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Tales and Novels, Vol. IV

M >> Maria Edgeworth >> Tales and Novels, Vol. IV



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TALES AND NOVELS, VOL. IV

CONTAINING

CASTLE RACKRENT; AN ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS; AN ESSAY ON THE NOBLE SCIENCE
OF SELF-JUSTIFICATION; ENNUI; AND THE DUN.

BY

MARIA EDGEWORTH

IN TEN VOLUMES. WITH ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL.


1857.



"A prudence undeceiving, undeceived,
That nor too little nor too much believed;
That scorn'd unjust suspicion's coward fear,
And without weakness knew to be sincere."
_Lord Lyttelton's Monody on his Wife_.



PREFACE


The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and
ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but
if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an
incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper
of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read
history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of
history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian;
they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such
diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or
heroism, to sympathize in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty
even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that
love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily
leads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes. We cannot judge
either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect
accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from
their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may
hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real
characters. The life of a great or of a little man written by himself,
the familiar letters, the diary of any individual published by his
friends or by his enemies, after his decease, are esteemed important
literary curiosities. We are surely justified, in this eager desire, to
collect the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives, not only
of the great and good, but even of the worthless and insignificant,
since it is only by a comparison of their actual happiness or misery in
the privacy of domestic life that we can form a just estimate of the
real reward of virtue, or the real punishment of vice. That the great
are not as happy as they seem, that the external circumstances of
fortune and rank do not constitute felicity, is asserted by every
moralist: the historian can seldom, consistently with his dignity, pause
to illustrate this truth: it is therefore to the biographer we must have
recourse. After we have beheld splendid characters playing their parts
on the great theatre of the world, with all the advantages of stage
effect and decoration, we anxiously beg to be admitted behind the
scenes, that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses.

Some may perhaps imagine, that the value of biography depends upon the
judgment and taste of the biographer: but on the contrary it may be
maintained, that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the extent
of his intellectual powers and of his literary talents. A plain
unvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative.
Where we see that a man has the power, we may naturally suspect that he
has the will to deceive us; and those who are used to literary
manufacture know how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of a
period, or the pointing of an antithesis.

That the ignorant may have their prejudices as well as the learned
cannot be disputed; but we see and despise vulgar errors: we never bow
to the authority of him who has no great name to sanction his
absurdities. The partiality which blinds a biographer to the defects of
his hero, in proportion as it is gross, ceases to be dangerous; but if
it be concealed by the appearance of candour, which men of great
abilities best know how to assume, it endangers our judgment sometimes,
and sometimes our morals. If her grace the Duchess of Newcastle, instead
of penning her lord's elaborate eulogium, had undertaken to write the
life of Savage, we should not have been in any danger of mistaking an
idle, ungrateful libertine, for a man of genius and virtue. The talents
of a biographer are often fatal to his reader. For these reasons the
public often judiciously countenance those who, without sagacity to
discriminate character, without elegance of style to relieve the
tediousness of narrative, without enlargement of mind to draw any
conclusions from the facts they relate, simply pour forth anecdotes, and
retail conversations, with all the minute prolixity of a gossip in a
country town.

The author of the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claims
to the public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward,
whose partiality to _the family_, in which he was bred and born, must
be obvious to the reader. He tells the history of the Rackrent family
in his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence that Sir Patrick,
Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrent's affairs will be as
interesting to all the world as they were to himself. Those who were
acquainted with the manners of a certain class of the gentry of Ireland
some years ago, will want no evidence of the truth of honest Thady's
narrative: to those who are totally unacquainted with Ireland, the
following Memoirs will perhaps be scarcely intelligible, or probably
they may appear perfectly incredible. For the information of the
_ignorant_ English reader, a few notes have been subjoined by the
editor, and he had it once in contemplation to translate the language
of Thady into plain English; but Thady's idiom is incapable of
translation, and, besides, the authenticity of his story would have
been more exposed to doubt if it were not told in his own
characteristic manner. Several years ago he related to the editor the
history of the Rackrent family, and it was with some difficulty that he
was persuaded to have it committed to writing; however, his feelings
for "_the honour of the family_," as he expressed himself, prevailed
over his habitual laziness, and he at length completed the narrative
which is now aid before the public.

The editor hopes his readers will observe that these are "tales of other
times:" that the manners depicted in the following pages are not those
of the present age: the race of the Rackrents has long since been
extinct in Ireland; and the drunken Sir Patrick, the litigious Sir
Murtagh, the fighting Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy, are
characters which could no more be met with at present in Ireland, than
Squire Western or Parson Trulliber in England. There is a time when
individuals can bear to be rallied for their past follies and
absurdities, after they have acquired new habits and a new
consciousness. Nations, as well as individuals, gradually lose
attachment to their identity, and the present generation is amused,
rather than offended, by the ridicule that is thrown upon its ancestors.

Probably we shall soon have it in our power, in a hundred instances, to
verify the truth of these observations.

When Ireland loses her identity by an union with Great Britain, she will
look back, with a smile of good-humoured complacency, on the Sir Kits
and Sir Condys of her former existence.



CONTENTS:

CASTLE RACKRENT
GLOSSARY
FOOTNOTES

ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS

Introduction
CHAP. I. Originality of Irish Bulls examined
II. Irish Newspapers
III. The Criminal Law of Bulls and Blunders
IV. Little Dominick
V. The Bliss of Ignorance
VI. "Thoughts that breathe, and Words that burn"
VII. Practical Bulls
VIII. The Dublin Shoeblack
IX. The Hibernian Mendicant
X. Irish Wit and Eloquence
XI. The Brogue
XII. Bath Coach Conversation
XIII. Bath Coach Conversation
XIV. The Irish Incognito
Conclusion
Appendix
Footnotes

AN ESSAY ON THE NOBLE SCIENCE OF SELF-JUSTIFICATION

ENNUI

THE DUN






CASTLE RACKRENT


_Monday Morning_.[A]

Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose estate, praised be
Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free, time out of mind, voluntarily
undertaken to publish the MEMOIRS of the RACKRENT FAMILY, I think it my
duty to say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself. My real
name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have always been known by no
other than "_honest Thady_"--afterward, in the time of Sir Murtagh,
deceased, I remember to hear them calling me "_old Thady_," and now I'm
come to "poor Thady;" for I wear a long great coat[1] winter and summer,
which is very handy, as I never put my arms into the sleeves; they are
as good as new, though come Holantide next I've had it these seven
years; it holds on by a single button round my neck, cloak fashion. To
look at me, you would hardly think "poor Thady" was the father of
attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what poor Thady
says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year, landed estate,
looks down upon honest Thady; but I wash my hands of his doings, and as
I have lived so will I die, true and loyal to the family. The family of
the Rackrents is, I am proud to say, one of the most ancient in the
kingdom. Every body knows this is not the old family name, which was
O'Shaughlin, related to the kings of Ireland--but that was before my
time. My grandfather was driver to the great Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin,
and I heard him, when I was a boy, telling how the Castle Rackrent
estate came to Sir Patrick; Sir Tallyhoo Rackrent was cousin-german to
him, and had a fine estate of his own, only never a gate upon it, it
being his maxim that a car was the best gate. Poor gentleman! he lost a
fine hunter and his life, at last, by it, all in one day's hunt. But I
ought to bless that day, for the estate came straight into _the_ family,
upon one condition, which Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin at the time took sadly
to heart, they say, but thought better of it afterwards, seeing how
large a stake depended upon it, that he should, by act of parliament,
take and bear the surname and arms of Rackrent.

Now it was that the world was to see what was _in_ Sir Patrick. On
coming into the estate, he gave the finest entertainment ever was heard
of in the country; not a man could stand after supper but Sir Patrick
himself, who could sit out the best man in Ireland, let alone the three
kingdoms itself.[B] He had his house, from one year's end to another, as
full of company as ever it could hold, and fuller; for rather than be
left out of the parties at Castle Rackrent, many gentlemen, and those
men of the first consequence and landed estates in the country, such as
the O'Neils of Ballynagrotty, and the Moueygawls of Mount Juliet's Town,
and O'Shannons of New Town Tullyhog, made it their choice, often and
often, when there was no room to be had for love nor money, in long
winter nights, to sleep in the chicken-house, which Sir Patrick had
fitted up for the purpose of accommodating his friends and the public in
general, who honoured him with their company unexpectedly at Castle
Rackrent; and this went on, I can't tell you how long--the whole country
rang with his praises!--Long life to him! I'm sure I love to look upon
his picture, now opposite to me; though I never saw him, he must have
been a portly gentleman--his neck something short, and remarkable for
the largest pimple on his nose, which, by his particular desire, is
still extant in his picture, said to be a striking likeness, though
taken when young. He is said also to be the inventor of raspberry
whiskey, which is very likely, as nobody has ever appeared to dispute it
with him, and as there still exists a broken punch-bowl at Castle
Rackrent, in the garret, with an inscription to that effect--a great
curiosity. A few days before his death he was very merry; it being his
honour's birth-day, he called my grandfather in, God bless him! to drink
the company's health, and filled a bumper himself, but could not carry
it to his head, on account of the great shake in his hand; on this he
cast his joke, saying, "What would my poor father say to me if he was to
pop out of the grave, and see me now? I remember when I was a little
boy, the first bumper of claret he gave me after dinner, how he praised
me for carrying it so steady to my mouth. Here's my thanks to him--a
bumper toast." Then he fell to singing the favourite song he learned
from his father--for the last time, poor gentleman--he sung it that
night as loud and as hearty as ever with a chorus:

"He that goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,
Falls as the leaves do, falls as the leaves do, and dies in October;
But he that goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,
Lives as he ought to do, lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest
fellow."

Sir Patrick died that night: just as the company rose to drink his
health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried
off; they sat it out, and were surprised, on inquiry, in the morning, to
find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick. Never did any gentleman
live and die more beloved in the country by rich and poor. His funeral
was such a one as was never known before or since in the county! All the
gentlemen in the three counties were at it; far and near, how they
flocked! my great grandfather said, that to see all the women even in
their red cloaks, you would have taken them for the army drawn out. Then
such a fine whillaluh![C] you might have heard it to the farthest end of
the county, and happy the man who could get but a sight of the hearse!
But who'd have thought it? just as all was going on right, through his
own town they were passing, when the body was seized for debt--a rescue
was apprehended from the mob; but the heir who attended the funeral was
against that, for fear of consequences, seeing that those villains who
came to serve acted under the disguise of the law: so, to be sure, the
law must take its course, and little gain had the creditors for their
pains. First and foremost, they had the curses of the country: and Sir
Murtagh Rackrent, the new heir, in the next place, on account of this
affront to the body, refused to pay a shilling of the debts, in which he
was countenanced by all the best gentlemen of property, and others of
his acquaintance; Sir Murtagh alleging in all companies, that he all
along meant to pay his father's debts of honour, but the moment the law
was taken of him, there was an end of honour to be sure. It was
whispered (but none but the enemies of the family believe it), that this
was all a sham seizure to get quit of the debts, which he had bound
himself to pay in honour.

It's a long time ago, there's no saying how it was, but this for
certain, the new man did not take at all after the old gentleman; the
cellars were never filled after his death, and no open house, or any
thing as it used to be; the tenants even were sent away without their
whiskey.[D] I was ashamed myself, and knew not what to say for the
honour of the family; but I made the best of a bad case, and laid it all
at my lady's door, for I did not like her any how, nor any body else;
she was of the family of the Skinflints, and a widow; it was a strange
match for Sir Murtagh; the people in the country thought he demeaned
himself greatly,[E] but I said nothing: I knew how it was; Sir Murtagh
was a great lawyer, and looked to the great Skinflint estate; there,
however, he overshot himself; for though one of the co-heiresses, he was
never the better for her, for she outlived him many's the long day--he
could not see that to be sure when he married her. I must say for her,
she made him the best of wives, being a very notable, stirring woman,
and looking close to every thing. But I always suspected she had Scotch
blood in her veins; any thing else I could have looked over in her from
a regard to the family. She was a strict observer for self and servants
of Lent, and all fast days, but not holidays. One of the maids having
fainted three times the last day of Lent, to keep soul and body
together, we put a morsel of roast beef into her mouth, which came from
Sir Murtagh's dinner, who never fasted, not he; but somehow or other it
unfortunately reached my lady's ears, and the priest of the parish had a
complaint made of it the next day, and the poor girl was forced, as soon
as she could walk, to do penance for it, before she could get any peace
or absolution, in the house or out of it. However, my lady was very
charitable in her own way. She had a charity school for poor children,
where they were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were
kept well to spinning gratis for my lady in return; for she had always
heaps of duty yarn from the tenants, and got all her household linen out
of the estate from first to last; for after the spinning, the weavers on
the estate took it in hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's
interest could get from the Linen Board to distribute gratis. Then there
was a bleach-yard near us, and the tenant dare refuse my lady nothing,
for fear of a law-suit Sir Murtagh kept hanging over him about the
water-course. With these ways of managing, 'tis surprising how cheap my
lady got things done, and how proud she was of it. Her table the same
way, kept for next to nothing;[F] duty fowls, and duty turkeys, and duty
geese, came as fast as we could eat 'em, for my lady kept a sharp
look-out, and knew to a tub of butter every thing the tenants had, all
round. They knew her way, and what with fear of driving for rent and Sir
Murtagh's lawsuits, they were kept in such good order, they never
thought of coming near Castle Rackrent without a present of something or
other--nothing too much or too little for my lady--eggs, honey, butter,
meal, fish, game, grouse, and herrings, fresh or salt, all went for
something. As for their young pigs, we had them, and the best bacon and
hams they could make up, with all young chickens in spring; but they
were a set of poor wretches, and we had nothing but misfortunes with
them, always breaking and running away. This, Sir Murtagh and my lady
said, was all their former landlord Sir Patrick's fault, who let 'em all
get the half year's rent into arrear; there was something in that to be
sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way; for let alone making
English tenants[G] of them, every soul, he was always driving and
driving, and pounding and pounding, and canting[H] and canting, and
replevying and replevying, and he made a good living of trespassing
cattle; there was always some tenant's pig, or horse, or cow, or calf,
or goose, trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh, that he
did not like to hear me talk of repairing fences. Then his heriots and
duty-work[I] brought him in something, his turf was cut, his potatoes
set and dug, his hay brought home, and, in short, all the work about his
house done for nothing; for in all our leases there were strict clauses
heavy with penalties, which Sir Murtagh knew well how to enforce; so
many days' duty work of man and horse, from every tenant, he was to
have, and had, every year; and when a man vexed him, why the finest day
he could pitch on, when the cratur was getting in his own harvest, or
thatching his cabin, Sir Murtagh made it a principle to call upon him
and his horse; so he taught 'em all, as he said, to know the law of
landlord and tenant. As for law, I believe no man, dead or alive, ever
loved it so well as Sir Murtagh. He had once sixteen suits pending at a
time, and I never saw him so much himself; roads, lanes, bogs, wells,
ponds, eel-wires, orchards, trees, tithes, vagrants, gravelpits,
sandpits, dunghills, and nuisances, every thing upon the face of the
earth furnished him good matter for a suit. He used to boast that he had
a lawsuit for every letter in the alphabet. How I used to wonder to see
Sir Murtagh in the midst of the papers in his office! Why he could
hardly turn about for them. I made bold to shrug my shoulders once in
his presence, and thanked my stars I was not born a gentleman to so much
toil and trouble; but Sir Murtagh took me up short with his old proverb,
"learning is better than house or land." Out of forty-nine suits which
he had, he never lost one but seventeen;[J] the rest he gained with
costs, double costs, treble costs sometimes; but even that did not pay.
He was a very learned man in the law, and had the character of it; but
how it was I can't tell, these suits that he carried cost him a power of
money; in the end he sold some hundreds a year of the family estate; but
he was a very learned man in the law, and I know nothing of the matter,
except having a great regard for the family; and I could not help
grieving when he sent me to post up notices of the sale of the
fee-simple of the lands and appurtenances of Timoleague. "I know, honest
Thady," says he, to comfort me, "what I'm about better than you do; I'm
only selling to get the ready money wanting to carry on my suit with
spirit with the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin."

He was very sanguine about that suit with the Nugents of
Carrickashaughlin. He could have gained it, they say, for certain, had
it pleased Heaven to have spared him to us, and it would have been at
the least a plump two thousand a-year in his way; but things were
ordered otherwise, for the best to be sure. He dug up a fairy-mount[2]
against my advice, and had no luck afterwards. Though a learned man in
the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters. I warned him
that I heard the very Banshee[3] that my grandfather heard under Sir
Patrick's window a few days before his death. But Sir Murtagh thought
nothing of the Banshee, nor of his cough, with a spitting of blood,
brought on, I understand, by catching cold in attending the courts, and
overstraining his chest with making himself heard in one of his
favourite causes. He was a great speaker with a powerful voice; but his
last speech was not in the courts at all. He and my lady, though both of
the same way of thinking in some things, and though she was as good a
wife and great economist as you could see, and he the best of husbands,
as to looking into his affairs, and making money for his family; yet I
don't know how it was, they had a great deal of sparring and jarring
between them. My lady had her privy purse--and she had her weed
ashes,[L] and her sealing money[M] upon the signing of all the leases,
with something to buy gloves besides; and, besides, again often took
money from the tenants, if offered properly, to speak for them to Sir
Murtagh about abatements and renewals. Now the weed ashes and the glove
money he allowed her clear perquisites; though once when he saw her in a
new gown saved out of the weed ashes, he told her to my face (for he
could say a sharp thing), that she should not put on her weeds before
her husband's death. But in a dispute about an abatement, my lady would
have the last word, and Sir Murtagh grew mad;[N] I was within hearing of
the door, and now I wish I had made bold to step in. He spoke so loud,
the whole kitchen was out on the stairs.[O] All on a sudden he stopped
and my lady too. Something has surely happened, thought I--and so it
was, for Sir Murtagh in his passion broke a blood-vessel, and all the
law in the land could do nothing in that case. My lady sent for five
physicians, but Sir Murtagh died, and was buried. She had a fine
jointure settled upon her, and took herself away to the great joy of the
tenantry. I never said any thing one way or the other, whilst she was
part of the family, but got up to see her go at three o'clock in the
morning. "It's a fine morning, honest Thady," says she; "good bye to
ye," and into the carriage she stepped, without a word more, good or
bad, or even half-a-crown; but I made my bow, and stood to see her safe
out of sight for the sake of the family.

Then we were all bustle in the house, which made me keep out of the way,
for I walk slow and hate a bustle; but the house was all hurry-skurry,
preparing for my new master. Sir Murtagh, I forgot to notice, had no
childer;[4] so the Rackrent estate went to his younger brother, a young
dashing officer, who came amongst us before I knew for the life of me
where-abouts I was, in a gig or some of them things, with another spark
along with him, and led horses, and servants, and dogs, and scarce a
place to put any Christian of them into; for my late lady had sent all
the feather-beds off before her, and blankets and household linen, down
to the very knife cloths, on the cars to Dublin, which were all her own,
lawfully paid for out of her own money. So the house was quite bare, and
my young master, the moment ever he set foot in it out of his gig,
thought all those things must come of themselves, I believe, for he
never looked after any thing at all, but harum-scarum called for every
thing as if we were conjurers, or he in a public-house. For my part, I
could not bestir myself any how; I had been so much used to my late
master and mistress, all was upside down with me, and the new servants
in the servants' hall were quite out of my way; I had nobody to talk to,
and if it had not been for my pipe and tobacco, should, I verily
believe, have broke my heart for poor Sir Murtagh.

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