The lively Princess, who was then twenty-six years of age, and had been concerned in bringing out a poem entitled the ‘Birth of Love,’ with engravings from designs by herself, intended to communicate that she had obtained permission to read ‘Camilla,’ though it had not yet been examined by her mother.
The subscribers to the new novel exceeded eleven hundred; but the number of copies printed was four thousand. Out of these only five hundred remained at the end of three months—a rate of sale considerably more rapid than that of ‘Cecilia’ had been. Macaulay mentions a rumour that the author cleared more than three thousand guineas by her work. This is not an improbable account; for Dr. Burney told Lord Orford within the first six weeks that about two thousand pounds had already been realized.[[117]] The material results were astonishing; yet ‘Camilla’ could not be considered a success. The ‘Picture of Youth’ had neither the freshness of ‘Evelina,’ nor the mature power of ‘Cecilia.’ It was wanting alike in simplicity and polish. By disuse of her art, the writer had lost touch with the public; by neglect of reading, she had gone back in literary culture. Hence it was generally felt that the charm which she had exercised was gone. The reviews were severe; new admirers appeared not; old friends found their faith a good deal tried. When the first demand was satisfied, there seems to have been no call for a fresh edition, though some years afterwards Miss Austen boldly coupled[[118]] ‘Camilla’ with ‘Cecilia’ as a ‘work in which most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world.’ When its five volumes were most sharply handled, brother Charles could console the chagrined author with the distich:
‘Now heed no more what critics thought ’em,
Since this you know, all people bought ’em.’
The composition of ‘Camilla’ has been blamed for the opposite faults of affectation and slovenliness. ‘Every passage,’ says Macaulay, ‘which the author meant to be fine is detestable; and the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be familiar.’ Other censors have observed that, while the rhetoric is inflated, the grammar is occasionally doubtful, and the diction sometimes barbarous. Now, it must be owned that the ordinary vocabulary of the Burneys was not remarkable for purity or elegance. In their talk and intimate letters, both the father and the daughters expressed themselves in the most colloquial forms, not seldom lapsing into downright slang. To give one instance only, the atrocious vulgarism of ‘an invite’ for ‘an invitation’ occurs in several parts of the Diary. When writing for the press, Dr. Burney guarded himself by the adoption of a wholly artificial style, that swelled, from time to time, into tedious magniloquence. Fanny was schooled for writing ‘Cecilia’ by the critical discussions of the Streatham circle, by much intercourse with Johnson, and by some study of style—chiefly the style of the ‘Ramblers’ and ‘Lives of the Poets.’ Having despatched her second novel, she ceased to be careful about literary questions. This indifference increased after her marriage. When describing the reception of ‘Camilla’ at Windsor, ‘the Queen,’ she writes, ‘talked of some books and authors, but found me wholly in the clouds as to all that is new.’ Her husband, insensible, of course, to the niceties of a foreign idiom, but apparently admiring pompous phraseology, conceived a relish for Dr. Burney’s style; and Madame, delighting to think her ‘dear father’ perfect, was pleased to place his English in the very first class.[[119]] The eloquence of ‘Camilla’ seems to mingle faint Johnsonian echoes with the stilted movement of the music-master’s prose; while too often the choice of words is left to chance. A recent editor of the two earlier novels has called attention to the numerous vulgarities of expression, not put into vulgar mouths, which occur in ‘Camilla.’ ‘People “stroam the fields,” or have “a depressing feel.”’ This editor suggests that Miss Burney’s five years at Court may have done much to spoil her English, remarking that ‘she lived at Windsor among hybrids.’ By ‘hybrids’ we suppose we are to understand equerries. But the equerries, if not possessing great culture, were, at any rate, gentlemen of good position. If they used the incriminated phrases why not also the personages of the novel? We take it, however, that ‘to stroam the fields’ is not a low phrase acquired by Fanny at Court, but a provincialism which she learned in her native county, where the verb to ‘stroam,’ or to ‘strome,’ was certainly in use a hundred years ago,[[120]] and is, we are assured, familiarly employed at the present day. We believe that Madame d’Arblay’s English was ruined, not by associating with Colonel Digby, or even Colonel Manners, but by neglect of reading, by retirement from lettered society, by fading recollections of Johnson, by untoward family influences, and by a strong hereditary tendency to run into fustian.
In October, 1796, Dr. Burney lost his second wife, who, after a prolonged period of ill-health, died at Chelsea Hospital. To prevent him from brooding over his bereavement, Madame d’Arblay induced her father to resume a poetical history of astronomy which he had begun some time before. This occupation amused him for some time, though in the end the poem, which ran to a great length, was destroyed unfinished.
Out of the profits made by his wife’s publication, M. d’Arblay built a small house on land leased to him by Mr. Locke at West Humble, near Dorking, and called it Camilla Cottage. If a family, as well as a nation, is happy that has no history, we must conclude that the d’Arblays lived very much at ease for some years after their removal to their new abode. When the excitement of planning, building, and taking possession is exhausted, Madame’s pen finds little to record, beyond the details of occasional interviews with the Queen and Princesses at Buckingham House. She wisely declines a proposal of Mrs. Crewe to make her directress of a weekly paper, which was to have been started, under the name of The Breakfast-Table, to combat the progress of Jacobinical ideas. Later on she abandons unwillingly a venture of a different kind. Still thirsting for dramatic success, she had written a comedy called ‘Love and Fashion;’ and towards the close of 1799 was congratulating herself on having it accepted by the manager of Covent Garden Theatre.[[121]] The piece was put into rehearsal early in the following spring; but Dr. Burney was seized with such dread of another failure, that, to appease him, his daughter and her husband consented to its being withdrawn. The compliance cost some effort: Fanny complained that she was treated as if she ‘had been guilty of a crime, in doing what she had all her life been urged to, and all her life intended—writing a comedy.’ ‘The combinations,’ she added, ‘for another long work did not occur to me: incidents and effects for a drama did.’
This was only a transient disappointment. In the first days of 1800 came a lasting sorrow, in the loss of Mrs. Phillips, who, since the autumn of 1796, had been living with her husband in Ireland, and who died immediately after landing in England on her way to visit her father.[[122]] But, except by this grief, the peace of Camilla Cottage was never interrupted so long as the husband and wife remained together. In her old age, Madame d’Arblay looked back to the first eight years of her married life as to a period of unruffled happiness.
Then occurred a crisis. The d’Arblays had borne poverty cheerfully, even joyfully, so long as any stretch of economy would enable them to keep within their income. The cost of living and the burden of taxation had begun to increase almost from the day of their marriage. One of the motives for bringing out ‘Camilla’ was the rise of prices, which had doubled within the preceding eighteen months. Hardly was Camilla Cottage occupied, when an addition to the window-tax compelled the owners to block up four of their new windows. The expense of building so much exceeded calculation that, after all bills were settled, the balance remaining from the foundress’s three thousand guineas produced only a few pounds of annual interest. In the spring of 1800, we read that the gardener has planted potatoes on every spot where they can grow, on account of the dreadful price of provisions. Towards the close of 1801, it is admitted that for some time previously they had been encroaching on their little capital, which was then nearly exhausted. As soon, therefore, as the preliminaries of peace were signed, M. d’Arblay determined to remove his family to France, hoping to recover something from the wreck of his fortune, and to obtain from the First Consul some allowance for half-pay as a retired officer. Crossing the Channel alone, in the first instance, the General involved himself in a double difficulty: he failed with the French Government by stipulating that he should not be required to serve against his wife’s country, while he had cut off his retreat by pledging himself at the English Alien Office not to return within a year. In this dilemma, he wrote to his wife to join him in Paris with their child. Madame d’Arblay obeyed the summons, amidst the anxious forebodings of her father, but with the full approval of the Queen, who granted her a farewell audience, admitting that she was bound to follow her husband.
Dr. Burney’s fears were more than justified by the event. His daughter left Dover a few days after the treaty was signed at Amiens. When she reached Paris, she found the city rejoicing at the conclusion of the war, yet worshipping Bonaparte, whose temper and attitude showed that the peace could not last. A reception by the First Consul, followed by a review, both of which Madame d’Arblay witnessed from an ante-chamber in the Tuileries, afforded striking evidence of the military spirit which animated everything: