Irish Books and Irish People | Page 4

of the family. Thady's son,
Jason Quirk, attorney and agent to the estate, has dispossessed the
Rackrents; but Thady is still "poor Thady," and regards the change with
horror. Before recounting the history of his own especial master and
patron, Sir Condy Rackrent, last of the line, Thady gives his ingenuous
account of the three who previously bore the name; Sir Patrick, Sir
Murtagh, and Sir Kit. Sir Patrick, the inventor of raspberry whiskey,
died at table: "Just as the company rose to drink his health with three
cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out,
and were surprised in the morning to find that it was all over with poor
Sir Patrick." That no gentleman likes to be disturbed after dinner, was
the best recognised rule of life in Ireland; if your host happened to have
a fit, you knew he would wish you to sit it out. Gerald Griffin in The
Collegians makes the same point with his usual vigour. A shot is heard
in the dining-room by the maids downstairs. They are for rushing in,
but the manservant knows better: "Sure, don't you know, if there was
anyone shot the master would ring the bell." After Sir Patrick, who thus
lived and died, to quote his epitaph, "a monument of old Irish
hospitality," came Sir Murtagh, "who was a very learned man in the
law, and had the character of it"; another passion that seems to go with
the land-hunger in Ireland. Sir Murtagh married one of the family of the
Skinflints: "She was a strict observer for self and servants of Lent and
all fast days, but not holidays." However, says Thady (is there not a
strong trace of Swift in all this?).
"However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a
charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read and
write gratis, and where they were well kept to spinning gratis for my

lady in return; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from the tenants,
and got all her household linen out of the estate from first to last; for
after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in hand for nothing,
because of the looms my lady's interest could get from the Linen Board
to distribute gratis.... Her table the same way, kept for next to nothing;
duty fowls, and duty turkeys, and duty geese came as fast as we could
eat them, for my lady kept a sharp look-out and knew to a tub of butter
everything the tenants had all round.... As for their young pigs, we had
them, and the best bacon and hams they could make up, with all young
chickens in the spring; but they were a set of poor wretches, and we had
nothing but misfortunes with them, always breaking and running away.
This, Sir Murtagh and my lady said, was all their former landlord, Sir
Patrick's fault, who let 'em get the half year's rent into arrear; there was
something in that, to be sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the
contrary way--"
I have abridged my lady's methods, and I omit Sir Murtagh's, who
taught his tenants, as he said, to know the law of landlord and tenant.
But, "though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in
other matters." He neglected his health, broke a blood-vessel in a rage
with my lady, and so made way for Sir Kit the prodigal. Sir Kit was
shot in a duel, and Sir Condy came into an estate which, between Sir
Murtagh's law-suits and Sir Kit's gaming, was considerably
embarrassed; indeed, the story proper is simply a history of makeshifts
to keep rain and bailiffs out of the family mansion. Poor Sir Condy; he
was the very moral of the man who is no man's enemy but his own, and
was left at the last with no friend but old Thady. Even Judy Quirk
turned against him, forgetting his goodness in tossing up between her
and Miss Isabella Moneygawl, the romantic lady who eloped with him
after the toss. She deserted before Judy; here is a bit of the final scene.
Thady was going upstairs with a slate to make up a window-pane.
"This window was in the long passage, or gallery, as my lady gave
orders to have it called, in the gallery leading up to my master's
bedchamber and hers. And when I went up with the slate, the door
having no lock, and the bolt spoilt, was ajar after Mrs. Jane (my lady's
maid), and as I was busy with the window, I heard all that was saying

within. 'Well, what's in your letter, Bella, my dear?' says he. 'You're a