Part 17

“La generosité et la grandeur d’ame etant inseparables, ce qui pourroit me perdre avec un autre, va être ma saufegarde avec vous. Admirateur sincere du bien que vous avez déja fait; animé par l’éspoir de celui qui vous reste à faire; je veux et j’éspere me rendre digne de la manière flatteuse dont vous venez de me traiter. Je pars, et vous pouvez compter sur ma reconnoissance: mais ce seroit vous en donner une preuve indigne de vous que de me rendre coupable d’ingratitude envers un autre. Enthousiaste de la liberté, je fas encore plus ami de l’ordre; et restai jusqu’au dernier moment un des serviteurs le plus fidele, et, j’ose le dire, le plus energique, d’un monarque dont plus qu’un autre j’ai connu le patriotisme et les vertus. Forcé de fuir, rien n’eut pû me faire manquer au serment de ne jamais porter les armes contre ma patrie; determiné de même de ne jamais m’armer contre la patrie de mon epouse—contre le pays qui pendant neuf ans nous a nourris. Je vous jure sur tout le reste fidelité et devouement.

“Salut et respect,

“ALEXANDRE DARBLAY.”

This letter he hurried off by an official express, through Buonaparte’s then minister here, M. Otto; who, after reading, forwarded it under cover to Le Citoyen Ministre de la Guerre, Berthier; to whom, as a former military friend, M. d’Arblay recommended its delivery to Le Premier Consul.[64] This done, M. d’Arblay pursued his own route.

A frightful chasm of all intelligence to Dr. Burney ensued after this critical departure of M. d’Arblay; no tidings came over of his arrival at Brest, his embarkation, or even of his safety, after crossing the channel in the remarkably tempestuous month of February, in 1802.

The causes of this mysterious silence would be too circumstantial for these Memoirs, to which it belongs only to state their result. The First Consul, upon reading the letter of M. d’Arblay, immediately withdrew his military commission; and Berthier, in an official reply, desired that _le Citoyen Darblay_ would consider that commission, and the letter to General Le Cler, as _non avenues_.

Berthier, nevertheless, in the document which annulled the St. Domingo commission, and which must have been written by the personal command of Buonaparte, since it was in answer to a letter that had been directed immediately to himself, calmly, and without rancour, harshness, or satire, developed the reason of the recall, in simply saying, that since _le Citoyen Darblay_ would not bear arms against the country of his wife, which might always, eventually, bear arms against France, he could not be engaged in the service of the Republic.

Buonaparte, stimulated, it is probable, by M. de Lauriston’s account of the frank and honourable character of M. d’Arblay, contented himself with this simple annulling act; without embittering it by any stigma, or demonstrating any suspicious resentment.

This event, as has been hinted, produced important consequences to Dr. Burney; consequences the most ungenial to his parental affections; though happily, at that period, not foreseen in their melancholy extent, of a ten years’ complete and desperate separation from his daughter d’Arblay.

Unsuspicious, therefore, of that appendent effect of the letter of M. d’Arblay to Buonaparte, the satisfaction of Dr. Burney, at this first moment, that no son-in-law of his would bear arms, through any means, however innocent, and with any intentions, however pure, under the banners of Buonaparte, largely contributed to make the unexpected tidings of this sudden change of situation an epoch of ecstacy, rather than of joy; of adoration, rather than of thankfulness, to his Hermit daughter.

But far different were the sensations to which this turn of affairs gave birth in M. d’Arblay. Consternation seems too tame a word for the bewildered confusion of his feelings, at so abrupt a breaking up of an enterprise, which, though unsolicited and unwished for in its origin, had by degrees, from its recurrence to early habits, become glowingly animated to his ideas and his prospects. Buonaparte had not then blackened his glory by the seizure and sacrifice of the Comte d’Enghein; and M. d’Arblay, in common with several other admirers of the military fame of the First Consul, had conceived a hope, to which he meant honestly to allude in his letter, that the final campaign of that great warrior, would be a voluntary imitation of the final campaign of General Monk.

Little, therefore, as he had intended to constitute Buonaparte, in any way, as his chief, a breach such as this in his own professional career, nearly mastered his faculties with excess of perturbation. To seem dismissed the service!—he could not brook the idea; he was confounded by his own position.

He applied to a generous friend,[65] high in military reputation, to represent his disturbance to the First Consul.

Buonaparte consented to grant an audience on the subject; but almost instantly interrupted the application, by saying, with vivacity, “I know that business! However, let him be tranquil. It shall not hurt him any further. There was a time I might have been capable of acting so myself!—”

And then, after a little pause, and with a look somewhat ironical, but by no means ill-humoured or unpleasant, he added: “_Il m’a écrit un diable de lettre!_”—He stopt again, after which, with a smile half gay, half cynical, he said: “However, I ought only to regard in it the husband of Cecilia;” and then abruptly he broke up the conference.

Of the _author_ of Cecilia, of course, he meant.

This certainly was a trait of candour and liberality worthy of a more gentle mind; and which, till the ever unpardonable massacre of the Duke d’Enghein, softened, in some measure, the endurance of the compulsatory stay in France that afterwards ensued to M. d’Arblay.

1802.

Dr. Burney, meanwhile, from the time that the St. Domingo commission was annulled, was in daily expectation of the return of his son-in-law, and the re-establishment of the little cottage of West Hamble:—but mournfully, alas, was he disappointed! The painful news arrived from M. d’Arblay, that, from the strangeness of the circumstances in which he was involved, he could not quit France without seeming to have gained his wish in losing his appointment. He determined, therefore, to remain a twelvemonth in Paris, to shew himself at hand in case of any change of orders. And he desired, of course, to be joined there by his wife and son.

M. d’Arblay, however, wrote to that wife, to Dr. Burney, and to his dearly reverenced friend, Mr. Locke, the most comforting assurance, that, one single year revolved, he would return, with his little family, to the unambitious enjoyment of friendship, repose, and West Hamble.

By no means gaily did Dr. Burney receive the account of this arrangement. Gloomy forebodings clouded his brow; though his daughter, exalted by joy and thankfulness that the pestilential climate of St. Domingo was relinquished; and happily persuaded that another year would re-unite her with her honoured father, her brethren, and friends, assented with alacrity to the scheme. Almost immediately, therefore, it took place; though not before the loyal heart of Dr. Burney had the soothing consolation of finding, that the step she was taking was honoured with the entire approbation of her benevolent late Royal Mistress; who openly held that to follow the fortune of the man to whom she had given her hand, was now her first duty in life.

And something of pleasure mixed itself with his parental cares, and a little mitigated the severity of his concern at this event, when the Doctor heard that she was not only admitted by that most gracious Queen to a long and flattering farewell audience; and to the high honour of separate parting interviews with each of the Princesses; but also to the unspeakable delight of being graciously detained in her Majesty’s white closet till the arrival there, from some review, of the benign King himself; who deigned, with his never-failing benevolence, to vouchsafe to her some inappreciable minutes of his favouring and heart-touching notice: while the Queen, with conscious pleasure at the happiness which she had thus accorded to her, smilingly said, “You did not expect this, Madame d’Arblay.”

With this high honour and goodness exhilarated, her spirits rose to their task; with the support of hope, she parted from her family and friends; with the resolution of remembering the escape from St. Domingo, should she be pursued by any misfortune, she quitted her loved cottage; and even from her thrice-dear father she separated without participating in his alarm, while seeking to dissipate it by her own brighter views.

Yet moved was she to her heart’s core when, on the evening preceding her departure, which took place after a long sojourn at Chelsea College, he suddenly broke from her, as if to stir the fire; but pronounced, in a voice that shewed he merely sought to hide his emotion, his fears, nay belief, that M. d’Arblay, though twice he had returned with speed from Paris when he had visited it alone, would probably be tempted to lengthen, if not fix his abode there, when the chief ties to his adopted country became a part of that of his birth.

Nevertheless, even this apprehension, such was her faith in the sacred influence of Camilla Cottage over the mind of her partner in life, she courageously parried, though impressively she felt; and at the leave-taking moment, she was happily able to cheer the presentiments of the Doctor, by the lively sincerity of the feelings that cheered her own.

One point only combatted her courage, and was too potent for her resistance; she could not utter an adieu to her matchless friend, Mr. Locke!—his frame had always seemed to her as fragile as his virtues were adamantine; and the tender partiality with which he had ever met her reverential attachment, made his voice so meltingly affecting to her, that she feared lest her own should betray how little she already thought him of this world! she cheerfully bade adieu to her father, her family, and her friends—but she retreated without uttering a farewell to Mr. Locke,—whom, alas! she never saw more!

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No further narrative, of which the detail can be personal or reciprocal with the Editor, can now be given of Dr. Burney. What follows will be collected from fragments of memoirs, and innumerable memorandums in his own handwriting; from his letters, and those of his family and friends; and from various accidental, incidental, and miscellaneous circumstances.

Yet, at the period of this separation, the Memorialist had the solace to know, that many as were the ties already dissolved of his early affections; numerous the links already broken of his maturer attachments; and wholly incalculable the mass of losses or changes in the current objects of pursuit that, from year to year, had eluded his grasp, flown from his hopes, or betrayed his expectations; he still possessed a host of consolers and revivers, added to what yet remained of his truly attached family, who strove, with equal fidelity and vivacity, to lighten and brighten the years yet lent to their friendly efforts.

At the head of this honourable list, and, for Dr. Burney, of every other, since the loss of Mr. Crisp and Mr. Bewley, would have risen Mr. Twining, had his society been attainable: but Mr. Twining was so seldom in London, that their meetings became as rare as they were precious. His correspondence however, still maintained its pre-eminence; and it is hardly too much to say, that the letters of Mr. Twining were received with a brighter welcome than the visits of almost any other person.

First, therefore, now, in positive, prevailing, and graceful activity of zeal to serve him in his own way, and furnish food to his ideas, with temptation to his spirits and humour for its welcome, must be placed his ever faithful and generous friend, and, by proxy, his god-child, Mrs. Crewe; who prized him equally as a counsellor and a companion.

Far different from all that belongs to this lady are the records that further unfold his broken intercourse with Mr. Greville; and most painful to him was it to turn from the fairness of right reason, and the steadfastness of constancy, which were unvaryingly manifested in the attachment of Mrs. Crewe, to the wayward character, and irrational claims of his erst first patron and friend, her father; who, emerging, nevertheless, from the apathetic gloom into which he had fallen on the first public breaking up of his establishment, had started a spirited resolution to hit upon a new, unknown, unheard-of walk in life, to give recruit to his fortune, and lustre to his name.

Eagerly he looked around for some striking object that might fix him to a point; but all was chaos to the disturbed glare of his ill-directed vision. His internal resources were too diffuse and unsystematized, to fit him for being the chief of any new enterprise; yet, to be an agent, a deputy, a second, he thought more intolerable than danger, distress, debt, difficulty, nay, destruction.

Sick, then, at heart, and self-abandoned for every purpose of active life, partly from despair, partly from ostentation, he plunged all he could yet command of faculty into the study of metaphysics; a study which, from his nervous irritability, soon made all commerce with his friends become impracticable rather than difficult.

1802.

The Memorialist had the comfort, however, to leave the Doctor always eagerly solicited to the society, or honoured with the correspondence of the noble Marquis of Aylesbury, and the liberal Earl of Lonsdale, inclusively with their singularly amiable families: and sought equally by the all-accomplished Dowager Lady Templeton, by Lady Manvers, Lady Mary Duncan, Mrs. Garrick, the Marchioness of Thomond, Mrs. Ord, Lord Cardigan, Mr. Coxe, Mr. Pepys, the still celebrated, though fading away Mrs. Montagu, the sagacious and polished Mrs. Boscawen, and the inimitable Lockes.

And while, in general friendship, such was the nourishment for his gratitude—that feeling which, when not the most oppressive, is the most delightful in human associations—his love of literature, science, and the arts, had food equally nutritive with Mr. Malone, from his spirit of research after facts, incidents, and all the shades and shadows of the great or marked characters that, erst, had been objects of renown.

With Mr. Courtney, though utterly dissimilar in politics, for his wit, sense, and general agreeability.

With Mr. Rogers, for the coincident elegance and philanthropy of his disposition with his poetry.

With Sir George Beaumont, from a vivid sympathy of taste in all the arts.

With Mr. Windham, from a union the most perfect in sentiment, in principles, and in literature.

And by the President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Bankes, the Doctor, from his own universal thirst of knowledge, and uncommon capacity for receiving, retaining, and naturalizing its gifts, was welcomed on public days as a worthy brother of the learned and studious; and in the hours of private conviviality was courted yet more from the gaiety of his humour and the entertainment of his anecdotes; Sir Joseph, when unbent from the state of Newton’s chair, being ever merrily charmed to reciprocate sportive nonsense; various remnants of which, laughingly amusing, but too ludicrous from the President of a scientific society for the press, are amongst the posthumous collections of the Doctor.

With all these his social hilarity was in constant circulation, kept alive by their kindness, and invigorated by their plaudits; which rendered such commerce as medicinal to his health as to his pleasure, from its sane and active spur to what constitutes the happiest portion of our mundane composition, animal spirits.

But the intercourse the most delighting to his fancy and his feelings, was through an increase of attachment for Lady Clarges. Yet melancholy was the cause of this augmented sympathy; melancholy then, and afterwards mournful. To the pleasing view of the personal likeness to his Susanna which had first endeared Lady Clarges to his sight; to the soothing sensations excited by those vocal notes in which a similarity of sound was so grateful to his ears, was now superadded another resemblance, as far more touching as it was less exhilarating; the health of Lady Clarges, never robust, was now in apparent, though not yet alarming, decline. This, altogether, occasioned a tender interest that clung to the breast of the Doctor, first with added regard, and afterwards with suffering solicitude.

In all, however, that was most efficient in good, most solid, most serious, most essential in comfort as well as elegance, the noble kindness of the Duke of Portland took the lead. His magnificent hospitality was nearly without parallel. The select invitations upon select occasions to Burlington House, with which his favour to the Doctor had begun, were succeeded by general ones for all times and all seasons; and with injunctions that the Doctor would choose his own days, and adjust their frequency completely by his own convenience.

This _carte blanche_ of admission at will was next extended from Burlington House to Bulstrode Park; where he was found so agreeable by the noble host, and so pleasing to the noble family, that, in a short time, the Duke urged him to take possession of an appropriated apartment, and to consider himself to be completely at home in that sumptuous dwelling; where he had his mornings with undisturbed liberty, wholly at his own disposal; where he even dined, according to the state of his health and spirits, at the Duke’s table, or in his own parlour; and where, though welcomed in any part of the day to every part of the house, he was never troubled with any inquiry for non-appearance, except at the evening’s assemblage; though not unfrequently the Duke made him personal visits of such affectionate freedom, as signally to endear to him this splendid habitation.

So impressive, indeed, was the regard of his Grace for Dr. Burney, and so animated was the gratitude of its return, that the enjoyments of Bulstrode Park, with all their refined luxuries, and their cultivated scenery, soon became less than secondary; they were nearly as nothing in the calculation of the Doctor, compared with what he experienced from the cordial conversation and kindness of the Duke.

Such, added to his family circle, were the auspices under which, to her great consolation, his daughter d’Arblay left Dr. Burney in April, 1802.

1802.

Dr. Burney, upon the arrival in France of his daughter d’Arblay, for the stated year, opened with her a continental correspondence, prudent, i.e. silent, in regard to politics; but communicative and satisfactory on family affairs and interests; which, on her part, was sustained by all the trust that, at such times, and from such a quarter, could be hazarded. She knew the passing pleasure, at least, with which he would read all that she could venture to write on the new scenes now before her; which were replete with objects, prospects, and ideas to give occupation to Conjecture and Expectation, of more vivacity and mental movement than had been offered to the thought of man for many preceding ages.

And, as her filial letters, from the influence of Mrs. Crewe with Mr. Pelham,[66] passed through the hands of Mr. Merry, the English Minister, she freely related various personal occurrences; though she abstained, of course, from any risk of betraying to the police, through a surprised correspondence, her private opinions, or secret feelings upon the vast new theatre of civil, political, and martial manoeuvres of which she now became, in some measure, a spectatress. Whatever looked Forward, or looked Backward, at that critical juncture, was dangerous for the Pen: to be acquiescent with what was Present alone was safety.

Dr. Burney, upon this separation, redoubled the vigilance of his self-exertions for turning to account every moment of his existence. And his spirits appeared to be equal to every demand upon their efforts. In his first letter to Paris, May 20, 1802, he says:

“I hope, now, the two nations will heartily shake hands, and not be quiet only themselves, but keep the rest of the world quiet. My hurries are such at present, as to oblige me to draw deeper than ever upon my sinking-fund.[67] Business, and more numerous engagements than I have ever yet had, swallow all my time; and this enormous Cyclopedia fills up all my thoughts. I have been long an A.B.C. derian; and now am become so for life.”

In another letter of the same year, written a few months later, the Cyclopedia is no longer proclaimed to be the principal, but the exclusive occupation of the Doctor. The indefatigable eagerness of its pursuit, will best appear from his own account:

“_July 1st, 1802._—I have this day taken leave, for this year, of my town business, which broke into three precious mornings of my week, shivered the lord knows how many links of the chain of my Cyclopedia, and lost me even the interval of time from the trouble of collecting the broken fragments of my materials, and re-putting them together.

“In order to form some idea of the total absorption of my present life, by this Herculean labour, added to my usual hurricanes during the town season, a delightful letter of Twining himself, which I received some weeks ago, remains unanswered! I had a mind to see what I could really do in twelve months, by driving the quill at every possible moment that I could steal from business or repose, by day and by night, in bed and up; and, with all this stir and toil, I have found it impracticable to finish three letters of the alphabet!”

* * * * *

How fortunate—may it not be said how benign?—was the invisibility to coming events at the parental and filial moment of the late separation! an invisibility that spared from fruitless disturbance the greater part of that promised year that was to have ended with the balm of re-union, by hiding the fresh proof with which it was labouring to manifest the never-ending, yet never-awaited imperfection and fallacy of human arrangements.

But grievous, however procrastinated, was the light that too soon broke into that invisibility, when, almost at the moment of happy expectation, Dr. Burney had the shock of hearing that war was again declared with France! And dire, most dire and afflicting to his daughter, was the similar information, of learning that Buonaparte had peremptorily ordered Lord Whitworth to quit Paris in a specified number of hours: and that a brief term was dictatorially fixed for either following that Ambassador, or immoveably remaining in France till the contest should be over.

The very peculiar position, in a military point of view, in which M. d’Arblay now stood in his native country, made it impossible for him to leave it, at so critical a juncture, in the hurried manner that the imperious decree of the French Dictator commanded. It might seem deserting his post! He felt, therefore, compelled, by claims of professional observance, to abide the uncertain storm where its first thunder rolled; and to risk, at its centre, the hazards of its circulation, and the chances of its course.

The unhappiness caused by this decision was wholly unmixed with murmurs from Dr. Burney, whose justice and candour acknowledged it, in such a situation, to be indispensable.

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