Some of her friends were frank enough in their comments on her situation. There was something, no doubt, in Miss Burney’s aspect which drew such remarks as these from the wife of an Irish bishop: “Well; the Queen, to be sure, is a great deal better dressed than she used to be; but for all that, I really think it is but an odd thing for you!—Dear, I think it’s something so out of the way for you!—I can’t think how you set about it. It must have been very droll to you at first. A great deal of honour, to be sure, to serve a Queen, and all that; but, I dare say a lady’s-maid could do it better.... It must be a mighty hurry-scurry life! You don’t look at all fit for it, to judge by appearances, for all its great honour, and all that.” Colonel Digby had previously accused her of being absent in her official occupation, and she had owned that she had at first found attention unattainable. “She had even,” she added, “and not seldom, handed the Queen her fan before her gown, and her gloves before her cap!” The Vice-Chamberlain thought this very likely, and observed that such matters did not seem trifles to her Majesty.

The Diary for the earlier months of 1790 contains little more than what the writer calls ‘loose scraps of anecdotes,’ of which we can find room for only one or two specimens. Here is an account of a conversation with Colonel Manners, who, besides being an equerry, was also a Member of Parliament:

“I had been informed he had once made an attempt to speak, during the Regency business, last winter; I begged to know how the matter stood, and he made a most frank display of its whole circumstances.

“‘Why, they were speaking away,’ he cried, ‘upon the Regency, and so—and they were saying the King could not reign, and recover; and Burke was making some of his eloquence, and talking; and, says he, ‘hurled from his throne’—and so I put out my finger in this manner, as if I was in a great passion, for I felt myself very red, and I was in a monstrous passion I suppose, but I was only going to say ‘Hear! Hear!’ but I happened to lean one hand down upon my knee, in this way, just as Mr. Pitt does when he wants to speak; and I stooped forward, just as if I was going to rise up and begin; but just then I caught Mr. Pitt’s eye, looking at me so pitifully; he thought I was going to speak, and he was frightened to death, for he thought—for the thing was, he got up himself, and he said over all I wanted to say; and the thing is, he almost always does; for just as I have something particular to say, Mr. Pitt begins, and goes through it all, so that he don’t leave anything more to be said about it; and so I suppose, as he looked at me so pitifully, he thought I should say it first, or else that I should get into some scrape, because I was so warm and looking so red.’

“Any comment would disgrace this; I will therefore only tell you his opinion, in his own words, of one of our late taxes.[[104]]

“‘There’s only one tax, ma’am, that ever I voted for against my conscience, for I’ve always been very particular about that; but that is the bacheldor’s tax, and that I hold to be very unconstitutional, and I am very sorry I voted for it, because it’s very unfair; for how can a man help being a bacheldor, if nobody will have him? and, besides, it’s not any fault to be taxed for, because we did not make ourselves bacheldors, for we were made so by God, for nobody was born married, and so I think it’s a very unconstitutional tax.’”

Miss Burney’s desultory journals for this year contain few notices of her life at Court. We hear, indeed, in the spring, of her being summoned to a new employment, and called upon four or five times to read a play before the Queen and Princesses. But this proved a very occasional break in the routine of drudgery which she could no longer support with cheerfulness. Henceforth she seems to avoid all mention of other engagements and incidents at Windsor or Kew as matters too wearisome to think of or write about. We have, instead, accounts of days spent at the Hastings trial, where, as before, she spent much time in conversing with Windham. The charges were now being investigated in detail, and it was often difficult to make up an interesting report for her mistress. Sometimes, however, when evidence weighed the proceedings down, Burke would speak from time to time, and lift them up; or Windham himself, much to Fanny’s satisfaction, would take part in the arguments. But Westminster Hall was attractive mainly by contrast to the palace; in the Great Chamberlain’s Box there was no danger of receiving a summons to the Queen, no fear of being late for an attendance in the royal dressing-room. During the recess, when there was no trial to attend, Miss Burney’s thoughts were a good deal occupied by the illness and death of a faithful man-servant, and with the subsequent disposal of his savings, which caused her some trouble.

Once, at the end of May, she had an opportunity of unburdening her mind to her father. They met in Westminster Abbey at one of the many commemorations of Handel which occurred about this time; and, neither of them caring very much for the great master’s music, they spent three hours chiefly in conversation. For four years they had not been so long alone together. Dr. Burney happened to mention that some of the French exiles wished him to make them acquainted with the author of ‘Cecilia,’ and repeated the astonished speech of the Comtesse de Boufflers on learning that this was out of his power: ‘Mais, monsieur, est-ce possible! Mademoiselle votre fille n’a-t-elle point de vacances?’ Such an opening was just what Fanny wanted, and she availed herself of it to pour out her whole heart. With many expressions of gratitude for the Queen’s goodness, she owned that her way of life was distasteful to her; she was lost to all private comfort, dead to all domestic endearment, worn with want of rest and laborious attendance. Separated from her relations, her friends, and the society she loved, she brooded over the past with hopeless regret, and lived like one who had no natural connections. “Melancholy was the existence, where happiness was excluded, though not a complaint could be made! where the illustrious personages who were served possessed almost all human excellence—yet where those who were their servants, though treated with the most benevolent condescension, could never in any part of the live-long day, command liberty, or social intercourse, or repose!” “The silence of my dearest father,” she adds, “now silencing myself, I turned to look at him; but how was I struck to see his honoured head bowed down almost into his bosom with dejection and discomfort! We were both perfectly still a few moments; but when he raised his head I could hardly keep my seat to see his eyes filled with tears! ‘I have long,’ he cried, ‘been uneasy, though I have not spoken; ... but ... if you wish to resign—my house, my purse, my arms, shall be open to receive you back!’”

It cannot fairly be said that, during the preceding four years, Miss Burney had been debarred from literary work. The conditions of her lot were hard, and it may have been one of them that she should publish nothing while in the Queen’s service; but she certainly had enjoyed considerable leisure for composition. Witness the full and carefully-written journal which she had kept during the greater part of her tenure of office. Perhaps the frequent interruptions to which she was liable hindered her from concentrating her thoughts on the production of a regular narrative. Indefatigable as she was with her pen, we can see that she was far less strenuous when much intellectual exertion was required. When she was offered her post, her Muse was at a standstill, as she told the King; and since she entered the household, she had written nothing capable of being printed, except two or three small copies of verses not worth printing, and the rough draft of a tragedy. She had begun this tragedy during the King’s illness, in order to distract her attention; and after laying it aside for sixteen months, she resumed her task in the spring of 1790, and completed the play in August. Well or ill done, she was pleased, she told her sisters, to have done something ‘at last—she who had so long lived in all ways as nothing.’ In the early part of this year the newspapers announced, as they had done several times before, that the distinguished novelist, who had so long been silent, had at length finished a new tale ready for the press. As often as this rumour appeared, a flutter of apprehension ran through the ante-rooms of the Upper and Lower Lodges. Fanny’s genius for seizing the points of a character, and presenting them in a ludicrous light, could not fail to be recognised wherever she went. Years before, the fiery Baretti had warned her that if she dared to put him in a book, she should feel the effects of an Italian’s vengeance.[[105]] Joseph Baretti, who had stilettoed his man, and who lived to libel Mrs. Piozzi, was the very person to fulfil a promise of this kind. But for his threat, his tempting eccentricities might have exposed him to considerable peril. But the carpet-knights and waiting-women of Windsor stood in no immediate danger. ‘There is a new book coming out, and we shall all be in it!’ exclaimed the conscience-stricken Mr. Turbulent. The colonels frowned, bit their lips, and tried not to look uncomfortable. ‘Well, anybody’s welcome to me and my character!’ cried poor Miss Planta, whom Fanny used to patronize. ‘Never mind! she’s very humane!’ observed one of the Willises, well aware that, whoever else might suffer, he and his family were exempt from ridicule. Miss Burney smiled demurely at the tributes paid to her power. Full well she knew that, so far as the characters of her colleagues were worth preserving, she had them all safe, under lock and key, in her Diary. But not a line of the dreaded novel had been written. The passion, which possessed her in her early days, for planning a story, and contriving situations for the actors in it, had faded away as the freshness of youth departed.

The months rolled on, and her spirits did not improve, while her health steadily declined. Some of her female friends—Mrs. Gwynn, Miss Cambridge, Mrs. Ord—saw her at Windsor or Kew after the close of the London season, and were painfully impressed with the alteration which they noted in her. The reports which these ladies carried up to town were speedily known throughout her father’s circle of acquaintances. The discontent that had been felt at her seclusion increased tenfold when it was suspected that there was danger of the prisoner’s constitution giving way. A sort of cabal was formed to bring influence to bear upon Dr. Burney. The lead in this seems to have been taken by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, despite his failing eyesight and his Academic troubles, was zealous as ever in the cause of his old favourite. Dr. Burney had yielded to Fanny’s wish of retiring; but he was not in affluent circumstances, he had expected great things from the Court appointment, his daughter had not much worldly wisdom, and in dread of the censure that awaited him in high quarters, if he suffered her to throw away a competency without visible necessity, he was for putting off the evil day of resignation as long as possible. It was therefore important that friends whose approbation he valued should unite to make him understand that the case, in their judgment, called for prompt determination. He was much worked upon in the autumn by a letter from Horace Walpole to Frances, in which the writer, with a touch of heartiness quite unusual to him, lamented her confinement to a closet at Court, and asked whether her talents were given to be buried in obscurity? About the same time, he was warned by his daughter, Mrs. Francis, that Windham, her neighbour in Norfolk, who had observed for himself the change in Fanny’s appearance, was meditating an attack on him as soon as they should meet in town. The politician had already sounded Burney to little purpose; ‘it is resolution,’ he told Charlotte, ‘not inclination, the Doctor wants.’ ‘I will set the Literary Club upon him!’ he cried. ‘Miss Burney has some very true friends there, and I am sure they will all eagerly assist. We will present him an address.’