The Squanders of Castle Squander

Preface

. I have very little to prefix in the shape of a preface. I can only say here, as I have said in the body of the book itself, that it is written neither for nor against any party. I may, however, be taxed with writing for a party, but that party is my country at large. This charge however will, I very much fear, not be brought against me in Ireland. I dare say I shall have both parties on my back ; but, thank God ! it is a tolerably broad one, and I trust will be able to bear the burden. I think, however, that there is no reasonable man who, on perusing these volumes, will not — nay, must not admit, that they were written in a spirit of the strictest impartiality and truth. I admit that I have been unsparing ; but then I have been just. The book, I will undertake to say, presents a very truthful picture of both the past and present condition of Irish life and society — a picture drawn from a knowledge of more than b VOL. I.

PREFACE.

IV fifty years of the people and the country. I wrote, certainly, with no purpose of offence, nor with any resentment, either personal or political, to gratify. I entertain no peculiar prejudices, either on the one side or the other. If I have ever harboured any such, they have been absorbed and lost in the anxiety which I entertain for the general welfare of my countrymen. I have occasionally spoken to them in this book of then social errors and personal habits and that with some severity ; but the severity was that of a friend, who may have waxed warm on reflecting that they did not take such steps to improve their condition, and maintain their independence as men, which they ought to have done. I do not wish to see them give way to crime, nor become the ignorant slaves of either priest or landlord.

In the body of the book there is an allusion made to 1832 as the period when the forty shilling free holders were abolished. This was a slip of memory. The forty shilling franchise was abolished by the Emancipa tion Act, in 1S29. WILLIAM CAELETON. Dublin, June Sth, 1852. CONTENTS. CBiprice. I. — HOW I CAME TO EDUCATE MB. SQUANDER'S " WHELPS " . 1 IL — I AM EXAMINED, APPOINTED, AND COMMENCE MT DUTIES . 22 UL — MASTER TOM — MT PUPIL — JEMMT M'SCUTT'S VERT ORIGINAL SOURCE OF INCOME 46 IV. — A GACGEB OUTWITTED — JA1IE3 SQUANDER'S rf^teTURE FOB COLLEGE -5!^J V. — THE HUNTSMAN'S MORALITT — THE TRIAL — BALLT SCAMPER RACES — O'CANTER OUT-MANŒUVRED AND DISGRACED — MR. squander's SUCCESS 82 VL — MASTER TOM'S AFFECTION DR. M'CLARET, HAVING TRANS- MOGRIFIED HIMSELF, IS ANXIOUS TO ACQUIRE THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS 106 VH. — GOING TO GATHER WOOL AND COMING HOME SHORN — MR. SQUANDER IN PRISON — IS MTSTERIOUSLT LIBERATED . 126 TTTT. — A MTSTERT SOLVED — DR. M'CLARET MAKES LOVE . .151 IX. — A DEPUTATION — THE COOK'S ORATION .... 170 X. STATE OF THE FAMILT EXECUTIVE INGENUITY . .190 XL — BEING A SHORT CHAPTER ON PURITT OF ELECTION AND IRISH LANDLORDS — THEIR CONDUCT — THE FORTT- SHILLING FRANCHISE — THE STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE COUNTRT . 208 Xn.

THE SHERIFF'S VISIT AND DEATH OF MR. SQUANDER . .219 VI CONTENTS. CHAP. PAOB Iffl — A DISCUSSION ON THE LAND QUES.TION — " GREABT POCKETS" BECOMES AGENT 245 XIV. — GLANCE AT A PORTION OF THE PROPERTT AND THE PEOPLE — EXPLOITS AND GRATITUDE OF " GREAST FO.KETS " . 264 XV. — A DINNER WITHOUT WINE 288 XVI. — ANECDOTES OF IRISH AGENCT CASTLE SQUANDER. CHAPTEE I. HOW I CAME TO EDUCATE MR. SQUANDER'S "WHELPS." The history, both natural, moral, social, and domestic, of the Squanders, of Castle Squander, is one with which Providence, for purposes very agreeable and disastrous to myself, thought fit to make me acquainted. I am the son of a man who was for some years a bailiff upon the Castle Squander property ; and having been gifted with an apt apprehension for picking up knowledge, and a rather extensive imagination concatenated with a strong affection for field sports, and indeed, for sport of every description, I soon began to be looked upon as a rather remarkable youth.

I received my education on the sunny side of a Plantation Seminary, or what the vulgarians of the country term a Hedge School. The master of this school was a very remarkable man as an English and classical didactic. His name was O'Shaughran, VOL. I. B which signifies " a man on the stray," and indeed he was seldom off it, being as genuine a specimen of the peripatetic school as e'er a learned vagabond in the records of old Greece itself. There was scarcely a county in Ireland into which he had not made victorious inroads — conquering, like Alexander, all the literary opponents that came in his way, and either making them knock under, or in case of resistance, banishing them from the place of their jurisdiction — or as he called it himself, " evanishing into thin air." " Gintlemen," he would often say, " sobriety and learning are two things altogether incompatible.

Poetry and poteen are both derivated from the same root : poieo, facio, to make, to budd, to construct. The human brain is a dead letter until it is irradiated and vivified by ' the genuine.' Here am I now the most celebrated classical didactic, and the greatest Philomath in Ireland, and vet without the poteen my head is nothing but a well-stored granary under lock and bar ; or a fountain sealed up, of which poteen may be considered the key ; for the moment it is applied, the granary is opened, the fountain is unsealed, and those who hunger and thirst after know ledge may feed and drink abundantly. Kandy O'Rodicke, approach sine metu ; I cherish large expectations from you; Randy, taking your juvende years into question, you have distinguished yourself oftener by drinking draughts of the true Pierian, than any condiscipulus I ever had under my care.

Go on therefore, and prosper, Randy, get your inspiration from that which eschews the gauger, bad luck to him ! and you will be heard of yet. " There's egreat old Homer, That fine old poemer, "Twasn't in St. Omer's he sucked it in : The thundering rhymer Got always a primer, From copious draughts of the true poteen. " Randy, there's a poculum there beyont, with a drop of the optima creatura in it. Will you hand it hither — thanks, Randy — ago tibi gratias, Randy — propino tibi salutem, Randy, and here's that you may rise to celebrity yet!" It is not to be supposed that under the tuition and example of such a man I did not make a suitable progress. Mr. O'Shaughran always, as was then the custom, went round to the houses of his wealthiest pupils at night, and among the rest, he did not neglect to pay my father a visit.

Now my father, though a bailiff upon the Castle Squander property, was a man well to do in the world. Indeed, in the good old times it sometimes happened that the bailiff, if a smart and knowing man, and with a naso adunco to business — succeeded in elevating himself through all the usual gradations of office until he found himself acting pleno veto in the full and unlimited capacity of agent. Or if he felt that from want of education he himself was incapable of that glorious uprise, he not unfrequently got one of his sons — of course the cleverest and most roguish of them — indoctrinated into the pure and transparent profession of an attorney. This, together B with an appropriate inoculation by his father into all the nice tricks and plausible iniquities connected with the management of property, gave the young scion a profound and copious knowledge of the business of an agent, by which he contrived to advance himself gradationally, untd, in some instances, the property got into what is called a transition state, and ultimately passed, all through his own kindness and friendly aid, from its original owner's into his own hands.

O'Shaughran then, knowing that my father enjoyed a good deal of local celebrity for excellent housekeeping, and that he was seldom without a good bottle of the true Pierian, took a peculiar fancy, not only to myself, but expressed a warm friendship for the whole famdyat large; in fact, I often thought there was a conspiracy between him and a circulating saltator of a dancing-master, against my father's hung-beef, bacon, and whiskey, but in an especial manner against the whole body of our domestic ornithology. The plot between the two scheming thieves was as follows. Paddy Dogherty, as great a little rebel as ever walked upon two feathers, kept his dancing-school in my father's barn. He was nicknamed Buckramback, because, in the year of thc Irish Rebellion, he was flogged to that degree that his back became, from what we may very fairlv term hard usage, so indurated, that being used to it, like the cook's eels, the cat-and-nine tails had no more effect upon him than upon so much cork or buckram.

Indeed in the long run, he used to go into the enemy's camp and sin» high treason at the top of his lungs, in order that they might put him on the triangles, where he used to consider it as an amusement, and make faces at the drummers and other officers about him, as if the whole thing was only a piece of fun — and devil a thing else it was to him. At last the Government found it was too expensive to be eternally whipping him without effect ; for they lost more in cat-and-nine-tails than ever they gained by his punish ment. He had got a Une out of some great writer which he kept repeating to the drummers while they were flogging him : " Lay on, Macduff, and d — d be he who first cries, Hold, enough." Lord Cornwallis, who happened to be present on one of these occasions, was so much struck with the little fellow's courage, that he gave him a pass, written by his own hand, and a guinea to boot, after which the tiny rebel danced the " Little House under the Hill " upon one of the drum-heads, to show his gratitude.

Well, as I said, he kept his dancing-school in rny father's barn, where he had a great many pupils ; but he did not confine himself to mere dancing ; he also taught what has since been termed " deportment " — a devilish difficult piece of science, as I have been given to under stand. His deportment embraced perhaps a greater variety of accomplishments than ever was comprehended within the prospectus of the most fashionable French professor. He taught the girls, for instance, the most fashionable method of kissing — and how they were to kiss more or less, according to the hold which the gentle man kissing them had upon their affections. His two great principles, however, as they affected either sex, were — first, that for females — which consisted in teaching them how " to hold up their heads and walk proud like the ladies."

The other consisted in teaching the young frieze-coats "how to carve like gintlemen." Here, now, was where our ornithology suffered in this point, having the conspiracy I spoke of between himself and the schoolmaster. This last lesson was a purely domestic one — and a great proof of his condescension and regard for those to whom he vouchsafed to disclose it. In giving it he suffered himself to fall, as it were, from the dignity of his profession ; but he cared not ; his anxiety was to make " ladies " of his female pupds, and " gintlemen " of the frieze-coats. " Harry Halloran," he would say to the son of some rude but wealthy farmer, " have your best turkey ready to-morrow, with punch and a bottle of wine ; for I will carve and do the honours wid you. I will show you what is meant by high life and mathematics — or, in other words, what is known and practised by the quality, as the pohte Science of Carvation."

My poor mother, who had a high strain in her, felt delighted at this opportunity of getting her daughters taught " to walk proud like the ladies ; " and my father, the baidff, who had an eye to an agency, in the distance, for some of us, felt equally anxious that we should know something of high dfe and mathematics — the mathematics having consisted in the most scientific method of carving a fowl — a hint which the dancing-master had received from O'Shaughran, the Philomath, who, with the aid of some old cookery-book, contrived to reduce the operation to a geometrical problem. At all events, such was Buckramback's love for this agreeable scheme, that, so far as fowl were concerned, he cleared out the poultry yards of almost every farmer in the neighbourhood ; and were it not that my worthy father, as bailiff of the Castle Squander property, was supplied with an incredible number of fowl from the unfortunate tenants in the shape — among more substantial tokens — of bribes, I don't think that even we could have supplied him with subjects for his "high life and mathematics."

This, however, was not all. O'Shaughran was always sure to come on these occasions with the aforesaid old cookery-book in his pocket — and, having pulled it out, and placed it before me and my brothers, whilst Buckramback was operating, he pointed out to us what he termed the great gastronomic problem, which he said consisted in carving the fowl according to the principles discovered by that great philosopher Captain Cook. Heaven help us ! in what a beautiful and intellectual state was the country at that time, when every one of us, young and old, looked upon these two men as each infallible in his way. I know there are several societies both in England and Ireland for the assurance of lives, which I conceive to be a fraud upon the public in general, as I don't suppose that one single society of them, any more than all of them put together, could extend a man's life beyond the moment appointed by Providence for his death.

Be this, however, as it may, I am of opinion that if such an extension were possible, there are in existence no two individuals vvho require the benefit of such societies, more than an Irish badiff and an Irish landlord — pardon me, I forgot the Irish agent. My poor father was a good kind man in his own famdy, but somehow or other, he had contracted from the habit of his profession, that kind of instinct which we may notice in the hound when the scent of an unfortunate and inoffensive hare comes in his way. Pity, compassion, sympathy, or fellow-feeling for those, against whom he had his writ or ejectment, or any other of those various documents, by which he was usually authorised to act, were to him principles which he could not understand. The spirit of his employment, and his anxiety to gratify those who had selected him for it, had so completely hardened his heart, that if he felt anything in the shape of conscience, anything that soothed and gratified it in the discharge of his duty, it was when he had cast a sharper and more inhuman spirit into the discharge of that duty.

In point of fact, I think his conscience was completely inverted ; for if ever he experienced anything like regret or remorse, it was for some over-indulgence to the wretched people, or some opportunity for further peculation which he had inconsiderately let slip him. To effect his caption, or the execution of his writ, in the most complete manner, without reference to the circumstances of the individual or the family on whom he pounced — without reference to sex, to age, to sickness, or even to insanity itself — was what he looked upon as constituting his merit and his pride. And yet it is surprising to think how the people liked him ! Yes, liked him ! Certainly they must have liked him, or how could it have come to pass that he was uniformly treated with such wonderful kindness and respect?

How could it happen that any man whom they detested should have received so many fat geese, turkeys, ducks, and fowl of every description ; so many bags of oats ; so many miscauns of butter, young pigs, and various other etceteras of that kind ? Yes, I maintain it, my father was a popular man. In fair and in market he was treated as such. How frequently in these places has he been asked in to drink with the tenantry, and forced to partake of the best the house could furnish, and that even by those who were a little behind in their rent, and who could consequently least afford it ! No, upon further reflection, I maintain it, my father must have been a feeling and a kind-hearted man ; for I can assure you, gentle reader, that on these occasions, when the unhappy people were committing many a doleful narrative of their hard situations to his kind confidence, he treated them with such a degree of sympathy, and promised to intercede for them with the landlord and get them time with such an honest and unquestionable sincerity, that they have kept blessing him, and bribing him — the latter at his own benevolent suggestion — untd he was forced to come down upon them at one fell swoop ; and if he was harsh then, and forgot all his friendship, all his promises, all their bribes, all his sympathy, was it not in the discharge of his duty ?

No, I do not think there ever was a more popular badiff — only that one night, after having levied an execution on the furniture, cattle, and hag-yard of a sick but honest famdy, he preferred staying out instead of returning to his own house that night. Neither did he come home in the morning, nor at noon, nor at night again. And it was only after a search of three days that he was found in a copse of hazel with two additional "solutions of continuity," as the surgeons say, in his head, more than ever nature had originally placed there. In other words, the poor kind-hearted man, who was so well beloved by the people, and loaded with so many substantial tokens of their regard, was forced to die an extempore death, without priest or friar, judge or jury, having received a bullet right through the head ; and such was the end of my poor father.

My mother, on the contrary, was not indeed such a wife to him as she ought to have been. Many a time, after his return home, boasting of the success with which he had executed his mission against some unfortunate family, has she risen up— but this was when we were poor— and seizing a noggin of buttermilk dashed it between his eyes, exclaiming, — " You hardened vagabone, why do you take delight in the misery of these unfortunate people ? Why don't you throw up your situation, and stick to your honest industry ? Why will you let yourself become a tool of the devil in the hands of any landlord? Do you remimber — can you forget — what we suffered when the bailiffs were upon our selves? Do you remimber Erank McMurt's conduct and his treachery to us afther all the presents we sent him ? And yet you'll allow yourself to become an instrument of hell in the hands of these Squanders of Castle Squander to harrish your fellow creatures ?

Faugh upon you ! But mark the end of it. Ah ! you give notice, by the way, to these poor creatures ; but take my word for it, that if you don't act in a milder and kinder spirit, your death will be without notice ! " My father never answered her, for he was a mild man at home, but he used to wink at us, and then, after getting in the whiskey bottle, he would sit down very comfortably and take two or three tumblers of punch. This was fair enough, but then we always had a second quarrel ; for when he began to get maudlin and moistened, he used to express pity for the creatures that had been turned out or ruined. Then my mother, who, as I said, was of a high strain, thought worse of this than she did of the other ; and, God knows, many a malivoguing she gave him for what she called his " harpocrisy."

For some years this went on, but as my mother saw the means and circumstances of the family increasing, and knew that every act of rapacity and fraud on the part of my father went to fill his pockets, it was wonderful how gradually she softened the tone of her rebukes until ultimately she had actually imbibed and identified herself with his spirit. " Poor creatures," she would say, " we kuow they are to be pitied, no doubt ; but then, on the other hand, one must do their duty." Such however is life, and such too often the strength of human virtue when opposed to temptation. After my father's death matters began to retrograde a good deal, and, I must say, that a large portion of my mother's sorrow for the poor man who had received an ejectment out of life without notice, was occasioned as much by the cessation of those handsome perquisites which he squeezed out of the unfortunate tenantry, as by his simple loss.

She was at this time what is called in Ireland a comely fiahoolagh widow, and in six months or so after the sad event I have just narrated, began to throw her eye about for a second husband. This was evident, from her neglect of the family, and a more than usual attention to the decoration of her person. Her dress, indeed, exhibited more show than taste, and caused a good deal of satire aud amusement among the neighbours. She now began to attend fairs and markets, although she had no earthly business at them, unless very rarely. Her affection also for our neighbours, and her sympathy for their bereave ments, increased so much, that I'll be bound to say a single wake did not take place for miles around at which she was not present. Now, as there is no meeting of any kind so remarkable for fun and courting as an Irish wake, where sorrow is fairly smothered in mirth, I think we need not travel far to find out the cause of her sympathy for those who had lost their friends.

Be this as it may, she was captivated by a species of Irish character called a Sportheen, which means a frolicsome and amusing vagabond, who detests work and industry, attends everv dance, wake, fair, race, and other place of diversion within his reach ; carries his wealth and wardrobe on his back, and laughs, and drinks, and fights his pleasant way through the world. To make a long story short, as the " divarting vagabond" wanted a hearth and feeding-place of his own, and finding that the bouncing widow had both, he made up to her ; the negotiations were short, as they always are where the parties are willing, and in a brief space of time she " metamurphied " the Sportheen blade into a stepfather. Alas ! alas ! here is where the unfortunate orphan is soon taught to draw the painful distinction between the spurious and the true — between the homely touch of nature and the hodow heartlessness of self-interest and pretence.

Our father, though hard in the heart as a Scotch whinstone, when executing his writs and decrees was not nevertheless without strong touches of domestic affection, and loved his children so well that he had pro jected a little scheme of ambition for each. It was now, however, we missed him. It was now we perceived the startling and incredible change of which a woman's heart — nay, even a mother's — is capable when she suffers any single passion to overcome her. The jolly, pleasant, rollicking Sportheen, who had been, and still was to others, all laughter, jest, and lightheartedness, was a most merci less and unfeeling tyrant to us, and evidently set his heart upon banishing us from the family. Young as we were, it was impossible to avoid suspecting this, and after the birth of their first child, he no longer concealed his purpose.

Every day, upon the slightest pretence, he beat us black and blue. But there is no evil without its good : his severity only knit our hearts and affections more closely together, and caused us to love each other with greater tenderness. My eldest sister was a beautiful and modest gni, and when I used to see the unoffending creature with a black-eye, which was often the case, I swore that if God spared me, I would work a fearful revenge upon the smiling and unmanly vdlain who treated her with such barbarity. I now felt that it was necessary to do something for myself, and consequently devoted every hour I could spare to self-improvement. I had laid in a tolerably good stock of mathematics, with a fair share of Greek and Latin, and was gifted besides with a good natural intellect ; but that which stood me most in stead was a pleasant social disposition, and an unconquerable love for what my old master, O'Shaughran, used to term the "true Pierian."

In Ireland, at this period, it may be necessary to mention, that no man with pretensions to instruct youth, or in other words, to keep a " hedge school," had any chance whatever for support unless he was remarkable for a love of drink. A kind of corrupt superstition prevailed among the people, that the drunken schoolmaster was always a man of the greatest talent and acquirements ; a superstition which originated from the well-known fact that clever teachers were so completely debauched by the kindness and hospitality of the people that the effect was mistaken for the cause. Such, however, was the fact, nor is it yet wholly obliterated from the country. One day at this time our landlord, Squire Squander, accompanied by his three slips of sons, having been out shooting, and the day being warm, happened to call in for a drink.

My stepfather was in the house at the time, and the Squire, having satisfied his thirst, sat down to rest. " Well, Mrs. Murphy," said he, addressing my mother, for I should say that Murphy was the name of our vagabond stepfather, the Sportheen, a circumstance which caused me to commit the little pun of meta-murphied above; "well, Mrs. Murphy," said he, "so you have got married again. This man, I suppose, is your husband." " Yes, your honour." " Well, and is he a good husband to you ? " " Betther never broke bread, your honour." " Kind to your chddren, eh ? " " He's the moral (model) of a good husband, sir," (equivocating) . " This pretty girl one of your daughters, eh ? " " Yes, your honour." " A very pretty girl — a very pretty girl, indeed ; there Dick," said he, addressing the eldest, " what do you think of that bit o' goods, eh, my boy ?

" "Her points are all good — admirable — father — but — come here, my pretty egirl." My sister drew back, for I need scarcely say that there was such a licentious leer in the eye of the young profligate, as would cause any modest girl to avoid him. " Why don't you go over to the young gentleman ? " said my mother. " Go over to him when he bids you." "No matter," said Master Dick; "it doesn't signify. I know the cause of it — pray, my dear, how did you get the black eye ? It's a thousand pities to see such a pretty girl as you are with a black eye." " Indeed, your honour," replied my mother, " it was a kick she got from one of the cows while milkin." " May-be, your honour," said my stepfather, " you and the young gintlemen would taste a drop of good spirits and water afther the fatigue of shooting ?

Truth it was very stupid of me not to think of it before." (To this the Squire made no reply.) You shan't carry it off that way, either, thought I, stepping forward — " Please your honour, if you wish to know who gave my sister the black eye — there he stands — that smiling hypocrite — that cruel and cowardly scoundrel before you. It would be better for us to be dead than lead the life we lead with him. There is not a week that my sister — that modest inoffensive girl — has not a black eye from his hand. And now, sir, he is going to put us out of thc house — upon the wide world without shelter or protection." "Come, come, come," said the Squire, "eh? what is this? what is this? A bad business — come here, my girl — don't be afraid to speak — Is this true ? " "It's true, sir, every word of it," she replied, with a curtsey; "I couldn't tell your honour the life we lead with him."