My plan of procedure was to be this. I was supposed to be making a tour
in Ireland, when, hearing of certain connections of my mother's family
living in Donegal, I at once wrote to my uncle Morse for an introduction
to them, and he not only provided me with a letter accrediting me, but
wrote by the same post to the Dudgeons to say I was sure to pay them a
visit.
On arriving in Dublin I was astonished to find so much that seemed
unlike what I had left behind me. That intense preoccupation, that
anxious eager look of business so remarkable in Liverpool, was not to
be found here. If the people really were busy, they went about their
affairs in a half-lounging, half-jocular humor, as though they wouldn't
be selling hides, or shipping pigs, or landing sugar hogsheads, if they
had anything else to do,--as if trade was a dirty necessity, and the
only thing was to get through with it with as little interruption as
possible to the pleasanter occupations of life.
Such was the aspect of things on the quays. The same look pervaded the
Exchange, and the same air of little to do, and of deeming it a joke
while doing it, abounded in the law courts, where the bench exchanged
witty passages with the bar; and the prisoners, the witnesses, and
the jury fired smart things at each other with a seeming geniality and
enjoyment that were very remarkable. I was so much amused by all I saw,
that I would willingly have delayed some days in the capital; but my
uncle had charged me to present myself at the vicarage without any
unnecessary delay; so I determined to set out at once. I was not, I
shame to own, much better up in the geography of Ireland than in that of
Central Africa, and had but a very vague idea whither I was going.
“Do you know Donegal?” asked I of the waiter, giving to my pronunciation
of the word a long second and a short third syllable.
“No, your honor, never heard of him,” was the answer.
“But it's a place I'm asking for,--a county,” said I, with some
impatience.
“Faix, maybe it is,” said he; “but it's new to me, all the same.”
“He means Donegal,” said a red-whiskered man with a bronzed
weather-beaten face, and a stern defiant air, that invited no
acquaintanceship.
“Oh, Donegal,” chimed in the waiter. “Begorra! it would n't be easy to
know it by the name your honor gav' it.”
“Are you looking for any particular place in that county?” asked the
stranger in a tone sharp and imperious as his former speech.
“Yes,” said I, assuming a degree of courtesy that I thought would be the
best rebuke to his bluntness; “but I 'll scarcely trust myself with the
pronunciation after my late failure. This is the place I want;” and I
drew forth my uncle's letter and showed the address.
“Oh, that's it, is it?” cried he, reading aloud. “'The Reverend Daniel
Dudgeon, Killyrotherum, Donegal.' And are you going there? Oh, I see you
are,” said he, turning his eyes to the foot of the address. '“Favored by
Paul Gosslett, Esq.' and you are Paul Gosslett.”
“Yes, sir, with your kind permission, I am Paul Gosslett,” said I, with
what I hoped was a chilling dignity of manner.
“If it's only my permission you want, you may be anything you please,”
said he, turning his insolent stare full on me.
I endeavored not to show any sensitiveness to this impertinence, and
went on with my dinner, the stranger's table being quite close to mine.
“It's your first appearance in Ireland, I suspect,” said he, scanning me
as he picked his teeth, and sat carelessly with one leg crossed over the
other.
I bowed a silent acquiescence, and he went on. “I declare that I believe
a Cockney, though he has n't a word of French, is more at home on the
Continent than in Ireland.” He paused for some expression of opinion on
my part, but I gave none. I filled my glass, and affected to admire the
color of the wine, and sipped it slowly, like one thoroughly engaged in
his own enjoyments.
“Don't you agree with me?” asked he, fiercely.
“Sir, I have not given your proposition such consideration as would
entitle me to say I concur with it or not.”
“That's not it at all!” broke he in, with an insolent laugh; “but you
won't allow that you 're a Cockney.”
“I protest, sir,” said I, sternly; “I have yet to learn that I 'm bound
to make a declaration of my birth, parentage, and education to the first
stranger I sit beside in a coffee-room.”
“No, you 're not,--nothing of the kind,--for it's done for you. It 's
done in spite of you, when you open your mouth. Did n't you see the
waiter running out of the room with the napkin in his mouth when you
tried to say Donegal? Look here, Paul,” said he, drawing his chair
confidentially towards my table. “We don't care a rush what you do with
your H's, or your W's, either; but, if we can help it, we won't have our
national names miscalled. We have a pride in them, and we 'll not suffer
them to be mutilated or disfigured. Do you understand me now?”
“Sufficiently, sir, to wish you a very good-night,” said I, rising from
the table, and leaving my pint of sherry, of which I had only drunk one
glass.
As I closed the coffee-room door, I thought--indeed, I 'm certain--I
heard a loud roar of laughter.
“'Who is that most agreeable gentleman I sat next at dinner?” asked I of
the waiter.
“Counsellor MacNamara, sir. Isn't he a nice man?”
“A charming person,” said I.
“I wish you heard him in the coort, sir. By my conscience, a witness has
a poor time under him! He 'd humbug you if you was an archbishop.”
“Call me at five,” said I, passing up the stairs, and impatient to gain
my room and be alone with my indignation.
I passed a restless, feverish night, canvassing with myself whether I
would not turn back and leave forever a country whose first aspect was
so forbidding and unpromising. What stories had I not heard of Irish
courtesy to strangers,--Irish wit and Irish pleasantry! Was this, then,
a specimen of that captivating manner which makes these people the
French of Great Britain? Why, this fellow was an unmitigated savage!
Having registered a vow not to open my lips to a stranger till I reached
the end of my journey, and to affect deafness rather than be led into
conversation, I set off the next day, by train, for Derry. True to my
resolve, I only uttered the word “beer” till I arrived in the evening.
The next day I took the steamer to a small village called Cushnagorra,
from whence it was only ten miles by a good mountain-road to
Killyrotherum Bay. I engaged a car to take me on, and at last found
myself able to ask a few questions without the penalty of being
cross-examined by an impertinent barrister, and being made the jest of a
coffee-room.
I wanted to learn something about the people to whose house I was going,
and asked Pat, accordingly, if he knew Mr. Dudgeon.
“Troth I do, sir, well,” said he.
“He's a good kind of man, I'm told,” said I.
“He is, indeed, sir; no betther.”
“Kind to the poor, and charitable?”
“Thrue for you; that's himself.”
“And his family is well liked down here?”
“I'll be bound they are. There's few like them to the fore.”
Rather worried by the persistent assent he gave me, and seeing that I
had no chance of deriving anything like an independent opinion from my
courteous companion, I determined to try another line. After smoking
a cigar and giving one to my friend, who seemed to relish it vastly, I
said, as if incidentally, “Where I got that cigar, Paddy, the people are
better off than here.”
“And where's that, sir?”
“In America, in the State of Virginia.”
“That's as thrue as the Bible. It's elegant times they have there.”
“And one reason is,” said I, “every man can do what he likes with his
own. You have a bit of land here, and you dare n't plant tobacco; or if
you sow oats or barley, you must n't malt it. The law says, 'You may
do this, and you sha'n't do that;' and is that freedom, I ask, or is it
slavery?”
“Slavery,--devil a less,” said he, with a cut of his whip that made the
horse plunge into the air.
“And do you know why that's done? Do you know the secret of it all?”
“Sorra a bit o' me.”
“I'll tell you, then. It's to keep up the Church; it's to feed the
parsons that don't belong to the people,--that's what they put the taxes
on tobacco and whiskey for. What, I 'd like to know, do you and I
want with that place there with the steeple? What does the Rev. Daniel
Dudgeon do for you or me? Grind us,--squeeze us,--maybe, come down on us
when we 're trying to scrape a few shillings together, and carry it off
for tithes.”
“Shure and he's a hard man! He's taking the herrins out of the net this
year,--for every ten herrins he takes one.”
“And do they bear that?”
“Well, they do,” said he, mournfully; “they've no spirit down here; but
over at Muggle-na-garry they put slugs in one last winter.”
“One what?”
“A parson, your honor; and it did him a dale o' good. He 's as meek as a
child now about his dues, and they 've no trouble with him in life.”
“They'll do that with Dudgeon yet, maybe?” asked I.
“With the Lord's blessing, sir,” said he, piously.
Satisfied now that it was not a very hopeful task to obtain much
information about Ireland from such a source, I drew my hat over my eyes
and affected to doze for the remainder of the journey.
We arrived, at length, at the foot of a narrow road, impassable by the
car, and here the driver told me I must descend and make the rest of my
way on foot.
“The house wasn't far,” he said; “only over the top of the hill in front
of me,--about half-a-quarter of a mile away.”
Depositing my portmanteau under a clump of furze, I set out,--drearily
enough, I will own. The scene around me, for miles, was one of arid
desolation. It was not that no trace of human habitation, nor of any
living creature was to be seen, but that the stony, shingly soil,
totally destitute of all vegetation, seemed to deny life to anything.
The surface rose and fell in a monotonous undulation, like a great
sea suddenly petrified, while here and there some greater boulders
represented those mighty waves which in the ocean seem to assert
supremacy over their fellows.
At last I gained the crest of the ridge, and could see the Atlantic,
which indented the shore beneath into many a little bay and inlet; but
it was some time ere I could distinguish a house which stood in a narrow
cleft of the mountain, and whose roof, kept down by means of stones and
rocks, had at first appeared to me as a part of the surface of the soil.
The strong wind almost carried me off my legs on this exposed ridge; so,
crouching down, I began my descent, and after half an hour's creeping
and stumbling, I reached a little enclosed place, where stood the house.
It was a long, one-storied building, with cow-house and farm-offices
under the same roof. The hall-door had been evidently long in disuse,
since it was battened over with strong planks, and secured, besides,
against the northwest wind by a rough group of rocks. Seeing entrance to
be denied on this side, I made for the rear of the house, where a woman,
beating flax under a shed, at once addressed me civilly, and ushered me
into the house.
“His riv'rence is in there,” said she, pointing to a door, and leaving
me to announce myself. I knocked, and entered. It was a small room, with
an antiquated fireplace, at which the parson and his wife and daughter
were seated,---he reading a very much-crumpled newspaper, and they
knitting.
“Oh, this is Mr. Gosslett. How are you, sir?” asked Mr. Dudgeon, seizing
and shaking my hand; while his wife said, “We were just saying we 'd
send down to look after you. My daughter Lizzy, Mr. Gosslett.”
Lizzy smiled faintly, but did not speak. I saw, however, that she was
a pretty, fair-haired girl, with delicate features and a very gentle
expression.
“It's a wild bit of landscape here, Mr. Gosslett; but of a fine day,
with the sun on it, and the wind not so strong, it's handsome enough.”
“It 's grand,” said I, rather hesitating to find the epithet I wanted.
Mrs. D. sighed, and I thought her daughter echoed it; but as his
reverence now bustled away to send some one to fetch my trunk, I took my
place at the fire, and tried to make myself at home.
A very brief conversation enabled me to learn that Mr. Dudgeon came
to the parish on his marriage, about four-and-twenty years before, and
neither he nor his wife had ever left it since. They had no neighbors,
and only six parishioners of their own persuasion. The church was about
a mile off, and not easily approached in bad weather. It seemed, too,
that the bishop and Mr. D. were always at war. The diocesan was a Whig,
and the parson a violent Orangeman, who loved loyal anniversaries,
demonstrations, and processions, the latter of which came twice
or thrice a year from Derry to visit him and stir up any amount
of bitterness and party strife; and though the Rev. Dan, as he was
familiarly called, was obliged to pass the long interval between these
triumphant exhibitions exposed to the insolence and outrage of the large
masses he had offended, be never blinked the peril, but actually dared
it, wearing his bit of orange ribbon in his button-hole as he went down
the village, and meeting Father Lafferty's scowl with a look of defiance
and insult fierce as his own.
After years of episcopal censure and reproof, administered without the
slightest amendment,--for Dan never appeared at a visitation, and none
were hardy enough to follow him into his fastness,--he was suffered
to do what he pleased, and actually abandoned as one of those hopeless
cases which time alone can clear off and remedy. An incident, however,
which had befallen about a couple of years back, had almost released the
bishop from his difficulty.
In an affray following on a twelfth of July demonstration, a man had
been shot; and though the Rev. Dan was not in any degree implicated in
the act, some imprudent allusion to the event in his Sunday's discourse
got abroad in the press, and was so severely commented on by a young
barrister on the trial, that an inhibition was issued against him, and
his church closed for three months.
I have been, thus far, prolix in sketching the history of those with
whom I was now to be domesticated, because, once placed before the
reader, my daily life is easily understood. We sat over the fire nearly
all day, abusing the Papists, and wondering if England would ever
produce one man who could understand the fact that unless you banished
the priests and threw down the chapels there was no use in making laws
for Ireland.
Then we dined, usually on fish, and a bit of bacon, after which we drank
the glorious, pious, and immortal memory, with the brass money, the
wooden shoes, and the rest of it,--the mild Lizzy herself being “told
off” to recite the toast, as her father had a sore throat and could
n't utter; and the fair, gentle lips, that seldom parted save to smile,
delivered the damnatory clause against all who would n't drink that
toast, and sentenced them to be “rammed, jammed, and crammed,” as the
act declares, in a way that actually amazed me.
If the peasant who drove me over to Killyrotherum did not add much to my
knowledge of Ireland by the accuracy of his facts or the fixity of his
opinions, the Rev. Dan assuredly made amends for all these shortcomings;
for he saw the whole thing at a glance, and knew why Ireland was
ungovernable, and how she could be made prosperous and happy, just as he
knew how much poteen went to a tumbler of punch; and though occasionally
despondent when the evening began, as it grew towards bedtime and the
decanter waxed low, he had usually arrived at a glorious millennium,
when every one wore an orange lily, and the whole world was employed in
singing “Croppies lie down.”