At the beginning of 1835, Sir Charles and Lady Morgan and one of their nieces went to Cheltenham, where they remained some time. The record of her sojourn there is slight; but the following extracts from her diary, and a few letters, indicate the chief events of this period.
January 8.—This place is the grand asylum of mediocrity—the Paradise of old women—the Olympus of old men—the resort of the refuse of all societies: viz., the dull, the old, sickly, or tiresome; and yet it has its aristocracy!
Well, with all this, we have found a few with whom it is
pleasant to live, and with them we live a great deal. The dear, old, agreeable,
and cordial Corry’s—James Corry, once the Corypheus of the Kilkenny theatricals. They have given up
Ireland, like others, and come to live in a pretty cottage here; our other most
agreeable, but new acquaintances, the family at
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January 10.—Moore, talking to Corry on the Whigs having done nothing for him, said of Lord Holland, Lansdowne, and Lord John Russell, “I had no reason to expect it; I live upon equal terms with Lansdowne, and when he is at Bowood I dine there constantly; now there is Macaulay, Lansdowne gave him a place of two or three thousand pounds a year, and never asked him to dinner once. These great men seek people in different ways, and for different purposes. I am quite contented.”
And so he is. This is so Irish, and so much an affair of temperament, that there is no arguing about it. Moore is an epitome of genuine Irish character, feeling, fancy, genius, and personal vanity overwhelming all—I know him well.
Last night we had some charming music at the Whitmore’s—my little Olivia sang divinely; but the dowagers and their turbans were too much for me.
Lady Charleville has one of the finest
minds that ever took a wrong direction. The ingenuity with which she argues on
false principles, the eloquence with which she does the honours of error, are
curious; but if you force her to step out of the track
in which her position has placed her, as a great lady, reared in the
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A letter from Sir Henry Hardinge to my husband about the compensation for his office. Nothing definite.
I have had some correspondence with the Treasury on your subject, and was in hopes to have induced them to have made a more desirable arrangement, They adhere, however, to that of their predecessors, and when I return to London, which I do this day, you shall hear from me officially; the exact amount of the retiring pension not having been as yet communicated. The division shall be expedited without delay.
I hope Lady Morgan enjoys the fine air of Cheltenham, and that her unrivalled talents are employed in amusing and instructing all classes and ages.
I am going to see Lady Clarke. I beg to offer my best regards to Lady Morgan, and am, my dear Sir Charles,
On leaving Cheltenham, Sir
Charles and Lady Morgan proceeded to
London, where they were joined by
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This pretty district, the principality of his highness the Duke of Westminster, is just the locale that suits me, hanging on the verge of the world’s bustle, not in it. The district of fashion, with all the advantages of seclusion; a garden before, though a royal one, and space and fresh air everywhere. In short, I am charmingly lodged. Yesterday, Morgan and I dined with Lord and Lady Charleville; left my dear Olivia at home. Lady Charleville growing finer by time,—noble, better and pleasanter. Lord Charleville a fearful monument of vitality, surviving all but its infirmities. His son, Lord Tullamore, a Lord in Waiting, a Tory, a dandy, an exclusive. He talked to me of the class and order to which he belonged! I told him the Irish story of the Baymishes of Cork, which set them all in fits of laughter, and even the servants were obliged to rush out of the room to hide their faces: so much for the class and order to which I belong.
March 2.—Received, to-day, a most gracious and
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Last night I met Moore at Lady
Stepney’s—looking old and ill—much out of
spirits, and, he says, weary of London after a few days’ residence. He
had come to publish his History of Ireland, but Longman and Co. found it was not half bulky
enough, so he was sent back to enlarge it. He would not sing. I delivered a
message to him from Lady Charleville.
“Tell him he must, as an historian, rectify an error in the life of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald.” He praises Lord
Camden (then Viceroy) for giving Lady Louisa Conolly permission to see the dying Lord Edward; and he accuses Lord Clare of cruelty for refusing her
permission to do so. The case was the reverse. Lady Louisa
threw herself at Lord Camden’s feet, and he refused
her petition. Then she flew, in her despair, to Lord
Clare, who said, “I cannot—dare not—give you a
written permission, but I will go with you to the prison myself.”
They went together, at night. When they came to the door of the miserable room,
Lord Clare said, “I cannot leave you alone
with the prisoner, but I will send away the jailor and leave the door open,
and watch before it myself. I shall hear
nothing.” Moore seemed much annoyed when
I told him this. “I have been bored to death,” he said,
“by friends of Lord Clare, about this,
already;
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Last night, after our dinner at Lady Charleville’s we proceeded to Mrs. Skinner’s, Portland
Place—ou par example,
Parnassus and Port Royal—the Sorbonne and the Antiquarian society—a
quadrille. I was the lioness of the night, malgri
moi! and there I sat, couched in a sort of a bay window,
and there was presented to me all manner of notabilities, and scores of people
from all corners of the earth. Amongst others, Mrs.
Somerville, the mathematician, all celestial and descended from
her solar system, the learned commentator of La
Place! and Miss Herschel,
member of the Royal Society. Mrs. Somerville struck me to
be a simple little woman, middle aged. Had she not been presented to me by name
and reputation, I should say one of the respectable twaddling chaperones one
meets with at every ball, dressed in a snug mulberry velvet gown and little cap
with a red flower. I asked her how she could descend from the stars to mix
amongst us? She said she was obliged to go out with her daughter (who was
dancing with my niece in the same quadrille). From the glimpse of her last
night, I should say there was no imagination, no deep moral philosophy, though
a deal of scientific lore and a great deal of bonhomie. She had long wished to know me, and
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Then up comes Bob Montgomery, the poet—he bows to the ground, a handsome little black man. I asked him if he was Satan Montgomery? and he said he was, so we began to be very facetious, and we laughed as if the devil was in us, till he was obliged to make place for Sir Alexander Creighton! physician to the late Emperor of Russia, author of a treatise on Insanity, a most playful and agreeable old gentleman; we knocked up a friendship for life, and should have gone on gossiping nonsense, but for Godwin, to whom Sir Alexander resigned his place. Alas, for Godwin! Caleb Williams Godwin, with whom I almost began my literary life at a dinner at Sir R. Phillips’s, my first publisher! He talked of Curran, Grattan, Hamilton Rowan, whom he had known in Ireland—wit, eloquence, chivalry!—now all dust! Then we got on the subject of his poor son-in-law, Shelley, and his daughter, whom I shall go and see as soon as she comes to town.
Dinner at Mr. Dilke’s—sat near Allan Cunningham—immense fun—Willis, the American poet, and other celebrities.
After our pleasant dinner went on to another congress at
Portland place, where we met all the arts and sciences, and where we spent the
night on the stairs,
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Dined yesterday at Mr. Courtney’s, M.P., the great epicure,—an exquisite dinner,—but Courtney so occupied with his dishes, he never spoke to his guests. I sat beside one of the greatest wits of the day, Sidney Smith! what a charmer! so natural, so little of a wit titré, so bon enfant, that the delicacy of his wit appears the natural result of a fine organization, and of a happy mind ready to enjoy and to receive as much pleasure from others as he confers upon those with whom he converses. He comes to see me to-morrow.
Yesterday, had a long visit and sofa conversation with Lucien Bonaparte,—his Italian ideas, no monarchy without an aristocracy. The reason France is all, à tors et à travers, is a wish to remove the peerage. He thinks with me, that Cardinal Richelieu was the founder of the revolutionary system. He said it was Richelieu who turned the cold, brave chivalry of France into the valetaille d’anti chambre of an effeminate despot. Speaking of the French, he said, “at the outburst of the Revolution of ’88, there were a good many people in France with common sense. The Emperor used to say to me that the French were essentially a monarchical people, and we used to deny this; but everything he ever said has come out true since.”
April 3.—My journal is gone to the dogs,
je n’en
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Mrs. Smith, Moore’s first love, and the subject of his graceful song,
“I’ll ask the Sylph that round thee flies,” |
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It was no common pleasure to receive a letter from you, and I beg you to believe that I know how to value such a favour, given in the midst of all your bustle and gaiety.
I heard with pleasure of your triumphs at Cheltenham; but I knew you would not settle there. It is very well for a few weeks; but I see that dear London will get possession of you at last. It is a dismal thought that you are to leave us, and you are really too sceptical as to the number of those who will feel your absence from Dublin a serious loss.
Of course you have heard of Mrs Hemans’ illness. She has long been given over. It is
three weeks since her physicians owned they had no hopes, and now a few days
will rob the world of one who will not be easily matched. She was past remedy when Dr.
Graves gave her into the hands of Dr.
Croker. The latter has, I believe, done all that could be done;
but the constitution was gone. Her fortitude of mind and sweetness of temper
shine out to the last. She is quite resigned, and will not allow a mournful
look or
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Sad, most sad has been her history! Those who love her, ought to rejoice when she is at peace; a lofty mind, ever soaring above the realities of life, essentially poetical, and never otherwise; ardent, sentient, enthusiastic, and all this contained in a frame of the most fragile delicacy. What chance had she here in Dublin, and with an utter disrelish for the kind of society that was attainable? When she was in the county of Wicklow last August, her anxiety to remain there was like the thirst of fever. Poor thing, I wish I had never known her.
Robert has been hunting the whole winter, till he is more like a horse than a man. I am hoarse with praying him to marry and be respectable; but he grows more hardened daily.
If you have heard that we are to have drawing-rooms in the daytime, as in London, I am sure you have laughed at the idea of it. Our whole turn out! our equipages, our poverty, alas! need the friendly cloak of night.
May.—The other night at Lady Clare’s; found myself seated by Pozzo di Borgo (the object of thirty
years’ despotism). He has a pension settled on him by the Tory
government, and still paid him by the Whigs—a disgrace to England. All
the three daugh-
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Babbage’s party last night very pleasant; got into mon petit coin—had a minister, a philosopher, a reviewer, a politician, and a dandy, successively sur la sellette. Vanderweyer charming, spirituel and observing. He inspires one with views and opinions similar to his own, and we agree upon most things. I told him I had received a letter from our mutual good friend, Rogier, in the morning, full of cordiality and warm feeling—reminding me of the old happy days of ’33.
July 21.—Last days in London.
With a heavy heart, as with a presentiment of the misery that awaited me. Even before leaving London, at seven in the morning, my dearest Morgan looked ill, and complained. At the end of the first stage he was taken ill—this was Barnet, and before we reached the second stage it was an interval of agony to both. He became very faint; I fanned and bathed his face with eau de cologne—it was very hot—and becoming fainter, he fell lifeless into my arms. As we were galloping down hill at the time, the carriage could not stop. At last we drew up at a little pothouse inn, the Black Bull, London Colney, where he was taken out of the carriage helpless, and thrown on a wretched bed.
No medical aid nearer than St. Alban’s, four miles off; thither I sent. What an interval! His extremities cold; his hands blue; congestion coming on; I, helpless, hopeless, watching all this!
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The arrival of surgeon Lipscomb—his active practice—covering him with hot tiles, mustard, blisters, bleeding him profusely, in a word saved his life—and mine. If there is desolation on earth, and misery in its supreme helplessness, it is the situation in which I was placed. I dare not think of it.
I discovered I was in the neighbourhood of Royal Porters! and making my dreary position known to Colonel and Mrs. White, they came to invite us to the great house; but this was impossible, so they supplied us with fresh flowers, fruit, and wine, and with the delight of my dear husband’s hourly recovering under my eyes, I began to think the Black Bull a very liveable, enjoyable place.
I filled the little Sunday parlour with flowers, and heard the whole history of Mrs. Black Bull, the hostess, and of her son, the butcher; and in the evening, when Morgan slept, I took my seat on a bench before the door with “boots” (Sam Edgell) and “mine host,” with a pot and a pipe on a round table before us, with such stories of highways and byeways!—a new view to me of humanity and society.
Wayworn travellers stopping and economizing a few
halfpence in the matter of refreshment—and the poor weary women—and
the pleasure I felt in turning a pint of small beer into a pint of good ale,
which was thought so noble on my part—and the joke cracked by
Sam, with the natty, returning postilion—for
little Sam, a ricketty fellow of two feet and a half high,
the Asmodeus of the Black Bull, was
evidently the wit titré of London Colney! Then the lovely, quiet
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The great skill and vigilance of Dr. Lipscomb brought back my husband and life to me. In London he might have died for want of that close attention paid him by this country doctor. We have had more opportunity of becoming acquainted lately with this order of medical men. What talent in obscurity! What worth unknown! while charlatanism is fed and flourishes in this world, beyond all talent and all worth.
July 25.—While seated on the stone bench of the Black Bull, the rector approached me with a look of curiosity and doubt, and said he had heard of Sir Charles’ illness, and he had come to offer his services to us both. He told me he was a Divine of two pluralities, the rector of London Colney, and something else that I forget, and while we sat gossiping before our cabaret, he said he could scarcely believe that the companion of Sam and of the master of the Black Bull was Lady Morgan of whom he had heard so much, &c. As the dew and darkness were falling, we adjourned to the little sanded floor parlour and a pair of tallow candles, and talked of books and the fashions of the neighbourhood of London Colney. In short, my parson was a parson of gentility, and an agreeable man of the world.
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August 1.—Dublin.—After an anxious and fatiguing journey, and having been on the point of losing all that was most dear to me, and necessary to the future remnant of my life—my husband, after having witnessed the distress of my sweet Sydney in the dreadful illness and threatened death of her almost bridegroom husband, I have at last reached wretched Dublin, the capital of wretched Ireland. I found our house in a wretched condition, half-painted, half-repaired, and full of dawdling drinking workmen, so we were obliged to take up our abode with my sister and Sir Arthur Clarke. Morgan laid up with a second attack; I, obliged to trudge over, at eight in the morning and remain till two with the workmen, who made a strike and left their employer, all because he employed a man whom they did not like.
August 9.—Tom
Moore, the poet, arrived yesterday, so Clarke went to ask him to dinner to day.
Clarke met him in the street going to mass, near the
Metropolitan Chapel, and accompanied him; he accepted the invitation, but
conditionally—à
l’ordinaire—if some great person, who he was
pretty sure would or had asked him, did not renew his claim. This is his old
way of accepting invitations. His old friend—his and mine—Edward Moore, of Cleveland Row, told me a
pleasant story of Tom having made three of those conditional promises in one day, and got through two
of them. Clarke was struck with the earnestness with which
he performed all the acts of grace during that picturesque service; nobody,
however, knew him, or noticed him. Clarke told the beadle
it was the great
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As the great man (who turned out to be old Jockey Hume of the Treasury, whose brother Tom came over with t’other Tom) did not send the invitation expected, Moore dined with us. We were only en famille with the addition of Mr. Reynolds Solly. Moore looks very old and bald, but still retains his cock-sparrow air. He was very pleasant; but rather egotistical and shallow, justifying all we ever thought of his little mind and brilliant imagination. He declaimed against the spread of knowledge and the diffusion of cheap literature, as destructive to wit and talent of the highest order; pronounced that the throwing open of high and royal society would leave no play for all those epigrammatic touches and charming literary effusions (in which he by-the-bye excels); above all, he said the unclassical and uneducated people meddling with literature (Gad-a-mercy fellow!), and the dilettanteisms of the age were destroying genius. I said, “But if the greater number are to be the happier, the wiser, and the better for this spread of knowledge, the goal of all human effort and labour is obtained?” with many other things that seemed to strike him as new.
After dinner, he sighed and said, “I walked
through the streets of Dublin all day, and not a human being knew me. I
suppose they will, before the week is over.” He exclaimed
bitterly against writing-women, even against the beautiful Mrs. Norton. “In short,”
said he, “a writing-woman is one unsexed;” but sud-
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August 12.—In the midst of all my workmen, philosophers from the British Association have made incursions—Babbage, Lardner, Whewell, Sedgwick, and about a dozen other Oxford and Cambridge Fellows—and Wilkie, too; so I throw open the house to them, tale quale, to-morrow evening. But I am worn out, miserable about Morgan, and Sydney being away from us all.
August 14.—My soireé very fine, learned, scientific, and tiresome! Fifty philosophers passed through my little salon last night.
My sister, Lady Clarke made a song about the philosophers, which she sang to them with great effect.
|
I.
Heigh for ould Ireland! oh would you require a land
Where men by nature are all quite the thing,
Where pure inspiration has taught the whole nation
To fight, love and reason, talk politics, sing;
’Tis Pat’s mathematical,
chemical, tactical,
Knowing and practical, fanciful, gay,
Fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
There’s nothing in life that is out of
his way.
|
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|
II.
He makes light of optics, and sees through dioptrics,
He’s a dab at
projectiles—ne’er misses his man;
He’s complete in attraction, and quick at re-action,
By the doctrine of chances he squares every
plan;
In hydraulics so frisky, the whole Bay of Biscay,
If it flowed but with whiskey, he’d stow
it away.
Pun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
There’s nothing in life that is out of
his way.
|
|
III.
So to him cross over savant and philosopher,
Thinking, God help them! to bother us all;
But they’ll find that for knowledge, ’tis at our
own College,
Themselves must inquire for—beds, dinner
or ball;
There are lectures to tire, and good lodgings to hire,
To all who require, and have money to pay;
While fun and philosophy, supping and
sophistry,
Ladies and lecturing fill up the day.
|
|
IV.
Here’s our déjeuner, put down your shilling,
pray,
See all the curious bastes, after their feed;
Lovely lips, Moore has
said, must evermore be fed,
So this is but suiting the word to the deed;
Perhaps you’ll be thinking that eating and drinking,
While wisdom sits blinking, is rather too gay;
But fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
Are all very sensible things in their way.
|
|
V.
So at the Rotundo, we all sorts of fun
do,
Hard hearts and pig-iron we melt in one flame;
For if love blows the bellows, our tough College Fellows
Will thaw into rapture at each lovely dame.
There too, sans apology, tea, tarts, tautology,
Are given with zoology to grave and gay;
Thus fun and philosophy, supping and sophistry,
Send all to England home happy and gay.
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Mrs. Smith (Moore’s old flame, and the subject of his poem, “I’ll ask the sylph that round you flies,” came to me on Friday, and said Moore wanted to get up a play for himself, and Calcraft, the manager, said that I ought to bustle about it and go. Then comes the strangest advertisement, viz., “That whoever wished to see the illustrious bard, &c., &c., might do so at the theatre on such an evening!”
August 16.—The theatre was crammed last night. The Great Unknown, and The Gentleman in Search of a Religion, and—popularity, was called forth by the galleries, with “Come out here, little Tom! Show your Irish face, my boy; and don’t be ashamed now!” Tom descended from the manager’s-box to the stagebox, and there made a speech, and was encored and bravoed.
Sunday, Moore dined in Kildare Street, and spoke in raptures of his reception at the theatre. We had, also, Mr. Coombe, of Edinbro’ (the phrenologist).
Wednesday last we lighted on Hayward, translator of Faust, in Sackville Street. We asked him to dine with us the day after. Just as we were sitting down, en tiers, enter Professor Whewell, of Cambridge, so we seized on him, and we had a rather awkward but pleasant little dinner party. Awkward, because our Irish cook was drunk, our English butler insolent, and the dinner bad.
September 8.—What times! what a country is
Ireland! The O’Connell
“rint” already accumulated for this year, is thirteen thousand four
hundred and fifty pounds—a census of the gullibility of the poor Irish,
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September 9.—So the Lords have rejected even the moderate amendments of the Church Bill; and wretched Ireland, or rather the independence of England, and her efforts for Ireland, are baffled in all their expectations; not a grievance removed, not an abuse abolished, not a step taken for the improvement of education or the peace of the country—the “Church Establishment,” the filthy corporations, the Orange powers, sheriffs, magistrates, jury, placemen, and even habitués of the Court—all the elements of misrule, are retained in their primitive force. Ascendancy still flourishing, Catholicism undermining, and the nation prostrate to both! The turbulence of the Irish is coupled with their stupid acquiescence in every wrong, and oppression and intolerance. For six hundred years they have borne a greater sum of oppression, injustice and wrong than any other people in the world. Their submission is their ignorance. There is a long and very new chapter on this to be written—and then—!
Since my return I have been given up to my usual
domestic duties. Morgan begins the day
with his face buried in the newspaper while at breakfast, then sets in to read
and write, if he can, the whole of the rest of the day, in a close room by a
hot fire. I try to get him out at two o’clock, and then there is a
painful struggle; if I succeed, I can see he is impatient to come home, and
then, after dinner, he reads till bedtime, and so reads and writes to the end
of the
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A more blameless life was never led; some great occasion would soon rouse him; he is always ready to meet an event with energy, he has no external world; his world is within, and were it not for his fidgetty wife, he would never look out of it. He is inherently shy, timid, proud, anti-social, and neither acts nor writes in reference to society or its opinions, but always to its interests. He does this on a principle in his nature, a love of liberty and of ease in his own person, and desiring the same for his species.
September 18.—We are going to-day to Portran (the Evans’) thank God!
Two hard-headed English lawyers, Jos. Evans and Mr. Blackburn, M.P. I was baited by the first for the amusement of the second. Mr. Evans himself always attacks me with some bitterness about my fashionable friends and my aristocratic tastes. They have all got something, these Irish Liberals—one brother a place of one thousand five hundred a-year, the other his election for Dublin, and Blackburn a commission. We, who live with aristocrats, that is people of good taste who happen to bear some rank, have got nothing, asked for nothing, and never can get anything.
Whilst here, Morgan, who is ill and weak, would take no exercise, so my sole object in coming here was disappointed.
October 2.—A charming note from Lord Morpeth,
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October 6.—Dinner at Lord Morpeth’s—what a charming host! The absence of all the official morgue by which we have so long been oppressed, was delightful, The new officers of the Crown amuse me very much by being the least amusing men possible—iron-bound men, all their muscles rigid, like men who, living out of society, have lost the play and movement of gesture which men of the world exhibit from long practice; but what uncompromising minds and characters! What honest men! How much and how long they have been wanted, and here they are, thank God, after five hundred years of struggle!
October 11.—Just heard of the deaths of Bellini and of Don
Telesfora de Trueba—these two fine emanations of
talent—extinguished, and oh, the blockheads who go on living and boring
for ever! I think it was in the summer of 1833, on our way to Belgium, that
Captain Marryatt brought
Don Telesfora to us in St. James’s Place. He was
one of the refugee victims of Ferdinand “the
Beloved,” whose tyranny deprived Spain of the services of
this able and estimable man. On the death of the king he returned, and was
elected member of the Chamber of Procuradores and secretary
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