The lady, unbending her furrowed brow, replied, “I’ll tell you how, ma’am: you must either say, I believe you to be an honest woman, and I’ll trust you; or, I believe you to be no better than you should be, and I’ll have nothing to do with you.”
An alternative such as this could hardly be called an alternative: the promise was given.
The smile now of pleasure, almost of triumph, that succeeded to that of satire, which had almost amounted to scorn, nearly recompensed the hazarded trust; which, soon afterwards, was even more than repaid by the sincerest admiration.
The lady, taking a thick letter-case from a capacious and well-furnished part of the female habiliment of other days, yclept a pocket, produced a small parcel; and said, “Do me the favour, ma’am, to slip this trifle into the Doctor’s bureau the first ‘time you see him open it; and just say, ‘Sir, this is bank notes for three hundred pounds, instead of what that rogue robbed you of. But you must ask no questions; and you must not stare, sir, for it’s from a friend that will never be known. So don’t be over curious; for it’s a friend who will never take it back, if you fret yourself to the bone. So please, sir, to do What you please with it Either use it, or put it behind the fire, whichever you think the most sensible.’ And then, if he should say, ‘Pray, miss, who gave you that impertinent message for me?’ you will get into no jeopardy, for you can answer that you are bound head and foot to hold your tongue; and then, being a man of honour, he will hold his. Don’t you think so, ma’am?”
The memorialist, heartily laughing, but in great perturbation lest the Doctor should be hurt or displeased, would fain have resisted this commission; but the lady peremptorily saying a promise was a promise, which no person under a vagabond, but more especially a person of honour, writing books, could break, would listen to no appeal.
She had been, she protested, on the point of Hon compos ever since that rogue had played the Doctor such a knavish trick, as picking his bureau to get at his cash; in thinking how much richer she, who had neither child nor chick, nor any particular great talents, was than she ought to be; while a man who was so much a greater scholar, and with such a fry of young ones at his heels, all of them such a set of geniuses, was suddenly made so much poorer, for no offence, only that rogue’s knavishness. And she could not get back into her right senses upon the accident, she said, till she had hit upon this scheme; for knowing Dr. Burney to be a very punctilious man, like most of the book-writers, who were always rather odd, she was aware she could not make him accept such a thing in a quiet way, how ever it might be his due in conscience; only by some cunning devise that he could not get the better of.
Expostulation was vain; and the matter was arranged exactly according to her injunctions.
Ultimately, however, when the deed was so confirmed as to be irrevocable, the memorialist obtained her leave to make known its author; though under the most absolute charge of secrecy for all around; which was strictly observed, notwithstanding all the resistance of the astonished Doctor, whom she forbade ever to name it, either to herself, she said, or Co., under pain of never speaking to him again.
All peculiar obstacles, however, having now passed away, justice seems to demand the recital of this extraordinary little anecdote in the history of Dr. Burney.
Those who still remember a daughter of the Earl of Thanet, who was widow of Sir William Duncan, will recognize, without difficulty, in this narration, the generosity, spirit, and good humour, with the uncultivated, ungrammatical, and incoherent dialect, and the comic, but arbitrary manner, of the indescribably diverting and grotesque, though munificent and nobly liberal, Lady Mary Duncan.
MRS. VESEY.
The singular, and, in another way, equally quaint and original, as well as truly Irish, Mrs. Vesey, no sooner heard of Dr. Burney’s misfortune, than she sent for an ingenious carpenter, to whom she communicated a desire to have a private drawer constructed in a private apartment, for the concealment and preservation of her cash from any fraudulent servant Accordingly, within the wainscot of her dressing-room, this was effected; and, when done, she rang for her principal domestics; and, after recounting to them the great evil that had happened to poor Dr. Burney, and bemoaning that he had not taken a similar precaution, she had charged them, in a low voice, never to touch such a part of the wall, lest they should press upon the spring of the private drawer, in which she was going to hide her geld and bank notes.
MADAME DE GENUS.
In the summer of this year, 1785, came over from France the celebrated Comtesse de Genlis. Dr. Burney and his second daughter were almost immediately invited, at the express desire of the countess, to meet, and pass a day with her, at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His niece, Miss Palmer, Sir Abraham and Lady Hume, Lord Palmerston, and some others, were of the party.
Madame de Genlis must then have been about thirty-five years of age; but the whole of her appearance was nearly ten years younger. Her face, without positive beauty, had the most winning agreeability: her figure was remarkably elegant, her attire was chastely simple: her air was reserved, and her demeanour was dignified. Her language had the same flowing perspicuity, and animated variety, by which it is marked in the best of her works; and her discourse was full of intelligence, yet wholly free from presumption or obtrusion. Dr. Burney was forcibly struck with her, and his daughter Was enchanted.
Almost as numerous as her works, and almost as diversified, were the characters which had preceded this celebrated lady to England. None, however, of the calumnious sort had reached the ears of the Doctor previously to this meeting; and though some had buzzed about those of the memorialist, they were vague; and she had willingly, from the charm of such superior talents, believed them unfounded; even before the witchery of personal partiality drove them wholly from the field: for from her sight, her manners, and her conversation, not an idea, could elicit that was not instinctively in her favour.
Unconstrained, therefore, was the impulsive regard with which this illustrious foreigner inspired both; and which, gently, but pointedly, it was her evident aim to increase. She made a visit the next day to the memorialist, whose society she sought with a flattering earnestness and a spirited grace that, coupled with her rare attractions, made a straight forward and, most animating conquest of her charmed votary.
Madame de Genlis had already been at Windsor, where, through the medium of Madame de la Fite, she had been honoured with a private audience of the queen; and the energetic respect with which she spoke of her majesty, was one of the strongest incentives to the loyal heart of Dr. Burney for encouraging this rising connexion.
Madame de Genlis had presented, she said, to the queen the sacred dramas which she had dedicated to her Serene Highness the Duchess of Orleans; adding, that she had brought over only two copies of that work, of which the second was destined for Mademoiselle Burney! to whom, with a billet of elegance nearly heightened into expressions of friendship, it was shortly conveyed.
The memorialist was at a loss how to make acknowledgments for this obliging offering, as she would have held any return in kind to savour rather of vanity than of gratitude. Dr. Burney, however, relieved her embarrassment, by permitting her to be the bearer of his own History of Music, as far as it had then been published. This Madame de Genlis received with infinite grace and pleasure; for while capable of treating luminously almost every subject that occurred, she had an air, a look, a smile, that gave consequence, transiently, to every thing she said or did.
She had then by her side, and fondly under her wing, a little girl whom she called Pamela, who was most attractively lovely, and whom she had imbued with a species of enthusiasm for the memorialist; so potent and so eccentric, that when, during the visit at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, Madame de Genlis said, “Pamela, voila Mademoiselle Burney!” the animated little person rushed hastily forward, and prostrated herself upon one knee before the astonished, almost confounded, object of her notice; who, though covered with a confusion half distressing, half ridiculous, obse
rved in every motion and attitude of the really enchanting little creature, a picturesque beauty of effect, and a magic allurement in her fine cast up eyes, that she could not but wish to see perpetuated by Sir Joshua.
On the day that Dr. Burney left his card in Portland-place, for a parting visit to Madame de Genlis, previously to her quitting London, he left there, also, the memorialist; who, by appointment, was to pass the morning with that lady. This same witching little being was then capitally aiding and abetting in a preconcerted manoeuvre, with which Madame de Genlis not a little surprised her guest This was by detaining her, through a thousand varying contrivances, all for a while unsuspected, in a particular position; while a painter, whom Madame de Genlis mentioned as being with her by chance, and who appeared to be amusing himself with sketching some fancies of his own, was clandestinely taking a portrait of the visitor.
However flattered by the desire of its possession in so celebrated a personage, that visitor had already, and decidedly, refused sitting for it, not alone to Madame do Genlis, but to various other kind demanders, from a rooted dislike of being exhibited. And when she discovered what was going forward, much vexed and disconcerted, she would have quitted her seat, and fled the premises: but the adroit little charmer had again recourse to her graceful prostration; and, again casting up her beautiful picturesque eyes, pleaded the cause and wishes of Madame de Genlis, whom she called Maryan, with an eloquence and a pathos so singular and so captivating, that the memorialist, though she would not sit quietly stilly nor voluntarily favour the painter’s artifice, could only have put in practice a peremptory and determined flight, by trampling upon the urgent, clinging, impassioned little suppliant.
This was the last day’s intercourse of Madame de Genlis with Dr,’ Burney and the memorialist Circumstances, soon afterwards, suddenly parted them; and circumstances never again brought them together.
MRS. DELANY.
The society which assembled at that lady’s mansion was elegant and high bred, yet entertaining and diversified. As Mrs. Delany chose to sustain her own house, that she might associate without constraint with her own family, the generous Duchess of Portland would not make a point of persuading her to sojourn at Whitehall; preferring the sacrifice of her own ease and comfort, in quitting that noble residence nearly every evening, to lessening those of her tenderly loved companions.
But a lamented, though not personal or family event, which occurred at the end of this summer, must here be recorded,’ with some detail of circumstance; as it proved, in its consequences, by no means unimportant to the history of Dr. Burney.
The venerable Mrs. Delany was suddenly bereft of the right noble friend who was the delight of her life, the Duchess Dowager of Portland. That honoured and honourable lady had quitted town for her dowry mansion of Bulstrode Park, Thither she had just most courteously invited this memorialist: who had spent with her grace and her beloved friend, at the fine dwelling of the former at Whitehall, nearly the last evening of their sojourn in town, to arrange this intended summer junction. A letter of Mrs. Delany’s dictation had afterwards followed to St. Martini street, fixing a day on which a carriage, consigned by her grace to Mrs. Delany’s service, was to fetch the new visitor. But on the succeeding morning, a far different epistle, written by the amanuensis of Mrs. Delany, brought the mournful counter-tidings of the seizure, illness, and decease, of the valuable, generous, and charming mistress of Bulstrode Park.
Mrs. Delany, as soon as possible, was removed back to St James’s Place; in a grief touchingly profound, though resigned.
This was a Joss for which, as Mrs. Delany was fifteen years the senior, no human calculation had prepared: and what other has the human mathematician! Her condition in life, therefore, as well as her heart, was assailed by this privation; and however inferior to the latter was the former consideration, the conflict of afflicted feelings with discomfited affairs, could not but be doubly oppressive: for though from the duchess no pecuniary loan was accepted by Mrs. Delany, unnumbered were the little auxiliaries to domestic economy which her grace found means to convey to St James’^ Place.
But now, even the house in that place, though already small for the splendid persons who frequently sought there to pay their respects to the duchess, as well as to Mrs. Delany, became too expensive for her means of supporting its establishment The friendship of the high-minded duchess for Mrs. Delany had been an honour to herself and to her sex, in its refinement as well as in its liberality. Her superior rank she held as a bauble, her superior wealth as dross, save as they might be made subservient towards equalizing in condition the chosen companion, with whom in affection all was already parallel.
Upon first receiving the melancholy intelligence of the broken-up meeting at Bulstrode Parky Dr. Burney had taken his much-grieved daughter with him to Chesington, where, with all its bereavements, he repaired, to go on with his History; but, with a kindness which always led him to participate in the calls of affection, he no sooner learned that her presence would be acceptable to Mrs. Delany, than he spared his amanuensis from his side and his work, and instantly lent her his Carriage to convey her back to town, and to the house of that afflicted lady, whose tenderly open-armed, though tearful reception, was as gratifying to the feelings of her deeply-attached guest, as the grief that she witnessed was saddening.
The Doctor permitted her now to take up her abode in this house of mourning; where she had the heartfelt satisfaction to find herself not only soothing to the admirable friend by whom, so late in life, but so warmly in love, she had been taken to the bosom; but empowered to relieve some of her cares by being intrusted to overlook, examine, and read to her letters and manuscripts of every description; and to select, destroy, or arrange the long-hoarded mass. She even began revising and continuing a manuscript memoir of the early days of Mrs. Delany; but, as it could be proceeded with only in moments of unbroken tête-à-tête it never was finished.
Meanwhile, when the tidings of the death of the Duchess Dowager of Portland reached their majesties, their first thought, after their immediate grief at her departure, was of Mrs. Delany; and when they found that the duchess, from a natural expectation of being herself the longest liver, had taken no measures to soften off the worldly part, at least, of this separation, the king, with most benevolent munificence, resolved to supply the deficiency, which a failure of foresight alone, he was sure, had occasioned in a friend of such anxious fondness. He completely, therefore, and even minutely, fitted up for Mrs. Delany a house at Windsor, near the castle; and settled a pension of three hundred pounds a-year upon her for life, to enable her to still keep her house in town, that she might repair thither every winter, for the pleasure of enjoying the society of her old friends.
The grateful heart of Mrs. Delany overflowed at her eyes at marks so attentive, as well as beneficent, of kindness and goodness in her sovereigns; for well she felt convinced that the queen had a mental share and influence in these Royal offerings.
To Windsor, thus invited, Mrs. Delany now went; and this memorialist, lightened of a thousand apprehensions by this cheer to the feelings of her honoured friend, returned to Dr. Burney, in Surrey. A letter speedily followed her, with an account that the good king himself, having issued orders to be apprised when Mrs. Delany entered the town of Windsor, had repaired to her newly allotted house, there, in person, to give her welcome. Overcome by such condescension, she flung herself upon her knees before him, to express a sense of his graciousness for which she could find no words.
Their majesties almost immediately visited her in person; an honour which they frequently repeated: and they condescendingly sent to her, alternately, all their royal daughters. And, as soon as she was recovered from her fatigues, they invited her to their evening concerts at the Upper Lodge, in which, at that time, they sojourned.
The time is now come to open upon the circumstances which will lead, ere long, to the cause of a seeming episode in these memoirs.
Dr. Burney was soon informed that
the queen had deigned to inquire of Mrs. Delany, why she had not brought her friend, Miss Burney, to her new home! an inquiry that was instantly followed by an invitation that hastened, of course, the person in question to St Alban’s street, Windsor.
Here she found her venerable friend in the full solace of as milch contentment as her recent severe personal loss, tend her advanced period of life, could well admit. And, oftentimes far nearer to mortal happiness is such contentment in the aged, than is suspected, or believed, by assuming and presuming youth; who frequently take upon trust — or upon poetry — their capability of superior enjoyment for its possession. She was honoured by all who approached her; she was loved by all with whom she associated. Her very dependence was made independent by the delicacy with which it left her completely mistress of her actions and her abode. Her sovereigns unbent from their state to bestow upon her graciousness and favour: and the youthful object of her dearest affections, Miss Port, was fostered, with their full permission, under her wing.
THE KING AND QUEEN.
In a week or two after the arrival of the new visitant, she was surprised into the presence of the king, by a sudden, unannounced, and unexpected entrance of his majesty, one evening, into the drawing-room of Mrs. Delany; where, however, the confusion occasioned by his unlooked-for appearance speedily, nay, blithely, subsided, from the suavity of his manners, the impressive benevolence of his countenance, and the cheering gaiety of his discourse. Fear could no more exist where goodness of heart was so predominant, than respect could fail where dignity of rank was so pre-eminent: and, ere many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Delany had the soft satisfaction not only of seeing the first tremors of her favoured friend pass insensibly away, but of observing them to be supplanted by ease, nay, delight, from the mild yet lively graciousness with which she was drawn into conversation by his majesty.
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