Our Lord Lieutenant is giving splendid parties, acting most judiciously, winning his way steadily, his Levée was immense, 1500 persons, all parties, the largest ever known since George iv. held one. They began to set down at eleven and finished at half after four. Many could only get their cards sent up, many were stopped on their road to town from want of conveyances, all being overfilled, the procession reached from the Castle gates to beyond Merrion Square, five guineas given for a pair of horses, two guineas for a bed. And there was a list of nobility to which our little Court has for long been a stranger.
O’Connell was there as Lord Mayor and was agitated, either by his strange position or his cool reception so much that he forgot to take off his hat. I see by the papers to-day that he is quite concerned for his omission and makes an ample apology, nothing being further from his intentions than any appearance of disrespect. His tribute Sunday, the last, brought him in Dublin alone £2,000. What does he do with these enormous sums, the repeal rent etc.
I have got to the 7th volume of Chambers’ Journal, it is a library, and have gone through many of the little works published as his educational course, some numbers of the Dublin University Magazine with more of Charles O’Malley11 of whom I am near tired in spite of the inimitable Baby Blake, ‘Two years before the Mast’ stupidly interesting, and now am much taken with some stories by Mrs. S. C. Hall admirably illustrative of low Irish character in which there is so much good even great combined with serious evil and a perversity there is no overcoming in this generation at any rate.
We had a great party here last night down in the kitchen in honour of Aunt Jane’s wedding. Upstairs only a glass of champaign round to the health of the happy pair, but below a grand entertainment. Tea, coffee, round of cold beef, slim cakes, bread and butter and a glass of sherry each to those who were not teetotallers. The company were the six house servants and the four outsides and Paddy and Peggy Dodson. And talking them over Hal and I began to reckon how many individuals we with our small means entirely supported, it surprised us how many we helped and there we stopt. Well spent money, better employed than in dress or fine furniture or feasting, for I am not yet a convert to the axiom that the spender no matter on what is always a benefactor, I can’t help thinking there should be method in distribution.
26. The Colonel seized in the most unaccountable manner with asthma, the worst fit he has had for years. Once or twice the violence of the spasm was quite painful to witness. We can no way account for the attack except that drinking Jane’s health in champaign and Constantia might have deranged his stomach and the cold ride to Donard hurt him afterwards. There we were, however, all day a pretty pair, both perfectly helpless, he in his chair, I on my sofa. The Doctor came to sympathize but he could only preach patience, he had no cure for either.
27. John Robinson has arrived for the November rents, looking well. Miss Cooper has settled his counting room for him and the Tenants are waiting. John made us quite happy in the evening by his account of the tenants, trying to farmers as the season has been with the untoward weather and mortality among the cattle, they have paid well, are all forwarder than they were this time last year and so decently dressed, clean, whole, comfortable looking, many of them with good cloth body coats and all good frieze coats, very different indeed from the ragged crew that welcomed me to Baltiboys just ten years ago this past October. It makes one feel very happy to see such improvement year by year among old and young, it is worth some personal sacrifice if indeed it can be called sacrifice to substitute the substantial pleasures resulting from properly fulfilled duties for mere selfish gratifications.
28. All off to church in hopes of hearing Mr. Moore. And here am I useless to everyone, however, I think, read and reflect, lay plans for more active future days. Above all not to lose temper with the ignorant, keeping in mind how much stronger prejudices must be in those who have seen little, learned less and are naturally indisposed to an heretick and a stranger. John came up to our room after tea and talked very agreeably till bedtime. And we were all in high spirits, very different from last year when at this time before the rents came in we owed John upwards of a hundred pounds, and now it is the other way for we have a balance to that amount in our favour.
30. Unable to get up, Hal better, still he had to sit up for two hours in the night. I sometimes think I sha’n’t get through rightly, these throwbacks are disagreeable, but I will do all in my power by patient obedience to rules to ensure the health and safety of the poor little creature that is trying mine and the issue is in God Almighty’s hands.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1. I was very wrong to grumble yesterday when I can write, read and work really very comfortably, and am in no pain, even did all my accounts this morning, paid my debts, balanced my books and am all in order for another month or so.
From Mr. Gardiner I have a most miserable account of poor unhappy Mary. He has been in great anxiety, not without reason, and now though she is better the relief is but temporary, disease is there, checked for the present, but ready to proceed quick or slow according to the care she can be induced to take of herself. With a firmer character than Mr. Gardiner’s to support her Mary might have been healthy, happy, deserving. As it is all her perverse dispositions have actually been fostered by his weak indulgence into inveterate habits of the most baneful tendency, and she who might have been the charm of all connected with her from her wit, her beauty, her grace and her natural kindness of heart only exists in a foreign land in broken health, low spirits, really the object of our pity.
A diseased craving for admiration is at the bottom of all her unhappiness, a growing want of excitement, a gradual disinclination to home pursuits, a wilfulness that would bear no contradiction all followed, tight lacing, thin shoes, an exposed form, late and irregular hours, a disregard of everything but momentary pleasure combined with a system of rich and savoury and improper eating such as in a woman is seldom even imagined, have all ended in such complete derangement of the system from indigestion that I do not see how it is probable for her constitution to stand it. Wayward she was from her birth, my father however controulled her into a creature that was the charm of our young lives, poor Mary, when I think of her in Highland days with her winning smile and her graceful ways and her clear bright beauty I feel she is not the same pure hearted being now, and in grief I write it, is it a consolation to think constitutional mental infirmity has much to do with it.
2. Hal a good night — I slept ill and was feverish and restless, to be expected with such an inactive life. A charming hunt, the Colonel home late in such spirits, rode forty miles.
3. A hurricane half the night, the meadows all flooded this morning, a fine day. Hal slept like a top all night, I pretty well considering, on the sofa again. Tom Darker sent me word he never knew the Colonel ride as he did yesterday, he thought he would kill the mare, he was in such spirits too.
9. This vigorous government has brought peace already, agitation now is such a mere farce that it must soon cease altogether, every one appearing tired of it, the [Repeal] rent too has been a perfect failure, smaller sums than usual collected in the most repealing neighbourhoods, none at all in some places, in others a refusal to allow of it. There is a great change coming over Irish minds most certainly, the most remarkable move being among the priesthood with whom alone any great change for good can originate; those of us who live for twenty years will see better times arising. In the meanwhile letters and pamphlets are [published] by priests and laymen, nobles and others, and the Executive doing its part well, getting quit of as much jobbing as possible, ten stipendiary magistrates dismissed, twenty more to follow, the whole magistracy to be revised, the whole Poor Law scandals to be put an end to. This bad weather, and with me a prisoner to my room we actually live on the post, the penny letters are delightful, and the Evening Mail which always picks up any news going, the London papers say little.
11. Jane sends me an Inverness paper in which is a paragraph with which she is evidently