Lady Morgan refers to Richard Kirwan (1733-1812 ) in several of her books, but her fullest portrait is found in The Book of the Boudoir (1829 ). She became acquainted with him during the last years of his life. She had by then published her most famous novel, The Wild Irish Girl (1806 ), and was the toast of Dublin and London literary society.
It was from her actor father that she first heard of Kirwan. “I remember, when I was a child, hearing a great deal of Mr Kirwan, and of chemistry: not that my family were particularly given to that, or any other of the sciences, though we had all a great calling to the arts. But the most eminent chemist of the day was an Irishman - and, still more, a Connaught man - and, more still, a Galway man.”
Kirwan was living at that time in a large house on Rutland Square with his devoted man-servant, Pope, who kept an eye on his master’s eccentricities. He always dined alone, his diet consisting of milk and ham. The ham was cooked on Sunday and reheated every day for the rest of the week. The poor man had an obsessive hatred of flies, and Pope was rewarded for each corpse produced.
It was Kirwan who made the first move. “It happened, that shortly after the publication of The Wild Irish Girl ... a plain, dark, old-fashioned coach drove to the door, and up came a card, thus, inscribed - ‘Mr Kirwan, to pay his respects to the fair authoress of The Wild Irish Girl’.”
And so the young Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan ) paid a call to the old gentleman, the first of many visits over the next few years. One of her first shocks was to discover he believed, like the philosopher Descartes, “that all appearances of sensibility manifested by animals are fallacious; and that the brute species are mere machines, divested of all feelings”. Very different from the views of his kinsman, Humanity Dick Martyn, founder of the RSPCA.
On one occasion, young Sydney bought her harp, hoping to entertain her host by playing a few Irish tunes. Hardly had she begun, however, before her host expressed his strong views on the music she was playing.
"Mr Kirwan called my taste barbarous and became quite vehement in his expression of abhorrence for Irish music. ‘Madam,' he said, 'I left Ireland at your age and full, as you are now, of all the vulgar errors of enthusiastic patriotism. I thought there was no poetry like Irish poetry, nor music like Irish music - when I returned I could not endure either'."
Over the years of their friendship, they grew very fond of one another, and anyone interested should get hold of The Book of the Boudoir, which is full of delightful anecdotes, told with sympathy, of Kirwan’s remarkable character. His last letter to her, written a few months before his death, expressed his sorrow that she was moving to London to be married.
It was Kirwan's dread of the cold that finally did him in. He was always cold, summer or winter made no difference, and Pope ensured there was a good blazing fire going year round.
Whenever he had to go out Kirwan would wrap himself up in his voluminous cloak, throwing several large wool scarves around his neck. But before leaving the house, he would stand directly in front of the roaring fire, flapping the sides of his greatcoat as if he were fanning himself. Finally, he would close his coat tightly and button it up to the neck.
Kirwan was convinced this procedure was a means of storing heat, which, with the final abrupt movement, trapped sufficient warmth, thus enabling him to carry with him a kind of portable heater.
Once outside, in order to make maximum use of the heat thus carefully hoarded, he would proceed along the street at something of a fast trot, occasionally passing into an actual gallop. Anyone he chanced to meet along the way, if they wished to speak with him, was obliged to run beside him at the same speed, be he the Lord Lieutenant or one of his scientific friends, until he had reached his destination.
What poor Kirwan failed to realise was that his constant practice of overheating himself and running along in the cold was many times more dangerous than simply taking normal care in confronting the elements.
Richard Kirwan died in June 1812, and his funeral was enormous.
Of the celebrated Mr Kirwan we may say, with the Roman poet Juvenal, he was rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno - 'a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan'.
Barnaby ffrench
