Two splendid marquees were erected at an early hour in the morning—one for the accommodation of the ladies, the other for the dinner party; and two beautiful pleasure-yachts which conveyed a portion of the invited to the scene, rested at anchor in the Sound, and with their white sails and coloured streamers contributed their share of life and beauty to the landscape. Let the reader then imagine what a spectacle was presented when the groups of quadrille-dancers—the beauty and gallantry of the metropolis and its vicinity—commenced dancing on the greensward to the music of one of the finest of military bands—what a delight to the happy multitude of spectators who looked on at the graceful and tempered gaiety of high life! The mind of the accomplished painter Watteau, in his finest pictures of the fetes champetres of the French, never conceived any thing so exquisitely beautiful and romantic.
This party did not disperse till after sunset. After an early dinner, dancing was again resumed; and it is worthy of remark that throughout the day there was not a single instance of rudeness or indecorum on the part of the uninvited spectators—no attempt even to approach beyond the natural rocky boundary which they had chosen for themselves—and that the festivities were concluded with mutual pleasure to all the parties who had participated in them. Alas! of the gay party then assembled—the gentle maidens in all the bloom of youthful beauty, the frank young soldiers, the men of fortune, the delighted parents—of all these how many now lie low! More, reader, than you could possibly imagine! Nor can we avoid exclaiming again, alas that such scenes of rational pleasure, in which the higher and the humbler classes came together in healthful and innocent enjoyment, are not now to be seen in our country as they were heretofore!
But while our memory with changeful feelings of pleasure and of pain fondly lingers on the brilliant scene we have attempted to sketch, we must not forget that our subject requires of us a notice of festivities of a very different character of which Dalkey was in former times the scene—when Dublin and its suburbs poured forth their crowds to enjoy the fun and drolleries of the crowning of Dalkey’s insular king!—when Dalkey, its Common, its Sound, and its Island, on a June day annually for several years, presented a spectacle of life, gaiety, good-humour, and enjoyment, such perhaps as was rarely ever exhibited elsewhere. What a glorious day was this for the Dunleary, Bullock, and Dalkey boatmen! Generous fellows! they would take over his majesty’s lieges to his empire for almost nothing—frequently for nothing; but, being determined enemies to absenteeism, they would not allow them to depart on the same terms, but would mulct those with taxes ad libitum who desired to abandon their country. And again, what a glorious day was this for the jingle-drivers of the Blackrock, the noddy-drivers, and the drivers of all other sorts of hired carriages in Dublin! Has it never occurred to the Railroad people to revive these forgotten frolics? What a harvest they might reap! But what do we say? The thing is impossible. The mirthful temperament, the thoughtless gaiety, the wit and humour that characterised the citizens in those days, are gone for ever. The Dublinians have become a grave, thoughtful, and serious people—we had almost said, a dull one. Their faces no longer wear a cheerful and happy look; the very youths of our metropolis seem to be ignorant of what merriment is, or at best to suppose that it consists in puffing tobacco smoke!
Ah! very different were the notions of their predecessors, the nobility and gentry of his Majesty the King of Dalkey! Smoking would not at all have suited their mercurial temperament: it would have been the last thing that they would have thought of to have had their tongues tied and their mouths contorted into ugliness in the ridiculously serious effort to hold a cigar between the lips, and look absurdly important! These fellows thought that mouths were given for a very different purpose—to sing the manly song, to throw forth, not clouds of tobacco smoke, but flashes of wit and humour; and we are inclined to think they were right.
We are not about to describe the annual ceremony of the coronation of the Dalkey king, though we should gladly do so if we had the power, for the memory of it, as an interesting illustration of the character of Irish society in days not very remote, should not be allowed to die. We have indeed been an eye-witness of some of these brilliant follies, but we were young at the time, and our memory only retains a general impression of them. We can recollect that the green island figured in our woodcut, as well as the common, presented one mass of living beings, gaily dressed and arranged into groups of happy parties, each with its own musicians. We can recollect also that the dress of the ladies was almost invariably white, with green silk bonnets—a costume that gave a singularly brilliant effect to the scene. A large marquee was erected about the centre of the island for the use of his Majesty and attendant nobles, and a cordon was drawn around it, within which none others were permitted to enter. There was a military band in attendance upon the royal party; and while the noblemen and ladies of the court danced upon the sod within the bounds, to the music of the state minstrels, the subjects of the monarch danced outside.
But these were only the evening festivities. The day was devoted to graver purposes—the landing of his Majesty and nobles from the royal barge under a salute of twenty-one guns, the band playing “God save the King,” and the assembled multitude rending the air with their acclamations! Then the ceremony of his coronation, and afterwards his journey through his dominions, attended by his nobles! At an early hour the monarch with his court proceeded in ludicrously solemn procession from the palace to the church—the roofless ruin figured in our cut—in which the ceremony was performed with a mock gravity which was, however thoughtlessly profane, still irresistibly humorous. The nobles, with painted faces and a profuse display of stars and ribbons, had their titles and appropriate badges of office. There was the grand chamberlain, with his bunch of old rusty keys—the archbishop with his paper mitre and his natural beard of a month’s growth! The very titles of these great personages were conferred in a spirit of drollery, and made characteristic of the peculiarities of the individuals who bore them. Thus there was a Lord of Ireland’s-eye—a grave-looking gentleman who had lost one of his visual organs; a Lord Posey—a gentleman who was remarkable for his habit of carrying a bunch of flowers at his breast; and so on. All the nobility were wits, orators, and generally first-rate vocalists, and the royal visitors were similarly gifted. Charles Incledon, the prince of ballad-singers of his time, here sang his “Black-eyed Susan” and other charming ditties, and John Philpot Curran, the greatest wit of the world, set the table in a roar with his meteor flashes. But the prime spirits of the court were his Majesty himself, Stephen Armitage, his Lord High Admiral Luke Cassidy, and his archbishop —— Gillespy. The long coronation sermon of the latter was one of the richest treats of the day, and produced effects such as sermon never produced before.
During this august and imposing ceremony, the church was not only crowded to excess, and its ruined walls covered with human beings, but it was also surrounded with a dense mass of anxious listeners. As to his Majesty himself, he was at times the gravest and at times the merriest of monarchs, much of his humour consisting in the whimsical uncertainty of his movements, for there never was a crowned head more capricious or changeable in disposition than the King of Dalkey. He would set out attended by his court on a journey to some distant region of his dominions, change his mind in a minute and alter his route elsewhere, and again change it within a few minutes; and all these mutations of purpose were most loyally approved of and sympathised in by his majesty’s nobles and subjects. Another trait in King Stephen’s character was his love for song; and when the word ran through his empire that at the royal banquet his majesty had commenced or was about to commence his favourite “Love is my passion and glory,” there was scarcely one of his subjects, male or female, who did not make a rush to get within earshot of him. Peace be with thee, Stephen! thou wert a king “of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy;” and though thy reign was short and thy dominions small, thou madest more of thy subjects truly happy than many monarchs whose reigns were as much longer as their possessions were more extensive!
Imperfect as these recollections of the Dalkey festivities are, they will perhaps convey to many who have not hitherto heard of them some slight idea of their character; and they will, we trust, excite some surviving actor in them to preserve their memory in a fuller and more graphic record. They were, it will be seen, a sort of extemporaneous acted drama of the Tom Thumb kind, admirably preserving the unities of time and place—the time being one day, and the place—his majesty’s empire! As to the theatre on which it was acted, it was most admirably adapted for the spectacle, and had the most abundant accommodation for the audience. The scenery too was real scenery—not painted canvass, that required distance to give it the effect of reality: the greensward, the blue sky and bluer sea, the rocky islands, the distant hills and mountains, were painted by the hand of the greatest of all Artists; and the theatre, instead of miserable foot-lights, had its illumination from the glorious sun, the greatest of all His visible works!
It may be supposed that these annual festivities must have been productive of scenes of drunkenness and quarrelling, and we cannot state of our own knowledge whether they were so or not: but we have been informed that they did not lead to such results; and the statement would seem true, from the fact that no accident ever occurred to any of those engaged in them—a singular circumstance, if we consider the dangers to which so many persons were exposed in consequence of having to cross the sound in crowded boats at a late hour in the evening.
P.