Читать книгу The Wild Irish Girl - Lady Sydney Morgan - Страница 14

I can support this wretched state of non-existence, this articula mortis, no longer. I cannot read—I cannot think—nothing touches, nothing interests me; neither is it permitted me to indulge my sufferings in solitude. These hospitable people still weary me with their attentions, though they must consider me as a sullen misanthropist, for I persist in my invisibility. I can escape them no longer but by flight—professional study is out of the question, for a time at least. I mean, therefore, to “take the wings of” some fine morning, and seek a change of being in a change of place; for a perpetual state of evaga-tion alone, keeps up the flow and ebb of existence in my languid frame. My father’s last letter informs me he is obliged by business to postpone his journey for a month; this leaves me so much the longer master of myself. By the time we meet, my mind may have regained its native tone. Laval too, writes for a longer leave of absence, which I most willingly grant. It is a weight removed off my shoulders; I would be savagely free.

I thank you for your welcome letters, and will do what I can to satisfy your antiquarian taste; and I would take your advice and study the Irish language, were my powers of comprehension equal to the least of the philological excellences of Tom Thumb or Goody Two Shoes,—but alas!

“Se perchetto a me Stesso quale acquisto,

Firo mai che me piaccia.” *

* “Torquatto Tasso.”

Villa di Marino, Atlantic Ocean

Having told Mr. Clendinning, that I should spend a few days in wandering about the country, I mounted my horse. So I determined to roam free and unrestrained by the presence of a servant, to Mr. Clendinning’s utter amazement, I ordered a few changes of linen, my drawing-book, and pocket escritoire, to be put in a small valice, which, with all due humility, I had strapped on the back of my steed, whom, by the bye, I expect will be as celebrated as the Rozinante of Don Quixote, or the Beltenbros L’Amadis de Gaul; and thus accoutred set off on my peregrination, the most listless knight that ever entered on the lists of errantry.

You will smile, when I tell you my first point of attraction was the Lodge; to which (though with some difficulty) I found my way; for it lies in a most wild and unfrequented direction, but so infinitely superior in situation to M——— house, that I no longer wonder at my father’s preference. Every feature that constitutes either the beauty or sublime of landscape, is here finely combined. Groves druidically venerable—mountains of Alpine elevation—expansive lakes, and the boldest and most romantic sea-coast I ever beheld, alternately diversify and enrich its scenery; while a number of young and flourishing plantations evince the exertion of taste in my father, he certainly has not betrayed in the disposition of his hereditary domains. I found this Tusculum inhabited only by a decent old man and his superannuated wife. Without informing them who I was, I made a feigning wish to make the place a pretext for visiting it. The old man smiled at the idea, and shook his head, presuming that I must be indeed a stranger in the country, as my accent denoted, for that this spot belonged to a great English Lord, whom he verily believed would not resign it for his own fine place some miles off; but when, with some jesuitical artifice I endeavoured to trace the cause of this attachment, he said it was his Lordship’s fancy, and that there was no accounting for people’s fancies.

“That is all very true,” said I, “but is it the house only that seized on your Lord’s fancy?”

“Nay, for the matter of that,” said he, “the lands are far more finer; the house, though large, being no great things.” I begged in this instance to judge for myself, and a few shillings procured me not only free egress, but the confidence of the ancient Cicerone.

This fancied harem, however, I found not only divested of its expected fair inhabitant, but wholly destitute of furniture, except what filled a bedroom occupied by my father, and an apartment which was locked. The old man with some tardiness produced the key, and I found this mysterious chamber was only a study; but closer inspection discovered that almost all the books related to the language, history, and antiquities of Ireland.

So you see, in fact, my father’s Sultana is no other than the Irish Muse; and never was son so tempted to become the rival of his father, since the days of Antiochus and Stratonice. For, at a moment when my taste, like my senses, is flat and palled, nothing can operate so strongly as an incentive, as novelty. I strongly suspect that my father was aware of this, and that he had despoiled the temple, to prevent me becoming a worshipper at the same shrine. For the old man said he had received a letter from his Lord, ordering away all the furniture (except that of his own bed-room and study) to the manor house; the study and bed-room, however, will suffice me, and here I shall certainly pitch my head-quarters until my father’s arrival.

I have already had some occasions to remark, that the warm susceptible character of the Irish is open to the least indication of courtesy and kindness.

My politesse to this old man, opened every sluice of confidence in his breast, and, as we walked down the avenue together, having thrown the bridle over my horse’s neck, and offered him my arm, for he was lame, I enquired how this beautiful farm fell into the hands of Lord M————, still concealing from him that it was his son who demanded the question.

“Why, your Honour,” said he, “the farm, though beautiful is small; however, it made the best part of what remained of the patrimony of the Prince, when————”

“What Prince?” interrupted I, amazed.

“Why, the Prince of Inismore, to be sure, jewel, whose great forefathers once owned the half of the barony, from the Red Bog to the sea-coast. Och! it is a long story, but I heard my grandfather tell it a thousand times, how a great Prince of Inismore in the wars of Queen Elizabeth, had here a castle and a great tract of land on the borders, of which he was deprived, as the story runs, becaise he would neither cut his glibbs, shave his upper lip, nor shorten his shirt; * and so he was driven, with the rest of us beyond the pale. The family, however, after a while, flourished greater nor ever. Och, and it is themselves that might, for they were true Milesians bread and born, every mother’s soul of them. O not a drop of Strongbonean flowed in their Irish veins, agrah!

* From the earliest settlement of the English in this

country, an inquisitorial persecution had been carried on

against the national costume. In the reign of Henry V. there

was an act passed against even the English colonists wearing

a whisker on the upper lip, like the Irish; and in 1616, the

Lord Deputy, in his instructions to the Lord President and

Council, directed, that such as appeared in the Irish robes

or mantles, should be punished by fine and imprisonment.

“Well, as I was after telling your Honour, the family flourished, and beat all before them, for they had an army of galloglasses at their back, * until the Cromwellian wars broke out, and those same cold-hearted Presbyterians, battered the fine old ancient castle of Inismore, and left in the condition it now stands; and what was worse nor that, the poor old Prince was put to death in the arms of his fine young son, who tried to save him, and that by one of Cromwell’s English Generals, who received the town lands of Inismore, which lie near Bally————, as his reward. Now this English General who murdered the Prince, was no other than the ancestor of my Lord, to whom these estates descended from father to son. Ay, you may well start, Sir, it was a woful piece of business; for of all their fine estates, nothing was left to the Princes of Inismore, but the ruins of their old castle, and the rocks that surround it; except this tight little bit of an estate here, on which the father of the present Prince built this house; becaise his Lady, with whom he got a handsome fortune, and who was descended from the Kings of Connaught, took a dislike to the castle; the story going that it was haunted by the murdered Prince; and what with building of this house, and living like an Irish Prince, as he was every inch of him, and spending 3000 l. a year out of 300 l., when he died (and the sun never shone on such a funeral; the whiskey ran about like ditch water, and the country was stocked with pipes and tobacco for many a long year after. For the present Prince, his son, would not be a bit behind his father in any thing, and so signs on him, for he is not worth one guinea this blessed day, Christ save him;)—well, as I was saying, when he died, he left things in a sad way, which his son is not the man to mend, for he was the spirit of a king, and lives in as much state as one to this day.”

* The second order of military in Ireland.

“But where, where does he live?” interrupted I, with breathless impatience.

“Why,” continued this living chronicle, in the true spirit of Irish replication, “he did live there in that Lodge, as they call it now, and in that room where my Lord keeps his books, was our young Princess born; her father never had but her, and loves her better than his own heart’s blood, and well he may, the blessing of the Virgin Mary and the Twelve Apostles light on her sweet head. Well, the Prince would never let it come near him, that things were not going on well, and continued to take at great rents, farms that brought him in little; for being a Prince and a Milesian, it did not become him to look after such matters, and every thing was left to stewards and the like, until things coming to the worst, a rich English gentleman, as it was said, come over here and offered the Prince, through his steward, a good round sum of money on this place, which the Prince, being harrassed by his spalpeen creditors, and wanting a little ready money more than any other earthly thing, consented to receive; the gentleman sending him word he should have his own time; but scarcely was the mortgage a year old, when this same Englishman, (Oh, my curse lie about him, Christ pardon me,) foreclosed it, and the fine old Prince not having as much as a shed to shelter his gray hairs under, was forced to fit up part of the old ruined castle, and open those rooms which it had been said were haunted. Discharging many of his old servants, he was accompanied to the castle by the family steward, the fosterers, the nurse * the harper, and Father John, the chaplain.

* The custom of retaining the nurse who reared the

children, has ever been, and is still in force among the

most respectable families in Ireland, as it is still in

modern, and was formerly in ancient Greece, and they are

probably both derived from the same origin. We read, that

when Rebecca left her father’s house to marry Isaac at

Beersheba, the nurse was sent to accompany her. But in

Ireland, not only the nurse herself, but her husband and

children are objects of peculiar regard and attention, and

are called fosterers. The claims of these fosterers

frequently descend from generation to generation, and the

tie which unite? them is indissoluble.

“Och, it was a piteous sight the day he left this: he was leaning on the Lady Glorvina’s arm as he walked out to the chaise, ‘James Tyral,’ says he to me in Irish, for I caught his eye; ‘James Tyral,’ but he could say no more, for the old tenants kept crying about him, and he put his mantle to his eyes and hurried into the chaise; the Lady Glorvina kissing her hand to us all, and crying bitterly till she was out of sight. But then, Sir, what would you have of it; the Prince shortly after found out that this same Mr. Mortgagee, was no other than a spalpeen steward of Lord M————‘s. It was thought he would have run mad when he found that almost the last acre of his hereditary lands was in the possession of the servant of his hereditary enemy; for so deadly is the hatred he bears to my Lord, that upon my conscience, I believe the young Prince who held the bleeding body of his murdered father in his arms, felt not greater for the murderer, than our Prince does for that murder’s descendant.

“Now my Lord is just such a man as God never made better, and wishing with all the veins in his heart to serve the old Prince, and do away all difference between them, what does he do, jewel, but writes him a mighty pretty letter, offering this house and a part of the lands a present. O! divil a word of lie I’m after telling you; but what would you have of it, but this offer sets the Prince madder than all; for you know that this was an insult on his honour, which warmed every drop of Milesian blood in his body for he would rather starve to death all his life, than have it thought he would be obligated to any body at all at all for wherewithal to support him; so with that the Prince writes him a letter: it was brought by the old steward, who knew every line of the contents of it, though divil a line in it but two, and that same was but one and a half, as one may say, and this it was, as the old steward told me:

“The son of the son of the son’s son of Bryan, Prince of Inismore, can receive no favour from the descendant of his ancestor’s murderer.”

“Now it was plain enough to be seen, that my Lord took this to heart, as well he might, faith; however, he considered that it came from a misfortunate Prince, he let it drop, and so this was all that ever passed between them; however, he was angry enough with his steward, but Measther Clendinning put his comehither on him, and convinced him that the biggest rogue alive was an honest man.”

“And the Prince!” I interrupted eagerly.

“Och, jewel, the prince lives away in the old Irish fashion, only he has not a Christian soul now at all at all, most of the old Milesian gentry having quit the country; besides, the Prince being in a bad state of health, and having nearly lost the use of his limbs, and his heart being heavy, and his purse light; for all that he keeps up the old Irish customs and dress, letting nobody eat at the same table but his daughter, * not even his Lady when she was alive.”

* M’Dermot, Prince of Coolavin, never suffered his wife to

sit at table with him; although his daughter-in-law was

permitted to that honour, as she was the descendant from the

royal family of the O’Connor.

“And do you think the son of Lord M———— would have no chance of obtaining an audience from the Prince?”

“What the young gentleman that they say is come to M———— house? why about as much chance as his father, but by my conscience, that’s a bad one.”

“And your young Princess, is she as implacable as her father?”

“Why, faith! I cannot well tell you what the Lady Glorvina is, for she is like nothing upon the face of God’s creation but herself. I do not know how it comes to pass, that every mother’s soul of us loves her better nor the Prince; ay, by my conscience, and fear her too; for well may they fear her, on the score of her great learning, being brought up by Father John, the chaplain, and spouting Latin faster nor the priest of the parish: and we may well love her, for she is a saint upon earth, and a great physicianer to boot; curing all the sick and maimed for twenty miles round. Then she is so proud, that divil a one soul of the quality will she visit in the whole barony, though she will sit in a smoky cabin for hours together, to talk to the poor: besides all this, she will sit for hours at her Latin and Greek, after the family are gone to bed, and yet you will see her up with the dawn, running like a doe about the rocks; her fine yellow hair streaming in the wind, for all the world like a mermaid.

“Och! my blessing light on her every day she sees the light, for she is the jewel of a child.”

“A child! say you!”

“Why, to be sure I think her one; for many a time I carried her in these arms, and taught her to bless herself in Irish; but she is no child either, for as one of our old Irish songs says, ‘Upon her cheek we see love’s letter sealed with a damask rose.’ * But if your Honour has any curiosity you may judge for yourself; for matins and vespers are celebrated every day in the year, in the old chapel belonging to the castle, and the whole family attend.”

* This is a line of a song of one Dignum, who composed in

his native language, but could neither read nor write nor

spoke any language but his own. “I have seen,” said the

celebrated Edmund Burke (who in his boyish days had known

him) “some of his effusions translated into English, but was

assured, by judges, that they fell far short of the

originals; yet they contained some graces, ‘snatched beyond

the reach of ark’ “—Vide Life of Burke.

“And are strangers also permitted?”

“Faith and it’s themselves that are; but few indeed trouble them, though none are denied. I used to get to mass myself sometimes, but it is now too far to walk for me.”

This was sufficient, I waited to hear no more, but repaid my communicative companion for his information, and rode off, having inquired the road to Inismore from the first man I met.

It would be vain, it would be impossible to describe the emotion which the simple tale of this old man awakened. The descendant of a murderer! The very scoundrel steward of my father revelling in the property of a man who shelters his aged head beneath the ruins of those walls where his ancestors bled under the uplifted sword of mine.

Why this, you will say, is the romance of a novel-read schoolboy. Are we not all, the little and the great, descended from assassins; was not the first born man a fratricide? and still, on the field of unappeased contention, does not “man the murderer, meet the murderer, man?”

Yes, yes, ‘tis all true; humanity acknowledges it and shudders. But still I wish my family had never possessed an acre of ground in this country, or possessed it on other terms. I always knew the estate fell into our family in the civil wars of Cromwell, and, in the world’s language, was the well-earned meed of my progenitor’s valour; but I seemed to hear it now for the first time.

I am glad, however, that this old Irish chieftain is such a ferocious savage; that the pity his fate awakens is qualified by aversion for his implacable, irascible disposition. I am glad his daughter is red headed, a pedant, and a romp; that she spouts Latin like the priest of the parish, and cures sore fingers; that she avoids genteel society, where her ideal rank would procure her no respect, and her unpolished ignorance, by force of contrast, make her feel her real inferiority; that she gossips among the poor peasants, over whom she can reign liege Lady; and, that she has been brought up by a jesuitical priest, who has doubtlessly rendered her as bigoted and illiberal as himself. All this soothes my conscientous throes of feeling and compassion; for oh! if this savage chief was generous and benevolent, as he is independent and spirited; if this daughter was amiable and intelligent, as she must be simple and unvitiated! But I dare not pursue the supposition, It is better as it is.

You would certainly never guess that the Villa di Marino, from whence I date the continuation of my letter, was simply a fisherman’s hut on the seacoast, half way between the Lodge and Castle of Inismore, that is, seven miles distant from each. Determined on attending vespers at Inismore, I was puzzling my brain to think where or how I should pass the night, when this hut caught my eye, and I rode up to it to inquire if there was any inn in the neighbourhood, where a chevalier errant could shelter his adventurous head for a night; but I was informed the nearest inn was fifteen miles distant, so I bespoke a little fresh straw, and a clean blanket which hung airing on some fishing tackle outside the door of this marine hotel, in preference to riding so far for a bed, at so late an hour as that in which the vespers would be concluded.

This mine host of the Atlantic promised me, pointing to a little board suspended over the door, on which was written:

“Good Dry Lodging.”

My landlord, however, convinced me his hotel afforded something better than good dry lodging; for entreating me to alight, till a shower passed over which was beginning to fall, I entered the hut, and found his wife, a sturdy lad their eldest son, and two naked little ones, seated at their dinner, and enjoying such a feast, as Apicius, who sailed to Africa from Rome to eat good oysters, would gladly have voyaged from Rome to Ireland to have partaken of; for they were absolutely dining on an immense turbot (whose fellow-sufferers were floundering in a boat that lay anchored near the door.) A most cordial invitation on their part, and a most willing compliance on mine, was the ceremony of a moment; and never did an English alderman on turtle day, or Roman emperor on lampreys and peacocks’ livers, make a more delicious repast, than the chance guest of these good people, on their boiled turbot and roasted potatoes, which was quaffed down by the pure phalernian of a neighbouring spring.

Having learnt that the son was going with the compeers of the demolished turbot to Bally————,

I took out my little escritoire to write you an account of the first adventure of my chivalrous tour; while one of spring’s most grateful sunny show ers, is pattering on the leaves of the only tree that shades this simple dwelling, and my Rosinante is nibbling a scanty dinner from the patches of vegetation that sprinkle the surrounding cliffs. Adieu! the vesper hour arrives. In all “my orisons thy sins shall be remembered.” The spirit of adventure wholly possesses me, and on the dusky horizon of life, some little glimmering of light begins to dawn.

Encore adieu.

H. M.