Impatient to see my own castle, I left Dublin. I was again astonished by
the beauty of the prospects, and the excellence of the roads. I had in
my ignorance believed that I was never to see a tree in Ireland,
and that the roads were almost impassable. With the promptitude of
credulity, I now went from one extreme to the other: I concluded that
we should travel with the same celerity as upon the Bath road; and I
expected, that a journey for which four days had been allotted might be
performed in two. Like all those who have nothing to do any where, I was
always in a prodigious hurry to get from place to place; and I ever had
a noble ambition to go over as much ground as possible in a given space
of time. I travelled in a light barouche, and with my own horses. My own
man (an Englishman), and my cook (a Frenchman), followed in a hackney
chaise; I cared not how, so that they kept up with me; the rest was
their affair. At night, my gentleman complained bitterly of the Irish
post carriages, and besought me to let him follow at an easier rate the
next day; but to this I could by no means consent: for how could I exist
without my own man and my French cook? In the morning, just as I
was ready to set off, and had thrown myself back in my carriage, my
Englishman and Frenchman came to the door, both in so great a rage, that
the one was inarticulate and the other unintelligible. At length the
object of their indignation spoke for itself. From the inn yard came a
hackney chaise, in a most deplorable crazy state; the body mounted up
to a prodigious height, on unbending springs, nodding forwards, one door
swinging open, three blinds up, because they could not be let down, the
perch tied in two places, the iron of the wheels half off, half loose,
wooden pegs for linch-pins, and ropes for harness. The horses were
worthy of the harness; wretched little dog-tired creatures, that looked
as if they had been driven to the last gasp, and as if they had never
been rubbed down in their lives; their bones starting through their
skin; one lame, the other blind; one with a raw back, the other with a
galled breast; one with his neck poking down over his collar, and the
other with his head dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at
arm’s length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, in half a hat and half
a wig, both awry in opposite directions; a long tattered great-coat,
tied round his waist by a hay-rope; the jagged rents in the skirts of
his coat showing his bare legs marbled of many colours; while something
like stockings hung loose about his ankles. The noises he made by way of
threatening or encouraging his steeds, I pretend not to describe.
In an indignant voice I called to the landlord, “I hope these are not
the horses--I hope this is not the chaise, intended for my servants.”
The innkeeper, and the pauper who was preparing to officiate as
postilion, both in the same instant exclaimed, “_Sorrow_ better chaise
in the county!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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