in to the Sessions having heard a bad account of Judy Ryan and her sister big Ellen quarrelling and fighting and drinking, taken up by the police at last.
16. Hal off on a crusade against the impertinent interference of the Roman Catholic priest with his tenantry, party work, political scheming beginning here where till now we never had any of it. Tenants who voted with and for their landlord denounced from the altar, harrassed in every way. So on the priest and on the tenants the Colonel means to call, to request of the first not to trouble themselves with what should not concern them, to tell the second to mind what they are about, to inform all that such as are not thoroughly for him he shall henceforth consider as against him and treat accordingly, he never till now interfered with them one way or another, but war having been proclaimed he will not blink the fight. If there were more like him we should not have the country priest-ridden the way it is. The poor people are well inclined and would be happy and prosperous if those vile priests would let them alone. Well, he found Father Ricard the curate at home, Father Germaine was not at home, and he told him quite plainly all he had heard and all he thought of what he had heard and all he certainly should do in consequence and he does not think they will continue their agitation hereabouts. At first the little priest tried to shuffle off the accusation but at last he was obliged to admit its truth though he excused it as an incidental flourish in an admonitory harangue concerning dues which I am delighted to find they are beginning to find some difficulty in collecting.
Mrs. John Hornidge called looking most wretched, so very fine too, just like a corpse dressed up for the grave in Italy in all the family splendour!
17. These wild people all gone mad, nothing but fighting in Baltiboys during these odious holidays. Andy Hyland beat and bruised in a most shocking manner by four strangers on the Ballymore road who insisted they owed him a beating though they would not say for what. Red Paddy Quin and big Pat his cousin a regular fight unknown for what. Pat Ryan and James Ryan both on lame James Quin for some mistake about a cart. Pat Ryan and Paddy the gardener at midnight on Monday quarrelling in Blesinton breaking people’s windows keeping half the town up. Judy Ryan and her sister Ellen throwing pewter pots at some men’s heads in a publick house and worst of all Dempsey his four daughters, George Cairns, his wife, and others setting on James Ryan with stones and broomsticks and pitch forks because they were displeased at his having hired a certain field. Shall we live to tame in any degree such savages.
18. Lovely day, played with Johnny, saw the little girls off on the donkeys for the post, then went to put away the clean clothes and then to start on my tour of lecturing. Pat Ryan and Judy his wife, James Ryan and his wife, George Cairns and his wife, Bryan Dempsey three of his daughters and two sons, Mary Dodson, Judy Ryan etc. all required it and all got it, all acknowledged they were wrong but did not seem inclined to do right again, all thanked me for the respect shown them in my taking the trouble to come to speak to them, none were uncivil, so I shall continue paying this respect in hopes that by constantly showing an interest in them and watching over them and advising them kindly we may in time improve their tempers. If I could but keep the women quiet, make them peace-makers instead of wranglers, keepers at home instead of gadders abroad and induce them to have their homes comfortable. We shall see, live in hope as they say, but these people are so untamed, and then their unfortunate religion and those priests.
27. A great parcel of Club books, came, Sydney Smith’s works10 in three octave volumes. Life of Sir Walter Scott in ten small ones.11 I had read this last before with such pleasure that I look forward to many delightful evenings reading it aloud. We began it after tea, read the fragment by Sir Walter himself with much interest and Mr. Lockhart’s stupid first chapter. It is more pleasant to me than to many from my knowing so many of the people mentioned. William Clerk so intimate at my father’s, so clever, alas! that I should have to add so indolent. I recollect one summer evening that he was drinking tea with us when we lived in George street that he was describing the confession of a felon who was on trial for murder which he related in so impressive a manner that when he drew the paper knife across [my sister] Mary’s throat in illustration of the story half of us screamed with horrour so entirely had he rivetted our attention. His memory was so extraordinary his information so extensive that people unable to believe that he really did know everything accused him of reading in the morning to prepare a set of subjects and then artfully turning the conversation at dinner like Sheridan to the point that suited him. If he had talked less one might have fancied this but he never let anything pass as far as I remember and we met him almost daily for years.
He was an oddity like his still cleverer brother Lord Eldin, so were the delightful old sisters, all of them foolishly fond of animals, the house was full of beasts, cats in pelisses, dogs in spencers, eating and drinking all over the rooms, often sitting on the tops of their heads and their shoulders. Lord Eldin had a most valuable collection of pictures, his whole house was one gallery, his port-folios of sketches were still more valuable, he had no greater pleasure in a spare hour than looking over some of these treasures even with us young people, explaining to us the beauties of the art and the defects of the particular painter.12 Edinburgh was in those days a school for the young mind to be formed in. I did not make the use I might have done of very uncommon opportunities, but it was impossible for the most careless not to derive permanent benefit from constant intercourse with society so talented.
28. Lovely and very busy day Hal off to the Sessions, then one of the school children ran down to say the Inspector had arrived there so Jane Cooper [the governess], the little girls and I went up to meet him. He is newly appointed to this district and expressed himself much pleased with the size and cheerfulness of the room, the cleanliness of the children whose appearance he considered superiour to any he had seen. His wife who examined the work praised it highly, she had seen some as neat, none so clean. I mentioned several things to him in which I considered the Board had not used me fairly and he gave me good hopes of redress in time, more particularly as to assistance towards the repairs of the schoolhouse which thus encouraged I shall apply for again.
Hal’s Sessions business was a grand affair. Kearns and Dempsey and James Ryan and all their assistants and all their witnesses, furious with one another, Dempsey most impudent to the Colonel who made him make a most ample apology in open Court. How low is morality among these people. Kearns let his grazing to James Ryan and knew that Ryan was to pay the money for it to the Colonel to whom Kearns owed that and much more for rent. Two days after he let the same ground to Dempsey and accompanied him to John Robinson’s office in Dublin and saw him there pay the hire of it. Dempsey knowing of the former transaction as many persons say though he has sworn a solemn oath on the Testament that he did not. It is all very shocking.
29. It is singular that with the great intimacy described by Mr. Lockhart to have existed between Lord Jeffrey13 and Sir Walter Scott that so constantly as we, that is [my sister] Jane and I, were with Lord Jeffrey, almost living at Craig Crook during the summer months, I never saw Sir Walter there nor in all our many delightful conversations did I ever hear his name mentioned. Not so William Clerk, his intimacy with Scott certainly was not so close in after life as it had been in their earlier days, but it continued and I often heard him talk of Abbottsford (sic) and of the novels which he never hesitated to affirm bore internal evidence of their Authour till he was let into the secret when he never afterwards gave an opinion upon them. Tommy Thompson14 too had cooled in his friendship and many other Whigs, probably politicks divided these clever men, for party then ran very high in Scotland. People in Edinburgh were also apt to get into sets, and to have so many engagements with one another that they really had no leisure to spend out of their own circle.
