Every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason. It is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learned their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with attempting to realize these visions. Master Damon writes a song and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a north-east wind that makes Damon button up to the chin, and pinches Chloe’s nose till it is red and blue; and then they cry, ‘This is a bad summer’—as if we ever had any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees, and make our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable unless you had a high hill before your nose and a thick warm wood at your back![429]
If the style of nineteenth century prose marks an improvement over that of the eighteenth century in respect of sprightliness, then surely such a passage as this must be held to indicate the progress towards it.
It is amazing how wide-spread was the knowledge of this craft. There are scores of letter-writers at the end of the century who may be read with pleasure. Even Mrs. Montagu could descend from the heights long enough to write in this pleasant tone to Mrs. Garrick and Miss More:
Most engaged and engaging ladies, will you drink tea with me on Thursday with a very small party? I think it an age, not a golden age, since I saw you last.[430]
With the presence of such letter-writers as Cowper, Johnson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Horace Walpole, not to mention countless minor names, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the familiar letter was the chosen medium of the age, as the periodic essay was of the earlier period and as the drama was of the Elizabethan age. It will always remain the best general record of the social life of the century; but its value is more particular than this. You may read the boisterous life of the age in its novels, you may find its solidity in Johnson and its superficiality in Chesterfield; you may see its rags in Hogarth or its grace in Reynolds; but for its simplicity, its affectionate intimacies, and its smiling ease, you must turn to its letters.
CHAPTER XIV
Fanny Burney and the Art of the Diarist
The Diary of Fanny Burney cannot, like the conversation of Johnson and the correspondence of Walpole, be cited as perhaps the finest specimen of its kind. Of the arts we are discussing, the diarist’s is the most difficult to define or characterize; for at one extreme, it may shrink into the dulness of a calendar, and at the other, it may record the agonies of a soul’s attempt to be honest with its God or with itself. Kinds so distinct as Pepys’s Diary and the Confessions of Rousseau seem to defy all attempts at common definition. The Diary of Miss Burney, unlike these works, has no psychological problems; but exists for the simple and engaging purpose of recording events of interest. In the beginning she resolved never to mix with her record, her ‘religious sentiments, opinions, hopes, fears, beliefs, or aspirations;[431] but to reserve her Diary for worldly dross.’ If not among the greatest diaries of the world, it is among the most normal; and it is not impossible to define it roughly. Diaries of this kind may be described as a sort of letter to oneself.
Miss Burney’s Diary was, however, written to be read by others than herself. It was addressed to her sisters, to whom sections of it were despatched from time to time. It partakes, therefore, in large measure of the nature of private correspondence, and much that has been said of that type applies obviously to this. But there are important differences. The greatness of the Diary certainly does not consist in the delightful treatment of domestic and personal trifles. Nor does Miss Burney paint highly for the mere love of painting, as the conversationalist and the letter-writer often do. She is not communicating herself, but the important life with which she is in touch. She does not so much wish that the reader should see her, as that he should see with her eyes—and her artistic vision was remarkably shrewd and keen. The Diary is thus a panorama rather than a portrait. We read diaries either to get at the personality of the writer or at the events described. The character of Fanny Burney, combining sweetness, shyness, wisdom, and pride, presents no particular problems, and is not of commanding interest. What she saw and what she heard, the people who loved her, who attached her to them, and who, not unfrequently, preyed upon her—these constitute the interest of the book; it is these and the art with which they are set before us that make the Diary what it is.
The thought that is for ever borne in upon the reader is that Miss Burney was a very lucky woman. Suffering as she did from shyness and an inflamed sense of propriety, it might easily have been her lot to lead a life as secluded as that of her friend, Mr. Crisp of Chessington; yet in fact Johnson himself did not commonly associate with more people whom one would like to have known. The young lady’s unassuming manner was of actual value in increasing her circle of desirable acquaintance, when once she was famous. When once she was famous, I repeat, for most of her interesting friends and experiences came to her as the result of her celebrity and of the bluestocking patronage which ensued upon it. It was Mrs. Thrale who drew Fanny Burney into the great world which she was to adorn and to record; but the interest of Mrs. Thrale went out rather to the author of Evelina, than to the mouse-like young lady of St. Martin Street. Seldom has so timid an entry into the literary world been accorded a reception so flattering. The young woman who had disposed of her novel under cover of night and anonymity, as though it had been so much stolen goods, was presently to find that she had every bluestocking in London at her feet, and that the King of Letters was proclaiming her the equal of Fielding. One speculates what would have become of her if she had begun her career with The Wanderer instead of Evelina. She had the luck to write her best novel—some will say her only good novel—first; and from that happy beginning sprang all the rest of her good fortune.