In her final parting with her Mistress she received much kind notice, including permission to retain half her emolument as a pension--and this after but five years' service!
The sweet Princesses successively pressed her hand at the parting scene and she quitted the room with her handkerchief at her eyes and a profound final curtsey. The Princess Royal whispered aside to me:--
"Poor soul, she might have made others happier but for the cruel wound her heart has received. I cannot--cannot forgive Colonel Digby!"
The gay and pretty Princess Elizabeth, much livelier in disposition, leaned on her sister's shoulder, whispering also:--
"I think, sister, that Miss Burney will not always be inconsolable, for at the trial of Mr Warren Hastings the Duchess of Ancaster observed that Mr Wyndham was very particular in his attentions to Miss Burney and that she did by no means froisser them. And have you not thought that she will certainly meet him much oftener in town than here?"
I could but smile at the young discerner whose thoughts agreed so fully with my own. For some time after she would ask me merrily what news of Mr Wyndham, and I certainly expected it. However that was not to be, and my expectations were verified next year by Miss Burney's marriage--a truly amazing one--even to M. D'Arblay, a refugee Frenchman and Roman Catholic!
Would that I could have heard Mrs Thrale-Piozzi's views on this circumstance!
Here I end. I design these notes as a strong corrective of what might place the Queen and others of less moment in an unamiable light. Let it be remembered that Miss Burney was the spoiled child of genius, who would still be first and who throbbingly aspired to a social eminence denied her. She received all attentions from the Royal Family as her due, and knew not how to draw the distinction between what was due to her own merit and what was given by these personages as due to their own high standard of courtesy and compassion. This is a distinction seldom drawn by those unused to high circles and a mere literary society cannot teach it.
I have often desired that I could have had the honour to be admitted to Her Majesty's private thoughts on Miss Burney, and should not be wholly surprised if they favoured my own.
No doubt allowance may be made for the vagaries of genius, but none the less do I rejoice that this, my first meeting with uncommon talent, was also the last. It is entirely out of place in courts, and certainly a happy mediocrity is the soil in which flourish the domestic virtues.