"I was at the Assembly, forced to go entirely against my own Inclination. But I always have sacrificed my own inclinations to the will of other people--could not resist the pressing Importunity of--Bet Dickens--to go--tho' it proved Horribly stupid. I drank tea at the ---- told old Turner--I was determined not to dance--he would not believe me--a wager ensued--half-a-crown provided I followed my own Inclinations--agreed--Mr. Audley asked me. I refused--sat still--yet followed my own Inclinations. But four couple began--Martin (c'etait Lui) was there--yet stupid--nimporte--quite Indifferent--on both sides--Who had I--to converse with the whole Evening--not a female friend--none there--not an acquaintance--All Dancing--who then--I've forgot--nimporte--I broke my earring--how--heaven knows--foolishly enough--one can't always keep on the Mask of Wisdom--well n'importe I danced a Minute a quatre the latter end of the Eve--with a stupid Wretch--need I name him--They danced cotillions almost the whole Night--two sets--yet I did not join them--Miss Jenny Hawkins danced--with who--can't you guess--well--n'importe----"
There is more, but my pen is out of breath. Nobody but Mr. Jingle ever wrote like that; and in so far as Maria Allen may be said to have had a soul, there in its little spasms is the soul of Maria Allen, with all the _malentendus_ of the ballroom and all the surgings of a love affair at cross-purposes thrown in.
As for Fanny Burney's early diary, its careful and admirable editor claims that you have in it "the only published, perhaps the only existing record of the life of an English girl, written of herself, in the eighteenth century." I believe that to be true. It is a record, and a faithful and very charming record of the externals of such a life. As such it is, to me at least, a valuable thing. If it does not unfold the amiable, brisk, and happy Fanny herself, there are two simple reasons why it could not. First, she was writing her journal for the entertainment of old Mr. Crisp of Chessington, the "Daddy Crisp" of her best pages; secondly, it is not at all likely that she knew of anything to unfold. Nor, for that matter, was Fanny herself of the kind that can unfold to another person. Yet there is a charm all over the book, which some may place here, some there, but which all will confess. For me it is not so much that Fanny herself is a charming girl, and a girl of shrewd observation, of a pointed pen, and an admirable gift of mimicry. She has all that and more--she has a good heart. Her sister Susan is as good as she, and there are many of Susan's letters. But the real charm of the book, I think, is in the series of faithful pictures it contains of the everyday round of an everyday family. Dutch pictures all--passers-by, a knock at the front door, callers--Mr. Young, "in light blue embroidered with silver, a bag and sword, and walking in the rain"; a jaunt to Greenwich, a concert at home--the Agujari in one of her humours; a masquerade--"a very private one, and at the house of Mr. Laluze ... Hetty had for three months thought of nothing else ... she went as a Savoyard with a hurdy-gurdy fastened round her waist. Nothing could look more simple, innocent, and pretty. My dress was a close pink Persian vest covered with a gauze in loose pleats...." What else? Oh, a visit to Teignmouth--Maria Allen now Mrs. Ruston; another to Worcester; quiet days at King's Lynn, where "I have just finished _Henry and Frances_ ... the greatest part of the last volume is wrote by Henry, and on the gravest of grave subjects, and that which is most dreadful to our thoughts, Eternal Misery...." Terrific novel: but need I go on? There may be some to whom a description of the nothings of this our life will be as flat as the nothings themselves--but I am not of that party. The things themselves interest me, and I confess the charm. It is the charm of innocence and freshness, a morning dew upon the words.