Part 12

“I shut myself up for some weeks; and, during part of that time, while sorting and examining papers with my daughter d’Arblay, she found among them the fragment of a poem on Astronomy, began at the period of the first ascent from balloons, and formed on the idea that, by their help, if, in process of time, a steerage was obtained, and the art of keeping them afloat, and ascending to what height the steersman pleased, was also discovered, parties might easily and pleasantly undertake voyages to the moon; and, perhaps, to the planets nearest to the earth, such as Mars and Venus: without considering that each planet and satellite must have its vortex and atmosphere filled with different beings and productions, none of which can subsist in another region.

“This wild fancy put it into my daughter d’Arblay’s head to persuade me to attempt a serious historical and didactic poem on the subject of astronomy; in order to employ my time and thoughts during the first stages of my sorrow for the losses I had sustained: and, having been a dabbler almost all my life in astronomy, I was not averse to the proposition.”

To the great satisfaction of this daughter, from the recreative employment of time to which it led, this idea was neither forgotten nor set aside; it was, in truth, but a return to the original propensity to astronomy which had been nourished by his first conjugal partner, who enthusiastically had shared his taste for contemplating the stars.

In his letters, after the return of the Memorialist to her cottage, the sadness of his mind is touchingly portrayed. In the first of them he says:

“_Nov._—I have been writing melancholy, heart-rending letters this day or two, which have oppressed me greatly: yet I am still more heartless in doing nothing. The author of the poem on The Spleen, says, ‘Fling but a stone, the giant dies:’ but such stones as I have to fling will not do the business. James and Charles[45] dined here yesterday, and kept the monster at a little distance; but he was here again the minute they were gone. I try to read; but ‘pronounce the words without understanding one of them,’ as Dr. Johnson said, in reading my Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients.”

And in another letter, of Dec. 2nd, 1796, he writes,—

“I have been tolerably well in body, but in mind extremely languid, and full of heartaches.

“Few people have been more _repandu_, or more frequently forced from home than myself; or more separately occupied when there: yet the short intervals I was able to spend with my family, ever since I had one, were the happiest of my life. Even labour, care, and anxiety, for those we love, have their pleasures; and those very superior to what can be derived by working and thinking for self.”

Most anxiously, in answer to these communications, the Memorialist pressed upon him a forced application to his Musical Dictionary; or, preferably yet, to the last started subject of his balloon ideal Voyages. But while this, after heavenly hopes, was what she urged for occupation; what chiefly she brought forward to him as comfort, was the solace which he had bestowed upon herself, during her late visit, from witnessing his mild and exemplary resignation. She ardently begged him to have recourse, for further self-consolation, to his own reflections upon all that had passed with the poor sufferer during the whole of their long intercourse; by looking back to his unabated, constant, and indulgent kindness, through sickness, misfortunes, and time; joined to the most grievous events, and trying circumstances.

MRS. CREWE.

Mrs. Crewe, whose fancy was as fertile as her friendship was zealous, perceiving the melancholy state of spirits into which the Doctor had fallen, sought to awaken him again into new life and activity through the kindly medium of his parental affections. She suggested to him, therefore, the idea of a new periodical morning paper, serious and burlesque, informing, yet amusing, upon _The Times as they Run_; strictly anti-jacobinical, and professedly monarchical; but allowing no party abuse, nor personal attack; and striving to fight the battles of morals and manners, by enlisting reason on their side, and raising the laugh against their foes.

_The Times as they Ran_, at that epoch, appeared big with every species of danger that could issue, through political avenues, from the universal sway of revolutionary systems which occupied, or revolutionary schemes which bewildered mankind. All thoughts were ingrossed by public affairs. Private life seemed as much a chimera of imagination, as reverting to the pastoral seasons of the poets of old, in wandering through valleys, or ascending mountains, crook in hand, with sheep, deer, or goats.

Mr. Burke, in his unequalled and unrivalled _Essence of the French Revolution_,—for such his Essay on that stupendous event may be called, had sounded a bell of alarm throughout Europe; echoing and re-echoing, aloud, aloft, around, with panic reverberation,

“Every man to his post! or Havoc will let loose the dogs of war,”

with massacre, degradation, shame, and devastation, “involving all—save the inflictors!”

Nor vain was the clangor of that bell. All who dreaded evils yet untried, evils wrapped up in the obscurity of hidden circumstances; dependent on the million of inlets to which accident opens an entrance; and of uncertain catastrophe; still more than they recoiled from ills which, however unpalatable, have been experienced, and are therefore known not to outstretch the powers of endurance; caught its fearful sound, and listened to its awful warnings: and the lament of Mr. Burke that the times of chivalry were gone by, nearly re-animated their return, from the eloquence with which he pointed them out as antidotes to the anarchy of insubordination; and spurs to rescue mankind from hovering degeneracy.

Fraught with these notions, Mrs. Crewe conceived an idea that a weekly paper upon such subjects, treating them so variously as to keep alive expectation, by essaying

“—— happily to steer From grave to gay; from lively to severe,”

might turn to what Mr. Burke, and Dr. Burney, and she herself, deemed the right way of seeing things, the motley many who, from wanting reflection to think for themselves, are dangerously led to act by others.

This weekly paper Mrs. Crewe purposed to call The Breakfast Table. And it was her desire, expressed in the most flattering terms, that the Doctor should bear a prominent part in it; but that his daughter should be the editor and chief.

The letters of Mrs. Crewe on this plan are full of spirit and ingenuity; and of comic as well as sagacious ideas. “If we are saved,” she cries, “from the infection, _i. e._ the jacobinism of our neighbours, it will be through the wise foresight of Mr. Burke; and from seeing that _persiflage_ has been their bane, and that _Quiz_, if we are not upon our guard, will be ours; and, above all, from taking heed that Jacobinism does not carry the day in _polite companies_; for Newgate never does mischief to society. No! ’tis your fine talkers, and free-thinkers, and refiners, that are to be feared. Watch but the vital parts, and the extremities will take care of themselves....

“I mentioned my idea of this paper to our Beaconsfield friends;[46] but they have enough to do there...!

“I think, indeed, there should be a society to join in this plan; which should include strictures upon life and manners at the end of the eighteenth century; to come out in one sheet for breakfast tables. How folks would read away, and talk, in all great towns, and in all country-houses; nay, and in London itself; where I remember my poor mother told me much of the effects produced formerly by periodical papers; even Pamela, when it came out in that way. Now how well Madame d’Arblay could manage such a work! and how one and all would join to get epigrams for her; and bobs at the times, in prose and in verse: and news from Paris; &c. &c. And we might all have a finger in the pie! and try to laugh people out of their Jacobinism. Old anecdotes, characters, and bits of poetry rummaged out of old authors; especially from some of the quaint, but clever ancient French poets: and a thousand interesting things that would be read, and tasted, and felt, if well introduced: and if Madame d’Arblay’s name could be said to preside, it would suit people’s laziness so well to have matters brought before them all ready chosen and prepared...!

“And O! how Mr. Burke’s spirit would be _relevé_ by such a spur! which is now choaked and kept down by gross abuse and disheartedness.

“Think of all this, Dr. Burney; it may employ you. Let it be a secret at first, and I have no objection to cater for our society of writers. People love to read the beauties of books; and we might pick out bits of Mr. Burke’s, so as to impress and shame all out of at least _creeping_ Jacobinism. I am certain, already, that Mr. Windham would approve the plan. The only point is to do it well.”

Project upon project, scheme upon scheme, and letter upon letter followed this opening, and sought, progressively, to make it effective to the Doctor: while all, by the desire of Mrs. Crewe, was communicated to Bookham, with the most cordial zeal for attracting its female recluse from her obscurity, by placing her at the head of a design to work at _mind_ and _morals_, in concert with the high names of Mr. Windham, Mr. Canning, and the then Dean of Chester; with various other honourable persons, marked out, but not yet engaged.

“Do ask Madame d’Arblay,” she continues, “to form some plan. We will all help to address letters to her, if she will be ‘Dear Spec.’”

She then adds a wish that the nominal Editor should be supposed to live in the neighbourhood of Sir Hugh Tyrold; whose simplicity of truth, perplexity of doubts and humility, and laughable originality of dialect, might produce comic entertainment to enliven the serious disquisitions.

And, in conclusion, her filial heart, always wedded to the memory of her distinguished mother, earnestly desired to make this work a mean to bring forth some “novel characters” of that celebrated lady, that might be taken from a posthumous manuscript which Mrs. Crewe, long since, had given to this Memorialist, to finish—if she thought feasible—or otherwise to edit; but which various impediments had, and still have, kept unpublished in her hands.

Nothing could be more honourable than such a proposition, nor more gratefully felt by the then Bookham, and afterwards West Hamble Female Hermit: but she, who, from the origin of her first literary attempt, might almost be called an accidental author, could by no means so new model the natural shyness of her character, as to assume courage for meeting the public eye with the opinions, injunctions, and admonitions of a didactic one. Her answer, therefore, to her Father, which, after communicating to Mrs. Crewe, Dr. Burney preserved, is here abridged and copied.

“TO DR. BURNEY.

* * * * *

“I hardly know whether I am most struck with the fertility of the ideas that Mrs. Crewe has started, or most gratified at their direction. Certainly, I am flattered where most susceptible of pleasure, when kindness such as hers would call me forth from my retirement, to second views so important in their ends, and demanding such powers in their progress. But though her opinion might give me courage, it cannot give me means. I am too far removed from the scene of public life to compose anything of public utility in the style she indicates. The manners as they rise; the morals, or their deficiencies, as they preponderate, should be viewed, for such a scheme, in all their variations, with a diurnal eye. The editor of such a censorial and didactic work, should be a watchful frequenter of public places, and live in the midst of public people. The plan is so excellent, it ought to be well adopted, and well fulfilled: but many circumstances would render its accomplishment nearly impossible for _me_. Wholly to omit politics, would mar all the original design: yet the personal hostility in which all intermingling with them is entangled, would make a dreadful breach into the peace of my happiness.” &c.

* * * * *

Then follows a statement of local obstacles to her presiding over such a project, from the peculiar position of M. d’Arblay; which required the most inflexible adherence to his cottage seclusion, till he could dauntlessly spring from it in manifestation of his loyal principles.

“But tell Mrs. Crewe,” she continues, “I entreat you, my dearest Father, that I am not only obliged, but made the happier by her kind partiality; and that, if otherwise circumstanced, I should have delighted to have entered into any scheme in which she would have taken a part.”

* * * * *

Here, at once, ere, in fact, it was begun, this business ended: Dr. Burney was acquiescent: and Mrs. Crewe was far too high-bred a character to prosecute any scheme, or persist in any wish of her own, that opposed the feelings of those whom she meant to please, or to serve. The topic, therefore, from the most eager pressure, was instantly cast into silence, from which it quietly dropt into oblivion.

DUKE OF PORTLAND.

But not so passive was Mrs. Crewe with respect to the signal favour to which the Doctor was rising in the estimation of the Duke of Portland, with whom, through her partial introduction, a long general acquaintance was now cementing into an intercourse of peculiar esteem and regard. His Grace, indeed, conceived so strong a liking to the principles and the opinions of Dr. Burney, as to manifest the most flattering pleasure in drawing them forth. And equally he seemed gratified, whenever they chanced to be _tête à tête_, in unbending his own mind in unrestrained and kind communication.

To owe the origin of this affectionate attachment to Mrs. Crewe, to whom already were owing such innumerable circumstances of agreeability, only heightened its charm. And it was here but the natural effect of situation—Mrs. Crewe being, at her pleasure, domiciliated at the various mansions of the Duke, from the marriage of one of her brothers with Lady Charlotte Bentinck, a daughter of his Grace.

This connexion became, ere long, a spring of spirits as well as of pleasure to Dr. Burney, in affording him, at Burlington House, a continually easy access to the highest rank of society of the Metropolis; and an elegantly prepared sojourn in the country, at the noble villa of Bulstrode Park; where the distinguished kindness of the Duke made the visits of the Doctor glide on deliciously to his satisfaction.

MR. BURKE.

But in the midst of this delectable new source of enjoyment to Dr. Burney, a deeply-mourned and widely-mournful loss tried again, with poignant sorrow, his kindliest affections.

On the 10th of July, 1797, he received the following note:—

“Dear Sir,

“I am grieved to tell you that your late friend, Mr. Burke, is no more. He expired last night, at half-past twelve o’clock.

“The long, steady, and unshaken friendship which had subsisted between you and him, renders this a painful communication; but it is a duty I owe to such friendship.

“I am, Dear Sir, &c., “EDW. NAGLE.”

“_Beaconsfield, 9th July, 1797._”

Hard, indeed, was this blow to Dr. Burney. He lamented this high character in all possible ways, as a friend, a patriot, a statesman, an orator, and a man of the most exalted genius.

“He was certainly,” says his letter to Bookham upon this event, “one of the greatest men of the present century; and, I think I might say, the best orator and statesman of modern times. He had his passions and prejudices, to which I did not subscribe; but I always ardently admired his great abilities, his warmth of friendship, his constitutional urbanity.”

He then adds:—

“That, while such was his character, and such his loss in public, he, (Dr. Burney,) and his daughter, to whom Mr. Burke had been so unremittingly and singularly partial, must be ungrateful indeed not yet more peculiarly to lament his departure, and honour his character in private.”

In her answer, she sorrowingly assures the Doctor that there was nothing to fear of her want of sympathy in this affliction. “I feel it,” she cries, “with my whole heart, and participate in every word you say of that truly great man. That he was not, as his enemies exclaim, perfect, is nothing in the scale of his stupendous superiority over almost all those who are merely exempt from his defects. That he was upright in heart and intention, even where he acted erroneously, I firmly believe: and that he asserted nothing that he had not persuaded himself to be true, even from Mr. Hastings being the most rapacious of villains, to the King’s being incurably insane.[47] He was as liberal in sentiment as he was luminous in intellect, and extraordinary in eloquence; and for amiability, he was surely, when in spirits and good-humour—_all but_ the most delightful of men. Yet, though superior to envy, and glowing with the noblest zeal to exalt talents and merits in others, he had, I believe, an unavoidable, though not a vain consciousness of his own greatness, that shut out from his consideration those occasional and useful self-doubts that keep the judgment in order, by making us, from time to time, call our motives and our passions to account.”

The Doctor was amongst the invited who paid the last homage to the manes of Mr. Burke by attending his funeral.

“Malone and I,” he says, “went to Bulstrode together, in my carriage, with two added horses. We found there the Dukes of Portland and Devonshire. Windham arrived to dinner. The Lord Chancellor and the Speaker could not leave London till four o’clock, but were at Bulstrode by seven. All set off together for Beaconsfield, where we found the rest of the pall-hearers, Lords Fitzwilliam and Inchiquin, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Frederick North, Drs. King and Lawrence, Dudley North, and very many of the great orator’s personal friends; though, by his repeated injunctions, the funeral was ordered to be very private. He left a list to whom rings of remembrance were to be sent, in which my name honourably occurs; and a jeweller has been with me for my measure.

“After these mournful rites, the Duke of Portland included me in his invite back to Bulstrode, with the Duke of Devonshire, the Chancellor, the Speaker, Windham, Malone, and Secretary King: and there I continued the next day.

“The Duke pressed me to stay on, and accompany him and his party to a visit, the following morning, in honour of Mr. Burke, that was to be made to the school, founded by that enlarged philanthropist, for the male children of the ruined emigrant nobility, now seeking refuge in this country. But it was not in my power to prolong my absence from town.”

DR. WARREN.

Dr. Burney now lost, also, his sagacious physician and enlightened friend, Dr. Warren; “a loss sad,” he says, “indeed, to his family, to science, and to hundreds of people whose lives he preserved.”

MRS. CREWE.

The unwearied Mrs. Crewe, grieved at the fresh dejection into which these reiterated misfortunes cast the Doctor, now started a scheme that had more of promise than any other that could have been devised of affording him some exhilaration. This was arranging an excursion that would lead him to visit the scene of his birth, that of his boyhood, and that of his education; namely, Shrewsbury, Condover, and Chester; by prevailing with him to accompany her to Mr. Crewe’s noble ancient mansion of Crewe Hall: a proposal so truly grateful to his feelings, that he found it resistless.

The following account of its execution is extracted from his own letters to the Hermits:

“The die is thrown; and I have agreed, at last, to go down with Mrs. Crewe to the family mansion in Cheshire, which Mr. Crewe, as well as herself, has so long pressed me to visit. M. le President de Fronteville, a very agreeable French gentleman, is to be of the party. But dear Mr. Crewe, with his daughter,[48] sets off first, to pass a condoling day or two with poor Mrs. Burke at Beaconsfield. We are then to join at Wycomb; and thence to Oxford; &c.

“_Crewe Hall, 2d August._

“I could not get a moment to write on the road, as we travelled at a great rate, with Mrs. Crewe’s four horses, followed by four post. I have now only time to name what places we passed ere we got to old Shrewsbury, which lies forty miles out of the right road of dear Mrs. Crewe; who so kindly made a point of carrying me thither. Blenheim—Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon,—where I visited the mansion, or rather _cabane_ of our immortal bard, now a butcher’s shop! I sate on his easy chair, still remaining in his chimney corner; and wondered more than ever how a man living in such a miserable house and town, should have attained such sublime ideas of grandeur in the most exalted situations. Birmingham—Wolverhampton—Nufnal by the Rekin—Watling, thought a Roman road—Lord Berwick’s—and, at five o’clock in the afternoon, on Monday, old Shrewsbury.

“I ran away from Mrs. Crewe, who was too tired to walk about, and played the Cicerone myself to Miss Crewe, who has both understanding and curiosity for gaining knowledge, and to M. de Fronteville, to whom I undertook to shew off old Shrewsbury; of which I knew all the streets, lanes, and parishes, as well as I did sixty years ago.

* * * * *

“I found my way, without a single question, to the old Town Hall, the New Town House, High Street, and Raven Street, where I was born. And then to the Free School, founded by Henry VIII. and endowed by his daughter Bess.

“We went up to the top of the highest tower in the Castle, which Sir William Pulteney now inhabits. He has repaired every one of the lofty and venerable towers in their true ancient and Gothic style. After dinner, I laid out _a shilling or two_ with an old bookseller, whom I catechised about old people and old things,—but alas! of the first, not one creature is now alive whom I remember, or who can remember me!

* * * * *

“The next morning, Tuesday, I set off alone, at seven o’clock, to visit the new church, St. Chad’s; which is a very fine one but so irreverently secular, that it would make a very handsome theatre. I then walked in that most beautiful of all public walks, as I still believe, in the world, called the Quarry; formed in verdant and flower-enamelled fields, by the Severn side, with the boldest and most lovely opposite shore imaginable.

“I found my way, also, from this walk to a new bridge, called The Welsh Bridge; which leads to Montgomeryshire. On the former old one there was a statue, which was supposed to be of Llewellen, Prince of Wales; but is now discovered to be of the Black Prince. It is well preserved, and is not of bad sculpture. I was driven back to the inn by the rain.

“We all adjourned to breakfast with Dr. Darwin, who is newly married to a daughter of Mr. Wedgewood’s. They are very intelligent, agreeable, and shrewd folks.

“In a most violent rain, nearly a storm, we left my dear old Shrewsbury; and without being able, in such weather, to get to my dearer old Condover.

Yet I could have found nothing there but melancholy remembrances; all gone for whom I had cared,—or who had cared for me!