Although McNally's are destroyed, some characteristic letters from Curran to him were supplied by the spy to Curran's biographer. It was a constant effort of McNally to engraft himself on the fame and name of Curran. A touching document in the romance of real life is the letter addressed by Curran to McNally in 1810. He exhibits a kind solicitude for the improved health of his false friend, and alludes to their future meeting where secrets and sorrow would be no more.
Godwin's, 41, Skinner Street, London.
Dear Mac,— ... I am glad to hear you are letting yourself out at Old Orchard; you are certainly unwise in giving up such an inducement to exercise, and the absolute good of being so often in good air. I have been talking about your habit without naming yourself. I am more persuaded that you and Egan[510] are not sufficiently afraid of weak liquors.[511] I can say from trial how little pains it costs to correct a bad habit. On the contrary, poor nature—like an ill-used mistress—is delighted with the return of our kindness, and is anxious to show her gratitude for that return by letting us see how well she becomes it.
I am the more solicitous upon this point from having made this change, which I see will make me waited for in Heaven longer than perhaps they looked for. If you do not make some pretext for lingering, you can have no chance of conveying me to the wherry; and the truth is, I do not like surviving old friends. I am somewhat inclined to wish for posthumous reputation; and if you go before me, I shall lose one of the most irreclaimable of my trumpeters. Therefore, dear Mac, no more water, and keep the other element, your wind, for the benefit of your friends. I will show my gratitude as well as I can, by saying handsome things of you to the saints and angels before you come. Best regards to all with you.
J. P. C.
'Mac' stuck to him like a leech to the end. 'As he walked through the grounds of his country seat with Mr. McNally,' writes Curran's son, 'he spoke of the impending event with tranquillity and resignation:—
I melt (said he) and am not
Of stronger earth than others.
'"I wish it was all over."'[512]
'Curran's will, which I have in the house,' writes his daughter-in-law, 'is dated September 14th, 1816, and the codicil the 5th September, 1817; it bears the signatures (as witnesses) of Richard Lonergan and Leonard McNally. Lonergan was editor of 'Carrick's Morning Post,' a popular organ. The first of a series of papers on the Dublin Theatre, signed 'L. M. N.,' appears in this journal of December 16, 1817:—
A moral, well-acted play [he writes] is of more real benefit to Society at large than all the inflated harangues of puritanical declaimers. To men of letters the drama affords a most delightful recreation, after their understandings have been absorbed in perplexities, or their intellectual powers strained by continued study.