In the most awful moment of my life, I was not without
aid and solace; my sister was with me, my brother-in-law, and my niece
Sydney Jones and her husband came to
me immediately, and I was removed from my own house to lodgings, whilst all the
wretched business that necessarily followed my most miserable loss was
arranged. After that, I accompanied my sister to Brighton, where I was received
by the dear, kind family of Horace
Smith, with affection and sympathy.
| 482 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
July 28.—Everybody makes a point of having me out, and I am beginning to be familiarised with my terrible loss. I go in and out of drawing-rooms, and “sit at good men’s tables,” and submit to the influence of the laughing-gas of society. I was told, only the other day, “I was so brilliant at somebody’s dinner;” all this is very contemptible, but it is inevitable.
I could read now, if I had sight—once, and so lately, I never missed my eyes! One thing cheers me—my beloved sister comes to me soon, and will meet under my roof her beloved children and mine—the all that is left me now.
London is the best place in the world for the happy and the unhappy, there is a floating capital of sympathy for every human good or evil; I am nobody, and yet what kindness I am daily receiving!
| DEATH OF SIR CHARLES MORGAN—1843. | 483 |
If I were not incapacitated by a weak sight and a heavy heart, and above all, by the eternal “qui bono?” that now impedes every flow of thought, and checks every tendency to action, what amusing memoranda would I not set down from the ceaseless anecdotes dropped by the congress of visitors, foreign and home, that daily fill my little salon. Poor, dear, kind Sir Mathew Tierny has just been here; his loss, like my own, is irreparable, and of the same nature.
