13 January 1783 – 19 January 1783

Now for this grand interview with Soame Jenyns. I went with my dear father who was quite enchanted at the affair. Dear soul, how he feeds upon all that brings fame to “Cecilia!” his eagerness upon this subject, and his pleasure in it, are truly enthusiastic, and, I think, rather increase by fulness than grow satiated. We were late; there was a good deal of company, not in groups, nor yet in a circle, but seated square round the room, in order following,—Miss Ellerker, Mrs. Soame Jenyns, Mrs. Thrale, her daughter, Mrs. Buller, Mr. Cambridge, senior, Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Selwin, Mr. Cambridge, junior, Miss Burgoyne, a lady or two I knew not, and three or four men. Mrs. Ord almost ran to the door to receive us, and every creature of this company, contrary to all present custom in large meetings, stood up. “Why have you been so late?” cried Mrs. Ord, “we have been waiting for you this hour. I was afraid there was some mistake.” “My father could not come sooner.” “But why would not you let me send my coach for you? Mr. Soame Jenyns has been dying with impatience; some of us thought you would not come; others thought it only coquetry; but come, let us repair the time as we can, and introduce you to one another without further delay.” You may believe how happy I felt at this “some thought,” and “others,” which instantly betrayed that everybody was apprised they were to see this famous rencounter; and lest I should mark it less, every body still stood up. Mr. Jenyns now, with all the speed in his power, hastened up to me, and began a long harangue of which I know hardly a word, upon the pleasure and favour, and honour, and what not, of meeting me, and upon the delight, and information, and amusement of reading “Cecilia.” I made all possible reverences, and tried to get to a seat, but Mrs. Ord, when I turned from him, took my hand, and leading me to the top of the room, presented me to Mrs. Jenyns. Reverences were repeated here, in silence, however, so they did very well. I then hoped to escape to Mrs. Thrale, who held out her hand to me, pointing to a chair by her own, and saying,— “Must I, too, make interest to be introduced to Miss Burney?” This, however, was not allowed; Mrs. Ord again took my hand, and parading me to the sofa, said,— “Come, Miss Burney, and let me place you by Mrs. Buller.” I was glad, by this time, to be placed any where, for not till then did the company seat themselves. Mr. Cambridge, Sen., then came up to speak to me, but had hardly asked how I did before Mrs. Ord brought Mr. Jenyns to me again, and made him my right-hand neighbour, saying,— “There! now I have put you fairly together, I have done with you.” Mr. Soame Jenyns then, thus called upon—could he do less?—began an eulogy unrivalled, I think, for extravagance of praise. All creation was open to me; no human being ever began that book and had power to put it down; pathos, humour, interest, moral—O heavens! I heard, however, but the leading words; though every body else, the whole roon, being silent, doubtless heard how they hung together. Had I been carried to a theatre to hear an oration upon my own performances, I could hardly have felt more confounded. I bowed my head during the first two or three sentences, by way of marking that I thought them over; but over they were not the more. I then turned away, but I only met Mrs. Buller, who took up the panegyric where Mr. Jenyns stopped for breath. In short, the things that were said, with the attention of the whole company, would have drawn blushes into the cheeks of Agujari or Garrick. I was almost upon the point of running away. I changed so often from hot to cold that I really felt myself in a fever and an ague. I never even attempted to speak to them, and I looked with all the frigidity I possibly could, in hopes they would tire of bestowing such honours on a subject so ungrateful. One moment I had hopes that Mr. G. Cambridge, in Christian charity, was coming to offer some interruption; for, when these speeches were in their height, he came and sat down on a chair immediately opposite Miss Thrale, and equally near, in profile, to me; but he merely said, “I hope Dr. Burney has not wanted his pamphlet?” Even Mrs. Thrale would not come near me, and told me afterwards it had been such a settled thing before my arrival, that I was to belong to Mr. Soame Jenyns, that she did not dare. The moment they were gone, “Well, Miss Burney,” said Mrs. Ord, “have you and Mr. Jenyns had a great deal of conversation together?” “O yes, a great deal on my part!” “Why you don't look quite recovered from it yet—did not you like it?” “O yes, it was perfectly agreeable to me!” “Did he oppress you?” cried Mr. Cambridge, and then he began a very warm praise of him for his talents, wit, and understanding, his knowledge, writings, and humour. I should have been very ready to have joined with him, had I not feared he meant an implied reproach to me, for not being more grateful for the praise of a man such as he described. I am sorry he was present if that is the case; but the truth is, the evening was not merely disagreeable but painful to me.

And now for Mrs. Delany. I spent one hour with Mrs. Thrale, and then called for Mrs. Chapone, and we proceeded together to St. James's-place. Mrs. Delany was alone in her drawing-room, which is entirely hung round with pictures of her own painting, and Ornaments of her own designing. She came to the door to receive us. She is still tall, though some of her height may be lost: not much, however, for she is remarkably upright. She has no remains of beauty in feature, but in countenance I never but once saw more, and that was in my sweet maternal grandmother. Benevolence, softness, piety, and gentleness are all resident in her face; and the resemblance with which she struck me to my dear grandmother, in her first appearance, grew so much stronger from all that came from her mind, which seems to contain nothing but purity and native humility, that I almost longed to embrace her; and I am sure if I had the recollection of that saint-like woman would have been so strong that I should never have refrained from crying over her. Mrs. Chapone presented me to her, and taking my hand, she said,— “You must pardon me if I give you an old-fashioned reception, for I know nothing new.” And she saluted me. I did not, as with Mrs. Walsingham, retreat from her. “Can you forgive, Miss Burney,” she continued, “this great liberty I have taken with you, of asking for your company to dinner? I wished so impatiently to see one from whom I have received such extraordinary pleasure, that, as I could not be alone this morning, I could not bear to put it off to another day; and, if you had been so good to come in the evening, I might, perhaps, have had company; and I hear so ill that I cannot, as I wish to do, attend to more than one at a time; for age makes me stupid even more than I am by nature; and how grieved and mortified I must have been to know I had Miss Burney in the room, and not to hear her!” She then mentioned her regret that we could not stay and spend the evening with her, which had been told her in our card of accepting her invitation, as we were both engaged, which, for my part, I heartily regretted. “I am particularly sorry,” she added, “on account of the Duchess dowager of Portland, who is so good as to come to me in an evening, as she knows I am too infirm to wait upon her grace myself: and she wished so much to see Miss Burney. But she said she would come as early as possible.” Soon after we went to dinner, which was plain, neat, well cooked, and elegantly served. When it was over, I began to speak; and now, my Chesington auditors, look to yourselves! “Will you give me leave, ma'am, to ask if you remember any body of the name of Crisp?” “Crisp?” cried she, “What! Mrs. Ann Crisp?” “Yes, ma'am.” “O surely! extremely well! a charming, an excellent woman she was; we were very good friends once; I visited her at Burford, and her sister Mrs. Gast.” Then came my turn, and I talked of the brother—-but I won't write what I said. Mrs. Delany said she knew him but very little; and by no means so much as she should have liked. I reminded her of a letter he wrote her from abroad, which she immediately recollected. This Chesingtonian talk lasted till we went upstairs, and then she shewed me the new art which she had invented. It is staining paper of all possible colours, and then cutting it out, so finely, and delicately, that when it is pasted on paper or vellum, it has all the appearance of being pencilled, except that, by being raised, it has still a richer and more natural look. The effect is extremely beautiful. She invented it at twenty-five! She told me she did four flowers the first year; sixteen the second; and the third, one hundred and sixty; and after that many more. They are all from nature, and consist of the most curious flowers, plants, and weeds, that are to (be found. She has been supplied with patterns from all the great gardens, and all the great florists in the kingdom. Her plan was to finish one thousand; but, alas! her eyes now fail her though she has only twenty undone of her task. About seven o'clock, the Duchess dowager of Portland came. She is not near so old as Mrs. Delany; nor, to me, is her face by any means so pleasing; but yet there is sweetness, and dignity, and intelligence in it. Mrs. Delany received her with the same respectful ceremony as if it was her first visit, though she regularly goes to her every evening. But what she at first took as an honour and condescension, she has so much of true humility of mind, that no use can make her see in any other light. She immediately presented me to her. Her grace courtesied and smiled with the most flattering air of pleasure, and said she was particularly happy in meeting with me. We then took our places, and Mrs. Delany said,— “Miss Burney, ma'am, is acquainted with Mr. Crisp, whom your grace knew so well; and she tells me he and his sister have been so good as to remember me, and to mention me to her.” The duchess instantly asked me a thousand questions about him—where he lived, how he had his health, and whether his fondness for the polite arts still continued. She said he was one of the most ingenious and agreeable men she had ever known, and regretted his having sequestered himself so much from the society of his former friends. In the course of this conversation I found the duchess very charming, high-bred, courteous, sensible, and spirited; not merely free from pride, but free from affability—its most mortifying deputy. After this she asked me if I had seen Mrs. Siddons, and what I thought of her. I answered that I admired her very much. “If Miss Burney approves her,” said the duchess, “no approbation, I am sure, can do her so much credit; for no one can so perfectly judge of characters or of human nature.” “Ah, ma'am,” cried Mrs. Delany, archly, “and does your grace remember protesting you would never read 'Cecilia?'” “Yes,” said she, laughing, “I declared that five volumes could never be attacked; but since I began I have read it three times.” “O terrible!” cried I, “to make them out fifteen.” “The reason,” continued she, “I held out so long against reading them, was remembering the cry there was in favour of 'Clarissa' and 'Sir Charles Grandison,' when they came out, and those I never could read. I was teased into trying both of them; but I was disgusted with their tediousness, and could not read eleven letters, with all the effort I could make: so much about my sisters and my brothers, and all my uncles and my aunts!” “But if your grace had gone on with 'Clarissa,'” said Mrs. Chapone, “the latter part must certainly have affected you, and charmed you." “O, I hate any thing so dismal! Every body that did read it had melancholy faces for a week. 'Cecilia' is as pathetic as I can bear, and more sometimes; yet, in the midst of the sorrow, there is a spirit in the writing, a fire in the whole composition, that keep off that heavy depression given by Richardson. Cry, to be sure, we did. Mrs. Delany, shall you ever forget how we cried? But then we had so much laughter to make us amends, we were never left to sink under our concern.” I am really ashamed to write on. “For my part,” said Mrs. Chapone, “when I first read it, I did not cry at all; I was in an agitation that half killed me, that shook all nerves, and made me unable to sleep at nights, from the suspense I was in! but I could not cry, for excess of eagerness.” “I only wish,” said the duchess, “Miss Burney could have been in some corner, amusing herself with listening to us, when Lord Weymouth, and the Bishop of Exeter, and Mr. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Delany, and I, were all discussing the point—of the name. So earnest we were, she must have been diverted with us. Nothing, the nearest our own hearts and interests, could have been debated more warmly. The bishop was quite as eager as any of us; but what cooled us a little, at last, was Mr. Lightfoot's thinking we were seriously going to quarrel; and while Mrs. Delany and I were disputing about Mrs. Delvile, he very gravely said, 'Why, ladies, this is only a matter of imagination; it is not a fact: don't be so earnest.'” “Ah, ma'am,” said Mrs. Delany, “how hard your grace was upon Mrs. Delvile: so elegant, so sensible, so judicious, so charming a woman.” “O, I hate her,” cried the duchess, “resisting that sweet Cecilia; coaxing her, too, all the time, with such hypocritical flattery.” “I shall never forget,” said Mrs. Delany, “your grace's earnestness when we came to that part where Mrs. Delvile bursts a blood vessel. Down dropped the book, and just with the same energy as if your grace had heard some real and important news, You called out, 'I'm glad of it with all my heart!'” “What disputes, too,” said Mrs. Chapone, “there are about Briggs. I was in a room some time ago where somebody said there could be no such character; and a poor little mean city man, who was there, started up and said, 'But there is though, for I've one myself!'” “The Harrels!—O, then the Harrels!” cried Mrs. Delany. “If you speak of the Harrels, and of the morality of the book,” cried the duchess, with a solemn sort of voice, “we shall, indeed, never give Miss Burney her due: so striking, so pure, so genuine, so instructive.” “Yes,” cried Mrs. Chapone, “let us complain how we will of the torture she has given our nerves, we must all join in saying she has bettered us by every line.” “No book,” said Mrs. Delany, “ever was so useful as this, because none other that is so good was ever so much read.” I think I need now write no more. I could, indeed, hear no more; for this last so serious praise, from characters so respectable, so moral, and so aged, quite affected me; and though I had wished a thousand times during the discourse to run out of the room, when they gave me finally this solemn sanction to the meaning and intention of my writing, I found it not without difficulty that I could keep the tears out of my eyes; and when I told what had passed to our sweet father, his cup quite ran over. The duchess had the good sense and judgment to feel she had drawn up her panegyric to a climax, and therefore here she stopped; so, however, did not we, for our coach was ready.