|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 49
"I was at the Assembly, forced to go entirely against my own
Inclination. But I always have sacrificed my own Inclinations
to the will of other people--could not resist the pressing
Importunity of--Bet Dickens--to go--tho' it proved Horribly
stupid. I drank tea at the--told old Turner--I was determined
not to dance--he would not believe me--a wager ensued--half
a crown provided I followed my own Inclinations--agreed--Mr.
Audley asked me. I refused--sat still--yet followed my own
Inclinations. But four couple began--Martin (c'�tait Lui)
was there--yet stupid--n'importe--quite Indifferent--on both
sides--Who had I--to converse with the whole Evening--not
a female friend--none there--not an acquaintance--All
Dancing--who then--I've forgot--n'importe--I broke my
earring--how--heaven knows--foolishly enough--one can't always
keep on the Mask of Wisdom--well n'importe I danced a Minuet a
quatre the latter end of the Eve--with a stupid Wretch--need
I name him--They danced cotillions almost the whole Night--two
sets--yet I did not join them--Miss Jenny Hawkins danced--with
who--can't you guess--well--n'importe------"
There is more, but my pen is out of breath. Nobody but Mr. Jingle ever
wrote like that; and in so far as Maria Allen may be said to have had
a soul, there in its little spasms is the soul of Maria Allen, with
all the _malentendus_ of the ballroom and all the surgings of a
love-affair at cross-purposes thrown in.
As for Fanny Burney's early diary, its careful and admirable editor
claims that you have in it "the only published, perhaps the only
existing record of the life of an English girl, written of herself in
the eighteenth century." I believe that to be true. It is a record,
and a faithful and very charming record of the externals of such a
life. As such it is, to me, at least, a valuable thing. If it does
not unfold the amiable, brisk, and happy Fanny herself, there are two
simple reasons why it could not. First, she was writing her journal
for the entertainment of old Mr. Crisp of Chessington, the "Daddy
Crisp" of her best pages; secondly, it is not at all likely that she
knew of anything to unfold. Nor, for that matter, was Fanny herself of
the kind that can unfold to another person. Yet there is a charm all
over the book, which some may place here, some there, but which
all will confess. For me it is not so much that Fanny herself is a
charming girl, and a girl of shrewd observation, of a pointed pen, and
an admirable gift of mimicry. She has all that, and more--she has a
good heart. Her sister Susan is as good as she, and there are many of
Susan's letters. But the real charm of the book, I think, is in the
series of faithful pictures it contains of the everyday round of an
everyday family. Dutch pictures all--passers-by, a knock at the front
door, callers--Mr. Young, "in light blue embroidered with silver,
a bag and sword, and walking in the rain"; a jaunt to Greenwich, a
concert at home--the Agujari in one of her humours; a masquerade--a
very private one, at the house of Mr. Laluze.... Hetty had for three
months thought of nothing else ... she went as a Savoyard with a
hurdy-gurdy fastened round her waist. Nothing could look more simple,
innocent and pretty. "My dress was a close pink Persian vest
covered with a gauze in loose pleats...." What else? Oh, a visit to
Teignmouth--Maria Allen now Mrs. Ruston; another to Worcester; quiet
days at King's Lynn, where "I have just finished _Henry and Frances_
... the greatest part of the last volume is wrote by Henry, and on
the gravest of grave subjects, and that which is most dreadful to our
thoughts, Eternal Misery...." Terrific novel: but need I go on? There
may be some to whom a description of the nothings of our life will be
as flat as the nothings themselves--but I am not of that party. The
things themselves interest me, and I confess the charm. It is the
charm of innocence and freshness, a morning dew upon the words.
The Burneys, however, can do no more for us than shed that auroral
dew. They cannot reassure us of our normal humanity, since they needed
reassurance themselves.
Where, then, shall we turn? So far as I am aware, to two only, except
for two others whom I leave out of account. Rousseau is one, for it is
long since I read him, but my recollection is that the _Confessions_
is a kind of novel, pre-meditated, selective, done with great art.
Marie Bashkirtseff is another. I have not read her at all. Of the two
who remain I leave Pepys also out of account, because, though it may
be good for us to read Pepys, it is better to have read him and be
through with it. There, under the grace of God, go a many besides
Pepys, and among them every boy who has ever befouled a wall with a
stump of pencil. We are left then with one whom it is ill to name
in the same fill of the inkpot, "Wordsworth's exquisite sister," as
Keats, who saw her once, at once knew her to be.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|