[59]. Ann Yearsley.
[60]. Macaulay.
CHAPTER V.
Mrs. Delany—Her Childhood—Her First Marriage—Swift—Dr. Delany—The Dowager Duchess of Portland—Mrs. Delany a Favourite at Court—Her Flower-Work—Miss Burney’s First Visit to Mrs. Delany—Meets the Duchess of Portland—Mrs. Sleepe—Crisp—Growth of Friendship with Mrs. Delany—Society at her House—Mrs. Delany’s Reminiscences—The Lockes of Norbury Park—Mr. Smelt—Dr. Burney has an Audience of the King and Queen—The King’s Bounty to Mrs. Delany—Miss Burney Visits Windsor—Meets the King and Queen—‘Evelina’—Invention Exhausted—The King’s Opinion of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Shakespeare—The Queen and Bookstalls—Expectation—Journey to Windsor—The Terrace—Dr. Burney’s Disappointment—Proposal of the Queen to Miss Burney—Doubts and Fears—An Interview—The Decision—Mistaken Criticism—Burke’s Opinion—A Misconception—Horace Walpole’s Regret—Miss Burney’s Journals of her Life at Court—Sketches of Character—The King and Queen—Mrs. Schwellenberg—The Queen’s Lodge—Miss Burney’s Apartments—A Day’s Duties—Royal Snuff—Fictitious Names in the Diary—The Princesses—A Royal Birthday—A Walk on the Terrace—The Infant Princess Amelia.
We have mentioned Mrs. Delany in our list of the more remarkable friends made by Miss Burney during the winter succeeding the publication of ‘Cecilia.’ Burke followed a fashion then prevalent when he pronounced this venerable lady the fairest model of female excellence in the previous age. Mrs. Delany owed her distinction in a great measure to the favour which she enjoyed with the royal family. Born in 1700, she was early instructed in the ways of a Court, having been brought up by an aunt who had been maid-of-honour to Queen Mary, and had received for her charge the promise of a similar employment in the household of Queen Anne. Having missed this promotion, the girl next fell into the hands of her uncle, George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, who, though celebrated by Pope as ‘the friend of every Muse,’ was not gentleman enough to treat his brother’s child with decent consideration. He forced Mary Granville, at seventeen, into a marriage with Alexander Pendarves, a Cornish squire near sixty, of drunken habits and morose manners, who sought the match chiefly to disappoint his expectant heir. After a few years, this worthy died of a fit, to the great relief of all belonging to him, but, unfortunately for his wife, without having made the provision for her which, to do him justice, he appears to have intended. Some time later the widow paid a visit to Ireland, where she became acquainted with Dean Swift, and his intimate associate, Dr. Patrick Delany, who was famed as a scholar and preacher. After her return, Swift exchanged occasional letters with her so long as he retained his reason. In 1743, Dr. Delany, then himself a widower, came over to England to offer himself to her in marriage. She accepted him, in spite of her family, whose high stomach rose against a mésalliance with an Irish parson. Their influence, however, was subsequently used to procure for Delany the deanery of Down. On his death, which occurred in 1768, Mrs. Delany settled in London, and, at the time when Miss Burney was introduced to her, had a house in St. James’s Place. Her most intimate friend was the old Duchess of Portland, with whom she regularly spent the summer at her Grace’s dower house of Bulstrode. There she was presented to George III. and his Queen, both of whom conceived a strong regard for her. The King called her his dearest Mrs. Delany, and in 1782 commissioned Opie to paint her portrait, which was placed at Hampton Court.[[61]]
While Frances Burney was having her first interview with Mrs. Delany, the Dowager Duchess of Portland condescended to appear upon the scene. This exalted personage, we are given to understand, had a natural aversion to female novel-writers, but, at her friend’s request, consented to receive homage from the author of ‘Cecilia.’ Her curiosity, in fact, got the better of her pride. Before her arrival, the conversation turned on the flower-work for which Mrs. Delany was famous among her acquaintances. This was a kind of paper mosaic, invented by the old lady, and practised by her until her eyesight failed. Some specimens of it were thought worthy of being offered, as a tribute of humble duty, to Queen Charlotte. The admiration freely bestowed on this trumpery, and the doubtful reception accorded to literary merit in a woman, illustrate the tone which prevailed in the highest society a hundred years ago. To cut out bits of coloured paper, and paste them together on the leaf of an album so as to resemble flowers, was considered a wonderful achievement even for a paragon of her sex. To have written the best work of imagination that had proceeded from a female pen was held to confer only an equivocal title to eminence. The Duchess, however, exerted herself to be civil. ‘She was a simple woman,’ says Walpole; but she did her best. She joined Mrs. Delany in recalling the characters that had pleased them most in ‘Cecilia;’ she dwelt on the spirit of the writing, the fire in the composition, and, ‘with a solemn sort of voice,’ declared herself gratified by the morality of the book, ‘so striking, so pure, so genuine, so instructive.’ Fanny, always impressed by grandeur, eager after praise, thankful for notice, was charmed with these compliments. She found her Grace’s manner not merely free from arrogance, but ‘free also from its mortifying deputy, affability.’ Yet the worship of rank, which belonged to that age, was, in little Miss Burney, always subordinate to better feelings. In her eyes the dignified visitor appeared by no means so interesting as her hostess.[[62]] Nor was it any air of courtliness that attracted her in Mrs. Delany, but a simple domestic association. Though not a person of genius, or, it should seem, of any extraordinary cultivation, this veteran of English and Irish society had preserved an unsullied, gentle, kindly spirit which showed itself in her face and carriage. Fanny could not remember to have seen so much sweetness of countenance in anyone except her own grandmother, Mrs. Sleepe. She at once began to trace, or to imagine, a resemblance between ‘that saint-like woman’ and her new friend, and gave herself up to the tenderness which the current of her thoughts excited.
Besides this similarity, she bethought her of another recollection which she could with propriety impart to the ladies before her. She had often heard Mr. Crisp speak of his former intercourse with the Duchess and Mrs. Delany. The latter, she learned on inquiry, had been chiefly intimate with Crisp’s sisters; but the Duchess had known Crisp himself well, and was curious to learn what had become of so agreeable and accomplished a man. Her questions gave the shy, silent Fanny a theme on which she could enlarge with animation. ‘I spared not,’ she writes, ‘for boasting of my dear daddy’s kindness to me.’ The accounts she had received from the Crisp family, she told Mrs. Delany, had first made her desire the acquaintance that day commenced. She ran on to relate the story of Crisp’s disappearance, painted his way of life in his retreat, and entertained the company with a description of Chesington Hall, its isolated and lonely position, its ruinous condition, its nearly inaccessible roads, its quaint old pictures, and straight long garden paths.[[63]] Her flow of spirits banished all reserve, and that evening laid the foundations of a friendship that partly consoled her for the death of Crisp and the desertion of Mrs. Thrale.
The attachment between Mrs. Delany and the favourite of Chesington and Streatham grew up rapidly. The entries in Fanny’s Diary show that she very soon became a constant visitor in St. James’s Place. She is flattered at being so much in favour there as to find its mistress always eager to fix a time for their next and next meeting. Yet, while profuse in praise of her venerable friend, she dwells more on the qualities of the old lady’s heart than on any accomplishments of mind or manner; she loves even more than she admires her; possibly some touches of high-breeding were lost on the music-master’s daughter; at any rate, the first impression abides with her, and in the noted pattern of antique polish and taste[[64]] she sees always the image of the departed Mrs. Sleepe.
Except in the presence of her young grand-niece Mary Port,[[65]] Mrs. Delany’s house had little charm of liveliness. The chief persons that frequented it belonged to the same generation as the Duchess of Portland, who spent most of her evenings there. A sombre figure in that peculiar assembly was Lady Wallingford, the impoverished widow of a gaming peer, and a daughter of the speculator Law. This lady, who never opened her lips, invariably appeared in full mourning dress, wearing a black silk robe, a hoop, long ruffles, a winged cap, and other appendages of an attire that even then was obsolete. Another visitor was the Countess of Bute, wife of George III.’s early favourite, and daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The elderly wit Horace Walpole often joined a circle in which his old-fashioned pleasantry was still received with the old applause. Fanny, who had met him elsewhere, thought that he never showed to such advantage as when surrounded by those stately dowagers. And while Horace, and most of the other callers, had, more or less, the air of having outlived their age, the lady to whom they paid their respects had passed the better portion of her life in a still more remote period. She encouraged Miss Burney to turn over Swift’s letters to her; and her most interesting anecdotes related to the days of the Dean, and Pope, and Young.