Having with difficulty won his wife, Sir Charles Morgan had to encounter the greater difficulty of making their
married life answer the ardent promises and protestations with which he had invoked it. His
was a more than ordinary hazardous choice. His wife, accustomed to unlimited flattery,
general admiration and entire independence of action, to say nothing of the deference with
which she was treated by every member of her own family circle, was very imperfectly
prepared for the subordination and restraint of marriage. Her strong will and great
determination of character had hitherto been virtues; henceforth, they bade fair to become
inconveniences in her domestic life, whilst her entire control over her own resources
withdrew from her husband that power of the purse, which, in govern-
| 2 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
| FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. | 3 |
The first year was very stormy, not without seasons of fine weather,
but not “set fair.” Afterwards, the domestic atmosphere cleared, their mutual
qualities adjusted themselves, and, like the people in the winding up of a fairy tale,
“they lived happily ever after.” The works she wrote after her marriage take a
different rank to those she wrote previously, and bear
| 4 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Miss Owenson did not come to her husband portionless; she had saved about five thousand pounds, the proceeds of her writings; this sum was settled upon herself, and it was stipulated in the marriage settlement that she was to have the sole and independent control over her own earnings, whilst the reversion of Sir Charles Morgan’s fortune was settled upon the daughter of his first marriage.
The following letters to Mrs. Lefanu, give an account of her early married life at Baron’s Court.
You, who have followed me through the four acts of my comedy, seem to cut me dead at the fifth, and leave me to the enjoyment of my own catastrophe without sympathy or participation; not a single couplet to celebrate the grand event, not even one line of prose to say “I wish you joy.” It is quite clear, that like all heroines, I no longer interest when I gain a husband.
Since you will not even ask me how I am, I will volunteer
the information of my being as happy as being “loved up to my
bent” (aye, and almost beyond
| FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. | 5 |
Though living in a palace, we have all the comfort and independence of home; besides bed-rooms and dressing-rooms, Morgan’s study has been fitted up with all the luxury of a joli boudoir by Lady Abercorn (who neither spared her taste nor purse on the occasion). It is stored with books, music, and everything that can contribute to our use and amusement. Here “the world forgotten, and by the world forgot,” we live all day, and do not join the family till dinner time, and as chacun a son goût is the order here, when we are weary of argand lamps and a gallery a hundred feet long in the evening—we retire to our own snuggery, where, very often, some of the others come to drink coffee with us. As to me, I am every inch a wife, and so ends that brilliant thing that was Glorvina.
N.B.—I intend to write a book to explode the vulgar idea of matrimony being the tomb of love. Matrimony is the real thing and all before but “leather and prunella.”
This chapter I dedicate to Bess. Sir Charles desires me to assure you of his highest consideration: an enthusiast in everything, he is a zealot as to talent, and one of your old letters has roused all his fanaticism in your favour; he longs as much to know you as I do to see you, et c’est beaucoup dire! for that, I fear, for a long time there is no chance.
| 6 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I have just learned from Olivia that you are ill; it is quite too bad that you, who are so much to so many, should be so often laid up, while those who are nothing to nobody, are going about with health and spirits sufficient to bore and annoy all their acquaintances; but so it is in this best of all possible worlds! My little billet crossed your kind and delightful letter, which I have not answered just because I had nothing to say worth the trouble of poring your poor eyes over my illegible scribble; and next, because I keep writing to you in store, as children do their bonne bouche,—the best thing for the last.
A chance (studiously sought for) threw it in my way to speak of dear Tom to the Chancellor. He is himself a good old Christian, upon the good old plan, and the little sketch I gave of Tom as a primitive minister of a primitive religion, as one whose vocation seemed to have “come from above,” and yet as one “more skilled to raise the wretched than to rise,” seemed to please him. Shortly after, he asked me if he had not married a daughter of Dr. Dobbins!
I merely mention this to you, because the Chancellor has the disposal of the patronage of
the Archbishop of Dublin, and that he is to be entirely guided by the fitness
of persons to fill their stations, and not by interest or influence. He is a
most excellent churchman, and not at all a man to rebuter any application
| FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. | 7 |
Colonel Gore is your “slave and blackamoor.” The day he arrived here, in the midst of a dinner, silent and solemn as the dulness of bon ton could make it, he cried out, “Lady Morgan, I am under more obligations to your friend than to all the world besides.” “What friend?” “Why Mrs. Lefanu to be sure; she taught my Phillip to read Milton,” &c., &c.
I long to hear from you; by this I hope you have seen my dear Olivia; she is England mad, would we were all settled there. Here or there, partout où vous êtes, et partout où je suis, I must always be among the number of those who respect you most and love you dearest.
PS.—Poor, dear, excellent Bess is, I suppose, as usual, your nurse and companion. She is, indeed, the inestimable daughter of an inimitable mother, and in my opinion, her whole life has been active, useful, and of practical excellence. She is one of the sinners who devote themselves to the “nothingness of good works.”
The tone of the following letter is very much softened and subdued from the “saucy Arethusa” style of former tunes.
It will be seen that all the kindness and luxury
| 8 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I never answer your dear, kind, welcome, and clever
letters at the moment I wish to answer them (which is the moment they are read)
both for your sake and my own, because I wish to delay the moment of bore to you, and to keep in view a pleasure for myself.
To hold intercourse with you of whatever description, has always been to me a
positive enjoyment since the first moment I saw you, and that was not the least
happy moment of my life. I was then full of the spirits which create hope in
the mind. I was beckoned on by a thousand bright illusions, and it was a
delicious event to meet half way in my career such a creature as yourself. In
short, my dear friend, our physical capabilities for receiving pleasure wear
out rapidly in proportion to their own intensity, and those who, like me, see
life through the dazzling prism of imagination long before they are permitted
to enter it, must, like me, find the original infinitely inferior to the
fiction; still I have no reason to complain. I have associated myself to one
who feels and thinks as I do, and this is, or ought to be, the first of human
blessings; but his thoughts and feelings are still of a
higher tone—they are not qualified by that
light vanity which brings my character down to the
general level of hu-
| FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. | 9 |
You will laugh at this wife-like letter; but provided you do laugh, I am satisfied. Could you take a peep out of your secluded Eden at the vicissitudes and miseries of those who live in the world, you would hug yourself in your own “home-felt certainty” of peace, comfort, and competency. The worst of all human evils you never can have known—poverty! As Ninon says upon a gayer subject, “On peut s’en rapporter à moi.” I am, however, for the present, living upon fifty thousand pounds a year, and shall do so for another year if I choose; but although our noble hosts are everything that is kind and charming, we prefer a home of our own, be it ever so tiny. Since I wrote to you, we have lost the beautiful Countess of Aberdeen, Lord Abercorn’s favourite daughter. It was a heavy blow.
| 10 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I am delighted your winter has been cheered by the society of your new son-in-law, and the amiable Emma. My dearest Olivia comes here in June, if her health permits, and after that I must settle in England and she in Ireland. I am at work again; but with the sole view of making some money to furnish a bit of a house in London, which, coûte que coûte, we must have. My book will be a genuine Irish romance of Elizabeth’s day, founded on historic facts. I would not write another line, to add the fame of Sappho to my own little quota of reputation, did not necessity guide my worn out stump of a goose-quill. My imagination is exhausted, and those hopes and views which in the first era of life give such spring to mind, and such energy to thought, are all dead and gone. At present nothing would give me more pleasure than to meet you in London when we go there. We are daily expecting the arrival of Lord Aberdeen and his little daughters, and Lady Marian Hamilton, and shortly Lord and Lady Hamilton and their family, so we shall have a house full; but people are mistaken as to the pleasures of a large society in great houses—there is an inevitability about it that is a dead bore.
I long to hear how the dear little farm is going on, and
all the improvements. Is the pig alive? is Poll as brilliant as ever, and
Mrs. Jones wedded to her sentimental lover? And you? Do you walk about with the little black silk apron
and feed the pets? Pray write to me, and soon—directly; this I ask in the
honesty of earnest wishes. Sir Charles
requests I will say something for him. What can I say, but that he is
| FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. | 11 |
The genuine Irish romance that was to furnish the little house of our own in London was the O’Donnel. Lady Morgan happily changed her plan. Instead of an historical novel of the days of Queen Bess, founded on facts, she wrote a delightful sketch of the Ireland she knew so well.
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
