Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress, and of the princesses, with respect and affection.The princesses seem to have well deserved all the praise which is bestowed on them in the Diary.They were, we doubt not, most amiable women.But "the sweet Queen," as she is constantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an object of admiration to us.She had undoubtedly sense enough to know what kind of deportment suited her high station, and self-command enough to maintain that deportment invariably.She was, in her intercourse with Miss Burney, generally gracious and affable, sometimes, when displeased, cold and reserved, but never, under any circumstances, rude, peevish, or violent.She knew how to dispense, gracefully and skilfully, those little civilities which, when paid by a sovereign, are prized at many times their intrinsic value; how to pay a compliment; how to lend a book; how to ask after a relation.But she seems to have been utterly regardless of the comfort, the health, the life of her attendants, when her own convenience was concerned.Weak, feverish, hardly able to stand, Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress the sweet Queen, and to sit up till midnight, in order to undress the sweet Queen.The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not, escape the notice of her royal mistress.But the established doctrine of the Court was, that all sickness was to be considered as a pretence until it proved fatal.The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing till she fell down dead at the royal feet."This," Miss Burney wrote, when she was suffering cruelly from sickness, watching, and labour, "is by no means from hardness of heart; far otherwise.There is no hardness of heart in any one of them; but it is prejudice, and want of personal experience."Many strangers sympathised with the bodily and mental sufferings of this distinguished woman.All who saw her saw that her frame was sinking, that her heart was breaking.The last, it should seem, to observe the change was her father.At length, in spite of himself, his eyes were opened.In May 1790, his daughter had an interview of three hours with him, the only long interview which they had had since he took her to Windsor in 1786.She told him that she was miserable, that she was worn with attendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and her friends were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men remember the dead.From daybreak to midnight the same killing labour, the same recreations, more hateful than labour itself, followed each other without variety, without any interval of liberty and repose.
The Doctor was greatly dejected by this news; but was too good-natured a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house and arms were open to her.Still, however, he could not bear to remove her from the Court.His veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry.It can be compared only to the grovelling superstition of those Syrian devotees who made their children pass through the fire to Moloch.When he induced his daughter to accept the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained, as she tells us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set down in the contract of service, would be the result of her connection with the Court.What advantage he expected we do not know, nor did he probably know himself.But, whatever he expected, he certainly got nothing.Miss Burney had been hired for board, lodging, and two hundred a year.Board, lodging, and two hundred a year, she had duly received.We have looked carefully through the Diary, in the hope of finding some trace of those extraordinary benefactions on which the Doctor reckoned.
But we can discover only a promise, never performed, of a gown:
and for this promise Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, such as might have suited the beggar with whom Saint Martin, in the legend, divided his cloak.The experience of four years was, however, insufficient to dispel the illusion which had taken possession of the Doctor's mind; and between the dear father and the sweet Queen, there seemed to be little doubt that some day or other Frances would drop down a corpse.Six months had elapsed since the interview between the parent and the daughter.The resignation was not sent in.The sufferer grew worse and worse.
She took bark; but it soon ceased to produce a beneficial effect.
She was stimulated with wine; she was soothed with opium; but in vain.Her breath began to fail.The whisper that she was in a decline spread through the Court.The pains in her side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the card-table of the old Fury to whom she was tethered, three or four times in an evening for the purpose of taking hartshorn.Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have excused her from work.But her Majesty showed no mercy.Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang; the Queen was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at midnight.But there had arisen, in literary and fashionable society, a general feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of indignation against both her father and the Queen."Is it possible," said a great French lady to the Doctor, "that your daughter is in a situation where she is never allowed a holiday?"Horace Walpole wrote to Frances, to express his sympathy.
Boswell, boiling over with good-natured rage, almost forced an entrance into the palace to see her."My dear ma'am, why do you stay? It won't do, ma'am; you must resign.We can put up with it no longer.Some very violent measures, I assure you, will be taken.We shall address Dr.Burney in a body." Burke and Reynolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause.
