Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of
the best of them says all this agitation has "killed the trade of the
place." I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families
are beginning seriously to demand that the "reduction screw" shall be
applied to other things besides rent. "A very decent farmer," he says,
"only last week stood up in the shop and said it was 'a shame the
shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to
sixpence!'"
This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of
things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of
his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to
dismiss a number of his attendants. "When a man finds he is taking in
ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but
pull up pretty short?" As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the
mechanics. "They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are
expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on
painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don't go to
the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that
have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we?
Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin's house, we used
regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets
and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make
nothing!"
It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis to Edenvale--and
Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine
wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river
flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house--a river
alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs
of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and
the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the
storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced
gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches
ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further
bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is
soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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