Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Sydney Owenson to Robert Owenson, [1799?]
Limerick.
My dear Papa,
Olivia and I are rather uneasy at your
silence, and hope you have not run the risk of breaking your other leg in a
frolic, as you did the other one in Cork,—I don’t mean a cork
leg,—but the city of Cork. You need not pity us at all, as we really are
very comfortable. I have opened a new mine of study which will last me for
life. We go every evening as usual to tea at Dr.
Douglas’s, where there is at present a very celebrated
gentleman, a Dr. Higgins,* a great
chemist; and Dr. Douglas has built a beautiful laboratory
in his garden, where Dr. Higgins does the most beautiful
experiments that ever were performed; assisted by young Mr. Cadenus
Boyd,† Mrs. Douglas’s nephew,
who is a pupil of the Doctor’s. Now, dear papa, observe, I never heard
the word “chemistry” at
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school, nor did I know what it meant, till Dr.
Higgins took the trouble of informing me; for you must know that
we walk home every evening by moonlight, accompanied by the whole party, and I
always fall to the Doctor’s share, who says my questions are very
suggestive; a word, by-the-bye, I never heard before, and that one day he would
not wonder if I was another Pauline
Lavoisier. Now, I dare say, you never heard anything about her.
Well, Lavoisier was the greatest chemist
in France, and the greatest philosopher, and his beautiful wife
Pauline cultivated chemistry with the greatest zeal
and talent; and I would rather be the wife of such a man as Lavoisier, than any
queen I ever read of.*
Dr. Higgins has lent me the Memoirs of Lavoisier, and I sat up reading
them till one o’clock in the morning, Molly scolding or snoring all the time. And now, dear papa, I
have a terrible thing to tell you, and hope you won’t be angry, as it was
only meant in fun. Well, one of Cadenus Boyd’s
experiments was, writing
* Lavoisier,
the most illustrious chemical philosopher of France, and the most
original expositor of the scientific philosophy of his age. His
discoveries obliged a new chemical nomenclature which became a
stumbling-block to older chemists, and was much complained of by our
own celebrated philosopher Kirwan. His admirable financial work, Let Richesses
Territorielles de France, had the distinction of
being published by order of the National Assembly in 1791, and in 1794
this honour to his country and to humanity was dragged to the
guillotine. His beautiful and gifted wife shared her husband’s
studies and pursuits; she not only cultivated chemistry with zeal and
success, but engraved with her own hand the copper-plates for his last
great work. She married the celebrated Count Rumford, and was living in Paris in 1847, when I
had the gratification of seeing her. |
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words with phosphorus on a dark wall; he gave us a bit of
this in a bottle of water, so, after we were all in bed and
Molly fast asleep in her adjoining closet, we got up
and made a noise to awaken her, so she came out and what should she see, but,
written on the wall in flame, “Molly,
beware!” She screamed out, “Lord Jasus, preserve
us!” and we laughed so that I let fall the phosphorus, which burned
through the table, and even the floor, and my left hand too, which brought up
Mrs. Shea in her night-shift; you never saw such a
figure, and she and Molly instantly set into a row as
usual. As soon as it was daylight, I was in such pain I was obliged to go to
Dr. Douglas’s with my arm, and Mrs.
Shea said, she wouldn’t let young ladies stay in her
house, who risked setting it on fire with their tricks. However, we are both
full of repentance for indulging in such childish pranks, and will endeavour to
remember what you so often remind us of, “that we are no longer
children,” and which is above all applicable to Miss in her
Teens—myself; so from this time forth I promise to be more considerate
and serious, but I never can be more in all duty and respect to you, dearest
papa, whose most affectionate child I am, Livia included,
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
British chemist; author of
The Sceptical Chymist (1661) and
The Origin of Forms and Qualities (1666).
Molly Cane (d. 1831)
The devoted nurse and housemaid who raised Sydney and Olivia Owenson.
Lady Olivia Clarke [née Owenson] (1785 c.-1845)
The younger sister of Lady Morgan who married Dublin physician Sir Arthur Clarke
(1778-1857) in 1808. She wrote songs and a play, and published in the
Metropolitan Magazine and
Athenaeum.
William Higgins (1763 c.-1825)
Irish chemist; he was educated at Oxford, published
Comparative View of
the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Theories (1789) and was F.R.S.
Richard Kirwan (1733-1812)
Irish chemist, educated at St. Omer; he was elected to the Royal Society in 1780 and was
president of the Royal Irish Academy in 1799. He was a friend of Lady Morgan.
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794)
French chemist and biologist guillotined during the French Revolution; he published
Traité élémentaire de chimie.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814)
American-born natural philosopher; a loyalist in the War of Independence he worked as a
civil servant in Britain and later in Bavaria.
