Through the good offices of her old dancing-master, M. Fontaine, who had been appointed master of ceremonies at the castle, Sydney was introduced to Mrs. Featherstone, or Featherstonehaugh, of Bracklin Castle, who required a governess-companion to her young daughters, and apparently did not object to youth and inexperience. The girl's debut in her employer's family would scarcely have made a favourable impression in any country less genial and tolerant than the Ireland of that period. On the night of her departure M. Fontaine gave a little bal d'adieu in her honour, and as the mail passed the end of his street at midnight, it was arranged that Sydney should take her travelling-dress with her to the ball, and change before starting on her journey. Of course she took no count of the time, and was gaily dancing to the tune of 'Money in Both Pockets,' with an agreeable partner, when the horn sounded at the end of the street. Like an Irish Cinderella, away flew Sydney in her muslin gown and pink shoes and stockings, followed by her admirers, laden with her portmanteau and bundle of clothes. There was just time for Molly to throw an old cloak over her charge, and then the coach door was banged-to, and the little governess travelled away through the winter's night. In the excitement of an adventure with an officer en route, she allowed her luggage to be carried on in the coach, and arrived at Bracklin, a shivering little object, in her muslin frock and pink satin shoes. Her stammered explanations were received with amusement and sympathy by her kind-hearted hosts, and she was carried off to her own rooms, 'the prettiest suite you ever saw,' she tells her father, 'a study, bedroom, and bath-room, a roaring turf fire in the rooms, an open piano, and lots of books scattered about. Betty, the old nurse, brought me a bowl of laughing potatoes, and gave me a hearty "Much good may it do you, miss"; and didn't I tip her a word of Irish, which delighted her.... Our dinner-party were mamma and the two young ladies, two itinerant preceptors, a writing and elocution master, and a dancing-master, and Father Murphy, the P.P.—such fun!—and the Rev. Mr. Beaufort, the curate of Castletown.'

Miss Sydney was quite at her ease with all these new acquaintances, and so brilliant were her sallies at dinner that, according to her own account, the men-servants were obliged to stuff their napkins down their throats till they were nearly suffocated. The priest proposed her health in a comic speech, and a piper having come up on purpose to 'play in Miss Owenson,' the evening wound up with the dancing of Irish jigs, and the singing of Irish songs. One is inclined to doubt whether Sydney's instructions were of much scientific value, but it is evident that she enjoyed her occupation, was the very good friend of both employers and pupils, and knew nothing of the snubs and neglect experienced by so many of our modern Jane Eyres.

The death of Mrs. Featherstone's mother, Lady Steele, who had been one of the belles of Lord Chesterfield's court, placed a fine old house in Dominic Street, Dublin, at the disposal of the family. At the head of the musical society of Dublin at that date was Sir John Stevenson, who is now chiefly remembered for his arrangement of the airs to Moore's Melodies. One day, while giving a lesson to the Miss Featherstones, Sir John sung a song by Moore, of whom Sydney had then never heard. Pleased at her evident appreciation, Stevenson asked if she would like to meet the poet, and promised to take her and Olivia to a little musical party at his mother's house. Moore had already made a success in London society, which he followed up in the less exclusive circles of Dublin, and it was only between a party at the Provost's and another at Lady Antrim's that he could dash into the paternal shop for a few minutes to sing a couple of songs for his mother's guests. But the effect of his performance upon the Owenson sisters was electrical. They went home in such a state of spiritual exaltation, that they forgot to undress before getting into bed, and awoke to plan, the one a new romance, the other a portrait of the poet.

Sydney had already finished her first novel, St. Clair, which she determined to take secretly to a publisher. We are given to understand that this was her first independent literary attempt, though she tells us that her father had printed a little volume of her poems, written between the ages of twelve and fourteen. This book seems to have been published, however, in 1801, when the author must have been at least one-and-twenty. It was dedicated to Lady Moira, through whose influence it found its way into the most fashionable boudoirs of Dublin. Be this as it may, Sydney gives a picturesque description of her early morning's ramble in search of a publisher. She eventually left her manuscript in the reluctant hands of a Mr. Brown, who promised to submit it to his reader, and returned to her employer's house before her absence had been remarked. The next day the family left Dublin for Bracklin, and as Sydney had forgotten to give her address to the publisher, it is not surprising that, for the time being, she heard no more of her bantling. Some months later, when she was in Dublin again, she picked up a novel in a friend's house, and found that it was her own St. Clair. On recalling herself to the publisher's memory, she received the handsome remuneration of—four copies of her own work! The book, a foolish, high-flown story, a long way after Werther, had some success in Dublin, and brought its author—literary ladies being comparatively few at that period—a certain meed of social fame.

Mr. Owenson, who had left the stage in 1798, was settled at Coleraine at this time, and desired to have both his daughters with him. Accordingly, Sydney gave up her employment, and tried to make herself contented at home. But the dulness and discomfort of the life were too much for her, and after a few months she took another situation as governess, this time with a Mrs. Crawford at Fort William, where she seems to have been as much petted and admired as at Bracklin. There is no doubt that Sydney Owenson was a flirt, a sentimental flirt, who loved playing with fire, but it has been hinted that she was inclined to represent the polite attentions of her gallant countrymen as serious affairs of the heart. She left behind her a packet of love-letters (presented to her husband after her marriage), and some of these are quoted in her Memoirs. The majority, however, point to no very definite 'intentions' on the part of the writers, but are composed in the artificially romantic vein which Rousseau had brought into fashion. Among the letters are one or two from the unfortunate Dermody, who had retired on half-pay, and was now living in London, engaged in writing his Memoirs (he was in the early twenties) and preparing his poems for the press.

'Were you a Venus I should forget you,' he writes to Sydney, 'but you are a Laura, a Leonora, and an Eloisa, all in one delightful assemblage.' He is evidently a little piqued by Sydney's admiration of Moore, for in a letter to Mr. Owenson he asks, 'Who is the Mr. Moore Sydney mentions? He is nobody here, I assure you, of eminence.' A little later, however, he writes to Sydney: 'You are mistaken if you imagine I have not the highest respect for your friend Moore. I have written the review of his poems in a strain of panegyric to which I am not frequently accustomed. I am told he is a most worthy young man, and I am certain myself of his genius and erudition.' Dermody's own career was nearly at an end. He died of consumption in 1802, aged only twenty-five.

If Sydney scandalised even the easy-going society of the period by her audacious flirtations, she seems to have had the peculiarly Irish faculty of keeping her head in affairs of the heart, and dancing in perfect security on the edge of a gulf of sentiment. Her work helped to steady her, and the love-scenes in her novels served as a safety-valve for her ardent imagination. Her father, notoriously happy-go-lucky about his own affairs, was a careful guardian of his daughters' reputation, while old Molly was a dragon of propriety. Sydney, moreover, had acquired one or two women friends, much older than herself, such as the literary Lady Charleville, and Mrs. Lefanu, sister of Sheridan, who were always ready with advice and sympathy. With Mrs. Lefanu Sydney corresponded regularly for many years, and in her letters discusses the debatable points in her books, and enlarges upon her own character and temperament. Chief among her ambitions at this time was that of being 'every inch a woman,' and she was a firm believer in the fashionable theory that true womanliness was incompatible with learning. 'I dropped the study of chemistry,' she tells her friend, 'though urged to it by, a favourite preceptor, lest I should be less the woman. Seduced by taste and a thousand arguments to Greek and Latin, I resisted, lest I should not be a very woman. And I have studied music as a sentiment rather than as a science, and drawing as an amusement rather than as an art, lest I should become a musical pedant, or a masculine artist.'

In 1803, the Crawfords having decided to leave Fort William and live entirely in the country, Sydney, who had a mortal dread of boredom, gave up her situation, and returned to her father, who was now settled near Strabane. Here she occupied her leisure in writing a second novel, The Novice of St. Dominic, in six volumes. When this was completed, Mrs. Lefanu advised her to take it to London herself, and arrange for its publication. Quite alone, and with very little money in her pocket, the girl travelled to London, and presented herself before Sir Richard Phillips, a well-known publisher, with whom she had already had some correspondence. If we may believe her own testimony, Sir Richard fell an easy victim to her fascinations, and there is no doubt that he was very kind to her, introduced her to his wife, and found her a lodging. Better still, he bought her book (we are not told the price), and paid her for it at once. The first purchases that she made with her own earnings were a small Irish harp, which accompanied her thereafter wherever she went, and a black 'mode cloak.' After her return to Ireland, Phillips corresponded with her, and gave her literary advice, which is interesting in so far as it shows what the reading public of that day wanted, or was supposed to want.

'The world is not informed about Ireland,' wrote the publisher, 'and I am in a condition to command the light to shine. I am sorry you have assumed the novel form. A series of letters addressed to a friend in London, taking for your model the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, would have secured you the most extensive reading. A matter-of-fact and didactic novel is neither one thing nor the other, and suits no class of readers. Certainly, however, Paul and Virginia would suggest a local plan; and it will be possible by writing three or four times over in six or eight months to produce what would command attention.' Sir Richard concluded his advice with the assurance that his correspondent had it in her to write an immortal work, if she would only labour it sufficiently, and that her third copy was certain to be a monument of Irish genius. Miss Owenson was the last person to act upon the above directions; her books read as if they were dashed off in a fine frenzy of composition. Perhaps she feared that her cherished womanliness would be endangered by too close an attention to accuracy and style.

The Novice, which appeared in 1804, was better than St. Clair, but such success as it enjoyed must have been due to the prevailing scarcity of first-rate, or even second-rate novelists, rather than to its own intrinsic merits. The public taste in fiction was not fastidious, and could swallow long-winded discussions and sentimental rhodomontade with an appetite that now seems almost incredible. The Novice is said to have been a favourite with Pitt in his last illness, but if this be true, the fact points rather to the decay of the statesman's intellect than to the literary value of the book. Still the author was tasting all the sweets of fame. She was much in request as a literary celebrity, and somebody had actually written for permission to select the best passages from her two books for publication in a work called The Morality of English Novels.

In the same year, 1804, an anonymous attack upon the Irish stage in six Familiar Epistles was published in Dublin. So cruel and venomous were these epistles that one actor, Edwin, is believed to have died of chagrin at the attack upon his reputation. An answer to the libel presently appeared, which was signed S. O., and has been generally attributed to Sydney Owenson. The Familiar Epistles were believed to be the work of John Wilson Croker, then young and unknown, and it may be that the lifelong malignity with which that critic pursued Lady Morgan was due to this early crossing of swords. Sydney herself was fond of hinting that Croker, in his obscure days, had paid her attentions which she, as a successful author, had not cared to encourage, and that wounded vanity was at the bottom of his hatred.

The next book on which Miss Owenson engaged was, if not her best, the one by which she is best known, namely, The Wild Irish Girl. The greater part of this was written while she was staying with Sir Malby Crofton at Longford House, from whose family, as has been seen, she claimed to be descended. Miss Crofton sat for the portrait of the heroine, and much of the scenery was sketched in the wild romantic neighbourhood. About the same time she collected and translated a number of Irish songs which were published under the title of The Lay of the Irish Harp. She thus anticipated Moore, and other explorers in this field, for which fact Moore at least gives her credit in the preface to his own collection. She was not a poet, but she wrote one ballad, 'Kate Kearney,' which became a popular song, and is not yet forgotten.

The story of The Wild Irish Girl is said to have been founded upon an incident in the author's own life. A young man named Everard had fallen in love with her, but as he was wild, idle, and penniless, his father called upon her to beg her not to encourage him, but to use her influence to make him stick to his work. Sydney behaved so well in the matter that the elder Mr. Everard desired to marry her himself, and though his offer was not accepted, he remained her staunch friend and admirer. The 'local colour' in the book is carefully worked up; indeed, in the present day it would probably be thought that the story was overweighted by the account of local manners and customs. Phillips, alarmed at the liberal principles displayed in the work, which he thought would be distasteful to English patriots, refused at first to give the author her price. To his horror and indignation Miss Owenson, whom he regarded as his own particular property, instantly sent the manuscript to a rival bookseller, Johnson, who published for Miss Edgeworth. Johnson offered L300 for the book, while Phillips had only offered L200 down, and L50 on the publication of the second and third editions respectively. The latter, however, was unable to make up his mind to lose the treasure, and after much hesitation and many heart-burnings, he finally wrote to Miss Owenson:—

'DEAR BEWITCHING AND DELUDING SYKEN,—Not being able to part from you, I have promised your noble and magnanimous friend, Atkinson [who was conducting the negotiations], the L300.... It will be long before I forgive you! At least not till I have got back the L300 and another L100 along with it.' Then follows a passage which proves that the literary market, in those days at any rate, was not overstocked: 'If you know any poor bard—a real one, no pretender—I will give him a guinea a page for his rhymes in the Monthly Magazine. I will also give for prose communications at the rate of six guineas a sheet.'

The Wild Irish Girl, whose title was suggested by Peter Pindar, made a hit, more especially in Ireland, and the author woke to find herself famous. She became known to all her friends as 'Glorvina,' the name of the heroine, while the Glorvina ornament, a golden bodkin, and the Glorvina mantle became fashionable in Dublin. The book was bitterly attacked, probably by Croker, in the Freeman's Journal, but the best bit of criticism upon it is contained in a letter from Mr. Edgeworth to Miss Owenson. 'Maria,' he says, 'who reads as well as she writes, has entertained us with several passages from The Wild Irish Girl, which I thought superior to any parts of the book I had read. Upon looking over her shoulder, I found she had omitted some superfluous epithets. Dared she have done this if you had been by? I think she would; because your good sense and good taste would have been instantly her defenders.' It must be admitted that all Lady Morgan's works would have gained by the like treatment.

In an article called 'My First Rout,' which appeared in The Book of the Boudoir (published in 1829), Lady Morgan describes a party at Lady Cork's, where she was lionised by her hostess, the other guests having been invited to meet the Wild Irish Girl. The celebrities present were brought up and introduced to Miss Owenson with a running comment from Lady Cork, which, though it must be taken with a grain of salt, is worth transcribing:—

'Lord Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl you were so anxious to meet. I assure you she talks quite as well as she writes. Now, my dear, do tell Lord Erskine some of those Irish stories you told us at Lord Charleville's. Mrs. Abington says you would make a famous actress, she does indeed. This is the Duchess of St. Albans—she has your Wild Irish Girl by heart. Where is Sheridan? Oh, here he is; what, you know each other already? Tant mieux. Mr. Lewis, do come forward; this is Monk Lewis, of whom you have heard so much—but you must not read his works, they are very naughty.... You know Mr. Gell; he calls you the Irish Corinne. Your friend, Mr. Moore, will be here by-and-by. Do see, somebody, if Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Kemble are come yet. Now pray tell us the scene at the Irish baronet's in the Rebellion that you told to the ladies of Llangollen; and then give us your blue-stocking dinner at Sir Richard Phillips'; and describe the Irish priests.'

At supper Sydney was placed between Lord Erskine and Lord Carysfort, and was just beginning to feel at her ease when Mr. Kemble was announced. Mr. Kemble, it soon became apparent, had been dining, and had paid too much attention to the claret. Sitting down opposite Miss Owenson, he fixed her with an intense and glassy stare. Unfortunately, her hair, which she wore in the fashionable curly 'crop,' aroused his curiosity. Stretching unsteadily across the table, he suddenly, to quote her own words, 'struck his claws into my locks, and addressing me in his deepest tones, asked, "Little girl, where did you buy your wig?"' Lord Erskine hastily came to the rescue, but Kemble, rendered peevish by his interference, took a volume of The Wild Irish Girl out of his pocket, and after reading aloud one of the most high-flown passages, asked, 'Little girl, why did you write such nonsense, and where did you get all those hard words?' Sydney delighted the company by blurting out the truth: 'Sir, I wrote as well as I could, and I got the hard words out of Johnson's Dictionary.' That Kemble spoke the truth in his cups may be proved by the following sentence, which is a fair sample of the general style of the book: 'With a character tinctured with the brightest colouring of romantic eccentricity [a father is describing his son, the hero], but marked by indelible traces of innate rectitude, and ennobled by the purest principles of native generosity, the proudest sense of inviolable honour, I beheld him rush eagerly on life, enamoured of its seeming good, incredulous of its latent evils, till, fatally entangled in the spells of the latter, he fell an early victim to their successful allurements.'

The Wild Irish Girl was followed by Patriotic Sketches and a volume of poems, for which Sir Richard Phillips offered L100 before he read them. A little later, in 1807, an operetta called The First Attempt, or the Whim of the Moment, the libretto by Miss Owenson and the music by T. Cooke, was performed at the Dublin Theatre. The Duke of Bedford, then Lord-Lieutenant, attended in state, the Duchess wore a Glorvina bodkin, and the entertainment was also patronised by the officers of the garrison and all the liberal members of the Irish bar. The little piece, in which Mr. Owenson acted an Irish character, was played for several nights, and brought its author the handsome sum of L400. This, however, seems to have been Sydney's first and last attempt at dramatic composition.

The family fortunes had improved somewhat at this time, for Olivia, who had gone out as a governess, became engaged to Dr., afterwards Sir Arthur Clarke, a plain, elderly little gentleman, who, however, made her an excellent husband. Having a good house and a comfortable income, he was able to offer a home to Mr. Owenson and to the faithful Molly. For the present, Sydney, though always on excellent terms with her brother-in-law, preferred her independence. She established herself in lodgings in Dublin, and made the most of the position that her works had won for her. Her flirtations and indiscretions provided the town with plenty of occasion for scandal, and there is a tradition that one strictly proper old lady, on being asked to chaperon Miss Owenson to the Castle, replied that when Miss Owenson wore more petticoats and less paint she would be happy to do so. Yet another tradition has been handed down to the effect that Miss Owenson appeared at one of the Viceregal balls in a dress, the bodice of which was trimmed with the portraits of her rejected lovers!

Foremost among our heroine's admirers at this time was Sir Charles Ormsby, K.C., then member for Munster, He was a widower, deeply in debt, and a good deal older than Sydney, but if there was no actual engagement, there was certainly an 'understanding' between the pair. In May, 1808, Miss Owenson was on a visit to the Dowager Lady Stanley of Alderley at Penrhos (one of the new friends her celebrity had gained for her), whence she wrote a sentimental epistle to Sir Charles Ormsby. The Sir John Stanley mentioned in the letter was the husband of Maria Josepha Holroyd, to whom he had been married in 1796.

'The figure and person of Lady Stanley are inimitable,' writes Sydney. 'Vandyck would have estimated her at millions. Though old, her manners, her mind, and her conversation are all of the best school.... Sir John Stanley is a man comme il y en a peu. Something at first of English reserve; but when worn off, I never met a mind more daring, more independent in its reflections, more profound or more refined in its ideas. He said a thousand things like you; I am convinced he has loved as you love. We sat up till two this morning talking of Corinne.... I have been obliged to sing "Deep in Love" so often for my handsome host, and every time it is as for you I sing it.' The letter concludes with the words, 'Aimons toujours comme a l'ordinaire.' The pair may have loved, but they were continually quarrelling, and their intimacy was finally broken a year or two later. Lady Morgan preserved to the end of her days a packet of love-letters indorsed, 'Sir Charles Montague Ormsby, Bart., one of the most brilliant wits, determined roues, agreeable persons, and ugliest men of his day.'

The summer of this year, 1808, Miss Owenson spent in a round of visits to country-houses, and in working, amid many distractions, at her Grecian novel, Ida of Athens. After the first volume had gone to press, Phillips took fright at some of the opinions therein expressed, and refused to proceed further with the work. It was then accepted by Longmans, who, however, were somewhat alarmed at what they considered the Deistical principles and the taint of French philosophy that ran through the book. Ida is a houri and a woman of genius, who dresses in a tissue of woven air, has a taste for philosophical discussions, and a talent for getting into perilous situations, from which her strong sense of propriety invariably delivers her. This book was the subject of adverse criticism in the first number of the Quarterly Review, the critic being, it is believed, Miss Owenson's old enemy, Croker. As a work of art, the novel was certainly a just object of ridicule, but the personalities by which the review is disfigured were unworthy of a responsible critic.

'The language,' observes the reviewer, 'is an inflated jargon, composed of terms picked up in all countries, and wholly irreducible to any ordinary rules of grammar and sense. The sentiments are mischievous in tendency, profligate in principle, licentious and irreverent in the highest degree.' The first part of this accusation was only too well founded, but the licentiousness of which Lady Morgan's works were invariably accused in the Quarterly Review, can only have existed in the mind of the reviewer. One cannot but smile to think how many persons with a taste for highly-spiced fiction must have been set searching through Lady Morgan's novels by these notices, and how bitterly they must have been disappointed. The review in question concludes with the remark that if the author would buy a spelling-book, a pocket-dictionary, exchange her raptures for common sense, and gather a few precepts of humility from the Bible, 'she might hope to prove, not indeed a good writer of novels, but a useful friend, a faithful wife, a tender mother, and a respectable and happy mistress of a family.' This impertinence is thoroughly characteristic of the days when the Quarterly was regarded as an amusing but frivolous, not to say flippant, publication.

Ida of Athens received the honour of mention in a note to Childe Harold. 'I will request Miss Owenson,' writes Byron, 'when she next chooses an Athenian heroine for her four volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a gentleman than a "Disdar Aga" (who, by the way, is not an Aga), the most impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny Athens ever saw (except Lord E[lgin]), and the unworthy occupant of the Acropolis, on a handsome stipend of 150 piastres (L8 sterling), out of which he has to pay his garrison, the most ill-regulated corps in the ill-regulated Ottoman Empire. I speak it tenderly, seeing I was once the cause of the husband of Ida nearly suffering the bastinado; and because the said Disdar is a turbulent fellow who beats his wife, so that I exhort and beseech Miss Owenson to sue for a separate maintenance on behalf of Ida.'

In 1809 Lady Abercorn, the third wife of the first Marquis, having taken a sudden fancy to Miss Owenson, proposed that she should come to Stanmore Priory, and afterwards to Baron's Court, as a kind of permanent visitor. A fine lady of the old-fashioned, languid, idle, easily bored type, Lady Abercorn desired a lively, amusing companion, who would deliver her from the terrors of a solitude a deux, make music in the evenings, and help to entertain her guests. It was represented to Sydney that such an invitation was not lightly to be refused, but as acceptance involved an almost total separation from her friends, she hesitated to enter into any actual engagement, and went to the Abercorns for two or three months as an ordinary visitor. Lord Abercorn, who was then between fifty and sixty, had been married three times, and divorced once. So fastidious a fine gentleman was he that the maids were not allowed to make his bed except in white kid gloves, and his groom of his chambers had orders to fumigate his rooms after liveried servants had been in them. He is described as handsome, witty, and blase, a roue in principles and a Tory in politics. Nothing pleased Lady Morgan better in her old age, we are told, than to have it insinuated that there had been 'something wrong' between herself and Lord Abercorn.

In January, 1810, Sydney writes to Mrs. Lefanu from Stanmore Priory to the effect that she is the best-lodged, best-fed, dullest author in his Majesty's dominions, and that the sound of a commoner's name is refreshment to her ears. She is surrounded by ex-lord-lieutenants, unpopular princesses (including her of Wales) deposed potentates (including him of Sweden), half the nobility of England, and many of the best wits and writers. She had sat to Sir Thomas Lawrence for her portrait, and sold her Indian novel, The Missionary, for a famous price. Lord Castlereagh, while staying at Stanmore, heard portions of the work read aloud, and admired it so much that he offered to take the author to London, and give her a rendezvous with her publisher in his own study. Stockdale, the publisher, was so much impressed by his surroundings that he bid L400 for the book, and the agreement was signed and sealed under Lord Castlereagh's eye. The Missionary was not so successful as The Wild Irish Girl, and added nothing to the author's reputation.

It was not until the end of 1810 that Miss Owenson decided to become a permanent member of the Abercorn household. About this time, or a little later, she wrote a short description of her temperament and feelings, from which a sentence or two may be quoted. 'Inconsiderate and indiscreet, never saved by prudence, but often rescued by pride; often on the verge of error, but never passing the line. Committing myself in every way except in my own esteem—without any command over my feelings, my words, or writings—yet full of self-possession as to action and conduct.' After describing her sufferings from nervous susceptibility and mental depression, she continues: 'But the hand that writes this has lost nothing of the contour of health or the symmetry of youth. I am in possession of all the fame I ever hoped or ambitioned. I wear not the appearance of twenty years; I am now, as I generally am, sad and miserable.'

In 1811 Dr. Morgan, a good-looking widower of about eight-and-twenty, accepted the post of private physician to Lord Abercorn. He was a Cambridge man, an intimate friend of Dr. Jenner's, and possessed a small fortune of his own. When he first arrived at Baron's Court, Miss Owenson was absent, and he heard so much of her praises that he conceived a violent prejudice against her. On her return she set to work systematically to fascinate him, and succeeded even better than she had hoped or desired. In Lady Abercorn he had a warm partisan, but it may be suspected that the ambitious Miss Owenson found it hard to renounce all hopes of a more brilliant match. The Abercorns having vowed that Dr. Morgan should be made Sir Charles, and that they would push his fortunes, Sydney yielded to their importunities so far as to write to her father, and ask his consent to her engagement.

'I dare say you will be amazingly astonished,' she observes, 'but not half so much as I am, for Lord and Lady Abercorn have hurried on the business in such a manner that I really don't know what I am about. They called me in last night, and, more like parents than friends, begged me to be guided by them—that it was their wish not to lose sight of me ... and that if I accepted Morgan, the man upon earth they most esteemed and approved, they would be friends to both for life—that we should reside with them one year after our marriage, so that we might lay up our income to begin the world. He is also to continue their physician. He has now L500 a year, independent of his practice. I don't myself see the thing quite in the light they do; but they think him a man of such great abilities, such great worth and honour, that I am the most fortunate person in the world.'

To her old friend, Mrs. Lefanu, she writes in much the same strain. 'The licence and ring have been in the house these ten days, and all the settlements made; yet I have been battling off from day to day, and have only ten minutes back procured a little breathing time. The struggle is almost too great for me. On one side engaged, beyond retrieval, to a man who has frequently declared to my friends that if I break off he will not survive it! On the other, the dreadful certainty of being parted for ever from a country and friends I love, and a family I adore.'

The 'breathing time' was to consist of a fortnight's visit to her sister, Lady Clarke, in Dublin, in order to be near her father, who was in failing health. The fortnight, however, proved an exceedingly elastic period. Mr. Owenson was not dangerously ill, the winter season was just beginning, and Miss Owenson was more popular than ever. Her unfortunate lover, as jealous as he was enamoured, being detained by his duties at Baron's Court, could only write long letters of complaint, reproach, and appeal to his hard-hearted lady. Sydney was thoroughly enjoying herself, and was determined to make the most of her last days of liberty. She admitted afterwards that she had behaved very badly at this time, and deserved to have lost the best husband woman ever had.

'I picture to myself,' writes poor Dr. Morgan, 'the thoughtless and heartless Glorvina trifling with her friend, jesting at his sufferings, and flirting with every man she meets.' He sends her some commissions, but declares that there is only one about which he is really anxious, 'and that is to love me exclusively; to prefer me to every other good; to think of me, speak of me, write to me, and look forward to our union as to the completion of every wish, as I do by you. Do this, and though you grow as ugly as Sycorax, you will never lose in me the fondest, most doating, affectionate of husbands. Glorvina, I was born for tenderness; my business in life is to love.... I read part of The Way to Keep Him this morning, and I see now you take the widow for your model; but it won't do, for though I love you in every mood, it is only when you are true to nature, passionate and tender, that I adore you. You are never less interesting to me than when you brillez in a large party.'

The fortnight's leave of absence had been granted in September, and by the end of November Dr. Morgan is thoroughly displeased with his truant fiancee, and asks why she could not have told him when she went away, that she intended to stay till Christmas. 'I know, he writes, 'this is but a specimen of the roundabout policy of all your countrywomen. How strange it is that you, who are in general great beyond every woman I know, philosophical and magnanimous, should in detail be so often ill-judging, wrong, and (shall I say) little?' In December Sydney writes to say that she will return directly after Christmas, and declares that the terrible struggle of feeling, which she had tried to forget in every species of mental dissipation, is now over; friends, relatives, country, all are resigned, and she is his for ever! A little later she shows signs of wavering again; she cannot make up her mind to part from her invalid father just yet; but this time Dr. Morgan puts his foot down, and issues his ultimatum in a stern and manly letter. He will be trifled with no longer. Sydney must either keep her promise and return at Christmas, or they had better part, never to meet again. 'The love I require,' he writes, 'is no ordinary affection. The woman who marries me must be identified with me. I must have a large bank of tenderness to draw upon. I must have frequent profession and frequent demonstration of it. Woman's love is all in all to me; it stands in place of honours and riches, and what is yet more, in place of tranquillity of mind.'

This letter, backed by one from Lady Abercorn, brought Sydney to her senses. In the first days of the new year (1812) she arrived at Baron's Court, a little shamefaced, and more than a little doubtful of her reception. The marquis was stiff, and the marchioness stately, but Sir Charles, who had just been knighted by the Lord Lieutenant, was too pleased to get his lady-love back, to harbour any resentment against her. A few days after her return, as she was sitting over the fire in a morning wrapper, Lady Abercorn came in and said:

'Glorvina, come upstairs directly and be married; there must be no more trifling.'

The bride was led into her ladyship's dressing-room, where the bridegroom was awaiting her in company with the chaplain, and the ceremony took place. The marriage was kept a secret from the other guests at the time, but a few nights later Lord Abercorn filled his glass after dinner, and drank to the health of 'Sir Charles and Lady Morgan.'



PART II

The marriage, unpromising as it appeared at the outset, proved an exceptionally happy one. Sir Charles was a straightforward, worthy, if somewhat dull gentleman, with no ambition, a nervous distaste for society, and a natural indolence of temperament. To his wife he gave the unstinted sympathy and admiration that her restless vanity craved, while she invariably maintained that he was the wisest, brightest, and handsomest of his sex. She seems to have given him no occasion for jealousy after marriage, though to the last she preserved her passion for society, and her ambition for social recognition and success. The first year of married life, which she described as a period of storm, interspersed with brilliant sunshine, was spent with the Abercorns at Baron's Court.

'Though living in a palace,' wrote Sydney to Mrs. Lefanu, early in 1812, 'we have all the comfort and independence of a home.... As to me, I am every inch a wife, and so ends that brilliant thing that was Glorvina. N.B.—I intend to write a book to explode the vulgar idea of matrimony being the tomb of love. Matrimony is the real thing, and all before but leather and prunella.' In a letter to Lady Stanley she paints Sir Charles in the romantic colours appropriate to a novelist's husband. 'In love he is Sheridan's Falkland, and in his view of things there is a melange of cynicism and sentiment that will never suffer him to be as happy as the inferior million that move about him. Marriage has taken nothing from the romance of his passion for me; and by bringing a sense of property with it, has rendered him more exigent and nervous about me than before.'

The luxury of Baron's Court was probably more than counterbalanced by the inevitable drawbacks of married life in a patron's household, where the husband, at least, was at that patron's beck and call. Before the end of the year, the Morgans were contemplating a modest establishment of their own, and Sydney had set to work upon a novel, the price of which was to furnish the new house. Mr. Owenson had died shortly after his daughter's marriage, and Lady Morgan persuaded her husband to settle in Dublin, in order that she might be near her sister and her many friends. A house was presently taken in Kildare Street, and Sir Charles, who had obtained the post of physician to the Marshalsea, set himself to establish a practice. Lady Morgan prided herself upon her housewifely talents, and in a letter dated May, 1813, she describes how she has made their old house clean and comfortable, all that their means would permit, 'except for one little bit of a room, four inches by three, which is fitted up in the Gothic, and I have collected into it the best part of a very good cabinet of natural history of Sir Charles's, eight or nine hundred volumes of choice books in French, English, Italian, and German, some little curiosities, and a few scraps of old china, so that, with muslin draperies, etc., I have made no contemptible set-out.... With respect to authorship, I fear it is over; I have been making chair-covers instead of systems, and cheapening pots and pans instead of selling sentiment and philosophy.'

In the midst of all her domestic labours, however, Lady Morgan contrived to finish a novel, O'Donnel, which Colburn published in 1814, and for which she received L550. The book was ill-reviewed, but it was an even greater popular success than The Wild Irish Girl. The heroine, like most of Lady Morgan's heroines, is evidently meant for an idealised portrait of herself, and the great ladies by whom she is surrounded are sketched from Lady Abercorn and certain of the guests at Baron's Court. The Liberal, or as they would now be called, Radical principles inculcated in the book gave bitter offence to the author's old-fashioned friends, and increased the rancour of her Tory reviewers. But O'Donnel found numerous admirers, among them no less a person than Sir Walter Scott, who notes in his diary for March 14, 1826: 'I have amused myself occasionally very pleasantly during the last few days by reading over Lady Morgan's novel of O'Donnel, which has some striking and beautiful passages of situation and description, and in the comic part is very rich and entertaining. I do not remember being so pleased with it at first. There is a want of story, always fatal to a book on the first reading—and it is well if it gets the chance of a second.'

The following year, 1815, France being once again open to English travellers, the Morgans paid a visit to Paris, Lady Morgan having undertaken to write a book about what was then a strange people and a strange country. The pair went a good deal into society, and made many friends, among them Lafayette, Cuvier, the Comte de Segur, Madame de Genlis, and Madame Jerome Bonaparte. Sydney, whose Celtic manners were probably more congenial to the French than Anglo-Saxon reserve, seems to have received a great deal of attention, and her not over-strong head was slightly turned in consequence.

'The French admire you more than any Englishwoman who has appeared here since the Battle of Waterloo,' wrote Madame Jerome Bonaparte to Lady Morgan, after the latter had returned to Ireland. 'France is the country you should reside in, because you are so much admired, and here no Englishwoman has received the same attentions since you. I am dying to see your last publication. Public expectation is as high as possible. How happy you must be at filling the world with your name as you do! Madame de Stael and Madame de Genlis are forgotten; and if the love of fame be of any weight with you, your excursion to Paris was attended with brilliant success.'

Madame de Genlis, in her Memoirs, gives a more soberly-worded account of the impression produced by Lady Morgan on Parisian society. The author of France is described as 'not beautiful, but with something lively and agreeable in her whole person. She is very clever, and seems to have a good heart; it is a pity that for the sake of popularity she should have the mania of meddling in politics.... Her vivacity and rather springing carriage seemed very strange in Parisian circles. She soon learned that good taste of itself condemned that kind of demeanour; in fact, gesticulation and noisy manners have never been popular in France.' The spoilt little lady was by no means satisfied with this portrait, and Sir Charles, who was away from home at the time the Memoirs appeared, writes to console her. 'You must not mind that lying old witch Madame de Genlis' attack upon you,' says the admiring husband. 'I thought she would not let you off easily; you were not only a better and younger (and I may say prettier) author than herself, but also a more popular one.'

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 L750 for the new work, but Lady Morgan demanded L1000, 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 butterfly 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 scraps 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 pronounce 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 sexes, 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 authoresses 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 L2000 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 manuscript 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 Duchess 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 title 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 constitution, 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 analysis of Colburn's methods of advertisement. 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 passage in one of Byron's letters to Moore. 'Lady Morgan,' writes the poet, 'in a really excellent book, I assure 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 God.'

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 L1350. 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 classes. 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 asserted 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 Pueckler 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 authoress. 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 embarrassment; 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 passage 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 authoress 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 associations considerably strengthened.'

In 1829 The Book of the Boudoir was published, with a preface in which Lady Morgan gives the following naive 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 manuscript 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 scraps, 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 assistance, 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 tittle-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 tittle-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 amusement 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 grasshopper, 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 God. 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 L500. 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 coxcomb 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 titre'; 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, L350, 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 L300 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 assisted 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 amusement 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 nobody, 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 crape.'

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 duchess, 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 assistance 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 coarsened, 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 passion 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.'



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS

PART I



Any fool, said a wise man, can write an interesting book if he will only take the trouble to set down exactly what he has seen and heard. Unfortunately, it is only a very special kind of fool who is capable of recording exactly what he sees and hears—a rare bird who flourishes perhaps once in a century, and is remembered long after wiser men are forgotten. It is not contended that the subject of this memoir was a fool in the crude sense of the word, though he was responsible for a good deal of folly; but he was inspired by that impertinent curiosity, that happy lack of dignity, and that passion for the trivial and the intimate, which, when joined to a natural talent for observation and a picturesque narrative style, enable the possessor to illuminate a circle and a period in a fashion never achieved by the most learned lucubrations of the profoundest scholars. Thanks to his Boswellising powers, 'Namby-Pamby Willis,' as he was called by his numerous enemies, has left an admirably vivid picture of the literary society of London in the 'thirties,' a picture that steadily increases in value as the period at which it was painted recedes into the past.

Willis came of a family that had contrived, not unsuccessfully, to combine religion with journalism. His immediate forebears seem to have been persons of marked individuality, and his pedigree was, for the New World, of quite respectable antiquity. The founder of the family, George Willis, was born early in the seventeenth century, and emigrated to New England about 1730, where he worked at his trade of brickmaking and building. Our hero's great-grandfather was a patriotic sailmaker, who assisted at a certain historic entertainment, when tar, feathers, and hot tea were administered gratis to his Majesty's tax-collector at Boston. His wife, Abigail, was a lady of character and maxims, who saved some tea for her private use when three hundred cases were emptied into Boston Harbour, and exhorted her family never to eat brown bread when they could get white, and never to go in at the back door when they might go in at the front. The son of this worthy couple conducted a Whig newspaper in Boston during the Rebellion, and became one of the pioneer journalists of the West. His son, Nathaniel's sire, was invited, in 1803, to start a newspaper at Portland, Maine, where the future Penciller was born in 1806, one year before his fellow-townsman Longfellow.

A few years later, Mr. Willis returned to Boston, where, in 1816, he started the Boston Recorder, the first newspaper, he was accustomed to say, that had ever been run on religious lines. He seems to have been a respectable, but narrow-minded man, who loved long devotions and many services, and looked upon dancing, card-playing and stage-plays as works of the Evil One. His redeeming points were a sense of humour and a keen appreciation of female beauty, which last characteristic he certainly bequeathed to his son. It was his custom to sit round the fire with his nine children on winter evenings, and tell them stories about the old Dutch tiles, representing New Testament scenes, with which the chimney-corner was lined. The success of these informal Scripture lessons led him to establish a religious paper for young people called The Youth's Companion, in which some of our hero's early verses appeared. His wife, Hannah Parker, is described as a charming woman, lively, impulsive, and emotional. Her son, Nathaniel, whose devotion to her never wavered, used to say, 'My veins are teeming with the quicksilver spirit my mother gave me.'

Willis the younger was sent to school at Boston, where he had Emerson for a schoolfellow, and afterwards to the university of Yale, where he wrote much poetry, and was well received in the society of the place on account of his good looks, easy manners, and precocious literary reputation. On leaving Yale, he was delivered of a volume of juvenile poems, and then settled down in Boston to four years' journalistic work. Samuel Goodrich, better known in England under his pseudonym of 'Peter Parley,' engaged him to edit some annuals and gift-books, an employment which the young man found particularly congenial. In his Recollections Peter Parley draws a comparison between his two contributors, Hawthorne and Willis, and records that everything Willis wrote attracted immediate attention, while the early productions of Hawthorne passed almost unnoticed.

In 1829 Willis started on his own account with the American Monthly Magazine, which had an existence of little more than two years. He announced that he could not afford to pay for contributions, as he expected only a small circulation, and he wrote most of the copy himself. Every month there were discursive, gossiping editorial articles in that 'personal' vein which has been worked with so much industry in our own day. He took his readers into his confidence, prattled about his japonica and his pastilles, and described his favourite bird, a scarlet trulian, and his dogs, Ugolino and L. E. L., who slept in the waste-paper basket. He professed to write with a bottle of Rudesheimer and a plate of olives at his elbow, and it was hinted that he ate fruit in summer with an amber-handled fork to keep his palm cool!

These youthful affectations had a peculiarly exasperating effect upon men of a different type; and Willis became the butt of the more old-fashioned critics, who vied with each other in inventing opprobrious epithets to shower upon the head of this young puppy of journalism. However, Nathaniel was not a person who could easily be suppressed, and he soon became one of the most popular magazine-writers of his time, his prose being described by an admirer as 'delicate and brief like a white jacket—transparent like a lump of sugar in champagne—soft-tempered like the sea-breeze at night.' Unfortunately, the magazines paid but little, even for prose of the above description, and Willis presently found himself in financial difficulties; while, with all his acknowledged fascinations, he was unlucky in his first love-affair. He became engaged to a beautiful girl called Mary Benham, but her guardian broke off the match, and the lady, who seems to have had an inclination for literary men, afterwards married Motley, the historian of the Dutch Republic.

In 1831 the American Monthly Magazine ceased to appear, and Willis, leaving Boston and his creditors without regret, obtained the post of assistant-editor on the New York Mirror, a weekly paper devoted to literature, light fiction, and the fine arts. It was the property of Morris, author of the once world-famous song, 'Woodman, spare that Tree,' and the editor-in-chief was Theodore Fay, a novelist of some distinction. Soon after his appointment it was decided that Willis should be sent to Europe as foreign correspondent of his paper. A sum of about a hundred pounds was scraped together for his expenses, and it was arranged that he should write weekly letters at the rate of two guineas a letter. In the autumn of 1831 he sailed in a merchant-vessel for Havre, whence he journeyed to Paris in November. Here he spent the first five or six months of his tour, and here began the series of 'Pencillings by the Way,' a portion of which gained him rather an unwelcome notoriety in English society by reason of the 'personalities' it contained. When published in book form the Pencillings were considerably toned down, and the proper names were represented by initials, so that people who read them then for the first time wondered what all the excitement had been about. As the chapters which relate to England are of most interest to English readers, Willis's continental adventures need only be briefly noticed. The extracts here quoted are taken from the original letters as they appeared in the New York Mirror, which differ in many respects from the version that was published in London after the attack by the Quarterly Review.

In Paris Willis found himself in his element, and was made much of by the Anglo-French community, which was then under the special patronage of Lafayette. One of the most interesting of his new acquaintances was the Countess Guiccioli, upon whose appearance and manners he comments with characteristic frankness.

'I met the Guiccioli yesterday in the Tuileries,' he writes shortly after his arrival. 'She looks much younger than I anticipated, and is a handsome blonde, apparently about thirty. I am told by a gentleman who knows her that she has become a great flirt, and is quite spoiled by admiration. The celebrity of Lord Byron's attachment would certainly make her a very desirable acquaintance were she much less pretty than she really is, and I am told her drawing-room is thronged with lovers of all nations contending for a preference which, having once been given, should be buried, I think, for ever.' A little later he has himself been introduced to the Guiccioli, and he describes an interview which he has had with her, when the conversation turned upon her friendship with Shelley.

'She gave me one of his letters to herself as an autograph,' he narrates. 'She says he was at times a little crazy—fou, as she expressed it—but there never was a nobler or a better man. Lord Byron, she says, loved him as a brother.... There were several miniatures of Byron hanging up in the room; I asked her if any of them were perfect in the resemblance. "No," she said, "that is the most like him," taking down a miniature by an Italian artist, "mais il etait beaucoup plus beau—beaucoup—beaucoup." She reiterated the word with a very touching tenderness, and continued to look at the portrait for some time.... She went on talking of the painters who had drawn Byron, and said the American, West's, was the best likeness. I did not tell her that West's portrait of herself was excessively flattered. I am sure no one would know her, from the engraving at least. Her cheek-bones are high, her forehead is badly shaped, and altogether the frame of her features is decidedly ugly. She dresses in the worst taste too, and yet for all this, and poetry and celebrity aside, the countess is both a lovely and a fascinating woman, and one whom a man of sentiment would admire at this age very sincerely, but not for beauty.'