MEMOIRS OF DR. BURNEY, BY HIS DAUGHTER MAD. D’ARBLAY.
[Concluded from [page 99].]
IN bringing to a conclusion this lengthened account of a work which, however executed, must be interesting to the general reader on account of the anecdotes relating to distinguished literary and other characters which it contains, and to the musical amateur from the information, though too scanty, which it conveys on matters concerning his favourite pursuit, we shall confine ourselves as much as possible to what relates to the art and its professors.
In 1785, Dr. Burney’s account of the Commemoration appeared, and led to his first audience of George III. and his queen.
This year, happily for Dr. Burney, re-opened with a new professional interest, that necessarily called him from the tributary sorrow with which the year 1784 had closed.
The engravings for the Commemoration of Handel were now finished; and a splendid copy of the work was prepared for the King. Lord Sandwich, as one of the chief Directors of the late festival, obligingly offered his services for taking the Doctor under his wing to present the book at the levee; but his Majesty gave Dr. Burney to understand, through Mr. Nicolai, that he would receive it, at a private audience, in his library.
This was an honour most gratifying to Dr. Burney, who returned from his interview at the palace in an elevation of pleasure that he communicated to his family with the social confidence that made the charm of his domestic character.
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ROYAL AUDIENCE.
He had found their Majesties together, without any attendants or any state, in the library; where he presented both to the King and to the Queen a copy of his Commemoration.
They had the appearance of being in a serene tête-à-tête, that bore every mark of frank and cheerful intercourse. His reception was most gracious; and they both seemed eager to look at his offerings, which they instantly opened and examined.
“You have made, Dr. Burney,” said his Majesty, “a much more considerable book of this Commemoration than I had expected; or, perhaps, than you had expected yourself?”
“Yes, Sire,” he answered. “the subject grew upon me as I proceeded, and a continual accumulation of materials rendered it almost daily more interesting.”
His Majesty then detailed his opinion of the various performers; and said that one thing only had discredited the business, and that was the inharmonious manner in which one of the base singers had sung his part; which had really been more like a man groaning in a fit of the cholic, than singing an air.
The Doctor laughingly agreed that such sort of execution certainly more resembled a convulsive noise, proceeding from some one in torture, than any species of harmony; and that therefore, as he could not speak of that singer favourably in his account, he had been wholly silent on his subject; as had been his practice in other similar instances.
The Queen seemed perfectly to understand, and much to approve, the motive for this mild method of treating want of abilities and powers to please, where the will was good, and where the labour had been gratuitous.
The King expressed much admiration that the full fortes of so vast a band, in accompanying the singers, had never been too loud, even for a single voice; when it might so naturally have been expected that the accompaniments even of the softest pianos, in such plenitude, would have been overpowering to all vocal solos. He had talked, he said, both with musical people and with philosophers upon the subject; but none of them could assign a reason, or account for so astonishing a fact.
Something then bringing forth the name of Shakspeare, the Doctor mentioned a translation of his plays by Professor Eichenberg. The King, laughing, exclaimed, “The Germans translate Shakspeare! why we don’t understand him ourselves! how should foreigners?”
The Queen replied, that she thought Eichenberg had rendered the soliloquies very exactly.
“Aye,” answered the King, “that is because in those serious speeches there are none of those puns, quibbles, and peculiar idioms of Shakspeare and his times, for which there are no equivalents in other languages.”
The remaining part of this conversation we omit, out of tenderness to Madame d’Arblay, who, being a practised writer, surely might have conveyed the sense of the highly flattering compliment paid her by their Majesties in less direct terms than she has here employed.
In 1786, Dr. Burney experienced some disappointment in not being appointed to succeed Mr. Stanley (‘blind Stanley’) as Master of the King’s band. The office was bestowed on Mr., afterwards Sir William, Parsons, by the Marquess of Salisbury, the Lord Chamberlain, at the request of the Marchioness. As Mr. Parsons had even less claims as a composer than Dr. Burney, and—though a most honourable, well-educated, sensible man, of very polished manners—possessed none of those literary talents which the other was then so exclusively and successfully devoting to the service of music, his appointment to the only place in the gift of the crown which offers anything like an adequate reward for musical eminence, was much censured, and, according to the author of these Memoirs, not a little displeasing to the King. It is but just, however, to the memory of Sir W. Parsons, to add, that he very soon conciliated the good will of all the royal family, with whom, ostensibly as singing-master to the Princesses, he passed much time, at both Buckingham House and Windsor, in intercourse as social as the great difference of each in the parties permitted.
About this time, Miss F. Burney, the future wife of General d’Arblay, was made Keeper of the Robes to the Queen, and had apartments assigned to her in the two principal royal residences. At those in Windsor Castle, Dr. Burney was, by royal desire, invited to pass some days with his daughter; and here the King, throwing off all the formalities of royalty, had an opportunity of entering into unrestrained, familiar conversation with the historian of music. The first of the interviews thus agreeably brought about is described in the following extract.
He [the King] opened upon musical matters, with the most animated wish to hear the sentiments of the Doctor, and to communicate his own; and the Doctor, enchanted, was more than ready, was eager, to meet these condescending advances.
No one at all accustomed to court etiquette could have seen him without smiling: he was so totally unimpressed with the modes which, even in private, are observed the royal presence, that he moved, spoke, and walked about the room without constraint; nay, he even debated with the King precisely with the same frankness that he would have used with any other gentleman whom he had accidentally met in society.
Nevertheless, a certain flutter of spirits which always accompanies royal interviews that are infrequent, even with those who are least awed by them, took from him that self-possession which, in new or uncommon cases, teaches us how to get through difficulties of form, by watching the manœuvres of our neighbours. Elated by the openness and benignity of his Majesty, he seemed in a sort of honest enchantment that drove from his mind all thought of ceremonial; though, in his usual commerce with the world, he was scrupulously observant of all customary attentions. But now, on the contrary, he pursued every topic that was started till he had satisfied himself by saying all that belonged to it; and he started any topic that occurred to him, whether the King appeared to be ready for another or not; and while the rest of the party, retreating towards the wainscot, formed a distant and respectful circle, in which the King, approaching separately and individually those whom he meant to address, was alone wont to move, the Doctor, quite unconsciously, came forward into the circle himself; and, wholly bent upon pursuing whatever theme was begun, either followed the King when he turned away, or came onward to meet his steps when he inclined them towards some other person; with an earnestness irrepressible to go on with his own subject, and to retain to himself the attention and the eyes—which never looked adverse to him—of the sweet-tempered monarch.
This vivacity and this nature evidently amused the King, whose candour and good sense always distinguished an ignorance of the routine of forms, from the ill manners or ill will of disrespect.
The Queen, also, with a grace all her own towards those whom she deigned to wish to please, honoured her Robekeeper’s apartment with her presence on the following evening, by accompanying thither the King; with the same sweetness of benevolence of seeking Mrs. Delany, in granting an audience to Dr. Burney.
No one better understood conversation than the Queen, or appreciated conversers with better judgment: gaily, therefore, she drew out, and truly enjoyed, the flowing, unpracticed, yet always informing discourse of Dr. Burney.
In 1791, Dr. Burney became a ‘member among the monthly reviewers, under the editorship of the worthy Mr. Griffith.’ In the same year he commences his journal in the following words:—
“1791.—This year was auspiciously begun, in the musical world, by the arrival in London of the illustrious Joseph Haydn. ’Tis to Salomon that the lovers of music are indebted for what the lovers of music will call this blessing. Salomon went over himself to Vienna, upon hearing of the death of the Prince of Esterhazy, the great patron of Haydn, purposely to tempt that celebrated musical genius hither; and on February 25, the first of Haydn’s incomparable symphonies, which was composed for the concerts of Salomon, was performed. Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte: and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever, to my knowledge, been caused by instrumental music in England. All the slow middle movements were encored; which never before happened, I believe, in any country.”
In 1801, Dr. Burney entered into an engagement with the proprietors of Rees’s Cyclopædia, as it is called, to furnish all its musical articles at stated periods. He thus speaks of this enterprise in a letter to some friend:—
“I have entered now into concerns that leave me not a minute or a thought to bestow on other matters. Besides professional avocations, I have deeply engaged in a work that can admit of no delay, and which occupies every instant that I can steal from business, friends, or sleep. A new edition, on a very enlarged plan, of the Cyclopædia of Chambers, is now printing in two double volumes 4to., for which I have agreed to furnish the musical articles, on a very large scale, including whatever is connected with the subject; not only definitions of the musical technica, but reflections, discussions, criticism, history, and biography. The first volume is printed, and does not finish the letter A; and in nine months’ hard labour, I have not brought forth two letters. I am more and more frightened every day at the undertaking, so long after the usual allowance of three score years and ten have expired. And the shortest calculation for the termination of this work is still ten years.”
And in his letters to West Hamble on the same subject, he mentions, that to fulfil his engagement, he generally rises at five or six o’clock every morning—! in his seventy-sixth year.
The only entry in Dr. Burney’s journal, in the year 1803, relates to Beethoven’s music, of the merits of which his quick discrimination enabled him immediately to form a favourable opinion.
“Beethoven’s compositions for the piano-forte were first brought to England by Miss Tate, a most accomplished dilettante singer and player. I soon afterwards heard some of his instrumental works, which are such as incline me to rank him amongst the first musical authors of the present century. He was a disciple of Mozart, and is now but three or four and twenty years of age.”
In his journal for 1804, he mentions his retirement from his profession, and confesses the advance of some of those infirmities which, when within two years of becoming an octogenarian, it is rather difficult to avoid.
“In 1804, in the month of April, I completed my 78th year, and decided to relinquish teaching and my musical patients; for both my ears and my eyes were beginning to fail me. I could still hear the most minute musical tone; but in conversation I lost the articulation, and was forced to make people at the least distance from me repeat everything that they said. Sometimes the mere tone of voice, and the countenance of the speaker, told me whether I was to smile or to frown; but never so explicitly as to allow me to venture at any reply to what was said! Yet I never, seemingly, have been more in fashion at any period of my life than this spring; never invited to more conversaziones, assemblées, dinners, and concerts. But I feel myself less and less able to bear a part in general conversation every day, from the failure of memory, particularly in names; and I am become fearful of beginning any story that occurs to me, lest I should be stopped short by hunting for Mr. How-d’ye-call-him’s style and titles.
“I was very near-sighted from about my 30th year; but though it is usually thought that that sort of sight improves with age, I have not discovered that the notion was well founded. My sight became not only more short, but more feeble. Instead of a concave glass, I was forced to have recourse to one that was convex, and that magnified highly, for pale ink and small types.”
Dr. Burney meets the Prince of Wales at Lady Salisbury’s, and, of course, is enchanted by him. At the same party is Lady Melbourne, an old pupil of the Doctor, who reproaches him with never having been to dine with her, and promptly mixes up a party, in which the heir apparent and the musical historian are the chief ingredients. The Prince and the Doctor agree surprisingly well in their opinions, and meet again afterwards at the Opera, where their unanimity is not less remarkable. But a few months later, Dr. Burney being on a visit to the Duke of Portland, at Bulstrode, is in company with Lord and Lady Darnley, with whom he did not so well agree in matters of musical taste.
“They came in,” he says in his journal, “while I was dressing, and I had not heard their names, and knew not who they were. Unacquainted, therefore, with the bigoted devotion to the exclusive merit of Handel that I had to encounter, I got into a hot dispute that I should else, at the Duke’s house, have certainly avoided. The expression ‘modern refinements,’ happened to escape me, which both my lord and his lady, with a tone of consummate contempt, repeated: ‘Modern refinements, indeed!’ ‘Well, then,’ cried I, ‘let us call them modern changes of style and taste; for what one party calls refinements, the other, of course, constantly calls corruption and deterioration.’ They were quite irritated at this; and we all three went to it ding-dong! I made use of the same arguments that I have so often used in my musical writings,—that ingenious men can not have been idle during a century; and the language of sound is never stationary, any more than that of conversation and books. New modes of expression, new ideas from new discoveries and inventions, required new phrases: and in the cultivation of instruments, as well as of the voice, emulation would produce novelty, which, above all things, is wanted in music. And to say that the symphonies of Haydn, and the compositions of Mozart and Beethoven, have no merit because they are not like Handel, Corelli, and Geminiani,—or to say that the singing of a Pacchierotti, a Marchese, a Banti, or a Billington, in their several styles, is necessarily inferior to singers and compositions of the days of Handel,—is supposing time to stand still.”
In 1805, the King visited and closely inspected Chelsea College, of which Dr. Burney was resident organist; and he had the honour to be summoned to the royal presence, when a long conversation, very diligently recorded in the Doctor’s journal, took place, of which the following is a small portion:—
“‘And what are you doing now, Dr. Burney?’ said the King.
“‘I am writing for the new Cyclopædia, 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 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.’”
Nearly all the poets thus alluded to are still living, but most of them are entirely recovered from such diseases. The dancers and fiddlers so elegantly spoken of, and in the plural number, to avoid apparent personality, were, we conjecture, M. Didelot and Mr. Viotti, both of whom were, for a time, obliged to leave this country.
Dr. Burney all his life had been a zealous Tory, but the Tories never showed their zeal for him. In 1806, when the Whigs came into office, the united efforts of Mr. Windham and Mr. Fox procured for the historian of music a pension of £300—a grant which, it is not saying much when we assert, was more justly obtained in this instance, than in nine cases out of ten in which the royal prerogative has been exercised.
Not only was the latter part of Dr. Burney’s life rendered comfortable through the instrumentality of that party for which he, and still more his daughter, entertained so great a horror, but he was destined to have an honour of the highest kind conferred on him by Jacobinism itself; for about this time the Institut National de France elected him a member of the Classe des Beaux Arts; and we have reason to know that he considered this as one of the most flattering events of his life; though his daughter, governed by prejudice rather than that exactness which ought to be the chief aim of a biographer, would lead us to believe that the distinction thus conferred was not only embarrassing, but somewhat disagreeable to him.
We now are fast approaching the close of Dr. Burney’s life, and the termination of this Memoir. One of the best remarks that have, in the progress of these three volumes, fallen from Madame d’Arblay’s pen, is the following, introducing the last entry made by her father in his journal. The date is 1813.
Sir Joshua Reynolds desired that the last name he should pronounce in public should be that of Michael Angelo; and Dr. Burney seems to purpose that the last name he should transmit—if so allowed—through his annals to posterity, should be that of Haydn.
“Finding a blank leaf at the end of my journal, it may be used in the way of postscriptum, in speaking of the prelude or opening of Haydn’s Creation, to observe, that though the generality of the subscribers were unable to disentangle the studied confusion in delineating chaos, yet, when dissonance was tuned, when order was established, and God said,
‘Let there be light!—and there was light!’
‘Que la lumière soit!—et la lumière fut!’
the composer’s meaning was felt by the whole audience, who instantly broke in upon the performers with rapturous applause before the musical period was closed.”
The winter of 1814 was remarkable for its severity, and made its impression on the feeble frame of Dr. Burney. Spring, however, had arrived, and he flattered himself, or rather flattered his numerous and affectionate family, that he had triumphed over the effects of so inclement a season. But he was deceived: the exertion to resist its influence had cost all his remaining strength, and more genial weather found him utterly exhausted.
On the 12th of April he almost suddenly exhibited symptoms which showed that nature could make no further effort, and he remained in a state nearly approaching insensibility, till the 15th, in the evening of which day he tranquilly breathed his last. A detailed account of this event is given in a letter written at the time by Madame d’Arblay to her husband, General d’Arblay, then in Paris, and this narrative may be mentioned as one of the best parts of the whole work; though it evidently has received recent touches that have not improved what we can imagine to have been the more natural tone and style of the original.
A memoir of so distinguished a literary character, of so excellent a musical critic, as Dr. Burney, cannot be read without exciting a very considerable degree of interest, particularly as coming from the pen of a celebrated writer; and, still more especially, as embodying numerous anecdotes of persons who filled such prominent stations, and shone with so much brilliancy, during a period that may almost be called our own. Had the whole been written with the spirit and in the manner of those early letters which Madame d’Arblay has here so judiciously published in all their native vivacity and unaffected simplicity, the work would have been delightful and irreproachable: but, unhappily, she delayed putting together her materials till that judgment, once so strong, was no longer in full vigour; till advancing age had somewhat lessened those qualifications which, at the time when she was deprived of her highly-gifted, excellent, and venerable parent, she, most undeniably, possessed for the performance of such a task.
Vain would it be to express a wish that Madame d’Arblay could be induced to publish what we will venture to call a castigated edition of this Memoir; her age renders it next to impossible that such a hope should be realized: but the time probably will come, when what she has here collected will be revised, be combined in a very different manner, and then form a work worthy of being classed among the most entertaining of the many pieces of biography in which the literature of our country abounds.