The entries in the journal and the letters grow scantier as we proceed. Lady Morgan’s life had few changes or vicissitudes; friend after friend departed; but she steadily refused to mourn. The first entry is:—
Poor Charles Kemble! I knew the whole dynasty of the Kembles, from King John downwards; Charles was the last and best of the whole stock—beautiful, graceful, gallant, and a very fine gentleman; such he was when I first knew him.
July.—Silvio Pellico is dead.
During our delightful residence on the Lake of Como, the
Villa Fontana was frequented by some of the most illustrious men in Lombardy.
Confalonieri, Count Porro, Count
Pecchio, and the charming women of their family. Silvio Pellico was the delight of all; he was
then all poetry. Many a moonlight night he passed with us in a gondola on the
lake, while Pecchio
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The poor Pellico on his deliverance from prison entered into the travaux forcés of the old, bigoted Marchesa Baralo. His great merits, his glowing imagination were gone; the most elegant of poets, the most free-thinking of philosophers, became a melancholy monk, and earned shrift by the utter prostration of his intellect.
September 2.—Moore Park. A sort of hospital for odds and ends. Since I arrived here, a month this day, I have been charmed with everything, en gros et en détail. I have an obituary already. Abbott Lawrence, my most kind and hospitable host is gone. Poor old Colburn gone too—my brilliant advertiser and publisher of thirty years! one who could not take his tea without a stratagem. He was a strange mélange of meanness and munificence in his dealings. There was a desperate vengeance that had more of the jealousy of love than the resentment of business in his attempt to destroy my fame and fortune when I went to Messrs. Saunders and Otley with my second France. We had a last quarrel about the cheap edition of my novels two months ago. I read of his death in the papers. I wish that we had parted friends.
Another death!—General Pepe is dead at Turin, at the age of seventy-two—one of the noblest men in the contemporary history of modern Italy.
I am getting up memorials for a history of Moore
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November.—In the beginning of September I went to Llanover on a visit to Sir Benjamin and Lady Hall. The gardens there are always in their full beauty in the autumn.
I went thence to Stamford Hall, Leicestershire, to pay one more visit to my dear and venerable friend, the Baroness Braye, and her charming daughter, Catherine, Countess of Beauchamp.
I arrived there very ill, with a severe attack of bronchitis. Nothing could exceed their kindness. I left Stamford Hall and my dear friends with the intention of proceeding to Combermere Abbey.
Lady Braye’s last words to me were to intreat that I would keep away as long as I could from the fogs of London. But I found myself so unwell on the railway, that is, my eyes so painful, that I proceeded on to London, and found my house more comfortable and pretty than ever. No high stairs! no long galleries and their draughts! and in short, I was at home. And so ends my vittegiatura of the autumn of 1855.
Lady Morgan remained at William Street for the Christmas holidays, surrounded by attached and admiring friends, and drawing to her pleasant drawing-room all the young men who were just gaining public notice by their talents or adventures. Among the correspondents who held to her most loyally was the Earl of Carlisle, then lord-lieutenant of Ireland. One of his letters runs:—
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How kindly you have written to me. Malahide was indeed full to me of pleasant, though mixed, memories, and I am sure you will not think the vivid historian of its storied site was omitted from them. It appeared to me a great change from former times, when we rollicked on oysters, and barristers sang treasonable songs. Now, we talked of archaeology, and looked at old porcelain. The portrait-gallery has received additions. I thought Dublin smiled very graciously on my levee and drawing-room, and my health has not, as yet, at all repined at my splendid captivity in the Castle, and we are to have Grecian theatricals, and an amateur opera, got up by Lady Downshire, and mainly indebted to Mrs. Geale.
Your imperial city is full of a more serious drama. I am sure you are too good a friend to the humanities of every kind not to be a sincere well-wisher to peace.
Macaulay is not in power at the Castle of Tyrconnel, as you may well guess. Have you good authority for the striking speech you recounted to me of the Duchess to James, after the Boyne?
Now, dear lady, I must leave you, for—the Lord Mayor!
Lady Morgan, like a true Irish woman, clung to her
528 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Maclean, the publisher of a portrait of mine, showed me
lately a list of the subscribers names, among whom the one that most gratified
me, was yours! You, probably, scarcely remember a
girl with (what in Irish we call) a Cathath head, and a very nimble foot at
crossing a ford and dancing an Irish jig, or taking a game of romps out of
“little Malby;” but she can never forget days so happy and so careless, and which
furnished forth the details of the Wild Irish Girl—the progenitress
of her own little fame and fortune! Still living on amid all these pleasant
impressions, I cannot resist writing you a few lines, not only to recal myself
to your memory, but to set at rest all my traditional shanaos of the
Crofton family. I found my claim on your attention by
a fact of which perhaps you
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530 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Accept my best thanks for your kind letter, to which various engagements have prevented my giving an earlier reply.
Believe me, it is our house which should be proud of a
kinswoman who, having fought her way to fame, as you have, is willing to
remember her friends of “long ago,” even to the romps with
“little Malby,” who, for his part
recollects well, one whose name has been a household word at Longford. You
desire a history of the Croftons since you were among us;
it would be tedious to any one else; should it prove so to you, you must only
confess that you provoked it. To begin with the title. It was discovered, some
time after my grandfather’s death, by the Herald at
Arms, that we were descended from the next
brother of the first baronet, and not from the
first baronet himself, to whose male issue that patent
limited the title. This was a great trouble to us at Longford, and a surprise
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My father died six years ago. I myself have left to me three sons and three daughters.
Now for the Longford estates. Longeuth, I believe, is
the Irish for it. When this latter passed into Longford, I am unable to
discover; but am disposed to think that the first Crofton
possessor changed the name—so much for the name. The estate itself is the
same as it was,—very large. Since the troubles of 1668, we have not
parted with an acre of it, nor are we likely to do so. Thanks to the Encumbered
Estate Court, which gave every facility for selling Irish estates when, from
the condition of the country they were least valuable; many an ancient family has
been pressed out of home and fortune. One family (some of the members of which you
must have known) the Percivals, of Temple House, in this
county, must, I fear, transfer to strangers an estate which they ac-
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Time has eaten away the trunks of the Longford pearmain, the original Crofton apple; and it is said, but I don’t believe it, that with the decay of the original stocks, the apple has universally degenerated.
If ever I have the opportunity, the “Irish Harp” may rely upon a call; but as I seldom leave home, I will, for this once act, if you will permit me, by deputy. Should my son and his bride be in London in June, as is probable, I promise he shall pay his respects to you, and I trust you may esteem him worthy of the ancient stock. Grateful of your kind recollection of me and mine,
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Early in February had appeared a volume of Rogers’s Table Talk, which had set the critics of society at war. The indecency of hurrying into print with anecdotes and sayings which could not fail to offend living persons, even before the hatchments were down, or the table at which the jests had been made, was sold, struck every one. Soon, the voice of protest echoed through the journals. Among those who felt themselves most aggrieved were the daughters and friends of Madame Piozzi. For many weeks, the Athenæum contained this sparkling controversy, in which Lady Morgan joined with her usual liveliness. From her private correspondence with the connections of Madame Piozzi on this scandal, the following letters are selected:—
I take the liberty of addressing you on the subject of our common correspondence with the editor or author of Rogers’s Table Twaddle.
There never was anything more false than that my dear
old friend, Viscountess Keith, and her
sister, Miss Thrale, and her late
sister, Mrs. Meyrick Hoare, refused to
be reconciled to their mother. On the contrary, as soon as Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi returned from their wedding tour
of four or five years on the Continent, Lady Keith and her
two younger sisters, then
534 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Long after Miss Thrale’s marriage with Lord Keith, Mrs. Piozzi died, and Lady Keith went from Tulliallan, in Scotland, to Bath, to attend her death-bed. It is very unfair to bring such stories forward, which are calculated to annoy two excellent old ladies—I say two, because there never was any question of reconciliation with the youngest, Mrs. Mostyn, who lived with her mother until her marriage, which, by-the-way, was a run-a-way one. Old Rogers ought to have known better than to circulate such false trash; for he was at one time intimate, and was, indeed, an admirer, if not a suitor, to one of the younger Miss Thrales.
I could have given the editor of the Twaddle a much more pleasing anecdote of old
Rogers than any of those in his
book. About nine years ago, a letter containing bills which I had signed,
amounting to upwards of two thousand pounds, was not received by my steward, to
whom I had addressed it. It was found, a month after, safe at the bottom of the
dead-letter box, in the post-office of Glasgow, having been oddly mistaken for
a valentine. However, for some weeks I was in great alarm, and I called on
Rogers,
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Would that I were near you, dearest Lady Morgan, to accept your agreeable invitation
of a chat between four and six: but there is always a reaction in our society
at Brighton. After our winter season is
536 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
The Athenæum confirms one’s opinion of the editor of Rogers’s Table Talk. As far as I am concerned, they are all wrong. Being but a child of nine years old on my mother’s return to England, I was taken home to Streatham, and brought up an opposition child, living with her and dear Piozzi until I was married, in 1795.
On that occasion the reconciliation took place, and I then saw my three sisters for the first time; my mother must have been about sixty, and she always called them “the ladies.”
These are not important events to bring before the public; and Rogers appears to have talked very little of Streatham, considering he lived there so much in my time; but he never was a talker. I have many letters, or had, and now possess his proposal of marriage to me at thirteen, with my impertinent caricature of him, and old Murphy calling me a saucy girl.
Excuse an abrupt conclusion to this family gossip, dear Lady Morgan, for I have a long dinner table today, and my head full of domestic cares.
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