Fanny Burney and Her Friends: Select Passages from Her Diary and Other Writings. Burney Fanny

from the ashes of the ‘History of Caroline Evelyn’ sprang Frances Burney’s first published work, ‘Evelina; or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World.’ We do not know how long a time expired from the burning of her manuscripts before Fanny relapsed into the sin of fiction-scribbling; but the flood of her invention probably rose the faster for being pent up. Irresistibly and almost unconsciously, she tells us, the whole story of ‘Evelina’ was laid up in her memory before a paragraph had been committed to paper. Even when her conscience had ceased to struggle, her opportunities for jotting down the ideas which haunted her were few and far between. She had to write in stolen moments, for she was under the eye of her stepmother. The demands on her time, too, became greater than they had been when Caroline Evelyn was her heroine. Her Diary occupied a large part of her leisure, and her hours of regular employment were presently lengthened by the work of transcribing for her father.

Charles Burney was now rising to eminence in his profession. To be Master of the King’s Band was the highest honour then within the reach of a musician, and Burney had been promised this appointment, though the promise was broken in favour of a candidate supported by the Duke of York.^[12] In the summer of 1769, the Duke of Grafton was to be installed as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. The poet Gray wrote the Installation Ode. Burney proposed to set it to music, and to conduct the performance at the ceremony, intending, at the same time, to take the degree of Doctor of Music at Cambridge. The Chancellor Elect accepted his offer as one which the composer’s rank well entitled him to make; but it soon appeared that the ideas of the two men as to the relative value of money and music were widely different. His Grace would consent to allow for the expense of singers and orchestra only one-half the amount which the conductor considered due to the occasion and his own importance. Burney in disgust threw up his commission, and, without loss of time, repaired to the sister University for his doctorate, which was conferred on him in June, 1769; the exercise produced by him as his qualification was so highly thought of that it was repeated three years successively at choral meetings in Oxford, and was afterwards performed at Hamburg under C. P. E. Bach.

Dr. Burney’s new title did not appear on his door-plate till a facetious friend exhorted him to brazen it. But, retiring as he was, the constitutional diffidence which his second daughter inherited was now giving way in him before the consciousness of ability and attainments, and the irresistible desire to establish a lasting reputation. In the latter part of the same year, he ventured anonymously into print with his first literary production. Ten years earlier, the return of Halley’s Comet at the time predicted seems to have given him an interest in astronomy, which he retained through life. There was again a comet visible in 1769, and this drew from him an Essay on Comets, to which he prefixed a translation from the pen of his first wife, Esther, of a letter by Maupertuis.^[13] But this pamphlet was only an experiment, and being obviously the work of an amateur, attracted little notice. Having once tried his ’prentice hand at authorship, he fixed his attention on his proper subject, and devoted himself to his long-projected ‘History of Music.’

      He had for many years kept a commonplace book, in which he laid up notes, extracts, abridgments, criticisms, as the matter presented itself. So large was the collection thus accumulated that it seemed to his family ‘as if he had merely to methodize his manuscripts, and entrust them to a copyist, for completing his purpose.’ The copyist was at hand in his daughter Frances, who became his principal secretary and librarian. But, as the enterprise proceeded, the views of the historian expanded. Much information that would now be readily supplied by public journals or correspondence was then only to be obtained by personal investigation on the spot. Early in 1770, Dr. Burney had determined that it would be needful for him to undertake a musical tour through France and Italy. He started on this expedition in June of that year, and did not return until the following January. His absence gave Fanny a considerable increase of leisure and opportunity for indulging her own literary dreams and occupations. Her stepmother, as well as her father, seems to have left her at liberty, for during part of this interval, at least, the attention of Mrs. Burney was engaged in providing a better habitation for her husband.

      The house in Poland Street had been found too small to accommodate the combined families. In addition to the children of their former marriages, there had been born to the parents a son, who was baptized Richard Thomas, and a daughter to whom they gave the name of Sarah Harriet. Mrs. Burney now found, and having found, proceeded to purchase and furnish, a large house in the upper part of Queen Square, Bloomsbury, which then enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the Hampstead and Highgate Hills. The new abode had once belonged to Alderman Barber, the friend of Dean Swift; and the Burneys pleased themselves with the thought that there the great saturnine humourist had been wont sometimes to set the table in a roar. The removal was effected while the Doctor was still on the Continent. On his arrival in London, he was welcomed to the new home by his wife and children, and by the never-failing Mr. Crisp. We hear, however, but little of this house in Queen Square, and even less of Fanny’s doings there. Her father had scarcely time to become acquainted with it before he was off to Chesington, where he occupied himself for several weeks in preparing the journal of his tour for the press. All his daughters were pressed into the service of copying and recopying his manuscript, but the chief share of this labour fell upon the scribbling Fanny. The book, which was called ‘The Present State of Music in France and Italy,’ appeared in the season of 1771. Thenceforth his friend Crisp’s retreat became Burney’s constant resort when he had literary work in hand. A further production of his pen, dealing with a matter of musical technique, came forth before the close of the same year. At the beginning of July, 1772, he set out on another tour, with the same object of collecting materials for his history, his route being now through Germany and the Netherlands. During this second pilgrimage, his family spent their time partly at Lynn, partly at Chesington; and Fanny, as we are told—apparently on the authority of her unpublished Diaries—profiting by the opportunities which these visits afforded, then “gradually arranged and connected the disjointed scraps and fragments in which ‘Evelina’ had been originally written.” But, careful to avoid offence, “she never indulged herself with reading or writing except in the afternoon; always scrupulously devoting her time to needlework till after dinner.”

      The traveller’s absence lasted five months: he reached Calais on his return in a December so boisterous that for nine days no vessel could cross the Channel; and Fanny relates that, when at length the passage was effected, he was too much exhausted by sea-sickness to quit his berth, and, falling asleep, was carried back to France to encounter another stormy voyage, and a repetition of his sea-sickness, before he finally landed at Dover. The fatigues and hardships of his homeward journey brought on a severe attack of rheumatism, to which he was subject. Fanny and her sisters nursed him, sitting by his bedside, pen in hand, to set down the narrative of his German tour as his sufferings allowed of his dictating it. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he went down to Chesington not forgetting to carry his secretaries with him.

During this illness, or a relapse which followed it, the house in Queen Square had to be relinquished from difficulties respecting the title; and Mrs. Burney purchased and fitted up another in a central situation, which was at once more convenient for her husband’s teaching engagements, and more agreeable to him as being nearer to the opera, the theatres, and the clubs. St. Martin’s Street, Leicester Fields, to which the family removed, is now among the most dingy, not to say the most squalid, of London streets; even in 1773, ‘its unpleasant site, its confined air, and its shabby immediate neighbourhood,’ are spoken of as drawbacks requiring compensation on an exchange from the fair and open view of the northern heights, crowned with Caen Woods, which had faced the windows in Bloomsbury. But, apart from the practical advantages before mentioned, the new home was invested with a strong attraction for the incomers in having been once inhabited by a personage whom our astronomical Doctor revered, and taught his children to revere, as ‘the pride of human nature.’ The belief that the house in Queen Square had occasionally been visited by Dean Swift was nothing compared with the certain knowledge that No. 1, St. Martin’s Street, had been the dwelling of Sir Isaac Newton.^[14] The topmost story was surmounted by an ‘observatory,’ having a leaden roof, and sides composed entirely of small panes of glass, except such parts as were taken up by a cupboard, fireplace and chimney. This structure being much dilapidated when Dr. Burney entered into possession, his first act was