Over the price to be paid for _France_, to which Sir Charles contributed some rather heavy chapters on medical science, political economy, and jurisprudence, there was the usual battle between the keen little woman and her publisher. Colburn, having done well with _O"Donnel_, felt justified in offering 750 for the new work, but Lady Morgan demanded 1000, and got it. The sum must have been a substantial compensation for the wounds that her vanity received at the hands of the reviewers. _France_, which made its appearance in 1817, in two volumes quarto, was eagerly read and loudly abused.
Croker, in the _Quarterly Review_, attacked the book, or rather the author, in an article which has become almost historic for its virulence. Poor Lady Morgan was accused of bad taste, bombast and nonsense, blunders, ignorance of the French language and manners, general ignorance, Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety!
The first four or five charges might have been proved with little difficulty, if it were worth while to break a b.u.t.terfly on a wheel, but it was necessary to distort the meaning and even the text of the original in order to give any colour to the graver accusations.
Croker had discovered, much to his delight, that the translator of the work (which was also published in Paris) had subjoined a note to some of Lady Morgan"s sc.r.a.ps of French, in which he confessed that though the words were printed to look like French, he could not understand them. The critic observes, _a propos_ of this fact, "It is, we believe, peculiar to Lady Morgan"s works, that her English readers require an English translation of her English, and her French readers a French translation of her French." This was a fair hit, as also was the ridicule thrown upon such sentences as "Cider is not held in any estimation by the _veritables Amphitryons_ of rural _savoir faire_." Croker professes to be shocked at Lady Morgan"s mention of _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_, having hitherto cherished the hope that "no British female had ever seen this detestable book"; while his outburst of virtuous indignation at her mention of the "superior effusions" of Parny, which some Frenchman had recommended to her, is really superb. "Parny," he exclaims, "is the most beastly, the most detestably wicked and blasphemous of all the writers who have ever disgraced literature. _Les Guerres des Dieux_ is the most dreadful tissue of obscenity and depravity that the devil ever inspired to the depraved heart of man, and we tremble with horror at the guilt of having read unwittingly even so much of the work as enables us to p.r.o.nounce this character of it."
Croker concludes with the hope that he has given such an idea of this book as might prevent, in some degree, the circulation of trash which, under the name of a "_Lady_ author," might otherwise have found its way into the hands of young persons of both s.e.xes, for whose perusal it was, on the score both of morals and politics, utterly unfit. Such a notice naturally defeated its own object, and _France_ went triumphantly through several editions. The review attracted almost as much attention as the book, and many protests were raised against it. "What cruel work you make with Lady Morgan," wrote Byron to Murray. "You should recollect that she is a woman; though, to be sure, they are now and then very provoking, still as auth.o.r.esses they can do no great harm; and I think it a pity so much good invective should have been laid out upon her, when there is such a fine field of us Jacobin gentlemen for you to work upon." The Regent himself, according to Lady Charleville"s report, had said of Croker: "D----d blackguard to abuse a woman; couldn"t he let her _France_ alone, if it be all lies, and read her novels, and thank her, by Jasus, for being a good Irishwoman?"
Lady Morgan, as presently appeared, was not only quite able to defend herself, but to give as good as she got. Peel, in a letter to Croker, says: "Lady Morgan vows vengeance against you as the supposed author of the article in the _Quarterly_, in which her atheism, profanity, indecency, and ignorance are exposed. You are to be the hero of some novel of which she is about to be delivered. I hope she has not heard of your predilection for angling, and that she will not describe you as she describes one of her heroes, as "seated in his _piscatory_ corner, intent on the destruction of the finny tribe."" "Lady Morgan," it seems, replies Croker, "is resolved to make me read one of her novels. I hope I shall feel interested enough to learn the language. I wrote the first part of the article in question, but was called away to Ireland when it was in the press; and I am sorry to say that some blunders crept in accidentally, and one or two were premeditatedly added, which, however, I do not think Lady Morgan knows enough of either English, French, or Latin to find out. If she goes on, we shall have sport."
Early in 1818 Colburn wrote to suggest that the Morgans should proceed to Italy with a view to collaborating in a book on that country, and offered them the handsome sum of 2000 for the copyright. By this time Sir Charles had lost most of his practice, owing to his publication of a scientific work, _The Outlines of the Physiology of Life_, which was considered objectionably heterodox by the Dublin public.
There was no obstacle, therefore, to his leaving home for a lengthened period, and joining his wife in her literary labours. In May, the pair journeyed to London _en route_ for the South, Lady Morgan taking with her the nearly finished ma.n.u.script of a new novel, _Florence Macarthy_. With his first reading of this book Colburn was so charmed, that he presented the author with a fine parure of amethysts as a tribute of admiration.
According to the testimony of impartial witnesses, Lady Morgan made as decided a social success in Italy as she had done a couple of years earlier in France. Moore, who met the couple in Florence, notes in his diary for October 1819: "Went to see Sir Charles and Lady Morgan; her success everywhere astonishing. Camac was last night at the Countess of Albany"s (the Pretender"s wife and Alfieri"s), and saw Lady Morgan there in the seat of honour, quite the queen of the room." In Rome the same appreciation awaited her. "The d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire," writes her ladyship, "is unceasing in her attentions. Cardinal Fesche (Bonaparte"s uncle) is quite my beau.... Madame Mere (Napoleon"s mother) sent to say she would be glad to see me; we were received quite in an imperial style. I never saw so fine an old lady--still quite handsome. The pictures of her sons hung round the room, all in royal robes, and her daughters and grandchildren, and at the head of them all, _old Mr. Bonaparte_. She is full of sense, feeling, and spirit, and not the least what I expected--vulgar."
_Florence Macarthy_ was published during its author"s absence abroad. The heroine, Lady Clancare, a novelist and politician, a beauty and a wit, is obviously intended for Lady Morgan herself, while Lady Abercorn figures again under the t.i.tle of Lady Dunore. But the most striking of all the character-portraits is Counsellor Con Crawley, who was sketched from Lady Morgan"s old enemy, John Wilson Croker. According to Moore, Croker winced more under this caricature than under any of the direct attacks which were made upon him. Con Crawley, we are told, was of a bilious, saturnine const.i.tution, even his talent being but the result of disease. These physical disadvantages, combined with an education "whose object was pretension, and whose principle was arrogance, made him at once a thing fearful and pitiable, at war with its species and itself, ready to crush in manhood as to sting in the cradle, and leading his overweening ambition to pursue its object by ways dark and hidden--safe from the penalty of crime, and exposed only to the obloquy which he laughed to scorn. If ever there was a man formed alike by nature and education to betray the land which gave him birth, and to act openly as the pander of political corruption, or secretly as the agent of defamation; who would stoop to seek his fortune by effecting the fall of a frail woman, or would strive to advance it by stabbing the character of an honest one; who could crush aspiring merit behind the ambuscade of anonymous security, while he came forward openly in defence of the vileness which rank sanctified and influence protected--that man was Conway Crawley."
The truth of the portraiture of the whole Crawley family--exaggerated as it may seem in modern eyes--was at once recognised by Lady Morgan"s countrymen. Sir Jonah Barrington, an undisputed authority on Irish manners and character, writes: "The Crawleys are superlative, and suffice to bring before my vision, in their full colouring, and almost without a variation, persons and incidents whom and which I have many a time encountered." Again, Owen Maddyn, who was by no means prejudiced in Lady Morgan"s favour, admits that her attack on Croker had much effect in its day, and was written on the model of the Irish school of invective furnished by Flood and Grattan. As a novelist, he held that she pointed the way to Lever, and adds: "The rattling vivacity of the Irish character, its ebullient spirit, and its wrathful eloquence of sentiment and language, she well portrayed; one can smell the potheen and turf smoke even in her pictures of a boudoir." In this sentence are summed up the leading characteristics, not only of _Florence Macarthy_, but of all Lady Morgan"s national romances.
_Italy_ was published simultaneously in London and Paris in June, 1821, and produced an even greater sensation than the work on France, though Croker declared that it fell dead from the press, and devoted the greater part of his "review" in the _Quarterly_ to an a.n.a.lysis of Colburn"s methods of advertis.e.m.e.nt. Criticism of a penal kind, he explained, was not called for, because, "in the first place, we are convinced that this woman is wholly _incorrigible_; secondly, we hope that her indelicacy, vanity, and malignity are inimitable, and that, therefore, her example is very little dangerous; and thirdly, though every page teems with errors of all kinds, from the most disgusting to the most ludicrous, they are smothered in such Boeotian dulness that they can do no harm." In curious contrast to this professional criticism is a pa.s.sage in one of Byron"s letters to Moore. "Lady Morgan," writes the poet, "in a _really excellent_ book, I a.s.sure you, on Italy, calls Venice an ocean Rome; I have the very same expression in _Foscari_, and yet you know that the play was written months ago, and sent to England; the _Italy_ I received only on the 16th.... When you write to Lady Morgan, will you thank her for her handsome speeches in her book about _my_ books?
Her work is fearless and excellent on the subject of Italy--pray tell her so--and I know the country. I wish she had fallen in with _me_; I could have told her a thing or two that would have confirmed her positions."
Almost simultaneously with the appearance of _Italy_, Colburn printed in his _New Monthly Magazine_ a long, vehement, and rather incoherent attack by Lady Morgan upon her critics. The editor, Thomas Campbell, explained in an indignant letter to the _Times_, that the article had been inserted by the proprietor without being first submitted to the editorial eye, and that he was in no way responsible for its contents. Colburn also wrote to the _Times_ to refute the _Quarterly_ reviewer"s statements regarding the sales of _Italy_, and publicly to declare his entire satisfaction at the result of the undertaking, and his willingness to receive from the author another work of equal interest on the same terms. In short, never was a book worse reviewed or better advertised.
The next venture of the indefatigable Lady Morgan, who felt herself capable of dealing with any subject, no matter how little she might know of it, was a _Life of Salvator Rosa_. This, which was her own favourite among all her books, is a rather imaginative work, which hardly comes up to modern biographical standards. The author seems to have been influenced in her choice of a subject rather by the patriotic character of Salvator Rosa than by his artistic attainments.
Lady Morgan was once asked by a fellow-writer where she got her facts, to which she replied, "We all imagine our facts, you know--and then happily forget them; it is to be hoped our readers do the same."
Nevertheless, she seems to have taken a good deal of trouble to "get up" the material for her biography; it was in her treatment of it that she sometimes allowed her ardent Celtic imagination to run away with her. About this time Colburn proposed that Sir Charles and Lady Morgan should contribute to his magazine, _The New Monthly_, and offered them half as much again as his other writers, who were paid at the rate of sixteen guineas a sheet. For this periodical Lady Morgan wrote a long essay on _Absenteeism_ and other articles, some of which were afterwards republished.
In the spring of 1824 the Morgans came to London for the season, and went much into the literary society that was dear to both their hearts. Lady Caroline Lamb took a violent fancy to Lady Morgan, to whom she confided her Byronic love-troubles, while Lady Cork, who still maintained a salon, did not neglect her old _protegee_. The rough notes kept by Lady Morgan of her social adventures are not usually of much interest or importance, as she had little faculty or inclination for Boswellising, but the following entry is worth quoting:--
"Lady Cork said to me this morning when I called Miss ---- a nice person, "Don"t say nice, child, "tis a bad word." Once I said to Dr.
Johnson, "Sir, that is a very nice person." "A _nice_ person," he replied; "what does that mean? Elegant is now the fashionable term, but it will go out, and I see this stupid _nice_ is to succeed to it. What does nice mean? Look in my Dictionary; you will see it means correct, precise.""
At Lydia White"s famous _soirees_ Lady Morgan met Sydney Smith, Washington Irving, Hallam, Miss Jane Porter, Anacreon Moore, and many other literary celebrities. Her own rooms were thronged with a band of young Italian revolutionaries, whose country had grown too hot to hold them, and who talked of erecting a statue to the liberty-loving Irishwoman when Italy should be free. Dublin naturally seemed rather dull after all the excitement and delights of a London season, but Lady Morgan, though she loved to grumble at her native city, had not yet thought of turning absentee herself. Her popularity with her countrymen (those of her own way of thinking) had suffered no diminution, and her national celebrity was proved by the following verse from a ballad which was sung in the Dublin streets:--
"Och, Dublin"s city, there"s no doubtin", Bates every city on the say; "Tis there you"ll hear O"Connell spoutin", And Lady Morgan making tay; For "tis the capital of the finest nation, Wid charmin" peasantry on a fruitful sod, Fightin" like divils for conciliation, An" hatin" each other for the love of G.o.d."
Our heroine was hard at work at this time upon the last of her Irish novels, _The O"Briens and the O"Flaherties_, which was published early in 1827, and for the copyright of which Colburn paid her 1350.
It was the most popular of all her works, especially with her own country-folk, and is distinguished by her favourite blend of politics, melodrama, local colour, and rough satire on the ruling cla.s.ses. The reviews as usual accused her of blasphemy and indecency, and so severe was the criticism in the _Literary Gazette_, then edited by Jerdan, that Colburn was stirred up to found a new literary weekly of his own, and, in conjunction with James Silk Buckingham, started the _Athenaeum_. Jerdan had a.s.serted in the course of his review that "In all our reading we never met with a description which tended so thoroughly to lower the female character.... Mrs. Behn and Mrs.
Centlivre might be more unguarded; but the gauze veil cannot hide the deformities, and Lady Morgan"s taste has not been of efficient power to filter into cleanliness the original pollution of her infected fountain." Lady Morgan observes in her diary that she has a right to be judged by her peers, and threatens to summon a jury of matrons to say if they can detect one line in her pages that would tend to make any honest man her foe.
There were other disadvantages attendant upon celebrity than those caused by inimical reviewers. No foreigner of distinction thought a visit to Dublin complete without an introduction to our author, who figures in several contemporary memoirs, not always in a flattering light. That curious personage, Prince Puckler Muskau, was travelling through England and Ireland in 1828, and has left a little vignette of Lady Morgan in the published record of his journey. "I was very eager," he explains, "to make the acquaintance of a lady whom I rate so highly as an auth.o.r.ess. I found her, however, very different from what I had pictured to myself. She is a little, frivolous, lively woman, apparently between thirty and forty, neither pretty nor ugly, but by no means inclined to resign all claims to the former, and with really fine expressive eyes. She has no idea of _mauvaise honte_ or embarra.s.sment; her manners are not the most refined, and affect the _aisance_ and levity of the fashionable world, which, however, do not sit calmly or naturally upon her. She has the English weakness of talking incessantly of fashionable acquaintances, and trying to pose for very _recherche_, to a degree quite unworthy of a woman of such distinguished talents; she is not at all aware how she thus underrates herself." The _Quarterly Review_ seized upon this pa.s.sage with malicious delight. The prince, as the reviewer points out, had dropped one lump of sugar into his bowl of gall; he had guessed Lady Morgan"s age at between thirty and forty." Miss Owenson,"
comments the writer, who was probably Croker, "was an established auth.o.r.ess six-and-twenty years ago; and if any lady, player"s daughter or not, knew what _she_ knew when she published her first work at eight or nine years of age (which Miss Owenson must have been at that time according to the prince"s calculation), she was undoubtedly such a juvenile prodigy as would be quite worthy to make a _case_ for the _Gentleman"s Magazine_."
Another observer, who was present at some of the Castle festivities, and who had long pictured Lady Morgan in imagination as a sylphlike and romantic person, has left on record his amazement when the celebrated lady stood before him. "She certainly formed a strange figure in the midst of that dazzling scene of beauty and splendour.
Every female present wore feathers and trains; but Lady Morgan scorned both appendages. Hardly more than four feet high, with a spine not quite straight, slightly uneven shoulders and eyes, Lady Morgan glided about in a close-cropped wig, bound with a fillet of gold, her large face all animation, and with a witty word for everybody. I afterwards saw her at the theatre, where she was cheered enthusiastically. Her dress was different from the former occasion, but not less original. A red Celtic cloak, fastened by a rich gold fibula, or Irish Tara brooch, imparted to her little ladyship a gorgeous and withal a picturesque appearance, which antecedent a.s.sociations considerably strengthened."
In 1829 _The Book of the Boudoir_ was published, with a preface in which Lady Morgan gives the following nave account of its genesis: "I was just setting off to Ireland--the horses literally putting-to--when Mr. Colburn arrived with his flattering proposition [for a new book]. Taking up a scrubby ma.n.u.script volume which the servant was about to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, he asked what was that. I said it was one of my volumes of odds and ends, and read him my last entry. "This is the very thing," he said, and carried it off with him." The book was correctly described as a volume of odds and ends, and was hardly worth preserving in a permanent shape, though it contains one or two interesting autobiographical sc.r.a.ps, such as the account of _My First Rout_, from which a quotation has already been given. A writer in _Blackwood_ reviewed the work in a vein of ironical admiration, professing to be much impressed by the author"s knowledge of metaphysics as exemplified in such a sentence as: "The idea of cause is a consequence of our consciousness of the force we exert in subjecting externals to the changes dictated by our volition." Unable to keep up the laudatory strain, even in joke, the reviewer (his style points to Christopher North) calls a literary friend to his a.s.sistance, who takes the opposite view, and declares that the book is "a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated texture of threadbare thievery; a trifling transcript of trite twaddle and trapessing t.i.ttle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance, indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style of writing--like a harlequin"s jacket."
Lady Morgan bobbed up as irrepressibly as ever from under this torrent of (so-called) criticism, made a tour in France and Belgium for the purpose of writing more "trapessing t.i.ttle-tattle," and on her return to London, such were the profits on blasphemy and indecency, bought her first carriage. This equipage was a source of much amus.e.m.e.nt to her friends in Dublin, "Neither she nor Sir Charles," we are told, "knew the difference between a good carriage and a bad one--a carriage was a carriage to them. It was never known where this vehicle was bought, except that Lady Morgan declared it came from the first carriage-builder in London. In shape it was like a gra.s.shopper, as well as in colour. Very high and very springy, with enormous wheels, it was difficult to get into, and dangerous to get out of. Sir Charles, who never in his life before had mounted a coach-box, was persuaded by his wife to drive his own carriage. He was extremely short-sighted, and wore large green spectacles out of doors. His costume was a coat much trimmed with fur, and heavily braided. James Grant, the tall Irish footman, in the brightest of red plush, sat beside him, his office being to jump down whenever anybody was knocked down, or run over, for Sir Charles drove as it pleased G.o.d. The horse was mercifully a very quiet animal, and much too small for the carriage, or the mischief would have been worse. Lady Morgan, in the large bonnet of the period, and a cloak lined with fur hanging over the back of the carriage, gave, as she conceived, the crowning grace to a neat and elegant turn-out. The only drawback to her satisfaction was the alarm caused by Sir Charles"s driving; and she was incessantly springing up to adjure him to take care, to which he would reply with warmth, after the manner of husbands."
In 1880 Lady Morgan published her _France_ (1829-30). This book was not a commission, but she had told Colburn that she was writing it, and as he made her no definite offer, she opened negotiations with the firm of Saunders and Otley. Colburn, who looked upon her as his special property, was furious at her desertion, and informed her that if she did not at once break off with Saunders and Otley, it would be no less detrimental to her literary than to her pecuniary interest.
Undismayed by this threat, Lady Morgan accepted the offer of a thousand pounds made her by the rival firm. Colburn, who was a power in the literary market, kept his word. He advertised in his own periodicals "LADY MORGAN AT HALF-PRICE," and stated publicly that in consequence of the losses he had sustained by her former works, he had declined her new book, and that copies of all her publications might be had at half-price. In consequence of these and other machinations, the new _France_, which was at least as good a book as the old one, fell flat, and the unfortunate publishers were only able to make one payment of 500. They tried to get their contract cancelled in court, and Colburn, who was called as a witness, admitted that he had done his best to injure Lady Morgan"s literary reputation. Eventually, the matter was compromised, Saunders and Otley being allowed to publish Lady Morgan"s next book, _Dramatic Scenes and Sketches_, as some compensation for their loss; but of this, too, they failed to make a success.
The reviews of _France_ were few and slighting, the wickedest and most amusing being by Theodore Hook. He quotes with glee the author"s complacent record that she was compared to Moliere by the Parisians, and that she had seen in a "poetry-book" the following lines:--
"Slendal (_sic_), Morgan, Schlegel-ne vous effrayez pas-- Muses! ce sont des noms fameux dans nos climats."
"Her ladyship," continues Theodore, "went to dine with one of those spectacle and sealing-wax barons, Rothschild, at Paris; where never was such a dinner, "no catsup and walnut pickle, but a mayonese fried in ice, like Ninon"s description of Seveigne"s (_sic_) heart,"
and to all this fine show she was led out by Rothschild himself. After the soup she took an opportunity of praising the cook, of whom she had heard much. "Eh bien," says Rothschild, laughing, as well he might, "he on his side has also relished your works, and here is a proof of it." "I really blush," says Miladi, "like Sterne"s accusing spirit, as I give in the fact--but--he pointed to a column of the most ingenious confectionery architecture, on which my name was inscribed in spun sugar." There was a thing--Lady Morgan in spun sugar! And what does the reader think her ladyship did? She shall tell in her own dear words. "All I could do under my triumphant emotion I did. I begged to be introduced to the celebrated and flattering artist." It is a fact--to the cook; and another fact, which only shows that the Hebrew baron is a Jew _d"esprit_, is that after coffee, the cook actually came up, and was presented to her. "He," says her ladyship, "was a well-bred gentleman, perfectly free from pedantry, and when we had mutually complimented each other on our respective works, he bowed himself out.""
In spite of her egoism and her many absurdities, it seems clear from contemporary evidence that in London, where she usually appeared during the season, Lady Morgan had a following. The names of most of the literary celebrities of the day appear amid the disjointed jottings of her diary. We hear of "that egregious c.o.xcomb D"Israeli, outraging the privilege a young man has of being absurd"; and Sydney Smith "so natural, so _bon enfant_, so little of a wit _t.i.tre_"; and Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, handsome, insolent, and unamiable; and Allan Cunningham, "immense fun"; and Thomas Hood, "a grave-looking personage, the picture of ill-health"; and her old critical enemy, Lord Jeffrey, with whom Lady Morgan started a violent flirtation.
"When he comes to Ireland," she writes, "we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together; in short, having cut me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say of my enemies before we meet, "Let me at them.""
The other literary women were naturally the chief object of interest to her. Lady Morgan seems to have been fairly free from professional jealousy, though she hated her countrywoman, Lady Blessington, with a deadly hatred. Mrs. Gore, then one of the most fashionable novelists, she finds "a pleasant little _rondelette_ of a woman, something of my own style. We talked and laughed together, as good-natured women do, and agreed upon many points." The learned Mrs. Somerville is described as "a simple, little, middle-aged woman. Had she not been presented to me by name and reputation, I should have said she was one of the respectable twaddling matrons one meets at every ball, dressed in a snug mulberry velvet gown, and a little cap with a red flower. I asked her how she could descend from the stars to mix among us. She said she was obliged to go out with a daughter. From the glimpse of her last night, I should say there was no imagination, no deep moral philosophy, though a great deal of scientific lore, and a great deal of _bonhomie_." For "poor dear Jane Porter," the author of _Scottish Chiefs_, Lady Morgan felt the natural contempt of a "showy woman" for one who looks like a "shabby canoness." "Miss Porter," she records, "told me she was taken for me the other night, and talked to _as such_ by a party of Americans. She is tall, lank, lean, and lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with a battered black gauze hat, and the air of a regular Melpomene. I am the reverse of all this, and _sans vanite_, the best-dressed woman wherever I go. Last night I wore a blue satin, trimmed fully with magnificent point-lace, and stomacher _a la Sevigne_, light blue velvet hat and feathers, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds."
As Lady Morgan at this time was nearer sixty than fifty, rouged liberally, and made all her own dresses, her appearance in the costume above described must at least have been remarkable.
Lady Morgan"s last novel, a Belgian story called _The Princess, or the Beguine_, was published by Bentley in 1834, and for the first edition she received, 350, a sad falling-off from the prices received in former days. As her popularity waned, she grew discontented with life in Dublin, "the wretched capital of wretched Ireland," as she calls it, and in a moment of mental depression she entered the characteristic query,"_Cui bono?_" in her diary. To the same faithful volume she confided complaints even of her beloved Morgan, but the fact that she could find nothing worse to reproach him with than a disinclination for fresh air and exercise, speaks volumes for his marital virtue. A more serious trouble came from failing eyesight, which in 1837 threatened to develop into total blindness. It was in this year, when things seemed at their darkest, that a pension of 300 a year was conferred on her by Lord Melbourne, "in recognition of her merits, literary and patriotic." It was probably this unexpected accession of income that decided the Morgans to leave Dublin, and spend the remainder of their days in London. They found a pleasant little house in William Street, Knightsbridge, a new residential quarter which was just growing up under the fostering care of Mr.
Cubitt. Lady Morgan went "into raptures over the pretty new quarter,"
and wrote some articles on Pimlico in the _Athenaeum_. She also got up a successful agitation for an entrance into Hyde Park at what is now known as Albert Gate. For deserting Ireland, after receiving a pension for patriotism, and writing against the evils of Absenteeism, Lady Morgan was subjected to a good deal of sarcasm by her countrymen.
But, as she pointed out, her property in Ireland was personal, not real, the tenant-farm of a drawing-room balcony, on which annual crops of mignonette were raised for home consumption, being the only territorial possession that she had ever enjoyed.
Lady Morgan"s eyesight must have temporarily improved with her change of dwelling, for in 1839 the first part of her last work of any importance, _Woman and her Master_, was published by Colburn, to whom she had at last become reconciled. This book, which was never finished, was designed to prove, among other things, that in spite of the subordination in which women have been kept, and in spite of all the artificial difficulties that have been put in their way, not only have they never been conquered in spirit, but that they have always been the depositaries of the vital and leading ideas of the time. The book is more soberly written than most of Lady Morgan"s works, but it would probably be regarded by the modern reader as dull and superficial. It was generally believed that Sir Charles had a.s.sisted in its composition, and few men have ever wielded a heavier pen. The pair only issued one more joint work, _The Book Without a Name_, which appeared in 1842, and consisted chiefly of articles and sketches that had already been published in the magazines.
The Morgans now found their chief occupation and amus.e.m.e.nt in the society which they attracted to their cheerful little house. One or two sketches of the pair, as they appeared in their later days, have been left by contemporaries. Chorley, an intimate friend, observes that, like all the sceptics he ever approached, they were absurdly prejudiced, and proof against all new impressions. "Neither of them, though both were literary and musical, could endure German literature and music, had got beyond the stale sarcasms of the _Anti-Jacobin_, or could admit that there is glory for such men as Weber, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, as well as for Cimarosa and Paisiello....
Her familiar conversation was a series of brilliant, egotistic, shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel, though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman." Her blunders were proverbial, as when she asked in all simplicity, "Who was Jeremy Taylor?" and on being presented to Mrs. Sarah Austin, complimented her on having written _Pride and Prejudice_.
Another friend, Abraham Hayward, used to say that Lady Morgan had been transplanted to London too late, and that she was never free of the corporation of fine ladies, though she saw a good deal of them. "She erroneously fancied that she was expected to entertain the company, be it what it might, and she was fond of telling stories in which she figured as the companion of the great, instead of confining herself to scenes of low Irish life, which she described inimitably. Lady Cork was accustomed to say, "I like Lady Morgan very much as an Irish blackguard, but I can"t endure her as an English fine lady.""
In 1843 Sir Charles died rather suddenly from heart disease. His wife mourned him sincerely, but not for long in solitude. She found the anaesthetic for her grief in society, and after a few months of widowhood writes: "Everybody makes a point of having me out, and I am beginning to be familiarised with my great loss. London is the best place in the world for the happy and the unhappy; there is a floating capital of sympathy for every human good or evil. I am a n.o.body, and yet what kindness I am daily receiving." Again, in 1845, after her sister"s death, she notes in her diary: "The world is my gin or opium; I take it for a few hours _per diem_--excitement, intoxication, absence. I return to my desolate home, and wake to all the horrors of sobriety.... Yet I am accounted the agreeable rattle of the great ladies" coterie, and I talk _pas mal_ to many clever men all day.... That Park near me, of which my beloved Morgan used to say, "It is ours more than the Queen"s, we use it daily and enjoy it nightly"--that Park that I worked so hard to get an entrance into, I never walk in it; it seems to me covered with c.r.a.pe."
Among the friends of Lady Morgan"s old age were the Carter Halls, Hepworth Dixon, Miss Jewsbury, Hayward, and Douglas Jerrold. Lord Campbell, old Rogers, and Cardinal Wiseman frequented her _soirees_, though with the last-named she had waged a pamphlet war over the authenticity of St. Peter"s chair at Rome. Rogers was reported to be engaged to one of Lady Morgan"s attractive nieces, the Miss Clarkes, who often stayed with her. It was in allusion to this rumour that he said, "Whenever my name is coupled with that of a young lady in this manner, I make it a point of honour to say I have been refused." To the last, we are told, Lady Morgan preserved the natural vivacity and aptness of repartee that had made her the delight of Dublin society half a century before. "I know I am vain," she said once to Mrs. Hall, "but I have a right to be. It is not put on and off like my rouge; it is always with me.... I wrote books when your mothers worked samplers, and demanded freedom for Ireland when Dan O"Connell scrambled for gulls" eggs in the crags of Derrynane.... Look at the number of books I have written. Did ever woman move in a brighter sphere than I do? I have three invitations to dinner to-day, one from a d.u.c.h.ess, one from a countess, and the third from a diplomatist, a very witty man, who keeps the best society in London."
Lady Morgan was fond of boasting that she had supported herself since she was fourteen (for which read seventeen or eighteen), and insisted on the advantage of giving every girl a profession by which she could earn her living, if the need arose. Speaking to Mrs. Hall on the subject of some girls who had been suddenly bereft of fortune, she exclaimed: "They do everything that is fashionable imperfectly; their drawing, singing, dancing, and languages amount to nothing. They were educated to marry, and had they had time, they might have gone off with, and hereafter _from_, husbands. I desire to give every girl, no matter her rank, a trade or profession. Cultivate what is necessary to the position she is born to; cultivate all things in moderation, but one thing to perfection, no matter what it is, for which she has a talent: give her a staff to lay hold of; let her feel, "This will carry me through life without dependence.""
With the a.s.sistance of Miss Jewsbury Lady Morgan, in the last years of her life, prepared a volume of reminiscences, which she called _The Odd Volume_. This, which was published in 1859, only deals with a short period of her career, and is of little literary interest. The _Athenaeum_, in the course of a laudatory review, observed that "Lady Morgan had lived through the love, admiration, and malignity of three generations of men, and was, in short, a literary Ninon, who seemed as brisk and captivating in the year 1859 as when George was Prince, and the author of "Kate Kearney" divided the laureateship of society and song with Tom Moore."
Lady Morgan, though now an octogenarian, was by no means pleased at these remarks. She still prided herself on her fascinations, was never tired and never bored, and looked upon any one who died under a hundred years of age as a suicide. "You have more strength and spirit, as well as more genius, than any of us," wrote Abraham Hayward to her.
"We must go back to the brilliant women of the eighteenth century to find anything like a parallel to you and your _soirees_." But bronchitis was an enemy with which even her high spirit was powerless to cope. She had an attack in 1858, but threw it off, and on Christmas Day gave a dinner, at which she told Irish stories with all her old vivacity, and sang "The Night before Larry was Stretched." On St.
Patrick"s Day, 1859, she gave a musical matinee, but caught cold the following week, and after a short illness, died on April 16th.
Thus ended the career of one of the most flattered and best abused women of the century. Held up as the Irish Madame de Stael by her admirers, and run down as a monster of impudence and iniquity by her enemies, it is no wonder that her character, by no means innately refined, became hardened, if not coa.r.s.ened, by so unenviable a notoriety. Still, to her credit be it remembered that she never lost a friend, and that she converted more than one impersonal enmity (as in the case of Jeffrey and Lockhart) into a personal friendship. In spite of her pa.s.sion for the society of the great, she wrote and worked throughout her whole career for the cause of liberty, and she was ever on the side of the oppressed. An incorrigible flirt before marriage, she developed into an irreproachable matron, while her natural frivolity and feather-headedness never tempted her to neglect her work, nor interfered with her faculty for making most advantageous business arrangements. "With all her frank vanity," we are told, "she had shrewd good sense, and she valued herself much more on her industry than on her genius, because the one, she said, she owed to her organisation, but the other was a virtue of her own rearing." It would be impossible to conclude a sketch of Lady Morgan more appropriately than by the following lines of Leigh Hunt, which she herself was fond of quoting, and in which her personal idiosyncrasies are pleasantly touched off:--
"And dear Lady Morgan, see, see, when she comes, With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums, So Irish, so modish, so mixtish, so wild; So committing herself as she talks--like a child.
So trim, yet so easy--polite, yet high-hearted, That truth and she, try all she can, won"t be parted; She"ll put you your fashions, your latest new air, And then talk so frankly, she"ll make you all stare."