THE KING AND QUEEN.
“——20, 1805.—The King, the Queen, and all the Royal Family in England, I believe, except the Prince and Princess of Wales, visited and inspected Chelsea College. They went over every ward, the Governor’s apartments, and all the offices; with the chapel, refectory, and even the kitchen. I was graciously summoned when they entered the chapel, and most graciously, indeed, received. The first thing the King said on my appearance, was, holding up both his hands as if astonished, ‘Ten years younger than when I saw you last, Dr. Burney!’ The first words of the Queen were, ‘How does Madame d’Arblay do?’ And after my answer, and humble thanks, she added in a low voice, ‘I am extremely obliged to you, Dr. Burney, for the hymn you sent me.’ ‘What? what?’ cried the King. Her Majesty answered: ‘The Russian air, Sir.’ ‘Ay, ay; it’s a very fine thing; but they performed it too slow. It wanted more spirit in the execution. They commonly perform too slow, and make things of that sort languid that should be animated.’
“He then illustrated his observation by examples taken from the sluggish performance of Acis and Galatea; in which I heartily coincided; particularising in my turn the trio of, ‘The Flocks shall leave the Mountains,’ ‘which loses,’ I said, ‘all its effect by being performed slowly. The two lovers are not complaining, nor accusing one another of infidelity or of cruelty; they are perfectly happy, and promising each other eternal constancy; the time, therefore, ought to mark liveliness, not melancholy: and the envy and jealousy of [Pg 361] Polypheme while exclaiming, “Rage! Fury! I cannot, cannot bear it!” sound so tame, when sung without the fire of quick expression, that they seem quite ridiculous: for he does bear it! and looks on to the sight of the lover’s happiness with very commendable patience and composure.’
“Their Majesties then both condescended to make some inquiries after my family, though by name only after my daughter d’Arblay. I heard from her very seldom, I answered; I was afraid of writing to her; and I saw she was afraid of writing to me. Buonaparte, I said, was so outrageous against this country, that I doubted not but that a sheet of blank paper that should pass between us, would be turned into a conspiracy! My grand-daughter Fanny Phillips, I mentioned, now lived with me: for she had often and most condescendingly been noticed by the Royal Family, during the time that my daughter d’Arblay had had the honour of belonging to the Queen’s establishment. The Queen said she had heard of my young companion from Lady Aylesbury. When I left their Majesties, I went in search of my grand-daughter, and brought her under my arm into the governor’s great room.
“The Queen no sooner perceived, than she graciously addressed her: while the King held up his hands at her growth since he had seen her, at the Palace, in her childhood. All the Princesses remembered, and spoke to her with the most pleasing kindness.
“‘And what are you doing now, Dr. Burney?’ said the King.
“‘I am writing for the new Cyclopedia, Sir.’
“‘I am glad the subject of music,’ he answered, ‘should be in such good hands.’
“And then, with an arch smile, he added: ‘For the essay writers, and [Pg 362] the periodical writers—are all, I believe, to a man, at this time, Jacobins.’
“And afterwards, with a good-humoured laugh, he said: ‘That disease (the Jacobin) was first caught here, I believe, by the poets; and then by the actors; and now the infection has caught all the singers, and dancers, and fiddlers!’
“‘Tis the shortest cut, Sir,’ I answered, ‘to make them all, what they all want to be, chiefs and masters severally themselves.’
“More seriously, then, the King said the contagion was so general only from the want of religion; without which all men were scrambling savages. ‘Religion,’ he added, ‘alone humanizes us.’
“Something being said, I forget what, about the Jew’s-row, Chelsea, his Majesty seemed fully apprised of its Bacchanalian character for the pensioners, as he directly quoted from Dryden,
“‘Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure!’
“And added, ‘when that ode is performing, and that line is singing, before Sir William Howe—I always give him a nod!’
“The King then resumed again his old favourite topic of amusement, my daughter d’Arblay’s concealed composition of Evelina; inquiring again and again into the various particulars of its contrivance and its discovery.
“I could not have been honoured with so much of his Majesty’s notice, but that, being at home at Chelsea College, I was naturally permitted to follow in his suite the whole morning; and all I have written passed at different intervals, between matters of higher import.”
“May 25.—I heard, with much musical concern, from Salomon, of the sudden death of young Pinto, who was infinitely the most extraordinary [Pg 363] early violin player, I believe, of any age or country. When quite a child, he used to lead and direct private concerts at Lady Clarges’; not only correcting old performers from the Opera band, who played under him, with his tongue, but with his instrument; informing them of the time and the expression of various movements and passages, just as Geminiani used to do at sixty; and which professors would then bear from nobody else. When he first set about studying composition, he read everything he could lay hold of; and taught himself the piano-forte; and found out the most commodious manner of fingering the most difficult and extraneous keys. He composed a set of lessons in six of the most unusual keys in the system, which no one but himself could play. It is generally believed that this most ingenious youth, who would listen to no control, shortened his existence by extreme irregularity of life. A matter worth recording, as a warning to check the ill-judged and fatal presumption of genius.”
The ensuing accounts, written by Dr. Burney, of the next successors to Sir George Howard, as Governors of Chelsea Hospital, are without date: