As it is delightful to turn from one trait in a character to another that seems quite incompatible with it, we must not assume that, because Miss Burney was shy and retiring, therefore she wanted spirits and gayety. On the contrary, she assures us, and the Diary and her other writings and her friends confirm it, that in good company she could carry laughter and hilarity to the pitch of riot. What a delicious picture does Crisp paint of her in childhood, dancing “Nancy Dawson on the grass-plot, with your cap on the ground, and your long hair streaming down your back, one shoe off, and throwing about your head like a mad thing.” She was always ready to dance Nancy Dawson, and eager in sympathy when others danced. In the lively parts of “Evelina” there is a Bacchic boisterousness almost Rabelaisian, and again and again throughout the Diary scenes of pure, wild fun diversify the literary gravity of Streatham and the dull decorum of the court of George the Third.
But if Miss Burney could mock her friends, she could also love them, and to study her friendships is to study the woman herself. Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi does, indeed, write of her young protégée in rather harsh terms. Like all the rest of the Streatham world, Fanny was bitterly opposed to the Piozzi marriage, and her attitude provoked her former hostess to indignant criticism. Even in the earlier days of ardent affection, Mrs. Thrale notes some flaws in the relationship. Fanny was independent. Mrs. Thrale was patronizing. Fanny accepted favors a little as her due. Mrs. Thrale showered them, but wished them recognized. “Fanny Burney has kept her room here in my house seven days, with a fever or something that she calls a fever; I gave her every medicine and every slop with my own hand; took away her dirty cups, spoons, etc.; moved her tables; in short, was doctor, nurse, and maid—for I did not like the servants should have additional trouble, lest they should hate her for it. And now, with the true gratitude of a wit, she tells me that the world thinks the better of me for my civility to her. It does? does it?”
Can you not understand how Fanny felt? And how Mrs. Thrale felt? And that they loved each other, nevertheless, as Mrs. Thrale indeed eagerly admits?
Then came the Piozzi trouble and the lady speaks harshly of “the treacherous Burneys.” Yet I do not think Fanny deserved it. She loved Dr. Johnson and she loved Mrs. Thrale. Between them her course was difficult. Also, she was undeniably conventional by nature and Mrs. Thrale’s irregularities shocked her. Yet she did the best she could.
“Treacherous,” said Mrs. Thrale. “True as gold,” said Queen Charlotte. The latter is much nearer the facts. Affection, loyal, devoted affection was the root of Miss Burney’s existence. She quotes Dr. Johnson’s saying to her, “Cling to those who cling to you,” and I am sure she was ready to carry it the one step further which real loyalty requires. Her friends stick by her and she by them. She defends them when they need it, even when they hardly deserve it. “All else but kindness and society has to me always been nothing.”
Especially charming is her devotion to her family. The Memoirs of her father are three volumes of long laudation. Almost equal is her affection for that singular figure, her other father, Samuel Crisp. Her sisters, Susan especially, are loved and praised with like ecstasy and when her husband appears, her letters to him and about him are as rapturous as was to be expected. One exception to these family ardors stands out by its oddity. Madame D’Arblay’s only son is, in youth, not what she would wish him to be—not dissipated, not vicious, but unsocial, unconventional—and she analyzes him to his father with a critical coldness which, in her, is startling. “When he is wholly at his ease, as he is at present, ... he is uncouth, negligent, and absent.... He exults rather than blushes in considering himself ignorant of everything that belongs to common life, and of everything that is deemed useful.... Sometimes he wishes for wealth, but it is only that he might be supine.... Yet, while thus open to every dupery, and professedly without any sense of order, he is so fearful of ridicule that a smile from his wife at any absurdity would fill him with the most gloomy indignation. It does so now from his mother.” And thus we get sudden glimpses into deep gulfs of human nature, where it is hardly meant we should.
It seems almost an irony that a person of Miss Burney’s social and conventional temper should have been forced into the excess of social convention—a court. She knew what was before her and hated it; for we like to indulge our failings in our own way. All the more, therefore, is one struck with the admirable qualities which such a trying experience calls out in her. To begin with, she maintains her dignity. Sensitive, shy, and timid as she was, it might be supposed that all court creatures would walk over her, from the king to the lowest lacquey, that in the busy struggle to climb she would be made a ladder-rung for every coarse or careless foot. No, it is clear she was not. She had no false pretensions, no whimsical assertion of pride in the wrong place. But she would not be imposed upon. How fine and straightforward is her statement of principle in the matter: “To submit to ill-humour rather than argue and dispute I think an exercise of patience, and I encourage myself all I can to practise it: but to accept even a shadow of an obligation upon such terms I should think mean and unworthy; and therefore I mean always, in a Court as I would elsewhere, to be open and fearless in declining such subjection.”
Even finer is the force of character with which she resists depression and brooding over being torn from her friends and cut off from all her favorite pursuits. “Now therefore I took shame to myself and resolved to be happy.” Happy she could not be, but such a resolution alters life, nevertheless, and shows an immense fund of character in the resolver. Similar resources she had shown before, when literary failure came to her as well as success. Accept the inevitable, resolutely control all thought of what cannot be helped, say nothing about it, and try something else. In short, she had a rich supply of that useful article, common sense. It is to be noted, also, that the heroines of her novels have it, for all their wild adventures.
With these various opportunities of human contact and with this natural shrewdness, Madame D’Arblay’s Diary should have been a mine of varied and powerful observation of life. It is not. She presents us with a vast collection of figures, vividly contrasted and distinguished in external details and little personal peculiarities; but rarely, if ever, does she get down to essentials, to a real grip on the deeper springs and motives of character. This is in large part due to the eternal literary prepossession which I have already pointed out. You feel that the painter is much more interested in making an effective picture than a genuine likeness. But Miss Burney’s deficiencies as an analyst of hearts go deeper than this technical artificiality and are bound up with one of the greatest charms of her personal temperament. For an exact observer of character she is altogether too amiable. I do not at all assert that a good student of men must hate them. Far from it.