“Hetty seems a good deal more lively than she used to appear at Paris; whether it is that her spirits are better, or that the great liveliness of the inhabitants made her appear grave there by comparison, I know not: but she was there remarkable for being sérieuse, and is here for being gay and lively. She is a most sweet girl. My sister Fanny is unlike her in almost everything, yet both are very amiable, and love each other as sincerely as ever sisters did. The characteristics of Hetty seem to be wit, generosity and openness of heart: Fanny’s—sense, sensibility, and bashfulness, and even a degree of prudery. Her understanding is superior, but her diffidence gives her a bashfulness before company with whom she is not intimate, which is a disadvantage to her. My eldest sister shines in conversation, because, though very modest, she is totally free from any mauvaise honte: were Fanny equally so, I am persuaded she would shine no less. I am afraid that my eldest sister is too communicative, and that my sister Fanny is too reserved. They are both charming girls—des filles comme il y en a peu.”
Burney’s second marriage took place not long after the return of Esther and Susanna from Paris. His choice on this occasion was an intimate friend of the first Mrs. Burney, whom she succeeded after an interval of six years. This lady was the widow of Mr. Stephen Allen, a merchant of Lynn, and by him the parent of several children. The young Allens had been playmates of the young Burneys. If not equal in mind or person to the adored Esther Sleepe, Mrs. Allen was a handsome and well-instructed woman, and proved an excellent stepmother to Fanny and her sisters, as well as an admirable wife to their father. For some reason or other, the nature of which does not very clearly appear, it was judged desirable that not only the engagement between the widow and widower should be kept secret, but that their wedding should be celebrated in private. They were married some time in the spring of 1768, at St. James’s, Piccadilly, by the curate, an old acquaintance of the bridegroom, their intention being confided to three other friends only. Crisp, who was one of these, had clearly no mind that Burney’s new connection should put an end to their alliance, or deprive himself of the relief which the visits of the widower and his children had afforded to the monotony of his retirement. The freshly married couple carried their secret and their happiness ‘to the obscure skirts of the then pathless, and nearly uninhabited Chesington Common, where Mr. Crisp had engaged for them a rural and fragrant retreat, at a small farm-house in a little hamlet a mile or two from Chesington Hall.’
The secret, we are further told, as usual in matrimonial concealments, was faithfully preserved for a time by careful vigilance, and then escaped through accident. Betrayed by the loss of a letter, Mrs. Burney came openly to town to be introduced to her husband’s circle, and presently took her place at the head of his household in Poland Street. The young people on both sides accepted their new relationships with pleasure. The long-deferred scheme of sending Fanny and her youngest sister to Paris was now finally abandoned. Susanna undertook to instruct Fanny in French, and Charlotte was put to school in Norfolk. For some years the united families spent their summer holidays at Lynn, where Mrs. Burney had a dower-house. But, whether in town or country, Frances and Susanna were specially devoted to each other. Susan alone was Fanny’s confidante in her literary attempts.
As the latter’s age increased, her passion for writing became more confirmed. Every scrap of white paper that could be seized upon without question or notice was at once covered with her manuscript. She was not long in finding out that her turn was mainly for story-telling and humorous description. The two girls laughed and cried together over the creations of the elder’s fancy, but the native timidity of the young author, and still more, perhaps, her father’s low estimate of her capacity, made her apprehend nothing but ridicule if what she scribbled were disclosed to others. She worked then under the rose, imposing the strictest silence on her faithful accomplice. When in London, she plied her pen in a closet up two pair of stairs, that was appropriated to the younger children as a playroom. At Lynn, she would shut herself up to write in a summer-house, which went by the name of ‘The Cabin.’ Yet all her simple precautions could not long elude the suspicion of her sharp-sighted stepmother. The second Mrs. Burney was a bustling, sociable person, who did not approve of young ladies creeping out of sight to study; though herself fond of books, and, as we learn, a particular admirer of Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey,’ then recently published, she was a matron of the period, and could not tolerate the idea of a young woman under her control venturing on the disesteemed career of literature. The culprit, therefore, was seriously and frequently admonished to check her scribbling propensity. Some morsels of her compositions, falling into the hands of Mrs. Burney, appear to have added point to the censor’s remarks. Fanny was warned not to waste time and thought over idle inventions; and she was further cautioned, and not unreasonably, according to the prevailing notions of the day, as to the discredit she would incur if she came before the public as a female novelist. The future author of ‘Cecilia’ was only too ready to assent to this view, and to cry peccavi. She bowed before her stepmother’s rebukes, and prepared herself inwardly for a great act of sacrifice. Seizing an opportunity when her father was at Chesington, and Mrs. Burney was in Norfolk, ‘she made over to a bonfire, in a paved play-court, her whole stock’ of prose manuscripts.
The fact of the auto da fé rests on the authority of the penitent herself: her niece and biographer, Mrs. Barrett, adds that Susanna stood by, weeping at the pathetic spectacle; but this is perhaps only a legendary accretion to the tale. It seems certain that Fanny fell into error, when, long years afterwards, she wrote of the incident as having occurred on her fifteenth birthday.[[11]] Fanny was never very careful about her dates, and she was unquestionably more than fifteen when her father’s second marriage took place. In spite of this, we are not warranted in questioning Mrs. Barrett’s express statement that her aunt’s famous Diary was commenced at the age of fifteen. Though of that portion of the Diary which belongs to the years preceding the publication of ‘Evelina,’ only the opening passages have been printed, and though the style of these may seem to betoken a more advanced age than that mentioned, the whole was before the biographer when she wrote, and the contents must have spoken for themselves.
Frances Burney had burned her papers with the full intention of breaking off altogether the baneful habit of authorship. Doubtless, however, she did not consider that her resolution of total abstinence debarred her from keeping a journal; and she was not long in discovering that, however steadfastly she might resist the impulses of her fancy, its wings were always pluming themselves for a flight. The latest-born of her literary bantlings committed to the flames had been a tale setting forth the fortunes and fate of Caroline Evelyn, who was feigned to be the daughter of a gentleman by a low-bred wife, and, after the death of her father, to contract a clandestine marriage with a faithless baronet, and then to survive her husband’s desertion of her just long enough to give birth to a female child. The closing incident of this tragic and tragically-destroyed production left a lively impression on the mind of the writer. Her imagination dwelt on the singular situations to which the infant, as she grew up, would be exposed by the lot that placed her between the rival claims of her vulgar grandmother and her mother’s more refined connections, and on the social contrasts and collisions, at once unusual and natural, which the supposed circumstances might be expected to occasion. In this way, from the ashes of the ‘History of Caroline Evelyn’ sprang Frances Burney’s first published work, ‘Evelina; or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World.’ We do not know how long a time expired from the burning of her manuscripts before Fanny relapsed into the sin of fiction-scribbling; but the flood of her invention probably rose the faster for being pent up. Irresistibly and almost unconsciously, she tells us, the whole story of ‘Evelina’ was laid up in her memory before a paragraph had been committed to paper. Even when her conscience had ceased to struggle, her opportunities for jotting down the ideas which haunted her were few and far between. She had to write in stolen moments, for she was under the eye of her stepmother. The demands on her time, too, became greater than they had been when Caroline Evelyn was her heroine. Her Diary occupied a large part of her leisure, and her hours of regular employment were presently lengthened by the work of transcribing for her father.
Charles Burney was now rising to eminence in his profession. To be Master of the King’s Band was the highest honour then within the reach of a musician, and Burney had been promised this appointment, though the promise was broken in favour of a candidate supported by the Duke of York.[[12]] In the summer of 1769, the Duke of Grafton was to be installed as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. The poet Gray wrote the Installation Ode. Burney proposed to set it to music, and to conduct the performance at the ceremony, intending, at the same time, to take the degree of Doctor of Music at Cambridge. The Chancellor Elect accepted his offer as one which the composer’s rank well entitled him to make; but it soon appeared that the ideas of the two men as to the relative value of money and music were widely different. His Grace would consent to allow for the expense of singers and orchestra only one-half the amount which the conductor considered due to the occasion and his own importance. Burney in disgust threw up his commission, and, without loss of time, repaired to the sister University for his doctorate, which was conferred on him in June, 1769; the exercise produced by him as his qualification was so highly thought of that it was repeated three years successively at choral meetings in Oxford, and was afterwards performed at Hamburg under C. P. E. Bach.
Dr. Burney’s new title did not appear on his door-plate till a facetious friend exhorted him to brazen it. But, retiring as he was, the constitutional diffidence which his second daughter inherited was now giving way in him before the consciousness of ability and attainments, and the irresistible desire to establish a lasting reputation. In the latter part of the same year, he ventured anonymously into print with his first literary production. Ten years earlier, the return of Halley’s Comet at the time predicted seems to have given him an interest in astronomy, which he retained through life. There was again a comet visible in 1769, and this drew from him an Essay on Comets, to which he prefixed a translation from the pen of his first wife, Esther, of a letter by Maupertuis.[[13]] But this pamphlet was only an experiment, and being obviously the work of an amateur, attracted little notice. Having once tried his ’prentice hand at authorship, he fixed his attention on his proper subject, and devoted himself to his long-projected ‘History of Music.’
He had for many years kept a commonplace book, in which he laid up notes, extracts, abridgments, criticisms, as the matter presented itself. So large was the collection thus accumulated that it seemed to his family ‘as if he had merely to methodize his manuscripts, and entrust them to a copyist, for completing his purpose.’ The copyist was at hand in his daughter Frances, who became his principal secretary and librarian. But, as the enterprise proceeded, the views of the historian expanded. Much information that would now be readily supplied by public journals or correspondence was then only to be obtained by personal investigation on the spot. Early in 1770, Dr. Burney had determined that it would be needful for him to undertake a musical tour through France and Italy. He started on this expedition in June of that year, and did not return until the following January. His absence gave Fanny a considerable increase of leisure and opportunity for indulging her own literary dreams and occupations. Her stepmother, as well as her father, seems to have left her at liberty, for during part of this interval, at least, the attention of Mrs. Burney was engaged in providing a better habitation for her husband.
The house in Poland Street had been found too small to accommodate the combined families. In addition to the children of their former marriages, there had been born to the parents a son, who was baptized Richard Thomas, and a daughter to whom they gave the name of Sarah Harriet. Mrs. Burney now found, and having found, proceeded to purchase and furnish, a large house in the upper part of Queen Square, Bloomsbury, which then enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the Hampstead and Highgate Hills. The new abode had once belonged to Alderman Barber, the friend of Dean Swift; and the Burneys pleased themselves with the thought that there the great saturnine humourist had been wont sometimes to set the table in a roar. The removal was effected while the Doctor was still on the Continent. On his arrival in London, he was welcomed to the new home by his wife and children, and by the never-failing Mr. Crisp. We hear, however, but little of this house in Queen Square, and even less of Fanny’s doings there. Her father had scarcely time to become acquainted with it before he was off to Chesington, where he occupied himself for several weeks in preparing the journal of his tour for the press. All his daughters were pressed into the service of copying and recopying his manuscript, but the chief share of this labour fell upon the scribbling Fanny. The book, which was called ‘The Present State of Music in France and Italy,’ appeared in the season of 1771. Thenceforth his friend Crisp’s retreat became Burney’s constant resort when he had literary work in hand. A further production of his pen, dealing with a matter of musical technique, came forth before the close of the same year. At the beginning of July, 1772, he set out on another tour, with the same object of collecting materials for his history, his route being now through Germany and the Netherlands. During this second pilgrimage, his family spent their time partly at Lynn, partly at Chesington; and Fanny, as we are told,—apparently on the authority of her unpublished Diaries—profiting by the opportunities which these visits afforded, then “gradually arranged and connected the disjointed scraps and fragments in which ‘Evelina’ had been originally written.” But, careful to avoid offence, “she never indulged herself with reading or writing except in the afternoon; always scrupulously devoting her time to needlework till after dinner.”