Time, however, overtook her, as he overtakes other people, and beat her in the race. Latterly she went out little in search of society, either because invitations came sparsely in, or that the fatigue was too great for her, or that she grudged the fly-hire. But she had weekly receptions in her own little drawing-room, and moved heaven and earth, and a variety of penny-post men, to get them attended. A few old Whigs, including the Marquess of Lansdowne and good-natured Lord Carlisle, when he happened to be in town, looked in occasionally at her soirées. Now and then a Tory man of genius—Sir E. B. Lytton, for example—would make his appearance; and it has even been whispered, though we doubt the truth of the story, that a learned divine, sometimes two, might occasionally be seen in the throng. But the bulk of her guests consisted of fashionables of a second or third order, with a few small celebrities, literary, musical, and artistic. The little woman was very great on these occasions. She dispensed her weak tea and weaker conversation with equal fluency; she flattered and received flattery to any conceivable amount. Every man his own trumpeter, and every woman too, was with her an article of religious belief; and she did what religious professors are suspected of not always doing—she carried her faith into practice. A judicious application of rouge to the cheeks, the frocks and furbelows of a girl, a mincing gait, and a perpetual smile, set her forth to the best advantage. At eighty-three years of age she was still a butterfly; and if she could not flit, she floundered from flower to flower.
One day it became known, through a paragraph in the ‘Morning Post,’ that Lady Morgan was dead. London was not thrown into a state of consternation by the announcement, neither did any of its leading habitués array themselves in mourning: on the contrary, we are afraid that, having read the brief sketch which accompanied the notification, and commented upon it, most people forgot within five minutes or less that such a person as Lady Morgan had ever existed. But this was a consummation which, though common enough where others were concerned, her ladyship had made up her mind should not occur in her case. Having engrossed, as she believed, a large share of public attention while living, she determined that she should not cease to be talked about when dead. Accordingly, she conceived the brilliant idea of immortalising herself in a posthumous work, and occupied herself, early and late, in preparing the materials. She availed herself of the assistance of kindhearted Miss Jewsbury in this work, and appointed by will that Mr Hepworth Dixon should be the guardian of her literary reputation. We never heard whether in her lifetime she made Mr Dixon aware of the honour which was intended for him: we think it probable that she did not; because Mr Dixon is reputed to be a man of sense; and it strikes us that, knowing his woman, he would have got out of the scrape had the chance of doing so been afforded him. But it is one thing to object to a proposed arrangement before it is completed, and quite another to refuse carrying into effect the last wish of a relative or dear friend. The struggle was doubtless severe; but sentiment prevailed with Mr Dixon over the remonstrances of good taste and good feeling. He took home the box which contained the precious documents; and now, at an interval of three years from the old lady’s death, the results are before us.
But Mr Dixon, though a pious executor, is not the less a wise man. He seems to have read her ladyship’s papers through, and arrived at a just appreciation of their merits. They would not bear handling in any shape; they must come before the public exactly as they came before him, or he at least could have nothing to say to them. Here is his preface:—
“Lady Morgan bequeathed her papers and journals to me, with a view to their publication. The collection was large, as she had preserved nearly every line written to her from the letters of princes and statesmen, the compliments of poets, of exiles, and heroes, down to the petitions of weavers, chimney-sweeps, and servant-girls—even the invitations sent her to dinner, and the address cards left at her door. Many of these trifles of the day have no value now; a hundred years hence, if kept together, they may serve to illustrate with singular brightness and detail the domestic life of a woman of society in the reign of Victoria. My duty in the matter of their publication was clear enough. Lady Morgan had not only proposed to write her own memoirs, but had made a considerable progress in her task. A good part of a volume had been prepared under her own eyes for the press. Much of the correspondence to be used had been marked, and the copious diaries, in which she had noted the events of her life and the course of her thoughts, supplied nearly all the additions which could be desired. Under these circumstances, it appeared to me that Lady Morgan could be judiciously left to tell her own story in her own way.”
If Mr Dixon had followed any other course, he would have done great injustice both to himself and to Lady Morgan. Her ladyship’s story, as told by herself, is indeed a literary curiosity: had it been told by him, or by anybody else, we doubt whether it would have found a dozen readers. It is probable, for example, that Mr Dixon would have endeavoured to settle the dates of events as they occurred. Possibly, too, he might have narrated these events exactly as they befell: we are pretty sure that he would have done his best to draw a faithful portraiture of his heroine—coloured, perhaps, with the tints which biographers are apt to shed over the objects of their laudation, but not absolutely blazing. Lady Morgan knew a great deal better than this. She starts with the frank avowal, “that she never means to be trammelled by attending to dates.... What has a woman to do with dates?—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates! New style, old style, procession of the equinox; ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their stations, yet never come.” Don’t let the reader suppose that this is a mere empty flourish of trumpets. Lady Morgan was never more earnest in her life than when she wrote these sentences. It formed part of her plan to be considered as enjoying a perpetual youth, and she took the readiest, and, as she believed, the surest means of effecting that purpose. In like manner, Lady Morgan had resolved that from beginning to end, her career, as the world was to follow it, should be a romance. She throws an air of mystery, therefore, not only over the date of her birth, but over all the incidents of place and condition into which she fell; till circumstances, as wonderful as they are fortunate, combined to plant her in the foremost ranks of literature and fashion. This gives her an immense advantage over autobiographers in general. She is free to say what she pleases, and to say it as she pleases; and if the public be perverse enough to discredit her statements wholly or in part, what is that to her? The public will read her book and talk about it, and the subject of it; and her manes, if she have any manes, will for a while be gladdened.
There are two ways of telling the story of Lady Morgan’s infancy and girlhood. The first, or poetical, which is her own, describes her as descended from an old Irish family—as the daughter of a man of brilliant genius and the highest sense of honour—as coming into the world at a moment when this great and good man’s affairs happened, unfortunately, to be in confusion; and as thus forced, without any fault of his or her own, to make a too early acquaintance with poverty and its attendant evils. The other, or prosaic, which has no foundation to rest upon except vulgar fact, says that Sydney Owenson was the daughter of a strolling player, who could never clearly distinguish between meum and tuum—who was always rollicking, light-hearted, and merry—who spent every farthing which he earned faster than it came in, was often in prison, and perpetually in debt. The poetic, or Lady Morgan’s reading, further shows that the Owensons or M‘Owens came from one of the great houses of Connaught, which at some remote period, date unknown, had lost or forfeited their enormous estates; that her grandfather, a handsome young yeoman, ran away with her grandmother, and that, though very poor, they lived, upon the whole, comfortably and respectably together. The other, or prosaic version, seems to say that it was Miss Owenson’s grandmother who ran away with her grandfather; that she fell in love with his illigant Hibernian proportions on the occasion of a great curling-match, and never let him alone till he had made her his wife. It is not, however, so easy, as we advance in this interesting history, to follow the line which separates the ideal from the real; but this much at least is certain, that before the end of a year the ci-devant Miss Crofton became the mother of Robert M‘Owen, and that Robert M‘Owen became in due course of time the father of Sydney Lady Morgan.
There is nothing to show very clearly under what circumstances the patronymic M‘Owen made way for the more euphonious Owenson. We are inclined to believe that the change must have occurred at the time when young M‘Owen became a dependant upon the Blakes, and hereby hangs a tale. Mrs M‘Owen, it appears, was a sweet singer, and played skilfully on the Irish harp. She possessed likewise a large share of that inventive faculty which descended to her granddaughter, for she managed to get up such a story, and to tell it so effectively, as to induce a rich neighbour to become the patron of her son. A Mr Blake, a man of enormous wealth, had purchased the property on which M‘Owen’s cabin stood. He called one day on the inmates, and was struck, of course, with the ladylike manners of one of them, who soon made him aware of the gentility of her own descent, and got up a pedigree still more startling for her husband and son. Mr Blake was assured, with great solemnity and perfect effect, that at some period indefinitely remote a Blake had diddled a M‘Owen out of his estate. The millionaire’s sympathies were awakened, either by the tale, or by the manner of telling it; and as he had previously been struck by the boy’s exquisite voice (for young M‘Owen sang like a thrush, and formed one of the choir in the morning at the chapel, and in the afternoon at the church), Mr Blake forthwith proposed to take him into his family and do for him. It was too good an offer to be refused. Young M‘Owen, henceforth to be spoken of as Owenson, left the cabin for the hall, and received just such an education as a horribly selfish bachelor with some fine tastes considered would suffice to render the boy useful to himself, and amusing to other people.
We hear nothing after this of Grandfather M‘Owen, and not much of Grandmother. They probably continued to live, the rest of their days, the cat-and-dog life which usually falls to the lot of persons circumstanced as they were; but the son goes with his patron to Dublin, where for the first time he is present at a play. By-and-by, after exchanging his frieze for broadcloth, he removes to London. There wits and beauties flock about him. He is very clever—he sings divinely. Oliver Goldsmith is his first cousin, five times removed, and Madame Weichsel takes a fancy to him. This is too much, and the lad’s head gets turned. Mr Blake has occasion to visit Ireland, or says that he has, and goes away, after charging young Owenson to keep at home and look after his property. In particular, he charges the lad not to go to the theatre in his absence, or to any other place of public amusement; but no sooner is the patron’s back turned, than the protégé hurries off to Vauxhall, and is easily persuaded to take part in the duet of ‘Fair Aurora’ with his friend Madame Weichsel, who has an engagement there. He little knows what eyes are upon him all the while. Mr Blake has not gone to Ireland; he has come to Vauxhall to be amused, and after listening to the duet, and probably applauding it, he goes straight back to his house in Russell Street. We are not prepared to say what might have happened had young Owenson returned home to sleep. But he did nothing of the sort; he was out on a spree for three days and three nights, and found, when the fun was over, that his trunk stood ready roped in the hall, and that a letter from Mr Blake, containing a bank post-bill for £300, requested him to go about his business.
On the whole, we are inclined to believe that this is a not incorrect statement of the case. Some allowances must of course be made for over-colouring. Probably Owenson was not quite the accomplished gentleman whom his daughter represents him to have been, nor Mr Blake the sybarite and the brute she describes. At all events, we think he did perfectly right in getting rid of a scapegrace whom he could not trust out of his own sight. Such, however, were not young Owenson’s views of the matter. He indignantly re-enclosed the bank-note to Mr Blake (we have some doubts about that fact), and marched off, proud and penniless, to Oliver Goldsmith. The upshot was that he took to the stage, and sang and acted with moderate success. He accepted an engagement in Shrewsbury, and there persuaded the mayor’s daughter to marry him privately. It was a decided mésalliance on both sides, for the good blood of old Ireland got contaminated by intermixture with that of a provincial magnate; while the magnate took so little to the honour conferred upon him, that he refused to make any settlement on the young couple, or even to see them.
Miss Hill, now Mrs Owenson, was a follower of Lady Huntingdon, and hated the stage. She prevailed upon her husband, great as he was in such characters as Sir Lucius O’Trigger and Major O’Flaherty, to abandon it, and he confined himself to singing at oratorios. This continued for a while, very much to the singer’s discontent; but by-and-by Richard Daley, Esq. of Castle Daley (let us not withhold the title), persuaded the facile Owenson to violate his pledge, and to connect himself with the Theatre-Royal, Crow Street, Dublin, of which he of Castle Daley was the patentee. There followed upon this a removal to Drumcondra, where the deputy-manager—for such was Mr Owenson’s rank—took a “pretty villa,” and Mrs Owenson bore as she best might her banishment to the land of Papists and potatoes. And here, in passing, we would venture to point out, that when Lady Morgan speaks of “pretty villas,” “elegant cottages,” “lovely villages,” and suchlike, she does not always intend that we should believe her au pied de la lettre. The “pretty villa” in the “lovely village” was, we suspect, in the present instance, a tumbledown, half-ruinous house on the outskirts of a dirty lane, much frequented by long-legged swine and half-naked children. And we arrive at this conclusion from recollecting a little incident in her ladyship’s after-history, which may be worth recording. She went out of town, on one occasion, to write, as she said, “in quiet,” a book on which she was engaged. Her correspondence with her fashionable friends was not, however, intermitted; and in a letter to Lady Charleville, not given in this collection, she describes herself as “sitting beside a glass door, which opens upon a velvet lawn, and commands a lovely view over one of the fairest landscapes that ever delighted the eye of a painter.” Lady Charleville, happening not long after to be near the place of “Glorvina’s” retreat, had the curiosity to go and see the spot which had been thus delineated, and found it to be a small and rather dirty room in a cottage, with a single window looking out upon a cabbage-garden, beyond which, at about ten yards’ distance, uprose a stiff quickset hedge, impervious to the vision!