The Irish sketch book and Critical reviews

Front matter

aassJMaZ^

Book T4-T

THE WORKS

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

Dedication vii

I. A Summer Day in Dublin, or there and thereabouts i

Chapter I. A Summer Day In Dublin, Or There And Thereabouts

y passenger by wood and mountain, by brawhng waterfall and gloomy plain, by the loneh" lake of Festiniog and across the swinging world's wonder of a Menai Bridge, through dismal Anglesea to dismal Holyhead — the Birmingham mail, — manages matters so cleverly, that after ten hours' ride the traveller is thrust incontinently on board the packet, and the steward says there's no use in providing dinner on board because the passage is so short.

That is true : but why not give us half an hour on shore? Ten hours spent on a coach-box render the dinner question one of extreme importance ; and as the packet reaches Kingstown at midnight, when all the world is asleep.

the inn-larders locked up, and the cook in bed; and as the mail is not landed until five in the morning (at which hour the passengers are considerately awakened by a great stamping and shouting overhead), might not "Lord Lowther " give us one httle half hour? Even the steward agreed that it was a useless and atrocious tyranny; and, indeed, after a little demur, produced a half-dozen of fried eggs, a feeble makeshift for a dinner.

Our passage across from the Head was made in a rain so pouring and steady, that sea and coast were entirely hidden from us, and one could see very little beyond the glowing tip of the cigar which remained alight nobly in spite of the weather. When the gallant exertions of that fiery spirit were over for ever, and burning bravely to the end it had breathed its last in doing its master service, all became black and cheerless around; the passengers had dropped off one by one, preferring to be dry and ill below rather than wet and squeamish above : even the mate, with his gold-laced cap (who is so astonishingly like Mr. Charles Dickens that he might pass for that gentleman)— even the mate said he would go to his cabin and turn in. So there remained nothing for it but to do as all the world had done.

Hence it was impossible to institute the comparison between the Bay of Naples and that of Dublin (the Bee of Neeples the former is sometimes called in this country), where I have heard the likeness asserted in a great number of societies and conversations. But how could one see the Bay of Dublin in the dark? and how, supposing one could see it, should a person behave who has never seen the Bay of Naples? It is but to take the similarity for granted, and remain in bed till morning.

When everybody was awakened at five o'clock by the noise made upon the removal of the mail-bags, there was heard a cheerless dribbling and pattering overhead, which led one to wait still further until the rain should cease. At length the steward said the last boat was going ashore, and receiving half-a-crown for his own services (the regular tariff), intimated likewise that it was the custom for gentlemen to compliment the stewardess with a shilling, which ceremony was also complied with. No doubt she is an amiable woman, and deserves any sum of money. As for inquiring whether she merited it or not in this instance, that surely is quite unfair. A traveller who stops to inquire the deserts of every individual claimant of a shilling on his road, had best stay quiet at home. If we only got what we deserved^ — heaven save us ! — many of us might whistle for a dinner.

A long pier, with a steamer or two at hand, and a few small vessels

LANDING AT KINGSTOWN. S

lying on either side of the jetty; a town irregularly built, with many handsome terraces, some churches, and showy-looking hotels ; a few people straggling on the beach; two or three cars at the railroad station, which runs along the shore as far as Dublin ; the sea stretching interminably eastward; to the north the Hill of Howth, lying grey behind the mist ; and, directly under his feet, upon the wet, black, shining, slippery deck, an agreeable reflection of his own legs, disappearing seemingly in the direction of the cabin from which he issues : are the sights which a traveller may remark on coming on deck at Kingstown pier on a wet morning — let us say on an average morning ; for according to the statement of well-informed natives, the Irish day is more often rainy than otherwise. A hideous obelisk, stuck upon four fat balls, and surmounted with a crown on a cushion (the latter were no bad emblems perhaps of the monarch in whose honour they were raised), commemorates the sacred spot at which George IV. quitted Ireland. You are landed here from the steamer; and a carman, who is dawdling in the neighbourhood, with a straw in his mouth, comes leisurely up to ask whether you will go to Dublin? Is it natural indolence, or the effect of despair because of the neighbouring railroad, which renders him so indifferent?— He does not even take the straw out of his mouth as he proposes the question — he seems quite careless as to the answer.

He said he would take me to Dublin " in three quarthers,' as soon as we began a parley. As to the fare, he would not hear of it — he said he would leave it to my honour ; he would take me for nothing. Was It possible to refuse such a genteel offer? The times are very much changed since those described by the facetious Jack Hinton, when the carmen tossed up for the passenger, and those who won him took him : for the remaining cars on the stand did not seem to take the least interest in the bargain, or to offer to overdrive or underbid their comrade in any way.

Before that day, so memorable for joy and sorrow, for rapture at receiving its monarch and tearful grief at losing him, when George IV. came and left the maritime resort of the citizens of Dublin, it bore a less genteel name than that which it owns at present, and was called Dunleary. After that glorious event Dunleary disdained to be Dunleary any longer, and became Kingstown henceforward and for ever. Numerous terraces and pleasure-houses have been built in the place — they stretch row after row along the banks of the sea, and rise one above another on the hill. The rents of these houses are said to be very high; the Dublin citizens crowd into them in summer ; and a great source of pleasure and comfort must it be to them to have the fresh sea-breezes and prospects so near to the metropolis.

The better sort of houses are handsome and spacious ; but the fashionable quarter is yet in an unfinished state, for enterprising architects are always beginning new roads, rows and terraces : nor are those already built by any means complete. Beside the aristocratic part of the town is a commercial one, and nearer to Dublin stretch lines of low cottages which have not a Kingstown look at all, but are evidently of the Dunleary period. It is quite curious to see in the streets where the shops are, how often the painter of the sign-boards begins with big letters, and ends, for want of space, with small; and the Enghshman accustomed to the thriving neatness and regularity which characterize towns great and small in his own country, can't fail to notice the difference here. The houses have a battered, rakish look, and seem going to ruin before their time. As seamen of all nations come hither who have made no vow of temperance, there are plenty of liquor-shops still, and shabby cigar-shops, and shabby

ENTRANCE TO DUBLIN. 7

milliners' and tailors' with fly-blown prints of old fashions. The bakers and apothecaries make a great brag of their calling, and you

see MEDICAL HALL, or PUBLIC BAKERY, BALLYRAGGET FLOUR-STORE,

(or whatever the name may be,) pompously inscribed over very humble tenements. Some comfortable grocers' and butchers' shops, and numbers of shabby sauntering people, the younger part of whom are barelegged and bareheaded, make up the rest of the picture which the stranger sees as his car goes jingling through the street.

After the town come the suburbs of pleasure-houses ; low, onestoreyed cottages for the most part : some neat and fresh, some that have passed away from the genteel state altogether, and exhibit downright poverty ; some in a state of transition, with broken windows and pretty romantic names upon tumble-down gates. Who hves in them.'' One fancies that the chairs and tables inside are broken, that the teapot on the breakfast-table has no spout, and the tablecloth is ragged and sloppy ; that the lady of the house is in dubious curl-papers, and the gentleman, with an imperial to his chin, wears a flaring dressinggown all ragged at the elbows.

To be sure, a traveller who in ten minutes can see not only the outsides of houses, but the interiors of the same, must have remarkably keen sight; and it is early yet to speculate. It is clear, however, that these are pleasure-houses for a certain class; and looking at the houses, one can't but fancy the inhabitants resemble them somewhat. The car, on its road to Dublin, passes by numbers of these — by more shabbiness than a Londoner will see in the course of his home peregrinations for a year.

The capabilities of the country, however, are very great, and in many instances have been taken advantage of : for you see, besides the misery, numerous handsome houses and parks along the road, having fine lawns and woods ; and the sea is in our view at a quarter of an hour's ride from Dublin. It is the continual appearance of this sort of wealth which makes the poverty more striking: and thus between the two (for there is no vacant space of fields between Kingstown and Dublin) the car reaches the city. There is but Httle commerce on this road, which was also in extremely bad repair. It is neglected for the sake of its thriving neighbour the railroad ; on which a dozen pretty httle stations accommodate the inhabitants of the various villages through which we pass.

The entrance to the capital is very handsome. There is no bustle and throng of carriages, as in London ; but you pass by numerous rows of neat houses, fronted with gardens and adorned with all sorts of gay-looking creepers. Pretty market-gardens, with trim beds of plants and shining glass-houses, give the suburbs a riaiite and cheerful look; and, passing under the arch of the railway, we are in the city itself. Hence you come upon several old-fashioned, well-built, airy, stately streets, and through Fitzwilliam Square, a noble place, the garden of which is full of flowers and foliage. The leaves are green, and not black as in similar places in London ; the red brick houses tall and handsome. Presently the car stops before an extremely big red house, in that extremely large square, Stephen's Green, where Mr. O'Connell says there is one day or other to be a Parliament. There is room enough for that, or for any other edifice which fancy or patriotism may have a mind to erect, for part of one of the sides of the square is not yet built, and you see the fields and the country beyond.

This then is the chief city of the aliens.— The hotel to which I had been directed is a respectable old edifice, much frequented by families from the country, and where the solitary traveller may likewise find society : for he may either use the '' Shelburne " as an hotel or a boarding-house, in which latter case he is comfortably accommodated at the very moderate daily charge of six-and-eightpence. For this charge a copious breakfast is provided for him in the coffee-room, a perpetual luncheon is likewise there spread, a plentiful dinner is ready at six o'clock : after which there is a drawing-room and a rubber of whist, with tay and coffee and cakes in plenty to satisfy the largest appetite. The hotel is majestically conducted by clerks and other officers ; the landlord himself does not appear, after the honest, comfortable English fashion, but lives in a private mansion hard by, where his name may be read inscribed on a brass-plate, hke that of any other private gentleman.

A woman melodiously crying " Dublin Bay herrings "' passed just as we came up to the door, and as that fish is famous throughout Europe, I seized the earliest opportunity and ordered a broiled one for breakfast. It merits all its reputation : and in this respect I should think the Bay of Dublin is far superior to its rival of Naples. Are there any herrings in Naples Bay ? Dolphins there may be ; and Mount Vesuvius, to be sure, is bigger than even the Hill of Howth ; but a dolphin is better in a sonnet than at a breakfast, and what poet is there that, at certain periods of the day, would hesitate in his choice between the two t

IRISH NEWSPAPERS. 9

With this famous broiled herring the morning papers are served up ; and a great part of these, too, gives opportunity of reflection to the new-comer, and shows him how different this country is from his own. Some hundred years hence, when students want to inform themselves of the history of the present day, and refer to files of Times and ChroJiicle for the purpose, I think it is possible that they will consult, not so much those luminous and philosophical leading-articles which call our attention at present both by the majesty of their eloquence and the largeness of their type, but that they will turn to those parts of the journals into which information is squeezed in the smallest possible print : to the advertisements, namely, the law and police reports, and to the instructive narratives supplied by that ill-used body of men who transcribe knowledge at the rate of a penny a line.

The papers before me {The Morning Registe?^, Liberal and Roman Catholic, Saunders's News-Letter, neutral and Conservative,) give a lively picture of the movement of city and country on this present fourth day of July, 1842, and the Englishman can scarcely fail, as he reads them, to note many small points of difference existing between his own country and this. How do the Irish amuse themselves in the capital t The love for theatrical exhibitions is evidently not very great. Theatre Royal — Miss Kemble and the Sonnambula, an Anglo-Italian importation. Theatre Royal, Abbey Street — The Temple of Magic and the Wizard, last week. Adelphi Theatre, Great Brunswick Street — The Original Seven Lancashire Bell-ringers : a delicious excitement indeed! Portobello Gardens— "The LAST ERUPTION BUT Six," says the advertisement in capitals. And, finally, " Miss Hayes will give her first and farewell concert at the Rotunda, previous to leaving her native country." Only one instance of Irish talent do we read of, and that, in a desponding tone, announces its intention of quitting its native country. All the rest of the pleasures of the evening are importations from cockney-land. The Sonnambula from Covent Garden, the Wizard from the Strand, the Seven Lancashire Bell-ringers from Ishngton, or the City Road, no doubt ; and as for " The last Eruption but Six," it has ernmped near the "Elephant and Castle" any time these two years, until the cockneys would wonder at it no longer.

The commercial advertisements are but few— a few horses and cars for sale ; some flaming announcements of insurance companies ; some " emporiums " of Scotch tweeds and English broadcloths ; an auction for damaged sugar j and an estate or two for sale. They lie in the lo THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK.

columns languidly, and at their ease as it were : how different from the throng, and squeeze, and bustle of the commercial part of a London paper, where every man (except Mr. George Robins) states his case as briefly as possible, because thousands more are to be heard besides himself, and as if he had no time for talking !

The most active advertisers are the schoolmasters. It is now the happy time of the Midsummer hohdays ; and the pedagogues make wonderful attempts to encourage parents, and to attract fresh pupils for the ensuing half-year. Of all these announcements that of Madame Shanahan (a delightful name) is perhaps the most briUiant. " To Parents and Guardians. — Paris. — Such parents and guardians as may wish to entrust their children for education in its fullest extent to ]\Iadame Shanahan, can have the advantage of being cojidiicted to Paris by her brother, the Rev, J. P. O'Reilly, of Church Street Chapel :" which admirable arrangement carries the parents to Paris and leaves the children in Dublin. Ah, Madame, you may take a French title ; but your heart is still in your country, and you are to i\it fullest extent an Irishwoman still !

Fond legends are to be found in Irish books regarding places where you may now see a round tower and a little old chapel, twelve feet square, where famous universities are once said to have stood, and which have accommodated myriads of students. Mrs. Hall mentions Glendalough, in Wicklow, as one of these places of learning ; nor can the fact be questioned, as the universities existed hundreds of years since, and no sort of records are left regarding them. A century hence some antiquary may light upon a Dublin paper, and form marvellous calculations regarding the state of education in the country. For instance, at Bective House Seminary, conducted by Doctor J. L. Burke, ex-Scholar T. C. D., no less than t^uo himdred and three young gentlemen took prizes at the Midsummer examination : nay, some of the most meritorious carried off a dozen premiums a-piece. A Doctor Delamere, ex-scholar T. C. D., distributed three hundred and twenty rewards to his young friends : and if we allow that one lad in twenty is a prizeman, it is clear that there must be six thousand four hundred and forty youths under the Doctor's care.

Other schools are advertised in the same journals, each with its hundred of prize-bearers ; and if other schools are advertised, how many more must there be in the country which are not advertised ! There must be hundreds of thousands of prizemen, millions of scholars ; besides national-schools, hedge-schools, infant-schools, and the like. The English reader will see the accuracy of the calculation.

IRISH NEWSPAPERS. ii

In the Moi'ning Registe?', the Englishman will find something to the full as curious and startling to him : you read gravely in the Enghsh language how the Bishop of Aurehopolis has just been consecrated ; and that the distinction has been conferred upon him by — the Holy Pontiff ! — the Pope of Rome, by all that is holy ! Such an announcement sounds quite strange in English, and in your own country, as it weie : or isn't it your own country? Suppose the Archbishop of Canterbury were to send over a clerg}^man to Rome, and consecrate him Bishop of the Palatine or the Suburra, I wonder how his Holiness would like tliat?

There is a report of Doctor Miley's sermon upon the occasion of the new bishop's consecration ; and the Register happily lauds the discourse for its "refined and fervent eloquepce." The Doctor salutes the Lord Bishop of Aureliopolis on his admission among the " Princes of the Sanctuary," gives a blow en passant at the Established Church whereof the revenues, he elegantly says, "rnight excite the zeal of Dives or Epicurus to become a bishop," and having vented his sly wrath upon the " courtly artifice and intrigue " of the Bench, proceeds to make the most outrageous comparisons with regard to my Lord of Aureliopolis ; his virtues, his sincerity, and the severe privations and persecutions which acceptance of the episcopal office entails upon him.

" That very evening," says the Register, " the new bishop entertained at dinner, in the chapel-house, a select number of friends ; amongst whom were the officiating prelates and clergymen who assisted in the ceremonies of the day. The repast was provided by Mr. Jude, of Grafton Street, and was served up in a style of elegance and comfort that did great honour to that gentleman's character as a restaurateur. The ivines were of the richest and rarest quality . It may be truly said to have been an entertainment where the feast of reason and the flow of soul predominated. The company broke up at nine."

And so my lord is scarcely out of chapel but his privations begin ! Well. Let us hope that, in the course of his episcopacy, he may incur no greater hardships, and that Doctor Miley may come to be a bishop too in his time ; when perhaps he will have a better opinion of the Bench.

The ceremony and feelings described are curious, I think ; and more so perhaps to a person who was in England only yesterday, and quitted it just as their Graces, Lordships, and Reverences were sitting down to dinner. Among what new sights, ideas, customs, does the

English traveller find himself after that brief six-hours' journey from Holyhead !

There is but one part more of the papers to be looked at ;. and that is the most painful of all. In the law-reports of the Tipperary special commission sitting at Clonmel, you read that Patrick Byrne is brought up for sentence, for the murder of Robert Hall, Esq. : and Chief Justice Doherty says, " Patrick Byrne, I will not now recapitulate the circumstances of your enormous crime, but guilty as you are of the barbarity of having perpetrated with your hand the foul murder of an unoffending old man— barbarous, cowardly and cruel as that act was — there lives one more guilty man, and that is he whose diabolical mind hatched the foul conspiracy of which you were but the instrument and the perpetrator. Whoever that may be, I do not envy him his protracted existence. He has sent that aged gentleman, without one moment's warning, to face his God ; but he has done more : he has brought you, unhappy man, with more deliberation and more cruelty, to face your God, with the weight of that man's blood up07t yoii. I have now only to pronounce the sentence of the law :" — it is the usual sentence, with the usual prayer of the judge, that the Lord may have mercy upon the convict's soul.

Timothy Woods, a young man of twenty years of age, is then tried for the murder of Michael Laffan. The Attorney-General states the case : — On the 19th of May last, two assassins dragged Laffan from the house of Patrick Cummins, fired a pistol-shot at him, and left him dead as they thought. Laffan, though mortally wounded, crawled away after the fall ; when the assassins, still seeing him give signs of life, rushed after him, fractured his skull by blows of a pistol, and left him on a dunghill dead. There Laffan's body lay for several hours, and nobody dared to totcch it. Laffan's widow found the body there two hours after the murder, and an inquest was held on the body as it lay on the dunghill. Laffan was driver on the lands of Kilnertin, which were formerly held by Pat Cummins, the man who had the charge of the lands before Laffa7i was mtwdered ; the latter was dragged out of Cummins's house in the presence of a witness who refused to swear to the murderers, and was shot in sight of another witness, James Meara, who with other men was on the road : when asked whether he cried out, or whether he went to assist the deceased, Meara answers, '■'■Indeed I did not j we would not interfere— it was no business of ours / "

Six more instances are given of attempts to murder ; on which the judge, in passing sentence, comments in the following way : —

IRISH NEWSPAPERS.

'^ The Lord Chief Justice addressed the several persons, and said — It was now his painful duty to pronounce upon them severally and respectively the punishment which the law and the court awarded against them for the crimes of which they had been convicted. Those crimes were one and all of them of no ordinary enormity — they were crimes which, in point of morals, involved the atrocious guilt of murder ; and if it had pleased God to spare their souls from the pollution of that offence, the court could not still shut its eyes to the fact, that although death had not ensued in consequence of the crimes of which they had been found guilty, yet it was not owing to their forbearance that such a dreadful crime had not been perpetrated. The prisoner, Michael Hughes, had been convicted of firing a gim at a person of the name of John Ryan (Luke) ; his horse had been killed, and no one could say that the balls were not intended for the prosecutor himself. The prisoner had fired one shot himself, and then called on his companion in guilt to discharge another. One of these shots killed Ryan's mare, and it was by the mercy of God that the life of the prisoner had not become forfeited by his own act. The next culprit was John Pound, who was equally guilty of the intended outrage perpetrated on the life of an unoffending individual — that individual a female, surrounded by her little children, five or six in number — with a complete carelessness to the probable consequences, while she and her family were going, or had gone, to bed.

The contents of a gun were discharged through the door, which entered the panel in three different places. The deaths resulting from this act might have been extensive, but it was not a matter of any moment how many were deprived of life. The woman had just risen from her prayers, preparing herself to sleep under the protection of that arm which would shield the child and protect the innocent, when she was wounded. As to Cornelius Flynn and Patrick Dwyer, they likewise were the subjects of similar imputations and similar observations. There was a very slight difference between them, but not such as to amount to any real distinction. They had gone upon a common, illegal purpose, to the house of a respectable individual, for the purpose of interfering with the domestic arrangements he thought fit to make. They had no sort of right to interfere with the disposition of a man's affairs ; and what would be the consequences if the reverse were to be held ? No imputation had ever been made upon the gentleman whose house was visited, but he was desired to dismiss another, under the pains and penalties of death, although that other was not a retained servant, but a friend who had come to Mr. Hogan on a visit. Because this visitor used sometimes to inspect the men at work, the lawlesrs edict issued that he should be put away. Good God ! to what extent did the prisoners and such misguided men intend to carry out their objects ? Where Avas their dictation to cease ? are they, and those in a similar rank, to take upon themselves to regulate how many and what men a farmer should take into his employment ?

Were they to be the judges whether a servant had discharged his duty to his principal ? or was it because a visitor happened to come, that the host should turn him away, under the pains and penalties of death? His lordship, after adverting to the guilt of the prisoners in this case — the last two persons convicted, Thos. Stapleton and Thos. Gleeson— said their case was so recently before the public, that it was sufficient to say they were morally guilty of what might be considered wilful and dehberate murder. Murder was most awful, because it could only be suggested by deliberate mahce, and the act of the prisoners was the result of that base, malicious, and diabolical disposition. What was the cause of resentment against the unfortunate man who had been shot at, and so desperately wounded ? Why, he had dared to comply with the wishes of a just landlord; and because the landlord, for the benefit of his tenantry, proposed that the farms should be squared, those who acquiesced in his wishes were to be equally the victims of the assassin. What were the facts in this case .^ The two prisoners at the bar, Stapleton and Gleeson, sprung out at the man as he v/as leaving work, placed him on his knees, and without giving him a moment of preparation, commenced the work of blood, intending deliberately to despatch that unprepared and unoffending individual to eternity. What country was it that they lived in, in which such crimes could be perpetrated in the open light of day ? It was not necessary that deeds of darkness should be shrouded in the clouds of night, for the darkness of the deeds themselves was considered a sufficient protection. He (the Chief Justice) was not aware of any solitary instance at the present commission, to show that the crimes committed were the consequences of poverty. Poverty should be no justification, however ; it might be some little palliation, but on no trial at this commission did it appear that the crime could be attributed to distress. His lordship concluded a most impressive address, by sentencing the six prisoners called up to transportation for life.