Fanny's First Novel

by Frank Frankfort Moore

He spoke evidently under the impulse of a great excitement at first, not looking at anyone in particular—just skimming them all with his eyes as he paced the room. But he seemed gradually to recover himself as he talked, and he appeared to address his last words to his wife. This assisted her to recover herself also—a minute or so in advance of him.

“You seem to be sure that Fanny wrote it,” she said, when he had done. “Is it fair to condemn her before you make sure?”

Everyone looked at Mrs. Burney; but only her husband laughed.

“Condemn her—condemn her for having written the finest novel since Fielding?” he said, with the laugh still on his face. There was no laugh on hers; on the contrary, its expression was more serious than ever.

“A novel is a novel,” she said. “I told Mr. Crisp—but that was only about the reading of novels—the cleverer they are the more mischievous—dangerous—even the reading—I never dreamt of her going so far as to write one, clever or otherwise. But a novel is still a novel—she must have neglected her duties in the house, though I failed to observe it... and sending it to a bookseller without saying a word to us! Who would have believed that a young woman with her training—”

“It flashed across me when I read the verses addressed to myself at the beginning that she had asked my permission some months ago, and that I had given it—I did so laughing at the poor child's credulousness in believing that any bookseller would print it for her and pay her for the privilege—the privilege of making a thousand pounds out of her book.”

“What! are you serious?—a thousand pounds, did you say?”

“Mr. Lowndes will make more than a thousand pounds by the sale of the book—Hetty tells me that he only paid Fanny twenty for it.”

“What is the world coming to—a fortune in a single book! And we talked about her being portionless, when all the time she was more richly endowed than all the rest of the family; for if she has written one book, she can certainly write another equally remunerative. 'Perhaps she has another ready for the printers.”

Mrs. Burney was blessed with the capacity to look at matters, however artistic they might be, from the standpoint of the practical housekeeper. The mention of so sonorous a sum as a thousand pounds caused the scales of prejudice to fall from the eyes through which she had regarded the act of authorship, and at that instant she perceived that it should not be thought of as a delinquency but as a merit.