Fanny Burney: A Biography - Claire Harman - Hardcover - 1 AMER ED

Chapter 1 1 A Low Race of Mortals The Burneys are I believe a very low Race of Mortals," wrote Dr. Johnson's confidante Hester Thrale in February 1779 of her daughter's music master and his family. The remark was scribbled in the margin of her journal as a gloss on her opinion that Dr. Burney's second daughter, Fanny, was "not a Woman of Fashion."1 This was such an obvious thing to say about twenty-six-year-old Fanny Burney that it hardly bore mentioning, unless from mild spite. The Burneys were indeed not "people of Fashion"; they were representative of the coming class, the intelligentsia: self-made, self-educated, self-conscious people in uneasy amity with their wealthy and well-born patrons. No doubt those patrons found it obliquely threatening that a "low race" could produce so many high achievers: in 1779 Dr. Burney, author, composer and teacher, was halfway through publishing his ground-breaking General History of Music; Fanny had shot to fame the previous year with her first novel, Evelina; another of the Burney daughters was a famous harpsichordist; and one of the sons had circumnavigated the world with Captain Cook. The Burneys, and people like them, had every reason to think they were being admired rather than sneered at. There had been no patrimony, titles or property to smooth Dr. Burney's path in life; he had achieved his position through a combination of natural genius and unstinting hard work, his eye forever on the main chance, his "spare person" worn to a ravelling. Mrs. Thrale claimed not to understand the devotion Burney inspired in his children-"tis very seldom that a person's own family will give him Credit for Talents which bring in no money to make them fine or considerable,"2 she wrote in her diary; but what was "no money" to Mrs. Thrale was riches to the Burneys, just as their reception among the "Great folks"-at her own house, Streatham Park, for instance-was more than enough to make them feel "considerable." Fanny Burney's pride in the insignificant-looking man who had effected these miracles was boundless, and she saw no absurdity in describing her father as the powerful "trunk" of the Burney tree.3 Charles Burney had so successfully overcome his humble background that he really did seem to have sprung up from nowhere and to have started his family history afresh. One of the Doctor's other harpsichord pupils in 1779 (they were all young ladies "of Fashion") had told Mrs. Thrale that "these Burney's are Irish people I'm sure; Mac Burneys they used to be called."4 Where the girl picked up this information one can hardly imagine, unless through class instinct; the Doctor did not advertise his changed name. Charles MacBurney, as he was first known, was born in Shrewsbury in 1726, the twin to a sister called Susanna and the youngest son of his father's second family. His grandfather, James, who was of Scottish or Irish descent (accounts differ), had had an estate in Shropshire and a house in Whitehall in the late seventeenth century, but by the time of Charles's birth the family money had all but disappeared. The story goes that the grandfather MacBurney was so disgusted by his son James running off with a young actress, Rebecca Ellis, that he disinherited him. The old gentleman rather perversely followed up this gesture of affronted rectitude by marrying his own cook and starting a second family, of whom the eldest son, Joseph, inherited most of the property. This son frittered his inheritance away, was imprisoned for debt and supported himself later by becoming a dancing-master; but despite his fall from grace and wealth, he seemed happy with his lot (or so Charles Burney, his half-nephew, thought when they met in the 1750s), and that branch of the family was noted for its cheerfulness and striking good looks. The outcast older brother James and hHarman, Claire is the author of 'Fanny Burney: A Biography - Claire Harman - Hardcover - 1 AMER ED' with ISBN 9780679446583 and ISBN 0679446583.