Conspicuous amongst the most conspicuous of the stars; of the ascendant,
was a lady, who took the field with an _éclat_, a brilliancy, and bustle,
which for a time fixed the attention of all upon herself. Although a fine
woman, in the strictest sense of the term, and still handsome, though not
still very young, she was even more distinguished by her air of high
supremacy, than by her beauty. She sat loftily in a lofty phaeton, which
was emblazoned with arms, and covered with coronets; and she played with
her long whip, as ladies of old managed their fans, with grace and
coquetry. She was dressed in a rich habit, whose facings and epaulettes
spoke her the lady of the noble colonel of some provincial corps of
volunteers. A high military cap, surmounted with a plume of black feathers,
well became her bright, bold, black eyes, and her brow that looked as if
accustomed "to threaten and command." The air had deepened her colour
through her rouge, as it had blown from her dark, dishevelled tresses the
mareschal powder, then still worn in Ireland--(the last lingering barbarism
of the British toilette, which France had already abandoned, with other
barbarous modes, and exchanged for the _coiffure d'Arippine_ and the _tête
à la Brutus_.) Her _pose_, her glance, her nod, her smile, all conscious
and careless as they were, proclaimed a privileged autocrat of the Irish
_bon ton_, a "_dasher_," as it was termed, of the first order; for that
species of effrontery called _dashing_ was then in full vogue, as consonant
to a state of society, where all in a certain class went by assumption.
This lady had arrived rather early in the field, for one whose habits were
necessarily on the wrong side of time and of punctuality. She came bowling
along, keeping up her fiery steeds to a sort of curvetting gallop, like one
deep in the science of the _manège_--now deranging the order of march of
the troops, by breaking through the ranks, in spite of the impertinent
remonstrances of the out-posts and videttes, at which she laughed, at once
to show her teeth and her power;--and now scattering the humble crowd,
"like chaff before the wind," as giving her horses the rein, she permitted
them to plunge head-long on, while skilfully flourishing her long whip, she
made on every side a preliminary clearance. Many among the multitude
announced her as the famous Kitty Cut-dash, and nodded knowingly as she
passed them; but the greater number detected in the beautiful charioteer,
the equally famous Albina Countess Knocklofty, the female chief of that
great oligarchical family, the Proudforts--a family on which the church
rained mitres, the state coronets, and the people--curses.
Beside her sat, or rather lounged, another dame of quality, bearing the
stamp of her class and caste as obviously, yet less deeply marked, than
her companion. More feminine in her air, more foreign in her dress and
entire bearing, her faultless form, and almost faultless face, had all the
advantages of the new democratic toilet of Paris, (adopted by its court,
when more important innovations were still fatally resisted;) and she
appeared in the Phoenix Park, dressed much in the same costume as Marie
Antoinette and her female favourites are described to have worn in the
gardens of Trianon, or in the bowers of St. Cloud,--to the horror of all
old _dames d'atours_, and all the partisans of the ancient regime of
whalebone and buckram! The chemise of transparent muslin, or _robe à la
Poliynae_, _chapeau de paille à la bergere_, tied down with a lilac
ribbon, with
"Scarf loosely flowing, hair as free,"
gave an air of sylph-like simplicity to one, whose features, though
beautiful, were marked by an expression foreign to simplicity, evincing
that taste, not sentiment, presided over her toilet, and that, "_chez
elle, un beau desordre fut l'effet de l'art_."
This triumphal car was followed, or surrounded, by a host of beaux; some
in military uniform, and with true English faces and figures; but the
greater number in the civil, though uncivilized, dress of the day, and
with forms and physiognomies as Irish as ever were exhibited in Pale or
Palatine, to the dread of English settlers and Scotch undertakers.
Ponderous powdered clubs, hanging from heads of dishevelled hair--shoulders
raised or stuffed to an Atlas height and breadth--the stoop of paviers,
and the lounge of chairmen--broad beavers, tight buckskins, the striped
vest of a groom, and the loose coat of a coachman, gave something ruffianly
to the air of even the finest figures, which assorted but too well with the
daring, dashing manner, that just then had succeeded, among a _particular
set_, to the courtly polish for which the travelled nobility of Ireland
were once so distinguished. Such, in exterior, were many of the members of
the famous _Cherokee Club_, and such the future legislators of that great
national indignity, which had procured them a contemptible pre-eminence in
the black book of public opinion, by the style and title of the "_Union
Lords_." As they now crowded round the cynosures of the day, there was
something too ardent and unrestrained in their homage, something too
emphatic in their expressions and gestures, for true breeding; while in
their handsome, but "light, revelling, and protesting faces," traces of
the night's orgies were still visible, which gave their fine features a
licentious cast, and deprived their open and very manly countenances of
every mark of intellectual expression.--_Lady Morgan's "O'Briens and
O'Flahertys."_
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