not consider Fanny quite such a dunce as the rest of the family did. Much more than Dr. Burney the mother had an opportunity of watching Fanny while she was playing and noticing that she possessed a great deal of invention and humour. Dr. Burney has given an interesting deacription of the young Fanny in a memorandum-book, written in 1808.
"She was wholly unnoticed in the nursery for any talents, or quickness of study: indeed, at eight years old she did not know her letters; and her brother, the tar, who in his boyhood had a natural genius for hoaxing, used to pretend to teach her to read; and gave her a book topsy-turvy, which he said she never found out! She had, however, a great deal of invention and humour in her childish sports; and used, after having seen a play in Mrs. Garrick's box, to take the actors off, and compose speeches for their characters; for she could not read them. But in company, or before strangers, she was silent, backward, and timid, even to sheepishness: and, from her shyness, had such profound gravity and composure of features, that those of my friends who came often to my house, and entered into the different humours of the children, never called Fanny by any other name, from the time she had reached her eleventh year than the Old Lady...
"She had always had a great affection for me; had an excellent heart, and a natural simplicity and probity about her that wanted no teaching. In her plays with her sisters, and some neighbour's children, this straightforward morality operated to an uncommon degree in one so young. There lived next door to me, at that time, in Poland Street, and in a private house, a capital hair merchant, who furnished peruques to the judges, and gentlemen of the law. The merchant's female children and mine, used to play together in the little garden behind the house; and unfortunately, one day, the door of the wig magazine being left open, they each of them put on one of those dignified ornaments of
Overman, Antoinette Arnolda, "An investigation into the character of Fanny Burney : -". Paris, 1933. Geraadpleegd op Delpher op 13-04-2021, http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=MMKB05:000037557:00009