Читать книгу The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney - Frances Burney - Страница 106

Fanny Burney to Mrs. Locke.

St. Martin’s-st.,

Nov. 14.

. . . I had a very unpleasant morning after I left you. When the coach and I had waited upon my father, I made the visit I mentioned to you. O what a visit!—all that I presupposed of attack, inquiry, and acrimony, was nothing to what passed. Rage more intemperate I have not often seen; and the shrill voice of feeble old age, screaming with unavailing passion is horrible. She had long looked upon Mrs. Thrale as a kind of protege, whom she had fondled as a child, and whose fame, as she grew into notice, she was always proud to hear of, and help to exalt. She is a woman (I can well attest!) of most furious passions herself, however at liberty she thinks she may be to show no sort of mercy to those of another.

Once, had I been less disturbed, I could have laughed; for she declared with great vehemence, that if she had suspected “the wretch of any intention to marry the man, she would have ordered her own postchaise, and followed her to prevent it!”

Alas, poor Lady F.

She then called upon me, to hear my story; which, most painfully to myself, I related. She expressed herself very sorry for me, till I came to an avowal of my letter after the marriage she then flew out into new choler. “I am amazed you would write to her, Miss Burney! I wonder you could think of it any more.”

I told her, I had thought myself so much indebted to her patience with my opposition to all her views and wishes for the whole tine of her long conflict, that, although I was the first to acknowledge her last action indefensible, I should be the last to forget all that had made me love her before it was committed.

This by no means satisfied her, and she poured forth again a torrent of unrelenting abuse. Some company, at last, came in, and I hastily took my leave. She called after me to fix some day for a longer visit; but I pretended not to hear, and ran down stairs, heartily resolving that necessity alone should ever force me into her presence again.

When I came home—before I could get upstairs—I was summoned to Miss Streatfield, whom I met with as little pleasure as Lady F., since I had never seen her, nor indeed anybody, from the time this cruel transaction has been published. Not that I dreaded her violence, for she is as gentle as a lamb but there were causes enough for dread of another nature. However fortunately and unexpectedly, she never named the subject, but prattled away upon nothing but her own affairs; and so, methinks, have I done too, and just as if I knew you wished to hear them. Do you?—I ask only for decency’s sake.