In 1842, the Book without a Name, by Sir Charles and Lady Morgan, appeared, published by Colburn. It was a collection of sketches and articles which had been contributed by them from time to time to the Metropolitan, New Monthly, and the Athenæum. It was not then so common to collect fugitive articles as it is now. These articles had obtained a good deal of notice when they originally appeared, and Mr. Colburn found his account in their republication. The Memoir of the Macaw of a Lady of Quality, to which reference has been made, will be found in these pages. We resume the diary as it occurs in a letter from Lady Morgan to her niece:—
April 12, 1842.—Talk to me of your gardens! I have at this moment, perfuming my rooms, twelve hyacinths, mignionette, sweet briar, and verbenas; fellow me that in your garden!
My right eye is very weak and painful, causing me
| 470 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I can do nothing for your young friend, P——; never encourage young people to suppose they are to throw themselves on their friends; they should be early taught to have no dependence but upon their own exertions. At fourteen, I worked for myself, and disdained living on my fine relations, the Croftons, and if I was left destitute to-morrow, I should begin and write again, as of old. How often have I preached this to you all?
Well, I am working at my Gate; the Cannon Brewery is blown down, and the Counter intrigue blown up. We have got the Duchess of Kent on our side, and that there is a likelihood of our having the Queen, whom we have petitioned. Lord Duncannon is dead against us, but I do not despair, for it will be a great public benefit.
April 17.—Hurrah! have got my Gate, just as we got Catholic Emancipation, by worrying for it!
It was said of somebody that he could be eloquent on a broom-stick. Sidney Smith could be lively about the gout, and Horace Smith about everything. A note from each may be given,—the first, for its graceful turn; the second, for its puns and conceit.
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Among incitements so numerous that it would weary you to mention them, there are two obstacles, a late dinner, to which I am engaged, and uncertain health. I had last week an attack of gout, which is receding from me (as a bailiff from the house of an half-pay captain) dissatisfied and terrified by the powers of colchicum; but I swear by that beautiful name we both bear, that I will come if it is possible.
(Which, of course, includes Lady
Morgan, you two being one) the same to you, and many of them (I
mean happy returns, &c., &c.) Right glad am I to hear that
Lady Morgan has thrown off her coughs and colds. We
are as dull here as you can be in London, with nothing half so good to enliven
us as Lady Morgan’s
| 472 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
As to my Adam Brown, I know nothing about him, except that Colburn seems rather ashamed to bring him out. I don’t mean to write any more, being quite worn out; so I resign Adam to his fate without any compunctious visitings of nature. I have had as much success as I deserved, and much more than I expected, and more money too, which was ever my sole inspiration.
Make sugar of paper! then there is a hope that poor authors may make plums, and critics become candied, and writers of tragedies may be more successful in the writing mood, and the worst productions be constantly in the mouths of the public, and all the evils of literature be twined into bonbons! I always said and felt that to restore the taste for tragedy, she must be taken from the stilts, and brought down to common life and common language. Everything is a round robin, rudeness, simplicity, perfection, decay, simplicity, rudeness. You must have novelty, and after you have reached perfection, you can only innovate by inferiority.
Never mind, it’s a very pretty world, and I am perfectly well contented with it, especially now that my wife is better, and my three girls at home, and all of us as cozy as possible, trying which can talk the most nonsense, and laugh the loudest at a bad joke.
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Our united regards and wishes for lots of happy new years are wafted to you and Lady Morgan from the family amanuensis.
PS.—Should this papyro-saccharine process go on, what capital kisses will be made from Little’s poems and sugar of lead from my works! You will see in the Magazine a poem of mine which will remind you of the fellow’s recantation for calling another a swindler. “I called you a swindler, it is true; you’re an honest man, I’m a liar.”
The diary resumed:—
11, William Street, January 1st, 1843.—I enter on my third year’s illness, which has interfered with my enjoyment of life, my worldly interests (for I cannot write without pain and palpitation), and all my social pleasures. My dear family are all far away, and I am deprived of my liberty at home and abroad, still, two of the great blessings are left me, the society of my most dear and true friend, my husband, in full health and spirits, and my own consciousness that I never lost an occasion of working or rendering a service during my long life, to the best of my ability; my sight has wonderfully recovered since my other attack.
January 28.—“Charming well again!” and
in my pretty drawing-room. An old friend dropped in to-day, and found Morgan and myself sitting over the
| 474 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
The following notes are from Lady Morgan’s letters to her niece:—
February 6th, 1843.—Your uncle has
made a very perfect recovery from a very alarming illness, but is still rather more
“pale, mild, and interesting” than, in my
unromanticism, I am desirous to see him! au
reste, I, too, am beginning to turn the corner of my three
years’ malady (though even writing such a scrap as this brings on my old
heart-beat), and so we have launched once more our old bark the Darby
and Joan, on the broad seas of society; but with all the caution and inland steering of old and shipwrecked mariners. We did our
Babbage last Saturday (his first of the
season), where were all the habitués of
the good old times, “your slave, but now your slave no longer,” Rogers, gave me a crush of the hand as he passed me in
the crowd, and turned his eyes tenderly on me, whilst I averted mine disdainfully; we
looked an illustration of Death and the
Lady, and I had a mind to ask Landseer, who stood near me, to take it for his next subject. Before I
drop the Yellow Poet, I must tell you that he is the slave and
blackmoor of another lady, who is now the receiver of all his pretty
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Diary again:
June.—Is it possible that I am again restored to health and sight. My dear Morgan is well and hearty, and Olivia better.
Soirées, operas, concerts, à discretion, which we (old fools as we are) enjoy à l’indiscretion! Well, so here I am, taking a new lease of life, available for any length of time, with a peppercorn fine, which is about the worth what we give in return. And here, if I open my journal again, it shall be to write something new and pleasant.
My life may be deemed a frivolity for one of my age, but no, it is a philosophy, a profound and just philosophy, founded upon the wisdom of the principle, to do and enjoy all the good I can, while I submit to the penalty of that mystery called life.
Some of the “young Englanders” have just been here; they might as well have been New Zealanders, for any advance they make in the art of thinking. But they are good boys, of the school of Tommy Goodchild, in the Universal Spelling Book, and they know it. All little “Jack Horners” in their way,
“Who put in his thumb, And pulled out a plumb. And said what a good boy am I!” |
Their plumb is a green-gage, poor
dears! I knew the firstlings of this school of good boys, some thirty years
| 476 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Sidney Smith has been in the Thames Tunnel, and sent me his experiences:—
I had fully intended, my dear madam, to have been of your party to-night; but I went to the Thames Tunnel, and have destroyed myself by walking under the river, and descending and ascending one hundred and twenty steps; there was a suffocating heat and a want of ventilation for which I was not prepared. I am astonished the Thames submits to the insult; one day or another it will come down upon the subaqueous intruders with all the force of a basin of water flung from the seventh story of a house in Edinburgh.
PS.—Mrs. Sidney (ill with the influenza) desires me to say that she depends upon Sir C. Morgan and you for Thursday; I beg you will keep away from the Tunnel in the interim.
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June 30th.—One of the most wretched days of my life—bad letter from Ireland.
“Yet love hopes on, when reason would despair.” |
My dear, dear Olivia; my hereafter in this world—gentle, spiritual, intellectual, full of the finest affections—unselfish beyond all comparison! My beloved Morgan said to me, as I wept over Dr. Carmichael’s letter—“Oh, Sydney, if you grieve thus for a niece, whom you never see much of, what is to become of you if I were to go?” This dreadful idea consoled me. How strange—my present loss appeared less; my beloved husband took me off to Richmond, and I came back in better spirits, and again full of hope—and Morgan beside me.
In Richmond Park we sat under an old tree, within view of the Mount where Henry VIII. stood when a cannon announced to him the decapitation of Anne Boleyn.
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