“If once you set about framing studied letters, that are to be correct, nicely grammatical, and run in smooth periods, I shall mind them no otherwise than as newspapers of intelligence… There is no fault in an epistolary correspondence like stiffness and study. Dash away whatever comes uppermost; the sudden sallies of imagination, clap’d down on paper, just as they arise, are worth folios… Never think of being correct when you write to me.” Not the least notable of Fanny’s records are the glimpses we get of some of her father’s friends. One is poor mad Kit Smart, always needy and out-at-elbows, with whom Burney had grown acquainted at Arne’s, and who died in 1772 in the King’s Bench Prison. Another, who also died in this period, is Hawkesworth, whose end, according to Fanny, was certainly hastened by the attacks made upon him in connection with his subsidised publication of Cook’s Voyages. Garrick more or less pervades the chronicle, dashing into the house in the most unexpected manner; rushing away with little Charlotte whom he declares to be the image of Comedy in Reynolds’s picture; acting, grimacing, mimicking, posturing, and altogether comporting himself in every respect like the excellent friend and histrion he was. Fanny often sees him play – as Bayes in the Rehearsal; as Richard the Third; as Lear, and as Abel Drugger in the Alchemist. Of “crook’d back’d Richard” she says, – “It is inconceivable how terribly great he is in this character! I will never see him so disfigured again; he seemed so truly the monster he performed, that I felt myself glow with indignation every time I saw him. The applause he met with, exceeds all belief in the absent. I thought at the end they would have torn the house down: our seats shook under us.” Of Lear, – “He was exquisitely great; every idea I had formed of his talents, although I have ever idolized him, was exceeded.” But she very properly blames Cibber’s feeble alterations of Shakespeare’s work. As to Abel Drugger, perhaps Garrick’s greatest part, she says: – “Never could I have imagined such a metamorphose as I saw; the extreme meanness, the vulgarity, the low wit, the vacancy of countenance, the appearance of unlicked nature in all his motions.” These are more than the opinions of an “unlessoned girl,” for they are confirmed to the full by experienced spectators such as Lichtenberg and Mme. Necker. To Goldsmith, then not far from his end, there is passing reference. “Dr. Goldsmith” – says the diary in May, 1773, – “has just brought on the stage a new comedy, called, ‘She stoops to Conquer.’ We went to it with Mr. and Mrs. Young; it is very laughable and comic; but I know not how it is, almost all diversions are insipid at present to me, except the opera.” There is another mention of Goldsmith a few pages further on. It relates to his projected Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. Among other contributors, Dr. Burney was to undertake the article “Musician.” But the plan never got beyond the prospectus stage. Goldsmith died in the following year, and Dr. Burney’s paper probably found its ultimate place in his own History of Music.
CHAPTER II
NO. 1, ST. MARTIN’S STREET
No. 1, St. Martin’s Street, now No. 35, to which the Burneys moved early in 1774, may fairly be described as a house with a history. We say “now,” since it still exists, – standing to the right at the top of the little street which opens into Leicester Square from the south; and having on its left that Orange Street Congregational Church where, in its Huguenot days, was wont to preach Wesley’s opponent, – the Rev. Augustus Montague Toplady. The house itself, once red brick, but at present stuccoed over, is not impressive, save for the distinction conferred by a Society of Arts tablet which proclaims it to have been formerly the residence of Newton. Miss Burney, indeed, as her father supposed, declares that Sir Isaac built it; but this is an error. He took it in 1710, when he was nearing seventy, and he lived in it until 1725, two years before he died at Kensington. Beyond occasional visits to the Princess Caroline at Leicester House on the opposite side of the Fields; and the fact that he superintended the production of two editions of the Principia during his period of residence, no very definite traditions belong to his sojourn in St. Martin’s Street. But Dr. Burney, who valued literary association, had a better reason for connecting his new house with Swift, than he had for connecting him with Queen Square. For in Newton’s house in St. Martin’s Street had certainly dwelt one of Swift’s intimates and Newton’s relatives, the beautiful and witty Catherine Barton, – the “jolie nièce” of Voltaire, – and the “Super-intendant of his domestick Affairs” to Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, to whom, it is conjectured, she was privately married. After the death of Halifax in 1715, she became the wife of John Conduitt, Newton’s successor as Master of the Mint; and, when in town, was accustomed to reside with her uncle in Leicester Fields. And it is no great stretch of imagination to assume that, at such times, though Swift himself was in exile, she was visited by the other old friends who had clustered around her when she was a Toast of the Kit Cats. The chairs of Lady Worsley and Lady Betty Germaine must often have waited at the narrow approach by which the street was then entered from the Fields, while their mistresses “disputed Whig and Tory” with Mrs. Conduitt, or were interrupted in a tête-à-tête by Gay and the Duchess of Queensberry.12
As regards situation, the change from Queen Square to St. Martin’s Street was not entirely for the better. It was no small loss to substitute an “unpleasant site,” “confined air,” and a “shabby immediate neighbourhood” for the unobstructed view of “Hampstead’s breezy Heath” which the Bloomsbury home afforded.13 But in the way of convenience, and a central position, the difference was great, in addition to which, compared with its predecessor, the new residence was “large and good.” It is true that the stairs were so steep and narrow that one of Fulke Greville’s friends broke his sword in climbing them; but, on the other hand, most of the rooms were panelled, and one, at least, of the ceilings “prodigiously painted and ornamented,” not, as the Doctor was careful to explain, by him, but by previous occupants. The chief glory of the house, however, was the unpretentious structure at the top, which passed for Sir Isaac’s observatory. It is perhaps safest to say “passed,” because, between 1725 and 1774, there must have been other dwellers in No. 1, St. Martin’s Street, and many things may have happened. But the Burneys seem to have devoutly believed in the small-paned, wooden turret, with the leaden roof and tiny fireplace, which embodied so respectable a tradition. They exhibited it religiously to their visitors; and one of its new owner’s first acts was to put it into repair. When, four years later, it was all but whirled away by the hurricane of 1778, he practically rebuilt it. And it was unquestionably Fanny’s chosen retreat and scriptorium. “His [Newton’s] observatory is my favourite sitting place, where I can retire to read or write any of my private fancies or vagaries.” And then follows what – having regard to some of her previous utterances – is more interesting than unexpected.14 “I burnt all up to my fifteenth year – thinking I grew too old for scribbling nonsense, but as I am less young, I grow, I fear, less wise, for I cannot any longer resist what I find to be irresistible, the pleasure of popping down my thoughts from time to time upon paper.”
Whatever may have been her exact age at the date of the famous auto-da-fé in the paved court at Poland Street, she must have been nearing two and twenty when she “popped down” the foregoing passage; and the moment, taken in connection with the change of scene from Bloomsbury to Leicester Fields is a favourable one for reviewing the Burney family circle in 1774-5. Dr. Burney’s second or German Tour, as we know, had been published in 1773; and in the same year he had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society. At present, in the intervals of rheumatism, he was working, with Fanny’s aid, at his History of Music. By his second wife he had two children, – Richard, and Sarah Harriet, the latter of whom eventually, like her gifted half-sister, became a novelist. But both Richard and Harriet, at this date, were in the nursery. Esther, or Hetty, the eldest daughter, had been married for some time to her cousin, Charles Rousseau Burney, afterwards of Bath, a musician and former pupil of her father; while Maria Allen, the daughter of Dr. Burney’s second wife, was married to a Mr. Rishton. James Burney, the sailor, having sailed with Cook in his second voyage, and been made a lieutenant, had now returned home. In 1775 he was serving on the North American Station, when he was recalled to accompany
Catherine Hyde was still living in Fanny Burney’s day; and Fanny saw her at Covent Garden Theatre in January, 1773, when Mason’s
“There are now,” said Cunningham, writing as far back as 1849, “at least 2 square miles of brick and mortar between it [Queen Square] and the view.” (
See
