our clothes a little after six o’clock, washed in ice and descended to the comforts of Cramer’s exercises on the piano-forte, or worse Bochsa’s on the harp till daylight allowed of our using our eyes; really children were cruelly used in those days, and for what purpose. Could we do any good with numb fingers, starving with cold and hunger and cross from actual suffering. Should we not have been better in our warm beds. Mary and I are wiser with our children. We never wish them to get up till they can see to dress and we have a warm room and good fire for them to go to afterwards and they never touch the pianoforte till they have had their breakfast and as I at least wish for no professors in my family, Janey has never yet any day practised an hour.
8. Miss Gardiner down with an order from the Inspector to attend at Naas to-morrow to furnish accounts and receive directions for the future management of our School. I took the reply on myself and made it like my father of old in the ‘brimstone and butter’ style sending them every account they could want but not sending the poor young woman, thinking their Inspector may come here himself if he has anything particular to say to us.
12. How taste changes. I remember as a girl being so delighted with Horace Walpole’s Letters, now they almost disgust me, so frivolous, such an absence of principle, such mere trifling through life, without an aim or an end, and vice so familiar to the society of the day, yet the charm of the style carries one on from one gossippy letter to another, all unsatisfactory though they be, and he had mind enough for better things had he lived in a better age, though naturally cold and ill-natured.
13. A letter from Mary—still delighted with Pau. She has got an admirer too, of course. She can’t live without one, but ’tis only the landlord of the maison Puyoo—rather a descent in the scale of lovers, but even beautiful women approach forty.
27. Very much interested in my book,1 which I finished with regret. Both Hal and I think that insanity was constitutional in him and would have broke out before had his life been unfortunate.
I cannot, when reading of these times and of these men avoid recurring in my thoughts to my father who lived with them and was of them and yet does not hold his proper station among them. In talents he was inferiour to few, in accomplishments superiour to most, but he had two great weaknesses, a wish to do too much and a desire that what he did do should be known and fully appreciated, he had the misfortune to be born heir to a very large fortune, to step into its possession when a boy, to find himself in his own country from his position a man of consequence and in his own family the one flattered idol of a large and needy connexion. He married, too, so very young, a beautiful and a clever woman, but he had to educate her and then he thought his own pupil too perfect and she was as young as himself, utterly ignorant of the world and her temper often prevented her using her judgement. There is nothing like the school of adversity, how can we make up to our children for their never knowing it.
How will O’Connell talk of his recent failure? He drove to Belfast under a borrowed name and left it in fear of his life under the escort of the police. The ministry are weak and ridiculous and contemptible but they have not been wrong in not putting down O’Connell, it was wiser to let him annihilate himself.
No children at my school but three and the hedge school full to overflowing, the priests, the odious priests, their poor law guardian is persecuting every one who did not vote for him, rating their holdings too high and leaning very light on his friends. Hal had to go to John Hornidge about it, Tom Kelly being of course, under ban and having come to complain. Mary Dodson and many more were turned from the Chapel door at Black Ditches because they had not pennies to pay for entrance. It was shut in their face by Mr. Germaine himself and all they do is to change their chapel. Tom Darker says he knows a 100 would go to church to-morrow if they were not afraid of one another and of the little secrets told at confession. Wretched country.
MONDAY FEBRUARY 8. Hardly ever was more vexed than on hearing this morning of the folly of that nice girl Anne Fitzpatrick, whom I used to admire as much for her cleanliness and modesty and industry as for her beauty. She has never been quite herself since her handsome lover, Pat Hipps, the carpenter, jilted her for a little dumpy heiress with forty pounds and latterly annoyed her mother by allowing a shabby looking labouring lad, without house or home to dangle after her. Last Monday she said she was going to Mrs. Tyrrell’s to have a gown made. Instead of that she went to Judy Ryan’s where she was joined by Mary Dempsey and this beau—from thence the three set off for the young man’s mother’s where they remained till Friday when Anne returned home to announce that the young man would not marry her. When he was sent for he would condescend to take her with twenty pounds. Old Mrs. Fitzpatrick stood out, would give no money, sent off the man and kept her daughter, but she will give in at last, they all do. This is the common way of proceeding where the young people know the old people won’t approve of the match they are making, this whole business is just a sample of the principle of the moral Irish. The lad aware he had no pretensions to be openly received as a lover, steals away the girl, assisted by another girl and also by a relation, a mother herself who could so easily have detained the silly girl while she sent down here for her brother John.
15. Read the little Temperance tract sent by Aunt Lissy. If all people kept their baptismal vows there would be no need of any human laws to govern our Commonwealths and if all people could be sufficiently educated, probably in some thousand or two of years we might reach this perfection. But in the meanwhile with the higher orders absorbed in selfishness and the lower plunged in vice and ignorance any restraint on the most degrading and most pernicious of their evil habits must operate beneficially on their morals.
18. Waked by a light in the room which made me start, it was Hannah with a candle, in a cloke, come for the pass books for Paddy who was just starting for Dublin, about five o’clock. We advised him not to go, it was so boisterous, rain and wind so violent, but he went. In the paper a violent letter of Mr. O’Connell’s and equally inflammatory speech of his son John’s threatening the English with another Irish rebellion whenever America and France declare war.
19. Interrupted all day by visitors, Mrs. Hornidge and Mrs. Finnemor, most beautifully dressed, had they been six and thirty and going to a publick breakfast, painted and made up and falsified in every way, they would have looked very well on the stage by lamplight.
20. Such a beautiful morning. Hal off in great glee for a fox hunt. No Paddy, what can the old man be about? Made ourselves miserable all the evening because Paddy had not returned. Hal began to think he had absconded altogether with cart, mare and goods for America, & as he dropt from the clouds here, whether he were a rogue or an honest man was problematical and this might have been a temptation beyond his withstanding. I absolved the poor man of all trickery but I feared he might himself have been tricked. Like other great men he has a failing—a woman can do anything with him and as in the course of these excursions he don’t always meet with the best of the sex I feared his having been inveigled into some den while his cart was pillaged and we were calculating how we should ever make up such a heavy loss—in short we were most ingenious in tormenting ourselves and we really passed a most anxious evening, I could hardly play piquet, and Tom Darker gave us no comfort for about one o’clock he began to have his misgivings and Miss Cooper’s consolation was that Paddy had broken the pledge and was lying in the ditch and that the mare would be sure to bring the cart home. At eleven we went upstairs, Hal, once more opened the window to listen along the road and heard them at the gate of the yard, it was such a relief, Paddy and the mare quite sober, all right, so we drank a glass of beer to their health!
21. Paddy came to deliver his letters looking so decent, so clean, so well dressed, my heart smote me for having doubted him. The nursery man had caused the delay.
24. East wind, stupid post. Election begun for the King’s County, dreadful excitement, Priests as busy as bees and this time they must succeed for no Conservative
