DARBHANGA, a town and district of British India, in the Tirhut division of Behar and Orissa. The town is on the left bank of the Little Baghmati river, and has a railway station. Pop. (1931) 60,676. The town is really a collection of villages round the residence of the Maharaja, a large modern building in exten sive grounds. There are a hospital, with a medical college and a Lady Dufferin hospital attached, and a town hall and large tanks extending for over a mile. The district of Darbhanga ex tends from the Nepal frontier to the Ganges. Area 3,348 sq.m. Pop. (1931) 3,166,094. The district consists entirely of an allu vial plain, in which the principal rivers are the Ganges, Burh Gandak, Baghmati and Little Baghmati, Balan and Little Balan, and Tiljuga. Rice is the staple crop, and the cultivator is espe cially dependent on the winter harvest. In 1897 a famine affected the whole district except the Samastipur subdivision, and an other affected half the district in 1906-07. Indigo manufacture was formerly an important industry but has declined. Sugar cultiva tion and manufacture have to some extent taken its place. bacco is also a valuable crop. The district is traversed by the main line of the Bengal and North-Western railway. Pusa (q.v.) in the west of the district is the headquarters of the Imperial Agri cultural Department.
The Darbhanga raj, which was founded in the 16th century, is a name applied to a large estate which includes parts of the dis tricts of Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Monghyr, Purnea and Bhagal pur. It is held by one of the chief noblemen of the province, Sir Rameshwar Singh Bahadur, Maharajadhiraj of Darbhanga, G.C.I.E., K.C.I.E., K.B.E., who was born in 186o, and on attain ing his majority in 1878 was appointed to the Indian Statutory Civil Service, which he resigned in 1885 in order to manage his estates. He was created raja bahadur in 1886, maharaja bahadur on his succession to the raj in 1898, and hereditary Maharaja dhiraj in 192o : he was a member of the Executive Council of Behar and Orissa from 1912 to 1917. He is the head of the Maithil Brahmans.
From her 5th year Fanny lived in the midst of a brilliant social circle, gathered round her father in Poland street, and later in his new home in St. Martin's street, Leicester Fields, London. Garrick was a frequent visitor, and would arrive before eight o'clock in the morning. Of the various "lyons" they entertained she leaves a graphic account, notably of Omai, the Otaheitan native, and of Alexis Orlov, the favourite of Catherine II. of Russia. Dr. Johnson she first met at her father's home in March 1777. Her father's drawing-room, where she met many of the chief musicians, actors and authors of the day, was in fact Fanny's only school. Her reading, however, was by no means limited. Macaulay stated that in the whole of Dr. Burney's library there was but one novel, Fielding's Amelia; but Austin Dobson points out that she was acquainted with the abbe Prevost's Doyen de Killerine, and with Marivaux's Vie de Marianne, besides Clarissa Harlowe and the books of Mrs. Elizabeth Griffith and Mrs. Frances Brooke. Her diary also contains the record of much more strenuous reading. Her stepmother, a woman of some cultivation, did not encourage habits of scribbling. Fanny, therefore, made a bonfire of her mss., among them a History of Caroline Evelyn, a story containing an account of Evelina's mother. Luckily her journal did not meet with the same fate. The first entry in it was made on May 3o, 1768, and it extended over 72 years. The earlier portions of it underwent wholesale editing in later days, and much of it was entirely obliterated. She planned out Evelina, or A Young Lady's Entrance into the World, long before it was written down. Evelina was published by Thomas Lowndes in the end of Jan. '778, but it was not until June that Dr. Burney learned its authorship, when the book had been reviewed and praised everywhere. Fanny proudly told Mrs. Thrale the secret. Mrs.
'His letters to Mrs. Gast and another sister, Anne, were edited with the title of Burford Papers (1906), by W. H. Hutton.
Thrale wrote to Dr. Burney on July 22: "Mr. Johnson returned home full of the Prayes of the Book I had lent him, and pro testing that there were passages in it which might do honour to Richardson: we talk of it for ever, and he feels ardent after the denouement; he could not get rid of the Rogue, he said." Miss Burney soon visited the Thrales at Streatham, "the most con sequential day I have spent since my birth" she calls the occasion. It was the prelude to much longer visits there. Dr. Johnson's best compliments were made for her benefit, and eagerly tran scribed in her diary. His affectionate friendship for "little Burney" only ceased with his death.
Evelina was a continued success. Sir Joshua Reynolds sat up all night to read it, as did Edmund Burke, who came next to Johnson in Miss Burney's esteem. She was introduced to Elizabeth Montagu and the other bluestocking ladies, to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and to the gay Mrs. Mary Cholmondeley, the sister of Peg Woffington, whose manners, as described in the diary, explain much of Evelina. At the suggestion of Mrs. Thrale, and with offers of help from Arthur Murphy, and encouragement from Sheridan, Fanny began to write a comedy. Crisp, realizing the limitations of her powers, tried to dissuade her, and the piece, The Witlings, was suppressed in deference to what she called a "hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle" from her two "daddies." Meanwhile her intercourse with Mrs. Thrale proved very exact ing, and left her little time for writing. She went with her to Bath in 178o, and was at Streatham again in 1781. Her next book was written partly at Chessington and after much discussion with Mr. Crisp. Cecilia; or Memoirs of an Heiress, by the author of Evelina, was published in 5 vols. in 1782 by Messrs. Payne and Cadell (who paid the author L250—not L2,000 as stated by Macaulay).
On April 24, 1783, Fanny Burney's "most judicious adviser and stimulating critic," "daddy" Crisp, died. He was her devoted friend, as she was to him, "the dearest thing on earth." The next year she was to lose two more friends. Mrs. Thrale married Piozzi, and Johnson died. Fanny had met the celebrated Mrs. Delany in '783, and she now attached herself to her. Mrs. Delany, who was living (1785) in a house near Windsor castle, presented to her by George III., was on the friendliest terms with both the king and queen, and Queen Charlotte soon after offered Miss Burney the post of second keeper of the robes, with a salary of L200 a year, which after some hesitation was accepted. Fanny's own misgivings as to her unfitness for court life were quite justi fied. From Queen Charlotte she received unvarying kindness, though she was not very clever with her waiting-maid's duties. She had to attend the queen's toilet, to take care of her lap-dog and her snuff-box, and to help her senior, Mrs. Schwellenberg, in enter taining the king's equerries and visitors at tea. The constant association with Mrs. Schwellenberg, who has been described as "a peevish old person of uncertain temper and impaired health, swaddled in the buckram of backstairs etiquette," proved to be the worst part of Fanny's duties. The strain told on her health, and after pressure both from Fanny and her numerous friends, Dr. Burney prepared with her a joint memorial asking the queen's leave to resign. She left the royal service in July 1791 with a retiring pension of L oo a year, granted from the queen's private purse, and returned to her father's house at Chelsea.
In 1792 she became acquainted with a group of French exiles, who had taken a house, Juniper Hall, near Mickleham, where Fanny's sister, Mrs. Phillips, lived. On July 31, 1793, she married one of the exiles, Alexandre D'Arblay, an artillery officer, who had been adjutant-general to La Fayette. They took a cot tage at Bookham on the strength, it appears, of Miss Burney's pension. In 1793 she produced her Brie/ Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy. Her son Alexandre was born on Dec. 18, 1794. In the following spring Sheridan produced at Drury Lane her Edwy and Elgiva, a tragedy which was not saved even by the acting of the Kembles and Mrs. Siddons. The play was never printed. Madame D'Arblay issued her next novel, Camilla: or A Picture of Youth (5 vols., 1796), by subscription, by which she made over L2,000; Jane Austen was among the sub scribers. Unfortunately its literary success was not great. A second play, Love and Fashion, was actually put in rehearsal in 1799, but was withdrawn in the next year. In 18o1 Madame D'Arblay accompanied her husband to Paris, where he eventually obtained a place in the civil service. In 1812 she returned to England, bringing with her her son Alexandre to escape the con scription. In 1814 she published The Wanderer; or Female Diffi culties. Possibly because readers expected to find a description of her impressions of revolutionary France, it had a large sale, from which the author realized £7,000. Nobody, it has been said, ever read The Wanderer. At the end of that year she returned to France. During the Hundred Days of 1815 she was in Belgium, and the vivid account in her Diary of Brussels during Waterloo may have been used by Thackeray in Vanity Fair. General D'Arblay now received permission to settle in England. After his death at Bath on May 3, 1818, his wife lived in Bolton street, Piccadilly. There she was visited in 1826 by Sir Walter Scott, who describes her (Journal, Nov. 18, 1826) as an elderly lady with no remains of personal beauty, but with a gentle manner and a pleasing countenance. The later years of her life were occu pied with the editing of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, arranged from his own Manuscripts, from family papers and from personal rec ollections (3 vols., 1832). Her style had, as time went on, altered for the worse, and this book is full of extraordinary affectations. Madame D'Arblay died in London on Jan. 6, 184o and was buried at Walcot, Bath, near her son and husband.
Madame D'Arblay's best title to the affections of modern readers is the Diary and Letters. Dr. Johnson lives in its pages almost as vividly as in those of Boswell, and King George and his wife in a friendlier light than in most of their contemporary portraits. Croker, in The Quarterly Review, April 1833 and June 1842, made two attacks on Madame D'Arblay. The first is an un friendly but largely justifiable criticism on the Memoirs of Dr. Burney. In the second, a review of the first three volumes of the Diary and Letters, Croker abused the writer's innocent vanity, and declared that, considering their bulk and pretensions, the Diary and Letters were "nearly the most worthless we have ever waded through." These pronouncements drew forth the eloquent defence by Lord Macaulay, first printed in The Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1843, which perhaps did more than anything else to maintain Madame D'Arblay's constant popularity.