Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Sydney Owenson to Robert Owenson, 20 August 1811
Baron’s Court,
August 20, 1811.
My dearest Dad,
I am the least taste in life at a loss how to begin to
tell you what I am going to ask you—which ![]()
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is, your
leave to marry Doctor Morgan, whom I
will not marry if you do not wish it. I dare say you will be amazingly
astonished; but not half so much as I am, for Lord and Lady Abercorn have
hurried on the business in such a manner, that I really don’t know what I
am about. They called me in last night, and more like parents than friends,
begged me to be guided by them—that it was their wish not to lose sight
of me, which, except I married a friend of theirs, they might, as they never
would acknowledge a Dublin husband, but that if I
accepted Morgan, the man upon earth they most esteemed and
approved, they would be friends to both for life—that we should reside
one year with them, after our marriage, or if they remained in Ireland, two
years, so that we might lay up our income during that time to begin the world.
He is also to continue their physician.
He has now five hundred a-year, independent of practice.
I don’t myself see the thing quite in the light they do; but they think
him a man of such great abilities, such great worth and honour, that I am the
most fortunate person in the world.
He stands in the first-class of physicians in London,
having taken his Doctor’s degree at Cambridge; his connexions are
excellent, &c., &c., and in person very distinguished-looking. Now tell
me what you wish, for I am still, as ever, all your own loving and dutiful
child,
Anne Jane Hamilton, marchioness of Abercorn [née Gore] (1763-1827)
Daughter of the earl of Arran; in 1783 she married Henry Hatton (d. 1793), in 1800 John
James Hamilton, first marquess of Hamilton. She entertained literary figures at her villa
at Stanmore, among them Lady Morgan.
Sir Thomas Charles Morgan (1780-1843)
English physician and philosophical essayist who married the novelist Sydney Owenson in
1812; he was the author of
Sketches of the Philosophy of Morals
(1822). He corresponded with Cyrus Redding.
