Among the fragments of Irish learning and Irish poetry, left
floating upon Time, from the days of Tighearnach O’Brian, Abbot
of Clonmacnois, who composed the annals of his native island in a mixture of Latin and
Erse; from King Kimbaoth, three hundred and five years before Christ,
down to a.d. 1088, there still remained, at the beginning of
this century, a solitary fragment called the Poor Scholar. Some
hapless and desolate boy inspired by Nature and taught by a hedge-schoolmaster, who
exchanged his Greek and Latin, as well as a touch at the annals of the “Four Maisthers” for a consideration of a few sods of turf, eggs, or
a “sudan rhue” (red herring). Such a
poor scholar might have been seen on the Dublin road, the via
sacra of every Irish country town, plodding his way from Ennis to
the metropolis, a satchel tied over his shoulder containing a few tattered books, sibylline
leaves from Homer and Horace, a few dirty MS. papers in the breast of his ragged jacket, an
ink-horn
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They reached the great western suburb of the metropolis—Thomas Street, of St. Thomas, his court—tune immemorial the rendezvous of rebellion, both in ancient and modern time, and one of the gates of the city.
Here his good-natured protector dropped him, and he proceeded—
“Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,” |
This observation induced the cobbler to ask him
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Here he worked for some months in various capacities; but chiefly as librarian. This stall was frequented by a certain Dr. Holton, who supplied the college boys with second-hand classics, which he picked up among the refuse of the scattered libraries of monastic times.
Dr. Holton took the boy home to his house, employed him in various ways, and exhibited him to his friends as a model of learning and ingenuity.
It happened, that the chief scene-painter of the Theatre Royal, frequented the library of the learned Doctor, and the Poor Scholar, ill fed and overworked, ragged and wretched, offered himself to the artist on any terms he might be pleased to give him. Here his condition was not much improved. He was constantly employed in the painting room, but the gaiety and bustle of theatrical life bewitched him. If he boiled size and washed brushes all day, he heard Shakespeare and Ben Jonson at night, and this awakened a poetic vein; he produced a characteristic poem on the performers which excited much mirth and applause in the green-room. It procured him, eventually, the patronage of Mr. Owenson, who desired him to come that evening to his own house.
It happened one evening, after dinner, when my father and mother, with
my sister and myself sitting on a little stool at their respective feet, my mother telling
Olivia a story, and my father humming a song of
other times—the lament of “Drimindhu,” or the
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My mother looked rather scared. “Dermody! what a Papist name!” The servant was desired to wait awhile, and my father, turning to my mother, said in a deprecating tone—
“By-the-bye, Jenny, my dear, I have found the greatest prodigy that has ever appeared since Chatterton, or your own Pope, who wrote beautiful poetry at fourteen,” and he gave her some rapid details which touched her feelings.
My mother was at once prepared to receive a guest so adapted to all her sympathies and tastes, and when James introduced a pale, melancholy-looking boy—shy and awkward—she pointed to a chair, and my father, filling him out a glass of port, cheered him up with many pleasant observations, while my mother listened to his story, artlessly told, with profound interest. The next day Dermody came to our house to make it his future home, and from that time forth he was treated as a child of the family. Well dressed, well cared for, his improvement in personal appearance and in spirits metamorphosed him into a very personable young gentleman. But before this happy change was altogether effected, Mr. Owenson introduced him to Dr. Young, afterwards Bishop of Clonfurt, and then Professor of Trinity College, Dublin.
Dr. Young pronounced him an excellent classical
scholar; and his poetry—which was almost extempo-
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Dr. Young proposed to superintend his studies and prepare him for college. Meantime, Mr. Owenson presented him to Lady Moira, to Lord Charlemont, and several other persons of note and distinction.
A subscription was raised of some amount to support him in college and to lighten the burthen which my father had taken on himself. The Reverend Dr. Austen, then at the head of the first seminary in Ireland, took him into his classes.
Mrs. Austen, a leading woman of fashion, frequently summoned him to her assemblies, where he wrote verses à commandment and recited them with grace. The boy-poet was introduced, like the young Roscius of the day, to all the literary and fashionable society during the Dublin season; but his home was in the old Music Hall, and in the simple country house of Drumcondra.
It appeared, too, that he was there happiest; and though his occasional absences in the evening, among his fine friends, was very distasteful to the sobriety of my mother’s habits and views for him, yet she was pleased by the distinction conferred on him, and she found in his society and literary conversation a resource against the tedium of those solitary evenings to which my father’s absence devoted her.
Dermody undertook to teach the children to read and write, a feat which he accomplished, through our fondness for his society and his fun, with marvellous celerity and success.
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He was the best of playfellows, and he was delighted with our early tendency to humour; he sometimes rolled with laughter on the floor at our drolleries.
He was passionately fond of music, and frequently made us sing beside him whilst he composed in the old spacious attic, which still bore the name of “the grove in the Music Hall.”
He was a greater favourite with the servants than dependents usually are, and, perhaps, the two years so passed in “books, and work, and healthful play,” were the happiest of his whole life, as certainly they were the most faultless.
He was just on the point of being entered on the College books when circumstances occurred which deprived him of the personal protection of his truest friend. Dr. Young being promoted to the bishopric of Clonfurt, the superintendence of Dermody’s studies fell exclusively on Dr. Austen. The distance from Drumcondra, where we resided for eight months of the year, was pleaded as a great obstacle to his being in time to attend his studies, Dr. Austen residing at the other end of Dublin. It was resolved, therefore, that he should be placed in a respectable house in the neighbourhood of Dr. Austen’s town residence, and near the College, for some part of the year; and, to the great regret of all parties, Dermody was removed, to lodge in the house of a Mr. and Mrs. Aichbone, in Grafton Street. They were rigid Wesleyan Methodists, and proprietors of a large glass and china warehouse.
They took great exception to Dermody’s habits of life, and attempted his proselytism with no other
result
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Unluckily, amongst these papers was an epigram of much greater importance, and quite as bitter as those against his stiff-necked hosts.
Mrs. Austen, the wife of the Rev. Dr. Austen, très belle et tant soit peu coquette, received the élite of the fashionable world at her house in Bagot Street. Among her guests she frequently numbered the young Marquis of Granby, the son of a former brilliant and well-remembered lord-lieutenant, who was quartered in the garrison. On the occasion of a fête given specially for him by Mrs. Austen, she commanded her young poet laureate to compose an ode in favour of the vice-regal reign of the Duke of Rutland, with a well-turned compliment to his handsome son. Dermody neglected the order—perhaps “accidentally on purpose”—he thought the desire fulsome, and he had become restive. Mrs. Austen, indignant at the negligence, considering it as the refusal of an upstart dependent, made use of some expression that struck his Irish pride on the life nerve; she ordered him to leave her house and never return, he accepted the command and did not reappear, in the expectation of being sent for. Whilst in the fever of his poetical dignity, he wrote a bitter satire, in which the foibles of his patroness were exaggerated into faults. This epigram was found by the detective Aichbone, and forwarded to Mr. Austen.
Dermody was not recalled; and the subscriptions
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Dermody was then flung upon the world, and after having for a time absented himself from all his friends, and even from my father’s house, he was at last, through my father’s kindness, taken under the protection of the Dowager Countess of Moira, who removed him from Dublin and placed him in the family, and under the tuition of the Rev. Mr. Boyd, who was then at work on his translation of Dante.
He sometimes wrote to my mother, but his letters, though full of affection and gratitude, were also full of complaint and discontent.
My mother’s unexpected death, perhaps, bereft him of his best friend,—certainly of his wisest counsellor.
Lady Moira was all goodness and generosity; but persons of high rank and great wealth are too far removed from the accidents and incidents of wayfaring life to be able to understand the impatient peevishness of poverty and genius combined.
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