Personal description of Counsellor Conaghty—Singular contrast of
physical roughness and mental suavity—A legal costume—The Counsellor’s
marriage—The bride described—Her plan for inducing her husband to
sacrifice to the Graces—The fatal mirror—The Counsellor views himself
in a new light—His consternation and false persuasion—The devil
unjustly accused—Conaghty’s illness and death.
The most extraordinary instance I recollect of a sudden affection of the
mind being fatal to the body was presented by an old acquaintance of
mine, Counsellor Conaghty, a gentleman of the Irish bar, who pined and
died in consequence of an unexpected view of his own person; but by no
means upon the same principle as Narcissus.
Mr. Conaghty was a barrister of about six feet two inches in length; his
breadth was about three feet across the shoulders; his hands splay, with
arms in full proportion to the rest of his members. He possessed,
indeed, a set of limbs that would not have disgraced a sucking elephant;
and his body appeared slit up two-thirds of its length, as if Nature had
originally intended (which is not very improbable) to have made twins of
him—but finding his _brains_ would not answer for _two_, relinquished
her design. His complexion, not a disagreeable fawn-colour, was spotted
by two good black eyes, well intrenched in his head, and guarded by a
thick _chevaux de frise_ of curly eyebrows. His mouth, which did not
certainly extend, like a john-dory’s, from ear to ear, was yet of
sufficient width to disclose between thirty and forty long, strong,
whitish tusks, the various heights and distances whereof gave a pleasing
variety to that feature. Though his _tall_ countenance was terminated by
a chin which might, upon a pinch, have had an interview with his
stomach, still there was quite enough of him between the chin and
waistband to admit space for a waistcoat, without the least difficulty.
Conaghty, in point of disposition, was a quiet, well-tempered, and, I
believe, totally irreproachable person. He was not unacquainted with the
superficies of law, nor was he without professional business. Nobody, in
fact, disliked him, and he disliked nobody. In national idiom, and
Emerald brogue, he unquestionably excelled (save one) all his
contemporaries. Dialogues sometimes occurred in Court between him and
Lord Avonmore, the Chief Baron, which were truly ludicrous.
The most unfortunate thing, however, about poor Conaghty, was his utter
contempt for what fastidious folks call _dress_.—As he scorned both
garters and suspenders, his stockings and small-clothes enjoyed the full
blessings of liberty. A well-twisted cravat, as if it feared to be
mistaken for a cord, kept a most respectful distance from his honest
throat—upon which the neighbouring beard flourished in full crops, to
fill up the interstice. His rusty black coat, well trimmed with peeping
button-moulds, left him, altogether, one of the most tremendous figures
I ever saw, of his own profession.
At length it pleased the Counsellor, or old Nick on his behalf, to look
out for a wife; and, as dreams go by contraries, so Conaghty’s perverse
vision of matrimonial happiness induced him to select a _sposa_ very
excellent internally, but in her exterior as much the reverse of himself
as any two of the same species could be.
Madam Conaghty was (and I dare say still is) a neat, pretty, dressy
little person: her head reached nearly up to her spouse’s hip; and if he
had stood wide, to let her pass, she might (without much stooping) have
walked under him as through a triumphal arch.
He was quite delighted with his captivating fairy, and she equally so
with her good-natured giant. Nothing could promise better for twenty or
thirty years of honey-moons, when an extraordinary and most unexpected
fatality demonstrated the uncertainty of all sublunary enjoyments, and
might teach ladies who have lost their beauty the dangers of a
looking-glass.
The Counsellor had taken a small house, and desired his dear little Mary
to furnish it to her own dear little taste. This, as new-married ladies
usually do, she set about with the greatest zeal and assiduity. She had
a proper taste for things in general, and was besides extremely anxious
to make her giant somewhat smarter; and, as he had seldom in his life
had any intercourse with looking-glasses larger than necessary just to
reflect his chin whilst shaving, she determined to place a grand
_mirror_ in her little drawing-room, extensive enough to exhibit the
Counsellor to himself from head to foot—and which, by reflecting his
loose, shabby habiliments, and tremendous contour, might induce him to
trim himself up.
This plan was extremely promising in the eyes of little Mary; and she
had no doubt it would be entirely consonant with her husband’s own
desire of Mrs. Conaghty’s little drawing-room being the nicest in the
neighbourhood. She accordingly purchased, in Great George Street, at a
very large price, a looking-glass of sufficing dimensions, and it was a
far larger one than the Counsellor had ever before noticed.
When this fatal reflector was brought home, it was placed leaning
against the wall in the still unfurnished drawing-room,—and the lady,
having determined at once to surprise and reform her dear giant, did not
tell him of the circumstance. The ill-fated Counsellor, wandering about
his new house—as people often do toward the close of the evening—that
interregnum between sun, moon, and candlelight, when shadows are deep
and figures seem lengthened—suddenly entered the room where the glass
was deposited. Unconscious of the presence of the immense reflector, he
beheld, in the gloom, a monstrous and frightful Caliban—wild, loose, and
shaggy,—standing close and direct before him; and, as he raised his own
gigantic arms in a paroxysm of involuntary horror, the goblin exactly
followed his example, lifting its tremendous fists, as if with a fixed
determination to fell the Counsellor, and extinguish him for ever.
Conaghty’s imagination was excited to its utmost pitch. Though the
spectre appeared larger than any d—l on authentic record, he had no
doubt it was a genuine demon sent express to destroy his happiness and
carry him to Belzebub. As his apprehensions augmented, his pores sent
out their icy perspiration: he tottered—the fiend too was in motion! his
hair bristled up, as it were like pikes to defend his head. At length
his blood recoiled, his eyes grew dim, his pulse ceased, his long limbs
quivered—failed; and down came poor Conaghty with a loud shriek and a
tremendous crash. His beloved bride, running up alarmed by the noise,
found the Counsellor as inanimate as the boards he lay on. A surgeon was
sent for, and phlebotomy was resorted to as for _apoplexy_, which the
seizure was pronounced to be. His head was shaved; and by the time he
revived a little, he had three extensive blisters and a cataplasm
preparing their stings for him.
It was two days before he recovered sufficiently to tell his Mary of the
horrid spectre that had assailed him—for he really thought he had been
felled to the ground by a blow from the goblin. Nothing, indeed, could
ever persuade him to the contrary, and he grew quite delirious.
His reason returned slowly and scantily; and when assured it was only a
_looking-glass_ that was the cause of his terror, the assurance did not
alter his belief. He pertinaciously maintained, that this was only a
kind story invented to tranquillise him. “Oh, my dearest Mary!” said
poor Conaghty, “I’m gone!—my day is come—I’m called away for ever. Oh!
had you seen the frightful figure that struck me down, you could not
have survived it one hour! Yet why should I fear the d—l? I’m not
wicked, Mary! No, I’m not _very_ wicked!”
A thorough Irish servant, an old fellow whom the Counsellor had brought
from Connaught, and who _of course_ was well acquainted with
supernatural appearances, and had not himself seen the fatal
mirror,—discovered, as he thought, the real cause of the goblin’s visit,
which he communicated to his mistress with great solemnity, as she
afterward related.
“Mistress,” said the faithful Dennis Brophy, “Mistress, it was all a
_mistake_. By all the books in the master’s study, I’d swear it was only
a mistake!—What harm did ever my master do nobody? and what would bring
a d—l overhauling a Counsellor that did no harm? What say could he have
to my master?”
“Don’t teaze me, Dennis,” said the unhappy Mary; “go along!—go!”
“I’ll tell you, mistress,” said he; “it was a d—l sure enough that was
in it!”
“Hush! nonsense!” said his mistress.
“By J—s! it _was_ the d—l, or one of his gossoons,” persisted Dennis;
“but he mistook the house, mistress, and that’s the truth of it!”
“What do you mean?” said _the mistress_.
“Why, I mane that you know Mr. —— lives on one side of us, and Mr. ——
lives at the other side, and they are both _attornies_, and the people
say they’ll both go to _him_: and so the d—l, or his gossoon, mistook
the door, and you see he went off again when he found it was my master
that was _in it_, and not an attorney, mistress.”
All efforts to convince Conaghty he was mistaken were vain. The illusion
could not be removed from his mind; he had received a shock which
affected his whole frame; a constipation of the intestines took place;
and in three weeks, the poor fellow manifested the effects of groundless
horror in a way which every one regretted.