the late eighteenth century the idea that one’s honour could only be defended by sword or pistol had become extraordinarily popular and there were many earnest advocates of the practice. In 1777 a number of self-proclaimed experts drew up a list of twenty-seven rules designed to ensure that duels were fought fairly and with some level of regulation. In the years that followed, several high-profile encounters between prominent politicians gave the practice increased respectability and legitimacy and a new breed of aggressive gentlemen known as the ‘fire-eaters’ emerged. Whaley was about to join their ranks.
The word was given and the pistol shots rang out in the evening air. Whaley’s shot missed, but ‘the ball of Mr. O—r’s pistol … entered the thick part of his antagonist’s thigh and lodged in the other’.4 A surgeon who was present attended the stricken duellist and ‘probed the muscular part to a considerable depth, but the ball … eluded his search’. Despite the excruciating pain Whaley managed to keep his composure and even shake hands with his opponent. The ball was successfully removed the next day and a few days later Whaley was said to be ‘in a fair way of recovery’.5 Samuel Faulkner’s brother Hugh, perhaps with the Keon–Reynolds encounter in mind, believed that Whaley was fortunate to escape with his life. In his opinion he had been most to blame for the duel: ‘I am astonished that a gentleman who has seen so much of the world and good company would behave in such a manner that he must quarrel with a man because his chaise drove past him on the publick road,’ he expostulated. ‘Sure he can’t think that because he has got more money than another, that he has a liberty to insult all who has less than himself.’6
Whether this was true or not, for the next few weeks Whaley was laid up and in no position to quarrel with anyone. For his mother and stepfather this was a silver lining: now they had an opportunity to try and talk some sense into him and dissuade him from further dangerous escapades. They were also anxious to somehow stem his financial excesses: on 15 December Whaley would turn 21, at which time he would have full control over his inheritance. By late November he was well enough to travel and Anne was expecting him at Somerset. ‘I am sure the country will be of service to him after his long confinement,’ she anticipated, ‘and will soon restore him to his strength and flesh, and I am in hopes that his presence will be of use to Mr Richardson.’ Her husband was in bad health and low spirits, probably partly as a result of worry over his stepson’s antics.7 He had not rescued him from a hazardous situation in 1784 to watch him throw his life away two years later and he resolved to act.
Samuel Faulkner had calculated the total amount of Whaley’s fortune at £48,674, eighteen shillings and ten pence halfpenny, in addition to the annual rental income from the estates.8 On paper the young man was due to come into this impressive inheritance on 15 December 1786, but for years he had been borrowing heavily on the strength of it, even selling one of his Carlow properties, Castletown House, to Faulkner earlier that year to raise money.9 Richardson insisted that Whaley examine the state of his fortune and when he did he ‘found it still more diminished by the variety of my dissipation and extravagance’. (W, 35) Even more worrying, it seemed that the money that remained was insufficient to clear his outstanding debts. Richardson now made a valiant attempt to rein in Whaley’s spending, warning him that ‘the way of life in which I was engaged, must inevitably lead me to ruin … and that at the rate I proceeded, I must in a short time be reduced to indigence’. (W, 35) ‘With tears in his eyes’ he urged his stepson to relinquish his two greatest indulgences: Harriet, on whom he was spending an ‘extraordinary, not to say scandalous’ (W, 35) amount, and the yacht. Each was costing him in the region of £5,000 a year.10 Though genuinely touched by his stepfather’s concerns, Whaley found it impossible to give up both of his ‘favourite hobby-horses’. Eventually he agreed to sell the ship rather than part ways with Harriet, to whom he was ‘now really attached’. (W, 37) He later confided to Faulkner that he would ‘rather have her happy than any other woman in the world’.11
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Offloading the yacht meant that Whaley’s planned voyage to the Mediterranean would be put on hold, though he still hoped to one day undertake it and perhaps even make money by betting on it. It was not surprising that gambling or ‘play’ continued to use up much of Whaley’s time and money: in the eighteenth century it was a near universal pastime. ‘This obsession of the age played itself out most ferociously … in the drawing rooms and private clubs’, where members gambled feverishly over cards and dice.12 The most famous Irish club was Daly’s Club on Dame Street, a ‘mecca for gamblers’.13 Daly’s was frequented at all hours and its candles burned behind drawn blinds even in the daytime. It had become one of Whaley’s favourite haunts and his losses there were such that his brother John, hardly a paragon of restraint himself, declared himself ‘very sorry’ that ‘Tom’s itch for gambling’ continued. ‘I think if he goes on much longer he will not have a farthing left.’14 Yet even in the midst of his money worries Whaley showed compassion for others, notably his one-time bearleader William Wray, whose health and fortunes had declined steadily in the two years since the grand tour. In May 1786, when Wray was destitute and near death, Whaley had contributed a significant sum to support him. Then, in December, he provided a Miss Katherine Wray (probably William’s daughter or sister) with an annuity which he insisted on renewing even when he himself was in financial distress.15
The following year did not bring much change in Whaley’s fortunes. He was now in control of what was left of his inheritance but as expected it did not meet his needs and he still required around £2,000 to pay off his debts. Frustrated that rents due on his Carlow and Armagh estates had not been collected, he blamed Faulkner for procrastinating: ‘I cannot help remarking that those things are generally the agents faults.’ He even tried to borrow £1,000 from his sister’s father-in-law, Sir Annesley Stewart, who turned down the request unequivocally: ‘I could no more raise a £1,000 at present than I could a million. I was in hopes you were free from all embarrassments except the ship and am very much concerned indeed to find it otherwise.’16 Then, in May, there came a reprieve: all but one of his creditors agreed to give him ‘time sufficient, to raise the mon[e]y’ to pay them. Welcome as this was, the constant anxiety was making Whaley despondent. ‘Would to God, I were as old and as fat as you’, he remarked to Samuel Faulkner, in not altogether complimentary terms. ‘I am sure I should then be as happy[.] at present I am poor and miserable.’17 If he remained in Dublin frequenting places like Daly’s he would only add to that poverty and he decided, or allowed himself to be persuaded, to spend the summer with Harriet at Faulkner’s country retreat, Fort Faulkner in County Wicklow.
The three-bay Georgian house still stands in an idyllic stretch of rolling countryside near the small village of Ballinaclash.18 Faulkner had acquired the house and adjoining lands around 1780 and placed them in the care of his steward, John Donnelly. By early 1787 William Norwood had moved to Fort Faulkner, hoping the country air would help him recover from a bad cough (in fact he was in the early stages of consumption).19 Around the middle of May Whaley and Harriet arrived with an entourage of servants. Favoured by a spell of particularly fine weather, they were much taken with the place. On 22 May Tom reported that he and Norwood had gone ‘a ferreting, and we kill[e]d 6 brace of rabbits, and … all the trout in the river’. On another occasion he claimed to have ‘had the best sport I have yet had in the river’, catching ‘one trout eleven inches long’. It is easy to picture him holding up the trout in a classic fisherman’s pose, his still boyish (though pox-scarred) face radiant with pride. Harriet, too, was enchanted by Fort Faulkner, preferring it ‘even to London’ and on 2 June Whaley declared that they were getting comfortable there. ‘I think upon my soul that I have not been so happy these many months.’20 He seemed to be reaping the benefit of the improved diet and surroundings. ‘He takes the goats whey every morning and exercises greatly after it’, Norwood reported to Faulkner, ‘so that you would almost already say he has got a look quite different from that you have seen him have this five years past’. Even the habitually dour clerk conceded that ‘we all seem as happy as we could wish ourselves’.21
These blissful days would not last. At least one person was not happy: John Donnelly. The steward was irked by the damage that Whaley’s servants, horses and livestock (the
