I started reading Fanny Burney's diary — a 1940 Everyman edition I haven't looked at in decades. Perhaps after my week in France, a major diary moment, the idea of a late eighteenth century diary was appealing, and after a number of late-night short bursts of reading without great involvement, one day this week I spent much of a day feeling not so well and lay on the sofa in the new room with a hot water bottle and read more than a hundred pages. Weakness gave me patience with old-fashioned language, and a new-found susceptibility.
Fanny Burney had no formal education at all, but grew up in a cultured household and educated herself by reading from the family library. Thus are free spirits made. For a number of years she was Keeper of the Robes at the court of George the Third, and became close to Queen Charlotte. Illumination here from The Madness of King George. Fanny Burney slips in beside Helen Mirren's portrayal of Queen Charlotte. The crossover is in itself touching. Ill-health forces her to quit. She is sad to leave.
By now I am thoroughly engaged with this diarist, and can visualise her in the diary silences as well as in its reported days. She addresses frequently her two sisters, especially Susy, as if she's writing for them. Her diary permeates her family. The two sisters, who were considered more favoured than Fanny, did receive two years of education in France, but there's no resentment, and only affection for her father, as well as an extra father known as Daddy Crisp.
The finale came last night, awake as usual, and near the end of the diary: Fanny Burney, F. Burney married a Frenchman and became Madame d'Arblay. They spend some years in France, amid festering franco-britannic relations. No free movement here. A passport was more literal then: issued for one journey. Six weeks to negotiate crossing the Channel was nothing. 1815, and Bonaparte was ready for the fall. Madame d'Arblay left Paris at the dead of night and arrived in Belgium in time for Waterloo.
That day, and June 18th, I passed in hearing the cannon! Good heaven! what indescribable horror to be so near the field of slaughter! such I call it, for the preparation to the ear by the tremendous sound was soon followed by its fullest effect, in the view of the wounded, the bleeding martyrs to the formidable contention that was soon to terminate the history of the war. And hardly more afflicting was this disabled return from the battle, than the sight of the continually pouring forth ready-armed and vigorous victims that marched past my windows to meet similar destruction.