In the ensuing year, 1807, the diary of the Doctor contains the following narration of the Countess of Mount Edgecumbe:

“December 21.—I have lost my oldest and most partial musical friend, the Countess Dowager of Mount Edgecumbe, relict of the third Lord and first Earl, and mother of the present Earl. She was daughter of Dr. John Gilbert, Archbishop of York. I knew and was known to her when she was Miss Gilbert, and at the head of lady musicians. She was always of the Italian school, and spoke both Italian and French well and fluently: she was one of the great patronesses of Giardini and Mengotti, in their days of renown; and generously never ceased serving [Pg 376] and supporting them when they were superseded by newer rivals. She was a correspondent in Italian with Martinelli. She played with great force and precision all the best modern compositions of the times; and in so high and spirited a style, that no other lady, or hardly professor, in England, durst attempt them. She kept her box at the opera till very late in life: and then, when, from the bustle and noise of entry and exit, she relinquished it, she still sustained her own private study and practice on the harpsichord. And, to the very last, when told of any musical phenomena, vocal or instrumental, she was curious and eager to hear them at private or subscription concerts. She went to Tunbridge Wells last summer, when her frame was extremely impaired, and her faculties no longer of their original brightness. Previously to setting out, she honoured me, in as infirm and decayed a state as herself, with a visit; condescendingly clambering up my flight of stairs to nearly the summit of Chelsea Hospital, protesting, with her old and very agreeable liveliness, that the exertion did her nothing but good: and then, almost on her knees, beseeching me to go also to Tunbridge Wells, as she was sure its waters would be highly beneficial to me. I was then, however, so unwell and feeble, that I feared going even to Bulstrode. I could not, therefore, satisfy this kind and noble lady with the least prospect of following her, and partaking of her offered hospitality.

“Daughter of so eminent a divine, she had been brought up with a firm belief and veneration in religion; and she was persuaded that all the calamities of the war were inflicted upon us as the scourge of our iniquities, for our admission of jacobinical principles at the opening of the French Revolution. It was a very remarkable circumstance, that pulsation stopped, and her heart ceased to beat, three days before she expired.”

About this period, also, or somewhat later, Dr. Burney had to lament the loss of his constant and respectable friend, Mrs. Ord; which, though not of a sort to prey upon his feelings, like those privations that bereaved him of the objects of his taste, as well as connexion, caused yet a considerable breach in his habits of friendly intercourse, and of such enlivening parties and projects, as constitute the major, though not the higher portion of our rotatory comforts.

The whole tenor of the life of Mrs. Ord, and of her minutest as well as most important actions, was under the concentrated guidance of a laudable ambition to merit general esteem. And so sagely directed were her movements for the attainment of their object, that she was one of those few beings whom censure passed by as unimpeachable.

She was sincerely attached to Dr. Burney and his family, and was sincerely lamented by all to whom her worth and virtues were known.

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Towards the close of this year, 1807, Dr. Burney had an infliction which nearly robbed him of his long-tried, and hitherto almost invulnerable force of mind, for bearing the rude assaults of misfortune: this was a paralytic stroke, which, in casting his left hand into a state of torpor, threw his heart, head, and nerves into one of ceaseless agitation, from an unremitting expectance of abrupt dissolution.

His absent daughter was spared from participating in the pain of this terrifying interval; and the despotic difficulty so often repined at of foreign correspondence, might here have seemed a benediction, had it been to political rigidity alone that she had been indebted for this exemption from availless anguish: but her generous father had made it his first care to prohibit, and peremptorily, all parts of his house from sending any communication, any hint whatsoever of his apprehensive state to Paris: and his exhortation, with the same earnestness, though not the same authority, was spread to every writing class of friend or acquaintance.

His own account of this trying event, written in the following year, in answer to his daughter’s alarm at his silence, will shew the full and surprising return of his spirits and health upon his recovery:

“To Madame D’arblay.

“Nov. 12th, 1808.

“My dear Fanny,

“The complaints made, in one of the two short notes which I have received, of letters never answered, Old Charles returns—as his account of family affairs he finds has never reached you. Indeed, for these last two or three years, I have had nothing good to say of own self; and I peremptorily charged all the rest of the family to say nothing bad on the subject of health: for I never understood the kindness of alarming distant friends with accounts of severe illness,—as we may be either recovered or dead before the information reaches them.

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“I wrote you an account of my excursion to Bristol Hotwells: but I had not been returned to Chelsea more than three days, before I had an alarming seizure in my left hand, which neither heat, friction, nor medicines could subdue. It felt perfectly asleep; in a state of immoveable torpor. My medical friends would not tell me what this obstinate numbness was; but I discovered by their prescriptions, and advice as to regimen, that it was neither more nor less than a paralytic affection; and, near Christmas, it was pronounced to be a Bath case. On Christmas eve, I set out for that City, extremely weak and dispirited: the roads terrible, and almost incessant torrents of rain all the way. I was five days on the journey; I took Fanny Phillips with me, and we had excellent apartments on the South Parade, which is always warm when any sun shines. I put myself under the care of Dr. Parry, who, having resided, and practised physic at Bath more than forty years, must, cÆteris paribus, know the virtues and vices of Bath waters better than the most renowned physicians in London. To give them fair play, I remained three months in this City; and I found my hand much more alive, and my general health very considerably amended. But, I caught so violent a fresh cold in my journey home, that it was called what the French style a Fluxion de poitrine, and I was immediately confined to my bed at Chelsea, and unable to eat, sleep, or speak. Strict starvation was then ordered; but softened off into fish and asparagus as soon as possible, by our wise and good [Pg 380] Æsculapius, Sir Walter Farquhar: and now I am allowed poultry and game, under certain restrictions, and find myself tolerably well again. All this tedious account of own self should still have been suppressed, but that I feared it might reach you by some other means, and give you greater alarm; I determined, therefore, to tell you the truth, the whole truth, &c., with my own paw: being able, at the same time, to write you that, cough excepted, which returns with cold weather, I passed last summer more free from complaint than I have passed any for many preceding years. And now it is time to say something of your other kindred, whose names you languish, you say, to see.

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“I have forgotten to mention that, during my invalidity at Bath, I had an unexpected visit from your ci-devant Streatham friend, of whom I had lost sight for more than ten years. When her name was sent in, I was much surprised, but desired she might be asked to follow it: and I received her as an old friend with whom I had spent much time very happily, and never wished to quarrel. She still looks well, but is grave, and seems to be turned into candour itself: though she still says good things, and writes admirable notes, and, I am told, letters. We shook hands very cordially; and avoided any allusion to our long separation and its cause. Her caro sposo still lives; but is such an object, from the gout, that the account of his sufferings made me pity him sincerely. He wished, she told me, to see his old friend; and, un beau matin, I could not refuse compliance with this wish. I found him in great pain, but very glad to see me. The old rancour, or ill-will, excited by our desire to impede the marriage, is totally worn away. Indeed, it never could have existed, but from her imprudence in betraying to him that proof of our friendship for her, which ought never to have been regarded as spleen against him, who, certainly, nobody could blame for accepting a gay rich widow.—What could a man do better?[83]”