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.
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.