CHAPTER XIV
Fanny Burney and the Art of the Diarist

The Diary of Fanny Burney cannot, like the conversation of Johnson and the correspondence of Walpole, be cited as perhaps the finest specimen of its kind. Of the arts we are discussing, the diarist’s is the most difficult to define or characterize; for at one extreme, it may shrink into the dulness of a calendar, and at the other, it may record the agonies of a soul’s attempt to be honest with its God or with itself. Kinds so distinct as Pepys’s Diary and the Confessions of Rousseau seem to defy all attempts at common definition. The Diary of Miss Burney, unlike these works, has no psychological problems; but exists for the simple and engaging purpose of recording events of interest. In the beginning she resolved never to mix with her record, her ‘religious sentiments, opinions, hopes, fears, beliefs, or aspirations;[431] but to reserve her Diary for worldly dross.’ If not among the greatest diaries of the world, it is among the most normal; and it is not impossible to define it roughly. Diaries of this kind may be described as a sort of letter to oneself.

Miss Burney’s Diary was, however, written to be read by others than herself. It was addressed to her sisters, to whom sections of it were despatched from time to time. It partakes, therefore, in large measure of the nature of private correspondence, and much that has been said of that type applies obviously to this. But there are important differences. The greatness of the Diary certainly does not consist in the delightful treatment of domestic and personal trifles. Nor does Miss Burney paint highly for the mere love of painting, as the conversationalist and the letter-writer often do. She is not communicating herself, but the important life with which she is in touch. She does not so much wish that the reader should see her, as that he should see with her eyes—and her artistic vision was remarkably shrewd and keen. The Diary is thus a panorama rather than a portrait. We read diaries either to get at the personality of the writer or at the events described. The character of Fanny Burney, combining sweetness, shyness, wisdom, and pride, presents no particular problems, and is not of commanding interest. What she saw and what she heard, the people who loved her, who attached her to them, and who, not unfrequently, preyed upon her—these constitute the interest of the book; it is these and the art with which they are set before us that make the Diary what it is.

The thought that is for ever borne in upon the reader is that Miss Burney was a very lucky woman. Suffering as she did from shyness and an inflamed sense of propriety, it might easily have been her lot to lead a life as secluded as that of her friend, Mr. Crisp of Chessington; yet in fact Johnson himself did not commonly associate with more people whom one would like to have known. The young lady’s unassuming manner was of actual value in increasing her circle of desirable acquaintance, when once she was famous. When once she was famous, I repeat, for most of her interesting friends and experiences came to her as the result of her celebrity and of the bluestocking patronage which ensued upon it. It was Mrs. Thrale who drew Fanny Burney into the great world which she was to adorn and to record; but the interest of Mrs. Thrale went out rather to the author of Evelina, than to the mouse-like young lady of St. Martin Street. Seldom has so timid an entry into the literary world been accorded a reception so flattering. The young woman who had disposed of her novel under cover of night and anonymity, as though it had been so much stolen goods, was presently to find that she had every bluestocking in London at her feet, and that the King of Letters was proclaiming her the equal of Fielding. One speculates what would have become of her if she had begun her career with The Wanderer instead of Evelina. She had the luck to write her best novel—some will say her only good novel—first; and from that happy beginning sprang all the rest of her good fortune.

It is to be remembered by those who study Miss Burney’s career that the appearance of Evelina, in 1778, marks a definite period in the history of woman’s contribution to English literature. Johnson’s estimate of the book was of course ludicrously wrong, and it is well to assume that his chivalry (for once) got the better of his judgment; yet it is impossible to deny the superlative significance of the book. It was the greatest creative work that had yet been produced by an Englishwoman. It is still read with delight by people who never heard of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Miss Fielding’s Peter Simple, or Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote. The bluestockings were right in feeling that the author had forced a new estimate of the sex. The respect for her work was universal: extravagant things—impossibilities—were expected of her.

It was now that Miss Burney’s modesty (so carefully nurtured) was felt to be but an added grace. The most vicious satirist could discover in ‘little Burney’ nothing of the arrogance of a femme savante. She gave the impression of hating her talents and the fame which had been thrust upon her. Her unassuming demeanour and her youthful sweetness (for she was still girlish at twenty-six) made her the delight of every drawing-room she would consent to enter, and not unfrequently brought down upon her admiration and social attentions which she would have been happier without. At last, in an unhappy hour, they brought her to the attention of Queen Charlotte. But for the moment, all was sweetness and triumph and popularity. Her position among the bluestockings is noticeable; she was beloved of them all. She was loyal to Mrs. Thrale without sacrificing the regard of Mrs. Montagu or in any way offending her beloved Mrs. Ord. She almost reconciled stiff old Mrs. Delany and the dear Duchess of Portland to literary eminence in a woman. Outside this circle she was no less esteemed. Johnson loved her as a daughter, and professed himself glad to ‘send his name down to posterity’ linked with hers. Burke, who read Evelina repeatedly, distinguished her by a special greeting when she appeared at the trial of Warren Hastings, as, indeed, did the prisoner himself. Wyndham delighted to converse with her by the hour. Walpole received her at Strawberry Hill, and was no less pleased with her unpretentious manner than with the fact that Mrs. Montagu now had a superior. Had Miss Burney cared to open a salon, she might have reigned over these men like a more rational Lespinasse. The more her fortune is dwelt upon, the more obvious it becomes. As a child she had had David Garrick for a grown-up playmate; as a young woman she had the privilege of welcoming Sarah Siddons to the court; later in life, she conversed on terms of intimacy with Madame de Stael. She had passed the day in Reynolds’s studio, and had looked at the stars through the glass of Herschel. She was visited at Windsor by Boswell, proof-sheets in hand; and Sheridan, at the height of his reputation, repeatedly invited her to write a comedy. She described her acquaintance to Queen Charlotte as being ‘not only very numerous, but very mixed, taking in not only most stations in life, but also most parties.’[432] We may marvel at the fact that the shy Fanny Burney became a novelist; but she could hardly help becoming a diarist.

Even the great misfortune of her life really contributed to her greatness. Her life at Court, which half killed her, a life which she repeatedly calls ‘monastic’ and describes as ‘dead and tame’—strong words from one who thought she adored the Queen—enabled her to depict a kind of life which, dull as it was, can never lack significance. If for no more important reason, her account of it will always be read as one of the great dramas of disillusion. It furnished Macaulay with material for one of his most brilliant extravaganzas. Like him, we read the third and fourth volume of the Diary, which detail that life, with feelings of rage at the royal gaolers and at the Hanoverian ideals of conduct that they almost succeeded in imposing upon her. The Queen’s obvious delight in checking Miss Burney’s literary activity and in stiffening her sense of propriety (which needed no stiffening) makes it difficult to control the judgment; and yet, upon reflection, it will be seen that the reader’s rage is but a tribute to one of the most effective pieces of realism in the language. It is true that it is often dull, but so is realism. It is true that Miss Burney’s adulation of the Royal Family is at times painfully fulsome; but even this only heightens the description of that life which, despite all adulation, she found unendurable. The story of her captivity is no less thrilling than that of Pamela in the clutches of Mrs. Jewkes.

As a delineation of an ogress, Mrs. Schwellenberg is at once more horrible and more lifelike than Mrs. Jewkes; beside her, all the ‘weatherbeaten old she-dragons’ of eighteenth century fiction and drama pale into insignificance. Miss Burney has often been praised for creating the character of Madame Duval, but that lady is a mere commonplace when compared with the spiteful old crone who had no interest above piquet and who divided the slight remnant of affection of which her withered nature was capable between her royal owner and her tame frogs. Her ambitions for Fanny Burney, the idol of the blues, was that she should learn piquet, give up writing, and become like unto herself, a spaniel of the backstairs. Few characters in literature are at once so comic and so loathsome.

It might be assumed that the depiction of Mrs. Schwellenberg were the result of mere dislike, if Miss Burney had not, at the same moment, been proving by her portrayal of Queen Charlotte that her vision was never more keen and her judgment of character never more unbiassed. She had no intention whatever of analyzing her mistress. As a lover of royal families, she was far more prone to idealize her; but for all that she had a genius for truthfulness, and could not help mirroring the royal nature with a fatal accuracy. It is the revelation of such royalty as can conceive no happiness apart from its own presence, of a queenly etiquette in which a native sweetness is lost in acquired selfishness. For subtlety and moderation this characterization is unsurpassed in its own century, and not often equalled in the century that followed it, for all its psychology and realism.

The triumph of Miss Burney’s realism over her personal inclination may be illustrated by setting side by side two sentences drawn from the same entry in the Diary for December 1790: ‘Her Majesty was very kind during this time, and the Princesses interested themselves about me with a sweetness very grateful to me.’ This is the expression of what is proper from the Keeper of the Robes; but on the next page it shrivels away before her sense of actuality: ‘Though I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could scarcely stand, I saw she concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers.’

These court-episodes in the Diary of Miss Burney are of special use in showing her powers of characterization. The earlier sections of the book deal with people no less interesting, but so familiar to us from other sources that Miss Burney’s skill in depicting them is not so readily perceived. No particular surprise mingles with our pleasure as we read of Johnson and of Mrs. Thrale, of Reynolds and of Mrs. Montagu, because the author’s art seems but to reflect, at most to amplify, what we have seen elsewhere. It is when she has occasion to make us acquainted with persons whom we have not met elsewhere, with ‘Mr. Turbulent’ and Mrs. Schwellenberg, that we begin to perceive the extent of her powers. Her five years’ imprisonment in no way impairs her observation of human nature. The sudden apparition of James Boswell upon the scene is as captivating a piece of writing as anything in the whole Diary; the contrast between his cheerful officiousness and the blundering officiousness of Mr. Turbulent is a sufficient proof of the fact that Miss Burney has retained all her old skill in characterization. Nor has the sense for a boisterous scene departed from the author of Evelina. The quiet little lady with prim demeanour still had a love of broad comedy, as the following pages may show. The scene is Mrs. Schwellenberg’s table, the occasion a dinner of the royal attendants in honour of the King’s birthday, the chief actor the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV), the Royal Sailor, who is shown, to use Miss Burney’s words—and they are significant of her conscious art—‘in genuine colours.’

Scenes as vivid, though not so uproarious, might be cited in every chapter of the work; to quote them all would be to print half the Diary. The selection here given is sufficient to show why Miss Burney’s writing is invariably referred to as dramatic. The Diary is, in parts, so like a novel as to prompt the query whether it is at all reliable as a record of facts. Did not the author’s imagination play freely over the events? Did she not select, arrange, and colour according to the demands of art rather than of history? Are the conversations not improved? Is not the diarist a novelist still? Questions of this large kind can hardly be answered save in a large, impressionistic way. The Diary is, in general, a truthful document and a reliable account of the life which it records. A mere glance at the book will reveal the fact that Miss Burney had little of Boswell’s passion for literalness, for accurate dates, and for written evidence. But Boswell was unique in his generation, and Boswell was a lawyer. Miss Burney was writing to amuse her sisters, not to inform the public; but there are passages which show that she was endowed with a remarkably accurate memory. She once has occasion[434] to quote a letter from memory; a comparison of it with the original, which happens to be in existence, reveals no evidence of misinterpretation, and shows the copy to be, in fact, very nearly a literal reproduction of the original. We are to remember that Miss Burney had been in the habit of keeping a diary, recording conversations which had interested her, ever since the age of fifteen; and that this had strengthened her memory as well as her powers of observation. It was to a similar practice that Boswell owed his ability to record conversation with accuracy; and he himself asserted that the ability grew with practice. There is no reason for supposing that the results in one case were radically different from those in the other. Certain it is that Miss Burney’s record of Johnson’s conversation is in no way inconsistent with Boswell’s. To say that in describing life at Streatham or at the Court she used her skill in selection and that she employed the judgment of a novelist in beginning and ending a conversation effectively is merely to repeat that the Diary is a work of art. Judgment in the choice of facts to set down need not indicate a misinterpretation of them.

There is but one quality in Miss Burney which shakes the reader’s confidence in her judgment of character. There is a tendency to emotionalism in her which the irreverent will term gush. She was touched with the sentimentality of her times. The tear of sensibility is ever trembling in her eyes. Her affection for Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. Locke, Mrs. Delany, and most other ladies, for ‘dear Daddy Crisp,’ for ‘dear Sir Joshua,’ is so effusive as to make all terms of endearment seem tawdry.

Hardly less distressing than this mawkishness is the lady’s self-consciousness, which she mistook for the virtue of modesty. The flattery which brought the blush of shame to her cheek and kept her on the verge of swooning, the flattery which made her shrink into corners or retire in confusion from the scene, the praise which was too gross for her ears, all this is written down in extenso and with something unpleasantly like gusto. It flows through the Diary like an apocalyptic river of honey. Macaulay reminds us, quite properly, that all this was ‘for the eyes of two or three persons who had loved her from infancy, who had loved her in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight.’ This is true, no doubt; but might not father and sisters have achieved delight without this surfeit of sweetness, ‘whereof a little more than a little is by much too much’? It is all very human, of course, and it would be chivalrous to forget it. But all the chivalry in the world cannot hide the fact that it is a serious blot on the art of the Diary, a blot that we cannot but wish away from so splendid a work.