October 27.—Poor Talma!! one of the earliest and kindest of my French acquaintance. The account of his death has just reached me. Of all the eminent men I knew in Paris in 1816, there now only remain Lafayette, Jouy, and Humboldt. Talma died of intestinal schirrus. Monsieur Du Puytren was desirous to perform an operation which he was convinced would have saved him if he had had strength enough to undergo it, but he was deterred from resorting to it by the extreme weakness to which he was reduced. The Archbishop of Paris repeatedly called at his house, but Talma declined to see him. Talma did not suffer any acute pain, he only complained of having a cloud before his eyes. Talma refused to see the Archbishop or any priest, saying that he would not deny the forty brightest years of his life, nor separate his cause from that of his comrades, nor acknowledge them to be infamous. The present Archbishop has endeavoured to obtain the repeal from the Court of Rome of the excommunication pronounced against actors. Talma was born in Paris, in January, 1760. His father was a dentist, who afterwards exercised his profession in London with great success.
October 30.—A ballad singer was this morning
singing beneath my window, in a voice most unmusical
| 232 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
“Och, Dublin city there’s no doubtin’ Bates every city upon the say; Tis there you’ll hear O’Connell spoutin’, An’ Lady Morgan making
tay; For ’tis the capital of the finest nation, Wid charming pisantry on a fruitful sod, Fighting like divils for conciliation, An’ hating each other for the love of God.” |
Just received the following note from Archibald Rowan, sending me the history of the “United Irishmen” for my “O’Briens and O’Flaherties.”
As there is no certainty from what seeds or flowers the bee extracts its sweets, H. Rowan sends Lady Morgan a book, which, it seems, was published after he left Ireland, and, till he met with it the other day, he did not know it existed.
