Fanny Burney

Fanny Burney (1752 – 1840), daughter of the musicologist Dr Charles Burney, was famous as a novelist in her lifetime and is equally respected as a diarist and playwright today.  Her novels Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla and The Wanderer were published between 1778 and 1814 while her plays A Busy Day and The Witlings had to wait until our own times to be seen on stage.  Though her journals have been known since the middle of the nineteenth century, a scholarly edition running to some two dozen volumes is presently being edited and published.  The Burney Society, which promotes interest in all the Burney family, is active on both sides of the Atlantic and in 2002 was instrumental in having a window to her memory placed in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Fanny Burney’s long and eventful life included many associations with Bath.  Her first documented visit to the city was made in 1780, lodging in South Parade with Mr and Mrs Thrale.  A plaque now marks the house.  During this visit of three months Fanny was feted as a best-selling novelist (Evelina had been published with runaway success two years earlier) and she witnessed the Gordon riots, leaving a vivid account in her journals.  After a period of service at the Court of George III and Queen Charlotte, she returned to Bath for three weeks in 1791, staying in Queen Square.  A few years later she married a French émigré, General Alexandre d’Arblay, and having been trapped in France with him following the Peace of Amiens in 1802, they retired to Bath after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, making a permanent home at 23 Great Stanhope Street in modest lodgings.  Fanny’s journals record how much she enjoyed living in Bath.

General d’Arblay died in Bath in 1818 and was buried in the mortuary garden of the parish church of St Swithin’s,  Walcot Street.  A memorial plaque inscribed with words composed by his distraught widow may still be seen inside the church.  Fanny left Bath to make a home in London with their only son, Alexander, but when he predeceased her in 1837, his body was brought to lie near his father’s.  Fanny joined them three years later.  The girl who had been born in the reign of George II had lived to see his great-great-niece Victoria on the throne, and some of the mourners travelled to her funeral by train.

It has recently been discovered that the remains of all three d’Arblays have been brought to Haycombe Cemetery, Whiteway Road, Bath while the table top tomb recording their names was moved to the small paled enclosure east of St Swithin’s Church where it may still be seen.

Further reading: A City of Palaces, Bath through the eyes of Fanny Burney by Maggie Lane, Millstream 1999.