The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney. Frances Burney
and the third, one hundred and sixty; and after that many more. They are all from nature, and consist of the most curious flowers, plants, and weeds, that are to (be found. She has been supplied with patterns from all the great gardens, and all the great florists in the kingdom. Her plan was to finish one thousand; but, alas! her eyes now fail her though she has only twenty undone of her task.
About seven o’clock, the Duchess dowager of Portland came. She is not near so old as Mrs. Delany; nor, to me, is her face by any means so pleasing; but yet there is sweetness, and dignity, and intelligence in it. Mrs. Delany received her with the same respectful ceremony as if it was her first visit, though she regularly goes to her every evening. But what she at first took as an honour and condescension, she has so much of true humility of mind, that no use can make her see in any other light. She immediately presented me to her. Her grace courtesied and smiled with the most flattering air of pleasure, and said she was particularly happy in meeting with me. We then took our places, and Mrs. Delany said,—
“Miss Burney, ma’am, is acquainted with Mr. Crisp, whom your grace knew so well; and she tells me he and his sister have been so good as to remember me, and to mention me to her.”
The duchess instantly asked me a thousand questions about him—where he lived, how he had his health, and whether his fondness for the polite arts still continued. She said he was one of the most ingenious and agreeable men she had ever known, and regretted his having sequestered himself so much from the society of his former friends.
In the course of this conversation I found the duchess very charming, high-bred, courteous, sensible, and spirited; not merely free from pride, but free from affability—its most mortifying deputy.
After this she asked me if I had seen Mrs. Siddons, and what I thought of her. I answered that I admired her very much.
“If Miss Burney approves her,” said the duchess, “no approbation, I am sure, can do her so much credit; for no one can so perfectly judge of characters or of human nature.”
“Ah, ma’am,” cried Mrs. Delany, archly, “and does your grace remember protesting you would never read ‘Cecilia?’”
“Yes,” said she, laughing, “I declared that five volumes could never be attacked; but since I began I have read it three times.”
“O terrible!” cried I, “to make them out fifteen.”
“The reason,” continued she, “I held out so long against reading them, was remembering the cry there was in favour of ‘Clarissa’ and ‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ when they came out, and those I never could read. I was teased into trying both of them; but I was disgusted with their tediousness, and could not read eleven letters, with all the effort I could make: so much about my sisters and my brothers, and all my uncles and my aunts!”
“But if your grace had gone on with ‘Clarissa,’” said Mrs. Chapone, “the latter part must certainly have affected you, and charmed you.”145
“O, I hate any thing so dismal! Every body that did read it had melancholy faces for a week. ‘Cecilia’ is as pathetic as I can bear, and more sometimes; yet, in the midst of the sorrow, there is a spirit in the writing, a fire in the whole composition, that keep off that heavy depression given by Richardson. Cry, to be sure, we did. Mrs. Delany, shall you ever forget how we cried? But then we had so much laughter to make us amends, we were never left to sink under our concern.”
I am really ashamed to write on.
“For my part,” said Mrs. Chapone, “when I first read it, I did not cry at all; I was in an agitation that half killed me, that shook all nerves, and made me unable to sleep at nights, from the suspense I was in! but I could not cry, for excess of eagerness.”
“I only wish,” said the duchess, “Miss Burney could have been in some corner, amusing herself with listening to us, when Lord Weymouth, and the Bishop of Exeter, and Mr. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Delany, and I, were all discussing the point—of the name. So earnest we were, she must have been diverted with us. Nothing, the nearest our own hearts and interests, could have been debated more warmly. The bishop was quite as eager as any of us; but what cooled us a little, at last, was Mr. Lightfoot’s thinking we were seriously going to quarrel; and while Mrs. Delany and I were disputing about Mrs. Delvile, he very gravely said, ‘Why, ladies, this is only a matter of imagination; it is not a fact: don’t be so earnest.’”
“Ah, ma’am,” said Mrs. Delany, “how hard your grace was upon Mrs. Delvile: so elegant, so sensible, so judicious, so charming a woman.”
“O, I hate her,” cried the duchess, “resisting that sweet Cecilia; coaxing her, too, all the time, with such hypocritical flattery.”
“I shall never forget,” said Mrs. Delany, “your grace’s earnestness when we came to that part where Mrs. Delvile bursts a blood vessel. Down dropped the book, and just with the same energy as if your grace had heard some real and important news, You called out, ‘I’m glad of it with all my heart!’”
“What disputes, too,” said Mrs. Chapone, “there are about Briggs. I was in a room some time ago where somebody said there could be no such character; and a poor little mean city man, who was there, started up and said, ‘But there is though, for I’ve one myself!’”
“The Harrels!—O, then the Harrels!” cried Mrs. Delany.
“If you speak of the Harrels, and of the morality of the book,” cried the duchess, with a solemn sort of voice, “we shall, indeed, never give Miss Burney her due: so striking, so pure, so genuine, so instructive.”
“Yes,” cried Mrs. Chapone, “let us complain how we will of the torture she has given our nerves, we must all join in saying she has bettered us by every line.”
“No book,” said Mrs. Delany, “ever was so useful as this, because none other that is so good was ever so much read.”
I think I need now write no more. I could, indeed, hear no more; for this last so serious praise, from characters so respectable, so moral, and so aged, quite affected me; and though I had wished a thousand times during the discourse to run out of the room, when they gave me finally this solemn sanction to the meaning and intention of my writing, I found it not without difficulty that I could keep the tears out of my eyes; and when I told what had passed to our sweet father, his cup quite ran over.
The duchess had the good sense and judgment to feel she had drawn up her panegyric to a climax, and therefore here she stopped; so, however, did not we, for our coach was ready.
Illness and Death of Mr. Crisp
Fanny Burney to Mr. Crisp
April 12, 1783.
My dearest—dearest daddy,
I am more grieved at the long and most disappointing continuation of your illness than I know how to tell you; and though my last account, I thank heaven, is better, I find you still suffer so much, that my congratulations in my letter to Susan, upon what I thought your recovery, must have appeared quite crazy, if you did not know me as well as you do, and were not sure what affliction the discovery of my mistake would bring to myself. I think I never yet so much wished to be at Chesington, as at this time, that I might see how you go on, and not be kept in such painful suspense from post to post.
Why did you tell me of the Deladys, Portlands, Cambridges, etc., as if any of them came into competition with yourself? When you are better, I shall send you a most fierce and sharp remonstrance upon this subject. At present I must be content with saying, I will undoubtedly accept your most kind invitation as soon as I possibly can. Meantime, if my letters will give you any amusement, I will write oftener than ever, and supply you with all the prog I get myself.
Susan, who is my reader, must be your writer, and let me know if such tittle-tattle as I can collect serves to divert some of those many moments of languor and weariness that creep between pain and