I was showing my picture of Byron, this morning, to Mr. Lovett, of Lismore, of literary notoriety, and the conversation naturally turned on the extraordinary liaison of Lady Caroline and Lord Byron a propos to which, Mr. Lovett told me the following anecdote.
“One morning I sauntered into Scroope Davis’ lodgings, and threw
myself on a sofa; but finding both ends full of heaps of books, I said,
‘Why the devil don’t you put up shelves, and leave your friends
a place to sit on?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘those were
books left me by Byron, when he was
going away, and I have not yet disposed them.’ I took up some of the
volumes with interest, and lighting on Vathek, I said,
‘Oh, you must lend me this, I have never had it;’ and turning
over the leaves, I found a
poem in MS. addressed to Lady
Caroline Lamb, with some allusion to her conduct to her
husband. I read it aloud, and Scroope Davis, snatching
the book from me, said, ‘No, you
| THE O’BRIENS AND O’FLAHERTIES—1827. | 259 |
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me. |
This is the only line I can recollect.”
By-the-bye, Lady Caroline assured me, last August, that Byron’s last letter to her was sealed with Lady Oxford’s coronet and crest. That she had a presentiment, on receiving it, of its contents, and that having read it she fell into a swoon, and took to her bed in a wretched hotel in Dublin; and that her head and heart never recovered the shock, and never would.
August 10th.—Olivia and her three girls still at Jenkinstown, Kilkenny—well for them! whilst I am perched up in my two-pair-of-stairs dressing-room, breathing dust, and seeing nothing but neighbour Sweeney’s old house, and the carpets up and the curtains down, all ready for the workmen and our departure. What a pickle to receive Prince Pickle Mustard in, and on dreary Sunday evening, too, that direful day in Dublin!
We had just returned from a long, dreary drive, tired, cold, covered with dust, when a thundering knock came to the door—J. Thomas flew to open it; enter a creature, fine and foppish—a sort of a tartar turned dandy—who asked, in a foreign accent, for Lady Morgan.
Thomas, sulky as a pig, because he hates “my lady having them furriners,” cried, “I don’t think my lady is at home; but I’ll thry, sir. Who shall I say, sir?”
| 260 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
“The Prince Pucklau Muskau”!!!
Away went Thomas, tumbling down the kitchen stairs—
Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill (Morgan, with a bottle in his hand) —came tumbling after. |
I, like Miss Polly, tumbled up stairs to the drawing-room and stood in all my dust and dowdiness to receive l’Altezza, whom le cher J., announced as “Prince Pickling Mustard,” (just as last summer he persisted in calling Prince Cimatelli, “Vermacelli;”) Well, I put on the best face (a dirty one) I could on it, and endeavoured to excuse things. The Prince put me at once at my ease. He is a most finished fop. Hélas! I shall have to unpaper and unpack my room and ask him to dinner when he returns from Wicklow.
