Saturday 7th July Wet morning; wait for Kennedy’s promised car, - to breakfast in the Zoological gardens. Smoking at the door, buy a newspaper, old hawker pockets my groat, then comes back saying “Yer Hanar has given me by mistake a threepenny!” Old knave, I gave him back his newspaper, ran up stairs for a penny, - discover that the threepenny has a hole drilled in it, that it is his, - and that I am done! He is off when I come down – Petrie under an umbrella, but no Kennedy still. We call a car, we two; I give him my “Note to Chambers Walker, Barrister,” whom he knows, who will take me up to at Sligo , when he (P) will join us, and we shall be happy. Well; - we shall see. Muddy Street, rain about done; carboy coming over one of the bridges, drives against the side of our car, seemed to me to see clearly for some instants that he must do such a thing, but to feel all the while that it would be so convenient to him if he didn’t, - a reckless humour, ignoring of the inevitable, which I saw often enough in Ireland. Even the mild Petrie swore, and brandished his umbrella. “How could I help it?; could I stop, and I goin’ so rapid!” At the gate of Zoological which is in Phoenix Park, were Hancock, Ball of the Museum, another Ball of the Poor-law[12], Cooke Taylor (for the last time, poor soul!), and others strolling under the wet boscage: breakfast now got served in a dim very damp kind of place (like some small rotunda, for limited public-meetings), - unpleasant enough wholly; and we got out into the gardens, and walked smoking, with freer talk (of mine mainly) good for little. Animals & c., - Public subscription scanty – Government helps: - adieu to it. In Kennedy’s car to Sackville Street; Poor law Ball and a whole set of us; pause at Sackville street, part go on, part will take me to Royal Irish Academy, after I have got my letters of this morning’s post. With Hancock I settle that Hutton this night shall lodge me at Howth; that he and Ingram shall escort me out thither, when I will bathe. Nerves and health – ach Gott, be silent of them! Royal Irish Academy really has an interesting Museum: Petrie does the honours with enthusiasm. Big old iron cross (smith’s name on it in Irish, and date about 1100 or so, ingenious old smith really); Second Book of Clogher (tremendously old, said Petrie), torques, copper razor, porridge-pots, bog butter (tastes like wax), bog-cheese (didn’t taste that, or even see); stone mallets (with cattle-bones copious where they are found, - “old savage feasting-places”): really an interesting Museum, for everything has a certain authenticity, as well as national or other significance, too often wanting in such places. Next to Petrie, my most assiduous expositor was the Secy., whom I had seen at Stokes’s; a mute, but who spoke now and civilly and to the purpose. Bustle-bustle. Evory Kennedy and others making up a route for me in the library room: at length, in a kind of paroxysm, I bid adieu to them all, and get away, - to the Hotel to pack and settle. Larcom next comes: for an hour and half in Board of Works with him. Sir W. Petty’s old survey of Irish lands (in another office from L’s); Larcom’s new one, very ingenious; coloured map, with dots, figures referring you to tables, where is a complete account of all estates, with their pauperisms, liabilities, rents, resources: for behoof of the Poor law Commrs. and their “electoral divisions”; a really meritorious and as I fancy most valuable work. Kirwan a western squire accidentally there; astonished at me, poor fellow, but does not hate me, invites me even. Larcom to Hotel door with me: adieu, adieu! To the Hotel people too, who have done all things zealously for me, and even schemed me out a route for the morrow (wrong, as it proved, alas!) I bid affecting adieus; and Ingram and Hancock bowl me off to the Howth Railway. Second-class, say they, but gentn. tho’ crowded: Dublin cockneys on a Saturday. The Hutton house, that evening amid “Socinian” really well-conditioned people: much should not be said of it. Hospitality’s self: tall silent-looking Father Hutton (for they live at Ballydoyle, this side of Howth) meets me with “hopes” &c. at the Station there: car is to follow us to Howth, where I am to bathe, whither we now roll on. Bathe, bad bathing-ground, tide being out, wound heel in the stones (slippers were in the Bathing Machine, but people didn’t tell me); Cornish Pilchard-sloops fishing here; dirty village; big old Abbey over-grown with thistles, nettles, burdocks and the extremity of squalor, to which we get access thro’ dark cabins by the back windows, - leaving a few coppers amid hallelujahs of thanks. Car, get wrapped, and drive to Lord Howth’s gate: admittance there, to those of us on foot, not without difficulty: beautiful avenue, beautiful still house looking out over the still sea at eventide; among the beautifullest places I ever saw. Lord Howth a racer, away now, with all his turf-equipments; Cornish people obliged to come and fish his Bay, - his mainly for 500 years back, I believe. Call in for a Cousin Hutton (poor George Darley’s class-fellow, a barrister, I afterwards find) who is to go with us; twilight getting darker and darker, - I still without dinner, and growing cold, reduced to tobacco merely! Arrive at last; succedaneum for dinner is readily provided, consumed along with coffee; night passes, not intolerably, tho’ silence for me was none; alas, on reflecting, I had not come there for silence! Cousin Hutton and Ingram off; a clever indignant kind of little fellow the latter. Mrs Hutton, big black eyes struggling to be in earnest; four young ladies, sewing, - schöne kinder truly. – At last do get to bed; sleep sound till 6, bemoaned by the everlasting main. “No train (Sunday) at the hour given by Imperial Hotel people,” so it appears! The good Huttons have decided to send me by their carriage. Excellent people; poor little streetkin of Ballydoyle fronting a wide waste of sea-sands (fisher people, I suppose): peace and good be with you!

Sunday 8th July Escorted by Hancock and young Hutton am set down at Imperial Hotel, and thence my assiduous Familiar brings out luggage, in a car to Kildare Railway Station, (in the extreme west, - King’s or Template-bridge, do they call it?): three quarters of an hour too soon; rather wearisome the waiting. Fields all about have a weedy look, ditches rather dirty; houses in view, extensive some of them, have a patched dilapidated air – limepointing on roofs (as I gradually found) is uncommonly frequent in Ireland; do. white-washing to cover a multitude of sins: grey time-worn look in consequence – lime is everywhere abundant in Ireland ; few bogs themselves but are close in the neighbourhood of lime. Start at last: second class but not quite Gentn this time; plenty of room however. Irish traveller alone in my compartment; big horse-faced elderly; not a bad fellow (a Wexforder?) – for Limerick I suppose. Two Irish gents (if not gentn) in the next compartment (for we were all very visible to one another); mixed rusticity or cockneyity, not remembered, in the other. Gents had both of them their tickets stuck in hatband; good, and often seen since in Scotland and elsewhere: talked to one another, loud but empty: first gent beaming black animal eyes, florid, ostentatious, voracious-looking: a sensual gent; neighbour had his back towards me, and he is lost: both went out awhile before me. – Kildare Station between 12 and 1 (I think): indifferent porterage – Country with hay and crops, in spite of occasional bogs, had been good, - waving champaign with Wicklow Hills in the distance; railway well enough, tho’ sometimes at stations or the like some little thing was wrong. – Letter of the Inscription knocked off, or the like. This then is Kildare: - but alas I nowhere see the city; above all, see no Peter Fitzgerald, whom I expected here to receive me. In the open space, which lies behind the station, get a view of Kildare, round tower, black and high, with old ruin of cathedral, on a height half a mile off; poor enough “City” to all appearance! Ask for St. Bridget’s “Fire Tower-house” that once was; nobody knows it; one young fellow pretends (and only pretends I think) to know it. Two gentlemen, fat fellows, out of the train seemingly had seen the label on my luggage; rush round to ask me eagerly, “Are you Mr. Thomas Carloil?” I thought they had been Fitzgerald, and joyfully answered and enquired: alas, no they were Mr. Something else altogether, and had to roll away again next instant. Seeing no Fitzgerald I had to bargain with a car-man (I think there was but one), and roll away towards Halverstown – up a steepish narrow road to Kildare first. Kildare, as I entered it looked worse and worse: one of the wretchedest wild villages I ever saw; and full of ragged beggars this day (Sunday), - exotic altogether, “like a village in Dahomey ,” man and Church both. Knots of worshipping people hung about the streets, and every-where round them hovered a harpy-swarm of clamorous mendicants, men, women, children: - a village winged, as if a flight of harpies had alighted on it! In Dublin I had seen winged groups, but not much worse than some Irish groups in London that year: here for the first time was “Irish beggary” itself! – From the centre or top of the village I was speeding thro’, where the Cathedral and Round Tower disclose, or properly had disclosed, themselves on my right, I turn a little to survey them; and here Fitzgerald and lady, hospitable pair, turn up and make themselves known to me. A la bonne heure! Beggars, beggars; walk through the wretched streets, Nunneries here, big chapel here, my hosts are Catholics; I wait smoking in their carriage till they make a call; won’t give beggars anything who depart, all but 2, young fellows, cowering nearly naked on opposite sides of me 20 yards off. “Take this groat and divide it between you!” Explosion of thanks; exeunt round the corner: re-enter one: “Ach, yer honor! He won’t give me the two pence” – “Then why don’t you lick him, you blockhead, till he either die or give it to you?” Two citizens, within hearing, burst into a laugh. – Home to Halverstown, pleasant rough-cultivated country, ragged hedges, fertile weedy fields, one good farmstead or two: Mrs Purcell welcomes us with genial smiles.

Monday 9th July 9 July 1949 . Went from Halverstown to Glendalough, wonderful passage, especially after Holywood a desolate hamlet among the hills. Scarecrow figures all busy among their peats, ragged all, old straw hats, old grey loose coats in tatters, vernacular aspect all. Horse unwilling to perform uphill, at length downhill too; we mostly walk. Young shepherd, very young gossoon (had been herding with somebody for no wages), was now sent home to “the Churches,” where he had a brother (minor) and sister left, - fibbed to me (as I found in the begging line), otherwise good and pitiable. I made him mount downhill. Resemblance to Galloway , in the hills, or to the pass beyond Dalveen; hills all black and boggy, some very craggy too; cattle kyloes, sheep mongrels: wild stony huts, patches of corn few yards in area. [Woman near Kilcullen milking a goat in the morning – goats frequent enough here, pick living in the ditches]. Wicklow Gap; Lead Mines; stone on the road. Guide (a sulky stupid creature) drives over it eyes open. – Like much here, like potatoe-culture. Cottages mostly cabins to the right hand under the road, and more frequent all the way down. Some mine-works (water wheel going), many mine shafts all the way down. At bottom inn, shop, swift river, steps, beggars, churches, churchyard, wreck of grey antiquity grown black; round tower – “Cathedral,” small Church with arch roof still entire, and little round belfry (?windows in it) at one end. Third church there; then lower and upper lake opening. Strait cul-de-sac of a glen, a spoke (or radius) making an angle with Wicklow Gap Glen: fit pot among the black mountains for St Kevin to macerate himself in. Scarecrow boatman; big mouth, rags, hunger and good humour, has his “chance” (of this best with strangers) by way of wages. Woman squirrel clambering on the rocks to shew St Kevin’s Bed; which needed no “shewing” at all; husband had deserted her, children all dead in workhouse but one; shed under a cliff; food as the ravens. New carman, rapid, good-humoured and loquacious; miner hurt among the hills; man galloping for doctor and priest; howl of woman’s lamentation heard among the twilight mountains; very miserable to hear. No whiskey at Trainer’s; handsome gift of milk by pretty daughter, brought sixpence all the same. Home about 10; expense enormous, 30/. or more, to me.

Tuesday 10 July Tuesday 10th July. Love, the Scotch farmer; excellent farming. Gentn (Burrowes) that wouldn’t allow draining; 800 people took the Common; priest had petitioned Peel 10 years ago, but took no notice; peasant vagrants did, and here their cabins and grottos all are. Fitz’s brother (a useful good servant) has a cabin and field here, with wife in it; good ground if it were drained. All Commons have been settled that way; once they were put away from, and the ditches levelled twice (so said our first carman, a fine active lad), the third time it held, and so they stay. O’Connor (Mrs Purcell’s brother) a smart dandyish landlord, complained dreadfully of these “Commoners” now mostly paupers; nobody’s property once, now his (to fen). All creatures, Love among the rest, cling to the potatoe, as the one hope or possibility they have or ever dream of; look upon the chance of failure, as our Sulky did upon the stone “perhaps I’ll get over it.” In the afternoon Curragh of Kildare, best of race courses, a sea of beautiful green land, with fine cropt furze on it here and there, a fine race-stand (like the best parish church) at one end, saddling house & c; racing apparatus enough; and work for about 10,000 people if they were set to it instead of left to beg, (circle of 3 miles, 4,000 acres, look?) Newbridge village and big barrack; Liffey both at Kilcullen and it; Monastery, Mrs P. saluted priest; people all lounging, village idle, silent, many houses down. – Railway, whirl of dust, smoke and screaming uproar, past Kildare again, past Athy (A-thigh) old walls, now a village, Wexford hills on this hand, Q’s County hills on that: good green wavy country alternating with detestable bogs to Carlow – saw into the grey old hungry-looking stones as we whirled past in the evening sun – Railway Station, broken windows there (done by mischievous boys), letters knocked off & c, now and then all the way from Dublin. Car at Bagnalstown, eloquent beggar. “More power to you “wherever you go! The Lord Almighty “ preserve your honor from all sickness and “hurt and the dangers of the year!” &c. &c. Never saw such begging in this world; often get into a rage at it. On to Kilkenny (over the Barrow & c); noisy vulgar fellow, talks, seems to know me. Castle Inn door; Dr Cane’s where I now am [writing in dressing gown] 7 a.m. , not having slept; morning the flower of summer; town old decayed and grey. Addenda (7 Octr) to the two foregoing entries. – Hideous crowds of beggars at Glendalough – offering guideship & c. No guide needed. Little black-eyed boy, beautiful orphan beggar, forces himself on us at last; ditto grey-eyed little girl, with fish her uncle had caught. Scarecrow boatman, his clothes or rags hung on him like tapestry, when the wind blew he expanded like a tulip: first of many such conditions of dress. “King O’Toole’s tomb”. “Tim Byrne” (Burn they pronounced), spoken to, he, the one whole-coated farmer of the place; many Byrnes hereabouts. Could not make out the meaning or origin of Glendalough; at last found St. Kevin (natural in St. K) to be the central fact: the “Kings” O’Toole, O’Byrne &c &c had dedicated chapels to him, bequeathing their own bodies to be buried there, as unspeakably advantageous for them; straight road to Heaven for them perhaps. Many burials still there; tombstones, all of mica-slate, slice off into obliteration within the century. One arch (there still remains another) of entrance to “Cathedral” had fallen last year (or year before?) Found, and miracles in “Patron-time”; “Patterun” is Kevin himself; “St. Kevin’s be your bed!” Brought heath and ivy from Glendalough; grimmest spot in my memory. Halverstown a quiet original little country-seat; beautiful in the summer greenness and all wearing an exotic look; “Irish Maecaenas” kind of air. Purcell, a notable Irishman, had run coaches, made a farm often at his coach station; this was one. Mass-chapel in it (priest didn’t appear); galleries, summer hall; dining room lighted with glass dome; number of tolerable pictures; - place added to gradually; very good; my room excellent. Greenhouse, pretty shrubbery with “big stone” in it (Edd Fitzd’s); trees round, children had a little coach with goats harnessed; good order reigning (or strenuously attempting to reign) everywhere. – Kilcullen (near by) has a Round Tower : height where the rebels of ’98 had a skirmish. Lord Waterford’s shooting-lodge, at “Trainers” (on the road to Glendalough), miserable bare place. Remember something of Kilcullen town itself; through which the kind Mrs Purcell drove me, that afternoon, as well as over Curragh & c. to Station at Kildare. Kildare Railway; big blockhead, sitting with his dirty feet on seat opposite, not stirring them for me, who wanted to sit there: “One thing we’re all agreed on,” said he “we’re very ill governed; Whig, Tory, Radical, Repealer, all admit we’re very ill governed!” – I thought to myself “Yes indeed: you govern yourself. He that would govern you well, would probably surprise you much my friend, - laying a hearty horsewhip over that back of your’s.” “No smoking allowed”; passengers had erased the “No.” Coarse young man entering, took out his pipe, and smoked without apology. Second Class; went no more in that – Carlow, “ Hungry Street :” remember it still well, and the few human figures stalking about in it: red, dusty-looking evening, to us (in rail) dusty and windy. Of Bagnalstown, saw nothing but Station, (Railway is still in progress), and some streak of distant housetops, behind (westward) of that; and one little inn at the extremity where our car halted and the beggars were. Dusty, dusky evening to Kilkenny. Lord Clifden’s property; racer, has a horse called “Justice to Ireland” (said my vulgar friend); - Kilkenny long feeble street of suburb; sinks hollow near the Castle; bridge and river there; then rapidly up is inn. Car to Dr Cane’s after delay; O’Shaugnessy and the other two poor-law Inspectors at dinner there: still waiting (8 ½ or 9 p m), Duffy, Cane, and Mrs. C.; warm welcome: queer old house; my foot a little sprained (from Halverstown and Love’s potatoe-field – didn’t trouble me above another day), Dr C bandaged it, - but my tay was very cold and bad. Talking difficult; no good of the O’Shaughnessys, no good of anything till I got away to bed. [End of addenda.]



Wednesday 11th July. Wake early, sound of jackdaws, curious old room, two windows to street, one behind; tops of all come down (not bottoms up, of all); plentiful thorough draft: look out over the grey old dilapidated town: smoke; to bed again, but sleep returns not. O’Shaughnessy (after letters written &c.) takes us out in Cane’s carriage to look over his poor-houses. – Had seen the “Market-morning” before; crowd of people under the pillars, eggs, lean fowls and other small-trash. – Coblers 3 or 4 working on the street. – Letter to Jane (to Mother next day. – Still here), - on a very curious kind of “table” (a hydrasting cylinder in fact), the only one I had convenient! O’Shaughnessy’s subsidiary poor-house (old brewhouse, I think), workhouse being filled to bursting: with some 8,000 (?) paupers in all. Many women here; carding cotton, knitting, spinning & c.& c. place and they were very clean; - “but one can,” bad enough! In other Irish workhouses, saw the like; but nowhere ever so well. Big Church or Cathedral, or blue stones, limestony in appearance, a-building near this spot. Buttermilk pails (in this subsidiary poor-house, as in all over Ireland ) – tasted from one; not bad on hot day. Eheu! – omitted other subsidiary poor-houses (I think); walked towards original workhouse with its 3,000: towards Cathedral, round tower & c. first; detestable lagoon evaporating, with houses and dusty streets round it; can’t get at it to drain! Round tower has wooden ladder to top; sit there, very high, view hungry-looking, parched, bare, Sahara-looking. Cathedral closes, empty, silent, and welcome; Cathedral seen as duty; Old Council House (of Kilkenny Council in 1642)[13] omitted by oversight; in Cathedral, some monuments not memorable to me; one (of 1649 time) a Councillor’s had been erased. Day dreadfully hot; get away to workhouse, where Duffy leaves me. Workhouse; huge chaos, ordered “as one could; “-O'S., poor light little Corker (he is from Cork , and a really active creature), proved to be the best of all the “orderers,” saw in Ireland in this office; but his establishment, the first I had ever seen, quite shocked me. Huge arrangements for eating, baking, stacks of Indian meal stirabout; 1000 or 2000 great bulks of men lying piled up within brick walls, in such a country, in such a day! Did a greater violence to the law of nature ever before present itself to sight, if one had an eye to see it? Schools, for girls, rather goodish; for boys, clearly bad; forward, impudent routine – scholar, one boy, with strong Irish physiognomy, - getting bred to be an impudent superficial pretender. So; or else sit altogether stagnant, and so far as you can, rot. Hospital: haggard ghastliness of some looks, - literally, their eyes grown “colorless” (as Mahomet describes the horror of the Day of Judgment); “take me home!” one half-mad was urging; a deaf-man; ghastly flattery of us by another, (his were the eyes): ah me! Boys drilling, men still piled within their walls: no hope but of stirabout; swine’s meat, swine’s destiny (I gradually saw): right glad to get away. Idle people, on road to castle; sitting on street curbstones, &c.; numerous in the summer afternoon; idle old city; can’t well think how they live. Castle “superb” enough but no heart for it; no portraits that I care about, - not even a certain likeness of the Duke James, the Great of Ormond; pay my half-crown; won’t write in the album; - home dead-tired; and O’S. is to come and dine. Of dinner little rememberable at all. Strange dialect of Mrs Dr Cane, a Wicklow lady, - made a canvas case for my writing case this day, good hostess! Came of Scotch people; rings with such a lilt in speaking as is unexampled hitherto; all is i’s, oi’s, &c; - excellent mother and wife, so far as heart goes, “sure-ly.” Snuffy editors, low-bred but not without energy, once “all for repale,” now out of that; have little or no memory of what they said or did. Dr Cane himself, lately in prison for “repale,” now free and Mayor again, is really a person of superior worth. Tall, straight, heavy man, with grey eyes and smallish globular black head; deep bass voice, with which he speaks slowly, solemnly, as if he were preaching. Irish (moral) Grandison – touch of that in him; sympathy with all that is good and manly however, and continual effort towards that. Likes me, is hospitably kind to me, and I am grateful to him. Up stairs about 8 o’clock (to smoke, I think), lie down on rough ottoman at bed’s end, for 5 minutes; - fall dead asleep and, Duffy wakes me at one o’clock ! We are to go to-morrow morning towards Waterford – I slept again, till towards six, and then wrote to my mother, as well as looked into “Commercial Reading rooms” & c opposite me in the ancient narrow street. Jackdaws and lime-pointed old slate roofs were my prospect otherwise fore and aft. Crown of the year now in regard to heat. Thursday 12th July Other stranger (snuffy editor now?) to breakfast, admires Gray’s Scheme, - Edin. Gray, a projector of money schemes – to give all the world money at will, “do nicely for Ireland , indeed” thought I or said. Off with Duffy, in Dr.’s chariot, to Railway Station about 10 ½ a.m. First Class rail: silent, excellent; ends at Thomastown in about an hour. Private car there; shady little street, hot, close, little inn, while they are packing luggage. Towards Waterford , railway men again breaking ground, groups of them visible twice. – Rawboned peasant spoken to, striding with us up a hill; sadly off since potatoes went and evictions came; struggling to do better. Jerpoint Abbey, huge distressing mass of ruins, huts leaning on the back of it, - to me nothing worth at all; or less than nothing of dilettantism must join with it. Rest of the road singularly forgotten; Duffy keeping me so busy at talk I suppose! Squalid hamlets, ditto cottages by the wayside, with their lean goats and vermin, I have forgotten the details of them; at present they (try to) re-emerge big and vague, - dim, worthless. “Ballyhack;” but I suppose it was “Mullinavat” where our man drew up; tried for buttermilk, at the little idle shop in the little idle village, - unattainable. “Carrickshock” farm on the west, fronting us (hedges or bushey ground about a mile off), where “18 police,” seizing for tithes, were set upon and all killed some 18 or more years ago. And next? Vacancy, not even our talk remembered in the least; - probably of questions which I had to answer. Duffy hummed continually, with words but without tune, whenever I ceased speaking; my own mood was one of silent stony uneasiness. Saw the Suir coming? My face was to the west; suppose we must have gone by “the new road from Mullinavat;” remember partly broken (Duffy hoped from “repale insurrection,” alas it was from bad masonry); the road too was broad and not very hilly; - at length under steep cliffs we come to the end of Waterford long wooden bridge; rattle over to the bright trim-looking long quay with its high substantial row of houses on the other side, rattle along the same, and at last are shoved out, very dusty and dim, at Commercial Hotel, whereit, not far form ending, is intersected by a broad street at right angles; street as I afterwards found, where “Meagher” (the now convict) lived, and where his father still lives. (Mem. On the Friday morning at Dublin I had seen a big flaring lithograph portrait (whose I didn’t know, like Lockhart somewhat) with the people murmuring sympathy over it, in a shop window near the end of Sackville Street: it was now removed; must have been M.’s) – This (Thursday) afternoon, was it now that I argued with Duffy about Smith O’Brien; I infinitely vilipending, he hotly eulogizing the said Smith? At Waterford it was Assize time and the Cl. Hotel was rather in an encumbered state: two small bed-rooms, without fireplaces, in third floor; mine looks out seaward, over clean courts, house roofs, and I think sees a bit of country, perhaps even of sea. Letters; one from Lord Stuart de Decies, (volunteer thro’ poor-law Ball), to whom I write that I will come, and enclosing Lord Monteagle’s letter. At dinner (excellent sole, raises question of London soles, they are Waterford fish but deteriorated by the transfer). Ld. Carew’s servant is here, Mr. Currey, Duke of Devonshire’s agent from Lismore is here; send my letters to them. Brief interview with Ld. Carew & son on the morrow here, nothing more; much negociation with Mr. Currey, eager to do the honours to me, in which enterprise he persisted and succeeded. Agent, kind of trading man, to whom I had a letter from the Fitzgeralds: not at home; leave it. Man comes after 10, talks civilly, lamentingly; send him off. A Quaker, one of Todhunter’s list, Strangman I think, after much enquiry, “doesn’t now live in town.” (Quaker Todhunter of Dublin had, by Dr. Kennedy’s request, sent me to Kilkenny a list of Quakers in all the principal towns – did see one of them at Limerick). Duffy’s Father Something was also not at home: so we returned to the hotel for tea. – Father Some-other-thing, a silly, fluctuating free-spoken priest, joined us in that meal; we to breakfast with him to morrow. – Smoke cigar along the quay. – the southernmost part of it beyond our Hôtel; talk with shopkeeper kind of man there, leaning over the balustrade, looking at the few ships and boats; Waterford’s Commerce ruined, - this was the sum of all my enquiries, - 2,000 hands acquainted with curing bacon had left the place, bacon (owing to potatoe failure) having ended. Butter do., Cattle do; all has ended “for the time”. Good many warehouses, three in one place on the quay you may now see shut. – Walk late up to the Post Office: big watchman, with grappling hook for drunk men, patrolling the Dock quay; - “accidents may happen, sir!” Wretched state of my poor clay carcase at that time; Currey has had a message for me; talk with him, hour and more, after my return; young smart clever-looking man; of lawyer and wholly English dialect and aspect; won’t let me pass without his hospitalities tho’ now I need them not. Bed at last, but no great shakes of a sleep. Friday 13th July Breakfast with the Father Something; steepish street far back in the City; other younger Father with him; - clever man this, black-eyed florid man of thirty this, not ill informed, and appears to have an element of real zeal in him, which is rare among these people. Priest’s breakfast and equipment nothing special; that of a poor schoolmaster of the like, living in lodgings with a rude old woman and her niece or daughter: talk also similar, - putting Irish for Scotch, the thing already known to me. – To see some Charitable Catholic Schools; far off, day hot, I getting ill: Irish monk (pallid, tall, dull-looking Irishman of 50) takes us hospitably; 40 or 50 boys, all Catholic, with good apparatus – these he silently won’t set agoing for us (“holiday” or some such thing); we have to look at them with what approval we can. To the hotel, I with younger priest; totally sick and miserable when I arrive, take refuge up stairs on three chairs, and there lie, obstinate to speak to no man till our car go off. Currey does see me however; settles at last, - will do the impossible (tho’ unnecessary), and not be satisfied without doing it. Car at last (after Ld. Carew &c); in the hot afternoon still high we rattle forth into the dust. Dust, dust, wind is arear of us (or some dusty way it blows) on the car; and there is no comfort but patience, distant view of green, and occasionally a cigar. The wind, dusty or not, refreshes, considerably cures my sick nerves, as it always does. Straight dusty places: goats chained together with straw-rope; “repale would be agreeable!” Scrubby ill-cultivated country; Duffy talking much, that is, making me talk. Hedges mostly of gorse, not one of them will turn any kind of cattle, - alas I found that the universal rule in Ireland , not one fence in 500 that will turn. Gorse they are almost all, and without attention paid: emblematic enough. Kilmacthomas, clear white village hanging on the steep declivity. Duffy discovered; enthusiasm of all for him, even the ( Galway ) policeman. Driver privately whispers me “he would like to give a cheer for that gent.” – “Don’t, it would do him no good.” Other policeman drunk, not mischievous but babbling-drunk; didn’t see another in that or any such condition in all my travels. We were in the lower end of Kilmacthomas; upwards it climbed the brae, to the rightward, with most decisive steepness; a poor small place, with houses or huts all limewashed, street torn up by rain-streams; lives very bright with me yet, as seen in the bright summer afternoon. Off again; towards Dungarvan; the sun veiled form us, the wind rising when we arrived there, about 5 or 6 o’clock . “Shake Dungarvan[14],” an Irish proverb, means to make a splutter, or load demonstration of any kind. Embanked road by way of approach, - mud of lagoon on each side, lefthand is sea-ward as you enter; - very bleak and windy just now. Car is shifted; populace all out gazing at Duffy, as if they would have stared thro’ and thro’ him; - would I were at Dromana for one; at Cappoquin first. This is a poor one-horse car; and our accommodation is not superb. Duffy and I on the south side; had been on the north before. N.B. Absurd report about Shiel M.P. before we reached Dungarvan; (“£3,000,000 short in the Mint, somebody’s robbery;” Duffy had heard it as a truth at Waterford too, and our driver was full of it); meeting of the two brother cars and loud banter of the drivers. These things, too, if they had any worth when recollected, I recollect. Cappoquin at last, in the thickening dusk, 8 ½ I suppose; leave Duffy at the Inn , and get a car for Dromana, in a most dusty, stiffened, petrified, far from enviable condition. Dromana drawbridge – (over some river tributary of the Blackwater), Dromana park, huge square grey house and deep solitude; am admitted, received with real hospitality and a beautiful quiet politeness (tho’ my Waterford letter has not been received); and, once entirely stript, washed, and otherwise refreshed, commit myself to the new kindly element, pure element that surrounds me. Sleep, - O the beautiful big old English bed!, and bedroom big as ballroom, looking out on woody precipices that overhang the Blackwater. Begirt with mere silence! I slept and again slept, a heavy sleep; still remembered with thankfulness. Saturday 14th July. Beautiful breezy sunny morning; wide waving wooded lawn, new cropt of hay; huge square old grey mansion hanging on the woody brow or (Drown, Drum) over the river with steps, paths & c cut in the steep; - grand silence everywhere, huge empty hall like a Cathedral when you entered; - all the family away but Ld Stuart and a step-daughter Baroness, semi-german, and married to a German now fighting against the Hungarians (Baroness zealous for him). The pleasantest morning and day of all my Tour. – Quiet simple breakfast; all in excellent order (tea hot & c as you find it rarely in a great house); my letter comes now and we have a nice quiet hour or two, we three, over this and other things; ride with Lord Stuart to gardens, thro’ woods to village of Dromana; clean slated hamlet with church; founded by predecessor (70 or 80 years ago) for weaving. Ulster weavers have all ceased here; posterity lives by country labour, reasonably well, you would say. This was the limit of our ride. All trim, rational, well ordered here; Ld Stuart himself good, quite English in style, and with the good-natured candid-drawling-dialect (à la Twistleton) that reminds you of England . Talent enough too, and a sensibility to fun among other things; man of fifty, smallish black eyes, full cheeks, expression of patience with capability of action, with the most prefect politeness at all points. Will drive me to Mount Melleray “Monastery;” does so; off about one. Other side of Cappoquin; road wilder, mounting towards Knockmeildown mountains, which had made figure last night, which make a great figure, among the other fine objects, from Dromana Park; arrive at Melleray in an hour or so. Hooded monks; - actually in brown coarse woollen sacks, that reach to the knee, with funnel shaped hood that can be thrown back; Irish physiognomy in a new guize! Labourers working in the field at hay & c; Country people they, I observe, presided over by a monk. – Entrance, squalid hordes of beggars sit waiting; Irish accent from beneath the hood, as a “brother” admits us; learning the Lordship’s quality he hastens off for “the prior”: a tallish, lean, not very prepossessing Irishman of 40, who conducts us thenceforth. Banished from Mount Meilleraye in France about 1830 for quasi-political reasons; the first of these Irishmen arrive penniless at Cork, know now what to do: a protestant Sir Something gives them “waste land,” wild craggy moor on this upland of the Knockmeildowns, charitable Catholics intervene, with other help: they struggle, prosper, and are now as we see. Good bit of ground cleared, drained, and productive; more in clear progress thereto, big simple square of buildings & c (Chapel very grand, done by monks all the decorations), dormitory very large, wholly wooden and clean: bakehouse, poor library, nasty tubs of cold stirabout (coarsest I ever saw) for beggars; silence; each monk, when bidden do anything, does it, folds hands over breast, and disappears with a large smile and a low bow; - curious enough to look upon indeed! Garden rather weedy, a few months poking about in it; work rather make-believe I feared; offices in the rear; extensive peat-stack, mill; body of hay-makers, one or two young monks actually making hay. Rise at 2 a.m. to their devotions; have really to go thro’ a great deal of drill-exercise thro’ the day, independently of work. One poor fellow in the library has been dabbling a bit in the elements of geometry, - elemental yet ingenious. “The other night lead spout has been torn off from our cow-house there; new thing theft from us.” – Excellent brown bread, milk and butter, is offered for viaticum; Lord Stuart, I see, smuggles some gift of money; and with blessings we are rolled away again. The new “Monastery” must have accumulated several 1000 pounds of property in these 17 or more or fewer years, in spite of its continual charities to beggars; but this itself, I take it must be very much the result of public Charity (Catholic Ireland much approving of them); and I confess the whole business had, lurking under it for me, at this year of grace, a certain dramatic character, as if they were “doing it.” Inevitable at this year of grace, I fear! Hard work I didn’t see monks doing: except it were one young fellow who was actually forking hay; food, glory, dim notion of getting to Heaven, too, I suppose these are motive enough for a man of average Irish insight? The saddest fact I heard about these poor monks was, that the Prior had discovered some of them surveying the Youghal-and-Cappoquin steamer, watching its arrival, from their high moor as the event of their day; and had reprovingly taken away their telescope: ah me! – potatoe failure had sadly marred them too; they had sold their fine organ (a pious gift) lately, and even, as I heard, their “whole stock of poultry” in the famine year. One Sir – Shaw, fine, Ayrshire man, an old Peninsula soldier, Lord S’s agent here, to dinner with us; fine hearty hoary old soldier, rattles pleasantly away: “Napier used to say, if you would be a soldier learn to sleep!” Few can do it: Napoleon could. Snatch sleep whenever and wherever there is a chance. About 10 I had to tear myself up, and with real pathos snatch myself away from these excellent people; their car waits for me, in the dim summer night, an English driver: and thro’ Cappoquin I am hurried to Lismore, smoking, and looking into the dark boscage, into the dark world. – Bridge building at Cappoquin, old bridge at Lismore Castle, steepish ascent, old gatehouse, passage, silent court; and at one of the corners (left hand, or river, side), Currey having done the impossible, posted, namely, in bespoken relays of cars all the way from Waterford, is here some minutes ago to receive me; Duke of Devonshire’s impulse, - strange enough – on me. Across the court, or through long silent passages to an excellent room and bed, fitted up as for persons of quality; and there, bemurmured by the Blackwater, quite happy had I not been so dyspeptic incurable a creature, I once more dissolve in grateful sleep under the clouds and stars. Sunday 15th July. Bright sunny morning again; day too hot; and I, alas, internally too hot. Noble old Castle, all sumptuous, clean, dry, and utterly vacant (only a poor Irish housekeeper, old, lame, clean, loitering on the stairs, with an appetite for shillings), - all mine for a few hours; like a palace of the fairies. Drive towards the mountains; to a school-house, to be developed into Agricultural school by “the Duke”: Currey, kind active man, having his gig ready. Duke’s property ends at the very peak of the very highest Knockmeildown, a cone that had been conspicuous to me these two days; well shaded country, up the clearest of little rivers; schoolhouse stop, very windy; two girls alone in the house. – Currey salutes the people in Irish (which he has learned) as we drive down again; meet many “Coming from chapel” or hanging about the road; a certain “squire” Something is in talk with certain common people, nods to Cy, we turn to the right when near Lismore; get into the Park of some anarchic squire (has been shot at, I think); bars and obstacles, high plantations dying for long want of the axe; ugliest of houses, with its back to us, or ugly posterior to us; anarchy reigns within (I am told) as without. Down at last towards Blackwater side; where C’s messenger, that was to row us, slightly fails; Currey, leaving horse, leaving message with somebody on the road, takes me thro’ the fat rough meadows; gets into the boat, rows me himself (good man), I steering; fat rough meadows, scraggy border of trees or woods, continues for a mile or two; messenger appears on the bank, mildly rebuked and re-instructed: otter bobs up, have never seen another: fine enough river, most obliging passage thereon: we step out, thro’ a notable decayed squire’s mansion, now genteel farm; find gig in messenger’s hands on the road; roll home; dine, and get packed and mounted again, over the moor to Youghal, the hospitable Currey still driving, still in all senses, carrying me along. Much talk with him: about the unquestionable confusion of leases; unreasons, good-efforts or otherwise of neighbour landlords; general state of men and things hereabouts; on all which he talks well, courteously, wisely. “Old Deerpark” (Duke’s) on the height, bare enough of look; somnolent sunday hamlet, yet with people in sunday clothes some of them; somnolent bridge-keeper over muddy river; pleasantish road hitherto, - mount now to the moor-top, and ragged barrenness with many roofless huts is the main characteristic; wind rising to a proper pitch – Blackwater side very beautiful. Dromana & c seen over it. Squire’s house hanging close with its lawnlet upon the edge of the high (seemed precipitous) river bank; fantastic-pretty in the sunny wind. Currey leaves letter there; meet Squiress and ladies walking in the grounds, Irish voices, pretty enough Irish ways of theirs. And so along, by deep woody dells, and high declivities, wild, variegated, sometimes beautiful, sometimes very ugly road, emerge at last upon the final reach of the Blackwater; a broad smooth now quite tidal expanse, and along the north shore or this by swift, level, often shady, course, to Youghal – “Yawal” – as they name it: a town memorable to my early heart – poor brother Alick’s song of “Yoogal harbour” still dwelling with me, bringing whom now from beyond the ocean! Sun has about sunk: grey wind is cold. Youghal seen sheltered under its steep high ground; muddy, sooty, rather ugly look all has for such a fine natural scene. Long flat bare road at last, as if an embankment much of it. Halliday’s stake nets, as used in Solway firth ; poor Halliday! “Captn Flash!” they sued him at law, put down his nets (he is now dead), sent him away and directly took to the same mode of fishing which still continues. Notable history of the “Bill for deepening Youghal Harbour ” too; unreason, contradiction of neighbouring Sir This and Mr. That; patience of good quiet Duke – renewed unreason and misfortune. Yl Harbour lies exactly of its old depth to this hour! Duke has here borrowed £10,000 of Government money to embank the marsh, and employ Yl poor in famine year; which still goes on: good speed to it! Duke of Devonshire, and those he represents, I find eminent as “good landlords” – according to the commonly accepted scale of worth, they have been and are “good amount the best.” Bridge over Blackwater at Lismore; general style of management; here too, I found what was before visible, that the English Absentee generally far surpasses the native resident as an owner of land; and that all admit the fact indeed. What a “scale of worth” tho’, must it be! Dingy scattered houses along a dingy waste, hungry, main-street full of idle sundayers; turn sharp to right up a lane close past a school founded by first Earl of Cork, past corner of “Sir Walter Raleigh’s house” (now a quaker’s), and in the cold dusty dusk we dismount in a little grassy court, - court of “Youghal College” (a kind of religious foundation, nobody could well tell me what); where, better or worse, an ancient pair of domestics received the tired travellers, light fire, get tea for them; and so taking leave of Currey, who is to start at 2 a.m. and do the impossible again to be at his grand jury work in Waterford, I mount to a big dim old room, the inner of two, and tumble into bed. Was there ever, for one thing, a more assiduous host than this Mr. Currey? He expected his wife to have met him here, - she is absent with her children, bathing-quarters some 7 miles off (Dungarvan bay perhaps?), but, owing to the mad state of the posts hereabouts just now, has never got his letter ;- right hearty good night to him.