This girl’s letter from Miss Stanley is amusing for its details of fashions long since changed.
With the greatest pleasure and ease have I executed your little commission, and only hope it will meet with your approbation. I should have been something happier had you given me a hint of about what breadth you would have liked it, but what I have sent is between broad and narrow; and should you like more of that kind, or any other, pray send me a line, and I can procure it with the greatest ease. You particularly mentioned mitred lace, but I think the present fashion rather runs on the scolloped edge.
I shall be very glad of a few lines from you, announcing
the arrival and your opinion of the lace, but let the money remain in your
possession till a better
| 364 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
| FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN. | 365 |
Good bye, then, dear Miss Owenson, and believe me to remain ever,
I have just heard that the Duke of York has resigned.
Few letters are better worth reading than Lady Charleville’s, and her criticism on Ida is in curious contrast to what such a novel would suggest in these days. Although “social evils” and “pretty horsebreakers” are discussed with composure, as familiar themes, so much rhetorical female virtue in such hazardous situations as abound in this Greek novel, would drive the whole class of readers from their propriety.
I hasten to do away any painful impression you could feel
at my silence. I never received any letter from you since I left Weymouth,
which I answered from Shrewsbury. Your politeness and kind inquiries for my
health, after my having the pleasure of being known to you in London, were
quite flattering, nor
| 366 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I read Ida before it was all issued from the press, a volume being sent me as soon as sewed: and I read it with the same conviction of the existence of excellent talent, great descriptive powers; and in this work I find particular ingenuity, in the novel attempt to interest us for a woman who loved two; and for each of the lovers, the episode was happily contrived in this plan and executed with great taste and spirit.
I could have wished the situations had been less critical in point of delicacy, as the English gentleman has incurred great blame from all sides for having suffered her to escape; and the poor Turk too. The politics of Athens are ingenious; but, alas! our poor Emmet hanging so recently in our streets, does not suffer us to enjoy our miseries in any fiction for some years to come.
I have not read the Monthly Review, where it is criticised. I choose to be pleased
with what you write now; though I do heartily reprobate your putting off the
period of polishing and purifying your language for pique to those censors,
who, after all, may be the best of friends, if they point out a path so
attainable to fame. Assuredly to those whom God has given fancy,
| FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN. | 367 |
Now I hope I have fulfilled your notions of good-will by this essay on the fair Greek, and at all events effaced every idea you could have conjured up to scare away the recollections of politeness and sympathy for my sad state which you have often so prettily and kindly expressed.
This amusing letter of criticism and compliment, very Irish and jolly, from Sir Jonah Barrington, whose Memoirs, when subsequently published, made such a noise, reached Miss Owenson at the Marquis of Abercorn’s.
I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, not
because it is friendly, nor yet because it is flattering, but simply because it
was yours. Fate, alas! my grand climacteric is in view—my years are
beginning to outnumber my enjoyments, and abominable fifty tells
| 368 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
When your note arrived I was merged in politics—my circulation was moving historically slow—the head was in full operation—the heart a-slumbering—of course my state was drooping, and the theory of patriotism was sinking under the pressure of application. You changed the scene. Refreshing ideas crowded on my fancy, and gave birth to some of the best sentences I ever wrote in my life.
What an advantage you writers of fiction have. If Homer and Virgil had been confined to feet they would have been wretched poets. Milton triumphs over Hume because he treats of impossibilities; and Ovid eclipses Sir Richard Musgrave because he is somewhat more incredible. Fiction is liberty—feet, incarceration. Our correspondence is unequal—you write to a slave, I to a free woman; and I plainly see I must either curb my volatility or give up my reputation. In truth, I hate bagatelle—I wish it was high-treason. It has been my bane all my life, and you see I am trying to get rid of it. Be assured that in these days a good steady impostor, who cuts out his risible muscles, and ties his tongue fast to his eye-teeth, is the only person sure of succeeding, or, indeed, countenanced in rational circles; and as I have undergone neither of these operations I intend to die in obscurity.
But come, I had better stop this sort of farago in
| FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN. | 369 |
“When gods meet gods and jostle in the dark,” |
Of all your characters I love Glorvina most. I hate to doubt of her existence—like a
she Prometheus (as you are), I believe you
stole a spark from Heaven to give animation to your idol. I say all this
because I think the society in which one writes has a great influence over
their characters. You wrote the Novice in retirement—you wrote Glorvina
in your closet—but you wrote Ida in Dublin; and depend upon it, if you are
writing now, you will have your scenes and character in high life—Lady
B—— to the Duke of Q——, and
Lady Betty F—— to the Countess
of Z——. I really think luxury is an enemy to the
refinement of ideas. I cannot conceive why the brain should not get fat and
unwieldy as well as any other part of the human frame. Some of our best poets
have written in paroxysms of hunger. I really believe even Addison would have had more point if he had
less victuals. I dined a few days ago with the Secretary, and never could write
a word since, save as before mentioned: and in the midst of magnificence and
splendour, where you now are, if you do not restrict yourself to a
sheep’s trotter and spruce beer you will lose your simplicity, and your
pen will betray your luxury. I hope in a
| 370 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Upon reading over this letter it is easy to perceive my head is not perfectly settled. Have you any recipe to cure a wandering fancy? If you have, do let me have it, and you will, if possible, increase the esteem with which I am.
One of her friends at this time, whose notice she considered a distinction, was Richard Kirwan, of Cregg Castle, in the county of Galway, one of the most ancient and respectable families of Connaught, a province where few families condescended to date from a more modern epoch than the flood.
The Kirwans are the only aboriginal family who were admitted into the thirteen tribes of Galway. “As proud as a Kirwan,” is a Galway proverb.
Richard Kirwan was a distinguished chemist; and there is an account of him in the Book of the Boudoir.
Mr. Kirwan induced Miss
Owenson to write a History of
Fictitious Literature, which was published many years after as a
magazine contribution. Miss Owenson gathered her materials diligently;
but they always retained their alluvial character; they were brought together by the
reading of the moment, and likely to be carried away by the next current that set in.
Nothing she read ever seemed to become assimilated by the action of her own
mind—everything retained
| FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN. | 371 |
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