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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




Amongst the splendid spectacles which I witnessed, as the _most_ splendid
I may mention an installation of the Knights of St. Patrick. There were
six knights installed on this occasion, one of the six being Lord
Altamont. He had no doubt received his ribbon as a reward for his
parliamentary votes, and especially in the matter of the union; yet, from
all his conversation upon that question, and from the general
conscientiousness of his private life, I am convinced that he acted all
along upon patriotic motives, and in obedience to his real views (whether
right or wrong) of the Irish interests. One chief reason, indeed, which
detained us in Dublin, was the necessity of staying for this particular
installation. At one time, Lord Altamont had designed to take his son and
myself for the two esquires who attend the new-made knight, according to
the ritual of this ceremony; but that plan was laid aside, on learning
that the other five knights were to be attended by adults; and thus, from
being partakers as actors, my friend and I became simple spectators of
this splendid scene, which took place in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. So
easily does mere external pomp slip out of the memory, as to all its
circumstantial items, leaving behind nothing beyond the general
impression, that at this moment I remember no one incident of the whole
ceremonial, except that some foolish person laughed aloud as the knights
went up with their offerings to the altar; the object of this unfeeling
laughter being apparently Lord Altamont, who happened to be lame--a
singular instance of levity to exhibit within the walls of such a
building, and at the most solemn part of such a ceremony, which to my
mind had a three-fold grandeur: 1st, as _symbolic_ and shadowy; 2d, as
representing the interlacings of chivalry with religion in the highest
aspirations of both; 3d, as _national_; placing the heraldries and
military pomps of a people, so memorably faithful to St. Peter's chair,
at the foot of the altar. Lord Westport and I sat with Lord and Lady
Castlereagh. They were both young at this time, and both wore an
impressive appearance of youthful happiness; neither, happily for their
peace of mind, able to pierce that cloud of years, not much more than
twenty, which divided them from the day destined in one hour to wreck the
happiness of both. We had met both on other occasions; and their
conversation, through the course of that day's pomps, was the most
interesting circumstance to me, and the one which I remember with most
distinctness of all that belonged to the installation. By the way, one
morning, on occasion of some conversation arising about Irish bulls, I
made an agreement with Lord Altamont to note down in a memorandum book
every thing throughout my stay in Ireland, which, to my feeling as an
Englishman, should seem to be, or should approach to, a bull. And this
day, at dinner, I reported from Lady Castlereagh's conversation what
struck me as such. Lord Altamont laughed, and said, "My dear child, I am
sorry that it should so happen, for it is bad to stumble at the
beginning; your bull is certainly a bull; [1] but as certainly Lady
Castlereagh is your countrywoman, and not an Irishwoman at all." Lady
Castlereagh, it seems, was a daughter of Lord Buckinghamshire; and her
maiden name was Lady Emily Hobart.

One other public scene there was, about this time, in Dublin, to the
eye less captivating, but far more so in a moral sense; more
significant practically, more burdened with hope and with fear. This
was the final ratification of the bill which united Ireland to Great
Britain. I do not know that any one public act, or celebration, or
solemnity, in my time, did, or could, so much engage my profoundest
sympathies. Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the extinction of the Venetian
republic had not then been published, else the last two lines would
have expressed my feelings. After admitting that changes had taken
place in Venice, which in a manner challenged and presumed this last
and mortal change, the poet goes on to say, that all this long
preparation for the event could not break the shock of it. Venice, it
is true, had become a shade; but, after all,--

"Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great has passed away."

But here the previous circumstances were far different from those of
Venice. _There_ we saw a superannuated and paralytic state, sinking
at any rate into the grave, and yielding, to the touch of military
violence, that only which a brief lapse of years must otherwise have
yielded to internal decay. _Here_, on the contrary, we saw a young
eagle, rising into power, and robbed prematurely of her natural honors,
only because she did not comprehend their value, or because at this
great crisis she had no champion. Ireland, in a political sense, was
surely then in her youth, considering the prodigious developments she
has since experienced in population and in resources of all kinds.

This great day of UNION had been long looked forward to by me; with some
mixed feelings also by my young friend, for he had an Irish heart, and
was jealous of whatever appeared to touch the banner of Ireland. But it
was not for him to say any thing which should seem to impeach his
father's patriotism in voting for the union, and promoting it through his
borough influence. Yet oftentimes it seemed to me, when I introduced the
subject, and sought to learn from Lord Altamont the main grounds which
had reconciled him and other men, anxious for the welfare of Ireland, to
a measure which at least robbed her of some splendor, and, above all,
robbed her of a name and place amongst the independent states of Europe,
that neither father nor son was likely to be displeased, should some
great popular violence put force upon the recorded will of Parliament,
and compel the two Houses to perpetuate themselves. Dolorous they must of
course have looked, in mere consistency; but I fancied that internally
they would have laughed. Lord Altamont, I am certain, believed (as
multitudes believed) that Ireland would be bettered by the commercial
advantages conceded to her as an integral province of the empire, and
would have benefits which, as an independent kingdom, she had not. It is
notorious that this expectation was partially realized. But let us ask,
Could not a large part of these benefits have been secured to Ireland
remaining as she was? Were they, in any sense, dependent on the sacrifice
of her separate parliament? For my part, I believe that Mr. Pitt's motive
for insisting on a legislative union was, in a small proportion, perhaps,
the somewhat elevated desire to connect his own name with the historical
changes of the empire; to have it stamped, not on events so fugitive as
those of war and peace, liable to oblivion or eclipse, but on the
permanent relations of its integral parts. In a still larger proportion I
believe his motive to have been one of pure convenience, the wish to
exonerate himself from the intolerable vexation of a double parliament.
In a government such as ours, so care-laden at any rate, it is certainly
most harassing to have the task of soliciting a measure by management and
influence twice over--two trials to organize, two storms of anxiety to
face, and two refractory gangs to discipline, instead of one. It must
also be conceded that no treasury influence could _always_ avail to
prevent injurious collisions between acts of the Irish and the British
Parliaments. In Dublin, as in London, the government must lay its account
with being occasionally outvoted; this would be likely to happen
peculiarly upon Irish questions. And acts of favor or protection would at
times pass on behalf of Irish interests, not only clashing with more
general ones of the central government, but indirectly also (through the
virtual consolidation of the two islands since the era of steam) opening
endless means for evading British acts, even within their own separate
sphere of operation. On these considerations, even an Irishman must grant
that public convenience called for the absorption of all local or
provincial supremacies into the central supremacy. And there were two
brief arguments which gave weight to those considerations: First, that
the evils likely to arise (and which in France _have_ arisen) from what
is termed, in modern politics, the principle of _centralization_, have
been for us either evaded or neutralized. The provinces, to the very
farthest nook of these "nook-shotten" islands, react upon London as
powerfully as London acts upon _them_; so that no counterpoise is
required with us, as in France it is, to any inordinate influence at the
centre. Secondly, the very pride and jealousy which could avail to
dictate the retention of an independent parliament would effectually
preclude any modern "Poyning's Act," having for its object to prevent the
collision of the local with the central government. Each would be supreme
within its own sphere, and those spheres could not but clash. The
separate Irish Parliament was originally no badge of honor or
independence: it began in motives of convenience, or perhaps necessity,
at a period when the communication was difficult, slow, and interrupted.
Any parliament, which arose on that footing, it was possible to guard by
a Poyning's Act, making, in effect, all laws null which should happen to
contradict the supreme or central will. But what law, in a corresponding
temper, could avail to limit the jurisdiction of a parliament which
confessedly had been retained on a principle of national honor? Upon
every consideration, therefore, of convenience, and were it only for the
necessities of public business, the absorption of the local into the
central parliament had now come to speak a language that perhaps could no
longer be evaded; and _that_ Irishman only could consistently oppose the
measure who should take his stand upon principles transcending
convenience; looking, in fact, singly to the honor and dignity of a
country which it was annually becoming less absurd to suppose capable of
an independent existence.

Meantime, in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoods
and the Grattans were not up to the mark. Refractory as they were,
they moved within the paling of order and decorum; they were not the
Titans for a war against the heavens. When the public feeling beckoned
and loudly supported them, they could follow a lead which they appeared
to head; but they could not create such a body of public feeling, nor,
when created, could they throw it into a suitable organization. What
they could do, was simply as ministerial agents and rhetoricians to
prosecute any general movement, when the national arm had cloven a
channel and opened the road before them. Consequently, that great
opening for a turbulent son of thunder passed unimproved; and the great
day drew near without symptoms of tempest. At last it arrived; and I
remember nothing which indicated as much ill temper in the public mind
as I have seen on many hundreds of occasions, trivial by comparison,
in London. Lord Westport and I were determined to lose no part of the
scene, and we went down with Lord Altamont to the house. It was about
the middle of the day, and a great mob filled the whole space about
the two houses. As Lord Altamont's coach drew up to the steps of that
splendid edifice, we heard a prodigious hissing and hooting; and I was
really agitated to think that Lord Altamont, whom I loved and respected,
would probably have to make his way through a tempest of public wrath--a
situation more terrific to him than to others, from his embarrassed
walking. I found, however, that I might have spared my anxiety; the
subject of commotion was, simply, that Major Sirr, or Major Swan, I
forget which, (both being celebrated in those days for their energy,
as leaders of the police,) had detected a person in the act of mistaking
some other man's pocket handkerchief for his own--a most natural
mistake, I should fancy, where people stood crowded together so thickly.
No storm of any kind awaited us, and yet at that moment there was no
other arrival to divide the public attention; for, in order that we
might see every thing from first to last, we were amongst the very
earliest parties. Neither did our party escape under any mistake of
the crowd: silence had succeeded to the uproar caused by the tender
meeting between the thief and the major; and a man, who stood in a
conspicuous situation, proclaimed aloud to those below him, the name
or title of members as they drove up. "That," said he, "is the Earl
of Altamont; the lame gentleman, I mean." Perhaps, however, his
knowledge did not extend so far as to the politics of a nobleman who
had taken no violent or factious part in public affairs. At. least,
the dreaded insults did not follow, or only in the very feeblest
manifestations. We entered; and, by way of seeing every thing, we went
even to the robing room. The man who presented his robes to Lord
Altamont seemed to me, of all whom I saw on that day, the one who
wore the face of deepest depression. But whether this indicated the
loss of a lucrative situation, or was really disinterested sorrow,
growing out of a patriotic trouble, at the knowledge that he was now
officiating for the last time, I could not guess. The House of Lords,
decorated (if I remember) with hangings, representing the battle of
the Boyne, was nearly empty when we entered--an accident which furnished
to Lord Altamont the opportunity required for explaining to us the
whole course and ceremonial of public business on ordinary occasions.

Gradually the house filled; beautiful women sat intermingled amongst
the peers; and, in one party of these, surrounded by a bevy of admirers,
we saw our fair but frail enchantress of the packet. She, on her part,
saw and recognized us by an affable nod; no stain upon her cheek,
indicating that she suspected to what extent she was indebted to our
discretion; for it is a proof of the unaffected sorrow and the solemn
awe which oppressed us both, that we had not mentioned even to Lord
Altamont, nor ever _did_ mention, the scene which chance had revealed
to us. Next came a stir within the house, and an uproar resounding
from without, which announced the arrival of his excellency. Entering
the house, he also, like the other peers, wheeled round to the throne,
and made to that mysterious seat a profound homage. Then commenced the
public business, in which, if I recollect, the chancellor played the
most conspicuous part--that chancellor (Lord Clare) of whom it was
affirmed in those days, by a political opponent, that he might swim
in the innocent blood which he had caused to be shed. But nautical
men, I suspect, would have demurred to that estimate. Then were summoned
to the bar--summoned for the last time--the gentlemen of the House of
Commons; in the van of whom, and drawing all eyes upon himself, stood
Lord Castlereagh. Then came the recitation of many acts passed during
the session, and the sounding ratification, the Jovian

"Annuit, et nutu totum tremefecit Olympum,"

contained in the _Soit fait comme il est desiré_, or the more peremptory
_Le roi le veut_. At which point in the order of succession came the
royal assent to the union bill, I cannot distinctly recollect. But one
thing I _do_ recollect--that no audible expression, no buzz, nor murmur,
nor _susurrus_ even, testified the feelings which, doubtless, lay
rankling in many bosoms. Setting apart all public or patriotic
considerations, even then I said to myself, as I surveyed the whole
assemblage of ermined peers, "How is it, and by what unaccountable magic,
that William Pitt can have prevailed on all these hereditary legislators
and heads of patrician houses to renounce so easily, with nothing worth
the name of a struggle, and no reward worth the name of an
indemnification, the very brightest jewel in their coronets? This morning
they all rose from their couches peers of Parliament, individual pillars
of the realm, indispensable parties to every law that could pass.
Tomorrow they will be nobody--men of straw--_terrae filii_. What madness
has persuaded them to part with their birthright, and to cashier
themselves and their children forever into mere titular lords? As to the
commoners at the bar, _their_ case was different: they had no life estate
at all events in their honors; and they might have the same chance for
entering the imperial Parliament amongst the hundred Irish members as for
reentering a native parliament. Neither, again, amongst the peers was the
case always equal. Several of the higher had English titles, which would,
at any rate, open the central Parliament to their ambition. That
privilege, in particular, attached to Lord Altamont. [2] And he, in any
case, from his large property, was tolerably sure of finding his way
thither (as in fact for the rest of his life he _did_) amongst the
twenty-eight representative peers. The wonder was in the case of petty
and obscure lords, who had no weight personally, and none in right of
their estates. Of these men, as they were notoriously not enriched by Mr.
Pitt, as the distribution of honors was not very large, and as no honor
could countervail the one they lost, I could not, and cannot, fathom the
policy. Thus much I am sure of--that, had such a measure been proposed by
a political speculator previously to Queen Anne's reign, he would have
been scouted as a dreamer and a visionary, who calculated upon men being
generally somewhat worse than Esau, viz., giving up their birthrights,
and _without_ the mess of pottage." However, on this memorable day, thus
it was the union was ratified; the bill received the royal assent without
a muttering, or a whispering, or the protesting echo of a sigh. Perhaps
there might be a little pause--a silence like that which follows an
earthquake; but there was no plain-spoken Lord Belhaven, as on the
corresponding occasion in Edinburgh, to fill up the silence with "So,
there's an end of an auld sang!" All was, or looked courtly, and free
from vulgar emotion. One person only I remarked whose features were
suddenly illuminated by a smile, a sarcastic smile, as I read it; which,
however, might be all a fancy. It was Lord Castlereagh, who, at the
moment when the irrevocable words were pronounced, looked with a
penetrating glance amongst a party of ladies. His own wife was one of
that party; but I did not discover the particular object on whom his
smile had settled. After this I had no leisure to be interested in any
thing which followed. "You are all," thought I to myself, "a pack of
vagabonds henceforward, and interlopers, with actually no more right to
be here than myself. I am an intruder; so are you." Apparently they
thought so themselves; for, soon after this solemn _fiat_ of Jove had
gone forth, their lordships, having no further title to their robes, (for
which I could not help wishing that a party of Jewish old clothes men
would at this moment have appeared, and made a loud bidding,) made what
haste they could to lay them aside forever. The house dispersed much more
rapidly than it had assembled. Major Sirr was found outside, just where
we left him, laying down the law (as before) about pocket handkerchiefs
to old and young practitioners; and all parties adjourned to find what
consolation they might in the great evening event of dinner.

Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parliaments, and installations,
and masked balls, with all other secondary splendors in celebration
of primary splendors, reflex glories that reverberated original glories,
at length had ceased to shine upon the Irish metropolis. The "season,"
as it is called in great cities, was over; unfortunately the last
season that was ever destined to illuminate the society or to stimulate
the domestic trade of Dublin. It began to be thought scandalous to be
found in town; _nobody_, in fact, remained, except some two hundred
thousand people, who never did, nor ever would, wear ermine; and in
all Ireland there remained nothing at all to attract, except that which
no king, and no two houses, can by any conspiracy abolish, viz., the
beauty of her most verdant scenery. I speak of that part which chiefly
it is that I know,--the scenery of the west,--Connaught beyond other
provinces, and in Connaught, Mayo beyond other counties. There it was,
and in the county next adjoining, that Lord Altamont's large estates
were situated, the family mansion and beautiful park being in Mayo.
Thither, as nothing else now remained to divert us from what, in fact,
we had thirsted for throughout the heats of summer, and throughout the
magnificences of the capital, at length we set off by movements as
slow and circuitous as those of any royal _progress_ in the reign of
Elizabeth. Making but short journeys on each day, and resting always
at the house of some private friend, I thus obtained an opportunity
of seeing the old Irish nobility and gentry more extensively, and on
a more intimate footing, than I had hoped for. No experience of this
kind, throughout my whole life, so much interested me. In a little
work, not much known, of Suetonius, the most interesting record which
survives of the early Roman literature, it comes out incidentally that
many books, many idioms, and verbal peculiarities belonging to the
primitive ages of Roman culture were to be found still lingering in
the old Roman settlements, both Gaulish and Spanish, long after they
had become obsolete (and sometimes unintelligible) in Rome. From the
tardiness and the difficulty of communication, the want of newspapers,
&c., it followed, naturally enough, that the distant provincial towns,
though not without their own separate literature and their own literary
professors, were always two or three generations in the rear of the
metropolis; and thus it happened, that, about the time of Augustus,
there were some grammatici in Rome, answering to our black-letter
critics, who sought the material of their researches in Boulogne,
(_Gessoriacum,_) in Arles, (_Arelata_,) or in Marseilles, (_Massilia_.)
Now, the old Irish nobility--that part, I mean, which might be called
the rural nobility--stood in the same relation to English manners and
customs. Here might be found old rambling houses in the style of antique
English manorial chateaus, ill planned, perhaps, as regarded
convenience and economy, with long rambling galleries, and windows
innumerable, that evidently had never looked for that severe audit to
which they were afterwards summoned by William Pitt; but displaying,
in the dwelling rooms, a comfort and "cosiness," combined with
magnificence, not always so effectually attained in modern times. Here
were old libraries, old butlers, and old customs, that seemed all alike
to belong to the era of Cromwell, or even an earlier era than his;
whilst the ancient names, to one who had some acquaintance with the
great events of Irish history, often strengthened the illusion. Not
that I could pretend to be familiar with Irish history _as_ Irish; but
as a conspicuous chapter in the difficult policy of Queen Elizabeth,
of Charles I., and of Cromwell, nobody who had read the English history
could be a stranger to the O'Neils, the O'Donnells, the Ormonds, (_i.
e._, the Butlers,) the Inchiquins, or the De Burghs, and many scores
beside. I soon found, in fact, that the aristocracy of Ireland might
be divided into two great sections: the native Irish--territorial
fixtures, so powerfully described by Maturin; and those, on the other
hand, who spent so much of their time and revenues at Bath, Cheltenham,
Weymouth, London, &c., as to have become almost entirely English. It
was the former whom we chiefly visited; and I remarked that, in the
midst of hospitality the most unbounded, and the amplest comfort, some
of these were conspicuously in the rear of the English commercial
gentry, as to modern refinements of luxury. There was at the same time
an apparent strength of character, as if formed amidst turbulent scenes,
and a raciness of manner, which were fitted to interest a stranger
profoundly, and to impress themselves on his recollection.


FOOTNOTES

[1] The idea of a _bull_ is even yet undefined; which is most
extraordinary, considering that Miss Edgeworth has applied all her tact
and illustrative power to furnish the _matter_ for such a definition, and
Coleridge all his philosophic subtlety (but in this instance, I think,
with a most infelicitous result) to furnish its _form_. But both have
been too fastidious in their admission of bulls. Thus, for example, Miss
Edgeworth rejects, as no true bull, the common Joe Miller story, that,
upon two Irishmen reaching Barnet, and being told that it was still
twelve miles to London, one of them remarked, "Ah! just six miles apace."
This, says Miss E., is no bull, but a sentimental remark on the maxim,
that friendship divides our pains. Nothing of the kind: Miss Edgeworth
cannot have understood it. The bull is a true representative and
exemplary specimen of the _genus_.

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