Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Journal entries: October 1831
October 1st.—I thought the
child’s ball, at the Stanley’s, a triste affair, or the contrast with
Lady Emily’s child’s ball
made it appear more so.
They were very civil; and Mr.
Stanley seemed as if he wished to be as unlike a minister of state at a child’s ball as possible;
he ran about and was even frisky, and at the ponderous supper (where there was
a smoking sirloin of beef at the head, and a cold round at the foot, two
turkeys and ducks at the side); he kept crying, “Why don’t you
eat; pray eat,” as if he was feeding the poor Irish at a soup
kitchen.
October 16th.—On my return
from Lucan, I find mon bon ami the
black volume, my journal white or blue, and unwritten still, on the writing
desk in my dressing-room; there it has lain for a month, and it actually
requires an effort of will to open and scribble in it. My life at Lucan was an
odd one, I was placed in a set I never was in before, such a place is the
mutual rendezvous of quizzeries of all sorts, and I should have died of it, but
for my Dominican monk, Father ![]()
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Fitzgerald, of Carlow (of whom and our romance more
hereafter), and his friend the head of the Dominicans, Father
Harold, and our own odd, clever, paradoxical friend,
Professor Macartney. We made a delightful little
coterie, and all the mediocrities were frightened out of their stupid wits.
Holy St. Francis! what a conclave in the midst of their
sanctity! for they were all saints, and vulgar saints. My arrival caused
universal dismay. Miss M——, the
archbishop’s daughter, ran away, others were about to follow her, but I
tamed them all. No Lady Huntingdon, had she
dropped among them, could have been more in the odour of sanctified popularity
than I was, after a while, and my life there was, in some respects, most
delectable,—air, health temperance, and occupation. I wrote there my two
most arduous Irish articles for the Metropolitan. Since our return, we have been
in perpetual agitation about the Reform bill, but I picked one gay,
light-hearted, agreeable evening out of the bustle,—a dinner and
soirée for Paganini. I asked him, not as a miraculous
fiddle-player, but as a study. He came into the drawing-room in a great coat, a
clumsy walking stick, and his hat in his hand (quite a Penruddock figure), and, walking up to me, made a regular set
speech in his Genoese Italian, which I am convinced was taught him by his
secretario; it abounded in Donnas
celebritissimas, and all the superlatives of Italian
gallantry. At dinner, he seemed wonderfully occupied with the dishes in
succession, and frequently said, “ho troppo,
mangiato!” at each dish, exclaiming,
“bravissimo!
excellmtissimo!” The fact is, I had ![]()
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copied a Florentine dinner as closely as I could, having
had a Florentine cook all the time we were in Italy; so, we had a minestra al vermicelli; maccaroni, in all
forms, &c., &c. I asked him if he were not the happiest man in the
world, every day acquiring so much fame and so much money. He sighed and said,
he should be but for one thing “i
Ragazzi” the little blackguards that ran after him in
the streets. In the evening, I took him into the boudoir; we had a tête-a-tête of an hour, in which
he told me his whole story; but in such an odd, simple, Italian, gossiping
manner, half by signs, looks, and inflections of the voice, that though I can
take him off to the life verbally, I can give no idea of him on
paper;—still here is the outline. His father and mother in humble life in
Genoa, fond of music—no more. At four years old, he played the guitar,
and, untaught, attended all the churches to sing, and at seven years of age,
composed something like a cantata; then he took up the violin and made such
progress, that his father travelled about with him from one Italian town to
another, till he attracted the attention and attained the patronage of
Elise Bonaparte, then Grand Duchess of
Tuscany. He was taken into her family, and played constantly at her brilliant
little court; there he fell in love with one of her dames d’honneur, who turned his head, he said,
and he became pazzo per amore, and
found his violin expressed his passion better than he could.
Mademoiselle B—— became his guide and
inspiration; but they had a terrible fracas, they
fought, fell out and separated. One day, in his despair, he was confi-![]()
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ding his misery to his beloved violin, and made it repeat
the quarrel just as it happened; he almost made it articulate the very words,
and in the midst of this singular colloquy, Mademoiselle de
B—— rushed into the room and threw her arms round
his neck and said, “Paganini, your genius has
conquered;” their reconciliation followed, and she begged he would note
down those inspirations of love; he did so, and called it, Il Concerto d’Amore. Having left
it by accident on the piano of the grand duchess, she saw, and commanded him to
play it; he did so, and the dialogue of the two strings had a wonderful
success. He married afterwards a chorus singer at Trieste, and she was the
mother of his little Paganini, whom he doated on. The
mother, he said, abandoned them both, and that he was now no longer susceptible
of the charms of the “Belle
Donne.” His violin was his mistress. While telling me
all this, he rolled his eyes in a most extraordinary way, and assumed a look
that it is impossible to define—really and truly something demoniacal.
Still, he seems to me, to be a stupified and almost idiotic creature.
