Of the French correspondents, M. Berquin, the true though self-named children’s friend, was foremost in bringing letters of strong recommendation to the Doctor from Paris.
M. Berquin warmly professed that the first inquiry he made upon his entrance into London, was for the HÔtel du Grand Newton; where he offered up incense to the owner, and to his second daughter, of so overpowering a perfume, that it would have derogated completely from the character of verity and simplicity that makes the charm of his tales for juvenile pupils, had it not appeared, from passages published in his works after his return to France, that he had really wrought himself into feeling the enthusiasm that here had appeared overstrained, unnatural, and almost, at least to the daughter, burlesque. In an account of him, written at this time to her sister Susanna, are these words:
“To Mrs. Phillips.
“We have a new man, now, almost always at the house, who has brought letters to my father from some of his best French correspondents, M. Berquin; author of the far most interesting lessons of moral conduct for adolescence or for what Mr. Walpole would call the betweenity time that intervals the boy or girl from the man or woman, that ever sprang from a vivid imagination, under the strictest guidance of right and reason. But to all this that is so proper, or rather, so excellent, M. Berquin joins an exuberance of devotion towards l’HÔtel du Grand Newton, and its present owner, and, above all, that owner’s second bairne, that seems with difficulty held back from mounting into an ecstacy really comic. He brought a set of his charming little volumes with him, and begged my mother to present them to Mademoiselle Beurnie; with compliments upon the occasion too florid for writing even, my Susan, to you. And though I was in the room the whole time, quietly scollopping a muslin border, and making entreating signs to my mother not to betray me, he never once suspected I might be the demoiselle myself, because—I am much afraid!—he saw nothing about me to answer to the splendour of his expectations! However, he has since made the discovery, and had the gallantry to comport himself as if he had made it—poor man!—without disappointment. Since then I have begun some acquaintance with him; but his rapture every time I speak is too great to be excited often! therefore, I am chary of my words. You would laugh irresistibly to see how enchantÉ he deems it fit to appear every time I open my mouth! holding up one hand aloft, as if in sign to all others present to keep the peace! And yet, save for this complimentary extravagance, his manners and appearance are the most simple, candid, and unpretending.”
Dr. Burney himself was seriously of opinion that all the superfluity of civility here described, was the mere effervescence of a romantic imagination; not of artifice, or studied adulation.[65]
