In the latter half of the last century, and on the evening of a dreary winter’s day, a lumbering post-coach, the Irish vetturino, the “leathern convenience” of that time (like those of Italy of the present day), between the infrequency of stage-coaches and the perils of an Irish “po’-chay,” crept up the ill-paved hill of an old street in the oldest part of old Dublin, called Fish Shamble Street, from its vicinity to the Liffey, a rather Irish nomenclature, as the Liffey had no fish and the street no shambles. Mr. Denis Reddy, was the celebrated proprietor, and he drove it himself, with his own horses thirty miles a day, providing the charge committed to his care with provisions and every accommodation on the road, when there were any, which was not always the case. He sat on his own coach-box, and, from time to time, let down the front glass to talk to his freight, which on the present occasion was an English lady, with two little girls and two maids. The journey had only been from the little town of Portarlington.
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On the brow of the hill, the carriage drew up before a ponderous double
gate of an apparently old dismantled fabric, which flanked a court and lane to the right,
and presented in front a corps de logis, from
whose portals streamed a flash of bright lights and many flickering shadowy figures. A
gaunt man with flaring lanthorn stood at the gate, apparently waiting for the party, and
ringing a bell he came forward with, “Och you’re welcome, marram, to the
great music hall! and ten thousand welcomes and to the childre! I am Pat
Brennan, plaise yer honour, the man about the place, from the beginning
of time and before! Shure here’s the masther, long life to him!” With
much love and great impatience in his countenance, the “masther” attempted to
open the carriage-door with a vehemence that almost shook it from its propriety; the maids
and the children screamed, whilst Mr. Reddy, coming to the rescue,
cried out, “Don’t be affeard, Mrs.
Owenson, its only this divil of a door, that takes the staggers
betimes!” The next moment the lady and children were in the arms of the happy
husband and father, who, drawing the arm of the lady through his own, and taking the eldest
child by the hand, whilst the other was carried by the maid, proceeded through the
cavernous entrance before them, into a vast space, with an atmosphere of dust and smoke,
whilst every species of noise and clatter and sounds uncouth, the fall of hammers, the
grinding of saws and the screwing of wheels; “the crash of matter and the fall of
worlds,” reverberate on every side. The party having crossed a long plank
that
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“This will be the green-room,” said the gentleman, “there is no such green-room in either of the Royal theatres; and in this room, my dear Jenny, Handel gave his first concert of the Messiah, which the stupid English had not the taste to encourage him to produce in London!” The lady smiled for the first time, and the little girl, who was in the habit of asking about everything, said, “Papa, was Handel a carpenter?” but received no answer, the gentleman going on to do the honours of the green-room.
“Sydney,” said her
mother peevishly, “don’t talk,
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The lady shuddered, but the gentleman led on through a gloomy court-yard, touched off by a rising moon, which exhibited the ruder aspect of the place, and from whence they ascended a very wide but not steep flight of stairs, which evidently meant to represent steps cut out of a rock, whilst branches of trees, gushing waters, and pendant stalactites glittering with frost hung on every side.
“Thim is a part of the old Ridottos,”—at that
moment an enormous cat sprang across, and Pat Brennan did not soothe
the fears which its appearance created, by the cool observation—“and that is
one of the wild cats the place is full of, with stings in their tails! Aye,
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“Get on before us, Pat, and hold up your lanthorn,” said the gentleman, angrily.
The stairs gradually narrowed till they terminated in a narrow gallery which led through clusters of rocks, by way of entrance into a large square space, apparently surrounded by beautiful pastoral scenery, and lighted by a real moon, which shone in from the skylights of the painted ceiling.
“And now, marram,” said Pat Brennan, “ye’re welcome to the Dargle, for it’s the Dargle ye see all about you, and Mr. Grattan’s house in the middle; and there’s the waterfall, and ——” but the rest of his words “the gods dispersed in empty air,” for the attention of the poor wearied and frightened guests was called to an object in the centre of the room, less picturesque, but infinitely more interesting at that moment—a table, plenteously and luxuriously covered, a lofty branch of lights in the centre which might have figured at the royal banquet of Macbeth; a blazing fire, sofas and chairs; a gentleman in a white jacket and cap was settling the dishes on the table, whom Pat Brennan introduced as Mr. Mulligan, the master’s son of the “Stragglers,” the greatest tavern in the world in regard of its beef steaks and punch royal, “and there’s of it before the fire that ’ll warm all your hearts.”
From the garrulity of Pat Brennan, his master saw that he judged of the merits of the punch from experience, and he dismissed him with,—
| IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. | 21 |
“You may go, now, Brennan; see to the getting in of the luggage.”
The table was immediately surrounded by the parents and the children, whilst “below the salt,” i. e., at a little table in the corner, the maids did ample justice to the feast before them.
Brennan, in spite of orders, remained de service, and Mr. Mulligan, with a bow that Brennan told the maids “cost his mother a dollar when he learned to dance,” returned to the “Strugglers,” whilst the party left behind proved that,—
L’homme en mangeant remonte ses ressorts.” |
Within an hour the whole party, except the gentleman, had retired to rest. The maids occupied a “shake down,” the lady and the little girls adjourned to an apartment called by courtesy a bedroom, but which had served the purpose of a hermit’s cave at the last ridotto. It had been made comfortable for present use.
The maids, however, did not fare so well, for Molly, the children’s maid, a semi-French importation from Portarlington, told her mistress the next morning that “the life was frightened out of her by Betty calling out to her, ‘are ye awake, Mrs. Molly? the rots are dragging the bed from under me!’”
These wild, incredible, and apparently fabulous scenes require an explanation, but they are indelibly photographed on a memory from which few things that ever impressed the imagination have been effaced.
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Note.—Lady Morgan was not superstitiously exact about supplying the “missing links” in her recollections and impressions of her early life; and no explanation was ever written of this whimsical introduction to the domestic Dublin life of her father; but the fact was simple enough—viz.: that the portion of the old music-hall, which was destined to serve as the family residence, had not been finished or put in order; hence the necessity of fitting up a lodging for a few nights in the midst of things in general. We can understand that Lady Morgan felt it more irksome to “explain” than to “describe.”—Ed.
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