My Mother! there is something infinitely dear and tender in that name, and though all mothers may not be equally dear and tender, still it is the declared intention of Nature that they should be so.
I gratefully acknowledge the memory of my mother’s worth, and early as I lost her, if there has ever come out in my poor nature a show of discretion and a scantling of that most uncommon quality, common sense, I owe it to her,—it is my inheritance from my excellent English mother.
A degree of common sense tempered down in me that exuberance of imagination which was the bane of my father’s prosperity.
My mother came from her native land, an enemy of all slovenliness in habits, conduct, or mind.
She was disgusted with the dirty Dublin houses of that day, though in ostentatious finery they far surpassed anything she had ever seen in the old picturesque houses of Shrewsbury, with their black and white facades, and their pent-house roofs.
| 70 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
The society tried her as much as the houses; she was overwhelmed, offended and distressed at the style of conversation which then prevailed in company; the broad allusions to subjects which are now not mentionable to ears polite, but which were common enough in the days of the Swifts and Stellas, and were the delight of the Lady Berkleys and the Lady Betty Germains of the vice-regal court. She was utterly disgusted at the double entente freely introduced; she could not find either excuse or compensation in the wit they often brought along with them. The colloquial habit of what was then called “selling bargains,” had not yet died out, the jest of which consisted in involving a person unconsciously into the utterance or the implication of some word or meaning, which placed the party in anything but a delicate dilemma.
Neither Catholic priest nor Protestant parson was spared; indeed, both parties bore the brunt of such jokes with an unblushing laugh, for the jokes usually alluded to their supposed success in gallantry,—an imputation which no Irishman of any profession can ever heartily resent.
The tendency to wit, or to its substitute—fun, had been a fashion in Ireland from the time of Charles the Second. Ladies of fashion played their game of equivoque, and
“Lips that not by words pleased only” |
| MY MOTHER. | 71 |
She had received as much education as women of her class ever received in England—and no more. She had no accomplishments, no artistic tendencies, but she was a good English scholar, and was thoroughly well acquainted with the popular English literature of her time. She was familiar with the works of Pope, Addison (she had his Spectator by heart), all Shenstone’s innocent pastorals, which she discordantly hummed and taught us to the music of Jackson of Exeter.
I can even now quote largely, and do so, no doubt, to the occasional ennui of my modern friends; but it is entirely owing to her instructions.
“With Delia ever could I stray,” |
“My banks they are furnished with bees,” |
| 72 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
“I’m in love with two nymphs that are To the flowers in a garden those nymphs I compare.” |
This song my sister and myself used to drawl out with the solemnity of a requiem; my mother always substituting “Sydney” and “Olivia” for the original heroines of the Rose and the Myrtle.
She also taught us to chaunt that noble Psalm—
“O come, loud anthems let us sing.” |
Much of my mother’s life was of necessity passed in seclusion, for she avoided all society except that of a very few ultimate friends; nevertheless, she had one great resource, in which she found both edification and amusement.
The habits of Irish cousinhood came forth very strongly under the influence of my father’s supposed prosperity. Poor kinsmen from Connaught were numerous, and my father had not the heart to shut his door against them, nor my mother either. Sometimes they came to ask for a “shake down” at our house for a “few days,” (the days were seldom less than weeks), whilst they were in search “of a place under Government,” through the influence of some under-secretary’s under-secretary at the Castle. They used to spend their days in pacing the “half acre,”* watching like detectives the exits and the entrances of their ideal patrons; but they always came home to Fish Shamble Street mare hungry than they went out. I will call over the roll of our visitors during the
* The Upper Castle yard, the residence of the officials. |
| MY MOTHER. | 73 |
“I’ll give you no more,” said the “Reverend Sir,” while we paused, with our hands behind our backs and our eyes raised to “the Parson.”
“I’ll give you no more,” said his Reverence.
“Then I’ll have ye before the Court of Conscience,” was the reply, when his Reverence accidentally crushing the bag under his arm, a sound was emitted from a pair of bagpipes. Fearing the pipes were injured, he drew them from the bag and played a few notes of “Maloney’s Pig,” which struck the “noddy” man and the children as with magic music
“Will ye give us a little more sir, of that, if you please?”
| 74 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
His Reverence complied; the children danced; the noddy man fell in, the servants rushed out, and began to dance too.
When the music stopped, the ecstatic charioteer held out the tester and said, “Here, plaize yer riverence, take it! By the piper that played before Moses I would not touch a farthing! sure, I would drive ye back again to Stoney Batter for nothing at all, saving a tune on yer beautiful pipes!”
The music which had so charmed the noddy man, attracted several passers-by from the streets. My mother threw up the window to see what was the matter; she dispersed the mob by calling out in a distressed tone, “Oh, Mr. Macklin, is that you? pray come in, and let the gates be shut.”
Mr. Macklin, removing his clerical hat, displayed his bolt upright red hair, and gladly accepted the invitation.
On entering, he presented my mother with an Oliver Cromwell Bible, which he told her “was worth all the books in St. Patrick’s Library;” shewing her, to prove its value, that the title-page of King James had been torn out in proof of the Low Churchism of its original proprietor.
My mother accepted the gift (or bribe) with reverential gratitude, and Mr. Macklin then informed her that he had come by special invitation from my father who had not led her to expect such a distinction.
“I suppose, ma’am, you know that Mr. Owenson is going to get up the grand mythological
drama of Midas? and he wishes to take some lessons on the
| MY MOTHER. | 75 |
My mother inquired whether he had lost his late curacy, which had, with some difficulty, been obtained for him?
“Indeed, then, Mrs. Owenson, ma’am, I have—along of the villany of the honorable and reverend the rector, who dismissed me on hearsay on account of my playing my congregation out on my pipes one Sunday—tho’ himself lives in Paris, and never comes near the church; and as to the congregation, Mrs. Owenson, it was just my own clerk, and Mrs. Mulligan, and her daughter, relapsed Protestants, and one or two others, all as one, as Dean Swift and his ‘dearly beloved Roger.’ The congregation was very much obliged to me; but somebody dirtily told the story, and I was turned out by return of post.”
The story was scarcely told, when my father returned home. Mr. Macklin repeated it with such graphic humour as it would be impossible to throw upon paper; but its impression was indelible on all who heard it.
To Mr. Macklin, accident soon added another locataire of a very different description—a concealed Jesuit priest—whose order it was then proscription in Ireland to receive.
Molly, on her mission to the only restaurateur then
living in Dublin, M. La Farrell, saw a tall, dark figure of very
sinister appearance, pass through the
| 76 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
“He is a poor Catholic clergyman,” said, in a whisper, a little gargotier who was weighing some Bologna sausages behind the counter, “I think a Jesuit; he lodges in our four-pair of stairs, but master says he will give him notice to quit before long. I think he is starving, but he never buys nothing from us.”
Molly, who was my charitable mother’s almoner on all occasions, told her this piteous tale with many exaggerations. My mother sent him, by Molly, a small donation with a courteous note—a donation in money to a man who, perhaps, if the truth were known, could have bought the fee simple of the whole estate in which she lived!
He returned her an elegant note of thanks, with his name and address, and begged permission to call on her some evening when alone. She deemed him too unfortunate to be refused, and Father Farer became a frequent guest at her tea-table, to the entire satisfaction of my father, who was much pleased to set him at the Rev. Mr. Macklin, particularly as my mother greatly enjoyed their controversial synod.
To complete the group, Mr. Langley, of Irevecca, came on one of Lady Huntingdon’s missions to Dublin, and spent much of his time at the Music Hall, bent on conversion and good dinners. My mother being the Protestant Pope among them all!
These “synods,” which were held two or three times a week,
interested her much; points of faith
| MY MOTHER. | 77 |
There was one, however, who seemed to derive a very particular amusement from these assemblies—it was my little self! My sister was duly sent to bed; but there was no getting rid of me. Not that I understood a sentence that was pronounced, but I was greatly interested in the expressions of triumph and defeat on the faces of each party. I saw everything from a pictorial point of view, as most children do; but the impressions that were made by these scenes, became, in after life, suggestive of inquiry and reflection. The group thus assembled in my mother’s sober parlour, comprised within itself the disunion of religious creeds which still engages the minds of the religious world in Great Britain.
The violence of Protestant-Calvinism against the Irish Catholics, John Wesley at the head of the “Protestant Association,” which he had founded, needed the genius, the wit, and the acrimony of Dean Swift to oppose and cope with them. The Catholics found their champion in Arthur O’Leary, whose caustic wit and brilliant Irish eloquence won the day.
These dissensions left a long train of religious disputation behind them, and my mother found her account in discussions which had become to her as her daily bread.
My mother was a little Lady
Huntingdon in her way, and exercised a despotic influence to the full
stretch of her very limited power. Before the season
| 78 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
My father took no notice at the time, but when he was gone he said to my mother, with an emphatic phrase now proscribed, and which Lady Townley used with difficulty “to gulp down” when she lost at cards—
“Jenny, my dear, I’ll be —— if that canting cousin of yours ever puts his feet under my mahogany again!”
And he never did.
For the rest of the connexion—the Spanish friar resolved himself back into the mystery whence he had come, and was never visible, at least in that form, again.
The Rev. Charles Macklin was preferred to a curacy through my father’s influence with the celebrated Dr. Younge, Bishop of Clonfurt, on the understanding that he was not to play on his bagpipes in church.
But the dispersion of these quarrelsome saints was followed by the advent of some lay visitors of a very different description.
Two of my father’s old London friends, joint lessees of
Covent-Garden, arrived in Dublin through the ac-
| MY MOTHER. | 79 |
Giordani had come over to superintend his own work, and was so bewitched with the musical sympathies of the Dublin people, that he remained and established an Italian Opera in a small theatre in Capel-street, which had its rage for two or three seasons and then was heard of no more, but the impressario remained, with more pupils on his hands than he was able to attend to. My father’s house was his house of refuge; it had many advantages for him—a table where he was always welcome, and a piano-forte, an instrument which had only recently, in Dublin, succeeded to harpsichords and spinnets.
Musical rehearsals in the morning or the evening, or whenever they
could be performed, and a regular rehearsal every Sunday evening, led to the foundation of
the Philharmonic Society in Dublin. By an odd coincidence, another lessee of Covent Garden,
Dr. Fisher, the divorced husband of Madame Storaci, and the first violinist of the age, was
tempted over to Dublin immediately on his return from his tour in France, Italy and
Germany, and a long visit to that royal fanatico per la
musica, Frederic the Great. He
| 80 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
A foreign valet in showy livery, bearing a magnificent violin case, in crimson and gold, which he deposited in the middle of the room, was followed by the entrance of the great professor, who stepped in on tip-toe, dressed in a brown silk camlet coat lined with scarlet silk, illustrated with brilliant buttons, and a powdered and perfumed toupée, so elevated as to divide his little person almost in two. His nether dress was fastened at the knees with diamond buttons, and the atmosphere of the room was filled with perfume from his person. He kissed my father on either cheek, and my mother’s hand with such fervour, that she was left in doubt whether the gallantry were profane or indecent.
With the tact of a man of the world, he opened his violin case and presented my mother with a tour de gorge of Brussels’ lace, which some German princess had given him for his jabot. My sister and myself received each an embroidered aurora-coloured pincushion stuffed with bergamot. From this time, the two eminent maestri continued the favoured guests of my father, to the infinite disgust of my mother, who, knowing no foreign language, and hearing no other spoken at her table, took an earlier flight than usual to her house at Drumcondra.
| MY MOTHER. | 81 |
Upon the occasion of these musical meetings, my sister and I usually crept in and hid under a table, in ecstasy at all we heard. Signor Giordani was so struck with our musical sensibilities, that he expressed his surprise to my father that he did not have us taught, young as we were. My father’s answer I have never forgotten, and I am sure it had no inconsiderable influence on my future life.
“If,” said he, “I were to cultivate their talent for music, it might induce them some day to go on the stage, and I would prefer to buy them a sieve of black cockles from Ring’s End,* to cry about the streets of Dublin, to seeing them the first prima donnas in Europe.” This sentence I understood later—and respected.
On looking back to this period, it seems to me, that our female visitors were few.
I only remember one theatrical family who belonged to our circle, that of Mr. Robert Hitchcock, an English gentleman, acting-manager of the Theatre Royal, and author of a history of the Irish stage, of great dramatic and historical interest. His accomplished and beautiful wife and daughter were received in the most respectable society of Dublin, particularly of the legal class. The young lady, in very early life, became the wife of an eminent barrister, Sir Joshua Green, who, as Recorder of Dublin in 1820, received George the Fourth on his first entrance into the second city of his empire.
Another of our lady visitors is at least memorable
* As famous for its cockles as Malahide for its oysters. |
| 82 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
She delighted to talk of the Doctor to my father, of which my mother sometimes complained, for though she adored The Vicar of Wakefield, she always called the author a “rake.”
Amongst other incidents which I recollect, was the mysterious visit of a lady, who was one day jolted up our court in a sedan-chair with close-drawn curtains; she was received by my father alone, for my mother withdrew and locked herself up in her bedroom until she went away.
This lady was no other than the celebrated Mrs. Billington, the daughter of Madame Weichsel—
That light that led astray” |
A curious incident happened in connexion with Mrs. Billington’s name. Soon after her departure from Dublin, it so happened that the officers of the Royal Barracks had got up The Beggars’ Opera travestie, and they had prevailed on my father, who was a favourite guest at their mess, to act the part of Polly Peachum to the Captain Macheath of Mrs. Brown, one of the prettiest fairy-like little actresses in the world; my father stood six feet high in his petticoats, but so strong was his resemblance to Mrs. Billington, who had recently played the same part, that he was hailed with “three cheers for Mrs. Billington.” If there was any foundation for the supposition which assigned to her a filial relationship, it would be curious to trace her fine voice in musical descent from “Clasagh na Valla.”
Mrs. Billington married in very early girlhood and most unhappily. She died, however, full of years and wealth; her house in Brompton was the resort of musical amateurs, and her concerts were fashionable. The concert-room she built is still in good preservation.
Curran’s lines “On Returning a Ring to a Lady,” were addressed to Mrs. Billington—they are very beautiful and passionate; but, perhaps, the following “On Mrs. Billington’s Birthday,” are more appropriate to the present pages:—
| 84 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
|
1.
“The wreath of love and friendship twine,
And deck it round with flowerets gay;
Touch the lip with rosy wine,
’Tis Eliza’s
natal day!
|
|
2
Time restrains his ruthless hand,
And learns one fav’rite form to spare;
Light o’er her tread by his command
The hours, nor print one footstep there.
|
|
3.
In amorous sport the purple Spring
Salutes her lips in roses drest;
And Winter laughs, and loves to fling
A flake of snow upon her breast.
|
|
4.
So may thy days in happiest pace,
Divine Eliza, glide along;
Unclouded as thy angel face,
And sweet as thy celestial song.”
|
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
