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Frances Burney (13 June 1752 – 6 January 1840), also known as Fanny Burney and later Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. In 1786–1790 she held the post as "Keeper of the Robes" to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre d'Arblay. After a long writing career and wartime travels that stranded her in France for over a decade, she settled in Bath, England, where she died on 6 January 1840. The first of her four novels, Evelina (1778), was the most successful and remains her most highly regarded. Most of her plays were not performed in her lifetime. She wrote a memoir of her father (1832) and many letters and journals that have been gradually published since 1889.

Comedies

In the period 1797–1801 Burney wrote three comedies that remained unpublished in her lifetime: Love and Fashion, A Busy Day and The Woman Hater. The last is partly a reworking of subject-matter from The Witlings, but with satirical elements toned down and more emphasis on reforming her characters' faults. First performed in December 2007 at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, it retains one of the central characters, Lady Smatter – an absent-minded but inveterate quoter of poetry, perhaps meant as a comic rendering of a Bluestocking. All other characters in The Woman Hater differ from those in The Witlings.

Life in France: revolution and mastectomy

In 1801 d'Arblay was offered service with the government of Napoleon Bonaparte in France, and in 1802 Burney and her son followed him to Paris, where they expected to remain for a year. The outbreak of war between France and England overtook their visit and they remained there in exile for ten years. Although isolated from her family while in France, Burney was supportive of her husband's decision to move to Passy, outside Paris.

In August 1810 Burney developed pains in her breast, which her husband suspected could be due to breast cancer. Through her royal network, she was eventually treated by several leading physicians, and a year later, on 30 September 1811, underwent a mastectomy performed by "7 men in black, Dr. Larrey, M. Dubois, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Aumont, Dr. Ribe, & a pupil of Dr. Larrey, & another of M. Dubois". The operation was performed like a battlefield operation under the command of M. Dubois, then accoucheur (midwife or obstetrician) to the Empress Marie Louise and seen as the best doctor in France. Burney later described the operation in detail, since she was conscious through most of it, as it took place before the development of anaesthetics.

I mounted, therefore, unbidden, the Bed stead – & M. Dubois placed me upon the Mattress, & spread a cambric handkerchief upon my face. It was transparent, however, & I saw, through it, that the Bed stead was instantly surrounded by the 7 men & my nurse. I refused to be held; but when, Bright through the cambric, I saw the glitter of polished Steel – I closed my Eyes. I would not trust to convulsive fear the sight of the terrible incision. Yet – when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast – cutting through veins – arteries – flesh – nerves – I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still? so excruciating was the agony. When the wound was made, & the instrument was withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished, for the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp & forked poniards, that were tearing the edges of the wound. I concluded the operation was over – Oh no! presently the terrible cutting was renewed – & worse than ever, to separate the bottom, the foundation of this dreadful gland from the parts to which it adhered – Again all description would be baffled – yet again all was not over, – Dr. Larry rested but his own hand, & – Oh heaven! – I then felt the knife (rack)ling against the breast bone – scraping it!

She sent her account of this experience months later to her sister Esther without rereading it. It remains one of the most compelling early accounts of a mastectomy. It is impossible to know today whether the breast removed was indeed cancerous. She survived, and returned to England with her son in 1812 to visit her ailing father and to avoid young Alexander's conscription into the French army. Charles Burney died in 1814, and she went back to France later that year after the Treaty of Paris had been concluded, to be with her husband.

In 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba, and returned to power in France. D'Arblay, who was serving with the King's Guard, remained loyal to King Louis XVIII and became involved in the military actions that followed. Burney fled to Belgium. When her husband was wounded she joined him at Trèves (Trier) and together they returned to Bath in England, to live at 23 Great Stanhope Street. Burney wrote an account of this experience and of her Paris years in her Waterloo Journal of 1818–1832. D'Arblay was promoted to lieutenant-general, but died shortly afterwards of cancer, in 1818.

The Wanderer and Memoirs of Dr Burney

Burney published her fourth novel, The Wanderer: Or, Female Difficulties, a few days before her father's death. "A story of love and misalliance set in the French Revolution", it criticises the English treatment of foreigners in the war years.[4] It also pillories the hypocritical social curbs put on women in general – as the heroine tries one means after another to earn an honest penny – and the elaborate class criteria for social inclusion or exclusion. That strong social message sits uneasily within an unusual structure that might be called a melodramatic proto-mystery novel with elements of the picaresque. The heroine is no scallywag, in fact a bit too innocent for modern taste, but she is wilful and for obscure reasons refuses to reveal her name or origin. So as she darts about the South of England as a fugitive, she arouses suspicions; it is not always easy to agree with the author that these are unfair or unjustified. There are a dismaying number of coincidental meetings of characters.

Some parallels of plot and attitude have been drawn between The Wanderer and early novels of Helen Craik, which she could have read in the 1790s.

Burney made £1500 from the first run, but the work disappointed her followers and did not go into a second English printing, although it met her immediate financial needs. Critics felt it lacked the insight of her earlier novels.It remains interesting today for the social opinions that it conveys and for some flashes of Burney's humour and discernment of character. It was reprinted in 1988 with an introduction by the novelist Margaret Drabble in the "Mothers of the Novel" series.

After her husband's death at 23 Great Stanhope Street, Bath, Burney moved to London to be nearer to her son, then a fellow at Christ's College.[18] In homage to her father she gathered and in 1832 published in three volumes the Memoirs of Doctor Burney. These were written in a panegyric style, praising her father's accomplishments and character, and she drew on many of her own personal writings from years before to produce them. Always protective of her father and the family reputation, she destroyed evidence of facts that were painful or unflattering and was soundly criticised by contemporaries and later by historians for doing so.

Later life

Burney outlived her son, who died in 1837, and her sister Charlotte Broome, who died in 1838. While in Bath, Burney received visits from younger members of the Burney family, who found her a fascinating storyteller with a talent for imitating the personalities that she described. She continued to write often to members of her family.

Frances Burney died on 6 January 1840. She was buried with her son and her husband in Walcot cemetery in Bath. A gravestone was later erected in the churchyard of St Swithin's across the road, adjacent to that of Jane Austen's father, George Austen.

Plaques and memorials

In addition to the gravestone erected in the churchyard of St Swithin, Bath, other memorials and plaques record Burney's life.

A plaque on the wall at 84 High Street, King's Lynn, shows where she and her father lived in the 1750s.

In 1780, two years after the publication of Evelina, she stayed at 14 South Parade, Bath, with Mr and Mrs Thrale, who were great friends of Dr Johnson. A plaque on the wall of the house records her visit.

At 78 West Street, Brighton, Sussex a blue plaque records her visits to the Thrales' home there.

At Windsor Castle Wall, St Alban's Street, Windsor, a plaque records the residence of Mary Delaney between 1785 and 1788, where she was frequently visited by Burney.

A blue plaque on a wall in Chapel Lane, Westhumble, Surrey records the d'Arblays' life there in their cottage, 'Camilla', which they built and in which they lived between 1797 and 1801.

At St Margaret's Vicarage, St Margaret's Place, Kings Lynn a blue plaque records Burney's regular visits there, where she observed the social life of Lynn.

A Royal Society of Arts brown plaque records her period of residence at 11 Bolton Street, Mayfair.

On 13 June 2002 the Burney Society of North Americaand the Burney Society UK[54] unveiled a memorial panel in the new Poets' Corner window in Westminster Abbey in memory of Frances Burney.

In 2013, a marble plaque was unveiled in the gallery of St Swithin's Church, Bath, to record Burney's life. This replaces two original plaques – one to her and one to her half-sister Sarah Harriet – that were lost. In 1958, the St Swithin's church authorities had sought to protect the plaques by removing them during renovations to the church organ, but they later disappeared.

Courtesy--wikipedia
- Fanny Burney

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