Part 15 (1/2)

MADAME D'ARBLAY.

[BORN 1752. DIED 1840.]

MACAULAY.

The daughter of Dr Burney deserves to have the progress of her mind recorded from her ninth to her twenty-fifth year. When her education had proceeded no further than her hornbook she lost her mother, and thenceforward educated herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet-tempered man can well be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to have occurred to him that a parent has other duties to perform to children than that of fondling them. No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write, and before she was fourteen she began to find pleasure in reading. It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very small.

When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most celebrated writings of Voltaire and Moliere, and, what seems still more extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is particularly deserving of observation, that she appears to have been by no means a novel-reader. Her father's library was large, and he had admitted into it so many books which rigid moralists generally exclude, that he felt uneasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single novel--Fielding's ”Amelia.”

But the great book of human nature was turned over before f.a.n.n.y Burney.

A society, various and brilliant, was sometimes to be found in Dr Burney's cabin. Johnson and he met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously. One tie, indeed, was awanting to their mutual attachment.

Burney loved his own art, music, pa.s.sionately, and Johnson just knew the bell of St Clement's Church from the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; and in winter nights their conversations were sometimes prolonged till the fire had gone out, and the candles had burned away to the wicks. Burney's admiration of the powers which had produced ”Ra.s.selas” and the ”Rambler” bordered on idolatry. Johnson, on the other hand, condescended to growl out that Burney was an honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible not to like. Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street. That wonderful actor loved the society of children, partly from good nature, and partly from vanity.

The ecstasies of mirth and terror which his gestures and play of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of pure critics. He often exhibited all his powers of memory for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in Saint Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks.

f.a.n.n.y's propensity to novel-writing could not be kept down. She told her father she had written a novel [”Evelina”]. On so grave an occasion it was surely his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, to prevent her exposing herself if her book was a bad one, and if it were a good one to see that the terms which she made with the publisher were likely to be beneficial to her. Instead of this he only stared, burst out a-laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and never even asked the name of the work. The contract with Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were given for the copyright, and were accepted by f.a.n.n.y with delight. Her father's inexcusable neglect of his duty happily caused her no worse evil than the loss of 1200 or 1500. After many delays, ”Evelina” appeared in 1778. Poor f.a.n.n.y was sick with terror, and durst hardly stir out of doors. Some days pa.s.sed before anything was heard of the book. Soon, however, the first accents of praise begin to be heard. The keepers of the circulating libraries reported that everybody was asking for ”Evelina,” and that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author.

Scholars and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to own that they could not tear themselves away from ”Evelina.” After producing other novels, for one of which, ”Camilla,” she is said to have received three thousand guineas, and encountering many strange vicissitudes, Madame D'Arblay died at the age of eighty-eight.

MADAME ROLAND.

[BORN 1754. DIED 1793.]

CARLYLE.

A far n.o.bler victim follows, one who will claim remembrance from several centuries--Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the wife of Roland. Queenly, sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to Riouffe in her prison.

”Something more than is usually found in the looks of women painted itself,” says he, ”in those large black eyes of hers, full of expression and sweetness. She spoke to me often at the grate; we were all attentive round her, in a sort of admiration and astonishment. She expressed herself with a purity, with a harmony and prosody, that made her language like music, of which the ear could never have enough. Her conversation was serious, not cold. Coming from the mouth of a beautiful woman, it was frank and courageous as that of a great man.” ”And yet her maid said, 'Before you she collects her strength; but, in her own room, she will sit three hours sometimes leaning on the window and weeping.'”

She has been in prison,--liberated once, but recaptured the same hour,--ever since the 1st of June, in agitation and uncertainty, which has gradually settled down into the last stern certainty--that of death.

In the Abbaye Prison, she occupied Charlotte Corday's apartment. Here, in the Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe; with ex-minister Claviere calls the beheaded twenty-two ”_nos amis_, our friends,” whom all are so soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of hers were written which all the world still reads.

But now, on the 8th of November, ”clad in white,” says Riouffe, ”with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle,” she is gone to the judgment-bar. She returned with a quick step; lifted her finger, to signify to us that she was doomed; her eyes seemed to have been wet.

Fouquier-Tinville's questions had been ”brutal;” offended female honour flung them back on him with scorn, not without tears. And now, short preparation soon done, she too shall go her last road. There went with her a certain Lamarche, ”director of a.s.signat-printing,” whose dejection she endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, ”to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her”--a remarkable request--which was refused. Looking at the statue of Liberty which stands there, she says, ”O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!” For Lamarche's sake she will die first, to show him how easy it is to die. ”Contrary to the order,” says Samson. ”Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a lady;” and Samson yielded.

n.o.ble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle, and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman's bosom! Like a white Grecian statue, serenely complete, she s.h.i.+nes in that black wreck of things, long memorable. Honour to great Nature who, in Paris city, in the era of n.o.ble-sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her clear perennial womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopedies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques! Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a pen ”to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her.” It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness and a kind of sacredness over all that preceded; so in her, too, there was an unnameable; she, too, was a daughter of the Infinite; there were mysteries which Philosophism had not dreamt of! She left long written counsels to her little girl. She said her husband would not survive her.

Some days afterwards, Roland, hearing the news of what happened on the 8th, embraces his kind friends at Rouen; leaves their kind house which had given him refuge; goes forth, with farewell too sad for tears. On the morrow morning, 16th of the month, ”some four leagues from Rouen, Paris-ward, near Bourg-Baudoin, in M. Normand's avenue,” there is seen, sitting leant against a tree, the figure of a rigorous wrinkled man, stiff now in the rigour of death, a cane-sword run through his heart, and at his feet this writing: ”Whoever thou art that findest me lying, respect my remains; they are those of a man who consecrated all his life to being useful, and who has died, as he lived, virtuous and honest. Not fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat, on learning that my wife had been murdered. I wished not to remain longer on an earth polluted with crimes.”

MARIE ANTOINETTE.

[BORN 1755. DIED 1793.]

CARLYLE.

On Monday, 14th October 1793, a cause is pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as these stone walls never witnessed--the trial of Marie Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To such changes of human fortune, what words are adequate?