Paddy at Home ("Chez Paddy")

by baron de E. Mandat-Grancey

In this way I received so many invitations, that, naturally being unable to accept them all, I was involved in a serious amount of work before I could ascertain which was the most authentic case. I proceeded to eliminate them. For instance, one amiable landlord, who has not received one penny from his farms for two or three years, about a fortnight ago received as compensation three shots in his hat in one evening, whilst he was driving his dog-cart along the road. This at first appeared to be a serious claim; but I soon changed my impression. Mr. X—— was actually fired at, but the shot was intended for one of his neighbours. His servant never doubted it for an instant. When he heard the shot whistling past his ears he turned round, and furiously apostrophising the assassin whom they saw running away across a field, he shouted out—

“You fool, to take his honour for Mr. Z——! Have you no eyes?”

Then, when his first anger had passed, he turned towards his master and amicably admonished him.

“There,” he said, “your honour is wrong! You know that Mr. Z—— has been condemned by the League, and yet you drive out in the dusk with a grey horse as like Mr. Z——’s as two drops of water. It isn’t reasonable. A poor fellow can easily make a mistake!”

And on the next morning Mr. X—— received by post a letter signed “Captain Moonlight,” confirming in every respect his servant’s explanation. The Captain much regretted his agent’s mistake, and congratulated himself on the fortunate want of skill which had prevented an “accident,” which he could never have forgiven himself, ending his letter by advising his correspondent in a friendly way to get rid of his grey horse or to leave it in the stables for some time.

The first duty of a really patriotic traveller is to point out to the merchants of his own country every good thing that may present itself to him. I therefore notify Parisian horse-dealers that for the last fortnight grey horses were sold for next to nothing in this country. But this is a digression, which I hope will be pardoned on account of the sentiment which inspired it. I said then that these explanations appeared to me to diminish the value of Mr. X——’s claim to the title of “severely boycotted;” in my opinion those of Mr. Z—— are superior. But since he hastened to Italy, where he wished to visit some of the museums, and his return still appears to be indefinitely postponed, I am forced to renounce the idea of studying the beauties of boycottage at his house.

At last I discovered the object of my search. Mr. Thompson is one of the principal agents in County Cork; he is unquestionably boycotted, and if only one half of what is reported in the newspapers about him is true, he is quite as “severely” so as any one could wish; for during the last eighteen months it has been necessary to place a garrison of seventy-five men in his house. It has but just been withdrawn, and will probably be replaced. Mr. Thompson, with whom I had been put in communication, immediately and with the greatest kindness wrote to invite me to stay with him, only he begged me not to arrive before Monday. I had therefore three days to spend at Ballinacourty. I was, however, only too pleased with the delay, which allowed me to enjoy Colonel M——’s charming hospitality a little longer, and to see a little of that country life, which differs so much in England from anything of the same kind in France, and which—must I own it?—is so much more agreeable.

This morning I went for a walk alone to see the country and talk at leisure to the peasantry. My first visit is always to the Shannon; through my open windows, I can hear in the night the roaring of its cascades. Its banks are covered with superb trees, and nothing is more charming than a walk there in the morning. It can only be made by passing through private grounds, for from here to Castle Connell the whole country between the high road and the river is occupied by the parks of seven or eight castles or country houses. But in this country the owners seem to invite you to enter their properties. Everywhere you find hurdle fences or gates always standing open.

I own that I was first attracted by the fly-fishing. Amongst us a fisherman is nearly always an elderly man for whom life has ceased to have illusions. He likes solitude, and consoles himself by the society of the gudgeons in place of the mortifications of an existence passed on the stool of a bureau or in the thick atmosphere of a back shop; the fraternity is also recruited by a number of retired officers; there are even some old captains of the line who belong to it, but they are in bad odour with the general inspectors and are never promoted to a superior rank.

English fishermen are very different. That which amongst us is almost regarded as the first halting-place in the progress towards the final softening of the brain, is, on the contrary, amongst our neighbours, considered a brevet of supreme elegance. Angling is one of their most-appreciated sports. A whole literature is devoted to it. When a young cavalry guardsman can announce to his comrades, towards the month of June, that he has obtained three weeks’ leave to go and install himself in a hut in Sweden, on the banks of a stream where he can get some fly-fishing, he becomes the object of secret envy amongst all his less fortunate comrades. If a French novelist made one of his heroes enjoy fly-fishing, you would feel sure that he is a husband, who would be abominably deceived before the third chapter; when an English one wishes to explain the lightning flash that kindled in Miss Kissmequick’s heart an inane love for the lively Irish Major O’Kelshick, he describes him taking three trout in ten minutes before the young heiress! That is quite enough to subjugate her, and not an English girl reads it but she inwardly owns that it would be quite enough for her too!