Towards the close of our first year at Mrs. Anderson’s, an event occurred which overwhelmed us with joy. My father took us with him to Kilkenny, during the long summer vacation, longer in Ireland, I believe, than in any other schools in the world.
His own residence there, and the circumstances connected with it, had considerable influence on the after life of my sister and myself.
It may be recollected, that it was stipulated in my father’s
agreement with Mr. Daly, that no paid actor nor
actress should appear on the boards of the Music Hall Theatre; but, after some time, this
article was violated by the engagement of Miss
Gough, the rival of Mrs. Siddons for the
time, the Honourable Mrs. Mahon, the “Bird of
Paradise,” Miss Poole, the great English
vocalist of the day, Miss Campion, afterwards Mrs. Pope, and other eminent professional actresses, by the
noble amateurs to whom he had let
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A lawsuit ensued, which my father lost. The noble dramatis personæ of the Music Hall were anxious to make him what reparation they could, and Lord Thurles (afterwards Marquis of Ormond) and other of the nobility and gentry of Kilkenny, who belonged to the company, proposed that he should build a theatre in Kilkenny, then, in point of fashion and rank, the Versailles of Ireland, and where a number of stagestruck young lords, and hyper-critical old ones, were desirous to establish upon a theatre such principles of dramatic perfection and aristocratic respectability as should form a distinguished epoch in the theatrical history of Ireland. This proposal, which promised to realize all my father’s ideas of theatrical perfectibility, he gladly accepted.
Lord Thurles was at the head of the Committee, and invited my father at once on a visit to the Castle at Kilkenny, to settle preliminaries and to take observations for the best site on which to erect the new theatre.
Lord Ormond was anxious to promote any plan which might induce his brilliant but dissipated son to remain on his ancient estate, and to reside more frequently at the most historical castle in Ireland; for Lord Thurles had been the chief of those terrible “Cherokees” who were so long the terror of the Dublin dowagers of both sexes. Lord Ormond, therefore, forwarded to the uttermost the wishes of the amateurs.
He seemed to conceive a personal partiality for my
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Names to the list came in fast, but subscriptions so slowly, that Lord Ormond remained for a long time in solitary dignity at the head of a list where so few followed him.
This beautiful little theatre rose with a rapidity like magic, for the workmen were paid high wages, and were paid punctually. It was mortgaged for five hundred pounds, before it was finished, to a Mr. Welsh, a wealthy and fashionable attorney of the day.* Ad-
* Apropos of “fashionable attorneys,” the late well-known Pierce Mahony, who came under this head to the very extent, and who was, besides, an excellent and worthy gentleman, when presented to Lord Wellesley, at the levee, his Excellency, with one of the banalités of royalty, said, “Of course, Mr. Mahony, you are of one of the liberal professions? At the bar, I suppose?” “Well, almost, my Lord—that is, my estates are in Kerry; but I employ my leisure hours, when in town, with the profession of an attorney.” Every body in Ireland was then ashamed of following any profession that could not come under the category of “liberal.” We happened to have a very equivocal-looking house next door, when we lived in Kildare Street, and a neighbour of suspicious appearance having come into it, Sir Charles sent for him in to make a little inquiry as to his mode of life, and asked him what he was? After some hesitation, he answered, “Well, Sir Charles, I should say, that I am rather what may be called in the—tailoring line!” |
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Performers of the first class were brought down, at large salaries, from Dublin and London, and in the summer which folowed the laying of the foundation, the beautiful Kilkenny Theatre (afterwards to be so celebrated for its private theatricals) was opened with great éclat, and filled nightly to overflowing, with a fashionable crowd from the town and neighbouring seats.
It was at this point that my father brought us down for our six weeks’ holiday. We were lodged in a delightful old house, the residence of a delightful old lady, who remembered the Great Duchess of Ormond going to take the air in the streets of Kilkenny in a coach and six, with two running footmen before her.
Our old lady was the grandmother to a charming family; her only daughter had married a gentilhomme de la chambre to the King of Sardinia—a contemporary of Louis XV.—his name was O’Rigan, and he was a native of Kilkenny; but he had dropped the vowel that marked his rank. He had succeeded to a large fortune, and returned to his native country to live as an Irish gentleman, and sport his cross and ribbon to an extreme old age. The young people were highly accomplished; we became their intimates and associates, and our long walks on the banks of the Nore were amongst the most delightful recreations of our holidays.
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Goldsmith’s tender lines to his mother and his home, in his Traveller—
“Where’er I roam, whatever climes I see, My heart still fondly turns to home and thee,” |
Kilkenny itself, with its historical Castle, where Parliaments had been held and sieges resisted, was still in the highest state of preservation. The picturesque ruins of its innumerable abbeys, each with its legends and traditions, especially that of the Black Abbey—the after scene of many interesting events in modern poetics, was the first.
But above all was the picture-gallery of the Castle of Kilkenny, where I first became acquainted with that master mode of expressing the human form divine in all its phases! This was my first contact with high art, and awakened a passion for its noble powers which in after life broke forth in my Life of Salvator Rosa—of all my works the most delightful to myself in its execution.
I had lent to me the Lives of the
Great Painters of the 16th and 17th Century, and I actually thought of
executing a life of Rubens, about which Moore has made an amusing anecdote in his Diary. The gallery
of Kilkenny Castle was rich in the works of Lely, and
was
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The sons and daughters of the House of Ormond were amongst the most distinguished of the originals of these beautiful portraits, which furnished forth the pages of the pleasantest book that perhaps ever was written, The Mémoires de Grammont, by Anthony Hamilton, nephew of the then great Duke of Ormond, pages of which might have been written in this very gallery when gazing on the portrait of his idol—Elizabeth Butler, Countess of Chesterfield.
The occasional presence of some of the officers of the Irish Brigade, the descendants of the Dunois and Bayards of the Battle of the Boyne, who were then drafted back in poverty to their noble families in the neighbourhood of Kilkenny, with whom they had sought refuge after the French Revolution, contributed to give a tone of elegance and refinement to the society. They spoke the French of the Academy, and English with an unmixed brogue, which was all that war and adversity had left them from their brave ancestors.
Many years afterwards, I was indebted to them for furnishing forth the story and character of my novel of O’Donnel.
Of their names I still remember the Honourable Captain Southwell, General Conway,
Colonel Eugene Macarthy (of Spring House, and of
course a cousin twenty times removed from my Florence
Macarthy). Of course these charming and accomplished gentle-
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An old diocesan library was placed at my disposal, and I took the opportunity of fluttering over a quantity of genuine old Irish books; which study engendered a taste for Irish antiquity, which never afterwards slumbered, and which circumstances in after life greatly favoured.
My father’s paternal vanity had induced him to print and edit a little volume of my verses, which he called Poems by a Young Lady between the Age of Twelve and Fourteen. They had all the faults of tiresome precocity, which is frequently disease, and generally terminates in dulness.
My head, however, was teeming with thick coming fancies, and when I
have been complimented on the works I have written, I might answer with Rousseau,
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Never were three months more occupied or more enjoyed; but the “coming event” of school cast its shadow before us, and our departure was hastened by a calamity of which we were kept in ignorance until ignorance was no longer possible.
Mr. Welsh foreclosed his mortgage suddenly, and bills to an enormous amount were presented.
The season of the Kilkenny theatricals came to a close, and my father carried us back to Dublin, where our maid, Molly, had arrived a few days before. She had taken lodgings for us opposite the Round Church in St. Andrew’s street.
Although we were not aware of facts, which, perhaps, we should not have understood, yet we were much grieved with the appearance of embarrassment, melancholy, preoccupation; visits from strange men, and the total change in my poor father’s habits and manners. His sudden departure for the south of Ireland, and his promise either to come back soon or to send for us, pacified us for the moment, though we were far from happy at being left by ourselves.
We knew but very few persons, and those chiefly the families of our school-fellows who resided near us, and those of our excellent preceptors.
The facts, as they afterwards came to my knowledge, were
these:—A statute of bankruptcy was in process against my father. Our cousins, those
sage, grave men
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An accident, in the interim, put me in possession of circumstances which my feelings rather than my intelligence enabled me to understand.
Opening, one day, one of my father’s old theatrical books, the Memoirs of Mossop, I found the following paragraph:—
“Mr. Mossop appeared before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy at Guildhall, being the third meeting, when he passed his examination and delivered up his effects, which were thirteen hundred pounds in cash, a forty-pound bill, and a ten-pound bill, and his gold watch, which the creditors humanely gave him back, as well as the bills. Mr. Garrick attended, and proved a debt of two hundred pounds,” &c.
This enlightened me as to the meaning of bankruptcy, and also
accounted for the fact that Molly had shortly before
unhooked my poor mother’s watch and chain, which I wore at my side, to which was
appended a valuable chatelaine, consisting, strange to say, of two miniatures of Abelard and Heloise,
and an enamelled
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Under these circumstances, my character seems to have developed itself rapidly, for adversity is a great teacher.
My father’s last words before his departure, were, that we should write to him daily, a command I took on myself to obey with great alacrity, trusting to chance for franks. I was already passionately fond of writing about any thing to any one.
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