Margaret Anne Doody wrote this about the character Briggs in her introduction to the 1988 Oxford edition of Burney’s second book, Cecilia, 1782: “It is one of the novel’s inventive triumphs that Briggs, far from being the stereotyped wretched miser, is one of the most vivacious characters. He lives in perpetual complete enjoyment of himself and what he is worth: he his self-love needs no supplement from the comforts or pleasures that lesser men enjoy.” See: Briggs: possessing every supplement naturally by making everything conform to his stratagem: to evaluate -- dressing himself for a masquerade ball in clothes that have been borrowed from a sweep and “pointing with a sneer” at the fake pearls on Sir Robert Floyer’s Turkish turban because they are not real, they are valueless, they are “nothing but French beads.” By the logic of the masquerade it doesn’t matter that the pearls are not real but Briggs’s understanding does not change when he leaves his house, it doesn't change according to anyone else’s wishes: it is never modified, it gets more violent, and his miserliness gives him an arsenal of rudeness, which he loves. His costume does not contribute to “the general air of gaiety diffused throughout the company,” it stinks (“an offensive smell of soot, making everybody look around the room”), it repels (“the company, with general disgust, retreated wherever he advanced“), but he is proud of it because it was cheap, and, in fact, he is glad – “All the better” -- when it is unique and annoying.
"How could this blackguard get in?" cried the Turk, "I believe he's a mere common chimneysweeper out of the streets, for he's all over dirt and filth. I never saw such a dress at a masquerade before in my life."
"All the better," returned the other; "would not change. What do think it cost?"
"Cost? Why, not a crown."
"A crown? ha! ha! -- a pot o' beer! Little Tom borrowed it; had it of our own sweep. Said 'twas for himself. I bid him a pint; rascal would not take less."
The sweep outfit is genuine, and it has a genuine effect, people run away from the smell of soot, while they do not react to Sir Robert’s costume as if the man inside is genuine Turk, nor do they treat a man in a black devil costume as if he is really an evil supernatural monster, and the book notices – Cecilia notices as well – that most people do not try to be genuine, it is not important to them; they do not try to stay in character at the ball. “[A] Minerva, not stately nor austere, not marching in warlike majesty, but gay and airy … ran up.”
"To own the truth," said Cecilia, "the almost universal neglect of the characters assumed by these masquers has been the chief source of my entertainment this evening: for at a place of this sort, the next best thing to a character well supported is a character ridiculously burlesqued."
The book calls a woman ignorant because she is dressed as a haymaker but doesn’t have any idea how haymakers live. “And pleased with her own readiness at repartee, without feeling the ignorance it betrayed, she tript lightly on.” Cecilia values genuineness, the book goes along with her tastes and supports them; Briggs loves genuineness though his is a different species of genuineness, but money-valuing makes him say things that have the same conclusion as her variety of genuineness – when he sums up Sir Robert’s outfit further: “never mind gold trappings; none of his own; all a take-in; hired for eighteenpence; not worth a groat." Robert Floyer’s self is not worth anything either; he looks good but he’s piggish. Cecilia knows it: she won’t marry him.
I think she deserves to feel the strange disgusted attraction towards Briggs that David Copperfield feels for Uriah Heep, but the book, as of page four hundred and eighteen, where I am, has made her react to his unpropriety with mannerly, clear distancing – and yet the example of his self-confidence standing in front of her fear deserves to be weirdly alluring (she is not as retreatful as Evelina, but still, she likes corners, she silences herself, ‘to avoid any hazard of altercation, she discreetly forbore making further complaints”) – she can’t get the black devil man away from her, she is at a loss, but Briggs, being a sweep, has a shovel, and he shovels him. “The fiend then began a yell so horrid, that it disturbed the whole company; but the chimney-sweeper, only saying, "Aye, aye, blacky, growl away, blacky, -- makes no odds," sturdily continued his work, and, as the fiend had no chance of resisting so coarse an antagonist without a serious struggle, he was presently compelled to change his ground.”
And then, patting her cheek with his dirty hand, and nodding at her with much kindness, "Pretty dove," he added, "be of good heart! shan't be meddled with; come to see after you.”
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peculiar how allure and ugliness can occur in the same package; human interactions remind me of geology. stratigraphy studies layers of earth and rock and how they blend into or overlay each other, and what kind of forces and/or events caused the observed configuration. not so easy, of course , analyzing the history of present human interactions, but perhaps more rewarding, socially speaking. narcissism is kind of like a basalt flow, sweeping in and covering up other, milder formations, sediments, and often hiding structural upheavals that might have indicated former violent occurrences which jumbled up the geologic record. interesting and confusing simultaneously...
ReplyDeleteBurney is good at narcissists. She has trouble letting herself enjoy them though, the way Dickens does.
DeleteBurney-blogging has been great. I hope the series goes on for a while.
ReplyDeleteI want to read all of her novels now. That should take a bit.
DeleteSo is Briggs the only rich man who actually works for his wealth, his sweep clothes actually more a revelation of truth than a costume? Another inverted form of honesty, or another level of honesty, maybe, in the masquerade theme?
ReplyDeleteThat's true, Briggs the stockbroker seems to be the only really rich worker in the book. There's also Mr Hobson, a London landlord, but he's well-off rather than rich. Mr Morrice the lawyer has an ambiguous amount of money and Burney only made him a lawyer so that she could have a social-climber character: he "owed his success neither to distinguished abilities, nor to skill-supplying industry, but to the art of uniting suppleness to others with confidence in himself." Most of the working people are poor.
DeleteBriggs, though, isn't revealing anything new when he dresses in dirt. He's dirty in his normal life as well because he never uses soap -- "never use soap; nothing but waste" -- other characters point out that his everyday clothes are tatty and old -- so the coal smell and the sweep rags are functioning as an exaggeration of the Briggs that people already see, more than as a revelation of anything he keeps hidden. You could call it honesty but maybe a perverted and hyperbolic honesty, not someone who keeps their dirt to themselves but something closer to a Star Wars fan who puts Millennium Falcon stickers all over their car and then goes to a Hallowe'en party as a Jedi.
There's another useful Doody moment when she says that Briggs' "own physical dirt is what has accrued to him, a painless increase from the world of nature," which recasts bars of soap, in the Briggs world, as thieves.
That's very good, soap as a thief, dirt as personal growth.
DeleteI am so used to irony as a personal writerly tool that I misread a lot of scenes I read, looking for the irony. Surface truths are sometimes hard for me to see.
Most of the other characters in that masquerade chapter do dress up in the way that you suggest, though. Just not Briggs. Cecilia's friend (who is secretly betraying her with bad advice) dresses up as the devil that he really is, and no one knows the joke except us. But the secrets that other people try to keep hidden or deny in themselves are the things that Briggs will tell you about himself immediately: you can't ironically shame a man by revealing that he's a stingy miser who lives in filth when it's his main topic of conversation already.
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