Mr Owenson’s theatrical adventure was not a fortunate one. The
Government went against him, by granting to Mr Daley a patent for the
exclusive performance of the regular drama; and the Dublin gentry,
though they took plenty of boxes at the Music Hall, objected or forgot
to pay for them. Neither was he more successful in trade. His cousins,
the Ffrenches, an old family, of course, exiled on account of their
religion, or for some other cause, made him their agent for the sale of
wines which they grew at Bordeaux; and though he certainly managed to
get rid of large quantities, he was never able to remit to them
negotiable bills for the same. He went, in short, to the dogs, his
course thither being a good deal accelerated by the death of his amiable
but gloomy and Calvinistic wife. And now began in earnest the education
of the two Misses Owenson. They were placed under a French _emigrée_, a
Mme. Terson, who kept school first at Portarlington, and afterwards at
Clontarf, and learned from her imperfectly a good deal, living at the
same time with “many girls of rank, and some of distinguished talent.”
How Mme. Terson got paid we are left to conjecture. Probably she never
got paid at all; but being a benevolent person, and a sort of sister of
mercy, she allowed the player’s daughters to remain with her for four
years, and then handed them over to a Mrs Anderson in order to be
finished. Mrs Anderson, however, was a different sort of person from
Mme. Terson. Her pupils “were the daughters of wealthy mediocrities;
their manners were coarse and familiar;” and Mrs Anderson herself had a
vulgar desire to receive _quid pro quo_. The young ladies could not,
under such circumstances, remain long with her. Yet “the school in Earl
Street had its advantages too, for it brought us constantly in contact
with our dear father, who walked out with us every Sunday on the Mall in
Sackville Street, where the fashionables of Dublin most did congregate,
who seldom passed us without the observation, ‘There goes Owenson and
his two dear little girls.’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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