rigidly moral father, should I discover this remote _Cassino_, (for
remote I understand it is) to be the _harem_ of some wild Irish
_Sultana_; for I strongly suspect “that metal more attractive” than the
cause he assigns, induces him to pay an annual visit to a country
to which, till within these few years, he nurtured the strongest
prejudices. You know there are but nineteen years between him and my
brother; and his feelings are so unblunted by vicious pursuits, his life
has been guided by such epicurian principles of enjoyment, that he still
retains much of the first warm flush of juvenile existence, and has
only sacrificed to time, its follies and its ignorance. I swear, at this
moment he is a younger man than either of his sons; the one chilled
by the coldness of an icy temperament into premature old age, and the
other!!!------Murtoch has been to see me. I have procured him a little
farm, and am answerable for the rent. I sent his wife some rich wine;
she is recovering very fast. Murtoch is all gratitude for the wine, but
I perceive his faith still lies in the _bacon!_
LETTER IV.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
I can support this wretched state of non-existence, this _articula
mortis_, no longer. I cannot read--I cannot think--nothing touches,
nothing interests me; neither is it permitted me to indulge my
sufferings in solitude. These hospitable people still weary me
with their attentions, though they must consider me as a sullen
misanthropist, for I persist in my invisibility. I can escape them no
longer but by flight--professional study is out of the question, for
a time at least. I mean, therefore, to “take the wings of” some
fine morning, and seek a change of being in a change of place; for
a perpetual state of evaga-tion alone, keeps up the flow and ebb of
existence in my languid frame. My father’s last letter informs me he is
obliged by business to postpone his journey for a month; this leaves me
so much the longer master of myself. By the time we meet, my mind may
have regained its native tone. _Laval_ too, writes for a longer leave
of absence, which I most willingly grant. It is a weight removed off my
shoulders; I would be savagely free.
I thank you for your welcome letters, and will do what I can to satisfy
your antiquarian taste; and I would take your advice and study the Irish
language, were my powers of comprehension equal to the least of the
philological excellences of _Tom Thumb_ or _Goody Two Shoes_,--but
alas!
“Se perchetto a me Stesso quale acquisto,
Firo mai che me piaccia.” *
* “Torquatto Tasso.”
_Villa di Marino, Atlantic Ocean_
Having told Mr. Clendinning, that I should spend a few days in
wandering about the country, I mounted my horse. So I determined to roam
free and unrestrained by the presence of a servant, to Mr. Clendinning’s
utter amazement, I ordered a few changes of linen, my drawing-book,
and pocket escritoire, to be put in a small valice, which, with all due
humility, I had strapped on the back of my steed, whom, by the bye, I
expect will be as celebrated as the _Rozinante_ of Don Quixote, or
the _Beltenbros L’Amadis de Gaul_; and thus accoutred set off on my
peregrination, the most listless knight that ever entered on the lists
of errantry.
You will smile, when I tell you my first point of attraction was the
_Lodge_; to which (though with some difficulty) I found my way; for
it lies in a most wild and unfrequented direction, but so infinitely
superior in situation to M------ house, that I no longer wonder at my
father’s preference. Every feature that constitutes either the beauty
or sublime of landscape, is here finely combined. Groves druidically
venerable--mountains of Alpine elevation--expansive lakes, and the
boldest and most romantic sea-coast I ever beheld, alternately diversify
and enrich its scenery; while a number of young and flourishing
plantations evince the exertion of taste in my father, he certainly has
not betrayed in the disposition of his hereditary domains. I found this
_Tusculum_ inhabited only by a decent old man and his superannuated
wife. Without informing them who I was, I made a feigning wish to make
the place a pretext for visiting it. The old man smiled at the idea,
and shook his head, presuming that I must be indeed a stranger in the
country, as my accent denoted, for that this spot belonged to a great
_English Lord_, whom he verily believed would not resign it for his own
fine place some miles off; but when, with some jesuitical artifice I
endeavoured to trace the cause of this attachment, he said it was his
Lordship’s fancy, and that there was no accounting for people’s fancies.
“That is all very true,” said I, “but is it the house only that seized
on your Lord’s fancy?”
“Nay, for the matter of that,” said he, “the lands are far more finer;
the house, though large, being no great things.” I begged in this
instance to judge for myself, and a few shillings procured me not only
free egress, but the confidence of the ancient _Cicerone_.
This fancied _harem_, however, I found not only divested of its expected
fair inhabitant, but wholly destitute of furniture, except what filled a
bedroom occupied by my father, and an apartment which was _locked_.
The old man with some tardiness produced the key, and I found this
mysterious chamber was only a study; but closer inspection discovered
that almost all the books related to the language, history, and
antiquities of Ireland.
So you see, in fact, my father’s _Sultana_ is no other than the _Irish
Muse_; and never was son so tempted to become the rival of his father,
since the days of Antiochus and Stratonice. For, at a moment when
my taste, like my senses, is flat and palled, nothing can operate so
strongly as an incentive, as novelty. I strongly suspect that my father
was aware of this, and that he had despoiled the temple, to prevent me
becoming a worshipper at the same shrine. For the old man said he had
received a letter from his Lord, ordering away all the furniture (except
that of his own bed-room and study) to the manor house; the study and
bed-room, however, will suffice me, and here I shall certainly pitch my
head-quarters until my father’s arrival.
I have already had some occasions to remark, that the warm susceptible
character of the Irish is open to the least indication of courtesy and
kindness.
My _politesse_ to this old man, opened every sluice of confidence in his
breast, and, as we walked down the avenue together, having thrown the
bridle over my horse’s neck, and offered him my arm, for he was lame, I
enquired how this beautiful farm fell into the hands of Lord M--------,
still concealing from him that it was his son who demanded the question.
“Why, your Honour,” said he, “the farm, though beautiful is small;
however, it made the best part of what remained of the patrimony of the
Prince, when--------”
“What Prince?” interrupted I, amazed.
“Why, the Prince of Inismore, to be sure, jewel, whose great forefathers
once owned the half of the barony, from the Red Bog to the sea-coast.
Och! it is a long story, but I heard my grandfather tell it a thousand
times, how a great Prince of Inismore in the wars of Queen Elizabeth,
had here a castle and a great tract of land on the _borders_, of which
he was deprived, as the story runs, becaise he would neither cut his
_glibbs_, shave his upper lip, nor shorten his shirt; * and so he was
driven, with the rest of us beyond the _pale_. The family, however,
after a while, flourished greater nor ever. Och, and it is themselves
that might, for they were true Milesians bread and born, every mother’s
soul of them. O not a drop of _Strongbonean_ flowed in their Irish
veins, agrah!
* From the earliest settlement of the English in this
country, an inquisitorial persecution had been carried on
against the national costume. In the reign of Henry V. there
was an act passed against even the English colonists wearing
a whisker on the upper lip, like the Irish; and in 1616, the
Lord Deputy, in his instructions to the Lord President and
Council, directed, that such as appeared in the Irish robes
or mantles, should be punished by fine and imprisonment.
“Well, as I was after telling your Honour, the family flourished, and
beat all before them, for they had an army of _galloglasses_ at
their back, * until the Cromwellian wars broke out, and those same
cold-hearted Presbyterians, battered the fine _old ancient_ castle of
Inismore, and left in the condition it now stands; and what was worse
nor that, the poor old Prince was put to death in the arms of his fine
young son, who tried to save him, and that by one of Cromwell’s English
Generals, who received the town lands of Inismore, which lie near
Bally--------, as his reward. Now this English General who murdered the
Prince, was no other than the ancestor of my Lord, to whom these estates
descended from father to son. Ay, you may well start, Sir, it was a
woful piece of business; for of all their fine estates, nothing was left
to the Princes of Inismore, but the ruins of their old castle, and the
rocks that surround it; except this tight little bit of an estate here,
on which the father of the present Prince built this house; becaise his
Lady, with whom he got a handsome fortune, and who was descended from
the Kings of Connaught, took a dislike to the castle; the story going
that it was haunted by the murdered Prince; and what with building of
this house, and living like an Irish Prince, as he was every inch of
him, and spending 3000 l. a year out of 300 l., when he died (and the
sun never shone on such a funeral; the whiskey ran about like _ditch
water_, and the country was stocked with pipes and tobacco for many a
long year after. For the present Prince, his son, would not be a bit
behind his father in any thing, and so signs on him, for he is not worth
one guinea this blessed day, Christ save him;)--well, as I was saying,
when he died, he left things in a sad way, which his son is not the man
to mend, for he was the spirit of a king, and lives in as much state as
one to this day.”
* The second order of military in Ireland.
“But where, where does he live?” interrupted I, with breathless
impatience.
“Why,” continued this living chronicle, in the true spirit of Irish
replication, “he did live there in that Lodge, as they call it now, and
in that room where my Lord keeps his books, was our young Princess born;
her father never had but her, and loves her better than his own heart’s
blood, and well he may, the blessing of the Virgin Mary and the Twelve
Apostles light on her sweet head. Well, the Prince would never let it
come near him, that things were not going on well, and continued to take
at great rents, farms that brought him in little; for being a Prince and
a Milesian, it did not become him to look after such matters, and every
thing was left to stewards and the like, until things coming to the
worst, a rich English gentleman, as it was said, come over here and
offered the Prince, through his steward, a good round sum of money
on this place, which the Prince, being harrassed by his _spalpeen_
creditors, and wanting a little ready money more than any other earthly
thing, consented to receive; the gentleman sending him word he should
have his own time; but scarcely was the mortgage a year old, when
this same Englishman, (Oh, my curse lie about him, Christ pardon me,)
foreclosed it, and the fine old Prince not having as much as a shed
to shelter his gray hairs under, was forced to fit up part of the old
ruined castle, and open those rooms which it had been said were haunted.
Discharging many of his old servants, he was accompanied to the castle
by the family steward, the _fosterers_, the _nurse_ * the harper, and
Father John, the chaplain.
* The custom of retaining the nurse who reared the
children, has ever been, and is still in force among the
most respectable families in Ireland, as it is still in
modern, and was formerly in ancient Greece, and they are
probably both derived from the same origin. We read, that
when Rebecca left her father’s house to marry Isaac at
Beersheba, the nurse was sent to accompany her. But in
Ireland, not only the nurse herself, but her husband and
children are objects of peculiar regard and attention, and
are called fosterers. The claims of these fosterers
frequently descend from generation to generation, and the
tie which unite? them is indissoluble.
“Och, it was a piteous sight the day he left this: he was leaning on the
Lady Glorvina’s arm as he walked out to the chaise, ‘James Tyral,’ says
he to me in Irish, for I caught his eye; ‘James Tyral,’ but he could
say no more, for the old tenants kept crying about him, and he put
his mantle to his eyes and hurried into the chaise; the Lady Glorvina
kissing her hand to us all, and crying bitterly till she was out of
sight. But then, Sir, what would you have of it; the Prince shortly
after found out that this same Mr. _Mortgagee_, was no other than a
spalpeen steward of Lord M--------‘s. It was thought he would have run
mad when he found that almost the last acre of his hereditary lands was
in the possession of the servant of his hereditary enemy; for so deadly
is the hatred he bears to my Lord, that upon my conscience, I believe
the young Prince who held the bleeding body of his murdered father in
his arms, felt not greater for the murderer, than our Prince does for
that murder’s descendant.
“Now my Lord is just such a man as God never made better, and wishing
with all the veins in his heart to serve the old Prince, and do away all
difference between them, what does he do, jewel, but writes him a mighty
pretty letter, offering this house and a part of the lands a present.
O! divil a word of lie I’m after telling you; but what would you have
of it, but this offer sets the Prince madder than all; for you know that
this was an insult on his honour, which warmed every drop of Milesian
blood in his body for he would rather starve to death all his life,
than have it thought he would be obligated to any body at all at all for
wherewithal to support him; so with that the Prince writes him a letter:
it was brought by the old steward, who knew every line of the contents
of it, though divil a line in it but two, and that same was but one and
a half, as one may say, and this it was, as the old steward told me:
“The son of the son of the son’s son of Bryan, Prince of Inismore, can
receive no favour from the descendant of his ancestor’s murderer.”
“Now it was plain enough to be seen, that my Lord took this to heart,
as well he might, faith; however, he considered that it came from a
misfortunate Prince, he let it drop, and so this was all that ever
passed between them; however, he was angry enough with his steward, but
Measther Clendinning put his _comehither_ on him, and convinced him that
the biggest rogue alive was an honest man.”
“And the Prince!” I interrupted eagerly.
“Och, jewel, the prince lives away in the old Irish fashion, only he has
not a Christian soul now at all at all, most of the old Milesian gentry
having quit the country; besides, the Prince being in a bad state of
health, and having nearly lost the use of his limbs, and his heart
being heavy, and his purse light; for all that he keeps up the old
Irish customs and dress, letting nobody eat at the same table but his
daughter, * not even his Lady when she was alive.”
* M’Dermot, Prince of Coolavin, never suffered his wife to
sit at table with him; although his daughter-in-law was
permitted to that honour, as she was the descendant from the
royal family of the O’Connor.
“And do you think the son of Lord M-------- would have no chance of
obtaining an audience from the Prince?”
“What the young gentleman that they say is come to M-------- house? why
about as much chance as his father, but by my conscience, that’s a bad
one.”
“And your young Princess, is she as implacable as her father?”
“Why, faith! I cannot well tell you what the Lady Glorvina is, for she
is like nothing upon the face of God’s creation but herself. I do not
know how it comes to pass, that every mother’s soul of us loves her
better nor the Prince; ay, by my conscience, and fear her too; for well
may they fear her, on the score of her great learning, being brought up
by Father John, the chaplain, and spouting Latin faster nor the priest
of the parish: and we may well love her, for she is a saint upon earth,
and a great _physicianer_ to boot; curing all the sick and maimed for
twenty miles round. Then she is so proud, that divil a one soul of the
quality will she visit in the whole barony, though she will sit in a
smoky cabin for hours together, to talk to the poor: besides all this,
she will sit for hours at her Latin and Greek, after the family are gone
to bed, and yet you will see her up with the dawn, running like a doe
about the rocks; her fine yellow hair streaming in the wind, for all the
world like a mermaid.
“Och! my blessing light on her every day she sees the light, for she is
the jewel of a child.”
“A child! say you!”
“Why, to be sure I think her one; for many a time I carried her in these
arms, and taught her to bless herself in Irish; but she is no child
either, for as one of our old Irish songs says, ‘Upon her cheek we see
love’s letter sealed with a damask rose.’ * But if your Honour has
any curiosity you may judge for yourself; for matins and vespers are
celebrated every day in the year, in the old chapel belonging to the
castle, and the whole family attend.”
* This is a line of a song of one Dignum, who composed in
his native language, but could neither read nor write nor
spoke any language but his own. “I have seen,” said the
celebrated Edmund Burke (who in his boyish days had known
him) “some of his effusions translated into English, but was
assured, by judges, that they fell far short of the
originals; yet they contained some graces, ‘snatched beyond
the reach of ark’ “--Vide Life of Burke.
“And are strangers also permitted?”
“Faith and it’s themselves that are; but few indeed trouble them, though
none are denied. I used to get to mass myself sometimes, but it is now
too far to walk for me.”
This was sufficient, I waited to hear no more, but repaid my
communicative companion for his information, and rode off, having
inquired the road to Inismore from the first man I met.
It would be vain, it would be impossible to describe the emotion which
the simple tale of this old man awakened. The descendant of a murderer!
The very scoundrel steward of my father revelling in the property of a
man who shelters his aged head beneath the ruins of those walls where
his ancestors bled under the uplifted sword of mine.
Why this, you will say, is the romance of a novel-read schoolboy. Are we
not all, the little and the great, descended from assassins; was not
the first born man a fratricide? and still, on the field of unappeased
contention, does not “man the murderer, meet the murderer, man?”
Yes, yes, ‘tis all true; humanity acknowledges it and shudders. But
still I wish _my_ family had never possessed an acre of ground in this
country, or possessed it on other terms. I always knew the estate fell
into our family in the civil wars of Cromwell, and, in the world’s
language, was the well-earned meed of my progenitor’s valour; but I
seemed to hear it now for the first time.
I am glad, however, that this old Irish chieftain is such a ferocious
savage; that the pity his fate awakens is qualified by aversion for
his implacable, irascible disposition. I am glad his daughter is _red
headed_, a pedant, and a romp; that she spouts Latin like the priest
of the parish, and cures sore fingers; that she avoids genteel society,
where her ideal rank would procure her no respect, and her unpolished
ignorance, by force of contrast, make her feel her real inferiority;
that she gossips among the poor peasants, over whom she can reign liege
Lady; and, that she has been brought up by a jesuitical priest, who has
doubtlessly rendered her as bigoted and illiberal as himself. All this
soothes my conscientous throes of feeling and compassion; for oh! if
this savage chief was generous and benevolent, as he is independent and
spirited; if this daughter was amiable and intelligent, as she must
be simple and unvitiated! But I dare not pursue the supposition, It is
better as it is.
You would certainly never guess that the _Villa di Marino_, from whence
I date the continuation of my letter, was simply a _fisherman’s hut_ on
the seacoast, half way between the Lodge and Castle of Inismore, that
is, seven miles distant from each. Determined on attending vespers at
Inismore, I was puzzling my brain to think where or how I should pass
the night, when this hut caught my eye, and I rode up to it to inquire
if there was any inn in the neighbourhood, where a _chevalier errant_
could shelter his adventurous head for a night; but I was informed
the nearest inn was fifteen miles distant, so I bespoke a little fresh
straw, and a clean blanket which hung airing on some fishing tackle
outside the door of this _marine hotel_, in preference to riding so
far for a bed, at so late an hour as that in which the vespers would be
concluded.
This mine host of the Atlantic promised me, pointing to a little board
suspended over the door, on which was written:
“Good Dry Lodging.”
My landlord, however, convinced me his hotel afforded something better
than good dry lodging; for entreating me to alight, till a shower passed
over which was beginning to fall, I entered the hut, and found his wife,
a sturdy lad their eldest son, and two naked little ones, seated at
their dinner, and enjoying such a feast, as Apicius, who sailed to
Africa from Rome to eat good oysters, would gladly have voyaged from
Rome to Ireland to have partaken of; for they were absolutely dining
on an immense turbot (whose fellow-sufferers were floundering in a boat
that lay anchored near the door.) A most cordial invitation on their
part, and a most willing compliance on mine, was the ceremony of a
moment; and never did an English alderman on turtle day, or Roman
emperor on lampreys and peacocks’ livers, make a more delicious repast,
than the chance guest of these good people, on their boiled turbot and
roasted potatoes, which was quaffed down by the pure phalernian of a
neighbouring spring.
Having learnt that the son was going with the compeers of the demolished
turbot to Bally--------,
I took out my little escritoire to write you an account of the first
adventure of my chivalrous tour; while one of spring’s most grateful
sunny show ers, is pattering on the leaves of the only tree that shades
this simple dwelling, and my _Rosinante_ is nibbling a scanty dinner
from the patches of vegetation that sprinkle the surrounding cliffs.
Adieu! the vesper hour arrives. In all “my orisons thy sins shall be
remembered.” The spirit of adventure wholly possesses me, and on the
dusky horizon of life, some little glimmering of light begins to dawn.
Encore adieu.
H. M.
LETTER V.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
_Castle of Inismore, Barony of --------_.
Ay, ‘tis even so--point your glasses--and rub your eyes, ‘tis all one;
here I am, and here I am likely to remain for some time, but whether a
prisoner of war, taken up on a suspicion of espionage, or to be offered
as an appeasing sacrifice to the _manes_ of the old Prince of Inismore,
you must for a while suspend your patience to learn.
According to the _carte du pays_ laid out for me by the fisherman, I
left the shore and crossed the summit of a mountain that “battled o’er
the deep,” and which after an hour’s ascension, I found sloped almost
perpendicularly down to a bold and rocky coast, its base terminating in
a peninsula, that advanced for near half a mile into the ocean. Towards
the extreme western point of this peninsula, which was wildly romantic
beyond all description, arose a vast and grotesque pile of rocks, which
at once formed the site and fortifications of the noblest mass of ruins
on which my eye ever rested. Grand even in desolation, and magnificent
in decay--it was the Castle of Inismore. The setting sun shone brightly
on its mouldering turrets, and the waves which bathed its rocky basis,
reflected on their swelling bosoms the dark outlines of its awful ruins. *
* Those who have visited the Castle of Dunluce, near the
Giant’s Causeway, may, perhaps, have some idea of its
striking features in this rude draught of the Castle of
Inismore.