Complete Works of Frances Burney

by Frances Burney

  “But I hope,” cried I, alarmed, “he does not see that.”

  “Why your caps,” cried he, “are much in your favour for concealment; they are excellent screens to all but the first row!”

  I saw him, however, again look at the poor, and, I sincerely believe, much-injured prisoner, and as I saw also he still bore With my open opposition, I could not but again seize a favourable moment for being more serious With him.

  “Ah, Mr. Windham,” I cried, “I have not forgot what dropped from you on the first day of this trial.”

  He looked a little surprised. “You,” I continued, “probably have no remembrance of it, for you have been living ever since down there; but I was more touched with what you said then, than with all I have since heard from all the others, and probably than with all I shall hear even from you again when you mount the rostrum.”

  “You conclude,” cried he, looking very sharp, “I shall then be better steeled against that fatal candour?”

  “In fact,” cried I, “Mr. Windham, I do really believe your steeling to he factitious; notwithstanding you took pains to assure me your candour was but the deeper malice; and yet I will own, when once I have heard your speech, I have little expectation of ever having the honour of conversing with you again.”

  “And why?” cried- he, starting back “what am I to say that you denounce such a forfeit beforehand?”

  I could not explain; I left him to imagine; for, should he prove as violent and as personal as the rest, I had no objection to his previously understanding I could have no future pleasure in discoursing with him.

  “I think, however,” I continued, with a laugh, “that since I have settled this future taciturnity, I have a fair right in the meanwhile to say whatever comes uppermost. He agreed to this with great approvance.

  “Moličre, you know, in order to obtain a natural opinion of his plays, applied to an old woman: you upon the same principle, to obtain a natural opinion of political matters, should apply to an ignorant one — for you will never, I am sure, gain it down there.”

  He smiled, whether he would or not, but protested this was the severest stricture upon his committee that had ever yet been uttered.

  MISS BURNEY’S UNBIASED SENTIMENTS.

  I told him as it was the last time he was likely to hear unbiased sentiments upon this subject, it was right they should be spoken very intelligibly. “ And permit me,” I said, “ to begin with what strikes me the most. Were Mr. Hastings really the culprit he is represented, he would never stand there.”

  “Certainly,” cried he, with a candour he could not suppress, “there seems something favourable in that; it has a Pod look; but assure yourself he never expected to see this day.”

  “But would he, if guilty, have waited its chance? Was not all the world before him? Could he not have chosen any other place of residence?”

  “Yes — but the shame, the disgrace of a flight?”

  “What is it all to the shame and disgrace of convicted guilt?”

  He made no answer.

  “And now,” I continued, “shall I tell you, just in the same simple style, how I have been struck with the speakers and speeches I have yet heard?” He eagerly begged me to go on.

  “The whole of this public speaking is quite new to me. I was never in the House of Commons. It is all a new creation to me.”

  “And what a creation it is he exclaimed. “how noble, how elevating! and what an inhabitant for it!”

  I received his compliment with great courtesy, as an encouragement. for me to proceed. I then began upon Mr. Burke; but I must give you a very brief summary of my speech, as it could only be intelligible at full length from your having heard his. I told him that his opening had struck me with the highest admiration of his powers, from the eloquence, the imagination, the fire, the diversity of expression, and the ready flow of language, with which he seemed gifted, in a most superior manner, for any and every purpose to which rhetoric could lead. “And when he came to his two narratives,” I continued, “whence he related the particulars of those dreadful murders, he interested, he engaged, he at last overpowered me; I felt my cause lost. I Could hardly keep on my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance towards a man so accused as Mr. Hastings; I wanted to sink on the floor, that they might be saved so painful a sight. I had no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in his favour remained. But When from this narration Mr. Burke proceeded to his own comments and declamation — when the charges of rapacity, cruelty, tyranny were general, and made with all the violence of personal detestation, and continued and aggravated without any further fact or illustration; then there appeared more of study than of truth, more of invective than of justice; and, in short, so little of proof to so much of passion, that in a very short time I began to lift up my head, my seat was no longer uneasy, my eyes were indifferent which way they looked, or what object caught them; and before I was myself aware of the declension of Mr. Burke’s powers over my feelings, I found myself a mere spectator in a public place, and looking all around it, with my opera-glass in my hand.”

  His eyes sought the ground on hearing this, and with no other comment than a rather uncomfortable shrug of the shoulders, he expressively and concisely said— “I comprehend you perfectly!”

  This was a hearing too favourable to stop me; and Mr. Hastings constantly before me was an animation to my spirits which nothing less could have given me, to a manager of such a committee.

  I next, therefore, began upon Mr. Fox; and I ran through the general matter of his speech, with such observations as had occurred to me in hearing it. “His violence,” I said, “had that sort of monotony that seemed to result from its being factitious, and I felt less pardon for that than for any extravagance in Mr. Burke, whose excesses seemed at least to be unaffected, and, if they spoke against his judgment, spared his probity. Mr. Fox appeared to have no such excuse; he looked all good humour and negligent ease the instant before he began a speech of uninterrupted passion and vehemence, and he wore the same careless and disengaged air the very instant he had finished. A display of talents in which the inward man took so little share could have no powers of persuasion to those who saw them in that light and therefore however their brilliancy might be admired, they were useless to their cause, for they left the mind of the hearer in the same state that they found it.”

  After a short vindication of his friends, he said, “You have never heard Pitt? You would like him beyond any other competitor.”

  And then he made his panegyric in very strong terms, allowing him to be equal, ready, splendid, wonderful! — he was in constant astonishment himself at his powers and success; — his youth and inexperience never seemed against him: though he mounted to his present height after and in opposition to such a vortex of splendid abilities, yet, alone and unsupported, he coped with them all! And then, with conscious generosity, he finished a most noble éloge with these words: “Take — you may take — the testimony of an enemy — a very confirmed enemy of Mr. Pitt’s!”

  Not very confirmed, I hope! A man so liberal can harbour no enmity of that dreadful malignancy that sets mitigation at defiance for ever.

  He then asked me if I had heard Mr. Grey?

  “ No,” I answered; “ I can come but seldom, and therefore I reserved myself for to-day.”

  “You really fill me with compunction,” he cried. “But if, indeed, I have drawn you into so cruel a waste of your time, the only compensation I can make you will be carefully to keep from you the day when I shall really speak.”

  “No,” I answered, “I must hear you; for that is all I now wait for to make up my final opinion.”

  “And does it all rest with me?— ‘Dreadful responsibility’ — as Mr.

  Hastings powerfully enough expresses himself in his narrative.”

  “And can you allow an expression of Mr. Hastings’s to be powerful? — That is not like Mr. Fox, who, in acknowledging some one small thing to be right, in his speech, checked himself for the
acknowledgment by hastily saying ‘Though I am no great admirer of the genius and abilities of the gentleman at the bar;’ — as if he had pronounced a sentence in a parenthesis, between hooks, — so rapidly he flew off to what he could positively censure.”

  “ And hooks they were indeed he cried.

  “Do not inform against me,” I continued, “and I will give you a little more of Moličre’s old woman.”

  He gave me his parole, and looked very curious,

  “Well then, — amongst the things most striking to an unbiased spectator was that action of the orator that led him to look full at the prisoner upon every hard part of the charge. There was no courage in it, since the accused is so situated he must make no answer; and, not being courage, to Moličre’s old woman it could only seem cruelty!”

  He quite gave up this point without a defence, except telling me it was from the habit of the House of Commons, as Fox, who chiefly had done this, was a most good-humoured man, and by nothing but habit would have been betrayed into such an error.

  “And another thing,” I cried, “which strikes those ignorant of senatorial licence, is this, — that those perpetual repetitions, from all the speakers, of inveighing against the power, the rapacity, the tyranny, the despotism of the gentleman at the bar, being uttered now, when we see him without any power, without even liberty-con fined to that spot, and the only person in this large assembly who may not leave it when he will — when we see such a contrast to all we hear we think the simplest relation would be sufficient for all purposes of justice, as all that goes beyond plain narrative, instead of sharpening indignation, only calls to mind the greatness of the fall, and raises involuntary commiseration!”

  “And you wish,” he cried, “to hear me? How you add to my difficulties! — for now, instead of thinking of Lords, Commons, bishops, and judges before me, and of the delinquent and his counsel at my side, I shall have every thought and faculty swallowed up in thinking of who is behind me!”

  This civil speech put an end to Moličre’s old woman and her comments; and not to have him wonder at her unnecessarily, I said, “Now, then, Mr. Windham, shall I tell you fairly what it is that induced me to say all this to you? — Dr. Johnson! — what I have heard from him of Mr. Windham has been the cause of all this hazardous openness.”

  “’Twas a noble cause,” cried he, well pleased, “and noble has been its effect! I loved him, indeed, sincerely. He has left a chasm in my heart-a chasm in the world! There was in him what I never saw before, what I never shall find again! I lament every moment as lost, that I might have spent in his society, and yet gave to any other.”

  How it delighted me to hear this just praise, thus warmly uttered! — I could speak from this moment upon no other subject. I told him how much it gratified me; and we agreed in comparing notes upon the very few opportunities his real remaining friends could now meet with of a similar indulgence, since so little was his intrinsic worth understood, while so deeply all his foibles had been felt, that in general it was merely a matter of pain to hear him even named.

  How did we then emulate each other in calling to mind all his excellences!

  “His abilities,” cried Mr. Windham, “were gigantic, and always at hand no matter for the subject, he had information ready for everything. He was fertile, — he was universal.”

  My praise of him was of a still more solid kind, — his principles, his piety, his kind heart under all its rough coating: but I need not repeat what I said, — my dear friends know every word.

  I reminded him of the airings, in which he gave his time with his carriage for the benefit of Dr. Johnson’s health. “What an advantage!” he cried, “was all that to myself! I had not merely an admiration, but a tenderness for him, — the more I knew him, the stronger it became. We never disagreed; even in politics, I found it rather words than things in which we differed.”

  “And if you could so love him,” cried I, “knowing him only in a general way, what would you have felt for him had you known him at Streatham?”

  I then gave him a little history of his manners and way of life, there, — his good humour, his sport, his kindness, his sociability, and all the many excellent qualities that, in the world at large, were by so many means obscured.

  He was extremely interested in all I told him, and regrettingly said he had only known him in his worst days, when his health was upon its decline, and infirmities were crowding- fast upon him.

  “Had he lived longer,” he cried, “I am satisfied I should have taken to him almost wholly. I should have taken him to my heart! have looked up to him, applied to him, advised with him in all the most essential occurrences of my life! I am sure, too, — though it is a proud assertion, — he would have liked me, also, better, had we mingled more. I felt a mixed fondness and reverence growing so strong upon me, that I am satisfied the closest union would have followed his longer life.”

  I then mentioned how kindly he had taken his visit to him at Lichfield during a severe illness, “And he left you,” I said, “a book? “Yes,” he answered, “and he gave me one, also, just before he died. ‘You will look into this Sometimes,’ he said, ‘and not refuse to remember whence you had it.’ “(271)

  And then he added he had heard him speak of me, — and with so much kindness, that I was forced not to press a recapitulation: yet now I wish I had heard it. just before we broke up, “There Is nothing,” he cried, with energy, “for which I look back upon myself with severer discipline than the time I have thrown away in other pursuits, that might else have been devoted to that wonderful man!” He then said he must be gone, — he was one in a committee of the House, and could keep away no longer.

  BURKE AND SHERIDAN MEET WITH COLD RECEPTIONS. I then again joined in with Mrs. Crewe, who, meantime, had had managers without end to converse with her. But, very soon after, Mr. Burke mounted to the House of Commons(272) again, and took the place left by Mr. Windham. I inquired very much after Mrs. Burke, and we talked of the spectacle, and its fine effect; and I ventured to mention, allusively, some of the digressive parts of the great speech in which I had heard him: but I saw him anxious for speaking more to the point, and as I could not talk to him — the leading prosecutor — with that frankness of opposing sentiments which I used to Mr. Windham, I was anxious only to avoid talking at all; and so brief was my speech, and so long my silences, that, of course, he was soon wearied into a retreat. Had he not acted such a part, with what pleasure should I have exerted myself to lengthen his stay!

  Yet he went not in wrath: for, before the close, he came yet a third time, to say “I do not pity you for having to sit there so long, for, with you, sitting can now be no punishment.”

  “No,” cried I, “I may take rest for a twelvemonth back.” His son also came to speak to me; but, not long after,

  Mrs. Crewe called upon me to say, “Miss Burney, Mr. Sheridan begs me to introduce him to you, for he thinks you have forgot him.”

  I did not feel very comfortable in this; the part he acts would take from me all desire for his notice, even were his talents as singular as they are celebrated. Cold, therefore, was my reception of his salutations, though as civil as I could make it. He talked a little over our former meeting at Mrs. Cholmondeley’s, and he reminded me of what he had there urged and persuaded with all his might, namely, that I would write a comedy; and he now reproached me for my total disregard of his counsel and opinion.

  I made little or no answer, for I am always put out by such sort of discourse, especially when entered upon with such abruptness. Recollecting, then, that “Cecilia” had been published since that time, he began a very florid flourish, saying he was in my debt greatly, not only for reproaches about what I had neglected, but for fine speeches about what I had performed. I hastily interrupted him with a fair retort, exclaiming,— “O if fine speeches may now be made, I ought to begin first — but know not where I should end!” I then asked after Mrs. Sheridan, and he soon after left me.

  Mrs. Crewe was v
ery obligingly solicitous our renewed acquaintance should not drop here; she asked me to name any day for dining with her, or to send to her at any time when I could arrange a visit: but I was obliged to decline it, on the general score of wanting time.

  In the conclusion of the day’s business there was much speaking, and I heard Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, and several others; but the whole turned extremely in favour of the gentleman at the bar, to the great consternation of the accusers, whose own witnesses gave testimony, most unexpectedly, on the side of Mr. Hastings.

  We came away very late; my dear James quite delighted with this happy catastrophe.

  AT WINDSOR AGAIN.

  March.-In our first journey to Windsor this month Mrs.

  Schwellenberg was still unable to go, and the party was Miss

  Planta, Colonel Wellbred, Mr. Fairly, Sir Joseph Banks, and Mr.

  Turbulent Sir Joseph was so exceedingly shy that we made no sort of acquaintance. If instead of going round the world he had only fallen from the moon, he could not appear less versed in the usual modes of a tea-drinking party. But what, you will say, has a tea-drinking party to do with a botanist, a man of science, a president of the Royal Society?

  I left him , however, to the charge of Mr. Turbulent, the two colonels becoming, as usual, my joint supporters. And Mr. Turbulent, in revenge, ceased not one moment to watch Colonel Wellbred, nor permitted him to say a word, or to hear an answer, without some most provoking grimace. Fortunately, upon this subject he cannot confuse me; I have not a sentiment about Colonel Wellbred, for or against, that shrinks from examination.

  To-night, however, my conversation was almost wholly with him. I would not talk with Mr. Turbulent; I could not talk with Sir Joseph Banks - and Mr. Fairly did not talk with me : he had his little son with him; he was grave and thoughtful, and seemed awake to no other pleasure than discoursing with that sweet boy.

  I believe I have forgotten to mention that Mrs. Gwynn had called upon me one morning, in London, and left me a remarkably fine impression of Mr. Bunbury’s “Propagation of a Lie,” which I had mentioned when she was at Windsor, with regret at having never seen it. This I had produced here a month ago, to show to our tea-party, and just as it was in the hands of Colonel Wellbred, his majesty entered the room; and, after looking at it a little while, with much entertainment, he took it away to show it to the queen and princesses. I thought it lost; for Colonel Wellbred said he concluded it would be thrown amidst the general hoard of curiosities, which, when once seen, are commonly ever after forgotten, yet which no one has courage to name and to claim.