The Wanderer - Burney

Burney published her fourth novel, The Wanderer: Or, Female Difficulties, a few days prior to Charles Burney’s death. Described as “a story of love and misalliance set in the French Revolution”, it criticizes the English treatment of foreigners during the war years. It also pillories the hypocritical social curbs put on women in general—as the heroine tries one means after another to earn an honest penny—as well as the elaborate class criteria for social inclusion or exclusion. That strong social message sits uneasily within a strange structure that might be called a melodramatic proto-mystery novel with elements of the picaresque. The heroine is no scalliwag, in fact a bit too innocent for modern taste, but she is wilful and for obscure reasons will not reveal her name or origin. So as she darts about the South of England as a fugitive, she arouses suspicions that it is not always easy to agree with the author are unfair or unjustified. There are a dismaying number of coincidental meetings of characters. Burney made £1500 from the first run, but the work disappointed her followers and it did not go into a second English printing, although it met her immediate financial needs. Critics felt it lacked the insight of her earlier novels. It remains interesting today for the social opinions that it conveys and for some flashes of Burney's humour and discernment of character. It was reprinted with an introduction by the novelist Margaret Drabble in the "Mothers of the Novel" series.


The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties is Frances Burney’s last novel. Published in March 1814 by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, this historical novel with Gothic overtones set during the 1790s tells the story of a mysterious woman who attempts to support herself while hiding her identity. The novel focuses on the difficulties faced by women as they strive for economic and social independence.

Begun in the 1790s, the novel took Burney fourteen years to complete. She worked on it sporadically while she wrote plays and was an exile in France. Although the first edition sold out on the strength of Burney's reputation, the scathing reviews of the novel caused it to sell poorly. Reviewers disliked its portrayal of women and its criticism of English society.

Burney spent fourteen years writing The Wanderer—the longest amount of time she spent writing any of her works. She began the novel in the late 1790s, after finishing Camilla, but stopped, deciding to write plays, which were more profitable. In 1801, Burney's husband, General Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard D'Arblay, returned to his home country of France and tried to acquire a commission in the French army that would not require him to fight the English. He was unsuccessful and could not then leave France without raising the suspicions of the government, so Burney joined him in April 1802. The Napoleonic Wars, which had halted briefly, resumed and Burney was forced to spend ten years as an exile in France. While there, she worked on a draft of The Wanderer; however, no manuscript of the novel exists, so it is impossible to track the exact progress of the novel. In 1812, Burney left France with her son on the Mary Anne, ostensibly to go to the United States; in actuality, she intended to return in England. The ship illegally docked in England and was captured, making Burney and a few other passengers nominally prisoners. Burney had not originally intended to work on the novel while in England, but during a long wait for her ship at Dunkirk, she had decided to continue working on it. Burney's husband sent her the manuscript there, to do which he had to promise the French government that "upon his Honour...the Work had nothing in it political, nor even National...possibly offensive to the Government". The customs officer, however, was enraged that the manuscript had been sent. According to Burney, he "began a rant of indignation & amazement, at a sight so unexpected & prohibited...He sputtered at the Mouth, & stamped with his feet". He accused Burney of being a traitor; Burney herself believed that without the help of an English merchant at the time, her manuscript would have been destroyed. However in her DedicationBurney gave a completely opposite account, no doubt to avoid any difficulties for her husband in France.Composition

Plot and themes

The protagonist, later identified as Juliet Granville, tries to become self-sufficient, but her story reveals the “difficulties” of a woman in her friendless situation. Women take advantage of her economically and men importune her. She is “a woman totally dispossessed by political events”. Miss Arbe, for example, takes control of Juliet's life and her money (although inexpertly); she also attempts to organize a ladies committee, becoming "a comic spectacle of political life". Specifically, Burney compares Miss Arbe to Robespierre: as Doody explains, "the arrangements of both become swallowed in egotism, are highly disorganized if impetuously directed, and are bound to end in failure". Throughout The Wanderer, Burney comments on the tyrannical hold that the rich have over the poor in England, showing how the wealthy will accept music lessons from Juliet but refuse to pay for them, placing her in a desperate situation. She also charts the downward spiral of Juliet from gentility to working woman; she begins as a musician and slips into the less-reputable positions of milliner and seamstress. In her cross-class analysis of the problems of women, Burney was probably influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798). However, according to Doody, "Burney is the first novelist seriously to express sympathy for the working women in their normal conditions of work—and to see how the system of employment, not merely individual bad employers, creates conditions of impossible monotony."The Wanderer opens with a group of people fleeing the Terror. Among them is the protagonist, who refuses to identify herself. No one can place her socially—even her nationality and race are in doubt. As Burney scholar Margaret Doody explains, "the heroine thus arrives [in England] as a nameless Everywoman: both black and white, both Eastern and Western, both high and low, both English and French." She asks for help from the group, but because she knows no one, she is refused.

Elinor Joddrel is the antagonist of the story. She controls her own destiny, largely because she is an umarried heiress, and articulates “feminist views on the economic and sexual oppression of women”. During the 1790s, novelists often portrayed feminist characters, sometimes as heroines, such as in Mary Hays’s Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796), but more frequently as “grotesque satires” as in Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800). In the character of Elinor, Justine Crump argues in her article on the novel for The Literary Encyclopedia, Burney represents feminist arguments, but she does not either explicitly criticize or endorse them. Doody, however, contends that Burney endorses Elinor's feminist arguments because no character contradicts them and Juliet appears to agree with them. When the two discuss women's issues, Juliet does not dispute Elinor's point of view, she adds more points to her argument.

Elinor falls hopelessly in love with Harleigh, the brother of her fiancé and a suitor of Juliet’s. Harleigh is uncertain whether he should propose to Juliet, as he knows nothing of her family and she earns money by giving young ladies music lesson and instruction on the harp. After Harleigh rejects her, Elinor “abandons decorum altogether”; she dresses up as a man and frightens Juliet with her threats of suicide. It is Harleigh who discovers Juliet’s true identity—she is the daughter of a “clandestine” marriage of the Earl of Granville. She was raised in France and forced to marry a revolutionary in order to save her guardian from the guillotine. Juliet fled the marriage, but her husband pursued her, believing that she would inherit the Granville fortune. The Granville family know of her predicament, but refuse to help her. Harleigh abandons Juliet after discovering that she is married. She is eventually rescued by a friend. In the end, Juliet’s husband is deported and executed as a spy; her guardian comes to England, thereby granting her respectability and her inheritance. Harleigh returns and proposes. Finally, “Elinor is brought to repudiate, if not her feminist principles, at least her suicidal intentions, and order is restored to the novel”. However, as Doody explains, "Burney gives us the 'happy ending' of course, but not until after she has made sure that we see it is just a formality, and by no means a solution." The reader cares little for Juliet's marriage to Harleigh and recognizes instead that she has become a commodity.

The love triangle between Harleigh, Elinor, and Juliet suggests that Elinor should be a villainess who disrupts the happy love of Harleigh and Juliet, however the characterizations of both Elinor and Harleigh challenge this assumption. Harleigh is a "very passive and fussy person", and as Doody argues, "he does not satisfy our ideas of the 'hero' of a love story—who ought to be handsome, dashing, strong, and courageous, if a trifle self-willed." His purpose in the novel is to mark out what is respectable and proper, claiming that Juliet should not perform her music in public nor should she profit monetarily from it. Juliet's defense of her performances to Harleigh mirror Burney's own defense of playwriting to her father, Charles Burney, who strongly disapproved. Harleigh is named after Henry Mackenzie's Harley in The Man of Feeling (1771) and reminiscent of him—a hero of "sentiment and delicacy".

Genre

The Wanderer is a historical novel, part of a new genre that was a response to the French Revolution. During the 1790s and early 19th century, novelists examined the past using fiction.Charlotte Turner Smith analyzed the revolution in Desmond (1792) and The Banished Man (1794) while Jane West's The Loyalists looked at the English Civil War. Sir Walter Scott'sWaverley (1814) was published the same year as The Wanderer. Although the novel is set during 1793-94, "the dire reign of the terrific Robespierre", Burney does not fill the text with references to specific historical events. Neither Louis XVI nor Marie Antoinette are mentioned in the novel, for example.

The Wanderer also draws on the conventions of Gothic fiction, specifically "mystery and concealment, spying and flight".Like Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791), the heroine of The Wanderer is unknown and in need of sympathy at the beginning of the story. Throughout the story, the heroine's name is consistently concealed and later only half-revealed.

Publication and reception

The Wanderer was translated into French by J.-B.-J. Breton de la Martinière and A.-J. Lemierre d'Argy and published in Paris in 1814; Burney described the translation as "abominable".A three-volume American edition was published in New York in 1814. No other editions were published until Pandora Press's 1988 reissue.The Wanderer was published in five volumes by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown on 28 March 1814. Burney was one of the most popular novelists in Britain at the beginning of the 19th century, but she had not published a novel since 1796. The Wanderer was greatly anticipated and Longman printed a large first edition of 3,000 copies.^[8] All of these copies were sold to booksellers before the novel's actual release. Believing the novel would be a bestseller, they issued a second edition of 1,000 copies on 15 April 1814 and planned three additional ones. However, compared to Burney’s earlier novels, The Wanderer was not a success. Only 461 copies of the second edition were sold during 1814 and over the next ten years, only 74. The leftovers were pulped.

The Wanderer received unfavorable reviews, “with one or two quite damning”, which may have seriously affected its sales. Reviewers argued that Burney’s earlier novels had been better; The Wanderer was improbable and the language was “prolix and obscure”. They were also taken aback by its criticism of England at a time when the entire country was celebrating its victory over Napoleon. The negative reviews were published quickly (for the 19th century): two hostile reviews appeared in April 1814; a genuinely favorable review did not appear until April 1815. Critic William Hazlitt complained about the novel's focus on women: “The difficulties in which [Burney] involves her heroines are indeed, ‘Female Difficulties;’ – they are difficulties created out of nothing.” According to Hazlitt, women did not have problems that could be made into interesting fiction. The reviewer for the British Critic found the character of Elinor distasteful and guided readers to Hamilton's more conservative Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. Since the 1980s, The Wanderer, along with Burney’s other works, has become the focus of serious scholarship and is popular among students.

"Camilla" - Summary

Camilla focuses on the story of the Tyrold family. Augustus ("Mr Tyrold") and Sir Hugh Tyrold are brothers who, after a period of estrangement lasting an unspecified number of years, are reunited after Sir Hugh sends Mr Tyrold a letter expressing his desire to move near his parsonage, requesting him to purchase an estate called Cleves and prepare it for the arrival of Sir Hugh, his niece Indiana Lynmere, and her governess Miss Margland (his other ward, Clermont Lynmere, is to be sent to "the Continent" to be educated). His primary motivation for the move is that after years of being an active bachelor and confirmed bachelor, he suddenly finds himself injured and too physically weak to partake of the active physical and social life he once enjoyed. Forced to find entertainment and solace in more sedentary ways, he finds himself woefully unprepared and further engages Mr Tyrold to engage a tutor. Mr Tyrold complies and hires Dr Orkborne, a man better suited to private academic pursuits than pedagogy. This plan proves to be untenable and Sir Hugh is left scrambling to find a permanent "scholar" to place under Orkborne's tutelage, not wanting to offend the academic by dismissing him so soon after dragging him all the way out to Cleves.

In the meantime, Sir Hugh becomes enchanted by his brother's middle daughter, Camilla, and decides to make her heiress to most of his fortune. He also requests the privilege of raising her, which makes Mr and Mrs Tyrold uneasy because as much as they value Sir Hugh's kindness and generosity, they both find him unsuitable as a guardian as he is too indulgent and desirous to please. Nevertheless, they allow Camilla to go to Cleves. It is there that Camilla's brother Lionel, elder sister, Lavinia, and younger sister, Eugenia, and her father's ward, Edgar Mandelbert, go to celebrate Camilla's tenth birthday.

Mrs Tyrold allowed Eugenia to join the festivities only on the promise that the party of young people are not leave the grounds of Cleves because the girl had not yet been inoculated against smallpox. Unfortunately, Lionel's mischievous and restless nature leads him to convince his uncle to allow the entire party of children to go to a fair. It is here that Eugenia is exposed to and contracts smallpox. Eugenia is disfigured but survives, only to suffer a tragic see-saw accident which leaves her further maimed and crippled. Naturally, this leads Sir Hugh to disown not only Camilla but all of his nieces and nephews in favor of making Eugenia his sole heiress. He justifies this sweeping action by arranging an eventual marriage between Eugenia and Clermont Lynmere. In the meantime, he consigns Eugenia's education to Dr Orkbourne so that if she will not be a beautiful bride, she will at least be a highly intelligent one able to entertain and engage her future husband in what he calls hic hæc hoc -- that is, is to receive the same sort of intensive, classical education that was at the time more generally given to boys and rarely (if ever) to girls. Though at first dismissive of the idea of educating girls in general and the teaching of Greek and Latin to females in particular, Dr Orkbourne discovers that Eugenia is not only an enthusiastic student but one who is also extremely intelligent and capable.

At first, Edgar Mandelbert finds himself drawn to Indiana's exquisite beauty. Sir Hugh decides that despite their young ages (13 and ten respectively), Edgar and Indiana are clearly destined for each other. This means that Sir Hugh spends much of the early part of the novel waiting and planning for the day when Edgar and Clermont leave off their educations and finishing tours of the Continent so that they may marry Indiana and Eugenia.

When Edgar does finish his education and reaches the age of majority, he leaves university to take over the running of his finances and estate, Beech Park, from his guardian, Mr Tyrold. In re-acquainting himself with the Tyrold sisters and Indiana, Edgar finds himself drawn to Camilla. She also finds herself drawn to Edgar. Unfortunately, the mortifying realization that he is considered to be Indiana's intended complicates his attempts at courtship until he can resolve the misunderstanding. Even so, the machinations of Miss Margland, the jealousy of Indiana, circumstances in general (including Camilla's misadventures in navigating country society and new acquaintances such as the dim-witted Mr Dubster, the rakish Sir Sedley Clarendel, and the beautiful, reputable, witty, but lamentably satirical widow Mrs Arlbery) and Edgar's judgmental nature in particular serve to make his wooing of Camilla extremely protracted. He finally wins Camilla's hand only to relinquish it almost immediately after catching Camilla's debasement at the lips of Sir Sedley Clarendel.

Clarendel, a frivolous and flirtatious baronet, in having been mortified to have fallen in love with Camilla, tried to save face by protesting that he had no serious designs on Camilla's affections or pretensions to marriage with her. Once done, he kisses the confused girl's hand. Edgar witnesses this with the same level of revulsion and astonishment usually reserved for catching one's grandparents in the act of sexual congress, which naturally offends Camilla. She frees him from their engagement and with her father's blessing and encouragement, removes to Southampton to visit her new friend, Mrs Berlington with Eugenia, Indiana, and Miss Margland following behind a few hours later to provide company and proper supervision. This is, of course, taken by Edgar as further sign that Camilla is capricious, weak, frivolous, and above all a debased flirt. Dr Marchmont, Edgar's tutor and mentor in matters of the heart, encourages these assumptions.

While Camilla suffers through one misadventure after the other, her sister Eugenia attracts the notice of fortune hunter Alphonso Bellamy. He appeals to Miss Margland's vanity by flattering her into pleading his case to Eugenia and Sir Hugh and eventually asks Sir Hugh for Eugenia's hand. He is refused, not being known to Sir Hugh nor particularly welcome as Eugenia is intended for Clermont.

Bellamy eventually kidnaps Eugenia and forces her into marriage, Edgar eventually stops listening to the misogynistic Dr Marchmont, Camilla falls into and gets out of debt, Lionel is forced to give up frivolity, Sir Hugh is nearly bankrupted by his nephews, and Mr Tyrold spends some time in debtor's prison. But all ends well as Bellamy accidentally kills himself, Mr Tyrold is freed, Camilla and Edgar are married, Lavinia marries Hal Westwyn, Indiana elopes with a penniless hotheaded military ensign called Macdersey, Clermont gets beaten by a servant he unfairly tried to whip, and Eugenia (it is hinted) eventually marries Mr Melmond, a man whose fine education and extremely emotional outbursts had won her heart early in the novel.

"Camilla" - Main Characters

Main characters

Camilla is the seventeen year old protagonist of the novel. She is in love with Edgar Mandlebert but frequent misunderstandings prevent their union.
Frances Burney decided on the name 'Camilla' for her heroine shortly before the novel's publication. At one time she was called Clarinda, but most frequently Ariella. As late as 15 July 1795, Frances Burney wrote to her brother Charles to say, 'The name of my heroine is ARIELLA.' Dr. Burney, however, objecting to the name Ariella, the novelist struck out the name Ariella and wrote in Camilla.
Camilla is very pretty, though not as exquisitely beautiful as Indiana. She is generous (caring about poor people and the singing bird that was "pinched"), cheerful spirited, sincere, and very emotional. She loves her family dearly. Her naive simplicity and admiration can sometimes lead her into danger, such as when she makes friends with the witty and eccentric Mrs. Arlbery, or the beautiful and romantic Mrs. Berlinton. Her brother Lionel calls her "the best girl in the world, when she did not mount the pulpit."
Edgar Mandlebert is a ward of Mr. Tyrold. He is in possession of a large inheritance and estate at Beech Park. He is handsome, chivalrous, and in love with Camilla but must first make sure that she is as virtuous and worthy of his esteem as he wants her to be, especially since some of her actions, though innocent, have the appearance of coquetting. At his best, he is an uncertain lover too easily led astray by the misogynistic Dr Marchmont. At his worst—and sadly, too frequent—he is judgmental and cold; too prudish for his generation and even that preceding him. He is nearly as superficial as Indiana, though his shallowness takes a different bent. Obsessed with being upright and several times described by other characters in the novel as "nice" and "peculiar" (that is, fastidious and particular), he cares more about the appearance of what is proper and is disinclined to probe for any deeper meaning or to ask for (much less accept) any explanation. He makes baseless assumption after baseless assumption. When he does not, Dr Marchmont does for him, always tending to whatever makes others, especially Camilla, appear in the worst possible light.
Eugenia is Camilla's fifteen year old sister. As a result of Sir Hugh's actions at the beginning of the novel she is crippled and bears smallpox pits: therefore, though she had originally been the prettiest of the Tyrold sisters, she is now the plainest. Because of this Sir Hugh leaves the entirety of his fortune to her after his death. Her mind, however, is intelligent while being very innocent; and her heart is extremely gentle, merciful, and humble. Sir Hugh Tyrold attempts to keep from her all knowledge of her own personal defects, and therefore she is the more shocked at some peasant women's coarse insults to her. Mr. Tyrold, however, teaches her that beauty is superficial, by showing her a beautiful but mad woman. Her generosity and freedom from selfish jealousy astonishes Melmond when she gives him up to Indiana, even trying to help their marriage financially.
Lavinia is Camilla's nineteen year old sister. The book describes her as:

Her polished complexion was fair, clear, and transparent; her features were of the extremest delicacy, her eyes of the softest blue, and her smile displayed internal serenity. The unruffled sweetness of her disposition bore the same character of modest excellence...the meekness of her composition degernated not into insensibility; it was open to all the feminine of pity, of sympathy, and of tenderness.

She later earns well-deserved happiness with Hal Westwyn, Sir Hugh Tyrold's close friend's son, an amiable and chivalrous young man. Her personality is very gentle, modest, and sympathizing, but a fine sense of morality points out to her the error of her brother Lionel's ways, which cost her many a remonstrating, but ineffectual, sigh.
Lionel is Camilla's older brother. He is very mischievous and enjoys practical jokes. Later on his violent spirits and lack of morals carry him too far. He is dearly loved by all his sisters, especially Camilla, but his shameless sefishness taxes her affection severely by making her sacrifice much happiness for his benefit.
Indiana Lynmere is Camilla's seventeen year old cousin under the care of Sir Hugh. She is exquisitely beautiful but shallow and selfish, and has a taste for flirting. She is very easily flattered by eloquent compliments, but her heart not being deep or passionate, she is not very constant.
Clermont Lynmere is Camilla's cousin under the care of Sir Hugh. He is at school for most of the novel and when he returns is found to be brutish and rude, and is one of the only people in the book who actually makes Sir Hugh Tyrold anything near angry. He is extremely aggravating towards servants, and is very violent. Mr. Westwyn heartily disapproves of him and is rather satisfied when Clermont's selfish brutality lands him in a fight.
Sir Hugh Tyrold is Camilla's uncle who lives at Cleves. He is uneducated but very good natured and sweet tempered, with good morals and an excellent heart. Camilla is his favourite niece, her sprightliness and lively sweetness endearing her to him. He is very generous and charitable. However, his naiveness sometimes entangles those whom he wishes best: for instance, he wants Edgar to marry Indiana, and Clermont to marry Eugenia; however, both hopes are unfulfilled - Edgar marries Camilla, which he rejoices in, and Eugenia marries Melmond. At the end of the book, his new matchmaking hopes have landed on Miss Margland and Dr. Orkbourne.
Mr. Tyrold is Camilla's father whom she lives with at Etherington. He is a pastor and is very well respected by his daughters. He has a kind, gentle temper, strengthened by steady sense.
Mrs. Tyrold is Camilla's mother. She is revered by her daughters, and she loves her husband. However, sometimes her perfectionism frightens Camilla: for instance, when Camilla has landed her father in prison because of her debts, she thinks she can muster up courage to beg her father and uncle's forgiveness, but at the thought of going near her mother, she is almost frightened out of her senses. Mrs. Tyrold has a truly good heart, however, and she kindly forgives Camilla in the end.
Miss Margland is the governess at Cleves. She is Indiana's almost constant companion and an annoyance to Sir Hugh and Dr. Orkbourne. Scornful and selfish, her greatest object is to go to London again, and when she is dismayed by Edgar's preference for Camilla, she has no scruples in treating her with indelicate cruelty herself, and egging Indiana to do the same.
Dr. Orkbourne is Eugenia's teacher at Cleves. He is interested almost solely in his studies. The servants think he is "cracked," but Sir Hugh insists they respect Dr. Orkbourne. Eugenia respects him.
Dr. Marchmont is an advisor and friend to Edgar. He is extremely skeptical of women based on his past experiences, and though honest and kind, he continually dissuades Edgar from proposing to Camilla, and cautions him.
Mrs. Arlbery is a friend of Camilla. Her status as a widow allows her to have much more freedom than generally allowed to women at the time. She enjoys bossing fashionable men around with ridiculous orders. Her sense of satire aside, she is the only one who sees Edgar Mandlebert for the emotional coward he really is, explaining perfectly his faults to a disbelieving Camilla.
Sir Sedley Clarendel is a friend of Mrs Arlberry. He is a baronet whose fortune of £15,000 per annum makes him wealthier than Mandlebert as well as his social superior. However, Sir Sedley's foppish manners prove initially repulsive to Camilla. Eventually, Camilla's sweet disposition, breeding, disinterestedness, and loveliness penetrate through Sir Sedley's foppish facade, leading to acts of generosity and a genuine admiration for her. Camilla is often too flustered to seriously withstand his attentions and her brother Lionel too often encourages Sir Sedley in the hopes that it will lead to many generous gifts of money once the baronet is married to Camilla. Upon finding that his attentions and hand are unwanted, he feigns a horror of any serious design on Camilla and flees to the Hebrides.

Melmond is a school acquaintance of Lionel's. He falls in love with Indiana before speaking to her, saying, "...she is all I ever read of! all I ever conceived! she is beauty in its very essence! she is elegance, delicacy, and sensibility personified!' To which even the thoughtless Lionel replies, 'All very true...but how should you know anything of her besides her beauty?'. Eugenia develops a crush on him because of his studious nature and fervent love of literature. Sometimes his romantic passions carry him away, as in the case of Indiana, but he has a good heart and principles underneath.
Mrs. Berlinton is a sixteen year old friend of Camilla's and Melmond's sister. Camila describes her to Edgar as "attractive, gentle, amiable." She was forced to marry a much older man by her aunt but continues a correspondence with a mystery male. She is very beautiful and her sweetness of manners are captivating, which makes Camilla enraptured with her. She is very romantic, just like Melmond, but without the firmness of his principles: thus she sinks into gambling, flirting, and immoral "friendships."
Jacob is a faithful old family servant, who adores his master, Sir Hugh Tyrold. He speaks affectionately of Camilla to Edgar, loves his master, and is plain-spoken to Clermont Lynmere.
Nicholas Gwigg (Alphonso Bellamy): the younger son of the master of a great gaming-house. In his first youth, he had been utterly neglected, and run wild; but his father afterwards becoming rich, had bestowed on him as good an education as the late business with which it had begun could possibly give (it was pity, perhaps, that the education did not include morals). He tried gaming, but spending as fast as he earned, he acquired nothing; and once, in a tide of disfavor, he had cheated, and been found out. His father dead, his elder brother passive, he went to London, hoping to elope with some heiress by relying on his handsome face and lots of compliments. In the process he changed his name to Alphonso Bellamy. He had first met with the beautiful Mrs. Berlinton, and though this would not make him any money, her romantic turn of mind and loveliness tempted him to a scheme yet darker. They had exchanged letters with each other after she left, and soon after he forced Eugenia to marry him by shocking her gentleness of disposition with a suicidal threat. He treated her cruelly, yelling at her and trying to force her to write to her uncle for money, and continuing his heinous correspondence, and even meeting with, Mrs. Berlinton. Several unpleasant debts of honor being claimed, he had tried to force Eugenia to write to her uncle for money by putting a gun to her head and saying he would kill himself immediately after she was dead. Terrified, she was beginning to agree, when the alarmed postillion shouted out, "Hold, villain! or you are a dead man!" His hand shook—the gun went off—and he dropped dead. His behavior to Eugenia throughout was selfish, unfeeling, and brutally cruel. At first, Eugenia really believed in his passion for her, and though refusing to accept it, she sincerely pitied him and would not suspect him. After the marriage, she found out what he was really like, but refused to persecute him in court ("Solemn has been my vow! sacred I must hold it!")
Mr. Westwyn: A good hearted old man and very close friend of Sir Hugh Tyrold. Though not so gentle or sweet tempered as his friend, he is affectionate and unassumingly plain spoken. He is very strict with his son, Hal, but clearly loves him dearly. He treats Clermont with well-deserved contempt, saying, "That person...is a fellow I have prodigious longing to give a good caning to." He takes a great liking to Camilla at first, but when he observes her seemingly coquettish behavior (in reality she was just making a naive mistake in the process of trying to repulse Hal's affection), his partiality for her soon cools. Later he grows delighted with Lavinia, who is "pretty near as pretty" as her sister, and whose gentle sweetness wins his blunt heart over.

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."