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Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys. To them alone was
confided the name of the desolate old hall in which he hid himself like a wild
beast in a den. For them were reserved such remains of his humanity as had
survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he regarded as his daughter. He
called her his Fannikin; and she in return called him her dear Daddy. In truth,
he seems to have done much more than her real parents for the development of her
intellect; for though he was a bad poet, he was a scholar, a thinker, and an
excellent counselor. He was particularly fond of the concerts in Poland Street.
They had, indeed, been commenced at his suggestion, and when he visited London
he constantly attended them. But when he grew old, and when gout, brought on
partly by mental irritation, confined him to his retreat, he was desirous of
having a glimpse of that gay and brilliant world from which he was exiled, and
he pressed Fannikin to send him full accounts of her father's evening parties. A
few of her letters to him have been published; and it is impossible to read them
without discerning in them all the powers which afterwards produced Evelina and
Cecilia, the quickness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and
manner, the skill in grouping, the humor, often richly comic, sometimes even
farcical.
Fanny's propensity to novel-writing had for a time been kept down. It now rose
up stronger than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales which had perished
in the flames, were still present to the eye of her mind. One favorite story, in
particular, haunted her imagination. It was about a certain Caroline Evelyn, a
beautiful damsel who made an unfortunate love-match, and died, leaving an infant
daughter. Frances began to image to herself the various scenes, tragic and
comic, through which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side,
meanly connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings,
good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid, young orphan; a
coarse sea captain; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb court dress;
another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow Hill, and tricked out
in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball; an old woman, all wrinkles and
rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a miss of seventeen, and screaming in a
dialect made up of vulgar French and vulgar English; a poet lean and ragged,
with a broad Scotch accent. By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and
stronger consistence; the impulse which urged Frances to write became
irresistible; and the result was the History of Evelina.
Then came, naturally enough, a wish, mingled with many fears, to appear before
the public; for, timid as Frances was, and bashful, and altogether unaccustomed
to hear her own praises, it is clear that she wanted neither a strong passion
for distinction, nor a just confidence in her own powers. Her scheme was to
become, if possible, a candidate for fame, without running any risk of disgrace.
She had not money to bear the expense of printing. It was therefore necessary
that some bookseller should be induced to take the risk; and such a bookseller
was not readily found. Dodsley refused even to look at the manuscript unless he
were entrusted with the name of the author. A publisher in Fleet Street, named
Lowndes, was more complaisant. Some correspondence took place between this
person and Miss Burney, who took the name of Grafton, and desired that the
letters addressed to her might be left at the Orange Coffee-house. But, before
the bargain was finally struck, Fanny thought it her duty to obtain her father's
consent. She told him that she had written a book, that she wished to have his
permission to publish it anonymously, but that she hoped that he would not
insist upon seeing it. What followed may serve to illustrate what we meant when
we said that Dr. Burney was as bad a father as so good-hearted a man could
possibly be. It never seems to have crossed his mind that Fanny was about to
take a step on which the whole happiness of her life might depend, a step which
might raise her to an honorable eminence, or cover her with ridicule and
contempt. Several people had already been trusted, and strict concealment was
therefore not to be expected. On so grave an occasion, it was surely his duty to
give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, to prevent her
from exposing herself if her book were a bad one, and, if it were a good one, to
see that the terms which she had made with the publisher were likely to be
beneficial to her. Instead of this, he only stared, burst out a-laughing, kissed
her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and never even asked the name of her
work. The contract with Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were given
for the copyright, and were accepted by Fanny with delight. Her father's
inexcusable neglect of his duty happily caused her no worse evil than the loss
of twelve or fifteen hundred pounds.
After many delays Evelina appeared in January 1778. Poor Fanny was sick with
terror, and durst hardly stir out of doors. Some days passed before anything was
heard of the book. It had, indeed, nothing but its own merits to push it into
public favor. Its author was unknown. The house by which it was published was
not, we believe, held in high estimation. No body of partisans had been engaged
to applaud. The better class of readers expected little from a novel about a
young lady's entrance into the world. There was, indeed, at that time a
disposition among the most respectable people to condemn novels generally: nor
was this disposition by any means without excuse; for works of that sort were
then almost always silly, and very frequently wicked.
Soon, however, the first faint accents of praise began to be heard. The keepers
of the circulating libraries reported that everybody was asking for Evelina, and
that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author. Then came a favorable
notice in the London Review; then another still more favorable in the Monthly.
And now the book found its way to tables which had seldom been polluted by
marble-covered volumes. Scholars and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the
crowd of romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not
ashamed to own that they could not tear themselves away from Evelina. Fine
carriages and rich liveries, not often seen east of Temple Bar, were attracted
to the publisher's shop in Fleet Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the
author, but was himself as much in the dark as any of the questioners. The
mystery, however, could not remain a mystery long. It was known to brothers and
sisters, aunts and cousins: and they were far too proud and too happy to be
discreet. Dr. Burney wept over the book in rapture. Daddy Crisp shook his fist
at his Fannikin in affectionate anger at not having been admitted to her
confidence. The truth was whispered to Mrs. Thrale; and then it began to spread
fast.
The book had been admired while it was ascribed to men of letters long
conversant with the world, and accustomed to composition. But when it was known
that a reserved, silent young woman had produced the best work of fiction that
had appeared since the death of Smollett, the acclamations were redoubled. What
she had done was, indeed, extraordinary. But, as usual, various reports improved
the story till it became miraculous. Evelina, it was said, was the work of a
girl of seventeen. Incredible as this tale was, it continued to be repeated down
to our own time. Frances was too honest to confirm it. Probably she was too much
a woman to contradict it; and it was long before any of her detractors thought
of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in
the generation which witnessed her first appearance. There was the envious
Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens, and the polecat John
Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of
Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her
age. That truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer of our own
time, whose spite she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials for a
worthless edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, some sheets of which our readers
have doubtless seen round parcels of better books.
But we must return to our story. The triumph was complete. The timid and obscure
girl found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame. Great men, on whom she had
gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed her with admiration,
tempered by the tenderness due to her sex and age. Burke, Windham, Gibbon,
Reynolds, Sheridan, were among her most ardent eulogists. Cumberland
acknowledged her merit, after his fashion, by biting his lips and wriggling in
his chair whenever her name was mentioned. But it was at Streatham that she
tasted, in the highest perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the
sweets of friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of prosperity and
popularity, with gay spirits, quick wit, showy though superficial acquirements,
pleasing though not refined manners, a singularly amiable temper, and a loving
heart, felt towards Fanny as towards a younger sister. With the Thrales Johnson
was domesticated. He was an old friend of Dr. Burney; but he had probably taken
little notice of Dr. Burney's daughters, and Fanny, we imagine, had never in her
life dared to speak to him, unless to ask whether he wanted a nineteenth or a
twentieth cup of tea. He was charmed by her tale, and preferred it to the novels
of Fielding, to whom, indeed, he had always been grossly unjust. He did not,
indeed, carry his partiality so far as to place Evelina by the side of Clarissa
and Sir Charles Grandison; yet he said that his little favorite had done enough
to have made even Richardson feel uneasy. With Johnson's cordial approbation of
the book was mingled a fondness, half gallant half paternal, for the writer; and
this fondness his age and character entitled him to show without restraint. He
began by putting her hand to his lips. But he soon clasped her in his huge arms,
and implored her to be a good girl. She was his pet, his dear love, his dear
little Burney, his little character-monger. At one time, he broke forth in
praise of the good taste of her caps. At another time he insisted on teaching
her Latin. That, with all his coarseness and irritability, he was a man of
sterling benevolence, has long been acknowledged. But how gentle and endearing
his deportment could be, was not known till the Recollections of Madame D'Arblay
were published.
We have mentioned a few of the most eminent of those who paid their homage to
the author of Evelina. The crowd of inferior admirers would require a catalogue
as long as that in the second book of the Iliad. In that catalogue would be Mrs.
Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things, and Seward, much given to yawning, and
Baretti, who slew the man in the Haymarket, and Paoli, talking broken English,
and Langton, taller by the head than any other member of the club, and Lady
Millar, who kept a vase wherein fools were wont to put bad verses, and
Jerningham who wrote verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar, and Dr.
Franklin, not, as some have dreamed, the great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who
could not then have paid his respects to Miss Burney without much risk of being
hanged, drawn and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the less,
Aias Meion outi todos ge dsos Telamonios Aias Alla polu meion.
It would not have been surprising if such success had turned even a strong head,
and corrupted even a generous and affectionate nature. But, in the Diary, we can
find no trace of any feeling inconsistent with a truly modest and amiable
disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof that Frances enjoyed with an
intense, though a troubled joy, the honors which her genius had won; but it is
equally clear that her happiness sprang from the happiness of her father, her
sister, and her dear Daddy Crisp. While flattered by the great, the opulent, and
the learned, while followed along the Steyne at Brighton, and the Pantiles at
Tunbridge Wells, by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart seems to have been
still with the little domestic circle in Saint Martin's Street. If she recorded
with minute diligence all the compliments, delicate and coarse, which she heard
wherever she turned, she recorded them for the eyes of two or three persons who
had loved her from infancy, who had loved her in obscurity, and to whom her fame
gave the purest and most exquisite delight. Nothing can be more unjust than to
confound these outpourings of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the
egotism of a bluestocking, who prates to all who come near her about her own
novel or her own volume of sonnets.
It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney's first venture should
tempt her to try a second. Evelina, though it had raised her fame, had added
nothing to her fortune. Some of her friends urged her to write for the stage.
Johnson promised to give her his advice as to the composition. Murphy, who was
supposed to understand the temper of the pit as well as any man of his time,
undertook to instruct her as to stage effect. Sheridan declared that he would
accept a play from her without even reading it. Thus encouraged, she wrote a
comedy named The Witlings. Fortunately it was never acted or printed. We can, we
think, easily perceive, from the little which is said on the subject in the
Diary, that The Witlings would have been damned, and that Murphy, and Sheridan
thought so, though they were too polite to say so. Happily Frances had a friend
who was not afraid to give her pain. Crisp, wiser for her than he had been for
himself, read the manuscript in his lonely retreat, and manfully told her that
she had failed, that to remove blemishes here and there would be useless, that
the piece had abundance of wit but no interest, that it was bad as a whole, that
it would remind every reader of the Femmes Savantes, which, strange to say, she
had never read, and that she could not sustain so close a comparison with
Moliere. This opinion, in which Dr. Burney concurred, was sent to Frances, in
what she called "a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle." But she had too much
sense not to know that it was better to be hissed and cat-called by her Daddy,
than by a whole sea of heads in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre: and she had too
good a heart not to be grateful for so rare an act of friendship. She returned
an answer, which shows how well she deserved to have a judicious, faithful, and
affectionate adviser. "I intend," she wrote, "to console myself for your censure
by this greatest proof I have ever received of the sincerity, candor, and, let
me add, esteem, of my dear daddy. And as I happen to love myself more than my
play, this consolation is not a very trifling one. This, however, seriously I do
believe, that when my two daddies put their heads together to concert that
hissing, groaning, cat-calling epistle they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor
little Miss Bayes as she could possibly do for herself. You see I do not attempt
to repay your frankness with an air of pretended carelessness. But, though
somewhat disconcerted just now, I will promise not to let my vexation live out
another day. Adieu, my dear daddy, I won't be mortified, and I won't be downed,
but I will be proud to find I have, out of my own family, as well as in it, a
friend who loves me well enough to speak plain truth to me."
Frances now turned from her dramatic schemes to an undertaking far better suited
to her talents. She determined to write a new tale, on a plan excellently
contrived for the display of the powers in which her superiority to other
writers lay. It was in truth a grand and various picture-gallery, which
presented to the eye a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong
peculiar feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and the
pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity,
supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at everything, and a Heraclitus to
lament over everything. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months was
completed. It wanted something of the simplicity which had been among the most
attractive charms of Evelina; but it furnished ample proof that the four years,
which had elapsed since Evelina appeared, had not been unprofitably spent. Those
who saw Cecilia in manuscript pronounced it the best novel of the age. Mrs.
Thrale laughed and wept over it. Crisp was even vehement in applause, and
offered to ensure the rapid and complete success of the book for half-a-crown.
What Miss Burney received for the copyright is not mentioned in the Diary; but
we have observed several expressions from which we infer that the sum was
considerable. That the sale would be great nobody could doubt; and Frances now
had shrewd and experienced advisers, who would not suffer her to wrong herself.
We have been told that the publishers gave her two thousand pounds, and we have
no doubt that they might have given a still larger sum without being losers.
Cecilia was published in the summer of 1782. The curiosity of the town was
intense. We have been informed by persons who remember those days that no
romance of Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently awaited, or more eagerly
snatched from the counters of the booksellers. High as public expectation was,
it was amply satisfied; and Cecilia was placed, by general acclamation, among
the classical novels of England.
Miss Burney was now thirty. Her youth had been singularly prosperous; but clouds
soon began to gather over that clear and radiant dawn. Events deeply painful to
a heart so kind as that of Frances followed each other in rapid succession. She
was first called upon to attend the deathbed of her best friend, Samuel Crisp.
When she returned to Saint Martin's Street, after performing this melancholy
duty, she was appalled by hearing that Johnson had been struck by paralysis;
and, not many months later, she parted from him for the last time with solemn
tenderness. He wished to look on her once more; and on the day before his death
she long remained in tears on the stairs leading to his bedroom, in the hope
that she might be called in to receive his blessing. He was then sinking fast,
and though he sent her an affectionate message, was unable to see her. But this
was not the worst. There are separations far more cruel than those which are
made by death. She might weep with proud affection for Crisp and Johnson. She
had to blush as well as to weep for Mrs. Thrale.
Life, however, still smiled upon Frances. Domestic happiness, friendship,
independence, leisure, letters, all these things were hers; and she flung them
all away.
Among the distinguished persons to whom she had been introduced, none appears to
have stood higher in her regard than Mrs. Delany. This lady was an interesting
and venerable relic of a past age. She was the niece of George Granville, Lord
Lansdowne, who, in his youth, exchanged verses and compliments with Edmund
Waller, and who was among the first to applaud the opening genius of Pope. She
had married Dr. Delany, a man known to his contemporaries as a profound scholar
and an eloquent preacher, but remembered in our time chiefly as one of that
small circle in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tortured by disappointed
ambition, by remorse, and by the approaches of madness, sought for amusement and
repose. Doctor Delany had long been dead. His widow, nobly descended, eminently
accomplished, and retaining, in spite of the infirmities of advanced age, the
vigor of her faculties and the serenity of her temper, enjoyed and deserved the
favor of the royal family. She had a pension of three hundred a year; and a
house at Windsor, belonging to the Crown, had been fitted up for her
accommodation. At this house the King and Queen sometimes called, and found a
very natural pleasure in thus catching an occasional glimpse of the private life
of English families.
In December 1785, Miss Burney was on a visit to Mrs. Delany at Windsor. The
dinner was over. The old lady was taking a nap. Her grandniece, a little girl of
seven, was playing at some Christmas game with the visitors, when the door
opened, and a stout gentleman entered unannounced, with a star on his breast,
and "What? what? what?" in his mouth. A cry of "The King!" was set up. A general
scampering followed. Miss Burney owns that she could not have been more
terrified if she had seen a ghost. But Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty
to her royal friend, and the disturbance was quieted. Frances was then
presented, and underwent a long examination and cross-examination about all that
she had written and all that she meant to write. The Queen soon made her
appearance and his Majesty repeated, for the benefit of his consort, the
information which he had extracted from Miss Burney. The good-nature of the
royal pair might have softened even the authors of the Probationary Odes, and
could not but be delightful to a young lady who had been brought up a Tory. In a
few days the visit was repeated. Miss Burney was more at ease than before. His
Majesty, instead of seeking for information, condescended to impart it, and
passed sentence on many great writers, English and foreign. Voltaire he
pronounced a monster. Rousseau he liked rather better. "But was there ever," he
cried, "such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so. But
what think you? What? Is there not sad stuff? What? What?"
The next day Frances enjoyed the privilege of listening to some equally valuable
criticism uttered by the Queen touching Goethe and Klopstock, and might have
learned an important lesson of economy from the mode in which her Majesty's
library had been formed. "I picked the book up on a stall," said the Queen. "Oh,
it is amazing what good books there are on stalls!" Mrs. Delany, who seems to
have understood from these words that her Majesty was in the habit of exploring
the booths of Moorfields and Holywell Street in person, could not suppress an
exclamation of surprise. "Why," said the Queen, "I don't pick them up myself.
But I have a servant very clever; and, if they are not to be had at the
booksellers, they are not for me more than for another." Miss Burney describes
this conversation as delightful; and, indeed, we cannot wonder that, with her
literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing in how magnificent a manner
the greatest lady in the land encouraged literature.
The truth is, that Frances was fascinated by the condescending kindness of the
two great personages to whom she had been presented. Her father was even more
infatuated than herself. The result was a step of which we cannot think with
patience, but which, recorded as it is, with all its consequences, in these
volumes, deserves at least this praise, that it has furnished a most impressive
warning.
A German lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one of the keepers of the Queen's
robes, retired about this time; and her Majesty offered the vacant post to Miss
Burney. When we consider that Miss Burney was decidedly the most popular writer
of fictitious narrative then living, that competence, if not opulence, was
within her reach, and that she was more than usually happy in her domestic
circle, and when we compare the sacrifice which she was invited to make with the
remuneration which was held out to her, we are divided between laughter and
indignation.
What was demanded of her was that she should consent to be almost as completely
separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost
as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to goal for a libel; that with
talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should
now be employed only in mixing snuff and sticking pins; that she should be
summoned by a waiting-woman's bell to a waiting-woman's duties; that she should
pass her whole life under the restraints of a paltry etiquette, should sometimes
fast till she was ready to swoon with hunger, should sometimes stand till her
knees gave way with fatigue; that she should not dare to speak or move without
considering how her mistress might like her words and gestures. Instead of those
distinguished men and women, the flower of all political parties, with whom she
had been in the habit of mixing on terms of equal friendship, she was to have
for her perpetual companion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from
Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and of temper which,
naturally savage, had now been exasperated by disease. Now and then, indeed,
poor Frances might console herself for the loss of Burke's and Windham's
society, by joining in the "celestial colloquy sublime" of his Majesty's
Equerries.
And what was the consideration for which she was to sell herself to this
slavery? A peerage in her own right? A pension of two thousand a year for life?
A seventy-four for her brother in the navy? A deanery for her brother in the
church? Not so. The price at which she was valued was her board, her lodging,
the attendance of a man-servant, and two hundred pounds a year.
The man who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells his birthright for a mess
of pottage, is unwise. But what shall we say of him who parts with his
birthright, and does not get even the pottage in return? It is not necessary to
inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation for the sacrifice of bodily
and mental freedom; for Frances Burney paid for leave to be a prisoner and a
menial. It was evidently understood as one of the terms of her engagement, that,
while she was a member of the royal household, she was not to appear before the
public as an author; and, even had there been no such understanding, her
avocations were such as left her no leisure for any considerable intellectual
effort. That her place was incompatible with her literary pursuits was indeed
frankly acknowledged by the King when she resigned. "She has given up," he said,
"five years of her pen." That during those five years she might, without painful
exertion, without any exertion that would not have been a pleasure, have earned
enough to buy an annuity for life much larger than the precarious salary which
she received at Court, is quite certain. The same income, too, which in Saint
Martin's Street would have afforded her every comfort, must have been found
scanty at Saint James's. We cannot venture to speak confidently of the price of
millinery and jewellery; but we are greatly deceived if a lady, who had to
attend Queen Charlotte on many public occasions, could possibly save a farthing
out of a salary of two hundred a year. The principle of the arrangement was, in
short, simply this, that Frances Burney should become a slave, and should be
rewarded by being made a beggar.
With what object their Majesties brought her to their palace, we must own
ourselves unable to conceive. Their object could not be to encourage her
literary exertions; for they took her from a situation in which it was almost
certain that she would write, and put her into a situation in which it was
impossible for her to write. Their object could not be to promote her pecuniary
interest; for they took her from a situation where she was likely to become
rich, and put her into a situation in which she could not but continue poor.
Their object could not be to obtain an eminently useful waiting-maid; for it is
clear that, though Miss Burney was the only woman of her time who could have
described the death of Harrel, thousands might have been found more expert in
tying ribands and filling snuff-boxes. To grant her a pension on the civil list
would have been an act of judicious liberality, honorable to the Court. If this
was impracticable, the next best thing was to let her alone. That the King and
Queen meant her nothing but kindness, we do not in the least doubt. But their
kindness was the kindness of persons raised high above the mass of mankind,
accustomed to be addressed with profound deference, accustomed to see all who
approach them mortified by their coldness and elated by their smiles. They
fancied that to be noticed by them, to be near them, to serve them, was in
itself a kind of happiness; and that Frances Burney ought to be full of
gratitude for being permitted to purchase, by the surrender of health, wealth,
freedom, domestic affection, and literary fame, the privilege of standing behind
a royal chair, and holding a pair of royal gloves.
And who can blame them? Who can wonder that princes should be under such a
delusion, when they are encouraged in it by the very persons who suffer from it
most cruelly? Was it to be expected that George the Third and Queen Charlotte
should understand the interest of Frances Burney better, or promote it with more
zeal than herself and her father? No deception was practiced. The conditions of
the house of bondage were set forth with all simplicity. The hook was presented
without a bait; the net was spread in sight of the bird: and the naked hook was
greedily swallowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle herself in the
net.
It is not strange indeed that an invitation to Court should have caused a
fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. But it was the duty of
the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on one side were only
infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, peace of mind,
affluence, social enjoyments, honorable distinctions. Strange to say, the only
hesitation was on the part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of himself
with delight. Not such are the raptures of a Circassian father who has sold his
pretty daughter well to a Turkish slave-merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable
man, a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the world. But he seems
to have thought that going to Court was like going to heaven; that to see
princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision; that the exquisite
felicity enjoyed by royal persons was not confined to themselves, but was
communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflection to all who were suffered to
stand at their toilettes, or to bear their trains. He overruled all his
daughter's objections, and himself escorted her to her prison. The door closed.
The key was turned. She, looking back with tender regret on all that she had
left, and forward with anxiety and terror to the new life on which she was
entering, was unable to speak or stand; and he went on his way homeward
rejoicing in her marvelous prosperity.
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