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Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Lady Morgan to Lady Olivia Clarke, 26 June 1819
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Preface
Vol. I Contents.
Prefatory Address
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Vol. I Index
Vol. II Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter IV
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Vol. II Index
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Lake of Como, Villa Fontana,
June 26, 1819.

The attentions of the Milanese increase with our residence among them, and persons of all parties, Guelphs and Ghibellines, have united to pay us attention. The Ex-minister of the Interior made a splendid entertainment for us at his beautiful villa, as did the Trivulgis, and a Marquis de Sylvas, of whose villa and gardens there are many printed accounts. We were told there was no hospitality in Italy. We not only dined out three times a week on an average, but we have had carriages and horses so much at our service, that though we have made several excursions of twenty and thirty miles into the country, we never had occasion to hire horses but once, and that was to go to Pavia, where we spent a few days, and made the acquaintance of old Volta, the inventor of the voltaic battery. We went with the Count and Countess Confalonieri to see Monza, and its magnificent cathedral, where the iron crown of Lombardy is kept. The difficulty and ceremonies attending on this, convince me that the travellers (not even Eustace) who mentions so lightly having seen this relic, have never seen it at all. We had an order expedited the night before from the Arch-Duke to the chanoines of Monza, who received us in grand pontificals at the gates of the church, as did the Grand-Master, of the imperial suite at the palace of Monza, where the Arch-Duke
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resides. We have also been to see the Grand Chartreuse, and in all my life I was never so entertained; but as to churches, and pictures, and public edifices, and institutions, my head is full of nothing else. To tell the truth, we became latterly quite overcome and exhausted by the life we led, for we never knew one moment’s quiet, nor had time to do anything. We had been offered the use of two beautiful villas on the Lake of Como, for nothing; one of them, the Villa Someriva, one of the handsomest palaces in Lombardy. We left Milan ten days back, and have since lived in a state of enchantment, and I really believe in fairy land. I know not where to refer you for an account of the Lake of Como except to Lady M. W. Montague’s Letters. The lake is fifty miles long, and the stupendous and magnificent mountains which embosom it, are strewn along their edges, with the fantastic villas of the nobility of Milan, to which, as there is no road, there is no approach but by water. We took boat at the pretty antique town of Como, and literally landed in the drawing-room of the Villa Tempi. The first things I perceived were the orange and lemon trees, laden with fruit, growing in groves in the open air; the American aloes, olive trees, vines, and mulberries, all in blossom or fruit, covering the mountains almost to their summits. The blossoms and orange flowers, with the profusion of roses and wild pinks, were almost too intoxicating for our vulgar senses.

The next day we set off on our aquatic excursions through regions the wildest, the loveliest, the most romantic that can be conceived. We landed at all the
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curious and classical points—at Pliny’s fountain, the site of his villa, &c.,—and after a course of twenty-five miles, reached my villa of Someriva, which we found to be a splendid palace, all marble, surrounded by groves of orange trees, but so vast, so solitary, so imposing, and so remote from all medical aid, that I gave up the idea of occupying it, and we rowed off to visit other villas, and at last set up our boat at a pretty inn on the lake, where we sat up half the night watching the arrival of boats and listening to the choruses of the boatmen. The next day we returned, and after new voyages found a beautiful little villa on the lake, ten minutes row from Como, which we have taken for two months, at six pounds a month. The villa Fontana consists of two pavilions, as they are called here, or small houses of two storeys, which are separated by a garden. In one reside the Signor and Signora, our hosts, with a charming family; in the other reside the Signor and Signora Morgan, with an Italian valet de chambre. These pavilions are on the lake in a little pyramid; the vines and grapes festooned from tree to tree, and woven into a canopy above. The lake spreads before us with all its mountain beauties and windings. To the right lies the town of Como, with its gothic cathedral. Immediately behind us, on every side, rise the mountains which divide Italian Switzerland from Lombardy, covered with vines, olives and lime trees, and all this is lighted by a brilliant sun and canopied by skies bright, and blue, and cloudless. We have already made some excursions into these enchanting mountains, which are like cultivated gardens raised into
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the air; and walked within a mile of the Swiss frontier. We have a boat belonging to the villa anchored in the garden, into which we jump and row off. But of all the delights, imagine that shoals of foolish fish float on the surface of the lake in the evening, and that Morgan, who ambitioned nothing but a nibble on the Liffey line, here catches the victims of his art by dozens! Our villa consists of seven pretty rooms on the upper floor, and four below. The floors are stone, sprinkled with water two or three times a-day, the walls painted in fresco, green jalousies and muslin draperies, and yet with all these cooling precautions, the heat obliges us to sit still all day. There is only one circumstance that reconciles me to your not sharing our pleasures, and that is a small matter of thunder and lightning, which comes about two days out of three, and is sometimes a little too near and too loud for the nerves of some of my friends. At this present moment it shakes the house, and the rain is falling as if Cox of Kilkenny was coming again. If, by the time we return, I don’t make “Les serpents de l’envie sifflent dans votre cœur” with my Spanish guitar, my name is not Oliver! Morgan is making great progress on the guitar. I think it would amuse you to witness the life we lead here. We rise early, and as our house is a perfect smother, we open the blinds (the sashes are never shut), and paradise bursts on us with a sun and sky that you never dreamt of in your philosophy. We breakfast under our arcade of vines, and the table covered with peaches and nectarines, while the fish literally pop their heads out of the lake to be fed, though
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Morgan, like a traitor, takes them by hundreds. Except you saw him in a yellow muslin gown and straw hat, on the lake of Como, you have no idea of human felicity! All day we are shut up in our respective little studies, in which the light scarcely penetrates, for the intolerable heat obliges every one to remain shut up during the middle of the day, and the houses and villages look as if they were uninhabited. At two o’clock we dine, at five, drink tea, and then we are off to the mountains, and frequently don’t come back till night, or else we are on the lake; but in either instance we are in scenes which no pencil could delineate, nor pen describe. The mountains with their valleys and glens are covered with fig-trees, chestnuts, and olive-trees, and with the lovely vineyards which are formed into festoons and arcades, and have quite another appearance from the stunted vineyards of France. The other day, after dinner, we walked on till we came to some barriers, where we were stopped by douaniers. We asked where we were, and found it was Switzerland. So, having walked through a pretty Swiss village, and admired a sign, “William Tell,” we walked back to Italy to tea. We are by no means destitute of society; some of our Milanese nobles come occasionally to their villas on the lake, and we are always asked to join the party. The Commandant de la Ville continues to give us tea parties, and we have three very nice English families, of whom we see a good deal (that is, as much as we like). One consists of three sisters, heiresses, and nieces to the Bishop of Rochester, the Misses King. They are sensible,
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off-handed women, travel about with no protection but a Newfoundland dog, though still youngish, and are equally independent in every other respect. They were so anxious to know us, and so fearful of intruding, that the youngest (drôle de corps) was coming in disguise as an Italian lady (because English women, they said, have no right to force themselves on me), with some story to get admittance! Another family, Mr. Laurie’s, English people of fashion, with seven children, a French governess, an Irish tutor, and an English housekeeper. Our last and most delightful is Mrs. Lock and three charming daughters; she is aunt to the Duke of Leinster, being the old duchess’s daughter, by Ogilvie. She is connected with all the first and cleverest people in England, and smacks of all that’s best in the best way. She was, she said, a long time negociating the business of an introduction to me, and at last effected it by getting a dinner made on the lake, to which we were invited. Since then we are in constant correspondence, either by voyages on the lake or by notes. We dined there the other day, and by way of amusing the sweet girls, who are shut up in the loveliest but most solitary site, I announced a party in my vineyard; and there were the Kings, and my Austrian commandant, and some of his officers and Spanish guitars, and a little band of music and fireworks, provided by the young Signori of my host’s family; there was tea, and cakes, and all sorts of things laid on the terrace by the lake; and Mrs. Lock’s boat approached in view, and the heavens looked transcendently bright, when lo! up rose one of the lake
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hurricanes, the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, tea, cakes, and fireworks were carried into the air, and poor Mrs. Lock, after tossing for five hours in a boat, which at every moment threatened to be overset, was too happy to land at midnight, two miles off, at a wretched little village, and pass the night at a cabaret or miserable public house. So much for my Como news!

The weather has been splendid; the heat was at ninety degrees of our thermometer for some days. In the midst of the glories of this beautiful clime these sudden storms burst forth, and while they last, spoil all. Among our Comoesque amusements, one is going to the festivals of the saints on the mountains, and to the churches. To-morrow we are to have an opera in Como, with a company from Milan, and the Commandant has given us his box. There has been an imperial fête at Milan, called a carousal, for which we had an imperial invitation; but as court dresses were necessary, we thought it not worth the expense. We are delighted with the good family of our host here; they are, Don Giorgo and Donna Teresa, the heads; he is ready for the “Padrone,” and excellent in his way; she, the best woman in the world; but as they speak Milanese, and very little Italian, we get on as it pleases heaven. The chief beau is the eldest son, a major in the army, and aide-de-camp to his uncle, a general; he is “Don Gallias,” and my “poor servant ever,” for he absolutely watches our looks and anticipates our wishes. Then two younger sons, handsome lads, come home for their college vacation, and two
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pretty, brown, black-eyed girls, Donna Giovana and Donna Rosina—nothing can equal their gaiety and noise. They live in the garden, and the young men are delightfully musical. The talent for music here is as common as speech. The children walk hand in hand and sing in parts almost from the cradle. On Sundays, the recreation of the peasantry is to get into boats, and float on the lake, and sing in chorus, which they do wonderfully, but you never hear a solo, though there is nothing but singing from morning till night. Such is our life, circle, and society here! Considering the remoteness of our habitation ce n’est pas mal. I forgot to mention we have an ex-ambassador and his gay, French wife, and some Capuchin friars, and that I was most gallantly received by the monks of a most famous college here—one of them, the finest head I ever beheld. Nothing can equal the beauty of some of the fine heads here, of our young hosts in particular; but there is also the most hideous race, called Cretins, that ever nature sent into the world to disgrace her handy works; they are precisely the figure of nut-crackers, that we have in toyshops, not above two feet high, with the head almost on the knees, but monstrously gay and self-conceited.

I labour, as usual, four or five hours a-day. I think I shall do the best that I have done yet, and that my great glory is to come. Lord Byron is, I hear, at Bologna. We have read his Don Juan. It is full of good fun, excellent hits, and à mourir de rire. His blue-stocking lady is sketched off wickedly well, but his shipwreck is horrible, bad taste, bad feeling, and
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bad policy. I see they have put in the French papers that I have left Italy for Vienna. I don’t know the motive. What is to be done about Moore? We were going to write to Byron about him, poor fellow!

Love to Clarke; kisses to the children—sans adieu.

S. M.