a year, was a wretched transit in miserable, ill-smelling vessels. From
Dublin to Bristol (our most convenient route) took at least thirty
hours. From Holyhead to London was a two days’ journey by coach. On one
of these journeys, having to stop at Bristol for two nights, I enjoyed
an opportunity (enchanting at sixteen) of being swung in a basket
backward and forward across the Avon, where the Suspension Bridge now
stands. Preparations for these journeys of ours to England were not
quite so serious as those which were necessarily made for our cousins
when they went out to India and were obliged for five or six months
wholly to dispense with the services of a laundress. Still, our
hardships were considerable, and youngsters who were going to school or
college were made up like little Micawbers “expecting dirty weather.”
Elderly ladies, I remember, usually travelled in mourning and sometimes
kept their little corkscrew curls in paper under their bonnet caps for
the whole journey; a less distressing proceeding, however, than that of
Lady Cahir thirty years earlier, who had her hair dressed, (powdered and
on a cushion) by a famous hairdresser in Bath, and came over to exhibit
it at St. Patrick’s ball in Dublin Castle, having passed five nights at
sea, desperately ill, but heroically refusing to lie down and disarrange
the magnificent structure on her aching head.
This lady by the way—of whom it was said that “Lady Cahir _cares_ for no
man”—had had a droll adventure in her youth, which my mother, who knew
her well and I think was her schoolfellow, recounted to me. Before she
married she lived with her mother, a rather extravagant widow, who
plunged heavily into debt. One day the long-expected bailiffs came to
arrest her and were announced as at the hall door. Quick as lightning
Lady Cahir (then, I think, Miss Townsend) made her mother exchange dress
and cap with her, to which she added the old lady’s wig and spectacles
and then sat in her armchair knitting sedulously, with the blinds drawn
down and her back to the window. The mother having vanished, the bailiff
was shown up, and, exhibiting his credentials, requested the lady to
accompany him to the sponging house. Of course there was a long palaver;
but at last the captive consented to obey and merely said, “Well! I will
go if you like, but I warn you that you are committing a great mistake
in apprehending me.”
“O, O! We all know about that, Ma’am! Please come along! I have a
hackney carriage at the door.”
The damsel, well wrapped in cloaks and furbelows and a great bonnet of
the period, went quietly to her destination; but when the time came for
closing the door on her as a prisoner, she jumped up, threw off wig,
spectacles and old woman’s cap, and disclosed the blue eyes, golden
hair, and radiant young beauty for which she was long afterwards
renowned. Meanwhile, of course, her mother had had abundance of time to
clear out of the way of her importunate creditors.
Many details of comforts and habits in those days were very much in
arrear of ours, perhaps about equally in Ireland and in England. It is
droll to remember, for example, as I do vividly, seeing in my childhood
the housemaids striving with infinite pains and great loss of time to
obtain a light with steel and flint and a tinder-box, when by some
untoward accident all the fires in the house (habitually burning all
night) had been extinguished.
The first matchbox I saw was a long upright red one containing a bottle
of phosphorus and a few matches which were lighted by insertion in the
bottle. After this we had Lucifers which nearly choked us with gas; but
in which we gloried as among the greatest discoveries of all time.
Seriously I believe few of the vaunted triumphs of science have
contributed so much as these easy illuminators of our long dark Northern
nights to the comfort and health of mankind.
Again our grandmothers had used exquisite China basins with round
long-necked jugs for all their ablutions and we had advanced to the use
of large basins and footpans, slipper baths and shower baths, when, as
nearly as possible in 1840, the first sponge bath was brought to
Ireland. I was paying a visit to my father’s cousin, Lady Elizabeth
M‘Clintock, at Drumcar in Co. Louth, when she exhibited with pride to me
and her other guests the novel piece of bedroom furniture. When I
returned home and described it my mother ordered a supply for our house,
and we were wont for a long time to enquire of each other, “how we
enjoyed our tubs?” as people are now supposed to ask: “Have you used
Pears’ soap?” I believe it was from India these excellent inventions
came.
Many other differences might be noted between the habits of those days
and of ours. _Diners Russes_ were, of course, not thought of. We dined
at six, or six-thirty, at latest; and after the soup and fish, all the
first course was placed at once on the table. For a party, for example,
of 16 or 18, there would be eight dishes; joints, fowls and entrées. It
was a triumph of good cookery, but rarely achieved, to serve them all
hot at once. Tea, made with an urn, was a regular meal taken in the
drawing-room about nine o’clock; _never_ before dinner. The modern five
o’clock tea was altogether unknown in the Forties, and when I ventured
sometimes to introduce it in the Fifties, I was so severely reprehended
that I used to hold a secret symposium for specially favoured guests in
my own room after our return from drives or walks. All old gentlemen
pronounced five o’clock tea an atrocious and disgraceful practice.
Another considerable difference in our lives was caused by the scarcity
of newspapers and periodicals. I can remember when the _Dublin Evening
Mail_,—then a single sheet, appearing three times a week and received at
Newbridge on the day after publication,—was our only source of news. I
do not think any one of our neighbours took the _Times_ or any English
paper. Of magazines we had _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_, but
illustrated ones were unknown. There was a tolerable circulating library
in Dublin, to which I subscribed and from whence I obtained a good many
French books; but the literary appetites of the Irish gentry generally
were frugal in the extreme!
The real differences, however, between Life in 1840 and Life in 1890
were much deeper than any record of these altered manners, or even any
references to the great changes caused by steam and the telegraph, can
convey. There were certain principles which in those days were almost
universally accepted and which profoundly influenced all our works and
ways. The first of them was Parental and Marital Authority. Perhaps my
particular circumstances as the daughter of a man of immense force of
will, caused me to see the matter especially clearly, but I am sure that
in the Thirties and Forties (at all events in Ireland) there was very
little declension generally from the old Roman _Patria Potestas_.
Fathers believed themselves to possess almost boundless rights over
their children in the matter of pursuits, professions, marriages and so
on; and the children usually felt that if they resisted any parental
command it was on their peril and an act of extreme audacity. My
brothers and I habitually spoke of our father, as did the servants and
tenants, as “_The Master_;” and never was title more thoroughly
deserved.
Another important difference was in the position of women. Of this I
shall have more to say hereafter; suffice it to note that it was the
universal opinion, that no gentlewoman could possibly earn money without
derogating altogether from her rank (unless, indeed, by card-playing as
my grandmother did regularly!); and that housekeeping and needlework (of
the most inartistic kinds) were her only fitting pursuits. The one
natural ambition of her life was supposed to be a “suitable” marriage;
the phrase always referring to _settlements_, rather than _sentiments_.
Study of any serious sort was disapproved, and “accomplishments” only
were cultivated. My father prohibited me when very young from learning
Latin from one of my brothers who kindly offered to teach me; but, as I
have recounted, he paid largely and generously that I might be taught
Music, for which I had no faculties at all. Other Irish girls my
contemporaries, were much worse off than I, for my dear mother always
did her utmost to help my studies and my liberal allowance permitted me
to buy books.
The laws which concerned women at that date were so frightfully unjust
that the most kindly disposed men inevitably took their cue from them,
and looked on their mothers, wives, and sisters as beings with wholly
inferior rights; with _no_ rights, indeed, which should ever stand
against theirs. The _deconsideration_ of women (as dear Barbara Bodichon
in later years used to say) was at once cause and result of our legal
disabilities. Let the happier women of these times reflect on the state
of things which existed when a married woman’s inheritance and even her
own earnings (if she could make any), were legally robbed from her by
her husband, and given, if he pleased, to his mistress! Let them
remember that she could make no will, but that her husband might make
one which should bequeath the control of her children to a man she
abhorred or to a woman of evil life. Let them remember that a husband
who had beaten and wronged his wife in every possible way could yet
force her by law to live with him and become the mother of his children.
Personally and most fortunately (for I know not of what crime I might
not have been guilty if so tried!) I never had cause of complaint on the
score of injustice or unkindness from any of the men with whom I had to
do. But the knowledge, when it came to me, of the legalised oppressions
under which other women groaned, lay heavy on my mind. I was not,
however, in those early days, interested in politics or large social
reforms; and did not covet the political franchise, finding in my
manifold duties and studies over-abundant outlets for my energies.
Another difference between the first and latter half of the century is,
I think, the far greater simplicity of character of the older
generation. No doubt there were, at the time of which I write, many fine
and subtle minds at work among the poets, philosophers and statesmen of
the day; but ordinary ladies and gentlemen, even clever and
well-educated ones, would, I think, if they could revive now, seem to us
rather like our boys and girls than our grandparents. Thousands of
allusions, ideas, shades of sentiment and reflection which have become
common-places to us, were novel and strange to them. What Cowper’s
poetry is to Tennyson’s, what the _Vicar of Wakefield_ is to
_Middlemarch_, so were their transparent minds to ours. I remember once
(for a trivial example of what I mean) walking with my father in his
later days in the old garden one exquisite spring day when the apple
trees were covered with blossoms and the birds were singing all round
us. As he leaned on my arm, having just recovered from an illness which
had threatened to be fatal and was in a mood unusually tender, I was
tempted to say, “Don’t you feel, Father, that a day like this is almost
too beautiful and delicious, that it softens one’s feelings to the verge
of pain?” In these times assuredly such a remark would have seemed to
most people too obvious to deserve discussion, but it only brought from
my father the reply: “God bless my soul, what nonsense you talk, my
dear! I never heard the like. Of course a fine day makes everybody
cheerful and a rainy day makes us dull and dismal.” Everyone I knew
then, was, more or less, similarly simple; and in some of the ablest
whom I met in later years of the same generation, (_e.g._, Mrs.
Somerville) I found the same single-mindedness, the same absence of all
experience of the subtler emotions. Conversation, as a natural
consequence, was more downright and matter of fact, and rarely if ever
was concerned with critical analyses of impressions. In short, (as I
have said) our fathers were in many respects, like children compared to
ourselves.
Another and a sad change has taken place in the amount of animal spirits
generally shared by young and old in the Thirties and Forties and down,
I think, to the Crimean War, which brought a great seriousness into all
our lives. It was not only the young who laughed in joyous “fits” in
those earlier days; the old laughed then more heartily and more often
than I fear many young people do now; that blessed laugh of hearty
amusement which causes the eyes to water and the sides to ache—a laugh
one hardly ever hears now in any class or at any age. An evidence of the
high level of ordinary spirits may be found in the readiness with which
such genuine laughter responded to the smallest provocation. It did not
need the delightful farce of the Keeley’s acting (though I recall the
helpless state into which Mr. Keeley’s pride in his red waistcoat
reduced half the house), but even an old, well-worn, good story, or
family catch-word with some ludicrous association, was enough to provoke
jovial mirth. It was part of a young lady’s and young gentleman’s home
training to learn how to indulge in the freest enjoyment of fun without
boisterousness or shrieks or discordance of any kind. Young people were
for ever devising pranks and jests among themselves, and even their
seniors occupied themselves in concocting jokes, many of which we should
now think childish; the order of the “April Fool,” being the general
type. Comic verse making; forging of love letters; disguising and
begging as tramps; sending boxes of bogus presents; making “ghosts” with
bolsters and burnt cork eyes to be placed in dark corners of passages;
these and a score of such monkey-tricks for which nobody now has
patience, were common diversions in every household, and were nearly
always taken good-humouredly. My father used to tell of one ridiculous
deception in which the chief actress and inventor was that very _grande
dame_ Elizabeth Hastings, Countess of Moira, daughter of the Methodist
Countess of Huntingdon. Lady Moira, my father and two other young men,
by means of advertising and letters, induced some wretched officer to
walk up and down a certain part of Sackville Street for an hour with a
red geranium in his buttonhole, to show himself off, as he thought, to a
young lady with a large fortune who proposed to marry him. The
conspirators sat in a window across the street watching their victim and
exploding with glee at his peacock behaviour. The sequel was better than
the joke. The poor man wrote a letter to his tormentress (whom he had at
last detected) so pitiful that her kind heart melted, and she exerted
her immense influence effectually on his behalf and provided for him
comfortably for life.
Henry, the third Marquis of Waterford, husband of the gifted and
beautiful lady whose charming biography Mr. Hare has recently written,
was the last example I imagine in Ireland of these redundant spirits. It
was told of him, and I remember hearing of it at the time, that a
somewhat grave and self-important gentleman had ridden up to Curraghmore
on business and left his bay horse at the door. Lord Waterford, seeing
the animal, caught up a pot of whitewash in use by some labourer and
rapidly _whitewashed the horse_; after which exploit he went indoors to
interview his visitor, and began by observing, “That is a handsome grey
horse of yours at the door.” “A bay, my Lord.”
“Not at all. It is a grey horse. I saw you on it.”
Eventually both parties adjourned to the front of the house and found
the whitewashed horse walking up and down with a groom. “You see it is
grey,” said the Marquis triumphantly.
Certainly no one in those days dreamed of asking the question, “Is Life
worth Living?” We were all, young and old, quite sure that life was
extremely valuable; a boon for which to be grateful to God. I recall the
amazement with which I first read of the Buddhist and Brahmin Doctrine
that Existence is _per se_ an evil, and that the reward of the highest
virtue will be Absorption, or Nirvana. The pessimism which prevails in
this _fin de siècle_ was as unknown in the Forties as the potato disease
before the great blight.
I much wish that some strong thinker would undertake the useful task of
tracking this mental and moral _anæmia_ of the present generation to its
true origin, whether that origin be the ebb of religious hope and faith
and the reaction from the extreme and too hasty optimism which
culminated in 1851, and has fallen rapidly since 1875, or whether, in
truth, our bodily conditions, though tending to prolong life and working
power to an amazing degree, are yet less conducive to the development of
the sanguine and hilarious temperament common in my youth. I have heard
as a defence for the revolution which has taken place in medical
treatment—from the depletory and antiphlogistic to the nourishing and
stimulating, and for the total abandonment of the practice of
bleeding—that it is not the doctors who have altered their minds, but
the patients, whose bodies have undergone a profound modification. I can
quite recall the time when (as all the novels of the period testify), if
anybody had a fall or a fit, or almost any other mishap, it was the
first business of the doctor to whip out his lancet, bare the sufferer’s
arm, and draw a large quantity of blood, when everybody and the
aforesaid novels always remarked; “It was providential that there was a
doctor at hand” to do it. I have myself seen this operation performed on
one of my brothers in our drawing-room about 1836, and I heard of it
every day occurring among our neighbours, rich and poor. My father’s
aunt, whom I well remember, Jane Power Trench (sister of the first Lord
Clancarty), who lived in Marlborough Buildings in Bath, was habitually
bled every year just before Easter, having previously spent the entire
winter in her bedroom of which the windows were pasted down and the
doors doubled. A few days after the phlebotomy the old lady invariably
bought a new bonnet and walked in it up to the top of Beacon Hill. She
continued the annual ritual unbroken till she died at 79. Surely these
people were made of stronger _pâte_ than we? In corroboration of this
theory I may record how much more hardy were the gentlemen of the
Forties in all their habits than are those of the Nineties. When my
father and his friends went on grouse-shooting expeditions to our
mountain-lodge, I used to provide for the large parties only abundance
of plain food for dinners, and for luncheons merely sandwiches, bread
and cheese, with a keg of ale, and a basket of apples. By degrees it
became necessary (to please my brother’s guests) to provide the best of
fish, fowl and flesh, champagne and peaches. The whole odious system of
_battues_, rendering sport unmanly as well as cruel, with all its
attendant waste and cost and disgusting butchery, has grown up within my
recollection by the extension of luxury, laziness and ostentation.
To turn to another subject. There was very little immorality at that
time in Ireland either in high or low life, and what there was received
no quarter. But there was, certainly, together with the absence of vice,
a lack of some of the virtues which have since developed amongst us. It
is not easy to realise that in my lifetime men were hanged for forgery
and for sheep-stealing; and that no one agitated for the repeal of such
Draconian legislation, but everybody placidly repeated the observation
(now-a-days so constantly applied to the scientific torture of animals),
that it was “NECESSARY.” Cruelties, wrongs and oppressions of all kinds
were rife, and there were (in Ireland at all events) none to raise an
outcry such as would echo now from one end of England to the other.
The Protestant pulpit was occupied by two distinct classes of men. There
were the younger sons of the gentry and nobles, who took the large
livings and were booked for bishoprics; and these were educated at
Oxford and Cambridge, were more or less cultivated men and associated of
course on equal terms with the best in the land. Not seldom they were
men of noble lives, and extreme piety; such for example, as the last
Protestant Archbishop of Tuam, and a certain Archdeacon Trench, whom I
remember regarding with awe and curiosity since I had heard that he had
once got up into his own pulpit, and (like Maxwell Gray’s _Dean
Maitland_) made a public confession of all his life’s misdoings. The
second class of Irish clergymen in those days were men of a rather lower
social grade, educated in Trinity College, often, no doubt, of excellent
character and devotion but generally extremely narrow in their views,
conducting all controversies by citations of isolated Bible-texts and
preaching to their sparse country congregations with Dublin brogues
which, not seldom, reduced the sublimity of their subjects to bathos.
There was one, for example, who said, as the peroration of his sermon on
the Fear of Death:—
“Me brethren the doying Christian lepps into the arrums of Death and
makes his hollow jaws ring with eternal hallelujahs!”
I have myself heard another read the concluding chapters of the gospels,
substituting with extraordinary effect the words “two Meal-factors,” for
the “two malefactors,” who were crucified. There was a chapter in the
Acts which we dreaded to hear, so difficult was it to help laughing when
we were told of “_Perthians_ and _Mades_, and the dwellers in
_Mesopotamia_ and the parts of Libya about _Cyraine_, streengers of
_Roum_, Jews and Proselytes, _Crates_ and Arabians.” It was also hard to
listen gravely to a vivid description of Jonah’s catastrophe, as I have
heard it, thus: “The weves bate against the ship, and the ship bate
against the weves;” (and, at last) “The Wheel swallowed Jonah!”
They had a difficult place to hold, these humbler Irish clergymen,
properly associating with no class of their parishioners; but to their
credit be it said, they were nearly all men of blameless lives, who did
their duty as they understood it, fairly well. The disestablishment of
the Irish Church which I had regarded beforehand with much prejudice,
did (I have since been inclined to think), very little mischief, and
certainly awakened in the minds of the Irish squirearchy who had to
settle their creed afresh, an interest in theology which was never
exhibited in my earlier days. I was absolutely astounded on paying a
visit to my old home a few years after disestablishment and while the
Convention (commonly called the _Contention_!) was going on, to hear
sundry recondite mysteries discussed at my brother’s table and to find
some of my old dancing partners actually greedily listening to what I
could tell them of the then recent discovery of Mr. Edmund
Ffoulkes,—that the doctrine of the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost
had been invented by King Reccared.
As regards any moral obligation or duty owed by men and women to the
lower animals, such ideas were as yet scarcely beginning to be
recognised. It was in 1822, the year in which I was born, that brave old
Richard Martin carried in Parliament the first Act ever passed by any
legislature in the world on behalf of the brutes. Tom Moore had laughed
at this early _Zoophilist_.
“Place me midst O’Rourkes, O’Tooles,
The ragged royal blood of Tara!
Place me where Dick Martin rules
The houseless wilds of Connemara