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Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Sydney Owenson to Alicia Le Fanu, 28 March 1806
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Preface
Vol. I Contents.
Prefatory Address
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Vol. I Index
Vol. II Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter IV
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Vol. II Index
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Londonderry Hotel,
March 28th.

Your letter is precisely ten minutes in my possession, and while dear papa is playing away, on an old Cremona, some fine old Irish airs, and a young musician, at the corner of my writing-table, is taking down the melody, here am I, with my poor whirlgig brain full of basses, trebles, and accompaniments, and my warm, impulsive heart, full of the most respected object of its friendship, scribbling away to her as fast as I can, and humming “Shelah na Conolan,” while papa plays and little Orpheus writes. Apropos of
264 LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR.  
these national airs, so tastelessly and so shamefully neglected, I am endeavouring to collect some of the best and least-known, and to put English words of my own to their wild and plaintive strains, and I am taking them down from my father, in preference to any one else, because he plays and sings them in the true attic style of Conomarra, and I really believe is more à porté to the idiomatic delicacies of Irish music than any man living, besides having the best and most original collection of airs. There are three or four (to which I have adapted words) universally known, though never sung in the true strains of Irish musical sentiment, and to which words had been put so vulgar and barbarous as to throw an air of ridicule over the whole. Of these are the “Cooleen,” whose date could not be ascertained in the reign of Henry the Eighth, “Savourneen Deelish,” “My lodgings on the cold ground;” the words of the latter, however, have a simplicity which I am sure mine will want, though I have endeavoured to imitate them. Have you heard “Shelah na Conolan,” an air that breathes the very spirit of pathos; “Kathleen O’Tyrell,” playfully arch; “One touch of her finger would do your heart good;” one of the same character “Drimadu,” heart-breaking and wild, and “Grace Nugent,” whose melody is tinctured with Italian elegance, and is the best of Carolan’s love songs; by way of experiment, I put Italian words to “Planxy Power,” which is itself truly Italian, and having sung it, con amore for one of our rustic amateurs, they acknowledged it at once to be one of Sarti’s soul-dissolving airs, especially as it
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was written on the same page with “Lungi.” Now, whether it is in my national enthusiasm or my national prejudice, or call it what you will, I really believe this country to have a music more original, more purely its own, more characteristic, and possessing more, the soul of melody, than any other country in Europe. The Italians, who now give the key-note to the music of every other country, have, in my opinion, none of their own. Their’s is the music of science. I have at this moment by me about a hundred and fifty ancient and modern Italian ballads, as sung by the Venetian gondolieri, and by the Roman and Tuscan peasantry, and if the character of national music is anywhere to be found, it must be in those airs, breathed in the “native wood-notes wild” of the natural and unscientific musician. But in these wretched ariettes there is only a monotonous recitative strain without melody, and incapable of being harmonized before the modern scale of music was given to Europe by the monk Guy Aretin; the sweet airs of my native country were as conformable to the laws of modern compositions, as the Iliad of Homer to the rules of criticism before Aristotle drew up his fundamental rules for forming an epic poem; besides that, then and ever, they breathed the sweetest intonations of the passions of the heart, and so now I have beat the Italians out of the field, and my triumph is complete, and there is no more to be said about the matter, only give me your applause! Oh, but there, I intended all this letter should be about a sarsenet mantle and knowing little hoods, which give one that delightful disin-
266 LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR.  
voltura air I love so much; but then papa’s violin is ringing in my ears, and then, like other wandering luminaries, I keep moving in my own sphere by the power of harmony (for music is my sphere, and I believe that philosophy is a little obsolete); but no matter, it answers my purpose just now as well as the Copernican or Newtonian systems combined. Pray do you observe, I have given an armistice to my “Il Penseroso” mood, and my good spirits hold an armed neutrality between my real and my fancied sorrow, and that though I am “most musical,” I am not “most melancholy,” and that, in short, I am restored to my usual bizarre random tone of mind. Oh, but Gresset, from whom you quote the happiest lines of his happiest poem—I never could get a full feast of that charming writer, but only at intervals snatched a little bonne bouche that incited my appetite without satisfying it. I adore those socializing poetic powers that smile in his social and familiar works. His patriotic ode is very fine; his Merchant is equal to anything of Moliere’s, and there is a sentiment in his ode, “Au Roi,” which ought to be written in letters of gold. “Le cri d’un peuple heureux est la seule eloquence qui sache parler aux Rois.”

As I have not unpacked my books nor music, nor shall do so whilst here, I have been thrown upon the rational resources of painting watch papers, and rifling the riches of a circulating library. There is a fine romance by a fine scholar of Cambridge, where an Italian lady, in a glowing Italian summer evening, who (after a day’s travel in Italian scenery) goes into
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an Italian inn, and calls for a good fire and a hot supper. This, and a thousand other little incongruities observed in the stuff I have been reading, convinces me of the truth of Walpole’s assertions—that even to write a novel requires a considerable portion of general information, knowledge, and intelligence, besides talent—not that any of these requisites were necessary to show my poor author that a bower, al fresco, would have been more grateful to his fair traveller than the kitchen comforts of an English inn, besides making his heroine talk of a pounded cow in the 13th century, and in Florence. Pray ask your learned Domine, Tom, if they pounded cows in those days in Italy, or whether it was not introduced in a later age by some tyrant English farmer. The name of this intemperate work is Isabel, and you can have a thousand such for sixpence per work, that have gone through three or four editions, which shows that the fools carry it all to nothing in the present day; for my part I know not what the destiny of my bagatelle may be, for like La Chossel, “Je n’ai pas entrepris de plaire à tons les sots.” Now tell me, in your next, you are well, and then I promise you you shall have no more voluminous farragoes of this kind, for you may perceive I am acting up to Moliere’s definition of a physician, “Un qui conte des fabrioles dans les chambres des malades,” and am I not at this moment in your little boudoir prattling away to you, as I hope soon to do. I envy you the society of Mrs. Holman.

S. O.