When Lady Morgan wished to give an impromptu evening party, she used to throw up the windows of the drawingroom, and invite her friends, as they passed, to come in and join the revel.
Vain and volatile as she was, society was a necessity to her. She lived on praise.
Besides her novels, she wrote a Life of Salvator Rosa, two huge volumes on France and two on Italy. Her work on France came out just after the battle of Waterloo, and created a great sensation, though it was called by Croker in the Quarterly Review "an impudent lie!" It sold so well that Colburn offered her £2,000 for a book of the same kind on Italy. She spent many months both in France and Italy collecting materials. As usual, she took about with her a little case containing her Irish harp. A French lady, who came to see her, fixed her eyes on it and said—"It is a little dead child, is it not?" Lady Morgan lifted up her hands in horror at the idea, and the French lady remarked—"Ah, madame, you English are so odd!" She was fully convinced that Lady Morgan was bringing her dead child to bury it at Pere La Chaise.
The lucky authoress bought a charming straw hat in Paris, with poppies in it, and, with her French grey cashmere and her coquetry, which she says, "will go with me to my grave," she thought herself irresistible. Great, then, was
