Lady Morgan was searching in all directions for information about Salvator Rosa’s pictures. Amongst others, she wrote to Lady Caroline Lamb, who interested her brother in the subject, and to the Duchess of Devonshire. The Duchess’s answer contains gossip about pictures and other matters. The writer of this letter was not Georgiana, the beautiful, electioneering Duchess, but the second wife of the Duke (Lady Elizabeth Foster) who died in 1824.
I should not have delayed so long answering your
interesting letter, if I had not been almost in daily
160 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
We have had a severe winter for Rome; and even to-day,
though very fine here, we saw snow on the Alban Hill. A Marchesa
Farra Cuppa has begun an excavation at Torneto, ancient
Tarquinia, which has excited a great degree of interest. A warrior with his
lance and shield was discovered entire, but the first blast of air reduced it
to dust. She gave me part
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Lady Caroline Lamb had written to her brother, the Honourable William Ponsonby, to ask him for information about Salvator Rosa for Lady Morgan. The information contained in his letter is interesting to those who admire, or collect, his pictures.
I send you all that I can recollect about Salvator Rosa’s pictures. I must have
some account in town
162 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
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A letter from General Cockburn to Lady Morgan, with the result of his enquiries about Salvator Rosa’s works; he was the author of a dissertation on the Passage of Hannibal over the Alps.
I have at last got into the Chigi palace. The Duchess of Devonshire was there the same day,
and
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Done by Salvator Rosa no more Than by Jacky Poole or
Lord Glandore. |
From Croker’s ill-natured lines on one of our poor friend J. Atkinson’s plays. The Philosopher, not like any print I ever saw of Rosa, and there is no other picture in the palace or in Rome even reported to be a portrait of him.
The Duchess also
took Camacini to the capitol to see the Magi, called
Salvator Rosa’s; our verdict,
a vile performance, not worth sixpence, and
certainly not done by Rosa,—and appeal against this
if you please. There are two magnificent and genuine pictures of his here, one
in the Colonna Palace, Prometheus chained
to the Rock, and the Vulture devouring him, horribly well
done. The other is an altar-piece in the church of St. John, Dei Fiorestini;
namely, the Martyrdom of Sts. Cosmos and
Damian on the pile, but the fire, instead of burning
them, by a miracle, burns their persecutors, which it would not have done, had
such unbelievers as you and Sir Charles
been on the pile; and old Sardinia would willingly have you both on such a pile
if he could, and en attendant, he burns your Italy whenever he can lay hold of a copy. I
wish the old rascal and the two Ferdinands, Naples and Spain, were to
suffer martyrdom,—but I should be content to hang or throw into the
sea,—not liking torture. I saw the librarian this day, at the Vatican,
and he swears as hard as any
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Now you have got all the information which Rome can produce on the subject, so go to press as fast as you can. We shall remain in dear Rome another month; if you answer this, direct—Venice, poste restante. I shall not be more than three weeks going there, from hence, and that will just give time for you to receive this, and for us to hear you are well, wicked, and radical as ever.
From Lady C. Lamb and her brother, William Ponsonby, there is a joint letter, containing further information about Salvator Rosa’s pictures.
I hope you will not impute it to me that your questions
are not answered; the truth is, I am in the country, enjoying this most
beautiful time of year, and my brother
has written me word that he will make all the inquiries you desire, but how
soon this may be I cannot tell. Lord Cowper
will write down on paper about one only. The two at Panshanger are landscapes
in the
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My sister sends me
this letter to forward to you, and apologizes for not having done your
commission earlier, because she was in the country. I must do the same, because
I am in town, and really have had my time completely taken up by business;
besides, as you must know, the great houses from which our information is to be
obtained, are not always the most easy of access. Not to lose more time than
necessary, I thought it better to write direct to you and recall to your
recollection our old Dublin and Priory acquaintance, than send any little
information I might be able to glean round by Brocket. As for Phryne, I cannot say I ever was
much struck with the modesty and decency of her attire and countenance. She and
168 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
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The Duchess of Devonshire, along with much kind interest expressed in Lady Morgan’s work, gives a little grave remonstrance on her Ladyship’s habit of hasty judgment and rash assertion.
I send you a list of the pictures which are known to be
Salvator Rosa’s, and those that
are attributed to him. You will see what you attribute to the ignorance or
indifference of Prince Chigi to the treasure which he
possesses, is a proof of his being neither ignorant
170 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I have taken with pleasure all the pains necessary to procure you the information which you wanted, but do not be offended if I say that I should have felt still more pleasure in doing so were you less unjust to this country; fallen they are certainly in power, but not in intellect, or talent, or worth of every kind; and your stay in Italy was far too short to admit of your appreciating them as your own undoubted talent would have enabled you to do, had you staid longer and derived your information from other sources. You said to me once, that were you to write your journey in France again, that you should write it very differently. I am sure you would say the same were you to come again into Italy; every monument of antiquity is attended to with the greatest care, and every picture that requires it is either cleaned, or noted down to be so. The commission of five attend on every new discovery to give their opinion as to the merit of what is found, and most productive have this year’s excavations proved to be in sculpture. Mosaic repairs go on, and new buildings in every part of Rome, and the Braccio Nuovo alone merits, in the Duke of Devonshire’s opinion, that one should come from London to Rome were it only to see that beautiful new museum, begun and completed by a pope from the age of seventy-nine to eighty-two!
I know not any capital so adorned by its sovereign as
this is. To know with certainty the different ob-
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Baini is living, he is a man of great musical science, he composed a fine Miserere, which was sung this year; but Salvator improvised his compositions, and no written ones can be found. Monseigneur Mai made diligent search for me, but in vain. If I can be of any further use to you, pray write to me. General Cockburn is still at Rome.
Events of the day are passing which may deserve blame,
but the efforts,—the heroic efforts which the Greeks have made and are
making, are worthy of all our admiration, and will end, I hope, by restoring
that interesting country to its situation in Europe. There is matter to animate
your genius, and I hope you will
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Once more adieu, my dear Madam, and pray let me know when your life of Salvator Rosa will appear; I have no doubt of the success which it will meet with.
So much for Salvator Rosa and his pictures. Whilst Lady Morgan was busy rehabilitating the name and character of a man of genius, she was undergoing a very unpleasant ordeal herself.
Sir Charles Morgan had been knighted by an act of personal favour, before he had done any thing ostensibly to merit the distinction, and it had been made a handle for ill-natured sarcasm; but vague ill-nature gave place to special hostility. Lady Morgan had made herself too marked a personage in the liberal interest to escape the hatred of the opposite party. The Tory clique desired to mortify her by any means, they were not particular about their weapon, and they certainly hit upon a method which was likely to mortify her to their heart’s content.
The right of the Lord-Lieutenant to confer the honour of knighthood
was impugned. It was speciously argued that since the union, the king alone in person could
confer honours. The titles of several
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In the absence of Sir William Betham, I beg leave to state for your information, that on Tuesday last the judges of England assembled at the house of Lord Chief Justice Dallas, in London, in pursuance of the royal mandate, to take into consideration and decide upon the disputed power of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to confer the honour of knighthood. Two of the number were unable to attend from illness; but the other ten were of opinion unanimously that the Lord-Lieutenant did possess the power, and that knights created by him were knights throughout the world.
I expect the return of Sir
William Betham from England in the course of this week, when the
above solemn decision will be given to the public in a man-
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Amusing letter from Lady Caroline Lamb, complains of false reports. She suffered more than most persons from this “common lot,” though “candid friends” would have told her she brought it on herself.
I have been much annoyed to-day by a paragraph in two
papers about my turning a woman out of doors—pray if you see or hear of
it, contradict it. As I hope for mercy, it is a most shameful falsehood made by
a very wicked girl because I sent her away. She came to me as Agnes
Drummond, a spinster, and ten days after hid a man in Brockett
Hall; the servants, in an uproar, discovered him in the evening; he said first
his name was Drummond, then
Fain—it was natural we should desire him to walk
out, in particular as Agnes Drummond had confided to me,
only the day before, that she had been married, when sixteen, to a thief of the
name of Fain, who had married her and carried away her
watch and property. I trouble you
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I have, I think, the very person Lady Cloncurry would like; she is about
twenty-two, very clever, good, and with a good manner, writes a beautiful hand,
knows music thoroughly, both harp and pianoforte. She is attached to an old
mathematician in Russia—a Platonic attachment; his name is
Wronsky, so that as they are not to marry or meet for
ten years, she is very anxious to go into any respectable and comfortable
family where she will be well treated; she draws, paints uncommonly well, and,
provided she had a room to herself, a fire, pen, ink, and paper, or a book, I
dare say she will make herself comfortable anywhere; how far she would like
Ireland, I guess not, as her views turned to Italy or Paris: if, however, your
lady will communicate with her herself, I will send you her answer; she is a
person of strict morals and great propriety—a little high, but
excessively sweet-tempered. She is by no means expensive, yet to go to Ireland
I think she would ask eighty guineas—is that too much? She would dedicate
all her time to the children after ten in the morning to six at night;
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There are other letters from the same fascinating and gifted, but most unhappy, lady. They are full of a whimsical grace, and might have been written by a bird of Paradise for all the practical sense they evince. Lady Morgan was very much attached to her, and tried to inspire her with common sense; but of that it holds good, as Rubini said of singing, “Monsieur, le chant ne s’enseigne pas.” She was full of generous impulses and good instinct; but she was too wilful either to hold or to bind. More than most women, she needed to be wisely guided, and this wise guidance was precisely the “one thing lacking” to her brilliant lot.
I thank you from my heart for what you said Sir Charles would do; and now, as you say, for
business. It is a disagreeable thing to recommend any one, and in particular
when the education of children is a point at stake. I therefore shall write you
word for the inspection of Lord and
Lady Cloncurry, all I know
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She has, certainly, good abilities and considerable knowledge. Of the latter, perhaps rather too much, as it makes her somewhat positive; but there is no conceit: her presumption is in her manner. It appears to me that there is a good chance of her doing well; but Lady Morgan must be aware that the power of instructing is almost a gift of nature; that many of the best instructed themselves are very deficient in it. She must also be aware that much temper and management is necessary to enable a person to like well the situation of a governess, which, in every family, will be beset by some of the difficulties and annoyances which Lady Morgan has well described in O’Donnel.
Lady Caroline’s story of a Governess is continued in her correspondence along with other stories, not so positive in their human interest.
Thank you and thank Sir
Charles for all his kindness about my fairy tale, Ada Reis,
although I think
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Whoever has reviewed Ada Reis must not think me discontented, neither unhappy. The loss of what one adores affects the mind and heart; but I have resigned myself to it, and God knows I am satisfied with all I have and have had. My husband has been to me as a guardian angel. I love him most dearly; and my boy, though afflicted, is clever, amiable, and cheerful.
Dear Lady Morgan, let me not be judged by hasty works and hasty letters. My heart is as calm as a lake on a fine summer day; and I am as grateful to God for his mercy and blessing as it is possible to be. Tell all this to Sir Charles; and pray write to me. Your letters amuse me excessively. I would I had anything clever or pretty to pay in return.
Joseph Hume, then M.P., for Middlesex, was a
correspondent of Sir Charles. The present generation
180 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
As it is my intention to bring the Church Establishment of Ireland before the House of Commons in the ensuing session, I shall be obliged by your sending me any authentic accounts of the value of the Church property, i.e., of the bishops, deans, and chapters of any diocese, that I may lay it before the public as completely as possible.
The cause is so good a one that I wish to be in moderation, and within bounds, as exaggeration always hurts our cause.
The system of tithes ought to be entirely abolished, as every attempt, like that of the last session, to bolster up so preposterous and a bad system must tender to render the change too violent when it shall be made; and the late conduct of some of the church militant will only hasten the event.
Until a radical change takes place in the Church establishment and Church property, there will be no peace in your wretched country, and every aid to affect these changes will be a real benefit to the country.
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To expose these evils of the system of tithes as it has been working in the last year, it would be of great use to me if you could cut out of any newspapers all the cases that can be depended upon, where burnings, murders, the interposition of the military, the destruction of cattle, &c., &c., have taken place on account of the tithe system, that they may be brought into array at once; also the conduct of such of the clergy as have taken the law into their own hands, or have behaved harshly so as to produce disturbance or mischief.
Can any account be obtained of the number of persons who have been murdered, hanged, and transported in the last year in Ireland on account of the tithes’ disputes?
All these, with documents to enable me to prove them, will be most valuable in forwarding the object I have in view, an exposure to effect a complete change.
I shall want as much information of that kind as you can collect for me before the middle of January, to be prepared to agitate the subject by the middle of February. Callous as the ministers are to proceedings that disgrace the country, and regardless as they are to the misery produced in Ireland by their conduct, and indifferent as they are also to the enormous charge on Great Britain to keep a whole nation under military power, I am confident that nothing will rouse the public indignation so much as a proper exposure of all these evils and their causes.
If you will zealously aid me, you will, I trust, aid the best interests of your own country; and in your desire to do that, I hope there cannot be a doubt.
182 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I shall, therefore, expect your early attention to my requests, whilst
PS.—I this day delivered to the charge of Mr. Felix Fitzpatrick a copy of Mills’ Essays on Government, on Jurisprudence, and the Liberty of the Press, of which we have printed one thousand for circulation; and I hope you will approve the sound doctrines they contain.
In October 1823, the Life and Times of Salvator Rosa appeared in two volumes
octavo. Lady Morgan said she wrote the work to the sound
of Rossini’s music It was her favourite of all
her works, and was written because she thought Salvator
Rosa had never received justice from posterity. In her preface to the first
edition she says, “should it be deemed worthy of enquiring why I selected the Life
of Salvator Rosa as a subject of biographical memoir in preference
to that of any other illustrious painter of the Italian schools, I answer that I was
influenced in my preference more by the peculiar character of the man than the
extraordinary merits of the artist. For admiring the works of the great Neapolitan
master with an enthusiasm unknown perhaps to the sobriety of professed vertu, I estimated still more highly the qualities
of the Italian patriot, who, stepping boldly in advance of a degraded age, stood in the
foreground of his times, like one of
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Having begun her work with this intention, Lady Morgan carries it through. She has produced a very clever, romantic biography, obscured by fine phrases and lighted up by exaggerated antitheses, but she has collected her materials with industry, and put them together as carefully and brilliantly as a Roman Mosaic. She is too much of a partisan to carry her hero out of the quagmire in which she found him, for she fights at every body and every thing that strikes her imagination by any association of ideas, so that Salvator is generally thrown down and lost in the fray. A more tranquil style and a simpler statement of her facts, with less colouring, and fewer epithets, would have given her testimony more weight, and effected her object better, if that were a single-minded desire to write the true biography of a calumniated man of genius. But Lady Morgan could never forget or efface herself. In her novels that did not signify; she kneaded together her characters and her story, and each had a suitability which gave a charm to the whole. When she meddled with history and facts she wrote of them as though they possessed no more substance than scenes in a novel, and this takes away from the dignity and reality of her historical facts, and hinders the reader from doing justice to the ardour and industry with which she sought materials to support every assertion on which she ventured, in spite of the rash rhetorical exaggerations which marked her style,—when she was not writing works of fiction.
Those who wish to obtain the facts of Salvator Rosa’s life, to form a judgment of his life and labours,
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Some of the incidental observations in Salvator Rosa are amusing, as for instance, when speaking of Louis the Fourteenth, who pensioned Bernini and neglected Poussin, she said, “this idle prodigality of kings is the result more of ignorance than of vice. If they usually know little of the arts, they are even still less aware of the value of money.”
Lady Morgan received five hundred pounds for the
copyright. It went into a second edition in 1825, when it was reprinted in a single volume.
It was the intention of Colburn to have prefixed a
portrait of Lady Morgan; she sat to Lover for the miniature, which has been before referred to. It was to be
engraved by Meyer, but between the painter and the
engraver, the result was such unmitigated ugliness, that
Colburn would not let it appear, and he presented Lady
Morgan with a beautiful velvet dress, as a peace offering for the annoyance.
Colburn and Lady Morgan had many quarrels
about this time, chiefly occasioned by Lady Morgan insisting that
Colburn made “great gains” out of her works, and did
not pay her in proportion,—an imputation which Colburn highly
resented. He complained much of her “hard thoughts” of him, and he stoutly
maintained that although Lady Morgan had wonderful genius, yet it was
to his own good publishing that her works were indebted for their great success;
nevertheless,
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In spite of the high prices he paid, Colburn seemed to justify Lady Morgan’s suspicions of his “great gains,” for he this year separated his circulating library from his publishing business, and took a house at No. 8, New Burlington Street, next door to Lady Cork, “who, he feared would be rather angry at his presumption, coming next door to her, shop and all!”
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