Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

“A very singular thing, I must confess,” said the Duke, laying down the paper. “This is the fourth time the bearer of despatches has met with an accident. If they don’t run foul of a rock in the Channel, they are sure to have a delay on the pier.”

“It is so natural, my Lord,” said the gloomy man, “that the carriers should stop at the Pigeon-house.”

“Do be quiet, Curran,” cried the Duke, “and pass round the decanter. They’ll not take the duty off claret, it seems.”

“And Day, my Lord, won’t put the claret on duty; he has kept the wine at his elbow for the last half-hour. Upon my soul, your Grace ought to knight him.”

“Not even his Excellency’s habits,” said a sharp, clever-looking man, “would excuse his converting Day into Knight.”

Amid a shower of smart, caustic, and witty sayings, droll stories, retort and repartee, the wine circulated freely from hand to hand; the presence of the Duke adding fresh impulse to the sallies of fun and merriment around him. Anecdotes of the army, the bench, and the bar, poured in unceasingly, accompanied by running commentaries of the hearers, who never let slip an opportunity for a jest or a rejoinder. To me, the most singular feature of all this was, that no one seemed too old or too dignified, too high in station, or too venerable from office, to join in this headlong current of conviviality. Austere churchmen, erudite chief-justices, profound politicians, privy councillors, military officers of high rank and standing, were here all mixed up together into one strange medley, apparently bent on throwing an air of ridicule over the graver business of life, and laughing alike at themselves and the world. Nothing was too grave for a jest, nothing too solemn for a sarcasm. All the soldier’s experience of men and manners, all the lawyer’s acuteness of perception and readiness of wit, all the politician’s practised tact and habitual subtlety, were brought to bear upon the common topics of the day with such promptitude, and such power, that one knew not whether to be more struck by the mass of information they possessed, or by that strange fatality which could make men, so great and so gifted, satisfied to jest where they might be called on to judge.

Play and politics, wine and women, debts and duels, were discussed, not only with an absence of all restraint, but with a deep knowledge of the world and a profound insight into the heart, which often imparted to the careless and random speech the sharpness of the most cutting sarcasm. Personalities, too, were rife; no one spared his neighbour, for he did not expect mercy for himself; and the luckless wight who tripped in his narrative, or stumbled in his story, was assailed on every side, until some happy expedient of his own, or some new victim being discovered, the attack would take another direction, and leave him once more at liberty. I feel how sadly inadequate I am to render even the faintest testimony to the talents of those, any one of whom, in after life, would have been considered to have made the fortune of a dinner-party, and who now were met together, not in the careless ease and lounging indifference of relaxation, but in the open arena where wit met wit, and where even the most brilliant talker, the happiest relater, the quickest in sarcasm, and the readiest in reply, felt he had need of all his weapons to defend and protect him. This was a mêlée tournament, where each man rode down his neighbour, with no other reason for attack than detecting a rent in his armour. Even the Viceroy himself, who, as judge of the lists, might be supposed to enjoy an immunity, was not safe here, and many an arrow, apparently shot at an adversary, was sent quivering into his corslet.

As I watched, with all the intense excitement of one to whom such a display was perfectly new, I could not help feeling how fortunate it was that the grave avocations and the venerable pursuits of the greater number of the party should prevent this firework of wit from bursting into the blaze of open animosity. I hinted as much to my neighbour, O’Grady, who at once broke into a fit of laughter at my ignorance; and I now learnt to my amazement that the Common Pleas had winged the Exchequer, that the Attorney-General had pinked the Bolls, and, stranger than all, that the Provost of the University himself had planted his man in the Phoenix.

“It is just as well for us,” continued he, in a whisper, “that the churchmen can’t go out; for the Dean, yonder, can snuff a candle at twenty paces, and is rather a hot-tempered fellow to boot. But come, now, his Grace is about to rise. We have a field-day to-morrow in the Park, and break up somewhat earlier in consequence.”

As it was now near two o’clock, I could see nothing to cavil at as to the earliness of the hour, although, I freely confess, tired and exhausted as I felt, I could not contemplate the moment of separation without a sad foreboding that I ne’er should look upon the like again. The party rose at this moment, and the Duke, shaking hands cordially with each person as he passed down, wished us all a good night. I followed with O’Grady and some others of the household, but when I reached the ante-chamber, mv new friend volunteered his services to see me to my quarters.

On traversing the lower castle-yard, we mounted an old-fashioned and rickety stair, which conducted to a gloomy, ill-lighted corridor. I was too much fatigued, however, to be critical at the moment, and so, having thanked O’Grady for all his kindness, I threw off my clothes hastily, and, before my head was well upon the pillow, was sound asleep.

CHAPTER IV. THE BREAKFAST

There are few persons so unreflective as not to give way to a little self-examination on waking for the first time in a strange place. The very objects about are so many appeals to your ingenuity or to your memory, that you cannot fail asking yourself how you became acquainted with them: the present is thus made the herald of the past, and it is difficult, when unravelling the tangled web of doubt that assails you, not to think over the path by which you have been travelling.

As for me, scarcely were my eyes opened to the light, I had barely thrown one glance around my cold and comfortless chamber, when thoughts of home came rushing to my mind. The warm earnestness of my father, the timid dreads of my poor mother, rose up before me, as I felt myself, for the first time, alone in the world. The elevating sense of heroism, that more or less blends with every young man’s dreams of life, gilds our first journey from our father’s roof. There is a feeling of freedom in being the arbiter of one’s actions, to go where you will and when you will. Till that moment the world has been a comparative blank; the trammels of school or the ties of tutorship have bound and restrained you. You have been living, as it were, within the rules of court – certain petty privileges permitted, certain small liberties allowed; but now you come forth disenchanted, disenthralled, emancipated, free to come as to go – a man in all the plenitude of his volition; and, better still, a man without the heavy, depressing weight of responsibility that makes manhood less a blessing than a burden. The first burst of life is indeed a glorious thing; youth, health, hope, and confidence have each a force and vigour they lose in after years: life is then a splendid river, and we are swimming with the stream – no adverse waves to weary, no billows to buffet us, we hold on our course rejoicing.

The sun was peering between the curtains of my window, and playing in fitful flashes on the old oak floor, as I lay thus ruminating and dreaming over the fature. How many a resolve did I then make for my guidance – how many an intention did I form – how many a groundwork of principle did I lay down, with all the confidence of youth! I fashioned to myself a world after my own notions; in which I conjured up certain imaginary difficulties, all of which were surmounted by my admirable tact and consummate cleverness. I remembered how, at both Eton and Sandhurst, the Irish boy was generally made the subject of some jest or quiz, at one time for his accent, at another for his blunders. As a Guardsman, short as had been my experience of the service, I could plainly see that a certain indefinable tone of superiority was ever asserted towards our friends across the sea. A wide-sweeping prejudice, whose limits were neither founded in reason, justice, or common sense, had thrown a certain air of undervaluing import over every one and every thing from that country. Not only were its faults and its follies heavily visited, but those accidental and trifling blemishes – those slight and scarce perceptible deviations from the arbitrary standard of fashion – were deemed the strong characteristics of the nation, and condemned accordingly; while the slightest use of any exaggeration in speech – the commonest employment of a figure or a metaphor – the casual introduction of an anecdote or a repartee, were all heavily censured, and pronounced “so very Irish!” Let some fortune-hunter carry off an heiress – let a lady trip over her train at the drawing-room – let a minister blunder in his mission – let a powder-magazine explode and blow up one-half of the surrounding population, there was but one expression to qualify all – “How Irish! how very Irish!” The adjective had become one of depreciation; and an Irish lord, an Irish member, an Irish estate, and an Irish diamond, were held pretty much in the same estimation.

Reared in the very hot-bed, the forcing-house, of such exaggerated prejudice, while imbibing a very sufficient contempt for everything in that country, I obtained proportionably absurd notions of all that was Irish. Our principles may come from our fathers; our prejudices certainly descend from the female branch. Now, my mother, notwithstanding the example of the Prince Regent himself, whose chosen associates were Irish, was most thoroughly exclusive on this point. She would admit that a native of that country could be invited to an evening party under extreme and urgent circumstances – that some brilliant orator, whose eloquence was at once the dread and the delight of the House – that some gifted poet, whose verses came home to the heart alike of prince and peasant – that the painter, whose canvas might stand unblushingly amid the greatest triumphs of art – could be asked to lionise for those cold and callous votaries of fashion, across the lake of whose stagnant nature no breath of feeling stirred, esteeming it the while, that in her card of invitation he was reaping the proudest proof of his success; but that such could be made acquaintances or companions, could be regarded in the light of equals or intimates, the thing never entered into her imagination, and she would as soon have made a confidant of the King of Kongo as a gentleman from Connaught.

Less for the purposes of dwelling upon my lady-mother’s “Hibernian horrors,” than of showing the school in which I was trained, I have made this somewhat lengthened exposé. It may, however, convey to my reader some faint impression of the feelings which animated me at the outset of my career in Ireland.

I have already mentioned the delight I experienced with the society at the Viceroy’s table. So much brilliancy, so much wit, so much of conversational power, until that moment I had no conception of. Now, however, while reflecting on it, I was actually astonished to find how far the whole scene contributed to the support of my ancient prejudices. I well knew that a party of the highest functionaries – bishops and law-officers of the crown – would not have conducted themselves in the same manner in England. I stopped not to inquire whether it was more the wit or the will that was wanting; I did not dwell upon the fact that the meeting was a purely convivial one, to which I was admitted by the kindness and condescension of the Duke; but, so easily will a warped and bigoted impression find food for its indulgence, I only saw in the meeting an additional evidence of my early convictions. How far my theorising on this point might have led me – whether eventually I should have come to the conclusion that the Irish nation were lying in the darkest blindness of barbarism, while, by a special intervention of Providence, I, was about to be erected into a species of double revolving light – it is difficult to say, when a tap at the door suddenly aroused me from my musings.

“Are ye awake, yet?” said a harsh, husky voice, like a bear in bronchitis, which I had no difficulty in pronouncing to be Corny’s.

“Yes, come in,” cried I; “what hour is it?”

“Somewhere after ten,” replied he, sulkily; “you’re the first I ever heerd ask the clock, in the eight years I have lived here. Are ye ready for your morning?”

“My what?” said I, with some surprise.

“Didn’t I say it, plain enough? Is it the brogue that bothers you?”

As he said this with a most sarcastic grin he poured, from a large jug he held in one hand, a brimming goblet full of some white compound, and handed it over to me. Preferring at once to explore, rather than to question the intractable Corny, I put it to my lips, and found it to be capital milk punch, concocted with great skill, and seasoned with what O’Grady afterwards called “a notion of nutmeg.”

“Oh! devil fear you, that he’ll like it. Sorrow one of you ever left as much in the jug as ‘ud make a foot-bath for a flea.”

“They don’t treat you over well, then, Corny,” said I, purposely opening the sorest wound of his nature.

“Trate me well! faix, them that ‘ud come here for good tratement, would go to the devil for divarsion. There’s Master Phil himself, that I used to bate, when he was a child, many’s the time, when his father, rest his sowl, was up at the coorts – ay, strapped him, till he hadn’t a spot that wasn’t sore an him – and look at him now; oh, wirra! you’d think I never took a ha’porth of pains with him. Ugh! – the haythins! – the Turks!”

“This is all very bad, Corny; hand me those boots.”

“And thim’s boots!” said he, with a contemptuous expression on his face that would have struck horror to the heart of Hoby. “Well, well.” Here he looked up as though the profligacy and degeneracy of the age were transgressing all bounds. “When you’re ready, come over to the master’s, for he’s waiting breakfast for you. A beautiful hour for breakfast, it is! Many’s the day his father sintenced a whole dockful before the same time!”

With the comforting reflection that the world went better in his youth, Corny drained the few remaining drops of the jug, and, muttering the while something that did not sound exactly like a blessing, waddled out of the room with a gait of the most imposing gravity.

I had very little difficulty in finding my friend’s quarters; for, as his door lay open, and as he himself was carolling away, at the very top of his lungs, some popular melody of the day, I speedily found myself beyond the threshold.

“Ah! Hinton, my hearty, how goes it? your headpiece nothing the worse, I hope, for either the car or the claret? By-the-by, capital claret that is! you’ve nothing like it in England.”

I could scarce help a smile at the remark, as he proceeded,

“But come, my boy, sit down; help yourself to a cutlet, and make yourself quite at home in Mount O’Grady.”

“Mount O’Grady!” repeated I. “Ha! in allusion, I suppose, to these confounded two flights one has to climb up to you.”

“Nothing of the kind; the name has a very different origin. Tea or coffee? there’s the tap! Now, my boy, the fact is, we O’Gradys were once upon a time very great folk in our way; lived in an uncouth old barrack, with battlements and a keep, upon the Shannon, where we ravaged the country for miles round, and did as much mischief, and committed as much pillage upon the peaceable inhabitants, as any respectable old family in the province. Time, however, wagged on; luck changed; your countrymen came pouring in upon us with new-fangled notions of reading, writing, and road-making; police and petty sessions, and a thousand other vexatious contrivances followed, to worry and puzzle the heads of simple country gentlemen; so that, at last, instead of taking to the hill-side for our mutton, we were reduced to keep a market-cart, and employ a thieving rogue in Dublin to supply us with poor claret, instead of making a trip over to Galway, where a smuggling craft brought us our liquor, with a bouquet fresh from Bordeaux. But the worst wasn’t come; for you see, a litigious spirit grew up in the country, and a kind of vindictive habit of pursuing you for your debts. Now, we always contrived, somehow or other, to have rather a confused way of managing our exchequer. No tenant on the property ever precisely knew what he owed; and, as we possessed no record of what he paid, our income was rather obtained after the maimer of levying a tribute, than receiving a legal debt. Meanwhile, we pushed our credit like a new colony: whenever a loan was to be, obtained, it was little we cared for ten, twelve, or even fifteen per cent.; and as we kept a jolly house, a good cook, good claret, and had the best pack of beagles in the country, he’d have been a hardy creditor who’d have ventured to push us to extremities. Even sheep, however, they say, get courage when they flock together, and so this contemptible herd of tailors, tithe-proctors, butchers, barristers, and bootmakers, took heart of grace, and laid siege to us in all form. My grandfather, Phil, – for I was called after him, – who always spent his money like a gentleman, had no notion of figuring in the Four Courts; but he sent Tom Darcy, his cousin, up to town, to call out as many of the plaintiffs as would fight, and to threaten the remainder that, if they did not withdraw their suits, they’d have more need of the surgeon than the attorney-general; for they shouldn’t have a whole bone in their body by Michaelmas-day. Another cutlet, Hinton? But I am tiring you with all these family matters.”

“Not at all; go on, I beg of you. I want to hear how your grandfather got out of his difficulties.”

“Faith, I wish you could! it would be equally pleasant news to myself; but, unfortunately, his beautiful plan only made bad worse, for they began fresh actions. Some, for provocation to fight a duel; others, for threats of assault and battery; and the short of it was, as my grandfather wouldn’t enter a defence, they obtained their verdicts, and got judgment, with all the costs.”

“The devil they did! That must have pushed him hard.”

“So it did; indeed it got the better of his temper, and he that was one of the heartiest, pleasantest fellows in the province, became, in a manner, morose and silent; and, instead of surrendering possession, peaceably and quietly, he went down to the gate, and took a sitting shot at the sub-sheriff, who was there in a tax-cart.”

“Bless my soul! Did he kill him?”

“No; he only ruffled his feathers, and broke his thigh; but it was bad enough, for he had to go over to France till it blew over. Well, it was either vexation or the climate, or, maybe, the weak wines, or, perhaps, all three, undermined his constitution, but he died at eighty-four – the only one of the family ever cut off early, except such as were shot, or the like.”

“Well, but your father – ”

“I am coming to him. My grandfather sent for him from school when he was dying, and he made him swear he would be a lawyer. ‘Morris will be a thorn in their flesh, yet,’ said he; ‘and look to it, my boy,’ he cried, ‘I leave you a Chancery suit that has nearly broke eight families and the hearts of two chancellors; – see that you keep it goings – sell every stick on the estate – put all the beggars in the barony on the property – beg, borrow, and steal them – plough up all the grazing-land; and I’ll tell you a better trick than all – ’ Here a fit of coughing interrupted the pious old gentleman, and, when it was over, so was he!”

“Dead!” said I.

“As a door-nail! Well, my father was dutiful; he kept the suit moving till he got called to the Bar! Once there, he gave it all his spare moments; and when there was nothing doing in the Common Pleas or King’s Bench, he was sure to come down with a new bill, or a declaration, before the Master, or a writ of error, or a point of law for a jury, till at last, when no case was ready to come on, the sitting judge would call out, ‘Let us hear O’Grady/ in appeal, or in error, or whatever it was. But, to make my story short, my father became a first-rate lawyer, by the practice of his own suit – rose to a silk-gown – was made solicitor and attorney-general – afterwards, chief-justice – ”

“And the suit?”

“Oh! the suit survived him, and became my property; but, somehow, I didn’t succeed in the management quite as well as my father; and I found that my estate cost me somewhere about fifteen hundred a year – not to mention more oaths than fifty years of purgatory could pay off. This was a high premium to pay for figuring every term on the list of trials, so I raised a thousand pounds on my commission, gave it to Nick M’Namara, to take the property off my hands, and as my father’s last injunction was, ‘Never rest till you sleep in Mount O’Grady,’ – why, I just baptised my present abode by that name, and here I live with the easy conscience of a dutiful and affectionate child that took the shortest and speediest way of fulfilling his father’s testament.”

“By Jove! a most singular narrative. I shouldn’t like to have parted with the old place, however.”

“Faith, I don’t know! I never was much there. It was a rackety, tumble-down old concern, with rattling windows, rooks, and rats, pretty much like this; and, what between my duns and Corny Delany, I very often think I am back there again. There wasn’t as good a room as this in the whole house, not to speak of the pictures. Isn’t that likeness of Darcy capital? You saw him last night. He sat next Curran. Come, I’ve no curaçoa to offer you, but try this usquebaugh.”