure of King George amid his terrified and tearful household; she shows him cheerfully insisting on the usual terrace walk with a single equerry, – on the usual evening concert. But “nothing was listened to,” – says Miss Burney of this latter, – “scarce a word was spoken; the Princesses wept continually; the Queen, still more deeply struck, could only, from time to time, hold out her hand to the King, and say ‘I have you yet.’ ” To this we may oppose another and more smiling passage. A few days later came the birthday of the little Princess Amelia; and Fanny’s account gives a good idea of one of the popular “terracings” above referred to. “It was really a mighty pretty procession,” she says. “The little Princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and a fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted in the parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed: for all the terracers stand up against the walls to make a clear passage for the Royal Family, the moment they come in sight.” Then followed the pleased King and Queen with the remainder of the Princesses, – the Princess Royal, the Princesses Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia, and their attendants; then, at a little distance, Major Price, the Equerry in Waiting, bringing up the rear to keep off the crowd.

Miss Burney was on the terrace with Mrs. Delany, who had been carried in her chair to the foot of the steps. At sight of Fanny’s companion, “the King instantly stopped to speak to her. The Queen, of course, and the little Princess, and all the rest, stood still, in their ranks. They talked a good while with the sweet old lady, during which time the King once or twice addressed himself to me. I caught the Queen’s eye, and saw in it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure to see me of the party. The little Princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is very fond, and behaved like a little angel to her: she then, with a look of enquiry and recollection, slowly, of her own accord, came behind Mrs. Delany to look at me. ‘I am afraid,’ said I, in a whisper, and stooping down, ‘your Royal Highness does not remember me?’ What think you was her answer? An arch little smile, and a nearer approach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me. I could not resist so innocent an invitation; but the moment I had accepted it I was half afraid it might seem, in so public a place, an improper liberty; however, there was no help for it. She then took my fan, and having looked at it on both sides, gravely returned it to me, saying, ‘O, a brown fan!’ The King and Queen then bid her curtsey to Mrs. Delany, which she did most gracefully, and they all moved on; each of the Princesses speaking to Mrs. Delany as they passed, and condescending to curtsey to her companion.”

One of the next things related is a royal visit to Nuneham (Lord Harcourt’s), which included excursions to Oxford and Blenheim. Miss Burney was one of the party, but – to use a phrase of Horace Walpole – did not greatly feel the joy of it, owing to the many discomforts and fatigues arising out of the defective arrangements which had been made for the Royal Suite. Mrs. Schwellenberg had assured her that she should “appear for nobody,” and the assurance was very literally carried out. It was in connection with this Nuneham trip that occurred the incident of the gown which has so much exercised some of Fanny’s biographers. Just before the visit took place, Mrs. Schwellenberg informed “Miss Bernar,” with much patronising importance, that she was to have a gown, as the Queen said she was not rich. Fanny protested that [like Dogberry] she had two gowns, and did not need another. “Miss Bernar,” said the scandalised old lady, “I tell you once, when the Queen will give you a gown, you must be humble, thankful, when [even if] you are Duchess of Ancaster,” —i. e. Mistress of the Robes. Further, she was not to be allowed to thank the Queen herself. “When I give you the gown,” added Mrs. Schwellenberg, “I will tell you when you may make your curtsey” – and then for the time the disagreeable conversation stopped. It does not appear that Fanny got her gown in time for Nuneham, as she went in a Chambéry gauze of her own. But it is an error to say – as Lord Macaulay does – that Queen Charlotte’s promise was “never performed,” for a few days later, in September, we find her wearing her “memorable present-gown” in honour of the birthday of the Princess Royal. It was “a lilac tabby,” we are told; and the King professed to admire it greatly, calling out that “Emily [i. e. the Princess Amelia] should see Miss Burney’s gown now, and she would think her fine enough.” But from a subsequent entry, it appears that it had been given through Mrs. Schwellenberg, for Miss Burney refers to the far greater pleasure that she received from a gift of violets presented to her by the Queen herself. Lord Macaulay, in his unwillingness to believe that Miss Burney obtained any “extraordinary benefactions” from Their Majesties, also overlooked the fact that, both in 1787, and 1788, Miss Burney received (though always through Mrs. Schwellenberg) New Year’s presents from the Queen. On the first occasion it was “a complete set of very beautiful white and gold china for tea, and a coffee-pot, tea-pot, cream-jug, and milk-jug of silver, in forms remarkably pretty.” In 1788 it was a gift of plate.61

Life at Court, whether at Kew, Windsor, or London, was not riotously eventful, and it has often been described. The usual humdrum routine repeated itself, diversified only by concerts, birthdays, and change of equerries. During much of the latter part of 1786, Mrs. Schwellenberg was ill, and Fanny reigned in her stead over the Windsor tea-table. Early in 1787, the Court went to London, taking up its abode at St. James’s Palace. During this time, Miss Burney also was occasionally ill, and went home for change. Once she visited Drury Lane with the Royal Family; and was startled by a complimentary reference to herself in the Epilogue to Holcroft’s Seduction– “a very clever piece,” – she says, – “but containing a dreadful picture of vice and dissipation in high life.” The reference was to “sweet Cecilia,” —

“Whose every passion yields to Reason’s laws,”62—

and seems to have delighted her Royal Master and Mistress as much as – we are assured – it embarrassed and disconcerted herself. “I took a peep at you!” said the kind King later, – “I could not help that. I wanted to see how you looked when your father first discovered your writing – and now I think I know!” Not very long subsequently, she had a compliment on the subject of Cecilia from another quarter. Mrs. Siddons, who was staying in the neighbourhood of Windsor, was ordered to the Lodge to read a play; and Fanny was requested by the Queen to receive her. Almost the first thing the other Queen – the stage Queen – said to Miss Burney was, that “there was no part she had ever so much wished to act as that of Cecilia.” Notwithstanding this most conciliatory speech, Mrs. Siddons – stately and beautiful as she was – does not appear to have impressed Cecilia’s author. “I found her” – says Fanny – “the Heroine of a Tragedy, – sublime, elevated, and solemn. In face and person, truly noble and commanding; in manners, quiet and stiff; in voice, deep and dragging; and in conversation, formal, sententious, calm and dry. I expected her to have been all that is interesting; the delicacy and sweetness with which she seizes every opportunity to strike and to captivate upon the stage had persuaded me that her mind was formed with that peculiar susceptibility which, in different modes, must give equal powers to attract and to delight in common life. But I was very much mistaken.” The play Mrs. Siddons read was Vanbrugh and Cibber’s Provoked Husband. As Fanny did not hear it, we have no account of its effect. But it would be interesting to know whether the entire absence of applause on these occasions, which so paralysed the mercurial Garrick, had the same effect on the majestic Mrs. Siddons.

In this way, what Fanny calls the “dead and tame life I now lead,” – of which the above was one of the rare variations, – went on as before, although there are signs in her Journal now and then, that it was sometimes less irksome to her. Indeed, on one occasion she goes so far as to write that she has now thoroughly formed her mind to her situation. “I even think” – she adds – “I now should do ill to change it; for though my content with it has been factitious, I believe it, in the main, suited to save me from more disturbance than it gives me.” With ampler space, it would be easy to fill a considerable number of pages by the vagaries of “Mr. Turbulent,” the divers humours of the equerries, and the whims of Mrs. Schwellenberg, who vacillates between endeavouring to kill her colleague by making her sit in a draught of a carriage window, and to conciliate her by the premature legacy of a sedan chair. But in the limits assigned to this chapter we can only hope to chronicle the more important events.

One of these was the trial of Warren Hastings, which began in February, 1788, in Westminster Hall. The Queen gave Fanny two tickets for the box of the Grand Chamberlain (Sir Peter Burrell), where she was just above the prisoner, whose pale and harassed face she could see distinctly with her glass when he looked up. Concerning the “high crimes and misdemeanours” alleged against him, she knew nothing, regarding the whole matter “as a party affair.” But her sympathies, like those of the Royal Household, were provisionally with Hastings, whom she had met two years earlier at the Cambridges at Twickenham, and had liked, – circumstances which she found somewhat embarrassing when presently she saw her other friend, Burke, with knit brows and scroll in hand, making portentous entry at the head of the Committee for the Prosecution. Great part of the first day’s proceedings was taken up by the interminably tedious over-reading of the charges; but Mr. Windham, one of the Committee, and her sister Charlotte’s neighbour in Norfolk,63 speedily asked to be presented to her; and, from time to time, visited the Grand Chamberlain’s box, pointing out the different notabilities, – among the rest, Hastings’ arch-enemy, Philip Francis. Mr. Windham, who was a man of the world and a brilliant talker, made himself extremely agreeable, though he was probably not so convincingly impressed by Miss Burney’s instinctive conviction of the innocence of the late Governor General of Bengal as she imagined. A little later, she went again to Westminster Hall to hear Burke, her companion upon this occasion being her brother James. It was the second day of Burke’s speech, – the first she had not heard. What she did hear surpassed her expectations; and what she says is confirmed by other auditors of that splendid oratory. She notes its inequality, – its digressions. But, she goes on – not without a touch of the Johnsonian “triptology” – “when he narrated, he was easy, flowing and natural; when he declaimed, energetic, warm and brilliant. The sentiments he interspersed were as nobly conceived as they were highly coloured; his satire had a poignancy of wit that made it as entertaining as it was penetrating; his allusions and quotations, as far as they were English and within my reach, were apt and ingenious; and the wild and sudden flights of his fancy, bursting forth from his creative imagination in language fluent, forcible, and varied, had a charm for my ear and my attention wholly new and perfectly irresistible.” In fact, she continues, “the whirlwind of his eloquence nearly drew me into its vortex.” Upon a third occasion, she heard Charles Fox raging for five hours at the Lords, who, in the opinion of the Committee, were favouring the accused. But Fanny thought Fox’s face looked hard and callous, and that Burke’s method of speaking was more gentleman-like, scholar-like, and fraught with true genius than that of Fox. On each of these visits, it should be added, she had much talk with Mr. Windham, who, for further recommendation, had been one of Johnson’s devotees; and she made careful report of her impressions to Queen Charlotte.

Another person to whom her accounts of the first scenes of the Great Trial had been specially welcome was now soon to be lost to her. On the 15th of April, 1788, not long after the above events, died Mrs. Delany. Her death was a serious blow to Fanny, who had resorted to her freely for sympathy when things went wrong either with the Senior Keeper, or in the “nice conduct” of the Equerries’ tea-table. In the July following, the King, whose health had hitherto been of the best, showed the first indications of that malady which was afterwards to be of so serious a character. As a consequence, it was decided that, in company with the Queen and the three elder Princesses, he should go to Cheltenham to drink the waters, – carrying with him the Royal household in concentrated form. Fanny and Miss Planta were of the party; Colonel Gwyn was the Equerry in Waiting; and Colonel Digby attended in his capacity of Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain. They were domiciled at Fauconberg Hall (Bay’s Hill Lodge), which was charmingly situated, but ridiculously restricted in point of accommodation. At Cheltenham, King George repeated his usual simple life, promenading daily in the Walks to the delight of the lieges; and from time to time making flying visits in the neighbourhood from which Miss Planta and Miss Burney were, of necessity, excluded. One result of these proceedings was to throw Miss Burney very much into the society of Colonel Digby, now a recently bereft and melancholy widower with a young family. The Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain was ten years older than Miss Burney; and rumour was already connecting his name with that of his eventual second wife, Miss Charlotte Gunning, a pretty Maid of Honour, who figures in the Diary as “Miss Fuzelier,” and was the eldest daughter of a baronet. Meanwhile, in the contracted limits of Bay’s Hill Lodge, both Colonel Digby and Miss Burney – like fellow-sufferers upon a raft – seem to have discovered that they had much in common. They exchanged ideas upon many subjects, staidly discussing religion and the affections, and particularly the second volume of a work with the “injudicious” title of Original Love Letters.64 Fanny was admittedly much “flattered” by the Colonel’s attraction to her little parlour; and in her Diary the record of this pleasant oasis in her pilgrimage has all the aspect of a decorous sentimental idyll. Unhappily, practical confirmation of the doleful Colonel’s standing topic – “the assured misery of all stations and all seasons in this vain and restless world” – arrived suddenly with a fit of the gout. This effectually put a stop to any further study of Akenside’s Odes and Falconer’s Shipwreck; and on the 8th of August Colonel Digby was forced to obtain sick leave, and departed. Almost immediately afterwards, and not entirely without Fanny’s good offices, – he was appointed to the vacant Mastership of St. Catherine’s Hospital, a sinecure in the Queen’s gift. With this, what Fanny styles, in a double sense, “the Cheltenham episode” drew to an end; and the Royal Household went back to the “set, gray life” of old. To make matters worse, before a few weeks were over, the King was again indisposed. In October those about him were vaguely uneasy; and in the night of the 20th, he was alarmingly ill. This attack however passed off; and on the 25th the Court moved from Kew to Windsor. On that day Miss Burney had “a sort of conference” with the King, which she explains to mean that she “was the object to whom he spoke.” Though he was as gracious and kind as usual, she was shocked at the hoarseness, volubility, and even vehemence of his speech. The next day she met him again in the passage from the Queen’s room. “He stopped me, and conversed upon his health near half an hour, still with that extreme quickness of speech and manner that belongs to fever; and he hardly sleeps, he tells me, one minute all night; indeed, if he recovers not his rest, a most delirious fever seems to threaten him. He is all agitation, all emotion, yet all benevolence and goodness, even to a degree that makes it touching to hear him speak. He assures everybody of his health; he seems only fearful to give uneasiness to others, yet certainly he is better than last night. Nobody speaks of his illness, nor what they think of it.”

For the next few days, notwithstanding that the King seemed sometimes better than at other times, he grew steadily worse. He became appreciably weaker; he walked like a gouty man; he had talked away all his voice, and his hoarseness was pitiful to hear. Nevertheless he was as amiable as ever: – “he seemed to have no anxiety but to set the Queen at rest, and no wish but to quiet and give pleasure to all around him.” In the meantime the poor Queen is overcome with nameless apprehension; walks up and down the room without uttering a word, shaking her head in manifest distress and irresolution. So matters wear on until the 3rd November when Dr. Heberden is called in, “for counsel [it is announced], not that His Majesty is worse.” Yet on the following day the Queen is in deeper distress than before; the King is in a state almost incomprehensible; and all the household is uneasy and alarmed. On the 5th, His Majesty goes out for an airing with the Princess Royal; and the Prince of Wales arrives from Brighton. Then between six and seven, an inexplicable stillness comes upon the Upper Lodge, as if something had happened. No one stirs; no one speaks. The evening concert is stopped. The equerries are gloomy and uncommunicative, though it is vaguely understood that the King is much worse, and that the Queen herself has been taken ill. At last Miss Burney learns the truth from the Vice-Chamberlain. At dinner His Majesty had broken into a positive fit of delirium, and the Queen had been in violent hysterics. “All the Princesses were in misery, and the Prince of Wales had burst into tears.65 No one knew what was to follow – no one could conjecture the event.”