to me, proving that he really has confidence both in my affection and in my prudence. Still woman is but woman and in matters of business even where the good of her own children is concerned she requires the counsel of a sterner mind, so we agreed that he should ask Richard Hornidge to undertake a joint charge.
If it be my lot to survive you, my dear, kind Hal, I will endeavour to the utmost to fulfil every wish of yours, to do as I think you would like to have done, and you may depend upon my paying to the few relations you value the same respect and the same attention as I believe you have always seen me show to them. And I sometimes wish that it may be my lot for you would be very wretched without me, encumbered with business and frightened about the children and lonely, and if you were ill how wretched you would be without her who for so many years has been your anxious attendant.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 2. Hal wrote his Will over fair on one of the printed papers and signed it in presence of the Doctor, and Tom Darker, who subscribed it as Witnesses. He leaves all his property to Johnny, and with a portion of £2,500 each to the dear little girls.
5. We consider that the sale of our horses and our carriages will take us over to France and give us a good sum besides to have by us for accidents and that the pay—£320—will keep us there well. The gross rent of the property here is about £380—head rents, cess23, pensions, wages, &c., all the necessary expenses that must be left upon it, allowing for bad rents, etc., £350—leaving John £630 to lay up annually, besides the profits of the farm, which must at least be another £100. And then, if we are so lucky as to let the house, we might allow ourselves the rent of it, as John would certainly have £600 a year, maybe more, to pay our little debt of a £1,000 with. So that if we tire of the Continent in two years we can come home rather more than free, and if we can stay a third year, we shall have near £1,000 in our pockets. So Hal is right, and the scheme is a good one when looked fairly in the face, and all set down in black and white figures arithmetically. Yet all my heart is in Baltiboys, rain and all I wish to live and die here.
7. Took a long walk: went to school and was much pleased. Called in by Tom Kelly to see his new haggard. His whole range of offices is very complete, well laid out, well built and most creditable to him. He is in despair at the Colonel going away. So are they all, poor people. Old Mrs. Tyrrell came to give up her land looking wretchedly ill. She has made some arrangement with Mick Tyrrell, which the Colonel seems to approve of, and which I hope may be agreed on, as the poor old woman would have her cabin and garden for life and a little turf, and be rid of her ill-tilled field, which keeps her in poverty and pays us no rent, and thus another patch would be got quit of, which fits in very well to little Tyrrell’s good farm.
9. Miserable night of asthma—in consequence of taking a tumbler of negus at night, eating meat at dinner and taking no exercise. Medicine won’t do alone—he must abstain from wine and meat till the stomach come round again; he was still suffering so much at six o’clock that he sent to tell the Doctor he should not go this day; but he got better, and the day was fine with the wind in his favour, and the Doctor came and revived his spirits; so they started at one o’clock. He never looked up once after turning from the hall door, and we—how desolate we were—for of later years I have been spoiled, he has never left us, and this month that we are to be alone seems to me as if it would be endless. Frank came back by nine o’clock, his master was off in good spirits.
10. Began the round of visits I intend to make before leaving the Country, and took the Burgage side first. The Redmonds seem pretty comfortable; the eldest married daughter in a good place, paying the Mother for caring her fine child, and though receiving neither money nor kindness from her husband, able to maintain herself perfectly without him. The second daughter married too rather in a hurry we think, and so well—to a woollen draper’s shopman, quite a lift in the world—but when it happened and how she and her baby came so unexpectedly upon the scene so immediately after the announcement of the husband seems queer, however married she is and well, and has a comfortable lodging, and has taken her little sister Margaret to live with her. Biddy, too, is with a laundress, so only the two least girls are at home. Mick always in work, and always dutiful to his Mother, so is her eldest son; her third son little help to her, but able to support himself, and she has a little boy as good as Mick. The house is in good repair, clean and decent, and she is so industrious there is no fear but that the worst days of that family are over. The poor Delanys looked miserable, their house a ruin and the two sick old people seated each side their chimney in patient misery. They have a little crop, straw enough to thatch the house, hay enough for the cow, the two little wee boys beginning to be some help to them, three daughters in good places, two at home—one must stay to mind those old cripples, but the other must get a place. Hal has left some warm clothing for the old man, and I must do something to enable them to get over the winter; it is heart-breaking to think of what will become of the creatures when we are away—it is the good dinner that has kept old Delany alive and free from pain so long. Then to the dear old cottage now almost a ruin, so dirty, so damp, windows overgrown with the creepers we trained so neatly, papers peeling off the walls, damp breaking through the ceilings, garden a wilderness. Mary Fitzpatrick wants what I can’t give her—a contented temper—always fretting for evils she can’t cure, and forgetting her many comforts. She would marry a Widower with three children, but only two of them are thrown upon her, and he is kind to her and a good workman. She has two nice babies of her own, wants nothing from me but a small supply of medicine, for her health is certainly very bad and most likely the principal cause of her fretfulness.
14. We walked up Burgage Lane to pay all remaining visits there, and found a great improvement in its inhabitants since we first remember them. All thriving except old Shannon, suffering from asthma, and Henry Wall’s family, who don’t look so well off as they used to do. The wife is too fond of tea; she has another baby, so I sent her physick. Mary Doolen I will leave a little money for with Tom Darker to be given to her occasionally.
15. The Doctor tells me Lord Milltown could not come home just now, that he can live at Leamington while the £200 he has just won will last, and what he will do after that nobody can tell; he is unable to raise money to pay the renewal fines of some farms on his wife’s property, the leases of which have fallen in, so that her income will be lessened for the future; and he knows the authour of Harry Lorrequer24 a class fellow of his own, a wild, very clever, hare-brained creature, who himself played off many of the tricks he describes, now living at Brussels, I fear not very creditably, since his present employment is fleecing Hugh Henry at Ecartez.
17. Great commotion in the yard, Mary Highland having been seen at the peach trees. I gave it them well at all sides, being very angry and for sundry reasons of my own being very glad of an opportunity publickly to find fault with her. Tom Darker has distrained the three bad Tenants, Kearns, Doyle and Quin.25
25. No letter from Hal by the early post, the second brought me his first from St. Servans. Says if I like he will return to sweet Baltiboys, where perhaps we might economise just as well as anywhere else after all. I will say the word, he may depend upon it, too happy to get him back at this small cost to the place where he is best and happiest, and where he ought to be. And may God grant that this new trial, backed by so many more equally unsuccessful, may cure his restless temper, which I sincerely believe was at the bottom of this whim, though he fancied it resulted from prudence. The dreadful society is worse in my eyes than the ugly, wretched seaport. What could he expect from a set of people among whom Dr. Eckford figured chief. Henry Robertson is so captivated by the scenery and the air here, that he seriously thinks of coming to live in Dublin or near it. His £800 a year, which is a bare maintenance for them in Edinburgh, would enable them to keep a carriage here; he says that if we could gather a little knot of Indians about us, we might laugh at the world.
27.
