Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  Much must be allowed in England for the licence of conversation; but by no means must this conversation-licence be extended to the Irish. If, for instance, at the convivial hour of dinner, when men are not usually intent upon grammatical or mathematical niceties, an Irish gentleman desires him “who rules the roast,” to cut the sirloin of beef horizontally downwards, let the mistake immediately be set down in our note-books, and conned over, and got by heart; and let it be repeated to all eternity as a bull. But if an English lady observe, when the candles have long stood unsnuffed, that “those odious long wicks will soon grow up to the ceiling,” she can be accused only of an error of vision. We conjure our readers to attend to these distinctions in their intercourse with their Hibernian neighbours: it must be done habitually and technically; and we must not listen to what is called reason; we must not enter into any argument, pro or con, but silence every Irish opponent, if we can, with a laugh.

  The Abbé Girard, in his accurate work, “Synonymes François,” makes a plausible distinction between un âne et un ignorant; he says, “On est âne par disposition: on est ignorant par défaut d’instruction.” An ignorant person may certainly, even in the very circumstances which betray his ignorance, evince considerable ability. For instance, the native Indian, who for the first time saw a bottle of porter uncorked, and who expressed great astonishment at the quantity of froth which he saw burst from the bottle, and much curiosity to know whether it could all be put in again, showed even in his ignorance a degree of capacity, which in different situations might have saved his life, or have made his fortune. In the situation of the poor fisher-man, and the great giant of smoke, who issued from the small vessel, well known to all versed in the Arabian Tales, such acuteness would have saved his life; and a similar spirit of inquiry, applied to chemistry, might, in modern times, have made his fortune. Even where no positive abilities are displayed at the time by those who manifest ignorance, we should not (except the culprits be natives of Ireland) hastily give them up. Ignorance of the most common objects is not only incident to certain situations, but absolutely unavoidable; and the individuals placed in those situations are no more blameable than they would be for becoming blind in the snows of Lapland, or for having goitres amongst the Cretins of Le Vallais. Would you blame the ignorant nuns who, insensible of the danger of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius,32 warmed themselves at the burning lava which flowed up to the windows of their cells? or would you think the French canoness an idiot who, at the age of fifty, was, on account of her health, to go out of her convent, and asked, when she met a cow for the first time, what strange animal that was? or would you think that those poor children deserved to be stigmatized as fools, who, after being confined for a couple of years in an English workhouse, actually at eight years old had forgotten the names of a pig and a calf?33 their ignorance was surely more deplorable than ridiculous. When the London young lady kept a collection of chicken-bones on her plate at dinner, as a bonne-bouche for her brother’s horse,34 Dr. Johnson would not suffer her to be called an idiot, but very judiciously defended her, by maintaining, that her action merely demonstrated her ignorant of points of natural history, on which a London miss had no immediate opportunity of obtaining information. Had the world always judged upon such subjects with similar candour, the reproachful cant term of cockney would never have been disgracefully naturalized in the English language. This word, as we are informed by a learned philologist, originated from the mistake of a learned citizen’s son, who having been bred up entirely in the metropolis, was so gloriously ignorant of country life and country animals, that the first time he heard a cock crow, he called it neighing. If such a mistake had been made by an Irishman, it would surely have been called a bull: it has, at least, as good pretensions to the title as many mistakes made by ignorant Hibernians; for instance, the well-known blunder relative to the sphinx: — An uninformed Irishman, hearing the sphinx alluded to in company whispered to a friend, “The sphinx! who is that now?”

  “A monster-man.”

  “Oh, a Munster-man: I thought he was from Connaught,” replied our Irishman, determined not to seem totally unacquainted with the family. Gross and ridiculous as this blunder appears, we are compelled by candour to allow, that the affectation of showing knowledge has betrayed to shame men far superior to our Hibernian, both in reputation and in the means of acquiring knowledge.

  Cardinal Richelieu, the Maecenas or would-be Maecenas of France, once mistook the name of a noted grammarian, Maurus Terentianus, for a play of Terence’s. This is called by the French writer who records it, “une bévue bien grossière.” However gross, a mistake can never be made into a bull. We find bévues French, English, Italian, German, Latin, and Greek, of theologians, historians, antiquaries, poets, critics, and translators, without end. The learned Budaeus takes Sir Thomas More’s Utopia for a true history; and proposes sending missionaries to work the conversion of so wise a people as the Utopians. An English antiquary35 mistakes a tomb in a Gothic cathedral for the tomb of Hector. Pope, our great poet, and prince of translators, mistakes Dec. the 8th, Nov. the 5th, of Cinthio, for Dec. 8th, Nov. 5th; and Warburton, his learned critic, improves upon the blunder, by afterward writing the words December and November at full length. Better still, because more comic, is the blunder of a Frenchman, who, puzzled by the title of one of Cibber’s plays, “Love’s Last Shift,” translates it “La Dernière Chemise de l’Amour.” We laugh at these mistakes, and forget them; but who can forget the blunder of the Cork almanack-maker, who informs the world that the principal republics in Europe, are Venice, Holland, and America?

  The blunders of men of all countries, except Ireland, do not affix an indelible stigma upon individual or national character. A free pardon is, and ought to be, granted by every Englishman to the vernacular and literary errors of those who have the happiness to be born subjects of Great Britain. What enviable privileges are annexed to the birth of an Englishman! and what a misfortune it is to be a native of Ireland!

  CHAPTER IV. LITTLE DOMINICK.

  We have laid down the general law of bulls and blunders; but, as there is no rule without an exception, we may perhaps allow an exception in favour of little Dominick.

  Little Dominick was born at Fort-Reilly, in Ireland, and bred nowhere until his tenth year, when he was sent to Wales to learn manners and grammar at the school of Mr. Owen ap Davies ap Jenkins ap Jones. This gentleman had reason to think himself the greatest of men; for he had over his chimney-piece a well-smoked genealogy, duly attested, tracing his ancestry in a direct line up to Noah; and moreover he was nearly related to the learned etymologist, who, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, wrote a folio to prove that the language of Adam and Eve in Paradise was pure Welsh. With such causes to be proud, Mr. Owen ap Davies ap Jenkins ap Jones was excusable for sometimes seeming to forget that a schoolmaster is but a man. He, however, sometimes entirely forgot that a boy is but a boy; and this happened most frequently with respect to little Dominick.

  This unlucky wight was flogged every morning by his master, not for his vices, but for his vicious constructions, and laughed at by his companions every evening for his idiomatic absurdities. They would probably have been inclined to sympathize in his misfortunes, but that he was the only Irish boy at school; and as he was at a distance from all his relations, and without a friend to take his part, he was a just object of obloquy and derision. Every sentence he spoke was a bull; every two words he put together proved a false concord; and every sound he articulated betrayed the brogue. But as he possessed some of the characteristic boldness of those who have been dipped in the Shannon, he showed himself able and willing to fight his own battles with the host of foes by whom he was encompassed. Some of these, it was said, were of nearly twice his stature. This may be exaggerated, but it is certain that our hero sometimes ventured with sly Irish humour to revenge himself upon his most powerful tyrant by mimicking the Welsh accent, in which Mr. Owen ap Jones said to him, “Cot pless me, you plockit, and shall I nev
er learn you Enclish crammer?”

  It was whispered in the ear of this Dionysius, that our little hero was a mimick; and he was treated with increased severity.

  The midsummer holydays approached; but he feared that they would shine no holydays for him. He had written to his mother to tell her that school would break up the 21st, and to beg an answer, without fail, by return of post; but no answer came.

  It was now nearly two months since he had heard from his dear mother or any of his friends in Ireland. His spirits began to sink under the pressure of these accumulated misfortunes: he slept little, ate less, and played not at all; indeed nobody would play with him upon equal terms, because he was nobody’s equal; his schoolfellows continued to consider him as a being, if not of a different species, at least of a different caste from themselves.

  Mr. Owen ap Jones’s triumph over the little Irish plockit was nearly complete, for the boy’s heart was almost broken, when there came to the school a new scholar — oh, how unlike the others! His name was Edwards; he was the son of a neighbouring Welsh gentleman; and he had himself the spirit of a gentleman. When he saw how poor Dominick was persecuted, he took him under his protection, fought his battles with the Welsh boys, and, instead of laughing at him for speaking Irish, he endeavoured to teach him to speak English. In his answers to the first question Edwards ever asked him, little Dominick made two blunders, which set all his other companions in a roar; yet Edwards would not allow them to be genuine bulls.

  In answer to the question, “Who is your father?” Dominick said, with a deep sigh, “I have no father — I am an orphan36 — I have only a mother.”

  “Have you any brothers and sisters?”

  “No; I wish I had; perhaps they would love me, and not laugh at me,” said Dominick, with tears in his eyes; “but I have no brothers but myself.”

  One day Mr. Jones came into the schoolroom with an open letter in his hand, saying, “Here, you little Irish plockit, here’s a letter from your mother.”

  The little Irish blockhead started from his form, and, throwing his grammar on the floor, leaped up higher than he or any boy in the school had ever been seen to leap before, and, clapping his hands, he exclaimed, “A letter from my mother! And will I hear the letter? And will I see her once more? And will I go home these holydays? Oh, then I will be too happy!”

  “There’s no tanger of that,” said Mr. Owen ap Jones; “for your mother, like a wise ooman, writes me here, that py the atvice of your cardian, to oom she is coing to be married, she will not pring you home to Ireland till I send her word you are perfect in your Enclish crammer at least.”

  “I have my lesson perfect, sir,” said Dominick, taking his grammar up from the floor; “will I say it now?”

  “Will I say it now? No, you plockit, no; and I will write your mother word you have proke Priscian’s head four times this tay, since her letter came. You Irish plockit!” continued the relentless grammarian, “will you never learn the tifference between shall and will? Will I hear the letter, and will I see her once more? What Enclish is this, plockit?”

  The Welsh boys all grinned, except Edwards, who hummed, loud enough to be heard, two lines of the good old English song,

  “And will I see him once again?

  And will I hear him speak?”

  Many of the boys were fortunately too ignorant to feel the force of the quotation; but Mr. Owen ap Jones understood it, turned upon his heel, and walked off. Soon afterwards he summoned Dominick to his awful desk; and, pointing with his ruler to the following page in Harris’s Hermes, bade him “reat it, and understant it, if he could.” Little Dominick read, but could not understand.

  “Then read it loud, you plockit.”

  Dominick read aloud —

  “There is nothing appears so clearly an object of the mind or intellect only as the future does, since we can find no place for its existence any where else: not but the same, if we consider, is equally true of the past—”

  “Well, co on — What stops the plockit? Can’t you reat Enclish now?”

  “Yes, sir; but I was trying to understand it. I was considering, that this is like what they would call an Irish bull, if I had said it.”

  Little Dominick could not explain what he meant in English, that Mr. Owen ap Jones would understand; and, to punish him for his impertinent observation, the boy was doomed to learn all that Harris and Lowth have written to explain the nature of shall and will. The reader, if he be desirous of knowing the full extent of the penance enjoined, may consult Lowth’s Grammar, p. 52, ed. 1799, and Harris’s Hermes, p. 10, 11, and 12, 4th edition. Undismayed at the length of his task, little Dominick only said, “I hope, if I say it all without missing a word, you will not give my mother a bad account of me and my grammar studies, sir.”

  “Say it all first, without missing a word, and then I shall see what I shall say,” replied Mr. Owen ap Jones.

  Even the encouragement of this oracular answer excited the boy’s fond hopes so keenly, that he lent his little soul to the task, learned it perfectly, said it at night, without missing one word, to his friend Edwards, and said it the next morning, without missing one word, to his master.

  “And now, sir,” said the boy, looking up, “will you write to my mother? And shall I see her? And shall I go home?”

  “Tell me first, whether you understant all this that you have learnt so cliply,” said Mr. Owen ap Jones.

  That was more than his bond. Our hero’s countenance fell: and he acknowledged that he did not understand it perfectly.

  “Then I cannot write a coot account of you and your crammer studies to your mother; my conscience coes against it,” said the conscientious Mr. Owen ap Jones.

  No entreaties could move him. Dominick never saw the letter that was written to his mother; but he felt the consequence. She wrote word this time punctually by return of the post, that she was sorry that she could not send for him home these holydays, as she heard so bad an account from Mr. Jones, &c. and as she thought it her duty not to interrupt the course of his education, especially his grammar studies. Little Dominick heaved many a sigh when he saw the packings-up of all his school-fellows, and dropped a few tears as he looked out of the window, and saw them, one after another, get on their Welsh ponies, and gallop off towards their homes.

  “I have no home to go to,” said he.

  “Yes, you have,” cried Edwards; “and our horses are at the door to carry us there.”

  “To Ireland? me! — the horses!” said the poor boy, quite bewildered: “and will they bring me to Ireland?”

  “No; the horses cannot carry you to Ireland,” said Edwards, laughing good-naturedly, “but you have a home now in England. I asked my father to let me take you home with me; and he says ‘Yes,’ like a dear, good father, and has sent the horses. Come, let’s away.”

  “But will Mr. Jones let me go?”

  “Yes; he dare not refuse; for my father has a living in his gift that Jones wants, and which he will not have, if he do not change his tone to you.”

  Little Dominick could not speak one word, his heart was so full. No boy could be happier than he was during these holydays: “the genial current of his soul,” which had been frozen by unkindness, flowed with all its natural freedom and force. When Dominick returned to school after these holydays were over, Mr. Owen ap Jones, who now found that the Irish boy had an English protector with a living in his gift, changed his tone. He never more complained unjustly that Dominick broke Priscian’s head, seldom called him Irish plockit, and once would have flogged a Welsh boy for taking up this cast-off expression of the master’s, but the Irish blockhead begged the culprit off.

  Little Dominick sprang forward rapidly in his studies: he soon surpassed every boy in the school, his friend Edwards only excepted. In process of time his guardian removed him to a higher seminary of education. Edwards had a tutor at home. The friends separated. Afterwards they followed different professions in distant parts of the world; and they neither saw
nor heard any more of each other for many years. From boys they grew into men, and Dominick, now no longer little Dominick, went over to India as private secretary to one of our commanders in chief. How he got into this situation, or by what gradations he rose in the world, we are not exactly informed: we know only that he was the reputed author of a much-admired pamphlet on Indian affairs; that the despatches of the general to whom he was secretary were remarkably well written, and that Dominick O’Reilly, Esq. returned to England, after several years’ absence, not miraculously rich, but with a fortune equal to his wishes. His wishes were not extravagant: his utmost ambition was to return to his native country with a fortune that should enable him to live independently of all the world, especially of some of his relations, who had not used him well. His mother was no more.