Mme. D’Arblay expected to have been able to come back to her father in eighteen months: she stayed in France ten years. During this period she resided with her husband at Passy. Their means, in the absence of remittances from England, which had practically ceased with the renewal of the war, consisted, primarily, of a small military retraite, or retiring allowance, of 1500 francs per annum (£62, 10s.), and later of a modest income earned by M. D’Arblay as a rédacteur and afterwards sous-chef in the Civil Department of les Bâtiments (Ministère de l’Intérieur). The post was no sinecure, and carried him to Paris daily from about half-past eight to half-past five. But he was treated by his chiefs with exemplary good feeling and consideration; and although, for lack of funds, only three rooms of the little home in the Rue Basse were finished and furnished, the husband and wife were perfectly happy. “Our view is extremely pretty from it [Paris on one side; the country on the other], and always cheerful; we rarely go out, yet always are pleased to return. We have our books, our prate, and our boy — how, with all this, can we, or ought we, to suffer ourselves to complain of our narrowed and narrowing income?” This was written in April, 1804. In 1810, they have apparently moved to Paris, for she dates from the Rue D’Anjou; and is rejoicing over the adopted friends she has found in her adopted country. “The society in which I mix, when I can prevail with myself to quit my yet dearer fireside, is all that can be wished, whether for wit, wisdom, intelligence, gaiety or politeness.” M. D’Arblay, says the same letter, is well, and at his office, where he is sadly overworked; and their son, now a youth of fifteen, with mathematical gifts, is preparing, at the same table, an exercise for his master. He is thin, pale and strong — we are told elsewhere; — but terribly sauvage, and singularly “averse to all the forms of society. Where he can have got such a rebel humour we conceive not; but it costs him more to make a bow than to resolve six difficult problems of algebra, or to repeat twelve pages from Euripides; and as to making a civil speech, he would sooner renounce the world.”[83]
In 1810 M. D’Arblay yielded to his wife’s desire to visit her friends in England. Everything had been done, and M. de Narbonne had procured her passport from the terrible Fouché, when a sudden embargo blocked all departures from the coast, and she was unable to start. In the following year she was operated upon for “a menace of cancer” by Napoleon’s famous surgeon, Baron de Larrey, a trial which, according to her niece, she bore with such fortitude as to earn, in her French circle, the name of L’Ange. In 1812 she made another, and a more successful, attempt to reach England. The necessity was then growing urgent, as her son was seventeen, and liable soon to a conscription which would have forced him to do the very thing his father had endeavoured to avoid, — namely, to fight the English. Mme. D’Arblay and young Alexandre, after waiting six weeks vainly at Dunkirk, at last landed at Deal in August. Many things had happened in her ten years’ absence. The King was now hopelessly mad; the Princess Amelia was dead; Mr. Twining was dead, as was also Mr. Locke of Norbury. She found her father sadly aged and broken, and indeed almost entirely confined to his bed-room. But she had plenty to occupy her during her stay. First, there was the settling of her son at Cambridge, where, having gained the Tancred scholarship, he began residence at Christ’s College in October 1813. Then there was the completion and publication of a new book, of which nearly three volumes out of five had been finished before she quitted France. Already, from Paris, she had been attempting some informal negotiations as to this, for Byron had heard of its existence. “My bookseller, Cawthorne,” — he wrote to Harness in Dec. 1811,— “has just left me, and tells me, with a most important face, that he is in treaty for a novel of Madame D’Arblay’s, for which 1000 guineas are asked! He wants me to read the MS. (if he obtains it), which I shall do with pleasure; but I should be very cautious in venturing an opinion on her whose Cecilia Dr. Johnson superintended.[84] If he lends it to me, I shall put it into the hands of Rogers and M[oor]e, who are truly men of taste.” Three days later, he repeats the story to Hodgson; but the amount has grown to 1500 guineas.
The best one can say about The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties, issued in March 1814, is, that it brought grist to the mill. It was not published by subscription like Camilla;[85] but Mme. D’Arblay herself tells us that 3600 copies were “positively sold and paid for” at the “rapacious price” of two guineas each in six months. From a literary point of view the book was an utter failure. It “was apparently never read by anybody,” observes Sir Leslie Stephen; and Macaulay says that “no judicious friend to the author’s memory will attempt to draw it from the oblivion into which it has justly fallen.” Even Mme. D’Arblay’s most faithful editor and admirer, Mrs. Ellis, makes open and heartfelt thanksgiving that it is not her duty to read it again. After these discouraging opinions from critics not unfriendly, it is scarcely surprising to learn that The Wanderer was attacked with unusual severity in the Quarterly for April, 1814; or that Hazlitt should, in the Edinburgh for February, 1815, make it the sorry pretext for that admirable survey of the national fiction which he afterwards converted into No. VI. of his Lectures on the English Comic Writers. Hazlitt earned, as has already been told in chapter i., the disapprobation of honest James Burney for his treatment of Mme. D’Arblay’s final effort. Yet it is notable that the critic blames The Wanderer, not for “decay of talent, but a perversion of it.” It is impossible to say as much now. The book, in truth, is wearisome, and its “difficulties” are unreal. The reason for its first success is, we suspect, to be traced to the cause suggested by Mme. D’Arblay herself, namely, the prevailing expectation that its pages would present a picture of contemporary and revolutionary France, where, it was known, the writer had been residing; and that this led to a number of copies being freely bespoken. When the real nature of its theme — the trivial and improbable adventures, in England, of a female refugee during the reign of Robespierre — was fully appreciated, the sale immediately fell off. Were it not futile, it would be interesting to speculate whether, had The Wanderer taken the place of Evelina in the order of Mme. D’Arblay’s productions, it would have succeeded at all, even in the absence of rivals. But it is a curious instance of the irony of circumstance that a book which nobody could read should have brought more than £7000 to somebody in the year in which Miss Edgeworth published Patronage, and Miss Austen, Mansfield Park. It is also more curious still, that in this very year Constable could not see his way to risk more than £700 on the copyright of an anonymous novel entitled Waverley; or, ’tis Sixty Years Since.
The Preface or Dedication to The Wanderer, from which some quotations have already been made during the progress of this volume, is dated 14 March, 1814. On the 12 April following, Dr. Burney died, being nursed tenderly by his daughter Fanny during his last illness. He had attained his eighty-eighth year, and since 1806 had enjoyed a pension of £300 per annum. One of the last distinctions of his busy career, which he had latterly occupied with a Life of Metastasio and contributions to Rees’ Cyclopædia, was that of Correspondent to the Institute of France, the diploma for which Mme. D’Arblay brought with her from Paris. A tablet was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey. Not long after his death, his daughter had the honour of being presented, in England, to Louis XVIII., who received her effusively, complimenting her, “in very pretty English,” upon her writings, and bidding her farewell at last under the style of “Madame la Comtesse.”[86] This was in April, 1814, after the taking of Paris, and the abdication of Buonaparte. A short time subsequently M. D’Arblay arrived from the French capital. He received a commission from the Duc de Luxembourg as Sous-Lieutenant in the Corps de Garde, and was restored to his old rank as Maréchal de Camp. He came to England on leave later in the same year, and took his wife back with him to France. Then followed the return of Buonaparte from Elba; and in March, 1815, Mme. D’Arblay took flight for Brussels. Some time afterwards she wrote from memory a narrative of the Hundred Days (March 20 to June 28), which has interest, but not the interest of a journa
l, although it is supposed to have supplied Thackeray with hints for the Brussels chapters of Vanity Fair. In July of the same year, General D’Arblay, while attempting, at Trèves, to raise a troop of refugees, received a kick from an unbroken horse. The accident was made worse by unskilled surgery; and having now, like his wife, passed his sixtieth year, he was placed on the retired list, with the title of Lieutenant-General, and received permission to settle in England. Three years later (3 May, 1818), he died at Bath, being buried in Walcot churchyard.[87] General D’Arblay is one of the most delightful figures in his wife’s Diary. A true militaire — as Susan Burney called him — he is also a typical specimen of the old pre-revolutionary régime, courteous, cheerful, amiable, and as dignified in ill-fortune as he is patient under poverty.
The remaining occurrences of Mme. D’Arblay’s life may be rapidly related. At Bath, in 1817 she had renewed her acquaintance with Mrs. Piozzi. At Ilfracombe, in the same year, she had a narrow escape from drowning, being surprised by the rising of the tide when she was searching for curiosities. After M. D’Arblay’s death she moved to 11, Bolton Street, Piccadilly, which bears a Society of Arts tablet in testimony of her residence there. It was at Bolton Street that she was visited by Sir Walter Scott, who describes her in his Journal for Nov. 18, 1826. Rogers took him. He found her an elderly lady (she was then seventy-four), “with no remains of personal beauty, but with a gentle manner and a pleasing expression of countenance. She told me she had wished to see two persons — myself, of course, being one; the other, George Canning. This was really a compliment to be pleased with — a nice little handsome pat of butter made up by a neat-handed Phillis of a dairymaid, instead of the grease, fit only for cart-wheels, which one is dosed with by the pound.” She told him the story of Evelina, and the mulberry tree episode.[88] “I trust I shall see this lady again,” writes Scott; “she has simple and apparently amiable manners, with quick feelings.”[89] He did see her again, two years later, and again with Rogers, when she showed him some notes which she induced him to believe had been recollected and jotted down in compliance with his suggestion on the former occasion. This was in May 1828.[90]
From 1828 to 1832 she busied herself in putting together the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which appeared in the latter year. They are based, with slight exceptions, on her father’s own MSS., drawn up in 1807 and afterwards, and on her own unprinted diaries and personal recollections. She herself was eighty when they were published, and her style had not improved with age. For the present generation, these records have been superseded by the publication of the original diaries and letters upon which in part they were based; but when they were issued in 1832, their memories and anecdotes were new to the public, who were not so impatient of their other defects as are later readers. Southey, indeed, to whom the volumes were sent by the author’s son, was unreserved in his praise. He wrote from Keswick that Evelina had not given him more pleasure when he was a schoolboy than these memoirs had given him now, and that was saying a good deal. “Except Boswell’s” — he went on— “there is no other work in our language which carries us into such society, and makes us fancy that we are acquainted with the people to whom we are there introduced.” But Croker, whom she had declined to assist with material for his edition of Boswell, made the Memoirs the subject of malignant attack in the Quarterly for April, 1833. Mme. D’Arblay — we are given to understand — was seriously pained by the imputation of unveracity contained in this article; and she might well be hurt on other grounds. The duties of reviewers are not always pleasant to perform; and Croker might plead, in defence of his ungallant inquisition into the author’s age, that, like Rousseau, he was simply actuated by the love of truth; but to say of a blameless and inoffensive old lady of eighty, who might certainly claim indulgence for imperfect recollection, that her style could not have been “more feeble, anile, incoherent, or ‘sentant plus l’apoplexie,’” is surely to write oneself down both cruel and contemptible.
One of the rare references to Mme. D’Arblay at this date is contained in Disraeli’s letters to his sister. “Contarini,” he writes, “seems universally liked, but moves slowly. The staunchest admirer I have in London, and the most discerning appreciator of Contarini, is old Madame D’Arblay. I have a long letter, which I will show you, — capital!” This was written in July, 1832. In 1837 Mme. D’Arblay had the misfortune to lose her son. Since she had placed him at Cambridge in 1813, he had done well. He had graduated in 1818 as tenth Wrangler; and though handicapped by a French education, became a Fellow of his College (Christ’s). Having taken orders in 1819, he was made, in 1836, minister of Ely Chapel, Holborn. He was preparing to marry, when he succumbed suddenly to influenza in January, 1837. His mother did not long survive him. Two years later, she was attacked by an illness, which was accompanied by spectral illusions; and, on January 6, 1840, being then in her eighty-eighth year, she died, at Lower Grosvenor Street, New Bond Street, and was buried by the side of her husband and son at Walcot. The prettiest story of her last days is told by Rogers. It is à propos of the well-known lines which begin —
“Life! we’ve been long together”;
and end —
“Say not Good Night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good Morning.”
“Sitting with Madame D’Arblay some time before she died, I [Rogers] said to her, ‘Do you remember those lines of Mrs. Barbauld’s Life, which I once repeated to you?’ ‘Remember them,’ she replied; ‘I repeat them to myself every night before I go to sleep.’”[91]
* * * * *
In 1842, two years after Mme. D’Arblay’s death, the first five volumes of her Diary and Letters were issued. These, like the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, were savagely assailed by Croker in the Quarterly in an article which had the good fortune to provoke a masterly retort in the Edinburgh from Lord Macaulay. Modern research has rectified some of the minor details, and modern criticism may dissent from some of the deductions, in this famous counterblast. But though no doubt prompted by antagonism to Mme. D’Arblay’s assailant in the rival review, and though strongly coloured by the writer’s political opinions, it remains, and must remain, a memorable tribute to the author of Evelina and Cecilia.
To Lord Macaulay’s essay, indeed, and to its periodical reproduction in fresh editions of his works, is probably due most of Mme. D’Arblay’s existing reputation as a novelist. And that reputation rests almost exclusively upon her first two productions, Evelina and Cecilia. We doubt if the piety of the enthusiast could ever revive — or rather create — the slightest interest in The Wanderer; or that any but the fanatics of the out-of-date, or the student of manners, could conscientiously struggle through Camilla. Works of genius, it is true, are occasionally born out of due time, and consequently fail of the recognition they deserve from their contemporaries, only to attain it eventually either through the insight of the independent critic, or the better knowledge of after ages. But these were not the circumstances of Camilla and The Wanderer. Both books were circulated freely among an audience not only specially qualified to judge, but also specially well-disposed; and if, with these advantages, they could not succeed in obtaining approbation, it is idle to attempt to revive them now. With Cecilia and Evelina, the case is different. They stand on their merits. And their merits are undeniable. It is true that — as Walpole said — Cecilia is too long; but its crowd of characters is very skilfully varied, and many of them, as Briggs, Albany, Mr. Delville, Mrs. Harrel, Mr. Monckton, are drawn with marked ability. And though the book has less freshness than its predecessor, it has more constructive power and greater certainty of hand. Mme. D’Arblay’s masterpiece, however, is Evelina. This she wrote because she must, — neither preoccupied with her public nor her past;[92] — and throughout this book penned for amusement in Newton’s old observatory, one never catches, as in Cecilia, the creak of the machinery, or fancies, in the background, the paternal voice pressing for prompt publication. It is perhaps difficult for a modern reader to be impressed by the
sentiments of the excellent Mr. Villars, still less to “blubber,” like Dr. Burney, over Sir John Belmont’s heroics; but, in spite of youthful exaggerations and faults of taste, it is still possible to admire the vivacity with which Miss Anville narrates her experiences, embarrassments, and social trepidations. It is also possible to comprehend something of the unparalleled enthusiasm produced by the opportune appearance of Evelina’s history in a dead season of letters — by its freedom from taint of immorality, its unfeigned fun and humour, and its unhackneyed descriptions of humanity. One can easily conceive how welcome these latter characteristics must have been to a public sickened and depressed by the “inflammatory tales” and “sentimental frippery”[93] of the circulating libraries. Evelina, moreover, marks a definite deviation in the progress of the national fiction. Leaving Fielding’s breezy and bustling highway, leaving the analytic hothouse of Richardson, it carries the novel of manners into domestic life, and prepares the way for Miss Edgeworth and the exquisite parlour-pieces of Miss Austen.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 710