Do you recollect at all, when you were last in town, my warm interest for the loyal part of the French exiles?-=do you remember my ?loge of a French officer, in particular, a certain M. d"Arblay?
Ah, my dear M--, you are quick as lightning; your sensitive apprehension will tell my tale for me now, without more aid than some details of circ.u.mstance.
The ?loge I then made, was with design to prepare you for an event I had reason to expect: such, however, was the uncertainty of my situation, from prudential obstacles, that I dared venture at no confidence, though my heart prompted it strongly, to a friend so sweetly sympathising in all my feelings and all my affairs--so constantly affectionate- so tenderly alive to all that interests and concerns me.
My dearest M-, you will give me, I am sure, your heart-felt wishes--your most fervent prayers. The choice I have made appears to me all you could yourself wish to fall to my lot--all you could yourself have formed to have accorded best with your kind partiality.
I had some hope you would have seen him that evening when we went together from Mrs. M. Montagu to Mrs. Locke"s, for he was then a guest in Portland Place; but some miserable circ.u.mstances, of which I knew nothing till after had just fallen out, and he had shut himself up in his room. He did not know we were there.
Many, indeed, have been the miserable circ.u.mstances that have, from time to time, alarmed and afflicted in turn, and seemed to render a renunciation indispensable. The difficulties, however, have been conquered; and last Sunday Page 69
Mr. and Mrs. Locke, my sister and Captain Phillips, and my brother Captain Burney, accompanied us to the altar, in Mickleham church ; since which the ceremony has been repeated in the chapel of the Sardinian amba.s.sador, that if, by a counter-revolution in France, M. d"Arblay recovers any f his rights, his wife may not be excluded from their partic.i.p.ation.
You may be amazed not to see the name of my dear father upon this solemn occasion - but his apprehensions from the smallness of our income have made him cold and averse and though he granted his consent, I could not even solicit his presence. I feel satisfied, however, that time will convince him I have not been so imprudent as he now thinks me. Happiness is the great end of all our worldly views and proceedings, and no one can judge for another in what will produce it, To me, wealth and ambition would always be unavailing ; I have lived in their most centrical possessions, and I have always seen that the happiness of the richest and the greatest has been the moment of retiring from riches and from power. Domestic comfort and social affection have invariably been the sole as well as ultimate objects of my choice, and I have always been a stranger to any other species of felicity.
M. d"Arblay has a taste for literature, and a pa.s.sion for reading and writing, as marked as my own ; this is a sympathy to rob retirement of all superfluous leisure, and insure to us both occupation constantly edifying or entertaining. He has seen so much of life, and has suffered so severely from its disappointments, that retreat, with a chosen companion, is become his final desire.
Mr. Locke has given M. d"Arblay a piece of ground in his beautiful park-, upon which we shall build a little neat and plain habitation. We shall continue, meanwhile, in his neighbourhood, to superintend the little edifice, and enjoy the Society of his exquisite house, and that of my beloved sister Phillips. We are now within two miles of both, at a farm-house, where we have what apartments we require, and no more, in a most beautiful and healthy situation, a mile and a half from any town.
The nearest is Bookham; but I beg that MY letters may be directed to me at Captain Phillips"s, Mickleham, as the post does not come this way, and I may else miss them for a week. AS I do not correspond with Mrs Montagu, and it would Page 70
be awkward to begin upon such a theme, I beg that when you write you will say something for me.
One of my first pleasures, in our little intended home, will be, finding a place of honour for the legacy of Mrs. Delany. Whatever may be the general wonder, and perhaps blame, of general people, at this connexion, equally indiscreet in pecuniary points for us both, I feel sure that the truly liberal and truly intellectual judgment of that most venerated character would have accorded its sanction, when acquainted with the worthiness of the object who would wish it.
Adieu, my sweet friend. Give my best compliments to Mr. ---, and give me your kind wishes, your kind prayers, my ever dear M--.
(1) So called from the convent where their meetings were held.
(2) Carlyle.
(3) Carlyle.
(4 "To the lamp;" the street lamp-irons being found, by the - French sansculottes, a handy subst.i.tute for the gallows.-ED.
(5) The old Marshal Duke de Broglie was one of the early emigrants. He quitted France in July 1789, after the fall of the Bastille.-ED.
(6) "Minister of War."
(7) Bradfield Hall, near Bury St. Edmund"s, Suffolk, the house of Arthur Young, See infra.-ED.
(8) " Arthur Young, the well-known writer of works on agriculture, still in high repute. He was a very old friend of the Burneys ; connected with them also, by marriage, Mrs. Young being a sister of Dr. Burney"s second wife. His " Travels in France " (from 1769 to 1790), published in 1794, gives a most valuable and interesting account of the state of that country just before the Revolution. Arthur Young was appointed Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, established by Act of Parliament in 1793. He died in 1820, in his seventy-ninth year, having been blind for some years previous to his death.-ED.
(9) f.a.n.n.y"s half-sister, Sarah Harriet Burney, -ED.
(10) " Minister of war."
(11) One memorable saying is recorded of the Duke de Liancourt.
He brought the news to the king of the capture of the Bastille by the people of Paris, July 14, 1789. "Late at night, the Duke de Liancourt, having official right of entrance, gains access to the royal apartments unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his const.i.tutional way, the Job"s- news. "Mais," said poor Louis, "c"est une r?volte, Why, that is a revolt!"?"Sire," answered Liancourt, "it is not a revolt,--it is a revolution.""-(Carlyle.)-ED.
(12) "Peers of France."
(13) Coblenz was the rallying-place of the emigrant n.o.blesse.-ED.
(14) On the 20th of June 1792, sansculotte Paris, a.s.sembling in its thousands, broke into the Tuileries, and called upon the king to remove his veto upon the decree against the priests, and to recall the ministry--Roland"s--which he had just dismissed. For three hours the king stood face to face with the angry crowd, refusing to comply. In the evening, the Mayor of Paris, P?tion, arrived, with other popular leaders from the a.s.sembly, and persuaded the people to disperse.-ED.
(15) "Save Yourself, M. de Liancourt!"
(16) "Ah! we are lost!"
(17) "prison."
(18) " I am in England.
(19) The Duke de la Rochefoucault, "journeying, by quick stages, with his mother and wife, towards the Waters of Forges, or some quieter country, was arrested at Gisors; conducted along the streets, amid effervescing mult.i.tudes, and killed dead " by the stroke of a paving-stone hurled through the coach-window." Killed as a once Liberal, now Aristocrat; Protector of Priests, Suspender of virtuous P?tions, and most unfortunate Hot-grown-cold, detestable to Patriotism.
He dies lamented of Europe; his blood spattering the cheeks of his old mother, ninety-three years old."
-(Carlyle, Erench Aevolulion, Part III., Book I., ch. vi.)- ED.
(20) School-boys.
(21) See note 361 ante, vol. ii.
p. 449.-ED.
(22) The name under which Madame de Genlis was now pa.s.sing.
(23) " She has seen me!"
(24) "Perhaps I am indiscreet?"
(25) "But, mademoiselle--after all--the king--is he quite cured?
(26) "What, mademoiselle! you knew that infamous woman?"
(27) These "journalizing letters " of Mrs. Phillips continue without interruption from the present page to page 37.-ED.
(28) Not yet duke, but viscount. He was created duke by Louis XVIII., in 1822.-ED.
(29) It should be March. "The portfolio of war was withdrawn from him, by a very laconic letter from the king, March 10, 1792; he had held it three months and three days." (Nouvelle Biographie G?n?rale: art. Narbonne.)-ED.
(30) Severe decrees against the emigrants were pa.s.sed in the Convention shortly afterwards. See infra, P. 33.-ED.
(31) "And as he is extremely attached to him, he has begged him to come and live with him."
(32) In a position to realise her fortune."
(33) "To pay his respects to me."
(34) "I do not speak English very well."