[107]. Memoirs, iii. 118 n.
CHAPTER XI.
Chelsea Hospital—Tour to Devonshire—Visit to Bath—Reminiscences—The Duchess of Devonshire—Return Home—Literary Pursuits resumed—Attempts at Tragedy—Social Engagements—Death of Sir Joshua Reynolds—A Public Breakfast at Mrs. Montagu’s—Mrs. Hastings—Mr. Boswell—Visit to Mrs. Crewe—The Burke Family—Meeting with Edmund Burke—Burke and the French Revolution—Charles Fox—Lord Loughborough—Mr. Erskine—His Egotism—The French Refugees in England—Bury St. Edmunds—Madame de Genlis—The Duke de Liancourt—The Settlement at Mickleham—Count de Narbonne—The Chevalier d’Arblay—Visit of Miss Burney to Norfolk—Death of Mr. Francis—Return to London.
Miss Burney returned to her father, who, with his wife and his youngest daughter Sarah, was then living in Chelsea Hospital. The family at this time occupied rooms on the ground-floor, which not long afterwards were exchanged for others in the top story. After resting three weeks at home, she set out on a tour to the southwest of England, under the care of her friend Mrs. Ord. The travellers journeyed by easy stages to Sidmouth, taking Stonehenge on their way, and stopping at the principal places which had been visited by the Court in the summer of 1789. Having spent eight or nine days on the coast of South Devon, they turned northwards, and proceeded by the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to Bath. That most famous of English watering-places was greatly altered from what it had been when Fanny passed the season there with the Thrales eleven years before. The circumference, she tells us, had trebled, though the new buildings were scattered, and most of them unfinished. “The hills are built up and down, and the vales so stocked with streets and houses, that, in some places, from the ground-floor on one side a street, you cross over to the attic of your opposite neighbour. It looks a town of hills, and a hill of towns.” But the palaces of white stone rising up on every hand interested her less than the old haunts with which she was familiar—the North Parade, where she had lived with Mrs. Thrale; the houses in the Circus, where she had visited Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Cholmley; the Belvedere, where she had talked with Mrs. Byron and Lord Mulgrave. Nearly a month slipped away in reviving old recollections, and in making some new acquaintances to replace the many that had disappeared. The retired official was much flattered by an introduction to the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, and amused herself with the thought that her first visit after leaving the Queen should be paid to the greatest lady of the Opposition. Another month was divided between Mickleham and Norbury Park, and by the middle of October Miss Burney was again at Chelsea.
‘We shall expect you here to dinner by four,’ wrote her father. ‘The great grubbery will be in nice order for you, as well as the little; both have lately had many accessions of new books. The ink is good, good pens in plenty, and the most pleasant and smooth paper in the world!
‘“Come, Rosalind, oh, come and see
What quires are in store for thee!”’
Are we wrong in thinking that these words express Dr. Burney’s anxiety to see his daughter once more working as she had not worked since the last sheet of ‘Cecilia’ was corrected for the press? In the succeeding pages of the Diary we find more than one passage where the good man’s eagerness for some new fruit of her talents is plainly confessed. Friends had united to persuade him that he had but to recall her from the royal dressing-room to her study, and fresh laurels, with abundant riches, would surely and speedily be hers. He was naturally impatient for some fulfilment of these prophecies. Rosalind appeared: she wore out the quills, and covered the quires; but nothing came of her activity. Her health was now fairly restored, and, in the first ardour of composition, she felt that she could employ two pens almost incessantly. Unhappily, her industry was devoted to a mistaken purpose. She had brought with her from Windsor the rough drafts of two tragedies, and without pausing to correct these, she occupied herself in writing a third. A less hopeful enterprise could not have been conceived. She had before her eyes the warning example of Mr. Crisp’s failure. Had this old friend been living, he would doubtless have been wiser for his pupil than he was for himself. It is certain that Nature had not designed the Siddons for tragedy more distinctly than she intended Frances Burney for comedy. With the exception of one or two powerful scenes, such as the death of Harrel, Fanny’s chief successes had been won in the department of humorous writing. It was her misfortune that she had at this moment no literary adviser on whose judgment she could rely. Her acquaintance with Arthur Murphy seems to have ceased; the Hastings trial, and the debates on the Regency, had cooled her relations with Sheridan and Burke. ‘Mr. Sheridan,’ she wrote, ‘I have no longer any ambition to be noticed by.’ Her regard for Burke continued; but she had not yet met him since her deliverance from captivity. Dr. Burney was told only that she was engaged upon a play, and was made to understand that he must wait until it was finished before he was indulged with a sight of the manuscript. Towards the end of 1791 she writes: ‘I go on with various writings, at different times, and just as the humour strikes. I have promised my dear father a Christmas-box and a New Year’s gift; and therefore he now kindly leaves me to my own devices.’ We do not find that the anxious parent received either of the promised presents. The daughter’s fit of application seems to have soon died away: in the early part of 1792, her father was ill and occupied with his ailments; and by the time he was able to think of other things, Fanny had ceased to prepare for coming before the public. Her tragedies slept in her desk for three years: when, at the end of that period, the earliest of them, which had been begun at Kew and finished at Windsor, was put on the stage, it was produced without revision, and failed—as, no doubt, it would have done under any circumstances.
As Miss Burney’s strength returned, she seems to have fallen back into the indolent life of visiting and party-going which she was leading when she joined the Royal Household. She saw once more the failing Sir Joshua, who had worked at her deliverance as if she had been his own daughter; though he passed from the scene before she found an opportunity of thanking him for his exertions. She attended a great public breakfast given by Mrs. Montagu, whose famous Feather Room and dining-room were thronged by hundreds of guests, and looked like a full Ranelagh by daylight. At this entertainment she met Mrs. Hastings, whose splendid dress, loaded with ornaments, gave her the appearance of an Indian princess. At another breakfast Fanny encountered Boswell, who had excited her displeasure by his revelation of Johnson’s infirmities, and who provoked her again by telling anecdotes of the great Samuel, and acting them with open buffoonery. During the Session, she spent much of her time at the Hastings trial, listening to the defence conducted by Law, Dallas, and Plomer, and rallying Windham on the sarcasms aimed by Law at the heated rhetoric of Burke. The great orator himself she rarely encountered on these occasions. In June, 1792, however, she spent a day with him at Mrs. Crewe’s house on Hampstead Hill.