Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century

by George Paston

In spite of her egoism and her many absurdities, it seems clear from contemporary evidence that in London, where she usually appeared during the season, Lady Morgan had a following. The names of most of the literary celebrities of the day appear amid the disjointed jottings of her diary. We hear of 'that egregious coxcomb D'Israeli, outraging the privilege a young man has of being absurd'; and Sydney Smith 'so natural, so bon enfant, so little of a wit titré'; and Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, handsome, insolent, and unamiable; and Allan Cunningham, 'immense fun'; and Thomas Hood, 'a grave-looking personage, the picture of ill-health'; and her old critical enemy, Lord Jeffrey, with whom Lady Morgan started a violent flirtation. 'When he comes to Ireland,' she writes, 'we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together; in short, having cut me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say of my enemies before we meet, "Let me at them."'

The other literary women were naturally the chief object of interest to her. Lady Morgan seems to have been fairly free from professional jealousy, though she hated her countrywoman, Lady Blessington, with a deadly hatred. Mrs. Gore, then one of the most fashionable novelists, she finds 'a pleasant little rondelette of a woman, something of my own style. We talked and laughed together, as good-natured women do, and agreed upon many points.' The learned Mrs. Somerville is described as 'a simple, little, middle-aged woman. Had she not been presented to me by name and reputation, I should have said she was one of the respectable twaddling matrons one meets at every ball, dressed in a snug mulberry velvet gown, and a little cap with a red flower. I asked her how she could descend from the stars to mix among us. She said she was obliged to go out with a daughter. From the glimpse of her last night, I should say there was no imagination, no deep moral philosophy, though a great deal of scientific lore, and a great deal of bonhomie.' For 'poor dear Jane Porter,' the author of Scottish Chiefs, Lady Morgan felt the natural contempt of a 'showy woman' for one who looks like a 'shabby canoness.' 'Miss Porter,' she records, 'told me she was taken for me the other night, and talked to as such by a party of Americans. She is tall, lank, lean, and lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with a battered black gauze hat, and the air of a regular Melpomene. I am the reverse of all this, and sans vanité, the best-dressed woman wherever I go. Last night I wore a blue satin, trimmed fully with magnificent point-lace, and stomacher à la Sévigné, light blue velvet hat and feathers, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds.' As Lady Morgan at this time was nearer sixty than fifty, rouged liberally, and made all her own dresses, her appearance in the costume above described must at least have been remarkable.

Lady Morgan's last novel, a Belgian story called The Princess, or the Béguine, was published by Bentley in 1834, and for the first edition she received, £350, a sad falling-off from the prices received in former days. As her popularity waned, she grew discontented with life in Dublin, 'the wretched capital of wretched Ireland,' as she calls it, and in a moment of mental depression she entered the characteristic query,'Cui bono?' in her diary. To the same faithful volume she confided complaints even of her beloved Morgan, but the fact that she could find nothing worse to reproach him with than a disinclination for fresh air and exercise, speaks volumes for his marital virtue. A more serious trouble came from failing eyesight, which in 1837 threatened to develop into total blindness. It was in this year, when things seemed at their darkest, that a pension of £300 a year was conferred on her by Lord Melbourne, 'in recognition of her merits, literary and patriotic.' It was probably this unexpected accession of income that decided the Morgans to leave Dublin, and spend the remainder of their days in London. They found a pleasant little house in William Street, Knightsbridge, a new residential quarter which was just growing up under the fostering care of Mr. Cubitt. Lady Morgan went 'into raptures over the pretty new quarter,' and wrote some articles on Pimlico in the Athenæum. She also got up a successful agitation for an entrance into Hyde Park at what is now known as Albert Gate. For deserting Ireland, after receiving a pension for patriotism, and writing against the evils of Absenteeism, Lady Morgan was subjected to a good deal of sarcasm by her countrymen. But, as she pointed out, her property in Ireland was personal, not real, the tenant-farm of a drawing-room balcony, on which annual crops of mignonette were raised for home consumption, being the only territorial possession that she had ever enjoyed.

Lady Morgan's eyesight must have temporarily improved with her change of dwelling, for in 1839 the first part of her last work of any importance, Woman and her Master, was published by Colburn, to whom she had at last become reconciled. This book, which was never finished, was designed to prove, among other things, that in spite of the subordination in which women have been kept, and in spite of all the artificial difficulties that have been put in their way, not only have they never been conquered in spirit, but that they have always been the depositaries of the vital and leading ideas of the time. The book is more soberly written than most of Lady Morgan's works, but it would probably be regarded by the modern reader as dull and superficial. It was generally believed that Sir Charles had assisted in its composition, and few men have ever wielded a heavier pen. The pair only issued one more joint work, The Book Without a Name, which appeared in 1842, and consisted chiefly of articles and sketches that had already been published in the magazines.

The Morgans now found their chief occupation and amusement in the society which they attracted to their cheerful little house. One or two sketches of the pair, as they appeared in their later days, have been left by contemporaries. Chorley, an intimate friend, observes that, like all the sceptics he ever approached, they were absurdly prejudiced, and proof against all new impressions. 'Neither of them, though both were literary and musical, could endure German literature and music, had got beyond the stale sarcasms of the Anti-Jacobin, or could admit that there is glory for such men as Weber, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, as well as for Cimarosa and Paisiello.... Her familiar conversation was a series of brilliant, egotistic, shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel, though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman.' Her blunders were proverbial, as when she asked in all simplicity, 'Who was Jeremy Taylor?' and on being presented to Mrs. Sarah Austin, complimented her on having written Pride and Prejudice.

Another friend, Abraham Hayward, used to say that Lady Morgan had been transplanted to London too late, and that she was never free of the corporation of fine ladies, though she saw a good deal of them. 'She erroneously fancied that she was expected to entertain the company, be it what it might, and she was fond of telling stories in which she figured as the companion of the great, instead of confining herself to scenes of low Irish life, which she described inimitably. Lady Cork was accustomed to say, "I like Lady Morgan very much as an Irish blackguard, but I can't endure her as an English fine lady."'

In 1843 Sir Charles died rather suddenly from heart disease. His wife mourned him sincerely, but not for long in solitude. She found the anaesthetic for her grief in society, and after a few months of widowhood writes: 'Everybody makes a point of having me out, and I am beginning to be familiarised with my great loss. London is the best place in the world for the happy and the unhappy; there is a floating capital of sympathy for every human good or evil. I am a nobody, and yet what kindness I am daily receiving.' Again, in 1845, after her sister's death, she notes in her diary: 'The world is my gin or opium; I take it for a few hours per diem--excitement, intoxication, absence. I return to my desolate home, and wake to all the horrors of sobriety.... Yet I am accounted the agreeable rattle of the great ladies' coterie, and I talk pas mal to many clever men all day.... That Park near me, of which my beloved Morgan used to say, "It is ours more than the Queen's, we use it daily and enjoy it nightly"--that Park that I worked so hard to get an entrance into, I never walk in it; it seems to me covered with crape.'

Among the friends of Lady Morgan's old age were the Carter Halls, Hepworth Dixon, Miss Jewsbury, Hayward, and Douglas Jerrold. Lord Campbell, old Rogers, and Cardinal Wiseman frequented her soirées, though with the last-named she had waged a pamphlet war over the authenticity of St. Peter's chair at Rome. Rogers was reported to be engaged to one of Lady Morgan's attractive nieces, the Miss Clarkes, who often stayed with her. It was in allusion to this rumour that he said, 'Whenever my name is coupled with that of a young lady in this manner, I make it a point of honour to say I have been refused.' To the last, we are told, Lady Morgan preserved the natural vivacity and aptness of repartee that had made her the delight of Dublin society half a century before. 'I know I am vain,' she said once to Mrs. Hall, 'but I have a right to be. It is not put on and off like my rouge; it is always with me.... I wrote books when your mothers worked samplers, and demanded freedom for Ireland when Dan O'Connell scrambled for gulls' eggs in the crags of Derrynane.... Look at the number of books I have written. Did ever woman move in a brighter sphere than I do? I have three invitations to dinner to-day, one from a duchess, one from a countess, and the third from a diplomatist, a very witty man, who keeps the best society in London.'

Lady Morgan was fond of boasting that she had supported herself since she was fourteen (for which read seventeen or eighteen), and insisted on the advantage of giving every girl a profession by which she could earn her living, if the need arose. Speaking to Mrs. Hall on the subject of some girls who had been suddenly bereft of fortune, she exclaimed: 'They do everything that is fashionable imperfectly; their drawing, singing, dancing, and languages amount to nothing. They were educated to marry, and had they had time, they might have gone off with, and hereafter from, husbands. I desire to give every girl, no matter her rank, a trade or profession. Cultivate what is necessary to the position she is born to; cultivate all things in moderation, but one thing to perfection, no matter what it is, for which she has a talent: give her a staff to lay hold of; let her feel, "This will carry me through life without dependence."'

With the assistance of Miss Jewsbury Lady Morgan, in the last years of her life, prepared a volume of reminiscences, which she called The Odd Volume. This, which was published in 1859, only deals with a short period of her career, and is of little literary interest. The Athenæum, in the course of a laudatory review, observed that 'Lady Morgan had lived through the love, admiration, and malignity of three generations of men, and was, in short, a literary Ninon, who seemed as brisk and captivating in the year 1859 as when George was Prince, and the author of "Kate Kearney" divided the laureateship of society and song with Tom Moore.'