Читать книгу The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney - Frances Burney - Страница 61

Fanny Burney to Mrs. Thrale104

Wednesday Evening, April 4, 1781

You bid me write to you, and so I will; you bid me pray for you, and so, indeed, I do, for the restoration of your sweet peace of mind. I pray for your resignation to this hard blow, for the continued union and exertion of your virtues with your talents, and for the happiest reward their exertion can meet with, in the gratitude and prosperity of your children. These are my prayers for my beloved Mrs. Thrale; but these are not my only ones; no, the unfailing warmth of her kindness for myself I have rarely, for a long time past, slept without first petitioning.

I ran away without seeing you again when I found you repented that sweet compliance with my request which I had won from you. For the world would I not have pursued you, had I first seen your prohibition, nor could I endure to owe that consent to teasing which I only solicited from tenderness. Still, however, I think you had better have suffered me to follow you; I might have been of some use; I hardly could have been in your way. But I grieve now to have forced you to an interview which I would have spared myself as well as you, had I foreseen how little it would have answered my purpose.

Yet though I cannot help feeling disappointed, I am not surprised; for in any case at all similar, I am sure I should have the same eagerness for solitude.

I tell you nothing of how sincerely I sympathise in your affliction; yet I believe that Mr. Crutchley and Dr. Johnson alone do so more earnestly; and I have some melancholy comfort in flattering myself that, allowing for the difference of our characters, that true regard which I felt was as truly returned. Nothing but kindness did I ever meet with; he ever loved to have me, not merely with his family, but with himself; and gratefully shall I ever remember a thousand kind expressions of esteem and good opinion, which are now crowding upon my memory.

⁸⁵ Mr. Smelt was a friend of Dr. Burney’s, and highly esteemed by Fanny both for his character and talents. He had been tutor to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.). We shall meet with him later.

⁸⁶ This boy was afterwards the celebrated painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence, President of the Royal Academy.

⁸⁷ Constantine John Phipps, second Baron Mulgrave in the Irish peerage. He was born in 1744; served with distinction in the navy, and made a voyage of discovery towards the North Pole in 1773. His account of this voyage was published in the following year. He became Baron Mulgrave on the death of his father, the first Baron, in 1775; was raised to the English peerage under the title of Lord Mulgrave in 1790, and died in 1792.

⁸⁸ Mrs. Byron was the wife of Admiral the Hon. John Byron (“Foul-weather Jack”), and grandmother of the poet. Her daughter Augusta subsequently married Vice–Admiral Parker, and died in 1824.

⁸⁹ Mrs. Dobson was authoress of an abridged translation of “Petrarch’s Life,” and of the “History of the Troubadours.”

⁹⁰ Dr. Harrington was a physician, and a friend of Dr. Burney. His son, “Mr. Henry”—the Rev. Henry Harrington—was the editor of “Nugaae Antiquae.”

⁹¹ The rough-mannered, brutal sea-captain in “Evelina.”

⁹² Lady Miller, of Bath Easton—the lady of the Vase. Horace Walpole gives an amusing description of the flummery which was indulged in every week at Bath Easton under her presidency. “You must know, that near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, which has now been christened Helicon. Ten years ago there lived a Madam (Briggs), an old rough humourist, who passed for a wit; her daughter, who passed for nothing, married to a captain (Miller), full of good-natured officiousness. These good folks were friends of Miss Rich, who carried me to dine with them at Bath Easton, now Pindus. They caught a little of what was then called taste, built, and planted, and begot children, till the whole caravan were forced to go abroad to retrieve. Alas! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The captain’s fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virtu; and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rimes as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus-fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase, dressed with pink ribands and myrtles, receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival: six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope (Miller), kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle.” Works, vol. v. P. 183

⁹³ Not our old acquaintance, Mrs. Cholmondeley, but a lady whom Fanny met for the first time during this season at Bath.

⁹⁴ See ante, note 121.

⁹⁵ Beattie’s “Essay on Truth,” published in 1770, and containing a feeble attack on Hume. Commonplace as the book is, it was received with rapture by the Orthodox, and Reynolds painted a fine picture of Beattie, standing with the “Essay” under his arm, while the angel of Truth beside him, drives away three demonic figures, in whose faces we trace a resemblance to the portraits of Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon. For this piece of flattery the painter was justly rebuked by Goldsmith, whose sympathies were certainly not on the side of infidelity. “It very ill becomes a mann of your eminence and character,” said the poet, “to debase so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his book will be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire’s fame will last for ever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture, to the shame of such a man as you.”

⁹⁶ Charlotte Lewis.

⁹⁷ Sir Clement Willoughby, a rakish baronet in “Evelina.”

⁹⁸ This flirtation came to nothing, as Captain Brisbane proved himself a jilt. The following month Miss Burney wrote to Mrs. Thrale as follows:—“Your account of Miss M—‘s being taken in, and taken in by Captain Brisbane, astonishes me! surely not half we have heard either of her adorers, or her talents, can have been true. Mrs. Byron has lost too little to have anything to lament, except, indeed, the time she sacrificed to foolish conversation, and the civilities she threw away upon so worthless a subject. Augusta has nothing to reproach herself with, and riches and wisdom must be rare indeed, if she fares not as well with respect to both, as she would have done with an adventurer whose pocket, it seems, was as empty as his head.”

⁹⁹ Sir John Fielding, the magistrate; brother of the novelist.

¹⁰⁰ Mr. Thrale’s brewery in Southwark. His town house in Grosvenor Square was threatened by the mob, but escaped destruction.

¹⁰¹ The manager of Mr. Thrale’s brewery.

¹⁰² James Harris, of Salisbury, and his family. Mr. Harris was the author of “Hermes, an Enquiry concerning Universal Grammar,” and was characterised by Dr. Johnson as a “sound, solid scholar.” He was an enthusiast on the subject of music, and had made Dr. Burney’s acquaintance at the opera in 1773.

¹⁰³ Fanny’s younger sister, some of whose lively and amusing letters and fragments of journal are printed in the “Early Diary.” Unlike Fanny, she was a bit of a flirt, and she seems to have been altogether a very charming young woman, who fully sustained the Burney reputation for sprightliness and good humour.

¹⁰⁴ This letter was written in reply to a few words from Mrs. Thrale, in which, alluding to her husband’s sudden death, she begs Miss Burney to “write to me—pray for me!” The hurried note from Mrs. Thrale is thus endorsed by Miss Burney:—“Written a few hours after the death of Mr. Thrale, which happened by a sudden stroke of apoplexy, on the morning of a day on which half the fashion of London had been invited to an intended assembly at his house in Grosvenor Square.” (Mr. Thrale, who had long suffered from ill health, had been contemplating a journey to Spa, and thence to Italy. His physicians, however, were strongly opposed to the scheme, and Fanny writes, just before his death, that it was settled that a great meeting of hi friends should take place, and that they should endeavour to prevail with him to give it up; in which she has little doubt of their succeeding.)