48 KEW GARDENS 



sticking pins ; that she should be summoned by 

 a waiting -woman's bell to a waiting -woman's 

 duties ; that she should pass her whole life under 

 the restraints of a paltry etiquette, should some- 

 times fast till she was ready to swoon for hunger, 

 should sometimes stand till her knees gave way 

 with fatigue, that she should not dare to speak or 

 move without considering how her mistress might 

 like her words and gestures." 



This engagement was certainly a mistake on 

 both sides : Miss Burney might have found more 

 congenial employment ; and the Queen could 

 have had a better dresser. But Macaulay, after 

 his manner, has rather over-emphasised the evils 

 of her lot in the royal service. She certainly 

 took it as a rise in the world, and to her father it 

 seemed dazzling good fortune. The remunera- 

 tion offered her, with the chance of further 

 favour, might well have satisfied even successful 

 novelists of that day, few among whom would not 

 have jumped at such admission to the skirts of 

 Court life. Her year's salary, 200, was almost 

 as much as she got from her second novel, and 

 far more than the proceeds of her first one ; then 

 Macaulay slurs over the Queen's generosity in 

 presents. To look at the matter in no mere terms 



