THE WILD IRISH GIRL
By Lady Sydney Morgan
INTRODUCTORY LETTERS.
THE EARL OF M--------
TO THE HONORABLE HORATIO M--------, KING’S BENCH.
Castle M--------, Leicestershire,
Feb. ----, 17------.
If there are certain circumstances under which a fond father
can address an imprisoned son without suffering the bitterest
heart-rendings of paternal agony, such are not those under which I
now address you. To sustain the loss of the most precious of all human
rights, and forfeit our liberty at the shrine of virtue, in defence of
our country abroad, or of our public integrity and principles at home,
brings to the heart of the sufferer’s dearest sympathising friend a
soothing solace, almost concomitant to the poignancy of his afflictions;
and leaves the decision difficult, whether in the scale of human
feelings, triumphant pride or affectionate regret preponderate.
“I would not,” said the old earl of Ormond, “give up my dead son for
twenty living ones.” Oh! how I envy such a father the possession, and
even the _loss_ of such a child: with what eagerness my heart rushes
back to that period when _I_ too triumphed in my son; when I beheld him
glowing in all the unadulterated virtues of the happiest nature, flushed
with the proud consciousness of superior genius, refined by a taste
intuitively elegant, and warmed by an enthusiasm constitutionally
ardent; his character indeed tinctured with the bright colouring of
romantic eccentricity, but marked by the indelible traces of innate
rectitude, and ennobled by the purest principles of native generosity,
the proudest sense of inviolable honour, I beheld him rush eagerly on
life, enamoured of its seeming good, incredulous of its latent evils,
till fatally fascinated by the magic spell of the former, he fell
an early victim to the successful lures of the latter. The growing
influence of his passions kept pace with the expansion of his mind, and
the moral powers of the _man of genius_, gave way to the overwhelming
propensities of the _man of pleasure_. Yet in the midst of those exotic
vices (for as such even yet I would consider them,) he continued at once
the object of my parental partiality and anxious solicitude; I admired
while I condemned, I pitied while I reproved.
*****
The rights of primogeniture, and the mild and prudent cast of your
brother’s character, left me no cares either for his worldly interest
or moral welfare: born to titled affluence, his destination in life was
ascertained previous to his entrance on its chequered scene; and equally
free from passions to mislead, or talents to stimulate, he promised to
his father that series of temperate satisfaction which, unillumined by
those coruscations, _your_ superior and promising genius flashed on the
parental heart, could not prepare for its sanguine feelings that mortal
disappointment with which _you_ have destroyed all its hopes. On the
recent death of my father I found myself possessed of a very large
but incumbered property: it was requisite I should make the same
establishment for my eldest son, that my father had made for me; while
I was conscious that my youngest was in some degree to stand indebted to
his own exertions, for independence as well as elevation in life.
You may recollect that during your first college vacation, we conversed
on the subject of that liberal profession I had chosen for you, and you
agreed with me, that it was congenial to your powers, and not inimical
to your taste; while the part I was anxious you should take in the
legislation of your country, seemed at once to rouse and gratify your
ambition; but the pure flame of laudable emulation was soon extinguished
in the destructive atmosphere of pleasure, and while I beheld you, in
the visionary hopes of my parental ambition, invested with the crimson
robe of legal dignity, or shining brightly conspicuous in the splendid
galaxy of senatorial luminaries, _you_ were idly presiding as the high
priest of libertinism at the nocturnal orgies of vitiated dissipation,
or indolently lingering out your life in elegant but unprofitable
pursuits.
It were as vain as impossible to trace you through every degree of error
on the scale of folly and imprudence, and such a repetition would be
more heart wounding to me than painful to you, were it even made under
the most extenuating bias of parental fondness.
I have only to add, that though already greatly distressed by the
liquidation of your debts, at a time when I am singularly circumstanced
with respect to pecuniary resources, I will make a struggle to free you
from the chains of this your present _iron_-hearted creditor, through
the retrenchment of my _own_ expenses, and my temporary retreat to the
solitute of my Irish estate must be the result; provided that by this
sacrifice I purchace your acquiescence to my wishes respecting the
destiny of your future life, and an unreserved abjuration of the follies
which have governed your past.
Yours, &c. &c.
M------.
TO THE EARL OF M--------
My Lord,
Suffer me, in the fullness of my heart, and in the language of one
prodigal and penitent as myself, to say, “I have sinned against Heaven
and thee, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son.” Abandon
me then, I beseech you, as such; deliver me up to the destiny, that
involves me to the complicated tissue of errors and follies I have so
industriously woven with my own hands; for though I am equal to sustain
the judgment my own vices have drawn down upon me, I cannot support the
cruel mercy with which your goodness endeavours to avert its weight.
Among the numerous catalogues of my faults, a sordid selfishness finds
no place. Yet I should deservedly incur its imputation, were I to accept
of freedom on such terms as you are so generous to offer. No, my Lord,
continue to adorn that high and polished circle in which you are so
eminently calculated to move; nor think so lowly of one, who, with all
his faults, is _your son_, as to believe him ready to purchase _his_
liberty at the expense of _your_ banishment from your native country.
I am, &c. &c.
_King’s Bench_. H. M.
TO THE HON. HORATIO M--------.
An act to which the exaggeration of _your_ feelings gives the epithet
of banishment, I shall consider as a voluntary sequestration from scenes
of which I am weary, to scenes which, though thrice visited, still
preserve the poignant charms of novelty and interest. Your hasty and
undigested answer to my letter (written in the prompt emotion of the
moment, ere the probable consequence of a romantic rejection to an
offer not unreflectingly made, could be duly weighed or coolly examined)
convinces me experience has contributed little to the modification of
your feelings, or the prudent regulation of your conduct. It is this
promptitude of feeling, this contempt of prudence, that formed the
predisposing cause of your errors and your follies. Dazzled by the
brilliant glare of the splendid virtues, you saw not, you would not see,
that prudence was among the first of moral excellences; the director,
the regulator, the standard of them all; that it is in fact the
corrector of virtue herself; for even _virtue_, like the _sun_, has her
_solstice_, beyond which she ought not to move.
If you would retribute what you seem to lament, and unite restitution
to penitence, leave this country for a short time, and abandon with the
haunts of your former blameable pursuits, those associates who were at
once the cause and punishment of your errors. I myself will become your
partner in exile, for it is to my estate in Ireland I _banish_ you for
the summer. You have already got through the “first rough brakes” of
your profession: as you can now serve the last term of this season, I
see no cause why _Coke upon Lyttleton_ cannot be as well studied amidst
the wild seclusion of Connaught scenery, and on the solitary shores of
the “steep Atlantic,” as in the busy bustling precincts of the Temple.
I have only to add, that I shall expect your undivided attention will
be given up to your professional studies; that you will for a short
interval resign the fascinating pursuits of polite literature and belles
lettres, from which even the syren spell of pleasure could not tear you,
and which snatched from vice many of those hours I believed devoted
to more serious studies. I know you will find it no less difficult to
resign the elegant theories of your favourite _Lavater_, for the dry
facts of law reports, than to exchange your duodecimo editions of
the amatory poets, for heavy tomes of cold legal disquisitions;
but happiness is to be purchased, and labour is the price; fame and
independence are the result of talent united to great exertion, and the
elegant enjoyments of literary leisure are never so keenly relished as
when tasted under the shade of that flourishing laurel which our own
efforts have reared to mature perfection. Farewell! My agent has
orders respecting the arrangement of your affairs. You must excuse the
procrastination of our interview till we meet in Ireland, which I fear
will not be so immediate as my wishes would incline. I shall write to my
banker in Dublin to replenish your purse on your arrival in Ireland,
and to my Connaught steward, to prepare for your reception at M--------
house. Write to me by return.
Once more farewell!
M--------.
TO THE EARL OF M--------
My Lord,
He who agonized on the bed of Procrostus reposed on a couch of down,
compared to the sufferings of him who in the heart he has stabbed,
beholds the pulse of generous affection still beating with an invariable
throb for the being who has inflicted the wound.
I shall offer you no thanks, my Lord, for the generosity of your
conduct, nor any extenuation for the errors of mine.
The gratitude the one has given birth to--the remorse which the other
has awakened, bid equal defiance to expression. I have only (fearfully)
to hope, that you will not deny my almost forfeited claim to the title
of your son.
H. M.
TO J. D., ESQ., M. P.
_Holyhead._
We are told in the splendid Apocrypha of ancient Irish fable, that
when one of the learned was missing on the Continent of Europe, it was
proverbially said,
“_Amandatus est ad disciplinum in Hibernia_”
But I cannot recollect that in its fabulous or veracious history,
Ireland was ever the mart of voluntary exile to the man of pleasure; so
that when you and the rest of my precious associates miss the track of
my footsteps in the oft trod path of dissipation, you will never think
of tracing its pressure to the wildest of the Irish shores, and exclaim,
“_Amandatus est ad, &c. &c. &c._”
However, I am so far advanced in the land of _Druidism_, on my way to
the “Island of Saints,” while you, in the emporium of the world, are
drinking from the cup of conjugal love a temporary oblivion to your
past sins and wickedness, and revelling in the first golden dreams of
matrimonial illusion.
I suppose an account of my high crimes and misdemeanours, banishment,
&c. &c. have already reached your ears; but while my brethren in
transportation are offering up their wishes and their hopes on the
shore, to the unpropitious god of winds, indulge me in the garrulity of
egotism, and suffer me to correct the overcharged picture of that arch
charicature _report_, by giving you a correct _ebauche_ of the recent
circumstances of my useless life.
When I gave you convoy as far as Dover, on your way to France, I
returned to London, to
“Surfeit on the same
and yawn my joys----”
And was again soon plunged in that dreadful vacillation of mind from
which your society and conversation had so lately redeemed me.
Vibrating between an innate propensity to _rights_ and an habitual
adherence to _wrong_; sick of pursuits I was too indolent to relinqush,
and linked to vice, yet still enamoured of virtue; weary of the useless,
joyless inanity of my existence, yet without energy, without power to
regenerate my worthless being; daily losing ground in the minds of
the inestimable few who were still interested for my welfare; nor
compensating for the loss, by the gratification of any one feeling in
my own heart, and held up as an object of fashionable popularity for
sustaining that character, which of all others I most despised; my taste
impoverished by a vicious indulgence, my senses palled by repletion, my
heart chill and unawakened, every appetite depraved and pampered into
satiety, I fled from myself, as the object of my own utter contempt and
detestation, and found a transient pleasurable inebriety in the well
practised blandishments of Lady C----.
You who alone know me, who alone have _openly_ condemned, and _secretly_
esteemed me, you who have wisely culled the blossom of pleasure, while I
have sucked its poison, know that I am rather a _méchant par air_, than
from any irresistible propensity to indiscriminate libertinism. In fact,
the _original sin_ of my nature militates against the hackneyed modes of
hackneyed licentiousness; for I am too profound a voluptuary to feel
any exquisite gratification from such gross pursuits as the “_swinish
multitude_” of fashion ennoble with that name of little understood,
_pleasure_. Misled in my earliest youth by “passion’s meteor ray,” even
then my heart called (but called in vain,) for a thousand delicious
refinements to give poignancy to the mere transient impulse of sense.
Oh! my dear friend, if in that sunny season of existence when the
ardours of youth nourish in our bosom a thousand indescribable emotions
of tenderness and love, it had been _my_ fortunate destiny to have
met with a being, who--but this is an idle regret, perhaps an idle
supposition;---the moment of ardent susceptibility is over, when woman
becomes the sole spell which lures us to good or ill, and when
her omnipotence, according to the bias of her own nature, and the
organization of those feelings on which it operates, determines, in
a certain degree our destiny through life--leads the mind through the
medium of the heart to the noblest pursuits, or seduces it through the
medium of the passions to the basest career.
That I became the dupe of Lady C----, and her artful predecessor, arose
from the want of that “something still unpossessed,” to fill my life’s
dreadful void. I sensibly felt the want of an object to interest my
feelings, and laboured under that dreadful interregnum of the heart,
reason and ambition; which leaves the craving passions open to every
invader. Lady C---- perceived the situation of my mind, and--but spare
me the detail of a connexion which even in memory, produces a _nausea_
of every sense and feeling. Suffice it to say, that equally the victim
of the husband’s villainy as the wife’s artifice, I stifled on its birth
a threatened prosecution, by giving my bond for a sum I was unable to
liquidate: it was given as for a gambling debt, but my father, who had
long suspected, and endeavoured to break this fatal connexion, guessed
at the truth, and suffered me to become a guest (_mal voluntaire_) in
the King’s Bench. This unusual severity on his part, lessened not on
mine the sense of his indulgence to my former boundless extravagance,
and I determined to remain a prisoner for life, rather than owe my
liberty to a new imposition on his tenderness, by such solicitings as
have hitherto been invariably crowned with success, though answered with
reprehension.
I had been already six weeks a prisoner, deserted by those gay moths
that had fluttered round the beam of my transient prosperity; delivered
up to all the maddening meditation of remorse, when I received a letter
from my father (then with my brother in Leicestershire,) couched in his
usual terms of reprehension, and intervals of tenderness; ascertaining
every error with judicial exactitude, and associating every fault with
some ideal excellence of parental creation, alternately the father and
the judge; and as you once said, when I accused him of partiality to his
eldest born, “talking _best_ of Edward was _most_ of me.”
In a word, he has behaved like an Angel. So well, that by Heavens! I can
scarcely bear to think of it. A spurious half-bred generosity--a little
tincture of illiberality on his side, would have been Balm of Gillead to
my wounded conscience; but with unqualified goodness he has paid all my
debts, supplied my purse beyond my wants, and only asks in return, that
I will retire for a few months to Ireland, and this I believe merely to
wean me from the presence of an object which he falsely believes still
hangs about my heart with no moderate influence.
And yet I wish his mercy had flowed in any other channel, even though
more confined and less liberal.
Had he banished me to the savage desolations of Siberia, my exile would
have had some character; had he even transported me to a South Sea
Island, or threw me into an Esquimaux hut, my new species of being would
have been touched with some interest; for in fact, the present relaxed
state of my intellectual system requires some strong transition of
place, circumstance, and manners, to wind it up to its native tone, to
rouse it to energy, or awaken it to exertion.
But sent to a country against which I have a decided prejudice--which
I suppose semi-barbarous, semi-civilized; has lost the strong and
hardy features of savage life, without acquiring those graces which
distinguish polished society--I shall neither participate in the
poignant pleasure of awakened curiosity and acquired information, nor
taste the least of those enjoyments which courted my acceptance in my
native land. Enjoyments did I say! And were they indeed enjoyments? How
readily the mind adopts the phraseology of habit, when the sentiment it
once clothed no longer exists. Would that my past pursuits were even in
_recollection_, the aspect of enjoyments. But even my memory has lost
its character of energy, and the past, like the present, appears
one unwearied scence of chill and vapid existence. No sweet point of
reflection seizes on the recollective powers. No actual joy woos my
heart’s participation, and no prospect of future felicity glows on
the distant vista of life, or awakens the quick throb of hope and
expectation; all is cold, sullen and dreary.
_Laval_ seems to entertain no less prejudice against this country than
his master, he has therefore begged leave of absence until my father
comes over. Pray have the goodness to send me by him a box of Italian
crayons, and a good thermometer; for I must have something to relieve
the _tedium vitae_ of my exiled days; and in my articles of stipulation
with my father, chemistry and belles lettres are _specially_ prohibited.
It was a useless prohibition, for Heaven knows, chemistry would have
been the last study I should have flown to in my present state of mind.
For how can he look minutely into the intimate structure of things,
and resolve them into their simple and elementary substance, whose own
disordered mind is incapable of analyzing the passions by which it is
agitated, of ascertaining the reciprocal relation of its incoherent
ideas, or combining them in different proportions (from those by which
they were united by chance,) in order to join a new and useful compound
for the benefit of future life? As for belles lettres! so blunted are
all those powers once so
“Active and strong, and feelingly alive,
To each fine impulse,”
that not _one “pansee coleur de rose”_ lingers on the surface of my
faded imagination, and I should turn with as much apathy from the
sentimental sorcery of _Rosseau_, as from the volumnious verbosity of
an High German doctor; yawn over “The Pleasures of Memory,” and run the
risk of falling fast asleep with the brilliant _Madame de Sevigne_ in my
hand. So send me a Fahrenheit, that I may bend the few coldly mechanical
powers left me, to ascertain the temperature of my wild western
_territories_, and expect my letters from thence to be only filled with
the summary results of metoric instruments, and synoptical views of
common phenomena.
Adieu.
H. M.
THE WILD IRISH GIRL.
LETTER I.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
_Dublin, March_, ----, 17----
I remember, when I was a boy, meeting somewhere with the quaintly
written travels of _Moryson_ through Ireland, and being particularly
struck with his assertion, that so late as the days of Elizabeth, an
Irish chieftain and his family were frequently seen seated round their
domestic fire in a state of perfect nudity. This singular anecdote (so
illustrative of the barbarity of the Irish, at a period when
civilization had made such a wonderful progress even in its sister
countries,) fastened so strongly on my boyish imagination, that whenever
the _Irish_ were mentioned in my presence, an _Esquimaux_ group circling
round the fire which was to dress a dinner, or broil an enemy, was the
image which presented itself to my mind; and in this trivial source, I
believe, originated that early formed opinion of Irish ferocity, which
has since been nurtured into a _confirmed prejudice_. So true it is,
that almost all the erroneous principles which influence our maturer
being, are to be traced to some fatal association of ideas received and
formed in early life. But whatever maybe the _cause_, I feel the
strongest objection to becoming a resident in the remote part of a
country which is still shaken by the convulsions of an anarchical
spirit; where for a series of ages the olive of peace has not been
suffered to shoot forth _one_ sweet blossom of national concord, which
the sword of civil dissension has not cropt almost in the germ; and the
natural character of whose factious sons, as we are still taught to
believe, is turbulent, faithless, intemperate, and cruel; formerly
destitute of arts, letters, or civilization, and still but slowly
submitting to their salutary and ennobling influence.
To confess the truth, I had so far suffered prejudice to get the start
of unbiassed liberality, that I had almost assigned to these rude
people scenes appropriately barbarous; and never was more pleasantly
astonished, than when the morning’s dawn gave to my view one of the
most splendid spectacles in the scene of picturesque creation I had ever
beheld, or indeed ever conceived--the bay of Dublin.
A foreigner on board the packet compared the view to that which the bay
of Naples affords: I cannot judge of the justness of the comparison,
though I am told one very general and commonplace; but if the scenic
beauties of the Irish bay are exceeded by those of the Neapolitan, my
fancy falls short in a just conception of its charms. The springing up
of a contrary wind kept us for a considerable time beating about this
enchanting coast; the weather suddenly changed, the rain poured in
torrents, a storm arose, and the beautiful prospect which had fascinated
our gaze, vanished in the mists of impenetrable obscurity.
As we had the mail on board, a boat was sent out to receive it, the
oars of which were plied by six men, whose statures, limbs, and features
declared them the lingering progeny of the once formidable race of Irish
giants, Bare headed, they “bided the pelting of the pitiless storm,”
with no other barrier to its fury, than what tattered check trousers,
and shirts open at neck, and tucked above the elbows afforded; and which
thus disposed, betrayed the sinewy contexture of forms, which might have
individually afforded a model to sculpture, for the colossal statue of
an Hercules, under all the different aspects of strength and exertion. *
* This little marine sketch is by no means a fancy picture;
it was actually copied from the life, in the summer of 1806.
A few of the passengers proposing to venture in the boat, I listlessly
followed, and found myself seated by one of these sea monsters, who, in
an accent that made me startle, addressed me in English at least as pure
and correct as a Thames’ boatman would use; and with so much courtesy,
cheerfulness, and respect, that I was at a loss to reconcile such
civilization of manner to such ferocity of appearance; while his
companions as they stemmed the mountainous waves, or plied their heavy
oars, displayed such a vein of low humour and quaint drollery, and in
a language so curiously expressive and original, that no longer able to
suppress my surprise, I betrayed it to a gentleman who sat near me, and
by whom I was assured that this species of colloquial wit was peculiar
to the lower class of the Irish, who borrowed much of their curious
phraseology from the peculiar idiom of their own tongue, and the
cheeriness of manner from the native exility of their temperament; “and
as for their courteousness.” he continued, “you will find them on a
further intercourse, civil even to _adulation_, as long as you treat
them with apparent kindness, but an opposite conduct will prove their
manner proportionably uncivilized.”
“It is very excusable,” said I, “they are of a class in society to which
the modification of the feelings are unknown, and to be sensibly alive
to _kindness or to unkindness_, is, in my opinion, a noble trait in the
national character of an unsophisticated people.”
While we spoke, we landed, and for the something like pleasurable
emotion, which the first on my list of Irish acquaintance produced in my
mind, I distributed among these “sons of the waves,” more silver than I
believe they expected Had I bestowed a principality on an Englishman
of the same rank, he would have been less lavish of the _eloquence_
of gratitude on his benefactor, though he might equally have felt the
_sentiment_.--So much for my voyage _across the Channel!_
This city is to London like a small temple of the Ionic order, whose
proportions are delicate, whose character is elegance, compared to
a vast palace, whose Corinthian pillars at once denote strength and
magnificence.
The wondrous extent of London excites our amazement; the compact
uniformity of Dublin our admiration. But a dispersion is less within the
_coup-d’oil_ of observance, than aggregation, the small, but harmonious
features of Dublin sieze at once on the eye, while the scattered but
splendid traits of London, excite a less immediate and more progressive
admiration, which is often lost in the intervals that occur between
those objects which are calculated to excite it.
In London, the miserable shop of a gin seller, and the magnificent
palace of a Duke, alternately create disgust, or awaken approbation.
In Dublin the buildings are not arranged upon such democratic
principles. The plebian hut offers no foil to the patrician edifice,
while their splendid and beautiful public structures are so closely
connected, as with _some_ degree of policy to strike _at once_ upon the
eye in the happiest combination. *
* Although in one point of view, there may be a policy in
this close association of splendid objects, yet it is a
circumstance of general and just condemnation to all
strangers who are not confined to a partial survey of the
city.
In other respects this city appears to me to be the miniature copy of
our imperial original, though minutely imitative in show and
glare. Something less observant of life’s prime luxuries, order and
cleanliness, there are a certain class of wretches who haunt the streets
of Dublin, so emblematic of vice, poverty, idleness, and filth, that
disgust and pity frequently succeed in the minds of the stranger to
sentiments of pleasure, surprise, and admiration. For the origin of this
evil, I must refer you to the supreme police of the city; but whatever
may be the cause, the effects (to an Englishman especially) are dreadful
and disgusting beyond all expression.
Although my father has a large connexion here, yet he only gave me a
letter to his banker, who has forced me to make his house my home for
the few days I shall remain in Dublin, and whose cordiality and kindness
sanctions all that has ever been circulated of Irish hospitality.
In the present state of my feelings, however, a party on the banks of
the _Ohio_, with a tribe of Indian hunters, would be more consonant to
my inclinations than the refined pleasures of the most polished circles
in the world. Yet these warm-hearted people, who find in the name of
stranger an irresistible lure to every kind attention, will force me to
be happy in despite of myself, and overwhelm me with invitations, some
of which it is impossible to resist. My prejudices have received some
mortal strokes, when I perceived that the natives of this barbarous
country have got goal for goal with us, in every elegant refinement of
life and manners; the only difference I can perceive between a London
and a Dublin _rout_ is, that here, amongst the first class, there is a
warmth and cordiality of address, which, though perhaps not more
sincere than the cold formality of British ceremony, is certainly more
fascinating. *
* “Every unprejudiced traveller who visits them [the Irish]
will be as much pleased with their cheerfulness as obliged
by their hospitality; and will find them a brave, polite,
and liberal people.”--Philosophical Survey through Ireland
by Mr. Young.
It is not, however, in Dublin I shall expect to find the tone of
national character and manner; in the first circles of all great cities
(as in courts) the native features of national character are softened
into general uniformity, and the genuine feelings of nature are
suppressed or exchanged for a political compliance with the reigning
modes and customs, which hold their tenure from the sanction and
example of the seat of government. Before I close this, I must make
one observation, which I think will speak more than volumes for the
refinement of these people.
During my short residence here, I have been forced, in true spirit of
Irish dissipation, into three parties of a night; and I have upon these
occasions observed that the most courted objects of popular attention,
were those whose talents alone endowed them with distinction. Besides
amateurs, I have met with many professional persons, whom I knew in
London as public characters, and who are here incorporated in the first
and most brilliant circles, appearing to feel no other inequality, than
what their own superiority of genius confers.
I leave Dublin to-morrow for M-------- house. It is situated in the
county of ------------, on the northwest coast of Connaught, which I
am told is the classic ground of Ireland. The native Irish, pursued by
religious and political bigotry, made it the asylum of their sufferings,
and were separated by a provincial barrier from an intercourse with the
rest of Ireland, until after the Restoration; so I shall have a fair
opportunity of beholding the Irish character in all its _primeval_
ferocity.
Direct your next to Bally--------, which I find is the nearest post
town to my _Kamskatkan palace_, where with no other society than that
of Black stone and Co. I shall lead such a life of animal existence, as
Prior gives to his Contented Couple--
“They ate, and drank, and slept--what then?
Why, slept, and drank, and ate again.”--
Adieu. H. M.
LETTER II.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
_M-------- House_.
In the various modes of penance invented by the various _penance
mongers_ of pious austerity, did you ever hear the travelling in an
_Irish postchaise_ enumerated as a punishment, which by far exceeds
horse-hair shirts and voluntary flagelation?
My first day’s journey from Dublin being as wet a one as this moist
climate and capricious season ever produced, my berlin answered all the
purposes of a _shower bath_, while the ventillating principles on which
the windows were constructed, gave me all the benefit to be derived from
the _breathy_ influence of the four cardinal points.
Unable any longer to sit tamely enduring the “_penalty of Adam,
the season’s change_,” or to sustain any longer the “hair-breadth
’scapes,” which the most dismantled of vehicles afforded me, together
with delays and stoppages of every species to be found in the catalogue
of procrastination and mischance, I took my seat in a mail coach which I
met at my third stage, and which was going to a town within twenty miles
of Bally--------. These twenty miles, by far the most agreeable of
my journey, I performed as we once (in days of boyish errantry)
accomplished a tour to Wales--on foot.
I had previously sent my baggage, and was happily unincumbered with a
servant, for the fastidious delicacy of Monsieur Laval would never have
been adequate to the fatigues of a pedestrian tour through a country
wild and mountainous as his own native _Savoy_. But to me every
difficulty was an effort of some good _genius_ chasing the demon of
lethargy from the usurpations of my mind’s empire. Every obstacle that
called for exertion was a temporary revival of latent energy; and every
unforced effort worth an age of indolent indulgence.
To him who derives gratification from the embellished labours of art,
rather than the simple but sublime operation of nature, _Irish_ scenery
will afford little interest; but the bold features of its varying
landscape, the stupendous attitude of its “cloud capt” mountains, the
impervious gloom of its deep embosomed glens, the savage desolation of
its uncultivated heaths, and boundless bogs, with those rich veins of
a picturesque champaigne, thrown at intervals into gay expansion by the
hand of nature, awaken in the mind of the poetic or pictoral traveller,
all the pleasures of tasteful enjoyment, all the sublime emotions of a
rapt imagination. And if the glowing fancy of Claude Loraine would have
dwelt enraptured on the paradisial charms of English landscape, the
superior genius of Salvator Rosa would have reposed its eagle wing
amidst those scenes of mysterious sublimity, with which the wildly
magnificent landscape of Ireland abounds. But the liberality of nature
appears to me to be here but frugally assisted by the donations of art.
Here _agriculture_ appears in the least felicitous of he! aspects. The
rich treasures of Ceres seldom wave their golden heads over the earth’s
fertile bosom; the verdant drapery of young plantations rarely skreens
out the coarser features of a rigid soil, the cheerless aspect of a
gloomy bog; while the unvaried surface of the perpetual pasturage which
satisfies the eye of the interested grazier, disappoints the glance of
the tasteful spectator.
Within twenty miles of Bally-------- I was literally dropt by the
stage at the foot of a mountain, to which your native _Wrekin_ is but a
hillock. The dawn was just risen, and flung its gray and reserved tints
on a scene of which the mountainous region of Capel Cerig will give you
the most adequate idea.
Mountain rising over mountain, swelled like an amphitheatre to those
clouds which, faintly tinged with the sun’s prelusive beams, and rising
from the earthly summits where they had reposed, incorporated with the
kindling æther of a purer atmosphere.
All was silent and solitary--a tranquility tinged with terror, a sort of
“delightful horror,” breathed on every side.--I was alone, and felt like
the presiding genius of desolation!
As I had previously learned my route, after a minute’s contemplation
of the scene before me, I pursued my solitary ramble along a steep and
trackless path, which wound gradually down towards a great lake, an
almost miniature sea, that lay embosomed amidst those stupendous heights
whose rugged forms, now bare, desolate, and barren, now clothed with
yellow furze and creeping underwood, or crowned with misnic forests,
appeared towering above my head in endless variety. The progress of the
sun convinced me that _mine_ must have been slow, as it was perpetually
interrupted by pauses of curiosity and admiration, and by long and many
lapses of thoughtful reverie; and fearing that I had lost my way (as I
had not yet caught a view of the village, in which, seven miles distant
from the spot where I had left the stage, I was assured I should find an
excellent breakfast,) I ascended that part of the mountain where, on one
of its vivid points, a something like a human habitation hung suspended,
and where I hoped to obtain a _carte du pays_: the exterior of this
_hut_, or _cabin_, as it is called, like the few I had seen which were
not built of mud, resembled in one instance the magic palace of Chaucer,
and was erected with loose stones,
“Which, cunningly, were without mortar laid.”
thinly thatched with straw; an aperture in the roof served rather to
_admit_ the air than _emit_ the smoke, a circumstance to which the
wretched inhabitants of those wretched hovels seem so perfectly
naturalized, that they live in a constant state of fumigation; and
a fracture in the side wall (meant I suppose as a substitute for a
casement) was stuffed with straw, while the door, off its hinges, was
laid across the threshhold, as a barrier to a little crying boy, who
sitting within, bemoaned his captivity in a tone of voice not quite so
mellifluous as that which Mons. Sanctyon ascribes to the crying children
of a certain district in Persia, but perfectly in unison with the
vocal exertions of the companion of his imprisonment, a large sow.
I approached--removed the barrier: the boy and the animal escaped
together, and I found myself alone in the centre of this miserable
asylum of human wretchedness--the residence of an _Irish peasant_.
To those who have only contemplated this useful order of society in
England, “where every rood of ground maintains its man,” and where the
peasant liberally enjoys the _comforts_ as well as the necessaries
of life, the wretched picture which the interior of an _Irish_ cabin
presents, would be at once an object of compassion and disgust. *
* Sometimes excavated from a hill, sometimes erected with
loose stones, but most generally built of mud, the cabin is
divided into two apartments, the one littered with straw and
coarse rugs, and sometimes, (but very rarely) furnished with
the luxury of a chaff bed, serves as a dormitory not only
to the family of both sexes, but in general to any animal
they are so fortunate as to possess; the other chamber
answers for every purpose of domesticity, though almost
destitute of every domestic implement, except the iron pot
in which the potatoes are boiled, and the stool on which
they are flung. From those wretched hovels (which often
appears amidst scenes that might furnish the richest models
to poetic imitation) it is common to behold a group of
children rush forth at the sound of a horse’s foot, or
carriage wheel, regardless of the season’s rigours, in a
perfect state of nudity, or covered with the drapery of
wretchedness, which gives to their appearance a still
stronger character of poverty; yet even in these miserable
huts you will seldom find the spirit of urbanity absent--the
genius of hospitality never. I remember meeting with an
instance of both, that made a deep impression on my heart;
in the autumn of 1804, in the course of a morning ramble
with a charming Englishwoman, in the county of Sligo, I
stopped to rest myself in a cabin, while she proceeded to
pay a visit to the respectable family of the O’H------s, of
Nymph’s Field: when I entered I found it occupied by an old
woman and her three granddaughters; two of the young women
were employed scutching flax, the other in some domestic
employment. I was instantly hailed with the most cordial
welcome; the hearth was cleared, the old woman’s seat forced
on me, eggs and potatoes roasted, and an apology for the
deficiency of bread politely made, while the manners of my
hostesses betrayed a courtesy that almost amounted to
adulation. They had all laid by their work on my entrance,
and when I requested I might not interrupt their avocations,
one of them replied “I hope we know better--we can work any
day, but we cannot any day have such a body as you under our
roof.” Surely this was not the manners of a cabin but a
court.
Almost suffocated, and not surprised that it was deserted _pro tempo_, I
hastened away, and was attracted towards a ruinous barn by a full chorus
of female voices--where a group of young females were seated round
an old hag who formed the centre of the circle; they were all busily
employed at their _wheels_, which I observed went merrily round in exact
time with their song, and so intently were they engaged by both, that
my proximity was unperceived. At last the song ceased--the wheel stood
still--and every eye was fixed on the old _primum mobile_ of the circle,
who, after a short pause, began a _solo_ that gave much satisfaction to
her young auditors, and taking up the strain, they again turned their
wheels round in unison.--The whole was sung in Irish, and as soon as I
was observed, suddenly ceased; the girls looked down and tittered--and
the old woman addressed me _sans ceremonie_, and in a language I now
heard for the first time.
Supposing that some one among the number must understand English, I
explained with all possible politeness the cause of my intrusion on this
little harmonic society. The old woman looked up in my face and shook
her head; I thought contemptuously--while the young ones, stifling their
smiles, exchanged looks of compassion doubtlessly at my ignorance of
their language.
“So many languages a man knows,” said Charles V., “so many times is he
a man,” and it is certain I never felt myself less invested with the
dignity of one, than while I stood twirling my stick, and “biding the
encounter of the eyes,” and smiles of these “spinners in the sun.” Here
you will say was prejudice opposed to prejudice with a vengeance; but I
comforted myself with the idea that the natives of Greenland, the most
gross and savage of mortals, compliment a stranger by saying, “he is as
well bred as a Greenlander.”
While thus situated, a sturdy looking young fellow with that figure and
openness of countenance so peculiar to the young Irish peasants, and
with his hose and brogues suspended from a stick over his shoulder,
approached and hailed the party in Irish: the girls instantly pointed
his attention towards me; he courteously accosted me in English, and
having learnt the nature of my dilemma, offered to be my guide--“it will
not take me above a mile out of my way, and if it did _two_, it would
make no _odds_,” said he. I accepted his offer, and we proceeded
together over the summit of the mountain.
In the course of our conversation (which was very fluently supported on
his side,) I learnt, that few strangers ever passing through this remote
part of the province, and even very many of the gentry here speaking
Irish, it was a rare thing to meet with any one wholly unacquainted with
the language, which accounted for the surprise, and I believe contempt,
my ignorance had excited.
When I enquired into the nature of those choral strains I had heard, he
replied--“O! as to that, it is according to the old woman’s fancy and
in fact I learnt that Ireland, like Italy, has its _improvisatores_, and
that those who are gifted with the impromptu talent are highly estimated
by their rustic compatriots;” and by what he added, I discovered that
their inspirations are either drawn from the circumstances of the
moment, from one striking excellence or palpable defect in some of
the company present, or from some humourous incident, or local event
generally known.
As soon as we arrived at the little _auberge_ of the little village, I
ordered my courteous guide his breakfast, and having done all due honour
to my own, we parted.
My route from the village to Bally-------- lay partly through a desolate
bog, whose burning surface, heated by a vertical sun, gave me no
inadequate idea of _Arabia Deserta_; and the pangs of an acute headache,
brought on by exercise more violent than my still delicate constitution
was equal to support, determined me to defer my journey until the
meridian ardours were abated; and taking your Horace from my pocket, I
wandered into a shady path, “impervious to the noontide ray.” Throwing
my “listless length” at the foot of a spreading beech, I had already got
to that sweet ode to Lydia, which Scaliger in his enthusiasm declares he
would rather have written than to have possessed the monarchy of Naples,
when somebody accosted me in Irish, and then with a “God save you,
Sir!” I raised my eyes, and beheld a poor peasant, driving, or rather
soliciting, a sorry lame cow to proceed.
“May be,” said he, taking off his hat, “your Honour would be after
telling me what’s the hour?” “Later than I supposed, my good friend,”
replied I, rising, “it is past two.” He bowed low, and stroking the face
of his companion, added, “well, the day is yet young, but you and I have
a long journey before us, my poor Driminduath.”
“And how far are you going, my friend?”
“Please your Honour, two miles beyond Bally-------.”
“It is my road exactly, and you, Driminduath, and I, may perform the
journey together.” The poor fellow seemed touched and surprised by my
condescension, and profoundly bowed his sense of it, while the curious
_triumviri_ set off on their pedestrian tour together.
I now cast an eye over the person of my _compagnon de voyage_. It was
a tall, thin, athletic figure, “bony and gaunt,” with an expressive
countenance, marked features, a livid complexion, and a quantity of
coarse black hair hanging about the face; the drapery was perfectly
appropriate to the wearer--an under garment composed of “_shreds_ and
_patches_,” was partially covered with an old great coat of coarse
frieze, fastened on the breast with a large wooden skewer, the sleeves
hanging down on either side unoccupied, * and a pair of yarn hose which
scarcely reached _midleg_, left the ankle and foot naked.
* This manner of wearing the coat, so genera, among the
peasantry, is deemed by the natives of the county of Galway
a remnant of the Spanish mode.
_Driminduath_ seemed to share in the obvious poverty of her master--she
was almost an anatomy, and scarcely able to crawl. “Poor beast!” said
he, observing I looked at her, “Poor beast! little she dreamed of coming
back the road she went, and little able is she to go it, poor soul; not
that I am _overly_ sorry I could not get nobody to take her off my hands
at all at all; though to-be-sure ’tis better to lose one’s cow than
one’s wife, any day in the year.”
“And had you no alternative?” I asked.
“Anan!” exclaimed he, starting.
“Were you obliged to part with one or the other?” Sorrow is garrulous,
and in the natural selfishness of its suffering, seeks to lessen the
weight of its woe by participation. In a few minutes I was master of
Murtoch O’Shaughnassey’s story: * he was the husband of a sick wife; the
father of six children, and a labourer, or _cotter_, who worked daily
throughout the year for the hut that sheltered the heads, and the little
potatoe rick which was the sole subsistence of his family.
* Neither the rencontre with, nor the character or story of
Murtoch, partakes in the least degree of fiction.
He had taken a few acres of ground, he said, from his employer’s
steward, to set grass potatoes in, by which he hoped to make something
handsome; that to enable himself to pay for them he had gone to work in
Leinster during the last harvest, “where, please your Honour,” he added,
“a poor man gets more for his labour than in Connaught; * but there it
was my luck (and bad luck it was) to get the shaking fever upon me, so
that I returned sick and sore to my poor people without a cross to bless
myself with, and then there was an end to my fine grass potatoes, for
devil receive the sort they’d let me dig till I paid for the ground;
and what was worse, the steward was going to turn us out of our cabin,
because I had not worked out the rent with him as usual, and not a
potatoe had I for the children; besides finding my wife and two boys in
a fever: the boys got well, but my poor wife has been decaying away ever
since; so I was fain to sell my poor Driminduath here, which was left
me by my gossip, in order to pay my rent and get some nourishment for my
poor woman, who I believe is just weak at heart for the want of it;
and so, as I was after telling your Honour, I left home yesterday for a
_fair_ twenty-five good miles off, but my poor Driminduath has got such
bad usage of late, and was in such sad plight, that nobody would bid
nothing for her, and so we are both returning home as we went, with full
hearts and empty stomachs.”