Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

by Charles James Lever

Now, although my French would have passed muster from Cannes to Caen, my English had something of the idiomatic peculiarity of the gentleman just alluded to; and were I only to speak once in Ireland, I must be inevitably detected. There was then no choice for it; I must even consent to talk through an interpreter,—a rather dull situation for a man about to “tour it” in Ireland!

As the Prince's journey was a secret in Paris, our arrangements were made with great caution and despatch. We travelled down to Boulogne with merely one other companion, an old Colonel Demaunais, who had been for some years a prisoner in England, and spoke English fluently, and with only three servants; there was nothing in our “cortège” betraying the rank of his Royal Highness.

Apartments had been prepared for us at Mivart's, and we dined each day at the French Embassy,—going to the Opera in the evening, and sight-seeing all the forenoon, like genuine “country cousins.” The Court was in Scotland; but even had it been in London, I conclude that the Prince would have been received in some mode which should not have attracted publicity.

Ten days sufficed for “town,” and we set out for Ireland, to visit which his Royal Highness was all impatience and eagerness.

Never can I forget the sensations with which I landed on that shore, which, about a dozen years before, I had quitted barefooted and hungry! Was the change alone in me; or what had come over the objects, to make them so very different from what they once were? The hotel that I remembered to have regarded as a kind of palace, where splendor and profusion prevailed, seemed now dirty and uncared-for; the waiters slovenly, the landlord rude, the apartments mean, and the food detestable! The public itself, as it paraded on the pier, was not that gorgeous panorama I once saw there,—the mingled elegance and fashion I used to regard with such eyes of wonderment and envy. What had become of them? Good looks there were, and in abundance,—for Irish women will be pretty, no matter what changes come over the land; but the men! good lack, what a strange aspect did they present! Without the air of fashion you see in Paris, or that more strongly marked characteristic of style and manliness the parks of London exhibit, here were displayed a kind of swaggering self-sufficiency whose pretension was awfully at variance with the mediocrity of their dress, and the easy jocularity that leered from their eyes. Some were aquatics, and wore Jersey shirts and frocks, loose trousers, and low shoes; but they overdid their parts, and lounged like Tom Cooke in a sea-piece.

Others appeared as élégans, and were even greater burlesques on the part. It was quite clear, however, that these formed no portion of the better classes of the capital, and so I hastened to assure the Prince, whose looks bespoke very palpable disappointment.

In Dublin, however, the changes were greater than I expected. It was not alone that I had seen other and greater capitals, where affluence and taste abound, and where, while the full tide of fashion sets “in” in one quarter, the still more exciting course of activity and industry flows along in another; but here an actual decline had taken place in the appearance of everything. The shops, the streets, the inhabitants, all looked in disrepair. There were few carriages, nothing deserving the name of equipage,—none of that stir and movement which characterize a capital. It all looked like a place where people dwelt to wear out their old houses and old garments, and to leave both behind them when no longer wearable. Windows mended with paper, pantaloons patched with party-colored cloth, “shocking bad hats,” mangy car-drivers, and great troops of beggars of every age and walk of mendicancy, were met with even in the best quarters; and with all these signs of poverty and decay, there was an air of swaggering recklessness in every one that was particularly striking. All were out of temper with England and English rule; and “Ireland for the Irish” was becoming a popular cant phrase,—pretty much on the same principle that blacklegs extinguish the lights when luck goes against them, and have a scramble for “the bank” in the dark. The strangest of all was, however, that nobody seemed to have died or left the place since I remembered it as a boy. There went the burly barrister down Bachelor's Walk, with the same sturdy stride I used to admire of yore,—his cheek a little redder, his presence somewhat more portly, perhaps, but with the self-same smile with which he then cajoled the jury, and that imposing frown with which he repelled the freedom of a witness. There were the same civic magistrates, the same attorneys, dancing-masters,—ay, even the dandies had not been replaced, but were the old crop, sadly running to seed, and marvellously ill cared for.

Even the Castle officials were beautifully consistent, and true to their old traditions; they were as empty and insolent as ever. It was the English pale performed over again at the Upper Castle Yard, and all without its limits were the kerns and “wild Irish” of centuries ago.

How is a craft like this ever to take the sea, thought I, with misery and mutiny everywhere! With six feet of water in the hold, the crew are turning out for higher wages, and ready to throw overboard the man who counsels them to put a hand to the pump!

But what had I to do with all this? Nor would I allude to it here, save to mention the straits and difficulties which beset me, to account for changes that I had never anticipated.