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JOUNTRY QUARTERS
BEING
bome passages fn tfje Utfc
01-
OMERSET CAVENDISH COBB, ESQ.
Late Captain,in tJie 12Qfh foot (Cairibenocll Ranyers.)
BY
CAPTAIN CHARLES KNOX, #-
ACTHOE OF " HARDNESS," " THE ASK AND THE DELUGK," ETC. ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
' Oh, ladie, beware of a gay yonnjr knight,
That love?, and then rides av. ay."
LONDON
SAUNDEES AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
1852.
CONFESSIONS
OF
COUNTRY QUARTERS.
CHAPTER I.
THE SOLDIER'S FAREWELL, AFTER THE FASHION OF
THE BRITISH ARMY LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
OF JAMES HAWKINS CHARITABLE BEQUESTS
GARRISON HACKS AND THEIR QUALIFICATIONS
WIDOWS OF THE 1 IOTII FOOT FLASH MAN OF
THE 120TH REGIMENT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF CONFESSOR AND HIS PARENTS POETRY OF
MESS TABLES.
'' Ballyraaccrocodile, May 10, 18 .
" DEAR COBB, I hear that you have sold
your hunters and pulled in and taken to
spooning instead, which pained me much,
as I had supposed you were eminently suc-
cessful on the Stock Exchange. I hope,
however, that the smash is not very serious ;
but in your new character I wish to recom-
VOL. I. B
2203440
2 CONFESSIONS OF
mend to your patronage a girl that has done
me to flirt with all the time I have been
here, and behaved very well, and I wish
you would take her up. Ellen O'Reilly is
her name; she is about twenty-two, with
good teeth, and I have taught her to waltz
properly, and have promised her that you
shall teach her to galoppe after the fashion
of the court of Saxe- Weimar, on which
subject, or rather about old Goethe, she is
somewhat enthusiastic ; her only.fault being
that she is a bit of a blue, and consequently
talks a d d deal of stuff about things that
she don't understand; that, however, you
know, most of them do without a tithe of
her redeeming qualities, for she really is a
very nice girl, as lady-like as could be hoped
for here, and does not expect one to marry
her. If you lend her that grey mare of
yours, and put your smartest boy on the
cab horse, you Avill win her heart slick
away;
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 3
" The garrison hacks here are pretty smart
steppers; indeed, rather better than usual;
there are not dragoons enough to inoculate
them with stable slang and canteen man-
ners. One girl, daughter of an old fellow
(pork and provision trade), who is as rich
as a Jew, and gives dinners twice a-week,
devilish near caught Willy Jackson. I
think she would have booked him dearly
beloved if it had not been for a host of
utterly unpresentable relations that Willy
could not swallow. She was not a bad
style of craft either, though she ate like a
cormorant and drank like a fish. She
waltzes well, but is too adhesive for my
taste. Beauty Bill, with that spooney
manner of his, had his usual luck; he
seemed so soft, that they tried a brother on
him, but it did not fit; two can play at
barking irons, and all that the affectionate
brother got was a ball through both thighs,
and within half an inch of the left femoral
B 2
4 CONFESSIONS OF
artery into the bargain, devil mend him !
He missed Bill altogether. So beware of
the Boyds; though perhaps you may say
they have had their lesson. But, seriously,
you cannot do better than take up with
Ellen ; there are many worse ways of spend-
ing an evening than a quiet game of ecarte
with her. You understand; and though it
is true that when she has too much cham-
pagne on board she is apt to be troublesome
from jealousy, that will not signify to you,
whose fidelity (for three months) is pro-
verbial through the whole British army and
most of the Prussian.
" Beware of a fat lump of a girl of the
name of Hooper ; her governor gives pretty
good dinners, and the girl herself is amus-
ing for a time, but she lies like a trooper.
Ellen's father is a clergyman, so I conclude
you will speedily get to windward of him
with that extensive biblical knowledge of
yours, that so forcibly reminds one of the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 5
skill in quotation attributed to the devil.
There is, however, no humbug about the
girl herself. She confesses that church
would bore her to death, if it were not for
looking out for new bonnets. She is rather
out of spirits, poor thing, as might be ex-
pected, but I trust you will speedily console
her. I have given her a lock of my hair, so
you had better try some other souvenir when
you go away. Our head quarters will get
on pretty well at Cork, but I am booked
for a diabolical hole called Durimanway,
further to the south-west. I do not believe
it is on any of the maps. I wish you good
luck among the Ballymaccrocodile white
muslin. Adieu.
"JAMES HAWKINS.
u P.S. Write and let me know how you
like Ellen.
" N.B. The best cigars are at O'Geogha-
gan's."
6 CONFESSIONS OF
Having deposited my last love affair in
the hands of the first turnpike keeper as
we marched out of Dublin, which is a way
we have in the army, I of course began
adoring Ellen O'Reilly in advance from the
moment that I received the above docu-
ment, or deed of transfer, vesting the pro-
perty in her in me upon my arrival at
Ballykillcronaghan, the village where we
halted the night before we were to march
into the flourishing market town of Bally-
maccrocodile, where, as the reader will have
conjectured, the gallant 120th, of which I
was then one of the greatest ornaments, was
about to be quartered.
I was the flash man of the 120th, or Cam-
berwell Rangers, a regiment too well known
to need any farther description on my part ;
indeed, an impertinent Quaker at Norwich
once went so far as to say, that we were
better known than trusted in that flourish-
ing city, but that was a drab-coloured
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 7
calumny; and as the reader is probably an
ignorant civilian, and, very likely, a sen-
sitive and inquisitive female, and the sub-
ject is an interesting one, I shall give a
slight sketch of the qualities which com-
monly go to the composition of the flash
man of a regiment, the " Mars, Bacchus,
Apollo virorum," who are arrayed in scarlet
and gold, as described in the Latin grammar,
to encourage sucking CsBsars to aspire to
that glorious distinction, an appointment
the patronage of which is not in the Horse
Guards.
Indeed, I believe, the dignitary in ques-
tion commonly elects himself, and then ap-
points his subordinates, though I, of course,
was raised to the pinnacle of 120th greatness
two days after my joining the regiment, as a
lieutenant, with a dog-cart and a couple of
private grooms, " mighty nate young men,"
as Major OTlaherty's leedy called them, on
the occasion of her borrowing one of them
8 CONFESSIONS OF
to drive her jaunting-car one day, when the
major's batman was in the guard-house and
remarkably drunk, and she wanted to drive
down to the town to purchase some tea and
sugar, and senna.
The flash man, then, is a something be-
tween a foreign secretary and a turkey cock ;
that is to say, he embodies in his own person
all the pretensions of the corps, whilst he
conducts much of its relations with the exte-
rior world ; goes with the colonel to call upon
the mayor when they march into a town,
and does the light work pertaining to that
dismal formality; sits next to non-military
strangers when they dine at mess, and fur-
nishes conversation suitable to their capa-
cities and stations in life a duty which
might possibly prove somewhat embarrassing
to most of his brother officers. He generally
contrives to get into society wherever they
are quartered, and introduces a few of the
most presentable and submissive of his ful-
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 9
lowers to the 'nicest girls,' (with the amount
of whose 'tin, 'as he calls it, he generally makes
himself acquainted.) He dresses very well
(or awfully badly if he goes for eccentric,)
and rides a washy thorough-bred, price 30,
with those nice thin long legs that young
ladies admire so a sort of sketch of a horse,
with the neck of an ostrich, and the tail of
a comet, and no body worth mentioning, that
will neither race, hunt, nor draw, but will eat
out of the hand and carry a lady. He rides
in remarkably long stirrups, and prefers a
canter to a trot. He is indignant at the
idea of getting a fall, is brilliant in his
gloves, flashy in his neckcloth; he pinches
in his waist, and shines in his boots.
He is generally president of the mess
committee, and considered a very tolerable
judge of the full-bodied, high- flavoured,
curious old military port, with which, when
the glasses sparkle on the board, and the wine
is ruby bright, the social spirit of the gayer
B 3
10 CONFESSIONS OF
of the officers is wound up to that pitch of
delightful hilarity which emboldens them to
perpetrate waltzes, polkas, and platitudes, at
a later hour in the evening. He generally
sits near the colonel at dinner, and can
maintain a conversation with the inspecting-
general without any manifest perturbation
at the presence of that grim potentate,
which frightens every one into fits ; he how-
ever nourishes on, reciting recent articles out
of the ' United Service JournaF with great
originality of manner, and laying bare the
recesses of the human head as embodied in
the gossip of the neighbourhood, calling the
attention of the illustrious guest to the
mess plate, china, glass, linen, cutlery, and
livery. Perhaps the regiment, like the 14th
Light Dragoons, has an article of plate that
was captured in the carriage of Napoleon ;
or of china that belonged to the celebrated
Hokypokywouskywah, who drowned himself
at Tchongquoaintsiaoun to save himself from
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 11
the slaughter inflicted upon that city of
dog devourers by the warriors of the West.
He ought to have a tolerable stock of
miscellaneous information (though of course
it need not be very great) ; a sufficient
amount of assurance, not without that little
dash of vanity that makes men work hard
to please even fools; a certain tact and
readiness; a Baker-street manner, and a
Regent-street swagger (for it does not do
for him to be too much of a gentleman) ;
some proficiency in manly exercises and
field sports, for the regiment carries a Miss
Molly in its establishment besides, who,
when dressed in the height of taste (Anglice,
fooled to the top of his bent), much resem-
bles Madame Vestris, as she appears in
command of her 'Invincibles,' and, indeed, in
point of mind is an indiifereut imitation of
the character that commonly is enveloped
in a petticoat; but nothing effeminate will
do for "flash man;" he may be a dandy,
12 CONFESSIONS OF
but be must be a man, and rather a smart
one, for he commonly commands the light
company, whose duty it may be, on active
service and under circumstances of peculiar
exposure, to protect the rear of the regiment
from the chastisement inflicted by a too im-
petuous enemy that hangs obstinately on its
skirts. The grenadier captain being selected
either as the senior of his rank, or for appear-
ance and stature, is a patriarchal brevet-
major, or a good-humoured giant, and, in
either case, embodies the thunder of the
regiment, of which the " flash man" is the
lightning.
Of course the reader will understand that
this sketch applies merely to the general
run of flash men, and by no means to the
present writer. Nothing, I should hope,
appertaining to Baker-street or Regent-
street could, at that time at least, be de-
tected in me, whose lady mother, the Lady
Caroline Cobb, resident in Cavendish-square,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 13
an intimate friend of the Marchioness of
Mesopotamia's, and an habitual frequenter of
Almack's, was deeply impressed with that
great cosmical truth, " manners make the
man" a traditionary maxim which had
been handed down in our family (by the
mother side) from father to child since
the creation (of the Earldom of Crabstock,
to which noble family she belonged).
She, in my early youth, took at least as
good care of my manners as of my morals,
which latter branch of cultivation she con-
sidered as belonging to the domain of the
church, and the catechism thereof, to which
she piously left it ; but she took great pains to
make me a gentleman, especially by point-
ing out to me the various solecisms con-
stantly in course of committal by my father,
who was not so highly descended as she was.
1 - V
and was much exposed to contamination,
in matters pertaining to his personal de-
meanour, from the force of daily example,
14 CONFESSIONS OF
when employed in the earning of sufficient
means to support us in affluence and com-
fort he being engaged in extending the
glory of England by mercantile adventure,
in which I was fool enough, at the instance
of Lady Caroline, to decline joining him, and
am in consequence, or at least was recently,
a houseless vagrant, earning an unpretending
livelihood at a moderate rate per line and
doing all my own work, a lamentable contrast
to those, my brilliant and fortunate (elder)
brother-authors, whose means enable them
to keep what they modestly call an " amanu-
ensis" to do their pen-and-ink work (brains
thrown in).
I indeed, in those days, had no reason to
complain of him; he allowed me 300.
a-year, which is as much as even an officer of
light dragoons commonly has. With so
liberal an allowance, I could not have looked
him in the face if I had any debts, so I
contracted none; but if I had, I have no
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 15
doubt he would have paid anything in
reason, for he let me have a latch-key when
I was at home on leave, stood claret all the
time, had a bad cold in his head whenever
Lady Caroline fancied she smelt cigars in
the house, and, in short, was everything
that a son could desire. But I cannot
describe the advantage that it is to a man
to have a lady mother. I need not describe
to the reader, whose accustomed penetration
will have long since taken note of the in-
teresting fact, how fully conscious those
fortunate youths are of their exalted lot.
I never in my life saw one of them that
was not six times more impressed with the
grandeur and glory of the peerage (espe-
cially the three highest ranks, the thrones,
dominations, princes) than the mere sons of
the male nobility, Those connected with the
order, through the better half, seem, with a
touching devotion, to take after the mother,
gleaming with a placid self-satisfaction that
.16 CONFESSIONS OP
is unruffled by any masculine roughness,
and shining in society with a mild light,
less fitted for the dinner-table than the tea-
table, which is eminently their sphere, until
some, that I have seen, become perfectly
lady-like, if we may apply such an expres-
sion to a true Briton.
I know one thing, my Lady Caroline
impressed me with such a respect and awe
for the fair sex, that at eighteen a tremor
blissful, indeed, yet not without devotion
came over me at the very sight of white
muslin ; and I had attained the rank of lieu-
tenant before I could either address young
ladies, or talk of them in the correct officer-
like manner. But one grows out of these
things, and by two or three-and-twenty, I
had acquired the proper military way of pa-
tronising garrison girls, or garrison hacks, as
we called our most affectionate friends and
purse-knitters in the 120th, and indeed, I
believe, in every other regiment in the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 17
service a term of endearment more expres-
sive perhaps than respectful, but universally
recognised in the poetry of mess-tables.
Perhaps I may venture to say, at the
heroic sacrifice of all character for penetra-
tion, that I never quite acquired that
magical instinct into their views upon our
hearts, hands, horses, homes, firesides, and
domestic happiness in general which I
found universal amongst the greater part of
the British infantry and the whole of the
cavalry ; but this, I suppose, arose from my
earlier experience among my own sisters
not having exhibited the softer sex in the
character of desperate man-hunters, or ad-
mirers of military men, of whom indeed they
knew very little hardly knowing the dif-
ference between heavy dragoons and fusi-
liers, poor benighted creatures; and having
been accustomed to consider men's claims to
position in society as consisting of a mis-
cellaneous jumble of birth, manners, habits,
18 CONFESSIONS OF
station, and clean linen a most unintel-
ligible hash of which is compounded what
is called " a gentleman," a thing that
nobody can understand or define; whereas
the red coat or blue jacket is a plain, intel-
ligible, extra-superfine, Saxony-wool fact,
within the grasp of the humblest compre-
hension. However, I cannot be responsible
for the ignorance of these young ladies;
that was my Lady Caroline's business, and
indeed it was her doing.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 19
CHAPTER II.
COMMUNISM IN THE BRITISH ARMY SOCIALIST
SYSTEM OF ROTATION MILITARY READINGS
INNOCENCE OF YOUTH MYSTERIES OF DUBLIN
TROTTING OUT MARCHING IN.
To return to our subject, for these are
confessions of country quarters, not of
Cavendish-square, though that dignified
spot has its confessions to make too, which
I hope to give to the public whenever Mrs.
Park-lane entrusts me with notes of the
unheard-of exertions she made (for the sake
of her daughters) to get into society, and
the frantic struggles that are made to get
to her balls NOW. These out-pourings of an
over-burdened heart relating to the market-
20 CONFESSIONS OF
towns of the United Kingdom, must now
return to the picturesque and exceedingly
filthy borough of Ballykillcronaghau, where
the left-wing of the 120th were billetted
on the night of the llth of May, 18.
We had just finished dinner, trout
lovelier than Lady , and boiled-
turkey with celery sauce, more charming
than the strains of Jenny Lind ; and after a
faint attempt at introducing an apocryphal
fluid they called " illigant oiild port with a
crust on it," and which I therefore suppose
was intended to pass for wine, by young
Simpkins, who liked being genteel, which
was overruled altogether, pooh-poohed, by a
choral under-growl of whiskey-punch, we
hud commenced moistening our military
clay, which had been somewhat roughly
kneaded by the day's march and the
Hibernian weather, with that liquor of life,
when a disparaging remark about the
accommodation afforded by Irish inns, made
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 21
by Hamilton, roused the divine wrath of
OTlaherty, a pure milesian and drinker of
whiskey. " A Scotchman complaining of
Ireland sounds mighty fine !" said the son of
Brehons; "I'm thinking it's the pot and
the kettle."
" I wouldn't own to Scotland if it was
such a beggarly place as this," retorted the
Scot. "A Jew cannot as much as thrive in
Ireland."
" Listen to the heretic comparing the
two," returned the champion of Erin. " Why,
man alive, you have nothing to do but to
look at their emblems, and see what they
think of themselves. What are the arms of
Scotland? A lion boxant. Those of Ire-
land, the harp; the one a brute-baste in a
blackguard attitude, the other the emblem
of melody and the insthrument of the
angels, Hyperion to a Satyr. How can
any man in his sinses, or out of them, corn-
pure the thistle to the shamrock; the one
22 CONFESSIONS OF
the symbol of our blessed religion, the
other an ill-conditioned weed, the food of a
jackass. Fill your glass, man; and make
yourself happy ;" and as he added example
to precept, the discussion dropped.
Almost immediately afterwards a mes-
senger arrived with half-a-dozen letters
for different officers of the detachment, con-
taining the testamentary dispositions of the
110th, whom we were to relieve the next
day at Ballymaccrocodile, and of which
missives a specimen, and rather a favour-
able one, has been given at the commence-
ment of the last chapter ; indeed it was our
practice to consider the fair ones of what-
ever town might be so fortunate as to enjoy
our protection in the light of a mild variety
of harem.
It is a great convenience to the British
army, that socialist system of handing the
garrison beauties, accurately marked and
ticketed, from regiment to regiment; one
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 23
never marches into a town without having
a reversionary interest in a flirtation, and a
preliminary knowledge of its object, her
tastes, habits, and weaknesses, with a sketch
of her prospects in case of accidents ; for
instances have occurred of young gentlemen,
who fancied they were playing at love,
finding it become very serious earnest, and
ultimately hearing themselves addressed by
a reverend gentlemen, who ties knots that
rearely slip, as " dearly beloved."
Of course, every one of us knew per-
fectly well of what a tender nature these
missives were, and received them with great
interest, so that a dead silence ensued while
we bestowed what time we could spare from
the whiskey-punch, in ascertaining what
prospects of delicious pain we had in store
for us at Ballymaccrocodile.
My letter was perhaps the longest of
all ; but whether it was that Hawkins wrote
and spelt well, or that I read writing with
24 CONFESSIONS OF
rather more ease to myself than my brothers-
in-arms, I was the first that had completed
the perusal of the deed of transfer ; and as
I was folding it up to put it in my pocket,
Popkins asked to see it.
Popkins had refused to take my duty for
me the night before we left Carrickaroghery,
when I wanted to drink T. T. L. tea with
Anna Maria Maloney; the consequence of
which refusal was a valedictory letter from
the young lady, which I have no doubt had
for its object the involving me in a corres-
pondence, with the view of submitting the
gushing out-pourings of my heart to the
consideration of twelve freeholders of the
county of Mayo, and which exercised all my
ingenuity in answering it, without com-
promising myself, a task I effected in a
very skilful and officer-like style. I do
not believe any one else in the regiment
could have done it half so well, though
plenty of them had been trying their hands
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 25
for years at that sort of thing, and some,
indeed, had burned their fingers.
l~ Now Popkins had no business to refuse,
for he had nobody to drink tea with, nobody
would have him at any price; and, in truth,
he was not half fast enough for the 120th,
so I determined to pursue him with an
inextinguishable hatred, and would not let
him see the letter, at which he set up a dismal
howl, complaining of my being so unsociable.
I knew that very well ; I was perfectly
aware that whenever any particularly deli-
cate and confidential communication, such
as one's aunt having bolted with the butler,
or one's sister having been jilted by that
young lord they followed down to Cowes, as
well as all reproachful or affectionate love
letters from the last quarter, or maternal
requisitions as to purity of life, water-gruel,
and dry stockings, reached any of our fel-
lows, it was laid on the mess-table for
general consideration, which practice had a
VOL. I. C
26 CONFESSIONS OF
most beneficial effect upon the corps, for by
giving us a lively interest in one another's
affairs, it made us the band of brothers we
were ; but I do honestly confess that I was
of an odd, unsociable disposition, which,
together with most others of my faults and
imperfections, I first tried to cure, and then
to hide, and finally made up my mind to
indulge.
However, Popkins was speedily consoled
by Simpkins tossing him his to read, which
that smart young subaltern was very
anxious should be read out publicly, he
being very proud of it, for it came from a
dragoon, on being acquainted with whom
he glorified himself hugely, who wanted
to make some little change in his domestic
arrangements, and who probably pitched
upon Simpkins for a sacrifice, from some
hazy idea, that that little man, whose
father is an eminent saddler and accoutre-
ment maker in the borough of Southwark,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 27
would probably worship a dragoon, and" do
bis bidding. The letter was as follows, at
least so Popkins read it out, for it was clear
that if one read each letter aloud, it would
save the remaining nine the trouble of
reading, and that plan was adopted accord-
ingly:
"DEAR SIMMY, Mind you ride up and
speak to me when I meet your regiment
marching in to-morrow; I shall be riding
with a charming creature with at least ten
thousand pounds "
" That will do for the marines," inter-
rupted Jenkins; "every girl has ten thou-
sand pounds, only it isn't payable till the
day of judgment."
" Perhaps she's a pawnbroker's daughter,"
suggested the Major; "they have all the
money in this country, where there's more
credit than capital."
" Except what the distillers have," said
c2
28 CONFESSIONS OF
Tomkins. " I remember when I was quar-
tered at Newtown Mount Mulligan "
" Yes, yes, I remember that too," inter-
rupted I; as, I well might, seeing that
I had heard the story at least two hun-
dred times, and in every description of
key, from the stentorian tone necessary to
overbear the clatter of the first onslaught
upon the first course down to the maudlin
jingle just before Tomkins dropped off his
perch, as was his habit in the small hours.
"We all remember that; let's have the
letter. It's no use talking about the girls
till we've seen them trotted out."
This was considered a very sensible and
practical remark, and the reading continued :
"I have been doing centimental ;" here
Popkins paused with a puzzled expression
of countenance : " I always thbught senti-
mental was spelt with an s"
" Well, I think it is," said Tomkins, after
a moment's hesitation.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 29
" What the deuce can it matter?" said
Jenkins. " The letters are of the same
family, only the c is the elder brother. Go
on."
" Doing sentimental for the last three
months, and am dead sick of her, and am
going to take up Willy Waddle's, of the
110th, flame, who, as soon as she has
mopped her brinies, will suit me better;
though I should think that Mary Anne
O'Malley would be more in your line. She
is not fast enough for me "
" Well," said Simpkins, somewhat of-
fended, " I do not know what makes him
think I am to put up with such a slow
filly." (It was the handwriting of the
dragoon that inspired him with the eques-
trian synonym; he generally called the fair
objects of his affections heifers. )
" Keep moving," said Jenkins, and Pop-
kins continued reading :
" She is not fast enough for me; but I
30 CONFESSIONS OF
am sure you will like her, for you may
squeedge her hand as much as you please,
and she will bear a deal of nudging. I
shall take care she receives you well;
indeed I have told her you have an old
aunt as rich as Rothschild, who is very
anxious you should marry, and will come
down handsomely; so she will run open-
mouthed at you."
A faint smile illuminated Simpkins's sal-
low face at this. " Haw !" said he ; " slap-
up fellows those dragoons are."
" Well, what next?" said Jenkins.
" So take compassion on her ; c o m-
p a s h o n," spelt Popkins.
"He must have written in a hurry,"
said Simpkins, " the trumpet sounding for
stables;"- though similar orthographical slips
in an infantry man would have excited his
most lively scorn.
' So take compassion on her, and say
something incidentally " ( < Incidentally,'
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 31
repented lie, ' that is a very good word
incidentally ; I wonder how he came by it'),
" say something incidentally about your
aunt and your expectations, you know, and
that sort of thing. Yours truly,
"ROBERT HOLSTER."
I missed the perusal of the remaining
consignments, all of which, I have no doubt,
were equally explicit and business-like, for
it was time to visit the billets, and per-
ceiving that my unfortunate ensign, Johnny
Waldgrave, who was one of the most at-
tractive boys I ever came across, but some-
what delicate, was completely knocked up by
the day's march, whereas I had the endur-
ance of an armadillo on the road, I went
out to go round them, and did not return
until the sederunt had broken up, after, as
I learned from Johnny, very nearly getting
up half a dozen quarrels about the disposal
of the unconscious beauties of Ballymaccro-
codile among them.
32 CONFESSIONS OF
I myself lost nothing by not hearing the
somewhat unceremonious overhauling under-
gone by the charmers in question, and, in-
deed, I had no interest in it. I had no
intention of interfering with anyone else's
game, had not the slightest idea of tolerating
any poaching upon my preserves, and being
abundantly satisfied of my ability to protect
my own property, was perfectly easy in my
mind upon the subject, and speedily found
myself, or lost myself, in the halls of sleep,
where I dreamed that Ellen O'Keilly was
embroidering a waistcoat for me.
This was very pleasant, but it did not
prevent the assembly sounding at the usual
hour in the morning, which, to the minds of
the gentlemen of England, who live at home
at ease, will appear little better than the
middle of the night, and I had to turn out
into the cold, with the customary resolution
of leaving the service immediately, which, I
believe, pervades all regiments on the march
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 33
for the first half hour after starting. Of course,
I was exceedingly savage, and strode along
at the head of my company, for the first two
miles, as if I really intended to exterminate
the neighbourhood. Johnny walked silently
by my side ; he had taken a look at me, and
seen that it was expedient not to trouble
me yet a while. Johnny used to humour
me about half an hour in the day, and make
me do whatever he pleased the remaining
twenty-three hours and a half; he looked so
like his sister Edith whenever he wanted
anything, that I never had the heart to
refuse him; but this morning, as it hap-
pened, it did not rain ; a very unusual thing
in Ireland. A fine May morning has a
wonderful effect in producing a tranquil
state of mind, almost as much so as a bad
heart and a good digestion, and Johnny,
upon a second inspection of my phsiogno-
mical barometer, perceiving that the weather
had moderated, ventured to ask me whether
c 3
34 CONFESSIONS OF
I knew anything about the place we were
about to pass the next six months in.
I told him that I knew nothing but what
was contained in Hawkins's letter, which I
gave him to read, for it was too much
trouble for me picking out extracts from
it. I find that when one attempts to read
on a road, one is always kicking one's feet
against stones, or tumbling over pigs, or
children, or something of the sort. Johnny
was hugely taken with the idea of Ellen's
only fault being a bit of a blue. He ad-
mitted that it was sometimes a fact, and
always a pity, that charming women talk of
things that they don't understand, but at the
same time stoutly affirmed that intellect, in-
telligence, and feeling, must elevate and
purify the female character; by which I
understood Johnny to mean, must make a
girl admire his verses, of which he wrote a
great deal, and very weN too, as I alone of
the 120th can testify, as it was only to me
that he ever ventured to show them.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 35
" Those romantic ideas, Johnny, niy
boy," said I, "will be the ruin of you.
Marriage, in the eye of the law, is a valu-
able consideration. A woman, in the eyes of
a sensible man, is a necessary appendage to
a certain sum of twenty or twenty-five thou-
sand pounds, which you are in want of, and
which cannot be had without taking her with
it. You may knock off a couple of thou-
sands for blue eyes, and a couple more for
good ancles, and perhaps six or eight hun-
dred for a good temper or an easy disposi-
tion; so that if she has a variety of good
qualities you may not perhaps get more
than fifteen or twenty thousand in money,
taking the rest out in female perfections;
while, on the other hand, if she squints or
squabbles, you ought to get five-and-twenty
or thirty thousand with her. That is the
true practical view to take that works best in
the long run, for all your personal and intel-
lectual charms fade and decay. For, Johnny,
36 CONFESSIONS OF
my boy, let me tell you there is a point
in the life of an intellectual and feeling
woman that is not dreamed of in your
philosophy, and that is when she is forty-
five, and d d positive, and takes snuff."
" The mind being more mature," began
Johnny, somewhat hesitatingly for his
conscience was tripping him up by the
heels; the young rogue knew very well
that, excepting his inevitable female rela-
tions, he never had spoken to a woman
above five-and-twenty in his lifetime, and
what was more, he was perfectly aware that
I knew it too. What moral maxim he was
about to hurl at my heretical head, is un-
happily lost to posterity, for at this moment
the head of the column approached a
village, the word was passed to march at
attention, and the alacrity with which
Johnny drew his sword and took his place
in the ranks of war savoured a good deal
more of rejoicing at his escape from the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 37
mature mind than any very burning mili-
tary ardour. When we cleared this singular
assemblage of man-sties, which I afterwards
learned was called Carrick-a-poguenadog-
hery, Johnny returned to my side.
" Did you hear Jenkins' riddle last night,
Cobb," said he.
" No."
" When is a ship like a female thief ?
Do you give it up?"
" Don't bother me," said I. " What is
it?"
"When she's a brig-and in stays," re-
turned he, exultingly ; " that's very good."
" It'll do for Ballymaccrocodile," replied I.
" You'll introduce me to Miss O'Eeilly,
won't you, Cobb ?" said he.
" To be sure I will," replied I; " I'll take
you to tea there. It's good for one's opinion
of human nature to associate every now
and then with clergymen. They don't take
such a hard view of character and motives
38 CONFESSIONS OF
as we men of the world do, Johnny, my
boy."
"Why not?" asked Johnny, strutting,
nevertheless, like a young turkey cock, at
being called a man of the world ; " they see
sin and crime."
" They do, Johnny," said I, " but they
also see sorrow and repentance. When the
devil is at a premium in a man's mind, he
goes to a lawyer; when the devil is at a
discount in a man's mind, he goes to a
parson; so I'll take you to the rectory;
you'll most likely find the mother's mind
more matured than the daughter's ; so you
shall talk to her whilst I astonish Ellen's
unripe intellect."
"Who is Beauty Bill?" asked Johnny.
" Upon my word," replied I, "unless that
he is a man of the name of Wiggins, who I
recollect is called Bill, and si good looking,
and curls his hair; I believe he sleeps with
it in papers; and screws in his waist, and
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 39
takes care of his complexion, and keeps an
Italian greyhound I do not know who
Hawkins means ; and if it is him, I should
not be able to give you any description
of him, other than that he is a son of old
Wiggins."
" But you cannot defend his conduct,
surely ?" said the conscientious young cub ;
"make love to a girl, and then shoot her
brother ! I do not call that love."
" How do you know that he did make
love to her?" retorted I. "How do you
know that she did not make love to him?
How do you know what nets and snares
were not wove round him by that perfidious
family? Have you never heard, you
heavenly innocent, of anxious mothers that
hunt you for six months, and then ask you
your intentions? How do you know that
the father did not try to fascinate him with
tawney old port, like a true Briton, the
father of a family ; or the mother with her
40 CONFESSIONS OF
matronly arts, like a middle-aged turtle
dove; or the brother with the terror of his
barking-irons, like a young rattlesnake?
Taking a shot at such people, is nothing
but spring-guns against man-traps."
"But he might have paid her some
attention," persisted that young Protestant
Joseph, Johnny, " or they would not have
thought about him at all ; and even if they
were not altogether right in what they did,
to think of shooting at the brother of a girl
that I was on friendly terms with, I could
no more do it than I could fly. How could
he ever look her in the face again, whether
he hit him or not?" .-
" He has not the slightest intention of
ever looking her in the face again, Johnny,"
said I; " and after this he would be a most
remarkable ass if he have. Take my word
for it, she won't break her shins over her
feelings. What should you think yourself
of a girl who would submit to havintr a
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 41
man pistolled into marrying her? Is that
the delicacy of sentiment and the commu-
nion of souls united by the holiest tie here
and hereafter?" Johnny began to wince a
bit, for he recognised the language. "Is
that the pearl beyond price to be sought
through life, and never abandoned but in
death, that you talked so much about to
Clementina Mullins in Merrion-square, and
that she repeated every word of, and a great
deal more, to me the next night, when she
believed that you were to march away that
day week with the regiment, and I was to
remain as aide-de-camp to his pinchbeck
majesty, the Lord Lieutenant, and be wor-
shipped by the women accordingly; as in-
deed I should have done, only that I found
that his Excellency expected his aide-de-
camps to hold his stirrup when he got off
his horse, to answer the bell, and to carry
three-cornered notes.
"What a shame," said Johnny, indig-
42 CONFESSIONS OF
nantly, cut to the quick by the atrocious
breach of confidence of the faithless Mul-
lins, who had quite won his heart by
telling him she would give- the world to
know his sister. " To think of her repeat-
ing that that I told her in the strictest
confidence, after her saying "
" What did she say?" asked I, for
Johnny stopped dead short. However, his
sense of honour was too high to allow of his
repeating what she said, so I continued.
"Don't look so savage, you young cannibal ;
if you want to pitch into a girl, never lose
your temper, but simply accuse her of being
'missish.' It's too vague a charge for her to
rebut, but it will drive her as mad as a
sackful of cats. Everything that she says,
answer her now I call that missish : you'll
soon have the whip-hand, and then if you
don't let in a dozen or two of stingers it's
your own fault. Never mind about this
little matter. I told her that I would not
4
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 43
have you abused ; and that if I ever heard
of her repeating any of your sentimental
tomfooleries, I'd wring her neck ; so it will
go no further;" and, in truth, I do not
believe it did, for I have no doubt that she
forgot all about Johnny and his mother and
sister, kith and kin, on the arrival of an
exceedingly smart hussar regiment, that
relieved a very dense, heavy dragoon one,
about the time that we quitted the city of
the brogue.
I was sorry that I gave Johnny this
little glimpse of real life, for I saw that it
shook his confidence in human nature at
least, the feminine variety. He trudged
on without speaking all that live-long day,
looked askance at Mary Anne O'Malley, as
if she were an hyeena in a claret-coloured
riding-habit, when Holster trotted her out
as per appointment, for Simmy's consi-
deration ; and certainly, we all thought her
quite good enough for him, except Johnny,
I
44 . CONFESSIONS OF
who winked sardonically at me, made some
very male, masculine, and manly remarks
about field-sports, as indicating that he
intended, for the future, to seek for enjoy-
ment in those pursuits, and be no longer
made a fool of by women, slouched along,
as if he did not care three farthings whether
any one was looking at him or not, and
never as much as condescended to dust his
boots as we marched into Ballymaccro-
codile.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 45
CHAPTER III.
NIGHT AND MORNING ! OPEN ARMS SINGULAR
FEMALE EQUESTRIAN TRIBE JUDGES OF LADIES
FAMILY ETHICS ENTER THE STREAM SYMP-
TOMS OF CIVILIZATION.
"LE Eoi EST MORT!"
"VlYELE ROl!"
In such terse and unmistakable language
was it announced in the olden time, long
ago, when there was a king in France, that
another Capet slept with the ancestral St.
Louis, and a fresh arm upheld the oriflamine ;
and even so, in that same day of May,
scarcely had the fluttering hearts of the
Ballymaccrocodileans ceased to throb re-
sponsively to the martial farewell of " the
46 CONFESSIONS OF
girls Ave left behind us," wherewith, after
the ancient manner, the 110th consoled
their fair friends (and their noble selves)
upon their departure, ere the same hearts
palpitated to the notes of hope in the
" British grenadiers," by which the 1 20th
announced that they were come to reign in
their stead.
Of course everybody turned out to see
us; and Johnny confessed to me privately,
afterwards, Avhen he was a little better of
Clementina Mullins, that his first impres-
sion of Ballymaccrocodile was, that it was
the colony of a female equestrian tribe;
the young rogue, notwithstanding his
misogynical conversion to the sports of the
field, having counted the fair ladies on
horseback whom we encountered in the last
five miles, and whom he found amounted
to thirteen. He then ascertained the number
of roads that led into the town, which being
five, he therefrom deduced that sixty-five,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 47
or thereabouts, of the damsels of that flourish-
ing market-town kept horses, poor dear boy.
I let him find his own way out of the
monstrous delusion ; experience comes surely,
and if one changes quarters rapidly, by no
means slowly; it is much more instructive
than preaching, which nobody ever attends
to; and I think some considerable light
had been let into his innocent mind,
when about three weeks afterwards he told
me that he had found out how many ladies
possessed horses, or could borrow them, in
the neighbourhood, and that they amounted
to fourteen; adding, that probably one of
them was ill the day we marched in. I
doubted this last remark being his own
composition, my opinion being that he had
plagiarized it from Simpkins, or more
likely Holster, who was an incurable, irre-
trievable, hopeless snob, with a gigantic
opinion of himself, and a maniacal self-
idolatry of his character of a cavalry
officer.
48 CONFESSIONS OF
Now I had no objection to bringing up
Johnny myself in the way he should go,
because I knew the way; but I had not the
slightest idea of suffering these gents to
show him the way he should not go viz.,
into gentism; indeed, I had too great a
regard for Edith, his sister, who was only a
year older than him, and used to talk to
me about his chest, which was weak, and
the night air, and not letting him drink
whiskey-punch of which deleterious fluid
I almost thought she believed the Bann,
the Boyne, the Barron, the Blackwater, the
Liffey, the Suir, and the Shannon were
composed so I considered it my duty to
Edith to put a stopper upon any attempt
to corrupt Johnny.
" Johnny, my boy, perhaps the fourteenth
was something of a lady ?" said I, as, in-
deed, I knew it was; for Hawkins' horses
being gone, and mine, of course, not come
in, Ellen was dismounted.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 49
" Well, that was what I thought, to tell
you the truth," replied Johnny, innocently,
thereby convincing me that I was correct
in setting down the remark as a piracy,
and from a somewhat discreditable source.
" Johnny," said I, " do you think that
either Simpkins or Holster is much of a
judge of a lady?''
" Well," replied Johnny, musing, with a
thoughtful expression, that reminded me
uncommonly of Edith when she got to the
night air on his chest; " well, I do not see
how either of them can ever have seen a
lady ; at least, I mean, ever spoken or been
friends with any ladylike women. Simp-
kins and Co. is a very respectable firm in
the saddlery line, and, I dare say, well
suited to the mayor and sheriff line, but
that does not make them judges of ladies,
you know ; and Holster's people are hemp
and tallow merchants, and good judges of
grease, I daresay. I do not suppose either
of them knows what a lady ought to be;
VOL. I. D
50 CONFESSIONS OF
I know neither knows what a gentleman
ought to be."
" Then, Johnny, my boy, don't you take
their opinions about ladies. If Simpkins
and Holster live to be a hundred, they will
not see as much of ladylike women as
you have seen already," said I, thinking of
Edith, and wishing I was in Eaton-square at
that very moment, with Lady Elizabeth
Waldgrave on one side, scolding me for
not having been at church last Sunday,
us was her custom, and on the other,
well, I was at Ballymaccrocodile, bearing
my country's arms, and respected by my
colonel and brother officers, alarmingly
caressed in the fashionable circles of the
neighbourhood, and what more could a
good soldier require; so I began giving
Johnny good advice, in a species of logic at
which I was unequalled.
" Johnny," snid I, " when you hear such
r,s Simpkins and Holster talking
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 51
scavenger slang about tits and gals, and
fillies and heifers, and a young jackass like
Bubbleby wondering when he will be able
to muster pluck enough to copy them, just
think what sort of mothers and sisters those
heroes must have had. You know it is the
mother makes the boy's manners and his
way of thinking about manners and habits.
Well, it does not take a conjurer to tell
what sort of mothers such hounds as those
must have had; and, you may rely upon it,
vulgar mothers make vulgar daughters."
" Precisely so," said Johnny, with the
air of a Lord Chief Justice, though he
knew nothing whatever about the matter,
except what I pleased to tell him, and I
never told him the ichole truth, for Edith's
sake.
" Well," continued I, " you know gent-
esses and snobesses herd together precisely
as gents and snobs do, and for the same
two reasons : first, that thev suit one ano-
'
D 2
52 CONFESSIONS OF
ther ; and, secondly, that the thorough-bred
ones won't have them at any price ; so that
these fine young men's sisters' friends are as
bad as themselves, and they have seen
nothing but vulgar women till the time that
they come into the army, by which time,
therefore, their snobbishness has become
chronic and incurable; and though they
get into better society then than they ever
heard of before because, in every place
there are a number of otherwise respectable
people who toady the troops, still, the vul-
garization is complete and ineradicable.
They are gents in their youth, and club
grubs in mature age."
"What do you mean by club grubs?"
asked Johnny.
" The club grub, Johnny, my boy, like
the aphis vasfator, is an entomological de-
velopment of the nineteenth century. He
did not exist in his present form till that
age, though the germ was maturing in re-
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 5-3
mote villages," returned I, much entertained
by Johnny's puzzled aspect. "In 1815,
when powder ceased to demand its food, the
fire-eaters found theirs hard to get, and the
half-pay heroes found that their day's sub-
sistence would not half pay for their day's
consumption at a tavern, they laid their
heads together, Johnny, my boy, and then
they laid the heads of King George IV. of
elegant memory together, and thence arose
the club of the present day, to which the
club of old was but a reed ; yet can a
reed discourse sweet music, nought but
a dull, a heavy sound, ever comes from a
club."
" Bosh!" said Johnny.
" Be it so, Johnny, my boy," said I ;
" nevertheless, when the rubicund warriors
beat their swords into carving-knives a new
combination produced new results, and be-
hold the club grub; the dry rot spread to
the establishments of the olden time and
54 CONFESSIONS OF
style, till hardly a knot in any club is now
unbored by the Teredo Twaddliensis, and
these fellows are in training thereanent.
'Tis education forms the common mind,
Johnny," said I, "and theirs are very
common minds. Just as the twig is bent
the tree's inclined, Johnny," said I.
"Very good Pope," said Johnny, ap-
provingly.
" Ask Holster or Simpkins where that
couplet comes from," said I, " and I take
it you'd puzzle him uncommonly. If
either did make a shot he'd probably say,
Elegant Extracts, or the Complete Guide to
Elocution ; so remember, Johnny, that swine
are no judges of pearls."
" When will you introduce me to Ellen
O'Reilly?" asked Johnny, who seemed some-
how to connect her with pearls (he had a
good deal of a quiet instinct). " She seems
to me not to go out anywhere, so I cannot
get introduced to her, and you promised to
ake me there."
t
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 55
"So I did, and so I will," replied I;
"but you must have a little patience; and
now be off with you; there's Mary Ann
O'Malley has been hanging out signals for
you to close this ten minutes ;" the fact being
that Mary Anne being a young lady who
prided herself upon a strong will and de-
cided character, had kicked at being handed
over like barrack furniture to Simpkins,
and the dear child of impulse that she was,
had exhibited the most decided symptoms
of taking kindly to Johnny instead, who re-
turned her blandishments with a concilia-
tory and deprecating shyness, as if he were
scratching a parrot's head.
I had good reasons, however, for not
having sooner introduced Johnny into the
family of the Rev. Mr. O'Reilly. That gen-
tleman had called upon me immediately upon
my arrival, evidently being moved to that
overt act of attention by Hawkins, of whom
he spoke as a sincere friend, whose unsettled
principles on matters of belief (or anything
, r )G CONFESSIONS OF
else, I thought) he deeply deplored, more
especially the utter levity with which he
associated with Roman Catholics and others
our natural enemies ; at the same time ex-
pressing a fervent hope that he would
speedily see the error of his ways, much of
which was, in Christian charity, to be attri-
buted to the vagabondage of a bachelor
life, necessarily demoralizing.
" The Romans had a deep significance in
the divinity of their Lares and Penates,
Captain Cobb," said my reverend friend,
who fancied he could hoodwink me, good
innocent man; "the rewards of Olympus for
prayers and vows were afar off; Jupiter
paid his debts at the death of his wor-
shippers, but the Household Gods delighted
in prompt payment; it was but to offer the
the vow, and the prayer was already granted,
the bill presented was honoured on the
spot;" by which heathen paraphrase I un-
derstood him to signify, that heaven smiles
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 57
upon married men, which, as a beneficed
clergyman, he very properly abstained from
affirming in Christian language any more
than its converse, that the smiles in which
bachelors bask come from a very different
part of the horizon.
Of course I could not tell at the moment
whether it was my friend or myself that he
wanted for Ellen, but concluded that the
bird in the hand was worth two in the
bush, (as indeed I -may say without va-
nity was the case), and that it was I that
was to beware of the bird-lime. (I was
wrong about this, but that happens so seldom
that I can afford to confess it when it does.)
However, he asked me to dine with him in
a quiet way the next Wednesday; made
some inquiries about the state of morals in
the regiment, which I answered with a cer-
tain promptitude of assertion I have often
found serviceable when no very strict sub-
sequent inquiries are likely to be madej
D 3
58 CONFESSIONS OF
asked my opinion, as a great authority, on
German matters, as to how I thought the
British and Prussian Governments would
pull together (he used some canonical form
of expression which I forget), about the
Bishopric of Jerusalem, then in course of
incubation ; and after a sly back-handed hit
at rationalism aud materialism in the dear
old Fatherland (may it have a safe deli-
verance out of its present troubles), took
his leave, leaving me in no doubt as to the
character which Hawkins had given of me
and in which I was of course expected to
appear (under penalty of being cold-
shouldered as a " professing Christian"),
viz., of a serious military man, with a view
to giving satisfaction in which character I
employed two hours that very day with
" Cruden's Concordance."
It is a well known military maxim, that'
one of the highest triumphs of tactics is to
produce the greatest possible results with
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 59
the smallest possible means. Indeed, the
art of war is eminently a practical science;
if the appearance answers the purpose of
the reality, so much the better; to none
more than to its professors applies the
maxim, " possunt quid posse videntur."
At 6 P.M. on the following Wednesday, I
made my first appearance at the rectory,
where I was to meet for the first time, my
new acquisition, Ellen. I did not, how-
ever, consider her entirely my own as yet;
there is a wide difference between a proper
confidence and a blundering rashness ; and
as no one can overrate the effect of first
impressions upon women, I took care that
my gloves and boots and other means to
that end should be unimpeachable, and in
other respects rather u got myself up" for
the occasion. Learning enough of the local
history to enable me to ask intelligent
questions, being well assured that those
who replied to them would consider the
60 CONFESSIONS OF
answers intelligent, I also learned the name
of the bishop of the diocese, and some anec-
dotes about that noble earl, his brother,
and other little bits of artless art.
My short interview with the worthy
rector, as well as Hawkins' preference for
the daughter, for he was a pretty good
judge of the article, had prepared me to
mid something very superior in the O'Keilly
family, and as I approached the rectory,
appearances confirmed me in that impres-
sion.
Near the gate several small gardens
appeared in front of the simple dwelling-
places of the burghers of Ballymaccroco-
dile, not small potato fields in masquerade,
as is customary in that country, but real
gardens, with gooseberry and currant
bushes, leeks and onions, and other unde-
niable fruit and vegetable productions, and'
some attempts at creepers on the houses,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 61
which flourished most luxuriantly, as they
well might, considering the nutritive cha-
racter of the walls that supported them (a
rich, well tempered mud) ; divers puddles
made practicable for infantry by boards
and stepping stones, fewer panes of super-
annuated small clothes than usual, and
other tokens of advancing civilization of
which the indigenous patriots would never
have dreamed if left to their own devices,
and which, as I by no means attributed
them to the Roman-catholic priest, I,
with great sagacity, set down to the credit
of the rectory, my entry into which con-
verted speculation into certainty.
A plain, neat wooden gate, with every
bar whole, led into a small court, one side
of which seemed one entire mass of roses.
Everywhere else, flowers and shrubs, well
*chosen and well kept, filled the space
between the neatly gravelled centre and
62 CONFESSIONS OF
the wall, sensibly covered with fruit trees ;
and finally, the door was opened by a very
clean, smiling, plump, trim maid servant.
This last circumstance convinced me
that I was in a Christian home. Any one
of the lesser nobility of the neighbourhood,
of aboriginal descent and ideas, would have
had his hospitable portal graced and dig-
nified by a shock-headed cowboy disguised
in plush, or an incarnated blast from the
stables, sooner than suffer his Druidical
dignity to be compromised by admitting
that he could be served by Kitty, who was
pretty enough to have been the pride of
Coleraine if her lot had been cast in the
province of Ulster.
She, with her cheery smile, and the
evidence of good sense on the part of my
host that her appearance afforded, pleased
me so much, that I asked her in an off-
handed military manner if her mother had
any more of her, which warlike pleasantry
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 63
made her my friend from that moment for-
wards, and she marshalled me into the
drawing-room without the formality of
asking my name, which, indeed, she did
not require, as she simply announced me as
u The Captain, ma'am."
64. CONFESSIONS OF
CHAPTER IV.
ENTER THE STREAM FIRST PLUNGE SYMPTOMS OF
WILLOWS TRIAL OF SKILL BENEVOLENCE OF
THE CONFESSOR ANGLING FOR TROUT CATCH-
ING A PIKE.
ELLEN O'REILLY was sitting in the window
when I entered, and was performing some
extraordinary feat of embroidery, which
convinced me that my vision of the waist-
coat was coming true. (Alas ! it never did.)
She rose, and I thought at the moment
that for two or three minutes she tried to
keep between me and the light (when I
found out why she did so, as I did soon
afterwards, I could have cried for the poor
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 65
girl, if crying had been conduct becoming
an officer and a gentleman), and I thought
she seemed somewhat agitated, which I
naturally set down to the splendour of my
appearance, or that tremblement de femme
which I presume commonly accompanies
the transfer from the old love to the new,
a species of vibration natural to a state of
transition, at least in a young girl; it
wears out in due time.
Mrs. O'Keilly, whom I at once perceived
was an Englishwoman, received me very
cordially; but being almost immediately
afterwards called out of the room upon
some affair of domestic economy of which
the only word that reached me was " capers"
left me at liberty to open a communica-
tion Avith Ellen, which, acting on the word
I heard, I effected forthwith by telling her
that I was exceedingly fond of boiled
mutton ; and the start of surprise she gave
at my foreknowledge of the dinner, as well
66 CONFESSIONS OF
us her curiosity as to how I acquired it,
placed us on a confidential footing directly.
Ellen certainly did Hawkins' taste great
credit. She was tall; her figure, though
slight, was rounded, and in her dark blue
eye I thought I could discover more feeling
than his description had given me to ex-
pect; and long before that evening was
over, a sort of lurking suspicion began to
worm itself into my mind, that my friend
James the lady killer had been indulging
in a trifle of libel upon a girl to whom lie
was behaving very badly, not that that
was any business of mine, hawks do not
pick out hawk's eyes I did not altogether
like throwing the first stone, but I read his
letter twice over that night before I went
to bed, and weighed and considered it, text
and context.
She might be called a blue at the mess
of the 110th, on the principle of the pro-
verb, " Parmi les aveugles le borgne est
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 67
roi;" but her conversation, though intelli-
gent, was simple, unstilted, and immaculate
of fine or foreign expressions.
She talked a good deal upon a great
many subjects connected with literature,
but she certainly understood them, for she
always read the books themselves, and
never the reviews, and was perfectly free
of the superficiality of magazine twaddle;
in short, without pretension, affectation, or
display, it was hard upon her to apply the
title of blue to her.
There was no cant, still less polemical
bitterness about her; and I dare say she
was a very good judge of a new bonnet:
but if the tree be known by its fruit, Ellen
certainly went to church for something
better than new bonnets. Charity, humility,
kindliness, gratitude, or forgiveness, each
alike ready to repay good for evil, all these
things speak a language that is very low,
but very unmistakeable. I never heard her
68 CONFESSIONS OF
say an unkind word of any one, though I
have seen her tried pretty severely. I
never observed in her the slightest disposi-
tion to flirt; and, indeed, I thought her
then, and think her still, a very amiable
and superior young lady.
However, the present subject was a dish
of delicious trout, which preceded the fore-
shadowed boiled mutton, which was excel-
lent, and did not eat the worse for being
handed round by Kitty. Indeed, it was a
very agreeable dinner altogether, and, I
thought, a colossal improvement on those
ponderous conglomerates of masters and
mistresses, with one lord for dignity and
one young lady for grace, on which one
occasionally does treadmill (of course, good
reader, never at your hospitable board) ;
here we had a great deal of very interest-
ing and notwithstanding it was at Bally-
maccrocodile rectory polished conversa-
tion; for the Celt, when he will take a
polish, takes it kindly.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 69
It is the Celtic blood in the French that
makes French conversation so brilliant, and
the language so spicily idiomatic. No one
supposes that the mantle of wit descended
on the Gauls from Chlodowick or Childeric,
or any other of the unpronounceable
Frankish anthropophagi that made the
third century hideous; it came from the
Gaelic Brennus, whose flinging his sword
into the scale was nothing but a practical
witticism, the steel and the sneer pre-
eminently Celtic, as O'Flaherty of ours told
me, though I did not think the transaction
so praiseworthy as he did; but I suppose
that was the Celtic blood in him. Saxon I
thought the organ of acquisitiveness too
much developed in it; that of conscien-
tiousness too little influential.
Of course I took a leading part in this
conversation, but am deterred from giving
it to the public, partly by native modesty,
and partly because it so nearly resembled
70 CONFESSIONS OF
the conversation that any well-bred civilian
may encounter any day at any well-selected
party, and wanting, the true military twang,
does not come strictly under the category
of Confessions of Country Quarters, and
partly because no part of it bore very
directly upon the future history of any of
the parties concerned. When it was on the
lighter topics of interest of the day, Ellen
bore hor part meekly; and when we talked
about poor-laws, and tithes, and the value
of labour and land, Ellen did not join the
conversation. But my vigilance, generally
tolerably wide awake, had been stirred up
to the highest pitch of watchfulness by
Mr. O'Reilly's ready and active attention
to me which tapped rather stingingly at
my conscience, for I felt I did not deserve
it by a certain confidential manner in
Mrs. O'Reilly (which would have afforded
a great deal of amusement to the mess, if
bestowed upon most of the other of our
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 71
fellows), by an occasional glance from Kitty,
which that active young lady, whenever I
caught her eye, shifted to the potatoes or
the roly-poly pudding with a rapidity that
showed that she had some particular reason
for eying me, and for not being taken in the
fact ; and finally, by Ellen's own proceedings,
who, I soon perceived, having recovered
from her first flurry, was holding me at
arms' length to look through me. Not
that there was anything to complain of in
her reception of me, or in her manner to
me; nothing could be more kindly or
more cordial than her welcome; but I
could plainly perceive that it was not so
upon my account alone.
When Ellen O'Reilly, to whom I shall
always be a true and sincere friend, fancied
that she could in actual fact and bona fide
earnest hold me at arms' length and look
through me, she undertook a task that
would have baffled Talleyrand. She was a
72 CONFESSIONS OF
simple-minded honest girl, a bright-eyed
impersonation of home, trained by a home-
education for the duties, the pursuits, and
the pleasures of home, with about as much
chance of taking my measure as of ascer-
taining the distance of Sirius or the future
of France.
She had none of that delightful assurance
and confidence in her own opinion, her own
discernment, and her own astuteness, that
used to charm me so much in young
O'Leary's girl, Caroline de Courci, who,
having had the advantages of a boarding-
school education, at Mrs. Flanagan's esta-
blishment for young ladies, at Cork, and
having seen a good deal of the world in her
walks with the rest of the pupils (of whom
she probably was one of the smartest) in
the Blackrock-road, fancied she was an
overmatch for the whole universe united,
upon any subject whatever, from cross-stitch
to conic sections, taking Shakspeare by the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. V3
way. She had a good deal of talent and
perseverance, and very nearly made O'Leary
marry her. Jenkins had an amazing
quantity of difficulty in persuading him to
administer the usual sedative to her, in the
shape of an inexorable father, or an imprac-
ticable grandmother, or capricious aunt.
I forget which he employed on this occa-
sion ; but I suppose the one is as good as
the other.
Ellen, however, in such a passage of
arms as this with me was hopelessly over-
matched ; all that her little plans of artless
art did was to show her own hand with-
out getting the slightest peep at mine;
and perhaps it was fortunate for her that
she did. The weather was fine, and I was
in good health and spirits, and inclined to
be good-natured. I did not want her for
myself; and getting sometimes tired of
carrying on these garrison flirtations on
my own account, was not disinclined to
VOL. l. E
74 CONFESSIONS OF
the variety of carrying on one on the
account of somebody else.
It would be a novel excitement, at all
events, and I offered no opposition to the
project I saw she had formed from the
first viz., of making me a go-between be-
tween herself and Hawkins, the more so, as
I was certain that gentleman would tolerate
nothing of the sort, being probably deeply
engaged in some fresh affair of the same
nature at least, if the semi-barbarous vil-
lage he occupied afforded anything that
habitually wore shoes and stockings.
Such, at the time, was really my view of
the case, founded upon the experience of
several years' service of my country in
different parts of the United Kingdom ; and
by all rules of reading the future from the
past, it ought to have been a correct one;
but recent events have shown us in a grim
and portentous panorama, that even the
most astute kings, ministers, newspaper
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 75
editors, and free-traders cannot always
spell the coming aright. I do not arrogate
to myself the gift of prophecy, and though
an officer, am but a man.
Upon calling the next day, I found that
Mr. O'Reilly was out visiting his parishion-
ers, of whom he had not quite so many as
could be desired, though, to those he had he
was a real link between heaven and earth,
and to the Roman Catholics of the district he
was a sort of perainbulatory savings bank;
for the same want of faith that prevented
those good people trusting their souls to the
rector, also prevented their trusting their
money to the priest ; and all the remittances
from America, and such like transactions
of exchange, fell upon the shoulders of the
Protestant ecclesiastic. Mrs. O'Reilly held
mysterious confabulation with the house-
keeper; so, finding no one in the drawing-
room when I entered, and seeing Ellen in
the garden, tying up some flowers, I walked
E 2
76 CONFESSIONS OF
out through the window which opened on
it, and joined her. I then became aware
that she had a younger sister of fifteen and
another of five. I certainly thought her
remarkably pretty when she came forward,
her countenance beaming, and her hand
stretched out to welcome me ; yet her
manner was not without embarrassment
either.
" I am afraid you will find this a dull
quarter, unless you are a fisherman, Cap-
tain Cobb," said she; "Lord Mountararat
is very shy of his shooting (shy, in
Anglo-Irish, means stingy) and the Car-
rick-a-Gullion hunt is stopped; the people
used to pelt them with two-year-olds."
" Not a bad reason for discontinuing the
hunt," said I, laughing, for I was aware
that a two-year-old is not, as an ignorant
Saxon might suppose, a zoological term, but
a geological one, signifying, in fact, a stone
about the size of an orange, one of twice
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 77
that size being a four-year-old, and both
very inconvenient if liberally applied to
the person. I felt convinced, however, that
Ellen would not have used a term so nearly
approaching slang, had she not learned it
from the 110th, as well as learn to use it
without scruple. I determined to cure her
of that; indeed, I generally did a good
deal towards making every girl 1 took in
hand presentable.
" You will find very good fishing," said
she. " Papa fishes sometimes; he says
that hunting and shooting are not clerical,
but the parish need not grudge the rector
a dish of trout every now and then. He
caught those we had yesterday."
" No doubt it is a purely orthodox, and,
indeed, apostolical occupation," replied I;
" and, if I recollect right, strongly com-
mended in the proverbs of Solomon, in
which there is not a word about double-
barrelled guns ; and, no doubt, fish have been
78 CONFESSIONS OF
peculiarly the property of the Church in
all ages. The john-dory is the especial
property of St. Peter. It is only a corrup-
tion from the Italian, ' il Janitore' being
said to be the fish from whose mouth the
saint that sits at the gate of Heaven took
the tribute-money."
" Have you heard from Captain Hawkins
lately ?" asked she, somewhat shyly.
My heart smote me as I answered, " He
wrote to inform me that I was to have the
pleasure of your acquaintance, which, I
trust, will soon ripen into a lasting friend-
ship." I had learned this form of speech,
since my arrival, from Holster, who called
it " feeling a filly's mouth."
" But I suppose you write to him some-
times?" continued she, totally overlooking
the lasting friendship; perhaps she had
heard that before, and could estimate the
duration and intensity. " He told me you
were the dearest friend he had."
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 70
"I do not know that men ever corre-
spond much," replied I, " but I shall write
to him in a few days."
"Oh," said she, and then checked her-
self suddenly, " we saw a great deal of him
when he was here. (She pricked her finger
with a thorn at this moment.) We were
all so sorry when the 110th went away. It
is one of the provoking things about you
officers, that you come to a place, and by
the time we begin to know you and like
you, you are ordered away."
It is the mercy of Providence, thought I;
the last route was the salvation of at least
seven of our fellows, who never could have
backed out otherwise.
" And then," continued the poor girl,
" it leaves such a blank."
I was astounded at the assurance with
Avhich she said this to me, who was come to
Ballymaccrocodile rectory, that blessed day
in May, for the express purpose of filling
80 CONFESSIONS OF
her blank; "but," she continued with a quiet
earnestness, " it is hard when one has
become accustomed to people, and received
muck kindness and attention from them,
and learned their ways, and how to please
them, and found subjects in common, and
*
felt that they like one, and, in short, made
friends of them, to have to part, and with
so little chance of seeing them again. You
have no idea how one misses them."
These remarks, quiet and subdued as was
the manner in which they were made, were
accompanied by a gentle sigh or two, that
smote me a good deal harder than I liked to
admit to myself.
"It is nothing to you," she continued;
" you go on to fresh scenes, and make fresh
friends, and have your occupations and
your amusements to keep you from think-
ing; but it is those that are left behind
who "
At this moment we were interrupted by
COUNTRY QUARTEJ1S. 81
little Alice, who came, bounding like a
young gazelle, to summon us to luncheon,
and having secured one of my hands, led
me, like a tiny princess with a captive
giant, into the presence of her mamma, who
speedily commenced an attempt to fatten
me on cold corned beef a most savoury
method of preparing the flesh of oxen, as
practised in the Emerald Isle, but as yet
but imperfectly revealed to the Saxou.
My little princess now engaged her cap-
tive giant in conversation, and the pretty
behaviour sprightly yet unobtrusive of
the child, together with her evident intelli-
gence and the careful cultivation that had
obviously been bestowed upon her, and,
indeed, her sister Nanny, a large portion of
which I set down to Ellen's account, pre-
possessed me more and more in favour of
the O'Reilly family. It also gave me a
somewhat uncomfortable sensation ;il Ill--
idea that mischief might have been <k'ii<'
E
82 CONFESSIONS OF
here by a friend of mine. I thought a great
deal upon the subject as I returned home,
and when I reached the barracks, found a
rumour there prevailing that we were im-
mediately to be ordered to Brighton. I did
not believe it; it struck me as being too
good news to be true.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 83
CHAPTER V.
REGIMENTAL STATE HERO OF WATERLOO HOW WE
LOVE IN THE ARMY AWFUL APPEARANCE OF
LORD GEORGE STABLE MINDS BREATHLESS
ESCAPE OF THE CONFESSOR.
THAT the reader may have a clear idea of
who were that band of bold adventurers
of red-coated Columbuses who were now
busy exploring the barbarous wilds of Bally-
maccrocodile society, I shall present him
with a nominal return of the garrison of that
disloyal city, on the 22nd of May, 18 :
Major O'Flaherty, commanding in the room
of Colonel Howard, C.B., absent on leave.
Captains Jenkins ( Grenadier) .
Cobb (Light Infantry).
Popkins.
84 CONFESSIONS OP
Lieute tiants.... Tomkins.
Simpkins.
Mtisgrave.
O'Leary.
Ensigns Macdougal.
Hamilton Stuart.
Boyd,
and my boy Johnny, whom his mother,
by an atrocious abuse of aristocratic con-
nexion, had persuaded the Colonel to put
into the light company, that he might
have the benefit of my fatherly care a
piece of injustice which O'Leary, who would
have given his eyes to the wings and cord-
sash, never forgave, till OTlaherty by by
a regular Irish job got him into the Grena-
diers. My other subaltern, Eavenswood, was
absent on leave.
O'Flaherty was a shock- headed semi-
savage, from Jar Connaught, a good soldier
and story-teller, and by no means ferocious,
though his ancestors, who were kins's in
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 85
Connemara, or Great Moguls, for anything
that I know, in the days of Ollambdh Fod-
lahmb, bore that title, and by no means
meekly. He was a sportsman too, and had
a brace of setters, which, on the ground
that the name of a sporting dog should
always consist of one syllable, he had christ-
ened Port and Clart. Jenkins was a
Welshman and a wag, and Popkins an
adjective; Musgrave a north-countryman
and a gentleman. The rest were promising
young officers.
The barrack accommodation being limited,
the squadron of the 20th heavy dragoons
messed with us, giving us thereby a most
interesting insight into the character and
habits of some parts of the cavalry variety
of the British army. I am bound to say
that the 20th was a very indifferent sample,
and that my experience of other regiments
completely upset any conclusions I might
have arrived at from our knowledge of
86 CONFESSIONS OF
them. These booted Apollos were com-
manded by Major Ducrow, (who, as he in-
formed us, before we had time to march our
companies off to their quarters when we
arrived, was styled in his regiment the
Hero of Waterloo, for reasons that will
become apparent in due time and place,)
Captain Waddilove, Lieutenant Holster
(who considered Don Juan as merely a faint
foreshadowing of the "coming man" himself),
and Kilderbee (who had two ideas one
was Cavalry fellows, the other, Limmers,)
and, I suppose, they ought to have had some
cornets with them, but I believe the suck-
ing Murats were learning to ride at Cahir,
a process which always seemed, to me at
least, when hounds were running, to par-
take much more of unlearning than anything
else.
In the garrison there was an engineer and
two artillery officers, who did not mix much
with us, who were mere food for the powder
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 87
they manufactured. They resided in great
ease and dignity in a palace which the
ordnance department (which they repre-
sented) had erected adjacent to the man
store-rooms in which we were stowed away,
and which comfortable family mansion of
theirs, indeed, to the eye of a stranger,
would have seemed an integral part of the
barracks of Bally maccrocodile ; from which,
however, notwithstanding a certain general
external resemblance, to save appearances,
and the being surrounded by the same
wall, it differed very widely indeed, in
point of interior accommodation, salubrity,
and comfort. They, as the phrase runs,
'kept themselves to themselves," and, I
believe, had a tea mess.
They held us, in general, in utter scorn
and contempt, as men without mind, in-
tellect, or mathematics, who did not know
a parabola from a spheroid, mid could
not calculate nativities as I believe tht-y
88 CONFESSIONS OF
thought they could, so high ' was their
opinion of Woolwich science ; but I am
bound to say, and I do so with all due
humility, that they professed great esteem
for me nevertheless, having discovered that
I knew something about the component
parts of triangles, upon one of them making
a remark to Major Ducrow (I do not know
upon what provocation) about the square
of the hypothenuse, which that gallant
officer supposed to signify some irregular
variety of Russian infantry, and said he
would like to try if he could not break it
with lancers, and was about to add an illus-
tration from Waterloo, as usual, when I
explained the meaning of the term to him ;
whereupon he thanked God he was not
what he was pleased to call a " gometor,"
and knew nothing about those sort of
things, and, indeed, in that way he had a
great deal for which to be grateful to
Providence.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 89
I may add, that our scientific fellow-
soldiers bad another establishment in the
barracks the canteen an institution in-
dicative of great sagacity on the part of
the authorities who sanction the invest-
ment of public money in buildings from
which the Ordnance derive a handsome rent
by keeping the Army drunk.
These, then, were the conquering heroes
that reigned over the Ballymaccrocodi-
linas in May, though of course, as the
year advanced some departed and others
came in their stead, till that dread day
arrived, when in the grey of the morning
the whole pageant melted away in strains
of soft music dying away in the distance,
like the delusion that it was, from the
tearful eyes of ** the girls we left behind
us."
Johnny was a great observer of Ducrow
and Holster, and used to take huge delight
in setting them off in their peculiar lines,
90 CONFESSIONS OF
which was by no means difficult, meat,
clothes, and fire not being more necessaries
of life to those gentlemen than an audience,
which they could not always command, for
they treated Tomkins, and Simpkins, and
O'Leary (off whose mess-plate they were
dining) with an assumption of superiority,
based upon their being " cavalry men,"
which those mild subalterns occasionally
revolted against. Johnny, however, young
as he was, laughed them to scorn.
He amused me exceedingly, the first
night he came actually in contact with the
ordinary working-day dragoon, and became
aware of the singular habits and practices
of these horse warriors, the strange ideas
that are current among them, and the
wonderful delusions they labour under about
their own importance, about women in
general, about good eating and good taste,
about dress and address, and the customs
of society and the ways of the world, in
short, about life.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 91
His experience had been confined hitherto
to a slight acquaintance with some of Lady
Elizabeth's young friends in the Life-guards
and Blues, who used to patronize him for
Edith's sake whom I believe, in his secret
heart he regarded with becoming awe, and,
I have no doubt, with great inward envy,
though he was too good a son to reproach
his mother with not parting with a quarter
of her income to keep him in a cuirass.
Ducrow, however, upset all his preconceived
notions of the dignity of the " long sword,
saddle, bridle"; and he used to sit oppo-
site that wearisome warrior at mess, and
make him repeat, time after time, the whole
story of how Lieutenant Ducrow and the
20th heavy dragoons comported themselves
on the three days (the regulation allowance
for a crisis in the nineteenth century) of
1815, from the time that the French crossed
the Sambre, to the time that the 20th
performed the same feat in pursuit of them,
92 CONFESSIONS OF
from which it would appear that the said
Lieutenant Ducrow, from 6 A.M. on the
15th of June to 6 P.M. on the 20th, was
present the whole time in every place,
from Brussels to Charleroi, and from Wavre
to Hal, notwithstanding that he was despe-
rately wounded and left for dead on the
16th; made prisoner, and escaped mira-
culously on the 17th; and half cracked by
a round-shot on the 18th, all which won-
derful accounts Johnny used to write off
to Edith, who used to be very grateful to
me for making him such a good corres-
pondent; and, in truth, she was in some
degree indebted to me for the amusing part
of these letters, for it was I who first suffi-
ciently impressed upon his young mind the
necessity of learning to keep his counte-
nance.
" I say, Holster !" said Johnny, one even-
ing that we were sitting at mess, and had
got tired of Ducrow and the 7th French
.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 93
cuirassiers, he had hewed into small bits,
" who was that black-haired girl you were
riding with to-day ? You seem pretty thick
there eh, old fellow !"
Holster replied with a wink, to attract
my attention ; to which Johnny gave me a
kick on the shin, that almost set me off
howling.
" You cavalry fellows should not keep
all the girls to yourselves; you ought to
let us have those you don't want !"
" It is no fault of ours !" replied the
worthy scion of hemp and tallow; "it is
not that we want all the girls, it is that
they all want us !"
" That's very true !" remarked Waddi-
love ; "it is a great bo-ar ; they have no
mercy on us, indeed, here they are pecu-
liarly voracious; I met a girl at O'Hara's,
the other day, I thought would have eat
me up, she let me have no peace."
11 1 sat opposite to them," whispered
94 CONFESSIONS OF
Johnny to rne; "he said something stupid
to her three times, and she snubbed him
every time, and I believe would have made
an awful example of him, only her mamma
was watching her like a black velvet dra-
gon, and looking as black as thunder at
her all the time. The girl thought him an
ass, but I believe the mother would have
worshipped a blue-faced baboon, providing
he came in the shape of what she called a
' horse officer.' "
" I have seen something of the sort my-
self in my time, Johnny," replied I; " but
keep Holster on the trot."
" She seemed tolerably sweet upon you,
Holster," continued that young gentleman ;
" has she any brothers?"
" She has some confounded cousins," re-
plied Holster; " I don't much mind brothers,
they don't generally want to be bothered
with their sisters when they are in com-
pany, and besides, if they get into my way
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 95
i
I kick them out of it ; but those confounded
Irish cousins are troublesome fellows that
won't take a hint. "
" You should tell her that she must send
them away when you are with her," said
Waddilove; "threaten to throw her over,
and she'll soon grow docile; that I find al-
ways brings them to their bearings."
" Don't they ever take one at one's
word?" asked Johnny, with an engaging
meekness; he would keep on kicking my
shins all the time.
" By Jove! I should like to see one of
them try such a trick on me," replied
Holster, magnificently, with a tremendous
tug at his moustaches. " No, no, my boy,
you're not up to things yet ; the true danger
of such a threat is that it may bring on a
scene; it's when they get repentant and
confiding and pathetic, that you must look
out for squalls ; at least, that's what we
have to fear in the cavalry," continued that
96 CONFESSIONS OF
fashionable officer, correcting himself, for he
evidently felt painfully that he had lowered
himself, by supposing that the same rules
could apply to " the worm-crushers," as I
once heard him inadvertently call us to
Ducrow, when they were both rather more
than usually fuddled with our port ; " I don't
know how it may be in the marching regi-
ments, but we find it very embarrassing,
upon my honour."
" Yes, we poor padnaggers have no chance
against you," said Johnny; " but you have
not told us about that young lady you were
riding with."
" I was not riding with her, Waldgrave,"
replied the dragoon, " she was riding with
me ; and it was as much as I could do to
get rid of her at the barrack gate. It was
quite painful to have to send her about her
business, she looked so disappointed; but
that was no fault of mine, I must dress
well, and if it is too killing, it is that sort
of killing that is no murder."
COUNTEY QUARTERS. 97
"Did she admire your dress?" asked
Johnny; " was it the coat or the boots?"
" It was the man, I should think," said
Holster; " she said something about a jewel
having a fitting casket, and I'm sure my
clothes fit well enough."
" Did she call you her jewel?" returned
Johnny, somewhat surprised; " why an old
beggar-woman called me her jewel the other
day."
" She said as much," answered the other;
" they all do. Waddilove, what will you take
about Lord George's colt for the Leger?"
Upon this awful question being asked, I
instantly made my escape, followed by
Johnny and two or three others, who were
as painfully aware as I was that anything
like rational conversation, or any description
of amusement, was over for that evening,
from the moment that the introduction of
the subject of racing placed the dragoons in
the saddle. Merciful powers! how they
VOL. I. F
98 CONFESSIONS OF
used to talk about races and horses, and, ye
gods ! how ignorantly.
At all times and places, in season and
out of season, we were nauseated by the
everlasting outpourings of the stable mind
and the idiotic deductions of stable logic.
Blunderbuss was to beat Carronnade at
York because Firelock beat Pocket Pistol
at Newmarket, because Blunderbuss was
great uncle to Double Barrell, and Howitzer
was grandmother of Grapeshot ; Cocksparrow
was to give Cassowary three pound at Exe-
ter because Turkeycock carried a feather
weight when Waterwagtail beat him at
Doncaster. One would suppose that the
words Liverpool, York, Manchester, and Ex-
eter, signified merely some suitable space
for bringing horses and cups together, and
that the English language was invented for
the sole purpose of enabling the " Era,"
and " Bell's Life," to enlighten the British
public about sweepstakes, and stallions, and
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 99
Hollo way's pills. I wish the Pope had
come to dine at mess sometimes, he would
have learned that there was a calendar worth
a dozen of his. Then they would get among
their troop horses, and we were deluged
with spavins and glanders, and windgalls
and speedy-cut. A 35 was a long-tailed
crib-biter, and C 14 a ring-tailed roarer.
We had hard mouths and sore eyes and
cracked feet all dinner time, and had stag-
gers and hide bound and speedy- cut after.
Never was such might, majesty, and do-
minion, given to the species Equus, and in-
deed, the fear of it, and the dread of it, was
so strong upon me, that upon its intro-
duction, whenever practicable, " I saved
myself," as the French most expressively
say.
Oh, gentle reader, when your hospitable
board is at last graced by a brace of the
principal luminaries of that brilliant ca-
valry regiment you are so anxious to toady,
F 2
1(JO CONFESSIONS OF
if you regard your other guests, place them
as far as possible asunder, and allow them
on no pretence to communicate with one
another. If you do, you will never get the
conversation into a Christian channel again
it will be all horses and races, races and
horses.
It was a fine evening, early in June, and
I judged that the best thing I could do was
to stroll down to the rectory, where I had,
of course, by this time, made myself at
home. I had already intimated to Mrs.
O'Reilly that I wished to introduce a young
friend of mine, and one whom I was sure
she would like, &c. &c. &c. ; and having
received a gracious assent from that lady,
now informed Johnny that I would fulfil my
promise to him, and take him to tea there
that very evening, with which notification
he was highly delighted, and scampered off
to his quarters to dress himself. Alas for
the days that one scampered off to one's
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 101
quarters, and one's heart bounded at di ess-
ing for tea !
I had not told Johnny why I had delayed
presenting him to the O'Keilly family so
long, though he had more than once loudly
expressed his surprise at it, being accus-
tomed to see my promises, whether for good
or evil, very rapidly followed hy perform-
ances. The fact was, that I found Ellen's
affair was much more serious than commonly
was the case with matters of the sort.
What had passed between her and Hawkins
I had no means of knowing ; she, of course,
did not confide in me; and though a sort of
tacit understanding was springing up be-
tween me and her mother, still it had not yet
amounted to an interchange of confidence
sufficient to confirm my surmises, though it
certainly strengthened them. I was quite
satisfied that Hawkins had won her heart,
was by no means clear as to what had
passed between them about her hand, and
102 CONFESSIONS OF
being utterly powerless to control events
contented myself with awaiting them.
However, as Ellen was in confirmed low
spirits, and utterly unable to conceal that
something was preying upon her heart, I
did not choose to subject her to the annoy-
ance of making any fresh acquaintance, still
less to draw upon her, in her then state of
mind, the observations of our humorous
young officers, who would speedily have fer-
reted out the story somehow ; agreed among
themselves that she had the pip ; asked me if
she was always shedding shiners ; and christ-
ened her by some facetious nickname, signi-
ficant of her forlorn and deserted condition.
As she did not at that time enter much
into the gaieties of the place, I had no
difficulty in effecting this temporary seclu-
sion; and in time, though she did not abso-
lutely recover her spirits, she at least got
her feelings under control, and then I judged
that I might safely comply with Johnny's
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 103
wishes to make her acquaintance, the more
so as that young gentleman had an old-
fashioned habit of never repeating what he
heard or saw in places where he was inti-
mate.
Indeed, I knew very well that none of
our people were so well qualified to be
admitted into the bosom of a respectable
family as my young subaltern; and after
informing him that at Mr. O'Reilly's there
were family prayers every night, and in-
quiring whether he knew how to behave
himself at them, to which he answered,
with some affectation of indignation, in the
affirmative, my mind was perfectly at ease
as to the impression he was likely to make.
I was right enough ; but there were prayers
that night of a nature that I never calcu-
lated on.
104 CONFESSIONS OF
;
CHAPTER VI.
SHADOW ON THE STREAM STARTLING CONFIDENCE
SOMETHING PARTICULAR IN THE WIND UN-
PLEASANT DISCOVERY OF A CONSCIENCE THE
FROGS AND THE BOYS THAT PELT THEM RE-
FRESHING CLOSE OF THE DAY'S WORK.
JOHNNY was received, as I had anticipated,
by the O'Reilly family, with a kindly friend-
liness, that set everybody at their ease ; and
then I was introduced to a gentleman whom
I had not before met, the Rev. Henry
Beecher, who, it turned out, was the
curate of the adjoining parish, a pleasing,
gentleman-like young man of highly clerical
appearance, somewhat formal, perhaps, yet
not more so than was consistent with his
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 105
profession, who returned our salutations
with an air benevolent, yet somewhat
alarmed that gave me the impression
that he looked upon us men of war as two
baptized tigers, or man-devils, whose souls
(if they were still in the betting) he never-
theless would have cheerfully prayed out of
purgatory without fee or reward, which is
more than his Roman-catholic anti-type
would have done; though during the even-
ing he spoke of the priest in terms of
respect that I doubt that functionary de-
serving, seeming to regard, or rather to
endeavour to regard, the Reverend Dionisius
O'Shaughnessy as a labourer in the same
vineyard, only with different tools.
Indeed, I believe poor Beecher, though,
of course, " a blood-stained and Celt-hating
Saxon, and a bigotted member of an alien
and bloated establishment that battened on
the vitals of the people, and turned the
green fields of Erin into a howling wilder-
I 3
106 CONFESSIONS OF
ness," as the pious Dionisius used to say,
Beecher, I have good cause to believe,
never indulged in a malignant feeling
against any created being, and never wil-
fully put his foot upon a worm.
I soon perceived, that he was evidently,
and deservedly, a great favourite with
Ellen, and that, for what reason I could
not tell, there was a remarkable harmony
and accord in their views of the various
topics that offered themselves during the
evening (except one); but still, with all
that, I remarked that though she looked
earnestly and kindly, if not compassion-
ately, at him when he spoke, still she never
could fairly meet his eye.
The reader may possibly have remarked
the singular patience, or rather indifference,
with which I had given up my undoubted
claims to a flirtation with Ellen during
our stay at Ballymaccrocodile ; but the
real fact was, that duleet sport, called
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 107
"spooning" in military language, becomes
wearisome in time, to say nothing of its
occasionally suggesting the difference be-
tween the sport to the frogs and the boy
that pelted them, in the fable; and, there-
fore, on this occasion, it was my pleasure
to appear in the character of an amateur
parent or guardian, a sort of out-rigger
upon the family canoe, which I perceived
was steering alarmingly wild, having in sad
truth been recently somewhat piratically
overhauled.
Ellen, when we made our appearance,
was on the point of commencing one of
those simple ballads that she sung with so
much feeling and taste, and I was not long
in discovering that if Beecher was all ears
for the song, he was all eyes for the singer.
I recollected my friend now at Dunnian-
way. I think I must have blushed, but
luckily, if I did, there was nobody to detect
the change of colour, and if Johnny had
108 CONFESSIONS OF
perceived it lie would probably have attri-
buted it to the generous, fruity, full-bodied
military port we had so lately quitted.
Some of Nanny's drawings were lying
upon the table; very creditable sketches
they were, too, and Johnny won her young
heart out of hand by really admiring them ;
so that by the time that I had done com-
plimenting Ellen on her singing, and had
finished taking the measure of Mr. Beecher,
I found my friend Johnny teaching Nanny
some artful dodges in shading, with little
Alice on his knee. I need not say what
Mrs. O'lleilly's feelings were towards him ;
indeed, at one time, I thought I perceived
her flapping her fins, as if mentally be-
stowing her maternal benediction upon his
young head; and I have no doubt the
worthy divine himself would have been
highly gratified had Johnny then and there
announced his entire adhesion to the
Thirty-nine Articles, including the fortieth,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 109
or additional Irish one viz., the glorious,
pious, and immortal memory of the great
and good King "William, who saved us from
popery, slavery, brass money, and wooden
shoes. They say that this is not so much
insisted on now; but the reader must
remember that this is a chronicle of some
years ago, and that something particular
had happened about tithes in the few years
preceding.
The day had been awfully hot, and there
was still a good deal of twilight left; in-
deed, it was more daylight, for we hud been
driven from the dinner-table so early by
the horse conversation that it was still
early, hardly, I think, eight o'clock; it
was speedily found that everybody, every
two or three minutes, took a look at the
glass door into the garden, and not long
afterwards we unanimously voted the draw-
ing-room close, and adjourned into the open
air. Johnny was immediately dragged off
110 CONFESSIONS OF
by Nanny and Alice to a little spot which
the latter called her own, and where she
amused herself planting flowers, taking
them up again to see how they were grow-
ing, pouring water over them to see the
water disappear in the earth, digging, as a
mode of stimulating a growing crop, and
various other juvenile eccentricities of hor-
ticultural nonage.
Ellen, pale and agitated, for a length of
time seemed determined that nothing should
separate her from me, which, at first, I was
inclined to interpret in the regular military
manner, but subsequently found reason
to alter my opinion. Beecher seemed
nervously anxious to separate her from us ;
and it struck me that Mrs. O'Reilly was
desirous that he should do so, as indeed
she was, though not precisely to afford
them a t$te-a-t$te, her object being to have
a confidential conversation with me.
When two such heavenly bodies as the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. Ill
mamma and the lover are in conjunction
the horoscope is not difficult to calculate.
Ten minutes saw Ellen and Beecher alone,
and something particular evidently on the
point of happening, whilst Mrs. O'Keilly
and I were at the other end of the garden,
talking about buttermilk and flummery.
The subject was not, however, a very in-
teresting one ; it was doomed to be short-
lived a divergence to stirabout prolonged,
but could not sustain it ; it was like the in-
dispensable but unmeaning advance of the
first pawn at chess; another moment, and
the game began.
" You never met Mr. Beecher before, did
you ?" asked the lady; " he used to be one
of the dearest friends we had, but we have
not seen him now for some time."
"I see him for the first time this evening,"
I replied ; " he seems a gentlemanly sort of
man."
" Indeed he is," replied Mrs. O'Reilly,
112 CONFESSIONS Otf
" and much more than that; a more sincere,
zealous, and hard-working minister than
him the whole diocese cannot produce. He
and Ellen used to be the dearest friends j
and I will confess to you, I did entertain a
hope that something would have come of it,
and so, indeed, did Mr. O'Reilly, who
would have made any sacrifice, compatible
with justice to his other children, to bring
it about. They would have been poor, cer-
tainly, but neither have been expensively
brought up, as you know ; as Mr. O'Reilly
says, * Better is a dinner of herbs where
peace is, than a stalled ox and contention
therewith;' and he was one that we could
thoroughly trust. I believe myself that he
was, and indeed is, still devotedly attached
to Ellen ; and I think she was not very far
from returning his attachment, until you
know how calculated your friend, Captain
Hawkins, is to win a girl's heart; and
since the 110th arrived here we have
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 113
seen but little of poor dear Mr. Beecher. I
suppose,now that they are gone "(confound
his impertinence, thought I; does he think
the 120th cannot have their own way with
women as well as the 110th? I've a great
mind however, I was merciful, as, indeed,
1 always am; and the poor mother pro-
ceeded :) " He came here yesterday. It is
seven long Irish miles to his house; but he
thinks nothing at least, he used to think
nothing of riding here to tea, and back
again; and it went to my heart to hear
him talk of * old times,' for I much fear
that what he means by ' old times' are gone
for ever."
She paused for a moment here; but I
had nothing to say. I felt the blood
tingling in every vein of my forehead, for I
could pretty well divine what was passing
in her mind with respect ta an act of a
friend of mine that I could neither repair
nor justify an act to which I could not
114 CONFESSIONS OF
help feeling myself and iny comrades as"
in some degree accessory, considering the
universal toleration, not to say encourage-
ment, extended to the unprincipled trifling
with woman's affections, which formed one
of our principal pastimes in country
quarters.
" Have you heard from Captain Hawkins
lately?" asked she, suddenly. "I know
gentlemen do not correspond very regularly ;
but I thought perhaps he might have
written to you."
" I have heard nothing from him since I
arrived here," answered I, thinking with
some little shame upon the letter I had
received the day before and which I
thought it discreet to say nothing about.
"Men, you know, seldom write to one another
unless for some specific reason."
"Captain Cobb," said Mrs. O'Reilly, with
much emotion, "you can surely make
allowance for what a mother's feelings must
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 115
be when, her daughter's happiness is so
nearly concerned ; and forgive me if I ask
you, did he ever tell you of any attachment
subsisting between him and Ellen? Surely
Tie is not one of those cruel triflers who win
women's hearts and then fling them to the
vultures ?"
This was a staggerer. My private
opinion was that he was. I was also of
opinion that a gay young officer, with a
heart as light and as hard as a cricket ball,
was likely to take a very different *dew of
the matter from an anxious mother, and I
assured her that he had made no communi-
cation to me on the subject (Jesuitically
salving my conscience with the reflection
that in his letter to me about Ellen there
was not a word about love), that I did not
consider him likely to think seriously of
matrimony as yet, and that if he did I
doubted his having the means.
" But surely," returned Mrs. O'Reilly,
116 CONFESSIONS OF
looking anxiously, nay, imploringly, into
my face, " surely no man of honour would
win a girl's affections, unless he really had
the means of marrying her as well as the
intention ?"
"No man of true honour would," an-
swered I, the abandoned hypocrite that I
was; "but, unhappily, men's honours fit
loosely when bright eyes are in the case."
"But do you really think," abruptly
asked Mrs. O'Reilly, upon whom a new and
ghastly light seemed breaking "do you
really think that he means to desert
Ellen?"
" I really have no knowledge, or means
of forming an opinion on the subject,"
replied I, now painfully convinced that my
worst forebodings were realized ; " I do
not know what may have passed between
Miss OTveilly and Hawkins. I do hope,
most sincerely, that it will be nothing
that you will have cause to repent of; but
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 117
at all events, certainty is better than sus-
pense, in any case; and, as soon as I can
get a few days leave, I will run over to
Dunmanway, arid, without letting him see
my hand, find out how matters really
stand."
The burst of gratitude which this unim-
portant offer of service elicited perfectly
astounded me. It was, however, almost
instantaneously interrupted by our perceiv-
ing Ellen entering the house by herself, her
face hidden in her hands, and evidently
violently agitated. Her mother instantly
followed her. I joined Johnny and the
girls. Nanny set me digging directly, and
kept me hard at work persecuting mother
earth till the hour of sunset arrived, and little
Alice informed me that the sun was going
to heaven, as that luminary disappeared
below the horizon.
Soon afterwards I heard the tramp of a
horse quitting the rectory. There was an
118 CONFESSIONS OF
uneasy flitting of lights about the windows.
The chill began to fall on us, and we
entered the drawing-room. Mr. Beecher
had disappeared. Ellen soon returned,
which rather astonished me, for she had
evidently been crying, and I marvelled
much at her facing company so soon after-
wards; I know neither Adeline nor Gun-
dreda would have done so, if my Lady Caro-
line would have let them, which she most
assuredly would not. It was a cheerless
assemblage round the tea-table. I took my
leave early; and, when Ellen grasped my
hand at parting, a cold shudder passed over
my frame, the grasp was so unconsciously
convulsive. I never knew that I had a
conscience before.
I did not by any means relish the disco-
very. It is all very well being sorry for
one's own misdeeds; that is a necessary
evil, following a due course of cause and
effect, like headache or gout following excess,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 119
which is nothing but a bill upon one's consti-
tution at a long date ; besides, one has had va-
lue received, but I entirely objected to being
sorry for the offences of my friends ; that is
an unjust and intolerable burden, a species of
rate in aid, which I relished as little as the
province of Ulster. I was perfectly ready
to go to Dunmanway and see what Hawkins
thought about it, and try to persuade him
to marry her. I should have made no
great bones about taking the case into the
court of twelve paces, if I judged the emer-
gency warranted my shooting my dear
friend ; in short, I had no sort of objection
to doing anything, but the greatest possible
to feeling anything.
I suppose that "sensations" are con-
sidered agreeable, since people talked about
indulging in them, and one does not talk of
indulging in bread-pudding or castor-oil;
those that liked them, or that deserved
them, were welcome to them; but I recol-
120 CONFESSIONS OF
lected a sensation I had once had, and it
gave me the idea that one red-hot devil was
tearing my heart and soul to pieces, and a
dozen worse ones fighting for the bits.
Perhaps it was the recollection of this that
made me feel for Ellen that unusual and
inconvenient sympathy that kept me silent
half the way back to barracks.
" Cobb," said Johnny, seriously, " do you
know that, from what I heard from the
children, it is my private opinion that that
young parson proposed for your friend
Ellen to-night."
" I'm sorry to say, Johnny," returned I,
" that I agree with you ; and that, what is
more, she refused him."
" That was not your doing?" said Johnny,
gravely.
"No, it was not my doing, Johnny,"
answered I. " It is a case beyond my
reach ; but don't say anything about what
you've seen to-night."
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 121
" You need not tell me that," replied the
youth, somewhat offended at the caution;
and, indeed, with justice, for he did not
need it.
" I know that, my dear Johnny," an-
swered I; "but you know what messes our
fellows make of any story they get the
slightest hint of, and this is a matter pecu-
liarly to be kept quiet."
" But what made her look so wretched
and miserable all tea-time?" asked Johnny;
"it was not that her father refused him,
but she refused him herself; and yet I
thought she was going to cry every minute.
She had been crying, I'm sure."
" She had, Johnny, and very bitter tears
they were," returned I. " She is really
very fond of Mr. Beecher, and the giving
him pain, though she could in no way help
it, gave her intense pain; but unhappily,
you see, she could not marry him, because
her heart, and I believe a truly loving
VOL. I. G
122 CONFESSIONS OF
heart it is, is given to another man, the
more's the pity, for he is unworthy of it, at
least, I am afraid so. Now you see, Johnny,
a woman can only love one man at a time;
it isn't like you, who can love three or four
women at the same time.
" Go to the devil !" interjected Johnny,
quite roused by this unexpected accusation.
"You're another!" continued he; perhaps
his conscience began to bore him. " I
should be sorry if any trouble did befall
them, however; they are a very charming
family, Cobb, and I am very much obliged
indeed to you for introducing me."
Now, thought I to myself, as we plodded
once more in silence towards our quarters,
here is a pretty illustration of that system of
" spooning." Here comes Hawkins, who
will no more marry than fly; he cuts in
between this poor devil of a parson, who
would have made her an excellent husband,
and whom she would have made an admi-
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 123
rable wife. Then goes a gash into Beecher's
heart that he'll take down into his grave with
him. Then he leaves Ellen dying for love of
him, with no more compunction than if he
left a sick charger in an hospital stable.
She was ready to cry her eyes out to-day at
being obliged to inflict all this pain on her
true lover; what will she feel when she finds
her chosen one false, faithless, worthless ?
What sufferings are not in store for her!
Well ! then goes a gash into her heart that
she will take down into her grave with her,
that, very likely, will hurry her down there,
too. All this to fill up Mr.. Hawkins' leisure
hours, which are twenty-four per diem;
and now he is performing some similar
devilments at Dunmanway, and calls it
fun. God forgive us our innocent mirth !
Upon reaching the barracks I found
myself completely exhausted. What with
Mrs. O'Reilly's conversation, tea, and moral-
izing, I had appeared in the character of a
G2
124 CONFESSIONS OF
respectable member of society for nearly
three hours, and the effort was tremendous.
I now indemnified myself with some brandy -
and-water and cigars, and learned that
some work had been cut out for me during
my absence, some brilliant military festi-
vities having been decided upon, the
arrangements of which could, of course,
be intrusted to none but me.
125
COUNTRY QUARTERS.
'
CHAPTER VII.
MARS AND VENUS HIDDEN ATTRACTIONS POETRY
OF INCOMPREHENSIBILITY LADIES FANCIES
TROPHIES OF FOREIGN CAMPAIGNS TROPHIES
OF HOME CAMPAIGNS.
THE 18th of June now drew rapidly near,
and the 18th of June was a day upon which
the gallant Ducrow, in his character of
Hero of Waterloo, was accustomed pre-
eminently to make an ass of himself, or
perhaps I might say more properly, to
clothe the ass he was in a lion's skin. Not
of sufficient rank to come within the list of
Apsley House, he commonly performed, or
caused to be performed, a banquet of the
sort himself; either a public dinner at mess,
126 CONFESSIONS OF
or a parade of the band, with ices and at-
tentive officers for the ladies who loved him ;
at which he fought all his battles o'er again,
and thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice
he slew the slain ; and not only made long
military speeches about divisions, brigades,
regiments, squadrons, half squadrons, and
other combinations of men and horses,
varied with biographical sketches of Ney,
Soult, Grouchy, Blucher, Gneisenau, Thiel-
man, and about five and thirty distinguished
British officers, but, as Johnny informed
me, used to recite lengthy poetical pas-
sages on the same subject such as that
celebrated one, which the reader "no doubt
remembers, beginning
" There was was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then,
Her beauty and her chivalry,"
(Viz. Major Ducrow.)
" And bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and bravo men ;"
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 127
viz., the 20th heavy dragoons; or some-
times that (in its time) not less celebrated
one, that the reader has no doubt forgotten,
that commences
" On that great day of milling, when blood lay in
lakes, '
When kings held the bottle, and Europe the
stakes."
Nay, on one occasion, it is reported that
the presence of an eminent tragedian in-
spired the breast of Ducrow with a
Shakesperian ardour, and that, seeing that
Shakespeare could have written nothing
about Waterloo (for a reason he had), the
gallant officer took the next best battle, and
learned by heart that spirited address that
we all learned at school, and that, if my
memory serves me rightly, begins
" D n him that wishes for more men from Eng-
land."
He also exhibited, carefully laid out in
128 CONFESSIONS OF
his quarters, for the admiration of the fair
worshippers of Mars, the jacket and
trousers in which he was wounded at Water-
loo, marked with his blood; and I never
heard any satisfactory reason assigned why
his shirt and stockings were not preserved
for exhibition too. Then there was an
eagle (from one of the men's shakoes), and
a horse shoe, and a bit of dried finger, and
a few bullets, and a book of French songs
that belonged more to Venus than to Mars,
and a picture of Shaw the Life-guardsman.
He also, as Johnny informed me, in-
variably proposed the health of old Blucher
and the Prussian army after dinner, which
reminded somebody else to propose the
Duke of Wellington and the heroes who
fought and bled under him, for which he
returned thanks himself; and at a later
period of the evening, when the liquor he
had swallowed had found its way to his
eyes, and he had arrived at the crying
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 129
stage, lie used to throw a shade of the
ludicrous over the solemn recollections of
the brave comrades who died in arms and
honour in that imperial battle, by proposing,
with a maudlin melancholy, the memory of
the dead. In short, the quarters of the 20th
became, for the day, a sort of military puppet-
show, wherein Ducrow enacted the part of
Punch very much to his own satisfaction.
Upon this occasion it was our intention
to give a grand entertainment to the neigh-
bourhood- on the anniversary ; we wished
to establish a system of pic-nics, and other
sociabilities; for Messrs. Ducrow, Holster,
Simpkins, and Co., had agreed that the
natives were very tol-lol for such a place
(the fact being that the society was remark-
ably good, few places could boast of a
more creditable resident gentry), and as a
beginning, it was as well to fix upon the
18th of June as any other day, and it served
to gratify the 20th.
G 3
130 CONFESSIONS OF
The Aveather had set in so decidedly fine
that we did not consider it necessary to
confine ourselves to barracks, and we
pitched upon the ruined castle of Kincora,
which was on the banks of a remarkably
picturesque river, about three miles off, for
the scene of dinner, with the intention that
all the younger part of the company should
stroll back to the town quietly through the
woods afterwards, and dance in the mess-
room in the evening.
Kincora, though, from its name, it
might have been a palace of Brian Boroihme,
or a hall of Nial of the Nine Hostages, was
in reality an Anglo-Norman fortalice of the
time of Richard the Second, built by Gaspar
de Lacy, the then lord of all the country
within a day's ride. The castle was a fine old
ruin ; indeed, so substantially was it built,
that after six centuries of time, war, weather,
and fire, it lifted up its bold front to the
sky; open, indeed, to all the winds of
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 131
heaven, but yet almost unscathed; and it
would not have cost much to efface Crom-
well's handwriting from it, and make it
habitable again. The estate was still kept
together in the hands of the representative,
in the female line, of the former lords of the
Pale ; but there is a cartload of curses in
the word mortgage.
The lower part of the principal mass of
buildings, for it was too large to be called
a tower, and too Norman to be called a
house, had, by way of a ground floor, a sort
of half hall, half vault, resting upon sub-
stantial columns of the black marble of the
neighbourhood, and a groined roof. Not-
withstanding the crypt-like character of
this apartment, the doors, windows, and
loop-holes, all of which seemed to have
grown considerably since their early days,
admitted sufficient light to prevent its
being actually gloomy. We had sent the
pioneers to level and cleanse the floor, and
132 CONFESSIONS OF
intended, in case it rained, to avail our-
selves of its shelter for dining in, and at
all events, in case of good weather, to use
it as a cool and agreeable retreat from the
heat of the day.
From a corner of this block of buildings
arose the indispensable donjon keep, and the
whole was mantled over with ivy of a
luxuriance that only Ireland can present.
There was, of course, the usual court-yard
or lawn, and the main rampart of the ex-
ternal wall was pierced by several breaches,
most of which were practicable for ladies,
and well calculated for the display of ankles
and something more; in front, a gently
sloping lawn, flanked on one side by a
luxuriant shrubbery of arbutus, and on the
other by the woods through which we were
to find our way back to the barracks,
offered its level sward for our sylvan
repast, if the clerk of the weather was
favourable.
COUNTRY QUARTERS.
This little bit of turf was, I should
imagine, about two acres in extent, that is
to say, about a hundred and fifty yards
long, by seventy wide, and terminated in
a precipice of fifty or sixty feet sheer
descent, broken and wooded, at the bottom
of which rippled and gurgled the picturesque
little Avonbeg, to which shining river two
tolerably safe paths led down from the
plateau on which stood the castle of Kin-
cora. The Avonbeg was full of trout, and
several of the gentlemen of the party
whipped their way to the place of assem-
blage, and by their united efforts furnished
us with an amazing quantity of that deli-
cate comestible; indeed, rather more than
the regimental gridirons could altogether
manage.
The preparations we made to delight
the eyes, the ears, and the palates of our
visitors, differed so little from those cus-
tomary on the like occasions (excepting,
134 CONFESSIONS OF
that as it was under one hand, it did not
rain roast fowls as it generally does) that I
shall not stop to describe them, unless, that
upon arriving we found a guest that I, for
one, had not invited viz. a most awful
looking eagle, which I speedily ascertained
had been surreptitiously introduced by
Ducrow, to afford him an opportunity of
delivering himself of some extraordinary
quantity of perilous stuff about the capture
of two imperial French eagles at "Waterloo ;
which feat, by-the-bye, he was beginning
to believe had been a performance of his
own.
THE HOUR ARRIVED AND THE MAN.
Ducrow, in full uniform, with his orderly
behind him, rode up at a walk to the gate
of Kincora, and the sun of Waterloo began
to shine upon that castle, a puffy Phoebus,
yet glorious withal. Ducrow, the slayer
alike of French cuirassiers and of English
ladies, who pierced hearts equally with his
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 135
sword and his eyes, was a plump little
Christian, like a bearded baby. I do not
know whether he was so well protected on
the 18th of June, 1815, as he was on that
day, 18 , but I can answer for it that on
that latter day, all from his waist upwards
was pistol or sabre proof; at least two
inches of padding separated the Waterloo
medal he wore with such pride from his
manly breast. . His sash was drawn to a
point of tightness as to make his waist a
hard solid column, off which shot would
have glanced as off a marble pillar, and
underneath that there lurked, as I was
credibly informed, what he called a belt, but
which a jury of milliners would infallibly
have pronounced stays. Of course I need
not say that he was very particular indeed
about his boots, and had bitter bad corns
in consequence; or that he employed some
horrible hogwash to make his moustachioes
hideous. Benignant nature saved him
136 CONFESSIONS OF
much trouble about his hair, which was
now, in whatever part of time or space
1826 is, having disappeared with that year,
and never been heard of since.
I never could discover what it was that
gave Ducrow the colossal opinion he pos-
sessed of his own irresistibility among the
fair sex, still less how it was that, somehow
or other, wherever he went, some fair hand
or other was ready to pat the greasy
monster, and some bright eye looked brighter
on his uncouth gambollings. He was not
well born, he was not well bred, he was not
well read. He did not dance well, he did
not talk well, he did not spell well. He
had no voice for singing, he had no ear for
music, he had no eye for beauty. He loved
nothing but himself, he worshipped nothing
but himself, he trusted nothing but himself.
I suppose he had a sort of a soul; but it
was so well wrapped up, that no one on this
earth had ever discovered it in the mass of
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 137
animal life in which it was bedded, like a
toad in a rock. I dare say he had a heart,
to keep his blood moving. I dare say he
had a head; for brandy-and-water cannot
be swallowed without a mouth to put it in.
I was too old a hand to be taken in by
his superhuman braggings of his unearthly
valour. I knew that all the sound and fury
simply meant, that when the trumpets of the
20th sounded the advance, Lieut. Ducrow
advanced, as did the 350 officers, non-com-
missioned officers, trumpeters, and privates
of that corps, and several thousands of
others ; and, most probably, when the musket
ball he glorified himself about so much hit
him, he did not set up a very dismal howl-
ing, as an Italian greyhound might be sup-
posed to do.
Nevertheless the fact is unquestionable,
that numbers of well-bred and well-educated
young ladies did worship this Mumbo
Jumbo, did write him valentines, of which
138 CONFESSIONS OF
he had an album, for he showed it me, and
I recognised both Clementina Mullins' hand-
writing and that of poor Arabella Boyd
(who missed Beauty Bill's heart, as her
brother did his body) ; that did give him
locks of their hair, for I saw them, woven
into a very pretty pattern like Berlin wool,
and sufficiently numerous to produce a very
delicate effect, from the minute shades of
difference, from the deepest black to what
he himself, in his horse language, called a
washy chestnut ; that did squeeze his hand,
for I have seen it myself. A girl, when, she
squeezes a man's hand, has a peculiar ex-
pression in her face, that I could swear to
at any time or place.
How all these things came to pass I no
more know than I or the author of the
" Vestiges of Creation" know how the world
was made. By all rule or common sense,
the man ought to have been repulsive : to
most women he was attractive. Why,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 139
women only could tell ; and of course they
would not. The first and last complete
confession ever made by woman stands
good for the sex to this day, a slimy
reptile crawls in, when angels stand de-
spairing without. " The serpent beguiled
me, and I did eat."
140 CONFESSIONS OF
CHAPTER VIII.
ANNIVERSARY OF WATERLOO FEAST THE NATIVES
STRIKING INSTANCE OF CELTIC GRATITUDE
THE STING IN THE VOICE.
OUR fat friend certainly afforded me and
Johnny a great deal of amusement, by the
refreshing coolness with which he took upon
himself the honours of the day, and the
receiving all the guests.
" Sucli beauty and fashion is overwhelm-
ing," said he to one constellation of Bally-
maccrocodile stars whom he bowed in back-
wards, like a manager with royalty; " my
courage fails me ; I am more daunted than
I was at Waterloo."
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 141
Johnny was going off into a roar of laugh-
ter when he looked at me ; he there saw an
imperturbable gravity, with a slight twinkle
in the eye, which he immediately imitated
as well as he could. To be sure, what
obligations Lady Elizabeth is under to
me. If this should ever meet her eye,
and Edith is still well Johnny soon
after came up to me.
"Cobb," said he, "why are the O'Reilly's
not come yet?"
" Upon my word, Johnny," replied I, " I
can assign no reason that would satisfy so
profound a philosopher as you."
" I shall take care of Nanny," said he ;
" she's a good girl, and very fond of me."
" Do, Johnny," said I, " it will be very
kind."
" Why, you know," said Johnny, " as she
don't know any one else, and has not many
gaieties, it will be a kindness to a young
thing like that to pay her attention, and
142 CONFESSIONS OF
she will really enjoy herself the more for it ;
so I'll take care of her, and Mary Ann
O'Malleymaygo to the devil."
" That's a very proper sentiment, Johnny,
and I honour you for it," replied I. " Well,
here they are at last, and the old gentle-
man himself with them ; I am very glad to
see that he is come."
" That was my doing," said Johnny, who,
I may remark, had established himself in a
sort of tame cat footing at the rectory
already. " I persuaded him that there could
be nothing sinful at these sort of festivities
by daylight, and he admitted that dining
on the grass was canonical if not aposto-
lical. I like him and I like Ellen; there
is no finery about them. I hate fine ladies."
"I agree with you, Johnny," said I;
"the fine lady is not much of a lady.
There is something open and expanded in
the mind of a lady, there is nothing that is
not close and contracted in that of a fine
lady."
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 143
" Then, they snub one so?" said my in-
genuous youth.
"Yes, Johnny," said I; "they are not
quite ladies, only ladylets; and the fine
gentleman is the son of his mother."
" I know that without your telling me,"
retorted Johnny, indignantly; "it's a wise
child that knows its own father, maybe ;
but its mother "
"Peace! Johnny," said I; "and don't
splutter when you talk; know that there
are two beings in the man, the man that
is born, and the man that is bred."
" Like a ham and veal sandwich, I sup-
pose," said Johnny, running off to seize
upon Nanny, for the young reprobate had
no taste for my profound disquisitions upon
the human mind; and, on the faith of a
confessor, I believe he was right.
I never saw Ellen looking better than
she did that morning. She was in higher
spirits than ever I had seen her; was de-
144 CONFESSIONS OF
lighted at her father having come, for she
concluded in her dear innocent mind that
a pic-nic must be as great a source of en-
joyment to him as it was to her and
Nanny; was much pleased at seeing that
young lady carried off by Johnny to the
top of the towering donjon keep, that
object of awful interest to youth, finally
was, of course, much gratified and flattered
at finding herself the subject of my special
solicitude at least she told me so, and I
believed her. I generally believed what
she said.
" Let us climb up to the top of the tower,
too," said she ; " there is a beautiful view
from there; you can trace the Avonbeg
through twelve gentlemen's places ; so that
its banks are adorned with every descrip-
tion of wood, and lawn, and rock, and
shrubbery; and I think people who build
houses by the banks of a river, and a very
beautiful river, generally show more taste
COUNTRY QUARTERS.
than when they build on a spot where there
is no great natural beauty. I suppose the
genius of the place taps the architect on
the shoulder ! I wish to heaven Gaspar
de Lacy had put banisters to his stairs !
There, you go on before. Look out of this
window see what a frame it makes, and
for what a picture ! There is a great deal
in this neighbourhood that reminds me of
England," continued she, her eye lighting
as she gazed upon the fair scene that lay
stretched at her feet; and the light in her
eye that day was clear and serene, not
the troubled and murky gleam that I have
seen shoot from it, when a chance word
roused thoughts that had fangs ; she was
communing with nature now, and its har-
mony swept over her mind, soothing and
smoothing jagged rents as it passed in-
deed, the influence of that scene extended
itself even to me, so much so that I
wished most sincerely that all the country
VOL. I. H
146 CONFESSIONS OF
round, and everything that I saw, belonged
to me.
" I know no other part of Ireland," she
said, " in which the natural beauties of rock
and river are combined with a complete
civilization of the landscape; for even
humble as those cottages there that you see
are, they have a few trees about' them that
make them look like homes, and not like
cantonments; they all have gardens, such
as they are, and flourishing hedges, with
fine hedgerow timber, fill the place of those
dreary, dry, stone walls, that disfigure other
parts of the country so much ; and yet,"
continued she, with a slight shudder, " there
is not a district in Europe so stained with
blood as this no, not one: we have good
cause to say so. Do you see that white
house yonder, with the three large oaks in
the lawn?"
" Beyond the turn in the road ?" said I.
" The same," said Ellen, gazing on it
COUNTR QUARTERS. 147
with a melancholy interest. " My grand-
father lived there ; he was one of the most
popular country gentlemen of his day, and
the good he did in the neighbourhood was
inconceivable ; indeed, it is to him that
this country owes a great deal of its im-
proved character. Well, when the great
rebellion of '98 broke out, he thought no
one would harm a hair of his head; and
when most of the other country gentlemen
went into the towns for safety, he remained
there, trusting to the love of the people,
which he had so richly deserved. One
morning, a crowd of people came to the
house and asked to see him ; he went out,
thinking that it was on justice business,
which in those days was generally ad-
ministered from the steps of. the hall door.
They cut off his head on those steps, they
kicked it about that lawn, and the first
that my grandmother knew of anything
having happened was, when the head all
H2
148 CONFESSIONS OF
bloody and disfigured was kicked through
the window into the room where she was
sitting at breakfast."
Having given me this agreeable sketch
of the pastimes of the neighbourhood, Ellen
proceeded to the roof of the tower. I,
nevertheless, continued most sincerely to
wish I owned everything I could see, with
all its playful eccentricities. I had great
faith in a good conscience and a correct
eye, reasonable rents and a steady hand,
kindness to tenants and a long over-and-
under double-barrelled pistol. I had an
idea that my hand could keep my head ; if
not, those might keep who could catch; at
all events, I had rather be shot at for thirty
thousand a-year than for eleven and seven-
pence a-day. Resolving these things in
my mind, I followed Ellen's ankles up to
the top, when we found, as we expected,
Nanny and Johnny, my valiant ensign
looking as black as thunder, for Mary Anne
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 149
O'Mulley was there before him, making
eyes at him that would draw a, duck off a
pond.
Mary Anne had got there alone, so that
he had no earthly means of shaking her off
till we appeared; upon which godsend,
Johnny, with remarkable military prompti-
tude, for which I gave him great credit,
saddled me with her at once, and made his
escape. The glance the lady shot after him
reminded me of a certain passage in the
history of one of the children of Israel ; and if
I read the glance of Ellen's eye aright, she,
too, was recalling some portion of the thirty-
ninth chapter of Genesis.
" Is it the first time ever you've been up
here, Captain?" asked Mary Anne, when she
was a little better; "it is an elegant view
from here, is not it?"
I answered that it was an elegant view,
and Mary Anne proceeded to point out its
beauties more in detail. " That's Poguena
150 CONFESSIONS OF
Gollagan Castle," said she, " the seat of the
O'Clancy family. Nan Clancy was engaged
to Major Mason of the Heavies, but he had
a rich aunt that would not let him marry
any but an Honourable Miss. Old O'Clancy
was county member, and got four thousand
pounds down, and no end of places, for voting
for the Union. Tom, the present man, is
Churchwarden of the Exchequer now, two
thousand a-year, and nothing to do. That's
Mount Molyneux. You know Clara and
Sarah Molyneux, Captain; they're here
already. Set them up with their laylock
bonnets" (Ellen subsequently spelt this
word for me ; she spelt it 1 i 1 a c). " Clara
was going to be married to Leftennant
Ridge of the Rifles, only his father would not
hear of the match; the more shame for
him, the old anchorite. But the way that
Captain Hobson of the Fusiliers threw over
Sarah was shameful. That's the reason
she's so cross; all she says is bitterly
flavoured with long spinsterhood."
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 151
Of course all this must have been highly
interesting to Ellen, and my patience,
never superabundant, ebbed to zero. I had
no idea of letting her be tormented, and
was on the point of coolly stopping the
current of Mary Anne's " accidents and
disasters at marriage," by carrying off
Ellen, when luckily the band struck up
below, and gave me a decent excuse for
descending to the court-yard.
" She is a good-hearted creature, Mary
Anne O'Malley," said Ellen, when we had
fairly shaken her off; " she has educated
all her younger sisters, and saved them the
expense of a governess, and they have no
money to spare at Newtown Mount O'Malley.
She makes the best nurse, too, in the world,
for her mother is always ailing. She would
make an excellent wife."
" Tell Johnny so," said I ; which she
instantly did.
Johnny would not have been Johnny if
152 CONFESSIONS OF
he had not flared up at this ; and whilst he
was reddening and spluttering, and we were
laughing at him especially Ellen, who
used to take great delight in quizzing
him I heard a voice, which I did not
recognise, inquire which was Captain Cobb
and as one does when one hears one's own
name mentioned, looked round to see who
it was.
That moment Ellen's arm griped mine
like a vice ; I felt her whole weight thrown
upon me at once; she seemed not to lean
against me, but, as it were, to grow upon
me, for her knees and her hips seemed
to seek support from me at the same
moment, and I felt a convulsive shudder
creep over- her from head to foot. I turned
suddenly towards her, naturally very much
startled, and looked in her face. There
was an expression half-horror, half-bewilder-
ment, such as I have seen in the coun-
tenance of those who have received an
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 153
overwhelming electric shock, but it was
gone in a moment. She passed her hand
over her face, and stood up again once
more, erect, but still leaning heavily on
me, and looked into my face with a melan-
choly smile, in which I thought I could
discern, that whatever the shock was, she
was very glad that it had struck her when
on the arm of a friend.
" It was a momentary giddiness," said
she ; and the blood that had left her face
now began to rush furiously back. " It
comes and goes; do get me a glass of
water."
At this moment the gentleman who had
been inquiring for me came up, and intro-
duced himself as a brother of James
Hawkins, from whom he brought me a
letter of introduction.
li 3
154 CONFESSIONS OF
CHAPTER IX.
THE SHDDDERAT THE SOUND THE GUAGING OF THE
LETTER THE SHADOW OF THE AVENGING ANGEL
-IT STEALS ACROSS THE PATH THE KEY-NOTE
IN THE OVERTURE THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN
SIGNIFICANT SILENCE SIGNIFICANT LOQUA-
CITY THE MELTING OF IRON THE SOUND OF
THE TRUMPET.
THERE is, it is well known, a mysterious
similitude between the voices of toothers
and sisters, but my coarser organs had not
detected it. I have no doubt, however,
that Ellen had, and that some subtle
analogy of tone had struck a chord in her
heart that had vibrated thus fiercely.
Robert Hawkins told me that he had just
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 155
arrived from Dunmanway, where he had
been spending a few days with his brother ;
that he had reached the barracks that
morning, and found that I had started for
Kincora (having to be there early, to see
that all was right), but had been hospitably
treated by rny brother officers, who were
about starting, and brought on here.
I expressed my gratification at making
his acquaintance; said that I had often
heard James speak of him (which was a
lie, but hospitable); hoped that he would
spend a few days with us, and forthwith
introduced him to Mary Anne O'Malley,
who, I trusted, would keep him in safe
custody till I was ready to attend to his
enjoyment myself.
I did not introduce him at first to Ellen,
as I did not precisely know what she might
wish, and, indeed, was anxious to read
Hawkins' letter before taking any steps in
that direction. It was a fortunate decision
156 CONFESSIONS 01"
on my part, at least for the ^time ; for on
sounding Ellen, I found that she was alto-
gether undecided on the subject. She half
wished to know him, half feared the image
he suggested; she hung upon his words,
but winced at the sound of his voice; so I
determined to give her some time to make
her mind up about it, and if she could not
do so, then make it up for her myself. It
was necessary, with a view to arrive at a
right decision, thatJE should, 1 ] at all events,
read Hawkins' letter, which I had no doubt
contained something more than the mere
introduction of his brother; and with this
object I restored Ellen for a time to her
mother, and retired into one of theVecesses
of the crypt, which now resembled a maga-
zine of comestibles, to peruse it undisturbed.
I have no objection to confessing that I
am under great obligations to instinct.
Many men would boast of their foresight,
their penetration, their prudence, their
COtWTRY QUARTERS. 157
judgment; yet how constantly do we see
foresight, penetration, prudence, and judg-
ment scattered to the four winds of heaven,
like chaff? All these things are within the
jurisdiction of circumstances ; but from a
true instinct there is no appeal short of
inspiration.
In this case, an instinct I can neither
define nor account for, warned me against
opening Hawkins' letter, though it seemed
only a common letter of introduction, in
Ellen's presence. When I did open it, I
found it contained a note addressed to her,
an agreeable discovery had it been made
when the letter was first delivered to me,
for, as a matter of course, the note would
have dropped out, address uppermost, in
the presence of the assembled world of Bal-
lymaccrocodile. My letter ran thus :
"Dunmamvay, June loth, 18 .
" MY DEAR COBB,
" Some of my ancestors must have
158 CONFESSIONS OF
committed some most outrageous and unex-
piated sin, to bring down upon me the
punishment of being quartered in this senri-
putrified hog's-nest. The filthiness, the
dreariness, the wretchedness, and the loneli-
ness I never knew what it was to be lonely
before. My brother Robert, whom I recom-
mend to your protection, will describe its
indescribable superhellishness, and the state
that I am in, at least, the little that is left of
me. I trust to your friendship to deliver the
enclosed ; I know it is a task that will not
much embarrass you, who have that awful
skill in the matter of when, where, and
how. I believe I ought not to have written
the letter, but I could not help it. How
do you like Ellen ? You never wrote. I
wish you would try and write to me some-
times. Everything here is so dreary, and
my links with the civilized world consist of
the weekly hamper from the messman (for
the natives here are incapable of preparing
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 159
food fit for human consumption), and the oc-
casional paper that somebody thinks of send-
ing every now and then. Ballymaccrocodile
is fairy-land compared to this sink of
savagery. However, I shall get leave in
autumn, and it is not clear to me that my
military career is not drawing fast to a
close. The everlasting ' Open pans,' * Ex-
amine arms/ is getting inconceivably weary-
ing. Such an occupation, day after day,
year after year, for a reasoning being ! Yet
I have hardly qualified myself for anything
better. Do you think I could learn to play
the flute? Have you heard Ellen sing
'When the stars on the rolling waters?'
make her sing it if you have not. I wish
you would give me your opinion as to how
money is to be made now. You say that it
is always to be made by those who have
patience and pluck, and I should like to be
able to say I was worth a clear six hundred
a-year. I suppose one might set up a cot-
160 CONFESSIONS Otf
tage on the banks of the Wye on that,
where you will always find a spare bed. I
need not enjoin caution in the delivery of
the enclosed note. Those who have actually
caught a weazel asleep, and shaved his eye-
brows, have a right to venture upon caution-
ing you, and those only. Have the Boyds
tried any of their tricks upon any of your
youngsters, or have they had enough
of militant matrimony? Hymen on a hair-
trigger ! We have heard that it was better
to marry than burn; in this case I think it
is better to fire than marry. Adieu. May
your shadow nevel be less.
"JAMES HAWKINS.
" P. S. Let me know how you get on at
the Rectory. I suppose Ellen is as gay as
a lark again. Does she ride much?"
I read this letter a second time to find
the key-note. I speedily struck it. It
appeared to me to go somewhat high
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 161
higher, perhaps, than could be sustained.
In the plains of Australia, thought I to
myself, there are those who go out for wool
and come home shorn ; on the steppes of the
Caspian there are those who make prisoners
and find they have caught Tartars. In the
playing with edge-tools there is danger to
the fingers; and on the morning of Actium,
Mark Antony little thought of quitting the
fight for the reason he did. There's that
confounded fellow of Popkins's putting the
two roast turkeys within three feet of one
another! How would these unhappy 120th
get on if I left them !
I rose now to resume my multifarious
duties, but found that Johnny, who cer-
tainly did my training great credit, had
already perceived and rectified the turkey
blunder, and that the preparations for the
feast were proceeding favourably. Ducrow
had collected a circle round him; he was
killing his fifth cuirassier, had broken his
162 CONFESSIONS OF
fourth square of the Imperial Guard, and
was rapidly approaching his celebrated
dash at the Emperor's person, which we
all know would have nipped in the bud the
knotty question, whether that potentate
was a guest or a prisoner on board of
the Bellerophon, by setting him down
to a comfortable supper with F. M. the
Duke of Wellington, had not Ducrow's
charger been killed by the last cannon-shot
fired by what had been a French army
that morning. I had no time to attend to
his balderdash, but proceeded at once to
seek out Robert Hawkins, who, I perceived,
had got exceedingly tired of Mary Anne;
as, indeed, he well might, for her conver-
sation ran mainly upon the private history
of her friends, who being utterly unknown
to him, did not much interest him.
"Are you fond of fishing?" asked I,
edging off, and drawing him by degrees
after me; for I wanted to get him clear of
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 163
Mary Anne. " There is very good fishing
about here."
" It -is a favourite pursuit of mine,"
replied he, favouring niy sheering-off move-
ment with great ingenuity and alacrity;
" indeed, it was principally for that that I
came over to Ireland."
"We'll set you to work in earnest to-
morrow," said I; "we have some fellows
in the regiment that like to be at the one
end of a line when there is a fish at the
other. But how did you leave James?"
" He was bored to death," returned
Hawkins; "and, indeed, I do not much
wonder at it. I never saw such a wretched
hole as he is quartered in. He'd give any-
thing to be back here. I never saw him so
low either; but I can fancy that sort of
life being very depressing."
" Depressing is no word for it," replied
I; "it is crushing, positively scrunching
I know it well. Is there anybody here you
wish to be introduced to?"
J64 CONFESSIONS OF
" Thank you," said lie; " I will come to
you when I do wish. Who is that girl
you were speaking to when I first spoke
to you?"
" That," answered I, watching him nar-
rowly, " is Miss O'Reilly, the daughter of
the rector of the parish. Did not James
ever say anything to you about her?"
" No ; I do not recollect his ever men-
tioning the name of O'Reilly," returned he,
and the significance of his silence did not
escape me; the inference I drew from it,
however, merely confirmed an opinion I
had already formed. " He told me about
some Miss Boyds and Miss Hoopers; he
did not speak much of the young ladies
of the place, which surprised me, for he is
generally a universal philanderer."
The pitcher that goes often, thought I
but my attention was attracted by a conver-
sation between Mary Anne O'Malley and
Miss Molyneux, which I do not believe
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 165
they intended me to hear, and hope they
will pardon ray repeating.
" That is a mighty pretty ring you have,
Julia," said Mary Anne; "where did you
get it?"
" Grandmamma gave it me," replied
Julia; " it is a jewel."
" "Well, I never wear rings when there's
dancing," said Mary Anne.
"Why not?" asked the other.
" Sure it might hurt one's hand," said
Mary Anne.
" Do your fingers swell, then, in dancing?"
asked Julia. " Papa says his do with long
walks."
"No, it wasn't that I meant," replied
the O'Malley; " you know, whenever one's
partner squeezes one's hand "
" But do your partners squeeze your
hand? nobody ever squeezes mine. I
should not feel flattered if any one did."
" I do not say that any one does, that
166 CONFESSIONS OF
would 1)6 telling," replied the prudent
Maria; "but there's no saying what might
happen;, and anyhow, one would like to
have one's hand in a squeezeable state."
What farther insight into Mary Ann's
habits I might have acquired I do not know,
for at the moment " the roast beef of old
England" came thundering on the breeze.
The trout and potatoes, the only hot things,
came steaming from within. Major
Ducro-.v's stories evidently, in the opinion
of his auditors, lost their point, as I sup-
pose his sword did too. for he never suc-
ceeded in killing his ninth cuirassier, with
whom he was then engaged ; and hastily
introducing Hawkins to any of the indi-
genous beauties I could lay my hands on,
I turned off to settle our party comfortably
together. It was a very agreeable little
coterie ; and I believe it would, have taken
a very sharp eye to discover that Ellen and
I were watching one another like a brace of
lynxes.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 167
Ellen did not succeed in making much
of a dinner ; a feeble attempt at affecting to
eat with an appetite merely showed how
much it went against the grain. She made
up for it by talking, however. It per-
fectly astounded me the way she rattled on,
and the manner in which she hopped from
subject to subject. It seemed as if every
fifteenth or twentieth word suggested to her
a new train of thoughts, and away she
went on the other tack. I have often
practised that as a dodge myself, when I
have been so unfortunate as to take a
tongue-tied damsel in to dinner a mis-
fortune that will occasionally happen to
the most skilful angler for whitebait.
The thundering bouquet in the epergne,
for instance, forms a good point to start
from. If the flowers are real, you may go
off through botany to all the sciences. If
they are artificial, through dye-stuff and all
the arts. Their colours lead you to the
168 CONFESSIONS OF
fashions, and their silver support to the
currency question. You may ride off upon
the roses of Damascus to the Arabian
Nights, and upon the lilies of the field to
Exeter Hall ; that is to say, if you are
clever enough to do it.
"Whether Ellen was really talking on a
system, or that this display of conversa-
tional ability was unconscious on her part,
I cannot exactly tell. I only know that she
was fulfilling the legitimate mission which
everybody is bursting with now-a-days.
She was talking " with a purpose," and
that purpose was to conceal her thoughts.
It seemed strange to me that a breaking
heart should thus overflow. In a similar
case, a gloomy silence would have been my
resource; yet she was so lively, and made
herself so agreeable, that Messrs. Popkins,
Simpkins, and Co., voted her a " clipper,"
a " trump," and a " spicy tit," and decided
upon taking her in hand. By the time,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 169
however, that that brandy-nosed innocent,
Ducrow, was preparing to propose the health
of " Field Marshal Prince Blucher, of Wahl-
stadt, whose untiring energy and unflinch-
ing valour the British army can never, &c.
&c." by the time, in short, that we had
just finished the gooseberry fool, I perceived
that Ellen was breaking down; the pace
had been too good to last, and I thought
that the most charitable thing that I could
do would be to take up the running myself.
It seemed to suit her too, for she was quite
exhausted, and I gave her a most interesting
history of my appearance at divers foreign
courts and the sensation that I created
there, for which I have no doubt she was
most sincerely grateful. It lasted twenty
minutes, and she listened to it with great
attention, and did not hear a word of it.
Ducrow the valiant, and his raw-head-
and-bloody-bones tomfooleries, bored me to
an amount that the Teredo navalis never
VOL. I.
170 CONFESSIONS OF
equalled in stone ; so much so, that I shall
take it for granted they would equally bore
the reader, and shall refrain from chronicling
either them or any other of the particulars
of that sylvan banquet, which, to say the
truth, did not differ materially from the
rest of its woodside brethren; unless, per-
haps, that the habits of military discipline
and foresight obviated the customary scar-
city of corkscrews. I have already stated
that our plan was, that after dinner and a
little rambling about the castle and grounds
(in lieu of wine and walnuts), we should
stroll back to the barracks (where a dance
was on the tapis) along the banks of the
Avonbeg, through the woods overhanging
which river several paths led to Ballymac-
crocodile, an arrangement likely to be pro-
ductive of a good deal of quiet enjoyment
to a good many of the parties included in it.
It seemed to me that Ellen wanted as
much quiet as could be got for her ; and as
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 171
I knew very well that if we went with the
crowd, like well-behaved people, we should
be worried to death ; whilst if we waited like
greenhorns till they were all gone, we should
be everlastingly stumbling upon some lag-
ging couple or other, whose good wishes we
might of course calculate on enjoying to a
very high degree, I judged that our best
plan was to start at once, a proposal which
was immediately acquiesced in, and forth-
with carried into effect.
Scarcely, however, had we got fairly
into the friendly shade, before Ellen, to my
great dismay, communicated to me that she
felt very unwell, &c. &c. &c. ; low spirits,
&c. &c. &c. ; she did not know why, &c.
&c. &c. ; but she was utterly incapable of
facing the ball we had so kindly, &c. &c.
&c. I was not perhaps very much asto-
nished at this ; but it certainly was pro-
voking ; and after a few unsuccessful efforts
to persuade her to change her very, as I
i 2
172 CONFESSIONS OF
called it, suicidal resolution, I gave up the
point, and during our walk home received
a great deal of useful and interesting in-
formation respecting the names, natures,
and properties of an enormous number of
wild flowers, which were bursting in unre-
strained luxuriance out of the teeming soil
around us, and whose natural history was,
of course, the subject that entirely engrossed
both our thoughts at the moment.
I regret to say that the greater part of
this instructive lecture has escaped my
memory. I should not be able now to tell
the difference between the naso sanguineus
and the oculus niger, nor could I distin-
guish the pillula ccerulea from the haustus
matutinus, so little was my rough-cast
military mind calculated for the delicate
delights of botany; but I perfectly recollect
whispering to Ellen when I parted with her
at the rectory gate, " Look into your reticule
when you get into your own room, and not
before"
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 173
I walked home, if, as I very justly
thought at the time, such a thing as a
barrack can be called home, full of melan-
choly reflections. It was no choice of mine
that I was so. They would come. I should
have preferred going on never-minding to
all the reflections in Christendom. I did
not want them, I'm sure, but still they
came. I really believe that at that moment
I was a much better man than people gave
me credit for being; I would not know-
ingly have set my foot upon a worm then j
I saw sorrow and suffering, and I was
touched by the sight ; yet there was nothing
selfish in my feelings, I wanted nothing for
myself. I felt shamed, and repented of
many things I once had thought excellent
jokes. I longed to try whether I could not
do right. I was fully determined to throw
the weight of my influence into the scale
to bring Hawkins to a proper sense of
right and wrong, and I knew that my
174 CONFESSIONS OF
intervention would carry weight in that
quarter. 1 fully intended to start for Dun-
manway the very next morning, and was
mentally debating whether it would be best
to take my own jaunting car with me, or
trust to the ordinary public conveyances of
the country. I was thinking of what I
should say to Hawkins, what line I should
adopt with him, and of his sneer in his first
letter about the devil quoting Scripture, and
his application of the remark to me. I
was endeavouring to picture myself to my-
self appearing in the character of the
father of a family. I was considering
whether I should take four shirts with me
or five, in case of unavoidable delays. I
was thinking how much better it is to dry
tears than to cause them to flow, and won-
dering what the functions of a groomsman
were, and how he was to dress ; whether he
gave the bridegroom away, or read the
responses; whether he came in for any of
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 175
the kissing which I somehow associated
with a wedding, which august ceremony I
had never witnessed. I was puzzling my
brains with the traditions I had heard
about that dire solemnity and the above-
mentioned kissings. Why the bridegroom
was accorded the privilege of saluting all
the bridesmaids at a moment when he was
about to enter upon such an alarming
" embarras des richesses" of that sort at
home, and resolving that whenever I be-
came entitled to that privilege, I should
put it up to public auction, and keep my
own breath to cool my own porridge. I
was endeavouring to account for the bride's
always having the toothache, and deter-
mining to ask our regimental surgeon the
reason, and I was perpending in my mind
who I should get to take my duty while I
was away. I felt an universal tender-
ness of disposition creeping over me and
nestling about me. I suppose it is what is
176 CONFESSIONS OF
called a melting mood in the annuals; I
think I could almost have married myself
then, I am nearly sure I could, if anybody
had asked me. It seems altogether like a
dream now, but it soon faded away. As I
entered the barrack gate the sight that met
my eyes was like the sound of a trumpet,
I found myself wide awake.
I perceived in a moment that something
particular was about to happen ; two com-
panies were being paraded and looked as
if they meant mischief. Flints were evi-
dently on the rise, ammunition was being
served out, women were carrying in wash-
ing, all the staff-serjeants were passing
about with pencils in their hands; these
were the most unmistakeable signs of a
job being cut out for somebody, and the
simultaneous advance made towards me by
the adjutant and my own colour-serjeant
the moment I appeared, left no doubt as to
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 177
who the happy man was. The orderly
book soon disclosed the rest of the secret :
"Detachment to march at 4 A.M. to-
morrow command of Captain Cobb escort
arms and ammunition, &c."
" Why am I to go? :J said I to the ad-
jutant; " it's a subaltern's duty. Whoever
heard of a captain's being sent? besides
which, it's not my turn!"
" The Major said you were to go," re-
turned he; adding, in a significant tone,
" you are to have two companies with you,
and your men carry twenty rounds in their
packs."
A low whistle conveyed my comprehen-
sion of the meaning of this liberality of
powder and shot, and my acquiescence in
the arrangement; and though it certainly
was a contretemps at the moment, still I
could not help feeling pleased and flattered
at being chosen out of my turn for the
I 3
178 CONFESSIONS OF
duty ; for be it known to the non-military
reader, that when the authorities order
troops to carry twenty rounds of ball cart-
ridge in their knapsacks, it is from a well-
grounded suspicion that the sixty rounds
in their pouches are in a fair way of being
fired away before they return.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 179
CHAPTER X.
GLORY AND THE GALLOWS THE AVATAR OF THE ASS
ADHESIVENESS DELICATE SENSE OF STATION
SECOND THOUGHTS THE BURNING iMASK.
UPON inquiry as to what the duty was that
required so unusual a force and such por-
tentous preparations, I learned that I was
to march three days out, and then receive
from the hands of Captain Hobson, of the
115th (Islington Light Infantry), certain
cars, containing some supernatural quantity
of arms and ammunition, destined for a mys-
terious fort on the Shannon, of whose exist-
ence I then became for the first time aware,
which precious and powdery charge I was
160 CONFESSIONS OP
to convey in safety to Ballymaccrocodile.
It was concluded, as a matter of course,
that such an irresistible temptation would
be too much for the virtue of the sons of
Erin, and that it would be certainly attacked
somewhere or other, and therefore a force
was sent with it, sufficient to deter any but
suicidal lunatics from attempting to take
liberties with it. It is, however, difficult
to account, upon any reasonable grounds,
for Celtic eccentricities.
I confess that, after the first excitement,
I was not quite so much pleased with the
flattering preference as I ought to have
been. In those days, and later, whosoever
Was employed in defence of the crown, the
constitution, and the law, in Ireland, worked
with a rope round his neck. The prin-
ciple of the government was, that as there
had been a considerable number of years of
Tory misrule in that little-understood island,
it was requisite that there should be a
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 181
certain number of years of Radical misrule
to balance them ; and then the parties being
quits, .the country might start fair (if it
survived this reciprocity) for good govern-
ment. I saw all around the Orangemen,
who merely desired law, order, and the
British connexion, discouraged and snubbed,
whilst the anarchical faction was petted and
pampered. I strongly suspected that if I
should have a collision with the people (so
called), that I should not be judged exactly
by the justice of my cause, but by the loud-
ness of the howl set up for my life. How-
ever, I consoled myself with that refreshing
military hymn,
Why, soldiers, why,
Should we be melancholy, boys ?
Why, soldiers, why,
Whose business 'tis to die ?"
I had just brought myself to the proper
working point of " don't-care-a-damnisli-
ness," when my notice was attracted by a
182 CONFESSIONS OF
roar of laughter and confusion from the
officers' quarters, and turning my eyes in
that direction, saw a young jackass precipi-
tated from one of the windows. I half
expected to see an old one follow, for I
perceived the ejector to be Ducrow, and
thought he might have gone mad, but upon
hurrying to the spot, found that no such
catastrophe was to be expected, though he
was foaming at the mouth with rage, the
most unendurable part of which was, that
as he was in the presence of half the ladies
of Ballymaccrocodile, it was absolutely
necessary that he should keep it in some
decent bounds.
I have already made mention of his habit
of exhibiting his Waterloo, jacket, appoint-
ments, and trophies, to the wondering eyes
of his admirers ; an interesting exhibition,
the effect of which was somewhat marred
by some of our mischievous young monkeys.
How they got into his room in his absence,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 183
or under whose concoction the whole thing
was, I do not even now know ; but certain
it is, that when the triumphant Major
headed a procession, consisting of all the
beauty and fashion of ten miles round,
towards the temple where the precious
relics were deposited viz., his own quarters,
upon throwing open the gates of the fane,
the assembled multitude then and there
beheld that unfortunate young donkey,
securely strapped in the Major's arm-chair,
with one of its fore hoofs resting on a map
of the battle of Waterloo, on which was
marked, with a blood-red line, the course of
the 20th Heavy Dragoons, a number of
crossed swords marking the several spots
rendered immortal by some special achieve-
ment of Lieutenant Ducrow.
I believe he wanted to call us all out,
one after the other, but the crisis settled
itself ; for, as every one wanted to indulge
in the suppressed laughter that the incident
184 CONFESSIONS OF
suggested, and no one liked to laugh before
the martyred major, a general escape back
into the barrack-yard left him alone in his
glory. It may be supposed that this mili-
tary pleasantry gave rise to an amazing
quantity of good-natured hilarity to all but
the unhappy victim, who did not recover it
all the evening, and even forgot to propose,
as he had intended, after supper, his solemn
toast, " The Memory of the Slain."
I found, when I descended, Jenkins, that
soul of wit, busy inflicting riddles on the
company. The following specimen may
interest the lovers of such rhetorical fire-
works.
"What flower reigns over the others?"
Answer : " The rose of the watering-pot
rains over the others."
' To what rose is salt water essential?"
Answer : " To herring's roes."
' When is champagne like a growing
crop r"
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 185
Answer : " When it's sweet" (it's wheat).
" Why is a man in love, going a voyage,
turned into an herb?"
Answer: " Because a lover with a C (sea)
before him becomes Clover."
" When is Faith a goose?"
Answer: "When it's trussed" (trust).
These were the son of Caradoc's avowed
contributions to the evening's amusement;
though I suspect his facetiae extended
rather farther, and that the violent passion
he flew into with me when, alluding to
Ducrow's martyrdom, I asked him how he,
Jenkins, would like to find a he-goat,
strapped in his chair, was rather put on
for the purpose of getting rid of the subject,
than the explosion of any very violent
animosity against me, or desire to do me
any bodily injury.
However, it was time to begin dancing;
and I speedily found myself rolling round
the room with Mary Bunyon, the girl that
186 CONFESSIONS OF
Hawkins had mentioned as being a good
waltzer, but too adhesive for his taste. She
was a good waltzer, and she was too
adhesive for my taste too. She made me
sit out the next quadrille in the tea-room,
describing for her edification the glories of
Crabstock Castle, the quantity of deer in
the park; how the young Ladies Pippin
dressed in the morning, when there was no
company ; when there was any, of course they
were dressed in the hoighth of the fashion ;
and whether my uncle ever drank beer.
In which details, as well as all matters
concerning the peerage in general, she took
that lively interest that is such a charm in
Irish society.
Then she made me take her to see all
manner of places in the barracks, accom-
panied by a friend, of course, for propriety.
She insisted upon seeing niy quarters,
which were in a glorious state of deshabille,
consequent upon our preparations for to-
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 187
morrow's inarch ; and when I told her that
I ought to be making my will instead of
making myself amiable to her, considering
the service I was going on, she begged I
would make my will, which she seemed to
think was a process of curious and delicate
manufacture, like pen-making and block
machinery. She had never seen a will made,
and had the greatest curiosity about it,
which I did not gratify. In short, it took
four dances to get rid of her; and the
moment I had fairly shaken her off, Johnny,
bursting with laughter, seized upon me;
he had been watching for me for some
time.
" I say, Cobb," said he, "look; do you
see that girl in blue, over there, dancing
with Waddilove?'
" Yes, Johnny," replied I ; that is Miss
Jemima D'Arcy L'Estrange, eldest daughter
of Sir Michael Angelo D'Arcy L'Estrange,
Baronet, of Plantagenet Castle, in this
188 CONFESSIONS OF
neighbourhood, Stephen's Green, Dublin,
and Herring-pond Prospect Villa, near Bray ;
a deputy-lieutenant and magistrate for both
counties, and a remarkably high and
mighty gentleman jackass.''
"Well," said Johnny, "what do you
think I just heard her tell Waddilove?
She said she never danced with any but
horse officers ; the foot were never genteel
enough."
"And I can tell you something more,
Johnny," rejoined I; "her father only calls
on the field officers of infantry, because
they are mounted; and when the 110th
came here, old Jones was still a captain, but
he got his majority whilst the regiment was
still here ; and three days after the " Gazette"
came down he found a card for him, bearing
the distinguished name of Sir Michael
Angelo D'Arcy L'Estrange. There is a
compliment paid to a pair of spurs."
At a later period of the evening, the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 189
young lady in question, about whose gloves
I perceived a singular smell of turpentine,
requested Mrs. Major OTlaherty to intro-
duce me to her, for what the good Major's
wife denominated in public a polka, but
privately and confidentially informed me
that she considered it a " mighty cosy
musical cuddle!" which astounding intro-
duction that lady performed, adding, as she
remarked my astonishment, that she knew
my uncle, the Earl of Crabstock, whereby,
in her estimation, I was elevated to a
social equality with the scions of saddlery
and hemp and tallow. I bore my honours
meekly. I never was in a quarter in
Ireland where this worship of cavalry did
not prevail. I suppose it is a sort of brogue
in the mind ; perhaps a proof of that eastern
origin so loudly insisted upon a mysterious
sympathy with Pacha's Horsetail, symbolical
of his dignity.
The having a Lady Elizabeth for a
190 CONFESSIONS OF
mother also, of course, gave Johnny eques-
trian rank in her eyes; though she knew
precisely as much of Lady Elizabeth as she
did of Lord Crabstock viz., was aware of
their existence from having read of it in the
Peerage. Johnny, who had no expecta-
tions of being committed on a capital
charge in the course of the next fortnight,
as I had, enjoyed the joke more, and nearly
drove her into hysterics of "horror by de-
picting a scene in which he figured mend-
ing his stockings. This, however, occurred
later in the evening; but at the moment
that I succeeded in shaking off the tenacious
hold of Miss Bunyon, I perceived an arrival
which rather astonished me: the door
opened, and in sailed Mrs. O'Reilly and
her two daughters. Ellen had got better,
or changed her mind; I leave my lady
readers to pronounce which Davus sum,
non (Edipus.
I now thought it advisable to take her
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 191
pleasure about introducing Robert Hawkins
to her ; and receiving a reply of most elabo-
rate indifference,- charitably performed that
act. Their conversation appeared so inte-
resting, that I could not find it in my heart
to interrupt it, but considerately suffered
two or three dances (during which I divided
myself as well as I could among the sur-
rounding white muslin) before I put in my
claims for Ellen's hand. She was feverish
and excited.
" I hope I did not startle you to-day,"
said she, " when I had that sort of of all-
overishness ? It is a nervous kind of weak-
ness that I have been subject to all my life,
and I believe is not of the slightest con-
sequence. Well, I declare, there's Jane
O'Halloran in the old wreath of roses, and
she's had them fresh frosted, too, I wonder
where did she get that done. So you are
going to escort ever so many guns and
powder to the Shannon? There is Mary
192 CONFESSIONS OF
Anne O'Malley, and Captain Holster lias
entangled his spurs in her petticoat. Take
care you don't blow it up the powder, I
mean ! It's a dreadful thing to have those
attacks that is, of the nerves. So Mr.
Hawkins is going to be put up in your
room whilst you are away. He's coming
to see us to-morrow. I'll get papa to see
about fishing for him (I half misinter-
preted this expression), and poor little
Johnny Waldgrave going with you, too!
Isn't it a burning shame to trust a shrimp
like that near fire-arms? What could he
do when the stones were flying ?"
Thus did she run on. Never did I get
in a word, sideways or edgeways; she went
away immediately that the dance was over,
and again was I electrified by the spasmodic
grasp of her hand when we parted. I went
to bed myself directly, being too old a
soldier not to know the value of a night's
rest before a day's work.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 193
Johnny, who was a younger hand, carried
on, and consequently did not go to Led at
all. I was told he flirted most amazingly.
I did not scold him for it. It is an amiable
weakness in a minor, but a grave offence in
one of mature age, unless he claims the bene-
fit of clergy.
VOL. I. K
194 CONFESSIONS OF
CHAPTER XL
HOW EVERYBODY ROSE TO MEET US THE LITTLE
CLOUD IN THE HEAVENS SYMPTOMS OF MISCHIEF
THE LADIES TO THE FRONT BEFORE HAND
WITH THE BARRICADE PROFESSIONAL DEBATE
VOCALIZATION OF LEAD MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF
THE CONFESSOR FROM HANGING.
WITH respect to the next five days, I
have little to narrate. I marched three
days, and then took over my charge from
Captain Hobson, who informed me that,
though he had no serious difficulty, he
had been watched and followed the whole
time by very suspicious crowds, and though
by vigilance, and strong guards at night,
he had succeeded in getting on without
O CJ
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 195
accident, he doubted whether I should be
so fortunate ; at all events, recommend-
ing a bright look-out which I indeed was
most religiously determined to keep.
For the first two days Fortune smiled on
us. Objects of intense attention to the
country people certainly we were, but they
did not think fit to take any liberties with
us, and we reached our last halting-place
unmolested. The next day was the longest
march of all ; twenty Irish miles and good
measure, too - between five-and-six-and-
twenty English. Judging that, by marching
two hours earlier than usual, I might anti-
cipate any attempt at stopping me, by slip-
ping past each ticklish point, before any
ill-disposed crowd could be assembled, I
gave orders that we should march at three,
but owing to the difficulty of getting the
men together at an unaccustomed hour, we
did not clear the town till about a quarter
K2
196 CONFESSIONS OF
to four, and our halt for breakfast accord-
ingly occurred about eight.
During the early part of the day I, of
course, saw nobody ; for the Irish peasant,
being in great want of money, and yearly
danger of starvation, lies in bed later than
any other peasant in the known world;
nor then was any commotion observable.
At nine we were in motion again, and so, I
perceived, was the whole population of the
district. However, there was nothing for
it but to advance; every mile diminished
materially the distance from Ballyrnaccro-
codile, whence it was possible O'Flaherty
might think of sending out a detachment to
meet us ; at all events, come what might,
the more numerous the mob that attacked us
was, the more simple our justification would
be. 1 was so fortunate as to find that all
my men were sober. I had my advanced
and rear guards in proper shape, and
flankers, where the ground admitted of it;
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 197
and I looked upon the surrounding abori-
gines, who were rising in every direction,
with proper military philosophy, as probable
and proximate food for powder. If wilful
will to water, wilful must drench; and if
wilful will to fire, wilful must scorch.
We were now rapidly approaching the
long straggling village of Clonacrana, when
I perceived a considerable crowd through
whom I should be compelled to pass. I
had a strong suspicion that some mischief
was intended here, and I saw from the way
that my advanced guard looked at their
arms as they entered that they shared my
opinion ; but the street was broad it would
be impossible effectually to barricade it ; and
observing that the houses were very low
and mean, incapable of giving much pro-
tection to assailants should they venture
upon attacking me from them, I did not
feel much apprehension as to the result. I
moreover remarked, that they were nearly
198 CONFESSIONS OF
all thatched, and mentally resolved, that if
a single shot came out of one of them, that
house should be wrapped in a great coat of
flame before ten minutes were over, at least
if straw burnt as I supposed it would. I
was fully determined, be the consequences
what they would to myself individually,
whoever took liberties with the detachment
entrusted to my command should feel the
weight of the tiger's paw.
As my advanced guard got a little way
into the village, I saw them first unbutton
the flaps of their pouches, and immediately
afterwards load. I now called niy men to
attention, in this case little more than a
formality, for they saw the thundercloud
blackening as plainly as I did, and had
silently and instinctively fallen into their
places. I suppose that there was some-
thing in my eye and manner, as I turned
round and gave the word, that told them
that there was to be no nonsense allowed,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 199
for I perceived grim and significant smiles
interchanged among them, a great comfort
to me, for it showed me that I had them
well in hand. I now ordered a sub-division
about thirty yards to the front, so as, in
case of any attempt to stop us by upsetting
cars on the road, as was a favourite trick
of the patriots of the day, to be at hand to
remove them, closed my carts up into a
compact body, and reserving to the last
the fixing bayonets and loading, in the
hope that the terror inspired by these
ominous preparations might enable us to
pull through without fighting advanced
into Clonacrana.
The Saxon reader will probably be in-
clined to sneer at what he will facetiously
call my magnanimous resolution above
stated, to perform my duty, be the conse-
quences what they would to myself indi-
vidually ; and the Saxon reader will be
wrong, as has been his custom heretofore,
200 CONFESSIONS OF
upon such matters. The consequence re-
ferred to was not the casualties of war, as
he may suppose. Neither I nor, I am con-
vinced, any single man in my detachment
shrunk from shot or steel, or entertained
the slightest doubt but that if any attempt
was made to stop us by any amount of
numbers whatever, we should be able and
willing to give such an account of any such
hostile body as has not been heard since
Cromwell's time. What weighed then hea-
vily upon my mind, and I believe upon
the mind of every officer employed in
Ireland from 1830 to 1840, was the con-
viction that in case of collision with a
treasonable and felonious mob, however
temperately he might perform his duty, he
would, in case of bloodshed, be sacrificed to
the howlings of a party of traitorous and
dishonest demagogues, by a government
which habitually coquetted with treason,
accepted known lies as great political truths,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 201
and bribed implacable enemies of lav/ and
order to a temporary quiet: a system the
fruits of which England is at this moment
reaping. Vainly are we told what they
, ., . ,
must reap who sow the wind.
It may be said that cases did occur
where officers did defend their men's lives
and their own without being offered up as
victims upon the altar of Celtic humanity;
but those officers owe their escape, not to the
courage or justice of the government of the
day, but to the prudence of O'Conncll. He
judged their cases and pronounced their
acquittal.
As I advanced into the village, I was
much struck with the rapid disappearance
of the crowd. There were a few men
lounging idly about the doors of the cot-
tages; the women of the place had all
turned out and scowled at us like so many
she-devils with toothaches; at the further
end of the village was a knot of thirty or
202 CONFESSIONS OF
forty men, collected round a few country
carts (I was thoroughly wide awake to what
that imported), but the crowd that a few
minutes ago I had seen swarming in the
squalid street had vanished. Of course I
knew they could not be far off, and I then
remarked that the men at the carts were
collecting women in great numbers about
them. Now when an Irish mob puts the
women in front it is a premonitory symp-
tom that it is going to attack. They trust
in some degree to the gallantry of the
soldiers not firing into women, and at all
events they prefer that the women should
be shot than themselves; and it is not so
difficult an operation as might be supposed,
for women have not the same instinctive
horror of fire-arms as men; they see the
lance and the bayonet, they see the blow
falling, but they do not see the ball coming,
and as to the chance of being shot they will
not believe (as in many other cases) that
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 203
such a thing can happen, until it has hap-
pened.
This then was my agreeable position. I
knew that I was immediately to be attacked
in front. I knew that on either flank some
two or three thousand men waited only the
proper moment to open a fire on me from
the cottages, or to pitch in a volley of
stones as big as one's fist from the gardens
behind them, or both and it turned out to
be both. I knew this as perfectly then as
I did a quarter of an hour afterwards, when
it had happened and all was over, and yet
the most simple military precaution viz.,
the dislodging the ambushed assailants from
the rear of the cottages, which could have
been done and certainly with success, was not
to be thought of. It would have been a
felony ; to be tried very likely by a jury
composed in part of my assailants, as was
actually the case with the coroner's inquest
which returned a verdict of wilful murder
204 CONFESSIONS OP
against the officers and men of the 120th
regiment of foot collectively, which verdict
has not, I believe, been set aside to this
day ; though as neither the county coroner
nor any other magistrate has yet thought fit
to issue his warrant for the apprehension of
the 120th, we are yet unhanged; for which
we are indebted to O'Connell, who said, that
executing a regiment of infantry, or that
sort of thing, would not do quite yet, but
offered to lay his head upon the block if it
was not practicable next June.
I was now half way through the village,
wondering why the game had not begun
already. I now, without halting, loaded,
fixed bayonets, and with the sub- division in
advance I have already spoken of, made a
dash at the carts. I was in time. Before
they could be got into motion my men had
seized them, every man about them im-
mediately catching a woman in his arms,
whom he' employed as a target, and for a
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 205
moment I deluded myself into a belief that
I had been too quick for the fine pisintry,
and that I should slip through ; in fact, the
certainty that five minutes more would pro-
duce that result, brought on a general at-
tack. The street in my front and rear was
thronged in a second ; volleys of stones came
pouring on us from behind the houses, and
a young man, apparently a respectable far-
mer's son, rashly leaving the shelter of the
cabins, came tip to a sergeant, and actually
snapped a pistol in his face.
The pistol burned priming, arid the ser-
geant shot the man dead, an irregular fire
broke out all round ; I think the mob must
have fired as many as thirty or forty shots,
but the chatter of the regular musketry
was a good deal too sharp for the amateur
splutterers, and it soon had all the talk to
itself. The convoy had now halted, for all
this passed, as may be supposed, in a very
few minutes, and in not very many more
206 CONFESSIONS OF
we were clear of the village. I saw some
bodies lying about, dead and wounded, but
did not attempt to make prisoners, having
enough to do with removing my own
wounded, amounting to an officer and four
men. The officer, 1 regret to say, was
Johnny.
I could, however, plainly perceive that
my days' work was by no means over yet.
The mob that had actually attacked me
had, indeed, scattered in all directions, but
still, once out of reach of shot, had got
into a number of little groups who evi-
dently were taking the direction of some
prearranged place of rendezvous ; and, after
a few minutes consideration of the nature
of the road, with which, having only passed
over it so short a time before, I was well
acquainted, I entertained no sort of doubt
but that I should have the pleasure of
renewing the acquaintance of my kind
friends at the pass of Knockuiske. As
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 207
to the professional debate likely to occur
there, I had not the slightest anxiety now
the murderous attack upon me had untied
my hands, and given a charming legality
to the whispering of ball cartridge. I felt
that I had an unquestionable right to act
as if I were in an enemy's country, and
was not unwilling to exercise it.
Exactly as I had expected, I found the
pass occupied in great force; it was a sort
of ravine, in fact, a cleft through a moun-
tain, by adopting which the road saved
several miles of detour, and its sides were
much too steep to attack, with any pros-
pect of success, a really well concealed
ambuscade. A well managed surprise here
might, to troops marching carelessly, have
been productive of serious results ; but the
extraordinary and most extravagant genius
of the Celt never showed itself to greater
advantage than upon this occasion; never
did I see more deliciously developed that
208 CONFESSIONS OF
strange mixture of cunning and simplicity,
that shows so clearly that the Celtic mind
is in its child stage, and ought to be treated
accordingly.
They had made their preparations with
great rapidity and some skill. They had
upset several cars across the road, and
were busy digging a trench, which, though
nothing to stop men or horses, would have
been a serious obstacle to loaded cars, espe-
cially as they were loaded with a com-
modity that might not be very patient
under jolting. They had piled heaps of
stones, about sixty or seventy feet up the
slopes, for pelting, and in some places had
placed what were positively rocks, in posi-
tions whence they might conveniently be
rolled down upon us, and there must have
been some thousands of them on the spot,
covering the sides of the hill, shouting,
cursing, and defying us; and thus after
our combat in Clonacrana had effectually
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 209
relieved me from the necessity of treating
them with any sort of ceremony, having
thus set their trap, in broad daylight, in
full view of myself and my men thus did
these heavenly innocents, in the beautiful
simplicity of their young hearts, imagine
that I was going to walk right into it.
" Och, the jewels !" I heard one of my men
say to another, " it's a broth of a boy that's
lading them blackguards; it's counting their
chickens before they're hatched, they are,
if they think the captain's such a born
innocent as to stand that dodge."
" They want some more lessons of Brown
Bess's taching," returned the other, looking
at his flint, and, notwithstanding his Irish
brogue, falling into his place with military
unconcern, as I gave the word to march at
attention. When within about four yards
of the good Christians on the hill, I halted
the convoy, closed up everything into a
compact body, and leaving orders for it not
210 CONFESSIONS OP
to advance till I sounded the advance from
the front, took a company with me and
proceeded to what I suppose was an opera-
tion that formed no part of the philosophy
of those worthy children of nature viz. the
turning their position.
The upper part of the mountain, which
the narrow gorge of Knockuiske pierced at
this spot, was to my right hand, and, of
course, as the possession of the upper ground
implied that of the lower, I took ground
about a hundred yards to my right, and
extending one sub-division and supporting
with the other, advanced in skirmishing order.
I immediately perceived this produced some
eifect; the crowd began slowly to melt
away, but the number of those who judged
it discreet to increase the distance between
their own persons and the muzzles of my
firelocks was by no means so many as
might have been expected. The mode of
governing Ireland of late years had made
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 211
it so completely a matter of faith with the
country-people that the troops were mere
playthings nine-pins for them to bowl
down that, though aware that when in
any very imminent peril of our lives we
sometimes defended ourselves, sometimes
even in a manner unpleasant to our assail-
ants, still the great bulk of the crowd could
not realize in their own minds the idea of
our originating a fire of our own accord;
and there they stood, I believe, without any
very serious idea of resisting us if we really
attacked in earnest, but observing our
movements with a deal of good-natured
curiosity, for they were now getting more
silent, and, from their gestures, seeming to
divide their interest between the halted
convoy in the road and the company with
which I was rapidly advancing along the
field, without in the least appearing to con-
sider that a few minutes more must send a
storm of shot whistling among them.
212 CONFESSIONS OF
A good number of them certainly dropped
off on the side that I was approaching, pro-
bably old soldiers, who could spell the por-
tentous characters that are composed of
sub-divisions and sections, and knew that
the movement I was making would compel
me to open a fire in a few minutes ; but still
the right-hand slope was crowded with a
multitude that must be dispersed, and, on
the other side of the road, our transactions
seemed to be looked upon by the patriotic
spectators on that slope as an interesting
drama by no means concerning them. I
did not wish to kill more than I could help,
and, therefore, in the hopes that they would
take the hint, I commenced serious opera-
tions at a considerable distance, and was
barely within range when I ordered the
"Fire" to be sounded.
It may be necessary to explain that
troops firing in skirmishing, fire by alternate
ranks. Now, as the company I had with
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 213
me consisted of sixty men, of whom one
half was extended skirmishing, and the
other kept together in support, it is obvious
that their outbreak of fire must have con-
sisted of fifteen shots- Fifteen hundred
48-pounders, however, could not have per-
formed the service more effectually. The
scamper that instantaneously took place
can be compared to nothing but rabbits
surprised and plunging into their burrows
and, indeed, resembled that scene of little
dignity in no slight degree; for they went
tumbling and blundering over one another
in their hurry, in such a manner, that if I
had not known that such a fire, at such a
distance, could have produced hardly any
results, I should have supposed that some
awful slaughter had taken place. I never
saw such a number of coat-tails together in
my life before or since.
Not one, I believe, was touched, at least
thev left no wounded' behind, and we per-
214 CONFESSIONS OF
ceived no marks of blood when we took
possession of the ground they had stood
upon, and I hope they all got safe home.
When the ramrods of the rank that had
fired were heard working in the barrels, the
other rank, as is the regular mode of pro-
ceeding, delivered its fire, and the yell that
burst from the crowd was tremendous. The
second volley is always a staggerer; it sug-
gests to every man's mind the homely pro-
verb, " There's more where that came
from," as they generally have had enough
and to spare already ; and the smoke had not
curled away and melted into nothingness
ere the crowd had done the same.
That on the other slope, sensibly dimi-
nished indeed, still lingered, in the vain
hope of being considered as innocent spec-
tators, but perceiving that though I had
ceased firing for the moment, I was by no
means inclined to consider them in that
amiable light, for I was bringing up my
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 215
right shoulders to present a front to them
with a similar fringe of fire, they also eva-
porated, and the pass of Knockuiske will
not figure in the history of the Irish Ke-
public as an Hibernian Morat. I now
sounded the advance for the convoy, for
there was not a martyr in sight, -and leaving
my skirmishers extended, as a gentle hint
in case of reviving patriotism, I descended
into the road with the support, and soon
made a practicable passage for my convoy.
I reached the barracks in safety, and was
exceedingly glad when I had delivered up
my charge and made my report, which I
took care should be as favourable to myself
as was consistent with credibility, an effort
in which I was much assisted by the agree-
able circumstance that no one on the
adverse side could contradict me, on the
English side of the water, without confess-
ing to a felony. I believe the general
opinion in Ireland was, that I ought to be
216 CONFESSIONS OF
hanged, and a good many fervid lovers of
their country and of humanity in general,
thought that something of the sort would
happen, and exulted accordingly, but pre-
maturely; for O'Connell, as I have already
said, took quite a different view of the case.
He was rather on his good behaviour (as
far as possible) at the time. He had had
two or three rubs in parliament lately, that
had touched sore spots. A certain hardi-
hood of assertion that went down like
mother's-milk on Burgh Quay, did not fit
the swallow of St. Stephen's. The sacrifice
of a British officer for doing his duty might
have roused questions and questioners who
would stand no mistake; so he let me off.
He said I could not help myself. I thought
I had helped myself very well indeed, but
was too well bred to contradict him, and
was only too happy to get out of the scrape
upon any terms whatever; so the Govern-
ment pardoned me, and even intimated
some feeble approval of my conduct.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 217
It also, as it seems, approved of the con-
duct of the gentlemen engaged on the other
side; for the Attorney-General never made
those tender inquiries after them that would
have been considered necessary in any other
civilized country, notwithstanding that the
death of one of my wounded men, two days
afterwards, involved the whole party in a
capital felony, and that several of the lead-
ing patriots had hopelessly and irretrievably
criminated themselves by the evidence they
would insist upon giving before the coro-
ner's inquest, which, as I have already
remarked, returned a verdict of wilful
murder against the 120th Regiment of
Foot, men and officers, bag and baggage.
VOL. i.
218 CONFESSIONS 01
CHAPTER XII.
THE WOUND AND THE WOUNDED THE STRAW THAT
SHOWS THE WIND THE WAY OF ONE'S OWN
THE LURE OF THE MIRROR THE SHADOW OF THE
SPECTRE.
OF that inquest I shall here say nothing.
The absence of all authority on the part of
the coroner, of all fairness on the part of
the jury, and of all truth on the part of the
witnesses, were striking characteristics of
that singular assemblage, at least to a
Saxon eye. But little promise of aptitude
for self-government displayed itself there.
However, it launched its bolt, and, as it is
said of other bolts of a similar character, it
was soon sped. May it rest in peace ! The
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 219
affair of Knockuiske, however, necessarily
detained me for some time in Ballymac-
crocodile. I might have been wanted to
answer questions, or to be hanged, or some-
thing of the sort. Perhaps it was consi-
dered fair-play, that some of the boys
whose uncles or aunts had been shot at
either of the places of combat, should have
a shot at me in return, from behind a
hedge. There I was, as I say, in case I
was wanted. I was not; so here I am.
The soldier commonly has a certain im-
munity in Ireland ; he has no hayricks to
burn, and no cattle to hough. The attempt
to turn up the surface of the barrack-yard
might lead to turning up the toes of the
turner ; and the attempt to burn the dwell-
ing of the soldier might be found marked by
a disagreeable peculiarity, viz., that the first
outbreak of fire might be accompanied by
an alarming amount of lead. One thing,
however, gave me great pleasure.
L2
220 CONFESSIONS OF
Almost immediately after our return,
Mrs. O'Keilly, hearing that something par-
ticular had happened, came up to see what
it was, and finding that Johnny was wounded,
insisted upon forthwith removing him to
the parsonage, to which 'Flaherty, being
a high disciplinarian, at first demurred, but
upon my urging the sanative effects of
female attendance upon wounded men,
yielded with a semifossilised sigh, and an
antediluvian sentiment about a senora with
black eyes, and black hair, and black man-
tilla, and I do not know how much more
black about her, who had tended him a
quarter of a century ago, when he got a
dab of French lead before St. Sebastian.
I have no doubt the senora is now as old
and ugly as sin, and a great deal uglier;
but I could almost have kissed her for the
share her memory (or recollection, if she
still survive) had in procuring Johnny per-
mission to pass his days of illness in a
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 221
Christian home, instead of the devil's pig-
stye, in which our rulers pen the British
army, under the name of barracks. Johnny
accordingly was conveyed to the parsonage,
and our surgeon went down to see what was
the matter, and patch him up as well as
possible.
The wound was serious, though I believe
not dangerous; at least Grampus described
it at mess that evening as a polygonal
incision of the left-branchial artery, with
radiated labial apertures, and a molluscous
contusion of the superincumbent stratum of
cellular tissue ; together with an exfoliatory
erasure of the ossa, and erosion of the
cuticle. I may mention, for the benefit of my
non-medical readers, that the boy was really
shot in the arm, and grazed in the ribs,- a
wound, of course, troublesome, but nothing
particular; but I was very glad to get him
down to the parsonage. I was convinced that
he would get better much faster there than
222 CONFESSIONS OF
amidst the ceaseless sound of a soldier's life,
to say nothing of female influence. I am
convinced that, were I ever wounded, which
the Lord forbid, the difference between the
grim visage of my soldier servant and the
interesting and sympathizing countenance
of such a charming creature as Ellen O'Reilly
would make a difference of eight or ten
days at least in my convalescence. I should
be absorbed in the blue eyes whilst the pill
was slipping down my throat, and the taper
fingers would shed a light upon the blackest
draught; but I am not quite certain that I
should be in any great hurry about con-
fessing to convalescence.
In spite of the hard words our warlike
Galen applied to his case, Johnny, to all
appearance, got gradually better ; Ellen
attended him with a motherly interest, by
which she acquired such an influence over
him as to compel him to swallow whatever
diabolical messes Grampus chose to drench
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 223
him with, which I am convinced he never
would have done upon any other terms;
and little Nanny, with a precocious gravity,
enacted the part of nurse. She wore out
her best sash in the performance, for she
never would go near him without being
decked out to the full amount that her
limited finery admitted of; and I caught
her once settling her hair into some parti-
cular fashion that he fancied, when she was
going to take him in a cup of some abomin-
able vegetable tea that he was ordered to
drink.
I gave her a coral necklace that evening,
which drove her wild with joy ; she de-
clared I was quite a satellite, by which I
understood her to mean something starlike,
or planetary, or heavenly; at all events,
something of a superior sphere ; and it
would but have been decorous in a clergy-
man's daughter to have culled me an angel,
or a cherub, as I have no doubt she felt me
224 CONFESSIONS OF
to be at that moment. I think she slept
in that necklace for some time ; I do not
think she does now, or it would not be in
such good preservation, for I saw it the
other day, at the head of the table of a
particular friend of mine, and she told me,
while I was helping the Brunoise, that she
had a diamond set and an emerald set now,
but she had a sort of liking for the coral
still. She did not mean that to be by way
of making love to me, as a young lady
sitting within two of me thought, and said
to her next neighbour ill French, supposing
that I was not likely to understand that
recondite language; I knew that she did
not, but it pleased me nevertheless.
Some time after our little affair with the
aborigines, it was considered that I had
been kept at Ballymaccrocodile to be cross-
examined or shot at long enough, and I got
a few days leave to go and see Hawkins at
Dunmanway. I had been so long in the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 225
habit of doing incomprehensible things, that
my wanting to leave the domestic enjoy-
ments of the 120th, and plunge into the
unknown regions of the county Cork,
excited no surprise. I believe if I had
chosen to roost in a horse chesnut tree, or
reside in the church steeple, our people
would have simply remarked, " It's so like
Cobb," and there would have been an end
of it. It saves one an amazing deal of
trouble, being allowed to do things " so like"
oneself. Half the worry of life lies in the
attempt to do things like others, who are
commonly very indifferent models. Nobody
troubled his head about what I wanted at
Dunniauway ; but if the twelve Apostles
had declared that I was going there for the
purpose of reconciling a faithless lover to a
lovesick girl, not a soul in the regiment
would have believed it. Probably, if the
supposition had been started, an amendment
would have been brought forward and
L3
2:26 CONFESSIONS OF
unanimously adopted, to the effect that I
Avas gone to persuade Hawkins to assign
me any remaining interest he might have
reserved in the young lady, or something of
that sort.
The day before I started I went to dine
at the parsonage. One would have supposed,
that considering Mrs. O'Reilly was quite
aware why I was going to visit my incon-
stant friend, a quiet family dinner would
have been the most rational way of enter-
taining me, and perhaps a confidential bit of
chat after ; but that incomprehensible spirit
that is everlastingly whispering into wo-
man's ears, tempted her to ask Mary Anne
O'Malley, who watches everything like a cat,
and whom I hated like poison. Whether
Ellen was cognisant of the real object of my
journey or not, I do not know, but she was
dressed in something very like half-mourn-
ing, had abolished her ringlets, and looked
the very impersonation of hopeless misery,
COCNTRY QUARTERS. 227
as I told Hawkins the next evening over
our whisky punch. Mary Anne O'Malley, on
the contrary, showed great spirit; she took
possession of Johnny to Nanny's intense
disgust, and evidently all dinner time was
pitching something uncommonly hot and
strong and sweet into him ; so much so, that
when an opportunity occurred, I thought it
my duty to Edith to call him over the
coals for it.
" Johnny, my boy," said I, when the
ladies had left the room and our minds
were at ease, " you are taking to flirting,
now that you've got your arm in a sling,
you interesting young reprobate : what's that
long conversation you've been holding with
Mary Anne O'Malley all dinner time?"
"I wasn't holding any," said he; " she's
been talking to me all the time, telling me
what sort of a person she'd like for a hus-
band, if ever she could make up her mind to
marry, which, of conrse, she never would."
228 CONFESSIONS OF
" Oh, the blessed Saint Virgin and Mar-
tyr!" said I; "she abjures matrimony,
does she? "Well, what's her idea of the
coming man?"
" "Why," said Johnny, "he must be young,
of good family, at least by the mother's side
at all events, and he must have been in the
army ; she does not care about much money,
she says."
" No, of course not," said I ; " she'd take
it out in love."
" Yes," replied he, " she says better a
dinner of herbs "
, " Don't be blasphemous, Johnny," said I,
" she's been coming the religious dodge over
you; what did she say about her man,
what was he to be like?"
" Oh, about middle size," returned
Johnny, with great simplicity; " rather
pale and interesting looking ; and she laid
great stress upon good teeth."
" Light hair," suggested I.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 229
" Yes, she said she liked light hair, it was
so angelic."
" But not blue eyes," said I ; " she liked
brown eyes."
" How the devil do you know that?"
asked Johnny, opening his brown eyes very
wide indeed.
" And a complexion with the mark of
the sun's kisses on it," said I.
Johnny sat staring on me.
" Small feet?"
Johnny looked at his French polish, they
were very small.
" And a bit of a poet," said I; " soul for
music eh ?"
" Well, she said something about that,"
said Johnny ; " but how do you know
that?"
" Why, Johnny, you heavenly innocent,"
said I; "she has been describing you to
yourself as her own ideal : that's the way
women propose ; and if you don't look
230 CONFESSIONS OF
sharp, she'll just trip you up and carry you
off as a sparrow-hawk does a water- wagtail.
I'll tell you what, Johnny; I'll write to
Clementina Mullins, to say you are de-
ceiving her."
" She deceived me seven times herself
since we left Dublin," returned Johnny.
with an air of injured innocence ; " first of
all, there was the flirtation with that con-
founded huzzar: then she took up with
a captain of Horse Artillery, that's two:
there was Brandyball, because he kept a
drag, that's three : and then that little fool
in the Rifles, that curled his hair, that's
four."
" Where did you get all this fashionable
news, Johnny?" interrupted I. " Johnny,
my boy, you're getting scandalous."
" I got it from Hope," said Johnny, with
an odd twist of his head, and a curious
expression of uneasiness in his countenance,
which at once rivetted my attention. I
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 231
had seen something of the sort before, but
I could not recollect where or how.
"What is the matter with you?" asked I.
" Only a little stiffness in the back of
my neck," replied he, swallowing a glass of
wine with a face as if it were physic.
" I think our young friend has caught
cold," said Mr. O'Reilly.
"I think I have," answered Johnny;
" for I've got an odd sort of sore-throat,
too. I must have some whey to-night,
and I dare say I shall be all right in the
morning."
Soon after this we adjourned to the
drawing-room, where Mary Anne O'Malley
renewed her attack upon Johnny, who
received her advances much as French
infantry in square receive Cossacks. What
she wanted with him I never could make
out; she could not have expected him to
marry her, and if she did, she went the
wrong way about it, for she speedily created
232 CONFESSIONS OF
a positive aversion to her in his breast.
This evening he Avas evidently out of sorts,
and I was not sorry to see him packed off
to bed about half-past nine ; he complained
of his throat, and of an odd feeling about
the root of his tongue, but at the time I
was not aware that this portended any-
thing more than a common cold; and after
a short arid mutually interesting conver-
sation with Ellen about the crops and fine
weather, and the widow 0' Something or
Other, the subjects that so completely ab-
sorbed both our minds at the moment, took
my leave, receiving at parting that spas-
modic grasp from Ellen, which used to give
me so much pain. I little thought that
there was a much worse spasm than that in
the house that moment.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 233
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MORNING AND THE GLEAM OF LIGHT THE
RETRIBUTION IN THE TOWER THE MONSTER
MEETING THE NATIONAL LYHIC THE CHILD
OF THE NATIVE THE STRANGER IN THE TONGUE.
AWAY in the clear bright morning for Dun-
manway, with a sort of sensation that I
was about to do a good action a sensation
strange and unaccustomed to me, and I
believe something like that which pervades
a young couple upon the birth of their first
child. I suppose it wears out by much
use, but I have no doubt that it is an
agreeable excitement at first, the calling an
immortal soul into existence. I have felt
the same sort of thing before, when I was
234 CONFESSIONS OF
very young, in spring; I wonder, will it
ever come again at least, on this side of
the grave !
Away I rattled in royal humour; there
was not a pig that I did not touch up as I
passed him; there was not a dog whose
Lark did not turn to a yelp as he came
within range; and I think I must have
winked at Mrs. O'Halloran's fat lady's
maid, as I spun by her, tripping demurely
to mass, she cast down her great eyes so
sheepishly, and shot them up so like bluish
lightning. It was a fine, bracing, invigo-
rating morning ; all the Ballymaccrocodilites
were afoot, leaning over the half-doors of
their cabins, and I almost fancied that two
or three of them were half thinking of
going to work somewhere or other at some-
thing or other. I wish they had; there
was not a rood of ground, street, or road
within twenty miles where there was not
something out of repair ; if they had only
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 235
mended their own inexpressibles, it would
have added to the civilization of the scene.
Away, over the long dreary bog, with
its deep holes, the armouries of the fine
peasantry, where they conceal the musket
and the fowling-piece, which are to win them
their " rights" at their great day of Arma-
geddon that, like the rainbow, seems
always near, but always receding the waste
black bog, with the grey, tall, lonely tower
that the English settler built in days of
yore, with its peaked roof and its little
corkscrew stair in the corner, and its
strange little nooks, in which heart of steel
and peep-of-day boy have lurked, and the
" man on his keeping" has crouched into
himself, and held his breath as he heard
the police searching, and half felt the gripe
of the hangman on his throat, as the
carbines struck against the walls. What a
deep breath drew he as their measured
tread died away in the distance, yet no
236 CONFESSIONS OF
thought of his victim came to that man's
mind, no thought of the grey hair be-
dabbled with blood, and the pale girl trying
to stanch it, and deluding herself into the
thought she had succeeded, because it had
ceased to flow. Many are the towers like
that in Ireland, built by the armed in-
truder, to shelter the armed murderer of
his successor perhaps descendant the
Nemesis of stone and mortar.
Away through the villages of curs and
dunghills, and through that beautiful city
called Cork, renowned mostly for beef and
beggars, with its gigantic harbour and un-
rivalled natural advantages (what a place
Cork would be if you could only expunge the
Corkomans and transplant the population
of Liverpool to the spot!) on through
Bandon, close to which, according to the
Irish historians, Cesara, Noah's niece,
pitched her tent soon after the deluge, and
planted a potato garden, now called Kill-
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 237
brogan ; and at last I reached Dun-
man way.
I found Hawkins and most of his detach-
ment away. There was a monster meeting
held in the neighbourhood, I believe, to
petition for a repeal of the duties on window
glass, which the fine peasantry found so
burdensome; or the abolition of judges and
juries ; or an act for the better ventilation
of madhouses ; or some other of their rights,
I never could precisely make out what.
However, Hawkins was there with a party,
and I determined to follow, and see what
this great popular demonstration was like.
I had, as the reader is aware, had some
professional intercourse with such mobs al-
ready, but had never before mingled with
one as a civilian. I had, however, formed
my opinion of their composition, which a
nearer acquaintance by no means tended to
dispel.
The scene was a strange one, worthy of
238 CONFESSIONS OF
the strange and unintelligible land on which
it was enacted, an enormous body of willing
dupes in frieze coats and indifferent hats,
swallowing open-mouthed huge doses of
irresistibly ludicrous treason, facetious fero-
city, and comic patriotism. The Great
Man was there as leader, himself and his
leadership an embodied anomaly; for no
man believed a word he spoke, yet his word
was law to all his followers, gospel to
some, yet these very men followed him
almost as much in the sense in which hounds
follow the hare, not their huntsman. There
was a whole caravan of country cars, a few
jaunting cars, a barouche for the leading
patriots, a shifting here and there, groups
gathering, scattering, whispering, shouting,
massing, circling, but ever closing upon a
common centre, with a choral undergrowl
of " Repale."
With respect to the formal proceedings
of the meeting itself, I shall say nothing,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 239
for indeed I know very little, and care less.
I believe they were composed of the regular
stock materials, cunning, that traded upon
the dishonest credulity of roguish dupes;
fraudful cupidity that, under the garb of
patriotism, sought to evade the discharge
of just obligations; ferocity, faintly veiled
by the outward appearance of religious zeal ;
treason, under the disguise of constitutional
formality, lies in the front, butchery in the
rear, the wolf reproaching the lamb with
troubling the water. It is well for us, the
mere minstrels of history, that we can saddle
our ponderous brethren with the dirty work.
To them we can leave the festering mass,
and willingly we do so ; but there was one
group here that particularly attracted my
notice, arid I shall endeavour to describe its
proceedings.
The principal personage in this section
of the assembly was a young man, tall, very
powerfully built, and, as far as mere animal
240 CONFESSIONS OF
features went, remarkably handsome, the
puppy ; ' but the expression of his counte-
nance was at that moment much marred by
a peculiar glance of the eye, half-threat,
half-wariness, savage bullying dashed with
low cunning, that often animates the coun-
tenance of a boy in a dispute with another,
when, the debate arrives at the menacing
point of " Say that again." The gentle-
man in question was at this moment stand-
ing on a jaunting-car, with a grim smile
that might truly be called a speaking smile ;
for it said, " Tyrants, tremble !" as plainly
as if the words had been articulated, survey-
ing the scene that was passing round him.
His coat was green his waistcoat green
his trousers green his white hat was sur-
rounded with black crape; in mourning,
I suppose, for the woes of his country, the
treaty of Limerick, or the last of the
Druids; his buttons bore the loyal emblem
of the harp, without the crown, whereby it
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 241
is intended, more hibernico, to convey to
the public mind that her Majesty is Queen
of Ireland, as an integral nation not as a
portion of the United Kingdom. He bore
a stick of fearful dimensions not the na-
tional arm, the handy little shillelagh but
a positive club of a murderous ponderosity,
and he was awaiting, with an aspect,
which, I believe, he intended should repre-
sent a fiery patience, the termination of
the rapturous applause which greeted the
subjoined national hymn, a well-meant air,
which I purchased on the spot for a penny,
and do not hesitate to say that I think it
was worth the money.
" Remember the hour, boys,
Before yez were born,
Ere Protestant power, boys,
Your green flag had torn ;
When kings' crowns, and half-crowns,
Was plentiful things ;
The law coorts were kings'
For all men were kings.
VOL. I. M
242 CONFESSIONS OF
" Then great Olla Folia,
Not the laste supercilious,
Bate Solomon hollow,
And Numa Pompilius.
The geese were all swans, then,
The pratie pots gold :
Without lave or consent,
We thrashed young and old.
" We argued with black thorns,
Discoorsing with blows;
Who came second best off,
Got a bloody nose.
The strongest was richest,
The weakest fared worst,
And he that was bouldest,
Was always served first.
" We all had our rights, then ;
We now have our wrongs ;
The divil's delights, then,
We'll kick up at once.
Whisk your switches away, boys,
For each Saxon marauder,
We'll slate ould De Grey, boys,
And we'll card the Recorder.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 243
" You won't hear yourself spake, boys,
For the roar for repale,
The fierce cowards shall quake, boys,
From their head to their tail.
The truculent caitiffs
Shall turn bloody pale,
The miscreants shall warble,
Hurrah for Repale !"
"Well, Mr.Lancaster," said young Ireland,
as the bard concluded, and the applause
subsided, "what do you think of that? is
not that the voice of a nation of loving
brothers warbling in social unison the ac-
cents of everlasting, unextinguishable hate?"
The gentleman whom he addressed
seemed to be about his own age, and was
also fearfully and wonderfully attired; he,
too, wore a long green frock coa't without a
collar, a deficiency which, however, his
shirt abundantly supplied, for its collar
almost covered his shoulders, its gills would
have done for a whale ; but with the ver-
dant hue of his upper garment, the har-
M 2 /
244 CONFESSIONS OF
mony of his attire with the Hibernicisra
of the present occasion ceased and deter-
mined; a brilliant sky-blue waistcoat sur-
mounted a pair of trousers of the most
cyclopean pattern of tartan I ever set
eyes on, and his head, whence long locks
depended to the place where the collar of
his coat would have been had it had a
local habitation, was surrounded by a sky-
blue forage cap with a white band, his face
presenting the somewhat (to English eyes)
anomalous conjunction of enormous long
moustaches and immense round spectacles
with a dash of violet in them.
Upon this appeal he smoothed down his
shirt collar, adjusted his spectacles, twisted
his moustache, assumed a metaphysical air,
and answered in such language as never
man or beast heard before, and that set me
staring open-mouthed at him for the next
half hour. His extraordinary answer
requires the place of honour of the head of
a chapter, to which we will remit it.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 245
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BLACK CLOUD OF WORDS THE NEW WORLD AND
THE OLD HERO WORSHIP THE PEEP BEHIND
THE SCENES.
" OF a truth," said this mighty man of words,
" I do, as it were, dimly, auricularly perceive
in the many-tongued oneness of the sound
storm, the obscure interwoven ground tone,
of a great soul concert, harmoniously dis-
sonant."
" Heart broken Eirinn, with her lovely
head discrowned, meekly bewailing her un-
utterable woes," said the young Irelander,
who was the cynosure of neighbouring eyes,
and whom I subsequently discovered to be
a respectable linen-draper, of Scotch origin,
246 CONFESSIONS OF
called Walker ; "heart broken Eirinn, calling
on the shades of her kings and druids, and
hear how the sacred soil of Carrickarafferty
echoes back its native tones."
"I do inwardly conceive, was the
answer, that the sacred and mysterious
union of the higher notes of song with the
groundinight of the base which the voice
of the people supplies, twin-born and im-
mortally wedded from the moment of their
common birth, may, on its own native
ground, connect organisms with matter to
a miud-land-commuuion, which the sons of
the soil perceive to be heart-stirring, but
which can never ring out natural and con-
cording music to aspirations born in an-
other time, clime, and place, nor harmonize
with that tone of mind to which they should
form a conturbing orchestral accompani-
ment in its creative mood. Whence I do
not myself, inward-soul-woven-conngurate
the race-belonging rythm therein working."
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 247
" Phelira," I heard a respectable-looking,
elderly farmer say, who had been listening
almost as open mouthed as myself to the
learned discourse " what's that he's say-
ing at all, at all? is it gibberish?"
" Gibberish !" returned Phelim, in high
contempt ; " then Mike, jewel, where have
you been living all your life? sure it's Saxon
he's talking."
" Saxon !" replied the other ; " so that's
Saxon, is it ? raal Saxon ? Well, anyhow it's
some comfort to know what it is that we've
been cursing and swearing at this three
yearsand more, but the Saxons themselves
wouldn't marry their twins, as he says."
"Wouldn't they?" said the other; "you
don't know what they wouldn't do; faith,
robbing a church wouldn't stick in their
gizzards, I'll engage. Sure they marry
their priests and bishops, Avliy wouldn't
they marry their brothers and sisters too,
twins itself!"
248 CONFESSIONS OF
b
u Mighty hard names he calls every-
thing," said Mike.
" Faith you may say that," replied
Phelim, " it's bad language he uses."
" D d bad language," returned Mike.
" I'm thinking he hasn't got the use of his
tongue properly; what the blazes does he
wear those blue goggles for ?"
" For fear the boys should throw dirt in
his eyes," replied the other, with peculiar
wink, and immediately afterwards he ap-
proached more nearly to Mr. Lancaster,
who was anxiously awaiting another burst
of eloquence from the orator of the jaunt-
ing-car. Out it canie, hot and hot.
" What are we here for? (" To petition
Parliament," suggested a cautious-looking
attorney who was standing near him.) To
petition Parliament? as soon petition that
parliament whose Speaker is
" M olocli, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice and parents' tears ;
Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sous!"
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 249
"If we go on petitioning the accursed, unna-
tural, stock-jobbing, poor-starving, pot-
walloping, heretic English Parliament,
where will Ireland be among the nations?
America will indict her as a swindler. It
was not for that that your brave country-
men assembled in hundreds of thousands
on the hill of Tara, and hailed your leader
in voices of thunder in the Eath of Mullagh-
mast, when the wrath of smiling Eirinn,
long pent up and nursed in the bosom of
her patience, shall burst forth unap-
peasably to the light, like a cataract on
fire, when the blazing breath of Freedom
sweeps, like a young hurricane, over a land
bursting with patriotism, uprooting in its
beneficent violence the coronets and mitres
of a detested brood of aliens and heretics,
and assassins and butchers ; when once more
the Gaelic Brehon, the lineal heir and suc-
cessor to that Brehon that sucked Rome,
shall throw the sword into the scale with
wd
250 CONCESSIONS OF
the terrible word, ' Woe to the conquered !'
when the oppressor, fattened with the
blood and the tears of centuries, shrinking
before his withering glance, shall bethink
himself of the prudent course adopted by
his brother snakes in the days of St.
Patrick, and rush madly into suicide to
save himself from slaughter ; when the
world's foundations tremble, and the bond
that unites the quivering granite to the
quaking whinstone "
What catastrophe was to happen then I
cannot tell, because I do not know. The
foundations of the world have not settled
an inch, that I know of, and the granite
and the whinstone are pretty good securities
to this day, but the belly-band of an Irish
jaunting-car is not, and at this tremendous
moment it gave way. Up went the shafts
into the air, and, as a necessary corollary,
down went the orator to the ground, his
parent soil treating him in a most step-
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 251
motherly coldness, encasing him in a gar-
ment of well-trodden and curiously-com-
pounded mud ; upon arising from which the
shouts of laughter with which he was re-
ceived told him most unmistakably that his
oratory for that great day for Ireland was
over. It is well for a speaker when his
audience laugh with him, but an unerring
instinct evidently warned Mr. Walker, who
seemed by no means deficient in acuteness,
that no man can safely address an audience
that has once laughed at him.
I was very sorry for this contretemps; I
wanted to hear him hold forth about the
sunrise in the west, and other wild flowers
of Irish oratory, and I found out subse-
quently that he was considered one of their
best and most national orators, and one of
the principal pillars of the State that is to
be when the Saxon is mowed down and
made Lay of. Whilst he was being mopped,
brushed, scrubbed, dabbed, and otherwise
252 CONFESSIONS OF
purified, I observed my friend Phelim ap-
proach the remarkable Lancaster, and for
some time listen very attentively to his
discourse, at the same time carefully scru-
tinising his attire, a personal examina-
tion which, in the end, seemed to lead him
to a conclusion respecting the country of
that gentleman different from that with
which he had started, and he forthwith
communicated his new opinion to his next
door neighbour, who was evidently very
much struck with it.
The idea seemed to take; little knots of
men were immediately formed in every
direction, discoursing eagerly upon some
very interesting subject. As the conversa-
tion was carried on in Irish, I could not
make out what they were saying, but the
subject clearly was Mr. Lancaster, as
I saw from the eager flashing eyes that
were bent upon him. He did not observe
them himself, probably would not have
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 253
heeded them if he had, for he did not look
like one who was in the habit of troubling
his head much about the safety of his per-
son ; but his companion immediately became
aware of the notice he was attracting, and
was very uneasy about it, for he evidently
felt that it was perfectly possible that an
excited niob, taking him for a spy, might
proceed to acts of violence.
I think he must have heard the allegation
that he was a Saxon, and, I suppose,
having brought him into his present posi-
tion, felt himself responsible for his personal
safety, which he proposed providing for,
by turning public attention into another
direction, and so getting the best chance of
withdrawing his endangered guest quietly.
I saw him persuade one of the regular hack-
paid declaimers to address the people; and
the patriot, having got upon a turf-cut
reversed, began :
" Brethren The cause, the holy cause
254 CONFESSIONS OF
the cause of the fatherless and the widow!
the cause of the stranger and the oppressed !"
(I thought he was now going to get out of
his causes, but I remarked that the excite-
ment of the mob, with respect to Mr. Lan-
caster, was fast coming to a crisis,) " for
which we are met this day, is to shake from
our shoulders the bonds of slavery and the
curse of an alien legislature."
" Hurrah for the Union !" burst suddenly
from a group of frieze coats. The orator
looked disconcerted, but proceeded " The
curse of a legislative union "
" The Union for ever !" shouted the
people.
The orator was thunderstruck, but the
clamour still continued " Hurrah for the
Union the Union for ever more power
to its elbow !"
"'Hereditary bondsmen!'" roared the
patriot, in high disdain, not unmixed with
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 255
trepidation " ' Hereditary bondsmen !'"
but the watchword fell unheeded.
Three cheers for the stripes was the
answer.
" The stars and stripes," suggested some
one"
" Say the moon at once, ye lunatics !"
howled the orator, at his wits' end.
" Hurrah for America !" shouted the
mob; and with a rush and a roar they
pounced upon the bewildered Lancaster,
who, before he could form the slightest idea
of what was going on, found himself perched
upon the shoulders of an huzzaing crowd,
and, representing in his own person the
United States of North America, progress-
ing rapidly towards the hustings, whence
the great man in green was at that moment
delivering a most inflammatory speech.
Never was greatness so unexpectedly
thrust upon unwitting mortal. It was in
256 CONFESSIONS OF
vain that he protested that he was a true-
born Englishman, and had served many
years in the army of his country.
" An Englishman," said they ; " mighty
fine that; it's senator Lancaster, from New
York sure he's been talking American the
last two hours. How would you know a
man if it wasn't for his tongue. Three
cheers for General Lancaster. He says he
sympathizes, too. Never mind, sir, we
wont sell you to the Peelers; never fear.
Hurrah for the American people and
language; what for would they be tied to
English words. Freeborn Yankees like
them"
" My friends," gasped the unhappy victim,
spasmodically.
" His friends !" responded the many-
headed and more-ton gued. " He's a Quaker
from Pennsylvania."
" Why don't you pay your debts ?" roared
a repudiated.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 257
" Whisht, you blackguard!" yelled a
true patriot; "isn't the gentleman come to
help us against the miscreants? what for
would he pay them? Sure it's the Saxons
that lent the money, not us ; and it's over
there now, in case we go over the water."
But when was Fortune otherwise than
fickle. When the worthy Lancaster, amidst
thundering cheers, arrived at the hustings,
he found that he might say with Wolsey,
' I have touched the highest point of all my greatness,
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting. I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no mail see me more."
For scarcely had he reached the tribune,
when the Liberator overwhelmed him with
a perfect torrent of abuse, the most elo-
quently foul-mouthed, oratorically vitupe-
rative that could be conceived; the fact
being, that the introduction of foreign
258 CONFESSIONS OF
armed interference in matters of domestic
policy might be a very pretty plaything
for a dozen unknown pacificators among
the mob, but was manifestly no joke to the
known, marked, and watched promoter of
this assemblage, who, having been all his
life endeavouring (it must be admitted
with unexampled success) to ascertain how
much treason a man might commit without
being hanged, was perfectly aware that it
might be run too fine, whence unpleasant
consequences might ensue; and hence the
vials of wrath of the Liberator descended
like a vitriolic shower-bath upon the de-
voted head of the bewildered stranger, to
whom his sudden elevation, and no less
sudden decadence, were alike utterly in-
comprehensible, unless upon the ground
which had already, I have no doubt, more
than once suggested itself to him that
there were certain peculiarities in the
national mind which would have led were
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 259
it not for the peculiar-minded gentleman
being in an overwhelming majority to the
erection in Ireland of a considerable number
of edifices resembling the hospital dedicated
to St. Luke.
However, the moment the Jupiter began
to thunder, the patriots who bore the
Promotheus on their shoulders " dropped
him, as they expressed it in the figurative
and poetical language of the nation, " like
a hot potato ;" and the Celtic hero having
secured his Saxon guest's body, for his
mind was still wandering in the realms of
conjecture, and persuaded a patriotic carman
to postpone his duty to Ireland, to his
duty to himself, and take them back to
Dunmanway at double the regular fare,
they commenced their journey homeward.
Having seen enough of the thing, I
requested a seat on the car, which was
graciously accorded ; and just after clearing
the crowd, we overtook two respectable-
260 CONFESSIONS OF
looking men, apparently small shopkeepers,
walking along in deep consultation. Mr.
Walker recognised them as they passed,
and offered them a lift also.
" Two head pacificators," said he to me,
with a wink, as they prepared to accept his
offer.
" Glorious day for Ireland this, Walker,"
said one of them, as he mounted. " The
Saxon will tremble in his blood-stained
boots when he hears of Ireland marshalling
her armies to crush the invader (queer
pacificators these, thought I to myself.)
Thirty thousand "
" Thirty, man alive !" interrupted the
other ; " sixty thousand, if there was a
man."
"Where were your eyes?" indignantly
broke in Walker ; " thirty thousand ! sixty
thousand ! both, at the very least."
" He is right ; he estimates the strength
of Ireland better than we do," rejoined
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 261
Pacificator A; there could not have been
less than ninety thousand children of Erin
assembled in their native plain this blessed
day."
" Ninety thousand," rejoined Pacificator
B, " fighting men, without counting aged
men past their work, and boys."
" Who might have amounted to at least
fifteen thousand more, besides women and
children," added Walker. " You see, Cap-
tain, what majestic array we can show in
the face of Europe."
" I hope you like the country, sir?" said
Pacificator B, to the speaker of unknown
tongues. " You've seen a great sight
to-day."
" I heard, of a truth," returned that
gentleman, " a wide-spread, inarticulate,
slumberous murmurment speaking much
in its words, and still more in its silences
which will remain seal-stamp impressed on
my mind, like a huge phantasmal giant
262 CONFESSIONS OF
shadow, reflected from a world-stirring
spectral mirror !"
" You're quite right, sir; that's my way
of thinking; that's what I say always,"
returned the Pacificator, who would have
seen the strange gentleman in the blackest
pool of the LifFy before he would have
acknowledged that he did not under-
stand every word that he spoke. " I'm
proud to meet a gentleman of your en-
lightened and comprehensive understand-
ing;" and then turning to his companion,
with the characteristic confidence which the
lower order of Irish seem, to repose in-
stinctively in the English officer, continued
the conversation, which had been momenta-
rily interrupted, with his companion, with
the most perfect indifference to my pre-
sence.
" Well, what's to be done with these
meetings?" said he; "what are they for;
there's some thousands of boys losing their
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 263
day's work; devil a bit of repale ever will
they get, and it would be the ruinin' of the
country if they did : where would we sell
our pigs or our wheat? He wont frecken
out the English government; sure they
wont resign ; devil a sight of a place any
of us will see these twenty years to come.
What's the game now?"
" I'll tell you what is," returned the
other ; " the people down in the west are as
mad as hatters about the priests and their
dues, and these meetins are just to give
them something else to think about that's
what it is; sorra the haporth more."
" Whew !" said the other" is that all.
Well, then, why don't they hold them down
in the west."
" Sure, if they held them in the west,
the boys would see them themselves," was
the answer. Where would your hundreds
of thousands be then?"
" I see," said the other. " I'm sinsible;
264 CONFESSIONS OF
thank you kindly, sir. Here's where we
get down. Good morning, sir. If there's
any information about the country we can
give you, we'll be proud to oblige you."
" Thousand times hearty thanks !" re-
sponded that gentleman " live ye well."
" What does he mane by that?" asked
Pacificator A ; ''it isn't bad lives, he says,
we lead."
"Never mind," returned Pacificator B;
"it's Saxon for 'long life to your honour;'
poor creatures, they haven't got English
enough to discoorse with us."
As the car drove off, Lancaster asked
of his companion " Whether he had heard
what they were saying?"
" Yes," said the other.
" Is there truth in the voice of it?" asked
that wonderful worker of English.
" I don't know much about that," re-
turned the Celt, carelessly ; " truth is a
mighty inconvanient commodity at these
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 265
monster meetings; but I don't suppose
there's much lying a man must live some-
how."
" Then this loud, high, deep chorus-
clamour, that this life-blood pledge, to die
for Ireland, is an empty voice, and not any-
thing else at all, any how !"
" Sure we're all ready to die for Ire-
land," returned Walker, loftily ; " but in my
private opinion" (here he dropped his voice
to a whisper) " most of us would a good deal
rather live for Ireland, and the jollier the
better."
VOL. I.
266 CONFESSIONS OF
CHAPTER XV.
THE RED-COATED ROBINSON CRUSOE THE FEELING
FOR A SOFT PLACE PARADISE AND THE PERI
THE SNARE FOR THE BENEDICT THE CANON OF
COURTSHIP THE PEAR NOT RIPE.
I FOUND, upon my return, that Hawkins
had arrived before me the magistrates
having discovered that the mob did not
mean mischief that time, and having dis-
missed him from the hiding-place, where,
according to custom, he had been kept
secretly to intimidate the insurgents. He
was, of course, in wretched humour, and
rather inclined to be jealous of my victory
of Knockuiske. However, he was not a
man to retain jealousy, or indeed, I think,
any other feeling, very long; and by the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 267
time he had written his report in which he
estimated the mob at three thousand men,
and about the same number of women and
children, and, I believe, over-estimated it
considerably by reason of my presence he
was perfectly placable, and almost ready to
receive any impression I might think fit to
make upon his mind with reference to
Ellen.
I am not ashamed to confess, notwith-
standing that when I was at Ballymac-
crocodile, many long Irish miles distant, I
felt perfectly convinced that I should have
no sort of difficulty in making him do what-
ever I pleased, a confidence natural to
genius, but not without occasional dis-
appointments, nevertheless, when I was
actually face to face with my man in his
own barrack-room, I by no means felt the
same implicit faith in my own powers of
leading, or driving, whichever the case
might require. Commonly speaking, when*
N 2
268 CONFESSIONS OF
one collars a difficulty, it melts away; but
in this instance I did riot find that agree-
able result indeed, I do not think I could
have opened my battle in anything like
proper form, had he not given me the
opening by inquiring about her himself.
Of course, on the road I had carefully
studied his letter. The indications in it
were discontent with his quarters, his
profession, and his mode of life ; above all,
with himself.
The little ember of love for Ellen, still
smouldering, though thinly veiled by the
affected interest in how I got on with
her, was, of course, the point upon which
I relied the point of the wedge, as one
might say. I never saw a man talked
into love yet; but a chance dip of his little
finger into that liquid madness, and the
game begins; a very little gentle pressure,
and in he goes, over head and ears. Hawkins
*was evidently not yet very deep, but, as it
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 269
were, sprinkled. Probably, had lie known
the real depth of the impression he had
made upon Ellen's heart, he would have
acted very differently. The tender in-
quiry in his letter as to how six hundred
a-year might be got up, seemed to point
towards settled weather for the rest of his
life a berth in ordinary in the haven of
matrimony.
Hawkins was really a well-disposed sort
of man enough, but he wanted stability of
purpose ; he never thoroughly knew his
own mind. I speedily found an illustration
of this point in his character. In his letter
to me he had expressed weariness of soldier-
ing. Now he was not, in truth, in the
least tired of his profession ; he was bored
at Dunmanway, and he was tormented with
a sort of half-hatched passion for Ellen,
which, without being strong enough to spur
him to action, or even to cheer him with
hope, was quite sufficient to prevent his
270 CONFESSIONS OF
deriving enjoyment from anything or any-
body else, and I am not very certain that
he might not have been somewhat troubled
by a sort of a conscience he had. Still he
would have repented leaving the army for
the rest of his life. He was heart and soul
a soldier; his detachment was in first-rate
order; and if the swarm of Pacificators I
saw in the morning had tried a turn of
their trade upon him, I have no doubt he
would have returned the compliment, and
pacified them in the usual military manner.
" Well, how do you get on here?" I said.
" It is a mercy of Providence that time
never stops."
" If it did I should try eternity," replied
Hawkins; u a bullet goes far, and sends far,
and no price would be very high to get out
of this place ; it is dull beyond anything my
experience affords, and I have had a good
deal, too. Heigho ! this is a weary world."
" I suppose," said I, " that your recrea-
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 271
tions are not of a very varied character? I
see you have a lough."
" Yes," replied he, sentimentally, " we
have a sort of a lake ; it does very well for
a cat in a bowl, but is not big enough for
duck hunts."
" And that bridge, I presume, affords the
usual transatlantic matches?" said I.
" Yes," replied he, languidly. " But the
stream eddies too much; there is trout in
it, however, and my sub and I divide the
labour about them he catches them, and I
eat them ; but the thing does not do post
equitem sedet atra cura."
" Take to studying geometry," suggested
I; "it is a fine, exhilarating exercise for
the mind (that was the way we always
consoled our friends when they were in dis-
tress; we always laughed at them, and they
speedily carne to laugh at themselves; the
system sounds ill, but works well). Conic
sections are more intellectual than ours,
272 CONFESSIONS OF
and their triangles have no blood in
them."
" I was thinking of astronomy," said he,
lighting a cigar; " it's more elevating."
" By the Lord, he wants to have a slap
at the moon," thought I. " He'll be
writing sonnets soon I * affaire va lien.
And I began to recall that symptomatic
stanza in " Don Juan:"
" He thought about himself, and of the earth ;
Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,
And how the deuce they ever could have birth;
And then he thought of earthquakes, and of
wars;
How many miles the moon might have in girth ;
Of air-balloons, and of the many bars
To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies ;
And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes."
" My dear fellow," said I, " a life of
solitude does not suit you. You have no
taste for study, or any sort of mental exer-
tion: or, indeed, any exertion whatever.
You would not like hunting, only that the
COUNTRY QUARTERS.
hounds find the brains, and the horses do
the work, and you enjoy the glory, to say
nothing about the excitement; and even
then, when you come home, and are thrown
upon your own resources, and towards nine
o'clock, you'd give heaven and earth for
somebody to make tea for you."
" Many a shaft at random sent,"
(the reader probably knows the rest); and
this shot (chance, as I confess it be) hit
the bull's eye ; what string in his heart it
touched, I cannot tell; but I could sec by
his countenance that it vibrated instantly,
and somewhat sharply. Perhaps it re-
minded him of those happy family meetings
at a certain tea-table in Ballymaccrocodile ;
perhaps it suggested to him a phantasma-
goric representation of something that might
happen if he behaved himself properly;
perhaps he had been drunk over night, and
was seedy and serious in consequence. BJ
N 3
274 CONFESSIONS OF
that how it may, I saw with great pleasure,
and no small exultation, that the first blow
had been well planted; and no man knew
better than I the inestimable value of a
good start.
" Have you got that canon of courtship,"
asked I, " that you showed me a couple of
years ago?"
" Yes," he answered; "it is in my desk,
among the letters."
As he opened the desk where his corre-
spondence reposed, I perceived that it con-
sisted mainly of little delicate notes in little
delicate hands. I do not think they were
about railway transactions, or the parallax
of Sirius. I took the paper from his hands,
and read for the last time
THE CANON OF COURTSHIP.
I. The fair object must have no grown-
up brothers; they are dangerous.
II. She ought, if possible, to have no
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 275
father ; or, at all events, he must be in the
church, or a judge.
III. Failing this condition, the father
must be a high-spirited man, certain not
to press his daughter upon any one; mas-
ter in his own house ; for it takes a strong
man to stop the she hurricane upon certain
occasions.
IV. There must be no great political, or
fashionable, or local influence, or other
power of doing mischief in the family;
vengeance may belong to the Lord, but it
is often borrowed.
V. No letter-writing that can possibly
be avoided must be allowed litera scripta
manet.
VI. No presents except flowers, which
may be made just as significant in the West
as in the East; they may mean nothing, or
they may be made to say anything and
everything but they are not evidence.
VII. When tired, pick a quarrel ; put the
276 CONFESSIONS OF
girl in the wrong, and keep her there, that
is generally easy enough; but some girls
are too good-hearted, or forgive too easily ;
in that case, drop her suddenly without
assigning a reason ; say no more about it,
and you will probably hear no more about
it.
VIII. Avoid breaking off about settle-
ments; any amount of rascality towards
others of their own sex women forgive
readily, and indeed often secretly admire
you for it; but there is no forgiveness for
meanness of any sort.
Such was the diabolical chart by which
my friend Hawkins had hitherto, in a great
measure, shaped his course through life. I
thought the time was come for consigning
these eight golden rules to the element they
most properly belonged to.
" I think we may as well put this pre-
cious document into the fire," said I.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 277
" I think so, too," replied he, rather in a
brown study ; and I threw it on the fire.
The paper fell upon a place where the fire
did not burn, and instead of igniting,
smouldered away. " They wont burn,"
said he.
" No," I answered. " The vows they
prompted were smoke, and they appropri-
ately vanish in smoke, and leave nothing
but a black mass behind them."
I could see that the hollow-heartedness of
his own conduct was recalled to his mind
by the comparison not a very original
one, by the by, but we will say nothing
about that of false vows to smoke. I began
to have some hopes.
It is strange what influence associations,
however oddly developed, exercise over our
emotions. I remember myself, albeit, as I
believe one of Shakspeare's men says, " not
much given to the melting mood," once
actually bursting into tears, when quartered
278 CONFESSIONS OF
in a semi-fossilized village, called, or at
least spelt, Oughterard a whilome strong-
hold and capital city of the famous
O'Flaherties, in the wilds of Connemara
for no better reason than that upon opening
a drawer in which lay some pairs of, alas !
very superfluous white kid gloves, the
odour, redolent of the white muslin para-
dises of London, which it at once recalled
to my mind in all their decollete glory, over-
came me; and, as I say, I actually shed
tears. (I believe, by the way, Mr. Moore
borrowed the idea of his beautiful poem of
" Paradise and the Peri," from this circum-
stance.) Of course, none of my friends will
believe this; but nevertheless, it is true; I,
Somerset Cavendish Cobb, then and there
wept. I have not repeated the practice
often, it is a bad habit for a captain of
Foot. This, however, is digression; and
if there is anything I pride myself on, it is
sticking to the point, as I did in the actual
business in hand with Hawkins.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 279
" That is all very well," said he, after a
moment's consideration; " but who is to
pay for it?"
I didn't know ; so I shifted my hand.
" I'm sure," said I, " I wish anything of
the sort was in store for me."
" Why should there not be?" asked my
friend. " What's to prevent you from mar-
rying ?"
" My dear fellow," replied I, " some craft
are built for cutters and some for schooners j
I was launched for a cutter."
" Stick in a mizen and become a yawl,"
suggested he.
" A ketch more properly," answered I.
" No, no, there's neither unity nor symmetry
in a ketch. Besides, it has got a bad name
Jack might not be able to find a Jill."
"Well, then, marry to better yourself," re-
turned he. " A clever fellow like you, that
can dance and write verses, ought to do
something among the pink-satin money-
bags."
280 CONFESSIONS OF
" No," said I, I admit, not without a
gentle sigh "no; if it rained heiresses,
Old Nick would hold an umbrella over my
head."
" I do not see that," replied he. He
always had a certain admiration of me,
which, strange to say, was almost free from
jealousy. " I should have supposed you
were just the fellow to carry off the greatest
prize in the market."
" Why, the fact is," I answered, " that
every heiress expects either a lord or a fool ;
and I cannot qualify on either ground."
" I've got no money," said he, evidently
wishing that he had ; " and, you see, as to
marrying any other any woman with
money, I mean that is to say, going to
look out for an heiress, why, you know, I
should have to throw over "
" Dinner is on the table, sir," said his
servant; and I believe Hawkins was not
sorry for the interruption; neither was I,
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 281
for I was ravenous, which was a much more
legitimate reason for wishing for dinner
than his, not that he had in the least lost
his appetite. Luckily for us, the subaltern
had spunged a dinner out of some of the
adjacent gentlemen; so I had the field clear
for my operations, and thought, as I sat
down, that this was a wonderful piece of
luck, and it would go hard if I did not
make some way before we reached our sixth
tumbler.
u Your difficulty in finding a wife," said
I, " will not be so much about money; for
marrying a woman with inexpensive habits
is as good as money; but in finding a
domestic woman, who will make your home
happy, and be what a mother ought to be
to your children that is what you want."
(The reader will perceive that in a good
cause I was ready to lie through a deal
board; and the most absurd thing was, that
Hawkins swallowed every word I said with
282 CONFESSIONS OF
a ludicrous confidence.) " This vagabonding
life of ours requires repose. Now you have
a fair opportunity ; you can lay your hand
upon what you want now."
" How?" asked he, somewhat nervously.
" Marry Ellen O'Reilly," said I, boldly;
"she's desperately in love with you now;
but if you don't look sharp, there's a parson
there swears he'll marry her if she keeps
him waiting ten years for it; and I'll tell
you what's more, if once she gets it fairly
into her head that you mean to desert her,
he'll catch her heart at the rebound, and
you'll see no more of her."
" Well, if she has no more steadiness
than that," said Hawkins, hesitatingly
"What do you mean by steadiness?"
interrupted I; " it's you that want steadi-
ness; you don't suppose that you're to
whistle her off and on like a pet spaniel;
besides, you have been making love to her
in earnest not a mere flirtation. This is
no joke."
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 283
" 1 certainly do like her," said he ; " but
marrying is a serious matter."
"Winning a girl's heart, and poisoning
the rest of her life, is a very serious
matter," replied I; "it's the story of the
boys pelting the frogs."
" It's hard we cannot have our innocent
amusements," quoth he. " What's one to
do in country quarters?"
" It may be play to you, but it's death
to them," returned I. " I don't profess to
be stiff laced myself; but there's a point
to stop at."
" Confound all parsonages !" answered
Hawkins, evidently running restive. "Have
a cigar and some whiskey punch. How's
the old grey mare getting on?"
284 CONFESSIONS OF
CHAPTER XVI.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD THE FEELING OP THE
PULSE UNDERGROUND ENJOYMENTS THE CHILL
ON THE HEART THE TUMBLE INTO A NEW
ACQUAINTANCE THE TOKEN OF HOPE.
I DO not think that Hawkins had naturally
a very bad heart, as I have already re-
marked. He was a good deal of a sensualist,
perhaps; did not much like his wishes not
being gratified ; and whilst he scrupled very
little to indulge in most of his gentle vices,
was desirous of doing so with the least
possible sin, scandal, or inconvenience to him-
self. He had just enough ability to enable
him to make some progress in everything
that he undertook, without strength of will
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 285
or purpose enough to insure success in any-
thing; he had enough talent to feel the
vague restlessness of genius, without having
ever cultivated his mind sufficiently to give
genius that accuracy and precision of object
that satisfies its craving for something to
do, by turning it into definite action. I do
not think that his feelings had ever been
called forth sufficiently to give him an idea
of what the poisoned garments are in which
feelings sometimes invest the human heart;
and yet I should hardly have called him
selfish. If he had money, he lent it readily
enough ; if he had not, he was still slow to
borrow. In short, he was just the sort
of man that, as a bachelor, degenerates
steadily, year after year ; but with a really
sensible and loving wife, would gradually
have moulted off his bad qualities, one
after the other, strengthened and extended
his good ones, and finally have reached a
much higher standard of character than
286 CONFESSIONS OF
most of his friends thought him capable of
attaining. If I had not believed in this
latent virtue in him, I should certainly not
have interfered in the matter as I did.
He possessed that habitual recklessness of
exposure of his own person, whether to
danger, fatigue, or weather, that is such an
invaluable treasure to its owner; and he
was very popular in his regiment.
At the same time, he was at this moment
doing as much mischief, and inflicting as
much misery, as the most consummate
villain could have done, either unconsciously
or unheedingly ; and I began to despair of
my mission the next morning at breakfast,
when I saw the enormous quantity of fried
eggs and bacon he devoured, whilst 1 was
describing to him how Ellen's life was
embittered by his infidelity.
One thing, however, gave me some com-
fort he had shown no disposition to speak
of her. This will, I have no doubt, appear
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 287
to many to be by no means a ground for
comfort, but I nevertheless felt it to be so.
I did not expect from him that he would
gravely and seriously confide his passion
(if it existed) to me, as he might to a
woman of sense and sensibility, who had
no daughters to marry, and might have
sympathized with him, consoled him, and
perhaps advised him. I never heard of
anybody coming to a captain of Light
Infantry for sympathy; but I felt certain
of this, that if he had been inclined to talk
much about her, it would have been in
some degree disrespectfully, and I felt his
silence to be a proof of regard for her.
However, the subject was not destined
to be carried much farther upon this occa-
sion. After breakfast, he proposed to me
to take a walk to see some wonderful cavern
that had recently been discovered. I can-
not honestly describe any very solemn
emotion that I experienced on entering this
288 CONFESSIONS OF
" vast hall of nature's own workmanship,
deep seated in the living rock," as it was
subsequently described in the " Illustrious
News," or the " Hysterical Times'' I forget
which. I know it sickened me of caverns:
In the first place, I expected to be able to
walk; I had supposed there would have
been a respectable floor I do not mean
boarded, but something tolerably flat and
even, like what I had been accustomed to
on the surface of the earth, with a roof
roughly but picturesquely arched, and
divers subterranean decorations depending
therefrom instead of which I could dis-
cover no difference between the roof and
the floor, than that the one smashed one's
head, and the other crushed one's feet.
It was sliding down a ledge here, and
twisting through a hole there sometimes
crawling and sometimes climbing it was
an underground miracle that I ever got out
again. I dreamed that night that I was a
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 289
toad, convicted of felony, and sentenced to
be crushed to death; and the next, that I
was a stalagmite, vainly endeavouring to
join myself to the corresponding stalactite
which kept dripping upon me till it almost
drove me mad. I ascertained that I had
no troglodytal propensities, and have never
been but ONCE in a cavern since (except in
the Colosseum). I asked Hawkins what
enjoyment he found in it: lie was compelled
to admit that he did not know, but that he
thought that one ought to go and see it.
Altogether, it was a strange sort of pleasure-
hunting, and a still stranger discharge of
duty. Upon returning, I found a messenger
waiting with a letter for me from head-
quarters.
I do not recollect ever having in my life
experienced the sensation with which I read
this missive; indeed, had I not felt it, I
should have doubted that such a state of
titter prostration, not only mental but
VOL. I.
290 CONFESSIONS OF
bodily, was possible. The symptoms of
which Johnny had complained the last
time I had seen him, and which, though I
hardly understood them, had given me a
vague uneasiness, now fully justified my
misgivings.
He had been attacked with locked jaw.
Half an hour saw me clear of Dunman-
way on my return.
Once fairly on the road, and free of the
bustle of departure, I had time and oppor-
tunity to examine my own feelings about
this new calamity; I was puzzled beyond
measure by their intensity, I certainly
liked Johnny very much, but not more than
I had liked many others, some of whom I
had lost, for we died young in our regiment.
I had felt much and deep sorrow for their loss;
but it was a manly sorrow, such as a soldier
feels for the comrade who has gone before
him ; but now I felt a sinking of the heart,
a shudder over my whole frame, a vague
COUNTRY QUARTERS, 291
feeling of self-accusation, a foreboding of
some very unbearable calamity to myself,
arising from the share I had in his death
it happening under my command. I could
not disabuse myself of the notion that I
was in some degree responsible for it. I
called upon Reason, and Reason acquitted
me; but Feeling whispered that it was by
no means clear that Lady Elizabeth, son-
less, would take precisely the same view;
or that Edith, brotherless, would or could
avoid connecting the death of her brother
with the commander in the skirmish in
which he fell. How could I meet them,
and what sort would be the meeting?
Would a wall rise between her and me,
or a common sorrow create a common
sympathy ?
Then, again, my thoughts would turn to
poor Johnny. There was an ingenuousness
about him, a freshness of heart, that had
always, from the first day I had seen him,
02
292 CONFESSIONS OF
attracted me. I had always, in my better
moments, looked forward to training and
preparing him for that struggle with the
world and oneself which forms what we call
life. I had once figured to myself Edith's
face when she read the accounts of some
brilliant achievement of his, and of the
honours and praises heaped on him, and
now the reversed arms, and the muffled
drum.
I could not keep from before my eyes a
phantasm of the guard at the barrack-gate
facing about to pay the last honour to the
funeral; and, struggling with these thoughts,
I entered an unpronounceable and almost
inaccessible village, when about two hun-
dred cur dogs turned out to pay their usual
compliments of barking, biting the horse's
heels, &c. &c. My horse, a thorough-bred,
which had become unsafe in hunting from
the loss of an eye, and I had therefore put
into harness, shied, plunged, and finally
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 293
bolted; before I could get a pull on him,
he had run up against a carriage that was
a few yards before me. This only made
him worse, and off he went like a cannon-
ball en ricochet. There was a pig on the
road no uncommon event in Ireland. Of
course the pig chose the most perverse
time for crossing. I felt a tremendous jerk
that flung me violently out of the car; a
bright flash of fire blazed before my eyes,
and then all was black and lifeless.
It is not particularly pleasant being
stunned, nor is it very agreeable coming to
oneself. When I did so, I presume that, in
the regular romantic manner, I asked,Where
am I? for I certainly did not know. I
found myself in an unknown room, smelling
strongly of whiskey (that is, the room), and
an unknown gentleman and lady standing
over me. I perceived above the chimney-
piece a portait of Robert Emmett, and upon
it that mysterious piece of furniture one so
294 CONFESSIONS OF
often sees in pothouses, a wineglass with
some wafers and toothpicks in it; and hav-
ing made these preliminary discoveries, was
informed that I was in the parlour of the
Grand National Hotel, Killmacballygoraf-
ferty, where it appeared I had been taken
by the gentleman whose carriage I had run
against.
An indigenous Esculapius was present,
insisting strongly upon rest and quiet,
which I interpreted into meaning remaining
a fortnight under his care, and declared
that I would see him and the rest of the
county of Cork suffering considerable post-
humous inconvenience first. He said that
it was madness attempting to move. I
rejoined that it would drive me mad to
stay, and that I preferred going mad at
Ballymaccrocodile to Killmacballygorafferty,
and rang the bell to order my car to be got
ready immediately. That, however, was
easier said than done; the car was disabled
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 295
by the accident; and, little as I liked the
rattletraps of the country, I was about to
order one, when the gentleman who had
picked me up, inquiring where I wanted to
go, informed me that he was going there
himself, and offered to give me a seat, which
I most joyfully accepted; and in ten mi-
nutes more was once more upon my way
towards my destination.
I suppose the blow upon my head some-
what confused my thoughts, for they got
into a most extraordinary mess. I think I
must have been half dozing for the first
mile or two ; for poor Johnny and Hawkins,
and Edith and the Colonel, and Lady Eli-
zabeth and Ellen, and even sometimes Mary
Anne O'Malley and the faithless Clementina
Mullins, kept soaring and wheeling like a
flight of crows before my eyes; and I once
got an idea into my head that I was going
to be hanged, I have no doubt arising from
my late miraculous escape from the gallows.
29G CONFESSIONS OF
At nil events, my now friends must have
come to the conclusion, that breaking heads
does not mend manners; for I did not take
the slightest notice of them for the first
half hour.
At last, however, I came to a sense of
my situation, and thought fit to bestow
some little attention upon them. The gen-
tleman was apparently about sixty, a tall,
handsome man, polished and courteous in his
manners, with a remarkable expression of
thought and intellect in his countenance
(not without a trifle of will), and that
peculiar searching directness in his eye,
that belongs to those, and those only, who
habitually sift all matters that come before
them. I should not have liked trying to
throw dust into that man's eyes.
The daughter was a strange contrast, a
delicate, fluttering, mignonne little thing,
like an incarnated butterfly Psyche in a
straw bonnet. I suppose she took after the
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 297
mother, and that the grave, elderly gentle-
man, who I took for granted was her father,
had required a plaything in his wife. I'm sure
I could not conceive his wanting a " help"
in anything. He smiled when I saw that I
was coming fully to my senses, and my
manners, and offered me some Eau de
Cologne to chafe my temples with, which
I found very refreshing.
" Oh ! what a terrible, terrible, fall you
got," said the young lady, holding up both
her hands. " I was quite sure you were
killed. Your head struck the ground like
a cannon ball."
" I thought you must have been badly
hurt," said the gentleman, with a quiet
smile; "for the shrieks Nina would continue
pouring forth would have waked the dead, and
you took not the slightest notice of them."
" Now, don't, you naughty, bad papa,"
said Nina, with the dawning of a blush.
" Shrieks, indeed ! I only said ' Oh !' "
298 CONFESSIONS OF
Of course, I began adoring Nina on the
spot. I think I could fall in love with the
venerable Nicholas' dam, if she would only
howl loud enough for me. It is a fine
institution that self-love ; I believe we
should hate three-fourths of our fellow-
creatures, if we did not flatter ourselves
that they were admiring (and envying) us
in their secret hearts.
" I only said ' Oh !' and when you see a
great man rolling and rolling up in the air
like a like an air balloon, and then coming
down flop, flop, I'm sure one could not say
less. What a strange sensation it was."
" We are about to spend some days at
Ballymaccrocodile," said the gentleman;
"the wife of the clergyman of the parish
is a near relative connexion of ours."
I now remembered having heard Mrs.
O'Reilly speak of a Mr. Wharton, who had
married a cousin of hers, and who was then
travelling about Ireland, endeavouring, by
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 299
his personal presence on the spot, to solve
the riddle that has so long puzzled the
Saxon mind What is Ireland ? and how is
it to be treated? Mrs. Wharton was long
since dead ; she died too early for the fair
Nina's good, as I speedily discovered; and
the father and daughter were now about to
spend a few days at Ballymaccrocodile.
But a new perplexity now awaited me.
The rectory was not the only attraction
for them in that ancient Bally. I had
scarcely informed them that I was quartered
there, and modestly disclosed my name,
before Nina seized me by the hand, and
exclaimed
" Then you are the kind, dear captain
that takes such good care of my dear, dear
little pet, Johnny Waldgrave ?"
This speech struck me dumb, and poor
Johnny lying perhaps on his death-bed.
" Good heavens ! what is the matter with
you?" continued she. "Papa! papa! he'll
300 CONFESSIONS OF
be stunned again. I mean he'll lose his
senses. Oh, what have I done ! What am
I to do! What is it!"
" I am afraid," said I, " I have bad news
about poor Johnny."
" Bad news !" shrieked the young lady.
" What is the matter with him? he is not
ill, is he?"
" He was wounded in a skirmish we had
with a mob some time ago," said I, " and I
have had bad news of his wound this morn-
ing ; it is on that account that I am in such
a hurry to get back."
"His wound is not dangerous, I hope?"
asked Mr. W T harton, anxiously.
" I hope not," I returned ; but it was,
I suspect, pretty clear to Mr. Wharton how
little real hope there was in that expression.
He looked piercingly at me, then at his
daughter, and, as if from consideration of
her presence, pursued his inquiries no
farther.
COUNTRY QUARTERS. 301
" Then those horrid Irish savages wounded
him," said Nina, with a shudder; and then
pulling down the window, screamed out
" Drive on, post-boy ! fast, fast ! very fast !
Papa, I told you they liked killing people.
Did they wound you, Captain Cobb?"
" I escaped," replied I.
" And how did you escape," asked she
quickly, "when he was hit?"
" No shot struck me," I returned ; and I
could not help a smile, for she evidently
had taken into her head that I had escaped
by flight, or some other precautionary
measure ; and then the smile faded fast away,
as I thought that precisely the same view of
the case might suggest itself to another
young lady.
" What was the whole story; tell me all
about it everything from the beginning,"
said Miss Wharton; and I hope the modest
narration of that short campaign, which
occupied a considerable portion of the rest
302 COUNTRY QUARTERS.
of our journey, restored my character for
personal courage in her opinion. It was a
great relief to me when my history was
ended, for by that time we were approach-
ing the rectory ; and as we drew near my
feelings of suspense became intolerable, I
could keep my thoughts to only one sub-
ject. Any attempt at the exercise of memory
was intolerable, and the eyes seemed to
burn in my head as we turned the corner
that gave us a view of the rectory, and the
token of hope met my eye. The window of
the room which Johnny occupied was open.
I knew there was life in that room, and
not death, and I began to understand what
was the meaning of the word MERCY.
END OF VOL. i.
'19279
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