Mr. and Mrs. Locke were latterly added to this set; which they were truly formed to draw to a climax of social perfection.
But a lamented, though not personal or family event, which occurred at the end of this summer, must here be recorded, with some detail of circumstance; as it proved, in its consequences, by no means unimportant to the history of Dr. Burney.
The venerable Mrs. Delany was suddenly bereft of the right noble friend who was the delight of her life, the Duchess Dowager of Portland. That honoured and honourable lady had quitted town for her dowry mansion of Bulstrode Park. Thither she had just most courteously invited this Memorialist; who had spent with her Grace and her beloved friend, at the fine dwelling of the former at Whitehall, nearly the last evening of their sojourn in town, to arrange this intended summer junction. A letter of Mrs. Delany’s dictation had afterwards followed to St. Martin’s-street, fixing a day on which a carriage, consigned by her Grace to Mrs. Delany’s service, was to fetch the new visitor. But, on the succeeding morning, a far different epistle, written by the Amanuensis of Mrs. Delany, brought the mournful counter-tidings of the seizure, illness, and decease, of the valuable, generous, and charming mistress of Bulstrode Park.
Mrs. Delany, as soon as possible, was removed back to St. James’s Place; in a grief the most touchingly profound, though the most edifyingly resigned.
This was a loss for which, as Mrs. Delany was fifteen years the senior, no human calculation had prepared; and what other has the human Mathematician? Her condition in life, therefore, as well as her heart, was assailed by this privation; and however inferior to the latter was the former consideration, the conflict of afflicted feelings with discomfitted affairs, could not but be doubly oppressive: for though from the Duchess no pecuniary loan was accepted by Mrs. Delany, unnumbered were the little auxiliaries to domestic economy which her Grace found means to convey to St. James’s Place.
But now, even the house in that place, though already small for the splendid persons who frequently sought there to pay their respects to the Duchess, as well as to Mrs. Delany, became too expensive for her means of supporting its establishment.
The friendship of the high-minded Duchess for Mrs. Delany had been an honour to herself and to her sex, in its refinement as well as in its liberality. Her superior rank she held as a bauble, her superior wealth as dross, save as they might be made subservient towards equalizing in condition the chosen companion, with whom in affection all was already parallel.
To see them together, offered a view of human excellence delightful to contemplate. They endeared existence to each other, and only what was participated seemed to be enjoyed by either. And they each possessed so much understanding, cultivation, taste, and spirit, that their mutual desire to procure and to give pleasure to each other, operated not less as a spur to their improvement, even at this late period of life, than as a delight to their affections. In sentiment and opinion their converse had the most unrestrained openness; but in manner, a superior respect in Mrs. Delany was never to be vanquished by the utmost equalizing efforts of the Duchess: it was a respect of the heart, grafted upon that of the old school; and every struggle to dislodge it only proved, by its failure, the unshakeable firmness of its basis. The Duchess, therefore, was forced to content herself with wearing an easy cheerfulness of freedom, that flung off all appearance of seeming aware of this reverence; but which she accompanied with a cherishing delicacy, that made her watchful of every turn of countenance, every modulation of voice, and every movement or gesture, that might indicate any species of desire for something new, altered, or any way attainable for the advantage or pleasure of the friend whom she most loved to honour.
What a blank was a breach such as this of an intercourse so tender, and at an age so advanced! Religion alone could make it supportable; and to that alone can be attributed the patient sweetness with which Mrs. Delany met every consolation that could be offered to her by her still existing ties, Lady Bute, Lady Bristol, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Sandford, &c. &c. &c.
But most eager amongst them, from the energy of her attachment, forth rushed her latest, newest, and last chosen friend, who, in another day or two, would have been at her side, on the very moment of this heavy deprivation. Fearfully, nevertheless, she came, every other consoler having priority of almost every species to plead for preference: but those chords of unison, which in sympathy alone include every claim, discarding, as dissonance, whatever would break in upon their harmony, had here struck from heart to heart with responsive tenderness; and what of merit preponderated in the scales of one, was balanced into fair equilibrium by venerating devotion in the other.