Jonah Barrington - Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 2 (of 3)

Robert, as usual with the gentlemen of his day, was the dupe of agents, and the victim of indolence and hospitality. He had deposited his consort in the tomb of her fathers, and had continued merrily enjoying the convivialities of the world (principally in the night-time) till his son George had passed his 22nd year, and then punctually made way for the succession , leaving George inheritor of a large territory, a moderate income, a tattered mansion, an embarrassed rent-roll, and a profound ignorance (without the consciousness of it) of business in all departments.

George, though not at all handsome, had completely the mien and manners of a gentleman. His features accorded well with his address, bespeaking the cordiality of a friend and the ardour of an Irishman. His disposition was mild – his nature brave, generous, and sincere: on some occasions he was obstinate and peevish; on others, somewhat sullen and suspicious; but in his friendships, George Hartpole was immutable.

His stature was of the middle height, and his figure exhibited no appearance either of personal strength or constitutional vigour: his slender form and the languid fire of his eye indicated excitation without energy; yet his spirits were moderately good, and the most careless observer might feel convinced that he had sprung from no ordinary parentage – a circumstance which then had due influence in Ireland, where agents, artisans, and attorneys had not as yet supplanted the ancient nobility and gentry of the country.

Shrewl Castle, the hereditary residence of the Hartpoles, was in no way distinguishable from the numerous other castellated edifices now in a state of dilapidation throughout the whole island – ruins which invariably excite a retrospect of happier times, when the resident landlord, reverenced and beloved, and the cheerful tenant, fostered and protected, felt the natural advantages of their reciprocal attachment; a reflection which leads us to a sad comparison with modern usages, when the absent lord and the mercenary agent have no consideration but the rents, no solicitude but for their collection; when the deserted tenantry keep pace in decline with the deserted mansion; when the ragged cottager has no master to employ, no guardian to protect him! – pining, and sunk in the lowest state of want and wretchedness, — sans work, sans food, sans covering, sans every thing, – he rushes forlorn and desperate into the arms of destruction, which in all its various shapes stands ready to receive him. The reflection is miserable, but true: – such is Ireland since the year 1800.

Hartpole’s family residence, picturesquely seated on a verdant bank of the smooth and beautiful Barrow, had, during the revolutions of time, entirely lost the character of a fortress: patched and pieced after all the numberless orders of village architecture, it had long resigned the dignity of a castle without acquiring the comforts of a mansion: yet its gradual descent, from the stronghold of powerful chieftains to the rude dwelling of an embarrassed gentleman, could be traced even by a superficial observer. Its half-levelled battlements, its solitary and decrepit tower, and its rough, dingy walls, (giving it the appearance of a sort of habitable buttress ,) combined to portray the downfall of an ancient family.

Close bounding the site of this ambiguous heritage was situate the ancient burial-place of the Hartpole family and its followers for ages. Scattered graves, some green – some russet – denoted the recentness or remoteness of the different interments; and a few broad flag-stones indented with defaced or illegible inscriptions, and covering the remains of the early masters of the domain, just uplifted their mouldering sides from among weeds and briars, and half disclosed the only objects which could render that cemetery interesting.

One melancholy yew-tree, spreading wide its straggling branches over the tombs of its former lords and the nave of an ancient chapel, (its own hollow trunk proclaiming that it could not long survive,) seemed to await, in awful augury, the honour of expiring with the last scion of its hereditary chieftains.

To me the view of this melancholy tree always communicated a low feverish sensation, which I could not well account for. It is true, I ever disliked to contemplate the residence of the dead: 13 13 I never could get over certain disagreeable sensations and awe at the interment of any person. So strongly, indeed, have I been impressed in this way, that I formed a resolution, which (with one exception) I have strictly adhered to these forty years, – namely, never to attend the funeral even of a relative. I have now and then indulged a whim of strolling over a country church-yard, occasionally to kill time when travelling, in other instances for statistical purposes: but, in general, the intelligible and serious inscriptions on the tomb-stones are so mingled and mixed with others too ridiculous even for the brain of a stone-cutter to have devised, that the rational and preposterous, alternately counteracting each other, made a sort of equipoise; and I generally left an ordinary church-yard pretty much in the same mood in which I entered it. but that of the Hartpole race, bounding their hall of revelry, seemed to me a check upon all hilarity; and I never could raise my spirits in any room, or sleep soundly in any chamber, which overlooked that sanctuary.

The incidents which marked the life of the last owner of Shrewl Castle were singular and affecting, and on many points may tend to exhibit an instructive example. Nothing, in fact, is better calculated to influence the conduct of society, than the biography of those whose career has been conspicuously marked either by eminent virtues or peculiar events. The instance of George Hartpole may serve to prove, were proof wanting, that matrimony, as it is the most irrevocable, so is it the most precarious step in the life of mortals; and that sensations of presentiment and foreboding (as I have already more than once maintained) are not always visionary.

I was the most valued friend of this ill-fated young man. To me his whole heart was laid open; – nor was there one important circumstance of his life, one feeling of his mind, concealed from me. It is now many years since he paid his debt to nature; and, by her course, I shall not much longer tarry to regret his departure; but, whilst my pilgrimage continues, that regret cannot be extinguished.

George had received but a moderate education, far inadequate to his rank and expectations; and the country life of his careless father had afforded him too few conveniences for cultivating his capacity. His near alliance, however, and intercourse with the Aldborough family, gave him considerable opportunities to counteract, in a better class of society, that tendency to rustic dissipation to which his situation had exposed him, and which, at first seductive, soon becomes habitual, and ruinous in every way to youthful morals.

Whatever were the other eccentricities or failings of Robert, Earl of Aldborough (the uncle of Hartpole), the hyperbolical ideas of importance and dignity which he had imbibed, though in many practical instances they rendered him ridiculous, still furnished him with a certain address and air of fashion which put rustic vulgarity out of his society, and, combined with a portion of classic learning and modern belles-lettres, never failed to give him an entire ascendancy over his ruder neighbours. This curious character exhibited a pretty equal proportion of ostentation and meanness. 14 14 Hartpole, though he despised the empty arrogance of his uncle, yet saw that his Lordship knew the world well and profited by that knowledge: – he therefore occasionally paid much attention to some of my Lord’s worldly lectures; and had he observed the best of them, though he might possibly have appeared less amiable, he would doubtless have been far more fortunate. But Hartpole could not draw the due distinction between the folly of his uncle’s ostentation and the utility of his address; disgusted with the one, he did not sufficiently practise the other; and despised the idea of acting as if he knew the world, lest he should be considered as affecting to know too much of it.