Part 7

“The manner, dear Sir, in which you have kindly relieved my mind is a new obligation, for which I am utterly unable to express my gratitude. * * * You have not only removed my fears of incurring your censure, but have put me in humour with my own proceeding: and somebody has truly said, that the worst quarrel a man can have is with himself. Indeed, I was so circumstanced in the late exigency, that I was unable to satisfy my feelings by any mode of action, or of quiescence, in my power: but you have reasoned in so enlarged and liberal a manner on the subject, that, great as I thought the trial during my mental conflict, you have so nearly transformed the evil into good, as to make me almost rejoice in the occasion that has given birth to such a letter as that with which you have honoured me. Your delicacy, dear Sir, in refraining from the least hint or allusion that could be construed into a wish that I should go with you in the late struggle, though you had a fair claim upon me,[20] redoubles my desire to give you some voluntary testimony of the great respect and regard with which I have the honour to be,” &c. &c. &c.

* * * * *

Dr. Burney at this time resided entirely at Chelsea College; and he found this sojourn so perfectly to his taste, that, though obliged, some years afterwards, by official arrangements, to remove from the ground floor to nearly the highest range of rooms in that lofty edifice, he never wished to change the place of his abode.

The distance from town was just sufficient to avoid its bustle, its smoke, its dust, and its noise; yet not enough to impede any evening engagement, as it was not above an hour’s walk, and consequently half an hour’s drive from Piccadilly. Operas, concerts, conversaziones, were all within reach of his time, when without obstruction from his health. And Chelsea air is even proverbially salubrious, Doctors Arbuthnot, Sloane, Mede, Cadogan, Farquar, &c., having given it medical celebrity in making it their chosen residence.

He had also the pleasure, in the College itself, of some very agreeable, hospitable, and respectable neighbours; to all of whom he was an acquisition equally valuable and valued. And which to the taste and pursuits of a man of letters was still more important, he found here safe, lofty, and well fitted-up chambers, that were spacious and ready for the accommodation of his books. Here, therefore, and completely to his satisfaction, he placed his learned, classical, scientific, and miscellaneous library.

Solaced, nevertheless, as was now his anxiety for his invalid daughter, he was not at rest. She looked ill, weak, and languid; and the danger was clearly not over.

She, too, with all the delight her affections experienced, felt her heart involuntarily saddened by quitting their Majesties and the Princesses: and the final marks of their benign favour upon parting with her, cast a shade of melancholy over her retreat from their presence, dejecting—though not amounting to regret.

So deplorably, indeed, was her health injured, that successive changes of air were medicinally advised for her to Dr. Burney; and her maternally zealous friend, Mrs. Ord, most kindly proposed taking charge of the execution of that prescription. A tour to the west was undertaken; the Bath waters were successfully tried: and, after passing nearly four months in gentle travelling, the good Mrs. Ord delivered the invalid to her family, nearly re-established.

The paternal affection which greeted this double restoration, to her health and her home, gave her, then, a happiness which vivified both. The Doctor allowed her the indulgence of living almost wholly in his study; they read together, wrote together, compared notes, communicated projects, and diversified each other’s employment; and his kindness, enlivened by her late danger and difficulties, was more marked, and more precious to her than ever.

THE KING, QUEEN, AND PRINCESSES.

It has been thought necessary to say so much, first upon the appointment in the Queen’s establishment of the Doctor’s second daughter, and next upon her resignation; from the honours to the Doctor in which both these events were entwined, that there now seems a call for a few more last lines upon the subject; which the Memorialist, with the sincerest sense—and perhaps pride!—of gratitude and respect, is anxious to impart.

She had no sooner made known that her western tour was finished, than she was summoned to the Palace, where her Majesty deigned to receive her with the highest grace of condescension; and to keep her in animated discourse, with the same noble trust in her faithful attachment, that had uniformly marked every conference during her royal residence. Each of the amiable Princesses honoured her with a separate interview; vying with each other in kindly lively expressions upon her restored looks and appearance: and the King, the gracious King himself, vouchsafed, with an air the most benevolent, not alone of goodness, but even of pleasure, to inquire after her health, to rejoice in its improvement, and to declare, condescendingly, repeatedly to declare, how glad he was to see her again. He even made her stand under a lustre, that he might examine her countenance, before he pronounced himself satisfied with her recovery.

And, from that time forward, upon her every subsequent admission, the graciousness of her reception bounded with the blandest joy from her own heart to that of the Doctor.

The Queen, full of sense, penetration, and judgment, easily saw that she had preserved a true and devoted adherent, though she had lost a servant. The Princesses, with the impulsive confidence of innocence, had faith in an attachment which they could not but be conscious their own amiability had inspired: and the King, with the purest innate probity of character, possessed a tact, which the quickest parts sometimes fail to bestow, of a straightforward discernment to distinguish fidelity from profession.

And thus, after conflicts and chagrins of which he had deeply felt the severity, and by the harass of which he still remained shaken; the Doctor finally attained the lasting consolation of seeing that the motives, which had urged him to withdraw his daughter from the royal roof, were perfectly understood; and that she had forfeited no favour; but, on the contrary, had left behind her a graciously benignant—he might almost venture to believe _friend_, in her condescending Royal Mistress; and in each of their Royal Highnesses, nay, even in the King himself, a most august and animated well-wisher.

And this persuasion, such was the anxious loyalty of the Doctor’s principles, was essential rather than reviving to his happiness.

HISTORY OF MUSIC.

Not to break into the little history which mentally, during the last five years, had almost absorbed Dr. Burney, no mention has been made of a personal event of as much moment to his peace as to his fame; namely, the publication, in 1789, of the third volume of his History of Music; nor that, before the end of the same year, he had the brain-relieving satisfaction of completing his long impending work, by bringing out the fourth and last volume.

All the details, whether thorny or flowery, of the progress to this conclusion, were unknown, in their passage, to the Memorialist; whose intricate situation and disordered health chased, from every paternal interview, all subjects that had not reference to her precarious position.

Unnarrated, however, and undescribed, it will not be difficult to imagine the load of care, thought, and anxiety that were now removed from the nearly overburthened historian.

It seemed to him a sort of regeneration to feel freedom restored to his reflections, and liberty to his use of time, by arriving at the close of this literary labour; which, though in its origin voluntary, had of late become heavily fatiguing, because shackled by an engagement, and therefore obligatory.

His first feelings upon this relief he has expressed, with his characteristic pleasantry, in a letter to Mr. Repton, the successor to Capability Brown, and cotemporary and brother rival park-embellisher with Uvedale Price and Gally Knight.

“Did you ever see, dear Sir,” says the Doctor in this letter, “a child, when musing over his playthings, with seeming quiet sobriety, give an involuntary jump from the mere ebullition of animal spirits? a few nights ago, when I had just sent the last copy of the last chapter of the last volume of my Work to the compositor, I caught myself in the fact; and, if you were here, I would exhibit to you how I jumped for joy at the thought of an enterprise being terminated, that had been thirty years in meditation, and twenty in writing and printing; and for which I had previously taxed every amusement and social enjoyment; and even, in order to gain more time, had drawn deeply upon my sinking fund—Sleep.”

1791.

The life of Dr. Burney was now almost equally distributed in literary, professional, and amical divisions.

In literature, his time, ostensibly, was become his own; but never was time less so than when put into his own hands; for his eagerness was without either curb or limit to devote it to some new pursuit. And scarcely had that elastic bound of renovated youth, of which he speaks to Mr. Repton, been capered, than a fresh, yet voluntary occupation, drove his newly-restored leisure away, and opened a course of bookish and critical toil, that soon seized again upon every spare moment. This was constituting himself a member amongst the Monthly Reviewers, under the editorship of the worthy Mr. Griffith.

Of the articles which were Dr. Burney’s, no list has been found; and probably none was kept. The ardour of sincerity in pointing out faults and failures, is so apt to lead to a similar ardour of severity in their censure, that, in those days, when the critics were not, wisely, anonymous, the secret and passive war of books and words among authors, menaced the more public and tumultuous one of swords and pistols.[21]

The articles which, occasionally, to a small circle, he avowed, were written with a spirit that made them frequently bright with entertainment, and sometimes luminous with instruction.

In his professional department, he has almost with exultation recorded, in the following passage of his journal, the happy commencement of the year 1791.

“1791.—This year was auspiciously begun, in the musical world, by the arrival in London of the illustrious Joseph Haydn. ’Tis to Salomon that the lovers of music are indebted for what the lovers of music will call this blessing. Salomon went over himself to Vienna, upon hearing of the death of the Prince of Esterhazy, the great patron of Haydn, purposely to tempt that celebrated musical genius hither; and on February 25, the first of Haydn’s incomparable symphonies, which was composed for the concerts of Salomon, was performed. Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte: and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience, as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever, to my knowledge, been caused by instrumental music in England. All the slow middle movements were encored; which never before happened, I believe, in any country.”

In his amical career, he still possessed Mr. Twining, to whom he clung with every species of high esteem and fond regard. And he yet retained his early and excellent old friend, Mr. Hayes; who preserved his memory and his faculties unimpaired, though his body was sunk into a state of debility the most deplorable.

The friendship of Sir Joshua Reynolds the Doctor constantly cultivated with the ardour, as well as pleasure, that always rapidly cements connexions that owe their origin to the attraction of sympathy.

With Sir Joseph Bankes he was now upon terms of lively intimacy; and had the satisfaction of seeing both his sons, from their nautical or classical eminence, share with him in the sprightly, as well as learned and lettered pleasures of the president’s good fellowship.

Mr. Windham, in every walk, whether of literature or sentiment, was amongst those with whom he most delightedly associated.

The elegant Mr. Smelt kept steadily his rank in the first line of the admired friends of the Doctor; but Mr. Smelt, though affectionately retaining for him the most faithful esteem and regard, was now nearly lost to all, except his immediate family; for he had himself lost the partner of his life, and the world faded before him with daily diminishing interest in its pleasures, pains, pursuits, or transactions.

The unfortunate, but truly amiable and high-minded Mr. Beckford was amongst the greatest favourites and most welcome visitors to Dr. Burney; whose remembrance of the friendly zeal of that gentleman in Italy, was a never-failing call for every soothing return that could be offered to him in the calamities which, roughly and ruinously, had now changed his whole situation in life—leaving his virtues alone unalterable.

The two Wesleys, Charles and Samuel, those born rather than bred musicians, sought, and were welcomed by the Doctor, whenever his leisure agreed with his estimation of their talents. With Samuel he was often in musical correspondence.

Horace Walpole invariably delighted in the society of Dr. Burney; and had himself no admirer who carried from his company and conversation a larger or more zested portion of his lordship’s _bon mots_; or who had a higher taste for his peculiar style of entertainment.

MR. GREVILLE.

But Mr. Greville, the old friend and early patron of the Doctor, he now never saw, save by accident; and rarely as that occurred, it was oftener than could be wished; so querulous was that gentleman grown, from ill-luck in his perilous pursuits; so irascible within, and so supercilious without; assuming to all around him a sort of dignified distance, that bordered, at least, upon universal disdain.

The world seemed completely in decadence with this fallen gentleman; and the writhings of long suffocated mortification, from sinking his fine spirits and sickening his gay hopes, began to engender a morbid irritation, that was ready, upon every fancied provocation, to boil into vehemence of passion, or burst into the bitterness of sarcastic reproach.

This state of things had come upon him unconsciously; though to the observations of his friends its advance had been glaringly evident.

It was not that he wanted, at large, foresight for events to be rationally expected, or judgment to dictate how they should be met: but his foresight, his sense of right, were all for his neighbours! for himself—he had none. To all without he had a nearly microscopic vision; to all within he was blind; as the eye sees every thing—but itself.

“Experience,” Mr. Crisp was wont to say, “is rarely of any use collaterally; it does not become efficient till it has personally been bought. And it must be paid for, also,” he would energetically add, “to be well remembered!”

But so torpid was the infatuation of self-security in Mr. Greville, that pertinaciously he frequented the same seductive haunts, and mechanically adhered to the same dangerous society, till the knowledge of his errors and their mischief was forced upon him by his creditors.

Angered and disgusted, he then, in gloomy sullenness, retired from public view; and lived a rambling, unsettled sort of life, as ill at ease with his family as with the world, from the wounds he habitually inflicted, and occasionally suffered, through the irritability of his argumentative commerce.

MR. AND MRS. SHERIDAN.

Another of the Doctor’s brightest calls to high and animated society was now, also, utterly eclipsed; for She, the loveliest of the lovely, the first Mrs. Sheridan, was fading away—vanishing—from the list of his fair enchantresses.

This paragon of syrens, by almost universal and national consent, had been looked up to, when she sang at oratorios and at concerts, as the star of harmony in England: though so short was that _eclât_ of supremacy, that, from the date of her marriage, her claim to such pre-eminence was known to the public only by remembrance or by rumour; Mr. Sheridan, her husband, inexorably renouncing all similar engagements, and only at his own house suffering her to sing.

Far happier had it been for that captivating and beautiful creature, far happier for her eminent and highly-talented husband, had the appropriate fame that belonged equally to the birth, education, and extraordinary abilities of both, been adequate to their pride of expectation: for then, glowing with rational and modest, not burning with inordinate and eccentric ambition, they would not disdainfully—almost madly—have cast away from their serious and real service the brilliant gifts of favouring nature, which, if seasonably brought forth, would have opened to them, without struggle or difficulty, the golden portals of that splendour to which their passion for grandeur and enjoyment throbbingly aspired.

But from these brilliant gifts, as instruments of advantage, they turned captiously aside; as if the exquisite powers, vocal and dramatic, which were severally intrusted to their charge, had been qualities that, in any view of utility, they ought to shrink from with secrecy and shame.

Yet Dr. Burney always believed Mrs. Sheridan herself to be inherently pure in her mind, and elegantly simple in her taste; though first from the magnetism of affection, and next from the force of circumstances, she was drawn into the same vortex of dissipation and extravagance, in which the desires and pursuits of her husband unresistedly rolled.

Every thing, save rank and place, was theirs; every thing, therefore, save rank and place, seemed beneath their aim.

If, in withdrawing his fair partner from public life, the virtues of moderation had bestowed contentment upon their retreat, how dignified had been such a preference, to all the affluence attendant upon a publicity demanding personal exhibition from a delicate and sensitive female!

Such was the light in which this act of Mr. Sheridan, upon its early adoption, had appeared to Dr. Johnson; and, as such, it obtained the high sanction of his approbation.[22] But to no such view was the subsequent conduct of this too aspiring and enchanting couple respondent. They assumed the expenses of wealth, while they disclaimed the remuneration of talents; and they indulged in the luxuries of splendour, by resources not their own.

Not such, had he lived to witness the result, had been the sanction of Dr. Johnson. He had regarded the retirement from public exhibition as a measure of primitive temperance and philosophic virtue. The last of men was Dr. Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity, by nullifying the labours of talents.

The unhappy delusion into which this high-wrought and mis-placed self-appreciation betrayed them, finished its fatal fanaticism by dimming their celebrity, mocking their ambition, and hurling into disorder and ruin their fortune, their reputation, their virtues, and their genius.

* * * * *

MRS. CREWE.

At the head of the female worthies, who gratified Dr. Burney with eager good wishes on the return of the Memorialist, stood Mrs. Montague. And still the honourable corps was upheld by Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Garrick, and Miss More—though, alas, the last-mentioned lady is now the only one of that distinguished set still spared to the world.

But the person at this epoch the most conciliatory and the most welcome to Dr. Burney, was the still beautiful, though no longer the still young; the humorous, though contemplative; the sportively loquacious, though deeply-thinking, Mrs. Crewe.

This lady was now his most confidential friend, and most intimate correspondent. In politics, they were not, indeed, naturally of the same school; though even there, strong mutual esteem, and a great tendency to mutual trust, induced a propensity to such fairness and candour of discussion, that their opinions were more frequently blended than hostile.

Mrs. Greville, her celebrated mother, who to this partiality had led the way by her example, was now no more; to the infinite grief of her tenderly admiring daughter.

Mrs. Crewe, in felicitating the Doctor on the recovery of his invalid, formed innumerable schemes, some of which were put in immediate execution, for aiding him to recruit her shattered nerves, and restring her animal spirits.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

But a catastrophe of the most sorrowing sort soon afterwards cast a shade of saddest hue upon this happy and promising period, by the death of the friend to whom, after his many deprivations, Dr. Burney had owed his greatest share of pleasure and animation—Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Deeply this loss affected his spirits. Sir Joshua was the last of the new circle with whom his intimacy had mellowed into positive friendship. And though with many, and indeed with most of the Literary Club, a connexion was gradually increasing which might lead to that heart-expanding interest in life, friendship,—to part with what we possess while what we wish is of uncertain attainment, leaves a chasm in the feelings of a man of taste and selection, that he is long nearly as unwilling as he may be unable to re-occupy.

With Mr. Burke, indeed, with the immortal Edmund Burke, Dr. Burney might have been as closely united in heart as he was charmed in intellect, had circumstances offered time and opportunity for the cultivation of intimacy. Political dissimilarity of sentiment does not necessarily sunder those who, in other points, are drawn together by congeniality of worth; except where their walk in life compels them to confront each other with public rivalry.

But Mr. Burke, in whose composition imagination was the leading feature, had so genuine a love of rural life and rural scenery, that he seldom came voluntarily to the metropolis but upon parliamentary business; and then the whole powers of his ardent mind were absorbed by politics, or political connexions: while Sir Joshua, whose equanimity of temper kept his imagination under control; and whose art was as much the happiness as it was the pride of his prosperity, finding London the seat of his glory, judiciously determined to make it that of his contentment. His loss, therefore, to Dr. Burney, was not only that of an admired friend, with whom emulously he might reciprocate and enlighten ideas; but, also, of that charm to current life the most soothing to its cares, a congenial companion always at hand.

And more particularly was he affected at this time by the departure of this valuable friend, from the circumstance of having just brought to bear the return home of the Memorialist, for which Sir Joshua, previously to a paralytic attack, had been the most eager and incessant pleader. The Doctor, therefore, had looked forward with the gayest gratification to the renewal of those meetings which, alike to himself, to his daughter, and to the knight, had invariably been productive of glee and pleasure.

But gone, ere arrived that renewal, was the power of its enjoyment! A meeting, indeed, took place, and with unalterable friendship on both sides. Immediately after the Western tour, Dr. Burney carried the Memorialist to Leicester-square; first mounting to the drawing-room himself, to inquire whether Sir Joshua were well enough for her admission. Assent was immediate; and she felt a sprightly renovation of strength in again ascending his stairs.