Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1

The gray dusk of evening had long fallen as we continued to chat together beside the blazing wood embers, – she evidently amusing herself with the original notions of an untutored, unlettered boy, and I drinking deep those draughts of love that nerved my heart through many a breach and battlefield.

Our colloquy was at length interrupted by the entrance of Sir George, who shook me most cordially by the hand, and made the kindest inquiries about my health.

“They tell me you are to be a lawyer. Mr. O’Malley,” said he; “and if so, I must advise you to take better care of your headpiece.”

“A lawyer, Papa; oh dear me! I should never have thought of his being anything so stupid.”

“Why, silly girl, what would you have a man be?”

“A dragoon, to be sure, Papa,” said the fond girl, as she pressed her arm around his manly figure, and looked up in his face with an expression of mingled pride and affection.

That word sealed my destiny.

CHAPTER VI

THE DINNER

When I retired to my room to dress for dinner, I found my servant waiting with a note from my uncle, to which, he informed me, the messenger expected an answer.

I broke the seal and read: —

DEAR CHARLEY, – Do not lose a moment in securing old Blake, – if you have not already done so, – as information has just reached me that the government party has promised a cornetcy to young Matthew if he can bring over his father. And these are the people I have been voting with – a few private cases excepted – for thirty odd years!

I am very sorry for your accident. Considine informs me that it will need explanation at a later period. He has been in Athlone since Tuesday, in hopes to catch the new candidate on his way down, and get him into a little private quarrel before the day; if he succeeds, it will save the county much expense, and conduce greatly to the peace and happiness of all parties. But “these things,” as Father Roach says, “are in the hands of Providence.” You must also persuade old Blake to write a few lines to Simon Mallock, about the Coolnamuck mortgage. We can give him no satisfaction at present, at least such as he looks for; and don’t be philandering any longer where you are, when your health permits a change of quarters.

Your affectionate uncle,

    GODFREY O’MALLEY.

P.S. I have just heard from Considine. He was out this morning and shot a fellow in the knee; but finds that after all he was not the candidate, but a tourist that was writing a book about Connemara.

P.S. No. 2. Bear the mortgage in mind, for old Mallock is a spiteful fellow, and has a grudge against me, since I horsewhipped his son in Banagher. Oh, the world, the world! G. O’M.

Until I read this very clear epistle to the end, I had no very precise conception how completely I had forgotten all my uncle’s interests, and neglected all his injunctions. Already five days had elapsed, and I had not as much as mooted the question to Mr. Blake, and probably all this time my uncle was calculating on the thing as concluded; but, with one hole in my head and some half-dozen in my heart, my memory was none of the best.

Snatching up the letter, therefore, I resolved to lose no more time, and proceeded at once to Mr. Blake’s room, expecting that I should, as the event proved, find him engaged in the very laborious duty of making his toilet.

“Come in, Charley,” said he, as I tapped gently at the door. “It’s only Charley, my darling. Mrs. B. won’t mind you.”

“Not the least in life,” responded Mrs. B., disposing at the same time a pair of her husband’s corduroys tippet fashion across her ample shoulders, which before were displayed in the plenitude and breadth of coloring we find in a Rubens. “Sit down, Charley, and tell us what’s the matter.”

As until this moment I was in perfect ignorance of the Adam-and-Eve-like simplicity in which the private economy of Mr. Blake’s household was conducted, I would have gladly retired from what I found to be a mutual territory of dressing-room had not Mr. Blake’s injunctions been issued somewhat like an order to remain.

“It’s only a letter, sir,” said I, stuttering, “from my uncle about the election. He says that as his majority is now certain, he should feel better pleased in going to the poll with all the family, you know, sir, along with him. He wishes me just to sound your intentions, – to make out how you feel disposed towards him; and – and, faith, as I am but a poor diplomatist, I thought the best way was to come straight to the point and tell you so.”

“I perceive,” said Mr. Blake, giving his chin at the moment an awful gash with the razor, – “I perceive; go on.”

“Well, sir, I have little more to say. My uncle knows what influence you have in Scariff, and expects you’ll do what you can there.”

“Anything more?” said Blake, with a very dry and quizzical expression I didn’t half like, – “anything more?”

“Oh, yes; you are to write a line to old Mallock.”

“I understand; about Coolnamuck, isn’t it?”

“Exactly; I believe that’s all.”

“Well, now, Charley, you may go down-stairs, and we’ll talk it over after dinner.”

“Yes, Charley dear, go down, for I’m going to draw on my stockings,” said the fair Mrs. Blake, with a look of very modest consciousness.

When I had left the room I couldn’t help muttering a “Thank God!” for the success of a mission I more than once feared for, and hastened to despatch a note to my uncle, assuring him of the Blake interest, and adding that for propriety’s sake I should defer my departure for a day or two longer.

This done, with a heart lightened of its load and in high spirits at my cleverness, I descended to the drawing-room. Here a very large party were already assembled, and at every opening of the door a new relay of Blakes, Burkes, and Bodkins was introduced. In the absence of the host, Sir George Dashwood was “making the agreeable” to the guests, and shook hands with every new arrival with all the warmth and cordiality of old friendship. While thus he inquired for various absent individuals, and asked most affectionately for sundry aunts and uncles not forthcoming, a slight incident occurred which by its ludicrous turn served to shorten the long half-hour before dinner. An individual of the party, a Mr. Blake, had, from certain peculiarities of face, obtained in his boyhood the sobriquet of “Shave-the-wind.” This hatchet-like conformation had grown with his growth, and perpetuated upon him a nickname by which alone was he ever spoken of among his friends and acquaintances; the only difference being that as he came to man’s estate, brevity, that soul of wit, had curtailed the epithet to mere “Shave.” Now, Sir George had been hearing frequent reference made to him always by this name, heard him ever so addressed, and perceived him to reply to it; so that when he was himself asked by some one what sport he had found that day among the woodcocks, he answered at once, with a bow of very grateful acknowledgment, “Excellent, indeed; but entirely owing to where I was placed in the copse. Had it not been for Mr. Shave there – ”

I need not say that the remainder of his speech, being heard on all sides, became one universal shout of laughter, in which, to do him justice, the excellent Shave himself heartily joined. Scarcely were the sounds of mirth lulled into an apparent calm, when the door opened and the host and hostess appeared. Mrs. Blake advanced in all the plenitude of her charms, arrayed in crimson satin, sorely injured in its freshness by a patch of grease upon the front about the same size and shape as the continent of Europe in Arrowsmith’s Atlas. A swan’s-down tippet covered her shoulders; massive bracelets ornamented her wrists; while from her ears descended two Irish diamond ear-rings, rivalling in magnitude and value the glass pendants of a lustre. Her reception of her guests made ample amends, in warmth and cordiality, for any deficiency of elegance; and as she disposed her ample proportions upon the sofa, and looked around upon the company, she appeared the very impersonation of hospitality.

After several openings and shuttings of the drawing-room door, accompanied by the appearance of old Simon the butler, who counted the party at least five times before he was certain that the score was correct, dinner was at length announced. Now came a moment of difficulty, and one which, as testing Mr. Blake’s tact, he would gladly have seen devolve upon some other shoulders; for he well knew that the marshalling a room full of mandarins, blue, green, and yellow, was “cakes and gingerbread” to ushering a Galway party in to dinner.

First, then, was Mr. Miles Bodkin, whose grandfather would have been a lord if Cromwell had not hanged him one fine morning. Then Mrs. Mosey Blake’s first husband was promised the title of Kilmacud if it was ever restored; whereas Mrs. French of Knocktunmor’s mother was then at law for a title. And lastly, Mrs. Joe Burke was fourth cousin to Lord Clanricarde, as is or will be every Burke from this to the day of judgment. Now, luckily for her prospects, the lord was alive; and Mr. Blake, remembering a very sage adage about “dead lions,” etc., solved the difficulty at once by gracefully tucking the lady under his arm and leading the way. The others soon followed, the priest of Portumna and my unworthy self bringing up the rear.

When, many a year afterwards, the hard ground of a mountain bivouac, with its pitiful portion of pickled cork-tree yclept mess-beef, and that pyroligneous aquafortis they call corn-brandy have been my hard fare, I often looked back to that day’s dinner with a most heart-yearning sensation, – a turbot as big as the Waterloo shield, a sirloin that seemed cut from the sides of a rhinoceros, a sauce-boat that contained an oyster-bed. There was a turkey, which singly would have formed the main army of a French dinner, doing mere outpost duty, flanked by a picket of ham and a detached squadron of chickens carefully ambushed in a forest of greens; potatoes, not disguised à la maître d’hôtel and tortured to resemble bad macaroni, but piled like shot in an ordnance-yard, were posted at different quarters; while massive decanters of port and sherry stood proudly up like standard bearers amidst the goodly array. This was none of your austere “great dinners,” where a cold and chilling plateau of artificial nonsense cuts off one-half of the table from intercourse with the other; when whispered sentences constitute the conversation, and all the friendly recognition of wine-drinking, which renews acquaintance and cements an intimacy, is replaced by the ceremonious filling of your glass by a lackey; where smiles go current in lieu of kind speeches, and epigram and smartness form the substitute for the broad jest and merry story. Far from it. Here the company ate, drank, talked, laughed, – did all but sing, and certainly enjoyed themselves heartily. As for me, I was little more than a listener; and such was the crash of plates, the jingle of glasses, and the clatter of voices, that fragments only of what was passing around reached me, giving to the conversation of the party a character occasionally somewhat incongruous. Thus such sentences as the following ran foul of each other every instant: —

“No better land in Galway” – “where could you find such facilities” – “for shooting Mr. Jones on his way home” – “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” – “kiss” – “Miss Blake, she’s the girl with a foot and ankle” – “Daly has never had wool on his sheep” – “how could he” – “what does he pay for the mountain” – “four and tenpence a yard” – “not a penny less” – “all the cabbage-stalks and potato-skins” – “with some bog stuff through it” – “that’s the thing to” – “make soup, with a red herring in it instead of salt” – “and when he proposed for my niece, ma’am, says he” – “mix a strong tumbler, and I’ll make a shake-down for you on the floor” – “and may the Lord have mercy on your soul” – “and now, down the middle and up again” – “Captain Magan, my dear, he is the man” – “to shave a pig properly” – “it’s not money I’m looking for, says he, the girl of my heart” – “if she had not a wind-gall and two spavins” – “I’d have given her the rights of the church, of coorse,” said Father Roach, bringing up the rear of this ill-assorted jargon.

Such were the scattered links of conversation I was condemned to listen to, till a general rise on the part of the ladies left us alone to discuss our wine and enter in good earnest upon the more serious duties of the evening.

Scarcely was the door closed when one of the company, seizing the bell-rope, said, “With your leave, Blake, we’ll have the ‘dew’ now.”

“Good claret, – no better,” said another; “but it sits mighty cold on the stomach.”

“There’s nothing like the groceries, after all, – eh, Sir George?” said an old Galway squire to the English general, who acceded to the fact, which he understood in a very different sense.

“Oh, punch, you are my darlin’,” hummed another, as a large, square, half-gallon decanter of whiskey was placed on the table, the various decanters of wine being now ignominiously sent down to the end of the board without any evidence of regret on any face save Sir George Dashwood’s, who mixed his tumbler with a very rebellious conscience.

Whatever were the noise and clamor of the company before, they were nothing to what now ensued. As one party were discussing the approaching contest, another was planning a steeple-chase, while two individuals, unhappily removed from each other the entire length of the table, were what is called “challenging each other’s effects” in a very remarkable manner, – the process so styled being an exchange of property, when each party, setting an imaginary value upon some article, barters it for another, the amount of boot paid and received being determined by a third person, who is the umpire. Thus a gold breast-pin was swopped, as the phrase is, against a horse; then a pair of boots, then a Kerry bull, etc., – every imaginable species of property coming into the market. Sometimes, as matters of very dubious value turned up, great laughter was the result. In this very national pastime, a Mr. Miles Bodkin, a noted fire-eater of the west, was a great proficient; and it is said he once so completely succeeded in despoiling an uninitiated hand, that after winning in succession his horse, gig, harness, etc., he proceeded seriatim to his watch, ring, clothes, and portmanteau, and actually concluded by winning all he possessed, and kindly lent him a card-cloth to cover him on his way to the hotel. His success on the present occasion was considerable, and his spirits proportionate. The decanter had thrice been replenished, and the flushed faces and thickened utterance of the guests evinced that from the cold properties of the claret there was but little to dread. As for Mr. Bodkin, his manner was incapable of any higher flight, when under the influence of whiskey, than what it evinced on common occasions; and as he sat at the end of the table fronting Mr. Blake, he assumed all the dignity of the ruler of the feast, with an energy no one seemed disposed to question. In answer to some observations of Sir George, he was led into something like an oration upon the peculiar excellences of his native country, which ended in a declaration that there was nothing like Galway.

“Why don’t you give us a song, Miles? And may be the general would learn more from it than all your speech-making.”

“To be sure,” cried the several voices together, – “to be sure; let us hear the ‘Man for Galway’!”

Sir George having joined most warmly in the request, Mr. Bodkin filled up his glass to the brim, bespoke a chorus to his chant, and clearing his voice with a deep hem, began the following ditty, to the air which Moore has since rendered immortal by the beautiful song, “Wreath the Bowl,” etc. And, although the words are well known in the west, for the information of less-favored regions, I here transcribe —

THE MAN FOR GALWAY

To drink a toast,
A proctor roast,
Or bailiff as the case is;