The Doctor truly revered in Mrs. Carter the rare union of humility with learning, and of piety with cheerfulness. He frequently, and always with pleasure, conveyed her to or from her home, when they visited the same parties; and always enjoyed those opportunities in comparing notes with her, on such topics as were not light enough for the large or mixed companies which they were just seeking, or had just left: topics, however, which they always treated with simplicity; for Mrs. Carter, though natively more serious, and habitually more studious than Dr. Burney, was as free from pedantry as himself.
By temperance of life and conduct, activity of body, and equanimity of mind, she nearly reached her 90th year in such health and strength as to be able to make morning calls upon her favourite friends, without carriage, companion, or servant. And with all her modest humility upon her personal acquirements, she had a dignified pride of independence, that invested her with the good sense to feel rather exalted than ashamed, at owing her powers of going forth to her own unaided self-exertion.
And Sixth, the man who, once the most accomplished of his race, had for half his life loved the Doctor with even passionate regard—Mr. Greville.
All these sad, and truly saddening catastrophes were unknown, in their succession, to the Memorialist; whom they only reached in the aggregate of their loss, when, after a long, unexplained, and ill-boding silence, Dr. Burney imposed upon himself the hard task of announcing the irremediable affliction he had sustained through these reiterated and awful visitations of death. And then, to spare his worn and harassed sensibility any development of his feelings, he thus summed up the melancholy list in one short paragraph:
“Time,” he says, “has made sad havoc amongst my dearest friends of late——Twining!——Dolly Young; Mr. Coxe; Lord Macartney; Lady Mary [Pg 343] Duncan;—poor Elizabeth Carter a few months ago;—Mr. Greville only a few weeks!”
And, kindly, then to lighten the grief he knew he must inflict by a catalogue that included Mr. Twining and Dolly Young, he hastens to add:
“Mr., Mrs., and Miss[69] Locke, however; Mrs. Angerstein; Mrs. Crewe; Miss Cambridge; Mrs. Garrick; Lady Templetown; Lady Keith, ci-devant Miss Thrale; the Marchioness of Thomond, ci-devant Miss Palmer; Mrs. Waddington; and many more of your most faithful votaries, still live, and never see me without urgent inquiries after you. Your dear Mrs. Locke, who has had a dreadful fit of illness, and losses enough to break so tender a heart, is perfectly recovered at last; and, I am told, is as well, and as sweet and endearing a character to her friends as ever.”
He then permits himself to go back to one parting phrase:
“But though, in spite of age and infirmities, I have lately more than doubled the number of friends I have lost—the niches of those above-mentioned can never be filled!”
From this time he reverted to them no more.