Account of the flagellation undergone by the two coopers—Their
application to the author for redress—Tit for tat, or giving _back_
the compliment—Major Connor, and his disinclination for attorneys—His
brother, Arthur Connor.
An anecdote, amongst many of the same genus, which I witnessed myself,
about the same period, is particularly illustrative of the state of
things in the Irish metropolis at the celebrated epocha of 1798.
Two wine-coopers of a Mr. Thomas White, an eminent wine-merchant, in
Clare Street, had been bottling wine at my house in Merrion Square. I
had known them long to be honest, quiet, and industrious persons: going
to their dinner, they returned, to my surprise, with their coats and
waistcoats hanging loose on their arms, and their shirts quite bloody
behind. They told their pitiful story with peculiar simplicity:—that as
they were passing quietly by Major Connor’s barrack, at Shelburn House,
Stephen’s Green, a fellow who owed one of them a grudge for beating him
and his brother at Donnybrook, had told Major Connor that “he heard we
were black rebels, and knew well where many a pike was hid in vaults and
cellars in the city, if we chose to discover of them; on which the
Major, please your honour, Counsellor, without stop or stay, or the
least ceremony in life, ordered the soldiers to strip us to our buffs,
and then tied us to the butt-end of a great cannon, and—what did he do
then, Counsellor dear, to two honest poor coopers, but he ordered the
soldiers to give us fifty cracks a-piece with the devil’s
cat-o’-nine-tails, as he called it; though, by my sowl, I believe there
were twenty tails to it—which the Major said he always kept saftening in
brine, to wallop such villains as we were, Counsellor dear! Well, every
whack went thorough my carcase, sure enough; and I gave tongue, because
I couldn’t help it: so, when he had his will of us, he ordered us to put
on our shirts, and swore us to come back in eight days more for the
remaining fifty cracks, unless we brought fifty pikes in the place of
them. Ah, the devil a pike ever we had, Counsellor dear, and what’ll we
do, Counsellor, what’ll we do?”
“Take this to the Major,” said I, writing to him a note of no very
gentle expostulation. “Give this, with my compliments; and if he does
not redress you, I’ll find means of making him.”
The poor fellows were most thankful; and I immediately received a note
from the Major, with many thanks for undeceiving him, and stating, that
if the wine-coopers would catch the fellow that belied them, he’d oblige
the chap with a cool hundred, from a new double cat, which he would
order for the purpose.
The Major strictly kept his word. The wine-coopers soon found their
accuser, and brought him to Major Connor, with my compliments; who sent
him home in half-an-hour with as raw a back as any brave soldier in his
Majesty’s service.
Learning also from the coopers that their enemy was an attorney’s clerk,
(a profession the Major had a most inveterate and very just aversion
to,) he desired them to bring him any disloyal attorneys they could
find, and he’d teach them more justice in one hour at Shelburn Barracks,
than they’d practise for seven years in the Four Courts.
The accuser, who got so good a practical lecture from Major Connor, was
a clerk to Mr. H. Hudson, an eminent attorney, of Dublin.
The Major’s brother, Arthur, was under a state prosecution, and
incarcerated as an unsuccessful patriot—but one to whom even Lord Clare
could not deny the attributes of consistency, firmness, and fidelity.
His politics were decidedly sincere. Banished from his own country, he
received high promotion in the French army; and, if he had not been
discontinued from the staff of his relative, Marshal Grouchy, the battle
of Waterloo (from documents I have seen) _must_ have had a different
termination. This, however, is an almost inexcusable digression.