Note 106 — Chapter X

Macaulay asserts that, shortly after her release, Miss Burney “visited her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle, and a nervous fever.” This is a strange misstatement. Mademoiselle Jacobi had leave of absence to nurse her sprain: it was not “in the old dungeon” that Miss Burney saw her on the occasion referred to, but in a small room at Brompton, where she was sitting with her leg on bolsters, and unable to put her foot to the ground. Fanny, in January, 1792, took a turn of duty at St. James’s, by the Queen’s request, because “Mademoiselle Jacobi was still lame.” Diary, vol. iii., pp. 385-87. However, we read afterwards that, towards the end of 1797, Mademoiselle Jacobi “retired to Germany, ill and dissatisfied with everything in England.” She, as well as Miss Burney, received a pension.