Читать книгу The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney - Frances Burney - Страница 80

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(“This is the last visit remembered, or, at least, narrated, of Streatham.” With these words Madame D’Arblay concludes the account given in the “Memoirs of Dr. Burney,” of her meeting with General Paoli. In the autumn Of 1782 Mrs. Thrale went, with her daughters and Dr. Johnson, to Brighthelmstone, where Fanny joined them. On their return to London, November 20, the Thrales settled for the winter in Argyle-street, and Fanny repaired to her father’s residence in St. Martin’s-street. She saw much of Mrs. Thrale during the winter, but in the following April that lady quitted London for Bath, where she resided until her marriage with Signor Piozzi in the summer of 1784. She maintained an affectionate correspondence with Fanny until after the marriage, but from the date of their parting in London, they saw no more of each other, except for one brief interval in May, 1784, for several years.

We must here give an account, as concise as possible, of the transaction which was so bitterly resented by the friends of Mrs. Thrale, but in which her conduct seems to us, taking all the circumstances fairly into consideration, to have been less deserving of condemnation than their uncharitableness. She had first seen Piozzi, an Italian singer, at a party at Dr. Burney’s in 1777, and her behaviour to him on that occasion had certainly afforded no premonition of her subsequent infatuation. Piozzi, who was nearly of the same age as herself, was, as Miss Seward describes him, “a handsome man, with gentle, pleasing, unaffected manners, and with very eminent skill in his profession.” He was requested by Dr. Burney to sing; rather unfortunately, it would appear, for the company, which included Johnson and the Grevilles, was by no means composed of musical enthusiasts, and Mrs. Thrale, in particular, “knew not a flat from a sharp, nor a crotchet from a quaver.” However, he complied; and Mrs. Thrale, after sitting awhile in silence, finding the proceedings dull, was seized with a desire to enliven them. “In a fit of utter recklessness, she suddenly, but softly, arose, and stealing on tiptoe behind Signor Piozzi, who was accompanying himself on the pianoforte to an animated aria parlante, with his back to the company and his face to the wall, she ludicrously began imitating him by squaring her elbows, elevating them with ecstatic shrugs of the shoulders, and casting up her eyes, while languishingly reclining her head; as if she were not less enthusiastically, though somewhat more suddenly, struck with the transports of harmony than himself.

“But the amusement which such an unlooked-for exhibition— caused to the party, was momentary; for Dr. Burney, shocked lest the poor signor should observe, and be hurt by this mimicry, glided gently round to Mrs. Thrale, and, with something between pleasantry and severity, whispered to her, ‘Because, madam, you have no ear yourself for music, will you destroy the attention of all who, in that one point, are otherwise gifted?’”¹²²

This deserved rebuke the lively lady took in perfectly good part, and the incident passed without further notice. She does not appear to have met with Piozzi again, Until, in July, 1780, she picked him up at Brighton. She now finds him “amazingly like her father,” and insists that he shall teach Hester music. From this point the fever gradually increased. In August, 1781, little more than four months after her husband’s death, Piozzi has become “a prodigious favourite” with her; she has even developed a taste for his music, which “fills the mind with emotions one would not be without, though inconvenient enough sometimes.” In the spring Of 1783, soon after her arrival at Bath, they were formally engaged, but the urgent remonstrances of her friends and family caused the engagement to be broken off, and Piozzi went to Italy. Her infatuation, however, was too strong to be overcome. Under the struggle, long protracted, her health gave way, and at length, by the advice of her doctor, and with the sullen consent of Miss Thrale, Piozzi was summoned to Bath. He, too, had been faithful, and he lost no time in obeying the summons. They were married, according to the Roman Catholic rites, in London, and again, on the 25th of July, 1784, in a Protestant church at Bath, her three elder daughters, of whom the eldest, Hester (“Queeny”), was not yet twenty years of age, having quitted Bath before his arrival.

Mrs. Piozzi left England with her husband and her youngest daughter, Cecilia, and lived for some years in Italy, where she compiled her well known “Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.” Her wedded life with Piozzi was certainly happy, and he gave her no reason to repent the step she had taken. The indignation of her former friends, especially of Dr. Johnson, was carried to a length which, the cause being considered, appears little short of ridiculous. Mrs. Thrale’s second marriage may have been ill-advised, but it was neither criminal nor disgraceful. Piozzi was incontestably a respectable man and a constant lover; but that an Italian musician, who depended upon his talents for his livelihood, should become the husband of the celebrated Mrs. Thrale, and the stepfather of four young ladies of fashion, the daughters of a brewer, and the heiresses to his large fortune,—there was the rub! The dislike of Dr. Johnson and his friends to the marriage was, from a worldly point of view, justifiable enough, but it argues ill for their generosity of mind that they should have attached such overwhelming importance to such petty considerations. Mrs. Piozzi has been blamed for deserting her three elder daughters; but the fact is, it was her daughters who deserted her, and refused to recognise her husband. Her only fault, if fault it can be called, was in declining to sacrifice the whole happiness of her life to the supposed requirements of their rank in society. In condemning her friends for their severity and illiberality, we must, however, make an exception in favour of Fanny. She, like the rest, had been averse to the match, but her cordiality to Mrs. Piozzi remained undiminished; and when, soon after the marriage, their correspondence was discontinued, to be renewed only after the lapse of many years, it was not Fanny, but Mrs. Piozzi, who broke it off, instigated, Fanny always believed, by her husband.

Her separation from Mrs. Thrale was not the only event which brought sorrow to Fanny during the years to which the following section of the Diary relates. Mr. Crisp, the person dearest to her of all human beings outside her own family, died at Chesington, of an attack of his old malady, the gout, on the 24th of April, 1783, aged seventy-five. Fanny and Susan were with him at the last, and Fanny’s love was rewarded, her anguish soothed yet deepened, when, almost with his dying breath, her Daddy Crisp called her “the dearest thing to him on earth.”

Towards the end of 1784 another heavy blow fell upon Fanny, in the loss of Dr. Johnson, who died on the 13th of December. The touching references in the Diary to his last illness form an interesting supplement to Boswell’s narrative.

But the picture of Fanny’s life during these years is not without bright touches. As such we may reckon the great, and deserved success of her novel, “Cecilia”; the commencement of her acquaintance with two ladies who were hereafter to be numbered among her dearest friends—the venerable Mrs. Delany, and Mrs. Locke, of Norbury Park, Surrey; and last, not least, the growing intimacy between Edmund Burke and the family of Dr. Burney.