Chesington Hall, which thenceforth became the joint residence of this pair of hermits, stood on an eminence rising from a wide and nearly desolate common, about midway between the towns of Epsom and Kingston; the neglected buildings were crumbling to pieces from age, having been begun in the same year in which Wolsey laid the first stone of Hampton Court; and the homestead was surrounded by fields, that for a long period had been so ploughed up as to leave no road or even regular footpath open across them. In this hiding-place Crisp fixed his abode for the rest of his life. So isolated was the spot that strangers could not reach it without a guide. But the inhabitants desired to have as few visitors as possible. Only as the spring of each year came round would Crisp, while his strength allowed, quit his refuge for a few weeks, to amuse himself with the picture-shows and concerts of the London season.
It seems to have been during one of these excursions that Burney met Crisp again after their long separation. The revival of their friendship gave the solitary man one more connecting link with the outside world. Down to that time Crisp’s only visitor in his retreat seems to have been his sister, Mrs. Sophia Gast, of Burford, in Oxfordshire. Now to Burney also was entrusted the clue for a safe route across the wild common to Chesington Hall, while from all others, including Mr. Greville, it was still steadfastly withheld. There is no reason to suppose that the acquaintances whom Crisp thus relinquished were more faithless than a poor man’s great friends usually are. He had been flattered with hopes of obtaining some public appointment through their interest; but his health had failed before the value of the promises made to him could be fairly tested. When restored strength might have rendered seclusion irksome, and employment acceptable, his pride rebelled against further solicitation, and fixed him in the solitude where his poverty and lack of energy alike escaped reproach. Charles Burney alone, from whom he had nothing to expect, and who had always looked up to him, was admitted where others were excluded.
The modern village of Chesington lies about two miles to the north-west of the railway-station at Ewell. Some patches of heathy common still remain. Though not so solitary a place as in the days of which we write, Chesington has still a lonely look.[9]
Crisp, in his sanctuary, and his occasional secret journeys to London, resumed his office of mentor to Burney, and became also the confidential adviser of Burney’s daughters. For such trust he was eminently qualified; since, to borrow the words of Macaulay, though he was a bad poet, he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent counsellor. He surpassed his younger friend, Charles, in general knowledge and force of mind, as much as he was surpassed by Charles in social tact and pliability of temper. And Burney was far from resenting or grudging the influence which Crisp acquired in his family; for Burney was a sweet-natured as well as a sensible man. No pitiful vanity or treacherous jealousy lay hid under his genial and gracious exterior. Conscious, apparently, that both from too great easiness of disposition, and from his manifold engagements, he was ill-fitted to discharge all the duties devolving on him as sole surviving parent, he cordially welcomed the assistance of his old and valued friend. Mrs. Thrale afterwards complained that Dr. Burney liked to keep his hold on his children; but the engrossing lady patroness seems to have meant only that he objected, as well he might, to have Fanny disposed of for months or years at a time without regard to his wishes or convenience. He was never disturbed by unworthy alarms lest some interloping well-wisher should steal away the hearts of his children from himself. He stooped to no paltry manœuvres to prevent them from becoming too much attached to this or that friend. He certainly did not interfere to check the warmth of his daughters’ regard for the rugged old cynic of Chesington, nor put any restraint on the correspondence which grew up between Fanny and her ‘dearest daddy.’ And he reaped the full reward of his unselfishness, or, we should rather say, of his straightforward good sense. No son or daughter was ever estranged from him by the feeling that his jealousy had robbed them of a useful connection or appreciative ally. Fanny’s fondness for her adopted father, as might have been expected, did not in the least diminish her love for her natural parent. ‘She had always a great affection for me,’ wrote Dr. Burney at the close of his life. The latter was, indeed, the standard by which she generally tried the claims of any other person to be considered admirable or charming. In her twenty-sixth year she expressed her enthusiasm for her newly-made friend, Mrs. Thrale, by saying: ‘I never before saw a person who so strongly resembles my dear father.’ At forty-one, she described her husband as being ‘so very like my beloved father in disposition, humour, and taste, that the day never passes in which I do not exclaim: “How you remind me of my father!” ’father!” ’
Crisp himself, at the time when Fanny made his acquaintance, had no pretension to gentle manners or a graceful address; but, like many other disappointed men who assume the character of misanthropes, he possessed at bottom a warm, and even tender, heart, and was particularly fond of young persons. In his intimate intercourse with the Burney family, all ceremony was discarded; towards the junior members he adopted a plain, rough style of speech, which, being unmistakably playful, left them always quite at home with him. Very soon the death of Crisp’s companion in retirement rendered the society of the Burneys more indispensable to the survivor, while it placed him in a better position for receiving these visits. The male line of the Hamiltons ended in Christopher, and his dilapidated estate descended to a maiden sister, Mrs. Sarah Hamilton. Rather than sell the property, this ancient lady, under Crisp’s advice, divided the capacious old Hall between herself and Farmer Woodhatch, who rented and cultivated what remained of the lands. To assist her in keeping up the residence she still retained, Mrs. Hamilton called in as ‘lady help’ a rustic niece, named Kitty Cooke, and Crisp became her lodger, securing to his own use ‘a favourite apartment, with a light and pleasant closet at the end of a long corridor.’ In this closet a great part of Burney’s ‘History of Music’ was written. There was a larger scheme, also, at this time, for turning the whole suite of rooms into a boarding establishment, but applicants for accommodation in so remote and obscure an abode were likely to be few in number. Mrs. Gast, however, came thither from time to time, and Frances Burney and her sisters were often there. We shall see, in due course, how the animated scenes of the famous novel, ‘Cecilia,’ or most of them, were elaborated within those mouldering walls. To the end of her life the author’s thoughts wandered back with delight to the quaint old place. Her memory let nothing slip: “not a nook or corner; nor a dark passage ‘leading to nothing’; nor a hanging tapestry of prim demoiselles and grim cavaliers; nor a tall canopied bed tied up to the ceiling; nor japan cabinets of two or three hundred drawers of different dimensions; nor an oaken corner-cupboard, carved with heads, thrown in every direction, save such as might let them fall