The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent | Page 5

you have the whole of the Pretender in your head,' after which there was the devil to pay.
There was a certain Chancellor in Ireland who was born a few years after his father and mother had separated. As he did not like Jerry, he used to make a great fuss about how he should pronounce his name. At last in Court one day he burst out:--
'Pray tell me what you wish me to call you--Mr. Kellegher, or Mr. Kellaire?'
'Call me anything you like, my lud, so long as you call me born in wedlock.'
The Chancellor did not score that time.
At one time there were grave complaints made about the light-hearted way in which Jerry handled his cases, and his practice fell off. He was conversing with a very stupid judge, lately elevated to the Bench, and observed:--
'It's a very extraordinary world: you have risen by your gravity, and I have fallen by my levity.'
He had a son who, in my time, had a large practice at the Bar, but I never came across him, nor did I ever hear that there was anything remarkable about him, except that he was not so witty as his father, which was not wonderful.
After all, as Jerry was before my own experience, I must not delay over him, so I will only give one more tale about him, and pass on.
When Lord Avonmore got his peerage for voting for the Union, he had his patent of nobility read out at a dinner-party, and it commenced, 'George, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.'
'Stop,' cried Jerry, 'I object to that. The consideration is set out too early in the deed.'
This long digression over, I revert to my father about whose respectable practice at the Four Courts I know nothing except that he allowed others to become judges, and did not find solicitors putting his services up to auction.
By the death of his elder brother, he succeeded to a property, near Dingle, on which he went to live and then got married, which was the wisest thing that he could do.
My mother was Mary Hickson, and her descent was this wise.
The Murrays were said to have come to Scotland from Moravia in the first century; and a pretty bulky history of the clan reveals as much truth about them as the author cared to put in when tired of inventing less probable facts. Sir Walter Murray, Lord of Drumshegrat, came to Ireland with Edward de Bruce and was killed in battle, leaving three sons, one of whom, christened Andrew, settled in County Down. Some of his descendants migrated to Bantry, where, in 1670, William Murray married Ann Hornswell, and was succeeded by his third son George, who was in turn succeeded by his eldest son William, who married Anne Grainger. Of the marriage, there was only one daughter Judith, who married Robert Hickson, heir to the property.
They had five sons and two daughters, the younger of whom married Sir William Cox, and the elder my father.
The superior of my dear mother never drew the breath of life. She lived until I was twenty-five, and I never met any man who could say more than I could for my mother, though equalled by what my own sons could say of theirs, and she too came of the same stock, for I married my first cousin, Julia Agnes Hickson. It is said no man is thoroughly happy until he is suitably married, an opinion I absolutely endorse; but happiness so great as my married life is not of public interest, and if it were, I should not wear my heart on my sleeve for general inspection. Any tribute from me to my dear wife would be superfluous; the devoted love of our children has been the endorsement by the next generation of the feelings which I have always felt towards her.
She was the daughter of my mother's eldest brother, John Hickson, called the Sovereign of Dingle. He had powers to collect customs, to hold a court, and to try cases in much the same way that a lord provost had.
On one occasion when a case was to be tried, two attorneys appeared from the town of Tralee, about thirty miles off. Now John Hickson had his own ideas about the attorneys of those days--ideas such as all honest men had, but dared not express. So he sent a crier through the town to say that the court was adjourned for a fortnight. When the appointed day arrived, the attorneys arrived also, so again the melodious tones of the crier proclaimed through the town that the court was adjourned for yet another fortnight, Captain Hickson remarking to his wife that he was not going to be helped to administer justice by those who earned their living on