LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
Documents Biography Criticism
Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Sydney Owenson to Thomas Charles Morgan, November 1811
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
GO TO PAGE NUMBER:
Preface
Vol. I Contents.
Prefatory Address
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Vol. I Index
Vol. II Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter IV
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Vol. II Index
Creative Commons License

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Produced by CATH
 
“And if I answered you ’I know not what,’
It shows the name of love.”

Give me, my dear philosopher, ten thousand more such letters, that I may have ten thousand more excuses for loving you still better than I do. I glory in my own inferiority when you give that exalted mind of yours fair play. I triumph in my conscious littleness; I say, “and this creature loves me.” Yes, dearest of all the dears, this is a proud consciousness. I think precisely with you, and argued on the same grounds; but not with the same eloquence that you have done. Davy (Sir Humphry), après tout, is a borné man. I dined with him on Saturday last, and he lectured, tolerably, till every one yawned; I said twenty times in the course of the evening, to Miss Butler, “how much better Morgan would have spoken;” and so you would, dearest. Nothing takes a woman like mind in man; before that, everything sinks. When you talk en philosophe to me (even the Philosophy of Love) I adore you. When you make bad puns, and are “put in mind,” I hate you. So, as you see, my love is a relative, not a positive, quality. You will know how to manage me, and I wish you every success, dear.

I shall not write much to you, to-day, because I am writing a long, long, letter to— to— the—Lord
BETWEEN CUP AND LIP.483
Mayor!!! Aye, and going to send it to the Freeman’s Journal!! Don’t look frightened to death, you quiz! I always have something to talk to the chief magistrate about, at this season of the year, and now it is about poor children; but I will send you the paper, and that will best inform you. Just before I sat down to write to you, yesterday, Livy and I had four naked little wretches at the fire warming and feeding, and, to tell the truth, their sufferings added to my nervousness; and you, joking and dissipation, had an equal share in the wretched spirits in which I addressed the dearest and the best. “Oh! Father Abraham, what these Irish be!” but so it is,—it is next to impossible to follow the quick transitions of our feelings. Just as I had got thus far, enter Professor Higgins—our Professor of Chemistry. He came to arrange a collection of mineralogy for Livy, which Clarke bought her with a cabinet, and now, here we are, in the midst of spars, quartz, ores, madrepores, and petrifactions. I know the whole thing now, at my fingers’ ends, and all in half-an-hour!!! The Professor says, I am a clever little soul! I have got a little collection, myself, which, with a harp, tripod, fifty volumes, and some music, constitutes all my household furniture—funny enough! Now, coûte qui coûte, no more dolorous letters; à quoi bon? if I were not to marry you, it would be because I loved you too well to involve you in difficulties and in distress. If I do marry you (and, like Solus, “I’m pretty sure I shall be married”) I will make you the dearest, best, and funniest little wife in the world.
484 LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR.  
Meantime, I prefer you to your whole sex, and so, clearest of all philosophers,

Adio,
Glorvina.

PS.—I shall not write to you to-morrow, love, because I am going out about business for poor papa, who is very poorly; but still, if not better, he is not worse. Here is a trait of poor human nature. When his head was blistered, he would only suffer the sise of the blister to be shaved; but when the pain came to the front of his head, he was obliged to have it all shaven. Yesterday he said to me, “Tell Morgan, my dear, that I have made a great sacrifice to health; that I have lost the finest head of hair that ever man had, and that I prided myself on, because I should like to prepare him for seeing me in a wig!”

I wish you would accustom yourself to write a little every day in mere authorship. I mean we shall write a novel together. Your name shall go down to posterity with mine, you wretch. The snow very deep, and the cold insupportable.

Sydney O.