The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent. Samuel Murray Hussey
my father, who had broken his leg when young, and not only disliked walking, but had a slight limp, which did not prevent him being in the saddle for many hours each day.
As a child, I led a fresh, natural, out-of-doors, healthy life, exposed to wind and rain, and all the better for both. There are very few trees about Dingle, and I quite agree with the remark of an American that it was the most open country he had ever seen.
I was always bathing, but I never got drowned, not even in liquor, although I have sat with some of the best in that capacity. I have myself been pretty temperate in everything, to which I attribute my longevity. And yet I am not sure that any rule can be laid down in this respect, for I have known men who saturated themselves in alcohol until they ought to have been kept out of sight of all decent people live longer than those that have kept straight in every way.
In proof of this, let me quote the delightful account of a centagenarian out of Smith's History of Kerry, a book already referred to, and which can now be finally put back on its shelf, dry as dust, as Carlyle might say, 'but pregnant with food for thought, ay, and for grim mirth,'—those are not exactly the words of the Sage of Chelsea, but just have the rub of his tongue about them.
'Mr. Daniel MacCarty died in February 1751,' as the account said, 'in the 112th year of his age. He lived during his whole life in the barony of Iveragh, and buried four wives. He married a fifth in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and she but a girl of fourteen, by whom he had several children. He was always a very healthy man, no cold ever affecting him, and he could not bear the warmth of a shirt at night, but put it under his pillow. He drank for many of the last years of his life great quantities of rum and brandy, which he called the naked truth; and if, in compliance to other gentlemen, he drank claret or punch, he always took an equal quantity of spirits to qualify those liquors: this he called a wedge. No man ever saw him spit. His custom was to walk eight or ten miles in a winter's morning over mountains with greyhounds and finders, and he seldom failed to bring home a brace of hares. He was an innocent man, and inherited the social virtues of the antient Milesians. He was of a florid complexion, looked amazingly well for a person of his age and manners of life, for his use of spirituous liquors was prodigious, a custom that much prevails in these baronies.'
Indeed, no one who was slightly acquainted with the characteristics of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kerry would suggest that total abstinence was even to-day their predominant virtue.
It is the fashion to say that it is a good thing to be one of a large family. From a financial point of view I am quite certain that the reverse is preferable, and as I was the youngest of nine—two others besides those I mentioned, James and Anne, coming to early demises—I received as many kicks and cuffs from my brethren as I did halfpence and affection from my parents. So, like Thackeray, as a child I sympathised with Lord MacTurk who wished to cut off the heads of his brethren. Now I have survived them all, and I fondly regret the sounds of voices that are still.
But as I sit in my arm-chair and ruminate over the past, which every old man must do in the intervals of reading the Times, going to the club, or losing his money by careful attention to speculation, I have the consolation of remembering that I did as much mischief as any other child. To be a really good child means that the animal is a prig or unhealthy. To-day I am fond of all my grandchildren, but the one I like best is the one which proves himself or herself the naughtiest for the moment.
This is a hard saying for parents, and not a good precept for the young, but there is solid truth in it and a bit of common-sense too, for it is best to get the original sin out in the years of innocence.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION
Perhaps the biggest wrench in life is going to school. It may not seem so very much afterwards—as the boy said of the tooth when he looked at it in the dentist's forceps—but the wrench is really bad.
I learned my letters from my mother, and picked up a few other smatterings before I had daily lessons from a tutor at Dingle. Strange to say, a very good classical education could have been obtained there in the thirties, better, so far as I can estimate, than could have been expected from a town double the size at the same period in England.
At the age of ten I was sent to Huddard's, then a very sound school in Dublin. I was well enough taught, not caned enough for my deserts, though more than sufficed for my feelings, and sufficiently fed, but at the end of two years I had to leave owing to ill health.
An apothecary, who selfishly recollected that the more medicines I took the better for him if not for me, converted me into a human receptacle for his empirical abominations, but another surgeon, who was rather tardily called in, packed me off to the country.
One of the leading Dublin physicians certified that I had only one lung; but as the other has served me faithfully for sixty-nine years, I am rather sceptical as to the accuracy of his diagnosis.
I remember very little about Huddard's, except that it was in Mountjoy Square, and about a hundred boys were herded there in unsought proximity. We boarders always fought the town boys, but also had to cajole them in humiliating ways to smuggle us in contraband articles of food. The meals at Huddard's were fairly good, no doubt, as school fare goes, but the sugary stick-jaw stuff for which the soul of a boy longs was naturally not part of the official bill of fare. The bullying was of a reasonable nature, or at all events I could hold my own with the best of them, being indifferent to punishment so long as I could hit out effectively from the shoulder. One of the ushers, a dwarf of malignant disposition, was an awful tyrant, and we always had an ardent desire to tar and feather him, only we did not know how to set about the operation even if we had ventured to attempt it.
After a happy interval of convalescence at home, I was sent to a smaller school kept by Mr. Hogg at Limerick. One of the boys there subsequently became that illustrious ornament of the Bench, Lord Justice Barry.
He was a very eloquent man, counted so even at the Irish Bar, where a certain high-flown loquacity is pretty prevalent, and had a great repute. He arrived at Cork once, and had to fight his way through a dense throng to get into court. On inquiring the reason of the crowd, he was told that everybody wanted to hear the big speech that was expected from Councillor Barry.
'Well, unless you make way for me it's disappointed every mother's son of you will be, for I am twin to Councillor Barry, and I never heard tell he had a brother.'
He carried on the old-fashioned habit of after-dinner conviviality, and used to sit drinking three hours after the wine had been put on the table, which was why I never accepted his hospitality in after years, for, as I said before, I am a man of moderation.
In my young days it was the regular thing to bring in whisky-punch after dinner; and for many years I regularly took one tumbler and never had a second, not once to the best of my recollection.
There is a good deal of change in the habits of life. When I was a boy coffee was unknown for breakfast, cocoa had not become known as a beverage, and tea was regularly drunk. We seldom took lunch, nor did the ladies, and afternoon tea was unheard of. Instead, tea was brought into the drawing-room about eight in the evening, and was always drunk very weak and sweet. In those times it was invariably from China and pretty costly.
We dined at five. Dinners were very solid. Soup was a pretty regular opening, but could be dispensed with without comment, and it was almost always greasy. At Dingle fish was pretty plentiful, but sweets were regarded as a great extravagance.
I remember, when grown up, dining with an elderly man near Cahirciveen, who had a turbot for which he must have paid at least eight shillings, but he apologised for not having a pudding on account of the necessity for economy, though a pudding would not have cost him eightpence.
Made dishes were very few and badly cooked. The food was chiefly joints, and, in nine cases out of ten, roast mutton. Vegetables were not so much eaten as now, always