LETTER III

TO J.D. ESQ. M.P.

I perceive my father emulates the policy of British Legislature, and delegates English ministers to govern his Irish domains. Who, do you think, is his fac-totum here? The rascally son of his cunning Leicestershire steward who unites all his father’s artifice to a proportionable share of roguery of his own. I have had some reason to know the fellow; but his servility of manner, and apparent rigid discharge of his duties, has imposed on my father; who, with all his superior mind, is to be imposed on, by those who know how to find the clue to his point of fallibility: his noble soul can never stoop to dive into the minute vices of a rascal of this description.

Mr Clendinning was absent from M— house when I arrived, but attended me the next morning at breakfast, with that fawning civility of manner I abhor, and which, contrasted with the manly courteousness of my late companion, never appeared more grossly obvious. He endeavoured to amuse me with a detail of the ferocity, cruelty, and uncivilized state of those among whom (as he hinted), I was banished for my sins. He had now, he said, been near five years among them, and had never met an individual of the lower order who did not deserve an halter at least: for his part, he kept a tight hand over them, and he was justified in so doing, or his Lord would be the sufferer; for few of them would pay their rents till their cattle were driven, or some such measure was taken with them. And as for the labourers and workmen, a slave-driver was the only man fit to deal with them: they were all rebellious, idle, cruel, and treacherous; and for his part, he never expected to leave the country with his life.

It is not possible a better defence for the imputed turbulence of the Irish peasantry could be made, than that which lurked in the unprovoked accusations of this narrow-minded sordid steward, who, it is evident, wished to forestall the complaints of those on whom he had exercised the native tyranny of his disposition (even according to his own account), by every species of harassing oppression within the compass of his ability. For if power is a dangerous gift even in the regulated mind of elevated rank, what does it become in the delegated authority of ignorance, meanness and illiberality? [1]

My father, however, by frequent visitations to his Irish estates (within these few years at least), must afford to his suffering tenantry an opportunity of redress; for who that ever approached him with a tear of suffering, left his presence with a tear of gratitude! But many, very many of the English nobility who hold immense tracts of land in this country, and draw from hence in part the suppliance of their luxuries, have never visited their estates, since conquest first put them in the possession of their ancestors. Ours, you know, fell to us in the Cromwellian wars, but since the time of General M—, who earned them by the sword, my father, his lineal descendant, is the first of the family who ever visited them. And certainly a wish to conciliate the affections of his tenantry, could alone induce him to spend so much of his time here as he has done; for the situation of this place is bleak and solitary, and the old mansion, like the old manor houses of England, has neither the architectural character of an antique structure, nor the accommodation of a modern one.

‘Ayant l’air delabri, sans l’air antique.’

On inquiring for the key of the library, Mr Clendinning informed me his Lord always took it with him, but that a box of books had come from England a few days before my arrival.

As I suspected, they were all law books — well, be it so; there are few sufferings more acute than those which forbid complaint, because they are self-created.

Four days have elapsed since I began this letter, and I have been prevented from continuing it merely for want of something to say.

I cannot now sit down, as I once did, and give you a history of my ideas or sensation, in the deficiency of fact or incident; for I have survived my sensations, and my ideas are dry and exhausted.

I can now trace my joys to their source, or my sorrows to their spring, for I am destitute of their present, and insensible to their former existence. The energy of youthful feeling is subdued, and the vivacity of warm emotion worn out by its own violence. I have lived too fast in a moral as well as a physical sense, and the principles of my intellectual, as well as my natural constitution are, I fear, fast hastening to decay. I live the tomb of my expiring mind, and preserve only the consciousness of my wretched state, without the power, and almost without the wish to be otherwise than what I am. And yet, God knows I am nothing less than contented.

Would you hear my journal? I rise late to my solitary breakfast, because it is solitary; then to study, or rather to yawn over Giles versus Haystack, until (to check the creeping effects of lethargy), I rise from my reading desk, and lounge to a window, which commands a boundless view of a boundless bog; then ‘with what appetite I may,’ sit down to a joyless dinner. Sometimes, when seduced by the blandishments of an evening singularly beautiful, I quit my den, and prowl down to the sea-shore, where, throwing myself at the foot of some cliff that ‘battles o’er the deep,’ I fix my vacant eye on the stealing waves that

‘Idly swell against the rocky coast,
And break — as break those glittering shadows,
Human joys.’

Then wet with the ocean spray and evening dew, return to bed, merely to avoid the intrusive civilities of Mr Clendinning. ‘Thus wear the hours away.’

I had heard that the neighbourhood about M— house was very good: I can answer for its being populous. Although I took every precaution to prevent my arrival being known, yet the natives have come down on me in hordes, and this in all the form of haut ton, as the innumerable cards of the clans of Os and Macs evince. I have, however, neither been visible to the visitants, nor accepted their invitations; for ‘man delights me not, nor woman either.’ Nor woman either! Oh! uncertainty of all human propensities! Yet so it is, that every letter that composes the word woman! seems cabilistical, and rouses every principle of aversion and disgust within me; while I often ask myself with Tasso,

‘Se pur ve nelle amor alcum diletto.’

It is certain, that the diminutive body of our worthy steward, is the abode of the transmigrated soul of some West Indian planter. I have been engaged these two days in listening to, and retributing those injuries his tyranny has inflicted, in spite of his rage, eloquence, and threats, none of which have been spared. The victims of his oppression haunt me in walks, fearful lest their complaints should come to the knowledge of this puissant major domo.

‘But why,’ said I to one of the sufferers, after a detail of seized geese, pounded cows, extra-labour, cruelty extorted, ejectments, &c. &c. given in all the tedious circumlocution of Irish oratory, — ‘why not complain to my father when he comes among you?’

‘Becaise, please you Honour, my Lord stays but a few days at a time here together, nor that same neither: besides, we be loath to trouble his Lordship, for feard it would be after coming to measter Clendinnin’s ears, which would be the ruination of us all; and then when my Lord is at the Lodge, which he mostly is, he is always out amongst the quality, so he is.’

‘What Lodge?’ said I.

‘Why, please your Honour, where my Lord mostly takes up when he comes here, the place that belonged to measter Clendinnin, who called it the Lodge; because the good old Irish name that was upon it happened not to hit his fancy.’

In the evening I asked Clendinning if my father did not sometimes reside at the Lodge? He seemed surprized at my information, and said, that was the name he had given to a ruinous old place which, with a few acres of indifferent land, he had purchased out of his hard labour, and which his Lord having taken an unaccountable liking to, rented from him, and was actually the tenant of his own steward.

O! what arms of recrimination I should be furnished with against my rigidly moral father, should I discover this remote Cassino (for remote I understand it is), to be the harem of some wild Irish Sultana; for I strongly suspect ‘that metal more attractive’ than the cause he assigns, induces him to pay an annual visit to a country to which, till within these few years, he nurtured the strongest prejudices. You know there are but 19 years between him and my brother; and his feelings are so unblunted by vicious pursuits, his life has been guided by such epicurean principles of enjoyment, that he still retains much of the first warm flush of juvenile existence, and has only sacrificed to time, its follies and its ignorance. I swear, at this moment he is a younger man than either of his sons; the one chilled by the coldness of an icy temperament into premature old age, and the other!!!

Murtoch has been to see me. I have procured him a little farm, and am answerable for the rent. I sent his wife some rich wine; she is recovering very fast. Murtoch is all gratitude for the wine, but I perceive his faith still likes in the bacon!

LETTER IV

TO J.D. ESQ. M.P.

I can support this wretched state of non-existence, this articula mortis, no longer. I cannot read — I cannot think — nothing touches, nothing interests me; neither is it permitted me to indulge my sufferings in solitude. These hospitable people still weary me with their attentions, though they must consider me as a sullen misanthropist, for I persist in my invisibility. I can escape them no longer but by flight — professional study is out of the question, for a time at least. I mean, therefore, to ‘take the wings of’ some fine morning and seek a change of being in a change of place; for a perpetual state of evagation alone, keeps up the flow and ebb of existence in my languid frame. My father’s last letter informs me he is obliged by business to postpone his journey for a month; this leaves me so much the longer master of myself. By the time we meet, my mind may have regained its native tone. Laval too, writes for a longer leave of absence, which I most willingly grant. It is a weight removed off my shoulders; I would be savagely free.

I thank you for your welcome letters, and will do what I can to satisfy your antiquarian taste; and I would take your advice, and study the Irish language, were my powers of comprehension equal to the least of the philosophical excellencies of Tom Thumb, or Goody Two Shoes; — but alas!

‘Se perchetto a me Stesso quale acquisto,
Faro mai che me piaccia.’ [2]

Villa di Marino, Atlantic Ocean

Having told Mr Clendinning that I should spend a few days in wandering about the country, I mounted my horse. So determined to roam free and unrestrained by the presence of a servant, to Mr Clendinning’s utter amazement, I ordered a few changes of linen, my drawing-book and pocket escritoire, to be put in a small valise, which, with all due humility, I had strapped on the back of my steed, whom, by the bye, I expect will be as celebrated as the Rozinante of Don Quixote, or the Beltenebros L’Amadis de Gaul; and thus accoutred, set off on my peregrination, the most listless knight that ever entered on the lists of errantry.

You will smile, when I tell you my first point of attraction was the Lodge; to which (though with some difficulty) I found my way; for it lies in a most wild and unfrequented direction, but so infinitely superior in situation to M— house, that I no longer wonder at my father’s preference. Every feature that constitutes either the beauty or sublime of landscape, is here finely combined. Groves druidically venerable — mountains of Alpine elevation — expansive lakes, and the boldest and most romantic seas coast I ever beheld, alternately diversify and enrich its scenery; while a number of young and flourishing plantations evince the exertion of a taste in my father, he certainly has not betrayed in the disposition of his hereditary domains. I found this Tusculum inhabited only by a decent old man and his superannuated wife. Without informing them who I was, I made a feigned wish to make the place a pretext for visiting it. The old man smiled at the idea, and shook his heard, presuming that I must be indeed a stranger in the country, as my accent denoted, for that this spot belonged to a great English Lord, whom he verily believed would not resign it for his own fine place some miles off; but when, with some jesuitical artifice, I endeavoured to trace the cause of this attachment, he said it was his Lordship’s fancy, and that there was no accounting for people’s fancies.

‘That is all very true,’ said I; ‘but is it the house only that seized on your Lord’s fancy?’

‘Nay, for the matter of that,’ said he, ‘the lands are far more finer; the house, though large, being no great things.’ I begged in this instance to judge for myself, and a few shillings procured me not only free egress, but the confidence of the ancient Cicerone.

This fancied harem, however, I found not only divested of its expected fair inhabitant, but wholly destitute of furniture, except what filled a bed-room occupied by my father, and an apartment which was locked. The old man with some tardiness produced the key, and I found this mysterious chamber was only a study; but closer inspection discovered, that almost all the books related to the language, history, and antiquities of Ireland.

So you see, in fact, my father’s Sultana is no other than the Irish Muse; and never was son so tempted to become the rival of his father, since the days of Antiochus and Stratonice. For, at a moment when my taste, like my senses, is flat and palled, nothing can operate so strongly as an incentive, as novelty. I strongly suspect that my father was aware of this, and that he had despoiled the temple, to prevent my becoming a worshipper at the same shrine. For the old man said he had received a letter from his Lord, ordering away all the furniture (except that of his own bed-room and study) to the manor house; the study and bed room however, will suffice me, and here I shall certainly pitch my head-quarters until my father’s arrival.

I have already had some occasions to remark, that the warm susceptible character of the Irish is open to the least indication of courtesy and kindness.

My politesse to this old man, opened ever sluice of confidence in my breast, and, as we walked down the avenue together, having thrown the bridle over my horse’s neck, and offered him my arm, for he as lame, I inquired how this beautiful farm fell into the hands of Lord M—; still concealing from him that it was his son who demanded the question.

‘Why, your Honour,’ said he, ‘the farm, though beautiful, is small; however, it made the best part of what remained of the patrimony of the Prince, when –’

‘What Prince?’ interrupted I, amazed.

‘Why the Prince of Inismore, to be sure, jewel, whose great forefathers once owned the half of the barony, from the Red Bog to the sea coast. Och! It is a long story, but I have heard my grandfather tell it a thousand times, how a great Prince of Inismore, in the wars of Queen Elizabeth, here had a castle and a great tract of land on the borders, of which he was deprived, as the story runs, becaise he would neither cut his glibbs, shave his upper lip, nor shorten his shirt: [3] and so he was driven with the rest of us beyond the pale. The family, however, after a while, flourished greater nor ever. Och, and it’s themselves that might; for they were true Milesians, bred and born, every mother’s soul of them. O! not a drop of Strongbonean flowed in their Irish veins agrah! Well, as I was after telling your Honour, the family flourished, and beat all before them, for they had an army of galloglasses at their back, [4] until the Cromwellian wars broke out, and those same cold-hearted Presbyterians battered the fine old ancient castle of Inismore, and left it in the condition it now stands; and what was worse nor that, the poor old Prince was put to death in the arms of his fine young son, who tried to save him, and that by one of Cromwell’s English Generals, who received the townlands of Inismore, which lie near Bally—, as his reward. Now this English General who murdered the Prince, was no other than the ancestor of my Lord, who whom these estates descended from father to son. Aye, you may well start, Sir, it was a woeful piece of business; for of all their fine estates, nothing was left to the Princes of Inismore, but the ruins of their old castle, and the rocks that surround it; except this tight little bit of an estate here, on which the father of the present Prince built this house; becaise his Lady, with whom he got a handsome fortune, and who was descended from the Kings of Connaught, took a dislike to the castle; the story going that it was haunted by the murdered Prince; and what with building this house, spending 3000l. a-year out of 300l., when he died (and the sun never shone upon such a funeral; the whiskey ran about like ditch water, and the country was stocked with pipes and tobacco for many a long year after. For the present Prince his son, would not be a bit behind with his father in any thing, and so signs on him, for he is not worth one guinea this blessed day, Christ save him); — well, as I was saying, when he died, he left things in a sad way, which his son has not the man to mind, for he was the spirit of a King, and lives in as much state as one to this day.’

‘But where, where does he live?’ interrupted I, with breathless impatience.

‘Why,’ continued this living Chronicle, in the true spirit of Irish replication, ‘he did live there in that Lodge, as they call it now, and in that room where my Lord keeps his books, was our young Princess born; her father never had but her, and loves her better than his own heart’s blood, as well he may, the blessing of the Virgin Mary and the Twelve Apostles light on her sweet head. Well, the Prince would never let it come near him, that things were not going on well, and continued to take at great rents, farms that brought him in little; for being a Prince and a Milesian, it did not become him to look after such matters, and every thing was left to stewards and the like, until things coming to the worst, a rich English gentleman, as it was said, came over here, and offered the Prince, through his steward, a good round sum of money on this place, which the Prince, being harassed by his spalpeen creditors, and wanting a little ready money more than any other earthly thing, consented to receive the gentleman; sending him word he should have his own time; but scarcely was the mortgage a year old, when this same Englishman, (Oh, my curse lie about him, Christ pardon me), foreclosed it, and the fine old Prince not having as much as a shed to shelter his grey hairs under, was forced to fit up part of the old ruined castle, and open those rooms which it had been said were haunted. Discharging many of his old servants, he was accompanied to the castle by the family steward, the fosterers, the nurse, [5] the harper, and Father John, the chaplain.

‘Och, it was a piteous sight the day he left this: he was leaning on the Lady Glorvina’s arm, as he walked out to the chaise. “James Tyral,” says he to me in Irish, for I caught his eye; “James Tyral,” but he could say no more, for the old tenants kept crying about him, and he put his mantle to his eyes and hurried into the chaise; the Lady Glorvina kissing her hand to us all, and crying bitterly till she was out of sight. But then, Sir, what would you have of it: the Prince shortly after found out that this same Mr Mortgagee, was no other than a spalpeen steward of Lord M—’s. It was thought he would have at first run mad, when he found that almost the last acre of his hereditary lands was in the possession of the servant of his hereditary enemy; for so deadly is the hatred he bears my Lord, that upon my conscience, I believe the young Prince who held the bleeding body of his murdered father in his arms, felt not greater for the murdered, than our Prince does for that murderer’s descendant.

‘Now, my Lord is just such a man as God never made better, and wishing with all the veins in his heart to serve the old Prince, and do away all difference between them, what does he do jewel? but writes him a mighty pretty letter, offering this house and part of the land as a present. O! divil a word a lie I’m after telling you; but what would have of it, but this offer sets the Prince madder than all; for you know that this was an insult on his honour, which warmed every drop of Milesian blood in his body, for he would rather starve to death all his life, than have it thought he would be obligated to any body at all at all for wherewithal to support him; so with that the Prince writes him a letter: it was brought by the old stewart, who knew every line of the contents of it, though divil a line in it but two, and that same was but one and half, as one may say, and this it was, as the old steward told me:

“The son of the son of the son’s son of Bryan Prince of Inismore, can receive no favour from the descendant of his ancestor’s murderer.”

‘Now it was plain enough to be seen, that my Lord took this to heart, as well he might faith; however, he considered that it came from a misfortunate Prince, he let it drop, and so this was all ever passed between them; however, he was angry enough with his steward, but measter Clendinnin put his comehither on him, and convinced him that the biggest rogue alive was an honest man.’

‘And the Prince!’ I interrupted eagerly.

‘Och, jewel, the prince lives away in the old Irish fashion, only he has not a Christian soul now at all at all, most of the old Milesian gentry having quit the country; besides, the Prince being in a bad state of health, and having nearly lost the use of his limbs, and his heart being heavy, and his purse light; for all that he keeps up the old Irish customs and dress, letting nobody eat at the same table but his daughter, [6] not even his Lady, when she was alive.’

‘And do you think the son of Lord M— would have no chance of obtaining an audience from the Prince?’

‘What, the young gentleman that they say is come to M— house? why about as much chance as his father; but by my conscience that’s a bad one.’

‘And your young Princess, is she as implacable as her father?’

‘Why faith! I cannot well tell you what the Lady Glorvina is, for she is like nothing upon the face of God’s creation but herself. I do not know how it comes to pass, that every mother’s soul of us love her better nor the Prince; aye, by my conscience, and fear her too; for well may they fear her, on the score of her great learning, being brought up by Father John, the chaplain, and spouting Latin faster nor the priest of the parish: and we may well love her, for she is a saint upon earth, and a great physicianer to boot; curing all the sick and maimed for twenty miles round. Then she is so proud, that divil a one soul of the quality will she visit in the whole barony, though she will sit in a smoky cabin for hours together, to talk to the poor: besides all this, she will sit for hours at her Latin and Greek, after the family are gone to bed, and yet you will see her up with the dawn, running like a doe about the rocks; her fine yellow hair streaming in the wind, for all the world like a mermaid. Och! my blessing light on her every day she sees the light, for she is a jewel of a child.’

‘A child! say you?’

‘Why, to be sure I think her one; for many a time I carried her in these arms, and taught her to bless herself in Irish; but she is not child either, for as one of our old Irish songs says, “Upon her cheek we see love’s letter sealed with a damask rose.” [7] But if your Honour has any curiosity you may judge for yourself; for matins and vespers are celebrated every day in the year, in the old chapel belonging to the castle, and the whole family may attend.’

‘And are strangers also permitted?’

‘Faith and its themselves that are; but few indeed trouble them, though none are denied. I used to get mass myself sometimes, but it is now too far to walk for me.’

This was sufficient, I waited to hear no more, but repaid my communicative companion for his information, and rode off, having inquired the road to Inismore from the first man I met.

It would be vain, it would be impossible, to describe the emotion which the simple tale of this old man awakened. The descendant of a murderer! The very scoundrel steward of my father revelling in the property of a man, who shelters his aged head beneath the ruins of those walls where his ancestors bled under the uplifted sword of mine.

Why this, you will say, is the romance of a novel-read school boy. Are we not all, the little and the great, descended from assassins; was not the first born man a fratricide? and still, on the field of unappeased contention, does not ‘man the murderer, meet the murderer, man?’

Yes, yes, ‘tis all true; humanity acknowledges it and shudders. But still I wish my family had never possessed an acre of ground in this country, or possessed it on other terms. I always knew the estate fell into our family in the civil wars of Cromwell, and in the world’s language, was the well-earned meed of my progenitors’ valour; but I seemed to hear it now for the first time.

I am glad, however, that this old Irish chieftain is such a ferocious savage; that one pity his fate awakens, is qualified by aversion for his implacable, irascible disposition. I am glad his daughter is redheaded, a pedant, and a romp; that she spouts Latin like the priest of the parish, and cures sore fingers; that she avoids genteel society, where her ideal rank would procure her no respect, and her unpolished ignorance, by force of contrast, make her feel her real inferiority; that she gossips among the poor peasants, over whom she can reign liege Lady; and, that she has been brought up by a Jesuitical priest, who has doubtlessly rendered her as bigoted and illiberal as himself. All this soothes my conscientious throes of feeling and compassion; for Oh! if this savage chief was generous and benevolent, as he is independent and spirited; if this daughter was amiable and intelligent, as she must be simple and unvitiated! But I dare not pursue the supposition. It is better as it is.

You would certainly never guess that the Villa de Marino, from whence I date the continuation of my letter, was simply a fisherman’s hut on the sea coast, half way between the Lodge and Castle of Inismore, that is, seven miles distant from each. Determined on attending vespers at Inismore, I was puzzling my brain to think where or how I should pass the night, when this hut caught my eye, and I rode up to it to inquire if there was any inn in the neighbourhood, where a Chevalier Errant could shelter his adventurous head for a night; but I was informed the nearest inn was fifteen miles distant, so I bespoke a little fresh straw, and a clean blanket, which hung airing on some fishing tackle outside the door of this marine hotel, in preference to riding so far for a bed, at so late an hour as that in which the vespers would be concluded.

This, mine host of the Atlantic promised me, pointing to a little board suspended over the door, on which was written

‘Good Dry Lodging.’

My landlord, however, convinced me his hotel afforded something better than good dry lodging; for entreating I would alight, till a shower passed over which was beginning to fall, I entered the hut, and found his wife, a sturdy lad their eldest son, and two naked little ones, seated at their dinner, and enjoying such as feast, as Apicius, who sailed to Africa from Rome to eat good oysters, would gladly have voyaged from Rome to Ireland, to have partaken of; for they were absolutely dining on an immense turbot (whose fellow- sufferers were floundering in a boat that lay anchored near the door). A most cordial invitation on their part, and a most willing compliance on mine, was the ceremony of a moment; and never did an English alderman on turtle day, or Roman Emperor on lampreys and peacock’s livers, make a more delicious repast, than the chance guest of these good people, on their boiled turbot and roasted potatoes, which was quaffed down with a pure phalernian of a neighbouring spring.

Having learnt that the son was going with the compeers of the demolished turbot to Bally—, I took out my little escritoire to write you an account of the first adventure of my chivalrous tour; while one of spring’s most grateful sunny showers, is pattering on the leaves of the only tree that shades this simple dwelling, and my Rosinante is nibbling a scanty dinner from the patches of vegetation that sprinkle the surrounding cliffs. Adieu! The vesper hour arrives. In all ‘my orisons thy sins shall be remembered.’ The spirit of adventure wholly possesses me, and on the dusky horizon of life, some little glimmering of light begins to dawn.

Encore adieu,

H.M.