Part 16

With this fondly-sad commission, she hastened to Chesington; where she found her Susanna, and all the house, immersed in affliction: and where, in about a week, she endured the heartfelt sorrow of witnessing the departure of the first, the most invaluable, the dearest Friend of her mourning Father; and the inestimable object of her own chosen confidence, her deepest respect, and, from her earliest youth, almost filial affection.

She had the support, however, of the soul-soothing sympathy of her Susanna; and the tender consolation of having read to him, by intervals, nearly the whole of Dr. Barney’s touching Farewell! and of having seen that her presence had been grateful to him, even in the midst of his sufferings; and of inhaling the balmy kindness with which his nearly final powers of utterance had called her “the dearest thing to him on earth!”

This wound, in its acuteness to Dr. Burney, was only less lacerating than that which had bled from the stroke that had torn away from him the early and adored partner of his heart. But the submissive resignation and patient philosophy with which he bore it, will best be exemplified by the following extract from a letter, written, on this occasion, to his second daughter; whose quick feelings had—as yet!—only once been strongly called forth; and that nearly in childhood, on her maternal deprivation; who knew not, therefore, enough of their force to be guarded against their invasion: and who, in the depth of her grief, had shut herself up in mournful seclusion; for,—blind to sickly foresight!—neither the age nor the infirmities of Mr. Crisp had worked upon her as preparatory to his exit.

His age, indeed, as it was unaccompanied by the smallest diminution of his faculties, though he had reached his seventy-sixth year, offered no mitigation to grief for his death; though a general one, undoubtedly, to its shock. What we lament, is what we lose; what we lose, whether young or old, is what we miss: it may justly, therefore, perhaps, be affirmed, that youth and beauty, however more elegiacally they may be sung, are only by the Lover and the Poet mourned over with stronger regret than age and goodness.

The animadversions upon the excess of sorrow to which this extract may give rise, must not induce the Memorialist of Dr. Burney to spare herself from their infliction, by withholding what she considers it her bounden duty to produce, a document that strikingly displays his tender parental kindness, his patient wisdom, and his governed sensibility.

“TO MISS BURNEY.

“ * * I am much more afflicted than surprised at the violence and duration of your sorrow for the terrible scenes and events you have witnessed at Chesington; and not only pity you, but participate in all your feelings. Not an hour in the day has passed—as you will some time or other find—since the fatal catastrophe, in which I have not felt a pang for the irreparable loss I have sustained. However, as something is due to the _living_—there is, perhaps, a boundary at which it is right to _endeavour_ to stop in lamenting the _dead_. It is very difficult,—as I have found!—to exceed that boundary in our duty or attention, without its being at the expense of others. I have experienced the loss of one so dear to me as to throw me into the utmost affliction of despondency which can be suffered without insanity. But I had claims on my life, my reason, and my activity, which, joined to higher motives, drew me from the pit of despair, and forced me, though with great difficulty, to rouse and exert every nerve and faculty in answering them.

“It has been very well said of mental wounds, that they must digest, like those of the body, before they can be healed. The poultice of necessity can alone, perhaps, in some cases, bring on this digestion; but we should not impede it by caustics or corrosions. Let the wound be open a due time—but not kept bare with violence.—

“To quit all metaphor, we must, alas! try to diminish our sorrow for one calamity to enable us to support another! A general peace gives but time to refit for new war; a mental blow, or wound, is no more. So far, however, am I from blaming your sorrow on the present occasion, that, in fact, I both love and honour you for it;—and, therefore, will add no more on that melancholy subject. With respect to the other,—&c. &c.

“* * *.”

It would be needless, it is hoped, to say that this mild and admirable exhortation effected fully its benevolent purpose. With grateful tears, and immediate compliance to his will, she hastened to his arms, received his tenderest welcome, and, quitting her chamber seclusion, again joined the family—if not with immediate cheerfulness, at least with composure: and again, upon his motion, and under his loved wing, returned to the world; if not with inward gaiety, with outward, yet true and unaffected gratitude for the kindness with which it received her back again to its circles:—but Mr. Crisp was not less gone, nor less internally lamented!

What the Doctor intimates of the proofs she would one day find of the continual occupation of his thoughts by his departed friend, alludes to an elegy to which he was then devoting every instant he could snatch from his innumerable engagements; and which, as a memorial of his friendship, was soothing to his affliction. It opens with the following lines.

“ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND.

“The guide and tutor of my early youth, Whose word was wisdom, and whose wisdom, truth, Whose cordial kindness, and whose active zeal Full forty years I never ceas’d to feel; The Friend to whose abode I eager stole To pour each inward secret of my soul; The dear companion of my leisure hours, Whose cheerful looks, and intellectual powers, Drove care, anxiety, and doubt away, And all the fiends that on reflection prey, Is now no more!—The features of that face Where glow’d intelligence and manly grace; Those eyes which flash’d with intellectual fire Kindled by all that genius could inspire— Those, those—and all his pleasing powers are fled To the cold, squalid mansions of the dead! This highly polished gem, which shone so bright, Impervious now, eclips’d in viewless night From earthly eye, irradiates no more This nether sphere!”—

What follows, though in the same strain of genuine grief and exalted friendship, is but an amplification of these lines; and too diffuse for any eyes but those to which the object of the panegyric had been familiar; and which, from habitually seeing and studying that honoured object, coveted, like Dr. Burney himself, to dwell, to linger upon its excellencies with fond reminiscence.

Mrs. Gast, the sister of Mr. Crisp, and Mrs. Catherine Cooke, his residuary legatee, put up a monument to his memory in the little church of Chesington, for which Dr. Burney wrote the following epitaph.

TO THE MEMORY

OF

SAMUEL CRISP, ESQ.,

_Who died April 24, 1783, aged 76_.

May Heaven—through our merciful REDEEMER—receive his soul!

Reader! This rude and humble spot contains The much lamented, much revered remains Of one whose learning, judgment, taste, and sense, Good-humour’d wit, and mild benevolence Charm’d and enlighten’d all the hamlet round, Wherever genius, worth,—or want was found. To few it is that bounteous heaven imparts Such depth of knowledge, and such taste in arts; Such penetration, and enchanting powers Of brightening social and convivial hours. Had he, through life, been blest, by nature kind, With health robust of body as of mind, With skill to serve and charm mankind, so great In arts, in science, letters, church, or state, His fame the nation’s annals had enroll’d, And virtues to remotest ages told.

C. BURNEY.

And the following brief account of this event the Doctor sent, in the ensuing May, to the newspapers.

Last week died, at Chesington, in Surrey, whither he had long retired from the world, Samuel Crisp, Esq., aged 75, whose loss will be for ever deplored by all those who were admitted into his retreat, and had the happiness of enjoying his conversation; which was rendered captivating by all that wit, learning, profound knowledge of mankind, and a most exquisite taste in the fine arts, as well as in all that embellishes human life, could furnish.

And thus, from the portentous disappearance of Mrs. Thrale, with a blight had opened this fatal spring; and thus, from the irreparable loss of Mr. Crisp, with a blast it closed!

HISTORY OF MUSIC.

Even to his History of Music the Doctor knew not, now, how to turn his attention; Chesington had so constantly been the charm, as well as the retreat for its pursuit, and Chesington and Mr. Crisp had seemed so indissolubly one, that it was long ere the painful resolution could be gathered of trying how to support what remained, when they were sundered.

Of the two most intimate of his musical friends after Mr. Crisp, Mr. Twining of Colchester came less frequently than ever to town; and Mr. Bewley of Massingham was too distant for any regularity of even annual meetings. And those friends still within his reach, in whom he took the deepest interest, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Burke, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, were too little conversant in music to be usefully sought at this music-devoted period. They had neither taste nor care for his art, and not the smallest knowledge upon its subject. Yet this, though for the moment, nearly a misfortune, was not any impediment to friendship on either side: Dr. Burney had too general a love of literature, as well as of the arts, to limit his admiration, any more than his acquirements, to his own particular cast; while the friends just mentioned regarded his musical science but as a matter apart; and esteemed and loved him solely for the qualities that he possessed in common with themselves.

Compelled was he, nevertheless, to endure the altered Chesington; where, happily, however, then resided his tender Susanna; whose sight was always a charm, and whose converse had a balm that enabled him again to return to his work, though it had lost, for the present, all voluntary influence over his spirits. But choice was out of the question; he had a given engagement to fulfil; and there was no place so sacred from intrusion as Chesington.

Thither, therefore, he repaired; and there, in laborious study, he remained, till the season for his professional toils called him again to St. Martin’s-street.

The first spur that urged his restoration to the world, and its ways, was given through the lively and frequent inquiries made after him and his history by sundry celebrated foreigners, German, Italian, and French.

BACH OF BERLIN.

Amongst his German correspondents, Dr. Burney ranked first the super-eminent Emanuel Bach, commonly known by the appellation of Bach of Berlin; whose erudite depths in the science, and exquisite taste in the art of music, seemed emulously combatting one with the other for precedence; so equal was what he owed to inspiration and to study.

Dr. Burney had the great satisfaction, publicly and usefully, to demonstrate his admiration of this superior musician, by successfully promoting both the knowledge and the sale of his works.

HAYDN.

With the equally, and yet more popularly celebrated Haydn, Dr. Burney was in correspondence many years before that noble and truly CREATIVE composer visited England; and almost enthusiastic was the admiration with which the musical historian opened upon the subject, and the matchless merits, of that sublime genius, in the fourth volume of the History of Music. “I am now,” he says, “happily arrived at that part of my narrative where it is necessary to speak of HAYDN, the incomparable HAYDN; from whose productions I have received more pleasure late in life, when tired of most other music, than I ever enjoyed in the most ignorant and rapturous part of my youth, when every thing was new, and the disposition to be pleased was undiminished by criticism, or satiety.”

EBELING.

The German correspondent to whom Dr. Burney was most indebted for information, entertainment, and liberal friendship, was Mynhere Ebeling, a native of Hamborough, who volunteered his services to the Doctor, by opening a correspondence in English, immediately upon reading the first, or French and Italian tour, with a zeal full of sprightliness and good-humour; solidly seconded by well understood documents in aid of the Musical History.[64]

PADRE MARTINI.

Amongst the Italians, the most essential to his business was Padre Martini; the most essential and the most generous. While the Doctor was at Bologna, he was allowed free access to the rare library of that learned Padre, with permission to examine his Istoria della Musica, before it was published. And this favour was followed by a display of the whole of the materials which the Padre had collected for his elaborate undertaking: upon all which he conversed with a frankness and liberality, that appeared to the Doctor to spring from a nature so completely void of all earthly drops of envy, jealousy, or love of pre-eminence, as to endow him with the nobleness of wishing that a fellow-labourer in the same vineyard in which he was working himself, should share the advantages of his toil, and reap in common its fruits.

With similar openness the Doctor returned every communication; and produced his own plan, of which he presented the Padre with a copy, which that modest man of science most gratefully received; declaring it to be not only edifying, but, in some points, surprisingly new. They entered into a correspondence of equal interest to both, which subsisted, to their mutual pleasure, credit, and advantage, through the remnant life of the good old Padre; and which not unfrequently owed its currency to the friendly intervention of the amiable, and, as far as his leisure and means accorded with his native inclination, literary Pacchierotti.

METASTASIO.

With Metastasio, who in chaste pathos of sentimental eloquence, and a purity of expression that seems to emanate from purity of feeling, stands nearly unequalled, he assiduously maintained the intercourse which he had happily begun with that laureate-poet at Vienna.

M. BERQUIN.

Of the French correspondents, M. Berquin, the true though self-named children’s friend, was foremost in bringing letters of strong recommendation to the Doctor from Paris.

M. Berquin warmly professed that the first inquiry he made upon his entrance into London, was for the _Hôtel du Grand Newton_; where he offered up incense to the owner, and to his second daughter, of so overpowering a perfume, that it would have derogated completely from the character of verity and simplicity that makes the charm of his tales for juvenile pupils, had it not appeared, from passages published in his works after his return to France, that he had really wrought himself into feeling the enthusiasm that here had appeared overstrained, unnatural, and almost, at least to the daughter, burlesque. In an account of him, written at this time to her sister Susanna, are these words:

“TO MRS. PHILLIPS.

“We have a new man, now, almost always at the house, who has brought letters to my father from some of his best French correspondents, M. Berquin; author of the far most interesting lessons of moral conduct for adolescence or for what Mr. Walpole would call the _betweenity_ time that intervals the boy or girl from the man or woman, that ever sprang from a vivid imagination, under the strictest guidance of right and reason. But to all this that is so proper, or rather, so excellent, M. Berquin joins an exuberance of devotion towards _l’Hôtel du Grand Newton_, and its present owner, and, above all, that owner’s second bairne, that seems with difficulty held back from mounting into an ecstacy really comic. He brought a set of his charming little volumes with him, and begged my mother to present them to _Mademoiselle Beurnie_; with compliments upon the occasion too florid for writing even, my Susan, to you. And though I was in the room the whole time, quietly scollopping a muslin border, and making entreating signs to my mother not to betray me, he never once suspected I might be the demoiselle myself, because—I am much afraid!—he saw nothing about me to answer to the splendour of his expectations! However, he has since made the discovery, and had the gallantry to comport himself as if he had made it—poor man!—without disappointment. Since then I have begun some acquaintance with him; but his rapture every time I speak is too great to be excited often! therefore, I am chary of my words. You would laugh irresistibly to see how _enchanté_ he deems it fit to appear every time I open my mouth! holding up one hand aloft, as if in sign to all others present to keep the peace! And yet, save for this complimentary extravagance, his manners and appearance are the most simple, candid, and unpretending.”

* * * * *

Dr. Burney himself was seriously of opinion that all the superfluity of civility here described, was the mere effervescence of a romantic imagination; not of artifice, or studied adulation.[65]

MM. LES COMTES DE LA ROCHEFAUCAULT.

Messieurs les Comtes de la Rochefaucault, sons of the Duc de Liancourt, when quite youths, were brought, at the desire of their father, to a morning visit in St. Martin’s-street, with their English tutor, Mr. Symonds, by Arthur Young; to whose superintending care and friendship they had been committed, for the study of agriculture according to the English mode.

The Duke had a passion for farming, for England, for improvement; and above all, for liberty,—which was then rising in glowing ferment in his nation; with little consciousness, and no foresight, of the bloody scenes in which it was to set!

THE DUC DE LIANCOURT.

The Duc de Liancourt himself, not long afterwards, came over to England, and, through the medium of Mr. Young, addressed letters of the most flattering politeness to Dr. Burney; soliciting his acquaintance, and, through his influence, an interview with _Mademoiselle Berney_. The latter, however, had so invincible a repugnance to being singled out with such undue distinction by strangers, that she prevailed, though with much difficulty, upon her father, to consent to her non-appearance when this visit took place. The Duke was too well bred not to pardon, though, no doubt, he more than marvelled at this _mauvaise honte Anglaise_.

He made his visit, however, very agreeable to the Doctor, who found him of lofty manners, person, and demeanour; of liberal and enlightened sentiments and opinions; and ardent to acquire new, but practical notions of national liberty; with the noble intention of propagating them amongst his countrymen: an intention which the turbulent humour of the times warpt and perverted into results the most opposed to his genuine views and wishes.

BRISSOT DE WARVILLE.

Brissot de Warville had begun an acquaintance with Dr. Burney upon meeting with him at the apartment of the famous Linguet, during the residence in England of that eloquent, powerful, unfortunate victim of parts too strong for his judgment, and of impulses too imperious for his safety.

At this time, 1783, Brissot de Warville announced himself as a member of a French committee employed to select subjects in foreign countries, for adding to the national stock of worthies of his own soil, who were destined to immortality, by having their portraits, busts, or statues, elevated in the Paris Pantheon. And, as such, he addressed a letter to Dr. Burney. He had been directed, he said, to choose, in England, a female for this high honour; and he wrote to Dr. Burney to say, that the gentlewoman upon whom it had pleased him to fix—was no other than a daughter of the Doctor’s![66]

At that astonished daughter’s earnest supplication, the Doctor, with proper acknowledgments, declined accepting this towering compliment.

M. Brissot employed his highest pains of flattery to conquer this repugnance; but head, heart, and taste were in opposition to his pleadings, and he had no chance of success.

Speedily after, M. Brissot earnestly besought permission to introduce to _l’Hôtel du Grand Newton_ his newly-married wife; and a day was appointed on which he brought thither his blooming young bride, who had been English Reader, he said, to her Serene Highness Mademoiselle d’Orleans,[67] under the auspices of the celebrated Comtesse de Genlis.[68]

Madame Brissot was pretty, and gentle, and had a striking air of youthful innocence. They seemed to live together in tender amity, perfectly satisfied in following literary pursuits. But it has since appeared that Brissot was here upon some deep political projects, of which he afterwards extended the practice to America. He had by no means, at that time, assumed the dogmatizing dialect, or betrayed the revolutionary principles, which, afterwards, contributed to hurl the monarchy, the religion, and the happiness of France into that murderous abyss of anarchy into which, ill-foreseen! he was himself amongst the earliest to be precipitated.

This single visit began and ended the Brissot commerce with St. Martin’s-street. M. Brissot had a certain low-bred fullness and forwardness of look, even in the midst of professions of humility and respect, that were by no means attractive to Dr. Burney; by whom this latent demagogue, who made sundry attempts to enter into a bookish intimacy in St. Martin’s-street, was so completely shirked, that nothing more was there seen or known of him, till his jacobinical harangues and proceedings, five years later, were blazoned to the world by the republican gazettes.

What became of his pretty wife in aftertimes; whether she were involved in his destruction, or sunk his name to save her life, has not been recorded. Dr. Burney heard of her no more; and always regretted that he had been deluded into shewing even the smallest token of hospitality to her intriguing husband: yet great was his thankfulness, that the delusion had not been of such strength, as to induce him to enrol a representation of his daughter in a selection made by a man of principles and conduct so opposite to his own; however, individually, the collection might have been as flattering to his parental pride, as her undue entrance into such a circle would have been painfully ostentatious to the insufficient and unambitious object of M. Brissot’s choice.

LE DUC DE CHAULNES.

Of the Duc de Chaulnes, the following account is copied from Dr. Burney’s memorandums:—

“In 1783, I dined at the Adelphi with Dr. Johnson and the Duc de Chaulnes. This extraordinary personage, a great traveller, and curious inquirer into the productions of art and of nature, had recently been to China; and, amongst many other discoveries that he had made in that immense and remote region, of which he had brought specimens to Europe, being a great chemist, he had particularly applied himself to the disclosure of the means by which the Chinese obtain that extraordinary brilliancy and permanence in the prismatic colours, which is so much admired and envied by other nations.

“I knew nothing of his being in England till, late one night, I heard a bustle and different voices in the passage, or little hall, in my house in St. Martin’s-street, commonly, from its former great owner, called Newton House; when, on inquiry, I was informed that there was a foreign gentleman, with a guide and an interpreter, who was come to beg permission to see the observatory of the _grand_ Newton.