The Lives & Legacy of Extraordinary Women. Kate Dickinson Sweetser
are you going to do, Fanny?" asked her sister in alarm.
"I've made up my mind what's best to be done, and I'm going to do it. Come down-stairs, please."
Fanny led the way with the papers, and Susan came after her. They went down the three flights, through a hall, and out into a paved court at the rear of the house.
"Will you watch them a minute, please?" said Fanny, as she laid the papers on the bricks.
She went indoors and soon was back again, with some sticks of wood, some straw, and a lighted taper in her hand. She laid the sticks together, stuffed some straw in among them, and then placed the pile of papers on top.
"Oh, Fanny," cried her sister, "you're not going to burn up all the story? Oh, poor Caroline! Don't do it, Fanny; think how long it took to write it and how good it is!"
"I must," said Fanny, very decidedly.
"Oh, please, please don't! It's almost like murder. It's a shame, Fanny, it is, it's a terrible shame!"
"It hurts me most," said Fanny, "but it's the only way to settle Caroline once for all." With a very grim face she held the taper to the straw until it caught fire. In a moment a page of the manuscript was curling up in flames.
"Oh, Fanny, Fanny!" cried Susan, tears coming to her eyes. She looked beseechingly at her sister, but the latter's purpose was inflexible. A few minutes more and the papers were all burning brightly.
The two girls stood there until the fire had burnt itself out, and then turned to each other. Tears stood in Fanny's eyes and also in those of the sympathetic Susan. "Poor Caroline Evelyn," sighed Fanny, "I'm going to be ever and ever so lonely without her."
Susan slipped her arm about her sister's waist, and they went indoors to get ready for supper. The young authoress was very quiet when the family met at table a little later, and had very little appetite, but the family were quite used to Fanny's reserve, and none of them thought anything about it except the faithful Susan, who threw tender reproachful glances across the table at Fanny from time to time.
The father of these girls, Dr. Charles Burney, was the fashionable music-master of the day in London. He had made a great success, and had so many pupils that he had to begin his round of lessons as early as seven o'clock in the morning, and often was not through with them until eleven at night. Many a time he dined in a hackney coach on sandwiches and a glass of sherry and water as he drove from one house to another. Among his friends were all sorts of people, musicians, actors, scholars, famous beaux and belles, and as he was most hospitable his children grew up familiar with many different types of men and women of the great world of London. The other girls and the boys were like their father in taking part in all the entertainments that went on, but Fanny, the second daughter, although she was admitted to be very bright, was unusually quiet and retiring. Her teacher called her "the silent, observant Miss Fanny," and that described her well, because she was always watching the people about her, and remembering their peculiar tricks of manner and speech.
But she had a mind of her own and could speak up on occasion. When she was ten years old her father lived in a house on Poland Street, next door to a wig-maker, who supplied perukes to the judges and lawyers of London. The children of the wig-maker and the Burney children played together in a little garden behind the former's house, and one day they went into the wig-maker's house, and each put on one of the fine wigs he had for sale. Then they began to play in the garden until one of the perukes, which was very fine and worth over ten guineas, fell into a tub of water and lost all its curl. The wig-maker came out, fished out the peruke, and declared it was entirely ruined. With that he spoke very angrily to his children, when suddenly the quiet Fanny stepped forth, and with the manner of an old lady said, "What is the use of talking so much about an accident? The wig is wet, to be sure, and it was a very good wig, but words will do no good, because, sir, what's done can't be undone." The wig-maker listened in great surprise, and then made Fanny a little bow. "Miss Burney speaks with the wisdom of ages," he said, and without another word went into the house.
Among all their father's friends the Burney children thought there was no one quite so amusing as the great actor David Garrick. He would drop in at all hours of the day, and always playing some new part. Sometimes he would sit still and listen to Dr. Burney talk on the history of music, and gradually his face and manner would change until the children could scarcely believe he was the same man who had entered the room a short time before. He would seem to become an old crafty man before their very eyes, or a villain from the slums of London, or a Spanish grandee for the first time in England. Sometimes he would appear at the house in disguise and give a new name to the maid and appear in the dining-room as a stranger to the family. Once he arrived at the door in an old, ill-fitting wig and shabby clothes and the servant refused to admit him, taking him for a beggar. "Egad, child," he said to the maid, "you don't guess whom you have the happiness to see! Do you know that I am one of the first geniuses of the age? You would faint away upon the spot if you could only imagine who I am!" The maid, very much startled, let him pass, and he shambled into the house, again pretending to be a beggar. The children were always delighted to have him come, and Fanny in particular, because she had a talent for mimicking people herself, and she liked to study him. He often sent them tickets to see him act at Drury Lane Theatre, and there they saw their friend play the greatest rôles of the English stage as no actor had ever played them before.
Fanny's particular friend was a Mr. Samuel Crisp, a curious man who had once been very popular in London, but had retired to a lonely life in the country at a place called Chesington Hall. He was very fond of the Burneys and often had them visit him at his country home. Fanny called him "her dearest daddy," and loved to walk across the meadows with him, and tell him of the curious people she had met at her father's house in town. He understood her better than any one else, and it was to him that she confided the story of how she had burned the manuscript of her novel. "It was very hard, Daddy," she said. "I know I oughtn't to want to keep on scribbling, but somehow I can't help it. I think of so many things, and I want to make them real, and the only way is to put them down on paper. People tell me young ladies shouldn't be writing stories, that it's not genteel, but how can I help myself?"
"You can tell them to me, Fanny, and no one shall ever know you made them up."
So she unburdened her heart to him, told him of her friend Caroline Evelyn, the dear child of her brain, of the suitors that young lady had, and how she treated them, and of her elopement to Gretna Green, and of the funny people she was continually meeting. Mr. Crisp listened and smiled, surprised at the girl's powers of description and humor. Finally he said to her, "It seems to me, Fanny, that young lady's career is more interesting to you than your own."
"So it is," she answered. "I think more about her than about any one else."
"Then," said Mr. Crisp, "in spite of your mother's good advice and your own judgment I predict that Caroline rises in time from the flames."
"Do you think so, Daddy? Oh, if she only might! It's well there's no paper and ink here or I'd begin her over again right on the spot."
Mr. Crisp was right in his prediction. That summer the Burneys went to the little town of King's Lynn, where Fanny had been born. There Fanny shut herself up in a summer-house which was called "The Cabin," and began to rewrite her book. She seized upon every scrap of white paper that she could find and bore it off with her. She worked secretly, inventing numberless excuses for the hours she spent by herself. Gradually the story took shape again, changed in many ways from its first telling, and with the heroine rechristened Evelina.
Meantime Dr. Burney had started to prepare his great History of Music, and asked the help of his daughters to copy it for him. Fanny wrote the best hand and was the most reliable, so her father made her his chief secretary, and day after day she worked with him, having to postpone her own book from week to week. But each time she came back to it more ardently and each time her pen flew faster as she sat at her table in the little summer-house. At last she told Susan about it, and Susan was delighted, and when Fanny read some of it to her she declared that it was a thousand times better than the story of Caroline had been.
When her father's History of Music appeared in print it made a great success, and this stirred the youthful