The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney. Frances Burney

without evidently displaying that such notice is more the effect of his benign condescension, than of any pretension on their part to deserve such a mark of his perceiving their existence. But you will think me mad about this man.

      Nov. 3—Last Monday we went again to the ball. Mr. B——y, who was there, and seated himself next to Lady Pembroke, at the top of the room, looked most sublimely happy! He continues still to afford me the highest diversion.

      As he is notorious for his contempt of all artists, whom he looks upon with little more respect than upon day-labourers, the other day, when painting was discussed, he spoke of Sir Joshua Reynolds as if he had been upon a level with a carpenter or farrier.

      “Did you ever,” said Mrs. Thrale, “see his Nativity?”

      “No, madam,—but I know his pictures very well; I knew him many years ago, in Minorca; he drew my picture there; and then he knew how to take a moderate price; but now, I vow, ma’am, ’tis scandalous—scandalous indeed! to pay a fellow here seventy guineas for scratching out a head!”

      “Sir,” cried Dr. Delap, “you must not run down Sir Joshua Reynolds, because he is Miss Burney’s friend.”

      “Sir,” answered he, “I don’t want to run the man down; I like him well enough in his proper place; he is as decent as any man of that sort I ever knew; but for all that, sir, his prices are shameful. Why, he would not (looking at the poor doctor with an enraged contempt) he would not do your head under seventy guineas!”

      “Well,” said Mrs. Thrale, “he had one portrait at the last exhibition, that I think hardly could be paid enough for; it was of a Mr. Stuart; I had never done admiring it.”

      “What stuff is this, ma’am!” cried Mr. B——y, “how can two or three dabs of paint ever be worth such a sum as that?”

      “Sir,” said Mr. Selwyn⁸² (always willing to draw him out), “you know not how much he is improved since you knew him in Minorca; he is now the finest painter, perhaps, in the world.”

      “Pho, pho, sir,” cried he, “how can you talk so? you, Mr. Selwin, who have seen so many capital pictures abroad?”

      “Come, come, sir,” said the ever odd Dr. Delap, “you must not go on so undervaluing him, for, I tell you, he is a friend of Miss Burney’s.”

      “Sir,” said Mr. B——y, “I tell you again I have no objection to the man; I have dined in his company two or three times; a very decent man he is, fit to keep company with gentlemen; but, ma’am, what are all your modern dabblers put together to one ancient? nothing!—a set of—not a Rubens among them! I vow, ma’am, not a Rubens among them!”. . . .

      To go on with the subject I left off with last—my favourite subject you will think it——Mr. B——y. I must inform you that his commendation was more astonishing to me than anybody’s could be, as I had really taken it for granted he had hardly noticed my existence. But he has also spoken very well of Dr. Delap—that is to say, in a very condescending manner. “That Mr. Delap,” said he, “seems a good sort of man; I wish all the cloth were like him; but, lackaday! ’tis no such thing; the clergy in general are but odd dogs.”

      Whenever plays are mentioned, we have also a regular speech about them. “I never,” he says, “go to a tragedy,—it’s too affecting; tragedy enough in real life: tragedies are only fit for fair females; for my part, I cannot bear to see Othello tearing about in that violent manner—and fair little Desdemona, ma’am, ’tis too affecting! to see your kings and your princes tearing their pretty locks,—oh, there’s no standing it! ‘A straw-crown’d monarch,’—what is that, Mrs. Thrale?

      ‘A straw-crown’d monarch in mock majesty.’

      “I can’t recollect now where that is; but for my part, I really cannot bear to see such sights. And then out come the white handkerchiefs, and all their pretty eyes are wiping, and then come poison and daggers, and all that kind of thing,—O ma’am, ’tis too much; but yet the fair tender hearts, the pretty little females, all like it!”

      This speech, word for word, I have already heard from him literally four times.

      When Mr. Garrick was mentioned, he honoured him with much the same style of compliment as he had done Sir Joshua Reynolds.

      “Ay, ay,” said he, “that Garrick was another of those fellows that people run mad about. Ma’am, ’tis a shaine to think of such things! an actor living like a person of quality scandalous! I vow, scandalous!”

      “Well,—commend me to Mr. B——y!” cried Mrs. Thrale “for he is your only man to put down all the people that everybody else sets up.”

      “Why, ma’am,” answered he, “I like all these people very well in their proper places; but to see such a set of poor beings living like persons of quality,—’tis preposterous! common sense, madam, common sense is against that kind of thing. As to Garrick, he was a very good mimic, an entertaining fellow enough, and all that kind of thing——but for an actor to live like a person of quality—oh, scandalous!”

      Some time after the musical tribe was mentioned. He was at cards at the time with Mr. Selwyn, Dr. Delap, and Mr. Thrale, while we “fair females,” as he always calls us, were speaking of Agujari.⁸³ He constrained himself from flying out as long as he was able; but upon our mentioning her having fifty pounds a song, he suddenly, in a great rage, called out, “Catgut and rosin! ma’am, ’tis scandalous!” . . .

      The other day, at dinner, the subject was married life, and among various husbands and wives Lord L— being mentioned, Mr. B——y pronounced his panegyric, and called him his friend. Mr. Selwyn, though with much gentleness, differed from him in opinion, and declared he could not think well of him, as he knew his lady, who was an amiable woman, was used very ill by him.

      “How, sir?” cried Mr. B——y.

      “I have known him,” answered Mr. Selwyn, “frequently pinch her till she has been ready to cry with pain, though she has endeavoured to prevent its being observed.”

      “And I,” said Mrs. Thrale, “know that he pulled her nose, in his frantic brutality, till he broke-some of the vessels of it, and when she was dying she still found the torture he had given her by it so great, that it was one of her last complaints.”

      The general, who is all for love and gallantry, far from attempting to vindicate his friend, quite swelled with indignation on this account, and, after a pause, big with anger, exclaimed,

      “Wretched doings, sir, wretched doings!”

      “Nay, I have known him,” added Mr. Selwyn, “insist upon handing her to her carriage, and then, with an affected kindness, pretend to kiss her hand, instead of which he has almost bit a piece out of it.”

      “Pitiful!—pitiful! sir,” cried the General, “I know nothing more shabby!”

      “He was equally inhuman to his daughter,” said Mrs. Thrale, “for, in one of his rages, he almost throttled her.”

      “Wretched doings!” again exclaimed Mr. B——y, “what! cruel to a fair female! Oh fie! fie! fie!—a fellow who can be cruel to females and children, or animals, must be a pitiful fellow indeed. I wish we had had him here in the sea. I should like to have had him stripped, and that kind of thing, and been well banged by ten of our clippers here with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Cruel to a fair female? Oh fie! fie! fie!”

      I know not how this may read, but I assure you its sound was ludicrous enough.

      However, I have never yet told you his most favourite story, though we have regularly heard it three or four times a day—and this is about his health.

      “Some years ago,” he says,—“let’s see, how many? in the year ‘71,—ay, ‘71, ‘72—thereabouts—I was taken very ill, and, by ill-luck, I was persuaded to ask advice of one of these Dr. Gallipots:—oh, how I hate them