CHAPTER IV

THE SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR

Once—so runs the story—when Miss Burney was dining with Sir Joshua Reynolds at that pleasant villa upon Richmond Hill which had been built for him by Chambers the architect, she chanced to see him looking at her in a peculiar way. “I know what you are thinking about,”—she said. “Ay,” he replied, “you may come and sit to me now whenever you please.” He had at last caught her special attitude,—her distinctive phase. “I hope he will take your picture,” “Daddy” Crisp had said, when she first made the artist’s acquaintance;—“who knows, but the time may come when your image may appear . . . like Garrick with the Comic and Tragic Muse contending for you?” Thalia and Melpomene were certainly to contend for the author of _Evelina_, and that at no distant date. There is however no picture of Fanny Burney in the Reynolds Gallery. Hoppner painted her later; but Hoppner is not Sir Joshua. Her best likeness, one of two from the same hand, is by her cousin, Edward Burney, who, it is hinted, surveyed his model—

“in the light Of tender personal regards,”—

and—it is also hinted—possibly slightly flattered her.

Edward Burney’s portrait, which is prefixed to the _Diary and Letters_ of 1842-6, had been mezzotinted two years earlier by Charles Turner on a larger scale. It is said to represent Miss Burney at the age of thirty, having been painted at Chessington in August 1782. She wears a hat and feathers; and her hair is frizzed out in the approved fashion of the day. Her attitude is conventional:—she sits demurely erect, with formally posed hands. But her eyes are brimming with latent animation; and the corners of the lips are lifted with a lurking sense of fun. Of the sitter’s stature the picture gives little indication. She is reported, however, to have been extremely slight and frail of make—“a small cargo for the Chessington coach,” said Mr. Crisp. It was perhaps owing to this that she preserved so long her youthful and almost girlish appearance. As to her eyes, which, in the portrait, look large and luminous, we have her own assurance that they were greenish gray; and from the fact that she was called “the dove” by one of her Tunbridge friends, we must assume that they resembled those of Mrs. Delany, who is praised by her adoring husband for “what Solomon calls ‘dove’s eyes.’” Her complexion was brown; and she is affirmed to have been rather French-looking. Beautiful of feature, perhaps, she could scarcely be called. But it is admitted that she had great charm of expression, and a countenance which was quick to betray every passing emotion. “Poor Fanny’s face”—said her father—“tells us what she thinks whether she will or no”; and she confirms this herself by lamenting her lack of power to command her features. She “rouged” readily—to use her own euphemism for blushing. For the rest, she was all her life ailing and delicate. But like many valetudinarians, she succeeded in surviving her robuster relatives. She out-lasted all her sisters except one; and she lived to the age of eighty-seven.[36]

When Dr. Burney fetched his daughter from Chessington, it had been arranged that they should stop at Streatham Place on their way back to town. This they did; and Fanny’s diary gives a full account of what she pronounces to be “the most consequential day she had spent since her birth.” Mrs. Thrale was very gracious, and very discreet, only mentioning _Evelina_ in order to refer to Dr. Johnson’s genuine admiration for the book. Mr. Seward, whom we remember as one of the visitors to St. Martin’s Street, was not by any means so considerate, bluntly blurting out his praises in the most embarrassing manner. At dinner a place was left next Miss Burney for Dr. Johnson, who presently appeared. The Doctor was as delicate as Mrs. Thrale, only touching indirectly and circuitously upon the burning topic. Asked by Mrs. Thrale to have some little pies of mutton, he declared gallantly that sitting next Miss Burney made him too proud to eat mutton. Later, after some rambling talk about the wear and tear of Garrick’s face, he went on to speak of Dr. Burney’s rival, Sir John Hawkins, whom he can scarcely be said to have extolled. He believed him “an honest man at the bottom; but to be sure,” he continued, “he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.” Giving an instance of Sir John’s “_unclubbable_” character, he added that it reminded him of a lady with whom he had once travelled, who, stopping at an inn in her own coach and four, called for—a pint of ale! quarrelling moreover with the waiter for not giving full measure. And here came in another adroit allusion to _Evelina_. “Mme. Duval”—said the Doctor—“could not have done a grosser thing!”—a sentiment which of course convulsed the company, and threw the young person at his side into the most delicious confusion. Altogether the visit was delightful; and when Fanny and her father got into the chaise to go, it was a settled thing that she was to come again to Streatham, and for a much longer stay.

When she reached St. Martin’s Street, there were further honours in store for her. Hetty had lately met Frances Reynolds, who was full of the new novel, “though without a shadow of suspicion as to the scribbler.” This, of itself, was not much; but Miss Reynolds also announced that her brother, Sir Joshua, having begun it when “he was too much engaged to go on with it, was so much caught, that he could think of nothing else, and was quite absent all the day, not knowing a word that was said to him; and, when he took it up again, found himself so much interested in it, that he sat up all night to finish it!” He would give fifty pounds, he had subsequently declared, to know the author, and other people were equally inquisitive. After this interesting piece of intelligence, Fanny thought she would herself go to Mr. Thomas Lowndes, and ascertain in what way that gentleman was satisfying the eagerness of enquirers. As she could not trust herself to speak, her step-mother went with her. They began by buying a copy, and then asked Mr. Lowndes—a pompous and consequential personage who happened to be in the shop—if he could tell them who wrote it. No, he replied, he did not know himself. Pressed further, he said that the author was a gentleman of the other end of the town; and, in response to renewed cross-questioning on Mrs. Burney’s part, affirmed that he was a master of his subject, and well versed in the manners of the times. Moreover, that he (Mr. Lowndes) had at first thought _Evelina_ was by Horace Walpole, who had once published a book in the same “snug manner,”[37] but he did not think so now. (Other people, it may be noted, had attributed it to Christopher Anstey of the _New Bath Guide_, then some dozen years old,—a work which Miss Anville and Lord Orville peruse together at Mrs. Beaumont’s.) Finally, out of sheer inability to satisfy his interrogator, Mr. Lowndes hinted darkly, “with a most important face,” that he had been told that the authorship of _Evelina_ was a piece of real secret history, which could consequently never be known. This final piece of information was too much for the listener, who “was obliged to look out at the shop-door” for the remainder of the interview. To the modern student Fanny’s investigations would have been more satisfying if they had thrown some definite light on the progress of the book from the publisher’s point of view. In spite of various statements to the contrary, it seems clear that when, in August, 1778, she and her step-mother went to Fleet Street, Mr. Lowndes was still selling the first impression. The second edition is dated 1779; and in October, 1796, the author wrote that “the first edition of _Evelina_ was of eight hundred, the second of five hundred, and the third of a thousand” copies. On the other hand, Lowndes, who should certainly have been acquainted with the facts, informed Dr. Burney, in an unpublished letter of 1782, that he only printed a first edition of five hundred. Whichever be the correct version of the story, it is pretty clear that the sale for the first twelve months can scarcely be regarded as extraordinary.[38]

Before the end of August Mrs. Thrale called at St. Martin’s Street, and carried off her new friend to Streatham Place; and at Streatham Place Fanny practically remained for the rest of 1778. The inviting white house with its wooded park, or enclosure, where—to use Susan Burney’s expression—the “cattle, poultry, and dogs all ran freely about without annoying each other,” has now long been a thing of the past, having been pulled down in 1863. Its site was the southern side of the lower common between Streatham and Tooting. It was a three-storied building, with many cheerful rooms which Fanny’s records make familiar to us. The saloon was hung with sky blue; and there was a parlour for the more crowded dinner parties, decorated with prints by Hogarth and others which, probably inaccurately, are described as being “pasted” on the walls. The library, also used frequently as a breakfast room, had been built by Mr. Thrale about 1773, and was kept stocked with books by Johnson, who here—said Mrs. Thrale—“talked Ramblers,” while she read aloud the last proofs of the _Lives of the Poets_. Above the book-cases, hung the famous Thrale Gallery, dispersed in 1816,—portraits by Sir Joshua of Johnson, of Burke, of the artist himself, of Goldsmith, Garrick, Murphy, Baretti, Dr. Burney and other visitors to the house. Over the fireplace, and also by Reynolds, was the double picture of Mrs. Thrale and Queenie, which was exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1884. In the grounds, besides plantations, and high-walled kitchen gardens with ice-houses and pineries, there was an encircling shrubbery which bordered a gravelled walk of nearly two miles. There was also a spring pond, dug by Thrale, which, apparently in imitation of Duck Island in St. James’s Park, boasted its Dick’s Island; and there was “a cool summer-house,” where Johnson wrote and studied, and Fanny read, or essayed to read, _Irene_. It must have been a most delightful country-house, meriting fully the Doctor’s grateful eulogy that “none but itself could be its parallel.” “I have found nothing,” he wrote from Lichfield in 1767, “that withdraws my affections from the friends whom I left behind, or which makes me less desirous of reposing at that place which your kindness and Mr. Thrale’s allows me to call my _home_.” “These are as good people,” he said to Miss Burney in the first days of her visit, “as you can be with; you can go to no better house; they are all good nature; nothing makes them angry.”

He himself seems to have softened with his environment. Although, as Fanny says, the freedom with which he condemned what he disapproved was astonishing, and his strength of language would to most persons be intolerable, he presented, upon the whole, a far more benignant aspect than that in which he is usually exhibited by Boswell. He is Johnson in clover, and _en belle humeur_; happier and more at ease than he is elsewhere, and therefore more agreeable. To the yet undisclosed author of _Evelina_ he is especially gracious, and even affectionate. He kisses her hand; makes her sit by him; pays her elaborate compliments; and no one, when he pleased, could do that better. “Harry Fielding,” he protested, “never drew so good a character” as her Mr. Smith. “Such a fine varnish of low politeness!—such a struggle to appear a gentleman! Madam [to Mrs. Thrale], there is no character better drawn anywhere—in any book, or by any author”—an extravagance which almost leads one particular author present to “poke herself under the table.” He bursts out with sudden quotations from _Evelina_:—with Miss Branghton’s, “Only think, Polly! Miss has danced with a Lord!”—he rallies poor Mr. Seward on his resemblance to the Holborn beau.—“Why you only want a tambour waistcoat, to look like Mr. Smith!” Then he is heard grumbling to himself over a letter from Fanny’s medical adviser, Dr. Jebb, whose penmanship is that of a tradesman. “Mr. Branghton would have written his name with just such beastly flourishes!” But perhaps the acme of his amiable speeches is his frank comparison of “dear little Burney,” as he comes to call her, with Fielding and Richardson. “Richardson,” he said, “would have been really afraid of her; there is merit,” he went on, “in _Evelina_ which he could not have borne. No; it would not have done! unless, indeed, she would have flattered him prodigiously. Harry Fielding, too, would have been afraid of her; there is nothing so delicately finished in all Harry Fielding’s works as in _Evelina_.” Then, shaking his head at her, he exclaimed, “O, you little character-monger you!”—an appellation which must be admitted to be singularly appropriate. On another occasion, he declared that she was his “hero.” “Dr. Goldsmith was my last; but I have had none since his time, till my little Burney came.”[39] “I admire her”—he said again, and to her face—“for her observation, for her good sense, for her humour, for her discernment, for her manner of expressing them, and for all her writing talents.” Decidedly it was good to be praised by Johnson; and one may well forgive Miss Burney for doubting whether she could possibly live up to his laudation.

Visitors to Streatham Place came and went so freely that it is difficult to chronicle them. Among the rest was that accomplished _esprit fort_, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, to whom Mrs. Thrale could not deny herself the pleasure of exhibiting her own special prize and discovery, the author of _Evelina_. Mrs. Montagu came to Streatham by invitation, accompanied by her friend, Miss Gregory. Dr. Johnson was very anxious that “Burney” should attack the “Queen of the Blue Stockings,” much as, in his own hot youth, he had hawked at all established wits. But Mrs. Thrale, finding that Mrs. Montagu knew nothing of _Evelina_, disclosed the secret of the authorship so abruptly, that Fanny fairly took to her heels and fled. Hence she saw less of the great lady than she would otherwise; and between the extreme blame of “Daddy” Crisp and the extreme praise of Mrs. Thrale, was not perhaps greatly prepossessed in favour of Mrs. Montagu, who, moreover, had been so ill-advised as never to have heard of _Evelina_. But Mrs. Montagu was very well-bred and polite; and easily fell in with Dr. Johnson’s suggestion that Miss Burney should accompany the rest of those present to the housewarming with which she hoped shortly to open her new abode in Portman Square,—that famous mansion of the feather-hangings celebrated by Cowper’s—

“The Birds put off their every hue To dress a room for Montagu.”

It was in reference to a suggestion by Mrs. Montagu that Fanny’s dedication was good enough to have been written by her father—a suggestion which, with all her filial affection, Fanny could scarcely be expected to welcome very warmly—that Johnson uttered one of his common-sense deliverances on criticism. “You must not mind that”—he said of Mrs. Montagu’s impolitic remark,—“for such things are always said where books are successful. There are three distinct kinds of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules.” Of this second class, his own “Dick Minim” is an admirable exemplification.[40]

In January, 1779, Miss Burney was again at St. Martin’s Street, her sister Susan being from home. St. Martin’s Street has a mysterious visit from “a square old gentleman, well-wigged, formal, grave and important,” who suddenly asks her if she is not _Evelina_, and turns out to be Dr. Francklin, chaplain to the Royal Academy. Then she is invited to Sir Joshua’s to meet Mrs. and Miss [Mary] Horneck (Goldsmith’s “Jessamy Bride”), soon to be married to Colonel Gwyn. The ladies had said that they would walk a hundred and sixty miles to see her, so there was nothing to excuse her for not stepping across the Fields to No. 47. Here she met another admirer, Peg Woffington’s witty and eccentric sister, Mrs. Cholmondeley; and Lord Palmerston, father of the Victorian premier; and Burke’s brother William, the “honest William” of Goldsmith’s _Retaliation_. All, and especially Sir Joshua, were most cordial, though Mrs. Cholmondeley’s “pointed speeches,” Duval _Ma foi’s_, and references to _Evelina_ generally, would have been embarrassing, even to a less nervous person than the author. Mrs. Cholmondeley, among other things, had been to Lowndes for information, getting nothing from that windbag but intelligence that a gentleman had betted that the writer of _Evelina_ was a man, while she, Mrs. Cholmondeley, felt equally convinced it was a woman. “But now”—she added—“we are both out; for it’s a girl!”—which must be accepted as unanswerable testimony to Fanny’s youthful appearance at six-and-twenty.

This interview with Mrs. Cholmondeley, who had been one of the book’s earliest and most energetic trumpeters (it was she, indeed, who had first recommended it “among the wits”), was of course, followed by an invitation, which proved a most important one. For at Mrs. Cholmondeley’s in Hertford Street she met, not only the beautiful “St. Cecilia” of Reynolds, with her almost equally beautiful sister, Miss Linley; but she met “St. Cecilia’s” husband, the all-conquering author of the recently-produced _School for Scandal_ and manager of Drury Lane, Richard Brinsley Sheridan himself, of whom she writes admiringly. He has “a good though I don’t think a handsome face. He is tall, and very upright, and his appearance and address are at once manly and fashionable, without the smallest tincture of foppery or modish graces. In short, I like him vastly, and think him every way worthy his beautiful companion,”—to whom, Fanny adds, he was manifestly much devoted. By and by, Sheridan introduced himself to Miss Burney, and was most agreeable. He had been telling her father, he said, that he had long expected to see in her “a lady of the gravest appearance, with the quickest parts.” He expressed the highest admiration for _Evelina_, adding that he hoped she (Miss Burney) did not intend to throw away her pen. He was very curious to know what she was about, and Sir Joshua observed that she must succeed in “anything in the dialogue way.” Mr. Sheridan assented. He thought “she should write a comedy.” “And you,” said the kind Sir Joshua presently, “would take anything of hers, would you not?—unsight, unseen?” “Yes,” he answered with quickness, “and make her a bow and my best thanks into the bargain.” Here was a piece of news to post off to Susan!

As a matter of fact, Miss Burney was already engaged upon a dramatic essay. Both her father and “Daddy” Crisp were anxious that, before interest cooled, she should follow up her first success by some other work; and from the date of Mrs. Thrale’s first letter to Dr. Burney,[41] that lady had been pressing her to write for the stage. She had the same conviction as Reynolds that something “in the dialogue way” would suit her young friend. _Evelina_—Mrs. Thrale thought—ran so naturally into conversations that it absolutely and plainly pointed that path to her. If she could not do better than Hannah More, who got nearly four hundred pounds for her foolish play,[42] she deserved to be whipped—said this kindly enthusiast. Dr. Johnson, after see-sawing immoderately, proposed, in a fit of untimely levity, that her first work should be entitled, _Streatham: A Farce_; but he, too, heartily approved. Mrs. Montagu, who was consulted, though she was sympathetic, was not so sure. She advanced the case of Fielding, who failed upon the stage. And “Daddy” Crisp was still more half-hearted. He wrote to Fanny an admirable letter upon the subject. While he was urgent that she should do something, he was by no means satisfied that the something in question should be a comedy. In a second letter he developed his ideas. She had gained much: she had much to lose. And play-writing—for her—had its peculiar difficulties. Her delicacy (and she was a prude, she knew herself) would debar her from those frequent lively freedoms without which comedy would lose wonderfully of its salt and spirit. All the same he would evidently not have her try the bloodless and prevalent sentimental comedy. About Fielding, he agreed with Mrs. Montagu. Finally, though he did not wholly desire to discourage her from the attempt, he thought that, in entering upon it, she must surrender a part of her strength. And here we may use his actual words:—“In these little entertaining elegant histories [such as _Evelina_], the writer has his full scope; as large a range as he pleases to hunt in—to pick, cull, select whatever he likes: he takes his own time—he may be as minute as he pleases, and the more minute the better, provided that taste, a deep and penetrating knowledge of human nature and the world, accompany that minuteness. When this is the case, the very soul, and all its most secret recesses and workings, are developed and laid as open to the view, as the blood-globules circulating in a frog’s foot, when seen through a microscope. The exquisite touches such a work is capable of (of which _Evelina_ is, without flattery, a glaring instance), are truly charming. But of these great advantages, these resources, you are strangely curtailed the moment you begin a comedy. There, everything passes in dialogue,—all goes on rapidly—narrative and descriptive, if not extremely short, becomes intolerable. The detail which in Fielding, Marivaux, and Crébillon, is so delightful, on the stage would bear down all patience. There all must be compressed into quintessence; the moment the scene ceases to move on briskly, and business seems to hang, sighs and groans are the consequence. Dreadful sound!—In a word, if the plot, the story of the comedy does not open and unfold itself in the easy, natural, unconstrained flow of the dialogue—if that dialogue does not go on with spirit, wit, variety, fun, humour, repartee,—and all in short into the bargain—_serviteur!_—good-bye t’ ye!”

This is excellently said, and shows once again how precept may excel practice,—though, to be sure, “Daddy” Crisp’s _Virginia_ was a tragedy, and not a comedy. In a later letter Fanny’s Mentor modified his views to the extent of admitting that it was possible, with due contrivance and dexterity, to display light principles without light expressions; but he stuck to the proposition that he would never allow his Fannikin “to sacrifice a grain of female delicacy for all the wit of Congreve and Vanbrugh put together,”—and in this she was entirely of his mind. These letters preceded the interview with Sheridan; and as we have already said, she had probably begun to work on a comedy still earlier.[43] When, in February, she got back to Streatham, she made the acquaintance of Arthur Murphy, in whose _Way to Keep Him_ she had acted at Barborne Lodge. He, too, volunteered the suggestion that she should write for the stage. Comedy, in his opinion, was the forte of _Evelina_, and he offered his skilled assistance. He subsequently gave her some rules by which she was too far advanced in her work to profit—rules which, Johnson consolingly told her, she would do just as well without. In May her play is finished, though “on account of the various Maecenases who would expect to be consulted,” the greatest secrecy is observed. Murphy applauds; and so does Mrs. Thrale. Johnson apparently was not consulted. But when it is carried off by Dr. Burney to “Daddy” Crisp, the verdict of Fanny’s “highest court” is unfavourable. Indeed, in what she calls a “hissing, groaning, cat-calling epistle,” they go as far as to recommend its suppression. Not only did it recall the _Femmes Savantes_ of Molière (which Fanny had never read), but they regarded the plot and incidents as insufficient to hold the attention of the audience. Fanny took her disappointment bravely, and at once threw her work aside. Later on, when it became necessary to explain matters to Sheridan, there was some talk of remodelling, and with this object the fourth act was almost entirely re-written. But Crisp, who was appealed to, stood to his guns. He thought the capital defect of an ill-planned fable beyond remedy, though he admitted the wit of the play.

Here the matter seems to have rested; and all we know of the suppressed piece is, that it was entitled _The Witlings_, and that the _dramatis personae_ included, among others, a quotation-loving Lady Smatter (in whom Mrs. Thrale professed to recognise her own portrait), Mrs. Voluble, Mrs. Wheedle, Mrs. Sapient, Dabbler, Censor, and a “great oaf, Bobby.” There was also—and the point is memorable in view of the title of Miss Burney’s next novel—a Cecilia, the loss and restoration of whose fortune were matters in debate. Whether Dr. Burney and his friend were right in their judgment of _The Witlings_, cannot now be affirmed or denied in the absence of the MS. Probably they were right; though they do not seem to have borne in mind how material a part the acting bears in the success of a piece; and at Sheridan’s theatre, Miss Burney’s comedy would certainly have been splendidly represented. King, Dodd, Palmer, Parsons, Mrs. Abington, and Miss Pope—would all probably have taken part in it. But Fanny’s advisers, it is clear, were also actuated by another reflection, of which Murphy knew nothing: they feared the effect upon the author of a possible _fiasco_. “My great scruple all along has been the consideration of the great stake you are playing for,”—writes Mr. Crisp,—“how much you have to lose, and how unequal your delicate and tender frame of mind would be to sustain the shock of a failure of success, should that be the case.” This is perhaps not a critical reason; but, at the same time, it is a reason beyond criticism. And “Daddy” Crisp shows plainly that it was _The Witlings_ he doubted,—not Fanny’s ability to produce comedy. For, in an earlier letter, he had suggested to her a fresh effort, based upon certain of her own experiences as narrated to her father.

It was early in 1779 that Miss Burney made the acquaintance of Sheridan at Mrs. Cholmondeley’s; and it was not until the beginning of 1780 that _The Witlings_ was practically abandoned. In the interim, at Streatham and elsewhere, Fanny seems to have spent her time very agreeably. In May, she went with the Thrales to Brighton, returning, apparently, early in June, owing to the sudden illness of Mr. Thrale. But in October they were again at Brighton, taking Knole Park (Lord Dorset’s) and its magnificent galleries in their way, and making a short stay at Tunbridge Wells, where Miss Burney pours scorn upon the famous Pantiles as a fashionable pleasure walk. “It has no beauty in itself, and borrows none from foreign aid, as it has only common houses at one side, and little millinery and Tunbridge-ware shops at the other, and at each end is choked up by buildings that intercept all prospect.” At Brighton, no doubt in the interests of _Evelina_, Mrs. Thrale at once inscribed their names at the booksellers’ shops upon the Steyne. At this date there were no great notabilities at Brighthelmstone, as Fanny styles the place, save “that celebrated wit and libertine,” the Hon. Mr. Beauclerk, and his wife, Lady Di; Cumberland the dramatist and his family; and Mrs. Musters, whose son married Byron’s first love, Mary Chaworth. The Miss Cumberlands were reckoned “the flashers of the place,” and Fanny gives an account of their father which reads like a scene from the _Critic_. “Sir Fretful Plagiary” was already prejudiced against her on account of her success; and when he called on Mrs. Thrale, he showed it. As soon as she had quitted the room he said to Mrs. Thrale, with a spiteful tone of voice,

“‘Oh, that young lady is an author, I hear!’

“‘Yes,’ answered Mrs. Thrale, ‘author of _Evelina_.’

“‘Humph—I am told it has some humour!’

“‘Ay, indeed! Johnson says nothing like it has appeared for years!’

“‘So,’ cried he, biting his lips, and waving uneasily in his chair, ’so, so!’

“‘Yes,’ continued she; ‘and Sir Joshua Reynolds told Mr. Thrale he would give fifty pounds to know the author!’

“‘So, so—oh, vastly well!’ cried he, putting his hand on his forehead.

“‘Nay!’ added she, ‘Burke himself sat up all night to finish it!’

“This seemed quite too much for him; he put both his hands to his face, and waving backwards and forwards, said, ‘Oh, vastly well!—this will do for anything!’ with a tone as much as to say, Pray, no more! Then Mrs. Thrale bid him good night, longing, she said, to call Miss Thrale first, and say, ‘So you won’t speak to my daughter?—why, she is no author.’”

Some of the persons sketched in Miss Burney’s journal are less known to fame than those who have been mentioned, but they are not less cleverly drawn. There is Mr. Seward, one of the Streatham _habitués_, and the later author of _Biographiana_. Mr. Seward is a brewer’s son, who dabbles in letters, and seems like an earlier real-life version of Sir Charles Coldstream in _Used Up_. With “Mr. Dry,” as Miss Burney calls him, she playfully proposes to collaborate in a comedy, to be entitled _Everything a Bore_. There is a real tragic author, Dr. John Delap, who, while as absent-minded and as ignorant of the world as Parson Adams, is engaged upon a play called _Macaria_,[44] on the story of the wife and daughter of Hercules, which Fanny has to read and criticise—or rather eulogise. There is a very musical, precocious, and semi-French ten-year-old schoolgirl, Miss Birch, who sings sentimental airs from French operas, and says to her friends, “_Que je vous adore!”—“Ah, permettez que je me mette à vos pieds!_” etc., with a dying languor that is equally delightful and preposterous. And there is that finished and fascinating coquette of coquettes, Miss Sophy Streatfield of Tunbridge Wells, who knows Greek as well as Miss Elizabeth Carter or Mrs. Buller, is as lovely as Mrs. Crewe or Mrs. Sheridan, and has moreover a faculty for shedding tears so becoming to her lackadaisical cast of beauty that she is periodically required (like the water works at Vauxhall) to display her unique gift for the public delectation. Fanny’s description of Miss Streatfield’s mechanical _grandes eaux_ is too good to be neglected. We must imagine her surrounded by attentive spectators, with Mrs. Thrale (like Mrs. Jarley) for exhibitor. “‘Yes, do cry a little, Sophy [_in a wheedling voice_], pray, do! Consider, now, you are going to-day, and it’s very hard if you won’t cry a little; indeed, S. S., you ought to cry.’ Now for the wonder of wonders. When Mrs. Thrale, in a coaxing voice, suited to a nurse soothing a baby, had run on for some time—while all the rest of us, in laughter, joined in the request—two crystal tears came into the soft eyes of the S. S., and rolled gently down her cheeks! Such a sight I never saw before, nor could I have believed.[45] She offered not to conceal or dissipate them: on the contrary, she really contrived to have them seen by everybody. She looked, indeed, uncommonly handsome, for her pretty face was not like Chloe’s [in Prior], blubbered; it was smooth and elegant, and neither her features nor complexion were at all ruffled; nay, indeed, she was smiling all the time.” It is melancholy to think that a lady who possessed in such perfection the attributes of Venus Victrix, should die unmarried. Yet this was the untoward fate of the “S. S.” “Everybody’s admiration, and nobody’s choice,” as one of her friends said, she survived until 1835, an ancient maiden lady, concerning whom we do not even know whether—like Pope’s Patty Blount—she retained to the last the charm of her wonderful blue eyes.

But Miss Streatfield is not the person upon whom Miss Burney concentrates her fullest powers of description. That honour is reserved for an unidentified Mr. B——y, to whom she devotes several pages. Mr. B——y, or “The General,” as she styles him, is an Irishman. He has been a Commissary in Germany; is between sixty and seventy, but means to pass for thirty; a professed admirer of the sex, whom he invariably calls “fair females”; garnishes his speech with French tags of the most hackneyed kind; quotes often and inaccurately; and although Fanny, afraid of painting too much _en noir_, declares him to be worthy and moral at bottom, seems to outward view to be nothing but a blundering, prejudiced, puffing, domineering busybody and bore. He is enraged with Reynolds for charging seventy guineas “to scratch out a head”; he is enraged with Garrick for living like a person of quality; he is enraged with Agujari for getting fifty pounds for a mere song; he is equally enraged with Rauzzini because the “fair females” sigh over him, and make a man sick. But the General’s standing topic is his health; his rooted antipathy, physicians; and his favourite story—which he tells three or four times a day—in this wise:—“‘Some years ago,’—he says—‘let’s see, how many? in the year ’71—ay, ’71, ’72—thereabouts—I was taken very ill, and, by ill luck, I was persuaded to ask the advice of one of these Dr. Gallipots:—oh, how I hate them all! Sir, they are the vilest pickpockets,—know nothing, sir! Nothing in the world! poor ignorant mortals! and they pretend—in short, sir, I hate them all; I have suffered so much by them, sir—lost four years of the happiness of my life—let’s see, ’71, ’72, ’73, ’74—ay, four years, sir!—mistook my case, sir!—and all that kind of thing. Why, sir, my feet swelled as big as two horses’ heads! I vow I will never consult one of these Dr. Gallipot fellows again! lost me, sir, four years of the happiness of my life!—why, I grew quite an object!—you would hardly have known me!—lost all the calves of my legs!—had not an ounce of flesh left!—and as to the rouge—why, my face was the colour of that candle!—those Gallipot fellows!—why they robbed me of four years—let me see, ’71, ’72—’

“And then it all goes over again!

“This story is always _a-propos_; if health is mentioned, it is instanced to show its precariousness; if life, to bewail what he has lost of it; if pain, to relate what he has suffered; if pleasure, to recapitulate what he has been deprived of; but if a physician is hinted at, eagerly indeed is the opportunity seized of inveighing against the whole faculty.”

There is more, especially of the General grumbling over the newspaper; but enough has been given. In all these pictures, it may be noted, Miss Burney insists upon her fidelity to fact. “I never mix truth and fiction,” she tells “Daddy” Crisp. “I have other purposes for imaginary characters than filling letters with them.” “The world, and especially the Great world, is so filled with absurdity of various sorts, now bursting forth in impertinence, now in pomposity, now giggling in silliness, and now yawning in dullness, that there is no occasion for invention to draw what is striking in every possible species of the ridiculous.” As time went on, her opportunities for study rather increased than decreased. At the beginning of 1780, as already related, the question of her comedy was again partly revived. Then there were proposals for a tour in Italy with the Thrales which was afterwards abandoned. But in April she went with her friends to Bath, making acquaintance _en route_, at the Bear at Devizes, with the hostess’s clever son, who afterwards became Sir Thomas Lawrence. At Bath they lodge (like Smollett’s Mr. Bramble) in the South Parade, with Allen’s Prior Park, the meadows, and “the soft flowing Avon” in view; and are speedily absorbed in the fashionable diversions of the place. Prelates were preaching at the Abbey and St. James’s Churches; there were public breakfasts in the Spring Gardens; the Pump Room was crowded with company and the Walks with promenaders; Mrs. Siddons was playing Belvidera at Mr. Palmer’s Theatre in Orchard Street; and life was one endless round of fiddles, dinners, concerts, assemblies, balls, card-parties and scandal. Miss Burney’s canvas becomes more and more crowded, and less detailed, affording space only for occasional vignettes such as the following: “In the evening we had Mrs. L——, a fat, round, panting, short-breathed old widow; and her daughter, a fubsy, good-humoured, laughing, silly, merry old maid. They are rich folks, and live together very comfortably, and the daughter sings—not in your fine Italian taste! no, that she and her mother agree to hold very cheap—but all about Daphne, and Chloe, and Damon, and Phillis, and Jockey!” Or this,—on the same page,—“Mrs. K—— is a Welsh lady, of immense fortune, who has a house in the Crescent, and lives in a most magnificent style. She is about fifty, very good-humoured, well-bred, and civil, and her waist does not measure above a hogshead. She is not very deep, I must own; but what of that? If all were wits, where would be the admirers at them?”

Dr. Johnson did not take part in the Bath expedition. He would, indeed, have come; but Mrs. Thrale had discouraged his doing so, feeling sure that a watering-place life would have horribly wearied him, which is not only possible but extremely probable. Literature—that is to say the literature of 1780—was nevertheless fairly represented in Bladud’s ancient City. First and foremost there was Mrs. Thrale’s rival, Mrs. Montagu, with her attendant train of blue-stockings; there was Anstey of the _New Bath Guide_, whom—as we have seen—wiseacres had credited with _Evelina_; there was Mrs. Susannah Dobson, the translator of _Petrarch_; there was Melmoth of Pliny’s _Letters_; there was Miss Elizabeth Carter of Epictetus; there was Lady Miller of Batheaston and the famous Frascati vase wherein—according to Macaulay—“fools were wont to put bad verses,” but which, however, at this precise moment of time, was not _en fonction_.[46] To the failings of her _confrères_ and _consœurs_, Miss Burney, it must be confessed, in her capacity of “faithful historian” is not always “very kind.” Of poor Lady Miller, who died a year later, she writes, “She is a round, plump, coarse-looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on. Her habits are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her manners very inelegant.” Of Mrs. Dobson, she reports that “though coarse, low-bred, forward, self-sufficient, and flaunting, she seems to have a strong and masculine understanding, and parts that, had they been united with modesty, or fostered by education, might have made her a shining and agreeable woman; but she has evidently kept low company, which she has risen above in literature, but not in manners.” Of Miss Carter, on the contrary, then growing old, Miss Burney says, that she “never saw age so graceful in the female sex yet, her whole face seems to beam with goodness, piety and philanthropy.” Anstey she finds not very agreeable—“shyly important, and silently proud,” and moreover unable to forget that he is the author of a popular work; while _Pliny_ Melmoth is written down as “intolerably self-sufficient.”

Some of the Bath visitors were naval officers who—it should be observed—did not at all accept Captain Mirvan’s portrait as typical of their profession. One of them, Mrs. Thrale’s cousin, Captain Cotton, pretended “in a comical and good-humoured way” to resent it highly; and so—he told the author—did all the Captains in the Navy. Admiral Byron, too,—the Byron of the “narrative” in _Don Juan_,—though he admired _Evelina_, was “not half pleased with the Captain’s being such a brute.” But Miss Burney herself is unconvinced and impenitent. “The more I see of sea-captains, the less reason I have to be ashamed of Captain Mirvan; for they have all so irresistible a propensity to wanton mischief,—to roasting beaux, and detesting old women, that I quite rejoice I showed the book to no one ere printed, lest I should have been prevailed upon to soften his character.” What the sea-captains, and the Bathonians generally thought of their critic, is not related, save in a sentence from _Thraliana_:—“Miss Burney was much admired at Bath (1780); the puppy-men said, ‘She had such a drooping air and such a timid intelligence’; or ‘a timid air,’ I think it was, and ‘a drooping intelligence’; never sure was such a collection of pedantry and affectation as filled Bath when we were on that spot.” The almost imperceptible feline touch in this passage serves to remind us that, in the padlocked privacy of her personal records, Mrs. Thrale did not scruple (like Dr. Johnson) to mingle praise with blame when occasion required. From other entries in _Thraliana_, Fanny seems to have sometimes vexed her friend by her prudish punctiliousness and dread of patronage, as well as by her perhaps more defensible preference for her own family. “What a blockhead Dr. Burney is to be always sending for his daughter home so! what a monkey! is she not better and happier with me than she can be anywhere else?” . . . “If I did not provide Fanny with every wearable—every wishable, indeed—it would not vex me to be served so; but to see the impossibility of compensating for the pleasures of St. Martin’s Street, makes one at once merry and mortified.” There were other reasons, as we shall learn presently, why Dr. Burney was anxious that Fanny should come back.[47]

Meanwhile, early in June, the Bath visit came to a premature conclusion. Returning from a visit to Lady Miller, Mrs. Thrale received intelligence of the Gordon riots. Her house in the Borough had been besieged by the mob, and only saved from destruction by the assistance of the Guards and the presence of mind of the superintendent, Mr. Perkins. Streatham Place was also threatened, and emptied of its furniture. What was worse, Mr. Thrale, then in a very unsatisfactory state of health, had been falsely denounced as a papist; and as there were also rioters at Bath, Mrs. Thrale and Fanny decided that it would be best to quit that place, and travel about the country. They started for Brighton; but before they got to Salisbury, London was again, in Dr. Burney’s words, “the most secure residence in the kingdom.” For the remainder of the year 1780, Fanny seems to have stayed quietly at St. Martin’s Street and Chessington. In March, 1781, she came to town to find the Thrales settled for the time in a hired house in Grosvenor Square and talking vaguely of continental travel—to Spa, to Italy, and elsewhere. But Mr. Thrale was obviously growing worse; and in April he died suddenly of apoplexy, “on the morning of a day on which half the fashion of London had been invited to an intended assembly at his house.” His death threw an infinity of additional care upon his already over-burdened widow; but, as soon as she was able, she again summoned Miss Burney to Streatham Place, where off and on, she lived until September. Then “Daddy” Crisp, descending from his Surrey retreat, bore her away perforce to Chessington; and at Chessington she continued to stay until the beginning of 1782, when she returned to Newton House in order to be present at her sister Susan’s marriage at St. Martin’s Church to Captain Molesworth Phillips of the Marines, a comrade, in Cook’s last voyage, of James Burney. After this, Fanny remained for some time quietly at home.

The reason why Dr. Burney wished to get his daughter away from Streatham Place, and why, at last, Mr. Crisp fetched her thence,—may perhaps be guessed. She had begun to work upon another novel; and her long absences from home seriously interfered with its progress. During the latter half of 1780, she had written steadily; but, in the following year, her renewed intercourse with Mrs. Thrale once more interrupted her labours; and her two fathers grew anxious that she should lose no further time. Of the advantages up to a certain point of her connection with the Streatham circle, both of them had been fully aware—Crisp especially. “Your time,” he had written to her in April, 1780, “could not be better employed, for all your St. Martin’s daddy wanted to retain you for some other purpose. You are now at school, the great school of the world, where swarms of new ideas and new characters will continually present themselves before you,—

‘which you’ll draw in, As we do air, fast as ’tis ministered.’”[48]

But there must be a limit, even to schooling; and that limit, in the opinion of Dr. Burney and his friend, had now been reached. So Fanny saw no more of Streatham or Mrs. Thrale till her new book was finished.

[36] Edward Francis Burney, 1760-1848, the artist referred to in the above paragraph, was a frequent contributor to the Royal Academy between 1780 and 1793. His solitary “portrait of a Lady,” 1785, _may_ have been his cousin’s picture. His first exhibits (418-20) were three “stained Drawings” for _Evelina_, in which Mme. Duval, Captain Mirvan, Mr. Villars, the heroine and her father, were all introduced. The Evelina of these designs is said to have strongly resembled the beautiful Sophy Streatfield; and an artful compliment was paid to Johnson by hanging his portrait in Mr. Villars’ parlour. Archdeacon Burney has one of these delicate little pictures.

[37] No doubt _The Castle of Otranto_, which Lowndes himself had published in 1764.

[38] The bibliography of Miss Burney’s first book is extremely perplexing. In the “Advertisement” to _Cecilia_, the author says that _Evelina_ (which, it will be remembered, appeared in January, 1778) passed “through Four Editions in one year.” In the _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, she implies that it went through three editions in five months (ii. p. 135). But the second and third editions are both dated 1779; and it must have been in the first months of that year that the sale was most active. In May, 1779, comes a reference to the fourth edition as on the stocks. “_Evelina_ continues to sell in a most wonderful manner; a fourth edition is preparing, with cuts [it should be copper plates], designed by Mortimer just before he died, and executed by Hall and Bartolozzi” (_Diary and Letters_, 1892, i. p. 139). John Hamilton Mortimer, A.R.A., the artist indicated, died 4th February, 1779. His drawings, which cost £73, still exist. It may here be added that Mrs. Chappel, of East Orchard, Shaftesbury, possesses a copy of the second edition of _Evelina_ (1779), presented to Dr. Burney,—whose name is filled up in the heading of the dedicatory verses,—“From his dutiful scribler,” _i.e._ “F. B.”

[39] This phrase of “Little Burney”—or more generally “dear little Burney”—to the sensitive Fanny’s “infinite _frettation_” got into print. A certain Rev. George Huddesford embodied it in a rhymed satire upon the camp which fears of French invasion had established at Warley Common in Essex, and which King George and Queen Charlotte visited in October, 1778. Johnson had gone there earlier, as the guest of Bennet Langton, who was a Captain in the Lincolnshire militia.

[40] _Idler_, June 9 and 16, 1759.

[41] See _ante_, p. 86.

[42] Miss Hannah More’s successful tragedy of _Percy_ was produced at Covent Garden, 10 December, 1777.

[43] See _Diary and Letters_, 1892, i. p. 48.

[44] Probably that afterwards produced at Drury Lane in 1781 as _The Royal Suppliants_, and based upon the _Heraclidæ_ of Euripides.

[45] Miss Burney here forgets that she had already assisted at a private view of Miss Streatfield’s performance (_Diary and Letters_, 1892, i. p. 135-6).

[46] There is an account of the Batheaston Thursday Parnassus in a letter from Walpole to Conway, 15 January, 1775. The historical urn no longer exists. But the verses cannot have been all bad. Garrick was responsible for some of them, and Graves of _The Spiritual Quixote_. Another contributor was Anstey, who wrote his _Election Ball_ for Lady Miller.

[47] _Autobiography, etc. of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale)_, by A. Hayward, 1861, (2nd edn.), i. pp. 125, 126.

[48] _Cymbeline_, Act 1. Sc. i.