THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.
THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.
BY LADY MORGAN.
“Je n’enseigne pas; je raconte.” MONTAIGNE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1829.
LONDON: SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON’S-COURT, FLEET-STREET.
TO THE READER.
The first page of the following work tells “its being’s aim and object.” It is not worth the gravity of a preface; and will probably escape the distinction of a criticism. It is of a species scarcely admitted into the dignity of British literature; and belongs to that light class of writing in which the French alone excel. Its character is essentially egotistical, and its style inevitably careless. Time and labour might perhaps have cleared it of both these faults, and have rendered it a better work: but it would not then have been the work it was intended to be—if, indeed, it was intended to be any thing.
The MS. volumes, from which its pages were extracted, have composed themselves; and I have copied not always what was best, but what was safest and most inoffensive. Living, as I occasionally have lived, among whatever is most noted, eminent, and distinguished, with reminiscences of all, I have yet confined myself to the mention of those to whom we are already posterity, or to those who have been so much and so long before the world, as to have become the property of the public. In all, I have found much good; and of all, I have said much: for, whatever party calumny may have put forth to the contrary, any severity which may have appeared in my writings has been directed against principles rather than persons. I have written, “from my youth, up,” under the influence of one great and all pervading cause, Ireland and its wrongs. Truth to tell, it was not a very gracious inspiration; and it frequently opposed opinions, inevitably tinctured with bitterness, to a temperament, which those who know me in private life, will vouch for being as cheery and as genial, as ever went to that strange medley of pathos and humour,—the Irish character.
But the day is now fast approaching, when all that is Irish will fall into its natural position; when fair play will be given to national tendencies, and when the sarcastic author of the O’Donnels and the O’Briens, having nothing to find fault with, will be reduced to write, “à l’eau rose,” books for boudoirs, or albums for ladies’ dressing-rooms. Among the multitudinous effects of catholic emancipation, I do not hesitate to predict a change in the character of Irish authorship.
I cannot, however, give this little work to the public without a word as to its title; because I never will, knowingly, contribute to a delusion, however innocent. All who have the supreme felicity of haunting great houses, are aware, that those odd books, which are thrown on round tables, or in the recesses of windows, to amuse the lounger of the moment, and are not in the catalogue of the library, are frequently stamped, in gold letters, with the name of the room to which they are destined: as thus;—“Elegant Extracts, Drawing-room;” “Spirit of the Journals, Saloon,” &c. &c. As my Book of the Boudoir kept its place in the little room which bore that title, and was never admitted into my bureau of official authorship, it took the name of its locale, which, by the advice of Mr. Colburn, it retains.[1] I must, however, here declare, for the sake of truth, and the benefit of country ladies, that the word Boudoir is no longer in vogue in any possible way; that it is a term altogether banished from the nomenclature of fashion; and that I could scarcely have given my work a title less likely to advance its interests with the enlightened of the bon ton. This is an important fact, which I have only recently discovered. It is a subject upon which much, no doubt, may be said; but as I am going to France, I will reserve all I have to say till my return, in the conviction that les lumières du siècle, on a point so important, will there be afforded me, and every circumstance connected with the “rise, decline, and fall of the Boudoir” will be communicated without reserve or restriction. Till then, and in the glorious hope of returning to my poor, native country, an emancipated Protestant, I take my leave of that gracious public, of whom, whether at home or abroad, I have never had reason to complain, and whose grateful servant I have the honour to subscribe myself
SYDNEY MORGAN.
April 4th, 1829, Kildare Street, Dublin.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
Page
My Book 1
Egoism and Egotism 7
Love in Idleness 21
Raconteurs 25
Eternity 51
Horne Tooke 53
Richard Kirwan, Esq. 54
Très-Distingué 89
Aux Petits Soins 91
Rapidity 92
My First Rout in London 98
Lord Erskine 117
Lord Castlereagh 127
Meddlers 133
Philosophy of Grammar 134
My Visiting Book 138
Foreign Visitors 148
Irish Union 156
Human Machinery ib.
Suicide 157
External Existence 158
Eclectics 159
Attitudes of Grief 160
Religious Diabolism 168
Fêtes, Parties, and Soirées 170
Doctrine of Causation 191
The Countess D’Albany 193
Irish Reliquaries 197
The Cadenas 201
Tofino 202
Religions 206
Tower of Babel 207
Mathematical Ladies 208
Cardinal Gonsalvi 212
French Poetry 223
Idleness of Genius 226
Frankness 232
Manœuvrers 236
Wonderful Children, and Good Mothers 237
Toys and Trinkets 248
Fauteuil—Bergère—Arm-chair—Episcopal Seat 257
The Spirit of the Age 267
The Key of the Book Case 281
Apothecaries 288
Maxims—Portraits 291
Human Animality 298
My Reviewers 302
Exclamations 316
Irish Judges 318
At the Head of his Profession 319
The Charitable Bazaars of Dublin 320
THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.
MY BOOK.
Last night, as we circled round the fire in the little red room in Kildare Street, by courtesy called a boudoir, talking about everything, anything, and nothing at all, I happened to give out some odds and ends, that amused those who, truth to tell, are not among the least amusable; when somebody said, “Why do you not write down all this?” and here is a blank book placed before me for the express purpose. But I suspect there is no talking upon paper, as one talks “les pieds couchés sur les chenets.” I feel, at least at this moment, that there is all the difference in the world between sitting bolt upright, before a marble-covered, blue-lined, lank, ledger-looking, Threadneedle-street sort of a volume, for the purpose of opening a running account with one’s own current ideas, and the sinking into the downy depths of an easy chair, and “then and there, without let and molestation” (as the old Irish passport has it), giving a careless and unheeded existence to the infinite deal of nothings which lie latent in the memories of all such, as have seen and heard much, and have been “over the hills and far away.” “Thoughts that breathe” will not always write; “words that burn” are apt to cool down as they are traced; visions that “come like shadows,” will also “so depart;” and the brightest exhalations of the mind, which are drawn forth by the sunny influence of social confidence, like other exhalations, will dissipate by their own lightness, and (beyond the reach of fixture or condensation) “make themselves air, into which they vanish.”
I never, in my life, kept a common-place-book for preserving such “Cynthias of the minute.” I have even an antipathy to all albums and vade-mecums, and such charitable repositories for fugitive thoughts, and thoughtless effusions—reveries which were never rêvés—and impromptus laboured at leisure. I hardly think I can bring myself to open a regular saving bank for the odd cash of mind, the surplus of round sums placed at legal interest in the great public fund of professed authorship: “on renvoye tout cela à la pédantisme.”
Still, however, in the days of pure pedantry, the days of the Scaligers, Pasquiers, Balzacs, and Thuanuses, genius and simplicity, and high philosophy too, found frequent shelter in such daily ledgers of spontaneous thought, and feeling. “Each day of my life is a page in my book,” says the learned Menage, who scribbled his agreeable Ana, while Mesdames Sévigné and Deshoulières sat disputing in his chimney corner, on the merits of coffee, and of Racine, or the fashion of an hurlubrelu. It was such a book, lying temptingly open on the old oak table in the gothic library of the château Montaigne, that led the charming “Michel, gentilhomme Perigordin,” to note down, (in the pauses of more studied composition) those natural and amusing things, which, as he himself quaintly expresses it, come, “à saute et à gambade.”[2] But then I am not Menage nor Montaigne.