“The whole party were engaged to dine at Mrs. Montague’s. Dr. Johnson said he had received the most flattering note he had ever read, or that anybody had ever read, by way of invitation. ‘Well! so have I too,’ cried Mrs. Thrale; ‘so if a note from Mrs. Montague is to be boasted of, I beg mine may not be forgot.’
“ ‘Your note,’ cried Dr. Johnson, ‘can bear no comparison with mine; I am at the head of the Philosophers, she says.’
“ ‘And I,’ cried Mrs. Thrale, ‘have all the Muses in my train!’
“ ‘A fair battle,’ said my father. ‘Come, compliment for compliment, and see who will hold out longest!’
“ ‘Oh, I am afraid for Mrs. Thrale,’ cried Mr. Seward, ‘for I know Mrs. Montague exerts all her forces, when she attacks Dr. Johnson.’
“ ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs. Thrale, ‘she has often, I know, flattered him, till he has been ready to faint.’
“ ‘Well, ladies,’ said my father, ‘you must get him between you to-day, and see which can lay on the paint thickest, Mrs. Thrale or Mrs. Montague.’
“ ‘I had rather,’ cried the Doctor, drily, ‘go to Bach’s Concert.’ ”
The talk then shifted to Garrick, who, having retired from the stage in the previous year, had been recently reading his farce of Lethe to the King and Queen. Dr. Johnson spoke of his old friend and pupil with his wonted candour, and not without touches of critical humour which must have been highly relished by that still-sore author of Virginia to whom Miss Burney’s budget was addressed. Of Garrick’s popular faults Johnson said—“Garrick is accused of vanity; but few men would have borne such unremitting prosperity with greater, if with equal moderation. He is accused, too, of avarice; but, were he not, he would be accused of just the contrary; for he now lives rather as a prince than an actor; but the frugality he practised, when he first appeared in the world, and which, even then, was perhaps beyond his necessity, has marked his character ever since; and now, though his table, his equipage and manner of living, are all the most expensive, and equal to those of a nobleman, yet the original stain still blots his name! Though, had he not fixed upon himself the charge of avarice, he would long since have been reproached with luxury and with living beyond his station in magnificence and splendour.” Another of the Doctor’s animadversions serves to explain an aspect of the actor’s character which has already been illustrated in this chapter.[[28]] “Garrick never enters a room,” he said, “but he regards himself as the object of general attention, from whom the entertainment of the company is expected; and true it is, that he seldom disappoints them; for he has infinite humour, a very just proportion of wit, and more convivial pleasantry, than almost any other man. But then off as well as on the Stage, he is always an Actor; for he thinks it so incumbent on him to be sportive, that his gaiety becomes mechanical from being habitual, and he can exert his spirits at all times alike, without consulting his real disposition to hilarity.”[[29]]
Previous to Dr. Johnson’s visit to St. Martin’s Street, Miss Burney had been staying at Chessington, whence, to the disgust of Mr. Crisp, she had been hastily recalled to meet her uncle, Mr. Richard Burney of Worcester, whose son Charles her sister Hetty had married. She then went on a visit to her uncle at Barborne (familiarly “Barebones”) Lodge, a little out of Worcester; and here she took part in some private theatricals, playing Mrs. Lovemore in what was apparently the first three-act form of Murphy’s Way to Keep Him, a comedy in which there are manifest traces of that pioneer sentimental drama, La Chaussée’s Préjugé à-la-mode—the prejudice in question being, that it is a mistake to love one’s wife. She seems, by her own account, to have been terribly nervous (in green and gray); but to have acquitted herself creditably in the crucial third Act. She afterwards appeared as Huncamunca in Fielding’s burlesque of Tom Thumb, the rival character of Glumdalca being taken by her cousin James, and that of Lord Grizzle by Edward Burney the artist. The Tom Thumb of the piece was the youngest of the family, Ann or Nancy, a child of seven, the daughter of Charles Burney and Hetty. By this time Miss Burney had entirely got over her stage fright, and entered thoroughly into her part of Tom Thumb’s fiancée.