"The Middle State": Italian Opera in Frances Burney's Cecilia

"The Middle State": Italian Opera in Frances Burney's Cecilia Leya Landau In 1787 Frances Burney wrote to her sister, Susan Burney Phillips, recounting a trip to the theatre with the royal party to see Thomas Holcroft's play Seduction. Burney described die drama as "a very clever piece, but containing a dreadful picture of vice and dissipation in high life."1 The performance concluded with an epilogue, written by Miles Andrews, which contained a couplet that startled and discomfited Burney with its unexpected praise of her second novel, Cecilia (1782): O such an Epiloguel I was listening to it with uncommon attention, from a Compliment paid in it to Mrs Montague, among other female Writers—but imagine what became of my attention, when I suddenly was struck with these lines—or something like them— Let sweet Cecilia gain yourjust applause, Whose every passion yields to Reason's Laws— To hear, wholly unprepared and unsuspicious, such lines in a Theatre,—seated in a Royal Box,—and with the whole Royal family and their Suite opposite 1 Frances Burney to Susan Burney Phillips, 1 March 1787, Frances Burney D'Arblay, Diary and Letters, MSS, Berg Collection, 3:2644-45, cited in A Known ScribblerFrances Burney on Literary Life, ed.Justine Crump (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2002), 242. References are to diis edition, hereafter cited as KS. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 17, Number 4,JuIy 2005 650 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION me,—was it not a singular circumstance? To describe its embarrassment would be impossible. (KS, 242)! Burney's anguish at her exposure in a public arena is a reaction appropriate to her status and reputation as a self-effacing female author; the emotive language that expresses her embarrassment—an effect ofsuch modesty—illustrates die tension (and balance) between passion and restraint that Andrews's epilogue identified as Burney's laudable achievement in Cecilia. This tension is played out in this scene in visual and spatial terms. A series ofspecular exchanges frame the reference on stage relating to Cecilia; Burney describes how her reaction to the evocation of her novel is scrutinized through the crisscrossing perspectives ofdifferent opera glasses: —my whole Head was leaning forward, widi my Opera Glass in my Hand, examining Miss Farren, who spoke die Epilogue:—instandy I shrunk back,—so astonished, and so ashamed ofmy public situation that I was almost ready to take to my HeeL· and run,—for it seemed as if I were there purposely,—in that conspicuous place,—"To sit attentive to my own applause—" The King immediately raised his Opera Glass to look at me, laughing heartily,—die Queen's presendy took die same direction. (KS, 242-43) The response ofthe royal party exacerbates Burney's self-consciousness and fear ofseeming narcissistically complicit in the epilogue's praise. Spatially, die performance of the epilogue occupies a middle point between die intersecting glances diat so disturb Burney; the variously agonized and amused exchanges of looks taking place in the royal boxes frame the reference to her literary achievement. At the same time, the words uttered on stage suggest a different sense ofoccupying a place between two opposing positions: the message conveyed in die couplet—that Burney evokes passion but exercises restraint through reason—praises a stance diat moderates extremes. In defending die conclusion to Cecilia, in response to Samuel "Daddy" Crisp's remarks on the manuscript, Burney wrote: "Besides, I tiiink die book in its present conclusion, somewhat original, for the Hero and Heroine are neidier plunged in the depths of misery, nor exalted to unhuman happiness,—is not such a middle state more natural?"3 In rejecting criticism of the conclusion, and in odier comments regarding die 2 Andrews's epilogue contains die couplet: "And oft let soft Ceciliawin your praise; / While Reason guides die clue, in Fancy's maze." 3 Frances Bumey to Samuel Crisp, 6 April 1782, in KS, 21 1. "THE MIDDLE STATE" 651 composition of Cecilia, Burney returns repeatedly—bodi in the novel and in her private correspondence—to this image of the "middle state" as a defining model and principle for her writing. In Burney's letter to Susan, the opera glasses that mediate—and intensify —her self-consciousness in...