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

37

The open indemnification of Mr. Judkin Fitzgerald, of Tipperary, for his cruelties in that county, was one of the worst acts of a vicious government. The prime serjeant, Mr. St. George Daly, though then the first law officer, (a Union one, too, as subsequently appeared,) voted against that most flagitious act of Parliament, which nothing but the raging madness of those times could have carried through any assembly. The dread of its recurrence did much to effect the Union.

38

The lieutenant’s brother being a Crown solicitor, had now and then got the lieutenant to copy the high treason indictments: and he, seeing there that imagining the death of a king was punished capitally, very naturally conceived that wishing it was twice as bad as supposing it: having therefore no doubt that all rebels wished it, he consequently decided in the tribunal of his own mind to hang every man who hypothetically and traitorously wished his majesty’s dissolution, which wish he also conceived was very easily ascertained by the wisher’s countenance.

A cabinet-maker at Charing Cross some years ago put on his board “patent coffin-maker to his majesty:” it was considered that though this was not an ill-intentioned, yet it was a very improper mode of imagining the king’s death, and the board was taken down accordingly. Lieutenant H – would surely have hanged him in Ireland.

39

Such was the case with the Bretons in La Vendée. An officer of rank in the French army at that period, commanding a regiment of chasseur republicans, told me very lately, that above 15,000 regular troops (his regiment among the rest) were surprised at noon-day, defeated and dispersed, and their artillery and baggage taken, by a smaller number of totally undisciplined Vendeans, with few fire-arms, but led on by officers selected for powerful strength and fiery enthusiasm. Their contempt for life, and impetuosity in close combat, were irresistible; the latter, indeed, was always a characteristic with them, and the gallantry of their chiefs was quite unparalleled.

40

The battle of Ross, in June, 1798, lasted ten hours. The rebel officers did nothing, the men every thing. While the commander-in-chief, Counsellor Bagenal Harvey, was standing on a hill nearly a mile distant, a boy twelve years old (Lett of Wexford town) called on the insurgents to follow him. He put himself at the head of ten thousand men – approached the town, and stormed it. The town took fire; the rebels got liquor; and they were killed in sleep and drunkenness. Nothing could have saved our troops had the rebels been well officered: General Johnston, who commanded the royalists, deserved great praise for his judgment on that critical occasion.

41

Mr. Bagenal provoked Harvey to challenge him. They met. Harvey fired, and missed. “D – n you, you young rascal,” cried Bagenal, “do you know that you had like to kill your god-father? Go back to Dunlickry, you dog, and have a good breakfast got ready for us. I only wanted to see if you were stout.”

42

I cannot omit introducing here one of his puns, because he ran a great risk of being shot for making it. A gentleman of the bar, married to a lady who had lost all her front teeth, and squinted so curiously that she appeared nearly blind, happened to be speaking of another lady who had run away from her husband. “Well,” said Harvey, “you have some comfort as to your wife.”

“What do you mean, sir?” said the barrister.

“I mean that if once you should lose Mrs. – , you will never be able to i-dent-ify her.”

If Mr. – had cared a farthing for his wife, it would have been impossible to reconcile this joke to him.

The above was an inferior pun, but it was to the point, and created great merriment.

43

Old Counsellor Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare’s father, was born a Roman Catholic, and educated for a priest. His good sense, however, opened his eyes to his own intellectual abilities; and he determined to get, if possible, to the bar – that sure source of promotion for reasoning talent. But when or where (if ever) he renounced the Romish church, I am ignorant. He acquired great and just eminence as a barrister, and made a large fortune. Lord Clare was born his second son. Mrs. Jeffries (his sister) I knew well, and I cannot pass her by here without saying, that whatever faults she had, her female correctness was unquestioned; and throughout my life I have never met a kinder-hearted being than Mrs. Jeffries, or a fairer though a decided enemy. Old Mr. Fitzgibbon loved to make money, and in his day it was not the habit for lawyers to spend it. They used to tell a story of him respecting a certain client who brought his own brief and fee, that he might personally apologise for the smallness of the latter. Fitzgibbon, on receiving the fee, looked rather discontented. “I assure you, Counsellor,” said the client (mournfully), “I am ashamed of its smallness; but in fact it is all I have in the world.” “Oh! then,” said Fitzgibbon, “you can do no more: – as it’s ‘all you have in the world,’ – why – hem! – I must —take it!”

44

An English gentleman once said to me very seriously, that he always preferred a London edition of an Irish book, as he thought, somehow or other, it helped to take out the brogue.

45

Pastoral poetry, whether classic, amatory, or merely rural, owes its chief beauty to simplicity. Far-fetched points and fantastic versification destroy its generic attribute; and their use reminds one of the fashion of harmonising the popular melodies of a country, in order that young ladies may screech them with more complicated execution.

Thus, I prefer, upon the whole, my deceased friend Lysight’s words written to an old tune, to those of my celebrated living friend, Mr. Thomas Moore; and think the Ounagh of the one likely to be quite as attractive a girl as the Mary of the other, notwithstanding all the finery wherewith the mention of the latter is invested. But our readers shall judge for themselves. We have given the commencement of Mr. Lysight’s version: here followeth that of Mr. Moore’s.

The day had sunk in dim showers,

But midnight now with “lustre meek”

Illumin’d all the pale flowers,

Like hope that lights the mourner’s cheek.

I said (while

The moon’s smile

Play’d o’er a stream in dimpling bliss)

The moon looks

On many brooks —

The brook can see no moon but this.

And thus I thought our fortunes run,

For many a lover looks on thee,

While, Oh! I feel there is but one —

One Mary in the world for me! —

Had not my talented friend garnished the above ditty with a note, admitting that he had pilfered his Irish Melody from an Englishman’s brains (Sir William Jones’s), I should have passed over so extravagant an attempt to manufacture simplicity. I therefore hope my friend will in future either confide in his own supreme talents, or not be so candid as to spoil his song by his sincerity. “It is the devil (said Skirmish) to desert; but it’s a d – d deal worse to own it!”

I think Dean Swift’s sample of Love Songs (though written near a century ago) has formed an admirable model for a number of modern sonnets; it should be much esteemed, since it is copied by so many of our minstrels.

LOVE SONG BY DEAN SWIFT.

Fluttering, spread thy purple pinions,

Gentle Cupid, o’er my heart:

I a slave in thy dominions —

Nature must give way to art, &c. &c.

46

How miserably has modern refinement reversed those scenes of happiness and hilarity – when the gentry of my native land were married in warm, cheerful chambers, and in the midst of animated beings, beloving and beloved! No gloom was there: every thing seemed to smile; and all thoughts of death or memoranda of mortality were discarded.

Now, those joyous scenes are shifted by sanctity and civilisation. Now, the female soul almost shudders – and it well may – on reaching the site of the connubial ceremony. The long, chilling aisle, ornamented only by sculptured tablets and tales of death and futurity, is terminated by the sombre chancel – whence the unpupilled eye and vacant stare of cold marble busts glare down on those of youth and animation, seeming to say, “Vain, hapless couple! see me – behold your fate! – the time is running now, and will not stop its course a single moment till you are my companions!” Under such auspices, the lovers’ vows are frozen ere they can be registered by the recording angel.

The cheerless ceremony concluded, the bridegroom solemnly hands the silent bride into her travelling chariot; hurries her to some country inn, with her pretty maid – perhaps destined to be a future rival; they remain there a few days, till yawning becomes too frequent, and the lady then returns to town a listless matron – to receive, on her couch of ennui, a string of formal congratulations, and predictions of connubial comfort, few of which are doomed to be so prophetic as the bridal stocking of her grandmother.

47

See Vol. i.

48

My brother’s actual rank in the army.

49

Irish marriages ran, some few years ago, an awkward risk of being nullified en masse, by the decision of two English judges. In 1826, I met, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, a young Hibernian nobleman, the eldest son of an Irish peer, who had arrived there in great haste from Paris, and expressed considerable though somewhat ludicrous trepidation on account of a rumour that had reached him of his being illegitimatised. In fact, the same dread seized upon almost all the Irish of any family there.

“I have no time to lose,” said Lord – , “for the packet is just setting off, and I must go and inquire into these matters. By Heaven,” added he, “I won’t leave one of the judges alive, if they take my property and title! I am fit for nothing else, you know I am not; and I may as well be hanged as beggared!”

Scarce had his lordship, from whom I could obtain no explanation, departed, when another scion of Irish nobility, the Honourable John Leeson, son to the late Earl of Miltown, joined me on the pier. “Barrington, have you seen to-day’s papers?” asked he.

“No,” I answered.

“Where was your father married?”

“In my grandfather’s house,” replied I, with some surprise.

“Then, by Jove,” exclaimed Leeson, “you are an illegitimate, and so am I! – My father was married at home, at eight o’clock in the evening, and that’s fatal. A general outcry has taken place among all the Irish at the reading-room.”

He then proceeded to inform me of the real cause of the consternation – and it was no trivial one. Two very able and honest English judges (Bayley and Park), on trying a woman for bigamy, had decided that, according to the English law, a marriage in a private house, without special licence or in canonical hours, was void; and, of course, the woman was acquitted, having been united to her first husband in Ireland without those requisites. Had that decision stood, it would certainly have rendered ninety-nine out of a hundred of the Irish Protestants, men, women, and children – nobility, clergy, and gentry – absolutely illegitimate; it was a very droll mistake of the learned judges, but was on the merciful side of the question before them; was soon amended, and no mischief whatsoever resulted from it: – though it was said that a great number of husbands and wives were extremely disappointed at the judges altering their decision. I seldom saw any couple married in church in Ireland; and in former times the ceremony was generally performed between dinner and supper, when people are supposed to be vastly more in love with each other than in the middle of the day.

50

Mrs. Mary Morton, of Ballyroan, a very worthy domestic woman, told me, many years since, that she had but one way of ruling her husband, which, as it is rather a novel way, and may be of some use to my fair readers, I will mention in her own words.

“You know,” said Mrs. Morton, “that Tom is most horribly nice in his eating, and fancies that both abundant and good food is essential to his health. Now, when he has been out of temper with me, he is sure of having a very bad dinner; if he grumbles, I tell him that whenever he puts me into a twitter by his tantrums, I always forget to give the cook proper directions. This is sure,” added she, “of keeping him in good humour for a week at least!”

51

The priests then, to render mass handy, invariably kept their manual in their breeches with a piece of strong green ribbon (having beads at the end of it) to lug it out by, resembling the chain of a modern buckish parson’s timepiece. They also gave another very extraordinary reason for keeping their manual in their smallclothes – namely, that no devil would presume to come near them when he was sure he should have the mass to encounter before he could get at their carcases.

52

When it was sought to make a child remember any thing long and circumstantially, it was the custom in Ireland either to whip him three or four times, duck him in cold water, or put him into a bag, with his face only out, and hang it up against a wall for a whole day. Such an extraordinary and undeserved punishment made an impression on the fresh tablet of the youngster’s mind never to be erased.

53

An Irish silver half-crown piece; the difference of English and Irish currency.

54

I recollect (at an interval of more than fifty years) Father Doran, of Culmaghbeg, an excellent man, full of humour, and well-informed, putting the soul in the most comprehensible state of personification possible: he said, the women could not understand what the soul was by the old explanations.

“I tell you all, my flock,” said Father Doran, “there’s not a man, woman, or child among you that has not his soul this present minute shut up in his body, waiting for the last judgment, according to his faith and actions. I tell you fairly, that if flesh could be seen through, like a glass window, you might see every one’s soul at the inside of his body peeping out through the ribs, like the prisoners at the jail of Maryborough through their iron bars: and the moment the breath is out of a man or woman, the soul escapes and makes off to be dealt with as it deserves, and that’s the truth; – so say your beads and remember your clergy!”

55

This idea was a standing joke with him for some time, till old Kit Julian, the retired exciseman, (heretofore mentioned,) made a hit at my uncle, which put his comparison to an end. “By my troth, then, Counsellor,” said Kit, “if you are like a fir, it is not a ‘spruce fir’ any how.” This sarcasm cut my uncle in the raw; and it was said that he had an additional shaving day, and clean cravat every week afterward.

56

The Irish ladies in the country at that period were always taught the art of pie and dumpling making, as a necessary accomplishment; and a husband who liked a good table always preferred a housekeeper to a gadder. Tempora mutantur!

57

Few gentlemen in Ireland made more “Fogies” than the good and witty Sir Hercules Langrish, one of that corps, and who was said to have been the godfather of his company.

Sir Hec’s idea of “Fogies” may be collected from an anecdote Sir John Parnell, chancellor of the exchequer, used to tell of him with infinite pleasantry.

Sir John, one evening immediately after dinner, went to Sir Hercules on some official business: he found him in the midst of revenue papers, with two empty bottles and a glass standing immediately before him. “What the deuce, Sir Hec!” said Sir John, “why, have you finished these two already?” – “To be sure I have,” said Sir Hec; “they were only claret.” – “And was nobody helping you?” said Sir John. “Oh, yes, yes!” said Sir Hercules; “see there, a bottle of port came to my assistance; there’s his fogy.”

58

Sir J. Ferns had one quality to an astonishing extent, which I can well vouch for, having often heard and seen its extraordinary effects.

His singing voice, I believe, never yet was equalled for its depth and volume of sound. It exceeded all my conceptions, and at times nearly burst the tympanum of the ear, without the slightest discord!

Yet his falsetto, or feigned voice, stole in upon the bass without any tones of that abrupt transition which is frequently perceptible amongst the best of songsters: his changes, though as it were from thunder to a flute, had not one disagreeable tone with them.

This extreme depth of voice was only in perfection when he was in one of his singing humours; and the effect of it (often shivering empty glass) was of course diminished in a large, and altogether inoperative in a very spacious room; but, in a moderately low and not very large chamber, its effect was miraculous.

59

A jingle is a species of jaunting-car used in the environs of Dublin by gentry that have no other mode of travelling.

60

Mr. O’Connell was called to the bar, Easter, 1798, on or about the same day that Father Roche was hanged. He did not finger politics in any way for several years afterwards, but he studied law very well, and bottled it in usum—jus habentis may be added or not.