The problematic nature of life-writing & Frances (Burney) D’Arblay’s on-going ever-changing epistolary novel

Frontispiece of an inexpensive 1854 7 volume reprint of Charlotte Barrett’s edition of her aunt’s life-writing

Dear friends and readers,

A careful reading of the 5th volume of the Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, 1782-83, ed. Lars Troide, Stewart Cooke, gets me thinking about the multi-level problematic nature of all life-writing, especially Frances D’Arblay’s.

I am wondering if this or the other volumes can be said to have had a single or even a double author. Volume 5 has several including Frances at several stages of her life. This is not just a matter of how far Frances D’Arblay later re-wrote her early life-writing books or at the time made up what she was putting down, but when did she do it. There is the year of the first brief entries: 1782-83 when she was Burney. There is the time after her husband’s death in 1817 when he conjured her to go back to the life-writing and write up everything. Then she is writing in the 1830s, when, as D’Arblay, she is known to have rewritten much or written up for the first time and did destroy much of her father’s writing insofar as she could and wrote her own autobiography as his biography. I’ve seen so much evidence to show she revised and imagined over and over, coming back with inserts at a later time again and again. Frances as Burney and then D’Arblay inserts the letters she was responding to or talking about; she inserts letters that shed light on what her letter is about; she is thinking of us, her later reader she’s planning on. She destroys thinking of us too.

She dies and others get to work. 1841 when Charlottte Barrett
made the first edition and used the term “Diaries.” She emphasizes the Evelina, Streatham and Court journal years. Then the later 19th century, with an edition of earlier journals than CB started with by Annie Raine Ellis, and the new re-editions by Dobson. The small amount of the later years known are again re-done, this time rescuing much destroyed or half-destroyed material in the 1980s, with three different teams doing it — under Joyce Hemlow. Then in the 21st century under Lars Troide, there’s a return to 1768 and a newly determined “full book.” Now with Troide’s retirement, Peter Sabor and Stewart Cooke seem to have taken over as general editors. Each time there’s something of a name change.

Not only are we back to Frances since the retierment of Troide, the silence over how much is made up, or the stubborn insistence that Frances had a miraculous memory such as is rarely seen so that we are to believe if not her every word, her every nuance or implication.

The kind of recent changes I’m thinking about is seen in both Betty Rizzo’s heavily-annotated fourth volume (Streatham, 1780-1781) and Lars Troide’s 5th. Just one small example, Troide (and Stewart?) seem to belive that Hester Thrale and Frances Burney were not that close friends at the time — I see all sort of tones and evidence that there really had been intimate liking and trust and closeness. Well, what is done is Troide inserts in a footnote a diary entry by Hester Thrale Piozzi 17 days after she has sent strong praise to Burney about Cecilia. The letter to Burney shows Hester remembering the characters, living through them, admiring this and that in the book, showing that it came alive in her mind. The footnote (not to Burney) is strongly critical and suggest the book is limited: the types of characters are time-bound and the novel will not live. The effect is to make Hester seem insincere when she’s writing Burney. This is making a different story from the one we’d come away with were we not to have this note.

It’s the insert that makes this effect. There are so many different kinds of motives for these inserts and erasures. I’ve now read a long one by Betty Rizzo where she (in effect) lambasts James Burney for his rebellious behavior which was but one reason his promotion was delayed. In comparison, Troide is silent when Frances tells Susan about Jem’s struggles and politicking.

Eventually Susan’s husband so outrageously mistreated her, it’s not exaggerating to say he caused her early death

And I’ve noticed that Frances does not reprint her sister, Susan’s letters nor insert them, and the editors have followed suit. They can now use them for a separate two volume edition of Susan’s life-writing, but originally they probably just imitated Frances. But why did she leave these out? Was her sister quickly not as happy as she asserts? it seems so if her sister’s need for her and then the other sister come to subsitute is a sign.

John Wiltshire in a particularly insightful essay in The Cambridge Companion to Frances Burney on the journals and letters in a throw-away line says the editors have continued the tradition, begun by Barrett, of making an epistolary novel by many people, constructed out of materials gathered together. I own a copy of Barrett’s book and read much of it some years ago. To me it read like a mid-19th century epistolary novel, differentiated from others by the determined innocence of the perspective of the editor. Wiltshire’s comment reminded me of Richardson who said writing Clarissa gave him such pleasure because he could personate so many voices and then the reader could enter into contrasted characters. These modern editors think of themselves as so objective, trying to present truth’s full complexity. But these are books in the tradition of the niece, Charlotte Barrett’s 6 volume book?

So who is novel-making here?

Come to that in Burney D’Arblay’s case of voluminous writing, to what extent are the novels life-writing? In the 5th volume, when Frances finishes her re-writing of Cecilia, her corrections, and it is published, she refers her sister, Susna, to Cecila’s “project” in the 5th volume of the novel where Cecilia vows not to waste her time on ignorant “underminers of existence” (people who are vain, proud, people who drive you to network, to waste time) but instead follow her own spirit in reading and enjoying the deeper pleasures of existence among friends and in solitude. Unfortunately that’s just what Frances Burney didn’t do when she took a job at court. But she means to. The section shows she wrote Cecilia as an alter-ego.

So where does life-writing end and how are we to judge it? I have yet to read the article suggesting an early experience of disability partly accounts for Frances’s long-time compulsive writing. So much to do, so much to think about when writing a review of such enrichened life-writing.

Of course I have in mind what we’ve seen in Austen’s life-writing, only there the problematical nature of the life-writing takes on a very different aspect: among other things, she didn’t live to doctor the stuff, others did …

Ellen