Читать книгу Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 1 (of 3) - Jonah Barrington - Страница 4

My godfathers – Lord Maryborough – Personal description and extraordinary character of Mr. Michael Lodge – My early education – At home – At school – My private tutor, Rev. P. Crawley, described – Defects of the University course – Lord Donoughmore’s father – Anecdote of the Vice-Provost – A country sportsman’s education.

A christening was, formerly, a great family epocha: – my godfathers were Mr. Pool of Ballyfin, and Captain Pigott of Brocologh Park; and I must have been a very pleasant infant, for Mr. Pool, having no children, desired to take me home with him, in which case I should probably have cut out of feather a very good person and a very kind friend – the present Lord Maryborough, whom Mr. Pool afterwards adopted whilst a midshipman in the navy, and bequeathed him a noble demesne and a splendid estate near my father’s. My family have always supported Lord Maryborough for Queen’s County, and his lordship’s tenants supported me in my hard-contested election for Maryborough in 1800.

No public functionary could act more laudably than Mr. Pool did whilst secretary in Ireland; and it must be a high gratification to him to reflect that, in the year 1800, he did not sell his vote, nor abet the degradation of his country.

Captain Pigott expressed the same desire to patronise me as Mr. Pool; – received a similar refusal, and left his property, I believe, to a parcel of hospitals: whilst I was submitted to the guardianship of Colonel Jonah Barrington, and the instructions of Mr. Michael Lodge, a person of very considerable consequence in my early memoirs, and to whose ideas and eccentricities I really believe I am indebted for a great proportion of my own, and certainly not the worst of them.

Mr. George Lodge had married a love-daughter of old Stephen Fitzgerald, Esq. of Bally Thomas, who by affinity was a relative of the house of Cullenaghmore, and from this union sprang Mr. Michael Lodge.

I never shall forget his figure! – he was a tall man with thin legs and great hands, and was generally biting one of his nails whilst employed in teaching me. The top of his head was half bald: his remaining hair was clubbed with a rose-ribbon; a tight stock, with a large silver buckle to it behind, appeared to be almost choking him: his chin and jaws were very long: and he used to hang his under jaw, shut one eye, and look up to the ceiling, when he was thinking, or trying to recollect any thing.

Mr. Michael Lodge had been what is called a Matross in the artillery service. My grandfather had got him made a gauger; but he was turned adrift for letting a poor man do something wrong about distilling. He then became a land-surveyor and architect for the farmers: – he could farry, cure cows of the murrain, had numerous secrets about cattle and physic, and was accounted the best bleeder and bone-setter in that county – all of which healing accomplishments he exercised gratis. He was also a famous brewer and accountant – in fine, was every thing at Cullenagh: steward, agent, caterer, farmer, sportsman, secretary, clerk to the colonel as a magistrate, and also clerk to Mr. Barret as the parson: but he would not sing a stave in church, though he’d chant indefatigably in the hall. He had the greatest contempt for women, and used to beat the maid-servants; whilst the men durst not vex him, as he was quite despotic! He had a turning-lathe, a number of grinding-stones, and a carpenter’s bench, in his room. He used to tin the saucepans, which act he called chymistry; and I have seen him, like a tailor, putting a new cape to his riding-coat! He made all sorts of nets, and knit stockings; but above all, he piqued himself on the variety and depth of his learning.

Under the tuition of this Mr. Michael Lodge, who was surnamed the “wise man of Cullenaghmore,” I was placed at four years of age, to learn as much of the foregoing as he could teach me in the next five years: at the expiration of which period he had no doubt of my knowing as much as himself, and then (he said) I should go to school “to teach the master.”

This idea of teaching the master was the greatest possible incitement to me; and as there was no other child in the house, I never was idle, but was as inquisitive and troublesome as can be imagined. Every thing was explained to me; and I not only got on surprisingly, but my memory was found to be so strong, that Mr. Michael Lodge told my grandfather half learning would answer me as well as whole learning would another child. In truth, before my sixth year, I was making a very great hole in Mr. Lodge’s stock of information (fortification and gunnery excepted), and I verily believe he only began to learn many things himself when he commenced teaching them to me.

He took me a regular course by Horn-book, Primer, Spelling-book, Reading-made-Easy, Æsop’s Fables, &c.: but I soon aspired to such of the old library books as had pictures in them; and particularly, a very large History of the Bible with cuts was my constant study. Hence I knew how every saint was murdered; and Mr. Lodge not only told me that each martyr had a painter to take his portrait before death, but also fully explained to me how they had all sat for their pictures, and assured me that most of them had been murdered by the Papists. I recollect at this day the faces of every one of them at their time of martyrdom; so strongly do youthful impressions sink into the mind, when derived from objects which at the time were viewed with interest.11

Be this as it may, however, my wise man, Mr. Michael Lodge, used his heart, head, and hands, as zealously as he could to teach me most things that he did know, and many things he did not know; but with a skill which none of our schoolmasters practise, he made me think he was only amusing instead of giving me a task. The old man tried to make me inquisitive, and inclined to ask about the thing which he wanted to explain to me; and consequently, at eight years old I could read prose and poetry, – write text, – draw a house, a horse, and a game-cock, – tin a copper saucepan, and turn my own tops. I could do the manual exercise with my grandfather’s crutch; and had learnt, besides, how to make bullets, pens, and black-ball; to dance a jig, sing a cronaune,12 and play the Jew’s harp. Michael also showed me, out of scripture, how the world stood stock still whilst the sun was galloping round it; so that it was no easy matter at college to satisfy me as to the Copernican system. In fact, the old Matross gave me such a various and whimsical assemblage of subjects to think about, that my young brain imbibed as many odd, chivalrous, and puzzling theories as would drive some children out of their senses; and, truly, I found it no easy matter to get rid of several of them when it became absolutely necessary, whilst some I shall certainly retain till my death’s day.

This course of education I most sedulously followed, until it pleased God to suspend my learning by the death of my grandfather, on whom I doted. He had taught me the broad-sword exercise with his cane, how to snap a pistol, and shoot with the bow and arrow; and had bespoken a little quarter-staff, to perfect me in that favourite exercise of his youth, by which he had been enabled to knock a gentleman’s brains out for a wager, on the ridge of Maryborough, in company with the great grandfather of the present Judge Arthur Moore, of the Common Pleas of Ireland. It is a whimsical gratification to me, to think that I do not at this moment forget much of the said instruction which I received either from Michael Lodge, the Matross, or from Colonel Jonah Barrington, – though after a lapse of nearly sixty years!

A new scene was now to be opened to me. I was carried to Dublin, and put to the famous schoolmaster of that day, Dr. Ball, of St. Michael-a-Powell’s, Ship-street; – one of the old round towers still stands in the yard – towers which defy all tradition. Here my puzzling commenced in good earnest. I was required to learn the English Grammar in the Latin tongue; and to translate languages without understanding any of them. I was taught prosody without verse, and rhetoric without composition; and before I had ever heard any oration, except a sermon, I was flogged for not minding my emphasis in recitation. To complete my satisfaction, – for fear I should be idle during the course of the week, castigation was regularly administered every Monday morning, to give me, by anticipation, a sample of what the repetition day might produce.

However, notwithstanding all this, I worked my way, got two premiums, and at length was reported fit to be placed under the hands of a private tutor, by whom I was to be finished for the University.

That tutor was well known many years in Digges-street, Dublin, and cut a still more extraordinary figure than the Matross. He was the Rev. Patrick Crawly, Rector of Killgobbin, whose son was hanged a few years ago for murdering two old women with a shoemaker’s hammer. My tutor’s person was, in my imagination, of the same genus as that of Caliban. His feet covered a considerable space of any room wherein he stood, and his thumbs were so large that he could scarcely hold a book without hiding more than half the page of it: – though bulky himself, his clothes doubled the dimensions proper to suit his body; and an immense frowzy wig, powdered once a week, covered a head which, for size and form, might vie with a quarter-cask.

Vaccination not having as yet plundered horned cattle of their disorders, its predecessor had left evident proofs of attachment to the rector’s countenance. That old Christian malady, the small-pox, which had resided so many centuries amongst our ancestors, and which modern innovations have endeavoured to undermine, had placed his features in a perfect state of compactness and security – each being sewed quite tight to its neighbour, every seam appearing deep and gristly, so that the whole visage appeared to defy alike the edge of the sharpest scalpel and the skill of the most expert anatomist.

Yet this was as good-hearted a parson as ever lived: – affectionate, friendly, and, so far as Greek, Latin, Prosody, and Euclid went, excelled by few: and under him I acquired, in one year, more classical knowledge than I had done during the former six, – whence I was enabled, out of thirty-six pupils, to obtain an early place in the University of Dublin, at entrance.

The college course, at that time, though a very learned one, was ill arranged, pedantic, and totally out of sequence. Students were examined in “Locke on the Human Understanding,” before their own had arrived at the first stage of maturity; and Euclid was pressed upon their reason before any one of them could comprehend a single problem. We were set to work at the most abstruse sciences before we had well digested the simpler ones, and posed ourselves at optics, natural philosophy, ethics, astronomy, mathematics, metaphysics, &c. &c. without the least relief from belles-lettres, modern history, geography, or poetry; in short, without regard to any of those acquirements – the classics excepted, – which form essential parts of a gentleman’s education.13

Nevertheless, I jogged on with bene for the classics —satis for the sciences – and mediocriter for mathematics. I had, however, the mortification of seeing the stupidest fellows I ever met, at school or college, beat me out of the field in some of the examinations, and very justly obtain premiums for sciences which I could not bring within the scope of my comprehension.

My consolation is, that many men of superior talent to myself came off no better; and I had the satisfaction of hearing that some of the most erudite, studious, and pedantic of my contemporary collegians, who entertained an utter contempt for me, went out of their senses; and I do believe that there are at this moment some of the most eminent of my academic rivals amusing themselves in mad-houses. One of them I lamented much – he still lives; his case is a most extraordinary one, and I shall mention it hereafter: – ’twill puzzle the doctors.

Whenever, indeed, I seek amusement by tracing the fate of such of my school and college friends as I can get information about, I find that many of the most promising and conspicuous have met untimely ends; and that most of those men whose great talents distinguished them first in the university and afterward at the bar, had entered, as sizers, for provision as well as for learning: – indigence and genius were thus jointly concerned in their merited elevation; and I am convinced that the finest abilities are frequently buried alive in affluence and in luxury: revolutions are sometimes their hot-bed, and at other times their grave.

The death of my grandmother, which now took place, made a very considerable change in my situation, and I had sense enough, though still very young, to see the necessity of turning my mind toward a preparation for some lucrative profession – either law, physic, divinity, or war.

I debated on all these, as I thought, with great impartiality: – the pedantry of the book-worms had disgusted me with clericals; wooden legs put me out of conceit with warfare; the horrors of death made me shudder at medicine; the law was but a lottery-trade, too precarious for my taste; and mercantile pursuits were too humiliating for my ambition. Nothing, on the other hand, could induce me to remain a walking gentleman: and so, every occupation that I could think of having its peculiar disqualification, I remained a considerable time in a state of uncertainty and disquietude.

Meanwhile, although my choice had nothing to do with the matter, by residing at my father’s I got almost imperceptibly engaged in that species of profession exercised by young sportsmen, whereby I was initiated into a number of accomplishments ten times worse than the negative ones of the walking gentleman: – namely, – riding, drinking, dancing, carousing, hunting, shooting, fishing, fighting, racing, cock-fighting, &c. &c.

After my grandmother’s death, as my father’s country-house was my home, so my two elder brothers became my tutors– the rustics my precedents– and a newspaper my literature. However, the foundation for my propensities had been too well laid to be easily rooted up; and whilst I certainly, for awhile, indulged in the habits of those around me, I was not at all idle as to the pursuits I had been previously accustomed to. I had a pretty good assortment of books of my own, and seldom passed a day without devoting some part of it to reading or letter-writing; and though I certainly somewhat mis-spent, I cannot accuse myself of having lost, the period I passed at Blandsfort – since I obtained therein a full insight into the manners, habits, and dispositions of the different classes of Irish, in situations and under circumstances which permitted nature to exhibit her traits without restraint or caution: building on which foundation, my greatest pleasure has ever been that of decyphering character, adding to and embellishing the superstructure which my experience and observation have since conspired to raise.

It is quite impossible I can give a better idea of the dissipation of that period, into which I was thus plunged, than by describing an incident I shall never forget, and which occurred very soon after my first entrée into the sporting sphere. – It happened in the year 1778, and was then no kind of novelty: – wherever there were hounds, a kennel, and a huntsman, there was the same species of scena, (with variations, however, ad libitum,) when the frost and bad weather put a stop to field avocations.