Curran and his contemporaries

Front matter

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Preface

Tue book upon which the present work is founded, after having gone through two editions, has been now out of print for very many years. Constant occupation in a laborious profession hitherto rendered its revision impossible, and I- was unwilling that a third edition should issue in its originally crude and imperfect state. Comparative leisure now enables me to reproduce it, let me hope, somewhat more deserving of the indulgence with which it was received.

The period of which it treats was one of vital interest to Ireland, and the men which it produced were not unworthy of the period. My object has been, touching as lightly as possible on the politics of the time, to give merely personal sketches of the characters as they appeared upon the scene to me. Many of these were my acquaintances, some of them my intimates; and the aim throughout has been a verisimilitude in the portraiture—in short, to make the reader as familiar with the originals as I was myself. Of many of these it is possible he may not have even heard the names, and of many others very little more. Let me hope that he will rejoice in a more intimate acquaintance with them, and that, in endeavoring to elevate the land of my birth, I may also have made some humble return for the kindness bestowed on me by that of my adoption.

Lonvon, November, 1850.

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CURRAN

AND

HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Tue title which I have prefixed to this volume strictly speaks what I intend it to be. No labored detail, no tedious narrative, no ambitious display of either fine writing or critical investigation, but the simple, and, in some measure, the self-drawn picture of a man who was a great ornament to the country in which it was his misfortune to be born. Before I proceed one step in my progress, the reader has a right to know what claim there is on his credulity, or what are the qualifications for the execution of such an undertaking. Early in life, I had been so accustomed to hear the name of Curran - mentioned with admiration long before I could understand the reason, that I began to make his character an absolute article in my literary creed, and to hold it in a kind of traditional reverence. As the mind strengthened, an inquiry naturally arose into the causes of such enviable celebrity. The bon. vivant referred me to his wit; the scholar to his eloquence ; the patriot to his ardent and undeviating principle. The questions on which he had voted were connected with the best days of Ireland, and his vote was always on the side of his country; the causes which he had advocated were sometimes of the most personal, and sometimes of the ae public interest, and in these his eloquence was without a parallel ; while his innumerable pleasantries formed, as it were, the table currency of a people proverbially convivial. With such a, complication of proofs, my judgment readily confirmed

A2 what my schoolboy faith had received : his speeches became my manual, his name almost my adoration ; and in a little poem,* composed while at the Temple, I gave him the rank which I thought he merited among the ornaments of his ‘country. The subject of the poem gave it circulation, and either fame or friendship soon brought it to the notice of Mr. Curran. When I was called to the bar he was on the bench; and, not only bagless, but briefless, I was one day, with many an associate, taking the idle round of the hall of the Four Courts, when a common friend told me he was commissioned by the Master of the Rolls to invite me to dinner that day at the Priory, a little country villa about four miles from Dublin. Those who recollect their first introduction to a really great man, may easily comprehend my delight and my consternation. ~Hour after hour was counted as it passed, and, like a timid bride, I feared the one which was to make me happy. It came at last, the important five o’clock, the ne plus ultra of the guest who would not go dinnerless at Curran’s. Never shall I forget my sensations when I caught the first glimpse of the little man through the vista of his avenue. There he was, as a thousand times afterward I saw him, in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tip-staff—his hands in his sides—his face almost parallel with the horizon—his under lip protruded, and the impatient step and the eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his dinmg-room. It was an invincible peculiarity ;. one second after five o’clock, and he would not wait for the viceroy. The moment he perceived me, he took me by the hand, said he would not have any one introduce me, and with a manner which I often thought was charmed, at once banished every apprehension, and completely familiarized me at the Priory. I had often seen Curran— often heard of him—often read him—but no man ever knew any thing about him who did not see him at his own table * The Emerald Isle.

with the few-whom he selected. He was a little convivial deity! He soared in every region, and was at home in all ; he touched every thing, and seemed as if he had created it ; he mastered the human heart with the same ease that he did his violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered ; and the wonderful creature who made you do all at will never let it appear that he was more than your equal, and was quite willing, if you chose, to become your auditor. It is said of Swift that his rule was to allow a minute’s pause after he had concluded, and then, if no person took up the conversation, he recommenced. Curran had no conversational rule whatever ; he spoke from impulse; and he had the art $0 to draw you into a participation, that, though you felt an inferiority, it was quite a contented one.. Indeed, nothing could exceed the urbanity of his demeanor. At the time I speak of he was turned of sixty, yet he was as playful as a child. The extremes of youth and age were met in him; he had the experience of the one and the simplicity of the other. At five o'clock we sat down to dinner, during which the host gave ample indications that it was one of his happy days. He had his moody ones: there was no one more uncertain. Joyous was my anticipation of a delightful evening. But, alas! what are the hopes of man? ~When the last dish had departed, Curran totally confounded me with a proposal, for which I was any thing but prepared— Mr. Phillips, as this is the first of, I hope, your very many visits to the Priory, I may as well at once initiate you into the peculiarities of the place.

You may observe, though the board is cleared, there are no preparations for a synepostwnt : it all depends on you. My friends here generally prefer @ walk after dinner. It is a” sweet evening; but if you wish for wine, say so without ceremony.”” Even now can I see Curran’s star-like eyes twinkling at the disappointment no doubt visible in mine. I had heard, and truly, that he was never more delightful than with half a dozen friends, after dinner, over his bottle. The hope in which I had so long reveled was realized at last—and here came this infernal walk and the “sweet evening!’ Oh, how I would have hailed a thunder-storm! But, to say the truth, the sun was shining, and the. birds were singing, and the flowers were blooming and breathing so sweetly on that autumn eve, that, wondering not at the wish of my companions, I also voted for the “‘walk.’? Never was man so mystified.. We took the walk, no doubt, but it was only to the drawing-room, where, over a dessert freshly culled from his gardens, and over wines for which his board was celebrated, we passed those hours which formed an era in my life. It was the commencement of that happy intercourse which gave this world a charm it ought, perhaps, never to possess. Yet, alas! that evening has its moral now. ‘The tongue which chained its hours is in the dust; the joyous few who felt its spell have followed; and all are gone save the mourner who recalls it! There is, in fact, scarcely a page of these recollections which does not fill me with a sense of solitude. “When I remember all The friends, so linked together, I’ve seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed.”

From that day till the day of his death, I was his intimate and his associate. He had no party to which I was not invited, and, party or no party, I was always welcome. He even went so far as to offer me apartments in his town residence, in Stephen’s Green. He was then Master of the Rolls. How often since that day has he run over to me, to its minutest incident, the history of his life; often would he describe his early prospects, his crosses and his successes, his friends and his enemies, and all the varieties of a checkered existence— over whose road, for every mile he passed, he had, like Burke, to pay a toll toenvy. Such is the claim which I have to be his biographer. I disclaim being an elaborate, but I hope to be a faithful one ; withholding what was confidential, sketching what. seemed peculiar or characteristic, writing chiefly

‘from his own authority, and so far claiming to be authentic.

My. Curran was born at Newmarket, a small-village in the county of Cork, on the 24th of July, 1750. . His father, James Curran, seneschal of the manor, was possessed, besides the paltry revenue of the office, of a very moderate income. Strange as it may seem, their paternal ancestor came over to Ireland one of Cromwell’s soldiers ; and the most ardent patriot she ever saw owed his origin to her most merciless and cruel! plunderer!~ Old: James Curran’s education was pretty much in the ratio of his income. Very different, however, in point of intellectual endowments, was the mother of my friend, whose maiden name, Philpot, he bore himself and preserved in his family. rom his account, she must have been a very extraordinary woman. Humble in her station, she was of course uneducated; but nature amply compensated her for any fortuitous deficiencies in that respect. Witty and eloquent, she was the delight of her own circle, and the great chronicle and arbitress of her neighborhood. Her legends were the tradi- - tions of the ‘olden time,” told with a burning tongue, and echoed by the heart of many a village Hampden. Her wit was the record of the rustic fireside ; and the village lyric and the village jest received their alternate tinge from the truly national romance or humor of her character. Little Jacky, as he was then called, used to hang with ecstasy upon her accents — he repeated her tales —he re-echoed her jests — he caught her enthusiasm; and often afterward, when he was the delight of the senate and the ornament of the bar, did he boast with tears that any merit he had he owed to the tuition of that affectionate and gifted mother. Indeed, there can not be the least doubt that the character of the man is often molded from the accidental impression of the childhood ; and he must have been but an inaccurate observer who did not trace all the maternal features in the filial piety that delighted

to portray them. After her death he placed an humble mon-

ument over her remains, upon which he inscribed the follow-

ing memorial, as well as I can recollect it from his very fre-

quent recital ;

“Here lieth all that was mortal of Martaa Curran—a woman of many virtues—few foibles—great talents, and no vice. This tablet was inscribed to her memory by a son who loved her, and whom she loved.”

Indeed, his recurrences to her memory were continual. He often told me that, after his success at the bar, which happily she lived to see, and the fruits of which to her death she shared, Mrs. Curran has said to him, ‘‘ O Jacky, Jacky, what a preacher was lost in you!” The observation proved rather her sagacity than her prudence. Had he directed his talents to the Church, there can be no doubt his success would have been splendid: he would have been the poorest and the most popular preacher of the day. He was too independent to fawn, and had too much genius to rise—he would have been adored by the congregation, hated by the bishops, starved on a curacy, and buried perhaps by the parish! Such is often enough the history of such men in the Church. I remember him once in an. action for a breach of promise of marriage, in which he was counsel for the defendant, a young clergyman, thus appealing to the jury: ‘Gentlemen, I entreat of you not to ruin this young man by a vindictive verdict, for, though he has talents and is in the Church, he may rise!” His mother, too patriotic not to have a large family, was of course too much occupied to attend to him exclusively. His father was divided between law and agriculture, and Master Jacky was left to his own devices. At the fairs, where wit and whisky provoked alternately the laugh and the fracture—at the wake, where the living so mourned the dead that there was soon but little difference between them, he appeared now a mourner and now a mime, until the court of his father-was quite scandalized, and the wit of his mother acknowledged to be hereditary.

At this period a circumstance occurred which he delighted to relate, as he comically said it first proved his aptitude for oratory. The keeper of a street puppet-show arrived at Newmarket, to the no small edification of the neighborhood ; and the feats of Mr. Punch, and the eloquence of his man, soon superseded every other topic. At length, however, Mr. Punch’s man fell ill, and the whole establishment was threatened with immediate ruin. Little Curran, who had with his eyes and ears devoured the puppet-show, and never missed the corner of its exhibition, proposed himself to the manager as Mr. Punch’s man. The offer was gladly accepted ; and for a time the success of the substitute was quite miraculous. Crowds upon crowds attended every performance; Mr. Punch’s man was the universal admiration. At length, before one of the most crowded audiences, he began to expatiate upon the wllage politics ; he described the fairs, told the wake secrets, caricatured the audience ; and, after disclosing every amour, and detailing every scandal, turned with infinite ridicule upon the very priest of the parish! This was the signal for-a general outery.. Every man and maid who had laughed at their neighbor’s picture, and pretended not to recognize their own, were outrageously scandalized at such familiarity with the clergy. Religion, as on larger theaters, was made the scape-goat; and by one and all, sentence of banishment was passed upon Mr. Punch. He was honorable, however, in his concealment of the substitute, whose prudence depregated such dangerous celebrity. Curran, in after times, used often to declare that he never ‘produced such an eflect upon any audience as in the humble character of Mr: Punch’s man.

At this period of his life it was that an incident occurred which, molding, as it did, his future fortunes, the reader shall have as nearly as possible as he related it. ‘I was then,” said he, ‘a little ragged apprentice to every kind of idleness and mischief, all day studying whatever was eccentric in those older, and half the night practicing it for the amusement of those who were younger than myself. Heaven only knows where it would have ended. But, as my mother said, I was born to be a great man. One morning I was playing at marbles in the village ball-alley, with a light heart and a lighter pocket. The gibe, and the jest, and the plunder went gayly round ; those who won, laughed, and those who lost, cheated ; when suddenly there appeared among us a stranger of very venerable and very cheerful aspect. His intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage ; on the contrary, he seemed pleased, and even delighted : he was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all, the happiest we shall ever see) perhaps rose upon his memory. God bless him! I see his fine form, at the distance of half a century, just as he stood before me in the little ball-alley in the days of my childhood’! His name was Boyse ; he was the rector of Newmarket. To me he took a particular fancy ; I was winning, and was full of waggery, thinking every thing that was eccentric, and by no means a miser of my eccentricities ; every one. was welcome to share them, and I had plenty to spare after having freighted the company. Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home with him. I learned from poor Boyse my alphabet and my grammar, and the rudiments of the classics: he taught me all he could, and then.he sent me to the school at Middleton—in short, he made aman of me. I recollect, it was about five-and-thirty years afterward, when I had risen to some eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in Parliament, and a good house in Ely Place, on my return one day from court I found an old gentleman seated alone in the drawing-room, his feet familiarly placed om each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and his whole air bespeaking the consciousness of one quite at home. He turned round— it was my friend of the ball-alley! I rushed instinctively into his arms.- I could not help bursting into tears. Words can not describe the scene which followed. ‘ You are right, sir; you are right: the chimney-piece is yours—the pictures are yours—the house is yours : you gave me all I have—my friend —my father He dined with me; and in the evening J caught the tear glistening in his fine blue eye when he saw his poor little J acky, the creature of his bounty, rising in the’

House of Commons to reply to. a 77ght honorable. Poor Boyse! he is now gone; and no suitor had a larger deposit of practical benevolence in the court above. This is his wine—let us drink to his memory.’ Such is a very faint and very humble imitation of the manner in which Mr. Curran used to relate this most interesting era in his history ; and I never heard him recur to it without weeping. In this place, however, it may be as well to remark, that neither his wit nor his eloquence can receive any thing like justice from even the most gifted narrator. -It would be quite as easy to paimt the waving of a ‘wand—the spell consisted in the very magic of the movement ; and until the charm of manner can be conveyed in words, the reader must fancy in vain the almost supernatural effect of Curran. :

At the school of Mr. Carey, in the town of Middleton, he received more than the common classical education of the country. He owed much to the talent and attention of this gentleman, and’ was always ready to acknowledge it. Indeed, there were few men in any country, or of any class, who had a more general, if not profound acquaintance with the best models of ancient literature. The Greek and Latin poets might be said to be his companions, and his quotations from them, both in conversation and at the bar, were apt and frequent. I remember him myself, im the cabin of one of the Holyhead packets, when we were all rolling in a storm, very deliberately opening his bag, taking out a little pocket Virgil, + and sitting down com amore to the fourth book of the Aineid, over which, he told me in the morning, he had been crying all night. For my part, as I very unclassically remarked, Dido might have hanged herself at the mast-head. without exciting in me, at the time, an additional emotion. Those who have ever enjoyed the comforts of a ship’s cabin in a storm, will know how to excuse my Vandalism. There is a witty instance, current among his friends, of the instantaneous applicaoy tion of his classical knowledge. When he was in college, the Rev. Dr. Hailes, one of the fellows, during a public examination, continually pronounced the word azmerwm with a wrong quantity : it was naturally enough the subject of conversation, and his reverence was rather unceremoniously handled by some of the academic critics. Curran affected to become his advocate: ‘“‘ The doctor is not to blame,” said he; “‘ there was only one man in all Rome who understood the word, and Horace tells us so—

At another time, when an insect of very high birth, but of very democratic habits, was caught upon the coat, about the appearance of which he was never very solicitous, his friend Egan, observing it, maliciously exclaimed from Virgil, “Eh! Curran : .

at the same time turning with a triumphant jocoseness to the spectators. But Curran, in the coolest manner taking up the line, immediately retorted,

It is unnecessary to say against whom the laugh was turned ; but we must not anticipate. While, however, we are on the subject of his classical witticisms, his bon mot upon a brother barrister of the name of Going certainly deserves a place. This gentleman fully verified the old adage that a story never loses in the telling ; he took care continually to add to every anecdote all the graces which could be derived from his own embellishment. An instance of this was one day remarked to Curran, who scarcely knew one of his own stories, it had so grown by thecarriage. ‘I see,” said he, ‘the proverb is quite applicable—‘ Vires acquirit eundo’—it gathers by Going.” The records of a schoolboy’s life afford but little for detail or observation. He could not have been very idle, and he so ad never was very industrious ; however, there was no period of his life during which he could not do as much in one hour as most other men could do in three, so that the stores of his mind and the negligence of his habits are perfectly reconcilable. From the academy of Middleton he passed on to Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a sizar on the sixteenth of June, 1769, aged nineteen, under the tutelage of Dr. Dobbin. He obtained the second place at entrance. Curran’s academical course was unmarked by any literary distinction save the obtaining a scholarship ; and, indeed, both for the College and its professors, he through life entertained the most sovereign contempt. Itis very little to be wondered at. Perhaps there is not to be found in the whole history of literature any institution, so ancient and so endowed, so totally destitute of literary fame as the Alma Mater of Ireland.* With the three exceptions of Dr. Magee, Dr. Millar, and Dr. Greaves, there is scarcely a single fellow of modern times who has produced a work which is not beneath contempt; and the English reader should be informed that a fellowship in Dublin College is an office of no inconsiderable emolument. Seven of the fellows are permanent stipendiaries on the institution, whose united salaries, &c., are little less than £10,000 a year. There is a whole host of junior fellows, whose incomes are very considerable, and a variety of livings from £1800 a year downward, upon which they are billeted as Death takes his revenge upon the extra incumbents for a too free enjoyment of the comforts of this world. Swift, more than a century ago, described the site of his Legion Club to be “Scarce a bowshot from the college— the globe from sense or knowledge” —

and so prophetic, as well as poetic, were the lines, that it has ever since received, both at Cambridge and Oxford, the ignominious appellation of The Szlent Sister. It is said, by way

* There are no doubt, at this moment, many men of genius among the junior fellows of the college, but they so totally attach themselves to tuition that literature is out of the question.

_ .

of extenuation, that the fellows are too much occupied in the tuition of the students to attend to their own literary reputation ; and, indeed, that the present provost* of the college has evinced a regard for his charge almost bordering upon innocent simplicity, no one can doubt after a perusal of the following anecdote. There is attached to it, among other advantages, a most magnificent library, of which the regulations were so rigid, and the public hours so few, that it had become, to the externs particularly, almost entirely useless. Strict as the ordinances respecting it were, the rigor of them was latterly so much increased, that a reverend member of the University thought proper formally to allude to it at a visitation. The provost was called on for his defense. He pleaded the sanction of the board, and declared that the utmost circumspection was now become necessary, as the graduates were actually (gentle reader, start not !)—actually taking to the study of the black art, and becoming horribly industrious about, the books of magic!!! Poor man! he absolutely fancied himself at the head of a college of conjwrors! I may venture to predict, if ever such an institution should spring up in Ireland, its members will be only bottle conjurors. ‘That Mr. Curran passed through this University without much distinction can hardly be considered as very derogatory to his character. He passed through it as Swift, and Burke, and Goldsmith did before him— “ The glory of the college, and its shame.”

But, though uncheered by any encouragement, and undistinguished by any favor, by the anonymous superintendents of the day, he was not altogether unvisited by their severity.

* This reyerend personage has lately, no doubt the most laudable motives, suppressed the Historical Society, an imstitution which, as a school of eloquence, was unrivaled, and has given to the bar and the senate some of their brightest ornaments. [The person here alluded to has since been made a bishop. I rejoice to say that a more enlightened successor has reopened the society, and that the University, in eyery respect, is much improved. 1850.]

He was called before their board on the slightest suspicion of irregularity, and generally proved himself more than an overmatch for them. At one time the charge was that he kept idle women in-his rooms! ‘‘I never did, please your reverences,”’ said the embryo advocate, with the expression of a modern saint upon his countenance, “I never did keep any woman zdle in my room, and I am ready to prove it.” Their reverences, I believe, did not require the corroboration. At another time he was called before them for wearing a dirty shirt. “JT pleaded,” said he, “inability to wear @ clean one ; and I told them the story of poor Lord Avonmore, who was at that time the plain, untitled, struggling Barry Yelverton. ‘T wish, mother,’ said Barry, ‘I had eleven shirts.’ ‘ Eleven, Barry! why eleven?’ ‘Because, mother, I am of opinion that a gentleman, to be comfortable, ought to have the dozen.’ Poor Barry had but ove, and I madeghe precedent my justification.”

From college he proceeded to London, where he contrived, quocunque modo, to enter his name on the books of the Middle Temple. Of his resources in the metropolis I never heard him speak, and the subject was too delicate to introduce. I have it; however, on the authority of a friend who knew him well, that he had some small stipend from the school at Middleton ; and that, in addition to this, he profited by his literary exertions. ‘To the magazines and the newspapers of the day, no doubt, he was a contributor ; and, were it possible, it would be not only entertaining, but instructive, to trace the infant glimmering of the intellect which was one day to shine in the “highest noon” of splendor. But the inquiry would be useless. The contemporaries of that day are almost all extinct, and the effusions of his unpracticed pen have long since perished, with the subjects in which they originated. They have suffered, like himself, alas! the common lot of humanity—a lot which it isin vain for us to deplore, because impossible for us to prevent. Of his literary productions at that early period, I have only been able to collect the following poetic trifles :

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CURRAN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

LINES WRITTEN AT RICHMOND.

On the same spot where weeping Thomson paid His last sad tribute to his Talbot's shade,

An humble muse, by fond remembrance led, Bewails the absent where he mourned the dead; Nor differs much the subject of the strain, Whether of death or absence we complain, Whether we’re sundered by the final scene,