“She has still a sense of the guilt that attaches to the writing of stories, though I am sure that no one in this house remembers it against her,” said Esther with a laugh, as Fanny's blushes increased. “But indeed I had not in my mind Mr. Crisp's advantage to her in this way, but only in regard to her correspondence. She has become quite an expert letter-writer since he induced her to send him her budget, and indeed I think that good letter-writing is as much of an accomplishment in these careless days as good singing—that is ordinary good singing—the good singing that we hear from some of father's pupils—Queenie Thrale, par exemple!”
“Your father is a good teacher, but the best teacher in the world cannot endow with a good singing-voice anyone who has not been so gifted by Nature,” said the elder lady. “'Tis somewhat different, to be sure, in regard to correspondence, and I do not doubt that Fanny's practice in writing to good Mr. Crisp will one day cause her to be regarded as one of the best letter-writers in the family, and that is something. It is a ladylike accomplishment, and one that is worth excelling in; it gives innocent pleasure to so many of her friends who live at a distance; and your father can always obtain plenty of franks, Mr. Charmier and Mr. Thrale are very obliging.”
Fanny was a little fidgety while her eldest sister and her stepmother were discussing her in a tone of indulgence which was more humiliating than open reprobation would have been. But she knew that the truth was, that from her earliest years she was looked on as the dunce of the family, and she was so morbidly self-conscious that she was quite ready to accept their estimate of her. The silent member of a musical family soon finds out how she is looked on by the others; not with unkindness—quite the contrary—but only as if she were to be slightly pitied for her deficiency. But she had a secret or two, the treasuring of which in her heart prevented her from having any feeling of humiliation in the presence of her splendid sister, whom all the world sought to attract to their houses, especially when there were guests anxious to be entertained by the sweet singing of a handsome young woman with a very presentable young husband. Fanny had her secrets and cherished them with a fearful joy, for she knew that any day might remove either or both of them, and then there would be nothing left for her in the household but to put her heart into her needlework. But one cannot do needlework without needles, and if she were to put her heart into her work, and if every needle had a point, the result would, she knew, be a good many prickings.
She trusted that she might never be condemned to put her heart into her needlework.
CHAPTER VI
THEN Lieutenant Burney sauntered into the room and greeted Esther; but when Fanny inquired with some eagerness what had been the result of Mr. Garrick's fooling of poor Mr. Kendal, James was by no means so glib or amusing as Fanny expected him to be.
“Psha!” he cried; “that Mr. Kendal is not worth powder and shot—at least not the weight of metal that Mr. Garrick can discharge—not in a broadside—Mr. Garrick is not given to broadsides—they are too clumsy for him—he is like Luke Boscawen, our chief gunner; he had a contempt for what he was used to term a blustering broadside, having a liking only for the working of his little brass swivel. He could do anything that he pleased with his little swivel. 'Ping!' it would go, when he had squinted along the sights, and the object he aimed at half a mile away—sometimes so small that we could scarce see it from our foretop—down it went. Boscawen could do what he pleased with it—the blunt nose of a whale rising to spout a mile away—the stem of a cocoa-nut palm on one of the islands when we were not sure of the natives and there was no time to climb the tree—that is the marksmanship of Mr. Garrick, and your Mr. Kendal was not worthy of an exercise of so much skill.”
“Nobody seems too insignificant to be made a fool of by Mr. Garrick,” said Mrs. Burney. “He is as happy when he has made a gruesome face and frightened a maid with a mop at the doorstep, as when he has stricken us with awe when the ghost enters in Hamlet, or when Macbeth declaims of the horror of the curse of sleeplessness that has been cast on him. That is why I said before he arrived that I was not sure that his influence upon you all is for good. He makes one lose one's sense of the right proportions and realities of life. Now is not that so, Hetty? I make no appeal to Fanny, for I know that she has ever been devoted to Mr. Garrick. Is it not true that she was used to frighten poor Lottie before she was ten by showing how Mr. Garrick frowned as the Duke of Gloster?”