FANNY BURNEY TO MRS. PHILIPS.
August 20.
... O my beloved Susan, 'tis a refractory heart I have to deal with!—it struggles so hard to be sad—and silent—and fly from you entirely, since it cannot fly entirely to you. I do all I can to conquer it, to content it, to give it a taste and enjoyment for what is still attainable: but at times I cannot manage it, and it seems absolutely indispensable to my peace to occupy myself in anything rather than in writing to the person most dear to me upon earth!... If to you alone I show myself in these dark colours, can you blame the plan that I have intentionally been forming, namely, to wean myself from myself—to lessen all my affections—to curb all my wishes—to deaden all my sensations? This design, my Susan, I formed so long ago as the first day my dear father accepted my offered appointment: I thought that what demanded a complete new system of life, required, if attainable, a new set of feelings for all enjoyment of new prospects, and for lessening regrets at what were quitted, or lost. Such being my primitive idea, merely from my grief of separation, imagine but how it was strengthened and confirmed when the interior of my position became known to me!—when I saw myself expected by Mrs. Schwellenberg, not to be her colleague, but her dependent deputy! not to be her visitor at my own option, but her companion, her humble companion, at her own command! This has given so new a character to the place I had accepted under such different auspices, that nothing but my horror of disappointing, perhaps displeasing, my dearest father, has deterred me from the moment that I made this mortifying discovery, from soliciting his leave to resign.
But oh my Susan,—kind, good, indulgent as he is to me, I have not the heart so cruelly to thwart his hopes—his views—his happiness, in the honours he conceived awaiting my so unsolicited appointment. The queen, too, is all sweetness, encouragement, and gracious goodness to me, and I cannot endure to complain to her of her old servant. You see, then, my situation; here I must remain!—The die is cast, and that struggle is no more.—To keep off every other, to support the loss of the dearest friends, and best society, and bear, in exchange, the tyranny, the exigeance, the ennui, and attempted indignities of their greatest contrast,—this must be my constant endeavour.
Amongst my sources of unhappiness in this extraordinary case is, the very favour that, in any other, might counteract it—namely, that of the queen: for while, in a manner the most attractive, she seems inviting my confidence, and deigning to wish my happiness, she redoubles my conflicts never to shock her with murmurs against one who, however to me noxious and persecuting, is to her a faithful and truly devoted old servant. This will prevent my ever having my distress and disturbance redressed; for they can never be disclosed. Could I have, as my dear father conceived, all the time to myself, my friends, my leisure, or my own occupations, that is not devoted to my official duties, how different would be my feelings, how far more easily accommodated to my privations and sacrifices! Little does the queen know the slavery I must either resist or endure. And so frightful is hostility, that I know not which part is hardest to perform.
MADAME DE GENLIs DISCUSSED.
Windsor, Monday Evening.—Madame de la Fite, who calls upon me daily, though I am commonly so much engaged I can scarce speak to her for a moment, came to desire I would let her bring me M. Argant,[215] who was come to Windsor to show some experiment to the king.
Madame de la Fite has long pressed me with great earnestness to write to Madame de Genlis, whose very elegant little note to me I never have answered. Alas! what can I do? I think of her as of one of the first among women—I see her full of talents and of charms—I am willing to believe her good, virtuous, and dignified;—yet, with all this, the cry against her is so violent and so universal, and my belief in her innocence is wholly unsupported by proof in its favour, or any other argument than internal conviction, from what I observed of her conduct and manners and conversation when I saw her in London, that I know not how to risk a correspondence with her, till better able to satisfy others, as well as I am satisfied myself: most especially, I dare not enter into such an intercourse through Madame de la Fite, whose indiscreet zeal for us both would lead her to tell her successful mediation to everybody she could make hear her. Already she has greatly distressed me upon this subject. Not content with continual importunity to me to write, ever since my arrival, which I have evaded as gently as possible, to avoid giving her my humiliating reasons, she has now written Madame de Genlis word that I am here, belonging to the same royal household as herself; and then came to tell me, that as we were now so closely connected, she proposed our writing jointly, in the same letter.