Cecilia Summary

The plot of her second attempt, though still conventional, was somewhat more ambitious. Miss Cecilia Beverley, a young lady in her twenty-first year, is heir, not only to ten thousand pounds from her father, but to 3,000 per annum from her uncle, the Dean of , to which latter inheritance is attached the restrictive condition that, should she marry, the happy man must take her name as well as her money. This turns out to be a very material detail in the novel. When the story begins, the Dean of is just dead; and Miss Beverley and her fortune, during the brief remainder of her minority, are left in the hands of three guardians— a fashionable and extravagant Mr. Harrel, a vulgar and miserly Mr. Briggs, and a very proud and pompous Mr. Delvile (of Delvile Castle). In the first chapter of the story, Cecilia is quitting Mrs. Charlton, with whom she has been staying, to take up her quarters in town with the Harrels, — Mrs. Harrel, in her green and salad days, having been the heroine's "most favourite young friend." In London, where would-be suitors — most of them attracted to the beaux yeux de sa cassette — cluster about her like flies round a honey pot, she speedily becomes aware that the playmate of her youth is terribly "translated" by the dissipations of a London life, that her friend's husband is an irredeemable gamester, and that both are palpably on the down-grade. Her available means become speedily involved in Harrel's ever-urgent necessities; and the crisis of this part of the narrative is reached, about the middle of volume three, by his suicide in a very melodramatic fashion at Vauxhall Gardens, where, for the nonce, the chief personages in the book are ingeniously assembled. After Harrel's death, Cecilia goes to stay at Delvile Castle. Here an attachment already begun with the son, Mortimer Delvile, a young man at once excitable and irresolute, is further developed. But now the dead hand comes in. The haughty Delviles cannot bring themselves to consent to the change of the family name, even "for a consideration " of £3000 per annum. There are consequently scenes, in one of which Mrs. Delvile, after using extremely exaggerated expressions, exclaims "My brain is on fire!" — and breaks a blood vessel. Eventually, after she has been softened by illness, a suggestion is made that Cecilia shall surrender her" uncle's fortune, with its vexatious obligations, and content herself with her Mortimer and her patrimony of ten thousand pounds. Unfortunately for this proposition, the ten thousand pounds in question are now non-existent, having been, absorbed by the creditors of Harrel and others, — that is to say, by the Jews. After this, a private marriage takes place, with the connivance of Mrs. Delvile. But Cecilia's troubles are not yet at an end. Fresh and very unforeseen complications arise, and, for a brief period, she goes as mad as Clementina or Clarissa. At length the curtain comes down upon a Johnsonian passage in which she is left exhibiting the pensive and reluctant optimism of Easselas.

If, in the foregoing rapid summary, it has not always been possible to speak with uniform gravity, it is that, today, the main issue of Cecilia's story has become — as the author's own Captain Aresby would now have said — a little dhnodi. In the present year of grace, it is difficult to comprehend the social conditions which should prevent a sensible man from marrying the woman he loves (particularly if that woman have £3000 a year) simply because the concomitant surrender of his family name would — as Mrs. Delvile puts it — bring "the blood of his wronged ancestors into his guilty cheeks." But when Cecilia was written, this was an other-guess matter; and the point was not only seriously argued by bishops, peers and ladies of quality, but was thought by no means undeserving of anxious consideration. A noble Lord, who descended from Elfrida, and had a castle in Warwickshire, was distinctly of opinion that the obstructive attitude of Mr. Delvile pere was a correct one; while Mrs. Thrale, who dated from Adam of Salzburg — one of the companions of the Conqueror — was equally convinced that her mother, Mrs. Salusbury, would have done just what Mrs. Delvile did. But this debatable point apart, Cecilia's story is unquestionably clever. The characters — and there are a crowd of them — are clearly drawn and discriminated; the pictures of contemporary social life are varied and very lively, while the famous Vauxhall episode, if it be not precisely the tragic masterpiece which it seemed to the fond eyes of admiring "Daddy" Crisp, certainly contrives to hold the reader in a genuine suspense of curiosity until the final event is reached. The discussion between the mother and son, — the other "crack scene" of the book — that, indeed, for which the author declares she wrote the whole, Mr. Crisp did not approve so much, and he was right. If it did not impress him, it impresses us still less. Mrs. Delvile's stormy heroics seem out of all proportion to the gravity of the matter in hand, and an unsympathetic reader, bewildered by the hail of commination, may well be forgiven for wondering whether the cause is worthy of the clamour. Nevertheless Miss Burney, in clinging to her convictions in regard to "name-compelling" wills, as well as in declining to end her book "like the hack Italian operas, with a jolly chorus that makes all parties good and all parties happy," was only acting in strict accordance with the injunctions, received from more than one adviser, to rely upon her own instincts, and not to depart from them, when her mind was made up. And it is a feature of her character, that, notwithstanding her undoubted distrust of her powers, she was sometimes as restive and intractable under criticism as Richardson himself.

The two scenes above indicated are those which are most frequently referred to by Miss Burney's critics. But there are others which, if not as highly-wrought, are as worthy of praise. The opera rehearsal, — at which it was said the book always opened, — the description of the ton parties, the long masquerade chapter, and the dialogue between Albany, Briggs and Hobson on Charity (which may be compared with that on the same subject between Parson Adams and Mr. Peter Pounce in Joseph Andrews), are well worth reading. But the names remind us that Miss Burney is, primarily, what Johnson called her, a "charactermonger," and that her plot is subordinate to her personages. Some of these, in spite of her protests, she had evidently seen in the flesh; some she had half-seen or overheard; some she had wholly invented from current social characteristics. Mr. Meadows, the absentminded and affectedly-indifferent, and Captain Aresby, who interlards his conversation with French words like the coming Silver Fork School and the lady in Thackeray's AlmacWs Adieu — are probably examples from the last category. Mr. Monckton and the supercilious Sir Robert Floyer, the caustic Mr. Gosport and the voluble Miss Larolles, she had doubtless met; while in those days of gaming and E.O. tables, she had probably heard of many Mr. Harrels. As to the miserly and penurious Briggs (and the facility with which one can label Miss Burney's characters with defining adjectives indicates one of her limitations), the consensus of contemporary criticism seems to have decided that he was overdrawn. But he is certainly not more exaggerated than some of the later characters of Dickens, and he is distinctly amusing, especially in his encounters with "Don Pedigree," as he calls his colleague, Mr. Delvile. Hobson the builder, with his large and puffy presence, his red waistcoat, and his round curled wig, is a capital specimen of the bumptious prosperous tradesman; while the thin, mean-looking, cringing and obsequious Mr. Simkins (the hosier) is another excellently observed and contrasted variety. Morrice, the pushing and officious young lawyer, the versatile Belfield, and that vivacious "agreeable Rattle" of rank, Lady Honoria Pemberton, can only be named. Lastly — for we must omit others altogether — comes Johnson's favourite Albany, — a cross between Apemantus and Solomon Eagle, — whose stagy denunciations certainly warrant the ingenuous inquiry of Mr. Hobson whether "the gentleman might be speaking something by heart." There should be an original for Albany; but he has not been definitely revealed.

Cecilia is more elaborate and much more mature than Evelina. It is also more skilfully constructed, and more carefully, though not so naturally, written. But it is certainly too long; and towards the close suggests something of the hurry imposed upon the author by her eager father. It must also be confessed that the last chapters are scarcely as interesting as their forerunners. As to the success of the book with its first audience, however, there can be no doubt. Anxiously awaited, it was welcomed with the warmest enthusiasm by numbers of readers; and by no one more splendidly and royally than by Edmund Burke, whose acquaintance Fanny had made at Sir Joshua's not very long before it appeared. When it came out, Burke wrote her a long letter, which was reprinted with subsequent editions. Few (he told her), let their experience in life and manners be what it might, would not find themselves better informed concerning human nature, and their stock of observation enriched, by reading Cecilia. "You have," he went on, " crowded into a few small volumes an incredible variety of characters; most of them well planned, well supported, and well contrasted with each other. If there be any fault in this respect, it is one in which you are in no great danger of being imitated. Justly as your characters are drawn, perhaps they are too numerous. But I beg pardon; I fear it is quite in vain to preach economy to those who are come young to excessive and sudden opulence." Praising her humour, her pathos, her "comprehensive and noble moral," and her sagacious observations, he concluded, — "In an age distinguished by producing extraordinary women, I hardly dare to tell you where my opinion would place you amongst them. I respect your modesty, that will not endure the commendations which your merit forces from everybody." A few months later, she met Burke at the house of the Hon. Miss Monckton (the "Lydia White" of that age), when he was equally kind, though he ventured upon some criticisms. He thought the masquerade scene too long, and that something might be spared from Harrel's grand assembly; he did not like Morrice's part at the Pantheon; * and he wished the conclusion "either more happy or more miserable." With this last Fanny — as we have already seen — could not coincide; but he promptly consoled her by another compliment. Nothing had struck him so much as the admirable skill with which her ingenious characters made themselves known by their own words; and he congratulated her upon her conquest of some of the old wits, because of the difficulty of giving satisfaction to those who piqued themselves on being past receiving it. Also, he touched upon the amount she had obtained from Payne and Cadell for the copyright, which he evidently knew. "Why did you not send for your own friend out of the city [i.e. Mr. Briggs]? He would have taken care you should not part with it [Cecilia] so much below par."