The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, of domestic affection, were almost too acute for her shattered frame.But happy days and tranquil nights soon restored the health which the Queen's toilette and Madame Schwellenberg's card-table had impaired.Kind and anxious faces surrounded the invalid.Conversation the most polished and brilliant revived her spirits.Travelling was recommended to her; and she rambled by easy journeys from cathedral to cathedral, and from watering-place to watering-place.She crossed the New Forest, and visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beautiful valley of Sidmouth.Thence she journeyed by Powderham Castle, and by the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to Bath, and from Bath, when the winter was approaching, returned well and cheerful to London.
There she visited her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever.
At this time England swarmed with French exiles, driven from their country by the Revolution.A colony of these refugees settled at Juniper Hall, in Surrey, not far from Norbury Park, where Mr.Lock, an intimate friend of the Burney family, resided.
Frances visited Norbury, and was introduced to the strangers.She had strong prejudices against them; for her Toryism was far beyond, we do not say that of Mr.Pitt, but that of Mr.Reeves;and the inmates of Juniper Hall were all attached to the constitution of 1791, and were therefore more detested by the royalists of the first emigration than Petion or Marat.But such a woman as Miss Burney could not long resist the fascination of that remarkable society.She had lived with Johnson and Windham, with Mrs.Montague and Mrs.Thrale.Yet she was forced to own that she had never heard conversation before.The most animated eloquence, the keenest observation, the most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to charm her.For Madame de Stael was there, and M.de Talleyrand.There too was M.de Narbonne, a noble representative of French aristocracy; and with M.de Narbonne was his friend and follower General D'Arblay, an honourable and amiable man, with a handsome person, frank soldierlike manners, and some taste for letters.
The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the constitutional royalists of France rapidly vanished.She listened with rapture to Talleyrand and Madame de Stael, joined with M.
D'Arblay in execrating the Jacobins and in weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French lessons from him, fell in love with him, and married him on no better provision than a precarious annuity of one hundred pounds.
Here the Diary stops for the present.We will, therefore, bring our narrative to a speedy close, by rapidly recounting the most important events which we know to have befallen Madame D'Arblay during the latter part of her life.
M.D'Arblay's fortune had perished in the general wreck of the French Revolution; and in a foreign country his talents, whatever they may have been, could scarcely make him rich.The task of providing for the family devolved on his wife.In the year 1796, she published by subscription her third novel, Camilla.It was impatiently expected by the public; and the sum which she obtained for it was, we believe, greater than had ever at that time been received for a novel.We have heard that she cleared more than three thousand guineas.But we give this merely as a rumour.Camilla, however, never attained popularity like that which Evelina and Cecilia had enjoyed; and it must be allowed that there was a perceptible falling off, not indeed in humour or in power of portraying character, but in grace and in purity of style.
We have heard that, about this time, a tragedy by Madame D'Arblay was performed without success.We do not know whether it was ever printed; nor indeed have we had time to make any researches into its history or merits.
During the short truce which followed the treaty of Amiens, M.
D'Arblay visited France.Lauriston and La Fayette represented his claims to the French Government, and obtained a promise that he should be reinstated in his military rank.M.D'Arblay, however, insisted that he should never be required to serve against the countrymen of his wife.The First Consul, of course, would not hear of such a condition, and ordered the general's commission to be instantly revoked.
Madame D'Arblay joined her husband in Paris, a short time before the war of 1803 broke out, and remained in France ten years, cut off from almost all intercourse with the land of her birth.At length, when Napoleon was on his march to Moscow, she with great difficulty obtained from his Ministers permission to visit her own country, in company with her son, who was a native of England.She returned in time to receive the last blessing of her father, who died in his eighty-seventh year.In 1814 she published her last novel, the Wanderer, a book which no judicious friend to her memory will attempt to draw from the oblivion into which it has justly fallen.In the same year her son Alexander was sent to Cambridge.He obtained an honourable place among the wranglers of his year, and was elected a fellow of Christ's College.But his reputation at the University was higher than might be inferred from his success in academical contests.His French education had not fitted him for the examinations of the Senate House; but, in pure mathematics, we have been assured by some of his competitors that he had very few equals.He went into the Church, and it was thought likely that he would attain high eminence as a preacher; but he died before his mother.All that we have heard of him leads us to believe that he was a son as such a mother deserved to have.In 1832, Madame D'Arblay published the Memoirs of her father; and on the sixth of January, 1840, she died in her eighty-eighth year.
We now turn from the life of Madame D'Arblay to her writings.