Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/69

 settled in Juniper Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood. M. de Narbonne and General d'Arblay lived there and were visited by Madame de Stael and Talleyrand. Miss Burney speedily became attached to General d'Arblay, who had been a comrade of Lafayette's, and was with him at the time of his arrest by the Prussians. They were married 31 July 1793, at Mickleham, the ceremony being repeated next day at the catholic chapel of the Sardinian embassy. Their whole fortune was Madame d'Arblay's pension of 100l. a year; and Dr. Burney, though protesting on prudential grounds and declining to be present at the marriage, gave a reluctant consent. The married pair settled at the village of Bookham, within reach of Norbury, and lived with great frugality, which was more imperative on the birth of a son, Alexander. Towards the end of 1794 Madame d'Arblay tried to improve her income by bringing out a tragedy, ‘Edwy and Elvina,’ the rough draught of which had been finished at Windsor August 1790. It was performed at Drury Lane 21 March 1795; but in spite of the acting of Mrs. Siddons and Kemble it failed and was withdrawn after the first night. She also published a brief and stilted address to the ladies of Great Britain in behalf of the French emigrant priests, but judiciously declined to edit a weekly anti-Jacobin paper to be called the ‘Breakfast Table,’ which had been projected by Mrs. Crewe. Another scheme was at least more profitable. She published by subscription the novel of ‘Camilla,’ in 1796; and in pursuance of a suggestion once made by Burke, the lists were kept by ladies instead of booksellers, the dowager duchess of Leinster, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Crewe, and Mrs. Locke. Three months after the publication, 500 copies only remained of 4,000, and Macaulay gives a rumour that she cleared 3,000 guineas by the sale. Burke sent her a banknote for 20l., saying that he took four copies for himself, Mrs. Burke, and also for the brother and son whom he had recently lost. Miss Austen was another subscriber. The book was a literary failure, like all her works after ‘Cecilia;’ but it brought in profit enough to enable her to build a cottage, called Camilla Cottage from its origin, on a piece of land belonging to Mr. Locke, at West Humble, close to Mickleham, whither she removed in 1797. A comedy called ‘Love and Fashion’ was accepted by the manager of Covent Garden, but withdrawn, in deference to her father's anxieties, in 1800. In 1801 M. d'Arblay returned to France and endeavoured to get employment. He offered to serve in the expedition to St. Domingo; but his appointment was cancelled upon his attempting to make a condition that he should never be called upon to serve against England. He was placed en retraite with a pension of 1,500 francs. In 1802 his wife and child joined him in Paris, where, in 1805, he also obtained a small civil employment, and they passed ten years at Passy, during which communication with England was almost entirely interrupted by the war, and few memorials of Madame d'Arblay are preserved. In 1812 Madame d'Arblay obtained permission to return to England with her son, who was now reaching the age at which he would become liable to the conscription. She arrived, after much difficulty and some risks, in August 1812, to find her father broken down in health, and attended him affectionately till his death, at the age of 86, in April 1814. At the beginning of the same year she published her last novel, the ‘Wanderer,’ already begun in 1802, for which she was to receive 1,500l. in a year and a half, and 3,000l. on the sale of 8,000 copies. She says that 3,600 copies were sold at the ‘rapacious price’ of two guineas. The book was apparently never read by anybody. Upon the fall of Napoleon, M. d'Arblay was restored to his old rank and appointed to a company in the corps de garde. Madame d'Arblay rejoined him at Paris; and upon the return of Napoleon from Elba she retired to Belgium, and was in Brussels during the battle of Waterloo, where her adventures, graphically described in the diary, were perhaps turned to account by Thackeray in the corresponding passages of ‘Vanity Fair.’ M. d'Arblay had meanwhile received an appointment to endeavour to raise a force of refugees at Trèves. Here Madame d'Arblay rejoined him after the battle to find that he had been seriously injured by the kick of a horse. He recovered, but was incapacitated for active service and was placed, contrary to his own wishes, upon half-pay. Madame d'Arblay passed the rest of her life in England. Her journals give us few incidents except a lively account of her narrow escape from drowning at Ilfracombe in 1817. Her husband died on 3 May 1818. Her son was elected to a Tancred studentship at Christ's College, Cambridge; was tenth wrangler in 1818; was ordained deacon in 1818, priest in 1819; was nominated minister of Ely chapel in 1836, and died of a rapid decline 19 Jan. 1837. Madame d'Arblay's last literary employment was the preparation for the press of the memoirs of her father, which appeared in 1832. The book is disfigured by an elaborate affectation