"
[Footnote 1: This may mean when the arrangements were made for the
publication, or when the book was published. It was published about
the beginning of June, 1782.]
"The mystery, however, soon ceased; the solicitations of the most
affectionate sympathy could not long be urged in vain;--the mystery
passed away--not so the misery! That, when revealed, was but to both
parties doubled, from the different feelings set in movement by its
disclosure.
"The astonishing history of the enigmatical attachment which impelled
Mrs. Thrale to her second marriage, is now as well known as her name:
but its details belong not to the history of Dr. Burney; though the
fact too deeply interested him, and was too intimately felt in his
social habits, to be passed over in silence in any memoirs of his
life.
"But while ignorant yet of its cause, more and more struck he became
at every meeting, by a species of general alienation which pervaded
all around at Streatham. His visits, which, heretofore, had seemed
galas to Mrs. Thrale, were now begun and ended almost without notice:
and all others,--Dr. Johnson not excepted,--were cast into the same
gulph of general neglect, or forgetfulness;--all,--save singly this
Memorialist!--to whom, the fatal secret once acknowledged, Mrs.
Thrale clung for comfort; though she saw, and generously pardoned,
how wide she was from meeting approbation.
"In this retired, though far from tranquil manner, _passed many
months; during which_, with the acquiescent consent of the Doctor,
his daughter, wholly devoted to her unhappy friend, _remained
uninterruptedly at sad and altered Streatham;_ sedulously avoiding,
what at other times she most wished, a _tete-a-tete_ with her father.
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