We learn, however, from the scanty notices belonging to this period, that the Chevalier was treated with consideration by the heads of his office, and that he and Madame kept their footing in Parisian society. ‘The society in which I mix,’ writes the lady, ‘when I can prevail with myself to quit my yet dearer fireside, is all that can be wished, whether for wit, wisdom, intelligence, gaiety, or politeness.’ She would resume, she adds, her old descriptions if she could only write more frequently, or with more security that she was not writing to the winds and the waves. Her worst distress was the rarity with which letters could be despatched, or travel either way, with anything like safety. At another time she tells her father: ‘I have never heard whether the last six letters I have written have as yet been received. Two of them were antiques that had waited three or four years some opportunity ... the two last were to reach you through a voyage by America.’ The very letter in which this is said lost its chance of being sent, and was not finished till a year later. Dr. Burney, in his fear of a miscarriage, finally gave up writing, and charged his family and friends to follow his example. Fanny had nothing to regret in her husband, except his being overworked and in poor health: her heart shrank from leaving him; yet her longing for England increased from year to year. Her visionary castles, she said, were not in the air, but on the sea.
In 1810 she had prepared everything for flight, when fresh rigours of the police obliged her to relinquish her design. In 1811 she had a dangerous illness, and was operated upon by the famous surgeon, Baron de Larrey, for a supposed cancer. In the summer of 1812, when Napoleon had set out on his Russian campaign, she obtained a passport for America, took ship with her son at Dunkirk, and landed at Deal. During the interval between her first and second attempts at crossing, all correspondence with England was prohibited on pain of death. One letter alone reached her, announcing in brief terms the death of the Princess Amelia, the renewed and hopeless derangement of the King, and the death of Mr. Locke.
[112]. Among other names, we find, besides those already mentioned, the Marquise de la Châtre, M. de Jaucourt, M. Sicard, the Princesse d’Hénin, De Lally Tollendal, Dumont.
[113]. A French inventor whom Fanny had met at Streatham.
[114]. How strong this prejudice continued to be was shown not long afterwards in a notable instance. Jane Austen’s father offered her ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to Cadell on November 1, 1797; the proposal was rejected by return of post, without an inspection of the manuscript, though Mr. Austen was willing to bear the risk of the publication.
[115]. Author of the ‘Canterbury Tales.’
[116]. Dr. Manners Sutton, then also Dean of Windsor, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
[117]. Lord Orford to Miss Berry, Aug. 16, 1796.
[118]. In ‘Northanger Abbey,’ which, though written in 1798, was not prepared for the press till 1803.