The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale Page 5

  TO J. D., ESQ., M. P.

  _Holyhead._

  We are told in the splendid Apocrypha of ancient Irish fable, thatwhen one of the learned was missing on the Continent of Europe, it wasproverbially said,

  “_Amandatus est ad disciplinum in Hibernia_”

  But I cannot recollect that in its fabulous or veracious history,Ireland was ever the mart of voluntary exile to the man of pleasure; sothat when you and the rest of my precious associates miss the track ofmy footsteps in the oft trod path of dissipation, you will never thinkof tracing its pressure to the wildest of the Irish shores, and exclaim,“_Amandatus est ad, &c. &c. &c._”

  However, I am so far advanced in the land of _Druidism_, on my way tothe “Island of Saints,” while you, in the emporium of the world, aredrinking from the cup of conjugal love a temporary oblivion to yourpast sins and wickedness, and revelling in the first golden dreams ofmatrimonial illusion.

  I suppose an account of my high crimes and misdemeanours, banishment,&c. &c. have already reached your ears; but while my brethren intransportation are offering up their wishes and their hopes on theshore, to the unpropitious god of winds, indulge me in the garrulity ofegotism, and suffer me to correct the overcharged picture of that archcharicature _report_, by giving you a correct _ebauche_ of the recentcircumstances of my useless life.

  When I gave you convoy as far as Dover, on your way to France, Ireturned to London, to

  “Surfeit on the same

  and yawn my joys----”

  And was again soon plunged in that dreadful vacillation of mind fromwhich your society and conversation had so lately redeemed me.

  Vibrating between an innate propensity to _rights_ and an habitualadherence to _wrong_; sick of pursuits I was too indolent to relinqush,and linked to vice, yet still enamoured of virtue; weary of the useless,joyless inanity of my existence, yet without energy, without power toregenerate my worthless being; daily losing ground in the minds ofthe inestimable few who were still interested for my welfare; norcompensating for the loss, by the gratification of any one feeling inmy own heart, and held up as an object of fashionable popularity forsustaining that character, which of all others I most despised; my tasteimpoverished by a vicious indulgence, my senses palled by repletion, myheart chill and unawakened, every appetite depraved and pampered intosatiety, I fled from myself, as the object of my own utter contempt anddetestation, and found a transient pleasurable inebriety in the wellpractised blandishments of Lady C----.

  You who alone know me, who alone have _openly_ condemned, and _secretly_esteemed me, you who have wisely culled the blossom of pleasure, while Ihave sucked its poison, know that I am rather a _méchant par air_, thanfrom any irresistible propensity to indiscriminate libertinism. In fact,the _original sin_ of my nature militates against the hackneyed modes ofhackneyed licentiousness; for I am too profound a voluptuary to feelany exquisite gratification from such gross pursuits as the “_swinishmultitude_” of fashion ennoble with that name of little understood,_pleasure_. Misled in my earliest youth by “passion’s meteor ray,” eventhen my heart called (but called in vain,) for a thousand deliciousrefinements to give poignancy to the mere transient impulse of sense.

  Oh! my dear friend, if in that sunny season of existence when theardours of youth nourish in our bosom a thousand indescribable emotionsof tenderness and love, it had been _my_ fortunate destiny to havemet with a being, who--but this is an idle regret, perhaps an idlesupposition---the moment of ardent susceptibility is over, when womanbecomes the sole spell which lures us to good or ill, and whenher omnipotence, according to the bias of her own nature, and theorganization of those feelings on which it operates, determines, ina certain degree our destiny through life--leads the mind through themedium of the heart to the noblest pursuits, or seduces it through themedium of the passions to the basest career.

  That I became the dupe of Lady C----, and her artful predecessor, arosefrom the want of that “something still unpossessed,” to fill my life’sdreadful void. I sensibly felt the want of an object to interest myfeelings, and laboured under that dreadful interregnum of the heart,reason and ambition which leaves the craving passions open to everyinvader. Lady C---- perceived the situation of my mind, and--but spareme the detail of a connexion which even in memory, produces a _nausea_of every sense and feeling. Suffice it to say, that equally the victimof the husband’s villainy as the wife’s artifice, I stifled on its birtha threatened prosecution, by giving my bond for a sum I was unable toliquidate: it was given as for a gambling debt, but my father, who hadlong suspected, and endeavoured to break this fatal connexion, guessedat the truth, and suffered me to become a guest (_mal voluntaire_) inthe King’s Bench. This unusual severity on his part, lessened not onmine the sense of his indulgence to my former boundless extravagance,and I determined to remain a prisoner for life, rather than owe myliberty to a new imposition on his tenderness, by such solicitings ashave hitherto been invariably crowned with success, though answered withreprehension.

  I had been already six weeks a prisoner, deserted by those gay mothsthat had fluttered round the beam of my transient prosperity; deliveredup to all the maddening meditation of remorse, when I received a letterfrom my father (then with my brother in Leicestershire,) couched in hisusual terms of reprehension, and intervals of tenderness; ascertainingevery error with judicial exactitude, and associating every fault withsome ideal excellence of parental creation, alternately the father andthe judge; and as you once said, when I accused him of partiality to hiseldest born, “talking _best_ of Edward was _most_ of me.”

  In a word, he has behaved like an Angel. So well, that by Heavens! I canscarcely bear to think of it. A spurious half-bred generosity--a littletincture of illiberality on his side, would have been Balm of Gillead tomy wounded conscience; but with unqualified goodness he has paid all mydebts, supplied my purse beyond my wants, and only asks in return, thatI will retire for a few months to Ireland, and this I believe merely towean me from the presence of an object which he falsely believes stillhangs about my heart with no moderate influence.

  And yet I wish his mercy had flowed in any other channel, even thoughmore confined and less liberal.

  Had he banished me to the savage desolations of Siberia, my exile wouldhave had some character; had he even transported me to a South SeaIsland, or threw me into an Esquimaux hut, my new species of being wouldhave been touched with some interest; for in fact, the present relaxedstate of my intellectual system requires some strong transition ofplace, circumstance, and manners, to wind it up to its native tone, torouse it to energy, or awaken it to exertion.

  But sent to a country against which I have a decided prejudice--whichI suppose semi-barbarous, semi-civilized; has lost the strong andhardy features of savage life, without acquiring those graces whichdistinguish polished society--I shall neither participate in thepoignant pleasure of awakened curiosity and acquired information, nortaste the least of those enjoyments which courted my acceptance in mynative land. Enjoyments did I say! And were they indeed enjoyments? Howreadily the mind adopts the phraseology of habit, when the sentiment itonce clothed no longer exists. Would that my past pursuits were even in_recollection_, the aspect of enjoyments. But even my memory has lostits character of energy, and the past, like the present, appearsone unwearied scence of chill and vapid existence. No sweet point ofreflection seizes on the recollective powers. No actual joy woos myheart’s participation, and no prospect of future felicity glows onthe distant vista of life, or awakens the quick throb of hope andexpectation all is cold, sullen and dreary.

  _Laval_ seems to entertain no less prejudice against this country thanhis master, he has therefore begged leave of absence until my fathercomes over. Pray have the goodness to send me by him a box of Italiancrayons, and a good thermometer; for I must have something to relievethe _tedium vitae_ of my exiled days; and in my articles of stipulationwith my father, chemistry and belles lettres are _specially_ prohibited.It was a useless prohibition, for Heaven knows, c
hemistry would havebeen the last study I should have flown to in my present state of mind.For how can he look minutely into the intimate structure of things,and resolve them into their simple and elementary substance, whose owndisordered mind is incapable of analyzing the passions by which it isagitated, of ascertaining the reciprocal relation of its incoherentideas, or combining them in different proportions (from those by whichthey were united by chance,) in order to join a new and useful compoundfor the benefit of future life? As for belles lettres! so blunted areall those powers once so

  “Active and strong, and feelingly alive,

  To each fine impulse,”

  that not _one “pansee coleur de rose”_ lingers on the surface of myfaded imagination, and I should turn with as much apathy from thesentimental sorcery of _Rosseau_, as from the volumnious verbosity ofan High German doctor; yawn over “The Pleasures of Memory,” and run therisk of falling fast asleep with the brilliant _Madame de Sevigne_ in myhand. So send me a Fahrenheit, that I may bend the few coldly mechanicalpowers left me, to ascertain the temperature of my wild western_territories_, and expect my letters from thence to be only filled withthe summary results of metoric instruments, and synoptical views ofcommon phenomena.

  Adieu.

  H. M.

  THE WILD IRISH GIRL.