The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 669 pages of information about The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 1.

The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 669 pages of information about The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 1.

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:(21) 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 negrQslave, a humane planter would have excused her fromwork.  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 eleven at night.

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

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The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.