ABBEYLEIX, _Sunday, Feb. 12._--Newtown-Stewart, through which I drove
yesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettily
situated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. slept for a
night on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way of
showing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when he
departed. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but of
absenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, and
rarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements--no
sanitation--but the inhabitants make no complaint. "Absenteeism" has its
compensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and are
little troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, £400 a year from the
whole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, but
the town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk and
Newry, we passed a spot known by the ominous name of "The Hill of the
Seven Murders," seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! I
suppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalry
officer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full of
hunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a "very fine
country."
"From the point of view of the picturesque?" I asked.
"Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!"
At Maple's Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that I
should give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, and
come on to this lovely place in my host's carriage, which would be sent
to meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7
P.M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of people
talking together about one of the carriages before we started; but there
was no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As we
moved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up a
cheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite a
gathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and as we slowed up, a
cry went up from among them of, "Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!"
The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to my
surprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people by
the shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, "Hurrah for
Gilhooly--you fools, hurrah for Gilhooly!"
This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travelling
from Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M.P., who appears to have
been arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the day
train, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon.
An hour's drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird under
its blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling,
delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone came
here from Lord Meath's on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. I
find the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chill
of the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a light
supper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was told
there, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being rather indiscreetly
importuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative lady
well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting,
peremptorily refused, saying, "no, nor any of the likes of her!" And
another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of
ninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association with
an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan
replied, "Oh, faith will come with time!" The same excellent priest,
when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrival
from the Earl of Meath's, pathetically and patriarchally adjured him, on
his next visit to Ireland, "not to go from one lord's house to another,
but to stay with the people." This was better than the Irish journal
which, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone,
with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed
that he "had been entrapped into going there!" Some one lamenting the
lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as
compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary
but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day
at an eviction in Kerry,[18] of a patriotic priest who chained himself
to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out the
bailiffs!
It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterly
denounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an
"outrage"!
Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is soft
and almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park borders
upon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad and
picturesque main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than a
street, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of the
late Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancient
abbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the present
mansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church.
It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Park
murders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as a
carver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and the
church to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little real
trouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. Sometimes
Lord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched in
the soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these mean
little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done
and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusing
illustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the local
organisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the place
together, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But
if she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever.
The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she
encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a
temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of
laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women
should ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in the
vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish
ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny's exquisite _Lime
d'Heures_, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle,
drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against
despair in respect to this industry. In one of the large rooms of her
own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of
carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of
civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of
design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as
they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy
at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are
already beginning to earn money by their work.
What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of
Dunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as
stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this
country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in
the relics of early Irish art.
Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel
Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum,
with camels across the desert--a marvellous piece of military work. I
find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant
before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present.
He there formed what seem to me very sound and just views as to the
ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil
War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General
Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty
which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day
before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant was
urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to
do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them.
Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass,
said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, "You were right,
and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them."
It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at
that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to
Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never
been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then
discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a
newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in
existence somewhere.
ABBEYLEIX, _Monday, Feb. 13._--To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci
and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm,
but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I
fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to
its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one of
these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a
belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of
its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect
of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to
the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a
bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the
scutcheon in stone of the O'Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this
family with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellite
movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call "mighty
interestin' reading." A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of
the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of
Preston and O'Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of
the cause of the Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal
legate of Pope Innocent.
Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towers
remain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it again
so late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image of
the great Marquis who, if Rinuccini read him aright, played so
resolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which Edward
Bruce won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really a
great modern house.
The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. The
castle windows look clown upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancient
bridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, but
a wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful,
and in summer must be charming.
Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last week
brought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authorities
made him insure the bridge for a day.
Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed some
tapestries, which are hardly shown to due advantage in that position.
They were made here at Kilkenny in a factory established by Piers
Butler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to be
sent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving what
Irish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They are
equally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especially
fine.
The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though a
trifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and family
portraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of the
black Earl of Ormon'de, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of his
person, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believe
that she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honour
him with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley with
his kinsman, the Irish chieftain O'Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earl
was traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing this
event hangs beneath his portrait.
The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde's courtesy, we found
everything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proof
chamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consulting the
records. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before Edward
III. made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianore
of England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Ireland
with Henry II., and John gave them estates, the charters of some of
which, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are fine
specimens of the great seals also of Henry III., and of his sons Edward
I. and Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as many
private seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals was
obviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, who
came of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellow
wax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for the
beauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on the
reverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at the
Tower of London. The seals of James I. follow the design of this die.
Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration something
disappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II., of 1660, very
large and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at his
ease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other. Many of the
private letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was a
great centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up in
volumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians.
But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough co-ordination and
examination than it has ever yet received.
There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. while at
Oxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges were
melting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than might
have been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton a
day; and he wound up his dinner regularly with "sparaguss" so long as it
lasted, and after it went out with artichokes.
An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the first
Duke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood's Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throws
some interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of great
houses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatest
personage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost of
about £50, a good deal less--allowing for the fall in the power of the
pound sterling--than it would now cost him to live at a fashionable
London hotel. He paid £9, 10s. a week for the keep of nineteen horses,
18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids, and £1, 17s. 4d. for
seven dozen of tallow-candles. The wines served at the ducal table were
Burgundy, Bordeaux, "Shampane," Canary, "Renish," and Portaport, the
last named at a shilling a bottle, while he paid no more than £3, 18s.
for six dozen bottles of Bordeaux, and £1, 1s. for a dozen and a half of
"Shampane." This of course was not the sparkling beverage which in our
times is the only contribution of Champagne to the wine markets of the
world, for the _Ay Mousseux_ first appears in history at the beginning
of the eighteenth century. It was the red wine of Champagne, which so
long contested the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evremond, who
with the Comte d'Olonne and the great _gourmets_ of the seventeenth
century thought Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris also
pronounced it the most wholesome of wines, doubtless introduced his own
religion on the subject into England--but the entry in the Duke's
Expense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that the duel of the
vintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy.
While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. a bottle, he had to pay
twenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. a bottle, for five dozen of
Burgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, was
the most noted wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their best
supplies thence in the time of Richard II.
From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St.
Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, now
the Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of much
earlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet in
height.
There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of the
great windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while he
was here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of the
Butlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in the
floor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord de
Vesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin once
powerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class. On one of these I
think it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady,
wearing a plaited cap under a "Waterford cloak"--one of the neatest
varieties of the Irish women's cloak--garment so picturesque at once,
and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learn
from Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. This
morning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, types
from two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and worn
about the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fell
into lines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautiful
statuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent them
by these two "daughters of the gods, divinely tall," it was impossible
not to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace and
insignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more than
once she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had been
presented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim the
mangled robe with tawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women who
are models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to their
country and appropriate to its conditions, prefer to make guys of
themselves in grotesque travesties of the latest "styles" from London
and Paris and Dublin!
Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in fact
limestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them.
So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at which
Swift, Congreve, and Farquhar,--an odd concatenation of
celebrities--were more or less educated, we made our way to the Imperial
Hotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking him
whether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irish
whisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put upon
the table with a decisive air, exclaiming, "And this, yer honour, is the
most excellent whisky in the whole world, or I'm not an Irishman!"
Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shut
us up at once to believe the waiter a Calmuck or a Portuguese--anything,
in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, the
whisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable.
I am almost tempted to think that the priests sequestrate all the good
whisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the "wine of
the country" which they offer one is as uniformly excellent.
Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the second
Duke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of the
ground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was then
standing, or upon which houses have since been built.
These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the "root of title"
of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the
centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an
ancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water without
mud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniably
declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the
parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost
complete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agricultural
depression which has made the banks and wholesale houses "come down"
upon the small dealers, and the "agitation," bankrupting or exiling the
local gentry, have all conspired to the same result.
From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the park
under trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party was
joined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his views
of the working of the "Plan of Campaign." It is a plan, he maintains,
not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offence
against "landlordism," not really promoted, as it appears to be, in the
interest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked from
Dublin as a battering engine against law and order in Ireland. Every
case in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on its
own merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot has
bees selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance,
the "Plan of Campaign" has been imposed upon the tenants because the
property belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to be
Governor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack the
Government. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, this
gentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive;
and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving the
property, and for the benefit of the tenants. Two of the largest
tenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and other
forms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league into
Luggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstances
to sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew to
be fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the
"Plan of Campaign" was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, the
owner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, the
trustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling on
the estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the "Plan of
Campaign" has been introduced, my informant says, because Lord
Clanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. "Go down to Portumna and
Woodford," he said, "and look into the matter for yourself. You will
find that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the main
exceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost never
visited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London.
People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believe
anything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people who
don't like the cut of Dr. Fell's whiskers, or the way in which he takes
soup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats his
wife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and
they know this, so they start the 'Plan of Campaign' on the Portumna
properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob
with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all
Ireland--and then you have the dreadful story of the 'evictions,' and
all the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them,
getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed or
injudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it is
enough to say 'Clanricarde,' and all common sense goes out of the
question, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde--for he
lives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don't mind the
row--but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run,
of the tenants of Ireland as well."
At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There are
eighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is called
the Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, while
their farms are carried on for the owner by the Land Corporation. As
they were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and were
intimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chief
tenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squandered
their resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry.
"At first each man was allowed £3 a month by the League for himself and
his family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put into
Parliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no more
to do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting £5 a week, and so
they revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to
£4 a month."
"And this they get now? Out of what funds?"
"Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other
people's money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the
League to 'protect' it! They give it the kind of 'protection' that
Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they
never let go!"
I submitted that at Gweedore Father M'Fadden had paid over to Captain
Hill the funds confided to him.
"No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!"
With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulster
tenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British law
only in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain to
discover the definite origin. "The best lawyers in Ireland" could give
him no light on this point. He could only find that it did not exist
apparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. The
gentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulster
was really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the "Ulster"
custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere.
There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition of
this tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to Lord
Castlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, to
find Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland for
fourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago that
recognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which,
in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was,
with much difficulty and reluctance, brought to accord in the
Compensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870!
Of this clause, too, I am told to-night that the scale of compensation
fixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised
(though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in the
interest of the "strong farmers," who wish to root out the small
farmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the fact
that under this section the small farmers, under £10, may be awarded
against the landlord seven years' rent as compensation for disturbance,
while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes as
the rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen the
preference of the landlords for the large farm system.