Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Some time after, a complete reconciliation took place between the parties, so far that her ladyship consented to live with him again – influenced much, I rather think, by having suffered great inconvenience, if not distress, from want of regularity in the receipt of her separate maintenance of 700l. per annum. I had the pleasure of meeting her frequently afterwards at the lady lieutenant’s parties.
The conclusion of the renewed intercourse is too curious to be omitted. Sir R – had taken a house in Nassau Street, in the city of Dublin; and it was thought possible that he and his wife might, at any rate, pass some time under the same roof: but fate decided otherwise.
Sir R – was literally insane on all political subjects, his imagination being occupied, night and day, with nothing but papists, jesuits, popes, priests, and rebels. Once in the dead of the night his lady was awakened by a sense of positive suffocation, and rousing herself, found that Sir R – was in the very act of strangling her! – He had grasped her by the throat with all his might, and, muttering heavy imprecations, had nearly succeeded in his diabolical attempt. – She struggled, and at length extricated herself from his grasp; upon which he roared out, making a fresh effort – “You infernal papist rebel! you United Irishman! You eternal villain! I’ll never part from you alive, if you don’t come quietly to the guard-house!”
In fact this crazy Orange-man had in his dream fancied that he was contesting with a rebel, whom he had better choke than suffer to escape, and poor Lady M – was nearly sacrificed to his excess of loyalty. In her robe de chambre and slippers she contrived to get out of the house, and never more ventured to return, as she now clearly perceived that even her personal safety could not be calculated on in her husband’s society.
I have in another work given a full character of Sir R – M – , and stated my opinion of his worse than mischievous history of Ireland. One more anecdote of him, and I have done.
Whilst he was high sheriff for the county of Waterford, an old man was sentenced to be whipped at the cart’s tail for some political offence; when, the executioner not being in readiness, the high sheriff, – a baronet and member of Parliament, – took up the cat-o’-nine-tails, ordered the cart to move on slowly, and operated himself with admirable expertness, but much greater severity than the hangman would have used! – Thus did he proceed to whip the old man through the streets of the city; and when the extreme point was reached, the sentence executed, and he was scarcely able to raise his arm, he publicly regretted he had not a little farther to go!
Lady M – was, in her own right, entitled to a fortune of 15,000l., to be paid only on her marriage. Her father, a gentleman of rank and estate, had by some mismanagement in office become extremely embarrassed. Sir R – M – , a man of family, but whose fortune was not large, cast his eye on her beauty – not totally overlooking her property. His taste was indisputably good; the lady being, at that period, every thing that could be desired! She possessed an ardent mind, great constitutional gaiety, and a sensitive heart; – to which were added a most engaging figure and a lovely and expressive countenance. Her father she loved dearly; and for his unhappy circumstances, therefore, her heart bled; but Sir R – M – could make no impression upon it. On the contrary, he excited her aversion. – Thus her affections being unattainable, the baronet resolved, if possible, to purchase her hand, leaving her heart to some future opportunity! Hence commences the affecting narrative of her ladyship’s wrongs and misfortunes, related to me by herself, almost unconsciously, in broken fragments, and at several times.
“I was not aware (said she) what caused my dear father’s obvious unhappiness, and often was I surprised at the pertinacity with which he pressed the baronet upon my consideration. I rejected him over and over again; still his suit was renewed, still my father appeared more anxious on his behalf, whilst my mother seconded their wishes. – My aversion increased; yet Sir R – M – ’s assiduities were redoubled with his repulses; and at length I contemplated the leaving my father’s house, if I were longer persecuted by these addresses.
“Though young, I knew the failing of my own character, which possessed not sufficient resolution to oppose its constitutional tendencies. Nature had formed me for all the pleasures and the pains which are alike inseparable from sensibility. I found a glow in every thought – an enthusiasm in every action. My feelings were always in earnest. I could love to excess, and hate to rancour! but I could do neither with mediocrity. I could be the best or the worst of wives. I could endure any thing with a man I loved, but could not sit upon a throne with one whom I detested.
“At length, I discovered the whole of my father’s more than pressing embarrassments; and understood that Sir R – M – had agreed to give up to him a considerable portion of my fortune if our marriage was effected. This shock to such a disposition as mine was cruel; and the dilemma was distracting: it involved my father’s comforts – or my own misery!
“Often, as we sat at our family repasts, have I perceived that dear parent lay down the fork he was conveying to his lips, and turn away to conceal the agitation of mind which might have betrayed to us that distress he was endeavouring to conceal.
“Gradually, I found that filial affection was taking the strongest hold of me. I thought I could endure unhappiness myself, but I could not bear to see my father miserable. I weighed the consequences, and reasoned so far as I possessed the faculty of reasoning. I saw his ruin or my own was inevitable!
“The struggle was, indeed, sharp – it was long – it was very painful: but at length filial piety prevailed over self; and I determined upon making the sacrifice. I communicated to my father my decision to admit the addresses of Sir R – M – , without hinting at my true reasons; but, at the same moment, I felt an indescribable change of character commence, which, from that sad period, has more or less affected every action of my life. I felt a sort of harsh sensation arise within my mind, and operate upon my temper, to which they had previously been strangers. My spirits flagged, – all pleasures grew insipid; and I perceived that the ice of indifference was chilling the sensibility of my nature.
“From the moment of my assent, my father’s disposition seemed to have undergone almost as radical a change as my own. He became once more cheerful, and I had at least the gratification of reflecting that, if I were myself lost, I had saved a parent! But I must remark that it was not so as to my mother – who, indeed, had not been kind to me.
“In due time the settlements were prepared, and my fortune, I learnt, secretly divided. The ceremony was about to be performed, and Sir R – M – at that very hour appeared to me to be the most disagreeable of mankind. There was a sort of uncouth civility – an abrupt, fiery, coarse expression, even in his most conciliating manners, which seemed to set all feelings of respect or cordiality at defiance. As to love, he was not susceptible of the passion; whilst I was created to enjoy its tenderest blessings. He was half mad by nature; – I had become so from misery! and in this state of mind we met to be united at the altar! I was determined, however, that he should learn by anticipation what he had to expect from me as a wife. ‘Sir R – M – , (said I to him,) I am resolved to give you the last proof you will ever receive of my candour. I accept you, not only as a husband whom I never can love, and never will obey, but whom I absolutely detest! – now marry me at your peril, and take the consequences!’ – He laughed convulsively, took me by the hand, and having led me into the next room, that ceremony was performed to which I should have thought a sentence of death preferable. The moment we were united I retired to my chamber, where tears, flowing in torrents, cooled my heated feelings. My purpose in marrying was effected: I therefore determined that (if possible) I never would live an hour in his society, and it was two months before my ill-fated stars compelled me to become the actual wife of the most unfeeling and abominable of fanatics.
“Our residence together of course was short, and at twenty-one I was thrown upon the world, to avoid my husband’s society. Being possessed of sufficient means, I travelled; and for the fourteen years of our separation my whole time was an unnatural and continued strife between passion and propriety. On a late occasion, you were my counsel, and from you nothing has been concealed. You did me more than justice – you have defeated him, and preserved me!”
I have not seen her ladyship for these many years; but never did I meet with one whom I conceived to be more completely thrown away, or whose natural disposition seemed better calculated to lead to her own happiness and to the happiness of those within her sphere of influence. I speak of her as she was when I knew her; and I have no reason to alter my impressions. Her father, mother, and husband, are all gone: how she is situated with regard to her surviving connexions, I know not.
PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS
The three classes of gentlemen in Ireland described – Irish poets – Mr. Thomas Flinter and D. Henesey – The bard – Peculiarities of the peasants – Their ludicrous misinformation as to distances accounted for – Civility of a waiter – Equivocation of the peasants, and their misdirection of travellers to different places.
I will now proceed to lay before the reader a brief but more general sketch of the state of Irish society at the period of my youth, reminding him of the principle which I have before assumed; namely, that of considering anecdotes, bon-mots, and the like, valuable only as they tend to exemplify interesting facts relative to history or manners: many such I have inserted in these fragments; and as I have been careful throughout to avoid mere inventions, my reader need not, by any means, reserve their perusal for the study of his travelling carriage.
Miss Edgeworth, in her admirable sketch of Castle Rackrent, gives a tolerably faithful picture of the Irish character under the combination of circumstances which she has selected; and the account that I am about to give may serve as an elucidation of the habits and manners of Irish country society about the period Miss Edgeworth alludes to, and somewhat later – with which she could not be so well acquainted.
In those days, the common people ideally separated the gentry of the country into three classes, and treated each class according to the relative degree of respect to which they considered it entitled.
They generally divided them thus:
1. Half-mounted gentlemen.
2. Gentlemen every inch of them.
3. Gentlemen to the back-bone.
The first-named class formed the only species of independent yeomanry then existing in Ireland. They were the descendants of the small grantees of Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, and King William III. by their confiscations; possessed about 200 or 300 acres of land each, in fee, from the Crown;29 and were occasionally admitted into the society of better gentlemen – particularly hunters – living at other times amongst each other, with an intermixture of their own servants, with whom they were always on terms of intimacy. They generally had good clever horses, which could leap over any thing, but seldom felt the trimming-scissors or currycomb, unless they belonged to jockey gentlemen. The riders commonly wore buck-skin breeches, and boots well greased, (blacking was never used in the country,) and carried large thong whips heavily loaded with lead at the butt-end, so that they were always prepared either to horsewhip a man or knock his brains out, as circumstances might dictate. These half-mounted gentlemen exercised hereditarily the authority of keeping the ground clear at horse-races, hurlings, and all public meetings (as soldiers keep the lines at a review). Their business was to ride round the inside of the ground, which they generally did with becoming spirit, trampling over some, knocking down others, and slashing every body who encroached on the proper limits. Bones being but very seldom broken, and skulls still seldomer fractured, every body approved of their exertions, because all the by-standers gained thereby a full view of the sport which was going forward. A shout of merriment was always set up when a half-mounted gentleman knocked down an interloper; and some of the poets present, if they had an opportunity, roared out their verses30 by way of a song to encourage the gentlemen.
The second class, or gentlemen every inch of them, were of excellent old families; – whose finances were not in so good order as they might have been, but who were not the less popular amongst all ranks. They were far above the first degree, somewhat inferior to the third; but had great influence; were much beloved, and carried more sway at popular elections and general county meetings than the other two classes put together.
The third class, or gentlemen to the back-bone, were of the oldest families and settlers, universally respected, and idolised by the peasantry, although they also were generally a little out at elbows. Their word was law; their nod would have immediately collected an army of cottagers, or colliers, or whatever the population was composed of. Men, women, and children, were always ready and willing to execute any thing “the squire” required, without the slightest consideration as to either its danger or propriety. The grand juries were selected from the two last classes.31
A curious circumstance perhaps rendered my family peculiarly popular. The common people had conceived the notion that the lord of Cullenaghmore had a right to save a man’s life every summer assizes at Maryborough; and it did frequently so happen, within my recollection, that my father’s intercession in favour of some poor deluded creatures (when the White Boy system was in activity) was kindly attended to by the government; and, certainly, besides this number, many others of his tenants owed their lives to similar interference. But it was wise in the government to accede to such representations; since their concession never failed to create such an influence in my father’s person over the tenantry, that he was enabled to preserve them in perfect tranquillity, whilst those surrounding were in a constant state of insubordination to all law whatever. Hanging the Irish will never either reform their morals, or thin their population.
I recollect a Mr. Tom Flinter, of Timahoe, one of the first-class gentlemen, who had speculated in cows and sheep, and every thing he could buy up, till his establishment was reduced to one blunt faithful fellow, Dick Henesey, who stuck to him throughout all his vicissitudes. Flinter had once on a time got a trifle of money, which was burning in his greasy pocket, and he wanted to expend it at a neighbouring fair! where his whole history, as well as the history of every man of his half-mounted contemporaries, was told in a few verses,32 by a fellow called Ned the dog-stealer, but who was also a great poet, and resided in the neighbourhood: – he was remarkably expert at both his trades.
In travelling through Ireland, a stranger is very frequently puzzled by the singular ways, and especially by the idiomatic equivocation, characteristic of every Irish peasant. Some years back, more particularly, these men were certainly originals – quite unlike any other people whatever. Many an hour of curious entertainment has been afforded me by their eccentricities; yet, though always fond of prying into the remote sources of these national peculiarities, I must frankly confess that, with all my pains, I never was able to develop half of them, except by one sweeping observation; namely, that the brains and tongues of the Irish are somehow differently formed or furnished from those of other people. Phrenology may be a very good science; but the heads of the Irish would puzzle the very best of its professors. Very few of those belonging to the peasantry, indeed, leave the world in the same shape they came into it. After twenty years of age, the shillelah quite alters the natural formation, and leaves so many hills and hollows upon their skulls, that the organ of fighting is the only one discoverable to any certainty.
One general hint which I beg to impress upon all travellers in Hibernia, is this: that if they show a disposition toward kindness, together with a moderate familiarity, and affect to be inquisitive, whether so or not, the Irish peasant will outdo them tenfold in every one of these dispositions. But if a man is haughty and overbearing, he had better take care of himself.
I have often heard it remarked and complained of by travellers and strangers, that they never could, when on a journey, get a true answer from any Irish peasant as to distances. For many years I myself thought it most unaccountable. If you meet a peasant on your road, and ask him how far, for instance, to Ballinrobe, he will probably say it is, “three short miles!” You travel on, and are informed by the next peasant you meet, “that it is five long miles!” On you go, and the next will tell “your honour” it is “a long mile, or about that same!” The fourth will swear “if your honour stops at three miles, you’ll never get there!” But, on pointing to a town just before you, and inquiring what place that is, he replies,
“Oh! plaze your honour, that’s Ballinrobe, sure enough!”
“Why you said it was more than three miles off!”
“Oh yes! to be sure and sartain, that’s from my own cabin, plaze your honour. – We’re no scholards in this country. Arrah! how can we tell any distance, plaze your honour, but from our own little cabins? Nobody but the schoolmaster knows that, plaze your honour.”
Thus is the mystery unravelled. When you ask any peasant the distance of the place you require, he never computes it from where you then are, but from his own cabin; so that, if you asked twenty, in all probability you would have as many different answers, and not one of them correct. But it is to be observed, that frequently you can get no reply at all, unless you understand Irish.
In parts of Kerry and Mayo, however, I have met with peasants who speak Latin not badly. On the election of Sir John Brown for the county of Mayo, Counsellor Thomas Moore and I went down as his counsel. The weather was desperately severe. At a solitary inn, where we were obliged to stop for horses, we requested dinner; upon which, the waiter laid a cloth that certainly exhibited every species of dirt ever invented. We called, and remonstrating with him, ordered a clean cloth. He was a low fat fellow, with a countenance perfectly immoveable, and seeming to have scarcely a single muscle in it. He nodded, and on our return to the room, (which we had quitted during the interval,) we found, instead of a clean cloth, that he had only folded up the filthy one into the thickness of a cushion, and replaced it with great solemnity. We now scolded away in good earnest. He looked at us with the greatest sang-froid, said sententiously, “Nemo me impune lacessit!” and turned his back on us.
He kept his word; when we had proceeded about four miles in deep snow, through a desperate night, and on a bleak bog-road, one of the wheels came off the carriage, and down we went! We were at least three miles from any house. The driver cursed (in Irish) Michael the waiter, who, he said, “had put a bran new wheel upon the carriage, which had turned out to be an old one, and had broken to pieces. It must be the devil,” continued he, “that changed it. Bad luck to you, Michael the waiter, any how! He’s nothin else but a treacherous blackguard, plaze your honour!”
We had to march through the snow to a wretched cottage, and sit up all night in the chimney corner, covered with ashes and smoke, and in company with one of the travelling fools who are admitted and welcomed for good luck in every cabin, whilst a genuine new wheel was got ready for the morning.
The Irish peasant, also, never, if he can avoid it, answers any question directly: in some districts, if you ask where such a gentleman’s house is, he will point and reply, “Does your honour see that large house there, all amongst the trees, with a green field before it?” – You answer, “Yes.” “Well,” says he, “plaze your honour that’s not it. But do you see the big brick house, with the cow-houses by the side of that same, and a pond of water? – you can’t see the ducks, becaze they are always diving, plaze your honour.”
“Yes.”
“Well, your honour, that’s not it. But, if you plaze, look quite to the right of that same house, and you’ll see the top of a castle amongst the trees there, with a road going down to it betune the bushes, – and a damn’d bad road, too, for either a beast or his master!”
“Yes.”
“Well, plaze your honour, that’s not it neither – but if your honour will come down this bit of a road a couple of miles, I’ll show it you sure enough– and if your honour’s in a hurry, I can run on hot foot,33 and tell the squire your honour’s galloping after me. Ah! who shall I tell the squire, plaze your honour, is coming to see him? – he’s my own landlord, God save his honour day and night!”
Their superstitions are very whimsical. On returning from the election of Mayo, I asked a fellow who was trotting away by the side of the carriage, and every now and then giving a long hop, to show us his agility – (twisting his shillelah over his head like a whirligig) – “if he was going far that night.”
“Ough! no, no, plaze your honour; it is me that would not go far in this country, these times, after sunset – oh, no, no!”
Fancying he alluded to robbers, I did not feel comfortable: – “And pray, friend,” said I, “why not?”
“I’ll tell your honour that: – becaze, plaze your honour, all the ould people say that the devil comes out of Castlebar after sun-down, to look for prey, from the day the Virgin was delivered till Candlemas eve, and all the priests can’t do nothing against him in this quarter. But he’s never seen no more the same year till the holly and ivy drive him out of all the chapels and towns again coming Christmas – and that’s the truth, and nothing else, plaze your honour’s honour!”
IRISH INNS
Their general character – Objections commonly made to them – Answer thereto – Sir Charles Vernon’s mimicry – Moll Harding – Accident nearly of a fatal nature to the author.
An Irish inn has been an eternal subject of ridicule to every writer upon the habits and accommodations of my native country. It is true that, in the early period of my life, most of the inns in Ireland were nearly of the same quality – a composition of slovenliness, bad meat, worse cooking, and few vegetables (save the royal Irish potato); but with plenty of fine eggs, smoked bacon, often excellent chickens, and occasionally the hen, as soon as she had done hatching them – if you could chew her. They generally had capital claret, and plenty of civility in all its ramifications.34
The poor people did their best to entertain their guests, but did not understand their trade; and even had it been otherwise, they had neither furniture, nor money, nor credit, nor cattle, nor customers enough to keep things going well together. There were then no post-horses nor carriages, – consequently, very little travelling in Ireland; and if there had been, the ruts and holes would have rendered thirty miles a-day a good journey. Yet I verily believe, on the whole, that the people in general were happier, at least they appeared vastly more contented, than at present. I certainly never met with so bad a thing in Ireland as the “Red Cow” in John Bull: for whatever might have been its quality, there was plenty of something or other always to be had at the inns to assuage hunger and thirst.
The best description I ever recollect to have heard of an Irish inn, its incidents and appurtenances, was in a sort of medley sung and spoken by the present Sir Charles Vernon, when he had some place in the Lord Lieutenant’s establishment at Dublin Castle: it was delivered by him to amuse the company after supper, and was an excellent piece of mimicry. He took off ducks, geese, pigs, chickens, cattle-drivers, the cook and the landlady, the guests, &c., to the greatest possible perfection.
