Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay)

In January, 1779, Miss Burney was again at St. Martin’s Street, her sister Susan being from home. St. Martin’s Street has a mysterious visit from “a square old gentleman, well-wigged, formal, grave and important,” who suddenly asks her if she is not Evelina, and turns out to be Dr. Francklin, chaplain to the Royal Academy. Then she is invited to Sir Joshua’s to meet Mrs. and Miss [Mary] Horneck (Goldsmith’s “Jessamy Bride”), soon to be married to Colonel Gwyn. The ladies had said that they would walk a hundred and sixty miles to see her, so there was nothing to excuse her for not stepping across the Fields to No. 47. Here she met another admirer, Peg Woffington’s witty and eccentric sister, Mrs. Cholmondeley; and Lord Palmerston, father of the Victorian premier; and Burke’s brother William, the “honest William” of Goldsmith’s Retaliation. All, and especially Sir Joshua, were most cordial, though Mrs. Cholmondeley’s “pointed speeches,” Duval Ma foi’s, and references to Evelina generally, would have been embarrassing, even to a less nervous person than the author. Mrs. Cholmondeley, among other things, had been to Lowndes for information, getting nothing from that windbag but intelligence that a gentleman had betted that the writer of Evelina was a man, while she, Mrs. Cholmondeley, felt equally convinced it was a woman. “But now” – she added – “we are both out; for it’s a girl!” – which must be accepted as unanswerable testimony to Fanny’s youthful appearance at six-and-twenty.

This interview with Mrs. Cholmondeley, who had been one of the book’s earliest and most energetic trumpeters (it was she, indeed, who had first recommended it “among the wits”), was of course, followed by an invitation, which proved a most important one. For at Mrs. Cholmondeley’s in Hertford Street she met, not only the beautiful “St. Cecilia” of Reynolds, with her almost equally beautiful sister, Miss Linley; but she met “St. Cecilia’s” husband, the all-conquering author of the recently-produced School for Scandal and manager of Drury Lane, Richard Brinsley Sheridan himself, of whom she writes admiringly. He has “a good though I don’t think a handsome face. He is tall, and very upright, and his appearance and address are at once manly and fashionable, without the smallest tincture of foppery or modish graces. In short, I like him vastly, and think him every way worthy his beautiful companion,” – to whom, Fanny adds, he was manifestly much devoted. By and by, Sheridan introduced himself to Miss Burney, and was most agreeable. He had been telling her father, he said, that he had long expected to see in her “a lady of the gravest appearance, with the quickest parts.” He expressed the highest admiration for Evelina, adding that he hoped she (Miss Burney) did not intend to throw away her pen. He was very curious to know what she was about, and Sir Joshua observed that she must succeed in “anything in the dialogue way.” Mr. Sheridan assented. He thought “she should write a comedy.” “And you,” said the kind Sir Joshua presently, “would take anything of hers, would you not? – unsight, unseen?” “Yes,” he answered with quickness, “and make her a bow and my best thanks into the bargain.” Here was a piece of news to post off to Susan!

As a matter of fact, Miss Burney was already engaged upon a dramatic essay. Both her father and “Daddy” Crisp were anxious that, before interest cooled, she should follow up her first success by some other work; and from the date of Mrs. Thrale’s first letter to Dr. Burney,41 that lady had been pressing her to write for the stage. She had the same conviction as Reynolds that something “in the dialogue way” would suit her young friend. Evelina– Mrs. Thrale thought – ran so naturally into conversations that it absolutely and plainly pointed that path to her. If she could not do better than Hannah More, who got nearly four hundred pounds for her foolish play,42 she deserved to be whipped – said this kindly enthusiast. Dr. Johnson, after see-sawing immoderately, proposed, in a fit of untimely levity, that her first work should be entitled, Streatham: A Farce; but he, too, heartily approved. Mrs. Montagu, who was consulted, though she was sympathetic, was not so sure. She advanced the case of Fielding, who failed upon the stage. And “Daddy” Crisp was still more half-hearted. He wrote to Fanny an admirable letter upon the subject. While he was urgent that she should do something, he was by no means satisfied that the something in question should be a comedy. In a second letter he developed his ideas. She had gained much: she had much to lose. And play-writing – for her – had its peculiar difficulties. Her delicacy (and she was a prude, she knew herself) would debar her from those frequent lively freedoms without which comedy would lose wonderfully of its salt and spirit. All the same he would evidently not have her try the bloodless and prevalent sentimental comedy. About Fielding, he agreed with Mrs. Montagu. Finally, though he did not wholly desire to discourage her from the attempt, he thought that, in entering upon it, she must surrender a part of her strength. And here we may use his actual words: – “In these little entertaining elegant histories [such as Evelina], the writer has his full scope; as large a range as he pleases to hunt in – to pick, cull, select whatever he likes: he takes his own time – he may be as minute as he pleases, and the more minute the better, provided that taste, a deep and penetrating knowledge of human nature and the world, accompany that minuteness. When this is the case, the very soul, and all its most secret recesses and workings, are developed and laid as open to the view, as the blood-globules circulating in a frog’s foot, when seen through a microscope. The exquisite touches such a work is capable of (of which Evelina is, without flattery, a glaring instance), are truly charming. But of these great advantages, these resources, you are strangely curtailed the moment you begin a comedy. There, everything passes in dialogue, – all goes on rapidly – narrative and descriptive, if not extremely short, becomes intolerable. The detail which in Fielding, Marivaux, and Crébillon, is so delightful, on the stage would bear down all patience. There all must be compressed into quintessence; the moment the scene ceases to move on briskly, and business seems to hang, sighs and groans are the consequence. Dreadful sound! – In a word, if the plot, the story of the comedy does not open and unfold itself in the easy, natural, unconstrained flow of the dialogue – if that dialogue does not go on with spirit, wit, variety, fun, humour, repartee, – and all in short into the bargain —serviteur!– good-bye t’ ye!”

This is excellently said, and shows once again how precept may excel practice, – though, to be sure, “Daddy” Crisp’s Virginia was a tragedy, and not a comedy. In a later letter Fanny’s Mentor modified his views to the extent of admitting that it was possible, with due contrivance and dexterity, to display light principles without light expressions; but he stuck to the proposition that he would never allow his Fannikin “to sacrifice a grain of female delicacy for all the wit of Congreve and Vanbrugh put together,” – and in this she was entirely of his mind. These letters preceded the interview with Sheridan; and as we have already said, she had probably begun to work on a comedy still earlier.43 When, in February, she got back to Streatham, she made the acquaintance of Arthur Murphy, in whose Way to Keep Him she had acted at Barborne Lodge. He, too, volunteered the suggestion that she should write for the stage. Comedy, in his opinion, was the forte of Evelina, and he offered his skilled assistance. He subsequently gave her some rules by which she was too far advanced in her work to profit – rules which, Johnson consolingly told her, she would do just as well without. In May her play is finished, though “on account of the various Maecenases who would expect to be consulted,” the greatest secrecy is observed. Murphy applauds; and so does Mrs. Thrale. Johnson apparently was not consulted. But when it is carried off by Dr. Burney to “Daddy” Crisp, the verdict of Fanny’s “highest court” is unfavourable. Indeed, in what she calls a “hissing, groaning, cat-calling epistle,” they go as far as to recommend its suppression. Not only did it recall the Femmes Savantes of Molière (which Fanny had never read), but they regarded the plot and incidents as insufficient to hold the attention of the audience. Fanny took her disappointment bravely, and at once threw her work aside. Later on, when it became necessary to explain matters to Sheridan, there was some talk of remodelling, and with this object the fourth act was almost entirely re-written. But Crisp, who was appealed to, stood to his guns. He thought the capital defect of an ill-planned fable beyond remedy, though he admitted the wit of the play.

Here the matter seems to have rested; and all we know of the suppressed piece is, that it was entitled The Witlings, and that the dramatis personae included, among others, a quotation-loving Lady Smatter (in whom Mrs. Thrale professed to recognise her own portrait), Mrs. Voluble, Mrs. Wheedle, Mrs. Sapient, Dabbler, Censor, and a “great oaf, Bobby.” There was also – and the point is memorable in view of the title of Miss Burney’s next novel – a Cecilia, the loss and restoration of whose fortune were matters in debate. Whether Dr. Burney and his friend were right in their judgment of The Witlings, cannot now be affirmed or denied in the absence of the MS. Probably they were right; though they do not seem to have borne in mind how material a part the acting bears in the success of a piece; and at Sheridan’s theatre, Miss Burney’s comedy would certainly have been splendidly represented. King, Dodd, Palmer, Parsons, Mrs. Abington, and Miss Pope – would all probably have taken part in it. But Fanny’s advisers, it is clear, were also actuated by another reflection, of which Murphy knew nothing: they feared the effect upon the author of a possible fiasco. “My great scruple all along has been the consideration of the great stake you are playing for,” – writes Mr. Crisp, – “how much you have to lose, and how unequal your delicate and tender frame of mind would be to sustain the shock of a failure of success, should that be the case.” This is perhaps not a critical reason; but, at the same time, it is a reason beyond criticism. And “Daddy” Crisp shows plainly that it was The Witlings he doubted, – not Fanny’s ability to produce comedy. For, in an earlier letter, he had suggested to her a fresh effort, based upon certain of her own experiences as narrated to her father.

It was early in 1779 that Miss Burney made the acquaintance of Sheridan at Mrs. Cholmondeley’s; and it was not until the beginning of 1780 that The Witlings was practically abandoned. In the interim, at Streatham and elsewhere, Fanny seems to have spent her time very agreeably. In May, she went with the Thrales to Brighton, returning, apparently, early in June, owing to the sudden illness of Mr. Thrale. But in October they were again at Brighton, taking Knole Park (Lord Dorset’s) and its magnificent galleries in their way, and making a short stay at Tunbridge Wells, where Miss Burney pours scorn upon the famous Pantiles as a fashionable pleasure walk. “It has no beauty in itself, and borrows none from foreign aid, as it has only common houses at one side, and little millinery and Tunbridge-ware shops at the other, and at each end is choked up by buildings that intercept all prospect.” At Brighton, no doubt in the interests of Evelina, Mrs. Thrale at once inscribed their names at the booksellers’ shops upon the Steyne. At this date there were no great notabilities at Brighthelmstone, as Fanny styles the place, save “that celebrated wit and libertine,” the Hon. Mr. Beauclerk, and his wife, Lady Di; Cumberland the dramatist and his family; and Mrs. Musters, whose son married Byron’s first love, Mary Chaworth. The Miss Cumberlands were reckoned “the flashers of the place,” and Fanny gives an account of their father which reads like a scene from the Critic. “Sir Fretful Plagiary” was already prejudiced against her on account of her success; and when he called on Mrs. Thrale, he showed it. As soon as she had quitted the room he said to Mrs. Thrale, with a spiteful tone of voice,

“ ‘Oh, that young lady is an author, I hear!’

“ ‘Yes,’ answered Mrs. Thrale, ‘author of Evelina.’

“ ‘Humph – I am told it has some humour!’

“ ‘Ay, indeed! Johnson says nothing like it has appeared for years!’

“ ‘So,’ cried he, biting his lips, and waving uneasily in his chair, ’so, so!’

“ ‘Yes,’ continued she; ‘and Sir Joshua Reynolds told Mr. Thrale he would give fifty pounds to know the author!’

“ ‘So, so – oh, vastly well!’ cried he, putting his hand on his forehead.

“ ‘Nay!’ added she, ‘Burke himself sat up all night to finish it!’

“This seemed quite too much for him; he put both his hands to his face, and waving backwards and forwards, said, ‘Oh, vastly well! – this will do for anything!’ with a tone as much as to say, Pray, no more! Then Mrs. Thrale bid him good night, longing, she said, to call Miss Thrale first, and say, ‘So you won’t speak to my daughter? – why, she is no author.’ ”

Some of the persons sketched in Miss Burney’s journal are less known to fame than those who have been mentioned, but they are not less cleverly drawn. There is Mr. Seward, one of the Streatham habitués, and the later author of Biographiana. Mr. Seward is a brewer’s son, who dabbles in letters, and seems like an earlier real-life version of Sir Charles Coldstream in Used Up. With “Mr. Dry,” as Miss Burney calls him, she playfully proposes to collaborate in a comedy, to be entitled Everything a Bore. There is a real tragic author, Dr. John Delap, who, while as absent-minded and as ignorant of the world as Parson Adams, is engaged upon a play called Macaria,44 on the story of the wife and daughter of Hercules, which Fanny has to read and criticise – or rather eulogise. There is a very musical, precocious, and semi-French ten-year-old schoolgirl, Miss Birch, who sings sentimental airs from French operas, and says to her friends, “Que je vous adore!” – “Ah, permettez que je me mette à vos pieds!” etc., with a dying languor that is equally delightful and preposterous. And there is that finished and fascinating coquette of coquettes, Miss Sophy Streatfield of Tunbridge Wells, who knows Greek as well as Miss Elizabeth Carter or Mrs. Buller, is as lovely as Mrs. Crewe or Mrs. Sheridan, and has moreover a faculty for shedding tears so becoming to her lackadaisical cast of beauty that she is periodically required (like the water works at Vauxhall) to display her unique gift for the public delectation. Fanny’s description of Miss Streatfield’s mechanical grandes eaux is too good to be neglected. We must imagine her surrounded by attentive spectators, with Mrs. Thrale (like Mrs. Jarley) for exhibitor. “ ‘Yes, do cry a little, Sophy [in a wheedling voice], pray, do! Consider, now, you are going to-day, and it’s very hard if you won’t cry a little; indeed, S. S., you ought to cry.’ Now for the wonder of wonders. When Mrs. Thrale, in a coaxing voice, suited to a nurse soothing a baby, had run on for some time – while all the rest of us, in laughter, joined in the request – two crystal tears came into the soft eyes of the S. S., and rolled gently down her cheeks! Such a sight I never saw before, nor could I have believed.45 She offered not to conceal or dissipate them: on the contrary, she really contrived to have them seen by everybody. She looked, indeed, uncommonly handsome, for her pretty face was not like Chloe’s [in Prior], blubbered; it was smooth and elegant, and neither her features nor complexion were at all ruffled; nay, indeed, she was smiling all the time.” It is melancholy to think that a lady who possessed in such perfection the attributes of Venus Victrix, should die unmarried. Yet this was the untoward fate of the “S. S.” “Everybody’s admiration, and nobody’s choice,” as one of her friends said, she survived until 1835, an ancient maiden lady, concerning whom we do not even know whether – like Pope’s Patty Blount – she retained to the last the charm of her wonderful blue eyes.

But Miss Streatfield is not the person upon whom Miss Burney concentrates her fullest powers of description. That honour is reserved for an unidentified Mr. B – y, to whom she devotes several pages. Mr. B – y, or “The General,” as she styles him, is an Irishman. He has been a Commissary in Germany; is between sixty and seventy, but means to pass for thirty; a professed admirer of the sex, whom he invariably calls “fair females”; garnishes his speech with French tags of the most hackneyed kind; quotes often and inaccurately; and although Fanny, afraid of painting too much en noir, declares him to be worthy and moral at bottom, seems to outward view to be nothing but a blundering, prejudiced, puffing, domineering busybody and bore. He is enraged with Reynolds for charging seventy guineas “to scratch out a head”; he is enraged with Garrick for living like a person of quality; he is enraged with Agujari for getting fifty pounds for a mere song; he is equally enraged with Rauzzini because the “fair females” sigh over him, and make a man sick. But the General’s standing topic is his health; his rooted antipathy, physicians; and his favourite story – which he tells three or four times a day – in this wise: – “ ‘Some years ago,’ – he says – ‘let’s see, how many? in the year ’71 – ay, ’71, ’72 – thereabouts – I was taken very ill, and, by ill luck, I was persuaded to ask the advice of one of these Dr. Gallipots: – oh, how I hate them all! Sir, they are the vilest pickpockets, – know nothing, sir! Nothing in the world! poor ignorant mortals! and they pretend – in short, sir, I hate them all; I have suffered so much by them, sir – lost four years of the happiness of my life – let’s see, ’71, ’72, ’73, ’74 – ay, four years, sir! – mistook my case, sir! – and all that kind of thing. Why, sir, my feet swelled as big as two horses’ heads! I vow I will never consult one of these Dr. Gallipot fellows again! lost me, sir, four years of the happiness of my life! – why, I grew quite an object! – you would hardly have known me! – lost all the calves of my legs! – had not an ounce of flesh left! – and as to the rouge – why, my face was the colour of that candle! – those Gallipot fellows! – why they robbed me of four years – let me see, ’71, ’72 – ’

“And then it all goes over again!

“This story is always a-propos; if health is mentioned, it is instanced to show its precariousness; if life, to bewail what he has lost of it; if pain, to relate what he has suffered; if pleasure, to recapitulate what he has been deprived of; but if a physician is hinted at, eagerly indeed is the opportunity seized of inveighing against the whole faculty.”

There is more, especially of the General grumbling over the newspaper; but enough has been given. In all these pictures, it may be noted, Miss Burney insists upon her fidelity to fact. “I never mix truth and fiction,” she tells “Daddy” Crisp. “I have other purposes for imaginary characters than filling letters with them.” “The world, and especially the Great world, is so filled with absurdity of various sorts, now bursting forth in impertinence, now in pomposity, now giggling in silliness, and now yawning in dullness, that there is no occasion for invention to draw what is striking in every possible species of the ridiculous.” As time went on, her opportunities for study rather increased than decreased. At the beginning of 1780, as already related, the question of her comedy was again partly revived. Then there were proposals for a tour in Italy with the Thrales which was afterwards abandoned. But in April she went with her friends to Bath, making acquaintance en route, at the Bear at Devizes, with the hostess’s clever son, who afterwards became Sir Thomas Lawrence. At Bath they lodge (like Smollett’s Mr. Bramble) in the South Parade, with Allen’s Prior Park, the meadows, and “the soft flowing Avon” in view; and are speedily absorbed in the fashionable diversions of the place. Prelates were preaching at the Abbey and St. James’s Churches; there were public breakfasts in the Spring Gardens; the Pump Room was crowded with company and the Walks with promenaders; Mrs. Siddons was playing Belvidera at Mr. Palmer’s Theatre in Orchard Street; and life was one endless round of fiddles, dinners, concerts, assemblies, balls, card-parties and scandal. Miss Burney’s canvas becomes more and more crowded, and less detailed, affording space only for occasional vignettes such as the following: “In the evening we had Mrs. L – , a fat, round, panting, short-breathed old widow; and her daughter, a fubsy, good-humoured, laughing, silly, merry old maid. They are rich folks, and live together very comfortably, and the daughter sings – not in your fine Italian taste! no, that she and her mother agree to hold very cheap – but all about Daphne, and Chloe, and Damon, and Phillis, and Jockey!” Or this, – on the same page, – “Mrs. K – is a Welsh lady, of immense fortune, who has a house in the Crescent, and lives in a most magnificent style. She is about fifty, very good-humoured, well-bred, and civil, and her waist does not measure above a hogshead. She is not very deep, I must own; but what of that? If all were wits, where would be the admirers at them?”

Dr. Johnson did not take part in the Bath expedition. He would, indeed, have come; but Mrs. Thrale had discouraged his doing so, feeling sure that a watering-place life would have horribly wearied him, which is not only possible but extremely probable. Literature – that is to say the literature of 1780 – was nevertheless fairly represented in Bladud’s ancient City. First and foremost there was Mrs. Thrale’s rival, Mrs. Montagu, with her attendant train of blue-stockings; there was Anstey of the New Bath Guide, whom – as we have seen – wiseacres had credited with Evelina; there was Mrs. Susannah Dobson, the translator of Petrarch; there was Melmoth of Pliny’s Letters; there was Miss Elizabeth Carter of Epictetus; there was Lady Miller of Batheaston and the famous Frascati vase wherein – according to Macaulay – “fools were wont to put bad verses,” but which, however, at this precise moment of time, was not en fonction.46 To the failings of her confrères and consœurs, Miss Burney, it must be confessed, in her capacity of “faithful historian” is not always “very kind.” Of poor Lady Miller, who died a year later, she writes, “She is a round, plump, coarse-looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on. Her habits are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her manners very inelegant.” Of Mrs. Dobson, she reports that “though coarse, low-bred, forward, self-sufficient, and flaunting, she seems to have a strong and masculine understanding, and parts that, had they been united with modesty, or fostered by education, might have made her a shining and agreeable woman; but she has evidently kept low company, which she has risen above in literature, but not in manners.” Of Miss Carter, on the contrary, then growing old, Miss Burney says, that she “never saw age so graceful in the female sex yet, her whole face seems to beam with goodness, piety and philanthropy.” Anstey she finds not very agreeable – “shyly important, and silently proud,” and moreover unable to forget that he is the author of a popular work; while Pliny Melmoth is written down as “intolerably self-sufficient.”

Some of the Bath visitors were naval officers who – it should be observed – did not at all accept Captain Mirvan’s portrait as typical of their profession. One of them, Mrs. Thrale’s cousin, Captain Cotton, pretended “in a comical and good-humoured way” to resent it highly; and so – he told the author – did all the Captains in the Navy. Admiral Byron, too, – the Byron of the “narrative” in Don Juan, – though he admired Evelina, was “not half pleased with the Captain’s being such a brute.” But Miss Burney herself is unconvinced and impenitent. “The more I see of sea-captains, the less reason I have to be ashamed of Captain Mirvan; for they have all so irresistible a propensity to wanton mischief, – to roasting beaux, and detesting old women, that I quite rejoice I showed the book to no one ere printed, lest I should have been prevailed upon to soften his character.” What the sea-captains, and the Bathonians generally thought of their critic, is not related, save in a sentence from Thraliana: – “Miss Burney was much admired at Bath (1780); the puppy-men said, ‘She had such a drooping air and such a timid intelligence’; or ‘a timid air,’ I think it was, and ‘a drooping intelligence’; never sure was such a collection of pedantry and affectation as filled Bath when we were on that spot.” The almost imperceptible feline touch in this passage serves to remind us that, in the padlocked privacy of her personal records, Mrs. Thrale did not scruple (like Dr. Johnson) to mingle praise with blame when occasion required. From other entries in Thraliana, Fanny seems to have sometimes vexed her friend by her prudish punctiliousness and dread of patronage, as well as by her perhaps more defensible preference for her own family. “What a blockhead Dr. Burney is to be always sending for his daughter home so! what a monkey! is she not better and happier with me than she can be anywhere else?”.. “If I did not provide Fanny with every wearable – every wishable, indeed – it would not vex me to be served so; but to see the impossibility of compensating for the pleasures of St. Martin’s Street, makes one at once merry and mortified.” There were other reasons, as we shall learn presently, why Dr. Burney was anxious that Fanny should come back.47