Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay)

From 1828 to 1832 she busied herself in putting together the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which appeared in the latter year. They are based, with slight exceptions, on her father’s own mss., drawn up in 1807 and afterwards, and on her own unprinted diaries and personal recollections. She herself was eighty when they were published, and her style had not improved with age. For the present generation, these records have been superseded by the publication of the original diaries and letters upon which in part they were based; but when they were issued in 1832, their memories and anecdotes were new to the public, who were not so impatient of their other defects as are later readers. Southey, indeed, to whom the volumes were sent by the author’s son, was unreserved in his praise. He wrote from Keswick that Evelina had not given him more pleasure when he was a schoolboy than these memoirs had given him now, and that was saying a good deal. “Except Boswell’s” – he went on – “there is no other work in our language which carries us into such society, and makes us fancy that we are acquainted with the people to whom we are there introduced.” But Croker, whom she had declined to assist with material for his edition of Boswell, made the Memoirs the subject of malignant attack in the Quarterly for April, 1833. Mme. D’Arblay – we are given to understand – was seriously pained by the imputation of unveracity contained in this article; and she might well be hurt on other grounds. The duties of reviewers are not always pleasant to perform; and Croker might plead, in defence of his ungallant inquisition into the author’s age, that, like Rousseau, he was simply actuated by the love of truth; but to say of a blameless and inoffensive old lady of eighty, who might certainly claim indulgence for imperfect recollection, that her style could not have been “more feeble, anile, incoherent, or ‘sentant plus l’apoplexie,’ ” is surely to write oneself down both cruel and contemptible.

One of the rare references to Mme. D’Arblay at this date is contained in Disraeli’s letters to his sister. “Contarini,” he writes, “seems universally liked, but moves slowly. The staunchest admirer I have in London, and the most discerning appreciator of Contarini, is old Madame D’Arblay. I have a long letter, which I will show you, – capital!” This was written in July, 1832. In 1837 Mme. D’Arblay had the misfortune to lose her son. Since she had placed him at Cambridge in 1813, he had done well. He had graduated in 1818 as tenth Wrangler; and though handicapped by a French education, became a Fellow of his College (Christ’s). Having taken orders in 1819, he was made, in 1836, minister of Ely Chapel, Holborn. He was preparing to marry, when he succumbed suddenly to influenza in January, 1837. His mother did not long survive him. Two years later, she was attacked by an illness, which was accompanied by spectral illusions; and, on January 6, 1840, being then in her eighty-eighth year, she died, at Lower Grosvenor Street, New Bond Street, and was buried by the side of her husband and son at Walcot. The prettiest story of her last days is told by Rogers. It is à propos of the well-known lines which begin —

“Life! we’ve been long together”;

and end —

“Say not Good Night, but in some brighter clime          Bid me Good Morning.”

“Sitting with Madame D’Arblay some time before she died, I [Rogers] said to her, ‘Do you remember those lines of Mrs. Barbauld’s Life, which I once repeated to you?’ ‘Remember them,’ she replied; ‘I repeat them to myself every night before I go to sleep.’ ”91

In 1842, two years after Mme. D’Arblay’s death, the first five volumes of her Diary and Letters were issued. These, like the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, were savagely assailed by Croker in the Quarterly in an article which had the good fortune to provoke a masterly retort in the Edinburgh from Lord Macaulay. Modern research has rectified some of the minor details, and modern criticism may dissent from some of the deductions, in this famous counterblast. But though no doubt prompted by antagonism to Mme. D’Arblay’s assailant in the rival review, and though strongly coloured by the writer’s political opinions, it remains, and must remain, a memorable tribute to the author of Evelina and Cecilia.

To Lord Macaulay’s essay, indeed, and to its periodical reproduction in fresh editions of his works, is probably due most of Mme. D’Arblay’s existing reputation as a novelist. And that reputation rests almost exclusively upon her first two productions, Evelina and Cecilia. We doubt if the piety of the enthusiast could ever revive – or rather create – the slightest interest in The Wanderer; or that any but the fanatics of the out-of-date, or the student of manners, could conscientiously struggle through Camilla. Works of genius, it is true, are occasionally born out of due time, and consequently fail of the recognition they deserve from their contemporaries, only to attain it eventually either through the insight of the independent critic, or the better knowledge of after ages. But these were not the circumstances of Camilla and The Wanderer. Both books were circulated freely among an audience not only specially qualified to judge, but also specially well-disposed; and if, with these advantages, they could not succeed in obtaining approbation, it is idle to attempt to revive them now. With Cecilia and Evelina, the case is different. They stand on their merits. And their merits are undeniable. It is true that – as Walpole said —Cecilia is too long; but its crowd of characters is very skilfully varied, and many of them, as Briggs, Albany, Mr. Delville, Mrs. Harrel, Mr. Monckton, are drawn with marked ability. And though the book has less freshness than its predecessor, it has more constructive power and greater certainty of hand. Mme. D’Arblay’s masterpiece, however, is Evelina. This she wrote because she must, – neither preoccupied with her public nor her past;92– and throughout this book penned for amusement in Newton’s old observatory, one never catches, as in Cecilia, the creak of the machinery, or fancies, in the background, the paternal voice pressing for prompt publication. It is perhaps difficult for a modern reader to be impressed by the sentiments of the excellent Mr. Villars, still less to “blubber,” like Dr. Burney, over Sir John Belmont’s heroics; but, in spite of youthful exaggerations and faults of taste, it is still possible to admire the vivacity with which Miss Anville narrates her experiences, embarrassments, and social trepidations. It is also possible to comprehend something of the unparalleled enthusiasm produced by the opportune appearance of Evelina’s history in a dead season of letters – by its freedom from taint of immorality, its unfeigned fun and humour, and its unhackneyed descriptions of humanity. One can easily conceive how welcome these latter characteristics must have been to a public sickened and depressed by the “inflammatory tales” and “sentimental frippery”93 of the circulating libraries. Evelina, moreover, marks a definite deviation in the progress of the national fiction. Leaving Fielding’s breezy and bustling highway, leaving the analytic hothouse of Richardson, it carries the novel of manners into domestic life, and prepares the way for Miss Edgeworth and the exquisite parlour-pieces of Miss Austen.

Of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, it is not necessary to say much more than has already been said. Although, as we have seen, Southey could praise them warmly, – to be sure, he was acknowledging a complimentary copy, – Macaulay declares that they were received with “a cry of disgust,” which a later writer converts into “a scream of derision.” Yet is must nevertheless be admitted that they contain much in the way of letters, documents, and anecdote which the student cannot well neglect; and it should be observed that it is in the connecting passages that the writer’s “peculiar rhetoric” is most manifest. The curious expedients she adopts to avoid using the personal pronoun; and the catenated phrases to which Croker objected, and which he unkindly emphasised by hyphens (e. g. “the yet very handsome though no longer in her bloom, Mrs. Stephen Allen,” “the sudden, at the moment, though from lingering illnesses often previously expected death, of Mrs. Burney”), – are certainly amusing; as is also the nebulous magniloquence of passages like the following, not, it may be added, an exceptional specimen: – “This sharp infliction, however, though it ill recompensed his ethereal flight, by no means checked his literary ambition; and the ardour which was cooled for gazing at the stars, soon seemed doubly re-animated for the music of the spheres.” But what is more extraordinary than these utterances is, that Mme. D’Arblay seems herself to have had no suspicion of their extravagance, since we find her, even after the publication of The Wanderer, gravely enjoining her son to avoid overstrained expression, not to labour to embellish his thoughts, and above all, to “be natural.”94

Happily for her readers, the Diary– to which we now come – is not written in the pernicious style of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney. Even in those parts of it which were composed after Cecilia and Camilla, it is still clear, fluent, and unaffected. Now and then, perhaps, – as in the quotation on Burke’s oratory at p. 160, – there is a sense of effort; but in general, the manner is delightful. Why Macaulay, who praised the Diary so much, did not praise it more, – did not, in fact, place it high above Mme. D’Arblay’s efforts as a novelist, – is hard to comprehend. It has all the graphic picturesqueness, all the dramatic interest, all the objective characterisation, all the happy faculty of “making her descriptions alive” (as “Daddy” Crisp had said), – which constitute the charm of the best passages in Evelina. But it has the further advantage that it is true; and that it deals with real people. King George and Queen Charlotte, Mrs. Schwellenberg and M. de Guiffardière, Johnson and Reynolds, Burke and Garrick, Sheridan, Cumberland, Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. Delany, Omai and Count Orloff – stand before us in their habits as they lived, and we know them more intimately than Mr. Briggs, believe in them more implicitly than in Captain Mirvan, and laugh at them more honestly than at “Madam French.” The Diary of Mme. D’Arblay deserves to rank with the great diaries of literature. It is nothing that it is egotistical, for egotism is of its essence: it is nothing that it is minute, its minuteness enforces the impression. It gives us a gallery of portraits which speak and move; and a picture of society which we recognise as substantially true to life.

1

This was Fanny Burney’s later friend, – the beautiful Mrs. Crewe of Reynolds, and the “Amoret” of Sheridan and Charles Fox.

2

Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 1832, i. 134.

3

Dr. Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell’s Johnson, 1887, i. 420. In a note communicated by Burney in 1799 to the third edition of Boswell’s book, he dates this performance “1769,” when (he says) he resided at Norfolk. But his memory must have deceived him, for according to the Annual Register for 1763, the Burlesque was performed at Ranelagh on June 10 in that year, having been previously published as a pamphlet, which is to be found in the British Museum; and it figures among the new books for June, 1763, in the Gentleman’s Magazine. The point is a trifling one, only important here because the success of the Ode has been advanced as one of the things which decided its composer to leave Lynn for London in 1760.

4

Admiral Burney’s recollections are referred to in Hood’s “Preface” to the separate issue of The Dream of Eugene Aram published in 1831, with William Harvey’s illustrations.

5

Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 1832, ii. 170-1.

6

Crisp’s Virginia was published anonymously by Tonson in 1754 with a dedication to the writer’s friends, the Earl and Countess of Coventry.

7

The Cunning Man (i. e. fortune-teller or soothsayer) was produced at Drury Lane in 1766 when Rousseau came to England, but it was coldly received (Biographia Dramatica, 1812, ii. 145).

8

In Letter lxiv. of Evelina, Miss Burney, applying this locution to Lord Orville, attributes it to Marmontel. The above passage is printed in the “Introduction” to the Diary and Letters, 1892, i. pp. xi-xii.

9

Oxford Journal, 23 June 1769.

10

Dr. Birkbeck Hill (Boswell’s Johnson, 1887, iv. 186 n.) seems, perhaps not unnaturally, to doubt this, as Burney “writes chiefly of music.” But it is confirmed by a passage in the Early Diary, 1889, i. 212. “He [Baretti] told my father that Dr. Johnson.. has read both his Tours with great pleasure, and has pronounced him to be one of the first writers of the age for travels!” Moreover, in the second Tour, the author was less chary of personal anecdote. In Edward FitzGerald’s letters, he draws Carlyle’s attention to some of the very interesting particulars which the second Tour contains concerning Frederick the Great (More Letters of Edward FitzGerald, 1901, p. 67). But Carlyle, who quotes the visit to Voltaire from the first Tour, does not mention the second at all.

11

Lord Macaulay relied upon the fact, mentioned in the Dedication to The Wanderer (p. xxii), that Dr. Burney’s large library only contained one novel, Fielding’s Amelia. But, as Mrs. Ellis pertinently remarks, “Novels were brought into the house if they did not abide in it.”

12

Catherine Hyde was still living in Fanny Burney’s day; and Fanny saw her at Covent Garden Theatre in January, 1773, when Mason’s Elfrida was being acted. “I had the pleasure to see Prior’s celebrated fair ‘Kitty, beautiful and young,’ now called Kitty, beautiful and old, in the stage box.” (Early Diary, 1889, i. p. 184.)

13

“There are now,” said Cunningham, writing as far back as 1849, “at least 2 square miles of brick and mortar between it [Queen Square] and the view.” (Handbook for London, ii. p. 686.)

14

See ante, p. 19.

15

In Recreations and Studies of A Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century [Thomas Twining], 1882, there are several letters from Twining to Burney and vice versa, some of which will be hereafter cited.

16

“So much of his [Garrick’s] drollery belongs to his voice, looks and manner,” says the Diary, “that writing loses it almost all.” Yet more than forty years afterwards, in her Memoirs of her father (1832, i. pp. 352-3), she expanded the above, about seven lines in the original, to a page and three quarters. It is clear that she worked from the Diary, for some of the expressions are identical. But many decorative particulars are added to the record of Garrick’s visit, which are not in the first account. We have preferred the earlier, if less picturesque, narrative. Boswell, of course, has nothing of this anecdote; which was not printed until long after his death.

17

The fate of Cowper’s “gentle savage” was pathetic. Painted by Reynolds and patronised by Lord Sandwich, – lionised by Lady Townshend and the Duchess of Devonshire, – he was suffered to go back once more to his own people, among whom he had neither status nor importance. He died soon after, having shown himself (says Vancouver) both “vain and silly.” And no wonder!

18

Agujari, according to Grove’s Dictionary of Music, was the highest and most extended soprano on record. Her voice reached “from the middle of the harpsichord to two notes above it,” says Miss Burney.

19

He is generally called “Count.” But in her letters, diary, and Memoirs, Fanny styles him “Prince.”

20

Early Diary, 1889, ii. 121.

21

Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach, 1826, ii. 125.

22

Dr. Burney evidently had mild qualms about these Sunday concerts. When after the first occasion here referred to, Dr. King and Dr. Ogle supped at St. Martin’s Street, he said that he hoped for absolution from them if there was any crime in having music on a Sunday. To which Dr. Ogle replied discreetly that music was an excellent thing any and every day; and Dr. King evasively – “Have we not music at church?”

23

The second volume appeared in 1782, and the third and fourth volumes, completing the work, in 1789.

24

In September, 1785, Miss Sally Payne married Captain James Burney, Fanny’s brother.

25

Early Diary, 1889, ii. 153; Birkbeck Hill’s Johnson’s Letters, 1892, ii. 5, and note.

26

The editor of the Early Diary “strongly suspects” that these words in the altered ms. were originally “dirty fists.” There are other indications that later corrections have somewhat modified the portrait.

27

The Bach referred to was Bach’s son, John Christian Bach, or (as he was called) “English” Bach. He was a famous harpsichord player, who, with Abel of the viol de gamba, conducted Mrs. Cornelys’ concerts in Soho Square.

28

See ante, pp. 38-40.

29

Early Diary, 1889, ii. pp. 153-60.

30

This suggests that, at the beginning of 1777, the third volume was not yet composed.

31

After the third edition (1779) Lowndes paid her another £10, making £30 in all (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 1832, ii. 151).

32

Diary and Letters, 1892, i. 10; Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 1832, ii. 149; Early Diary, 1889, ii. 239 n.

33

Forsyth, Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, 1871, p. 325.

34

Marie-Jeanne de Heurles de Laboras, Mme. Riccoboni, d. 1792, translated Fielding’s Amelia and Kelly’s False Delicacy into French, and continued Marivaux’ Marianne. She wrote several sentimental novels, one of which Mrs. Brooke Englished as Lady Catesby’s Letters.

35

Journal of Sir Walter Scott, 1891, i. 309.

36

Edward Francis Burney, 1760-1848, the artist referred to in the above paragraph, was a frequent contributor to the Royal Academy between 1780 and 1793. His solitary “portrait of a Lady,” 1785, may have been his cousin’s picture. His first exhibits (418-20) were three “stained Drawings” for Evelina, in which Mme. Duval, Captain Mirvan, Mr. Villars, the heroine and her father, were all introduced. The Evelina of these designs is said to have strongly resembled the beautiful Sophy Streatfield; and an artful compliment was paid to Johnson by hanging his portrait in Mr. Villars’ parlour. Archdeacon Burney has one of these delicate little pictures.

37

No doubt The Castle of Otranto, which Lowndes himself had published in 1764.

38

The bibliography of Miss Burney’s first book is extremely perplexing. In the “Advertisement” to Cecilia, the author says that Evelina (which, it will be remembered, appeared in January, 1778) passed “through Four Editions in one year.” In the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, she implies that it went through three editions in five months (ii. p. 135). But the second and third editions are both dated 1779; and it must have been in the first months of that year that the sale was most active. In May, 1779, comes a reference to the fourth edition as on the stocks. “Evelina continues to sell in a most wonderful manner; a fourth edition is preparing, with cuts [it should be copper plates], designed by Mortimer just before he died, and executed by Hall and Bartolozzi” (Diary and Letters, 1892, i. p. 139). John Hamilton Mortimer, A.R.A., the artist indicated, died 4th February, 1779. His drawings, which cost £73, still exist. It may here be added that Mrs. Chappel, of East Orchard, Shaftesbury, possesses a copy of the second edition of Evelina (1779), presented to Dr. Burney, – whose name is filled up in the heading of the dedicatory verses, – “From his dutiful scribler,” i. e. “F. B.”

39

This phrase of “Little Burney” – or more generally “dear little Burney” – to the sensitive Fanny’s “infinite frettation” got into print. A certain Rev. George Huddesford embodied it in a rhymed satire upon the camp which fears of French invasion had established at Warley Common in Essex, and which King George and Queen Charlotte visited in October, 1778. Johnson had gone there earlier, as the guest of Bennet Langton, who was a Captain in the Lincolnshire militia.

40

Idler, June 9 and 16, 1759.

41

See ante, p. 86.

42

Miss Hannah More’s successful tragedy of Percy was produced at Covent Garden, 10 December, 1777.

43

See Diary and Letters, 1892, i. p. 48

44

Probably that afterwards produced at Drury Lane in 1781 as The Royal Suppliants, and based upon the Heraclidæ of Euripides.

45

Miss Burney here forgets that she had already assisted at a private view of Miss Streatfield’s performance (Diary and Letters, 1892, i. p. 135-6).

46

There is an account of the Batheaston Thursday Parnassus in a letter from Walpole to Conway, 15 January, 1775. The historical urn no longer exists. But the verses cannot have been all bad. Garrick was responsible for some of them, and Graves of The Spiritual Quixote. Another contributor was Anstey, who wrote his Election Ball for Lady Miller.

47

Autobiography, etc. of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale), by A. Hayward, 1861, (2nd edn.), i. pp. 125, 126.

48

Cymbeline, Act 1. Sc. i.

49

Charlotte Burney in Early Diary, 1889, ii. 307. Lord Macaulay (Edinburgh Review, lxxvi. 540) had been told that the publishers gave two thousand pounds. Probably – as Mrs. Ellis does not fail to suggest – there was some confusion on the part of Macaulay’s informant between pounds paid and copies printed.

50

Book iv. ch. 2.

51

Diary and Letters, 1892, i. 454.

52

The verses from which these quotations are taken appeared in the Morning Herald for 12 March, 1782. Long attributed to Sir W. W. Pepys, they are now given to Dr. Burney. But, as regards his daughter, they only express a general feeling.

53

Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 1832, ii. 323.

54

Autobiography, etc. of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale), 1861 (2nd ed.), i. 147 et seq.

55

This was the bitterness of the sick bed; and it is wholly irreconcilable with the regard expressed in Johnson’s last communication to Mrs. Piozzi and his gratitude “for that kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.” Luckily for her, he did not burn all her letters, for her not-undignified answer to his first rough remonstrance was found by Miss Hawkins amongst his papers, and returned to its writer. As already stated, it is printed by Hayward (Autobiography, etc., 1861 (2nd ed.), i. 240-1, No. 4).