The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume I Part 43

Beauclerk's, soon after his marriage with Lord Bolingbroke's divorced wife, in company with Goldsmith, and told a new story of poor Goldsmith's eternal blundering.

A LETTER FROM BURKE To f.a.n.n.y BURNEY.

Whitehall, July 29, 1782.

Madam,

I should feel exceedingly to blame if I could refuse to myself the natural satisfaction, and to you the just but poor return, of my best thanks for the very great instruction and entertainment I have received from the new present you have bestowed on the public. There are few--I believe I may say fairly there are none at all--that will not find themselves better informed concerning human nature, and their stock of observation enriched, by reading your "Cecilia." They certainly will, let their experience in life and manners be what it may. The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth. You have crowded into a few small volumes an incredible variety of characters; most of them well planned, well supported, and well contrasted with each other. If there be any fault in this respect, It is one in which you are in no great danger of being imitated. Justly as your characters are drawn, perhaps they are too numerous. But I beg pardon; I fear it is quite in vain to preach economy to those who are come young to excessive and sudden opulence.

I might trespa.s.s on your delicacy if I should fill my letter with what I fill my conversation to others. I should be troublesome to you alone if I should tell you all I feel and think on the natural vein of humour, the tender pathetic, the comprehensive and n.o.ble moral, and the sagacious observance, that appear quite throughout that extraordinary performance.

In an age distinguished by producing extraordinary women, I hardly dare to tell you where my opinion would place you amongst them. I respect your modesty, that will not endure the commendations which your merit forces from everybody.

I have the honour to be, with great grat.i.tude, respect, and esteem, madam, your most obedient and most humble servant,

EDM. BURKE.

My best compliments and congratulations to Dr. Burney on the great honour acquired to his family.

MISS BURNEY SITS FOR HER PORTRAIT

_Chesington, Monday, Aug. 12_--I set out for this ever dear place, accompanied by Edward,[151] who was sent for to paint Mr. Crisp for my father. I am sure you will rejoice in this. I was a little dumpish in the journey, for I seemed leaving my Susan again. However, I read a "Rambler" or two, and "composed the harmony of my temper," as well as I could, for the sake of Edward, who was not only faultless of this, but who is, I almost think, faultless of all things. I have thought him more amiable and deserving, than ever, since this last sojourn under the same roof with him; and, as it happened, I have owed to him almost all the comfort I have this time met with here.

We came in a chaise, which was well loaded with canva.s.ses, pencils, and painting materials; for Mr. Crisp was to be three times painted, and Mrs. Gast once. My sweet father came down Gascoign-lane to meet us, in very pood spirits and very good health. Next came dear daddy Crisp, looking vastly well, and, as usual, high in glee and kindness at the meeting. Then the affectionate Kitty, the good Mrs. Hamilton, the gentle Miss Young, and the enthusiastic Mrs. Gast.

The instant dinner was over, to my utter surprise and consternation, I was called into the room appropriated for Edward and his pictures, and informed I was to sit to him for Mr. Crisp! Remonstrances were unavailing, and declarations of aversion to the design were only ridiculed; both daddies interfered, and, when I ran off, brought me back between them, and compelled my obedience;--and from that time to this, nothing has gone forward but picture-sitting.

GENERAL PAOLI.

f.a.n.n.y BURNEY to MR. CRISP

Oct. 15, 1782.

... I am very sorry you could not come to Streatham at the time Mrs.

Thrale hoped to see you, for when shall we be likely to meet there again? You would have been much pleased, I am sure, by meeting with General Paoli, who spent the day there, and was extremely communicative and agreeable. I had seen him in large companies, but was never made known to him before; nevertheless, he conversed with me as if well acquainted not only with myself, but my connexions,--inquiring of me when I had last seen Mrs. Montagu? and calling Sir Joshua Reynolds, when he spoke of him, my friend. He is a very pleasing man, tall and genteel in his person, remarkably well bred, and very mild and soft in his manners.

I will try to give you a little specimen of his conversation, because I know you love to hear particulars of all out-of-the-way persons.

His English is blundering but not unpretty. Speaking of his first acquaintance with Mr. Boswell,--

"He came," he said, "to my country, and he fetched me some letter of recommending him; but I was of the belief he might be an impostor, and I supposed, in my mind, he was an espy; for I look away from him, and in a moment I look to him again, and I behold his tablets. Oh! he was to the work of writing down all I say! Indeed I was angry. But soon I discover he was no impostor and no espy; and I only find I was myself the monster he had come to discern. Oh,--is a very good man! I love him indeed; so cheerful! so gay! so pleasant! but at the first, oh! I was indeed angry."

After this he told us a story of an expectation he had of being robbed, and of the protection he found from a very large dog that he is very fond of."

"I walk out," he said, "in the night; I go towards the field; I behold a man--oh, ugly one! I proceed--he follow; I go on--he address me. 'You have one dog,' he says. 'Yes,' say I to him. 'Is a fierce dog?' he says; 'is he fiery?' 'Yes,' reply I, 'he can bite.' 'I would not attack in the night,' says he, 'a house to have such dog in it.' Then I conclude he was a breaker, so I turn to him---oh, very rough! not gentle--and I say, very fierce, 'He shall destroy you, if you are ten!'"

Afterwards, speaking of the Irish giant, who is now shown in town, he said,--

"He is so large I am as a baby! I look at him--oh! I find myself so little as a child! Indeed, my indignation it rises when I see him hold up his hand so high. I am as nothing; and I find myself in the power of a man who fetches from me half a crown."

This language, which is all spoke very pompously by him, sounds comical from himself, though I know not how it may read.

SECT. 5 (1782-3-4-)

"CECILIA": A PAEAN OF PRAISE: LAMENTATIONS.

["This is the last visit remembered, or, at least, narrated, of Streatham." With these words Madame D'Arblay concludes the account given in the "Memoirs of Dr. Burney," of her meeting with General Paoli. In the autumn Of 1782 Mrs.

Thrale went, with her daughters and Dr. Johnson, to Brighthelmstone, where f.a.n.n.y joined them. On their return to London, November 20, the Thrales settled for the winter in Argyle-street, and f.a.n.n.y repaired to her father's residence in St. Martin's-street. She saw much of Mrs.

Thrale during the winter, but in the following April that lady quitted London for Bath, where she resided until her marriage with Signor Piozzi in the summer of 1784. She maintained an affectionate correspondence with f.a.n.n.y until after the marriage, but from the date of their parting in London, they saw no more of each other, except for one brief interval in May, 1784, for several years.

We must here give an account, as concise as possible, of the transaction which was so bitterly resented by the friends of Mrs. Thrale, but in which her conduct seems to us, taking all the circ.u.mstances fairly into consideration, to have been less deserving of condemnation than their uncharitableness. She had first seen Piozzi, an Italian singer, at a party at Dr. Burney's in 1777, and her behaviour to him on that occasion had certainly afforded no premonition of her subsequent infatuation. Piozzi, who was nearly of the same age as herself, was, as Miss Seward describes him, "a handsome man, with gentle, pleasing, unaffected manners, and with very eminent skill in his profession." He was requested by Dr. Burney to sing; rather unfortunately, it would appear, for the company, which included Johnson and the Grevilles, was by no means composed of musical enthusiasts, and Mrs. Thrale, in particular, "knew not a flat from a sharp, nor a crotchet from a quaver." However, he complied; and Mrs. Thrale, after sitting awhile in silence, finding the proceedings dull, was seized with a desire to enliven them. "In a fit of utter recklessness, she suddenly, but softly, arose, and stealing on tiptoe behind Signor Piozzi, who was accompanying himself on the pianoforte to an animated aria parlante, with his back to the company and his face to the wall, she ludicrously began imitating him by squaring her elbows, elevating them with ecstatic shrugs of the shoulders, and casting up her eyes, while languishingly reclining her head; as if she were not less enthusiastically, though somewhat more suddenly, struck with the transports of harmony than himself.

"But the amus.e.m.e.nt which such an unlooked-for exhibition-- caused to the party, was momentary; for Dr. Burney, shocked lest the poor signor should observe, and be hurt by this mimicry, glided gently round to Mrs. Thrale, and, with something between pleasantry and severity, whispered to her, 'Because, madam, you have no ear yourself for music, will you destroy the attention of all who, in that one point, are otherwise gifted?'"[153]

This deserved rebuke the lively lady took in perfectly good part, and the incident pa.s.sed without further notice. She does not appear to have met with Piozzi again, Until, in July, 1780, she picked him up at Brighton. She now finds him "amazingly like her father," and insists that he shall teach Hester music. From this point the fever gradually increased. In August, 1781, little more than four months after her husband's death, Piozzi has become "a prodigious favourite" with her; she has even developed a taste for his music, which "fills the mind with emotions one would not be without, though inconvenient enough sometimes."

In the spring Of 1783, soon after her arrival at Bath, they were formally engaged, but the urgent remonstrances of her friends and family caused the engagement to be broken off, and Piozzi went to Italy. Her infatuation, however, was too strong to be overcome. Under the struggle, long protracted, her health gave way, and at length, by the advice of her doctor, and with the sullen consent of Miss Thrale, Piozzi was summoned to Bath. He, too, had been faithful, and he lost no time in obeying the summons. They were married, according to the Roman Catholic rites, in London, and again, on the 25th of July, 1784, in a Protestant church at Bath, her three elder daughters, of whom the eldest, Hester ("Queeny"), was not yet twenty years of age, having quitted Bath before his arrival.

Mrs. Piozzi left England with her husband and her youngest daughter, Cecilia, and lived for some years in Italy, where she compiled her well known "Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson." Her wedded life with Piozzi was certainly happy, and he gave her no reason to repent the step she had taken. The indignation of her former friends, especially of Dr. Johnson, was carried to a length which, the cause being considered, appears little short of ridiculous. Mrs. Thrale's second marriage may have been ill-advised, but it was neither criminal nor disgraceful. Piozzi was incontestably a respectable man and a constant lover; but that an Italian musician, who depended upon his talents for his livelihood, should become the husband of the celebrated Mrs. Thrale, and the stepfather of four young ladies of fashion, the daughters of a brewer, and the heiresses to his large fortune,--there was the rub! The dislike of Dr. Johnson and his friends to the marriage was, from a worldly point of view, justifiable enough, but it argues ill for their generosity of mind that they should have attached such overwhelming importance to such petty considerations. Mrs.

Piozzi has been blamed for deserting her three elder daughters; but the fact is, it was her daughters who deserted her, and refused to recognise her husband. Her only fault, if fault it can be called, was in declining to sacrifice the whole happiness of her life to the supposed requirements of their rank in society. In condemning her friends for their severity and illiberality, we must, however, make an exception in favour of f.a.n.n.y. She, like the rest, had been averse to the match, but her cordiality to Mrs. Piozzi remained undiminished; and when, soon after the marriage, their correspondence was discontinued, to be renewed only after the lapse of many years, it was not f.a.n.n.y, but Mrs. Piozzi, who broke it off, instigated, f.a.n.n.y always believed, by her husband.

Her separation from Mrs. Thrale was not the only event which brought sorrow to f.a.n.n.y during the years to which the following section of the Diary relates. Mr. Crisp, the person dearest to her of all human beings outside her own family, died at Chesington, of an attack of his old malady, the gout, on the 24th of April, 1783, aged seventy-five.

f.a.n.n.y and Susan were with him at the last, and f.a.n.n.y's love was rewarded, her anguish soothed yet deepened, when, almost with his dying breath, her Daddy Crisp called her "the dearest thing to him on earth."

Towards the end of 1784 another heavy blow fell upon f.a.n.n.y, in the loss of Dr. Johnson, who died on the 13th of December. The touching references in the Diary to his last illness form an interesting supplement to Boswell's narrative.

But the picture of f.a.n.n.y's life during these years is not without bright touches. As such we may reckon the great, and deserved success of her novel, "Cecilia"; the commencement of her acquaintance with two ladies who were hereafter to be numbered among her dearest friends--the venerable Mrs. Delany, and Mrs. Locke, of Norbury Park, Surrey; and last, not least, the growing intimacy between Edmund Burke and the family of Dr. Burney.--ED.]

AT BRIGHTON AGAIN, THE "FAmous Miss BURNEY."