This lady by the way—of whom it was said that “Lady Cahir cares for no man”—had had a droll adventure in her youth, which my mother, who knew her well and I think was her schoolfellow, recounted to me. Before she married she lived with her mother, a rather extravagant widow, who plunged heavily into debt. One day the long-expected bailiffs came to arrest her and were announced as at the hall door. Quick as lightning Lady Cahir (then, I think, Miss Townsend) made her mother exchange dress and cap with her, to which she added the old lady’s wig and spectacles and then sat in her armchair knitting sedulously, with the blinds drawn down and her back to the window. The mother having vanished, the bailiff was shown up, and, exhibiting his credentials, requested the lady to accompany him to the sponging house. Of course there was a long palaver; but at last the captive consented to obey and merely said, “Well! I will go if you like, but I warn you that you are committing a great mistake in apprehending me.”
“O, O! We all know about that, Ma’am! Please come along! I have a hackney carriage at the door.”
The damsel, well wrapped in cloaks and furbelows and a great bonnet of the period, went quietly to her destination; but when the time came for closing the door on her as a prisoner, she jumped up, threw off wig, spectacles and old woman’s cap, and disclosed the blue eyes, golden hair, and radiant young beauty for which she was long afterwards renowned. Meanwhile, of course, her mother had had abundance of time to clear out of the way of her importunate creditors.
Many details of comforts and habits in those days were very much in arrear of ours, perhaps about equally in Ireland and in England. It is droll to remember, for example, as I do vividly, seeing in my childhood the housemaids striving with infinite pains and great loss of time to obtain a light with steel and flint and a tinder-box, when by some untoward accident all the fires in the house (habitually burning all night) had been extinguished.
The first matchbox I saw was a long upright red one containing a bottle of phosphorus and a few matches which were lighted by insertion in the bottle. After this we had Lucifers which nearly choked us with gas; but in which we gloried as among the greatest discoveries of all time. Seriously I believe few of the vaunted triumphs of science have contributed so much as these easy illuminators of our long dark Northern nights to the comfort and health of mankind.
Again our grandmothers had used exquisite China basins with round long-necked jugs for all their ablutions and we had advanced to the use of large basins and footpans, slipper baths and shower baths, when, as nearly as possible in 1840, the first sponge bath was brought to Ireland. I was paying a visit to my father’s cousin, Lady Elizabeth M‘Clintock, at Drumcar in Co. Louth, when she exhibited with pride to me and her other guests the novel piece of bedroom furniture. When I returned home and described it my mother ordered a supply for our house, and we were wont for a long time to enquire of each other, “how we enjoyed our tubs?” as people are now supposed to ask: “Have you used Pears’ soap?” I believe it was from India these excellent inventions came.
Many other differences might be noted between the habits of those days and of ours. Diners Russes were, of course, not thought of. We dined at six, or six-thirty, at latest; and after the soup and fish, all the first course was placed at once on the table. For a party, for example, of 16 or 18, there would be eight dishes; joints, fowls and entrées. It was a triumph of good cookery, but rarely achieved, to serve them all hot at once. Tea, made with an urn, was a regular meal taken in the drawing-room about nine o’clock; never before dinner. The modern five o’clock tea was altogether unknown in the Forties, and when I ventured sometimes to introduce it in the Fifties, I was so severely reprehended that I used to hold a secret symposium for specially favoured guests in my own room after our return from drives or walks. All old gentlemen pronounced five o’clock tea an atrocious and disgraceful practice.
Another considerable difference in our lives was caused by the scarcity of newspapers and periodicals. I can remember when the Dublin Evening Mail,—then a single sheet, appearing three times a week and received at Newbridge on the day after publication,—was our only source of news. I do not think any one of our neighbours took the Times or any English paper. Of magazines we had Blackwood and the Quarterly, but illustrated ones were unknown. There was a tolerable circulating library in Dublin, to which I subscribed and from whence I obtained a good many French books; but the literary appetites of the Irish gentry generally were frugal in the extreme!
The real differences, however, between Life in 1840 and Life in 1890 were much deeper than any record of these altered manners, or even any references to the great changes caused by steam and the telegraph, can convey. There were certain principles which in those days were almost universally accepted and which profoundly influenced all our works and ways. The first of them was Parental and Marital Authority. Perhaps my particular circumstances as the daughter of a man of immense force of will, caused me to see the matter especially clearly, but I am sure that in the Thirties and Forties (at all events in Ireland) there was very little declension generally from the old Roman Patria Potestas. Fathers believed themselves to possess almost boundless rights over their children in the matter of pursuits, professions, marriages and so on; and the children usually felt that if they resisted any parental command it was on their peril and an act of extreme audacity. My brothers and I habitually spoke of our father, as did the servants and tenants, as “The Master;” and never was title more thoroughly deserved.
Another important difference was in the position of women. Of this I shall have more to say hereafter; suffice it to note that it was the universal opinion, that no gentlewoman could possibly earn money without derogating altogether from her rank (unless, indeed, by card-playing as my grandmother did regularly!); and that housekeeping and needlework (of the most inartistic kinds) were her only fitting pursuits. The one natural ambition of her life was supposed to be a “suitable” marriage; the phrase always referring to settlements, rather than sentiments. Study of any serious sort was disapproved, and “accomplishments” only were cultivated. My father prohibited me when very young from learning Latin from one of my brothers who kindly offered to teach me; but, as I have recounted, he paid largely and generously that I might be taught Music, for which I had no faculties at all. Other Irish girls my contemporaries, were much worse off than I, for my dear mother always did her utmost to help my studies and my liberal allowance permitted me to buy books.