Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

by Charles James Lever

We dined everywhere, from that viceregal palace in a swamp, to the musty halls of the Chief Secretary in the Castle. We partook of a civic feast, a picnic at the waterfall; we had one day with the military! And here, by the way, I recognized an old acquaintance of other days, the Hon. Captain De Courcy. He was still on the staff, and still constant to his ancient flame, who, with a little higher complexion and more profuse ringlets,—it is strange how color and hair go on increasing with years,—looked pretty much what I remembered her of yore.

“You had better wait for your groom, Mons. Le Comte,” said De Courcy to me at the review, as I was dismounting to speak to some people in the crowd of carriages. “Don't trust those fellows. I once had a valuable mare stolen by one of those vagrants, and, what was worse, the rascal rode her at a steeplechase the same day.”

“Pas possible!” exclaimed I, at the bare thought of such an indignity. “What became of the young villain?”

“I forget, now, whether I let him off, or whether he was publicly whipped; but I am certain he never came to good.”

I felt a flush of anger rise to my cheek at this speech, but I checked my passion; and well I might, as I thought upon my own condition and upon his. To have expended any interest or sympathy as to the boy, besides, would have been absurd, and I was silent. Among our invitations, was one to the house of a baronet who resided in a midland county, only a few miles from my native place. We arrived at night at Knockdangan Castle, an edifice of modern gothic style, which means a marvellously expensive residence, rendered almost uninhabitable by the necessity of having winding stairs, narrow corridors, low ceilings, and pointed windows. The house was full of company, the greater part of whom had arrived unexpectedly; still, our reception was everything that genial hospitality could dictate. One of the drawing-rooms had been already converted into a kind of barrack-room, with half-a-dozen beds in it; and now the library was to be devoted to the Prince, while a small octagon tower leading off it, about the size and shape of a tea-tray, was reserved for me. If these arrangements were attended with inconvenience, certainly nothing in the manner of either host or hostess showed it. They and their numerous family of sons and daughters seemed to take it as the most natural thing in life to be thrown into disorder to accommodate their friends; not alone their friends, but their friends' friends: for so proved more than half of the present company. Several of “the boys,” meaning the sons of the host, slept at houses in the neighborhood; we actually bivouacked in a little temple in the garden. There seemed no limit to the contrivances of our kind entertainers, either in the variety of the plans for pleasure, or the hearty good-nature with which they concurred in any suggestion of the guests. All that Spanish politeness expresses, as a phrase, was here reduced to actual practice. Everything was at the disposal of the stranger. Not alone was he at liberty to ride, drive, fish, shoot, hunt, boat, or course at will, but all his hours were at his own disposal, and his liberty unfettered, even as to whether he dined in his own apartment, or joined the general company. Nothing that the most courteous attention could provide was omitted, at the same time that the most ample freedom was secured to all. Here, too, was found a tone of cultivation that would have graced the most polished society of any European capital. Foreign languages were well understood and spoken; music practised in its higher walks; drawing cultivated with a skill rarely seen out of the hands of professed masters; subjects of politics and general literature were discussed with a knowledge and a liberality that bespoke the highest degree of enlightenment; while to all these gifts the general warmth of native character lent an indescribable charm of kindliness and cordiality that left none a stranger who spent even twelve hours beneath their roof.

The Prince was in ecstasies with everything and every one, and he himself no less a favorite with all. Every fall he got in hunting made him more popular; every misadventure that occurred to him, in trying to conform to native tastes, gave a new grace and charm to his character. The ladies pronounced him “a love,” and the men, in less polished, but not less hearty, encomium, called him “a devilish good fellow for a Frenchman.”

The habits I have already alluded to, of each guest living exactly how he pleased, gave a continual novelty to the company; sometimes two or three new faces would appear at the dinner-table or in the drawing-room, and conjecture was ever at work whether the last arrivals had been yet seen, and who were they who presented themselves at table?

“You will meet two new guests to-day, Count,” said the host one day, as we entered the drawing-room before dinner: “a Spanish Bishop and his niece,—a very charming person, and a widow of nineteen! They came over to Ireland about some disputed question of property,—being originally Irish by family,—and are now, I regret to say, about to return to Spain in a few days. Hitherto a severe cold has confined the Bishop to his chamber; and his niece, not being, I fancy, a proficient in any but her native language, had not courage to face a miscellaneous party. They will both, however, favor us to-day; and as you are the only one here who can command the 'true Castilian tongue,' you will take the Countess in to dinner.”

I bowed my acknowledgments, not sorry to have the occasion of displaying my Spanish and playing the agreeable to my fair countrywoman.

The drawing-room each day before dinner had no other light than that afforded by a great fire of bog deal, which, although diffusing a rich and ruddy glow over all who sat within the circle around it, left the remainder of the apartment in comparative darkness; and few, except those very intimate, were able to recognize each other in the obscurity. Whether this was a whim of the host, or a pardonable artifice to make the splendor of the well-lighted dinner-table more effective, on the principle of orators, who begin at a whisper to create silence, I know not, but we used to jest over the broken shins and upset spider tables that each day announced the entrance of some guest less familiarized to the geography of the apartment.