The Ladies": A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty Part 22

"Madam, money was not in question. A woman who will marry a foreigner and a Roman Catholic, in both respects her country's foe, must expect--"

I looked for an explosion but, as happens when women quarrel, Mrs Piozzi's humour took the most unexpected turn. She laughed:--

"Ah, f.a.n.n.y, f.a.n.n.y, that was the world's voice. Time was you loved me kindly; but the world you always did and will love reverentially. Well-- continue!--'t is worth it. The world has its prizes to give and I have none now. I did not even provide a husband for my friend, and your Royals have not been more successful--I know not why. The day may come when you yourself may fall back on a foreigner and Roman Catholic, and, if so, may he be as good as mine and may you live as happy with him!"

She curtseyed and made to move on. I thought of this later when Miss Burney married M. D'Arblay, a Frenchman and Roman Catholic. I wondered then if she recalled this scene and her own strictures. She bridled with dignity.

"I can scarce imagine Dr Burney's daughter doing the like, Madam. My tastes are all English. But is it well to prolong this talk? Our ways of life are now so different--"

"Truly all is changed--and you with it. But I was ever a prophet, f.a.n.n.y, and I venture to tell you that you have so overloaded your heart and your wits with caution and fear of the world's opinion that when you take pen in hand once more you 'll find it clogged and heavy. 'T will move on stilts instead of the light heels that danced 'Evelina,' and the ungrateful world will say, 'There goes a woman that if she had shut her eyes on forms and opened them on nature had been the glory of her age.'

You are too fearful of the world, f.a.n.n.y. I flew in its face and found its bark worse than its bite, and that if you kicked it, it crawled to kiss your feet. And so now good-bye."

They both curtseyed angrily, and Mrs Piozzi proceeded quickly down the drive, then suddenly turned and ran back, both hands outstretched:--

"f.a.n.n.y, f.a.n.n.y, I can't--" she panted. "It all so rose on me with the sight of you. My master at the table, and Johnson in his chair booming out his wisdoms, and Burke, and poor Goldie--Oh, the poor dead days--the sad dead days--and you a part of them all; and could I say a word to wound you, no matter what you did to me! You that were a part of it all--I felt as if I would kill it outright if I left you in anger. Can one kill ghosts?--they are but ghosts, and yet--Oh, f.a.n.n.y!"

She held out her shaking hands. I knew this shockingly disordered Miss Burney's notions of propriety and that a lady out of favour with the great world should be seen by me thus familiar with her, and she at Court. She barely touched the hand.

"It was to the memory of those days your friends looked to keep you in a becoming path," said she. "Indeed I share your affection for them, but to remember them thus--"

"Do you so?" says the other a little wildly, and drawing back to dash the tears from her eyes. "Then remember them your way and I 'll remember them mine, and so our paths go east and west: (then turning to me,) I'm sure I ask your pardon, Ma'am, for what must appear so declamatory and high-flown. We Welsh folk, like all the other poor Celts, are allowed romantic flights sometimes to make sport for the sober English. Farewell, Miss Burney. My! best compliments and respects attend your father."

She ran off again very quick and tripping. We stood looking after her till Miss Burney spoke:--

"The tenderness I had and have for her is not to be expressed nor compared save with the love of David for Jonathan. How have I been wounded!

Yourself, my dear Miss P., is a witness to her ungoverned pa.s.sions. Your delicacy will not prefer to entail the misery of explanation on me."

I hurriedly disclaimed any wish to pursue the subject, and she was silent as if revolving the scene. But why should I now hesitate to own that though all the propriety of speech and silence had been on Miss Burney's side, my own sympathies were engaged with the poor lady. I thought a heart that less weighed opinion must have melted at her appeal to fond memories, gushing warm from a sensibility that she could not control. Since that interview, when I have heard Mrs. Piozzi censured I could comprehend the high romantic notion with which she had entered on her marriage, and the more so, since I had been credibly informed that Mr Piozzi was in all respects admirable could he but have had the blessing to be born an Englishman and Protestant.

"Dear Miss P., I trust to you to keep this painful meeting a secret," said my companion. "I know your serious and respectable character too well to doubt you will draw the veil over the wild ungoverned temper of one once so honoured."

I promised and reserved my thoughts and we turned back to the Castle. But the events of this astonishing walk were not yet at an end. We were nearing the gates of the gardens, when we saw Colonel and Mrs Digby beneath the trees on the further side. They were not conversing and the whole width of the path was between them. It gave rightly or wrongly an air of dissatisfaction, of weariness in each other's company, that struck me as instantly as it did my companion, though of course it could be no surprise to see them where all the Household took their airings when they would. She drew me sharply behind a tree.

"Miss P.," she said in breathless agitation, "it is not the least of my sufferings here that I know it is supposed they are caused by this marriage. I beg you would not deny it (for I would have spoken)--it is too palpable that this is believed. Yet you are wrong--completely wrong.

Those who have ceased to give us pleasure very soon lose the power to give us pain; and I view his marriage with an indifference that wishes him neither well nor ill. My heart was never engaged. I will not deny that he risked it and all my peace with it, but he succeeded not. I do not form one wish to be in her place whom we have just seen. They will have what happiness they deserve and, if I am not mistaken, I think it will be little indeed."

She turned and gazed after them with an expression of bitterness the most concentrated. Never again did I doubt that it was not wounded love but wounded pride which was driving her from Court into the retirement of her home. Let others more capable than myself judge which is the severer pang!

She had never regarded him further than as he had flattered her vanity as woman and genius, and a burning resentment at the public slight was all that needed commiseration.

She added composedly:--

"Your kindness deserved this explanation and will accept it. There is no man on earth so indifferent to me as Colonel Digby, and later events will prove to you that I speak the truth."

I said I could but rejoice to hear it, and we returned from these agitations to her room.

All this confirmed the opinion I held that she was naturally a person of agreeable disposition but spoiled by her literary success. I never doubted that her acceptance of Court office was with a view to a brilliant establishment such as she had given her own "Evelina." She was as much her own heroine and hoped for as romantic advancement, very sensibly preferring a social triumph, could it be secured, to a mere literary one, which she always took a little doubtfully as somewhat that might be disparaged. Disappointed, and openly disappointed, in this hope by the heartless behaviour of Colonel Digby, she felt retreat to be inevitable and also the only hope for a future settlement. Yet had she been wiser to remain! I have ever been convinced that her taste for the pen was gone by and that only the narrowness of her means drove her to it again. At Court she would have been valuable from a natural caution which received a fresh lesson in this foiled love-affair. When I add that Mrs Schwellenberg offered her the reversion of her own place when ill health should cause her retirement and that I know this would have been confirmed, it will be seen what she most imprudently sacrificed to sentiment.

It will be objected that marriage was her object. If so, there were opportunities at Court she could not have elsewhere, and among the grave clergy who attended, a suitable settlement might have been found. Miss Burney, as the lady of a Bishop, dispensing a serious hospitality and amending his Charges to his clergy, would have been in her right place. I am told that her later manner of writing was far more suited to Episcopality than to fiction, and can answer that when reading her "Memoirs" of her father I was unable to trace the sense through the verbiage, which appears to confirm this view. But it was not to be, though I believe from the eagerness with which she ever visited the Royals and took every opportunity to keep her name in sight, that she regretted her folly and would have repaired it. But how was it possible for Their Majesties to a.s.sist a needy Frenchman and Roman Catholic?

In her final parting with her Mistress she received much kind notice, including permission to retain half her emolument as a pension--and this after but five years' service!

The sweet Princesses successively pressed her hand at the parting scene and she quitted the room with her handkerchief at her eyes and a profound final curtsey. The Princess Royal whispered aside to me:--

"Poor soul, she might have made others happier but for the cruel wound her heart has received. I cannot--cannot forgive Colonel Digby!"

The gay and pretty Princess Elizabeth, much livelier in disposition, leaned on her sister's shoulder, whispering also:--

"I think, sister, that Miss Burney will not always be inconsolable, for at the trial of Mr Warren Hastings the d.u.c.h.ess of Ancaster observed that Mr Wyndham was very particular in his attentions to Miss Burney and that she did by no means _froisser_ them. And have you not thought that she will certainly meet him much oftener in town than here?"

I could but smile at the young discerner whose thoughts agreed so fully with my own. For some time after she would ask me merrily what news of Mr Wyndham, and I certainly expected it. However that was not to be, and my expectations were verified next year by Miss Burney's marriage--a truly amazing one--even to M. D'Arblay, a refugee Frenchman and Roman Catholic!

Would that I could have heard Mrs Thrale-Piozzi's views on this circ.u.mstance!

Here I end. I design these notes as a strong corrective of what might place the Queen and others of less moment in an unamiable light. Let it be remembered that Miss Burney was the spoiled child of genius, who would still be first and who throbbingly aspired to a social eminence denied her. She received all attentions from the Royal Family as her due, and knew not how to draw the distinction between what was due to her own merit and what was given by these personages as due to their _own_ high standard of courtesy and compa.s.sion. This is a distinction seldom drawn by those unused to high circles and a mere literary society cannot teach it.

I have often desired that I could have had the honour to be admitted to Her Majesty's private thoughts on Miss Burney, and should not be wholly surprised if they favoured my own.

No doubt allowance may be made for the vagaries of genius, but none the less do I rejoice that this, my first meeting with uncommon talent, was also the last. It is entirely out of place in courts, and certainly a happy mediocrity is the soil in which flourish the domestic virtues.

Though I defend not Colonel Digby it is possible he showed his judgment if not his delicacy in his retreat, it being very difficult for him or any man to preserve in Miss Burney's company that sense of superiority which is so essential to matrimonial peace. There was that in her eye which, if suddenly surprised, indicated satire; there was that in her demeanour which hinted depths which might or might not be soothing. To be candid, what we do not understand is feared rather than loved. And it is to the author of "Evelina" I owe this conviction.

Peace be with her manes when what I have so doubtfully written shall be read!

Elizabeth Bennet Mrs. Darcy

"I must confess," observed Jane Austen, when Elizabeth Bennet, who had been created in 1796, was at last introduced to the world of readers in 1812, "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like _her_ at least, I do not know."

Miss Austen had the whimsical habit of diverting herself, when visiting portrait galleries, by looking for faces that resembled those of her heroines. She was continually on the watch for Elizabeth, but never came upon her. She found Mrs. Bingley, "in a white gown with green ornaments,"

but not Mrs. Darcy herself. "I daresay Mrs. D. will be in yellow."

The exhibition in Spring Gardens promised well, but no Elizabeth appeared.

"We have been both to the exhibition and to Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and I am disappointed, for there was nothing like Mrs. D. at either. I can only imagine that Mr. D. prizes any picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye. I can imagine he would have that sort of feeling--that mixture of love, pride, and delicacy."

We could wish that Miss Austen had found the portrait; but since she never did, there is none of Mrs. Darcy in this book.

VII

The Darcys of Rosings

[_A reintroduction to some of the characters of Miss Austen's novels_.]

_Whitethorn Manor_, HUNSDON, KENT.