Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3). Jonah Barrington
baronet of very ancient family (an honour which he never suffered any person to be ignorant of after twenty minutes’ conversation), proprietor of a large Galway territory, garnished with the usual dilapidated chateau, brogueless tenantry, managing attorneys, and mis-managing agents, having sufficiently squeezed his estate to get (as he terms) the juice out of it, determined to serve a few campaigns about St. James’ Street, &c., and try if he could retrench at the several club-houses and “hells” to be met with amidst what is called “high life” in our economical metropolis.
After having enacted with éclat all the parts in the various scenes usually performed on that great theatre, he at length found, that the place was not much cheaper than sweet Glinsk, or any old principality of his own dear country. He therefore resolved to change the scene for a more diverting and cheerful one; and by way of a finish, came over to Paris, where any species of ruin may be completed with a taste, ease, and despatch unknown in our boorish country.
The baronet brought over three or four thousand pounds in his fob, just (as he told me) to try, by way of comparison, how long that quantity of the dross would last in Paris9– on which point his curiosity was promptly satisfied: – “Frascati” and the “Salon des Etrangers,” by a due application of spotted bones, coloured pasteboard, and painted whirligigs, under the superintendence of the Marquis de Livere, informed him at the termination of a short novitiate, that nearly the last of his “Empereurs” had been securely vested in the custody of the said Marquis de Livere.
Though this seemed, primâ facie, rather inconvenient, yet the baronet’s dashing establishment did not immediately suffer diminution, until his valet’s repeated answer, pas chez lui, began to alarm the crew of grooms, goddesses, led captains, &c.
Misfortune (and he began to fancy this was very like one) seldom delays long to fill up the place of ready money when that quits a gentleman’s service: and it now seemed disposed to attach itself to the baronet in another way. Madam Pandora’s box appeared to fly open, and a host of bodily ills beset Sir John, who, having but indifferent nerves, was quite thrown on his back.
Such was the hapless situation of Sir John Burke, while exercising his portion of the virtue of patience, in waiting for remittances– a period of suspense particularly disagreeable to travellers abroad – every post-day being pretty certain to carry off the appetite; which circumstance, to be sure, may be sometimes considered convenient enough.
Families from the interior of Hibernia are peculiarly subject to that suspense; and where their Irish agent happens to be an old confidential solicitor, or a very dear friend, or a near relation of the family, the attack is frequently acute. An instance, indeed, occurred lately, wherein the miscarriage of an Irish letter actually caused the very same accident to a new-married lady!
The baronet, however, bore up well; and being extremely good-humoured, the surliest créanciers in Paris could not find in their hearts for some time to be angry with him; and so, most unreasonably left him to be angry with himself, which is a thousand times more tormenting to a man, because sans intermission.
At length, some of his most pressing friends, who a short time before had considered it their highest honour to enjoy the pratique of Monsieur le Chevalier, began to show symptoms of losing temper; – as smoke generally forebodes the generation of fire, something like a blaze seemed likely to burst forth; and as the baronet most emphatically said to me – “The d – d duns, like a flock of jack snipes, were eternally thrusting their long bills into me, as if I was a piece of bog!”
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