“To Madame D’arblay.
“Nov. 12th, 1808.
“My dear Fanny,
“The complaints made, in one of the two short notes which I have received, of letters never answered, Old Charles returns—as his account of family affairs he finds has never reached you. Indeed, for these last two or three years, I have had nothing good to say of own self; and I peremptorily charged all the rest of the family to say nothing bad on the subject of health: for I never understood the kindness of alarming distant friends with accounts of severe illness,—as we may be either recovered or dead before the information reaches them.
“I wrote you an account of my excursion to Bristol Hotwells: but I had not been returned to Chelsea more than three days, before I had an alarming seizure in my left hand, which neither heat, friction, nor medicines could subdue. It felt perfectly asleep; in a state of immoveable torpor. My medical friends would not tell me what this obstinate numbness was; but I discovered by their prescriptions, and advice as to regimen, that it was neither more nor less than a paralytic affection; and, near Christmas, it was pronounced to be a Bath case. On Christmas eve, I set out for that City, extremely weak and dispirited: the roads terrible, and almost incessant torrents of rain all the way. I was five days on the journey; I took Fanny Phillips with me, and we had excellent apartments on the South Parade, which is always warm when any sun shines. I put myself under the care of Dr. Parry, who, having resided, and practised physic at Bath more than forty years, must, cæteris paribus, know the virtues and vices of Bath waters better than the most renowned physicians in London. To give them fair play, I remained three months in this City; and I found my hand much more alive, and my general health very considerably amended. But, I caught so violent a fresh cold in my journey home, that it was called what the French style a Fluxion de poitrine, and I was immediately confined to my bed at Chelsea, and unable to eat, sleep, or speak. Strict starvation was then ordered; but softened off into fish and asparagus as soon as possible, by our wise and good [Pg 380] Æsculapius, Sir Walter Farquhar: and now I am allowed poultry and game, under certain restrictions, and find myself tolerably well again. All this tedious account of own self should still have been suppressed, but that I feared it might reach you by some other means, and give you greater alarm; I determined, therefore, to tell you the truth, the whole truth, &c., with my own paw: being able, at the same time, to write you that, cough excepted, which returns with cold weather, I passed last summer more free from complaint than I have passed any for many preceding years. And now it is time to say something of your other kindred, whose names you languish, you say, to see.
“I have forgotten to mention that, during my invalidity at Bath, I had an unexpected visit from your ci-devant Streatham friend, of whom I had lost sight for more than ten years. When her name was sent in, I was much surprised, but desired she might be asked to follow it: and I received her as an old friend with whom I had spent much time very happily, and never wished to quarrel. She still looks well, but is grave, and seems to be turned into candour itself: though she still says good things, and writes admirable notes, and, I am told, letters. We shook hands very cordially; and avoided any allusion to our long separation and its cause. Her caro sposo still lives; but is such an object, from the gout, that the account of his sufferings made me pity him sincerely. He wished, she told me, to see his old friend; and, un beau matin, I could not refuse compliance with this wish. I found him in great pain, but very glad to see me. The old rancour, or ill-will, excited by our desire to impede the marriage, is totally worn away. Indeed, it never could have existed, but from her imprudence in betraying to him that proof of our friendship for her, which ought never to have been regarded as spleen against him, who, certainly, nobody could blame for accepting a gay rich widow.—What could a man do better?[83]”
It is well worthy of notice, and greatly in favour of the Bath waters for paralytic affections, that Dr. Burney never had a return of his alarming seizure of the hand; and never to the end of his life, which was yet prolonged several years, had any other paralytic attack.
It was during this residence at Bath that Dr. Burney made his last will; in which, after settling his various legacies, he left his two eldest daughters, Esther and Frances, his residuary legatees; and nominated his sons, Captain James Burney and Dr. Charles Burney, his executors.
DR. BURNEY’S MEMOIRS.
It was here, also, after a cessation of twenty-four years, that the Doctor recurred to his long dormant scheme of writing his own Memoirs.
If, at the date of its design and commencement, in 1782, his plan had been put into execution, according to the nobly independent ideas, and widely liberal intention of its projection, few are the individual narratives of a private life in the last century, that could have exhibited a more expansive, informing, general, or philosophical view of society than those of Dr. Burney.
But, in 1807, though the uncommon powers of his fine mind were still unimpaired for conversation or enjoyment, his frame had received a blow, and his spirits a suspensive shock, that caused a marked diminution of his resources for composition.
His imagination, hitherto the most vivid, even amidst sorrow, calamity, nay care, nay sickness, nay age, was now no longer, as heretofore, rambling abroad and at will for support and renovation. A fixed object, as he expressed himself in various letters of that date, had seized, occupied, absorbed it. The alarm excited by a paralytic attack is far more baneful than its suffering; for every rising dawn, and every darkening eve look tremblingly for its successor; and the sword of Damocles, as he mournfully declared, seemed eternally waving over his head.