So, however, it was; for when, in the year 1806, that renowned orator of liberty, found himself suddenly, and, by the premature death of Mr. Pitt, almost unavoidably raised to the head of the state, Mrs. Crewe started a claim for Dr. Burney.
Mr. Windham was instant and animated in supporting it. Mr. Fox, with his accustomed grace, where he had a favour to bestow, gave it his ready countenance; the King’s Sign Manual was granted with alacrity of approbation; and the faithful, invaluable LADY CREWE, while her own new honours were freshly ornamenting her brow, had the cordial happiness of announcing to her unsoliciting and no longer expecting old friend, his participation in the new turn of the tide.
It was Lord Grenville, however, who was the immediately apparent agent in this gift of the Crown; though Charles Fox, there can be no doubt, had a real share of pleasure in propitiating such a reward to a friend and favourite of Lord and Lady Crewe; to settle whose long withheld title was amongst the first official acts of his friendship upon coming into power.
The pension accorded was £300 per annum, and the pleasure caused by this benevolent royal act amongst the innumerable friends of the man of four-score — for such, now, was Dr. Burney — was great almost to exultation. And, in truth, so little had his financial address kept pace with his mental abilities, that, previously to this grant, he had found it necessary, in relinquishing the practice of his profession, to relinquish his carriage.
Such news, of course, was not trusted to the post of Paris; and it was long after its date, ere it reached the Parisian captives. Nevertheless, in this same month of May, 1806, Dr. Burney, the octogenaire, as he now called himself, confided, upon other subjects, to a passing opportunity, along letter to Paris; written in a strong and firm round hand; the following pages from which, evince his unaltered disposition to cultivate his natural gaiety with his social spirit of kindness:
“TO MADAME D’ARBLAY.
* * * * *”I have so much to say, that I hardly know where to begin. —— —
“At the close of this last summer, I took it into my head that the air, water, rocks, woods, fine prospects, and delightful rides on the Downs, at Bristol Hotwells, and in their vicinity, would do my cough good, and enable me to bear the ensuing winter more heroically than I have done what have preceded it; for since the Influenza of 1804, I have dreaded cold, and night air, as much as they are dreaded by a trembling Italian greyhound. Do you remember Frisk, the pretty little slim dog we had, as successor to Mr. Garrick’s favourite pet, Phill? who always pestered Garrick to let him lick his hands and his fingers, — till Garrick, though provoked, could not, in the comic playfulness of his character, help caressing him again, even while exclaiming, when the animal fawned upon him: ‘What dost follow me for, eh, — Slobberchaps? — Tenderness without ideas I’ Well, as chill am I now as that poor puppy, Frisk, — though not quite as tender, nor yet, I trust, as void of ideas.
“Well, to the Hotwells at Bristol I went; and took with me Fanny Phillips. And we both took Evelina, as many of its best scenes are at the Wells and at Bath. However we devoured it so eagerly on the journey, that we had only half a volume left when we arrived at No. 7, on Vincent’s Parade; where we were sumptuously lodged; and Fanny Phillip’s maid went to market; and our landlady dressed our dinners; and, as I had my carriage, and horses, and servant, we did very well: except that we were. too late in the season, for we had not above three balmy days in our whole month’s residence.
“I liked little Evelina full as well as ever; and I have always thought it the best — that is, the most near to perfection of your excellent penmanships. There are none of those heart-rending scenes which tear one to pieces in the last volumes of Cecilia and Camilla. They always make me melancholy for a week. But, for all that, Fanny Phillips and I proposed going through the whole while at Bristol, for our social reading. However, it was not possible; for we could never procure the first volume of Cecilia from any of the Libraries. It was always, as the Italians say of the English when they vainly try for admission, ‘Sempre not at home!’
“I made an excursion to the city of Wells for one day and night, to see its admirable cathedral. The Bishop, Dr. Beadon, is an old musical acquaintance of mine, of thirty years’ standing. He wished me to have remained a week with him. And I should have liked it very well, ‘ma! — ma! — ma!’ — as the Italians say, I have no weeks to spare!”
The health and spirits of Dr. Burney were now so good, that he seized another opportunity for writing again, in the same month, to his truly grateful daughter:
“12th October.
“My Dear Fanny,
“Do you remember a letter of thanks which I received from Rousseau for a present of music which I sent him, with a printed copy of The Cunning Man, that I had Englishized from his Divan du Village? I thought myself the most fortunate of beings, in 1770, to have obtained an hour’s conversation with him; for he was then more difficult of access than ever, especially to the English, being out of humour with the whole nation, from resentment of Horace Walpole’s forged letter from the King of Prussia; and he had determined, he said, never to read or write again! Guy, the famous bookseller, was the only person he then admitted; and it was through the sagacious good offices of this truly eminent book-man, urged by my friends, Count d’Holbach, Diderot, &c., that the interview I so ardently aspired at was procured for me. Well, this letter from the great Jean Jacques, which I had not seen these twenty years, I have lately found in a cover from Lord Harcourt, to whom I had lent it, when his lordship was preparing a list of all Rousseau’s works, for the benefit of his widow; which, however, he left to find another editor, when Madame Rousseau relinquished her celebrated name, to become the wife of some ordinary man. Lord Harcourt then returned my letter, and, upon a recent review of it, I was quite struck with the politeness and condescension with which Jean Jacques had accepted my little offering, at a time when he refused all assistance, nay, all courtesy, from the first persons both of England and France. I am now writing in bed, and have not the original to quote; but, as far as I can remember, he concludes his letter with the following flattering lines:
“‘The works, Sir, which you have presented me, will often call to my remembrance the pleasure I had in seeing and hearing you; and will augment my regret at my not being able sometimes to renew that pleasure. I entreat you, Sir, to accept my humble salutations.
“‘JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.’
“I give you this in English, not daring, by memory, to quote J. J. Rousseau. It was directed to M. Burney, in London; and, I believe, under cover to Lord Harcourt, who always was his open protector. But is it not extraordinary, my dear Fanny, that the most flattering letters I have received should be from Dr. Johnson and J. J. Rousseau? I can account for it in no other way than from my always treating them with openness and frankness, yet with that regard and reverence which their great literary powers inspired. Much as I loved and respected the good and great Dr. Johnson, I saw his prejudices and severity of character. Nor was I blind to Rousseau’s eccentricities, principles, and paradoxes in all things but music; in which his taste and views, particularly in dramatic music, were admirable; and supported with more wit, reason, and refinement, than by any writer on the subject, in any language which I am able to read. But as I had no means to correct the prejudices of the one, nor the principles of the other of these extraordinary persons, was I to shun and detest the whole man because of his peccant parts? Ancient and modern poets and sages, philosophers and moralists, subscribe to the axiom, humanum est errare, and yet, every individual, whatever be his virtues, science, or talents, is treated, if his frailties are discovered, as if the characteristic of human nature were perfection, and the least diminution from it were unnatural and unpardonable! God bless you, my dear Fanny. Write soon, and long, I entreat.”
In this same, to Dr. Burney, memorable year, 1806, he had the agreeable surprise of a first invitation from Mr. West, President of the Royal Academy, to the annual dinner given by its directors to
the most munificent patrons, capital artists, distinguished judges, or eminent men of letters of the day, for the purpose of assembling them to a private and undisturbed view of the works prepared for forming the exhibition of the current year.
By that grand painter, and delightful man of letters, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Burney, from the time of their first happy intimacy, had regularly been included in the annual invitations; but Mr. West was unacquainted, personally, with the Doctor, and had, of course, his own set and friends to oblige. What led to this late compliment, after a chasm of fourteen years, does not appear; but the remembrance occurred at a moment of revived exertion, and the Doctor accepted it with exceeding satisfaction. Nevertheless, the opening of the account which he has left in his journal of this classic entertainment, is far from gay:
“My sight was now,” he says, “become so feeble, that I knew nobody who did not first accost me; and my hearing so impaired, that it was with difficulty I caught what was said to me by any of my neighbours, except those immediately to my right or my left.
“At the Royal Academy this year, I was placed near my son Dr. Charles, and Loutherbourg, who served me as a nomenclature, and I was happily in the midst of many old as well as new friends and acquaintance; particularly the Bishops of Durham, Winchester, and London, and Sir George Beaumont.
“I went early into several small apartments, previously to entering the great room; and luckily, in the first I entered I came upon Sir George Beaumont, who most kindly, politely, and with cordial courtesy, accompanied me during the whole review; always, with unerring judgment, pointing out what was most worth stopping to examine. He was enthusiastically fond of Wilkie’s famous piece.
“Mr. Windham here came forward in the highest spirits. I never saw him more animated, even when conversing with favourite females. I eagerly made up to him with my thanks, both to himself and Mrs. Windham, for their zeal and activity in my affairs.§ ‘Yes, yes,’ cried he gaily, ‘in zeal we all vied one with another.’
“It had rained torrents all day; but I had promised, not expecting the continuance of such weather, to go from the exhibition to the opera, to join Lord and Lady Bruce; who wanted to make a convert of me to their favourite singer, Grassini; but in descending the endless stairs, I was joined by my benevolent neighbour, the Bishop of Winchester; who, perceiving how cautiously I made my way, seized my arm, and insisted on conducting me; and when he heard my opera engagement, he dauntlessly, though laughingly, ordered away my carriage himself, and helped me into his own; promising absolution for my failure to Lady Bruce, but protesting he could not, and would not, suffer me to go any whither such a desperate night, from home; whither he drove me full gallop, setting me down at Chelsea College, in his way to Winchester House. More kind and cheerful benevolence never entered man’s heart, than is lodged in this good prelate’s.”
1807.
In the ensuing year, 1807, the diary of the Doctor contains the following narration of the Countess of Mount Edgecumbe:
“December 21. — I have lost my oldest and most partial musical friend, the Countess Dowager of Mount Edgecumbe, relict of the third Lord and first Earl, and mother of the present Earl. She was daughter of Dr. John Gilbert, Archbishop of York. I knew and was known to her when she was Miss Gilbert, and at the head of lady musicians. She was always of the Italian school, and spoke both Italian and French well and fluently: she was one of the great patronesses of Giardini and Mengotti, in their days of renown; and generously never ceased serving and supporting them when they were superseded by newer rivals. She was a correspondent in Italian with Martinelli. She played with great force and precision all the best modern compositions of the times; and in so high and spirited a style, that no other lady, or hardly professor, in England, durst attempt them. She kept her box at the opera till very late in life: and then, when, from the bustle and noise of entry and exit, she relinquished it, she still sustained her own private study and practice on the harpsichord. And, to the very last, when told of any musical phenomena, vocal or instrumental, she was curious and eager to hear them at private or subscription concerts. She went to Tunbridge Wells last summer, when her frame was extremely impaired, and her faculties no longer of their original brightness. Previously to setting out, she honoured me, in as infirm and decayed a state as herself, with a visit; condescendingly clambering up my flight of stairs to nearly the summit of Chelsea Hospital, protesting, with her old and very agreeable liveliness, that the exertion did her nothing but good: and then, almost on her knees, beseeching me to go also to Tunbridge Wells, as she was sure its waters would be highly beneficial to me.! was then, however, so unwell and feeble, that I feared going even to Bulstrode. I could not, therefore, satisfy this kind and noble lady with the least prospect of following her, and partaking of her offered hospitality.
“Daughter of so eminent a divine, she had been brought up with a firm belief and veneration in religion; and she was persuaded that all the calamities of the war were inflicted upon us as the scourge of our iniquities, for our admission of jacobinical principles at the opening of the French Revolution. It was a very remarkable circumstance, that pulsation stopped, and her heart ceased to beat, three days before she expired.”
About this period, also, or somewhat later, Dr. Burney had to lament the loss of his constant and respectable friend, Mrs. Ord; which, though not of a sort to prey upon his feelings, like those privations that bereaved him of the objects of his taste, as well as connexion, caused yet a considerable breach in his habits of friendly intercourse, and of such enlivening parties and projects, as constitute the major, though not the higher portion of our rotatory comforts.
The whole tenor of the life of Mrs. Ord, and of her minutest as well as most important actions, was under the concentrated guidance of a laudable ambition to merit general esteem. And so sagely directed were her movements for the attainment of their object, that she was one of those few beings whom censure passed by as unimpeachable.
She was sincerely attached to Dr. Burney and his family, and was sincerely lamented by all to whom her worth and virtues were known.
* * *
Towards the close of this year, 1807, Dr. Burney had an infliction which nearly robbed him of his long-tried, and hitherto almost invulnerable force of mind, for bearing the rude assaults of misfortune: this was a paralytic stroke, which, in casting his left hand into a state of torpor, threw his heart, head, and nerves into one of ceaseless agitation, from an unremitting expectance of abrupt dissolution.
His absent daughter was spared from participating in the pain of this terrifying interval; and the despotic difficulty so often repined at of foreign correspondence, might here have seemed a benediction, had it been to political rigidity alone that she had been indebted for this exemption from availless anguish: but her generous father had made it his first care to prohibit, and peremptorily, all parts of his house from sending any communication, any hint whatsoever of his apprehensive state to Paris: and his exhortation, with the same earnestness, though not the same authority, was spread to every writing class of friend or acquaintance.
His own account of this trying event, written in the following year, in answer to his daughter’s alarm at his silence, will shew the full and surprising return of his spirits and health upon his recovery:
“TO MADAME D’ARBLAY.
“Nov. 12 th, 1808.
“My dear Fanny,
“The complaints made, in one of the two short notes which I have received, of letters never answered, Old Charles returns — as his account of family affairs he finds has never reached you. Indeed, for these last two or three years, I have had nothing’ good to say of own self; and I peremptorily charged all the rest of the family to say nothing had on the subject of health: for I never understood the kindness of alarming distant friends with accounts of severe illness, - as we may be either recovered or dead before the information reaches them.
“I wrote you an account of my excursion to Bristol Hotwells: but I had not
been returned to Chelsea more than three days, before I had an alarming seizure in my left hand, which neither heat, friction, nor medicines could subdue. It felt perfectly asleep; in a state of immoveable torpor. My medical friends would not tell me what this obstinate numbness was; but I discovered by their prescriptions, and advice as to regimen, that it was neither more nor less than a paralytic affection; and, near Christmas, it was pronounced to be a Bath case. On Christmas eve, I set out for that City, extremely weak and dispirited: the roads terrible, and almost incessant torrents of rain all the way. I was five days on the journey; I took Fanny Phillips with me, and we had excellent apartments on the South Parade, which is always warm when any sun shines. I put myself under the care of Dr. Parry, who, having resided, and practised physic at Bath more than forty years, must, caeteris paribus, know the virtues and vices of Bath waters better than the most renowned physicians in London. To give them fair play, I remained three months in this City; and I found my hand much more alive, and my general health very considerably amended. But, I caught so violent a fresh cold in my journey home, that it was called what the French style a Fluxion de poitrine, and I was immediately confined to my bed at Chelsea, and unable to eat, sleep, or speak. Strict starvation was then ordered; but softened off into fish and asparagus as soon as possible, by our wise and good Aesculapius, Sir Walter Farquliar: and now I am allowed poultry and game, under certain restrictions, and find myself tolerably well again. All this tedious account of own self should still have been suppressed, but that I feared it might reach you by some other means, and give you greater alarm; I determined, therefore, to tell you the truth, the whole truth, &c., with my own paw: being able, at the same time, to write you that, cough excepted, which returns with cold weather, I passed last summer more free from complaint than I have passed any for many preceding years. And now it is time to say something of your other kindred, whose names you languish, you say, to see.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 439