Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 2 (of 3)
14
Hartpole, though he despised the empty arrogance of his uncle, yet saw that his Lordship knew the world well and profited by that knowledge: – he therefore occasionally paid much attention to some of my Lord’s worldly lectures; and had he observed the best of them, though he might possibly have appeared less amiable, he would doubtless have been far more fortunate. But Hartpole could not draw the due distinction between the folly of his uncle’s ostentation and the utility of his address; disgusted with the one, he did not sufficiently practise the other; and despised the idea of acting as if he knew the world, lest he should be considered as affecting to know too much of it.
15
I cannot better illustrate the state of a person so chased by misery, than by quoting a few unpublished lines, the composition of a very young lady, Miss M. T., with whom, and with whose amiable family, I have the pleasure of being intimate.
I am aware that I do her great injustice by quoting these particular verses – some of the most inferior of her writings; but they seem so much to the point, that I venture to risk her displeasure. She is not, indeed, irritable; and I promise to atone for my error by a few further quotations from her superior compositions.
I.
I never sought a day’s repose
But some sharp thorn pierced my breast;
I never watch’d the evening’s close,
And hoped a heaven of rest;
But soon a darkling cloud would come
Athwart the prospect bright,
And, pale as twilight on a tomb,
My hopes grew dim in night.
II.
Oft have I mark’d the heav’nly moon
Wandering her pathless way
Along the midnight’s purple noon,
More fair – more loved than day:
But soon she flung her shadowy wreath
O’er dark eternity,
As a faint smile on the cheek of death
’Twixt hope and agony.
III.
Oft on the rainbow’s bloom I’ve gazed,
Arch’d as a gate of heaven,
Till gushing showers its portals razed,
And bathed the brow of even.
’Tis thus young hopes illume the sky
Of Life’s dark atmosphere,
Yet, like the rainbow’s splendid dye,
They meet and disappear.
IV.
Ev’n so, the mirth of man is madness; —
His joy as a sepulchral light,
Which shows his solitude and sadness,
But chaseth not the night.
16
The noble Earl had then also the appellation of “Blind Ben,” which had been conferred on him by the agreeable and witty Lady Aldborough, and which ought not to have been by any means considered derogatory, inasmuch as his name is certainly Benjamin, and one of his eyes is actually “not at home;” and as the abrupt mode of its quitting his Lordship’s service was rather humorous, it may be amusing to mention it.
He had once (as he thought) the honour of killing a crane. Benjamin’s evil genius, however, maliciously scattered the shot, and the crane had only been what they call in Ireland kilt; but feeling pretty sure that her death was determined on, she resolved to die heroically, and not unrevenged. She fell, and lying motionless, seduced her assassin to come and wring her head off, according to the usual rules and practice of humanity by fowlers. The honourable sportsman approached triumphantly, and stooping to seize the spolia opima, Madam Crane, (having as good eyes of her own as the one that took aim at her,) in return for his compliment, darted her long bill plump into the head of the Honourable Benjamin O’Neil Stratford, entering through the very same casement which he had closed the shutters of to take his aim. In fact, she turned the honourable gentleman’s eye clean out of its natural residence; and being thus fully gratified by extinguishing the light in one of her enemy’s lanterns, she resigned her body to be plucked, stuffed, and roasted, in the usual manner, as was performed accordingly. Thus, though her slayer was writhing in agony, his family was fully revenged by feasting on his tormentor. Daily consultations were held to ascertain whether her long rapier had not actually penetrated the brain of the Honourable Benjamin. One of the tenants being heard to say, in a most untenant-like manner, that it might in such case be all for the best, was asked his reason for so undutiful an expression; and replied, that if she had just pricked his honour’s brain, maybe it might have let out the humours, which would have done no harm either to his honour or to Baltinglass.
17
George Hartpole was sponsor to my only son.
18
One of us, Counsellor Townley Fitgate, (afterwards chairman of Wicklow County,) having a pleasure-cutter of his own in the harbour of Dublin, used to send her to smuggle claret for us from the Isle of Man: he made a friend of one of the tide-waiters, and we consequently had the very best wines on the cheapest possible terms.
19
He was at that time Mr. Wolfe. An information ex officio had been filed against a printer in Cork for a seditious newspaper: it turned out that the two Counsellors Sheers were the real editors. They begged of me to mediate with the attorney-general. He had always a strong feeling for the honour and character of his profession, and forgave all parties, on conditions which I all but vouched for, but to which they certainly did not adhere.
20
This anecdote has been termed “fabulous” by some of the sapient periodical critics, and a “bounce” by others. “’Tis quite impossible,” say the scribblers, “for any man to cut his own head off.” This no doubt singular decapitation, however, happens to be a well known and comparatively recent fact; and if either of the aforesaid sceptics will be so obliging as to try the same species of guillotine that Ned did at the Barrow water, he may, with the greatest facility, get rid of, probably, the thickest and heaviest article belonging to him.
The Emperor of Morocco, it is said, to convince his subjects what an easy matter decapitation was, and what an uncertain tenure a head has in his dominions, used to cut off the head of a jack-ass every morning with one back stroke of his sabre. Should his copper-coloured Majesty honour England with his august presence, to be feasted, fire-worked, and subsidised like Don Miguel the First, what noble practice at decapitation, in the absence of his jack-asses, he might have in London among the periodical scribblers– without doing much injury to the animals themselves, and none at all either to the “Société des lettres,” or what is called in England the “discerning public.”
21
This is only mentioned as indicative of the singular flow of ideas of the Irish peasantry. The most serious and solemn events are frequently converted by them into sources of humour and of comic expression that altogether banish any thing under the head of gravity.
The lower orders are never half so happy as at a wake– when they can procure candles, punch, a piper, and tobacco, to enable them to sit and smoke round a human corpse! No matter what death it suffered, or disorder it died of (except indeed the bite of a mad dog). Their hilarity knows no limits; their humorous phrases and remarks flow in a constant stream of quaint wit and pointed repartee, but not in the style or tone of any other people existing. The wake is also their usual place of match-making; and the marriages or misfortunes of the ladies are generally decided on “going home from the wake.”
The cheerfulness of the wake, however, is intermitting: – every hour or two the most melancholy howling that human voices could raise is set up by the keeners, and continued long enough to give the recurrence to mirth and fun increased excitement. These keeners, or mourners, are a set of old women, who practise for general use the most lachrymose notes, high and low, it is possible to conceive – which they turn into a sort of song (without words), at one time sinking into the deepest and most plaintive strains, then, on a sudden, raised into a howl, loud, frightful, and continued nearly to a shriek; and then in long notes descending in a tone of almost supernatural cadence.
They say that this is mimicking wicked souls “undergoing their punishment in purgatory,” and is used as a defiance to the devil, and to show him that the corpse they are waking does not care a “mass for him.” But then, they never trust the corpse to be left alone, because it could make no resistance to Belzebub if he came for it; and a priest always remains in the room to guard the body, if the keeners should happen to go away.
If you ask a country fellow how he can be so merry over a “dead man” —
“Ough! plase your honour,” he will probably reply, “why shouldn’t we be merry when there’s a good corpse to the fore?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mane is it? – fy, sure enough, your honour, Father Corcoran says (and the devil so good a guess in the town-land) that after the month’s mind is over, Tom Dempsey, the corpse, will be happier nor any of us. – Ough! your honour! hell to the rap of tythe-cess or hearth-money, he’ll have to pay proctor nor parson! – There’s many a boy in the parish, plase your honour, would not object to be Tom Dempsey, the corpse, fresh and fasting, this blessed morning!”
If you begin to reason with him, he will perhaps say – “Why, plase your honour, sure it’s only his corpse that’s corpsed; – after the masses he’ll be out of pain, and better off nor any gentleman in this same county, except our own landlord, God bless him up or down!”
If you seem to think the defunct’s family will be unhappy in consequence of his death —
“Oh, plase your honour! Tom was a good frind, sure enough, and whilst there’s a shovel and sack in the neighbourhood his family won’t be let to want nothing any how.”
“But his poor wife?”
“Ough! then it’s she that’s sorry for poor Tom, your honour! Whilst the keeners were washing and stretching the corpse, and she crying her eyes out of her head – oh, the cratur! – Father Corcoran whispered all as one as a mass, and plenty of comfort into Mrs. Dempsey’s own ear, cheek by jowl, and by my sowl the devil a drop of a tear came out of her afterward, plase your honour!”
What is termed the Irish cry, is keening on an extensive scale, and is perhaps the most terrific yell ever yet practised in any country.
It is used in processions on the roads, as the people are carrying a dead body to its place of interment – and occasionally, on any great misfortune where the lamentation should be general.
If there are twenty thousand persons in a procession, they all set up the same cry as the keeners, but a hundred times more horrid and appalling. It may be heard many miles from the spot.
One mode formerly of raising the people in the least possible time, was the carrying a coffin under pretence of a burial. The procession, which sets out probably with only a dozen persons, amounts in the course of an hour to some twenty thousand. When once the yell is set up, every person within hearing is expected immediately to join the corpse by the shortest road – scampering across fields, ditches, &c.; so that, as the numbers increase, the roar becomes more tremendous, and answers better than a hundred bells in bringing a population together.
It is usual for every man, woman, and child to pick up a stone or two, as they go along, and throw them into a heap, which tradition sometimes marks out as the site of some remarkable battle, murder, &c.
The above plan was occasionally resorted to by the insurgents in the year 1798; and there can be no doubt, if they all set out with processions at one hour of any given day, that it would be a tremendous species of muster for such a people as the Irish, who are as little known or understood by the generality of the English, as the Cossacks.
This cry certainly is not calculated to excite so great a variety of passions as Mr. Dryden attributes to the music at Alexander’s Feast. But I will venture to assert, that if his Macedonian Majesty had been ever so tipsy, and thoroughly bent upon ever so much mischief, one sudden, thundering burst of the Irish cry in his banqueting-room would have quickly brought Alexander and all his revellers to their senses – rendered their heels as light as their heads – and Miss Thais would have been left by her lover to the protection of Captain Rock and his merry men.
I believe the very best of our composers would find it rather difficult to set the Irish cry to music– though by the new light, every noise whatsoever must be a note or half a note; and it is reported that Mr. Moore and Sir John Stephenson used their joint and several efforts to turn this national cry into melody, but without success. I cannot see why such able persons should fail on so interesting a composition. There are plenty of notes in it whole and half, sharp, flat, and natural; – sufficient to compose any piece of music. It is only therefore to select the best among them scientifically; put an “andante affettuoso” in front; then send it to a barrel organ-builder; – and no doubt it would grind out to the entire satisfaction of the whole Irish population.
22
To the imperfection of the excise laws, and the totally erroneous system of licensing public houses, (as to numbers, qualifications, and police regulations respecting them,) is greatly to be attributed the increase of crime of late years.
An unconnected and independent board, for the exclusive purpose of granting licenses and registering complaints; convenient and responsible country branches, and monthly reports, would tend much to produce sobriety, and check those drunken conspiracies, the common sources of robbery and murder. Punishment rather than prevention is the greatest error a police can fall into.
23
The following lines are by Miss M. Tylden, the young poetess whom I have before mentioned, and shall again allude to more fully. In my humble opinion, there are not fourteen consecutive lines in the English language superior in true sublimity both of thought and language:
The sun is in the empire of his light,
Throned in the mighty solitude of heaven:
He seems the visible Omnipotent
Dwelling in glory: – his high sanctuary
Do the eyes worship, and, thereon as if
Impiety to gaze, the senses reel,
Drunk with the spirit of his deep refulgence.
Circle of glory! – Diadem of heaven!
Cast in the mould of bright eternity,
And bodying forth the attributes of Him
Who made thee of this visible world supreme;
And thou becamest a wonder and a praise, —
A worship – yea, a pure idolatry!
The image of the glories of our God.
I look upon the personification of God to be the excess of blasphemy.
24
The reader may deem it curious to compare the two following stanzas – the first graced with the great name of Mr. Addison; the second the performance of my accomplished young friend, and extracted from her common-place book, without any opportunity given for revision. – She is ignorant that I have published a line of hers.
ON THE PLANETS.
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens – a shining frame!
Their great Original proclaim.
In Reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing, as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine!”
Addison.
ON THE PLANETS.
Ye living fires in yon eternal dome, —
Ye lamps, whose light is immortality, —
Hung forth in mercy from our Father’s house,
As beacon-lights to guide us to our God!
Ye are ordain’d man’s faithful monitors,
Gazing like heavenly eyes upon our deeds,
Till guilt is awed, and shrinks beneath your glance.
Ye bright and visible rewards! held forth
From God’s high sanctuary, to work in us
A pure ambition for eternal things,
And glories which our spirit heaves to grasp!
M. Tylden.
25
Nothing in print places my theory in so distinct, clear, and pleasing a point of view as Parnell’s Hermit, – a strong, moral, and impressive tale, – beautiful in poetry, and abounding in instruction. There the Omniscience of God is exemplified by human incidents, and the mysterious causes of his actions brought home to the commonest capacity. The moral of that short and simple tale says more than a hundred volumes of dogmatic controversies! – The following couplets appear to me extremely impressive: —
The Maker justly claims that world he made:
In this the right of Providence is laid:
Its sacred majesty, through all, depends
On using second means to work its ends.
What strange events can strike with more surprise
Than those which lately struck thy wondering eyes?
Yet, taught by these, confess the Almighty just;
And where you can’t unriddle, learn to trust.
26
That lovely district extends about thirty miles in length, and from four to seven in breadth: it commences near Dublin, and ends at a short distance beyond Avondale: the soil is generally a warm gravel, with verdant valleys, bounded by mountains arable to their summits on one side, and by the sea upon the other. The gold mine is on a frontier of this district; and it is perhaps the most congenial to the growth of trees and shrubs of any spot in the British dominions.
27
In my Memoirs of Ireland.
28
I allude to the public trial as to copyright, by Mr. Power, when it was stated that Mr. Moore wrote the Melodies for so much a year. They are certainly very unequal.
29
Archer in “The Beaux Stratagem.”
30
St. Ambrose.
31
Nothing could be more truly disgusting than the circumstance of the most ruffianly parts of the London population, under the general appellation of a “British audience,” assuming to themselves the feelings of virtue, delicacy, decorum, morals, and modesty – for the sole purpose of driving into exile one of the first performers that ever trod the stage of England! – and that for an offence which (though abstractedly unjustifiable) a great number of the gentry, not a few of the nobility, and even members of the holy church militant, are constantly committing and daily detected in: which commission and detection by no means seem to have diminished their popularity, or caused their reception to be less cordial among saints, methodists, legal authorities, and justices of the quorum.
The virtuous sentence of transportation passed against Mr. Kean by the mob of London certainly began a new series of British morality; and the laudable societies for the “suppression of vice” may shortly be eased of a great proportion of their labours by more active moralists, (the frequenters of the upper gallery) culled from High-street St. Giles’s, the Israelites of Rag-fair, and the Houses of Correction. Hogarth has, in his print of “Evening,” immortalised the happy state of the horned citizens at his period.
32
“Samson pulling down the hall of the Philistines” is the very finest piece of spectacle that can be conceived! – “Susannah and the Elders” is rather too naked a concern for the English ladies to look at, unless through their fans: transparent ones have lately been invented, to save the expense of blushes, &c. But the most whimsical of their scriptural dramas is the exhibition of Noah as a ship-builder, preparatory to the deluge: it is a most splendid spectacle. He is assisted by large gangs of angels working as his journeymen, whose great solicitude is to keep their wings clear out of the way of their hatchets, &c. At length the whole of them strike and turn out for wages, till the arrival of a body of gens d’armes immediately brings them to order, by whom they are threatened to be sent back to heaven if they do not behave themselves!
33
I rather think that a very good man, and one of the first advocates of Ireland, carried this observation of mine and its bearings rather beyond the point I here intended, in his speech (as reported) in the Court of Chancery, on the arrival of the present chancellor. The reply of Sir Anthony Hart appeared to me to be the wisest, the most dignified, effective, and honest, that could possibly be pronounced by a lord chancellor so circumstanced, and coming after his noble predecessor.
34
The speeches of counsel on that trial being published in the newspapers, she requested my advice as to bringing an action for defamation against some of the parties. My reply to her was the same that had been pleasantly and adroitly given to myself by Sir John Doyle.
“If you wrestle with a chimney-sweeper,” said Sir John, “it is true you may throw your antagonist; but you will be sure to dirty your own coat by the encounter.” Never was there a better aphorism. Mrs. Jordan adopted it; and most properly satisfied herself with despising, instead of punishing, all her calumniators.
35
There were a species of chickens then to be had in Dublin such as I never saw in any other country; – as white as snow, very small, fat, and trussed up as round as little balls: the eye and the palate were equally gratified by them. The crammed fowls of Dublin were then also unrivalled. I believe they are now equalled in London, and vastly exceeded by the capons of Paris, which are quite delicious: – lamb at Paris, too, is finer than any where else.
36
The intermixed French phrases which I have retained in sketching this conversation at Maquetra may perhaps appear affected to some; and I frankly admit there are few things in composition so disagreeable to me as a jumble of words culled from different tongues, and constituting a mélange which advances no just claim to the title of any language whatever. But those who are accustomed to the familiar terms and expressive ejaculations of French colloquy, know that the idiomatic mode of expression only can convey the true point and spirit of the dialogue, and more particularly does this observation apply to the variegated traits of character belonging to French females.
The conversation with Agnes consisted, on her part, nearly of broken sentences throughout – I may say, almost of looks and monosyllables! at all events, of simple and expressive words in a combination utterly unadapted to the English tongue. Let a well-educated and unprejudiced gentleman hold converse on the same topics with an English and a French girl, and his remarks as to the difference will not fail to illustrate what I have said.
Far – very far be it from me to depreciate the fair ones of our own country. I believe that they are steadier and better calculated to describe facts, or to advise in an emergency: but they must not be offended with me for adding, that in the expression of every feeling, either of a lively or tearful nature, as well as in the graces of motion, their elastic neighbours are immeasurably superior. Even their eyes speak idioms which our less pliable language cannot explain. I have seen humble girls in France who speak more in one second than many of our finest ladies could utter in almost a century! Chaqu’un a son goût, however; and I honestly confess, that a sensitive French girl would make but an ill-assorted match with a thorough-bred John Bull!
