Frances Burney - The Royal Court

The Royal Court

In 1775 Frances Burney turned down a marriage proposal from one Thomas Barlow, probably on the grounds of his inadequate wealth. Her side of the Barlow courtship is amusingly told in her journal. During the period 1782-85 she enjoyed the rewards of her successes as a novelist; she was received at fashionable literary gatherings throughout London. In 1781 Samuel Crisp died. In 1784 Dr Johnson died, and that year also saw the failure of her romance with a young clergyman, George Owen Cambridge. She was 33 years old.

In 1785, thanks to her association with Mary Granville Delany, a woman known in both literary and royal circles, Frances travelled to the court of King George III and Queen Charlotte, where the Queen offered her the post of “Second Keeper of the Robes”, with a salary of £200 per annum. Frances hesitated in taking the office, not wishing to be separated from her family, and especially resistant to any employment that would restrict the free use of her time in writing. However, unmarried at 34, she felt pressured to accept, and she thought that perhaps improved social status and an income would allow her greater freedom to write. She accepted the post in 1786. She developed a warm relationship with the queen and princesses that lasted into her later years, yet her anxieties proved to be accurate: this position exhausted her and left her little time to write. She was unhappy and her feelings were intensified by a poor relationship with her superior Mrs Schwellenburg, the Keeper of the Robes. She felt dominated by her superior, who has been described as "a peevish old person of uncertain temper and impaired health, swaddled in the buckram of backstairs etiquette”.

During her years in court, Burney continued to produce her journals. To her friends and to Susanna, she recounted her life in court as well as significant political events, including the public trial of Warren Hastings for “official misconduct in India”. She also recorded the speeches of Edmund Burke at the trial. She was courted by an official of the royal household, Colonel Stephen Digby, but he eventually married another woman of greater wealth. The disappointment, combined with the other frustrations of her office, contributed to her failing health at this time. In 1790 she prevailed on her father (whose own career had taken a new turn when he was appointed organist at Chelsea Hospital in 1783) to request that she be released from the post, which she was. She returned to her father’s house in Chelsea, but continued to receive a yearly pension of £100. She maintained a friendship with the royal family and received letters from the princesses from 1818 until 1840.