In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had misbehaved—breaking open the graves of the family on the place, “and tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?”
The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I told my jarvey to take me to the Castle.
“To the Castle, is it?” he replied, looking around at me with an astonished air.
“Yes,” I said, “I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he’s a very good man.”
“ You don’t expect to be ‘boycotted’ for going to the Castle, do you?”
“And why should I be? But I haven’t been inside of the Castle gates for twenty years. And—here they are!” he cried out suddenly, pulling up his horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.
We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site. He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr. Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener.
Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country. He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of experience as an agent for other properties. “I have a very simple rule,” he said to me, “in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one.” It was only, he said, after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of the country, he was quite aware.
But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of which he has to send a notice by telegraph—a remark which recalled to me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a protection against “the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices.” The park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police car carrying two armed men.