Complete Works of Frances Burney

by Frances Burney

  “THE RUNNING HORSE”

  not speak to me, but kissed her hand with a very speaking and touching expression of countenance.”

  Fanny, in a letter to Mrs. Lock, expresses great regret at the unfortunate termination of her acquaintance with Madame de Staël, which “had begun with so much spirit and pleasure.” “I wish,” she says, “the world would take more care of itself and less of its neighbours. I should have been very safe, I trust, without such flights and distances and breaches. But there seemed an absolute resolution formed to crush this acquaintance, and compel me to appear its wilful renouncer.

  . . . “I am vexed, however - very much vexed - at the whole business. I hope Madame de Staël left Norbury Park with full satisfaction in its steady and more comfortable connection. I fear mine will pass for only a fashionable one.”

  It is satisfactory to know that before long the breach was healed to a large extent. This is shown by an affectionate letter from Madame de Staël to Miss Burney which we shall give later on.

  Whilst the various events of the last few months were taking place in the valley of Mickleham, a romance between two members of the little community was gradually weaving itself into shape.

  “The frequency and intimacy with which Miss Burney and M. d’Arblay now met,” writes the editor of the “Diaries,” “ripened into attachment the high esteem which each felt for the other; and after many struggles and scruples, occasioned by his reduced circumstances and clouded prospects, M. d’Arblay wrote her an offer of his hand; candidly acknowledging, however, the slight hope he entertained of ever recovering the fortune he had lost by the Revolution.

  “At this time Miss Burney went to Chesington for a short period, probably hoping that the extreme quiet of that place would assist her deliberations, and tranquillise her mind during her present perplexities.”

  [The “Druids’ Walk,” Norbury Park]

  CHAPTER XV. “DADDY CRISP’S” HOME

  CHESINGTON HALL, the home of her “Daddy Crisp,” was dear to the heart of Fanny Burney. There her father during his widowhood used to take “his delighted children to enjoy the society of that most valued friend,” and so complete was the enjoyment of young and old on these occasions that “in this long-loved rural abode,” says Fanny, “the Burneys and happiness seemed to make a stand.”

  “The old Hall,” she tells us, “had been built upon a large, lone and nearly desolate common; and no regular road, or even track, to the mansion from Epsom (the nearest town) had been spared from its encircling ploughed fields or fallow ground.” So isolated, indeed, was its position that strangers could not reach it without a guide, and to Dr. Burney alone, among his former friends and acquaintance, had Crisp confided the clue which would enable him to discover the route. Crisp had fixed his abode in Chesington Hall that he might be far removed from all contact with the world and its disappointments; but he had not shut out his heart from human love and sympathy, nor his mind from intellectual influences. He was, as Macaulay has said, “a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent counsellor,” and he became, by common consent, the family adviser of the Burney household, while his solitary home came to be their holiday resort.

  CHESINGTON HALL

  Fanny from early girlhood had been accustomed to write long letters to her Chesington “Daddy” to while away his lonely hours by accounts of the various gatherings in the little parlour of her home in St. Martin’s Street, where distinguished singers, and statesmen and women of fashion all thronged to wait upon the author of the “History of Music.” In after life Fanny entered in one of her notebooks the following memorandum: “A charge delivered to me by our dear vehement Mr. Crisp at the opening of my juvenile correspondence with him: ‘Harkee, you little monkey! dash away whatever comes uppermost; if you stop to consider either what you say, or what may be said of you, I would not give one fig for your letters.”’

  In describing the interior of Chesington Hall, Fanny dwells affectionately upon every detail - nothing is omitted; not a “nook or corner; nor a dark passage leading to nothing; nor a hanging tapestry of prim demoiselles and grim cavaliers; nor a tall canopied bed tied up to the ceiling; nor Japan cabinets of two or three hundred drawers of different dimensions; nor an oaken corner-cupboard, carved with heads, thrown in every direction, save such as might let them fall on men’s shoulders; nor a window stuck in some angle close to the ceiling of a lofty slip of a room; nor a quarter of a staircase leading to some quaint unfrequented apartment; nor a wooden chimney-piece, cut in diamonds, squares and round nobs, surmounting another of blue and white tiles, representing vis-à-vis a dog and a cat, as symbols of married life and harmony.”

  At the end of a long passage on the first storey, running from the front to the back of the house, there was a small room which Mr. Crisp had named the “Conjuring Closet,” for there his friend Dr. Burney had written a large portion of his “History of Music”; delighting in the quiet and seclusion of Chesington for his literary work.

  It was at Chesington that Fanny was staying in July 1778, when the sudden and unlooked for success of “Evelina” became known to her. No one out of her own family had been let into the secret of its authorship, not even her “Daddy Crisp.” She revered him too highly as a literary critic to venture to show him her “little book which she had written simply for her private recreation,” and had “printed for a frolic.”

  One morning a packet was put into her hands containing a letter from her father, who had just read “Evelina” for the first time, full of the warmest expressions in its favour. This letter was accompanied by the astonishing intelligence that Dr. Johnson was its ardent and outspoken admirer, that “Sir Joshua Reynolds had been fed while reading the little work, even refusing to quit it at table,” and that Edmund Burke had sat up a whole night to finish it! “All this,” writes Fanny, “so struck, so nearly bewildered the author, that, seized with a fit of wild spirits, and not knowing how to account for the vivacity of her emotion to Mr. Crisp, she darted out of the room, in which she had read the tidings by his side, to a small lawn before the window, where she danced lightly, blithely, gaily, around a large old mulberry-tree as impulsively and airily as she had often done in her days of adolescence.”

  We have visited Chesington and have seen that very tree, which stands on the lawn strong and healthy as ever. As we gazed upon its spreading branches, the whole scene rose before our eyes, and we danced, in spirit, with Fanny on that eventful morning.

  OLD MULBERRY TREE

  Three years later she was ensconced at Chesington writing her novel of “Cecilia.” All was going well, when an urgent summons came from the outer world, in the shape of a letter from Mrs. Thrale, to call her away. Fanny obeyed, and soon afterwards, on the sudden death of Mr. Thrale, accompanied his widow to Streatham, and there remained for a long period to comfort and cheer her, Meanwhile the MS. lay at Chesington untouched, and Fanny’s two fathers became uneasy on the subject. Urged by Crisp, Dr. Burney agreed to recall his daughter, but he found himself powerless against the “self-willed little lady of Thrale Place,” so Daddy Crisp himself came to the rescue. He made the journey to Streatham in spite of his infirmities, carried his point with Mrs. Thrale, and “bore off his young friend to the quiet and exclusive possession of the Doctor’s Conjuring Closet at Chesington!” Early in the following year the book was published.

  When Fanny, in the summer of 1793, had resorted to her second home for quiet and tranquillity, in order to consider the great question of M. d’Arblay’s proposal, her beloved “Daddy” was no more. He had died ten years before that period, deeply mourned by the whole Burney family. Fanny’s hosts were now an aged lady - Mrs. Hamilton - and her younger companion, Kitty Cook, who had for many years occupied a part of the old Hall. “Miss Kitty Cook still amuses me very much,” writes Fanny, “by her incomparable dialect; and by her kindness and friendliness I am taken the best care of imaginable.”

  Fanny mentions the “Mount,” a hillock on the edge of the garden comm
anding a wide view. Here, in a rustic arbour, fashioned like a beehive, she had found in former days a retreat in which to compose much of “Evelina.” Two giant elms sheltered the summer-house and formed a landmark at a distance of sixteen miles. Here Fanny

  THE MOUNT

  could see on the horizon the trees of Norbury Park. The “Mount” and its thatched arbour are unchanged, but one of the great elms has disappeared.

  In describing the Hall to a friend, she speaks of its “insulated and lonely position, its dilapidated state, its nearly inaccessible roads, its quaint old pictures, and straight long garden paths.” We have trod those garden paths. They are of the softest mown grass, and are flanked by long beds, with high box edgings, full of old-fashioned flowers and fruit-trees. The very pictures are still to be seen hanging on the walls of a long corridor. They are portraits of the Hatton family, a member of which built the mansion in the reign of Henry VIII. The house, it is true, was rebuilt nearly a century ago, but it was re-built upon the old plan, so that the present building closely resembles the former one. A sketch from a contemporary drawing will show the reader the Chesington Hall of Crisp’s day. Its “lonely position” is still maintained. Corn-fields and meadows surround it as of yore, and it is united with the outer world by shady lanes.

  Whilst Fanny was endeavouring to solve her perplexities at Chesington, M. d’Arblay, who was suffering the pains of suspense, found a friendly comforter in Mrs. Phillips.

  “At dinner came our Tio,” she writes to her sister, “very bad indeed. After it we walked with the children to Norbury; but little Fanny was so well pleased with his society that it was impossible to get a word on any particular subject. I, however, upon his venturing to question me whereabouts was the campagne où se trouvait Mlle. Burnet, ventured de mon côté to speak the name of Chesington, and give a little account of its inhabitants, the early love we had for the spot, our excellent Mr. Crisp, and your good and kind hostesses.

  “He listened with much interest and pleasure, and said: ‘Mais, ne pourrait on pas faire se petit voyage-là?’

  “I ventured to say nothing encouraging, at least decisively, in a great measure upon the children’s account, lest they should repeat; and, moreover, your little namesake seemed to me surprisingly attentive and éveillée, as if elle se doutoit de quelque chose.

  “When we came home I gave our Tio some paper to write to you; it was not possible for me to add more than the address, much as I wished it.”

  Here is the account of M. d’Arblay’s visit from Fanny herself. “I had prepared for it,” she writes, “from the time of my own expectation, and I had much amusement in what the preparation produced. Mrs. Hamilton ordered half a ham to be boiled ready; and Miss Kitty trimmed up her best cap and tried it on, on Saturday, to get it in shape to her face. She made chocolate also, which we drank up on Monday and Tuesday because it was spoiling. ‘I have never seen none of the French quality,’ she says, ‘and I have a purdigious curiosity; though as to dukes and dukes’ sons, and these high top captains, I know they’ll think me a mere country bumpkin. Howsoever they can’t call me worse than Fat Kit Square, and that’s the worst name I ever got from any of our English pelite bears, which I suppose these pelite French quality never heard the like of.’

  “Unfortunately, however, when all was prepared above, the French top captain entered while poor Miss Kitty was in dishbill, and Mrs. Hamilton finishing washing up her china after breakfast. A maid, who was out at the pump and saw the arrival, ran in to give Miss Kitty time to escape, for she was in her round dress nightcap and without her roll and curls. However, he followed too quick, and Mrs. Hamilton was seen in her linen gown and mob, though she had put on a silk one in expectation for every noon these four or five days past; and Miss Kitty was in such confusion, she hurried out of the room. She soon, however, returned, with the roll and curls, and the throat fashionably lost in a silk gown. And though she had not intended to speak a word, the gentle quietness of her guest so surprised and pleased her that she never quitted his side while he stayed, and has sung his praises ever since.

  “Mrs. Hamilton, good soul! in talking and inquiring since of his history and conduct, shed tears at the recital. She says now she has seen one of the French gentry that has been drove out of their country by the villains she has heard of, she shall begin to believe there really has been a Revolution! and Miss Kitty says, ‘I purtest I did not know before, but it was all a sham.’”

  [Window of the “Conjuring Closet” in Chesington Hall]

  CHAPTER XVI. A PERPLEXING QUESTION

  FANNY, in writing on May 31 a letter addressed to both her sister Susan and to her beloved friend Mrs. Lock, says: “Much indeed in the course of last night and this morning has occurred to me that now renders my longer silence as to prospects and proceedings unjustifiable to myself.

  “M. d’Arblay’s last three letters convince me that he is desperately dejected when alone, and when perfectly natural. It is not that he wants patience, but he wants rational expectation of better times; expectation founded on something more than mere aërial hope, that builds one day upon what the next blasts: and thus has to build again, and again to be blasted.

  . . . “My dearest Fredy, in the beginning of her knowledge of this transaction, told me that Mr. Lock was of opinion that the 100l. per annum[] might do, as it does for many a curate. M. d’A. also most solemnly and affectingly declares that le simple nécessaire is all he requires, and here in your vicinity would unhesitatingly be preferred by him to the most brilliant fortune in another séjour.

  “If he can say that, what must I be not to echo it? I, who in the bosom of my own most chosen, most darling friends - I need not enter more upon this . . . . I cannot picture such a fate with dry eyes.

  . . . “With regard to my dear father, he has always left me to myself; I will not therefore speak to him while thus uncertain what to decide.

  “It is certain, however, that with peace of mind and retirement, I have resources that I could bring forward to amend the little situation; as well as that, once thus undoubtedly established and naturalised, M. d’A. would have claims for employment.

  “These reflections, with a mutual freedom from ambition, might lead to a quiet road, unbroken by the tortures of applications, expectations, attendance, disappointment and time-wasting hopes and fears; if there were not apprehensions the 100l. might be withdrawn. I do not think it likely, but it is a risk too serious to be run. Mr. d’A. protests he could not answer to himself the hazard. How to ascertain this, to clear the doubt, or to know the fatal certainty, before it should be too late, exceeds my powers of suggestion.

  “In short, my dearest friends, you will think for me and let me know what occurs to you, and I will defer any answer till I hear your opinions.

  “Heaven ever bless you! and pray for me at this moment.

  “F. B.”

  In the meanwhile, Dr. Burney was becoming alarmed as to the turn affairs were taking. “I have for some time seen very plainly,” he writes to his daughter, “that you are éprise, and have been extremely uneasy at the discovery. You must have observed my silent gravity, surpassing that of mere illness and consequent low spirits.” He goes on to warn her “not to entangle herself in a wild and romantic attachment which offers nothing in prospect but poverty and distress.” He dwells earnestly on the fact of M. d’Arblay’s total loss of fortune, and remarks, “Your income, if it was as certain as a freehold estate, is insufficient for the purpose; and if the Queen should be displeased and withdraw her allowance, what could you do?

  . . . “My objections are not personal,” he adds, “but wholly prudential. As far as character, merit, and misfortune demand esteem and regard, you may be sure that M. d’Arblay will be always received by me with the utmost attention and respect; but in the present situation of things I can by no means think I ought to encourage (blind and ignorant as I am of all but his misfortunes) a serious and solemn union with one whose unhappiness would be a reproach to the f
acility and inconsiderateness of a most affectionate father.”

  “Dr. Burney,” writes his daughter, in her “Memoir” of her father, “it may well be believed, was startled, was affrighted, when a proposition was made to him for the union of his daughter with a ruined gentleman - a foreigner - an emigrant; but the proposition came under the sanction of the wisest as well as kindest of that daughter’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Lock, of Norbury Park; and with the fullest sympathies of his cherished Susanna . . . . The Doctor could not, therefore, turn from the application implacably; he only hesitated, and demanded time for consideration. Fortunately, at this crisis, some letters arrived from M. de Lally-Tollendal and from the Prince de Poix, mentioning the ‘favour in which they knew M. d’Arblay to have stood with Louis XVI.,’ and speaking from their own knowledge of ‘the spotless honour, the stainless character, and the singularly amiable disposition for which, in his own country, M. d’Arblay had been distinguished.’”

  This evidence had its due weight, and at the same time Mrs. Phillips sent to her father a statement she had drawn up “of the plans and means and purposes of M. d’A. and F. B. - so clearly

  CARVED STONE SEAT, NORBURY PARK

  demonstrating their power of happiness, with willing economy, congenial tastes, and mutual love of the country, that Dr. B. gave way and sent, though reluctantly, a consent” to the marriage.

  There is an unpublished letter (preserved in the Burney family) written by Fanny to her brother Charles to announce her engagement to M. d’Arblay. That letter is dated from Norbury Park, and we picture to ourselves Fanny, as she wrote it, seated very possibly in a small room to the front of the mansion, whose tall window looks across smooth lawns and groups of trees, to a blue distance lying in the direction of Chesington.