Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Thomas Charles Morgan to Sydney Owen, 7 October 1811
Monday, October 7.
Dearest, dear Love,
Will you, can you pardon my ravings? How angry I am with
myself! I have at last got a sweet, charming, affectionate letter from you, and
half my miseries are over. If my two last letters gave you pain, think what
misery (well or ill-founded), what horrid depression must have been mine to
inspire them. Your rea-![]()
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sonings are all very fine and very conclusive; but,
alas, I parted with reason to a certain little coquette,
and I can attend to and feel no language but that of the heart. Still, however,
I must insist upon my distinction, that while I am ready to give up everything to your lovely, amiable family feelings, I can ill brook your associating any unpleasant idea
with that of returning to me. If I know my heart, neither solitude, sickness,
nor slavery would be unpalatable, if it gave me back to Glorvina. I would seek her amidst the plague, in an African
ship, or, if such a place existed, in her own
father’s dominions. I have but one object in life, and it is
you; and so little can I bear the idea of your preferring anything to me, that
I have been angry with Olivia when she
has had too much of your attention. Indeed, indeed it is because I love, that I cannot suppose it possible any feeling of
disgust, or ennui, can associate itself with your return
to me, and, I would fain hope, happiness. You cannot think so meanly of me as
to suppose the dimity chamber could urge me to draw you from your duties. Trust
me, love, you never win me more than when I see you, in imagination,
discharging them; but when I picture to myself the thoughtless, heartless Glorvina, trifling
with her friend, jesting at his sufferings, and flirting with every man she
meets; when I imagine her more in love with the vanities of
this wicked world than with me, I feel not sure
of her. Do not think me cruel in reminding you that you have lost one husband
by flirting, and that that makes me feel it is just
possible you may drive another mad. I cannot, ![]()
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give you to
the amusements of Dublin. God knows (if he takes the trouble to know) this
“pile” is “dreary” enough without you; but it makes me
curse the hour I threw away my love on one so incapable of returning it, when I
see you looking forward to a solitary winter in it;
trust me, dearest, a little natural philosophy will make
time pass pleasantly enough, never fear.
I read part of your letter to Miss B——, relative to “Almighty Tact,”
and she laughed tout son saoul. She
says, if there is one human being more thoroughly destitute of tact than another, it is Glorvina—and, indeed, I think so. In the instance of
myself you have failed utterly. If you knew me, you would not combat my
feelings by your affected stoicism; you would flatter my vanity with the idea
of the separation being as painful to you as to me; you would soothe me with
tenderness and not shock me with badinage. If you knew
how much eloquence there was in the magic ——; if you knew the
pleasure I felt in touching the paper that had touched your lips! Oh,
Glor.! Glor.! have you been all
this while studying me to so little purpose? In reply to your
orders, know that I have not opened my lips to say more
than—“a bit more,” “very good,” and “no
more, thank you, My Lord,” since you have been gone. Lady Abercorn swears she heard me sing,
“Il mio ben quando vena,” and says I
am Nina Pazza. In good truth, I believe she
is right, for surely nothing but madness would distress itself, and what it
loves more than itself, as I do. I assure you I have
made myself quite ill, and others ![]()
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present; my calmness is
acquired, unnatural, and deceitful. I am sorry, very sorry, for your poor dear
dad; but hope he is not seriously worse; say everything that is kind to him
from me, and tell him I hope we shall spend many a pleasant day together yet.
Do you know you shock my tenderness by the ease with which you talk of
Miss Butler. Surely we must adopt two terms to express
our different loves, one word cannot imply such different affections. I will think and speak of nothing but you. As to my
commissions, do not, best and dearest, put yourself to any inconvenience about
them; when done you may send them by the mail, the pleasure of receiving
anything from you is worth the carriage, though it even amounted to gold. There
is, however, but one commission about which I am anxious, and that is to love me as I do you, exclusively; to prefer me to every other good; to think of me, speak
of me, write to me, and to look forward to our union as the completion of every
wish, for so do I by you. Do this, and though you grow as “ugly” as Sycorax, you will never lose in me the fondest, most doating,
affectionate of husbands. Glorvina, I was born for
tenderness; my business in life is to love. Cultivate,
then, the latent feelings of the heart, learn to
distrust the imagination, and to despise and quit the
world, before the world leaves you. How, dearest, will you otherwise bear the
hour when no longer young, lovely, and agaçante, you will see the great
ones lay aside their plaything and forget their companion who can no
longer give them plea-![]()
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sure; where, but in the arms of
affection, will you then find consolation? Fly, then, to me by times. You have
much wisdom to acquire yet, with respect to happiness; and believe me, the dimity chamber is a school worth all the Portico’s
in the world, Mrs. Stoic. There nature reigns, and you will hear none but the
language of truth. Do you recollect folding up a piece of blotting-paper with
one of your letters? I preserve it as the apple of my eye, and kiss it, as I
would you, all to pieces.
My sweetest life, I do not mean an atom of acrimony
towards you in all this; but misery will be querulous. I determine to pass over
my sufferings in silence; but find I cannot. Do not say I am selfish; if I
were, I should have pressed you to marriage when I could have done it
effectually. I should have opposed your leaving me; and now I should give up
all to you for comfort. I flatter myself, that hitherto
every sacrifice has been on my part. My only comfort is, that my wishes have
given place to yours.
I do not wish you to cut any one; but I think Parkhurst, too particular in his attentions; besides, how can I bear that anybody
can have the pleasure of talking to you and gazing on you when I cannot. I
should be sorry you offended a friend on account of any
whim of mine; you can be civil to him without encouraging his
daily visits. Strangely as I show it, I am obliged and grateful for
your every attention, and in this instance in particular; but indeed I do not
wish it. I have not so mean an opinion of myself to be jealous of
anybody’s alienating your mind from me ![]()
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by exciting a
preference, et pour tout le reste j’en sais
assez.
I have kissed your dear hair again and again, as I do the
bottle, twenty times an hour; do not judge of my temper by this instance, for,
believe me, I am not always, nor ever was in my married life, in the horrible
state of mind I now am. You know I think ill of life in general, and kick
against calamity as if I received an affront as well as an injury in it from
fate. But trust me, no chance of life can reach me to wound as I am now
wounded; when reposed on your dear bosom then my spirits will be calmed, my
irritability soothed. If I thought there was the remotest chance of my giving
you the uneasiness I know I now do, when once you are mine, I would release you
from your engagement au coup de
pistolet. No, no, my beloved, I hope, after all, we may be
enabled to say, in our age, c’est un monde
passable, at least it shall be so
to you, if I can make it so. God bless you, my own dear, sweet, darling girl;
don’t, don’t be angry with me, for I am very wretched without that.
Mr. Eliot is come at last, and I must go dress and
acquire steadiness for “representation.”
Adieu ma belle, ma
chère Glor.
9 o’clock.
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.
Anne Jane Hamilton, marchioness of Abercorn [née Gore] (1763-1827)
Daughter of the earl of Arran; in 1783 she married Henry Hatton (d. 1793), in 1800 John
James Hamilton, first marquess of Hamilton. She entertained literary figures at her villa
at Stanmore, among them Lady Morgan.
Sir Thomas Charles Morgan (1780-1843)
English physician and philosophical essayist who married the novelist Sydney Owenson in
1812; he was the author of
Sketches of the Philosophy of Morals
(1822). He corresponded with Cyrus Redding.
Charles Parkhurst (1812 fl.)
Assistant gentleman usher to the Duke of Richmond when he was Lord Lieutenant; one of
Sydney Owenson's admirers.
Lady Jane Manners- Sutton [née Butler] (1779-1846)
The daughter of James Butler, ninth Baron Cahir; in 1815 she married Thomas Manners
Sutton at Baron's Court, the residence of the Marquis of Abercorn in County Tyrone.
