Читать книгу The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney - Frances Burney - Страница 18

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(Fanny’s circle of acquaintance was largely extended in 1779, in which year she was introduced to Mrs. Horneck and her daughter Mary (Goldsmith’s “Jessamy Bride”), to Mr. and Mrs. Cholmondeley, to Arthur Murphy, the dramatist, and best of all, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his beautiful wife. The Hornecks and the Cholmondeleys she met at one of those delightful parties at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s house in Leicester Square,—parties composed of the wisest and wittiest in English society of the day, though nowhere among the guests could there be found a man of more genuine worth or more brilliant genius than the mild-mannered host. Mrs. Horneck had been a noted beauty in her younger days, and she, as well as her two lovely daughters, had been painted by Sir Joshua. The elder daughter, Catherine (Goldsmith’s “Little Comedy”), was now (1779) Mrs. Bunbury, wife of Henry Bunbury the caricaturist. Mary, the younger, was at this time about twenty-six years of age, and was subsequently married to Colonel Gwynn, whom we shall meet with in Fanny’s Diary of her Life at Court. Goldsmith, it is said, had loved Mary Horneck, though the ugly little man never ventured to tell his love; but when he died, five years before her meeting with Fanny, the Jessamy Bride caused his coffin to be reopened, and a lock of hair to be cut from the dead poet’s head. This lock she treasured until her own death, nearly seventy years afterwards.

Mrs. Sheridan’s maiden name was Eliza Anne Linley. There is an interesting notice of her in Fanny’s “Early Diary” for the month of April, 1773. “Can I speak of music, and not mention Miss Linley? The town has rung of no other name this month. Miss Linley is daughter to a musician of Bath, a very sour, ill-bred, severe, and selfish man. She is believed to be very romantic; she has long been very celebrated for her singing, though never, till within this month, has she been in London.

“She has long been attached to a Mr. Sheridan, a young man of great talents, and very well spoken of, whom it is expected she will speedily marry. She has performed this Lent at the Oratorio of Drury-lane, under Mr. Stanley’s direction. The applause and admiration she has met with, can only be compared to what is given Mr. Garrick. The whole town seems distracted about her. Every other diversion is forsaken. Miss Linley alone engrosses all eyes, ears, hearts.”

The “young man of great talents” was, when Fanny first met him, already renowned as the author of “The Rivals” and “The School for Scandal.” His wife’s extraordinary beauty has been perpetuated in one of Reynolds’s masterpieces, in which she is represented as St. Cecilia, sitting at an organ. Her father seems to have fully deserved the character which Fanny gives him. In 1772 Eliza, then only nineteen, ran away to France with young Sheridan, who was just of age, and, it is reported, was privately married to him at the time. They were pursued, however, by old Linley, and Eliza was brought back, to become the rage of the town as a singer. Her lover married her openly in April, 1773, and thenceforward she sang no more in public.

Fanny’s account of her visits to Tunbridge Wells and Brighton will recall, to readers of her novels, the delightfully humorous descriptions of the society at those fashionable resorts, in “Camilla” and “The Wanderer.” Mount Ephraim, at Tunbridge Wells, where Sophy Streatfield resided, will be recognized as the scene of the accident in which Camilla’s life is saved by Sir Sedley Clarendel.