The tragic nature of these events made an impression on the popular mind which two centuries did not efface. The spirit of Isabel was still said to sail every night from Hereford to Northbrigg, to meet her lover; and the beach across the river which this unearthly traveller pursued, was long distinguished by the name of "The Spectre's Voyage."
Neele's Romance of History.
IRISH GRANDEES.
Conspicuous amongst the most conspicuous of the stars; of the ascendant, was a lady, who took the field with an éclat, a brilliancy, and bustle, which for a time fixed the attention of all upon herself. Although a fine woman, in the strictest sense of the term, and still handsome, though not still very young, she was even more distinguished by her air of high supremacy, than by her beauty. She sat loftily in a lofty phaeton, which was emblazoned with arms, and covered with coronets; and she played with her long whip, as ladies of old managed their fans, with grace and coquetry. She was dressed in a rich habit, whose facings and epaulettes spoke her the lady of the noble colonel of some provincial corps of volunteers. A high military cap, surmounted with a plume of black feathers, well became her bright, bold, black eyes, and her brow that looked as if accustomed "to threaten and command." The air had deepened her colour through her rouge, as it had blown from her dark, dishevelled tresses the mareschal powder, then still worn in Ireland—(the last lingering barbarism of the British toilette, which France had already abandoned, with other barbarous modes, and exchanged for the coiffure d'Arippine and the tête à la Brutus.) Her pose, her glance, her nod, her smile, all conscious and careless as they were, proclaimed a privileged autocrat of the Irish bon ton, a "dasher," as it was termed, of the first order; for that species of effrontery called dashing was then in full vogue, as consonant to a state of society, where all in a certain class went by assumption.
This lady had arrived rather early in the field, for one whose habits were necessarily on the wrong side of time and of punctuality. She came bowling along, keeping up her fiery steeds to a sort of curvetting gallop, like one deep in the science of the manège—now deranging the order of march of the troops, by breaking through the ranks, in spite of the impertinent remonstrances of the out-posts and videttes, at which she laughed, at once to show her teeth and her power;—and now scattering the humble crowd, "like chaff before the wind," as giving her horses the rein, she permitted them to plunge head-long on, while skilfully flourishing her long whip, she made on every side a preliminary clearance. Many among the multitude announced her as the famous Kitty Cut-dash, and nodded knowingly as she passed them; but the greater number detected in the beautiful charioteer, the equally famous Albina Countess Knocklofty, the female chief of that great oligarchical family, the Proudforts—a family on which the church rained mitres, the state coronets, and the people—curses.
Beside her sat, or rather lounged, another dame of quality, bearing the stamp of her class and caste as obviously, yet less deeply marked, than her companion. More feminine in her air, more foreign in her dress and entire bearing, her faultless form, and almost faultless face, had all the advantages of the new democratic toilet of Paris, (adopted by its court, when more important innovations were still fatally resisted;) and she appeared in the Phoenix Park, dressed much in the same costume as Marie Antoinette and her female favourites are described to have worn in the gardens of Trianon, or in the bowers of St. Cloud,—to the horror of all old dames d'atours, and all the partisans of the ancient regime of whalebone and buckram! The chemise of transparent muslin, or robe à la Poliynae, chapeau de paille à la bergere, tied down with a lilac ribbon, with
"Scarf loosely flowing, hair as free,"
gave an air of sylph-like simplicity to one, whose features, though beautiful, were marked by an expression foreign to simplicity, evincing that taste, not sentiment, presided over her toilet, and that, "chez elle, un beau desordre fut l'effet de l'art."
This triumphal car was followed, or surrounded, by a host of beaux; some in military uniform, and with true English faces and figures; but the greater number in the civil, though uncivilized, dress of the day, and with forms and physiognomies as Irish as ever were exhibited in Pale or Palatine, to the dread of English settlers and Scotch undertakers. Ponderous powdered clubs, hanging from heads of dishevelled hair—shoulders raised or stuffed to an Atlas height and breadth—the stoop of paviers, and the lounge of chairmen—broad beavers, tight buckskins, the striped vest of a groom, and the loose coat of a coachman, gave something ruffianly to the air of even the finest figures, which assorted but too well with the daring, dashing manner, that just then had succeeded, among a particular set, to the courtly polish for which the travelled nobility of Ireland were once so distinguished. Such, in exterior, were many of the members of the famous Cherokee Club, and such the future legislators of that great national indignity, which had procured them a contemptible pre-eminence in the black book of public opinion, by the style and title of the "Union Lords." As they now crowded round the cynosures of the day, there was something too ardent and unrestrained in their homage, something too emphatic in their expressions and gestures, for true breeding; while in their handsome, but "light, revelling, and protesting faces," traces of the night's orgies were still visible, which gave their fine features a licentious cast, and deprived their open and very manly countenances of every mark of intellectual expression.—Lady Morgan's "O'Briens and O'Flahertys."