Buch lesen: «Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3)», Seite 20

The beast being thus freed from all constraint, thought the best thing he could do was to gallop home to his own stable (if he could find the way to it), and so set out with the utmost expedition, kicking up behind, and making divers vulgar noises, as if he was ridiculing his master’s misfortune.

He was, however, stopped on the road, and sent home to Dublin, with an intimation that Captain Ferns and all the troop were cut off near Rathfarnan; and this melancholy intelligence was published, with further particulars, in a second edition of the Dublin Evening Post, two hours after the arrival of Mr. Walker’s charger in the metropolis.

Misfortunes never come alone. The residue of the troop in high spirits had cantered on a little. The kind offices of Mr. Walker to Mr. Delany being quite voluntary, they had not noticed his humanity; and, on his roaring out to the very extent of his lungs, and the troop turning round, as the devil would have it, another tree intercepted the view of Mr. Walker, so that they perceived a very different object. – “Captain, Captain,” cried out four or five of the troop, all at once, “Look there! look there!” and there did actually appear several hundred men, attended by a crowd of women and children, approaching them by the road on which the rebel had been apprehended. There was no time to be lost; and a second heat of the horse-race immediately took place, but without waiting to be started, as on the former occasion; and this course being rather longer than the last, led them totally out of sight of Messrs. Walker and Delany.

The attorney and rebel had in the mean time enjoyed an abundance of that swing-swang exercise which so many professors of law, physic, and divinity practised pending the Irish insurrection; nor was there the slightest danger of their pastime being speedily interrupted, as Captain Ferns’ troop, being flanked by above three hundred rebels, considered that the odds were too tremendous to hold out any hopes of a victory: of course a retrograde movement was considered imperative, and they were necessitated, as often happens after boasted victories, to leave Messrs. Walker and Delany twirling about in the string, like a pair of fowls under a bottle-jack.

But notwithstanding they were both in close and almost inseparable contact, they seemed to enjoy their respective situations with a very different demeanour.

The unpleasant sensations of Mr. Delany had for a considerable time subsided into a general tranquillity, nor did his manner in the slightest degree indicate any impatience or displeasure at being so long detained in company with the inveterate solicitor; nor indeed did he articulate one sentence of complaint against the boisterous conduct of his outrageous comrade.

The attorney, on the contrary, not being blessed with so even a temper as Mr. Delany, showed every symptom of inordinate impatience to get out of his company, and exhibited divers samples of plunging, kicking, and muscular convulsion, more novel and entertaining than even those of the most celebrated rope-dancers; he also incessantly vociferated as loud, if not louder than he had ever done upon any former occasion, though not in any particular dialect or language, but as a person generally does when undergoing a cruel surgical operation.

The attorney’s eyes not having any thing to do with the hanging matter, he clearly saw the same crowd approaching which had caused the retrograde movement of his comrades; and, as it approached, he gave himself entirely up for lost, being placed in the very same convenient position for piking as Absalom (King David’s natural son) when General Joab ran him through the body without the slightest resistance; and though the attorney’s toes were not two feet from the ground, he made as much fuss, floundering and bellowing, as if they had been twenty.

The man of law at length became totally exhausted and tranquil, as children generally are when they have no strength to squall any longer. He had, however, in this state of captivity, the consolation of beholding (at every up glance) the bloated, raven-gray visage of the king’s enemy, and his disloyal eyes bursting from their sockets, and full glaring with inanimate revenge on the loyalist who had darkened them. A thrilling horror seized upon the nerves and muscles of the attorney: his sins and clients were now (like the visions in Macbeth, or King Saul and the Witch of Endor) beginning to pass in shadowy review before his imagination. The last glance he could distinctly take, as he looked upward to Heaven for aid, (there being none at Rathfarnan,) gave a dismal glimpse of his once red-and-white engrossing member, now, like the chameleon, assuming the deep purple hue of the rebel jaw it was in contact with, the fingers spread out, cramped, and extended as a fan before the rebel visage; and numbness, the avant-courier of mortification, having superseded torture, he gave himself totally up to Heaven. If he had a hundred prayers, he would have repeated every one of them; but, alas! theology was not his forte, and he was gradually sinking into that merciful insensibility invented by farriers, when they twist an instrument upon a horse’s nostrils, that the torture of his nose may render him insensible to the pains his tail is enduring.

In the mean time the royal troop, which had most prudentially retreated to avoid an overwhelming force, particularly on their flank, as the enemy approached, yielded ground, though gradually. The enemy being all foot, the troop kept only a quarter of a mile from them, and merely retreated a hundred yards at a time, being sure of superior speed to that of the rebels, – when, to the surprise of Captain Ferns, the enemy made a sudden wheel, and took possession of a churchyard upon a small eminence, as if intending to pour down on the cavalry, if they could entice them within distance; but, to the astonishment of the royal troopers, instead of the Irish war-whoop, which they expected, the enemy set up singing and crying in a most plaintive and inoffensive manner. The buck parson, with Malony the bailiff, being ordered to reconnoitre, immediately galloped back, announcing that the enemy had a coffin, and were performing a funeral; but, both swearing that it was a new ambush, and the whole troop coinciding in the same opinion, a further retreat was decided on, which might be now performed without the slightest confusion. It was also determined to carry off their dead, for such it was taken for granted the attorney must have been, by the excess of his agitation, dancing and plunging till they lost sight of him, and also through the contagion and poisonous collision of a struggling rebel, to whom he had been so long cemented.

In order, therefore, to bring off the solicitor, dead or alive, they rallied, formed, and charged, sword in hand, towards the rampike, where they had left Attorney W – and Mr. Delany in so novel a situation, and where they expected no loving reception.

In the mean time, it turned out that the kicking, plunging, and rope-dancing of the attorney had their advantages; as, at length, the obdurate rope, by the repeated pulls and twists, slipped over the knot of the rampike which had arrested its progress, ran freely, and down came the rebel and royalist together, with an appropriate crash, on the green sod under their gibbet, which seemed beneficently placed there by nature on purpose to receive them.

The attorney’s innocent feet, however, still remained tightly moored to the gullet of the guilty rebel, and might have remained there till they grew or rotted together, had not the opportune arrival of his gallant comrades saved them from mortification.

To effect the separation of Attorney W – and Mr. Delany was no easy achievement: the latter had gone to his forefathers, but the rope was strong and tight, both able and willing to have hung half a dozen more of them, if employed to do so. Many loyal pen-knives were set instantly at work; but the rope defied them all; the knot was too solid. At length Sergeant Potterton’s broad-sword, having assumed the occupation of a saw, effected the operation without any accident, save sawing across one of the attorney’s veins. The free egress of his loyal gore soon brought its proprietor to his sense of existence; though three of the fingers had got so clever a stretching, that the muscles positively refused to bend any more for them, and they ever after retained the same fan-like expansion as when knotted to Mr. Delany. The index and thumb still retained their engrossing powers, to the entire satisfaction of the club of Skinners’ Alley, of which he was an active alderman.

The maimed attorney was now thrown across a horse and carried to a jingle,⁵⁹ and sent home with all the honours of war to his wife and children, to make what use they pleased of.

Captain Ferns’ royal troop now held another council of war, to determine on ulterior operations; and, though the rebel army in the church-yard might have been only a funeral, it was unanimously agreed that an important check had been given to the rebels of Rathfarnan; yet that prudence was as necessary an ingredient in the art of war as intrepidity; and that it might be risking the advantage of what had been done, if they made any attempt on the yellow house, or the captain’s Bourdeaux, as they might be overpowered by a host of pot-valiant rebels, and thereby his Majesty be deprived of their future services.

They therefore finally decided to retire upon Dublin at a sling-trot – publish a bulletin of the battle in Captain Giffard’s Dublin Journal – wait upon Lords Camden and Castlereagh, and Mr. Cooke, with a detail of the expedition and casualties, – and, finally, celebrate the action by a dinner, when the usual beverage, with the anthem of “God save the King,” might unite in doing national honour both to the liquor and to his Majesty, the latter being always considered quite lonesome by the corporators of Dublin, unless garnished by the former accompaniment.

This was all carried into effect. Lieutenant H – , the walking gallows, (ante) was especially invited; and the second metropolis of the British empire had thus the honour of achieving the first victory over the rebellious subjects of his Majesty in the celebrated insurrection of 1798.

FLOGGING THE WINE-COOPERS

Account of the flagellation undergone by the two coopers – Their application to the author for redress – Tit for tat, or giving back the compliment – Major Connor, and his disinclination for attorneys – His brother, Arthur Connor.

An anecdote, amongst many of the same genus, which I witnessed myself, about the same period, is particularly illustrative of the state of things in the Irish metropolis at the celebrated epocha of 1798.

Two wine-coopers of a Mr. Thomas White, an eminent wine-merchant, in Clare Street, had been bottling wine at my house in Merrion Square. I had known them long to be honest, quiet, and industrious persons: going to their dinner, they returned, to my surprise, with their coats and waistcoats hanging loose on their arms, and their shirts quite bloody behind. They told their pitiful story with peculiar simplicity: – that as they were passing quietly by Major Connor’s barrack, at Shelburn House, Stephen’s Green, a fellow who owed one of them a grudge for beating him and his brother at Donnybrook, had told Major Connor that “he heard we were black rebels, and knew well where many a pike was hid in vaults and cellars in the city, if we chose to discover of them; on which the Major, please your honour, Counsellor, without stop or stay, or the least ceremony in life, ordered the soldiers to strip us to our buffs, and then tied us to the butt-end of a great cannon, and – what did he do then, Counsellor dear, to two honest poor coopers, but he ordered the soldiers to give us fifty cracks a-piece with the devil’s cat-o’-nine-tails, as he called it; though, by my sowl, I believe there were twenty tails to it – which the Major said he always kept saftening in brine, to wallop such villains as we were, Counsellor dear! Well, every whack went thorough my carcase, sure enough; and I gave tongue, because I couldn’t help it: so, when he had his will of us, he ordered us to put on our shirts, and swore us to come back in eight days more for the remaining fifty cracks, unless we brought fifty pikes in the place of them. Ah, the devil a pike ever we had, Counsellor dear, and what’ll we do, Counsellor, what’ll we do?”

“Take this to the Major,” said I, writing to him a note of no very gentle expostulation. “Give this, with my compliments; and if he does not redress you, I’ll find means of making him.”

The poor fellows were most thankful; and I immediately received a note from the Major, with many thanks for undeceiving him, and stating, that if the wine-coopers would catch the fellow that belied them, he’d oblige the chap with a cool hundred, from a new double cat, which he would order for the purpose.

The Major strictly kept his word. The wine-coopers soon found their accuser, and brought him to Major Connor, with my compliments; who sent him home in half-an-hour with as raw a back as any brave soldier in his Majesty’s service.

Learning also from the coopers that their enemy was an attorney’s clerk, (a profession the Major had a most inveterate and very just aversion to,) he desired them to bring him any disloyal attorneys they could find, and he’d teach them more justice in one hour at Shelburn Barracks, than they’d practise for seven years in the Four Courts.

The accuser, who got so good a practical lecture from Major Connor, was a clerk to Mr. H. Hudson, an eminent attorney, of Dublin.

The Major’s brother, Arthur, was under a state prosecution, and incarcerated as an unsuccessful patriot – but one to whom even Lord Clare could not deny the attributes of consistency, firmness, and fidelity. His politics were decidedly sincere. Banished from his own country, he received high promotion in the French army; and, if he had not been discontinued from the staff of his relative, Marshal Grouchy, the battle of Waterloo (from documents I have seen) must have had a different termination. This, however, is an almost inexcusable digression.

THE ENNISCORTHY BOAR

Incidents attending the first assault of Wexford by the rebels, in 1798 – Excesses mutually committed by them and the royalists – Father Roche – Captain Hay, and his gallant rescue of two ladies – Mr. O’Connell in by-gone days – Painful but ludicrous scenes after the conflict at Wexford – Swinish indignity offered to a clergyman – A pig of rapid growth – Extraordinary destination of the animal – Its arrival and special exhibition in London – Remarks on London curiosities – Remarkable success of the Enniscorthy boar – Unhappy disclosure of the animal’s previous enormities – Reaction on the public mind – His Majesty’s comments on the affair – Death of the swinish offender, in anticipation of a projected rescue by the London Irish.

A most ludicrous incident chanced to spring out of the most murderous conflict (for the numbers engaged) that had occurred during the merciless insurrection of 1798 in Ireland.

The murdered victims had not been effectually interred, the blood was scarcely dry upon the hill, and the embers of the burned streets not yet entirely extinguished in Enniscorthy, when, in company with a friend who had miraculously escaped the slaughter, and Mr. John Grogan, of Johnston, who was then seeking for evidence amongst the conquered rebels, to prove the injustice of his brother’s execution, I explored and noted the principal occurrences of that most sanguinary engagement. I give them, in connexion with the preposterous incident which they gave rise to, to show in one view the mélange of fanaticism, ferocity, and whimsical credulity, which characterised the lower Irish at that disastrous epocha, as well as the absurd credulity and spirit of true intolerance which signalised their London brethren, in the matter of the silly incident which I shall mention.

The town of Enniscorthy, in the county of Wexford, in Ireland, (one of the first strong possessions that the English, under Strongbow, established themselves in,) is situate most beautifully on the river Slaney, at the base of Vinegar Hill; places which the conflicts and massacres of every nature, and by both parties, have marked out for posterity as the appropriate sites of legendary tales, and traditional records of heroism and of murder.

The town is not fortified; and the hill, like half a globe, rising from the plain, overlooks the town and country, and has no neighbouring eminence to command it.

The first assault on this town by the rebels, and its defence by a gallant, but not numerous garrison, formed one of the most desperate, heroic, and obstinate actions of an infatuated people. It was stormed by the rebels, and defended with unflinching gallantry; but captured after a long and most bloody action, during which no quarter was given or accepted on either side. Those who submitted to be prisoners only preserved their lives a day, to experience some more cold-blooded and torturing extinction.

The orange and green flags were that day alternately successful. But the numbers, impetuosity, and perseverance of the rebels, becoming too powerful to be resisted, the troops were overthrown, the rout became general, and the royalists endeavoured to save themselves in all directions: but most of those who had the good fortune to escape the pike or blunderbuss were flung into burning masses, or thrown from the windows of houses, where they had tried to gain protection or conceal themselves.

The insurgents were that day constantly led to the charge, or, when checked, promptly rallied by a priest, who had figured in the French revolution in Paris – a Father Roche. His height and muscular powers were immense, his dress squalid and bloody, his countenance ruffianly and terrific; he had no sense either of personal danger, or of Christian mercy. That day courage appeared contagious, and even his aged followers seemed to have imbibed all the ferocity and blind desperation of their gigantic and fearless pastor.

The streets through which the relics of the royal troops must traverse to escape the carnage were fired on both sides by the order of Father Roche, and the unfortunate fugitives had no chance but to pass through volumes of flame and smoke, or yield themselves up to the ferocious pike-men, who chased them even into the very body of the conflagration.

My accompanying friend had most unwittingly got into the town, when in possession of the army, and could not get out of it on the sudden assault of the rebels. He had no arms. Many of them knew him, however, to be a person of liberal principles, civil and religious; but he with difficulty clambered to a seat high up in the dilapidated castle; where, unless as regarded the chance of a random shot, he was in a place of tolerable safety. There he could see much; but did not descend till the next morning; and would certainly have been shot at the windmill on Vinegar Hill had not the Catholic priests of his own parish vouched for his toleration and charity; and above all, that he had, early that year, given a large sum towards building a chapel and endowing a school for the cottagers’ children.

His description of the storm was extremely exciting; and the more so, as it was attended by an occurrence of a very interesting nature.

It was asserted by some of the loyal yeomen who were engaged, that the rebels were commanded, as to their tactics, by Captain Hay, of the – dragoons, who had been some time amongst them as a prisoner; a report countenanced by the disaffection of his family. This gave rise to charges against Captain Hay of desertion to the rebels, and high-treason. He was submitted to a court-martial; but an act of the most gallant and chivalrous description saved him from every thing but suspicion of the criminality imputed.

Mrs. Ogle and Miss Moore, two of the most respectable ladies of Wexford, happened to be in Enniscorthy, when it was assaulted, without any protector, and subject to all the dangers and horrors incidental to such captures. They had no expectation of escape, when Captain Hay, in the face of every species of danger, with a strength beyond his natural powers, and a courage which has not been exceeded, placing them on a horse before him, rushed into the midst of a burning street, and, through flames and shots, and every possible horror, bore them through the fire in safety; and, although he sadly scorched himself, proceeded in conveying and delivering them safe to their desponding relations. Mr. Ogle was member for the county. The act was too gallant to leave any thing more than the suspicion of guilt, and the accused was acquitted on all the charges.

Very shortly afterwards his eldest brother was executed at Wexford, his father died, while another brother, also deeply implicated, was not prosecuted, and figured many years afterwards as secretary to the Catholic Committee; but he was neither deep enough nor mute enough for Mr. Daniel O’Connell, who, at that day, was, by-the-by, a large, ruddy young man, with a broad and savoury dialect, an imperturbable countenance, intrepid address, et præterea nihil. He was then more fastidious as to his approbation of secretaries than he afterwards turned out to be.⁶⁰

Amongst the persons who lost their lives on that occasion was the Rev. Mr. Haydn, a very old and highly respected clergyman of the Established Church: he was much more lamented than the thirty priests who were hanged at the same period. He was piked or shot by the rebels in the street, and lay dead and naked upon the Castle Hill, till duly consumed by half-starving dogs, or swine of the neighbourhood, that marched without invitation into the town, to dine upon any of the combatants who were not interred too deep to be easily rooted up again.

After the rebellion had entirely ended, it was remarked in the neighbourhood, that what the peasants call a “slip of a pig,” who had been busy with his neighbours carousing in Enniscorthy, as aforesaid, had, from that period, increased in stature and corresponding bulk to an enormous degree, and far outstripped all his cotemporaries, not only in size, but (so far as the term could be applicable to a pig) in genuine beauty. At length his growth became almost miraculous; and his exact symmetry kept pace with his elevation.

This young pig was suffered to roam at large, and was universally admired as the most comely of his species. He at length rose to the elevation of nearly a heifer, and was considered too great a curiosity to remain in Ireland, where curiosities, animate and inanimate, human and beastly, are too common to be of any peculiar value, or even excite attention. It was therefore determined to send him over as a present to our Sovereign – as an olive-branch, so to speak, for the subdued and repentant rebels of Enniscorthy, and a specimen which, being placed in the Tower, might do great honour to the whole race of domestic swine, being the first tame gentleman of his family that ever had been in any royal menagerie.

This Enniscorthy miracle was accordingly shipped for Bristol, under the care of a priest, two rebels, and a showman, and in due season arrived in the metropolis of England. Regular notice of his arrival was given to the king’s proper officers at the Tower, who were to prepare chambers for his reception, though it was maliciously whispered that the “olive branch,” as the priest called the pig, was intended only second-hand for his Majesty; that is to say, after the party and showman should have pursed every loose shilling the folks of London might be tempted to pay for a sight of so amiable an animal. The pig took admirably; the showman (a Caledonian by birth) was economical in the expenditure, and discreet in his explanations. The pig became the most popular show at the east end; Exeter Change even felt it. However, fate ultimately restored the baboons and tigers to their old and appropriate rank in society.

This proceeding, this compliment of the olive branch, was neither more nor less than is generally used in the case of our most celebrated generals, admirals, and statesmen, (and occasionally our most gracious Sovereigns,) who, being duly disembowelled, spiced, swaddled, and screwed up in a box, with a white satin lining to it, (well stuffed, to make it easy,) are exhibited to their compatriots of all ranks, who can spare sixpence to see an oak trunk, covered with black, and plenty of lacquered tin nailed on the top of it. But here the pig was seen alive and merry, which every body (except testamentary successors) conceives has much the advantage over any thing that is inanimate.

I had myself, when at Temple, the honour of paying sixpence to see the fork which belonged to the knife with which Margaret Nicholson attempted to penetrate the person of his Majesty, King George the Third, at St. James’s; and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, through their actuaries, receive payment for showing the stone heads of patriots, poets, and ministers, whom they have secured in their tabernacle; Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was drowned as an admiral; Major André, who was hanged as a spy; and Mr. Grattan, who should have been buried in Ireland.

There can be little doubt that the greatest men of the present day, for a British shilling, before much more of the present century is finished, will be exhibited in like manner.

The thing has become too public and common. In early days, great men, dying, required to be buried in the holiest sanctuary going. Sometimes the great bust was transferred to Westminster Abbey; but, of late, the monuments are becoming so numerous, the company so mixed, and the exhibition so like a show-box, that the modern multiplication of Orders has made many Knights very shy of wearing them. Thus the Abbey has lost a great proportion of its rank and celebrity; and I have been told of a gentleman of distinction, who, having died of a consumption, and being asked where he wished to be buried, replied, “any where but Westminster Abbey.”

To resume, however, the course of my narrative – the celebrity of the “olive branch” every day increased, and the number of his visitors so rapidly augmented, that the priest and showman considered that the day when he should be committed to the Tower would be to them no trifling misfortune. Even the ladies conceived there was something musical in his grunt, and some tried to touch it off upon their pianos. So gentle, so sleek and silvery were his well-scrubbed bristles, that every body patted his fat sides. Standing on his bare feet, his beautifully arched back, rising like a rainbow, overtopped half his visitors; and he became so great and general a favourite, that, though he came from Ireland, nobody even thought of inquiring whether he was a papist or protestant grunter!

One day, however, the most unforeseen and grievous misfortune that ever happened to so fine an animal, at once put an end to all his glories, and to the abundant pickings of his chaplain.

It happened, unfortunately, that a Wexford yeoman, who had been at the taking and retaking of Enniscorthy, (a theme he never failed to expatiate on,) and had been acquainted with the pig from his infancy, as well as the lady sow who bore him, having himself sold her to the last proprietors, came at the time of a very crowded assembly into the room; and, as Irishmen never omit any opportunity of talking, (especially in a crowd, and, if at all convenient, more especially about themselves,) the yeoman began to brag of his acquaintance with the hog, the storming of the town, the fight, and slaughter; and, unfortunately, in order to amuse the company, by suggesting the cause of his enormous bulk and stature, mentioned, as a national curiosity, that the people in Ireland were so headstrong as to attribute his growth to his having eaten the Rev. Mr. Haydn, a Protestant clergyman of Enniscorthy, after the battle; but he declared to the gentlemen and ladies that could not be the fact, as he was assured by an eye-witness, a sergeant of pike-men amongst the rebels, that there were several dogs helping him, and some ducks out of the Castle court. Besides, the parson having been a slight old gentleman, there was scarcely as much flesh on his reverend bones as would have given one meal to a hungry bull-dog. This information, and the manner of telling it, caused an instantaneous silence, and set every English man and woman staring and shuddering around him, not one of whom did the pig attempt to put his snout on. The idea of a Papist pig eating a Protestant parson was of a nature quite insupportable; both church and state were affected: their praises were now turned to execration; the women put their handkerchiefs to their noses to keep off the odour; every body stood aloof both from the pig and the showman, as if they were afraid of being devoured. The men cursed the Papist brute, and the rebellious nation that sent him there; every one of them who had a stick or an umbrella gave a punch or a crack of it to the “olive branch;” and in a few minutes the room was cleared of visitors, to the astonishment of the yeoman, who lost no time in making his own exit. The keepers, now perceiving that their game was gone, determined to deliver him up, as Master Haydn, to the lieutenant of the Tower, to be placed at the will and pleasure of his Majesty.

The chaplain, showman, and two amateur rebels, now prepared to return to Wexford. Though somewhat disappointed at the short cut of their exhibition, they had no reason to find fault with the lining their pockets had got. The officers of the Tower, however, had heard the catastrophe and character of the “olive branch,” and communicated to the lieutenant their doubts if he were a fit subject to mix with the noble wild beasts in a royal menagerie. Several consultations took place upon the subject; the lord chamberlain was requested to take his Majesty’s commands upon the subject in council: the king, who had been signing some death-warrants and pardons for the Recorder of London, was thunderstruck and shocked at the audacity of an Irish pig eating a Protestant clergyman; and though no better Christian ever existed than George the Third, his hatred to pork from that moment was invincible, and became almost a Jewish aversion.