it. also I have a most damnable heavy stock on my little pasture[.] theirs two mare … and one cow of Mr. Whaleys two horses and two cow of yours that is eight head all on the gorse bogg for I may be damd. if I suffer them in the waste land’.22 He also had little time for Harriet, who he referred to as ‘the English whore’. Whaley, however, had more serious things to worry about than the irascible steward. On 6 June he found himself suffering from ‘a very great pain in his head’,23 and soon afterwards he was laid up with a fever. Though he was prone to bouts of illness throughout his life, this was one of the worst. Following a prolonged period of indolence and self-indulgence, his system may have reacted to the sudden change in lifestyle and diet.
At first Whaley’s condition gave serious cause for concern. After someone wisely treated him with Peruvian bark, a powerful anti-fever medicine,24 he improved and by early July had ‘every favourable appearance of a speedy recovery’. Harriet hoped he would be able to leave his sickbed: ‘this day we mean to get him up, and have got an arm chair for that purpose … I am happy to say I believe all danger is now over.’ At first Harriet had not known that Whaley was ill: somehow, and for some reason, his ‘friends’ (meaning, presumably, Norwood, acting on instructions) had contrived to keep her in the dark about it. ‘What reason I was not inform’d of it I cannot tell,’ she exclaimed. ‘But … it hurt me much as Mr. Whaley is my only friend.’ She knew he was the only reason his family and friends tolerated her presence, and she was understandably exasperated that they saw her as his ‘whore’ and nothing else. ‘Had anything bad happen[e]d him, they need not have been allarm’d[.] I should not have been any trouble to them while I had my own free country to go to, where the people are not quite so illiberal in their ideas as they are in Ireland.’25 Harriet was a kind-hearted soul. She knew well what it was to be a woman in vulnerable circumstances and had tried to help others less well-off than herself. Before leaving for Wicklow she had asked Faulkner to look out for her maidservant, ‘a very sober honnest woman and the best servant I ever had in Dublin’, who for some reason had suffered opprobrium from the other domestics.26
Whaley recovered slowly and hung on at Fort Faulkner for a few more months, indulging himself at his agent’s expense. Despite this he believed that the salary of £300 a year he was paying Faulkner to look after his estates was too generous, and in August he told Norwood he was determined to reduce it. The clerk reported to Faulkner,
I asked him did he know what it was he paid you he said he did answering £300 a year. To which I replied Sir. look through all your accounts and see has my uncle ever charged you a farthing for traveling expences. and which every agent in Ireland is allowed. Now Sir said I considering all this he has not over £100 a year for his trouble. We have had a great deal of conversation on this subject and I find he is determined to deduct something off the am[oun]t. of what you have at present by the receipt of the rents. Now my dear uncle who is at the bottom of this I cannot say, nor is it possible for you or I to find out at present…
Norwood was convinced that some ‘deceitfull and ill minded people’, determined to harm Faulkner, had put Whaley up to this. ‘I realy am of opinion there is some one at his elbow underminding you.’ He advised his uncle to hold the agency even at a reduced rate rather than satisfy their malice. ‘Poor young man he is foolish and ill advised at present but that will have an end.’27 Whether it would or not remained to be seen, but Norwood was right about one thing: Whaley was indeed susceptible to the wiles of the ‘deceitfull and ill minded’, and they would cause him considerable distress in the years that lay ahead.
For the present, Fort Faulkner had given him a taste for the rustic lifestyle and he began planning to settle down as a country gentleman. Within the coming couple of years he hoped to put aside ‘ten or twelve thousand pounds with which please God I will settle at home and laugh at the world’.28 Anne Richardson was delighted to hear of her son’s new plan and hoped that he would start farming ‘and lead the life of an honest country gentleman, he will find more real satisfaction in it, than in all the scenes of dissipation he has already been engaged in’. She dreamily anticipated that he might ‘turn his thoughts to matrimony and get some thousands with a good wife’.29 Indeed Whaley seemed to be transforming into a responsible and charitable member of society. In November he cancelled his membership of several Dublin clubs (including, possibly, Daly’s), suggesting that he had turned his back on gambling. He also showed sympathy for others who had suffered losses. The following month he and a friend, Mr Singleton, donated money to the inmates of the Four Courts Marshalsea, a debtors’ prison, professing themselves ‘shocked at so many slaves in bondage, fallen victims to the folly of wrong-headed creditors’.30
At this time Whaley and Harriet were settling into a new property he had purchased in County Carlow: Font Hill, a country house and estate adjacent to the River Barrow.31 The house boasted several showpiece rooms including a scarlet room, a green room, a drawing room, a parlour and a billiard room. There were fine views across the country to the south, which along with the Barrow offered ample opportunities for hunting and fishing. However, Font Hill was in sore need of refurbishment and Whaley and Harriet were greatly discomfited by its ‘deplorable’ condition. Holes in the roof let in the rain and the walls were ‘running down with water’. There was only one dry room, in which the couple were sleeping, but this did not prevent them from catching bad colds. By the end of December work was underway, though Whaley was still waiting for the lead needed to repair the roof to arrive.32 Meanwhile he was keen to go hunting on his new estate and he asked Faulkner to send him cock shot, duck shot, partridge shot, snipe shot and buckshot.33 He also indulged a sweet tooth: the groceries ordered in by Harriet from Dublin included ‘three loafs of house keepers lump sugar … two stone of common brown sugar and three pound of the best chocolate and two pound of brown sugar candy’.34 But life at Font Hill was too sedate for Tom. Before long his mind was wandering elsewhere and soon his body would follow.
***
Thus far in his life Whaley had not done much to earn a place in the annals of history. He had gone on a chaotic grand tour, indulged in a series of liaisons, fallen prey to swindlers, become an MP, fought a duel, accumulated large debts and made a belated effort to settle down to the quiet life. While he had certainly had some adventures, his career was not so different from that of other moneyed and wayward young men in Ireland and Britain. But things were about to change. For years Whaley had longed to travel, not simply to the usual grand tour destinations of France and Italy, but to more remote and exotic lands. As a boy he had spent long hours drawing and colouring in maps of foreign regions and he seems to have immersed himself in tales of Captain James Cook, Sinbad the Sailor and other real or legendary explorers. Now, in early 1788, he began planning in earnest for his long-anticipated trip to the Mediterranean. Although he no longer owned a ship, that need not prevent him from securing a berth on a vessel. He had also decided to do more than simply visit the Middle Sea and its ports. He dreamt of travelling beyond its shores to a great walled city, the home of some of the world’s most ancient and sacred shrines. Like thousands of pilgrims, travellers and soldiers before him, Whaley was unable to resist the lure of Jerusalem.
Going by his own account, the whole thing originated in a simple quip over a meal ‘with some people of fashion’ at Leinster House, the Duke of Leinster’s magnificent townhouse on Kildare Street (see Plate 7):
the conversation turned upon my intended voyage, when one of the company asked me to what part of the world I meant to direct my course first, to which I answered, without hesitation, ‘to Jerusalem.’ This was considered by the company as a mere jest; and so, in fact, it was; but the subject still continuing, some observed that there was no such place at present existing; and others that, if it did exist, I should not be able to find it. This was touching me in the tender point: the difficulty of an undertaking always stimulated me to the attempt. I instantly offered to bet any sum that I would go to Jerusalem and return to Dublin within two years from my departure. I accepted without hesitation all the wagers that were offered me … (W, 34–5)
When exactly this happened is uncertain: it may have been as early as 1786, when the Freeman’s Journal remarked
