Seeing that it was good!—And gave thee charge
Thenceforth for evermore with constant eye
To watch the times and seasons, and preserve
The circling maze, exact.
These lines are, as a matter of fact, neither better nor worse than any others of the two thousand of which this sorry production consists. There are no traces of the rugged beauty of Bertram and Fredolfo, and it is really difficult to imagine that Maturin had any part in the work. On the other hand it must be admitted that it is equally inferior to the poetry later produced by Wills.[159] The matter ought to have been taken very quietly by those whom it concerned, nor did it, to judge from the record of Wills, stop their friendly intercourse. It may lastly be mentioned that Maturin dedicated The Universe to his old antagonist Samuel Taylor Coleridge; which must have happened either in a fit of Christian forgiveness or of deliberate irony.
The picture which Wills draws of Maturin is, it will be observed, totally different from the description quoted in connection with his mode of composing Melmoth. It also differs from what other scanty records there are preserved of Maturin, which all agree that he was, at that time, beginning to lead a retired life and appear but little in society. His pecuniary embarrassments were extremely distressing; the profits he had reaped by Melmoth and The Universe had probably been swallowed up by the old debt he had contracted some time about 1815, besides which he undoubtedly was something of a spendthrift and unpractical in business-transactions. His home had undergone a melancholy change since the success of Bertram, as depicted by the writer in Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine 1846:
The inside of the house was gloomy and melancholy in the extreme: just the house for the romancist who penned “Melmoth.” The dull kitchen candle of the servant threw but a faint light; and my feet struck with a lonely sound on the naked flags of the hall, which was barely furnished with two chairs surmounted by his crest, a galloping horse; the stairs were without carpets. On entering the drawing-room, it almost appeared to be unfurnished. A single drugget partly covered the floor, and a small table stood in the centre: but the entire end nearest the door was occupied by a divan covered with scarlet, which appeared strangely out of character with the general meagreness of the apartment; beside the folding-doors was a square piano; at the fire was placed an old armchair, in which I afterwards saw him sit for many a weary hour, till three or four o’clock in the morning, while writing the “Albigenses;” and on a small work-table between the windows lay a very ancient writing-desk. Such was my first glimpse of the author’s domicile, which had once been a witness of very different scenes.
The gloominess of Maturin’s existence was brightened by the return of Lady Morgan to her native country in 1821, after an absence of several years abroad. The little governess who had earned her first laurels with The Wild Irish Girl was now transformed into one of the foremost literary celebrities of the day. In 1812 Miss Owenson had become the wife of Dr. Thomas Charles Morgan, physician to the Marquis of Abercorn, who had shortly before been ‘knighted by the viceroy—at a hint, it is said, from the doctor’s enterprising fiancée. She had, since then, published numerous novels, amongst others the Irish story O’Donnel (1814). Her greatest fame, however, was due to the extensive work on France (1817), the strongly liberal views of which had roused the fury of the Quarterly Review and caused the fierce contest of which Maturin also had borne his share of the brunt in the vehement attacks upon his best romances. From the rare and brief political utterances in Maturin’s works, sermons, and letters, it may be gathered that he rather inclined to toryism; but uninterested as he was in politics, his opinions did not in any way bias his regard for Lady Morgan, of whom he used to speak ‘in terms of the most extravagant admiration.’[160] Though the two were the only authors of repute residing in Dublin, there was no kind of jealousy between them. The character of Lady Morgan was broad-minded and generous, and her desire to help Maturin was sincere beyond any doubt. Her weekly réunions in Kildare Street, pleasantly described by her biographer,[161] were among the few relaxations Maturin allowed himself in his later years:
In this agreeably situated mansion there was regularly held for a long series of years, a still more voluminous series of most delightful and select literary réunions, which are remembered by the surviving few who had the privilege of access, with enthusiastic feelings of pride and pleasure. A constant guest was the brilliant, eccentric, and almost forgotten Charles Robert Maturin. Domestic sorrows and pecuniary reverses threw a gloom over the later years of his existence; and, as a contemporary record informs us, every inducement failed to make him desert his melancholy hearth save the intellectual circle which Lady Morgan illuminated by her sparkling wit, or the romantic solitudes of Wicklow wherein some of his richest veins of inspiration had been caught in happier bygone days.