Views of Society and Manners in the North of Ireland; in a series of letters written in the year 1818

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VIEWS OF g>ocietg ano fanners IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND, IN A SERIES OF LETTERS WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1818. By JOHN GAMBLE, Esq. AUTHOR OF " IRISH SKETCHES," " SARSFIELD," " NORTHERN IRISH TALES," &C. As some lone miser visitine** his store, Bends at bis treasure, counts, recounts it o'er; Thus to my breast alternate passions rise, Pleas'd with each good tbat heav'n to man supplies : Yet oft a siah prevails, and sorrows fall, To see the hoard of human bliss so small. Goldsmith. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOfTE-l ROW. Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, Printers-Street, London.

ADVERTISEMENT.

. A cheat proportion of the inhabitants of the North of Ireland are the descendants of Scotchmen, settled here after the accession of James the First to the throne of England. In some of the maritime counties opposite to Scotland, the Irish were almost entirely ex pelled ; the inhabitants, therefore, retain their Scotch manners in more primitive freshness. In this part ofthe country subjugation of the unfortunate native was equally complete, but expulsion was by no means so general ; the new comers took possession only ofthe valleys and fertile spots, and kindly left the native the bogs and mountains. By degrees, as fear abated and rancour subsided, he crept slowly A IV*

Letter I

London. 1 hat I should still be here you will wonder, and I almost wonder myself; but I knew London early, I have known it long ; it was the scene of many a youthful joy, and youth ful sorrow too ; the joy and sorrow long are over, but their recollection remains. The friends who passed St. Paul's with me have passed away, but its heavy clock still rolls mellow on my accustomed ear. Those with whom I trod Westminster abbey, tread it no longer, but its dusky aisles almost give me back their tall figures and lengthening shades. In the stained glass and hollow organ, I see as it were, thesights, and hear the sounds of other and better days. However I shall leave this at the furthest in a few weeks ; I shall once more visit the n land of my fathers, then go where I originally proposed ; but go wheresoever I may, never shall I forget my obligations to you ; » I can converse with you no longer, but I shall write until I can write no more.

I trust it has been otherwise with you, but the weather here has for some time past been frightful ; my remembrance, (it is more now than young remembrance,) can scarce find its parallel ; however, yesterday was fine, and I walked in the park ; it was crowded, and black seemed still the prevailing colour. But though the garb is thus worn, the mourning in reality long is gone, and the Princess Charlotte is almost as much forgotten as if she had never lived. This you will scarcely credit, and rarely, I admit, has death taken place under circumstances more calculated to make a lasting, as well as deep impression ; she was innocent and young — she was the affectionate daughter of a joyless mother, and she was about to be a joyful mother herself. The highest raised moment of expectation was the absolute extinction of hope, and the dreary vacancy of a November morning was broken on, not by the merry peals of rejoicing, but by the dismal tolling of a solitary bell.

My heart at the sound melted within me, and the tears, I am not ashamed to ac knowledge, spite of myself, dropped from my eyes, as I thought of this fair lily thus untimely broken — this blooming rose shaken before it was fully blown. But grief for the death of those whom we have scarcely seen, and never personally known, is, of all our short-lived feelings, the most short-lived. The very next day, or at the most the day after, I eat my bread and drank my wine, if not as a great king directs, with a merry heart, at least with my usual one. My sensibility, I believe, is not less than that of other men ; and I may fairly presume that the measure of their sorrow was not greater than my own. I fear, therefore, God forgive me if I be wrong, that the face of woe so long and ostentatiously worn, was affectation soon, and at the last was neither more nor less than downright hypocrisy.

It was in truth scarcely possible to be in society, without observing the laborious effort to keep individual feeling at the general standard ; lashing up slumbering sorrow, as a boy does his top, lest it should fall before its companions. In this sentimental deception, the news papers bore a conspicuous part; the people were marshalled like mourners at a funeral, and instructed to manage gracefully their white handkerchiefs, and to sob and sigh in all the elegance of woe. In a particular manner one paper was the Grimaldi of this grimace j and, as the Princess of Abyssinia b did on the loss of her favourite, it stole each day a few moments from its Atlas-like labours, to dwell on the good qualities, and to mourn the loss ofthe deceased. This I suppose was intended to show to a wondering world, that the people of England knew the exact mea sure of joy and sorrow, as well as of praise and censure ; and that, while beyond all others they had taken the greatest liberty with Princes, beyond all others they could mourn for them.

I say more on this subject than perhaps you will think necessary, but if there be a vice which I detest more than another, it is hypocrisy, and, so unaccountably do nations change, it is the one to which the people of England seem now the most prone ; it is an ominous as well as odious one, for it is sure, and speedily too, to be followed by open and avowed profligacy. In this instance there was not only the hypocrisy of vanity, but I fear of hate, and dislike ofthe living was con veyed by mourning for the dead ; grace and renown it not unintelligibly said were fled; the wine of life was drawn, and there was remaining only the dregs : this sentiment, or rather the application of it, is your own. How I came to know this you will wonder, but I shall not leave you to wonder. I was returning on the walk, when a ser vant accosted me and said his mistress wished to speak to me : it was your friend Mrs. D~ with her young family; she civilly made room. for me in her carriage, and I was lucky enough to get seated without hurting the Lilliputian party.

Your friend 1 believe is thought a wit, or, which is just as well, she thinks herself one. " Seven times I nodded to you," said she, " and all the time you took no more notice than the statue in Don Juan."" " I am sorry" I replied, " but at the distance we were asunder, you might have nodded to me to eternity, and I have been no wiser than the pedestal on which the statue stands." " O true, I had forgot," said she carelessly, " that you are blind." There are ladies who think even their rude ness becoming ; your friend I am sure is not such a one, but her vivacity makes her at times heedless, and wit you know is prover bially forgetful. She took me home with her to dinner, and in the evening she showed me your verses on the subject we have just been talking ofl I am glad you have betaken yourself to poetry, for it will cheer you on your wearisome voyage; " the Hours" mythologists tell us, ." dance before the chariot of Apollo."

Your verses, like all I ever heard you utter, breathe goodness, but even goodness may lead us astray ; and do you not apprehend that in b your judgment of an illustrious Personage, it has a little misled you ? On domestic discord there rests a mist too dark to penetrate ; but placable as women are in general, there are faults which they rarely, I will not say never, forgive ; and after death it is better to have a bad epitaph, than their ill report, which is worse even than the players', while alive. There is no royal road, it is said, to mathe matics; I am sure there is none to ladies* good will.

Letter II

London* -Tor a wonder I was last night at Drury Lane, and nothing could be worse than the scene behind the curtain, except the scene before. The audience sat like guilty creatures, waiting the coming ofthe play ; I was on the front seat of the pit, and, in familiar language, could not quarrel with my com pany, for I had the entire bench to myself; the play was a dull comedy, written I know not by whom, and revived I know not on what account. I left the house before the performance was over. It is but justice to this unfortunate theatre to say, that the only other time I was there this season, I was more fortunate ; the play was Hamlet. You know my fondness for the theatre, and will therefore pardon me a few remarks on this celebrated play. That it is defective as a drama, is saying little, for almost all the great author's dramas are the same ; but in many respects it is peculiarly, and even perversely so.

Hamlet treats Ophelia with useless cruelty, and he b murders her father almost in sport ; he mourns sincerely over the grave of his unfortunate mistress, yet the very ensuing scene we find him coolly moralising with Horatio, amusing himself with the language and manner of Osrick, and finally, with no other misgiving than from his own selfishness, consenting to the mock combat with Laertes. -The warm hearted and high-spirited Laertes here loses all claim to our regard : indeed, the con sistency of his character is entirely destroyed, by his consenting to the king's vile and pitiful device ; nor is it more vile and pitiful, than it is bungling and inartificial. Besides, as the Greeks used to do with Hercules, we ask, and no one I am sure can tell us, what has all this to do with the ghost, and such a ghost too, fierce, implacable, and unforgiving !

Let loose from his prison-house with all his earthly imperfections on his head, unpurified by his wanderings in air, or his sufferings in fire ; he seeks not justice but revenge, and it is not his visitation, after all, that whets his son's blunted purpose ; the catastrophe is brought about by means with which the commencement has little to do ; nor are the means more incongruous and contradictory, than the catastrophe is incon gruous and unjust ; though not the guiltless, yet the repentant queen, perishes as well as her guiltier husband. Hamlet and Laertes f fall together, and the venerable Polonius is murdered, while the fair Ophelia is drowned. It is scarcely possible to follow to her watery grave this persecuted young female, without a helpless feeling of misery. Her dramatic life runs in one sad unvaried tenor, and ends in sorrow as it first began : unjustly suspected by her brother, contemptuously rated by her father, and barbarously treated by her lover, her heart is more broken than her head is disordered, and at the end she dies, not so much from madness as from grief.

Weak ness, as it may seem, I can never look on her funeral procession without a shuddering, only less than the horror with which I behold the decaying remains of wretched mortality scattered with brutal indifference around. Yet to this revolting scene, much 1 am per suaded of the popularity of the play with the 'galleries is owing ; and their thoughtless occu pants laugh in hardened insensibility at the eyeless head and tongueless skull, which is all that will soon be of themselves. By the force of habit I suppose it is, that I myself smile at the grave-digger's endless throwing off of waistcoats ; I remember that I laughed in the days of happy infancy, and tbat my fathers, and my fathers' fathers, in all probability did the same. To this influence of association, much ofthe general pleasure we derive from the play may be owing.

But it has other and better sources : it has the merit, the merit of merits, of forcibly arresting the attention, and of creating an interest, which however by a fatality attendant on the great author, grows less towards the close. The scene between Hamlet and the ghost is almost of appalling interest, and we cannot help wondering at the soul-less want of taste of the dramatic critic, who would have confined it to the green-room. Reason disavows kindred with a ghost, but it is imagination's first-born and darling child. The wild idea touches our soul's finest chords, and, like the Æolian harp hung in the forest tree, it pours out to the midnight wind its dearest, though saddest sounds. Having said so much of the play, I must perforce say something of the players. Far be it from me offensively to remark on a young and modest female, but surely those who put Miss Cubitt into the part of Ophelia, consulted her reputation as little as the theatre's good.

Of the King and Queen it is saying enough, that they fretted and strutted " their hour on the stage," like other poor players, and at the last died as unlamented as, in those democratic times, even a real king or queen could have done. Mr. Dowton's Polonius was so bad, that scarcely was it possible to be worse ; and yet he is an actor, though I think his abilities are over-rated, by no means wanting in comic powers. But his sins were of omission, not of commission : he did not out-Herod Herod, if I may so speak, he in-Heroded him. He played with his reputation round his neck, and, as he managed it, it was a mill-stone that weighed him down. As Mark Antony's was by Cæsar, his genius was rebuked by Munden, the inimitable performer of this part ; and, fearful to ostend, he never rose, or strove even to please.

Hamlet was done by Mr. Kean. You are not I know an admirer of this great actor ; I join with the many in their applause of him. Hamlet is not considered as one of his happiest efforts ; and no doubt there are con siderable inequalities in his performance : but it is the character of genius to be unequal, and he is almost ever great when the subject is so. I would that you had seen him in the scene with Ophelia, that you too might have admired. His emendation was so simple, that we wonder how it was ever missed, yet so happy, that with our indignation against Hamlet, it mingles pity, and in a measure reconciles us to him. It is. evident that Hamlet loves Ophelia. Though fleetingly, he sincerely mourns her death, and in the language of impassioned feeling, tells Laertes that forty thousand brothers, with all their love, could not make up the sum of his.

When he treated her so cruelly therefore, he was merely playing a part. Kemble merely played a part; he counterfeited madness to perfection, and made his exits and.his entrances, with well assumed mimic rage. But Kean gives the entire scene with more delicate colouring, and in the very torrent of his passion, begets a temperance which gives it smoothness. He all along mingles feeling with moroseness, and makes us doubt, whether it is in anger or in sorrow that he speaks. But he leaves us not in doubt ; — he is about to depart, and is at the side-door even ; — he looks back ; — he looks on Ophelia ; — nature is too strong for art, and he advances to her again ; — he takes her by the hand, and gazes wishfully on her ; — tears seem to fill his eyes, he presses her hand, and, amidst the applauses of the audi ence, retires.

And rarely were applauses better deserved. This mute scene was as admirably done, as it was ingeniously con ceived : every attitude was a picture, every gesture was a sentence, and, while they penetrated to the heart, gave equal pleasure to the eye. . A Frenchman, who happened to be sitting beside me, applauded as loudly as any. By the help of the play which he held in his hand, he seemed to enter fully into the cun ning of the scene ; and had I at that moment asked him his opinion of Kean, it would I am sure have been a most favourable one. But I waited until the play was done. " C'est un joli acteur," was his only answer to my question. " Is he as good a one as Talma ?" I ventured to ask. " Suis-je Her cule ?" he briefly and disdainfully replied. I would have conversed with him further, but he actually turned rudely away.

This is not the only instance I have of late seen of similar incivility, and I can not help regarding it as one of the surest signs of the times that are to come ; for what must be the pent-up feelings in Frenchmen's bosoms, when they forget the civility which was so habitual to them, as almost to be a part of themselves. I well remember that on the eve of our rebellion, those who knew the country best, were never thoroughly alarmed uutil they remarked the entire change in the manner and conduct of the people, and saw them go home from fair and market as sober as they had come ; they then said that the cloud which hung over us would soon come down in a storm.

Letter III

London. How time passes ! It is exactly ten weeks this day since you left London ; you are I trust gliding over smooth seas and untroubled waters, while I am still here solitary and alone; and my longest journey has been to Richmond for a day. I returned by the steam-boat, — I would have returned, I should rather say, for we had not gone far until we were wrecked, happily without accident, on a green bank ; and I walked the remainder ofthe way home, well satisfied that matters were no worse. A lady declared that as long as she lived, she would never take another voyage from Richmond to London ; and between ourselves, I have nearly resolved the same. There were two things which a wise man of old said he repented of: the one was not very courteous to your sex, for it was having trusted a woman with a secret ; the other was, his taking a journey by water, when he might as well have gone by land.

Had there been steam-boats in his days, he would not, 1 dare say, have been the more reconciled to the watery element. I dined on Sunday in Cavendish-street. There were more people at table than I can tell ; and the amusements of the evening I shall not tell, for they were unbecoming the day. I was early taught to respect the Sabbath, and habit continues what prejudice, as many doubtless would reckon it, began. I passed yesterday at Chelsea, with an old acquaintance whom I knew while abroad. He is an honest Highlander of the clan of Lovat, and christened Simon, in memory I presume of the unfortunate chief of that name. I would have set him on talking of his native hills, but a mist was over his recollections, impenetrable as that which so often rests on the hills themselves. To make amends for his forgetfulness of the dusky mountains, he had remembrances of warfare in plenty : — he served in the Ame rican war, and was captured with Bourgoyne, and not a dell, dingle, or glade was there of their laborious march, that he did not de scribe with a minuteness which, were he living, would probably have edified the gallant general himself.

My thoughts were often wandering, but they returned in time to ex press proper condolence for the injury which the nation sustained by the capture of Sara toga, lt must have been very great, for my friend assured me, that the effects are felt even at the present day. Though nearly sixty years have elapsed since he left Scotland, he has the accent as strong, as if he had only left it yesterday. With the erect gait of an old soldier, and the sinewy form of an old Highlandman, if he had some thing less ofthe recollections of the one, and something more of the reminiscences of the other, he would be a valuable acquisition to a •writer of the present day. . But his whole soul is in war. Not with the heroic tartan and bonnet of our story books, but with the close coat and triangular hat of modern war.

It is I suppose from this predilection, that he chooses Chelsea for his residence. The hospital is his favourite walk, where, in con versation with some aged pensioners, I dare say he wiles away many a weary hour. " Talks o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, " Shoulders his crutch, and shows how fields were won.'' He took me through the Hospital. He like wise took me to the military asylum, where we saw the children go to dinner. The boys marched in gaily to the sound of the drum. It was the regulator of their devotion, as well as of their march. On the signal, a boy with a loud voice said grace. The drum again struck, and the numerous group were seated, as if they had only one body. The Duke of York is the patron of the institution, and a full length picture of him hangs in the hall.

My friend called it a full length likeness, but this is a mistake. A lady might fall in love with the picture, and still not view the Royal original con amore. The sergeant-major who led us about, I soon discovered was a countryman of my own. He was born, he told me, in the county of Ferma nagh, and had served twenty-five years in the Enniskillen dragoons. In the society of Scotch men, I know not what you would have taken him for, but in the society of English men, I am sure you would have taken him for a Scotchman. In justice to my hostess, I must say, that we had a comfortable dinner without a single dish of Scotch cookery. I partook freely of my host's home-brewed ale. Of home-brewed wine I am no admirer ; and how seldom is wine now to be met with, that in a greater or les ser degree, is not home-brewed ?

I did not return until it was late. However, I had no fear of robbers, for it was moonlight, and I had a sturdy Scotchman, a gallant officer just returned from abroad, by my side. I have heard and read of many extraordinary instances ofthe effects of fear. The following, which he related to me, seems as extraordinary as any : Two soldiers of the garrison to which he belonged, were brought out for execution, with all the melancholy pomp attendant on c such occasions. One of them was almost immediately thrown off — the other remained on his knees at the foot of the gallows, the mute spectator of his companion's agony. He was desired by his commanding officer to stand up ; and, at that moment ofthe death of hope, his life was granted to him. But sentence was already passed by a power which does not pardon.

Nature was too weak to bear the mighty shock, and he fell to the ground like one who receives the thunder stroke ; in this state of insensibility he was borne home, and spite of every application he died a few hours afterwards. The contempt of death which soldiers seem to show in the field of battle, appears almost supernatural. But in reality, it is not so much contempt of death, as forgetfulness of it. When danger is inevitable, we all tremble al most alike ; and I question, whether Cæsar's heart, as the assassins' weapons gleamed to his sight, did not give him as sharp a pang as mine gave me, when stuck on a rock, and instantly thinking to perish, I. cast my eyes on the howling storm, the furious waves, the whitening foam, and labouring ship. Nature is uniform, and as she has made us almost all equal with regard to the miseries of life, so has she hedged us in with nearly an equal horror of death.

Letter IV

London. 1 he weather has long been delightful, yet still am I here, sauntering in dusty streets, when I might be wandering in green meadows, and listening to the song of the drawing-room, in stead ofthe nightingale ofthe grove. But a few nights ago, I am bound to sup pose that I heard even the nightingale out done. You are I believe, aware of my ac quaintance with Mr. Brah am. Independent of his extraordinary musical powers, he is a man whose society I like. His habits seem entirely domestic, and he appears as happy in his family, as by his kindness to all who com pose it, he deserves to be. He had a great musical party on Wednesday, and he was good enough to ask me. That I accepted of the invitation, you will not doubt. I have little musical skill, but for musical fondness, I will yield to few.

Nature has close barred my eyes to objects, but, to make amends, she has opened wide my ears to sounds. The company were about half assembled when I came. Some card tables were formc ed, but the music had not begun. Mr. Faw cett and Sir George Smart were playing whist. A number of foreigners, principally I believe Italians, were standing looking on the cards. I stood looking on the players. Shortly I had more players to look at, for almost at the in stant Mr. and Mrs. C. Kemble and Mrs. Lis ton were announced. We are strange creatures ! We clothe players with the imaginary qualities of their fictitious existences. We are gratified to divest them ofthe drapery in which our fancies arrayed them, and to see them as they are. The rooms now became crowded. The musicbooks were opened, and Sir George Smart was taken from the whist table to the piano forte.

Had I not heard him announced I should, from the intelligence of his eye, have guessed him to be either poet or musician. The piano-forte sounded as he was seating himself; the spontaneous movement of the ladies, and the indistinct sound of their voices and fans, shewed how highly their expecta tions were raised. The fair audience had good reason for ex pectation, for the musical group now assembled could scarcely any where be equalled, and no where perhaps be excelled. Beside our host, who, if I may so speak, was an host'm himself, there were Madame Fodor and Signior Am*. brogetti of the Opera House, Miss Stephens, Miss Goodall, Miss Corri, Miss Byrne, with many others. Alternately they took their stand at the piano ; and in hearkening to the dulcet song of those syrens, (the Emperor Tiberius puzzled a Greek sophist, by asking him what the song of the syrens was,) the hours flew unnoted away.

The music was exclusively Italian, and several of the compositions were of exquisite beauty ; there were others, in which sentiment and meaning, to my apprehension at least, were sacrificed to sound. This I fear is the almost unavoidable consequence of the refinement of musical taste ; it separates so widely the heart from the ear, that pure melody can scarcely reach it. Modern music seems most calcula ted to display brilliance of execution ; those like me whose zeal is greater than their know ledge, have therefore to lament that the charm of music is too often sacrificed to the ostenta tion of skill, and complication of harmony. This intricacy, I am sure, overwhelms many who profess to be pleased with it. Between one and two we went to supper ; I had a very pleasant lady, though I rather think not a professional one, on my right hand, and Miss Byrne sat on my left.

The circumstances under which this deserving young woman chose the stage as a profession, insures to her the good wishes of every humane person ; she has a particular claim on mine, for to the hospitac lity of an uncle of hers, I was some years ago often indebted. Though her vocal powers are not of the highest order, they are respectable. Nature has not been unkind, nor has art been spared; perhaps it has been lavished, and I am sure she is lavish of it ; but good sense is as necessary to singing, as Horace says it is to writing well ; true song, like true wit, is only nature to advantage dressed, and should never be over adorned. Rather than all be ornament, let none be there. Of Madame Fodor it is difficult with mode ration to speak, and I would give much that you had heard her ; the chaste simplicity of her manner could alone be the result of exquisite taste, united to exquisite art ; it was indeed the perfection of art, for while it decked her song with music's choicest beauties, it was hid in the wreath which itself had prepared.