MISS BURNEY'S ADMIRATION OF MADAME DE STAEL.
(Fanny Burney to Dr. Burney.) Mickleham, February 29, 1793 Have you not begun, dearest sir, to give me up as a lost sheep? Susanna's temporary widowhood, however, has tempted me on, and spelled me with a spell I know not how to break. It is long, long since we have passed any time so completely together; her three lovely children only knit us the closer. The widowhood, however, we expect now quickly to expire, and I had projected my return to my dearest father
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for Wednesday next, which would complete my fortnight here but some circumstances are intervening that incline me to postpone it another week. Madame de Stal, daughter of M. Necker, and wife of the Swedish ambassador to France, is now head of the little French colony in this neighbourhood. M. de Stael, her husband, is at present suspended in his embassy, but not recalled and it is yet uncertain whether the regent Duke of Sudermania will send him to Paris, during the present horrible Convention, or order him home. He is now in Holland, waiting for commands. Madame de Stal, however, was unsafe in Paris, though an ambassadress, from the resentment owed her by the commune, for having received and protected in her house various destined victims of the 10th August and of the 2nd September. She was even once stopped in her carriage, which they called aristocratic, because of its arms and ornaments, and threatened to be murdered, and only saved by one of the worst wretches of the Convention, Tallien, who feared provoking a war with Sweden, from such an offence to the wife of its ambassador. She was obliged to have this same Tallien to accompany her, to save her from massacre, for some miles from Paris, when compelled to quit it.
She is a woman of the first abilities, I think, I have ever seen; she is more in the style of Mrs. Thrale than of any other celebrated character, but she has infinitely more depth, and seems an even profound politician and metaphysician. She has suffered us to hear some of her works in MS., which are truly wonderful, for powers both of thinking and expression. She adores her father, but is much alarmed at having had no news from him since he has heard of the massacre of the martyred Louis; and who can wonder it should have overpowered him?
Ever since her arrival she has been pressing me to spend some time with her before I return to town. She wanted Susan and me to pass a month with her, but, finding that impossible, she bestowed all her entreaties upon me alone, and they are grown so urgent, upon my preparation for departing, and acquainting her my furlough of absence was over, that she not only insisted upon my writing to you, and telling why I deferred my return, but declares she will also write herself, to ask your permission for the visit. She exactly resembles Mrs. Thrale in the ardour and warmth of her temper and partialities. I find her impossible to resist, and therefore, if your answer to Page 48
her is such as I conclude it must be, I shall wait upon her for a week. She is only a short walk from hence, at juniper Hall.