Memorials and Other Papers — CompleteDe Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Complete
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
illuminated, that Lady Carbery would take all her visitors once or
twice a week to admire it. On the other hand, at Westport you might
fancy yourself overlooking the establishment of some Albanian Pacha.
Crowds of irregular helpers and grooms, many of them totally
unrecognized by Lord Altamont, some half countenanced by this or that
upper servant, some doubtfully tolerated, some _not_ tolerated,
but nevertheless slipping in by postern doors when the enemy had
withdrawn, made up a strange mob as regarded the human element in this
establishment. And Dean Browne regularly asserted that five out of six
amongst these helpers he himself could swear to as active boys from
Vinegar Hill. Trivial enough, meantime, in our eyes, was any little
matter of rebellion that they might have upon their consciences. High
treason we willingly winked at. But what we could _not_ wink at
was the systematic treason which they committed against our comfort,
namely, by teaching our horses all imaginable tricks, and training them
up in the way along which they should _not_ go, so that when they
were old they were very little likely to depart from it. Such a set of
restive, hard-mouthed wretches as Lord Westport and I daily had to
bestride, no tongue could describe. There was a cousin of Lord
Westport's, subsequently created Lord Oranmore, distinguished for his
horsemanship, and always splendidly mounted from his father's stables
at Castle M'Garret, to whom our stormy contests with ruined tempers and
vicious habits yielded a regular comedy of fun; and, in order to
improve it, he would sometimes bribe Lord Westport's treacherous groom
into misleading us, when floundering amongst bogs, into the interior
labyrinths of these morasses. Deep, however, as the morass, was this
man's remorse when, on leaving Westport, I gave him the heavy golden
perquisite, which my mother (unaware of the tricks he had practised
upon me) had by letter instructed me to give. He was a mere savage boy
from the central bogs of Connaught, and, to the great amusement of Lord
Westport, he persisted in calling me "your majesty" for the rest of
that day; and by all other means open to him he expressed his
penitence. But the dean insisted that, no matter for his penitence in
the matter of the bogs, he had certainly carried a pike at Vinegar
Hill; and probably had stolen a pair of boots at Furnes, when he kindly
made a call at the Deanery, in passing through that place to the field
of battle. It is always a pleasure to see the engineer of mischief
"hoist with his own petard;" [Footnote: "Hamlet," but also "Ovid:"--
"Lex nec justior ulla est, **Quam necis artifices arte perire sua."]
and it happened that the horses assigned to draw a post-chariot
carrying Lord Westport, myself, and the dean, on our return journey to
Dublin, were a pair utterly ruined by a certain under-postilion, named
Moran. This particular ruin did Mr. Moran boast to have contributed as
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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