Her father's veneration for royalty amounting to idolatry, he could not bear to remove her from the court—"and, between the dear father and the sweet queen, there seemed to be little doubt that some day or other Frances would drop down a corpse. Six months had elapsed since the interview between the parent and the daughter. The resignation was not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark, but it failed to produce a beneficial effect. She was stimulated with wine; she was soothed with opium, but in vain. Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was in a decline spread through the court. The pains in her side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the card-table of the old fury, Mme. Schwellenberg, to whom she was tethered, three or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking hartshorn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have excused her from work. But her Majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang; the queen was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at midnight."
At last Miss Burney's father was moved to compassion and allowed her to write a letter of resignation. "Still I could not," writes Miss Burney in her diary, "summon courage to present my memorial from seeing the queen's entire freedom from such an expectation. For though I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could hardly stand, I saw she concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers.
"At last, with a trembling hand, the paper was delivered. Then came the storm. Mme. Schwellenberg raved like a maniac. The resignation was not accepted. The father's fears were aroused, and he declared, in a letter meant to be shown to the queen, that his daughter must retire. The Schwellenberg raged like a wildcat. A scene almost horrible ensued.
"The queen then promised that, after the next birthday, Miss Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her Majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it."
At length, however, the prison door was opened, and Frances was free once more. Her health was restored by traveling, and she returned to London in health and spirits. Macaulay tells us that she went to visit the palace, "her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever."
An ignorant and unlettered woman would doubtless not have found this life in the palace tedious, and our sympathy would not have been aroused for her; for as long as the earth lasts there must be human beings fitted for every station, and it is supposed, till the end of all things, there must be cooks, housemaids, and dining-room servants, which will make it never possible for the whole human family to stand entirely upon the same platform socially and intellectually. And Miss Burney's wretchedness, which calls forth our sympathy, was not because she had to perform the duties of waiting-maid, but because to a gifted and educated woman these duties were uncongenial; and congeniality means happiness; uncongeniality, unhappiness.
CHAPTER XIV.
From the sorrows of Miss Burney in the palace—a striking contrast with the menials described in our own country homes—I will turn to another charming place on the James River—Powhatan Seat, a mile below Richmond, which had descended in the Mayo family two hundred years.