The household in the autumn of 1774 consisted of the Doctor and his wife, both approaching fifty, Fanny (who, aged twenty-two, might not have been expected to be at home for much longer), Susan, aged nineteen, thirteen-year-old Charlotte, the lively six-year-old Richard and toddler Sally, then as always a rather neglected little girl. Small children were never going to be a novelty in the Burney household. When the family moved into St Martin’s Street, Esther was only a few weeks away from giving birth to her third child, Charles Crisp Burney, having had Hannah Maria in 1772 and Richard in 1773, the first three of Dr Burney’s eventual total of thirty-six grandchildren.
The move to St Martin’s Street took place while Charles Burney was recuperating from another bout of rheumatic fever. He was confined to bed for weeks, but carried on work on the History by dictating to Fanny and Susan. The family did not hold a large party at the new house until March 1775 on account of this indisposition, but the publication of The Present State of Music in Germany […] in 1773 had significantly increased Burney’s standing as a writer as well as a historian of music, and there was no stopping the flow of illustrious visitors passing through London who wanted an introduction to him. Fanny’s letters to Crisp in 1774 and 1775 contain many highly entertaining set-pieces describing some of these callers. The first was the most exotic, a young native of the Society Islands called Omai who had come to England on board the Adventure with James Burney. James, who had finished his training as an able seaman in 1771, had joined Captain Cook’s second voyage to the Antarctic Circle the following year, returning to England in July 1774. He had mastered some Tahitian on the voyage home and was able to act as interpreter to ‘lyon of lyons’ Omai, who was fêted all round London, received by the King and invited to the houses of aristocrats keen to observe and display a living emblem of the nation’s South Sea discoveries. Omai arrived at the Burneys’ house in the company of Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, the botanists who had accompanied Cook on his first circumnavigation of the globe. His manners impressed Fanny extremely favourably; even though he had very little English, the Polynesian ‘paid his Compliments with great politeness […] which he has found a method of doing without words’.57 Fanny sat next to him at dinner and noticed how unostentatiously alert Omai was to the feelings of others, glossing over the servant’s mistakes and assuring Mrs Burney that the (tough) beef was actually ‘very dood’. He ‘committed not the slightest blunder at Table’, and didn’t fuss over his new suit of Manchester velvet with lace ruffles, although it was totally unlike his native costume (or the fantasy burnous in which he was painted by Reynolds during his visit). ‘Indeed’, wrote Fanny to Crisp, ‘he appears to be a perfectly rational & intelligent man, with an understanding far superiour to the common race of us cultivated gentry: he could not else have borne so well the way of Life into which he is thrown’. With his spotless manners and spotless ruffles, Omai could not have been a more perfect example of Noble Savagery, showing up the gracelessness of the expensively educated ‘Boobys’ around him in a way that the future satirist found highly gratifying. ‘I think this shews’, she concluded grandly, ‘how much more Nature can do without art than art with all her refinement, unassisted by Nature.’58
Their next notable visitor was one of the most famous singers of the day, the Italian soprano Lucrezia Agujari, known rather blatantly as ‘La Bastardina’. Mozart had met her in 1768 and marvelled at her astonishingly high range: she had, in his presence, reached three octaves above middle C – a barely credible achievement. She was virtuosa di camera to the court of the Duke of Parma, whose master of music, Giuseppe Colla, ‘a Tall, thin, spirited Italian, full of fire, & not wanting in Grimace’,59 was her constant companion. Susan Burney had got the impression – not unreasonably – that the couple were married, and that La Bastardina retained her maiden name for professional purposes. This led Hetty to cause the singer some consternation by enquiring if she had any children: ‘Moi!’ she exclaimed disingenuously, ‘je ne suis pas mariée, moi!’60
The Burneys were of course all craving to hear Agujari sing, but Signor Colla explained that a slight sore throat prevented it. ‘The singer is really a slave to her voice’, Fanny noted in her journal; ‘she fears the least Breath of air – she is equally apprehensive of Any heat – she seems to have a perpetual anxiety lest she should take Cold; & I do believe she neither Eats, Drinks, sleeps or Talks, without considering in what manner she may perform those vulgar duties of Life so as to be the most beneficial to her Voice.’ Agujari was contracted at huge cost to sing at the Pantheon on Oxford Road (a new venue for concerts and assemblies that was proving immensely popular and in which Charles Burney had shares), and though she promised to return and sing for the Burneys at some later date, the possibility seemed remote. Months passed and they heard nothing of her, only jokes based on the story that she had been mauled by a pig when young and had had her side repaired with a silver plate. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, showed Charles Burney a satirical song he had written on the subject and wanted to have set to music. It was a dialogue between Agujari and the pig, ‘beginning Caro Mio Porco – the Pig answers by a Grunt; – & it Ends by his exclaiming ah che bel mangiare!’61 It is interesting to note that although the parody of her father’s book had struck Fanny as scandalous, she was quite happy to join in and pass on jokes about Agujari’s ‘silver side’. It presented ‘too fair a subject for Ridicule to have been suffered to pass untouched’.
It wasn’t until June that Agujari did sing for the Burneys, and then all jokes about her person and criticism of her affectations were forgotten. ‘We wished for you! I cannot tell you how much we wished for you!’ Fanny wrote ecstatically to Crisp:
I could compare her to nothing I ever heard but only to what I have heard of – Your Carestino – Farinelli – Senesino – alone are worthy to be ranked with the Bastardini. Such a powerful voice! – so astonishing a Compass – reaching from C in the middle of the Harpsichord, to 2 notes above the Harpsichord! Every note so clear, so full – so charming! Then her shake – so plump – so true, so open! it is [as] strong & distinct as Mr Burney’s upon the Harpsichord.62
Agujari certainly did not stint her hosts. She stayed for five hours, singing ‘almost all the Time’, arias, plain chant, recitative: ‘whether she most astonished, or most delighted us, I cannot say – but she is really a sublime singer’. There was no more talk of their exotic visitor being ‘conceitedly incurious’ about her rivals: ‘her Talents are so very superior that she cannot chuse but hold all other performers cheap’.63 The generous free recital, the sublime voice, the plump shake had all done their work. Fanny and her sisters became Agujari’s besotted devotees.
In his Surrey retreat, Crisp hung on these bulletins, especially the accounts of musical evenings. On one memorable occasion in 1773 recorded by Fanny, the party consisted of the violinist Celestini, the singer Millico and the composer Antonio Sacchini, ‘the first men of their Profession in the World’.64 Fanny could describe in detail evenings out, say at the opera, where they had gone to hear Agujari’s rival Gabrielli, and reproduce the long discussions about the performances afterwards, with what seems to be remarkable accuracy. The guests at one of the Doctor’s musical evenings that summer and autumn included Viscount Barrington, then Secretary at War, the Dutch Ambassador and Lord Sandwich, whom Charles Burney was no doubt trying to cultivate on James’s behalf. This was exciting company for the Burney girls, and the fact that Fanny relished these evenings shows that her shyness was less potent than her curiosity. Some of their guests were outlandish, such as Prince Orloff, the lover of Catherine the Great, who arrived at St Martin’s Street late on the appointed evening and squatted on