The Express.
London, England, 1859-01-15 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Passage* from My_ Autobiography. By SYDNEY
Lady MORGAN. Bentley.
This charming book has only one fault. It is but
• fragment. The complete autobiography, Lady
Morgan tells as, may yet come : the sooner the
better. It is long since the reading public has been
admitted to so great a treat as this fascinating collec-
tion of wit, anecdote, and gossip supplies to all those
who love to look behind the scenes of the great
world, and see the actors as they lived and moved.
The first date in the book is August, 1818—the last,
May, 1819: ten months recovered from the oblivion
with which the lapse of forty years hides the words, the
thoughts and the fashions of our fleeting generations.
What a gulf already separates us from that past !
when the Battle of Waterloo was three years old—
when George was Regent in England, and Louis
des huares Monarch of France, when Napoleon was
sating out his heart in his island prison, and Byron
seeking forgetfalbeas in the " charmed cup "of the
Adriatic Circe. It was a stirring and a brilliant
time; rich in genius, sumptuous in pleasure, extra-
vagant in luxury. The London and Paris
et 1818-19 are before us in the pages of
this brilliant book. Lady Morgan had just published
her " France" which Croker in the Quarterly had jut
massacred. The book was a great and deserved success.
Everybody was talking of it; all the world took
sides about it pro and cm. Colburn, with the dash-
ing munificent* which marked the great publishers
of the great age—the age of the Byron Poems and
the Waverley Novels—offered the authoress of
" France" 2,0001. fur a similar work on Italy. The
offer was at once accepted, and authoress and hus-
band left Dublin for the metropolis. It marks the
leisurely habits of forty years ago that the next ten
months were spent partly in London and partly in
Paris, chemin fauna towards Italy. Their arrival at
No. 8, Conduit street, Hanover-square, was heralded
by Colburn in a puff preliminary, and a stream
of coronets and celebrities set in, almost
before they were well established in their lodgings.
From this point to the last page in the volume we
live without intermission among various orders of
notabilities--admirably daguerreotyped either by

their own bands, in cOnfid;ntial letters, or in We
diary kept by Lady Morgan, and the family epistles
regularly franked and forwarded by the vivacious
lady to her sister in Dublin. The only difficulty is
one of selection—a difficulty reduced almost to
nothing by the certainty that whatever and
wherever we choose it is impossible to choose amiss.
Let us begin with one or two characteristic ',craps
about that eccentric empress of all lion-hunters--the
famous Lady Cork. Here is her first note of in-
vitation:

----- -
Lady Cork has found as out. I send you a note of hers,
which reminds one of " Arlequkt arobassadeur," "Sire,
voila men depecher, et voila mee nonuse-dept,ches."
A very, very sirseable man dines with me on Sunday. the
4th. Will you sad your spouse honour my poor board that
day? But do not mention your coming, for I prettier' never
to see companylnpon the Sabbath. We shall be only a snug
party. )(omens, two ; Carlisle, one ; self, one ; friends
three.
Fool that I am! I forgot I wee engaged on the 4th. It
must be Saturday, the 3td, that you most dine here. Say
" Yas."—Yours, MART Coax sad ORRRIIT.
This was her invariable mode of signature; it
once, am Lady Morgan tells us, led to an odd result:

.
She wrote to an upholsterer in the City to mad her some
expensivenmeable that bad naught her eye en portant in his
shop. His answer was—"D. B. not having any dealings
with M. Cork end Orrery, bogs to have swore explicit order,
finding that the home is not known in the trade.

Lady Cork's parties were famous through many
generations of party-goers. here is some amusing
gossip about them :
The Dowager Lady Cork slim* lives with us, or rather
we with her. Her most curious and beautiful house is in the
next street, and every morning I am sure tc(have • note
from Mary Cork and Onery," brought by an elfin page.
She takes us about everywhere, and mere putties for us of
all sorts of colours—pink blue, gray, and • colour I have
',applied her with (not froM the rainbow). dun-ducketty stud
colour —I must explaiu. She said to me one day,' My
dear, I have pink for the exclusives, blues for the literary,
gray for the religious—at which Kitty Birmingham, the
Irish saint, presides—for I have them all in their turns ; then
I have one party of all sorts, and I have no colour for it."
"Oh," said I, call it dun-ducketty mud colour.' " She
laughed and adopted it. I must send you some of her note.,
for they are saspoyablo. With ell her oddity, elm la good
astute Itself.
Again
Dined at Lady Cork's; and most agreeable company.
The Dacher of Sawa (or Lady De Ameisnd, COMM it
onus
skit), the first by all right, divine and human. the mooed
by en act of parliament and the Prerogative Court. Oh,
these men and their laws! so lightly made so lightly
broken; as parkin or expediency erliegen ; from Henry the
Eighth and his pope, before and after. Mr. Misr, r ce-
lebrated for hi. maiden oration as "Single-speech Hamilton"
was for his. His beautiful wife (Mira Mortara, daughter
of Lord Galway) carrying on the hereditary costmeskst of
Mencklons and Maas. General ?donation and • young
Munekton, • family party congregated under the roof of
Johnson's "little dunce," pretty Maria Manckton ; with the
addition of the emusisg Sr A. Csrliele, who entertained us
with an account more amusing than proper, of • fairy child
who had Wes made • show of in London, and which, altar
its drib, he had preserved in spirits. This caught Lady
attention, and the following little dialogue ensued
Lady Cork—My dear Sir Anthony, will you let me have
that little curiosity to morrow night ? It will be vary
envier.
Sir A.—Well, madam, I don't think she can own on so
short an invitation. She w like other lions, with the ex-
ception of the "learned pig.' who never notated peering.
Lady Cork, pitevielily.--Well, but I have hr the pig, and
it is • humbug. To-morrow is my " Bins" night, and
your little anatomy—what do you call her (—would just
answer the " Blur," they are as fond of senesce and that
tort of thing ; end then, Sir Anthony, you would give us •
little discourse, as you did at the College of Surgeons. You
will meet two reviewers sad the editor of the Court Jouruuli
It may be of service to you : indeed it may, they cut up
folks so ! What do you think Sir Charles Morgan i you
are a physician.
Sir C. 14.—Well, Lady Cork, Sir Anthony is so distin-
guished for his own skill in " cutting up " that I would not
trust your "reviewers" atm him, for fear of the effects of •
jalousie du utilise.
Lady Cork.—Well, you axe both very throw : clever
men are 14 sometimes—there's Home Smith whom I invited

fee this evening particularly, and he had the pertnese to write
me word be WAS engaged to the elephant.
What has your Lsdyiship dons with your Irish saint,
Kitty Birmingham 't" saked I.
" Oh, she is coming to-morrow, my ' Grey' evening."
A general utter followed, which mu cut short by Lady
Cork raying, " Duchess, shall we got"
Again •
Friday (yesterday), we dined et Lady Cork's, with Jekyll,
Lord Cerbamptos, and some other famous wits end men of
pleasure about town—a most delicious day. Lord Car-
hampton made Lady Cork give this dinner that he might
meet me, for he raves about • France ; " and you may be
sure I was not sorry to meet the once fatuous
Colonel Luttrell, the opponent of Wilkes, and the victim of
Junius. lie is odd, but clever and pleasant, sad the conver-
sation was delightful. We retired after dinner to a room,
opening into a curious garden, with parrots and macaws
flying about, music board among the trees, and rose-water
spouting out of fountains, and eseentes and perfumes carried
in red-hot ladles by servants, till we were enveloped in
clouds of incense.
At Paris the authoress of " France" found her-
self in especial favour with the liberal party, then
waging battle—with Benjamin Constant and Manuel
for its orators, Paul Colmar for its Fonblanque, and
Beranger foe its inspired singer—against the re-
actionary tendencies of the second Restoration. The
lively lady opens her salons on Wednesday evenings,
and becomes a notability in the most brilliant circle
of the French capital. A stay at La Grange, the
country-house of La Fayette, wos an enjoyable inter-
lude between the polite mobs of May Fair and the
apiritud receptions of the Rue Helder. This is a
pleasant sketch of " Cromwell-Grandison" in his
retirement, and a piece of historical gossip worth

recording: - - -
As I thought the general limped a little, although Morgan
gave bins his arm, I proposed as we reached the extremity
of the grande p•lonst, that commands such a beautiful view
of the chateau and its five tower,, that we should sit down
to enjoy the same on ow of the many wooden benches with
which the grounds abound. The shale of two tine trees
offered us repose end shelter from the 111112 sad, above all,
one of those charming reuteries with the general, to which
he unsuspectingly kat himself. In those low, clew, modulated
tone., which game to everything he said such emphasis, he
simmered our questions by replies, that might almost be
called historical.