"The Ladies": A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty

by L. Adams Beck

I hurriedly disclaimed any wish to pursue the subject, and she was silent as if revolving the scene. But why should I now hesitate to own that though all the propriety of speech and silence had been on Miss Burney's side, my own sympathies were engaged with the poor lady. I thought a heart that less weighed opinion must have melted at her appeal to fond memories, gushing warm from a sensibility that she could not control. Since that interview, when I have heard Mrs. Piozzi censured I could comprehend the high romantic notion with which she had entered on her marriage, and the more so, since I had been credibly informed that Mr Piozzi was in all respects admirable could he but have had the blessing to be born an Englishman and Protestant.

"Dear Miss P., I trust to you to keep this painful meeting a secret," said my companion. "I know your serious and respectable character too well to doubt you will draw the veil over the wild ungoverned temper of one once so honoured."

I promised and reserved my thoughts and we turned back to the Castle. But the events of this astonishing walk were not yet at an end. We were nearing the gates of the gardens, when we saw Colonel and Mrs Digby beneath the trees on the further side. They were not conversing and the whole width of the path was between them. It gave rightly or wrongly an air of dissatisfaction, of weariness in each other's company, that struck me as instantly as it did my companion, though of course it could be no surprise to see them where all the Household took their airings when they would. She drew me sharply behind a tree.

"Miss P.," she said in breathless agitation, "it is not the least of my sufferings here that I know it is supposed they are caused by this marriage. I beg you would not deny it (for I would have spoken)--it is too palpable that this is believed. Yet you are wrong--completely wrong. Those who have ceased to give us pleasure very soon lose the power to give us pain; and I view his marriage with an indifference that wishes him neither well nor ill. My heart was never engaged. I will not deny that he risked it and all my peace with it, but he succeeded not. I do not form one wish to be in her place whom we have just seen. They will have what happiness they deserve and, if I am not mistaken, I think it will be little indeed."

She turned and gazed after them with an expression of bitterness the most concentrated. Never again did I doubt that it was not wounded love but wounded pride which was driving her from Court into the retirement of her home. Let others more capable than myself judge which is the severer pang! She had never regarded him further than as he had flattered her vanity as woman and genius, and a burning resentment at the public slight was all that needed commiseration.

She added composedly:--

"Your kindness deserved this explanation and will accept it. There is no man on earth so indifferent to me as Colonel Digby, and later events will prove to you that I speak the truth."

I said I could but rejoice to hear it, and we returned from these agitations to her room.

All this confirmed the opinion I held that she was naturally a person of agreeable disposition but spoiled by her literary success. I never doubted that her acceptance of Court office was with a view to a brilliant establishment such as she had given her own "Evelina." She was as much her own heroine and hoped for as romantic advancement, very sensibly preferring a social triumph, could it be secured, to a mere literary one, which she always took a little doubtfully as somewhat that might be disparaged. Disappointed, and openly disappointed, in this hope by the heartless behaviour of Colonel Digby, she felt retreat to be inevitable and also the only hope for a future settlement. Yet had she been wiser to remain! I have ever been convinced that her taste for the pen was gone by and that only the narrowness of her means drove her to it again. At Court she would have been valuable from a natural caution which received a fresh lesson in this foiled love-affair. When I add that Mrs Schwellenberg offered her the reversion of her own place when ill health should cause her retirement and that I know this would have been confirmed, it will be seen what she most imprudently sacrificed to sentiment.

It will be objected that marriage was her object. If so, there were opportunities at Court she could not have elsewhere, and among the grave clergy who attended, a suitable settlement might have been found. Miss Burney, as the lady of a Bishop, dispensing a serious hospitality and amending his Charges to his clergy, would have been in her right place. I am told that her later manner of writing was far more suited to Episcopality than to fiction, and can answer that when reading her "Memoirs" of her father I was unable to trace the sense through the verbiage, which appears to confirm this view. But it was not to be, though I believe from the eagerness with which she ever visited the Royals and took every opportunity to keep her name in sight, that she regretted her folly and would have repaired it. But how was it possible for Their Majesties to assist a needy Frenchman and Roman Catholic?