Lady Morgan was still engaged in completing Florence Macarthy, when Colburn went to press with it early in March, though it was not more than half finished. He had his own reasons for pressing forwards the publication. He had an idea. This idea was to follow up the success he had had with the work on France, by producing another of a similar class upon Italy.
In March, 1818, Colburn wrote to
Sir Charles and Lady
Morgan, proposing they should pay a visit to Italy that year, and write a
work upon that country, similar in scope
and design to the one that had been so successful on France; Lady
Morgan to write the observations and sketches on men, manners, and the
things worthy of note; Sir Charles contributing the chapters on the
state of the laws, the influence of politics, and the condition of science and education.
He offered them two thousand pounds for the copyright. They closed with the offer, and he
wrote to thank them, declaring that their frank acceptance of his offer had put him in
fresh spirits. He urged them
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On their way to London Sir Charles and Lady Morgan remained one night at Holyhead, the spot she had so often visited when going to her old friend, Lady Stanley. The dear friend was dead, and here is Lady Morgan’s record of her visit to the empty shrine.
“This is the first time I arrived at Holyhead without the hope of seeing dear Lady Stanley standing at her own gate, with Sir John on one side and Susanne on the other with her shawls and dog. The gates were now closed, and all looked gloomy and desolate.”
Colburn had engaged rooms for them in Conduit Street, and they were soon surrounded by all the gaiety of London. Colburn was in high good humour, and so enchanted with Florence Macarthy, in reading the proofs, that in the enthusiasm of the moment he rushed out and bought a beautiful parure of amethysts, which he presented to Lady Morgan, as a tribute of admiration, and perhaps, with a little hope of keeping her in good humour. The whole of their stay in London and Paris, en route to Italy, has been minutely chronicled in the Odd Volume,* and there is no further need to allude to it. It was a pleasant season of visits and
* Published by Bentley, 1858. |
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“You are not to suppose we spend all our time in idleness, for we study hard in our different departments. I give an hour to Italian every morning, and have began a course of history, ancient and modern, to rub up my memory before touching classic ground.”
Italy was not then the accessible holiday tour it has since become. There was enough of difficulty and adventure to give the journey a dash of the heroic to Lady Morgan’s imagination, which loved to set all things in theatrical array.
Whilst in London she received the following letter from Madame Jerome Bonaparte. Madame Bonaparte had returned to America, where she must have found her position more irksome than in Paris, if her wrongs had not been too great to leave room for petty vexations.
I have not received a line from you since my arrival in
America, which I regret more than I can express to you. I wrote you a very long
letter describing the effect your work
on France produced on its transatlantic readers. The demand was so
great, that it went through three editions with us. I assure you that your
reputation here is as familiar and as great as in Europe, where you are so
justly admired. I wish
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I have letters from Paris which say De Caze, the Minister of Police, is created a peer, and is to marry one of the Princesses de Beauveau, whom you know.
Qu’en pensez-vous? It appears
very strange to my
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Paris offers too many agréments, too many agreeable recollections—among the latter you are my greatest—and I think with pain that I shall perhaps never see you again.
Mais cela n’empêche pas que je vous prie de lui
dire—that I recollect him with pleasure and regret, and
that I beg to be remembered to him. I suppose you will return to Paris, where I
hope you will be happy and pleased; it is very easy to be pleased and happy in
your situation, because every one is pleased with you, and you are loved
whenever you choose to be so. The French admire you so much, that you ought to
live with them. Suppose you were to come to this country; it is becoming the
fashion to travel here and to know something of us, and I assure you that if
you would spend some time here you might find materials for an interesting
work—de toutes les
manières, you would make any country interesting that
you wrote about. I wish I could return to Europe; but it is impossible—a
single woman is exposed to so many disagreeable comments in a foreign country;
her life, too, is so solitary except when in public, which is not half the day,
that it is more prudent for me to remain here; besides, I have at present only
eleven hundred pounds a-year to spend, which you know make only twenty-
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Adieu, my dear Lady
Morgan—il ne faut pas que je
vous vous ennuye davantage. Make my best love acceptable
to Sir Charles, and ask him to think
sometimes of me. Write to me, I entreat you. J’ai plus que
jamais besoin de vos lettres pour me consoler de tout ce que j’ai
perdu en vous quittant pour revenir dans mon triste pays. Have
you a good college in Dublin? I might send my son there in two years, perhaps,
as I cannot
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A letter from Lady Morgan to her sister, written on their route to Paris, is a curious picture of what travelling was in comparatively modern times. We seem to be divided by a great gulf from those days,—as wide as that which separates us from the feudal times.
Here we are, my dear love, after a tremendous expense at
the hotel at Dover, where we slept last night, and embarked at twelve
o’clock this morning, in a stormy sea. The captain remained behind to try
and get more passengers, and the result was, that we remained tossing in the
bay near two hours, almost to the extinction of our existence. In my life I
never suffered so much. As to Morgan, he
was a dead man. The whole voyage we were equally bad; and the ship could not be
got into port,—so we were flung, more dead than alive, into a wretched
sail boat, and how we got on shore I do not know. It rained in torrents all the
time; but the moment I touched French ground, and breathed French air, I got
well. We came to our old
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We leave this early to-morrow, and shall be in Paris the next day, please God. Lafayette is to come up for us to take us to his chateau; until, therefore, I learn the post town of La Grange, direct to the Hotel d’Orleans, where we shall go on our arrival in Paris. I feel myself so gay here already, that I am sure my elements are all French. A thousand loves, and French and Irish kisses to the darlings.
The travellers passed through Paris and Geneva into Italy. In Florence, they met Tom Moore, then troubled with his leg. In Lady Morgan’s papers is a little note which may be given for the sake of the story that follows.
This leg of mine seems inclined to turn out rather a
serious concern, and the sooner I avail myself of
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This “leg” had been an ill of long standing. Moore refers to it in several of his letters to his mother in the previous year.
Lady Morgan used to tell, in a very droll manner, a story about a visit that Sir Charles paid to Moore whilst he was laid up with the leg of which he complains in the preceding note. Moore was a good Catholic, or at least very orthodox in his opinions; Sir Charles was neither. On this occasion, after examining and prescribing for the leg, he sat down on the bedside and entered into a physiological and metaphysical discussion. Moore, for a time, sustained his part, until he became somewhat hardly pressed, when he exclaimed—
“Oh, Morgan, talk no more,—consider my immortal soul!”
“Damn your soul!” said Sir Charles, impatiently—“attend to my argument.”
Argument was not the strong point in Moore.
Moore mentions this conversation; but does not make a story of it.
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