Well, Her Royal Highness gave me her hand to kiss, very gracious. She will not let her dignity draggle in the mud, like others I could name. But whether she would have been more easy with Portland or another, I will not determine. The Fates alone know, and sure they can't be women, they keep their secrets so well!
Fanny Bueney
Madame D'Arblay
1752-1840
"Send me a minute Journal of everything," begs Mr. Crisp, "and never mind their being trifles--trifles well-dressed are excellent food, and your cookery is with me of established reputation."
Fanny Burney's letters, full of "trifles well-dressed" are as delightful as the novels, "Evelina," "Cecilia," and "Camilla," that made her famous. The skill of her writing and the charm of her character, "half-and-half sense and modesty," won her the friendship of Burke, Sheridan, Walpole, Warren Hastings, Hannah More, the Queen, and Dr. Johnson.
"She is a real wonder," said Johnson to Mrs. Thrale.
When Queen Charlotte made her second-keeper of the robes, her novel-reading friends protested that she had been "royally gagged and promoted to fold muslins." After four years of it, she returned to her home, her writing, and her marriage with General d'Arblay. With the proceeds of her most profitable novel, she built Camilla Cottage, where, with her good Alexandre and her gay little son, she could live and write, "Pleasure is seated in London, joy, mirth, society; but happiness, oh, it has taken its seat, its root, at West Humble!" She lived to be eighty-eight.
Yet the world still thinks of her on those youthful visits at Mrs. Thrale's in Streatham, when, if she seemed about to take her leave, Dr. Johnson would exclaim, "Don't you go, little Burney, don't you go!"
