The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Hereabouts, the owner of the villa, Mr. Latouche, has a great grazing establishment; and some herd-boys, no doubt seeing strangers on the hill, thought proper that the cattle should stray that way, that they might drive them back again, and parenthetically ask the travellers for money,—everybody asks travellers for money, as it seems. Next day, admiring in a labourer’s arms a little child—his master’s son, who could not speak—the labourer, his he-nurse, spoke for him, and demanded a little sixpence to buy the child apples. One grows not a little callous to this sort of beggary; and the only one of our numerous young guides who got a reward was the raggedest of them. He and his companions had just come from school, he said,—not a Government school, but a private one, where they paid. I asked how much,—‘Was it a penny a week?’ ‘No; not a penny a week, but so much at the end of the year.’ ‘Was it a barrel of meal, or a few stone of potatoes, or something of that sort?’ ‘Yes; something of that sort.’

The something must, however, have been a very small something on the poor lad’s part. He was one of four young ones, who lived with their mother, a widow. He had no work; he could get no work; nobody had work. His mother had a cabin with no land—not a perch of land, no potatoes—nothing but the cabin. How did they live?—the mother knitted stockings. I asked, had she any stockings at home?—the boy said, ‘No.’ How did he live?—he lived how he could; and we gave him threepence, with which, in delight, he went bounding off to the poor mother. Gracious heavens! what a history to hear, told by a child looking quite cheerful as he told it, and as if the story was quite a common one. And a common one, too, it is; and God forgive us!

Here is another, and of a similar low kind, but rather pleasanter. We asked the car-boy how much he earned. He said, ‘Seven shillings a week, and his chances’—which in the summer season, from the number of tourists who are jolted in his car, must be tolerably good—eight or nine shillings a week more, probably. But he said, in winter his master did not hire him for the car; and he was obliged to look for work elsewhere: as for saving, he never had saved a shilling in his life.

We asked him, was he married? and he said, No, but he was as good as married; for he had an old mother and four little brothers to keep, and six mouths to feed, and to dress himself decent to drive the gentlemen. Was not the ‘as good as married’ a pretty expression? and might not some of what are called their betters learn a little good from these simple poor creatures? There’s many a young fellow who sets up in the world would think it rather hard to have four brothers to support; and I have heard more than one genteel Christian pining over five hundred a year. A few such may read this, perhaps: let them think of the Irish widow with the four children and nothing, and at least be more contented with their port and sherry and their leg of mutton.

This brings us at once to the subject of dinner and the little village, Roundwood, which was reached by this time, lying a few miles off from the lakes, and reached by a road not particularly remarkable for any picturesqueness in beauty, though you pass through a simple pleasing landscape, always agreeable as a repose, I think, after viewing a sight so beautiful as those mountain lakes we have just quitted. All the hills up which we had panted had imparted a fierce sensation of hunger; and it was nobly decreed that we should stop in the middle of the street of Roundwood, impartially between the two hotels, and solemnly decide upon a resting-place after having inspected the larders and bedrooms of each.

And here, as an impartial writer, I must say, that the hotel of Mr. Wheatley possesses attractions which few men can resist, in the shape of two very handsome young ladies, his daughters; whose faces, were they but painted on his signboard, instead of the mysterious piece which ornaments it, would infallibly draw tourists into the house, thereby giving the opposition inn of Murphy not the least chance of custom.

A landlord’s daughters in England, inhabiting a little country inn, would be apt to lay the cloth for the traveller, and their respected father would bring in the first dish of the dinner; but this arrangement is never known in Ireland; we scarcely ever see the cheering countenance of my landlord. And as for the young ladies of Roundwood, I am bound to say that no young persons in Baker Street could be more genteel; and that our bill, when it was brought the next morning, was written in as pretty and fashionable a lady’s hand as ever was formed in the most elegant finishing school at Pimlico.

Of the dozen houses of the little village, the half seem to be houses of entertainment. A green common stretches before these, with its rural accompaniments of geese, pigs, and idlers; a park and plantation at the end of the village, and plenty of trees round about it, give it a happy, comfortable, English look; which is, to my notion, the best compliment that can be paid to a hamlet; for where, after all, are villages so pretty?

Here, rather to one’s wonder, for the district was not thickly enough populated to encourage dramatic exhibitions, a sort of theatre was erected on the common; a ragged cloth covering the spectators and the actors, the former (if there were any) obtaining admittance through two doors on the stage, in front, marked PIT & GALERY. Why should the word not be spelt with one L as with two?

The entrance to the pit was stated to be threepence, and to the galery twopence. We heard the drums and pipes of the orchestra as we sate at dinner; it seemed to be a good opportunity to examine Irish humour of a peculiar sort, and we promised ourselves a pleasant evening in the pit.