306 (return)
[ See ante, p. 44.—-ED.]
307 (return)
[ The Duke of Clarence,
third son of George III.; afterwards William IV.—ED.]
308 (return)
[ “The Jessamy
Bride.” See ante, vol. i, p. 111.—ED.]
309 (return)
[ “Observations and
Reflections made in the course of a Journey through France, Italy, and
Germany,” by published in 1789.]
310 (return)
[ “The Midnight
Hour,” a comedy by Mrs. Inchbald, well known as the authoress of
“A Simple Story,” and “Nature and Art,” was
originally produced at Covent Garden, May 22, 1787. “The Commissary,”
a comedy by Samuel Foote, partly taken from “Le Bourgeois
Gentilhomme,” was first performed at the Haymarket in June, 1765.
Mr. Quick and Mrs. Wells were popular comedians of the time.—ED.]
311 (return)
[ In “The Provoked
Husband,” by Vanbrugh and Cibber.—ED.]
312 (return)
[ Maria Anne Smythe was
born in 1756, and married, in 1775, Edward Weld of Lulworth Castle. He
died within a year, and she married, in 1778, Thomas Fitzherbert of
Swinnerton, Staffordshire, who died in 1781. In December, 1785, Mrs.
Fitzherbert was privately married to the Prince of Wales. The marriage was
never publicly recognised, and its legality was perhaps disputable: for by
the Act of 1772 the marriage of any member of the Royal family under the
age of twenty-five without the king’s consent, was declared invalid,
and at the date of his marriage with the beautiful Mrs Fitzherbert, the
Prince was but twenty-three years of age. He always treated her as his
wife, however, and she was received in society. She continued to live with
him even after his marriage with the Princess Caroline, and finally parted
from him in 1803, retiring with an allowance of 6,000 pounds a year to
Brighton, where she died in 1837.—-ED.]
313 (return)
[ A character in Colman’s
comedy of “The Jealous Wife.”— ED.]
314 (return)
[ Sisters—the
Italian word.—ED.]
315 (return)
[ Dock is now called
Devonport.—ED.]
316 (return)
[ The lady-sculptor, the
Hon. Mrs. Damer, daughter of General Conway and kinswoman of Horace
Walpole, who bequeathed to her, for the term of her life, his villa at
Strawberry Hill. Her performances in sculpture were of no great merit, but
were prodigiously admired by Horace Walpole, who had a notorious weakness
for the works of persons of quality. Mrs. Damer was a staunch whig, and
canvassed Westminster on behalf of Charles Fox at the election of 1784, in
company with the Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Crewe.—ED.]
317 (return)
[ His late wife, it will
be remembered, was a daughter of Lord Ilchester.—ED.]
318 (return)
[ Longleat, in Wiltshire,
was never intended for a monastery, but Was built from a design, it is
said, by John of Padua, for Sir John Thynne, who was knighted by Somerset
on the field, after the battle of Pinkie. Sir John’s descendant,
Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat, the wealthy friend of Monmouth, and the
“wise Issachar” of Dryden’s “Absalom and
Achitophel,” was murdered in his coach in Pall- Mall (February 12,
1682), by the contrivance of Count Koenigsmark, who was tried for the
murder and acquitted, although his confederates, the actual perpetrators
of the crime, were hanged for it. Thomas Thynne was succeeded in his
estates by his cousin, Sir Thomas Thynne, who was the same year created
Baron Thynne and Viscount Weymouth, titles which have descended in the
family, and to which that of Marquis of Bath has since been added. (See
“Count Koenigsmark and Tom of Ten Thousand,” by H. Vizetelly,
London, 1890.)—ED.]
319 (return)
[ James Bruce, the famous
African traveller, made the acquaintance of the Burney family in 1775. He
was about seven feet in height. In her early letters to Mr. Crisp, Fanny
calls him the “man- mountain.”—ED.]
320 (return)
[ Sir James Thornhill,
the father-in-law of Hogarth.—ED.]
321 (return)
[ “One day, in the
month of July, 1789, while finishing the portrait of the Marchioness of
Hereford, he felt a sudden decay of sight in his left eye. He laid down
the pencil, sat a little while in mute consideration, and never lifted it
more. His sight gradually darkened, and within ten weeks of the first
attack his left eye was wholly blind.” (Allan Cunningham.) For some
time after this he attended to his duties as President of the Royal
Academy, and he delivered his last address to the students in 1790. Sir
Joshua died in his sixty-ninth year, February 23, 1792—ED.]
322 (return)
[ Wednesday, November 18.—-ED.]
323 (return)
[ Covent Garden.—ED.]
324 (return)
[ A comedy by Reynolds,
originally produced at Covent Garden, May 15, 1789.—-ED.]
325 (return)
[ Sir Robert Gunning, the
bride’s father.—ED.]
326 (return)
[ Fanny refers to Burke’s
attitude during the Regency debates, in which, as a member of the
opposition, he had supported Mr. Fox.—ED.]
327 (return)
[ “A Narrative of
the mutiny on board his majesty’s ship Bounty; and the subsequent
Voyage of part of the Crew, in the ship’s boat, from Tofoa, one of
the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch settlement in the East Indies.
Written by Lieutenant William Bligh.” London, 1790. Lieutenant
(afterwards Admiral) Bligh was appointed to the command of the Bounty in
August, 1787. He sailed from England in December, and arrived at Otaheite,
October 26, 1788, the object of his voyage being to transplant the bread
fruit tree from the South Sea Islands to the British colonies in the West
Indies, with a view to its acclimatisation there. A delay of more than
five months at Otaheite demoralized the crew, to whom the dolce farniente
of life in a Pacific island, and the Charms of the Otaheitan women,
offered greater attractions than the toils of sea-faring under a somewhat
tyrannical captain. The Bounty left Otaheite April 4, 1789, and on the
28th of the same month a mutiny broke out under the leadership of the
mater’s mate, Fletcher Christian. Captain Bligh and eighteen of his
men were set adrift in the ship’s boat, in which they sailed for
nearly three months, undergoing terrible privations, and reaching the
Dutch settlement at Timor, an island off the east coast of Java, June 14.
Bligh arrived in England, March 14, 1790. The mutineers finally settled in
Pitcairn’s island, where their descendants are still living.—ED.]
328 (return)
[ See note ante 263, p.
102.—-ED.]
329 (return)
[ Mrs. Piozzi’s
youngest daughter, who had accompanied her mother and step-father abroad.—ED.]
330 (return)
[ It appears from a note
in the “Memoirs of Dr. Burney” (vol. iii. p. 199), that Fanny
had once before met Mrs Piozzi since her marriage, at an assembly at Mrs.
Locke’s. This meeting must have taken place Soon after the marriage,
as Mrs. Piozzi went abroad with her husband shortly afterwards.—ED.]
331 (return)
[ Fanny’s
half-sister.—ED.]
332 (return)
[ An allusion to the
personal resemblance between Windham and Hastings. See ante, p. 149.—-ED.]
333 (return)
[ By her “Visions”
Fanny apparently means her desire of resigning her place at Court, and her
hope of her father’s concurrence.- -ED.]
334 (return)
[ i.e., Attempts to
induce him to procure for sundry strangers some acquaintance with his
daughter.—ED.]
335 (return)
[ The Comtesse de
Bouflers-Rouvrel and, probably, her daughter-in-law, the Comtesse Amélie
de Bouflers. Madame de Bouflers- Rouvrel was distinguished in Parisian
society as a bel-esbrit, and corresponded for many years with Rousseau.
Left a widow in 1764, she became the mistress of the Prince de Conti. Her
first visit to England was in 1763, when she was taken by Topham Beauclerk
to see Dr. Johnson. She revisited this country at the time of the
emigration, but returning to France, was imprisoned by the Revolutionists.
The fall of Robespierre (July, 1794) restored her to liberty. Amelie de
Bouflers, less fortunate than her mother-in-law, perished by the
guillotine, June 27, 1794.—- ED.]
336 (return)
[ But is it possible,
sir, that your daughter has no holidays?]
337 (return)
[ Burke’s speech,
delivered February 9, in a debate on the army estimates, in which he took
occasion to denounce, with great vehemence, the principles and conduct of
the French Revolution, which he contrasted, much to its disadvantage, with
the English Revolution of 1688. “The French,” he said, “had
shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto appeared
in the world.” The sentiments uttered by Burke on this occasion
delighted the ministerialists and friends of the Court as much as they
dismayed his own party. As the debate proceeded he found himself in the
strange position of a chief of opposition enduring the compliments of the
prime minister and the attacks of Fox and Sheridan, who took a broader and
juster view of the great events in France, though condemning equally with
Burke the Excesses of the Revolutionists. Fox declared His grief at
hearing, “from the lips of a man whom he loved and revered,”
Sentiments “so hostile to the general principles of liberty.”
This speech of Burke’s may be said to mark the commencement of that
disagreement between himself and Fox, which culminated in the total breach
of their friendship.—ED.]
338 (return)
[ Dr. Burney was a member
of this famous club, having been elected in 1784. Mr. Windham had been a
member since 1778.—-ED.]
339 (return)
[ “Reflections on
the Revolution in France,” published November 1, 1790. it was
received by the public with avidity, and went through eleven editions
within a year—ED.]
340 (return)
[ An allusion to the
imperious interruption of the marriage of Cecilia, and young Delvile. See
“Cecilia,” book vii., ch. 7.—ED.]
341 (return)
[ Some weeks later Fanny
has the following allusion to the ball: “The Princess Mary chatted
with me over her own adventures on the queen’s birthday, when she
first appeared at Court. The history of her dancing at the ball, and the
situation of her partner and brother, the Duke of Clarence, she spoke of
with a sweet ingenuousness and artless openness which makes her very
amiable character. And not a little did I divert her when I related the
duke’s visit to our party! ‘O,’ cried she, ‘he told me
of it himself the next morning, and said, “You may think how far I
was gone, for I kissed the Schwellenberg’s hand!”’”—ED.]
342 (return)
[ “On the evening
of Saturday May 15 (1784), he [Dr. Johnson] was in fine spirits at our
Essex Head Club. He told us, ‘I dined yesterday at Patrick’s
with Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and Fanny Burney. Three such women are
not to be found: I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs.
Lennox, who is superior to them all.’” (Boswell.) This “occasional
sally” cannot, of course, be taken as expressing Johnson’s
deliberate opinion of the relative merits of Fanny Burney and Mrs. Lenox.
He was an old friend of Charlotte Lenox, and had written in 1752 the
dedication for her “Female Quixote,” a novel of singular charm
and humour, though scarcely to be placed on a par with “Evelina”
or “Cecilia.”—ED.]
343 (return)
[ Fanny’s successor
in office.—ED.]
344 (return)
[ The old servant of Mrs.
Delany.—ED.]
345 (return)
[ Fanny’s maid.—ED.]
346 (return)
[ The flight of the king
and his family from Paris, on the night of June 20-21. They reached
Varennes in safety the following night, but were there recognised and
stopped, and the next day escorted back to Paris.—ED.]
347 (return)
[ The reader will find in
Green’s “History of the English People,” a widely
different view of’ the character of Dunstan. But Fanny knew only the
old stories, and had, moreover, written a tragedy, “Edwy and Elgiva,”
in which Dunstan, in accordance with those old stories, appears as the
villain.—ED.]
348 (return)
[ Author of the “New
Bath Guide.”—ED.]
349 (return)
[ Henrietta Frances,
second daughter of John, first Earl Spencer, and younger sister of
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, married Viscount Duncannon in 1780. She
died in 1821.—-ED.]
350 (return)
[ Gibbon had good reason
for his opinion of the power of Lady Elizabeth’s charms. In 1787, he
met her at Lausanne, a young widow of twenty-eight, and found her
allurements so irresistible that he proposed marriage to her, and was
rejected.—ED.]
352 (return)
[ In the “Memoirs
of Dr. Burney,” Fanny writes in more detail of this her last visit
to Sir Joshua. “He was still more deeply depressed; though Miss
Palmer good-humouredly drew a smile from him, by gaily exclaiming, ‘Do,
pray, now, uncle, ask Miss Burney to write another book directly! for we
have almost finished Cecilia again—and this is our sixth reading of
it!’”]
“The little occupation, Miss Palmer said, of which Sir joshua was then capable, was carefully dusting the paintings in his picture gallery, and placing them in different points of view.
“This passed at the conclusion of 1791; on the February of the following year, this friend, equally amiable and eminent, was no more!” (Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 144).—ED.]
353 (return)
[ The wife of Sir Lucas
Pepys.—ED.]
354 (return)
[ Afterwards Lord
Ellenborough: the leading counsel for Hastings.—ED.]
355 (return)
[ February 23, 1792.—-ED.]
356 (return)
[ The greater part of Sir
joshua’s large fortune was left to his unmarried niece, Mary Palmer.
Considerable legacies were left to his niece, Mrs. Gwatkin (Offy Palmer),
and to his friend Edmund Burke. In addition to these legacies, his will
provided for a number of small bequests, including one of a thousand
pounds to his old servant, Ralph Kirkley. In the following summer Mary
Palmer married the Earl of Inchiquin, afterwards Marquis of Thomond.
“He is sixty-nine,” Fanny writes about that time of Lord
Inchiquin; “but they say he is remarkably pleasing in his manners,
and soft and amiable in his disposition.”—ED.]
357 (return)
[ He was buried in the
crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, near the tomb of Sir Christopher
Wren.—ED.]
358 (return)
[ The recent proclamation
by the Government against the publication and sale of seditious writings.
The “new associates” were members of the societies of
sympathisers with the principles of the French Revolution, which, under
such titles as “Friends of the People.” “Corresponding
Society,” etc., were now spreading all over England.—ED.]
359 (return)
[ The revolutionary clubs
of Paris, the Jacobins’ Club in particular, gradually acquired such
power as enabled them to overawe the Legislative Assembly, and even, at a
later date, the Convention itself. Their influence only ceased with the
overthrow and death of their leader, Robespièrre, in 1794.—ED.]
360 (return)
[ The wife and eldest
daughter of Arthur Young, the well- known writer on agriculture. Mrs.
Young was the sister of Dr. Burney’s second Wife.—ED.]
361 (return)
[ “Madame de Genlis’s
husband, the Count de Genlis, had become Marquis of Sillery by the death
of his elder brother. He was a Revolutionist and member of the Girondin
party: one of the twenty-two Girondins who perished by the guillotine,
October 31, 1793. Madame de Genlis (or Brulard) had come to England in
October, 1791, with her young pupil, Mlle. d’Orléans (Egalité), the
daughter of Philippe Egalité, Duke of Orleans, whose physicians had
ordered her to take the waters at Bath. They remained in England until
November, 1792, when they were recalled to Paris by Egalité. Arriving
there, they found themselves proscribed as emigrants, and obliged to quit
Paris within eight-and-forty hours. They then took refuge in Flanders, and
settled at Tournay where Pamela was married to Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
subsequently one of the leaders in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. In
Flanders Madame de Genlis enjoyed the protection of General Dumontiez, but
when he became suspected, with too good reason, by the Convention, she was
obliged again to take flight, and found safety at last with Mlle. d’Orléans,
in Switzerland.”
Pamela was the adopted daughter of Madame de Genlis; some said her actual daughter by the Duke of Orleans; but this is at least doubtful. “Circe,” or “Henrietta Circe,” as Fanny afterwards calls her, was Madame de Genlis’s niece, Henriette de Sercey (!), who subsequently married a rich merchant of Hamburg.—ED. VOL. 11.]
362 (return)
[ “Is it possible?
Am I so happy? Do I see my dear Miss Burney?”—ED.]
363 (return)
[ Earl Macartney was sent
as ambassador to China in 1793, for the purpose of concluding a commercial
treaty with that power. He was unsuccessful, however, and, after spending
some months in China, the embassy returned to England.—ED.]
364 (return)
[ “Miss French, a
lively niece of Mr. Burke’s.” (.Memoirs of Dr. Burney, vol.
iii, p. 157.)—ED.]
365 (return)
[ Burke was, of course,
mistaken. When Wycherley died, at seventy-five (December, 1715), Mary
Granville (afterwards Mrs. Delany) was in her sixteenth year. Wycherley,
it is true, married a young wife on his deathbed, but it is certain that
this was not Mary Granville; indeed, if Pope’s account, given in
Spence’s “Anecdotes,” may be trusted, it was a woman of
very different character.—ED.]
366 (return)
[ Alexander Wedderburn,
afterwards Lord Loughborough, was born in or near Edinburgh in 1733. He
attained distinction at the bar, and entered Parliament early in the reign
of George III. As a politician he was equally notorious for his skill in
debate and his want of public principle. Previously a member of the
opposition, he ratted to the Government in 1771, and was rewarded by Lord
North with the Solicitor- Generalship. He defended Lord Clive in 1773.
When Thurlow became Lord Chancellor (in 1778), Wedderburn succeeded him in
the office of Attorney-General. In 1786 he was made Chief justice of the
Court of Common Pleas, and called to the House of Peers by the title of
Baron Loughborough. After this we find him acting as a follower of Charles
Fox, and leader of the Whig party in the House of Lords. He supported Fox’s
views on the Regency question in 1788-9, but when the split in the Whig
party on the subject of the French Revolution took place, Loughborough,
like Burke, gave his support to the government. In January, 1793, he
obtained the long coveted post of Lord Chancellor. He died January 1,
1805. A story goes that when the news of Loughborough’s death was
brought to George III., “his majesty was graciously pleased to
exclaim, ‘Then he has not left a greater knave behind him in my
dominions.’” (Campbell’s “Lives of the
Chancellors,” vol. vi., p. 334.)- -ED.]
367 (return)
[ Thomas Erskine (born
1750, died 1823), If less eminent in the law, was a far more respectable
politician than Loughborough, although his parliamentary career was by no
means so brilliant. He was a consistent Whig, with the courage of his
convictions. He lost his post of Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales
through his defence of Thomas Paine, author of the famous “Rights of
Man,” in December, 1792. Fired by the example of the French
Revolutionists, the friends of liberty in England were, about this time,
everywhere forming themselves into political associations, for the purpose
of promoting Parliamentary reform, and generally “spreading the
principles of freedom.” By the government these societies were
regarded as seditious. Erskine was a member of one or more of these
associations, and one of his most brilliant triumphs at the bar was
connected with the prosecution by government (October, 1794), of Hardy
Thelwall and Horne Tooke for high treason, as members of one of these
supposed seditious societies. The prisoners were defended by Erskine and
acquitted. Erskine became Lord Chancellor in 1806 after the death of Pitt.—ED.]
368 (return)
[ On his own admission
Erskine was a member of the Society of Friends of the People about the end
of 1792—ED.]
369 (return)
[ With all his talents
Erskine was always noted for his inordinate vanity.—ED.]
370 (return)
[ The famous Lord Chief
justice. He died in 1793, aged eighty-eight years.—ED.]
371 (return)
[ Alderman Boydell’s
celebrated “Shakspeare Gallery” in Pall Mall, contained
paintings illustrative of Shakspeare by Reynolds, Romney, Fuseli, and many
others of the most distinguished painters of the day. The entire
collection, comprising one hundred and seventy works, was sold by auction
by Christie, in May, 1805.—-ED.]