UBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE SONGS, POEMS, AND VERSES WaDier4Bo»tail.PlLSc. gongs, Poems, ^ Verses BY Helen, Lady DufFerin (COUNTESS OF GIFFORD) Edited, with a Memoir and some Account of the Sheridan Family, by her Son THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA WITH PORTRAIT THIRD EDITION LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1894 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh HELEN'S TOWER Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream perchance How the Greek beauty from the Scaean Gate Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. Hearts would leap otherwise at thy advance, Lady to whom this Tower is consecrate ! Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate. Yet, unlike hers, was blessed by every glance. The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange : A transitory shame of long ago, It dies into the sand from which it sprang ; But thine Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change ; God's Self laid stable earth's foundations so, When all the morning stars together sang. Robert Browning. j4f rii z6, 1870. CONTENTS A Sketch of my Mother ..... The Irish Emigrant ...... Song, April 30, 1833 ...... The Charming Woman ..... The Mother's Lament, showing how a family resemblance is not always desirable The Fine Young English Gentleman, dedicated to Charles Sheridan, Esq., and his fellow clerks at the Admiralty . The Bay of Dublin . Terence's Farewell to Kathleen Katey's Letter . Sweet Kilkenny Town Song, from her lover to a Lady with nose .... Disenchanted Fame ..... PAGE I 105 109 III 115 • 119 . 124 • 126 . 128 • 131 a beau tiful • 135 137 . 140 Vlll SONGS, POEMS, AND VERSES PAGE Oh sing no more ! . . . . . .142 The Change . . . . . . .144 And have I lost Thee? . . . . .146 I AM weary . . . . . . .148 Chactas' Lament for Atala . . . .150 They bid me forget thee . . . . .152 On my Child's Picture . . . . .154 Lines on a Clock given to my Son . . .158 To my dear Son, on his 21st birthday, with a Silver Lamp, on which was engraved " Fiat lux" 159 To my Son, June 21, 1848 ..... 161 To MY Son, Sunday Night, January 14, 1849 • ^^5 To MY Son, this 23rd January 1849 . . . 166 To MY Son, with a shabby present, this 21st of June 1852 168 To my dear Son, going to sea in the " Foam," June 21, 1854 ...... 170 To MY Son. Rondo. To be sung on the 21st of all Junes, but more especially on this Thursday, 1855 172 To MY dearest Son, with a Chain made from my hair, June 21, i860 ..... 175 The Gates of Somnauth . . . , .177 On a Picture of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William and Lady Somerville, playing on the piano . . . . . . . .182 CONTENTS Consulting the " Sticks of Fate " The Emigrant Ship .... Donna Inez's Confession To Janie Ellice, on quitting Glenquoich, where my Son had lain ill of a dangerous fever To Mr. Samuel Rogers, from my bed this ist of January 1843 .... The Nuns of Minsk .... The German Teacher The Dunrobin Garland Mrs. Harris's Soliloquy, while threading her needle ...... On a Picture of a Chinese Procession, "going out to meet the Spring " To the Seine, near Etiolles The Dead Language .... A Lament on the Weather Meditations on the Poor Law, an Election Squi An Insulted Box .... A Valentine ..... A Valentine ..... Prologue, to the play of "Richelieu " . Epjlogue, to the play of " Patronage " . Epilogue, to the play of " Ernani " Prologue ...... To Helen Sheridan .... IX PAGE 184 188 198 200 201 206 209 213 218 224 226 230 237 240 243 245 247 250 253 255 SONGS, POEMS, AND VERSES PAGE The " Saldanha," by Thomas Sheridan . .256 In Memory of the Late Earl of Gifford, by the Hon. Mrs. Norton (Lady Stirling-Maxwell ofKeir) 261 A FEW Thoughts on Keys ..... 269 Finesse, or a busy Day in Messina, Comedy in Three Acts 287 List of Works by the members of the Family of Sheridan . . . . . . .421 List of Works of Adam Blackwood and his descendants ....... 430 The Sheridan Genealogy . . . . .431 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER A FOND desire to preserve the memory of those we love from obHvion is an almost universal sentiment, whether we build the tomb of Mausolus or carve the name of Rosalind on the forest trees in Arden. It is this motive which has led me to collect and publish the poems and songs of my mother ; for a book once published has put on the robes of immortality ; it becomes a KTrj/jia e's del, an indestructible witness to the existence and individuality of its author. Nor need I apologise for having undertaken this pious labour, for some of the pieces have already received a warm welcome, not only in England, but also in " Greater Britain." One of them, the " Irish Emigrant," has attained to world-wide fame, and on the other side of the Atlantic is wont to bring the audience to its feet. Another, " The Charming Woman," when it first appeared many years ago, was sung in the streets and theatres as well as in the drawing-rooms of London ; while one or two of the longer poems have continued B ^/ 2 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER to be recognised favourites at popular recitations. Since these have pleased, I have been induced to add others to the number, and to give to vi'hat has already been published a more stable existence than belonged to the fleeting form in which my mother's verses were originally disseminated. Printed in this small volume, they will, I trust, be allowed a niche in the literature of our century. I have had some doubts whether I should add to the others the verses addressed to myself; but it seemed to me that poems which expressed such genuine love in so direct and simple a manner would probably appeal to many a mother's heart, who would be glad to find expressed in musical language the thoughts which were struggling for utterance in her own breast. Nor have I hesitated to add the lighter and more trivial pieces which will be found at the end of the volume, because, in combination with the pathetic ones which precede them, they will convey some notion of the playful, sunny temperament which sparkled on the surface of their author's illimitable depths of feeling. At a future time I hope to publish a selection of my mother's letters. A few amusing ones have already EARLY YEARS 3 been dovetailed into some recently-published memoirs, and two of them I have now reproduced. She could not, indeed, put pen to paper without betraying the innocent gaiety of her disposition, — a gaiety as tender as it was witty, — for her very laughter was a caress. In accomplishing this latter task I intend giving a more elaborate account of my mother's life ; mean- while, I have thought that those who may be tempted to glance at the following pages might be glad to know a little about their writer. I have also introduced a short account of the family from which she sprung, as well as of that into which she married. Helen, Lady Dufferin, or, to give her title in full, Helen, Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye, was the daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and the grand-daughter of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Butler- Sheridan. The Sheridans, though they fell afterwards upon evil days, were originally an ancient, affluent, and important family, possessing castles and lands in the County Cavan, a tract of which is marked in the old maps of the period as " the Sheridan country " ; ^ but ^ " In Cavan, the ancient Brefny East the families mentioned in an olil map bearing date 1607 are the Sheridans or O'Sheridans, and the O'Reillys." — Notes ok the Sheridain. 4 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER in Queen Elizabeth's time their property was escheated, as Thomas Sheridan bitterly complained before the bar of the House of Commons in 1680.^ They were driven from their homes, and were forced during the next two hundred years to fight the battle of life under what were always discouraging and sometimes desperate conditions. It is, perhaps, to these persecutions of Fate that their continuous intellectual activity may be attributed. The first of the line who laboured in the world of letters was Denis Sheridan, the son of Donald and of a daughter of the O'Neill. He must have been born about the year 1600.^ He had quitted the CathoHc ^ " In clearing myself of this aspersion (I.e. of too great devotion to the interests of the Duke of York, afterwards James II.), I must say something, which nought but necessity can excuse from vanity, in that I was born a gentleman of one of the ancientest families and related to many considerable in Ireland. In one County there is a castle and a large demesne, in another a greater tract of land for several miles together, yet known by our name. My grandfather was the last that enjoyed our estate ; and my father, left an orphan at the beginning of King James's reign, found himself dispossessed and exposed to the world. - — that whole County, with five others in Ulster, being entirely escheated to the Crown." — Thomas Sheridan at the Bar of the Houze of Commons, 1680. 2 " Behind the Palace of Kilmore, where Bedell's bones repose, the traveller will come upon an intricate network of Lake scenery, among hills and wooded flats. Here is Trinity Island, where stand the remains of an old Abbey, and many legends about the Sheridans cluster round this island. It is said that the first of the family settled here from Spain, being sent over by the Pope of Rome in the fifth or sixth century, and DENIS SHERIDAN 5 fold to become a Protestant clergyman, and a devoted disciple of the saintly Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, under whose direction he translated the English version of the Bible into Irish. Bishop Bedell died in Mr. Sheridan's house in the year 1642. From his sister, Sarah Sheridan, descended, in the third generation, the gallant General Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan. Denis Sheridan had four sons, three of whom were men of mark in their day, one of them, William, succeeding Bedell in the See of Kilmore ; another, Patrick, becoming Bishop of Cloyne ; while the third, Thomas, was the author of a very remarkable work, published in 1677, entitled The Rise and Power of Parliaments. It has recently been republished and edited by Mr. Saxe Bannister, who has added an founded a school of learning on the island, which he enriched with a library of manuscripts. This insular University was presided over from generation to generation by one of the Sheridan family, and an Irish manuscript, now in the University of Rheims, was indited by one of the name. Considerably north of Trinity Island is Cloughoughter Castle where Bedell was imprisoned. The Castle stands on a small island, and is a beautiful ruin. Here lived Donald Sheridan, the father of Denis, who translated the Holy Scriptures into Irish, which were afterwards published by Robert Boyle, and are now known as the Irish Bible. Donald Sheridan was married to a daughter of the O'Neill, and had two sons, Denis and another, and a daughter who was the grandmother of the gallant Sarsfield." — Notes on the Sheridans. 6 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER interesting sketch of the author's Hfe. Under James the Second, Thomas Sheridan was made a Privy Councillor and Secretary to the Government of Ireland, and received the honour of Knighthood, as his son did also. After James's overthrow, he adhered to the fortunes of the fallen King, and accompanied him in exile to France. "There he wrote a history of the time, which has obtained great praise from the highest authorities. Sir James Mackintosh and Lord Macaulay, both of whom have made large use of the unprinted manuscript now preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor."^ Thomas Sheridan married a natural daughter of his Sovereign, and by her became father of the Sir Thomas Sheridan, one of " the seven men of Moidart," who followed Prince Charles to Scotland in the '45. In connection with this fact I may mention a curious coincidence. Many years ago I accompanied the late Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, then Lord and Lady Stafford, upon a yachting cruise shortly after their marriage. We eventually reached Cromartie, the ancient seat of the attainted Earls of Cromartie, of whom Lady Stafford was the representative. One day after dinner ^ Editor's Preface to The Rise and Poiver of Parliaments. A REMINISCENCE OF THE 45 7 I happened to see a large old-fashioned chest under the sideboard. I asked Lady Stafford what was in it. She said that it contained the Cromartie papers. Being fond of old-world reminiscences, I proposed that we should open it. The housekeeper having come with her key, I stretched my hand at random among the heap of documents within, and lighted on a bundle of worn and yellow letters. The very first that we opened proved to be an order, written and signed by Sir Thomas Sheridan, who acted as the Prince's Secretary, instructing the Earl of Cromartie of that day to burn down the Castle of the Earl of Sutherland. It was curious that the first time that this paper saw the light since reaching its destination, three persons so intimately connected with the original three concerned in its subject-matter, should have been alone together. Sir Thomas Sheridan's daughter became the wife of Colonel Guillaume, A.D.C. to King William, on which occasion she received back part of the old Sheridan property. Of James, the fourth son of Denis, we know but little. One of his sons, Daniel, must have been a phenomenal Sheridan, for he amassed a large fortune 8 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER in San Domingo. He became a subject of the King of France, who invested his son, Jacques, with the Marquisate of Etiau. This Jacques' daughter and heiress, Jeanne Sheridan, married the Marquis de Maille de la Tour Landry, the head of one of the oldest families in France, and was the mother of the Comtesse d'Hautefort, who attended the Duchesse de Berry in prison. The only literary remains of the two Sheridan Bishops that have been preserved are some sermons and two volumes of discourses, the one published in 1704, and the other in 1720. In the next generation we have in Thomas Sheridan an author in whom the less serious but more attractive qualities of the race were eminently apparent. Dr. Thomas Sheridan, the son of Denis Sheridan's fourth son, James, was born in 1687, and, having adopted the " profession of a Schoolmaster, he rose to great eminence both as a teacher and as a scholar." 1 But what appears to have principally endeared him to his friends were his extraordinary wit, his liveliness, his good nature, his simplicity, and an absence of worldly wisdom worthy of ^ Encfclopiedia Britannka. THOMAS SHERIDAN 9 Dominie Sampson. These were the traits which so captivated Swift, and not only Swift, but Stella, and this to such a degree that the ferocious Dean soon found life intolerable without the constant companionship of Sheridan.^ Sheridan used to pass months in Swift's house in Dubhn, and Swift in turn was a continual guest at Quilca, or rather Ouilcalgh, a country house which, with a small estate, had come into Sheridan's possession. It was here that the plan of the Drapier's Letters was discussed between the two, that Gulliver s Travels received their final touches, and that, in conjunction with Swift, Sheridan edited the Intelligencer. Of Thomas Sheridan's attainments as a scholar it is scarcely necessary to speak ; they were universally recognised at the time. But the only records of his eminence in this direction which have survived are his translations in verse of the Philoctetes of Sophocles, and of the 6'^^/r^5 of Juvenal published in 1745." Quilcalgh was also the site of Stella's Bower. 1 People used to say that Sheridan's wit and sweet gaiety was the harp of David, that could play the evil spirit out of Saul, i.e. the Dean. 2 Lord Cork says of Thomas Sheridan that " not a day passed that he did not make a rebus, an anagram or a madrigal. He was idle, poor, and gay ; knew more of books than of men ; and was completely ignorant of the value of money." — Biographic Ginerale. 10 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER His son, Thomas Sheridan, the fourth in descent from Denis, was born about 1719. As his father died a poor man, owing to his having "a better knowledge of books, than of men, or of the value of money," Thomas Sheridan had to gain his own living. From early days, even at school, he seems to have had a passion for acting, and he started by adopting the stage as his profession, with the usual results. But his chief claim to literary consideration rests upon his enthusiastic efforts in favour of a better system of education than that which was then in vogue. To this cause he devoted a great portion of his life and of his resources, and in recognition of his efforts he received ad eundem degrees both from Oxford and Cambridge. He wrote a play, several works on education, with a course of lectures on elocution, and two dissertations on language, a biography of Swift, and a general dictionary. He also collected, with a view to publication, a quarto volume of his father's writings, but those have unfortunately dis- appeared. He was the intimate friend of Garrick and of Johnson, — for whom he was instrumental in pro- curing a pension, — of Wedderburn, of Archbishop Markham, and of the author of Pamela. He died RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN II in 1788, leaving two sons, Charles, who became a member of the Irish Parliament and wrote a History of the Revolution in Sweden in 1772, and a younger one, the author of The School for Scandal. Of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, my great-grand- father, it is not necessary that I should say much. His life still remains to be written.^ No famous man has been more unfortunate in his biographers. Moore planned his work upon too large a scale, and tired of his task before he had half finished it. Moreover, though Sheridan's countryman, or perhaps for that reason, he was, as I have heard, rather jealous of him. The author of Sheridan and his Times says he bore a grudge against Sheridan for having, good-humouredly, twitted him with having plagiarised some of his verses. The Prince Regent, when he read the book, said the writer had better abscond, or justice would lay him by the heels " for cutting and maiming and barbarously attempting the Life of Sheridan ! ! " Moore's subacid tone becomes more accentuated in his second volume ; but almost at the onset of the work he begins carping at Sheridan for the pains he took to refine and polish the dialogues in his plays. ^ I understand that an eminent writer has actually taken this task in hand. 12 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER But, as is remarked in the following extract from a review of Moore's book, written, I believe, by- Jeffrey, he "who was for thirty years the most brilliant talker — the greatest conversational wit of the splendid circle in which he moved — could not possibly have been a man to whom preparation was generally- necessary in order to shine ; and cannot be suspected of having had a cold or sluggish fancy, which did not give its golden harvests till it was diligently laboured and manured. His conceptions, on the contrary, seem always to have flowed from him with great copious- ness and rapidity. But he had taste as well as genius, and his labour was employed, not in making what was bad tolerable, but in making what was good better and best. Ariosto is said to have written the first stanza of his Orlando ten or twelve times over." ^ Nor does Moore seem altogether pleased at the equal terms upon which Sheridan, the son of an actor and the grandson of a schoolmaster, mingled with the smart and exclusive society of the day. But the great houses of London have always extended a warm welcome to genius, however humble its origin, though as a matter of fact, if a claim to good birth ^ Edinburgh Revienv, December 1826. R. B. SHERIDAN S BIOGRAPHERS I3 is dependent upon ancient descent and feudal distinc- tion, Sheridan was as well born as Pitt, Fox, North, or any of the iine gentlemen with whom he associated ; for, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, his direct ancestors had been as princes in the land, and his own branch of the family were the Chiefs of the Name. As for Mr. Smyth's Memoir^ though accepted as authoritative from the fact of his having been young Sheridan's tutor, and there- fore intimate with the father, I have often heard my grandmother, who was a very calm and trust- worthy witness, say that it was full of exaggerations and misrepresentations. Subsequent authors have drawn their materials from these somewhat tainted sources. "Tradition, too, has attached to his name dozens of mythical anecdotes, as examples of his wit, his frolicsome humour, his habits of procrastination, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his methods of escaping from them, for which there was really no foundation. The real Sheridan, as he was known in private life, is irrevocably gone. Even Moore, writing so soon after his death, has to lament that he could find out nothing about him."^ ^ Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER Moreover, as has often happened with other notable persons, those who have recorded their impressions in regard to Sheridan knew him only when he was old and broken, his gaiety all quenched (though his wit still flickered in the socket), the adherent of a disorganised party, a man utterly ruined by the burning of Drury Lane Theatre, pestered by petty debts, yet still sufficiently formidable to provoke detraction at the hands of his political enemies, while his fame exposed him to the curiosity and criticism of the gossips. These thick clouds have obscured the brightness of his early manhood and the social and political ascendency which he enjoyed during his maturer years. It is evident that, when he had scarcely ceased to be a boy, his geniality, his good- nature, which his subsequent trials neither soured nor exhausted, his charming manners, and his hand- some person, — his splendid eyes were the very home of genius, — as much as his extraordinary liveliness and wit had made him a favourite with the best English society, where he was as popular with men as with women, while his eloquence, his Parlia- mentary aptitude, and, above all, his solid abilities, which his more brilliant graces have thrown into the R. B. Sheridan's character 15 background, at once placed him on a level with the greatest orators and statesmen of that epoch. That he had failings — when was genius without them ? — cannot be denied, but their results have been absurdly magnified. He was addicted to wine, — as who was not in those days ? — but in his case the nervous temperament which made him what he was, rendered its effects upon his brain and constitution exception- ally deleterious.^ At the end of his life he was involved in pecuniary difficulties ; but these arose partly from a calamity for which he was not respon- sible, and partly from an ineradicable and apparently hereditary inability to attend to what is called 1 Byron remarks rather bitterly that the glass which half maddened Sheridan failed to affect the coarser brains of his more stolid intimates, who basked in the sunshine of his gaiety. In contrast to Sheridan's weak-headedness, I may cite the instance of my paternal grandfather, who never had a day's illness, and lived till eighty-one. He would occasionally begin a convivial evening with what he called a " clearer," i.e. a bottle of port, and continued with four bottles of claret. He always retired to bed in a state of perfect though benevolent sobriety. He enjoyed, indeed, as President of some Social Club, the title of "The Great Benevolence of Ireland." I have reason to complain that my two grandfathers, by over -drawing the family account with Bacchus, have left me a water drinker, — a condition of degeneracy which caused, I remember, serious concern to the older friends of the family. l6 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER " business." He began life without a sixpence ; he made a disinterested marriage ; from a feeling of chivalrous delicacy, which won for him the admiration of Dr. Johnson, he would not allow his wife to sing in public, though in this way he might have added ^2000 a year to his income ; he was the boon companion and friend for forty years of men who lived in the greatest wealth and splendour ; that is to say, he was surrounded with every temptation to extravagance ; and yet, when after his death, his affairs were inquired into, his debts were found to amount to a comparatively trifling sum.^ His, too, was a gambling age, but, though fond of betting upon political events, he never touched a card or handled the dice box. On the other hand, let it be remembered, that even when administering to the amusement of his con- temporaries, and writing for a pleasure-seeking public, at a period of considerable licence, he has never sullied his pages by an impure allusion, a gross joke, or an un- ^ Moore says less than ^^5000. Fox's debts were paid twice over by his friends, and amounted to tens of thousands, as also did Pitt's. Sheridan, on the other hand, coined from his brains an ample income, which endured in full volume until he was burnt out. Had it been but prudently administered, it would, even so, have kept him in affluence for the rest of his life. SHERIDAN AS A SPEAKER I7 worthy sentiment ; while during his long Parliamentary career it was always on the side of justice, of liberty, and of humanity ^ — in whose sacred cause he sacrificed repeated opportunities of emolument, and some of Life's most valued prizes,^ — that he was found fighting. Succeeding generations of his countrymen may well afford, therefore, to forget the pathetic infirmities which dimmed the splendour of Sheridan's latter years, out of respect for one of the greatest speakers that has ever entranced the House of Commons, and in gratitude for the gift his genius has bequeathed them in his two immortal Comedies, and the incomparable Critic. Of Sheridan's speech against Warren Hastings, ^ Sheridan opposed the war with America ; he deprecated the coalition between Fox and North 5 he advocated the abolition of slavery ; he de- nounced the tyranny of Warren Hastings ; he condemned the trade restrictions on Ireland ; he fought for Catholic emancipation ; he did his best to save the French Royal Family. He was also in favour of an eight hours' day, ^ He might at any time, had he so chosen, have " hid his head in a coronet," as he himself expressed it. On another occasion he remarked, rather pitifully, that it was easy enough for his rich and titled colleagues to exhibit a virtuous indifference to place, but for so poor a man as himself to prefer his principles to place required a different kind of heroism. From a sense of honour towards his party he more than once refused office, especially in 1804 when offered it by Addington, with whom he agreed in opinion. — Diet, of English History. C 1 8 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER Mr. Burke declared it to be "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there is any record or tradition." Mr. Fox said : " All that he had ever heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it dwindled into nothing, and vanished like a vapour before the sun," Mr. Pitt acknowledged that "it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind." Burke said to Fox while Sheridan was speaking, "That is the true style, — something between poetry and prose, and better than either." Byron said : " Whatever Sheridan has chosen to do has been the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy [The School for Scandal); the best opera, [The Duenna^ in my mind far before The Beggar's Opera); the best farce (772^ Critic); the best address [The Monologue on Gar rick); and, to crown all, delivered the best oration ever conceived or heard in this country." And Moore calls Sheridan : — The pride of the palace, the bower and the hall — The orator, dramatist, minstrel, — who ran Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all ; — " 'T'r>n/i " TOM SHERIDAN I9 Whose mind was an essence compounded with art. From the finest and best of all other men's powers ; — Who rul'd like a wizard, the world of the heart, And could call up its sunshine, or draw down its showers ; — Whose humour, as gay as the fire-fly's light, Play'd round every subject, and shone, as it pla/d ; — Whose wit, in the combat as gentle as bright. Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade ; — Whose eloquence, brightening whatever it tried, Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave, Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide, As ever bore Freedom aloft on its wave.^ Mr. Sheridan left two sons : Thomas, whose mother was Miss Linley, and Charles, born in 1 796, by a second marriage with Miss Ogle. I remember Charles very well, for he did not die till 1843. In his youth he showed great promise, but a brain fever must have injuriously affected his intellectual powers ; for, though extremely amiable, he had none of the brilliancy of those who had gone before him. He interested himself, however, in Greek affairs, and in 1 Though in his Life of Sheridan, Moore sometimes yielded to a feeling of petty jealousy, he was a good-natured man, and too clever himself not to appreciate genius, and in the above verses his truer instincts regained the mastery. 20 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER 1824 he published a volume on the Greek Revolu- tion, and in the following year a translation in verse of the Songs of Greece from the Romaic text. Thomas Sheridan, my grandfather, seems, on the contrary, to have been endovi^ed with all the wit of his father, and to have inherited from Miss Linley, whom he also resembled, the charm and sweet disposition which so endeared him to his friends. The author of Sheridan and his Times says that no man was ever more universally admired, and that such was the charm and easy grace of his wit, that, wherever he went, his presence was hailed with delight. Many of his amusing sayings have been repeated to me, of which the following is a specimen : One day his father, remonstrating with him in reference to some matter, exclaimed, " Why, Tom, my father would never have permitted me to do such a thing ! " — " Sir," said his son, in a tone of the greatest indignation, "do you presume to compare your father to my father ? " Unfortunately death struck Thomas Sheridan down in the flower of his manhood. Consumption, which had been fatal to his beautiful mother, displayed its baleful symptoms, and though the Government of the day gave him a small appoint- ment at the Cape of Good Hope, where it was hoped JOSEPH LE FANU 21 the climate would prove propitious to his health, it was all to no purpose, for he died there in 1817. He had married Henrietta Callander, a most lovely woman. By her he left seven children, three daughters and four sons, the youngest of whom was killed when a midshipman by a fall from the fore -top of H.M.S. Diamond in 1826, at the age of fifteen, in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro. Though Thomas Sheridan was a frequent writer of vers de societe^ he published nothing. His only literary effort which has survived is a very fine poem on the loss of the Saldanha in Lough Swilly. This piece has recently appeared in the Athencsum^ and I have taken upon myself to give it a home in this volume. But those of the Sheridans to whom I have thus briefly referred, are not the only scions of the house who have enriched the literature of their country with works of recognised value ; for it will be seen on reference to a table appended to this volume that during the last two hundred and fifty years the family has produced twenty -seven authors and more than two hundred works. Of the collateral contributors to its literary fame I will only mention two : Joseph 22 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER Sheridan Le Fanu, grandson of Brinsley Sheridan's sister Alicia, who wrote the House by the Churchyard^ Uncle Silas^ and some other powerful novels, as well as the delightful ballad of "Shamus O'Brien," and Sheridan Knowles, descended from Thomas Sheridan of Quilca, Swift's friend, the author of the Hunchback^ a play that still keeps the stage, as well as of other works and poems of considerable repute. The follow- ing short essay on the Life of Man which Joseph Le Fanu submitted, when a little boy, to his scandalised father, will show that the family wit continued to sparkle as brightly in the side channels as in the main current : — " A man's life," writes this young philosopher, " naturally divides itself into three distinct parts — the first, when he is planning and contriving all kinds of villainy and rascality. That is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived. Tliat is the Jiovjer of manhood and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world. That is the period of dotage. ^^ Mr. William Le Fanu, Joseph's brother, has also MISS CHAMBERLAINE 23 recently published a charming book, entitled Seventy Tears of Irish Life. Nor must we omit from the category of Sheridan authors the three remarkable women who became the wives of the last three Sheridans I have mentioned — Miss Chamberlaine, Miss Linley, and Miss Callander. Miss Chamberlaine, the grand -daughter of Sir Oliver Chamberlaine, was the wife of the second Thomas Sheridan and the mother of Richard Brinsley. She was an exceptionally clever woman, and there can be little doubt it was from her that the latter obtained the divine spark which converted the mere talents he may be supposed to have inherited from his father, into the genius which made him famous. She wrote two novels which enjoyed great popularity in their day, Sidney Bidulph and Nourjahad^ the former praised both by Mr. Fox and Lord North, and two plays. The Discovery and The Dupe. The Discovery was one of Garrick's stock pieces, and Sir Anthony Branville one of his favourite characters. Moore states that when The Rivals was running at Covent Garden, Garrick renewed The Discovery at Drury Lane, so that two pieces by the mother and the son were being acted at the same moment at the two great London theatres. 24 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER For Miss Linley, the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, I have not words to express my admiration. It is evident, from the universal testimony of all who knew her, that there has seldom lived a sweeter, gentler, more tender or lovable human being. Wilkes said of her : " She is superior to all I have heard of her, and is the most modest, pleasing, and delicate flower I have seen for a long time," Dr. Parr said she was " quite celestial." A friend of Rogers, the poet, wrote : "Miss Linley had a voice as of the cherub choir. She took my daughter on her lap, and sang a number of childish songs, with such a playfulness of manner and such a sweetness of look and voice as was quite enchanting." Garrick always alluded to her as " the Saint." One Bishop called her " the connecting link between a woman and an angel," and another said that " to look at her when singing was like looking in the face of a Seraph." Macaulay, in his Essay on Warren Hastings, says of her : " There, too, was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay." Her loveliness in all its unspeakable grace is still with us in the portraits of her by Romney, Gains- MISS LINLEY 2$ borough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Married to a man who never ceased to adore her,^ but who must have often tried her in many ways, she clung to him, as her touching letters attest, to the day of her death with unfailing devotion.^ The daughter of a musician at Bath who had to earn his bread by the exercise of his profession, when still little more than a child she found herself transferred, on her marriage, to the best society of London. But though surrounded, as a lovely young woman in her position was sure to be, by every sort of adulation, she neither lost her head nor her native simplicity ; and in an unpublished letter to her husband, written only a year or two before her death, she assures him with what glad alacrity she would quit the blaze of social splendour in which she was then living, — the worship of her admirers, — and the pleasures of the world, to return with him to the poverty and obscurity of their early life, if only he 1 There is a touching story of a friend hearing Sheridan, who occupied a bed-room adjoining his own, sobbing at night, weeks after his wife's death. - She writes to a friend : " Poor Dick and I have always been struggling against the stream, and shall probably continue to do so till the end of our lives ; yet we would not change sentiments and sensations with for all his estates." 26 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER would give the signal. As an artist she was supreme in her day, and will go down to posterity as Reynolds's "Saint Cecilia," and in the painted window of the Chapel of New College at Oxford, perhaps with even a truer application, as the fairest of the Christian graces. Gainsborough executed three pictures of her, one a magnificent full length of which Lord Rothschild is the fortunate possessor, and another of her and her sister Mary, also full length, now in the Gallery of Dulwich, as well as a lovely head of her with her brother Thomas as a lad looking over her shoulder. This last portrait is at Knole. The brother was drowned soon after when boating at the Duke of Ancaster's. Her sister Mary married Mr. Tickell, the grandson of the poet Tickell, Addison's friend. There exists a beautiful portrait of her by Romney in the possession of Baron Alfred de Rothschild. Mr. Tickell was killed by a fall from a window in the upper story of Hampton Court Palace. He was in the habit of reading, seated on its outside ledge, but no one ever knew how the accident occurred. He was an author of some distinction, being, as was said of him by Mathias, "one of the happiest occasional MRS. SHERIDAN NEE CALLANDER 2/ writers of his day, and possessed of great conversational talents." In the Dulwich gallery there are portraits, also by Gainsborough, of Mrs. Sheridan's father and her three brothers, all of whom were remarkably handsome. To one of these a melancholy interest attaches. The picture represents a young man in a naval uniform. Gainsborough painted it in a few hours, just before the poor boy left home to join his ship. From this voyage he never returned. Few things by Miss Linley have been published, but she wrote a great deal of very pretty poetry, instinct with a simple tender grace, such as resembled her own sweet self. The MSS. passed at her death into the possession of her great friend Mrs. Canning, and thence into that of the late Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who was fond of reading her verses aloud. The next Mrs. Sheridan, my mother's mother, was Caroline Henrietta Callander, the daughter of Colonel Callander of Ardkinglas and Craigforth,^ by Lady Elizabeth M'Donnell, daughter of the Earl of Antrim. Mrs. Sheridan was a very beautiful woman, 1 Colonel Callaniler, or Sir James Campbell, as he afterwards became, had an adventurous life, of which he gives an account in his memoirs published by Colburn and Bentlcy, 1832. 28 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER as was her sister Fanny, who married Sir James Graham of Netherby. From Lady Graham are descended the present Countess of Feversham and her not less lovely daughters the Duchess of Leinster, Lady Helen Vincent, and Lady Cynthia Graham ; while by the marriage of her eldest son. Sir Frederick Graham, with his cousin, Lady Hermione St. Maur, Mrs. Thomas Sheridan's grand-daughter, the beauty of both sisters in conjunction with that of the Sheridans lives again in the present Viscountess Grimston and the Duchess of Montrose, as it did, alas ! for only too brief a period in their sister the late Lady Houghton, the wife of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Mrs. Thomas Sheridan, after some years of a very happy life with her husband, whose social popularity she fully shared, accompanied him to the Cape. My mother was the only one of her children she took with her. On their return, after Mr. Sheridan's death, their ship called at St. Helena, where my mother remembered getting a sight of Napoleon walking in his garden. On her arrival in England, the King was good enough to give Mrs. Sheridan apartments in Hampton Court Palace. She was, of course, poor; but, being a woman of a firm A HANDSOME FAMILY 29 mind and great good sense, she contrived, out of the small pension to which she became entitled at her husband's death, to pay off his few debts, and to give every necessary educational advantage to her seven children. She also wrote several novels, one of them, Carwell^ a story of great power, Sydney Smith admired Carwell very much j but, as the hero comes to be hanged, he observed that, "though he knew Mrs. Sheridan was a Callander, he was unaware that she was a Newgate Calendar ! " I now come to the seventh generation in de- scent from Denis Sheridan, the friend, host, and collaborator of Bishop Bedell. During more than two centuries the race had been waging a harassing and often calamitous battle with the world and fortune ; but on its intellectual side it had always been eminent and occasionally triumphant. Happier days are henceforth in store for it, and, probably, no family, as regards both its men and its women, has ever blossomed out into such a glowing galaxy of beauty, wit, and talent as were concentrated in its later representatives. The Memoirs of the day, the letter writers, even the historians, have noted their pre- 30 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER eminence in these respects. Frances Kemble, in her Records of a Girlhood^ writes : " The Nortons' house was close to the issue from St. James's Park. I remember passing an evening with them there when a host of distinguished public and literary men were crowded into their small drawing-room, which was resplendent with the light of Sheridan beauty, male and female. Mrs. Sheridan (Miss Callander), the mother of the Graces, more beautiful than anybody but her daughters j Lady Graham, their beautiful aunt ; Mrs. Norton ; Mrs. Blackwood (Lady DufFerin) ; Georgina Sheridan (Duchess of Somerset and Queen of Beauty by universal consent) ; and Charles Sheridan, their younger brother, a sort of younger brother of the Apollo Belvedere. Certainly, I never saw such a bunch of beautiful creatures all growing on one stem. I remarked it to Mrs. Norton, who looked complacently round her tiny drawing-room, and said, ' Yes, we are rather good-looking people.'" Alas! only some of this brilliant group were destined to live out man's allotted span. Charles Sheridan, the youngest and perhaps the handsomest of the men, was an enchanting com- panion. Even when already enfeebled by the fell MR. BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 3I disease which destroyed his father and beautiful grand- mother, I remember him sitting in one of the drawing-rooms of this Embassy, of which he was a Secretary, when a ball was going on, surrounded by a circle of men and ladies, kept away from the dancing by his sallies. He died in a room which has now been thrown into my present Chancery, when he was only twenty -eight. His nephew, Fletcher Norton, the only one of my generation who had inherited something of the same grace and liveliness in con- versation, died in the same room of the same disease, a few years afterwards. Another brother, Frank, also died young in the Mauritius, where he was serving as Treasurer to the Government. Though of a different temperament, and not so lively as Charles, he was perhaps the cleverer and wittier of the two.^ 1 "In 1841, I spent many weeks with Lady DufTerin at Sorrento. The Sirens' caves along that coast are beautiful, and when poor Frank Sheridan sang in the summer evenings, his lovely voice filled the air with sounds enchanting enough to bring out the Sirens themselves. Such beauty, such talent, such wit and fascination ; you could listen all day long to his songs, recitations, stories, scenes acted — some beautiful and touching, some comic beyond description, — and never tire, — his spirits never flagging nor his fund of imagination ceasing." — Letter from the Honble. Mrs. Ward. 32 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER The eldest brother, Brinsley, ran away with a great heiress, Miss Grant, the daughter of Sir Colquhoun Grant, and was married at Gretna Green — Sir James Graham having lent them Netherby for their honey- moon. Though for a time justly incensed at this proceeding. Sir Colquhoun eventually became entirely reconciled with my uncle, consulted him in all his affairs, and left him his entire personal property, in addition to that which had been entailed upon Miss Grant. Mr. Brinsley Sheridan's son, Algernon Sheridan, now lives at Frampton Court, in Dorset- shire, having married Miss Motley, the daughter of the distinguished historian ; so that the Sheridans of the future will find in their beautiful home in England, and in the rolling downs and golden cornfields of Dorsetshire, a tardy compensation for the castles and territories in Cavan, of whose unjust con- fiscation Thomas Sheridan so bitterly complained in 1680. Florence, Lady Poltimore, is Mr. Brinsley Sheridan's only surviving daughter. Of my mother's two sisters, one married the Duke of Somerset, and, as Lady Seymour, was chosen to represent the Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton MRS. NORTON 33 Tournament.! She had two sons, Ferdinand, Earl St. Maur, who died after a few hours' illness in the prime of his manhood ; and Edward, who was killed in India at the age of twenty-four, by a bear which he had already mortally wounded. Both brothers were of the greatest promise. Earl St. Maur had distinguished himself as honorary Aide -de- Camp to Lord Clyde during the Indian Mutiny, and was mentioned in despatches, while Lord Edward had already evinced con- siderable intellectual vigour as a writer in the magazines. The other sister became the wife of Mr. Norton, a brother of Lord Grantley's, to whose title and estates her second son succeeded in 1875. In later life she married Sir William StirHng- Maxwell of Keir, the author of the Cloister Life of Charles V.^ and other well-known works. He was as modest and lovable as he was learned and accomplished, and was the only commoner in modern times to whom the Order of the Thistle has been given. As already mentioned, one of Mrs. Norton's sons, Fletcher, died at Paris. 1 "In the evening came the beauty, Lady Seymour, and anything so splendid I never gazed upon. Mrs. Norton sang and acted, and did everything that was delightful. Old Mrs. Sheridan, who, by the bye, is young and pretty, and authoress of Carwell, is my greatest admirer." — Lord Bcaconifield's Letters. D 34 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER The other, Brinsley (Lord Grantley), showed in early days a good deal of talent, and published, when about eighteen or nineteen, a series of poems, called Pinocchi. He died in 1877 at Capri, where he had made a romantic marriage, and found a very pretty bride, who made him a most loving and devoted wife. Lady Grantley, whom I had the happiness of seeing very frequently in 1890, when passing my summer holidays at Sorrento, died at Capri two years ago. The beauty of each of the sisters was of a different type, but they were all equally tall and stately. The Duchess of Somerset had large deep blue or violet eyes, black hair, black eyebrows and eyelashes, perfect features, and a complexion of lilies and roses — a kind of colouring seldom seen out of Ireland. Mrs. Norton, on the contrary, was a brunette, with dark burning eyes like her grandfather's, a pure Greek profile, and a clear olive complexion.^ The brothers were all over six feet. ^ " Gibson, the sculptor, whom I had asked what he thought of Englishwomen, said he had seen many handsome women, but none so lovely as Mrs. Norton." — Mary Somer-ville' s Memoirs, 1873. " Though neither as perfectly lovely as the Duchess of Somerset, nor as perfectly charming as Lady Dufferin, she (Mrs. Norton) produced a more striking impression than either of them, by the combination of LADY DUFFERIN 35 My mother, though her features were less regular than those of her sisters, was equally lovely and attractive. Her figure was divine, — the perfection of grace and symmetry, her head being beautifully set upon her shoulders. Her hands and feet were very small, many sculptors having asked to model the former.^ She had a pure sweet voice. She sang delightfully, and poetical genius with which she alone of the three was gifted ; with the brilliant wit and power of repartee which they (especially Lady Dufferin) possessed in common with her, united to the exceptional beauty with which they were all three endowed." — Records of a Girlhood, by Frances A. Kemble, London, 1878. Of Mrs. Norton, Shelley writes : " I never met a woman so perfectly charming, with so variable but always beautiful expression." 1 "Mrs. Norton's sister. Lady Dufterin, also very handsome, was delight- ful company and full of wit. No one else would have said, on hearing many shoes being cleaned outside her cabin door on a rough passage across the Irish Channel, ' Oh, my dear Carry, there must be centipedes on board ! ' " — Mrs. Ross in Murray's Magazine, '^une. 1890. " Mrs. Norton and Mrs. Blackwood are looking wonderfully handsome this year. I pointed them out to Madame Sebastiani, who was in great admiration of their beauty." — Malmesbury's Memoirs. "There were at this time three sisters, fairest amongst the fairest — Lady Seymour, Lady DufFerin, and Mrs. Norton — who afford the highest proofs of the transmission of hereditary qualities. Miss Linley was equally remarkable for the grace and charm of womanhood. The grand- children possessed the united gifts which won all hearts. No one who has ever met Lady DufFerin could forget her rare combination of grace, beauty, and wit." — Lord Lamington's In the Days of the Dandies. 36 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER herself composed many of the tunes to which both her pubhshed and her unpublished songs were set. She also wrote the music for some of Mrs. Norton's songs Her ear for music was so good that if she went to an opera over night, you would be sure to hear her sing- ing the principal airs in it the next morning. Though she never studied drawing, she had a natural talent both for figures and landscape painting. I have albums full of her water-colour sketches, and the illustrations to " The Honourable Impulsia Gushing- ton," which she did with a common quill pen, evince her intuitive aptitude for figure-drawing. She had also a charming habit, which her two sisters shared, and which has reappeared in some of my children, of illustrating her letters with the most amusing pen-and- ink scrawls and caricatures. She had mastered French before she was sixteen, as well as acquired some Latin. In after years she wrote in French as readily as in English, and she also learned German. Her talent for versifying showed itself very early. One or two of the pieces which will be found in the following pages were written while she was still a girl, or rather a child 5 for she may be said to have been married out of the schoolroom. Before either of them were THE BLACKWOODS 37 twenty-one, she and Mrs. Norton were paid ;^ioo by a publisher for a collection of songs they contributed between them. As I was unable to determine the respective authorship of these compositions, none of them appear in this volume. On her return with her widowed mother from the Cape, and until she was grown up, my mother lived uninterruptedly at Hampton Court, except on the occasion of one or perhaps two visits to Rossie Priory, the residence of Lord Kinnaird, who had been a great friend of her father. The only other circumstance connected with my mother's childhood which may be worth mentioning, is the fact that her nurse, a Mrs. Markham, only died last year at the age of one hundred and seven. My mother was " brought out " when she was scarcely seventeen ; and before she was half through the London season, my father, who was then a Com- mander in the Navy, and had recently returned from the China seas, met her at some ball, and fell at once in love with her. Her mother, with a large family was naturally not averse to any marriage which gave promise of a settled future for her eldest daughter. My father's family, however, took a different view of 38 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER the matter, and by no means approved of what they not unreasonably considered a very imprudent match. The Blackwoods originally came from Fife in Scotland. They passed over into Ulster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at the same time that James Hamilton, the first Lord Clandeboye, "settled" the northern half of the County of Down. Up to that time they seem to have been a family of no import- ance, though some high-sounding epitaphs of the time of Oueen Mary claim for them a rank and distinc- tion which no documents are extant to justify. But their coats of arms are displayed as early as 1400. The only persons of the name mentioned in history are William Blackwood, who died fighting against the English at the battle of Pinkie in 1547 j^ ^"^ ^'^ son, Adam, who was a trusted servant of Mary Queen of Scots, a member of her Council, and her representative in Poitou (the Province from which she drew her revenues as Queen Dowager of France). This Adam Blackwood was a man of learning and ability, as were also his sons. He settled permanently ^ This William is referred to in his son's epitaph as, " inclytorum majorum serie in Caledonia notus," but their fame has not stood the wear and tear of time. THE FRENCH BLACKWOODS 39 in France, and married a French wife, having been granted "titres de noblesse" by the French king. One of the sons became a distinguished Professor in the University of Paris ; another w^as killed at the assault of St. Paul I'Amiate, near Castres in Languedoc. Another of the name, Maximilian, commanded Mary Queen of Scots' guard on her journey from Paris to Calais, where she embarked for Scotland. Adam Blackwood wrote the Life of Mary Queen of Scots in French, and thus became the earliest of her biographers. He was a fervent Catholic, and, I regret to say, com- posed a Latin ode congratulating Charles IX. upon the massacre of St. Bartholomew. This indiscretion, however, he in part redeemed by presenting another complimentary poem in the same learned language to Henri IV. on his arrival in Poitiers. The male line of the French Blackwoods is now extinct, the last of the name, a Mademoiselle Scholastique, dying in 1837. The dispersal of both branches of the family, the one to Ireland and the other to France, was probably the result of straitened circumstances, and of the troubles engendered by Queen Mary's unhappy fate ; and each retained a treasured memorial of their dethroned 40 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER Sovereign, my own ancestor having brought away with him a beautiful miniature of the Queen ; and the French Blackwood a Livre d^Heures which she herself had given him. The latter is also now in my posses- sion ; and, to show how Providence watches over the sacred guild of bibliomaniacs, I may mention how it came there. Being engaged in collecting all the works ever written by members of my family, I had made a list of those published by the French Black- woods, many of which, in spite of the assistance of the eminent Mr. Quaritch, I had failed to acquire in London. Business calling me to Paris some thirty years ago, I put this Hst in my pocket, and repairing to the Quai d'Orsay, which is the home of old curiosity and book shops, I entered the first that took my fancy. When he saw my list, the bookseller shook his head j these sixteenth-century books, he said, were difficult to come by. However, he had one, and he added, " I know of another which, though not on your list, will interest you." He then routed out from his stores a small square volume of Latin prayers by Adam Blackwood, and told me that the originals had been written out and signed in the author's own hand on the fly-leaves of a Mass book which Queen Mary had AN OLD-WORLD TALE 4I given him, and which contained a further inscription to that effect. This missal had come recently into his hands, and he had sold it only a few days ago. It was from its purchaser that, some time afterwards, I acquired it. The Ulster Blackwoods sat in the Irish Parliament continuously throughout the best part of the last century. They were created Baronets in 1763, and were advanced to the Peerage in 1800 as Barons Dufferin and Clandeboye, in consideration of my great- uncle, James Lord Dufferin, having raised a regiment of horse during the French war. My great-grand- father, Sir John Blackwood, was strongly opposed to the Union, and on two occasions had refused an Earldom with which the Government of the day had proposed to gratify him ; ^ but his eldest son was a personal friend and neighbour of Castlereagh's, and of a different way of thinking. Through his mother he was the heir-general of the Hamiltons, Viscounts Clandeboye, Earls of Clanbrassil, on which account ^ On another occasion a Government emissary, who was a guest at Clandeboye, in admiring the crest upon the silver observed that it would be much improved were a coronet placed above it. " But how," said Sir John, " would that agree with the motto below ? " The motto was " Per vias rectas." 42 A SKETCH OF MY MOTHER the second title of Clandeboye was conferred upon him, or rather upon her. And here I am tempted to relate an old-world story which I have always thought would furnish a novel writer with one of those critical turning-points in his plot, which are so difficult to invent. James, second Viscount Clandeboye, who lived in the time of Charles the First, had married Lady Anne Carey, daughter of Henry Earl of Monmouth, and grand-daughter of the Sir Robert Carey to whom, when Queen EHzabeth breathed her last, the ring was thrown out of the window, with which he posted off to James the First at Edinburgh. By this lady. Lord Clandeboye, who subsequently became the first Earl of Clanbrassil, had a son, Henry, who married Lady Alice Moore, sister of the Earl of Drogheda. In his will Lord Clandeboye left all his estates in the County of Down, which were then considerable, to this only son ; but, should this son have no children, everything was to go to his next of kin. When Alice, Lady Clanbrassil, saw that she was not likely to have children, she suggested to her husband that he should make a will leaving the estates to herself and her brothers. Her husband objected that such a will would be waste paper, as the property LORD CLANBRASSIL's WILL 43 had been already entailed by his father on his cousin. The lady, however, persisting. Lord Clanbrassil, who is represented in his portrait with a handsome but weak face, consulted his mother as to what he should do. His mother warned him that if he made such a will, he would be sleeping within a month in the family vault at Bangor. Lady Alice, however, eventually prevailed, and, on the sudden death of her husband, whom she is supposed to have poisoned, her father-in- law's will, which settled the estate on the collaterals, was nowhere to be found, she having destroyed it. There then ensued for twenty years a double contest, — a contest of armed bands representing the defrauded heirs on the one side, and Lady Alice and her friends on the other, in the County ; and an interminable lawsuit between the same parties in the Courts at Dublin. One day, however, a little maid was sent by her mistress, the old dowager Countess, the mother of Henry, the last Earl, to dust out the Charter Room in the Castle of Killyleagh,^ which then served as a dower house. The family deeds lay upon shelves ^ This Castle is probably one of the oldest inhabited houses in Ireland, dating from the days of Henry the Secon