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Title: The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh: The Irish Sketch Book
Author: Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863
Language: English
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THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
[Illustration]
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH
AND
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
BY
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
_With Illustrations by the Author_
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902
CONTENTS
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
PAGE
An Invasion of France 1
A Caution to Travellers 12
The Fêtes of July 27
On the French School of Painting 35
The Painter’s Bargain 51
Cartouche 64
On some French Fashionable Novels 76
A Gambler’s Death 95
Napoleon and his System 104
The Story of Mary Ancel 116
Beatrice Merger 133
Caricatures and Lithography in Paris 139
Little Poinsinet 162
The Devil’s Wager 175
Madame Sand and the New Apocalypse 185
The Case of Peytel 208
French Dramas and Melodramas 233
Meditations at Versailles 251
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
PAGE
CHAPTER I
A Summer Day in Dublin, or there and thereabouts 271
CHAPTER II
A Country-house in Kildare--Sketches of an Irish Family and Farm 291
CHAPTER III
From Carlow to Waterford 300
CHAPTER IV
From Waterford to Cork 310
CHAPTER V
Cork--The Agricultural Show--Father Mathew 319
CHAPTER VI
Cork--The Ursuline Convent 327
CHAPTER VII
Cork 334
CHAPTER VIII
From Cork to Bantry; with an Account of the City of Skibbereen 345
CHAPTER IX
Rainy Days at Glengariff 355
CHAPTER X
From Glengariff to Killarney 362
CHAPTER XI
Killarney--Stag-hunting on the Lake 370
CHAPTER XII
Killarney--The Races--Mucross 377
CHAPTER XIII
Tralee--Listowel--Tarbert 385
CHAPTER XIV
Limerick 391
CHAPTER XV
Galway--Kilroy’s Hotel--Galway Night’s Entertainments--First
Night: An Evening with Captain Freeny 403
CHAPTER XVI
More Rain in Galway--A Walk there--And the Second Galway
Night’s Entertainment 419
CHAPTER XVII
From Galway to Ballynahinch 442
CHAPTER XVIII
Roundstone Petty Sessions 452
CHAPTER XIX
Clifden to Westport 456
CHAPTER XX
Westport 462
CHAPTER XXI
The Pattern at Croagh-Patrick 466
CHAPTER XXII
From Westport to Ballinasloe 470
CHAPTER XXIII
Ballinasloe to Dublin 474
CHAPTER XXIV
Two Days in Wicklow 478
CHAPTER XXV
Country Meetings in Kildare--Meath--Drogheda 494
CHAPTER XXVI
Dundalk 506
CHAPTER XXVII
Newry, Armagh, Belfast--From Dundalk to Newry 519
CHAPTER XXVIII
Belfast to the Causeway 529
CHAPTER XXIX
The Giant’s Causeway--Coleraine--Portrush 538
CHAPTER XXX
Peg of Limavaddy 550
CHAPTER XXXI
Templemoyle--Derry 553
CHAPTER XXXII
Dublin at last 565
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
DEDICATORY LETTER
TO
M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC.
27 RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS
SIR,--It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise
virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the
admiration and example of his fellow-men.
Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a
small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you
were met by a statement from your creditor, that an immediate settlement
of your bill would be extremely inconvenient to him, your reply was,
‘Mon Dieu, sir, let not that annoy you; if you want money, as a
gentleman often does in a strange country, I have a thousand-franc note
at my house which is quite at your service.’
History or experience, sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions that
can be compared to yours,--an offer like this from a stranger and a
tailor seems to me so astonishing,--that you must pardon me for thus
making your virtue public, and acquainting the English nation with your
merit and your name. Let me add, sir, that you live on the first floor;
that your cloths and fit are excellent, and your charges moderate and
just; and, as a humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these
volumes at your feet.--Your obliged, faithful servant,
M. A. TITMARSH.
About half of the sketches in these volumes have already appeared in
print, in various periodical works. A part of the text of one tale, and
the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French originals; the
other stories, which are, in the main, true, have been written upon
facts and characters, that came within the Author’s observation during a
residence in Paris.
* * * * *
As the remaining papers relate to public events, which occurred during
the same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has ventured to
give his publication the title which it bears.
LONDON,
_July 1, 1840_.
[Illustration: EXPLANATION OF THE ALLEGORY
Number 1’s an ancient Carlist, Number 8 a Paris Artist,
Gloomily there stands between them, Number 2 a Bonapartist;
In the middle is King Louis-Philip standing at his ease,
Guarded by a loyal Grocer, and a Sergeant of Police;
4’s the people in a passion, 6 a Priest of pious mien,
5 a Gentleman of Fashion, copied from a Magazine.
]
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
AN INVASION OF FRANCE
‘Cæsar venit in Galliam summâ diligentiâ.’
About twelve o’clock, just as the bell of the packet is tolling a
farewell to London Bridge, and warning off the blackguard-boys with the
newspapers, who have been shoving _Times_, _Herald_, _Penny Paul-Pry_,
_Penny Satirist_, _Flare-up_, and other abominations into your
face--just as the bell has tolled, and the Jews, strangers,
people-taking-leave-of-their-families, and blackguard-boys aforesaid are
making a rush for the narrow plank which conducts from the paddle-box of
the _Emerald_ steamboat unto the quay--you perceive, staggering down
Thames Street, those two hackney-coaches, for the arrival of which you
have been praying, trembling, hoping, despairing, swearing--sw----, I
beg your pardon, I believe the word is not used in polite company--and
transpiring, for the last half-hour. Yes, at last, the two coaches draw
near, and from thence an awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags,
nurserymaids, hat-boxes, band-boxes, bonnet-boxes, desks, cloaks, and an
affectionate wife, are discharged on the quay.
‘Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane,’ screams that worthy woman, who has
been for a fortnight employed in getting this tremendous body of troops
and baggage into marching order. ‘Hicks! Hicks! for Heaven’s sake mind
the babies!’--‘George--Edward, sir, if you go near that porter with the
trunk, he will tumble down and kill you, you naughty boy!--My love, _do_
take the cloaks and umbrellas, and give a hand to Fanny and Lucy; and I
wish you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear; they want fifteen
shillings, and count the packages, love--twenty-seven packages,--and
bring little Flo; where’s little Flo?--Flo! Flo!’--(Flo comes sneaking
in; she has been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier,
that sneaks off similarly, landward).
As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a
danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a
ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front
of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her
courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always,
I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill,
eager, and ill-humoured, before and during a great family move of this
nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother
leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary
nursemaids, are safe in the cabin; you have counted twenty-six of the
twenty-seven parcels, and have them on board; and that horrid man on the
paddle-box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW,
SIR!--says, _Now, sir_, no more.
I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy
among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any of
the movements of the vessel. When these private arrangements are made,
you find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, sweet
whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for
the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations of ship-masts,
and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the
ships, the barges salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious
and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, ‘Ease her, stop her!’
which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes out,
‘Ease her, stop her!’ in echo: the deck is crowded with groups of
figures, and the sun shines over all.
The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, ‘Lunch, ladies
and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?’
About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great, red, raw Cheshire
cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced,
and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in
individuals of their size and stature.
The decks have a strange look; the people on them, that is. Wives,
elderly stout husbands, nursemaids, and children predominate, of course,
in English steamboats. Such may be considered as the distinctive marks
of the English gentleman at three or four and forty: two or three of
such groups have pitched their camps on the deck. Then there are a
number of young men, of whom three or four have allowed their moustaches
to _begin_ to grow since last Friday; for they are going ‘on the
Continent,’ and they look, therefore, as if their upper lips were
smeared with snuff.
A _danseuse_ from the opera is on her way to Paris. Followed by her
_bonne_ and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the
real dancer fashion, and ogling all around. How happy the two young
Englishmen are, who can speak French, and make up to her: and how all
criticise her points and paces! Yonder is a group of young ladies, who
are going to Paris to learn how to be governesses: those two splendidly
dressed ladies are milliners from the Rue Richelieu, who have just
brought over, and disposed of, their cargo of summer fashions. Here sits
the Rev. Mr. Snodgrass with his pupils, whom he is conducting to his
establishment, near Boulogne, where, in addition to a classical and
mathematical education (washing included), the young gentlemen have the
benefit of learning French among _the French themselves_. Accordingly,
the young gentlemen are locked up in a great rickety house, two miles
from Boulogne, and never see a soul, except the French usher and the
cook.
Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill--(I never
shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little, dark, dirty,
six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their
pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly anointing
themselves with some charm against sea-sickness!)--a few Frenchmen are
there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to
the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that
the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the
bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and
wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could
fancy the Mounseers formidable at sea.
There are, of course, many Jews on board. Who ever travelled by
steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or sledge
without meeting some of the wandering race?
By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck
again, and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes tea;
and then there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses as a
preventive against what may happen; and about this time you pass the
Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups on deck
disappear, and your wife, giving you an alarmed look, descends, with her
little ones, to the ladies’ cabin, and you see the steward and his boys
issuing from their den under the paddle-box, with each a heap of round
tin vases, like those which are called, I believe, in America,
_expectoratoons_, only these are larger.
The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than
ever--ridge by ridge of long white rock passes away. ‘That’s Ramsgit,’
says the man at the helm; and, presently, ‘That there’s Deal--it’s
dreadful fallen off since the war;’ and ‘That’s Dover, round that there
pint, only you can’t see it;’ and, in the meantime, the sun has plumped
his hot face into the water, and the moon has shown hers as soon as ever
his back is turned, and Mrs. ---- (the wife in general) has brought up
her children and self from the horrid cabin, in which, she says, it is
impossible to breathe; and the poor little wretches are, by the
officious stewardess and smart steward (expectoratoonifer), accommodated
with a heap of blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which
they crawl, as best they may, and from the heaving heap of which are,
during the rest of the voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and sounds
of puking woe!
Dear, dear Maria! Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers and
brutal wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the insolence
of haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their demands at
least eighteenpence? Is this the woman at whose voice servants tremble;
at the sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and mayhap the parlour, is
in order? Look at her now, prostrate, prostrate--no strength has she to
speak, scarce power to push to her youngest one--her suffering,
struggling Rosa,--to push to her the--the instrumentoon!
In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the
passengers, who have their own woes (you yourself--for how can you help
_them_?--you are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is up with
you), are looking on indifferent--one man there is who has been watching
you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your helpless family the
tenderness that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and you have
been conversing with him, in the course of the morning, in
French--which, he says, you speak remarkably well, like a native, in
fact, and then in English (which, after all, you find, is more
convenient). What can express your gratitude to this gentleman for all
his goodness towards your family and yourself?--you talk to him, he has
served under the Emperor, and is, for all that, sensible, modest, and
well informed. He speaks, indeed, of his countrymen almost with
contempt, and readily admits the superiority of a Briton, on the seas
and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a
foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This
distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are
going?--where you stop?--if you have a great quantity of luggage on
board?--and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes
you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the
monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up.
Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you
find him now, perhaps (with characteristic ingratitude), something of a
bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the children and their
mamma. At last a Boulogne light comes in sight (you see it over the bows
of the vessel, when, having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks swiftly
down), Boulogne harbour is in sight, and the foreigner says:
The distinguished foreigner says, says he--‘Sare, eef you af no ‘otel, I
sall recommend you, milor, to ze ‘Otel Betfort, in ze Quay, sare, close
to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose. Good bets and fine garten,
sare; table-d’hôte, sare, à cinq-heures; breakfast, sare, in French or
English style;--I am the commissionaire, sare, and vill see to your
loggish.’
...Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking, French
humbug!--Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his
business; but at twelve o’clock at night, when the voyage is over, and
the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to go, with a wife
and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to stand, and longing for
bed, you find yourself, somehow, in the Hôtel Bedford (and you can’t be
better), and smiling chambermaids carry off your children to snug beds;
while smart waiters produce for your honour--a cold fowl, say, and a
salad, and a bottle of Bordeaux and seltzer-water.
* * * * *
The morning comes--I don’t know a pleasanter feeling than that of waking
with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you may have
made the voyage a dozen times) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a
very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red _percale_; the windows
are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are
little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet
all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be--the sun shines brighter
than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and
what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the
courtyard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is
going to Paris _en poste_, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier,
the postillion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls
out for ‘Quatre biftecks aux pommes, pour le trente-trois’--(O my
countrymen! I love your tastes and your ways!)--the chambermaid is
laughing, and says, ‘Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!’ (what can they be
about?)--a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and says,
‘Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo pah?’ He has
been ringing for half an hour--the last energetic appeal succeeds, and
shortly he is enabled to descend to the coffee-room, where, with three
hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes what
he calls his first _French_ breakfast.
It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the little
French fishermen’s children are beautiful, and the little French
soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge _pompons_ on their
caps, and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their
littleness, far more military and more intelligent than the heavy louts
one has seen swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a
crowd of bare-legged fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman
who is screaming ‘Fleuve du Tage,’ at an inn-window, to a harp, and
there are the little gamins mocking _him_. Lo! these seven young ladies,
with red hair and green veils, they are from neighbouring Albion, and
going to bathe. Here come three Englishmen, _habitués_ evidently of the
place,--dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress,
another has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of
guiltless spurs--all have as much hair on the face as nature or art can
supply, and all wear their hats very much on one side. Believe me, there
is on the face of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard
like one of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,--so
ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and
depraved.
But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?--Take things coolly. As the
poet has observed, ‘Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;’ with
such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don’t give us, cries the
patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else can
do that), but rather continue in that good-humoured, facetious,
descriptive style, with which your letter has commenced. Your remark,
sir, is perfectly just, and does honour to your head and excellent
heart.
There is little need to give a description of the good town of Boulogne;
which, haute and basse, with the new lighthouse and the new harbour, and
the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the convents, and the number of
English and French residents, and the pillar erected in honour of the
grand _Armée d’Angleterre_, so called because it _didn’t_ go to England,
have all been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned
Dr. Millingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it
is to hear the stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon’s time argue how that
audacious Corsican _would_ have marched to London, after swallowing
Nelson and all his gunboats, but for _cette malheureuse guerre
d’Espagne_ and _cette glorieuse campagne d’Autriche_, which the gold of
Pitt caused to be raised at the Emperors tail, in order to call him off
from the helpless country in his front. Some Frenchmen go farther still,
and vow that in Spain they were never beaten at all; indeed, if you read
in the _Biographie des Hommes du Jour_, article ‘Soult,’ you will fancy
that, with the exception of the disaster at Vittoria, the campaigns in
Spain and Portugal were a series of triumphs. Only, by looking at a map,
it is observable that Vimieiro is a mortal long way from Toulouse,
where, at the end of certain years of victories, we somehow find the
honest Marshal. And what then?--he went to Toulouse for the purpose of
beating the English there, to be sure;--a known fact, on which comment
would be superfluous. However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate;
let us break off further palaver, and away at once....
(During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay his
bill at the hôtel at Boulogne, to mount the diligence of Laffitte,
Caillard, and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much
jingling of harness-bells and screaming of postillions.)
* * * * *
The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to remove
the greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks during the
journey. She withdraws the ‘Madras’ of dubious hue which has bound her
head for the last five-and-twenty hours, and replaces it by the black
velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your nose, has hung from the
diligence roof since your departure from Boulogne. The old lady in the
opposite corner, who has been sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully of
anisette, arranges her little parcels in that immense basket of
abominations which all old women carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth
and eyes with her dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap
into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming headpiece,
covered with withered artificial flowers and crumpled tags of ribbon;
she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her
handkerchief before her mouth:--her eyes roll strangely about for an
instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has been
getting her teeth ready, which had lain in her basket among the bonbons,
pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake, lozenges, prayer-books,
peppermint-water, copper-money, and false hair--stowed away there during
the voyage. The Jewish gentleman, who has been so attentive to the
milliner during the journey, and is traveller and bagman by profession,
gathers together his various goods. The sallow-faced English lad, who
has been drunk ever since we left Boulogne yesterday, and is coming to
Paris to pursue the study of medicine, swears that he rejoices to leave
the cursed diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and d--d glad
that the d--d voyage is so nearly over. ‘Enfin!’ says your neighbour,
yawning, and inserting an elbow in the mouth of his right-and left-hand
companion, ‘nous voilà.’
NOUS VOILÀ!--We are at Paris! This must account for the removal of the
milliner’s curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady’s teeth.--Since
the last _relais_, the diligence has been travelling with extraordinary
speed. The postillion cracks his terrible whip, and screams shrilly. The
conductor blows incessantly on his horn, the bells of the harness, the
bumping and ringing of the wheels and chains, and the clatter of the
great hoofs of the heavy snorting Norman stallions, have wondrously
increased within this the last ten minutes; and the diligence, which has
been proceeding hitherto at the rate of a league an hour, now dashes
gallantly forward, as if it would traverse at least six miles in the
same space of time. Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at St.
Stephen’s--he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the end. He
gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; at the close,
again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; he cracketh the
whip of his satire; he shouts the shout of his patriotism; and, urging
his eloquence to its roughest canter, awakens the sleepers, and inspires
the weary, until men say, What a wondrous orator! What a capital coach!
We will ride henceforth in it, and in no other!
But, behold us at Paris! The diligence has reached a rude-looking gate,
or _grille_, flanked by two lodges; the French kings of old made their
entry by this gate; some of the hottest battles of the late revolution
were fought before it. At present, it is blocked by carts and peasants,
and a busy crowd of men, in green, examining the packages before they
enter, probing the straw with long needles. It is the Barrier of St.
Denis, and the green men are the customs’ men of the city of Paris. If
you are a countryman, who would introduce a cow into the metropolis, the
city demands twenty-four francs for such a privilege: if you have a
hundredweight of tallow-candles, you must, previously, disburse three
francs: if a drove of hogs, nine francs per whole hog: but upon these
subjects Mr. Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and other writers have already
enlightened the public. In the present instance, after a momentary
pause, one of the men in green mounts by the side of the conductor, and
the ponderous vehicle pursues its journey.
The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents a
strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where
everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were
painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and black sky.
Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and colour. Before
you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of _gutter_--not a
very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each
side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some
as high as the Tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is
their favourite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give
a strange air of rude gaiety to the looks. Milkwomen, with a little
crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling
the chief material of the Parisian _café-au-lait_. Gay wineshops,
painted red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, are
filled with workmen taking their morning’s draught. That gloomy-looking
prison on your right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for
Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now
occupy that mansion; they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread
of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of
all the other prisoners; they make hooks and eyes and phosphorus-boxes,
and they attend chapel every Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure
they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the Legislature to
superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor
creatures continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago,
and are at the Porte St. Denis itself.
There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass; it commemorates
some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in
ponderous allegories--nymphs and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with
fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch
Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion
revived, and overcame the man some years afterwards; but of this fact,
singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then,
_round_ the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect
of triumphal arches), you cross the Boulevard, which gives a glimpse of
trees and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the
Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and
the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and
the great vehicle clatters into the courtyard, where its journey is
destined to conclude.
If there was a noise before of screaming postillions and cracked horns,
it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are in
a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the father of diligences.
Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute--no light affairs,
like your English vehicles, but ponderous machines, containing fifteen
passengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on
the roof: others are loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming
or departing;--bustling porters and screaming commissionaires. These
latter seize you as you descend from your place,--twenty cards are
thrust into your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable
swiftness, shriek into your ear, ‘Dis way, sare; are you for ze Otel of
Rhin? Hôtel de l’Amirauté!--Hôtel Bristol, sare?--Monsieur, l’Hôtel de
Lille? Sacr-rrré nom de Dieu, laissez passer ce petit Monsieur! Ow mosh
loggish ave you, sare?’
[Illustration]
And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of
Titmarsh. If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love English
comfort, clean rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would have
plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you be?)
concerning wine; if, in this foreign country, you _will_ have your
English companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-and-water--do
not listen to any of these commissioner fellows, but with your best
English accent shout out boldly, MEURICE! and straightway a man will
step forward to conduct you to the Rue de Rivoli.
Here you find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for instance,
for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled eggs, or
grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a society which
will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the Universities;
young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters, with fat
father and mother; officers of dragoons, and lawyers’ clerks. The last
time we dined at Meurice’s we hobbed and nobbed with no less a person
than Mr. Moses, the celebrated bailiff of Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham
was on his right, and a clergyman’s lady, with a train of white-haired
girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken with the diamond rings of the
fascinating stranger!
It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, especially
if you spend your days reading the English papers at Galignani’s, as
many of our foreign tourists do.
But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose. If,--to continue on
the subject of hotel-choosing,--if you love quiet, heavy bills, and the
best _table-d’hôte_ in the city, go, O stranger! to the Hôtel des
Princes; it is close to the Boulevard, and convenient for Frascati’s.
The Hôtel Mirabeau possesses scarcely less attraction; but of this you
will find, in Mr. Bulwer’s _Autobiography of Pelham_, a faithful and
complete account. Lawson’s Hotel has likewise its merits, as also the
Hôtel de Lille, which may be described as a ‘second chop’ Meurice.
If you are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the pleasant
art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the Hôtel
Corneille, near the Odéon, or others of its species; there are many
where you can live royally (until you economise by going into lodgings)
on four francs a day; and where, if by any strange chance you are
desirous for a while to get rid of your countrymen, you will find that
they scarcely ever penetrate.
But, above all O, my countrymen! shun boarding-houses, especially if you
have ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the characters of
the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and their
mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad
dinners; and, secondly, bad company. If you play cards, you are very
likely playing with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a----
person with whom you had better have nothing to do.
* * * * *
NOTE (which ladies are requested not to read).--In one of these
establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a friend
of the writer lived. A lady, who had passed for some time as the wife of
one of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and name, her original
husband remaining in the house, and saluting her by her new title.
A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS
A million dangers and snares await the traveller, as soon as he issues
out of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted; and as each man
cannot do better than relate such events as have happened in the course
of his own experience, and may keep the unwary from the path of danger,
let us take this, the very earliest opportunity, of imparting to the
public a little of the wisdom which we painfully have acquired.
And first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be remarked,
that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of native and exotic
swindlers than are to be found in any other European nursery. What young
Englishman that visits it, but has not determined, in his heart, to have
a little share of the gaieties that go on--just for once, just to see
what they are like? How many, when the horrible gambling-dens were open,
did resist a sight of them?--nay, was not a young fellow rather
flattered by a dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went, fondly
pretending that he should see ‘French society,’ in the persons of
certain Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place?
My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although, perhaps, a
little weaker and simpler than his neighbours; and coming to Paris with
exactly the same notions that bring many others of the British youth to
that capital, events befell him there, last winter, which are strictly
true, and shall here be narrated, by way of warning to all.
Pog, it must be premised, is a City man, who travels in drugs for a
couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, drives
his own gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the metropolis,
a remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man. Pogson’s only fault
is too great an attachment to the fair:--‘The sex,’ as he says often,
‘will be his ruin;’ the fact is, that Pog never travels without a _Don
Juan_ under his driving-cushion, and is a pretty-looking young fellow
enough.
Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in that
city that his love of the sex had like to have cost him dear. He worked
his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the towns on his
route, rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares as his master
dealt in (‘the sweetest sample of castor-oil, smelt like a nosegay--went
off like wildfire--hogshead and a-half at Rochester, eight-and-twenty
gallons at Canterbury,’ and so on), and crossed to Calais, and thence
voyaged to Paris in the coupé of the diligence. He paid for two places,
too, although a single man, and the reason shall now be made known.
Dining at the _table-d’hôte_ at Quillacq’s--it is the best inn on the
continent of Europe--our little traveller had the happiness to be placed
next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the extreme pink of
the nobility. A large lady, in black satin, with eyes and hair as black
as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles, sable tippet, worked
pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings on each of her plump white
fingers. Her cheeks were as pink as the finest Chinese rouge could make
them: Pog knew the article; he travelled in it. Her lips were as red as
the ruby lip-salve: she used the very best, that was clear.
She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and
talking perpetually of _mes trente-deux ans_); and Pogson, the wicked
young dog! who professed not to care for young misses, saying they smelt
so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that the lady was one of
_his_ beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us about her, he said, ‘She’s
a slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg’lar good one; _one of my sort_!’ And
such was Pogson’s credit in all commercial rooms, that one of _his_ sort
was considered to pass all other sorts.
During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly polite and attentive to
the lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the way with
the best-bred English on their first arrival ‘on the Continent,’ all his
impressions regarding the sights and persons he had seen. Such remarks
having been made during half an hour’s ramble about the ramparts and
town, and in the course of a walk down to the custom-house, and a
confidential communication with the commissionaire, must be, doubtless,
very valuable to Frenchmen in their own country: and the lady listened
to Pogson’s opinions, not only with benevolent attention, but actually,
she said, with pleasure and delight. Mr. Pogson said that there was no
such thing as good meat in France, and that’s why they cooked their
victuals in this queer way: he had seen many soldiers parading about the
place, and expressed a true Englishman’s abhorrence of an armed force;
not that he feared such fellows as these--little whipper-snappers--our
men would eat them. Hereupon the lady admitted that our Guards were
angels, but that Monsieur must not be too hard upon the French; ‘her
father was a General of the Emperor.’
Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself, at the notion that he was
dining with a General’s daughter, and instantly ordered a bottle of
champagne to keep up his consequence.
‘Mrs. Bironn, ma’am,’ said he, for he had heard the waiter call her by
some such name, ‘if you _will_ accept a glass of champagne, ma’am,
you’ll do me, I’m sure, great _h_onour: they say it’s very good, and a
precious sight cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too--not that
I care for money. Mrs. Bironn, ma’am, your health, ma’am.’
The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine.
‘Har you any relation, ma’am, if I may make so bold; har you anyways
connected with the family of our immortal bard?’
‘Sir, I beg your pardon.’
‘Don’t mention it, ma’am: but Bi_ronn_ and _By_ron are hevidently the
same names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you
might be related to his lordship: his horigin, ma’am, was of French
extraction:’ and here Pogson began to repeat:
‘Hare thy heyes like thy mother’s, my fair child,
Hada! sole daughter of my ouse and art.’
‘Oh!’ said the lady, laughing, ‘you speak of _Lor_ Byron.’
‘Hauthor of _Don Juan_, _Child Arold_, and _Cain, a Mystery,’_ said
Pogson: ‘I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la Bironn, took
the liberty of hasking whether you were connected with his
lordship;--that’s hall;’ and my friend here grew dreadfully red, and
began twiddling his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining very
eagerly the contents of his plate.
‘Oh no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baroness; my husband was Baron,
and I am Baroness.’
‘What! ‘ave I the honour--I beg your pardon, ma’am--is your ladyship a
Baroness, and I not know it; pray excuse me for calling you ma’am.’
The Baroness smiled most graciously--with such a look as Juno cast upon
unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends upon
him--the Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black velvet
bag, drew from it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory card-case
extracted a glazed card, printed in gold; on it was engraved a coronet,
and under the coronet the words--
BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL,
NÉE DE MELVAL-NORVAL.
_Rue Taitbout_.
[Illustration: MR. POGSON’S TEMPTATION]
The grand Pitt diamond--the Queen’s own star of the garter--a sample of
otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more curiously,
or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness.
Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocket-book: and when
he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of the Baroness de
Florval-Delval, née de Melval-Norval, gazing upon him with friendly and
serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled through Pogson’s blood: he
felt himself to be the very happiest fellow ‘on the Continent.’
But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly and
elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of his
conversation: he was too much frightened at the presence he was in, and
contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep attention, and
ejaculations of ‘Yes, my lady,’ and ‘No, your ladyship,’ for some
minutes after the discovery had been made. Pogson piqued himself on his
breeding: ‘I hate the aristocracy,’ he said, ‘but that’s no reason why I
shouldn’t behave like a gentleman.’
A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the
ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in
Pogson’s champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room,
when the happy bagman had the delight of a _tête-à-tête_. The Baroness
did not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was comfortable,
and she had ordered none in her apartment. Might Pogson give her one
more glass of champagne, or would her ladyship prefer ‘something hot.’
Her ladyship gravely said, she never took _anything_ hot! ‘Some
champagne, then, a leetle drop?’ She would! she would! Oh, gods! how
Pogson’s hand shook as he filled and offered her the glass!
What took place during the rest of the evening had better be described
by Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to publish his
letter:--
‘QUILLACQ’S HOTEL (_pronounced_ KILLYAX), CALAIS.
‘DEAR TIT,--I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or,
rather, yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a
wonderful adventure that has just befallen me. A woman, in course;
that’s always the case with _me_, you know: but oh, Tit! if you
_could_ but see her! Of the first family in France, the
Florval-Melvals, beautiful as an angel, and no more caring for
money than I do for split peas.
‘I’ll tell you how it all occurred. Everybody in France, you know,
dines at the ordinary--it’s quite distangy to do so. There was only
three of us to-day, however,--the Baroness, me, and a gent, who
never spoke a word; and we didn’t want him to, neither: do you mark
that?
‘You know my way with the women; champagne’s the thing; make ‘em
drink, make ‘em talk;--make ‘em talk, make ‘em do anything. So I
orders a bottle, as if for myself; and, “Ma’am,” says I, “will you
take a glass of Sham--just one?” Take it she did--for you know it’s
quite distangy here: everybody dines at the _table-d’hôte_, and
everybody accepts everybody’s wine. Bob Irons, who travels in
linen, on our circuit, told me that he had made some slap-up
acquaintances among the genteelest people at Paris, nothing but by
offering them Sham.
‘Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses--the
old fellow goes--we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military
man, she said: is it not singular that so many people should?), and
by ten o’clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her
whole history, knew where she came from, and where she was going.
Leave me alone with ‘em; I can find out any woman’s history in half
an hour.
‘And where do you think she _is_ going? to Paris, to be sure: she
has her seat in what they call the coopy (though you’re not near so
cooped in it as in our coaches. I’ve been to the office and seen
one of ‘em). She has her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds
_three_; so what does Sam Pogson do?--he goes and takes the other
two. Ain’t I up to a thing or two? Oh no, not the least; but I
shall have her to myself the whole of the way.
‘We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches
you: please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind
the expense. And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you come
down to the coach, call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would--it
sounds well travelling, you know; and when she asked me if I was an
officer, I couldn’t say no. Adieu, then, my dear fellow, till
Monday, and vive le joy, as they say. The Baroness says I speak
French charmingly, she talks English as well as you or I.--Your
affectionate friend, S. POGSON.’
This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an
apartment for Mr. Pogson as beseemed a gentleman of his rank in the
world and the army. At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to the
diligence office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine which
contained him and his lovely Baroness.
Those who have much frequented the society of gentlemen of his
profession (and what more delightful?) must be aware that, when all the
rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty
hours’ coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and as spruce as when he
started; having within himself a thousand little conveniences for the
voyage, which common travellers neglect. Pogson had a little portable
toilet, of which he had not failed to take advantage, and with his
long, curling, flaxen hair, flowing under a sealskin cap, with a gold
tassel, with a blue-and-gold satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet
waistcoat, a light green cut-away coat, a pair of barred
brick-dust-coloured pantaloons, and a neat mackintosh, presented,
altogether, as elegant and _distingué_ an appearance as any one could
desire. He had put on a clean collar at breakfast, and a pair of white
kids as he entered the barrier, and looked, as he rushed into my arms,
more like a man stepping out of a bandbox than one descending from a
vehicle that has just performed one of the laziest, dullest, flattest,
stalest, dirtiest journeys in Europe.
To my surprise, there were _two_ ladies in the coach with my friend, and
not _one_, as I had expected. One of these, a stout female, carrying
sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman’s wraps, was evidently a
maid-servant; the other, in black, was Pogson’s fair one, evidently. I
could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sallow face,--of a dusky
nightcap flapping over the curl-papers,--but these were hidden by a lace
veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which the crowning birds-of-paradise
were evidently in a moulting state. She was encased in many shawls and
wrappers; she put, hesitatingly, a pretty little foot out of the
carriage--Pogson was by her side in an instant, and, gallantly putting
one of his white kids round her waist, aided this interesting creature
to descend. I saw, by her walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my
little Pogson was a lost man.
After some brief parley between them--in which it was charming to hear
how my friend Samuel _would_ speak what he called French to a lady who
could not understand one syllable of his jargon--the mutual
hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a
graceful French curtsey. ‘_Ad_you!’ said Samuel, and waved his lily
hand. ‘_Adyou-addimang._’
A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach
with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the imperial, here
passed us, and greeted me with a ‘How d’ye do?’ He had shouldered his
own little valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of
commissionaires, who would have fain spared him the trouble.
‘Do you know that chap?’ says Pogson; ‘surly fellow, ain’t he?’
‘The kindest man in existence,’ answered I; ‘all the world knows Major
British.’
‘He’s a Major, is he?--why, that’s the fellow that dined with us at
Killyax’s; it’s lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he
mightn’t have liked it, you know:’ and then Sam fell into a
reverie;--what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
‘Did you ever _see_ such a foot and ankle?’ said Sam, after sitting for
some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene; his hands in his
pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.
‘_Isn’t_ she a slap-up woman, eh, now?’ pursued he; and began
enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a
favourite animal.
‘You seem to have gone a pretty length already,’ said I, ‘by promising
to visit her to morrow.’
‘A good length?--I believe you. Leave _me_ alone for that.’
‘But I thought you were only to be two in the _coupé_, you wicked
rogue.’
‘Two in the _coupy_? Oh! ah! yes, you know--why, that is, I didn’t know
she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman
travelling without one!), and couldn’t, in course, refuse, when she
asked me to let the maid in.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Couldn’t, you know, as a man of _h_onour; but I made up for all that,’
said Pogson, winking slily, and putting his hand to his little bunch of
a nose, in a very knowing way.
‘You did, and how?’
‘Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and
my back’s half broke, I can tell you:’ and thus having depicted his
happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was
to lodge during his stay in Paris.
The next day, at five, we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and
described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as ‘slap-up.’ She had
received him quite like an old friend; treated him to _eau sucrée_, of
which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer: and actually asked
him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous
youth’s brow, and I inquired still further.
‘Why,’ said he, with a sigh, ‘I thought she was a widow; and, hang it!
who should come in but her husband the Baron; a big fellow, sir, with a
blue coat, a red ribbing, and _such_ a pair of mustachios!’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘he didn’t turn you out, I suppose?’
‘Oh no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said that he
respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,--said he had
fought in Spain against us,--and made me welcome.’
‘What could you want more?’
Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of
human nature had been there to read into this little bagman’s heart, it
would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered
soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young
scoundrel was concocting.
I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter of the
Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a fashionable fellow
as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, and a new city to see,
should be always wandering to my dull quarters; so that, although he did
not make his appearance for some time, he must not be accused of any
lukewarmness of friendship on that score.
He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once I had the good
fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as
pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in the Champs
Élysées. ‘That’s _another_ tiptop chap,’ said he, when we met, at
length. ‘What do you think of an Earl’s son, my boy? Honourable Tom
Ringwood, son of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you think of that, eh?’
I thought he was getting into very good society. Sam was a dashing
fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr.
Ringwood at the Baron’s, and they’d been to the play together; and the
honourable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being
well-to-do _in a certain quarter_; and he had had a game of billiards
with the Baron, at the _Estaminy_, ‘a very distangy place, where you
smoke,’ said Sam; ‘quite select, and frequented by the tiptop nobility;’
and they were as thick as peas in a shell; and they were to dine that
day at Ringwood’s, and sup, the next night, with the Baroness.
‘I think the chaps down the road will stare,’ said Sam, ‘when they hear
how I’ve been coming it.’ And stare, no doubt, they would; for it is
certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. Pogson’s
advantages.
The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping together,
and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam intended to
bestow on his relations when he returned. Seven needle-books, for his
sisters; a gilt buckle, for his mamma; a handsome French cashmere shawl
and bonnet, for his aunt (the old lady keeps an inn in the Borough, and
has plenty of money, and no heirs); and a toothpick case, for his
father. Sam is a good fellow to all his relations, and as for his aunt,
he adores her. Well, we were to go and make these purchases, and I
arrived punctually at my time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very
pale and dismal.
I saw how it had been.--‘A little too much of Mr. Ringwood’s claret, I
suppose?’
He only gave a sickly stare.
‘Where does the Honourable Tom live?’ says I.
‘_Honourable!_’ says Sam, with a hollow horrid laugh; ‘I tell you, Dick,
he’s no more Honourable than you are.’
‘What, an impostor?’
‘No, no; not that. He is a real Honourable, only--’
‘Oh, ho! I smell a rat--a little jealous, eh?’
‘Jealousy be hanged! I tell you he’s a thief; and the Baron’s a thief;
and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better. Eight-and-thirty pounds
he won of me before supper; and made me drunk, and sent me home:--is
_that_ honourable? How can _I_ afford to lose forty pounds? It’s took me
two years to save it up:--if my old aunt gets wind of it, she’ll cut me
off with a shilling: hang me!’--and here Sam, in an agony, tore his fair
hair.
While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was rung,
which signal being answered by a surly ‘Come in,’ a tall, very
fashionable gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to his chin,
entered the room. ‘Pogson, my buck, how goes it?’ said he familiarly,
and gave a stare at me: I was making for my hat.
‘Don’t go,’ said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again.
The Honourable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha’d: and, at last, said he
wished to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible.
‘There’s no secrets betwixt me and my friend,’ cried Sam.
Mr. Ringwood paused a little:--’ An awkward business that of last
night,’ at length exclaimed he.
‘I believe it _was_ an awkward business,’ said Sam drily.
‘I really am very sorry for your losses.’
‘Thank you: and so am I, _I_ can tell you,’ said Sam.
‘You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink, you
_will_ play high: by Gad, you led _us_ in, and not we you.’
‘I dare say,’ answered Sam, with something of peevishness; ‘losses is
losses: there’s no use talking about ‘em when they’re over and paid.’
‘And paid?’ here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ringwood; ‘why, my dear fel----
what the deuce--has Florval been with you?’
‘D----Florval!’ growled Tom, ‘I’ve never set eyes on his face since last
night; and never wish to see him again.’
‘Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the bills
which you gave him last night?’
‘Bills! what do you mean?’
‘I mean, sir, these bills,’ said the Honourable Tom, producing two out
of his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion. ‘“I promise to pay,
on demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four hundred pounds.
October 20, 1838.” “Ten days after date I promise to pay the Baron de et
cætera, et cætera, one hundred and ninety-eight pounds. Samuel Pogson.”
You didn’t say what regiment you were in.’
‘WHAT!’ shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, starting up, and looking
preternaturally pale and hideous.
‘D---- it, sir, you don’t affect ignorance: you don’t pretend not to
remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms: money
_lent_ to you, by Madame de Melval, at your own request, and lost to her
husband? You don’t suppose, sir, that I shall be such an infernal idiot
as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up with a mean subterfuge
of this sort? Will you, or will you not, pay the money, sir?’
‘I will not,’ said Sam stoutly; ‘it’s a d----d swin----’
Here Mr. Ringwood sprang up, clenching his riding-whip, and looking so
fierce, that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room. ‘Utter
that word again, and, by Heaven, I’ll murder you!’ shouted Mr. Ringwood,
and looked as if he would, too: ‘once more, will you, or will you not,
pay this money?’
‘I can’t,’ said Sam faintly.
‘I’ll call again, Captain Pogson,’ said Mr. Ringwood, ‘I’ll call again
in one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you must meet my
friend, the Baron de Melval, or I’ll post you for a swindler and a
coward.’ With this he went out; the door thundered to after him, and
when the clink of his steps departing had subsided, I was enabled to
look round at Pog. The poor little man had his elbows on the marble
table, his head between his hands, and looked as one has seen gentlemen
look over a steam-vessel off Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably
fresh: at last he fairly burst out crying.
‘If Mrs. Pogson heard of this,’ said I, ‘what would become of the Three
Tuns?’ (for I wished to give him a lesson). ‘If your ma, who took you
every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was paying attention
to married women;--if Drench, Glauber, and Co., your employers, were to
know that their confidential agent was a gambler, and unfit to be
trusted with their money, how long do you think your connection would
last with them, and who would afterwards employ you?’
To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa
whimpering so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have
relented towards him, and would have been touched by the little wretch’s
tears. Everything, too, must be pleaded in excuse for this unfortunate
bagman: who, if he wished to pass for a Captain, had only done so
because he had an intense respect and longing for rank: if he had made
love to the Baroness, had only done so because he was given to
understand by Lord Byron’s _Don Juan_ that making love was a very
correct, natty thing: and if he had gambled, had only been induced to do
so by the bright eyes and example of the Baron and the Baroness. O ye
Barons and Baronesses of England! if ye knew what a number of small
commoners are daily occupied in studying your lives, and imitating your
aristocratic ways, how careful would ye be of your morals, manners, and
conversation!
My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson, and
revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to be
practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and determined to
apply for counsel to no less a person than Major British.
A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major
British; and Heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when
I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Pog’s. The Major is on half-pay,
and occupies a modest apartment, _au quatrième_, in the very hotel which
Pogson had patronised at my suggestion; indeed, I had chosen it from
Major British’s own peculiar recommendation.
There is no better guide to follow than such a character as the honest
Major, of whom there are many likenesses now scattered over the
continent of Europe: men who love to live well, and are forced to live
cheaply, and who find the English, abroad, a thousand times easier,
merrier, and more hospitable than the same persons at home. I, for my
part, never landed on Calais pier without feeling that a load of sorrows
was left on the other side of the water; and have always fancied that
black care stepped on board the steamer, along with the custom-house
officers, at Gravesend, and accompanied one to yonder black louring
towers of London--so busy, so dismal, and so vast.
British would have cut any foreigner’s throat who ventured to say so
much, but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this nature; for
he passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad, with headquarters
at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and only went to England for
the month’s shooting, on the grounds of his old Colonel, now an old
Lord, of whose acquaintance the Major was passably inclined to boast.
He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every one of
the English nobility; gave himself certain little airs of a man of
fashion, that were by no means disagreeable; and was, indeed, kindly
regarded by such English aristocracy as he met in his little annual
tours among the German courts, in Italy, or in Paris, where he never
missed an ambassador’s night, and retailed to us, who didn’t go, but
were delighted to know all that had taken place, accurate accounts of
the dishes, the dresses, and the scandal which had there fallen under
his observation.
He is, however, one of the most useful persons in society that can
possibly be; for besides being incorrigibly duelsome on his own account,
he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor in the world,
and has carried more friends through scrapes and prevented more deaths
than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single
step in the army, as is well known. In ‘14 he killed a celebrated French
fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he does,
a great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family
people, he is loved by them both, and has as welcome a place made for
him at a roaring bachelor’s supper at the Café Anglais as at a staid
dowager’s dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honoré. Such pleasant old
boys are very profitable aquaintances, let me tell you; and lucky is the
young man who has one or two such friends in his list.
Hurrying on Pogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to the
Major’s _quatrième_, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in. The
little gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in painting,
elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily
promenaded the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had
been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his hands; no man
stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely brushed, with a
stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red face, with a blue
frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy little person, as Major
British, about whom we have written these two pages. He stared rather
hardly at my companion, but gave me a kind shake of the hand, and we
proceeded at once to business. ‘Major British,’ said I, ‘we want your
advice in regard to an unpleasant affair which has just occurred to my
friend Pogson.’
‘Pogson, take a chair.’
‘You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other day,
encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman.’
British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help
feeling pleased.
‘Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was she
with him; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him to her
house, where he has been constantly, and has been received with much
kindness.’
‘I see,’ says British.
‘Her husband the Baron ----’
‘_Now_ it’s coming,’ said the Major, with a grin: ‘her husband is
jealous, I suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my dear
sir, you can’t refuse--can’t refuse.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Pogson, wagging his head passionately.
‘Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as his
lady was, and has introduced him to some very _distingués_ friends of
his own set. Last night one of the Baron’s friends gave a party in
honour of my friend Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards
_before_ he was made drunk, and Heaven knows how much after.’
‘Not a shilling, by sacred Heaven!--not a shilling!’ yelled out Pogson.
‘After the supper I ad such an eadach, I couldn’t do anything but fall
asleep on the sofa.’
‘You “ad such an eadach,” sir,’ said British sternly, who piques himself
on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney.
‘Such a _h_-eadache, sir,’ replied Pogson, with much meekness.
‘The unfortunate man is brought home at two o’clock, as tipsy as
possible, dragged upstairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking, receives
a visit from his entertainer of the night before--a Lord’s son, Major, a
tiptop fellow,--who brings a couple of bills that my friend Pogson is
said to have signed.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, the thing’s quite simple,--he must pay them.’
‘I can’t pay them.’
‘He can’t pay them,’ said we both in a breath: ‘Pogson is a commercial
traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he to pay
five hundred pounds?’
‘A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble? Gentlemen gamble,
sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements of the gentry.
What business had you with Barons and Lords’ sons, sir?--serve you
right, sir.’
‘Sir,’ says Pogson, with some dignity, ‘merit, and not birth, is the
criterion of a man; I despise an hereditary aristocracy, and admire only
Nature’s gentlemen. For my part, I think that a British merch--’
‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ bounced out the Major, ‘and don’t lecture me;
don’t come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature’s
gentlemen--Nature’s tomfools, sir! Did Nature open a cash account for
you at a banker’s, sir! Did Nature give you an education, sir? What do
you mean by competing with people to whom Nature has given all these
things? Stick to your bags, Mr. Pogson, and your bagmen, and leave
Barons and their like to their own ways.’
‘Yes, but, Major,’ here cried that faithful friend, who has always stood
by Pogson; ‘they won’t leave him alone.’
‘The Honourable gent says I must fight if I don’t pay,’ whimpered Sam.
‘What! fight _you_? Do you mean that the Honourable gent, as you call
him, will go out with a bagman?’
‘He doesn’t know I’m a--I’m a commercial man,’ blushingly said Sam: ‘he
fancies I’m a military gent.’
The Major’s gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion; and he
laughed outrageously. ‘Why, the fact is, sir,’ said I, ‘that my friend
Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being
complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly, he
was in the army. He only assumed the rank in order to dazzle her weak
imagination, never fancying that there was a husband, and a circle of
friends, with whom he was afterwards to make an acquaintance; and then,
you know, it was too late to withdraw.’
‘A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pogson, by making love to
other men’s wives, and calling yourself names,’ said the Major, who was
restored to good-humour. ‘And, pray, who is the _h_onourable gent?’
‘The Earl of Cinqbars’ son,’ says Pogson, ‘the Honourable Tom Ringwood.’
‘I thought it was some such character: and the Baron is the Baron de
Florval-Melval?’
‘The very same.’
‘And his wife a black-haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle; calls
herself Athenais; and is always talking about her _trente-deux ans_?
Why, sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard when we were here
in ‘15. She’s no more his wife than I am. Melval’s name is Chicot. The
woman is always travelling between London and Paris: I saw she was
hooking you at Calais; she has hooked ten men, in the course of the last
two years, in this very way. She lent you money, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’--‘And she leans on your shoulder, and whispers, “Play half for
me,” and somebody wins it, and the poor thing is as sorry as you are,
and her husband storms and rages, and insists on double stakes; and she
leans over your shoulder again, and tells every card in your hand to
your adversary; and that’s the way it’s done, Mr. Pogson.’
‘I’ve been _ad_, I see I ave,’ said Pogson very humbly.
‘Well, sir,’ said the Major, ‘in consideration, not of you, sir--for,
give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful little
scoundrel--in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with whom, I am
proud to say, I am intimate’ (the Major dearly loved a lord, and was, by
his own showing, acquainted with half the peerage), ‘I will aid you in
this affair. Your cursed vanity, sir, and want of principle, has set
you, in the first place, intriguing with other men’s wives; and if you
had been shot for your pains, a bullet would have only served you right,
sir. You must go about as an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay
richly for your swindling, sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as I
think your punishment has been already pretty severe, I shall do my
best, out of regard for my friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter
going any further; and I recommend you to leave Paris without delay. Now
let me wish you a good morning.’ Wherewith British made a majestic bow,
and began giving the last touch to his varnished boots.
We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chapfallen; and I meditating
on the wisdom of the half-pay philosopher, and wondering what means he
would employ to rescue Pogson from his fate.
What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ringwood did _not_ make his
appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for ‘Mr. Pogson,
commercial traveller,’ etc. etc. It was blank inside, but contained his
two bills. Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for Vienna; nor
did the Major explain the circumstances which caused his departure; but
he muttered something about ‘knew some of his old tricks,’ threatened
police, and made him disgorge directly.
Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often thought it
was very green of him to give up the bills to the Major, who, certainly,
would never have pressed the matter before the police, out of respect
for his friend Lord Cinqbars.
THE FÊTES OF JULY
IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘BUNGAY BEACON’
PARIS, _July_ 30th, 1839.
We have arrived here just in time for the fêtes of July. You have read,
no doubt, of that glorious revolution which took place here nine years
ago, and which is now commemorated annually, in a pretty facetious
manner, by gun-firing, student-processions, pole-climbing-for-silver-spoons,
gold-watches, and legs-of-mutton, monarchical orations, and what not,
and sanctioned, moreover, by Chamber of Deputies, with a grant of a
couple of hundred thousand francs to defray the expenses of all the
crackers, gun-firings, and legs-of-mutton aforesaid. There is a new
fountain in the Place Louis Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis
Seize, or else the Place de la Révolution, or else the Place de la
Concorde (who can say why?)--which, I am told, is to run bad wine
during certain hours to-morrow, and there _would_ have been a review
of the National Guards and the Line--only, since the Fieschi business,
reviews are no joke, and so this latter part of the festivity has been
discontinued.
Do you not laugh--O Pharos of Bungay--at the continuance of a humbug
such as this? at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug? The King of the
Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the most absolute Sovereign
in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of this fair kingdom of France
a single man who cares sixpence about him, or his dynasty, except,
mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Château, who eat his dinners, and put
their hands in his purse. The feeling of loyalty is as dead as old
Charles the Tenth; the Chambers have been laughed at, the country has
been laughed at, all the successive ministries have been laughed at (and
you know who is the wag that has amused himself with them all); and,
behold, here come three days at the end of July, and cannons think it
necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz, fountains
to run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy
_mâts-de-cocagne_ in token of gratitude and _réjouissance publique_!--My
dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact humbugs,
these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other nations
of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses,
opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible to preserve a
grave countenance; instead of having Carlyle to write a _History of the
French Revolution_, I often think it should be handed over to Dickens or
Theodore Hook, and oh! where is the Rabelais to be the faithful
historian of the last phase of the Revolution--the last glorious nine
years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious three days?
I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have
seen, with my neighbours, all the gingerbread stalls down the Champs
Élysées, and some of the ‘catafalques’ erected to the memory of the
heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected personally
with the victims, and not having in the least profited by their deaths,
come and weep; but the grief shown on the first day is quite as absurd
and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one
which admits of much wholesome reflection and food for mirth; and,
besides, is so richly treated by the French themselves, that it would
be a sin and a shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the honour of
translating, for your edification, an account of the first day’s
proceedings--it is mighty amusing, to my thinking.
CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY
‘To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honour of the victims of
July, were held in the various edifices consecrated to public worship.
‘These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially that of
the Petits-Pères), were uniformly hung with black on the outside; the
hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July 1830--surrounded by
a wreath of oak-leaves.
‘In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought
proper to dress _little catafalques_, as for burials of the third and
fourth class. Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number of the
National Guard.
‘The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and a
great concourse of people attended. The service was performed with the
greatest pomp.
‘In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full attendance:
_apologetical discourses_ on the Revolution of July were pronounced by
the pastors.
‘The absence of M. de Quélen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many members
of the superior clergy, was remarked at Nôtre Dame.
‘The civil authorities attended service in the several districts.
‘The poles, ornamented with tricoloured flags, which formerly were
placed on Nôtre Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed. The flags on
the Pont Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high, and
covered with crape.’
Et cætera, et cætera, et cætera.
‘The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and adorned
with tricoloured flags. In front and in the middle was erected an
expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and surmounted by a funeral
vase.
‘_These tombs were guarded by the_ MUNICIPAL GUARD, THE TROOPS OF THE
LINE, THE SERGENS DE VILLE (_town patrol_), AND A BRIGADE OF AGENTS OF
POLICE IN PLAIN CLOTHES, under the orders of peace-officer Vassal.
‘Between eleven and twelve o’clock, some young men, to the number of 400
or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a
tricoloured banner with an inscription, “To THE MANES OF JULY:” ranging
themselves in order, they marched five abreast to the Marché des
Innocens. On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of the Halle aux Draps,
where the post had been doubled, issued out without arms, and the
town-sergeants placed themselves before the market to prevent the entry
of the procession. The young men passed in perfect order, and without
saying a word--only lifting their hats as they defiled before the tombs.
When they arrived at the Louvre they found the gates shut and the Garden
evacuated. The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion.
‘After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to the
public.’
* * * * *
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
There’s nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning of
this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous,
undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of
these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of
professed wags;--do not the men write their own tale with an admirable
Sancho-like gravity and _naïveté_, which one could not desire improved?
How good is that touch of sly indignation about the _little
catafalques_! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the
Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout
Jews! and how touching the ‘_apologetical discourses_ on the
Revolution,’ delivered by the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound
affliction of the Gardes Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the
police-agents in plain clothes, and the troops with fixed bayonets,
sobbing round the ‘expiatory monuments of a pyramidical shape,
surmounted by funeral vases,’ and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into
the public who might wish to indulge in the same woe! O ‘Manes of July!’
(the phrase is pretty and grammatical), why did you with sharp bullets
break those Louvre windows? Why did you bayonet redcoated Swiss behind
that fair white facade, and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, prospective
guillotine, burst yonder bronze gates, rush through that peaceful
picture-gallery, and hurl royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of
Kings, head-over-heels out of yonder Tuileries windows?
It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:--there is, however,
_one_ benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press or
person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks of
them?)--_one_ benefit they have gained, or nearly--_abolition de la
peine-de-mort_, namely _pour délit politique_--no more wicked
guillotining for revolutions. A Frenchman must have his revolution--it
is his nature to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to
fire at troops of the line--it is a sin to balk it. Did not the King
send off Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four? Did not the
jury, before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolutionary Colonel
Vaudrey not guilty?--One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent
courage and energy in half a dozen _émeutes_, he will get promotion and
a premium.
I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject) want to talk more
nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes
over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers,
and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched,
foolhardy Barbès, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which
has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart’s speech:
‘When the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate
that awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:--_I_ am the Indian!’
‘Well----’
‘M. Victor Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court
of Peers, condemning Barbès to death, was published. The great poet
composed the following verses:
‘“Par votre ange envolé, ainsi qu’une colombe,
Par le royal enfant, doux et frêle roseau,
Grâce, encore une fois! Grâce, au nom de la tombe!
Grâce, au nom du berçeau!”[1]
‘M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which
he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the
penny-post.
‘That truly is a noble voice which can at all hours thus speak to the
throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the gods--it is
better named now--it is the language of the kings.
‘But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the poet.
The pen of his Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbès, while that
of the poet was still writing.
‘Louis Philippe replied to the author of _Ruy Blas_ most graciously,
that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses
had only confirmed his previous disposition to mercy.’
Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
monstrous palpable folly? In any country; save this, would a poet who
chose to write four crack-brained verses comparing an angel to a dove,
and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in
the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and the
little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a
‘gracious answer’ to his nonsense? Would he have ever despatched the
nonsense? and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of
‘the noble voice that could thus speak to the throne,’ and the noble
throne that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice? You get
nothing done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage-tricks are played,
and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or
solemn; in the face of death, as by Barbès with his hideous Indian
metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his
twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King’s absurd reply to
this absurd demand! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a
reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why the
law should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower world,
our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or should move on,
majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions--like a God: but, in
the very midst of the path across which it is to pass, lo! M. Victor
Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says, O divine Justice! I will trouble
you to listen to the following trifling effusion of mine:
‘_Par votre ange envolé, ainsi qu’une_,’ etc.
Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo’s verses,
and, with true French politeness, says, ‘Mon cher Monsieur, these verses
are charming, _ravissants, délicieux_, and, coming from such a
_célébrité littéraire_ as yourself, shall meet with every possible
attention--in fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous
opinions, this charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher
Monsieur Hugo, au revoir!’--and they part:--Justice taking off his hat
and bowing, and the Author of _Ruy Blas_ quite convinced that he has
been treating with him _d’égal à égal_. I can hardly bring my mind to
fancy that anything is serious in France--it seems to be all rant,
tinsel, and stage-play. Sham liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham
justice,--_où, diable, donc la vérité va-t-elle se nicher_?
* * * * *
The last rocket of the fête of July has just mounted, exploded, made a
portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue-lights, and then
(like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth gun on the
Invalid Terrace has uttered its last roar--and a great comfort it is
for eyes and ears that the festival is over. We shall be able to go
about our every-day business again, and not be hustled by the gendarmes
or the crowd.
The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and
beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to
the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where
their manners and innocent gaiety show a very pleasing contrast to the
coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our own
country--at Epsom racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The
greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers
from a place in the neighbourhood of Paris, who, as soon as the
fireworks were over, formed themselves into a line, three or four
abreast, and so marched singing home. As for the fireworks, squibs and
crackers are very hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of
them: to me, the prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the
number of children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the
parents towards these little creatures. It does one good to see honest,
heavy _épiciers_, fathers of families, playing with them in the
Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders,
through many long hours, in order that the little ones, too, may have
their share of the fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does not
take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part,
to take care of the children at home.
The fête, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only
a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during
the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs
Élysées for full half a mile have been consigned to their dens and
darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the
glorious 29th of July?--I think not; the Government which vowed that
there should be no more persecutions of the press, was, on that very
29th, seizing a legitimist paper, for some real or fancied offence
against it: it had seized, and was seizing daily, numbers of persons
merely suspected of being disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is
understood, when some of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to
trial, were found guilty and sentenced to _one_ day’s imprisonment,
after _thirty-six days’ detention on suspicion_). I think the Government
which follows such a system cannot be very anxious about any further
revolutionary fêtes, and that the Chamber may reasonably refuse to vote
more money for them. Why should men be so mighty proud of having, on a
certain day, cut a certain numbre of their fellow-countrymen’s throats?
The Guards and the Line employed, this time nine years, did no more than
those who cannonaded the starving Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless
inhabitants of the Rue Transnounain; they did but fulfil the soldier’s
honourable duty,--his superiors bid him kill and he killeth; perhaps,
had he gone to his work with a little more heart, the result would have
been different, and then--would the conquering party have been justified
in annually rejoicing over the conquered? Would we have thought Charles
X. justified in causing fireworks to be blazed, and concerts to be sung,
and speeches to be spouted, in commemoration of his victory over his
slaughtered countrymen? I wish, for my part, they would allow the people
to go about their business as on the other 362 days of the year, and
leave the Champs Élysées free for the omnibuses to run, and the
Tuileries in quiet, so that the nursemaids might come as usual, and the
newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece.
Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these latter,
and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication is
not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver
disquisition. The July fêtes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable
part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them, one by
one; to read Tweedledum’s praise, and Tweedledee’s indignation--to read,
in the _Débats_, how the King was received with shouts and loyal
vivats--in the _National_, how not a tongue was wagged in his praise,
but, on the instant of his departure, how the people called for the
‘Marseillaise’ and applauded _that_. But best say no more about the
fête. The legitimists were always indignant at it. The high Philippist
party sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it; it seems a
joke against _them_. Why continue it! If there be anything sacred in the
name and idea of royalty, why renew this fête? It only shows how a
rightful monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous usurper
stole his precious diadem. If there be anything noble in the memory of a
day, when citizens, unused to war, rose against practised veterans, and,
armed with the strength of their cause, overthrew them, why speak of it
now? or renew the bitter recollections of the bootless struggle and
victory? O Lafayette! O hero of two worlds! O accomplished Cromwell
Grandison! you have to answer for more than any mortal man who has
played a part in history: two republics and one monarchy does the world
owe to you; and especially grateful should your country be to you. Did
you not, in ‘90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and, in
‘30, prepare the way for----
* * * * *
[The editor of the _Bungay Beacon_ would insert no more of this letter,
which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public.]
ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING
WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL
DISQUISITIONS
IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP OF LONDON
The three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the
École des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of French art, since
its commencement almost, and give the stranger a pretty fair opportunity
to study and appreciate the school. The French list of painters contains
some very good names--no very great ones, except Poussin (unless the
admirers of Claude choose to rank him among great painters),--and I
think the school was never in so flourishing a condition as it is at the
present day. They say there are three thousand artists in this town
alone: of these a handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but well
understand their business; draw the figure accurately; sketch with
cleverness; and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs’ shops, in a
decent manner.
To account for a superiority over England--which, I think, as regards
art, is incontestable--it must be remembered that the painter’s trade,
in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood,
and, generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen
excellent schools in which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a
practised master, learn the apprenticeship of his art at an expense of
about ten pounds a year. In England there is no school except the
Academy, unless the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and
place himself under the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young
man, for his ten pounds, has all sorts of accessory instruction, models,
etc.; and has, further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study
his profession which are not to be found in England,--the streets are
filled with picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures walking
about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms are covered
with pictures; Nature herself is inclined more kindly to him, for the
sky is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines
for the greater part of the year. Add to this incitements more selfish,
but quite as powerful: a French artist is paid very handsomely; for five
hundred a year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society
rather above his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and
hostesses in places where titles are laughed at, and a baron is thought
of no more account than a banker’s clerk.
The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, dirtiest
existence possible. He comes to Paris, probably at sixteen, from his
province; his parents settle forty pounds a year on him, and pay his
master; he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter
of Nôtre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters); he
arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labours among a
score of companions as merry and poor as himself. Each gentleman has his
favourite tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a
cloud of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of
choruses, of which no one can form an idea that has not been present at
such an assembly.
[Illustration]
You see here every variety of _coiffure_ that has ever been known. Some
young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their shoulders--you may
smell the tobacco with which they are scented across the street;--some
have straight locks, black, oily, and redundant; some have _toupées_ in
the famous Louis-Philippe fashion; some are cropped close; some have
adopted the present mode--which he who would follow must, in order to do
so, part his hair in the middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with
gum, and iron it flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears, you
take the tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the
whole head--such curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat,
and in her Britannic Majesty’s coachman’s state wig.
This is the last fashion. As for the beards, there is no end to them;
all my friends the artists have beards who can raise them; and Nature,
though she has rather stinted the bodies and limbs of the French nation,
has been very liberal to them of hair, as you may see by the following
specimen. Fancy these heads and beards under all sorts of caps--Chinese
caps, Mandarin caps, Greek skull-caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or
Kuzzilbash caps, Middle Age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps
of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all
the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen
can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.
In this company and costume the French student of art passes his days
and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what theatres, at
what _guinguettes_, in company with what seducing little milliner, there
is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his coat to go to a
carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse for six
weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment.
These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport
themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German _bursch_
towards the _philister_, or as the military man, during the Empire, did
to the _pékin_:--from the height of their poverty they look down upon
him with the greatest imaginable scorn--a scorn, I think, by which the
citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the arts is intense. The case
is very different in England, where a grocer’s daughter would think she
made a _mésalliance_ by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in
spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry
composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose
positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As for instance,
my friend, the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable pedigree, a
paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in Warwickshire, in
company with several squires and parsons of that enlightened county.
Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily agreeable at dinner,
and delighted all present with his learning and wit. ‘Who is that
monstrous pleasant fellow?’ said one of the squires. ’ Don’t you know?’
replied another. ‘It’s Asterisk, the author of So-and-so, and a famous
contributor to such-and-such a magazine.’ ‘Good heavens!’ said the
squire, quite horrified; ‘a literary man! I thought he had been a
gentleman!’
Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the grand
hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the great _de par
le monde_, as Brantôme says, and entertained them in a proper
ministerial magnificence. The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was
at one of his ministerial parties; and went, a fortnight afterwards, as
in duty bound, to pay her respects to M. Guizot. But it happened, in
this fortnight, that M. Guizot was Minister no longer; but gave up his
portfolio, and his grand hotel, to retire into private life, and to
occupy his humble apartments in the house which he possesses, and of
which he lets the greater portion. A friend of mine was present at one
of the ex-Minister’s _soirées_, where the Duchess of Dash made her
appearance. He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite
astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder. Two or
three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a Minister _en
retraite_, who lives by letting lodgings! In our country was ever such a
thing heard of? No, thank Heaven! and a Briton ought to be proud of the
difference.
But to our muttons. This country is surely the paradise of painters and
penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet at Rome,
exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and leading such a
life as Rubens or Titian did of old; when one sees M. Thiers’s grand
villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he was not even a
penny-a-liner, no such luck); when one contemplates, in imagination, M.
Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk through the picture gallery
of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore, with a wheel-chair, a privilege
of princes only, and accompanied--nay, for what I know, actually
trundled--down the gallery by majesty itself--who does not long to make
one of the great nation, exchange his native tongue for the melodious
jabber of France; or, at least, adopt it for his native country, like
Marshal Saxe, Napoleon, and Anacharsis Clootz? Noble people! they made
Tom Paine a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a _dynasty_
of him.
Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in
France; and here, at least, we are back to them. At the École Royale des
Beaux-Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of their
performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being bound to
leave their prize sketch or picture. Can anything good come out of the
Royal Academy? is a question which has been considerably mooted in
England (in the neighbourhood of Suffolk Street especially). The
hundreds of French samples are, I think, not very satisfactory. The
subjects are almost all what are called classical: Orestes pursued by
every variety of Furies; numbers of little wolf-sucking Romuluses;
Hectors and Andromaches in a complication of parting embraces, and so
forth; for it was the absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because
these subjects had been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must
remain so _in sæcula sæculorum_; because to these lofty heights giants
had scaled, behold the race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at
them likewise! and on the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs
(excuse the pleasantry) were instructed to swell out and roar as much as
possible like bulk.
What was the consequence, my dear friend? In trying to make themselves
into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as might be
expected. For a hundred and ten years the classical humbug oppressed
the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy
years’ specimens of the dulness which it engendered.
Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave
him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our
very best to ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas fit us
no more than their breeches! It is the study of Nature, surely, that
profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a
dustman up to Æschylus, is God’s work, and good to read, as all works of
Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit
itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not
the courage to utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked,
and quarrelled with the world, and found himself growing fit, and
quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-humoured,
did not half Europe grow ill-humoured too? Did not every poet feel his
young affections withered, and despair and darkness cast upon his soul?
Because certain mighty men of old could make heroical statues and plays,
must we not be told that there is no other beauty but classical
beauty?--must not every little whipster of a French poet chalk you out
plays, ‘Henriades,’ and such-like, and vow that here was the real thing,
the undeniable Kalon?
The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world
was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now are by
what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is curious to
look at the pictorial traditions as here handed down. The consequence of
them is, that scarce one of the classical pictures exhibited is worth
much more than two-and-sixpence. Borrowed from statuary, in the first
place, the colour of the paintings seems, as much as possible, to
participate in it: they are mostly of a misty, stony-green, dismal hue,
as if they had been painted in a world where no colour was. In every
picture there are, of course, white mantles, white urns, white columns,
white statues--those _obligés_ accomplishments of the sublime. There are
the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips,
just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as if the
latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from
which there was no appeal. Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is
yonder simpering Venus de’ Medici to be our standard of beauty, or the
Greek tragedies to bound our notions of the sublime? There was no reason
why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and remain ἁναξ ἁνδρὡν
to eternity: and there is a classical quotation, which you may have
occasionally heard, beginning _Vixere fortes_, etc., which, as it avers
that there were a great number of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may
not unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to
succeed him. Shakespeare made a better man when his imagination moulded
the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you will measure Satan by
Prometheus, the blind old Puritan’s work by that of the fiery Grecian
poet, does not Milton’s angel surpass Æschylus’s--surpass him by ‘many a
rood’?
In this same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a
number of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he ought
to be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized copy of ‘The
Last Judgment’ of Michael Angelo, and a number of casts from statues by
the same splendid hand. There is the sublime, if you please--a new
sublime--an original sublime--quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See
yonder, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in
glory; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august
and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the ‘Moses,’ the grandest
figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something
frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examining this, and the
astonishing picture of ‘The Judgment,’ or even a single figure of it,
the spectator’s sense amounts almost to pain. I would not like to be
left in a room alone with the ‘Moses.’ How did the artist live amongst
them, and create them? How did he suffer the painful labour of
invention? One fancies that he would have been scorched up, like Semele,
by sights too tremendous for his vision to bear. One cannot imagine him,
with our small physical endowments and weaknesses, a man like ourselves.
As for the École Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its
students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men did
anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began thinking for
themselves. There is only one picture among the many hundreds that has,
to my idea, much merit (a charming composition of Homer singing, signed
Jourdy); and the only good that the academy has done by its pupils was
to send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the
intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the
least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession,
the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down,
and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them
away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by
us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and sent them rambling
after artificial grace without the proper means of judging or attaining
it.
A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts. It is beautiful,
and as well finished and convenient as beautiful. With its light and
elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of the Renaissance, and
fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on a fine day, a place more
_riant_ and pleasing.
Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the
Luxembourg, where _bonnes_, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with
pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where
the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the
_émeutes_ which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the
picture-gallery of modern French artists whom Government thinks worthy
of patronage.
A very great proportion of these, as we see by the catalogue, are by the
students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux Arts, and
who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken rank among
the professors of the art. I don’t know a more pleasing exhibition; for
there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very
good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness of execution.
In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be
a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up
among the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases,
with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The
anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in
consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in
full vigour. There is Brutus, having chopped his son’s head off, with
all the agony of a father; and then, calling for number two, there is
Æneas carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as
two Hottentots, and many more such choice subjects from Lemprière.
But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with
which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it:--
7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. ‘The Grand
Dauphiness Dying.’
18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, etc. ‘Zenobia found Dead.’
36. Debay, Chevalier. ‘The Death of Lucretia.’
38. Dejuinne. ‘The Death of Hector.’
34. Court, Chevalier de la, etc. ‘The Death of Cæsar.’
39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. ‘Dante and Virgil in the
Infernal Lake,’ ‘The Massacre of Scio,’ and ‘Medea
going to murder her Children.’
43. Delaroche, Chevalier. ‘Joas taken from among the Dead.’
44. ‘The Death of Queen Elizabeth.’
45. ‘Edward V. and his Brother’ (preparing for death).
50. ‘Hecuba going to be Sacrificed.’ Drolling, Chevalier.
51. Dubois. ‘Young Clovis found Dead.’
56. Henry, Chevalier. ‘The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.’
75. Guérin, Chevalier. ‘Cain, after the Death of Abel.’
83. Jacquand. ‘Death of Adelaide de Comminges.’
88. ‘The Death of Eudamidas.’
93. ‘The Death of Hymetto.’
103. ‘The Death of Philip of Austria.’
And so on.
You see what woeful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these
painters, and ought to be called _Chevaliers de la Mort_. I don’t know
why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such
grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself
should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at
the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and
because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these
men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all
the circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the
scheme--the bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that
our teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your
humble servant and other anti-humbuggists should heartily, according to
the strength that is in them, endeavour to pull down. What, for
instance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas? What
was Hecuba to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I
would lay a wager that neither of them ever conjugated τὑπτω,
and that their school learning carried them not as far as the letter,
but only to the game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such
subjects? From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in
sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba,
in the _Mythological Dictionary_. What a classicism, inspired by rouge,
gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lemprière, and copied, half from ancient
statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence
the hour!
Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his ‘Medea’ is a
genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs.
Brownrigg, and her two female ‘prentices, would have done as well as the
desperate Colchian, with her τἑκνα φἱλτατα. M. Delacroix has
produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp
of genius on all of them,--the great poetical _intention_, which is
worth all your execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit; with
not such a great _heart_, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful
draughtsman, and an excellent arranger of his subject. ‘The Death of
Elizabeth’ is a raw, young performance, seemingly--not, at least, to my
taste. The ‘Enfans d’Edouard’ is renowned over Europe, and has appeared
in a hundred different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and
gloomy, and merits fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in
such subjects--in what Lord Portsmouth used to call ‘black jobs.’ He has
killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Duke of Guise, and I don’t
know whom besides. He is, at present, occupied with a vast work at the
Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honour of seeing him--a
little, keen-looking man, some five feet in height. He wore, on this
important occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act of
smoking a cigar.
Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king
of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the
Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such
subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; and he is so clever a
man, that all he does is good, to a certain degree. His ‘Judith’ is
somewhat violent, perhaps. His ‘Rebecca’ most pleasing, and not the less
so for a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless singularity
of costume. ‘Raphael and Michael Angelo’ is as clever a picture as can
be--clever is just the word--the groups and drawing excellent, the
colouring pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French students study it
incessantly; there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix.
His little scraps of woodcuts, in the now publishing _Life of Napoleon_,
are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid for them not a
penny more than he merits.
The picture, by Court, of ‘The Death of Cæsar,’ is remarkable for effect
and excellent workmanship; and the head of Brutus (who looks like Armand
Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful heads of women, and
some very good colour in the picture. Jacquand’s ‘Death of Adelaide de
Comminge’ is neither more nor less than beautiful. Adelaide had, it
appears, a lover, who betook himself to a convent of Trappists. She
followed him thither, disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not
discovered by him till on her death-bed. The painter has told this story
in a most pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of
_onction_ and melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally
represented, and the tone and colour very good. Decaisne’s ‘Guardian
Angel’ is not so good in colour, but is equally beautiful in expression
and grace. A little child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the
infant. You see women look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and
what triumph would a painter have more?
We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-pieces
of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain of
Grasivaudan), and the ‘Prometheus’ of Aligny. This is an imitation,
perhaps; as is a noble picture of ‘Jesus Christ and the Children,’ by
Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better models, at any rate; and
one begins to perceive that the odious classical dynasty is no more.
Poussin’s magnificent ‘Polyphemus’ (I only know a print of that
marvellous composition) has, perhaps, suggested the first-named picture;
and the latter has been inspired by a good enthusiastic study of the
Roman schools.
Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school. When he broke up
his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of his pupils
attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and some, with scarcely
a penny in their pouches, walked through France, and across the Alps, in
a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being determined not to forsake their old
master. Such an action was worthy of them, and of the high rank which
their profession holds in France, where the honours to be acquired by
art are only inferior to those which are gained in war. One reads of
such peregrinations in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian
painter followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara.
In regard of Ingres’s individual merit, as a painter, the writer of this
is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him; one being a
_plafond_ in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.
Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art,
and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us
back to Cranach and Dürer, and which is making progress here.
For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or
Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbours, and will be a favourite
with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be a
greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of
silly affectations and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is
Chevalier Ziegler’s picture of ‘St. Luke painting the Virgin.’ St. Luke
has a monk’s dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her
arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eyeing
his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this
Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life.
First, take your colours, and rub them down clean,--bright carmine,
bright yellow, bright sienna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the
costumes of your figures as much as possible like the costumes of the
early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above
colours; and if on a gold ground, the more ‘Catholic’ your art is. Dress
your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good
commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you may see
in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal in
Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster’s wife by Cranach or Van
Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their gowns, and proper
angular draperies. Place all their heads on one side, with the eyes
shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the back of the head, draw, and
gild with gold-leaf, a halo, or glory, of the exact shape of a
cart-wheel: and you have the thing done. It is Catholic art _tout
craché_, as Louis Philippe says. We have it still in England, handed
down to us for four centuries, in the pictures on the cards, as the
redoubtable king and queen of clubs. Look at them: you will see that the
costumes and attitudes are precisely similar to those which figure in
the catholicities of the school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley’s ‘Jeune Fille confiant son premier
secret à Vénus.’ Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of this
year only; and, I think, the best sculpture in the gallery--pretty,
fanciful, _naïve_; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I
have seldom seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also,
Jaley’s ‘Pudeur,’ Jacquot’s ‘Nymph,’ and Rude’s ‘Boy with the Tortoise.’
These are not very exalted subjects, or what are called exalted, and do
not go beyond simple, smiling beauty and nature. But what then? Are we
gods, Miltons, Michael Angelos, that can leave earth when we please, and
soar to heights immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of
academicians would fain make us so. Are you not, and half the painters
in London, panting for an opportunity to show your genius in a great
‘historical picture’? O blind race! Have you wings? Not a feather: and
yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the tops of rugged hills;
and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your ragged elbows, and making
as if you would fly! Come down, silly Dædalus; come down to the lowly
places in which Nature ordered you to walk. The sweet flowers are
springing there; the fat muttons are waiting there; the pleasant sun
shines there; be content and humble, and take your share of the good
cheer.
While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has gaily
conducted us across the water; and _le garde qui veille à la porte du
Louvre ne défend pas_ our entry.
What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners who
sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the brethren
of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any extraordinary
wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which Paris, more than
any other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury which surpasses all
others, and spend their days in a palace which all the money of all the
Rothschilds could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine in
a cellar; but no grandee in Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings’
houses have, at best, but damask hangings and gilt cornices. What are
these to a wall covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards
of Rubens? Artists from England, who have a national gallery that
resembles a moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except
under particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may
revel here to their hearts’ content. Here is a room half a mile long,
with as many windows as Alladin’s palace, open from sunrise till
evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study: the only
puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall begin upon, and keep
his eyes away from the rest.
Fontaine’s grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings, and
shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery: but it is thought
too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance on
Sabbath. A little back-stair (leading from a court, in which stand
numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, of polished granite) is the
common entry for students and others, who, during the week, enter the
gallery.
Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
artists which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death only
entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let us
confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this letter.
I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two
admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gaiety. The
colour is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one of these so much
lauded pictures is the portrait of a washerwoman. ‘Pope Pius,’ at the
Louvre, is as bad in colour, and as remarkable for its vigour and look
of life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life,
but must attempt the heroic;--failed signally, and, what is worse,
carried a whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman
so, twenty years ago, he would have thrown the _démenti_ in your teeth;
or, at least, laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us
that we don’t know when we are beaten; they go a step farther, and swear
their defeats are victories. David was a part of the glory of the
Empire; and one might as well have said, there, that ‘Romulus’ was a bad
picture, as that Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who
believe in the Emperor, believe in the Théâtre Français, and believe
that Ducis improved upon Shakespeare, have the above opinion. Still, it
is curious to remark, in this place, how art and literature become party
matters, and political sects have their favourite painters and authors.
Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead. He died about a year after
his bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott,
from his castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch
adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders,
who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and
harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes
and demigods of Greece and Rome. _Notre Dame à la rescousse!_ Sir Brian
de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clean out of his saddle.
Andromache may weep; but her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See!
Robin Hood twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. _Montjoie
Saint Denis!_ down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder are
Leonidas and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor.
Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lemprière by the
nose, and reigns sovereign.
Of the great pictures of David, the defunct, we need not, then, say
much. Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has
come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is
because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage.
But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude,
which was followed by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how
are we to suppose yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the
heroic and the sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever nature
will allow; the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to
stretch their legs too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus--
[Illustration: Romulus. The Horatii.]
Romulus’s is the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all in
the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond
Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michael, I don’t think
would.
The little picture of ‘Paris and Helen,’ one of the master’s earliest, I
believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely
painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious
ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and
have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the
master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the
varnish? Girodet’s pictures are green; Gros’s emperors and grenadiers
have universally the jaundice. Gerard’s ‘Psyche’ has a most decided
green sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the
enthusiasm which this performance inspired on its first appearance
before the public.
In the same room with it is Girodet’s ghastly ‘Deluge,’ and Géricault’s
dismal ‘Medusa.’ Géricault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a
man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because
no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his
talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price.
All his works have a grand _cachet_: he never did anything mean. When he
painted the ‘Raft of the Medusa,’ it is said he lived for a long time
among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second
Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar, probably,
with Reynolds’s admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft
beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and
frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black,
against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a
legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper, because more natural,
than Girodet’s green ‘Deluge,’ for instance; or his livid ‘Orestes,’ or
red-hot ‘Clytemnestra.’
Seen from a distance, the latter’s ‘Deluge’ has a certain awe-inspiring
air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold
of a tree. On the green man’s shoulders is his old father, in a green
old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and, dangling
at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful
head); and a green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group.
The old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the
tree, which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of
giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the critics;
they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French
tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with
pleasure,--the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good
things--melancholy antitheses--sparkling undertakers’ wit; but this is
heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly.
The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin’s pictures; they put me in
mind of the colour of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy, lurid hue.
How noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is
in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts
Diogenes! The air is thunder-laden and breathes heavily. You hear
ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom.
Near it is a landscape, by Carol Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite
a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding up
a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. _O matutini rores
auræque salubres_! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to
create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish! You can
see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh
salubrious airs (‘the breath of Nature blowing free,’ as the Corn-law
man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapours are rising up
from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the
time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with
regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without
bearing away a certain pleasing dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the
other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein, lies the vast
privilege of the landscape painter: he does not address you with one
fixed particular subject of expression, but with a thousand never
contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may
always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial
imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your
bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more
delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen
landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large
pieces of figures have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar
upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David’s
sansculotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical
brightness and gaiety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder
ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades!
What splendid dandies are those, ever smirking, turning out their toes,
with broad blue ribands to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and
wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a
golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little Cupids, bubbling up in
clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There
is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye
is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to
a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to
pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm,
fresh, delicate, yet full of flavour,--should be likened to a bottle of
Chateau Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romanée
Gelée?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odour almost sickens you; a
sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had
been drinking hot blood.
An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off
this mortal stage, in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often
indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of
pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.
Confess how many times you have read Béranger, and how many Milton? If
you go to the Star and Garter, don’t you grow sick of that vast luscious
landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and
a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to
this subject,--say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton they never
grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with exquisite
Titania. Let us thank Heaven, my dear sir, for according to us the power
to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I have never heard
that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses
of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and
to the donkeys; and if it nothing profit us, _aërias tentâsse domos_
along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
I have now only to mention the charming ‘Cruche Cassée’ of Greuze, which
all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the colour (a thought
too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are
three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and
colour; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to
be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very
fine picture by Bon Bollongue, ‘Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,’
deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigour and richness of
colour. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes
of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of
Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the
French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better colour, and
of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.
Every one of Lesueur’s church-pictures are worth examining and admiring;
they are full of ‘unction’ and pious mystical grace. ‘Saint Scholastica’
is divine; and the ‘Taking down from the Cross’ as noble a composition
as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more
beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in
the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out
with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I
declare that the ‘Jardinière’ is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing
heavenly about her. I vow that the ‘Saint Elizabeth’ is a bad
picture,--a bad composition, badly drawn, badly coloured, in a bad
imitation of Titian,--a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when
Raphael painted this picture, two years before his death, the spirit of
painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; _it was
time that he should die_!!
There,--the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is
no time to speak of Lesueur’s ‘Crucifixion,’ which is odiously coloured,
to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most
difficult to translate into words;--one lays down the pen, and thinks
and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one:
ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colours
are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the
whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if
pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which,
for the present, adieu.--Your faithful
M. A. T.
_To_ MR. ROBERT MACGILP, _Newman Street, London_.
THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN
Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and, as all the world
knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
came to sit to him.
As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
butcher’s daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit
the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair creature’s
name--‘was as lovely a bit of mutton,’ her father said, ‘as ever a man
would wish to stick a knife into.’ She had sat to the painter for all
sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge’s
pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless
other characters: Portrait of a Lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who
was by this time the offspring of their affections.
The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more
lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
household; bakers’ bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural
butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and swore that
his daughter, and the dauber her husband, should have no more of his
wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over
their little infant, vowed to Heaven that they would do without: but in
the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon
pawned his best coat.
When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind
of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the
course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan,
his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand basin and
ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa
said, smiling, that she had found a second father in _her uncle_,--a
base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no
longer the tender simple Griskinissa of other days.
I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking: she swallowed the
warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
evening with the crimson plush breeches.
Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
Griskinissa’s face and her mind grew ugly together; her good-humour
changed to bilious bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets to foul
abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and the
peach colour on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded up
into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to
this a dirty draggle-tailed chintz; long matted hair, wandering into her
eyes and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have
the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.
Poor Simon, who had been a gay lively fellow enough in the days of his
better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck, and
cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the
neighbours could hear this woman’s tongue, and understand her doings;
bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the
floor, and poor Gambouge’s oil and varnish pots went clattering through
the windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon sat
pale and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the brandy-bottle, when
Mrs. Gambouge was out of the way.
One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a picture
of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced a year
before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in
the most pathetic manner. ‘Oh, miserable fate of genius!’ cried he, ‘was
I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this--to be bullied by a
fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold
only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed be
the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or steal, let me sell myself
as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched
than I am now!’
‘Quite the contrary,’ cried a small cheery voice.
‘What!’ exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. ‘Who’s
there?--where are you?--who are you?’
‘You were just speaking of me,’ said the voice.
Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right a bladder of
crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany.
‘Where are you?’ cried he again.
‘S-q-u-e-e-z-e!’ exclaimed the little voice.
Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze, when,
as sure as I am living, a little imp spirted out from the hole upon the
palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily manner.
When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to be
as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then he
jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the poor
painter what he wanted with him.
* * * * *
The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself at
last upon the top of Gambouge’s easel,--smearing out, with his heels,
all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on to the allegoric
portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
‘What!’ exclaimed Simon, ‘is it the----’
[Illustration]
‘Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I
am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me a
little better.’
‘Upon my word,’ said the painter, ‘it is a very singular surprise which
you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
existence.’
The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr. Macready’s
best looks, said:
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.’
Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but felt
somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation of his
new friend.
Diabolus continued: ‘You are a man of merit, and want money: you will
starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend,
how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai,
the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but
the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of
an article which, in itself, is a supposition,--a valueless, windy,
uncertain property of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think,
an _animula vagula blandula_--bah! there is no use beating about the
bush--I mean _a soul_. Come, let me have it: you know you will sell it
some other way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!’--and,
having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as
big as a double _Times_, only there was a different _stamp_ in the
corner.
It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love
to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be
found in the Devil’s own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the
skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over the
paper and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven years, and
at the end of that time was to become the property of the----: Provided
that, during the course of the seven years, every single wish which he
might form should be gratified by the other of the contracting parties;
otherwise the deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge should be
left ‘to go to the ---- his own way.’
‘You will never see me again,’ said Diabolus, in shaking hands with poor
Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at this
day--‘never, at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask will
be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me, it is
best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like scandal. But if
you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and out of the course
of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of this you are the
best judge.’ So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the
chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance,
nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, Heaven
forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an
opportunity to make a similar bargain.
‘Heigho!’ said Simon. ‘I wonder whether this be a reality or a dream. I
am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means to be drunk?
and as for sleeping, I’m too hungry for that. I wish I could see a capon
and a bottle of white wine.’
‘MONSIEUR SIMON!’ cried a voice on the landing-place.
‘C’est ici,’ quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so; and
lo! there was a restaurateur’s boy at the door, supporting a tray, a
tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a tall
amber-coloured flask of sauterne.
‘I am the new boy, sir,’ exclaimed this youth, on entering; ‘but I
believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things.’
Simon grinned, and said, ‘Certainly, I did _ask_ for these things.’ But
such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on his
innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they were for
old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived on
the floor beneath.
‘Go, my boy,’ he said; ‘it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
remove the plates and glasses.’
The little waiter trotted downstairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured
the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--seasoning his
repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
inevitable bill, which was to follow all.
‘Ye gods!’ said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, ‘what a dinner!
what wine!--and how gaily served up too!’ There were silver forks and
spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver dish. ‘Why, the
money for this dish and these spoons,’ cried Simon, ‘would keep me and
Mrs. G. for a month! I wish’--and here Simon whistled, and turned round
to see that nobody was peeping--‘I wish the plate were mine.’
Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! ‘Here they are,’ thought Simon to
himself; ‘why should not I _take them_?’ And take them he did.
‘Detection,’ said he, ‘is not so bad as starvation; and I would as soon
live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge.’
So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout, and
ran downstairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he was.
He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker--that
establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piété. ‘I am obliged
to come to you again, my old friend,’ said Simon, ‘with some family
plate, of which I beseech you to take care.’
The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. ‘I can give you nothing
upon them,’ said he.
‘What!’ cried Simon; ‘not even the worth of the silver?’
‘No; I could buy them at that price at the “Café Morisot,” Rue de la
Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper.’ And, so
saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he had
wished to pawn.
The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime--_when
crime is found out!_--otherwise, conscience takes matters much more
easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be virtuous.
‘But, hark ye, my friend,’ continued the honest broker, ‘there is no
reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have half
the money?--speak, or I peach.’
Simon’s resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. ‘Give me
half,’ he said, ‘and let me go.--What scoundrels are these pawnbrokers!’
ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, ‘seeking every
wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won gain.’
When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of no
less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked
up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon it
was inscribed the simple number, 152. ‘A gambling-house,’ thought
Gambouge. ‘I wish I had half the money that is now on the table
upstairs.’
He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
hundred persons busy at a table of _rouge et noir_. Gambouge’s five
napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was
more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning
round--in ‘its predestined circle rolled,’ as Shelley has it, after
Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and
thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to
the delighted painter. ‘Oh, Diabolus!’ cried he, ‘now it is that I begin
to believe in thee! Don’t talk about merit,’ he cried; ‘talk about
fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future--tell me of _zeroes_.’
And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.
The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped into
zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
lookers-on began to stare at him.
There were twelve thousand pounds on the table. Suffice it to say, that
Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick bundle of
bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had been but
half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a prince for
half a year!
Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had a
stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He repented
of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the restaurateur’s plate.
‘O honesty!’ he cried, ‘how unworthy is an action like this of a man who
has a property like mine!’ So he went back to the pawnbroker with the
gloomiest face imaginable. ‘My friend,’ said he, ‘I have sinned against
all that I hold most sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion.
Here is thy money. In the name of Heaven, restore me the plate which I
have wrongfully sold thee!’
But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, ‘Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell it at
all.’
‘Well,’ cried Gambouge, ‘thou art an inexorable ruffian, Trois-boules;
but I will give thee all I am worth.’ And here he produced a billet of
five hundred francs. ‘Look,’ said he, ‘this money is all I own; it is
the payment of two years’ lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O Heaven! I _stole_ that
plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer the
thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did wrong. I
will starve, I will confess; but I will, I _will_ do right!’
The broker was alarmed. ‘Give me thy note,’ he cried; ‘here is the
plate.’
‘Give me an acquittal first,’ cried Simon, almost broken-hearted; ‘sign
me a paper, and the money is yours.’ So Trois-boules wrote according to
Gambouge’s dictation: ‘Received, for thirteen ounces of plate, twenty
pounds.’
‘Monster of iniquity!’ cried the painter, ‘fiend of wickedness! thou art
caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds’ worth of
plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted
dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money, or I will
bring thee to justice!’
The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave
up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken a
victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a tartar. Simon now
returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner, and
restored the plate.
* * * * *
And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a profound
picture of human life) that Gambouge, since he had grown rich, grew
likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father. He fed the
poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And I have no
doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar
circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon Gambouge.
There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse than
ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he went
to plays, she went to Bible societies, and _vice versâ_: in fact, she
led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a cat in
the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as may be supposed, Simon
prospered in all worldly things--he was the most miserable dog in the
whole city of Paris. Only on the point of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon
agree: and for many years, and during a considerable number of hours in
each day, he thus dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin. O
philosophy! we may talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the
wine-cup, where thou liest like truth in a well, where shall we find
thee?
He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there
was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes, and
the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six years,
began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all as that which
we have described at the commencement of this history. He had grown, as
we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to mass, and had a
confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to consult that
reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole matter.
‘I am inclined to think, holy sir,’ said Gambouge, after he had
concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his
desires were accomplished, ‘that, after all, this demon was no other
than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of that bottle
of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity.’
The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church comfortably
together, and entered afterwards a _café_, where they sat down to
refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his button-hole,
presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before
which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ he
said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers of
the day.
‘Bah!’ said he, at last,--‘sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais? Look,
sir,’ he said, handing over an immense sheet of the _Times_ to Mr.
Gambouge, ‘was ever anything so monstrous?’
Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page. ‘It is
enormous,’ he said; ‘but I do not read English.’
‘Nay,’ said the man with the orders, ‘look closer at it, Signor
Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is.’
Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked at
it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. ‘Come, M. l’Abbé he
said; ‘the heat and glare of this place are intolerable.’
* * * * *
The stranger rose with them. ‘Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
monsieur,’ said he; ‘I do not mind speaking before the Abbé here, who
will be my very good friend one of these days; but I thought it
necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it _at
church_, as you may fancy.’
Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted _Times_, the paper signed
by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
* * * * *
There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to
live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had consultations
with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais.
But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty had been
before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted could give him a
pennyworth of consolation.
Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to
all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
One day Simon’s confessor came bounding into the room with the greatest
glee. ‘My friend,’ said he, ‘I have it! Eureka!--I have found it. Send
the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit College at Rome,
give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter’s; and tell his Holiness
you will double all, if he will give you absolution!’
Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome,
_ventre à terre_. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition,
and sent him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in
due form.
‘Now,’ said he, ‘foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Diabolus! your contract
is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe on the road
to salvation.’ In a fervour of gratitude he clasped the hand of his
confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the cheeks of these
good men.
They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
sitting opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail about
as if he would have gone mad with glee.
‘Why,’ said he, ‘what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
_that_?’ and he tossed the Pope’s missive into a corner. ‘M. l’Abbé
knows,’ he said, bowing and grinning, ‘that though the Pope’s paper may
pass current _here_, it is not worth twopence in our country. What do I
care about the Pope’s absolution? You might just as well be absolved by
your under-butler.’
‘Egad,’ said the Abbé, ‘the rogue is right--I quite forgot the fact,
which he points out clearly enough.’
‘No, no, Gambouge,’ continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, ‘go thy
ways, old fellow, that _cock won’t fight_.’ And he retired up the
chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail
scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed, or
a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more easy to imagine than
to describe.
To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into
such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked
under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night or
day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and cursed
his stars that he ever had married the butcher’s daughter.
It wanted six months of the time.
A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in the
city of Paris--he gaily presided at one end of his table, while Mrs.
Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other extremity.
After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
appear. The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear naked;
the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster; everybody was
pale with expectation and affright.
A very quiet gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to the
company. ‘I will not show my _credentials_,’ he said, blushing, and
pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
shoe-buckles, ‘unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the person
you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will.’
‘You know,’ said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
‘that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months to
come?’
‘I am,’ replied the new-comer.
‘You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit the
bond which I gave you?’
‘It is true.’
‘You declare this before the present company?’
‘Upon my honour, as a gentleman,’ said Diabolus, bowing, and laying his
hand upon his waistcoat.
A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
‘My love,’ continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, ‘will you be
so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am
anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who, in
sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest and
fondest companion.’
Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
husband’s side, and took him tenderly by the hand. ‘Simon!’ said she,
‘is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?’
Simon continued solemnly: ‘Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to obey
me in all things for the six months during which our contract has to
run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half a
year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her caprices,
follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which falls from her
infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I will deliver
myself up at the appointed time.’
Not Lord G----, when flogged by Lord B---- in the House,--not Mr.
Cartlitch, of Astley’s Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did
now. ‘Take another year, Gambouge,’ screamed he; ‘two more--ten
more--a century; roast me on Lawrence’s gridiron, boil me in holy water,
but don’t ask that: don’t, don’t bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge!’
[Illustration: A PUZZLE FOR THE DEVIL]
Simon smiled sternly. ‘I have said it,’ he cried; ‘do this, or our
contract is at an end.’
The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
house turned sour; he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person
in the company well-nigh fainted with the colic. He slapped down the
great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it
with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty pair of
wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with
his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.
* * * * *
Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. ‘You drunken, lazy
scoundrel!’ cried a shrill and well-known voice, ‘you have been asleep
these two hours:’ and here he received another terrific box on the ear.
It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
Nothing remained to corroborate his story except the bladder of lake,
and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
‘I wish,’ said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, ‘that
dreams were true;’ and he went to work again at his portrait.
* * * * *
My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
that her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
CARTOUCHE
I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur
Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much the
fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for
histories of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is
cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest
Church-of-England men.
Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says
the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the Courtille, and in
the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years
later, and in the Marais;--of respectable parents, of course. Think of
the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough,
Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Molière,
Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same
twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing, _à l’envi_!
Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift
was but a dull, idle college lad; but if we read the histories of some
other great men mentioned in the above list--I mean the thieves,
especially--we shall find that they all commenced very early: they
showed a passion for their art, as little Raphael did, or little Mozart;
and the history of Cartouche’s knaveries begins almost with his
breeches.
Dominic’s parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont (now
Louis le Grand); and although it has never been discovered that the
Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced him much in classical or
theological knowledge, Cartouche, in revenge, showed, by repeated
instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were
strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although
not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is
yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and
twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to
his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in the
college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in,
suspicion (which, alas! was confirmed) immediately fell upon him: and by
this little piece of youthful _naïveté_, a scheme, prettily conceived
and smartly performed, was rendered naught.
Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the
apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under
contribution. Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he used to
deal with them, occasionally, on honest principles of barter; that is,
whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows’ knives, books, rulers,
or playthings, which he used fairly to exchange for tarts and
gingerbread.
It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was determined to patronise
this young man; for before he had been long at college, and soon after
he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from the nightcap scrape,
an opportunity occurred by which he was enabled to gratify both his
propensities at once, and not only to steal, but to steal sweetmeats. It
happened that the principal of the college received some pots of
Narbonne honey, which came under the eyes of Cartouche, and in which
that young gentleman, as soon as ever he saw them, determined to put his
fingers. The president of the college put aside his honey-pots in an
apartment within his own; to which, except by the one door which led
into the room which his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet.
There was no chimney in the room; and the windows looked into the court,
where there was a porter at night, and where crowds passed by day. What
was Cartouche to do?--have the honey he must.
Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and over
the president’s rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, into which
the dexterous Cartouche penetrated. These were divided from the rooms
below, according to the fashion of those days, by a set of large beams,
which reached across the whole building, and across which rude planks
were laid, which formed the ceiling of the lower story and the floor of
the upper. Some of these planks did young Cartouche remove; and having
descended by means of a rope, tied a couple of others to the neck of the
honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his prey in safety. He then
cunningly fixed the planks again in their old places, and retired to
gorge himself upon his booty. And, now, see the punishment of avarice!
Everybody knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by a
vow to have no more than a certain small sum of money in their
possession. The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a
larger sum, in defiance of this rule: and where do you think the old
gentleman had hidden it? In the honey-pots! As Cartouche dug his spoon
into one of them, he brought out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a
couple of golden louis, which, with ninety-eight more of their fellows,
were comfortably hidden in the pots. Little Dominic, who, before, had
cut rather a poor figure among his fellow-students, now appeared in as
fine clothes as any of them could boast of; and when asked by his
parents, on going home, how he came by them, said that a young nobleman
of his schoolfellows had taken a violent fancy to him, and made him a
present of a couple of his suits. Cartouche the elder, good man, went to
thank the young nobleman; but none such could be found, and young
Cartouche disdained to give any explanation of his manner of gaining the
money.
Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of youth.
Cartouche lost a hundred louis--for what? For a pot of honey not worth a
couple of shillings. Had he fished out the pieces, and replaced the pots
and the honey, he might have been safe, and a respectable citizen all
his life after. The principal would not have dared to confess the loss
of his money, and did not, openly; but he vowed vengeance against the
stealer of his sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made. Cartouche, as
usual, was fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were found
a couple of empty honey-pots! From this scrape there is no knowing how
he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a little
anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young Cartouche was made
to disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold pieces, old Cartouche
made up the deficiency, and his son was allowed to remain
unpunished--until the next time.
This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though history has
not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis Dominic next
committed, it must have been a serious one; for Cartouche, who had borne
philosophically all the whippings and punishments which were
administered to him at college, did not dare to face that one which his
indignant father had in pickle for him. As he was coming home from
school, on the first day after his crime when he received permission to
go abroad, one of his brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met him
at a short distance from home, and told him what was in preparation;
which so frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home
altogether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself as he
could.
Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full exercise of
it, and his gains were by no means equal to his appetite. In whatever
professions he tried,--whether he joined the gypsies, which he did;
whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, which occupation history
attributes to him,--poor Cartouche was always hungry. Hungry and ragged,
he wandered from one place and profession to another, and regretted the
honey-pots at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and _bouilli_ at home.
Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a merchant, and had dealings
at Rouen. One day, walking on the quays of that city, this gentleman saw
a very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had just made a pounce upon
some bones and turnip-peelings, that had been flung out on the quay, and
was eating them as greedily as if they had been turkeys and truffles.
The worthy man examined the lad a little closer. Oh, heavens! it was
their runaway prodigal--it was little Louis Dominic! The merchant was
touched by his case; and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and
the rags and dirt of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and
hugged him with the tenderest affection. Louis kissed and hugged too,
and blubbered a great deal; he was very repentant, as a man often is
when he is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace was
made; and his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly, and for
a while Louis was as good a son as might be.
But why attempt to balk the progress of genius? Louis’s was not to be
kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time--a smart, lively
young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamoured of a lovely
washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have
something more than mere flames and sentiment;--a washer, or any other
woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps,
and a necklace every now and then, and a few handkerchiefs and silk
stockings, and a treat into the country or to the play. Now, how are all
these things to be had without money? Cartouche saw at once that it was
impossible; and as his father would give him none, he was obliged to
look for it elsewhere. He took to his old courses, and lifted a purse
here, and a watch there; and found, moreover, an accommodating
gentleman, who took the wares off his hands.
This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable society,
in which Cartouche’s merit began speedily to be recognised, and in which
he learnt how pleasant it is in life to have friends to assist one, and
how much may be done by a proper division of labour. M. Cartouche, in
fact, formed part of a regular company or gang of gentlemen, who were
associated together for the purpose of making war on the public and the
law.
Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a rich
young gentleman from the provinces. As is the fashion in France, the
parents had arranged the match among themselves, and the young people
had never met until just before the time appointed for the marriage,
when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his title-deeds, and
settlements, and money. Now, there can hardly be found in history a
finer instance of devotion than Cartouche now exhibited. He went to his
captain, explained the matter to him, and actually, for the good of his
country, as it were (the thieves might be called his country),
sacrificed his sister’s husband’s property. Informations were taken, the
house of the bridegroom was reconnoitred, and, one night, Cartouche, in
company with some chosen friends, made his first visit to the house of
his brother-in-law. All the people were gone to bed; and, doubtless, for
fear of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions spared him
the trouble of opening the door, by ascending quietly at the window.
They arrived at the room where the bridegroom kept his great chest, and
set industriously to work, filing and picking the locks which defended
the treasure.
The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly Cartouche
and his workmen handled their tools, from fear of disturbing his
slumbers, their benevolent design was disappointed, for awaken him they
did; and quietly slipping out of bed, he came to a place where he had a
complete view of all that was going on. He did not cry out, or frighten
himself sillily; but, on the contrary, contented himself with watching
the countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognise them on
another occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did not feel the
slightest anxiety about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed
all the cash and papers the day before.
As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the
nothing which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such a
loud voice, ‘Here, Thomas!--John!--officer!--keep the gate, fire at the
rascals!’ that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped nimbly out of
window, and left the house free.
Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother-in-law, but
eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present at
his father’s house. The evening before the marriage came; and then his
father insisted upon his appearance among the other relatives of the
bride’s and bridegroom’s families, who were all to assemble and make
merry. Cartouche was obliged to yield; and brought with him one or two
of his companions, who had been, by the way, present in the affair of
the empty money-boxes; and though he never fancied that there was any
danger in meeting his brother-in-law, for he had no idea that he had
been seen on the night of the attack, with a natural modesty, which did
him really credit, he kept out of the young bridegroom’s sight as much
as he could, and showed no desire to be presented to him. At supper,
however, as he was sneaking modestly down to a side-table, his father
shouted after him, ‘Ho, Dominic, come hither, and sit opposite your
brother-in-law:’ which Dominic did, his friends following. The
bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a bumper; and was in the act
of making him a pretty speech, on the honour of an alliance with such a
family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship in general, when,
looking in his face--ye gods! he saw the very man who had been filing at
his money-chest a few nights ago! By his side, too, sat a couple more of
the gang. The poor fellow turned deadly pale and sick, and, setting his
glass down, ran quickly out of the room, for he thought he was in
company of a whole gang of robbers. And when he got home, he wrote a
letter to the elder Cartouche, humbly declining any connection with his
family.
Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an
abrupt dissolution of the engagement; and then, much to his horror,
heard of his eldest son’s doings. ‘You would not have me marry into
such a family?’ said the ex-bridegroom. And old Cartouche, an honest old
citizen, confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would not. What was he
to do with the lad? He did not like to ask for a _lettre de cachet_, and
shut him up in the Bastile. He determined to give him a year’s
discipline at the monastery of St. Lazare.
But how to catch the young gentleman? Old Cartouche knew that, were he
to tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey, and,
therefore, he determined to be very cunning. He told Dominic that he was
about to make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and should require a
witness; so they stepped into a carriage together, and drove
unsuspectingly to the Rue St. Denis. But, when they arrived near the
convent, Cartouche saw several ominous figures gathering round the
coach, and felt that his doom was sealed. However, he made as if he knew
nothing of the conspiracy; and the carriage drew up, and his father
descended, and, bidding him wait for a minute in the coach, promised to
return to him. Cartouche looked out; on the other side of the way half a
dozen men were posted, evidently with the intention of arresting him.
Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius, which,
if he had not been professionally employed in the morning, he never
could have executed. He had in his pocket a piece of linen, which he had
laid hold of at the door of some shop, and from which he quickly tore
three suitable stripes. One he tied round his head, after the fashion of
a nightcap; a second round his waist, like an apron; and with the third
he covered his hat, a round one with a large brim. His coat and his
periwig he left behind him in the carriage; and when he stepped out from
it (which he did without asking the coachman to let down the steps), he
bore exactly the appearance of a cook’s boy carrying a dish; and with
this he slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade adieu to
the Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily to seek him,
and was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and wig.
With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home, father, friends,
conscience, remorse, society, behind him. He discovered (like a great
number of other philosophers and poets, when they have committed
rascally actions) that the world was all going wrong, and he quarrelled
with it outright. One of the first stories told of the illustrious
Cartouche, when he became professionally and openly a robber, redounds
highly to his credit, and shows that he knew how to take advantage of
the occasion, and how much he had improved in the course of a very few
years’ experience. His courage and ingenuity were vastly admired by his
friends; so much so, that, one day, the captain of the band thought fit
to compliment him, and vowed that when he (the captain) died, Cartouche
should infallibly be called to the command-in-chief. This conversation,
so flattering to Cartouche, was carried on between the two gentlemen, as
they were walking, one night, on the quays by the side of the Seine.
Cartouche, when the captain made the last remark, blushingly protested
against it, and pleaded his extreme youth as a reason why his comrades
could never put entire trust in him. ‘Psha, man!’ said the captain, ‘thy
youth is in thy favour; thou wilt live only the longer to lead thy
troops to victory. As for strength, bravery, and cunning, wert thou as
old as Methuselah, thou couldst not be better provided than thou art
now, at eighteen.’ What was the reply of Monsieur Cartouche? He
answered, not by words, but by actions. Drawing his knife from his
girdle, he instantly dug it into the captain’s left side, as near his
heart as possible: and then, seizing that imprudent commander,
precipitated him violently into the waters of the Seine, to keep company
with the gudgeons and river-gods. When he returned to the band, and
recounted how the captain had basely attempted to assassinate him, and
how he, on the contrary, had, by exertion of superior skill, overcome
the captain, not one of the society believed a word of his history; but
they elected him captain forthwith. I think his Excellency Don Rafael
Maroto, the pacificator of Spain, is an amiable character, for whom
history has not been written in vain.
Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the feats
which Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a pitch of
glory, that if there had been a hundred thousand, instead of a hundred
of them, who knows but that a new and popular dynasty might not have
been founded, and ‘Louis Dominic, premier Empereur des Frances,’ might
have performed innumerable glorious actions, and fixed himself in the
hearts of his people, just as other monarchs have done, a hundred years
after Cartouche’s death.
A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of Cartouche,
who, in company with two other gentlemen, robbed the _coche_, or
packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity of
booty,--making the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling them at
leisure. ‘This money will be but very little among three,’ whispered
Cartouche to his neighbour, as the three conquerors were making merry
over their gains; ‘if you were but to pull the trigger of your pistol in
the neighbourhood of your comrade’s ear, perhaps it might go off, and
then there would be but two of us to share.’ Strangely enough, as
Cartouche said, the pistol _did_ go off, and No. 3 perished. ‘Give him
another ball,’ said Cartouche: and another was fired into him. But no
sooner had Cartouche’s comrade discharged both his pistols, than
Cartouche himself, seized with a furious indignation, drew his: ‘Learn,
monster,’ cried he, ‘not to be so greedy of gold, and perish, the victim
of thy disloyalty and avarice!’ So Cartouche slew the second robber; and
there is no man in Europe who can say that the latter did not merit well
his punishment.
I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of the
triumphs of Cartouche and his band: how he robbed the Countess of O----,
going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell in love with
him, and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the lieutenant of
police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any man who would bring
Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a coach-and-six, drove up to
the hôtel of the police; and the noble Marquess, desiring to see
Monsieur de la Reynie, on matters of the highest moment, alone, the
latter introduced him into his private cabinet; and how, when there, the
Marquess drew from his pocket a long curiously shaped dagger: ‘Look at
this, Monsieur de la Reynie,’ said he; ‘this dagger is poisoned!’
‘Is it possible?’ said M. de la Reynie.
‘A prick of it would do for any man,’ said the Marquess.
‘You don’t say so!’ said M. de la Reynie.
‘I do, though; and, what is more,’ says the Marquess, in a terrible
voice, ‘if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, with
your face towards it, and your hands crossed over your back, or if you
make the slightest noise or cry, I will stick this poisoned dagger
between your ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche!’
At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk incontinently
down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully gagged and corded;
after which Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands upon all the money which
was kept in the lieutenant’s cabinet. Alas! and alas! many a stout
bailiff, and many an honest fellow of a spy, went, for that day, without
his pay and his victuals.
There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, and
found in it a certain Abbé Potter, who was full of indignation against
this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went back to Paris,
which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he should give the
lieutenant of police some information, which would infallibly lead to
the scoundrel’s capture. But poor Potter was disappointed in his
designs; for, before he could fulfil them, he was made the victim of
Cartouche’s cruelty.
A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche had
travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbé de Potter, of that town;
that, on the reverend gentleman’s return towards Paris, Cartouche had
waylaid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and would come to Paris
himself, bearing the name and clothes of the unfortunate Abbé, by the
Lille coach, on such a day. The Lille coach arrived, was surrounded by
police agents; the monster Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the
Abbé’s guise. He was seized, bound, flung into prison, brought out to be
examined, and, on examination, found to be no other than the Abbé Potter
himself! It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men,
and find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us.
Another diligence adventure is recounted of the famous Cartouche. It
happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady, clad in
widow’s weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of servants. The poor
thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman of Marseilles, and was going
to the capital to arrange with her lawyers, and to settle her husband’s
will. The Count de Grinche (for so her fellow-passenger was called) was
quite as candid as the pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a
captain in the regiment of Nivernois; that he was going to Paris to buy
a colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince de
Montmorenci, the Commandeur de la Trémoille, with all their interest at
Court, could not fail to procure for him. To be short, in the course of
the four days’ journey, the Count Louis Dominic de Grinche played his
cards so well, that the poor little widow half forgot her late husband;
and her eyes glistened with tears as the Count kissed her hand at
parting--at parting, he hoped, only for a few hours.
Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the end
of a fortnight, and in the midst of a _tête-à-tête_, he plunged, one
morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, ‘Leonora, do you love me?’ the
poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh in the world;
and, sinking her blushing head on his shoulder, whispered, ‘Oh, Dominic,
je t’aime! Ah!’ said she, ‘how noble is it of my Dominic to take me with
the little I have, and he so rich a nobleman!’ The fact is, the old
Baron’s titles and estates had passed away to his nephews; his dowager
was only left with three hundred thousand livres, in _rentes sur
l’état_,--a handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of
Count Dominic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de
la Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorise him to
aspire to the hand of a duchess, at least.
The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick that
was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her affianced
husband, sold out her money, and realised it in gold, to be made over to
him on the day when the contract was to be signed. The day arrived; and,
according to the custom in France, the relations of both parties
attended. The widow’s relatives, though respectable, were not of the
first nobility, being chiefly persons of the _finance_ or the _robe_;
there was the President of the Court of Arras, and his lady; a
farmer-general; a judge of a court of Paris; and other such grave and
respectable people. As for Monsieur le Comte de la Grinche, he was not
bound for names; and, having the whole peerage to choose from, brought a
host of Montmorencies, Créquis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back. His
_homme d’affaires_ brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans
of his estates, and the titles of his glorious ancestry. The widow’s
lawyers had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one side and
the parchments on the other, lay the contract which was to make the
widow’s three hundred thousand francs the property of the Count de
Grinche. The Count de la Grinche was just about to sign, when the
Marshal de Villars, stepping up to him, said, ‘Captain, do you know who
the President of the Court of Arras, yonder, is? It is old Manasseh, the
fence, of Brussels. I pawned a gold watch to him, which I stole from
Cadogan, when I was with Malbrook’s army in Flanders.’
Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. ‘Run me
through the body!’ said his Grace, ‘but the Comptroller-General’s lady,
there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the----’
Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon’s voice fell.
Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table. He took up one
of the widow’s fifteen thousand gold pieces;--it was as pretty a bit of
copper as you could wish to see. ‘My dear,’ said he politely, ‘there is
some mistake here, and this business had better stop.’
‘Count!’ gasped the poor widow.
‘Count be hanged!’ answered the bridegroom sternly; ‘my name is
CARTOUCHE!’
[Illustration: CARTOUCHE]
ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS
WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL
There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for
money, and having received a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a
state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed
out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as
exactly to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so much richer than the
doublets of all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honour the
procession was given, remarked the painter, and so his deceit was found
out.
I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a
similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more
agreeable, lifelike, and natural than the true one: and all who, from
laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and
comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that
they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their
favourite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the
world.
If, then, ladies, the bigwigs begin to sneer at the course of our
studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the
mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let us
at once take a high ground, and say,--Go you to your own employments,
and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from
the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black-draughts of metaphysics; go
fumble over history-books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy; _our_
histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk
sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley, and
Co.; our walks are over such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and
Shakespeare have laid out for us; and if our dwellings are castles in
the air, we find them excessively splendid and commodious;--be not you
envious because you have no wings to fly thither. Let the bigwigs
despise us; such contempt of their neighbours is the custom of all
barbarous tribes; witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared
that there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sclavonic
hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their jargon
which signifies ‘to speak;’ the ruffians imagining that they had a
monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other nations were
dumb.
Not so: others may be _deaf_; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent,
instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so
much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on
his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were
much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible
catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the
reader.
As thus:
Julius Cæsar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard, at Blenheim.
The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
And what have we here?--so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had
been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia; and
that Julius Cæsar’s family name had been John Churchill;--the fact would
have stood, in history, thus:
‘Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia.’
And why not?--we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated,
that:
‘The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and
Cæsar, writing home to his mamma, said, “Madame, tout est perdu
fors l’honneur.”’
What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
written, and sixty-volumed _Biographies Universelles_, and Lardner’s
_Cabinet Cyclopædias_, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the
names everything; and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by
learning Walker’s _Gazetteer_, or getting by heart a fifty-years-old
edition of the _Court Guide_.
Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
question--the novelists.
* * * * *
On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked,
that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as ‘copies’ and
‘compositions.’ Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly
stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according
to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them); and, for
composition, we intend to favour the public with some studies of French
modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of
the English public.
Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by the
French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works
political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical,
theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a
plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time and
study. And, passing from novels in general to French novels, let us
confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a
great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal
observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has dwelt
two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for the
purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)--let an
English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he knows
of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many
French friends he has made? He has enjoyed, at the end of the year, say:
At the English Ambassador’s, so many soirées.
At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
At cafés, so many dinners.
At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax-candles, cups of tea,
glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the
same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people.
Year by year we live in France, and grow grey, and see no more. We play
écarté with Monsieur de Trèfle every night; but what know we of the
heart of the man--of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trèfle?
If we have good legs, and love the amusement, we dance with Countess
Flicflac, Tuesdays and Thursdays, ever since the Peace: and how far are
we advanced in acquaintance with her since we first twirled her round a
room? We know her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of
them are sham, by the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and her
rouge--but no more: she may turn into a kitchen-wench at twelve on
Thursday night, for aught we know; her _voiture_, a pumpkin; and her
_gens_, so many rats: but the real, rougeless, _intime_ Flicflac, we
know not. This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we may understand
the French language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but never can
penetrate into Flicflac’s confidence: our ways are not her ways; our
manners of thinking not hers; when we say a good thing, in the course of
the night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac will trill you
off fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the _bêtise_ of the Briton, who
has never a word to say. We are married, and have fourteen children, and
would just as soon make love to the Pope of Rome as to any one but our
own wife. If you do not make love to Flicflac, from the day after her
marriage to the day she reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool. We won’t
play at écarté with Trèfle on Sunday nights; and are seen walking,
about one o’clock (accompanied by fourteen red-haired children, with
fourteen gleaming prayer-books), away from the church. ‘Grand Dieu!’
cries Trèfle, ‘is that man mad? He won’t play at cards on a Sunday; he
goes to church on a Sunday; he has fourteen children!’
[Illustration: HOW TO ASTONISH THE FRENCH
AN ENGLISH FAMILY IN THE TUILERIES]
Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise? Pass we on to our argument,
which is, that with our English notions and moral and physical
constitution, it is quite impossible that we should become intimate with
our brisk neighbours; and when such authors as Lady Morgan and Mrs.
Trollope, having frequented a certain number of tea-parties in the
French capital, begin to prattle about French manners and men--with all
respect for the talents of those ladies, we do believe their information
not to be worth a sixpence: they speak to us, not of men, but of
tea-parties. Tea-parties are the same all the world over; with the
exception that, with the French, there are more lights and prettier
dresses; and with us a mighty deal more tea in the pot.
There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a man
may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or
post-boys. On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library,
he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people
and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume
bears us whithersoever we will--back to Ivanhoe and Cœur de Lion, or
to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up to the
heights of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork
school; or, better still, to the snug inn-parlour, or the jovial
tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure
that a man who, a hundred years hence, should sit down to write the
history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary
history of _Pickwick_ aside as a frivolous work. It contains true
character under false names; and, like _Roderick Random_, an inferior
work, and _Tom Jones_ (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a
better idea of the state and ways of the people than one could gather
from any more pompous or authentic histories.
We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short
reviews of French fiction-writers, of particular classes, whose Paris
sketches may give the reader some notion of manners in that capital. If
not original, at least the drawings are accurate; for, as a Frenchman
might have lived a thousand years in England, and never could have
written _Pickwick_, an Englishman cannot hope to give a good description
of the inward thoughts and ways of his neighbours.
To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing fashion
in which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the works of a new
writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual manners, without
those monstrous and terrible exaggerations in which late French writers
have indulged; and who, if he occasionally wounds the English sense of
propriety (as what French man or woman alive will not?), does so more by
slighting than by outraging it, as, with their laboured descriptions of
all sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press
have done. M. de Bernard’s characters are men and women of genteel
society--rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes;
and we follow him in his lively malicious account of their manners,
without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas have
provided for us.
Let us give an instance:--it is from the amusing novel called _Les Ailes
d’Icare_, and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a French
fashionable rogue. The fashions will change in a few years, and the
rogue, of course, with them. Let us catch this delightful fellow ere he
flies. It is impossible to sketch the character in a more sparkling,
gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard’s; but such light things are very
difficult of translation, and the sparkle sadly evaporates during the
process of _decanting_.
A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER
‘MY DEAR VICTOR--It is six in the morning: I have just come from the
English Ambassador’s ball, and as my plans for the day do not admit of
my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, saturated as I am
with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other pleasures would be too
wearisome to keep me awake, except that of conversing with you. Indeed,
were I not to write to you now, when should I find the possibility of
doing so? Time flies here with such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures
and my affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade,
that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment
has its imperious employ. Do not, then, accuse me of negligence: if my
correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give
it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and
which carries me hither and thither at its will.
‘However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I
assure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous and
fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my debts, I
propose to consecrate four hours to-day. I give you the preference to
all the world, even to the lovely Duchess of San Severino, a delicious
Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I met last summer at the Waters
of Aix. I have also a most important negotiation to conclude with one of
our Princes of Finance: but _n’importe_, I commence with thee:
friendship before love or money--friendship before everything. My
despatches concluded, I am engaged to ride with the Marquis de
Grigneure, the Comte de Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may
recover, for a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale, that Grigneure has
lost, the appetite which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at
the Ambassador’s gala. On my honour, my dear fellow, everybody was of a
_caprice prestigieux_ and a _comfortable mirobolant_. Fancy, for a
banquet-hall, a Royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of the
shrubs transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming through the
foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most brilliant
cavaliers of Paris. Orleans and Nemours were there, dancing and eating
like simple mortals. In a word, Albion did the thing very handsomely,
and I accord it my esteem.
Here I pause, to ring for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea; for my
head is heavy, and I’ve no time for a headache. In serving me, this
rascal of a Frédéric has broken a cup, true Japan, upon my honour--the
rogue does nothing else. Yesterday, for instance, did he not thump me
prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after Cellini, of which the
carving alone cost me three hundred francs? I must positively put the
wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety of my furniture; and, in
consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom
hath not waited for years--Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be
elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I was
speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the
Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After quitting
Borel’s, we propose to adjourn to the Barrière du Combat, where Lord
Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from
England--one of these, O’Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory), has a face in
which I place much confidence: I have a bet of ten louis with Castijars
on the strength of it. After the fight, we shall make our accustomed
appearance at the Café de Paris (the only place, by the way, where a man
who respects himself may be seen),--and then away with frocks and spurs,
and on with our dress-coats for the rest of the evening. In the first
place, I shall go doze for a couple of hours at the Opera, where my
presence is indispensable; for Coralie, a charming creature, passes this
evening from the rank of the _rats_ to that of the _tigers_, in a
_pas-de-trois_, and our box patronises her. After the Opera, I must show
my face at two or three _salons_ in the Faubourg St. Honoré; and having
thus performed my duties to the world of fashion, I return to the
exercise of my rights as a member of the Carnival. At two o’clock all
the world meets at the Théâtre Ventadour; lions and tigers--the whole of
our menagerie, will be present. Enoc! off we go! roaring and bounding
Bacchanal and Saturnal; ‘tis agreed that we shall be everything that is
low. To conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most “furiously
dishevelled” orgy that ever was known.’
* * * * *
The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious and
instructive. But pause we for the present, to consider the fashionable
part: and, caricature as it is, we have an accurate picture of the
actual French dandy. Bets, breakfasts, riding, dinners at the Café de
Paris, and delirious Carnival balls: the animal goes through all such
frantic pleasures at the season that precedes Lent. He has a wondrous
respect for English ‘gentlemen-sportsmen;’ he imitates their
clubs--their love of horse-flesh: he calls his palefrenier a groom,
wears blue bird’s-eye neckcloths, sports his pink out hunting, rides
steeplechases, and has his Jockey Club. The ‘tigers and lions’ alluded
to in the report have been borrowed from our own country, and a great
compliment is it to Monsieur de Bernard, the writer of the above amusing
sketch, that he has such a knowledge of English names and things, as to
give a Tory lord the decent title of Lord Cobham, and to call his dog
O’Connell. Paul de Kock calls an English nobleman, in one of his last
novels, _Lord Boulingrog_, and appears vastly delighted at the
verisimilitude of the title.
For the ‘rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, galop
infernal, ronde du sabbat, tout le tremblement,’ these words give a most
clear untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous can
hardly strike a man’s eye. I was present at one where the four thousand
guests whirled screaming, reeling, roaring, out of the ballroom in the
Rue St. Honoré, and tore down to the column in the Place Vendôme, round
which they went shrieking their own music, twenty miles an hour, and so
tore madly back again. Let a man go alone to such a place of amusement,
and the sight for him is perfectly terrible: the horrid frantic gaiety
of the place puts him in mind more of the merriment of demons than of
men: bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs, pistol-shots, pour out of the
orchestra, which seems as mad as the dancers; whizz, a whirlwind of
paint and patches, all the costumes under the sun, all the ranks in the
empire, all the he and she scoundrels of the capital, writhed and
twisted together, rush by you. If a man falls, woe be to him: two
thousand screaming menads go trampling over his carcass; they have
neither power nor will to stop.
A set of Malays, drunk with bang, and running the muck, a company of
howling dervishes, may possibly, at our own day, go through similar
frantic vagaries; but I doubt if any civilised European people but the
French would permit and enjoy such scenes. But our neighbours see little
shame in them; and it is very true that men of all classes, high and
low, here congregate and give themselves up to the disgusting worship of
the genius of the place. From the dandy of the Boulevard and the Café
Anglais, let us turn to the dandy of ‘Flicoteau’s’ and the Pays
Latin--the Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are
celebrated, and whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on
the alert. The following is M. de Bernard’s description of him:
‘I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the
École de Droit; we lived in the same hotel on the Place du
Panthéon. No doubt, madam, you have occasionally met little
children dedicated to the Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in
white raiment from head to foot: my friend Dambergeac had received
a different consecration. His father, a great patriot of the
Revolution, had determined that his son should bear into the world
a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great displeasure of
his godmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was christened by
the pagan name of Harmodius. It was a kind of moral tricolour
cockade, which the child was to bear through the vicissitudes of
all the revolutions to come. Under such influences, my friend’s
character began to develop itself, and, fired by the example of his
father, and by the warm atmosphere of his native place, Marseilles,
he grew up to have an independent spirit, and a grand liberality of
politics, which were at their height when first I made his
acquaintance.
‘He was then a young man of eighteen, with a tall slim figure, a
broad chest, and a flaming black eye, out of all which personal
charms he knew how to draw the most advantage; and though his
costume was such as Staub might probably have criticised, he had,
nevertheless, a style peculiar to himself--to himself and the
students, among whom he was the leader of the fashion. A tight
black coat, buttoned up to the chin, across the chest, set off that
part of his person; a low-crowned hat, with a voluminous rim, cast
solemn shadows over a countenance bronzed by a southern sun: he
wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks, which he
sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more
revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his
code and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto
in his pocket, by way of a breviary.
‘Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain
sympathies of character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself,
and we speedily became close friends. I don’t think, in the whole
course of his three years’ residence, Dambergeac ever went through
a single course of lectures. For the examinations, he trusted to
luck, and to his own facility, which was prodigious: as for
honours, he never aimed at them, but was content to do exactly as
little as was necessary for him to gain his degree. In like manner
he sedulously avoided those horrible circulating libraries, where
daily are seen to congregate the “reading men” of our schools. But,
in revenge, there was not a milliner’s shop, or a _lingèré’s_, in
all our Quartier Latin, which he did not industriously frequent,
and of which he was not the oracle. Nay, it was said that his
victories were not confined to the left bank of the Seine; reports
did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him
accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the
Boulevard Poissonnière. Such recitals were, for us less favoured
mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited
our ambition, but not our jealousy; for the superiority of
Harmodius was acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a
rivalry with him. No man ever cantered a hack through the Champs
Élysées with such elegant assurance; no man ever made such a
massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a rubber at
billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet of
Béranger with such a roaring melodious bass. He was the monarch of
the Prado in winter; in summer of the Chaumière and Mont Parnasse.
Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment
showed a more amiable _laisser-aller_ in the dance--that peculiar
dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish
society has banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the
prince of _mauvais sujets_, a youth with all the accomplishments of
Göttingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces of his own country.
‘Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast
and absorbing occupation--politics, namely, in which he was as
turbulent and enthusiastic as in pleasure. _La Patrie_ was his
idol, his heaven, his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he
dreamed, of his country. I have spoken to you of his coiffure à la
Sylla; need I mention his pipe, his meerschaum pipe, of which
General Foy’s head was the bowl; his handkerchief with the Charte
printed thereon; and his celebrated tricolour braces, which kept
the rallying sign of his country ever close to his heart? Besides
these outward and visible signs of sedition, he had inward and
secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs, frequented
associations, read the _Constitutionnel_ (Liberals, in those days,
swore by the _Constitutionnel_), harangued peers and deputies who
had deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall
on such, and the _Constitutionnel_ declared their merit, Harmodius
was the very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his
shoulder to their coffins.
‘Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less
lively. He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a
claqueur at a theatre. At this period, missionaries were rife about
Paris, and endeavoured to re-illume the zeal of the faithful by
public preachings in the churches. “Infâmes jésuites!” would
Harmodius exclaim, who, in the excess of his toleration, tolerated
nothing; and, at the head of a band of philosophers like himself,
would attend with scrupulous exactitude the meetings of the
reverend gentlemen. But, instead of a contrite heart, Harmodius
only brought the abomination of desolation into their sanctuary. A
perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under the feet
of the faithful; odours of impure asafœtida would mingle with
the fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise
up along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding
one of the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.
‘His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the
claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit! They knew
him, and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and
his famous war-cry, “La Carte au chapeau!” was so much dreaded,
that the “entrepreneurs de succès dramatiques” demanded twice as
much to _do_ the Odéon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius
frequented) as to applaud at any other place of amusement: and,
indeed, their double pay was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care
that they should earn the most of it under the benches.’
This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give the
reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent Paris
student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him: the grisette
is his heroine; and dear old Béranger, the cynic-epicurean, has
celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses in the world. Of
these we may have occasion to say a word or two anon. Meanwhile let us
follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing descriptions of his
countrymen somewhat farther; and, having seen how Dambergeac was a
ferocious republican, being a bachelor, let us see how age, sense, and a
little Government pay--that great agent of conversions in France--nay,
in England--has reduced him to be a pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of
the _juste milieu_: his former portrait was that of the student, the
present will stand for an admirable lively likeness of
THE SOUS-PRÉFET
‘Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was
introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual furniture of
a man in his station. There was, in the middle of the room, a large
bureau, surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there were many shelves
with boxes duly ticketed; there were a number of maps, and, among them,
a great one of the department over which Dambergeac ruled; and, facing
the windows, on a wooden pedestal, stood a plaster cast of the “Roi des
Français.” Recollecting my friend’s former republicanism, I smiled at
this piece of furniture; but before I had time to carry my observations
any farther, a heavy rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused the
windows to rattle and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the
sub-prefecture, called my attention to the court without. Its iron gates
were flung open, and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot
escorted by a brace of gendarmes, sword in hand. A tall gentleman, with
a cocked-hat and feathers, wearing a blue-and-silver uniform coat,
descended from the vehicle; and having, with much grave condescension,
saluted his escort, mounted the stair. A moment afterwards the door of
the study was opened, and I embraced my friend.
‘After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each other
with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we had last
met.
‘“You are grown very thin and pale,” said Harmodius, after a moment.
‘“In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on
celibacy,--you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.”
‘In fact, a great change, and such an one as many people would call a
change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown fat,
and announced a decided disposition to become what French people call a
_bel homme_: that is, a very fat one. His complexion, bronzed before,
was now clear white and red: there were no more political allusions in
his hair, which was, on the contrary, neatly frizzed, and brushed over
the forehead, shell-shape. This headdress, joined to a thin pair of
whiskers, cut crescent-wise from the ear to the nose, gave my friend a
regular bourgeois physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal too
well; and, added to this, the solemnity of his prefectoral costume gave
his whole appearance a pompous, well-fed look, that by no means pleased.
‘“I surprise you,” said I, “in the midst of your splendour: do you know
that this costume and yonder attendants have a look excessively awful
and splendid? You entered your palace just now with the air of a pasha.”
‘“You see me in uniform in honour of Monseigneur the Bishop, who has
just made his diocesan visit, and whom I have just conducted to the
limit of the arrondissement.”
‘“What!” said I, “you have gendarmes for guards, and dance attendance on
bishops? There are no more janissaries and Jesuits, I suppose?” The
sub-prefect smiled.
‘“I assure you that my gendarmes are very worthy fellows; and that among
the gentlemen who compose our clergy there are some of the very best
rank and talent: besides, my wife is niece to one of the
vicars-general.”
‘“What have you done with that great Tasso beard that poor Armandine
used to love so?”
‘“My wife does not like a beard; and you know that what is permitted to
a student is not very becoming to a magistrate.”
‘I began to laugh. “Harmodius and a magistrate?--how shall I ever couple
the two words together? But tell me, in your correspondences, your
audiences, your sittings with village mayors and petty councils, how do
you manage to remain awake?”
‘“In the commencement,” said Harmodius gravely, “it _was_ very
difficult; and, in order to keep my eyes open, I used to stick pins into
my legs: now, however, I am used to it; and I’m sure I don’t take more
than fifty pinches of snuff at a sitting.”
‘“Ah! _à propos_ of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a
famous smoker. Give me a cigar,--it will take away the musty odour of
these piles of papers.”
‘“Impossible, my dear; I don’t smoke; my wife cannot bear a cigar.”
‘His wife! thought I: always his wife; and I remember Juliette, who
really grew sick at the smell of a pipe, and Harmodius would smoke,
until, at last, the poor thing grew to smoke herself, like a trooper. To
compensate, however, as much as possible for the loss of my cigar,
Dambergeac drew from his pocket an enormous gold snuff-box, on which
figured the self-same head that I had before remarked in plaster, but
this time surrounded with a ring of pretty princes and princesses, all
nicely painted in miniature. As for the statue of Louis Philippe, that,
in the cabinet of an official, is a thing of course; but the snuff-box
seemed to indicate a degree of sentimental and personal devotion, such
as the old Royalists were only supposed to be guilty of.
‘“What! you are turned decided _juste milieu_?” said I.
‘“I am a sous-préfet,” answered Harmodius.
‘I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the change
which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions of my friend,
but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I should find the
student of ‘26 in the functionary of ‘34. At this moment a domestic
appeared.
‘“Madame is waiting for Monsieur,” said he: “the last bell has gone, and
mass beginning.”
‘“Mass!” said I, bounding up from my chair. “You at mass, like a decent
serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and bored keys to
whistle through?”--The sous-préfet rose, his countenance was calm, and
an indulgent smile played upon his lips, as he said, “My arrondissement
is very devout; and not to interfere with the belief of the population
is the maxim of every wise politician: I have precise orders from
Government on the point, too, and go to eleven-o’clock mass every
Sunday.”’
* * * * *
There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts
here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still more
curious to think of what he has _not_ written, and to judge of his
characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by
the unconscious testimony that the words all together convey. In the
first place, our author describes a swindler imitating the manners of a
dandy: and many swindlers and dandies be there, doubtless, in London as
well as in Paris. But there is about the present swindler, and about
Monsieur Dambergeac the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the
sous-préfet, and his friend, a rich store of calm internal _debauch_,
which does not, let us hope and pray, exist in England. Hearken to M. de
Gustan, and his smirking whispers about the Duchess of San Severino, who
_pour son bonheur particulier_, etc. etc. Listen to Monsieur
Dambergeac’s friend’s remonstrances concerning _pauvre Juliette_, who
grew sick at the smell of a pipe; to his _naïve_ admiration at the fact
that the sous-préfet goes to church: and we may set down, as axioms,
that religion is so uncommon among the Parisians, as to awaken the
surprise of all candid observers; that gallantry is so common as to
create no remark, and to be considered as a matter of course. With us,
at least, the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man
professing _ir_religion who would be remarked and reprehended in
England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate it adopts the
decency of secrecy, and is not made patent and notorious to all the
world. A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a
mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio
over again, in the thousand and one French novels which depict the state
of society in that country.
For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be
alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like) to be found in as many
admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de Bernard. He is
more remarkable than any other French author, to our notion, for writing
like a gentleman: there is ease, grace, and _ton_ in his style, which,
if we judge aright, cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulié, or Dumas.
We have then--_Gerfaut_, a novel: a lovely creature is married to a
brave, haughty Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at
Paris, he remaining on his _terres_, cultivating, carousing, and hunting
the boar. The lovely creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris;
instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place; baron
killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into
dissipation, and so the tale ends.
Next, _La Femme de Quarante Ans_, a capital tale, full of exquisite fun
and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and _three_
lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night;
for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her
three admirers _a star apiece_, saying to one and the other, ‘Alphonse,
when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;’ ‘Isidore, when that
bright planet sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline,’ etc.
_Un Acte de Vertu_, from which we have taken Dambergeac’s history,
contains him, the husband--a wife--and a brace of lovers; and a great
deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants the
other. Pretty morals truly!
If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of Le
Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit,
exactly the same intrigues going on. A noble Count lives in the Faubourg
St. Honoré, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her
Grace to the Countess, his wife. The Countess, his wife, in order to
_ramener_ her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend,
_to pretend to take a lover_: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the
affair in earnest: climax--duel, death, despair, and what not! In the
_Faubourg St. Germain_, another novel by the same writer, which
professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon
dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria, there is an old husband,
of course; a sentimental young German nobleman, that falls in love with
his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the
conduct of the lady, who is reprehended--not for deceiving her husband
(poor devil!)--but for being a flirt, _and taking a second lover_, to
the utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all? Had Père Enfantin (who, it is
said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a
banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified,
social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been
avoided:--would it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver
of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and
there propound his scheme for the regeneration of France?
He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently
advanced to give such a philosopher fair-play. In London, as yet, there
are no blessed _Bureaux de Mariage_, where an old bachelor may have a
charming young maiden--for his money; or a widow of seventy may buy a
gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of bank-billets. If
_mariages de convenance_ take place here (as they will wherever avarice,
and poverty, and desire, and yearning after riches are to be found), at
least, thank God, such unions are not arranged upon a regular organised
_system_: there is a fiction of attachment with us, and there is a
consolation in the deceit (‘the homage,’ according to the old _môt_ of
Rochefoucauld, ‘which vice pays to virtue’); for the very falsehood
shows that the virtue exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old
French colonel inveighing against the chastity of English _demoiselles_:
‘Figurez-vous, sir,’ said he (he had been a prisoner in England), ‘that
these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with
the men!’--and, pray Heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts
of maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young
lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous
lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich and
rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting or
thinking of harm.
Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the
Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but
some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader;
and all are filled with that remarkable _naïf_ contempt of the
institution called marriage, which we have seen in M. de Bernard. The
romantic young nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted
into what a celebrated female author calls _la crême de la crême de la
haute volée_ of Parisian society. He is a youth of about twenty years of
age. ‘No passion had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to
his faculties; he was awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling
for it, and yet trembling at its approach; feeling, in the depths of his
soul, that that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and
decide, perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life.’
Is it not remarkable that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should not
pitch upon a _demoiselle_, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue must
have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be is
thus recounted by our author, in the shape of
A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION
‘A lady, with a great deal of _esprit_, to whom forty years’ experience
of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the
Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new-comers
to the Faubourg St. Germain, and of their destiny and reception in
it;--one of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man--said, in
speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she received at her own house, and
met everywhere, “This young German will never gain for himself the title
of an exquisite, or a man of _bonnes fortunes_, among us. In spite of
his calm and politeness, I think I can see in his character some rude
and insurmountable difficulties, which time will only increase, and
which will prevent him for ever from bending to the exigencies of either
profession; but, unless I very much deceive myself, he will, one day, be
the hero of a veritable romance.”
‘“He, madam?” answered a young man, of fair complexion and fair hair,
one of the most devoted slaves of the fashion:--He, Madame la Duchesse?
Why, the man is, at best, but an original, fished out of the Rhine: a
dull heavy creature, as much capable of understanding a woman’s heart as
I am of speaking bas-Breton.”
‘“Well, Monsieur de Belport, you will speak bas-Breton. Monsieur de
Stolberg has not your admirable ease of manner, nor your facility of
telling pretty nothings, nor your--in a word, that particular something
which makes you the most _recherche_ man of the Faubourg St. Germain;
and even I avow to you that, were I still young, and a coquette, _and
that I took it into my head to have a lover_, I would prefer you.”
‘All this was said by the Duchess with a certain air of raillery and
such a mixture of earnest and malice, that Monsieur de Belport, piqued
not a little, could not help saying, as he bowed profoundly before the
Duchess’s chair, “And might I, madam, be permitted to ask the reason of
this preference?”
‘“Oh, mon Dieu, oui,” said the Duchess, always in the same tone;
“because a lover like you would never think of carrying his attachment
to the height of passion; and these passions, do you know, have
frightened me all my life. One cannot retreat at will from the grasp of
a passionate lover; one leaves behind one some fragment of one’s moral
_self_, or the best part of one’s physical life. A passion, if it does
not kill you, adds cruelly to your years; in a word, it is the very
lowest possible taste. And now you understand why I should prefer you,
M. de Belport--you, who are reputed to be the leader of the fashion.”
‘“Perfectly,” murmured the gentleman, piqued more and more.
‘“Gerard de Stolberg _will_ be passionate. I don’t know what woman will
please him, or will be pleased by him” (here the Duchess of Chalux spoke
more gravely); “but his love will be no play, I repeat it to you once
more. All this astonishes you, because you, great leaders of the _ton_
that you are, never can fancy that a hero of romance should be found
among your number. Gerard de Stolberg--but look, here he comes!”
‘M. de Belport rose, and quitted the Duchess, without believing in her
prophecy: but he could not avoid smiling as he passed near the _hero of
romance_.
‘It was because M. de Stolberg had never, in all his life, been a hero
of romance, or even an apprentice-hero of romance.’
* * * * *
‘Gerard de Stolberg was not, as yet, initiated into the thousand secrets
in the chronicle of the great world: he knew but superficially the
society in which he lived; and, therefore, he devoted his evening to the
gathering of all the information which he could acquire from the
indiscreet conversations of the people about him. His whole man became
ear and memory; so much was Stolberg convinced of the necessity of
becoming a diligent student in this new school, where was taught the art
of knowing and advancing in the great world. In the recess of a window
he learned more on this one night than months of investigation would
have taught him. The talk of a ball is more indiscreet than the
confidential chatter of a company of idle women. No man present at a
ball, whether listener or speaker, thinks he has a right to affect any
indulgence for his companions, and the most learned in malice will
always pass for the most witty.
‘“How!” said the Viscount de Mondragé: “the Duchess of Rivesalte arrives
alone to-night, without her inevitable Dormilly!” and the Viscount, as
he spoke, pointed towards a tall and slender young woman, who, gliding
rather than walking, met the ladies, by whom she passed, with a graceful
and modest salute, and replied to the looks of the men _by brilliant
veiled glances, full of coquetry and attack_.
“Parbleu!” said an elegant personage standing near the Viscount de
Mondragé, “don’t you see Dormilly ranged behind the Duchess, in quality
of train-bearer, and hiding, under his long locks and his great screen
of moustaches, the blushing consciousness of his good luck?--They call
him _the fourth chapter_ of the Duchess’s memoirs. The little Marquis
d’Alberas is ready to die out of spite; but the best of the joke is,
that she has only taken poor de Vendre for a lover in order to vent her
spleen on him. Look at him against the chimney yonder: if the
Marchioness do not break at once with him by quitting him for somebody
else, the poor fellow will turn an idiot.”
‘“Is he jealous?” asked a young man, looking as if he did not know what
jealousy was, and as if he had no time to be jealous.
‘“Jealous!--the very incarnation of jealousy; the second edition,
revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged; as jealous as poor
Gressigny, who is dying of it.”
‘“What! Gressigny too? why, ‘tis growing quite into fashion: egad! _I_
must try and be jealous,” said Monsieur de Beauval. “But see! here comes
the delicious Duchess of Bellefiore,”’ etc. etc. etc.
* * * * *
Enough, enough; this kind of fashionable Parisian conversation, which
is, says our author, ‘a prodigious labour of improvising,’ a
‘chef-d’œuvre,’ a ‘strange and singular thing, in which monotony is
unknown,’ seems to be, if correctly reported, a ‘strange and singular
thing’ indeed; but somewhat monotonous, at least to an English reader,
and ‘prodigious’ only, if we may take leave to say so, for the wonderful
rascality which all the conversationists betray. Miss Neverout and the
Colonel, in Swift’s famous dialogue, are a thousand times more
entertaining and moral; and, besides, we can laugh _at_ those worthies
as well as with them; whereas the ‘prodigious’ French wits are to us
quite incomprehensible. Fancy a duchess as old as Lady ---- herself, and
who should begin to tell us ‘of what she would do if ever she had a mind
to take a lover;’ and another duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping
modestly among the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by veiled
glances, full of coquetry and attack!--Parbleu, if Monsieur de
Viel-Castel should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and
they should tear his eyes out, and send the fashionable Orpheus floating
by the Seine, his slaughter might almost be considered as justifiable
_Counticide_.
A GAMBLER’S DEATH
Anybody who was at C---- school some twelve years since, must recollect
Jack Attwood: he was the most dashing lad in the place, with more money
in his pocket than belonged to the whole fifth form in which we were
companions.
When he was about fifteen, Jack suddenly retreated from C----, and
presently we heard that he had a commission in a cavalry regiment, and
was to have a great fortune from his father, when that old gentleman
should die. Jack himself came to confirm these stories a few months
after, and paid a visit to his old school chums. He had laid aside his
little school-jacket and inky corduroys, and now appeared in such a
splendid military suit as won the respect of all of us. His hair was
dripping with oil, his hands were covered with rings, he had a dusky
down over his upper lip which looked not unlike a moustache, and a
multiplicity of frogs and braiding on his surtout, which would have
sufficed to lace a field-marshal. When old Swishtail, the usher, passed
in his seedy black coat and gaiters, Jack gave him such a look of
contempt as set us all a-laughing: in fact it was his turn to laugh now;
for he used to roar very stoutly some months before, when Swishtail was
in the custom of belabouring him with his great cane.
Jack’s talk was all about the regiment and the fine fellows in it: how
he had ridden a steeplechase with Captain Boldero, and licked him at the
last hedge; and how he had very nearly fought a duel with Sir George
Grig, about dancing with Lady Mary Slamken at a ball. ‘I soon made the
baronet know what it was to deal with a man of the N--th,’ said Jack.
‘Dammee, sir, when I lugged out my barkers, and talked of fighting
across the mess-room table, Grig turned as pale as a sheet, or as----’
‘Or as you used to do, Attwood, when Swishtail hauled you up,’ piped out
little Hicks, the foundation-boy.
It was beneath Jack’s dignity to thrash anybody now but a grown-up
baronet; so he let off little Hicks, and passed over the general titter
which was raised at his expense. However, he entertained us with his
histories about lords and ladies, and So-and-so ‘of ours,’ until we
thought him one of the greatest men in his Majesty’s service, and until
the school-bell rung; when, with a heavy heart, we got our books
together, and marched in to be whacked by old Swishtail. I promise you
he revenged himself on us for Jack’s contempt of him. I got that day at
least twenty cuts to my share, which ought to have belonged to Cornet
Attwood, of the N--th Dragoons.
When we came to think more coolly over our quondam school-fellow’s
swaggering talk and manners, we were not quite so impressed by his
merits as at his first appearance among us. We recollected how he used,
in former times, to tell us great stories, which were so monstrously
improbable that the smallest boy in the school would scout them; how
often we caught him tripping in facts, and how unblushingly he admitted
his little errors in the score of veracity. He and I, though never great
friends, had been close companions: I was Jack’s form-fellow (we fought
with amazing emulation for the _last_ place in the class); but still I
was rather hurt at the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all
our former intimacy, in his steeplechases with Captain Boldero and his
duel with Sir George Grig.
Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day came
down to C----, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-days, and
furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill for one hundred
and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news might be had of his
customer. Jack was in India, with his regiment, shooting tigers and
jackals, no doubt. Occasionally, from that distant country, some
magnificent rumour would reach us of his proceedings. Once I heard that
he had been called to a court-martial for unbecoming conduct; another
time, that he kept twenty horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta
races. Presently, however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore
away, Jack’s image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or to think
about my college chum.
A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the Estaminet du Grand
Balcon, an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is unexceptionable,
and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-looking, thick-set man, in a
greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby hat, cocked on one side of his dirty
face, took the place opposite to me, at the little marble table, and
called for brandy. I did not much admire the impudence or the appearance
of my friend, nor the fixed stare with which he chose to examine me. At
last he thrust a great greasy hand across the table, and said,
‘Titmarsh, do you forget your old friend Attwood?’
I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten
years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold rings, to
see us at C---- school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a
deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward to
seize the gloved finger of a millionaire, or a milor, draws
instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband
and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron
squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either
very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this
history, know very well the great art of shaking hands; recollect how
you shook Lord Dash’s hand the other day, and how you shook _off_ poor
Blank, when he came to borrow five pounds of you.
[Illustration]
However, the genial influence of the hollands speedily dissipated
anything like coolness between us; and, in the course of an hour’s
conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were suffering
together under the ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had
quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a
fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon his
own circumstances; but I could read them in his elbows, which were
peeping through his old frock. He talked a great deal, however, of runs
of luck, good and bad; and related to me an infallible plan for breaking
all the play-banks in Europe--a great number of old tricks;--and a vast
quantity of gin-punch was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact,
did our conversation continue, that, I confess it with shame, the
sentiment, or something stronger, quite got the better of me, and I
have, to this day, no sort of notion how our palaver concluded.--Only,
on the next morning I did not possess a certain five-pound note, which
on the previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest
drawing, by the way, in the collection); but there, instead, was a strip
of paper, thus inscribed:
‘IOU
Five Pounds. JOHN ATTWOOD, Late of the N--th Dragoons.’
I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and
ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as
soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances,
the note was of much more consequence to me.
As I lay, cursing my ill-fortune, and thinking how on earth I should
manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst into my little
garret--his face strangely flushed--singing and shouting as if it had
been the night before. ‘Titmarsh,’ cried he, ‘you are my preserver!--my
best friend! Look here, and here, and here!’ And at every word Mr.
Attwood produced a handful of gold, or a glittering heap of five-franc
pieces, or a bundle of greasy, dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than
either silver or gold;--he had won thirteen thousand francs after
leaving me at midnight in my garret. He separated my poor little all, of
six pieces, from this shining and imposing collection; and the passion
of envy entered my soul: I felt far more anxious now than before,
although starvation was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for
_cheating_ me out of all this wealth. Poor fellow! it had been better
for him had he never seen a shilling of it.
However, a grand breakfast at the Café Anglais dissipated my chagrin;
and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly shared some
portion of his good fortune with me. As far as the creature comforts
were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never was particular as to
settling my share of the reckoning.
Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood engraved
on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as the giraffe at
the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his coat as in the old
days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs and boarding-houses of
the capital. Madame de Saint Laurent, and Madame la Baronne de Vaudry,
and Madame la Comtesse de Don Jonville, ladies of the highest rank, who
keep a _société choisie_, and condescend to give dinners at five francs
a head, vied with each other in their attentions to Jack. His was the
wing of the fowl, and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his
was the place at the écarté table, where the Countess would ease him
nightly of a few pieces, declaring that he was the most charming
cavalier, _la fleur d’Albion_. Jack’s society, it may be seen, was not
very select; nor, in truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless,
dare-devil, Macheath kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife
on each arm.
It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred pounds
of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but for some time,
his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of growing lower,
seemed always to maintain a certain level;--he played every night.
Of course, such a humble fellow as I could not hope for a continued
acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood. He grew overbearing and cool, I
thought; at any rate I did not admire my situation as his follower and
dependant, and left his grand dinner for a certain ordinary where I
could partake of five capital dishes for ninepence. Occasionally,
however, Attwood favoured me with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his
great cab-horse. He had formed a whole host of friends besides. There
was Fips, the barrister, Heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and
Gortz, the West Indian, who was there on the same business; and Flapper,
a medical student,--all these three I met one night at Flapper’s rooms,
where Jack was invited, and a great ‘spread’ was laid in honour of him.
Jack arrived rather late--he looked pale and agitated; and, though he
ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made Flapper’s
eyes wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and Jack bid fair to
swallow them all. However, the West Indian generously remedied the evil,
and, producing a napoleon, we speedily got the change for it in the
shape of four bottles of champagne.
Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sang the ‘Good Old English
Gentleman;’ Jack, the ‘British Grenadiers;’ and your humble servant,
when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, ‘When the Bloom is on the
Rye,’ in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper’s, who
was asleep, and Jack’s, who was singing the ‘Bay of Biscay, O,’ at the
same time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a
pair of single-sticks, the barrister having a very strong notion that he
was Richard the Third.
At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across his sconce, that the
other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle, which was,
providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at Fips; had that
celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the moment, the Queen’s Bench
would have lost one of its most eloquent practitioners.
Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath.
‘M-m-ister Go-gortz,’ he said, ‘I always heard you were a blackguard;
now I can pr-pr-peperove it. Flapper, your pistols! every ge-ge-genlmn
knows what I mean.’
Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the tipsy
barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed to
sacrifice the West Indian. Gortz was nothing loth, but was quite as
valorous as the lawyer.
Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of the
party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for the
weapons. ‘Pshaw!’ said he eagerly, ‘don’t give these men the means of
murdering each other; sit down and let us have another song.’ But they
would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced his pistol-case, and
opened it, in order that the duel might take place on the spot. There
were no pistols there! ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Attwood, looking much
confused; ‘I--I took the pistols home with me to clean them!’
I don’t know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we were
sobered all of a sudden. Attwood was conscious of the singular effect
produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavoured to speak of other
things, but we could not bring our spirits back to the mark again, and
soon separated for the night. As we issued into the street, Jack took me
aside and whispered, ‘Have you a napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?’
Alas! I was not so rich. My reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only
in the morning, to borrow a similar sum.
He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard him
speak another word.
* * * * *
Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding the
supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing letter from
Mr. Gortz:--
‘DEAR T.--I wish you would come over here to breakfast. There’s a
row about Attwood.--Yours truly, SOLOMON GORTZ.’
I immediately set forward to Gortz’s; he lived in the Rue du Heldes, a
few doors from Attwood’s new lodging. If the reader is curious to know
the house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has
but to march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens,
when he will see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from
the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the
West Indian’s, at about midday (it was a Sunday morning), I found that
gentleman in his dressing-gown, discussing, in the company of Mr. Fips,
a large plate of _bifteck aux pommes_.
‘Here’s a pretty row!’ said Gortz, quoting from his letter;--‘Attwood’s
off--have a bit of beefsteak?’
‘What do you mean?’ exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology of my
acquaintances:--‘Attwood off?--has he cut his stick?’
‘Not bad,’ said the feeling and elegant Fips--‘not such a bad guess, my
boy; but he has not exactly _cut his stick_.’
‘What then?’
‘_Why, his throat._’ The man’s mouth was full of bleeding beef as he
uttered this gentlemanly witticism.
I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the news.
I did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more for
propriety’s sake than for feeling’s: but for my old school acquaintance,
the friend of my early days, the merry associate of the last few months,
I own, with shame, that I had not a tear or a pang. In some German tale
there is an account of a creature, most beautiful and bewitching, whom
all men admire and follow; but this charming and fantastic spirit only
leads them, one by one, into ruin, and then leaves them. The novelist,
who describes her beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and _has no
heart_. I think the intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle is a
spirit of this nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or an
honest friendship made by it: it only entices men, and ruins them; it is
only a phantom of friendship and feeling, called up by the delirious
blood, and the wicked spells of the wine.
But to drop this strain of moralising (in which the writer is not too
anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure), we passed
sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood’s character, expressed our horror at
his death, which sentiment was fully proved by Mr. Fips, who declared
that the notion of it made him feel quite faint, and was obliged to
drink a large glass of brandy; and, finally, we agreed that we would go
and see the poor fellow’s corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial.
Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said
he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards,
but that he was anxious to _get back his pistol_. Accordingly, we
sallied forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited
still. He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house;
and it was only on arriving there that day, that we found he had been
gradually driven from his magnificent suite of rooms _au premier_, to a
little chamber in the fifth story:--we mounted, and found him. It was a
little shabby room, with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed
in an alcove; the light from the one window was falling full upon the
bed and the body. Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt: he had kept it,
poor fellow, _to die in_; for in all his drawers and cupboards, there
was not a single article of clothing: he had pawned everything by which
he could raise a penny--desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and
not a single halfpenny was found in his possession.[2]
He was lying as I have drawn him, one hand on his breast, the other
falling towards the ground. There was an expression of perfect calm on
the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light. On
the other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in
it the pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the
life of this vigorous young man. In his forehead, at the side, was a
small black wound; Jack’s life had passed through it; it was little
bigger than a mole.
* * * * *
‘Regardez un peu,’ said the landlady; ‘messieurs, il m’a gâté trois
matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs.’
[Illustration]
This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the
landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was not a soul
to love him or lament him. We, his friends, were looking at his body
more as an object of curiosity, watching it with a kind of interest with
which one follows the fifth act of a tragedy, and leaving it with the
same feeling with which one leaves the theatre when the play is over and
the curtain is down.
Beside Jack’s bed, on his little _table de nuit_, lay the remains of his
last meal, and an open letter, which we read. It was from one of his
suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--
‘Où es-tu, cher Jack? _why you not come and see me_--tu me dois de
l’argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, _a box of the
Play_. Viens demain soir, je t’attendrai _at eight o’clock_,
Passage des Panoramas. _My Sir is at his country._--Adieu à demain.
‘_Samedi_.’ ‘FIFINE.
I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in the
evening. The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in the
countenance of every passer-by, to recognise Attwood. ‘ADIEU À
DEMAIN!’--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the writer of
them little knew. ‘Adieu à demain!’--the morrow was come, and the soul
of the poor suicide was now in the presence of God. I dare not think of
his fate; for, except in the fact of his poverty and desperation, was he
worse than any of us, his companions, who had shared his debauches, and
marched with him up to the very brink of the grave?
There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--his
burial; it was of a piece with his death.
He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the
arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barrière de
l’Étoile. They buried him at six o’clock, of a bitter winter’s morning,
and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found to
read a service over his grave. The three men who have figured in this
history acted as Jack’s mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place
so early in the morning, these men sat up the night through, _and were
almost drunk_ as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.
MORAL
‘When we turned out in our greatcoats,’ said one of them afterwards,
‘reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d----e, sir, we quite
frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company.’
After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were very happy to get
home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished the day royally
at Frascati’s.
[Illustration]
NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM
ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON’S WORK
Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of
Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three years
ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was, however foolish
its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and inexperienced its leader,
there was, nevertheless, a party, and a considerable one, in France,
that were not unwilling to lend the new projectors their aid. The troops
who declared against the Prince, were, it was said, all but willing to
declare for him; and it was certain that, in many of the regiments of
the army, there existed a strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager
wish for the return of the imperial system and family.
As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is another
question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better than the King
of the French, or the King of the French better than the King of France
and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; but all the three
monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism has no lack of
supporters; St. Simonianism was followed by a respectable body of
admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of friends. If, in a country
where so many quacks have had their day, Prince Louis Napoleon thought
he might renew the imperial quackery, why should he not? It has
recollections with it that must always be dear to a gallant nation; it
has certain claptraps in its vocabulary that can never fail to inflame a
vain, restless, grasping, disappointed one.
In the first place, and don’t let us endeavour to disguise it, they hate
us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the wisdom of Lord
Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary,
Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer--and, let us add, not all the benefit which both
countries would derive from the alliance--can make it, in our times at
least, permanent and cordial. They hate us. The Carlist organs revile us
with a querulous fury that never sleeps; the moderate party, if they
admit the utility of our alliance, are continually pointing out our
treachery, our insolence, and our monstrous infractions of it; and for
the Republicans, as sure as the morning comes, the columns of their
journals thunder out volleys of fierce denunciations against our
unfortunate country. They live by feeding the natural hatred against
England, by keeping old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the
history of old quarrels; and as in these we, by God’s help, by land and
by sea, in old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate
the shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past
defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows how to
_exploiter_ this hatred will always be popular to a certain extent; and
the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its conditions.
Then there is the favourite claptrap of the ‘natural frontier.’ The
Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next
follows the cry, ‘Let France take her place among nations, and direct,
as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe.’ These are the two chief
articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we may credit the
journal which has been established to advocate the cause. A natural
boundary--stand among the nations--popular development--Russian
alliance, and a reduction of _la perfide Albion_ to its proper
insignificance. As yet we know little more of the plan: and yet such
foundations are sufficient to build a party upon, and with such windy
weapons a substantial Government is to be overthrown!
In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding
favour with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able
to refer to a former great professor of them--his uncle Napoleon. His
attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the uncle,
and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show what
Napoleon’s ideas really were; what good had already resulted from the
practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and
difficulties; and what vast benefits _would_ have resulted from them;
ay, and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation
would be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the
interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor
Napoleon had certain arguments in favour of his opinions for the time
being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendémiaire, when
General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be
remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and
by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting
such a philosopher; the Directory was established forthwith, and the
sacred cause of the minority triumphed. In like manner, when the General
was convinced of the weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the
necessity of establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau,
Lannes, Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the
truth!--marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it
to prevail. Error vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of its
high priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to
guide the destinies of France! How much more expeditious, reasonable,
and clinching was this argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that
can be found in any pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos!
Talk about points, there are none like those at the end of a bayonet;
and the most powerful of styles is a good rattling ‘article’ from a
nine-pounder.
At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always
propagated the _Idées Napoléoniennes_. Not such, however, is Prince
Louis’s belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you
will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never
existed: you will read that ‘the mission of Napoleon’ was to be the
‘_testamentary executor of the Revolution_;’ and the Prince should have
added, the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the _executor_, he
should be called the _executioner_, and then his title would be
complete. In Vendémiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the
Revolution’s natural heirs, and made her, as it were, _alter her will_;
on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her
property, and kept it until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to
be sure, are no arguments, but the example is the Prince’s, not ours.
In the Prince’s eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs the most
wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had millions
of supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the exact
contrary. It is curious to think of the former difference of opinion
concerning Napoleon; and in reading his nephew’s rapturous encomiums of
him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in
his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror,
twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the ‘bloody
Corsican upstart and assassin’? What stories did we not believe of
him?--what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?--we, who
were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and
newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as
any of his own countrymen.
Then was the age when the _Idées Napoléoniennes_ might have passed
through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our
neighbours were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange
infatuation--adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a
fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had attained
its highest pitch of grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in
England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so
hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the world’s history
cannot show his parallel. This ruffian’s name was, during the early part
of the French Revolution, Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg’s emissaries were
in every corner of France; Pittetcobourg’s gold chinked in the pockets
of every traitor in Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike
Robespierre; it drove into cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle
philanthropist Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted
against the bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first,
great, glorious, irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and
fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned.
On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to
reconsider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have not
changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty years all
parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with affectionate
reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his private virtue. In
France, however, or, at least, among certain parties in France, there
has been no such modification of opinion. With the Republicans,
Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--crafty, bloody, seeking whom he
may devour; and _perfide Albion_ more perfidious than ever. This hatred
is the point of union between the Republic and the Empire; it has been
fostered ever since, and must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would
hope to conciliate both parties.
With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory as
fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the
imperial apologist’s opinion should be received with the utmost caution;
for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and
partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir,
likewise, and, bearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one
may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. ‘The Empire was the
best of empires,’ cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly,
the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would
convince a man with a proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a
certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the
Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who averred that,
for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty,
and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather.
Let us examine some of the Prince’s article. If we may be allowed humbly
to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for
those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover,
and in itself, very _bad leather_. The hides are poor, small, unsound
slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not
particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the
conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an
extract from his first chapter, ‘On Governments in General:’--
‘I speak it with regret, I can see but two Governments, at this
day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them;
they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the
extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new.
Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in
its crater, the two nations of the East and the West march, without
hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single
individual, the other under liberty.
‘Providence has confided to the United States of North America the
task of peopling and civilising that immense territory which
stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North
Pole to the Equator. The Government, which is only a simple
administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in
practice the old adage, _Laissez faire, laissez passer_, in order
to favour that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of
America to the west.
‘In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
progress which, in a century and a-half, has rescued that empire
from barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the
ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralise, as far as
possible, all the powers of the State in the hands of one person,
in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal
franchises have served to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to
receive from it the improvements which it expects.
‘But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of
Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source
of progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of
empire, the genius for the arts of peace, and the genius of
war--hast thou no further passion to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease
to waste thy force and energies in intestine struggles? No; such
cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when, to govern
thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to place
in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilisation.’
These are the conclusions of the Prince’s remarks upon Governments in
general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser at
the end than at the beginning. But two Governments in the world fulfil
their mission: the one Government, which is no Government; the other,
which is a despotism. The duty of France is _in all treaties_ to place
her sword of Brennus in the scale of civilisation. Without quarrelling
with the somewhat confused language of the latter proposition, may we
ask what, in Heaven’s name, is the meaning of all the three? What is
this _épée de Brennus_? and how is France to use it? Where is the great
source of political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American
republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly
prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents
constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has
read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily
disputes on the slave question, praise the _Government_ of the
States?--a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed
before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of
Canada can brave at their will? There is no Government, but a prosperous
anarchy; as the Prince’s other favourite Government is a prosperous
slavery. What, then, is to be the _épée de Brennus_ Government? Is it to
be a mixture of the two? ‘Society,’ writes the Prince axiomatically,
‘contains in itself two principles--the one of progress and immortality,
the other of disease and disorganisation.’ No doubt; and as the one
tends towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and
then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of
Governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as
notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks in
rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their ‘providential
mission’!
From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us
to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the
merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor’s advent
in the following grandiose way:--
‘Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was
to be the _testamentary executor_ of the Revolution. The
destructive fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution,
dying, but not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment
of her last will, she said to him, “Establish upon solid bases the
principal result of my efforts. Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat
feudal Europe that is leagued against me. Cicatrise my wounds.
Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width, which I have had to
perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France. And,
even if you must water the tree of civilisation with your blood--if
you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a
country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the
sacred cause of the French people. Ensure its triumph by all the
means which genius can discover and humanity approve.”
‘This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was
difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still
boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the
same instruments which had been employed for pulling down.
‘The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather
than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear.
For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with
additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to
combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and
adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social
order.
‘Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion.
Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long
while excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force
of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated
into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at
its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant
throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid
open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained;
it became the prop of Government, as it was the organising element
of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened
people and sovereigns alike; thus, having clothed itself in a
milder garb, _it insinuated itself everywhere in the train of our
battalions_. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed
themselves with its moral force--covered themselves with its
colours. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged
to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the contest their fears
returned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and that liberty
will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them no more.
‘The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of
the Revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without
the Consulate and the Empire, the Revolution would have been only a
grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the
Revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The
contrary, however, was the case. Napoleon rooted the Revolution in
France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the principal benefits
of the crisis of 1789. To use his own words, “He purified the
Revolution,” he confirmed kings, and ennobled people. He purified
the Revolution in separating the truths which it contained from the
passions that, during its delirium, disfigured it. He ennobled the
people in giving them the consciousness of their force, and those
institutions which raise men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be
considered as the Messiah of the new ideas; for--and we must
confess it--in the moments immediately succeeding a social
revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice all
the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become
master of the regenerative genius, to identify one’s self with the
sentiments of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the
desired point. To accomplish such a task _your fibre should respond
to that of the people_, as the Emperor said; you should feel like
it, your interests should be so intimately raised with its own,
that you should vanquish or fall together.’
Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures of
speech,--which, when put together, amount, like certain other
combinations of round figures, to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue
the merits and demerits of Prince Louis’s notable comparison between the
Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many
blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors,
blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the
grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the
legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are
we to say of the legacy of the dying Revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions
do not die, and, on their deathbeds, making fine speeches, hand over
their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the
history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old
men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections,
_Pittetcobourg_, above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a
fine opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms:
the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer, who would not
hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The
tale may be found in every account of the Revolution, and the rest of
his story need not be told. We know every step that he took: we know
how, by doses of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever
of the sections--that fever which another camp-physician (Menou)
declined to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and
how the Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace,
exile, and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in
all tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys,
secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies-of-honour? Not a word of miracle
is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions, or
political Messiahs. From Napoleon’s rise to his fall, the bayonet
marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the ‘five
hundred,’--now he charges with it across the bloody Arcola--now he flies
before it over the fatal plain of Waterloo.
Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in
the character of his hero’s government, the Prince is, nevertheless,
obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor’s manner of rule
was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be
agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready--it is the
same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions
in exile--the excuse of necessity. He _would_ have been very liberal,
but that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war
prevented him--or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says
his apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set
about his plan in this wise:--
‘Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to
create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the
principles of the Revolution. He recalled the _émigrés_, without
touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and
sold as public property. He re-established the Catholic religion at
the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and
endowed equally the ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be
consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the
Pope’s demand any of the liberties of the Gallican Church. He
married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning
any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He
re-established noble titles, without attaching to them any
privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all
ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the Empire all
idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his
pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had
done.
‘The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government
is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in
the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it.
In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it
should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate
the principle of equality in all its extension. It was necessary to
restore the _prestige_ with which the Government had been formerly
invested, and to make the principles of the Revolution take root in
the public manners. At the commencement of a new society, it is the
legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the
manners which make the law, or preserve it, from age to age
intact.’
Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the Empire was asked how he
was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man’s actions
were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host
of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank
has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but,
for all that, did not abandon his conquests--perhaps not actually; but
he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does
not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the
Russian campaign? But for Napoleon’s imperial father-in-law, Poland
would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why
was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his
throne? Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people?
Why must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers,
and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from
Astley’s, with dukes’ coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals’ batons?
We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an
aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican
dilemma--another apology for the Revolutionary blunder. To keep the
Republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the
despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been
labouring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and
kings’ heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe?
To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Trémoille, and Emperor
Stork in place of King Log. Oh, lame conclusion! Is the blessed
Revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in
establishing a Prince Fergus O’Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke of
Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better
under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets.
At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better
arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any
one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any
patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of
M. de Pontois, the other day, ‘_Le Roi trouve convenable_ that you take
the title of,’ etc.
To execute the legacy of the Revolution, then; to fulfil his
providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the
simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his
Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a
military despotism, to re-establish honours and titles; it was
necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old _prestige_ of the
Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he adds--a truth
which one hardly would expect from him,--‘At the commencement of a new
society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later,
it is the manners which preserve the laws.’ Of course, and here is the
great risk that all revolutionising people run; they must tend to
despotism; ‘they must personify themselves in a man,’ is the Prince’s
phrase: and, according as is his temperament or disposition--according
as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the Revolution becomes
tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.
Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of his
to the Pope. ‘Tell the Pope,’ he says to an archbishop, ‘to remember
that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, _qui marcheront avec
moi, pour moi, et comme moi_.’ And this is the legacy of the Revolution,
the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special
pleading will not avail against such a speech as this--one so insolent,
and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole
of the Emperor’s progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred
thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the
six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all
the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so
crawling and abject but now, becomes, of a sudden, endowed with a
wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham Empress, sham
kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and
embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands
on, and when the Allies appear before Paris, when for courage and
manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the
relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy,
and crushing or scattering them from the path of his swift and
victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,--where are the great
dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the Empire? Where is Maria
Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow King of Rome? Is she
going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen,
lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries are off on the wings of all
the winds--_profligati sunt_, they are away with the money-bags, and
Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolls into the palace of his fathers.
With regard to Napoleon’s excellences as an administrator, a legislator,
a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew
speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be
disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous
code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it,
and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast
public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or
exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that
were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to
show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.
As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to
confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily
than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting
parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a
steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance
farther, and live more at ease, than under any other form of government.
Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices; Lord
John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord
Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles for
Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing ἑρωτα μοὑνον, his
natural Anacreontics. But, alas! not so: if the despotic Government
has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has
its bad, and it is for this that the civilised world is compelled to
substitute for it something more orderly and less capricious. Good
as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected,
too, that, since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and
would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. ‘Flying
from steeple to steeple,’ the eagles of the former did actually, and
according to promise, perch for a while on the towers of Notre-Dame.
We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor,
the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a
mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech,
pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor
than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the
Emperor Napoleon II. ‘L’Empereur est mort, vive l’Empereur!’ shouted
Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played,
and as for old Lafayette and his ‘permanent’ representatives, a corporal
with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more
Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.
In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his
appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from
Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a
keeper, and in a postchaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it
was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose.
Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a
flight it will take?
THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL
‘Go, my nephew,’ said old Father Jacob to me, ‘and complete thy studies
at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in these
times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out the
divine intention.’
Schneider was an old college friend of Uncle Jacob’s, was a Benedictine
monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time
my uncle’s chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted
the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper
incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the
other days of the week.
The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without
vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that
praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since.
You would hardly conceive (said the Major, swearing a great oath) how
devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than
my own beautiful _patois_ of Alsatian French; I could utterly overthrow,
in argument, every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the
neighbourhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these
unbelievers in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a
day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge
my little sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was
the godly life I led at my Uncle Jacob’s in the village of Steinbach.
Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a pleasant
house were then in the possession of another uncle--Uncle Edward. He was
the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but Jacob, the elder,
had shown a decided vocation for the Church, from, I believe, the age of
three, and now was by no means tired of it at sixty. My father, who was
to have inherited the paternal property, was, as I hear, a terrible
scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family, and disappeared
altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother,
who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was
refused all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared
for by my good Uncle Jacob.
Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she
died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then too
young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.
During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I
said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will
that something should be done for me, his grandson.
Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years
older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with
which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was
fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a
lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that
she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something to
do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she
intended to live single, turned away her lovers one after another, and
devoted herself to the care of her father.
Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for
me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her,
and when we sang ‘Ave Maria’ on Sundays I could not refrain from turning
to her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like an angel,
as she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good qualities; she
could play better on the harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she
could make better pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there
was not a want or a fancy of the old hunks, her father, or a wish of
mine or my uncle’s, that she would not gratify if she could; as for
herself, the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us
happy.
I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she
would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my
books, her presence ‘would cast a light upon the day;’ how she used to
smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for
high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who
could deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from
under a grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please.
Amongst other favours she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond
of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days; but
I found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit, the
less she would condescend to confer it on me; till, at last, when I was
about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at
least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now
become so mighty unwilling to give.
[Illustration: MARY ANCEL]
I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just as
I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a
staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by Uncle Edward, and sent
me reeling some yards down the garden.
The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse, now
poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did not
think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to utter
on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he screamed; and
then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and saluted her in a
manner equally forcible and significant: she, who was very much
frightened at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry at the
coarse words he used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her.
‘The child is but fourteen,’ she said; ‘he is your own nephew, and a
candidate for holy orders:--Father, it is a shame that you should thus
speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession.’
I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect
on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history
commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be sent
to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the Church were
concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle’s old college chum,
Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek.
I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard so
much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my
pretty cousin and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however, a
parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both
sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for
me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last
time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less
than a great wet sponge. My cousin’s eyes were stoically dry; her
ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be
in love with a young chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with
perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have
known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she
wrote me a month afterwards--_then_, nobody was by, and the consequence
was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping: if she had
used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.
Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in
those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider’s
door; over it was written--
‘COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.’
Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no
idea of the meaning of the words: however, I entered the citizen’s room
without fear, and sat down in his antechamber until I could be admitted
to see him.
Here I found very few indications of his reverence’s profession; the
walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the
like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word _Tratîre_
underneath; lists and Republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes, and
firearms. At a deal table, stained with grease and wine, sat a gentleman
with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person which
immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap containing a tricolour
cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe, reading a
little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every now and then
he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his
book, by which I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest
sensibilities--‘Ah, brigand!’ ‘Oh, malheureuse!’ ‘Oh, Charlotte,
Charlotte!’ The work which this gentleman was perusing is called _The
Sorrows of Werther_; it was all the rage in those days, and my friend
was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see Father
Schneider. He turned towards me a hideous pimpled face, which I dream of
now at forty years’ distance.
‘Father who?’ said he. ‘Do you imagine that Citizen Schneider has not
thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older
you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a man has
died for less!’ And he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was
hanging in the room.
I was in amazement.
‘What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until
monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of
Anacreon?’
‘He _was_ all this,’ replied my grim friend; ‘he is now a Member of the
Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your
head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer.’
He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me
the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction.
Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and afterwards
entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became
distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became
chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati
began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily
joined the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being
compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he
came to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and
acted for some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at
Strasburg.
[‘Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under
his tuition!’ said the Captain.’ I owe the preservation of my morals
entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very
little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of
a town, when a little licence can offend nobody.’]
By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider’s biography, we had
grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so
remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of studies, my pleasant
country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my
occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the
Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name of
my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a
tender place she had in my heart.
Then we reverted to _The Sorrows of Werther_, and discussed the merits
of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings
about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He
talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that
I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition,
his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse
appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with
his own situation.
‘Candid youth!’ cried my unknown, ‘I love to hear thy innocent story,
and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary
in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle
with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off
our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, again!’
Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I
blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with
one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is! thought
I; the people in our village call these Republicans wicked and
bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental
bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that
he held a place under Government. I was busy in endeavouring to discover
what his situation might be, when the door of the next apartment opened,
and Schneider made his appearance.
At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance,
and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow.
‘You drunken, talking fool,’ he said, ‘you are always after your time.
Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have
finished your beer and your sentiment!’
My friend slunk, muttering, out of the room.
‘That fellow,’ said Schneider, turning to me, ‘is our public
executioner: a capital hand, too, if he would but keep decent time; but
the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over _The Sorrows of
Werther!_’
* * * * *
I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my proper
merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of
Robespierre’s crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely attached
to me, and kept me constantly about his person. As for the priesthood
and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of the question. The
Austrians were on our frontier; every day brought us accounts of battles
won; and the youth of Strasburg, and of all France, indeed, were
bursting with military ardour. As for me, I shared the general mania,
and speedily mounted a cockade as large as that of my friend the
executioner.
The occupations of this worthy were unremitting. St. Just, who had come
down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the laws and the
aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider used to make
country excursions in search of offenders, with this fellow, as a
provost-marshal, at his back. In the meantime, having entered my
sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had joined a
regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the Austrians who
menaced us, and now threatening the _émigrés_, who were banded at
Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased as my whiskers grew; and
when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself man enough to marry her,
and to cut the throat of any one who should venture to say me nay.
I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes
had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary
rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous
‘Fête of the Supreme Being’ had been celebrated at Paris; the practice
of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them
in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime
of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle’s church was closed, and
he, himself, an inmate in my brother’s house, only owing his safety to
his great popularity among his former flock and the influence of Edward
Ancel.
The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that
is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs
regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was
loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in his neighbourhood. But
owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet
and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities
had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a
commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and
to remind the rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France.
Now and then, when I could gain a week’s leave of absence, I returned to
the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and
with a warmer feeling by his daughter.
I won’t describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my
Uncle Edward when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and he
stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would
withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His
daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern;
and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to
do?--to despair and to leave her. As for my poor Uncle Jacob, he had no
counsel to give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was
turned into a stable, his surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was
only too lucky in keeping _his head_ on them. A bright thought struck
him: suppose you were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider
regarding this marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you
now as before.
(Here the Captain paused a little.) You may fancy (continued he) that it
was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like Uncle Jacob to counsel me
in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such a murderous
cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it in those days;
guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was only thought the
better patriot the more severe he might be. I departed forthwith to
Strasburg, and requested the vote and interest of the Citizen President
of the Committee of Public Safety.
He heard me with a great deal of attention. I described to him most
minutely the circumstances, expatiated upon the charms of my dear Mary,
and painted her to him from head to foot. Her golden hair and her bright
blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her tripping tiny feet; and
furthermore, I added that she possessed a fortune which ought, by
rights, to be mine, but for the miserly old father. ‘Curse him for an
aristocrat!’ concluded I, in my wrath.
As I had been discoursing about Mary’s charms, Schneider listened with
much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his
interest redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the
worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite
terrible. Oh, fool that I was to trust him so far!
* * * * *
The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following note
from St. Just:--
‘STRASBURG: _Fifth year of the Republic one and
‘indivisible, 11 Ventôse._
‘The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, and to
carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the Committee of
Public Safety at Paris. The necessary leave of absence from his military
duties has been provided. Instant punishment will follow the slightest
delay on the road.
‘Salut et Fraternité.’
There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way to the
capital.
As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I knew to
be that of Schneider. The ruffian smiled at me as I passed, and wished
me a _bon voyage_. Behind his chariot came a curious machine, or cart; a
great basket, three stout poles, and several planks, all painted red,
were lying in this vehicle, on the top of which was seated my friend
with the big cockade. It was the _portable guillotine_ which Schneider
always carried with him on his travels. The _bourreau_ was reading _The
Sorrows of Werther_, and looked as sentimental as usual.
I will not speak of my voyage, in order to relate to you Schneider’s. My
story had awakened the wretch’s curiosity and avarice, and he was
determined that such a prize as I had shown my cousin to be should fall
into no hands but his own. No sooner, in fact, had I quitted his room
than he procured the order for my absence, and was on the way to
Steinbach as I met him.
The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my Uncle Jacob
was surprised by receiving a message that the Citizen Schneider was in
the village, and was coming to greet his old friend. Old Jacob was in an
ecstasy, for he longed to see his college acquaintance, and he hoped
also that Schneider had come into that part of the country upon the
marriage-business of your humble servant. Of course Mary was summoned to
give her best dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready
to receive the new State dignitary.
Schneider’s carriage speedily rolled into the courtyard, and Schneider’s
_cart_ followed, as a matter of course. The ex-priest only entered the
house; his companion remaining with the horses to dine in private. Here
was a most touching meeting between him and Jacob. They talked over
their old college pranks and successes; they capped Greek verses, and
quoted ancient epigrams upon their tutors, who had been dead since the
Seven Years’ War. Mary declared it was quite touching to listen to the
merry friendly talk of these two old gentlemen.
After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain,
Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said, quietly, that he had come
on particular and unpleasant business--hinting about troublesome times,
spies, evil reports, and so forth. Then he called Uncle Edward aside,
and had with him a long and earnest conversation; so Jacob went out and
talked with Schneider’s _friend_: they speedily became very intimate,
for the ruffian detailed all the circumstances of his interview with me.
When he returned into the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy,
he found the tone of the society strangely altered. Edward Ancel, pale
as a sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and
Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about the
rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and indivisible
Republic.
‘Jacob,’ he said as my uncle entered the room, ‘I was willing, for the
sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your brother. He is
a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds communications with the enemy
on the frontier; he is a possessor of great and ill-gotten wealth, of
which he has plundered the Republic. Do you know,’ said he, turning to
Edward Ancel, ‘where the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of
them, would lead you?’
Poor Edward sate trembling in his chair, and answered not a word. He
knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment followed
suspicion; and though guiltless of all treason with the enemy, perhaps
he was aware that, in certain contracts with the Government, he had
taken to himself a more than patriotic share of profit.
‘Do you know,’ resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, ‘for what
purpose I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied? I am the
administrator of the justice of the Republic. The life of yourself and
your family is in my hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the executor
of the law; he has rid the nation of hundreds of wretches like yourself.
A single word from me, and your doom is sealed without hope, and your
last hour is come. Ho! Grégoire!’ shouted he; ‘is all ready?’
Grégoire replied from the court, ‘I can put up the machine in half an
hour. Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and the law
people?’
‘Do you hear him?’ said Schneider. ‘The guillotine is in your courtyard;
your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove your crime. Have
you a word in your defence?’
Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who did
not give way to his terrors, spoke for him.
‘You cannot, sir,’ said she, ‘although you say it, _feel_ that my father
is guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone if you had
thought it. You threaten him in this manner because you have something
to ask and to gain from us: what is it, citizen?--tell us at how much
you value our lives, and what sum we are to pay for our ransom?’
‘Sum!’ said Uncle Jacob; ‘he does not want money of us: my old friend,
my college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains with anybody
belonging to Jacob Ancel!’
‘Oh no, sir, no, you can’t want money of us,’ shrieked Edward; ‘we are
the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider, ruined in
the cause of the Republic.’
‘Silence, father,’ said my brave Mary; ‘this man wants a _price_: he
comes with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill us. If
we die, he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is confiscated to the
State. Tell us, sir, what is the price of our safety?’
Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.
‘Mademoiselle Marie,’ he said, ‘is perfectly correct in her surmise. I
do not want the life of this poor drivelling old man: my intentions are
much more peaceable, be assured. It rests entirely with this
accomplished young lady (whose spirit I like, and whose ready wit I
admire), whether the business between us shall be a matter of love or
death. I humbly offer myself, Citizen Ancel, as a candidate for the hand
of your charming daughter. Her goodness, her beauty, and the large
fortune which I know you intend to give her, would render her a
desirable match for the proudest man in the Republic, and, I am sure,
would make me the happiest.’
‘This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider,’ said Mary, trembling, and
turning deadly pale: ‘you cannot mean this; you do not know me: you
never heard of me until to-day.’
‘Pardon me, belle dame,’ replied he; ‘your cousin Pierre has often
talked to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special suggestion
that I made the visit.’
‘It is false!--it is a base and cowardly lie!’ exclaimed she (for the
young lady’s courage was up),--‘Pierre never could have forgotten
himself and me so as to offer me to one like you. You come here with a
lie on your lips--a lie against my father, to swear his life away,
against my dear cousin’s honour and love. It is useless now to deny it:
Father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will marry no other but him--no, though
our last penny were paid to this man as the price of our freedom.’
Schneider’s only reply to this was a call to his friend Grégoire.
‘Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and tell
your people to make ready.’
‘Shall I put _the machine_ up?’ shouted he of the sentimental turn.
‘You hear him,’ said Schneider; ‘Marie Ancel, you may decide the fate of
your father. I shall return in a few hours,’ concluded he, ‘and will
then beg to know your decision.’
The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left the
family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood.
Old Uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the
enactment of this strange scene, sate staring wildly at Schneider, and
holding Mary on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to him for
protection, and not to her father, who was kneeling almost senseless at
the window, gazing at the executioner and his hideous preparations. The
instinct of the poor girl had not failed her; she knew that Jacob was
her only protector, if not of her life--Heaven bless him!--of her
honour. ‘Indeed,’ the old man said, in a stout voice, ‘this must never
be, my dearest child--you must not marry this man. If it be the will of
Providence that we fall, we shall have at least the thought to console
us that we die innocent. Any man in France at a time like this would be
a coward and traitor if he feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave
and good who have preceded us.’
‘Who speaks of dying?’ said Edward. ‘You, brother Jacob?--you would not
lay that poor girl’s head on the scaffold, or mine, your dear brother’s.
You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a small sacrifice,
bring your poor old father into danger?’
Mary made no answer. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘there is time for escape: he
is to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be safe, in
concealment, or on the frontier.’ And she rushed to the door of the
chamber, as if she would have instantly made the attempt: two gendarmes
were at the door. ‘We have orders, mademoiselle,’ they said, ‘to allow
no one to leave this apartment until the return of the Citizen
Schneider.’
Alas! all hope of escape was impossible. Mary became quite silent for a
while; she would not speak to Uncle Jacob; and in reply to her father’s
eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she would answer
Schneider when he arrived.
The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual to
his appointment, the ex-monk appeared. Directly he entered, Mary
advanced to him, and said calmly--
‘Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the offer
which you have made me. I will be your wife; but I tell you that I love
another; and that it is only to save the lives of these two old men that
I yield my person up to you.’
Schneider bowed, and said--
‘It is bravely spoken. I like your candour--your beauty. As for the
love, excuse me for saying that is a matter of total indifference. I
have no doubt, however, that it will come as soon as your feelings in
favour of the young gentleman, your cousin, have lost their present
fervour. That engaging young man has, at present, another
mistress--Glory. He occupies, I believe, the distinguished post of
corporal in a regiment which is about to march to--Perpignan, I
believe.’
It was, in fact, Monsieur Schneider’s polite intention to banish me as
far as possible from the place of my birth; and he had, accordingly,
selected the Spanish frontier as the spot where I was to display my
future military talents.
Mary gave no answer to this sneer: she seemed perfectly resigned and
calm: she only said--
‘I must make, however, some conditions regarding our proposed marriage,
which a gentleman of Monsieur Schneider’s gallantry cannot refuse.’
‘Pray command me,’ replied the husband-elect. ‘Fair lady, you know I am
your slave.’
‘You occupy a distinguished political rank, citizen representative,’
said she; ‘and we in our village are likewise known and beloved. I
should be ashamed, I confess, to wed you here; for our people would
wonder at the sudden marriage, and imply that it was only by compulsion
that I gave you my hand. Let us, then, perform this ceremony at
Strasburg, before the public authorities of the city, with the state and
solemnity which befits the marriage of one of the chief men of the
Republic.’
‘Be it so, madam,’ he answered, and gallantly proceeded to embrace his
bride.
Mary did not shrink from this ruffian’s kiss; nor did she reply when
poor old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, burst out, and said--‘Oh,
Mary, Mary, I did not think this of thee!’
‘Silence, brother!’ hastily said Edward; ‘my good son-in-law will pardon
your ill-humour.’
I believe Uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of the
marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little scrupulous as
to the means of obtaining them.
The matter then was finally arranged; and presently, after Schneider had
transacted the affairs which brought him into that part of the country,
the happy bridal party set forward for Strasburg. Uncles Jacob and
Edward occupied the back seat of the old family carriage, and the young
bride and bridegroom (he was nearly Jacob’s age) were seated
majestically in front. Mary has often since talked to me of this
dreadful journey. She said she wondered at the scrupulous politeness of
Schneider during the route; nay, that at another period she could have
listened to and admired the singular talent of this man, his great
learning, his fancy, and wit; but her mind was bent upon other things,
and the poor girl firmly thought that her last day was come.
In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three leagues
from Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a cavalry
regiment, looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was pleased to
take a fancy to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative tone, to
descend, and to give up my steed for the benefit of the Republic. I
represented to him, in vain, that I was a soldier like himself, and the
bearer of despatches to Paris. ‘Fool!’ he said; ‘do you think they would
send despatches by a man who can ride at best but ten leagues a day?’
And the honest soldier was so wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he
not only confiscated my horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau
which contained the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure. I had
nothing for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to
Strasburg. I arrived there in the evening, determining the next morning
to make my case known to the Citizen St. Just; and though I made my
entry without a sou, I don’t know what secret exultation I felt at again
being able to return.
The antechamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those days, too
crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early audience; two days
passed before I could obtain a sight of the friend of Robespierre. On
the third day, as I was still waiting for the interview, I heard a great
bustle in the courtyard of the house, and looked out with many others at
the spectacle.
A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in some
absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and gendarmerie,
and an immense crowd of the _badauds_ of Strasburg, were surrounding a
carriage which then entered the court of the mayoralty. In this
carriage, great God! I saw my dear Mary, and Schneider by her side. The
truth instantly came upon me; the reason for Schneider’s keen inquiries
and my abrupt dismissal; but I could not believe that Mary was false to
me. I had only to look in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see
that this proposed marriage was not with her consent.
I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room in
which I was, and hid my face in my hands; I could not look upon her as
the wife of another,--upon her so long loved and truly--the saint of my
childhood--the pride and hope of my youth--torn from me for ever, and
delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who stood before me.
The door of St. Just’s private apartment opened, and he took his seat at
the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortége arrived before
it.
Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the
Republic to espouse the Citoyenne Marie Ancel.
‘Is she a minor?’ said St. Just.
‘She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away.’
‘I am here,’ said Uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing.
‘Edward Ancel, so please you, citizen representative. The worthy Citizen
Schneider has done me the honour of marrying into my family.’
‘But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage,’ said Mary,
interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.
Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavoured to prevent her from
speaking. Her father turned pale, and cried, ‘Stop, Mary, stop! For
Heaven’s sake, remember your poor old father’s danger!’
‘Sir, may I speak?’
‘Let the young woman speak,’ said St. Just, ‘if she have a desire to
talk.’ He did not suspect what would be the purport of her story.
‘Sir,’ she said, ‘two days since the Citizen Schneider entered for the
first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love of very
sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you to-day. He
had heard from a person who is now, unhappily, not present, of my name
and of the wealth which my family was said to possess; and hence arose
this mad design concerning me. He came into our village with supreme
power, an executioner at his heels, and the soldiery and authorities of
the district entirely under his orders. He threatened my father with
death if he refused to give up his daughter; and I, who knew that there
was no chance of escape, except here before you, consented to become his
wife. My father I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the
State have passed through my hands. Citizen representative, I demand to
be freed from this marriage; and I charge Schneider as a traitor to the
Republic, as a man who would have murdered an innocent citizen for the
sake of private gain.’
During the delivery of this little speech, Uncle Jacob had been sobbing
and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had done, he
rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his arms. ‘Bless
thee, my child!’ he cried, ‘for having had the courage to speak the
truth, and shame thy old father and me, who dared not say a word.’
‘The girl amazes me,’ said Schneider, with a look of astonishment. ‘I
never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: her
father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as gladly.
Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?’
‘It was, indeed, by my free consent,’ said Edward, trembling.
‘For shame, brother!’ cried old Jacob. ‘Sir, it was by Edward’s free
consent and my niece’s; but the guillotine was in the courtyard!
Question Schneider’s famulus, the man Grégoire, him who reads _The
Sorrows of Werther_.’
Grégoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider as he
said, ‘I know not what took place within doors; but I was ordered to put
up the scaffold without; and I was told to get soldiers, and let no one
leave the house.’
‘Citizen St. Just,’ cried Schneider, ‘you will not allow the testimony
of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-priest, to weigh
against the word of one who has done such service to the Republic: it is
a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole family is known to favour the
interest of the _émigrés_.’
‘And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow the
others to escape: you must make a better defence, Citizen Schneider,’
said St. Just, sternly.
Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had received an
order to quit Strasburg for Paris, immediately after a conversation with
Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in promoting my marriage
with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard from me full accounts
regarding her father’s wealth; and that he had abruptly caused my
dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme against her.
‘You are in the uniform of a regiment in this town; who sent you from
it?’ said St. Just.
I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which
Schneider had sent me.
‘The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my office.
Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?’
‘Why,’ said my sentimental friend Grégoire, ‘for the matter of that, I
can answer that the lad was always talking about this young woman: he
told me the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I had with
Citizen Schneider as we talked about it.’
‘The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into,’ said St. Just.
‘The marriage cannot take place. But if I had ratified it, Mary Ancel,
what would then have been your course?’
Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said--‘_He would have died
to-night--I would have stabbed him with this dagger_.’[3]
* * * * *
The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged; all
the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy Grégoire
was about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his office. On this
occasion it was not death that he was to inflict; he was only to expose
a criminal who was to be sent on afterwards to Paris. St. Just had
ordered that Schneider should stand for six hours in the public _place_
of Strasburg, and then be sent on to the capital, to be dealt with as
the authorities there might think fit.
The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of
punishment; and Grégoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man
whose orders he had obeyed so often--who had delivered over to disgrace
and punishment so many who merited it not.
Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and insults
of the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched on to Paris,
where it is probable that he would have escaped death, but for his own
fault. He was left for some time in prison, quite unnoticed, perhaps
forgotten: day by day fresh victims were carried to the scaffold, and
yet the Alsatian tribune remained alive; at last, by the mediation of
one of his friends, a long petition was presented to Robespierre,
stating his services and his innocence, and demanding his freedom. The
reply to this was an order for his instant execution: the wretch died in
the last days of Robespierre’s reign. His comrade, St. Just, followed
him, as you know; but Edward Ancel had been released before this, for
the action of my brave Mary had created a strong feeling in his favour.
‘And Mary?’ said I.
Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain’s little room: she
was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some forty years,
and followed by a number of noisy rosy children.
‘This is Mary Ancel,’ said the Captain, ‘and I am Captain Pierre, and
yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in force,
for it is the fête of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers and sisters
have all come from their schools to dance at his birthday.’
BEATRICE MERGER
Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr.
Colburn’s politest romances--so smooth and aristocratic does it
sound--is no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not a
fashionable French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.
[Illustration]
She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming with
good-nature, and marked dreadfully by small-pox; and a pair of black
eyes, which might have done some execution had they been placed in a
smoother face. Beatrice’s station in society is not very exalted; she is
a servant-of-all-work: she will dress your wife, your dinner, your
children; she does beefsteaks and plain work; she makes beds, blacks
boots, and waits at table;--such, at least, were the offices which she
performed in the fashionable establishment of the writer of this book;
perhaps her history may not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.
‘My father died,’ said Beatrice, ‘about six years since, and left my
poor mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of land,
and four children too young to work. It was hard enough in my father’s
time to supply so many little mouths with food; and how was a poor
widowed woman to provide for them now, who had neither the strength nor
the opportunity for labour?
‘Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have
helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bedridden; so she did
nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till night:
Heaven knows! poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be very
happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and that
it is worse still to be sick and hungry too.
‘At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very far
from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could hardly
find employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn a matter of
twelve sous a day. Mother, work as she would, could not gain more than
six; and it was a hard job, out of this, to put meat into six bellies,
and clothing on six backs. Old Aunt Bridget would scold, as she got her
portion of black bread; and my little brothers used to cry if theirs did
not come in time. I, too, used to cry when I got my share; for mother
kept only a little, little piece for herself, and said that she had
dined in the fields,--God pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I am
sure He did; for, but for Him, no working man or woman could subsist
upon such a wretched morsel as my dear mother took.
‘I was a thin, ragged, barefooted girl, then, and sickly and weak for
want of food; but I think I felt mother’s hunger more than my own; and
many and many a bitter night I lay awake, crying, and praying to God to
give me means of working for myself and aiding her. And He has, indeed,
been good to me,’ said pious Beatrice, ‘for He has given me all this!
‘Well, time rolled on, and matters grew worse than ever: winter came,
and was colder to us than any other winter, for our clothes were thinner
and more torn; mother sometimes could find no work, for the fields in
which she laboured were hidden under the snow; so that when we wanted
them most we had them least--warmth, work, or food.
‘I knew that, do what I would, mother would never let me leave her,
because I looked to my little brothers and my old cripple of an aunt;
but, still, bread was better for us than all my service; and when I left
them the six would have a slice more; so I determined to bid good-bye to
nobody, but to go away, and look for work elsewhere. One Sunday, when
mother and the little ones were at church, I went in to Aunt Bridget,
and said, “Tell mother when she comes back, that Beatrice is gone.” I
spoke quite stoutly, as if I did not care about it.
‘“Gone! gone where?” said she. “You an’t going to leave me alone, you
nasty thing; you an’t going to the village to dance, you ragged,
barefooted slut: you’re all of a piece in this house--your mother, your
brothers, and you. I know you’ve got meat in the kitchen, and you only
give me black bread;” and here the old lady began to scream as if her
heart would break; but we did not mind it, we were so used to it.
‘“Aunt,” said I, “I’m going, and took this very opportunity because you
_were_ alone; tell mother I am too old now to eat her bread and do no
work for it: I am going, please God, where work and bread can be found:”
and so I kissed her: she was so astonished that she could not move or
speak; and I walked away through the old room, and the little garden,
God knows whither!
‘I heard the old woman screaming after me, but I did not stop nor turn
round. I don’t think I could, for my heart was very full; and if I had
gone back again, I should never have had the courage to go away. So I
walked a long, long way, until night fell; and I thought of poor mother
coming home from mass, and not finding me; and little Pierre shouting
out, in his clear voice, for Beatrice to bring him his supper. I think I
should like to have died that night, and I thought I should too; for
when I was obliged to throw myself on the cold, hard ground, my feet
were too torn and weary to bear me any farther.
‘Just then the moon got up; and do you know I felt a comfort in looking
at it, for I knew it was shining on our little cottage, and it seemed
like an old friend’s face. A little way on, as I saw by the moon, was a
village; and I saw, too, that a man was coming towards me; he must have
heard me crying, I suppose.
‘Was not God good to me? This man was a farmer, who had need of a girl
in his house; he made me tell him why I was alone, and I told him the
same story I have told you, and he believed me and took me home. I had
walked six long leagues from our village that day, asking everywhere for
work in vain; and here, at bedtime, I found a bed and a supper!
‘Here I lived very well for some months; my master was very good and
kind to me; but, unluckily, too poor to give me any wages; so that I
could save nothing to send to my poor mother. My mistress used to scold;
but I was used to that at home, from Aunt Bridget; and she beat me
sometimes, but I did not mind it; for your hardy country girl is not
like your tender town lasses, who cry if a pin pricks them, and give
warning to their mistresses at the first hard word. The only drawback to
my comfort was, that I had no news of my mother; I could not write to
her, nor could she have read my letter, if I had; so there I was, at
only six leagues’ distance from home, as far off as if I had been to
Paris or to ‘Merica.
‘However, in a few months I grew so listless and homesick, that my
mistress said she would keep me no longer; and though I went away as
poor as I came, I was still too glad to get back to the old village
again, and see dear mother, if it were but for a day. I knew she would
share her crust with me, as she had done for so long a time before; and
hoped that, now, as I was taller and stronger, I might find work more
easily in the neighbourhood.
‘You may fancy what a fête it was when I came back; though I’m sure we
cried as much as if it had been a funeral. Mother got into a fit, which
frightened us all; and as for Aunt Bridget, she _skreeled_ away for
hours together, and did not scold for two days at least. Little Pierre
offered me the whole of his supper; poor little man! his slice of bread
was no bigger than before I went away.
‘Well, I got a little work here, and a little there; but still I was a
burden at home rather than a breadwinner; and, at the closing in of the
winter, was very glad to hear of a place at two leagues’ distance, where
work, they said, was to be had. Off I set, one morning, to find it, but
missed my way, somehow, until it was night-time before I
arrived.--Night-time and snow again; it seemed as if all my journeys
were to be made in this bitter weather.
‘When I came to the farmers door, his house was shut up, and his people
all a-bed; I knocked for a long while in vain; at last he made his
appearance at a window upstairs, and seemed so frightened, and looked so
angry, that I suppose he took me for a thief. I told him how I had come
for work. “Who comes for work at such an hour?” said he. “Go home, you
impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest people out of their sleep.”
He banged the window to; and so I was left alone to shift for myself as
I might. There was no shed, no cowhouse, where I could find a bed; so I
got under a cart, on some straw; it was no very warm berth. I could not
sleep for the cold; and the hours passed so slowly, that it seemed as if
I had been there a week, instead of a night; but still it was not so bad
as the first night when I left home, and when the good farmer found me.
‘In the morning, before it was light, the farmer’s people came out, and
saw me crouching under the cart: they told me to get up; but I was so
cold that I could not: at last the man himself came, and recognised me
as the girl who had disturbed him the night before. When he heard my
name and the purpose for which I came, this good man took me into the
house, and put me into one of the beds out of which his sons had just
got; and if I was cold before, you may be sure I was warm and
comfortable now: such a bed as this I had never slept in, nor ever did I
have such good milk-soup as he gave me out of his own breakfast. Well,
he agreed to hire me; and what do you think he gave me?--six sous a day!
and let me sleep in the cowhouse besides: you may fancy how happy I was
now, at the prospect of earning so much money.
‘There was an old woman among the labourers who used to sell us soup: I
got a cupful every day for a halfpenny, with a bit of bread in it; and
might eat as much beetroot besides as I liked: not a very wholesome
meal, to be sure, but God took care that it should not disagree with me.
‘So, every Saturday, when work was over, I had thirty sous to carry home
to mother; and tired though I was, I walked merrily the two leagues to
our village, to see her again. On the road there was a great wood to
pass through, and this frightened me; for if a thief should come and rob
me of my whole week’s earnings, what could a poor lone girl do to help
herself? But I found a remedy for this too, and no thieves ever came
near me; I used to begin saying my prayers as I entered the forest, and
never stopped until I was safe at home; and safe I always arrived, with
my thirty sous in my pocket.--Ah! you may be sure, Sunday was a merry
day for us all.’
* * * * *
This is the whole of Beatrice’s history which is worthy of publication;
the rest of it only relates to her arrival in Paris, and the various
masters and mistresses whom she there had the honour to serve. As soon
as she enters the capital the romance disappears, and the poor girl’s
sufferings and privations luckily vanish with it. Beatrice has got now
warm gowns, and stout shoes, and plenty of good food. She has had her
little brother from Picardy; clothed, fed, and educated him: that young
gentleman is now a carpenter, and an honour to his profession. Madame
Merger is in easy circumstances, and receives, yearly, fifty francs from
her daughter. To crown all, Mademoiselle Beatrice herself is a funded
proprietor, and consulted the writer of this biography as to the best
method of laying out a capital of two hundred francs, which is the
present amount of her fortune.
God bless her! she is richer than his Grace the Duke of Devonshire; and,
I dare to say, has, in her humble walk, been more virtuous and more
happy than all the dukes in the realm.
It is, indeed, for the benefit of dukes and such great people (who, I
make no doubt, have long since ordered copies of these Sketches from Mr.
Macrone) that poor little Beatrice’s story has been indited. Certain it
is that the young woman would never have been immortalised in this way,
but for the good which her betters may derive from her example. If your
ladyship will but reflect a little, after boasting of the sums which
you spend in charity; the beef and blankets which you dole out at
Christmas; the poonah-painting which you execute for fancy fairs; the
long, long sermons which you listen to at St. George’s, the whole year
through;--your ladyship, I say, will allow that, although perfectly
meritorious in your line, as a patroness of the Church of England, of
Almack’s, and of the Lying-in Asylum, yours is but a paltry sphere of
virtue, a pitiful attempt at benevolence, and that this honest
servant-girl puts you to shame! And you, my Lord Bishop; do you, out of
your six sous a day, give away five to support your flock and family?
Would you drop a single coach-horse (I do not say _a dinner_, for such a
notion is monstrous in one of your lordship’s degree) to feed any one of
the starving children of your lordship’s mother--the Church?
I pause for a reply. His lordship took too much turtle and cold punch
for dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now; but we have, by this
ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world wag as it
will, and poor Christians and curates starve as they may, my lord’s
footmen must have their new liveries, and his horses their four feeds a
day.
* * * * *
When we recollect his speech about the Catholics--when we remember his
last charity sermon,--but I say nothing. Here is a poor benighted
superstitious creature, worshipping images, without a rag to her tail,
who has as much faith, and humility, and charity, as all the reverend
bench.
* * * * *
This angel is without a place; and for this reason (besides the pleasure
of composing the above slap at Episcopacy)--I have indited her history.
If the Bishop is going to Paris, and wants a good honest
maid-of-all-work, he can have her, I have no doubt; or if he chooses to
give a few pounds to her mother, they can be sent to Mr. Titmarsh, at
the publisher’s.
Here is Miss Merger’s last letter and autograph. The note was evidently
composed by an _écrivain public_:--
‘_Madame_--_Ayant appris par ce Monsieur, que vous vous portiez
bien, ainsi que Monsieur, ayant su aussi que vous parliez de moi
dans votre lettre cette nouvelle m’a fait bien plaisir. Je profite
de l’occasion pour vous faire passer ce petit billet où Je voudrais
pouvoir m’enveloper pour aller vous voir el pour vous dire que Je
suis encore sans place Je m’ennuye toujours de ne pas vous voir
ainsi que Minette [Minette_ is a cat] _qui semble m’interroger tour
à tour et demander où votes êtes. Je vous envoye aussi la note du
linge à blanchir_--_ah, Madame! Je vais cesser de vous écrire mais
non de vous regretter_.’
[Illustration: Beatrice Mergen signature]
CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS
Fifty years ago there lived at Munich a poor fellow, by name Aloys
Senefelder, who was in so little repute as an author and artist, that
printers and engravers refused to publish his works at their own
charges, and so set him upon some plan for doing without their aid. In
the first place, Aloys invented a certain kind of ink, which would
resist the action of the acid that is usually employed by engravers, and
with this he made his experiments upon copper plates, as long as he
could afford to purchase them. He found that to write upon the plates
backwards, after the manner of engravers, required much skill and many
trials; and he thought that, were he to practise upon any other polished
surface--a smooth stone, for instance, the least costly article
imaginable--he might spare the expense of the copper until he had
sufficient skill to use it.
One day, it is said that Aloys was called upon to write--rather a humble
composition for an author and artist--a washing-bill. He had no paper at
hand, and so he wrote out the bill with some of his newly invented ink
upon one of his Kilheim stones. Some time afterwards he thought he would
try and take an _impression_ of his washing-bill: he did, and succeeded.
Such is the story, which the reader most likely knows very well; and
having alluded to the origin of the art, we shall not follow the stream
through its windings and enlargement after it issued from the little
parent rock, or fill our pages with the rest of the pedigree. Senefelder
invented Lithography. His invention has not made so much noise and larum
in the world as some others, which have an origin quite as humble and
unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no small profit and a great
deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound to speak of it with all
gratitude and respect. The schoolmaster, who is now abroad, has taught
us, in our youth, how the cultivation of art ‘emollit mores nec sinit
esse’--(it is needless to finish the quotation); and lithography has
been, to our thinking, the very best ally that art ever had; the best
friend of the artist, allowing him to produce rapidly multiplied and
authentic copies of his own works (without trusting to the tedious and
expensive assistance of the engraver); and the best friend to the people
likewise, who have means of purchasing these cheap and beautiful
productions, and thus having their ideas ‘mollified’ and their manners
‘feros’ no more.
With ourselves among whom money is plenty, enterprise so great, and
everything matter of commercial speculation, lithography has not been so
much practised as wood or steel engraving, which, by the aid of great
original capital and spread of sale, are able more than to compete with
the art of drawing on stone. The two former may be called art done by
_machinery_. We confess to a prejudice in favour of the honest work of
_hand_, in matters of art, and prefer the rough workmanship of the
painter to the smooth copies of his performances which are produced, for
the most part, on the wood block or the steel plate.
The theory will possibly be objected to by many of our readers: the best
proof in its favour, we think, is, that the state of art amongst the
people in France and Germany, where publishers are not so wealthy or
enterprising as with us,[4] and where lithography is more practised, is
infinitely higher than in England, and the appreciation more correct. As
draughtsmen, the French and German painters are incomparably superior to
our own; and with art, as with any other commodity, the demand will be
found pretty equal to the supply: with us, the general demand is for
neatness, prettiness, and what is called _effect_ in pictures, and these
can be rendered completely, nay, improved, by the engraver’s
conventional manner of copying the artist’s performances. But to copy
fine expression and fine drawing, the engraver himself must be a fine
artist; and let anybody examine the host of picture-books which appear
every Christmas, and say whether, for the most part, painters or
engravers possess any artistic merit? We boast, nevertheless, of some of
the best engravers and painters in Europe. Here, again, the supply is
accounted for by the demand; our highest class is richer than other
aristocracy, quite as well instructed, and can judge and pay for fine
pictures and engravings. But these costly productions are for the few,
and not for the many, who have not yet certainly arrived at properly
appreciating fine art.
Take the standard ‘Album,’ for instance--that unfortunate collection of
deformed Zuleikas and Medoras (from the ‘Byron Beauties,’ the Flowers,
Gems, Souvenirs, Caskets of Loveliness, Beauty, as they may be called);
glaring caricatures of flowers, singly, in groups, in flower-pots, or
with hideous deformed little Cupids sporting among them; of what are
called ‘mezzotinto’ pencil-drawings, ‘poonah-paintings,’ and what not.
‘The Album’ is to be found invariably upon the round rosewood
brass-inlaid drawing-room table of the middle classes, and with a couple
of ‘Annuals’ besides, which flank it on the same table, represents the
art of the house; perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house
in the dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantelpiece; and of the
mistress over the piano upstairs; add to these some odious miniatures of
the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-glass; and here,
commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an overcharged picture),
the collection ends. The family goes to the Exhibition once a year, to
the National Gallery once in ten years: to the former place they have an
inducement to go; there are their own portraits, or the portraits of
their friends, or the portraits of public characters; and you will see
them infallibly wondering over No. 2645 in the catalogue, representing
‘The Portrait of a Lady,’ or of the ‘First Mayor of Little Pedlington
since the Passing of the Reform Bill;’ or else bustling and squeezing
among the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the Gallery.
England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of admirers of
art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever portrait-painters. How
many _artists_? Let the reader count upon his five fingers, and see if,
living at the present moment, he can name one for each.
If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to
the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble _cafés_
in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers,
representing, ‘Les Gloires de l’Armée Française,’ the ‘Seasons,’ the
‘Four Quarters of the World,’ ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ or some other
allegory, landscape, or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls
usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the
common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, undeniable. In
Paris, the manner in which the _cafés_ and houses of the _restaurateurs_
are ornamented, is, of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can
be more beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the
designs which adorn many of them. We are not prepared to say what sums
were expended upon the painting of ‘Véry’s’ or ‘Verfour’s,’ of the
‘Salle Musard,’ or of numberless other places of public resort in the
capital. There is many a shopkeeper whose sign is a very tolerable
picture; and often have we stopped to admire (the reader will give us
credit for having remained _outside_) the excellent workmanship of the
grapes and vine-leaves over the door of some very humble, dirty,
inodorous shop of a _marchand de vin_.
These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are
ornaments, for the most part, much too costly for the people. But the
same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of resort,
appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has
lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family,
however poor, may bear witness how profusely the walls of his smart
_salon_ in the English quarter, or of his little room _au sixième_ in
the Pays Latin, has been decorated with prints of all kinds. In the
first, probably, with bad engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry
pictures of the artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with
gay caricatures of Granville or Monnier; military pieces, such as are
dashed off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of the
three designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous hand); or
clever pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the admirable
Roqueplan, or Decamp. We have named here, we believe, the principal
lithographic artists in Paris; and those--as doubtless there are
many--of our readers who have looked over Monsieur Aubert’s portfolios,
or gazed at that famous caricature-shop window in the Rue du Coq, or are
even acquainted with the exterior of Monsieur Delaporte’s little
emporium in the Burlington Arcade, need not be told how excellent the
productions of all these artists are in their _genre_. We get in these
engravings the _loisirs_ of men of genius, not the finikin performances
of laboured mediocrity, as with us: all these artists are good painters,
as well as good designers; a design from them is worth a whole gross of
‘Books of Beauty;’ and if we might raise a humble supplication to the
artists in our own country of similar merit--to such men as Leslie,
Maclise, Herbert, Cattermole, and others--it would be, that they should,
after the example of their French brethren and of the English landscape
painters, take chalk in hand, produce their own copies of their own
sketches, and never more draw a single ‘Forsaken One,’ ‘Rejected One,’
‘Dejected One,’ at the entreaty of any publisher, or for the pages of
any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or Loveliness whatever.
Can there he a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll
through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fête-day? not to look so much at
the pictures as at the lookers-on. Thousands of the poorer classes are
there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling grisettes, smart
dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed wondering faces, marching
together in little companies of six or seven, and stopping every now and
then at Napoleon or Leonidas as they appear in proper vulgar heroics in
the pictures of David or Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be
approved by the connoisseur, but they have _a_ taste for art. Can the
same be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be
sociable and amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the
taproom or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can
be built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday
paper? So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so well has
it succeeded in materialising and binding down to the earth the
imagination of men, for which God has made another world (which certain
statesmen take but too little into account)--that fair and beautiful
world of art, in which there _can_ be nothing selfish or sordid, of
which Dulness has forgotten the existence, and which Bigotry has
endeavoured to shut out from sight--
‘On a banni les démons et les fées,
Le raisonner tristement s’accrédite:
On court, hélas! après la vérité:
Ah! croyez-moi, l’erreur a son mérite!’
We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as Voltaire
does in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate on the
beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-engines, and
the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain or bread, and the
loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have well-nigh smothered poor Fancy
among us. We boast of our science, and vaunt our superior morality. Does
the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy has
invented to secure it--in spite of all the preachers, all the
meeting-houses, and all the legislative enactments--if any person will
take upon himself the painful labour of purchasing and perusing some of
the cheap periodical prints which form the people’s library of
amusement, and contain what may be presumed to be their standard in
matters of imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is
that we bring forward of superior morality. The aristocracy, who are so
eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel, the annoyance
of the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized upon
that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and _ennui_ ordered by
Act of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday paper. It might be
read in a club-room, where the poor could not see how their betters
ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an
easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for his
devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more
piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of _double entendre_. It was a
fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which
he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his
opera-box, or his _chasse_ after coffee. The delightful novelty could
not for any time be kept exclusively for the _haut ton_; and from my
lord it descended to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square
it spread all the town through; so that now the lower classes have their
scandal and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they
_will_ imitate them!); and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my
lord’s, and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the prints
have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly
proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a
number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbé
Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English
morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the worst period of the French
monarchy, scarcely equalled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping
country of ours.
The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we
would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this immorality
exist? Because the people _must_ be amused, and have not been taught
_how_; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed
in material want, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the
cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated,
and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still
more ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, in an increased
proportion.
Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath Bills,
politicians, and what not, may appear, perhaps, out of place, in a few
pages which purport only to give an account of some French drawings: all
we would urge is, that, in France, these prints are made because they
are liked and appreciated; with us they are not made, because they are
not liked and appreciated; and the more is the pity. Nothing merely
intellectual will be popular among us: we do not love beauty for
beauty’s sake, as Germans; or wit, for wit’s sake, as the French: for
abstract art we have no appreciation. We admire H. B.’s caricatures,
because they are the caricatures of well-known political characters, not
because they are witty; and Boz, because he writes us good palpable
stories (if we may use such a word to a story); and Madame Vestris,
because she has the most beautifully shaped legs;--the _art_ of the
designer, the writer, the actress (each admirable in its way), is a very
minor consideration; each might have ten times the wit, and would be
quite unsuccessful without their substantial points of popularity.
In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art is a
thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how much
superiority is there in French _society_ over our own; how much better
is social happiness understood; how much more manly equality is there
between Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and poor in our own
country, with all our superior wealth, instruction, and political
freedom! There is, amongst the humblest, a gaiety, cheerfulness,
politeness, and sobriety, to which in England no class can show a
parallel; and these, be it remembered, are not only qualities for
holidays, but for working days too, and add to the enjoyment of human
life as much as good clothes, good beef, or good wages. If, to our
freedom, we could but add a little of their happiness!--it is one, after
all, of the cheapest commodities in the world, and in the power of every
man (with means of gaining decent bread) who has the will or the skill
to use it.
We are not going to trace the history of the rise and progress of art in
France: our business, at present, is only to speak of one branch of art
in that country--lithographic designs, and those chiefly of a humorous
character. A history of French caricature was published in Paris, two or
three years back, illustrated by numerous copies of designs, from the
time of Henry III. to our own day. We can only speak of this work from
memory, having been unable, in London, to procure the sight of a copy;
but our impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as
unfavourable as could possibly be; nothing could be more meagre than the
wit, or poorer than the execution, of the whole set of drawings. Under
the Empire, art, as may be imagined, was at a very low ebb; and aping
the Government of the day, and catering to the national taste and
vanity, it was a kind of tawdry caricature of the sublime; of which the
pictures of David and Girodet, and almost the entire collection now at
the Luxembourg Palace, will give pretty fair examples. Swollen,
distorted, unnatural, the painting was something like the politics of
those days; with force in it, nevertheless, and something of grandeur,
that will exist in spite of taste, and is born of energetic will. A man,
disposed to write comparisons of characters, might, for instance, find
some striking analogies between Mountebank Murat, with his irresistible
bravery and horsemanship, who was a kind of mixture of Duguesclin and
Ducrow, and Mountebank David, a fierce powerful painter and genius,
whose idea of beauty and sublimity seem to have been gained from the
bloody melodramas on the Boulevard. Both, however, were great in their
way, and were worshipped as gods in those heathen times of false belief
and hero-worship.
As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the rightful
princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf, her attendant,
were entirely in the power of the giant who ruled the land. The Princess
Press was so closely watched and guarded (with some little show,
nevertheless, of respect for her rank), that she dared not utter a word
of her own thoughts; and, for poor Caricature, he was gagged, and put
out of the way altogether: imprisoned as completely as ever Asmodeus was
in his phial.
How the Press and her attendant fared in succeeding reigns, is well
known; their condition was little bettered by the downfall of Napoleon:
with the accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed even than
before--more than they could bear; for so hard were they pressed, that,
as one has seen when sailors were working a capstan, back of a sudden
the bars flew, knocking to the earth the men who were endeavouring to
work them. The Revolution came, and up sprang Caricature in France; all
sorts of fierce epigrams were discharged at the flying monarch, and
speedily were prepared, too, for the new one.
About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be correct) a
certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was his
profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit. M. Philipon
designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of an eminent
publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering about them a
body of wits and artists like themselves, set up journals of their
own:--_La Caricature_, first published once a week; and the _Charivari_
afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also appears daily.
At first the caricatures inserted in the _Charivari_ were chiefly
political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between the
State and M. Philipon’s little army in the Galerie Véro-Dodat. Half a
dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis Philippe, his
august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the
monarchy, on the other; it was something like Thersites girding at Ajax,
and piercing through the folds of the _clypei septemplicis_ with the
poisonous shifts of his scorn. Our French Thersites was not always an
honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon
the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see
the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth
fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive
opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they _did_ tell, it
may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and
served almost to annihilate the adversary.
To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf, the
King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so mercilessly
ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure drawn with such
odious and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful attitudes, circumstances,
and disguises, so ludicrously mean, and often so appropriate, that the
King was obliged to descend into the lists and battle his ridiculous
enemy in form. Prosecutions, seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal
officials, were first brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his
little dauntless troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out of
his ranks; and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their
weapons upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would
fight no more. The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued _avocats
du Roi_ made no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of a fine by
some fresh and furious attack upon his great enemy; if his epigrams were
more covert, they were no less bitter; if he was beaten a dozen times
before a jury, he had eighty or ninety victories to show in the same
field of battle, and every victory and every defeat brought him new
sympathy. Every one who was at Paris a few years since must recollect
the famous ‘_poire_’ which was chalked upon all the walls of the city,
and which bore so ludicrous a resemblance to Louis Philippe. The _poire_
became an object of prosecution, and M. Philipon appeared before a jury
to answer for the crime of inciting to contempt against the King’s
person, by giving such a ludicrous version of his face. Philipon, for
defence, produced a sheet of paper, and drew a _poire_, a real large
Burgundy pear: in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower near the
stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves. ‘There was no
treason at least in _that_,’ he said to the jury; ‘could any one object
to such a harmless botanical representation?’ Then he drew a second
pear, exactly like the former, except that one or two lines were
scrawled in the midst of it, which bore, somehow, a ludicrous
resemblance to the eyes, nose, and mouth of a celebrated personage; and,
lastly, he drew the exact portrait of Louis Philippe; the well-known
toupet, the ample whiskers and jowl were there, neither extenuated nor
set down in malice. ‘Can I help it, gentlemen of the jury, then,’ said
he, ‘if his Majesty’s face is like a pear? Say you, yourselves,
respectable citizens, is it, or is it not, like a pear?’ Such eloquence
could not fail of its effect; the artist was acquitted, and _La Poire_
is immortal.
At last came the famous September laws: the freedom of the Press,
which, from August 1830, was to be ‘désormais une vérité,’ was calmly
strangled by the monarch who had gained his crown for his supposed
championship of it; by his Ministers, some of whom had been stout
Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the Chamber, which,
such is the blessed constitution of French elections, will generally
vote, unvote, revote in any way the Government wishes. With a wondrous
union, and happy forgetfulness of principle, monarch, Ministers, and
deputies issued the restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as
for the poor dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered. No more political
satires appear now, and ‘through the eye, correct the heart;’ no more
_poires_ ripen on the walls of the metropolis; Philipon’s political
occupation is gone.
But there is always food for satire; and the French caricaturists, being
no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the King and
the deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the pencil in the
ridicules and rascalities of common life. We have said that public
decency is greater amongst the French than amongst us, which, to some of
our readers, may appear paradoxical; but we shall not attempt to argue
that, in private roguery, our neighbours are not our equals. The
_procès_ of Gisquet, which has appeared lately in the papers, shows how
deep the demoralisation must be, and how a Government, based itself on
dishonesty (a tyranny that is under the title and fiction of a
democracy), must practise and admit corruption in its own and in its
agents’ dealings with the nation. Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of
Ministers dabbling with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for
the granting of unjust privileges and monopolies,--of grasping, envious
police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the
integrity of commerce,--those who like to examine such details may find
plenty in French history; the whole French finance system has been a
swindle from the days of Louvois, or Law, down to the present time. The
Government swindles the public, and the small traders swindle their
customers, on the authority and example of the superior powers. Hence
the art of roguery, under such high patronage, maintains in France a
noble front of impudence, and a fine audacious openness, which it does
not wear in our country.
Among the various characters of roguery which the French satirists have
amused themselves by depicting, there is one of which the _greatness_
(using the word in the sense which Mr. Jonathan Wild gave to it) so far
exceeds that of all others, embracing, as it does, all in turn, that it
has come to be considered the type of roguery in general; and now, just
as all the political squibs were made to come of old from the lips of
Pasquin, all the reflections on the prevailing cant, knavery, quackery,
humbug, are put into the mouth of Monsieur Robert Macaire.
A play was written, some twenty years since, called the _Auberge des
Adrets_, in which the characters of two robbers escaped from the galleys
were introduced--Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above mentioned, and
Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, butt, and scapegoat,
on all occasions of danger. It is needless to describe the play--a
witless performance enough, of which the joke was Macaire’s exaggerated
style of conversation, a farrago of all sorts of highflown sentiments,
such as the French love to indulge in--contrasted with his actions,
which were philosophically unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was
most picturesquely sordid. The play had been acted, we believe, and
forgotten, when a very clever actor, M. Frédéric Lemaître, took upon
himself the performance of the character of Robert Macaire, and looked,
spoke, and acted it to such admirable perfection, that the whole town
rung with applauses of his performance, and the caricaturists delighted
to copy his singular figure and costume. M. Robert Macaire appears in a
most picturesque green coat, with a variety of rents and patches, a pair
of crimson pantaloons ornamented in the same way, enormous whiskers and
ringlets, an enormous stock and shirt-frill, as dirty and ragged as
stock and shirt-frill can be, the relic of a hat very gaily cocked over
one eye, and a patch to take away somewhat from the brightness of the
other--these are the principal _pièces_ of his costume--a snuff-box like
a creaking warming-pan, a handkerchief hanging together by a miracle,
and a switch of about the thickness of a man’s thigh, formed the
ornaments of this exquisite personage. He is a compound of Fielding’s
‘Blueskin’ and Goldsmith’s ‘Beau Tibbs.’ He has the dirt and dandyism of
the one, with the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to
swindle, but where he can get a shilling more, M. Macaire will murder
without scruple: he performs one and the other act (or any in the scale
between them) with a similar bland imperturbability, and accompanies his
actions with such philosophical remarks as may be expected from a person
of his talents, his energies, his amiable life and character.
Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire’s jokes, and makes vicarious
atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which Pantaloon
performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the fatal influence of
Clown. He is quite as much a rogue as that gentleman, but he has not his
genius and courage. So in pantomimes (it may, doubtless, have been
remarked by the reader), Clown always leaps first, Pantaloon following
after, more clumsily and timidly than his bold and accomplished friend
and guide. Whatever blows are destined for Clown fall, by some means of
ill luck, upon the pate of Pantaloon; whenever the Clown robs, the
stolen articles are sure to be found in his companion’s pocket; and thus
exactly Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to go through
the world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished than the other.
Both robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his friend, and, in the
event of danger, leaving him faithfully in the lurch. There is, in the
two characters, some grotesque good for the spectator--a kind of
_Beggars’ Opera_ moral.
Ever since Robert, with his dandified rags and airs, his cane and
snuff-box, and Bertrand with torn surtout and all-absorbing pocket, have
appeared on the stage, they have been popular with the Parisians; and
with these two types of clever and stupid knavery, M. Philipon and his
companion Daumier have created a world of pleasant satire upon all the
prevailing abuses of the day.
Almost the first figure that these audacious caricaturists dared to
depict was a political one: in Macaire’s red breeches and tattered coat
appeared no less a personage than the King himself--the old _Poire_--in
a country of humbugs and swindlers the _facile princeps_; fit to govern,
as he is deeper than all the rogues in his dominions. Bertrand was
opposite to him, and having listened with delight and reverence to some
tale of knavery truly Royal, was exclaiming with a look and voice
expressive of the most intense admiration, ‘AH, VIEUX BLAGUEUR!
va!’--the word _blague_ is untranslatable--it means _French_ humbug, as
distinct from all other; and only those who know the value of an epigram
in France, an epigram so wonderfully just, a little word so curiously
comprehensive, can fancy the kind of rage and rapture with which it was
received. It was a blow that shook the whole dynasty. Thersites had
there given such a wound to Ajax, as Hector in arms could scarcely have
inflicted: a blow sufficient almost to create the madness to which the
fabulous hero of Homer and Ovid fell a prey.
Not long, however, was French caricature allowed to attack personages so
illustrious: the September laws came, and henceforth no more epigrams
were launched against politics, but the caricaturists were compelled to
confine their satire to subjects and characters that had nothing to do
with the State. The Duke of Orleans was no longer to figure in
lithography as the fantastic Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes
(in chalk) to shelter under the enormous shadow of M. d’Argout’s nose;
Marshal Lohan’s squirt was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers’s pigmy
figure and round spectacled face were no more to appear in print.[5]
Robert Macaire was driven out of the Chambers and the Palace--his
remarks were a great deal too appropriate and too severe for the ears of
the great men who congregated in those places.
The Chambers and the Palace were shut to him; but the rogue, driven out
of this rogue’s paradise, saw ‘that the world was all before him where
to choose,’ and found no lack of opportunities for exercising his wit.
There was the Bar, with its roguish practitioners, rascally attorneys,
stupid juries, and forsworn judges; there was the Bourse, with all its
gambling, swindling, and hoaxing, its cheats and its dupes; the Medical
Profession, and the quacks who ruled it, alternately; the Stage, and the
cant that was prevalent there; the Fashion, and its thousand follies and
extravagances. Robert Macaire had all these to _exploiter_. Of all the
empire, through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes, and
absurdities of men, he may make sport at will: of all except of a
certain class. Like Bluebeard’s wife, he may see everything, but is
bidden _to beware of the blue chamber_. Robert is more wise than
Bluebeard’s wife, and knows that it would cost him his head to enter it.
Robert therefore keeps aloof for the moment. Would there be any use in
his martyrdom? Bluebeard cannot live for ever; perhaps, even now, those
are on their way (one sees a suspicious cloud of dust or two) that are
to destroy him.
In the meantime Robert and his friend have been furnishing the designs
that we have before us, and of which perhaps the reader will be edified
by a brief description. We are not, to be sure, to judge of the French
nation by M. Macaire, any more than we are to judge of our own national
morals in the last century by such a book as the _Beggars’ Opera_; but
upon the morals and the national manners, works of satire afford a world
of light that one would in vain look for in regular books of history.
Doctor Smollett would have blushed to devote any considerable portion of
his pages to a discussion of the acts and character of Mr. Jonathan
Wild, such a figure being hardly admissible among the dignified
personages who usually push all others out from the possession of the
historical page; but a chapter of that gentleman’s memoirs, as they are
recorded in that exemplary _recueil_--the _Newgate Calendar_; nay, a
canto of the great comic epic (involving many fables, and containing
much exaggeration, but still having the seeds of truth) which the
satirical poet of those days wrote in celebration of him--we mean
Fielding’s _History of Jonathan Wild the Great_--does seem to us to
give a more curious picture of the manners of those times than any
recognised history of them. At the close of his history of George II.,
Smollett condescends to give a short chapter on Literature and Manners.
He speaks of Glover’s _Leonidas_, Cibber’s _Careless Husband_, the poems
of Mason, Grey, the two Whiteheads, ‘the nervous style, extensive
erudition, and superior sense of a Cooke; the delicate taste, the
polished muse, and tender feeling of a Lyttelton.’ ‘King,’ he says,
‘shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence; the female sex distinguished
themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carte rivalled the
celebrated Dacier in learning and critical knowledge; Mrs. Lennox
signalised herself by many successful efforts of genius both in poetry
and prose; and Miss Reid excelled the celebrated Rosalba in
portrait-painting, both in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in
crayons. The genius of Cervantes was transferred into the novels of
Fielding, who painted the characters and ridiculed the follies of life
with equal strength, humour, and propriety. The field of history and
biography was cultivated by many writers of ability, among whom we
distinguish the copious Guthrie, the circumstantial Ralph, the laborious
Carte, the learned and elegant Robertson, and, above all, the ingenious,
penetrating, and comprehensive Hume,’ etc. We will quote no more of the
passage. Could a man in the best humour sit down to write a graver
satire? Who cares for the tender muse of Lyttelton? Who knows the signal
efforts of Mrs. Lennox’s genius? Who has seen the admirable
performances, in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in crayons,
of a Miss Reid? Laborious Carte, and circumstantial Ralph, and copious
Guthrie, where are they, their works, and their reputation? Mrs.
Lennox’s name is just as clean wiped out of the list of worthies as if
she had never been born; and Miss Reid, though she was once actual flesh
and blood, ‘rival in miniature and at large’ of the celebrated Rosalba,
she is as if she had never been at all; her little farthing rushlight of
a soul and reputation having burnt out, and left neither wick nor
tallow. Death, too, has overtaken copious Guthrie and circumstantial
Ralph. Only a few know whereabouts is the grave where lies laborious
Carte; and yet, O wondrous power of genius! Fielding’s men and women are
alive, though History’s are not. The progenitors of circumstantial Ralph
sent forth, after much labour and pains of making, educating, feeding,
clothing, a real man child, a great palpable mass of flesh, bones, and
blood (we say nothing about the spirit), which was to move through the
world, ponderous, writing histories, and to die, having achieved the
title of circumstantial Ralph; and lo! without any of the trouble that
the parents of Ralph had undergone, alone perhaps in a watch-or
spunging-house, fuddled most likely, in the blandest, easiest, and most
good-humoured way in the world, Henry Fielding makes a number of men and
women on so many sheets of paper, not only more amusing than Ralph or
Miss Reid, but more like flesh and blood, and more alive now than they.
Is not Amelia preparing her husband’s little supper? Is not Miss Snap
chastely preventing the crime of Mr. Firebrand? Is not Parson Adams in
the midst of his family, and Mr. Wild taking his last bowl of punch with
the Newgate Ordinary? Is not every one of them a real substantial
_have_-been personage now?--more real than Reid or Ralph? For our parts,
we will not take upon ourselves to say that they do not exist somewhere
else, that the actions attributed to them have not really taken place;
certain we are that they are more worthy of credence than Ralph, who may
or may not have been circumstantial; who may or may not even have
existed, a point unworthy of disputation. As for Miss Reid, we will take
an affidavit that neither in miniature nor at large did she excel the
celebrated Rosalba; and with regard to Mrs. Lennox, we consider her to
be a mere figment, like Narcissa, Miss Tabitha Bramble, or any hero or
heroine depicted by the historian of _Peregrine Pickle_.
In like manner, after viewing nearly ninety portraits of Robert Macaire
and his friend Bertrand, all strongly resembling each other, we are
inclined to believe in them both as historical personages, and to
canvass gravely the circumstances of their lives. Why should we not?
Have we not their portraits? Are not they sufficient proofs? If not, we
must discredit Napoleon (as Archbishop Whateley teaches), for about his
figure and himself we have no more authentic testimony.
Let the reality of M. Robert Macaire and his friend M. Bertrand be
granted, if but to gratify our own fondness for those exquisite
characters: we find the worthy pair in the French capital, mingling with
all grades of its society, _pars magna_ in the intrigues, pleasures,
perplexities, rogueries, speculations, which are carried on in Paris,
as in our own chief city; for it need not be said that roguery is of no
country nor clime, but finds ὡς πανταχοὑ γε πατρἱς ἡ βὁσκουσα γἡ, is a
citizen of all countries where the quarters are good; among our merry
neighbours it finds itself very much at its ease.
Not being endowed, then, with patrimonial wealth, but compelled to
exercise their genius to obtain distinction, or even subsistence, we see
Messrs. Bertrand and Macaire, by turns, adopting all trades and
professions, and exercising each with their own peculiar ingenuity. As
public men, we have spoken already of their appearance in one or two
important characters, and stated that the Government grew fairly jealous
of them, excluding them from office, as the Whigs did Lord Brougham. As
private individuals they are made to distinguish themselves as the
founders of journals, _sociétés en commandite_ (companies of which the
members are irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all
sorts of commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on
the part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements from the
shareholders.
These are, among the French, so numerous, and have been, of late years
(in the shape of Newspaper Companies, Bitumen Companies, Galvanised-Iron
Companies, Railroad Companies, etc.), pursued with such a blind _furor_
and lust of gain by that easily excited and imaginative people, that, as
may be imagined, the satirist has found plenty of occasion for remark,
and M. Macaire and his friend innumerable opportunities for exercising
their talents.
We know nothing of M. Emile de Girardin, except that, in a duel, he shot
the best man in France, Armand Carrel; and in Girardin’s favour it must
be said, that he had no other alternative; but was right in provoking
the duel, seeing that the whole Republican party had vowed his
destruction, and that he fought and killed their champion, as it were.
We know nothing of M. Girardin’s private character; but, as far as we
can judge from the French public prints, he seems to be the most
speculative of speculators, and, of course, a fair butt for the malice
of the caricaturists. His one great crime, in the eyes of the French
Republicans and Republican newspaper proprietors, was, that Girardin set
up a journal, as he called it, ‘franchement monarchique,’--a journal in
the pay of the monarchy, that is,--and a journal that cost only forty
francs by the year. The _National_ costs twice as much; the _Charivari_
itself costs half as much again; and though all newspapers, of all
parties, concurred in ‘snubbing’ poor M. Girardin and his journal, the
Republican prints were by far the most bitter against him, thundering
daily accusations and personalities; whether the abuse was well or ill
founded, we know not. Hence arose the duel with Carrel; after the
termination of which, Girardin put by his pistol, and vowed, very
properly, to assist in the shedding of no more blood. Girardin had been
the originator of numerous other speculations besides the journal: the
capital of these, like that of the journal, was raised by shares, and
the shareholders, by some fatality, have found themselves woefully in
the lurch; while Girardin carries on the war gaily, is, or was, a
_member of_ the Chamber of Deputies, has money, goes to Court, and
possesses a certain kind of reputation. He invented, we believe, the
‘Institution Agronome de Coetbo,’[6] the ‘Physionotype,’ the ‘Journal
des Connaissances Utiles,’ the ‘Panthéon Littéraire,’ and the system of
‘Primes’--premiums, that is--to be given, by lottery, to certain
subscribers in these institutions. Could Robert Macaire see such things
going on, and have no hand in them?
Accordingly Messrs. Macaire and Bertrand are made the heroes of many
speculations of the kind. In almost the first print of our collection,
Robert discourses to Bertrand of his projects. ‘Bertrand,’ says the
disinterested admirer of talent and enterprise, ‘j’adore l’industrie. Si
tu veux, nous créons une banque, mais là, une vraie banque: capital,
cent millions de millions, cent milliards de milliards d’actions. Nous
enfonçons la banque de France, les banquiers, les banquistes; nous
enfonçons tout le monde.’ ‘Oui,’ says Bertrand, very calm and stupid,
‘mais les gendarmes?’ ‘Que tu es bête, Bertrand: est-ce qu’on arrête un
millionnaire?’ Such is the key to M. Macaire’s philosophy; and a wise
creed too, as times go.
Acting on these principles, Robert appears soon after; he has not
created a bank, but a journal. He sits in a chair of state, and
discourses to a shareholder. Bertrand, calm and stupid as before, stands
humbly behind. ‘Sir,’ says the editor of _La Blague_, journal
quotidienne, ‘our profits arise from a new combination. The journal
costs twenty francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a-half. A million
subscribers make three millions and a-half of profits; there are my
figures; contradict me by figures, or I will bring an action for libel.’
The reader may fancy the scene takes place in England, where many such a
swindling prospectus has obtained credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is
still a journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his
composition, a violent attack on a law. ‘My dear M. Macaire,’ says the
editor, ‘this must be changed; we must _praise_ this law.’ ‘Bon, bon!’
says our versatile Macaire. ‘Je vais retoucher ça, et je vous fais en
faveur de la loi _un article mousseux_.’
Can such things be? Is it possible that French journalists can so forget
themselves? The rogues! they should come to England and learn
consistency. The honesty of the Press in England is like the air we
breathe, without it we die. No, no! in France the satire may do very
well; but for England it is too monstrous. Call the Press stupid, call
it vulgar, call it violent,--but honest it _is_. Who ever heard of a
journal changing its politics? _O tempora! O mores!_ as Robert Macaire
says, this would be carrying the joke too far.
When he has done with newspapers, Robert Macaire begins to distinguish
himself on ‘Change,[7] as a creator of companies, a vendor of shares, or
a dabbler in foreign stock. ‘Buy my coal-mine shares,’ shouts Robert;
‘gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, “sont de la pot-bouille, de la
ratatouille en comparaison de ma houille.”’ ‘Look,’ says he, on another
occasion, to a very timid open-countenanced client, ‘you have a property
to sell! I have found the very man, a rich capitalist, a fellow whose
bills are better than bank-notes.’ His client sells; the bills are taken
in payment, and signed by that respectable capitalist, Monsieur de Saint
Bertrand. At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular letter to all the
world, running thus:--‘Sir,--I regret to say that your application for
shares in the Consolidated European Incombustible Blacking Association
cannot be complied with, as all the shares of the C.E.I.B.A. were
disposed of on the day they were issued. I have, nevertheless,
registered your name, and in case a second series should be put forth, I
shall have the honour of immediately giving you notice. I am, sir,
yours, etc., the Director, ROBERT MACAIRE.’--‘Print three hundred
thousand of these,’ he says to Bertrand, ‘and poison all France with
them.’ As usual, the stupid Bertrand remonstrates--‘But we have not sold
a single share; you have not a penny in your pocket, and----’
‘Bertrand, you are an ass; do as I bid you.’
Will this satire apply anywhere in England? Have we any Consolidated
European Blacking Associations amongst us? Have we penniless directors
issuing El Dorado prospectuses, and jockeying their shares through the
market? For information on this head, we must refer the reader to the
newspapers; or if he be connected with the City, and acquainted with
commercial men, he will be able to say whether _all_ the persons whose
names figure at the head of announcements of projected companies are as
rich as Rothschild, or quite as honest as heart could desire.
When Macaire has sufficiently _exploité_ the Bourse, whether as a
gambler in the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives that
it is time to turn to some other profession, and, providing himself with
a black gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up--a new religion.
‘Mon ami,’ says the repentant sinner, ‘le temps de la commandite va
passer, _mais les badauds ne passeront pas_.’ (O rare sentence! it
should be written in letters of gold!) ‘_Occupons-nous de ce qui est
éternel._ Si nous fassions une religion?’ On which M. Bertrand remarks,
‘A religion! what the devil--a religion is not an easy thing to make.’
But Macaire’s receipt is easy. ‘Get a gown, take a shop,’ he says,
‘borrow some chairs, preach about Napoleon, or the discovery of America,
or Molière--and there’s a religion for you.’
We have quoted this sentence more for the contrast it offers with our
own manners, than for its merits. After the noble paragraph, ‘Les
badauds ne passeront pas. Occupons-nous de ce qui est éternel,’ one
would have expected better satire upon cant than the words that follow.
We are not in a condition to say whether the subjects chosen are those
that had been selected by Père Enfantin, or Chatel, or Lacordaire; but
the words are curious, we think, for the very reason that the satire is
so poor. The fact is, there is no religion in Paris; even clever M.
Philipon, who satirises everything, and must know, therefore, some
little about the subject which he ridicules, has nothing to say but,
‘Preach a sermon, and that makes a religion; anything will do.’ If
_anything_ will do, it is clear that the religious commodity is not in
much demand. Tartuffe had better things to say about hypocrisy in his
time; but then Faith was alive; now, there is no satirising religious
cant in France, for its contrary, true religion, has disappeared
altogether; and having no substance, can cast no shadow. If a satirist
would lash the religious hypocrites in _England_ now--the High Church
hypocrites, the Low Church hypocrites, the promiscuous Dissenting
hypocrites, the No-Popery hypocrites--he would have ample subject
enough. In France, the religious hypocrites went out with the Bourbons.
Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we should say, in
the capital, for of that we speak) are unaffectedly so, for they have no
worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority have no
religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the
minority’s weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever
that may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident
that body of men should be dismissed from their situations, and be
succeeded by H. B.’s friends, the Tories,--what must the poor artist do?
He must pine away and die, if he be not converted; he cannot always be
paying compliments; for caricature has a spice of Goethe’s Devil in it,
and is ‘der Geist, der stets verneint,’ the Spirit that is always
denying.
With one or two of the French writers and painters of caricatures, the
King tried the experiment of bribery; which succeeded occasionally in
buying off the enemy, and bringing him from the Republican to the Royal
camp; but when there, the deserter was never of any use. Figaro, when so
treated, grew fat and desponding, and lost all his sprightly _verve_;
and Nemesis became as gentle as a Quakeress. But these instances of
‘ratting’ were not many. Some few poets were bought over; but, among
men following the profession of the Press, a change of politics is an
infringement of the point of honour, and a man must _fight_ as well as
apostatise. A very curious table might be made, signalising the
difference of the moral standard between us and the French. Why is the
grossness and indelicacy, publicly permitted in England, unknown in
France, where private morality is certainly at a lower ebb? Why is the
point of private honour now more rigidly maintained among the French?
Why is it, as it should be, a moral disgrace for a Frenchman to go into
debt, and no disgrace for him to cheat his customer? Why is there more
honesty and less--more propriety and less?--and how are we to account
for the particular vices or virtues which belong to each nation in its
turn?
The above is the Reverend M. Macaire’s solitary exploit as a spiritual
swindler; as _Maître_ Macaire in the courts of law, as _avocat_,
_avoué_--in a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the bar, he
distinguishes himself greatly, as may be imagined. On one occasion we
find the learned gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate _détenu_--no
other person, in fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen into
some trouble, and is awaiting the sentence of the law. He begins--
‘Mon cher Bertrand, donne-moi cent écus, je te fais acquitter d’emblée.’
‘J’ai pas d’argent.’
‘Hé bien, donne-moi cent francs?’
‘Pas le sou.’
‘Tu n’as pas dix francs?’
‘Pas un liard.’
‘Alors donne moi tes bottes, je plaiderai la circonstance atténuante.’
The manner in which Maître Macaire soars from the _cent écus_ (a high
point already) to the sublime of the boots, is in the best comic style.
In another instance he pleads before a judge, and, mistaking his client,
pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff. ‘The infamy of the
plaintiff’s character, my _luds_, renders his testimony on such a charge
as this wholly unavailing.’ ‘M. Macaire, M. Macaire,’ cries the
attorney, in a fright, ‘you are for the plaintiff!’ ‘This, my lords, is
what the defendant _will say_. This is the line of defence which the
opposite party intend to pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh
with an enlightened jury, or injure the spotless reputation of my
client!’ In this story and expedient M. Macaire has been indebted to the
English bar. If there be an occupation for the English satirist in the
exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, what
room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law? On this point the
French are babes in iniquity compared to us--a counsel prostituting
himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that it is hardly food
for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much more complicated
and interesting knavery whereon to exercise its skill.
M. Macaire is more skilful in love than in law, and appears once or
twice in a very amiable light while under the influence of the tender
passion. We find him at the head of one of those useful establishments
unknown in our country--a Bureau de Mariage: half a dozen of such places
are daily advertised in the journals: and ‘une veuve de trente ans ayant
une fortune de deux cent mille francs,’ or ‘une demoiselle de quinze
ans, jolie, d’une famille très distinguée, qui possède trente mille
livres de rentes,’--continually, in this kind-hearted way, are offering
themselves to the public; sometimes it is a gentleman, with a ‘physique
agréable,--des talens de société’--and a place under Government, who
makes a sacrifice of himself in a similar manner. In our little
historical gallery we find this philanthropic anti-Malthusian at the
head of an establishment of this kind, introducing a very meek
simple-looking bachelor to some distinguished ladies of his
_connaissance_. ‘Let me present you, sir, to Madame de St. Bertrand’ (it
is our old friend), ‘veuve de la grande armée, et Mdlle. Eloa de
Wormspire. Ces dames brûlent de l’envie de faire votre connoissance. Je
les ai invitées à dîner chez vous ce soir: vous nous menerez à l’opéra,
et nous ferons une petite parte d’écarté. Tenez-vous bien, M. Gobard!
ces dames out des projets sur vous!’
Happy Gobard! happy system, which can thus bring the pure and loving
together, and acts as the best ally of Hymen! The announcement of the
rank and titles of Madame de St. Bertrand--‘veuve de la grande
armée’--is very happy. ‘La grande armée’ has been a father to more
orphans, and a husband to more widows, than it ever made. Mistresses of
_cafés_, old governesses, keepers of boarding-houses, genteel beggars,
and ladies of lower rank still, have this favourite pedigree. They have
all had _malheurs_ (what kind it is needless to particularise), they are
all connected with the _grand homme_, and their fathers were all
colonels. This title exactly answers to the ‘clergyman’s daughter’ in
England--as, ‘A young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, is desirous to
teach,’ etc.; ‘A clergyman’s widow receives into her house a few
select,’ and so forth. ‘Appeal to the benevolent.--By a series of
unheard-of calamities, a young lady, daughter of a clergyman in the west
of England, has been plunged,’ etc. etc. The difference is curious, as
indicating the standard of respectability.
The male beggar of fashion is not so well known among us as in Paris,
where street-doors are open; six or eight families live in a house; and
the gentleman who earns his livelihood by this profession can make half
a dozen visits without the trouble of knocking from house to house, and
the pain of being observed by the whole street, while the footman is
examining him from the area. Some few may be seen in England about the
Inns of Court, where the locality is favourable (where, however, the
owners of the chambers are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the
harvest must be poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,--fat,
smooth-tongued, and well-dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who
would be insulted almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as
their right. Among these, of course, our friend Robert plays his part;
and an excellent engraving represents him, snuff-box in hand, advancing
to an old gentleman, whom, by his poodle, his powdered head, and his
drivelling, stupid look, one knows to be a Carlist of the old _régime_.
‘I beg pardon,’ says Robert; ‘is it really yourself to whom I have the
honour of speaking?’--‘It is.’ ‘Do you take snuff?’--‘I thank you.’
‘Sir, I have had misfortunes--I want assistance. I am a Vendéan of
illustrious birth. You know the family of _Macairbec_--we are of Brest.
My grandfather served the King in his galleys; my father and I belong,
also, to the marine. Unfortunate suits at law have plunged us into
difficulties, and I do not hesitate to ask you for the succour of ten
francs.’--‘Sir, I never give to those I don’t know.’--‘Right, sir,
perfectly right. Perhaps you will have the kindness to _lend_ me ten
francs?’
The adventures of Doctor Macaire need not be described, because the
different degrees in quackery which are taken by that learned physician
are all well known in England, where we have the advantage of many
higher degrees in the science, which our neighbours know nothing about.
We have not Hahnemann, but we have his disciples; we have not Broussais,
but we have the College of Health; and surely a dose of Morison’s pills
is a sublimer discovery than a draught of hot water. We had St. John
Long, too,--where is his science?--and we are credibly informed that
some important cures have been effected by the inspired dignitaries of
‘the church’ in Newman Street--which, if it continue to practise, will
sadly interfere with the profits of the regular physicians, and where
the miracles of the Abbé Paris are about to be acted over again.
In speaking of M. Macaire and his adventures, we have managed so
entirely to convince ourselves of the reality of the personage, that we
have quite forgotten to speak of Messrs. Philipon and Daumier, who are,
the one the inventor, the other the designer, of the Macaire Picture
Gallery. As works of _esprit_, these drawings are not more remarkable
than they are as works of art, and we never recollect to have seen a
series of sketches possessing more extraordinary cleverness and variety.
The countenance and figure of Macaire and the dear stupid Bertrand are
preserved, of course, with great fidelity throughout; but the admirable
way in which each fresh character is conceived, the grotesque
appropriateness of Robert’s every successive attitude and gesticulation,
and the variety of Bertrand’s postures of invariable repose, the
exquisite fitness of all the other characters, who act their little part
and disappear from the scene, cannot be described on paper, or too
highly lauded. The figures are very carelessly drawn; but, if the reader
can understand us, all the attitudes and limbs are perfectly
_conceived_, and wonderfully natural and various. After pondering over
these drawings for some hours, as we have been while compiling this
notice of them, we have grown to believe that the personages are real,
and the scenes remain imprinted on the brain as if we had absolutely
been present at their acting. Perhaps the clever way in which the plates
are coloured, and the excellent effect which is put into each, may add
to this illusion. Now, in looking, for instance, at H. B.’s slim vapoury
figures, they have struck us as excellent _likenesses_ of men and women,
but no more: the bodies want spirit, action, and individuality. George
Cruikshank, as a humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does not
know the art of ‘effect’ so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might
venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose
works are extensively circulated--the illustrator of _Pickwick_ and
_Nicholas Nickleby_,--it would be to study well these caricatures of
Monsieur Daumier; who, though he executes very carelessly, knows very
well what he would express, indicates perfectly the attitude and
identity of his figure, and is quite aware, beforehand, of the effect
which he intends to produce. The one we should fancy to be a practised
artist, taking his ease: the other, a young one, somewhat bewildered: a
very clever one, however, who, if he would think more, and exaggerate
less, would add not a little to his reputation.
Having pursued, all through these remarks, the comparison between
English art and French art, English and French humour, manners, and
morals, perhaps we should endeavour, also, to write an analytical essay
on English cant or humbug, as distinguished from French. It might be
shown that the latter was more picturesque and startling, the former
more substantial and positive. It has none of the poetic flights of the
French genius, but advances steadily, and gains more ground in the end
than its sprightlier compeer. But such a discussion would carry us
through the whole range of French and English history, and the reader
has probably read quite enough of the subject in this and the foregoing
pages.
We shall, therefore, say no more of French and English caricatures
generally, or of Mr. Macaire’s particular accomplishments and
adventures. They are far better understood by examining the original
pictures by which Philipon and Daumier have illustrated them, than by
translations first into print and afterwards into English. They form a
very curious and instructive commentary upon the present state of
society in Paris, and a hundred years hence, when the whole of this
struggling, noisy, busy, merry race shall have exchanged their pleasures
or occupations for a quiet coffin (and a tawdry lying epitaph) at
Montmartre, or Père la Chaise; when the follies here recorded shall have
been superseded by new ones, and the fools now so active shall have
given up the inheritance of the world to their children: the latter
will, at least, have the advantage of knowing, intimately and exactly,
the manners of life and being of their grandsires, and calling up, when
they so choose it, our ghosts from the grave, to live, love, quarrel,
swindle, suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore. And when the amused
speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the immensity of our
follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded
superstitions, wondered how this man should he considered great, who is
now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned); how this
should have been thought a patriot who is but a knave spouting
commonplace; or how that should have been dubbed a philosopher who is
but a dull fool, blinking solemn, and pretending to see in the dark;
when he shall have examined all these at his leisure, smiling in a
pleasant contempt and good-humoured superiority, and thanking Heaven for
his increased lights, he will shut the book, and be a fool as his
fathers were before him.
It runs in the blood. Well hast thou said, O ragged Macaire,--‘Le jour
va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS.’
LITTLE POINSINET
About the year 1760, there lived, at Paris, a little fellow, who was the
darling of all the wags of his acquaintance. Nature seemed, in the
formation of this little man, to have amused herself, by giving loose to
half a hundred of her most comical caprices. He had some wit and
drollery of his own, which sometimes rendered his sallies very amusing;
but, where his friends laughed with him once, they laughed at him a
thousand times, for he had a fund of absurdity in himself that was more
pleasant than all the wit in the world. He was as proud as a peacock, as
wicked as an ape, and as silly as a goose. He did not possess one single
grain of common sense; but, in revenge, his pretensions were enormous,
his ignorance vast, and his credulity more extensive still. From his
youth upwards, he had read nothing but the new novels, and the verses in
the almanacs, which helped him not a little in making, what he called,
poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero was a poet. All the
common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of
society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities,
a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so
irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled to
burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange
little gentleman. He was very proud of his voice, and uttered all his
sentences in the richest tragic tone. He was little better than a dwarf;
but he elevated his eyebrows, held up his neck, walked on the tips of
his toes, and gave himself the airs of a giant. He had a little pair of
bandy legs, which seemed much too short to support anything like a human
body; but, by the help of these crooked supporters, he thought he could
dance like a Grace; and, indeed, fancied all the graces possible were to
be found in his person. His goggle eyes were always rolling about
wildly, as if in correspondence with the disorder of his little brain;
and his countenance thus wore an expression of perpetual wonder. With
such happy natural gifts, he not only fell into all traps that were laid
for him, but seemed almost to go out of his way to seek them; although,
to be sure, his friends did not give him much trouble in that search,
for they prepared hoaxes for him incessantly.
One day the wags introduced him to a company of ladies, who, though not
countesses and princesses exactly, took, nevertheless, those titles upon
themselves for the nonce; and were all, for the same reason, violently
smitten with Master Poinsinet’s person. One of them, the lady of the
house, was especially tender; and, seating him by her side at supper, so
plied him with smiles, ogles, and champagne, that our little hero grew
crazed with ecstasy, and wild with love. In the midst of his happiness,
a cruel knock was heard below, accompanied by quick loud talking,
swearing, and shuffling of feet: you would have thought a regiment was
at the door. ‘Oh, heavens!’ cried the marchioness, starting up, and
giving to the hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; ‘fly--fly, my
Poinsinet: ‘tis the colonel--my husband!’ At this, each gentleman of the
party rose, and, drawing his rapier, vowed to cut his way through the
colonel and all his _mousquetaires_, or die, if need be, by the side of
Poinsinet.
The little fellow was obliged to lug out his sword too, and went
shuddering downstairs, heartily repenting of his passion for
marchionesses. When the party arrived in the street, they found, sure
enough, a dreadful company of _mousquetaires_, as they seemed, ready to
oppose their passage. Swords crossed,--torches blazed; and, with the
most dreadful shouts and imprecations, the contending parties rushed
upon one another; the friends of Poinsinet surrounding and supporting
that little warrior, as the French knights did King Francis at Pavia,
otherwise the poor fellow certainly would have fallen down in the gutter
from fright.
But the combat was suddenly interrupted; for the neighbours, who knew
nothing of the trick going on, and thought the brawl was real, had been
screaming with all their might for the police, who began about this time
to arrive. Directly they appeared, friends and enemies of Poinsinet at
once took to their heels; and, in _this_ part of the transaction, at
least, our hero himself showed that he was equal to the longest-legged
grenadier that ever ran away.
When, at last, those little bandy legs of his had borne him safely to
his lodgings, all Poinsinet’s friends crowded round him, to congratulate
him on his escape and his valour.
‘Egad, how he pinked that great red-haired fellow!’ said one.
‘No; did I?’ said Poinsinet.
‘Did you? Psha! don’t try to play the modest, and humbug _us_; you know
you did. I suppose you will say, next, that you were not for three
minutes point to point with Cartentierce himself, the most dreadful
swordsman of the army.’
‘Why, you see,’ says Poinsinet, quite delighted, ‘it was so dark that I
did not know with whom I was engaged; although, _corbleu_, I _did for_
one or two of the fellows.’ And after a little more of such
conversation, during which he was fully persuaded that he had done for a
dozen of the enemy at least, Poinsinet went to bed, his little person
trembling with fright and pleasure; and he fell asleep, and dreamed of
rescuing ladies, and destroying monsters, like a second Amadis de Gaul.
When he awoke in the morning, he found a party of his friends in his
room: one was examining his coat and waistcoat; another was casting many
curious glances at his inexpressibles. ‘Look here!’ said this gentleman,
holding up the garment to the light; ‘_one_--two--three gashes! I am
hanged if the cowards did not aim at Poinsinet’s legs! There are four
holes in the sword arm of his coat, and seven have gone right through
coat and waistcoat. Good heaven! Poinsinet, have you had a surgeon to
your wounds?’
‘Wounds!’ said the little man, springing up, ‘I don’t know--that is, I
hope--that is--O Lord! O Lord! I hope I’m not wounded!’ and, after a
proper examination, he discovered he was not.
‘Thank heaven! thank heaven!’ said one of the wags (who, indeed, during
the slumbers of Poinsinet had been occupied in making these very holes
through the garments of that individual), ‘if you have escaped, it is by
a miracle. Alas! alas! all your enemies have not been so lucky.’
‘How! is anybody wounded?’ said Poinsinet.
‘My dearest friend, prepare yourself; that unhappy man who came to
revenge his menaced honour--that gallant officer--that injured husband,
Colonel Count de Cartentierce----’
‘Well?’
‘Is NO MORE! he died this morning, pierced through with nineteen wounds
from your hand, and calling upon his country to revenge his murder.’
When this awful sentence was pronounced, all the auditory gave a
pathetic and simultaneous sob; and as for Poinsinet, he sank back on his
bed with a howl of terror, which would have melted a Visigoth to
tears,--or to laughter. As soon as his terror and remorse had, in some
degree, subsided, his comrades spoke to him of the necessity of making
his escape; and huddling on his clothes, and bidding them all a tender
adieu, he set off, incontinently, without his breakfast, for England,
America, or Russia, not knowing exactly which.
One of his companions agreed to accompany him on a part of this
journey,--that is, as far as the barrier of St. Denis, which is, as
everybody knows, on the highroad to Dover; and there, being tolerably
secure, they entered a tavern for breakfast; which meal, the last that
he ever was to take, perhaps, in his native city, Poinsinet was just
about to discuss, when, behold! a gentleman entered the apartment where
Poinsinet and his friend were seated, and, drawing from his pocket a
paper, with ‘AU NOM DU ROY’ flourished on the top, read from it, or
rather from Poinsinet’s own figure, his exact _signalement_, laid his
hand on his shoulder, and arrested him in the name of the King, and of
the provost-marshal of Paris. ‘I arrest you, sir,’ said he gravely,
‘with regret; you have slain, with seventeen wounds, in single combat,
Colonel Count de Cartentierce, one of his Majesty’s household; and, as
his murderer, you full under the immediate authority of the
provost-marshal, and die without trial or benefit of clergy.’
You may fancy how the poor little man’s appetite fell when he heard this
speech. ‘In the provost-marshal’s hands?’ said his friend: ‘then it _is_
all over, indeed! When does my poor friend suffer, sir?’
‘At half-past six o’clock the day after to-morrow,’ said the officer,
sitting down, and helping himself to wine. ‘But stop,’ said he suddenly;
‘sure I can’t mistake? Yes--no--yes, it is. My dear friend, my dear
Durand! don’t you recollect your old schoolfellow, Antoine?’ And
herewith the officer flung himself into the arms of Durand, Poinsinet’s
comrade, and they performed a most affecting scene of friendship.
‘This may be of some service to you,’ whispered Durand to Poinsinet;
and, after some further parley, he asked the officer when he was bound
to deliver up his prisoner; and, hearing that he was not called upon to
appear at the Marshalsea before six o’clock at night, Monsieur Durand
prevailed upon Monsieur Antoine to wait until that hour, and in the
meantime to allow his prisoner to walk about the town in his company.
This request was, with a little difficulty, granted; and poor Poinsinet
begged to be carried to the houses of his various friends, and bid them
farewell. Some were aware of the trick that had been played upon him;
others were not; but the poor little man’s credulity was so great, that
it was impossible to undeceive him; and he went from house to house
bewailing his fate, and followed by the complaisant marshal’s officer.
The news of his death he received with much more meekness than could
have been expected; but what he could not reconcile to himself was, the
idea of dissection afterwards. ‘What can they want with me?’ cried the
poor wretch, in an unusual fit of candour. ‘I am very small and ugly; it
would be different if I were a tall, fine-looking fellow.’ But he was
given to understand that beauty made very little difference to the
surgeons, who, on the contrary, would, on certain occasions, prefer a
deformed man to a handsome one; for science was much advanced by the
study of such monstrosities. With this reason Poinsinet was obliged to
be content; and so paid his rounds of visits, and repeated his dismal
adieus.
The officer of the provost-marshal, however amusing Poinsinet’s woes
might have been, began, by this time, to grow very weary of them, and
gave him more than one opportunity to escape. He would stop at
shop-windows, loiter round comers, and look up in the sky, but all in
vain: Poinsinet would not escape, do what the other would. At length,
luckily, about dinner-time, the officer met one of Poinsinet’s friends
and his own: and the three agreed to dine at a tavern, as they had
breakfasted; and there the officer, who vowed that he had been up for
five weeks incessantly, fell suddenly asleep in the profoundest fatigue;
and Poinsinet was persuaded, after much hesitation on his part, to take
leave of him.
And now, this danger overcome, another was to be avoided. Beyond a doubt
the police were after him, and how was he to avoid them? He must be
disguised, of course; and one of his friends, a tall gaunt lawyer’s
clerk, agreed to provide him with habits.
So little Poinsinet dressed himself out in the clerk’s dingy black suit,
of which the knee-breeches hung down to his heels, and the waist of the
coat reached to the calves of his legs; and, furthermore, he blacked his
eyebrows, and wore a huge black periwig, in which his friend vowed that
no one could recognise him. But the most painful incident, with regard
to the periwig, was, that Poinsinet, whose solitary beauty--if beauty it
might be called--was a head of copious, curling yellow hair, was
compelled to snip off every one of his golden locks, and to rub the
bristles with a black dye; ‘for if your wig were to come off,’ said the
lawyer, ‘and your fair hair to tumble over your shoulders, every man
would know, or at least suspect you.’ So off the locks were cut, and in
his black suit and periwig little Poinsinet went abroad.
His friends had their cue; and when he appeared amongst them, not one
seemed to know him. He was taken into companies where his character was
discussed before him, and his wonderful escape spoken of. At last he was
introduced to the very officer of the provost-marshal who had taken him
into custody, and who told him that he had been dismissed the provost’s
service, in consequence of the escape of the prisoner. Now, for the
first time, poor Poinsinet thought himself tolerably safe, and blessed
his kind friends who had procured for him such a complete disguise. How
this affair ended I know not:--whether some new lie was coined to
account for his release, or whether he was simply told that he had been
hoaxed: it mattered little; for the little man was quite as ready to be
hoaxed the next day.
[Illustration: POINSINET IN DISGUISE]
Poinsinet was one day invited to dine with one of the servants of the
Tuileries; and, before his arrival, a person in company had been
decorated with a knot of lace and a gold key, such as chamberlains wear;
he was introduced to Poinsinet as the Count de Truchses, chamberlain to
the King of Prussia. After dinner the conversation fell upon the Count’s
visit to Paris; when his Excellency, with a mysterious air, vowed that
he had only come for pleasure. ‘It is mighty well,’ said a third person,
‘and, of course, we can’t cross-question your lordship too closely;’
but at the same time it was hinted to Poinsinet that a person of such
consequence did not travel for _nothing_, with which opinion Poinsinet
solemnly agreed; and indeed it was borne out by a subsequent declaration
of the Count, who condescended, at last, to tell the company, in
confidence, that he _had_ a mission, and a most important one--to find,
namely, among the literary men of France, a governor for the Prince
Royal of Prussia. The company seemed astonished that the King had not
made choice of Voltaire or D’Alembert, and mentioned a dozen other
distinguished men who might be competent to this important duty; but the
Count, as may be imagined, found objections to every one of them; and,
at last, one of the guests said, that, if his Prussian Majesty was not
particular as to age, he knew a person more fitted for the place than
any other who could be found,--his honourable friend, M. Poinsinet, was
the individual to whom he alluded.
‘Good heavens!’ cried the Count, ‘is it possible that the celebrated
Poinsinet would take such a place? I would give the world to see him!’
And you may fancy how Poinsinet simpered and blushed when the
introduction immediately took place.
The Count protested to him that the King would be charmed to know him;
and added, that one of his operas (for it must be told that our little
friend was a vaudeville-maker by trade) had been acted seven-and-twenty
times at the theatre at Potsdam. His Excellency then detailed to him all
the honours and privileges which the governor of the Prince Royal might
expect; and all the guests encouraged the little man’s vanity, by asking
him for his protection and favour. In a short time our hero grew so
inflated with pride and vanity, that he was for patronising the
chamberlain himself, who proceeded to inform him that he was furnished
with all the necessary powers by his sovereign, who had specially
enjoined him to confer upon the future governor of his son the Royal
order of the Black Eagle.
Poinsinet, delighted, was ordered to kneel down; and the Count produced
a large yellow riband, which he hung over his shoulder, and which was,
he declared, the grand cordon of the order. You must fancy Poinsinet’s
face, and excessive delight at this; for as for describing them, nobody
can. For four-and-twenty hours the happy chevalier paraded through Paris
with this flaring yellow riband; and he was not undeceived until his
friends had another trick in store for him.
He dined one day in the company of a man who understood a little of the
noble art of conjuring, and performed some clever tricks on the cards.
Poinsinet’s organ of wonder was enormous; he looked on with the gravity
and awe of a child, and thought the man’s tricks sheer miracles. It
wanted no more to set his companions to work.
‘Who is this wonderful man?’ said he to his neighbour.
‘Why,’ said the other, mysteriously, ‘one hardly knows who he is; or, at
least, one does not like to say to such an indiscreet fellow as you
are.’ Poinsinet at once swore to be secret. ‘Well, then,’ said his
friend, ‘you will hear that man--that wonderful man--called by a name
which is not his: his real name is Acosta; he is a Portuguese Jew, a
Rosicrucian, and Cabalist of the first order, and compelled to leave
Lisbon for fear of the Inquisition. He performs here, as you see, some
extraordinary things, occasionally; but the master of the house, who
loves him excessively, would not for the world that his name should be
made public.’
‘Ah, bah!’ said Poinsinet, who affected the _bel esprit_; ‘you don’t
mean to say that you believe in magic, and cabalas, and such trash?’
‘Do I not? You shall judge for yourself.’ And, accordingly, Poinsinet
was presented to the magician, who pretended to take a vast liking for
him, and declared that he saw in him certain marks which would
infallibly lead him to great eminence in the magic art, if he chose to
study it.
Dinner was served, and Poinsinet placed by the side of the
miracle-worker, who became very confidential with him, and promised
him--ay, before dinner was over--a remarkable instance of his power.
Nobody, on this occasion, ventured to cut a single joke against poor
Poinsinet; nor could he fancy that any trick was intended against him,
for the demeanour of the society towards him was perfectly grave and
respectful, and the conversation serious. On a sudden, however, somebody
exclaimed, ‘Where is Poinsinet? Did any one see him leave the room?’
All the company exclaimed how singular the disappearance was; and
Poinsinet himself, growing alarmed, turned round to his neighbour, and
was about to explain.
‘Hush!’ said the magician, in a whisper; ‘I told you that you should see
what I could do. _I have made you invisible_; be quiet, and you shall
see some more tricks that I shall play with these fellows.’
Poinsinet remained then silent, and listened to his neighbours, who
agreed, at last, that he was a quiet, orderly personage, and had left
the table early, being unwilling to drink too much. Presently they
ceased to talk about him, and resumed their conversation upon other
matters.
At first it was very quiet and grave, but the master of the house
brought back the talk to the subject of Poinsinet, and uttered all sorts
of abuse concerning him. He begged the gentleman, who had introduced
such a little scamp into his house, to bring him thither no more;
whereupon the other took up, warmly, Poinsinet’s defence; declared that
he was a man of the greatest merit, frequenting the best society, and
remarkable for his talents as well as his virtues.
‘Ah!’ said Poinsinet to the magician, quite charmed at what he heard,
‘however shall I thank you, my dear sir, for thus showing me who my true
friends are?’
The magician promised him still further favours in prospect; and told
him to look out now, for he was about to throw all the company into a
temporary fit of madness, which, no doubt, would be very amusing.
In consequence, all the company, who had heard every syllable of the
conversation, began to perform the most extraordinary antics, much to
the delight of Poinsinet. One asked a nonsensical question, and the
other delivered an answer not at all to the purpose. If a man asked for
a drink they poured him out a pepper-box or a napkin: they took a pinch
of snuff, and swore it was excellent wine: and vowed that the bread was
the most delicious mutton that ever was tasted. The little man was
delighted.
‘Ah!’ said he, ‘these fellows are prettily punished for their rascally
backbiting of me!’
‘Gentlemen,’ said the host, ‘I shall now give you some celebrated
champagne,’ and he poured out to each a glass of water.
‘Good heavens!’ said one, spitting it out, with the most horrible
grimace, ‘where did you get this detestable claret?’
‘Ah, faugh!’ said a second, ‘I never tasted such vile corked Burgundy in
all my days!’ and he threw the glass of water into Poinsinet’s face, as
did half a dozen of the other guests, drenching the poor wretch to the
skin. To complete this pleasant illusion, two of the guests fell to
boxing across Poinsinet, who received a number of the blows, and
received them with the patience of a fakir, feeling himself more
flattered by the precious privilege of beholding this scene invisible,
than hurt by the blows and buffets which the mad company bestowed upon
him.
The fame of this adventure spread quickly over Paris, and all the world
longed to have at their houses the representation of _Poinsinet the
Invisible_. The servants and the whole company used to be put up to the
trick; and Poinsinet, who believed in his invisibility as much as he did
in his existence, went about with his friend and protector the magician.
People, of course, never pretended to see him, and would very often not
talk of him at all for some time, but hold sober conversation about
anything else in the world. When dinner was served, of course there was
no cover laid for Poinsinet, who carried about a little stool, on which
he sate by the side of the magician, and always ate off his plate.
Everybody was astonished at the magician’s appetite and at the quantity
of wine he drank; as for little Poinsinet, he never once suspected any
trick, and had such a confidence in his magician, that, I do believe, if
the latter had told him to fling himself out of window, he would have
done so, without the least trepidation.
Among other mystifications in which the Portuguese enchanter plunged
him, was one which used to afford always a good deal of amusement. He
informed Poinsinet, with great mystery, that _he was not himself_; he
was not, that is to say, that ugly deformed little monster, called
Poinsinet; but that his birth was most illustrious, and his real name
_Polycarte_. He was, in fact, the son of a celebrated magician; but
other magicians, enemies of his father, had changed him in his cradle,
altering his features into their present hideous shape, in order that a
silly old fellow, called Poinsinet, might take him to be his own son,
which little monster the magician had likewise spirited away.
The poor wretch was sadly cast down at this; for he tried to fancy that
his person was agreeable to the ladies, of whom he was one of the
warmest little admirers possible; and to console him somewhat, the
magician told him that his real shape was exquisitely beautiful, and as
soon as he should appear in it, all the beauties in Paris would be at
his feet. But how to regain it? ‘Oh, for one minute of that beauty!’
cried the little man; ‘what would he not give to appear under that
enchanting form!’ The magician here-upon waved his stick over his head,
pronounced some awful magical words, and twisted him round three times;
at the third twist, the men in company seemed struck with astonishment
and envy, the ladies clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his.
Everybody declared his beauty to be supernatural.
Poinsinet, enchanted, rushed to a glass. ‘Fool!’ said the magician; ‘do
you suppose that _you_ can see the change? My power to render you
invisible, beautiful, or ten times more hideous even than you are,
extends only to others, not to you. You may look a thousand times in the
glass, and you will only see those deformed limbs and disgusting
features with which devilish malice has disguised you.’ Poor little
Poinsinet looked, and came back in tears. ‘But,’ resumed the
magician,--‘ha, ha, ha!--_I_ know _a_ way in which to disappoint the
machinations of these fiendish magi.’
‘Oh, my benefactor!--my great master!--for heaven’s sake tell it!’
gasped Poinsinet.
‘Look you--it is this. A prey to enchantment and demoniac art all your
life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly satisfied;
nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly hideous that ever
walked the earth!’
‘_Is_ it?’ whispered Poinsinet. ‘Indeed, and indeed, I didn’t think it
so bad!’
‘He acknowledges it! he acknowledges it!’ roared the magician. ‘Wretch,
dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now
that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale,
that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou
art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so conceited of
thyself? I tell thee, Poinsinet, that over every fresh instance of thy
vanity the hostile enchanters rejoice and triumph. As long as thou art
blindly satisfied with thyself; as long as thou pretendest, in thy
present odious shape, to win the love of aught above a negress; nay,
further still, until thou hast learned to regard that face, as others
do, with the most intolerable horror and disgust, to abuse it when thou
seest it, to despise it, in short, and treat that miserable disguise in
which the enchanters have wrapped thee with the strongest hatred and
scorn, so long art thou destined to wear it.’
Such speeches as these, continually repeated, caused Poinsinet to be
fully convinced of his ugliness; he used to go about in companies, and
take every opportunity of inveighing against himself; he made verses and
epigrams against himself; he talked about ‘that dwarf, Poinsinet;’ ‘that
buffoon, Poinsinet;’ ‘that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;’ and he
would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it
reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh
epithet that he uttered.
Of course the wags, from time to time, used to give him every possible
encouragement, and declared that, since this exercise, his person was
amazingly improved. The ladies, too, began to be so excessively fond of
him, that the little fellow was obliged to caution them at last--for the
good, as he said, of society; he recommended them to draw lots, for he
could not gratify them all; but promised when his metamorphosis was
complete, that the one chosen should become the happy Mrs. Poinsinet;
or, to speak more correctly, Mrs. Polycarte.
I am sorry to say, however, that, on the score of gallantry, Poinsinet
was never quite convinced of the hideousness of his appearance. He had a
number of adventures, accordingly, with the ladies, but, strange to say,
the husbands or fathers were always interrupting him. On one occasion he
was made to pass the night in a slipper-bath full of water; where,
although he had all his clothes on, he declared that he nearly caught
his death of cold. Another night, in revenge, the poor fellow
‘----dans le simple appareil
D’une beauté, qu’on vient d’arracher au sommeil,’
spent a number of hours contemplating the beauty of the moon on the
tiles. These adventures are pretty numerous in the memoirs of M.
Poinsinet; but the fact is, that people in France were a great deal more
philosophical in those days than the English are now, so that
Poinsinet’s loves must be passed over, as not being to our taste. His
magician was a great diver, and told Poinsinet the most wonderful tales
of his two minutes’ absence under water. These two minutes, he said,
lasted through a year, at least, which he spent in the company of a
naiad, more beautiful than Venus, in a palace more splendid than even
Versailles. Fired by the description, Poinsinet used to dip, and dip,
but he never was known to make any mermaid acquaintances, although he
fully believed that one day he should find such.
The invisible joke was brought to an end by Poinsinet’s too great
reliance on it; for being, as we have said, of a very tender and
sanguine disposition, he one day fell in love with a lady in whose
company he dined, and whom he actually proposed to embrace; but the fair
lady, in the hurry of the moment, forgot to act up to the joke; and
instead of receiving Poinsinet’s salute with calmness, grew indignant,
called him an impudent little scoundrel, and lent him a sound box on the
ear. With this slap the invisibility of Poinsinet disappeared, the
gnomes and genii left him, and he settled down into common life again,
and was hoaxed only by vulgar means.
A vast number of pages might be filled with narratives of the tricks
that were played upon him; but they resemble each other a good deal, as
may be imagined, and the chief point remarkable about them is the
wondrous faith of Poinsinet. After being introduced to the Prussian
ambassador at the Tuileries, he was presented to the Turkish envoy at
the Place Vendôme, who received him in state, surrounded by the officers
of his establishment, all dressed in the smartest dresses that the
wardrobe of the Opéra Comique could furnish.
As the greatest honour that could be done to him, Poinsinet was invited
to eat, and a tray was produced, on which was a delicate dish prepared
in the Turkish manner. This consisted of a reasonable quantity of
mustard, salt, cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, with a couple of
tablespoonfuls of cayenne pepper, to give the whole a flavour; and
Poinsinet’s countenance may be imagined when he introduced into his
mouth a quantity of this exquisite compound.
‘The best of the joke was,’ says the author who records so many of the
pitiless tricks practised upon poor Poinsinet, ‘that the little man used
to laugh at them afterwards himself with perfect good-humour; and lived
in the daily hope that, from being the sufferer, he should become the
agent in these hoaxes, and do to others as he had been done by.’
Passing, therefore, one day, on the Pont Neuf, with a friend, who had
been one of the greatest performers, the latter said to him, ‘Poinsinet,
my good fellow, thou hast suffered enough, and thy sufferings have made
thee so wise and cunning, that thou art worthy of entering among the
initiated, and hoaxing in thy turn.’ Poinsinet was charmed; he asked
when he should be initiated, and how? It was told him that a moment
would suffice, and that the ceremony might be performed on the spot. At
this news, and according to order, Poinsinet flung himself straightway
on his knees in the kennel; and the other, drawing his sword, solemnly
initiated him into the sacred order of jokers. From that day the little
man believed himself received into the society; and to this having
brought him, let us bid him a respectful adieu.
[Illustration]
THE DEVIL’S WAGER
It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save churchyard
ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of graves, and all
eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the
grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the poole.
And no light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked and
devilish wills-o’-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead
good men astraye.
When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owle, as he flappeth
along lazily; or the magician, as he rides on his infernal broomsticke,
whistling through the aire like the arrowes of a Yorkshire archere.
It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o’clock of the night) that two
beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse with
each other.
Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the heathens
feigned), but of dæmons; and the second, with whom he held company, was
the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir Roger was Count of
Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre, Villacerf and _aultre
lieux_. But the great die as well as the humble; and nothing remained of
brave Roger now but his coffin and his deathless soul.
And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had bound
him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was stubborn, he
would draw so tight as to strangle him well-nigh, sticking into him the
barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo, would groan and
roar lustily.
Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatorie, being bound
to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and roast _in
sæcula sæculorum_.
‘It is hard,’ said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through the
clouds, ‘that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for want of a
single ave.’
‘How, Sir Soul?’ said the dæmon. ‘You were on earth so wicked, that not
one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from hell-flame a
creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a
subject of our lord the Devil, as I am; and, perhaps, thou wilt be
advanced to posts of honour, as am I also:’ and to show his authoritie,
he lashed with his tail the ribbes of the wretched Rollo.
‘Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; for my
sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail, by her
prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that every day I
felt the pains of purgatory decrease: the pitchforks which, on my first
entry, had never ceased to vex and torment my poor carcass, were now not
applied above once a week; the roasting had ceased, the boiling had
discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept up, to remind me of my
situation.’
‘A gentle stewe,’ said the dæmon.
‘Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the
prayers of my blessed sister. But yesterday, he who watched me in
purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my bonds
should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been a
blessed angel.’
‘And the other ave?’ said the dæmon.
‘She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of the
prayer.’ And hereat the wretched spirit began to weepe and whine
piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and scalding the tail
of Mercurius the devil.
‘It is, in truth, a hard case,’ said the dæmon; ‘but I know of no remedy
save patience, and for that you will have an excellent opportunity in
your lodgings below.’
‘But I have relations,’ said the earl; ‘my kinsman Randal, who has
inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?’
‘Thou didst hate and oppress him when living.’
‘It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda----’
‘You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover.’
‘Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?’
‘A dozen, without doubt.’
‘And my brother, the prior?’
‘A liege subject of my lord the Devil; he never opens his mouth except
to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine.’
‘And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should be
saved.’
‘Aves with them are raræ aves,’ replied Mercurius, wagging his tail
right waggishly; ‘and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that not
one of these will say a prayer to save thee.’
‘I would wager willingly,’ responded he of Chauchigny; ‘but what has a
poor soul like me to stake?’
‘Every evening, after the day’s roasting, my lord Satan giveth a cup of
cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a year, that
none of the three will pray for thee.’
‘Done!’ said Rollo.
‘Done!’ said the dæmon; ‘and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle of
Chauchigny.’
Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall
towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the castle.
Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light in the
banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady
Matilda.
‘With whom shall we begin?’ said the dæmon: ‘with the baron or the
lady?’
‘With the lady, if you will.’
‘Be it so, her window is open, let us enter.’
So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda’s chamber.
* * * * *
The young lady’s eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that it
was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two
visitors. Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her white arm on
the cushion of a great chair, in which she sat pleasantly supported by
sweet thoughts and swan’s down; a lute was at her side, and a book of
prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the
amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)--and sighed for
ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word ‘Edward!’
At this the soul of the baron was wroth. ‘The jade is at her old
pranks,’ said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: ‘I pray
thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villainous
page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle.’
When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle (for
a year’s sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of his
appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. ‘What’s o’clock?’
said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: ‘is he come?’
‘Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul. For the love
of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a year
past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single ave.’
‘I will say it for thee to-morrow, uncle.’
‘To-night, or never.’
‘Well, to-night be it:’ and she requested the devil Mercurius to give
her the prayer-book from under the table; but he had no sooner touched
the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. ‘It was
hotter,’ he said, ‘than his master Sir Lucifer’s own particular
pitchfork.’ And the lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid of
her missal.
At the commencement of her devotions the dæmon retired, and carried with
him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the clock,
and began--
‘Ave Maria----’
When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
‘Hark!’ said Matilda.
‘Now the toils of day are over,
And the sun hath sunk to rest,
Seeking, like a fiery lover,
The bosom of the blushing West--
The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
Raising the moon, her silver shield,
And summoning the stars to guard
The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!’
‘For mercy’s sake!’ said Sir Rollo, ‘the ave first, and next the song.’
So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
‘Ave Maria, gratia plena!’ but the music began again, and the prayer
ceased of course.
‘The faithful night! Now all things lie
Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
In pious hope I hither hie,
And humbly chaunt mine ev’ning hymn.
Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
(For never holy pilgrim kneel’d,
Or wept at feet more pure than thine)
My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!’
‘Virgin love!’ said the baron. ‘Upon my soul, this is too bad!’ and he
thought of the lady’s lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
But _she_ only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
‘Niece Matilda!’ cried Sir Roger agonisedly, ‘wilt thou listen to the
lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a dozen
words to make him happy?’
At this Matilda grew angry: ‘Edward is neither impudent nor a liar, Sir
Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song.’
‘Come away,’ said Mercurius; ‘he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will come
the supper.’
So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and the
page sang away till morning.
* * * * *
‘My virtues have been my ruin,’ said poor Sir Rollo, as he and Mercurius
slunk silently out of the window. ‘Had I hanged that knave Edward, as I
did the page his predecessor, my niece would have sung mine ave, and I
should have been by this time an angel in heaven.’
‘He is reserved for wiser purposes,’ responded the devil: ‘he will
assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde’s brother; and, in
consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be
succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will give
way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedlar, who shall,
finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair Mathilde.
So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying, we may now
look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord the Devil.’
The soul of the baron began to think that his companion knew too much
for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for it; he would
not, and could not, cry off; and he prayed inwardly that the brother
might be found more pious than the sister.
But there seemed little chance of this. As they crossed the court,
lackeys, with smoking dishes and full jugs, passed and repassed
continually, although it was long past midnight. On entering the hall,
they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a
fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had congregated
there even in the time of Sir Rollo. The lord of the castle had
signified that ‘it was his royal pleasure to be drunk,’ and the
gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their master. Mercurius
was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his usually rigid countenance
into a bland and benevolent smile, which became him wonderfully.
The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a person
with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity of the
company. Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the
confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song, with
which he was amusing the society.
‘Holy Mother!’ cried he, ‘it is Sir Roger.’
‘Alive!’ screamed Sir Randal.
‘No, my lord,’ Mercurius said; ‘Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a
matter of business; and I have the honour to act as his counsellor and
attendant.’
‘Nephew,’ said Sir Roger, ‘the dæmon saith justly; I come on a trifling
affair, in which thy service is essential.’
‘I will do anything, uncle, in my power.’
‘Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt.’ But Sir Randal looked very
blank at this proposition. ‘I mean life spiritual, Randal,’ said Sir
Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the wager.
Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was playing
all sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, became so
popular with this godless crew, that they lost all the fear which his
first appearance had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken with
him, and used his utmost eloquence and endeavours to convert the devil;
the knights stopped drinking to listen to the argument; the men-at-arms
forbore brawling; and the wicked little pages crowded round the two
strange disputants, to hear their edifying discourse. The ghostly man,
however, had little chance in the controversy, and certainly little
learning to carry it on. Sir Randal interrupted him. ‘Father Peter,’
said he, ‘our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want of a single ave:
wilt thou say it for him?’ ‘Willingly, my lord,’ said the monk, ‘with my
book;’ and accordingly he produced his missal to read, without which aid
it appeared that the holy father could not manage the desired prayer.
But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish art, inserted a song in
the place of the ave, so that Father Peter, instead of chaunting an
hymn, sang the following irreverent ditty:--
‘Some love the matin-chimes, which tell
The hour of prayer to sinner:
But better far’s the midday bell,
Which speaks the hour of dinner;
For when I see a smoking fish,
Or capon drown’d in gravy,
Or noble haunch on silver dish,
Full glad I sing mine ave.
My pulpit is an alehouse bench,
Whereon I sit so jolly;
A smiling rosy country wench
My saint and patron holy.
I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
I press her ringlets wavy,
And in her willing ear I speak
A most religious ave.
And if I’m blind, yet Heaven is kind,
And holy saints forgiving;
For sure he leads a right good life
Who thus admires good living.
Above, they say, our flesh is air,
Our blood celestial ichor:
Oh, grant! ‘mid all the changes there,
They may not change our liquor!’
[Illustration: THE CHAPLAIN PUZZLED]
And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table in
an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-arms, and
the wicked little pages rang out the last verse with a most melodious
and emphatic glee. ‘I am sorry, fair uncle,’ hiccupped Sir Randal,
‘that, in the matter of the ave, we could not oblige thee in a more
orthodox manner; but the holy father has failed, and there is not
another man in the hall who hath an idea of a prayer.’
‘It is my own fault,’ said Sir Rollo; ‘for I hanged the last confessor.’
And he wished his nephew a surly good-night, as he prepared to quit the
room.
‘Au revoir, gentlemen,’ said the devil Mercurius; and once more fixed
his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
* * * * *
The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
contrary, was in high good-humour. He wagged his tail with the most
satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of
his poor associate. On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold
night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the woods, and
the owls who were watching in the towers.
In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of
miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two in
Champagne, found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the court
of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage and
cloister, until they reached the door of the prior’s cell.
Now the prior, Rollo’s brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer; his
time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead of
fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew; and
he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his wager
with poor Sir Roger.
‘You seem to be well acquainted with the road,’ said the knight.
‘I have reason,’ answered Mercurius, ‘having, for a long period, had the
acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have little chance
with him.’
‘And why?’ said Sir Rollo.
‘He is under a bond to my master never to say a prayer, or else his soul
and his body are forfeited at once.’
‘Why, thou false and traitorous devil!’ said the enraged knight; ‘and
thou knewest this when we made our wager?’
‘Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been any
chance of losing?’
And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius’s door.
‘Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the tongue
of my nephew’s chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either of them
alone, my wager had been won.’
‘Certainly; therefore I took good care to go with thee; however, thou
mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is open. I
will stand without for five minutes, when it will be time to commence
our journey.’
It was the poor baron’s last chance; and he entered his brother’s room
more for the five minutes’ respite than from any hope of success.
Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he stood
in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except his long
white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a silver rod, and
muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. ‘I am,’ said
he, ‘the shade of thy brother, Roger de Rollo; and have come, from pure
brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate.’
‘Whence camest thou?’
‘From the abode of the blessed in Paradise,’ replied Sir Roger, who was
inspired with a sudden thought; ‘it was but five minutes ago that the
Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of thy wicked
compact with the fiend. “Go,” said he, “to thy miserable brother, and
tell him that there is but one way by which he may escape from paying
the awful forfeit of his bond.’”
‘And how may that be?’ said the prior; ‘the false fiend hath deceived
me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in
return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?’
‘I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. Mary
Lazarus’ (the worthy earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of a saint),
‘I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was seated, and sped
hither to save thee. “Thy brother,” said the Saint, “hath but one day
more to live, when he will become for all eternity the subject of Satan;
if he would escape, he must boldly break his bond, by saying an ave.”’
‘It is the express condition of the agreement,’ said the unhappy monk,
‘I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan’s, body and soul.’
‘It is the express condition of the Saint,’ answered Roger fiercely:
‘pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever.’
So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave, ‘Amen!’
said Sir Roger devoutly.
‘Amen!’ said Mercurius, as, suddenly coming behind, he seized Ignatius
by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
church-steeple.
The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but it was
of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, ‘Do not fret,
brother; it must have come to this in a year or two.’
And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: _but this time
the devil had not his tail round his neck_. ‘I will let thee off thy
bet,’ said he to the dæmon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
‘I believe, my lord,’ said the dæmon politely, ‘that our ways separate
here.’ Sir Roger sailed gaily upwards; while Mercurius having bound the
miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth, and perhaps
lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming as the devil dashed him
against the iron spikes and buttresses of the church.
* * * * *
The moral of this story will be given in the second edition.
MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE
I don’t know an impression more curious than that which is formed in a
foreigner’s mind, who has been absent from this place for two or three
years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has taken place, in
the meantime, in French fashions and ways of thinking. Two years ago,
for instance, when I left the capital, I left the young gentlemen of
France with their hair brushed _en toupet_ in front, and the toes of
their boots round; now the boot-toes are pointed, and the hair, combed
flat and parted in the middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable
shoulders; and, in like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion
has changed considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast the
old modes with the new. Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those
days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed, and
our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to another.
The Revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the Empire was
of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the same
process. They take top-boots and macintoshes from across the water, and
caricature our fashions; they read a little, very little, Shakespeare,
and caricature our poetry: and while in David’s time art and religion
were only a caricature of heathenism, now, on the contrary, these two
commodities are imported from Germany; and, distorted caricatures
originally, are still further distorted on passing the frontier.
I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in our
country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel any such
humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have relished the
mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the Germans, with their
sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the old times, and mysterious
transcendental talk, are aping many of their fashions as well and
solemnly as they can; not very solemnly, God wot; for I think one should
always prepare to grin when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being
sure that there is something false and ridiculous lurking under the
owl-like solemnity.
When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a Catholic
reaction. Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures; churches were
built here and there; old missals were copied and purchased; and
numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding about them as ever
was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in churches, ladies’
boudoirs, and picture-shops. One or two fashionable preachers rose, and
were eagerly followed; the very youth of the schools gave up their pipes
and billiards for some time, and flocked in crowds to Notre-Dame, to sit
under the feet of Lacordaire. I went to visit the church of Notre Dame
de Lorette yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic
rage, and was not a little struck by the similarity of the place to the
worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the
architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the
moment. It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported by sham
marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, which will look
very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy pictures and carvings,
in the very pink of the mode. The congregation did not offer a bad
illustration of the present state of Catholic reaction. Two or three
stray people were at prayers; there was no service; a few countrymen and
idlers were staring about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid
guardian of the place, was comfortably and appropriately asleep on his
bench at the door. I am inclined to think the famous reaction is over:
the students have taken to their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and
one or two _cafés_ have been established, within the last year, that are
ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de Lorette.
[Illustration: FRENCH CATHOLICISM (_Sketched in the Church of N. D. de
Lorette_)]
However, if the immortal Görres and the German mystics have had their
day, there is the immortal Göthe and the Pantheists; and I incline to
think that the fashion has set very strongly in their favour. Voltaire
and the Encyclopædians are voted, now, _barbares_ and there is no term
of reprobation strong enough for heartless Humes and Helvetiuses, who
lived but to destroy, and who only thought to doubt. Wretched as
Voltaire’s sneers and puns are, I think there is something more manly
and earnest even in them than in the present muddy French
transcendentalism. Pantheism is the word now; one and all have begun to
_éprouver_ the _besoin_ of a religious sentiment; and we are deluged
with a host of gods accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be
inspired; Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of
genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the _Débats_, has
divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly beardless scribbler
of poems and prose but tells you, in his preface, of the _sainteté_ of
the _sacerdoce littéraire_; or a dirty student, sucking tobacco and
beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the Chaumière, who is not
convinced of the necessity of a new ‘Messianism,’ and will hiccup, to
such as will listen, chapters of his own drunken Apocalypse. Surely, the
negatives of the old days were far less dangerous than the assertions of
the present; and you may fancy what a religion that must be which has
such high priests.
There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives of
many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations. Madame Sand,
for instance, I do not know personally, and can only speak of her from
report. True or false, the history, at any rate, is not very edifying;
and so may be passed over: but, as a certain great philosopher told us,
in very humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather
grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, we may, at least, demand, in
all persons assuming the character of moralist or philosopher--order,
soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the
intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we
know how circumstance and passion _will_ sway the intellect; how
mortified vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns
angrily upon conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our
judge our enemy, because he has given sentence against us!--How often
have we called the right wrong, because the right condemns us! And in
the lives of many of the bitter foes of the Christian doctrine, can we
find no personal reason for their hostility? The men in Athens said it
was out of regard for religion that they murdered Socrates; but we have
had time, since then, to reconsider the verdict; and Socrates’s
character is pretty pure now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of
those days.
The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes
through which Madame Sand’s mind has passed,--the initiatory trials,
labours, and sufferings which she has had to go through,--before she
reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches her
wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and
began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming novel
of _Indiana_. ‘Pity,’ cried she, ‘for the poor woman who, united to a
being whose brute force makes him her superior, should venture to break
the bondage which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free.’
In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the most
exquisite prose. What a tender suffering creature is Indiana; how little
her husband appreciates that gentleness which he is crushing by his
tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is that, in the absence of his
sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding creature, should seek elsewhere
for shelter; how cautious should we be, to call criminal--to visit with
too heavy a censure--an act which is one of the natural impulses of a
tender heart, that seeks but for a worthy object of love! But why
attempt to tell the tale of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has written
it so well, that not the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom can fail
to be touched by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen to her
argument. Let us grant, for argument’s sake, that the laws of marriage,
especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly upon
unfortunate women.
But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature, honestly
argued, it is better, surely, to apply to an indifferent person for an
umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or
snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit,
or will not take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to
hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a
pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be
presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person--particularly as
his reasoning, if successful, might get him _out of gaol_. This is a
homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame
Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern husband,
and also having, according to the newspapers, sought ‘sympathy’
elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be somewhat partial, and
received with some little caution.
And tell us who have been the social reformers?--the haters, that is, of
the present system, according to which we live, love, marry, have
children, educate them, and endow them--_are they pure themselves_? I do
believe not one; and directly a man begins to quarrel with the world and
its ways, and to lift up, as he calls it, the voice of his despair, and
preach passionately to mankind about this tyranny of faith, customs,
laws; if we examine what the personal character of the preacher is, we
begin pretty clearly to understand the value of the doctrine. Any one
can see why Rousseau should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron
such a free-and-easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame
Sand, who has a genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take
the present condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and
labour so hotly to set it right.
After _Indiana_ (which, we presume, contains the lady’s notions upon
wives and husbands) came _Valentine_, which may be said to exhibit her
doctrine, in regard of young men and maidens, to whom the author would
accord, as we fancy, the same tender licence. _Valentine_ was followed
by _Lelia_, a wonderful book indeed, gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in
magnificent poetry; a regular topsyturvyfication of morality, a thieves’
and prostitutes’ apotheosis. This book has received some late
enlargements and emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on
morals, which, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they can
only be mentioned here, not particularised: but of _Spiridion_ we may
write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.
In this work, the lady asserts her Pantheistical doctrine, and openly
attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless now,
and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual
world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her opinions
in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not merely
from the extraordinary eloquence and genius of the woman herself, but
because they express the opinions of a great number of people besides:
for she not only produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others
very eagerly; and one finds in her writings so much similarity with
others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her, that the book before
us may pass for the expressions of the sentiments of a certain French
party.
‘Dieu est mort,’ says another writer of the same class, and of great
genius too.--‘Dieu est mort,’ writes Mr. Henry Heine, speaking
of the Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of
speech,--‘N’entendez-vous pas sonner la clochette?--on porte les
sacrements à un Dieu qui se meurt!’ Another of the Pantheist poetical
philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which Christ and the
Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the former is classed with
Prometheus. This book of _Spiridion_ is a continuation of the theme, and
perhaps you will listen to some of the author’s expositions of it.
It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day have
an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of folios: it
required some learning then to write a book, and some time, at least,
for the very labour of writing out a thousand such vast pages would
demand a considerable period. But now, in the age of duodecimos, the
system is reformed altogether: a male or female controversialist draws
upon his imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead of an
argument, and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has it all
his own way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our shame be
it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of
proselytism--those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment,
false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and
piety--I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever
so silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if
religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world. We, I say,
have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the sects of
the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it. I can point you out
blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as dreadful as those above
mentioned; but this is no place for such discussions, and we had better
return to Madame Sand. As Mrs. Sherwood expounds, by means of many
touching histories and anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions
of Church history, Church catechism, Church doctrine;--as the author of
_Father Clement, a Roman Catholic Story_, demolishes the stately
structure of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman Catholic
faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages;--by the means of
a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over the vast
fabric, as David’s pebble-stone did Goliath;--as, again, the Roman
Catholic author of _Geraldine_ falls foul of Luther and Calvin, and
drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by the sounds of her
little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by means of pretty
sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims _her_
truth--that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is no
more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery
unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!--Who are these who come forward to
explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light,
and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God’s
people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God’s prophet would have
perished had he seen! Who are these that are now so familiar with
it?--Women, truly; for the most part weak women--weak in intellect, weak
mayhap in spelling and grammar, but marvellously strong in
faith:--women, who step down to the people with stately step and voice
of authority, and deliver their twopenny tablets as if there were some
Divine authority for the wretched nonsense recorded there!
With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness stands,
in the goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and, as far
as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, beautifully rich and pure.
She has a very exuberant imagination, and, with it, a very chaste style
of expression. She never scarcely indulges in declamation, as other
modern prophets do, and yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and
full. She seldom runs a thought to death (after the manner of some
prophets, who, when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill
it), but she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy
sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation. I can’t express to
you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of country
bells--provoking I don’t know what vein of musing and meditation, and
falling sweetly and sadly on the ear.
This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people who
read Madame Sand’s first books, _Valentine_ and _Indiana_: in
_Spiridion_ it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who are not
afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found most
delightful. The author’s intention, I presume, is to describe, in a
parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic Church; and,
indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: and she places her hero in a
monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about him, and the
events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame Dudevant’s doctrine
are not inaptly laid down. Innocent, faithful, tender-hearted, a young
monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when he has pronounced his vows, an
object of aversion and hatred to the godly men whose lives he so much
respects, and whose love he would make any sacrifice to win. After
enduring much, he flings himself at the feet of his confessor, and begs
for his sympathy and counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and
accuses him, fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime--bids him
never return to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart,
and the stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere repentance, washed
away.
‘Thus speaking,’ says Angel, ‘Father Hegesippus tore away his robe,
which I was holding in my supplicating hands. In a sort of wildness
I still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from him, and I
fell with my face towards the ground. He quitted me, closing
violently after him the door of the sacristy, in which this scene
had passed. I was left alone in the darkness. Either from the
violence of my fall, or the excess of my grief, a vein had burst in
my throat, and a hæmorrhage ensued. I had not the force to rise; I
felt my senses rapidly sinking, and, presently, I lay stretched on
the pavement, unconscious, and bathed in my blood.’
Now the wonderful part of the story begins.
‘I know not how much time I passed in this way. As I came to myself I
felt an agreeable coolness. It seemed as if some harmonious air was
playing round about me, stirring gently in my hair, and drying the drops
of perspiration on my brow. It seemed to approach, and then again to
withdraw, breathing now softly and sweetly in the distance, and now
returning, as if to give me strength and courage to rise.
‘I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay, under
the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in a kind of
peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer wind, as it
breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above me. Then I fancied
I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end of the sacristy: it
whispered so low that I could not catch the words. I remained
motionless, and gave it my whole attention. At last I heard, distinctly,
the following sentence:--_Spirit of Truth, raise up these victims of
ignorance and imposture_.” “Father Hegesippus,” said I, in a weak voice,
“is that you who are returning to me?” But no one answered. I lifted
myself on my hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I
got up completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near to the only
door in this little room, that none, after the departure of the
confessor, could have entered it without passing over me; besides, the
door was shut, and only opened from the inside by a strong lock of the
ancient shape. I touched it and assured myself that it was closed. I was
seized with terror, and, for some moments, did not dare to move. Leaning
against the door, I looked round, and endeavoured to see into the gloom
in which the angles of the room were enveloped. A pale light, which came
from an upper window, half closed, was to be seen trembling in the midst
of the apartment. The wind beat the shutter to and fro, and enlarged or
diminished the space through which the light issued. The objects which
were in this half light--the praying-desk, surmounted by its skull--a
few books lying on the benches--a surplice hanging against the
wall--seemed to move with the shadow of the foliage that the air
agitated behind the window. When I thought I was alone, I felt ashamed
of my former timidity; I made the sign of the cross, and was about to
move forward in order to open the shutter altogether, but a deep sigh
came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed to my place. And yet I
saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure that no person was near it.
Then I had an idea which gave me courage. Some person, I thought, is
behind the shutter, and has been saying his prayers outside without
thinking of me. But who would be so bold as to express such wishes and
utter such a prayer as I had just heard?
‘Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister, now
entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window. But I had not
made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me, detaching itself
from the praying-desk, traversed the room, directing itself towards the
window, and passed swiftly by me. The movement was so rapid that I had
not time to avoid what seemed a body advancing towards me, and my fright
was so great, that I thought I should faint a second time. But I felt
nothing, and, as if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly
disappear to my left.
‘I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation, and
looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked into
the garden: it was deserted, and the midday wind was wandering among the
flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the room; I
looked behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I shook all
the sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls; everything was
in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had
just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy
that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the hæmorrhage, and that I
had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained
shut up there until the next day.’
* * * * *
I don’t know whether the reader has been as much struck with the above
mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me as
very fine; and the natural _supernaturalness_ is kept up in the best
style. The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful _light appearing_ over
the furniture of the room, and giving it an air of strange motion--the
awful shadow which passed through the body of the timid young
novice--are surely very finely painted. ‘I rushed to the shutter, and
flung it back: there was no one in the sacristy. I looked into the
garden: it was deserted, and the midday wind was roaming among the
flowers.’ The dreariness is wonderfully described: only the poor pale
boy looking eagerly out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot
midday wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of
these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to
make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion’s
wonderful visitant.
* * * * *
‘As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to make
way for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of surprising
beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although dressed in the large
black robe which the superiors of our order wear, he had, underneath, a
short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the waist by a leathern belt,
and a buckle of silver, after the manner of the old German students.
Like them, he wore, instead of the sandals of our monks, short tight
boots; and over the collar of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders,
and was as white as snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful
hair I ever saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal
to me that he was in the habit of commanding. With much respect, and yet
uncertain, I half saluted him. He did not return my salute; but he
smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and, at the same time, his eyes,
severe and blue, looked towards me with an expression of such
compassionate tenderness, that his features have never since then passed
away from my recollection. I stopped, hoping he would speak to me, and
persuading myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that he had the power
to protect me; but the monk, who was walking behind me, and who did not
seem to remark him in the least, forced him brutally to step aside from
the walk, and pushed me so rudely as almost to cause me to fall. Not
wishing to engage in a quarrel with this coarse monk, I moved away; but,
after having taken a few steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the
unknown still gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude. The
sun shone full upon him, and made his hair look radiant. He sighed and
lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my
favour, and to call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned slowly
towards the sanctuary, entered into the choir, and was lost, presently,
in the shade. I longed to return, in spite of the monk, to follow this
noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who was he that I
imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to cease? I felt, even
while his softness drew me towards him, that he still inspired me with a
kind of fear; for I saw in his physiognomy as much austerity as
sweetness.’
* * * * *
Who was he?--we shall see that. He was somebody very mysterious indeed:
but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex, to make a
very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most becoming
costumes possible.
* * * * *
The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious
golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion,
and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more
important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This
beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman’s
coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe--is her religious
type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth,
through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles,
with ‘a belt such as is worn by the old German students.’ You will
pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat lightly;
but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the
French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or he
may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of
Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand’s convictions--if convictions they may
be called--or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are
represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of
truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd
and unreasonable, that the reader’s feelings are continually swaying
between admiration and something very like contempt--always in a kind of
wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:--
‘Peter Hebronius,’ says our author, ‘was not originally so named.
His real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little
village in the neighbourhood of Innspruck. His family, which
possessed a considerable fortune, left him, in his early youth,
completely free to his own pursuits. From infancy he had shown that
these were serious. He loved to be alone; and passed his days, and
sometimes his nights, wandering among the mountains and valleys in
the neighbourhood of his birthplace. He would often sit by the
brink of torrents, listening to the voice of their waters, and
endeavouring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had hidden in
those sounds. As he advanced in years his inquiries became more
curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive a
solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German
universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words
and his memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The
new faith was strengthening the conquests it had made; the
Reformers were as ardent as in the first days, but their ardour was
more enlightened and more measured. Proselytism was still carried
on with zeal, and new converts were made every day. In listening to
the morality and to the dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from
Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration. His bold and
sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now
submitted to him, with those in the belief of which he had been
bred; and enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to
acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that a
religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all
others--which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of
conduct--which neither rendered the present intelligible nor
satisfactory, and left the future uncertain--could not be that of
noble souls and lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God
of truth who had dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating
will, and had called to the performance of his narrow wishes the
slaves of a vulgar terror. Always conversant with himself, Samuel,
who had spoken what he thought, now performed what he had spoken;
and, a year after his arrival in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism,
and entered into the bosom of the Reformed Church. As he did not
wish to do things by halves, and desired as much as was in him to
put off the old man and lead a new life, he changed his name of
Samuel to that of Peter. Some time passed, during which he
strengthened and instructed himself in his new religion. Very soon
he arrived at the point of searching for objections to refute, and
adversaries to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to
the strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he
set himself to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing
that the faith which he had just embraced contained the pure truth,
he despised all the attacks which could be made against it, and
laughed already at the irresistible arguments which he was to find
in the works of the Eagle of Meaux. But his mistrust and irony soon
gave place to wonder first, and then to admiration; he thought that
the cause pleaded by such an advocate must, at least, be
respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to think that great
geniuses would only devote themselves to that which was great. He
then studied Catholicism with the same ardour and impartiality
which he had bestowed on Lutheranism. He went into France to gain
instruction from the professors of the Mother Church as he had from
the doctors of the Reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld,
Fénelon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself.
Guided by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their
talents the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the
mysteries of the Catholic doctrine and morality. He found, in this
religion, all that had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty
of Protestantism--the dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God,
which the two religions had borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed
the natural consequence of the last doctrine--a doctrine, however,
to which the Jews had not arrived--the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul; free-will in this life; in the next, recompense for
the good, and punishment for the evil. He found, more pure,
perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in Protestantism,
that sublime morality which preaches equality to man, fraternity,
love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your neighbour;
Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula, and
that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had,
indeed, in its favour, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want
of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual
reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and
vital condition of all revealed religion--the principle of
infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the
laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one
revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another. Now,
infallibility is nothing but revelation continued by God, or the
Word, in the person of His vicars.
* * * * *
‘At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself entirely
and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the hands of Bossuet.
He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, to signify that he had
been twice enlightened by the Spirit. Resolved thenceforward to
consecrate his life to the worship of the new God who had called him to
Him, and to the study of His doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with
the aid of a large fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like
himself, had left to him, he built this convent, where we now are.’
* * * * *
A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has there
left Messrs. Sp----r, P----l, and W. Dr----d, who were the lights of
the great church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles, and
declared and believed that every word of nonsense which fell from their
lips was a direct spiritual intervention. These gentlemen have become
Puseyites already, and are, my friend states, in the highway to
Catholicism. Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some time since: having
been converted to that faith along with M. N----, of the Academy of
Music; Mr. L----, the pianoforte player; and one or two other chosen
individuals, by the famous Abbé de la M----. Abbé de la M---- (so told
me, in the diligence, a priest, who read his breviary and gossiped
alternately very curiously and pleasantly) is himself an _âme perdue_:
the man spoke of his brother clergyman with actual horror; and it
certainly appears that the Abbé’s works of conversion have not
prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought her hero (and herself, as we
may presume) to the point of Catholicism, proceeds directly to dispose
of that as she has done of Judaism and Protestantism, and will not
leave, of the whole fabric of Christianity, a single stone standing.
I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la
M----, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be a
warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious
speculations; for in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon
lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrate at the
mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand’s novel of
_Spiridion_ may do a vast deal of good, and bears a good moral with it;
though not such an one, perhaps, as our fair philosopher intended. For
anything he learned, Samuel-Peter-Spiridion-Hebronius might have
remained a Jew from the beginning to the end. Wherefore be in such a
hurry to set up new faiths? Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so
preternaturally wise? Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion
for the purpose of jumping into another? See what good this
philosophical friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you
are come at last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in
mud at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot see
an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing genius of
yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for the conduct of
common men. And for what? Let our friend Spiridion speak for himself.
After setting up his convent, and filling it with monks, who entertain
an immense respect for his wealth and genius, Father Hebronius,
unanimously elected prior, gives himself up to further studies, and
leaves his monks to themselves. Industrious and sober as they were,
originally, they grow quickly intemperate and idle; and Hebronius, who
does not appear among his flock until he has freed himself of the
Catholic religion, as he has of the Jewish and the Protestant, sees,
with dismay, the evil condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late,
the precipitancy by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity.
‘But as he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown
more prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself
unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still
maintained all the exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he
had abjured. But it was not enough for him to have quitted error,
it was necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had well look
round to discover it; he could not find anything that resembled it.
Then commenced for him a series of sufferings, unknown and
terrible. Placed face to face with doubt, this sincere and
religious spirit was frightened at its own solitude; and as it had
no other desire nor aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here
below interested it, he lived absorbed in his own sad
contemplations, looking ceaselessly into the vague that surrounded
him like an ocean without bounds, and seeing the horizon retreat
and retreat as ever he wished to near it. Lost in this immense
uncertainty, he felt as if attacked by vertigo, and his thoughts
whirled within his brain. Then, fatigued with his vain toils and
hopeless endeavours, he would sink down depressed, unmanned,
life-wearied, only living in the sensation of that silent grief
which he felt and could not comprehend.’
It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage from
one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the truth,
wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a little,
before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and implicated
others in errors and follies which might, at least, have been confined
to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively harmless. In what a
pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr----d and P----l have left
their Newman Street congregation, who are still plunged in their old
superstitions, from which their spiritual pastors and masters have been
set free! In what a state, too, do Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister
philosophers, Templars, Saint-Simonians, Founierites, Lerouxites, or
whatever the sect may be, leave the unfortunate people who have listened
to their doctrines, and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery
versatility of belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to
another, leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind
them! I wish the State would make a law that one individual should not
be allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life; or, at any
rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed. How many
charlatans would have been silenced,--how much conceit would have been
kept within bounds,--how many fools, who are dazzled by fine sentences,
and made drunk by declamation, would have remained quiet and sober, in
that quiet and sober way of faith which their fathers held before them!
However, the reader will be glad to learn that, after all his doubts and
sorrows, Spiridion does discover the truth (_the_ truth, what a wise
Spiridion!), and some discretion with it; for, having found among his
monks, who are dissolute, superstitious--and all hate him--one only
being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him:--
‘If you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were,
like mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my
entire thoughts. I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I
myself have filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating
you with the draught. But it is not so, alas! you are made to love
rather than to know, and your heart is stronger than your
intellect. You are attached to Catholicism--I believe so, at
least--by bonds of sentiment which you could not break without
pain, and which if you were to break, the truth which I could lay
bare to you in return would not repay you for what you had
sacrificed. Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very likely.
It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when it does
not revivify, smothers. I will not, then, reveal to you this
doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of
my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of
mourning and despair.... Of all the works which my long studies
have produced, there is one alone which I have not given to the
flames; for it alone is complete. In that you will find me entire,
and there LIES THE TRUTH. And, as the sage has said you must not
bury your treasures in a well, I will not confide mine to the
brutal stupidity of these monks. But as this volume should only
pass into hands worthy to touch it, and be laid open for eyes that
are capable of comprehending its mysteries, I shall exact from the
reader one condition, which, at the same time, shall be a proof: I
shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that he who one day
shall read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain terrors of
the grave, in searching for it amid the dust of my sepulchre. As
soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on my breast....
Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think my withered heart
will spring up again, as the frozen grass at the return of the sun,
and that, from the midst of its infinite transformations, my spirit
will enter into immediate communication with thine!’
* * * * *
Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which
contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to Mrs.
Sand for being so good as to print it for him? We leave all the story
aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the manuscript, but
left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern, old, philosophical,
unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift the gravestone, but
was taken with fever, and obliged to forgo the discovery; and how,
finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth amiable and innocent as his name,
was the destined person who brought the long-buried treasure to light.
Trembling and delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF
SPIRIDION.
Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents that
mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest? If this be absolute truth,
_à quoi bon_ search for it, since we have long, long had the jewel in
our possession, or since, at least, it has been held up as such by every
sham philosopher who has had a mind to pass off his wares on the public?
Hear Spiridion:--
‘How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I
prayed, how much have I laboured, before I understood the cause and
the aim of my passage on this earth! After many incertitudes, after
much remorse, after many scruples, _I have comprehended that I was
a martyr_!--But why my martyrdom? said I; what crime did I commit
before I was born, thus to be condemned to labour and groaning,
from the hour when I first saw the day up to that when I am about
to enter into the night of the tomb?
‘At last, by dint of imploring God--by dint of inquiry into the
history of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and
the shadows of the past have melted from before my eyes. I have
lifted a corner of the curtain: I have seen enough to know that my
life, like that of the rest of the human race, has been a series of
necessary errors, yet, to speak more correctly, of incomplete
truths, conducting, more or less slowly and directly, to absolute
truth and ideal perfection. But when will they rise on the face of
the earth--when will they issue from the bosom of the
Divinity--those generations who shall salute the august countenance
of Truth, and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth? I see well
how humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its
apotheosis. Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast
and the angel; but I know not how many centuries have been
required, that he might pass from the _state of brute to the state
of man_, and _I cannot tell how many ages are necessary that he may
pass from the state of man to the state of angel_!
‘Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that
which warns me that great destinies await humanity. In this life
all is over for me. Much have I striven to advance but little: I
have laboured without ceasing, and have done almost nothing. Yet,
after pains immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have
done all I could, and am sure that the little I have done will not
be lost.
‘What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a
future age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past.
Thou who wilt be no more Catholic--no more Christian, thou wilt ask
of the poor monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and
death. Thou wouldst know wherefore were his vows, why his
austerities, his labours, his retreat, his prayers?
‘You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your
road, and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has
not been my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon
the past history of humanity. You will see that its fate has been
ever to choose between the least of two evils, and ever to commit
great faults in order to avoid others still greater. You will see
... on one side, the heathen mythology, that debased the spirit in
its efforts to deify the flesh; the austere Christian principle,
that debased the flesh too much, in order to raise the worship of
the spirit. You will see, afterwards, how the religion of Christ
embodies itself in a Church, and raises itself a generous
democratic power against the tyranny of princes. Later still, you
will see how that power has attained its end, and passed beyond it.
You will see it, having chained and conquered princes, league
itself with them, in order to oppress the people, and seize on
temporal power. Schism, then, raises up against it the standard of
revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle of liberty
of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty of
conscience brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse still,
religious indifference and disgust. And if your soul, shattered in
the tempestuous changes which you behold humanity undergoing, would
strike out for itself a passage through the rocks, amidst which,
like a frail bark, lies tossing trembling truth, you will be
embarrassed to choose between the new philosophers--who, in
preaching tolerance, destroy religious and social unity--and the
last Christians, who, to preserve society, that is, religion and
philosophy, are obliged to brave the principle of toleration. Man
of truth! to whom I address, at once, my instruction and my
justification, at the time when you shall live, the science of
truth no doubt will have advanced a step. Think, then, of all your
fathers have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their
ignorance and uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across
which, with so much pain, they have conducted thee! And if the
pride of thy young learning shall make thee contemplate the petty
strifes in which our life has been consumed, pause and tremble as
you think of that which is still unknown to yourself, and of the
judgment that your descendants will pass on you. Think of this, and
learn to respect all those who, seeking their way in all sincerity,
have wandered from the path, frightened by the storm, and sorely
tried by the severe hand of the All-Powerful. Think of this, and
prostrate yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among
them, are saints and martyrs.
‘Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness
still. Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your
respect; for man is weak.... Weep, then, for us obscure
travellers--unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and
unheard-of labours, have prepared the way before you. Pity me, who,
having passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for
truth, only opened my eyes to shut them again for ever, and saw
that I had been in vain endeavouring to support a ruin, to take
refuge in a vault of which the foundations were worn away.’
* * * * *
The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the rise,
progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay of
Christianity--of an assertion, that the ‘doctrine of Christ is
incomplete;’ that ‘Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
Panthéon of divine men!’ and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious
vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented,
and in which Christ is made to say: ‘_We are all Messiahs_, when we wish
to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we
suffer for it!’
And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and
it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_; and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for
the future! After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? ‘Man is
between an angel and a beast: I don’t know how long it is since he was a
brute--I can’t say how long it will be before he is an angel.’ Think of
people living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think of
the state of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed
through, ere such words could be written, and could be popular!
When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and breathes,
instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear French air, he
is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow in his blood, and
a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice in a year, and then only at
a distance from London, he can attain in England. Is the intoxication, I
wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten
thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of
French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk,
the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one
absurdity to another, and bow shall we understand their vagaries? Let us
suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary
quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious
manuscript of _Spiridion_. That great destinies are in prospect for the
human race we may fancy, without her ladyship’s word for it: but more
liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as
that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and
think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than
ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor
chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far
removed from that angelic consummation which all must wish for so
devoutly. She cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries
have been necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his
present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may pass
from the state of man to the state of angel! What the deuce is the use
of chronology or philosophy?--We were beasts, and we can’t tell when our
tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when our wings are to begin
to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, O man of genius, follow our
counsel: lead an easy life, don’t stick at trifles: never mind about
_duty_, it is only made for slaves; if the world reproach you, reproach
the world in return, you have a good loud tongue in your head; if your
straitlaced morals injure your mental respiration, fling off the
old-fashioned stays, and leave your free limbs to rise and fall as
Nature pleases; and when you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and
yet unfit to return to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be
miserable, like my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or
else mount a step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and
mental vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly
to find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race,
and a desire to set them right after your own fashion. There is the
quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk and speak,
when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-glasses at his
neighbour’s head with a pretty good aim; after this comes the pathetic
stage, when the patient becomes wondrous philanthropic, and weeps
wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and fancies he is at home in
bed--where he ought to be: but this is an allegory.
I don’t wish to carry this any further, or to say a word in defence of
the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found ‘incomplete’;--here, at
least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs.
Sand’s book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: our
business is only with the day and the new novels, and the clever or
silly people who write them. Oh! if they but knew their places, and
would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all
the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk like a philosopher:
when will she go back to her old trade, of which she was the very ablest
practitioner in France?
I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and
beauty, be praised too highly. One must suffice,--it is the descent of
Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, _Spiridion_.
‘It seemed to me,’ he begins, ‘that the descent was eternal; and
that I was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I
reached a level place, and I heard a mournful voice deliver these
words, as it were, to the secret centre of the earth--_He will
mount that ascent no more!_”--Immediately I heard arise towards me,
from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices
united in a strange chant--_Let us destroy him! Let him be
destroyed! What does he here among the dead? Let him be delivered
back to torture! Let him be given again to life!_”
‘Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived
that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of
a mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; before
me, nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of
midnight beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and
quitting that staircase, which methought it was impossible for me
to reascend, I sprang forth into the void with an execration. But,
immediately, when I had uttered the curse, the void began to be
filled with forms and colours, and I presently perceived that I was
in a vast gallery, along which I advanced, trembling. There was
still darkness round me; but the hollows of the vaults gleamed with
a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of their
building.... I did not distinguish the nearest objects; but those
towards which I advanced assumed an appearance more and more
ominous, and my terror increased with every step I took. The
enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the tracery thereof
itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature, delivered to
tortures without a name. Some hung by their feet, and, locked in
the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the marble
of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged
upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards
capitals, where other figures stooped towards them, eager to
torment them. Other pillars, again, represented a struggling mass
of figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a
trunk severed to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads
whereof retained life enough to seize and devour that which was
near them. There were some who, half hanging down, agonised
themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay the lower
moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were
attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with
each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh--grasping which,
they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and
agony. Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there were on
either side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but
of a loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to
pieces--in feasting upon their limbs and entrails. From the vault,
instead of bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded forms
of children; as if, to escape these eaters of man’s flesh, they
would throw themselves downwards, and be dashed to pieces on the
pavement.... The silence and motionlessness of the whole added to
its awfulness. I became so faint with terror, that I stopped, and
would fain have returned. But at that moment I heard, from the
depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused noises,
like those of a multitude on its march. And the sounds soon became
more distinct, and the clamour fiercer, and the steps came hurrying
on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more violent, more
threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this disorderly crowd;
and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of those dismal
sculptures. Then it seemed as if those figures began to heave--and
to sweat blood--and their beady eyes to move in their sockets. At
once I beheld that they were all looking upon me, that they were
all leaning towards me,--some with frightful derision, others with
furious aversion. Every arm was raised against me, and they made as
though they would crush me with the quivering limbs they had torn
one from the other.’
* * * * *
It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble to
go down into damp unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up a
few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather
tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs. Sand’s
religious or irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people who
are quite satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady is
the representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits and
philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this condition.
The leaves of the Diderot and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly
fruit: here it is, ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall?
Heaven send that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is
come.
THE CASE OF PEYTEL
IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE
PARIS: _November_ 1839.
MY DEAR BRIEFLESS--Two months since, when the act of accusation first
appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian Peytel,
all Paris was in a fervour on the subject. The man’s trial speedily
followed, and kept for three days the public interest wound up to a
painful point. He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning of
September; and, since that time, what with Maroto’s disaffection and
Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to
occupy ourselves with τι νἑον. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac
helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have
remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his
favour, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much,
and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and
his case altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling was
raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how
Peytel’s head had been cut off at Bourg.
He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which
attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice. He had
made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time to
consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed it. He
had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up all the way
from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an interview with the
King, who had refused to see her. Last Monday morning, at nine o’clock,
an hour before Peytel’s breakfast, the Greffier of Assize Court, in
company with the Curé of Bourg, waited on him, and informed him that he
had only three hours to live. At twelve o’clock, Peytel’s head was off
his body; an executioner from Lyons had come over the night before, to
assist the professional throat-cutter of Bourg.
I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations for
this scoundrel’s fate, or to declare my belief in his innocence, as
Monsieur de Balzac has done. As far as moral conviction can go, the
man’s guilt is pretty clearly brought home to him. But any man who has
read the ‘Causes Célèbres,’ knows that men have been convicted and
executed upon evidence ten times more powerful than that which was
brought against Peytel. His own account of his horrible case may be
true; there is nothing adduced in the evidence which is strong enough to
overthrow it. It is a serious privilege, God knows, that society takes
upon itself, at any time, to deprive one of God’s creatures of
existence. But when the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk
does it incur! In England, thank Heaven, the law is more wise and more
merciful: an English jury would never have taken a man’s blood upon such
testimony; an English judge and Crown advocate would never have acted as
these Frenchmen have done: the latter inflaming the public mind by
exaggerated appeals to their passions; the former seeking, in every way,
to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and confound him, to
do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter remarks from the bench,
with any effect that his testimony might have on the jury. I don’t mean
to say that judges and lawyers have been more violent and inquisitorial
against the unhappy Peytel than against any one else; it is the fashion
of the country; a man is guilty until he proves himself to be innocent;
and to batter down his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers,
with all their horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate
eloquence. It is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the
law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the
legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you take
him at a cruel unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against the law,
clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt. Thank God
that, in England, things are not managed so!
However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions
about the law. Peytel’s case may, nevertheless, interest you, for the
tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how easy a
thing it is for a man’s life to be talked away in France, if ever he
should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime. The French ‘acte
d’accusation’ begins in the following manner:--
‘Of all the events which in these latter times have afflicted the
department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more
profound and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady,
Félicité Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at
Belley. At the end of October 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that
town, with her husband, and their servant Louis Rey, in order to
pass a few days at Mâcon; at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley
were suddenly awakened by the arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his
cries, and by the signs which he exhibited of the most lively
agitation: he implored the succours of all the physicians in the
town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at the bells of their
houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his wife,
stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on
the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had
taken.
‘At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a
spectacle was presented to their eyes!
‘A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life;
her whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged
into the water. She appeared to be severely wounded in the face;
and her garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and
rainy weather, left the upper part of her knees almost entirely
exposed. At the sight of this half-naked and inanimate body, all
the spectators were affected. People said that the first duty to
pay to a dying woman, was, to preserve her from the cold, to cover
her. A physician examined the body; he declared that all remedies
were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and cold.
‘The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh
succours, and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just
been given him, required that all the physicians in the place
should be sent for. A scene so strange and so melancholy; the
incoherent account given by Peytel of the murder of his wife; his
extraordinary movements; and the avowal which he continued to make,
that he had despatched the murderer, Rey, with strokes of his
hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant Wolf, commandant of
gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the immediate arrest of
Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the arms of a friend, who
interceded for him, and begged the police not immediately to seize
upon his person.
‘The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the
bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road,
where it lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did
so.’
* * * * *
Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English
counsel has to prosecute a prisoner, on the part of the Crown, for a
capital offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the most
moderate terms, and especially warns the jury to give the accused person
the benefit of every possible doubt that the evidence may give, or may
leave. See how these things are managed in France, and how differently
the French counsel for the Crown sets about his work.
He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we have
just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that an
unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and to form
its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a happy, just
prepossession against the prisoner.
Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as turgid
and declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a newspaper
document by an unlimited penny-a-liner:--‘The department of the Ain is
in a dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of Belley come
trooping from their beds,--and what a sight do they behold:--a young
woman at the bottom of a carriage, _toute ruisselante_, just out of a
river; her garments, in spite of the cold and rain, raised, so as to
leave the upper part of her knee entirely exposed, at which all the
beholders were affected, and cried, that the _first duty_ was to cover
her from the cold.’ This settles the case at once; the first duty of a
man is to cover the legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help.
The eloquent ‘Substitut du Procureur du Roi’ has prejudged the case, in
the course of a few sentences. He is putting his readers, among whom his
future jury is to be found, into a proper state of mind; he works on
them with pathetic description, just as a romance-writer would: the rain
pours in torrents: it is a dreary evening in November; the young
creature’s situation is neatly described; the distrust which entered
into the breast of the keen old officer of gendarmes strongly painted,
the suspicions which might, or might not, have been entertained by the
inhabitants, eloquently argued. How did the advocate know that the
people had such? did all the bystanders say aloud, ‘I suspect that this
is a case of murder by Monsieur Peytel, and that his story about the
domestic is all deception’? or did they go off to the mayor, and
register their suspicion? or was the advocate there to hear them? Not
he; but he paints you the whole scene as though it had existed, and
gives full accounts of suspicions as if they had been facts, positive,
patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.
Having thus primed his audience, and prepared them for the testimony of
the accused party, ‘Now,’ says he, with a fine show of justice, ‘let us
hear Monsieur Peytel;’ and that worthy’s narrative is given as
follows:--
‘He said that he had left Mâcon on the 31st October, at eleven
o’clock in the morning, in order to return to Belley, with his wife
and servant. The latter drove, or led, an open car; he himself was
driving his wife in a four-wheeled carriage, drawn by one horse:
they reached Bourg at five o’clock in the evening; left it at
seven, to sleep at Pont d’Ain, where they did not arrive before
midnight. During the journey, Peytel thought he remarked that Rey
had slackened his horse’s pace. When they alighted at the inn,
Peytel bade him deposit in his chamber 7500 francs, which he
carried with him; but the domestic refused to do so, saying that
the inn gates were secure, and there was no danger. Peytel was,
therefore, obliged to carry his money upstairs himself. The next
day, the 1st November, they set out on their journey again, at nine
o’clock in the morning; Louis did not come, according to custom, to
take his master’s orders. They arrived at Tenay about three,
stopped there a couple of hours to dine, and it was eight o’clock
when they reached the bourg of Rossillon, where they waited half an
hour to bait the horses.
‘As they left Rossillon, the weather became bad, and the rain began
to fall: Peytel told his domestic to get a covering for the
articles in the open chariot; but Rey refused to do so, adding, in
an ironical tone, that the weather was fine. For some days past,
Peytel had remarked that his servant was gloomy, and scarcely spoke
at all.
‘After they had gone about five hundred paces beyond the bridge of
Andert, that crosses the river Furans, and ascended to the least
steep part of the hill of Darde, Peytel cried out to his servant,
who was seated in the car, to come down from it, and finish the
ascent on foot.
‘At this moment a violent wind was blowing from the south, and the
rain was falling heavily: Peytel was seated back in the right
corner of the carriage, and his wife, who was close to him, was
asleep, with her head on his left shoulder. All of a sudden he
heard the report of a firearm (he had seen the light of it at some
paces’ distance), and Madame Peytel cried out, ‘My poor husband,
take your pistols;’ the horse was frightened, and began to trot.
Peytel immediately drew a pistol, and fired, from the interior of
the carriage, upon an individual whom he saw running by the side of
the road.
‘Not knowing, as yet, that his wife had been hit, he jumped out on
one side of the carriage, while Madame Peytel descended from the
other; and he fired a second pistol at his domestic, Louis Rey,
whom he had just recognised. Redoubling his pace, he came up with
Rey, and struck him, from behind, a blow with the hammer. Rey
turned at this, and raised up his arm to strike his master with the
pistol which he had just discharged at him; but Peytel, more quick
than he, gave the domestic a blow with the hammer, which felled him
to the ground (he fell his face forwards), and then Peytel,
bestriding the body, despatched him, although the brigand asked for
mercy.
‘He now began to think of his wife; and ran back, calling out her
name repeatedly, and seeking for her, in vain, on both sides of the
road. Arrived at the bridge of Andert, he recognised his wife,
stretched in a field, covered with water, which bordered the
Furans. This horrible discovery had so much the more astonished
him, because he had no idea until now, that his wife had been
wounded: he endeavoured to draw her from the water; and it was only
after considerable exertions that he was enabled to do so, and to
place her, with her face towards the ground, on the side of the
road. Supposing that, here, she would be sheltered from any further
danger, and believing, as yet, that she was only wounded, he
determined to ask for help at a lone house, situated on the road
towards Rossillon; and at this instant he perceived, without at all
being able to explain how, that his horse had followed him back to
the spot, having turned back of its own accord, from the road to
Belley.
‘The house at which he knocked was inhabited by two men, of the
name Thannet, father and son, who opened the door to him, and whom
he entreated to come to his aid, saying that his wife had just been
assassinated by his servant. The elder Thannet approached to, and
examined the body, and told Peytel that it was quite dead; he and
his son took up the corpse, and placed it in the bottom of the
carriage, which they all mounted themselves, and pursued their
route to Belley. In order to do so, they had to pass by Rey’s body,
on the road, which Peytel wished to crush under the wheels of his
carriage. It was to rob him of 7500 francs, said Peytel, that the
attack had been made.’
Our friend, the Procureur’s Substitut, has dropped, here, the eloquent
and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner’s
narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to
listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making
such an uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with
some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed
in the opening part of the act of accusation? He might have said:--
‘Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man
distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has
lived long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a
few months married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss
has plunged her bereaved husband into despair--almost into madness.
Some early differences had marked, it is true, the commencement of
their union; but these,--which, as can be proved by evidence, were
almost all the unhappy lady’s fault,--had happily ceased, to give
place to sentiments far more delightful and tender. Gentlemen,
Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a sweet pledge of future concord
between herself and her husband: in three brief months she was to
become a mother.
‘In the exercise of his honourable profession,--in which, to
succeed, a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted
probity,--and, gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel _did_ succeed--_did_
inspire respect and confidence, as you, his neighbours, well
know;--in the exercise, I say, of his high calling, Monsieur
Peytel, towards the end of October last, had occasion to make a
journey in the neighbourhood, and visit some of his many clients.
‘He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him. Does
this look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of
love--of love and paternal care on his part towards the being with
whom his lot in life was linked,--the mother of his coming
child,--the young girl, who had everything to gain from the union
with a man of his attainments of intellect, his kind temper, his
great experience, and his high position? In this manner they
travelled, side by side, lovingly together. Monsieur Peytel was not
a lawyer merely; but a man of letters and varied learning; of the
noble and sublime science of geology he was, especially, an ardent
devotee.’
(Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology. Allude to the creation
of this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator. Fancy the
conversations which Peytel, a religious man,[8] might have with his
young wife upon the subject.)
‘Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named
Louis Rey. Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a
regiment--a school, gentleman, where much besides bravery, alas! is
taught; nay, where the spirit which familiarises one with notions
of battle and death, I fear, may familiarise one with ideas, too,
of murder. Rey, a dashing reckless fellow, from the army, had
lately entered Peytel’s service; was treated by him with the most
singular kindness; accompanied him (having charge of another
vehicle) upon the journey before alluded to; and _knew that his
master carried with him a considerable sum of money_; for a man
like Rey an enormous sum, 7500 francs. At midnight on the 1st of
November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning home, an
attack was made upon their carriage. Remember, gentlemen, the hour
at which the attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in
the carriage; and remember that the Savoy frontier _is within a
league of the spot_ where the desperate deed was done.’
Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common justice
to Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the facts, but
the suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to have given a
similar florid account of the prisoner’s case? Instead of this, you will
remark, that it is the advocate’s endeavour to make Peytel’s statements
as uninteresting in style as possible; and then he demolishes them in
the following way:--
‘Scarcely was Peytel’s statement known, but the common sense of the
public rose against it. Peytel had commenced his story upon the
bridge of Andert, over the cold body of his wife. On the 2nd
November he had developed it in detail, in the presence of the
physicians, in the presence of the assembled neighbours--of the
persons who, on the day previous only, were his friends. Finally,
he had completed it in his interrogatories, his conversations, his
writings, and letters to the magistrates; and everywhere these
words, repeated so often, were only received with a painful
incredulity. The fact was, that, besides the singular character
which Peytel’s appearance, attitude, and talk had worn ever since
the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma; its
contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons
were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to
believe it.’
Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole
French public; whose opinions, of course, he knows. Peytel’s statement
is discredited _everywhere_; the statement which he had made over the
cold body of his wife--the monster! It is not enough simply to prove
that the man committed the murder, but to make the jury violently angry
against him, and cause them to shudder in the jury-box, as he exposes
the horrid details of the crime.
‘Justice,’ goes on Mr. Substitute (who answers for the feelings of
everybody), ‘_disturbed by the preoccupations of public opinion_,
commenced, without delay, the most active researches. The bodies of
the victims were submitted to the investigations of men of art; the
wounds and projectiles were examined; the place where the event
took place explored with care. The morality of the authors of this
frightful scene became the object of rigorous examination; the
_exigences_ of the prisoner, the forms affected by him, his
calculated silence, and his answers, coldly insulting, were feeble
obstacles; and justice at length arrived, by its prudence, and by
the discoveries it made, to the most cruel point of certainty.’
You see that a man’s demeanour is here made a crime against him; and
that Mr. Substitute wishes to consider him guilty, because he has
actually the audacity to hold his tongue. Now follows a touching
description of the domestic, Louis Rey:--
‘Louis Rey, a child of the Hospital at Lyons, was confided, at a
very early age, to some honest country-people, with whom he stayed
until he entered the army. At their house, and during this long
period of time, his conduct, his intelligence, and the sweetness of
his manners, were such, that the family of his guardians became to
him as an adopted family; and that his departure caused them the
most sincere affliction. When Louis quitted the army, he returned
to his benefactors, and was received as a son. They found him just
as they had ever known him’ (I acknowledge that this pathos beats
my humble defence of Rey entirely), ‘except that he had learned to
read and write; and the certificates of his commanders proved him
to be a good and gallant soldier.
‘The necessity of creating some resources for himself obliged him
to quit his friends, and to enter the service of Monsieur de
Montrichard, a lieutenant of gendarmerie, from whom he received
fresh testimonials of regard. Louis, it is true, might have a
fondness for wine and a passion for women; but he had been a
soldier, and these faults were, according to the witnesses, amply
compensated for by his activity, his intelligence, and the
agreeable manner in which he performed his service. In the month of
July 1839, Rey quitted, voluntarily, the service of M. de
Montrichard; and Peytel, about this period, meeting him at Lyons,
did not hesitate to attach him to his service. Whatever may be the
prisoner’s present language, it is certain that, up to the day of
Louis’s death, he served Peytel with diligence and fidelity.
‘More than once his master and mistress spoke well of him.
_Everybody_ who has worked, or been at the house of Madame Peytel,
has spoken in praise of his character; and, indeed, it may be said,
that these testimonials were general.
‘On the very night of the 1st of November, and immediately after
the catastrophe, we remark how Peytel begins to make insinuations
against his servant; and how artfully, in order to render them more
sure, he disseminates them through the different parts of his
narrative. But, in the course of the proceeding, these charges have
met with a most complete denial. Thus we find the disobedient
servant who, at Pont d’Ain, refused to carry the money-chest to his
master’s room, under the pretext that the gates of the inn were
closed securely, occupied with tending the horses after their long
journey; meanwhile Peytel was standing by, and neither master nor
servant exchanged a word, and the witnesses who beheld them both
have borne testimony to the zeal and care of the domestic.
‘In like manner, we find that the servant, who was so remiss in the
morning as to neglect to go to his master for orders, was ready for
departure before seven o’clock, and had eagerly informed himself
whether Monsieur and Madame Peytel were awake; learning, from the
maid of the inn, that they had ordered nothing for their breakfast.
This man, who refused to carry with him a covering for the car,
was, on the contrary, ready to take off his own cloak, and with it
shelter articles of small value; this man, who had been for many
days so silent and gloomy, gave, on the contrary, many proofs of
his gaiety--almost of his indiscretion, speaking, at all the inns,
in terms of praise of his master and mistress. The waiter at the
inn at Dauphin says he was a tall young fellow, mild and
good-natured; “we talked for some time about horses, and such
things; he seemed to be perfectly natural, and not preoccupied at
all.” At Pont d’Ain, he talked of his being a foundling; of the
place where he had been brought up, and where he had served; and
finally, at Rossillon, an hour before his death, he conversed
familiarly with the master of the port, and spoke on indifferent
subjects.
‘All Peytel’s insinuations against his servant had no other end
than to show, in every point of Rey’s conduct, the behaviour of a
man who was premeditating attack. Of what, in fact, does he accuse
him? Of wishing to rob him of 7500 francs, and of having had
recourse to assassination in order to effect the robbery. But, for
a premeditated crime, consider what singular improvidence the
person showed who had determined on committing it; what folly and
what weakness there is in the execution of it.
‘How many insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of
committing and profiting by crime! On leaving Belley, Louis Rey,
according to Peytel’s statement, knowing that his master would
return with money, provided himself with a holster pistol, which
Madame Peytel had once before perceived among his effects. In
Peytel’s cabinet there were some balls; four of these were found in
Rey’s trunk, on the 6th of November. And, in order to commit the
crime, this domestic had brought away with him a pistol, and no
ammunition! for Peytel has informed us that Rey, an hour before his
departure from Mâcon, purchased six balls at a gunsmith’s. To gain
his point, the assassin must immolate his victims; for this, he has
only one pistol, knowing, perfectly well, that Peytel, in all his
travels, had two on his person; knowing that, at a late hour of the
night, his shot might fail of effect; and that, in this case, he
would be left to the mercy of his opponent.
‘The execution of the crime is, according to Peytel’s account,
still more singular. Louis does not get off the carriage until
Peytel tells him to descend. He does not think of taking his
master’s life until he is sure that the latter has his eyes open.
It is dark, and the pair are covered in one cloak; and Rey only
fires at them at six paces’ distance: he fires at hazard, without
disquieting himself as to the choice of his victim; and the
soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has
not force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying in his
hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite
of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps
of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon
some better means of escape. And we find this man, full of youth
and vigour, lying with his face to the ground, in the midst of a
public road, falling without a struggle, or resistance, under the
blows of a hammer!
‘And suppose the murderer had succeeded in his criminal projects,
what fruit could he have drawn from them?--Leaving on the road the
two bleeding bodies; obliged to lead two carriages at a time, for
fear of discovery; not able to return himself, after all the pains
he had taken to speak, at every place at which they had stopped, of
the money which his master was carrying with him; too prudent to
appear alone at Belley; arrested at the frontier, by the excise
officers, who would present an impassable barrier to him till
morning,--what could he do, or hope to do? The examination of the
car has shown that Rey, at the moment of the crime, had neither
linen, nor clothes, nor effects of any kind. There was found in his
pockets, when the body was examined, no passport, nor certificate;
one of his pockets contained a ball, of large calibre, which he had
shown, in play, to a girl, at the inn at Mâcon, a little
horn-handled knife, a snuff-box, a little packet of gunpowder, and
a purse, containing only a halfpenny and some string. Here is all
the baggage, with which, after the execution of his homicidal plan,
Louis Rey intended to take refuge in a foreign country.[9] Beside
these absurd contradictions, there is another remarkable fact,
which must not be passed over; it is this:--the pistol found by Rey
is of an antique form, and the original owner of it has been found.
He is a curiosity-merchant at Lyons; and, though he cannot affirm
that Peytel was the person who bought this pistol of him, he
perfectly recognises Peytel as having been a frequent customer at
his shop!
‘No, we may fearlessly affirm that Louis Rey was not guilty of the
crime which Peytel lays to his charge. If, to those who knew him,
his mild and open disposition, his military career, modest and
without a stain, the touching regrets of his employers, are
sufficient proofs of his innocence--the calm and candid observer,
who considers how the crime was conceived, was executed, and what
consequences would have resulted from it, will likewise acquit him,
and free him of the odious imputation which Peytel endeavours to
cast upon his memory.
‘But justice has removed the veil with which an impious hand
endeavoured to cover itself. Already, on the night of the 1st of
November, suspicion was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of
Peytel; by those excessive attentions towards his wife, which came
so late; by that excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated
bursts of sorrow, which are such as Nature does not exhibit. The
criminal, whom the public conscience had fixed upon; the man whose
frightful combinations have been laid bare, and whose falsehoods,
step by step, have been exposed, during the proceedings previous to
the trial; the murderer, at whose hands a heart-stricken family,
and society at large, demands an account of the blood of a
wife;--that murderer is Peytel!’
When, my dear Briefless, you are a judge (as I make no doubt you will
be, when you have left off the club all night, cigar-smoking of
mornings, and reading novels in bed), will you ever find it in your
heart to order a fellow-sinner’s head off upon such evidence as this?
Because a romantic Substitut du Procureur du Roi chooses to compose and
recite a little drama, and draw tears from juries, let us hope that
severe Rhadamanthine judges are not to be melted by such trumpery. One
wants but the description of the characters to render the piece
complete, as thus:--
PERSONNAGES. COSTUMES.
{ Habillement complet
SEBASTIEN } Meurtrier { de notaire perfide: figure
PEYTEL } { pâle, barbe noire, cheveux
{ noirs.
{ Soldat retiré, bon, }
{ brave, franc, jovial, aimant } Costume ordinaire; il
LOUIS REY{ le vin, les femmes, } porte sur ses épaules une
{ la gaîté, ses maîtres surtout;} couverture de cheval.
{ vrai Français, enfin. }
WOLFF Lieutenant de Gendarmerie.
FÉLICITÉ } Femme et victime de Peytel.
D'ALCAZAR }
Médecins, Villageois, Filles d’Auberge, Garçons d’Ecurie, etc. etc.
La scène se passe sur le pont d’Andert, entre Mâcon et Belley. Il est
minuit. La pluie tombe: les tonnerres grondent. Le ciel est couvert de
nuages, et sillonné d’éclairs.
All these personages are brought into play in the Procureur’s drama: the
villagers come in with their chorus; the old lieutenant of gendarmes
with his suspicions; Rey’s frankness and gaiety, the romantic
circumstances of his birth, his gallantry and fidelity, are all
introduced, in order to form a contrast with Peytel, and to call down
the jury’s indignation against the latter. But are these proofs? or
anything like proofs? And the suspicions, that are to serve instead of
proofs, what are they?
‘My servant, Louis Rey, was very sombre and reserved,’ says Peytel;
‘he refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to
my room, to cover the open car when it rained.’ The Prosecutor
disproves these by stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and
servants, asked if his master was up, and stood in the inn-yard,
grooming the horses, with his master by his side, neither speaking
to the other. Might he not have talked to the maids, and yet been
sombre when speaking to his master? Might he not have neglected to
call his master, and yet have asked whether he was awake? Might he
not have said that the inn gates were safe, out of hearing of the
ostler witness? Mr. Substitute’s answers to Peytel’s statements are
no answers at all. Every word Peytel said might be true, and yet
Louis Rey might not have committed the murder; or every word might
have been false, and yet Louis Rey might have committed the murder.
‘Then,’ says Mr. Substitute, ‘how many obstacles are there to the
commission of the crime! And these are:--
‘1. Rey provided himself with _one_ holster pistol, to kill two
people, knowing well that one of them had always a brace of pistols
about him.
‘2. He does not think of firing until his master’s eyes are open:
fires at six paces, not caring at whom he fires, and then runs
away.
‘3. He could not have intended to kill his master, because he had
no passport in his pocket, and no clothes; and because he must have
been detained at the frontier until morning; and because he would
have had to drive two carriages, in order to avoid suspicion.
‘4. And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was
found by his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons,
who perfectly recognised Peytel as one of his customers, though he
could not say he had sold that particular weapon to Peytel.’
Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer--much
more, that Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1. Rey had no need to kill
two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood. Suppose he had
killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel easily?--a weak
woman, in an excessively delicate situation, incapable of much energy at
the best of times.
2. ‘He does not fire till he knows his master’s eyes are open.’ Why, on
a stormy night, does a man driving a carriage go to sleep? Was Rey to
wait until his master snored? ‘He fires at six paces, not caring whom he
hits;’--and might not this happen too? The night is not so dark but that
he can see his master, in _his usual place_, driving. He fires and
hits--whom? Madame Peytel, who had left her place, _and was wrapped up
with Peytel in his cloak_. She screams out, ‘Husband, take your
pistols.’ Rey knows that his master has a brace, thinks that he has hit
the wrong person, and, as Peytel fires on him, runs away. Peytel
follows, hammer in hand; as he comes up with the fugitive, he deals him
a blow on the back of the head, and Rey falls--his face to the ground.
Is there anything unnatural in this story?--anything so monstrously
unnatural, that is, that it might not be true?
3. These objections are absurd. Why need a man have change of linen? If
he had taken none for the journey, why should he want any for the
escape? Why need he drive two carriages?--He might have driven both into
the river, and Mrs. Peytel in one. Why is he to go to the douane, and
thrust himself into the very jaws of danger? Are there not a thousand
ways for a man to pass a frontier? Do smugglers, when they have to pass
from one country to another, choose exactly those spots where a police
is placed?
And, finally, the gunsmith of Lyons, who knows Peytel quite well, cannot
say that he sold the pistol to him; that is, he did not sell the pistol
to him; for you have only one man’s word, in this case (Peytel’s), to
the contrary; and the testimony, as far as it goes, is in his favour. I
say, my lud, and gentlemen of the jury, that these objections of my
learned friend, who is engaged for the Crown, are absurd, frivolous,
monstrous; that to suspect away the life of a man upon such suppositions
as these, is wicked, illegal, and inhuman; and, what is more, that Louis
Rey, if he wanted to commit the crime--if he wanted to possess himself
of a large sum of money--chose the best time and spot for so doing; and,
no doubt, would have succeeded, if Fate had not, in a wonderful manner,
caused Madame Peytel _to take her husband’s place_, and receive the ball
intended for him in her own head.
But whether these suspicions are absurd or not, hit or miss, it is the
advocate’s duty, as it appears, to urge them. He wants to make as
unfavourable an impression as possible with regard to Peytel’s
character; he, therefore, must, for contrast’s sake, give all sorts of
praise to his victim, and awaken every sympathy in the poor fellow’s
favour. Having done this, as far as lies in his power, having
exaggerated every circumstance that can be unfavourable to Peytel, and
given his own tale in the baldest manner possible--having declared that
Peytel is the murderer of his wife and servant, the Crown now proceeds
to back this assertion, by showing what interested motives he had, and
by relating, after its own fashion, the circumstances of his marriage.
They may be told briefly here. Peytel was of a good family of Mâcon, and
entitled, at his mother’s death, to a considerable property. He had been
educated as a notary, and had lately purchased a business, in that line,
at Belley, for which he had paid a large sum of money; part of the sum,
15,000 francs, for which he had given bills, was still due.
Near Belley, Peytel first met Félicité Alcazar, who was residing with
her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard; and, knowing that the young
lady’s fortune was considerable, he made an offer of marriage to the
brother-in-law, who thought the match advantageous, and communicated on
the subject with Félicité’s mother, Madame Alcazar, at Paris. After a
time Peytel went to Paris, to press his suit, and was accepted. There
seems to have been no affectation of love on his side; and some little
repugnance on the part of the lady, who yielded, however, to the wishes
of her parents, and was married. The parties began to quarrel on the
very day of the marriage, and continued their disputes almost to the
close of the unhappy connection. Félicité was half blind, passionate,
sarcastic, clumsy in her person and manners, and ill educated; Peytel, a
man of considerable intellect and pretensions, who had lived for some
time at Paris, where he had mingled with good literary society. The lady
was, in fact, as disagreeable a person as could well be, and the
evidence describes some scenes which took place between her and her
husband, showing how deeply she must have mortified and enraged him.
A charge very clearly made out against Peytel, is that of dishonesty: he
procured, from the notary of whom he bought his place, an acquittance in
full, whereas there were 15,000 francs owing, as we have seen. He also,
in the contract of marriage, which was to have resembled, in all
respects, that between Monsieur Broussais and another Demoiselle
Alcazar, caused an alteration to be made in his favour, which gave him
command over his wife’s funded property, without furnishing the
guarantees by which the other son-in-law was bound. And, almost
immediately after his marriage, Peytel sold out of the funds a sum of
50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife, and used it for his own
purposes.
About two months after his marriage, _Peytel pressed his wife to make
her will_. He had made his, he said, leaving everything to her, in case
of his death: after some parley, the poor thing consented.[10] This is a
cruel suspicion against him; and Mr. Substitute has no need to enlarge
upon it. As for the previous fact, the dishonest statement about the
15,000 francs, there is nothing murderous in that--nothing which a man
very eager to make a good marriage might not do. The same may be said of
the suppression, in Peytel’s marriage contract, of the clause to be
found in Broussais’s, placing restrictions upon the use of the wife’s
money. Mademoiselle d’Alcazar’s friends read the contract before they
signed it, and might have refused it, had they so pleased.
After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife (there
were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing between them from
room to room), the latter was induced to write him a couple of
exaggerated letters, swearing ‘by the ashes of her father’ that she
would be an obedient wife to him, and entreating him to counsel and
direct her. These letters were seen by members of the lady’s family,
who, in the quarrels between the couple, always took the husband’s part.
They were found in Peytel’s cabinet, after he had been arrested for the
murder, and after he had had full access to all his papers, of which he
destroyed or left as many as he pleased. The accusation makes it a
matter of suspicion against Peytel, that he should have left these
letters of his wife’s in a conspicuous situation.
* * * * *
‘All these circumstances,’ says the accusation, ‘throw a frightful light
upon Peytel’s plans. The letters and will of Madame Peytel are in the
hands of her husband. Three months pass away, and this poor woman is
brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with two balls in her
head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by the side of a peasant!
‘What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this
murder?--whom could it profit?--who but himself had an odious chain to
break, and an inheritance to receive? Why speak of the servant’s
projected robbery? The pistols found by the side of Louis’s body, the
balls bought by him at Mâcon, and those discovered at Belley among his
effects, were only the result of a perfidious combination. The pistol,
indeed, which was found on the hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of
November, could only have belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown
by him, near the body of his domestic, with the paper which had before
enveloped it. Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis? Among all
the gendarmes, workwomen, domestics, employed by Peytel and his
brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this weapon in
Louis’s possession? It is true that Madame Peytel did, on one occasion,
speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol, which had nothing to do,
however, with that found near Louis Rey.’
* * * * *
Is this justice, or good reason? Just reverse the argument, and apply it
to Rey. ‘Who but Rey could have committed this murder?--who but Rey had
a large sum of money to seize upon?--a pistol is found by his side,
balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in his trunks at home. The
pistol found near his body could not, indeed, have belonged to Peytel:
did any man ever see it in his possession? The very gunsmith who sold
it, and who knew Peytel, would he not have known that he had sold him
this pistol? At his own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of all
kinds; everybody has seen them--a man who makes such collections is
anxious to display them. Did any one ever see this weapon?--Not one. And
Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in the valet’s
possession. She was short-sighted, and could not particularise what kind
of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to her husband and her
brother-in-law.’ This is not satisfactory, if you please: but, at least,
it is as satisfactory as the other set of suppositions. It is the very
chain of argument which would have been brought against Louis Rey by
this very same compiler of the act of accusation, had Rey survived,
instead of Peytel, and had he, as most undoubtedly would have been the
case, been tried for the murder.
This argument was shortly put by Peytel’s counsel:--_‘If Peytel had been
killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey guilty of
the murder of his master and mistress?_’ It is such a dreadful dilemma,
that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have dared to persecute
Peytel in the manner in which they did.
After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions
against Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of the
prisoner’s allegations in his own defence, comes the trial. The judge is
quite as impartial as the preparer of the indictment, as will be seen by
the following specimens of his interrogatories:--
_Judge._ The act of accusation finds in your statement
contradictions, improbabilities, impossibilities. Thus your
domestic, who had determined to assassinate you, in order to rob
you, and who _must have calculated upon the consequence of a
failure_, had neither passport nor money upon him. This is very
unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only a single
halfpenny, which was all he had.
_Prisoner._ My servant was known, and often passed the frontier
without a passport.
_Judge._ _Your domestic had to assassinate two persons_, and had no
weapon but a single pistol. He had no dagger; and the only thing
found on him was a knife.
_Prisoner._ In the car there were several turner’s implements,
which he might have used.
_Judge._ But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued
him immediately. He had, according to you, only this old pistol.
_Prisoner._ I have nothing to say.
_Judge._ Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt
the road, ran straight forward on the road itself: _this, again, is
very unlikely_.
_Prisoner._ This is a conjecture I could answer by another
conjecture; I can only reason on the facts.
_Judge._ How far did you pursue him?
_Prisoner._ I don’t know exactly.
_Judge._ You said ‘two hundred paces.’
No answer from the prisoner.
_Judge._ Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall. He was
ahead of you. You were in a carriage, from which you had to
descend: you had to take your pistols from a cushion, and _then_
your hammer;--how are we to believe that you could have caught him,
if he ran? It is _impossible_.
_Prisoner._ I can’t explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in
one leg. I, for my part, run tolerably fast.
_Judge._ At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?
_Prisoner._ I can’t tell.
_Judge._ Perhaps he was not running when you fired.
_Prisoner._ I saw him running.
_Judge._ In what position was your wife?
_Prisoner._ She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the
right side of the carriage.
_Judge._ The shot must have been fired _à bout portant_, because it
burned the eyebrows and lashes entirely. The assassin must have
passed his pistol across your breast.
_Prisoner._ The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it:
professional gentlemen will prove it.
_Judge._ _That is what you pretend, because you understand
perfectly the consequences of admitting the fact._ Your wife was
hit with two balls--one striking downwards, to the right, by the
nose, the other going horizontally through the cheek, to the left.
_Prisoner._ The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for
the purpose.
_Judge._ _It is a very unlucky combination for you_ that these
balls, which went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken
two different directions.
_Prisoner._ I can’t dispute about the various combinations of
fire-arms--professional persons will be heard.
_Judge._ According to your statement, your wife said to you, ‘My
poor husband, take your pistols.’
_Prisoner._ She did.
_Judge._ In a manner quite distinct?
_Prisoner._ Yes.
_Judge_. So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?
_Prisoner._ Yes; that is the fact.
_Judge._ _Here, again, is an impossibility_; and nothing is more
precise than the declaration of the medical men. They affirm that
your wife could not have spoken--their report is unanimous.
_Prisoner._ I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from
professional men, likewise: you must hear them.
_Judge._ What did your wife do next?
* * * * *
_Judge._ You deny the statements of the witnesses (they related to
Peytel’s demeanour and behaviour, which the judge wishes to show
were very unusual;--and what if they were?). Here, however, are
some mute witnesses, whose testimony you will not perhaps refuse.
Near Louis Rey’s body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a
whip.... Your domestic must have had this cloth upon him when he
went to assassinate you: it was wet and heavy. An assassin
disencumbers himself of anything that is likely to impede him,
especially when he is going to struggle with a man as young as
himself.
_Prisoner._ My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body;
it might be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry.
The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there
was no hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that
Rey must have held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip,
and the pistol with which he intended to commit the crime; which
was impossible.
_Prisoner._ These are only conjectures.
And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a man.
Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to make such.
Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming of the jury, such
monstrous assumptions and unreason--fancy them coming from an impartial
judge! The man is worse than the public accuser.
‘Rey,’ says the judge, ‘could not have committed the murder, _because he
had no money in his pocket, to fly, in case of failure_.’ And what is
the precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for a gentleman to
have, before he makes such an attempt? Are the men who murder for money
usually in possession of a certain independence before they begin? How
much money was Rey,--a servant, who loved wine and women, had been
stopping at a score of inns on the road, and had, probably, an annual
income of four hundred francs,--how much money was Rey likely to have?
_‘Your servant had to assassinate two persons._’ This I have mentioned
before. Why had he to assassinate two persons,[11] when one was enough?
If he had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and gagged his wife
immediately?
_‘Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the woods, by
the side of the road: this is very unlikely._’ How does his worship
know? Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the exact road that a man
will take, who has just missed a _coup_ of murder, and is pursued by a
man who is firing pistols at him? And has a judge a right to instruct a
jury in this way, as to what they shall, or shall not, believe?
‘You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you; to jump
out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and _then_, your hammer. _This
is impossible._’ By heavens! does it not make a man’s blood boil, to
read such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry? This man, when it suits
him, shows that Rey would be slow in his motions; and, when it suits
him, declares that Rey ought to be quick; declares, _ex cathedrâ_, what
pace Rey should go, and what direction he should take; shows, in a
breath, that he must have run faster than Peytel; and then, that he
could not run fast, because the cloak clogged him; settles how he is to
be dressed when he commits a murder, and what money he is to have in his
pocket; gives these impossible suppositions to the jury, and tells them
that the previous statements are impossible; and, finally, informs them
of the precise manner in which Rey must have stood holding his
horse-cloth in one hand, his whip and pistol in the other, when he made
the supposed attempt at murder. Now, what is the size of a horse-cloth?
Is it as big as a pocket-handkerchief? Is there no possibility that it
might hang over one shoulder: that the whip should be held under that
very arm? Did you never see a carter so carry it, his hands in his
pockets all the while? Is it monstrous, abhorrent to nature, that a man
should fire a pistol from under a cloak on a rainy day?--that he should,
after firing the shot, be frightened, and run; run straight before him,
with the cloak on his shoulders, and the weapon in his hand? Peytel’s
story is possible, and very possible; it is almost probable. Allow that
Rey had the cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in
his motions; that Peytel may have come up with him--felled him with a
blow of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by one
blow--he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the paper might
have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he fell.
Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this; and men have
been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the crime laid to their
charge as the judge on the bench who convicted them.
In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to him;
and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and
impossibilities,--Mr. Public Prosecutor, with his romantic narrative and
inflammatory harangues to the jury,--may have used all these powers to
bring to death an innocent man. From the animus with which the case has
been conducted from beginning to end, it was easy to see the result.
Here it is, in the words of the provincial paper:--
‘BOURG: _28th October 1839_.
‘The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took
place four days before the anniversary of his crime. The terrible
drama of the bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons,
has just terminated on the scaffold. Mid-day had just sounded on
the clock of the Palais: the same clock tolled midnight when, on
the 30th of August, his sentence was pronounced.
‘Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his
principal hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition
to the king. The notion of transportation was that which he seemed
to cherish most. However, he made several inquiries from the gaoler
of the prison, when he saw him at meal-times, with regard to the
place of execution, the usual hour, and other details on the
subject. From that period, the words “_Champ de Foire_” (the
fair-field, where the execution was to be held) were frequently
used by him in conversation.
‘Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more
strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the
departure of the curé, who latterly has been with him every day.
The documents connected with the trial had arrived in the morning.
He was ignorant of this circumstance, but sought to discover from
his guardians what they tried to hide from him; and to find out
whether his petition was rejected, and when he was to die.
‘Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his
counsel, M. Margerand, in order that he might have some
conversation with him, and regulate his affairs, before he----; he
did not write down the word, but left in its place a few points of
the pen.
‘In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be
allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing:
otherwise, he said, _Time might fail_. This was a new, indirect
manner of repeating his ordinary question. As light, up to that
evening, had been refused him, it was thought best to deny him in
this, as in former instances; otherwise his suspicions might have
been confirmed. The keeper refused his demand.
‘This morning, Monday, at nine o’clock, the Greffier of the Assize
Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon
him, came to the prison, in company with the curé of Bourg, and
announced to the convict that his petition was rejected, and that
he had only three hours to live. He received this fatal news with a
great deal of calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected
than he had been on the trial. “I am ready; but I wish they had
given me four-and-twenty hours’ notice,”--were all the words he
used.
‘The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the curé, who
did not thenceforth quit him. Peytel breakfasted at ten o’clock.
‘At eleven, a picquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took
their station upon the place before the prison, where a great
concourse of people had already assembled. An open car was at the
door. Before he went out, Peytel asked the gaoler for a
looking-glass; and having examined his face for a moment, said, “at
least, the inhabitants of Bourg will see that I have not grown
thin.”
‘As twelve o’clock sounded the prison gates opened, an aide
appeared, followed by Peytel leaning on the arm of the curate.
Peytel’s face was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on
his head, and his greatcoat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned
at the neck.
‘He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the
carriage would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be
difficult, he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road
was. He immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace. He
was not bound at all.
‘An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through
which he had to pass to the place of execution. He cast his eyes
alternately upon them and upon the guillotine, which was before
him.
‘Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the curé, and
bade him adieu. He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his mother
and sister. He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave himself
into the hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and cap. He
asked how he was to place himself, and, on a sign being made, he
flung himself briskly on the plank, and stretched his neck. In
another moment he was no more.
‘The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved
by the sight it had witnessed. As at all executions, there was a
very great number of women present.
‘Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a
coffin. The family had asked for his remains, and had them
immediately buried, privately: and thus the unfortunate man’s head
escaped the modellers in wax, several of whom had arrived to take
an impression of it.’
Down goes the axe; the poor wretch’s head rolls gasping into the basket;
the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and his aids
have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august sacrifice, and
of the altar on which it had been performed. Say, Mr. Briefless, do you
think that any single person, meditating murder, would be deterred
therefrom by beholding this--nay, a thousand more executions? It is not
for moral improvement, as I take it, nor for opportunity to make
appropriate remarks upon the punishment of crime, that people make a
holiday of a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations to flock
and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready
in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Elssler in her last new ballet and
flesh-coloured stockinet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract
poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be excited, in
different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a
meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more questionable
in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution. The lust is
in every man’s nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a wrestling-or
boxing-match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first
drawing of blood, makes the stranger shudder a little; but soon the
blood is his chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a fierce
delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a man killed;
and I make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must begin to
throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.
Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I
made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in both
cases. In the first instance, the day for Fieschi’s death was,
purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at
some remote quarter of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist
good to witness the scene which we saw on the morning when his execution
did _not_ take place.
It was carnival time, and the rumour had pretty generally been carried
abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied me,
came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the
death. We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs
Elysées; where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all
bent upon the same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held
in the Rue St. Honoré; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches
were collected. The ball was just up, and a crowd of people, in hideous
masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and
daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women
and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties
swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across
the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound
for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the
execution place, at the Barrière d’Enfer. As we crossed the river and
entered the Enfer Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more
drunken devils from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the
grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for
Fieschi and his cortège. We waited and waited; but alas! no fun for us
that morning: no throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied
justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed
of their expected breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene,
that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad
mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it,
wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a _bonne-bouche_ of
a murder.
The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the
ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-mate in
murder, Avril. But as we came to the ground (a gloomy round space,
within the barrier--three roads lead to it; and, outside, you see the
wine-shops and restaurateurs of the barrier looking gay and
inviting)--as we came to the ground, we only found, in the midst of it,
a little pool of ice, just partially tinged with red. Two or three idle
street-boys were dancing and stamping about this pool; and when I asked
one of them whether the execution had taken place, he began dancing more
madly than ever, and shrieked out with a loud fantastical theatrical
voice, ‘Venez tous, Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre
Lacenaire, et de son compagnon le traître Avril,’ or words to that
effect; and straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in
chorus, and took hands and danced round the little puddle.
O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate grace!
Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or moralised in
any way? He had gratified his appetite for blood, and this was all.
There is something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of
execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully
excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind,
which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent
and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as
the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after
an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it.
This merry pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic.
But, for God’s sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in
moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man’s guilt before we
murder him. To kill him, even with the full assurance that he is guilty,
is hazardous enough. Who gave you the right to do so?--you, who cry out
against suicides as impious and contrary to Christian law? What use is
there in killing him? You deter no one else from committing the crime by
so doing: you give us, to be sure, half an hour’s pleasant
entertainment; but it is a great question whether we derive much moral
profit from the sight. If you want to keep a murderer from further
inroads upon society, are there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God
wot; treadmills, galleys, and houses of correction? Above all, as in the
case of Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two deaths
already: was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the
fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering the
thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been suffered upon
similar and stronger evidence before, can any man declare, positively
and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that this was not _the
third murder in the family_?
FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS
There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as
much as you please.
There is the old classical drama, well-nigh dead, and full time too: old
tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous
Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to
revive this _genre_, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine
will never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore.
Madame Rachel can only galvanise the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient
French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the
grave; and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess
has raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the
knavish valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart
free-spoken serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines as loud as the
Horaces or the Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the
_ronflement_ of the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes;
for my part, I had rather go to Madame Saqui’s, or see Deburan dancing
on a rope: his lines are quite as natural and poetical.
Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the
father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows,
and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books! How that
unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his
disciples! You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so
sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is this
joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about two
thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale
repeated to it over and over again.
Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into
life of late years; and which is said, but I don’t believe a word of it,
to have Shakespeare for a father. If Mr. Scribe’s plays may be said to
be so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the _drame_
is a grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are added,
not prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas were.
Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable
guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since _Hernani_, has
contained a monster--a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is
Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrèce Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary
Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a hump-backed monster;
and others that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to
pardon--nay, admiringly to witness--because they are agreeably mingled
with some exquisite display of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one
monster to each play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to
whom murder is nothing; common intrigue, and simple breakage of the
before-mentioned commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast,
delightful complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in
England, much less described.
When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle
Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her greatness,
and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these charming horrors
for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her sons, in the
_Tour de Nesle_. I have seen her poison a company of no less than nine
gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the number; I have
seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable
relations, in the four first acts; and, at the last, be actually burned
at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in
a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are
not so good as a real downright execution; but, in point of interest,
the next thing to it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill
the breast; with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect
for that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody,
daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warm-hearted, poisonous Lucretia
Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper afterwards,
at the Café Anglais, when the horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce
to the supper!
Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After
having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris
for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has
seen,--the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by
which one has been interested and excited,--a man may take leave to be
heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and of
the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted
himself to indulge.
Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the
spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has
recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many
pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.
Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately
obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and
as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely
Catholic pictures and quasi-religious books, but a number of Catholic
plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the
theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from
these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of
their lives before. In the course of a very few years we have seen--_The
Wandering Jew_, _Belshazzar’s Feast_, _Nebuchadnezzar_, and the
_Massacre of the Innocents_, _Joseph and his Brethren_, _The Passage of
the Red Sea_, and _The Deluge_.
The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a vast
quantity of religion before the footlights. There was his famous tragedy
of _Caligula_, which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris critics,
was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why? Because,
says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the rogues. The
public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him at once.
‘As for the critics,’ says he nobly, ‘let those who cried out against
the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne, reproach me for
_the chastity of Messalina_.’ (This dear creature is the heroine of the
play of _Caligula_.) ‘It matters little to me. These people have but
seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not
seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles
of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!
‘The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was,
beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed
the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for
four hours, with pious attention (_avec recueillement et religion_), to
the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to
it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with
its head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream,
the solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his
waking hours.’
You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint
Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like
Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don’t set
up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are
inspired by Heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces,
and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward
Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with a
play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own
merits) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and
was uttering five-act revelations.
All things considered, the tragedy of _Caligula_ is a decent tragedy; as
decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it to
be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be
remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay, of
the English school too); and if the writer take the character of a
remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable
fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy. Caligula is killed at
the end of the performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved: and
the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from
the mere ‘vase’ and ‘candlestick’ personages, may be said to be depicted
in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good
fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when
she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
‘_Stella (continuant_) Voilà
Que je vois s’avancer, sans pilote et sans rames,
Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes
Et, spectacle inouï qui me ravit encor,
Tous quatre avaient au front une auréole d’or
D’où partaient des rayons de si vive lumière
Que je fus obligée à baisser la paupière;
Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi,
Les voyageurs divins étaient auprès de moi.
Un jour de chacun d’eux et dans toute sa gloire
Je te raconterai la merveilleuse histoire,
Et tu l’adoreras, j’espère; en ce moment,
Ma mère, il te suffit de savoir seulement
Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie:
Un édit les avait bannis de leur patrie,
Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrités,
Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garottés,
Sur une frêle barque échouée au rivage.
Les avaient à la mer poussés dans un orage.
Mais à peine l’esquif eut-il touché les flots,
Qu’au cantique, chanté par les saints matelots,
L’ouragan replia ses ailes frémissantes,
Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes,
Et qu’un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux,
Enveloppa l’esquif d’un cercle radieux!...
_Junia._ Mais c’était un prodige.
_Stella._ Un miracle, ma mère!
Leurs fers tombèrent seuls, l’eau cessa d’être amère,
Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert
D’une manne pareille à celle du desert;
C’est ainsi que, poussés par une main céleste,
Je les vis aborder.
_Junia._ Oh! dis vîte le reste!
_Stella._ A l’aube, trois d’entre eux quittèrent la maison:
Marthe prit le chemin qui mène à Tarascon,
Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,
Et celle qui resta ... _c’était la plus jolie_ [how truly French!],
Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour,
Demanda si les monts ou les bois d’alentour
Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde,
Qui la pût séparer à tout jamais du monde....
Aquila se souvint qu’il avait pénétré
Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignoré,
Grotte creusée aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes,
Où l’aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abîmes.
Il offrit cet asile, et dès le lendemain
Tous deux, pour l’y guider, nous étions en chemin.
Le soir du second jour nous touchâmes sa base:
Là, tombant à genoux dans une sainte extase,
Elle pria longtemps, puis vers l’antre inconnu,
Dénouant sa chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.
Nos prières, nos cris restèrent sans réponses:
Au milieu des cailloux, des épines, des ronces,
Nous la vîmes monter, un bâton à la main,
Et ce n’est qu’arrivée au terme du chemin,
Qu’enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine....
_Junia._ Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?
_Stella._ Madeline.’
Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore,
‘A bark drew near, that had nor sail nor oar; two women and two men
the vessel bore: each of that crew, ‘twas wondrous to behold, wore
round his head a ring of blazing gold; from which such radiance
glittered all around, that I was fain to look towards the ground.
And when once more I raised my frightened eyne, before me stood the
travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot that each befell,
at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon: the time will
come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now. Suffice it,
that from Syria’s land they came; an edict from their country
banished them. Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and
launched them in that vessel from the shore. They launched these
victims on the waters rude: nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for
food. As the doomed vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew
uplifts a sacred strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings;
the storm, awe-stricken, folds its quivering wings. A purer sun
appears the heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in radiance
bright.
_Junia._ Sure, ‘twas a prodigy.
_Stella._ A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell.
The salt sea-wave grew fresh; and, twice a day, manna (like that
which on the desert lay) covered the bark, and fed them on their
way. Thus, hither led, at Heaven’s divine behest, I saw them
land----
_Junia._ My daughter, tell the rest.
_Stella._ Three of the four our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha,
took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one
remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us if, i’ the woods
or mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear;
where she might hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin
knew of such a den; deep hidden in a mountain’s hoary breast, on
which the eagle builds his airy nest. And thither offered he the
saint to guide. Next day upon the journey forth we hied; and came,
at the second eve, with weary pace, unto the lonely mountain’s
rugged base. Here the worn traveller, falling on her knee, did pray
awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her sandals from her
feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No answer made
she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles and rude
stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did she
pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den.
Here, powerless and panting, fell she then.
_Junia._ What was her name, my daughter?
_Stella._ MAGDALEN.
Here the translator must pause--having no inclination to enter ‘the
tabernacle’ in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur
Dumas.
Something ‘tabernacular’ may be found in Dumas’s famous piece of _Don
Juan de Marana_. The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast
number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary, and little
angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)--on earth, under the
earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite;
and the plot, as it appears from a _dialogue_ between a good and a bad
angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a contest between
these two worthies for the possession of the soul of a member of the
family of Marana.
Don Juan de Marana not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by Mozart
and Molière, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but possesses
further qualities which render his character eminently fitting for stage
representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace and Lacenaire; he
blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the slightest provocation,
and without the most trifling remorse; he overcomes ladies of rigid
virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of no virtue at all; and the
poet, inspired by the contemplation of such a character, has depicted
his hero’s adventures and conversation with wonderful feeling and truth.
The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and
intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas’s, for
the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second act
our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his sister-in-law;
in the third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon
the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on
the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the
purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the
statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimised, and made
to behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he
has caused.
This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a
white sheet, preceded by a wax candle; and, having declared their names
and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:--
‘_Don Sandoval_ (_loquitur_). I am Don Sandoval d’Ojedo. I played
against Don Juan my fortune, the tomb of my fathers, and the heart
of my mistress; I lost all. I played against him my life, and I
lost it. Vengeance against the murderer! vengeance!--(_The candle
goes out._)’
_The candle goes out_, and an angel descends--a flaming sword in his
hand--and asks: ‘Is there no voice in favour of Don Juan?’ when lo! Don
Juan’s father (like one of those ingenious toys called
‘Jack-in-the-box’) jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his
son.
When Martha, the nun, returns, having prepared all things for her
elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.--‘I am no longer
your husband,’ says he, upon coming to himself; ‘I am no longer Don
Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you
must die!’
This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person
than an angel, an angel in disguise--the good spirit of the house of
Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings, and forfeiting
her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth,
and, if possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character, she
had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood at one
elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear, at the
other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her pious
counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don’s attention.
[Illustration]
In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats
her,--in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her
virtue,--and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the poor
creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company, might have
been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate angel, feels a
certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies up to heaven to ask
permission to remain with him on earth.
And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers
white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of Marana
upon her knees, uttering the following address:--
‘LE BON ANGE
Vierge, à qui le calice à la liqueur amère
Fut si souvent offert,
Mère, que l’on nomma la douloureuse mère,
Tant vous avez souffert!
Vous, dont les yeux divins, sur la terre des hommes,
Ont versé plus de pleurs
Que vos pieds n’ont depuis, dans le ciel où nous sommes,
Fait éclore de fleurs!
Vase d’élection, étoile matinale,
Miroir de pureté,
Vous qui priez pour nous, d’une voix virginale,
La suprême bonté;
A mon tour, aujourd’hui, bienheureuse Marie,
Je tombe à vos genoux;
Daignez donc m’écouter, car c’est vous que je prie,
Vous qui priez pour nous.’
Which may be thus interpreted:--
‘O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught
So often has been quaffed,
That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us
The Mother Dolorous!
Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe,
Upon the earth below,
Than ‘neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours,
Have risen flowers!
O beaming morning star! O chosen vase!
O mirror of all grace!
Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray
Man’s sins away;
Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!
Unto my sad complaint;
Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call,
Who hearest all.’
She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and
follow the fortunes of Don Juan;--and as there is one difficulty, or, to
use her own words,--
‘Mais, comme vous savez qu’aux voûtes éternelles,
Malgré moi, tend mon vol,
_Soufflez sur mon étoile et détachez mes ailes,
Pour m’enchaîner au sol_;’
her request is granted, her star is _blown out_ (O poetic allusion!),
and she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don
Juan!
The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be satisfied
as to the moral of this play; but is it not a very bitter satire upon
the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that
the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the vulgar wit
of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure
reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has
re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or
alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship over
public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his
clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a
little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbours across
the Channel, and at the kind of consideration in which they hold their
religion. Here is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put
sentiments in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He
shows heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails
himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed, as a vehicle
for a scene-painter’s skill, or an occasion for a handsome actress to
wear a new dress.
M. Dumas’s piece of _Kean_ is not quite so sublime; it was brought out
by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit
be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and
received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners. As
such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you
find a Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely
to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him,
especially the two present;--as for the Ambassadress, she prefers him to
her husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more
seducing person still--no less a person than the Prince of Wales! who
presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation
concerning Kean. ‘This man,’ says his Royal Highness, ‘is the very pink
of fashion. Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I myself only
an insignificant private gentleman: he has a reputation among ladies,
for which I sigh in vain; and spends an income twice as great as mine.’
This admirable historic touch at once paints the actor and the Prince;
the estimation in which the one was held, and the modest economy for
which the other was so notorious.
Then we have Kean, at a place called the _Trou de Charbon_, the
‘Coal-hole,’ where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a
fisty combat with a notorious boxer; this scene was received by the
audience with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the
journals, as a faultless picture of English manners. The ‘Coal-hole’
being on the banks of the Thames, a nobleman--_Lord Melbourn!_--has
chosen the tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have
their ship in waiting, in order to carry off a young lady, with whom his
lordship is enamoured. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick
of time, saves the innocent _Meess Anna_, and exposes the infamy of the
Peer;--a violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn
slinks away, disappointed, to meditate revenge. Keen’s triumphs continue
through all the acts; the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the
Prince becomes furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully
jealous. They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where,
unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels
ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly
insults the Prince of Wales, that his Royal Highness determines to send
him _to Botany Bay_. His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to
New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him,
previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!
[Illustration: THE GALLERY AT DEBURAU’S THEATRE SKETCHED FROM NATURE]
This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the
people of Paris; the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because
the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in
the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals,
success among women is at once the proof and the reward of virtue.
The sacred personage introduced in Dumas’s play, behind a cloud, figures
bodily in the piece of the _Massacre of the Innocents_, represented at
Paris last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume is
exactly that of Carlo-Dolce’s Madonna; and an ingenious fable is
arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the
Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters is
Jean le Précurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is
beheaded by the orders of that sovereign.
In the _Festin de Balthazar_ we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and
the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number
of captive Jews is seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer
enters, exclaiming, ‘Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jérusalem,’ and
the request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar’s Feast
is given in a grand tableau, after Martin’s picture. That painter, in
like manner, furnished scenes for the _Déluge_. Vast numbers of
schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower
classes delight in them. The famous _Juif Errant_, at the theatre of the
Porte St. Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success,
no doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres
have produced.
The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will
question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they
are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there
is, in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral. The
Boulevard writers don’t pretend to ‘tabernacles’ and divine gifts, like
Madame Sand and Dumas, before mentioned. If they take a story from the
sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with
the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably wicked,
or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and
philanthropic murderers, as their betters do. Vice is vice on the
Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars
out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life
of her child, making their remarks on the circumstances of the scene.
‘Ah, le gredin!’ growls an indignant countryman. ‘Quel monstre!’ says a
grisette, in a fury. You see very fat old men crying like babies; and,
like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and
audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially
are the former affected, that, at Franconi’s, where the battles of the
Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of
the mimic army, as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served,
with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted
to be an officer--an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may
rise to be a Colonel, or a General of Division; if ill, he is degraded
to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a
regiment of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the lowest depth,
however; nay, it is said that the men who perform these Cossack parts
receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers and old guard. They will
not consent to be beaten every night, even in play; to be pursued in
hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight against their beloved
Emperor. Surely there is fine hearty virtue in this, and pleasant
childlike simplicity.
So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened
classes is profoundly immoral and absurd, the drama of the common people
is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made notes of
one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and kindness in
them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or two favourite
points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast success at the
Porte St. Martin was _La Duchesse de la Vauballière_. The Duchess is the
daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and
then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballière, a terrible _roué_, the
farmer’s landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d’Orléans, the
Regent of France.
Now, the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense
altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but
Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his
dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who
compelled the pair to marry and make it up.
Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains
faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that,
beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her
husband and herself.
Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner:
he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters
into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he
determines to make away with her altogether.
For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor,
bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for
Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and, oh, horror! the doctor
turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that
he has been thus committing murder on his true love!
Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the heroine;
no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and,
accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth,
through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.
And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who,
after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge
in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous
notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his
dying day.
Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his
Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la
Vauballière; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was not
the eldest son of old La Vauballière, the former Duke; then another
deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballière (who seems to have been
a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence, the
present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and, finally,
Morisseau brings forward another document, which proves that the
_reg’lar_ Duke is no other than Adrian, the doctor!
Thus it is that love, law, and physic, combined, triumph over the horrid
machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.
_Hermann l’Ivrogne_ is another piece of the same order; and, though not
very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the
celebrated Captain Smith, of Halifax, who ‘took to drinking ratafia, and
thought of poor Miss Bailey,’--a woman and the bottle have been the
cause of Hermann’s ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced
from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives
himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force,
and not infidelity, has been the cause of his mistress’s ruin, the
reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the
_infâme ravisseur_. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and
excellently well acted, here ensues: Hermann proposes to the Count, on
the eve of their duel, that the survivor should bind himself to espouse
the unhappy Marie; but the Count declares himself to be already married,
and the student, finding a duel impossible (for his object was to
restore, at all events, the honour of Marie), now only thinks of his
revenge, and murders the Count. Presently, two parties of men enter
Hermann’s apartment; one is a company of students, who bring him the
news that he has obtained the prize of painting; the other the
policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the penalty of murder.
I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is
similarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an
aristocrat,--a wicked Count, or licentious Marquis,--who is brought to
condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good
reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of
the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which
they did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the
theatre lives upon traditions; and don’t let us be too scornful at such
simple legends that are handed down by the people, from race to race.
Vulgar prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against the
great is only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long,
therefore, may fat _épiciers_ blubber over mimic woes, and honest
_prolétaires_ shake their fists, shouting--‘Gredin, scélérat, monstre de
Marquis!’ and such republican cries.
Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of dislike
against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have we (the
writer has submitted to the public, in the preceding pages, a couple of
specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin), in which that
great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be miserably
tricked, humiliated, and disappointed! A play of this class, which, in
the midst of all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it,
was called _Le Maudit des Mers_. Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in
the midst of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers,
blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at beholding
an archangel with a sword, all covered with flaming resin, who told him
that, as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or too wicked, to
utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the seas until he could
find some being who would pray to Heaven for him!
Once, only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this
purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many acts,
describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable
Dutchman. Willing to go any lengths, in order to obtain this prayer,
he, in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of
Pizarro; and, in the third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau;
but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make
their appearance:--‘Treachery,’ says the spirit, ‘cannot lessen thy
punishment;--crime will not obtain thy release! _A la mer! à la mer!_’
and the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and
tempest-tossed, and sea-sick, for a hundred years more.
But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in
America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian
costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington,
he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the
curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with
angels on the decks, and ‘sweet little cherubs’ fluttering about the
shrouds and the poop, appears to receive him.
This piece was acted at Franconi’s, where, for once, an angel-ship was
introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirised
by our neighbours, who have some droll traditions regarding us. In one
of the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires
upon the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small
theatres exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and
Monck Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the
expense of John Bull. Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor
Hanneton, appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them
communicates to the public the philosophical observations which were
made in the course of his aërial tour.
‘On leaving Vauxhall,’ says his lordship, ‘we drank a bottle of Madeira,
as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few
biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours
we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds; lunch, bottled porter; at
Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold, cherry
brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought, with pity, of the
poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below; more bottled
porter; over Calais; dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near
Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night
confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The
sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle,
and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded
this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for
dinner.’
The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbours make many
better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays,
for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism,
concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man
of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress:--
‘Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale,
Est ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pâle,
C’est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;
On s’y couche à minuit, et l’on s’y lève tard;
Ses raouts tant vantés ne sont qu’une boxade,
Sur ses grands quais jamais échelle ou sérénade,
Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter
Qui passent sans lever le front à Westminster;
Et n’était sa forêt de mâts perçant la brume,
Sa tour dont à minuit le vieil œil s’allume,
Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illuminés bien plus,
Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j’ai lus,
Il n’en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus léthargique
Que cette nation qu’on nomme Britannique!’
The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is
Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months
in England, as an _attaché_ to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places
the heroine of his tale in a _petit réduit près le Strand_, ‘with a
green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you
fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the
perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!’ He next places her--
‘Dans un Square écarté, morne et couverte de givre,
Où se cache un Hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;’
and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is
truly unhappy in that village.
‘Arthur dessèche et meurt.--Dans la ville de Sterne,
Rien qu’en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer;
Il n’aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne,
Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le _soda-water_.[12]
_Liston_ ne le fait plus sourciller! Il rumine
Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un échiquier,
Contre le peuple anglais, les nègres, la vermine
Et les mille _cokneys_ du peuple boutiquier,
Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les pâtissières,
Les parieurs d’Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
La _quaterly_, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
il ne touche plus, hélas! un sou d’argent!
Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L’heureux poète!
‘L’heureux poète’ indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so
happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. ‘The
bath of Asia, with green jalousies,’ in which the lady dwells; ‘the old
hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely square;’--were ever such things
heard of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes, the
vermin, whom he meets in the street,--how great and happy are all these
discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and ‘gin,’
‘cokneys,’ and the ‘quaterly’ have not the least effect upon him! And
this gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires _Williams
Shakspear_, the ‘grave et vieux prophète,’ as he calls him, and never,
for an instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd.
I don’t know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England; but
his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in Kean
the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit, with a
speech beginning, ‘_My Lords and Gentlemen_;’ and a company of
Englishwomen are introduced (at the memorable Coal-hole), and they all
wear _pinafores_; as if the British female were in the invariable habit
of wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it. There
was another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject
of Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made to
play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a duel with
Lord Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of Lords was
represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen’s
favour. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from
shouting they proceed to pelting; and pasteboard brickbats and cabbages
came flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At
this unpleasant juncture, _Sir Hardinge_, the Secretary at War, rises
and calls in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the
ignominious fall of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!
The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of
conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the
solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the
perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them.
Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pig-tail, and
spangled court coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has,
invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather gaiters, and a long
white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was represented in the old
caricatures, after the peace, when Vernet designed him somewhat after
the following fashion.
[Illustration]
And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of the
_Naufrage de la Méduse_, the first act is laid on board an English
ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue, or green,
coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the colour
accurately), in little blue coats, and TOP-BOOTS!
* * * * *
Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any
more remarks. The force of blundering can go no farther. Would a
playwright or painter of the Chinese empire have stranger notions about
the barbarians than our neighbours, who are separated from us but by two
hours of salt water?
MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES
The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bric-à-brac shop of late
years; and its time-honoured walls have been covered with many thousand
yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on. I don’t know how
many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy visitor is now obliged to
march through, amidst a crowd of chattering Paris cockneys, who are
never tired of looking at the glories of the Grenadier Français; to the
chronicling of whose deeds this old palace of the old kings is now
altogether devoted. A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither
from Paris, bringing shoals of _badauds_ in its wake. The old _coucous_
are all gone, and their place knows them no longer. Smooth asphaltum
terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have
frightened them away from the pleasant station which they used to occupy
under the trees of the Champs Elysées; and though the old _coucous_ were
just the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever
constructed, one can’t help looking back to the days of their existence
with a tender regret, for there was pleasure, then, in the little trip
of three leagues; and who ever had pleasure in a railroad journey?--Does
any reader of this venture to say that, on such a voyage, he ever dared
to be pleasant? Do the most hardened stokers joke with one another?--I
don’t believe it. Look into every single car of the train, and you will
see that every single face is solemn. They take their seats gravely, and
are silent, for the most part, during the journey; they dare not look
out of window, for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes
whizzing by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down
train: they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness; through awful
pipes of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the bowels of
gentle mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on,
puffing and screaming. Does any man pretend to say that he _enjoys_ the
journey?--he might as well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he
bears it, but that is all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him,
for any exhibition of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at
his ease; but he is afraid, nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I
am sure Hannibal or Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a
car; there kept close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and
whirled along at this dizzy pace. You can’t stop, if you would;--you may
die, but you can’t stop; the engine may explode upon the road, and up
you go along with it; or, may be a bolter, and take a fancy to go down a
hill, or into a river: all this you must bear, for the privilege of
travelling twenty miles an hour.
This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to be so
merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance of the
cuckoos; and I would as lieve have for companions the statues that
lately took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of Deputies,
and stepped out in the Court of Versailles, as the most part of the
people who now travel on the railroad. The stone figures are not a whit
more cold and silent than these persons, who used to be, in the old
cuckoos, so talkative and merry. The prattling grisette and her swain
from the Ecole de Droit; the huge Alsacian carabinier, grim smiling
under his sandy moustaches and glittering brazen helmet; the jolly
nurse, in red calico, who had been to Paris to show mamma her darling
Lolo, or Guguste;--what merry companions used one to find squeezed into
the crazy old vehicles that formerly performed the journey! But the age
of horseflesh is gone--that of engineers, economists, and calculators
has succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for ever.
Why not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap defence of
nations, and unbought grace of life; that age of chivalry, which he
lamented, _à propos_ of a trip to Versailles, some half a century back?
Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and
successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear, and
whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was not more
bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than exists even in
our own happy days,--let us make a few moral and historical remarks upon
the town of Versailles, where, between railroad and _coucou_, we are
surely arrived by this time.
The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns. You pass, from the
railroad station, through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of
stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys,
and ragged old women, under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy
houses, palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life)
the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence
highborn duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids
to lovely Du Barri, and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches,
hot for the honour of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his
stockings when he rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors,
chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers are now
established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling
at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags
are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun;
oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking
in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the
wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, thirsty
stones.
[Illustration: THE CHEAP DEFENCE OF NATIONS
A NATIONAL GUARD ON DUTY]
After pacing, for some time, through such dismal streets, we _déboucher_
on the _grand place_; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the
glories of France. In the midst of the great, lonely plain, this famous
residence of King Louis looks low and mean.--Honoured pile! time was
when tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the
gate;--fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women, from Paris, broke
through the charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you
through it for a penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the
palace.
We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are
portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about these
miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy
to Waterloo,--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.,--all the mistresses of his
successor,--and all the great men who have flourished since the French
empire began. Military heroes are most of these: fierce constables in
shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in
bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities,
dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in
African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the
good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the greater part of ‘all the
glories’ of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these
military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that
they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage,
filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but it.
Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the
walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any
family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has not
been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore:
but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford
matter for a whole library of sermons. The cheap defence of nations
expended a thousand millions in the erection of this magnificent
dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in the intervals of their warlike
labours, to level hills, or pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build
aqueducts, and transplant woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long
canals. A vast garden grew up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace
in the garden, and a stately city round the palace: the city was peopled
with parasites, who daily came to do worship before the creator of these
wonders--the Great King. ‘Dieu seul est grand,’ said courtly Massillon;
but next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his
vicegerent here upon earth--God’s lieutenant-governor of the
world,--before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and shade
their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun, which
shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to bear.
Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--or,
rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out
of his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendours, viz. in his
cinnamon-coloured coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramid of a
wig;[13] his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the
ground, ‘that he scarcely seemed to touch;’ when he came out, blazing
upon the dukes and duchesses that waited his rising,--what could the
latter do but cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble?--And did he not
himself believe, as he stood there, on his high heels, under his
ambrosial periwig, that there was something in him more than
man--something above Fate?
This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, from
his terrace, before his gloomy palace of St. Germains, he could catch a
glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St. Denis, where
his race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a sublime
condescension, ‘Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am mortal.’
Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed
that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight
of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty’s eyes; and is said, by the
legend, to have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.
In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,--with
guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys,
Fénelons, Molières, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois,
Colberts,--transported himself to his new palace: the old one being left
for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should come.
And when the time did come, and James sought his brother’s kingdom, it
is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and
promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the
_canaille_ had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle;
and the courtiers said to one another reverently,[14] ‘The Lord said
unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies my
footstool.’ There was no blasphemy in the speech; on the contrary, it
was gravely said, by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame
to the latter to compare his Majesty with God Almighty. Indeed, the
books of the time will give one a strong idea how general was this
Louis-worship. I have just been looking at one, which was written by an
honest Jesuit and _protégé_ of Père la Chaise, who dedicates a book of
medals to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go almost as
far in print. He calls our famous monarch ‘Louis le Grand:--1,
l’invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquérant; 4, la merveille de son
siècle; 5, la terreur de sea ennemis; 6, l’amour de ses peuples; 7,
l’arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, l’admiration de l’univers; 9,
et digne d’en être le maître; 10, le modèle d’un héros achevé; 11, digne
de l’immortalité, et de la vénération de tous les siècles!’
A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good honest judgment upon the
great King! In thirty years more--1. The invincible had been beaten a
vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman,
who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite
forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies
(for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that
may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in
turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as
scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been,
before or since. 7. The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb
ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers’ ante-chambers. 8.
Is again a general term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe,
was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all
but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar way. And 11. The man
worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend
to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to mutter prayers
at his bedside, and croaking Jesuits to prepare him,[15] with Heaven
knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that
Great Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course
of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend,
and he ruined and left her. Poor La Vallière, what a sad tale is yours!
‘Look at this Galerie des Glaces,’ cried Monsieur Vatout, staggering
with surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred and forty-two
feet long, and forty high; ‘here it was that Louis displayed all the
grandeur of Royalty; and such was the splendour of his Court, and the
luxury of the times, that this immense room could hardly contain the
crowd of courtiers that pressed around the monarch.’ Wonderful!
wonderful! Eight thousand four hundred and sixty square feet of
courtiers! Give a square yard to each, and you have a matter of three
thousand of them. Think of three thousand courtiers per day, and all the
chopping and changing of them for near forty years; some of them dying;
some getting their wishes and retiring to their provinces to enjoy their
plunder; some disgraced, and going home to pine away out of the light of
the sun;[16] new ones perpetually arriving,--pushing, squeezing, for
their place, in the crowded Galerie des Glaces. A quarter of a million
of noble countenances, at the very least, must those glasses have
reflected. Rouge, diamonds, ribands, patches upon the faces of smiling
ladies: towering periwigs, sleek shaven crowns, tufted moustaches,
scars, and grizzled whiskers, worn by ministers, priests, dandies, and
grim old commanders.--So many faces, O ye gods! and every one of them
lies! So many tongues, vowing devotion and respectful love to the great
King in his six-inch wig; and only poor La Vallière’s amongst them all
which had a word of truth for the dull ears of Louis of Bourbon.
‘Quand j’aurai de la peine aux Carmélites,’ says unhappy Louise, about
to retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand Galerie des
Glaces, ‘je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens-là m’ont fait
souffrir!’--A troop of Bossuets inveighing against the vanities of
Courts could not preach such an affecting sermon. What years of anguish
and wrong has the poor thing suffered, before these sad words came from
her gentle lips! How these courtiers have bowed and flattered, kissed
the ground on which she trod, fought to have the honour of riding by her
carriage, written sonnets, and called her goddess: who in the days of
her prosperity was kind and beneficent, gentle and compassionate to all;
then (on a certain day, when it is whispered that his Majesty hath cast
the eyes of his gracious affection upon another) behold the three
thousand courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.--‘O divine
Athenais! what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.--_That_ a
goddess?--a pretty goddess forsooth;--a witch, rather, who, for a while,
kept our gracious monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she
walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond
earrings!’[17] The some tale may be told of many more deserted
mistresses; and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of herself one
day. Meantime, while La Vallière’s heart is breaking, the model of a
finished hero is yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero
should. _Let_ her heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance;
what right has she to repent? Away with her to her convent! She goes,
and the finished hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism
to have reached! Our Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean
people were beyond him: his friends died, his mistresses left him; his
children, one by one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis is
not moved in the slightest degree! As how, indeed, should a god be
moved?
I have often liked to think about this strange character in the world,
who moved in it, bearing about a full belief in his own infallibility;
teaching his generals the art of war, his ministers the science of
government, his wits taste, his courtiers dress; ordering deserts to
become gardens, turning villages into palaces at a breath; and indeed
the august figure of the man, as he towers upon his throne, cannot fail
to inspire one with respect and awe:--how grand those flowing locks
appear; how awful that sceptre; how magnificent those flowing robes! In
Louis, surely, if in any one, the majesty of kinghood is represented.
But a king is not every inch a king, for all the poet may say; and it is
curious to see how much precise majesty there is in that majestic figure
of Ludovicus Rex. In the plate opposite, we have endeavoured to make the
exact calculation. The idea of kingly dignity is equally strong in the
two outer figures; and you see, at once, that majesty is made out of the
wig, the high-heeled shoes, and cloak, all fleur-de-lis bespangled. As
for the little, lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two, in
a jacket and breeches, there is no majesty in _him_ at any rate; and yet
he has just stept out of that very suit of clothes. Put the wig and
shoes on him, and he is six feet high;--the other fripperies, and he
stands before you majestic, imperial, and heroic! Thus do barbers and
cobblers make the gods that we worship: for do we not all worship him?
Yes; though we all know him to be stupid, heartless, short, of doubtful
personal courage, worship and admire him we must; and have set up, in
our hearts, a grand image of him, endowed with wit, magnanimity, valour,
and enormous heroical stature.
And what magnanimous acts are attributed to him! or, rather, how
differently do we view the actions of heroes and common men, and find
that the same thing shall be a wonderful virtue in the former, which, in
the latter, is only an ordinary act of duty! Look at yonder window of
the King’s chamber;--one morning a Royal cane was seen whirling out of
it, and plumped among the courtiers and guard of honour below. King
Louis had absolutely, and with his own hand, flung his own cane out of
the window, ‘because,’ said he, ‘I won’t demean myself by striking a
gentleman!’ Oh, miracle of magnanimity! Lauzun was not caned, because
he besought Majesty to keep his promise,--only imprisoned for ten years
in Pignerol, along with banished Fouquet;--and a pretty story is
Fouquet’s, too.
[Illustration: AN HISTORICAL STUDY
REX LUDOVICUS LUDOVICUS REX]
Out of the window the King’s august head was one day thrust, when old
Condé was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. ‘Don’t
hurry yourself, my cousin,’ cries Magnanimity; ‘one who has to carry so
many laurels cannot walk fast.’ At which all the courtiers, lackeys,
mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions clasp their hands and
burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For a
century and three-quarters have not all the books that speak of
Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?--‘Don’t hurry yourself,
my cousin!’ O admirable King and Christian! what a pitch of
condescension is here, that the greatest King of all the world should go
for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman,
worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!
What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of
mankind, that histories like these should be found to interest and awe
them. Till the world’s end, most likely, this story will have its place
in the history-books; and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly
be moved by it. I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night
pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he had done an action of
sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and sweet dreams,--especially if
he had taken a light supper, and not too vehemently attacked his _en cas
de nuit_.
That famous adventure, in which the _en cas de nuit_ was brought into
use, for the sake of one Poquelin, _alias_ Molière:--how often has it
been described and admired? This Poquelin, though King’s _valet de
chambre_, was by profession a vagrant; and as such looked coldly on by
the great lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him. Majesty
hearing of this, ordered his _en cas de nuit_ to be placed on the table,
and positively cut off a wing, with his own knife and fork, for
Poquelin’s use. O thrice happy Jean Baptiste! The King has actually sate
down with him cheek by jowl, had the liver-wing of a fowl, and given
Molière the gizzard; put his imperial legs under the same mahogany, _sub
iisdem trabibus_. A man, after such an honour, can look for little else
in this world: he has tasted the utmost conceivable earthly happiness,
and has nothing to do now but to fold his arms and look up to heaven,
and sing ‘Nunc dimittis’ and die.
Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride;
but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped
it. If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only
because thousands of people had told him so--people only half liars,
too; who did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man
almost as much as they said they did. If, when he appeared in his
five-hundred-million coat, as he is said to have done, before the
Siamese Ambassadors, the courtiers began to shade their eyes and long
for parasols, as if this Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it
is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling
about his person; he had half a million of eager testimonies to this
idea. Who was to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life
did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution,
that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and
that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of triumphs.
‘On n’est plus heureux à notre âge,’ says the old man, to one of his old
generals, welcoming Tallard, after his defeat; and he rewards him with
honours, as if he had come from a victory. There is, if you will,
something magnanimous in this welcome to his conquered general, this
stout protest against Fate. Disaster succeeds disaster; armies after
armies march out to meet fiery Eugene and that dogged fatal Englishman,
and disappear in the smoke of the enemies’ cannon. Even at Versailles
you may almost hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have
forgotten their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old
Louis plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender. All the gold and
silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all the
jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely; and,
bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one, promises, if his
general is defeated, to place himself at the head of his nobles, and die
King of France. Indeed, after a man, for sixty years, has been
performing the part of a hero, some of the real heroic stuff must have
entered into his composition, whether he would or not. When the great
Elliston was enacting the part of King George the Fourth, in the play of
_The Coronation_, at Drury Lane, the galleries applauded very loudly his
suavity and majestic demeanour, at which Elliston, inflamed by the
popular loyalty (and by some fermented liquor in which, it is said, he
was in the habit of indulging), burst into tears, and, spreading out his
arms, exclaimed: ‘Bless ye, bless ye, my people!’ Don’t let us laugh at
his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people who clapped hands and yelled
‘Bravo!’ in praise of him. The tipsy old manager did really feel that he
was a hero at that moment; and the people, wild with delight and
attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches, surely were uttering the
true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in reverencing these and
other articles of costume. In this fifth act, then, of his long Royal
drama, old Louis performed his part excellently; and when the curtain
drops upon him, he lies, dressed majestically, in a becoming kingly
attitude, as a king should.
The King his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much
occasion for moralising: perhaps the neighbouring Parc aux Cerfs would
afford better illustrations of his reign. The life of his
great-grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have frightened
Louis the Well-beloved; who understood that loneliness is one of the
necessary conditions of divinity, and, being of a jovial companionable
turn, aspired not beyond manhood. Only in the matter of ladies did he
surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did David. War he eschewed, as his
grandfather bade him; and his simple taste found little in this world to
enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolate and the frying of pancakes. Look,
here is the room called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands,
he made his mistress’s breakfast--here is the little door through which,
from her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came
stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man. But of
women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palled upon
him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign;--after having
exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his
hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and
stale; used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the national purse
had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant
ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his
ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory; indeed it was high time
that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of
his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus
of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were
raised to his memory.
As for the courtiers--the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of
life--they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as the
way is. When the King dies, the officer appointed opens his chamber
window, and calling out into the court below, _Le Roi est mort_, breaks
his cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming _Vive le Roi!_
Straightway all the loyal nobles begin yelling _Vive le Roi!_ and the
officer goes round solemnly and sets yonder great clock in the Cour de
Marbre to the hour of the King’s death. This old Louis had solemnly
ordained; but the Versailles clock was only set twice: there was no
shouting of _Vive le Roi_ when the successor of Louis XV. mounted to
heaven to join his sainted family.
Strange stories of the deaths of kings have always been very recreating
and profitable to us: what a fine one is that of the death of Louis XV.,
as Madame Campan tells it! One night the gracious monarch came back ill
from Trianon; the disease turned out to be the small-pox; so violent
that ten people of those who had to enter his chamber caught the
infection and died. The whole Court flies from him; only poor old fat
Mesdames the King’s daughters persist in remaining at his bedside, and
praying for his soul’s welfare.
On the 10th May 1774, the whole Court had assembled at the château; the
Œil de Bœuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as soon
as the King had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people of
the stables, with those who watched in the King’s room, that a lighted
candle should be placed in a window, and should be extinguished as soon
as he had ceased to live. The candle was put out. At that signal,
guards, pages, and squires mounted on horseback, and everything was made
ready for departure. The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting
together for the news of the King’s demise. _An immense noise, as if of
thunder, was heard in the next room_; it was the crowd of courtiers, who
were deserting the dead King’s apartment in order to pay their court to
the new power of Louis XVI. Madame de Noailles entered, and was the
first to salute the Queen by her title of Queen of France, and begged
their Majesties to quit their apartments to receive the princes and
great lords of the Court desirous to pay their homage to the new
sovereigns. Leaning on her husband’s arm, a handkerchief to her eyes, in
the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette received these first
visits. On quitting the chamber where the dead King lay, the Duc de
Villequier bade M. Andervillé, first surgeon of the King, to open and
embalm the body: it would have been certain death to the surgeon. ‘I am
ready, sir,’ says he; ‘but, whilst I am operating, you must hold the
head of the corpse: your charge demands it.’ The Duke went away without
a word, and the body was neither opened nor embalmed. A few humble
domestics and poor workmen watched by the remains, and performed the
last offices to their master. The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be
poured into the coffin.
They huddled the King’s body into a postchaise; and in this deplorable
equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis the Well-beloved was
carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to Saint-Denis, and then
thrown into the tomb of the kings of France!
If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roofs
of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself,
by gazing upon the doings of all the townspeople below with a telescope.
Behold that balcony where, one morning, he, his Queen, and the little
Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their side, who
kissed her Majesty’s hand, and protected her; and then, lovingly
surrounded by his people, the King got into a coach and came to Paris:
nor did his Majesty ride much in coaches after that.
There is a portrait of the King, in the upper galleries, clothed in red
and gold, riding a fat horse, brandishing a sword, on which the word
‘Justice’ is inscribed, and looking remarkably stupid and uncomfortable.
You see that the horse will throw him at the very first fling; and as
for the sword, it never was made for such hands as his, which were good
at holding a corkscrew or a carving-knife, but not clever at the
management of weapons of war. Let those pity him who will: call him
saint and martyr if you please; but a martyr to what principle was he?
Did he frankly support either party in his kingdom, or cheat and tamper
with both? He might have escaped, but he must have his supper, and so
his family was butchered, and his kingdom lost, and he had his bottle of
Burgundy in comfort at Varennes. A single charge upon the fatal tenth of
August, and the monarchy might have been his once more; but he is so
tender-hearted, that he lets his friends be murdered before his eyes
almost: or, at least, when he has turned his back upon his duty and his
kingdom, and has skulked for safety into the reporters’ box at the
National Assembly. There were hundreds of brave men who died that day,
and were martyrs, if you will: poor neglected tenth-rate courtiers, for
the most part, who had forgotten old slights and disappointments, and
left their places of safety to come and die, if need were, sharing in
the supreme hour of the monarchy. Monarchy was a great deal too humane
to fight along with these, and so left them to the pikes of Santerre and
the mercy of the men of the Sections. But we are wandering a good ten
miles from Versailles, and from the deeds which Louis XVI. performed
there.
He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith, that he
might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have
earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys.
Those who will, may see the workshop where he employed many useful
hours; Madame Elizabeth was at prayers; meanwhile, the Queen was making
pleasant parties with her ladies; Monsieur the Count d’Artois was
learning to dance on the tight-rope; and Monsieur de Provence was
cultivating _l’eloquence du billet_ and studying his favourite Horace.
It is said that each member of the august family succeeded remarkably
well in his or her pursuits: big Monsieur’s little notes are still
cited. At a minuet or sillabub, poor Antoinette was unrivalled; and
Charles, on the tight-rope, was so graceful and so _gentil_, that Madame
Saqui might envy him. The time only was out of joint. Oh, cursed spite,
that ever such harmless creatures as these were bidden to right it!
A walk to the Little Trianon is both pleasing and moral: no doubt the
reader has seen the pretty fantastical gardens which environ it; the
groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells
you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette to
retire, with her favourite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss
village are pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of the place
does not fail to point out the different cottages which surround the
piece of water, and tell the names of the Royal masqueraders who
inhabited each. In the long cottage close upon the lake dwelt the
Seigneur du Village, no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the
Dauphin, was the Bailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the
Count d’Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Condé,
who enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other _rôle_, for it
does not signify much); near him was the Prince de Roham, who was the
Aumônier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was under the
charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself.
I forget whether Monsieur, the fat Count of Provence, took any share of
this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors
of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate had
such dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of
their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall
poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose, of a
sudden, some conjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them,
and foretells to them the woes that are about to come. ‘You, Monsieur
l’Aumônier, the descendant of a long line of princes, the passionate
admirer of that fair Queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of
her ruin and your own,[18] and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son
of the Condés, shall live long enough to see your Royal race overthrown,
and shall die by the hands of a hangman.[19] You, oldest son of St.
Louis, shall perish by the executioner’s axe; that beautiful head, O
Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever.’ ‘They shall kill me
first,’ says Lamballe, at the Queen’s side. ‘Yes, truly,’ replies the
soothsayer, ‘for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who
love her.’[20] ‘And,’ cries Monsieur d’Artois, ‘do I not love my sister
too? I pray you not to omit me in your prophecies.’
To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says scornfully, ‘You may look forward to
fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You
shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not
the worthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile:
you shall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you and
your race; and you shall return home over half a million of human
corpses, that have been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as
great as the greatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest
enemy shall bring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to be
chained by such a paltry yoke as you can put on her; you shall be a
tyrant, but in will only, and shall have a sceptre, but to see it robbed
from your hand.’
‘And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?’ asked Monsieur the
Count d’Artois.
* * * * *
This I cannot say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallen
asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at this
instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering
of national guards, lancers, and outriders, in red. HIS MAJESTY LOUIS
PHILIPPE was going to pay a visit to the palace, which contains several
pictures of his own glorious actions, and which has been dedicated, by
him, to All the Glories of France.
THE END
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
OF 1842
TO DR.
CHARLES LEVER
OF TEMPLEOGUE HOUSE, NEAR DUBLIN
MY DEAR LEVER,
Harry Lorrequer needs no complimenting in a dedication; and I would not
venture to inscribe these volumes to the Editor of the _Dublin
University Magazine_, who, I fear, must disapprove of a great deal which
they contain.
But allow me to dedicate my little book to a good Irishman (the hearty
charity of whose visionary redcoats, some substantial personages in
black might imitate to advantage), and to a friend from whom I have
received a hundred acts of kindness and cordial hospitality.
Laying aside for a moment the travelling title of Mr. Titmarsh, let me
acknowledge these favours in my own name, and subscribe myself, my dear
Lever,
Most sincerely and gratefully yours,
W. M. THACKERAY.
LONDON, _April 27, 1843_.
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
CHAPTER I
A SUMMER DAY IN DUBLIN, OR THERE AND THEREABOUTS
The coach that brings the passenger by wood and mountain, by brawling
waterfall and gloomy plain, by the lonely lake of Festiniog, and across
the swinging world’s-wonder of a Menai Bridge, through dismal Anglesea
to dismal Holyhead--the Birmingham mail,--manages matters so cleverly,
that after ten hours’ ride the traveller is thrust incontinently on
board the packet, and the steward says there’s no use in providing
dinner on board because the passage is so short.
That is true; but why not give us half-an-hour on shore? Ten hours spent
on a coach-box render the dinner question one of extreme importance; and
as the packet reaches Kingstown at midnight, when all the world is
asleep, the inn-larders locked up, and the cook in bed; and as the mail
is not landed until five in the morning (at which hour the passengers
are considerately awakened by a great stamping and shouting overhead),
might not Lord Lowther give us one little half-hour? Even the steward
agreed that it was a useless and atrocious tyranny; and, indeed, after a
little demur, produced a half-dozen of fried eggs, a feeble makeshift
for a dinner.
Our passage across from the Head was made in a rain so pouring and
steady, that sea and coast were entirely hidden from us, and one could
see very little beyond the glowing tip of the cigar which remained
alight nobly in spite of the weather. When the gallant exertions of that
fiery spirit were over for ever, and, burning bravely to the end, it had
breathed its last in doing its master service, all became black and
cheerless around; the passengers had dropped off one by one, preferring
to be dry and ill below rather than wet and squeamish above; even the
mate, with his gold-laced cap (who is so astonishingly like Mr. Charles
Dickens, that he might pass for that gentleman)--even the mate said he
would go to his cabin and turn in. So there remained nothing for it but
to do as all the world had done.
Hence it was impossible to institute the comparison between the Bay of
Naples and that of Dublin (the Bee of Neeples the former is sometimes
called in this country), where I have heard the likeness asserted in a
great number of societies and conversations. But how could one see the
Bay of Dublin in the dark? and how, supposing one could see it, should a
person behave who has never seen the Bay of Naples? It is but to take
the similarity for granted, and remain in bed till morning.
When everybody was awakened at five o’clock by the noise made upon the
removal of the mail-bags, there was heard a cheerless dribbling and
pattering overhead, which led one to wait still further until the rain
should cease. At length the steward said the last boat was going ashore,
and receiving half a crown for his own services (the regular tariff),
intimated likewise that it was the custom for gentlemen to compliment
the stewardess with a shilling, which ceremony was also complied with.
No doubt she is an amiable woman, and deserves any sum of money. As for
inquiring whether she merited it or not in this instance, that surely is
quite unfair. A traveller who stops to inquire the deserts of every
individual claimant of a shilling on his road, had best stay quiet at
home. If we only got what we _deserved_,--Heaven save us!--many of us
might whistle for a dinner.
A long pier, with a steamer or two at hand, and a few small vessels
lying on either side of the jetty; a town irregularly built, with many
handsome terraces, some churches, and showy-looking hotels; a few people
straggling on the beach; two or three cars at the railroad station,
which runs along the shore as far as Dublin; the sea stretching
interminably eastward; to the north the Hill of Howth, lying grey behind
the mist; and, directly under his feet, upon the wet, black, shining,
slippery deck, an agreeable reflection of his own legs, disappearing
seemingly in the direction of the cabin from which he issues; are the
sights which a traveller may remark on coming on deck at Kingstown pier
on a wet morning--let us say on an _average_ morning; for according to
the statement of well-informed natives, the Irish day is more often
rainy than otherwise. A hideous obelisk, stuck upon four fat balls, and
surmounted with a crown on a cushion (the latter were no bad emblems
perhaps of the monarch in whose honour they were raised), commemorates
the sacred spot at which George IV. _quitted_ Ireland: you are landed
here from the steamer; and a carman, who is dawdling in the
neighbourhood, with a straw in his mouth, comes leisurely up to ask
whether you’ll go to Dublin? Is it natural indolence, or the effect of
despair because of the neighbouring railroad, which renders him so
indifferent?--He does not even take the straw out of his mouth as he
proposes the question, and seems quite careless as to the answer.
He said he would take me to Dublin ‘in three quarthers,’ as soon as we
began a parley; as to the fare, he would not hear of it--he said he
would leave it to my honour; he would take me for nothing. Was it
possible to refuse such a genteel offer? The times are very much changed
since those described by the facetious Jack Hinton, when the carmen
tossed up for the passenger, and those who won him took him; for the
remaining cars on the stand did not seem to take the least interest in
the bargain, or offer to overdrive or underbid their comrade in any way.
Before that day, so memorable for joy and sorrow, for rapture at
receiving its monarch and tearful grief at losing him, when George IV.
came and left the maritime resort of the citizens of Dublin, it bore a
less genteel name than that which it owns at present, and was called
Dunleary. After that glorious event Dunleary disdained to be Dunleary
any longer, and became Kingstown henceforward and for ever. Numerous
terraces and pleasure-houses have been built in the place--they stretch
row after row along the banks of the sea, and rise one above another on
the hill. The rents of these houses are said to be very high; the Dublin
citizens crowd into them in summer; and a great source of pleasure and
comfort must it be to them to have the fresh sea-breezes and prospects
so near to the metropolis.
The better sort of houses are handsome and spacious; but the fashionable
quarter is yet in an unfinished state, for enterprising architects are
always beginning new roads, rows and terraces; nor are those already
built by any means complete. Besides the aristocratic part of the town
is a commercial one, and nearer to Dublin stretch lines of low cottages
which have not a Kingstown look at all, but are evidently of the
Dunleary period. It is quite curious to see in the streets where the
shops are, how often the painter of the signboards begins with big
letters, and ends, for want of space, with small; and the Englishman
accustomed to the thriving neatness and regularity which characterise
towns, great and small, in his own country, can’t fail to notice the
difference here. The houses have a battered rakish look, and seem going
to ruin before their time. As seamen of all nations come hither who have
made no vow of temperance, there are plenty of liquor-shops still, and
shabby cigar-shops, and shabby milliners’ and tailors’ with fly-blown
prints of old fashions. The bakers and apothecaries make a great brag of
their calling, and you see MEDICAL HALL, or PUBLIC BAKERY, _BALLYRAGGET
FLOUR-STORE_ (or whatever the name may be) pompously inscribed over very
humble tenements. Some comfortable grocers’ and butchers’ shops, and
numbers of shabby sauntering people, the younger part of whom are
bare-legged and bareheaded, make up the rest of the picture which the
stranger sees as his car goes jingling through the street.
After the town come the suburbs of pleasure-houses; low, one-storied
cottages for the most part; some neat and fresh; some that have passed
away from the genteel state altogether, and exhibiting downright
poverty; some in a state of transition, with broken windows and pretty
romantic names upon tumbledown gates. Who lives in them? One fancies
that the chairs and tables inside are broken, and the teapot on the
breakfast-table has no spout, and the tablecloth is ragged and sloppy,
and the lady of the house is in dubious curl-papers, and the gentleman
with an imperial to his chin and a flaring dressing-gown all ragged at
the elbows.
To be sure, a traveller who in ten minutes can see not only the outsides
of houses, but the interiors of the same, must have remarkably keen
sight; and it is early yet to speculate. It is clear, however, that
these are pleasure-houses for a certain class; and looking at the
houses, one can’t but fancy the inhabitants resemble them somewhat. The
car, on its road to Dublin, passes by numbers of these--by more
shabbiness than a Londoner will see in the course of his home
peregrinations for a year.
The capabilities of the country, however, are very, very great, and in
many instances have been taken advantage of; for you see, besides the
misery, numerous handsome houses and parks along the road, having fine
lawns and woods, and the sea in our view, at a quarter of an hour’s ride
from Dublin. It is the continual appearance of this sort of wealth which
makes the poverty more striking; and thus between the two (for there is
no vacant space of fields between Kingstown and Dublin) the car reaches
the city. There is but little commerce on this road, which was also in
extremely bad repair. It is neglected for the sake of its thriving
neighbour the railroad, on which a dozen pretty little stations
accommodate the inhabitants of the various villages through which we
pass.
The entrance to the capital is very handsome. There is no bustle and
throng of carriages, as in London; but you pass by numerous rows of neat
houses, fronted with gardens, and adorned with all sorts of gay-looking
creepers. Pretty market-gardens, with trim beds of plants and shining
glass-houses, give the suburbs a _riante_ and cheerful look; and,
passing under the arch of the railway, we are in the city itself. Hence
you come upon several old-fashioned, well-built, airy, stately streets,
and through Fitzwilliam Square, a noble place, the garden of which is
full of flowers and foliage. The leaves are green, and not black as in
similar places in London; the red-brick houses tall and handsome.
Presently the car stops before an extremely big red house, in that
extremely large square, Stephen’s Green, where Mr. O’Connell says there
is one day or other to be a Parliament. There is room enough for that,
or for any other edifice which fancy or patriotism may have a mind to
erect, for part of one of the sides of the square is not yet built, and
you see the fields and the country beyond.
* * * * *
This then is the chief city of the aliens.--The hotel to which I had
been directed is a respectable old edifice, much frequented by families
from the country, and where the solitary traveller may likewise find
society. For he may either use the Shelburne as an hotel or a
boarding-house, in which latter case he is comfortably accommodated at
the very moderate daily charge of six-and-eight-pence. For this charge a
copious breakfast is provided for him in the coffee-room, a perpetual
luncheon is likewise there spread, a plentiful dinner is ready at six
o’clock; after which, there is a drawing-room and a rubber of whist,
with _tay_ and coffee and cakes in plenty to satisfy the largest
appetite. The hotel is majestically conducted by clerks and other
officers; the landlord himself does not appear, after the honest
comfortable English fashion, but lives in a private mansion hard by,
where his name may be read inscribed on a brass-plate, like that of any
other private gentleman.
A woman melodiously crying ‘Dublin Bay herrings’ passed just as we came
up to the door, and as that fish is famous throughout Europe, I seized
the earliest opportunity and ordered a broiled one for breakfast. It
merits all its reputation: and in this respect I should think the Bay of
Dublin is far superior to its rival of Naples. Are there any herrings in
Naples Bay? Dolphins there may be; and Mount Vesuvius, to be sure, is
bigger than even the Hill of Howth: but a dolphin is better in a sonnet
than at a breakfast, and what poet is there that, at certain periods of
the day, would hesitate in his choice between the two?
With this famous broiled herring the morning papers are served up; and a
great part of these, too, gives opportunity of reflection to the
new-comer, and shows him how different this country is from his own.
Some hundred years hence, when students want to inform themselves of the
history of the present day, and refer to files of _Times_ and
_Chronicle_ for the purpose, I think it is possible that they will
consult, not so much those luminous and philosophical leading articles
which call our attention at present both by the majesty of their
eloquence and the largeness of their type, but that they will turn to
those parts of the journals into which information is squeezed into the
smallest possible print, to the advertisements, namely, the law and
police reports, and to the instructive narratives supplied by that
ill-used body of men who transcribe knowledge at the rate of a penny a
line.
The papers before me (the _Morning Register_, Liberal and Roman
Catholic; _Saunders’s News-Letter_, neutral and Conservative) give a
lively picture of the movement of city and country on this present
fourth day of July, and the Englishman can scarcely fail, as he reads
them, to note many small points of difference existing between his own
country and this. How do the Irish amuse themselves in the capital? The
love for theatrical exhibitions is evidently not very great. Theatre
Royal--Miss Kemble and the Sonnambula, an Anglo-Italian importation.
Theatre Royal, Abbey Street--The Temple of Magic and the Wizard, last
week. Adelphi Theatre, Great Brunswick Street--The Original Seven
Lancashire Bell-ringers: a delicious excitement indeed! Portobello
Gardens--‘THE LAST ERUPTION BUT SIX,’ says the advertisement in
capitals. And, finally, ‘Miss Hayes will give her first and farewell
concert at the Rotunda, previous to leaving her native country.’ Only
one instance of Irish talent do we read of, and that, in a desponding
tone, announces its intention of quitting its native country. All the
rest of the pleasures of the evening are importations from cockney-land.
The Sonnambula from Covent Garden, the Wizard from the Strand, the Seven
Lancashire Bell-ringers, from Islington or the City Road, no doubt; and
as for ‘The last Eruption but Six,’ it has _erumped_ near the Elephant
and Castle any time these two years, until the cockneys would wonder at
it no longer.
The commercial advertisements are but few--a few horses and cars for
sale; some flaming announcements of insurance companies; some
‘emporiums’ of Scotch tweeds and English broadcloths; an auction for
damaged sugar; and an estate or two for sale. They lie in the columns
languidly, and at their ease as it were: how different from the throng,
and squeeze, and bustle of the commercial part of a London paper, where
every man (except Mr. George Robins) states his case as briefly as
possible, because thousands more are to be heard besides himself, and as
if he had no time for talking!
The most active advertisers are the schoolmasters. It is now the happy
time of the Midsummer holidays; and the pedagogues make wonderful
attempts to encourage parents, and to attract fresh pupils for the
ensuing half-year. Of all these announcements that of MADAME SHANAHAN (a
delightful name) is perhaps the most brilliant. ‘To Parents and
Guardians.--Paris.--Such parents and guardians as may wish to entrust
their children for education _in its fullest extent_ to MADAME SHANAHAN,
_can have the advantage of being conducted to Paris_ by her brother, the
Rev. J. P. O’Reilly, of Church Street Chapel:’ which admirable
arrangement carries the parents to Paris and leaves the children in
Dublin. Ah, Madame, you may take a French title; but your heart is still
in your country, and you are to the _fullest extent_ an Irishwoman
still!
Fond legends are to be found in Irish books regarding places where you
may now see a round tower and a little old chapel, twelve feet square,
where famous universities are once said to have stood, and which have
accommodated myriads of students. Mrs. Hall mentions Glendalough, in
Wicklow, as one of these places of learning; nor can the fact be
questioned, as the universities existed hundreds of years since, and no
sort of records are left regarding them. A century hence some antiquary
may light upon a Dublin paper, and form marvellous calculations
regarding the state of education in the country. For instance, at
Bective-House seminary, conducted by Dr. J. L. Burke, Ex-Scholar T.C.D.,
no less than _two hundred and three_ young gentlemen took prizes at the
Midsummer examination: nay, some of the most meritorious carried off a
dozen premiums a piece. A Dr. Delamere, Ex-Scholar T.C.D., distributed
three hundred and twenty rewards to his young friends; and if we allow
that one lad in twenty is a prizeman, it is clear that there must be six
thousand four hundred and forty youths under the Doctor’s care.
Other schools are advertised in the same journals, each with its hundred
of prize-bearers; and if other schools are advertised, how many more
must there be in the country which are not advertised! There must be
hundreds of thousands of prizemen, millions of scholars: besides
national schools, hedge schools, infant schools, and the like. The
English reader will see the accuracy of the calculation.
In the _Morning Register_, the Englishman will find something to the
full as curious and startling to him: you read gravely in the English
language how the Bishop of Aureliopolis has just been consecrated; and
that the distinction has been conferred upon him by--the Holy
Pontiff!--the Pope of Rome, by all that is holy! Such an announcement
sounds quite strange _in English_, and in your own country, as it were;
or isn’t it your own country? Suppose the Archbishop of Canterbury were
to send over a clergyman to Rome, and consecrate him Bishop of the
Palatine or the Suburra, I wonder how his Holiness would like _that_?
There is a report of Dr. Miley’s sermon upon the occasion of the new
bishop’s consecration; and the _Register_ happily lauds the discourse
for its ‘refined and fervent eloquence.’ The doctor salutes the Lord
Bishop of Aureliopolis on his admission among the ‘Princes of the
Sanctuary,’ gives a blow _en passant_ at the Established Church, whereof
the revenues, he elegantly says, ‘might excite the zeal of Dives or
Epicurus to become a Bishop,’ and having vented his sly wrath upon the
‘courtly artifice and intrigue’ of the Bench, proceeds to make the most
outrageous comparisons with regard to my Lord of Aureliopolis; his
virtues, his sincerity, and the severe privations and persecutions which
acceptance of the episcopal office entails upon him.
‘That very evening,’ says the _Register_, ‘the new bishop
entertained at dinner, in the Chapel-house, a select number of
friends; amongst whom were the officiating prelates and clergymen
who assisted in the ceremonies of the day. The repast was provided
by Mr. Jude, of Grafton Street, and was served up in a style of
elegance and comfort that did great honour to that gentleman’s
character as a _restaurateur_. _The wines were of the richest and
rarest quality._ It may be truly said to have been an entertainment
where the feast of reason and the flow of soul predominated. The
company broke up at nine.’
And so, my lord is scarcely out of chapel but his privations begin!
Well. Let us hope that, in the course of his episcopacy, he incur no
greater hardships, and that Dr. Miley may come to be a bishop too in his
time; when perhaps he will have a better opinion of the Bench.
The ceremony and feelings described are curious, I think; and more so
perhaps to a person who was in England only yesterday, and quitted it
just as their Graces, Lordships, and Reverences were sitting down to
dinner. Among what new sights, ideas, customs, does the English
traveller find himself after that brief six hours’ journey from
Holyhead!
There is but one part more of the papers to be looked at; and that is
the most painful of all. In the law reports of the Tipperary Special
Commission sitting at Clonmel, you read that Patrick Byrne is brought up
for sentence, for the murder of Robert Hall, Esq.: and Chief Justice
Doherty says: ‘Patrick Byrne, I will not now recapitulate the
circumstances of your enormous crime; but guilty as you are of the
barbarity of having perpetrated with your hand the foul murder of an
unoffending old man--barbarous, cowardly, and cruel as that act
was--there lives one more guilty man, and that is he whose diabolical
mind hatched the foul conspiracy of which you were but the instrument
and the perpetrator. Whoever that may be, I do not envy him his
protracted existence. He has sent that aged gentleman, without one
moment’s warning, to face his God: but he has done more, he has brought
you, unhappy man, with more deliberation and more cruelty, to face your
God, _with the weight of that man’s blood upon you_. I have now only to
pronounce the sentence of the law:’--it is the usual sentence, with the
usual prayer of the judge, that the Lord may have mercy upon the
convict’s soul.
Timothy Woods, a young man of twenty years of age, is then tried for the
murder of Michael Laffan. The Attorney-General states the case:--On the
19th of May last, two assassins dragged Laffan from the house of Patrick
Cummins, fired a pistol-shot at him, and left him dead as they thought.
Laffan, though mortally wounded, crawled away after the fall; when the
assassins, still seeing him give signs of life, rushed after him,
fractured his skull by blows of a pistol, and left him on a dunghill
dead. There Laffan’s body lay for several hours, and _nobody dared to
touch it_. Laffan’s widow found the body there two hours after the
murder, and _an inquest was held on the body as it lay on the dunghill_.
Laffan was driver on the lands of Kilnertin, which were formerly held by
Pat Cummins, _the man who had the charge of the lands before Laffan was
murdered_; and the latter was dragged out of Cummins’s house in the
presence of a witness who refused to swear to the murderers, and was
shot in sight of another witness, James Meara, who with other men was on
the road: and when asked whether he cried out, or whether he went to
assist the deceased, Meara answers, ‘_Indeed I did not; we would not
interfere--it was no business of ours!_’
Six more instances are given of attempts to murder; on which the judge,
in passing sentence, comments in the following way:--
‘The Lord Chief Justice addressed the several persons, and said--It
was now his painful duty to pronounce upon them severally and
respectively the punishment which the law and the court awarded
against them, for the crimes of which they had been convicted.
Those crimes were one and all of them of no ordinary enormity--they
were crimes which, in point of morals, involved the atrocious
guilt of murder; and if it had pleased God to spare their souls
from the pollution of that offence, the court could not still shut
its eyes to the fact, that although death had not ensued in
consequence of the crimes of which they had been found guilty, yet
it was not owing to their forbearance that such a dreadful crime
had not been perpetrated. The prisoner, Michael Hughes, had been
convicted of firing a gun at a person of the name of John Ryan
(Luke); his horse had been killed, and no one could say that the
balls were not intended for the prosecutor himself. The prisoner
had fired one shot himself, and then called on his companion in
guilt to discharge another. One of these shots killed Ryan’s mare,
and it was by the mercy of God that the life of the prisoner had
not become forfeited by his own act. The next culprit was John
Pound, who was equally guilty of the intended outrage perpetrated
on the life of an unoffending individual--that individual a female,
surrounded by her little children, five or six in number. With a
complete carelessness to the probable consequences, while she and
her family were going, or had gone, to bed, the contents of a gun
were discharged through the door, which entered the panel in three
different places. The deaths resulting from this act might have
been extensive, but it was not a matter of any moment how many were
deprived of life. The woman had just risen from her prayers,
preparing herself to sleep under the protection of that arm which
would shield the child and protect the innocent, when she was
wounded. As to Cornelius Flynn and Patrick Dwyer, they likewise
were the subjects of similar imputations and similar observations.
There was a very slight difference between them, but not such as to
amount to any real distinction. They had gone upon a common illegal
purpose, to the house of a respectable individual, for the purpose
of interfering with the domestic arrangements he thought fit to
make. They had no sort of right to interfere with the disposition
of a man’s affairs; and what would be the consequences if the
reverse were to be held? No imputation had ever been made upon the
gentleman whose house was visited, but he was desired to dismiss
another, under the pains and penalties of death, although that
other was not a retained servant, but a friend who had come to Mr.
Hogan on a visit. Because this visitor used sometimes to inspect
the men at work, the lawless edict issued that he should be put
away. Good God! to what extent did the prisoners and such misguided
men intend to carry out their objects? Where was their dictation to
cease? and they, and those in a similar rank, to take upon
themselves to regulate how many and what men a farmer should take
into his employment? Were they to be the judges whether a servant
had discharged his duty to his principal? or was it because a
visitor happened to come, that the host should turn him away, under
the pains and penalties of death? His lordship, after adverting to
the guilt of the prisoners in this case--the last two persons
convicted, Thos. Stapleton and Thos. Gleeson--said their case was
so recently before the public, that it was sufficient to say they
were morally guilty of what might be considered wilful and
deliberate murder. Murder was most awful, because it could only be
suggested by deliberate malice, and the act of the prisoners was
the result of that base, malicious, and diabolical disposition.
What was the cause of resentment against the unfortunate man who
had been shot at, and so desperately wounded? Why, he had dared to
comply with the wishes of a just landlord; and because the
landlord, for the benefit of his tenantry, proposed that the farms
should be squared, those who acquiesced in his wishes were to be
equally the victims of the assassin. What were the facts in this
case? The two prisoners at the bar, Stapleton and Gleeson, sprung
out at the man as he was leaving work, placed him on his knees, and
without giving him a moment of preparation, commenced the work of
blood, intending deliberately to despatch that unprepared and
unoffending individual to eternity. What country was it that they
lived in, in which such crimes could be perpetrated in the open
light of day? It was not necessary that deeds of darkness should be
shrouded in the clouds of night, for the darkness of the deeds
themselves was considered a sufficient protection. He (the Chief
Justice) was not aware of any solitary instance at the present
Commission, to show that the crimes committed were the consequences
of poverty. Poverty should be no justification, however; it might
be some little palliation, but on no trial at this Commission did
it appear that the crime could be attributed to distress. His
lordship concluded a most impressive address, by sentencing the six
prisoners called up to transportation for life.
‘The clock was near midnight as the court was cleared, and the
whole of the proceedings were solemn and impressive in the extreme.
The Commission is likely to prove extremely beneficial in its
results on the future tranquillity of the country.’
I confess, for my part, to that common cant and sickly sentimentality,
which, thank God! is felt by a great number of people nowadays, and
which leads them to revolt against murder, whether performed by a
ruffian’s knife or a hangman’s rope: whether accompanied with a curse
from the thief as he blows his victim’s brains out, or a prayer from my
lord on the bench in his wig and black cap. Nay, is all the cant and
sickly sentimentality on our side, and might not some such charge be
applied to the admirers of the good old fashion? Long ere this is
printed, for instance, Byrne and Woods have been hanged:[21] sent ‘to
face their God,’ as the Chief Justice says, ‘with the weight of their
victim’s blood upon them,’--a just observation; and remember that it is
_we who send them_. It is true that the judge hopes Heaven will have
mercy upon their souls; but are such recommendations of particular
weight because they come from the bench? Psha! If we go on killing
people without giving them time to repent, let us at least give up the
cant of praying for their souls’ salvation. We find a man drowning in a
well, shut the lid upon him, and heartily pray that he may get out. Sin
has hold of him, as the two ruffians of Laffan yonder, and we stand
aloof, and hope that he may escape. Let us give up the ceremony of
condolence, and be honest, like the witness, and say, ‘Let him save
himself or not, it’s no business of ours.’ ... Here a waiter, with a
very broad, though insinuating accent, says, ‘Have you done with the
_Sandthers_, sir, there’s a gentleman waiting for’t these two hours?’
And so he carries off that strange picture of pleasure and pain, trade,
theatres, schools, courts, churches, life and death, in Ireland, which a
man may buy for a fourpenny-piece.
* * * * *
The papers being read, it became my duty to discover the town; and a
handsomer town, with fewer people in it, it is impossible to see on a
summer’s day. In the whole wide square of Stephen’s Green, I think there
were not more than two nursery-maids, to keep company with the statue of
George I., who rides on horseback in the middle of the garden, the horse
having his foot up to trot, as if he wanted to go out of town too. Small
troops of dirty children (too poor and dirty to have lodgings at
Kingstown) were squatting here and there upon the sunshiny steps, the
only clients at the thresholds of the professional gentlemen whose names
figure on brass-plates on the doors. A stand of lazy carmen, a policeman
or two with clinking boot-heels, a couple of moaning beggars leaning
against the rails and calling upon the Lord, and a fellow with a toy and
book stall, where the lives of St. Patrick, Robert Emmet, and Lord
Edward Fitzgerald may be bought for double their value, were all the
population of the Green.
At the door of the Kildare Street Club, I saw eight gentlemen looking
at two boys playing at leapfrog: at the door of the University six lazy
porters, in jockey-caps, were sunning themselves on a bench--a sort of
blue-bottle race; and the Bank on the opposite side did not look as if
sixpence-worth of change had been negotiated there during the day. There
was a lad pretending to sell umbrellas under the colonnade, almost the
only instance of trade going on; and I began to think of Juan Fernandez,
or Cambridge in the long vacation. In the courts of the College, scarce
the ghost of a gyp or the shadow of a bed-maker.
In spite of the solitude, the square of the College is a fine sight--a
large ground, surrounded by buildings of various ages and styles, but
comfortable, handsome, and in good repair; a modern row of rooms; a row
that has been Elizabethan once; a hall and senate-house, facing each
other, of the style of George I.; and a noble library, with a range of
many windows, and a fine manly simple façade of cut stone. The library
was shut. The librarian, I suppose, is at the seaside; and the only part
of the establishment which I could see was the museum, to which one of
the jockey-capped porters conducted me, up a wide dismal staircase
(adorned with an old pair of jack-boots, a dusty canoe or two, a few
helmets, and a South Sea Islander’s armour) which passes through a hall
hung round with cobwebs (with which the blue-bottles are too wise to
meddle), into an old mouldy room, filled with dingy glass-cases, under
which the articles of curiosity or science were partially visible. In
the middle was a very _seedy_ camelopard (the word has grown to be
English by this time), the straw splitting through his tight old skin
and the black cobblers’-wax stuffing the dim orifices of his eyes. Other
beasts formed a pleasing group around him, not so tall, but equally
mouldy and old. The porter took me round to the cases, and told me a
great number of fibs concerning their contents: there was the harp of
Brian Borou, and the sword of some one else, and other cheap old
gimcracks with their corollary of lies. The place would have been a
disgrace to Don Saltero. I was quite glad to walk out of it, and down
the dirty staircase again, about the ornaments of which the
jockey-capped gyp had more figments to tell; an atrocious one (I forget
what) relative to the pair of boots; near which--a fine specimen of
collegiate taste--were the shoes of Mr. O’Brien, the Irish giant. If the
collection is worth preserving,--and indeed the mineralogical specimens
look quite as awful as those in the British Museum,--one thing is clear,
that the rooms are worth sweeping. A pail of water costs nothing, a
scrubbing-brush not much, and a charwoman might be hired for a trifle,
to keep the room in a decent state of cleanliness.
Among the curiosities is a mask of the Dean--not the scoffer and giber,
not the fiery politician, nor the courtier of St. John and Harley,
equally ready with servility and scorn; but the poor old man, whose
great intellect had deserted him, and who died old, wild, and sad. The
tall forehead is fallen away in a ruin, the mouth has settled in a
hideous, vacant smile. Well, it was a mercy for Stella that she died
first; it was better that she should be killed by his unkindness than by
the sight of his misery; which, to such a gentle heart as that, would
have been harder still to bear.
The Bank and other public buildings of Dublin are justly famous. In the
former may still be seen the room which was the House of Lords formerly,
and where the Bank directors now sit, under a clean marble image of
George III. The House of Commons has disappeared, for the accommodation
of clerks and cashiers. The interior is light, splendid, airy, well
furnished, and the outside of the building not less so. The Exchange,
hard by, is an equally magnificent structure; but the genius of commerce
has deserted it, for all its architectural beauty. There was nobody
inside when I entered, but a pert statue of George III. in a Roman toga,
simpering and turning out his toes; and two dirty children playing,
whose hoop-sticks caused great clattering echoes under the vacant
sounding dome. The neighbourhood is not cheerful, and has a dingy
poverty-stricken look.
Walking towards the river, you have on either side of you, at Carlisle
Bridge, a very brilliant and beautiful prospect. The Four Courts and
their dome to the left, the Custom-house and its dome to the right; and
in this direction seaward, a considerable number of vessels are moored,
and the quays are black and busy with the cargoes discharged from ships.
Seamen cheering, herring-women bawling, coal-carts loading--the scene is
animated and lively. Yonder is the famous Corn Exchange; but the Lord
Mayor is attending to his duties in Parliament, and little of note is
going on. I had just passed his lordship’s mansion in Dawson Street,--a
queer old dirty brick house, with dumpy urns at each extremity, and
looking as if a story of it had been cut off--a _rasée_ house. Close at
hand, and peering over a paling, is a statue of our blessed sovereign
George II. How absurd these pompous images look, of defunct majesties,
for whom no breathing soul cares a halfpenny! It is not so with the
effigy of William III., who has done something to merit a statue. At
this minute the Lord Mayor has William’s effigy under a canvas, and is
painting him of a bright green picked out with yellow--his lordship’s’
own livery.
The view along the quays to the Four Courts has no small resemblance to
a view along the quays at Paris, though not so lively as are even those
quiet walks. The vessels do not come above-bridge, and the marine
population remains constant about them, and about numerous dirty
liquor-shops, eating-houses, and marine-store establishments, which are
kept for their accommodation along the quay. As far as you can see, the
shining Liffey flows away eastward, hastening (like the rest of the
inhabitants of Dublin) to the sea.
In front of Carlisle Bridge, and not in the least crowded, though in the
midst of Sackville Street, stands Nelson upon a stone pillar. The Post
Office is on his right hand (only it is cut off); and on his left,
Gresham’s and the Imperial Hotel. Of the latter let me say (from
subsequent experience) that it is ornamented by a cook who could dress a
dinner by the side of M. Borel or M. Soyé. Would there were more such
artists in this ill-fated country! The street is exceedingly broad and
handsome; the shops at the commencement, rich and spacious; but in Upper
Sackville Street, which closes with the pretty building and gardens of
the Rotunda, the appearance of wealth begins to fade somewhat, and the
houses look as if they had seen better days. Even in this, the great
street of the town, there is scarcely any one, and it is as vacant and
listless as Pall Mall in October. In one of the streets off Sackville
Street is the house and exhibition of the Irish Academy, which I went to
see, as it was positively to close at the end of the week. While I was
there, two _other_ people came in; and we had, besides, the money-taker
and porter, to whom the former was reading, out of a newspaper, those
Tipperary murders which were mentioned in a former page. The echo took
up the theme, and hummed it gloomily through the vacant place.
The drawings and reputation of Mr. Burton are well known in England: his
pieces were the most admired in the collection. The best draughtsman is
an imitator of Maclise, Mr. Bridgeman, whose pictures are full of
vigorous drawing, and remarkable too for their grace. I gave my
catalogue to the two young ladies before mentioned, and have forgotten
the names of other artists of merit, whose works decked the walls of the
little gallery. Here, as in London, the Art Union is making a stir; and
several of the pieces were marked as the property of members of that
body. The possession of some of these one would not be inclined to
covet; but it is pleasant to see that people begin to buy pictures at
all, and there will be no lack of artists presently, in a country where
nature is so beautiful, and genius so plenty. In speaking of the fine
arts and of views of Dublin, it may be said that Mr. Petrie’s designs
for Curry’s Guide-book of the City are exceedingly beautiful, and,
above all, _trustworthy_: no common quality in a descriptive artist at
present.
Having a couple of letters of introduction to leave, I had the pleasure
to find the blinds down at one house, and the window in papers at
another; and at each place the knock was answered in that leisurely way
by one of those dingy female lieu-tenants who have no need to tell you
that families are out of town. So the solitude became very painful, and
I thought I would go back and talk to the waiter at the Shelburne, the
only man in the whole kingdom that I knew. I had been accommodated with
a queer little room and dressing-room on the ground-floor, looking
towards the Green: a black-faced good-humoured chambermaid had promised
to perform a deal of scouring which was evidently necessary (which fact
she might have observed for six months back, only she is no doubt of an
absent turn), and when I came back from the walk, I saw the little room
was evidently enjoying itself in the sunshine, for it had opened its
window, and was taking a breath of fresh air, as it looked out upon the
Green. Here is a portrait of the little window.
[Illustration]
As I came up to it in the street, its appearance made me burst out
laughing, very much to the surprise of a ragged cluster of idlers
lolling upon the steps next door; and I have drawn it here, not because
it is a particularly picturesque or rare kind of window, but because, as
I fancy, there is a sort of _moral_ in it. You don’t see such windows
commonly in respectable English inns--windows leaning gracefully upon
hearth-brooms for support. Look out of that window without the
hearth-broom and it would cut your head off: how the beggars would start
that are always sitting on the steps next door! Is it prejudice that
makes one prefer the English window, that relies on its own ropes and
ballast (or lead if you like), and does not need to be propped by any
foreign aid? or is this only a solitary instance of the kind, and are
there no other specimens in Ireland of the careless, dangerous,
extravagant hearth-broom system?
In the midst of these reflections (which might have been carried much
farther, for a person with an allegorical turn might examine the entire
country through this window), a most wonderful cab, with an immense
prancing cab-horse, was seen to stop at the door of the hotel, and Pat
the waiter tumbling into the room swiftly with a card in his hand,
says, ‘Sir, the gentleman of this card is waiting for you at the door.’
Mon Dieu! it was an invitation to dinner! and I almost leapt into the
arms of the man in the cab--so delightful was it to find a friend in a
place where, a moment before, I had been as lonely as Robinson Crusoe.
The only drawback, perhaps, to pure happiness, when riding in such a
gorgeous equipage as this, was that we could not drive up Regent Street,
and meet a few creditors, or acquaintances at least. However, Pat, I
thought, was exceedingly awe-stricken by my disappearance in this
vehicle; which had evidently, too, a considerable effect upon some other
waiters at the Shelburne, with whom I was not as yet so familiar. The
mouldy camelopard at the Trinity College ‘Musayum’ was scarcely taller
than the bay horse in the cab; the groom behind was of a corresponding
smallness. The cab was of a lovely olive-green, picked out white, high
on high springs and enormous wheels, which, big as they were, scarcely
seemed to touch the earth. The little tiger swung gracefully up and
down, holding on by the hood, which was of the material of which the
most precious and polished boots are made. As for the _lining_--but here
we come too near the sanctity of private life; suffice that there was a
kind friend inside, who (though by no means of the fairy sort) was as
welcome as any fairy in the finest chariot. W---- had seen me landing
from the packet that morning, and was the very man who in London, a
month previous, had recommended me to the Shelburne. These facts are not
of much consequence to the public, to be sure, except that an
explanation was necessary of the miraculous appearance of the cab and
horse.
Our course, as may be imagined, was towards the seaside; for whither
else should an Irishman at this season go? Not far from Kingstown is a
house devoted to the purpose of festivity: it is called Salt Hill,
stands upon a rising ground, commanding a fine view of the bay and the
railroad, and is kept by persons bearing the celebrated name of
Lovegrove. It is in fact a sea-Greenwich; and though there are no marine
whitebait, other fishes are to be had in plenty, and especially the
famous Bray trout, which does not ill deserve its reputation.
Here we met three young men, who may be called by the names of their
several counties--Mr. Galway, Mr. Roscommon, and Mr. Clare; and it
seemed that I was to complain of solitude no longer: for one straightway
invited me to his county, where was the finest salmon-fishing in the
world; another said he would drive me through the county Kerry in his
four-in-hand drag; and the third had some propositions of sport equally
hospitable. As for going down to some races, on the Curragh of Kildare I
think, which were to be held on the next and the three following days,
there seemed to be no question about _that_. That a man should miss a
race within forty miles, seemed to be a point never contemplated by
these jovial sporting fellows.
[Illustration]
Strolling about in the neighbourhood before dinner, we went down to the
sea-shore, and to some caves which had lately been discovered there; and
two Irish ladies, who were standing at the entrance of one of them,
permitted me to take the following portraits, which were pronounced to
be pretty accurate.
They said they had not acquiesced in the general Temperance movement
that had taken place throughout the country; and, indeed, if the truth
must be known, it was only under promise of a glass of whisky apiece
that their modesty could be so far overcome as to permit them to sit for
their portraits. By the time they were done, a crowd of both sexes had
gathered round and expressed themselves quite ready to sit upon the same
terms. But though there was great variety in their countenances, there
was not much beauty; and besides, dinner was by this time ready, which
has at certain periods a charm even greater than art.
The bay, which had been veiled in mist and grey in the morning, was now
shining under the most beautiful clear sky, which presently became rich
with a thousand gorgeous hues of sunset. The view was as smiling and
delightful a one as can be conceived,--just such a one as should be seen
_à travers_ a good dinner, with no fatiguing sublimity or awful beauty
in it, but brisk, brilliant, sunny, enlivening. In fact, in placing his
banqueting-house here, Mr. Lovegrove had, as usual, a brilliant idea.
You must not have too much view, or a severe one, to give a relish to a
good dinner; nor too much music, nor too quick, nor too slow, nor too
loud; any reader who has dined at a _table-d’hôte_ in Germany will know
the annoyance of this--a set of musicians immediately at your back will
sometimes play you a melancholy polonaise; and a man with a good ear
must perforce eat in time, and your soup is quite cold before it is
swallowed; then, all of a sudden, crash goes a brisk galop! and you are
obliged to gulp your victuals at the rate of ten miles an hour. And in
respect of conversation during a good dinner, the same rules of
propriety should be consulted. Deep and sublime talk is as improper as
sublime prospects. Dante and champagne (I was going to say Milton and
oysters, but that is a pun) are quite unfit themes of dinner-talk. Let
it be light, brisk, not oppressive to the brain. Our conversation was, I
recollect, just the thing. We talked about the last Derby the whole
time, and the state of the odds for the St. Leger; nor was the Ascot Cup
forgotten; and a bet or two was gaily booked.
Meanwhile the sky, which had been blue and then red, assumed, towards
the horizon, as the red was sinking under it, a gentle delicate cast of
green. Howth Hill became of a darker purple, and the sails of the boats
rather dim. The sea grew deeper and deeper in colour. The lamps at the
railroad dotted the line with fire; and the lighthouses of the bay began
to flame. The trains to and from the city rushed flashing and hissing
by--in a word, everybody said it was time to light a cigar, which was
done, the conversation about the Derby still continuing.
‘Put out that candle,’ said Roscommon to Clare; which the latter
instantly did by flinging the taper out of window upon the lawn, which
is a thoroughfare; and where a great laugh arose among half a score of
beggar-boys, who had been under the window for some time past,
repeatedly requesting the company to throw out sixpence between them.
Two other sporting young fellows had now joined the company; and as by
this time claret began to have rather a mawkish taste, whisky-and-water
was ordered, which was drunk upon the _perron_ before the house, whither
the whole party adjourned, and where for many hours we delightfully
tossed for sixpences--a noble and fascinating sport. Nor would these
remarkable events have been narrated, had I not received express
permission from the gentlemen of the party to record all that was said
and done. Who knows but, a thousand years hence, some antiquary or
historian may find a moral in this description of the amusement of the
British youth at the present enlightened time?
HOT LOBSTER
_P.S._--You take a lobster, about three feet long if possible,
remove the shell, cut or break the flesh of the fish in pieces not
too small. Some one else meanwhile makes a mixture of mustard,
vinegar, catsup, and lots of cayenne pepper. You produce a machine
called a _despatcher_, which has a spirit-lamp under it that is
usually illuminated with whisky. The lobster, the sauce, and near
half a pound of butter are placed in the despatcher, which is
immediately closed. When boiling, the mixture is stirred up, the
lobster being sure to heave about in the pan in a convulsive
manner, while it emits a remarkably rich and agreeable odour
through the apartment. A glass and a-half of sherry is now thrown
into the pan, and the contents served out hot, and eaten by the
company. Porter is commonly drunk, and whisky-punch afterwards, and
the dish is fit for an emperor.
* * * * *
_N.B._--You are recommended not to hurry yourself in getting up the next
morning, and may take soda-water with advantage.--_Probatum est._
CHAPTER II
A COUNTRY-HOUSE IN KILDARE--SKETCHES OF AN IRISH FAMILY AND FARM
It had been settled among my friends, I don’t know for what particular
reason, that the Agricultural Show at Cork was an exhibition I was
specially bound to see; when, therefore, a gentleman to whom I had
brought a letter of introduction, kindly offered me a seat in his
carriage, which was to travel by short days’ journeys to that city, I
took an abrupt farewell of Pat the waiter, and some other friends in
Dublin, proposing to renew our acquaintance, however, upon some future
day.
We started then one fine afternoon on the road from Dublin to Naas,
which is the main southern road from the capital to Leinster and
Munster, and met, in the course of the ride of a score of miles, a dozen
of coaches very heavily loaded, and bringing passengers to the city. The
exit from Dublin this way is not much more elegant than the outlet by
way of Kingstown, for though the great branches of the city appear
flourishing enough as yet, the small outer ones are in a sad state of
decay. Houses drop off here and there, and dwindle woefully in size; we
are got into the back premises of the seemingly prosperous place, and it
looks miserable, careless, and deserted. We passed through a street
which was thriving once, but has fallen since into a sort of decay, to
judge outwardly,--St. Thomas’s Street. Emmet was hanged in the midst of
it; and on pursuing the line of street, and crossing the great Canal,
you come presently to a fine tall square building in the outskirts of
the town, which is no more nor less than Kilmainham Jail, or castle.
Poor Emmet is the Irish darling still--his history is on every bookstall
in the city, and yonder trim-looking brick jail a spot where Irishmen
may go and pray. Many a martyr of theirs has appeared and died in front
of it,--found guilty of ‘wearing of the green.’
There must be a fine view from the jail windows, for we presently come
to a great stretch of brilliant green country, leaving the Dublin hills
lying to the left, picturesque in their outline, and of wonderful
colour. It seems to me to be quite a different colour to that in
England--different-shaped clouds--different shadows and lights. The
country is well tilled, well peopled; the hay-harvest on the ground, and
the people taking advantage of the sunshine to gather it in; but in
spite of everything, green meadows, white villages and sunshine, the
place has a sort of sadness in the look of it.
The first town we passed, as appears by reference to the Guide-book, is
the little town of Rathcoole; but in the space of three days Rathcoole
has disappeared from my memory, with the exception of a little low
building which the village contains, and where are the quarters of the
Irish constabulary. Nothing can be finer than the trim, orderly, and
soldierlike appearance of this splendid corps of men.
One has glimpses all along the road of numerous gentlemen’s places,
looking extensive and prosperous, of a few mills by streams here and
there; but though the streams run still, the mill-wheels are idle for
the chief part; and the road passes more than one long low village,
looking bare and poor, but neat and whitewashed. It seems as if the
inhabitants were determined to put a decent look upon their poverty. One
or two villages there were evidently appertaining to gentlemen’s seats;
these are smart enough, especially that of Johnstown, near Lord Mayo’s
fine domain, where the houses are of the Gothic sort, with pretty
porches, creepers, and railings. Noble purple hills to the left and
right keep up, as it were, an accompaniment to the road.
As for the town of Naas, the first after Dublin that I have seen, what
can be said of it but that it looks poor, mean, and yet somehow
cheerful? There was a little bustle in the small shops, a few cars were
jingling along the broadest street of the town--some sort of dandies and
military individuals were lolling about right and left; and I saw a fine
Court-house, where the assizes of Kildare county are held.
But by far the finest, and I think the most extensive edifice in Naas,
was a haystack in the inn-yard, the proprietor of which did not fail to
make me remark its size and splendour. It was of such dimensions as to
strike a cockney with respect and pleasure; and here standing just as
the new crops were coming in, told a tale of opulent thrift and good
husbandry. Are there many more such haystacks, I wonder, in Ireland? The
crops along the road seemed healthy, though rather light: wheat and oats
plenty, and especially flourishing; hay and clover not so good; and
turnips (let the important remark be taken at its full value) almost
entirely wanting.
The little town, as they call it, of Kilcullen, tumbles down a hill and
struggles up another; the two being here picturesquely divided by the
Liffey, over which goes an antique bridge. It boasts, moreover, of a
portion of an abbey wall, and a piece of round tower, both on the hill
summit, and to be seen (says the Guide-book) for many miles round. Here
we saw the first public evidences of the distress of the country. There
was no trade in the little place, and but few people to be seen, except
a crowd round a meal-shop, where meal is distributed once a week by the
neighbouring gentry. There must have been some hundreds of persons
waiting about the doors; women for the most part: some of their children
were to be found loitering about the bridge much farther up the street;
but it was curious to note, amongst these undeniably starving people,
how healthy their looks were. Going a little farther, we saw women
pulling weeds and nettles in the hedges, on which dismal sustenance the
poor creatures live, having no bread, no potatoes, no work--well! these
women did not look thinner or more unhealthy than many a well-fed
person. A company of English lawyers, now, look more cadaverous than
these starving creatures.
Stretching away from Kilcullen bridge, for a couple of miles or more,
near the fine house and plantations of the Latouche family, is to be
seen a much prettier sight, I think, than the finest park and mansion in
the world. This is a tract of excessively green land, dotted over with
brilliant white cottages, each with its couple of trim acres of garden,
where you see thick potato ridges covered with blossom, great blue plots
of comfortable cabbages, and such pleasant plants of the poor man’s
garden. Two or three years since, the land was a marshy common, which
had never since the days of the Deluge fed any being bigger than a
snipe, and into which the poor people descended, draining and
cultivating, and rescuing the marsh from the water, and raising their
cabins and setting up their little enclosures of two or three acres upon
the land which they had thus created. ‘Many of ‘em has passed months in
jail for that,’ said my informant (a groom on the back seat of my host’s
phaeton); for it appears that certain gentlemen in the neighbourhood
looked upon the titles of these new colonists with some jealousy, and
would have been glad to depose them; but there were some better
philosophers among the surrounding gentry, who advised that instead of
discouraging the settlers it would be best to help them; and the
consequence has been, that there are now two hundred flourishing little
homesteads upon this rescued land, and as many families in comfort and
plenty.
Just at the confines of this pretty rustic republic, our pleasant
afternoon’s drive ended; and I must begin this tour by a monstrous
breach of confidence by first describing what I saw.
Well, then, we drove through a neat lodge-gate, with no stone lions or
supporters, but riding well on its hinges, and looking fresh and white;
and passed by a lodge, not Gothic, but decorated with flowers and
evergreens, with clean windows and a sound slate roof; and then went
over a trim road, through a few acres of grass, adorned with plenty of
young firs and other healthy trees, under which were feeding a dozen of
fine cows or more. The road led up to a house, or rather a congregation
of rooms, built seemingly to suit the owner’s convenience, and
increasing with his increasing wealth, or whim, or family. This latter
is as plentiful as everything else about the place; and as the arrows
increased, the good-natured lucky father has been forced to multiply the
quivers.
First came out a young gentleman, the heir of the house, who, after
greeting his papa, began examining the horses with much interest; whilst
three or four servants, quite neat and well dressed and, wonderful to
say, without any talking, began to occupy themselves with the carriage,
the passengers, and the trunks. Meanwhile, the owner of the house had
gone into the hall, which is snugly furnished as a morning-room, and
where one, two, three young ladies came in to greet him. The young
ladies having concluded their embraces, performed (as I am bound to say
from experience, both in London and Paris) some very appropriate and
well-finished curtsies to the strangers arriving; and these three young
persons were presently succeeded by some still younger, who came without
any curtsies at all; but, bounding and jumping, and shouting out ‘Papa’
at the top of their voices, they fell forthwith upon that worthy
gentleman’s person, taking possession this of his knees, that of his
arms, that of his whiskers, as fancy or taste might dictate.
‘Are there any more of you?’ says he, with perfect good-humour; and, in
fact, it appeared that there were some more in the nursery, as we
subsequently had occasion to see.
Well, this large happy family are lodged in a house than which a
prettier or more comfortable is not to be seen even in England; of the
furniture of which it may be in confidence said, that each article is
only made to answer one purpose:--thus, that chairs are never called
upon to exercise the versatility of their genius by propping up windows;
that chests of drawers are not obliged to move their unwieldy persons in
order to act as locks to doors; that the windows are not variegated by
paper, or adorned with wafers, as in other places which I have seen; in
fact, that the place is just as comfortable as a place can be.
And if these comforts and reminiscences of three days’ date are enlarged
upon at some length, the reason is simply this:--this is written at what
is supposed to be the best inn at one of the best towns of Ireland,
Waterford. Dinner is just over; it is assize-week, and the
_table-d’hôte_ was surrounded for the chief part by English
attorneys--the cyouncillors (as the bar are pertinaciously called)
dining upstairs in private. Well, on going to the public room, and being
about to lay down my hat on the sideboard, I was obliged to pause--out
of regard to a fine thick coat of dust, which had been kindly left to
gather for some days past, I should think, and which it seemed a shame
to misplace. Yonder is a chair basking quietly in the sunshine; some
round object has evidently reposed upon it (a hat or plate probably),
for you see a clear circle of black horsehair in the middle of the
chair, and dust all round it. Not one of those dirty napkins that the
four waiters carry would wipe away the grime from the chair, and take to
itself a little dust more! The people in the room are shouting out for
the waiters, who cry, ‘Yes, sir,’ peevishly, and don’t come; but stand
bawling and jangling, and calling each other names, at the sideboard.
The dinner is plentiful and nasty--raw ducks, raw peas, on a crumpled
tablecloth, over which a waiter has just spirted a pint of obstreperous
cider. The windows are open, to give free view of a crowd of old
beggar-women, and of a fellow playing a cursed Irish pipe. Presently
this delectable apartment fills with choking peat-smoke; and on asking
what is the cause of this agreeable addition to the pleasures of the
place, you are told that they are lighting a fire in a back-room.
Why should lighting a fire in a back-room fill a whole enormous house
with smoke? Why should four waiters stand and _jaw_ and gesticulate
among themselves, instead of waiting on the guests? Why should ducks be
raw, and dust lie quiet in places where a hundred people pass daily? All
these points make one think very regretfully of neat, pleasant,
comfortable, prosperous H---- town, where the meat was cooked, and the
rooms were clean, and the servants didn’t talk. Nor need it be said
here, that it is as cheap to have a house clean as dirty, and that a raw
leg of mutton costs exactly the same sum as one _cuit à point_. And by
this moral earnestly hoping that all Ireland may profit, let us go back
to H----, and the sights to be seen there.
There is no need to particularise the chairs and tables any further, nor
to say what sort of conversation and claret we had; nor to set down the
dishes served at dinner. If an Irish gentleman does not give you a more
hearty welcome than an Englishman, at least he has a more hearty manner
of welcoming you; and while the latter reserves his fun and humour (if
he possess those qualities) for his particular friends, the former is
ready to laugh and talk his best with all the world, and give way
entirely to his mood. And it would be a good opportunity here for a man
who is clever at philosophising to expound various theories upon the
modes of hospitality practised in various parts of Europe. In a couple
of hours’ talk, an Englishman will give you his notions on trade,
politics, the crops: the last run with the hounds, or the weather: it
requires a long sitting, and a bottle of wine at the least, to induce
him to laugh cordially, or to speak unreservedly; and if you joke with
him before you know him, he will assuredly set you down as a low
impertinent fellow. In two hours, and over a pipe, a German will be
quite ready to let loose the easy floodgates of his sentiment, and
confide to you many of the secrets of his soft heart. In two hours a
Frenchman will say a hundred and twenty smart, witty, brilliant, false
things, and will care for you as much then as he would if you saw him
every day for twenty years--that is, not one single straw; and in two
hours an Irishman will have allowed his jovial humour to unbutton, and
gambolled and frolicked to his heart’s content. Which of these, putting
_Monsieur_ out of the question, will stand by his friend with the most
constancy, and maintain his steady wish to serve him? That is a question
which the Englishman (and I think with a little of his ordinary cool
assumption) is disposed to decide in his own favour; but it is clear
that for a stranger the Irish ways are the pleasantest, for here he is
at once made happy and at home, or at ease rather; for home is a strong
word, and implies much more than any stranger can expect, or even desire
to claim.
Nothing could be more delightful to witness than the evident affection
which the children bore to one another and to their parents, and the
cheerfulness and happiness of their family parties. The father of one
lad went with a party of his friends and family on a pleasure party, in
a handsome coach-and-four. The little fellow sate on the coach-box and
played with the whip very wistfully for some time: the sun was shining,
the horses came out in bright harness, with glistening coats; one of the
girls brought a geranium to stick in papa’s button-hole, who was to
drive. But although there was room in the coach, and though papa said he
should go if he liked, and though the lad longed to go--as who
wouldn’t--he jumped off the box and said he would not go: mamma would
like him to stop at home and keep his sister company; and so down he
went like a hero. Does this story appear trivial to any one who reads
this? If so, he is a pompous fellow, whose opinion is not worth the
having; or he has no children of his own; or he has forgotten the day
when he was a child himself; or he has never repented of the surly
selfishness with which he treated brothers and sisters, after the habit
of young English gentlemen.
‘That’s a list that uncle keeps of his children,’ said the same young
fellow, seeing his uncle reading a paper; and to understand this joke,
it must be remembered that the children of the gentleman called uncle
came into the breakfast-room by half-dozens. ‘That’s a _rum_ fellow,’
said the eldest of these latter to me, as his father went out of the
room, evidently thinking his papa was the greatest wit and wonder in the
whole world. And a great merit, as it appeared to me, on the part of
these worthy parents was, that they consented not only to make, but to
take jokes from their young ones; nor was the parental authority in the
least weakened by this kind familiar intercourse.
A word with regard to the ladies so far. Those I have seen appear to the
full as well educated and refined, and far more frank and cordial, than
the generality of the fair creatures on the other side of the Channel. I
have not heard anything about poetry, to be sure, and in only one house
have seen an album; but I have heard some capital music, of an excellent
family sort--that sort which is used, namely, to set young people
dancing, which they have done merrily for some nights. In respect of
drinking, among the gentry, teetotalism does not, thank Heaven! as yet
appear to prevail; but although the claret has been invariably good,
there has been no improper use of it[22]. Let all English be recommended
to be very careful of whisky, which experience teaches to be a very
deleterious drink. Natives say that it is wholesome, and may be
sometimes seen to use it with impunity; but the whisky-fever is
naturally more fatal to strangers than inhabitants of the country; and
whereas an Irishman will sometimes imbibe a half-dozen tumblers of the
poison, two glasses will often be found sufficient to cause headaches,
heartburns, and fevers to a person newly arrived in the country. The
said whisky is always to be had for the asking, but is not produced at
the bettermost sort of tables.
Before setting out on our second day’s journey, we had time to accompany
the well-pleased owner of H---- town over some of his fields and
out-premises. Nor can there be a pleasanter sight to owner or stranger.
Mr. P---- farms four hundred acres of land about his house; and employs
on this estate no less than a hundred and ten persons. He says there is
full work for every one of them; and to see the elaborate state of
cultivation in which the land was, it is easy to understand how such an
agricultural regiment were employed. The estate is like a well-ordered
garden--we walked into a huge field of potatoes, and the landlord made
us remark that there was not a single weed between the furrows; and the
whole formed a vast flower-bed of a score of acres. Every bit of land up
to the hedge-side was fertilised and full of produce: the space left for
the plough having afterwards been gone over, and yielding its fullest
proportion of ‘fruit.’ In a turnip-field were a score or more of women
and children, who were marching through the ridges, removing the young
plants where two or three had grown together, and leaving only the most
healthy. Every individual root in the field was thus the object of
culture; and the owner said that this extreme cultivation answered his
purpose, and that the employment of all these hands (the women and
children earn 6d. and 8d. a day all the year round), which gained him
some reputation as a philanthropist, brought him profit as a farmer too;
for his crops were the best that land could produce. He has further the
advantage of a large stock for manure, and does everything for the land
which art can do.
Here we saw several experiments in manuring. An acre of turnips prepared
with bone-dust; another with ‘Murray’s Composition,’ whereof I do not
pretend to know the ingredients; another with a new manure called guano.
As far as turnips and a first year’s crop went, the guano carried the
day. The plants on the guano acre looked to be three weeks in advance of
their neighbours, and were extremely plentiful and healthy. I went to
see this field two months after the above passage was written: the guano
acre still kept the lead; the bone-dust ran guano very hard; and
composition was clearly distanced.
Behind the house is a fine village of corn and hay ricks, and a street
of outbuildings, where all the work of the farm is prepared. Here were
numerous people coming with pails for buttermilk, which the good-natured
landlord made over to them. A score of men or more were busied about the
place; some at a grindstone, others at a forge--other fellows busied in
the cart-houses and stables, all of which were as neatly kept as in the
best farm in England. A little farther on was a flower-garden, a
kitchen-garden, a hothouse just building, a kennel of fine pointers and
setters;--indeed a noble feature of country neatness, thrift, and
plenty.
We went into the cottages and gardens of several of Mr. P----‘s
labourers, which were all so neat, that I could not help fancying they
were pet cottages erected under the landlord’s own superintendence, and
ornamented to his order. But he declared that it was not so; that the
only benefit his labourers got from him was constant work, and a house
rent-free; and that the neatness of the gardens and dwellings was of
their own doing. By making them a present of the house, he said, he made
them a present of the pig and live stock, with which almost every Irish
cotter pays his rent, so that each workman could have a bit of meat for
his support;--would that all labourers in the empire had as much! With
regard to the neatness of the houses, the best way to ensure this, he
said, was for the master constantly to visit them--to awaken as much
emulation as he could amongst the cottagers, so that each should make
his place as good as his neighbour’s--and to take them good-humouredly
to task if they failed in the requisite care.
And so this pleasant day’s visit ended. A more practical person would
have seen, no doubt, and understood much more than a mere citizen could,
whose pursuits have been very different from those noble and useful ones
here spoken of. But a man has no call to be a judge of turnips or live
stock, in order to admire such an establishment as this, and heartily to
appreciate the excellence of it. There are some happy organisations in
the world which possess the great virtue of _prosperity_. It implies
cheerfulness, simplicity, shrewdness, perseverance, honesty, good
health. See how, before the good-humoured resolution of such characters,
ill-luck gives way, and fortune assumes their own smiling complexion!
Such men grow rich without driving a single hard bargain; their
condition being to make others prosper along with themselves. Thus, his
very charity, another informant tells me, is one of the causes of my
host’s good fortune. He might have three pounds a year from each of
forty cottages, but instead prefers a hundred healthy workmen; or he
might have a fourth of the number of workmen, and a farm yielding a
produce proportionately less; but instead of saving the money of their
wages, prefers a farm the produce of which, as I have heard from a
gentleman whom I take to be good authority, is unequalled elsewhere.
Besides the cottages, we visited a pretty school, where children of an
exceeding smallness were at their work,--the children of the Catholic
peasantry. The few Protestants of the district do not attend the
national school, nor learn their alphabet or their multiplication table
in company with their little Roman Catholic brethren. The clergyman, who
lives hard by the gate of H---- town, in his communication with his
parishioners cannot fail to see how much misery is relieved and how much
good is done by his neighbour; but though the two gentlemen are on good
terms, the clergyman will not break bread with his Catholic
fellow-Christian. There can be no harm, I hope, in mentioning this fact,
as it is rather a public than a private matter; and, unfortunately, it
is only a stranger that is surprised by such a circumstance, which is
quite familiar to residents of the country. There are Catholic inns and
Protestant inns in the towns; Catholic coaches and Protestant coaches on
the roads; nay, in the North, I have since heard of a High Church coach
and a Low Church coach adopted by travelling Christians of either party.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III
FROM CARLOW TO WATERFORD
The next morning being fixed for the commencement of our journey towards
Waterford, a carriage made its appearance in due time before the
hall-door: an amateur stage-coach, with four fine horses, that were to
carry us to Cork. The crew of the ‘drag,’ for the present, consisted of
two young ladies, and two who will not be old, please Heaven! for these
thirty years; three gentlemen, whose collected weights might amount to
fifty-four stone; and one of smaller proportions, being as yet only
twelve years old: to these were added a couple of grooms and a
lady’s-maid. Subsequently we took in a dozen or so more passengers, who
did not seem in the slightest degree to inconvenience the coach or the
horses; and thus was formed a tolerably numerous and merry party. The
governor took the reins, with his geranium in his button-hole, and the
place on the box was quarrelled for without ceasing, and taken by turns.
Our day’s journey lay through a country more picturesque, though by no
means so prosperous and well-cultivated as the district through which we
had passed on our drive from Dublin. This trip carried us through the
county of Carlow and the town of that name: a wretched place enough,
with a fine court-house, and a couple of fine churches; the Protestant
church, a noble structure; and the Catholic cathedral, said to be built
after some Continental model. The Catholics point to the structure with
considerable pride: it was the first, I believe, of the many handsome
cathedrals for their worship which have been built of late years in
this country by the noble contributions of the poor man’s penny, and by
the untiring energies and sacrifices of the clergy. Bishop Doyle, the
founder of the church, has the place of honour within it; nor, perhaps,
did any Christian pastor ever merit the affection of his flock more than
that great and high-minded man. He was the best champion the Catholic
Church and cause ever had in Ireland; in learning, and admirable
kindness and virtue, the best example to the clergy of his religion: and
if the country is now filled with schools, where the humblest peasant in
it can have the benefit of a liberal and wholesome education, it owes
this great boon mainly to his noble exertions, and to the spirit which
they awakened.
As for the architecture of the cathedral, I do not fancy a professional
man would find much to praise in it: it seems to me overloaded with
ornaments, nor were its innumerable spires and pinnacles the more
pleasing to the eye because some of them were off the perpendicular. The
interior is quite plain, not to say bare and unfinished. Many of the
chapels in the country that I have since seen are in a similar
condition; for when the walls are once raised, the enthusiasm of the
subscribers to the building seems somewhat characteristically to grow
cool, and you enter at a porch that would suit a palace, with an
interior scarcely more decorated than a barn. A wide large floor, some
confession-boxes against the blank walls here and there, with some
humble pictures at the ‘stations,’ and the statue, under a mean canopy
of red woollen stuff, were the chief furniture of the cathedral.
The severe homely features of the good bishop were not very favourable
subjects for Mr. Hogan’s chisel; but a figure of prostrate, weeping
Ireland, kneeling by the prelate’s side, and for whom he is imploring
protection, has much beauty. In the chapels of Dublin and Cork some of
this artist’s works may be seen, and his countrymen are exceedingly
proud of him.
Connected with the Catholic cathedral is a large tumbledown-looking
divinity college: there are upwards of a hundred students here, and the
college is licensed to give degrees in arts as well as divinity; at
least so the officer of the church said, as he showed us the place
through the bars of the sacristy-windows, in which apartment may be seen
sundry crosses, a pastoral letter of Dr. Doyle, and a number of
ecclesiastical vestments formed of laces, poplins, and velvets,
handsomely laced with gold. There is a convent by the side of the
cathedral, and, of course, a parcel of beggars all about, and indeed all
over the town, profuse in their prayers and invocations of the Lord, and
whining flatteries of the persons whom they address. One wretched old
tottering hag began whining the Lord’s Prayer as a proof of her
sincerity, and blundered in the very midst of it, and left us
thoroughly disgusted after the very first sentence.
It was market-day in the town, which is tolerably full of poor-looking
shops, the streets being thronged with donkey-carts, and people eager to
barter their small wares. Here and there were picture-stalls, with huge
hideous coloured engravings of the Saints; and indeed the objects of
barter upon the banks of the clear bright river Barrow, seemed scarcely
to be of more value than the articles which change hands, as one reads
of, in a town of African huts and traders on the banks of the Quarra.
Perhaps the very bustle and cheerfulness of the people served only, to a
Londoner’s eyes, to make it look the more miserable. It seems as if they
had no _right_ to be eager about such a parcel of wretched rags and
trifles as were exposed to sale.
There are some old towers of a castle here, looking finely from the
river; and near the town is a grand modern residence belonging to
Colonel Bruen, with an oak-park on one side of the road, and a deer-park
on the other. These retainers of the Colonel’s lay, in their rushy green
enclosures, in great numbers and seemingly in flourishing condition.
The road from Carlow to Leighlin Bridge is exceedingly beautiful: noble
purple hills rising on either side, and the broad silver Barrow flowing
through rich meadows of that astonishing verdure which is only to be
seen in this country. Here and there was a country-house, or a tall mill
by a stream-side: but the latter buildings were for the most part empty,
the gaunt windows gaping without glass, and their great wheels idle.
Leighlin Bridge, lying up and down a hill by the river, contains a
considerable number of pompous-looking warehouses, that looked for the
most part to be doing no more business than the mills on the Carlow
road, but stood by the roadside staring at the coach, as it were, and
basking in the sun, swaggering, idle, insolvent, and out-at-elbows.
There are one or two very pretty, modest, comfortable-looking
country-places about Leighlin Bridge, and on the road thence to a
miserable village called the Royal Oak, a beggarly sort of bustling
place.
Here stands a dilapidated hotel and posting-house: and indeed on every
road, as yet, I have been astonished at the great movement and
stir;--the old coaches being invariably crammed, cars jingling about
equally full, and no want of gentlemen’s carriages to exercise the
horses of the Royal Oak and similar establishments. In the time of the
rebellion, the landlord of this Royal Oak, a great character in those
parts, was a fierce United Irishman. One day it happened that Sir John
Anderson came to the inn, and was eager for horses on. The landlord,
who knew Sir John to be a Tory, vowed and swore he had no horses; that
the judges had the last going to Kilkenny; that the yeomanry had carried
off the best of them; that he could not give a horse for love or money.
‘Poor Lord Edward!’ said Sir John, sinking down in a chair, and clasping
his hands, ‘my poor dear misguided friend, and must you die for the loss
of a few hours and the want of a pair of horses?’
‘Lord _What_?’ says the landlord.
‘Lord Edward Fitzgerald,’ replied Sir John. ‘The Government has seized
his papers, and got scent of his hiding-place; if I can’t get to him
before two hours, Sirr will have him.’
‘My dear Sir John,’ cried the landlord, ‘it’s not two horses but it’s
eight I’ll give you, and may the judges go hang for me! Here, Larry!
Tim! First and second pair for Sir John Anderson; and long life to you,
Sir John, and the Lord reward you for your good deed this day.’
Sir John, my informant told me, had invented this predicament of Lord
Edward’s in order to get the horses; and by way of corroborating the
whole story, pointed out an old chaise which stood at the inn-door with
its window broken, a great crevice in the panel, some little wretches
crawling underneath the wheels, and two huge blackguards lolling against
the pole,--‘and that,’ says he, ‘is no doubt the very postchaise Sir
John Anderson had.’ It certainly looked ancient enough.
Of course, as we stopped for a moment in the place, troops of slatternly
ruffianly-looking fellows assembled round the carriage, dirty heads
peeped out of all the dirty windows, beggars came forward with a joke
and a prayer, and troops of children raised their shouts and halloos. I
confess, with regard to the beggars, that I have never yet had the
slightest sentiment of compassion for the very oldest or dirtiest of
them, or been inclined to give them a penny: they come crawling round
you with lying prayers and loathsome compliments, that make the stomach
turn; they do not even disguise that they are lies; for, refuse them,
and the wretches turn off with a laugh and a joke, a miserable grinning
cynicism that creates distrust and indifference, and must be, one would
think, the very best way to close the purse, not to open it, for objects
so unworthy.
How do all these people live? one can’t help wondering;--these
multifarious vagabonds, without work or workhouse, or means of
subsistence? The Irish Poor Law Report says that there are twelve
hundred thousand people in Ireland--a sixth of the population--who have
no means of livelihood but charity, and whom the State, or individual
members of it, must maintain. How _can_ the State support such an
enormous burthen; or the twelve hundred thousand be supported? What a
strange history it would be, could one but get it true,--that of the
manner in which a score of these beggars have maintained themselves for
a fortnight past!
Soon after quitting the Royal Oak our road branches off to the
hospitable house where our party, consisting of a dozen persons, was to
be housed and fed for the night. Fancy the look which an English
gentleman of moderate means would assume, at being called on to receive
such a company! A pretty road of a couple of miles, thickly grown with
ash and oak trees, under which the hats of coach-passengers suffered
some danger, leads to the house of D----. A young son of the house, on a
white pony, was on the look-out, and great cheering and shouting took
place among the young people as we came in sight.
Trotting away by the carriage-side, he brought us through a gate with a
pretty avenue of trees leading to the pleasure-grounds of the house--a
handsome building commanding noble views of river, mountains, and
plantations. Our entertainer only rents the place; so I may say, without
any imputation against him, that the house was by no means so handsome
within as without,--not that the want of finish in the interior made our
party the less merry, or the host’s entertainment less hearty and
cordial.
The gentleman who built and owns the house, like many other proprietors
in Ireland, found his mansion too expensive for his means, and has
relinquished it. I asked what his income might be, and no wonder that he
was compelled to resign his house; which a man with four times the
income in England would scarcely venture to inhabit. There were numerous
sitting-rooms below; a large suite of rooms above, in which our large
party, with their servants, disappeared without any seeming
inconvenience, and which already accommodated a family of at least a
dozen persons and a numerous train of domestics. There was a great
courtyard, surrounded by capital offices, with stabling and coach-houses
sufficient for a half-dozen of country gentlemen. An English squire of
ten thousand a year might live in such a place--the original owner, I am
told, had not many more hundreds.
Our host has wisely turned the chief part of the pleasure-ground round
the house into a farm; nor did the land look a bit the worse, as I
thought, for having rich crops of potatoes growing in place of grass,
and fine plots of waving wheat and barley. The care, skill, and neatness
everywhere exhibited, and the immense luxuriance of the crops, could not
fail to strike even a cockney; and one of our party, a very well-known
practical farmer, told me that there was at least five hundred pounds’
worth of produce upon the little estate of some sixty acres, of which
only five-and-twenty were under the plough.
As at H---- town, on the previous day, several men and women appeared
sauntering in the grounds, and as the master came up asked for work, or
sixpence, or told a story of want. There are lodge-gates at both ends of
the demesne; but it appears the good-natured practice of the country
admits a beggar as well as any other visitor. To a couple our landlord
gave money, to another a little job of work; another he sent roughly out
of the premises: and I could judge thus what a continual tax upon the
Irish gentleman these travelling paupers must be, of whom his ground is
never free.
[Illustration]
There, loitering about the stables and outhouses, were several people
who seemed to have acquired a sort of right to be there: women and
children who had a claim upon the buttermilk; men who did an odd job now
and then; loose hangers-on of the family: and in the lodging-houses and
inns I have entered, the same sort of ragged vassals are to be found; in
a house however poor, you are sure to see some poorer dependant who is
a stranger, taking a meal of potatoes in the kitchen; a Tim or Mike
loitering hard by, ready to run on a message, or carry a bag. This is
written, for instance, at a lodging over a shop in Cork. There sits in
the shop a poor old fellow quite past work, but who totters up and down
stairs to the lodgers, and does what little he can for his easily-won
bread. There is another fellow outside who is sure to make his bow to
anybody issuing from the lodging, and ask if his honour wants an errand
done? Neither class of such dependants exist with us. What housekeeper
in London is there will feed an old man of seventy that’s good for
nothing, or encourage such a disreputable hanger-on as yonder shuffling,
smiling cad?
Nor did Mr. M----‘s ‘irregulars’ disappear with the day; for when,
after a great deal of merriment, and kind happy dancing and romping of
young people, the fineness of the night suggested the propriety of
smoking a certain cigar (it is never more acceptable than at that
season), the young squire voted that we should adjourn to the stables
for the purpose, where accordingly the cigars were discussed. There were
still the inevitable half-dozen hangers-on: one came grinning with a
lantern, all nature being in universal blackness except his grinning
face; another ran obsequiously to the stables to show a favourite
mare--I think it was a mare--though it may have been a mule, and your
humble servant not much the wiser. The cloths were taken off; the
fellows with the candles crowded about; and the young squire bade me
admire the beauty of her fore-leg, which I did with the greatest
possible gravity. ‘Did you ever see such a fore-leg as that in your
life?’ says the young squire, and further discoursed upon the horse’s
points, the amateur grooms joining in chorus.
There was another young squire of our party, a pleasant gentlemanlike
young fellow, who danced as prettily as any Frenchman, and who had
ridden over from a neighbouring house: as I went to bed, the two lads
were arguing whether young Squire B---- should go home or stay at D----
that night. There was a bed for him--there was a bed for everybody, it
seemed, and a kind welcome too. How different was all this to the ways
of a severe English house!
Next morning the whole of our merry party assembled round a long, jovial
breakfast-table, stored with all sorts of good things; and the biggest
and jovialest man of all, who had just come in fresh from a walk in the
fields, and vowed that he was as hungry as a hunter, and was cutting
some slices out of an inviting ham on the side-table, suddenly let fall
his knife and fork with dismay. ‘Sure, John, don’t you know it’s
Friday?’ cried a lady from the table; and back John came with a most
lugubrious queer look on his jolly face, and fell to work upon bread and
butter, as resigned as possible, amidst no small laughter, as may be
well imagined. On this I was bound, as a Protestant, to eat a large
slice of pork, and discharged that duty nobly, and with much
self-sacrifice.
The famous ‘drag’ which had brought us so far seemed to be as hospitable
and elastic as the house which we now left, for the coach accommodated,
inside and out, a considerable party from the house, and we took our
road leisurely, in a cloudless, scorching day, towards Waterford. The
first place we passed through was the little town of Gowran, near which
is a grand, well-ordered park, belonging to Lord Clifden, and where his
mother resides, with whose beautiful face, in Lawrence’s pictures, every
reader must be familiar. The kind English lady has done the greatest
good in the neighbourhood, it is said, and the little town bears marks
of her beneficence, in its neatness, prettiness, and order. Close by the
church there are the ruins of a fine old abbey here, and a still finer
one a few miles on, at Thomastown, most picturesquely situated amidst
trees and meadow, on the river Nore. The place within, however, is dirty
and ruinous--the same wretched suburbs, the same squalid congregation of
beggarly loungers, that are to be seen elsewhere. The monastic ruin is
very fine, and the road hence to Thomastown rich with varied cultivation
and beautiful verdure, pretty gentlemen’s mansions shining among the
trees on either side of the way. There was one place along this rich
tract that looked very strange and ghastly--a huge old pair of gate
pillars, flanked by a ruinous lodge, and a wide road winding for a mile
up a hill. There had been a park once, but all the trees were gone;
thistles were growing in the yellow sickly land, and rank thin grass on
the road. Far away you saw in this desolate tract a ruin of a house:
many a butt of claret has been emptied there, no doubt, and many a merry
party come out with hound and horn. But what strikes the Englishman with
wonder is not so much, perhaps, that an owner of the place should have
been ruined and a spendthrift, as that the land should lie there useless
ever since. If one is not successful with us another man will be, or
another will try, at least. Here lies useless a great capital of
hundreds of acres of land; barren, where the commonest effort might make
it productive, and looking as if for a quarter of a century past no soul
ever looked or cared for it. You might travel five hundred miles through
England and not see such a spectacle.
A short distance from Thomastown is another abbey; and presently, after
passing through the village of Knocktopher, we came to a posting-place
called Ballyhale, of the _moral_ aspect of which the following scrap
taken in the place will give a notion.
A dirty, old, contented, decrepit idler was lolling in the sun at a
shop-door, and hundreds of the population of the dirty, old, decrepit,
contented place were employed in the like way. A dozen of boys were
playing at pitch-and-toss; other male and female beggars were sitting on
a wall looking into a stream; scores of ragamuffins, of course, round
the carriage; and beggars galore at the door of the little alehouse or
hotel. A gentleman’s carriage changed horses as we were baiting here. It
was a rich sight to see the cattle, and the way of starting them:
‘Halloo! Yoop, Hoop!’ a dozen of ragged ostlers and amateurs running by
the side of the miserable old horses, the postillion shrieking, yelling,
and belabouring them with his whip. Down goes one horse among the
new-laid stones; the postillion has him up with a cut of the whip and a
curse, and takes advantage of the start caused by the stumble to get the
brute into a gallop, and to go down the hill. ‘I know it for a fact,’ a
gentleman of our party says, ‘that no horses _ever_ got out of Ballyhale
without an accident of some kind.’
[Illustration]
‘Will your honour like to come and see a big pig?’ here asked a man of
the above gentleman, well known as a great farmer and breeder. We all
went to see the big pig, not very fat as yet, but, upon my word, it is
as big as a pony. The country round is, it appears, famous for the
breeding of such, especially a district called the Welsh mountains,
through which we had to pass on our road to Waterford.
This is a curious country to see, and has curious inhabitants: for
twenty miles there is no gentleman’s house: gentlemen dare not live
there. The place was originally tenanted by a clan of Welshes; hence its
name; and they maintain themselves in their occupancy of the farms in
Tipperary fashion, by simply putting a ball into the body of any man who
would come to take a farm over any one of them. Some of the crops in the
fields of the Welsh country seemed very good, and the fields well
tilled; but it is common to see, by the side of one field that is well
cultivated, another that is absolutely barren; and the whole tract is
extremely wretched. Appropriate histories and reminiscences accompany
the traveller; at a chapel near Mullinavat is the spot where sixteen
policemen were murdered in the tithe campaign; farther on you come to a
limekiln, where the guard of a mail-coach was seized and _roasted
alive_. I saw here the first hedge-school I have seen; a crowd of
half-savage-looking lads and girls looked up from their studies in the
ditch, their college or lecture-room being in a mud cabin hard by.
And likewise, in the midst of this wild tract, a fellow met us who was
trudging the road with a fish-basket over his shoulder, and who stopped
the coach, hailing two of the gentlemen in it by name, both of whom
seemed to be much amused by his humour. He was a handsome rogue, a
poacher, or salmon-taker, by profession, and presently poured out such a
flood of oaths, and made such a monstrous display of grinning wit and
blackguardism, as I have never heard equalled by the best Billingsgate
practitioner, and as it would be more than useless to attempt to
describe. Blessings, jokes, and curses trolled off the rascal’s lips
with a volubility which caused his Irish audience to shout with
laughter, but which were quite beyond a cockney. It was a humour so
purely national as to be understood by none but natives, I should think.
I recollect the same feeling of perplexity while sitting, the only
Englishman, in a company of jocular Scotchmen. They bandied about puns,
jokes, imitations, and applauded with shrieks of laughter what, I
confess, appeared to me the most abominable dulness--nor was the
salmon-taker’s jocularity any better. I think it rather served to
frighten than to amuse; and I am not sure but that I looked out for a
band of jocular cut-throats of his sort, to come up at a given guffaw,
and playfully rob us all round. However, he went away quite peaceably,
calling down for the party the benediction of a great number of saints,
who must have been somewhat ashamed to be addressed by such a rascal.
Presently we caught sight of the valley through which the Suire flows,
and descended the hill towards it, and went over the thundering old
wooden bridge to Waterford.
CHAPTER IV
FROM WATERFORD TO CORK
The view of the town, from the bridge and the heights above it, is very
imposing; as is the river both ways. Very large vessels sail up almost
to the doors of the houses, and the quays are flanked by tall red
warehouses, that look at a little distance as if a world of business
might be doing within them. But as you get into the place, not a soul is
there to greet you except the usual society of beggars, and a sailor or
two, or a green-coated policeman sauntering down the broad pavement. We
drove up to the Coach Inn, a huge, handsome, dirty building, of which
the discomforts have been pathetically described elsewhere. The landlord
is a gentleman and considerable horse-proprietor, and though a perfectly
well-bred, active, and intelligent man, far too much of a gentleman to
play the host well: at least as an Englishman understands that
character.
Opposite the town is a tower of questionable antiquity and undeniable
ugliness; for though the inscription says it was built in the year one
thousand and something, the same document adds that it was rebuilt in
1819--to either of which dates the traveller is thus welcomed. The quays
stretch for a considerable distance along the river, poor
patched-windowed, mouldy-looking shops forming the basement-story of
most of the houses. We went into one, a jeweller’s, to make a
purchase--it might have been of a gold watch for anything the owner
knew; but he was talking with a friend in his back-parlour, gave us a
look as we entered, allowed us to stand some minutes in the empty shop,
and at length to walk out without being served. In another shop a boy
was lolling behind a counter, but could not say whether the articles we
wanted were to be had; turned out a heap of drawers, and could not find
them; and finally went for the master, who could not come. True
commercial independence, and an easy way enough of life.
In one of the streets leading from the quay is a large, dingy Catholic
chapel, of some pretensions within; but, as usual, there had been a
failure for want of money, and the front of the chapel was unfinished,
presenting the butt-end of a portico, and walls on which the stone
coating was to be laid. But a much finer ornament to the church than any
of the questionable gewgaws which adorned the ceiling was the piety,
stern, simple, and unaffected, of the people within. Their whole soul
seemed to be in their prayers, as rich and poor knelt indifferently on
the flags. There is of course an Episcopal cathedral, well and neatly
kept, and a handsome Bishop’s palace: near it was a convent of nuns, and
a little chapel-bell clinking melodiously. I was prepared to fancy
something romantic of the place; but as we passed the convent gate, a
shoeless slattern of a maid opened the door--the most dirty and
unpoetical of housemaids.
Assizes were held in the town, and we ascended to the court-house
through a steep street, a sort of rag-fair, but more villainous and
miserable than any rag-fair in St. Giles’s: the houses and stock of the
Seven Dials look as if they belonged to capitalists when compared with
the scarecrow wretchedness of the goods here hung out for sale. Who
wanted to buy such things? I wondered. One would have thought that the
most part of the articles had passed the possibility of barter for
money, even out of the reach of the half-farthings coined of late. All
the street was lined with wretched hucksters and their merchandise of
gooseberries, green apples, children’s dirty cakes, cheap crockeries,
brushes, and tin-ware; among which objects the people were swarming
about busily. Before the court is a wide street, where a similar market
was held, with a vast number of donkey-carts urged hither and thither,
and great shrieking, chattering, and bustle. It is five hundred years
ago since a poet who accompanied Richard II. in his voyage hither spoke
of ‘_Watreforde ou moult vilaine et orde y sont la gente_.’ They don’t
seem to be much changed now, but remain faithful to their ancient
habits.
About the court-house swarms of beggars of course were collected, varied
by personages of a better sort: grey-coated farmers, and women with
their picturesque blue cloaks, who had trudged in from the country
probably. The court-house is as beggarly and ruinous as the rest of the
neighbourhood; smart-looking policemen kept order about it, and looked
very hard at me as I ventured to take a sketch.
The figures as I saw them were thus disposed. The man in the dock, the
policeman seated easily above him, the woman looking down from a
gallery. The man was accused of stealing a sack of wool, and, having no
counsel, made for himself as adroit a defence as any one of the
councillors (they are without robes or wigs here, by the way) could have
made for him. He had been seen examining a certain sack of wool in a
coffee-shop at Dungarvan, and next day was caught sight of in Waterford
Market, standing under an archway from the rain, with the sack by his
side.
[Illustration]
‘Wasn’t there twenty other people under the arch?’ said he to a witness,
a noble-looking beautiful girl--the girl was obliged to own there were.
‘Did you see me touch the wool, or stand nearer to it than a dozen of
the dacent people there?’ and the girl confessed she had not. ‘And this
it is, my lord,’ says he to the bench; ‘they attack me because I’m poor
and ragged, but they never think of charging the crime on a rich
farmer.’
But alas for the defence! another witness saw the prisoner with his legs
round the sack, and being about to charge him with the theft, the
prisoner fled into the arms of a policeman, to whom his first words
were, ‘I know nothing about the sack.’ So, as the sack had been stolen,
as he had been seen handling it four minutes before it was stolen, and
holding it for sale the day after, it was concluded that Patrick Malony
had stolen the sack, and he was accommodated with eighteen months
accordingly.
In another case we had a woman and her child on the table; and others
followed, in the judgment of which it was impossible not to admire the
extreme leniency, acuteness, and sensibility of the judge presiding,
Chief Justice Pennefather:--the man against whom all the Liberals in
Ireland, and every one else who has read his charge too, must be angry,
for the ferocity of his charge against a Belfast newspaper editor. It
seems as if no parties here will be dispassionate when they get to a
party question, and that natural kindness has no claim, when Whig and
Tory come into collision.
[Illustration]
The juryman is here placed on a table instead of a witness-box; nor was
there much further peculiarity to remark, except in the dirt of the
court, the absence of the barristerial wig and gown, and the great
coolness with which a fellow who seemed a sort of clerk, usher, and
Irish interpreter to the court, recommended a prisoner, who was making
rather a long defence, to be quiet. I asked him why the man might not
have his say. ‘Sure,’ says he, ‘he’s said all he has to say, and there’s
no use in any more.’ But there was no use in attempting to convince Mr.
Usher that the prisoner was best judge on this point; in fact the poor
devil shut his mouth at the admonition, and was found guilty with
perfect justice.
A considerable poorhouse has been erected at Waterford, but the beggars
of the place as yet prefer their liberty, and less certain means of
gaining support. We asked one who was calling down all the blessings of
all the saints and angels upon us, and telling a most piteous tale of
poverty, why she did not go to the poorhouse. The woman’s look at once
changed from a sentimental whine to a grin. ‘Dey owe two hundred pounds
at dat house,’ said she, ‘and faith, an honest woman can’t go dere;’
with which wonderful reason ought not the most squeamish to be content?
* * * * *
After describing, as accurately as words may, the features of a
landscape, and stating that such a mountain was to the left, and such a
river or town to the right, and putting down the situations and names of
the villages, and the bearings of the roads, it has no doubt struck the
reader of books of travels that the writer has not given him the
slightest idea of the country, and that he would have been just as wise
without perusing the letterpress landscape through which he has toiled.
It will be as well then, under such circumstances, to spare the public
any lengthened description of the road from Waterford to Dungarvan;
which was the road we took, followed by benedictions delivered gratis
from the beggar-hood of the former city. Not very far from it you see
the dark plantations of the magnificent domain of Curraghmore, and pass
through a country blue, hilly, and bare, except where gentlemen’s seats
appear with their ornaments of wood. Presently, after leaving Waterford,
we came to a certain town called Kilmacthomas, of which all the
information I have to give is, that it is situated upon a hill and
river, and that you may change horses there. The road was covered with
carts of seaweed, which the people were bringing for manure from the
shore some four miles distant; and beyond Kilmacthomas we beheld the
Cummeragh Mountains, ‘often named in maps the Nennavoulagh,’ either of
which names the reader may select at pleasure.
Thence we came to ‘Cushcam,’ at which village be it known that the
turnpike-man kept the drag a very long time waiting. ‘I think the fellow
must be writing a book,’ said the coachman, with a most severe look of
drollery at a cockney tourist, who tried, under the circumstances, to
blush, and not to laugh. I wish I could relate or remember half the mad
jokes that flew about among the jolly Irish crew on the top of the
coach, and which would have made a journey through the Desert jovial.
When the ‘pike-man had finished his composition (that of a
turnpike-ticket, which he had to fill), we drove on to Dungarvan; the
two parts of which town, separated by the river Colligan, have been
joined by a causeway three hundred yards along, and a bridge erected at
an enormous outlay by the Duke of Devonshire. In former times, before
his Grace spent his eighty thousand pounds upon the causeway, this wide
estuary was called ‘Dungarvan Prospect,’ because the ladies of the
country, walking over the river at low water, took off their shoes and
stockings (such as had them), and tucking up their clothes,
exhibited,--what I have never seen, and cannot, therefore, be expected
to describe. A large and handsome Catholic chapel, a square with some
pretensions to regularity of building, a very neat and comfortable inn,
and beggars and idlers still more numerous than at Waterford, were what
we had leisure to remark in half an hour’s stroll through the town.
Near the prettily situated village of Cappoquin is the Trappist house of
Mount Meilleraie, of which we could only see the pinnacles. The brethren
were presented some years since with a barren mountain, which they have
cultivated most successfully. They have among themselves workmen to
supply all their frugal wants, ghostly tailors and shoemakers, spiritual
gardeners and bakers, working in silence, and serving Heaven after
their way. If this reverend community, for fear of the opportunity of
sinful talk, choose to hold their tongues, the next thing will be to cut
them out altogether, and so render the danger impossible--if, being men
of education and intelligence, they incline to turn butchers and
cobblers, and smother their intellects by base and hard menial labour,
who knows but one day a sect may be more pious still, and rejecting even
butchery and bakery, as savouring too much of worldly convenience and
pride, take to a wild-beast life at once? Let us concede that suffering,
and mental and bodily debasement, are the things most agreeable to
Heaven, and there is no knowing where such piety may stop. I was very
glad we had not time to see the grovelling place; and as for seeing
shoes made or fields tilled by reverend amateurs, we can find cobblers
and ploughboys to do the work better.
By the way, the Quakers have set up in Ireland a sort of monkery of
their own. Not far from Carlow we met a couple of cars drawn by white
horses, and holding white Quakers and Quakeresses, in white hats,
clothes, shoes, with wild maniacal-looking faces, bumping along the
road. Let us hope that we may soon get a community of Fakeers and
howling Dervises into the country. It would be a refreshing thing to see
such ghostly men in one’s travels, standing at the corners of roads, and
praising the Lord by standing on one leg, or cutting and hacking
themselves with knives like the prophets of Baal. Is it not as pious for
a man to deprive himself of his leg as of his tongue, and to disfigure
his body with the gashes of a knife, as with the hideous white raiment
of the illuminated Quakers?
While these reflections were going on, the beautiful Blackwater river
suddenly opened before us, and driving along it for three miles through
some of the most beautiful, rich country ever seen, we came to Lismore.
Nothing can be certainly more magnificent than this drive. Parks and
rocks covered with the grandest foliage; rich handsome seats of
gentlemen in the midst of fair lawns, and beautiful bright plantations
and shrubberies; and at the end, the graceful spire of Lismore church,
the prettiest I have seen in, or, I think, out of Ireland. Nor in any
country that I have visited have I seen a view more noble--it is too
rich and peaceful to be what is called romantic, but lofty, large, and
_generous_, if the term may be used; the river and banks as fine as the
Rhine; the castle not as large, but as noble and picturesque as Warwick.
As you pass the bridge, the banks stretch away on either side in amazing
verdure, and the castle-walks remind one somewhat of the dear old
terrace of St. Germains, with its groves, and long grave avenues of
trees.
The salmon-fishery of the Blackwater is let, as I hear, for a thousand a
year. In the evening, however, we saw some gentlemen who are likely to
curtail the profits of the farmer of the fishery--a company of ragged
boys, to wit--whose occupation, it appears, is to poach. These young
fellows were all lolling over the bridge, as the moon rose rather
mistily, and pretended to be deeply enamoured of the view of the river.
They answered the questions of one of our party with the utmost
innocence and openness, and one would have supposed the lads were so
many Arcadians, but for the arrival of an old woman, who suddenly coming
up among them poured out, upon one and all, a volley of curses, both
deep and loud, saying that perdition would be their portion, and calling
them ‘shchamers’ at least a hundred times. Much to my wonder, the young
men did not reply to the voluble old lady for some time, who then told
us the cause of her anger. She had a son,--‘Look at him there, the
villain.’ The lad was standing, looking very unhappy. ‘His father,
that’s now dead, paid a fistful of money to bind him ‘prentice at
Dungarvan: but these shchamers followed him there; made him break his
indentures, and go poaching and thieving and shchaming with them.’ The
poor old woman shook her hands in the air, and shouted at the top of her
deep voice; there was something very touching in her grotesque sorrow,
nor did the lads make light of it at all, contenting themselves with a
surly growl, or an oath, if directly appealed to by the poor creature.
So, cursing and raging, the woman went away. The son, a lad of fourteen,
evidently the fag of the big bullies round about him, stood dismally
away from them, his head sunk down. I went up and asked him, ‘Was that
his mother?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Was she good and kind to him when he was
at home?’ He said, ‘Oh yes.’ ‘Why not come back to her?’ I asked him;
but he said ‘he couldn’t.’ Whereupon I took his arm, and tried to lead
him away by main force; but he said, ‘Thank you, sir, but I can’t go
back,’ and released his arm. We stood on the bridge some minutes longer,
looking at the view; but the boy, though he kept away from his comrades,
would not come. I wonder what they have done together, that the poor boy
is past going home? The place seemed to be so quiet and beautiful, and
far away from London, that I thought crime couldn’t have reached it; and
yet, here it lurks somewhere among six boys of sixteen, each with a
stain in his heart, and some black history to tell. The poor widow’s
yonder was the only family about which I had a chance of knowing
anything in this remote place; nay, in all Ireland; and, God help us,
hers was a sad lot!--A husband gone dead,--an only child gone to ruin.
It is awful to think that there are eight millions of stories to be
told in this island. Seven million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand
nine hundred and ninety-eight more lives that I, and all brother
cockneys, know nothing about. Well, please God, they are not all like
this.
That day, I heard _another_ history. A little old disreputable man in
tatters, with a huge steeple of a hat, came shambling down the street,
one among the five hundred blackguards there. A fellow standing under
the sun portico (a sort of swaggering, chattering, cringing _touter_,
and master of ceremonies to the gutter) told us something with regard to
the old disreputable man. His son had been hanged the day before at
Clonmel, for one of the Tipperary murders. That blackguard in our eyes
instantly looked quite different from all other blackguards--I saw him
gesticulating at the corner of a street, and watched him with wonderful
interest.
The church with the handsome spire, that looks so graceful among the
trees, is a cathedral church, and one of the neatest-kept and prettiest
edifices I have seen in Ireland. In the old graveyard Protestants and
Catholics lie together--that is, not together; for each has a side of
the ground, where they sleep, and, so occupied, do not quarrel. The sun
was shining down upon the brilliant grass--and I don’t think the shadows
of the Protestant graves were any longer or shorter than those of the
Catholics. Is it the right or the left side of the graveyard which is
nearest heaven, I wonder? Look, the sun shines upon both alike, ‘and the
blue sky bends over all.’
Raleigh’s house is approached by a grave old avenue, and well-kept wall,
such as is rare in this country; and the court of the castle within has
the solid, comfortable, quiet look, equally rare. It is like one of our
colleges at Oxford: there is a side of the quadrangle with pretty
ivy-covered gables; another part of the square is more modern; and by
the main body of the castle is a small chapel exceedingly picturesque.
The interior is neat and in excellent order; but it was unluckily done
up some thirty years ago (as I imagine from the style), before our
architects had learned Gothic, and all the ornamental work is
consequently quite ugly and out of keeping. The church has probably been
arranged by the same hand. In the castle are some plainly furnished
chambers, one or two good pictures, and a couple of oriel windows, the
views from which up and down the river are exceedingly lovely. You hear
praises of the Duke of Devonshire as a landlord wherever you go among
his vast estates; it is a pity that, with such a noble residence as
this, and with such a wonderful country round about it, his Grace should
not inhabit it more.
Of the road from Lismore to Fermoy it does not behove me to say much,
for a pelting rain came on very soon after we quitted the former place,
and accompanied us almost without ceasing to Fermoy. Here we had a
glimpse of a bridge across the Blackwater, which we had skirted in our
journey from Lismore. Now enveloped in mist and cloud--now spanned by a
rainbow, at another time basking in sunshine, Nature attired the
charming prospect for us in a score of different ways; and it appeared
before us like a coquettish beauty who was trying what dress in her
wardrobe might most become her. At Fermoy we saw a vast barrack, and an
overgrown inn, where, however, good fare was provided; and thence
hastening came by Rathcormack, and Watergrass Hill, famous for the
residence of Father Prout, whom my friend, the Rev. Francis Sylvester,
has made immortal; from which descending we arrived at the beautiful
wooded village of Glanmire, with its mills and steeples, and streams,
and neat school-houses, and pleasant country residences. This brings us
down upon the superb stream which leads from the sea to Cork.
The view for three miles on both sides is magnificently beautiful. Fine
gardens, and parks, and villas cover the shore on each bank; the river
is full of brisk craft moving to the city or out to sea; and the city
finely ends the view, rising upon two hills on either side of the
stream. I do not know a town to which there is an entrance more
beautiful, commodious, and stately.
Passing by numberless handsome lodges, and, nearer the city, many
terraces in neat order, the road conducts us near a large tract of some
hundred acres which have been reclaimed from the sea, and are destined
to form a park and pleasure-ground for the citizens of Cork. In the
river, and up to the bridge, some hundreds of ships were lying; and a
fleet of steamboats opposite the handsome house of the St. George’s
Steam Packet Company. A church stands prettily on the hill above it,
surrounded by a number of new habitations very neat and white. On the
road is a handsome Roman Catholic chapel, or a chapel which will be
handsome so soon as the necessary funds are raised to complete it. But,
as at Waterford, the chapel has been commenced, and the money has
failed, and the fine portico which is to decorate it one day, as yet
only exists on the architect’s paper. St. Patrick’s Bridge, over which
we pass, is a pretty building; and Patrick Street, the main street of
the town, has an air of business and cheerfulness, and looks densely
thronged.
As the carriage drove up to those neat, comfortable, and extensive
lodgings which Mrs. MacO’Boy has to let, a magnificent mob was formed
round the vehicle, and we had an opportunity of at once making
acquaintance with some of the dirtiest rascally faces that all Ireland
presents. Besides these professional rogues and beggars, who make a
point to attend on all vehicles, everybody else seemed to stop too, to
see that wonder, a coach and four horses. People issued from their
shops, heads appeared at windows. I have seen the Queen pass in state in
London, and not bring together a crowd near so great as that which
assembled in the busiest street of the second city of the kingdom, just
to look at a green coach and four bay horses. Have they nothing else to
do?--or is it that they _will_ do nothing but stare, swagger, and be
idle in the streets?
CHAPTER V
CORK--THE AGRICULTURAL SHOW--FATHER MATHEW
A man has no need to be an agriculturalist in order to take a warm
interest in the success of the Irish Agricultural Society, and to see
what vast good may result from it to the country. The National Education
scheme--a noble and liberal one, at least as far as a stranger can see,
which might have united the Irish people, and brought peace into this
most distracted of all countries--failed unhappily of one of its
greatest ends. The Protestant clergy have always treated the plan with
bitter hostility: and I do believe, in withdrawing from it, have struck
the greatest blow to themselves as a body, and to their own influence in
the country, which has been dealt to them for many a year. Rich,
charitable, pious, well educated, to be found in every parish in
Ireland, had they chosen to fraternise with the people and the plan,
they might have directed the educational movement; they might have
attained the influence which is now given over entirely to the priest;
and when the present generation, educated in the National Schools, were
grown up to manhood, they might have had an interest in almost every man
in Ireland. Are they as pious, and more polished, and better educated
than their neighbours the priests? There is no doubt of it; and by
constant communion with the people they would have gained all the
benefits of the comparison, and advanced the interests of their religion
far more than now they can hope to do. Look at the National School:
throughout the country it is commonly by the chapel side--it is a
Catholic school, directed and fostered by the priest; and as no people
are more eager for learning, more apt to receive it, or more grateful
for kindness than the Irish, he gets all the gratitude of the scholars
who flock to the school, and all the future influence over them, which
naturally and justly comes to him. The Protestant wants to better the
condition of these people; he says that the woes of the country are
owing to its prevalent religion; and in order to carry his plans of
amelioration into effect, he obstinately refuses to hold communion with
those whom he is desirous to convert to what he believes are sounder
principles and purer doctrines. The clergyman will reply, that points of
principle prevented him: with this fatal doctrinal objection, it is not
of course the province of a layman to meddle; but this is clear, that
the parson might have had an influence over the country, and he would
not; that he might have rendered the Catholic population friendly to
him, and he would not; but, instead, has added one cause of estrangement
and hostility more to the many which already existed against him. This
is one of the attempts at union in Ireland, and one can’t but think with
the deepest regret and sorrow of its failure.
Mr. O’Connell and his friends set going another scheme for advancing the
prosperity of the country,--the notable project of home manufactures,
and of a coalition against foreign importation. This was a union
certainly, but a union of a different sort to that noble and peaceful
one which the National Education Board proposed. It was to punish
England, while it pretended to secure the independence of Ireland, by
shutting out our manufactures from the Irish markets; which were one day
or other, it was presumed, to be filled by native produce. Large bodies
of tradesmen and private persons in Dublin and other towns in Ireland
associated together, vowing to purchase no articles of ordinary
consumption or usage but what were manufactured in the country. This
bigoted old-world scheme of restriction--not much more liberal than
Swing’s crusade against the threshing-machines or the coalitions in
England against machinery--failed, as it deserved to do. For the benefit
of a few tradesmen, who might find their account in selling at dear
rates their clumsy and imperfect manufactures, it was found impossible
to tax a people that are already poor enough; nor did the party take
into account the cleverness of the merchants across sea, who were by no
means disposed to let go their Irish customers. The famous Irish frieze
uniform which was to distinguish these patriots, and which Mr. O’Connell
lauded so loudly and so simply, came over made at half-price from Leeds
and Glasgow, and was retailed as real Irish by many worthies who had
been first to join the union. You may still see shops here and there
with their pompous announcement of ‘Irish Manufactures’; but the scheme
is long gone to ruin--it could not stand against the vast force of
English and Scotch capital and machinery, any more than the Ulster
spinning-wheel against the huge factories and steam-engines which one
may see about Belfast.
The scheme of the Agricultural Society is a much more feasible one; and
if, please God, it can be carried out, likely to give not only
prosperity to the country, but union likewise in a great degree. As yet,
Protestants and Catholics concerned in it have worked well together; and
it is a blessing to see them meet upon _any_ ground without heartburning
and quarrelling. Last year, Mr. Purcell, who is well known in Ireland as
the principal mail-coach contractor for the country,--who himself
employs more workmen in Dublin than perhaps any other person there, and
has also more land under cultivation than most of the great landed
proprietors in the country,--wrote a letter to the newspapers, giving
his notions of the fallacy of the exclusive-dealing system, and pointing
out at the same time how he considered the country might be
benefited--by agricultural improvement, namely. He spoke of the
neglected state of the country, and its amazing natural fertility; and,
for the benefit of all, called upon the landlords and landholders to use
their interest and develop its vast agricultural resources. Manufactures
are at best but of slow growth, and demand not only time but capital;
meanwhile, until the habits of the people should grow to be such as to
render manufactures feasible, there was a great neglected treasure,
lying under their feet, which might be the source of prosperity to all.
He pointed out the superior methods of husbandry employed in Scotland
and England, and the great results obtained upon soils naturally much
poorer; and, taking the Highland Society for an example, the
establishment of which had done so much for the prosperity of Scotland,
he proposed the formation in Ireland of a similar association.
The letter made an extraordinary sensation throughout the country.
Noblemen and gentry of all sides took it up; and numbers of these wrote
to Mr. Purcell, and gave him their cordial adhesion to the plan. A
meeting was held, and the Society formed: subscriptions were set on
foot, headed by the Lord-Lieutenant (Fortescue) and the Duke of
Leinster, each with a donation of £200; and the trustees had soon £5000
at their disposal; with, besides, an annual revenue of £1000. The
subscribed capital is funded; and political subjects strictly excluded.
The Society has a show yearly in one of the principal towns of Ireland;
it corresponds with the various local agricultural associations
throughout the country; encourages the formation of new ones; and
distributes prizes and rewards. It has further in contemplation to
establish a large Agricultural School for farmers’ sons; and has formed
in Dublin an Agricultural Bazaar and Museum.
* * * * *
It was the first meeting of the Society which we were come to see at
Cork. Will it be able to carry its excellent intentions into effect?
Will the present enthusiasm of its founders and members continue? Will
one political party or another get the upper hand in it? One can’t help
thinking of these points with some anxiety--of the latter especially: as
yet, happily, the clergy of either side have kept aloof, and the union
seems pretty cordial and sincere.
There are in Cork, as no doubt in every town of Ireland sufficiently
considerable to support a plurality of hotels, some especially devoted
to the Conservative and Liberal parties. Two dinners were to be given _à
propos_ of the Agricultural Meeting; and in order to conciliate all
parties, it was determined that the Tory landlord should find the cheap
ten-shilling dinner for one thousand, the Whig landlord the genteel
guinea dinner for a few select hundreds.
I wish Mr. Cuff, of the Freemasons’ Tavern, could have been at Cork to
take a lesson from the latter gentleman; for he would have seen that
there are means of having not merely enough to eat, but enough of the
very best, for the sum of a guinea; that persons can have not only wine,
but good wine; and, if inclined (as some topers are on great occasions)
to pass to another bottle,--a second, a third, or a fifteenth bottle for
what I know, is very much at their service. It was a fine sight to see
Mr. MacDowall presiding over an ice-well, and extracting the bottles of
champagne. With what calmness he did it! How the corks popped, and the
liquor fizzed, and the agriculturalists drank the bumpers off! And how
good the wine was too--the greatest merit of all! Mr. MacDowall did
credit to his liberal politics by his liberal dinner.
‘Sir,’ says a waiter whom I had asked for currant-jelly for the
haunch--(there were a dozen such smoking on various parts of the
table--think of that, Mr. Cuff!)--‘Sir,’ says the waiter, ‘there’s no
jelly, but I’ve brought you _some very fine lobster-sauce_.’ I think
this was the most remarkable speech of the evening, not excepting that
of my Lord Bernard, who, to three hundred gentlemen more or less
connected with farming, had actually the audacity to quote the words of
the great agricultural poet of Rome--
‘O fortunatos nimium sua si,’ et cætera.
How long are our statesmen in England to continue to back their opinions
by the Latin Grammar? Are the Irish agriculturalists so _very_ happy,
if they did but know it--at least those out of doors? Well, those within
were jolly enough. Champagne and claret, turbot and haunch, are gifts of
the _justissima tellus_, with which few husbandmen will be disposed to
quarrel;--no more let us quarrel either with eloquence after dinner.
If the Liberal landlord had shown his principles in his dinner, the
Conservative certainly showed his; by conserving as much profit as
possible for himself. We sat down one thousand to some two hundred and
fifty cold joints of meat. Every man was treated with a pint of wine,
and very bad too, so that there was the less cause to grumble because
more was not served. Those agriculturalists who had a mind to drink
whisky-and-water had to pay extra for their punch. Nay, after shouting
in vain for half an hour to a waiter for some cold water, the unhappy
writer could only get it by promising a shilling. The sum was paid on
delivery of the article; but as everybody round was thirsty too, I got
but a glassful from the decanter, which only served to make me long for
more. The waiter (the rascal!) promised more, but never came near us
afterwards: he had got his shilling, and so he left us in a hot room,
surrounded by a thousand hot fellow-creatures, one of them making a dry
speech. The agriculturalists were not on this occasion _nimium
fortunati_.
To have heard a nobleman, however, who discoursed the meeting, you would
have fancied that we were the luckiest mortals under the broiling July
sun. He said he could conceive nothing more delightful than to see, ‘on
proper occasions’--(mind, _on proper occasions_!)--‘the landlord mixing
with his tenantry; and to look around him at a scene like this, and see
_the condescension_ with which the gentry mingled with the farmers!’
Prodigious condescension truly! This neat speech seemed to me an
oratoric slap on the face to about nine hundred and seventy persons
present; and being one of the latter, I began to hiss by way of
acknowledgment of the compliment, and hoped that a strong party would
have destroyed the harmony of the evening, and done likewise. But not
one hereditary bondsman would join in the compliment--and they were
quite right too. The old lord who talked about condescension is one of
the greatest and kindest landlords in Ireland. If he thinks he
condescends by doing his duty and mixing with men as good as himself,
the fault lies with the latter. Why are they so ready to go down on
their knees to my lord? A man can’t help ‘condescending’ to another who
will persist in kissing his shoestrings. They respect rank in
England--the people seem almost to adore it here.
As an instance of the intense veneration for lords which distinguishes
this county of Cork, I may mention what occurred afterwards. The members
of the Cork Society gave a dinner to their guests of the Irish
Agricultural Association. The founder of the latter, as Lord Downshire
stated, was Mr. Purcell: and as it was agreed on all hands that the
Society so founded was likely to prove of the greatest benefit to the
country, one might have supposed that any compliment paid to it might
have been paid to it through its founder. Not so. The Society asked the
lords to dine, and Mr. Purcell to meet the lords.
After the grand dinner came a grand ball, which was indeed one of the
gayest and prettiest sights ever seen; nor was it the less agreeable,
because the ladies of the city mixed with the ladies from the country,
and vied with them in grace and beauty. The charming gaiety and
frankness of the Irish ladies have been noted and admired by every
foreigner who has had the good fortune to mingle in their society; and I
hope it is not detracting from the merit of the upper classes to say
that the lower are not a whit less pleasing. I never saw in any country
such a general grace of manner and _ladyhood_. In the midst of their
gaiety, too, it must be remembered that they are the chastest of women,
and that no country in Europe can boast of such a general purity.
In regard of the Munster ladies, I had the pleasure to be present at two
or three evening parties at Cork, and must say that they seem to excel
the English ladies not only in wit and vivacity, but in the still more
important article of the toilette. They are as well dressed as
Frenchwomen, and incomparably handsomer; and if ever this book reaches a
thirtieth edition, and I can find out better words to express
admiration, they shall be inserted here. Among the ladies’
accomplishments, I may mention that I have heard in two or three private
families such fine music as is rarely to be met with out of a capital.
In one house we had a supper and songs afterwards, in the old honest
fashion. Time was in Ireland when the custom was a common one; but the
world grows languid as it grows genteel; and I fancy it requires more
than ordinary spirit and courage now for a good old gentleman, at the
head of his kind family table, to strike up a good old family song.
The delightful old gentleman who sung the song here mentioned could not
help talking of the temperance movement with a sort of regret, and said
that all the fun had gone out of Ireland since Father Mathew banished
the whisky from it. Indeed, any stranger going amongst the people can
perceive that they are now anything but gay. I have seen a great number
of crowds and meetings of people in all parts of Ireland, and found them
all gloomy. There is nothing like the merry-making one reads of in the
Irish novels. Lever and Maxwell must be taken as chroniclers of the old
times--the pleasant but wrong old times--for which one can’t help having
an antiquarian fondness.
On the day we arrived at Cork, and as the passengers descended from ‘the
drag,’ a stout, handsome, honest-looking man, of some two-and-forty
years, was passing by, and received a number of bows from the crowd
around. It was
[Illustration: Theobald Mathew]
with whose face a thousand little print-shop windows had already
rendered me familiar. He shook hands with the master of the carriage
very cordially, and just as cordially with the master’s coachman, a
disciple of temperance, as at least half Ireland is at present. The day
after the famous dinner at MacDowall’s, some of us came down rather
late, perhaps in consequence of the events of the night before (I think
it was Lord Bernard’s quotation from Virgil, or else the absence of the
currant-jelly for the venison, that occasioned a slight headache among
some of us, and an extreme longing for soda-water),--and there was the
Apostle of Temperance seated at the table drinking tea. Some of us felt
a little ashamed of ourselves, and did not like to ask somehow for the
soda-water in such an awful presence as that. Besides, it would have
been a confession to a Catholic priest, and, as a Protestant, I am above
it.
The world likes to know how a great man appears even to a _valet de
chambre_, and I suppose it is one’s vanity that is flattered in such
rare company to find the great man quite as unassuming as the very
smallest personage present; and so like to other mortals, that we would
not know him to be a great man at all, did we not know his name, and
what he had done. There is nothing remarkable in Mr. Mathew’s manner,
except that it is exceedingly simple, hearty, and manly, and that he
does not wear the downcast, demure look which, I know not why, certainly
characterises the chief part of the gentlemen of his profession. Whence
comes that general scowl which darkens the faces of the Irish
priesthood? I have met a score of these reverend gentlemen in the
country, and not one of them seemed to look or speak frankly, except Mr.
Mathew and a couple more. He is almost the only man, too, that I have
met in Ireland, who, in speaking of public matters, did not talk as a
partisan. With the state of the country, of landlord, tenant, and
peasantry, he seemed to be most curiously and intimately acquainted;
speaking of their wants, differences, and the means of bettering them,
with the minutest practical knowledge. And it was impossible in hearing
him to know, but from previous acquaintance with his character, whether
he was Whig or Tory, Catholic or Protestant. Why does not Government
make a Privy Councillor of him?--that is, if he would honour the Right
Honourable body by taking a seat amongst them. His knowledge of the
people is prodigious, and their confidence in him as great; and what a
touching attachment that is which these poor fellows show to any one who
has their cause at heart--even to any one who says he has!
Avoiding all political questions, no man seems more eager than he for
the practical improvement of this country. Leases and rents, farming
improvements, reading societies, music societies--he was full of these,
and of his schemes of temperance above all. He never misses a chance of
making a convert, and has his hand ready and a pledge in his pocket for
sick or poor. One of his disciples in a livery-coat came into the room
with a tray--Mr. Mathew recognised him and shook him by the hand
directly; so he did with the strangers who were presented to him; and
not with a courtly popularity-hunting air, but, as it seemed, from sheer
hearty kindness, and a desire to do every one good.
When breakfast was done--(he took but one cup of tea, and says that,
from having been a great consumer of tea and refreshing liquids before,
a small cup of tea, and one glass of water at dinner, now serve him for
his day’s beverage)--he took the ladies of our party to see his
burying-ground--a new and handsome cemetery, lying a little way out of
the town, and where, thank God! Protestants and Catholics may lie
together, without clergymen quarrelling over their coffins.
It is a handsome piece of ground, and was formerly a botanic garden; but
the funds failed for that undertaking, as they have for a thousand other
public enterprises in this poor disunited country; and so it has been
converted into a _hortus siccus_ for us mortals. There is already a
pretty large collection. In the midst is a place for Mathew
himself--honour to him living or dead! Meanwhile, numerous stately
monuments have been built, flowers planted here and there over dear
remains, and the garden in which they lie is rich, green, and beautiful.
Here is a fine statue, by Hogan, of a weeping genius that broods over
the tomb of an honest merchant and clothier of the city. He took a
liking to the artist, his fellow-townsman, and ordered his own monument,
and had the gratification to see it arrive from Rome a few weeks before
his death. A prettier thing even than the statue is the tomb of a little
boy, which has been shut in by a large and curious _grille_ of
ironwork. The father worked it, a blacksmith, whose darling the child
was, and he spent three years in hammering out this mausoleum. It is the
beautiful story of the pot of ointment told again at the poor
blacksmith’s anvil; and who can but like him for placing this fine
gilded cage over the body of his poor little one? Presently you come to
a Frenchwoman’s tomb, with a French epitaph, by a French husband, and a
pot of artificial flowers in a niche--a wig, and a pot of rouge, as it
were, just to make the dead look passably well. It is _his_ manner of
showing his sympathy for an immortal soul that has passed away. The poor
may be buried here for nothing; and here, too, once more THANK GOD! each
may rest without priests or parsons scowling hell-fire at his neighbour
unconscious under the grass.
CHAPTER VI
CORK--THE URSULINE CONVENT
There is a large Ursuline convent at Blackrock, near Cork, and a lady
who had been educated there was kind enough to invite me to join a party
to visit the place. Was not this a great privilege for a heretic? I have
peeped into convent chapels abroad, and occasionally caught glimpses of
a white veil or black gown; but to see the pious ladies in their own
retreat was quite a novelty--much more exciting than the exhibition of
Long Horns and Short Horns by which we had to pass on our road to
Blackrock.
The three miles’ ride is very pretty. As far as Nature goes, she has
done her best for the neighbourhood; and the noble hills on the opposite
coast of the river, studded with innumerable pretty villas, and
garnished with fine trees and meadows, the river itself dark blue under
a brilliant cloudless heaven, and lively with its multiplicity of gay
craft, accompany the traveller along the road; except here and there
where the view is shut out by fine avenues of trees, a beggarly row of
cottages, or a villa wall. Rows of dirty cabins, and smart bankers’
country-houses, meet one at every turn; nor do the latter want for fine
names, you may be sure. The Irish grandiloquence displays itself finely
in the invention of such; and, to the great inconvenience, I should
think, of the postman, the names of the houses appear to change with the
tenants: for I saw many old houses with new placards in front, setting
forth the _last_ title of the house.
I had the box of the carriage (a smart vehicle that would have done
credit to the ring), and found the gentleman by my side very
communicative. He named the owners of the pretty mansions and lawns
visible on the other side of the river: they appear almost all to be
merchants, who have made their fortunes in the city. In the like manner,
though the air of the town is extremely fresh and pure to a pair of
London lungs, the Cork shopkeeper is not satisfied with it, but
contrives for himself a place (with an euphonious name, no doubt) in the
suburbs of the city. These stretch to a great extent along the
beautiful, liberal-looking banks of the stream.
I asked the man about the Temperance, and whether he was a temperance
man? He replied by pulling a medal out of his waistcoat pocket, saying
that he always carried it about with him for fear of temptation. He said
that he took the pledge two years ago, before which time, as he
confessed, he had been a sad sinner in the way of drink. ‘I used to
take,’ said he, ‘from eighteen to twenty glasses of whisky a day; I was
always at the drink; I’d be often up all night at the public; I was
turned away by my present master on account of it;’--and all of a sudden
he resolved to break off. I asked him whether he had not at first
experienced ill-health from the suddenness of the change in his habits:
but he said--and let all persons meditating a conversion from liquor
remember the fact--that the abstinence never affected him in the least,
but that he went on growing better and better in health every day,
stronger and more able of mind and body.
The man was a Catholic, and in speaking of the numerous places of
worship along the road as we passed, I’m sorry to confess, dealt some
rude cuts with his whip regarding the Protestants. Coachman as he was,
the fellow’s remarks seemed to be correct; for it appears that the
religious world of Cork is of so excessively enlightened a kind, that
one church will not content one pious person; but that, on the contrary,
they will be at Church of a morning, at Independent Church of an
afternoon, at a Darbyite congregation of an evening, and so on,
gathering excitement or information from all sources by which they could
come at it. Is not this the case? are not some of the ultra-serious as
eager after a new preacher, as the ultra-worldly for a new dancer? don’t
they talk and gossip about him as much? Though theology from the
coach-box is rather questionable (after all, the man was just as much
authorised to propound his notions as many a fellow from an amateur
pulpit), yet he certainly had the right here, as far as his charge
against certain Protestants went.
The reasoning from it was quite obvious, and I’m sure was in the man’s
mind, though he did not utter it, as we drove by this time into the
convent gate. ‘Here,’ says coachman, ‘is _our_ church. _I_ don’t drive
my master and mistress from church to chapel, from chapel to
conventicle, hunting after new preachers every Sabbath. I bring them
every Sunday and set them down at the same place, where they know that
everything they hear _must_ be right. Their fathers have done the same
thing before them; and the young ladies and gentlemen will come here
too; and all the new-fangled doctors and teachers may go roaring through
the land, and still here we come regularly, not caring a whit for the
vagaries of others, knowing that we ourselves are in the real old right
original way.’
I am sure this was what the fellow meant by his sneer at the
Protestants, and their gadding from one doctrine to another; but there
was no call and no time to have a battle with him, as by this time we
had entered a large lawn covered with haycocks, and prettily, as I
think, ornamented with a border of blossoming potatoes, and drove up to
the front door of the convent. It is a huge old square house, with many
windows, having probably been some flaunting squire’s residence; but the
nuns have taken off somewhat from its rakish look, by flinging out a
couple of wings, with chapels, or buildings like chapels, at either end.
A large, lofty, clean, trim hall was open to a flight of steps, and we
found a young lady in the hall, playing, instead of a pious
sonata--which I vainly thought was the practice in such godly seminaries
of learning--that abominable rattling piece of music called ‘La
Violette,’ which it has been my lot to hear executed by other young
ladies; and which (with its like) has always appeared to me to be
constructed upon this simple fashion--to take a tune, and then, as it
were, to fling it down and upstairs. As soon as the young lady playing
‘The Violet’ saw us, she quitted the hall and retired to an inner
apartment, where she resumed that delectable piece at her leisure.
Indeed, there were pianos all over the educational part of the house.
We were shown into a gay parlour (where hangs a pretty drawing
representing the melancholy old convent which the Sisters previously
inhabited in Cork), and presently Sister No. Two-Eight made her
appearance--a pretty and graceful lady, thus attired.
‘’Tis the prettiest nun of the whole house,’ whispered the lady who had
been educated at the convent; and I must own that, slim, gentle, and
pretty as this young lady was, and calculated, with her kind smiling
face and little figure, to frighten no one in the world, a great
six-foot Protestant could not help looking at her with a little tremble.
I have never been in a nun’s company before; I’m afraid of such--I don’t
care to own--in their black mysterious robes and awful veils. As priests
in gorgeous vestments, and little rosy incense-boys in red, bob their
heads and knees up and down before altars, or clatter silver pots full
of smoking odours, I feel I don’t know what sort of thrill and secret
creeping terror. Here I was, in a room with a real live nun, pretty and
pale--I wonder has she any of her sisterhood immured in _oubliettes_
down below: is her poor little, weak, delicate body scarred all over
with scourgings, iron collars, hair shirts? What has she had for dinner
to-day?--as we passed the refectory there was a faint sort of vapid
nunlike vegetable smell, speaking of fasts and wooden platters; and I
could picture to myself silent sisters eating their meal--a grim old
yellow one in the reading-desk, croaking out an extract from a sermon
for their edification.
[Illustration]
But is it policy, or hypocrisy, or reality? These nuns affect extreme
happiness and content with their condition; a smiling beatitude, which
they insist belongs peculiarly to them, and about which the only
doubtful point is the manner in which it is produced before strangers.
Young ladies educated in convents have often mentioned this fact, how
the nuns persist in declaring and proving to them their own extreme
enjoyment of life.
Were all the smiles of that kind-looking Sister Two-Eight perfectly
sincere? Whenever she spoke her face was lighted up with one. She seemed
perfectly radiant with happiness, tripping lightly before us, and
distributing kind compliments to each, which made me in a very few
minutes forget the introductory fright which her poor little presence
had occasioned.
She took us through the hall (where was the vegetable savour before
mentioned), and showed us the contrivance by which the name of Two-Eight
was ascertained. Each nun has a number, or a combination of numbers,
prefixed to her name; and a bell is pulled a corresponding number of
times, by which each sister knows when she is wanted. Poor souls! are
they always on the look-out for that bell, that the ringing of it should
be supposed infallibly to awaken their attention?
From the hall the sister conducted us through ranges of apartments, and
I had almost said avenues of pianofortes, whence here and there a
startled pensioner would rise, _hinnuleo similis_, at our approach,
seeking a _pavidam matrem_, in the person of a demure old stout mother
hard by. We were taken through a hall decorated with series of pictures
of Pope Pius VI.,--wonderful adventures, truly, in the life of the
gentle old man. In one, you see him gracefully receiving a Prince and
Princess of Russia (tremendous incident!). The Prince has a pigtail, the
Princess powder and a train, the Pope a---- but never mind, we shall
never get through the house at this rate.
Passing through Pope Pius’s gallery, we came into a long, clean, lofty
passage, with many little doors on each side; and here I confess my
heart began to thump again. These were the doors of the cells of the
Sisters. Bon Dieu! and is it possible that I shall see a nun’s cell? Do
I not recollect the nun’s cell in _The Monk_, or in _The Romance of the
Forest_? or, if not there, at any rate in a thousand noble romances,
read in early days of half-holiday perhaps--romances at twopence a
volume.
Come in, in the name of the saints! Here is the cell. I took off my hat
and examined the little room with much curious wonder and reverence.
There was an iron bed, with comfortable curtains of green serge. There
was a little clothes-chest of yellow wood, neatly cleaned, and a wooden
chair beside it, and a desk on the chest, and about six pictures on the
wall,--little religious pictures: a saint with gilt paper round him; the
Virgin showing on her breast a bleeding heart, with a sword run through
it; and other sad little subjects, calculated to make the inmate of the
cell think of the sufferings of the saints and martyrs of the Church.
Then there was a little crucifix, and a wax candle on a ledge; and here
was the place where the poor black-veiled things were to pass their
lives for ever!
After having seen a couple of these little cells, we left the corridors
in which they were, and were conducted, with a sort of pride on the
nun’s part, I thought, into the grand room of the convent--a parlour
with pictures of saints and a gay paper, and a series of small fineries,
such only as women very idle know how to make. There were some portraits
in the room, one an atrocious daub of an ugly old woman, surrounded by
children still more hideous. Somebody had told the poor nun that this
was a fine thing, and she believed it--Heaven bless her!--quite
implicitly; nor is the picture of the ugly old Canadian woman the first
reputation that has been made this way.
Then from the fine parlour we went to the museum. I don’t know how we
should be curious of such trifles; but the chronicling of small-beer is
the main business of life--people only differing, as Tom Moore wisely
says in one of his best poems, about their own peculiar tap. The poor
nuns’ little collection of gimcracks was displayed in great state; there
were spars in one drawer; and I think a Chinese shoe and some Indian
wares in another; and some medals of the Popes, and a couple of score of
coins; and a clean glass case, full of antique works of French theology
of the distant period of Louis XV., to judge by the bindings--and this
formed the main part of the museum. ‘The chief objects were gathered
together by a single nun,’ said the sister with a look of wonder, and
she went prattling on, and leading us hither and thither, like a child
showing her toys.
What strange mixture of pity and pleasure is it which comes over you
sometimes when a child takes you by the hand, and leads you up solemnly
to some little treasure of its own--a feather, or a string of glass
beads? I declare I have often looked at such with more delight than at
diamonds; and felt the same sort of soft wonder examining the nuns’
little treasure-chamber. There was something touching in the very
poverty of it;--had it been finer it would not have been half so good.
And now we had seen all the wonders of the house but the chapel, and
thither we were conducted; all the ladies of our party kneeling down as
they entered the building, and saying a short prayer.
This, as I am on sentimental confessions, I must own affected me too. It
was a very pretty and tender sight. I should have liked to kneel down
too, but was ashamed; our northern usages not encouraging--among men at
least--that sort of abandonment of dignity. Do any of us dare to sing
psalms at church? and don’t we look with rather a sneer at a man who
does?
The chapel had nothing remarkable in it except a very good organ, as I
was told; for we were allowed only to see the exterior of that
instrument, our pious guide with much pleasure removing an oil-cloth
which covered the mahogany. At one side of the altar is a long high
_grille_, through which you see a hall, where the nuns have their
stalls, and sit in chapel time; and beyond this hall is another small
chapel, with a couple of altars, and one beautiful print in one of
them--a German Holy Family--a prim, mystical, tender piece, just
befitting the place.
In the _grille_ is a little wicket and a ledge before it. It is to this
wicket that women are brought to kneel; and a bishop is in the chapel on
the other side, and takes their hands in his, and receives their vows. I
had never seen the like before, and own that I felt a sort of shudder at
looking at the place. There rest the girl’s knees as she offers herself
up, and forswears the sacred affections which God gave her; there she
kneels and denies for ever the beautiful duties of her being:--no tender
maternal yearnings, no gentle attachments are to be had for her or from
her--there she kneels and commits suicide upon her heart. O honest
Martin Luther! thank God, you came to pull that infernal, wicked,
unnatural altar down--that cursed Paganism! Let people, solitary, worn
out by sorrow or oppressed with extreme remorse, retire to such places:
fly and beat your breasts in caverns and wildernesses, O women, if you
will, but be Magdalens first. It is shameful that any young girl, with
any vocation however seemingly strong, should be allowed to bury herself
in this small tomb of a few acres. Look at yonder nun--pretty, smiling,
graceful, and young--what has God’s world done to _her_, that she should
run from it, or she done to the world, that she should avoid it? What
call has she to give up all her duties and affections; and would she not
be best serving God with a husband at her side, and a child on her knee?
The sights in the house having been seen, the nun led us through the
grounds and gardens. There was the hay in front, a fine yellow cornfield
at the back of the house, and a large, melancholy-looking
kitchen-garden; in all of which places the nuns, for certain hours in
the day, are allowed to take recreation. ‘The nuns here are allowed to
amuse themselves more than ours at New Hall,’ said a little girl who is
educated at that English Convent: ‘do you know that here the nuns may
make hay?’ What a privilege is this! We saw none of the black sisterhood
availing themselves of it, however: the hay was neatly piled into cocks
and ready for housing; so the poor souls must wait until next year
before they can enjoy this blessed sport once more.
Turning into a narrow gate with the nun at our head, we found ourselves
in a little green quiet enclosure--it was the burial-ground of the
convent. The poor things know the places where they are to lie: she who
was with us talked smilingly of being stretched there one day, and
pointed out the resting-place of a favourite old sister who had died
three months back, and been buried in the very midst of the little
ground. And here they come to live and die. The gates are open, but they
never go out. All their world lies in a dozen acres of ground; and they
sacrifice their lives in early youth, many of them passing from the
grave upstairs in the house to the one scarcely narrower in the
churchyard here; and are seemingly not unhappy.
I came out of the place quite sick; and looking before me,--there, thank
God! was the blue spire of Monkstown church soaring up into the free
sky--a river in front rolling away to the sea--liberty, sunshine, all
sorts of glad life and motion round about: and I couldn’t but thank
Heaven for it, and the Being whose service is freedom, and who has given
us affections that we may use them--not smother and kill them; and a
noble world to live in, that we may admire it and Him who made it--not
shrink from it, as though we dared not live there, but must turn our
backs upon it and its bountiful Provider.
And in conclusion, if that most cold-blooded and precise of all
personages, the respectable and respected English reader, may feel
disposed to sneer at the above sentimental homily, or to fancy that it
has been written for effect--let him go and see a convent for himself. I
declare I think for my part that we have as much right to permit
Sutteeism in India as to allow women in the United Kingdom to take these
wicked vows, or Catholic Bishops to receive them; and that Government
has as good a right to interpose in such cases, as the police has to
prevent a man from hanging himself, or the doctor to refuse a glass of
prussic acid to any one who may have a wish to go out of the world.
CHAPTER VII
CORK
Amidst the bustle and gaieties of the Agricultural Meeting, the
working-day aspect of the city was not to be judged of: but I passed a
fortnight in the place afterwards, during which time it settled down to
its calm and usual condition. The flashy French and plated-goods shops,
which made a show for the occasion of the meeting, disappeared; you were
no longer crowded and jostled by smart male and female dandies in
walking down Patrick Street or the Mall; the poor little theatre had
scarcely a soul in its bare benches: I went once, but the dreadful
brass-band of a dragoon regiment blew me out of doors. This music could
be heard much more pleasantly at some distance off in the street.
One sees in this country many a grand and tall iron gate leading into a
very shabby field covered with thistles; and the simile of the gate
will in some degree apply to this famous city of Cork,--which is
certainly not a city of palaces, but of which the outlets are
magnificent. That towards Killarney leads by the Lee, the old Avenue of
Mardyke, and the rich green pastures stretching down to the river; and
as you pass by the portico of the county gaol, as fine and as glancing
as a palace, you see the wooded heights on the other side of the fair
stream, crowded with a thousand pretty villas and terraces, presenting
every image of comfort and prosperity. The entrance from Cove has been
mentioned before; nor is it easy to find anywhere a nobler, grander, and
more cheerful scene.
Along the quays up to St. Patrick’s Bridge there is a certain bustle.
Some forty ships may be lying at anchor along the walls of the quay; and
its pavements are covered with goods of various merchandise: here a
cargo of hides; yonder a company of soldiers, their kits, and their
Dollies, who are taking leave of the redcoats at the steamer’s side.
Then you shall see a fine, squeaking, shrieking drove of pigs embarking
by the same conveyance, and insinuated into the steamer by all sorts of
coaxing, threatening, and wheedling. Seamen are singing and yeehoing on
board; grimy colliers smoking at the liquor-shops along the quay; and as
for the bridge--there is a crowd of idlers on _that_, you may be sure,
sprawling over the balustrade for ever and ever, with long ragged coats,
steeple-hats, and stumpy doodeens.
Then along the coal-quay you may see a clump of jingle-drivers, who have
all a word for your honour; and in Patrick Street, at three o’clock,
when ‘The Rakes of Mallow’ gets under weigh (a cracked old coach with
the paint rubbed off, some smart horses, and an exceedingly dingy
harness)--at three o’clock, you will be sure to see at least forty
persons waiting to witness the departure of the said coach; so that the
neighbourhood of the inn has an air of some bustle.
At the other extremity of the town, if it be assize time, you will see
some five hundred persons squatting in the Court-house, or buzzing and
talking within; the rest of the respectable quarter of the city is
pretty free from anything like bustle. There is no more life in Patrick
Street than in Russell Square of a sunshiny day; and as for the Mall, it
is as lonely as the chief street of a German Residenz.
I have mentioned the respectable quarter of the city--for there are
quarters in it swarming with life, but of such a frightful kind as no
pen need care to describe; alleys where the odours and rags and darkness
are so hideous, that one runs frightened away from them. In some of
them, they say, not the policeman, only the priest, can penetrate. I
asked a Roman Catholic clergyman of the city to take me into some of
these haunts, but he refused very justly; and indeed a man may be quite
satisfied with what he can see in the mere outskirts of the districts,
without caring to penetrate farther. Not far from the quays is an open
space where the poor hold a market or bazaar. Here is liveliness and
business enough: ragged women chattering and crying their beggarly
wares; ragged boys gloating over dirty apple-and pie-stalls; fish
frying, and raw and stinking; clothes-booths, where you might buy a
wardrobe for scarecrows; old nails, hoops, bottles, and marine-wares;
old battered furniture, that has been sold against starvation. In the
streets round about this place, on a sunshiny day, all the black gaping
windows and mouldy steps are covered with squatting lazy figures--women,
with bare breasts, nursing babies, and leering a joke as you pass
by--ragged children paddling everywhere. It is but two minutes’ walk out
of Patrick Street, where you come upon a fine flashy shop of plated
goods, or a grand French emporium of dolls, walking-sticks, carpet-bags,
and perfumery. The markets hard by have a rough, old-fashioned, cheerful
look; it’s a comfort after the misery to hear a red butcher’s wife
crying after you to buy an honest piece of meat.
The poorhouse, newly established, cannot hold a fifth part of the
poverty of this great town; the richer inhabitants are untiring in their
charities, and the Catholic clergyman before mentioned took me to see a
delivery of rice, at which he presides every day until the potatoes
shall come in. This market, over which he presides so kindly, is held in
an old bankrupt warehouse, and the rice is sold considerably under the
prime cost to hundreds of struggling applicants who come when lucky
enough to have wherewithal to pay.
That the city contains much wealth is evidenced by the number of
handsome villas round about it, where the rich merchants dwell; but the
warehouses of the wealthy provision-merchants make no show to the
stranger walking the streets; and of the retail shops, if some are
spacious and handsome, most look as if too big for the business carried
on within. The want of ready money was quite curious. In three of the
principal shops I purchased articles, and tendered a pound in
exchange--not one of them had silver enough; and as for a five-pound
note, which I presented at one of the topping booksellers, his boy went
round to various places in vain, and finally set forth to the bank,
where change was got. In another small shop I offered half-a-crown to
pay for a sixpenny article--it was all the same. ‘Tim,’ says the good
woman, ‘run out in a hurry and fetch the gentleman change.’ Two of the
shopmen, seeing an Englishman, were very particular to tell me in what
years they themselves had been in London. It seemed a merit in these
gentlemen’s eyes to have once dwelt in that city; and I see in the
papers continually ladies advertising as governesses, and specifying
particularly that they are ‘English ladies.’
I received six £5 post-office orders; I called four times on as many
different days at the Post Office before the capital could be
forthcoming, getting on the third application £20 (after making a great
clamour, and vowing that such things were unheard of in England), and on
the fourth call the remaining £10. I saw poor people, who may have come
from the country with their orders, refused payment of an order of some
40s.; and a gentleman who tendered a pound note in payment of a foreign
letter, told to ‘leave his letter and pay some other time.’ Such things
could not take place in the hundred-and-second city in England; and as I
do not pretend to doctrinise at all, I leave the reader to draw his own
deductions with regard to the commercial condition and prosperity of the
second city in Ireland.
Half a dozen of the public buildings I saw were spacious and shabby
beyond all cockney belief. Adjoining the Imperial Hotel is a great,
large, handsome, desolate reading-room, which was founded by a body of
Cork merchants and tradesmen, and is the very picture of decay. Not
Palmyra--not the Russell Institution in Great Coram Street--present more
melancholy appearances of faded greatness. Opposite this is another
institution, called the Cork Library, where there are plenty of books
and plenty of kindness to the stranger; but the shabbiness and faded
splendour of the place are quite painful. There are three handsome
Catholic churches commenced of late years; not one of them is complete:
two want their porticoes; the other is not more than thirty feet from
the ground; and according to the architectural plan was to rise as high
as a cathedral. There is an institution, with a fair library of
scientific works, a museum, and a drawing-school with a supply of casts.
The place is in yet more dismal condition than the library. The plasters
are spoiled incurably for want of a sixpenny feather-brush; the dust
lies on the walls, and nobody seems to heed it. Two shillings a year
would have repaired much of the evil which has happened to this
institution; and it is folly to talk of inward dissensions and political
differences as causing the ruin of such institutions. Kings or laws
don’t cause or cure dust and cobwebs; but indolence leaves them to
accumulate, and imprudence will not calculate its income, and vanity
exaggerates its own powers, and the fault is laid upon that tyrant of a
sister kingdom. The whole country is filled with such failures;
swaggering beginnings that could not be carried through; grand
enterprises begun dashingly, and ending in shabby compromises or
downright ruin.
I have said something in praise of the manners of the Cork ladies: in
regard of the gentlemen, a stranger too must remark the extraordinary
degree of literary taste and talent amongst them, and the wit and
vivacity of their conversation. The love for literature seems to an
Englishman doubly curious. What, generally speaking, do a company of
grave gentlemen and ladies in Baker Street know about it? Who ever reads
books in the City, or how often does one hear them talked about at a
Club? The Cork citizens are the most book-loving men I ever met. The
town has sent to England a number of literary men, of reputation too,
and is not a little proud of their fame. Everybody seemed to know what
Maginn was doing, and that Father Prout had a third volume ready, and
what was Mr. Croker’s last article in the _Quarterly_. The young clerks
and shopmen seemed as much _au fait_ as their employers, and many is the
conversation I heard about the merits of this writer or that--Dickens,
Ainsworth, Lover, Lever.
I think, in walking the streets, and looking at the ragged urchins
crowding there, every Englishman must remark that the superiority of
intelligence is here, and not with us. I never saw such a collection of
bright-eyed, wild, clever, eager faces. Mr. Maclise has carried away a
number of them in his memory; and the lovers of his admirable pictures
will find more than one Munster countenance under a helmet in company of
Macbeth, or in a slashed doublet alongside of Prince Hamlet, or in the
very midst of Spain in company with Signor Gil Blas. Gil Blas himself
came from Cork, and not from Oviedo.
I listened to two boys almost in rags: they were lolling over the quay
balustrade, and talking about _one of the Ptolemys!_ and talking very
well too. One of them had been reading in Rollin, and was detailing his
information with a great deal of eloquence and fire. Another day,
walking in the Mardyke, I followed three boys, not half so well dressed
as London errand-boys: one was telling the other about Captain Ross’s
voyages, and spoke with as much brightness and intelligence as the
best-read gentleman’s son in England could do. He was as much of a
gentleman, too, the ragged young student; his manner as good, though
perhaps more eager and emphatic; his language was extremely rich, too,
and eloquent. Does the reader remember his school-days, when half a
dozen lads in the bedrooms took it by turns to tell stories? how poor
the language generally was, and how exceedingly poor the imagination!
Both of those ragged Irish lads had the making of gentlemen, scholars,
orators, in them. _À propos_ of love of reading, let me mention here a
Dublin story. Dr. Lever, the celebrated author of _Harry Lorrequer_,
went into Dycer’s stables to buy a horse. The groom who brought the
animal out, directly he heard who the gentleman was, came out and
touched his cap, and pointed to a little book in his pocket in a pink
cover. ‘_I can’t do without it, sir_,’ says the man. It was _Harry
Lorrequer_. I wonder does any one of Mr. Rymell’s grooms take in
_Pickwick_, or would they have any curiosity to see Mr. Dickens, should
he pass that way?
The Corkagians are eager for a Munster University; asking for, and
having a very good right to, the same privilege which has been granted
to the chief city of the north of Ireland. It would not fail of being a
great benefit to the city and to the country too, which would have no
need to go so far as Dublin for a school of letters and medicine; nor,
Whig and Catholic for the most part, to attend a Tory and Protestant
University. The establishing of an open college in Munster would bring
much popularity to any Ministry that should accord such a boon. People
would cry out ‘Popery and Infidelity,’ doubtless, as they did when the
London University was established; as the same party in Spain would cry
out, ‘Atheism and Heresy.’ But the time, thank God! is gone by in
England when it was necessary to legislate for _them_; and Sir Robert
Peel, in giving his adherence to the National Education scheme, has
sanctioned the principle of which this so much longed-for college would
only be a consequence.
The medical charities and hospitals are said to be very well arranged,
and the medical men of far more than ordinary skill. Other public
institutions are no less excellent. I was taken over the Lunatic Asylum,
where everything was conducted with admirable comfort, cleanliness, and
kindness; and as for the county gaol, it is so neat, spacious, and
comfortable, that we can only pray to see every cottager in the country
as cleanly, well lodged, and well fed as the convicts are. They get a
pound of bread and a pint of milk twice a day: there must be millions of
people in this wretched country, to whom such food would be a luxury
that their utmost labours can never by possibility procure for them; and
in going over this admirable institution, where everybody is cleanly,
healthy, and well clad, I could not but think of the rags and filth of
the horrid starvation market before mentioned; so that the prison seemed
almost a sort of premium for vice. But the people like their freedom,
such as it is, and prefer to starve and be ragged as they list. They
will not go to the poorhouses, except at the greatest extremity, and
leave them on the slightest chance of existence elsewhere.
Walking away from this palace of a prison, you pass amidst all sorts of
delightful verdure, cheerful gardens, and broad green luscious pastures,
down to the beautiful river Lee. On one side the river shines away
towards the city with its towers and purple steeples; on the other it is
broken by little waterfalls, and bound in by blue hills, an old castle
towering in the distance, and innumerable parks and villas lying along
the pleasant wooded banks. How beautiful the scene is, how rich and how
happy! Yonder, in the old Mardyke Avenue, you hear the voices of a score
of children, and along the bright green meadows, where the cows are
feeding, the gentle shadows of the clouds go playing over the grass. Who
can look at such a charming scene but with a thankful swelling heart?
In the midst of your pleasure, three beggars have hobbled up, and are
howling supplications to the Lord. One is old and blind, and so diseased
and hideous, that straightway all the pleasure of the sight round about
vanishes from you--that livid ghastly face interposing between you and
it. And so it is throughout the south and west of Ireland; the traveller
is haunted by the face of the popular starvation. It is not the
exception, it is the condition of the people. In this fairest and
richest of countries, men are suffering and starving by millions. There
are thousands of them at this minute stretched in the sunshine at their
cabin doors with no work, scarcely any food, no hope seemingly. Strong
countrymen are lying in bed ‘_for the hunger_’--because a man lying on
his back does not need so much food as a person afoot. Many of them have
torn up the unripe potatoes from their little gardens, and to exist now
must look to winter, when they shall have to suffer starvation and cold
too. The epicurean, and traveller for pleasure, had better travel
anywhere than here; where there are miseries that one does not dare to
think of; where one is always feeling how helpless pity is, and how
hopeless relief, and is perpetually made ashamed of being happy.
* * * * *
I have just been strolling up a pretty little height called Grattan’s
Hill, that overlooks the town and the river, and where the artist that
comes Cork-wards may find many subjects for his pencil. There is a kind
of pleasure-ground at the top of this eminence--a broad walk that
draggles up to a ruined wall, with a ruined niche in it, and a battered
stone bench. On the side that shelves down to the water are some
beeches, and opposite them a row of houses from which you see one of the
prettiest prospects possible--the shining river with the craft along
the quays, and the busy city in the distance, the active little steamers
puffing away towards Cove, the farther bank crowned with rich woods, and
pleasant-looking country-houses,--perhaps they are tumbling, rickety,
and ruinous, as those houses close by us, but you can’t see the ruin
from here.
What a strange air of forlorn gaiety there is about the place!--the sky
itself seems as if it did not know whether to laugh or cry, so full is
it of clouds and sunshine. Little fat, ragged, smiling children are
clambering about the rocks, and sitting on mossy doorsteps, tending
other children yet smaller, fatter, and more dirty. ‘Stop till I get you
a posy’ (pronounced _pawawawsee_), cries one urchin to another. ‘Tell me
who is it ye love, Jooly,’ exclaims another, cuddling a red-faced infant
with a very dirty nose. More of the same race are perched about the
summer-house, and two wenches with large purple feet are flapping some
carpets in the air. It is a wonder the carpets will bear this kind of
treatment at all, and do not be off at once to mingle with the elements:
I never saw things that hung to life by such a frail thread.
This dismal pleasant place is a suburb of the second city in Ireland,
and one of the most beautiful spots about the town. What a prim,
bustling, active, green-railinged, tea-gardened, gravel-walked place
would it have been in the five-hundredth town in England!--but you see
the people can be quite as happy in the rags and without the paint, and
I hear a great deal more heartiness and affection from these children
than from their fat little brethren across the Channel.
If a man wanted to study ruins, here is a house close at hand, not forty
years old no doubt, but yet as completely gone to rack as Netley Abbey.
It is quite curious to study that house; and a pretty ruinous fabric of
improvidence, extravagance, happiness, and disaster may the imagination
build out of it! In the first place, the owners did not wait to finish
it before they went to inhabit it! This is written in just such another
place;--a handsome drawing-room with a good carpet, a lofty marble
mantelpiece, and no paper to the walls. The door is prettily painted
white and blue, and though not six weeks old, a great piece of the
woodwork is off already (Peggy uses it to prevent the door from banging
to); and there are some fine chinks in every one of the panels, by which
my neighbour may see all my doings.
A couple of score of years, and this house will be just like yonder
place on Grattan’s Hill.
Like a young prodigal, the house begins to use its constitution too
early; and when it should yet (in the shape of carpenters and painters)
have all its masters and guardians to watch and educate it, my house on
Grattan’s Hill must be a man at once, and enjoy all the privileges of
strong health! I would lay a guinea they were making punch in that house
before they could keep the rain out of it; that they had a dinner-party
and ball before the floors were firm or the wainscots painted, and a
fine tester-bed in the best room, where my lady might catch cold in
state, in the midst of yawning chimneys, creaking window-sashes, and
smoking plaster.
Now look at the door of the coach-house, with its first coat of paint
seen yet, and a variety of patches to keep the feeble barrier together.
The loft was arched once, but a great corner has tumbled at one end,
leaving a gash that unites the windows with the coach-house door.
Several of the arch-stones are removed, and the whole edifice is about
as rambling and disorderly as--as the arrangement of this book, say.
Very tall tufts of mouldy moss are on the drawing-room windows, with
long white heads of grass. As I am sketching this--_honk!_--a great lean
sow comes trampling through the slush within the courtyard, breaks down
the flimsy apparatus of rattling boards and stones which had passed for
the gate, and walks with her seven squeaking little ones to disport on
the grass on the hill.
The drawing-room of the tenement mentioned just now, with its pictures,
and pulleyless windows and lockless doors, was tenanted by a friend who
lodged there with a sick wife and a couple of little children; one of
whom was an infant in arms. It is not, however, the lodger, who is an
Englishman, but the kind landlady and her family who may well be
described here--for their like are hardly to be found on the other side
of the Channel. Mrs. Fagan is a young widow who has seen better days,
and that portrait over the grand mantelpiece is the picture of her
husband that is gone, a handsome young man, and well-to-do at one time
as a merchant. But the widow (she is as pretty, as ladylike, as kind,
and as neat as ever widow could be) has little left to live upon but the
rent of her lodgings and her furniture; of which we have seen the best
in the drawing-room.
She has three fine children of her own: there is Minny, and Katey, and
Patsey, and they occupy indifferently the dining-room on the
ground-floor or the kitchen opposite; where in the midst of a great
smoke sits an old nurse, by a copper of potatoes which is always
bubbling and full. Patsey swallows quantities of them, that’s clear--his
cheeks are as red and shining as apples, and when he roars, you are sure
that his lungs are in the finest condition. Next door to the kitchen is
the pantry, and there is a bucket full of the before-mentioned fruit,
and a grand service of china for dinner and dessert. The kind young
widow shows them with no little pride, and says with reason that there
are few lodging-houses in Cork that can match such china as that. They
are relics of the happy old times when Fagan kept his gig and horse,
doubtless, and had his friends to dine--the happy prosperous days which
she has exchanged for poverty and the sad black gown.
Patsey, Minny, and Katey have made friends with the little English
people upstairs; the elder of whom, in the course of a month, has as
fine a Munster brogue as ever trolled over the lips of any born
Corkagian. The old nurse carries out the whole united party to walk,
with the exception of the English baby, that jumps about in the arms of
a countrywoman of her own. That is, unless one of the four Miss Fagans
take her; for four of them there are, four _other_ Miss Fagans, from
eighteen downwards to fourteen:--handsome, fresh, lively, dancing,
bouncing girls. You may always see two or three of them smiling at the
parlour-window, and they laugh and turn away their heads when any young
fellow looks and admires them.
Now, it stands to reason that a young widow of five-and-twenty can’t be
the mother of four young ladies of eighteen downwards; and, if anybody
wants to know how they come to be living with the poor widow their
cousin, the answer is, they are on a visit. Peggy the maid says their
papa is a gentleman of property, and can ‘spend his eight hundred a
year.’
Why don’t they remain with the old gentleman, then, instead of
quartering on the poor young widow, who has her own little mouths to
feed? The reason is, the old gentleman has gone and _married his cook_;
and the daughters have quitted him in a body, refusing to sit down to
dinner with a person who ought by rights to be in the kitchen. The whole
family (the Fagans are of good family) take the quarrel up, and here are
the young people under shelter of the widow.
Four merrier, tender-hearted girls are not to be found in all Ireland;
and the only subject of contention amongst them is, which shall have the
English baby; they are nursing it, and singing to it, and dandling it by
turns all day long. When they are not singing to the baby, they are
singing to an old piano; such an old, wiry, jingling, wheezy piano! It
has plenty of work, playing jigs and song accompaniments between meals,
and acting as a sideboard at dinner. I am not sure that it is at rest at
night either; but have a shrewd suspicion that it is turned into a
four-post bed. And for the following reason:--
Every afternoon, at four o’clock, you see a tall old gentleman walking
leisurely to the house. He is dressed in a long greatcoat with huge
pockets, and in the huge pockets are sure to be some big apples for all
the children--the English child amongst the rest, and she generally has
the biggest one. At seven o’clock, you are sure to hear a deep voice
shouting ‘PAGGY!’ in an awful tone--it is the old gentleman calling for
his ‘materials’; which Peggy brings without any further ado; and a glass
of punch is made, no doubt, for everybody. Then the party separates: the
children and the old nurse have long since trampled upstairs; Peggy has
the kitchen for her sleeping-apartment; and the four young ladies make
it out somehow in the back drawing-room. As for the old gentleman, he
reposes in the parlour; and it must be somewhere about the piano, for
there is no furniture in the room except that, a table, a few old
chairs, a workbox, and a couple of albums.
The English girl’s father met her in the street one day, talking
confidentially with a tall old gentleman in a greatcoat. ‘Who’s your
friend?’ says the Englishman afterwards to the little girl. ‘Don’t you
know him, papa?’ said the child in the purest brogue. ‘Don’t you know
him?--THAT’S UNCLE JAMES!’ And so it was: in this kind, poor, generous,
barebacked house, the English child found a set of new relations; little
rosy brothers and sisters to play with, kind women to take the place of
the almost dying mother, a good old Uncle James to bring her home apples
and care for her--one and all ready to share their little pittance with
her, and to give her a place in their simple friendly hearts. God
Almighty bless the widow and her mite, and all the kind souls under her
roof!
How much goodness and generosity--how much purity, fine feeling--nay,
happiness--may dwell amongst the poor whom we have been just looking at!
Here, thank God, is an instance of this happy and cheerful poverty: and
it is good to look, when one can, at the heart that beats under the
threadbare coat, as well as the tattered old garment itself. Well,
please Heaven, some of those people whom we have been looking at are as
good, and not much less happy: but though they are accustomed to their
want, the stranger does not reconcile himself to it quickly; and I hope
no Irish reader will be offended at my speaking of this poverty, not
with scorn or ill-feeling, but with hearty sympathy and good-will.
* * * * *
One word more regarding the Widow Fagan’s house. When Peggy brought in
coals for the drawing-room fire, she carried them--in what do you think?
‘In a coal-scuttle, to be sure,’ says the English reader, down on you as
sharp as a needle.
No, you clever Englishman, it wasn’t a coal-scuttle.
‘Well, then, it was in a fire-shovel,’ says that brightest of wits,
guessing again.
No, it _wasn’t_ a fire-shovel, you heaven-born genius; and you might
guess from this until Mrs. Snooks called you up to coffee, and you would
never find out. It was in something which I have already described in
Mrs. Fagan’s pantry.
‘Oh, I have you now, it was the bucket where the potatoes were; the
thlatternly wetch!’ says Snooks.
Wrong again! Peggy brought up the coals--in a CHINA PLATE!
Snooks turns quite white with surprise, and almost chokes himself with
his port. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘of all the _wum_ countwith that I ever wead
of, hang me if Ireland ithn’t the _wummetht_. Coalth in a plate!
Mawyann, do you hear that? In Ireland they alwayth thend up their coalth
in a plate!’
CHAPTER VIII
FROM CORK TO BANTRY; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE CITY OF SKIBBEREEN
That light four-inside, four-horse coach, the ‘Skibbereen Perseverance,’
brought me fifty-two miles to-day, for the sum of three-and-sixpence,
through a country which is, as usual, somewhat difficult to describe. We
issued out of Cork by the western road, in which, as the Guide-book
says, there is something very imposing. ‘The magnificence of the county
court-house, the extent, solidity, and characteristic sternness of the
county gaol,’ were visible to us for a few minutes; when, turning away
southward from the pleasant banks of the stream, the road took us
towards Bandon, through a country that is bare and ragged-looking, but
yet green and pretty; and it always seems to me, like the people, to
look cheerful in spite of its wretchedness, or, more correctly, to look
tearful and cheerful at the same time.
The coach, like almost every other public vehicle I have seen in
Ireland, was full to the brim and over it. What can send these restless
people travelling and hurrying about from place to place as they do? I
have heard one or two gentlemen hint that they had ‘business’ at this
place or that; and found afterwards that one was going a couple of score
of miles to look at a mare, another to examine a setter-dog, and so on.
I did not make it my business to ask on what errand the gentlemen on the
coach were bound; though two of them, seeing an Englishman, very
good-naturedly began chalking out a route for him to take, and showing a
sort of interest in his affairs, which is not with us generally
exhibited. The coach, too, seemed to have the elastic hospitality of
some Irish houses; it accommodated an almost impossible number. For the
greater part of the journey the little guard sat on the roof among the
carpet-bags, holding in one hand a huge tambour-frame, in the other a
bandbox marked ‘Foggarty, Hatter.’ (What is there more ridiculous in the
name of Foggarty than in that of Smith? and yet, had Smith been the
name, I never should have laughed at or remarked it.) Presently by his
side clambered a green-coated policeman with his carbine, and we had a
talk about the vitriol-throwers at Cork, and the sentence just passed
upon them. The populace has decidedly taken part with the
vitriol-throwers; parties of dragoons were obliged to surround the
avenues of the court; and the judge who sentenced them was abused as he
entered his carriage, and called an old villain, and many other
opprobrious names.
This case the reader very likely remembers. A saw-mill was established
at Cork, by which some four hundred sawyers were thrown out of employ.
In order to deter the proprietors of this and all other mills from using
such instruments further, the sawyers determined to execute a terrible
vengeance, and cast lots among themselves which of their body should
fling vitriol into the faces of the mill-owners. The men who were chosen
by the lot were to execute this horrible office on pain of death, and
did so,--frightfully burning and blinding one of the gentlemen owning
the mill. Great rewards were offered for the apprehension of the
criminals, and at last one of their own body came forward as an
approver, and the four principal actors in this dreadful outrage were
sentenced to be transported for life. Crowds of the ragged admirers of
these men were standing round ‘the magnificent county court-house’ as we
passed the building. Ours is a strange life indeed. What a history of
poverty and barbarity, and crime, and even kindness, was that by which
we passed before the magnificent county court-house, at eight miles an
hour? What a chapter might a philosopher write on them! Look yonder at
those two hundred ragged fellow-subjects of yours; they are kind, good,
pious, brutal, starving. If the priest tells them, there is scarce any
penance they will not perform; there is scarcely any pitch of misery
which they have not been known to endure, nor any degree of generosity
of which they are not capable: but if a man comes among these people,
and can afford to take land over their heads, or if he invents a machine
which can work more economically than their labour, they will shoot the
man down without mercy, murder him, or put him to horrible tortures, and
glory almost in what they do. There stand the men; they are only
separated from us by a few paces: they are as fond of their mothers and
children as we are; their gratitude for small kindnesses shown to them
is extraordinary; they are Christians as we are; but interfere with
their interests, and they will murder you without pity.
It is not revenge so much which these poor fellows take, as a brutal
justice of their own. Now, will it seem a paradox to say, in regard to
them and their murderous system, that the way to put an end to the
latter is to _kill them no more_? Let the priest be able to go amongst
them and say, the law holds a man’s life so sacred that it will on _no
account_ take it away. No man, nor no body of men, has a right to meddle
with human life; not the Commons of England any more than the Commons of
Tipperary. This may cost two or three lives, probably, until such time
as the system may come to be known and understood: but which will be the
greatest economy of blood in the end?
By this time the vitriol-men were long passed away, and we began next to
talk about the Cork and London steamboats; which are made to pay, on
account of the number of paupers whom the boats bring over from London
at the charge of that city. The passengers found here, as in everything
else almost which I have seen as yet, another instance of the injury
which England inflicts on them. ‘As long as these men are strong and can
work,’ says one, ‘you keep them: when they are in bad health, you fling
them upon us.’ Nor could I convince him that the agricultural gentlemen
were perfectly free to stay at home if they liked: that we did for them
what was done for English paupers--sent them, namely, as far as possible
on the way to their parishes; nay, that some of them (as I have seen
with my own eyes) actually saved a bit of money during the harvest, and
took this cheap way of conveying it and themselves to their homes again.
But nothing would convince the gentlemen that there was not some wicked
scheming on the part of the English in the business; and, indeed, I find
upon almost every other subject a peevish and puerile suspiciousness
which is worthy of France itself.
By this time we came to a pretty village called Innishannon, upon the
noble banks of the Bandon river; leading for three miles by a great
number of pleasant gentlemen’s seats to Bandon town. A good number of
large mills were on the banks of the stream; and the chief part of
them, as in Carlow, useless. One mill we saw was too small for the
owner’s great speculations; and so he built another and larger one: the
big mill cost him £10,000, for which his brothers went security; and, a
lawsuit being given against the millowner, the two mills stopped, the
two brothers went off, and yon fine old house, in the style of Anne,
with terraces and tall chimneys--one of the oldest country-houses I have
seen in Ireland--is now inhabited by the natural son of the millowner,
who has more such interesting progeny. Then we came to a tall,
comfortable house, in a plantation; opposite to which was a stone
castle, in its shrubberies on the other side of the road. The tall house
in the plantation shot the opposite side of the road in a duel, and
nearly killed him; on which the opposite side of the road built this
castle, _in order to plague_ the tall house. They are good friends now;
but the opposite side of the road ruined himself in building his house.
I asked, ‘Is the house finished?’--‘_A good deal of it is_,’ was the
answer.--And then we came to a brewery, about which was a similar story
of extravagance and ruin; but, whether before or after entering Bandon,
does not matter.
We did not, it appears, pass through the best part of Bandon: I looked
along one side of the houses in the long street through which we went,
to see if there was a window without a broken pane of glass, and can
declare on my conscience that every single window had three broken
panes. There we changed horses, in a market-place, surrounded, as usual,
by beggars; then we passed through a suburb still more wretched and
ruinous than the first street, and which, in very large letters, is
called DOYLE STREET: and the next stage was at a place called Dunmanway.
Here it was market-day, too, and, as usual, no lack of attendants:
swarms of peasants in their blue cloaks, squatting by their stalls here
and there. There is a little, miserable old market-house, where a few
women were selling buttermilk; another, bullocks’ hearts, liver, and
such like scraps of meat; another had dried mackerel on a board; and
plenty of people huckstering, of course. Round the coach came crowds of
raggery, and blackguards fawning for money. I wonder who gives them any!
I have never seen any one give yet; and were they not even so numerous
that it would be impossible to gratify them all, there is something in
their cant and supplications to the Lord so disgusting to me, that I
could not give a halfpenny.
In regard of pretty faces, male or female, this road is very
unfavourable. I have not seen one for fifty miles; though, as it was
market-day all along the road, we have had the opportunity to examine
vast numbers of countenances. The women are, for the most part, stunted,
short, with flat Tartar faces; and the men no handsomer. Every woman has
bare legs, of course; and as the weather is fine, they are sitting
outside their cabins, with the pig, and the geese, and the children
sporting around.
Before many doors we saw a little flock of these useful animals, and the
family pig almost everywhere. You might see him browsing and poking
along the hedges, his fore and hind leg attached with a wisp of hay to
check his propensity to roaming. Here and there were a small brood of
turkeys; now and then a couple of sheep or a single one grazing upon a
scanty field, of which the chief crop seemed to be thistles and stone;
and, by the side of the cottage, the potato-field always.
[Illustration]
The character of the landscape for the most part is bare and sad; except
here and there in the neighbourhood of the towns, where people have
taken a fancy to plant, and where nature has helped them, as it almost
always will in this country. If we saw a field with a good hedge to it,
we were sure to see a good crop inside. Many a field was there that had
neither crop nor hedge. We passed by and over many pretty streams,
running bright through brilliant emerald meadows: and I saw a thousand
charming pictures, which want as yet an Irish Berghem. A bright road
winding up a hill; on it a country cart, with its load, stretching a
huge shadow; the before-mentioned emerald pastures and silver rivers in
the foreground; a noble sweep of hills rising up from them, and
contrasting their magnificent purple with the green; in the extreme
distance the clear cold outline of some far-off mountains, and the white
clouds tumbled about in the blue sky overhead. It has no doubt struck
all persons who love to look at nature, how different the skies are in
different countries. I fancy Irish or French clouds are as
characteristic as Irish or French landscapes. It would be well to have a
Daguerreotype and get a series of each. Some way beyond Dunmanna the
road takes us through a noble savage country of rocks and heath. Nor
must the painter forget long black tracts of bog here and there, and the
water glistening brightly at the places where the turf has been cut
away. Add to this, and chiefly by the banks of rivers, a ruined old
castle or two; some were built by the Danes, it is said. The O’Connors,
the O’Mahonys, the O’Driscolls, were lords of many others, and their
ruined towers may be seen here and along the sea.
Near Dunmanna that great coach, ‘The Skibbereen Industry,’ dashed by us
at seven miles an hour; a wondrous vehicle: there were gaps between
every one of the panels; you could see daylight through and through it.
Like our machine, it was full, with three complementary sailors on the
roof, as little harness as possible to the horses, and as long stages as
horses can well endure; ours were each eighteen-mile stages. About eight
miles from Skibbereen a one-horse car met us, and carried away an
offshoot of passengers to Bantry. Five passengers and their luggage, and
a very wild steep road; all this had one poor little pony to overcome!
About the towns there were some show of gentlemen’s cars, smart and well
appointed, and on the road great numbers of country carts; an army of
them met us coming from Skibbereen, and laden with grey sand for manure.
Before you enter the city of Skibbereen, the tall new Poorhouse presents
itself to the eye of the traveller; of the common model, being a
bastard-Gothic edifice, with a profusion of cottage-ornée (is cottage
masculine or feminine in French?)--of cottage-orné roofs, and pinnacles,
and insolent-looking stacks of chimneys. It is built for 900 people, but
as yet not more than 400 have been induced to live in it; the beggars
preferring the freedom of their precarious trade to the dismal certainty
within its walls. Next we come to the chapel, a very large
respectable-looking building of dark-grey stone; and presently, behold,
by the crowd of blackguards in waiting, the ‘Skibbereen Perseverance’
has found its goal, and you are inducted to the ‘Hotel’ opposite.
Some gentlemen were at the coach, besides those of lower degree. Here
was a fat fellow with large whiskers, a geranium, and a cigar; yonder a
tall handsome old man that I would swear was a dragoon on half-pay. He
had a little cap, a Taglioni coat, a pair of beautiful spaniels, and a
pair of knee-breeches which showed a very handsome old leg; and his
object seemed to be to invite everybody to dinner as they got off the
coach. No doubt he has seen the ‘Skibbereen Perseverance’ come in ever
since it was a ‘Perseverance.’ It is wonderful to think what will
interest men in prisons or country towns!
There is a dirty coffee-room, with a strong smell of whisky; indeed
three young ‘materialists’ are employed at the moment: and I hereby beg
to offer an apology to three other gentlemen--the Captain, another, and
the gentleman of the geranium, who had caught hold of a sketching-stool
which is my property, and were stretching it, and sitting upon it, and
wondering, and talking of it, when the owner came in, and they bounced
off to their seats like so many schoolboys. Dirty as the place was, this
was no reason why it should not produce an exuberant dinner of trout and
Kerry mutton; after which Dan the waiter, holding up a dingy decanter,
asks how much whisky I’d have.
That calculation need not be made here; and if a man sleeps well, has he
any need to quarrel with the appointments of his bedroom, and spy out
the deficiencies of the land? As it was Sunday, it was impossible for me
to say what sort of shops ‘the active and flourishing town’ of
Skibbereen contains. There were some of the architectural sort, viz.
with gilt letters and cracked mouldings, and others into which I thought
I saw the cows walking; but it was only into their little cribs and
paddocks at the back of the shops. There is a trim Wesleyan chapel,
without any broken windows; a neat church standing modestly on one side;
the lower street crawls along the river to a considerable extent, having
by-streets and boulevards of cabins here and there.
The people came flocking into the place by hundreds, and you saw their
blue cloaks dotting the road and the bare open plains beyond. The men
came with shoes and stockings to-day, the women all bare-legged, and
many of them might be seen washing their feet in the stream before they
went up to the chapel. The street seemed to be lined on either side with
blue cloaks, squatting along the doorways as is their wont. Among these,
numberless cows were walking to and fro, and pails of milk passing, and
here and there a hound or two went stalking about. Dan, the waiter,
says they are hunted by the handsome old Captain who was yesterday
inviting everybody to dinner.
Anybody at eight o’clock of a Sunday morning in summer may behold the
above scene from a bridge just outside the town. He may add to it the
river, with one or two barges lying idle upon it; a flag flying at what
looks like a custom-house; bare country all around; and the chapel
before him, with a swarm of the dark figures round about it.
I went into it, not without awe (for, as I confessed before, I always
feel a sort of tremor on going into a Catholic place of worship: the
candles, and altars, and mysteries, the priest, and his robes, and nasal
chanting, and wonderful genuflections, will frighten me as long as I
live). The chapel-yard was filled with men and women; a couple of shabby
old beadles were at the gate, with copper shovels to collect money; and
inside the chapel four or five hundred people were on their knees, and
scores more of the blue-mantles came in, dropping their curtsies as they
entered, and then taking their places on the flags.
And now the pangs of hunger beginning to make themselves felt, it became
necessary for your humble servant (after making several useless
applications to a bell, which properly declined to work on Sundays) to
make a personal descent to the inn-kitchen, where was not a bad study
for a painter. It is a huge room, with a peat fire burning, and a
staircase walking up one side of it, on which stair was a damsel in a
partial though by no means picturesque dishabille. The cook had just
come in with a great frothing pail of milk, and sat with her arms
folded; the hostler’s boy sat dangling his legs from the table; the
hostler was dandling a noble little boy of a year old, at whom Mrs. Cook
likewise grinned delighted. Here, too, sat Mr. Dan, the waiter; and no
wonder breakfast was delayed, for all three of these worthy domestics
seemed delighted with the infant.
He was handed over to the gentleman’s arms for the space of thirty
seconds; the gentleman being the father of a family, and of course an
amateur.
‘Say Dan for the gentleman,’ says the delighted cook.
‘Dada,’ says the baby; at which the assembly grinned with joy: and Dan
promised I should have my breakfast ‘in a hurry.’
But of all the wonderful things to be seen in Skibbereen, Dan’s pantry
is the most wonderful: every article within is a makeshift, and has been
ingeniously perverted from its original destination. Here lie bread,
blacking, fresh butter, tallow-candles, dirty knives--all in the same
cigar-box with snuff, milk, cold bacon, brown sugar, broken teacups,
and bits of soap. No pen can describe that establishment, as no English
imagination could have conceived it. But lo! the sky has cleared after a
furious fall of rain--(in compliance with Dan’s statement to that
effect, ‘that the weather would be fine’)--and a car is waiting to carry
us to Loughine.
Although the description of Loughine can make but a poor figure in a
book, the ride thither is well worth the traveller’s short labour. You
pass by one of the cabin-streets out of the town, into a country which
for a mile is rich with grain, though bare of trees; then through a
boggy bleak district, from which you enter into a sort of sea of rocks,
with patches of herbage here and there. Before the traveller, almost all
the way, is a huge pile of purple mountain, on which, as one comes
nearer, one perceives numberless waves and breaks, as you see small
waves on a billow in the sea; then clambering up a hill, we look down
upon a bright green flat of land, with the lake beyond it, girt round by
grey melancholy hills. The water may be a mile in extent; a cabin tops
the mountain here and there; gentlemen have erected one or two anchorite
pleasure-houses on the banks, as cheerful as a summer-house would be on
Salisbury Plain. I felt not sorry to have seen this lonely lake, and
still happier to leave it. There it lies with crags all round it, in the
midst of desolate plains; it escapes somewhere to the sea; its waters
are salt; half a dozen boats lie here and there upon its banks, and we
saw a small crew of boys plashing about and swimming in it, and laughing
and yelling. It seemed a shame to disturb the silence so.
The crowd of swaggering ‘gents’ (I don’t know the corresponding phrase
in the Anglo-Irish vocabulary to express a shabby dandy) awaiting the
Cork mail, which kindly goes twenty miles out of its way to accommodate
the town of Skibbereen, was quite extraordinary. The little street was
quite blocked up with shabby gentlemen, and shabby beggars, awaiting
this daily phenomenon. The man who had driven us to Loughine did not
fail to ask for his fee as driver; and then, having received it, came
forward in his capacity of boots, and received another remuneration. The
ride is desolate, bare, and yet beautiful. There are a set of hills that
keep one company the whole way; they were partially hidden in a grey
sky, which flung a general hue of melancholy too over the green country
through which we passed. There was only one wretched village along the
road, but no lack of population; ragged people who issued from their
cabins as the coach passed, or were sitting by the wayside. Everybody
seems sitting by the wayside here: one never sees this general repose in
England--a sort of ragged lazy contentment. All the children seemed to
be on the watch for the coach; waited very knowingly and carefully their
opportunity, and then hung on by scores behind. What a pleasure, to run
over flinty roads with bare feet, to be whipped off, and to walk back to
the cabin again! These were very different cottages to those neat ones I
had seen in Kildare. The wretchedness of them is quite painful to look
at; many of the potato-gardens were half dug up, and it is only the
first week in August, near three months before the potato is ripe and at
full growth; and the winter still six months away. There were chapels
occasionally, and smart new-built churches--one of them has a
congregation of ten souls, the coachman told me. Would it not be better
that the clergyman should receive them in his room, and, that the
church-building money should be bestowed otherwise?
At length, after winding up all sorts of dismal hills speckled with
wretched hovels, a ruinous mill every now and then, black bog-lands, and
small winding streams, breaking here and there into little falls, we
come upon some grounds well tilled and planted, and descending (at no
small risk from stumbling horses) a bleak long hill, we see the water
before us, and turning to the right by the handsome little park of Lord
Bearhaven, enter Bantry. The harbour is beautiful. Small mountains in
pretty green undulations rising on the opposite side; great grey ones
farther back; a pretty island in the midst of the water, which is
wonderfully bright and calm. A handsome yacht, and two or three vessels
with their Sunday colours out, were lying in the bay. It looked like a
seaport scene at a theatre, gay, cheerful, neat, and picturesque. At a
little distance the town, too, is very pretty. There are some smart
houses on the quays, a handsome court-house as usual, a fine large
hotel, and plenty of people flocking round the wonderful coach.
The town is most picturesquely situated, climbing up a wooded hill, with
numbers of neat cottages here and there, an ugly church with an air of
pretension, and a large grave Roman Catholic chapel, the highest point
of the place. The main street was as usual thronged with the squatting
blue cloaks, carrying on their eager trade of buttermilk and green
apples, and such cheap wares. With the exception of this street and the
quay, with their whitewashed and slated houses, it is a town of cabins.
The wretchedness of some of them is quite curious; I tried to make a
sketch of a row which lean against an old wall, and are built upon a
rock that tumbles about in the oddest and most fantastic shapes, with a
brawling waterfall dashing down a channel in the midst. These are, it
appears, the beggars’ houses; any one may build a lodge against that
wall, rent-free; and such places were never seen! As for drawing them,
it was in vain to try; one might as well make a sketch of a bundle of
rags. An ordinary pigsty in England is really more comfortable. Most of
them were not six feet long or five feet high, built of stones huddled
together, a hole being left for the people to creep in at, a ruined
thatch to keep out some little portion of the rain. The occupiers of
these places sat at their doors in tolerable contentment, or the
children came down and washed their feet in the water. I declare I
believe a Hottentot kraal has more comforts in it; even to write of the
place makes one unhappy, and the words move slow. But in the midst of
all this misery there is an air of actual cheerfulness; and go but a few
score of yards off, and these wretched hovels lying together look really
picturesque and pleasing.
CHAPTER IX
RAINY DAYS AT GLENGARIFF
A smart two-horse car takes the traveller thrice a week from Bantry to
Killarney, by way of Glengariff and Kenmare. Unluckily, the rain was
pouring down furiously as we passed to the first-named places, and we
had only opportunity to see a part of the astonishing beauties of the
country. What sends picturesque tourists to the Rhine and Saxon
Switzerland? within five miles round the pretty inn of Glengariff there
is a country of the magnificence of which no pen can give an idea. I
would like to be a great prince, and bring a train of painters over to
make, if they could, and according to their several capabilities, a set
of pictures of the place. Mr. Creswick would find such rivulets and
waterfalls, surrounded by a luxuriance of foliage and verdure that only
his pencil can imitate. As for Mr. Cattermole, a red-shanked Irishman
should carry his sketching-books to all sorts of wild, noble heights,
and vast, rocky valleys, where he might please himself by piling crag
upon crag, and by introducing, if he had a mind, some of the wild
figures which peopled this country in old days. There is the Eagles’
Nest, for instance, regarding which the Guide-book gives a pretty
legend. The Prince of Bantry being conquered by the English soldiers,
fled away, leaving his Princess and children to the care of a certain
faithful follower of his, who was to provide them with refuge and food.
But the whole country was overrun by the conquerors; all the flocks
driven away by them, all the houses ransacked, and the crops burnt off
the ground, and the faithful servitor did not know where he should find
a meal or a resting-place for the unhappy Princess O’Donovan.
He made, however, a sort of shed by the side of a mountain, composing it
of sods and stones so artfully that no one could tell but that it was a
part of the hill itself; and here, having speared or otherwise obtained
a salmon, he fed their Highnesses for the first day; trusting to Heaven
for a meal when the salmon should be ended.
[Illustration]
The Princess O’Donovan and her princely family soon came to an end of
the fish; and cried out for something more.
So the faithful servitor, taking with him a rope and his little son
Shamus, mounted up to the peak where the eagles rested; and, from the
spot to which he climbed, saw their nest, and the young eaglets in it,
in a cleft below the precipice.
‘Now,’ said he, ‘Shamus my son, you must take these thongs with you, and
I will let you down by the rope’ (it was a straw-rope, which he had made
himself, and though it might be considered a dangerous thread to hang by
in other countries, you’ll see plenty of such contrivances in Ireland to
the present day).
‘I will let you down by the rope, and you must tie the thongs round the
necks of the eaglets, not so as to choke them, but to prevent them from
swallowing much.’ So Shamus went down, and did as his father bade him,
and came up again when the eaglets were doctored.
Presently the eagles came home: one bringing a rabbit and the other a
grouse. These they dropped into the nest for the young ones; and soon
after went away in quest of other adventures.
Then Shamus went down into the eagles’ nest again, gutted the grouse and
rabbit, and left the garbage to the eaglets (as was their right), and
brought away the rest. And so the Princess and Princes had game that
night for their supper. How long they lived in this way, the Guide-book
does not say: but let us trust that the Prince, if he did not come to
his own again, was at least restored to his family and decently
mediatised: and, for my part, I have very little doubt but that Shamus,
the gallant young eagle-robber, created a favourable impression upon one
of the young princesses, and (after many adventures in which he
distinguished himself) was accepted by her Highness for a husband, and
her princely parents for a gallant son-in-law.
And here, while we are travelling to Glengariff, and ordering painters
about with such princely liberality (by the way, Mr. Stanfield should
have a boat in the bay, and paint both rock and sea at his ease), let me
mention a wonderful, awful incident of real life which occurred on the
road. About four miles from Bantry, at a beautiful wooded place, hard by
a mill and waterfall, up rides a gentleman to the car with his luggage,
going to Killarney races. The luggage consisted of a small carpet-bag
and a pistol-case. About two miles farther on, a fellow stops the car:
‘Joe,’ says he, ‘my master is going to ride to Killarney, so you please
to take his luggage.’ The luggage consisted of a small carpet-bag,
and--a pistol-case as before. Is this a gentleman’s usual travelling
baggage in Ireland?
As there is more rain in this country than in any other, and as,
therefore, naturally, the inhabitants should be inured to the weather,
and made to despise an inconvenience which they cannot avoid, the
travelling conveyances are arranged so that you may get as much practice
in being wet as possible. The travellers’ baggage is stowed in a place
between the two rows of seats, and which is not inaptly called the well,
as in a rainy season you might possibly get a bucketful of water out of
that orifice. And, I confess, I saw, with a horrid satisfaction, the
pair of pistol-cases lying in this moist aperture, with water pouring
above them and lying below them; nay, prayed that all such weapons might
one day be consigned to the same fate. But as the waiter at Bantry, in
his excessive zeal to serve me, had sent my portmanteau back to Cork by
the coach, instead of allowing me to carry it with me to Killarney, and
as the rain had long since begun to insinuate itself under the
seat-cushion, and through the waterproof apron of the car, I dropped off
at Glengariff, and dried the only suit of clothes I had by the kitchen
fire. The inn is very pretty; some thorn-trees stand before it, where
many bare-legged people were lolling, in spite of the weather. A
beautiful bay stretches out before the house, the full tide washing the
thorn-trees; mountains rise on either side of the little bay, and there
is an island, with a castle in it in the midst, near which a yacht was
moored. But the mountains were hardly visible for the mist, and the
yacht, island, and castle looked as if they had been washed against the
flat grey sky in India-ink.
The day did not clear up sufficiently to allow me to make any long
excursion about the place, or indeed to see a very wide prospect round
about it: at a few hundred yards, most of the objects were enveloped in
mist; but even this, for a lover of the picturesque, had its beautiful
effect, for you saw the hills in the foreground pretty clear, and
covered with their wonderful green, while immediately behind them rose
an immense blue mass of mist and mountain that served to _relieve_ (to
use the painter’s phrase) the nearer objects. Annexed to the hotel is a
flourishing garden, where the vegetation is so great that the landlord
told me it was all he could do to check the trees from growing; round
about the bay, in several places, they come clustering down to the water
edge, nor does the salt water interfere with them.
Winding up a hill to the right, as you quit the inn, is the beautiful
road to the cottage and park of Lord Bantry. One or two parties on
pleasure bent went so far as the house, and were partially consoled for
the dreadful rain which presently poured down upon them, by wine,
whisky, and refreshments which the liberal owner of the house sent out
to them. I myself had only got a few hundred yards when the rain
overtook me, and sent me for refuge into a shed, where a blacksmith had
arranged a rude furnace and bellows, and where he was at work, with a
rough gilly to help him, and, of course, a lounger or two to look on.
The scene was exceedingly wild and picturesque, and I took out a
sketch-book and began to draw. The blacksmith was at first very
suspicious of the operation which I had commenced, nor did the poor
fellow’s sternness at all yield until I made him a present of a shilling
to buy tobacco, when he, his friend, and his son became good-humoured,
and said their little say. This was the first shilling he had earned
these three years: he was a small farmer, but was starved out, and had
set up a forge here, and was trying to get a few pence. What struck me
was the great number of people about the place. We had at least twenty
visits while the sketch was being made; cars, and single and double
horsemen, were continually passing; between the intervals of the shower
a couple of ragged old women would creep out from some hole and display
baskets of green apples for sale: wet or not, men and women were
lounging up and down the road. You would have thought it was a fair, and
yet there was not even a village at this place, only the inn and
post-house, by which the cars to Tralee pass thrice a week.
The weather, instead of mending, on the second day was worse than ever.
All the view had disappeared now under a rushing rain, of which I never
saw anything like the violence. We were visited by five maritime, nay
buccaneering-looking gentlemen in mustachios, with fierce caps and
jackets, just landed from a yacht: and then the car brought us three
Englishmen wet to the skin and thirsting for whisky-and-water.
And with these three Englishmen a great scene occurred, such as we read
of in Smollett’s and Fielding’s inns. One was a fat old gentleman from
Cambridge, who, I was informed, was a fellow of a College in that
University, but whom I shrewdly suspect[23] to be a butler or steward of
the same. The younger men, burly, manly, good-humoured fellows of
seventeen stone, were the nephews of the elder, who, says one, ‘could
draw a cheque for his thousand pounds.’
Two-and-twenty years before, on landing at the Pigeon-House at Dublin,
the old gentleman had been cheated by a carman, and his firm opinion
seemed to be that all carmen, nay, all Irishmen, were cheats.
And a sad proof of this depravity speedily showed itself: for having
hired a three-horse car at Killarney, which was to carry them to Bantry,
the Englishmen saw, with immense indignation, after they had drunk a
series of glasses of whisky, that the three-horse car had been removed,
a one-horse vehicle standing in its stead.
Their wrath no pen can describe. ‘I tell you they are all so!’ shouted
the elder. ‘When I landed at the Pigeon-House----’ ‘Bring me a
post-chaise!’ roars the second. ‘Waiter, get some more whisky!’ exclaims
the third. ‘If they don’t send us on with three horses, I’ll stop here
for a week.’ Then issuing, with his two young friends, into the
passage, to harangue the populace assembled there, the elder Englishman
began a speech about dishonesty, ‘d----d rogues and thieves,
Pigeon-House; he was a gentleman, and wouldn’t be done, d----n his eyes
and everybody’s eyes.’ Upon the affrighted landlord, who came to
interpose, they all fell with great ferocity: the elder man swearing,
especially, that he ‘would write to Lord Lansdowne regarding his
conduct, likewise to Lord Bandon, also to Lord Bantry: he was a
gentleman; he’d been cheated in the year 1815, on his first landing at
the Pigeon-House: and d----n the Irish, they were all alike.’ After
roaring and cursing for half an hour, a gentleman at the door, seeing
the meek bearing of the landlord--who stood quite lost and powerless in
the whirlwind of rage that had been excited about his luckless ears,
said, ‘If men cursed and swore in that way in his house, he would know
how to put them out.’
‘Put _me_ out!’ says one of the young men, placing himself before the
fat old blasphemer, his relative. ‘Put me out, my fine fellow!’ But it
was evident the Irishman did not like his customer. ‘Put _me_ out!’
roars the old gentleman, from behind his young protector; ’----n my
eyes, who are _you_, sir? who _are_ you, sir? I insist on knowing who
you are?’
‘And who are you?’ asks the Irishman.
‘Sir, I’m a gentleman, and _pay my way_!--and as soon as I get into
Bantry, I swear I’ll write a letter to Lord Bandon Bantry, and complain
of the treatment I have received here.’
Now, as the unhappy landlord had not said one single word, and as, on
the contrary, to the annoyance of the whole house, the stout old
gentleman from Cambridge had been shouting, raging, and cursing for two
hours, I could not help, like a great ass as I was, coming forward and
(thinking the landlord might be a tenant of Lord Bantry’s) saying,
‘Well, sir, if you write and say the landlord has behaved ill, I will
write to say that he has acted with extraordinary forbearance and
civility.’
O fool! to interfere in disputes where one set of the disputants have
drunk half a dozen glasses of whisky in the middle of the day! No sooner
had I said this than the other young man came and fell upon me, and in
the course of a few minutes found leisure to tell me ‘that I was no
gentleman; that I was ashamed to give my name, or say where I lived;
that I was a liar, and didn’t live in London, and couldn’t mention the
name of a single respectable person there; that he was a merchant and
tradesman, and hid his quality from nobody;’ and finally, ‘that though
bigger than himself, there was nothing he would like better than that I
should come out on the green and stand to him like a man.’
This invitation, although repeated several times, I refused with as much
dignity as I could assume; partly because I was sober and cool, while
the other was furious and drunk; also because I felt a strong suspicion
that in about ten minutes the man would manage to give me a tremendous
beating, which I did not merit in the least; thirdly, because a victory
over him would not have been productive of the least pleasure to me; and
lastly, because there was something really honest and gallant in the
fellow coming out to defend his old relative. Both of the younger men
would have fought like tigers for this disreputable old gentleman, and
desired no better sport. The last I heard of the three was that they and
the driver made their appearance before a magistrate in Bantry; and a
pretty story will the old man have to tell to his club at the Hoop, or
the Red Lion, of those swindling Irish, and the ill-treatment he met
with in their country.
As for the landlord, the incident will be a blessed theme of
conversation to him for a long time to come. I heard him discoursing of
it in the passage during the rest of the day; and next morning when I
opened my window and saw with much delight the bay clear and bright as
silver--except where the green hills were reflected in it, the blue sky
above, and the purple mountains round about with only a few clouds
veiling their peaks--the first thing I heard was the voice of Mr. Eccles
repeating the story to a new customer.
‘I thought thim couldn’t be gintlemin,’ was the appropriate remark of
Mr. Tom the waiter, ‘from the way in which they took their whishky,--raw
with cold wather, widout _mixing or inything_.’ Could an Irish waiter
give a more excellent definition of the ungenteel?
At nine o’clock in the morning of the next day, the unlucky car which
had carried the Englishmen to Bantry came back to Glengariff; and as the
morning was very fine, I was glad to take advantage of it, and travel
some five-and-thirty English miles to Killarney.
CHAPTER X
FROM GLENGARIFF TO KILLARNEY
The Irish car seems accommodated for any number of persons: it appeared
to be full when we left Glengariff, for a traveller from Bearhaven, and
the five gentlemen from the yacht, took seats upon it with myself, and
we fancied it was impossible more than seven should travel by such a
conveyance; but the driver showed the capabilities of his vehicle
presently. The journey from Glengariff to Kenmare is one of astonishing
beauty; and I have seen Killarney since, and am sure that Glengariff
loses nothing by comparison with this most famous of lakes. Rock, wood,
and sea stretch around the traveller--a thousand delightful pictures:
the landscape is at first wild without being fierce, immense woods and
plantations enriching the valleys--beautiful streams to be seen
everywhere.
Here again I was surprised at the great population along the road; for
one saw but few cabins, and there is no village between Glengariff and
Kenmare. But men and women were on banks and in fields; children, as
usual, came trooping up to the car; and the jovial men of the yacht had
great conversations with most of the persons whom we met on the road. A
merrier set of fellows it were hard to meet. ‘Should you like anything
to drink, sir?’ says one, commencing the acquaintance. ‘We have the best
whisky in the world, and plenty of porter in the basket.’ Therewith the
jolly seamen produced a long bottle of grog, which was passed round from
one to another; and then began singing, shouting, laughing, roaring, for
the whole journey. ‘British sailors have a knack, pull away ho, boys!
Hurroo, my fine fellow, does your mother know you’re out? Hurroo, Tim
Herlihy! you’re a _fluke_, Tim Herlihy.’ One man sang on the roof, one
_hurrooed_ to the echo, another apostrophised the aforesaid Herlihy as
he passed grinning on a car; a third had a pocket-handkerchief flaunting
from a pole, with which he performed exercises in the face of any
horsemen whom we met; and great were their yells as the ponies shied off
at the salutation and the riders swerved in their saddles. In the midst
of this rattling chorus we went along: gradually the country grew wilder
and more desolate, and we passed through a grim mountain region, bleak
and bare, the road winding round some of the innumerable hills, and once
or twice, by means of a tunnel, rushing boldly through them. One of
these tunnels, they say, is a couple of hundred yards long; and a pretty
howling, I need not say, was made through that pipe of rock by the jolly
yacht’s crew. ‘We saw you sketching in the blacksmith’s shed at
Glengariff,’ says one, ‘and we wished we had you on board. Such a jolly
life we led of it!’--They roved about the coast, they said, in their
vessel; they feasted off the best of fish, mutton, and whisky; they had
Gamble’s turtle-soup on board, and fun from morning till night, and
_vice versâ_. Gradually it came out that there was not, owing to the
tremendous rains, a dry corner in their ship; that they slung two in a
huge hammock in the cabin, and that one of their crew had been ill, and
shirked off. What a wonderful thing pleasure is! To be wet all day and
night; to be scorched and blistered by the sun and rain; to beat in and
out of little harbours, and to exceed diurnally upon whisky-punch--‘faith,
London, and an arm-chair at the club, are more to the tastes of some men.
After much mountain-work of ascending and descending (in which latter
operation, and by the side of precipices that make passing cockneys
rather squeamish, the carman drove like mad to the hooping and
screeching of the red rovers), we at length came to Kenmare, of which
all that I know is that it lies prettily in a bay or arm of the sea;
that it is approached by a little hanging-bridge, which seems to be a
wonder in these parts; that it is a miserable little place when you
enter it; and that, finally, a splendid luncheon of all sorts of meat
and excellent cold salmon may sometimes be had for a shilling at the
hotel of the place. It is a great vacant house, like the rest of them,
and would frighten people in England; but after a few days one grows
used to the Castle Rackrent style. I am not sure that there is not a
certain sort of comfort to be had in these rambling rooms, and among
these bustling, blundering waiters, which one does not always meet with
in an orderly English house of entertainment.
After discussing the luncheon, we found the car with fresh horses,
beggars, idlers, policemen, etc., standing round, of course; and now the
miraculous vehicle, which had held hitherto seven with some difficulty,
was called upon to accommodate thirteen.
A pretty noise would our three Englishmen of yesterday, nay, any other
Englishmen for the matter of that, have made, if coolly called upon to
admit an extra party of four into a mail-coach! The yacht’s crew did not
make a single objection; a couple clambered up on the roof, where they
managed to locate themselves with wonderful ingenuity, perched upon hard
wooden chests, or agreeably reposing upon the knotted ropes which held
them together: one of the new passengers scrambled between the
driver’s legs, where he held on somehow, and the rest were pushed and
squeezed astonishingly in the car.
[Illustration: A CAR TO KILLARNEY]
Now the fact must be told, that five of the new passengers (I don’t
count a little boy besides) were women, and very pretty, gay,
frolicsome, lively, kind-hearted, innocent women too; and for the rest
of the journey there was no end of laughing, and shouting, and singing,
and hugging, so that the caravan presented the appearance which is
depicted in the opposite engraving.
Now it may be a wonder to some persons, that with such a cargo the
carriage did not upset, or some of us did not fall off; to which the
answer is that we _did_ fall off. A very pretty woman fell off, and
showed a pair of never-mind-what-coloured garters, and an interesting
English traveller fell off too: but, Heaven bless you! these cars are
made to fall off from; and considering the circumstances of the case,
and in the same company, I would rather fall off than not. A great
number of polite allusions and genteel inquiries were, as may be
imagined, made by the jolly boat’s crew. But though the lady affected to
be a little angry at first, she was far too good-natured to be angry
long, and at last fairly burst out laughing with the passengers. We did
not fall off again, but held on very tight, and just as we were reaching
Killarney, saw somebody else fall off from another car. But in this
instance the gentleman had no lady to tumble with.
For almost half the way from Kenmare, this wild, beautiful road commands
views of the famous lake and vast blue mountains about Killarney. Turk,
Tomies, and Mangerton were clothed in purple like kings in mourning;
great, heavy clouds were gathered round their heads, parting away every
now and then, and leaving their noble features bare. The lake lay for
some time underneath us, dark and blue, with dark misty islands in the
midst. On the right-hand side of the road would be a precipice covered
with a thousand trees, or a green rocky flat, with a reedy mere in the
midst, and other mountains rising as far as we could see. I think of
that diabolical tune in _Der Freischütz_, while passing through this
sort of country. Every now and then, in the midst of some fresh country
or enclosed trees, or at a turn of the road, you lose the sight of the
great, big, awful mountain; but, like the aforesaid tune in _Der
Freischütz_, it is always there close at hand. You feel that it keeps
you company. And so it was that we rode by dark old Mangerton, then
presently past Mucruss, and then through two miles of avenues of
lime-trees, by numerous lodges and gentlemen’s seats, across an old
bridge, where you see the mountains again and the lake, until, by Lord
Kenmare’s house, a hideous row of houses informed us that we were at
Killarney.
Here my companion suddenly let go my hand, and, by a certain uneasy
motion of the waist, gave me notice to withdraw the other too; and so we
rattled up to the Kenmare Arms; and so ended, not without a sigh on my
part, one of the merriest six-hour rides that five yachtsmen, one
cockney, five women and a child, the carman, and a countryman with an
alpeen, ever took in their lives.
As for my fellow-companion, she would hardly speak the next day; but all
the five maritime men made me vow and promise that I would go and see
them at Cork, where I should have horses to ride, the fastest yacht out
of the harbour to sail in, and the best of whisky, claret, and welcome.
Amen, and may every single person who buys a copy of this book meet with
the same deserved fate!
The town of Killarney was in a violent state of excitement with a series
of horse-races, hurdle-races, boat-races, and stag-hunts by land and
water, which were taking place, and attracted a vast crowd from all
parts of the kingdom. All the inns were full, and lodgings cost five
shillings a day, nay, more in some places; for though my landlady, Mrs.
Macgillicuddy, charges but that sum, a leisurely old gentleman whom I
never saw in my life before, made my acquaintance by stopping me in the
street yesterday, and said he paid a pound a day for his two bedrooms.
The old gentleman is eager for company; and, indeed, when a man travels
alone, it is wonderful how little he cares to select his society; how
indifferent company pleases him; how a good fellow delights him; how
sorry he is when the time for parting comes, and he has to walk off
alone, and begin the friendship hunt over again.
The first sight I witnessed at Killarney was a race-ordinary, where for
a sum of twelve shillings any man could take his share of turbot,
salmon, venison, and beef, with port, and sherry, and whisky-punch at
discretion. Here were the squires of Cork and Kerry, one or two
Englishmen, whose voices, amidst the rich humming brogue round about,
sounded quite affected (not that they were so, but there seems a sort of
impertinence in the shrill, high-pitched tone of the English voice
here). At the head of the table, near the chairman, sat some brilliant
young dragoons, neat, solemn, dull, with huge mustachios, and boots
polished to a nicety.
And here of course the conversation was of the horse, horsy. How Mr.
This had refused fifteen hundred guineas for a horse which he bought for
a hundred; how Bacchus was the best horse in Ireland; which horses were
to run at Something races; and how the Marquis of Waterford gave a
plate or a purse. We drank ‘the Queen,’ with hip, hip, hurra! The
‘winner of the Kenmare stakes,’ hurray! Presently the gentleman next me
rose and made a speech; he had brought a mare down, and won the stakes,
a hundred and seventy guineas, and I looked at him with a great deal of
respect. Other toasts ensued, and more talk about horses; nor am I in
the least disposed to sneer at gentlemen who like sporting and talk
about it; for I do believe that the conversation of a dozen fox-hunters
is just as clever as that of a similar number of merchants, barristers,
or literary men. But to this trade, as to all others, a man must be
bred; if he has not learnt it thoroughly or in early life, he will not
readily become a proficient afterwards, and when therefore the subject
is broached, had best maintain a profound silence.
A young Edinburgh cockney, with an easy self-confidence that the reader
may have perhaps remarked in others of his calling and nation, and who
evidently knew as much of sporting matters as the individual who writes
this, proceeded nevertheless to give the company his opinions, and
greatly astonished them all; for these simple people are at first
willing to believe that a stranger is sure to be a knowing fellow, and
did not seem inclined to be undeceived even by this little pert grinning
Scotsman. It was good to hear him talk of Haddington, Musselburgh--and
Heaven knows what strange outlandish places, as if they were known to
all the world. And here would be a good opportunity to enter into a
dissertation upon national characteristics; to show that the bold
swaggering Irishman is really a modest fellow, while the canny Scot is a
most brazen one; to wonder why the inhabitant of one country is ashamed
of it, which is in itself so fertile and beautiful, and has produced
more than its fair proportion of men of genius, valour, and wit; whereas
it never enters into the head of a Scotchman to question his own
equality (and something more) at all: but that such discussions are
quite unprofitable; nay, that exactly the contrary propositions may be
argued to just as much length. Has the reader ever tried with a dozen of
Mr. Tocqueville’s short crisp philosophic apothegms and taken the
converse of them? The one or other set of propositions will answer
equally well, and it is the best way to avoid all such. Let the above
passage, then, simply be understood to say, that on a certain day the
writer met a vulgar little Scotchman--not that all Scotchmen are
vulgar;--that this little pert creature prattled about his country as if
he and it were ornaments to the world, which the latter is no doubt; and
that one could not but contrast his behaviour with that of great big
stalwart simple Irishmen, who asked your opinion of their country with
as much modesty as if you--because an Englishman--must be somebody, and
they the dust of the earth.
Indeed, this want of self-confidence at times becomes quite painful to
the stranger. If, in reply to their queries, you say you like the
country, people seem really quite delighted. Why should they? Why should
a stranger’s opinion who doesn’t know the country be more valued than a
native’s who does?--Suppose an Irishman in England were to speak in
praise or abuse of the country, would one be particularly pleased or
annoyed? One would be glad that the man liked his trip; but as for his
good or bad opinion of the country, the country stands on its own
bottom, superior to any opinion of any man or men.
I must beg pardon of the little Scotchman for reverting to him (let it
be remembered that there were _two_ Scotchmen at Killarney, and that I
speak of the other one); but I have seen no specimen of that sort of
manners in any Irishman since I have been in the country. I have met
more gentlemen here than in any place I ever saw, gentlemen of high and
low ranks, that is to say: men shrewd and delicate of perception,
observant of society, entering into the feelings of others, and anxious
to set them at ease or to gratify them; of course exaggerating their
professions of kindness, and in so far insincere; but the very
exaggeration seems to be a proof of a kindly nature, and I wish in
England we were a little more complimentary. In Dublin, a lawyer left
his chambers, and a literary man his books, to walk the town with
me--the town, which they must know a great deal too well; for, pretty as
it is, it is but a small place after all, not like that great bustling,
changing, struggling world, the Englishman’s capital. Would a London man
leave his business to trudge to the Tower or the Park with a stranger?
We would ask him to dine at the club, or to eat whitebait at
Lovegrove’s, and think our duty done, neither caring for him, nor
professing to care for him; and we pride ourselves on our honesty
accordingly. Never was honesty more selfish. And so a vulgar man in
England disdains to flatter his equals, and chiefly displays his
character of snob by assuming as much as he can for himself, swaggering
and showing off in his coarse, dull, stupid way.
‘I am a gentleman, and pay my way,’ as the old fellow said at
Glengariff. I have not heard a sentence near so vulgar from any man in
Ireland. Yes, by the way, there was another Englishman at Cork: a man in
a middling, not to say humble, situation of life. When introduced to an
Irish gentleman, his formula seemed to be, ‘I think, sir, I have met you
somewhere before.’ ‘I am sure, sir, I have met you before,’ he said, for
the second time in my hearing, to a gentleman of great note in Ireland.
‘Yes, I have met you at Lord X----‘s.’ ‘I don’t know my Lord X----,’
replied the Irishman. ‘Sir,’ says the other, ‘_I shall have great
pleasure in introducing you to him_.’ Well, the good-natured simple
Irishmen thought this gentleman a very fine fellow. There was only one,
of some dozen who spoke about him, that found out Snob. I suppose the
Spaniards lorded it over the Mexicans in this way: their drummers
passing for generals among the simple red men, their glass beads for
jewels, and their insolent bearing for heroic superiority.
Leaving, then, the race-ordinary (that little Scotchman with his airs
has carried us the deuce knows how far out of the way), I came home just
as the gentlemen of the race were beginning to ‘mix,’ that is, to
forsake the wine for the punch. At the lodgings I found my five
companions of the morning with a bottle of that wonderful whisky of
which they spoke; and which they had agreed to exchange against a bundle
of Liverpool cigars: so we discussed them, the whisky, and other topics
in common. Now there is no need to violate the sanctity of private life,
and report the conversation which took place, the songs which were sung,
the speeches which were made, and the other remarkable events of the
evening. Suffice it to say, that the English traveller gradually becomes
accustomed to whisky-punch (in moderation, of course), and finds the
beverage very agreeable at Killarney; against which I recollect a
protest was entered at Dublin.
But after we had talked of hunting, racing, regatting, and all other
sports, I came to a discovery which astonished me, and for which these
honest kind fellows are mentioned publicly here. The portraits, or a
sort of resemblance of four of them, may be seen in the foregoing
drawing of the car. The man with the straw hat and handkerchief tied
over it is the captain of an Indiaman; three others, with each a pair of
mustachios, sported yacht-costumes, jackets, club-anchor buttons, and so
forth; and, finally, one on the other side of the car (who cannot be
seen on account of the portmanteaus, otherwise the likeness would be
perfect), was dressed with a coat and hat in the ordinary way. One with
the gold band and mustachios is a gentleman of property, the other three
are attorneys every man of them. Two in large practice in Cork and
Dublin; the other, and owner of the yacht, under articles to the
attorney of Cork. Now did any Englishman ever live with three attorneys
for a whole day, without hearing a single syllable of law spoken? Did we
ever see in our country attorneys with mustachios; or, above all, an
attorney’s clerk the owner of a yacht of thirty tons? He is a gentleman
of property too--the heir, that is, to a good estate; and has had a
yacht of his own, he says, ever since he was fourteen years old. Is
there any English boy of fourteen who commands a ship with a crew of
five men under him? We all agreed to have a boat for the stag-hunt on
the lake next day; and I went to bed wondering at this strange country
more than ever. An attorney with mustachios! What would they say of him
in Chancery Lane?
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XI
KILLARNEY--STAG-HUNTING ON THE LAKE
Mrs. Macgillicuddy’s house is at the corner of the two principal streets
of Killarney town, and the drawing-room windows command each a street.
Before one window is a dismal, rickety building, with a slated face,
that looks like an ex-town hall. There is a row of arches to the ground
floor, the angles at the base of which seem to have mouldered or to have
been kicked away. Over the centre arch is a picture with a flourishing
yellow inscription above, importing that it is the meeting-place of the
Total Abstinence Society. Total abstinence is represented by the figures
of a gentleman in a blue coat and drab tights, with gilt garters, who is
giving his hand to a lady; between them is an escutcheon, surmounted
with a cross and charged with religious emblems. Cupids float above the
heads and between the legs of this happy pair, while an exceedingly
small tea-table with the requisite crockery reposes against the lady’s
knee; a still, with death’s-head and bloody bones, filling up the vacant
corner near the gentleman. A sort of market is held here, and the place
is swarming with blue cloaks and groups of men talking; here and there
is a stall with coarse linens, crockery, a cheese; and crowds of egg-and
milk-women are squatted on the pavement, with their ragged customers or
gossips; and the yellow-haired girl, on the opposite page, with a barrel
containing nothing at all, has been sitting, as if for her portrait,
this hour past.
[Illustration: THE MARKET OF KILLARNEY]
Carts, cars, jingles, barouches, horses, and vehicles of all
descriptions rattle presently through the streets; for the town is
crowded with company for the races and other sports, and all the world
is bent to see the stag-hunt on the lake. Where the ladies of the
Macgillicuddy family have slept, heaven knows, for their house is full
of lodgers. What voices you hear! ‘Bring me some hot wa_tah_,’ says a
genteel, high-piped English voice. ‘Hwhere’s me hot wather?’ roars a
deep-toned Hibernian. See over the way, three ladies in ringlets and
green tabinet taking their ‘tay’ preparatory to setting out. I wonder
whether they heard the sentimental songs of the law-marines last night?
They must have been edified if they did.
My companions came, true to their appointment, and we walked down to the
boats, lying at a couple of miles from the town, near the Victoria Inn,
a handsome mansion, in pretty grounds, close to the lake, and owned by
the patriotic Mr. Finn. A nobleman offered Finn eight hundred pounds for
the use of his house during the races, and, to Finn’s eternal honour be
it said, he refused the money, and said he would keep his house for his
friends and patrons, the public. Let the Cork Steam Packet Company think
of this generosity on the part of Mr. Finn, and blush for shame; at the
Cork Agricultural Show they raised their fares, and were disappointed in
their speculation, as they deserved to be, by indignant Englishmen
refusing to go at all.
The morning had been bright enough, but for fear of accidents we took
our macintoshes, and at about a mile from the town found it necessary to
assume those garments and wear them for the greater part of the day.
Passing by the Victoria, with its beautiful walks, park, and lodge, we
came to a little creek where the boats were moored; and there was the
wonderful lake before us, with its mountains, and islands, and trees.
Unluckily, however, the mountains happened to be invisible; the islands
looked like grey masses in the fog, and all that we could see for some
time was the grey silhouette of the boat ahead of us, in which a
passenger was engaged in a witty conversation with some boat still
farther in the mist.
[Illustration]
Drumming and trumpeting was heard at a little distance, and presently we
found ourselves in the midst of a fleet of boats upon the rocky shores
of the beautiful little Innisfallen.
Here we landed for a while, and the weather clearing up, allowed us to
see this charming spot. Rocks, shrubs, and little abrupt rises and falls
of ground, covered with the brightest emerald grass; a beautiful little
ruin of a Saxon chapel, lying gentle, delicate, and plaintive on the
shore; some noble trees round about it, and beyond, presently, the tower
of Ross Castle, island after island appearing in the clearing sunshine,
and the huge hills throwing their misty veils off, and wearing their
noble robes of purple. The boats’ crews were grouped about the place,
and one large barge especially had landed some sixty people, being the
Temperance band, with its drums, trumpets, and wives. They were
marshalled by a grave old gentleman with a white waistcoat and queue, a
silver medal decorating one side of his coat, and a brass heart reposing
on the other flap. The horns performed some Irish airs prettily; and, at
length, at the instigation of a fellow who went swaggering about with a
pair of whirling drumsticks, all formed together, and played
‘Garryowen’--the active drum of course most dreadfully out of time.
Having strolled about the island for a quarter of an hour, it became
time to take to the boats again, and we were rowed over to the wood
opposite Sullivan’s cascade, where the hounds had been laid in in the
morning, and the stag was expected to take water. Fifty or sixty men are
employed on the mountain to drive the stag lakewards, should he be
inclined to break away; and the sport generally ends by the stag, a wild
one, making for the water with the pack swimming afterwards; and here he
is taken and disposed of, how I know not. It is rather a parade than a
stag-hunt: but, with all the boats around and the noble view, must be a
fine thing to see.
Presently, steering his barge, the _Erin_, with twelve oars and a green
flag sweeping the water, came by the president of the sports, Mr. John
O’Connell, a gentleman who appears to be liked by rich and poor here,
and by the latter especially is adored. ‘Sure we’d dhrown ourselves for
him,’ one man told me; and proceeded to speak eagerly in his praise, and
to tell numberless acts of his generosity and justice. The justice is
rather rude in this wild country sometimes, and occasionally the judges
not only deliver the sentence but execute it; nor does any one think of
appealing to any more regular jurisdiction. The likeness of Mr.
O’Connell to his brother is very striking; one might have declared it
was the Liberator sitting at the stern of the boat.
Some scores more boats were there, darting up and down in the pretty,
busy waters. Here came a Cambridge boat; and where, indeed, will not the
gentlemen of that renowned University be found? Yonder were the dandy
dragoons, stiff, silent, slim, faultlessly appointed, solemnly puffing
cigars. Every now and then a hound would be heard in the wood, whereon
numbers of voices, right and left, would begin to yell in
chorus--Hurroo! Hoop! Yow--yow--yow! in accents the most shrill or the
most melancholious. Meanwhile the sun had had enough of the sport, the
mountains put on their veils again, the islands retreated into the mist,
the word went through the fleet to spread all umbrellas, and ladies took
shares of macintoshes and disappeared under the flaps of silk cloaks.
The wood comes down to the very edge of the water, and many of the crews
thought fit to land and seek this green shelter. There you might see how
the _dandium summâ genus hæsit ulmo_, clambering up thither to hide from
the rain, and many ‘_membra_’ in dabbled russia-ducks, cowering _viridi
sub arbuto, ad aquæ lene caput_. To behold these moist dandies the
natives of the country came eagerly. Strange, savage faces might be seen
peering from out of the trees; long-haired, bare-legged girls came down
the hill, some with green apples and very sickly-looking plums; some
with whisky and goat’s-milk; a ragged boy had a pair of stag’s-horns to
sell: the place swarmed with people. We went up the hill to see the
noble cascade, and when you say that it comes rushing down over rocks
and through tangled woods, alas! one has said all the dictionary can
help you to, and not enough to distinguish this particular cataract from
any other. This seen and admired, we came back to the harbour where the
boats lay, and from which spot the reader might have seen the following
view of the lake--that is, you _would_ see the lake, if the mist would
only clear away.
But this for hours it did not seem inclined to do. We rowed up and down
industriously for a period of time which seemed to me atrociously long.
The bugles of the _Erin_ had long since sounded ‘Home, sweet home!’ and
the greater part of the fleet had dispersed. As for the stag-hunt, all I
saw of it was four dogs that appeared on the shore at different
intervals, and a huntsman in a scarlet coat, who similarly came and
went: once or twice we were gratified by hearing the hounds; but at last
it was agreed that there was no chance for the day, and we rowed off to
Kenmare Cottage--where, on the lovely lawn, or in a cottage adjoining,
the gentry picnic, and where, with a handkerchief full of potatoes, we
made as pleasant a meal as ever I recollect. Here a good number of the
boats were assembled; here you might see cloths spread and dinner going
on; here were those wonderful officers, looking as if they had just
stepped from bandboxes, with, by heavens! not a shirt-collar disarranged
nor a boot dimmed by the wet. An old piper was making a very feeble
music, with a handkerchief spread over his face; and farther on a little
smiling German boy was playing an accordion, and singing a ballad of
Hauff’s. I had a silver medal in my pocket, with Victoria on one side
and Britannia on the other, and gave it him, for the sake of old times
and his round friendly face. Oh, little German boy, many a night as you
trudge lonely through this wild land, must you yearn after _Brüderlein_
and _Schwesterlein_ at home--yonder in stately Frankfurt city that lies
by silver Mayn. I thought of vineyards and sunshine, and the greasy
clock in the theatre, and the railroad all the way to Wiesbaden, and the
handsome Jew country-houses by the Bockenheimer-Thor.... ‘Come along,’
says the boatman, ‘all the gintlemin are waiting for your honour.’ And I
found them finishing the potatoes, and we all had a draught of water
from the lake, and so pulled to the middle of Turk lake, through the
picturesque green rapid that floats under Brickeen bridge.
[Illustration]
What is to be said about Turk Lake? When there, we agreed that it was
more beautiful than the large lake, of which it is not one-fourth the
size; then, when we came back, we said, ‘No, the large lake is the most
beautiful.’ And so, at every point we stopped at, we determined that
that particular spot was the prettiest in the whole lake. The fact is,
and I don’t care to own it, they are too handsome. As for a man coming
from his desk in London or Dublin and seeing ‘the whole lakes in a day,’
he is an ass for his pains; a child doing sums in addition might as well
read the whole multiplication table, and fancy he had it by heart. We
should look at these wonderful things leisurely and thoughtfully; and
even then, blessed is he who understands them. I wonder what impression
the sight made upon the three tipsy Englishmen at Glengariff? What idea
of natural beauty belongs to an old fellow who says he is ‘a gentleman,
and pays his way’? What to a jolly fox-hunter, who had rather see a good
‘screeching’ run with the hounds than the best landscape ever painted?
And yet they all come hither, and go through the business regularly, and
would not miss seeing every one of the lakes and going up every one of
the hills--by which circumlocution the writer wishes ingenuously to
announce that he will not see any more lakes, ascend any mountains or
towers, visit any gaps of Dunloe, or any prospects whatever, except such
as nature shall fling in his way in the course of a quiet reasonable
walk.
In the middle lake we were carried to an island where a ceremony of
goat’s-milk and whisky is performed by some travellers, and where you
are carefully conducted to a spot that ‘Sir Walter Scott admired more
than all.’ Whether he did or not, we can only say on the authority of
the boatman; but the place itself was a quiet nook, where three waters
meet, and indeed of no great picturesqueness when compared with the
beauties around. But it is of a gentle, homely beauty--not like the
lake, which is as a princess dressed out in diamonds and velvet for a
drawing-room, and knowing herself to be faultless too. As for
Innisfallen, it was just as if she gave one smiling peep into the
nursery before she went away, so quiet, innocent, and tender is that
lovely spot; but, depend on it, if there is a lake fairy or princess, as
Crofton Croker and other historians assert, she is of her nature a vain
creature, proud of her person, and fond of the finest dresses to adorn
it. May I confess that I would rather, for a continuance, have a house
facing a paddock, with a cow in it, than be always looking at this
immense overpowering splendour? You would not, my dear brother-cockney
from Tooley Street,--no, those brilliant eyes of thine were never meant
to gaze at anything less bright than the sun. Your mighty spirit finds
nothing too vast for its comprehension, spurns what is humble as
unworthy, and only, like Foot’s bear, dances to ‘the genteelest of
tunes.’
The long and short of the matter is, that on getting off the lake, after
seven hours’ rowing, I felt as much relieved as if I had been dining for
the same length of time with her Majesty the Queen, and went jumping
home as gaily as possible; but those marine lawyers insisted so
piteously upon seeing Ross Castle, close to which we were at length
landed, that I was obliged (in spite of repeated oaths to the contrary)
to ascend that tower, and take a bird’s-eye view of the scene. Thank
Heaven, I have neither tail nor wings, and have not the slightest wish
to be a bird; that continual immensity of prospect which stretches
beneath those little wings of theirs must deaden their intellects,
depend on it. Tomkins and I are not made for the immense. We can enjoy a
little at a time, and enjoy that little very much; or if like birds, we
are like the ostrich--not that we have fine feathers to our backs, but
because we cannot fly. Press us too much, and we become flurried and run
off, and bury our heads in the quiet bosom of dear mother earth, and so
get rid of the din, and the dazzle, and the shouting.
Because we dined upon potatoes, that was no reason we should sup on
buttermilk: well, well! salmon is good, and whisky is good too.
CHAPTER XII
KILLARNEY--THE RACES--MUCROSS
The races were as gay as races could be, in spite of one or two untoward
accidents that arrived at the close of the day’s sport. Where all the
people came from that thronged out of the town was a wonder; where all
the vehicles, the cars, barouches, and shandrydans, the carts, the
horse-and donkey-men, could have found stable and shelter, who can tell?
Of all these equipages and donkeypages I had a fine view from Mrs.
Macgillicuddy’s window, and it was pleasant to see the happy faces
shining under the blue cloaks as the carts rattled by.
A very handsome young lady--I presume Miss MacG.--who gives a hand to
the drawing-room, and comes smiling in with the teapot,--Miss MacG., I
say, appeared to-day in a silk bonnet and stiff silk dress, with a
brooch and a black mantle, as smart as any lady in the land, and looking
as if she was accustomed to her dress too, which the housemaid on banks
of Thames does not. Indeed, I have not met a more ladylike young person
in Ireland than Miss MacG.; and when I saw her in a handsome car on the
course, I was quite proud of a bow.
Tramping thither, too, as hard as they could walk, and as happy and
smiling as possible, were Mary the coachman’s wife, of the day before,
and Johanna with the child, and presently the other young lady--the man
with the stick, you may be sure; he would toil a year for that day’s
pleasure: they are all mad for it; people walk for miles and miles round
to the race; they come without a penny in their pockets often, trusting
to chance and charity, and that some worthy gentleman may fling them a
sixpence. A gentleman told me that he saw on the course persons from his
part of the country, who must have walked eighty miles for the sport.
For a mile and a-half to the racecourse there could be no pleasanter
occupation than looking at the happy multitudes who were thronging
thither; and, I am bound to say, that on rich or poor shoulders I never
saw so many handsome faces in my life. In the carriages, among the
ladies of Kerry, every second woman was handsome; and there is something
peculiarly tender and pleasing in the looks of the young female
peasantry that is perhaps even better than beauty. Beggars had taken
their stations along the road in no great numbers, for I suspect they
were most of them on the ground, and those who remained were
consequently of the oldest and ugliest. It is a shame that such horrible
figures are allowed to appear in public as some of the loathsome ones
which belong to these unhappy people. On went the crowd, however,
laughing and gay as possible; all sorts of fun passing from car to foot
passengers as the pretty girls came clattering by, and the ‘boys’ had a
word for each. One lady with long flowing auburn hair, who was turning
away her head from some ‘boys’ very demurely, I actually saw, at a pause
of the cart, kissed by one of them. She gave the fellow a huge box on
the ear, and he roared out ‘Oh, murther!’ and she frowned for some time
as hard as she could, whilst the ladies in the blue cloaks at the back
of the car uttered a shrill rebuke in Irish. But in a minute the whole
party was grinning, and the young fellow who had administered the salute
may, for what I know, have taken another without the slap on the face,
by way of exchange.
And here, lest the fair public may have a bad opinion of the personage
who talks of kissing with such awful levity, let it be said that with
all this laughing, romping, kissing, and the like, there are no more
innocent girls in the world than the Irish girls; and that the women of
our squeamish country are far more liable to err. One has but to walk
through an English and Irish town, and see how much superior is the
morality of the latter. That great terror-striker, the Confessional, is
before the Irish girl, and, sooner or later, her sins must be told
there.
By this time we are got upon the course, which is really one of the most
beautiful spots that ever was seen; the lake and mountains lying along
two sides of it, and of course visible from all. They were busy putting
up the hurdles when we arrived--stiff bars and poles, four feet from the
ground, with furze-bushes over them. The grand stand was already full;
along the hedges sate thousands of the people, sitting at their ease
doing nothing, and happy as kings. A daguerreotype would have been of
great service to have taken their portraits, and I never saw a vast
multitude of heads and attitudes so picturesque and lively. The sun
lighted up the whole course and the lakes with amazing brightness,
though behind the former lay a huge rack of the darkest clouds, against
which the cornfields and meadows shone in the brightest green and gold,
and a row of white tents was quite dazzling.
There was a brightness and intelligence about this immense Irish crowd,
which I don’t remember to have seen in an English one. The women in
their blue cloaks, with red smiling faces peering from one end, and bare
feet from the other, had seated themselves in all sorts of pretty
attitudes of cheerful contemplation; and the men, who are accustomed to
lie about, were doing so now with all their might--sprawling on the
banks, with as much ease and variety as club-room loungers on their soft
cushions--or squatted leisurely among the green potatoes. The sight of
so much happy laziness did one good to look on. Nor did the honest
fellows seem to weary of this amusement. Hours passed on, and the
gentlefolks (judging from our party) began to grow somewhat weary; but
the finest peasantry in Europe never budged from their posts, and
continued to indulge in talk, indolence, and conversation.
When we came to the row of white tents, as usual it did not look so
brilliant or imposing as it appeared from a little distance, though the
scene around them was animating enough. The tents were long humble
booths stretched on hoops, each with its humble streamer or ensign
without, and containing, of course, articles of refreshment within. But
Father Mathew has been busy among the publicans, and the consequence is
that the poor fellows are now condemned for the most part to sell ‘tay’
in place of whisky; for the concoction of which beverage huge caldrons
were smoking, in front of each hut-door, in round graves dug for the
purpose and piled up with black smoking sod.
Behind this camp were the carts of the poor people, which were not
allowed to penetrate into the quarter where the quality cars stood. And
a little way from the huts, again, you might see (for you could scarcely
hear) certain pipers executing their melodies and inviting people to
dance.
Anything more lugubrious than the drone of the pipe, or the jig danced
to it, or the countenances of the dancers and musicians, I never saw.
Round each set of dancers the people formed a ring, in the which the
_figurantes_ and _coryphées_ went through their operations. The toes
went in and the toes went out; then there came certain mystic figures of
hands across, and so forth. I never saw less grace or seemingly less
enjoyment, no, not even in a quadrille. The people, however, took a
great interest, and it was ‘Well done, Tim!’ ‘Step out, Miss Brady!’ and
so forth, during the dance.
Thimble-rig too obtained somewhat, though in a humble way. A ragged
scoundrel--the image of Hogarth’s Bad Apprentice--went bustling and
shouting through the crowd with his dirty tray and thimble, and, as soon
as he had taken his post, stated that this was the ‘royal game of
thimble,’ and calling upon ‘gintlemin’ to come forward; and then a
ragged fellow would be seen to approach, with as innocent an air as he
could assume, and the bystanders might remark that the second ragged
fellow almost always won. Nay, he was so benevolent, in many instances,
as to point out to various people who had a mind to bet, under which
thimble the pea actually was; meanwhile, the first fellow was sure to be
looking away and talking to some one in the crowd. But somehow it
generally happened, and how of course I can’t tell, that any man who
listened to the advice of rascal No. 2 lost his money. I believe it is
so even in England.
[Illustration]
Then you would see gentlemen with halfpenny roulette-tables; and, again,
here were a pair (indeed they are very good portraits) who came forward
disinterestedly with a table and a pack of cards, and began playing
against each other for ten shillings a game, betting crowns as freely as
possible.
Gambling, however, must have been fatal to both of these gentlemen, else
might not one have supposed that, if they were in the habit of winning
much, they would have treated themselves to better clothes? This,
however, is the way with all gamblers, as the reader has, no doubt,
remarked; for, look at a game of loo or _vingt-et-un_ played in a
friendly way, and where you, and three or four others, have certainly
lost three or four pounds: well, ask at the end of the game who has
won, and you invariably find that nobody has. Hopkins has only covered
himself; Snooks has neither lost nor won; Smith has won four shillings;
and so on. Who gets the money? The devil gets it, I dare say; and so, no
doubt, he has laid hold of the money of yonder gentleman in the handsome
greatcoat.
But, to the shame of the stewards be it spoken, they are extremely
averse to this kind of sport; and presently comes up one, a stout old
gentleman on a bay horse, wielding a huge hunting-whip, at the sight of
which all fly, amateurs, idlers, professional men, and all. He is a rude
customer to deal with, that gentleman with the whip: just now he was
clearing the course, and cleared it with such a vengeance that a whole
troop on a hedge retreated backwards into a ditch opposite, where was
rare kicking, and sprawling, and disarrangement of petticoats, and cries
of ‘Oh, murther!’ ‘Mother of God!’ ‘I’m kilt!’ and so on. But as soon as
the horsewhip was gone, the people clambered out of their ditch again,
and were as thick as ever on the bank.
The last instance of the exercise of the whip shall be this. A groom
rode insolently after a gentleman, and calling him names, and inviting
him to fight. This the great flagellator hearing, rode up to the groom,
lifted him gracefully off his horse, into the air, and on to the ground,
and when there administered to him a severe and merited fustigation;
after which he told the course-keepers to drive the fellow off the
course, and enjoined the latter not to appear again at his peril.
As for the races themselves, I won’t pretend to say that they were
better or worse than other such amusements; or to quarrel with gentlemen
who choose to risk their lives in manly exercise. In the first race
there was a fall; one of the gentlemen was carried off the ground, and
it was said _he was dead_. In the second race, a horse and man went over
and over each other, and the fine young man (we had seen him five
minutes before, full of life and triumph, clearing the hurdles on his
grey horse, at the head of the race):--in the second heat of the second
race, the poor fellow missed his leap, was carried away stunned and
dying,--and the bay horse won.
I was standing, during the first heat of this race (this is the second
man the grey has killed--they ought to call him the Pale Horse), by half
a dozen young girls from the gentleman’s village, and hundreds more of
them were there, anxious for the honour of their village, the young
squire, and the grey horse. Oh, how they hurra’d as he rode ahead! I saw
these girls--they might be fourteen years old--after the catastrophe.
‘Well,’ says I, ‘this is a sad end to the race.’ ‘_And is it the pink
jacket or the blue has won this time?_’ says one of the girls. It was
poor Mr. C----‘s only epitaph: and wasn’t it a sporting answer? That
girl ought to be a hurdle-racer’s wife; and I would like, for my part,
to bestow her upon the groom who won the race.
I don’t care to confess that the accident to the poor young gentleman so
thoroughly disgusted my feelings as a man and a cockney, that I turned
off the racecourse short, and hired a horse for sixpence to carry me
back to Miss Macgillicuddy. In the evening, at the inn (let no man who
values comfort go to an Irish inn in race-time), a blind old piper, with
silvery hair, and of a most respectable, bard-like appearance, played a
great deal too much for us after dinner. He played very well, and with
very much feeling, ornamenting the airs with flourishes and variations
that were very pretty indeed, and his pipe was by far the most melodious
I have heard: but honest truth compels me to say that the bad pipes are
execrable, and the good inferior to a clarionet.
Next day, instead of going back to the racecourse, a car drove me out to
Mucross, where, in Mr. Herbert’s beautiful grounds, lies the prettiest
little _bijou_ of a ruined abbey ever seen--a little chapel with a
little chancel, a little cloister, a little dormitory, and in the midst
of the cloister a wonderful huge yew-tree which darkens the whole place.
The abbey is famous in book and legend; nor could two young lovers, or
artists in search of the picturesque, or picnic-parties with the cold
chicken and champagne in the distance, find a more charming place to
while away a summer’s day than in the park of Mr. Herbert. But depend on
it, for show-places and the due enjoyment of scenery, that distance of
cold chickens and champagne is the most pleasing perspective one can
have. I would have sacrificed a mountain or two for the above, and would
have pitched Mangerton into the lake for the sake of a friend with whom
to enjoy the rest of the landscape.
The walk through Mr. Herbert’s domain carries you through all sorts of
beautiful avenues, by a fine house which he is building in the
Elizabethan style, and from which, as from the whole road, you command
the most wonderful rich views of the lake. The shore breaks into little
bays, which the water washes; here and there are picturesque grey rocks
to meet it, the bright grass as often, or the shrubs of every kind which
bathe their roots in the lake. It was August, and the men before Turk
Cottage were cutting a second crop of clover, as fine, seemingly as a
first crop elsewhere; a short walk from it brought us to a neat lodge,
whence issued a keeper with a key, quite willing, for the consideration
of sixpence, to conduct us to Turk waterfall.
Evergreens and other trees, in their brightest livery; blue sky; roaring
water, here black, and yonder foaming of a dazzling white; rocks shining
in the dark places, or frowning black against the light, all the leaves
and branches keeping up a perpetual waving and dancing round about the
cascade: what is the use of putting down all this? A man might describe
the cataract of the Serpentine in exactly the same terms, and the reader
be no wiser. Suffice it to say, that the Turk cascade is even handsomer
than the before-mentioned waterfall of O’Sullivan, and that a man may
pass half an hour there, and look, and listen, and muse, and not even
feel the want of a companion, or so much as think of the iced champagne.
There is just enough of savageness in the Turk cascade to make the view
_piquante_. It is not, at this season at least, by any means fierce,
only wild; nor was the scene peopled by any of the rude, red-shanked
figures that clustered about the trees of O’Sullivan’s
waterfall--savages won’t pay sixpence for the prettiest waterfall ever
seen,--so that this only was for the best of company.
The road hence to Killarney carries one through Mucross village, a
pretty cluster of houses, where the sketcher will find abundant
materials for exercising his art and puzzling his hand. There are not
only noble trees, but a green common and an old water-gate to a river,
lined on either side by beds of rushes, and discharging itself beneath
an old mill-wheel. But the old mill-wheel was perfectly idle, like most
men and mill-wheels in this country: by it is a ruinous house, and a
fine garden of stinging-nettles; opposite it, on the common, is another
ruinous house, with another garden containing the same plant; and far
away are sharp ridges of purple hills, which make as pretty a landscape
as the eye can see. I don’t know how it is, but throughout the country
the men and the landscapes seem to be the same, and one and the other
seem rugged, ruined, and cheerful.
Having been employed all day (making some abominable attempts at
landscape-drawing, which shall not be exhibited here), it became
requisite, as the evening approached, to recruit an exhausted cockney
stomach, which, after a very moderate portion of exercise, begins to
sigh for beefsteaks in the most peremptory manner. Hard by is a fine
hotel with a fine sign stretching along the road for the space of a
dozen windows at least, and looking inviting enough. All the doors were
open, and I walked into a great number of rooms, but the only person I
saw was a woman with trinkets of arbutus, who offered me, by way of
refreshment, a walking-stick or a card-rack. I suppose everybody was at
the races; and an evilly-disposed person might have laid _main-basse_
upon the greatcoats which were there, and the silver spoons, if by any
miracle such things were kept--but Britannia-metal is the favourite
composition in Ireland, or else iron by itself, or else iron that has
been silvered over, but that takes good care to peep out at all the
corners of the forks: and blessed is the traveller who has not other
observations to make regarding his fork, besides the mere abrasion of
the silver.
This was the last day’s race, and on the next morning (Sunday) all the
thousands who had crowded to the race seemed trooping to the chapels,
and the streets were blue with cloaks. Walking in to prayers, and
without his board, came my young friend of the thimble rig, and
presently after sauntered in the fellow with the long coat, who had
played at cards for sovereigns. I should like to hear the confession of
himself and friend the next time they communicate with his reverence.
[Illustration]
The extent of this town is very curious, and I should imagine its
population to be much greater than five thousand, which was the number,
according to Miss Macgillicuddy. Along the three main streets are
numerous arches, down every one of which runs an alley, intersected by
other alleys, and swarming with people. A stream or gutter runs commonly
down these alleys, in which the pigs and children are seen paddling
about. The men and women loll at their doors or windows, to enjoy the
detestable prospect. I saw two pigs under a fresh-made deal staircase in
one of the main streets near the Bridewell: two very well-dressed girls,
with their hair in ringlets, were looking out of the parlour-window:
almost all the glass in the upper rooms was of course smashed, the
windows patched here and there (if the people were careful), the
woodwork of the door loose, the whitewash peeling off,--and the house
evidently not two years old.
By the Bridewell is a busy potato-market, picturesque to the sketcher,
if not very respectable to the merchant: here were the country carts and
the country cloaks, and the shrill beggarly bargains going on--a world
of shrieking, and gesticulating, and talk, about a pennyworth of
potatoes.
All round the town miserable streets of cabins are stretched. You see
people lolling at each door, women staring and combing their hair, men
with their little pipes, children whose rags hang on by a miracle,
idling in a gutter. Are we to set all this down to absenteeism, and pity
poor injured Ireland? Is the landlord’s absence the reason why the house
is filthy, and Biddy lolls in the porch all day? Upon my word, I have
heard people talk as if, when Pat’s thatch was blown off, the landlord
ought to go fetch the straw and the ladder, and mend it himself. People
need not be dirty if they are ever so idle; if they are ever so poor,
pigs and men need not live together. Half an hour’s work, and digging a
trench, might remove that filthy dunghill from that filthy window. The
smoke might as well come out of the chimney as out of the door. Why
should not Tim do that, instead of walking a hundred-and-sixty miles to
a race? The priests might do much more to effect these reforms than even
the landlords themselves: and I hope, now that the excellent Father
Mathew has succeeded in arraying his clergy to work with him in the
abolition of drunkenness, they will attack the monster Dirt with the
same good-will, and surely with the same success.
CHAPTER XIII
TRALEE--LISTOWEL--TARBERT
I made the journey to Tralee next day, upon one of the famous Bianconi
cars--very comfortable conveyances too, if the booking officers would
only receive as many persons as the car would hold, and not have too
many on the seats. For half an hour before the car left Killarney, I
observed people had taken their seats: and, let all travellers be
cautious to do likewise, lest, although they have booked their places,
they be requested to mount on the roof, and accommodate themselves on a
bandbox, or a pleasant deal trunk with a knotted rope, to prevent it
from being slippery, while the corner of another box jolts against your
ribs for the journey. I had put my coat on a place, and was stepping to
it, when a lovely lady with great activity jumped up and pushed the
cloak on the roof, and not only occupied my seat, but insisted that her
husband should have the next one to her. So there was nothing for it but
to make a huge shouting with the book-keeper, and call instantly for the
taking down of my luggage, and vow my great gods that I would take a
postchaise and make the office pay; on which, I am ashamed to say, some
other person was made to give up a decently comfortable seat on the
roof, which I occupied, the former occupant hanging on--Heaven knows
where or how.
A company of young squires were on the coach, and they talked of
horse-racing and hunting punctually for three hours, during which time I
do believe they did not utter one single word upon any other subject.
What a wonderful faculty it is! The writers of Natural Histories, in
describing the noble horse, should say he is made not only to run, to
carry burdens, etc., but to be talked about. What would hundreds of
thousands of dashing young fellows do with their tongues, if they had
not this blessed subject to discourse on?
As far as the country went, there was here, to be sure, not much to be
said. You pass through a sad-looking, bare, undulating country, with few
trees, and poor stone-hedges, and poorer crops; nor have I yet taken in
Ireland so dull a ride. About half-way between Tralee and Killarney is a
wretched town, where horses are changed, and where I saw more hideous
beggary than anywhere else, I think. And I was glad to get over this
gloomy tract of country, and enter the capital of Kerry.
It has a handsome description in the guide-books; but, if I mistake not,
the English traveller will find a stay of a couple of hours in the town
quite sufficient to gratify his curiosity with respect to the place.
There seems to be a great deal of poor business going on; the town
thronged with people as usual; the shops large and not too splendid.
There are two or three rows of respectable houses, and a mall, and the
townspeople have the further privilege of walking in the neighbouring
grounds of a handsome park, which the proprietor has liberally given to
their use. Tralee has a newspaper, and boasts of a couple of clubs; the
one I saw was a big white house, no windows broken, and looking
comfortable. But the most curious sight of the town was the chapel, with
the festival held there. It was the feast of the Assumption of the
Virgin (let those who are acquainted with the calendar and the facts it
commemorates say what the feast was, and when it falls), but all the
country seemed to be present on the occasion, and the chapel and the
large court leading to it were thronged with worshippers, such as one
never sees in our country, where devotion is by no means so crowded as
here. Here, in the courtyard, there were thousands of them on their
knees, rosary in hand, for the most part, praying, and mumbling, and
casting a wistful look round as the strangers passed. In a corner was an
old man groaning in the agonies of death or colic, and a woman got off
her knees to ask us for charity for the unhappy old fellow. In the
chapel the crowd was enormous: the priest and his people were kneeling,
and bowing, and humming, and chanting, and censer-rattling: the ghostly
crew being attended by a fellow that I don’t remember to have seen in
Continental churches, a sort of Catholic clerk, a black shadow to the
parson, bowing his head when his reverence bowed, kneeling when he
knelt, only three steps lower.
But we who wonder at copes and candlesticks, see nothing strange in
surplices and beadles. A Turk, doubtless, would sneer equally at each,
and have you to understand that the only reasonable ceremonial was that
which took place at his mosque.
Whether right or wrong, in point of ceremony, it was evident the heart
of devotion was there: the immense dense crowd moaned and swayed, and
you heard a hum of all sorts of wild ejaculations, each man praying
seemingly for himself, while the service went on at the altar. The altar
candles flickered red in the dark, steaming place, and every now and
then from the choir you heard a sweet female voice chanting Mozart’s
music, which swept over the heads of the people a great deal more pure
and delicious than the best incense that ever smoked out of the pot.
On the chapel-floor, just at the entry, lay several people moaning, and
tossing, and telling their beads. Behind the old woman was a font of
holy water, up to which little children were clambering; and in the
chapel-yard were several old women, with tin cans full of the same
sacred fluid, with which the people, as they entered, aspersed
themselves with all their might, flicking a great quantity into their
faces, and making a curtsey and a prayer at the same time. ‘A pretty
prayer, truly!’ says the parson’s wife. ‘What sad, sad benighted
superstition!’ says the Independent minister’s lady. Ah! ladies, great
as your intelligence is, yet think, when compared with the Supreme One,
what a little difference there is after all between your husbands’ very
best extempore oration, and the poor Popish creatures’! One is just as
far off Infinite Wisdom as the other: and so let us read the story of
the woman and her pot of ointment, that most noble and charming of
histories; which equalises the great and the small, the wise and the
poor in spirit, and shows that their merit before Heaven lies _in doing
their best_.
[Illustration]
When I came out of the chapel, the old fellow on the point of death was
still howling and groaning in so vehement a manner, that I heartily
trust he was an impostor, and that on receiving a sixpence he went home
tolerably comfortable, having secured a maintenance for that day. But it
will be long before I can forget the strange, wild scene, so entirely
different was it from the decent and comfortable observances of our own
church.
Three cars set off together from Tralee to Tarbert: three cars full to
overflowing. The vehicle before us contained nineteen persons, half a
dozen being placed in the receptacle called the well, and one clinging
on as if by a miracle at the bar behind. What can people want at
Tarbert? I wondered; or anywhere else, indeed, that they rush about from
one town to another in this inconceivable way? All the cars in all the
towns seem to be thronged: people are perpetually hurrying from one
dismal tumbledown town to another; and yet no business is done anywhere
that I can see. The chief part of the contents of our three cars was
discharged at Listowel, to which, for the greater part of the journey,
the road was neither more cheerful nor picturesque than that from
Killarney to Tralee. As, however, you reach Listowel, the country
becomes better cultivated, the gentlemen’s seats are more frequent, and
the town itself, as seen from a little distance, lies very prettily on a
river, which is crossed by a handsome bridge, which leads to a
neat-looking square, which contains a smartish church, which is flanked
by a big Roman Catholic chapel, etc. An old castle, grey and
ivy-covered, stands hard by. It was one of the strongholds of the Lords
of Kerry, whose burying-place (according to the information of the
coachman) is seen at about a league from the town.
But pretty as Listowel is from a distance, it has, on a more intimate
acquaintance, by no means the prosperous appearance which a first glance
gives it. The place seemed like a scene at a country theatre, once
smartly painted by the artist; but the paint has cracked in many places,
the lines are worn away, and the whole piece only looks more shabby for
the flaunting strokes of the brush which remain. And here, of course,
came the usual crowd of idlers round the car: the epileptic idiot
holding piteously out his empty tin snuff-box; the brutal idiot, in an
old soldier’s coat, proffering his money-box, and grinning, and
clattering the single halfpenny it contained; the old man with no
eyelids, calling upon you in the name of the Lord; the woman with a
child at her hideous, wrinkled breast; the children without number. As
for trade, there seemed to be none; a great Jeremy-Diddler kind of hotel
stood hard by, swaggering and out-at-elbows, and six pretty girls were
smiling out of a beggarly straw-bonnet shop, dressed as smartly as any
gentleman’s daughters of good estate. It was good, among the crowd of
bustling, shrieking fellows, who were ‘jawing’ vastly and doing nothing,
to see how an English bagman, with scarce any words, laid hold of an
ostler, carried him off, _vi et armis_, in the midst of a speech, in
which the latter was going to explain his immense activity and desire to
serve, pushed him into a stable, from which he issued in a twinkling,
leading the ostler and a horse, and had his bag on the car and his horse
off in about two minutes of time, while the natives were still shouting
round about other passengers’ portmanteaus.
Some time afterwards, away we rattled on our own journey to Tarbert,
having a postillion on the leader, and receiving, I must say, some
graceful bows from the young bonnet-makeresses. But of all the roads
over which human bones were ever jolted, the first part of this from
Listowel to Tarbert deserves the palm. It shook us all into headaches;
it shook some nails out of the side of a box I had; it shook all the
cords loose in a twinkling, and sent the baggage bumping about the
passengers’ shoulders. The coachman at the call of another English
bagman, who was a fellow-traveller,--the postillion at the call of the
coachman, descended to re-cord the baggage. The English bagman had the
whole mass of trunks and bags stoutly corded and firmly fixed in a few
seconds; the coachman helped him as far as his means allowed; the
postillion stood by with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe, and
never offering to stir a finger. I said to him that I was delighted to
see in a youth of sixteen that extreme activity and willingness to
oblige, and that I would give him a handsome remuneration for his
services at the end of the journey: the young rascal grinned with all
his might, understanding the satiric nature of the address perfectly
well; but he did not take his hands out of his pockets for all that,
until it was time to get on his horse again, and then, having carried us
over the most difficult part of the journey, removed his horse and pipe,
and rode away with a parting grin.
The cabins along the road were not much better than those to be seen
south of Tralee, but the people were far better clothed, and indulged in
several places in the luxury of pigsties. Near the prettily situated
village of Ballylongford, we came in sight of the Shannon mouth; and a
huge red round moon, that shone behind an old convent on the banks of
the bright river, with dull green meadows between it and us, and wide
purple flats beyond, would be a good subject for the pencil of any
artist whose wrist had not been put out of joint by the previous ten
miles’ journey.
The town of Tarbert, in the guide-books and topographical dictionaries,
flourishes considerably. You read of its port, its corn and provision
stores, etc., and of certain good hotels; for which, as travellers, we
were looking with a laudable anxiety. The town, in fact, contains about
a dozen of houses, some hundreds of cabins, and two hotels; to one of
which we were driven, and a kind landlady, conducting her half-dozen
guests into a snug parlour, was for our ordering refreshment
immediately,--which I certainly should have done, but for the ominous
whisper of a fellow in the crowd as we descended (of course a
disinterested patron of the other house), who hissed into my ears, ‘_Ask
to see the beds_,’ which proposal, accordingly, I made before coming to
any determination regarding supper.
The worthy landlady eluded my question several times with great skill
and good-humour, but it became at length necessary to answer it; which
she did by putting on as confident an air as possible, and leading the
way upstairs to a bedroom, where there was a good large comfortable bed,
certainly.
The only objection to the bed, however, was that it contained a sick
lady, whom the hostess proposed to eject without any ceremony, saying
that she was a great deal better, and going to get up that very evening.
However, none of us had the heart to tyrannise over lovely woman in so
painful a situation, and the hostess had the grief of seeing four out of
her five guests repair across the way to Brallaghan’s or Gallagher’s
Hotel,--the name has fled from my memory, but it is the big hotel in the
place; and unless the sick lady has quitted the other inn, which most
likely she has done by this time, the English traveller will profit by
this advice, and on arrival at Tarbert will have himself transported to
Gallagher’s at once.
The next morning a car carried us to Tarbert Point, where there is a
pier not yet completed, and a Preventive station, and where the Shannon
steamers touch, that ply between Kilrush and Limerick. Here lay the
famous river before us, with low banks and rich pastures on either side.
CHAPTER XIV
LIMERICK
A capital steamer, which on this day was thronged with people, carried
us for about four hours down the noble stream and landed us at Limerick
Quay. The character of the landscape on either side the stream is not
particularly picturesque, but large, liberal, and prosperous. Gentle
sweeps of rich meadows and cornfields cover the banks, and some, though
not too many, gentlemen’s parks and plantations rise here and there.
But the landscape was somehow more pleasing than if it had been merely
picturesque; and, especially after coming out of that desolate county of
Kerry, it was pleasant for the eye to rest upon this peaceful, rich, and
generous scene. The first aspect of Limerick is very smart and pleasing;
fine neat quays with considerable liveliness and bustle, a very handsome
bridge (the Wellesley Bridge) before the spectator, who, after a walk
through two long and flourishing streets, stops at length at one of the
best inns in Ireland--the large, neat, and prosperous one kept by Mr.
Cruise. Except at Youghal, and the poor fellow whom the Englishman
belaboured at Glengarriff, Mr. Cruise is the only landlord of an inn I
have had the honour to see in Ireland. I believe these gentlemen
commonly (and very naturally) prefer riding with the hounds, or manly
sports, to attendance on their guests; and the landladies, if they
prefer to play the piano, or to have a game of cards in the parlour,
only show a taste at which no one can wonder: for who can expect a lady
to be troubling herself with vulgar chance-customers, or looking after
Molly in the bedroom or waiter Tim in the cellar?
Now, beyond this piece of information regarding the excellence of Mr.
Cruise’s hotel, which every traveller knows, the writer of this doubts
very much whether he has anything to say about Limerick that is worth
the trouble of saying or reading. I can’t attempt to describe the
Shannon, only to say that on board the steamboat there was a piper and a
bugler, a hundred of genteel persons coming back from donkey-riding and
bathing at Kilkee, a couple of heaps of raw hides that smelt very
foully, a score of women nursing children, and a lobster-vendor, who
vowed to me on his honour that he gave eightpence apiece for his fish,
and that he had boiled them only the day before; but when I produced the
Guide-book, and solemnly told him to swear upon that to the truth of his
statement, the lobster-seller turned away, quite abashed, and would not
be brought to support his previous assertion at all. Well, this is no
description of the Shannon, as you have no need to be told, and other
travelling cockneys will, no doubt, meet neither piper nor
lobster-seller nor raw hides; nor, if they come to the inn where this is
written, is it probable that they will hear, as I do at this present
moment, two fellows with red whiskers, and immense pomp and noise and
blustering with the waiter, conclude by ordering a pint of ale between
them. All that one can hope to do is, to give a sort of notion of the
movement and manners of the people; pretending by no means to offer a
description of places, but simply an account of what one sees in them.
So that if any traveller after staying two days in Limerick should
think fit to present the reader with forty or fifty pages of
dissertation upon the antiquities and history of the place, upon the
state of commerce, religion, education, the public may be pretty well
sure that the traveller has been at work among the guide-books, and
filching extracts from the topographical and local works.
They say there are three towns to make one Limerick: there is the Irish
town on the Clare side; the English town with its old castle (which has
sustained a deal of battering and blows from Danes, from fierce Irish
kings, from English warriors who took an interest in the place, Henry
Secundians, Elizabethians, Cromwellians, and _vice versâ_, Jacobites,
King Williamites,--and nearly escaped being in the hands of the Robert
Emmetites); and finally the district called Newtown-Pery. In walking
through this latter tract, you are, at first, half led to believe that
you are arrived in a second Liverpool, so tall are the warehouses and
broad the quays; so neat and trim a street of near a mile which
stretches before you. But even this mile-long street does not, in a few
minutes, appear to be so wealthy and prosperous as it shows at first
glance; for of the population that throng the streets, two-fifths are
barefooted women, and two-fifths more ragged men: and the most part of
the shops which have a grand show with them appear, when looked into, to
be no better than they should be, being empty makeshift-looking places
with their best goods outside.
Here, in this handsome street too, is a handsome club-house, with plenty
of idlers, you may be sure, lolling at the portico; likewise you see
numerous young officers, with very tight waists and absurd brass
shell-epaulettes to their little absurd frock-coats, walking the
pavement--the dandies of the street. Then you behold whole troops of
pear-, apple-, and plum-women, selling very raw, green-looking fruit,
which, indeed, it is a wonder that any one should eat and live. The
houses are bright red--the street is full and gay, carriages and cars in
plenty go jingling by--dragoons in red are every now and then clattering
up the street; and as upon every car which passes with ladies in it you
are sure (I don’t know how it is) to see a pretty one, the great street
of Limerick is altogether a very brilliant and animated sight.
If the ladies of the place are pretty, indeed, the vulgar are scarcely
less so. I never saw a greater number of kind, pleasing, clever-looking
faces among any set of people. There seem, however, to be two sorts of
physiognomies which are common; the pleasing and somewhat melancholy one
before mentioned, and a square, high-cheeked, flat-nosed physiognomy not
uncommonly accompanied by a hideous staring head of dry, red hair.
Except, however, in the latter case, the hair flowing loose and long is
a pretty characteristic of the women of the country; many a fair one do
you see at the door of the cabin, or the poor shop in the town, combing
complacently that ‘greatest ornament of female beauty,’ as Mr. Rowland
justly calls it.
The generality of the women here seem also much better clothed than in
Kerry; and I saw many a one going barefoot whose gown was nevertheless a
good one, and whose cloak was of fine cloth. Likewise it must be
remarked that the beggars in Limerick were by no means so numerous as
those in Cork, or in many small places through which I have passed.
There were but five, strange to say, round the mail-coach as we went
away; and, indeed, not a great number in the streets.
The belles-lettres seem to be by no means so well cultivated here as in
Cork. I looked in vain for a Limerick guide-book: I saw but one good
shop of books, and a little trumpery circulating library, which seemed
to be provided with those immortal works of a year old, which, having
been sold for half a guinea the volume at first, are suddenly found to
be worth only a shilling. Among these, let me mention, with perfect
resignation to the decrees of fate, the works of one Titmarsh: they were
rather smartly bound by an enterprising publisher, and I looked at them
in Bishop Murphy’s library at Cork, in a bookshop in the remote little
town of Ennis, and elsewhere, with a melancholy tenderness. Poor
flowerets of a season! (and a very short season too), let me be allowed
to salute your scattered leaves with a passing sigh!... Besides the
bookshops, I observed in the long, best street of Limerick a half-dozen
of what are called French shops, with nick-nacks, German-silver chimney
ornaments, and paltry finery. In the windows of these you saw a card
with ‘Cigars’; in the bookshop, ‘Cigars’; at the grocer’s, the
whisky-shop, ‘Cigars’: everybody sells the noxious weed, or makes
believe to sell it, and I know no surer indication of a struggling,
uncertain trade than that same placard of ‘Cigars.’ I went to buy some
of the pretty Limerick gloves (they are chiefly made, as I have since
discovered, at Cork). I think the man who sold them had a patent from
the Queen, or his Excellency, or both, in his window: but, seeing a
friend pass just as I entered the shop, he brushed past, and held his
friend in conversation for some minutes in the street,--about the
Killarney races, no doubt, or the fun going on at Kilkee. I might have
swept away a bagful of walnut-shells containing the flimsy gloves; but
instead walked out, making him a low bow, and saying I would call next
week. He said, wouldn’t I wait? and resumed his conversation; and, no
doubt, by this way of doing business, is making a handsome
independence. I asked one of the ten thousand fruit-women the price of
her green pears. ‘Twopence apiece,’ she said; and there were two little
ragged beggars standing by, who were munching the fruit. A
bookshop-woman made me pay threepence for a bottle of ink which usually
costs a penny; a potato-woman told me that her potatoes cost
fourteenpence a stone; and all these ladies treated the stranger with a
leering, wheedling servility, which made me long to box their ears, were
it not that the man who lays his hand upon a woman is an----, etc., whom
‘twere gross flattery to call a what-d’ye-call-‘em. By the way, the man
who played Duke Aranza at Cork delivered the celebrated claptrap above
alluded to as follows:--
‘The man who lays his hand upon a woman,
Save in the way of kindness, is a villain,
Whom ‘twere _a gross piece_ of flattery to call a coward;’
and looked round calmly for the applause, which deservedly followed his
new reading of the passage.
To return to the apple-women;--legions of ladies were employed through
the town upon that traffic; there were really thousands of them,
clustering upon the bridges, squatting down in doorways and vacant sheds
for temporary markets, marching and crying their sour goods in all the
crowded lanes of the city. After you get out of the main street the
handsome part of the town is at an end, and you suddenly find yourself
in such a labyrinth of busy swarming poverty and squalid commerce as
never was seen--no, not in St. Giles’s, where Jew and Irishman side by
side exhibit their genius for dirt. Here every house almost was a half
ruin, and swarming with people; in the cellars you looked down and saw a
barrel of herrings, which a merchant was dispensing; or a sack of meal,
which a poor dirty woman sold to people poorer and dirtier than herself:
above was a tinman, or a shoemaker, or other craftsman, his battered
ensign at the door, and his small wares peering through the cracked
panes of his shop. As for the ensign, as a matter of course, the name is
never written in letters of the same size. You read--
[Illustration: PAT^K HANLAH^an TAILOR]
[Illustration: JAME^S HURL^EY SHOE MAK^er]
or some similar signboard. High and low, in this country, they begin
things on too large a scale. They begin churches too big and can’t
finish them; mills and houses too big, and are ruined before they are
done; letters on signboards too big, and are up in a corner before the
inscription is finished--there is something quite strange, really, in
this general consistency.
Well, over James Hurley, or Pat Hanlahan, you will most likely see
another board of another tradesman, with a window to the full as
curious. Above Tim Carthy evidently lives another family. There are
long-haired girls of fourteen at every one of the windows, and dirty
children everywhere. In the cellars, look at them in dingy white
nightcaps over a bowl of stirabout; in the shop, paddling up and down
the ruined steps, or issuing from beneath the black counter; up above,
see the girl of fourteen is tossing and dandling one of them; and a
pretty tender sight it is, in the midst of this filth and wretchedness,
to see the women and children together. It makes a sunshine in the dark
place, and somehow half reconciles one to it. Children are
everywhere--look out of the nasty streets into the still more nasty back
lanes; there they are, sprawling at every door and court, paddling in
every puddle; and in about a fair proportion to every six children an
old woman--a very old, blear-eyed, ragged woman--who makes believe to
sell something out of a basket, and is perpetually calling upon the name
of the Lord. For every three ragged old women you will see two ragged
old men, praying and moaning like the females. And there is no lack of
young men, either, though I never could make out what they were about:
they loll about the street, chiefly conversing in knots; and in every
street you will be pretty sure to see a recruiting sergeant, with gay
ribands in his cap, loitering about with an eye upon the other loiterers
there. The buzz, and hum, and chattering of this crowd is quite
inconceivable to us in England, where a crowd is generally silent: as a
person with a decent coat passes, they stop in their talk and say, ‘God
bless you for a fine gentleman!’ In these crowded streets, where all are
beggars, the beggary is but small: only the very old and hideous venture
to ask for a penny, otherwise the competition would be too great.
As for the buildings that one lights upon every now and then in the
midst of such scenes as this, they are scarce worth the trouble to
examine: occasionally you come on a chapel, with sham Gothic windows and
a little belfry, one of the Catholic places of worship; then, placed in
some quiet street, a neat-looking dissenting meeting-house. Across the
river yonder, as you issue out from the street, where the preceding
sketch was taken, is a handsome hospital; near it the old cathedral, a
barbarous old turreted edifice, of the fourteenth century it is said;
how different to the sumptuous elegance which characterises the English
and Continental churches of the same period! Passing by it, and walking
down other streets,--black, ruinous, swarming, dark, hideous,--you come
upon the barracks and the walks of the old castle, and from it on to an
old bridge, from which the view is a fine one. On one side are the grey
bastions of the castle; beyond them, in the midst of the broad stream,
stands a huge mill that looks like another castle; farther yet is the
handsome new Wellesley Bridge, with some little craft upon the river,
and the red warehouses of the new town looking prosperous enough. The
Irish town stretches away to the right; there are pretty villas beyond
it, and on the bridge are walking twenty-four young girls, in parties of
four and five, with their arms round each other’s waists, swaying to and
fro, and singing or chattering, as happy as if they had shoes to their
feet. Yonder you see a dozen pair of red legs glittering in the water,
their owners being employed in washing their own or other people’s rags.
The Guide-book mentions that one of the aboriginal forests of the
country is to be seen at a few miles from Limerick; and thinking that an
aboriginal forest would be a huge discovery, and form an instructive and
delightful feature of the present work, I hired a car in order to visit
the same, and pleased myself with visions of gigantic oaks, Druids,
Norma, wildernesses and awful glooms, which would fill the soul with
horror. The romance of the place was heightened by a fact stated by the
carman, viz., that until late years robberies were very frequent about
the wood; the inhabitants of the district being a wild lawless race.
Moreover, there are numerous castles round about,--and for what can a
man wish more than robbers, castles, and an aboriginal wood?
The way to these wonderful sights lies through the undulating grounds
which border the Shannon; and though the view is by no means a fine one,
I know few that are pleasanter than the sight of these rich, golden,
peaceful plains, with the full harvest waving on them and just ready for
the sickle. The hay harvest was likewise just being concluded, and the
air loaded with the rich odour of the hay. Above the trees, to your
left, you saw the mast of a ship, perhaps moving along, and every now
and then caught a glimpse of the Shannon, and the low grounds and
plantations of the opposite county of Limerick. Not an unpleasant
addition to the landscape, too, was a sight which I do not remember to
have witnessed often in this country--that of several small and decent
farmhouses, with their stacks and sheds and stables, giving an air of
neatness and plenty that the poor cabin with its potato-patch does not
present. Is it on account of the small farms that the land seems richer
and better cultivated here than in most other parts of the country?
Some of the houses in the midst of the warm summer landscape had a
strange appearance, for it is often the fashion to whitewash the roofs
of the houses, leaving the slates of the walls of their natural colour;
hence, and in the evening especially, contrasting with the purple sky,
the house-tops often looked as if they were covered with snow.
According to the Guide-book’s promise, the castles began soon to appear;
at one point we could see three of these ancient mansions in a line,
each seemingly with its little grove of old trees, in the midst of the
bare but fertile country. By this time, too, we had got into a road so
abominably bad and rocky, that I began to believe more and more with
regard to the splendour of the aboriginal forest, which must be most
aboriginal and ferocious indeed when approached by such a savage path.
After travelling through a couple of lines of wall with plantations on
either side, I at length became impatient as to the forest, and, much to
my disappointment, was told this was it. For the fact is, that though
the forest has always been there, the trees have not, the proprietors
cutting them regularly when grown to no great height, and the monarchs
of the woods which I saw round about would scarcely have afforded timber
for a bedpost. Nor did any robbers make their appearance in this
wilderness: with which disappointment, however, I was more willing to
put up than with the former one.
But if the wood and the robbers did not come up to my romantic notions,
the old castle of Bunratty fully answered them, and indeed should be
made the scene of a romance, in three volumes at least.
‘It is a huge, square tower, with four smaller ones at each angle; and
you mount to the entrance by a steep flight of steps, being commanded
all the way by the crossbows of two of the Lord De Clare’s retainers,
the points of whose weapons may be seen lying upon the ledge of the
little narrow _meurtrière_ on each side of the gate. A venerable
seneschal, with the keys of office, presently opens the little back
postern, and you are admitted to the great hall--a noble chamber,
_pardi_! some seventy feet in length, and thirty high. ‘Tis hung round
with a thousand trophies of war and chase,--the golden helmet and spear
of the Irish king, the long yellow mantle he wore, and the huge brooch
that bound it. Hugo De Clare slew him before the castle in 1305, when he
and his kernes attacked it. Less successful in 1314, the gallant Hugo
saw his village of Bunratty burned round his tower by the son of the
slaughtered O’Neill; and, sallying out to avenge the insult, was brought
back--a corpse! Ah! what was the pang that shot through the fair bosom
of the _Lady Adela_, when she knew that ‘twas the hand of _Redmond
O’Neill_ sped the shaft which slew her sire!
‘You listen to this sad story, reposing on an oaken settle (covered with
deer’s-skin taken in the aboriginal forest of Carclow hard by), and
placed at the enormous hall-fire. Here sits Thonom an Diaoul, “Dark
Thomas,” the blind harper of the race of De Clare, who loves to tell the
deeds of the lordly family. “Penetrating in disguise,” he continues,
“into the castle, Redmond of the golden locks sought an interview with
the lily of Bunratty; but she screamed when she saw him under the
disguise of the gleeman, and said, My father’s blood is in the hall! At
this, up started fierce Sir Ranulph. Ho, Bludyer! he cried to his
squire, call me the hangman and Father John; seize me, vassals, yon
villain in gleeman’s guise, and hang him on the gallows on the tower!
‘“Will it please ye walk to the roof of the old castle and see the beam
on which the lords of the place execute the refractory?” “Nay, marry,”
say you, “by my spurs of knighthood, I have seen hanging enough in merry
England, and care not to see the gibbets of Irish kernes.” The harper
would have taken fire at this speech reflecting on his country; but
luckily here Gulph, your English squire, entered from the pantler (with
whom he had been holding a parley), and brought a manchet of bread, and
bade ye, in the Lord De Clare’s name, crush a cup of Ypocras, well
spiced, _pardi_, and by the fair hands of the Lady Adela.
‘“The Lady Adela!” say you, starting up in amaze. “Is not this the year
of grace 1600, and lived she not three hundred years syne?”
‘“Yes, Sir Knight, but Bunratty tower hath _another lily_: will it
please you see your chamber?”
‘So saying, the seneschal leads you up a winding stair in one of the
turrets, past one little dark chamber and another, without a fireplace,
without rushes (how different from the stately houses of Nonsuch or
Audley End!), and, leading you through another vast chamber above the
baronial hall, similar in size, but decorated with tapestries and rude
carvings, you pass the little chapel (“Marry,” says the steward, “many
would it not hold, and many do not come!”), until at last you are
located in the little cell appropriated to you. Some rude attempts have
been made to render it fitting for the stranger; but, though more neatly
arranged than the hundred other little chambers which the castle
contains, in sooth ‘tis scarce fitted for the serving-man, much more for
Sir Reginald, the English knight.
‘While you are looking at a bouquet of flowers, which lies on the
settle--magnolias, geraniums, the blue flowers of the cactus, and in the
midst of the bouquet, _one lily_; whilst you wonder whose fair hands
could have culled the flowers--hark! the horns are blowing at the
drawbridge and the warder lets the portcullis down. You rush to your
window, a stalwart knight rides over the gate, the hoofs of his black
courser clanging upon the planks. A host of wild retainers wait round
about him: see, four of them carry a stag, that hath been slain, no
doubt, in the aboriginal forest of Carclow. By my fay! (say you), ‘tis a
stag of ten.
‘But who is that yonder on the grey palfrey, conversing so prettily, and
holding the sportive animal with so light a rein?--a light green
riding-habit and ruff, a little hat with a green plume--sure it must be
a lady, and a fair one. She looks up. O blessed Mother of Heaven, that
look! those eyes that smile, those sunny golden ringlets! It is--_it is_
the Lady Adela: the lily of Bunrat----’
If the reader cannot finish the other two volumes for him or herself, he
or she never deserves to have a novel from a circulating library again;
for my part, I will take my affidavit the English knight will marry the
Lily at the end of the third volume, having previously slain the other
suitor at one of the multifarious sieges of Limerick. And I beg to say
that the historical part of this romance has been extracted carefully
from the Guide-book: the topographical and descriptive portion being
studied on the spot. A policeman shows you over it, halls, chapels,
galleries, gibbets, and all. The huge old tower was, until late years,
inhabited by the family of the proprietor, who built himself a house in
the midst of it: but he has since built another in the park opposite,
and half a dozen ‘peelers,’ with a commodity of wives and children, now
inhabit Bunratty. On the gate where we entered were numerous placards
offering rewards for the apprehension of various country offenders; and
a turnpike, a bridge, and a quay have sprung up from the place which Red
Redmond (or anybody else) burned.
* * * * *
On our road to Galway the next day, we were carried once more by the old
tower, and for a considerable distance along the fertile banks of the
Fergus lake, and a river which pours itself into the Shannon. The first
town we came to is Castle Clare, which lies conveniently on the river,
with a castle, a good bridge, and many quays and warehouses, near which
a small ship or two were lying. The place was once the chief town of the
county, but is wretched and ruinous now, being made up for the most
part of miserable thatched cots, round which you see the usual dusky
population. The drive hence to Ennis lies through a country which is by
no means so pleasant as that rich one we have passed through, being
succeeded ‘by that craggy, bleak, pastoral district which occupies so
large a portion of the limestone district of Clare.’ Ennis, likewise,
stands upon the Fergus--a busy little narrow-streeted, foreign-looking
town, approached by half a mile of thatched cots, in which I am not
ashamed to confess that I saw some as pretty faces as over any half-mile
of country I ever travelled in my life.
A great light of the Catholic church, who was of late a candlestick in
our own communion, was on the coach with us, reading devoutly out of a
breviary, on many occasions, along the road. A crowd of black coats and
heads, with that indescribable look which belongs to the Catholic
clergy, were evidently on the look-out for the coach; and as it stopped
one of them came up to me with a low bow, and asked if I was the
Honourable and Reverend Mr. S----? How I wish I had answered him I was!
It would have been a grand scene. The respect paid to this gentleman’s
descent is quite absurd--the papers bandy his title about with pleased
emphasis--the Galway paper calls him the _very_ Reverend. There is
something in the love for rank almost childish: witness the adoration of
George IV.; the pompous joy with which John Tuam records his
correspondence with a great man; the continual my-lording of the
Bishops, the Right-Honourabling of Mr. O’Connell--which title his
party-papers delight on all occasions to give him--nay, the delight of
that great man himself when first he attained the dignity; he figured in
his robes in the most good-humoured simple delight at having them, and
went to church forthwith in them, as if such a man wanted a title before
his name!
At Ennis, as well as everywhere else in Ireland, there were of course
the regular number of swaggering-looking buckeens, and shabby-genteel
idlers, to watch the arrival of the mail-coach. A poor old idiot, with
his grey hair tied up in bows, and with a ribbon behind, thrust out a
very fair soft hand with taper fingers, and told me, nodding his head
very wistfully, that he had no father nor mother: upon which score he
got a penny. Nor did the other beggars round the carriage who got none
seem to grudge the poor fellow’s good fortune. I think when one poor
wretch has a piece of luck, the others seem glad here: and they promise
to pray for you just the same if you give as if you refuse.
The town was swarming with people; the little dark streets, which twist
about in all directions, being full of cheap merchandise and its
vendors. Whether there are many buyers, I can’t say. This is written
opposite the market-place in Galway, and I have watched a stall a
hundred times in the course of the last three hours and seen no money
taken: but at every place I come to, I can’t help wondering at the
numbers; it seems market-day everywhere--apples, pigs, and potatoes
being sold all over the kingdom. There seem to be some good shops in
those narrow streets: among others, a decent little library, where I
bought, for eighteenpence, six volumes of works strictly Irish, that
will serve for a half-hour’s gossip on the next rainy day.
The road hence to Gort carried us at first by some dismal,
lonely-looking, reedy lakes, through a melancholy country; an open
village standing here and there, with a big chapel in the midst of it,
almost always unfinished in some point or other. Crossing at a bridge
near a place called Tubbor, the coachman told us we were in the famous
county of Galway, which all readers of novels admire in the warlike
works of Maxwell and Lever; and, dismal as the country had been in
Clare, I think on the northern side of the bridge it was dismaller
still--the stones not only appearing in the character of hedges, but
strewing over whole fields, in which sheep were browsing as well as they
could.
We rode for miles through this stony, dismal district, seeing more lakes
now and anon, with fellows spearing eels in the midst. Then we passed
the plantations of Lord Gort’s Castle of Loughcooter, and presently came
to the town which bears his name, or _vice versâ_. It is a
regularly-built little place, with a square and street: but it looked as
if it wondered how the deuce it got into the midst of such a desolate
country, and seemed to _bore_ itself there considerably. It had nothing
to do, and no society.
A short time before arriving at Oranmore, one has glimpses of the sea,
which comes opportunely to relieve the dulness of the land. Between Gort
and that place we passed through little but the most woeful country, in
the midst of which was a village, where a horse-fair was held, and where
(upon the word of the coachman) all the bad horses of the country were
to be seen. The man was commissioned, no doubt, to buy for his
employers, for two or three merchants were on the look-out for him, and
trotted out their cattle by the side of the coach. A very good,
neat-looking, smart-trotting chestnut horse, of seven years old, was
offered by the owner for £8; a neat brown mare for £10, and a better (as
I presume) for £14; but all _looked_ very respectable, and I have the
coachman’s word for it that they were good serviceable horses. Oranmore,
with an old castle in the midst of the village, woods, and park
plantations round about, and the bay beyond it, has a pretty and
romantic look; and the drive of about four miles thence to Galway, the
most picturesque part, perhaps, of the fifty miles’ ride from Limerick.
The road is tolerably wooded. You see the town itself, with its huge old
church-tower, stretching along the bay, ‘backed by hills linking into
the long chain of mountains which stretch across Connemara and the Joyce
country.’ A suburb of cots that seems almost endless has, however, an
end at last among the houses of the town: and a little fleet of a couple
of hundred fishing-boats was manœuvring in the bright waters of the
bay.
CHAPTER XV
GALWAY--KILROY’S HOTEL--GALWAY NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENTS--FIRST NIGHT: AN
EVENING WITH CAPTAIN FREENY
When it is stated that, throughout the town of Galway, you cannot get a
cigar which costs more than twopence, Londoners may imagine the
strangeness and remoteness of the place. The rain poured down for two
days after our arrival at Kilroy’s Hotel. An umbrella under such
circumstances is a poor resource: self-contemplation is far more
amusing, especially smoking, and a game at cards, if any one will be so
good as to play.
But there was no one in the hotel coffee-room who was inclined for the
sport. The company there, on the day of our arrival, consisted of two
coach passengers,--a Frenchman who came from Sligo, and ordered
mutton-chops and _fraid potatoes_ for dinner by himself, a turbot which
cost two shillings, and in Billingsgate would have been worth a guinea;
and a couple of native or inhabitant bachelors who frequented the _table
d’hôte_.
By the way, besides these there were at dinner two turkeys (so that Mr.
Kilroy’s two-shilling ordinary was by no means ill supplied); and, as a
stranger, I had the honour of carving these animals, which were
dispensed in rather a singular way. There are, as it is generally known,
to two turkeys four wings. Of the four passengers, one ate no turkey,
one had a pinion, another the remaining part of the wing, and the fourth
gentleman took the other three wings for his share. Does everybody in
Galway eat three wings when there are two turkeys for dinner? One has
heard wonders of the country,--the dashing, daring, duelling,
desperate, rollicking, whisky-drinking people: but this wonder beats
all. When I asked the Galway turkiphagus (there is no other word, for
turkey was invented long after Greece) ‘if he would take a third wing?’
with a peculiar satiric accent on the words _third wing_, which cannot
be expressed in writing, but which the occasion fully merited, I thought
perhaps that, following the custom of the country where everybody,
according to Maxwell and Lever, challenges everybody else,--I thought
the Galwagian would call me out; but no such thing. He only said, ‘If
you plase, sir,’ in the blandest way in the world; and gobbled up the
limb in a twinkling.
As an encouragement, too, for persons meditating that important change
of condition, the gentleman was a teetotaller: he took but one glass of
water to that intolerable deal of bubblyjock. Galway must be very much
changed since the days when Maxwell and Lever knew it. Three
turkey-wings and a glass of water! But the man cannot be the
representative of a class, that is clear: it is physically and
arithmetically impossible. They can’t _all_ eat three wings of two
turkeys at dinner: the turkeys could not stand it, let alone the men.
These wings must have been ‘non usitatæ (nec tenues) pennæ.’ But no more
of these flights; let us come to sober realities.
The fact is, that when the rain is pouring down in the streets, the
traveller has little else to remark except these peculiarities of his
fellow-travellers and inn-sojourners; and, lest one should be led into
further personalities, it is best to quit that water-drinking
gormandiser at once, and, retiring to a private apartment, to devote
one’s self to quiet observation and the acquisition of knowledge, either
by looking out of the window and examining mankind, or by perusing
books, and so living with past heroes and ages.
As for the knowledge to be had by looking out of window, it is this
evening not much. A great wide, blank, bleak, water-whipped square lies
before the bedroom window; at the opposite side of which is to be seen
the Opposition Hotel, looking even more bleak and cheerless than that
over which Mr. Kilroy presides. Large dismal warehouses and private
houses form three sides of the square; and in the midst is a bare
pleasure-ground surrounded by a growth of gaunt iron railings, the only
plants seemingly in the place. Three triangular edifices that look
somewhat like gibbets stand in the paved part of the square, but the
victims that are consigned to their fate under these triangles are only
potatoes, which are weighed there; and, in spite of the torrents of
rain, a crowd of barefooted, red-petticoated women, and men in grey
coats and flower-pot hats, are pursuing their little bargains with the
utmost calmness. The rain seems to make no impression on the males; nor
do the women guard against it more than by flinging a petticoat over
their heads, and so stand bargaining and chattering in Irish, their
figures indefinitely reflected in the shining, varnished pavement.
Donkeys and pony carts innumerable stand around, similarly reflected;
and in the baskets upon these vehicles you see shoals of herrings lying.
After a short space this prospect becomes somewhat tedious, and one
looks to other sources of consolation.
The eighteen-pennyworth of little books purchased at Ennis in the
morning came here most agreeably to my aid; and indeed they afford many
a pleasant hour’s reading. Like the _Bibliothèque Grise_, which one sees
in the French cottages in the provinces, and the German _Volksbuecher_,
both of which contain stores of old legends that are still treasured in
the country, these yellow-covered books are prepared for the people
chiefly; and have been sold for many long years before the march of
knowledge began to banish Fancy out of the world, and give us, in place
of the old fairy tales, Penny Magazines, and similar wholesome works.
Where are the little harlequin-backed story-books that used to be read
by children in England some thirty years ago? Where such authentic
narratives as _Captain Bruce’s Travels_, _The Dreadful Adventures of
Sawney Bean_, etc., which were commonly supplied to little boys at
school by the same old lady who sold oranges and alycompayne?--they are
all gone out of the world, and replaced by such books as _Conversations
on Chemistry_, _The Little Geologist_, _Peter Parley’s Tales about the
Binomial Theorem_, and the like. The world will be a dull world some
hundreds of years hence, when Fancy shall be dead, and ruthless Science
(that has no more bowels than a steam-engine) has killed her.
It is a comfort, meanwhile, to come on occasions on some of the good old
stories and biographies. These books were evidently written before the
useful had attained its present detestable popularity. There is nothing
useful _here_, that’s certain; and a man will be puzzled to extract a
precise moral out of the _Adventures of Mr. James Freeny_; or out of the
legends in the _Hibernian Tales_; or out of the lamentable tragedy of
the _Battle of Aughrim_, writ in most doleful Anglo-Irish verse. But,
are we to reject all things that have not a moral tacked to them? ‘Is
there any moral shut within the bosom of the rose?’ And yet, as the same
noble poet sings (giving a smart slap to the utility people the while),
‘useful applications lie in art and nature,’ and every man may find a
moral suited to his mind in them; or, if not a moral, an occasion for
moralising.
Honest Freeny’s adventures (let us begin with history and historic
tragedy, and leave fancy for future consideration), if they have a
moral, have that dubious one which the poet admits may be elicited from
a rose; and which every man may select according to his mind. And surely
this is a far better and more comfortable system of moralising than that
in the fable-books, where you are obliged to accept the story with the
inevitable moral corollary that _will_ stick close to it.
Whereas, in Freeny’s life, one man may see the evil of drinking, another
the harm of horse-racing, another the danger attendant on early
marriage, a fourth the exceeding inconvenience as well as hazard of the
heroic highwayman’s life--which a certain Ainsworth, in company with a
certain Cruikshank, have represented as so poetic and brilliant, so
prodigal of delightful adventure, so adorned with champagne, gold lace,
and brocade.
And the best part of worthy Freeny’s tale is the noble _naïveté_ and
simplicity of the hero as he recounts his own adventures, and the utter
unconsciousness that he is narrating anything wonderful. It is the way
of all great men, who recite their great actions modestly, and as if
they were matters of course; as indeed to them they are. A common tyro,
having perpetrated a great deed, would be amazed and flurried at his own
action; whereas I make no doubt the Duke of Wellington, after a great
victory, took his tea and went to bed just as quietly as he would after
a dull debate in the House of Lords. And so with Freeny,--his great and
charming characteristic is grave simplicity; he does his work; he knows
his danger as well as another; but he goes through his fearful duty
quite quietly and easily; and not with the least air of bravado, or the
smallest notion that he is doing anything uncommon.
It is related of Carter, the Lion-King, that when he was a boy, and
exceedingly fond of gingerbread-nuts, a relation gave him a parcel of
those delicious cakes, which the child put in his pocket just as he was
called on to go into a cage with a very large and roaring lion. He had
to put his head into the forest-monarch’s jaws, and leave it there for a
considerable time, to the delight of thousands: as is even now the case;
and the interest was so much the greater, as the child was exceedingly
innocent, rosy-cheeked, and pretty. To have seen that little flaxen head
bitten off by the lion would have been a far more pathetic spectacle
than that of the decapitation of some grey-bearded, old, unromantic
keeper, who had served out raw meat and stirred up the animals with the
pole, any time these twenty years; and the interest rose in consequence.
While the little darling’s head was thus enjawed, what was the
astonishment of everybody to see him put his hand into his little
pocket, take out a paper--from the paper a gingerbread-nut--pop that
gingerbread-nut into the lion’s mouth, then into his own, and so finish
at least twopennyworth of nuts!
The excitement was delirious: the ladies, when he came out of Chancery,
were for doing what the lion had not done, and eaten him up--with
kisses. And the only remark the young hero made was, ‘Uncle, them nuts
wasn’t so crisp as them I had t’other day.’ He never thought of the
danger,--he only thought of the nuts.
Thus it is with FREENY. It is fine to mark his bravery, and to see how
he cracks his simple philosophic nuts in the jaws of innumerable lions.
At the commencement of the last century, honest Freeny’s father was
house-steward in the family of Joseph Robbins, Esq., of Ballyduff; and,
marrying Alice Phelan, a maid-servant in the same family, had issue
JAMES, the celebrated Irish hero. At a proper age James was put to
school; but being a nimble, active lad, and his father’s mistress taking
a fancy to him, he was presently brought to Ballyduff, where she had a
private tutor to instruct him, during the time which he could spare from
his professional duty, which was that of pantry-boy in Mr. Robbins’s
establishment. At an early age he began to neglect his duty; and
although his father, at the excellent Mrs. Robbins’s suggestion,
corrected him very severely, the bent of his genius was not to be warped
by the rod, and he attended ‘all the little country dances, diversions,
and meetings, and became what is called a good dancer, his own natural
inclinations hurrying him (as he finely says) into the contrary
diversions.’
He was scarce twenty years old when he married (a frightful proof of the
wicked recklessness of his former courses), and set up in trade in
Waterford; where, however, matters went so ill with him, that he was
speedily without money, and £50 in debt. He had, he says, not any way of
paying the debt, except by selling his furniture or his _riding-mare_,
to both of which measures he was averse; for where is the gentleman in
Ireland that can do without a horse to ride? Mr. Freeny and his
riding-mare became soon famous, insomuch that a thief in gaol warned the
magistrates of Kilkenny to beware of a _one-eyed man with a mare_.
These unhappy circumstances sent him on the highway to seek a
maintenance, and his first exploit was to rob a gentleman of fifty
pounds; then to attack another, against whom he ‘had _a secret disgust_,
because this gentleman had prevented his former master from giving him a
suit of clothes!’
Urged by a noble resentment against this gentleman, Mr. Freeny, in
company with a friend by the name of Reddy, robbed the gentleman’s
house, taking therein £70 in money, which was honourably divided among
the captors.
‘We then,’ continues Mr. Freeny, ‘quitted the house with the booty, and
came to Thomastown; but not knowing how to dispose of the plate, left it
with Reddy, who said he had a friend from whom he would get cash for it.
In some time afterwards I asked him for the dividend of the cash he got
for the plate, but all the satisfaction he gave me was, that it was
lost, which occasioned me _to have my own opinion of him_.’
Mr. Freeny then robbed Sir William Fownes’ servant of £14, in such an
artful manner that everybody believed the servant had himself secreted
the money; and no doubt the rascal was turned adrift, and starved in
consequence--a truly comic incident, and one that could be used so as to
provoke a great deal of laughter, in an historical work of which our
champion should be the hero.
The next enterprise of importance is that against the house of Colonel
Palliser, which Freeny thus picturesquely describes. Coming with one of
his spies close up to the house, Mr. Freeny watched the Colonel lighted
to bed by a servant; and thus, as he cleverly says, could judge ‘of the
room the Colonel lay in.’
‘Some time afterwards,’ says Freeny, ‘I observed a light upstairs, by
which I judged the servants were going to bed, and soon after observed
that the candles were all quenched, by which I assured myself they were
all gone to bed. I then came back to where the men were, and appointed
Bulger, Motley, and Commons to go in along with me; but Commons answered
that he never had been in any house before where there were arms; upon
which I asked the coward what business he had there, and swore I would
as soon shoot him as look at him, and at the same time cocked a pistol
to his breast; but the rest of the men prevailed upon me to leave him at
the back of the house, where he might run away when he thought proper.
‘I then asked Grace where did he choose to be posted; he answered “That
he would go where I pleased to order him,” for which I thanked him; we
then immediately came up to the house, lighted our candles, put Houlahan
at the back of the house, to prevent any person from coming out that
way, and placed Hacket on my mare, well armed, at the front; and I then
broke one of the windows with a sledge, whereupon Bulger, Motley, Grace,
and I got in; upon which I ordered Motley and Grace to go upstairs, and
Bulger and I would stay below, where we thought the greatest danger
would be; but I immediately, upon second consideration, for fear Motley
or Grace should be daunted, desired Bulger to go up with them, and when
he had fixed matters above, to come down, as I judged the Colonel lay
below. I then went to the room where the Colonel was, and burst open the
door; upon which he said, “Odds-wounds! who’s there?” to which I
answered, “A friend, sir;” upon which he said, “You lie; by G--d, you
are no friend of mine!” I then said that I was, and his relation also,
and that if he viewed me close he would know me, and begged of him not
to be angry; upon which I immediately seized a bullet-gun and case of
pistols, which I observed hanging up in his room. I then quitted his
room, and walked round the lower part of the house, thinking to meet
some of the servants, _whom_ I thought would strive to make their escape
from the men who were above, and meeting none of them, I immediately
returned to the Colonel’s room; where I no sooner entered than he
desired me to go out for a villain, and asked why I bred such
disturbance in his house at that time of night; at the same time I
snatched his breeches from under his head, wherein I got a small purse
of gold, and said that abuse was not fit treatment for me who was his
relation, and that it would hinder me of calling to see him again. I
then demanded the key of his desk which stood in his room; he answered
he had no key; upon which I said I had a very good key; at the same time
giving it a stroke with the sledge, which burst it open, wherein I got a
purse of ninety guineas, a four-pound piece, two moidores, some small
gold, and a large glove, with twenty-eight guineas in silver.
‘By this time Bulger and Motley came downstairs to me, after rifling the
house above; we then observed a closet inside his room, which we soon
entered, and got therein a basket wherein there was plate to the value
of three hundred pounds.’
And so they took leave of Colonel Palliser, and rode away with their
earnings.
The story, as here narrated, has that simplicity which is beyond the
reach of all except the very highest art; and it is not high art
certainly which Mr. Freeny can be said to possess, but a noble nature
rather, which leads him thus grandly to describe scenes wherein he acted
a great part. With what a gallant determination does he inform the
coward Commons that he would shoot him ‘_as soon as look at him_’; and
how dreadful he must have looked (with his one eye) as he uttered that
sentiment! But he left him, he says, with a grim humour, at the back of
the house, ‘where he might run away when he thought proper.’ The Duke of
Wellington must have read Mr. Freeny’s history in his youth (his Grace’s
birthplace is not far from the scene of the other gallant Irishman’s
exploit), for the Duke acted in precisely a similar way by a Belgian
Colonel at Waterloo.
It must be painful to great and successful commanders to think how their
gallant comrades and lieutenants, partners of their toil, their
feelings, and their fame, are separated from them by time, by death, by
estrangement, nay sometimes by treason. Commons is off, disappearing
noiseless into the deep night, whilst his comrades perform the work of
danger; and Bulger,--BULGER, who in the above scene acts so gallant a
part, and in whom Mr. Freeny places so much confidence--actually went
away to England, carrying off ‘some plate, some shirts, a gold watch,
and a diamond ring’ of the Captain’s; and, though he returned to his
native country, the valuables did not return with him, on which the
Captain swore he would blow his brains out. As for poor Grace, he was
hanged, much to his leader’s sorrow, who says of him that he was ‘the
faithfullest of his spies.’ Motley was sent to Naas gaol for the very
robbery: and though Captain Freeny does not mention his ultimate fate,
‘tis probable he was hanged too. Indeed, the warrior’s life is a hard
one, and over misfortunes like these the feeling heart cannot but sigh.
But, putting out of the question the conduct and fate of the Captain’s
associates, let us look to his own behaviour as a leader. It is
impossible not to admire his serenity, his dexterity, that dashing
impetuosity in the moment of action, and that aquiline _coup d’œil_
which belongs to but few generals. He it is who leads the assault,
smashing in the window with a sledge; he bursts open the Colonel’s door,
who says (naturally enough), ‘Odds-wounds! who’s there?’ ‘A friend,
sir,’ says Freeny. ‘You lie! by G--d, you are no friend of mine!’ roars
the military blasphemer. ‘I then said that I was, _and his relation
also_, and that if he viewed me close he would know me, and begged of
him not to be angry: _upon which I immediately seized_ a brace of
pistols which I observed hanging up in his room.’ That is something like
presence of mind: none of your brutal braggadocio work, but neat,
wary--nay, sportive bearing in the face of danger. And again, on the
second visit to the Colonel’s room, when the latter bids him ‘go out for
a villain, and not breed a disturbance,’ what reply makes Freeny? ‘_At
the same time I snatched his breeches_ from under his head.’ A common
man would never have thought of looking for them in such a place at
all. The difficulty about the key he resolves in quite an Alexandrian
manner; and, from the specimen we already have had of the Colonel’s
style of speaking, we may fancy how ferociously he lay in bed and swore,
after Captain Freeny and his friends had disappeared with the ninety
guineas, the moidores, the four-pound piece, and the glove with
twenty-eight guineas in silver.
As for the plate, he hid it in a wood; and then, being out of danger, he
sate down and paid everybody his deserts. By the way, what a strange
difference of opinion is there about a man’s _deserts_! Here sits
Captain Freeny with a company of gentlemen, and awards them a handsome
sum of money for an action which other people would have remunerated
with a halter. Which are right? perhaps both: but at any rate it will be
admitted that the Captain takes the humane view of the question.
The greatest enemy Captain Freeny had was Counsellor Robbins, a son of
his old patron, and one of the most determined thief-pursuers the
country ever knew. But though he was untiring in his efforts to capture
(and of course to hang) Mr. Freeny, and though the latter was strongly
urged by his friends to blow the Counsellor’s brains out; yet, to his
immortal honour it is said he refused that temptation, agreeable as it
was, declaring that he had eaten too much of that family’s bread ever to
take the life of one of them, and being besides quite aware that the
Counsellor was only acting against him in a public capacity. He
respected him, in fact, like an honourable though terrible adversary.
How deep a stratagem-inventor the Counsellor was, may be gathered from
the following narration of one of his plans:--
‘Counsellor Robbins finding his brother had not got intelligence that
was sufficient to carry any reasonable foundation for apprehending us,
walked out as if merely for exercise, till he met with a person whom he
thought he could confide in, and desired the person to meet him at a
private place appointed for that purpose, which they did; and he told
that person he had a very good opinion of him, from the character
received from his father of him, and from his own knowledge of him, and
hoped that the person would then show him that such opinion was not ill
founded. The person assuring the Counsellor he would do all in his power
to serve and oblige him, the Counsellor told him how greatly he was
concerned to hear the scandalous character that part of the country
(which had formerly been an honest one) had lately fallen into. That it
was said that a gang of robbers who disturbed the country lived
thereabouts; the person told him he was afraid what he said was too
true; and, on being asked whom he suspected, he named the same four
persons Mr. Robbins had, but said he dare not, for fear of being
murdered, be too inquisitive, and therefore could not say anything
material; the Counsellor asked him if he knew where there was any
private ale to be sold; and he said Moll Burke, who lived near the end
of Mr. Robbins’s avenue, had a barrel or half a barrel. The Counsellor
then gave the person a moidore, and desired him to go to Thomastown and
buy two or three gallons of whisky, and bring it to Moll Burke’s, and
invite as many as he suspected to be either principals or accessories to
take a drink, and make them drink very heartily, and when he found they
were fuddled, and not sooner, to tell some of the hastiest, that some
other had said some bad things of them, so as to provoke them to abuse
and quarrel with each other; and then, probably, in their liquor and
passion, they might make some discoveries of each other, as may enable
the Counsellor to get some one of the gang to discover and accuse the
rest.
‘The person accordingly got the whisky and invited a good many to drink;
but the Counsellor being then at his brother’s, a few only went to Moll
Burke’s, the rest being afraid to venture while the Counsellor was in
the neighbourhood; among those who met, there was one Moll Brophy, the
wife of Mr. Robbins’s smith, and one Edmund or Edward Stapleton,
otherwise Gaul, who lived thereabouts; and when they had drank
plentifully, the Counsellor’s spy told Moll Brophy, Gaul had said she
had gone astray with some persons or other; she then abused Gaul, and
told him he was one of Freeny’s accomplices, for that he, Gaul, had told
her he had seen Colonel Palliser’s watch with Freeny, and that Freeny
had told him, Gaul, that John Welsh and the two Graces had been with him
at the robbery.
‘The company on their quarrel broke up, and the next morning the spy met
the Counsellor at the place appointed, at a distance from Mr. Robbins’s
house, to prevent suspicion, and there told the Counsellor what
intelligence he had got; the Counsellor not being then a justice of the
peace, got his brother to send for Moll Brophy to be examined; but when
she came, she refused to be sworn or to give any evidence, and thereupon
the Counsellor had her tied and put on a car in order to be carried to
jail on a mittimus from Mr. Robbins, for refusing to give evidence on
behalf of the Crown. When she found she would really be sent to jail,
she submitted to be sworn, and the Counsellor drew from her what she had
said the night before, and something further, and desired her not to
tell anybody what she had sworn.’
But if the Counsellor was acute, were there not others as clever as he?
For when, in consequence of the information of Mrs. Brophy, some
gentlemen who had been engaged in the burglarious enterprises in which
Mr. Freeny obtained so much honour, were seized and tried, Freeny came
forward with the best of arguments in their favour. Indeed, it is fine
to see these two great spirits matched one against the other,--the
Counsellor, with all the regular force of the country to back him--the
Highway General, with but the wild resources of his gallant genius, and
with cunning and bravery for his chief allies.
‘I lay by for a considerable time after, and concluded within myself to
do no more mischief till after the assizes, when I would hear how it
went with the men who were then in confinement. Some time before the
assizes Counsellor Robbins came to Ballyduff, and told his brother that
he believed Anderson and Welsh were guilty, and also said he would
endeavour to have them both hanged, of which I was informed.
‘Soon after, I went to the house of one George Roberts, who asked me if
I had any regard for those fellows who were then confined (meaning
Anderson and Welsh). I told him I had a regard for one of them: upon
which he said, he had a friend who was a man of power and
interest,--that he would save either of them, provided I would give him
five guineas. I told him I would give him ten, and the first gold watch
I could get; whereupon he said that it was of no use to speak to his
friend without the money or value, for that he was a mercenary man; on
which I told Roberts I had not so much money at that time, but that I
would give him my watch as a pledge to give his friend. I then gave him
my watch, and desired him to engage that I would pay the money which I
promised to pay, or give value for it in plate, in two or three nights
after; upon which he engaged that his friend would act the needful; when
we appointed a night to meet, and we accordingly met; and Roberts told
me that his friend agreed to save Anderson and Welsh from the gallows;
whereupon I gave him a plate tankard, value £10, a large ladle, value
£4, with some tablespoons; and the assizes of Kilkenny, in spring 1748,
coming on soon after, Counsellor Robbins had Welsh transmitted from Naas
to Kilkenny, in order to give evidence against Anderson and Welsh; and
they were tried for Mrs. Mounford’s robbery, on the evidence of John
Welsh and others. The physic working well, six of the jury were for
finding them guilty, and six more for acquitting them; and the other six
finding them peremptory, and that they were resolved to starve the
others into compliance, as they say they may do by law, were for their
own sakes obliged to comply with them, and they were acquitted; on which
Counsellor Robbins began to smoke the affair, and suspect the operation
of gold dust, which was well applied for my comrades, and thereupon
left the court in a rage, and swore he would for ever quit the country,
since he found people were not satisfied with protecting and saving the
rogues they had under themselves, but must also show that they could and
would oblige others to have rogues under them whether they would or no.’
Here Counsellor Robbins certainly loses that greatness which has
distinguished him in his former attack on Freeny; the Counsellor is
defeated and loses his temper. Like Napoleon, he is unequal to reverses,
but in adverse fortune his presence of mind deserts him.
But what call had he to be in a passion at all? It may be very well for
a man to be in a rage because he is disappointed of his prey: so is the
hawk, when the dove escapes, in a rage; but let us reflect that, had
Counsellor Robbins had his will, two honest fellows would have been
hanged; and so let us be heartily thankful that he was disappointed, and
that these men were acquitted by a jury of their countrymen. What right
had the Counsellor, forsooth, to interfere with their verdict? Not
against Irish juries at least does the old satire apply, ‘And culprits
hang that jurymen may dine.’ At Naas, on the contrary, the jurymen
starved in order that the culprits might be saved--a noble and humane
act of self-denial.
In another case, stern justice, and the law of self-preservation,
compelled Mr. Freeny to take a very different course with respect to one
of his ex-associates. In the former instance we have seen him pawning
his watch, giving up tankard, tablespoons--all, for his suffering
friends; here we have his method of dealing with traitors.
One of his friends, by the name of Anderson, was taken prisoner, and
condemned to be hanged, which gave Mr. Freeny, he says, ‘a great shock’;
but presently this Anderson’s fears were worked upon by some traitors
within the gaol, and--
‘He then consented to discover; but I had a friend in gaol at the same
time, one Patrick Healy, who daily insinuated to him that it was of no
use or advantage to him to discover anything, as he received sentence of
death; and that, after he had made a discovery, to leave him as he was,
without troubling themselves about a reprieve. But notwithstanding, he
told the gentleman that there was a man _blind of an eye, who had a bay
mare_, that lived at the other side of Thomastown Bridge, _whom_ he
assured them would be very troublesome in that neighbourhood after his
death. When Healy discovered what he told the gentleman, he one night
took an opportunity, and made Dooling fuddled, and prevailed upon him
to take his oath he never would give the least hint about me any more.
He also told him the penalty that attended infringing upon his oath; but
more especially as he was at that time near his end, which had the
desired effect; for he never mentioned my name, nor even anything
relative to me,’ and so went out of the world repenting of his meditated
treason.
What further exploits Mr. Freeny performed may be learned by the curious
in his history: they are all, it need scarcely be said, of a similar
nature to that noble action which has already been described. His
escapes from his enemies were marvellous; his courage in facing them
equally great. He is attacked by whole ‘armies,’ through which he makes
his way; wounded, he lies in the woods for days together with three
bullets in his leg, and in this condition manages to escape several
‘armies’ that have been marched against him. He is supposed to be dead,
or travelling on the Continent, and suddenly makes his appearance in his
old haunts, advertising his arrival by robbing ten men on the highway in
a single day: and, so terrible is his courage, or so popular his
manners, that he describes scores of labourers looking on while his
exploits were performed, and not affording the least aid to the roadside
traveller whom he vanquished.
But numbers always prevail in the end; what could Leonidas himself do
against an army? The gallant band of brothers led by Freeny were so
pursued by the indefatigable Robbins and his myrmidons, that there was
no hope left for them, and the Captain saw that he must succumb.
He reasoned, however, with himself (with his usual keen logic), and
said:--
‘My men must fall,--the world is too strong for us, and, to-day or
to-morrow,--it matters scarcely when they must yield. They will be
hanged for a certainty, and thus will disappear the noblest company of
knights the world has ever seen.
‘But as they will certainly be hanged, and no power of mine can save
them, is it necessary that I should follow them too to the tree; and
will James Bulger’s fate be a whit more agreeable to him, because James
Freeny dangles at his side? To suppose so, would be to admit that he was
actuated by a savage feeling of revenge, which I know belongs not to his
generous nature.’
In a word, Mr. Freeny resolved to turn king’s evidence; for though he
swore (in a communication with the implacable Robbins) that he would
rather die than betray Bulger, yet when the Counsellor stated that he
must then die, Freeny says, ‘I promised to submit, and _understood that
Bulger should be set_.’
Accordingly some days afterwards (although the Captain carefully avoids
mentioning that he had met his friends with any such intentions as those
indicated in the last paragraph) he and Mr. Bulger came together: and,
strangely enough, it was agreed that the one was to sleep while the
other kept watch; and, while thus employed, the enemy came upon them.
But let Freeny describe for himself the last passages of his history:--
‘We then went to Welsh’s house, with a view not to make any delay there;
but, taking a glass extraordinary after supper, Bulger fell asleep.
Welsh, in the meantime, told me his house was the safest place I could
get in that neighbourhood, and while I remained there I would be very
safe, provided that no person knew of my coming there (I had not
acquainted him that Breen knew of my coming that way). I told Welsh
that, as Bulger was asleep, I would not go to bed till morning: upon
which Welsh and I stayed up all night, and in the morning Welsh said
that he and his wife had a call to Callen, it being market-day. About
nine o’clock I went and awoke Bulger, desiring him to get up and guard
me whilst I slept, as I guarded him all night; he said he would, and
then I went to bed charging him to watch close, for fear we should be
surprised. I put my blunderbuss and two cases of pistols under my head,
and soon fell fast asleep. In two hours after, the servant-girl of the
house, seeing an enemy coming into the yard, ran up to the room where we
were, and said that there were an hundred men coming into the yard; upon
which Bulger immediately awoke me, and, taking up my blunderbuss, he
fired a shot towards the door, which wounded Mr. Burgess, one of the
sheriffs of Kilkenny, of which wound he died. They concluded to set the
house on fire about us, which they accordingly did; upon which I took my
fusee in one hand, and a pistol in the other, and Bulger did the like,
and as we came out of the door, we fired on both sides, imagining it to
be the best method of dispersing the enemy, who were on both sides of
the door. We got through them, but they fired after us, and as Bulger
was leaping over a ditch he received a shot in the small of the leg,
which rendered him incapable of running; but, getting into a field,
where I had the ditch between me and the enemy, I still walked slowly
with Bulger, till I thought the enemy were within shot of the ditch, and
then wheeled back to the ditch and presented my fusee at them; they all
drew back and went for their horses to ride round, as the field was wide
and open, and without cover except the ditch. When I discovered their
intention I stood in the middle of the field, and one of the gentlemen’s
servants (there were fourteen in number) rode foremost towards me; upon
which I told the son of a coward I believed he had no more than five
pounds a year from his master, and that I would put him in such a
condition that his master would not maintain him afterwards. To which he
answered that he had no view of doing us any harm, but that he was
commanded by his master to ride so near us; and then immediately rode
back to the enemy, who were coming towards him. They rode almost within
shot of us, and I observed they intended to surround us in the field,
and prevent me from having any recourse to the ditch again. Bulger was
at this time so bad with the wound, that he could not go one step
without leaning on my shoulder. At length, seeing the enemy coming
within shot of me, I laid down my fusee and stripped off my coat and
waistcoat, and running towards them, cried out, “You sons of cowards,
come on, and I will blow your brains out;” on which they returned back,
and then I walked easy to the place where I left my clothes, and put
them on, and Bulger and I walked leisurely some distance farther. The
enemy came a second time, and I occasioned them to draw back as before,
and then we walked to Lord Dysart’s deer-park wall. I got up the wall
and helped Bulger up. The enemy, who still pursued us, though not within
shot, seeing us on the wall, one of them fired a random shot at us to no
purpose. We got safe over the wall, and went from thence into my Lord
Dysart’s wood, where Bulger said he would remain, thinking it a safe
place; but I told him he would be safer anywhere else, for the army of
Kilkenny and Callen would be soon about the wood, and that he would be
taken if he stayed there. Besides, as I was very averse to betraying him
at all, I could not bear the thoughts of his being taken in my company
by any party but Lord Carrick’s. I then brought him about half a mile
beyond the wood, and left him there in a brake of briars, and looking
towards the wood I saw it surrounded by the army. There was a cabin near
that place where I fixed Bulger: he said he would go to it at night, and
he would send for some of his friends to take care of him. It was then
almost two o’clock, and we were four hours going to that place, which
was about two miles from Welsh’s house. Imagining that there were spies
fixed on all the fords and by-roads between that place and the mountain,
I went towards the bounds of the county Tipperary, where I arrived about
nightfall, and going to a cabin, I asked whether there was any drink
sold near that place? The man of the house said there was not; and as I
was very much fatigued, I sat down, and there refreshed myself with what
the cabin afforded. I then begged of the man to sell me a pair of his
brogues and stockings, as I was then barefooted, which he accordingly
did. I quitted the house, went through Kinsheenah and Poulacoppal, and
having so many thorns in my feet, I was obliged to go barefooted, and
went to Sleedelagh, and through the mountains, till I came within four
miles of Waterford, and going into a cabin, the man of the house took
eighteen thorns out of the soles of my feet, and I remained in and about
that place for some time after.
‘In the meantime a friend of mine was told that it was impossible for me
to escape death, for Bulger had turned against me, and that his friends
and Stack were resolved upon my life; but the person who told my friend
so, also said, that if my friend would set Bulger and Breen, I might get
a pardon through the Earl of Carrick’s means and Counsellor Robbins’s
interest. My friend said that he _was sure I would not consent to such a
thing, but the best way was to do it unknown to me_; and my friend
accordingly set Bulger, who was taken by the Earl of Carrick and his
party, and Mr. Fitzgerald, and six of Counsellor Robbins’s soldiers, and
committed to Kilkenny jail. He was three days in jail before I heard he
was taken, being at that time twenty miles distant from the
neighbourhood; nor did I hear from him or see him since I left him near
Lord Dysart’s wood, _till a friend_ came and told me it was to preserve
my life and to fulfil my articles that Bulger was taken.’
* * * * *
‘Finding I was suspected, I withdrew to a neighbouring wood and
concealed myself there till night, and then went to Ballyduff to Mr.
Fitzgerald and surrendered myself to him, till I could write to my Lord
Carrick, which I did immediately, and gave him an account of what I
escaped, or that I would have gone to Ballilynch and surrendered myself
there to him, and begged his lordship to send a guard for me to conduct
me to his house, which he did, and I remained there for a few days.
‘He then sent me to Kilkenny jail; and at the summer assizes following,
James Bulger, Patrick Hacket, otherwise Bristeen, Martin Millea, John
Stack, Felix Donnelly, Edmund Kenny, and James Larrassy were tried,
convicted, and executed; and at spring assizes following, George Roberts
was tried for receiving Colonel Palliser’s gold watch, knowing it to be
stolen, but was acquitted on account of exceptions taken to my pardon,
which prevented my giving evidence. At the following assizes, when I had
got a new pardon, Roberts was again tried for receiving the tankard,
ladle, and silver spoons from me, knowing them to be stolen, and was
convicted and executed. At the same assizes, John Reddy, my instructor,
and Martin Millea were also tried, convicted, and executed.’
And so they were all hanged: James Bulger, Patrick Hacket or Bristeen,
Martin Millea, John Stack and Felix Donnelly, and Edmund Kenny and James
Larrassy, with Roberts, who received the Colonel’s watch, the tankard,
ladle, and the silver spoons, were all convicted and all executed. Their
names drop naturally into blank verse. It is hard upon poor George
Roberts too: for the watch he received was no doubt in the very
inexpressibles which the Captain himself took from the Colonel’s head.
As for the Captain himself, he says that, on going out of jail,
Counsellor Robbins and Lord Carrick proposed a subscription for him--in
which, strangely, the gentlemen of the county would not join, and so
that scheme came to nothing; and so he published his memoirs in order to
get himself a little money. Many a man has taken up the pen under
similar circumstances of necessity.
But what became of Captain Freeny afterwards does not appear. Was he an
honest man ever after? Was he hanged for subsequent misdemeanours? It
matters little to him now; though, perhaps, one cannot help feeling a
little wish that the latter fate may have befallen him.
Whatever his death was, however, the history of his life has been one of
the most popular books ever known in this country. It formed the
class-book in those rustic universities which are now rapidly
disappearing from among the hedges of Ireland. And lest any English
reader should, on account of its lowness, quarrel with the introduction
here of this strange picture of wild courage and daring, let him be
reconciled by the moral at the end, which, in the persons of Bulger and
the rest, hangs at the beam before Kilkenny jail.
CHAPTER XVI
MORE RAIN IN GALWAY--A WALK THERE--AND THE SECOND GALWAY NIGHT’S
ENTERTAINMENT
‘Seven hills has Rome, seven mouths has Nilus’ stream,
Around the Pole seven burning planets gleam.
Twice equal these is Galway, Connaught’s Rome:
Twice seven illustrious tribes here find their home.[24]
Twice seven fair towers the city’s ramparts guard,
Each house within is built of marble hard.
With lofty turret flanked, twice seven the gates,
Through twice seven bridges water permeates.
In the High Church are twice seven altars raised,
At each a holy saint and patron’s praised.
Twice seven the convents, dedicate to Heaven,--
Seven for the female sex--for godly fathers seven.’[25]
Having read in Hardiman’s History the quaint inscription in Irish Latin,
of which the above lines are a version, and looked admiringly at the old
plans of Galway which are to be found in the same work, I was in hopes
to have seen in the town some considerable remains of its former
splendour, in spite of a warning to the contrary which the learned
historiographer gives.
The old city certainly has some relics of its former stateliness; and,
indeed, is the only town in Ireland I have seen, where an antiquary can
find much subject for study, or a lover of the picturesque an occasion
for using his pencil. It is a wild, fierce, and most original old town.
Joyce’s Castle in one of the principal streets, a huge square grey
tower, with many carvings and ornaments, is a gallant relic of its old
days of prosperity, and gives one an awful idea of the tenements which
the other families inhabited, and which are designed in the interesting
plate which Mr. Hardiman gives in his work. The Collegiate Church, too,
is still extant, without its fourteen altars, and looks to be something
between a church and a castle, and as if it should be served by Templars
with sword and helmet, in place of mitre and crosier. The old houses in
the Main Street are like fortresses; the windows look into a court
within; there is but a small low door, and a few grim windows peering
suspiciously into the street.
Then there is Lombard Street, otherwise called Deadman’s Lane, with a
raw-head and cross-bones and a ‘memento mori’ over the door where the
dreadful tragedy of the Lynches was acted in 1493. If Galway is the Rome
of Connaught, James Lynch Fitzstephen, the Mayor, may be considered as
the Lucius Junius Brutus thereof. Lynch had a son who went to Spain as
master of one of his father’s ships, and being of an extravagant wild
turn, there contracted debts, and drew bills, and alarmed his father’s
correspondent, who sent a clerk and nephew of his own back in young
Lynch’s ship to Galway, to settle accounts. On the fifteenth day, young
Lynch threw the Spaniard overboard. Coming back to his own country, he
reformed his life a little, and was on the point of marrying one of the
Blakes, Burkes, Bodkins, or others: when a seaman who had sailed with
him, being on the point of death, confessed the murder in which he had
been a participator.
Hereon the father, who was chief magistrate of the town, tried his son,
and sentenced him to death; and when the clan Lynch rose in a body to
rescue the young man, and avert such a disgrace from their family, it is
said that Fitzstephen Lynch hanged the culprit with his own hand. A
tragedy called ‘The Warden of Galway’ has been written on the subject,
and was acted a few nights before my arrival.
[Illustration]
The waters of Lough Corrib, which ‘permeate’ under the bridges of the
town, go rushing and roaring to the sea with a noise and eagerness only
known in Galway; and along the banks you see all sorts of strange
figures washing all sorts of wonderful rags, with red petticoats and
redder shanks standing in the stream. Pigs are in every street, the
whole town shrieks with them: and I saw the pair of lovers in the
frontispiece;[26] the girl with the little Galway _pet_ in her lap.
There are numbers of idlers on the bridges, thousands in the streets,
humming and swarming in and out of dark old ruinous houses; congregated
round numberless apple-stalls, nail-stalls, bottle-stalls,
pigsfoot-stalls; in queer old shops, that look to be two centuries old;
loitering about warehouses, ruined or not; looking at the washerwomen
washing in the river, or at the fish-donkeys, or at the potato-stalls,
or at a vessel coming into the quay, or at the boats putting out to sea.
That boat at the quay, by the little old gate, is bound for Arranmore;
and one next to it has a freight of passengers for the cliffs of Mohir,
on the Clare coast; and as the sketch is taken, a hundred of people have
stopped in the street to look on, and are buzzing behind in Irish,
telling the little boys in that language--who will persist in placing
themselves exactly in the front of the designer--to get out of his way;
which they do for some time; but at length curiosity is so intense that
you are entirely hemmed in, and the view rendered quite invisible. A
sailor’s wife comes up--who speaks English--with a very wistful face,
and begins to hint, that them black pictures are very bad likenesses,
and very dear too for a poor woman, and how much would a painted one
cost, does his honour think? And she has her husband that’s going to sea
to the West Indies to-morrow, and she’d give anything to have a picture
of him. So I made bold to offer to take his likeness for nothing. But he
never came, except one day at dinner, and not at all on the next day,
though I stayed on purpose to accommodate him. It is true that it was
pouring with rain; and as English waterproof cloaks are not waterproof
in _Ireland_, the traveller who has but one coat must of necessity
respect it, and had better stay where he is, unless he prefers to go to
bed while he has his clothes dried at the next stage.
The houses in the fashionable street where the club-house stands (a
strong building, with an agreeable Old Bailey look) have the appearance
of so many little Newgates. The Catholic chapels are numerous,
unfinished, and ugly. Great warehouses and mills rise up by the stream,
or in the midst of unfinished streets here and there; and handsome
convents with their gardens, justice-houses, barracks, and hospitals
adorn the large, poor, bustling, rough-and-ready-looking town. A man who
sells hunting-whips, gunpowder, guns, fishing-tackle, and brass and iron
ware, has a few books on his counter; and a lady in a by-street, who
carries on the profession of a milliner, eked out her stock in a similar
way. But there were no regular book-shops that I saw, and when it came
on to rain, I had no resource but the Hedge-School volumes again. They,
like Patrick Spelman’s sign (which was faithfully copied in the town),
present some very rude flowers of poetry and ‘entertainment’ of an
exceedingly humble sort; but such shelter is not to be despised when no
better is to be had; nay, possibly its novelty may be piquant to some
readers, as an admirer of Shakespeare will occasionally condescend to
listen to Mr. Punch, or an epicure to content himself with a homely dish
of beans and bacon.
[Illustration]
When Mr, Kilroy’s waiter has drawn the window-curtains, brought the hot
water for the whisky-negus, and a pipe and a ‘screw’ of tobacco, and two
huge old candlesticks that were plated once, the audience may be said to
be assembled, and after a little overture performed on the pipe, the
second night’s entertainment begins with the historical tragedy of the
‘Battle of Aughrim.’
Though it has found its way to the West of Ireland, the ‘Battle of
Aughrim’ is evidently by a Protestant author, a great enemy of Popery
and wooden shoes: both of which principles, incarnate in the person of
St. Ruth, the French General commanding the troops sent by Louis XIV. to
the aid of James II., meet with a woeful downfall at the conclusion of
the piece. It must have been written in the reign of Queen Anne, judging
from some loyal compliments which are paid to that sovereign in the
play, which is also modelled upon Cato.
The ‘Battle of Aughrim’ is written from beginning to end in decasyllabic
verse of the richest sort; and introduces us to the chiefs of William
and James’s army. On the English side we have Baron de Ginckle, three
Generals, and two Colonels; on the Irish, Monsieur St. Ruth, two
Generals, two Colonels, and an English gentleman of fortune, a
volunteer, and son of no less a person than Sir Edmonbury Godfrey.
There are two ladies--Jemima, the Irish Colonel Talbot’s daughter, in
love with Godfrey; and Lucinda, lady of Colonel Herbert, in love with
her lord. And the deep nature of the tragedy may be imagined when it is
stated that Colonel Talbot is killed, Colonel Herbert is killed, Sir
Charles Godfrey is killed, and Jemima commits suicide, as resolved not
to survive her adorer. St. Ruth is also killed, and the remaining Irish
heroes are taken prisoners or run away. Among the supernumeraries there
is likewise a dreadful slaughter.
The author, however, though a Protestant, is an Irishman (there are
peculiarities in his pronunciation which belong only to that nation),
and as far as courage goes, he allows the two parties to be pretty
equal. The scene opens with a martial sound of kettle-drums and trumpets
in the Irish camp, near Athlone. That town is besieged by Ginckle, and
Monsieur St. Ruth (despising his enemy with a confidence often fatal to
Generals) meditates an attack on the besiegers’ lines, if, by any
chance, the besieged garrison be not in a condition to drive them off.
After discoursing on the posture of affairs, and letting General
Sarsfield and Colonel O’Neil know his hearty contempt of the English and
their General, all parties, after protestations of patriotism, indulge
in hopes of the downfall of William. St. Ruth says he will drive the
wolves’ and lions’ cubs away. O’Neil declares he scorns the Revolution,
and, like great Cato, smiles at persecution. Sarsfield longs for the day
‘when our Monks and Jesuits shall return, and holy incense on our altars
burn.’ When
‘_Enter_ a Post.
_Post._ With important news I from Athlone am sent,
Be pleased to lead me to the General’s tent.
_Sars._ Behold the General there. Your message tell.
_St. Ruth._ Declare your message. Are our friends all well?
_Post._ Pardon me, sir, the fatal news I bring
Like vulture’s poison every heart shall sting.
Athlone is lost without your timely aid,
At six this morning an assault was made,
When, under shelter of the British cannon,
Their grenadiers in armour took the Shannon,
Led by brave Captain Sandys, who _with fame_,
_Plunged to his middle in the rapid stream_.
He led them through, and with undaunted ire
He gained the bank in spite of all our fire;
Being bravely followed by his grenadiers
Though bullets flew like hail about their ears,
And by this time they enter uncontrolled.
_St. Ruth._ Dare all the force of England be so bold
T’ attempt to storm so brave a town, when I
With all Hibernia’s sons of war am nigh?
Return: and if the Britons dare pursue,
Tell them St. Ruth is near, and _that will do_.
_Post._ Your aid would do much better than your name.
_St. Ruth._ Bear back this answer, friend, from whence you came. [_Exit_ Post.’
The picture of brave Sandys, ‘who with fame plunged to his middle in the
rapid stream,’ is not a bad image on the part of the Post; and St.
Ruth’s reply, ‘Tell them St. Ruth is near, and _that will do_,’
characteristic of the vanity of his nation. But Sarsfield knows Britons
better, and pays a merited compliment to their valour:
‘_Sars._ Send speedy succours and their fate prevent,
You know not yet what Britons dare attempt.
I know the English fortitude is such,
To boast of nothing, though they hazard much.
No force on earth their fury can repel,
Nor would they fly from all the devils in hell.’
Another officer arrives--Athlone is really taken, St. Ruth gives orders
to retreat to Aughrim, and Sarsfield, in a rage, first challenges him,
and then vows he will quit the army. ‘A _gleam_ of horror does my vitals
_damp_,’ says the Frenchman (in a figure of speech more remarkable for
vigour than logic); ‘I fear Lord Lucan has forsook the camp!’ But not
so: after a momentary indignation, Sarsfield returns to his duty, and
ere long is reconciled with his vain and vacillating chief.
And now the love intrigue begins. Godfrey enters--and states Sir Charles
Godfrey is his lawful name: he is an Englishman, and was on his way to
join Ginckle’s camp, when Jemima’s beauty overcame him: he asks Colonel
Talbot to bestow on him the lady’s hand. The Colonel consents, and in
Act II., on the plain of Aughrim, at five o’clock in the morning, Jemima
enters and proclaims her love. The lovers have an interview, which
concludes by a mutual confession of attachment, and Jemima says, ‘Here,
take my hand. ‘Tis true the gift is small, but when I can, I’ll give you
heart and all.’ The lines show finely the agitation of the young person.
She meant to say, Take _my heart_, but she is longing to be married to
him, and the words slip out as it were unawares. Godfrey cries in
raptures--
‘Thanks to the gods! who such a present gave:
Such radiant graces ne’er could man _receive_ (_resave_);
For who on earth has e’er such transports known?
What is the Turkish monarch on his throne,
Hemmed round _with rusty swords_ in pompous state?
Amidst his court no joys can be so great.
Retire with me, my soul, no longer stay!
In public view, the General moves this way.’
‘Tis, indeed, the General; who, reconciled with Sarsfield, straightway,
according to his custom, begins to boast about what he will do:--
‘Thrice welcome to my heart, thou best of friends!
The rock on which our holy faith depends!
May this our meeting as a tempest make
The vast foundations of Britannia shake,
Tear up their orange plant, and overwhelm
The strongest bulwarks of the British realm!
Then shall the Dutch and Hanoverian fall,
And James shall ride in triumph to Whitehall;
Then to protect our faith he will maintain
An inquisition here like that in Spain.
_Sars._ Most bravely urged, my Lord! your skill, I own,
Would be _unparalleled_--had you saved Athlone.’
--‘Had you saved Athlone!’ Sarsfield has him there. And the contest of
words might have provoked quarrels still more fatal, but alarms are
heard: the battle begins, and St. Ruth (still confident) goes to meet
the enemy, exclaiming, ‘Athlone was sweet, but Aughrim shall be sour.’
The fury of the Irish is redoubled on hearing of Talbot’s heroic death.
The Colonel’s corpse is presently brought in, and to it enters Jemima,
who bewails her loss in the following pathetic terms:--
‘_Jemima._ Oh!--he is dead!--my soul is all on fire,
Witness ye gods!--he did with fame expire;
For Liberty a sacrifice was made,
And fell, like Pompey, by some _villain’s_ blade.
There lies a breathless corse, whose soul ne’er knew
A thought but what was always just and true;
Look down from heaven, God of peace and love,
Waft him with triumph to the throne above;
And oh! ye winged guardians of the skies!
Tune your sweet harps, and sing his obsequies!
Good friends, stand off----whilst I embrace the ground
Whereon he lies--------and bathe each mortal wound
With brinish tears, that like to torrents run
From these sad eyes. Oh heavens! I’m undone [_Falls down on the body._
_Enter_ SIR CHARLES GODFREY. _He raises her._
_Sir Char._ Why do these precious eyes like fountains flow,
_To drown the radiant heaven that lies below_?
Dry up your tears, I trust his soul ere this
Has reached the mansions of eternal bliss.
Soldiers! bear hence the body out of sight. [_They bear him off._
_Jem._ Oh, stay--ye murderers, cease to kill me quite:
See how he glares!----and see again he flies!
The clouds fly open, and he mounts the skies.
Oh! see his blood, it shines refulgent bright,}
I see him yet--I cannot lose him quite,}
But still pursue him on--and--_lose my sight_.’}
The gradual disappearance of the Colonel’s soul is now finely indicated,
and so is her grief, when showing the body to Sir Charles, she says,
‘Behold the mangled cause of all my woes.’ The sorrow of youth, however,
is but transitory; and when her lover bids her dry her _gushish_ tears,
she takes out her pocket-handkerchief with the elasticity of youth, and
consoles herself for the father in the husband.
Act III. represents the English camp: Ginckle and his Generals
discourse; the armies are engaged. In Act IV. the English are worsted in
spite of their valour, which Sarsfield greatly describes. ‘View,’ says
he--
‘View how the foe like an impetuous flood
Breaks through the smoke, the water, and--the mud!’
It becomes exceedingly hot. Colonel Earles says--
‘In vain Jove’s lightnings issues from the sky,
For death more sure from British _ensigns_ fly.
Their messengers of death much blood have spilled,
And full three hundred of the Irish killed.’
A description of war (Herbert):--
‘Now bloody colours wave in their pride,
_And each proud hero does his beast bestride_.’
General Dorrington’s description of the fight is, if possible, still
more noble:--
‘_Dor._ Haste, noble friends, and save your lives by flight,
For ‘tis but madness if you stand to fight.
Our cavalry the battle have forsook,
And death appears in each dejected look;
Nothing but dread confusion can be seen,
For severed heads and trunks o’erspread the green;
The fields, the vales, the hills, and vanquished plain,
For five miles round are covered with the slain.
Death in each quarter does the eye alarm,
Here lies a leg, and there a shattered arm.
There heads appear, which, cloven by mighty bangs,
And severed quite, on either shoulder hangs:
This is the awful scene, my Lords! Oh, fly
The impending danger, for your fate is nigh!’
Which party, however, is to win--the Irish or English? Their heroism is
equal, and young Godfrey especially, on the Irish side, is carrying all
before him--when he is interrupted in the slaughter by _the ghost of his
father_: of old Sir Edmonbury, whose monument we may see in Westminster
Abbey. Sir Charles, at first, doubts about the genuineness of this
venerable old apparition; and thus puts a case to the ghost:--
‘Were ghosts in heaven, in heaven they there would stay,
Or if in hell, _they could not get away_.’
A clincher, certainly, as one would imagine; but the ghost jumps over
the horns of the fancied dilemma, by saying that he is not at liberty to
state where he comes from.
‘_Ghost._ Where visions rest, or souls imprisoned dwell,
By Heaven’s command, we are forbid to tell;
But in the obscure grave--where corpse decay,
Moulder in dust and putrify away,--
No rest is there; for the immortal soul
Takes its full flight and flutters round the pole;
Sometimes I hover over the Euxine sea--
From pole to sphere, until the judgment day--
Over the Thracian Bosphorus do I float,
And pass the Stygian lake in Charon’s boat,
O’er Vulcan’s fiery court and sulph’rous cave,
And ride like Neptune on a briny wave;
List to the blowing noise of Etna’s flames,
And court the shades of Amazonian dames;
Then take my flight up to the gloomy moon:
Thus do I wander till the day of doom.
Proceed I dare not, or I would unfold
A horrid tale would make your blood run cold,
Chill all your nerves and sinews in a thrice,
Like whispering rivulets congealed to ice.
_Sir Char._ Ere you depart me, ghost, I here demand
You’d let me know your last divine command!’
The ghost says that the young man must die in the battle; that it will
go ill for him if he die in the wrong cause; and, therefore, that he had
best go over to the Protestants--which poor Sir Charles (not without
many sighs for Jemima) consents to do. He goes off then, saying--
‘I’ll join my countrymen, and yet proclaim
Nassau’s great title to the _crimson plain_.’
In Act V., that desertion turns the fate of the day. Sarsfield enters
with his sword drawn, and acknowledges his fate. ‘Aughrim,’ exclaims
Lord Lucan,
‘Aughrim is now no more, St. Ruth is dead,
And all his guards are from the battle fled.
As he rode down the hill he met his fall,
_And died a victim to a cannon ball_.’
And he bids the Frenchman’s body to
‘----lie like Pompey in his gore,
Whose hero’s blood encircles the Egyptian shore.’
‘Four hundred Irish prisoners we have got,’ exclaims an English General,
‘and seven thousand lyeth on the spot.’ In fact, they are entirely
discomfited, and retreat off the stage altogether; while, in the moment
of victory, poor Sir Charles Godfrey enters, wounded to death, according
to the old gentleman’s prophecy. He is racked by bitter remorse; he
tells his love of his treachery, and declares ‘no crocodile was ever
more unjust.’ His agony increases, the ‘optic nerves grow dim and lose
their sight, and all his veins are now exhausted quite;’ and he dies in
the arms of his Jemima, who stabs herself in the usual way.
And so every one being disposed of, the drums and trumpets give a great
peal, the audience huzzas, and the curtain falls on Ginckle and his
friends exclaiming--
‘May all the gods th’ auspicious evening bless,
Who crowns Great Britain’s _arrums_ with success!’
And questioning the prosody, what Englishman will not join in the
sentiment?
In the interlude the band (the pipe) performs a favourite air. Jack the
waiter and candle-snuffer looks to see that all is ready: and after the
dire business of the tragedy, comes in to sprinkle the stage with water
(and perhaps a little whisky in it). Thus all things being arranged, the
audience takes its seat again, and the afterpiece begins.
* * * * *
Two of the little yellow volumes purchased at Ennis are entitled _The
Irish and the Hibernian Tales_. The former are modern, and the latter of
an ancient sort; and so great is the superiority of the old stories over
the new, in fancy, dramatic interest, and humour, that one can’t help
fancying Hibernia must have been a very superior country to Ireland.
These Hibernian novels, too, are evidently intended for the Hedge-School
universities. They have the old tricks and some of the old plots that
one has read in many popular legends of almost all countries, European
and Eastern: successful cunning is the great virtue applauded; and the
heroes pass through a thousand wild extravagant dangers, such as could
only have been invented when art was young and faith was large. And as
the honest old author of the tales says, ‘they are suited to the meanest
as well as the highest capacity, tending both to improve the fancy and
enrich the mind,’ let us conclude the night’s entertainment by reading
one or two of them, and reposing after the doleful tragedy which has
been represented. The ‘Black Thief’ is worthy of the _Arabian Nights_, I
think,--as wild and odd as an Eastern tale.
It begins, as usual, with a king and a queen who lived once on a time in
the south of Ireland, and had three sons: but the queen being on her
death-bed, and fancying her husband might marry again, and unwilling
that her children should be under the jurisdiction of any other woman,
besought his majesty to place them in a tower at her death, and keep
them there safe until the young princes should come of age.
The queen dies: the king of course marries again, and the new queen, who
bears a son too, hates the offspring of the former marriage, and looks
about for means to destroy them.
‘At length the queen, _having got some business with the hen-wife_, went
herself to her, and after a long conference passed, was taking leave of
her, when the hen-wife prayed that if ever she should come back to her
again she might break her neck. The queen, greatly incensed at such a
daring insult from one of her meanest subjects, to make such a prayer on
her, demanded immediately the reason, or she would have her put to
death. “It was worth your while, madam,” says the hen-wife, “to pay me
well for it, for the reason I prayed so on you concerns you much.” “What
must I pay you?” asked the queen. “You must give me,” says she, “the
full of a pack of wool: and I have an ancient crock which you must fill
with butter; likewise a barrel which you must fill for me full of
wheat.” “How much wool will it take to the pack?” says the queen. “It
will take seven herds of sheep,” said she, “and their increase for seven
years.” “How much butter will it take to fill your crock?” “Seven
dairies,” said she, “and the increase for seven years.” “And how much
will it take to fill the barrel you have?” says the queen. “It will take
the increase of seven barrels of wheat for seven years.” “That is a
great quantity,” says the queen, “but the reason must be extraordinary,
and before I want it, I will give you all you demand.”’
The hen-wife acquaints the queen with the existence of the three sons,
and giving her majesty an enchanted pack of cards, bids her to get the
young men to play with her with these cards, and on their losing, to
inflict upon them such a task as must infallibly end in their ruin. All
young princes are set upon such tasks, and it is a sort of opening of
the pantomime, before the tricks and activity begin. The queen went
home, and ‘got speaking’ to the king ‘in regard of his children, and
_she broke it off_ to him in a very polite and engaging manner, so that
he could see no muster or design in it.’ The king agreed to bring his
sons to court, and at night, when the royal party ‘began to sport, and
play at all kinds of diversions,’ the queen cunningly challenged the
three princes to play cards. They lose, and she sends them in
consequence to bring her back the Knight of the Glen’s wild steed of
bells.
On their road (as wandering young princes, Indian or Irish, always do)
they meet with the Black Thief of Sloan, who tells them what they must
do. But they are caught in the attempt, and brought ‘into that dismal
part of the palace where the Knight kept a furnace always boiling, in
which he threw all offenders that ever came in his way, which in a few
minutes would entirely consume them. “Audacious villains!” says the
Knight of the Glen, “how dare you attempt so bold an action as to steal
my steed? See now the reward of your folly: for your greater punishment,
I will not boil you all together, but one after the other, so that he
that survives may witness the dire afflictions of his unfortunate
companions.” So saying, he ordered his servants to stir up the fire. “We
will boil the eldest-looking of these young men first,” says he, “and so
on to the last, which will be this _old champion_ with the black cap. He
seems to be the captain, and looks as if he had come through many
toils.”--I was as near death once as this prince is yet,” says the
Black Thief, “and escaped: and so will he too.” “No, you never were,”
said the Knight, “for he is within two or three minutes of his latter
end.” “But,” says the Black Thief, “I was within one moment of my death,
and I am here yet.” “How was that?” says the Knight. “I would be glad to
hear it, for it seems to be impossible.” “If you think, Sir Knight,”
says the Black Thief, “that the danger I was in surpassed that of this
young man, will you pardon him his crime?” “I will,” says the Knight,
“so go on with your story.”
‘“I was, sir,” says he, “a very wild boy in my youth, and came through
many distresses; once in particular, as I was on my rambling, I was
benighted, and could find no lodging. At length I came to an old kiln,
and being much fatigued, I went up and lay on the ribs. I had not been
long there, when I saw three witches coming in with three bags of gold.
Each put their bags of gold under their heads, as if to sleep. I heard
the one say to the other, that if the Black Thief came on them while
they slept, he would not leave them a penny. I found by their discourse
that everybody had got my name into their mouth, though I kept silent as
death during their discourse. At length they fell fast asleep, and then
I stole softly down, and seeing some turf _convenient_, I placed one
under each of their heads, and off I went with their gold, as fast as I
could.
‘“I had not gone far,” continued the Thief of Sloan, “until I saw a
greyhound, a hare, and a hawk in pursuit of me, and began to think it
must be the witches that had taken that metamorphose, in order that I
might not escape them unseen either by land or water. Seeing they did
not appear in any formidable shape, I was more than once resolved to
attack them, thinking that with my broadsword I could easily destroy
them. But considering again that it was perhaps still in their power to
become so, I gave over the attempt, and climbed with difficulty up a
tree, bringing my sword in my hand, and all the gold along with me.
However, when they came to the tree they found what I had done, and,
making further use of their hellish art, one of them was changed into a
smith’s anvil, and another into a piece of iron, of which the third one
soon made a hatchet. Having the hatchet made, she fell to cutting down
the tree, and in course of an hour it began to shake with me.”’
This is very good and original. The ‘boiling’ is in the first
fee-faw-fum style, and the old allusion to ‘the old champion in the
black cap’ has the real Ogresque humour. Nor is that simple contrivance
of the honest witches without its charm; for if, instead of wasting
their time, the one in turning herself into an anvil, the other into a
piece of iron, and so hammering out a hatchet at considerable labour and
expense--if either of them had turned herself into a hatchet at once,
they might have chopped down the Black Thief before cock-crow, when they
were obliged to fly off, and leave him in possession of the bags of
gold.
The eldest prince is ransomed by the Knight of the Glen, in consequence
of this story; and the second prince escapes on account of the merit of
a second story; but the great story of all is of course reserved for the
youngest prince.
‘I was one day on my travels,’ says the Black Thief, ‘and I came into a
large forest, where I wandered a long time, and could not get out of it.
At length I came to a large castle, and fatigue obliged me to call in
the same, where I found a young woman, and a child sitting on her knee,
and she crying. I asked her what made her cry, and where the lord of the
castle was, for I wondered greatly that I saw no stir of servants, or
any person about the place. “It is well for you,” says the young woman,
“that the lord of this castle is not at home at present; for he is a
monstrous giant, with but one eye on his forehead, who lives on human
flesh. He brought me this child,” says she--I do not know where he got
it--and ordered me to make it into a pie, and I cannot help crying at
the command.” I told her that if she knew of any place convenient, that
I could leave the child safely, I would do it, rather than that it
should be buried in the bowels of such a monster. She told of a house a
distance off, where I would get a woman who would take care of it. “But
what will I do in regard of the pie?” “Cut a finger off it,” said I,
“and I will bring you in a young wild pig out of the forest, which you
may dress as if it was the child, and put the finger in a certain place,
that if the giant doubts anything about it, you may know where to turn
it over at first, and when he sees it he will be fully satisfied that
it is made of the child.” She agreed to the plan I proposed; and,
cutting off the child’s finger, by her direction, I soon had it at the
house she told me of, and brought her the little pig in the place of it.
She then made ready the pie; and, after eating and drinking heartily
myself, I was just taking my leave of the young woman when we observed
the giant coming through the castle gates. “Lord bless me!” said she,
“what will you do now? Run away and lie down among the dead bodies that
he has in the room” (showing me the place); “and strip off your clothes
that he may not know you from the rest if he has occasion to go that
way.” I took her advice, and laid myself down among the rest, as if
dead, to see how he would behave. The first thing I heard was him
calling for his pie. When she set it down before him, he swore it smelt
like swine’s flesh; but, knowing where to find the finger, she
immediately turned it up, which fairly convinced him of the contrary.
The pie only served to sharpen his appetite, and I heard him sharpen his
knife, and saying he must have a collop or two, for he was not near
satisfied. But what was my terror when I heard the giant groping among
the bodies, and, fancying myself, cut the half of my hip off, and took
it with him to be roasted. You may be certain I was in great pain; but
the fear of being killed prevented me from making any complaint.
However, when he had eat all, he began to drink hot liquors in great
abundance, so that in a short time he could not hold up his head, but
threw himself on a large creel he had made for the purpose, and fell
fast asleep. _Whenever_ I heard him snoring, bad as I was, I went up and
caused the woman to bind my wound with an handkerchief; and taking the
giant’s spit, I reddened it in the fire, and ran it through the eye, but
was not able to kill him. However, I left the spit sticking in his head,
and took to my heels; but I soon found he was in pursuit of me, although
blind; and, having an enchanted ring, he threw it at me, and it fell on
my big toe and remained fastened to it. The giant then called to the
ring, where it was, and to my great surprise it made him answer on my
foot; and he, guided by the same, made a leap at me, which I had the
good luck to observe, and fortunately escaped the danger. However, I
found running was of no use in saving me as long as I had the ring on my
foot; so I took my sword and cut off the toe it was fastened on, and
threw both into a large fish-pond that was convenient. The giant called
again to the ring, which, by the power of enchantment, always made
answer; but he, not knowing what I had done, imagined it was still on
some part of me, and made a violent leap to seize me, when he went into
the pond, over head and ears, and was drowned. “Now, Sir Knight,” says
the Thief of Sloan, “you see what dangers I came through and always
escaped; but, indeed, I am lame for want of my toe ever since.”’
And now remains but one question to be answered, viz. How is the Black
Thief himself to come off? This difficulty is solved in a very dramatic
way, and with a sudden turn in the narrative that is very wild and
curious.
‘My lord and master,’ says an old woman that was listening all the time,
‘that story is but too true, as I well know, _for I am the very woman
that was in the giant’s castle, and you, my lord, the child that I was
to make into a pie_, and this is the very man that saved your life,
which you may know by the want of your finger that was taken off, as you
have heard, to deceive the giant.’
That fantastical way of bearing testimony to the previous tale, by
producing an old woman who says the tale is not only true, but she was
the very old woman who lived in the giant’s castle, is almost a stroke
of genius. It is fine to think that the simple chronicler found it
necessary to have a proof for his story, and he was no doubt perfectly
contented with the proof found.
‘The Knight of the Glen, greatly surprised at what he had heard the old
woman tell, and knowing he wanted his finger from his childhood, began
to understand that the story was true enough. “And is this my dear
deliverer?” says he. “O brave fellow, I not only pardon you all, but I
will keep you with myself while you live; where you shall feast like
princes, and have every attendance that I have myself.” They all
returned thanks on their knees, and the Black Thief told him the reason
they attempted to steal the steed of Bells, and the necessity they were
under in going home. “Well,” says the Knight of the Glen, “if that’s the
case, I bestow you my steed rather than this brave fellow should die; so
you may go when you please; only remember to call and see me betimes,
that we may know each other well.” They promised they would, and with
great joy they set off for the King their father’s palace, and the Black
Thief along with them. The wicked Queen was standing all this time on
the tower, and, hearing the bells ringing at a great distance off, knew
very well it was the Princes coming home, and the steed with them, and
through spite and vexation precipitated herself from the tower, and was
shattered to pieces. The three Princes lived happy and well during their
father’s reign, always keeping the Black Thief along with them; but how
they did after the old King’s death is not known.’
Then we come upon a story that exists in many a European language, of
the man cheating Death; then to the history of the Apprentice Thief,
who of course cheated his masters; which, too, is an old tale, and may
have been told very likely among those Phœnicians who were the
fathers of the Hibernians for whom these tales were devised. A very
curious tale is there, concerning Manus O’Malaghan and the fairies:--‘In
the parish of Ahoghill lived Manus O’Malaghan. _As he was searching for
a calf that had strayed_, he heard many people talking. Drawing near, he
distinctly heard them repeating, one after the other, “Get me a horse,
get me a horse”; and “Get me a horse too,” says Manus. Manus was
instantly mounted on a steed surrounded with a vast crowd, who galloped
off, taking poor Manus with them. In a short time they suddenly stopped
in a large wide street, asking Manus if he knew where he was? “Faith,”
says he, “I do not.” “You are _in Spain_,” said they.’
Here we have again the wild mixture of the positive and the fanciful.
The chronicler is careful to tell us why Manus went out searching for a
calf, and this positiveness prodigiously increases the reader’s wonder
at the subsequent events. And the question and answer of the mysterious
horsemen is fine: ‘Don’t you know where you are? _In Spain._’ A vague
solution, such as one has of occurrences in dreams sometimes.
The history of Robin the Blacksmith is full of these strange flights of
poetry. He is followed about ‘by a little boy in a green jacket,’ who
performs the most wondrous feats of the blacksmith’s art, as follows:--
‘Robin was asked to do something, who wisely shifted it, saying he would
be very sorry not to give the honour of the first trick to his
lordship’s smith; at which he was called forth to the bellows. When the
fire was well kindled, to the great surprise of all present he blew a
great shower of wheat out of the fire, which fell through all the shop.
They then demanded of Robin to try what he could do. “Pho!” said Robin,
as if he thought nothing of what was done. “Come,” said he to the boy,
“I think I showed you something like that.” The boy goes then to the
bellows and blew out a great flock of pigeons, who soon devoured all the
grain, and then disappeared.
‘The Dublin smith, sorely vexed that such a boy as him should outdo him,
goes a second time to the bellows, and blew a fine trout out of the
hearth, who jumped into a little river that was running by the shop
door, and was seen no more at that time.
‘Robin then said to the boy, “Come, you must bring us yon trout back
again, to let the gentlemen see we can do something.” Away the boy goes,
and blew a large otter out of the hearth, who immediately leaped into
the river, and in a short time returned with it in his mouth, and then
disappeared. All present allowed that it was a folly to attempt a
competition any further.’
The boy in the green jacket was one ‘of a kind of small beings called
Fairies’; and not a little does it add to the charm of these wild tales
to feel, as one reads them, that the writer must have believed in his
heart a great deal of what he told. You see the tremor, as it were, and
a wild look of the eyes, as the story-teller sits in his nook, and
recites, and peers wistfully round, lest the beings he talks of be
really at hand.
Let us give a couple of the little tales entire. They are not so
fanciful as those before mentioned, but of the comic sort, and suited to
the first kind of capacity mentioned by the author in his preface.
Donald and his Neighbors
‘Hudden and Dudden, and Donald O’Neary, were near neighbours in the
barony of Ballinconlig, and ploughed with three bullocks; but the two
former, envying the present prosperity of the latter, determined to kill
his bullock, to prevent his farm being properly cultivated and laboured,
that, going back in the world, he might be induced to sell his lands,
which they meant to get possession of. Poor Donald, finding his bullock
killed, immediately skinned it, and throwing his skin over his shoulder,
with the fleshy side out, set off to the next town with it, to dispose
of it to the best advantage. Going along the road a magpie flew on the
top of the hide, and began picking it, chattering all the time. This
bird had been taught to speak and imitate the human voice, and Donald,
thinking he understood some words it was saying, put round his hand and
caught hold of it. Having got possession of it, he put it under his
greatcoat, and so went on to the town. Having sold the hide, he went
into an inn to take a dram; and, following the landlady into the cellar,
he gave the bird a squeeze, which caused it to chatter some broken
accents that surprised her very much. “What is that I hear?” said she to
Donald: “I think it is talk, and yet I do not understand.” “Indeed,”
said Donald, “it is a bird I have that tells me everything, and I always
carry it with me to know when there is any danger. Faith,” says he, “it
says you have far better liquor than you are giving me.” “That is
strange,” said she, going to another cask of better quality, and asking
him if he would sell the bird. “I will,” said Donald, “if I get enough
for it.” “I will fill your hat with silver if you leave it with me.”
Donald was glad to hear the news, and, taking the silver, set off,
rejoicing at his good luck. He had not been long home when he met with
Hudden and Dudden. “Ha!” said he, “you thought you did me a bad turn,
but you could not have done me a better; for, look here, what I have got
for the hide,” showing them the hatful of silver. “You never saw such a
demand for hides in your life as there is at present.” Hudden and Dudden
that very night killed their bullocks, and set out the next morning to
sell their hides. On coming to the place they went through all the
merchants, but could only get a trifle for them. At last they had to
take what they could get, and came home in a great rage, and vowing
revenge on poor Donald. He had a pretty good guess how matters would
turn out; and his bed being under the kitchen window, he was afraid they
would rob him, or perhaps kill him when asleep; and on that account,
when he was going to bed, he left his old mother in his bed, and lay
down in her place, which was in the other side of the house; and, taking
the old woman for Donald, choked her in the bed; but he making some
noise, they had to retreat, and leave the money behind them, which
grieved them very much. However, by daybreak, Donald got his mother on
his back, and carried her to town. Stopping at a well, he fixed his
mother, with her staff, as if she was stooping for a drink, and then
went into a public-house convenient, and called for a dram. “I wish,”
said he to a woman that stood near him, “you would tell my mother to
come in; she is at yon well trying to get a drink, and she is hard in
hearing; if she does not observe you, give her a little shake, and tell
her that I want her.” The woman called her several times, but she seemed
to take no notice: at length she went to her and shook her by the arm;
but when she let her go again, she tumbled on her head into the well,
and, as the woman thought, was drowned. She, in great fear and surprise
at the accident, told Donald what had happened. “O, mercy,” said he,
“what is this?” He ran and pulled her out of the well, weeping and
lamenting all the time, and acting in such a manner that you would
imagine that he had lost his senses. The woman, on the other hand, was
far worse than Donald; for his grief was only feigned, but she imagined
herself to be the cause of the old woman’s death. The inhabitants of the
town, hearing what had happened, agreed to make Donald up a good sum of
money for his loss, as the accident happened in their place; and Donald
brought a greater sum home with him than he got for the magpie. They
buried Donald’s mother; and as soon as he saw Hudden and Dudden, he
showed them the last purse of money he had got. “You thought to kill me
last night,” said he, “but it was good for me it happened on my mother,
for I got all that purse for her, to make gunpowder.”
‘That very night Hudden and Dudden killed their mothers, and the next
morning set off with them to town. On coming to the town with their
burthen on their backs, they went up and down crying, “Who will buy old
wives for gunpowder?” so that every one laughed at them, and the boys at
last clodded them out of the place. They then saw the cheat, and, vowing
revenge on Donald, buried the old women, and set off in pursuit of him.
Coming to his house, they found him sitting at his breakfast, and
seizing him, put him in a sack, and went to drown him in a river at some
distance. As they were going along the highway, they raised a hare,
which they saw had but three feet, and, throwing off the sack, ran after
her, thinking by appearance she would be easily taken. In their absence
there came a drover that way, and hearing Donald singing in the sack,
wondered greatly what could be the matter. “What is the reason,” said
he, “that you are singing, and you confined?” “Oh, I am going to
heaven,” said Donald; “and in a short time I expect to be free from
trouble.” “Oh dear,” said the drover, “what will I give you if you let
me to your place?” “Indeed I do not know,” said he; “it would take a
good sum.” “I have not much money,” said the drover, “but I have twenty
head of fine cattle, which I will give you to exchange places with me.”
“Well, well,” says Donald, “I don’t care if I should; loose the sack and
I will come out.” In a moment the drover liberated him, and went into
the sack himself; and Donald drove home the fine heifers and left them
in his pasture.
‘Hudden and Dudden having caught the hare, returned, and getting the
sack on one of their backs, carried Donald, as they thought, to the
river, and threw him in, where he immediately sunk. They then marched
home, intending to take immediate possession of Donald’s property; but
how great was their surprise, when they found him safe at home before
them, with such a fine herd of cattle, whereas they knew he had none
before. “Donald,” said they, “what is all this? We thought you were
drowned, and yet you are here before us?” “Ah!” said he, “if I had but
help along with me when you threw me in, it would have been the best job
ever I met with, for of all the sight of cattle and gold that ever was
seen, is there, and no one to own them; but I was not able to manage
more than what you see, and I could show you the spot where you might
get hundreds.” They both swore they would be his friend, and Donald
accordingly led them to a very deep part of the river, and lifting up a
stone, “Now,” said he, “watch this,” throwing it into the stream. “There
is the very place, and go in one of you first, and if you want help, you
have nothing to do but call.” Hudden jumping in, and sinking to the
bottom, rose up again, and making a bubbling noise as those do that are
drowning, attempting to speak, but could not. “What is that he is saying
now?” says Dudden. “Faith,” says Donald, “he is calling for help--don’t
you hear him? Stand about,” said he, running back, “till I leap in; I
know how to do better than any of you.” Dudden, to have the advantage of
him, jumped in off the bank, and was drowned along with Hudden. And this
was the end of Hudden and Dudden.’
The Spaeman
‘A poor man in the North of Ireland was under the necessity of selling
his cow, to help to support his family. Having sold his cow, he went
into an inn, and called for some liquor. Having drank pretty heartily,
he fell asleep, and when he awoke he found he had been robbed of his
money. Poor Roger was at a loss to know how to act; and, as is often the
case, when the landlord found that his money was gone, he turned him out
of doors. The night was extremely dark, and the poor man was compelled
to take up his lodgings in an old uninhabited house at the end of the
town.
‘Roger had not remained long here until he was surprised by the noise of
three men, whom he observed making a hole, and, depositing something
therein, closed it carefully up again, and then went away. The next
morning, as Roger was walking towards the town, he heard that a cloth
shop had been robbed to a great amount, and that a reward of thirty
pounds was offered to any person who could discover the thieves. This
was joyful news to Roger, who recollected what he had been witness to
the night before. He accordingly went to the shop, and told the
gentleman that for the reward he would recover the goods, and secure the
robbers, provided he got six stout men to attend him. All which was
thankfully granted him.
‘At night Roger and his men concealed themselves in the old house, and
in a short time after the robbers came to the spot for the purpose of
removing their booty; but they were instantly seized and carried into
the town, prisoners, with the goods. Roger received the reward and
returned home, well satisfied with his good luck. Not many days after,
it was noised over the country that this robbery was discovered by the
help of one of the best Spaemen to be found, insomuch that it reached
the ears of a worthy gentleman of the county of Derry, who made strict
inquiry to find him out. Having at length discovered his abode, he sent
for Roger, and told him he was every day losing some valuable article,
and, as he was famed for discovering lost things, if he could find out
the same he should be handsomely rewarded. Poor Roger was put to a
stand, not knowing what answer to make, as he had not the smallest
knowledge of the like. But recovering himself a little, he resolved to
humour the joke; and, thinking he would make a good dinner and some
drink of it, told the gentleman he would try what he could do, but that
he must have a room to himself for three hours, during which time he
must have three bottles of strong ale and his dinner. All which the
gentleman told him he should have. No sooner was it made known that the
Spaeman was in the house than the servants were all in confusion,
wishing to know what would be said.
‘As soon as Roger had taken his dinner, he was shown into an elegant
room, where the gentleman sent him a quart of ale by the butler. No
sooner had he set down the ale than Roger said, “There comes one of
them”; intimating the bargain he had made with the gentleman for the
three quarts, which the butler took in a wrong light, and imagined it
was himself. He went away in great confusion, and told his wife. “Poor
fool,” said she, “the fear makes you think it is you he means; but I
will attend in your place, and hear what he will say to me.” Accordingly
she carried the second quart; but no sooner had she opened the door than
Roger cried, “There comes two of them.” The woman, no less surprised
than her husband, told him the Spaeman knew her too. “And what will we
do?” said he; “we will be hanged.” “I will tell you what we must do,”
said she: “we must send the groom the next time, and if he is known, we
must offer him a good sum not to discover on us.” The butler went to
William and told him the whole story, and that he must go next to see
what he would say to him, telling him at the same time what to do, in
case he was known also. When the hour was expired, William was sent with
the third quart of ale, which, when Roger observed, he cried out, “There
is the third and last of them”; at which he changed colour, and told him
“that if he would not discover on them, they would show him where they
were all concealed, and give him five pounds besides.” Roger, not a
little surprised at the discovery he had made, told him “if he recovered
the goods, he would follow them no further.”
‘By this time the gentleman called Roger to know how he had succeeded.
He told him “he could find the goods, but that the thief was gone.” “I
will be well satisfied,” said he, “with the goods, for some of them are
very valuable.” “Let the butler come along with me, and the whole shall
be recovered.” He accordingly conducted Roger to the back of the
stables, where the articles were concealed--such as silver cups, spoons,
bowls, knives, forks, and a variety of other articles of great value.
‘When the supposed Spaeman brought back the stolen goods, the gentleman
was so highly pleased with Roger, that he insisted on his remaining with
him always, as he supposed he would be perfectly safe as long as he was
about his house. Roger gladly embraced the offer, and in a few days took
possession of a piece of land, which the gentleman had given to him in
consideration of his great abilities.
‘Some time after this, the gentleman was relating to a large company the
discovery Roger had made, and that he could tell anything. One of the
gentlemen said he would dress a dish of meat, and bet for fifty pounds
that he could not tell what was in it, and he would allow him to taste
it. The bet being taken and the dish dressed, the gentleman sent for
Roger, and told the bet that was depending on him. Poor Roger did not
know what to do; at last he consented to the trial. The dish being
produced, he tasted it, but could not tell what it was. At last, seeing
he was fairly beat, he said, “Gentlemen, it is folly to talk: the fox
may run awhile, but he is caught at last”--allowing with himself that he
was found out. The gentleman that had made the bet then confessed that
it was a fox he had dressed in the dish; at which they all shouted out
in favour of the Spaeman--particularly his master, who had more
confidence in him than ever.
‘Roger then went home, and so famous did he become, that no one dared
take anything but what belonged to them, fearing that the Spaeman would
discover on them.’
* * * * *
And so we shut up the Hedge-School Library, and close the Galway Nights’
Entertainments. They are not quite so genteel as Almack’s, to be sure;
but many a lady who has her opera-box in London has listened to a piper
in Ireland.
[Illustration]
_Apropos_ of pipers: here is a young one that I caught and copied
to-day. He was paddling in the mud, shining in the sun careless of his
rays, and playing his little tin-music as happy as Mr. Cooke with his
oboe.
Perhaps the above verses and tales are not unlike my little Galway
musician. They are grotesque and rugged; but they are pretty and
innocent-hearted too; and as such, polite persons may deign to look at
them for once in a way. While we have Signor Costa in a white neckcloth,
ordering opera-bands to play for us the music of Donizetti, which is not
only sublime but genteel; of course such poor little operatives as he
who plays the wind-instrument yonder, cannot expect to be heard often;
but is not this Galway? and how far is Galway from the Haymarket?
CHAPTER XVII
FROM GALWAY TO BALLYNAHINCH
The Clifden car, which carries the Dublin letters into the heart of
Connemara, conducts the passenger over one of the most wild and
beautiful districts that it is ever the fortune of a traveller to
examine; and I could not help thinking, as we passed through it, at how
much pains and expense honest English Cockneys are, to go and look after
natural beauties far inferior, in countries which, though more distant,
are not a whit more strange than this one. No doubt, ere long, when
people know how easy the task is, the rush of London tourism will come
this way; and I shall be very happy if these pages shall be able to
awaken in one bosom, beating in Tooley Street or the Temple, the desire
to travel towards Ireland next year.
After leaving the quaint old town behind us, and ascending one or two
small eminences to the north-westward, the traveller, from the car, gets
a view of the wide sheet of Lough Corrib shining in the sun, as we saw
it, with its low dark banks stretching round it. If the view is gloomy,
at least it is characteristic; nor are we delayed by it very long; for
though the lake stretches northwards into the very midst of the Joyce
country (and is there in the close neighbourhood of another huge lake,
Lough Mask, which again is near to another sheet of water), yet from
this road henceforth, after keeping company with it for some five miles,
we only get occasional views of it, passing over hills and through
trees, by many rivers and smaller lakes, which are dependent upon that
of Corrib. Gentlemen’s seats, on the road from Galway to Moycullen, are
scattered in great profusion--perhaps there is grass growing on the
gravel walk, and the iron gates of the tumble-down old lodges are rather
rickety; but for all that, the places look comfortable, hospitable, and
spacious; and as for the shabbiness and want of finish here and there,
the English eye grows quite accustomed to it in a month; and I find the
bad condition of the Galway houses by no means so painful as that of the
places near Dublin. At some of the lodges, as we pass, the mail-carman,
with a warning shout, flings a bag of letters. I saw a little party
looking at one which lay there in the road, crying, Come, take me! but
nobody cares to steal a bag of letters in this country, I suppose, and
the carman drove on without any alarm. Two days afterwards, a gentleman
with whom I was in company left on a rock his book of fishing-flies; and
I can assure you there was a very different feeling expressed about the
safety of _that_.
In the first part of the journey, the neighbourhood of the road seemed
to be as populous as in other parts of the country,--troops of
red-petticoated peasantry peering from their stone-cabins,--yelling
children following the car, and crying, ‘Lash, lash!’ It was Sunday, and
you would see many a white chapel among the green bare plains to the
right of the road, the courtyard blackened with a swarm of cloaks. The
service seems to continue (on the part of the people) all day. Troops of
people, issuing from the chapel, met us at Moycullen, and ten miles
farther on, at Oughterard, their devotions did not yet seem to be
concluded.
A more beautiful village can scarcely be seen than this. It stands upon
Lough Corrib, the banks of which are here, for once at least,
picturesque and romantic; and a pretty river, the Feogh, comes rushing
over rocks and by woods, until it passes the town and meets the lake.
Some pretty buildings in the village stand on each bank of this stream,
a Roman Catholic chapel with a curate’s neat lodge, a little church, on
one side of it; a fine court-house of grey stone on the other. And here
it is that we get into the famous district of Connemara, so celebrated
in Irish stories, so mysterious to the London tourist. ‘It presents
itself,’ says the Guide-book, ‘under every possible combination of
heathy moor, bog, lake, and mountain. Extensive mossy plains, and wild
pastoral valleys, lie embosomed among the mountains, and support
numerous herds of cattle and horses, for which the district has been
long celebrated. These wild solitudes, which occupy by far the greater
part of the centre of the country, are held by a hardy and ancient race
of grazing farmers, who live in a very primitive state, and, generally
speaking, till little beyond what supplies their immediate wants. For
the first ten miles the country is comparatively open; and the mountains
on the left, which are not of great elevation, can be distinctly traced
as they rise along the edge of the heathy plain.
‘Our road continues along the Feogh River, which expands itself into
several considerable lakes, and at five miles from Oughterard we reach
Lough Bofin, which the road also skirts. Passing in succession
Lough-a-preaghan, the lakes of Anderran and Shindella, at ten miles from
Oughterard we reach Slyme and Lynn’s Inn, or Halfway House, which is
near the shore of Loughonard. Now, as we advance towards the group of
Binabola, or the Twelve Pins, the most gigantic scenery is displayed.’
But the best guide-book that ever was written cannot set the view before
the mind’s eye of the reader, and I won’t attempt to pile up big words
in place of these wild mountains, over which the clouds as they passed,
or the sunshine as it went and came, cast every variety of tint, light,
and shadow; nor can it be expected that long, level sentences, however
smooth and shining, can be made to pass as representations of those calm
lakes by which we took our way. All one can do is to lay down the pen
and ruminate, and cry ‘Beautiful!’ once more; and to the reader say,
‘Come and see!’
Wild and wide as the prospect around us is, it has somehow a kindly,
friendly look, differing in this from the fierce loneliness of some
similar scenes in Wales that I have viewed. Ragged women and children
come out of rude stone-huts to see the car as it passes. But it is
impossible for the pencil to give due raggedness to the rags, or to
convey a certain picturesque mellowness of colour that the garments
assume. The sexes, with regard to raiment, do not seem to be particular.
There were many boys on the road in the national red petticoat, having
no other covering for their lean, brown legs. As for shoes, the women
eschew them almost entirely; and I saw a peasant trudging from mass, in
a handsome scarlet cloak, a fine blue cloth gown, turned up to show a
new lining of the same colour, and a petticoat quite white and neat, in
a dress of which the cost must have been at least £10; and her husband
walked in front carrying her shoes and stockings.
The road had conducted us for miles through the vast property of the
gentleman to whose house I was bound, Mr. Martin, the Member for the
county; and the last and prettiest part of the journey was round the
Lake of Ballynahinch, with tall mountains rising immediately above us on
the right, pleasant woody hills on the opposite side of the lake, with
the roofs of the houses rising above the trees; and in an island in the
midst of the water a ruined old castle, that cast a long, white
reflection into the blue waters where it lay. A land-pirate used to live
in that castle, one of the peasants told me, in the time of ‘Oliver
Cromwell.’ And a fine fastness it was for a robber, truly; for there
was no road through these wild countries in his time--nay, only thirty
years since, this lake was at three days’ distance of Galway. Then comes
the question, What, in a country where there were no roads and no
travellers, and where the inhabitants have been wretchedly poor from
time immemorial,--what was there for the land-pirate to rob? But let us
not be too curious about times so early as those of Oliver Cromwell. I
have heard the name many times from the Irish peasant, who still has an
awe of the grim, resolute Protector.
The builder of Ballynahinch House has placed it to command a view of a
pretty, melancholy river that runs by it, through many green flats and
picturesque rocky grounds; but from the lake it is scarcely visible. And
so, in like manner, I fear it must remain invisible to the reader too,
with all its kind inmates, and frank, cordial hospitality, unless he may
take a fancy to visit Galway himself, when, as I can vouch, a very small
pretext will make him enjoy both.
It will, however, be only a small breach of confidence to say, that the
major-domo of the establishment (who has adopted accurately the voice
and manner of his master, with a severe dignity of his own, which is
quite original) ordered me on going to bed ‘not to move in the morning
till he called me,’ at the same time expressing a hearty hope that I
should ‘want nothing more that evening.’ Who would dare, after such
peremptory orders, not to fall asleep immediately, and in this way
disturb the repose of Mr. J--n M--ll--y!
There may be many comparisons drawn between English and Irish
gentlemen’s houses; but perhaps the most striking point of difference
between the two is the immense following of the Irish house, such as
would make an English housekeeper crazy almost. Three comfortable,
well-clothed, good-humoured fellows walked down with me from the car,
persisting in carrying--one a bag, another a sketching-stool, and so on;
walking about the premises in the morning, sundry others were visible in
the courtyard, and near the kitchen door. In the grounds a gentleman, by
name Mr. Marcus C--rr, began discoursing to me regarding the place, the
planting, the fish, the grouse, and the Master, being himself,
doubtless, one of the irregulars of the house. As for maids, there were
half a score of them skurrying about the house; and I am not ashamed to
confess that some of them were exceedingly good-looking. And if I might
venture to say a word more, it would be respecting Connemara breakfasts;
but this would be an entire and flagrant breach of confidence, and, to
be sure, the dinners were just as good.
One of the days of my three days’ visit was to be devoted to the lakes;
and as a party had been arranged for the second day after my arrival, I
was glad to take advantage of the society of a gentleman staying in the
house, and ride with him to the neighbouring town of Clifden.
The ride thither from Ballynahinch is surprisingly beautiful; and as you
ascend the high ground from the two or three rude stone-huts which face
the entrance-gates of the house, there are views of the lake and the
surrounding country which the best parts of Killarney do not surpass, I
think, although the Connemara lakes do not possess the advantage of wood
which belongs to the famous Kerry landscape.
But the cultivation of the country is only in its infancy as yet, and it
is easy to see how vast its resources are, and what capital and
cultivation may do for it. In the green patches among the rocks, and the
mountain-sides, wherever crops were grown, they flourished; plenty of
natural wood is springing up in various places; and there is no end to
what the planter may do, and to what time and care may effect. The
carriage-road to Clifden is but ten years old; as it has brought the
means of communication into the country, the commerce will doubtless
follow it; and in fact, in going through the whole kingdom, one can’t
but be struck with the idea that not one-hundredth part of its
capabilities are yet brought into action, or even known perhaps, and
that by the easy and certain progress of time, Ireland will be poor
Ireland no longer. For instance, we rode by a vast green plain, skirting
a lake and river, which is now useless almost for pasture, and which a
little draining will convert into thousands of acres of rich productive
land. Streams and falls of water dash by one everywhere--they have only
to utilise this water-power for mills and factories; and hard by are
some of the finest bays in the world, where ships can deliver and
receive foreign and home produce. At Roundstone especially, where a
little town has been erected, the bay is said to be unexampled for size,
depth, and shelter; and the Government is now, through the rocks and
hills on their wild shore, cutting a coast-road to Bunown, the most
westerly part of Connemara, whence there is another good road to
Clifden. Among the charges which the Repealers bring against the Union,
they should include at least this: they would never have had these roads
but for the Union, roads which are as much at the charge of the London
tax-payer as of the most ill-used Milesian in Connaught.
A string of small lakes follow the road to Clifden, with mountains on
the right of the traveller for the chief part of the way. A few figures
at work in the bog-lands--a red petticoat passing here and there--a
goat or two browsing among the stones--or a troop of ragged whitey-brown
children, who came out to gaze at the car, form the chief society on the
road. The first house at the entrance to Clifden is a gigantic
poorhouse--tall, large, ugly, comfortable, it commands the town, and
looks almost as big as every one of the houses therein. The town itself
is but of a few years’ date, and seems to thrive in its small way.
Clifden Castle is a fine château in the neighbourhood, and belongs to
another owner of immense lands in Galway--Mr. D’Arcy.
Here a drive was proposed along the coast to Bunown, and I was glad to
see some more of the country, and its character. Nothing can be wilder.
We passed little lake after lake, lying a few furlongs inwards from the
shore. There were rocks everywhere, some patches of cultivated land here
and there, nor was there any want of inhabitants along this savage
coast. There were numerous cottages, if cottages they may be called, and
women and, above all, children in plenty. Here is one of the former--her
attitude as she stood gazing at the car. To depict the multiplicity of
her rags would require a month’s study.
[Illustration]
At length we came in sight of a half-built edifice, which is approached
by a rocky, dismal grey road, guarded by two or three broken gates,
against which rocks and stones were piled, which were to be removed to
give an entrance to our car. The gates were closed so laboriously, I
presume to prevent the egress of a single black consumptive pig, far
gone in the family way--a teeming skeleton--that was cropping the thin
dry grass that grew upon a round hill which rises behind this most
dismal castle of Bunown.
If the traveller only seeks for strange sights, this place will repay
his curiosity. Such a dismal house is not to be seen in all England, or,
perhaps, such a dismal situation. The sea lies before and behind; and on
each side, likewise, are rocks and copper-coloured meadows, by which a
few trees have made on attempt to grow. The owner of the house had,
however, begun to add to it, and there, unfinished, is a whole apparatus
of turrets, and staring raw stone and mortar, and fresh ruinous
carpenters’ work. And then the courtyard!--tumble-down outhouses,
staring empty pointed windows, and new-smeared plaster cracking from the
walls--a black heap of turf, a mouldy pump, a wretched old coal-scuttle
emptily sunning itself in the midst of this cheerful scene! There was an
old Gorgon, who kept the place, and who was in perfect unison with
it--Venus herself would become bearded, blear-eyed, and haggard if left
to be the housekeeper of this dreary place.
In the house was a comfortable parlour, inhabited by the priest who has
the painful charge of the district. Here were his books and his
breviaries, his reading-desk with the cross engraved upon it, and his
portrait of Daniel O’Connell the Liberator, to grace the walls of his
lonely cell. There was a dead crane hanging at the door on a gaff; his
red fish-like eyes were staring open, and his eager grinning bill--a
rifle-ball had passed through his body. And this was doubtless the only
game about the place; for we saw the sportsman who had killed the bird,
hunting vainly up the round hill for other food for powder. This
gentleman had had good sport, he said, shooting seals upon a
neighbouring island, four of which animals he had slain.
Mounting up the round hill, we had a view of the Sline Lights--the most
westerly point in Ireland.
Here too was a ruined sort of summer-house, dedicated DEO HIBERNIÆ
LIBERATORI. When these lights were put up, I am told the proprietor of
Bunown was recommended to apply for compensation to Parliament, inasmuch
as there would be no more _wrecks_ on the coast: from which branch of
commerce the inhabitants of the district used formerly to derive a
considerable profit. Between these Sline Lights and America nothing lies
but the Atlantic. It was beautifully blue and bright on this day, and
the sky almost cloudless; but I think the brightness only made the scene
more dismal, it being of that order of beauties which cannot bear the
full light, but require a cloud or a curtain to set them off to
advantage. A pretty story was told me by the gentleman who had killed
the seals. The place where he had been staying for sport was almost as
lonely as this Bunown, and inhabited by a priest too--a young, lively,
well-educated man. ‘When I came here first,’ the priest said, ‘_I cried
for two days_’; but afterwards he grew to like the place exceedingly,
his whole heart being directed towards it, his chapel, and his cure. Who
would not honour such missionaries--the virtues they silently practise,
and the doctrines they preach? After hearing that story, I think Bunown
looked not quite so dismal, as it is inhabited, they say, by such
another character. What a pity it is that John Tuam, in the next county
of Mayo, could not find such another hermitage to learn modesty in, and
forget his Graceship, his Lordship, and the sham titles by which he sets
such store.
A moon as round and bright as any moon that ever shone, and riding in a
sky perfectly cloudless, gave us a good promise of a fine day for the
morrow, which was to be devoted to the lakes in the neighbourhood of
Ballynahinch; one of which, Lough Ina, is said to be of exceeding
beauty. But no man can speculate upon Irish weather. I have seen a day
beginning with torrents of rain, that looked as if a deluge was at hand,
clear up in a few minutes, without any reason, and against the
prognostications of the glass and all other weather-prophets; so in like
manner, after the astonishingly fine night, there came a villainous dark
day; which, however, did not set in fairly for rain until we were an
hour on our journey, with a couple of stout boatmen rowing us over
Ballynahinch Lake. Being, however, thus fairly started, the water began
to come down, not in torrents certainly, but in that steady, creeping,
insinuating mist, of which we scarce know the luxury in England; and
which, I am bound to say, will wet a man’s jacket as satisfactorily as a
cataract would do.
It was just such another day as that of the famous stag-hunt at
Killarney, in a word; and as, in the first instance, we went to see the
deer killed, and saw nothing thereof, so, in the second case, we went to
see the landscape with precisely the same good fortune. The mountains
covered their modest beauties in impenetrable veils of clouds; and the
only consolation to the boat’s crew was, that it was a remarkably good
day for trout-fishing--which amusement some people are said to prefer to
the examination of landscapes, however beautiful.
O you, who laboriously throw flies in English rivers, and catch, at the
expiration of a hard day’s walking, casting, and wading, two or three
feeble little brown trouts of two or three ounces in weight, how would
you rejoice to have but an hour’s sport in Derryclear or Ballynahinch;
where you have but to cast, and lo! a big trout springs at your fly,
and, after making a vain struggling, splashing, and plunging for a
while, is infallibly landed in the net and thence into the boat! The
single rod in the boat, caught enough fish in an hour to feast the crew,
consisting of five persons, and the family of a Herd of Mr. Martin’s,
who has a pretty cottage on Derryclear Lake, inhabited by a cow and its
calf, a score of fowls, and I don’t know how many sons and daughters.
Having caught enough trout to satisfy any moderate appetite, like true
sportsmen the gentlemen on board our boat became eager to hook a salmon.
Had they hooked a few salmons, no doubt they would have trolled for
whales, or for a mermaid; one of which finny beauties the waterman swore
he had seen on the shore of Derryclear, he with Jim Mullen being above
on a rock, the mermaid on the shore directly beneath them, visible to
the middle, and as usual ‘racking her hair.’ It was fair hair, the
boatman said; and he appeared as convinced of the existence of the
mermaid, as he was of the trout just landed in the boat.
In regard of mermaids, there is a gentleman living near Killala Bay,
whose name was mentioned to me, and who declares solemnly, that one day,
shooting on the sands there, he saw a mermaid, and determined to try her
with a shot. So he drew the small-shot charge from his gun and loaded
with ball, that he always had by him for seal-shooting, fired, and hit
the mermaid through the breast. The screams and moans of the creature,
whose person he describes most accurately, were the most horrible
heart-rending noises that he ever, he said, heard: and not only were
they heard by him, but by the fishermen along the coast, who were
furiously angry against Mr. A----n, because, they said, the injury done
to the mermaid would cause her to drive all the fish away from the bay
for years to come.
But we did not, to my disappointment, catch a glimpse of one of these
interesting beings, nor of the great sea-horse which is said to inhabit
these waters, nor of any fairies (of whom the stroke-oar, Mr. Marcus,
told us not to speak, for they didn’t like bein’ spoken of); nor even of
a salmon, though the fishermen produced the most tempting flies. The
only animal of any size that was visible, we saw while lying by a swift
black river, that comes jumping with innumerable little waves into
Derryclear, and where the salmon are especially suffered to “stand”;
this animal was an eagle--a real wild eagle, with grey wings and a white
head and belly; it swept round us, within gunshot reach, once or twice,
through the leaden sky, and then settled on a grey rock, and began to
scream its shrill, ghastly, aquiline note.
The attempts on the salmon having failed, the rain continuing to fall
steadily, the Herd’s cottage before named was resorted to: when Marcus,
the boatman, commenced forthwith to gut the fish, and, taking down some
charred turf-ashes from the blazing fire, on which about a hundredweight
of potatoes were boiling, he--Marcus--proceeded to grill on the floor
some of the trout, which we afterwards ate with immeasurable
satisfaction. They were such trouts as, when once tasted, remain for
ever in the recollection of a commonly grateful mind--rich, flaky,
creamy, full of flavour. A Parisian _gourmand_ would have paid ten
francs for the smallest _cooleen_ among them; and, when transported to
his capital, how different in flavour would they have been!--how
inferior to what they were as we devoured them, fresh from the fresh
waters of the lake, and jerked as it were from the water to the
gridiron! The world had not had time to spoil those innocent beings
before they were gobbled up with pepper and salt, and missed, no doubt,
by their friends. I should like to know more of their ‘_set_.’ But
enough of this: my feelings overpower me: suffice it to say, they were
red or salmon trouts--none of your white-fleshed brown-skinned river
fellows.
When the gentlemen had finished their repast, the boatmen and the family
set to work upon the ton of potatoes, a number of the remaining fish,
and a store of other good things; then we all sat round the turf-fire in
the dark cottage, the rain coming down steadily outside, and veiling
everything except the shrubs and verdure immediately about the cottage.
The Herd, the Herd’s wife, and a nondescript female friend, two healthy
young herdsmen in corduroy rags, the herdsman’s daughter paddling about
with bare feet, a stout black-eyed wench with her gown over her head,
and a red petticoat not quite so good as new, the two boatmen, a badger
just killed and turned inside out, the gentlemen, some hens cackling and
flapping about among the rafters, a calf in a corner cropping green meat
and occasionally visited by the cow her mama, formed the society of the
place. It was rather a strange picture; but as for about two hours we
sat there, and maintained an almost unbroken silence, and as there was
no other amusement but to look at the rain, I began, after the
enthusiasm of the first half-hour, to think that after all London was a
bearable place, and that for want of a turf-fire and a bench in
Connemara, one _might_ put up with a sofa and a newspaper in Pall Mall.
This, however, is according to tastes; and I must say that Mr. Marcus
betrayed a most bitter contempt for all cockney tastes, awkwardness, and
ignorance: and very right too. The night, on our return home, all of a
sudden cleared; but though the fishermen, much to my disgust--at the
expression of which, however, the rascals only laughed--persisted in
making more casts for trout, and trying back in the dark upon the spots
which we had visited in the morning, it appeared the fish had been
frightened off by the rain; and the sportsmen met with such indifferent
success that at about ten o’clock we found ourselves at Ballynahinch.
Dinner was served at eleven: and, I believe, there was some whisky-punch
afterwards, recommended medicinally and to prevent the ill effects of
the wetting; but that is neither here nor there.
The next day the Petty Sessions were to be held at Roundstone, a little
town which has lately sprung up near the noble bay of that name. I was
glad to see some specimens of Connemara litigation, as also to behold at
least one thousand beautiful views that lie on the five miles of road
between the town and Ballynahinch. Rivers and rocks, mountains and sea,
green plains and bright skies, how (for the hundred-and-fiftieth time)
can pen-and-ink set you down? But if Berghem could have seen those blue
mountains, and Karel du Jardin could have copied some of these green
airy plains, with their brilliant little coloured groups of peasants,
beggars, horsemen, many an Englishman would know Connemara upon canvas,
as he does Italy or Flanders now.
CHAPTER XVIII
ROUNDSTONE PETTY SESSIONS
‘The temple of august Themis,’ as a Frenchman would call the
Sessions-room at Roundstone, is an apartment of some twelve feet square,
with a deal table and a couple of chairs for the accommodation of the
magistrates, and a Testament with a paper cross pasted on it to be
kissed by the witnesses and complainants who frequent the court. The
law-papers, warrants, etc., are kept on the Session-clerk’s bed in an
adjoining apartment, which commands a fine view of the courtyard--where
there is a stack of turf, a pig, and a shed beneath which the
magistrates’ horses were sheltered during the sitting. The
Sessions-clerk is a gentleman ‘having,’ as the phrase is here, both the
English and Irish languages, and interpreting for the benefit of the
worshipful bench.
And if the cockney reader suppose that in this remote country spot, so
wild, so beautiful, so distant from the hum and vice of cities,
quarrelling is not, and Litigation never shows her snaky head, he is
very much mistaken. From what I saw, I would recommend any ingenious
young attorney whose merits are not appreciated in the Metropolis, to
make an attempt upon the village of Roundstone; where as yet, I believe,
there is no solicitor, and where an immense and increasing practice
might speedily be secured. Mr. O’Connell, who is always crying out
‘Justice for Ireland,’ finds strong supporters among the Roundstonians,
whose love of justice for themselves is inordinate. I took down the
plots of the five first little litigious dramas which were played before
Mr. Martin and the stipendiary magistrate.
Case 1.--A boy summoned a young man for beating him so severely that he
kept his bed for a week, thereby breaking an engagement with his master,
and losing a quarter’s wages.
The defendant stated, in reply, that the plaintiff was engaged--in a
field through which defendant passed with another person--setting two
little boys to fight; on which defendant took plaintiff by the collar
and turned him out of the field. A witness who was present swore that
defendant never struck plaintiff at all, nor kicked him, nor ill-used
him, further than by pushing him out of the field.
As to the loss of his quarter’s wages, the plaintiff ingeniously proved
that he had afterwards returned to his master, that he had worked out
his time, and that he had in fact received already the greater part of
his hire. Upon which the case was dismissed, the defendant quitting
court without a stain upon his honour.
Case 2 was a most piteous and lamentable case of killing a cow; the
plaintiff stepped forward with many tears and much gesticulation to
state the fact, and also to declare that she was in danger of her life
from the defendant’s family.
It appeared on the evidence that a portion of the defendant’s
respectable family are at present undergoing the rewards which the law
assigns to those who make mistakes in fields with regard to the
ownership of sheep which sometimes graze there. The defendant’s father,
O’Damon, for having appropriated one of the fleecy bleaters of
O’Melibœus, was at present past beyond sea to a country where wool,
and consequently mutton, is so plentiful, that he will have the less
temptation. Defendant’s brothers tread the Ixionic wheel for the same
offence. Plaintiff’s son had been the informer in the case, hence the
feud between the families, the threats on the part of the defendants,
the murder of the innocent cow.
[Illustration]
But upon investigation of the business, it was discovered, and on the
plaintiff’s own testimony, that the cow had not been killed, nor even
been injured, but that the defendant had flung two stones at it, which
_might_ have inflicted great injury had they hit the animal with
greater force in the eye or in any delicate place.
Defendants admitted flinging the stones, but alleged as a reason that
the cow was trespassing on their grounds, which plaintiff did not seem
inclined to deny. Case dismissed.--Defendant retires with unblemished
honour; on which his mother steps forward, and lifting up her hands with
tears and shrieks, calls upon God to witness that the defendant’s own
brother-in-law had sold to her husband the very sheep on account of
which he had been transported.
Not wishing probably to doubt the justice of the verdict of an Irish
jury, the magistrate abruptly put an end to the lamentation and oaths of
the injured woman by causing her to be sent out of court, and called the
third cause on.
This was a case of thrilling interest and a complicated nature,
involving two actions, which ought each perhaps to have been gone into
separately, but were taken together. In the first place Timothy Horgan
brought an action against Patrick Dolan for breach of contract in not
remaining with him for the whole of six months during which Dolan had
agreed to serve Horgan. Then Dolan brought an action against Horgan for
not paying him his wages for six months’ labour done--the wages being
two guineas.
Horgan at once, and with much candour, withdrew his charge against
Dolan, that the latter had not remained with him for six months; nor can
I understand to this day, why in the first place he swore to the charge,
and why afterwards he withdrew it. But immediately advancing another
charge against his late servant, he pleaded that he had given him a suit
of clothes, which should be considered as a set-off against part of the
money claimed.
Now such a suit of clothes as poor Dolan had was never seen, I will not
say merely on an English scarecrow, but on an Irish beggar. Strips of
rags fell over the honest fellow’s great brawny chest, and the covering
on his big brown legs hung on by a wonder. He held out his arms with a
grim smile, and told his Worship to look at the clothes--the argument
was irresistible, Horgan was ordered to pay forthwith: he ought to have
been made to pay another guinea for clothing a fellow-creature in rags
so abominable. And now came a case of trespass, in which there was
nothing interesting but the attitude of the poor woman who trespassed,
and who meekly acknowledged the fact. She stated, however, that she only
got over the wall as a short cut home: but the wall was eight feet high,
with a ditch too; and I fear there were cabbages or potatoes in the
enclosure. They fined her a sixpence, and she could not pay it, and went
to gaol for three days, where she and her baby, at any rate, will get a
meal.
Last on the list which I took down, came a man who will make the fortune
of the London attorney, that I hope is on his way hither. A rather old,
curly-headed man, with a sly smile perpetually lying on his face (the
reader may give whatever interpretation he please to the ‘lying’)--he
comes before the Court almost every fortnight, they say, with a
complaint of one kind or other. His present charge was against a man for
breaking into his courtyard, and wishing to take possession of the same.
It appeared, however, that he, the defendant, and another lived in a row
of houses--the plaintiff’s house was, however, first built, and as his
agreement specified that the plot of ground behind his house should be
his likewise, he chose to imagine that the plot of ground behind all the
three houses was his, and built his turf-stack against his neighbour’s
window. The magistrate of course pronounced against this ingenious
discoverer of wrongs, and he left the court still smiling and twisting
round his little wicked eyes, and declaring solemnly that he would put
in an _appale_. If one could have purchased a kicking at a moderate
price off that fellow’s back, it would have been a pleasant little piece
of self-indulgence, and I confess I longed to ask him the price of the
article.
[Illustration]
And so, after a few more such great cases, the court rose; and I had
leisure to make moral reflections, if so minded--and sighing to think
that cruelty and falsehood, selfishness and rapacity, dwell not in
crowds alone, but flourish all the world over: sweet flowers of human
nature, they bloom in all climates and seasons, and are just as much at
home in a hothouse in Thavies’ Inn, as on a lone mountain or a rocky
sea-coast in Ireland, where never a tree will grow!
We walked along this coast, after the judicial proceedings were over, to
see the country, and the new road that the Board of Works is
forming--such a wilderness of rocks I never saw! The district for miles
is covered with huge stones, shining white in patches of green, with the
Binabola on one side of the spectator, and the Atlantic running in and
out of a thousand little bays on the other. The country is very hilly,
or wavy rather, being a sort of ocean petrified; and the engineers have
hard work with these numerous abrupt little ascents and descents, which
they equalise as best they may, by blasting, cutting, filling cavities,
and levelling eminences. Some hundreds of men were employed at this
work, busy with their hand-barrows, their picking and boring. Their pay
is eightpence a day.
There is little to see in the town of Roundstone, except a Presbyterian
Chapel in process of erection, that seems big enough to accommodate the
Presbyterians of the county; and a sort of lay convent, being a
community of brothers of the third order of St. Francis. They are all
artisans and workmen, taking no vows, but living together in common, and
undergoing a certain religious regimen. Their work is said to be very
good, and all are employed upon some labour or other. On the front of
this unpretending little dwelling is an inscription with a great deal of
pretence, stating that the establishment was founded with the
approbation of ‘His Grace, the most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of
Tuam.’
The most Reverend Doctor MacHale is a clergyman of great learning,
talents, and honesty; but His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Tuam strikes
me as being no better than a mountebank; and some day I hope even his
own party will laugh this humbug down. It is bad enough to be awed by
big titles at all; but to respect sham ones! O stars and garters! We
shall have his Grace the Lord Chief-Rabbi next, or his Lordship the
Arch-Imaum!
CHAPTER XIX
CLIFDEN TO WESTPORT
On leaving Ballynahinch (with sincere regret, as any lonely tourist may
imagine, who is called upon to quit the hospitable friendliness of such
a place and society), my way lay back to Clifden again, and thence
through the Joyce country, by the Killery mountains, to Westport in
Mayo. The road, amounting in all to four-and-forty Irish miles, is
performed in cars, in different periods of time, according to your horse
and your luck. Sometimes, both being bad, the traveller is two days on
the road; sometimes a dozen hours will suffice for the journey--which
was the case with me, though I confess to having found the twelve hours
long enough. After leaving Clifden, the friendly look of the country
seemed to vanish; and, though picturesque enough, was a thought too wild
and dismal for eyes accustomed to admire a hop-garden in Kent, or a view
of rich folly meadows in Surrey, with a clump of trees and a comfortable
village spire. ‘Inglis,’ the Guide-book says, ‘compares the scenes to
the Norwegian Fiords.’ Well, the Norwegian Fiords must, in this case, be
very dismal sights; and I own that the wildness of Hampstead Heath (with
the imposing walls of Jack Straw’s Castle rising stern in the midst of
the green wilderness) are more to my taste than the general views of
yesterday.
We skirted by lake after lake, lying lonely in the midst of lonely
boglands, or bathing the sides of mountains robed in sombre rifle green.
Two or three men, and as many huts, you see in the course of each mile
perhaps, as toiling up the bleak hills, or jingling more rapidly down
them, you pass through this sad region. In the midst of the wilderness,
a chapel stands here and there, solitary, on the hillside; or a ruinous,
useless school-house, its pale walls contrasting with the general
surrounding hue of sombre purple and green. But though the country looks
more dismal than Connemara, it is clearly more fertile: we passed miles
of ground that evidently wanted but little cultivation to make them
profitable; and along the mountain-sides, in many places, and over a
great extent of Mr. Blake’s country especially, the hills were covered
with a thick, natural plantation, that may yield a little brushwood now,
but might in fifty years’ time bring thousands of pounds of revenue to
the descendants of the Blakes. This spectacle of a country going to
waste is enough to make the cheerfullest landscape look dismal; it gives
this wild district a woeful look indeed. The names of the lakes by which
we came I noted down in a pocket-book as we passed along; but the names
were Irish, the car was rattling, and the only names readable in the
catalogue is Letterfrack.
The little hamlet of Leenane is at twenty miles’ distance from Clifden;
and to arrive at it, you skirt the mountain along one side of a vast
pass, through which the ocean runs from Killery Bay, separating the
mountains of Mayo from the mountains of Galway. Nothing can be more
grand and gloomy than this pass; and as for the character of the
scenery, it must, as the Guide-book says, ‘be seen to be understood.’
Meanwhile, let the reader imagine huge, dark mountains in their
accustomed livery of purple and green, a dull grey sky above them, an
estuary silver-bright below: in the water lies a fisherman’s boat or
two; a pair of sea-gulls, undulating with the little waves of the water;
a pair of curlews wheeling overhead and piping on the wing; and on the
hillside a jingling car, with a cockney in it, oppressed by and yet
admiring all these things. Many a sketcher and tourist, as I found, has
visited this picturesque spot; for the hostess of the inn had stories of
English and American painters, and of illustrious book-writers, too,
travelling in the services of our Lords of Paternoster Row.
The landlord’s son of Clifden, a very intelligent young fellow, was here
exchanged for a new carman in the person of a raw Irisher of twenty
years of age, ‘having’ little English, and dressed in that very pair of
pantaloons which Humphrey Clinker was compelled to cast off some years
since, on account of the offence which they gave to Mrs. Tabitha
Bramble. This fellow, emerging from among the boats, went off to a field
to seek for the black horse, which the landlady assured me was quite
fresh and had not been out all day, and would carry me to Westport in
three hours. Meanwhile I was lodged in a neat little parlour, surveying
the Mayo side of the water, with some cultivated fields and a show of a
village at the spot where the estuary ends, and above them lodges and
fine dark plantations, climbing over the dark hills that lead to Lord
Sligo’s seat of Delphi. Presently, with a curtsey, came a young woman
who sold worsted socks at a shilling a pair, and whose portrait is here
given.
[Illustration]
It required no small pains to entice this rustic beauty to stand, while
a sketch should be made of her. Nor did any compliments or cajolements,
on my part or the landlady’s, bring about the matter; it was not until
money was offered that the lovely creature consented. I offered (such is
the ardour of the real artist) either to give her a sixpence, or to
purchase two pairs of her socks, if she would stand still for five
minutes. On which she said she would prefer selling the socks. Then she
stood still for a moment in the corner of the room; then she turned her
face towards the corner and the other part of her person towards the
artist, and exclaimed in that attitude, ‘I must have a shilling more.’
Then I told her to go to the deuce. Then she made a proposition,
involving the stockings and sixpence, which was similarly rejected; and
finally, the above splendid design was completed at the price first
stated.
However, as we went off, this timid little love barred the door for a
moment, and said that ‘I ought to give her another shilling; that a
gentleman would give her another shilling,’ and so on--she might have
trod the London streets for ten years, and not have been more impudent
and more greedy.
By this time the famous fresh horse was produced, and the driver, by
means of a wraprascal, had covered a great part of the rags of his lower
garment. He carried a whip and a stick, the former lying across his knee
ornamentally, the latter being for service, and as his feet were
directly under the horse’s tail, he had full command of the brute’s
back, and belaboured it for six hours without ceasing.
What little English the fellow knew, he uttered with a howl, roaring
into my ear answers, which, for the most part, were wrong, to various
questions put to him. The lad’s voice was so hideous, that I asked him
if he could sing; on which forthwith he began yelling the most horrible
Irish ditty, of which he told me the title, that I have forgotten. He
sang three stanzas, certainly keeping a kind of tune, and the latter
lines of each verse were in rhyme; but when I asked him the meaning of
the song, he only roared out its Irish title.
On questioning the driver further, it turned out that the horse,
warranted fresh, had already performed a journey of eighteen miles that
morning, and the consequence was, that I had full leisure to survey the
country through which we passed. There were more lakes, more mountains,
more bog, and an excellent road through this lonely district, though few
only of the human race enlivened it. At ten miles from Leenane, we
stopped at a roadside hut, where the driver pulled out a bag of oats,
and borrowing an iron pot from the good people, half filled it with
corn, which the poor, tired, galled, bewhipped black horse began eagerly
to devour. The young charioteer himself hinted very broadly his desire
for a glass of whisky, which was the only kind of refreshment that this
remote house of entertainment supplied.
In the various cabins I have entered, I have found talking a vain
matter; the people are suspicious of the stranger within their wretched
gates, and are shy, sly, and silent. I have, commonly, only been able to
get half-answers in reply to my questions, given in a manner that seemed
plainly to intimate that the visit was unwelcome. In this rude hostel,
however, the landlord was a little less reserved, offered a seat at the
turf-fire, where a painter might have had a good subject for his skill.
There was no chimney, but a hole in the roof, up which a small portion
of the smoke ascended (the rest preferring an egress by the door, or
else to remain in the apartment altogether); and this light from above
lighted up as rude a set of figures as ever were seen. There were two
brown women, with black eyes and locks, the one knitting stockings on
the floor, the other ‘racking’ (with that natural comb which five horny
fingers supply) the elf-locks of a dirty urchin between her knees. An
idle fellow was smoking his pipe by the fire; and by his side sate a
stranger, who had been made welcome to the shelter of the place--a
sickly well-looking man, whom I mistook for a deserter at first, for he
had evidently been a soldier.
But there was nothing so romantic as desertion in his history. He had
been in the dragoons, but his mother had purchased his discharge: he was
married, and had lived comfortably in Cork for some time, in the
glass-blowing business. Trade failing at Cork, he had gone to Belfast to
seek for work. There was no work at Belfast; and he was so far on his
road home again: sick, without a penny in the world, a hundred and fifty
miles to travel, and a starving wife and children to receive him at his
journey’s end. He had been thrown off a caravan that day, and had almost
broken his back in the fall. Here was a cheering story! I wonder where
he is now: how far has the poor starving lonely man advanced over that
weary desolate road, that in good health, and with a horse to carry me,
I thought it a penalty to cross? What would one do under such
circumstances, with solitude and hunger for present company, despair and
starvation at the end of the vista? There are a score of lonely lakes
along the road which he has to pass: would it be well to stop at one of
them, and fling into it the wretched load of cares which that poor
broken back has to carry? Would the world he would light on _then_ be
worse for him than that he is pining in now: Heaven help us: and on this
very day, throughout the three kingdoms, there are a million such
stories to be told! Who dare doubt of heaven after that? of a place
where there is at last a welcome to the heart-stricken prodigal and a
happy home to the wretched.
The crumbs of oats which fell from the mouth of the feasting Dives of a
horse were battled for outside the door by a dozen Lazaruses in the
shape of fowls, and a lanky young pig, who had been grunting in an old
chest in the cabin, or in a miserable recess of huddled rags and straw
which formed the couch of the family, presently came out and drove the
poultry away, picking up, with great accuracy, the solitary grains lying
about, and more than once trying to shove his snout into the corn-pot,
and share with the wretched old galled horse. Whether it was that he was
refreshed by his meal, or that the car-boy was invigorated by his glass
of whisky, or inflamed by the sight of eighteenpence--which munificent
sum was tendered to the soldier, I don’t know, but the remaining eight
miles of the journey were got over in much quicker time, although the
road was exceedingly bad and hilly for the greatest part of the way to
Westport. However, by running up the hills at the pony’s side, the
animal, fired with emulation, trotted up them too, descending them with
the proverbial surefootedness of his race, the car and he bouncing over
the rocks and stones at the rate of at least four Irish miles an hour.
At about five miles from Westport the cultivation became much more
frequent. There were plantations upon the hills, yellow corn and
potatoes in plenty in the fields, and houses thickly scattered. We had
the satisfaction, too, of knowing that future tourists will have an
excellent road to travel over in this district; for by the side of the
old road, which runs up and down a hundred little rocky steeps,
according to the ancient plan, you see a new one running for several
miles,--the latter way being conducted, not over the hills, but around
them, and, considering the circumstances of the country, extremely broad
and even. The car-boy presently yelled out ‘REEK, REEK!’ with a shriek
perfectly appalling. This howl was to signify that we were in sight of
that famous conical mountain so named, and from which St. Patrick, after
inveigling thither all the venomous reptiles in Ireland, precipitated
the whole noisome race into Clew Bay. The road also for several miles
was covered with people, who were flocking in hundreds from Westport
market, in cars and carts, on horseback single and double, and on foot.
And presently, from an eminence, I caught sight not only of a fine view,
but of the most beautiful view I ever saw in the world, I think; and to
enjoy the splendour of which I would travel a hundred miles in that car
with that very horse and driver. The sun was just about to set, and the
country round about and to the east was almost in twilight. The
mountains were tumbled about in a thousand fantastic ways, and swarming
with people. Trees, cornfields, cottages, made the scene indescribably
cheerful; noble woods stretched towards the sea, and, abutting on them,
between two highlands, lay the smoking town. Hard by was a large Gothic
building--it is but a poor-house; but it looked like a grand castle in
the grey evening--but the bay, and the Reek which sweeps down to the
sea, and a hundred islands in it, were dressed up in gold and purple and
crimson, with the whole cloudy west in a flame. Wonderful, wonderful!...
The valleys in the road to Leenane have lost all glimpses of the sun ere
this; and I suppose there is not a soul to be seen in the black
landscape, or by the shores of the ghastly lakes, where the poor
glass-blower from the whisky-shop is faintly travelling now.
CHAPTER XX
WESTPORT
Nature has done much for this pretty town of Westport; and after Nature,
the traveller ought to be thankful to Lord Sligo, who has done a great
deal too. In the first place, he has established one of the prettiest,
comfortablest inns in Ireland, in the best part of his little town,
stocking the cellars with good wines, filling the house with neat
furniture, and lending, it is said, the whole to a landlord gratis, on
condition that he should keep the house warm, and furnish the larder,
and entertain the traveller. Secondly, Lord Sligo has given up, for the
use of the townspeople, a beautiful little pleasure-ground about his
house. ‘You may depand upon it,’ said a Scotchman at the inn, ‘that
they’ve right of pathway through the groonds, and that the Marquess
couldn’t shut them oot.’ Which is a pretty fair specimen of charity in
this world: this kind world, that is always ready to encourage and
applaud good actions, and find good motives for the same. I wonder how
much would induce that Scotchman to allow poor people to walk in _his_
park, if he had one!
In the midst of this pleasure-ground, and surrounded by a thousand fine
trees, dressed up in all sorts of verdure, stands a pretty little
church; paths through the wood lead pleasantly down to the bay; and, as
we walked down to it on the day after our arrival, one of the green
fields was suddenly black with rooks, making a huge cawing and clanging
as they settled down to feed. The house, a handsome massive structure,
must command noble views of the bay, over which all the colours of
Titian were spread, as the sun set behind its purple islands.
Printer’s ink will not give these wonderful hues; and the reader will
make his picture at his leisure. That conical mountain to the left is
Croagh-Patrick; it is clothed in the most magnificent violet colour, and
a couple of round clouds were exploding, as it were, from the summit,
that part of them towards the sea lighted up with the most delicate gold
and rose colour. In the centre is the Clare Island, of which the edges
were bright cobalt, whilst the middle was lighted up with a brilliant
scarlet tinge, such as I would have laughed at in a picture, never
having seen in nature before, but looked at now with wonder and pleasure
until the hue disappeared as the sun went away. The islands in the bay
(which was of a gold colour) looked like so many dolphins and whales
basking there. The rich park-woods stretched down to the shore; and the
immediate foreground consisted of a yellow cornfield, whereon stood
innumerable shocks of corn, casting immense long purple shadows over the
stubble. The farmer, with some little ones about him, was superintending
his reapers; and I heard him say to a little girl, ‘Nory, I love you the
best of all my children!’ Presently, one of the reapers coming up, says,
‘It’s always the custom in these parts to ask strange gentlemen to give
something to drink the first day of reaping; and we’d like to drink your
honour’s health in a bowl of coffee.’ _O fortunatos nimium!_ The cockney
takes out sixpence, and thinks that he never passed such a pleasant
half-hour in all his life as in that cornfield, looking at that
wonderful bay.
A car which I had ordered presently joined me from the town, and going
down a green lane very like England, and across a causeway near a
building, where the carman proposed to show me ‘me Lard’s caffin that he
brought from Rome, and a mighty big caffin entirely,’ we came close upon
the water and the Port. There was a long, handsome pier (which, no
doubt, remains at this present minute), and one solitary cutter lying
alongside it; which may or may not be there now. There were about three
boats lying near the cutter, and six sailors, with long shadows, lolling
upon the pier. As for the warehouses, they are enormous; and might
accommodate, I should think, not only the trade of Westport, but of
Manchester too. There are huge streets of these houses, ten stories
high, with cranes, owners’ names, etc., marked Wine Stores, Flour
Stores, Bonded Tobacco Warehouses, and so forth. The six sailors that
were singing on the pier, no doubt are each admirals of as many fleets
of a hundred sail, that bring wines and tobacco from all quarters of the
world to fill these enormous warehouses. These dismal mausoleums, as
vast as pyramids, are the places where the dead trade of Westport lies
buried--a trade that, in its lifetime, probably was about as big as a
mouse. Nor is this the first nor the hundredth place to be seen in this
country, which sanguine builders have erected to accommodate an
imaginary commerce. Mill-owners over-mill themselves, merchants
over-warehouse themselves, squires over-castle themselves, little
tradesmen about Dublin and the cities over-villa and over-gig
themselves, and we hear sad tales about hereditary bondage and the
accursed tyranny of England.
Passing out of this dreary pseudo-commercial port, the road lay along
the beautiful shores of Clew Bay, adorned with many a rickety villa and
pleasure-house, from the cracked windows of which may be seen one of the
noblest views in the world. One of the villas the guide pointed out
with peculiar exultation; it is called by a grand name--Waterloo Park,
and has a lodge, and a gate, and a field of a couple of acres, and
belongs to a young gentleman who, being able to write Waterloo Park on
his card, succeeded in carrying off a young London heiress with a
hundred thousand pounds. The young couple had just arrived, and one of
them must have been rather astonished, no doubt, at the ‘Park.’ But what
will not love do? With love and a hundred thousand pounds, a cottage may
be made to look like a castle, and a park of two acres may be brought to
extend for a mile. The night began now to fall, wrapping up in a sober
grey livery the bay and mountains, which had just been so gorgeous in
sunset; and we turned our backs presently upon the bay, and the villas
with the cracked windows, and scaling a road of perpetual ups and downs,
went back to Westport. On the way was a pretty cemetery, lying on each
side of the road, with a ruined chapel for the ornament of one division,
a holy well for the other. In the holy well lives a sacred trout, whom
sick people come to consult, and who operates great cures in the
neighbourhood. If the patient sees the trout floating on his back, he
dies; if on his belly, he lives; or _vice versâ_. The little spot is
old, ivy-grown, and picturesque, and I can’t fancy a better place for a
pilgrim to kneel and say his beads at.
But considering the whole country goes to mass, and that the priests can
govern it as they will, teaching what shall be believed and what shall
be not credited, would it not be well for their reverences, in the year
eighteen hundred and forty-two, to discourage these absurd lies and
superstitions, and teach some simple truths to their flock? Leave such
figments to magazine-writers and ballad-makers; but, _corbleu!_ it makes
one indignant to think that people in the United Kingdom, where a press
is at work, and good sense is abroad, and clergymen are eager to educate
the people, should countenance such savage superstitions and silly,
grovelling heathenisms.
The chapel is before the inn where I resided, and on Sunday, from a very
early hour, the side of the street was thronged with worshippers, who
came to attend the various services. Nor are the Catholics the only
devout people of this remote district. There is a large Presbyterian
church very well attended, as was the Established Church service in the
pretty church in the park. There was no organ, but the clerk and a choir
of children sang hymns sweetly and truly; and a charity sermon being
preached for the benefit of the diocesan schools, I saw many pound-notes
in the plate, showing that the Protestants here were as ardent as their
Roman Catholic brethren. The sermon was extempore, as usual, according
to the prevailing taste here. The preacher by putting aside his
sermon-book, may gain in warmth, which we don’t want, but lose in
reason, which we do. If I were Defender of the Faith, I would issue an
order to all priests and deacons to take to the book again; weighing
well, before they uttered it, every word they proposed to say upon so
great a subject as that of religion; and mistrusting that dangerous
facility given by active jaws and a hot imagination. Reverend divines
have adopted this habit, and keep us for an hour listening to what might
well be told in ten minutes. They are wondrously fluent, considering all
things; and though I have heard many a sentence begun whereof the
speaker did not evidently know the conclusion, yet, somehow or other, he
has always managed to get through the paragraph without any hiatus,
except perhaps in the sense. And as far as I can remark, it is not calm,
plain, downright preachers who preserve the extemporaneous system for
the most part, but pompous orators, indulging in all the cheap graces of
rhetoric--exaggerating words and feelings to make effect, and dealing in
pious caricature. Church-goers become excited by this loud talk and
captivating manner, and can’t go back afterwards to a sober discourse
read out of a grave old sermon-book, appealing to the reason and the
gentle feelings, instead of to the passions and the imagination. Beware
of too much talk, O parsons! If a man is to give an account of every
idle word he utters, for what a number of such loud nothings, windy
emphatic tropes and metaphors, spoken, not for God’s glory but the
preacher’s, will many a cushion-thumper have to answer! And this rebuke
may properly find a place here, because the clergyman by whose discourse
it was elicited is not of the eloquent dramatic sort, but a gentleman,
it is said, remarkable for old-fashioned learning and quiet habits, that
do not seem to be to the taste of the many boisterous young clergy of
the present day.
The Catholic chapel was built before their graces the most reverend lord
archbishops came into fashion. It is large and gloomy, with one or two
attempts at ornament by way of pictures at the altars, and a good
inscription warning the incomer, in a few bold words, of the sacredness
of the place he stands in. Bare feet bore away thousands of people who
came to pray there; there were numbers of smart equipages for the richer
Protestant congregation. Strolling about the town in the balmy summer
evening, I heard the sweet notes of a hymn from the people in the
Presbyterian praying-house. Indeed, the country is full of piety, and a
warm, sincere, undoubting devotion.
On week-days the street before the chapel is scarcely less crowded than
on the Sabbath: but it is with women and children merely; for a stream
bordered with lime-trees runs pleasantly down the street, and hither
come innumerable girls to wash, while the children make dirt-pies and
look on. Wilkie was here some years since, and the place affords a great
deal of amusement to the painter of character. Sketching, _tant bien que
mal_, the bridge and the trees, and some of the nymphs engaged in the
stream, the writer became an object of no small attention; and at least
a score of dirty brats left their dirt-pies to look on, the bare-legged
washing-girls grinning from the water.
[Illustration]
One, a regular rustic beauty, whose face and figure would have made the
fortune of a frontispiece, seemed particularly amused and _agaçante;_
and I walked round to get a drawing of her fresh jolly face: but
directly I came near she pulled her gown over her head, and resolutely
turned round her back; and, as that part of her person did not seem to
differ in character from the backs of the rest of Europe, there is no
need of taking its likeness.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PATTERN AT CROAGH-PATRICK
On the pattern-day, however, the washerwomen and children had all
disappeared--nay, the stream, too, seemed to be gone out of town. There
was a report current, also, that on the occasion of the pattern, six
hundred teetotallers had sworn to revolt; and I fear that it was the
hope of witnessing this awful rebellion which induced me to stay a
couple of days at Westport. The pattern was commenced on the Sunday, but
the priests, going up to the mountain, took care that there should be no
sports nor dancing on that day; but that the people should only content
themselves with the performance of what are called religious duties.
Religious duties! Heaven help us! If these reverend gentlemen were
worshippers of Moloch or Baal, or any deity whose honour demanded
bloodshed, and savage rites, and degradation, and torture, one might
fancy them encouraging the people to the disgusting penances the poor
things here perform. But it’s too hard to think that in our days any
priests of any religion should be found superintending such a hideous
series of self-sacrifices as are, it appears, performed on this hill.
A friend who ascended the hill brought down the following account of it.
The ascent is a very steep and hard one, he says; but it was performed
in company of thousands of people who were making their way barefoot to
the several ‘stations’ upon the hill.
‘The first station consists of one heap of stones, round which they must
walk seven times, casting a stone on the heap each time, and before and
after every stone’s throw saying a prayer.
‘The second station is on the top of the mountain. Here there is a great
altar--a shapeless heap of stones. The poor wretches crawl _on their
knees_ into this place, say fifteen prayers, and after going round the
entire top of the mountain fifteen times, say fifteen prayers again.
‘The third station is near the bottom of the mountain at the further
side from Westport. It consists of three heaps. The penitents must go
seven times round these collectively, and seven times afterwards round
each individually, saying a prayer before and after each progress.’
My informant describes the people as coming away from this ‘frightful
exhibition, suffering severe pain, wounded and bleeding in the knees and
feet, and some of the women shrieking with the pain of their wounds.’
Fancy thousands of these bent upon their work, and priests standing by
to encourage them!--for shame, for shame! If all the popes, cardinals,
bishops, hermits, priests, and deacons that ever lived, were to come
forward and preach this as a truth--that to please God you must macerate
your body, that the sight of your agonies is welcome to Him, and that
your blood, groans, and degradation find favour in His eyes, I would not
believe them. Better have over a company of Fakeers at once, and set
the Suttee going.
Of these tortures, however, I had not the fortune to witness a sight;
for going towards the mountain for the first four miles, the only
conveyance I could find was half the pony of an honest sailor, who said,
when applied to, ‘I tell you what I do wid you: I give you a spell
about’; but as it turned out we were going different ways, this help was
but a small one. A car with a spare seat, however (there were hundreds
of others quite full, and scores of rattling country carts covered with
people, and thousands of bare legs trudging along the road)--a car with
a spare seat passed by at two miles from the Pattern, and that just time
to get comfortably wet through on arriving there. The whole mountain was
enveloped in mist; and we could nowhere see thirty yards before us. The
women walked forward, with their gowns over their heads; the men
sauntered on in the rain, with the utmost indifference to it. The car
presently came to a cottage, the court in front of which was black with
two hundred horses, and where as many drivers were jangling and bawling;
and here we were told to descend. You had to go over a wall and across a
brook, and behold the Pattern.
The pleasures of the poor people--for after the business on the mountain
came the dancing and love-making at its foot--was woefully spoiled by
the rain, which rendered dancing on the grass impossible; nor were the
tents big enough for that exercise. Indeed, the whole sight was as
dismal and half-savage a one as I have seen. There may have been fifty
of these tents squatted round a plain of the most brilliant green grass,
behind which the mist curtains seemed to rise immediately; for you could
not even see the mountain side beyond them. Here was a great crowd of
men and women, all ugly, as the fortune of the day would have it (for
the sagacious reader has, no doubt, remarked that there are ugly and
pretty days in life). Stalls were spread about, whereof the owners were
shrieking out the praises of their wares--great, coarse, damp-looking
bannocks of bread for the most part, or, mayhap, a dirty collection of
pigs’-feet, and such refreshments. Several of the booths professed to
belong to ‘confectioners’ from Westport or Castlebar, the confectionery
consisting of huge biscuits and doubtful-looking ginger-beer--ginger-ale
or gingeretta it is called in this country, by a fanciful people who
love the finest titles. Add to these, caldrons containing water for tay
at the doors of the booths, other pots full of masses of pale legs of
mutton (the owner ‘prodding,’ every now and then for a bit, and holding
it up and asking the passenger to buy). In the booths it was impossible
to stand upright, or to see much, on account of smoke. Men and women
were crowded in these rude tents, huddled together, and disappearing in
the darkness. Owners came bustling out to replenish the emptied
water-jugs, and landladies stood outside in the rain calling strenuously
upon all passers-by to enter. Here is a design taken from one of the
booths, presenting ingeniously an outside and an inside view of the same
place--an artifice seldom practised in pictures.
[Illustration]
Meanwhile, high up on the invisible mountain, the people were dragging
their bleeding knees from altar to altar, flinging stones, and muttering
some endless litanies, with the priests standing by. I think I was not
sorry that the rain, and the care of my precious health, prevented me
from mounting a severe hill to witness a sight that could only have
caused one to be shocked and ashamed that servants of God should
encourage it. The road home was very pleasant; everybody was wet
through, but everybody was happy, and by some miracle we were seven on
the car. There was the honest Englishman in the military cap, who sung
‘The sea, the hopen sea’s my ‘ome,’ although not any one of the company
called upon him for that air. Then the music was taken up by a
good-natured lass from Castlebar; then the Englishman again, ‘With
burnished brand and musketoon’; and there was no end of pushing
pinching, squeezing, and laughing. The Englishman, especially, had a
favourite yell, with which he saluted and astonished all cottages,
passengers, cars, that we met or overtook. Presently came prancing by
two dandies, who were especially frightened by the noise. ‘Thim’s two
tailors from Westport,’ said the carman, grinning with all his might.
‘Come, gat out of the way there, gat along!’ piped a small English voice
from above somewhere. I looked up, and saw a little creature perched on
the top of a tandem, which he was driving with the most knowing air--a
dreadful young hero, with a white hat, and a white face, and a blue
bird’s-eye neckcloth. He was five feet high, if an inch, an ensign, and
sixteen; and it was a great comfort to think, in case of danger or riot,
that one of his years and personal strength was at hand to give help.
‘Thim’s the afficers,’ said the carman, as the tandem wheeled by, a
small groom quivering on behind--and the carman spoke with the greatest
respect this time. Two days before, on arriving at Westport, I had seen
the same equipage at the door of the inn--where for a moment there
happened to be no waiter to receive me. So, shouldering a carpet-bag, I
walked into the inn-hall, and asked a gentleman standing there, where
was the coffee-room? It was the military tandem-driving youth, who with
much grace looked up in my face, and said calmly, _‘I dawnt knaw_.’ I
believe the little creature had just been dining in the very room--and
so present my best compliments to him.
The Guide-book will inform the traveller of many a beautiful spot which
lies in the neighbourhood of Westport, and which I had not the time to
visit; but I must not take leave of the excellent little inn without
speaking once more of its extreme comfort; nor of the place itself,
without another parting word regarding its beauty. It forms an event in
one’s life to have seen that place, so beautiful is it, and so unlike
all other beauties that I know of. Were such a bay lying upon English
shores it would be a world’s wonder: perhaps, if it were on the
Mediterranean, or the Baltic, English travellers would flock to it by
hundreds; why not come and see it in Ireland? Remote as the spot is,
Westport is only two days’ journey from London now, and lies in a
country far more strange to most travellers than France or Germany can
be.
CHAPTER XXII
FROM WESTPORT TO BALLINASLOE
The mail-coach took us next day by Castlebar and Tuam to Ballinasloe, a
journey of near eighty miles. The country is interspersed with
innumerable seats belonging to the Blakes, the Browns, and the
Frenches; and we passed many large domains belonging to bankrupt lords
and fugitive squires, with fine lodges, adorned with moss and battered
windows, and parks where, if the grass was growing on the roads, on the
other hand the trees had been weeded out of the grass. About these seats
and their owners the guard, an honest shrewd fellow, had all the gossip
to tell. This jolly guard himself was a ruin, it turned out; he told me
his grandfather was a man of large property; his father, he said, kept a
pack of hounds, and had spent everything by the time he, the guard, was
sixteen: so the lad made interest to get a mail-car to drive, whence he
had been promoted to the guard’s seat, and now for forty years had
occupied it, travelling eighty miles, and earning seven-and-twopence
every day of his life. He had been once ill, he said, for three days;
and if a man may be judged by ten hours’ talk with him, there are few
more shrewd, resolute, simple-minded men to be found on the outside of
any coaches or the inside of any houses in Ireland.
During the first five-and-twenty miles of the journey,--for the day was
very sunny and bright,--Croaghpatrick kept us company; and, seated with
your back to the horses, you could see, ‘on the left, that vast
aggregation of mountains which stretches southwards to the Bay of
Galway; on the right, that gigantic assemblage which sweeps in circular
outline northward to Killule.’ Somewhere amongst those hills the great
John Tuam was born, whose mansion and cathedral are to be seen in Tuam
town, but whose fame is spread everywhere. To arrive at Castlebar, we go
over the undulating valley which lies between the mountains of Joyce
country and Erris; and the first object which you see on entering the
town is a stately Gothic castle that stands at a short distance from it.
On the gate of the stately Gothic castle was written an inscription not
very hospitable: WITHOUT BEWARE, WITHIN AMEND;--just beneath which is an
iron crane of neat construction. The castle is the county gaol, and the
iron crane is the gallows of the district. The town seems neat and
lively; there is a fine church, a grand barracks (celebrated as the
residence of the young fellow with the bird’s-eye neckcloth), a club,
and a Whig and Tory newspaper. The road hence to Tuam is very pretty and
lively, from the number of country seats along the way, giving
comfortable shelter to more Blakes, Brownes, and Lynches.
In the cottages, the inhabitants looked healthy and rosy in their rags,
and the cots themselves in the sunshine almost comfortable. After a
couple of months in the country, the stranger’s eye grows somewhat
accustomed to the rags: they do not frighten him as at first: the
people who wear them look for the most part healthy enough; especially
the small children--those who can scarcely totter, and are sitting
shading their eyes at the door, and leaving the unfinished dirt-pie to
shout as the coach passes by--are as healthy a looking race as one will
often see. Nor can any one pass through the land without being touched
by the extreme love of children among the people: they swarm everywhere,
and the whole county rings with cries of affection towards the children,
with the songs of young ragged nurses dandling babies on their knees,
and warnings of mothers to Patsey to come out of the mud, or Norey to
get off the pig’s back.
At Tuam the coach stopped exactly for fourteen minutes and a half,
during which time those who wished might dine: but instead, I had the
pleasure of inspecting a very mouldy dirty town, and made my way to the
Catholic Cathedral--a very handsome edifice indeed; handsome without and
within, and of the Gothic sort. Over the door is a huge coat of arms
surmounted by a Cardinal’s hat--the arms of the See, no doubt, quartered
with John Tuam’s own patrimonial coat; and that was a frieze coat, from
all accounts, passably ragged at the elbows. Well, he must be a poor wag
who could sneer at an old coat because it was old and poor. But if a man
changes it for a tawdry gimcrack suit, bedizened with twopenny tinsel,
and struts about calling himself his Grace and my Lord, when may we
laugh if not then? There is something simple in the way in which these
good people belord their clergymen, and respect titles real or sham.
Take any Dublin paper,--a couple of columns of it are sure to be filled
with movements of the small great men of the world. Accounts from
Darrynane state that the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor is in good
health--his Lordship went out with his beagles yesterday; or His Grace
the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Ballywhack, assisted by the
Right Reverend the Lord Bishops of Trincomalee and Hippopotamus,
assisted, etc.; or Colonel Tims, of Castle Tims, and lady, have quitted
the Shelburne Hotel, with a party for Kilballybathershins, where the
_august_[27] party propose to enjoy a few days’ shrimp-fishing,--and so
on. Our people are not witty and keen of perceiving the ridiculous, like
the Irish; but the bluntness and honesty of the English have well-nigh
kicked the fashionable humbug down; and except perhaps among footmen and
about Baker Street, this curiosity about the aristocracy is wearing fast
away. Have the Irish so much reason to respect their lords that they
should so chronicle all their movements; and not only admire real
lords, but make sham ones of their own to admire _them_?
There is no object of special mark upon the road from Tuam to
Ballinasloe, the country being flat for the most part, and the noble
Galway and Mayo mountains having disappeared at length, until you come
to a glimpse of Old England in the pretty village of Ahascragh. An old
oak-tree grows in the neat street, the houses are as trim and white as
eye can desire, and about the church and the town are handsome
plantations, forming on the whole such a picture of comfort and plenty
as is rarely to be seen in the part of Ireland I have traversed. All
these wonders have been wrought by the activity of an excellent resident
agent. There was a countryman on the coach deploring that, through
family circumstances, this gentleman should have been dispossessed of
his agency, and declaring that the village had already begun to
deteriorate in consequence. The marks of such decay were not, however,
visible, at least to a newcomer; and, being reminded of it, I indulged
in many patriotic longings for England: as every Englishman does when he
is travelling out of the country which he is always so willing to quit.
That a place should instantly begin to deteriorate because a certain
individual was removed from it--that cottagers should become thriftless,
and houses dirty, and house-windows cracked,--all these are points which
public economists may ruminate over, and can’t fail to give the
carelessest traveller much matter for painful reflection. How is it that
the presence of one man more or less should affect a set of people come
to years of manhood, and knowing that they have their duty to do? Why
should a man at Ahascragh let his home go to ruin, and stuff his windows
with ragged breeches instead of glass, because Mr. Smith is agent in
place of Mr. Jones? Is he a child, that won’t work unless the
schoolmaster be at hand? or are we to suppose, with the Repealers, that
the cause of all this degradation and misery is the intolerable tyranny
of the sister country, and the pain which poor Ireland has been made to
endure? This is very well at the Corn Exchange, and among patriots after
dinner; but, after all, granting the grievance of the franchise (though
it may not be unfair to presume that a man who has not strength of mind
enough to mend his own breeches or his own windows will always be the
tool of one party or another), there is no Inquisition set up in the
country; the law tries to defend the people as much as they will allow;
the odious tithe has even been whisked off from their shoulders to the
landlord’s; they may live pretty much as they like. Is it not too
monstrous to howl about English tyranny and suffering Ireland, and call
for a Stephen’s Green Parliament to make the country quiet and the
people industrious? The people are not politically worse treated than
their neighbours in England. The priests and the landlords, if they
chose to co-operate, might do more for the country now than any kings or
laws could. What you want here is not a Catholic or Protestant party,
but an Irish party.
In the midst of these reflections, and by what the reader will doubtless
think a blessed interruption, we came in sight of the town of
Ballinasloe and its ‘gash-lamps,’ which a fellow-passenger did not fail
to point out with admiration. The road-menders, however, did not appear
to think that light was by any means necessary: for, having been
occupied, in the morning, in digging a fine hole upon the highway,
previous to some alterations to be effected there, they had left their
work at sundown, without any lamp to warn coming travellers of the
hole--which we only escaped by a wonder. The papers have much such
another story. In the Galway and Ballinasloe coach a horse on the road
suddenly fell down and died; the coachman drove his coach
unicorn-fashion into town; and, as for the dead horse, of course he left
it on the road at the place where it fell, and where another coach
coming up was upset over it, bones broken, passengers maimed, coach
smashed. By Heavens! the tyranny of England is unendurable; and I have
no doubt it had a hand in upsetting that coach.
CHAPTER XXIII
BALLINASLOE TO DUBLIN
During the cattle-fair the celebrated town of Ballinasloe is thronged
with farmers from all parts of the kingdom--the cattle being
picturesquely exhibited in the park of the noble proprietor of the town,
Lord Clancarty. As it was not fair-time the town did not seem
particularly busy, nor was there much to remark in it, except a church,
and a magnificent lunatic asylum, that lies outside the town on the
Dublin road, and is as handsome and stately as a palace. I think the
beggars were more plenteous and more loathsome here than almost
anywhere; to one hideous wretch I was obliged to give money to go away,
which he did for a moment, only to obtrude his horrible face directly
afterwards, half eaten away with disease. ‘A penny for the sake of poor
little Mery,’ said another woman, who had a baby sleeping on her
withered breast; and how can any one who has a little Mery at home
resist such an appeal? ‘Pity the poor blind man!’ roared a respectably
dressed grenadier of a fellow. I told him to go to the gentleman with a
red neckcloth and fur cap (a young buck from Trinity College)--to whom
the blind man with much simplicity immediately stepped over, and as for
the rest of the beggars, what pen or pencil could describe their hideous
leering flattery, their cringing swindling humour!
The inn, like the town, being made to accommodate the periodical crowds
of visitors who attended the fair, presented in their absence rather a
faded and desolate look; and, in spite of the live-stock for which the
place is famous, the only portion of their produce which I could get to
my share, after twelve hours’ fasting and an hour’s bell-ringing and
scolding, was one very lean mutton-chop and one very small damp kidney,
brought in by an old tottering waiter to a table spread in a huge black
coffee-room, dimly lighted by one little jet of gas.
As this only served very faintly to light up the above banquet, the
waiter, upon remonstrance, proceeded to light the other _bec_; but the
lamp was sulky, and upon this attempt to force it, as it were, refused
to act altogether, and went out. The big room was then accommodated with
a couple of yellow mutton-candles. There was a neat, handsome, correct
young English officer warming his slippers at the fire, and opposite him
sate a worthy gentleman, with a glass of mingled ‘materials,’
discoursing to him in a very friendly and confidential way.
As I don’t know the gentleman’s name, and as it is not at all
improbable, from the situation in which he was, that he has quite
forgotten the night’s conversation, I hope there will be no breach of
confidence in recalling some part of it. The speaker was dressed in deep
black, worn, however, with that _dégagé_ air peculiar to the votaries of
Bacchus, or that nameless god, offspring of Bacchus and Ceres, who may
have invented the noble liquor called whisky. It was fine to see the
easy folds in which his neckcloth confined a shirt-collar moist with the
generous drops that trickled from the chin above,--its little percentage
upon the punch. There was a fine dashing black satin waistcoat that
called for its share, and generously disdained to be buttoned. I think
this is the only specimen I have seen yet of the personage still so
frequently described in the Irish novels--the careless drinking
‘squire--the Irish Will Whimble.
‘Sir,’ says he, ‘as I was telling you before this gentleman came in
(from Westport, I preshume, sir, by the mail; and ‘my service to you!’),
the butchers in Chume (Tuam)--where I live, and shall be happy to see
you and give you a shakedown, a cut of mutton, and the use of as good a
brace of pointers as ever you shot over--the butchers say to me,
whenever I look in at their shops and ask for a joint of meat--they say:
“Take down that quarther o’ mutton, boy; IT’S NO USE WEIGHING IT for Mr.
Bodkin. He can tell with an eye what’s the weight of it to an ounce!”
And so, sir, I can; and I’d make a bet to go into any market in Dublin,
Tchume, Ballinasloe, where you please, and just by looking at the meat
decide its weight.’
At the pause, during which the gentleman here designated Bodkin drank
off his materials, the young officer said gravely, that this was a very
rare and valuable accomplishment, and thanked him for the invitation to
Tchume.
The honest gentleman proceeded with his personal memoirs; and (with a
charming modesty that authenticated his tale, while it interested his
hearers for the teller) he called for a fresh tumbler, and began
discoursing about horses. ‘Them, I don’t know,’ says he, confessing the
fact at once; ‘or, if I do, I’ve been always so unlucky with them that
it’s as good as if I didn’t.
‘To give you an idea of my ill fortune: Me brother-‘n-law Burke once
sent me three colts of his to sell at this very fair of Ballinasloe,
and, for all I could do I could only get a bid for one of ‘em, and sold
her for sixteen pound. And d’ye know what that mare was, sir?’ says Mr.
Bodkin, giving a thump that made the spoon jump out of the punch-glass
for fright. ‘D’ye know who she was? she was Water-Wagtail,
sir,--WATER-WAGTAIL! She won fourteen cups and plates in Ireland before
she went to Liverpool; and you know what she did _there_?’ (We said,
‘Oh! of course.’) ‘Well, sir, the man who bought her from me sold her
for four hunder’ guineas; and in England she fetched eight hunder’
pounds.
‘Another of them very horses, gentlemen (Tim, some hot
wather--screeching hot, you divil--and a sthroke of the limin)--another
of them horses that I was refused fifteen pound for, me brother-in-law
sould to Sir Rufford Bufford for a hunder’-and-fifty guineas. Wasn’t
_that_ luck?
‘Well, sir, Sir Rufford gives Burke his bill at six months, and don’t
pay it when it come jue. A pretty pickle Tom Burke was in, as I leave ye
to fancy, for he’d paid away the bill, which he thought as good as
goold; and sure it ought to be, for Sir Rufford had come of age since
the bill was drawn, and before it was due, and, as I needn’t tell you,
had slipped into a very handsome property.
‘On the protest of the bill, Burke goes in a fury to Gresham’s in
Sackville Street, where the baronet was living, and (would ye believe
it?) the latter says he doesn’t intend to meet the bill, on the score
that he was a minor when he gave it. On which Burke was in such a rage
that he took a horsewhip and vowed he’d beat the baronet to a jelly, and
post him in every club in Dublin, and publish every circumstance of the
transaction,’
‘It _does_ seem rather a queer one,’ says one of Mr. Bodkin’s hearers.
‘Queer indeed: but that’s not it, you see; for Sir Rufford is as
honourable a man as ever lived; and after the quarrel he paid Burke his
money, and they’ve been warm friends ever since. But what I want to show
ye is our infernal luck. _Three months before, Sir Rufford had sold that
very horse for three hunder guineas_.’
The worthy gentleman had just ordered in a fresh tumbler of his
favourite liquor, when we wished him good-night, and slept by no means
the worse, because the bedroom candle was carried by one of the
prettiest young chambermaids possible.
Next morning, surrounded by a crowd of beggars more filthy, hideous, and
importunate than any I think in the most favoured towns of the south, we
set off, a coach-load, for Dublin. A clergyman, a guard, a Scotch
farmer, a butcher, a bookseller’s hack, a lad bound for Maynooth and
another for Trinity, made a varied pleasant party enough, where each,
according to his lights, had something to say.
I have seldom seen a more dismal and uninteresting road than that which
we now took, and which brought us through the ‘old, inconvenient,
ill-built, and ugly town of Athlone.’ The painter would find here,
however, some good subjects for his sketch-book, in spite of the
commination of the Guide-book. Here, too, great improvements are taking
place for the Shannon navigation, which will render the town not so
inconvenient as at present it is stated to be; and hard by lies a little
village that is known and loved by all the world where English is
spoken. It is called Lishoy, but its real name is Auburn, and it gave
birth to one Noll Goldsmith, whom Mr. Boswell was in the habit of
despising very heartily. At the Quaker town of Moate, the butcher and
the farmer dropped off, the clergyman went inside, and their places were
filled by four Maynoothians, whose vacation was just at an end. One of
them, a freshman, was inside the coach with the clergyman, and told him,
with rather a long face, of the dismal discipline of his college. They
are not allowed to quit the gates (except on general walks); they are
expelled if they read a newspaper; and they begin term with ‘a retreat’
of a week, which time they are made to devote to silence, and, as it is
supposed, to devotion and meditation.
I must say the young fellows drank plenty of whisky on the road to
prepare them for their year’s abstinence; and, when at length arrived in
the miserable village of Maynooth, determined not to go into college
that night, but to devote the evening to ‘a lark.’ They were simple,
kind-hearted young men, sons of farmers or tradesmen seemingly; and, as
is always the case here, except among some of the gentry, very
gentlemanlike, and pleasing in manners. Their talk was of this companion
and that; how one was in rhetoric, and another in logic, and a third had
got his curacy. Wait for a while; and with the happy system pursued
within the walls of their college, those smiling good-humoured faces
will come out with a scowl, and downcast eyes that seem afraid to look
the world in the face. When the time comes for them to take leave of
yonder dismal-looking barracks, they will be men no longer, but bound
over to the Church, body and soul; their free thoughts chained down and
kept in darkness, their honest affections mutilated: well, I hope they
will be happy to-night at any rate, and talk and laugh to their hearts’
content. The poor freshman, whose big chest is carried off by the porter
yonder to the inn, has but twelve hours more of hearty, natural human
life. To-morrow, they will begin their work upon him; cramping his mind,
and bitting his tongue, and firing and cutting at his heart,--breaking
him to pull the Church chariot. Ah! why didn’t he stop at home, and dig
potatoes and get children?
Part of the drive from Maynooth to Dublin is exceedingly pretty: you are
carried through Leixlip, Lucan, Chapelizod, and by scores of parks and
villas, until the gas-lamps come in sight. Was there ever a cockney that
was not glad to see them; and did not prefer the sight of them, in his
heart, to the best lake or mountain ever invented? Pat the waiter comes
jumping down to the car and says, ‘Welcome back, sir!’ and bustles the
trunk into the queer little bedroom, with all the cordial hospitality
imaginable.
CHAPTER XXIV
TWO DAYS IN WICKLOW
The little tour we have just been taking has been performed, not only by
myriads of the ‘car-drivingest, tay-drinking, say-bathingest people in
the world,’ the inhabitants of the city of Dublin, but also by all the
tourists who have come to discover this country for the benefit of the
English nation. ‘Look here!’ says the ragged bearded genius of a guide
at the Seven Churches. ‘This is the spot which Mr. Henry Inglis
particularly admired, and said it was exactly like Norway. Many’s the
song I’ve heard Mr. Sam Lover sing here--a pleasant gentleman entirely.
Have you seen my picture that’s taken off in Mrs. Hall’s book? All the
strangers know me by it, though it makes me much cleverer than I am.’
Similar tales has he of Mr. Barrow, and the trans-atlantic Willis, and
of Crofton Croker, who has been everywhere.
The guide’s remarks concerning the works of these gentlemen inspired me,
I must confess, with considerable disgust and jealousy. A plague take
them! What remains for me to discover after the gallant adventurers in
the service of Paternoster Row have examined every rock, lake, and ruin
of the district, exhausted it of all its legends, and ‘invented new’
most likely, as their daring genius prompted? Hence it follows that the
description of the two days’ jaunt must of necessity be short; lest
persons who have read former accounts should be led to refer to the
same, and make comparisons which might possibly be unfavourable to the
present humble pages.
Is there anything new to be said regarding the journey? In the first
place, there’s the railroad: it’s no longer than the railroad to
Greenwich, to be sure, and almost as well known: but has it been _done_?
that’s the question; or has anybody discovered the dandies on the
railroad?
After wondering at the beggars and carmen of Dublin, the stranger can’t
help admiring another vast and numerous class of inhabitants of the
city--namely, the dandies. Such a number of smartly-dressed young
fellows, I don’t think any town possesses: no, not Paris, where the
young shopmen, with spurs and stays, may be remarked strutting abroad on
fête-days; nor London, where on Sundays, in the Park, you see thousands
of this cheap kind of aristocracy parading--nor Liverpool, famous for
the breed of commercial dandies, desk and counter Dorsays and cotton and
sugar-barrel Brummels, and whom one remarks pushing on to business with
a brisk determined air--all the above races are only to be encountered
on holidays, except by those persons whose affairs take them to shops,
docks, or counting-houses, where these fascinating young fellows labour
during the week.
But the Dublin breed of dandies is quite distinct from those of the
various cities above-named, and altogether superior; for they appear
every day, and all day long, not once a week merely, and have an
original and splendid character and appearance of their own, very hard
to describe, though no doubt every traveller, as well as myself, has
admired and observed it. They assume a sort of military and ferocious
look, not observable in other cheap dandies, except in Paris perhaps now
and then; and are to be remarked not so much for the splendour of their
ornaments as for the profusion of them. Thus, for instance, a hat which
is worn straight over the two eyes costs very likely more than one which
hangs upon one ear; a great oily bush of hair to balance the hat
(otherwise the head no doubt would fall hopelessly on one side) is even
more economical than a crop which requires the barber’s scissors
ofttimes; also a tuft on the chin may be had at a small expense of
bear’s-grease by persons of a proper age; and although big pins are the
fashion, I am bound to say I have never seen so many or so big as here.
Large agate marbles or ‘taws,’ globes terrestrial and celestial,
pawnbrokers’ balls,--I cannot find comparisons large enough for these
wonderful ornaments of the person. Canes also should be mentioned, which
are sold very splendid, with gold or silver heads, for a shilling on the
quays; and the dandy not uncommonly finishes off with a horn
quizzing-glass, which being stuck in one eye, contracts the brows and
gives a fierce determined look to the whole countenance.
In idleness at least these young men can compete with the greatest
lords; and the wonder is, how the city can support so many of them, or
they themselves; how they manage to spend their time; who gives them
money to ride hacks in the ‘Phaynix’ on fields and race days; to have
boats at Kingstown during the summer; and to be crowding the
railway-coaches all the day long. Cars go whirling about all day,
bearing squads of them. You see them sauntering at all the
railway-stations in vast numbers, and jumping out of the carriages as
the trains come up, and greeting other dandies with that rich large
brogue which some actor ought to make known to the English public: it
being the biggest, richest, and coarsest of all the brogues of Ireland.
I think these dandies are the chief objects which arrest the stranger’s
attention as he travels on the Kingstown railroad, and I have always
been so much occupied in watching and wondering at them as scarcely to
have leisure to look at anything else during the pretty little ride of
twenty minutes, so beloved by every Dublin cockney. The waters of the
bay wash in many places the piers on which the railway is built, and you
see the calm stretch of water beyond, and the big purple hill of Howth,
and the lighthouses, and the jetties, and the shipping. Yesterday was a
boat-race (I don’t know how many scores of such take place during the
season), and you may be sure there were tens of thousands of the
dandies to look on. There had been boat-races the two days previous:
before that, had been a field day--before that, three days of garrison
races--to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, there are races at Howth.
There seems some sameness in the sports, but everybody goes; everybody
is never tired; and then I suppose comes the punch-party, and the song
in the evening--the same old pleasures, and the same old songs the next
day, and so on to the end. As for the boat-race, I saw two little boats
in the distance tugging away for the dear life--the beach and piers
swarming with spectators, the bay full of small yachts, and innumerable
row-boats, and in the midst of the assemblage a convict-ship lying ready
for sail, with a black mass of poor wretches on her deck, who too were
eager for pleasure.
Who is not, in this country? Walking away from the pier and King
George’s column, you arrive upon rows after rows of pleasure-houses,
whither all Dublin flocks during the summer time; for every one must
have his sea-bathing, and they say that the country houses to the west
of the town are to be empty, or had for very small prices; while for
those on the coast, especially towards Kingstown, there is the readiest
sale at large prices. I have paid frequent visits to one, of which the
rent is as great as that of a tolerable London house; and there seems to
be others suited to all purses--for instance, there are long lines of
two-roomed houses, stretching far back and away from the sea,
accommodating, doubtless, small commercial men, or small families, or
some of those travelling dandies we have just been talking about, and
whose costume is so cheap and so splendid.
A two-horse car, which will accommodate twelve, or will condescend to
receive twenty passengers, starts from the railway-station for Bray,
running along the coast for the chief part of the journey, though you
have but few views of the sea, on account of intervening woods and
hills. The whole of this country is covered with handsome villas and
their gardens and pleasure-grounds. There are round many of the houses
parks of some extent, and always of considerable beauty, among the trees
of which the road winds. New churches are likewise to be seen in various
places; built like the poorhouses, that are likewise everywhere
springing up, pretty much upon one plan--a sort of bastard or Vauxhall
Gothic--resembling no architecture of any age previous to that when
Horace Walpole invented the Castle of Otranto and the other monstrosity
upon Strawberry Hill, though it must be confessed that those on the Bray
line are by no means so imaginative. Well, what matters, say you, that
the churches be ugly, if the truth is preached within? Is it not fair,
however, to say that Beauty is the truth too, of its kind? and why
should it not be cultivated as well as other truth? Why build these
hideous barbaric temples, when at the expense of a little study and
taste, beautiful structures might be raised?
After leaving Bray, with its pleasant bay, and pleasant river, and
pleasant inn, the little Wicklow tour may be said to commence properly;
and, as that romantic and beautiful country has been described many
times in familiar terms, our only chance is to speak thereof in romantic
and beautiful language, such as no other writer can possibly have
employed.
We rang at the gate of the steward’s lodge, and said, ‘Grant us a pass,
we pray, to see the parks of Powerscourt, and to behold the brown deer
upon the grass, and the cool shadows under the whispering trees.’
But the steward’s son answered, ‘You may not see the parks of
Powerscourt, for the lord of the castle comes home, and we expect him
daily.’ So, wondering at this reply, but not understanding the same, we
took leave of the son of the steward, and said, ‘No doubt Powerscourt is
not fit to see. Have we not seen parks in England, my brother, and shall
we break our hearts that this Irish one hath its gates closed to us?’
Then the car-boy said, ‘My lords, the park is shut, but the waterfall
runs for every man; will it please you see the waterfall?’ ‘Boy,’ we
replied, ‘we have seen many waterfalls; nevertheless, lead on!’ and the
boy took his pipe out of his mouth, and belaboured the ribs of his
beast.
And the horse made believe, as it were, to trot, and jolted the ardent
travellers; and we passed the green trees of Tinnehinch, which the
grateful Irish nation bought and consecrated to the race of GRATTAN; and
we said, ‘What nation will spend fifty thousand pounds for our benefit?’
and we wished we might get it; and we passed on. The birds were,
meanwhile, chanting concerts in the woods; and the sun was
double-gilding the golden corn.
And we came to a hill, which was steep and long of descent; and the
car-boy said, ‘My lords, I may never descend this hill with safety to
your honours’ bones: for my horse is not sure of foot, and loves to
kneel in the highway; descend therefore, and I will await your return
here on the top of the hill.’
So we descended, and one grumbled greatly; but the other said, ‘Sir, be
of good heart! the way is pleasant, and the footman will not weary as he
travels it’; and we went through the swinging gates of a park, where the
harvestmen sate at their potatoes--a mealy meal.
The way was not short, as the companion said, but still it was a
pleasant way to walk. Green stretches of grass were there, and a forest
nigh at hand. It was but September; yet the autumn had already begun to
turn the green ones into red; and the ferns that were waving underneath
the trees were reddened and fading too. And as Dr. Jones’s boys of a
Saturday disport in the meadows after school-hours, so did the little
clouds run races over the waving grass. And as grave ushers who look on
smiling at the sports of these little ones, so stood the old trees
around the green, whispering and nodding to one another.
Purple mountains rose before us in front, and we began presently to hear
a noise and roaring afar off--not a fierce roaring, but one deep and
calm, like to the respiration of the great sea, as he lies basking on
the sands in the sunshine.
And we came soon to a little hillock of green, which was standing before
a huge mountain of purple black, and there were white clouds over the
mountains, and some trees waving on the hillock, and between the trunks
of them we saw the waters of the waterfall descending; and there was a
snob on a rock, who stood and examined the same.
[Illustration]
Then we approached the water, passing the clump of oak-trees. The waters
were white, and the cliffs which they varnished were purple. But those
round about were grey, tall, and gay with blue shadows, and ferns,
heath, and rusty-coloured funguses sprouting here and there in the same.
But in the ravine where the waters fell, roaring, as it were, with the
fall, the rocks were dark, and the foam of the cataract was of a yellow
colour. And we stood, and were silent, and wondered. And still the trees
continued to wave, and the waters to roar and tumble, and the sun to
shine, and the fresh wind to blow.
And we stood and looked: and said in our hearts it was beautiful, and
bethought us how shall all this be set down in types and ink? (for our
trade is to write books and sell the same--a chapter for a guinea, a
line for a penny); and the waterfall roared in answer: ‘For shame, O
vain man, think not of thy books and of thy pence now; but look on, and
wonder, and be silent! Can types or ink describe my beauty, though aided
by thy small wit? I am made for thee to praise and wonder at: be
content, and cherish thy wonder. It is enough that thou hast seen a
great thing: is it needful that thou shouldst prate of all thou hast
seen?’
So we came away silently, and walked through the park without looking
back. And there was a man at the gate, who opened it and seemed to say,
‘Give me a little sixpence.’ But we gave nothing, and walked up the
hill, which was sore to climb; and on the summit found the car-boy, who
was lolling on his cushions and smoking, as happy as a lord.
Quitting the waterfall of Powerscourt (the grand style in which it has
been described was adopted in order that the reader, who has probably
read other descriptions of the spot, might have at least _something_ new
in this account of it), we speedily left behind us the rich and wooded
tract of country about Powerscourt, and came to a bleak tract, which,
perhaps by way of contrast to so much natural wealth, is not unpleasing,
and began ascending what is very properly called the Long Hill. Here you
see, in the midst of the loneliness, a grim-looking barrack, that was
erected when, after the Rebellion, it was necessary for some time to
occupy this most rebellious country; and a church, looking equally
dismal, a lean-looking, sham-Gothic building, in the midst of this green
desert. The road to Luggala, whither we were bound, turns off the Long
Hill, up another hill, which seems still longer and steeper, inasmuch as
it was ascended perforce on foot, and over lonely, boggy moorlands,
enlivened by a huge grey boulder plumped here and there, and come, one
wonders how, to the spot. Close to this hill of Slieve-Buck is marked in
the maps a district called ‘the uninhabited country,’ and these stones
probably fell at a period of time when not only this district, but all
the world, was uninhabited,--and in some convulsion of the neighbouring
mountains, this and other enormous rocks were cast abroad.
From behind one of them, or out of the ground somehow, as we went up the
hill, sprang little ragged guides, who are always lurking about in
search of stray pence from tourists; and we had three or four of such at
our back by the time we were at the top of the hill. Almost the first
sight we saw was a smart coach-and-four, with a loving wedding party
within, and a genteel valet and lady’s-maid without. I wondered, had
they been burying their modest loves in the uninhabited district? But
presently, from the top of the hill, I saw the place on which their
honeymoon had been passed; nor could any pair of lovers, nor a pious
hermit, bent on retirement from the world, have selected a more
sequestered spot.
Standing by a big shining granite stone on the hilltop, we looked
immediately down upon Lough Tay--a little round lake of half a mile in
length, which lay beneath us as black as a pool of ink--a high,
crumbling, white-sided mountain, falling abruptly into it on the side
opposite to us, with a huge ruin of shattered rocks at its base.
Northwards, we could see between mountains a portion of the neighbouring
lake of Lough Dan, which, too, was dark, though the Annamoe river, which
connects the two lakes, lay coursing through the greenest possible
flats, and shining as bright as silver. Brilliant green shores, too,
come gently down to the southern side of Lough Tay; through these runs
another river, with a small rapid or fall, which makes a music for the
lake; and here, amidst beautiful woods, lies a villa, where the four
horses, the groom and valet, the postillions, and the young couple had,
no doubt, been hiding themselves.
Hereabouts, the owner of the villa, Mr. Latouche, has a great grazing
establishment; and some herd-boys, no doubt seeing strangers on the
hill, thought proper that the cattle should stray that way, that they
might drive them back again, and parenthetically ask the travellers for
money,--everybody asks travellers for money, as it seems. Next day,
admiring in a labourer’s arms a little child--his master’s son, who
could not speak--the labourer, his he-nurse, spoke for him, and demanded
a little sixpence to buy the child apples. One grows not a little
callous to this sort of beggary; and the only one of our numerous young
guides who got a reward was the raggedest of them. He and his companions
had just come from school, he said,--not a Government school, but a
private one, where they paid. I asked how much,--‘Was it a penny a
week?’ ‘No; not a penny a week, but so much at the end of the year.’
‘Was it a barrel of meal, or a few stone of potatoes, or something of
that sort?’ ‘Yes; something of that sort.’
The something must, however, have been a very small something on the
poor lad’s part. He was one of four young ones, who lived with their
mother, a widow. He had no work; he could get no work; nobody had work.
His mother had a cabin with no land--not a perch of land, no
potatoes--nothing but the cabin. How did they live?--the mother knitted
stockings. I asked, had she any stockings at home?--the boy said, ‘No.’
How did he live?--he lived how he could; and we gave him threepence,
with which, in delight, he went bounding off to the poor mother.
Gracious heavens! what a history to hear, told by a child looking quite
cheerful as he told it, and as if the story was quite a common one. And
a common one, too, it is; and God forgive us!
Here is another, and of a similar low kind, but rather pleasanter. We
asked the car-boy how much he earned. He said, ‘Seven shillings a week,
and his chances’--which in the summer season, from the number of
tourists who are jolted in his car, must be tolerably good--eight or
nine shillings a week more, probably. But he said, in winter his master
did not hire him for the car; and he was obliged to look for work
elsewhere: as for saving, he never had saved a shilling in his life.
We asked him, was he married? and he said, No, but he was _as good as
married;_ for he had an old mother and four little brothers to keep, and
six mouths to feed, and to dress himself decent to drive the gentlemen.
Was not the ‘as good as married’ a pretty expression? and might not some
of what are called their betters learn a little good from these simple
poor creatures? There’s many a young fellow who sets up in the world
would think it rather hard to have four brothers to support; and I have
heard more than one genteel Christian pining over five hundred a year. A
few such may read this, perhaps: let them think of the Irish widow with
the four children and _nothing_, and at least be more contented with
their port and sherry and their leg of mutton.
This brings us at once to the subject of dinner and the little village,
Roundwood, which was reached by this time, lying a few miles off from
the lakes, and reached by a road not particularly remarkable for any
picturesqueness in beauty, though you pass through a simple pleasing
landscape, always agreeable as a repose, I think, after viewing a sight
so beautiful as those mountain lakes we have just quitted. All the hills
up which we had panted had imparted a fierce sensation of hunger; and it
was nobly decreed that we should stop in the middle of the street of
Roundwood, impartially between the two hotels, and solemnly decide upon
a resting-place after having inspected the larders and bedrooms of each.
And here, as an impartial writer, I must say, that the hotel of Mr.
Wheatley possesses attractions which few men can resist, in the shape of
two very handsome young ladies, his daughters; whose faces, were they
but painted on his signboard, instead of the mysterious piece which
ornaments it, would infallibly draw tourists into the house, thereby
giving the opposition inn of Murphy not the least chance of custom.
A landlord’s daughters in England, inhabiting a little country inn,
would be apt to lay the cloth for the traveller, and their respected
father would bring in the first dish of the dinner; but this arrangement
is never known in Ireland; we scarcely ever see the cheering countenance
of my landlord. And as for the young ladies of Roundwood, I am bound to
say that no young persons in Baker Street could be more genteel; and
that our bill, when it was brought the next morning, was written in as
pretty and fashionable a lady’s hand as ever was formed in the most
elegant finishing school at Pimlico.
Of the dozen houses of the little village, the half seem to be houses of
entertainment. A green common stretches before these, with its rural
accompaniments of geese, pigs, and idlers; a park and plantation at the
end of the village, and plenty of trees round about it, give it a happy,
comfortable, English look; which is, to my notion, the best compliment
that can be paid to a hamlet; for where, after all, are villages so
pretty?
Here, rather to one’s wonder, for the district was not thickly enough
populated to encourage dramatic exhibitions, a sort of theatre was
erected on the common; a ragged cloth covering the spectators and the
actors, the former (if there were any) obtaining admittance through two
doors on the stage, in front, marked PIT & GALERY. Why should the word
not be spelt with one L as with two?
The entrance to the pit was stated to be threepence, and to the galery
twopence. We heard the drums and pipes of the orchestra as we sate at
dinner; it seemed to be a good opportunity to examine Irish humour of a
peculiar sort, and we promised ourselves a pleasant evening in the pit.
But, although the drums began to beat at half-past six, and a crowd of
young people formed round the ladder at that hour, to whom the manager
of the troop addressed the most vehement invitations to enter, nobody
seemed to be inclined to mount the steps; for the fact, most likely was
that not one of the poor fellows possessed the requisite twopence which
would induce the fat old lady who sate by it to fling open the
gallery-door. At one time I thought of offering a half-crown for a
purchase of tickets for twenty and so at once benefiting the management
and the crowd of ragged urchins who stood wistfully without his
pavilion; but it seemed ostentatious, and we had not the courage to face
the tall man in the greatcoat gesticulating and shouting in front of the
stage and make the proposition.
Why not? It would have given the company potatoes at least for supper,
and made a score of children happy. They would have seen ‘the learned
pig who spells your name, the feats of manly activity, the wonderful
Italian vaulting’; and they would have heard the comic songs by ‘your
humble servant.’
‘Your humble servant’ was the head of the troop: a long man, with a
broad accent, a yellow topcoat, and a piteous lean face. What a
speculation was this poor fellow’s! he must have a company of at least a
dozen to keep. There were three girls in trousers, who danced in front
of the stage, in Polish caps, tossing their arms about to the tunes of
three musicianers; there was a page, two young tragedy actors, and a
clown; there was the fat old woman at the gallery-door waiting for the
twopences; there was the Jack-pudding; and it was evident that there
must have been some one within, or else who would take care of the
learned pig?
The poor manager stood in front, and shouted to the little Irishry
beneath; but no one seemed to move. Then he brought forward Jack
Pudding, and had a dialogue with him; the jocularity of which, by
heavens! made the heart ache to hear. We had determined, at least, to go
to the play before that, but the dialogue was too much: we were obliged
to walk away, unable to face that dreadful Jack Pudding, and heard the
poor manager shouting still for many hours through the night, and the
drums thumping vain invitations to the people. Oh unhappy children of
the Hibernian Thespis! it is my belief that they must have eaten the
learned pig that night for supper.
It was Sunday morning when we left the little inn at Roundwood; the
people were flocking in numbers to church, on cars and pillions, neat,
comfortable, and well-dressed. We saw in this country more health, more
beauty, and more shoes than I have remarked in any quarter. That famous
resort of sightseers, the Devil’s Glen, lies at a few miles’ distance
from the little village; and, having gone on the car as near to the spot
as the road permitted, we made across the fields--boggy, stony,
ill-tilled fields they were--for about a mile, at the end of which walk,
we found ourselves on the brow of the ravine that has received so ugly a
name.
Is there a legend about the place? No doubt for this, as for almost
every other natural curiosity in Ireland, there is some tale of monk,
saint, fairy, or devil; but our guide in the present day was a barrister
from Dublin, who did not deal in fictions by any means so romantic, and
the history, whatever it was, remained untold. Perhaps the little
breechesless cicerone who offered himself, would have given us the
story, but we dismissed the urchin with scorn, and had to find our own
way through bush and bramble down to the entrance of the gully.
Here we came on a cataract, which looks very big in Messrs. Curry’s
pretty little Guide-book (that every traveller to Wicklow will be sure
to have in his pocket); but the waterfall, on this shining Sabbath
morning, was disposed to labour as little as possible, and, indeed, is a
spirit of a very humble ordinary sort.
But there is a ravine of a mile and a half, through which a river runs
roaring (a lady who keeps the gate will not object to receive a
gratuity)--there is a ravine, or Devil’s Glen, which forms a delightful
wild walk, and where a Methusaleh of a landscape-painter might find
studies for all his life long. All sorts of foliage and colour, all
sorts of delightful caprices of light and shadow--the river tumbling and
frothing amidst the boulders--_raucum per lævia murmur saxa ciens_, and
a chorus of 150,000 birds (there might be more), hopping, twittering,
singing under the clear cloudless Sabbath scene, make this walk one of
the most delightful that can be taken; and, indeed, I hope there is no
harm in saying that you may get as much out of an hour’s walk there, as
out of the best hour’s extempore preaching. But this was as a salvo to
our conscience for not being at church.
Here, however, was a long aisle, arched gothically overhead, in a much
better taste than is seen in some of those dismal new churches; and, by
way of painted glass, the sun lighting up multitudes of various-coloured
leaves, and the birds for choristers, and the river by way of organ, and
in it stones enough to make a whole library of sermons. No man can walk
in such a place without feeling grateful, and grave, and humble; and
without thanking Heaven for it as he comes away. And, walking and musing
in this free happy place, one could not help thinking of a million and a
half of brother Cockneys, shut up in their huge prison (the treadmill
for the day being idle), and told by some legislators that relaxation is
sinful, that works of art are abominations, except on week-days, and
that their proper place of resort is a dingy tabernacle, where a
loud-voiced man is howling about hell-fire in bad grammar. Is not this
beautiful world, too, a part of our religion? Yes, truly, in whatever
way my Lord John Russell may vote; and it is to be learned without
having recourse to any professor at any Bethesda, Ebenezer, or
Jerusalem; there can be no mistake about it; no terror, no bigoted
dealing of damnation to one’s neighbour--it is taught without false
emphasis or vain spouting on the preacher’s part--how should there be
such with such a preacher?
This wild onslaught upon sermons and preachers needs perhaps an
explanation; for which purpose we must whisk back out of the Devil’s
Glen (improperly so named) to Dublin, and to this day week, when, at
this very time, I heard one of the first preachers of the city deliver a
sermon that lasted for an hour and twenty minutes--time enough to walk
up the Glen and back, and remark a thousand delightful things by the
way.
Mr. G----‘s church (though there would be no harm in mentioning the
gentleman’s name, for a more conscientious and excellent man, as it is
said, cannot be) is close by the Custom House in Dublin, and crowded
morning and evening with his admirers. The service was beautifully read
by him, and the audience joined in the responses, and in the psalms and
hymns,[28] with a fervour which is very unusual in England. Then came
the sermon; and what more can be said of it than that it was extempore,
and lasted for an hour and twenty minutes? The orator never failed once
for a word, so amazing is his practice; though, as a stranger to this
kind of exercise, I could not help trembling for the performer, as one
has for Madame Saqui on the slack-rope, in the midst of a blaze of
rockets and squibs, expecting every minute she must go over. But the
artist was too skilled for that; and after some tremendous bound of a
metaphor in the midst of which you expect he must tumble neck and heels,
and be engulfed in the dark abyss of nonsense, down he was sure to come,
in a most graceful attitude too, in the midst of a fluttering ‘ah!’ from
a thousand wondering people.
But I declare solemnly that when I came to try and recollect of what the
exhibition consisted, and give an account of the sermon at dinner that
evening, it was quite impossible to remember a word of it; although, to
do the orator justice, he repeated many of his opinions a great number
of times over. Thus, if he had to discourse of death to us, it was--At
the approach of the Dark Angel of the Grave--at the coming of the grim
King of Terrors--at the warning of that awful Power to whom all of us
must bow down--at the summons of that Pallid Spectre whose equal foot
knocks at the monarch’s tower or the poor man’s cabin--and so forth.
There is an examiner of plays, and indeed there ought to be an examiner
of sermons, by which audiences are to be fully as much injured or
misguided as by the other named exhibitions. What call have reverend
gentlemen to repeat their dicta half a dozen times over, like Sir Robert
Peel when he says anything that he fancies to be witty? Why are men to
be kept for an hour and twenty minutes listening to that which may be
more effectually said in twenty?
And it need not be said here that a church is not a sermon-house--that
it is devoted to a purpose much more lofty and sacred, for which has
been set apart the noblest service, every single word of which latter
has been previously weighed with the most scrupulous and thoughtful
reverence. And after this sublime work of genius, learning, and piety is
concluded, is it not a shame that a man should mount a desk, who has not
taken the trouble to arrange his words beforehand, and speak thence his
crude opinions in his doubtful grammar? It will be answered that the
extempore preacher does not deliver crude opinions, but that he arranges
his discourse beforehand; to all which it may be answered that Mr.----
contradicted himself more than once in the course of the above oration,
and repeated himself a half-dozen of times. A man in that place has no
right to say a word too much or too little.
And it comes to this,--it is the preacher the people follow, not the
prayers; or why is this church more frequented than any other? It is
that warm emphasis, and word-mouthing, and vulgar imagery, and glib
rotundity of phrase, which brings them together and keeps them happy and
breathless. Some of this class call the Cathedral Service _Paddy’s
Opera_; they say it is Popish--downright scarlet--they won’t go to it.
They will have none but their own hymns--and pretty they are--no
ornaments but those of their own minister, his rank incense and tawdry
rhetoric. Coming out of the church, on the Custom House steps hard by,
there was a fellow with a bald large forehead, a new black coat, a
little Bible, spouting--spouting _in omne volubilis œvum_--the very
counterpart of the reverend gentleman hard by. It was just the same
thing, just as well done, the eloquence quite as easy and round, the
amplifications as ready, the big words rolling round the tongue, just as
within doors. But we are out of the Devil’s Glen by this time; and
perhaps, instead of delivering a sermon there, we had better have been
at church hearing one.
The country people, however, are far more pious; and the road along
which we went to Glendalough was thronged with happy figures of people
plodding to or from mass. A chapel-yard was covered with grey cloaks;
and at a little inn hard by, stood numerous carts, cars, shandry-dans,
and pillioned horses, awaiting the end of the prayers. The aspect of the
country is wild, and beautiful of course; but why try to describe it? I
think the Irish scenery just like the Irish melodies--sweet, wild, and
sad even in the sunshine. You can neither represent one nor other by
words; but I am sure if one could translate ‘The Meeting of the Waters’
into form and colours, it would fall into the exact shape of a tender
Irish landscape. So, take and play that tune upon your fiddle, and shut
your eyes, and muse a little, and you have the whole scene before you.
I don’t know if there is any tune about Glendalough; but if there be, it
must be the most delicate, fantastic, fairy melody that ever was played.
Only fancy can describe the charms of that delightful place. Directly
you see it, it smiles at you as innocent and friendly as a little child;
and once seen, it becomes your friend for ever, and you are always happy
when you think of it. Here is a little lake, and little fords across it,
surrounded by little mountains, and which lead you now to little islands
where there are all sorts of fantastic little old chapels and
graveyards; or, again, into little brakes and shrubberies where small
rivers are crossing over little rocks, plashing and jumping, and singing
as loud as ever they can. Thomas Moore has written rather an awful
description of it; and it may indeed appear big to _him_, and to the
fairies who must have inhabited the place in old days--that’s clear. For
who could be accommodated in it except the little people?
There are seven churches, whereof the clergy must have been the smallest
persons, and have had the smallest benefices and the littlest
congregations ever known. As for the cathedral, what a bishoplet it must
have been that presided there!--the place would hardly hold the Bishop
of London, or Mr. Sidney Smith--two full-sized clergymen of these
days--who would be sure to quarrel there for want of room, or for any
other reason. There must have been a dean no bigger than Mr. Moore
before mentioned, and a chapter no bigger than that chapter in _Tristram
Shandy_ which does not contain a single word, and mere popguns of
canons, and a beadle about as tall as Crofton Croker, to whip the little
boys who were playing at taw (with peas) in the yard.
They say there was a university, too, in the place, with I don’t know
how many thousand scholars; but for accounts of this, there is an
excellent guide on the spot, who, for a shilling or two, will tell all
he knows, and a great deal more too.
There are numerous legends, too, concerning St. Kevin, and Fin Mac Coul
and the devil, and the deuce knows what. But these stories are, I am
bound to say, abominably stupid and stale; and some guide[29] ought to
be seized upon and choked, and flung into the lake, by way of warning to
the others to stop their interminable prate. This is the curse
attending curiosity, for visitors to almost all the show-places in the
country: you have not only the guide--who himself talks too much, but a
string of ragged amateurs, starting from bush and briar, ready to carry
his honour’s umbrella or my lady’s cloak, or to help either up a bank or
across a stream. And all the while they look wistfully in your face,
saying, ‘Give me sixpence!’ as clear as looks can speak. The
unconscionable rogues! how dare they, for the sake of a little
starvation or so, interrupt gentlefolks in their pleasure?
A long tract of wild country, with a park or two here and there, a
police barrack perched on a hill, a half-starved-looking church
stretching its long scraggy steeple over a wide plain, mountains whose
base is richly cultivated while their tops are purple and lonely, warm
cottages and farms nestling at the foot of the hills, and humble cabins
here and there on the wayside, accompany the car, that jingles back over
fifteen miles of ground through Inniskerry to Bray. You pass by wild
gaps and greater and lesser Sugar Loaves; and about eight o’clock, when
the sky is quite red with sunset, and the long shadows are of such a
purple as (they may say what they like) Claude could no more paint than
I can, you catch a glimpse of the sea, beyond Bray, and crying out,
‘θἁλαττα, θἁλαττα! affect to be wondrously delighted by the
sight of that element.
The fact is, however, that at Bray is one of the best inns in Ireland;
and there you may be perfectly sure is a good dinner ready, five minutes
after the honest car-boy, with innumerable hurroos and smacks of his
whip, has brought up his passengers to the door with a gallop.
* * * * *
As for the Vale of Avoca, I have not described that; because (as has
been before occasionally remarked) it is vain to attempt to describe
natural beauties; and because, secondly (though this is a minor
consideration), we did not go thither. But we went on another day to the
Dargle, and to Shanganah, and the city of Cabinteely, and to the
Scalp--that wild pass; and I have no more to say about them, than about
the Vale of Avoca. The Dublin cockney, who has these places at his door,
knows them quite well; and, as for the Londoner, who is meditating a
trip to the Rhine for the summer, or to Britanny or Normandy, let us
beseech him to see his _own country first_ (if Lord Lyndhurst will allow
us to call this a part of it); and if, after twenty-four hours of an
easy journey from London, the cockney be not placed in the midst of a
country as beautiful, as strange to him, as romantic as the most
imaginative man on ‘Change can desire,--may this work be praised by the
critics all around and never reach a second edition!
CHAPTER XXV
COUNTRY MEETINGS IN KILDARE--MEATH--DROGHEDA
An agricultural show was to be held at the town of Naas, and I was glad,
after having seen the grand exhibition at Cork, to be present at a more
homely, unpretending country festival, where the eyes of Europe, as the
orators say, did not happen to be looking on. Perhaps men are apt, under
the idea of this sort of inspection, to assume an air somewhat more
pompous and magnificent than that which they wear every day. The Naas
meeting was conducted without the slightest attempt at splendour or
display--a hearty, modest, matter-of-fact country meeting.
[Illustration]
Market-day was fixed upon of course, and the town, as we drove into it,
was thronged with frieze-coats, the market-place bright with a great
number of apple-stalls, and the street filled with carts and vans of
numerous small tradesmen, vending cheeses, or cheap crockeries, or
ready-made clothes and such goods. A clothier, with a great crowd round
him, had arrayed himself in a staring new waistcoat of his stock, and
was turning slowly round to exhibit the garment, spouting all the while
to his audience, and informing them that he could fit out any person, in
one minute, ‘in a complete new shuit from head to fut.’ There seemed to
be a crowd of gossips at every shop-door, and, of course, a number of
gentlemen waiting at the inn-steps, criticising the cars and carriages
as they drove up. Only those who live in small towns know what an object
of interest the street becomes, and the carriages and horses which pass
therein. Most of the gentlemen had sent stock to compete for the prizes.
The shepherds were tending the stock. The judges were making their
award, and until their sentence was given, no competitors could enter
the show-yard. The entrance to that, meanwhile, was thronged by a great
posse of people, and as the gate abutted upon an old grey tower, a
number of people had scaled that, and were looking at the beasts in the
court below. Likewise, there was a tall haystack, which possessed
similar advantages of situation, and was equally thronged with men and
boys. The rain had fallen heavily all night, the heavens were still
black with it, and the coats of the men, and the red feet of many
ragged female spectators, were liberally spattered with mud.
The first object of interest we were called upon to see was a famous
stallion; and passing through the little by-streets (dirty and small,
but not so small and dirty as other by-streets to be seen in Irish
towns) we came to a porte-cochère, leading into a yard filled with wet
fresh hay, sinking juicily under the feet; and here in a shed was the
famous stallion. His sire must have been a French diligence-horse; he
was of a roan colour, with a broad chest, and short clean legs. His
forehead was ornamented with a blue ribbon, on which his name and prizes
were painted, and on his chest hung a couple of medals by a chain--a
silver one awarded to him at Cork, a gold one carried off by superior
merit from other stallions assembled to contend at Dublin. When the
points of the animal were sufficiently discussed, a mare, his sister,
was produced, and admired still more than himself. Any man who has
witnessed the performance of the French horses in the Havre diligence,
must admire the vast strength and the extraordinary swiftness of the
breed; and it was agreed on all hands, that such horses would prove
valuable in this country, where it is hard now to get a stout horse for
the road, so much has the fashion for blood, and nothing but blood,
prevailed of late.
By the time the stallion was seen, the judges had done their
arbitration; and we went to the yard, where broad-backed sheep were
resting peaceably in their pens; bulls were led about by the nose;
enormous turnips, both Swedes and Aberdeens, reposed in the mud; little
cribs of geese, hens, and peafowl were come to try for the prize; and
pigs might be seen--some encumbered with enormous families, others with
fat merely. They poked up one brute to walk for us: he made, after many
futile attempts, a desperate rush forward, his legs almost lost in fat,
his immense sides quivering and shaking with the exercise; he was then
allowed to return to his straw, into which he sunk panting. Let us hope
that he went home with a pink ribbon round his tail that night, and got
a prize for his obesity.
I think the pink ribbon was, at least to a Cockney, the pleasantest
sight of all; for on the evening after the show we saw many carts going
away so adorned, having carried off prizes on the occasion. First came a
great bull stepping along, he and his driver having each a bit of pink
in their hats; then a cart full of sheep; then a car of
good-natured-looking people, having a churn in the midst of them that
sported a pink favour. When all the prizes were distributed, a select
company sate down to dinner at Macavoy’s Hotel; and no doubt a reporter
who was present has given in the county paper an account of all the
good things eaten and said. At our end of the table we had saddle of
mutton, and I remarked a boiled leg of the same delicacy, with turnips,
at the opposite extremity. Before the vice I observed a large piece of
roast beef, which I could not observe at the end of dinner, because it
was all swallowed. After the mutton we had cheese, and were just
beginning to think that we had dined very sufficiently, when a squadron
of apple-pies came smoking in, and convinced us that, in such a glorious
cause, Britons are never at fault. We ate up the apple-pies, and then
the punch was called for by those who preferred that beverage to wine,
and the speeches began.
The chairman gave ‘The Queen,’ nine times nine and one cheer more;
‘Prince Albert and the rest of the Royal Family,’ great cheering; ‘The
Lord-Lieutenant’--his Excellency’s health was received rather coolly, I
thought. And then began the real business of the night: Health of the
Naas Society, health of the Agricultural Society, and healths all round;
not forgetting the Sallymount Beagles and the Kildare Foxhounds--which
toasts were received with loud cheers and halloos by most of the
gentlemen present, and elicited brief speeches from the masters of the
respective hounds, promising good sport next season. After the Kildare
Foxhounds, an old farmer in a grey coat got gravely up, and without
being requested to do so in the least, sung a song, stating that--
‘At seven in the morning by most of the clocks
We rode to Kilruddery in search of a fox’;
and at the conclusion of his song challenged a friend to give another
song. Another old farmer, on this, rose and sung one of Morris’s songs
with a great deal of queer humour; and, no doubt many more songs were
sung during the evening, for plenty of hot-water jugs were blocking the
door as we went out.
The jolly frieze-coated songster who celebrated the Kilruddery fox,
sung, it must be confessed, most woefully out of tune; but still it was
pleasant to hear him, and I think the meeting was the most agreeable one
I have seen in Ireland: there was more good-humour, more cordial union
of classes, more frankness and manliness, than one is accustomed to find
in Irish meetings. All the speeches were kind-hearted, straightforward
speeches, without a word of politics or an attempt at oratory: it was
impossible to say whether the gentlemen present were Protestant or
Catholic,--each one had a hearty word of encouragement for his tenant,
and a kind welcome for his neighbour. There were forty stout, well-to-do
farmers in the room, renters of fifty, seventy, a hundred acres of land.
There were no clergymen present, though it would have been pleasant to
have seen one of each persuasion, to say grace for the meeting and the
meat.
At a similar meeting at Ballytore the next day, I had an opportunity of
seeing a still finer collection of stock than had been brought to Naas,
and at the same time one of the most beautiful, flourishing villages in
Ireland. The road to it from H---- town, if not remarkable for its rural
beauty, is pleasant to travel, for evidences of neat and prosperous
husbandry are around you everywhere--rich crops in the fields, and neat
cottages by the roadside, accompanying us as far as Ballytore--a white,
straggling village, surrounding green fields, of some five furlongs
square, with a river running in the midst of them, and numerous fine
cattle in the green. Here is a large windmill, fitted up like a castle,
with battlements and towers; the castellan thereof is a good-natured old
Quaker gentleman, and numbers more of his following inhabit the town.
The consequence was, that the shops of the village were the neatest
possible, though by no means grand or portentous. Why should Quaker
shops be neater than other shops? They suffer to the full as much
oppression as the rest of the hereditary bondsmen; and yet, in spite of
their tyrants, they prosper.
I must not attempt to pass an opinion upon the stock exhibited at
Ballytore; but, in the opinion of some large agricultural proprietors
present, it might have figured with advantage in any show in England,
and certainly was finer than the exhibition at Naas; which, however, is
a very young society. The best part of the show, however, to everybody’s
thinking (and it is pleasant to observe the manly fair-play spirit which
characterises the society), was, that the prizes of the Irish
Agricultural Society were awarded to two men--one a labourer, the other
a very small holder, both having reared the best stock exhibited on the
occasion. At the dinner, which took place in a barn of the inn, smartly
decorated with laurels for the purpose, there was as good and stout a
body of yeomen as at Naas the day previous, but only two landlords; and
here, too, as at Naas, neither priest nor parson. Cattle-feeding, of
course, formed the principal theme of the after-dinner discourse--not,
however, altogether to the exclusion of tillage; and there was a good
and useful prize for those who could not afford to rear fat oxen--for
the best-kept cottage and garden namely, which was won by a poor man
with a large family and scanty precarious earnings, but who yet found
means to make the most of his small means, and to keep his little
cottage neat and cleanly. The tariff and the plentiful harvest together
had helped to bring down prices severely; and we heard from the farmers
much desponding talk. I saw hay sold for £2 the ton, and oats for 8s.
3d. the barrel.
In the little village I remarked scarcely a single beggar, and very few
bare feet indeed among the crowds who came to see the show. Here the
Quaker village had the advantage of the town of Naas, in spite of its
poorhouse, which was only half full when we went to see it; but the
people prefer beggary and starvation abroad, to comfort and neatness in
the union-house.
A neater establishment cannot be seen than this; and liberty must be
very sweet indeed, when people prefer it and starvation to the certainty
of comfort in the union-house. We went to see it after the show at Naas.
The first persons we saw at the gate of the place were four buxom
lasses, in blue jackets and petticoats, who were giggling and laughing
as gaily as so many young heiresses of a thousand a year, and who had a
colour in their cheeks that any lady of Almack’s might envy. They were
cleaning pails and carrying in water from a green court or playground in
front of the house, which some of the able-bodied men of the place were
busy in enclosing. Passing through the large entrance of the house, a
nondescript Gothic building, we came to a court divided by a road and
two low walls: the right enclosure is devoted to the boys of the
establishment, of whom there were about fifty at play--boys more healthy
or happy it is impossible to see. Separated from them is the nursery;
and here were seventy or eighty young children, a shrill clack of happy
voices leading the way to the door where they were to be found. Boys and
children had a comfortable little uniform, and shoes were furnished for
all; though the authorities did not seem particularly severe in
enforcing the wearing of the shoes, which most of the young persons left
behind them.
In spite of all the _Times’s_ in the world, the place was a happy one.
It is kept with a neatness and comfort to which, until his entrance into
the union-house, the Irish peasant must perforce have been a stranger.
All the rooms and passages are white, well scoured, and airy; all the
windows are glazed; all the beds have a good store of blankets and
sheets. In the women’s dormitories there lay several infirm persons, not
ill enough for the infirmary, and glad of the society of the common
room. In one of the men’s sleeping-rooms we found a score of old
grey-coated men sitting round another who was reading prayers to them;
and outside the place we found a woman starving in rags, as she had been
ragged and starving for years; her husband was wounded, and lay in his
house upon straw; her children were ill with a fever; she had neither
meat, nor physic, nor clothing, nor fresh air, nor warmth for
them;--and she preferred to starve on rather than enter the house.
The last of our agricultural excursions was to the fair of Castledermot,
celebrated for the show of cattle to be seen there, and attended by the
farmers and gentry of the neighbouring counties. Long before reaching
the place we met troops of cattle coming from it--stock of a beautiful
kind, for the most part large, sleek, white, long-backed, most of the
larger animals being bound for England. There was very near as fine a
show in the pastures along the road, which lies across a light green
country with plenty of trees to ornament the landscape, and some neat
cottages along the roadside.
At the turnpike of Castledermot the droves of cattle met us by scores no
longer, but by hundreds, and the long street of the place was thronged
with oxen, sheep, and horses, and with those who wished to see, to sell,
or to buy. The squires were altogether in a cluster at the
police-houses; the owners of the horses rode up and down, showing the
best paces of their brutes; among whom you might see Paddy, in his
ragged frieze-coat, seated on his donkey’s bare rump, and proposing him
for sale. I think I saw a score of this humble though useful breed that
were brought for sale to the fair. ‘I can sell him,’ says one fellow,
with a pompous air, ‘wid his tackle or widout.’ He was looking as grave
over the negotiation as if it had been for a thousand pounds. Besides
the donkeys, of course there was plenty of poultry, and there were pigs
without number, shrieking, and struggling, and pushing hither and
thither among the crowd, rebellious to the straw-rope. It was a fine
thing to see one huge grunter, and the manner in which he was landed
into a cart. The cart was let down on an easy inclined plane to tempt
him; two men ascending, urged him by the forelegs, other two entreated
him by the tail. At length, when more than half of his body had been
coaxed upon the cart, it was suddenly whisked up, causing the animal
thereby to fall forward; a parting shove sent him altogether into the
cart, the two gentlemen inside jump out, and the monster is left to ride
home.
The farmers, as usual, were talking of the tariff, predicting ruin to
themselves, as farmers will, on account of the decreasing price of
stock, and the consequent fall of grain. Perhaps the person most to be
pitied is the poor pig-proprietor yonder: it is his rent which he is
carrying through the market, squeaking at the end of the straw-rope, and
Sir Robert’s bill adds insolvency to that poor fellow’s misery.
This was the last of the sights which the kind owner of H---- town had
invited me into his country to see; and I think they were among the most
pleasing I witnessed in Ireland. Rich and poor were working friendlily
together; priest and parson were alike interested in these honest,
homely, agricultural festivals; not a word was said about hereditary
bondage and English tyranny; and one did not much regret the absence of
those patriotic topics of conversation. If but for the sake of the
change, it was pleasant to pass a few days with people among whom there
was no quarrelling; no furious denunciations against Popery on the part
of the Protestants, and no tirades against the parsons from their bitter
and scornful opponents of the other creed.
Next Sunday, in the county Meath, in a quiet old church lying amongst
meadows and fine old stately avenues of trees, and for the benefit of a
congregation of some thirty persons, I heard for the space of an hour
and twenty minutes some thorough Protestant doctrine, and the Popish
superstitions properly belaboured. Does it strengthen a man in his own
creed to hear his neighbour’s belief abused? One would imagine so; for
though abuse converts nobody, yet many of our pastors think they are not
doing their duty by their own fold unless they fling stones at the flock
in the next field, and have, for the honour of the service, a match at
cudgelling with the shepherd. Our shepherd to-day was of this pugnacious
sort.
The Meath landscape, if not varied and picturesque, is extremely rich
and pleasant; and we took some drives along the banks of the Boyne, to
the noble park of Slane (still sacred to the memory of George IV., who
actually condescended to pass some days there), and to Trim, of which
the name occurs so often in Swift’s Journals, and where stands an
enormous old castle that was inhabited by Prince John. It was taken from
him by an Irish chief, our guide said; and from the Irish chief it was
taken by Oliver Cromwell. O’Thuselah was the Irish chief’s name no
doubt.
Here, too, stands, in the midst of one of the most wretched towns in
Ireland, a pillar erected in honour of the Duke of Wellington by the
gentry of his native county. His birthplace, Dangan, lies not far off.
And as we saw the hero’s statue, a flight of birds had hovered about it:
there was one on each epaulette and two on his marshal’s staff; and,
besides these wonders, we saw a certain number of beggars; and a madman,
who was walking round a mound and preaching a sermon on grace; and a
little child’s funeral came passing through the dismal town, the only
stirring thing in it (the coffin was laid on a one-horse country car--a
little deal box, in which the poor child lay--and a great troop of
people followed the humble procession); and the innkeeper, who had
caught a few stray gentlefolk in a town where travellers must be rare,
and in his inn, which is more gaunt and miserable than the town itself,
and which is by no means rendered more cheerful because sundry
theological works are left for the rare frequenters in the coffee-room.
The innkeeper brought in a bill which would have been worthy of Long’s,
and which was paid with much grumbling on both sides.
It would not be a bad rule for the traveller in Ireland to avoid those
inns where theological works are left in the coffee-room. He is pretty
sure to be made to pay very dearly for these religious privileges.
We waited for the coach at the beautiful lodge and gate of Annsbrook;
and one of the sons of the house coming up, invited us to look at the
domain, which is as pretty and neatly ordered as--as any in England. It
is hard to use this comparison so often, and must make Irish hearers
angry. Can’t one see a neat house and grounds without instantly thinking
that they are worthy of the sister country; and implying, in our cool
way, its superiority everywhere else? Walking in this gentleman’s
grounds, I told him, in the simplicity of my heart, that the
neighbouring country was like Warwickshire, and the grounds as good as
any English park. Is it the fact that English grounds _are_ superior, or
only that Englishmen are disposed to consider them so?
A pretty little twining river, called the Nanny’s Water, runs through
the Park: there is a legend about that, as about other places. Once upon
a time (ten thousand years ago), St. Patrick being thirsty as he passed
by this country, came to the house of an old woman, of whom he asked a
drink of milk. The old woman brought it to his reverence with the best
of welcomes, and----here it is a great mercy that the Belfast mail
comes up, whereby the reader is spared the rest of the history.
The Belfast mail had only to carry us five miles to Drogheda, but, in
revenge, it made us pay three shillings for the five miles; and again,
by way of compensation, it carried us over five miles of a country that
was worth, at least, five shillings to see--not romantic or especially
beautiful, but having the best of all beauty--a quiet, smiling,
prosperous, unassuming, _work-day_ look, that in views and landscapes
most good judges admire. Hard by Nanny’s Water, we came to Duleek
Bridge, where, I was told, stands an old residence of the De Bath
family, who were, moreover, builders of the picturesque old Bridge.
It leads over a wide green common, which puts one in mind of Eng---- (a
plague on it, there is the comparison again!), and at the end of the
common lies the village among trees: a beautiful and peaceful sight. In
the background there was a tall, ivy-covered old tower, looking noble
and imposing, but a ruin and useless--then there was a church, and next
to it a chapel--the very same sun was shining upon both. The chapel and
church were connected by a farmyard, and a score of golden ricks were in
the background, the churches in unison, and the people (typified by the
corn-ricks) flourishing at the feet of both--may one ever hope to see
the day in Ireland when this little landscape allegory shall find a
general application?
For some way, after leaving Duleek, the road and the country round
continue to wear the agreeable cheerful look just now lauded. You pass
by a house where James II. is said to have slept the night before the
Battle of the Boyne (he took care to sleep far enough off on the night
after), and also by an old red-brick hall, standing at the end of an old
chace or terrace-avenue, that runs for about a mile down to the house,
and finishes at a moat towards the road. But as the coach arrives near
Drogheda, and in the boulevards of that town, all resemblance to England
is lost. Up hill and down, we pass low rows of filthy cabins in dirty
undulations. Parents are at the cabin-doors dressing the hair of ragged
children; shockheads of girls peer out from the black circumference of
smoke, and children inconceivably filthy, yell wildly and vociferously
as the coach passes by. One little ragged savage rushed furiously up the
hill, speculating upon permission to put on the drag-chain at
descending, and hoping for a halfpenny reward. He put on the chain, but
the guard did not give a halfpenny. I flung him one, and the boy rushed
wildly after the carriage, holding it up with joy. ‘The man inside has
given me one,’ says he, holding it up exultingly to the guard. I flung
out another (by-the-bye, and without any prejudice, the halfpence in
Ireland _are_ smaller than those of England), but when the child got
this halfpenny, small as it was, it seemed to overpower him--the little
man’s look of gratitude was worth a great deal more than the biggest
penny ever struck.
The town itself, which I had three-quarters of an hour to ramble
through, is smoky, dirty, and lively. There was a great bustle in the
black main street, and several good shops, though some of the houses
were in a half state of ruin, and battered shutters closed many of the
windows, where formerly had been ‘Emporiums,’ ‘Repositories,’ and other
grandly-titled abodes of small commerce. Exhortations to repeal were
liberally plastered on the blackened walls, proclaiming some past or
promised visit of the great agitator. From the bridge is a good bustling
spectacle of the river and the craft; the quays were grimy with the
discharge of the coal-vessels that lay alongside them; the warehouses
were not less black; the seamen and porters loitering on the quay were
as swarthy as those of Puddledock; numerous factories and chimneys were
vomiting huge clouds of black smoke: the commerce of the town is stated
by the Guide-book to be considerable, and increasing of late years. Of
one part of its manufactures every traveller must speak with
gratitude--of the ale namely, which is as good as the best brewed in the
sister kingdom. Drogheda ale is to be drunk all over Ireland in the
bottled state: candour calls for the acknowledgment that it is equally
praiseworthy in draught. And while satisfying himself of this fact, the
philosophic observer cannot but ask why ale should not be as good
elsewhere as at Drogheda; is the water of the Boyne the only water in
Ireland whereof ale can be made?
Above the river and craft, and the smoky quays of the town, the hills
rise abruptly, up which innumerable cabins clamber. On one of them, by a
church, is a round tower or fort, with a flag; the church is the
successor of one battered down by Cromwell in 1649, in his frightful
siege of the place. The place of one of his batteries is still marked
outside the town, and known as ‘Cromwell’s Mount’; here he ‘made the
breach assaultable, and, by the help of God, stormed it.’ He chose the
strongest point of the defence for his attack.
After being twice beaten back, by the divine assistance he was enabled
to succeed in a third assault: he ‘knocked on the head’ all the officers
of the garrison; he gave orders that none of the men should be spared.
‘I think,’ says he, ‘that night we put to the sword two thousand men,
and one hundred of them having taken possession of St. Peter’s steeple
and a round tower next the gate, called St. Sunday’s, I ordered the
steeple of St. Peter’s to be fired, when one in the flames was heard to
say, “God confound me, I burn, I burn!”’ The Lord General’s history of
‘this great mercy vouchsafed to us’ concludes with appropriate religious
reflections: and prays Mr. Speaker of the House of Commons to remember
that ‘it is good that God alone have all the glory.’ Is not the
recollection of this butchery almost enough to make an Irishman turn
rebel?
When troops march over the bridge, a young friend of mine (whom I
shrewdly suspect to be an Orangeman in his heart) told me that their
bands play the ‘Boyne Water.’ Here is another legend of defeat for the
Irishman to muse upon; and here it was, too, that King Richard II.
received the homage of four Irish kings, who flung their skenes or
daggers at his feet and knelt to him, and were wonder-stricken by the
riches of his tents and the garments of his knights and ladies. I think
it is in Lingard that the story is told; and the antiquarian has no
doubt seen that beautiful old manuscript at the British Museum where
these yellow-mantled warriors are seen riding down to the king, splendid
in his forked beard, and peaked shoes, and long, dangling, scalloped
sleeves, and embroidered gown.
The Boyne winds picturesquely round two sides of the town, and,
following it, we came to the Linen Hall,--in the days of the linen
manufacture a place of note, now the place where Mr. O’Connell harangues
the people,--but all the windows of the house were barricaded when we
passed it, and of linen or any other sort of merchandise there seemed to
be none. Three boys were running past it with a mouse tied to a string,
and a dog galloping after: two little children were paddling down the
street, one saying to the other, ‘_Once I had a halfpenny_, and bought
apples with it.’ The barges were lying lazily on the river, on the
opposite side of which was a wood of a gentleman’s domain, over which
the rooks were cawing, and by the shore were some ruins, where ‘Mr. Ball
once had his kennel of hounds’--touching reminiscence of former
prosperity!
There is a very large and ugly Roman Catholic chapel in the town, and a
smaller one of better construction; it was so crowded, however, although
on a week-day, that we could not pass beyond the chapel-yard; where were
great crowds of people, some praying, some talking, some buying and
selling. There were two or three stalls in the yard, such as one sees
near Continental churches, presided over by old women, with a store of
little brass crucifixes, beads, books, and bénitiers for the faithful to
purchase. The church is large and commodious within, and looks (not like
all other churches in Ireland) as if it were frequented. There is a
hideous stone monument in the churchyard representing two corpses half
rotted away;--time or neglect had battered away the inscription, nor
could we see the dates of some older tombstones in the ground, which
were mouldering away in the midst of nettles and rank grass on the wall.
By a large public school of some reputation, where a hundred boys are
educated (my young guide the Orangeman was one of them; he related with
much glee how, on one of the Liberator’s visits, a schoolfellow had
waved a blue and orange flag from the window and cried, ‘King William
for ever, and to hell with the Pope!’), there is a fine old gate leading
to the river, and in excellent preservation, in spite of time and Oliver
Cromwell. It is a good specimen of Irish architecture. By this time that
exceedingly slow coach, the Newry Lark, had arrived at that exceedingly
filthy inn where the mail had dropped us an hour before. An enormous
Englishman was holding a vain combat of wit with a brawny grinning
beggar-woman at the door. ‘There’s a _clever_ gentleman,’ says the
beggar-woman; ‘sure he’ll give me something.’ ‘How much should you
like?’ says the Englishman, with playful jocularity. ‘Musha,’ says she,
‘many a _littler_ man nor you has given me a shilling.’ The coach drives
away; the lady had clearly the best of the joking-match: but I did not
see, for all that, that the Englishman gave her a single farthing.
From Castle Bellingham--as famous for ale as Drogheda, and remarkable
likewise for a still better thing than ale, an excellent resident
proprietress, whose fine park lies by the road, and by whose care and
taste the village has been rendered one of the most neat and elegant I
have yet seen in Ireland--the road to Dundalk is exceedingly
picturesque, and the traveller has the pleasure of feasting his eye with
the noble line of Mourn Mountains, which rise before him while he
journeys over a level country for several miles. The Newry Lark, to be
sure, disdained to take advantage of the easy roads to accelerate its
movements in any way; but the aspect of the country is so pleasant that
one can afford to loiter over it. The fields were yellow with the
stubble of the corn, which in this, one of the chief corn counties of
Ireland, had just been cut down; and a long straggling line of neat
farmhouses and cottages runs almost the whole way from Castle Bellingham
to Dundalk. For nearly a couple of miles of the distance the road runs
along the picturesque flat called Lurgan Green; and gentlemen’s
residences and parks are numerous along the road, and one seems to have
come amongst a new race of people, so trim are the cottages, so neat the
gates and hedges, in this peaceful smiling district. The people, too,
show signs of the general prosperity. A National school had just
dismissed its female scholars as we passed through Dunlar; and though
the children had most of them bare feet, their clothes were good and
clean, their faces rosy and bright, and their long hair as shiny and as
nicely combed as young ladies’ need to be. Numerous old castles and
towers stand on the road here and there; and long before we entered
Dundalk we had a sight of a huge factory-chimney in the town, and of the
dazzling white walls of the Roman Catholic church lately erected there.
The cabin-suburb is not great, and the entrance to the town is much
adorned by the Hospital--a handsome Elizabethan building--and a row of
houses of a similar architectural style, which lie on the left of the
traveller.
CHAPTER XXVI
DUNDALK
The stranger can’t fail to be struck with the look of Dundalk, as he has
been with the villages and country leading to it, when contrasted with
places in the south and west of Ireland. The coach stopped at a
cheerful-looking _Place_, of which almost the only dilapidated mansion
was the old inn at which it discharged us, and which did not hold out
much prospect of comfort. But in justice to the King’s Arms, it must be
said that good beds and dinners are to be obtained there by voyagers;
and if they choose to arrive on days when his Grace the Most Reverend
the Lord Archbishop of Armagh and R.C. Primate of Ireland is dining with
his clergy, the house of course is crowded, and the waiters, and the boy
who carries in the potatoes, a little hurried and flustered. When their
reverences were gone, the laity were served; and I have no doubt, from
the leg of a duck which I got, that the breast and wings must have been
very tender.
Meanwhile, the walk was pleasant through the bustling little town. A
grave old church, with a tall copper spire, defends one end of the main
street; and a little way from the inn is the superb new chapel, which
the architect, Mr. Duff, has copied from King’s College Chapel in
Cambridge. The ornamental part of the interior is not yet completed; but
the area of the chapel is spacious and noble, and three handsome altars
of scagliola (or some composition resembling marble) have been erected
of handsome and suitable form. When, by the aid of further
subscriptions, the church shall be completed, it will be one of the
handsomest places of worship the Roman Catholics possess in this
country. Opposite the chapel stands a neat low black building--the gaol;
in the middle of the building, and over the doorway, is an ominous
balcony and window, with an iron beam overhead. Each end of the beam is
ornamented with a grinning iron skull! Is this the hanging-place? and do
these grinning cast-iron skulls facetiously explain the business for
which the beam is there? For shame! for shame! Such disgusting emblems
ought no longer to disgrace a Christian land. If kill we must, let us do
so with as much despatch and decency as possible,--not brazen out our
misdeeds and perpetuate them in this frightful satiric way.
A far better cast-iron emblem stands over a handsome shop in the place
hard by--a plough namely, which figures over the factory of Mr.
Shekelton, whose industry and skill seem to have brought the greatest
benefit to his fellow-townsmen, of whom he employs numbers in his
foundries and workshops. This gentleman was kind enough to show me
through his manufactories, where all sorts of iron-works are made, from
a steam-engine to a door-key; and I saw everything to admire, and a vast
deal more than I could understand, in the busy, cheerful, orderly,
bustling, clanging place. Steam-boilers were hammered here; and pins
made by a hundred busy hands in a manufactory above. There was the
engine-room, where the monster was whirring his ceaseless wheels and
directing the whole operations of the factory, fanning the forges,
turning the drills, blasting into the pipes of the smelting-houses: he
had a house to himself, from which his orders issued to the different
establishments round about. One machine was quite awful to me, a gentle
cockney, not used to such things--it was an iron-devourer, a wretch with
huge jaws and a narrow mouth, ever opening and shutting, opening and
shutting. You put a half-inch iron plate between his jaws, and they shut
not a whit slower or quicker than before, and bit through the iron as if
it were a sheet of paper. Below the monster’s mouth was a punch that
performed its duties with similar dreadful calmness, going on its rising
and falling.
I was so lucky as to have an introduction to the Vicar of Dundalk, which
that gentleman’s kind and generous nature interpreted into a claim for
unlimited hospitality; and he was good enough to consider himself bound
not only to receive me, but to give up previous engagements abroad in
order to do so. I need not say that it afforded me sincere pleasure to
witness, for a couple of days, his labours among his people; and indeed
it was a delightful occupation to watch both flock and pastor. The world
is a wicked, selfish, abominable place, as the parson tells us; but his
reverence comes out of his pulpit and gives the flattest contradiction
to his doctrine, busying himself with kind actions from morning till
night, denying to himself, generous to others, preaching the truth to
young and old, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, consoling the
wretched, and giving hope to the sick;--and I do not mean to say that
this sort of life is led by the Vicar of Dundalk merely, but do firmly
believe that it is the life of the great majority of the Protestant and
Roman Catholic clergy of the country. There will be no breach of
confidence, I hope, in publishing here the journal of a couple of days
spent with one of these reverend gentlemen, and telling some readers, as
idle and profitless as the writer, what the clergyman’s peaceful labours
are.
In the first place, we set out to visit the church--the comfortable
copper-spired old edifice that was noticed two pages back. It stands in
a green churchyard of its own, very neat and trimly kept, with an old
row of trees that were dropping their red leaves upon a flock of vaults
and tombstones below. The building being much injured by flame and time,
some hundred years back, was repaired, enlarged, and ornamented--as
churches in those days were ornamented--and has consequently lost a good
deal of its Gothic character. There is a great mixture, therefore, of
old style and new style and no style; but, with all this, the church is
one of the most commodious and best appointed I have seen in Ireland.
The vicar held a council with a builder regarding some ornaments for the
roof of the church, which is, as it should be, a great object for his
care and architectural taste, and on which he has spent a very large sum
of money. To these expenses he is, in a manner bound, for the living is
a considerable one, its income being no less than two hundred and fifty
pounds a year; out of which he has merely to maintain a couple of
curates and a clerk and sexton, to contribute largely towards schools
and hospitals, and relieve a few scores of pensioners of his own who are
fitting objects of private bounty.
We went from the church to a school, which has been long a favourite
resort of the good vicar’s: indeed, to judge from the schoolmaster’s
books, his attendance there is almost daily--and the number of the
scholars some two hundred. The number was considerably greater until the
schools of the Educational Board were established, when the Roman
Catholic clergymen withdrew many of their young people from Mr.
Thackeray’s establishment.
We found a large room with sixty or seventy boys at work; in an upper
chamber were a considerable number of girls, with their teachers, two
modest and pretty young women; but the favourite resort of the vicar was
evidently the Infant School,--and no wonder: it is impossible to witness
a more beautiful or touching sight.
Eighty of these little people, healthy, clean, and rosy--some in smart
gowns and shoes and stockings, some with patched pinafores and little
bare pink feet--sate upon a half-dozen low benches, and were singing, at
the top of their fourscore fresh voices, a song when we entered. All the
voices were hushed as the vicar came in, and a great bobbing and
curtseying took place; whilst a hundred and sixty innocent eyes turned
awfully towards the clergyman, who tried to look as unconcerned as
possible, and began to make his little ones a speech. ‘I have brought,’
says he, ‘a gentleman from England, who has heard of my little children
and their school, and hopes he will carry away a good account of it.
Now, you know, we must all do our best to be kind and civil to
strangers: what can we do here for this gentleman that he would
like?--do you think he would like a song?’
_All the Children._--‘We’ll sing to him!’
Then the schoolmistress, coming forward, sang the first words of a hymn,
which at once eighty little voices took up, or near eighty--for some of
the little things were too young to sing yet, and all they could do was
to beat the measure with little red hands as the others sang. It was a
hymn about heaven, with a chorus of ‘Will not that be joyful, joyful?’
and one of the verses beginning ‘Little children, too, are there.’ Some
of my fair readers (if I have the honour to find such) who have been
present at similar tender charming concerts, know the hymn, no doubt. It
was the first time I had ever heard it; and I do not care to own that it
brought tears to my eyes, though it is ill to parade such kind of
sentiment in print. But I think I will never, while I live, forget that
little chorus, nor would any man who has ever loved a child or lost one.
God bless you, O little happy singers! What a noble and useful life is
his, who, in place of seeking wealth or honour, devotes his life to such
a service as this! And all through our country, thank God! in quiet
humble corners that busy citizens and men of the world never hear of,
there are thousands of such men employed in such holy pursuits, with no
reward beyond that which the fulfilment of duty brings them. Most of
these children were Roman Catholics. At this tender age the priests do
not care to separate them from their little Protestant brethren: and no
wonder. He must be a child-murdering Herod who would find the heart to
do so.
After the hymn, the children went through a little scripture catechism,
answering very correctly, and all in a breath, as the mistress put the
questions. Some of them were, of course, too young to understand the
words they uttered; but the answers are so simple that they cannot fail
to understand them before long; and they learn in spite of themselves.
The catechism being ended, another song was sung; and now the vicar (who
had been humming the chorus along with his young singers, and, in spite
of an awful and grave countenance, could not help showing his extreme
happiness) made another oration, in which he stated that the gentleman
from England was perfectly satisfied; that he would have a good report
of the Dundalk children to carry home with him; that the day was very
fine, and the schoolmistress would probably like to take a walk; and,
finally, would the young people give her a holiday? ‘As many,’
concluded he, ‘as will give the schoolmistress a holiday, hold up their
hands!’ This question was carried unanimously.
But I am bound to say, when the little people were told that as many as
_wouldn’t like_ a holiday were to hold up _their_ hands, all the little
hands went up again exactly as before: by which it may be concluded
either that the infants did not understand his reverence’s speech, or
that they were just as happy to stay at school as to go and play; and
the reader may adopt whichever of the reasons he inclines to. It is
probable that both are correct.
The little things are so fond of the school, the vicar told me as we
walked away from it, that on returning home they like nothing better
than to get a number of their companions who don’t go to school, and to
play at infant-school.
[Illustration]
They may be heard singing their hymns in the narrow alleys and humble
houses in which they dwell; and I was told of one dying who sang his
song of ‘Will not that be joyful, joyful?’ to his poor mother weeping at
his bedside, and promising her that they should meet where no parting
should be.
‘There was a child in the school,’ said the vicar, ‘whose father, a
Roman Catholic, was a carpenter by trade, a good workman, and earning a
considerable weekly sum, but neglecting his wife and children and
spending his earnings in drink. We have a song against drunkenness that
the infants sing; and one evening, going home, the child found her
father excited with liquor and ill-treating his wife. The little thing
forthwith interposed between them, told her father what she had heard at
school regarding the criminality of drunkenness and quarrelling, and
finished her little sermon with the hymn. The father was first amused,
then touched; and the end of it was that he kissed his wife, and asked
her to forgive him, hugged his child, and from that day would always
have her in his bed, made her sing to him morning and night, and forsook
his old haunts for the sake of his little companion.’
He was quite sober and prosperous for eight months; but the vicar at the
end of that time began to remark that the child looked ragged at school,
and passing by her mother’s house, saw the poor woman with a black eye.
‘If it was any one but your husband, Mrs. C----, who gave you that black
eye,’ says the vicar, ‘tell me; but if he did it, don’t say a word.’ The
woman was silent, and soon after, meeting her husband, the vicar took
him to task. ‘You were sober for eight months. Now tell me fairly,
C----,’ says he, ‘were you happier when you lived at home with your wife
and child, or are you more happy now?’ The man owned that he was much
happier formerly, and the end of the conversation was, that he promised
to go home once more and try the sober life again, and he went home and
succeeded.
The vicar continued to hear good accounts of him; but passing one day by
his house he saw the wife there looking very sad. Had her husband
relapsed?--No, he was dead, she said--dead of the cholera; but he had
been sober ever since his last conversation with the clergyman, and had
done his duty to his family up to the time of his death. ‘I said to the
woman,’ said the good old clergyman, in a grave low voice, ‘your husband
is gone now to the place where, according to his conduct here, his
eternal reward will be assigned him; and let us be thankful to think
what a different position he occupies now, to that which he must have
held had not his little girl been the means, under God, of converting
him.’
Our next walk was to the County Hospital, the handsome edifice which
ornaments the Drogheda entrance of the town, and which I had remarked on
my arrival. Concerning this hospital, the governors were, when I passed
through Dundalk, in a state of no small agitation; for a gentleman by
the name of----, who, from being an apothecary’s assistant in the place,
had gone forth as a sort of amateur inspector of hospitals throughout
Ireland, had thought fit to censure their extravagance in erecting the
new building, stating that the old one was fully sufficient to hold
fifty patients, and that the public money might consequently have been
spared. Mr.----‘s plan for the better maintenance of them in general
is, that commissioners should be appointed to direct them, and not
county gentlemen as heretofore; the discussion of which question does
not need to be carried on in this humble work.
My guide, who is one of the governors of the new hospital, conducted me,
in the first place, to the old one--a small dirty house in a damp and
low situation, with but three rooms to accommodate patients, and these
evidently not fit to hold fifty, or even fifteen patients. The new
hospital is one of the handsomest buildings of the size and kind in
Ireland; an ornament to the town, as the angry commissioner stated, but
not after all a building of undue cost, for the expense of its erection
was but £3000, and the sick of the county are far better accommodated in
it than in the damp and unwholesome tenement regretted by the eccentric
commissioner.
An English architect, Mr. Smith, of Hertford, designed and completed the
edifice; strange to say, only exceeding his estimates by the sum of
three-and-sixpence, as the worthy governor of the hospital with great
triumph told me. The building is certainly a wonder of cheapness, and,
what is more, so complete for the purpose for which it was intended, and
so handsome in appearance, that the architect’s name deserves to be
published by all who hear it; and if any country newspaper editors
should notice this volume, they are requested to make the fact known.
The house is provided with every convenience for men and women, with all
the appurtenances of baths, water, gas, airy wards, and a garden for
convalescents; and below, a dispensary, a handsome board-room, kitchen,
and matron’s apartments, etc.--indeed, a noble requiring a house for a
large establishment need not desire a handsomer one than this, at its
moderate price of £3000. The beauty of this building has, as is almost
always the case, created emulation, and a terrace in the same taste has
been raised in the neighbourhood of the hospital.
From the Hospital we bent our steps to the Institution; of which place I
give below the rules, and a copy of the course of study, and the
dietary: leaving English parents to consider the fact, that their
children can be educated at this place for _thirteen pounds a year_. Nor
is there anything in the establishment savouring of the Dotheboys
Hall.[30] I never saw, in any public school in England, sixty cleaner,
smarter, more gentlemanlike boys than were here at work. The upper
class had been at work on Euclid as we came in, and were set, by way of
amusing the stranger, to perform a sum of compound interest of
diabolical complication, which, with its algebraic and arithmetic
solution, was handed up to me by three or four of the pupils; and I
strove to look as wise as I possibly could. Then they went through
questions of mental arithmetic with astonishing correctness and
facility; and finding from the master that classics were not taught in
the school, I took occasion to lament this circumstance, saying, with a
knowing air, that I would like to have examined the lads in a Greek
play.
Classics, then, these young fellows do not get. Meat they get but twice
a week. Let English parents bear this fact in mind; but that the lads
are healthy and happy, anybody who sees them can have no question;
furthermore, they are well instructed in a sound practical
education--history, geography, mathematics, religion. What a place to
know of would this be for many a poor half-pay officer, where he may put
his children in all confidence that they will be well cared for and
soundly educated! Why have we not State Schools in England, where, for
the prime cost--for a sum which never need exceed for a young boy’s
maintenance £25 a year--our children might be brought up? We are
establishing National Schools for the labourer; why not give education
to the sons of the poor gentry--the clergyman whose pittance is small,
and would still give his son the benefit of a public education--the
artist--the officer--the merchant’s office-clerk, the literary man? What
a benefit might be conferred upon all of us if honest Charter Schools
could be established for our children, and where it would be impossible
for Squeers to make a profit![31]
Our next day’s journey led us, by half-past ten o’clock, to the ancient
town of Louth, a little poor village now, but a great seat of learning
and piety, it is said, formerly, where there stood a university and
abbeys, and where St. Patrick worked wonders. Here my kind friend, the
rector, was called upon to marry a smart sergeant of police to a pretty
lass, one of the few Protestants who attend his church; and, the
ceremony over, we were invited to the house of the bride’s father hard
by, where the clergyman was bound to cut the cake, and drink a glass of
wine to the health of the new-married couple. There was evidently to be
a dance and some merriment in the course of the evening; for the good
mother of the bride (Oh, blessed is he who has a good mother-in-law!)
was busy at a huge fire in the little kitchen, and along the road we met
various parties of neatly-dressed people, and several of the sergeant’s
comrades, who were hastening to the wedding. The mistress of the
rector’s darling Infant School was one of the bridesmaids: consequently
the little ones had a holiday.
But he was not to be disappointed of his Infant School in this manner;
so, mounting the car again, with a fresh horse, we went a very pretty
drive of three miles to the snug lone schoolhouse of Glyde-farm--near a
handsome park, I believe of the same name, where the proprietor is
building a mansion of the Tudor order.
The pretty scene of Dundalk was here played over again; the children
sang their little hymns, the good old clergyman joined delighted in the
chorus, the holiday was given, and the little hands held up, and I
looked at more clean bright faces and little rosy feet--the scene need
not be repeated in print, but I can understand what pleasure a man must
take in the daily witnessing of it, and in the growth of these little
plants, which are set and tended by his care. As we returned to Louth, a
woman met us with a curtsey and expressed her sorrow that she had been
obliged to withdraw her daughter from one of the rector’s schools, which
the child was vexed at leaving too. But the orders of the priest were
peremptory; and who can say they were unjust? The priest, on his side,
was only enforcing the rule which the parson maintains as his:--the
latter will not permit his young flock to be educated except upon
certain principles and by certain teachers; the former has his own
scruples unfortunately also--and so that noble and brotherly scheme of
National Education falls to the ground. In Louth, the National School
was standing by the side of the priest’s chapel--it is so almost
everywhere throughout Ireland; the Protestants have rejected, on very
good motives doubtless, the chance of union which the Education Board
gave them--be it so: if the children of either sect be educated apart,
so that they _be_ educated, the education scheme will have produced its
good, and the union will come afterwards.
The church at Louth stands boldly upon a hill looking down on the
village, and has nothing remarkable in it but neatness, except the
monument of a former rector, Dr. Little, which attracts the spectator’s
attention from the extreme inappropriateness of the motto on the coat of
arms of the reverend defunct. It looks rather unorthodox to read in a
Christian temple, where a man’s bones have the honour to lie, and where,
if anywhere, humility is requisite--that there is _multum in parvo_, ‘a
great deal in Little.’ O Little, in life you were not much, and lo! you
are less now; why should filial piety engrave that pert pun upon your
monument, to cause people to laugh in a place where they ought to be
grave? The defunct doctor built a very handsome rectory-house, with a
set of stables that would be useful to a nobleman, but are rather too
commodious for a peaceful rector who does not ride to hounds; and it was
in Little’s time, I believe, that the church was removed from the old
abbey, where it formerly stood, to its present proud position on the
hill.
The abbey is a fine ruin, the windows of a good style, the tracings of
carvings on many of them; but a great number of stones and ornaments
were removed formerly to build farm-buildings withal, and the place is
now as rank and ruinous as the generality of Irish burying-places seem
to be. Skulls lie in clusters amongst nettle-beds by the abbey-walls;
graves are only partially covered with rude stones; a fresh coffin was
lying broken in pieces within the abbey; and the surgeon of the
dispensary hard by might procure subjects here, almost without
grave-breaking. Hard by the abbey is a building of which I beg leave to
offer the following interesting sketch:--
[Illustration]
The legend in the country goes that the place was built for the
accommodation of Saint ‘Murtogh,’ who lying down to sleep here in the
open fields, not having any place to house under, found to his surprise,
on waking in the morning, the above edifice, which the angels had built.
The angelic architecture, it will be seen, is of rather a rude kind; and
the village antiquary, who takes a pride in showing the place, says that
the building was erected _two thousand years ago_. In the handsome
grounds of the rectory is another spot visited by popular tradition--a
fairy’s ring: a regular mound of some thirty feet in height, flat and
even on the top, and provided with a winding path for the
foot-passenger to ascend. Some trees grew on the mound, one of which was
removed in order to make the walk. But the country-people cried out
loudly at this desecration, and vowed that the ‘little people’ had
quitted the country side for ever in consequence.
While walking in the town, a woman meets the rector with a number of
curtseys and compliments, and vows that ‘tis your reverence is the
friend of the poor, and may the Lord preserve you to us, and lady; and
having poured out blessings innumerable, concludes by producing a paper
for her son that’s in trouble in England. The paper ran to the effect,
that ‘We, the undersigned, inhabitants of the parish of Louth, have
known Daniel Horgan ever since his youth, and can speak confidently as
to his integrity, piety, and good conduct.’ In fact, the paper stated
that Daniel Horgan was an honour to his country, and consequently quite
incapable of the crime of sack-stealing, I think, with which at present
he was charged and lay in prison in Durham Castle. The paper had, I
should think, come down to the poor mother from Durham, with a direction
ready written to despatch it back again when signed, and was evidently
the work of one of those benevolent individuals in assize-towns, who,
following the profession of the law, delight to extricate unhappy young
men of whose innocence (from various six-and-eightpenny motives) they
feel convinced. There stood the poor mother, as the rector examined the
document, with a huge wafer in her hand, ready to forward it so soon as
it was signed; for the truth is, that ‘We, the undersigned,’ were as yet
merely imaginary.
‘You don’t come to church,’ says the rector. ‘I know nothing of you or
your son: why don’t you go to the priest?’
‘Oh, your reverence, my son’s to be tried next Tuesday,’ whimpered the
woman; and then said the priest was not in the way, but as we had seen
him a few minutes before, recalled the assertion, and she confessed that
she _had_ been to the priest, and that he would not sign; and fell to
prayers, tears, and unbounded supplications to induce the rector to give
his signature. But that hard-hearted divine, stating that he had _not_
known Daniel Horgan from his youth upwards, that he could not certify as
to his honesty or dishonesty, enjoined the woman to make an attempt upon
the R.C. curate, to whose handwriting he would certify if need were.
The upshot of the matter was that the woman returned with a certificate
from the R.C. curate as to her son’s good behaviour while in the
village, and the rector certified that the handwriting was that of the
R.C. clergyman in question, and the woman popped her big red wafer into
the letter and went her way. Tuesday is passed long ere this: Mr.
Horgan’s guilt or innocence is long since clearly proved, and he
celebrates the latter in freedom, or expiates the former at the mill.
Indeed, I don’t know that there was any call to introduce his adventures
to the public, except, perhaps, it may be good to see how in this little
distant Irish village the blood of life is running. Here goes a happy
party to a marriage, and the parson prays a ‘God bless you!’ upon them,
and the world begins for them. Yonder lies a stall-fed rector in his
tomb, flaunting over his nothingness his pompous heraldic motto; and
yonder lie the fresh fragments of a nameless deal coffin, which any foot
may kick over. Presently you hear the clear voices of little children
praising God; and here comes a mother wringing her hands and asking for
succour for her lad, who was a child but the other day. Such _motus
animorum atque hoec certamina tanta_ are going on in an hour of an
October day in a little pinch of clay in the county Louth.
Perhaps--being in the moralising strain--the honest surgeon at the
dispensary might come in as an illustration. He inhabits a neat humble
house, a story higher than his neighbours’, but with a thatched roof. He
relieves a thousand patients yearly at the dispensary, he visits seven
hundred in the parish, he supplies the medicines gratis; and receiving
for these services the sum of about one hundred pounds yearly, some
county economists and calculators are loud against the extravagance of
his salary, and threaten his removal. All these individuals and their
histories we presently turn our backs upon, for, after all, dinner is at
five o’clock, and we have to see the new road to Dundalk, which the
county has lately been making.
Of this undertaking, which shows some skilful engineering--some gallant
cutting of rocks and hills, and filling of valleys, with a tall and
handsome stone bridge thrown across the river, and connecting the high
embankments on which the new road at that place is formed--I can say
little, except that it is a vast convenience to the county, and a great
credit to the surveyor and contractor too; for the latter, though a poor
man, and losing heavily by his bargain, has yet refused to mulct his
labourers of their wages; and, as cheerfully as he can, still pays them
their shilling a day.
CHAPTER XXVII
NEWRY, ARMAGH, BELFAST--FROM DUNDALK TO NEWRY
My kind host gave orders to the small ragged boy that drove the car to
take ‘particular care of the little gentleman’; and the car-boy,
grinning in appreciation of the joke, drove off at his best pace, and
landed his cargo at Newry, after a pleasant two hours’ drive. The
country for the most part is wild, but not gloomy--the mountains round
about are adorned with woods and gentlemen’s seats; and the car-boy
pointed out one hill--that of Slievegullion, which kept us company all
the way--as the highest hill in Ireland. Ignorant or deceiving car-boy!
I have seen a dozen hills, each the highest in Ireland, in my way
through the country, of which the inexorable Guide-book gives the
measurement and destroys the claim. Well, it was the tallest hill, in
the estimation of the car-boy; and in this respect the world is full of
car-boys. Has not every mother of a family a Slievegullion of a son,
who, according to her measurement, towers above all other sons? Is not
the patriot, who believes himself equal to three Frenchmen, a car-boy in
heart? There was a kind young creature, with a child in her lap, that
evidently held this notion. She paid the child a series of compliments,
which would have led one to fancy he was an angel from heaven at the
least; and her husband sate gravely by, very silent, with his arms round
a barometer.
Beyond these there were no incidents or characters of note, except an
old hostler that they said was ninety years old, and watered the horse
at a lone inn on the road. ‘Stop!’ cries this wonder of years and rags,
as the car, after considerable parley, got under weigh. The car-boy
pulled up, thinking a fresh passenger was coming out of the inn.
‘_Stop, till one of the gentlemen gives me something_,’ says the old
man, coming slowly up with us; which speech created a laugh, and got him
a penny: he received it without the least thankfulness, and went away
grumbling to his pail.
Newry is remarkable as being the only town I have seen which has no
cabin suburb: strange to say, the houses begin all at once, handsomely
coated and hatted with stone and slate; and if Dundalk was prosperous,
Newry is better still. Such a sight of neatness and comfort is
exceedingly welcome to an English traveller, who, moreover, finds
himself, after driving through a plain bustling clean street, landed at
a large plain comfortable inn, where business seems to be done, where
there are smart waiters to receive him, and a comfortable warm
coffee-room that bears no traces of dilapidation.
What the merits of the _cuisine_ may be I can’t say for the information
of travellers; a gentleman to whom I had brought a letter from Dundalk
taking care to provide me at his own table, accompanying me previously
to visit the lions of the town. A river divides it, and the counties of
Armagh and Down: the river runs into the sea at Carlingford Bay, and is
connected by a canal with Lough Neagh, and thus with the north of
Ireland. Steamers to Liverpool and Glasgow sail continually. There are
mills, foundries, and manufactories, of which the Guide-book will give
particulars; and the town of 13,000 inhabitants is the busiest and most
thriving that I have yet seen in Ireland.
Our first walk was to the church; a large and handsome building,
although built in the unlucky period when the Gothic style was coming
into vogue. Hence one must question the propriety of many of the
ornaments, though the whole is massive, well-finished, and stately. Near
the church stands the Roman Catholic chapel, a very fine building, the
work of the same architect, Mr. Duff, who erected the chapel at Dundalk;
but, like almost all other edifices of the kind in Ireland that I have
seen, the interior is quite unfinished, and already so dirty and
ruinous, that one would think a sort of genius for dilapidation must
have been exercised in order to bring it to its present condition. There
are tattered green-baize doors to enter at, a dirty clay floor, and
cracked plaster walls, with an injunction to the public not to spit on
the floor. Maynooth itself is scarcely more dreary. The architect’s
work, however, does him the highest credit: the interior of the church
is noble and simple in style; and one can’t but grieve to see a fine
work of art, that might have done good to the country, so defaced and
ruined as this is.
The Newry poorhouse is as neatly ordered and comfortable as any house,
public or private, in Ireland: the same look of health which was so
pleasant to see among the Naas children of the union-house, was to be
remarked here: the same care and comfort for the old people. Of
able-bodied there were but few in the house; it is in winter that there
are most applicants for this kind of relief; the sunshine attracts the
women out of the place, and the harvest relieves it of the men.
Cleanliness, the matron said, is more intolerable to most of the inmates
that any other regulation of the house; and instantly on quitting the
house they relapse into their darling dirt, and of course at their
periodical return are subject to the unavoidable initiatory lustration.
Newry has many comfortable and handsome public buildings; the streets
have a business-like look, the shops and people are not too poor, and
the southern grandiloquence is not shown here in the shape of fine words
for small wares. Even the beggars are not so numerous, I fancy, or so
coaxing and wheedling in their talk. Perhaps, too, among the gentry, the
same moral change may be remarked, and they seem more downright and
plain in their manner; but one must not pretend to speak of national
characteristics from such a small experience as a couple of evenings’
intercourse may give.
Although not equal in natural beauty to a hundred other routes which the
traveller takes in the south, the ride from Newry to Armagh is an
extremely pleasant one, on account of the undeniable increase of
prosperity which is visible through the country. Well-tilled fields,
neat farmhouses, well-dressed people, meet one everywhere, and people
and landscape alike have a plain, hearty, flourishing look.
The greater part of Armagh has the aspect of a good stout old English
town, although round about the steep on which the cathedral stands (the
Roman Catholics have taken possession of another hill, and are building
an opposition cathedral on this eminence) there are some decidedly Irish
streets, and that dismal combination of house and pig-sty which is so
common in Munster and Connaught.
But the main streets, though not fine, are bustling, substantial, and
prosperous; and a fine green has some old trees and some good houses,
and even handsome stately public buildings, round about it, that remind
one of a comfortable cathedral city across the water.
The cathedral service is more completely performed here than in any
English town, I think. The church is small, but extremely neat, fresh,
and handsome--almost too handsome; covered with spick-and-span gilding
and carved-work in the style of the thirteenth century; every pew as
smart and well-cushioned as my lord’s own seat in the country church;
and for the clergy and their chief, stalls and thrones quite curious for
their ornament and splendour. The Primate with his blue riband and badge
(to whom the two clergymen bow reverently as, passing between them, he
enters at the gate of the altar rail) looks like a noble Prince of the
Church; and I had heard enough of his magnificent charity and kindness
to look with reverence at his lofty handsome features.
Will it be believed that the sermon lasted only for twenty minutes? Can
this be Ireland? I think this wonderful circumstance impressed me more
than any other with the difference between north and south, and, having
the Primate’s own countenance for the opinion, may confess a great
admiration for orthodoxy in this particular.
A beautiful monument to Archbishop Stuart, by Chantrey; a magnificent
stained window, containing the arms of the clergy of the diocese (in the
very midst of which I was glad to recognise the sober old family coat of
the kind and venerable Rector of Louth), and numberless carvings and
decorations, will please the lover of church architecture here. I must
confess, however, that in my idea the cathedral is quite too complete.
It is of the twelfth century, but not the least venerable. It is as neat
and trim as a lady’s drawing-room. It wants a hundred years at least to
cool the raw colour of the stones, and to dull the brightness of the
gilding; all which benefits, no doubt, time will bring to pass, and
future cockneys setting off from London Bridge after breakfast in an
aërial machine may come to hear the morning service here, and not remark
the faults which have struck a too susceptible tourist of the nineteenth
century.
Strolling round the town after service, I saw more decided signs that
Protestantism was there in the ascendant. I saw no less than three
different ladies on the prowl, dropping religious tracts at various
doors; and felt not a little ashamed to be seen by one of them getting
into a car with bag and baggage, being bound for Belfast.
* * * * *
The ride of ten miles from Armagh to Portadown was not the prettiest,
but one of the pleasantest drives I have had in Ireland; for the country
is well cultivated along the whole of the road, the trees in plenty, and
villages and neat houses always in sight. The little farms, with their
orchards and comfortable buildings, were as clean and trim as could be
wished; they are mostly of one story, with long thatched roofs and
shining windows, such as those that may be seen in Normandy and Picardy.
As it was Sunday evening, all the people seemed to be abroad, some
sauntering quietly down the roads--a pair of girls here and there pacing
leisurely in a field, a little group seated under the trees of an
orchard, which pretty adjunct to the farm is very common in this
district; and the crop of apples seemed this year to be extremely
plenty. The physiognomy of the people too has quite changed: the girls
have their hair neatly braided up, not loose over their faces as in the
south; and not only are bare feet very rare, and stockings extremely
neat and white, but I am sure I saw at least a dozen good silk gowns
upon the women along the road, and scarcely one which was not clean and
in good order. The men for the most part figured in jackets, caps, and
trousers, eschewing the old well of a hat which covers the popular head
at the other end of the island, the breeches, and the long, ill-made
tail-coat. The people’s faces are sharp and neat, not broad, lazy,
knowing-looking, like that of many a shambling Diogenes who may be seen
lounging before his cabin in Cork or Kerry. As for the cabins, they have
disappeared; and the houses of the people may rank decidedly as
cottages. The accent, too, is quite different; but this is hard to
describe in print. The people speak with a Scotch twang, and, as I
fancied, much more simply and to the point. A man gives you a downright
answer, without any grin, or joke, or attempt at flattery. To be sure,
these are rather early days to begin to judge of national
characteristics; and very likely the above distinctions have been drawn
after profoundly studying a Northern and a Southern waiter at the inn at
Armagh.
At any rate, it is clear that the towns are vastly improved, the
cottages and villages no less so; the people look active and
well-dressed; a sort of weight seems all at once to be taken from the
Englishman’s mind on entering the province, when he finds himself once
more looking upon comfort, and activity, and resolution. What is the
cause of this improvement? _Protestantism_ is, more than one
Church-of-England man said to me; but for Protestantism, would it not be
as well to read Scotchism?--meaning thrift, prudence, perseverance,
boldness, and common sense, with which qualities any body of men, of any
Christian denomination, would no doubt prosper.
The little brisk town of Portadown, with its comfortable unpretending
houses, its squares and market-place, its pretty quay with craft along
the river,--a steamer building on the dock, close to mills and
warehouses that look in a full state of prosperity,--was a pleasant
conclusion to this ten miles’ drive, that ended at the newly opened
railway-station. The distance hence to Belfast is twenty-five miles;
Lough Neagh may be seen at one point of the line, and the Guide-book
says that the station towns of Lurgan and Lisburn are extremely
picturesque; but it was night when I passed by them, and after a journey
of an hour and a quarter reached Belfast.
That city has been discovered by another eminent cockney traveller (for
though born in America, the dear old Bow-bell blood must run in the
veins of Mr. N. P. Willis), and I have met, in the periodical works of
the country, with repeated angry allusions to his description of
Belfast, the pink heels of the chambermaid who conducted him to bed
(what business had he to be looking at the young woman’s legs at all?),
and his wrath at the beggary of the town and the laziness of the
inhabitants, as marked by a line of dirt running along the walls, and
showing where they were in the habit of lolling.
These observations struck me as rather hard when applied to Belfast,
though possibly pink heels and beggary might be remarked in other cities
of the kingdom; but the town of Belfast seemed to me really to be as
neat, prosperous, and handsome a city as need be seen; and, with respect
to the inn, that in which I stayed, (Kearn’s) was as comfortable and
well-ordered an establishment as the most fastidious cockney can desire,
and with an advantage which some people perhaps do not care for, that
the dinners which cost seven shillings at London taverns are here served
for half a crown; but I must repeat here, in justice to the public, what
I stated to Mr. William the waiter, viz., that half a pint of port wine
_does_ contain more than two glasses--at least it does in happy, happy
England.... Only, to be sure, here the wine is good, whereas the port
wine in England is not port, but, for the most part, an abominable drink
of which it would be a mercy only to give us two glasses; which,
however, is clearly wandering from the subject in hand.
They call Belfast the Irish Liverpool: if people are for calling names,
it would be better to call it the Irish London at once--the chief city
of the kingdom, at any rate. It looks hearty, thriving, and prosperous,
as if it had money in its pockets and roast beef for dinner: it has no
pretensions to fashion, but looks mayhap better in its honest broadcloth
than _some people_ in their shabby brocade. The houses are as handsome
as at Dublin, with this advantage, that people seem to live in them.
They have no attempt at ornament for the most part, but are grave,
stout, red-brick edifices, laid out at four angles in orderly streets
and squares.
The stranger cannot fail to be struck (and haply a little frightened) by
the great number of meeting-houses that decorate the town, and give
evidence of great sermonising on Sundays. These buildings do not affect
the Gothic, like many of the meagre edifices of the Established and the
Roman Catholic churches, but have a physiognomy of their own--a
thick-set citizen look. Porticos have they, to be sure, and ornaments
Doric, Ionic, and what not; but the meeting-house peeps through all
these classical friezes and entablatures; and though one reads of
‘imitations of the Ionic Temple of Ilissus, near Athens,’ the classic
temple is made to assume a bluff, downright, Presbyterian air, which
would astonish the original builder, doubtless. The churches of the
Establishment are handsome and stately;--the Catholics are building a
brick cathedral, no doubt of the Tudor style. The present chapel,
flanked by the National Schools, is an exceedingly unprepossessing
building of the Strawberry Hill or Castle of Otranto Gothic; the keys
and mitre figuring in the centre--‘The cross-keys and night-cap,’ as a
hard-hearted Presbyterian called them to me, with his blunt humour.
The three churches are here pretty equally balanced--Presbyterians
25,000, Catholics 20,000, Episcopalians 17,000. Each party has two or
more newspaper organs; and the wars between them are dire and unceasing,
as the reader may imagine. For whereas, in other parts of Ireland where
Catholics and Episcopalians prevail, and the Presbyterian body is too
small, each party has but one opponent to belabour; here, the Ulster
politician, whatever may be his way of thinking, has the great advantage
of possessing two enemies on whom he may exercise his eloquence; and in
this triangular duel all do their duty nobly. Then there are
subdivisions of hostility. For the Church there is a High Church and a
Low Church journal; for the Liberals there is a Repeal journal and a
No-repeal journal. For the Presbyterians there are yet more varieties of
journalist opinion, of which it does not become a stranger to pass a
judgment. If the _Northern Whig_ says that the _Banner of Ulster_ ‘is a
polluted rag, which has hoisted the red banner of falsehood’ (which
elegant words may be found in the first-named journal of the 13th
October), let us be sure the _Banner_ has a compliment for the _Northern
Whig_ in return; if the Repeal _Vindicator_ and the priests attack the
Presbyterian journals and the Home Missions, the reverend gentlemen of
Geneva are quite as ready with the pen as their brethren of Rome, and
not much more scrupulous in their language than the laity. When I was in
Belfast, violent disputes were raging between Presbyterian and
Episcopalian Conservatives with regard to the Marriage Bill; between
Presbyterians and Catholics on the subject of the Home Missions; between
the Liberals and Conservatives, of course. ‘Thank God,’ for instance,
writes a Repeal journal, ‘that the honour and power _of Ireland_ are not
involved in the disgraceful Afghan war!’--a sentiment insinuating Repeal
and something more; disowning, not merely this or that ministry, but the
sovereign and her jurisdiction altogether. But details of these
quarrels, religious or political, can tend to edify but few readers out
of the country. Even in it, as there are some nine shades of
politico-religious differences, an observer pretending to impartiality
must necessarily displease eight parties, and almost certainly the whole
nine; and the reader who desires to judge the politics of Belfast must
study for himself. Nine journals, publishing four hundred numbers in a
year, each number containing about as much as an octavo volume: these,
and the back numbers of former years, sedulously read, will give the
student a notion of the subject in question. And then, after having read
the statements on either side, he must ascertain the truth of them, by
which time more labour of the same kind will have grown upon him, and he
will have attained a good old age.
Amongst the poor, the Catholics and Presbyterians are said to go in a
pretty friendly manner to the National Schools; but among the
Presbyterians themselves it appears there are great differences and
quarrels, by which a fine institution, the Belfast Academy, seems to
have suffered considerably. It is almost the only building in this large
and substantial place that bears, to the stranger’s eye, an unprosperous
air. A vast building, standing fairly in the midst of a handsome green
and place, and with snug, comfortable red-brick streets stretching away
at neat right angles all around, the Presbyterian College looks handsome
enough at a short distance, but on a nearer view is found in a woful
state of dilapidation. It does not possess the supreme dirt and filth of
Maynooth--_that_ can but belong to one place, even in Ireland; but the
building is in a dismal state of unrepair, steps and windows broken,
doors and stairs battered. Of scholars I saw but a few, and these were
in the drawing academy. The fine arts do not appear as yet to flourish
in Belfast. The models from which the lads were copying were not good:
one was copying a bad copy of a drawing by Prout; one was colouring a
print. The ragged children in a German National School have better
models before them, and are made acquainted with truer principles of art
and beauty.
Hard by is the Belfast Museum, where an exhibition of pictures was in
preparation, under the patronage of the Belfast Art Union. Artists in
all parts of the kingdom had been invited to send their works, of which
the Union pays the carriage; and the porters and secretary were busy
unpacking cases, in which I recognised some of the works which had
before figured on the walls of the London Exhibition rooms.
The book-shops which I saw in this thriving town said much for the
religions disposition of the Belfast public: there were numerous
portraits of reverend gentlemen, and their works of every variety:--_The
Sinners’ Friend, The Watchman on the Tower, The Peep of Day, Sermons
delivered at Bethesda Chapel_, by so-and-so; with hundreds of the neat
little gilt books with bad prints, scriptural titles, and gilt edges,
that came from one or two serious publishing houses in London, and in
considerable numbers from the neighbouring Scotch shores. As for the
Theatre, with such a public the drama can be expected to find but
little favour; and the gentleman who accompanied me in my walk, and to
whom I am indebted for many kindnesses during my stay, said not only
that he had never been in the playhouse, but that he never heard of any
one going thither. I found out the place where the poor neglected
dramatic Muse of Ulster hid herself; and was of a party of six in the
boxes, the benches of the pit being dotted over with about a score more.
Well, it was a comfort to see that the gallery was quite full, and
exceedingly happy and noisy: they stamped, and stormed, and shouted, and
clapped, in a way that was pleasant to hear. One young god, between the
acts, favoured the public with a song--extremely ill sung, certainly,
but the intention was everything; and his brethren above stamped in
chorus with roars of delight.
As for the piece performed, it was a good old melodrama of the British
sort, inculcating a thorough detestation of vice and a warm sympathy
with suffering virtue. The serious are surely too hard upon poor
playgoers. We never for a moment allow rascality to triumph beyond a
certain part of the third act; we sympathise with the woes of young
lovers--her in ringlets and a Polish cap, him in tights and a Vandyke
collar; we abhor avarice or tyranny in the person of ‘the first old man’
with the white wig and red stockings, or of the villain with the roaring
voice and black whiskers; we applaud the honest wag (he is a good fellow
in spite of his cowardice) in his hearty jests at the tyrant before
mentioned; and feel a kindly sympathy with all mankind as the curtain
falls over all the characters in a group, of which successful love is
the happy centre. Reverend gentlemen in meeting-house and church, who
shout against the immoralities of this poor stage, and threaten all
playgoers with the fate which is awarded to unsuccessful plays, should
try and bear less hardly upon us.
An artist, who, in spite of the Art Union, can scarcely, I should think,
flourish in a place that seems devoted to preaching, politics, and
trade, has somehow found his way to this humble little theatre, and
decorated it with some exceedingly pretty scenery--almost the only
indication of a taste for the fine arts which I have found as yet in the
country.
A fine night-exhibition in the town is that of the huge spinning-mills
which surround it, and of which the thousand windows are lighted up at
nightfall, and may be seen from almost all quarters of the city.
A gentleman to whom I had brought an introduction good-naturedly left
his work to walk with me to one of these mills, and stated by whom he
had been introduced to me to the mill-proprietor, Mr. Mulholland.
_‘That_ recommendation,’ said Mr. Mulholland gallantly, ‘is welcome
anywhere.’ It was from my kind friend Mr. Lever. What a privilege some
men have, who can sit quietly in their studies and make friends all the
world over!
Here is the figure of a girl sketched in the place; there are nearly
five hundred girls employed in it. They work in huge long chambers,
lighted by numbers of windows, hot with steam, buzzing and humming with
hundreds of thousands of whirling wheels, that all take their motion
from a steam-engine which lives apart in a hot cast-iron temple of its
own, from which it communicates with the innumerable machines that the
five hundred girls preside over. They have seemingly but to take away
the work when done--the enormous monster in the cast-iron room does it
all. He cards the flax, and combs it, and spins it, and beats it, and
twists it; the five hundred girls stand by to feed him, or take the
material from him, when he has had his will of it. There is something
frightful in the vastness as in the minuteness of this power. Every
thread writhes and twirls as the steam-fate orders it,--every thread, of
which it would take a hundred to make the thickness of a hair.
[Illustration]
I have seldom, I think, seen more good looks than amongst the young
women employed in this place. They work for twelve hours daily, in rooms
of which the heat is intolerable to a stranger; but in spite of it they
looked gay, stout, and healthy; nor were their forms much concealed by
the very simple clothes they wear while in the mill.
The stranger will be struck by the good looks not only of these
spinsters, but of almost all the young women in the streets. I never saw
a town where so many women are to be met--so many and so pretty--with
and without bonnets, with good figures, in neat homely shawls and
dresses. The grisettes of Belfast are among the handsomest ornaments of
it; and as good, no doubt, and irreproachable in morals as their sisters
in the rest of Ireland.
Many of the merchants’ counting-houses are crowded in little
old-fashioned ‘entries,’ or courts, such as one sees about the Bank in
London. In and about these, and in the principal streets in the daytime,
is a great activity, and homely unpretending bustle. The men have a
business look too, and one sees very few flaunting dandies, as in
Dublin. The shopkeepers do not brag upon their signboards, or keep
‘emporiums,’ as elsewhere,--their places of business being for the most
part homely; though one may see some splendid shops, which are not to be
surpassed by London. The docks and quays are busy with their craft and
shipping, upon the beautiful borders of the Lough;--the large red
warehouses stretching along the shores, with ships loading, or
unloading, or building, hammers clanging, pitch-pots flaming and
boiling, seamen cheering in the ships, or lolling lazily on the shore.
The life and movement of a port here give the stranger plenty to admire
and observe. And nature has likewise done everything for the
place--surrounding it with picturesque hills and water;--for which
latter I must confess I was not very sorry to leave the town behind me,
and its mills, and its meeting-houses, and its commerce, and its
theologians, and its politicians.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXVIII
BELFAST TO THE CAUSEWAY
The Lough of Belfast has a reputation for beauty almost as great as that
of the Bay of Dublin; but though, on the day I left Belfast for Larne,
the morning was fine, and the sky clear and blue above, an envious mist
lay on the water, which hid all its beauties from the dozen of
passengers on the Larne coach. All we could see were ghostly-looking
silhouettes of ships gliding here and there through the clouds; and I am
sure the coachman’s remark was quite correct, that it was a pity the day
was so misty. I found myself, before I was aware, entrapped into a
theological controversy with two grave gentlemen outside the
coach--another fog, which did not subside much before we reached
Carrickfergus. The road from the Ulster capital to that little town
seemed meanwhile to be extremely lively; cars and omnibuses passed
thickly peopled. For some miles along the road is a string of handsome
country-houses, belonging to the rich citizens of the town; and we
passed by neat-looking churches and chapels, factories and rows of
cottages clustered round them, like villages of old at the foot of
feudal castles. Furthermore it was hard to see, for the mist which lay
on the water had enveloped the mountains too, and we only had a glimpse
or two of smiling comfortable fields and gardens.
Carrickfergus rejoices in a real romantic-looking castle jutting bravely
into the sea, and famous as a background for a picture. It is of use for
little else now, luckily, nor has it been put to any real warlike
purposes since the day when honest Thurot stormed, took, and evacuated
it. Let any romancer who is in want of a hero peruse the second volume,
or it may be the third, of the _Annual Register_, where the adventures
of that gallant fellow are related. He was a gentleman, a genius, and,
to crown all, a smuggler. He lived for some time in Ireland, and in
England, in disguise; he had love-passages and romantic adventures; he
landed a body of his countrymen on these shores, and died in the third
volume, after a battle gallantly fought on both sides, but in which
victory rested with the British arms. What can a novelist want more?
William III. also landed here; and as for the rest, ‘M’Skimin, the
accurate and laborious historian of the town, informs us that the
founding of the castle is lost in the depths of antiquity.’ It is
pleasant to give a little historic glance at a place as one passes
through. The above facts may be relied on as coming from Messrs. Curry’s
excellent new Guide-book, with the exception of the history of Mons.
Thurot, which is ‘private information,’ drawn years ago from the scarce
work previously mentioned. By the way, another excellent companion to
the traveller in Ireland is the collection of the _Irish Penny
Magazine_, which may be purchased for a guinea, and contains a mass of
information regarding the customs and places of the country. Willis’s
work is amusing, as everything is, written by that lively author, and
the engravings accompanying it as unfaithful as any ever made.
Meanwhile, asking pardon for this double digression, which has been
made while the guard-coachman is delivering his mail-bags--while the
landlady stands looking on in the sun, her hands folded a little below
the waist--while a company of tall burly troops from the castle has
passed by, ‘surrounded’ by a very mean, mealy-faced, uneasy-looking
little subaltern--while the poor, epileptic idiot of the town, wallowing
and grinning in the road, and snorting out supplications for a
halfpenny, has tottered away in possession of the coin;--meanwhile,
fresh horses are brought out, and the small boy who acts behind the
coach, makes an unequal and disagreeable tootooing on a horn kept to
warn sleepy carmen and celebrate triumphal entries into and exits from
cities. As the mist clears up, the country shows round about wild but
friendly; at one place we passed a village where a crowd of well-dressed
people were collected at an auction of farm-furniture, and many more
figures might be seen coming over the fields and issuing from the mist.
The owner of the carts and machines is going to emigrate to America.
Presently we come to the demesne of Red Hall, ‘through which is a pretty
drive of upwards of a mile in length: it contains a rocky glen, the bed
of a mountain stream--which is perfectly dry, except in winter--and the
woods about it are picturesque, and it is occasionally the resort of
summer-parties of pleasure.’ Nothing can be more just than the first
part of the description, and there is very little doubt that the latter
paragraph is equally faithful;--with which we come to Larne, a ‘most
thriving town,’ the same authority says, but a most dirty and
narrow-streeted and ill-built one. Some of the houses reminded one of
the south, as thus--
[Illustration]
A benevolent fellow-passenger said that the window was ‘a convanience’;
and here, after a drive of nineteen miles upon a comfortable coach, we
were transferred with the mail-bags to a comfortable car that makes the
journey to Ballycastle. There is no harm in saying that there was a very
pretty smiling buxom young lass for a travelling companion; and somehow,
to a lonely person, the landscape always looks prettier in such society.
The ‘Antrim coast road,’ which we now, after a few miles, begin to
follow, besides being one of the most noble and gallant works of art
that is to be seen in any country, is likewise a route highly
picturesque and romantic; the sea spreading wide before the spectator’s
eyes upon one side of the route;--the tall cliffs of limestone rising
abruptly above him on the other. There are in the map of Curry’s
Guide-book points indicating castle and abbey ruins in the vicinity of
Glenarm; and the little place looked so comfortable as we abruptly came
upon it round a rock, that I was glad to have an excuse for staying, and
felt an extreme curiosity with regard to the abbey and the castle.
The abbey only exists in the unromantic shape of a wall; the castle,
however, far from being a ruin, is an antique in the most complete
order--an old castle repaired so as to look like new, and increased by
modern wings, towers, gables, and terraces, so extremely old that the
whole forms a grand and imposing-looking baronial edifice, towering
above the little town which it seems to protect, and with which it is
connected by a bridge and a severe-looking armed tower and gate. In the
town is a town-house, with a campanile in the Italian taste, and a
school or chapel opposite, in the Early English; so that the inhabitants
can enjoy a considerable architectural variety. A grave-looking church,
with a beautiful steeple, stands amid some trees hard by a second
handsome bridge and the little quay; and here, too, was perched a poor
little wandering theatre (gallery 1d., pit 2d.), and proposing that
night to play ‘Bombastes Furioso, and the Comic Bally of Glenarm in an
Uproar.’ I heard the thumping of the drum in the evening; but, as at
Roundwood, nobody patronised the poor players: at nine o’clock there was
not a single taper lighted under their awning, and my heart (perhaps it
is too susceptible) bled for Fusbos.
The severe gate of the castle was opened by a kind, good-natured old
porteress, instead of a rough gallowglass with a battle-axe and yellow
shirt (more fitting guardian of so stern a postern), and the old dame
insisted upon my making an application to see the grounds of the castle,
which request was very kindly granted, and afforded a delightful
half-hour’s walk. The grounds are beautiful, and excellently kept; the
trees in their autumn livery of red, yellow, and brown, except some
stout ones that keep to their green summer clothes, and the laurels and
their like, who wear pretty much the same dress all the year round. The
birds were singing with most astonishing vehemence in the dark
glistening shrubberies; but the only sound in the walks was that of the
rakes pulling together the falling leaves. There was of these walks one
especially, flanked towards the river by a turreted wall covered with
ivy, and having on the one side a row of lime-trees that had turned
quite yellow, while opposite them was a green slope, and a quaint
terrace-stair, and a long range of fantastic gables, towers, and
chimneys;--there was, I say, one of these walks which Mr. Cattermole
would hit off with a few strokes of his gallant pencil, and which I
could fancy to be frequented by some of those long-trained, tender,
gentle-looking young beauties whom Mr. Stone loves to design. Here they
come talking of love in a tone that is between a sigh and a whisper,
and gliding in rustling shot silks over the fallen leaves.
There seemed to be a good deal of stir in the little port, where, says
the Guide-book, a couple of hundred vessels take in cargoes annually of
the produce of the district. Stone and lime are the chief articles
exported, of which the cliffs for miles give an unfailing supply; and,
as one travels the mountains at night, the kilns may be seen lighted up
in the lonely places, and flaring red in the darkness.
If the road from Larne to Glenarm is beautiful, the coast route from the
latter place to Cushendall is still more so; and, except peerless
Westport, I have seen nothing in Ireland so picturesque as this noble
line of coast-scenery. The new road, luckily, is not yet completed, and
the lover of natural beauties had better hasten to the spot in time,
ere, by flattening and improving the road, and leading it along the
sea-shore, half the magnificent prospects are shut out, now visible from
along the mountainous old road; which, according to the good old
fashion, gallantly takes all the hills in its course, disdaining to turn
them. At three miles’ distance, near the village of Cairlough, Glenarm
looks more beautiful than when you are close upon it; and, as the car
travels on to the stupendous Garron Head, the traveller, looking back,
has a view of the whole line of coast southward as far as Isle Magee,
with its bays and white villages, and tall precipitous cliffs, green,
white, and grey. Eyes left, you may look with wonder at the mountains
rising above, or presently at the pretty park and grounds of Drumnasole.
Here, near the woods of Nappan, which are dressed in ten thousand
colours--ash-leaves turned yellow, nut-trees red, birch-leaves brown,
lime-leaves speckled over with black spots (marks of a disease which
they will never get over)--stands a school-house that looks like a
French château, having probably been a villa in former days, and
discharges, as we pass, a cluster of fair-haired children that begin
running madly down the hill, their fair hair streaming behind them. Down
the hill goes the car madly too, and you wonder and bless your stars
that the horse does not fall, or crush the children that are running
before, or you that are sitting behind. Every now and then, at a trip of
the horse, a disguised lady’s-maid, with a canary-bird in her lap and a
vast anxiety about her best bonnet in the bandbox, begins to scream; at
which the car-boy grins, and rattles down the hill only the quicker. The
road, which almost always skirts the hillside, has been torn sheer
through the rock here and there; and immense work of levelling,
shovelling, picking, blasting, filling, is going on along the whole
line. As I was looking up a vast cliff, decorated with patches of green
here and there at its summit, and at its base, where the sea had beaten
until now, with long, thin, waving grass, that I told a grocer, my
neighbour, was like mermaids’ hair (though he did not in the least
coincide in the simile)--as I was looking up the hill, admiring two
goats that were browsing on a little patch of green, and two sheep
perched yet higher (I had never seen such agility in mutton)--as, I say
once more, I was looking at these phenomena, the grocer nudges me and
says, ‘_Look on to this side_--_that’s Scotland yon_,’ If ever this book
reaches a second edition, a sonnet shall be inserted in this place,
describing the author’s feelings on HIS FIRST VIEW OF SCOTLAND.
Meanwhile, the Scotch mountains remain undisturbed, looking blue and
solemn far away in the placid sea.
Rounding Garron Head, we come upon the inlet which is called Red Bay,
the shores and sides of which are of red clay, that has taken the place
of limestone, and towards which, between two noble ranges of mountains,
stretches a long green plain, forming, together with the hills that
protect it and the sea that washes it, one of the most beautiful
landscapes of this most beautiful country. A fair writer, whom the
Guide-book quotes, breaks out into strains of admiration in speaking of
this district; calls it ‘Switzerland in miniature,’ celebrates its
mountains of Glenariff and Lurgethan, and lauds, in terms of equal
admiration, the rivers, waterfalls, and other natural beauties that lie
within the glen.
The writer’s enthusiasm regarding this tract of country is quite
warranted, nor can any praise in admiration of it be too high; but alas!
in calling a place ‘Switzerland in miniature,’ do we describe it? In
joining together cataracts, valleys, rushing streams, and blue
mountains, with all the emphasis and picturesqueness of which type is
capable, we cannot get near to a copy of Nature’s sublime countenance;
and the writer can’t hope to describe such grand sights so as to make
them visible to the fireside reader, but can only, to the best of his
taste and experience, warn the future traveller where he may look out
for objects to admire. I think this sentiment has been repeated a score
of times in this journal; but it comes upon one at every new display of
beauty and magnificence, such as here the Almighty in His bounty has set
before us; and every such scene seems to warn one, that it is not made
to talk about too much, but to think of, and love, and be grateful for.
Rounding this beautiful bay and valley, we passed by some caves that
penetrate deep into the red rock, and are inhabited--one by a
blacksmith, whose forge was blazing in the dark; one by cattle; and one
by an old woman that has sold whisky here for time out of mind. The road
then passes under an arch cut in the rock by the same spirited
individual who has cleared away many of the difficulties in the route to
Glenarm, and beside a conical hill, where for some time previous have
been visible the ruins of the ‘ancient ould castle’ of Red Bay. At a
distance, it looks very grand upon its height; but on coming close it
has dwindled down to a mere wall, and not a high one. Hence, quickly we
reach Cushendall, where the grocer’s family are on the look-out for him;
the driver begins to blow his little bugle, and the disguised
lady’s-maid begins to smooth her bonnet and hair.
At this place a good dinner of fresh whiting, broiled bacon, and small
beer was served up to me for the sum of eightpence, while the
lady’s-maid in question took her tea. ‘This town is full of Papists,’
said her ladyship, with an extremely genteel air; and, either in
consequence of this, or because she ate up one of the fish, which she
had clearly no right to, a disagreement arose between us, and we did not
exchange another word for the rest of the journey. The road led us for
fourteen miles by wild mountains, and across a fine aqueduct to
Ballycastle; but it was dark as we left Cushendall, and it was difficult
to see more in the grey evening but that the country was savage and
lonely, except where the kilns were lighted up here and there in the
hills, and a shining river might be seen winding in the dark ravines.
Not far from Ballycastle lies a little old ruin, called the Abbey of
Bonamargy: by it the Margy river runs into the sea, upon which you come
suddenly; and on the shore are some tall buildings and factories, that
looked as well in the moonlight as if they had not been in ruins; and
hence a fine avenue of limes leads to Ballycastle. They must have been
planted at the time recorded in the Guide-book, when a mine was
discovered near the town, and the works and warehouses on the quay
erected. At present, the place has little trade, and half a dozen carts
with apples, potatoes, dried fish, and turf, seem to contain the
commerce of the market.
The picturesque sort of vehicle which is here designed, is said to be
going much out of fashion in the country, the solid wheels giving place
to those common to the rest of Europe. A fine and edifying conversation
took place between the designer and the owner of the vehicle. ‘Stand
still for a minute, you and the car, and I will give you twopence!’
‘What do you want to do with it?’ says the latter. ‘To draw it.’ ‘To
_draw_ it?’ says he, with a wild look of surprise, ‘and is it you’ll
draw it?’ ‘I mean, I want to take a picture of it; you know what a
picture is?’ ‘No, I don’t.’ ‘Here’s one,’ says I, showing him a book.
‘Oh, faith, sir,’ says the carman, drawing back rather alarmed, ‘I’m no
scholar!’ And he concluded by saying, ‘_Will you buy the turf, or will
you not?_ by which straightforward question he showed himself to be a
real practical man of sense; and, as he got an unsatisfactory reply to
this query, he forthwith gave a lash to his pony, and declined to wait a
minute longer. As for the twopence, he certainly accepted that handsome
sum, and put it into his pocket, but with an air of extreme wonder at
the transaction, and of contempt for the giver, which very likely was
perfectly justifiable. I have seen men despised in genteel companies
with not half so good a cause.
In respect to the fine arts, I am bound to say that the people in the
south and west showed much more curiosity and interest with regard to a
sketch and its progress than has been shown by the _badauds_ of the
north; the former looking on by dozens, and exclaiming, ‘That’s Frank
Mahony’s house!’ or, ‘Look at Biddy Mullins and the child!’ or ‘He’s
taking off the chimney now!’ as the case may be; whereas, sketching in
the north, I have collected no such spectators, the people not taking
the slightest notice of the transaction.
[Illustration]
The little town of Ballycastle does not contain much to occupy the
traveller: behind the church stands a ruined old mansion with round
turrets, that must have been a stately tower in former days. The town is
more modern, but almost as dismal as the tower. A little street behind
it slides off into a potato-field--the peaceful barrier of the place;
and hence I could see the tall rock of Bengore, with the sea beyond it,
and a pleasing landscape stretching towards it.
Dr. Hamilton’s elegant and learned book has an awful picture of yonder
head of Bengore; and hard by it the Guide-book says is a coal-mine,
where Mr. Barrow found a globular stone hammer, which, he infers, was
used in the coal-mine before weapons of iron were invented. The former
writer insinuates that the mine must have been worked more than a
thousand years ago, ‘before the turbulent chaos of events that succeeded
the eighth century.’ Shall I go and see a coal-mine that may have been
worked a thousand years since? Why go see it? says idleness. To be able
to say that I have seen it. Sheridan’s advice to his son here came into
my mind;[32] and I shall reserve a description of the mine, and an
antiquarian dissertation regarding it, for publication elsewhere.
Ballycastle must not be left without recording the fact that one of the
snuggest inns in the country is kept by the postmaster there; who has
also a stable full of good horses for travellers who take his little inn
on the way to the Giant’s Causeway.
The road to the Causeway is bleak, wild, and hilly. The cabins along the
road are scarcely better than those of Kerry, the inmates as ragged, and
more fierce and dark-looking. I never was so pestered by juvenile
beggars as in the dismal village of Ballintoy. A crowd of them rushed
after the car, calling for money in a fierce manner, as if it was their
right; dogs as fierce as the children came yelling after the vehicle;
and the faces which scowled out of the black cabins were not a whit more
good-humoured. We passed by one or two more clumps of cabins, with their
turf and corn-stacks lying together at the foot of the hills; placed
there for the convenience of the children, doubtless, who can thus
accompany the car either way, and shriek out their ‘Bonny gantleman, gie
us a hap’ny.’ A couple of churches, one with a pair of its pinnacles
blown off, stood in the dismal open country, and a gentleman’s house
here and there: there were no trees about them, but a brown grass round
about--hills rising and falling in front, and the sea beyond. The
occasional view of the coast was noble; wild Bengore towering eastwards
as we went along; Raghery Island before us, in the steep rocks and caves
of which Bruce took shelter when driven from yonder Scottish coast, that
one sees stretching blue in the north-east.
I think this wild gloomy tract through which one passes is a good
prelude for what is to be the great sight of the day, and got my mind to
a proper state of awe by the time we were near the journey’s end; and
turning away shorewards by the fine house of Sir Francis Macnaghten,
went towards a lone handsome inn, that stands close to the Causeway. The
landlord at Ballycastle had lent me Hamilton’s book, to read on the
road; but I had not time then to read more than half a dozen pages of
it. They described how the author, a clergyman distinguished as a man of
science, had been thrust out of a friend’s house by the frightened
servants one wild night, and butchered by some White Boys, who were
waiting outside, and called for his blood. I had been told at Belfast
that there was a corpse in the inn: was it there now? It had driven off,
the car-boy said, ‘in a handsome hearse and four to Dublin the whole
way.’ It was gone, but I thought the house looked as if the ghost was
there. See, yonder are the black rocks stretching to Portrush; how
leaden and grey the sea looks! how grey and leaden the sky! You hear the
waters roaring evermore, as they have done since the beginning of the
world. The car drives up with a dismal grinding noise of the wheels to
the big lone house; there’s no smoke in the chimneys; the doors are
locked; three savage-looking men rush after the car: are they the men
who took out Mr. Hamilton--took him out and butchered him in the
moonlight? Is everybody, I wonder, dead in that big house? Will they let
us in before those men are up? Out comes a pretty smiling girl, with a
curtsey, just as the savages are at the car, and you are ushered into a
very comfortable room; and the men turn out to be guides. Well, thank
Heaven it’s no worse! I had fifteen pounds still left; and, when
desperate, have no doubt should fight like a lion.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY--COLERAINE--PORTRUSH
The traveller no sooner issues from the inn by a back door, which he is
informed will lead him straight to the Causeway, than the guides pounce
upon him, with a dozen rough boatmen who are likewise lying in wait; and
a crew of shrill beggar-boys, with boxes of spars, ready to tear him and
each other to pieces seemingly, yell and bawl incessantly round him.
‘I’m the guide Miss Henry recommends,’ shouts one. ‘I’m Mr. Macdonald’s
guide,’ pushes in another. ‘This way,’ roars a third, and drags his prey
down a precipice; the rest of them clambering and quarrelling after. I
had no friends: I was perfectly helpless. I wanted to walk down to the
shore by myself, but they would not let me, and I had nothing for it but
to yield myself into the hands of the guide who had seized me, who
hurried me down the steep to a little wild bay, flanked on each side by
rugged cliffs and rocks, against which the waters came tumbling,
frothing, and roaring furiously. Upon some of these black rocks two or
three boats were lying: four men seized a boat, pushed it shouting into
the water, and ravished me into it. We had slid between two rocks, where
the channel came gurgling in; we were up one swelling wave that came in
a huge advancing body ten feet above us, and were plunging madly down
another (the descent causes a sensation in the lower regions of the
stomach which it is not at all necessary here to describe), before I had
leisure to ask myself why the deuce I was in that boat, with four rowers
hurrooing and bounding madly from one huge liquid mountain to
another--four rowers whom I was bound to pay. I say, the query came
qualmishly across me why the devil I was there, and why not walking
calmly on the shore.
[Illustration: A ROW TO THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY]
The guide began pouring his professional jargon into my ears. ‘Every one
of them bays,’ says he, ‘has a name (take my place, and the spray won’t
come over you): that is Port Noffer, and the next, Port na Gange; them
rocks is the Stookawns (for every rock has his name as well as every
bay); and yonder--give way, my boys,--hurray, we’re over it now; has it
wet you much, sir?--that’s the little cave; it goes five hundred feet
under ground, and the boats goes in it easy of a calm day.’
‘Is it a fine day or a rough one now?’ said I; the internal disturbance
going on with more severity than ever.
‘It’s betwixt and between; or, I may say, neither one nor the other. Sit
up, sir; look at the entrance of the cave: don’t be afraid, sir; never
has an accident happened in any one of these boats, and the most
delicate ladies has rode in them on rougher days than this. Now, boys,
pull to the big cave; that, sir, is six hundred and sixty yards in
length, though some says it goes for miles inland, where the people
sleeping in their houses hears the waters roaring under them.’
The water was tossing and tumbling into the mouth of the little cave. I
looked,--for the guide would not let me alone till I did,--and saw what
might be expected: a black hole of some forty feet high, into which it
was no more possible to see than into a millstone. ‘For Heaven’s sake,
sir,’ says I, ‘if you’ve no particular wish to see the mouth of the big
cave, put about and let us see the Causeway and get ashore.’ This was
done, the guide meanwhile telling some story of a ship of the Spanish
Armada having fired her guns at two peaks of rock, then visible, which
the crew mistook for chimney-pots--what benighted fools these Spanish
Armadilloes must have been--it is easier to see a rock than a
chimney-pot; it is easy to know that chimney-pots do not grow on
rocks:--but where, if you please, is the Causeway?
‘That’s the Causeway before you,’ says the guide.
‘Which?’
‘That pier which you see jutting out into the bay right ahead.’
‘Mon Dieu! and have I travelled a hundred and fifty miles to see
_that_?’
I declare, upon my conscience, the barge moored at Hungerford Market is
a more majestic object, and seems to occupy as must space. As for
telling a man that the Causeway is merely a part of the sight; that he
is there for the purpose of examining the surrounding scenery; that if
he looks to the westward he will see Portrush and Donegal Head before
him; that the cliffs immediately in his front are green in some places,
black in others, interspersed with blotches of brown and streaks of
verdure;--what is all this to a lonely individual lying sick in a boat,
between two immense waves that only give him momentary glimpses of the
land in question, to show that it is frightfully near, and yet you are
an hour from it? They won’t let you go away--that cursed guide _will_
tell out his stock of legends and stories. The boatmen insist upon your
looking at boxes of ‘specimens,’ which you must buy of them; they laugh
as you grow paler and paler; they offer you more and more ‘specimens’;
even the dirty lad who pulls number three, and is not allowed by his
comrades to speak, puts in _his_ oar, and hands you over a piece of
Irish diamond (it looks like half-sucked alicompayne), and scorns you.
‘Hurray, lads, now for it, give way!’ how the oars do hurtle in the
rullocks, as the boat goes up an aqueous mountain, and then down into
one of those cursed maritime valleys where there is no rest as on shore!
At last, after they had pulled me enough about, and sold me all the
boxes of specimens, I was permitted to land at the spot whence we set
out, and whence, though we had been rowing for an hour, we had never
been above five hundred yards distant. Let all cockneys take warning
from this; let the solitary one caught issuing from the back door of the
hotel, shout at once to the boatmen to be gone--that he will have none
of them. Let him, at any rate, go first down to the water to determine
whether it be smooth enough to allow him to take any decent pleasure by
riding on its surface. For after all, it must be remembered that it is
pleasure we come for--that we are not _obliged_ to take those
boats.--Well, well! I paid ten shillings for mine, and ten minutes
before would cheerfully have paid five pounds to be allowed to quit it;
it was no hard bargain after all. As for the boxes of spar and
specimens, I at once, being on terra firma, broke my promise, and said I
would see them all ---- first. It is wrong to swear, I know; but
sometimes it relieves one _so_ much!
The first act on shore was to make a sacrifice to Sanctissima Tellus;
offering up to her a neat and becoming Taglioni coat, bought for a
guinea in Covent Garden only three months back. I sprawled on my back on
the smoothest of rocks that is, and tore the elbows to pieces: the guide
picked me up; the boatmen did not stir, for they had had their will of
me; the guide alone picked me up, I say, and bade me follow him. We went
across a boggy ground in one of the little bays, round which rise the
green walls of the cliff, terminated on either side by a black crag, and
the line of the shore washed by the poluphlosboiotic, nay, the
poluphlosboiotatotic sea. Two beggars stepped over the bog after us,
howling for money, and each holding up a cursed box of specimens. No
oaths, threats, entreaties, would drive this vermin away; for some time
the whole scene had been spoilt by the incessant and abominable jargon
of them, the boatmen, and the guides. I was obliged to give them money
to be left in quiet, and if, as no doubt will be the case, the Giant’s
Causeway shall be a still greater resort of travellers than ever, the
county must put policemen on the rocks to keep the beggars away, or
fling them in the water when they appear.
And now, by force of money, having got rid of the sea and land beggars,
you are at liberty to examine at your leisure the wonders of the place.
There is not the least need for a guide to attend the stranger, unless
the latter have a mind to listen to a parcel of legends, which may be
well from the mouth of a wild simple peasant who believes in his tales,
but are odious from a dullard who narrates them at the rate of sixpence
a lie. Fee him and the other beggars, and at last you are left tranquil
to look at the strange scene with your own eyes, and enjoy your own
thoughts at leisure.
That is, if the thoughts awakened by such a scene may be called
enjoyment; but for me, I confess, they are too near akin to fear to be
pleasant; and I don’t know that I would desire to change that sensation
of awe and terror which the hour’s walk occasioned, for a greater
familiarity with this wild, sad, lonely place. The solitude is awful. I
can’t understand how those chattering guides dare to lift up their
voices here, and cry for money.
It looks like the beginning of the world, somehow: the sea looks older
than in other places, the hills and rocks strange, and formed
differently from other rocks and hills--as those vast dubious monsters
were formed who possessed the earth before man. The hilltops are
shattered into a thousand cragged fantastical shapes; the water comes
swelling into scores of little strange creeks, or goes off with a leap,
roaring into those mysterious caves yonder, which penetrate who knows
how far into our common world. The savage rock-sides are painted of a
hundred colours. Does the sun ever shine here? When the world was
moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the
_bit over_--a remnant of chaos! Think of that!--it is a tailor’s simile.
Well, I am a cockney: I wish I were in Pall Mall! Yonder is a
kelp-burner: a lurid smoke from his burning kelp rises up to the leaden
sky, and he looks as naked and fierce as Cain. Bubbling up out of the
rocks at the very brim of the sea rises a little crystal spring: how
comes it there? and there is an old grey hag beside it, who has been
there for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there sits and sells
whisky at the extremity of creation! How do you dare to sell whisky
there, old woman? Did you serve old Saturn with a glass when he lay
along the Causeway here? In reply, she says, she has no change for a
shilling: she never has; but her whisky is good.
This is not a description of the Giant’s Causeway (as some clever critic
will remark), but of a Londoner there, who is by no means so interesting
an object as the natural curiosity in question. That single hint is
sufficient; I have not a word more to say. ‘If,’ says he, ‘you cannot
describe the scene lying before us--if you cannot state from your
personal observation that the number of basaltic pillars composing the
Causeway has been computed at about forty thousand, which vary in
diameter, their surface presenting the appearance of a tesselated
pavement of polygonal stones--that each pillar is formed of several
distinct joints, the concave end of the one being accurately fitted into
the concave of the next, and the length of the joints varying from five
feet to four inches--that although the pillars are polygonal, there is
but one of three sides in the whole forty thousand (think of that!), but
three of nine sides, and that it may be safely computed that ninety-nine
out of one hundred pillars have either five, six, or seven sides;--if
you cannot state something useful, you had much better, sir, retire and
get your dinner.’
Never was summons more gladly obeyed. The dinner must be ready by this
time; so, remain you, and look on at the awful scene, and copy it down
in words if you can. If at the end of the trial you are dissatisfied
with your skill as a painter, and find that the biggest of your words
cannot render the hues and vastness of that tremendous swelling sea--of
those lean solitary crags standing rigid along the shore, where they
have been watching the ocean ever since it was made--of those grey
towers of Dunluce standing upon a leaden rock, and looking as if some
old, old princess, of old, old fairy times, were dragon-guarded
within--of yon flat stretches of sand where the Scotch and Irish
mermaids hold conference--come away too, and prate no more about the
scene! There is that in nature, dear Jenkins, which passes even our
powers. We can feel the beauty of a magnificent landscape, perhaps; but
we can describe a leg of mutton and turnips better. Come, then, this
scene is for our betters to depict. If Mr. Tennyson were to come hither
for a month, and brood over the place, he might, in some of those lofty
heroic lines which the author of the ‘Morte d’Arthur’ knows how to pile
up, convey to the reader a sense of this gigantic desolate scene. What!
you too are a poet? Well then, Jenkins, stay! but believe me, you had
best take my advice, and come off.
* * * * *
The worthy landlady made her appearance with the politest of bows and an
apology,--for what does the reader think a lady should apologise in the
most lonely rude spot in the world?--because a plain servant-woman was
about to bring in the dinner, the waiter being absent on leave at
Coleraine! O heaven and earth! where will the genteel end? I replied
philosophically that I did not care twopence for the plainness or beauty
of the waiter, but that it was the dinner I looked to, the frying
whereof made a great noise in the huge lonely house; and it must be
said, that though the lady _was_ plain, the repast was exceedingly good.
‘I have expended my little all,’ says the landlady, stepping in with a
speech after dinner, ‘in the building of this establishment; and though
to a man its profits may appear small, to such a _being_ as I am it will
bring, I trust, a sufficient return’; and on my asking her why she took
the place, she replied that she had always, from her earliest youth, a
fancy to dwell in that spot, and had accordingly realised her wish by
building this hotel--this mausoleum. In spite of the bright fire, and
the good dinner, and the good wine, it was impossible to feel
comfortable in the place; and when the car-wheels were heard, I jumped
up with joy to take my departure and forget the awful lonely shore, that
wild, dismal, genteel inn. A ride over a wide gusty country, in a grey,
misty, half-moonlight, the loss of a wheel at Bushmills, and the escape
from a tumble, were the delightful varieties after the late awful
occurrences. ‘Such a being’ as I am, would die of loneliness in that
hotel; and so let all brother cockneys be warned.
Some time before we came to it, we saw the long line of mist that lay
above the Bann, and coming through a dirty suburb of low cottages,
passed down a broad street with gas and lamps in it (thank Heaven, there
are people once more!), and at length drove up in state, across a
gas-pipe, in a market-place, before an hotel in the town of Coleraine,
famous for linen and for Beautiful Kitty, who must be old and ugly now,
for it’s a good five-and-thirty years since she broke her pitcher,
according to Mr. Moore’s account of her. The scene as we entered the
Diamond was rather a lively one--a score of little stalls were brilliant
with lights; the people were thronging in the place making their
Saturday bargains; the town clock began to toll nine; and hark! faithful
to a minute, the horn of the Derry mail was heard tootooing, and four
commercial gentlemen, with Scotch accents, rushed into the hotel at the
same time with myself.
Among the beauties of Coleraine may be mentioned the price of beef,
which a gentleman told me may be had for fourpence a pound; and I saw
him purchase an excellent codfish for a shilling. I am bound, too, to
state, for the benefit of aspiring Radicals, what two Conservative
citizens of the place stated to me, viz.:--that though there were two
Conservative candidates then canvassing the town, on account of a
vacancy in the representation, the voters were so truly liberal that
they would elect any person of any other political creed, who would
simply bring money enough to purchase their votes. There are 220 voters,
it appears; of whom it is not, however, necessary to ‘argue’ with more
than fifty, who alone are open to conviction; but as parties are pretty
equally balanced, the votes of the quinquagint, of course, carry an
immense weight with them. Well, this is all discussed calmly standing on
an inn steps, with a jolly landlord and a professional man of the town
to give the information. So, Heaven bless us, the ways of London are
beginning to be known even here. Gentility has already taken up her seat
in the Giant’s Causeway, where she apologises for the plainness of her
look; and, lo! here is bribery as bold as in the most civilised
places--hundreds and hundreds of miles away from St. Stephen’s and Pall
Mall. I wonder, in that little island of Raghery, so wild and lonely,
whether civilisation is beginning to dawn upon them?--whether they bribe
and are genteel? But for the rough sea of yesterday, I think I would
have fled thither to make the trial.
The town of Coleraine, with a number of cabin suburbs belonging to it,
lies picturesquely grouped on the Bann river; and the whole of the
little city was echoing with psalms as I walked through it on the Sunday
morning. The piety of the people seems remarkable; some of the inns even
will not receive travellers on Sunday; and this is written in an hotel,
of which every room is provided with a Testament, containing an
injunction on the part of the landlord to consider this world itself as
only a passing abode. Is it well that Boniface should furnish his guest
with Bibles as well as bills, and sometimes shut his door on a
traveller, who has no other choice but to read it on a Sunday? I heard
of a gentleman arriving from shipboard at Kilrush on a Sunday, when the
pious hotel-keeper refused him admittance; and some more tales, which to
go into would require the introduction of private names and
circumstances, but would tend to show that the Protestant of the north
is as much priest-ridden as the Catholic of the south;--priest and
old-woman-ridden, for there are certain expounders of doctrine in our
Church, who are not, I believe, to be found in the Church of Rome; and
woe betide the stranger who comes to settle in these parts, if his
‘seriousness’ be not satisfactory to the heads (with false fronts to
most of them) of the congregations.
Look at that little snug harbour of Portrush; a hideous new castle
standing on a rock protects it on one side, a snug row of gentlemen’s
cottages curve round the shore facing northwards, a bath-house, an
hotel, more smart houses, face the beach westward, defended by another
mound of rocks. In the centre of the little town stands a new-built
church; and the whole place has an air of comfort and neatness which is
seldom seen in Ireland. One would fancy that all the tenants of these
pretty snug habitations, sheltered in this nook far away from the world,
have nothing to do but to be happy, and spend their little comfortable
means in snug little hospitalities among one another, and kind little
charities among the poor. What does a man in active life ask for more
than to retire to such a competence, to such a snug nook of the world;
and there repose with a stock of healthy children round the fireside, a
friend within call, and the means of decent hospitality wherewith to
treat him?
Let any one meditating this pleasant sort of retreat, and charmed with
the look of this or that place as peculiarly suited to his purpose, take
a special care to understand his neighbourhood first, before he commit
himself by lease-signing or house-buying. It is not sufficient that you
should be honest, kind-hearted, hospitable, of good family--what are
your opinions upon religious subjects? Are they such as agree with the
notions of old Lady This, or Mrs. That, who are the patronesses of the
village? If not, woe betide you! you will be shunned by the rest of the
society, thwarted in your attempts to do good, whispered against over
evangelical bohea and serious muffins. Lady This will inform every new
arrival that you are a reprobate, and lost; and Mrs. That will consign
you and your daughters, and your wife (a worthy woman, but, alas! united
to that sad worldly man!) to damnation. The clergyman who partakes of
the muffins and bohea before mentioned, will very possibly preach
sermons against you from the pulpit: this was not done at Portstewart to
my knowledge, but I have had the pleasure of sitting under a minister in
Ireland who insulted the very patron who gave him his living,
discoursing upon the sinfulness of partridge-shooting, and threatening
hell-fire as the last ‘meet’ for fox-hunters; until the squire, one of
the best and most charitable resident landlords in Ireland, was
absolutely driven out of the church where his fathers had worshipped
for hundreds of years, by the insults of this howling evangelical
inquisitor.
So much as this I did not hear at Portstewart; but I was told that at
yonder neat-looking bath-house _a dying woman_ was denied a bath on a
Sunday. By a clause of the lease by which the bath-owner rents his
establishment, he is forbidden to give baths to any one on the Sunday.
The landlord of the inn, forsooth, shuts his gates on the same day, and
his conscience on week-days will not allow him to supply his guests with
whisky or ardent spirits. I was told by my friend, that because he
refused to subscribe for some fancy charity, he received a letter to
state that ‘he spent more in one dinner than in charity in the course of
the year.’ My worthy friend did not care to contradict the statement, as
why should a man deign to meddle with such a lie? But think how all the
fishes, and all the pieces of meat, and all the people who went in and
out of his snug cottage by the seaside must have been watched by the
serious round about! The sea is not more constant roaring there, than
scandal is whispering. How happy I felt, while hearing these histories
(demure heads in crimped caps peering over the blinds at us as we walked
on the beach), to think I am a cockney, and don’t know the name of the
man who lives next door to me!
I have heard various stories, of course from persons of various ways of
thinking, charging their opponents with hypocrisy, and proving the
charge by statements clearly showing that the priests, the preachers, or
the professing religionists in question, belied their professions
wofully by their practice. But in matters of religion, hypocrisy is so
awful a charge to make against a man, that I think it is almost unfair
to mention even in the cases in which it is proven, and which,--as, pray
God, they are but exceptional,--a person should be very careful of
mentioning, lest they be considered to apply generally. _Tartuffe_ has
been always a disgusting play to me to see, in spite of its sense and
its wit; and so, instead of printing, here or elsewhere, a few stories
of the Tartuffe kind which I have heard in Ireland, the best way will be
to try and forget them. It is an awful thing to say of any man walking
under God’s sun by the side of us, ‘You are a hypocrite, lying as you
use the Most Sacred Name, knowing that you lie while you use it.’ Let it
be the privilege of any sect that is so minded, to imagine that there is
perdition in store for all the rest of God’s creatures who do not think
with them; but the easy countercharge of hypocrisy, which the world has
been in the habit of making in its turn, is surely just as fatal and
bigoted an accusation as any that the sects make against the world.
What has this disquisition to do _à propos_ of a walk on the beach at
Portstewart? Why, it may be made here as well as in other parts of
Ireland, or elsewhere as well, perhaps, as here. It is the most
priest-ridden of countries; Catholic clergymen lord it over their ragged
flocks, as Protestant preachers, lay and clerical, over their more
genteel co-religionists. Bound to inculcate peace and goodwill, their
whole life is one of enmity and distrust.
Walking away from the little bay and the disquisition which has somehow
been raging there, we went across some wild dreary highlands to the
neighbouring little town of Portrush, where is a neat town and houses,
and a harbour, and a new church too, so like the last-named place that I
thought for a moment we had only made a round, and were back again at
Portstewart. Some gentlemen of the place, and my guide, who had a
neighbourly liking for it, showed me the new church, and seemed to be
well pleased with the edifice; which is, indeed, a neat and convenient
one, of a rather irregular Gothic. The best thing about the church, I
think, was the history of it. The old church had lain some miles off, in
the most inconvenient part of the parish, whereupon the clergyman and
some of the gentry had raised a subscription in order to build the
present church. The expenses had exceeded the estimates, or the
subscriptions had fallen short of the sums necessary; and the church, in
consequence, was opened with a debt on it, which the rector and two more
of the gentry had taken on their shoulders. The living is a small one;
the other two gentlemen going bail for the edifice not so rich as to
think light of the payment of a couple of hundred pounds beyond their
previous subscriptions--the lists are therefore still open; and the
clergyman expressed himself perfectly satisfied either that he would be
reimbursed one day or other, or that he would be able to make out the
payment of the money for which he stood engaged. Most of the Roman
Catholic churches that I have seen through the country have been built
in this way,--begun when money enough was levied for constructing the
foundation, elevated by degrees as fresh subscriptions came in, and
finished--by the way, I don’t think I _have_ seen one finished--but
there is something noble in the spirit (however certain economists may
cavil at it) that leads people to commence these pious undertakings with
the firm trust that ‘Heaven will provide.’
Eastwards from Portrush, we came upon a beautiful level sand which leads
to the White Rocks, a famous place of resort for the frequenters of the
neighbouring watering-places. Here are caves, and for a considerable
distance a view of the wild and gloomy Antrim coast as far as Bengore.
Midway, jutting into the sea (and I was glad it was so far off), was the
Causeway; and nearer, the grey towers of Dunluce.
Looking north, were the blue Scotch hills and the neighbouring Raghery
Island. Nearer Portrush are two rocky islands, called the Skerries, of
which a sportsman of our party vaunted the capabilities, regretting that
my stay was not longer, so that I might land and shoot a few ducks
there. This unlucky lateness of the season struck me also as a most
afflicting circumstance. He said also that fish were caught off the
island--not fish good to eat, but very strong at pulling, eager of
biting, and affording a great deal of sport. And so we turned our backs
once more upon the Giant’s Causeway, and the grim coast on which it
lies; and as my taste in life leads me to prefer looking at the smiling
fresh face of a young cheerful beauty, rather than at the fierce
countenance and high features of a fierce dishevelled Meg Merrilies, I
must say again that I was glad to turn my back on that severe part of
the Antrim coast, and my steps towards Derry.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXX
PEG OF LIMAVADDY
Between Coleraine and Derry there is a daily car (besides one or two
occasional queer-looking coaches), and I had this vehicle, with an
intelligent driver, and a horse with a hideous raw on his shoulder,
entirely to myself for the five-and-twenty miles of our journey. The
cabins of Coleraine are not parted with in a hurry, and we crossed the
bridge, and went up and down the hills of one of the suburban streets,
the Ban flowing picturesquely to our left; a large Catholic chapel, the
before-mentioned cabins, and farther on, some neat-looking houses and
plantations, to our right. Then we began ascending wide lonely hills,
pools of bog shining here and there amongst them, with birds, both black
and white, both geese and crows, on the hunt. Some of the stubble was
already ploughed up, but by the side of most cottages you saw a black
potato-field that it was time to dig now, for the weather was changing
and the winds beginning to roar. Woods, whenever we passed them, were
flinging round eddies of mustard-coloured leaves; the white trunks of
lime and ash trees beginning to look very bare. Then we stopped to give
the raw-backed horse water; then we trotted down a hill with a noble
bleak prospect of Lough Foyle and the surrounding mountains before us,
until we reached the town of Newtown Limavaddy, where the raw-backed
horse was exchanged for another not much more agreeable in his
appearance, though, like his comrade, not slow on the road.
Newtown Limavaddy is the third town in the county of Londonderry. It
comprises three well-built streets, the others are inferior; it is,
however, respectably inhabited; all this may be true, as the
well-informed Guide-book avers, but I am bound to say that I was
thinking of something else as we drove through the town, having fallen
eternally in love during the ten minutes of our stay. Yes, Peggy of
Limavaddy, if Barrow and Inglis have gone to Connemara to fall in love
with the Misses Flynn, let us be allowed to come to Ulster and offer a
tribute of praise at your feet--at your stockingless feet, O Margaret!
Do you remember the October day (‘twas the first day of the hard
weather), when the way-worn traveller entered your inn? But the
circumstances of this passion had better be chronicled in deathless
verse.
PEG OF LIMAVADDY
Riding from Coleraine
(Famed for lovely Kitty),
Came a cockney bound
Unto Derry city;
Weary was his soul,
Shivering and sad he
Bump’d along the road
Leads to Limavaddy.
Mountains stretch’d around,
Gloomy was their tinting,
And the horse’s hoofs
Made a dismal clinting;
Wind upon the heath
Howling was and piping,
On the heath and bog,
Black with many a snipe in:
‘Mid the bogs of black,
Silver pools were flashing,
Crows upon their sides
Picking were and splashing.
Cockney on the car
Closer folds his plaidy,
Grumbling at the road
Leads to Limavaddy.
Through the crashing woods
Autumn brawl’d and bluster’d,
Tossing round about
Leaves the hue of mustard;
Yonder lay Lough Foyle,
Which a storm was whipping,
Covering with mist
Lake, and shores, and shipping.
Up and down the hill
(Nothing could be bolder),
Horse went with a raw,
Bleeding on his shoulder.
‘Where are horses changed?’
Said I to the laddy
Driving on the box:
‘Sir, at Limavaddy.’
Limavaddy inn’s
But a humble baithouse,
Where you may procure
Whisky and potatoes;
Landlord at the door
Gives a smiling welcome
To the shivering wights
Who to his hotel come.
Landlady within
Sits and knits a stocking,
With a wary foot
Baby’s cradle rocking.
To the chimney nook,
Having found admittance,
There I watch a pup
Playing with two kittens;
(Playing round the fire,
Which of blazing turf is,
Roaring to the pot
Which bubbles with the murphies);
And the cradled babe
Fond the mother nursed it,
Singing it a song
As she twists the worsted!
Up and down the stair
Two more young ones patter
(Twins were never seen
Dirtier nor fatter);
Both have mottled legs,
Both have snubby noses,
Both have--Here the host
Kindly interposes:
‘Sure you must be froze
With the sleet and hail, sir,
So will you have some punch,
Or will you have some ale, sir?’
Presently a maid
Enters with the liquor,
(Half a pint of ale
Frothing in a beaker).
Gods! I didn’t know
What my beating heart meant,
Hebe’s self I thought
Enter’d the apartment.
As she came she smiled,
And the smile bewitching,
On my word and honour,
Lighted all the kitchen!
With a curtsey neat
Greeting the new-comer,
Lovely, smiling Peg
Offers me the rummer;
But my trembling hand
Up the beaker tilted,
And the glass of ale
Every drop I spilt it;
Spilt it every drop
(Dames, who read my volumes,
Pardon such a word)
On my whatd’yecall’ems!
Such a silver peal!
In the meadows listening,
You who’ve heard the bells
Ringing to a christening;
You who ever heard
Caradori pretty,
Smiling like an angel
Singing ‘Giovinetti,’
Fancy Peggy’s laugh,
Sweet, and clear, and cheerful,
At my pantaloons
With half-a-pint of beer full!
[Illustration]
Witnessing the sight
Of that dire disaster,
Out began to laugh
Missis, maid, and master;
Such a merry peal,
‘Specially Miss Peg’s was
(As the glass of ale
Trickling down my legs was),
That the joyful sound
Of that ringing laughter
Echoed in my ears
Many a long day after.
When the laugh was done.
Peg, the pretty hussy,
Moved about the room
Wonderfully busy;
Now she looks to see
If the kettle keep hot,
Now she rubs the spoons,
Now she cleans the teapot:
Now she sets the cups
Trimly and secure,
Now she scours a pot,
And so it was I drew her.
Thus it was I drew her
Scouring of a kettle,[33]
(Faith! her blushing cheeks
Redden’d on the metal!)
Ah! but ‘tis in vain
That I try to sketch it;
The pot perhaps is like,
But Peggy’s face is wretched.
No: the best of lead,
And of Indian rubber,
Never could depict
That sweet kettle-scrubber!
See her as she moves!
Scarce the ground she touches,
Airy as a fay,
Graceful as a duchess;
Bare her rounded arm,
Bare her little leg is,
Vestris never show’d
Ankles like to Peggy’s;
Braided is her hair,
Soft her look and modest,
Slim her little waist
Comfortably boddiced.
This I do declare,
Happy is the laddy
Who the heart can share
Of Peg of Limavaddy;
Married if she were,
Blest would be the daddy
Of the children fair
Of Peg of Limavaddy;
Beauty is not rare
In the land of Paddy,
Fair beyond compare
Is Peg of Limavaddy.
Citizen or squire,
Tory, Whig, or Radical
would all desire
Peg of Limavaddy.
Had I Homer’s fire,
Or that of Sergeant Taddy,
Meetly I’d admire
Peg of Limavaddy.
And till I expire,
Or till I grow mad, I
Will sing unto my lyre
Peg of Limavaddy!
CHAPTER XXXI
TEMPLEMOYLE--DERRY
From Newtown Limavaddy to Derry, the traveller has many wild and noble
prospects of Lough Foyle and the plains and mountains round it, and of
scenes which may possibly in this country be still more agreeable to
him--of smiling cultivation, and comfortable well-built villages, such
as are only too rare in Ireland. Of a great part of this district, the
London Companies are landlords--the best of landlords, too, according to
the report I could gather; and their good stewardship shows itself
especially in the neat villages of Muff and Ballikelly, through both of
which I passed. In Ballikelly, besides numerous simple, stout,
brick-built dwellings for the peasantry, with their shining windows and
trim garden-plots, is a Presbyterian meeting-house, so well-built,
substantial and handsome, so different from the lean, pretentious,
sham-Gothic ecclesiastical edifices which have been erected of late
years in Ireland, that it can’t fail to strike the tourist who has made
architecture his study or his pleasure. The gentlemen’s seats in the
district are numerous and handsome; and the whole movement along the
road betokened cheerfulness and prosperous activity.
As the carman had no other passengers but myself, he made no objection
to carry me a couple of miles out of his way, through the village of
Muff, belonging to the Grocers of London (and so handsomely and
comfortably built by them as to cause all cockneys to exclaim, ‘Well
done our side!’), and thence to a very interesting institution, which
was established some fifteen years since in the neighbourhood--the
Agricultural Seminary of Templemoyle. It lies on a hill in a pretty
wooded country, and is most curiously secluded from the world by the
tortuousness of the road which approaches it.
Of course it is not my business to report upon the agricultural system
practised there, or to discourse on the state of the land or the crops;
the best testimony on this subject is the fact, that the Institution
hired, at a small rental, a tract of land, which was reclaimed and
farmed, and that of this farm the landlord has now taken possession,
leaving the young farmers to labour on a new tract of land, for which
they pay five times as much rent as for their former holding. But though
a person versed in agriculture could give a far more satisfactory
account of the place than one to whom such pursuits are quite
unfamiliar, there is a great deal about the establishment which any
citizen can remark on; and he must be a very difficult cockney indeed
who won’t be pleased here.
After winding in and out, and up and down, and round about the eminence
on which the house stands, we at last found an entrance to it, by a
courtyard, neat, well-built, and spacious, where are the stables and
numerous offices of the farm. The scholars were at dinner off a
comfortable meal of boiled beef, potatoes, and cabbages, when I arrived;
a master was reading a book of history to them; and silence, it appears,
is preserved during the dinner. Seventy scholars were here assembled,
some young, and some expanded into six feet and whiskers--all, however,
are made to maintain exactly the same discipline, whether whiskered or
not.
The ‘head farmer’ of the school, Mr. Campbell, a very intelligent Scotch
gentleman, was good enough to conduct me over the place and the farm,
and to give a history of the establishment and the course pursued
there. The Seminary was founded in 1827, by the North-West of Ireland
Society, by members of which and others about three thousand pounds were
subscribed, and the buildings of the school erected. These are spacious,
simple, and comfortable; there is a good stone house, with airy
dormitories, schoolrooms, etc., and large and convenient offices. The
establishment had, at first, some difficulties to contend with, and for
some time did not number more than thirty pupils. At present, there are
seventy scholars, paying _ten pounds_ a year, with which sum, and the
labour of the pupils on the farm, and the produce of it, the school is
entirely supported. The reader will, perhaps, like to see an extract
from the Report of the school, which contains mere details regarding it.
‘TEMPLEMOYLE WORK AND SCHOOL TABLE
_‘From 20th March to 23rd September_
‘Boys divided into two classes, A and B
Hours. At work. At school.
5-1/2 All rise.
6-8 ....................... A ................... B
8-9 Breakfast.
9-1 ....................... A ................... B
1-2 Dinner and recreation.
2-6 ....................... B ................... A
6-7 Recreation.
7-9 Prepare lessons for next day.
9 To bed.
‘On Tuesday B commences work in the morning and A at school, and so on
alternate days.
‘Each class is again subdivided into three divisions, over each of which
is placed a monitor, selected from the steadiest and best-informed boys;
he receives the Head Farmer’s directions as to the work to be done, and
superintends his party while performing it.
‘In winter the time of labour is shortened according to the length of
the day, and the hours at school increased.
‘In wet days, when the boys cannot work out, all are required to attend
school.
‘DIETARY
‘_Breakfast._--Eleven ounces of oatmeal made in stirabout, one pint of
sweet milk.
‘_Dinner._--Sunday--Three-quarters of a pound of beef stewed with pepper
and onions, or one-half pound of corned beef with cabbage, and three and
one-half pounds of potatoes.
‘Monday--One-half pound of pickled beef, three and a half pounds of
potatoes, one pint of buttermilk.
‘Tuesday--Broth made of one-half pound of beef, with leeks, cabbage, and
parsley, and three and a half pounds of potatoes.
‘Wednesday--Two ounces of butter, eight ounces of oatmeal made into
bread, three and one-half pounds of potatoes, and one pint of sweet
milk.
‘Thursday--Half a pound of pickled pork, with cabbage or turnips, and
three and a half pounds of potatoes.
‘Friday--Two ounces of butter, eight ounces wheat meal made into bread,
one pint of sweet milk or fresh buttermilk, three and a half pounds of
potatoes.
‘Saturday--Two ounces of butter, one pound of potatoes mashed, eight
ounces of wheat meal made into bread, two and a half pounds of potatoes,
one pint of buttermilk.
‘_Supper._--In summer, flummery made of one pound of oatmeal seeds, and
one pint of sweet milk. In winter, three and a half pounds of potatoes,
and one pint of buttermilk or sweet milk.
‘RULES FOR THE TEMPLEMOYLE SCHOOL
‘1. The pupils are required to say their prayers in the morning, before
leaving the dormitory, and at night, before retiring to rest, each
separately, and after the manner to which he has been habituated.
‘2. The pupils are required to wash their hands and faces before the
commencement of business in the morning, on returning from agricultural
labour, and after dinner.
‘3. The pupils are required to pay the strictest attention to their
instructors, both during the hours of agricultural and literary
occupation.
‘4. Strife, disobedience, inattention, or any description of riotous or
disorderly conduct, is punishable by extra labour or confinement, as
directed by the Committee, according to circumstances.
‘5. Diligent and respectful behaviour, continued for a considerable
time, will be rewarded by occasional permission for the pupil so
distinguished to visit his home.
‘6. No pupil, on obtaining leave of absence, shall presume to continue
it for a longer period than that prescribed to him on leaving the
Seminary.
‘7. During their rural labour, the pupils are to consider themselves
amenable to the authority of their Agricultural Instructor alone, and
during their attendance in the schoolroom, to that of their Literary
Instructor alone.
‘8. Non-attendance during any part of the time allotted either for
literary or agricultural employment, will be punished as a serious
offence.
‘9. During the hours of recreation the pupils are to be under the
superintendence of their Instructors, and not suffered to pass beyond
the limits of the farm, except under their guidance, or with a written
permission from one of them.
‘10. The pupils are required to make up their beds, and keep those
clothes not in immediate use neatly folded up in their trunks, and to be
particular in never suffering any garment, book, implement, or other
article belonging to or used by them, to lie about in a slovenly or
disorderly manner.
‘11. Respect to superiors, and gentleness of demeanour, both among the
pupils themselves and towards the servants and labourers of the
establishment, are particularly insisted upon, and will be considered a
prominent ground of approbation and reward.
‘12. On Sundays the pupils are required to attend their respective
places of worship, accompanied by their Instructors or Monitors; and it
is earnestly recommended to them to employ a part of the remainder of
the day in sincerely reading the Word of God, and in such other
devotional exercises as their respective ministers may point out.’
* * * * *
At certain periods of the year, when all hands are required, such as
harvest, etc., the literary labours of the scholars are stopped, and
they are all in the field. On the present occasion we followed them into
a potato-field, where an army of them were employed digging out the
potatoes; while another regiment were trenching-in elsewhere for the
winter: the boys were leading the carts to and fro. To reach the
potatoes we had to pass a field, part of which was newly ploughed: the
ploughing was the work of the boys, too; one of them being left with an
experienced ploughman for a fortnight at a time, in which space the lad
can acquire some practice in the art. Amongst the potatoes and the boys
digging them, I observed a number of girls taking them up as dug and
removing the soil from the roots. Such a society for seventy young men
would, in any other country in the world, be not a little dangerous: but
Mr. Campbell said that no instance of harm had ever occurred in
consequence, and I believe his statement may be fully relied on: the
whole country bears testimony to this noble purity of morals. Is there
any other in Europe which in this point can compare with it?
In winter the farm-works do not occupy the pupils so much, and they give
more time to their literary studies. They get a good English education;
they are grounded in arithmetic and mathematics; and I saw a good map of
an adjacent farm, made from actual survey by one of the pupils. Some of
them are good draughtsmen likewise, but of their performances I could
see no specimen, the artists being abroad, occupied wisely in digging
the potatoes.
And here, _à propos_, not of the school but of potatoes, let me tell a
potato story, which is, I think, to the purpose, wherever it is told. In
the county of Mayo a gentleman by the name of Crofton is a landed
proprietor, in whose neighbourhood great distress prevailed among the
peasantry during the spring and summer, when the potatoes of the last
year were consumed, and before those of the present season were up; Mr.
Crofton, by liberal donations on his own part, and by a subscription
which was set on foot among his friends in England as well as in
Ireland, was enabled to collect a sum of money sufficient to purchase
meal for the people, which was given to them, or sold at very low
prices, until the pressure of want was withdrawn, and the blessed
potato-crop came in. Some time in October, a smart night’s frost made
Mr. Crofton think that it was time to take in and pit his own potatoes,
and he told his steward to get labourers accordingly.
Next day, on going to the potato-grounds, he found the whole fields
swarming with people; the whole crop was out of the ground, and again
under it, pitted and covered, and the people gone, in a few hours. It
was as if the fairies that we read of in the Irish legends, as coming to
the aid of good people and helping them in their labours, had taken a
liking to this good landlord, and taken in his harvest for him. Mr.
Crofton, who knew who his helpers had been, sent the steward to pay them
their day’s wages, and to thank them at the same time for having come to
help him at a time when their labour was so useful to him. One and all
refused a penny; and their spokesman said, ‘They wished they could do
more for the likes of him or his family.’ I have heard of many
conspiracies in this country; is not this one as worthy to be told as
any of them?
Round the house of Templemoyle is a pretty garden, which the pupils take
pleasure in cultivating, filled not with fruit (for this, though there
are seventy gardeners, the superintendent said somehow seldom reached a
ripe state), but with kitchen herbs, and a few beds of pretty flowers,
such as are best suited to cottage horticulture. Such simple carpenters’
and masons’ work as the young men can do is likewise confided to them;
and though the dietary may appear to the Englishman as rather a scanty
one, and though the English lads certainly make at first very wry faces
at the stirabout porridge (as they naturally will when first put in the
presence of that abominable mixture), yet after a time, strange to say,
they begin to find it actually palatable; and the best proof of the
excellence of the diet is, that nobody is ever ill in the institution:
colds and fevers, the ailments of lazy gluttonous gentility, are
unknown; and the doctor’s bill for the last year, for seventy pupils,
amounted to thirty-five shillings. _O beati agricoliculæ!_ You do not
know what it is to feel a little uneasy after half a crown’s worth of
raspberry-tarts, as lads do at the best public schools; you don’t know
in what majestic polished hexameters the Roman poet has described your
pursuits; you are not fagged and flogged into Latin and Greek at the
cost of two hundred pounds a year. Let these be the privileges of your
youthful betters; meanwhile content yourselves with thinking that you
_are_ preparing for a profession, while they are _not_; that you are
learning something useful, while they, for the most part, are not; for
after all, as a man grows old in the world, old and fat, cricket is
discovered not to be any longer very advantageous to him--even to have
pulled in the Trinity boat does not in old age amount to a substantial
advantage; and though to read a Greek play be an immense pleasure, yet
it must be confessed few enjoy it. In the first place, of the race of
Etonians, and Harrovians, and Carthusians that one meets in the world,
very few _can_ read the Greek; of those few--there are not, as I
believe, any considerable majority of poets. Stout men in the
bow-windows of clubs (for such young Etonians by time become) are not
generally remarkable for a taste for Æschylus.[34] You do not hear much
poetry in Westminster Hall, or I believe at the bar-tables afterwards;
and if occasionally, in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel lets off a
quotation--a pocket-pistol wadded with a leaf torn out of Horace--depend
on it, it is only to astonish the country gentlemen who don’t understand
him: and it is my firm conviction that Sir Robert no more cares for
poetry than you or I do.
Such thoughts will suggest themselves to a man who has had the benefit
of what is called an education at a public school in England, when he
sees seventy lads from all parts of the empire learning what his Latin
poets and philosophers have informed him is the best of all
pursuits,--finds them educated at one-twentieth part of the cost which
has been bestowed on his own precious person; orderly without the
necessity of submitting to degrading personal punishment; young, and
full of health and blood, though vice is unknown among them; and brought
up decently and honestly to know the things which it is good for them in
their profession to know. So it is, however: all the world is improving
except the gentleman. There are at this present writing five hundred
boys at Eton, kicked, and licked, and bullied by another
hundred--scrubbing shoes, running errands, making false concords, and
(as if that were a natural consequence!) putting their posteriors on a
block for Dr. Hawtrey to lash at; and still calling it education. They
are proud of it--good heavens!--absolutely vain of it; as what dull
barbarians are not proud of their dulness and barbarism? They call it
the good old English system: nothing like classics, says Sir John, to
give a boy a taste, you know, and a habit of reading--(Sir John, who
reads the _Racing Calendar_, and belongs to a race of men of all the
world the least given to reading!)--it’s the good old English system;
every boy fights for himself--hardens ‘em, eh, Jack? Jack grins, and
helps himself to another glass of claret, and presently tells you how
Tibs and Miller fought for an hour and twenty minutes ‘like good uns.’
... Let us come to an end, however, of this moralising; the car-driver
has brought the old raw-shouldered horse out of the stable, and says it
is time to be off again.
Before quitting Templemoyle, one thing more may be said in its favour.
It is one of the very few public establishments in Ireland where pupils
of the two religious denominations are received, and where no religious
disputes have taken place. The pupils are called upon, morning and
evening, to say their prayers privately. On Sunday each division,
Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and Episcopalian, is marched to its proper
place of worship. The pastors of each sect may visit their young flock
when so inclined; and the lads devote the Sabbath evening to reading the
books pointed out to them by their clergymen.
Would not the Agricultural Society of Ireland, the success of whose
peaceful labours for the national prosperity every Irish newspaper I
read brings some new indication, do well to show some mark of its
sympathy for this excellent institution of Templemoyle? A silver medal
given by the Society to the most deserving pupil of the year, would be a
great object of emulation amongst the young men educated at the place,
and would be almost a certain passport for the winner in seeking for a
situation in after life. I do not know if similar seminaries exist in
England. Other seminaries of a like nature have been tried in this
country, and have failed: but English country gentlemen cannot, I should
think, find a better object of their attention than this school; and our
farmers would surely find such establishments of great benefit to them:
where their children might procure a sound literary education at a small
charge, and at the same time be made acquainted with the latest
improvements in their profession. I can’t help saying here, once more,
what I have said _à propos_ of the excellent school at Dundalk, and
begging the English middle classes to think of the subject. If
Government will not act (upon what never can be effectual, perhaps,
until it become a national measure), let small communities act for
themselves, and tradesmen and the middle classes set up CHEAP
PROPRIETARY SCHOOLS. Will country newspaper editors, into whose hands
this book may fall, be kind enough to speak upon this hint, and extract
the tables of the Templemoyle and Dundalk establishments, to show how,
and with what small means, boys may be well, soundly, and humanely
educated--not brutally, as some of us have been, under the bitter
fagging and the shameful rod? It is no plea for the barbarity that use
has made us accustomed to it; and in seeing these institutions for
humble lads, where the system taught is at once useful, manly, and
kindly, and thought of what I had undergone in my own youth,--of the
frivolous monkish trifling in which it was wasted, of the brutal tyranny
to which it was subjected,--I could not look at the lads but with a sort
of envy: please God, their lot will be shared by thousands of their
equals and their betters before long!
It was a proud day for Dundalk, Mr. Thackeray well said, when, at the
end of one of the vacations there, fourteen English boys, and an
Englishman with his little son in his hand, landed from the Liverpool
packet, and, walking through the streets of the town, went into the
schoolhouse quite happy. That _was_ a proud day in truth for a distant
Irish town, and I can’t help saying that I grudge them the cause of
their pride somewhat. Why should there not be schools in England as
good, and as cheap, and as happy?
With this, shaking Mr. Campbell gratefully by the hand, and begging all
English tourists to go and visit his establishment, we trotted off for
Londonderry, leaving at about a mile’s distance from the town, and at
the pretty lodge of St. Columb’s, a letter, which was the cause of much
delightful hospitality.
St. Columb’s Chapel, the walls of which still stand picturesquely in Sir
George Hill’s park, and from which that gentleman’s seat takes its
name, was here since the sixth century. It is but fair to give
precedence to the mention of the old abbey, which was the father, as it
would seem, of the town. The approach to the latter from three quarters,
certainly, by which various avenues I had occasion to see it, is always
noble. We had seen the spire of the cathedral peering over the hills for
four miles on our way: it stands, a stalwart and handsome building, upon
an eminence, round which the old-fashioned stout red houses of the town
cluster, girt in with the ramparts and walls that kept out James’s
soldiers of old. Quays, factories, huge red warehouses, have grown round
this famous old barrier, and now stretch along the river. A couple of
large steamers and other craft lay within the bridge; and, as we passed
over that stout wooden edifice, stretching eleven hundred feet across
the noble expanse of the Foyle, we heard along the quays a great
thundering and clattering of iron-work in an enormous steam frigate
which has been built in Derry, and seems to lie alongside a whole street
of houses. The suburb, too, through which we passed was bustling and
comfortable; and the view was not only pleasing from its natural
beauties, but has a manly, thriving, honest air of prosperity, which is
no bad feature, surely, for a landscape.
Nor does the town itself, as one enters it, belie, as many other Irish
towns do, its first flourishing look. It is not splendid, but
comfortable; a brisk movement in the streets; good downright shops,
without particularly grand titles; few beggars. Nor have the common
people, as they address you, that eager smile,--that manner of compound
fawning and swaggering, which an Englishman finds in the townspeople of
the west and south. As in the North of England, too, when compared with
other districts, the people are greatly more familiar, though by no
means disrespectful to the stranger.
On the other hand, after such a commerce as a traveller has with the
race of waiters, postboys, porters, and the like (and it may be that the
vast race of postboys, etc., whom I did not see in the north, are quite
unlike those unlucky specimens with whom I came in contact), I was
struck by their excessive greediness after the traveller’s gratuities,
and their fierce dissatisfaction if not sufficiently rewarded. To the
gentleman who brushed my clothes at the comfortable hotel at Belfast,
and carried my bags to the coach, I tendered the sum of two shillings,
which seemed to me quite a sufficient reward for his services: he
battled and bawled with me for more, and got it too; for a
street-dispute with a porter calls together a number of delighted
bystanders, whose remarks and company are by no means agreeable to a
solitary gentleman. Then, again, was the famous case of Boots of
Ballycastle, which, being upon the subject, I may as well mention here:
Boots of Ballycastle, that romantic little village near the Giant’s
Causeway, had cleaned a pair of shoes for me certainly, but declined
either to brush my clothes, or to carry down my two carpet-bags to the
car; leaving me to perform those offices for myself, which I did: and
indeed they were not very difficult. But immediately I was seated on the
car, Mr. Boots stepped forward, and wrapped a mackintosh very
considerately round me, and begged me at the same time to ‘remember
him.’
There was an old beggar-woman standing by, to whom I had a desire to
present a penny: and having no coin of that value, I begged Mr. Boots,
out of sixpence which I tendered to him, to subtract a penny, and
present it to the old lady in question. Mr. Boots took the money, looked
at me, and his countenance, not naturally good-humoured, assumed an
expression of the most indignant contempt and hatred as he said, ‘I’m
thinking I’ve no call to give my money away. Sixpence is my right for
what I’ve done.’
‘Sir,’ says I, ‘you must remember that you did but black one pair of
shoes, and that you blacked them very badly too.’
‘Sixpence is my right,’ says Boots; ‘a _gentleman_ would give me
sixpence!’ and, though I represented to him that a pair of shoes might
be blacked in a minute--that fivepence a minute was not usual wages in
the country--that many gentlemen, half-pay officers, briefless
barristers, unfortunate literary gentlemen, would gladly black twelve
pairs of shoes per diem if rewarded with five shillings for so doing,
there was no means of convincing Mr. Boots. I then demanded back the
sixpence, which proposal, however, he declined, saying, after a
struggle, he would give the money, but a gentleman would have given
sixpence; and so left me with furious rage and contempt.
As for the city of Derry, a carman who drove me one mile out to dinner
at a gentleman’s house, where he himself was provided with a comfortable
meal, was dissatisfied with eighteenpence, vowing that a ‘dinner job’
was always paid half-a-crown, and not only asserted this, but continued
to assert it for a quarter of an hour with the most noble though
unsuccessful perseverance. A second car-boy, to whom I gave a shilling
for a drive of two miles altogether, attacked me because I gave the
other boy eighteenpence; and the porter who brought my bags fifty yards
from the coach, entertained me with a dialogue that lasted at least a
couple of minutes, and said, ‘I should have had sixpence for carrying
one of ‘em.’
For the car which carried me two miles the landlord of the inn made me
pay the sum of five shillings. He is a godly landlord, has Bibles in the
coffee-room, the drawing-room, and every bedroom in the house, with this
inscription--
UT MIGRATURUS HABITA
THE TRAVELLER’S TRUE REFUGE
Jones’s Hotel, Londonderry
This pious double or triple entendre, the reader will, no doubt,
admire--the first simile establishing the resemblance between this life
and an inn; the second allegory showing that the inn and the Bible are
both the traveller’s refuge.
In life we are in death--the hotel in question is about as gay as a
family vault: a severe figure of a landlord, in seedy black, is
occasionally seen in the dark passages or on the creaking old stairs of
the black inn. He does not bow to you--very few landlords in Ireland
condescend to acknowledge their guests--he only warns you--a silent
solemn gentleman who looks to be something between a clergyman and a
sexton--‘ut migraturus habita!’--the ‘migraturus’ was a vast comfort in
the clause.
It must, however, be said, for the consolation of future travellers,
that when at evening, in the old lonely parlour of the inn, the great
gaunt fireplace is filled with coals, two dreary funereal candles and
sticks glimmering upon the old-fashioned round table, the rain pattering
fiercely without, the wind roaring and thumping in the streets, this
worthy gentleman can produce a pint of port wine for the use of his
migratory guest, which causes the latter to be almost reconciled to the
cemetery in which he is resting himself, and he finds himself, to his
surprise, almost cheerful. There is a mouldy-looking old kitchen, too,
which, strange to say, sends out an excellent comfortable dinner, so
that the sensation of fear gradually wears off.
As in Chester, the ramparts of the town form a pleasant promenade; and
the batteries, with a few of the cannon, are preserved, with which the
stout ‘prentice boys of Derry beat off King James in ‘88. The guns bear
the names of the London Companies--venerable cockney titles! It is
pleasant for a Londoner to read them, and see how, at a pinch, the
sturdy citizens can do their work.
The public buildings of Derry are, I think, among the best I have seen
in Ireland; and the Lunatic Asylum, especially, is to be pointed out as
a model of neatness and comfort. When will the middle classes be allowed
to send their own afflicted relatives to public institutions of this
excellent kind, where violence is never practised--where it is never to
the interest of the keeper of the asylum to exaggerate his patient’s
malady, or to retain him in durance, for the sake of the enormous sums
which the sufferer’s relatives are made to pay? The gentry of three
counties which contribute to the Asylum have no such resource for
members of their own body, should any be so afflicted--the condition of
entering this admirable Asylum is, that the patient must be a pauper,
and on this account he is supplied with every comfort and the best
curative means, and his relations are in perfect security. Are the rich
in any way so lucky?--and if not, why not?
The rest of the occurrences at Derry belong, unhappily, to the domain of
private life, and though very pleasant to recall, are not honestly to be
printed. Otherwise, what popular descriptions might be written of the
hospitalities of St. Columb’s, of the jovialities of the mess of the--th
Regiment, of the speeches made and the songs sung, and the devilled
turkey at twelve o’clock, and the headache afterwards; all which events
could be described in an exceedingly facetious manner. But these
amusements are to be met with in every other part of her Majesty’s
dominions; and the only point which may be mentioned here as peculiar to
this part of Ireland, is the difference of the manner of the gentry to
that in the South. The Northern manner is far more _English_ than that
of the other provinces of Ireland--whether it is _better_ for being
English is a question of taste, of which an Englishman can scarcely be a
fair judge.
CHAPTER XXXII
DUBLIN AT LAST
A wedding-party that went across Derry Bridge to the sound of bell and
cannon, had to flounder through a thick coat of frozen snow, that
covered the slippery planks, and the hills round about were whitened
over by the same inclement material. Nor was the weather, implacable
towards young lovers and unhappy buck-skinned postillions shivering in
white favours, at all more polite towards the passengers of her
Majesty’s mail that runs from Derry to Ballyshannon.
Hence the aspect of the country between those two places can only be
described at the rate of nine miles an hour, and from such points of
observation as may be had through a coach window, starred with ice and
mud. While horses were changed we saw a very dirty town called Strabane;
and had to visit the old house of the O’Donnels in Donegal during a
quarter of an hour’s pause that the coach made there--and with an
umbrella overhead. The pursuit of the picturesque under umbrellas let us
leave to more venturesome souls: the fine weather of the finest season
known for many long years in Ireland was over, and I thought with a
great deal of yearning of Pat the waiter, at the Shelbourne Hotel,
Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and the gas-lamps, and the covered cars, and
the good dinners to which they take you.
Farewell, then, O wild Donegal! and ye stern passes through which the
astonished traveller windeth! Farewell, Ballyshannon, and thy
salmon-leap, and thy bar of sand, over which the white head of the
troubled Atlantic was peeping! Likewise, adieu to Lough Erne, and its
numberless green islands, and winding river-lake, and wavy fir-clad
hills! Good-bye, moreover, neat Enniskillen, over the bridge and
churches whereof the sun peepeth as the coach starteth from the inn!
See, how he shines now on Lord Belmore’s stately palace and park, with
gleaming porticoes and brilliant grassy chases: now, behold he is yet
higher in the heavens, as the twanging horn proclaims the approach to
beggarly Cavan, where a beggarly breakfast awaits the hungry voyager.
Snatching up a roll wherewith to satisfy the pangs of hunger, sharpened
by the mockery of breakfast, the tourist now hastens in his arduous
course, through Virginia, Kells, Navan, by Tara’s threadbare mountain,
and Skreen’s green hill; day darkens, and a hundred thousand lamps
twinkle in the grey horizon--see above the darkling trees a stumpy
column rise, see on its base the name of Wellington (though this,
because ‘tis night, thou canst not see), and cry, ‘It is the
_Phaynix_!’--On and on, across the iron bridge, and through the streets
(dear streets, though dirty, to the citizen’s heart how dear you be!),
and, lo, now with a bump, the dirty coach stops at the seedy inn, six
ragged porters battle for the bags, six wheedling carmen recommend their
cars, and (giving first the coachman eighteenpence) the cockney says,
‘Drive, car-boy, to the Shelbourne.’
And so having reached Dublin--and seeing the ominous 565 which figures
upon the last page, it becomes necessary to curtail the observations
which were to be made upon that city: which surely ought to have a
volume to itself--the humours of Dublin at least require so much space.
For instance, there was the dinner at the Kildare Street Club, or the
Hotel opposite,--the dinner in Trinity College Hall,--that at Mr.----,
the publisher’s, where a dozen of the literary men of Ireland were
assembled,--and those (say fifty) with Harry Lorrequer himself, at his
mansion of Templeogue. What a favourable opportunity to discourse upon
the peculiarities of Irish character! to describe men of letters, of
fashion, and university dons! Sketches of these personages may be
prepared, and sent over, perhaps, in confidence to Mrs. Sigourney in
America (who will of course not print them)--but the English habit does
not allow of these happy communications between writers and the public;
and the author who wishes to dine again at his friend’s cost, must needs
have a care how he puts him in print.
Suffice it to say, that at Kildare Street we had white neckcloths, black
waiters, wax-candles, and some of the best wine in Europe; at Mr.----,
the publisher’s, wax-candles, and some of the best wine in Europe; at
Mr. Lever’s, wax-candles, and some of the best wine in Europe; at
Trinity College--but there is no need to mention what took place at
Trinity College; for on returning to London, and recounting the
circumstances of the repast, my friend B----, a Master of Arts of that
University, solemnly declared the thing was impossible:--no stranger
_could_ dine at Trinity College; it was too great a privilege--in a
word, he would not believe the story, nor will he to this day; and why,
therefore, tell it in vain? I am sure if the Fellows of Colleges in
Oxford and Cambridge were told that the Fellows of T. C. D. only drink
beer at dinner, they would not believe _that_. Such, however, was the
fact: or may be it was a dream, which was followed by another dream of
about four-and-twenty gentlemen seated round a common-room table after
dinner; and, by a subsequent vision of a tray of oysters in the
apartments of a tutor of the University, some time before midnight. Did
we swallow them or not?--the oysters are an open question.
Of the Catholic College of Maynooth, I must likewise speak briefly, for
the reason that an accurate description of that establishment would be
of necessity so disagreeable, that it is best to pass it over in a few
words. An Irish union-house is a palace to it. Ruin so needless, filth
so disgusting, such a look of lazy squalor, no Englishman who has not
seen can conceive. Lecture-room and dining-hall, kitchen and students’
room, were all the same. I shall never forget the sight of scores of
shoulders of mutton lying on the filthy floor in the former, or the view
of a bed and dressing-table that I saw in the other. Let the next
Maynooth grant include a few shillings’-worth of whitewash and a few
hundred-weights of soap; and if to this be added a half-score of
drill-sergeants, to see that the students appear clean at lecture, and
to teach them to keep their heads up and to look people in the face,
Parliament will introduce some cheap reforms into the seminary, which
were never needed more than here. Why should the place be so shamefully
ruinous and foully dirty? Lime is cheap, and water plenty at the canal
hard by. Why should a stranger, after a week’s stay in the country, be
able to discover a priest by the scowl on his face, and his doubtful
downcast manner? Is it a point of discipline that his reverence should
be made to look as ill-humoured as possible? And I hope these words will
not be taken hostilely. It would have been quite as easy, and more
pleasant, to say the contrary, had the contrary seemed to me to have
been the fact; and to have declared that the priests were remarkable for
their expression of candour, and their college for its extreme neatness
and cleanliness.
This complaint of neglect applies to other public institutions besides
Maynooth. The Mansion-house, when I saw it, was a very dingy abode for
the Right Honourable Lord Mayor, and that Lord Mayor Mr. O’Connell. I
saw him in full council, in a brilliant robe of crimson velvet,
ornamented with white satin bows and sable collar, in an enormous
cocked-hat, like a slice of an eclipsed moon--in the following costume
in fact.
The Aldermen and Common Council, in a black oak parlour and at a dingy
green table, were assembled around him, and a debate of thrilling
interest to the town ensued. It related, I think, to water-pipes. The
great man did not speak publicly, but was occupied chiefly at the end of
the table, giving audiences to at least a score of clients and
petitioners.
The next day I saw him in the famous Corn Exchange. The building without
has a substantial look, but the hall within is rude, dirty, and ill
kept. Hundreds of persons were assembled in the black, steaming place;
no inconsiderable share of frieze-coats were among them; and many small
Repealers, who could but lately have assumed their breeches, ragged as
they were. These kept up a great chorus of shouting, and ‘hear, hear!’
at every pause in the great Repealer’s address. Mr. O’Connell was
reading a report from his Repeal-wardens; which proved that when Repeal
took place, commerce and prosperity would instantly flow into the
country; its innumerable harbours would be filled with countless ships,
its immense water-power would be directed to the turning of myriads of
mills: its vast energies and resources brought into full action. At the
end of the report three cheers were given for Repeal, and in the midst
of a great shouting Mr. O’Connell leaves the room.
‘Mr. Quiglan! Mr. Quiglan!’ roars an active _aide-de-camp_ to the
doorkeeper, ‘a covered kyar for the Lard Mayre.’ The covered car came; I
saw his Lordship get into it. Next day he was Lord Mayor no longer; but
Alderman O’Connell in his state-coach, with the handsome greys whose
manes were tied up with green ribbon, following the new Lord Mayor to
the right honourable inauguration. Javelin-men, city-marshals (looking
like military undertakers), private carriages, glass coaches, cars,
covered and uncovered, and thousands of yelling ragamuffins, formed the
civic procession of that faded, worn-out, insolvent old Dublin
Corporation.
[Illustration]
The walls of this city had been placarded with huge notices to the
public, that O’Connell’s rent-day was at hand; and I went round to all
the chapels in town on that Sunday (not a little to the scandal of some
Protestant friends), to see the popular behaviour. Every door was
barred, of course, with plate-holders; and heaps of pence at the humble
entrances, and bank-notes at the front gates, told the willingness of
the people to reward their champion. The car-boy who drove me had paid
his little tribute of fourpence at morning mass; the waiter who brings
my breakfast had added to the national subscription with his humble
shilling; and the Catholic gentleman with whom I dined, and between
whom and Mr. O’Connell there is no great love lost, pays his annual
donation, out of gratitude for old services, and to the man who won
Catholic Emancipation for Ireland. The piety of the people at the
chapels is a sight, too, always well worthy to behold. Nor indeed is
this religious fervour less in the Protestant places of worship: the
warmth and attention of the congregation, the enthusiasm with which
hymns are sung and responses uttered, contrast curiously with the cool
formality of worshippers at home.
The service at St. Patrick’s is finely sung; and the shameless English
custom of retreating after the anthem, is properly prevented by locking
the gates, and having the music after the sermon. The interior of the
cathedral itself, however, to an Englishman who has seen the neat and
beautiful edifices of his own country, will be anything but an object of
admiration. The greater part of the huge old building is suffered to
remain in gaunt decay, and with its stalls of sham Gothic, and the
tawdry old rags and gimcracks of the ‘most illustrious order of St.
Patrick’ (whose pasteboard helmets, and calico banners, and lath swords,
well characterise the humbug of chivalry which they are made to
represent), looks like a theatre behind the scenes. ‘Paddy’s Opera,’
however, is a noble performance; and the Englishman may here listen to a
half-hour sermon, and in the anthem to a bass singer whose voice is one
of the finest ever heard.
The Drama does not flourish much more in Dublin than in any other part
of the country. Operatic stars make their appearance occasionally, and
managers lose money. I was at a fine concert, at which Lablache and
others performed, where there were not a hundred people in the pit of
the pretty theatre, and where the only encore given was to a young woman
in ringlets and yellow satin, who stepped forward and sung ‘Coming
through the rye,’ or some other scientific composition, in an
exceedingly small voice. On the nights when the regular drama was
enacted, the audience was still smaller. The theatre of Fishamble Street
was given up to the performances of the Rev. Mr. Greg and his Protestant
company, whose soirées I did not attend; and, at the Abbey Street
Theatre, whither I went in order to see, if possible, some specimens of
the national humour, I found a company of English people ranting through
a melodrama, the tragedy whereof was the only laughable thing to be
witnessed.
Humbler popular recreations may be seen by the curious. One night I paid
twopence to see a puppet-show--such an entertainment as may have been
popular a hundred and thirty years ago, and is described in the
_Spectator_. But the company here assembled were not, it scarcely need
be said, of the genteel sort. There were a score of boys, however, and a
dozen of labouring men, who were quite happy and contented with the
piece performed, and loudly applauded. Then in passing homewards of a
night, you hear, at the humble public-houses, the sound of many a
fiddle, and the stamp of feet dancing the good old jig, which is still
maintaining a struggle with Teetotalism, and, though vanquished now, may
rally some day and overcome the enemy. At Kingstown, especially, the old
‘fire-worshippers’ yet seem to muster pretty strongly; loud is the music
to be heard in the taverns there, and the cries of encouragement to the
dancers.
Of the numberless amusements that take place in the _Phaynix_, it is not
very necessary to speak. Here you may behold garrison races, and
reviews; lord-lieutenants in brown greatcoats; _aides-de-camp_
scampering about like mad in blue; fat colonels roaring ‘charge’ to
immense heavy dragoons; dark riflemen lining woods and firing; galloping
cannoneers banging and blazing right and left. Here comes his Excellency
the Commander-in-Chief, with his huge feathers, and white hair, and
hooked nose; and yonder sits his Excellency the Ambassador from the
republic of Topinambo in a glass coach, smoking a cigar. The honest
Dublinites make a great deal of such small dignitaries as his Excellency
of the glass coach; you hear everybody talking of him, and asking which
is he; and when presently one of Sir Robert Peel’s sons makes his
appearance on the course, the public rush delighted to look at him.
They love great folks, those honest Emerald Islanders, more intensely
than any people I ever heard of, except the Americans. They still
cherish the memory of the sacred George IV. They chronicle genteel small
beer with never-failing assiduity. They go in long trains to a sham
court--simpering in tights and bags, with swords between their legs. O
heaven and earth, what joy! Why are the Irish noblemen absentees? If
their lordships like respect, where would they get it so well as in
their own country?
The Irish noblemen are very likely going through the same delightful
routine of duty before their real sovereign--in _real_ tights and
bagwigs, as it were, performing their graceful and lofty duties, and
celebrating the august service of the throne. These, of course, the
truly loyal heart can only respect; and I think a drawing-room at St.
James’s the grandest spectacle that ever feasted the eye or exercised
the intellect. The crown, surrounded by its knights and nobles, its
priests, its sages, and their respective ladies; illustrious foreigners,
men learned in the law, heroes of land and sea, beef-eaters,
gold-sticks, gentlemen-at-arms, rallying round the throne and defending
it with those swords which never knew defeat (and would surely, if
tried, secure victory): these are sights and characters which every man
must look upon with a thrill of respectful awe, and count amongst the
glories of his country. What lady that sees this will not confess that
she reads every one of the drawing-room costumes, from Majesty down to
Miss Anna Maria Smith; and all the names of the presentations, from
Prince Baccabocksky (by the Russian Ambassador) to Ensign Stubbs on his
appointment?
We are bound to read these accounts. It is our pride, our duty as
Britons. But though one may honour the respect of the aristocracy of the
land for the sovereign, yet there is no reason why those who are not of
the aristocracy should be aping their betters; and the Dublin Castle
business has, I cannot but think, a very high-life-below-stairs look.
There is no aristocracy in Dublin. Its magnates are tradesmen--Sir Fiat
Haustus, Sir Blacker Dosy, Mr. Serjeant Bluebag, or Mr. Counsellor
O’Fee. Brass plates are their titles of honour, and they live by their
boluses or their briefs. What call have these worthy people to be
dangling and grinning at lord-lieutenants’ levees, and playing sham
aristocracy before a sham sovereign? Oh that old humbug of a Castle! It
is the greatest sham of all the shams in Ireland.
Although the season may be said to have begun, for the courts are
opened, and the _noblesse de la robe_ have assembled, I do not think the
genteel quarters of the town look much more cheerful. They still, for
the most part, wear their faded appearance and lean half-pay look. There
is the beggar still dawdling here and there. Sound of carriages or
footmen do not deaden the clink of the burly policeman’s boot-heels. You
may see, possibly, a smutty-faced nursemaid leading out her little
charges to walk; or the observer may catch a glimpse of Mick the footman
lolling at the door, and grinning as he talks to some dubious tradesman.
MICK and JOHN are very different characters externally and
inwardly;--profound essays (involving the history of the two countries
for a thousand years) might be written regarding Mick and John, and the
moral and political influences which have developed the flunkeys of the
two nations. The friend, too, with whom Mick talks at the door is a
puzzle to a Londoner. I have hardly ever entered a Dublin house without
meeting with some such character on my way in or out. He looks too
shabby for a dun, and not exactly ragged enough for a beggar--a
doubtful, lazy, dirty family vassal--a guerilla footman. I think it is
he who makes a great noise, and whispering, and clattering, handing in
the dishes to Mick from outside of the dining-room door. When an
Irishman comes to London he brings Erin with him; and ten to one you
will find one of these queer retainers about his place.
London one can only take leave of by degrees: the great town melts away
into suburbs, which soften, as it were, the parting between the cockney
and his darling birthplace. But you pass from some of the stately fine
Dublin streets straight into the country. After No. 46 Eccles Street,
for instance, potatoes begin at once. You are on a wide green plain,
diversified by occasional cabbage-plots, by drying-grounds white with
chemises, in the midst of which the chartered wind is revelling; and
though in the map some fanciful engineer has laid down streets and
squares, they exist but on paper; nor, indeed, can there be any need of
them at present, in a quarter where houses are not wanted so much as
people to dwell in the same.
If the genteel portions of the town look to the full as melancholy as
they did, the downright poverty ceases, I fear, to make so strong an
impression as it made four months ago. Going over the same ground again,
places appear to have quite a different aspect; and, with their
strangeness, poverty and misery have lost much of their terror. The
people, though dirtier and more ragged, seem certainly happier than
those in London.
Near to the King’s Court, for instance (a noble building, as are almost
all the public edifices of the city), is a straggling green suburb,
containing numberless little shabby, patched, broken-windowed huts, with
rickety gardens dotted with rags that have been washed, and children
that have not; and thronged with all sorts of ragged inhabitants. Near
to the suburb, in the town, is a dingy, old, mysterious district, called
Stoneybatter, where some houses have been allowed to reach an old age,
extraordinary in this country of premature ruin, and look as if they had
been built some six score years since. In these and the neighbouring
tenements, not so old, but equally ruinous and mouldy, there is a sort
of vermin swarm of humanity: dirty faces at all the dirty windows;
children on all the broken steps; smutty slipshod women clacking and
bustling about, and old men dawdling. Well, only paint and prop the
tumbling gates and huts in the suburb, and fancy the Stoneybatterites
clean, and you would have rather a gay and agreeable picture of human
life--of workpeople and their families reposing after their labours.
They are all happy, and sober, and kind-hearted,--they seem kind, and
playing with the children--the young women having a gay good-natured
joke for the passer-by; the old seemingly contented, and buzzing to one
another. It is only the costume, as it were, that has frightened the
stranger, and made him fancy that people so ragged must be unhappy.
Observation grows used to the rags as much as the people do, and my
impression of the walk through this district, on a sunshiny, clear
autumn evening, is that of a fête. I am almost ashamed it should be so.
Near to Stoneybatter lies a group of huge gloomy edifices--an hospital,
a penitentiary, a madhouse, and a poorhouse. I visited the latter of
these, the North Dublin Union-house, an enormous establishment, which
accommodates two thousand beggars. Like all the public institutions of
the country, it seems to be well conducted, and is a vast, orderly, and
cleanly place, wherein the prisoners are better clothed, better fed, and
better housed than they can hope to be when at liberty. We were taken
into all the wards in due order--the schools and nursery for the
children; the dining-rooms, day-rooms, etc., of the men and women. Each
division is so accommodated, as also with a large court or ground to
walk and exercise in.
Among the men, there are very few able-bodied; the most of them, the
keeper said, having gone out for the harvest-time, or as soon as the
potatoes came in. If they go out, they cannot return before the
expiration of a month: the guardians have been obliged to establish this
prohibition, lest the persons requiring relief should go in and out too
frequently. The old men were assembled in considerable numbers in a long
day-room that is comfortable and warm. Some of them were picking oakum
by way of employment, but most of them were past work; all such inmates
of the house as are able-bodied being occupied upon the premises. Their
hall was airy and as clean as brush and water could make it: the men
equally clean, and their grey jackets and Scotch caps stout and warm.
Thence we were led, with a sort of satisfaction, by the guardian, to the
kitchen--a large room, at the end of which might be seen certain
coppers, emitting, it must be owned, a very faint inhospitable smell. It
was Friday, and rice-milk is the food on that day, each man being served
with a pint-canful, of which cans a great number stood smoking upon
stretchers--the platters were laid, each with its portion of salt, in
the large clean dining-room hard by. ‘Look at that rice,’ said the
keeper, taking up a bit; ‘try it, sir, it’s delicious.’ I’m sure I hope
it is.
The old women’s room was crowded with, I should think, at least four
hundred old ladies--neat and nice, in white clothes and caps--sitting
demurely on benches, doing nothing for the most part; but some employed,
like the old men, in fiddling with the oakum. ‘There’s tobacco here,’
says the guardian, in a loud voice; ‘who’s smoking tobacco?’ ‘Fait, and
I wish dere _was_ some tabacky here,’ says one old lady, ‘and my service
to you, Mr. Leary, and I hope one of the gentlemen has a snuff-box, and
a pinch for a poor old woman.’ But we had no boxes; and if any person
who reads this visit, goes to a poorhouse or lunatic asylum, let him
carry a box, if for that day only--a pinch is like Dives’s drop of water
to those poor limboed souls. Some of the poor old creatures began to
stand up as we came in--I can’t say how painful such an honour seemed to
me.
There was a separate room for the able-bodied females; and the place and
courts were full of stout, red-cheeked, bouncing women. If the old
ladies looked respectable, I cannot say the young ones were particularly
good-looking; there were some Hogarthian faces amongst them--sly,
leering, and hideous. I fancied I could see only too well what these
girls had been. Is it charitable or not to hope that such bad faces
could only belong to bad women?
‘Here, sir, is the nursery,’ said the guide, flinging open the door of a
long room. There may have been eighty babies in it, with as many nurses
and mothers. Close to the door sat one with as beautiful a face as I
almost ever saw: she had at her breast a very sickly and puny child, and
looked up, as we entered, with a pair of angelical eyes, and a face that
Mr. Eastlake could paint--a face that _had_ been angelical that is; for
there was the snow still, as it were, but with the footmark on it. I
asked her how old she was--she did not know. She could not have been
more than fifteen years, the poor child. She said she had been a
servant--and there was no need of asking anything more about her story.
I saw her grinning at one of her comrades as we went out of the room;
her face did not look angelical then. Ah, young master or old, young or
old villain, who did this!--have you not enough wickedness of your own
to answer for, that you must take another’s sins upon your shoulders;
and be this wretched child’s sponsor in crime?...
But this chapter must be made as short as possible; and so I will not
say how much prouder Mr. Leary, the keeper, was of his fat pigs than of
his paupers--how he pointed us out the burial-ground of the family of
the poor--their coffins were quite visible through the niggardly
mould; and the children might peep at their fathers over the
burial-ground-playground wall--nor how we went to see the Linen Hall of
Dublin--that huge, useless, lonely, decayed place, in the vast windy
solitudes of which stands the simpering statue of George IV., pointing
to some bales of shirting, over which he is supposed to extend his
august protection.
The cheers of the rabble hailing the new Lord Mayor were the last
sounds that I heard in Dublin: and I quitted the kind friends I had made
there with the sincerest regret. As for forming ‘an opinion of Ireland,’
such as is occasionally asked from a traveller on his return--that is as
difficult an opinion to form as to express; and the puzzle which has
perplexed the gravest and wisest, may be confessed by a humble writer of
light literature, whose aim it only was to look at the manners and the
scenery of the country, and who does not venture to meddle with
questions of more serious import.
To have ‘an opinion about Ireland,’ one must begin by getting the truth;
and where is it to be had in the country? Or rather, there are two
truths, the Catholic truth and the Protestant truth. The two parties do
not see things with the same eyes. I recollect, for instance, a Catholic
gentleman telling me that the Primate had forty-three thousand _five
hundred_ a year; a Protestant clergyman gave me, chapter and verse, the
history of a shameful perjury and malversation of money on the part of a
Catholic priest; nor was one tale more true than the other. But belief
is made a party business; and the receiving of the archbishop’s income
would probably not convince the Catholic, any more than the clearest
evidence to the contrary altered the Protestant’s opinion. Ask about an
estate, you may be sure almost that people will make misstatements, or
volunteer them if not asked. Ask a cottager about his rent, or his
landlord: you cannot trust him. I shall never forget the glee with which
a gentleman in Munster told me how he had sent off MM. Tocqueville and
Beaumont ‘with _such_ a set of stories.’ Inglis was seized, as I am
told, and mystified in the same way. In the midst of all these truths,
attested with ‘I give ye my sacred honour and word,’ which is the
stranger to select? And how are we to trust philosophers who make
theories upon such data?
Meanwhile it is satisfactory to know, upon testimony so general as to be
equivalent almost to fact, that, wretched as it is, the country is
steadily advancing, nor nearly so wretched now as it was a score of
years since; and let us hope that the _middle class_, which this
increase of prosperity must generate (and of which our laws have
hitherto forbidden the existence in Ireland, making there a population
of Protestant aristocracy and Catholic peasantry), will exercise the
greatest and most beneficial influence over the country. Too independent
to be bullied by priest or squire--having their interest in quiet, and
alike indisposed to servility or to rebellion; may not as much be hoped
from the gradual formation of such a class, as from any legislative
meddling? It is the want of the middle class that has rendered the
squire so arrogant, and the clerical or political demagogue so
powerful; and I think Mr. O’Connell himself would say that the existence
of such a body would do more for the steady acquirement of orderly
freedom, than the occasional outbreak of any crowd, influenced by any
eloquence from altar or tribune.
THE END
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REV. R. H. BARHAM.--=Life.=
“ “ =Theodore Hook.=
=Biographies of Eminent Persons. Vol. I.=
“ “ =II.=
“ “ =III.=
“ “ =IV.=
“ “ =V.=
=Annual Summaries. Vol. I.=
“ “ =II.=
=Masson’s French Dictionary.=
=Shakespeare’s Works. Vol I.=
“ “ =II.=
“ “ =III.=
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:
‘By your angel flown away just like a dove,
By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed,
Pardon yet once more! Pardon in the name of the tomb!
Pardon in the name of the cradle!’
[2] In order to account for these trivial details, the reader must be
told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact; and that the little
sketch in this page was _taken from nature_. The letter was likewise a
copy from one found in the manner described.
[3] This reply, and indeed the whole of the story, is historical. An
account, by Charles Nodier, in the _Revue de Paris_, suggested it to the
writer.
[4] These countries are, to be sure, inundated with the productions
of our market, in the shape of ‘Byron Beauties,’ reprints from the
‘Keepsakes,’ ‘Books of Beauty,’ and such trash; but these are only of
late years, and their original schools of art are still flourishing.
[5] Almost all the principal public men had been most ludicrously
caricatured in the _Charivari_: those mentioned above were usually
depicted with the distinctive attributes mentioned by us.
[6] It is not necessary to enter into descriptions of these various
inventions.
[7] We have given a description of a genteel Macaire in the account of
_M. de Bernard’s_ novels.
[8] He always went to mass; it is in the evidence.
[9] This sentence is taken from another part of the ‘acte d’accusation.’
[10] ‘Peytel,’ says the act of accusation, ‘did not fail to see the
danger which would menace him, if this will (which had escaped the
magistrates in their search for Peytel’s papers) was discovered. He,
therefore, instructed his agent to take possession of it, which he did,
and the fact was not mentioned for several months afterwards. Peytel and
his agent were called upon to explain the circumstance, but refused, and
their silence for a long time interrupted the “instruction” (getting up
of the evidence). All that could be obtained from them was an avowal
that such a will existed, constituting Peytel his wife’s sole legatee;
and a promise, on their parts, to produce it before the court gave its
sentence.’ But why keep the will secret? The anxiety about it was surely
absurd and unnecessary: the whole of Madame Peytel’s family knew that
such a will was made. She had consulted her sister concerning it, who
said--‘If there is no other way of satisfying him, make the will;’ and
the mother, when she heard of it, cried out--‘Does he intend to poison
her?’
[11] M. Balzac’s theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued with
Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her marriage, when she was
staying in the house of her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard,
where Rey had been a servant.
[12] The italics are the author’s own.
[13] It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his Majesty
Louis XIV. used to _powder his wig with gold-dust_.
[14] I think it is in the amusing _Memoirs of Madame de Créqui_ (a
forgery, but a work remarkable for its learning and accuracy) that the
above anecdote is related.
[15] They made a Jesuit of him on his death-bed.
[16] Saint Simon’s account of Lauzun, in disgrace, is admirably
facetious and pathetic; Lauzun’s regrets are as monstrous as those of
Raleigh when deprived of the sight of his adorable queen and mistress,
Elizabeth.
[17] A pair of diamond earrings, given by the King to La Vallière,
caused much scandal; and some lampoons are extant, which impugn the
taste of Louis XIV. for loving a lady with such an enormous mouth.
[18] In the diamond-necklace affair.
[19] He was found hanging in his own bedroom.
[20] Among the many lovers that rumour gave to the Queen, poor Ferscu
is the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained for her a high and
perfectly pure devotion. He was the chief agent in the luckless escape
to Varennes; was lurking in Paris during the time of her captivity; and
was concerned in the many fruitless plots that were made for her rescue.
Ferscu lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful and violent death. He
was dragged from his carriage by the mob, in Stockholm, and murdered by
them.
[21] The two men were executed pursuant to sentence, and both persisted
solemnly in denying their guilt. There can be no doubt of it: but it
appears to be a point of honour with these unhappy men to make no
statement which may incriminate the witnesses who appeared on their
behalf, and on their part perjured themselves equally.
[22] The only instance of intoxication that I have heard of as yet,
has been on the part of two ‘cyouncillors,’ undeniably drunk and noisy
yesterday after the bar dinner at Waterford.
[23] The suspicion turned out to be very correct. The gentleman is the
respected cook of C----, as I learned afterwards from a casual Cambridge
man.
[24] By the help of an Alexandrine, the names of these famous families
may also be accommodated to verse.
‘Athey, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Deane, Dorsey, Frinche,
Joyce, Morech, Skereth, Fonte, Kirowan, Martin, Lynche.’
[25] If the rude old verses are not very remarkable in quality, in
_quantity_ they are still more deficient, and take some dire liberties
with the laws laid down in the Gradus and the Grammar:--
‘Septem ornant montes Romam, septem ostia Nilum,
Tot rutilis stellis splendet in axe Polus.
Galvia, Polo Niloque bis æquas. Roma Conachtæ,
Bis septem illustres has colit illa tribus.
Bis urbis septem defendunt mœnia turres,
Intus et en duro est marmore quæque domus.
Bis septem portæ sunt, castra et culmina circum,
Per totidem pontum permeat unda vias.
Principe bis septem fulgent altaria templo,
Quævis patronæ est ara dicata suo.
Et septem sacrata Deo cœnobia, patrum,
Fœminei et sexus, tot pia tecta tenet.’
[26] First edition “_The Irish Sketch Book_, 1843.”
An allusion has been made in the first chapter of this volume to a
frontispiece which was originally intended for it. But an accident
happened to the plate, which has compelled the author to cancel it, and
insert that which at present appears.
[27] This epithet is applied to the party of a Colonel somebody, in a
Dublin paper.
[28] Here is an extract from one of the latter--
‘Hasten to some distant isle,
In the bosom of the deep,
Where the skies for ever smile,
_And the blacks for ever weep_.’
Is it not a shame that such nonsensical false twaddle should be sung in
a house of the Church of England, and by people assembled for grave and
decent worship?
[29] It must be said, for the worthy fellow who accompanied us, and who
acted as cicerone previously to the great Willis, the great Hall, the
great Barrow, that though he wears a ragged coat his manners are those
of a gentleman, and his conversation evinces no small talent, taste, and
scholarship.
[30] ‘Boarders are received from the age of eight to fourteen at £12 per
annum, and £1 for washing, paid quarterly in advance.
‘Day Scholars are received from the age of ten to twelve at £2, paid
quarterly in advance.
‘The Incorporated Society have abundant cause for believing that the
introduction of Boarders into their Establishments has produced far
more advantageous results to the public than they could, at so early
a period, have anticipated; and that the election of boys to their
Foundations _only_ after a fair competition with others of a given
district, has had the effect of stimulating masters and scholars to
exertion and study, and promises to operate most beneficially for the
advancement of religious and general knowledge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ARRANGEMENT OF SCHOOL BUSINESS IN DUNDALK INSTITUTION |
---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+
Hours | Monday, Wednesday, | Tuesday | Saturday. |
| and Friday. | and Thursday. | |
---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+
6 to 7 | Rise, wash, etc. | Rise, wash, etc. | Rise, wash, etc. |
| | | |
7 “ 7-1/2 |{Scripture by the |{Scripture by the |{Scripture by the |
|{Master, and prayer.|{Master, and prayer.|{Master and prayer. |
| | | |
7-1/2 “ 8-1/2 |{Reading, History, |{Reading, History, |{Reading, History, |
|{etc. |{etc. |{etc. |
| | | |
8-1/2 “ 9 | Breakfast. | Breakfast. | Breakfast. |
| | | |
9 “ 10 | Play. | Play. | Play. |
| | | |
10 “ 10-1/2 | English Grammar. | Geography. |}10 to 11 |
10-1/2 “ 11-1/4| Algebra. | Euclid. |}repetition. |
| | | |
| |{Lecture on |}11 to 12, |
11-1/4 “ 12 | Scripture. |{principles |}Use of |
| |{of Arithmetic. |}Globes. |
| | | |
12 “ 12-3/4 | Writing. | Writing. |{12 to 1, Catechism |
| | |{and Scripture |
|{Arithmetic at | |{by the Catechist. |
12-3/4 “ 2 |{Desks, and | Mensuration. | |
|{Bookkeeping. | | |
| | | |
2 “ 2-1/2 | Dinner. | Dinner. | Dinner. |
| | | |
2-1/2 “ 5 | Play. | Play. |{The remainder of |
| | |{this day is devoted|
|{Spelling, Mental |{Spelling, Mental |{to exercise till |
5 “ 7-1/2 |{Arithmetic, and |{Arithmetic, and |{the hour of Supper,|
|{Euclid. |{Euclid. |{after which the |
| | |{Boys assemble in |
7-1/2 “ 8 | Supper. | Supper. |{the Schoolroom |
| | |{and hear a portion |
8 “ 8-1/2 | Exercise. | Exercise. |{of Scripture read |
| | |{and explained by |
|{Scripture by the |{Scripture by the |{the Master, as on |
8-1/2 “ 9 |{Master, and prayer |{Master, and prayer |{other days, and |
|{in Schoolroom. |{in Schoolroom. |{conclude with |
| | |{prayer. |
9 | Retire to bed. | Retire to bed. | |
---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+
The sciences of Navigation and practical Surveying are taught in the |
Establishment; also a selection of the Pupils, who have a taste for it, are |
instructed in the art of Drawing. |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
DIETARY |
|
=Breakfast=.--Stirabout and Milk, every Morning. |
|
=Dinner=.--On Sunday and Wednesday, Potatoes and Beef; 10 ounces of the |
latter to each boy. On Monday and Thursday, Bread and Broth; 1/2 lb. of the |
former to each boy. On Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, Potatoes and Milk; |
2 lbs. of the former to each boy. |
|
=Supper=.--1/2 lb. of Bread with Milk, uniformly, except on Monday and |
Thursday; on these days, Potatoes and Milk. |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
‘The districts for eligible Candidates are as follow:--
‘Dundalk Institution embraces the counties of Louth and Down, because
the properties which support it lie in this district.
‘The Pococke Institution, Kilkenny, embraces the counties of Kilkenny
and Waterford, for the same cause.
‘The Ranelagh Institution, the towns of Athlone and Roscommon, and
three districts in the counties of Galway and Roscommon, which the
Incorporated Society hold in fee, or from which they receive impropriate
tithes.
(_Signed_) CÆSAR OTWAY, _Secretary_.’
[31] The Proprietary Schools of late established have gone far to
protect the interests of parents and children; but the masters of
these schools take boarders, and of course draw profits from them. Why
make the learned man a beef and mutton contractor? It would be easy to
arrange the economy of a school so that there should be no possibility
of a want of confidence, or of peculation, to the detriment of the pupil.
[32] ‘I want to go into a coal-mine,’ says Tom Sheridan, ‘in order to
say I have been there.’ ‘Well, then, say so,’ replied the admirable
father.
[33] The late Mr. Pope represents Camilla as ‘_scouring the plain_,’
an absurd and useless task. Peggy’s occupation with the kettle is
much more simple and noble. The second line of this poem (whereof the
author scorns to deny an obligation) is from the celebrated “Frithiof”
of Esaias Tigner. A maiden is serving warriors to drink, and is
standing by a shield--Und die Runde des Schildes ward wie das Mägdelein
roth,”--perhaps the above is the best thing in both poems.
[34] And then, how much Latin and Greek does the public schoolboy know?
Also, does he know anything else, and what? Is it history, or geography,
or mathematics, or divinity?
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
holdiug converse with each other.=> holding converse with each other.
{pg 176}
philosophic apophthegms=> philosophic apothegms {pg 367}
so pulled to the middle or Turk lake=> so pulled to the middle of Turk
lake {pg 375}
Does it strenghten a man=> Does it strengthen a man {pg 500}
scolloped sleeves=> scalloped sleeves {pg 504}
in throuble in England=> in trouble in England {pg 517}
middle in the rapid strame=> middle in the rapid stream {footnote pg
424}
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