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

Night after night the revel afforded uninterrupted pleasure to the joyous gentry; the festivity being subsequently renewed at some other mansion, till the gout thought proper to put the whole party hors de combat ; having the satisfaction of making cripples for a few months such as he did not kill.

Whilst the convivials bellowed with only toe or finger agonies, it was a mere bagatelle; but when Mr. Gout marched up the country, and invaded the head or the stomach, it was then called no joke ; and Drogheda usquebaugh, the hottest-distilled drinkable liquor ever invented, was applied to for aid, and generally drove the tormentor in a few minutes to his former quarters. It was, indeed, counted a specific; and I allude to it the more particularly, as my poor grandfather was finished by over-doses thereof.

It was his custom to sit under a very large branching bay-tree in his arm-chair, placed in a fine sunny aspect at the entrance of the garden. I particularly remember his cloak, for I kept it twelve years after his death: it was called a cartouche cloak, from a famous French robber who, it was said, invented it for his gang for the purposes of evasion. It was made of very fine broad-cloth; of a bright blue colour on one side, and a bright scarlet on the other: so that on being turned, it might deceive even a vigilant pursuer.

There my grandfather used to sit of a hot sunny day, receive any rents he could collect, and settle any accounts which his indifference on that head permitted him to think of.

At one time he suspected a young rogue of having slipped some money off his table when paying rent; afterward, when the tenants began to count out their money, he threw the focus of his large reading-glass upon their hands: – the smart, without any visible cause, astonished the ignorant creatures! – they shook their hands, and thought it must be the devil who was scorching them. The priest was let into the secret: he seriously told them all it was the devil sure enough, who had mistaken them for the boy that stole the money from the Colonel; but that if he (the priest) was properly considered , he would say as many masses as would bother fifty devils , were it necessary. The priest got his fee; and another farthing never was taken from my grandfather.

My grandfather was rather a short man, with a large red nose – strong made; and wore an immense white wig, such as the portraits give to Dr. Johnson. He died at eighty-six years of age, of shrub-gout and usquebaugh, beloved and respected. I cried heartily for him; and then became the favourite of my grandmother, the best woman in the world, who went to reside in Dublin, and prepare me for college.

Colonel John Barrington, my great-grandfather, for some time before his death, and after I was born, resided at Ballyroan. My grandfather having married Margaret, the daughter of Sir John Byrne, Bart., had taken the estates and mansion, and given an annuity to my great-grandfather, who died, one hundred and four years old, of a fever, having never shown any of the usual decrepitudes or defects of age: he was the most respectable man by tradition of my family, and for more than seventy years a parliament man.

Sir Daniel Byrne, Bart. my great grandfather, lived at his old castle of Timogrie, almost adjoining my grandfather Barrington: his domains, close to Stradbally, were nearly the most beautiful in the Queen’s County. On his decease, his widow, Lady Dorothea Byrne, an Englishwoman, whose name had been Warren, (I believe a grand-aunt to the late Lady Bulkley,) resided there till her death; having previously seen her son give one of the first and most deeply to be regretted instances of what is called forming English connexions . Sir John Byrne, my grand-uncle, having gone to England, married the heiress of the Leycester family: – the very name of Ireland was then odious to the English gentry; and previous terms were made with him, that his children should take the cognomen of Leycester, and drop that of Byrne; that he should quit Ireland, sell all his paternal estates there, and become an Englishman . He assented; and the last Lord Shelburne purchased, for less than half their value, all his fine estates, of which the Marquis of Lansdown is now proprietor.

After the father’s death, his son, Sir Peter Leycester, succeeded, and the family of Byrne, descended from a long line of Irish princes and chieftains, condescended to become little amongst the rank of English Commoners; and so ended the connexion between the Byrnes and Barringtons.

My mother was the only daughter of Patrick French, of Peterwell, county Galway, wherein he had large estates: my grandmother (his wife) was one of the last remaining to the first house of the ancient O’Briens. Her brother, my great-uncle, Donatus, also emigrated to England, and died fifteen or sixteen years since, at his mansion, Blatherwick, in Cheshire, in a species of voluntary obscurity, inconsistent with his birth and large fortune. He left great hereditary estates in both countries to the enjoyment of his mistress and natural children, excluding the legitimate branches of his family from all claims upon the manors or demesnes of their ancestors. The law enabled him to do what a due sense of justice and pride would have interdicted.

The anomaly of political principles among the country gentlemen of Ireland at that period was very extraordinary. They professed what they called “ unshaken loyalty ;” and yet they were unqualified partisans of Cromwell and William, two decided usurpers – one of them having dethroned his father-in-law, and the other decapitated his king.

The fifth of November was always celebrated in Dublin for the preservation of James, a Scottish king, (after Queen Elizabeth had cut his mother’s head off) from Guy Fawkes and a barrel of gunpowder in London; then the thirtieth of January was highly approved of by a great number of Irish, as the anniversary of making Charles the First, the son and heir of the said James, shorter by his head. Then the very same Irish celebrated the restoration of Charles the Second, the son of the shortened king, and who was twice as bad as his father; and whilst they rejoiced in putting a crown upon the head of the son of the king who could not keep his own head on, they never failed to drink bumpers to the memory of Old Noll , who had cut that king’s head off; and in order to commemorate the whole story, and make their children remember it, they dressed up a fat calf’s-head , whole and white, on every anniversary of King Charles’s throat being cut , and with a red-smoked ham, which they called “Bradshaw,” placed by the side of it, all parties partook thereof most happily; washing down the emblem and its accompaniment with as much claret as they could hold, in honour of Noll the regicide !

Having thus proved their loyalty to James the First, and their attachment to his son’s murderer, and then their loyalty to the eldest of his grandsons, they next proceeded to celebrate the birth-day of William of Orange, a Dutchman, who had kicked their king, (his father-in-law) the second grandson, out of the country, and who in all probability would have given the Irish another calf’s head for their celebration, if the said king, his father-in-law, had not got out of the way with the utmost expedition, and gone to live upon charity in France, the then mortal enemy of the British nation; and as they dressed a calf’s head for the son’s murder, so they dressed sheeps’ trotters every first of July, to commemorate the grandson’s running away at the Boyne Water, in the year 1690.

One part of the Irish people then invented a toast, called, “ The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of William, the Dutchman ;” whilst another raised a counter-toast, called “ The memory of the chesnut horse ,” that broke the neck of the same King William . 1 1 King William’s neck was not broken, only his collar-bone ; his fall from a chesnut horse, however, hastened his dissolution. But in my mind, (if I am to judge of past times by the corporation of Dublin) it was only to coin an excuse for getting loyally drunk as often as possible, that they were so enthusiastically fond of making sentiments , as they called them. 2 2 Could his majesty, King William, learn in the other world that he has been the cause of more broken heads and drunken men, since his departure, than all his predecessors, he must be the proudest ghost and most conceited skeleton that ever entered the gardens of Elysium.