It was a severe winter: the very day after the Earl set out from Lismore there began to fall at Clonmell “the greatest snow that ever any man now living did see in Ireland.” The House of Lismore must have stood, very white and quiet, looking down over the precipice into the swirling Blackwater below it. All about it, white and silent too, lay the gardens and orchards, the fishponds and park lands, and the wooded wildernesses; and the mountains beyond were hidden in falling snows. The roads could not have been easy riding between Clonmell and Dublin, but the Earl and his servants reached Dublin in safety, and he sent back by Dungarvan’s man “two new books of Logick” for the versatile Kynalmeaky’s further education.
Kildare had come back to Dublin also, and not too soon; for he and his young wife were to make up their differences over a little grave. Early in March their eldest little girl died under the Earl’s roof in Dublin; and a few days later Lady Kildare’s boy was born—the “young master” of Wentworth’s vindictive letter to Laud.
But spring was at hand, and the Lismore orchards were in blossom. The Earl was busy buying more lands and manors to be settled on Robyn, and writing to his English friends about a “ffrench gent” to accompany his sons Kynalmeaky and Broghill as “governour” on their foreign travels. Great sheet-winged hawks, also, were brought “to fflye for our sports”; and in July Lord Clifford and his suite arrived from Yorkshire on a visit to Lismore. The Earl of Cork was in his element. A great hunting-party had been arranged, and the huntsmen filled the lodge in the park. Dungarvan and his wife—Lord Clifford’s daughter and heiress—the Barrymores, and Katharine and Arthur Jones, were all gathered at Lismore. Lord Clifford was to see this Munster home at its very best; its terraces and rose-gardens aflame with colour, its orchards heavy with fruit, its pigeon-houses and watermills and fishponds and the great turreted walls—all the “re-edifications” in fact, that had been the work of years. And the seventeenth-century interior must have been as imposing; for there was furniture of crimson velvet, fringed with silver, and furniture of black and scarlet velvet brocade. The walls were hung with tapestry, the floors were spread with Turkey rugs. There were high-backed chairs and low-backed chairs, and Indian embroideries, and “long cushions” for the embrasured window-seats. The Earl’s hospitable tables were furnished with fish, beef, venison, and huge all-containing pies—to be washed down by Bordeaux wine, usquebagh, and aqua vitæ; and they groaned also beneath their burden of silver;—flagons and trenchers, “covered salts,” “costerns,” kettles and ladles of silver and silver gilt; while the “ewers and basons” in the bedrooms were of silver, the great gilded beds hung with scarlet cloth and silver lace and the ceilings of the children’s nursery and the Earl’s “studdie” were of “fretwork”—their walls of “Spanish white”.
Katharine and Arthur Jones went back to Athlone early in September. The hunting-party was dispersed, and the House of Lismore was emptying again. It must have been on one of those autumn days before Katharine left Lismore that there happened the little “foolish” incident about Robyn and the plums: an incident which the elder sister would tell, long afterwards, when Robert Boyle had made his world-wide reputation, and she and he were growing old together in the house in Pall Mall.[35]
Dungarvan’s wife had already made a special pet of Francis, who was indeed a lovable and happy-tempered boy. But it was Robyn who was his sister Kate’s favourite. She seems to have felt a special tenderness for this little fellow with a little independent character of his own, so different from all his brothers: a little fellow with a stutter, attributed by his family to his habit of mimicking some children with whom he had been allowed to play; a little fellow who was “studious” at eight years old, and so hopelessly and tactlessly truthful that the old Earl—fond old disciplinarian that he was—had never been able to “find him in a lie in all his life.”
And so with the plums. Lady Dungarvan, in delicate health, was being petted by all the family; and Katharine Jones had given “strict orders” that the fruit of a certain plum tree in the Lismore garden should be preserved for Lady Dungarvan’s use. Robyn had gone into the garden, and, “ignoring the prohibition,” had been eating the plums. And when his sister Kate taxed him, “by way of aggravation,” with having eaten “half a dozen plums,”—“Nay, truly, sister,” answered he simply to her, “I have eaten half a score.”[36]
Mr. Wilkinson and a certain “Mownsier” had between them taught Robyn to speak some French and Latin and to write a fair hand; and now that he was in his ninth year, and Frank twelve years old, they were to be sent to Eton. The Earl had been in correspondence for some time with his old friend Sir Henry Wotton, not only about this matter, but about a “governour” who should take Kynalmeaky and Broghill abroad. Accordingly on September 9, 1635, a few days after their sister Katharine and Arthur Jones had left Lismore, Francis and Robert, with Carew their personal servant, under the charge of the Earl’s own confidential servant, Mr. Thomas Badnedge, left Lismore for Youghal, there to embark for England, “to be schooled and bredd at Eaton.” Badnedge was to carry the purse, with £50 in it, and if he wanted any more was to draw upon Mr. Burlamachy, the Lord Mayor of London. And the Earl gave the boys at parting £3 between them: “the great God of Heaven”, he wrote in his diary, “bless, guyde and protect them!”
It was not till September 24 that the little party actually sailed from Youghal, for they waited a whole week for a wind, and then they were “beat back again” by a storm. But at last, “though the Irish coasts were then sufficiently infested with Turkish gallies,” they reached Bristol in safety, having touched at Ilfracombe and Minehead on the way. There was a short stay “to repose and refresh themselves” at Bristol, and then their journey was “shaped” direct for Eton College. It was of course a journey by coach-roads; and their first sight of English scenery was in late September.
They arrived at Eton on October 2; and Mr. Badnedge delivered the two boys safely into the charge of Sir Henry Wotton. Their “tuicon” was to be undertaken by Mr. John Harrison, the “chief schoolmaster.”
Shortly after their arrival, Francis penned a little letter to his father, the Earl of “Korke,” to be carried back to Ireland by one of their escort. He began on bended knees with hearty prayers, and went on to say that he had no news to tell except some things he had observed on his travels, but these he would leave the bearer of his letter to narrate, “in regard I am incited by my school exercise.” Sir “Hary Wutton” had been very kind to them, entertaining them the first day of their arrival at his own table. He had also put at their disposal “a chamber of his owne with a bedd furnished afore our own wilbe furnished.” The young lords at Eton had also been most friendly, especially the Earl of Peterborough’s son, with whom Frank and Robyn were, for the present, to dine and sup. And there was a postscript to say that Mr. Badnedge had been very kind “in all our travels,” and had sent them a supply of linen from London after their arrival, for which they were “much bound to him.”