A Georgian Pageant

by Frank Frankfort Moore

She was paying no attention to him. Her eyes were fixed upon the group of men who were recovering their breath while they walked slowly toward her. The King was between his two physicians—not Physicians in Ordinary; just the contrary—the two physicians who had been summoned from Lincolnshire by some person in authority who possessed intelligence—it should surely be easy to identify such a man at the Court of George III—when, some months earlier, His Majesty gave signs of losing his mental balance. They were the Willises, father and son, the former a clergyman, who was therefore all the more fully qualified to deal with a mind diseased—such a case as was defined as needing more the divine than the physician. The King was between the father and his son, but neither of them was exercising any ostentatious or officious restraint upon him. One of them was smiling while he said some reassuring words to the Royal patient; the other was endeavouring to reassure little Miss Burney from a distance.

And it seemed that the intentions of both were realised, for His Majesty was smiling as benignly as was ever his wont, and little Miss Burney took her courage in both hands and boldly advanced to meet her Sovereign. (She had been for three years the Queen's “Dresser.”) But when they met, after the King had cried, “Why did you run away from me, Miss Burney?” it appeared that the process of reassuring the King had been but too effectually accomplished, for before the lady could frame a diplomatic reply to his inquiry, he had enwound her in his paternal arms and kissed her heartily on the cheek, greatly to her confusion and (she pretends) to her horror. The two doctors stood placidly by. They, poor things, being quite unaccustomed to the ways of the immediate entourage of the Court of George III—though they had doubtless heard something of the practices that prevailed at the Courts of His Majesty's lamented grandfather and great-grandfather—seemed under the impression that there was nothing unusual in this form of salutation. For all they knew it might be regarded as de rigueur between a monarch and the ladies of his consort's retinue. Even Dr. Willis, the divine, took a tolerant view of the transaction. He, as Miss Burney afterwards recorded, actually looked pleased!

But, of course, the prim little lady herself was overwhelmed—yes, at first; but soon her good sense came to her rescue. She seems to have come with extraordinary rapidity to the conclusion that the King was not so mad as she had believed him to be. Her train of reasoning was instinctive, and therefore correct: the King had put his arms about her and kissed her when he had the chance, therefore he could not be so mad after all.

In truth, however, Fanny Burney took the view of her treatment that any sensible modest young woman would take of it. She knew that the King, who had been separated for several months from the people whom he had been daily in the habit of meeting, had shown in the most natural way possible his delight at coming once more in contact with one of them.

And undoubtedly the homely old gentleman was delighted beyond measure to meet with some one belonging to his happy years—a pleasanter face than that of Mrs. Schwellenberg, the dreadful creature who had made Fanny Burney's life miserable. It is not conceivable that the King would have kissed Mrs. Schwellenberg if he had come upon her suddenly as he had upon Miss Burney. People prefer silver rather than iron links with a happy past. He was so overjoyed, that the divine and the physician in attendance soon became anxious. They could not know much of all that he talked about to Miss Burney. They were in the position of strangers suddenly introduced to a family circle, and understanding nothing of the little homely secrets—homely topics upon which all the members of the circle have laughed together for years.

They possibly could not see much sense in his long and rambling chat—it must have been largely in monologue—but they must have observed the face of the lady who was listening to him, and known from the expression which it wore that their patient was making himself intelligible. Only now and again they thought it prudent to check his exuberance. They must have been the most intelligent of men; and their names deserve to stand high in the annals of their country. At a time when the scientific treatment of the insane had not even begun to be formulated—when to be mentally afflicted meant to be on a level with felons and to be subjected to such repressive treatment as was afforded by the iron of the fetters and the hiss of the whipcord—at a time when a lust for office could make a statesman like Burke (a statesman who caused multitudes to weep in sympathy with his harangue on the sufferings of Marie Antoinette) refer to the King as having been “hurled by the Almighty from his throne” (in order to give the Opposition a chance of jumping into place and power over his prostrate body)—at such a time as this Dr. Willis and his two sons undertook the treatment of the King, and in the face of much opposition from the place-hunters in the Prince of Wales's pack, succeeded in restoring their patient to the palace which his happy nature had transformed into a home for every one dwelling under its roof.

They stood by for some time after the King had greeted Miss Burney; and when he began to speak to her of topics that had a purely domestic ring they showed their good taste, as well as their knowledge of the peculiarities of their “case,” by moving away to a little distance, signalling to their attendants to do the same. Their discrimination must have been highly appreciated by the King. The poor restless mind had long wanted such a good long talk with a sympathetic listener, who, he knew, could understand every allusion that he might make to the past. He yearned to talk and to hear of such things as some one living in a distant land looks forward to finding in a letter from home. The res angusta domi—that was what he was hungering for—the trivial things in which he delighted—the confidences on simple matters—the sly everyday jests, never acutely pointed even to the family circle, but absolutely pointless to every one outside, yet sounding so delightfully witty when repeated as a sign of a happy intimacy of the past!

Little Miss Burney had never imagined a scene like that in which she played an insignificant part at the moment, but one of enormous importance for posterity. She had, a few years before, been placed upon the porphyry pedestal which is reserved in England for the greatest woman writer of the generation. Seated there quite complacently, without reflecting upon the possibility of her pedestal becoming a trifle rickety, she had clasped her novel Evelina to her bosom, and received, without her head being in the least turned, the adulation—respectful in some cases, almost passionate in others—of the most notable men and women in the most intellectual and artistic society in England. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was not disposed to overrate the merits of any writer whom the world had praised, was kissing her hands, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan was kissing her feet; Sir Joshua Reynolds was kissing the hem of her garments; while Edmund Burke was weaving a tinsel crown of rhetoric for her shapely head; but there were others equally great at that time who seemed to think that only a nimbus could give the appropriate finish to the little personage on the pedestal. The marvellous story of her success has been often told. It is more easily told than understood in the present day, the fact being that fashion in fiction is the most ephemeral of all human caprices, and Fanny Burney was essentially a fashion. She followed up the marvellous success of Evelina, after an interval of four years, with the natural success of Cecilia, and, after another four years, she retired from the brilliant world into the obscurity of the palace—the palace wardrobe. She had visited Mrs. Delany, and had been introduced (not presented) to the King and Queen, and the office of Queen's Dresser—Keeper of the Robes was the stately designation of a very humble service—becoming vacant, it was offered to Fanny Burney and accepted by her, acting on the advice of her father, who most certainly hoped that his own interests as a musician, fully qualified to become leader of the Royal Band, would be materially advanced when his daughter should become one of the Household.

Reams of indignation have been published from time to time in respect of Dr. Burney's conduct in urging on his one brilliant daughter—the others were not brilliant, only mothers—to accept a post the duties of which could be discharged by any lady's maid with far more advantage to the Royal Consort than could possibly result from the ministrations of Fanny Burney. The world has been called on to bemoan the prudent indiscretion of the father, who did not hesitate to fling his gifted daughter's pen out of the window, so to speak, and thereby deprive the waiting world of some such masterpiece as Camilla—the novel which she published five years after her release from the burden of the Robes. There can be no doubt that the feeling which prevailed among the circle of the elect—the Reynoldses, the Burkes, and even the frigid Walpole—when it became known that Miss Burney's health was breaking down under the strain of her duties at the Court—she had about two hours' daily attendance of the most ordinary nature upon the Queen—was on the border of indignation. Every one affirmed that it was a disgrace for so lively a genius to be kept at the duties of a lady's maid. It was like turning the winner of the Oaks out to the plough. Edmund Burke, recalling his early approbation of the intentions of Dr. Burney in regard to his daughter, declared that he had never made so great a mistake in all his life; and we know that he made a few. These excellent people had no reason to speak otherwise than they did on this matter. All they knew was that the pen of the novelist who had given them so much pleasure had been (as they believed) idle for nearly nine years, five of which had been passed at the Court. That reflection was quite enough to rouse their indignation. But what can one say of the indignation on this point of a writer who actually made the fact of his being engaged on a review of the Diary of Fanny Burney—the incomparable Diary which she kept during her five years at Court—an excuse for turning the vials of his wrath upon her father, whose obstinacy gave her a chance of writing the most interesting chapter—the most accurate chapter—of History that was ever penned by man or woman?

Macaulay wrote in all the fullness of his knowledge of what Fanny Burney had written. He knew that for four years after she had published Cecilia her pen had been idle so far as fiction was concerned. He knew that for five years after her release from the thraldom of the Queen's closet she had published nothing; he himself felt it to be his duty to point out the comparative worthlessness of Camilla, the novel which she then gave to the world, not because she felt upon her the impulse of a woman of genius, but simply because she found herself in great need of some ready money. Macaulay does not disdain to go into the money question, showing (he fancies) how Dr. Burney had by his obstinacy deprived his gifted daughter of earning the large sum which she would assuredly have obtained by the writing of a novel in the time that she was compelled to devote to the Queen's toilette. He found it convenient to ignore the fact that of the fourteen years that elapsed between the publication of Cecilia and that of Camilla only five were spent at Court. Surely any born novelist could, without running a chance of imperilling a well-earned reputation by undue haste in the dialogue or by scamping the descriptive passages, contrive by dint of hard, but not over-hard, work to produce more than one complete romance within a space of nine years. Many ladies who are not born novelists have succeeded in surpassing this task without physical suffering.