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Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




The tardiness and slovenly execution of the whole service, meantime,
was well illustrated in what follows:--

Killala was not delivered from rebel hands until the 23rd of September,
notwithstanding the general surrender had occurred on the 8th; and
then only in consequence of an express from the bishop to General
Trench, hastening his march. The situation of the Protestants was
indeed critical. Humbert had left three French officers to protect the
place, but their influence gradually had sunk to a shadow. And plans
of pillage, with all its attendant horrors, were daily debated. Under
these circumstances, the French officers behaved honorably and
courageously. "Yet," says the bishop, "the poor commandant had no
reason to be pleased with the treatment he had received immediately
after the action. He had returned to the castle for his sabre, and
advanced with it to the gate, in order to deliver it up to some English
officer, when it was seized and forced from his hand by a common soldier
of Fraser's. He came in, got another sword, which he surrendered to
an officer, and turned to reenter the hall. At this moment a second
Highlander burst through the gate, in spite of the sentinel placed
there by the general, and fired at the commandant with an aim that was
near proving fatal, for the ball passed under his arm, piercing a very
thick door entirely through, and lodging in the jamb. Had we lost the
worthy man by such an accident, his death would have spoiled the whole
relish of our present enjoyment. He complained, and received an apology
for the soldier's behavior from his officer. Leave was immediately
granted to the three French officers (left behind by Humbert at Killala)
to keep their swords, their effects, and even their bed chambers in
the house."

* * * * *

_Note applying generally to this chapter on the Second Irish
Rebellion._--Already in 1833, when writing this 10th chapter, I felt
a secret jealously (intermittingly recurring) that possibly I might
have fallen under a false bias at this point of my youthful memorials.
I myself had seen reason to believe--indeed, sometimes I knew for
certain--that, in the _personalities_ of Irish politics from Grattan
downwards, a spirit of fiery misrepresentation prevailed, which made
it hopeless to seek for any thing resembling truth. If in any quarter
you found candor and liberality, _that_ was because no interest existed
in any thing Irish, and consequently no real information. Find out any
man that could furnish you with information such as presupposed an
interest in Ireland, and inevitably he turned out a bigoted partisan.
There cannot be a stronger proof of this than the ridiculous libels
and literary caricatures current even in England, through one whole
generation, against the late Lord Londonderry--a most able and faithful
manager of our English foreign interests in times of unparalleled
difficulty. Already in the closing years of the last century, his Irish
policy had been inextricably falsified: subsequently, when he came to
assume a leading part in the English Parliament, the efforts to
calumniate him became even more intense; and it is only within the
last five years that a reaction of public opinion on this subject has
been strong enough to reach even those among his enemies who were
enlightened men. Liberal journals (such, _e. g._, as the "North British
Review") now recognize his merits. Naturally it was impossible that
the civil war of 1798 in Ireland, and the persons conspicuously
connected with it, should escape this general destiny of Irish politics.
I wrote, therefore, originally under a jealousy that partially I might
have been duped. At present, in reviewing what I had written twenty
years ago, I feel this jealousy much more keenly. I shrink from the
bishop's malicious portraitures of our soldiers, sometimes of their
officers, as composing a licentious army, without discipline, without
humanity, without even steady courage. Has any man a right to ask our
toleration for pictures so romantic as these? Duped perhaps I was
myself: and it was natural that I should be so under the overwhelming
influences oppressing any right that I _could_ have at my early age
to a free, independent judgment. But I will not any longer assist in
duping the reader; and I will therefore suggest to him two grounds of
vehement suspicion against all the insidious colorings given to his
statements by the bishop:--

1st. I beg to remind the reader that this army of Mayo, in 1798, so
unsteady and so undisciplined, if we believe the bishop, was in part
the army of Egypt in the year 1801: how would the bishop have answered
_that_?

2dly. The bishop allows great weight in treating any allegations
whatever against the English army or the English government, to the
moderation, equity, and self-control claimed for the Irish peasantry
as notorious elements in their character. Meantime he forgets this
doctrine most conspicuously at times; and represents the safety of the
Protestants against pillage, or even against a spirit of massacre, as
entirely dependent on the influence of the French. Whether for property
or life, it was to the French that the Irish Protestants looked for
protection: not I it is, but the bishop, on whom that representation
will be found to rest.


FOOTNOTES

[1] As this happened to be the truth, the bishop did right to report it.
Otherwise, his lordship does not seem to have had much acquaintance with
the French scenical mode of arranging their public acts for purposes of
effect. Cynical people (like myself, when looking back to this anecdote
from the year 1833) were too apt to remark that this plate and that
basket were carefully numbered; that the episcopal butler (like
Pharaoh's) was liable, alas! to be hanged in case the plate were not
forthcoming on a summons from head quarters; and that the Killala "place
of security" was kindly strengthened, under the maternal anxiety of the
French republic, by doubling the French sentries.

[2] I leave this passage as it was written originally under an impression
then universally current. But, from what I have since read on this
subject, I beg to be considered as speaking very doubtfully on the true
causes of the St. Domingo disasters.




CHAPTER XI.

TRAVELLING.


It was late in October, or early in November, that I quitted Connaught
with Lord Westport; and very slowly, making many leisurely deviations
from the direct route, travelled back to Dublin. Thence, after some
little stay, we recrossed St. George's Channel, landed at Holyhead,
and then, by exactly the same route as we had pursued in early June,
we posted through Bangor, Conway, Llanrwst, Llangollen, until once
again we found ourselves in England, and, as a matter of course, making
for Birmingham. But why making for Birmingham? Simply because
Birmingham, under the old dynasty of stage coaches and post chaises,
was the centre of our travelling system, and held in England something
of that rank which the golden milestone of Rome held in the Italian
peninsula.

At Birmingham it was (which I, like myriads beside, had traversed a
score of times without ever yet having visited it as a _terminus ad
quem_) that I parted with my friend Lord Westport. His route lay through
Oxford; and stopping, therefore, no longer than was necessary to harness
fresh horses,--an operation, however, which was seldom accomplished
in less than half an hour at that era,--he went on directly to
Stratford. My own destination was yet doubtful. I had been directed,
in Dublin, to inquire at the Birmingham post office for a letter which
would guide my motions. There, accordingly, upon sending for it, lay
the expected letter from my mother; from which I learned that my sister
was visiting at Laxton, in Northamptonshire, the seat of an old friend,
to which I also had an invitation. My route to this lay through
Stamford. Thither I could not go by a stage coach until the following
day; and of necessity I prepared to make the most of my present day
in gloomy, noisy, and, at that time, dirty Birmingham.

Be not offended, compatriot of Birmingham, that I salute your natal
town with these disparaging epithets. It is not my habit to indulge
rash impulses of contempt towards any man or body of men, wheresoever
collected, far less towards a race of high-minded and most intelligent
citizens, such as Birmingham has exhibited to the admiration of all
Europe. But as to the noise and the gloom which I ascribe to you, those
features of your town will illustrate what the Germans mean by a
_one-sided_ [1] (ein-seitiger) judgment. There are, I can well
believe, thousands to whom Birmingham is another name for domestic
peace, and for a reasonable share of sunshine. But in my case, who
have passed through Birmingham a hundred times, it always happened to
rain, except once; and that once the Shrewsbury mail carried me so
rapidly away, that I had not time to examine the sunshine, or see
whether it might not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know,
men of Birmingham, that you _can_ counterfeit--such is your
cleverness--all things in heaven and earth, from Jove's thunderbolts
down to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to
my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous
_Hen and Chickens_ [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had
reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flock
to roost at less variable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking by
those who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functions
of the porter, or of "boots," or of "underboots," who began their rounds
for collecting the several freights for the Highflyer, or the Tally-ho,
or the Bang-up, to all points of the compass, and too often (as must
happen in such immense establishments) blundered into my room with that
appalling, "Now, sir, the horses are coming out." So that rarely, indeed,
have I happened to _sleep_ in Birmingham. But the dirt!--_that_ sticks a
little with you, friend of Birmingham. How do I explain away _that_?
Know, then, reader, that at the time I speak of, and in the way I speak
of, viz., in streets and inns, all England was dirty.

* * * * *

Being left therefore alone for the whole of a rainy day in Birmingham,
and Birmingham being as yet the centre of our travelling system, I
cannot do better than spend my Birmingham day in reviewing the most
lively of its reminiscences.

The revolution in the whole apparatus, means, machinery, and
dependences of that system--a revolution begun, carried through, and
perfected within the period of my own personal experience--merits a
word or two of illustration in the most cursory memoirs that profess
any attention at all to the shifting scenery and moving forces of the
age, whether manifested in great effects or in little. And these
particular effects, though little, when regarded in their separate
details, are _not_ little in their final amount. On the contrary, I
have always maintained, that under a representative government, where
the great cities of the empire must naturally have the power, each in
its proportion, of reacting upon the capital and the councils of the
nation in so conspicious a way, there is a result waiting on the final
improvements of the arts of travelling, and of transmitting intelligence
with velocity, such as cannot be properly appreciated in the absence
of all historical experience. Conceive a state of communication between
the centre and the extremities of a great people, kept up with a
uniformity of reciprocation so exquisite as to imitate the flowing and
ebbing of the sea, or the systole and diastole of the human heart; day
and night, waking and sleeping, not succeeding to each other with more
absolute certainty than the acts of the metropolis and the controlling
notice of the provinces, whether in the way of support or of resistance.
Action and reaction from every point of the compass being thus perfect
and instantaneous, we should then first begin to understand, in a
practical sense, what is meant by the unity of a political body, and
we should approach to a more adequate appreciation of the powers which
are latent in organization. For it must be considered that hitherto,
under the most complex organization, and that which has best attained
its purposes, the national will has never been able to express itself
upon one in a thousand of the public acts, simply because the national
voice was lost in the distance, and could not collect itself through
the time and the space rapidly enough to connect itself immediately
with the evanescent measure of the moment. But, as the system of
intercourse is gradually expanding, these bars of space and time are
in the same degree contracting, until finally we may expect them
altogether to vanish; and then every part of the empire will react
upon the whole with the power, life, and effect of immediate conference
amongst parties brought face to face. Then first will be seen a
political system truly _organic_--_i.e._, in which each acts upon all,
and all react upon each; and a new earth will arise from the indirect
agency of this merely physical revolution. Already, in this paragraph,
written twenty years ago, a prefiguring instinct spoke within me of
some great secret yet to come in the art of distant communication. At
present I am content to regard the electric telegraph as the oracular
response to that prefiguration. But I still look for some higher and
transcendent response.

The reader whose birth attaches him to this present generation, having
known only macadamized roads, cannot easily bring before his imagination
the antique and almost aboriginal state of things which marked our
travelling system down to the end of the eighteenth century, and nearly
through the first decennium of the present. A very few lines will
suffice for some broad notices of our condition, in this respect,
through the last two centuries. In the Parliament war, (1642-6,) it is
an interesting fact, but at the same time calculated to mislead the
incautious reader, that some officers of distinction, on both sides,
brought close carriages to head quarters; and sometimes they went even
upon the field of battle in these carriages, not mounting on horseback
until the preparations were beginning for some important manoeuvre, or
for a general movement. The same thing had been done throughout the
Thirty Years' war, both by the Bavarian, imperial, and afterwards by the
Swedish officers of rank. And it marks the great diffusion of these
luxuries about this era, that on occasion of the reinstalment of two
princes of Mecklenburg, who had been violently dispossessed by
Wallenstein, upwards of eighty coaches mustered at a short notice, partly
from the territorial nobility, partly from the camp. Precisely, however,
at military head quarters, and on the route of an army, carriages of this
description were an available and a most useful means of transport.
Cumbrous and unweildy they were, as we know by pictures; and they could
not have been otherwise, for they were built to meet the roads.
Carriages of our present light and _reedy_ (almost, one might say,
_corky_) construction would, on the roads of Germany or of England,
in that age, have foundered within the first two hours. To our
ancestors, such carriages would have seemed playthings for children.
Cumbrous as the carriages of that day were, they could not be more so
than artillery or baggage wagons: where these could go, coaches could
go. So that, in the march of an army, there was a perpetual guaranty
to those who had coaches for the possibility of their transit. And
hence, and not because the roads were at at all better than they have
been generally described in those days, we are to explain the fact,
that both in the royal camp, in Lord Manchester's, and afterwards in
General Fairfax's and Cromwell's, coaches were an ordinary part of the
camp equipage. The roads, meantime, were as they have been described,
viz., ditches, morasses, and sometimes channels for the course of small
brooks. Nor did they improve, except for short reaches, and under
peculiar local advantages, throughout that century. Spite of the roads,
however, publick carriages began to pierce England, in various lines,
from the era of 1660. Circumstantial notices of these may be found in
Lord Auckland's (Sir Frederic Eden's) large work on the poor laws.
That to York, for example, (two hundred miles,) took a fortnight in
the journey, or about fourteen miles a day. But Chamberlayne, who had
a personal knowledge of these public carriages, says enough to show
that, if slow, they were cheap; half a crown being the usual rate for
fifteen miles, (_i.e._, 2_d._ a mile.) Public conveyances, multiplying
rapidly, could not but diffuse a general call for improved roads;
improved both in dimensions and also in the art of construction. For
it is observable, that, so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, England,
the most equestrian of nations, already presented to its inhabitants
a general system of decent bridle roads. Even at this day, it is
doubtful whether any man, taking all hinderances into account, and
having laid no previous relays of horses, could much exceed the exploit
of Carey, (afterwards Lord Monmouth,) a younger son of the first Lord
Hunsden, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. Yet we must not forget that the
particular road concerned in this exploit was the Great North Road,
(as it is still called by way of distinction,) lying through Doncaster
and York, between the northern and southern capitals of the island.
But roads less frequented were tolerable as bridle roads; whilst all
alike, having been originally laid down with no view to the broad and
ample coaches, from 1570 to 1700, scratched the panels on each side
as they crept along. Even in the nineteenth century, I have known a
case in the sequestered district of Egremont, in Cumberland, where a
post chaise, of the common narrow dimensions, was obliged to retrace
its route of fourteen miles, on coming to a bridge built in some remote
age, when as yet post chaises were neither known nor anticipated, and,
unfortunately, too narrow by three or four inches. In all the provinces
of England, when the soil was deep and adhesive, a worse evil beset
the stately equipage. An Italian of rank, who has left a record of
his perilous adventure, visited, or attempted to visit, Petworth, near
London, (then a seat of the Percys, now of Lord Egremont,) about the
year 1685. I forget how many times he was overturned within one
particular stretch of five miles; but I remember that it was a subject
of gratitude (and, upon meditating a return by the same route a subject
of pleasing hope) to dwell upon the softlying which was to be found
in that good-natured morass. Yet this was, doubtless, a pet road,
(sinful punister! dream not that I glance at _Pet_worth,) and an
improved road. Such as this, I have good reason to think, were most
of the roads in England, unless upon the rocky strata which stretch
northwards from Derbyshire to Cumberland and Northumberland. The public
carriages were the first harbingers of a change for the better; as
these grew and prospered, slender lines of improvement began to vein
and streak the map. And Parliament began to show their zeal, though
not always a corresponding knowledge, by legislating backwards and
forwards on the breadth of wagon wheel tires, &c. But not until our
cotton system began to put forth blossoms, not until our trade and our
steam engines began to stimulate the coal mines, which in _their_ turn
stimulated _them_, did any great energy apply itself to our roads. In
my childhood, standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters at
the front windows of my mother's carriage, I remember one unvarying
set of images before us. The postilion (for so were all carriages then
driven) was employed, not by fits and starts, but always and eternally,
in _quartering_ [3] _i.e._, in crossing from side to side--according to
the casualties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length of
lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a horse, filled to
the brim with standing pools of rain water; and the collateral chambers
of these ruts kept from becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as the
Romans called _lirae_, to maintain the footing upon which _lirae_, so
as not to swerve, (or, as the Romans would say, _delirare_,) was a
trial of some skill both for the horses and their postilion. It was,
indeed, next to impossible for any horse, on such a narrow crust of
separation, not to grow _delirious_ in the Roman metaphor; and the
nervous anxiety, which haunted me when a child, was much fed by this
very image so often before my eye, and the sympathy with which I
followed the motion of the docile creature's legs. Go to sleep at the
beginning of a stage, and the last thing you saw--wake up, and the
first thing you saw--was the line of wintry pools, the poor off-horse
planting his steps with care, and the cautious postilion gently applying
his spur, whilst manoeuvring across this system of grooves with some
sort of science that looked like a gypsy's palmistry; so equally
unintelligible to me were his motions, in what he sought and in what
he avoided.

I may add, by way of illustration, and at the risk of gossiping, which,
after all, is not the worst of things, a brief notice of my very first
journey. I might be then seven years old. A young gentleman, the son
of a wealthy banker, had to return home for the Christmas holidays to
a town in Lincolnshire, distant from the public school where he was
pursuing his education about a hundred miles. The school was in the
neighborhood of Greenhay, my father's house. There were at that time
no coaches in that direction; now (1833) there are many every day. The
young gentleman advertised for a person to share the expense of a post
chaise. By accident, I had an invitation of some standing to the same
town, where I happened to have some female relatives of mature age,
besides some youthful cousins. The two travellers elect soon heard of
each other, and the arrangement was easily completed. It was my earliest
migration from the paternal roof; and the anxieties of pleasure, too
tumultuous, with some slight sense of undefined fears, combined to
agitate my childish feelings. I had a vague, slight apprehension of
my fellow-traveller, whom I had never seen, and whom my nursery maid,
when dressing me, had described in no very amiable colors. But a good
deal more I thought of Sherwood Forest, (the forest of Robin Hood,)
which, as I had been told, we should cross after the night set in. At
six o'clock I descended, and not, as usual, to the children's room,
but, on this special morning of my life, to a room called the breakfast
room: where I found a blazing fire, candles lighted, and the whole
breakfast equipage, as if for my mother, set out, to my astonishment,
for no greater personage than myself. The scene being in England, and
on a December morning, I need scarcely say that it rained: the rain
beat violently against the windows, the wind raved; and an aged servant,
who did the honors of the breakfast table, pressed me urgently to eat.
I need not say that I had no appetite: the fulness of my heart, both
from busy anticipation, and from the parting which was at hand, had
made me incapable of any other thought or attention but such as pointed
to the coming journey. All circumstances in travelling, all scenes and
situations of a representative and recurring character, are
indescribably affecting, connected, as they have been, in so many
myriads of minds, more especially in a land which is sending off forever
its flowers and blossoms to a clime so remote as that of India, with
heart-rending separations, and with farewells never to be repeated.
But, amongst them all, none cleaves to my own feelings more indelibly,
from having repeatedly been concerned, either as witness or as a
principal party in its little drama, than the early breakfast on a
wintry morning long before the darkness has given way, when the golden
blaze of the hearth, and the bright glitter of candles, with female
ministrations of gentleness more touching than on common occasions,
all conspire to rekindle, as it were for a farewell gleam, the holy
memorials of household affections. And many have, doubtless, had my
feelings; for, I believe, few readers will ever forget the beautiful
manner in which Mrs. Inchbald has treated such a scene in winding up
the first part of her "Simple Story," and the power with which she has
invested it.

Years, that seem innumerable, have passed since that December morning
in my own life to which I am now recurring; and yet, even to this
moment, I recollect the audible throbbing of heart, the leap and rushing
of blood, which suddenly surprised me during a deep lull of the wind,
when the aged attendant said, without hurry or agitation, but with
something of a solemn tone, "That is the sound of wheels. I hear the
chaise. Mr. H---- will be here directly." The road ran, for some
distance, by a course pretty nearly equidistant from the house, so
that the groaning of the wheels continued to catch the ear, as it
swelled upon the wind, for some time without much alteration. At length
a right-angled turn brought the road continually and rapidly nearer
to the gates of the grounds, which had purposely been thrown open. At
this point, however, a long career of raving arose; all other sounds
were lost; and, for some time, I began to think we had been mistaken,
when suddenly the loud trampling of horses' feet, as they whirled up
the sweep below the windows, followed by a peal long and loud upon the
bell, announced, beyond question, the summons for my departure. The
door being thrown open, steps were heard loud and fast; and in the
next moment, ushered by a servant, stalked forward, booted and fully
equipped, my travelling companion--if such a word can at all express
the relation between the arrogant young blood, just fresh from assuming
the _toga virilis,_ and a modest child of profound sensibilities, but
shy and reserved beyond even English reserve. The aged servant, with
apparently constrained civility, presented my mother's compliments to
him, with a request that he would take breakfast. This he hastily and
rather peremptorily declined. Me, however, he condescended to notice
with an approving nod, slightly inquiring if I were the young gentleman
who shared his post chaise. But, without allowing time for an answer,
and striking his boot impatiently with a riding whip, he hoped I was
ready. "Not until he has gone up to my mistress," replied my old
protectress, in a tone of some asperity. Thither I ascended. What
counsels and directions I might happen to receive at the maternal
toilet, naturally I have forgotten. The most memorable circumstance
to me was, that I, who had never till that time possessed the least
or most contemptible coin, received, in a network purse, six glittering
guineas, with instructions to put three immediately into Mr. H----'s
hands, and the others when he should call for them.

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