His radiant face to be obscur’d
By baleful mists and vapours dense,
All nature mourns with grief intense:
But the refulgent God of Day
Soon shews himself in bright array;
And as his glorious visage clears,
The globe itself in smiles appears.”
“Lynn, 1753.”
The last act of Mr. Burney in relinquishing his residence in Norfolk, was drawing up a petition to Lord Orford to allow park-room in the Haughton grounds, for the rest of its life, to his excellent, faithful mare, the intelligent Peggy; whose truly useful services he could not bear to requite, according to the unfeeling usage of the many, by selling her to hard labour in the decline of her existence.
Lord Orford good-humouredly complied with the request; and the justly-prized Peggy, after enjoying for several years the most perfect ease and freedom, died the death of old age, in Haughton Park.
LONDON.
In 1760, Mr. Burney, with his wife and young family, returned to London; but no longer to the city, which has the peculiar fate, whilst praised and reverenced by the many who to its noble encouragement owe their first dawn of prosperity, of being almost always set aside and relinquished, when that prosperity is effected. Is it that Fortune, like the sun, while it rises, cold, though of fairest promise, in the East, must ever, in its more luxuriant splendour, set in the West?
The new establishment was in Poland-street; which was not then, as it is now, a sort of street that, like the rest of its neighbourhood, appears to be left in the lurch. House-fanciers were not yet as fastidious as they are become at present, from the endless variety of new habitations. Oxford-road, as, at that time, Oxford-street was called, into which Poland-street terminated, had little on its further side but fields, gardeners’ grounds, or uncultivated suburbs. Portman, Manchester, Russel, Belgrave squares, Portland-place, &c. &c., had not yet a single stone or brick laid, in signal of intended erection: while in plain Poland-street, Mr. Burney, then, had successively for his neighbours, the Duke of Chandos, Lady Augusta Bridges, the Hon. John Smith and the Miss Barrys, Sir Willoughby and the Miss Astons; and, well noted by Mr. Burney’s little family, on the visit of his black majesty to England, sojourned, almost immediately opposite to it, the Cherokee King.
The opening of this new plan of life, was as successful to Mr. Burney as its projection had been promising. Pupils of rank, wealth, and talents, were continually proposed to him; and, in a very short time, he had hardly an hour unappropriated to some fair disciple.
Lady Tankerville, amongst the rest, resumed her lessons with her early master, obligingly submitting her time to his convenience, be it what it might, rather than change her first favourite instructor. Ere long, however, she resided almost wholly abroad, having attached herself with enthusiastic fervour to the Princess Amelia, sister to Frederick the Great of Prussia. The Countess even accepted the place of Dame d’Atour to that accomplished princess; whose charms, according to poetical record, banished for a while their too daring admirer, Voltaire, from the Court of Berlin.
This enterprising Countess retained her spirit of whim, singularity, and activity, through a long life; for when, many years later, she returned to her own country, quite old, while Dr. Burney had not yet reached the zenith of his fame, she again applied to him for musical tuition; and when he told her, with regret, that his day was completely filled up, from eight o’clock in the morning; “Come to me, then,” cried she, with vivacity, “at seven!” which appointment literally, and twice a week, took place.
All the first friends of Mr. Burney were happy to renew with him their social intercourse. Mrs. Greville, when in town, was foremost in eagerly seeking his Esther; and Mr. Greville met again his early favourite with all his original impetuosity of regard: while their joint newer friends of Norfolk, Mrs. Stephen Allen and Miss Dorothy Young in particular, warmly sustained an unremitting communication by letters: and Lords Orford, Eglinton, and March, General Lord Townshend, Charles Boone, and many others, sought this enlivening couple, with an unabating sense of their worth, upon every occasion that either music or conversation offered, for accepting, or desiring, admission to their small parties: for so uncommon were the powers of pleasing which they possessed, that all idea of condescension in their worldly superiors seemed superseded, if not annihilated, by personal eagerness to enjoy their rare society.
ESTHER.
Thus glided away, in peace, domestic joys, improvement, and prosperity, this first — and last! happy year of the new London residence. In the course of the second, a cough, with alarming symptoms, menaced the breast of the life and soul of the little circle; consisting now of six children, clinging with equal affection around each parent chief.
She rapidly grew weaker and worse. Her tender husband hastened her to Bristol Hotwells, whither he followed her upon his first possible vacation; and where, in a short time, he had the extasy to believe that he saw her recover, and to bring her back to her fond little family.
But though hope was brightened, expectation was deceived! stability of strength was restored no more; and, in the ensuing autumn, she was seized with an inflammatory disorder with which her delicate and shaken frame had not force to combat. No means were left unessayed to stop the progress of danger; but all were fruitless! and, after less than a week of pain the most terrific, the deadly ease of mortification suddenly, awfully succeeded to the most excruciating torture.
Twelve stated hours of morbid bodily repose became, from that tremendous moment of baleful relief, the counted boundary of her earthly existence.
The wretchedness of her idolizing husband at the development of such a predestined termination to her sufferings, when pronounced by the celebrated Dr. Hunter, was only not distraction. But she herself, though completely aware that her hours now were told, met the irrevocable doom with open, religious, and even cheerful composure — sustained, no doubt, by the blessed aspirations of mediatory salvation; and calmly declaring that she quitted the world with perfect tranquillity, save for leaving her tender husband and helpless children. And, in the arms of that nearly frantic husband, who, till that fatal epoch, had literally believed her existence and his own, in this mortal journey, to be indispensably one — she expired.
When the fatal scene was finally closed, the disconsolate survivor immured himself almost from light and life, through inability to speak or act, or yet to bear witnesses to his misery.
He was soon, however, direfully called from this concentrated anguish, by the last awful summons to the last awful rites to human memory, the funeral; which he attended in a frame of mind that nothing, probably, could have rescued from unrestrained despair, save a pious invocation to submission that had been ejaculated by his Esther, when she perceived his rising agony, in an impressive “Oh, Charles!” — almost at the very moment she was expiring: an appeal that could not but still vibrate in his penetrated ears, and control his tragic passions.
The character, and its rare, resplendent worth, of this inestimable person, is best committed to the pen of him to whom it best was known; as will appear by the subsequent letter, copied from his own hand-writing. It was found amongst his posthumous papers, so ill-written and so blotted by his tears, that he must have felt himself obliged to re-write it for the post.
It may be proper to again mention, that though Esther was maternally of French extraction, and though her revered mother was a Roman Catholic, she herself was a confirmed Protestant. But that angelic mother had brought her up with a love and a practice of genuine piety which undeviatingly intermingled in every action, and, probably, in every thought of her virtuous life, so religiously, so deeply, that neither pain nor calamity could make her impatient of existence; nor yet could felicity the most perfect make her reluctant to die.
To paint the despairing grief produced by this deadly blow must be cast, like the portrait of its object, upon the sufferer; and the inartificial pathos, the ingenuous humility, with which both are ma
rked in the affecting detail of her death, written in answer to a letter of sympathizing condolence from the tenderest friend of the deceased, Miss Dorothy Young, so strongly speak a language of virtue as well as of sorrow, that, unconsciously, they exhibit his own fair unsophisticated character in delineating that of his lost love. A more touching description of happiness in conjugal life, or of wretchedness in its dissolution, is rarely, perhaps, with equal simplicity of truth, to be found upon record.
“To Miss DOROTHY YOUNG.
“I had not thought it possible that any thing could urge me to write in the present deplorable disposition of my mind; but my dear Miss Young’s letter haunts me! Neither did I think it possible for any thing to add to my affliction, borne down and broken-hearted as I am. But the current of your woes and sympathetic sorrows meeting mine, has overpowered all bounds which religion, philosophy, reason, or even despair, may have been likely to set to my grief. Oh Miss Young! you knew her worth — you were one of the few people capable of seeing and feeling it. Good God! that she should be snatched from me at a time when I thought her health re-establishing, and fixing for a long old age! when our plans began to succeed, and we flattered ourselves with enjoying each other’s society ere long, in a peaceable and quiet retirement from the bustling frivolousness of a capital, to which our niggard stars had compelled us to fly for the prospect of establishing our children.
“Amongst the numberless losses I sustain, there are none that unman me so much as the total deprivation of domestic comfort and converse — that converse from which I tore myself with such difficulty in a morning, and to which I flew back with such celerity at night! She was the source of all I could ever project or perform that was praise-worthy — all that I could do that was laudable had an eye to her approbation. There was a rectitude in her mind and judgment, that rendered her approbation so animating, so rational, so satisfactory! I have lost the spur, the stimulus to all exertions, all warrantable pursuits, — except those of another world. From an ambitious, active, enterprizing Being, I am become a torpid drone, a listless, desponding wretch! — I know you will bear with my weakness, nay, in part, participate in it; but this is a kind of dotage unfit for common eyes, or even for common friends, to be entrusted with.
“You kindly, and truly, my dear Miss Young, styled her one of the greatest ornaments of society; but, apart from the ornamental, in which she shone in a superior degree, think, oh think, of her high merit as a daughter, mother, wife, sister, friend! I always, from the first moment I saw her to the last, had an ardent passion for her person, to which time had added true friendship and rational regard. Perhaps it is honouring myself too much to say, few people were more suited to each other; but, at least, I always endeavoured to render myself more worthy of her than nature, perhaps, had formed me. But she could mould me to what she pleased! A distant hint — a remote wish from her was enough to inspire me with courage for any undertaking. But all is lost and gone in losing her — the whole world is a desert to me! nor does its whole circumference afford the least hope of succour — not a single ray of that fortitude She so fully possessed!
“You, and all who knew her, respected and admired her understanding while she was living. Judge, then, with what awe and veneration I must be struck to hear her counsel when dying! — to see her meet that tremendous spectre, death, with that calmness, resignation, and true religious fortitude, that no stoic philosopher, nor scarcely Christian, could surpass; for it was all in privacy and simplicity. Socrates and Seneca called their friends around them to give them that courage that perhaps solitude might have robbed them of, and to spread abroad their fame to posterity; but she, dear pattern of humility! had no such vain view; no parade, no grimace! When she was aware that all was over — when she had herself pronounced the dread sentence, that she felt she should not outlive the coming night, she composedly gave herself up to religion, and begged that she might not be interrupted in her prayers and meditations.
“Afterwards she called me to her, and then tranquilly talked about our family and affairs, in a manner quite oracular.
“Sometime later she desired to see Hetty, who, till that day, had spent the miserable week almost constantly at her bed-side, or at the foot of the bed. Fanny, Susan, and Charley, had been sent, some days before, to the kind care of Mrs. Sheeles in Queen Square, to be out of the way; and little Charlotte was taken to the house of her nurse.
“To poor Hetty she then discoursed in so kind, so feeling, so tender a manner, that I am sure her words will never be forgotten. And, this over, she talked of her own death — her funeral — her place of burial, — with as much composure as if talking of a journey to Lynn! Think of this, my dear Miss Young, and see the impossibility of supporting such a loss — such an adieu, with calmness! I hovered over her till she sighed, not groaned, her last — placidly sighed it — just after midnight.
“Her disorder was an inflammation of the stomach, with which she was seized on the 19th of September, after being on that day, and for some days previously, remarkably in health and spirits. She suffered the most excruciating torments for eight days, with a patience, a resignation, nearly quite silent. Her malady baffled all medical skill from the beginning. I called in Dr. Hunter.
“On the 28th, the last day! she suffered, I suppose, less, perhaps nothing! as mortification must have taken place, which must have afforded that sort of ease, that those who have escaped such previous agony shudder to think of! On that ever memorable, that dreadful day, she talked more than she had done throughout her whole illness. She forgot nothing, nor threw one word away! always hoping we should meet and know each other hereafter! — She told poor Hetty how sweet it would be if she could see her constantly from whence she was going, and begged she would invariably suppose that that would be the case. What a lesson to leave to a daughter! — She exhorted her to remember how much her example might influence the poor younger ones; and bid her write little letters, and fancies, to her in the other world, to say how they all went on; adding, that she felt as if she should surely know something of them.
“Afterwards, feeling probably her end fast approaching, she serenely said, with one hand on the head of Hetty, and the other grasped in mine: “Now this is dying pleasantly I in the arms of one’s friends!” I burst into an unrestrained agony of grief, when, with a superiority of wisdom, resignation, and true religion, — though awaiting, consciously, from instant to instant awaiting the shaft of death, — she mildly uttered, in a faint, faint voice, but penetratingly tender, “Oh Charles Η”
“I checked myself instantaneously, over-awed and stilled as by a voice from one above. I felt she meant to beg me not to agitate her last moments! — I entreated her forgiveness, and told her it was but human nature. “And so it is!” said she, gently; and presently added, “Nay, it is worse for the living than the dying, — though a moment sets us even! — life is but a paltry business — yet
“‘Who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey
This pleasing — anxious being e’er resign’d?
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?’”
“She had still muscular strength left to softly press both our hands as she pronounced these affecting lines.
“Other fine passages, also, both from holy writ, and from what is most religious in our best poets, she from time to time recited, with fervent prayers; in which most devoutly we joined.
“These, my dear Miss Young, are the outlines of her sublime and edifying exit — What a situation was mine! but for my poor helpless children, how gladly, how most gladly should I have wished to accompany her hence on the very instant, to that other world to which she so divinely passed I — for what in this remains for me?”
Part of a letter, also, to Mrs. Stephen Allen, the friend to whom, next to Miss Dorothy Young, the departed had been most attached, seems to belong to this place. Its style, as it was written at a later period, is more composed; but it evinces in th
e wretched mourner the same devotion to his Esther’s excellences, and the same hopelessness of earthly happiness.
“To MRS. STEPHEN ALLEN.
* * * *
“Even prosperity is insipid without participation with those we love; for me, therefore, heaven knows, all is at an end — all is accumulated wretchedness! I have lost a soul congenial with my own; — a companion, who in outward appurtenances and internal conceptions, condescended to assimilate her ideas and manners with mine. Yet believe not that all my feelings are for myself; my poor girls have sustained a loss far more extensive than they, poor innocents! are at present sensible of. Unprovided as I should have left them with respect to fortune, had it been my fate to resign her and life first, I should have been under no great apprehension for the welfare of my children, in leaving them to a mother who had such inexhaustible resources in her mind and intellects. It would have grieved me, indeed, to have quitted her oppressed by such a load of care; but I could have had no doubt of her supporting it with fortitude and abilities, as long as life and health had been allowed her. Fortitude and abilities she possessed, indeed, to a degree that, without hyperbole, no human being can conceive but myself, who have seen her under such severe trials as alone can manifest, unquestionably, true parts and greatness of mind. I am thoroughly convinced she was fitted for any situation, either exalted or humble, which this life can furnish. And with all her nice discernment, quickness of perception, and delicacy, she could submit, if occasion seemed to require it, to such drudgery and toil as are suited to the meanest domestic; and that, with a liveliness and alacrity that, in general, are to be found in those only who have never known a better state. Yet with a strength of reason the most solid, and a capacity for literature the most intelligent, she never for a moment relinquished the female and amiable softness of her sex with which, above every other attribute, men are most charmed and captivated.”
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 381