Complete Works of Frances Burney

by Frances Burney

  This evening, however, the colonel was successful, and recovered me my print. It is so extremely humorous that I was very glad to receive it, and in return I fetched my last sketches, which Mr. William Locke had most kindly done for me when here last autumn, and indulged Colonel Wellbred with looking at them, charging him at the same time to guard them from a similar accident. I meant to show them myself to my royal mistress, who is all care, caution, and delicacy, to restore to the right owner whatever she receives with a perfect knowledge who the right owner is,

  The second volume of the “Letters” of my reverenced Dr. Johnson was now lent me by her majesty; I found in them very frequent mention of our name, but nothing to alarm in the reading it.

  DEATH OF MRS. DELANY.

  April.-I have scarce a memorandum of this fatal month, in which I was bereft of the most revered of friends, and, perhaps, the most perfect of women.(273) I am yet scarce able to settle whether to glide silently and resignedly — as far as I can — past all this melancholy deprivation, or whether to go back once more to the ever-remembered, ever-sacred scene that closed the earthly pilgrimage of my venerable, my sainted friend.

  I believe I heard the last words she uttered : I cannot learn that she spoke after my reluctant departure. She finished with that cheerful resignation, that lively hope, which always broke forth when this last — awful — but, to her, most happy change seemed approaching.

  Poor Miss Port and myself were kneeling by her bedside. She had just given me her soft hand; without power to see either of us, she felt and knew us. O, never can I cease to cherish the remembrance of the sweet, benign, holy voice with which she pronounced a blessing upon us both! We kissed her — and, with a smile all beaming — I thought it so — of heaven, she seemed then to have taken leave of all earthly solicitudes. Yet then, even then, short as was her time on earth, the same soft human sensibility filled her for poor human objects. She would not bid us farewell — would not tell us she should speak with us no more — she only said, as she turned gently away from us, “And now — I’ll go to sleep!” — But, O, in what a voice she said it! I felt what the sleep would be; so did poor Miss Port.

  Poor, sweet, unfortunate girl! what deluges of tears did she shed over me! I promised her in that solemn moment my eternal regard, and she accepted this, my first protestation of any kind made to her, as some solace to her sufferings. Sacred shall I hold it! — sacred to my last hour. I believe, indeed, that angelic being had no other wish equally fervent.

  How full of days and full of honours was her exit! I should blush at the affliction of my heart in losing her, could I ever believe excellence was given us here to love and to revere, yet gladly to relinquish. No, I cannot think it: the deprivation may be a chastisement, but not a joy. We may submit to it with patience; but we cannot have felt it with warmth where we lose it without pain, Outrageously to murmur, or sullenly to refuse consolation — there, indeed, we are rebels against the dispensations of providence — and rebels yet more weak than wicked; for what and whom is it we resist? what and who are we for such resistance?

  She bid me — how often did she bid me not grieve to lose her! Yet she said, in my absence, she knew I must, and sweetly regretted how much I must miss her. I teach myself to think of her felicity; and I never dwell upon that without faithfully feeling I would not desire her return. But, in every other channel in which my thoughts and feelings turn, I miss her with so sad a void! She was all that I dearly loved that remained within my reach; she was become the bosom repository of all the livelong day’s transactions, reflections, feelings, and wishes. Her own exalted mind was all expanded when we met. I do not think she concealed from me the most secret thought of her heart; and while every word that fell from her spoke wisdom, piety, and instruction, her manner had an endearment, her spirits a native gaiety, and her smile, to those she loved, a tenderness so animated.

  Blessed spirit! sweet, fair, and beneficent on earth! — O, gently mayest thou now be at rest in that last home to which fearfully I look forward, yet not hopeless; never that — and sometimes with fullest, fairest, sublimest expectations! If to her it be given to plead for those she left, I shall not be forgotten in her prayer. Rest to her sweet soul! rest and everlasting peace to her gentle spirit!

  I saw my poor lovely Miss Port twice in every day, when in town, till after the last holy rites had been performed. I had no peace away from her; I thought myself fulfilling a wish of that sweet departed saint, in consigning all the time I had at my own disposal to solacing and advising with her beloved niece, who received this little offering with a sweetness that once again twined her round my heart. . . .

  Poor Mrs. Astley, the worthy humble friend, rather than servant, of the most excellent departed, was the person whom, next to the niece, I most pitied. She was every way to be lamented: unfit for any other service, but unprovided for in this, by the utter and most regretted inability of her much attached mistress, who frequently told me that leaving poor Astley unsettled hung heavy on her mind.

  My dearest friends know, the success I had in venturing to represent her worth and situation to my royal mistress. In the moment when she came to my room to announce his majesty’s gracious intention to pension Mrs. Astley here as housekeeper to the same house, I really could scarce withhold myself from falling prostrate at her feet : I never felt such a burst of gratitude but where I had no ceremonials to repress it. Joseph, too, the faithful footman, I was most anxious to secure in some good service — and I related my wishes for him to General Cary, who procured for him a place with his daughter, Lady Amherst.

  I forget if I have ever read you the sweet words that accompanied to me the kind legacies left me by my honoured friend. I believe not. They were ordered to be sent me with the portrait of Sacharissa, and two medallions of their majesties: they were originally written to accompany the legacy to the Bishop of Worcester, Dr. Hurd, as you may perceive by the style, but it was desired they might also be copied: —

  “I take this liberty, that my much esteemed and respected friend may sometimes recollect a person who was so sensible of the honour of her friendship and who delighted so much in her conversation and works.”

  Need I — O, I am sure I need not say with what tender, grateful, sorrowing joy I received these sweet pledges of her invaluable regard!

  To these, by another codicil, was added the choice of one of her mosaic flowers. And verbally, on the night but one before she died, she desired I might have her fine quarto edition of Shakespeare, sweetly saying she had never received so much pleasure from him in any other way as through my reading.

  THE HASTINGS TRIAL AND MR. WINDHAM AGAIN. The part of this month in which my Susanna was in town I kept no journal at all. And I have now nothing to add but to copy those memorandums I made of the trial on the day I went to Westminster Hall with my two friends,(274) previously to the deep calamity on which I have dwelt. They told me they could not hear what Mr. Windham said; and there is a spirit in his discourse more worth their hearing than any other thing I have now to write.

  You may remember his coming straight from the managers, in their first procession to their box, and beginning at once a most animated attack — scarcely waiting first to say “How do!” — before he exclaimed “I have a great quarrel with you — I am come now purposely to quarrel with you — you have done me mischief irreparable — you have ruined me!”

  “Have I?”

  “Yes: and not only with what passed here, even setting that aside, though there was mischief enough here; but you have quite undone me since!”

  I begged him to let me understand how.

  “I will,” he cried. “When the trial broke up for the recess I went into the country, purposing to give my whole time to study and business; but, most unfortunately, I had just sent for a new set of ‘Evelina;’ and intending only to look at it, I was so cruelly caught that I could not let it out of my hands, and have been living with nothing but the Branghtons ever since.”

  I
could not but laugh, though on this subject ’tis always awkwardly.

  “There was no parting with it,” he continued. “I could not shake it off from me a moment! — see, then, every way, what mischief you have done me!”

  He ran on to this purpose much longer, with great rapidity, and then, suddenly, stopping, again said, “But I have yet another quarrel with you, and one you must answer. How comes it that the moment you have attached us to the hero and the heroine — the instant you have made us cling to them so that there is no getting disengaged — twined, twisted, twirled them round our very heart-strings — how is it that then you make them undergo such persecutions? There is really no enduring their distresses, their Suspenses, their perplexities. Why are you so cruel to all around — to them and their readers?”

  I longed to say — Do you object to a persecution? — but I know he spells it prosecution.

  I could make no answer: I never can. Talking over one’s own writings seems to me always ludicrous, because it cannot be impartially, either by author or commentator; one feeling, the other fearing, too much for strict truth and unaffected candour.

  When we found the subject quite hopeless as to discussion, he changed it, and said “I have lately seen some friends of yours, and I assure you I gave you an excellent character to them: I told them you were firm, fixed, and impenetrable to all conviction.”

  An excellent character, indeed! He meant to Mr. Francis and

  Charlotte.

  Then he talked a little of the business of the day and he told me that Mr. Anstruther was to speak.

  “I was sure of it,” I cried,, “by his manner when he entered the managers’ box. I shall know when you are to speak, Mr. Windham, before I hear you.,”

  He shrugged his shoulders a little uncomfortably. I asked him to name to me the various managers. He did; adding, “Do you not like to sit here, where you can look down upon the several combatants before the battle?”

  When he named Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor, I particularly desired he might be pointed out to me, telling him I had long wished to see him, from the companion given to him in one of the “Probationary Odes,” where they have coupled him with my dear father, most impertinently and unwarrantably.

  “That, indeed,” he cried, “is a licentiousness in the press quite intolerable — to attack and involve private characters in their public lampoons! To Dr. Burney they could have no right; but Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor is fair game enough, and likes that or any other way whatever of obtaining notice. You know what Johnson said to Boswell of preserving fame?”

  “No.”

  “There were but two ways,” he told him, “of preserving; one was by sugar, the other by salt. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘as the sweet way, Bozzy, you are but little likely to attain, I would have you plunge into vinegar, and get fairly pickled at once.’ And such has been the plan of Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor. With the sweet he had, indeed, little chance, so he soused into the other, head over ears.”

  We then united forces in repeating passages from various of the “Probationary Odes,” and talking over various of the managers, till Mr. Anstruther was preparing to speak, and Mr. Windham went to his cell.

  I am sure you will remember that Mr. Burke came also, and the panic with which I saw him, doubled by my fear lest he should see that panic.

  When the speech was over, and evidence was filling up the day’s business, Mr. Windham returned. Some time after, but I have forgotten how, we were agreeing in thinking suspense, and all obscurity, in expectation or in opinion, almost the thing’s most trying to bear in this mortal life, especially where they lead to some evil construction.

  “But then,” cried he, “on the other hand, there is nothing so pleasant as clearing away a disagreeable prejudice; nothing SO exhilarating as the dispersion of a black mist, and seeing all that had been black and gloomy turn out bright and fair.”

  “That, Sir,” cried I, “is precisely what I expect from thence,” pointing to the prisoner.

  What a look he gave me, yet he laughed irresistibly.

  “However,” I continued, “I have been putting my expectations from your speech to a kind of test.”

  “And how, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Why, I have been reading — running over, rather — a set of speeches, in which almost the whole House made a part, upon the India bill; and in looking over those I saw not one that had not in it something positively and pointedly personal, except Mr. Windham’s.”

  “O, that was a mere accident.”

  “But it was just the accident I expected from Mr. Windham. I do not mean that there was invective in all the others, for in some there was panegyric — plenty! but that panegyric was always so directed as to convey more of severe censure to one party than of real praise to the other. Yours was all to the business, and hence I infer you will deal just so by Mr. Hastings.”

  “I believe,” cried he, looking at me very sharp, “you only want to praise me down. You know what it is to skate a man down?”

  “No, indeed.”

  “Why, to skate a man down is a very favourite diversion among a certain race Of wags. It is only to praise, and extol, and stimulate him to double and treble exertion and effort, till, in order to show his desert of such panegyric, the poor dupe makes so many turnings and windings, and describes circle after circle with such hazardous dexterity, that, at last, down he drops in the midst of his flourishes, to his own eternal disgrace, and their entire content.” page 147

  I gave myself no vindication from this charge but a laugh; and we returned to discuss speeches and speakers, and I expressed again my extreme repugnance against all personality in these public harangues, except in simply stating facts. “ What say you, then,” cried he, “ to Pitt?” He then repeated a warm and animated praise of his powers and his eloquence, but finished with this censure: “He takes not,” cried he, “the grand path suited to his post as prime minister, for he is personal beyond all men; pointed, sarcastic, cutting; and it is in him peculiarly unbecoming. The minister should be always conciliating; the attack, the probe, the invective, belong to the assailant.” Then he instanced Lord North, and said much more on these political matters and maxims than I can possibly write, or could at the time do more than hear; for, as I told him, I not only am no politician, but have no ambition to become one, thinking it by no means a female business.

  “THE QUEEN IS so KIND.”

  When he went to the managers’ box, Mr. Burke again took his place, but he held it a very short time, though he was in high good humour and civility. The involuntary coldness that results from internal disapprobation must, I am sure, have been seen, so thoroughly was it felt. I can only talk on this matter with Mr. Windham, who, knowing my opposite principles, expects to hear them, and gives them the fairest play by his good humour, candour, and politeness. But there is not one other manager with whom I could venture such openness.

  That Mr. Windham takes it all in good part is certainly amongst the things he makes plainest, for again, after Mr. Burke’s return to the den, he came back.

  “I am happy,” cried I, “to find you have not betrayed me.”

  “Oh, no; I would not for the world.”

  “I am quite satisfied you have kept my counsel; for Mr. Burke has been with me twice, and speaking with a good humour I could not else have expected from him. He comes to tell me that he never pities me for sitting here, whatever is going forward, as the sitting must be rest; and, indeed, it seems as if my coming hither was as much to rest my frame as to exercise my mind. “That’s a very good idea, but I do not like to realize it; I do not like to think of you and fatigue together. Is it so? Do you really want rest?”

  “O, no.”

  “O, I am well aware yours is not a mind to turn complainer but yet I fear, and not for your rest only, but your time. How is that; have you it, as you Ought, at your own disposal?”

  “Why not quite,” cried I, laughing. Good heaven! what a question, in a situation like mine!
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br />   “Well, that is a thing I cannot bear to think of — that you should want time.”

  “But the queen,” cried I, is so kind.”

  “That may be,” interrupted he, “and I am very glad of it but still, time — and to you!”

  “Yet, after all, in the whole, I have a good deal, though always Uncertain. for, if sometimes I have not two minutes when I expect two hours, at other times I have two hours where I expected only two minutes.”

  “All that is nothing, if you have them not with certainty. Two hours are of no more value than two minutes, if you have them not at undoubted command.”

  Again I answered, “The queen is so kind;” determined to sound that sentence well and audibly into republican ears.

  “Well, well,” cried he, “that may be some compensation to you, but to us, to all others, what compensation is there for depriving you of time?”

  “Mrs. Locke, here,” cried I, “always wishes time could be bought, because there are so many who have more than they know what to do with, that those who have less might be supplied very reasonably.”

  “’Tis an exceeding good idea,” cried he, “and I am sure, if it could be purchased, it ought to be given to YOU by act of parliament, as a public donation and tribute.” There was a fine flourish!

  PERSONAL RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN WINDHAM AND HASTINGS. A little after, while we were observing Mr. Hastings, Mr. Windham exclaimed, “He’s looking up; I believe he is looking for you.”