I cannot proceed further in this my veracious history without dwelling
a little longer upon the characters of the two interesting individuals I
have already presented to my readers as Mr. and Mrs. Rooney.
Paul Rooney, attorney-at-law, 42, Stephen's-green, north, was about
as well known in his native city of Dublin as Nelson's Pillar. His
reputation, unlimited by the adventitious circumstances of class, spread
over the whole surface of society; and, from the chancellor down to the
carman, his claims were confessed.
It is possible that, in many other cities of the world, Mr. Rooney might
have been regarded as a common-place, every-day personage, well to do
in the world, and of a free-and-easy character, which, if it left little
for reproach, left still less for remark: but in Ireland, whether it was
the climate or the people, the potteen or the potatoes, I cannot say,
but certainly he “came out,” as the painters call it, in a breadth of
colour quite surprising.
The changeful character of the skies has, they tell us, a remarkable
influence in fashioning the ever-varying features of Irish temperament;
and, certainly, the inconstant climate of Dublin had much merit if it
produced in Mr. Rooney the versatile nature he rejoiced in.
About ten o'clock, on every morning during term, might be seen a
shrewd, cunning-looking, sly little fellow, who, with pursed-up lips and
slightly elevated nose, wended his way towards the Four Courts, followed
by a ragged urchin with a well-filled bag of purple stuff. His black
coat, drab shorts, and gaiters, had a plain and business-like cut; and
the short, square tie of his white cravat had a quaint resemblance to a
flourish on a deed; the self-satisfied look, the assured step, the easy
roll of the head--all bespoke one with whom the world was thriving; and
it did not need the additional evidence of a certain habit he had of
jingling his silver in his breeches-pocket as he went, to assure you
that Rooney was a warm fellow, and had no want of cash.
Were you to trace his steps for the three or four hours that ensued, you
would see him bustling through the crowded hall of the Four Courts--now,
whispering some important point to a leading barrister, while he held
another by the gown lest he should escape him; now, he might be remarked
seated in a niche between the pillars, explaining some knotty difficulty
to a western client, whose flushed cheek and flashing eye too plainly
indicated his impatience of legal strategy, and how much more pleased he
would feel to redress his wrongs in his own fashion; now brow-beating,
now cajoling, now encouraging, now condoling, he edged his way through
the bewigged and dusty throng, not stopping to reply to the hundred
salutations he met with, save by a knowing wink, which was the only
civility he did not put down at three-and-fourpence. If his knowledge of
law was little, his knowledge of human nature--at least of such of it
as Ireland exhibits--was great; and no case of any importance could
come before a jury, where Paul's advice and opinion were not deemed of
considerable importance. No man better knew all the wiles and twists,
all the dark nooks and recesses of Irish character. No man more quickly
could ferret out a hoarded secret; no one so soon detect an attempted
imposition. His was the secret _police_ of law: he read a witness as he
would a deed, and detected a flaw in him to the full as easily.
As he sat near the leading counsel in a cause, he seemed a kind of
middle term between the lawyer and the jury. Marking by some slight
but significant gesture every point of the former, to the latter he
impressed upon their minds every favourable feature of his client's
cause; and twelve deaf men might have followed the pleadings in a cause
through the agency of Paul's gesticulations. The consequence of these
varied gifts was, business flowed in upon him from every side, and few
members of the bar were in the receipt of one-half his income.
Scarcely, however, did the courts rise, when Paul, shaking from his
shoulders the learned dust of the Exchequer, would dive into a small
apartment which, in an obscure house in Mass-lane, he dignified by the
name of his study. Short and few as were his moments of seclusion, they
sufficed to effect in his entire man a complete and total change. The
shrewd little attorney, that went in with a _nisi prius_ grin, came out
a round, pleasant-looking fellow, with a green coat of jockey cut, a
buff waistcoat, white cords, and tops; his hat set jauntily on one side,
his spotted neckcloth knotted in bang-up mode,--in fact, his figure the
_beau idéal_ of a west-country squire taking a canter among his covers
before the opening of the hunting.
His grey eyes, expanded to twice their former size, looked the very soul
of merriment; his nether lip, slightly dropped, quivered with the last
joke it uttered. Even his voice partook of the change, and was now
a rich, full, mellow Clare accent, which, with the recitative of his
country, seemed to Italianise his English. While such was Paul, his
_accessoires_--as the French would call them--were in admirable keeping:
a dark chesnut cob, a perfect model of strength and symmetry, would be
led up and down by a groom, also mounted upon a strong hackney,
whose flat rib and short pastern showed his old Irish breeding; the
well-fitting saddle, the well-balanced stirrup, the plain but powerful
snaffle, all looked like the appendages of one whose jockeyism was no
assumed feature; and, indeed, you had only to see Mr. Rooney in his
seat, to confess that he was to the full as much at home there as in the
Court of Chancery.
From this to the hour of a late dinner, the Phoenix Park became his
resort. There, surrounded by a gay and laughing crowd, Paul cantered
along, amusing his hearers with the last _mot_ from the King's Bench,
or some stray bit of humour or fun from a case on circuit. His
conversation, however, principally ran on other topics: the Curragh
Meeting, the Loughrea Steeple-chase, the Meath Cup, or Lord Boyne's
Handicap; with these he was thoroughly familiar. He knew the odds of
every race, could apportion the weights, describe the ground, and,
better than all, make rather a good guess at the winner. In addition to
these gifts, he was the best judge of a horse in Ireland; always well
mounted, and never without at least two hackneys in his stable, able to
trot their fifteen Irish miles within the hour. Such qualities as
these might be supposed popular ones in a country proverbially given
to sporting; but Mr. Rooney had other and very superior powers of
attraction,--he was the Amphitryou of Dublin. It was no figurative
expression to say that he kept open house. _Déjeuners_, dinners, routs,
and balls followed each other in endless succession. His cook was
French, his claret was Sneyd's; he imported his own sherry and Madeira,
both of which he nursed with a care and affection truly parental. His
venison and black-cock came from Scotland; every Holyhead packet had
its consignment of Welsh mutton; and, in a word, whatever wealth could
purchase, and a taste, nurtured as his had been by the counsel of many
who frequented his table, could procure, such he possessed in abundance,
his greatest ambition being to outshine in splendour, and surpass in
magnificence, all the other dinner-givers of the day, filling his house
with the great and titled of the land, who ministered to his vanity with
singular good-nature, while they sipped his claret, and sat over his
Burgundy. His was indeed a pleasant house. The _bons vivants_ liked it
for its excellent fare, the perfection of its wines, the certainty of
finding the first rarity of the season before its existence was heard of
at other tables; the lounger liked it for its ease and informality; the
humorist, for the amusing features of its host and hostess; and not a
few were attracted by the gracefulness and surpassing loveliness of one
who, by some strange fatality of fortune, seemed to have been dropped
down into the midst of this singular _ménage_.
Of Mr. Rooney, I have only further to say that, hospitable as a prince,
he was never so happy as at the head of his table; for, although his
natural sharpness could not but convince him of the footing which he
occupied among his high and distinguished guests, yet he knew well there
are few such levellers of rank as riches, and he had read in his youth
that even the lofty Jove himself was accessible by the odour of a
hecatomb.
Mrs. Rooney--or, as she wrote herself upon her card, Mrs. Paul Rooney
(there seemed something distinctive in the prenom.)--was a being of
a very different order. Perfectly unconscious of the ridicule that
attaches to vulgar profusion, she believed herself the great source of
attraction of her crowded staircase and besieged drawing-room. True
it was, she was a large and very handsome woman. Her deep, dark, brown
eyes, and brilliant complexion, would have been beautiful, had not her
mouth somewhat marred their effect, by that coarse expression which high
living and a voluptuous life is sure to impress upon those not born
to be great. There is no doubt of it, the mouth is your thorough-bred
feature. You will meet eyes as softly beaming, as brightly speaking,
among the lofty cliffs of the wild Tyrol, or in the deep valleys of
the far west; I have seen, too, a brow as fairly pencilled, a nose no
Grecian statue could surpass, a skin whose tint was fair and transparent
as the downy rose-leaf, amid the humble peasants of a poor and barren
land; but never have I seen the mouth whose clean-cut lip and chiselled
arch betokened birth. No; that feature would seem the prerogative of
the highly born; fashioned to the expression of high and holy thoughts;
moulded to the utterance of ennobling sentiment, or proud desire. Its
every lineament tells of birth and blood.
Now, Mrs. Rooney's mouth was a large and handsome one, her teeth white
and regular withal, and, when at rest, there was nothing to find
fault with; but let her speak--was it her accent?--was it the awful
provincialism of her native city?--was it that strange habit of
contortion any _patois_ is sure to impress upon the speaker?--I cannot
tell, but certainly it lent to features of very considerable attraction
a vulgarising character of expression.
It was truly provoking to see so handsome a person mar every effect
of her beauty by some extravagant display. Dramatising every trivial
incident in life, she rolled her eyes, looked horror-struck or happy,
sweet or sarcastic, lofty or languishing, all in one minute. There was
an eternal play of feature of one kind or other; there was no rest,
no repose. Her arms--and they were round, and fair, and
well-fashioned--were also enlisted in the service; and to a distant
observer Mrs. Rooney's animated conversation appeared like a priest
performing mass.
And that beautiful head, whose fair and classic proportions were
balanced so equally upon her white and swelling throat, how tantalising
to know it full of low and petty ambitions, of vulgar tastes, of
contemptible rivalries, of insignificant triumph. To see her, amid the
voluptuous splendour and profusion of her gorgeous house, resplendent
with jewellery, glistening in all the blaze of emeralds and rubies; to
watch how the poisonous venom of innate vulgarity had so tainted that
fair and beautiful form, rendering her an object of ridicule who should
have been a thing to worship. It was too bad; and, as she sat at dinner,
her plump but taper fingers grasping a champagne glass, she seemed like
a Madonna enacting the part of Moll Flagon.
Now, Mrs. Paul's manner had as many discrepancies as her features. She
was by nature a good, kind, merry, coarse personage, who loved a joke
not the less if it were broad as well as long. Wealth, however, and its
attendant evils, suggested the propriety of a very different line; and
catching up as she did at every opportunity that presented itself such
of the airs and graces as she believed to be the distinctive traits
of high life, she figured about in these cast-off attractions, like a
waiting-maid in the abandoned finery of her mistress.
As she progressed in fortune, she “tried back” for a family, and
discovered that she was an O'Toole by birth, and consequently of Irish
blood-royal; a certain O'Toole being king of a nameless tract, in an
unknown year, somewhere about the time of Cromwell, who, Mrs. Rooney had
heard, came over with the Romans.
“Ah, yes, my dear,” as she would say when, softened by sherry and
sorrow, she would lay her hand upon your arm--“ah, yes, if every one had
their own, it isn't married to an attorney I'd be, but living in regal
splendour in the halls of my ancestors. Well, well!” Here she would
throw up her eyes with a mixed expression of grief and confidence in
Heaven, that if she hadn't got her own, in this world, Oliver Cromwell,
at least, was paying off, in the other, his foul wrongs to the royal
house of O'Toole.
I have only one person more to speak of ere I conclude my rather prolix
account of the family. Miss Louisa Bellew was the daughter of an Irish
baronet, who put the keystone upon his ruin by his honest opposition
to the passing of the Union. His large estates, loaded with debt
and encumbered by mortgage, had been for half a century a kind of
battle-field for legal warfare at every assizes. Through the medium of
his difficulties he became acquainted with Mr. Rooney, whose craft
and subtlety had rescued him from more than one difficulty, and whose
good-natured assistance had done still more important service by loans
upon his property.
At Mr. Rooney's suggestion, Miss Bellew was invited to pass her winter
with them in Dublin. This proposition which, in the palmier days of the
baronet's fortune, would in all probability never have been made, and
would certainly never have been accepted, was now entertained with some
consideration, and finally acceded to, on prudential motives. Rooney had
lent him large sums; he had never been a pressing, on the contrary, he
was a lenient creditor; possessing great power over the property, he had
used it sparingly, even delicately, and showed himself upon more than
one occasion not only a shrewd adviser, but a warm friend. “'Tis true,”
thought Sir Simon, “they are vulgar people, of coarse tastes and low
habits, and those with whom they associate laugh at, though they live
upon them; yet, after all, to refuse this invitation may be taken in ill
part; a few months will do the whole thing. Louisa, although young,
has tact and cleverness enough to see the difficulties of her position;
besides, poor child, the gaiety and life of a city will be a relief to
her, after the dreary and monotonous existence she has passed with me.”
This latter reason he plausibly represented to himself as a strong one
for complying with what his altered fortunes and ruined prospects seemed
to render no longer a matter of choice.
To the Rooneys, indeed, Miss Bellew's visit was a matter of some
consequence; it was like the recognition of some petty state by one
of the great powers of Europe. It was an acknowledgment of a social
existence, an evidence to the world not only that there was such a thing
as the kingdom of Rooney, but also that it was worth while to enter into
negotiation with it, and even accredit an ambassador to its court.
Little did that fair and lovely girl think, as with tearful eyes she
turned again and again to embrace her father, as the hour arrived, when
for the first time in her life she was to leave her home, little did she
dream of the circumstances under which her visit was to be paid. Less
a guest than a hostage, she was about to quit the home of her infancy,
where, notwithstanding the inroads of poverty, a certain air of its once
greatness still lingered; the broad and swelling lands, that stretched
away with wood and coppice, far as the eye could reach--the woodland
walks--the ancient house itself, with its discordant pile, accumulated
at different times by different masters--all told of power and supremacy
in the land of her fathers. The lonely solitude of those walls, peopled
alone by the grim-visaged portraits of long-buried ancestors, were now
to be exchanged for the noise and bustle, the glitter and the glare of
second-rate city life; profusion and extravagance, where she had seen
but thrift and forbearance; the gossip, the scandal, the tittle-tattle
of society, with its envies, its jealousies, its petty rivalries, and
its rancours, were to supply those quiet evenings beside the winter
hearth, when reading aloud some old and valued volume she learned to
prize the treasures of our earlier writers under the guiding taste of
one whose scholarship was of no mean order, and whose cultivated mind
was imbued with all the tenderness and simplicity of a refined and
gentle nature.
When fortune smiled, when youth and wealth, an ancient name and a high
position, all concurred to elevate him, Sir Simon Bellew was courteous
almost to humility; but when the cloud of misfortune lowered over his
house, when difficulties thickened around him, and every effort to
rescue seemed only to plunge him deeper, then the deep-rooted pride of
the man shone forth: and he who in happier days was forgiving even to
a fault, became now scrupulous about every petty observance, exacting
testimonies of respect from all around him, and assuming an almost
tyranny of manner totally foreign to his tastes, his feelings, and
his nature; like some mighty oak of the forest, riven and scathed by
lightning, its branches leafless and its roots laid bare, still standing
erect, it stretches its sapless limbs proudly towards heaven, so stood
he, reft of nearly all, yet still presenting to the adverse wind of
fortune his bold, unshaken front.
Alas and alas! poverty has no heavier evil in its train than its
power of perverting the fairest gifts of our nature from their true
channel,--making the bright sides of our character dark, gloomy, and
repulsive. Thus the high-souled pride that in our better days sustains
and keeps us far above the reach of sordid thoughts and unworthy
actions, becomes, in the darker hour of our destiny, a misanthropic
selfishness, in which we wrap ourselves as in a mantle. The caresses
of friendship, the warm affections of domestic love, cannot penetrate
through this; even sympathy becomes suspect, and then commences that
terrible struggle against the world, whose only termination is a broken
heart.
Notwithstanding, then, all Mr. Rooney's address in conveying the
invitation in question, it was not without a severe struggle that Sir
Simon resolved on its acceptance; and when at last he did accede, it was
with so many stipulations, so many express conditions, that, thad they
been complied with _de facto_, as they were acknowledged by promise,
Miss Bellew would, in all probability, have spent her winter in the
retirement of her own chamber in Stephen's-green, without seeing more of
the capital and its inhabitants than a view from her window presented.
Paul, it is true, agreed to everything; for, although, to use his own
language, the codicil revoked the entire body of the testament, he
determined in his own mind to break the will. “Once in Dublin,” thought
he, “the fascinations of society, the pleasures of the world, with such
a guide as Mrs. Rooney”--and here let me mention, that for his wife's
tact and social cleverness Paul had the most heartfelt admiration--“with
advantages like these, she will soon forget the humdrum life of
Kilmorran Castle, and become reconciled to a splendour and magnificence
unsurpassed by even the viceregal court.”
Here, then, let me conclude this account of the Rooneys, while I resume
the thread of my own narrative. Although I feel for and am ashamed of
the prolixity in which I have indulged, yet, as I speak of real people,
well known at the period of which I write, and as they may to a certain
extent convey an impression of the tone of one class in the society
of that day, I could not bring myself to omit their mention, nor even
dismiss them more briefly.