Frances (or Fanny) Burney was born on 13th
June 1752 at King’s Lynn in Norfolk, the third child of Charles Burney, a
well-known musician who wrote a celebrated “History of Music”. Although she was
a slow starter, she became a voracious reader and an early writer of stories,
plays and much else. However, on her 15th birthday she burnt
everything she had written up to that date.
When Fanny was eight the family moved to London
Her mother died when she was 12, in 1762, and
her father re-married in 1767. Fanny’s relationship with her step-mother became
increasingly strained, although she got on well with the children of her
step-mother’s previous marriage. We know these facts from Fanny’s earliest
diaries, which she started to keep from 1768.
Fanny helped her father with his literary
work, which brought her into contact with London
Fanny Burney is best known for “Evelina”, a
novel which was probably begun around 1772, with most of the writing dating
from 1776 after the first volume of her father’s “History of Music” had been
published. The writing of “Evelina”, and its publication, were done under a
cloak of secrecy, as writing was not regarded at the time as a suitable
occupation for a woman. Only the closest members of her family, not including
her father, were even aware that Fanny was writing anything other than her work
on the “History of Music”. All sorts of subterfuges were used to preserve the
secret, including writing in a disguised hand and night-time visits to
publishers by Fanny’s brother.
“Evelina, or, A Young Lady's Entrance into the World” was published on 29 January
1778 and was an almost immediate success. It was read with enthusiasm by such
notables as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson, who praised
it highly. The secret of its authorship eventually leaked out, but this also
brought Fanny to the notice of the writer and socialite Hester Thrale, who was
a friend of both her father and Samuel Johnson. Fanny and Hester became firm
friends and Fanny gained access to the most distinguished intellectual circles
of the day. Her diaries record many incidents from the lives of these people,
and have proved to be valuable source material for the social history of the
time.
Fanny was urged, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
and others, to write a play, which she did. This was “The Witlings”, a
satirical comedy that poked fun at some of the lesser literary lights of the
day, much as Alexander Pope had done a generation earlier. However, although
the play was completed, and would no doubt have been highly successful, her
father took fright at the consequences of its being staged, and so this never
happened.
Her second novel was “Cecilia, the Memoirs of
an Heiress”, begun in 1780 and published in 1782. Like “Evelina”, this was very
well received, with her readers accepting that a well-connected woman could
also be a respected writer of fiction.
Even though her novels brought her wealth and
success, Fanny Burney’s personal life then underwent a number of upheavals,
including a break with her friend Hester Thrale and the death of Samuel
Johnson, who had been one of her greatest supporters. Together with changes on
the domestic front with a sister marrying and her father accepting a post at Chelsea Hospital
She took up her responsibilities in July 1786
and stayed in royal service for five years. Despite moving in the highest
circles, the work was nothing short of menial drudgery and extremely boring to
a woman with such a lively mind and outgoing personality. She would much have
preferred to mix in the literary and intellectual circles that she had known
previously, but the royal family and court consisted of people with virtually
no interest in that world, and she simply did not fit in.
To later generations, the main interest of
Fanny’s Burney time at court comes from her journals, which covered the time of
King George’s first period of madness, in 1788. Eventually, Fanny’s health
began to suffer, and it was on health grounds that she was finally released
from her duties, in July 1791.
With her health on the mend, Fanny rejoined
the society she had missed so much and soon made the acquaintance of a group of
French émigrés who had escaped from the Terror being perpetuated by the
Jacobins. These were not reactionary aristocrats but constitutional reformers,
whose efforts at moderation had been repulsed just as strongly as had the
representatives of the “ancien regime”. Among this group was Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard d'Arblay, a soldier and former adjutant
to the Marquis de Lafayette. Fanny became attracted to him and accepted his
offer of marriage, much to her father’s dismay.
On 28th July 1793, at the age of 41, Fanny Burney became
Madame d’Arblay, the wife of a penniless Frenchman, a Catholic with, for the
time, very liberal political views. None of these facts was likely to please
her father.
However, the marriage turned out to be a very happy one, lasting until
her husband’s death in 1818. A son, Alexander, was born in 1794.
Fanny began writing again, firstly working on a verse tragedy that she
had virtually completed during her time at court as a way of staving off the
boredom. This was “Edwy and Elgiva”, based on the life of a 10th
century Saxon king, and it was the only play by Fanny Burney to be staged in
her lifetime. However, it was not well-received and was withdrawn after only
one performance, despite its all-star cast.
Fanny’s third novel was “Camilla, a Picture of Youth” which was written
in little more than a year and published in June 1796. As was common at the
time, people were invited to subscribe in advance and would expect to receive
their copy on publication. One notable name (among many such) on the list of
subscribers was that of Jane Austen, aged 20 at the time. Although “Camilla” is
not regarded today as the best of her work, being too moralistic for modern
tastes, it was hugely successful at the time and the proceeds allowed the
d’Arblays to build their own house, called “Camilla Cottage”.
Fanny soon became painfully embroiled in
serious family problems affecting her sisters and brother. These included the
death of her sister Susan in 1800, after she had suffered at the hands of her
unworthy husband, and a family scandal, the details of which were kept entirely
out of public knowledge, that involved her brother James living with his
half-sister.
D’Arblay was anxious to recover his property
in France , and the couple lived apart for a
time until Fanny and Alex were able to join him there. However, when
hostilities broke out the family became trapped in France
and did not return to England for another ten
years. While there, Fanny underwent a mastectomy, which was performed without
anaesthetic.
In 1812 Fanny and Alex were able to return to England , and in 1814 she published her last novel, “The
Wanderer”, which was based on her own experiences. However, this did not prove
to be a success. Her father died during the same year and Fanny started work on
compiling his memoirs.
Back in France ,
Fanny witnessed the events leading up to the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815,
after which the d’Arblays returned to England
for good, settling in Bath where her husband
died in May 1818.
Fanny Burney devoted much of the rest of her
life to assembling her father’s “Memoirs”, which were published in 1832. Her
final years were marked by a series of family deaths, including that of her son
Alex in 1837. By the time of her own death in 1840, at the age of 87, only one
family member of her generation, a half-sister, was left to survive her.
Fanny Burney has been hailed as the first woman
writer of note in English literature (not counting the far less talented Aphra
Behn). Her early reputation depended a lot on her journals, some of which were
published from 1842 and were soon recognised as valuable insights into late
Georgian England. As a novelist, her influence on later writers such as Jane
Austen cannot be doubted, particularly her ability to place female characters
in realistic social settings. In more recent years, Fanny Burney has been
re-assessed as a feminist icon, with her troubled life-history being analysed
alongside her literary works.
© John Welford
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