Miss Owenson, in spite of
episcopal gaieties and dissipation, had finished her novel, Ida of Athens; but Sir Richard Phillips, her “prince of
publishers,” was showing himself tenacious of his “right divine to govern
wrong.” The exact cause of their quarrel is not recorded, beyond Miss
Owenson’s declaration, “that he had used her
barbarously.” She possibly asked too much money for her work,—or
Sir Richard had not the same faith in its value, seeing the haste
and distractions under which it had been written; he threw up the work after the first
volume had gone to press, and Miss Owenson had to look elsewhere for a
publisher. The novel was accepted by Messrs.
Longmans. There was a good deal of “perilous stuff” in the work,
and the letter to her publishers, shows her to be quite conscious of it, and yet capable of
taking her own part. Previous in date, however, comes a fragment of a land letter from
Lady Stanley, with a motherly present of a piece
of velvet for a dress. Her
| 344 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Yes, my dear Sydney, I
would we were placed vis-à-vis in some chimney
corner; that I should understand you well, I have no doubt, nor should I laugh,
or rally at your romance, as you call it; for I have not forgotten the
aspirations of a youthful heart, and I have some sense
of the fastidiousness of a refined spirit; and I do think, that somehow, I
might be able to insinuate some little drop of cordial towards the serenity of
your’s. May we some day meet and discourse in peace! but, alack! here am
I now in all the agitation of an impending journey, methinks, a sort of dreary
and perilous pilgrimage, and my thoughts are all distracted; I dispatch to you,
therefore, but these few hurried lines, just to say I love you well, and to bid
you cheer your spirit; believe me, its droop is but a passing cloud. Often
shall I think of you, and wish for you, when in that tumultuous yet vague city
of
| FIRST TASTE OF CRITICISM. | 345 |
It has been said that there was perilous stuff in Ida. The Messrs. Longman remonstrated against some parts of it; and put Miss Owenson on her defence.
Letter to Longman on his disapprobation of some parts of Ida, which he published in 1809:—
I am honoured by the attention with which you have
perused my work, and obliged for the hints you have suggested for its
improvement. I am at all times open to conviction, but particularly so, when I
observe great nicety of judgment united to great kind-
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Your apprehension that some of my readers will suspect the work of being tainted with the philosophy of the new school of French moralists, and of promulgating Deistical principles, give me leave to say, I think unfounded. I solemnly assure you I am wholly unacquainted with the works of the persons alluded to (except a very partial perusal of Helvetius and the travels of M. Volney come under that head); the habits of my life and situation have all thrown me dependent on my own mind, and have been as favourable to the study of Nature in her moral operations and an admiration of her works in their spirit and their forms, as they have been inimical to that description of information and system which books are calculated to bestow.
Whatever, therefore, are my errors, they are exclusively
my own; are, consequently, free from the criticisms of common-place imitation,
and in an age when human intellect has nearly readied its god of attainment,
the writer who has (in the least degree) the power to be original, inevitably possesses the spell to be attractive. Were I writing for certain sects,
or for a certain class in society only, some part of
your appre-
| FIRST TASTE OF CRITICISM. | 347 |
| 348 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
If I have, in the hurry of composition, asserted that the
union of social and selfish love constitute the perfection of human Nature, I
have written nonsense, for the union might exist upon very unequal terms, and
the selfish preponderate very much over the social.
I meant to assert that the subjection of the selfish passions to the social or
general good of mankind constituted the perfection of human Virtue; but of human virtue, I do not believe that any peculiar mode of
faith is to be considered, as it must be admitted that a Brahmin or Mussulman,
a Catholic or Protestant, may all be perfectly virtuous men, though they differ
in points of faith, and that a man who promotes the happiness of his fellow
creature is a virtuous man, even though he is a Jew, which is but his
misfortune, and it might have been yours sir, or mine, had we been born of
parents of that persuasion; for, after all, we must confess, that our religion
is more frequently our inheritance than our conviction;
though it may be both—and certainly, when Mr.
Pope asserted, that “his faith can’t be wrong
whose life is in the
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This letter to Lady Stanley shows the natural reaction, after the life of over-work and social dissipation she had been leading for so many months. She was always subject to fits of depressed spirits, though she carefully kept them to herself. In the present case, her relations towards Sir Charles Ormsby had, no doubt, a good deal of influence in producing this discouragement; they had assumed a very uncomfortable aspect.
I have not answered your letter immediately, dear lady,
first, because you advise me not to be in too great a hurry, and next, because
I did not find myself worthy to answer it; but, nevertheless, it has been a
precious letter to me, it is full of the heart that I love
| 350 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
| FIRST TASTE OF CRITICISM. | 351 |
Ida of Athens
encountered more criticism than any of its predecessors. It had been written under
distractions, of which it bears the traces. It possesses, however, the merit of being very
interesting, and extremely romantic. The descriptions both of the personal charms of the
heroine, and the declarations of love to which they give rise, are ardent and eloquent, and
of an intrepidity which, in these days, would be highly astonishing. Ida is not only a heroine—a houri and a woman of
genius—but she is also “a woman of the strictest principle,” and never
goes even “a kennin wrang;” indeed, we never recollect to have heard or read
such logical arguments as Ida sets forth on behalf of
female rectitude, nor to have seen such a signal instance of female virtue and feminine
imprudence. Her maxims are her guardian angels, and, strange to say, they are strong enough
to save her in situations of peril. Although she is pleased to dress in “a tissue of
woven air” for a best gown, it is as effectual a protection as the tenfold shield of
heavy petticoats in which Knickerbocker’s
Dutch heroines attired themselves. Ida discourses like
a very Corinna about Greek art, literature, morals, and
politics, in a manner eloquent, pedantic, enthusiastic, and absurd. The real interest of
the book lies in the unexpressed but ever-present parallel between the condition of the
Greeks, their aspirations after liberty, their recollec-
| 352 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
This novel procured for her the thorny honour of a review in the Quarterly—a foretaste of what was to be her lot hereafter! The bitter ill-nature of the article is more remarkable than its brilliancy or its justice; and the ill-nature defeated its object. It would be difficult to find a novel offering fairer mark for ridicule than Ida, and the Quarterly, in its heavy cannonade, entirely missed it. Lady Morgan was always rather ashamed of Ida, and spoke of it as “a bad book;” but she wrote out in it many thoughts and feelings which were fermenting in her own mind, and the novel carried them safely off.
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