Camilla - Fanny Burney

Camilla Tyrold is the eldest of three daughters of a country parson. As a child, she lives with her rich uncle, Sir Hugh Tyrold, & is considered by everyone, including Sir Hugh, to be his heiress. After a series of events which leave Camilla's sister, Eugenia, lame & scarred from smallpox, Sir Hugh changes his mind & takes Eugenia into his home & makes her his heir. Sir Hugh is a silly man. Ignorant, vapid yet much loved by his family & servants, it is his fault that Eugenia becomes ill after he ignores her mother's instructions. Camilla returns to her modest family home feeling no resentment at all. Camilla's brother, Lionel, is a silly, thoughtless young man who thinks nothing of proprieties & puts his sisters into some very embarrassing situations. He plagues both his uncles (Sir Hugh & his mother's brother in Spain) for money as he's always in debt & uses emotional blackmail on Camilla which leads to serious consequences for her future happiness.

Sir Hugh also has another niece & nephew who have expectations from his generosity even though he has tried to make it clear that Eugenia will inherit everything. Clermont Lynmere is sent off on the Grand Tour to become learned & cultured as Sir Hugh intends him to marry Eugenia & in that way, share in her inheritance. His sister, Indiana, is a beautiful but shallow girl who has been flattered & encouraged by her governess, Miss Margland, into believing she has only to enter a room to make slaves of every man in it. Eugenia has been well-educated by the ill-tempered, absent-minded Dr Orkborne as Sir Hugh believes that her fine mind will make up for her lack of personal attractions when Clermont comes home to marry her.

Camilla has become attached to Edgar Mandlebert, a young landowner who has been under her father's guardianship. Edgar returns her feelings but is worried by the propriety Camilla's enthusiastic, open manner. He is advised by Dr Marchmont, a clergyman who serves as Edgar's moral as well as spiritual guide. Unfortunately he takes rather a jaundiced view of the female sex after some sad experiences in his youth so Edgar veers from determining to throw himself at Camilla's feet & offer her his hand & disapproving of her behaviour.

Camilla becomes acquainted with Mrs Arlbury, a witty, worldly woman who takes a fancy to her & asks her to visit. Camilla then meets Sir Sedley Clarendel, a fop who is taken with her beauty but deterred by her lack of money & Major Cerwood who pursues her without mercy. There are conflicting rumours in the neighbourhood as to which of the Tyrold sisters is actually Sir Hugh's heiress. This leads to Eugenia being pursued by the plausible but smooth Mr Bellamy & Camilla finding herself an object of attention to several men as well as the garrulous & vulgar Mrs Mittin who manages to get her into considerable debt on visits to fashionable resorts like Tunbridge Wells & Southampton. Camilla also meets Mrs Berlinton, a beautiful young woman who is unhappily married to an older man & likes to cultivate sentimental but potentially dangerous friendships with handsome young men.

Camilla & Edgar are at cross-purposes throughout the entire book. Edgar is a serious, priggish young man who sets himself up as Camilla's moral guide, a role she is quite happy to allow him to play. However, Camilla's love of excitement & her tendency to be dazzled by women such as Mrs Arlbury & Mrs Berlinton lead to situations where her actions are misconstrued & her motives questioned. Unfortunately Edgar is too ready to believe that Camilla is engaged to Sir Sedley or trifling with Major Cerbery & so he spends a lot of time stalking off to consult with Dr Marchmont when he should just sit down with Camilla & ask her what's going on. Camilla is helpless as only a young, unmarried woman of the time can be. She is at the mercy of her hostesses & she finds herself entangled in debt & obligations which she cannot escape. Her principles are sound but she can be frivolous & stubborn where her pleasures or her friendships are concerned.

Camilla is a very long book, over 900pp. The first four volumes follow Camilla on her journeys from her home at Etherington to Sir Hugh's estate at Cleves, her visits to her friends & the growing web of entanglements & misunderstandings that separate her from Edgar. In the final volume, however, the comedy of manners is replaced by a Gothic story of abduction, forced marriage, desperate illness & mysterious death. It's quite a change in tone but it's a lot of fun. Maybe Fanny Burney realised that she had to create some drastic plot twists to force the story to a conclusion. I enjoyed Camilla very much although I found I had to put it down occasionally because I was so frustrated by Camilla's ability to dig herself further & further into a pit of trouble.

There are some wonderful characters in the book. Miss Margland is a spiteful, embittered woman who thinks herself superior to her post as governess & is determined to find Indiana a rich husband so she can to live out her days with her grateful pupil. Clermont Lynmere is a boor who returns from the Grand Tour with no manners & without absorbing any culture at all. He is rude to Sir Hugh & dismissive of Eugenia, shrinking in horror from the poor girl. He is also greedy, reaching in front of people to get at any food in sight. Sir Hugh's old Yorkshire friend Mr Westwyn & his son, Harry, are men with hearts of gold. Westwyn had conducted his son & Clermont on the Grand Tour & has a pretty shrewd opinion of the worth of both young men. Mr & Mrs Tyrold are paragons & it's easy to see how Camilla shrinks from confessing her faults to two such moral, if loving, parents. Still, for all its delights, the book is much too long. I can only agree with Edgar when he declares,

'O Camilla,' he cried, 'if, indeed, I might hope from you any partiality, why act any part at all? - how plain, how easy, how direct your road to my heart, if but straightly pursued!'

Evelina - Fanny Burney

The subtitle of Evelina is the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World which describes both Evelina's & Fanny Burney's experiences. It was Fanny Burney's first novel and, like Lord Byron, she woke up the next day to find herself famous. Unlike Byron, though, Fanny was almost morbidly shy & was both horrified & fascinated by her new fame. She was lionised by the bluestockings of the day but especially enjoyed her friendship with the great Dr Johnson, who loved the novel & quoted from it in his letters. Her fame also brought her to the attention of the royal family & she was offered a position as lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte. Her father, the famous musicologist Dr Charles Burney, insisted she accept the post (which wasn't really refusable anyway) & Fanny spent a miserable few years at Court. Her health & spirits suffered from the boredom & backbiting & eventually she was allowed to graciously resign & return to private life.

Fanny Burney's life was an extraordinary one (picture above from here). Her Letters & Journals are wonderful, full of witty descriptions & emotion. She famously described the mastectomy she endured without anaesthetic in 1812. She survived the operation & recovered from breast cancer, living until 1840, when she died aged 87. She had married a French emigre, Alexandre D'Arblay, in 1793, & they had a son, Alex. Sadly, husband, son & her sisters (to whom she was very close) predeceased her.She was much admired, most famously by Jane Austen, who mentioned her novels, Camilla & Cecilia, in her defense of the novel in Northanger Abbey,

"It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.''

Evelina is an epistolary novel, told mostly through the letters of Evelina to her guardian, Rev Arthur Villars of Berry Hill. Evelina has been quietly brought up in the country. Her mother had married a young rake, Sir John Belmont, but he had scandalously deserted her & denied their marriage & poor Caroline died in childbirth. Evelina has lived a retired life, her education, both practical & moral, guided by the Rev Villars. At the age of 17 she is about to make her first visit to London in the company of her friend, Maria Mirvan & her mother. Maria's father, Captain Mirvan, is returning from a voyage & they will stay briefly in London before returning to the country.

As soon as Evelina arrives, her social education begins. She goes to a dance where she refuses an invitation to dance from a forward young man, Sir Clement Willoughby, only to accept another man's invitation shortly afterwards. Sir Clement pursues Evelina with questions & complaints about his treatment, leading Evelina to tell him that she had already promised Lord Orville the dance, even though this is not true. The web of white lies becomes more entangled until Evelina is almost distracted. Lord Orville's calm politeness & good manners entrance Evelina although she is mortified that every time she meets him, she seems to be caught up in an undignified scene.

Matters become more complicated when Evelina's grandmother, Madame Duval, arrives from France with the intention of taking the girl back to Paris to be "finished" & to pursue her father until he acknowledges her. Madame Duval is a vulgar, loud woman. Recently widowed, she is accompanied by a young man, Monsieur DuBois, with whom she's on intimate terms. She has had nothing to do with Evelina, having married a Frenchman & not even knowing of her existence until a few years before. The arrival of these "Frenchies" inspires Captain Mirvan to a fit of apoplexy as he displays all the traditional prejudice & xenophobia of the English. His teasing & plotting against Madame Duval is very funny & culminates with a plot to pretend to hold up her coach & steal her jewels which results in her losing her wig & being ducked in a pond.

Evelina is forced to leave her kind friends & stay with her grandmother on another visit to London, where she meets her equally vulgar cousins, the Branghtons, & tries to evade the attentions of Sir Clement while trying to prevent Lord Orville discovering her connections. Many misunderstandings result & there are some very funny scenes when Evelina is persecuted by the unwanted attentions of her family & various suitors. On the one hand she is entranced by London & its attractions. On the other, she has to navigate through the new world of polite society & keep her reputation intact. The difficulties of this show just how circumscribed the life of a young woman could be.

Evelina's social position is ambiguous. The world considers her illegitimate because her rich father has repudiated her mother. She is beautiful & attracts many suitors but are they looking for marriage or just a flirtation? The pitfalls & the dangers of making a false step are constant. The visits to the new pleasure gardens outside London like Vauxhall & Ranelagh illustrate this so well. Evelina becomes separated from her party & wanders down a dark path pursued by some drunken young rakes. In desperation, she takes refuge with two women who turn out to be prostitutes. They think it's all a fine joke & refuse to let her go. Of course, she meets Lord Orville while she's in the company of these women & has to try to convey her mortification while not being too forward or impolite.

Evelina could just be a stock heroine bouncing from one embarrassing situation to the next, getting deeper & deeper into a web of half-truths & evasions. She's a more interesting character than that, though. She learns from every situation she finds herself in. Her moral education has given her a solid grounding & she learns how to conduct herself through the mistakes she makes. Even when her romantic feelings for Lord Orville run away with her, the sober, loving replies from Rev Villars bring her back down to earth. Her good intentions are often thwarted by the adults who should be looking after her welfare but she follows her heart & overcomes all the obstacles on the way to her happy ending. This is a lovely book & I'm glad I finally got around to it as it's been sitting on my tbr shelves for a very long time.