Colburn was very anxious to obtain Sir Charles and Lady Morgan as contributors to his Magazine, The New Monthly. He wrote to them to say that although the highest terms he gave were fifteen to sixteen guineas a sheet; yet, to her and to Sir Charles he would give “a bonus of half as much more, according to the quantity.” Lady Morgan consented, and set to work on an essay on Absenteeism, which the enemies of Ireland were always declaiming against, as the source of all the woes of Ireland. She set herself to show that Absenteeism was but the effect of ill-government and unjust legislation from the earliest period of England’s rule.
She began to read up for her materials and she found much help from the Pacata Hibernia, of which mention is made in her letters to Sir Charles, when she ran away to Dublin during her engagement, and would not return till she had almost driven him past his patience!
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Lady Morgan had seen in her youth so much of the misery of financial irregularity, that she had a sacred horror of all debt; she kept her accounts with a punctuality that would have been creditable to a Chancellor of the Exchequer. One entry has an interest, as showing that literary labour, when well done and industriously followed, is not the ungrateful, ill-requited task it has been the fashion to represent it. Lady Morgan worked hard and drudged, without feeling degraded by the process.
May 9.—This page is from an old Account-book.—By my earnings, since April 3, 1822, I have added to our joint-stock account, such sums as makes the whole £5,109 7s., from £2,678 11s. 6d., as it stood on that date. The several sums, therefore, vested in the Irish and English Stocks, and which, being my earnings, I have disposed of according to my marriage settlement, are—
| £ | s. | d. | |
| 5,109 | 1 | 1 | Reduced 3 per Cent. Annuities. |
| 680 | 0 | 0 | Irish 3½ per Cent. |
| 32 | 13 | 9 | Irish 5 per Cents. |
| 600 | 0 | 0 | Loan at Interest. |
| _____ | __ | __ | |
| 6,421 | 14 | 10 |
The above is not a despicable sum to have made by her own industry, and saved by her own thrift.
Lady Morgan used to tell an anecdote, that she once took
with her to one of the vice-regal balls,
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“I have brought your Excellency an offering, a letter of the woman you loved best in the world, a letter that will interest you.” Lord Wellesley took it, but not without a look of slight surprise. The packet was not of course opened then, but the next morning, before she was up, Lady Morgan received the following letter, accompanied by the gift of a beautiful silver case to hold perfume bottles.
I am very grateful to Lady Morgan for the perusal of this letter. It is written by Prudentia Trevor (sister to my mother) who was married to Charles Leslie, of Monaghan; it is franked by my grandfather, Arthur Trevor, the first Lord Dungannon. It must have been written from Bryntrinalt, in North Wales, in the year 1761. I was born in Grafton Street, Dublin, 1760, in a large, old house, afterwards pulled down, opposite the Provost’s house. I was taken to England, 1767, where my family attended the coronation.
The above note is written in pencil. The essay on Absenteeism had become a more
important work than Lady Morgan at first contemplated, and she
| 190 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
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Sir Charles and Lady Morgan came over to London for the season of 1824; and Lady Morgan described the incidents of her life in letters to her sister.
Imprimis,—We have three and ninepence to pay for
the last packet, charged overweight; but as I suspect it was the “chillies bulletins” that kicked the balance, I am
quite satisfied to pay any sum for the productions of the most original writers
of the age,
| 192 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
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We have just got notice that Lord Byron’s funeral takes place on Monday. Morgan is to go. His name is on the list; so are all the Whig lords. We could not bring ourselves to go and see him laid in state.
Our dinner at Dick’s (Quintin) was sumptuous. We had the house of Mulgrave, Lady Cork, Lord and Lady Dillon, Sir Watkin, and others,—Lord Mulgrave’s daughter,’ Lady Murray, is a charming person. They are particularly civil to us, and we dine there next Friday; and, on Wednesday, we are to meet the Duke of Wellington and Lord Hertford at Lady Cork’s.
Campbell came to breakfast with Morgan, and they went together to the funeral of poor Lord Byron. The public wish was that he should be buried in the abbey, but his sister would have him buried in the family vault, and insisted on his funeral being a peer’s funeral, from which the vulgar public, the nation, was to be excluded. There would not have been a single literary person there, but Rogers and Moore (his personal friends), had not Morgan and Campbell, at the last moment, suggested others. All was mean and pompous, yet confusion: hundreds of persons on foot, in deep mourning, who came to pay this respect to one of the greatest geniuses of the age. Thomas Moore takes tea with us this evening, before we go to Lady Cork’s Whig party. Did I tell you of the gentillesse of some of the managers of the theatres? They have sent me keys of private boxes?
| 194 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I can no more. God bless you all, good people; and love me as I love you. S. Morgan.
In allusion to Lady Morgan’s love of general society, her political friends looked doubtingly on her London season of this year; her friend, the Honourable Mrs. Caulfield, niece of Sir Capel Molyneux, the fine old Irish gentleman and “patriot,” who had registered a vow not to encourage Lord Lieutenants until the act of union should be repealed,—this daughter, as great a patriot as himself, wrote to Lady Morgan,—“I will not affront you by supposing that you will suffer by the ordeal your patriotism and your radicalism are undergoing. I will only say that I shall congratulate you and human nature if you end your gaieties among the Tories without a slight degree of contamination. I am alike enraged at your abuse of Dublin (though as to society, it is just) and at your idea of adding to the number of those you yourself write against by becoming an absentee. True friendship shows itself most in misfortune; and the riches, the society, the comforts, of London and of England should only attach an Irish patriot more strongly to his country,—the land of sorrow and suffering. I trust neither the variety, scenery, wealth, nor society afforded on the Continent or in England, will ever tempt us to have a home in either, but that like a captain to his ship, we shall not abandon poor old Ireland so long as our rulers allow our lives to be safe and of any use to it.”
The tone of the “friends of
Ireland” was then little
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The following letter from Lord Cloncurry is given as containing the views of an Irish landlord on the subject of poor laws for Ireland.
Lord Cloncurry, when the Honourable Valentine Lawless, had been mixed up very actively with the proceedings of the “United Irishmen.” He was arrested in May, 1798, confined for about six weeks in the house of the king’s messenger, in Pimlico, and then set at liberty with an admonition. On April 14, 1799, he was again arrested “on suspicion of treasonable practices.” The “Habeas Corpus” was at that time suspended. He was examined before the Privy Council, was committed to the Tower, where he endured a somewhat rigorous imprisonment, until March, 1801, when he was discharged on the expiration of the “suspension;” without having had any regular trial. He suffered much in health; and domestic afflictions fell heavily upon him during the twenty-two months of his imprisonment. The lady to whom he was engaged to be married, died of sorrow and anxiety on his account, his father also died, and to avoid the contingency of confiscation, left away from him the sum of seventy thousand pounds; this, together with the disorder that his affairs fell into, made his loss in a pecuniary point of view a sufficiently heavy fine.
| 196 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I see by the papers that I owe you sixteen shillings and
eight pence on the Greek account, which you can either receive from Val. or
hold over in terrorem against me.
Your observations on the Poor Laws, and the prospect of introducing them into
Ireland, are founded on the best principles of human political philosophy, and
I would only act in opposition to them from a feeling of the utter hopelessness
of our situation, and from the idea that they may ultimately be one means of
bringing about that change which all parties allow to be necessary. The case of
Ireland is so different from that of any other country, that as a mere Irishman
I think quite differently from what I would as a citizen of the world. What
could be more silly or atrocious than the Corn Laws? An Englishman voting for
them should have been sent only to Bethlehem or the hulks, yet I voted for
them, as I knew my countrymen never taste bread, and the same, bad as it was,
gave us much English money. Now the Poor Laws will not, I think, ruin the price
of land as you expect, but will lower it, and perhaps cost me twelve or fifteen
hundred per annum; but as no tenant can pay more than he already does, the
landlords must be answerable, as in the case of tithes—thus the Poor Laws
will be an indirect absentee tax—the desire to abolish it will join the
upper
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I am truly sorry Lady Morgan should feel one moment’s illness. I am interested for her as an Irishman as well as a sincere and grateful friend. We have got a capital house here, and the place is beautiful and pleasant; if you could come to us for a couple of months we could make you and your dear lady very comfortable.
I want to consult you as to an application from Staunton for an advance of one hundred pounds on his security, for the purpose of re-establishing the Morning Herald. I would most willingly give one or two hundred pounds for a clever, thorough-going Irish paper, to be managed by a committee; but though I always take the Evening Herald, it is too polemical and too personal, and too full of long, drawling, priest-written stuff to do any real good. I have no objection to aid Staunton with fifteen or twenty pounds; but for any farther advance I should like the security of a committee. I wish you and Curran would turn this in your minds, and see whether we could not establish what is so much wanted.
PS. Our M.D. here is an Irish Papist, brother to Councillor Scully. Balls and cards here every week, to the great comfort of Miss Bryan.
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