Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3)

At length, a happy letter reached the major, signifying that all parties had agreed, and that his Alicia, heart and hand, was to be given up to him for life, as his own private and exclusive property – “to have and to hold, for better for worse,” &c. &c. This announcement rendered him almost as wild as his despair had done previously. When he received the letter, he leaped down a flight of stairs at one spring, and in five minutes ordered his charger to be saddled for himself; his hunter, “Mad Tom,” for me; and his chestnut, “Rainbow,” for Neil. In ten minutes we were all mounted and in full gallop toward Dublin, which he had determined to reach that night after one short stoppage at Kildare, where we arrived (without slackening rein) in as short a time as if we had rode a race. The horses were fed well, and drenched with hot ale and brandy; but as none of them were in love, I perceived that they would willingly have deferred the residue of the journey till the ensuing morning. Indeed, my brother’s steed conceiving that charges of such rapidity and length were not at all military, unless in running away, determined practically to convince his master that such was his notion. We passed over the famous race-ground of the Curragh in good style; but, as my brother had not given his horse time to lie down gently and rest himself in the ordinary way, the animal had no choice but to perform the feat of lying down whilst in full gallop – which he did very expertly just at the Curragh stand-house. The only mischief occurring herefrom was, that the drowsy charger stripped the skin, like rags, completely off both his knees, scalped the top of his head, got a hurt in the back sinews, and (no doubt without intending it) broke both my brother’s collarbones. When we came up (who were a few hundred yards behind him), both man and beast were lying very quietly, as if asleep; – my brother about five or six yards before the horse, who had cleverly thrown his rider far beyond the chance of being tumbled over by himself. The result was, as usual on similar occasions, that the horse was led limping and looking foolish to the first stable, and committed to all the farriers and grooms in the neighbourhood. My brother was carried flat on a door to the nearest ale-house; and doctors being sent for, three (with bags of instruments) arrived from different places before night, and, after a good deal of searching and fumbling about his person, one of them discovered that both collar-bones were smashed, as aforesaid, and that if either of the broken bones or splinters thereof turned inward by his stirring, it might run through the lobes of his lungs, and very suddenly end all hopes of ever completing his journey: his nose had likewise taken a different turn from that it had presented when he set out: – and the palms of his hands fully proved that they could do without any skin, and with a very moderate quantity of flesh.

However, the bones were well arranged, a pillow strapped under each arm, and another at his shoulder-blades. All necessary comforts were procured, as well as furniture from Mr. Hamilton, whose house was near. I did not hear a word that night about Alicia; but in due time the major began to recover once more, and resumed his love, which had pro tempore been literally knocked out of him. It was announced by the doctor that it would be a long time before he could use his hands or arms, and that removal or exercise might produce a new fracture, and send a splinter or bone through any part of his interior that might be most handy.

Though I thought the blood he had lost, and the tortures the doctor put him to, had rendered his mind a good deal tamer than it was at Maryborough, he still talked much of Alicia, and proposed that I should write to her, on his part, an account of his misfortunes; and the doctor in attendance allowing him the slight exertion of signing his name and address in his own handwriting, I undertook to execute my task to the utmost of my skill, and certainly performed it with great success. I commenced with due warmth, and stated that the “accident he had met with only retarded the happiness he should have in making her his wife, which he had so long burned for, but which circumstances till then had prevented,” &c. &c. (The words I recollect pretty well, because they afterward afforded me infinite amusement.) The letter was sealed with the family arms and crest.

“Now, Jonah,” said my brother, “before I marry I have a matter of some importance to arrange, lest it should come to the ears of my Alicia, which would be my ruin; and I must get you to see it settled for me at Philipstown, so as to prevent any thing exploding.” He went on to give me the particulars of a certain liaison he had formed with a young woman there, an exciseman’s daughter, which he was now, as may be supposed, desirous of breaking; and (though protesting that interference in such matters was not at all to my taste) I consented to write, at his dictation, a sort of compromise to the party, which he having signed, both epistles were directed at the same time, and committed to the post-office of Kilcullen bridge.

The amorous and fractured invalid was now rapidly advancing to a state of convalescence. His nose had been renovated with but an inconsiderable partiality for the left cheek; his collar-bones had approximated to a state of adhesion; and he began impatiently to count the days and nights that would metamorphose his Alicia from a spinster to a matron.

The extravagance of his flaming love amused me extremely: his aerial castles were built, altered, and demolished with all the skill and rapidity of modern architecture; while years of exquisite and unalloyed felicity arose before his fancy, of which they took an immovable grasp.

We were busily engaged one morning in planning and arranging his intended establishment, on returning to the sports and freaks of a country gentleman (with the addition of a terrestrial angel to do the honours), when, on a sudden, we heard rather a rough noise at the entrance of the little chamber wherein the invalid was still reclining upon a feather-bed, with a pillow under each arm to keep the bones in due position. Our old fat landlady, who was extremely partial to the cornet,48 burst in with her back toward us, endeavouring to prevent the entrance of a stranger, who, however, without the least ceremony, giving her a hearty curse, dashed into the centre of the room in a state of bloated rage scarcely conceivable – which was more extraordinary as the individual appeared to be no other than Captain Tennyson Edwards, of the 30th regiment, third brother of the beloved Alicia. Of course we both rose to welcome him most heartily: this however he gave us no opportunity of doing; but laying down a small mahogany case, which he carried in his hand, and putting his arms akimbo, he loudly exclaimed without any exordium, “Why, then, Cornet Jack Barrington, are you not the greatest scoundrel that ever disgraced civilised society?”

This quere of course was not answered in the affirmative by either of us; and a scene of astonishment on the one side and increasing passion on the other, baffled all common-place description: I must therefore refer it to the imagination of my readers. The retort courteous was over and over reiterated on both sides without the slightest attempt at any éclaircissement.

At length the captain opened his mahogany case, and exhibited therein a pair of what he called his “barking irons,” bright and glittering as if both able and willing to commit most expertly any murder or murders they might be employed in.

“You scoundrel!” vociferated the captain to the cornet, “only that your bones were smashed by your horse, I would not leave a whole one this day in your body. But I suppose your brother here will have no objection to exchange shots for you, and not keep me waiting till you are well enough to be stiffened! Have you any objection (turning to me) ‘to take a crack?’”

“A very considerable objection,” answered I; “first, because I never fight without knowing why; and secondly, because my brother is not in the habit of fighting by proxy.”

“Not know why?” roared the captain. “There! read that! Oh! I wish you were hale and whole, cornet, that I might have the pleasure of a crack with you!”

I lost no time in reading the letter; and at once perceived that my unlucky relative had, in the flurry of his love, misdirected each of the two epistles just now spoken of, and consequently informed “the divine Alicia” that he could hold no further intercourse with her, &c.

A fit of convulsive laughter involuntarily seized me, which nothing could restrain; and the captain meanwhile, nearly bursting with rage, reinvited me to be shot at. My brother stood all the time like a ghost, in more pain, and almost in as great a passion as our visitor. He was unable to articulate; and the pillows fixed under each arm rendered him one of the most grotesque figures that a painter could fancy.

When I recovered the power of speaking (which was not speedily), I desired Tennyson to follow me to another room: he took up his pistol-case, and expecting I was about to indulge him with a crack or two, seemed somewhat easier in mind and temper. I at once explained to him the curious mistake, and without the least hesitation the captain burst into a much stronger paroxysm of laughter than I had just escaped from. Never did any officer in the king’s service enjoy a victory more than Captain Edwards did this strange blunder. It was quite to his taste, and on our proposing to make the invalid as happy as exhaustion and fractures would admit of, a new scene, equally unexpected, but of more serious consequences, turned up.

A ruddy, active and handsome country girl came to the door, and sprang with rapidity from a pillion on which she had been riding behind a good-looking rustic lad. Our landlady greeted her new customer with her usual urbanity. “You’re welcome to these parts, miss,” said Mrs. Mahony: “you stop to-night – to be sure you do: – what do you choose, miss? – Clean out the settle-bed parlour: – the chickens and rashers, miss, are capital, so they are. – Gassoon, do run and howld the lady’s beast; go, avourneen, carry him in and wipe him well – do you hear? and throw a wisp of hay before the poor brute. You rode hard, miss, so you did!”

“Oh! where’s the cornet?” cried the impatient maiden, totally disregarding Mrs. Mahony: for it was Jenny – herself, who had come speedily from Philipstown to forestall the happy moments which my bewildered brother had, in his letter to his Alicia, so delightfully anticipated. Nothing could restrain her impatience; she burst into the little parlour full on the astounded invalid, who was still standing bolt upright, like a statue, in the very position wherein we had left him. His loving Jenny, however, unconscious that his collarbones had been disunited, rushed into his arms with furious affection. “Oh! my dearest Jack!” cried she, “we never part no more! no, never – never!” and tight, indeed, was the embrace wherewith the happy Jenny now encircled the astonished cornet; but, alas! down came one of the pillows! the arm, of course, closed; and one half of the left collar-bone being as ignorant as its owner of the cause of so obstreperous an embrace, and, wishing as it were to see what matter was going forward in the world, instantly divorced itself from the other half, and thrusting its ivory end through the flesh, skin, and integuments (which had obstructed its egress), quickly appeared peeping through the lover’s shirt.

The unfortunate inamorato could stand these accumulated shocks no longer, and sank upon the feather-bed in a state of equal astonishment and exhaustion, groaning pitiously.

Here I must again apply to the imagination of my reader for a true picture of the succeeding scene. Fielding alone could render a detail palatable; the surgeons were once more sent for to reset the collar: an energetic kiss, which his Jenny had imprinted on the cornet’s nose, again somewhat disturbed its new position, and conferred a pain so acute, as to excite exclamations, by no means gentle in their nature, from the unresisting sufferer.

Suffice it to say, Jenny was with much difficulty at length forced away from her Jack, if not in a dead faint, at least in something extremely like one. An éclaircissement took place so soon as she came round; and the compromise, before hinted at, was ultimately effected.

Edwards asked a hundred pardons of my poor brother, who, worn out, and in extreme pain, declared he would as soon die as live. In fine, it was nearly a month more ere the cornet could travel to Dublin, and another before he was well enough to throw himself at the feet of his dulcinea: which ceremony was in due season succeeded by the wedding49 I have already given my account of, and which left me much more unaccountably smitten than my more fiery brother.

Captain Tennyson Edwards subsequently ran away with the kind-hearted Jenny, and in three or four years after, married one of the prettiest of my six sisters. He was one of the drollest fellows in the world on some occasions, and had once nearly ended his days similarly (though more vulgarly) to the traditional catastrophe of the Duke of Clarence in the Tower. He persuaded a very comely dairy-maid, at Old Court, that if she would not abscond with him, he should end his life in despair; and she would, in the eye of Heaven, be guilty of his murder: and to convince her of his fixed determination to commit suicide for love of her, he put his head into a very high churn of butter-milk, which was standing in the dairy – when, the floor being slippery, his feet gave way, and he pounced down, head-foremost and feet upward, clean into the churn; and had not the gardener been at hand on the instant, he would have expired by the most novel mode of extermination on record.

THE LAST OF THE GERALDINES

Principles of domestic government discussed – How to rule a husband – Elizabeth Fitzgerald, of Moret Castle – Brings her son to see his father hanged by the Cahills – Enjoins him to revenge the outrage – Peculiar methods of impressing the injunction on the boy’s memory – He grows to manhood – Mysterious disappearance of four of the Cahills – Mr. Jemmy Corcoran – Way of identifying a skeleton – Father Doran, and his spiritual theory – Squire Stephen Fitzgerald the son, and Squire Stephen Fitzgerald the grandson, of Elizabeth – Education, marriage, and personal description of the latter – The several members of his family described – Tom, the heir-apparent – A short life and a merry one – Jack, his successor – Moret Castle in its modern state – Miss Dolly Fitzgerald, and her sister Fanny – their respective merits – Matrimonial speculations – Curious family discussion as to the attractions of hung meat, &c.

In the early part of my life, the system of domestic government and family organization was totally different from that at present in vogue. The patriarchal authority was then frequently exercised with a rigour which, in days of degenerate relaxation, has been converted into a fruitful subject for even dramatic ridicule. In Ireland, the “rule of the patriarchs” has become nearly extinguished. New lights have shone upon the rising generation; the “rights of women” have become a statute law of society; and the old, wholesome word obedience (by which all wives and children were formerly influenced) has been reversed, by prefacing it with the monosyllable dis.

“Every body is acquainted,” said an intimate friend of mine to his wife, in my presence, “with the ruinous state of obstinacy and contradiction raging in modern times among the subordinate members of families throughout the United Kingdom; as if the word united were applied to the empire only to satirise the disunited habits, manners, politics, religion, and morality of its population. There are,” continued he, “certain functions that must be exercised every day (two or three times a day if possible) by persons of all descriptions, who do not wish to leave this world within a week at the very latest; but, unless on the absolute necessity of mastication for purposes of self-support, I am not aware of any other subject respecting which unanimity of opinion is even affected among the individuals of any family throughout the country.”

The wife nodded assent, but spake not: – first, because she hated all controversy; and second, because though, on the subject of domestic supremacy, she was always sure of getting the worst of the argument, she contented herself with having, beyond doubt, the best of the practice.50

My friend’s observations were, I think, just. In my time the change has been excessive; and to enable my readers to form a better judgment of the matter, I will lay before them a few authentic anecdotes of rather antique dates.

In volume one I mentioned the illustrious exploits of my great-aunt, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, of Moret Castle, and the heroic firmness wherewith she bore the afflicting view of my great-uncle Stephen, her husband, “dancing upon nothing” (as the Irish phrase it) at the castle-gate, immediately under the battlements; and though it is possible there may exist some modern ladies who might have sufficient self-possession to look on a similar object without evincing those signs of inconsolability natural to be expected on such an occasion, yet, I will venture to say, few are to be found who, like my aunt Elizabeth, would risk their lives and property rather than accept of a second husband. Nor do I believe that, since the patriarchal government has been revolutionised by the unnatural rebellion of wives and children, there has existed one lady – young, old, or middle-aged, in the three kingdoms, who could be persuaded to imitate the virtuous gentoos, and voluntarily undergo conflagration with her departed lord and master.

My great-uncle had a son born unto him by his magnanimous spouse, who was very young, and in the castle at the time his father was corded (Hibernice). Elizabeth led him to the castle top, and showing him his dangling parent, cried, “See there! you were born a Geraldine; the blood of that noble race is in you, my boy! See – see the sufferings of your own father! Never did a true Geraldine forgive an enemy! I perceive your little face gets flushed: – you tremble; ay, ay, ’tis for revenge! Shall a Cahill live?”

“No, mother, no! when I’m able, I’ll kill them all! I’ll kill all the Cahills myself!” cried the lad, worked on by the fury of his respectable mother.

“That’s my dear boy!” said Elizabeth, kissing him fervently. “Shall one live?”

“No, mother, not one,” replied the youngster.

“Man, woman, or child?” pursued the heroine.

“Neither man, woman, nor child,” echoed her precocious son.

“You are a Geraldine,” repeated Elizabeth. “Call the priest,” added she, turning to a warder.

“He made a little too free, my lady mistress,” said the warder, “and is not very fitting for duty, saving your presence; – but he’ll soon sleep it off.”

“Bring him up, nevertheless,” cried Elizabeth: – “I command you to bring up his reverence.”

The priest was accordingly produced by Keeran Karry. “Father,” said the lady, “where’s your manual?”

“Where should it be,” answered the priest (rather sobered), “but where it always is, lady?” pulling, as he spake, a book out of a pocket in the waistband of his breeches, where (diminished and under the name of a fob) more modern clergymen carry their watches.51

“Now, your reverence,” said Elizabeth, “we’ll swear the young squire to revenge my poor Stephen, his father, on the Cahills, root and branch, so soon as he comes to manhood. Swear him! – swear him thrice!” exclaimed she.

The boy was duly sworn, and the manual reposited in the priest’s smallclothes.

“Now, take the boy down and duck him, head over heels, in the horse-pond!” cried his mother.52

Young Fitzgerald roared lustily, but was nevertheless well soused, to make him remember his oath the better. This oath he repeated upon the same spot, while his mother lived, on every anniversary of his father’s murder; and it was said by the old tenants, that “young Stephen” (though flourishing in more civilised times) religiously kept the vow as far as he could; and that, so soon as he came into possession of Moret, four of the ablest of the Cahills (by way of a beginning) were missed from the neighbourhood of Timahoe in one night – nobody ever discovering what had become of them; indeed, the fewest words were considered far the safest.

The skeletons of four lusty fellows, however, were afterwards found in clearing out a pit in the Donane colliery, and many persons said they had belonged to the four Cahills from Timahoe; but, as the colliers very sapiently observed, there being no particular marks whereby to distinguish the bones of a Cahill from those of any other “boy,” no one could properly identify them.

A bystander, who had been inspecting the relics, protested, on hearing this remark made, that he could swear to one of the skulls at least (which appeared to have been fractured and trepanned); and he gave a very good reason for this assertion – namely, that it was himself who had “cracked the skull of Ned Cahill, at the fair of Dysart, with a walloper, and he knew the said skull ever after. It was between jest and earnest,” continued Jemmy Corcoran, “that I broke his head – all about a game-cock, and be d – d to it! and by the same token, I stood by in great grief at Maryborough, while Doctor Stapleton was twisting a round piece out of Ned Cahill’s skull, and laying a two-and-eight-penny-halfpenny53 (beaten quite thin on the smith’s forge) over the hole, to cover his brains any way. The devil a brain in his sconce but I could see plainly; and the said two-and-eight-penny-halfpenny stayed fast under his wig for many a year, till Ned pulled it off (bad luck to it!) to pay for drink with myself at Timahoe! They said he was ever after a little cracked when in his liquor: and I’m right sorry for having act or part in that same fracture, for Ned was a good boy, so he was, and nobody would strike him a stroke on the head at any rate after the two-and-eight-penny-halfpenny was pledged off his skull.”

Though Mr. Jemmy Corcoran was so confident as to the skull he had fractured, his testimony was not sufficient legally to identify a Cahill, and the four sets of bones being quietly buried at Clapook, plenty of masses, &c. were said for an entire year by Father Cahill, of Stradbally, to get their souls clean out of purgatory; that is, if they were in it, which there was not a clergy in the place would take on to say he was “sartain sure of.”54

This Stephen Fitzgerald, – who had killed the Cahills, sure enough, as became the true son and heir of the aforesaid Stephen, who was hanged, – lived, as report went, plentifully and regularly at Moret. No better gentleman existed, the old people said, in the quiet way, after once he had put the four Cahills into the coal-pit, as he promised his worthy mother Elizabeth, “the likes of whom Moret never saw before nor since, nor ever will while time is time, and longer too!”

Stephen had one son only, who is the principal subject of my present observations; and as he and his family (two lovely boys and two splendid girls) were not exactly the same sort of people commonly seen now-a-days, it may not be uninteresting to give my readers a picture of them.

Stephen, the son of Elizabeth, had been persuaded by Mr. John Lodge, an attorney of Bull Alley, in the city of Dublin, (who married a maid-servant of my grandfather’s at Cullenagh,) that the two-mile race-course of the Great Heath in Queen’s County, which King George pretended was his property because it had been formerly taken from a papist Geraldine, now reverted to my great-uncle’s family, in consequence of their being Protestants; and Mr. Lodge added, that if Squire Stephen would make his son a counsellor, no doubt he would more aptly trace pedigrees, rights, titles, and attainders, and, in fine, get possession of several miles of the Great Heath, or of the race-course at any rate.