Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

Among Irish ladies and gentlemen in the Forties there was a great deal of interest of course in our domestic pets, and I remember a beautiful and beloved young bride coming to pay us a visit, and asking in a tone of profound conviction: “What would life be without dogs?” Still there was nothing then existing, I think, in the world like the sentiment which inspired Mathew Arnold’s Geist or even his “Kaiser Dead.” The gulf between the canine race and ours was thought to be measureless. Darwin had not yet written the Descent of Man or made us imagine that “God had made of one blood” at least all the mammals “upon earth.” No one dreamed of trying to realise what must be the consciousness of suffering animals; nor did anyone, I think, live under the slightest sense of responsibility for their well-being. Even my dear old friend, Harriet St. Leger, though she was renowned through the county for her attachment to her great black Retrievers, said to me one day, many years after I had left Ireland, “I don’t understand your feelings about animals at all. To me a dog is a dog. To you it seems to be something else!”

Another difference was, that there was very little popularity-hunting in the Forties. The “working man” was seen, but not yet heard of; and, so far as I remember, we thought as little of the public opinion of our villages respecting us as we did of the public opinion of the stables. The wretched religious bigotry which, as we knew, made the Catholics look on us as infallibly condemned of God in this world and the next, was an insuperable barrier to sympathy from them, and we never expected them to understand either our acts or motives. But if we cared little or nothing what they thought of us, I must in justice say that we did care a great deal for their comfort, and were genuinely unhappy in their afflictions and active to relieve their miseries. When the famine came there was scarcely one Irish lady or gentleman, I think, who did not spend time, money and labour like water to supply food to the needy. I remember the horror with which my father listened to a visitor, who was not an Irishwoman but a purse-proud nouveau riche married to a very silly baronet in our neighbourhood, who told him that her husband’s Mayo property had just cost them £70. “That will go some way in supplying Indian meal to your tenants,” said my father, supposing that to such purpose it must be devoted. “O dear, no! We are not sending it for any such use,” said Lady —. “We are spending it on evictions!” “Good God!” shouted my father; “how shocking! At such a time as this!”

It has been people like these who have ever since done the hard things of which so much capital has been made by those whose interest it has been to stir up strife in the “distressful country.”

I happen to be able to recall precisely the day, almost the hour, when the blight fell on the potatoes and caused the great calamity. A party of us were driving to a seven o’clock dinner at the house of our neighbour, Mrs. Evans, of Portrane. As we passed a remarkably fine field of potatoes in blossom, the scent came through the open windows of the carriage and we remarked to each other how splendid was the crop. Three or four hours later, as we returned home in the dark, a dreadful smell came from the same field, and we exclaimed, “Something has happened to those potatoes; they do not smell at all as they did when we passed them on our way out.” Next morning there was a wail from one end of Ireland to the other. Every field was black and every root rendered unfit for human food. And there were nearly eight millions of people depending principally upon these potatoes for existence!

The splendid generosity of the English public to us at that time warmed all our Anglo-Irish hearts and cheered us to strain every nerve to feed the people. But the agitators were afraid it would promote too much good feeling between the nations, which would not have suited their game. I myself heard O’Connell in Conciliation Hall (that ill-named place!) endeavour to belittle English liberality. He spoke (a strange figure in the red robes of his Mayoralty and with a little sandy wig on his head) to the following purpose:—

“They have sent you over money in your distress. But do you think they do it for love of you, or because they feel for you, and are sorry for your trouble? Devil a bit! They are afraid of you!—that is it! They are afraid of you. You are eight millions strong.”

It was as wicked a speech as ever man made, but it was never, that I know of, reported or remarked upon. He spoke continually to similar purpose no doubt, in that Hall, where my cousin—afterwards the wife of John Locke, M.P. for Southwark—and I had gone to hear him out of girlish curiosity.

The part played by Anglo-Irish ladies when the great fever which followed the famine came on us, was the same. It became perfectly well known that if any of the upper classes caught the fever, they almost uniformly died. The working people could generally be cured by a total change of diet and abundant meat and wine, but to the others no difference could be made in that way, and numbers of ladies and gentlemen lost their lives by attending their poor in the disease. It was very infectious, or at least it was easily caught in each locality by those who went into the cabins.

There were few people whom I met in Ireland in those early days whose names would excite any interest in the reader’s mind. One was poor Elliot Warburton, the author of the Crescent and the Cross, who came many times to Newbridge as an acquaintance of my brother. He was very refined and, as we considered, rather effeminate; but how grand, even sublime, was he in his death! On the burning Amazon in mid-Atlantic he refused to take a place in the crowded boats, and was last seen standing alone beside the faithful Captain at the helm as the doomed vessel was wrapped in flames. I have never forgotten his pale, intellectual face and somewhat puny frame, and pictured him thus—a true hero.

His brother, who was commonly known as Hochelaga, from the name of his book on Canada, was a hale and genial young fellow, generally popular. One rainy day he was prompted by a silly young lady-guest of ours to sing a series of comic songs in our drawing-room, the point of the jokes turning on the advances of women to men. My dear mother, then old and feeble, after listening quietly for a time, slowly rose from her sofa, walked painfully across the room, and leaning over the piano said in her gentle way a few strong words of remonstrance. She could not bear, she said, that men should ridicule women. Respect and chivalrous feeling for them, even when they were foolish and ill-advised, were the part, she always thought, of a generous man. She would beg Mr. Warburton to choose some other songs for his fine voice. All this was done so gently and with her sweet, kind smile, that no one could take offence. Mr. Warburton was far from doing so. He was, I could see, touched with tender reverence for his aged monitress, and rising hastily from the piano, made the frankest apologies, which of course were instantly accepted. I have described this trivial incident because I think it illustrates the kind of influence which was exercised by women of the old school of “decorum.”