It is possible, of course, that, in some cases, Miss Burney leaned upon her predecessors, especially where her own experiences fell short. Lord Orville, it has been suggested, is a recollection of the hero of Sir Charles Grandison; Sir Clement Willoughby, of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen or Mr. Greville in the same novel. That she should think of these then-established types would, indeed, be only natural. But while Richardson drew his male heroes mainly from his moral consciousness, Miss Burney has rectified her puppets from her personal recollections. Lord Orvilles, perhaps, were not very common in her environment. Still, to say nothing of King in Lord Ogleby (she knew the Clandestine Marriage by heart), she had seen and heard a live fine gentleman in Fulke Greville; and in Mr. Anthony Chamier and Mr. Charles Boone had conversed with some flesh-and-blood specimens of men of the world, who helped to make her characters, objectively at all events, more convincingly real than those of Richardson. For Lord Orville—though somewhat shadowy—is really a nobleman; and Sir Clement Willoughby, a not-inconceivable specimen of the genus “agreeable rake.” As to the impertinent fop, Mr. Lovel, one can imagine that she would have little difficulty in constructing him—with an added sprinkle of malice—out of the “scraps and heel-taps” of her coxcomb cousin, Richard Burney of Worcester, or of that other fantastic feather-head, the Spanish traveller, Mr. Twiss. But the Lovels, and the Orvilles, and the Willoughbys, clever as they are, would scarcely have made the fortune of Evelina; still less would the benedictory Mr. Villars, the exemplary Lady Howard, Mrs. Mirvan and her daughter, or that melancholy concession to sentimentalism, Mr. Macartney. These belong to the working machinery of the story; its prominent interest, apart from its accurate pictures of contemporary character and manners, is concentrated upon the two antagonists, Captain Mirvan and Mme. Duval, and upon the inimitably vulgar Branghton group, which includes the Holborn beau, Mr. Smith.
Madame Duval, in particular, is drawn with remarkable vigour, though it is difficult to imagine how, at any period of her life, an educated man could possibly have married her. Her illiterate English with its cheap French tags, her Ma fois and her Shakespearean superlatives, all combine to make a most graphic broad-comedy portrait. She would perhaps have been better for a touch, which Goldsmith would certainly not have omitted, of tenderness somewhere; as it is, the only sign of anything approaching that quality is her solicitude for M. Du Bois, the poor French gentleman who accompanies her,—one hardly knows why,—for he has no very definite purpose in the book beyond swelling the list of Evelina’s admirers, and opposing his courtesy and unobtrusive good manners to the rudeness of his immediate associates. But though no softer traits make us admire Mme. Duval, one can at least be sorry for her. A certain amount of horse-play—and even the ruining of a new Lyons silk costume—are perhaps permissible in a roaring farce; but to drag an elderly woman forcibly along the high road, shake her furiously, deposit her in a ditch (bumping her vigorously the while), and then tie her feet together, leaving her “almost roaring, and in the utmost agony of rage and terror”—certainly seems to be going to unusual lengths in the pursuit of practical joking, even with a person who has so far forgotten herself as to spit in your face. If Mme. Duval was not a person of “position” in one sense, she was at least (as the Colonel says in Punch) a person of exceedingly “uncomfortable position” in another. Yet, as Miss Burney has depicted the episode, we must presume that she has actually depicted something she had heard of or seen. And there is no doubt that there was an under side to the often superficial and conventional refinement of her day,—a side of absolute heartlessness and insensibility, begotten of brutal pastimes, butcherly penal laws, and a cynical disregard for the value of human life. Even in that admirable comedy of Goldsmith which Miss Burney had seen played not so very many years before the appearance of Evelina, there are traces of this, though Goldsmith was the most amiable of men. Yet even Goldsmith allows Tony Lumpkin to tell an audience that, after jolting two ladies, one of them his own mother, to a jelly, he has finally lodged them in a horsepond; and everyone seems to think the joke an excellent one. Nor are there any indications that Johnson or Reynolds ever commented upon the callous barbarity of the proceeding.
This being so, we could perhaps hardly expect any superfine delicacy from the rough sailor whom Miss Burney has invented for Mme. Duval’s discomfiture. Captain Mirvan is an officer of the Oakum and Hatchway type rather than of the Lieutenant Bowling order. His twin aversions are a fop and a Frenchman; and he meets them both; or rather, in place of the latter, he meets an Englishwoman naturalised in France, which does as well. Indeed, it is a little curious that, in his hatred of “Madam Frog,” as he calls Evelina’s grandmother, Captain Mirvan entirely overlooks the fact that Mme. Duval is really nothing more than a vulgar English barmaid. Captain Mirvan is excellently conceived, but only partially exhibited. To say nothing of the fact that he is a seaman on shore, it would have been impossible for Evelina to depict him except in expurgated form. She herself allows as much to Mr. Villars. “Notwithstanding the attempts I so frequently make of writing some of the Captain’s conversation, I can only give you a faint idea of his language; for almost every other word he utters, is accompanied by an oath, which, I am sure, would be as unpleasant for you to read, as for me to write. And, besides, he makes use of a thousand sea-terms, which are to me quite unintelligible.” Miss Burney had a brother who was a lieutenant in the navy, and no doubt was sufficiently instructed as to the manners and customs of the mariners of Cook’s day. She moreover appreciated to the full their delight in hoaxes and practical jokes. As regards their oaths and asseverations no one can blame her reticence,—a reticence which was commended even by her contemporaries. But it is permissible to criticism to observe that a Georgian ship-captain ad usum Delphini, and deprived in great measure of his picturesque nautical jargon is an artistic contradiction which it is difficult to invest with complete and convincing reality. It is no doubt owing in part to the absence of his uncouth amphibious atmosphere that Captain Mirvan’s baiting of Mme. Duval leaves such an unpleasantly cold-blooded impression upon the modern reader. On ship-board, and in his own element, he was no doubt a brave man and a smart officer. On shore, he is an unmitigated bear; and since Mme. Duval was in a way his guest, an absolutely inconceivable host.
Of the Branghton family, Miss Burney has given, at the outset, a rather fuller introductory description than she usually gives of her characters. The father, Mme. Duval’s nephew, is a silversmith on Snow-Hill, a man about forty, intelligent, but contracted and prejudiced, having spent his life in the city, and contemptuous of all who reside elsewhere. His son is “weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his temper; but his gaiety is that of a foolish, over-grown schoolboy, whose mirth consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father for his close attention to business, and love of money; though he seems himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity, to make him superior to either. His chief delight appears to be tormenting and ridiculing his sisters, who, in return, most heartily despise him.” The elder girl is not ill-looking; but is proud, ill-tempered and conceited. “She hates the city, though without knowing why; for it is easy to discover she has lived no where else.” The younger sister, Polly, is “rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy and very good natured.” This worshipful family, after the fashion of the eighteenth century, live at the shop in the city, and let some of the rooms. One of the garrets is occupied by the already mentioned Scotch poet, Macartney, while the dining room is in possession of the Holborn beau, who, besides keeping a foot-boy of his own, is—according to Miss Polly Branghton—“quite like one of the quality, and dresses as fine, and goes to balls and dances, and everything quite in taste.” Mr. Smith, with his underbred gentility and his awkward sprightliness, is the most vivid of the portraits in the book.
With enforced associates of this type, it is easy to conceive that Evelina is continually involved in vexation and embarrassment, and even landed in some equivocal situations. The Branghtons take her to the Opera, but carry her to the shilling gallery. They take her to Vauxhall, where, unlike Goldsmith’s pawnbroker’s widow, she does contrive to see the famous waterworks. But by the heedlessness of her cousins, she is decoyed into the dubious Dark Walks, where she is rescued from a gang of rakes by Sir Clement Willoughby, only to be subsequently subjected by him to impertinent gallantries on his own account. After this, she goes to a ball at the Long Room at Hampstead with Mme. Duval, where she has the greatest difficulty in avoiding to “hop a dance” with the importunate Holborn beau, who, in the phrase of his circle is “as fine as fivepence.” At Marylebone Gardens an explosion of M. Torré’s fireworks terrifies her into seeking the protection of some very undesirable companions of her own sex, in whose compromising company, to her intense annoyance, she is discovered both by Lord Orville and Sir Clement Willoughby. Finally, after she has been pestered by the attentions of Mr. Smith, and threatened by Mme. Duval with young Branghton as a husband, the full measure of her mortification is filled at Kensington Gardens, where, in a soaking shower, her cousins contrive to borrow Lord Orville’s coach, in her name, although against her will. As a result the coach is badly injured in taking these discreditable connections to Snow Hill. There are other consequences to this misadventure, but they cannot be touched upon here.
These scenes at the old London pleasure resorts of Evelina’s century—as was admitted by her contemporaries—are depicted with full knowledge, and with a spirit and animation not to be found elsewhere, though it is difficult to make quotation from them without presenting them imperfectly. One passage, however, which Johnson admired, we may venture to cite, with the caveat that a brick is not a building. The party are in the Great Room at Vauxhall, looking at one of Hayman’s paintings;—we may assume it, from the reference to Neptune, to be that which commemorated Admiral Hawke’s defeat of the French in Quiberon Bay. Evelina has asked M. Du Bois for an explanation of the subject: Mme. Duval invokes the assistance of Mr. Smith, who, for the moment, is sorely crestfallen at the superior ease and splendour of Sir Clement Willoughby:—
“ ‘Don’t ask him [M. Du Bois]’—she cries—‘your best way is to ask Mr. Smith, for he’s been here the oftenest. Come, Mr. Smith, I daresay you can tell us all about them.’
“ ‘Why, yes, Ma’am, yes,’ said Mr. Smith: who, brightening up at this application, advanced towards us, with an air of assumed importance, which, however, sat very uneasily upon him, and begged to know what he should explain first: ‘For I have attended,’ said he, ‘to all these paintings, and know everything in them perfectly well; for I am rather fond of pictures, Ma’am; and, really, I must say, I think a pretty picture is a—a very—is really a very—is something very pretty——’
“ ‘So do I too,’ said Madame Duval, ‘but pray now, Sir, tell us who that is meant for,’ pointing to a figure of Neptune.
“ ‘That!—Why, that, Ma’am, is,— . . . I can’t think how I come to be so stupid, but really I have forgot his name;—and yet, I know it as well as my own too,—however, he’s a General, Ma’am, they are all Generals.’