KEW IN FAVOUR 67 



Windsor life, with halts at Kew in the summer. 

 Hut henceforth Miss Burney's diary has little 

 to say about Kew ; and after another year we 

 lose that peep-hole into royal domesticity. The 

 life of a glorified waiting-maid began to tell upon 

 her health and spirits : " Lost to all private 

 comfort, dead to all domestic endearment, I was 

 worn with want of rest and fatigued with 

 laborious watchfulness and attendance." Her 

 chief comfort had been a sort of intermittent 

 philandering with the Queen's Vice- Chamberlain, 

 Colonel Digby the "Mr. Fairly " of her journals 

 a favourite with the King, too, to whom he 

 could "say anything in his genteel roundabout 

 way." This gentleman the lady clearly admired 

 none the less when he became a widower, though 

 to us she presents him rather too much in the 

 character of a priggish novel hero, full of edifying 

 reflections and opinions. But the sentimental 

 friend turned out not impeccable, for he married 

 Another, the "Miss Fuzilier," about whom his 

 fellow-servant had often rallied him ; and she 

 cannot conceal that this choice seemed un- 

 worthy of him. Her health was so evidently 

 breaking down that her literary friends cried 

 out on the sacrifice ; even the newspapers 



