Читать книгу The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney - Frances Burney - Страница 133

(How Miss Cambridge replied is not known; but Miss Burney’s appreciation of the queen’s kindness, and the desire avowed by Dr. Burney and Mrs. Delany that so honourable and advantageous an offer should not be declined, induced her to accept it; and the following letters to her father show the final result of her deliberations, and her affectionate care to prevent him from perceiving her uneasiness.)

Fanny Burney to Dr. Burney

Monday, June 19.

How great must have been your impatience, dearest sir but my interview has only this morning taken place. Everything is settled, and tomorrow morning I go to the queen’s Lodge, to see the apartments, and to receive my instructions.

I must confess myself extremely frightened and full of alarms at a change of situation so great, so unexpected, so unthought-of. Whether I shall suit it or not, heaven only knows, but I have a thousand doubts. Yet nothing could be sweeter than the queen,—more encouraging, more gentle, or more delicate. She did not ask me one question concerning my qualifications for the charge; she only said, with the most condescending softness, “I am sure, Miss Burney, we shall suit one another very well.” And, another time, “I am sure we shall do very well together.”

And what is it, dear Sir, you suppose to be my business? Not to attend any of the princesses—but the queen herself! This, indeed, was a delightful hearing, reverencing and admiring her as I have so sincerely done ever since I first saw her. And in this, my amazement is proportioned to my satisfaction; for the place designed me is that of Mrs. Haggerdorn, who came with her from Germany, and it will put me more immediately and more constantly in her presence than any other place, but that of Mrs. Schwellenberg, in the Court.

The prepossession the queen has taken in my favour is truly extraordinary, for it seems as if her real view was, as Mr. Smelt hinted, to attach me to her person. She has been long, she told Mrs. Delany, looking out for one to supply the place of Mrs. Haggerdorn, whose ill health forces her back to Germany; “and I was led to think of Miss Burney, first by her books; then by seeing her—then by always hearing how she was loved by her friends; but chiefly by your friendship for her.”

I fancy my appointment will take place very soon.

Windsor, June 20.

Most dear Sir,

I am sure you will be glad to hear I have got one formality over, that was very disagreeable to my expectations. I have been introduced to Mrs. Haggerdorn whom I am to succeed, and to Mrs. Schwellenberg, whom I am to accompany. This passed at the queen’s Lodge, in their own apartments, this morning. I cannot easily describe the sensation with which I entered that dwelling,—the thoughts of its so soon becoming my habitation,—and the great hazard of how all will go on in it—and the sudden change!

Everything was perfectly civil and easy; the queen had herself prepared them to receive me, and requested me to go. They made no use of the meeting in the way of business it was merely a visit of previous ceremony. . . .

The utmost astonishment will take place throughout the Court when they hear of my appointment. Everybody has settled some successor to Mrs. Haggerdorn; and I have never, I am very sure, been suspected by a single person. I saw, this morning, by all that passed with Mrs. S., how unexpected a step her majesty has taken. The place, she told me, has been solicited, distantly, by thousands and thousands of women of fashion and rank. . . .

Fanny Burney to Mrs. Francis 171

St. Martin’s-street, June 27.

. . . Her majesty has sent me a message, express, near a fortnight ago, with an offer of a place at Court, to succeed Mrs. Haggerdorn, one of the Germans who accompanied her to England, and who is now retiring into her own country. ’Tis a place of being constantly about her own person, and assisting in her toilette,—a place of much confidence, and many comforts; apartments in the palace; a footman kept for me; a coach in common with Mrs. Schwellenberg; 200 pounds a-year, etc.

I have been in a state of extreme disturbance ever since, from the reluctance I feel to the separation it will cause me from all my friends. Those, indeed, whom I most love, I shall be able to invite to me in the palace——but I see little or no possibility of being able to make what I most value, excursions into the country. . . . I repine at losing my loved visits to Mickleham, Norbury, Chesington, Twickenham, and Ayle sham; all these I must now forego. . . .

You may believe how much I am busied. I have been presented at the queen’s Lodge in Windsor, and seen Mrs. Haggerdorn in office, and find I have a place of really nothing to do, but to attend; and on Thursday I am appointed by her majesty to go to St. James’s, to see all that belongs to me there. And I am now “fitting out” just as you were, and all the maids and workers suppose I am going to be married, and snigger every time they bring in any of my new attire. I do not care to publish the affair till it is made known by authority; so I leave them to their conjectures, and I fancy their greatest wonder is, who and where is the sposo; for they must think it odd he should never appear!

¹⁵⁸ “Memoirs of Dr. Burney,” vol. iii. p. 87. Fanny had, however, to assist in dressing the queen. See postea, P—345.

¹⁵⁹ The death of the Duchess dowager of Portland.

¹⁶⁰ Miss Planta was English teacher to the two eldest princesses.

¹⁶¹ One of the governesses to the princesses.

¹⁶² Georgina Mary Anne Port, grandniece of Mrs. Delany, by whom she was brought up from the age of seven until Mrs. Delany’s death. She was born in 1771, and mairied, in 1789, Mr. Waddington, afterwards Lord Llanover. She was for many years on terms of friendship with Fanny, but after Madame D’Arblay’s death, Lady Llanover seized the opportunity of publishing, in her edition of Mrs. Delany’s Correspondence, an attack upon her former friend, of which the ill-breeding is only equalled by the inaccuracy. The view which she there takes of Fanny is justly characterised by Mr. Shuckburgh as “the lady-inwaiting’s lady’s-maid’s view.” (See Macmillan’s magazine for February, 1890.)

¹⁶³ Joseph Baretti, author of an Italian and English Dictionary, and other works; the friend Of JOhnson, well known to readers of Boswell. He had long been acquainted with the Burneys. Fanny writes in her “Early Diary” (March, 1773): “Mr. Baretti appears to be very facetious; he amused himself very much with Charlotte, whom he calls Churlotte, and kisses whether she will or no, always calmly saying, ‘Kiss a me, Churlotte!’” Charlotte Burney was then about fourteen; she was known after this in the family as Mrs. Baretti.

¹⁶⁴ A character in “Cecilia.”

¹⁶⁵ Mrs. Phillips (Susan)

¹⁶⁶ Madame de Genlis had visited England during the spring of 1785, and made the acquaintance of Dr. Burney and his daughter Fanny. In July Fanny writes of her as “the sweetest as well as the most accomplished Frenchwoman I ever met with,” and in the same month Madame de Genlis writes to Fanny: “Je vous aime depuis l’instant ou j’ai lu Evelina et Cecilia, et le bonheur de vous entendre et de vous conneitre personellement a rendu ce sentiment aussi tendre qu’il est bien fonde.” The acquaintance, however, was not kept up.

¹⁶⁷ The famous actress, Kitty Clive. She had quitted the stage in 1760. Genest says of her, “If ever there was a true Comic Genius, Mrs. Clive was one.”—

¹⁶⁸ John Henderson was by many people considered second only to Garrick, especially in Shakspearean parts. He too was lately dead, having made his last appearance on the stage on the 8th of November, 1785, within less than a month of his death.

¹⁶⁹ “Adele et Theodore, ou Lettres sur l’education” by Madame de Genlis, first published in 1782.

¹⁷⁰ We shall hear again of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, and of the scandal which was caused by the lady’s reception at Court. She was bought by Hastings of her former husband for 10,000 pounds. The story is briefly as follows:—

Among the fellow-passengers of Hastings on the ship which conveyed him to India in 1769, were a German portrait-painter, named Imhoff, and his wife, who were going out to Madras in the hope of bettering their circumstances. During the voyage a strong attachment sprang up between Hastings and the lady, who nursed him through an illness. The husband, it seems, had as little affection for his wife as she had for him, and was easily prevailed upon to enter into an amicable arrangement, by virtue of which Madame Imhoff instituted proceedings for divorce against him in the German courts. Pending the result, the Imhoffs continued to live together ostensibly as man and wife to avoid scandal. The proceedings were long protracted, but a decree of divorce was finally procured in 1772, when Hastings married the lady and paid to the complaisant husband a sum, it is said, exceeding, 10,000 pounds.

The favourable reception accorded by the queen to Mrs. Hastings, when, in 1784, she returned to England as wife of the Governor-general of Bengal, passed not without public comment. Her husband, however, was in high esteem at Court from his great services, and she had an additional recommendation to the queen’s favour in the friendship of Mrs. Schwellenberg, the keeper of the robes, whom she had known before her voyage to India.

¹⁷¹ Fanny’s sister Charlotte, who had married Clement Francis, Feb. 11, 1786. They were now settled at Aylesham, in Norfolk, where Mr. Francis was practising as a surgeon.