We hear nothing after this of Grandfather M‘Owen, and not much of
Grandmother. They probably continued to live, the rest of their days,
the cat-and-dog life which usually falls to the lot of persons
circumstanced as they were; but the son goes with his patron to Dublin,
where for the first time he is present at a play. By-and-by, after
exchanging his frieze for broadcloth, he removes to London. There wits
and beauties flock about him. He is very clever—he sings divinely.
Oliver Goldsmith is his first cousin, five times removed, and Madame
Weichsel takes a fancy to him. This is too much, and the lad’s head gets
turned. Mr Blake has occasion to visit Ireland, or says that he has, and
goes away, after charging young Owenson to keep at home and look after
his property. In particular, he charges the lad not to go to the theatre
in his absence, or to any other place of public amusement; but no sooner
is the patron’s back turned, than the protégé hurries off to Vauxhall,
and is easily persuaded to take part in the duet of ‘Fair Aurora’ with
his friend Madame Weichsel, who has an engagement there. He little knows
what eyes are upon him all the while. Mr Blake has not gone to Ireland;
he has come to Vauxhall to be amused, and after listening to the duet,
and probably applauding it, he goes straight back to his house in
Russell Street. We are not prepared to say what might have happened had
young Owenson returned home to sleep. But he did nothing of the sort; he
was out on a spree for three days and three nights, and found, when the
fun was over, that his trunk stood ready roped in the hall, and that a
letter from Mr Blake, containing a bank post-bill for £300, requested
him to go about his business.
On the whole, we are inclined to believe that this is a not incorrect
statement of the case. Some allowances must of course be made for
over-colouring. Probably Owenson was not quite the accomplished
gentleman whom his daughter represents him to have been, nor Mr Blake
the sybarite and the brute she describes. At all events, we think he did
perfectly right in getting rid of a scapegrace whom he could not trust
out of his own sight. Such, however, were not young Owenson’s views of
the matter. He indignantly re-enclosed the bank-note to Mr Blake (we
have some doubts about that fact), and marched off, proud and penniless,
to Oliver Goldsmith. The upshot was that he took to the stage, and sang
and acted with moderate success. He accepted an engagement in
Shrewsbury, and there persuaded the mayor’s daughter to marry him
privately. It was a decided _mésalliance_ on both sides, for the good
blood of old Ireland got contaminated by intermixture with that of a
provincial magnate; while the magnate took so little to the honour
conferred upon him, that he refused to make any settlement on the young
couple, or even to see them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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