An impertinent servant made a blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding between the gentlemen and the ladies.A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity.An unlucky member of the household mentioned a passage in the Morning Herald, reflecting on the Queen; and forthwith Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad English, and told him that he made her "what you call perspire!"A more important occurrence was the King's visit to Oxford.Miss Burney went in the royal train to Nuneham, was utterly neglected there in the crowd, and could with difficulty find a servant to show the way to her bedroom, or a hairdresser to arrange her curls.She had the honour of entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages which formed the royal procession, of walking after the Queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of standing, half dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation.At Magdalen College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlour, where she sank down on a chair.A good-natured equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread, which he had wisely put into his pockets.At that moment the door opened; the Queen entered; the wearied attendants sprang up; the bread and fruit were hastily concealed."I found," says poor Miss Burney, "that our appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the same moment that our strength was to be invincible."Yet Oxford, seen even under such disadvantages, "revived in her,"to use her own words, "a consciousness to pleasure which had long lain nearly dormant." She forgot, during one moment, that she was a waiting-maid, and felt as a woman of true genius might be expected to feel amidst venerable remains of antiquity, beautiful works of art, vast repositories of knowledge, and memorials of the illustrious dead.Had she still been what she was before her father induced her to take the most fatal step of her life, we can easily imagine what pleasure she would have derived from a visit to the noblest of English cities.She might, indeed, have been forced to travel in a hack chaise, and might not have worn so fine a gown of Chambery gauze as that in which she tottered after the royal party; but with what delight would she have then paced the cloisters of Magdalen, compared the antique gloom of Merton with the splendour of Christ Church, and looked down from the dome of the Ratcliffe Library on the magnificent sea of turrets and battlements below! How gladly would learned men have laid aside for a few hours Pindar's Odes and Aristotle's Ethics to escort the author of Cecilia from college to college! What neat little banquets would she have found set out in their monastic cells! With what eagerness would pictures, medals, and illuminated missals have been brought forth from the most mysterious cabinets for her amusement! How much she would have had to hear and to tell about Johnson, as she walked over Pembroke, and about Reynolds, in the antechapel of New College!
But these indulgences were not for one who had sold herself into bondage.
About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another event diversified the wearisome life which Frances led at Court.Warren Hastings was brought to the bar of the House of Peers.The Queen and Princesses were present when the trial commenced, and Miss Burney was permitted to attend.During the subsequent proceedings a day rule for the same purpose was occasionally granted to her;for the Queen took the strongest interest in the trial, and when she could not go herself to Westminster Hall, liked to receive a report of what had passed from a person of singular powers of observation, and who was, moreover, acquainted with some of the most distinguished managers.The portion of the Diary which relates to this celebrated proceeding is lively and picturesque.
Yet we read it, we own, with pain; for it seems to us to prove that the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to feel the pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as incompatible with health of mind as the air of the Pomptine marshes with health of body.From the first day she espouses the cause of Hastings with a presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty and suavity of her ordinary deportment.She shudders when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons.She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent man.She is at a loss to conceive how the managers can look at the defendant, and not blush.Windham comes to her from the manager's box, to offer her refreshment."But," says she, "Icould not break bread with him." Then, again, she exclaims, "Ah, Mr.Windham, how can you ever engage in so cruel, so unjust a cause?" "Mr.Burke saw me," she says, "and he bowed with the most marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech, a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which, certainly, no other orator that ever lived, could have made."My curtsy," she continues, "was the most ungrateful, distant and cold; I could not do otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause." Now, not only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but the very last act which he performed on the day on which he was turned out of the Pay Office, about four years before this trial, was to make Dr.
