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A very curious paper might be made by any one who, after an absence of
some years from Ireland, should chronicle his new impressions of the
country, and compare them with his old ones. The changes time works
everywhere, even in a brief space, are remarkable, but particularly
so in a land where everything is in a state of transition--where the
violence with which all subjects are treated, the excited tone people
are wont to assume on every topic, are continually producing their
effects on society--dismembering old alliances--begetting new
combinations. Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences by
the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties, public feeling,
and private habits, how little chance there is for a prophet to make a
character by his predictions regarding Ireland. He would, indeed, be a
skilful chemist who would attempt the analysis of our complex nature;
but far greater and more gifted must he be, who, from any consideration
of the elements, would venture to pronounce on the probable results of
their action and re-action, and declare what we shall be some twenty
years hence. Oh, for a good Irish “Rip van Winkle,” who would at least
let us look on the two pictures--what we were, and what we are. He
should be a Clare man--none others have the same shrewd insight into
character, the same intuitive knowledge of life; none others detect,
like them, the flaws and fractures in human nature. There may be more
mathematical genius in Cork, and more classic lore in Kerry; there may
be, I know there is, a more astute and patient pains-taking spirit of
calculation in the northern counties; but for the man who is only to
have one rapid glance at the game, and say how it fares--to throw a
quick _coup-d'oeil_ on the board, and declare the winner, Clare for
ever!
Were I a lawgiver, I would admit any attorney to practise who should
produce sufficient evidence of his having served half the usual time
of apprenticeship in Ennis. The Pontine marshes are not so prolific
of fever, as the air of that country of ready-witted intelligence and
smartness; and now, ere I return from my digression, let me solemnly
declare, that, for the opinion here expressed, I have not received any
money or moneys, nor do I expect to receive such, or any place, pension,
or other reward, from Tom Steele or any one else concerned.
Well, we have not got this same western “Rip van Winkle,” nor do I think
we are likely to do so, for this simple reason, that if he were a Clare
man, he 'd never have been caught “napping;” so, now, let us look
about us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not find
something to our purpose. But where to begin, that's the question: no
clue is left to the absentee of a few years by which to guide his path.
He may look in vain even for the old land-marks which he remembered in
boyhood; for somehow he finds them all in masquerade.
The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence of his Orange
livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of Dan's footmen. Let
him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory of the glorious
hip, hip, hurra's he has shouted in the exuberance of his loyalty, and
straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor O'Connell, proceeding
in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks who are these plump
gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and well-rounded calves, whose
haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders, and he is told that he knew
them of old, as wearing dusky black coats and leather shorts; pleasant
fellows in those days, and well versed in punch and polemics. The
hackney-coaches have been cut down into covered cars, and the “bulky”
watchmen reduced to new police. Let him turn which way he will--let it
be his pleasure to hear the popular preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or
the scientific lecturer, and if his memory be only as accurate as his
hearing, he will confess “time's changes;” and when he learns who are
deemed the fashionable entertainers of the day--at whose boards sit
lords and baronets most frequently, he will exclaim with the poet--
“Pritchard 's genteel, and Garrick 's six feet high.”
Well, well, it's bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with
what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the
universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the gnarled
and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is exactly the
piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the jagged, ill-formed
rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is invaluable in a rustic
arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle, dull lawyers make excellent
judges, and the people who cannot speak within the limits of Lindley
Murray, are admirable public writers and excellent critics; and as
Doctor Pangloss was a good man “because he knew what wickedness was,” so
nothing contributes to the detection of faults in others, like the daily
practice of their commission by ourselves; and never can any man predict
failure to another with such eloquence and impressiveness, as when he
himself has experienced what it is to be damned.
Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to follow it out
further; but for the present I must not--so now, to try back: I will
suppose my absentee friend to have passed his “day in town,” amazed and
surprised at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder him
with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with that game of cross
corners by which every one seems to have changed his place; nor attempt
any explanation of the mysterious doctrine by which the party which
affects the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult in
any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the government
contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and absurd
comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of our
best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago, and with
respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will introduce
him to an evening party--a society where the _élite_ of Dublin are
assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the more brilliant
blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and exalted men are
met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will appear to him to
have been no alteration nor change here. Even the very faces he will
remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago: some pursy gentlemen
with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced before, are now grown
whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured in the quadrille,
have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the gay, laughing,
light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at supper, is become a
rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned pre-occupation,
much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward Sugden; the wild,
reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in the “Shades,” is now a
soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his imitation of the two great
leaders in his art, and alternately assuming the “Epic or the Lake”
school of physic. All this may amuse, but cannot amaze him: such is
the natural current of events, and he ought to be prepared for it.
The evening wears on, however; the frigid politeness and ceremonious
distance which we have for some years back been borrowing from our
neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer natures pretty much as a
suit of plate armour would a _danseuse_ in a ballet--this begins to wear
off, and melt away before the genial heat of Irish temperament; “the
mirth and fun grow fast and furious;” and a new dance is called for.
What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the horror, of our friend to
hear the band strike up a tune which he only remembered as associated
with everything base, low, and disgraceful; which, in the days of his
“libertine youth,” he only heard at riotous carousals and roistering
festivals; whose every bar is associated with words--ay, there's the
rub--which, in his maturer years, he blushes to have listened to! he
stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he forgets that the young
lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of the air, is ignorant of
its history; he watches her sparkling eye and animated gesture, without
remembering that _she_ knows nothing off the associations at which her
partner is, perhaps, smirking; he sees her _vis-à-vis_ exchanging looks
with his friend, that denote _their_ estimation of the music; and in
very truth, so puzzled is he, he begins to distrust his senses. The air
ceases, and is succeeded by another no less known, no less steeped
in the same class of associations, and so to the conclusion. These
remembrances of past wickedness go on “crescendo,” till the _finale_
caps the whole with a melody, to which even the restraints of society
are scarcely able to prevent a humming accompaniment of concurring
voices, and--these are the Irish Quadrilles! What can account for this?
What special pleading will find an argument in its favour? When Wesley
objected to all the good music being given to the devil, he only excused
his adoption of certain airs which, in their popular form, had never
been connected with religious words and feelings; and in his selection
of them, was rigidly mindful to take such only as in their character
became easily convertible to his purpose: he never enlisted those to
which, by an unhappy destiny, vulgarising and indelicate associations
have been so connected as to become inseparably identified; and although
the object is widely different, I cannot see how, for the purposes of
social enjoyment, we should have diverged from his example. If we wished
a set of Irish quadrilles, how many good and suitable airs had we not
ready at our hands? Is not our national music proverbially rich, and in
the very character of music that would suit us? Are there not airs in
hundreds, whose very names are linked with pleasing and poetic memories,
admirably adapted to the purpose? Why commit the choice, as in this
case, to a foreigner who knew nothing of them, nor of us? And why
permit him to introduce into our drawing-rooms, through the means of a
quadrille band, a class of reminiscences which suggest levity in young
men, and shame in old ones? No, no: if the Irish quadrilles are to be
fashionable, let it be in those classic precincts where their merits
are best appreciated, and let Monsieur Jullien's popularity be great in
Barrack-street!