Jonah Barrington - Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 1 (of 3)

The room of banquet had been re-arranged by the old woman: spitchcocked chickens, fried rashers, and broiled marrowbones appeared struggling for precedence. The clean cloth looked fresh and exciting: jugs of mulled and buttered claret foamed hot upon the refurnished table; and a better or heartier breakfast I never enjoyed in my life.

A few members of the jovial crew had remained all night at their posts; but I suppose alternately took some rest, as they seemed not at all affected by their repletion. Soap and hot water restored at once their spirits and their persons; and it was determined that the rooms should be ventilated and cleared out for a cock-fight, to pass time till the approach of dinner.

In this battle-royal, every man backed his own bird; twelve of which courageous animals were set down together to fight it out – the survivor to gain all. In point of principle, the battle of the Horatii and Curiatii was re-acted; and in about an hour, one cock crowed out his triumph over the mangled body of his last opponent; – being himself, strange to say, but little wounded. The other eleven lay dead; and to the victor was unanimously voted a writ of ease , with sole monarchy over the hen-roost for the remainder of his days; and I remember him, for many years, the proud and happy commandant of his poultry-yard and seraglio. They named him “Hyder Ally;” – and I do not think a more enviable two-legged animal existed.

Fresh visitors were introduced each successive day, and the seventh morning had arisen before the feast broke up. As that day advanced, the cow was proclaimed to have furnished her full quantum of good dishes; the claret was upon its stoop; and the last gallon, mulled with a pound of spices, was drunk in tumblers to the next merry meeting! – All now retired to their natural rest, until the evening announced a different scene.

An early supper, to be partaken of by all the young folks, of both sexes, in the neighbourhood, was provided in the dwelling-house, to terminate the festivities. A dance, as usual, wound up the entertainment; and what was then termed a “raking pot of tea,” 16put a finishing stroke, in jollity and good-humour, to such a revel as I never saw before, and, I am sure, shall never see again.

When I compare with the foregoing the habits of the present day, and see the grandsons of those joyous and vigorous sportsmen mincing their fish and tit-bits at their favourite box in Bond-street; amalgamating their ounce of salad on a silver saucer; employing six sauces to coax one appetite; burning up the palate to make its enjoyments the more exquisite; sipping their acid claret, disguised by an olive or neutralized by a chesnut; lisping out for the scented waiter, and paying him the price of a feast for the modicum of a Lilliputian, and the pay of a captain for the attendance of a blackguard; – it amuses me extremely, and makes me speculate on what their forefathers would have done to those admirable Epicenes, if they had had them at the “Pilgrimage” in the huntsman’s cottage.

To these extremes of former roughness and modern affectation, it would require the pen of such a writer as Fielding to do ample justice. It may, however, afford our reader some diversion to trace the degrees which led from the grossness of the former down to the effeminacy of the latter; and these may, in a great measure, be collected from the various incidents which will be found scattered throughout these sketches of sixty solar revolutions.

Nothing indeed can better illustrate the sensation which the grandfathers, or even aged fathers, of these slim lads of the Bond-street and St. James’s-street establishments, must have felt upon finding their offspring in the elegant occupations I have just mentioned, than an incident relating to Captain Parsons Hoye, of County Wicklow, who several years since met with a specimen of the kind of lad at Hudson’s, in Covent-Garden.

A nephew of his, an effeminate young fellow, who had been either on the Continent or in London a considerable time, and who expected to be the Captain’s heir, (being his sister’s son) accidentally came into the coffee-room. Neither uncle nor nephew recollected each other; but old Parsons’ disgust at the dandified manners, language, and dress of the youth, gave rise to an occurrence which drew from the bluff seaman epithets wonderfully droll, but rather too coarse to record: – the end of it was, that, when Parsons discovered the relationship of the stranger, (by their exchanging cards in anger,) he first kicked him out of the coffee-room, and then struck him out of a will which he had made, – and died very soon after, as if on purpose to mortify the macaroni!

Commodore Trunnion was a civilized man, and a beauty (but a fool), compared to Parsons Hoye, – who had a moderate hereditary property near Wicklow; had been a captain in the royal navy; was a bad farmer, a worse sportsman, and a blustering justice of peace: but great at potation ! and what was called, “in the main, a capital fellow.” He was nearly as boisterous as his adopted element: his voice was always as if on the quarter-deck; and the whistle of an old boatswain, who had been decapitated by his side, hung as a memento, by a thong of leather, from his waistcoat button-hole. It was frequently had recourse to, and, whenever he wanted a word , supplied the deficiency.

In form, the Captain was squat, broad, and coarse: a large purple nose, with a broad crimson chin to match, were the only features of any consequence in his countenance, except a couple of good-enough bloodshot eyes, screened by most exuberant grizzle eye-brows. His powdered wig had behind it a queue in the form of a hand-spike, – and a couple of rolled-up paste curls, like a pair of carronades, adorned its broad-sides; a blue coat, with slash cuffs and plenty of navy buttons, surmounted a scarlet waistcoat with tarnished gold binding – the skirts of which, he said, he would have of their enormous length because it assured him that the tailor had put all the cloth in it ; a black Barcelona adorned his neck; while a large old round hat, bordered with gold lace, pitched on his head, and turned up on one side, with a huge cockade stuck into a buttonless loop, gave him a swaggering air. He bore a shillelagh, the growth of his own estate, in a fist which would cover more ground than the best shoulder of wether mutton in a London market. 17Yet the Captain had a look of generosity, good nature, benevolence, and hospitality, which his features did their very best to conceal, and which none but a good physiognomist could possibly discover.

Waking the piper – Curious scene at my brother’s hunting-lodge – Joe Kelly’s and Peter Alley’s heads fastened to the wall – Operations practised in extricating them.

I met with another ludicrous instance of the dissipation of even later days, a few months after my marriage. Lady B – and myself took a tour through some of the southern parts of Ireland, and among other places visited Castle Durrow, near which place my brother, Henry French Barrington, had built a hunting cottage, wherein he happened to have given a house-warming the previous day.

The company, as might be expected at such a place and on such an occasion, was not the most select: – in fact, they were hard-going sportsmen, and some of the half-mounted gentry were not excluded from the festival.

Amongst others, Mr. Joseph Kelly, of unfortunate fate, brother to Mr. Michael Kelly, (who by the bye does not say a word about him in his Reminiscences,) had been invited, to add to the merriment by his pleasantry and voice, and had come down from Dublin solely for the purpose of assisting at the banquet.

It may not be amiss to say something here of this remarkable person. I knew him from his early youth. His father was a dancing-master in Mary-street, Dublin; and I found in the newspapers of that period a number of puffs, in French and English, of Mr. O’Kelly’s abilities in that way – one of which, a certificate from a French artiste of Paris, is curious enough. 18What could put it into his son’s head, that he had been Master of the Ceremonies at Dublin Castle is rather perplexing! He became a wine-merchant latterly, dropped the O which had been placed at the beginning of his name, and was a well-conducted and respectable man. 19