The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 by Maria Edgeworth

M >> Maria Edgeworth >> The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

_February 19_.

I yesterday found in my writing-desk a copy I had made of the letter
Lord Carrington wrote to me in answer to mine announcing your former
Futtehgur appointment; and now that it can go free I enclose it. I like
an expression of Lord Mahon's about him in a note I lately received from
him. "My grandfather is in excellent health, and I cannot offer you a
better wish than that you may at eighty-one possess the same activity,
the same quickness of intellect, the same gushing, warm-hearted
benevolence which distinguishes him." Gushing benevolence: I like that
expression.

Sophy despatched a letter for you last week, in which I am sure she told
you all domestic occurrences. Barry has bought Annaghmore in the King's
County: an excellent house; and Sophy and Barry and all the children are
to stay with us till Sophy's health--very delicate--is strengthened, and
till they have furnished what rooms they mean to inhabit at Annamore;
this looks better than with the _gh_, but Sophy stickles for the old
Irish spelling.

Molly and Hetty, and Crofton and child, are all flourishing; poor old
George is declining as gently and comfortably as can be. When we go to
see him, his eyes light up and his mouth crinkles into smiles, and he,
as well as Molly, never fails to ask for Master Pakenham. Though _Helen_
cannot reach you for a year, Fanny has desired Bentley to send you a
copy before it is published. I should tell you beforehand that there is
no humour in it, and no Irish character. It is impossible to draw
Ireland as she now is in a book of fiction--realities are too strong,
party passions too violent to bear to see, or care to look at their
faces in the looking-glass. The people would only break the glass, and
curse the fool who held the mirror up to nature--distorted nature, in a
fever. We are in too perilous a case to laugh, humour would be out of
season, worse than bad taste. Whenever the danger is past, as the man in
the sonnet says,

We may look back on the hardest part and laugh.

Then I shall be ready to join in the laugh. Sir Walter Scott once said
to me, "Do explain to the public why Pat, who gets forward so well in
other countries, is so miserable in his own." A very difficult question:
I fear above my power. But I shall think of it continually, and listen,
and look, and read.

Thank you, my dear brother, for your excellent and to me particularly
interesting last letter, in which you copied for me the good
observations on the state of your part of India, and the collection of
the revenue, rents, etc. Many of the observations on India apply to
Ireland; similarity of certain general causes operating on human nature
even in countries most different and with many other circumstances
dissimilar, produce a remarkable resemblance in human character and
conduct. I admire your generous indignation against oppression and
wringing by "any indirection from the poor peasant his vile trash." Some
of the disputes that you have to settle at Cucherry, and some of the
viewings that you record of boundaries, etc., about which there are
quarrels, put me in mind of what I am called upon to do here continually
in a little way. I hope Honora and Sophy have given you satisfaction
about the exact place of the new walks; as I cannot draw I can do
nothing in that way, but I can tell you that I have been planting
rhododendrons and arbutus in front of the euonymus tree. I hope you will
have a good garden in your new residence, and that you will not be too
hot in it. How you could find that your having more to do, made you more
able to endure the horrid heat you describe, passes my comprehension.
Heat always makes me so indolent, imbecile, and irritable. I remember
all this in the only heat _to call heat_, that I was ever exposed to in
Paris and Switzerland; I could not even speak, much less write. If I had
been under your 107 degrees I should have melted away to the very bone,
and never, never, never could have penned that _dropping_ letter as you
did to Honora, and with that _puddle_ ink too. Well! we are very, very,
very much obliged to you, dear Pakenham, for all the labour you go
through for us, and we hope that under the shade of the Himalaya
mountains you will be able to write, at your ease and without all manner
of _stodge_ in your ink.

_21st_.

This morning brought through Harriet, Margaret Craig's joy at your
promotion, and--Honora says I must go out this delightful sunshine
morning, and look at all the full-blown crocuses, violets, heath, and
pyrus japonica. I have a standard pyrus now--vulgar things compared with
your _Indian Prides_.

Oh! my dear Pakenham, I am sure you are shocked at the death of Sir John
Malcolm! both he and Sir James Macintosh, the two whose genius you so
admired, and whose conversation you so enjoyed just before you left
England--both gone!

_March 8_.

Ever since I finished my last to you I have had my head so immersed in
accounts that I have never been able till this moment to fulfil my
intention of giving you my travels in Connemara.

I travelled with Sir Culling and Lady Smith (Isabella Carr). Sir
Culling, of old family, large fortune and great philanthropy, extending
to poor little Ireland and her bogs, and her Connemara, and her
penultimate barony of Erris and her ultimate Giants' Causeway, and her
beautiful lake of Killarney. And all these things he determined to see.
Infant and nurse, and lady's-maid, and gentleman's gentleman, and Sir
Culling and the fair Isabella all came over to Ireland last September,
just as Fanny had left us, and she meeting them in Dublin, and
conceiving that nurse and baby would not do for Connemara, wrote
confidentially to beg us to invite them to stay at Edgeworthstown, while
father and mother, and maid, and man, were to proceed on their travels.
They spent a pleasant week, I hope, at Edgeworthstown. I am sure Honora
did everything that was possible to make it pleasant to them, and we
regretted a million of times that your mother was not at home. Sir
Culling expected to have had all manner of information as to roads,
distances, and time, but Mrs. Edgeworth not being at home, and Miss
Edgeworth's local knowledge being such as you know, you may guess how he
was disappointed. Mr. Shaw and the Dean of Ardagh, who dined with him
here, gave him directions as far as Ballinasloe and a letter to the
clergyman there. The fair of Ballinasloe was just beginning, and Sir
Culling was determined to see that, and from thence, after studying the
map of Ireland and roadbooks one evening, he thought he should get
easily to Connemara, Westport, and the Barony of Erris, see all that in
a week, and come back to Edgeworthstown, take up Bambino and proceed on
a northern or a southern tour.

You will be surprised that I should--seeing they knew so little what
they were about--have chosen to travel with them; and I confess it was
imprudent and very unlike my usual dislike to leave home without any of
my own people with me. But upon this occasion I fancied I should see all
I wanted to see of the wonderful ways of going on and manners of the
natives better for not being with any of my own family, and especially
for its not being suspected that I was an authoress and might put them
in a book. In short, I thought it was the best opportunity I could ever
have of seeing a part of Ireland which, from time immemorial, I had been
curious to see. My curiosity had been raised even when I first came to
Ireland fifty years ago, by hearing my father talk of the King of
Connemara, and his immense territory, and his ways of ruling over his
people with almost absolute power, with laws of his own, and setting all
other laws at defiance. Smugglers and caves, and murders and mermaids,
and duels, and banshees, and fairies, were all mingled together in my
early associations with Connemara and Dick Martin,--"Hair-trigger Dick,"
who cared so little for his own life or the life of man, and so much for
the life of animals, who fought more duels than any man of even his
"Blue-blaze-devil" day, and who brought the bill into Parliament for
preventing cruelty to animals; thenceforward changing his cognomen from
"Hair-trigger Dick" to "Humanity Martin." He was my father's
contemporary, and he knew a number of anecdotes of him. _Too besides_, I
once saw him, and remember that my blood crept slow and my breath was
held when he first came into the room, a pale, little insignificant-
looking mortal he was, but he still kept hold of my imagination, and his
land of Connemara was always a land I longed to visit. Long afterwards,
a book which I believe you read, _Letters from the Irish Highlands_,
written by the family of Blakes of Renvyle, raised my curiosity still
further, and wakened it for new reasons, in a new direction. Further and
further and higher, Nimmo and William deepened my interest in that
country, and, in short, and at length all these motives worked together.
Add to them a book called _Wild Sports of the West_, of which Harriet
read to me all the readable parts till I rolled with laughing. Add also
that I had lately heard Mr. Rothwell give a most entertaining account of
a tour he had taken in Erris, and to the house of a certain Major
Bingham who must be the most diverting and extraordinary original upon
earth--and shall I die without seeing him? thought I--now or never.

At the first suggestion I uttered that I should like to see him and
Erris, and the wonders of Connemara, Lady Culling Smith and Sir Culling
burst into delight at the thought of having me as their travelling
companion, so it was all settled in a moment. Honora approved, Aunt Mary
hoped it would all turn out to my satisfaction, and off we set with four
horses mighty grand in their travelling carriage, which was a summer
friend, open or half-open. A half head stuck up immovable with a window
at each ear, an apron of wood, varnished to look like japanned leather
hinged at bottom, and having at top where it shuts a sort of fairy-board
window which lets down in desperately bad weather.

Our first day was all prosperous and sunshine, and what Captain Beaufort
would call plain sailing. To Ballymahon the first stage. Do you remember
Ballymahon, and the first sight of the gossamer in the hedges sparkling
with dew, going there packed into the chaise with your four sisters and
me to see the museum of a Mr. Smith, who had a Cellini cup and a Raphael
plate, and miniatures of Madame de Maintenon, and wonders
innumerable--but Sophy at this moment tells me that I am insisting upon
your remembering things that happened before you were born, and that
even Francis was only one year old at the time of this breakfast, and it
was she herself who was so delighted with that first view of the
gossamer in the glittering sunshine.

But I shall never get on to Athlone, much less to Connemara. Of Athlone
I have nothing to say but what you may learn from the _Gazetteer_,
except that, while we were waiting in the antiquated inn there, while
horses were changing, I espied a print hanging smoked over the
chimney-piece, which to my _connoisseur_ eyes seemed marvellously good,
and upon my own judgment I proposed for it to the landlady, and bought
it for five shillings (frame excepted); and when I had it out of the
frame, and turned it round, I found my taste and judgment gloriously
justified. It was from a picture of Vandyke's--the death of Belisarius;
and here it is now hanging up in the library, framed in satin wood, the
admiration of all beholders, Barry Fox above all.

But to proceed. It was no easy matter to get out of Athlone, for at the
entrance to the old-fashioned, narrowest of narrow bridges we found
ourselves wedged and blocked by drays and sheep, reaching at least a
mile; men cursing and swearing in Irish and English; sheep baaing, and
so terrified, that the shepherds were in transports of fear brandishing
their crooks at our postillions, and the postillions in turn brandishing
their whips on the impassive backs of the sheep. The cocked gold-edged
hat of an officer appeared on horseback in the midst, and there was
silence from all but the baaing sheep. He bowed to us ladies, or to our
carriage and four, and assured us that he would see us safe out, but
that it would be a work of time. While this work of time was going on,
one pushed his way from behind, between sheep and the wheel on my side
of the carriage, and putting in his head called out to me, "Miss
Edgeworth, if you are in it, my master's in town, and will be with you
directly almost, with his best compliments. He learned from the landlady
your name. He was in the inn that minute, receiving rents he is, if you
will be kind enough to wait a minute, and not stir _out of that_."

Kind enough I was, for I could not help myself, if I had been ever so
unkindly disposed towards my unknown friend. Up came, breathless, a
well-known friend, Mr. Strickland. Introduced amidst the baaing of the
sheep to my travelling companions, and, as well as I could make myself
heard in the din, I made him understand where we were going next, and
found, to my great satisfaction, that he would overtake us next day at
Ballinasloe, if we could stay there next day; and we could and must, for
it was Sunday. I cannot tell you--and if I could you would think I
exaggerated--how many hours we were in getting through the next ten
miles; the road being continually covered with sheep, thick as wool
could pack, all _coming from_ the sheep-fair of Ballinasloe, which, to
Sir Culling's infinite mortification, we now found had taken place the
previous day. I am sure we could not have had a better opportunity and
more leisure to form a sublime and just notion of the thousands and tens
of thousands which must have been on the field of sale. This retreat of
the ten thousand never could have been effected without the generalship
of these wonderfully skilled shepherds, who, in case of any disorder
among their troops, know how dexterously to take the offender by the
left leg or the right leg with their crooks, pulling them back without
ever breaking a limb, and keeping them continually in their ranks on the
weary, long march.

We did not reach Ballinasloe till it was almost dark. There goes a
story, you know, that no woman must ever appear at Ballinasloe Fair;
that she would be in imminent peril of her life from the mob. The
daughters of Lord Clancarty, it was said, "had tried it once, and scarce
were saved by fate." Be this as it may, we were suffered to drive very
quietly through the town; and we went quite through it to the outskirts
of scattered houses, and stopped at the door of the Vicarage. And well
for us that we had a letter from the Dean of Ardagh to the Rev. Mr.
Pounden, else we might have spent the night in the streets, or have paid
guineas apiece for our beds, all five of us, for three nights. Mr. and
Mrs. Pounden were the most hospitable of people, and they were put to a
great trial--dinner just over, and that day had arrived unexpectedly one
family of relations, and expectedly another, with children without end.
And how they did stow them and us, to this hour I cannot conceive: they
had, to be sure, one bed-chamber in a house next door, which, luckily,
Lord and Lady Somebody had not arrived to occupy. Be it how it might,
here we stayed till Monday; and on Sunday there was to be a charity
sermon for the benefit of the schools, under the patronage of Lord and
Lady Clancarty, and the sermon was preached by Archdeacon Pakenham; and
after the sermon--an excellent sermon on the appropriate text of the
good Samaritan--an immense crowd before the windows filled the fair
green, and we went out to see. The crowd of good, very good-natured
Irishmen, gentle and simple mixed, opened to let the ladies and English
stranger in to see: and fine horses and fine leaping we saw, over a
loose wall built up for the purpose in the middle of the fair green; and
such shouting, and such laughing, and such hurraing for those that
cleared and for those that missed. As for the rest of the cattle-fair,
we _lift_ on Monday morning before the thick of it came on.

I forgot to tell you that on Sunday arrived Mr. Strickland, and he with
maps and road-books explained to Sir Culling where he should go, and how
he was to accomplish his objects. It was settled that we were to go to
Loughrea, and to see certain ruins by going a few miles out of our way;
and this we accomplished, and actually did see, by an uncommonly fine
sunset, the beautiful ruins of Clonmacnoise; and we slept this night at
Loughrea, where we had been assured there was a capital inn, and may be
it was, but the rats or the mice ran about my room so, and made such a
noise in the holes of the floor, that I could not sleep, but was
thankful they did not get on or into my bed.

Next day to Galway, and still it was fine weather, and bright for the
open carriage, and we thought it would always be so. Galway, wet or dry,
and it was dry when I saw it, is the dirtiest town I ever saw, and the
most desolate and idle-looking. As I had heard much from Captain
Beaufort and Louisa of the curious Spanish buildings in Galway, I was
determined not to go through the town without seeing these; so, as soon
as we got to the inn, I summoned landlord and landlady, and begged to
know the names of the principal families in the town. I thought I might
chance to light upon somebody who could help us. In an old history of
Galway which Mr. Strickland picked up from a stall at Ballinasloe, I
found prints of some of the old buildings and names of the old families;
and the landlord having presented me with a list as long as an
alderman's bill of fare of the names of the gentlemen and ladies of
Galway, I pitched upon the name of a physician, a Dr. Veitch, of whom I
had found a fine character in my book. He had been very good to the poor
during a year of famine and fever. To him I wrote, and just as I had
finished reading his panegyric to Lady Smith, in he walked; and he
proved to be an old acquaintance. He was formerly a surgeon in the army,
and was quartered at Longford at the time of the rebellion: remembered
our all taking shelter there, how near my father was being killed by the
mob, and how courageously he behaved. Dr. Veitch had received some
kindness from him, and now he seemed anxious, thirty-five years
afterwards, to return that kindness to me and my companions. He walked
with us all over Galway, and showed us all that was worth seeing, from
the new quay _projecting_, and the new green Connemara marble-cutters'
workshop, to the old Spanish houses with projecting roofs and piazza
walks beneath; and, wading through seas of yellow mud thick as
stirabout, we went to see archways that had stood centuries, and above
all to the old mayoralty house of that mayor of Galway who hung his own
son; and we had the satisfaction of seeing the very window from which
the father with his own hands hung his own son, and the black marble
marrowbones and death's head, and inscription and date, 1493. I daresay
you know the story; it formed the groundwork very lately of a tragedy.
The son had--from jealousy as the tragedy has it, from avarice according
to the vulgar version--killed a Spanish friend; and the father, a modern
Brutus, condemns him, and then goes to comfort him. I really thought it
worth while to wade through mud to see these awful old relics of other
times and other manners. But, coming back again, at every turn it was
rather disagreeable to have "fish" bawled into one's ears, and "fine
flat fish" flapped in one's face. The fish-market was fresh supplied,
and Galway is famous for _John Dorees_. "A John Doree, ma'am, for
eighteen-pence--a shilling--sixpence!" A John Doree could not be had for
guineas in London. Quin, the famous actor, wished he was all throat when
he was eating a John Doree. But still it was not pleasant, at every turn
and every crossing, to have ever so fine John Dorees flapped in one's
face. Sir Culling bought one for sixpence, and it was put into the
carriage; and we took leave of Dr. Veitch, and left Galway.

From Galway Sir Culling was obliged to take job horses, as he was warned
that we were entering a country where post horses were not to be found,
and were never even heard of. Dr. Veitch bid us not think of entering
Connemara this night. "You will have to send after me soon, if you don't
take care. You have no idea of the places you are going into, and that
you may have to sleep in."

The next place we were to go to, and where Dr. Veitch advised us to
sleep, was Outerard, a small town or village, where he told us was an
inn, or an hotel, as even in these out-of-the-world regions it is now
called. It was but fifteen miles, and this with four horses was not two
hours' drive; and Sir Culling thought it would be sad waste of daylight
to sleep at Outerard, for still he measured his expected rate of
travelling by his Bath Road standard. Though we left Galway at three, we
were not at Outerard till past seven, with our fine, fresh horses; and
excellent horses they really were, and well harnessed too, with
well-accoutred postillions in dark blue jackets and good hats and boots,
all proper, and an ugly little dog running joyously along with the
horses. Outerard, as well as we could see it, was a pretty
mountain-scattered village, with a pond and trees, and a sort of
terrace-road, with houses and gardens on one side, and a lower road with
pond and houses on the other. There is a spa at Outerard to which
bettermost sort of people come in the season; but this was not the
season, and the place had that kind of desolate look, mixed with
_pretensions_ too, which a watering-place out of season always has.

When we came to the hotel, our hearts sank within us. Dusk as it was,
there was light enough to guess, at first sight, that it would never do
for sleeping--half covered with overgrown ivy, damp, forlorn, windows
broken, shattered look all about it. With difficulty we got at the
broken gate into the very small and dirty courtyard, where the four
horses could hardly stand with the carriage. Out came such a master and
such a maid! and such fumes of whiskey-punch and tobacco. Sir Culling
got down from his barouche-seat, to look if the house was practicable;
but soon returned, shaking his head, and telling us in French that it
was quite impossible; and the master of the inn, with half threats, half
laughter, assured us we should find no other place in Outerard. I
inquired for the Priest's house. I was on the point of asking, "Has the
Priest any family?" but recollected myself in time, and asked whether
the Priest's house was large enough to hold us. "Not an atom of room to
spare in it, ma'am." Then I inquired for the Chief of the Police, the
Clergyman, or the Magistrate? "Not in it, neither, none; but the Chief
of the Police's house is there on the top of the hill; but you will not
get in."

We went there, however, and up the hill toiled, and to the door of a
sort of spruce-looking lanthorn of a house, without tree or shrub near
it. But still it might be good to sleep in; and, nothing daunted by the
maid's prophecies and ominous voice, we determined to try our fate. Sir
Culling got down and rubbed his hands; while, after his man's knocking
at the door several times, no one came to open it, though through the
large drawing-room window we saw figures gliding about. At last the door
half opened by hands unseen, and Sir Culling, pushing it wholly open,
went in; and we sat in the carriage, waiting as patiently as we could.
The figures in black and white came to the window, and each had
pocket-handkerchiefs in their hands or at their eyes. Sir Culling
reappeared, ordered the horses to be turned about again; and when he had
remounted his barouche-seat, which he did with all convenient speed, he
informed us that a lady had died in this house a few days before, of
cholera; that she had this day been buried; that under any other
circumstances the master and mistress would have been happy to receive
us, but now it was quite impossible, for our sake and their own. The
damp, broken-windowed hole was preferable; so back we went. But as we
went along the _high_ road, down in the _low_ road on the other side of
the pond, through the duskiness we saw lights in several houses; and in
front of one long house which looked whiter than the rest, we stopped at
an opening in the road where was a path which led to the valley beneath,
and Sir Culling, who proved in this our need an active knight, sallied
down to adventure another trial; and in a few minutes after _im_merging
into this mud castle, and emerging from it, he waved his arm over his
head in sign of triumph, and made a sign to the postillions to turn down
into the valley, which they did without overturning us; and to our
satisfaction we found ourselves housed at Mrs. O'Flaherty's, who did not
keep an inn, observe; her admitting us, observe, depended upon our
clearly understanding that she did not so demean herself. But she in the
season let her house as a boarding-house to the quality, who came to
Outerard to drink the waters or to bathe. So, to oblige us poor
travellers, without disgrace to the blood and high descent of the
O'Flaherties, she took us in, as we were quality, and she turned her two
sons out of their rooms and their beds for us; and most comfortably we
were lodged. And we ate the John Doree we had brought with us, and I
thought it not worth all the talking about it I had heard; and, for the
first time in my days or nights, I this night tasted a _toombler_ of
anti-Parliament whiskey, _alias_ poteen, and water; and of all the
detestable tastes that ever went into my mouth, or smells that ever went
under my nose, I think this was the worst--literally smoke and fire
spirit. Isabella observed that she had often drank Innishowon and water
with dear Agnes and Joanna Baillie. There's no disputing about tastes;
therefore I did not dispute, only set down the tumbler, and sip took
never more; for I could as soon have drank the chimney smoking. The
doors, just opening with a latch, received us into our bed-rooms, with
good turf fires on the hearth, coved ceilings, and presses, and all like
bed-rooms in an English farm-house more than an Irish: wonderful
comfortable for Outerard, after fear of the cholera and the dead woman
especially.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23