Many happy Christmases and New Years to all the family of
Bracklin, and very many thanks to my dearest Margo for her
welcome and charmingly written letter, which nearly equals C.’s in style
(who, however, promises to be the Sevigné of the family), and surpasses it in writing. Here
we are, singing, playing, and dancing away as merry as crickets, and ushering
in the seasons with all due merriment. So now for some little account of our
festivals. The other day we had upwards of forty people to dinner; among
others, Lord Dunally, Lord and Lady
Clonbrock, Honourable Miss
Dillon, the Vaughans, of “Golden
Grove,” whom I think I heard mamma mention to a great many other fine
people. We began dancing, without the gentlemen, almost immediately after tea.
I had the felicity of opening our female ball with Miss
PERIOD OF 1801. | 225 |
226 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Nothing can be pleasanter than our life at present; to-morrow we are to have Lord Norbury, and all the world to dinner, and music in the evening. We got a delightful piano and tambourine, and I do nothing but sing and play, and am much improved in voice and singing since you heard me. Do you know our house is not much more than half the size of Bracklin—everything in the simplest style; neither can I say much for Lord Clonbrock’s mode of living—there was a thousand times more show at Bracklin on a gala-day than we had at Latteville. My little girls are the best and most attentive creatures in the world, and if mamma and papa do not flatter, are making a wonderful progress; but you shall see them in spring, for we all go for two or three months to Dublin, from that to Ballyspellin Spa, and then make a tour to Killarney, and so back home; such is the plan laid down for the present; but give me Fort William, and I am content. Why do you force me to tell you my pupil’s names, or why cannot I answer you by writing Rosabella or Angelica? Alas! no, I must stain this sublime epistle by confessing their names are——Miss Bridget and Miss Kate: after that can you ask me to write more than that I am,