“Pray send me a direction where Mrs. Chapone lives; and pray, some time, let me have the honour of telling you how much I am, Madam, your most humble servant,
Inexpressibly shocked to have hurt or displeased her honoured friend, yet conscious from all within of unalterable and affectionate reverence, she took courage to answer him without offering any serious defence.
“May I not say dear?—for quarrelled I am sure we have not. The bad weather alone has kept me from waiting upon you: but now, that you have condescended to give me a summons, no ‘Lion shall stand in the way’ of my making your tea this afternoon—unless I receive a prohibition from yourself, and then—I must submit! for what, as you said of a certain great lady,[72] signifies the barking of a lap-dog, if once the lion puts out his paw?
“Mrs. Chapone lives in Dean-street, Soho.
“I beg you, Sir, to forgive a delay for which I can ‘tax the elements only with unkindness,’ and to receive with your usual goodness and indulgence,
“And most faithful humble servant, “F. BURNEY.”
A latent, but most potent reason, had, in fact, some share in abetting the elements in the failure of the Memorialist of paying her respects in Bolt Court at this period; except when attending thither her father. Dr. Burney feared her seeing Dr. Johnson alone; dreading, for both their sakes, the subject to which the Doctor might revert, if they should chance to be _tête à tête_. Hitherto, in the many meetings of the two Doctors and herself that had taken place after the paralytic stroke of Dr. Johnson, as well as during the many that had more immediately followed the retreat of Mrs. Thrale to Bath, the name of that lady had never once been mentioned by any of the three.
Not from difference of opinion was the silence; it was rather from a painful certainty that their opinions must be in unison, and, consequently, that in unison must be their regrets. Each of them, therefore, having so warmly esteemed one whom each of them, now, so afflictingly blamed, they tacitly concurred that, for the immediate moment, to cast a veil over her name, actions, and remembrance, seemed what was most respectful to their past feelings, and to her present situation.