Now it was that the world was to see what was _in_ Sir Patrick. On
coming into the estate he gave the finest entertainment ever was heard
of in the country; not a man could stand after supper but Sir Patrick
himself, who could sit out the best man in Ireland, let alone the
three kingdoms itself. He had his house, from one year's end to
another, as full of company as ever it could hold, and fuller; for
rather than be left out of the parties at Castle Rackrent, many
gentlemen, and those men of the first consequence and landed estates
in the country,--such as the O'Neils of Ballynagrotty, and the
Moneygawls of Mount Juliet's Town, and O'Shannons of New Town
Tullyhog,--made it their choice often and often, when there was no
moon to be had for love nor money, in long winter nights, to sleep in
the chicken-house, which Sir Patrick had fitted up for the purpose of
accommodating his friends and the public in general, who honored him
with their company unexpectedly at Castle Rackrent; and this went on I
can't tell you how long: the whole country rang with his praises--long
life to him! I'm sure I love to look upon his picture, now opposite to
me; though I never saw him, he must have been a portly gentleman--his
neck something short, and remarkable for the largest pimple on his
nose, which by his particular desire is still extant in his picture,
said to be a striking likeness though taken when young. He is said
also to be the inventor of raspberry whisky; which is very likely, as
nobody has ever appeared to dispute it with him, and as there still
exists a broken punch-bowl at Castle Rackrent in the garret, with an
inscription to that effect--a great curiosity. A few days before his
death he was very merry; it being his Honor's birthday, he called my
grandfather in, God bless him! to drink the company's health, and
filled a bumper himself, but could not carry it to his head on account
of the great shake in his hand; on this he cast his joke,
saying:--"What would my poor father say to me if he was to pop out of
the grave and see me now? I remember when I was a little boy, the
first bumper of claret he gave me after dinner, how he praised me for
carrying it so steady to my mouth. Here's my thanks to him--a bumper
toast." Then he fell to singing the favorite song he learned from his
father for the last time, poor gentleman; he sung it that night as
loud and as hearty as ever, with a chorus:--
"He that goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,
Falls as the leaves do,
Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October;
But he that goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,
Lives as he ought to do.
Lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow."
Sir Patrick died that night: just as the company rose to drink his
health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was
carried off; they sat it out, and were surprised, on inquiry in the
morning, to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick. Never did
any gentleman live and die more beloved in the country by rich and
poor. His funeral was such a one as was never known before or since in
the county! All the gentlemen in the three counties were at it; far
and near, how they flocked! My great-grandfather said that to see all
the women even in their red cloaks, you would have taken them for the
army drawn out. Then such a fine whillaluh! you might have heard it to
the farthest end of the county, and happy the man who could get but a
sight of the hearse! But who'd have thought it? just as all was going
on right, through his own town they were passing, when the body was
seized for debt: a rescue was apprehended from the mob, but the heir,
who attended the funeral, was against that for fear of consequences,
seeing that those villains who came to serve acted under the disguise
of the law; so, to be sure, the law must take its course, and little
gain had the creditors for their pains. First and foremost, they had
the curses of the country; and Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the new heir, in
the next place, on account of this affront to the body, refused to pay
a shilling of the debts, in which he was countenanced by all the best
gentlemen of property, and others of his acquaintance. Sir Murtagh
alleging in all companies, that he all along meant to pay his father's
debts of honor, but the moment the law was taken of him there was an
end of honor to be sure. It was whispered (but none but the enemies of
the family believed it) that this was all a sham seizure to get quit
of the debts, which he had bound himself to pay in honor.
It's a long time ago, there's no saying how it was, but this for
certain: the new man did not take at all after the old gentleman; the
cellars were never filled after his death, and no open house or
anything as it used to be; the tenants even were sent away without
their whisky. I was ashamed myself, and knew not what to say for the
honor of the family; but I made the best of a bad case, and laid it
all at my lady's door, for I did not like her anyhow, nor anybody
else; she was of the family of the Skinflints, and a widow; it was a
strange match for Sir Murtagh; the people in the country thought he
demeaned himself greatly, but I said nothing: I knew how it was; Sir
Murtagh was a great lawyer, and looked to the great Skinflint estate;
there however he overshot himself; for though one of the co-heiresses,
he was never the better for her, for she outlived him many's the long
day--he could not see that, to be sure, when he married her. I must
say for her, she made him the best of wives, being a very notable
stirring woman, and looking close to everything. But I always
suspected she had Scotch blood in her veins; anything else I could
have looked over in her from a regard to the family. She was a strict
observer for self and servants of Lent, and all fast days, but not
holy days. One of the maids having fainted three time the last day of
Lent, to keep soul and body together we put a morsel of roast beef in
her mouth, which came from Sir Murtagh's dinner,--who never fasted,
not he; but somehow or other it unfortunately reached my lady's ears,
and the priest of the parish had a complaint made of it the next day,
and the poor girl was forced as soon as she could walk to do penance
for it, before she could get any peace or absolution, in the house or
out of it. However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She
had a charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read
and write gratis, and where they were kept well to spinning gratis for
my lady in return; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from the
tenants, and got all her household linen out of the estate from first
to last; for after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in
hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's interest could get
from the linen board to distribute gratis. Then there was a
bleach-yard near us, and the tenant dare refuse my lady nothing, for
fear of a law suit Sir Murtagh kept hanging over him about the
water-course.
With these ways of managing, 'tis surprising how cheap my lady got
things done, and how proud she was of it. Her table, the same way,
kept for next to nothing,--duty fowls, and duty turkeys, and duty
geese came as fast as we could eat 'em, for my lady kept a sharp
lookout, and knew to a tub of butter everything the tenants had, all
round. They knew her way, and what with fear of driving for rent and
Sir Murtagh's lawsuits, they were kept in such good order, they never
thought of coming near Castle Rackrent without a present of something
or other--nothing too much or too little for my lady: eggs, honey,
butter, meal, fish, game, grouse, and herrings, fresh or salt, all
went for something. As for their young pigs, we had them, and the best
bacon and hams they could make up, with all young chickens in spring;
but they were a set of poor wretches, and we had nothing but
misfortunes with them, always breaking and running away. This, Sir
Murtagh and my lady said, was all their former landlord Sir Patrick's
fault, who let 'em all get the half-year's rent into arrear; there was
something in that, to be sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the
contrary way; for let alone making English tenants of them, every
soul, he was always driving and driving and pounding and pounding, and
canting and canting and replevying and replevying, and he made a good
living of trespassing cattle; there was always some tenant's pig, or
horse, or cow, or calf, or goose trespassing, which was so great a
gain to Sir Murtagh that he did not like to hear me talk of repairing
fences. Then his heriots and duty work brought him in something; his
turf was cut, his potatoes set and dug, his hay brought home, and in
short, all the work about his house done for nothing; for in all our
leases there were strict clauses heavy with penalties, which Sir
Murtagh knew well how to enforce: so many days' duty work of man and
horse from every tenant he was to have, and had, every year; and when
a man vexed him, why, the finest day he could pitch on, when the
cratur was getting in his own harvest, or thatching his cabin, Sir
Murtagh made it a principle to call upon him and his horse; so he
taught 'em all, as he said, to know the law of landlord and tenant.
As for law, I believe no man, dead or alive, ever loved it so well as
Sir Murtagh. He had once sixteen suits pending at a time, and I never
saw him so much himself; roads, lanes, bogs, wells, ponds, eel weirs,
orchards, trees, tithes, vagrants, gravel pits, sand pits, dung-hills,
and nuisances,--everything upon the face of the earth furnished him
good matter for a suit. He used to boast that he had a law suit for
every letter in the alphabet. How I used to wonder to see Sir Murtagh
in the midst of the papers in his office! Why, he could hardly turn
about for them. I made bold to shrug my shoulders once in his
presence, and thank my stars I was not born a gentleman to so much
toil and trouble; but Sir Murtagh took me up short with his old
proverb, "Learning is better than house or land." Out of forty-nine
suits which he had, he never lost one but seventeen; the rest he
gained with costs, double costs, treble costs sometimes; but even that
did not pay. He was a very learned man in the law, and had the
character of it; but how it was I can't tell, these suits that he
carried cost him a power of money: in the end he sold some hundreds a
year of the family estate: but he was a very learned man in the law,
and I know nothing of the matter, except having a great regard for the
family; and I could not help grieving when he sent me to post up
notices of the sale of the fee-simple of the lands and appurtenances
of Timoleague. "I know, honest Thady," says he to comfort me, "what
I'm about better than you do; I'm only selling to get the ready money
wanting to carry on my suit with spirit with the Nugents of
Carrickashaughlin."
He was very sanguine about that suit with the Nugents of
Carrickashaughlin. He could have gained it, they say, for certain, had
it pleased Heaven to have spared him to us, and it would have been at
the least a plump two thousand a year in his way; but things were
ordered otherwise,--for the best, to be sure. He dug up a fairy mount
against my advice, and had no luck afterward. Though a learned man in
the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters. I warned
him that I heard the very Banshee that my grandfather heard under Sir
Patrick's window a few days before his death. But Sir Murtagh thought
nothing of the Banshee, nor of his cough with a spitting of
blood,--brought on, I understand, by catching cold in attending the
courts, and overstraining his chest with making himself heard in one
of his favorite causes. He was a great speaker, with a powerful voice;
but his last speech was not in the courts at all. He and my lady,
though both of the same way of thinking in some things, and though she
was as good a wife and great economist as you could see, and he the
best of husbands as to looking into his affairs, and making money for
his family,--yet I don't know how it was, they had a great deal of
sparring and jarring between them. My lady had her privy purse, and
she had her weed ashes, and her sealing money upon the signing of all
the leases, with something to buy gloves besides; and besides, again,
often took money from the tenants, if offered properly, to speak for
them to Sir Murtagh about abatements and renewals. Now the weed ashes
and the glove money he allowed her clear perquisites; though once when
he saw her in a new gown saved out of the weed ashes, he told her to
my face (for he could say a sharp thing) that she should not put on
her weeds before her husband's death. But in a dispute about an
abatement, my lady would have the last word, and Sir Murtagh grew mad;
I was within hearing of the door, and now I wish I had made bold to
step in. He spoke so loud the whole kitchen was out on the stairs. All
on a sudden he stopped, and my lady too. Something has surely
happened, thought I--and so it was, for Sir Murtagh in his passion
broke a blood-vessel, and all the law in the land could do nothing in
that case. My lady sent for five physicians, but Sir Murtagh died, and
was buried. She had a fine jointure settled upon her, and took herself
away, to the great joy of the tenantry. I never said anything one way
or the other, while she was part of the family, but got up to see her
go at three o'clock in the morning. "It's a fine morning, honest
Thady," says she; "good-by to ye," and into the carriage she stepped,
without a word more, good or bad, or even half a crown; but I made my
bow, and stood to see her safe out of sight, for the sake of the
family.