She had a certain light, jaunty air peculiarly Irish, celebrated by Leigh Hunt in verses which embody a faithful portrait:
And dear Lady Morgan, see, see where she comes,
With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums,
So Irish, so modish, so mixtish, so wild,
So committing herself, as she talks, like a child;
So trim, yet so easy, polite, yet high-hearted,
That Truth and she, try all she can, won't be parted.
She'll put on your fashions, your latest new air,
And then talk so frankly, she'll make you all stare.
Mrs. Hall may say "Oh!" and Miss Edgeworth say "Fie!"
But my lady will know the what and the why.
Her books, a like mixture, are so very clever
That Jove himself swore he could read them for ever,
Plot, character, freakishness, all are so good,
And the heroine herself playing tricks in a hood.
After a happy year with her patrons Glorvina married and moved to a home of her own in Kildare street, Dublin, whence she writes to Lady Stanley: "With respect to authorship, I fear it is over. I have been making chair-covers instead of periods, hanging curtains instead of raising systems, and cheapening pots and pans instead of selling sentiment and philosophy." But even during this first busy year of housekeeping she was working upon O'Donnel, another national tale, for which she was paid five hundred and fifty pounds. It was highly praised by Sir Walter Scott, and sold with rapidity, but her Liberal politics made her unpopular with the leading Tory journalism of England. In point of pitiless invective the criticism of the Quarterly and Blackwood has perhaps never been exceeded. Her books were denounced as pestilent, and the public advised against maintaining her acquaintance. Miss Martineau, an impartial critic, if impartiality consists in punching almost every one she passed, did not fail to give our heroine a black eye, speaking of her as "in that set to which Mrs. Jameson belonged, who make women blush and men grow insolent."
Sir Charles and his wife next visited Paris with the intention of writing a book. Their letters carried them into every circle of Parisian society, and in each the popularity of Lady Morgan was unbounded. Madame Jerome Bonaparte wrote to her: "The French admire you more than any one who has appeared here since the battle of Waterloo in the form of an Englishwoman." When France appeared the clamor of abuse in England was enough to appall a very stout heart. John Wilson Croker was one of her most bitter assailants, and attempted to annihilate her in the Quarterly. She balanced matters by caricaturing him as "Counsellor Crawley" in her next novel, in a way that hit and hurt, and by a witticism which lives, while his envenomed sentences are forgotten. Some one was telling her that Croker was among the crowd who thought they could have managed the battle of Waterloo much better than Wellington, whose success, in their estimation, was only a fortunate mistake. She exclaimed, "Oh, I can believe it. He had his secret for winning the battle: he had only to put his Notes on Boswell's Johnson in front of the British lines, and all the Bonapartes that ever existed could never have got through them!" Maginn, in Blackwood, gave unmerciful cuts at her superficial opinions, ultra sentiments and chambermaid French. Fraser's Magazine complimented her sardonically on her simple style, being happy to observe that she had reduced the number of languages used, as the Sibyl did her books, to three, wisely discarding German, Spanish, the dead and Oriental languages. But she received the cannonade, which would have crushed some women, with perfect equanimity. As a compensation, she was the toast of the day, and at some grand reception had a raised dais only a little lower than that provided for the duchess de Berri. At a dinner at Baron Rothschild's, Carême, the Delmonico of those times, surprised her with a column of ingenious confectionery architecture on which was inscribed her name spun in sugar. It was a more equivocal compliment when Walter Scott christened two pet donkeys Hannah More and Lady Morgan.
Florence Macarthy, another novel, attacking the social and political abuses in Irish government, was her next work. Colburn, her publisher, who had just presented her with a beautiful parure of amethysts, now proposed that she and her husband should go to Italy. "Do it, and get up another book—the lively lady to sketch men and manners, the metaphysical balance-wheel contributing the solid chapters on laws, politics, science and education." They accepted the offer, and received the same extraordinary attentions as in their former tour. This may be accounted for by the fact that it was well known that they were to prepare a book on Italy. It was equally well known that Lady Morgan had a sharp tongue and still sharper pen; so that people who lived in glass houses, as did many of the magnates, were remarkably civil to "Miladi," even those who regarded her tour among them as an unjustifiable invasion. Byron pronounced this book an excellent and fearless work. During her sojourn in Italy Lady Morgan became enthusiastic about Salvator Rosa, and began to collect material for writing the history of his life and times, which was her own favorite of all her writings.
In 1825 the Diary is started, chatty, full of gossip and incident. She writes, October 30th: "A ballad-singer was this morning singing beneath my window in a strain most unmusical and melancholy. My own name caught my ear, and I sent Thomas out to buy the song. Here is a stanza:
Och, Dublin City, there's no doubting,
Bates every city upon the say:
'Tis there you'll hear O'Connell spouting,
And Lady Morgan making tay;
For 'tis the capital of the foinest nation,
Wid charming pisantry on a fruitful sod,
Fighting like divils for conciliation,
An' hating one another for the love o' God."
The O'Briens and O'Flahertys was published in 1827, and proved more popular than any of her previous novels. There is an allusion to it in the interesting account which Lord Albemarle gives us of his acquaintance with Lady Morgan: "A number of pleasant people used to assemble of an evening in Lady Morgan's 'nut-shell' in Kildare street. When I first met her she was in the height of her popularity. In her new novel she tells me I am to figure as a certain count, a great traveller who made a trip to Jerusalem for the sole object of eating artichokes in their native country. The chief attraction in the Kildare street 'at homes' was her sister Olivia (Lady Clark), who used to compose and sing charming Irish songs, for the most part squibs on the Dublin society of the day. One of the verses ran thus:
We're swarming alive,
Like bees in a hive,
With talent and janius and beautiful ladies:
We've a duke in Kildare,
And a Donnybrook Fair;
And if that wouldn't plaze, why nothing would plaze yez.
We've poets in plenty,
But not one in twenty
Will stay in ould Ireland to keep her from sinking:
They say they can't live
Where there's nothing to give.
Och, what business have poets with ating or dhrinking?"
Justly proud of her sister, Lady Morgan was in the habit of addressing every new-comer with, "I must make you acquainted with my Livy." She once used this form of words to a gentleman who had just been worsted in a fierce encounter of wit with the fascinating lady. "Yes, madam," he replied, "I happen to know your Livy, and I only wish 'your Livy' was Tacitus."