“His greatest passion is for transplanting. Everything we possess he moves from one end of the garden to another to produce better effects. Roses take place of jessamines, jessamines of honeysuckles, and honeysuckles of lilacs, till they have all danced round as far as the space allows; but whether the effect may not be a general mortality, summer only can determine.
“Such is our horticultural history. But I must not omit that we have had for one week cabbages from our own cultivation every day! Oh, you have no idea how sweet they tasted! We agreed they had a freshness and a goût we had never met with before. We had them for too short a time to grow tired of them, because, as I have already hinted, they were beginning to run to seed before we knew they were eatable.”
While the General was gardening, Madame plied her pen, using it once more, after the lapse of a dozen years, with a definite purpose of publication. Her first composition was for a charitable object. It was an address to the ladies of England on behalf of the emigrant French clergy, who, to the number of 6,000, were suffering terrible distress all over the country. This short paper is an early example of the stilted rhetoric which gradually ruined its author’s style. Some months later we hear of a more important work being in progress. This tale, eventually published under the title of ‘Camilla,’ was commenced in the summer of 1794, though it did not see the light till July, 1796.
A son, their only child, was born on December 18, 1794, and was baptized Alexander Charles Louis Piochard, receiving the name of his father, with those of his two god-fathers, Dr. Charles Burney the younger, and the Count de Narbonne.
An illness, which retarded the mother’s recovery, interrupted the progress of her novel, and perhaps counted for something in the failure of the tragedy with which, as we mentioned before, she tempted fortune on the stage. ‘Edwy and Elgiva’—so this drama was called—was produced at Drury Lane on March 21, 1795. It says much for the author’s repute that John Kemble warmly recommended her work to Sheridan, who seems to have accepted it without hesitation or criticism. The principal characters were undertaken by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. At the close of the performance, it was announced that the piece was withdrawn for alterations. There was a little complaint that several of the actors were careless and unprepared; but, on the whole, Madame d’Arblay bore her defeat with excellent temper. She consoled herself with the thought that her play had not been written for the theatre, nor even revised for the press; that the manuscript had been obtained from her during her confinement; and that she had been prevented by ill-health from attending rehearsals, and making the changes which, on the night of representation, even her unprofessional judgment perceived to be essential. Yet it is difficult to imagine that a tragedy by the author of ‘Evelina’ could, under any circumstances, have been successful; and we are more surprised that Sheridan was so complaisant than that Dr. Burney had always shrugged his shoulders when the Saxon drama was mentioned in his hearing.
Three years sooner the dramatist would have felt her personal mishap more keenly, as she would have welcomed with far livelier pleasure an event of a public nature which occurred shortly afterwards. On April 23, 1795, Warren Hastings was triumphantly acquitted. The incident hardly stirred her at all. She was now experiencing that detachment which is the portion of ladies even of social and literary tastes, when they have accomplished the great function of womanhood. Her father writes her a pleasant account of his London life, relating some characteristic condolences which he had received from Cumberland on the fate of her play, mentioning his own visit of congratulation to Hastings, and chatting about the doings at the Literary Club. The blissful mother replies in a letter, dated from the ‘Hermitage, Bookham,’ which is principally occupied with praises of rural retirement and the intelligent infant, though it ends with some words about the tragedy, and a postscript expressing satisfaction at the acquittal. Not long before, Frances Burney had repined at living in what she rather inaptly called a monastery: Frances d’Arblay is more than content with the company of her gardener and their little ‘perennial plant.’ At her marriage, she had counted on having the constant society of Susanna and her Captain, as well as the Lockes; but in June, 1795, the Phillipses remove to town, and are not missed. The Bambino not only supplied all gaps, but made his willing slave work as hard at ‘Camilla’ as, long years before, she had worked at ‘Cecilia’ under the jealous eye of her Chesington daddy.
She was now as keen as Crisp would have had her be in calculating how she could make most money by her pen. ‘I determined,’ she says, ‘when I changed my state, to set aside all my innate and original abhorrences, and to regard and use as resources myself what had always been considered as such by others. Without this idea and this resolution, our hermitage must have been madness.’ She had formerly objected to a plan, suggested for her by Burke, of publishing by subscription, with the aid of ladies, instead of booksellers, to keep lists and receive names of subscribers. She determined to adopt this plan in bringing out ‘Camilla.’ The Dowager Duchess of Leinster, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Crewe, and Mrs. Locke, gave her the required assistance. In issuing her proposals, she was careful not to excite the prejudice which still prevailed against works of fiction.[[114]] She remembered that the word novel had long stood in the way of ‘Cecilia’ at Windsor, and that the Princesses had not been allowed to read it until it had been declared innocent by a bishop. ‘Camilla,’ she warned her friends, was ‘not to be a romance, but sketches of characters and morals put in action.’ It was, therefore, announced simply as ‘a new work by the author of Evelina and Cecilia.’ The manuscript was completed by the end of 1795; but, as in the case of ‘Cecilia,’ six months more elapsed before the day of publication arrived.
Meanwhile, the subscription-list filled up nobly. When Warren Hastings heard what was going forward, we are told that “he gave a great jump, and exclaimed, ‘Well, then, now I can serve her, thank Heaven, and I will! I will write to Anderson to engage Scotland, and I will attack the East Indies myself!’” Nor was Edmund Burke less zealous than his old enemy. Protesting that for personal friends the subscription ought to be five guineas instead of one, he asked for but one copy of ‘Camilla’ in return for twenty guineas which he sent on behalf of himself, his wife, his dead brother Richard, and the son for whom he was in mourning. In the same spirit, three Misses Thrale order ten sets of the book. As we glance down the pages of the list, we meet with most of the survivors of the old Blue Stockings, with Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Montagu, and Hannah Moore. There, too, are many literary women of other types: Anna Barbauld, Amelia Alderson, afterwards Mrs. Opie, Mary Berry, Maria Edgeworth, Sophia and Harriet Lee.[[115]] There the incomparable Jane Austen, then a girl of twenty, pays tribute to a passed mistress of her future art. There also figure the names of many of the writer’s former colleagues in the royal household. Even Mrs. Schwellenberg is on the list. Perhaps, as the book was to be dedicated by permission to the Queen, this was almost a matter of course. But the subscription was, in fact, a testimonial to a general favourite from hundreds of attached friends, some of whom cared little for literature; as well as from a crowd of distant admirers, who regarded her as the most eminent female writer of her time.
The first parcel of ‘Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth,’ reached Bookham on an early day in July, 1796; and Madame d’Arblay at once set off for Windsor to present copies to the King and Queen. Immediately on her arrival, she was admitted to an audience of the Queen, during which the King entered to receive his share of the offering. The excellent monarch was in one of his most interrogative moods, and particularly curious to learn who had corrected the proofs of the volumes before him. His flattered subject confessed that she was her own reader. ‘Why, some authors have told me,’ cried he, ‘that they are the last to do that work for themselves! They know so well by heart what ought to be, that they run on without seeing what is. They have told me, besides, that a mere plodding head is best and surest for that work, and that the livelier the imagination, the less it should be trusted to.’ Madame had carried her husband with her to Windsor. They were detained there three days; and, as Walpole remarks with some emphasis, even M. d’Arblay was allowed to dine. Horace means, of course, that the General, who had the Cross of St. Louis, was invited to a place at Mdlle. Jacobi’s table. Just before dinner, Madame d’Arblay was called aside by her entertainer, and presented, in the name of their Majesties, with a packet containing a hundred guineas, as a ‘compliment’ in acknowledgment of her dedication.
On the following day, the Chevalier and his wife repaired to the Terrace. “The evening was so raw and cold that there was very little company, and scarce any expectation of the Royal Family; and when we had been there about half an hour the musicians retreated, and everybody was preparing to follow, when a messenger suddenly came forward, helter-skelter, running after the horns and clarionets, and hallooing to them to return. This brought back the straggling parties, and the King, Duke of York, and six Princesses soon appeared.... The King stopped to speak to the Bishop of Norwich[[116]] and some others at the entrance, and then walked on towards us, who were at the further end. As he approached, the Princess Royal said, ‘Madame d’Arblay, sir;’ and instantly he came on a step, and then stopped and addressed me, and after a word or two of the weather, he said, ‘Is that M. d’Arblay?’ and most graciously bowed to him, and entered into a little conversation, demanding how long he had been in England, how long in the country, etc. Upon the King’s bowing and leaving us, the Commander-in-Chief most courteously bowed also to M. d’Arblay; and the Princesses all came up to speak to me, and to curtsey to him, and the Princess Elizabeth cried, ‘I’ve got leave! and mamma says she won’t wait to read it first!’”