Read Ebook: Personal Sketches of His Own Times Vol. 3 (of 3) by Barrington Jonah Sir

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Ebook has 634 lines and 106494 words, and 13 pages

"Thirdly, in the Court of Conscience."

"Granted."

"Fourthly, in my own counting-house."

"Granted--according to the rank of the visitor."

"Granted, with the exception of such as hold any offices, or get into good company."

The articles were arranged, and the treaty took effect that very evening.

Footnote 1:

There are now four baronets amongst that hard-going corporation.

"Heyday!" said Sir William, staring: "what the deuce have we here? Hollo! Christopher--Kit--I say Kit--who--who--or where the devil did this come from?"

"Did--did--he say nothing, Kit?" said Sir William, surprised.

"And was that all, Christopher?" said Sir William.

Sir William now seemed a little puzzled, desired Christopher to be gone, and throwing the painting on the table, said, "I didn't want any arms or crests. I had very good ones of my own, and I don't understand this matter at all. My family had plenty of arms and crests since King William came over the water."

"So have mine--a very nice lion rampant of their own, my lord," said her ladyship, as excellent a woman as could be: "I'm of the Rawins's," continued she, "and they have put me into your arms, Sir William:--look!"

"Oh that is all as it should be, my dear," said his lordship, who was a very tender husband. But regarding it more closely, her ladyship's colour, as she looked over his shoulder, mantled a few shades higher than its natural roseate hue, and she seemed obviously discontented.

"I tell you, Sir William," said she, "it is a malicious insult; and if you were out of the mayoralty, or my boy, Lovelace Steemer, had arrived at full maturity, I have no doubt the person who sent this would be made a proper example of. I hope you feel it, Sir William."

"Feel!--feel what, my love?" said Sir William, calmly, he being not only a courteous, but a most peaceful citizen. "Don't be precipitate, my darling!--let us see--let us see."

"No, no, Sir Jonah," said the lady interrupting me.

"I see now," said Sir William, looking at the bottom, "this comes from Ulster."

"Read on, Sir William," said I, "read on."

"I suppose," said I, "some blood relation to the Escheator of Munster, and--"

Footnote 2:

Every lord mayor of Dublin becomes judge of a "Court of Conscience" for twelve months after the expiration of his mayoralty; each decree costing a shilling; many of the causes are of the most comical description; but never would there have arisen so great a judge as Sancho Panza of Barataria, from presiding in our Court of Conscience.

I cannot omit stating, that Sir William, when lord mayor, gave the most numerous, brilliant, and complete masquerade ever seen in Dublin, or, I believe, any where else. There were fourteen or fifteen hundred persons, and I am sure not more than one hundred dominoes; every body went in character, and every person tried to keep up the character he adopted. Ireland, of all places in the world, is, perhaps, best adapted to a masquerade, as every Irishman is highly amused when he can get an opportunity of assuming, by way of freak, any new character.

Footnote 3:

This was the first instance I recollect of pertinacity conquering privilege.

DANGERS OF REFLECTION.

Personal description of Counsellor Conaghty--Singular contrast of physical roughness and mental suavity--A legal costume--The Counsellor's marriage--The bride described--Her plan for inducing her husband to sacrifice to the Graces--The fatal mirror--The Counsellor views himself in a new light--His consternation and false persuasion--The devil unjustly accused--Conaghty's illness and death.

The most extraordinary instance I recollect of a sudden affection of the mind being fatal to the body was presented by an old acquaintance of mine, Counsellor Conaghty, a gentleman of the Irish bar, who pined and died in consequence of an unexpected view of his own person; but by no means upon the same principle as Narcissus.

Conaghty, in point of disposition, was a quiet, well-tempered, and, I believe, totally irreproachable person. He was not unacquainted with the superficies of law, nor was he without professional business. Nobody, in fact, disliked him, and he disliked nobody. In national idiom, and Emerald brogue, he unquestionably excelled all his contemporaries. Dialogues sometimes occurred in Court between him and Lord Avonmore, the Chief Baron, which were truly ludicrous.

Madam Conaghty was a neat, pretty, dressy little person: her head reached nearly up to her spouse's hip; and if he had stood wide, to let her pass, she might have walked under him as through a triumphal arch.

He was quite delighted with his captivating fairy, and she equally so with her good-natured giant. Nothing could promise better for twenty or thirty years of honey-moons, when an extraordinary and most unexpected fatality demonstrated the uncertainty of all sublunary enjoyments, and might teach ladies who have lost their beauty the dangers of a looking-glass.

This plan was extremely promising in the eyes of little Mary; and she had no doubt it would be entirely consonant with her husband's own desire of Mrs. Conaghty's little drawing-room being the nicest in the neighbourhood. She accordingly purchased, in Great George Street, at a very large price, a looking-glass of sufficing dimensions, and it was a far larger one than the Counsellor had ever before noticed.

When this fatal reflector was brought home, it was placed leaning against the wall in the still unfurnished drawing-room,--and the lady, having determined at once to surprise and reform her dear giant, did not tell him of the circumstance. The ill-fated Counsellor, wandering about his new house--as people often do toward the close of the evening--that interregnum between sun, moon, and candlelight, when shadows are deep and figures seem lengthened--suddenly entered the room where the glass was deposited. Unconscious of the presence of the immense reflector, he beheld, in the gloom, a monstrous and frightful Caliban--wild, loose, and shaggy,--standing close and direct before him; and, as he raised his own gigantic arms in a paroxysm of involuntary horror, the goblin exactly followed his example, lifting its tremendous fists, as if with a fixed determination to fell the Counsellor, and extinguish him for ever.

It was two days before he recovered sufficiently to tell his Mary of the horrid spectre that had assailed him--for he really thought he had been felled to the ground by a blow from the goblin. Nothing, indeed, could ever persuade him to the contrary, and he grew quite delirious.

"Don't teaze me, Dennis," said the unhappy Mary; "go along!--go!"

"I'll tell you, mistress," said he; "it was a d--l sure enough that was in it!"

"Hush! nonsense!" said his mistress.

All efforts to convince Conaghty he was mistaken were vain. The illusion could not be removed from his mind; he had received a shock which affected his whole frame; a constipation of the intestines took place; and in three weeks, the poor fellow manifested the effects of groundless horror in a way which every one regretted.

FORMER STATE OF MEDICINE IN IRELAND.

My state of Irish medicine, therefore, relates to those "once on a time" days, when sons lamented their fathers, and wives could weep over expiring husbands; when every root and branch of an ancient family became as black as rooks for the death of a blood relation, though of almost incalculable removal. In those times the medical old woman and the surgeon-farrier--the bone-setter and the bleeder--were by no means considered contemptible practitioners among the Christian population--who, in common with the dumb beasts, experienced the advantages of their miscellaneous practice.

Footnote 4:

Footnote 5:

At that time there was seldom more than one regular doctor in a circuit of twenty miles, and a farrier never came to physic a gentleman's horse that some boxes of pills were not deducted from his balls, for the general use of the ladies and gentlemen of the family; and usually succeeded vastly better than those of the apothecary.

"Jug Coyle," said I, "why are you so angry?"

Jug:--"Sure it's not for myself, it's for my calling," said she: "a thousand years before the round towers were built , the colloughs were greater nor any lady in the country. We had plenty of charms in those days, Master Jonah, till the farriers came, bad luck to the race! Ough! may the curse of Crummell light on yees all, breed, seed, and generation, Larry Butler! not forgetting Ned Morrisy of Clapook, the villanous cow-doctor, that takes the good from the colloughs likewise, and all--"

Here Jug Coyle stopped short, as the farrier opened his eyes, and she knew well that if Larry Butler had a sup in, he would as soon beat an old woman as any body else. She therefore resumed munching her herbs, but was totally silenced.

I had a great respect for old Butler: he was very passionate, but universally licensed: he could walk any distance, and always carried in his hand a massive firing-iron. I have thus particularly described the old man, as being one of the most curious characters of his class I ever met in Ireland.

"Why, certainly, Jug," said I, "it would be rather bad treatment if we had no cures in the country."

"Ough! that saying is like your dear father," said she, "and your grandfather before you, and your great-grandfather who was before him agin. Moreover," pursued Jug, "God planted our cures in the fields because there was no pothecaries."

"Well, then, Master Jonah," resumed she, "if God or the Virgin, and I'm sure I can't say which of them, planted the cures, sure they must have made people who knew how to pick them up in the fields, or what good is their growing there?"

"Of that there is no doubt, Jug," said I, "though there may be other reasons for it."

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