Chelsea Hospital—Tour to Devonshire—Visit to Bath—Reminiscences—The Duchess of Devonshire—Return Home—Literary Pursuits resumed—Attempts at Tragedy—Social Engagements—Death of Sir Joshua Reynolds—A Public Breakfast at Mrs. Montagu’s—Mrs. Hastings—Mr. Boswell—Visit to Mrs. Crewe—The Burke Family—Meeting with Edmund Burke—Burke and the French Revolution—Charles Fox—Lord Loughborough—Mr. Erskine—His Egotism—The French Refugees in England—Bury St. Edmunds—Madame de Genlis—The Duke de Liancourt—The Settlement at Mickleham—Count de Narbonne—The Chevalier d’Arblay—Visit of Miss Burney to Norfolk—Death of Mr. Francis—Return to London.
Miss Burney returned to her father, who, with his wife and his youngest daughter Sarah, was then living in Chelsea Hospital. The family at this time occupied rooms on the ground-floor, which not long afterwards were exchanged for others in the top story. After resting three weeks at home, she set out on a tour to the southwest of England, under the care of her friend Mrs. Ord. The travellers journeyed by easy stages to Sidmouth, taking Stonehenge on their way, and stopping at the principal places which had been visited by the Court in the summer of 1789. Having spent eight or nine days on the coast of South Devon, they turned northwards, and proceeded by the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to Bath. That most famous of English watering-places was greatly altered from what it had been when Fanny passed the season there with the Thrales eleven years before. The circumference, she tells us, had trebled, though the new buildings were scattered, and most of them unfinished. 279“The hills are built up and down, and the vales so stocked with streets and houses, that, in some places, from the ground-floor on one side a street, you cross over to the attic of your opposite neighbour. It looks a town of hills, and a hill of towns.” But the palaces of white stone rising up on every hand interested her less than the old haunts with which she was familiar—the North Parade, where she had lived with Mrs. Thrale; the houses in the Circus, where she had visited Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Cholmley; the Belvedere, where she had talked with Mrs. Byron and Lord Mulgrave. Nearly a month slipped away in reviving old recollections, and in making some new acquaintances to replace the many that had disappeared. The retired official was much flattered by an introduction to the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, and amused herself with the thought that her first visit after leaving the Queen should be paid to the greatest lady of the Opposition. Another month was divided between Mickleham and Norbury Park, and by the middle of October Miss Burney was again at Chelsea.
‘We shall expect you here to dinner by four,’ wrote her father. ‘The great grubbery will be in nice order for you, as well as the little; both have lately had many accessions of new books. The ink is good, good pens in plenty, and the most pleasant and smooth paper in the world!
‘“Come, Rosalind, oh, come and see
What quires are in store for thee!”’
Are we wrong in thinking that these words express Dr. Burney’s anxiety to see his daughter once more working as she had not worked since the last sheet of ‘Cecilia’ was corrected for the press? In the succeeding pages of the Diary we find more than one passage where the good 280man’s eagerness for some new fruit of her talents is plainly confessed. Friends had united to persuade him that he had but to recall her from the royal dressing-room to her study, and fresh laurels, with abundant riches, would surely and speedily be hers. He was naturally impatient for some fulfilment of these prophecies. Rosalind appeared: she wore out the quills, and covered the quires; but nothing came of her activity. Her health was now fairly restored, and, in the first ardour of composition, she felt that she could employ two pens almost incessantly. Unhappily, her industry was devoted to a mistaken purpose. She had brought with her from Windsor the rough drafts of two tragedies, and without pausing to correct these, she occupied herself in writing a third. A less hopeful enterprise could not have been conceived. She had before her eyes the warning example of Mr. Crisp’s failure. Had this old friend been living, he would doubtless have been wiser for his pupil than he was for himself. It is certain that Nature had not designed the Siddons for tragedy more distinctly than she intended Frances Burney for comedy. With the exception of one or two powerful scenes, such as the death of Harrel, Fanny’s chief successes had been won in the department of humorous writing. It was her misfortune that she had at this moment no literary adviser on whose judgment she could rely. Her acquaintance with Arthur Murphy seems to have ceased; the Hastings trial, and the debates on the Regency, had cooled her relations with Sheridan and Burke. ‘Mr. Sheridan,’ she wrote, ‘I have no longer any ambition to be noticed by.’ Her regard for Burke continued; but she had not yet met him since her deliverance from captivity. Dr. Burney was told only that she was engaged upon a play, and was made to understand that he must wait until it was 281finished before he was indulged with a sight of the manuscript. Towards the end of 1791 she writes: ‘I go on with various writings, at different times, and just as the humour strikes. I have promised my dear father a Christmas-box and a New Year’s gift; and therefore he now kindly leaves me to my own devices.’ We do not find that the anxious parent received either of the promised presents. The daughter’s fit of application seems to have soon died away: in the early part of 1792, her father was ill and occupied with his ailments; and by the time he was able to think of other things, Fanny had ceased to prepare for coming before the public. Her tragedies slept in her desk for three years: when, at the end of that period, the earliest of them, which had been begun at Kew and finished at Windsor, was put on the stage, it was produced without revision, and failed—as, no doubt, it would have done under any circumstances.
As Miss Burney’s strength returned, she seems to have fallen back into the indolent life of visiting and party-going which she was leading when she joined the Royal Household. She saw once more the failing Sir Joshua, who had worked at her deliverance as if she had been his own daughter; though he passed from the scene before she found an opportunity of thanking him for his exertions. She attended a great public breakfast given by Mrs. Montagu, whose famous Feather Room and dining-room were thronged by hundreds of guests, and looked like a full Ranelagh by daylight. At this entertainment she met Mrs. Hastings, whose splendid dress, loaded with ornaments, gave her the appearance of an Indian princess. At another breakfast Fanny encountered Boswell, who had excited her displeasure by his revelation of Johnson’s infirmities, and who provoked her again by 282telling anecdotes of the great Samuel, and acting them with open buffoonery. During the Session, she spent much of her time at the Hastings trial, listening to the defence conducted by Law, Dallas, and Plomer, and rallying Windham on the sarcasms aimed by Law at the heated rhetoric of Burke. The great orator himself she rarely encountered on these occasions. In June, 1792, however, she spent a day with him at Mrs. Crewe’s house on Hampstead Hill.
“The villa at Hampstead is small, but commodious. We were received by Mrs. Crewe with much kindness. The room was rather dark, and she had a veil to her bonnet, half down, and with this aid she looked still in a full blaze of beauty.... She is certainly, in my eyes, the most completely a beauty of any woman I ever saw. I know not, even now, any female in her first youth who could bear the comparison. She uglifies everything near her. Her son was with her. He is just of age, and looks like her elder brother! he is a heavy, old-looking young man. He is going to China with Lord Macartney.[108]
“My former friend, young Burke, was also there. I was glad to renew acquaintance with him; though I could see some little strangeness in him: this, however, completely wore off before the day was over. Soon after entered Mrs. Burke, Miss French, a niece, and Mr. Richard Burke, the comic, humorous, bold, queer brother of the Mr. Burke.... Mrs. Burke was just what I have always seen her, soft, gentle, reasonable, and obliging; and we met, I think, upon as good terms as if so many years had not parted us.
“At length Mr. Burke appeared, accompanied by Mr. Elliot. He shook hands with my father as soon as he 283had paid his devoirs to Mrs. Crewe, but he returned my curtsey with so distant a bow, that I concluded myself quite lost with him, from my evident solicitude in poor Mr. Hastings’s cause. I could not wish that less obvious, thinking as I think of it; but I felt infinitely grieved to lose the favour of a man whom, in all other articles, I so much venerate, and whom, indeed, I esteem and admire as the very first man of true genius now living in this country.
“Mrs. Crewe introduced me to Mr. Elliot: I am sure we were already personally known to each other, for I have seen him perpetually in the Managers’ Box, whence, as often, he must have seen me in the Great Chamberlain’s. He is a tall, thin young man, plain in face, dress, and manner, but sensible, and possibly much besides; he was reserved, however, and little else appeared.
“The moment I was named, to my great joy I found Mr. Burke had not recollected me. He is more near-sighted considerably than myself. ‘Miss Burney!’ he now exclaimed, coming forward, and quite kindly taking my hand, ‘I did not see you;’ and then he spoke very sweet words of the meeting, and of my looking far better than ‘while I was a courtier,’ and of how he rejoiced to see that I so little suited that station. ‘You look,’ cried he, ‘quite renewed, revived, disengaged; you seemed, when I conversed with you last at the trial, quite altered; I never saw such a change for the better as quitting a Court has brought about!’
“Ah! thought I, this is simply a mistake from reasoning according to your own feelings. I only seemed altered for the worse at the trial, because I there looked coldly and distantly, from distaste and disaffection to your proceedings; and I here look changed for the better, only because I here meet you without the chill of disapprobation, 284and with the glow of my first admiration of you and your talents!
“Mrs. Crewe gave him her place, and he sat by me, and entered into a most animated conversation upon Lord Macartney and his Chinese expedition, and the two Chinese youths who were to accompany it. These last he described minutely, and spoke of the extent of the undertaking in high, and perhaps fanciful, terms, but with allusions and anecdotes intermixed, so full of general information and brilliant ideas, that I soon felt the whole of my first enthusiasm return, and with it a sensation of pleasure that made the day delicious to me.
“After this my father joined us, and politics took the lead. He spoke then with an eagerness and a vehemence that instantly banished the graces, though it redoubled the energies, of his discourse. ‘The French Revolution,’ he said, ‘which began by authorizing and legalizing injustice, and which by rapid steps had proceeded to every species of despotism except owning a despot, was now menacing all the universe and all mankind with the most violent concussion of principle and order.’ My father heartily joined, and I tacitly assented to his doctrines, though I feared not with his fears.
“One speech I must repeat, for it is explanatory of his conduct, and nobly explanatory. When he had expatiated upon the present dangers, even to English liberty and property, from the contagion of havoc and novelty, he earnestly exclaimed, ‘This it is that has made ME an abettor and supporter of Kings! Kings are necessary, and, if we would preserve peace and prosperity, we must preserve THEM. We must all put our shoulders to the work! Ay, and stoutly, too!’...
“At dinner Mr. Burke sat next Mrs. Crewe, and I had the happiness to be seated next Mr. Burke; and my other neighbour was his amiable son.
285“The dinner, and the dessert when the servants were removed, were delightful. How I wish my dear Susanna and Fredy[109] could meet this wonderful man when he is easy, happy, and with people he cordiall............