THE MEMORIAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTE.
I now desired an audience of Mrs. Schwellenberg. With what trembling agitation did I deliver her my paper, requesting her to have the goodness to lay it at the feet of the queen before her majesty left town! We were then to set out for Windsor before twelve o’clock. Mrs. Schwellenberg herself remained in town.
Here let me copy the memorial. Most humbly presented to Her Majesty.
“Madam, With the deepest sense of your Majesty’s goodness and condescension, amounting even to sweetness—to kindness who can wonder I should never have been able to say what I know not how to write—that I find my strength and health unequal to my duty?
“Satisfied that I have regularly been spared and favoured by your Majesty’s humane consideration to the utmost, I could never bring myself to the painful confession of my secret disquietude; but I have long felt creeping upon me a languor, a feebleness, that makes, at times, the most common attendance a degree of capital pain to me, and an exertion that I could scarce have made, but for the revived alacrity with which your Majesty’s constant graciousness has inspired me, and would still, I believe, inspire me, even to my latest hour, while in your Majesty’s immediate presence. I kept this to myself while I thought it might wear away,—or, at least, I only communicated it to obtain some medical advice: but the weakness, though it comes only in fits, has of late so much Increased, that I have hardly known how, many days, to keep myself about—or to rise up in the morning, or to stay up at night.
“At length, however, as my constitution itself seems slowly, yet surely, giving way, my father became alarmed.
“I must not enter, here, upon his mortification and disappointment: the health and preservation of his daughter could alone be more precious to him than your Majesty’s protection.
“With my own feelings upon the subject it would ill become me to detain your Majesty, and the less, as I am fully sensible my place, in point of its real business, may easily he far better supplied;—In point of sincere devotion to your majesty, I do not so readily yield. I can only, therefore, most humbly entreat that your Majesty will deign to accept from my father and myself the most dutiful acknowledgments for the uniform benignity so graciously shown to me during the whole of my attendance. My father had originally been apprehensive of my inability, with regard to strength, for sustaining any but the indulgence of a domestic life: but your Majesty’s justice and liberality will make every allowance for the flattered feelings of a parent’s heart, which could not endure, untried, to relinquish for his daughter so high an honour as a personal office about your Majesty. I dare not, Madam, presume to hope that Your Majesty’s condescension will reach to the smallest degree of concern at parting with me; but permit me, Madam, humbly, earnestly, and fervently, to solicit that I may not be deprived of the mental benevolence of your Majesty, which so thankfully I have experienced, and so gratefully must for ever remember.
“That every blessing, every good, may light upon your Majesties here, and await a future and happier period hereafter, will be always amongst the first prayers of,
“Madam, your Majesty’s ever devoted, ever grateful, most attached, and most dutiful subject and servant,
“Frances Burney.”
With this, though written so long ago, I only wrote an explanatory note to accompany it, which I will also copy:—
“Madam,
“May I yet humbly presume to entreat your Majesty’s patience for a few added lines, to say that the address which I now most respectfully lay at your Majesty’s feet was drawn up two months ago, when first I felt so extreme a weakness as to render the smallest exertion a fatigue? While I waited, however, for firmness to present it, I took the bark, and found myself, for some time, so much amended, that I put it aside, and my father, perceiving me better, lost his anxious uneasiness for my trying a new mode of life. But the good effect has, of late, so wholly failed, that an entire change of air and manner of living are strongly recommended as the best chance for restoring my shattered health. We hold it, therefore, a point of that grateful duty we owe to your Majesty’s goodness and graciousness, to make this melancholy statement at once, rather than to stay till absolute incapacity might disable me from offering one small but sincere tribute of profound respect to your Majesty,—the only one in my power—that of continuing the high honour of attending your Majesty, till your Majesty’s own choice, time, and convenience nominate a successor.”