Where now was the agitation, the incertitude, the irresolution of the memorialist? Where the severity of her conflict, the pang of her sundering wishes? All were suddenly dissolved by overwhelming astonishment, and melted by respectful gratitude: and to the decision of Dr. Burney all now was willingly, and with resolute and cheerful acquiescence, referred.
Dr. Burney felt honoured, felt elated, felt proud of a mark so gracious, so unexpected, of personal partiality to his daughter; but felt it, perforce, with the same drawbacks to entire happiness that so strongly had balanced its pleasure with herself. Yet his high sense of such singular condescension, and his hope of the worldly advantage to which it might possibly lead, joined to the inherent loyalty that rendered a wish of his sovereign a law to him, checked his disturbance ere it amounted to hesitation. Mutually, therefore, resigned to a parting from so honourable a call, they embraced in tearful unison of sentiment; and, with the warmest feelings of heartfelt and most respectful — though not unsighing — devotion, Dr. Burney hastened to Mr. Smelt, with their unitedly grateful and obedient acceptance of the offer which her majesty had deigned to transmit to them through his kind and liberal medium.
THE QUEEN.
Dr. Burney now became nearly absorbed by this interesting crisis in the life of his second daughter; of which, however, the results, not the details, belong to these Memoirs.
She was summoned almost immediately to Windsor, though only, at first, to the house of Mrs. Delany; in whose presence, as the Doctor learned from her letters, this memorialist was called to the honour of an interview of more than two hours with her majesty. Not, however, for the purpose of arranging the particulars of her destination. The penetrating queen, who soon, no doubt, perceived a degree of agitation which could not be quite controlled in so new, so unexpected a position, with a delicacy the most winning, put that subject quite aside; and discoursed solely, during the whole long audience, upon general or literary matters.
“I know well,” continued the letter to the Doctor, “how my kind father will rejoice at so generous an opening; especially when I tell, him, that, in parting, she condescended, and in the softest manner, to say, ‘I am sure, Miss Burney, we shall suit one another very well!’ And then, turning to Mrs. Delany, she added, ‘I was led to think of Miss Burney first by her books — then by seeing her — and then by always hearing how she was loved by her friends — but chiefly, and over all, by your regard for her.’”
The Doctor was then further informed, through Mrs. Delany, that the office of his daughter was to be that of an immediate attendant upon her majesty, designated in the Court Calendar by the name of keeper of the robes.
The business thus fixed, though unannounced, as Mrs. Haggerdorn, the predecessor, still held her place, the Doctor again, for a few weeks, received back his daughter; whom he found, like himself, extremely gratified that her office consisted entirely in attendance upon so kind and generous a queen: though he could not but smile a little, upon learning that its duties exacted constant readiness to assist at her majesty’s toilette: not from any pragmatical disdain of dress — on the contrary, dress had its full share of his admiration, when he saw it in harmony with the person, the class, and the time of life of its exhibitor. But its charms and its capabilities, he was well aware, had engaged no part of his daughter’s reflections; what she knew of it was accidental, caught and forgotten with the same facility; and conducing, consequently, to no system or knowledge that might lead to any eminence of judgment for inventing or directing ornamental personal drapery. And she was as utterly unacquainted with the value of jewelry, as she was unused to its wear and care.
The queen, however, he considered, as she made no inquiry, and delivered no charge, was probably determined to take her chance; well knowing she had others more initiated about her to supply such deficiencies. It appeared to him, indeed; that far from seeking, she waived all obstacles; anxious, upon this occasion, at least, where the services were to be peculiarly personal, to make and abide by a choice exclusively her own; and in which no common routine of chamberlain etiquette should interfere.
And, ere long, he had the inexpressible comfort to be informed that so changed, through the partial graciousness of the queen to the memorialist, was the place from that which had been Mrs. Haggerdorn’s; so lightened and so simplified, that, in fact, the nominal new keeper of the robes had no robes in her keeping; that the difficulties with respect to jewelry, laces, and court habiliments, and the other routine business belonging to the dress-manufactory, appertained to her colleague, Mrs. Schwellenberg; and that the manual labours and cares devolved upon the wardrobe-women; while from herself all that officially was required was assiduous attention, unremitting readiness for every summons to the dressing-room, not unfrequent long readings, and perpetual sojourn at the palace.
KEEPER OF THE ROBES.
Not till within a few days of the departure of Mrs. Haggerdorn for Germany, there to enjoy, in her own country and family, the fruits of her faithful services, was the vacation of her place made public; when, to avoid troublesome canvassings, Dr. Burney was commissioned to announce in the newspapers her successor.
Open preparations were then made for a removal to Windsor, and a general leave-taking of the memorialist with her family and friends ensued.
Not, indeed, a leave-taking of that mournful cast which belongs to great distance, or decided absence; distance here was trifling, and absence merely precarious; yet was it a leave-taking that could not not be gay, though it ought not to be sad. It was a parting from all habitual or voluntary intercourse with natal home, and bosom friends; since she could only at stated hours receive even her nearest of kin in her apartments, and no appointment could be hazarded for abroad, that the duties of office did not make liable to be broken.
These restrictions, nevertheless, as they were official, Dr. Burney was satisfied could cause no offence to her connexions: and with regard to her own privations, they were redeemed by so much personal favour and condescension, that they called not for more philosophy than is almost regularly demanded, by the universal equipoise of good and evil, in all sublunary changes.
General satisfaction and universal wishing joy ensued from all around to Dr. Burney; who had the great pleasure of seeing that this disposal of his second daughter was spread far’ and wide through the kingdom, and even beyond its watery bounds, so far as so small an individual could excite any interest, with one accord of approbation.
But the chief notice of this transaction that charmed Dr. Burney, a notice which he hailed with equal pride and delight, was from Mr. Burke; to whom it was no sooner made known, than he hastened in person to St Martin’s street with his warm gratulations; and, upon missing both father and daughter, he entered the parlour, to write upon a card that he picked from a bracket, these flattering words:
MR. BURKE,
To congratulate upon the honour done by
The QUEEN to Miss Burney, —
And to HERSELF.”
WINDSOR.
The 17th of July, 1787, was the day appointed by the queen for the entrance into her majesty’s establishment of Dr. Burney’s secbnd daughter.
The Doctor’s correspondence with the new robe-keeper was active, lively, incessant; and he had no greater pleasure than in perusing and answering her letters from Windsor Lodge.
As soon as it was in his power to steal a few days from his business and from London, he accepted an invitation from Mrs. Delany to pass them in her abode, by the express permission, or rather with the lively approbation of the king and queen; without which Mrs. Delany held it utterly unbecoming to receive any guests in the house of private, but royal hospitality, which they had consigned to her use.
The queen on this occasion, as on others that were similar, gave orders that Dr. Burney should be requested to dine at the Lodge with his daughter; to whom devolved, in the then absence of her coadjutrix, Mrs. Schwellenberg, the office of doing the honours of a very magnificent table. And that daughter h
ad the happiness, at this time, to engage for meeting her father, two of the first characters for virtue, purity, and elegance, that she had ever known, — the exemplary Mr. Smelt, and the nearly incomparable Mrs. Delany. There were also some other agreeable people; but the spirited Dr. Burney was the principal object: and he enjoyed himself from the gay feelings of his contentment, as much as by the company he was enjoyed.
In the evening, when the party adjourned from the dining room to the parlour of the robe-keeper, how high was the gratification of Dr. Burney to see the king enter the apartment; and to see that, though professedly it was to do honour to years and virtue, in fetching Mrs. Delany himself to the queen, which was very generally his benevolent custom, he now superadded to that goodness the design of according an audience to Dr. Burney: for when Mrs. Delany was preparing to attend his majesty, he, smilingly, made her re-seat herself, with his usual benign consideration for her time of life; and then courteously entered into conversation with the happy Dr. Burney.
He opened upon musical matters, with’ the most animated wish to hear the sentiments of the Doctor, and to communicate his own; and the Doctor, enchanted, was more than ready, was eager to meet these condescending advances.
No one at all accustomed to court etiquette could have seen him without smiling: he was so totally unimpressed with the modes which, even in private, are observed in the royal presence, that he moved, spoke, and walked about the room without constraint; nay, he even debated with the king precisely with the same frankness that he would have used with any other gentleman, whom he had accidentally met in society.
Nevertheless, a certain flutter of spirits which always accompanies royal interviews that are infrequent, even with those who are least awed by them, took from him that self-possession which, in new, or uncommon cases, teaches us how to get through difficulties of form, by watching the manoeuvres of our neighbours. Elated by the openness and benignity of his majesty, he seemed in a sort of honest enchantment that drove from his mind all thought of ceremonial; though in his usual commerce with the world, he was scrupulously observant of all customary attentions. But now, on the contrary, he pursued every topic that was started till he had satisfied himself by saying all that belonged to it; and he started any topic that occurred to him, whether the king appeared to be ready for another, or not; and while the rest of the party, retreating towards the wainscot, formed a distant and respectful circle, in which the king, approaching separately and individually those whom he meant to address, was alone wont to move, the Doctor, quite unconsciously, came forward into the circle himself; and, wholly bent upon pursuing whatever theme was begun, either followed the king when he turned away, or came onward to meet his steps when he inclined them towards some other person; with an earnestness irrepressible to go on with his own subject; and to retain to himself the attention and the eyes — which never looked adverse to him — of the sweet-tempered monarch.
This vivacity and this nature evidently amused the king, whose candour and good sense always distinguished an ignorance of the routine of forms, from the ill manners or ill will of disrespect.
The queen, also, with a grace all her own towards those whom she deigned to wish to please, honoured her robe-keeper’s apartment with her presence on the following evening, accompanying thither the king; with the same sweetness of benevolence of seeking Mrs. Delany, in granting an audience to Dr. Burney.
No one better understood conversation than the queen, or appreciated conversers with better judgment: gaily, therefore, she drew out, and truly enjoyed, the flowing, unpractised, yet always informing discourse of Dr. Burney.
DR. HERSCHEL.
One morning about this period was dedicated to the famous Herschel, whom Dr. Burney visited at Slough, whither he carried his daughter, to see, and to take a walk through the immense new telescope of Helschel’s own construction. Already from another very large, though, in comparison with this, very diminutive one, Dr. Herschel said he had discovered fifteen hundred universes! The moon, too, which, at that moment, was his favourite object, had afforded him two volcanos; and his own planet, or the Georgium Sidus, had favoured him with two satellites.
Dr. Burney, who had a passionate inclination for astronomy, had a double tie to admiration and regard for Dr. Herschel, who, both practically and theoretically, was also an excellent musician. They had much likewise in common of suavity of disposition; and they conversed together with a pleasure that led, eventually, to much after intercourse.
The accomplished and amiable Mr. Smelt joined them here by appointment; as did, afterwards, the erudite, poetical, and elegant Dr. Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, and author of the Marks of Imitation; whose fine features, fine expression, and fine manners made him styled by Mr. Smelt “The Beauty of Holiness;” and who was accompanied by the learned Dr. Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.
Miss Herschel, the celebrated comet-searcher, and one of the most truly modest, or rather humble, of human beings, having sat up all night at her eccentric vocation, was now, much to their regret, mocking the day-beams in sound repose.
In similar visits to his daughter, Dr. Burney had again and again the high honour and happiness of being indulged with long, lively, and most agreeable conversations with his majesty; who, himself a perfectly natural man, had a true taste for what, in a court — or, in truth, out of one — is so rarely to be met with, — an unsophisticated character.
And thus, congenial with his principles, and flattering to his taste, softly, gaily, salubriously, began for Dr. Burney the new career of his second daughter. It was a stream of happiness, now gliding on gently with the serenity of enjoyment for the present; now rapidly flowing faster with the aspiring velocity of hope for the future.
MRS. DELANY.
What a reverse to this beaming sunshine was floating in the air! A second year was yet incomplete, when a cloud intercepted the bright rays that had almost revivified Dr. Burney, by suddenly and forever closing from his view the inestimable, the exemplary, the venerated friend of his daughter, Mrs. Delany: for sudden was this mortal eclipse, though, at her great age, it could never be unexpected.
GEORGE THE THIRD.
Such was the cloud that obscured the spring horizon of Dr. Burney in 1788; but which, severely as it damped and saddened him, was but as a point in a general mass, save from his kind grief for his heart-afflicted daughter, compared with the effect produced upon him by the appalling hurricane that afterwards ensued; though there, he himself was but as a point, and scarcely that, in the vast mass of general woe and universal disorder, of which that fatal storm was the precursor.
The war of all the elements, when their strife darts with lightnings, and hurls with thunder, that seem threatening destruction all around, is peace, is calm, is tameness and sameness, to that which was caused by the first sudden breaking out of a malady nameless, but tremendous, terrific, but unknown, in the king — that father of his people, that friend of human kind.
This event, then, is foreign to all domestic memoirs; and to such as are political, Dr. Burney’s can have no pretensions. It will rapidly, therefore, be passed over, in consonance with the intentions of the Doctor, manifested by an entire omission of any intervening memorandums, from his grief at the illness, to his joy at the recovery of his sovereign; a joy which, however diversified by the endless shadings of multitudinous circumstances, was almost universally felt by all ranks, all classes, all ages; and hailed by a chorus of sympathy, that resounded in songs of thanksgiving and triumph throughout the British empire.
WINDSOR.
And yet — though joy flew to his bosom with such exalting delight, when that joy had spent its first effervescence; when, exhausted by its own eager ebullition, it subsided into quiet thankfulness — did Dr. Burney find himself in the same state of self gratulation at the position of his daughter, as before that blight which bereaved her of Mrs. Delany? did he experience the same vivid glow of pleasure in her destination, that he felt previously to that tremendous national t
empest that had shaken the palace, and shattered all its dwellers, through terror, watchfulness, and sorrow?
Alas, no! the charm was broken, the curtain was dropt! the scene was changed by unlooked-for contingencies; and a catastrophe of calamity seemed menacing his peace, that was precisely the reverse of all that the opening of this part of his life’s drama had appeared to augur of fecility.
The health of his daughter fell visibly into decay; her looks were alarmingly altered; her strength was daily enfeebling; and the native vivacity of her character and spirits were palpably sinking from premature internal debility.
This, indeed, was a blight to close, in sickly mists, the most brilliant avenues of his parental ambition. It was a shock of the deepest disappointment, that the one amongst his progeny on whom fortune had seemed most to smile, should be threatened with lingering dissolution, through the very channel in which she appeared to be gliding to honour and favour: and that he, her hope-beguiled parent, must now, at all mundane risks, snatch her away from every mundane advantage, or incur the perilous chance of weeping over her precipitated grave.
Yet, where such seemed the alternative, there could be no hesitation: the tender parent took place of the provident friend, and his decision was immediate to recall the invalid from all higher worldly aspirations to her retired natal home.
The gratitude of his daughter at this paternal tenderness rose to her eyes, in her then weakened state, with constant tears every time it occurred to her mind; for well she knew how many a gay hope, and glowing fond idea, must be sacrificed by so retrograde a measure.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 422