which then belonged to my father’s cousin, old Lady Castlemaine. Another
old cousin in the house showed me where, between two towers covered with
ivy, she had looked one dark night out of her bedroom window on hearing
a wailing noise below, and had seen some white object larger than any
bird, floating slowly up and then sinking down into the shadow below
again, and yet again. Of course it was the Banshee; and somebody had
died afterwards! We also had our Banshee at Newbridge about that time.
One stormy and rainy Sunday night in October my father was reading a
sermon as usual to the assembled household, and the family, gathered
near the fire in what we were wont to call on these evenings “Sinner’s
chair” and the “Seat of the Scornful,” were rather somnolent, when the
most piercing and unearthly shrieks arose apparently just outside the
windows in the pleasure ground, and startled us all wide awake. At the
head of the row of servants sat our dear old housekeeper “Joney” then
the head-gardener’s wife, who had adopted a child of three years old,
and this evening had left him fast asleep in the housekeeper’s room,
which was under part of the drawing-room. Naturally she and all of us
supposed that “Johnny” had wakened and was screaming on finding himself
alone; and though the outcries were not like those of a child, “Joney”
rose and hastily passed down the room and went to look after her charge.
To reach the housekeeper’s room she necessarily passed the servants’
hall and out of it rushed the coachman—a big, usually red-faced
Englishman, whom she declared was on that occasion as pale as death. The
next instant one of the housemaids, who had likewise played truant from
prayers, came tottering down from a bedroom (so remote that I have
always wondered how _any_ noise below the drawing-room could have
reached it), and sunk fainting on a chair. The little boy meanwhile was
sleeping like a cherub in undisturbed repose in a clothes basket! What
that wild noise was,—heard by at least two dozen people,—we never
learned and somehow did not care much to investigate.
After our visit at Moydrum my father and I went to yet other cousins at
Garbally; his mother’s old home. At that time—I speak of more than half
a century ago,—the Clancarty family was much respected in Ireland; and
the household at Garbally was conducted on high religious principles and
in a very dignified manner. It was in the Forties that the annual Sheep
Fair of Ballinasloe was at its best, and something like 200,000 sheep
were then commonly herded at night in Garbally Park. The scene of the
Fair was described as curious, but (like a stupid young prig, as I must
have been) I declined the place offered me in one of the carriages and
stopped in the house on the plea of a cold, but really to enjoy a
private hunt in the magnificent library of which I had caught a glimpse.
When the various parties came back late in the day there was much talk
of a droll mishap. The Marquis of Downshire of that time, who was
stopping in the house, was a man of colossal strength, and rumour said
he had killed two men by accidental blows intended as friendly. However
this may be, he was on this occasion overthrown _by sheep_! He was
standing in the gangway between the hurdles in the great fair, when an
immense flock of terrified animals rushed through, overset him and
trampled him under their feet. When he came home, laughing good
humouredly at his disaster, he presented a marvellous spectacle with his
rather _voyant_ light costume of the morning in a frightful pickle.
Another agreeable man in the house was the Lord Devon of that day, a
very able and cultivated man (whom I straightway interrogated concerning
Gibbon’s chapter on the Courtenays!); and poor Lord Leitrim, a kindly
and good Irish landlord, afterwards most cruelly murdered. There were
also the Ernes and Lord Enniskillen and many others whom I have
forgotten, and a dear aged lady; the Marchioness of Ormonde. Hearing I
had a cold, she kindly proposed to treat me medically and said: “I
should advise you to try Brandy and Salt. For my own part I take
Morrison’s pills whenever I am ill, if I cannot get hydropathic baths;
but I have a very great opinion of Tar-water. Holloway’s ointment and
pills, too, are excellent. My son, you know, joined Mr. ——” (I have
forgotten the name) “to pay £15,000 to St. John Long for his famous
recipe; but it turned out no good when he had it. No! I advise you
decidedly to try brandy and salt.”
From Garbally we drove to Parsonstown, where Lady Rosse was good enough
to welcome us to indulge my intense longing to see the great telescope,
then quite recently erected. Lord Rosse at that time believed that, as
he had resolved into separate stars many of the nebulæ which were
irresolvable by Herschel’s telescope, there was a presumption that _all_
were resolvable; and consequently that the nebular hypothesis must be
abandoned. The later discovery of gaseous nebulæ by the spectroscope
re-established the theory. I was very anxious on the subject, having
pinned my faith already on the _Vestiges of Creation_ (then a new book),
in sequence to Nichol’s _Architecture of the Heavens_: that prose-poem
of science. Lord Rosse was infinitely indulgent to my girlish curiosity,
and took me to see the process of polishing the speculum of his second
telescope; a most ingenious piece of mechanism invented mainly by
himself. He also showed me models which he has made in plaster of lunar
craters. I saw the great telescope by day, but, alas, when darkness came
and it was to have been ready for me to look through it and I was
trembling with anticipation, the butler came to the drawing-room door
and announced: “A rainy night, my lord”! It was a life-long
disappointment, for we could not stay another day though hospitably
pressed to do so; and I never had another chance.
Lord Rosse had guessed already that Robert Chambers was the author of
the _Vestiges_. He explained to me the reason for the enormous mass of
masonry on which the seven-foot telescope rested, by the curious fact
that even where it stood within his park, the roll of a cart more than
two miles away, outside, was enough to make the ground tremble and to
disturb the observation.
There was a romantic story then current in Ireland about Lord and Lady
Rosse. It was said that, as a young man, he had gone _incog._ and worked
as a handicraftsman in some large foundry in the north of England to
learn the secrets of machine making. After a time his employer,
considering him a peculiarly promising young artisan, invited him
occasionally to a Sunday family dinner when young Lord Parsons, as he
then was, speedily fell in love with his host’s daughter. Observing what
was going on, the father put a veto on what he thought would be a
_mésalliance_ for Miss Green, and the supposed artisan left his
employment and the country; but not without receiving from the young
lady an assurance that she returned his attachment. Shortly afterwards,
having gone home and obtained his father, Lord Rosse’s consent, he
re-appeared and now made his proposals to Mr. Green, _père_, in all due
form as the heir of a good estate and an earldom. He was not rejected
this time.
I tell this story only as a pretty one current when I saw Lord and Lady
Rosse; a very happy and united couple with little children who have
since grown to be distinguished men. Very possibly it may be only a
myth!
I never saw Archbishop Whately except when he confirmed me in the church
of Malahide. He was no doubt a sincerely pious man, but, his rough and
irreverent manner (intended, I believe, as a protest against the
Pecksniffian tone then common among evangelical dignitaries) was almost
repulsive and certainly startling. Outside his palace in Stephen’s Green
there was at that time a row of short columns connected from top to top
by heavy chains which fell in festoons and guarded the gardens of the
square. Nothing would serve his Grace (we were told with horror by the
spectators) than to go of a morning after breakfast and sit on these
chains smoking his cigar as he swung gently back and forth, kicking the
ground to gain impetus.
On the occasion of my confirmation he exhibited one of his whims most
unpleasantly for me. This was, that he must actually touch, in his
episcopal benediction, the _head_, not merely the _hair_, of the
kneeling catechumen. Unhappily, my maid had not foreseen this
contingency, but had thought she could not have a finer opportunity for
displaying her skill in plaiting my redundant locks; and had built up
such an edifice with plaits and pins, (on the part of my head which
necessarily came under the Archbishop’s hand) that he had much ado to
overthrow the same! He did so, however, effectually; and I finally
walked back, through the church to my pew with all my _chevelure_
hanging down in disorder, far from “admired” by me or anybody.
Of all the phases of orthodoxy I think that of Whately,—well called the
_Hard Church_,—was the last which I could have adopted at any period of
my life. It was obviously his view that a chain of propositions might be
constructed by iron logic, beginning with the record of a miracle two
thousand years ago and ending with unavoidable conversion to the love of
God and Man!
The last person of whom I shall speak as known to me first in Ireland,
was that dear and noble woman, Fanny Kemble. She has not mentioned in
her delightful _Records_ how our acquaintance, destined to ripen into a
life-long friendship, began at Newbridge, but it was in a droll and
characteristic way.
Mrs. Kemble’s friend “H.S.”—Harriet St. Leger—lived at Ardgillan Castle,
eight Irish miles from Newbridge. Her sister, the wife of Hon. and Rev.
Edward Taylor and mother of the late Tory Whip, was my mother’s
best-liked neighbour, and at an early age I was taught to look with
respect on the somewhat singular figure of Miss St. Leger. In those days
any departure from the conventional dress of the time was talked of as
if it were altogether the most important fact connected with a woman, no
matter what might be the greatness of her character or abilities. Like
her contemporaries and fellow countrywomen, the Ladies of Llangollen,
(also Irish), Harriet St. Leger early adopted a costume consisting of a
riding habit (in her case with a skirt of sensible length) and a black
beaver hat. All the empty-headed men and women in the county prated
incessantly about these inoffensive garments, insomuch that I arrived
early at the conviction that, rational and convenient as such dress
would be, the game was not worth the candle. Things are altered so far
now that, could dear Harriet reappear, I believe the universal comment
on her dress would rather be: “How sensible and befitting”! rather than
the silly, “How odd”! Anyway I imagine she must have afforded a somewhat
singular contrast to her ever magnificent, not to say gorgeous friend
Fanny Kemble, when at the great Exhibition of 1851, they were the
observed of observers, sitting for a long time side by side close to the
crystal fountain.
Every reader of the charming _Records of a Girlhood_ and _Recollections
of Later Life_, must have felt some curiosity about the personality of
the friend to whom those letters of our English Sevigné were addressed.
I have before me as I write an excellent reproduction in platinotype
from a daguerreotype of herself which dear Harriet gave me some twenty
years ago. The pale, kind, sad face is, I think inexpressibly touching;
and the woman who wore it deserved all the affection which Fanny Kemble
gave her. She was a deep and singularly critical thinker and reader, and
had one of the warmest hearts which ever beat under a cold and shy
exterior. The iridescent genius of Fanny Kemble in the prime of her
splendid womanhood, and my poor young soul, overburdened with thoughts
too great and difficult for me, were equally drawn to seek her sympathy.
It happened once, somewhere in the early Fifties, that Mrs. Kemble was
paying a visit to Miss St. Leger at Ardgillan, and we arranged that she
should bring her over some day to Newbridge to luncheon. I was, of
course, prepared to receive my guest very cordially but, to my
astonishment, when Mrs. Kemble entered she made me the most formal
salutation conceivable and, after being seated, answered all my small
politenesses in monosyllables and with obvious annoyance and
disinclination to converse with me or with any of my friends whom I
presented to her. Something was evidently frightfully amiss, and Harriet
perceived it; but what could it be? What could be done? Happily the gong
sounded for luncheon, and, my father being absent, my eldest brother
offered his arm to Mrs. Kemble and led her, walking with more than her
usual stateliness across the two halls to the dining-room, where he
placed her, of course, beside himself. I was at the other end of the
table but I heard afterwards all that occurred. We were a party of
eighteen, and naturally the long table had a good many dishes on it in
the old fashion. My brother looked over it and asked: “What will you
take, Mrs. Kemble? Roast fowl? or galantine? or a little Mayonnaise, or
what else?”
“Thank you,” replied Mrs. Kemble, “_If there be a potato!_”
Of course there was a potato—nay, several; but a terrible _gêne_ hung
over us all till Miss Taylor hurriedly called for her carriage, and the
party drove off.
The moment they left the door after our formal farewells, Harriet St.
Leger (as she afterwards told me) fell on her friend: “Well, Fanny,
never, _never_ will I bring you anywhere again. How _could_ you behave
so to Fanny Cobbe?”
“I cannot permit any one,” said Mrs. Kemble, “to invite a number of
people to meet me without having asked my consent; I do not choose to be
made a gazing-stock to the county. Miss Cobbe had got up a regular party
of all those people, and you could see the room was decorated for it.”
“Good Heavens, what are you talking of?” said Harriet, “those ladies and
gentlemen are all her relations, stopping in the house. She could not
turn them out because you were coming, and her room is always full of
flowers.”
“Is that really so?” said Mrs. Kemble, “Then you shall tell Fanny Cobbe
that I ask her pardon for my bad behaviour, and if she will forgive me
and come to see me in London, _I will never behave badly to her again_?”
In a letter of hers to Harriet St. Leger given to me after her death, I
was touched to read the following reference to this droll incident:—
“Bilton Hotel,
“Wed. 9th.
“I am interrupted by a perfect bundle of fragrance and fresh colour
sent by Miss Cobbe with a note in which I am sorry to say she gives me
very little hope of seeing her at all while I am in Dublin. This, as
you know, is a real disappointment to me. I had rather fallen in love
with her, and wished very much to have had some opportunity of more
intercourse with her. Her face when I came to talk to her seemed to me
keen and sweet—a charming combination—and I was so grateful to her for
not being repelled by my ungracious demeanour at her house, that I had
quite looked forward to the pleasure of seeing her again.
“F. A. K.”
I did go to see her in London; and she kept her word, and was my dear
and affectionate friend and bore many things from me with perfect good
humour, for forty years; including (horrible to recall!) my falling fast
asleep while she was reading Shakespeare to Mary Lloyd and me in our
drawing-room here at Hengwrt! Among her many kindnesses was the gift of
a mass of her Correspondence from the beginning of her theatrical career
in 1821 to her last years. She also successively gave me the MSS. of all
her _Records_, but in each case I induced her to take them back and
publish them herself. I have now, as a priceless legacy, a large parcel
of her own letters, and five thick volumes of autograph letters
addressed to her by half the celebrated men and women of her time. They
testify uniformly to the admiration, affection and respect
wherewith,—her little foibles notwithstanding,—she was regarded by three
generations.
CHAPTER
VIII.
_UPROOTED._
I draw now to the closing years of my life at Newbridge, after I had
published my first book and before my father died. They were happy and
peaceful years, though gradually overshadowed by the sense that the long
tenure of that beloved home must soon end. It is one of the many
perversities of woman’s destiny that she is, not only by hereditary
instinct a home-making animal, but is encouraged to the uttermost to
centre all her interests in her home; every pursuit which would give her
anchorage elsewhere, (always excepting marriage) being more or less
under general disapproval. Yet when the young woman takes thoroughly to
this natural home-making, when she has, like a plant, sent her roots
down into the cellars and her tendrils up into the garrets and every
room bears the impress of her personality, when she glories in every
good picture on the walls or bit of choice china on the tables and
blushes for every stain on the carpets, when, in short, her home is, as
it should be, her outer garment, her nest, her shell, fitted to her like
that of a murex, then, almost invariably comes to her the order to leave
it all, tear herself out of it,—and go to make (if she can) some other
home elsewhere. Supposing her to have married early, and that she is
spared the late uprooting from her father’s house at his death, she has
usually to bear a similar transition when she survives her husband; and
in this case often with the failing health and spirits of old age. I do
not know how these heartbreaks are to be spared to women of the class of
the daughters and wives of country gentlemen or clergymen; but they are
hard to bear. Perhaps the most fortunate daughters (harsh as it seems to
say so) are those whose fathers die while they are themselves still in
full vigour and able to begin a new existence with spirit and make new
friends; as was my case. Some of my contemporaries, whose fathers lived
till they were fifty, or even older, had a bitterer trial in quitting
their homes and were never able to start afresh.
In my last few years at Newbridge my father and I were both cheered by
the frequent presence of my dear little niece, Helen, on whom he doted,
and towards whom flowed out the tenderness which had scarcely been
allowed its free course with his own children. _L’Art d’être Grandpère_
is surely the most beautiful of arts! When all personal pleasures have
pretty well died away then begins the reflected pleasure in the fresh,
innocent delights of the child; a moonlight of happiness perhaps more
sweet and tender than the garish joys of the noontide of life. To me,
who had never lived in a house with little children, it brought a whole
world of revelations to have this babe and afterwards her little sister,
in a nursery under my supervision during their mother’s long illnesses.
I understood for the first time all that a child may be in a woman’s
life, and how their little hands may pull our heart-strings. My nieces
were dear, good, little babes then; they are dear and good women now;
the comfort of my age, as they were the darlings of my middle life.
Having received sufficient encouragement from the _succès d’estime_ of
my _Theory of Intuitive Morals_, I proceeded now to write the first of
the three books on _Practical Morals_, with which I designed to complete
the work. My volume of _Religious Duty_, then written, has proved,
however, the only one of the series ever published. At a later time I
wrote some chapters on _Personal_ and on _Social Duty_, but was
dissatisfied with them, and destroyed the MSS.
As _Religious Duty_ (3rd edition) is still to be had (included by Mr.
Fisher Unwin in his late re-issue of my principal works), I need not
trouble the reader by any such analysis of it as I have given of the
former volume. In writing concerning _Religious Duty_ at the time, I
find in a letter of mine to Harriet St. Leger (returned to me when she
grew blind), that I spoke of it thus:—
“Newbridge, April 25th, 1857.
“You see I have, after all, inserted a little preface. I thought it
necessary to explain the object of the book, lest it might seem
superfluous where it coincides with orthodox teaching, and offensively
daring where it diverges from it. Your cousin’s doubt about my
Christianity lasting till she reached the end of _Intuitive Morals_,
made me resolve to forestall in this case any such danger of seeming
to fight without showing my colours. You see I have now nailed them
mast-high. But though I have done this, I cannot say that it has been
in any way to _make converts_ to my own creed that I have written this
book. I wanted to show those who are already Theists, actually or
approximately, that Theism is something far more than they seem
commonly to understand. I wanted, too, to show to those who have had
their historical faith shaken, but who still cling to it from the
belief that without it no real _religion_ is possible, that they may
find all which their hearts can need in a faith purely intuitive.
Perhaps I ought rather to say that these objects have been before me
in working at my book. I suppose in reality the impulse to such an
undertaking comes more simply. We think we have found some truths, and
we long to develop and communicate them. We do not sit down and say
‘Such and such sort of people want such and such a book. I will try
and write it.’”
The plan of this book is simple. After discussing in the first chapter
the _Canon of Religious Duty_, which I define to be “Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thine heart and soul and strength,”—I discuss, in
the next chapter, _Religious Offences_ against that Law,—Blasphemy,
Hypocrisy, Perjury, &c. The third chapter deals with _Religious Faults_
(failures of duty) such as Thanklessness, Irreverence, Worldliness, &c.
The fourth, which constitutes the main bulk of the book, consists of
what are practically six Sermons on Thanksgiving, Adoration, Prayer,
Repentance, Faith, and Self-Consecration.
The book has been very much liked by some readers, especially the
chapter on _Thanksgiving_, which I reprinted later in a tiny volume. It
is strange in these days of pessimism to read it again. I am glad I
wrote it when my heart was unchilled, my sight undimmed, by the frozen
fog which has been hanging over us for the last two decades. An incident
connected with this chapter touched me deeply. My father in his last
illness permitted it to be read to him. Having never before listened to
anything I had written, and having, even then, no idea who wrote the
book, he expressed pleasure and sympathy with it, especially with a
passage in which I speak of the hope of being, in the future life,
“young again in all that makes childhood beautiful and holy.” It was a
pledge to me of how near our hearts truly were, under apparently the
world-wide differences.
My father was now sinking slowly beneath the weight of years and of
frequent returns of the malarial fever of India,—in those days called
“Ague,”—which he had caught half a century before in the Mahratta wars.
I have said something already of his powerful character, his upright,
honourable, fearless nature; his strong sense of Duty. Of the lower sort
of faults and vices he was absolutely incapable. No one who knew him
could imagine him as saying a false or prevaricating word; of driving a
hard bargain; of eating or drinking beyond the strictest rules of
temperance; least of all, of faithlessness in thought or deed to his
wife or her memory. His mistakes and errors, such as they were, arose
solely from a fiery temper and a despotic will, nourished rather than
checked by his ideas concerning the rights of parents, and husbands,
masters and employers; and from his narrow religious creed. Such as he
was, every one honoured, some feared, and many loved him.
Before I pass on to detail more of the incidents of my own life, I shall
here narrate all that I can recall of his descriptions of the most
important occurrence in his career—the battle of Assaye.
In Mr. George Hooper’s delightful Life of Wellington (_English Men of
Action Series_) there is a spirited account of that battle, whereby
British supremacy in India was practically secured. Mr. Hooper speaks
enthusiastically of the behaviour, in that memorable fight, of the 19th
Light Dragoons, and of its “splendid charge,” which, with the
“irresistible sweep” of the 78th, proved the “decisive stroke” of the
great day. He describes this charge thus:—
... “The piquets, or leading troops on the right were by mistake led
off towards Assaye, uncovering the second line, and falling themselves
into a deadly converging fire. The Seventy-Fourth followed the piquets
into the cannonade, and a great gap was thus made in the array. The
enemy’s horse rode up to charge, and so serious was the peril on the
right that the Nineteenth Light Dragoons and a native cavalry regiment
were obliged to charge at once. Eager for the fray, they galloped up,
cheering as they went, and cheered by the wounded; and, riding home,
even to the batteries, saved the remnants of the piquets and of the
Seventy-Fourth.” (P. 76.)
My father, then a cornet in the regiment, carried the regimental flag of
the Nineteenth through that charge, and for the rest of the day; the
non-commissioned officer whose duty it was to bear it having been struck
dead at the first onset, and my father saving the flag from falling into
the hands of the Mahrattas.