Beschreibung:

Lady Louisa Connolly’s Transcript Letters Connolly (Lady Louisa) [Seymour (Lady Albert)] A very important collection of nine quarto volumes containing manuscript transcriptions of Lady Louisa’s letters 1759 – 1821, mostly to her brother and sisters (the celebrated Lennox family), with a few letters from other family members. The volumes strongly bound in half moroco on heavy marble boards, transcribed in the clear mid-19th Century hand of Lady Albert Seymour. As m/ss, w.a.f. Lady Lousia was the wife of Thomas Connolly of Castletown House. She was a daughter of the third Duke of Richmond; her brother Charles Lennox the fourth Duke, organised the celebrated Ball on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. One sister was married to Charles James Fox; another to Sir Charles Napier, historian of the Peninsular War, and another to the Duke of Leinster (hence Lord Edward Fitzgerald was her nephew). The early volumes are mainly domestic in content, but Vol. 6 (1796 – 1803) is of particular interest. See especially her long letter to her brother 18 June 1798 (pp. 74-99), followed by her unfinished ‘Journal of the late Rebellion.’ Speaking of ‘the poor Duke of Leinster,’ (p. 74) she says ‘his distresses are great indeed. I do not believe that his excellent and amiable wife can live by all that I hear. His distress about the whole of poor Edwards business and end is of that nature that it must give him the deepest affliction and with his immense family, the derangement of his property for the present is a most alarming prospect. The County of Kildare where is his whole Estate, is in a manner laid waste, and no chance that I can forseee of his getting in his half years rent…’ Writing of her nephew Lord Edward Fitzgerald she mentions his ‘most undaunted spirit and courage …. the total carelessness of his own life, and his firm adherence to those he considered under his protection .. he could have saved himself over and over, but spurned at the thought , and no intreaties of the tenderest kind would have kept him out of the scrape. That he originally flattered himself with the vain hope, that a redress of grievances might be affected without bloodshed. I am convinced of .. whatever danger was attached to the plan, he was to meet it, and to sacrifice himself to save others…’ * A most valuable and important historical collection, deserving of much further research. Some of the original Lennox letters have been sold at various times (including some at Mealy’s…) and other deposited in various libraries, but this is probably the most complete collection of their texts than exists anywhere else. Provenance: From the family of Lady Albert Seymour, who was great-niece of Louise Connolly, the daughter of Lady Sarah Napier.