Miss Burney at Norbury Park—Execution of the French King—Madame de Sta?l and Talleyrand at Mickleham—Miss Burney’s Impressions of M. d’Arblay—Proposed Marriage—Visit to Chesington—The Marriage takes place—A Happy Match—The General as Gardener—Madame d’Arblay resumes her Pen—Birth of a Son—‘Edwy and Elgiva’—Acquittal of Warren Hastings—Publishing Plans—The Subscription List—Publication of ‘Camilla’—Visit of the Author to Windsor—Interview with the King and Queen—A Compliment from their Majesties—The Royal Family on the Terrace—Princess Elizabeth—Great Sale of ‘Camilla’—Criticisms on the Work—Declension of Madame d’Arblay’s Style—Camilla Cottage—Wedded Happiness—Madame d’Arblay’s Comedy of ‘Love and Fashion’ withdrawn—Death of Mrs. Phillips—Straitened Circumstances—The d’Arblays go to France—Popularity of Bonaparte—Reception at the Tuileries and Review—War between England and France—Disappointments—Life at Passy—Difficulty of Correspondence—Madame d’Arblay’s Desire to return to England—Sails from Dunkirk.
On the opening of 1793, the French Constitutionalists were at the lowest point of depression and disgrace. They were reviled on all hands for having given weight and impetus to a movement which they were impotent to control. Norbury Park and Mickleham were eager that Miss Burney should see their new friends and judge them for herself. “Your French colonies,” she wrote in reply to Mrs. Locke’s pressing invitation, “are truly attractive: I am sure they must be so to have caught me—so substantially, fundamentally the foe of all their proceedings while in power.” Having tarried long enough to pay her birthday duty to the Queen, she left London at the commencement of the season, and went down to Surrey. A day or two after her arrival came the news of the French King’s execution. The excitement caused by this intelligence 294quickened the already frequent intercourse between the Lockes and Juniper Hall, and Fanny soon found herself on familiar terms with the refugees. Before the end of January, Madame de Sta?l appeared on the scene, and placed herself at the head of the little colony. Necker’s daughter had earned the rage of the Commune by her exertions to save life during the massacres of August and September; nor was it at all clear that the privilege which she enjoyed as wife of the Swedish Ambassador would avail for her protection. She had, therefore, crossed the Channel, and now joined her Constitutionalist friends at Juniper Hall, whither she was soon followed by Talleyrand, who had come to England in her company. No other party of refugees could boast two names of equal distinction, though French titles had become plentiful as blackberries in several parts of England. Madame de Sta?l paid the most flattering attention to the author of ‘Cecilia,’ whose second novel had procured her considerable reputation in Paris. A warm but short-lived intimacy between the two ladies ensued. No two persons could be less suited to one another than our timid, prudish little Burney and the brilliant and audacious French femme de lettres. The public acts of the Bishop of Autun—‘the viper that had cast his skin,’ as Walpole called him—had not inclined Fanny in his favour; but his extraordinary powers conquered her admiration, and as she listened to the exchanges of wit, criticism, and raillery between him and Madame de Sta?l, she could see for the moment no blemishes in either, and looked on the little band of exiles, some of whom could almost vie with these leaders, as rare spirits from some brighter world. The group, consisting at different times of some dozen persons,[112] 295were all most agreeable; but one, perhaps the least dazzling of the whole constellation, proved more attractive than the rest:
“M. d’Arblay,” wrote Fanny, “is one of the most singularly interesting characters that can ever have been formed. He has a sincerity, a frankness, an ingenuous openness of nature, that I have been unjust enough to think could not belong to a Frenchman. With all this, which is his military portion, he is passionately fond of literature, a most delicate critic in his own language, well versed in both Italian and German, and a very elegant poet. He has just undertaken to become my French master for pronunciation, and he gives me long daily lessons in reading. Pray expect wonderful improvements! In return, I hear him in English.”
The natural consequences followed. In a few days we read: “I have been scholaring all day, and mastering too; for our lessons are mutual, and more entertaining than can easily be conceived.” Our novelist, in short, was more romantic than any of her own creations: Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla were prosaic women compared with Frances. On the verge of forty-one, she gave away her heart to an admirer, suitable to her in age, indeed, but possessing neither fortune, occupation, nor prospects of any kind. Whatever property d’Arblay could claim, the Convention had confiscated. Fanny herself had nothing but the small annuity which she enjoyed during the Queen’s pleasure, and which might be discontinued if she married this Roman Catholic alien. Such a match, in any case, implied seclusion almost as complete as that from which she had recently escaped. This was anything but the issue that her father had been promised when he was pressed to sanction her resignation. It is not surprising, therefore, that he wrote her a remonstrance 296stronger and more decided than he had been in the habit of addressing to any of his children. But Dr. Burney stood alone. The Lockes and Phillipses were as much fascinated by their French neighbours as his enamoured daughter. Susanna was in avowed league with the enemy. Mr. Locke gave it as his opinion that two persons, with one or more babies, might very well subsist on a hundred a year. Thus assailed by opposing influences, Fanny went to deliberate in solitude at Chesington, and sauntered about the lanes where she had planned ‘Cecilia,’ wondering if the Muse would ever visit her again. The General’s pursuing letters convinced her that his grief at her hesitation was sincere and profound. He made a pilgrimage to see her, which vouched his devotion, and gained him the support of her simple hostesses, Mrs. Hamilton and Kitty Cooke, who wept at his tale of misfortunes, and learned for the first time what was meant by the French Revolution. Finally, through the mediation of his favourite Susanna, Dr. Burney was persuaded to give way and send a reluctant consent. The wedding took place on the 31st of July, 1793, in Mickleham Church, in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Locke, Captain and Mrs. Phillips, M. de Narbonne, and Captain Burney, who acted as proxy for his father. On the following day, the ceremony was repeated at the Sardinian Chapel in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, according to the rites of the Romish Church.
The marriage proved eminently happy. Dr. Burney, though he shrank from giving away the bride, was a respecter of accomplished facts, and soon became on excellent terms with his new son-in-law. The late impetuous lovers proceeded to translate their romance into the most sober prose. Love in a cottage had been the goal of their ambition. Mr. Locke had promised a site for the cottage; but as funds for building it were not 297immediately forthcoming, the pair went first into farm lodgings, afterwards into a hired house of two or three rooms at Bookham, within two miles of Mickleham and Norbury Park. D’Arblay, a man of real honour, would have left his wife, almost in their honeymoon, to fight for Louis XVII. at Toulon; but his offer of service was declined by the English Government, and thenceforth the General resigned himself to wait for better times. Like a sensible man, il cultivait son jardin. Like a man of sense, but not like a good husbandman. His wife, who, notwithstanding her happiness, seems to have lost her sense of humour very soon after matrimony, enjoyed one of her last hearty laughs at the expense of her lord:
“This sort of work is so totally new to him, that he receives every now and then some of poor Merlin’s[113] ‘disagreeable compliments’; for when Mr. Locke’s or the Captain’s gardeners favour our grounds with a visit, they commonly make known that all has been done wrong. Seeds are sowing in some parts when plants ought to be reaping, and plants are running to seed while they are thought not yet at maturity. Our garden, therefore, is not yet quite the most profitable thing in the world; but M. d’A. assures me it is to be the staff of our table and existence.
“A little, too, he has been unfortunate; for, after immense toil in planting and transplanting strawberries round our hedge here at Bookham, he has just been informed they will bear no fruit the first year, and the second we may be ‘over the hills and far away.’
“Another time, too, with great labour, he cleared a considerable compartment of weeds; and when it looked clean and well, and he showed his work to the gardener, the man said he had demolished an asparagus bed! 298M. d’A. protested, however, nothing could look more like des mauvaises herbes.
“His greatest passion is for transplanting. Everything we possess he moves from one end of the garden to another to produce better effects. Roses take place of jessamines, jessamines of honeysuckles, and honeysuckles of lilacs, till they have all danced round as far as the space allows; but whether the effect may not be a general mortality, summer only can determine.
“Such is our horticultural history. But I must not omit that we have had for one week cabbages from our own cultivation every day! Oh, you have no idea how sweet they tasted! We agreed they had a freshness and a go?t we had never met with before. We had them for too short a time to grow tired of them, because, as I have already hinted, they were beginning to run to seed before we knew they were eatable.”
While the General was gardening, Madame plied her pen, using it once more, after the lapse of a dozen years, with a definite purpose of publication. Her first composition was for a charitable object. It was an address to the ladies of England on behalf of the emigrant French clergy, who, to the number of 6,000, were suffering terrible distress all over the country. This short paper is an early example of the stilted rhetoric which gradually ruined its author’s style. Some months later we hear of a more important work being in progress. This tale, eventually published under the title of ‘Camilla,’ was commenced in the summer of 1794, though it did not see the light till July, 1796.
A son, their only child, was born on December 18, 1794, and was baptized Alexander Charles Louis Piochard, receiving the name of his father, with those of his two god-fathers, Dr. Charles Burney the younger, and the Count de Narbonne.
299An illness, which retarded the mother’s recovery, interrupted the progress of her novel, and perhaps counted for something in the failure of the tragedy with which, as we mentioned before, she tempted fortune on the stage. ‘Edwy and Elgiva’—so this drama was called—was produced at Drury Lane on March 21, 1795. It says much for the author’s repute that John Kemble warmly recommended her work to Sheridan, who seems to have accepted it without hesitation or criticism. The principal characters were undertaken by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. At the close of the performance, it was announced that the piece was withdrawn for alterations. There was a little complaint that several of the actors were careless and unprepared; but, on the whole, Madame d’Arblay bore her defeat with excellent temper. She consoled herself with the thought that her play had not been written for the theatre, nor even revised for the press; that the manuscript had been obtained from her during her confinement; and that she had been prevented by ill-health from attending rehearsals, and making the changes which, on the night of representation, even her unprofessional judgment perceived to be essential. Yet it is difficult to imagine that a tragedy by the author of ‘Evelina’ could, under any circumstances, have been successful; and we are more surprised that Sheridan was so complaisant than that Dr. Burney had always shrugged his shoulders when the Saxon drama was mentioned in his hearing.
Three years sooner the dramatist would have felt her personal mishap more keenly, as she would have welcomed with far livelier pleasure an event of a public nature which occurred shortly afterwards. On April 23, 1795, Warren Hastings was triumphantly acquitted. The incident hardly stirred her at all. She was now experiencing that 300detachment which is the portion of ladies even of social and literary tastes, when they have accomplished the great function of womanhood. Her father writes her a pleasant account of his London life, relating some characteristic condolences which he had received from Cumberland on the fate of her play, mentioning his own visit of congratulation to Hastings, and chatting about the doings at the Literary Club. The blissful mother replies in a letter, dated from the ‘Hermitage, Bookham,’ which is principally occupied with praises of rural retirement and the intelligent infant, though it ends with some words about the tragedy, and a postscript expressing satisfaction at the acquittal. Not long before, Frances Burney had repined at living in what she rather inaptly called a monastery: Frances d’Arblay is more than content with the company of her gardener and their little ‘perennial plant.’ At her marriage, she had counted on having the constant society of Susanna and her Captain, as well as the Lockes; but in June, 1795, the Phillipses remove to town, and are not missed. The Bambino not only supplied all gaps, but made his willing slave work as hard at ‘Camilla’ as, long years before, she had worked at ‘Cecilia’ under the jealous eye of her Chesington daddy.
She was now as keen as Crisp would have had her be in calculating how she could make most money by her pen. ‘I determined,’ she says, ‘when I changed my state, to set aside all my innate and original abhorrences, and to regard and use as resources myself what had always been considered as such by others. Without this idea and this resolution, our hermitage must have been madness.’ She had formerly objected to a plan, suggested for her by Burke, of publishing by subscription, with the aid of ladies, instead of booksellers, to keep lists and 301receive names of subscribers. She determined to adopt this plan in bringing out ‘Camilla.’ The Dowager Duchess of Leinster, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Crewe, and Mrs. Locke, gave her the required assistance. In issuing her proposals, she was careful not to excite the prejudice which still prevailed against works of fiction.[114] She remembered that the word novel had long stood in the way of ‘Cecilia’ at Windsor, and that the Princesses had not been allowed to read it until it had been declared innocent by a bishop. ‘Camilla,’ she warned her friends, was ‘not to be a romance, but sketches of characters and morals put in action.’ It was, therefore, announced simply as ‘a new work by the author of Evelina and Cecilia.’ The manuscript was completed by the end of 1795; but, as in the case of ‘Cecilia,’ six months more elapsed before the day of publication arrived.
Meanwhile, the subscription-list filled up nobly. When Warren Hastings heard what was going forward, we are told that “he gave a great jump, and exclaimed, ‘Well, then, now I can serve her, thank Heaven, and I will! I will write to Anderson to engage Scotland, and I will attack the East Indies myself!’” Nor was Edmund Burke less zealous than his old enemy. Protesting that for personal friends the subscription ought to be five guineas instead of one, he asked for but one copy of ‘Camilla’ in return for twenty guineas which he sent on behalf of himself, his wife, his dead brother Richard, and the son for whom he was in mourning. In the same spirit, three Misses Thrale order ten sets of the book. As we glance down the pages of the list, we meet with 302most of the survivors of the old Blue Stockings, with Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Montagu, and Hannah Moore. There, too, are many literary women of other types: Anna Barbauld, Amelia Alderson, afterwards Mrs. Opie, Mary Berry, Maria Edgeworth, Sophia and Harriet Lee.[115] There the incomparable Jane Austen, then a girl of twenty, pays tribute to a passed mistress of her future art. There also figure the names of many of the writer’s former colleagues in the royal household. Even Mrs. Schwellenberg is on the list. Perhaps, as the book was to be dedicated by permission to the Queen, this was almost a matter of course. But the subscription was, in fact, a testimonial to a general favourite from hundreds of attached friends, some of whom cared little for literature; as well as from a crowd of distant admirers, who regarded her as the most eminent female writer of her time.
The first parcel of ‘Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth,’ reached Bookham on an early day in July, 1796; and Madame d’Arblay at once set off for Windsor to present copies to the King and Queen. Immediately on her arrival, she was admitted to an audience of the Queen, during which the King entered to receive his share of the offering. The excellent monarch was in one of his most interrogative moods, and particularly curious to learn who had corrected the proofs of the volumes before him. His flattered subject confessed that she was her own reader. ‘Why, some authors have told me,’ cried he, ‘that they are the last to do that work for themselves! They know so well by heart what ought to be, that they run on without seeing what is. They have told me, besides, that a mere plodding head is best and surest for that work, and that the livelier the imagination, the less 303it should be trusted to.’ Madame had carried her husband with her to Windsor. They were detained there three days; and, as Walpole remarks with some emphasis, even M. d’Arblay was allowed to dine. Horace means, of course, that the General, who had the Cross of St. Louis, was invited to a place at Mdlle. Jacobi’s table. Just before dinner, Madame d’Arblay was called aside by her entertainer, and presented, in the name of their Majesties, with a packet containing a hundred guineas, as a ‘compliment’ in acknowledgment of her dedication.
On the following day, the Chevalier and his wife repaired to the Terrace. “The evening was so raw and cold that there was very little company, and scarce any expectation of the Royal Family; and when we had been there about half an hour the musicians retreated, and everybody was preparing to follow, when a messenger suddenly came forward, helter-skelter, running after the horns and clarionets, a............