There is something almost treacherous in the facility with which an Irish girl receives your early attentions and appears to like them, that invariably turns a young fellow’s head very long before he has any prospect of touching her heart. She thinks it so natural to be made love to, that there is neither any affected coyness nor any agitated surprise. She listens to your declaration of love as quietly as the chief justice would to one of law, and refers the decision to a packed jury of her relatives, who rarely recommend you to mercy. Love and fighting, too, are so intimately united in Ireland, that a courtship rarely progresses without at least one exchange of shots between some of the parties concerned. My first twenty-four hours in Dublin is so pleasantly characteristic of this that I may as well relate it here, while the subject is before us; besides, as these “Confessions” are intended as warnings and guides to youth, I may convey a useful lesson, showing why a man should not “make love in the dark.”
It was upon a raw, cold, drizzling morning in February, 18—, that our regiment landed on the North-wall from Liverpool, whence we had been hurriedly ordered to repress some riots and disturbances then agitating Dublin.
We marched to the Royal Barracks, our band playing Patrick’s Day, to the very considerable admiration of as naked a population as ever loved music. The —th dragoons were at the same time quartered there—right pleasant jovial fellows, who soon gave us to understand that the troubles were over before we arrived, and that the great city authorities were now returning thanks for their preservation from fire and sword, by a series of entertainments of the most costly, but somewhat incongruous kind—the company being scarce less melee than the dishes. Peers and playactors, judges and jailors, archbishops, tailors, attorneys, ropemakers and apothecaries, all uniting in the festive delight of good feeding, and drinking the “glorious memory”—but of whom half the company knew not, only surmising “it was something agin the papists.” You may smile, but these were pleasant times, and I scarcely care to go back there since they were changed. But to return. The —th had just received an invitation to a ball, to be given by the high sheriff, and to which they most considerately said we should also be invited. This negociation was so well managed that before noon we all received our cards from a green liveried youth, mounted on a very emaciated pony—the whole turn-out not auguring flatteringly of the high sheriff’s taste in equipage.
We dined with the —th, and, as customary before going to an evening party, took the “other bottle” of claret that lies beyond the frontier of prudence. In fact, from the lieutenant-colonel down to the newly-joined ensign, there was not a face in the party that did not betray “signs of the times” that boded most favourably for the mirth of the sheriff’s ball. We were so perfectly up to the mark, that our major, a Connemara man, said, as we left the mess-room, “a liqueure glass would spoil us.”
In this acme of our intellectual wealth, we started about eleven o’clock upon every species of conveyance that chance could press into the service. Of hackney coaches there were few—but in jingles, noddies, and jaunting-cars, with three on a side and “one in the well,” we mustered strong—Down Barrack-street we galloped, the mob cheering us, we laughing, and I’m afraid shouting a little, too—the watchmen springing their rattles, as if instinctively at noise, and the whole population up and awake, evidently entertaining a high opinion of our convivial qualities. Our voices became gradually more decorous, however, as we approached the more civilized quarter of the town; and with only the slight stoppage of the procession to pick up an occasional dropper-off, as he lapsed from the seat of a jaunting-car, we arrived at length at our host’s residence, somewhere in Sackville-street.
Had our advent conferred the order of knighthood upon the host, he could not have received us with more “empressement.” He shook us all in turn by the hand, to the number of eight and thirty, and then presented us seriatim to his spouse, a very bejewelled lady of some forty years—who, what between bugles, feathers, and her turban, looked excessively like a Chinese pagoda upon a saucer. The rooms were crowded to suffocation—the noise awful—and the company crushing and elbowing rather a little more than you expect where the moiety are of the softer sex. However, “on s’habitue a tout,” sayeth the proverb, and with truth, for we all so perfectly fell in with the habits of the place, that ere half an hour, we squeezed, ogled, leered, and drank champagne like the rest of the corporation.
“Devilish hot work, this,” said the colonel, as he passed me with two rosy-cheeked, smiling ladies on either arm; “the mayor—that little fellow in the punch-coloured shorts—has very nearly put me hors de combat with champagne; take care of him, I advise you.”
Tipsy as I felt myself, I was yet sufficiently clear to be fully alive to the drollery of the scene before me. Flirtations that, under other circumstances, would demand the secrecy and solitude of a country green lane, or some garden bower, were here conducted in all the open effrontery of wax lights and lustres; looks were interchanged, hands were squeezed, and soft things whispered, and smiles returned; till the intoxication of “punch negus” and spiced port, gave way to the far greater one of bright looks and tender glances. Quadrilles and country dances—waltzing there was none, (perhaps all for the best)—whist, backgammon, loo—unlimited for uproar—sandwiches, and warm liquors, employed us pretty briskly till supper was announced, when a grand squeeze took place on the stairs—the population tending thitherward with an eagerness that a previous starvation of twenty-four hours could alone justify. Among this dense mass of moving muslin, velvet and broad-cloth, I found myself chaperoning an extremely tempting little damsel, with a pair of laughing blue eyes and dark eyelashes, who had been committed to my care and guidance for the passage.
“Miss Moriarty, Mr. Lorrequer,” said an old lady in green and spangles, who I afterwards found was the lady mayoress.
“The nicest girl in the room,” said a gentleman with a Tipperary accent, “and has a mighty nice place near Athlone.”