The nature of life-writing: Frances Burney D’Arblay

A Portrait of Frances Burney around the time of Volume 5 (1782) by Francisco Edward Burney

Tell me, my dear, what Heroine ever yet existed wihtout her own Closet?

Her next solicitude was to furnish herself with a well-chosen collection of books; and this employment, which to a lover of literature, young and ardent in its pursuit, is perhaps the mind’s first luxury, proved a source of entertainment so fertile and delightful it left her nothing to wish. —Frances Burney, Cecilia

Dear friends and readers,

As we come to the end of a four year reading close reading project over what’s left of the letters of Jane Austen, I and two other friends (Eighteenth Century Worlds at Yahoo) have begun another: we have at least made a start on reading through at least some of Frances Burney D’Arblay’s journals, diaries, letters, whatever you want to call the texts that will comprise a 25 volume masterwork once the several teams of scholars that have been at work since Joyce Hemlow started the heroic new complete, unabridged, uncensored, aggressively retrieved life-writings, have done.

We are reading about 20 pages a week and we have thus far read and posted on the Journals for 1768, 1769 and are into 1770 in Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, edd. Lars Troide (mostly), Stewart Cooke and (for 4.1, The Streatham Years, part 1), Betty Rizzo, a series of six volumes altogether. I’ve read through this first volume before and gotten up to half-way through the second, 1774-1777. And thus far what I’ve read is a confirmation of my conclusions in my now published review of the fifth volume, 1782-83, which I’ve put on my website: The nature of life-writing, especially in diaries and journals and on my academia.edu page.

From the now famous opening:

To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintance & actions, when the Hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a Journal: a Journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole Heart! But a thing of this kind ought to be addressed to somebody — I must imagion myself to be talking — talking to the most intimate of friends — to one in whom I should take delight in confiding, & remorse in concealment: but who must this friend be? — to make choice of one to [sic] 1 whom I can but half rely, would be to frustrate entirely the intention of my plan. The only one I could wholly, totally confide in, lives in the same House with me, & not only never has, but never will, leave me one secret to tell her. To whom, then, must I dedicate my wonderful, surprising & interesting adventures? — to whom dare I reveal my private opinion of my nearest Relations? the secret thoughts of my dearest friends? my own hopes, fears, I reflections & dislikes? –Nobody!
    To Nobody, then, will I write my Journal! since To Nobody can I be wholly unreserved — to Nobody can I reveal every thought, every wish of my Heart, with the most unlimited confidence, the most unremitting sincerity to the end of my Life! For what chance, what accident can end my connections with Nobody? No secret can I conceal from No-body, & to No-body can I be ever unreserved. Disagreement cannot stop our affection, Time itself has no power to end our friendship. The love, the esteem I entertain for Nobody, No-body’s self has not power to destroy. From Nobody I have nothing to fear, (the) secrets sacred to friendship, Nobody will not reveal, when the affair is doubtful, Nobody will not look towards the side least favourable –.
    I will suppose you, then, to be my best friend; tho’ God forbid you ever should! my dearest companion — & a romantick Girl, for mere oddity may perhaps be more sincere — more tender if you were a friend [in] propria personae [sic ] — in as much as imagionation often exceeds reality. In your Breast my errors may create pity without exciting contempt; may raise your compassion, without eradicating your love.
    From this moment, then, my dear Girl — but why, permit me to ask, must a female be made Nobody? Ah! my dear, what were this world good for, were Nobody a female? And now I have done with preambulation

They act out Garrick’s Miss in Her Teens in the first year

Here are only a very few scattered comments on this early life-writing:

It’s the vivid liveliness of the prose that is so startling. In the earliest part of this book pages FBA reveals herself to be a serious reader, someone who invests herself deeply in books. She cares. She gives a moving account of why she keeps a diary, writes to Nobody: this way she spends much more time with her friends, keeps her memories vivid, literally lives more. She offers little exegeses on her reading far more revealing than all of Austen’s literary comments.

Her relationship to the writer matters. She immediately dislikes Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, yet cannot put it down and in the end confesses herself emotionally conquered — that may surprise people but the reasons she does tell show her to be a deep conservative and on what grounds conservatives in this era really thought. She objects to Goldsmith’s protests against capital punishment except for murder on the grounds the Bible allows it. She is drawn in by the sincerity of emotion: I suggest what she really dislikes is the open portrait of poverty in the era and how clergymen were treated. She sees all the pessimism of Johnson’s Rasselas. She forgives him because she so respects him so she cannot see how radical his book. She later reads the enormous Dean of Coleraine, Prevost’s book Englished. She says she loves it: the Piety, the zeal, the humanity, goodness and humility of this kind old man has won my heart …”

The incident where her father finds her papers and presents them to her is written up after the fact and doctored. Frances recognizes her father knows and is allowing this, only with a warning to hide what he suspects will give away feelings and thoughts what will shock or enrage others.

Troide inserts a long discussion where a trusty woman friend, Dorothy Young, has (my guess) been sent by Charles Burney to dissuade FBA from keeping up this diary. Fanny in the fiction carries on believing her father and mother don’t know but it’s clear they do and may have taken this ploy. Note the terms: Dorothy Young, also a spinster says you must not write such thoughts down as if they come into your mind you must instantly dismiss them; never leave a record.

This is how the veiled female mind arose — that’s Virginia Woolf’s term for women’s minds and her idea of why they don’t achieve. Also George Eliot in her essay “women in France: madame de Sable.” Note that the niece did not include it; Fanny probably not, and how only in Anne Ellis’s edition do we have a copy. Fanny (our character in the diary) is “loathe” to “give her friend up.” The fiction of Nobody is enormously central to her writing she needs a totally liberated audience.

A visit from Mr Fulke Greville (c. 1716-1806) allows Troide to tell the story of how FBA’s father survived: he was an utter sycophant is a hostile way of putting it (and there are is a possible unacknowledged portrait of him in Cecilia); to put it more sympathetically his genius attracted attention and he then charmed people and at several junctures a powerful person rescued him, and Greville was the first. CB had impregnated Fanny’s mother (the oldest sibling was illegitimate): Greville purchases his indenture, paid him as a part-time musician (part of staff) and domestic servant and then released him again. He and Mrs G introduced CB to the right people including Giuseppe Baretti (1719-89) and Troide tells of conflicts Barretti had with another person trying to make his way in this milieu by travel writing: fighting books Fanny calls these (Fanny is Frances’s chief character). Fanny comments that it’s impossible either man can be a judge of what he pretends to pronounce on.

We have a scene of playing on the pianoforte and meet the man to be Fanny’s second father, Mr or Daddy Crisp –- Fanny is trying to get her father’s permission to visit Chessington Hall where Crisp rents lodgings. This is going to be an important anti-materialistic unprestigious retreat-world for her. Crisp slowly works his way into Charles Burney’s acceptance. Worming his way into the family — CB is holding out, but we see Fanny calling him Daddy Crisp and Crisp has a rhineroceros skin — the key to middle class success is just this sort on ceaseless controlled sycophancy — Fanny says “my dear father is tired of refusing.”

A long vignette of a social occasion where the actor who played in Tamerland and Mr Crisp came one evening and we see the whole family playing musical instruments together — a remarkable scene to modern people –, all supping and how a a Mr Pringle seems to be interested in Fanny and a Mr Seton still (in effect) treating Hetty misleadingly. Fanny is much titillated with the flirting, talk, descriptions of what actors did in the play (“He licked Her”). She did not see the play but reads about the performances and enters into it totally, has obviously read it.

Frances writes a compassionate insightful portrait of Christopher Smart — remember she’s only 16 at this point. He’s presented as a poet of genius who it is “impossible not to pity when you realized” he’s been confined twice and is desperate for the smallest sums of money. She cites several of his poems, describes him as “grave yet wildness in manner, looks & voice … impossible to see him … without feeling utmost concern …” She includes astute portrait threaded in of the writer Arthur Young (and his wife).

By early 1769 she is writing long dialogues in the Grandison manner. She is trying to write and think about “la belle passion” – sex – because she realizes Mr Henry Seton is after her or her sister, Hetty. She brings up how much she owes her father – to him she owes everything, comfort, happiness – she feels uncomfortable about how this journal contains her true thoughts – as after all she does not go on to detail them, or if she did she came back years later as there is a cut leaf. It picks up in mid-sentence where she is saying how grieved she is when Maria (step-sister is hurt). She writes amazingly well. The next entry shows her worrying about her sister’s attachment to Seton (that would be Hetty probably) – he is flirting with both.

Then one of these large social scenes this time dining together – with a character vignette portrait of Hawkesworth who was a member of Johnson’s crowd, editor of Adventurer. It reminds of portraits by Scott in his journals: FBA pronounced Hawkesworth “solid” but too affected, he uses language as if he were a book — she is embarrassed in front of herself to be pronouncing on such a man.

She’s actually inhibited – she tries but cannot get herself to write down her thoughts about sex, if she did write about this man’s exploitation of these girls, she cut it; she is yet 16 and analyzing one of her father’s socially and intellectually successful friends

A long piece on her sister Susanna’s illness. At first the feel is of a play, and Fanny is determined to write hectically and dramatically but as he sister continues ill, she gets scared. Her sister’s life was in danger as these people don’t have a clue how to help her: they move from apothecary to doctor. Her father appears not to come — they don’t notify him at first, but when they do, the parents still don’t show. Awful things are done to Susie — blisters on top of her high fever, “inflammation of the breast,” and high pain. Fanny is with her continually trying to do what’s called nursing.

After the near death of Susan, Fanny is half-hysterical still: on a night of the dancing until 2 in the morning she laughs “to an immoderate degree” and cannot stop herself. That this is linked to Susan’s recovery is seen in the next paragraph being about her intense gratitude to Dr Armstrong who tells Fanny Susan saw the gates of heaven, and took credit wittily for saving her; “‘O yea, answered he, they were very ready to receive her there – but I would not let her depart, — I thought she might as well stay here a little longer” (p. 55)

Henry Seton keeps up his on-again off-again courtship with Hetty, sometimes aggressively salacious; Fanny writes out a long dialogue where they discuss human nature, melancholy, and she accuses him of misanthropy — how quick she is to pick up inferences.. I suggest this is the first of many such males who seek a courting liaison but will not marry fringe women without a sizable dowry and/or rank, and helps give context for George Owen Cambridge and the suitors at court: the Burney girls attracted men enormously but they had no money whatsoever — as is seen in CB giving 55 (!) lessons a week and Burney recording how frantically busy her father is: “My dearr Papa is in charming Health & good humour, tho’ hurried to Death — p 58). Seton’s offers gifts of fur-lined gloves and verses without admitting to it fit.

There is a long exquisitely excited description of a masquerade the girls go to — especially detailing costumes. Fanny has a fabulous time – the details are scrumptious, telling us each outfit. Hetty goes as a Savoyard with a hurdy gurdy – doing justice to her musical nature. There is a witch, nun, Punchy, Dominos galore. What is interesting is that the people act in character. I did not know that people did that at masquerades so the nun does a satiric diatribe on retreating from the world – she’s doing and making fun of her character. So too a witch. So we are told a Punch (I hope he is not beating anyone up). Fanny says perhaps the Nun goes on too long and she does her speech several times and then comes back to Fanny; it’s obvious they find Fanny responsive as they all come over to her to do their speeches.

Ah here my suspicions come in. Did everyone crowd around Fanny? Was she really the center of attraction? We shall find her presenting herself so much later where the person says no such conversations occurred. It reads novelistically – perhaps she heightened all but putting herself at the center goes beyond that, no?

I remember Cecilia being so vivid – but not if its heroine was the center. Then – and I didn’t know this –, just before the dancing everyone unmasks! The costumes were such no one could tell who you were – and I saw just a little of that at the ASECS masquerade ball, but only a few did that. Here everyone does. Then when they unmask the man asks the woman to dance. So there is not indiscriminate intermixing is there? Then there are 5 pages ripped out.

Now we get a less elaborated and precise depiction of Fanny besieged by a Mr Pugh and then Captain Blomerfield. The masquerade is much much more polished and careful and elaborate. As described, the dancing here is closer to truth, has been worked up to less perfection too. FBA’s heroine is unable to make one of her suitors go away; she wants to manipulate the couples to get a substitute for herself and no one will cooperate. This reminds me of scenes in Evelina – and also Northanger Abbey at the early assemblies in Bath. Burney depicts males as far more aggressive than Austen ever does – and I think probably more accurately therefore. Austen does not only eschew men alone but various kinds of abrasive physical semi-sexual scenes in social life Austen does not come near. Also raw and coarse ridicule – of Captain Bloomfield as I take it.

Fanny herself is presented as distressed by all these scenes. If we distinguish the character from FBA we don’t have to ask whether the text registers the unconscious truth of the writer, don’t have to ask if Fanny is really distressed. We can see her as a character and FBA dramatizing her complexly. Fanny is reproved for some of her conduct and we are to see she’s right that the reproof itself was ill bred – the purpose of manners is to make you comfortable.
Malicious social fun this is called, maybe malicious is too strong a word. The woman have to watch out for this is part of serious courting too.

Later the Dutchman from the masquerade attempts (as we’d say) to go out with Fanny; but is turned off. He offers free tickets to go to the play! Still no good. Note her father calls him “Bold:” the people we are friendly with at masquerades are not those we will socialize with necessarily. He is stigmatized; Captain Bloomfield would not have been as abrupt! – -that man was aggressive and abrasive as no man anywhere in Austen is. Seton returns (like a bad penny) and a rich Mr Mackintosh writes an acrostick on Fanny: she calls him stupid and sees his possession of a great fortune as unhappy – on the grounds that as far as she’s concerned it’s a waste. I don’t think this is FBA presenting a critical portrait of Fanny but simply Frances at age 18 herself.

After the dance, they propose to do Miss in Her Teens – whether just reading aloud or acting I can’t say. Fanny will not do a transgressive female and it’s said they expected that a wife abandoned by her husband who threatens to throttle him is the character; she had been having an affair with another character while the husband was at war. We can’t know if Fanny thought out her shock.

They visit people profiting from colonialism in India — and note fills us in on who they were, where attached,what happens to sons — and Hetty ecstatic – two young men sent to East and West Indies. Families just wrenched apart by the need for position, money. They decide to go to that play that the Dutchman sent tickets for after all.

They go to the play and it is “wretchedly performed:” Troide has a note where he found a contemporary review and playbill and confirms chief actors didn’t even know their lines. The descriptoin of the full hot rooms reminded me of Catherine and Mrs Allen’s first time at the Assembly ball in Bath. The “Dutchman” comes up to them and they are mortified because their lies to get rid of him are exposed, but not mortified enough to improve their behavior.

She has stopped writing for a month and a half, and resumes at Lyme Regis — we know that place from Persuasion. But we’ll get a very different — social world that Austen eschews — was perhaps never part of, that Austen avoided or her family like the poor Dutchman, sidelined. She tells Nobody she has been too out of spirits to write. Another hot and crowded and this time elaborately luxuriously appointed ball. By 3 in the morning there was just room for 12 couples to stand up. they are out past 4. No not Austen’s worlds as she shows them to us at all.

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Orange Street Chapel, St Martin’s Street, a Burney family residence in London

These texts were first printed when in the 1890s Anne Ellis fell in love with Burney’s novels and she produced an almost modern edition of the diaries and journals from 1768 to 1778 the year of the publication of Evelina (where Charlotte Barrett began). Some say – and I agree — some of the most vivid writing FBA ever did is in these three – -they are a young girl’s writing which has been re-arranged by the older FBA many years later, and somewhat censored.

Troide continually reveals his own distastes and values, his distrust and looking askance at the oldest son, James, a ugly and judgemental note about a girl who eloped and ended up living off men (n. 94, p 34), another woman is “capricious and spoiled” (a pupil of the son Charles’s). He inserts and occasionally even OMITS text. Frances came back to this early diary many years later and inserted a melancholy disillusioned feminist poem, famous in its day. In Troide’s abridgement of FBA’s diaries for Penguin he will repeatedly choose the hard and satiric and conservative FBA leaving out this kind of thing, giving a slant to Streatam which makes it feel a far meaner place. When Frances copied this out she was many years a widow

Here is Frances Greville’s Ode to Indifference:

Oft I’ve implor’d the gods in vain,
    And pray’d till I’ve been weary;
For once I’ll seek my wish to gain
    Of Oberon, the Fairy.

Sweet airy being, wanton sprite,
    Who lurk’st in woods unseen,
And oft by Cynthia’s silver light,
    Trip’st gaily o’er the green:

If e’er thy pitying heart was mov’d,
    As ancient stories tell, 10
And for the Athenian maid who lov’d,
    Thou sought’st a wondrous spell;

O deign once more t’exert thy power!
    Haply some herb or tree,
Sovereign as juice of western flower,
    Conceals a balm for me.

I ask no kind return of love,
    No tempting charm to please;
Far from the heart those gifts remove,
    That sighs for peace and ease:

Nor peace, nor ease, the heart can know,
    That, like the needle true,
Turns at the touch of joy or woe,
    But, turning, trembles too.

Far as distress the soul can wound,
    ‘Tis pain in each degree;
‘Tis bliss but to a certain bound,
    Beyond, is agony.

Then take this treacherous sense of mine,
    Which dooms me still to smart;
Which pleasure can to pain refine,
    To pain new pangs depart.

O haste to shed the sovereign balm,
    My shatter’d nerves new string;
And for my guest, serenely calm,
    The nymph Indifference bring!

At her approach, see Hope, see Fear,
    See Expectation fly!
And Disappointment in the rear,
    That blasts the promis’d joy!

The tear which Pity taught to flow
    The eye shall then disown;
The heart that melts for others’ woe
    Shall then scarce feel its own.

The wounds which now each moment bleed,
    Each moment then shall close;
And tranquil days shall still succeed
    To nights of calm repose.

O Fairy Elf! but grant me this,
    This one kind comfort send,
And so may never-fading bliss
    Thy flowery paths attend!

So may the glow-worm’s glimmering light
    Thy tiny footsteps lead
To some new region of delight,
    Unknown to mortal tread!

And be thy acorn goblet filled
    With heaven’s ambrosial dew,
From sweetest, freshest flowers distilled,
    That shed fresh sweets for you!

And what of life remains for me
    I’ll pass in sober ease;
Half pleased, contented will I be,
    Content but half to please

Ellen