Fanny's First Novel

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Mrs. Burney would be fully justified in feeling cross with her, not being aware of the fact that another young man, compared with whom Thomas Barlowe was as the dust of the ground, was burning, with an ardour of which Thomas was incapable, to take her to himself and provide for her in a style undreamt of in the Poultry.

But the worst of the matter was that she could not let her stepmother into this secret. She could not say that she was engaged to marry Signor Rauzzini, and she might leave herself open to the gravest rebuke for having listened to his protestations of devotion without obtaining the consent of either of her parents.

And through all this tangle of reflections there ran the silken thread of consciousness that she was no longer the Fanny Burney who was regarded by her stepmother as the dunce, but Fanny Burney the writer of “Evelina,” to whom the most critical review had devoted a full column of adulation!

That was what made her position so anomalous; and it was because she took the happenings of the previous days to heart that she went to bed with a shocking headache, and after a sleepless night was found on the verge of a fever. She was suffering from suppressed secrets; but the doctor did not know this. He prescribed James's Powders; and when these should have done all that they were meant to do—a small part of all that Dr. James and Mr. Newbery affirmed they would do—a change into the country.

But several weeks had passed before she was strong enough to start on the latter and most essential portion of the prescription, and found herself in her own room in Mr. Crisp's isolated house at Chessington.

Meantime, of course, she had no further news of the book, and she remained unconfessed, so far as the secret of its publication was concerned. Her sisters did not so much as mention its name or the name of Thomas Barlowe, so cleverly had they diagnosed the nature of her malady and so tactfully did they try to hasten her recovery.

Her old friend Mr. Crisp had been her guide since her childhood. She always alluded to him as her second Daddy—so far as paternal influence was concerned she might have given him the foremost place. He it was who had led her on to embody in letters to him the daily incidents of her life, thus unconsciously setting the loom, as it were, in which “Evelina” was to be woven. He it was who became her teacher and her critic, and it was possibly because she feared his criticism of her work that she refrained from making a confidant of him from the first. She felt that she could face the public and the reviewers—it did not matter how they might receive the book, but she was too timid to submit it to the mature judgment of the man who had first put a pen in her hand. It was not on her own account that she refrained from giving him a chance of reading her book, but on his: she knew how hurt he would be if he found her book to be an indifferent one, and whether indifferent or not, how angry he would be if people did not buy it by the thousand.

Now, however, that she found herself alone with him, she made up her mind to tell him all about it. She would choose her own time for doing this; but it would certainly be done before she returned to St. Martin's Street.

But on the second day after her arrival at Ches-sington a parcel came for her, addressed by Susy. On opening it, she found it to contain two volumes of “Evelina.” The letter that was enclosed told her that Cousin Edward had called at the Orange Coffee House and found that a set had been left there at the instance of Mr. Lowndes, addressed to Mr. Grafton. Of these, Lottie had read the first two, which were now sent on to the author, but the third she had not finished, and hoped that Fanny would not mind her detaining it for a few days longer.

This was really the first glimpse that the author had of her book in its binding. She had, in the name of Mr. Grafton, requested Mr. Lowndes to send a set of the volumes to the Orange Coffee House. But that was nearly three months ago, and until now Mr. Lowndes appeared not to have thought it worth his while to comply with the request. Now, however, it seemed to have occurred to him that the author of a book that everyone was talking about might be worth conciliating, and so he had directed a set of volumes to the Coffee House.