Read Ebook: Memoirs of Doctor Burney (Vol. 1 of 3) Arranged from his own manuscripts from family papers and from personal recollections by his daughter Madame d'Arblay by Burney Fanny

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From what cause is not known, and it is difficult to conceive any that can justify such extraordinary neglect, young Charles was left in Shropshire, upon the removal of his parents to Chester; and abandoned, not only during his infancy, but even during his boyhood, to the care of an uncultivated and utterly ignorant, but worthy and affectionate old nurse, called Dame Ball, in the rustic village of Condover, not far from Shrewsbury.

His reminiscences upon this period were amongst those the most tenaciously minute, and the most agreeable to his fancy for detail, of any part of his life; and the uncommon gaiety of his narratory powers, and the frankness with which he set forth the pecuniary embarrassments and provoking mischances, to which his thus deserted childhood was exposed, had an ingenuousness, a good-humour, and a comicality, that made the subject of Condover not more delectable to himself than entertaining to his hearer.

Nevertheless, these accounts, when committed to paper, and produced without the versatility of countenance, and the vivacious gestures that animated the colloquial disclosures, so lose their charm, as to appear vapid, languid, and tedious: and the editor only thus slightly recurs to them for the purpose of pointing out how gifted must be the man who, through disadvantages of so lowering a species, could become, in after-life, not only one of the best informed, but one of the most polished, members of society.

There were few subjects of his childish remembrance with which he was himself more amused, than with the recital of the favourite couplets which the good nurse Ball most frequently sang to him at her spinning wheel; and which he especially loved to chaunt, in imitating her longdrawn face, and the dolorous tones of her drawling sadness.

"Good bye, my dear neighbours! My heart it is sore, For I must go travelling all the world o'er. And if I should chance to come home very rich, My friends and relations will make of me mich; But if I should chance to come home very poor, My friends and relations will turn me out of door, After I have been travelling, travelling, travelling, all the world o'er."

CHESTER.

The education of the subject of these memoirs, when, at length, he was removed from this his first instructress, whom he quitted, as he always protested, with agony of grief, was begun at the Free School at Chester.

It can excite no surprise, his brilliant career through life considered, that his juvenile studies were assiduous, ardent, and successful. He was frequently heard to declare that he had been once only chastised at school, and that not for slackness, but forwardness in scholastic lore. A favourite comrade, who shared his affections, though not his application or his genius, was hesitating through an ill-learnt lesson, and on the point of incurring punishment, when young Burney, dropping his head on his breast to muffle his voice, whispered the required answer.

"Burney prompts, Sir!" was loudly called out by a jealous, or malevolent fellow-student: and Burney paid the ignoble tax at which his incautious good nature, and superior talents, were assessed.

The resources of practical education ought, perhaps, to be judged only by the experience which puts them into play; but incongruous, at least to all thinking, though it may be incompetent, observers, must seem the discipline that appoints to the instinctive zeal of youthful friendship, the same degrading species of punishment that may be necessary for counteracting the sluggard mischiefs of indolence, or the dangerous examples of misconduct.

The prominent talents of young Burney for music fixed that tuneful art for his profession; and happily so; for while its pursuit was his business, its cultivation was his never-ceasing delight.

Yet not exclusively: far otherwise. He had a native love of literature, in all its branches, that opened his intellects to observation, while it furnished his mind with embellishments upon almost every subject; a thirst of knowledge, that rendered science, as far as he had opportunity for its investigation, an enlargement to his understanding; and an imagination that invested all the arts with a power of enchantment.

SHREWSBURY.

His earliest musical instructor was his eldest half brother, Mr. James Burney, who was then, and for more than half a century afterwards, organist of St. Margaret's, Shrewsbury; in which city the young musician elect began his professional studies.

It was, however, in age only that Mr. James Burney was his brother's senior or superior; from him, therefore, whatever could be given or received, was finished almost ere it was begun, from the quickness with which his pupil devoted himself to what he called the slavery of conquering unmeaning difficulties in the lessons of the times.

The following spirited paragraph on his juvenile progress is transcribed from his early memorandums.

"The celebrated Felton, and after him, the first Dr. Hayes, came from Oxford to Shrewsbury on a tour, while I was studying hard, without instruction or example; and they amazed and stimulated me so forcibly by their performance on the organ, as well as by their encouragement, that I thenceforward went to work with an ambition and fury that would hardly allow me to eat or sleep.

"I had, also, a great passion for angling; but whenever I could get leisure to pursue that sport, I ran no risk of losing my time, if the fish did not bite; for I had always a book in my pocket, which enabled me to wait with patience their pleasure."

Another paragraph, which is singular and amusing, is transcribed, also, from the Shrewsbury Annals:--

"CHARACTER OF LADY TANKERVILLE.

"In 1738, she married Lord Ossulston, son of the Earl of Tankerville: and I remember leading off a choral song, or hymn, by her direction, to chaunt her out of St. Julian's Church. I was then quite a boy; and I heard no more of her till I was grown up, and settled in London."

CHESTER.

On quitting Shrewsbury to return to his parents at Chester, the ardour of young Burney for improvement was such as to absorb his whole being; and his fear lest a moment of daylight should be profitless, led him to bespeak a labouring boy, who rose with the sun, to awaken him regularly with its dawn. Yet, as he durst not pursue his education at the expense of the repose of his family, he hit upon the ingenious device of tying one end of a ball of pack-thread round his great toe, and then letting the ball drop, with the other end just within the boy's reach, from an aperture in the old-fashioned casement of his bed-chamber window.

This was no contrivance to dally with his diligence; he could not choose but rise.

He was yet a mere youth, when, while thus unremittingly studious, he was introduced to Dr. Arne, on the passage of that celebrated musician through the city of Chester, when returning from Ireland: and this most popular of English vocal composers since the days of Purcel, was so much pleased with the talents of this nearly self-instructed performer, as to make an offer to Mr. Burney senior, upon such conditions as are usual to such sort of patronage, to complete the musical education of this lively and aspiring young man; and to bring him forth to the world as his favourite and most promising pupil.

To this proposal Mr. Burney senior was induced to consent; and, in the year 1714, at the age of seventeen, the eager young candidate for fame rapturously set off, in company with Dr. Arne, for the metropolis.

LONDON.

Arrived in London, young Burney found himself unrestrainedly his own master, save in what regarded his articled agreement with Dr. Arne. Every part of his numerous family was left behind him, or variously dispersed, with the single exception of his elder and only own brother, Richard Burney, afterwards of Worcester, but who, at this period, was settled in the capital.

This brother was a man of true worth and vigorous understanding, enriched with a strong vein of native humour. He was an indefatigable and sapient collector of historical portraits, and passionately fond of the arts; and he was father of a race of children who severally, and with distinction, shone in them all; and who superadded to their ingenuity and their acquirements the most guileless hearts and scrupulous integrity.

DR. ARNE.

Dr. Arne, professionally, has been fully portrayed by the pupil who, nominally, was under his guidance; but who, in after-times, became the historian of his tuneful art.

Eminent, however, in that art as was Dr. Arne, his eminence was to that art alone confined. Thoughtless, dissipated, and careless, he neglected, or rather scoffed at all other but musical reputation. And he was so little scrupulous in his ideas of propriety, that he took pride, rather than shame, in being publicly classed, even in the decline of life, as a man of pleasure.

Such a character was ill qualified to form or to protect the morals of a youthful pupil; and it is probable that not a notion of such a duty ever occurred to Dr. Arne; so happy was his self-complacency in the fertility of his invention and the ease of his compositions, and so dazzled by the brilliancy of his success in his powers of melody--which, in truth, for the English stage, were in sweetness and variety unrivalled--that, satisfied and flattered by the practical exertions and the popularity of his fancy, he had no ambition, or, rather, no thought concerning the theory of his art.

The depths of science, indeed, were the last that the gay master had any inclination to sound; and, in a very short time, through something that mingled jealousy with inability, the disciple was wholly left to work his own way as he could through the difficulties of his professional progress.

Had neglect, nevertheless, been the sole deficiency that young Burney had had to lament, it would effectually have been counteracted by his own industry: but all who are most wanting to others, are most rapacious of services for themselves; and the time in which the advancement of the scholar ought to have been blended with the advantage of the teacher, was almost exclusively seized upon for the imposition of laborious tasks of copying music: and thus, a drudgery fitted for those who have no talents to cultivate; or those who, in possessing them, are driven from their enjoyment by distress, filled up nearly the whole time of the student, and constituted almost wholly the directions of the tutor.

MRS. CIBBER.

Young Burney, now, was necessarily introduced to Dr. Arne's celebrated sister, the most enchanting actress of her day, Mrs. Cibber; in whose house, in Scotland-yard, he found himself in a constellation of wits, poets, actors, authors, and men of letters.

The social powers of pleasing, which to the very end of his long life endeared him to every circle in which he mixed, were now first lighted up by the sparks of convivial collision which emanate, in kindred minds, from the electricity of conversation. And though, as yet, he was but a gazer himself in the splendour of this galaxy, he had parts of such quick perception, and so laughter-loving a taste for wit and humour, that he not alone received delight from the sprightly sallies, the ludicrous representations, or the sportive mimicries that here, with all the frolic of high-wrought spirits, were bandied about from guest to guest; he contributed personally to the general enjoyment, by the gaiety of his participation; and appeared, to all but his modest self, to make an integral part of the brilliant society into which he was content, nay charmed, to seem admitted merely as an auditor.

GARRICK.

Conspicuous in this bright assemblage, Garrick, then hardly beyond the glowing dawn of his unparalleled dramatic celebrity, shone forth with a blaze of lustre that struck young Burney with enthusiastic admiration.

And nearly as prompt was the kind impression made in return, by the new young associate, on the fancy and the liking of this inimitable outward delineator of the inward human character; who, to the very close of that splendid circle which he described in the drama and in literature, retained for this early conquest a distinguishing, though not, perhaps, a wholly unremitting partiality; for where is the spoilt child, whether of the nursery or of the public, who is uniformly exempt from fickleness or caprice,--those wayward offsprings of lavish indulgence?

Not dense, however, nor frequent, were the occasional intermissions to the serenity of their intercourse; and the sunshine by which they were dispersed, beamed from an heightened esteem that, in both parties, terminated in cordial affection.

THOMSON.

With Thomson, too, whose fame, happily for posterity, hung not upon the ephemeral charm of accent, variety of attitude, or witchery of the eye, like that of even the most transcendent of the votaries of the buskins; with Thomson, too, his favoured lot led him to the happiness of early and intimate, though, unfortunately, not of long-enduring acquaintance, the destined race of Thomson, which was cut short nearly in the meridian of life, being already almost run.

It was not in the house only of Mrs. Cibber that he met this impressive and piety-inspiring painter of Nature, alike in her rural beauties and her elemental sublimities: the young musician had the advantage of setting to music a part of the mask of Alfred, which brought him into close contact with the author, and rivetted good will on one side by high admiration on the other.

With various persons, renowned or interesting, of the same set, who were gaily basking, at this period, in the smiles of popular sunshine, the subject of these memoirs daily mixed; but, unfortunately, not a memorandum of their intercourse has he left, beyond their names.

Mrs. Cibber herself he considered as a pattern of perfection in the tragic art, from her magnetizing powers of harrowing and winning at once every feeling of the mind, by the eloquent sensibility with which she portrayed, or, rather, personified, Tenderness, Grief, Horror, or Distraction.

KIT SMART.

With a different set, and at a different part of the town, young Burney formed an intimacy with Kit Smart, the poet; a man then in equal possession of those finest ingredients for the higher call of his art, fire and fancy, and, for its comic call, of sport and waggery. No indication, however, of such possession was granted to his appearance; not a grace was bestowed on his person or manners; and his physiognomy was of that round and stubbed form that seemed appertaining to a common dealer behind a common counter, rather than to a votary of the Muses. But his intellects, unhappily, were more brilliant than sound; and his poetic turn, though it never warped his sentiments or his heart, was little calculated to fortify his judgment.

DOCTOR ARMSTRONG.

And, at this same epoch, the subject of these memoirs began also an intercourse with the celebrated Dr. Armstrong, as high, then, in the theory of his art, medicine, as he was far from lucratively prosperous in its practice. He had produced upon it a didactic poem, "The Art of Preserving Health," which young Burney considered to be as nervous in diction as it was enlightening in precept. But Dr. Armstrong, though he came from a part of the island whence travellers are by no means proverbially smitten with the reproach of coming in vain; nor often stigmatized with either meriting or being addicted to failure, possessed not the personal skill usually accorded to his countrymen, of adroitness in bringing himself forward. Yet he was as gaily amiable as he was eminently learned; and though, from a keen moral sense of right, he was a satirist, he was so free from malevolence, that the smile with which he uttered a remark the most ironical, had a cast of good-humoured pleasantry that nearly turned his sarcasm into simple sport.

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