Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 2 (of 3). Jonah Barrington

5

There was an association in the year 1782, (a volunteer corps) which was called the “Independent Light Horse.” They were not confined to one district, and none could be admitted but the younger brothers of the most respectable families. They were all both “hilt and muzzle adepts;” – and, that no member might set himself up as greater than another, every individual of the corps was obliged, on entering, to give his honour “that he could cover his fortune with the crown of his hat, and had exchanged a shot or thrust before he was ballotted for.”

Roscommon and Sligo then furnished some of the finest young fellows (fire-eaters) I ever saw: their spirit and decorum were equally admirable, and their honour and liberality conspicuous on all occasions.

6

The residue of the rules I have found among other papers since the first edition of this book was printed – but they are much defaced. There were eleven or twelve of them only, on points of honour. The rules of combat are all given; and they are full of a pugnacious sophistry, which would scarcely entertain the reader.

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His second ascent was a most unfortunate one for the spectators. It took place from the Duke of Leinster’s lawn, Merrion-square: the crowds outside were immense, and so many squeezed together and leaned against a thick parapet wall fronting the street, that it yielded to the weight and pressure, and the spectators and parapet wall came tumbling down together a great depth. Several were killed and many disabled; while Crosby sailed quietly over their heads, in all human probability, to be drowned before an hour had expired.

8

It has since been discovered that death did not master him for many years after this report. His history is not a common one. I have lately received a considerable quantity of documents and Mss. collected or written during the period he was supposed to be dead, and at many different places, till a late day. Most of them are to me utterly unintelligible; but there is sufficient to furnish matter for one of the most curious memoirs that can be conceived, and altogether novel. So multifarious, however, are the materials, that I fear their due arrangement would be quite beyond my powers.

9

Mr. Peter Burrowes, K. C., was my old friend and schoolfellow. He was one of those persons whom every body likes: – there never was a better hearted man! We were at Temple together.

10

Lord Clare (when attorney-general) coming out of the Exchequer, which was much crowded, was asked who was speaking. “Speaking!” said Fitzgibbon; “nobody – Dick Guinness is whistling a demurrer.”

11

I have found many notes respecting such-like matters, in old Ms. books, &c. &c.; particularly two or three at the end of an old Cookery book, in Ms., by my great-grandmother Lady Byrne, of Timogue, in her own hand-writing, in 1729, with several receipts purporting to be by Lady Rory O’Neil, of Smithfield, Dublin, who died in 1741, at a great age. I shall revive this subject in another volume, which I contemplate.

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The country authorities were very wise, very grave, and very grim on this subject; but, after all, I suspect the most natural way of accounting for the fatality alluded to is, that the old gentlemen were commonly among the hardest livers in the country, and consequently, the gout was certain to be their companion, and generally their executioner.

If wood be kept alternately in and out of moisture, it rots soon: – if it is always in water, it never decays. A man’s constitution and rum-punch may to a degree resemble wood and water in this respect. The hardest incessant drinkers I ever recollect lived to a great age, were generally healthy, and usually made their exit, at last, by apoplexy, without troubling either doctor, parson, or apothecary: while, on the contrary, most of those who were only intermitting boozers, died much earlier; their finisher being, nine times out of ten, gout in the head or stomach: a cause, however, occasionally varied by a broken neck by a fall from a horse, when riding home from a housewarming, or drowning in a ditch, whilst watering their horses after the dogh à dourish. A few were smothered in shaking bogs, whilst attending the turf-cutters, &c. &c.

It required at least three days and nights incessant hard going to kill a drinker of the first class. It cost Squire Luke Flood of Roundwood, a place situated in Queen’s County, five days and nights hard working at port before he could finish either himself or the piper. Old Squire Lewis Moor of Cremorgan died, by way of variety, at seventy-six, of a violent passion, because his wife became jealous of his proceedings with the kitchen-maid. A few died of Drogheda usquebaugh, and several of sore ancles. I recollect, in fact, many of the most curious deaths and burials in Ireland that ever took place in any country under heaven. None of them were considered as being melancholy events, since every hard going squire then generally took his full turn in this world, and died by some coup de grace, as stated: however, he was commonly regretted by all his acquaintance and family, except his eldest son.

13

I never could get over certain disagreeable sensations and awe at the interment of any person. So strongly, indeed, have I been impressed in this way, that I formed a resolution, which (with one exception) I have strictly adhered to these forty years, – namely, never to attend the funeral even of a relative. I have now and then indulged a whim of strolling over a country church-yard, occasionally to kill time when travelling, in other instances for statistical purposes: but, in general, the intelligible and serious inscriptions on the tomb-stones are so mingled and mixed with others too ridiculous even for the brain of a stone-cutter to have devised, that the rational and preposterous, alternately counteracting each other, made a sort of equipoise; and I generally left an ordinary church-yard pretty much in the same mood in which I entered it.

14

Hartpole, though he despised the empty arrogance of his uncle, yet saw that his Lordship knew the world well and profited by that knowledge: – he therefore occasionally paid much attention to some of my Lord’s worldly lectures; and had he observed the best of them, though he might possibly have appeared less amiable, he would doubtless have been far more fortunate. But Hartpole could not draw the due distinction between the folly of his uncle’s ostentation and the utility of his address; disgusted with the one, he did not sufficiently practise the other; and despised the idea of acting as if he knew the world, lest he should be considered as affecting to know too much of it.

15

I cannot better illustrate the state of a person so chased by misery, than by quoting a few unpublished lines, the composition of a very young lady, Miss M. T., with whom, and with whose amiable family, I have the pleasure of being intimate.

I am aware that I do her great injustice by quoting these particular verses – some of the most inferior of her writings; but they seem so much to the point, that I venture to risk her displeasure. She is not, indeed, irritable; and I promise to atone for my error by a few further quotations from her superior compositions.

I.

I never sought a day’s repose

But some sharp thorn pierced my breast;

I never watch’d the evening’s close,

And hoped a heaven of rest;

But soon a darkling cloud would come

Athwart the prospect bright,

And, pale as twilight on a tomb,

My hopes grew dim in night.

II.

Oft have I mark’d the heav’nly moon

Wandering her pathless way

Along the midnight’s purple noon,

More fair – more loved than day:

But soon she flung her shadowy wreath

O’er dark eternity,

As a faint smile on the cheek of death

’Twixt hope and agony.

III.

Oft on the rainbow’s bloom I’ve gazed,

Arch’d as a gate of heaven,

Till gushing showers its portals razed,

And bathed the brow of even.

’Tis thus young hopes illume the sky

Of Life’s dark atmosphere,

Yet, like the rainbow’s splendid dye,

They meet and disappear.

IV.

Ev’n so, the mirth of man is madness; —

His joy as a sepulchral light,

Which shows his solitude and sadness,

But chaseth not the night.

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