‘Chelsea College: July 17, 1792.
‘My dear Friend,—Your very kind and hearty invitation to Bradfield came at a time when I was utterly unable to answer it. I was just emerged from the sick room into daily hurry and business, for which I was but little fit, and am still detained here by an unusual number of engagements for this time of year, the end of which I am not able to see. If my patients had walked off as early as I wished them, or if, like other doctors, I could have them put to their long home by a dash of my pen, I really believe I should not have been able to resist the lure you threw out; but now, if I am able to travel, or fit for any house but my own, I have two positive engagements on my hands of long standing: the first to Mickleham, to my daughter, Phillips, where I promised, as soon as I could pronounce myself a convalescent, to go and complete my cure; the other is to Crewe Hall, in Cheshire, whither I have been going more than twice seven years; and at which place I was so sure of arriving last August, that my correspondents, at my request, addressed their letters to me there. This year the claims upon me and Fanny have been so powerfully renewed by Mrs. Crewe that nothing but increased indisposition can resist them. She has promised to carry us down by slow journeys, and, if it should be necessary for me to go to Buxton for my confounded rheumatism (which, though less painful, still deprives me of all use of my left paw), she will even accompany me thither. My poor wife is also in sad health, and we are neither of us fit for anything but to con ailments with those who are as old and infirm as ourselves. But we send you a splinter[[151]] from us, before we were quite broke up and unfit for service. It is not sufficient to improve your fire of a wet day, but may perhaps be of some little use in the way of kindling.
‘I thank you heartily for your very interesting book of “Travels.” It is in public perusal of an evening, and has fastened on us. The parts of France which you have traversed were to me almost unknown. I never saw the Loire or the Garonne. No one can accuse you of drowsiness, like old Homer and such folks; you are always awake, and keep your readers so. We are now in the midst of that most astonishing of all events, the French Revolution, and like your narrative extremely. Though an enemy to the old tyranny, you neither reason about the rights of man like Wat Tyler or even Tom Payne. You saw coming on all the evils which anarchy has occasioned. You have long seen the futility of theory without practice among French agriculturists, and the political philosophers who think themselves wiser than the experiences of all antiquity, and not content with anything already done, must needs set about inventing an entire new government, and you see what a fine mess they have made of it.
‘Yours ever,
‘Charles Burney.’
From Miss Burney, afterwards Mdme. d’Arblay, writing on some traits of my character, &c.:—
‘Chelsea College: July 17, 1792.
‘Nay, if you talk of your difficulties in fabricating an epistle to me, please to consider how much greater are mine in attempting to answer it. You! a country farmer, the acknowledged head of “the only art worth cultivating,” as you tell us,—the contemner of every other pursuit, the scorner of all old customs, the defier of all musty authorities, the derider of all fogrum superiors,—in one word a Jacobin. You afraid? and of whom? a Chelsea pensioner? One who, maimed in the royal service, ignobly forbears, spurning royal reparation? One who, though flying a court, degenerately refrains from hating or even reviling kings, queens, and princesses? One who presumes to wish as well to manufactures for her outside, as to agriculture for her inside? One who has the ignorance to reverence commerce, and who cannot think of a single objection to the Wool Bill? One, in short, and to say all that is abominable at once, one who in theory is an aristocrat, and in practice a ci-devant courtier?
‘And shall a creature of this description, the willing advocate of every opinion, every feeling you excommunicate from “your business and bosom,” dare to write to you? Impossible!
‘Whether I shall come and see you all or not is another matter. If I can I will.