Mr. M’Leod smiled, said something about time and patience, and observed, “that one experiment was not conclusive against a whole nation.” Any thing like a general argument Mr. Hardcastle could not comprehend. He knew every blade of grass within the reach of his tether, but could not reach an inch beyond. Any thing like an appeal to benevolent feelings was lost upon him; for he was so frank in his selfishness, that he did not even pretend to be generous. By sundry self-complacent motions he showed whilst his adversary spoke, that he disdained to listen almost as much as to read: but, as soon as M’Leod paused, he said, “What you observe, sir, may possibly be very true; but I have made up my mind.” Then he went over and over again his assertions, in a louder and a louder voice, ending with a tone of interrogation that seemed to set all answer at defiance, “What have you to answer to me now, sir? — Can any man alive doubt this, sir?”
M’Leod was perfectly silent. The company broke up; and, as we were going out of the room, I maliciously asked M’Leod, why he, who could say so much in his own defence, had suffered himself to be so completely silenced? He answered me, in his low, deliberate voice, in the words of Moiré—”’Qu’est-ce que la raison avec un filet de voix contre une gueule comme celle-là?’ At some other time,” added Mr. M’Leod, “my sentiments shall be at your lordship’s disposal.”
Indolent persons love positive people, when they are of their own opinion; because they are saved the trouble of developing their thoughts, or supporting their assertions: but the moment the positive differs in sentiment from the indolent man, there is an end of the friendship. The indolent man then hates his pertinacious adversary as much as he loved his sturdy friend. So it happened between Mr. Hardcastle and me. This gentleman was a prodigious favourite with me, so long as his opinions were not in opposition to my own; but an accident happened, which brought his love of power and mine into direct competition, and then I found his peremptory mode of reasoning and his ignorance absurd and insufferable.
Before I can do justice to my part of this quarrel, I must explain the cause of the interest which I took in behalf of the persons aggrieved. During the time that my first hot fit of benevolence was on me, I was riding home one evening after dining with Mr. Hardcastle, and I was struck with the sight of a cabin, more wretched than any I had ever before beheld: the feeble light of a single rush-candle through the window revealed its internal misery.
“Does any body live in that hovel?” said I
“Ay, sure, does there: the Noonans, plase your honour,” replied a man on the road. Noonans! I recollected the name to be that of the pugilist, who had died in consequence of the combat at which I had been present in London; who had, with his dying breath, besought me to convey his only half-guinea and his silk handkerchief to his poor father and sister. I alighted from my horse, asking the man, at the same time, if the son of this Noonan had not died in England.
“He had, sir, a son in England, Mick Noonan, who used to send him odd guineas, I mind, and was a good lad to his father, though wild; and there’s been no account of him at-all-at-all this long while: but the old man has another boy, a sober lad, who’s abroad with the army in the East Indies; and it’s he that is the hope of the family. And there’s the father — and old as he is, and poor, and a cripple, I’d engage there is not a happier man in the three counties at this very time speaking: for it is just now I seen young Jemmy Riley, the daughter’s bachelor, go by with a letter. What news? says I. ‘Great news!’ says he: ‘a letter from Tom Noonan to his father; and I’m going in to read it for him.’”
By the time my voluble informant had come to this period, I had reached the cabin door. Who could have expected to see smiles and hear exclamations of joy under such a roof?
I saw the father, with his hands clasped in ecstasy, and looking up to heaven, with the strong expression of delight in his aged countenance. I saw every line of his face; for the light of the candle was full upon it. The daughter, a beautiful girl, kneeling beside him, held the light for the young man, who was reading her brother’s letter. I was sorry to interrupt them.
“Your honour’s kindly welcome,” said the old man, making an attempt to rise.
“Pray, don’t let me disturb you.”
“It was only a letter from a boy of mine that’s over the seas, we was reading,” said the old man. “A better boy to an ould father, that’s good for nothing now in this world, never was, plase your honour. See what he has sent me: a draft here for ten guineas out of the little pay he has. God for ever bless him! — as he surely will.”
After a few minutes’ conversation, the old man’s heart was so much opened towards me, that he talked as freely as if he had known me for years. I led to the subject of his other son Michael, who was mentioned in the letter as a wild chap. “Ah! your honour, that’s what lies heaviest on my heart, and will, to my dying day, that Mick, before he died, which they say he did surely a twelvemonth ago, over there in England, never so much as sent me one line, good or bad, or his sister a token to remember him by even!”
“Had he but sent us the least bit of a word, or the least token in life, I had been content,” said the sister, wiping her eyes: “we don’t so much as know how he died.”
I took this moment to relate the circumstances of Michael Noonan’s death; and when I told them of his dying request about the half-guinea and the silk handkerchief, they were all so much touched, that they utterly forgot the ten-guinea draft, which I saw on the ground, in the dirt, under the old man’s feet, whilst he contemplated the half-guinea which his poor Michael had sent him: repeating, “Poor fellow! poor fellow! ’twas all he had in the world. God bless him! — Poor Michael! he was a wild chap! but none better to his parents than he while the life was in him. Poor Michael!”
In no country have I found such strong instances of filial affection as in Ireland. Let the sons go where they may, let what will befall them, they never forget their parents at home: they write to them constantly the most affectionate letters, and send them a share of whatever they earn.
When I asked the daughter of this Noonan, why she had not married? the old man answered, “That’s her own fault — if it be a fault to abide by an old father. She wastes her youth here, in the way your honour sees, tending him who has none other to mind him.”
“Oh! let alone that,” said the girl, with a cheerful smile; “we be too poor to think of marrying yet, by a great deal! so, father dear, you’re no hinderance any way. For don’t I know, and doesn’t Jemmy there know, that it’s a sin and a shame, as my mother used to say, for them that have nothing, to marry and set up house-keeping, like the rogue that ruined my father?”
“That’s true,” said the young man, with a heavy sigh; “but times will mend, or we’ll strive and mend them, with the blessing of God.”
I left this miserable but in admiration of the generosity of its inhabitants. I desired the girl to come to Glenthorn Castle the next day, that I might give her the silk handkerchief which her poor brother had sent her. The more I inquired into the circumstances of this family, the more cause I found for pity and approbation. The old man had been a good farmer in his day, as the traditions of the aged, and the memories of the young, were ready to witness; but he was unfortunately joined in co-partnership with a drunken rogue, who ran away, and left an arrear of rent, which ruined Noonan. Mr. Hardcastle, the agent, called upon him to pay it, and sold all that the old man possessed; and this being insufficient to discharge the debt, he was forced to give up his farm, and retire, with his daughter, to this hovel; and soon afterwards he lost the use of his side by a paralytic stroke.
I was so much pleased with the goodness of these poor people, that, in despite of my indolent disposition, I bestirred myself the very next day to find a better habitation for them on my own estate. I settled them, infinitely to their satisfaction, in a small farm; and the girl married her lover, who undertook to manage the farm for the old man. To my utter surprise, I found that Mr. Hardcastle was affronted by the part I took in this affair
. He complained that I had behaved in a very ungentlemanlike manner, and had spirited the tenants away from Lady Ormsby’s estate, against the regulation which he had laid down for all the tenants not to emigrate from the estate. Jemmy Riley, it seems, was one of the cotters on the Ormsby estate, a circumstance with which I was unacquainted; indeed I scarcely at that time understood what was meant by a cotter. Mr. Hardcastle’s complaint, in matter and manner, was unintelligible to me; but I was quite content to leave off visiting him, as he left off visiting me — but here the matter did not stop. This over-wise and over-busy gentleman took upon him, amongst other offices, the regulation of the markets in the town of Ormsby; and as he apprehended, for reasons best and only known to himself, a year of scarcity, he thought fit to keep down the price of oats and potatoes. He would allow none to be sold in the market of Ormsby but at the price which he stipulated. The poor people grumbled, and, to remedy the injustice, made private bargains with each other. He had information of this, and seized the corn that was selling above the price he had fixed. Young Riley, Noonan’s son-in-law, came to me to complain, that his little oats were seized and detained. I remonstrated. Hardcastle resented the appeal to me, and bid him wait and be damned. The young man, who was rather of a hasty temper, and who did not much like either to wait or be damned, seized his own oats, and was marching off, when they were recaptured by Hardcastle’s bailiff, whom young Riley knocked down; and who, as soon as he got up again, went straight and swore examinations against Riley. Then I was offended, as I had a right to be, by the custom of the country, with the magistrate who took an examination against my tenant, without writing first to me. Then there was a race between the examinations of my justice of peace and his justice of peace. My indolence was conquered by my love of power: I supported the contest; the affair came before our grand jury: I conquered, and Mr. Hardcastle was ever after, of course, my enemy. To English ears the possessive pronouns my and his may sound extraordinary, prefixed to a justice of peace; but, in many parts of Ireland, this language is perfectly correct. A great man talks of making a justice of the peace with perfect confidence; a very great man talks with as much certainty of making a sheriff; and a sheriff makes the jury; and the jury makes the law. We must not forget, however, that in England, during the reign of Elizabeth, a member of parliament defined a justice of peace to be “an animal, who for half a dozen chickens will dispense with half a dozen penal statutes.” Time is necessary to enforce the sanctions of legislation and civilization — But I am anticipating reflections which I made at a much later period of my life. To return to my history.
My benevolence was soon checked by slight disappointments. Ellinor’s cottage, which I had taken so much pains to build, became a source of mortification to me. One day I found my old nurse sitting at her wheel, in the midst of the wreck and litter of all sorts of household furniture, singing her favourite song of
“There was a lady loved a swine:
Honey! says she,
I’ll give ye a silver trough.
Hunk! says he!”
Ellinor seemed, alas! to have as little taste for the luxuries with which I had provided her as the pig had for the silver trough. What I called conveniences were to her incumbrances: she had not been used to them; she was put out of her way; and it was a daily torment to one of her habits, to keep her house clean and neat.
There may be, as some philosophers assure us that there is, an innate love of order in the human mind; but of this instinctive principle my poor Ellinor was totally destitute. Her ornamented farm-house became, in a wonderfully short time, a scene of dirt, rubbish, and confusion. There was a partition between two rooms, which had been built with turf or peat, instead of bricks, by the wise economy I had employed. Of course, this was pulled down to get at the turf. The stairs also were pulled down and burned, though there was no scarcity of firing. As the walls were plastered and papered before they were quite dry, the paper grew mouldy, and the plaster fell off. In the hurry of finishing, some of the woodwork had but one coat of paint. In Ireland they have not faith in the excellent Dutch proverb, “Paint costs nothing.” I could not get my workmen to give a second coat of paint to any of the sashes, and the wood decayed: divers panes of glass in the windows were broken, and their places filled up with shoes, an old hat, or a bundle of rags. Some of the slates were blown off one windy night: the slater lived at ten miles distance, and before the slates were replaced, the rain came in, and Ellinor was forced to make a bedchamber of the parlour, and then of the kitchen, retreating from corner to corner as the rain pursued, till, at last, when “it would come every way upon her bed,” she petitioned me to let her take the slates off and thatch the house; for a slated-house, she said, was never so warm as a tatched cabin; and as there was no smoke, she was kilt with the cowld.
In my life I never felt so angry. I was ten times more angry than when Crawley ran away with my wife. In a paroxysm of passion, I reproached Ellinor with being a savage, an Irish-woman, and an ungrateful fool.
“Savage I am, for any thing I know; and fool I am, that’s certain; but ungrateful I am not,” said she, bursting into tears. She went home and took to her bed; and the next thing I heard from her son was, “that she was lying in the rheumatism, which had kept her awake many a long night, before she would come to complain to my honour of the house, in dread that I should blame myself for sending of her into it afore it was dry.”
The rheumatism reconciled me immediately to Ellinor; I let her take her own way, and thatch the house, and have as much smoke as she pleased, and she recovered. But I did not entirely recover my desire to do good to my poor tenants. After forming, in the first enthusiasm of my benevolence, princely schemes for their advantage, my ardour was damped, and my zeal discouraged, by a few slight disappointments.
I did not consider, that there is often, amongst uncultivated people, a mixture of obstinate and lazy content, which makes them despise the luxuries of their richer neighbours; like those mountaineers, who, proud of their own hard fare,80 out of a singular species of contempt, call the inhabitants of the plains mange-rotis, “eaters of roast meat.” I did not consider that it must take time to change local and national habits and prejudices; and that it is necessary to raise a taste for comforts, before they can be properly enjoyed.
In the pettishness of my disappointment, I decided that it was in vain to attempt to improve and civilize such people as the Irish. I did not recollect, perhaps at that time I did not know, that even in the days of the great Queen Elizabeth, “the greatest part of the buildings in the cities and good towns of England consisted only of timber, cast over with thick clay to keep out the wind. The new houses of the nobility were indeed either of brick or stone; and glass windows were then beginning to be used in England:”81 and clean rushes were strewed over the dirty floors of the royal palace. In the impatience of my zeal for improvement, I expected to do the work of two hundred years in a few months: and because I could not accelerate the progress of refinement in this miraculous manner, I was out of humour with myself and with a whole nation. So easily is the humanity of the rich and great disgusted and discouraged! as if any people could be civilized in a moment, and at the word of command of ignorant pride or despotic benevolence!
CHAPTER IX.
“He saw — and but that admiration
Had been too active, too like passion,
Or had he been to ton less true,
Cupid had shot him through and through.”
I have not thought it necessary to record every visit that I received from all my country neighbours; but I must now mention one, which led to important consequences; a visit from Sir Harry Ormsby, a very young dashing man of fortune, who, in expectation of the happy moment when he should be of age, resided with his mother, the dowager Lady Ormsby. Her ladyship had heard that there had been some disagreement between her agent, Mr. Hardcastle, and my people; but she took the earliest opportunity of expressing her wishes, that our families should be on an amicable footing.
Lady Ormsby was just come to the country, with a large party of her fashionable friends — some Irish, some English: Lord and Lady Kilrush; my Lady Kildangan, and her daughter the Lady Geraldine —— — ; the knowing widow O’Connor; the English dasher, Lady Hauton; the interesting Mrs. Norton, separated but not parted from her husband; the pleasant Miss Bland; the three Miss Ormsbys, better known by the name of the Swanlinbar Graces; two English aides-de-camp from the Castle, and a brace of brigadiers; besides other men of inferior note.
I perceived that Sir Harry Ormsby took it for granted that I must be acquainted with the pretensions of all these persons to celebrity; his talkativeness and my taciturnity favoured me so fortunately, that he never discovered the extent of my ignorance. He was obligingly impatient to make me personally acquainted “with those of whom I must have heard so much in England.” Observing that Ormsby Villa was too far from Glenthorn Castle for a morning visit, he pressed me to waive ceremony, and to do Lady Ormsby and him the honour of spending a week with them, as soon as I could make it convenient. I accepted this invitation, partly from a slight emotion of curiosity, and partly from my habitual inability to resist any reiterated importunity.
Arrived at Ormsby Villa, and introduced to this crowd of people, I was at first disappointed by seeing nothing extraordinary. I expected that their manners would have been as strange to me as some of their names appeared: but whether it was from my want of the powers of discrimination, or from the real sameness of the objects, I could scarcely, in this fashionable flock, discern any individual marks of distinction. At first view, the married ladies appeared much the same as those of a similar class in England, whom I had been accustomed to see. The young ladies I thought, as usual, “best distinguished by black, brown, and fair:” but I had not yet seen Lady Geraldine —— — ; and a great part Of the conversation, the first day I was at Ormsby Villa, was filled with lamentations on the unfortunate tooth-ache, which prevented her ladyship from appearing. She was talked of so much, and as a person of such importance, and so essential to the amusement of society, that I could not help feeling a slight wish to see her. The next day at breakfast she did not appear; but, five minutes before dinner, her ladyship’s humble companion whispered, “Now Lady Geraldine is coming, my lord.” I was always rather displeased to be called upon to attend to any thing or any body, yet as Lady Geraldine entered, I gave one involuntary glance of curiosity. I saw a tall, finely-shaped woman, with the commanding air of a woman of rank; she moved well; not with feminine timidity, but with ease, promptitude, and decision. She had fine eyes and a fine complexion, yet no regularity of feature. The only thing that struck me as really extraordinary was her indifference when I was introduced to her. Every body had seemed extremely desirous that I should see her ladyship, and that her ladyship should see me; and I was rather surprised by her unconcerned air. This piqued me, and fixed my attention. She turned from me, and began to converse with others. Her voice was agreeable: she did not speak with the Irish accent; but, when I listened maliciously, I detected certain Hibernian inflections; nothing of the vulgar Irish idiom, but something that was more interrogative, more exclamatory, and perhaps more rhetorical, than the common language of English ladies, accompanied with much animation of countenance and demonstrative gesture. This appeared to me peculiar and unusual, but not affected. She was uncommonly eloquent, and yet, without action, her words were not sufficiently rapid to express her ideas. Her manner appeared foreign, yet it was not quite French. If I had been obliged to decide, I should, however, have pronounced it rather more French than English. To determine what it was, or whether I had ever seen any thing similar, I stood considering her ladyship with more attention than I had ever bestowed on any other woman. The words striking — fascinating — bewitching, occurred to me as I looked at her and heard her speak. I resolved to turn my eyes away, and shut my ears; for I was positively determined not to like her, I dreaded so much the idea of a second Hymen. I retreated to the farthest window, and looked out very soberly upon a dirty fish-pond. Dinner was announced. I observed Lady Kildangan manoeuvring to place me beside her daughter Geraldine, but Lady Geraldine counteracted this movement. I was again surprised and piqued. After yielding the envied position to one of the Swanlinbar Graces, I heard Lady Geraldine whisper to her next neighbour, “Baffled, mamma!”
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