The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney. Frances Burney
deserted windows, and Mr. Thrale had followed me. As to Miss L—, she came to stand by me, and her panic, I fancy, returned, for she seemed quite panting with a desire to say something, and an incapacity to utter it.
It proved happy for me that I had taken this place, for in a few minutes the mean, neat woman, whose name was Aubrey, asked if Miss Thrale was Miss Thrale?
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And pray, ma’am, who is that other young lady?”
“A daughter of Dr. Burney’s, ma’am.”
“What!” cried Mrs. Dobson, “is that the lady that has favoured us with that excellent novel?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Then burst forth a whole volley from all at once. “Very extraordinary, indeed!” said one;—“Dear heart, who’d have thought it?” said another,—“I never saw the like in my life!” said a third. And Mrs. Dobson, entering more into detail, began praising it through, but chiefly Evelina herself, which she said was the most natural character she had ever met in any book.
Mr. and Mrs. Whalley now arrived, and I was obliged to go to a chair—when such staring followed; they could not have opened their eyes wider when they first looked at the Guildhall giants! I looked with all the gravity and demureness possible, in order to keep them from coming plump to the subject again, and, indeed this, for a while, kept them off.
Soon after, Dr. Harrington90 arrived, which closed our party. Miss L— went whispering to him, and then came up to me, with a look of dismay, and said,
“O, ma’am, I’m so prodigiously concerned; Mr. Henry won’t come!”
“Who, ma’am?”
“Mr. Henry, ma’am, the doctor’s son. But, to be sure, he does not know you are here, or else—but I’m quite concerned, indeed, for here now we shall have no young gentlemen!”
“O, all the better,” cried I, “I hope we shall be able to do very well without.”
“O yes, ma’am, to be sure. I don’t mean for any common young gentlemen; but Mr. Henry, ma’am, it’s quite another thing;—however, I think he might have come but I did not happen to mention in my card that you was to be here, and so—but I think it serves him right for not coming to see me.”
Soon after the mamma hobbled to me, and began a furious Panegyric upon my book, saying at the same time,
“I wonder, Miss, how you could get at them low characters. As to the lords and ladies, that’s no wonder at all; but, as to t’others, why, I have not stirred night nor morning while I’ve been reading it; if I don’t wonder how you could be so clever!”
And much, much more. And, scarcely had she unburthened herself, ere Miss L—trotted back to me, crying, in a tone of mingled triumph and vexation,
“Well, ma’am, Mr. Henry will be very much mortified when he knows who has been here; that he will, indeed; however, I’m sure he deserves it!”
I made some common sort of reply, that I hoped he was better engaged, which she vehemently declared was impossible.
We had now some music. Miss L— sung various old elegies of Jackson, Dr. Harrington, and Linley, and O how I dismalled in hearing them! Mr. Whalley, too, sung “Robin Gray,” and divers other melancholic ballads, and Miss Thrale Sang “Ti seguiro fedele.” But the first time there was a cessation of harmony, Miss L— again respectfully approaching me, cried,
“O well, all my comfort is that Mr. Henry will be prodigiously mortified! But there’s a ball to-night, so I suppose he’s gone to that. However, I’m sure if he had known of meeting you young ladies here—but it’s all good enough for him, for not coming.”
“Nay,” cried I, “if meeting young ladies is a motive with him, he can have nothing to regret while at a ball, where he will see many more than he could here.”
“O, ma’am, as to that—but I say no more, because it mayn’t be proper; but, to be sure, if Mr. Henry had known—however, he’ll be well mortified!” . . .
I was not two minutes relieved, ere Miss I—returned, to again assure me how glad she was that Mr. Henry would be mortified. The poor lady was quite heart-broken that we did not meet.
All the Best Families in the Navy
Tuesday.—Lord Mulgrave called this morning. He is returned to Bath for only a few days. He was not in his usual spirits; yet he failed not to give me a rub for my old offence, which he seems determined not to forget; for upon something being said, to which, however, I had not attended, about seamen, he cast an arch glance at me, and cried out,
“Miss Burney, I know, will take our parts—if I remember right, she is one of the greatest of our enemies!”
“All the sea captains,” said Mrs. Thrale, “fall upon Miss Burney: Captain Cotton, my cousin, was for ever plaguing her about her spite to the navy.”
This, however, was for the character of Captain Mirvan,91 which, in a comical and good-humoured way, Captain Cotton pretended highly to resent, and so, he told me, did all the captains in the navy.
Augusta Byron, too, tells me that the admiral, her father, very often talks of Captain Mirvan, and though the book is very high in his favour, is not half pleased with the captain’s being such a brute.
However, I have this to comfort me—that the more I see of sea captains, the less reason I have to be ashamed of Captain Mirvan; for they have all so irresistible a propensity to wanton mischief—to roasting beaus, and detesting old women, that I quite rejoice I showed the book to no one ere printed, lest I should have been prevailed upon to soften his character. Some time after, while Lord Mulgrave was talking of Captain G. Byron’s marrying a girl at Barbadoes, whom he had not known a week, he turned suddenly to me, and called out,
“See, Miss Burney, what you have to expect—your brother will bring a bride from Kamschatka, without doubt!”
“That,” said I, “may perhaps be as well as a Hottentot, for when he was last out, he threatened us with a sister from the Cape of Good Hope.”
Thursday,—Lord Mulgrave and Dr. Harrington dined here. Lord Mulgrave was delightful;—his wit is of so gay, so forcible, so splendid a kind that when he is disposed to exert it, he not only engrosses attention from all the rest of the company, but demands the full use of all one’s faculties to keep pace in understanding the speeches, allusions, and sarcasms which he sports. But he will never, I believe, be tired of attacking me about the sea; “he will make me ‘eat it that leak,” I assure you.
During dinner he was speaking very highly of a sea officer whose name, I think, was Reynolds.
“And who is he?” asked Mrs. Thrale, to which his lordship answered, “Brother to Lord—something, but I forget what;” and then, laughing and looking at me, he added, “We have all the great families in the navy—ay, and all the best families, too,—have we not, Miss Burney? The sea is so favourable an element to genius, that there all high-souled younger brothers with empty pockets are sure of thriving: nay, I can say even more for it, for it not only fosters the talents of the spirited younger brothers, it also lightens the dullness even of that poor animal—an elder brother; so that it is always the most desirable place both for best and worst.”
“Well, your lordship is always ready to praise it,” said Mrs. Thrale, “and I only wish we had a few more like you in the service,—and long may you live, both to defend and to ornament it!”
“Defence,” answered he with quickness, “it does not want, and, for ornament, it is above all!”
The Lady of Bath Easton
Saturday.—In