THE LONG-FORGOTTEN TRAGEDY: MISS BURNEY AGAIN AS READER.
On Easter Sunday, the 4th of April, when I left my beloved Susan at St. James’s, I left with her all spirit for any voluntary employment, and it occurred to me I could best while away the leisure allowed me by returning to my long-forgotten tragedy. This I have done, in those moments as yet given to my journal, and it is well I had so sad a resource, since any merrier I must have aimed at in vain.
It was a year and four months since I had looked at or thought of it. I found nothing but unconnected speeches, and hints, and ideas, though enough in quantity, perhaps, for a whole play. I have now begun planning and methodising, and have written three or four regular scenes. I mention all these particulars of my progress, in answer to certain queries in the comments of my Susan and Fredy, both of old date.
Well (for that is my hack, as “however” is my dear Susanna’s), we set off rather late for Windsor,-Mr. de Luc, Miss Planta, and myself; Mrs. Schwellenberg stayed in town....
I invited my old beau, as her majesty calls Mr. Bryant, to dinner, and he made me my best day out of the ten days of our Windsor sojourn. He has insisted upon lending me some more books, all concerning the most distant parts of the earth, or on subjects the most abstruse. His singular simplicity in constantly conceiving that, because to him such books alone are new, they must have the same recommendation to me, is extremely amusing; and though I do all that is possible to clear up the distinction, he never remembers it.
The king, for which I was very sorry, did not come Into the room. He made it but one visit, indeed, during this week. He then conversed almost wholly with General Grenville upon the affairs of France; and in a manner so unaffected, open and manly, so highly superior to all despotic principles, even while most condemning the unlicensed fury of the Parisian mob, that I wished all the nations of the world to have heard him, that they might have known the real existence of a patriot king.
Another reading took place, and much more comfortably; it was to the queen and princesses, without any lady-in-waiting. The queen, as before, condescended to order me to sit close to her side; and as I had no model before me, I scrupled much less to follow the bent of my own ideas by small occasional comments. And these were of use both to body and mind; they rested the lungs from one invariable exertion, as much as they saved the mind from one strain of attention.
Our play was “The Man of Business,” a very good comedy, but too local for long life. And another of Colman’s which I read afterwards has the same defect. Half the follies and peculiarities it satirises are wholly at an end and forgotten. Humour springing from mere dress, or habits, or phraseology, is quickly obsolete; when it sinks deeper, and dives into character, it may live for ever.
I dedicated my Wednesday evening to a very comfortable visit to our dear James, whose very good and deserving wife, and fine little fat children, with our Esther and her fair Marianne and Fanny, all cordially conspired to make me happy. We read a good deal of Captain Bligh’s interesting narrative,[327] every word of which James has taken as much to heart as if it were his own production.
I go on, occasionally, with my tragedy. It does not much enliven, but it soothes me.