The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney. Frances Burney
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made an apology for her intrusion, but the poor girl blushed and retreated into a corner of the room: another girl, however, advanced, and obligingly and gracefully invited us in and gave us all chairs. She was just sixteen extremely pretty, and with a countenance better than her features, though those were also very good. Mrs. Thrale made her many compliments, which she received with a mingled modesty and pleasure, both becoming and interesting. She was, indeed, a sweetly pleasing girl.
We found they were both daughters of our hostess, and born and bred at Devizes. We were extremely pleased with them, and made them a long visit, which I wished to have been longer. But though those pretty girls struck us so much, the wonder of the family was yet to be produced. This was their brother, a most lovely boy of ten years of age who seems to be not merely the wonder of their family, but of the times, for his astonishing skill in drawing.86 They protest he has never had any instruction, yet showed us some of his productions that were really beautiful. Those that were copies were delightful, those of his own composition amazing, though far inferior. I was equally struck with the boy and his works.
We found that he had been taken to town, and that all the painters had been very kind to him, and Sir Joshua Reynolds had pronounced him, the mother said, the most promising genius he had ever met with. Mr. Hoare has been so charmed with this sweet boy’s drawings that he intends sending him to Italy with his own son.
This house was full of books, as well as paintings, drawings, and music and all the family seem not only ingenious and industrious, but amiable; added to which, they are strikingly handsome.
Lord Mulgrave on the “Services”
Bath.—I shall now skip to our arrival at this beautiful city which I really admire more than I did, if possible, when I first saw it. The houses are so elegant, the streets are so beautiful, the prospects so enchanting, I could fill whole pages upon the general beauty of the place and country, but that I have neither time for myself, nor incitement for you, as I know nothing tires so much as description.
Monday.—Lord Mulgrave, Augustus Phipps, Miss Cooper, Dr. Harrington, and Dr. Woodward dined with us.
I like Lord Mulgrave87 very much. He has more wit, and a greater readiness of repartee, than any man I have met with this age. During dinner he was all brilliancy, but I drew myself into a little scrape with him, from which I much wanted some of his wit to extricate myself. Mrs. Thrale was speaking of the House of Commons, and lamenting that she had never heard any debates there.
“And now,” said she, “I cannot, for this General Johnson has turned us all out most barbarously.”
“General Johnson?” repeated Lord Mulgrave.
“Ay, or colonel—I don’t know what the man was, but I know he was no man of gallantry.”
“Whatever he was,” said his lordship, “I hope he was a land officer.”
“I hope so too, my lord,” said she.
“No, no, no,” cried Mr. Thrale, “it was Commodore Johnson.”
“That’s bad, indeed,” said Lord Mulgrave, laughing. “I thought, by his manners, he had belonged to the army.”
“True,” said I “they were hardly polished enough for the sea.”
This I said a demi-voix, and meant only for Mrs. Thrale, but Lord Mulgrave heard and drew up upon them, and pointing his finger at me with a threatening air, exclaimed,
“Don’t you speak, Miss Burney? What’s this, indeed?”
They all stared, and to be sure I rouged pretty high.
“Miss Burney,” said Mrs. Thrale, “should be more respectful to be sure, for she has a brother at sea herself.”
“I know it,” said he, “and for all her, we shall see him come back from Kamschatka as polished a beau as any he will find.”
Poor Jem! God send him safe back, polished or rough.
Lord Mulgrave’s brother Edmund is just entered into the army.
“He told me t’other day,” said his lordship, “that he did not like the thoughts of being a parson.”
“‘Very well,’ said I, ‘you are old enough to choose for yourself; what will you be then?’
“‘Why, a soldier,’ says he.
“‘A soldier? will you so? Why, then, the best thing you can do is to embark with your brother Henry immediately, for you won’t know what to do in a regiment by yourself.’ Well, no sooner said than done! Henry was just going to the West Indies in Lord Harrington’s regiment, and Edmund ordered a chaise and drove to Portsmouth after him. The whole was settled in half an hour.”
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough
My sister Gast, in her younger days, was a great favourite with an old lady who was a particular crony and intimate of old Sarah Marlborough, who, though much of the jade, had undoubtedly very strong parts, and was indeed remarkably clever. When Mrs. Hinde (the old lady) would sometimes talk to her about books, she’d cry out, “Prithee, don’t talk to me about books; I never read any books but men and cards!” But let anybody read her book, and then tell me if she did not draw characters with as masterly a hand as Sir Joshua Reynolds.—Mr. Crisp to Fanny Burney (April 27.)
The Byrons
Sunday—We had Mrs. Byron and Augusta,88 and Mrs. Lee, to spend the afternoon. Augusta opened her whole heart to me, as we sat together, and told me all the affairs of her family. Her brother, Captain George Byron, is lately returned from the West Indies, and has brought a wife with him from Barbadoes, though he was there only three weeks, and knew not this girl he has married till ten days before he left it!—a pleasant circumstance for this proud family!
Poor Mrs. Byron seems destined for mortification and humiliation; yet such is her native fire, and so wonderful are her spirits, that she bears up against all calamity, and though half mad one day with sorrow and vexation, is fit the next to entertain an assembly of company;—and so to entertain them as to make the happiest person in the company, by comparison with herself, seem sad.
Augusta is a very amiably ingenuous girl, and I love her the more for her love of her sisters: she talked to me of them all, but chiefly of Sophia, the youngest next to herself, but who, having an independent fortune, has quarrelled with her mother, and lives with one of her sisters, Mrs. Byron, who married a first cousin, And son of Lord Byron.
“Ah, Miss Burney,” she says continually, “if you knew Sophy, you would never bear me! she is so much better than I am, and so handsome, and so good, and so clever,—and I used to talk to her of you by the hour together. She longs so to know you! ‘Come,’ she says, ‘now tell me something more about your darling, Miss Burney.’ But I ought to hope you may never see her, for if you did I should be so jealous.”
Mr. Henry will be so Mortified
Friday was a busy and comical day. We had an engagement of long standing, to drink tea with Miss L—, whither we all went, and a most queer evening did we spend.
When we entered, she and all her company were looking out of the window; however, she found us out in a few minutes, and made us welcome in a strain of delight and humbleness at receiving us, that put her into a flutter of spirits, from which she never recovered all the evening.
Her fat, jolly mother took her seat at the top of the room; next to her sat a lady in a riding habit, whom I soon found to be Mrs. Dobson;89 below her sat a gentlewoman, prim, upright, neat, and mean; and, next to her, sat another, thin, haggard, wrinkled, fine, and tawdry, with a thousand frippery ornaments and old-fashioned furbelows; she was excellently nick-named, by