Part 14

Horace Walpole, sportively desirous, as he whispered to Dr. Burney, that the Doctor’s daughter should see the humours of a man so near to counting his age by a century, insisted, one night at this house, upon forming a little group for that purpose; to which he invited, also, Mr. and Mrs. Locke: exhibiting thus the two principal points of his own character, from which he rarely deviated: a thirst of amusement from what was singular; with a taste yet more forcible for elegance from what was excellent.

At the side of General Oglethorpe, Mr. Walpole, though much past seventy, had almost the look, and had quite the air of enjoyment of a man who was yet almost young: and so skeleton-like was the General’s meagre form, that, by the same species of comparison, Mr. Walpole almost appeared, and, again, almost seemed to think himself, if not absolutely fat, at least not despoiled of his _embonpoint_; though so lank was his thinness, that every other person who stood in his vicinity, might pass as if accoutred and stuffed for a stage representation of Falstaff.[48]

MRS. THRALE.

But—previously to the late Streatham catastrophe—blither, more bland, and more gleeful still, was the personal celebrity of Mrs. Thrale, than that of either Mrs. Montagu or Mrs. Vesey. Mrs. Vesey, indeed, gentle and diffident, dreamed not of any competition: but Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Thrale had long been set up as fair rival candidates for colloquial eminence; and each of them thought the other alone worthy to be her peer. Openly, therefore, when they met, they combatted for precedence of admiration; with placid, though high-strained intellectual exertion on one side, and an exuberant pleasantry of classical allusion or quotation on the other, without the smallest malice in either; for so different were their tastes as well as attributes, that neither of them envied, while each did justice to the powers of her opponent.

The blue parties at Mrs. Thrale’s, though neither marked with as much splendour as those of Mrs. Montagu, nor with so curious a selection of distinguished individuals as those of Mrs. Vesey, were yet held of equal height with either in general estimation, as Dr. Johnson, “himself a host,” was usually at Mrs. Thrale’s; or was always, by her company, expected: and as she herself possessed powers of entertainment more vivifying in gaiety than any of her competitors.

* * * * *

Various other meetings were formed in imitation of the same plan of dispensing with cards, music, dice, dancing, or the regales of the festive board, to concentrate in intellectual entertainment all the hopes of the guest, and the efforts of the host and hostess. And, with respect to colloquial elegance, such a plan certainly is of the first order for bringing into play the highest energies of our nature; and stimulating their fairest exercise in discussions upon the several subjects that rise with every rising day; and that take and give a fresh colour to Thought as well as to Expression, from the mind of every fresh discriminator.

And such meetings, when the parties were well assorted, and in good-humour, formed, at that time, a coalition of talents, and a brilliancy of exertion, that produced the most informing dissertations, or the happiest sallies of wit and pleasantry, that could emanate from social intercourse.

HON. MISS MONCTON.[49]

One of the most striking parties of this description, after the three chiefs, was at the residence of the Hon. Miss Moncton; where there was a still more resplendent circle of rank, and a more distinguished assemblage of foreigners, than at any other; with always, in addition, somebody or something uncommon and unexpected, to cause, or to gratify curiosity.

Not merely as fearful of form as Mrs. Vesey was Miss Moncton; she went farther; she frequently left her general guests wholly to themselves. There was always, she knew, good fare for intellectual entertainment; and those who had courage to seek might partake of its advantages; while those who had not that quality, might amuse themselves as lookers on. And though some might be disconcerted, no one who had candour could be offended, when they saw, from the sprightly good-humour of their hostess, that this reception was instigated by gay, not studied singularity.

Miss Moncton usually sat about the middle of the room, lounging on one chair, while bending over the back of another, in a thin fine muslin dress, even at Christmas; while all around her were in satins, or tissues; and without advancing to meet any one, or rising, or placing, or troubling herself to see whether there were any seats left for them, she would turn round her head to the announcement of a name, give a nod, a smile, and a short “How do you do?—” and then, chatting on with her own set, leave them to seek their fortune.

To these splendid, and truly uncommon assemblages, Dr. Burney and his daughter accepted, occasionally, some of the frequent invitations with which they were honoured.

And here they had sometimes the happiness to meet, amidst the nobles and dames of the land, with all the towering height of his almost universal superiority, Mr. Burke; who, sure, from the connexions of the lady president, to find many chosen friends with whom he could coalesce or combat upon literary or general topics, commonly entered the grand saloon with a spirited yet gentle air, that shewed him full fraught with the generous purpose to receive as well as to dispense social pleasure; untinged with one bitter drop of political rancour; and clarified from all acidity of party sarcasm.

And here, too, though only latterly, and very rarely, appeared the sole star that rose still higher in the gaze of the world, Dr. Johnson. Miss Moncton had met with the Doctor at Brighton, where that animated lady eagerly sought him as a gem to crown her coteries; persevering in her attacks for conquest, with an enthusiasm that did honour to her taste; till the Doctor, surprised and pleased, rewarded her exertions by a good-humoured compliance with her invitations.

* * * * *

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

But of these coteries, none surpassed, if they equalled, in easy pleasantry, unaffected intelligence, and information free from pedantry or formality, those of the Knight of Plympton. Sir Joshua Reynolds was singularly simple, though never inelegant in his language; and his classical style of painting could not be more pleasing, however more sublimely it might elevate and surprise, than his manners and conversation.

There was little or no play of countenance, beyond cheerfulness or sadness, in the features of Sir Joshua; but in his eyes there was a searching look, that seemed, upon his introduction to any person of whom he had thought before he had seen, to fix, in his painter’s mind, the attitude, if it may be so called, of face that would be most striking for a picture. But this was rarely obvious, and never disconcerting; he was eminently unassuming, unpretending, and natural.[50]

Dr. Burney has left amongst his papers a note of an harangue which he had heard from Sir Joshua Reynolds, at the house of Dudley Long, when the Duke of Devonshire, and various other peers, were present, and when happiness was the topic of discussion. Sir Joshua for some time had listened in silence to their several opinions; and then impressively said: “You none of you, my lords, if you will forgive my telling you so, can speak upon this subject with as much knowledge of it as I can. Dr. Burney perhaps might; but it is not the man who looks around him from the top of a high mountain at a beautiful prospect on the first moment of opening his eyes, who has the true enjoyment of that noble sight: it is he who ascends the mountain from a miry meadow, or a ploughed field, or a barren waste; and who works his way up to it step by step; scratched and harassed by thorns and briars; with here a hollow, that catches his foot; and there a clump that forces him all the way back to find out a new path;—it is he who attains to it through all that toil and danger; and with the strong contrast on his mind of the miry meadow, or ploughed field, or barren waste, for which it was exchanged,—it is he, my lords, who enjoys the beauties that suddenly blaze upon him. They cause an expansion of ideas in harmony with the expansion of the view. He glories in its glory; and his mind opens to conscious exaltation; such as the man who was born and bred upon that commanding height, with all the loveliness of prospect, and fragrance, and variety, and plenty, and luxury of every sort, around, above, beneath, can never know; can have no idea of;—at least, not till he come near some precipice, in a boisterous wind, that hurls him from the top to the bottom, and gives him some taste of what he had possessed, by its loss; and some pleasure in its recovery, by the pain and difficulty of scrambling back to it.”

MRS. REYNOLDS.

Mrs. Reynolds also had her coteries, which were occasionally attended by most of the persons who have been named; equally from consideration to her brother, and personal respect to herself.

Mrs. Reynolds wrote an essay on Taste, which she submitted, in the year 1781, to the private criticism of her sincere friend, Dr. Johnson.

But it should seem that the work, though full of intrinsic merit, was warpt in its execution by that perplexity of ideas in which perpetual ponderings, and endless recurrence to first notions, so subversive of all progression, cloudily involved the thoughts, as well as the expressions, of this ingenious lady; for the award of Dr. Johnson, notwithstanding it contained high praise and encouragement for the revision of the treatise, frankly avows, “that her notions, though manifesting a depth of penetration, and a nicety of remark, such as Locke or Pascal might be proud of, must everywhere be rendered smoother and plainer; and he doubts whether many of them are very clear even to her own mind.”

Probably the task which he thus pointed out to her of development and explanation, was beyond the boundary of her powers; for though she lived twenty years after the receipt of this counsel, the work never was published.

MRS. CHAPONE.

Mrs. Chapone, too, had her own coteries, which, though not sought by the young, and, perhaps, fled from by the gay, were rational, instructive, and social; and it was not with self-approbation that they could ever be deserted. But the search of greater gaiety, and higher fashion, rarely awaits that award.

The meetings, in truth, at her dwelling, from her palpable and organic deficiency in health and strength for their sustenance, though they never lacked of sense or taste, always wanted spirit; a want which cast over them a damp that made the same interlocutors, who elsewhere grouped audiences around them from their fame as discoursers, appear to be assembled here merely for the grave purpose of performing a duty.

Yet here were to be seen Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, Hannah More, the clever family of the Burroughs, the classically lively Sir William Pepys, and the ingenious and virtuous Mrs. Barbauld.

But though the dignity of her mind demanded, as it deserved, the respect of some return to the visits which her love of society induced her to pay, it was a _tête à tête_ alone that gave pleasure to the intercourse with Mrs. Chapone: her sound understanding, her sagacious observations, her turn to humour, and the candour of her affectionate nature, all then came into play without effort: and her ease of mind, when freed from the trammels of doing the honours of reception, seemed to soften off, even to herself, her corporeal infirmities. It was thus that she struck Dr. Burney with the sense of her worth; and seemed portraying in herself the original example whence the precepts had been drawn, for forming the unsophisticated female character that are displayed in the author’s Letters on the improvement of the mind.

SIR WILLIAM WELLER PEPYS.

But the meetings of this sort, to which sarcasm, sport, or envy have given the epithet of blueism, that Dr. Burney most frequently and the latest attended, were those at the house of Mr., since Sir William Weller Pepys.

The passion of Sir William for literature, his admiration of talents, and his rapturous zeal for genius, made him receive whoever could gratify any of those propensities, with an enchantment of pleasure that seemed to carry him into higher regions. The parties at his house formed into little, separate, and chosen groups, less awful than at Mrs. Montagu’s, and less awkward than at Mrs. Vesey’s: and he glided adroitly from one of these groups to another, till, after making the round of politeness necessary for the master of the house, his hospitality felt acquitted of its devoirs; and he indulged, without further restraint, in the ardent delight of fixing his standard for the evening in the circle the most to his taste: leaving to his serenely acquiescent wife the more forbearing task of equalizing attention. To do that, indeed, beyond what was exacted by good breeding for the high, and by kindness for the insignificant part of his guests, would have been a discipline to all his feelings, that would have converted those parties, that were his pride and his joy, into exercises of the severest penitence.

But while an animated reciprocation of ideas in conversation, a lively memory of early anecdotes, and a boundless readiness at recital of the whole mass of English poets, formed the gayest enjoyment of his chosen and happiest hours, the voice of justice must raise him still higher for solid worth. His urbanity was universal. He never looked so charmed as when engaged in some good office: and his charities were as expansive as the bounty of those who possessed more than double his income. So sincere, indeed, was his benevolence, that it seemed as much a part of himself as his limbs, and could have been torn from him with little less difficulty.[51]

SOAME JENYNS.

Amongst the _Bouquets_, as Dr. Burney denominated the fragrant flatteries courteously lavished, in its day, on the Memoirs of an Heiress, few were more odorous to him than those offered by the famous old Wits, Soame Jenyns and Owen Cambridge.

Soame Jenyns, at the age of seventy-eight, condescended to make interest with Mrs. Ord to arrange an acquaintance for him, at her house in Queen Ann-street, with the father and the daughter.

Soame Jenyns is so well known as an author, and was in his time so eminent as a wit; and his praise gave such pleasure to Dr. Burney, that another genuine letter, written for Mr. Crisp at the moment, with an account of the meeting, will be here abridged, as characteristically marking the parental gratification of the Doctor.

TO SAMUEL CRISP, ESQ.

_Chesington._

My dear Mr. Crisp will be impatient, I know, for a history of the long-planned re-encounter with the famed Soame Jenyns.

My father was quite enchanted at his request; and no wonder! for who could have expected such civil curiosity from so renowned an old wit?

We were late; my father could not be early: but I was not a little disconcerted to find, instead of Mr. Soame Jenyns _all alone by himself_, a room full of company; not in groups, nor yet in a circle, but seated square; _i.e._ close to the wainscot, leaving a vacancy in the middle of the apartment sufficient for dancing three or four cotillons.

Mrs. Ord almost ran to the door to receive us, crying out, “Why have you been so late, Dr. Burney? We have been waiting for you this hour. I was afraid there was some mistake. Mr. Soame Jenyns has been dying with impatience for the arrival of Miss Burney. Some of us thought she was naughty, and would not come; others thought it was only coquetry. But, however, my dear Miss Burney, let us repair the lost time as quickly as we can, and introduce you to one another without further delay.”

You may believe how happy I was at this “some thought,” and “others thought,” which instantly betrayed that every body was apprised they were to witness this grand encounter: And, to mark it still more strongly, every one, contrary to all present custom, stood up,—as if to see the sight!

I really felt so abashed at meeting so famous an author with such publicity; and so much ashamed of the almost ridiculously undue ceremony of the rising, that I knew not what to do, nor how to _comport_ myself. But they all still kept staringly upright, till Mr. Jenyns, who was full dressed in a court suit, of apricot-coloured silk, lined with white satin, made all the slow speed in his power, from the less thus urged?—began an harangue the most elegantly complimentary, upon the pleasure, and the honour, and the what not? of seeing, my dear daddy, your very obedient and obsequious humble servant, and spinster,

F. B.

I made all possible reverences, and endeavoured to get to a seat; but Mrs. Ord, when I turned from him, took my hand, and led me, in solemn form, to what seemed to be the group of honour, to present me to Mrs. Soame Jenyns, who, with all the rest, was still immovably standing! The reverences were repeated here, and returned; but in silence, however, on both sides; so they did very well—that is, they were only dull.

I then hoped to escape to my dear Mrs. Thrale, who most invitingly held out her hand to me, and said, pointing to a chair by her own, “Must I, too, make interest to be introduced to Miss Burney?”

This, however, was not allowed; for my dear Lady Clement Cotterel, Mrs. Ord, again taking my hand, and parading me to a sofa, said, “Come, Miss Burney, and let me place you by Mrs. Buller.”

I was glad by this time to be placed any where; for not till I was thus accommodated, did the company, _en masse_, re-seat themselves!

Mr. Cambridge, senior, then advanced to speak to me; but before I could answer, or, rather, hear him, Mrs. Ord again summoned poor Mr. Jenyns, and made him my right hand neighbour on the sofa, saying, “There, Mr. Jenyns! and there, Miss Burney! now I have put you fairly together, I have done with you!”

This dear, good Mrs. Ord! what a mistaken road was this for bring us into acquaintance! I verily think Mr. Jenyns was almost out of countenance himself; for he had probably said all his say; and would have been as glad of a new subject, and a new companion, as I could have been myself.

To my left hand neighbour I had never before been presented. Mrs. Buller is tall and elegant in her person, genteel and ugly in her face, and abrupt and singular in her manners. She is, however, very clever, sprightly, and witty, and much in vogue. She is, also, a Greek scholar, a celebrated traveller in search of foreign customs and persons, and every way original, in her knowledge and her enterprising way of life. And she has had the maternal heroism—which with me is her first quality—of being the guide of her young son in making the grand tour.

Mr. Soame Jenyns, thus again called upon, resolved, after a pause, not to be called upon in vain; and therefore, with the chivalrous courtesy that he seemed to think the call demanded, began an eulogy unrivalled, I think, in exuberance and variety of animated phraseology. All creation in praise seemed to open to his fancy! No human being had ever begun Cecilia, or Evelina, who had power to lay them down unread: pathos, humour, interest, moral, contrast of character, of manners, of language—O! such _mille jolis choses_!

I heard, however, but the leading words—which—for I see your arch smile!—you will say I have not failed to retain!—though every body else, the whole room being attentively dumb, probably heard how they were strung together. And indeed, my dear father, who was quite delighted, says the panegyric was as witty as it was flattering. But for myself, had I been carried to a theatre, and perched upon a stool, to hear a public oration upon my simple penmanship, I could hardly have been more confounded. I bowed my head, after the first three or four sentences, by way of marking that I thought he had done: but done he had not the more! I then turned away to the other side, hoping to relieve him as well as myself; for I am sure he must have been full as much worried; but I only came upon Mrs. Buller, who took up the _éloge_ just where Mr. Jenyns, for want of breath, let it drop; splendidly saying, how astonishing it was, that in a nation the most divided of any in the known world, alike in literature and in politics, any living pen could be found to bring about a universal harmony of opinion.

You will only, as usual, laugh, I know, my dear Mr. Crisp, and rather exult than be sorry for my poor embarrassed _phiz_ during this playful duet. So also do I, too, now it is over; and feel grateful to the inflictors: but, for all that, I was tempted to wish either them or myself in the Elysian fields—for I won’t say at Jericho—during the infliction. And indeed, as to this present evening, the extraordinary things that were sported by Mr. Jenyns, and seconded by Mrs. Buller, would have brought blushes into the practised cheeks of Agujari or of Garrick. I changed so often from hot to cold, between the shame of insufficiency, and the consciousness that while they engaged every ear themselves, they put me forward to engage every eye, that I felt now in a fever, and now in an ague, from the awkwardness of appearing thus expressly summoned to

“Sit attentive to my own applause—!”

and my dear father himself, with all his gratified approbation, said I really, at times, looked quite ill. Mrs. Thrale told me, afterwards, she should have come to _naturalize_ me with a little common chat, but that I had been so publicly destined for Soame Jenyns before my arrival, that she did not dare interfere!

At length, however, finding they seemed but to address a breathing statue, they entered into a discussion that was a most joyful relief to me, upon foreign and English customs; and especially upon the rarity, in England, of good conversation; from the perpetual intervention of politics, always noisy; or of dissipation, always frivolous.

Here they were joined by Mr. Cambridge, who, as _all the world_[52] knows, is an intimate friend of Soame Jenyns; and who is always truly original and entertaining: but imagine my surprise—surprise and delight! in a room and a company like this, where all, except Mr. Cambridge and Mr. Jenyns, were of the beau monde of the present day, suddenly to hear pronounced the name of my dear Mr. Crisp! for, in the midst of this discourse upon customs and conversations in different countries, Mr. Cambridge, who asserted that every man, possessing steadiness with spirit, might live in this great nation exactly as he pleased; either with friends or with strangers, either in public or in solitude, smilingly illustrated his remark, in calling upon my father to second him, by reciting the example of Mr. Crisp! I almost jumped with pleasure and astonishment at the sound of that name, and the praise with which, from the mover and the seconder, it was instantly accompanied. How eloquent grew my father!—but here, I know, I must stop.

When the party broke up, Mr. Jenyns thought it necessary—or, at least, thought it would so be deemed by Mrs. Ord, to recapitulate, though with concentration, his panegyric of the highly honoured Cecilia. And Mrs. Buller renewed, also, her civilities, and hoped “I would not look strange upon them!”—for I looked, my dear father told me afterwards, all the colours of the rainbow; adding, “Why Fanny,

“‘I’d not look at all, if I couldn’t look better!’”[53]

But how I blush when I think of Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. and Miss Thrale, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Garrick, Miss More, Mrs. Chapone, Miss Gregory[54]—nay, Mrs. Montagu herself—being called upon to a scene such as this, not as personages of the drama; but as auditresses and spectatresses! I can only hope they all laugh,—for, if not, I am sure they must all scoff.