CHELSEA, 4^th Oct., 1849. – I will now, my long confused wayfarings of the Summer being ended, endeavour to write down with all despatch what I can remember of them. After much sorting of paper-rubbish, reading over all the Irish letters to my wife and kindred, and in some measure clearing the decks (not for “action” yet, alas, no, no!) set about this, which I partly consider a clearing of my own mind, as some kind of “preparation for action.” Faxit.

Reminiscences of my Irish Journey.

Saturday, 30^th June, 1849. – After endless “agonies of preparation,” natural to a poor stationary sedentary, biliary, and otherwise much bewildered mortal, about 8 in the morning I got on board the Chelsea steamer here, at the Cadagon Pier; left my poor Wife gazing sorrowfully after me, and, in a close, damp-sunny morning, was wafted swiftly down the river. Memory now is a blank nightmare till I reach the wooden platform swinging on the river just above London Bridge, north side, and call earnestly for some boatman to take my luggage and me “to the Athlone, at Alderman Stairs.” Boatman comes, a ragged, lean greasy and sooty creature, with hurried toilsome eyes and shallow shelf chin – “a wholesome small nature, terribly beaten upon and stunted” – who cheerfully takes me in; zealously descends the river with me, tide against him; whisks his way like a needle thro’ innumerable impediments of ships, rafts, barges; sweating, panting, eyes looking still more toilsome, jacket doffed, shelf-chin still more protruded; and at half-past nine, reaches the Athlone, a dingy dirty-looking Dublin steamer (but a steamer and mode of travel I had chosen against my lazy wishes, and in obedience to my insights and determinations); and, after rowing round (steward or third mate at first refusing to let down the steps) puts me on board – takes 1s. 6d. with protests, the double his fare, and splashes away again about his business. There am I on board.

Steamer lying all, to an unexpected degree, as if in a kind of greasy sleep. £2 fare demanded by some landsman interested, seems the liveliest fact. Canaille of various kinds, Irish by look, getting itself located in the fore-deck; one yellow-faced, roughish, very slight-made Irish figure in cab half-drunk fixes my attention, by his endless talk to Stewards &c. seemingly about nothing at all or next to nothing: a sorrowful phenomenon often confirmed afterwards. Half-pay Serjeant looking figure, - clean old Lancashire physiognomy of fifty (old Indian soldier, now at Falmouth, as I learned afterwards) is talking insipidities about the news from the papers, I forget what. Other figures – the more spectral in my memory, somewhat like spectral flies in a spectral gluepot! I was very sick in body, perhaps still more so in soul; and had, by no means, a lively mirror of attention to hold up to them. At 10 o’clock, nevertheless, with unexpected precision, a bell rang, the steam mechanism began growling, and we jumbled forth on our way.

To the river-mouth I remember little with distinctness; the day had settled into grey; with more than enough of east-wind now that our own velocity was added to it. The brick-chaos and ship-and-boat-chaos of big London till after Greenwich lies across my remembrance like an ugly indistinct smear, full of noise and confusion, no figure distinct in it. Passengers, one after one, came on board; at Greenwich a great many Soldiers “recruits and invalids” Irish both, the latter from India, and “bad subjects” mostly, as I learned afterwards, - these came on board at Gravesend in great number, drunk many of them, with or without officers (without it afterwards turned out); a nasty sight rather. Pilot-boats hooked themselves astern of us, and went shoving thro’ the foam; sometimes as many as 4 boats at once: “pilots looking out for a job,” – favoured by the Steamers. A tall antelope or panther figure in red coat (about Gravesend, I think) misses the proper boarding-place from his boat; steps into one of these pilot-boats, cool he amid the tumult of noises and splashing of spray; and twists gallantly aloft over the stern; dashes the spray from self and papers, and with a brisk calmness which I could not but admire, stept smiling forwards to his place, the fore-deck: a corporal of foot; commander he, as I found, of the broken military there. An exceedingly tall lank simple-looking Irish gentleman came on board thereabouts too, whom I afterwards named to myself the “Irish Toots” (see Dickens). A very short well-conditioned cockney-looking gentleman had likewise come. I took him for the Captain of these Majesty’s forces of ours; but found afterwards he was a tourist, “looking at all the capital Cities,” Paris last year, Dublin this; he had a small sea-store (from which I guessed a wife too); his big blue eyes, silly as he was, had at times a beautiful sorrow in them while he sat silent in the evening on deck for a while; a rough pugface – tamed into perfect peaceable politeness, had in it an air of limited rationality, veracity and English wholesomeness, which pleased me. But I must get on! Somewhere on the river a big fat Englishman of 50 stept on board, burly, black, pock-marked, one eye shut (seemingly out, but it proved to be in too, on occasion): some trader (one would have hoped, in bacon and edibles) to the Plymouth region, I afterwards found. One other cabin passenger, where entering I noticed not, was an elderly Lancashire or Cumberland man, you could not say of what quality below a gentn.; feeble-minded, good-humoured, his old wrinkly face grew quite blown-out at last, the eyes almost shut up, by inflammatory regimen of whiskey &c. and want of sleep, before the voyage ended. I did not in the least hate, yet how little either, did I pity this poor old man. Alas, wrapt up in our own black cares (which we ought to conquer, and keep moderately conquered, if we stood to our post), shut up the soul of man from feeling for his brother, - surely an ignorable state! Let this suffice for our ship’s loading. I remember very vaguely Erith, much more so Southend or rather the name of “Southend and its long Pier,” (a cockney bathing-place). I have a dim tint of grey-green country and spectral objects enough there rushing past me all that day and afternoon. Our Captain, an excellent, civil, able, old Welshman, kept aloft on the platform; very obliging when you spoke to him. I went twice there with a cigar, looking down into the sea of Irish rabble, and began to decipher type-faces of the Irish. The “light boats,” we passed near to two or three of them; the dreariest objects I ever in this world saw; the “Girder” “Tongue” &c. on their several shoals of those names; must keep a light burning at night; the two men have no function else whatever; I suppose they can eat terribly, and sleep nearly the whole day. Their boats were bobbing and capering in the wild surf; narrow was the share otherwise these poor fellows had of this Universe. It is a wild expanse of shoals and channels, this Thames mouth. I had never been on that side of it, at least never in daylight, having usually in former voyages passed by the Nore. Of Broadstairs and Ramsgate, nothing but a tremulous cloudy shadow remains. Ditto of Deal. I saw Walmer Castle, Duke of Wellington’s, looking down on us with wings of planted wood; less memorably some big Hotel, perhaps more than one, its windows glittering in the bleared windy sunset, - not beautiful to me they, or anything, in that sad mood. Dover (lived at, 24 years before, one autumn) looked grim enough in the twilight; I could recognise almost nothing of my old localities, the new “entrance of the tunnel” was not recognisable except as a small blotch. How I took tea & c. and went to bed is quite abolished from recollection; too well can I recollect the snoring of my one-eyed provision friend, - whose eating at tea, whole chickens and plates of ham vanishing before him, I do now recollect! Also that I got up, probably about midnight; was told we were opposite Brighton, but could see no token of that or of anything but a dim flat coast with some kind of luminous gleam all along where sea met land; whereupon I had to smoke a pipe, and descend to my lair again. Cyclops snoring still more effectively now – seldom or never heard such snoring, which was not a stream, diastole and systole, but a whirlpool rather, or system of whirlpools, bottomless maelstroms and sandy syrtis conjoined (ah me!) for the man was nearly suffocated by closed curtains and by vanished plates of ham. I have a dim but certain recollection of jumping out of my bed or drawer at last, indignantly dashing his curtains open, with some passionate demand to “cease that beastly gurgling and gluddering, in the name of all the devils!” Whereby at least my heavy Provisional friend did awake; and I fell asleep and heard no more of him for that night. Poor fellow; not a bad creature, after all; there seemed a kind of healthy banter in him, a merry vivid eye; probably an excellent dealer in bacon, praiseworthy as a British citizen in 1849; but he did eat excessively, and his snoring was to me at once hateful and terrible, - poor fellow after all!

Sunday morning (1 July) at 7 came on deck: beautifully sunny morning, Isle of Wight, Ventnor region lying close at hand, and the ship motionless waiting for the turn of the tide – wind had gone round from east to west in the night: we hung for about an hour with little, at first with next to no motion, opposite that southwest region of the little Island. The special localities, none of which were known to me beforehand, I did not get committed to memory. A straggling hamlet (perhaps about Dunnose, I can’t now find on the map any name that fixes itself as the name then given me) with a kind of bay and clayey unbeautiful coasts, this stood distinct; less so other straggling human objects; and now only Ventnor itself figures as absorbing the whole vivid past of the scene. A steepish slope, very green but rather treeless; houses and little gardens sprinkled over a good part of it, connected by oblique paths; grass-surface very beautiful everywhere, shrubberies apparently flourishing; a pleasant group of dwellings hung out there against the morning sun, - and one of them, I knew not which, had been John Sterling’s last dwelling! I looked intently, with many thoughts. Bonchurch not visible now – had it been? I knew also (what was curious to think of) that John Forster, little dreaming of my whereabout, was in one White’s at Bonchurch, down from London that very morning. Far elsewhither was I bound. With eye or with glass, looking never so intently I could discover no human or even living figure; which proves perhaps that our distance was greater than the short distance it appeared to be. “Toots” very loquacious when he could get a chance, came talking about Dr. McHale of Tuam (“Chuam” he called it) and Nangle of Achil Island; and how John had “cursed them all with bell, book and candle” & c. which I shook off, not believing it at all literally in spite of Toots’s evident bona fides, and wishing indeed to see Ventnor rather than it. After Ventnor, talk with the Half-pay Serjt. Major; Wight now flitting faster by us, the ship being under full movement again; of Indian soldiering; mainly about the economics, difficulties & c. of locomotion for armies; but above all things the prices of articles in the various markets, allowances of grog – what you could get, and pocket or swallow, by your soldiering in India – this was the theme of my half-pay Serjt. A most healthy practical man; simplicity itself, and yet savoir-faire enough, tough as leather, and a stroke in him (I could see) like that of a quarter staff of oak. Man worth remembering told me of his pensions, promotions, appointment now (to some military charge of a district, I think) at Falmouth: “as good as £100 in all, sir, which is very well, you see”; more total absence of bragging, nay of self consciousness or of any unwholesome element it was impossible to see or figure. Soldiering like working, in such men; strong both ways, as native oak: the strongest kind of men. After Wight, Needles & c. (terribly worn, almost dilapidated and ruinous-ugly looking) had rapidly flowed past, - perhaps before 10 o’clock, the coast left us; Southampton & c. far in the distance, passed unnoticed, and I think I must have taken to read Quaker Pim’s book on Ireland which also passed unnoticed. Or perhaps I went to sleep? Probably that was it? Yes, in my notebook (pencil) it is marked so “fell asleep on deck a little in the sun towards noon.”

N.B. – After 3 days more there is not even a pencil scrap, nothing but the letters to help me decipher what was the exact day of this or that occurrence still remembered by me.

It turned out now that there had a man been lost last night. The good old Captain so reported it. On Saturday evening, most of the poor Irish wretches of “invalids” got more or less completely drunk; some of them even on entering, had needed no completing. One of them a lean, angry, misguided, entirely worthless looking creature, age perhaps 40, came staggering upon the quarterdeck, and made a turn there: turn nearly completed, he came right upon the captain who of course ordered him off, - which order, tho’ given mildly enough the poor drunk wretch felt to be insulting to his honour, and swore fiercely not to comply with. A scuffle had ensued (Captain’s hand got “twisted”): all of us started up to conjure the poor wretch & c.; he did then turn off, abashed, perhaps repentant, had taken more drink for consolation; was “last seen about midnight”: it was now he that was never to be seen more! The Irish physiognomies I studied often from the upper platform: besides my yellow friend with the cap, I had made out some five or six type-physiognomies, which I could recognize as specimens of Irish classes of faces: there was the angry-bewildered, for instance the poor wretch that went overboard, or a still better yet left on board, a lean withered show of a creature with hanging brows, droop nose, mouth corners dropping, chin narrow, narrow, eyes full of sorrow and rage; “ I have a right to be here, sir, I want my ration!” said he once. There was there a blond big tiger-face (to whom I lent a light for his pipe); this is of mixed breed, I think a north country face: noble possibility quite marred. Irish sailor at the helm in wig and storm hat; bulky, with aquiline face and closed mouth, wild cunning little eye: like Jock McDonald of my early years. Ah me! These faces are still very clear to me; and were I a painter, I could draw them; others, one or two, not thought of again till now, have got erased; I was struck in general with the air of faculty misbred, and gone to waste, or more or less “excellent possibility much marred,” in almost all these faces. The man had found himself so enveloped in conditions which he deemed unfair, which he had revolted against, but had not been able to conquer, that he had so to speak, lost his way; a sorry sight, the tragedy of each of these poor men; but here too surely is a “possibility”; if the Irish faculty be good, you can breed it, put it among conditions which are fair or at least fairer.

“Portland Bill”: it was on awakening from one of my deck sleeps, well on in the afternoon that this object, a muddy-beached little Island, I found, - perhaps an Island only at high tide: - shaped rather like a battle bill – was that the origin of the name? From this point the Coast continued our neighbour again; by degrees Dorsetshire passed, and then Devonshire with its gnarled rocks (as if they were whinstone or limestone, and scotch rocks) winded rapidly off, as the evening sank – viewless now, damp, and rather windy, as we were running in to the teeth of the breeze. Many caves, gnarled promontories, rock islets; trim houses and fields, no human creature visible; a silent English Sabbath country, - like the dream of a Sabbath. Mate, of whom anon, points out Plymouth light in the thickening dusk; past 10 we make the light: Breakwater with its red lamp, with its sudden calm of sea, and tumult of boats; - we were in some most dark, strait place, with rain beginning, and they called it Plymouth Harbour. Toots’s talk to me, while the bustle went on, about an Irish lord (just dead?) and his brother, transcendent blackguards, beautiful men, dance or dinner of innumerable improper-females in London once – pity rather than I have forgotten that: but of Toots who could do anything but forget? Smooth-flowing shallow shameless river of talk; always in one or two minutes, when I could not bodily get away from him, my thoughts slid far away. These transcendent Irish lords were connected, somehow by marriage, with the late Duke of Gordon. Of my night in this harbour there remains yet sad memorial; in a scrawl of a letter begun about midnight to my wife! Enough here to record the stages or chief epochs: 1. To bed very sleepy. Toots and the Lancashire Non-significant, talking serious jargon for about an hour in the cabin, wouldn’t let me; I remember, the poor cockney tourist had been asking “for a pen,” remembered Post Office here, and started up to write, by way of deliverance from that ear-torment: - 2. Writing with ear-torment still worse near at hand, my Provisional friend (O Heaven I thought he had been gone, never to snore more) stept in, evidently full of food and porter; at sight of him I start, can write no farther; lock up my writing case, wait impatiently that Toots and Non-significant would end. 3. Try bed again; can’t at all. Toots and Non-significant stumble in, rain patters on the deck, Provisional friend takes to snoring – “blubber – gurgle – gludder!” I start up and down my clothes; find in the cabin too a poor under-steward snoring, loudly but humanly, and have not the heart to awaken him. Uncertain what to do, fly on deck, smoke (under my umbrella), try not to despair; find at last a side cabin with nothing in it but rubbish of clothes, a sofa and an open window; fling myself down there, thanking Heaven, and fall sound asleep – till 8 next morning.

Monday 2^nd July

All busy when I came on deck; sunny morning, boxes, bales, persons getting or got on board; soon sail; have seen nothing of Plymouth, see little even of the harbour except confusion of ropes and ships; - size of it guessable at less than I expected. Tract of town (Catwater they called it?) stretching back on the right as we sailed out; buildings like public storehouses, or official houses, farther down; two neat women step hurriedly on board there; misventurous Irish-women, giving up their plan of emigration to Australian, and cowering back to Ennis in Clare, as I afterwards learned; sisters, Misses Hewit by name. Breakwater a stone glacis, with light-tower (perhaps cannon-tower too) and small esplanade at the end, some frigates scattered about; it was Plymouth sound; pretty enough in the summer morning after such a night. Various new figures now on board; new prey to Toots. I spoke to none; hoped they would leave at Falmouth where we were to call. Sick gentleman in big wicker cradle lay on the deck; poor fellow! “paralytic in the lower extremities,” going to Dublin for surgery, attended only by a rough clown of a servant; his eyes looked mild and patient, tho’ sad; intelligent white face; age probably about 35; they shifted him round out of the sun; not to embarrass him, we had to forbear looking at his cradle or him.

Cornish coast, as that of Devonshire had been, gnarled rocky; indented all along, harbour and sound (when once you had “opened” it) at the bottom of each little bay “Pol” – something or other, when you asked the name. An interesting event to me. Looe: “that is Looe,” that strait hardly perceptible crack or notch in the rocks there. – Poor C. Buller, poor old years of his and mine! Fowey-Harbour entrance was marked by white spots, a couple, painted on the rocks; not find it otherwise. Toots preying on the new comers. “Hum-m-m. Drum-m-m!” with a strong Irish intonation in it. Many trim sloops or one pattern, with red sails and conspicuous label (“P.H. No. 1” & c.? Something like that) were nimbly cutting about: “Pilchard-boats, sir!” All busy here, crowded steamer crossed to us on the left: pleasure-trip, Falmouth – to the Eddystone probably. Half-pay serjeant did the honours of the coast as we approached his new home; has liberty seemingly of the quarter-deck, but feeds and sleeps in some region of his own. About noon or after, past St. Mawes and on the left past Pendennis, - Falmouth; and moor there “for about an hour” – which proved two hours and more.

I might, had I foreseen that latter fact, have gone ashore to see “Barclay Fox” and Co., if nothing better;  nay, I was near going, had my foot on the ladder towards a boat, but in the scrambling tumult gave it up again, and decided to stay and look about me and pensively smoke and consider. John Sterling’s house was there too; but nobody could tell me which; tho’ one, a brisk young damsel, did point out the warehouse of the Foxes, a big house near the sea. Falmouth might contain 3 or 4 thousand souls (as the look suggested to guess); it hung, pleasantly enough, tho’ much too bare-looking, on the slope of the acclivity and down close to the sea; reminded me a little of Kirkcaldy, except that this was squarish in shape, not “a long town”, rather a “loose town,” as I judged; one street near the sea, main street I suppose, on the level; the sloping thoroughfares I judged to be mostly lanes. The country looked bare; the harbour land-locked is beautiful, and if deep must be excellent. Assisted clown to screen the poor invalid gentleman in his cradle from the hot windless sun; fixed up my own umbrella over him, which the clown afterwards told me, in confidential gratitude, was “ a graat suppoart” – Sent a card ashore to Fox; admired the clean, sturdy, clear-looking boatmen; watched their long dangerous loading and disloading. Toots had gone, Provisional friend (O joy!) had gone; hoped we should now have a stiller time. About two the steam growled again, and we got under way, close to the little pleasant Castle of Pendennis this time, a trim castellated height with trim paths & c. (one company in it, Serjt, half-Pay had said); and so again out to the open deep.

Our 2 Irishwomen “from Ennis in Clare” with their clean summer-bonnets (mere clean calico, folded full over paste board, with a tack or two; much admired by me) had come to the quarter-deck; wished evidently to be spoken to; were by me, after others of us. Father had been a Lieutenant of foot with pension, mother too with pension; both being dead, resources were all out: parson had advised emigration, “free passage to Australia” was certain if we would deposit £12 in advance; deposited, sold off, came to Plymouth, found the “free passage” a passage among parish paupers, and shrieked (of course) at the notion of it! Officers had been extremely helpful and polite; got us back, with difficulty, our £12; and here we are, wending our sad way home again! A more distressing story I had not lately heard. For both the women, “ladies” you could not have hesitated even in the poor-house to call them, were clearly of the superior faculty and quality: the elder some 45 perhaps, a rugged brave-looking woman; the younger delicate, graceful, and even still beautiful, tho’ verging towards middle-age also. The two unfortunates, was there nothing other for them by way of career in the world but this! The younger was quite pleasant company; but at “the Lizard” or earlier began to grow sick, grew ever sicker, and I had to lead her to her place, a horrible den called “Second Cabin,” and there leave her sister and her. Ill-nature of the stewardess, tiff between the good old captain and her because of these poor Miss Hewits. “Bring me our basket, pray sir! Stewardess will give it you!” were the last words of the elder from her dark den. Stewardess knew nothing of their basket, not she; old captain awoke from his after-dinner nap, reproached the woman for her greedy hard character, ordered here to “know” the basket, which, with very angry tears, assisted by me and my soothing eloquence, the creature at least did. Base, in many cases, under certain aspects, is the mind of man!

The “Lizard point” we would pass before dinner; stormy place of cliffs, high cliffs rough water; I found that in shape it did resemble somewhat the head of a Lizard, - at least on the western sides it does. We were past the “souther” most land of Britain then; but the tossing of the water did not abate as promised; the evening light glared wild and sad upon the solitary sea, to the Land’s-end, that was the word now. Coast still high and all rock; Land’s end stretching out black ahead; it was towards sunset that we actually reached it; passed it round the lighthouse at the distance perhaps of a mile. The wildest most impressive place I ever saw on the coasts of Britain. A lighthouse rises on a detached rock some considerable space ahead; many detached rocks, of a haggard skeleton character, worn haggard by the wild sea, are scattered about between the lighthouse and end of the firm cliff; that cluster, where the lighthouse is, had seemed to me like the ruins of a Cathedral for some time. Very wild and grim, impressive in itself and as the notablest of the British capes. A farmhouse called by sailors “First and last” stands very near to the extremity; farther round to the west are villages and many houses visible “mining village” you are told; the promontory itself is among the highest I have seen (much higher than St. Bees I thought); sheer and black. A boat or two, poor specks of piscatory human art, were seen rocking and paddling among the angry skeleton rocks in these ever-vexed waters; where they were to land, or how far get up to “First and last” one didn’t well see. But here at last is the spectre of the mixed Cathedral, - a lighthouse among haggard sea-beat rocks, namely; and we are round the Land’s-end, getting round towards the western side of it, and had better look well our last. The sunshine now went out, angry breeze blew colder from dark cloudy skies, - baddish night, probably? Some poor laboring ship, with patched sails and not otherwise of prosperous aspect met us just past the lighthouse, borne into the grim evening, it on its way, we on ours; and the Land’s-end was among the things that had been; “standing for the Tuscar, sir!” – Tuscar Light on the coast of Wexford, 130 miles off. And so the evening and the morning had been a new day.

As there was nothing to be seen on deck but the dim tumult of sea and sky, I suppose I must have gone early to bed: I can remember shutting my little cabin door, (for the harsh stewardess, in hope probably of a shilling, had volunteered to make a bed for me in the place where I had found refuge the night before) with a satisfied feeling, and turning in with great hope: but, alas, it proved far otherwise. My first experience in the new bed was a jolt that nearly threw me out: the wind had risen, was still rising; the steamer pitched, rolled, tumbled, creaked and growled: doors banging, men’s feet and voices sounding, and the big sea booming and roaring: not a wink of sleep could be had all night, hardly could one’s place in bed be maintained. Some time, perhaps between 3 and 4 I went on deck to smoke; a wild wet stormy dimness everywhere; the mate dripping from every angle of his face and person – with thin wet shoes on, I remember – approached my shelter, talking sea stoicisms to me, admitting that it was a roughish night: noticeable fellow this; very civil, very good-humoured, sliding about (for he trailed his limbs and feet with thin shoes) to put this and that detail in order always; voice thin, creaky, querulous – hesitatory, and as if it couldn’t be troubled to speak; a rocking, sliding, innocent-hearted “sea-pedant” (as such I had classed him); with lips drawn in, puckered brow, and good humoured eyes pretending to be wearier than they were; came from the Medway, had been wrecked, traded to Aberdeen, was now puddling about in these seas; -  may  he prosper, poor fellow! I flung myself next on the sofa, under miscellaneous wrappage, and did then get some stony sleep till the morning fairly broke.

Tuesday 3^rd July

On deck between 8 and 9, all hands looking out for “the Tuskar” when doing nothing else; old captain and a wretched passenger or two trying to walk the quarter-deck (impossible for any two-footed land animal); big sheets of spray dashing over them from time to time. A wild grey tumult; sight and sound everywhere of the rather dismal sort in sea and in sky. One ship or perhaps two at various times visible; elsewhere no Tuskar, no motion that was not of the chaotic powers. Sailors made a wave or motion or sound of some sort from the platform, Captain too looked; Tuskar at last! In a few instants more I also could see it; white pillar or tower rising steady amid the tumult of the waters, strange and welcome; some 12 miles off, they said. We turned now gradually to the right: for Arklow head, for Wicklow do., then was Dublin itself to come. Wind, as we turned from it on our new course, grew softer somewhat and water smoother, but all day it was gusty, very uncomfortable and too cold. The poor sick gentleman had passed the night on deck, his cradle well screened under tarpaulins; and didn’t seem much hurt by the rough weather. Lancashire Non-significant, who took a little punch perhaps too often, seemed greatly out of sorts; his poor face red as vermilion in parts, and swollen as if you had blown up all its own wrinkles with wind; - poor devil; yet he ate again at breakfast, and made no complaint, took nothing amiss.

“Wexford Harbour,” visible only as a blank on the line of coast, was a mere tradition to us. Wexford and Wicklow hills ( I supposed about Eniscorthy and Ferns) many common-place-looking hills of moderate height and complex arrangement now visible. Vinegar Hill, a peaked flat cone, conspicuous enough among the others. Thought of the “Battle of Vinegar Hill,” but not with interest, with sorrow rather and contempt; one of the ten times ten thousand futile fruitless “battles” this brawling unreasonable people has fought, - the saddest of distinctions to them among peoples! In Heaven’s name learn that “revolting” is not the trade which will profit you. The unprofitablest of all trades, if you exceed in it; in Heaven’s name either be at peace, or else try to fight with some chance of success! “Hill of Tarah” visible too, of conical shape; but not the historical illustrious Tara, - that is in Meath, I think; - tho’ that too is but moderately “illustrious” to me.

Arklow Town I didn’t see at all; understood there was next to no town, but remembered “Wooden Ludlow’s” adventure there, and could have liked to take some picture of the ground with me. Wicklow head, beautiful trim establishment of a light-house there, properly three towers (one or else two of them having proved wrong built), accurately whitewashed, walled in, with paths &c., a pleasure to look at upon the brown crag. These generally like that of Devonshire or the lower forms of Scotch cost; interior not ill-cultivated; houses trim enough from the distance, fields fenced and some small stragglings of plantation even. Behind Wicklow Head, in a broad shallow bay looking rather bleared, found Wicklow Town, kept looking at it as we sailed northward right away from it; lies in a hollow on the southern side of the Bay screened by Wicklow head from the east winds – rather a feeblish kind of County Town; chapels, a steeple, slate roofs, thin cloud of smoke; perhaps 2 or towards 3 thousand inhabitants, as I judged. In all these seas we saw no ship, absolutely none at all but one Wicklow Fishing sloop, of the same form but quite rusty and out of repair, as the Cornish Pilchard-sloops of yesterday; - alas one, & in this state of ineffectuality. A big steamer farther on, making from Dublin towards “Bristol” ( I think our captain said); this and a pilot boat not employed by us; expect these three we saw no other ships at all in those Irish seas that day. Wonderful & lamentable! chorus all my Irish friends; and grope for their pikes to try and mend it! Bray Head I had seen before; and Bray, but couldn’t make my recollections correspond. Beautiful suburban country by the shores there, on the Dublin side. Works of Wicklow Railway, hanging over the sea, I remember, probably about Bray Head. Afternoon sinking lower, wind cold, bleary, loud; no dinner till one got to Dublin: wish we were there. Dublin Bay at last; Kingstown with its small exotic rows of villas hanging over the saltwater; Dalkey Islet, with ruined church, close on the other side of us. Kingstown Harbour; huge square basin within granite moles, few ships, small business in it; wild wind was tossing some filament of steam about (mail steamer, getting ready I suppose for Holyhead), and the rest was idle vacancy. Long lines of granite embankment, a noble channel with docks, miles of it (there seemed to me), and no ship in it, no human figure on it, the genius of vacancy alone possessing it! Will “be useful some day” I suppose? The look of it, in one’s own cold wretched humour, was rather sad. – Dublin Harbour at last; a few ships actually moored here, along the quays nearest to the city. Tumult, as usual; our key was on the north bank. Miss Hewits came up, specially begged me not to leave their luggage once on shore till they themselves came with the remainder of it: did so, tho’ little able to wait; was hardly ever in a more deplorable state of body than even now. Despatched the Miss Hewits; got into a cab myself escaping from the unutterable hurlyburly.  “Imperial Hôtel, Sackville Street!” – and was safely set down there, in wind and dust, myself a mass of dust and inflammatory ruin, about 6 or 7 in the evening of Tuesday July 3. – What a pleasure to get fairly washed, and into clean linen and clothes, once more! Small wholesome dinner in the ground storey; fine roomy well-ordered place: but, alas, at the Post Office there was no admittance, “all shut at 7.” I had to take that disappointment, and instead of receiving letters write letters.

Imperial-Hotel people, warned I suppose by Fitzgerald (Miss Purcell the proprietress’s nephew) had brightened up into enthusiastic smiles of welcome at the sound of my name: all was done for me then that human waiterage in the circumstances could do; I had a brisk-eyed deft Irish youth by way of special attendant, really a clever, active, punctual youth, who seemed as if he would have run to the world’s end for me at lifting of my finger: he got me cloakpins (my little bedroom the “quietest” they had, wanted such); bath tubs, attended to my letters, clothes, messages, waited on my like a familiar fairy. Could they have got me a room really “quiet,” where I might have really slept, all had been well there. But that was not possible; not there, nor anywhere else in inns. One’s “powers of observation” act under sad conditions, if the nerves are to be continually in a shatter with want of sleep and what it brings! Under that sad condition, as of a gloomy pressure of waking nightmare, were all my Irish operations, of observation or other, transacted; no escape from it; take it silently therefore, say nothing more of it, but do the best you may under it as under a law of fate.

About 10 at night, still writing letters, I received “John O’Hagan’s” visit; a note from Duffy[1], who was dining there, had lain waiting for me before – brisk innocent modest young barrister, this John O’Hagan[2]; Duffy’s sister-in-law did by no manner of means let rooms; so her offer of one, indicated in Duffy’s note, had to be at once declined: Duffy himself “would be here in half an hour”. Wrote on to my mother or to Jane: Duffy came soon after the time set; drank a “glass of lemonade” from me, I a glass of punch; took my letters of introduction home with him to scheme out a route, gave me a road series “drive here first, then there, then &c” from Dublin introductions on the morrow; and after a silent pipe I tumbled into bed.

Wednesday 4^th July.

Thursday 5^th July

What people called, what bustle there was of cards and people and appointments and invitations in my little room, I have quite forgotten the details of (letters indicate more of it perhaps): what I can remember is mainly what I did, and not quite definitely (except with effort) all or the most of that.

Notes and visitors, hospitable messages and persons, Macdonnel, Coll. Foster, Dr. Kennedy – in real truth I have forgotten all the particulars; of Thursday I can remember only a dim hurly-burly, and whirlpool of assiduous hospitable calls and proposals, till about 4 o’clock when a “Sir Philip Crampton,”[7] by no means the most notable of my callers, yet now the most noted in my memory, an aged, rather vain and not very deep-looking Doctor of Physic, came personally to “drive me out,” – drive me to the Phoenix Park and Lord Lieutenant’s, as it proved. Vapid-inane looking streets in this Dublin, along the quays and everywhere; sad defect of wagons, real business vehicles or even gentlemen’s carriages; nothing but an empty whirl of street cars, huckster carts and other such “trashery.” Sir P’s. talk, of Twistleton mainly – Phoenix Park, gates, mostly in grass, monument a pyramid, I really don’t remember in “admonition” of what, - some victory perhaps? Frazer’s Guide-Book would tell. Hay going on, in pikes, coils, perhaps swaths too; patches of potatoes even: a rather dimmish wearisome look. House with wings (at right angles to the body of the building) with esplanade, two sentries, and utter solitude, looked decidedly dull. Sir Ph., some business inside, tho’ Ldship. out, leaves me till that end; I write my name, with date merely, not with address, in his Lordship’s book (“haven’t the honor to know her Laydship,”) am conducted through empty galleries, into an empty room in the western (or is it northern?) wing, am there to wait. Tire soon of waiting; walk off leaving message. Sir P. overtakes me before we reach the gate; sets me down at my Hotel again, after much celebration of his place in the Wicklow Hills, etc., after saluting an elderly roué Prince or Graf something, a very unbeautiful old boiled-looking foreign dignitary (Swede, I think) married to somebody’s sister; - and with salutations, takes himself away, muttering about “Zoological Society breakfast on Saturday”, and I, barely in time now for Stokes’s dinner, behold him no more.

Stokes’s dinner was well replenished both with persons and other material, but it proved rather unsuccessful. Foolish Mrs Stokes, a dim Glasgow lady, with her I made the reverse of progress, - owing chiefly to ill luck. She did bore me to excess, but I did not give way to that; had difficulty however in resisting it; and at length once, when dinner was over, I, answering somebody about something chanced to quote Johnson’s, “Did I say anything that you understand, Sir?” the poor foolish lady took it to herself; bridled, tossed her head with some kind of indignant-polite ineptitude of a reply; and before long flounced out of the room (with her other ladies, not remembered now), and became, I fear, my enemy for ever! Petrie, a Painter of Landscapes, notable antiquarian, enthusiastic for Brian Boru and all that province of affairs; an excellent simple, affectionate loveable soul, “dear old Petrie”, he was our chief figure for me: called for punch instead of wine, he, and was gradually imitated; a thin, wrinkly, half-ridiculous, yet mildly dignified man; old bachelor, you could see[8]; speaks with a panting manner, difficult to find the word; shews real knowledge, tho’ with sad credulity on Irish antiquarian matters; not knowledge that I saw on anything else. Burton[9], a young Portrait-Painter; thin-aquiline man, with long thin locks scattered about, with a look of real Painter-talent, but thin, proud-vain; not a pleasant “man of genius.” Todd, antiquarian parson (Dean or something), whose house I had seen the night before: little round-faced, dark-complexioned, squat, good humoured and knowing man; learned in Irish Antiquities he too; not without good instruction on other matters too. – These and a mute or two were the dinner; Stokes, who has a son that carves, sitting at the side; after dinner there came in many other mutes who remained such to me. Talk, in spite of my endeavours, took an Irish-versus-English character; wherein, as I really have no respect for Ireland as it is now and has been it was impossible for me to be popular! Good humour in general, tho’ not without effort always, did maintain itself. But Stokes, “the son of a United-Irishman” as I heard, grew more and more gloomy, emphatic, contradictory: After 11 I was glad to get away, Petrie and others in kindly mood going with me so far as our roads coincided; and about 12 (I suppose) I got to bed, - and do not suppose, also, but know, that there was a wretched wakeful night appointed me: some neighbouring guest taken suddenly ill, as I afterwards heard. ( I must get on faster, be infinitely briefer in regard to all this!

Friday 6^th July

Still in the bath-tub, when my waiter knocked at the door, towards 9; and so soon as let in, gave me a letter with notice that some orderly, or heidue, or I know not what the term is, was waiting in some vehicle for an answer. Invitation from Lord Clarendon to dine with him on Saturday: here was a nodus! For not having slept, I had resolved to be out of Dublin and the noise without delay; Kennedy had pressed me to his country-house for a dinner on Saturday, and that, tho’ not yet in words, I had resolved to do, his hospitality being really urgent and his place quiet; - and now has the Lord Lieutenant come, whose invitation abolished by law of etiquette all others! Out of the cold bath, on the spur of the moment, thou shalt decide, and the heidue waits! Polite answer (well enough really) that I am to quit Dublin that evening, and cannot come. Well so far; so much is tolerably ended. New very polite note came from Lord Clarendon offering me introductions & c. an hour or two after; for which I wrote a 2^nd note, “not needed, thousand thanks.” This morning I had to breakfast with O’Hagan, where were two young “Fellows of Trinity” great admirers & c. and others to be.

Fellows of Trinity, breakfast and the rest of it accordingly took effect: Talbot Street – I think they call the place, - lodgings, respectable young barrister’s. Hancock the Political-Economy Professor, whom I had seen the day before; he and one Ingram, author of the Repeal Song “True men like you men,” were the two Fellows; to whom as a mute brother one Hutton was added, with “invitation to me” from the parental circle, “beautiful place somewhere out near “, - very well as it afterwards proved. “Dr Murray,” Theology-Professor of Maynooth, a big burly mass of Catholic Irishism; he and Duffy, with a certain vinaigrous pale shrill logician figure who came in after breakfast, made up the party – Talk again England versus Ireland; a sad unreasonable humour pervading all the Irish population on this matter – “England does not hate you at all, nor love you at all; merely values and will pay you according to the work you can do!” No teaching of that unhappy people to understand so much. Dr Murray, head cropt like stubble, red-skinned face, harsh grey Irish eyes; full of fiery Irish zeal, too, and age, which however he had the art to keep down under buttery-vocables: man of considerable strength, man not to be “loved” by any manner of means! Hancock, and now Ingram too, were wholly English (that is to say, Irish-rational) in sentiment. Duffy very plaintive with a strain of rage audible in it. Vinaigrous logician, intolerable in that vein, drove me out to smoke. Not a pleasant breakfast in the humour I was then in!

University after, along with these two fellows:  library and busts; Museum, with big dark Curator Ball in it; many knick-knacks – Skull of Swift’s Stella, and plaster-cast of Swift: couldn’t write my name, except all in a tremulous scratchy shiver, in such a state of nerves was I. Todd had, by appointment, been waiting for me; was gone again. Right glad I to get home, and smoke a pipe in peace, till Macdonnel (or somebody) should come for me! – Think it was this day I saw among others Councillor Butt, brought up to me by Duffy: a terrible black burly son of earth: talent visible in him, but still more animalism; big bison-head, black, not quite unbrutal: glad when he went off “to the Galway Circuit” or whithersoever.[10]

Sad reflexions upon Dublin, and the animosities that reign in its hungry existence – Not now the “Capital” of Ireland; has Ireland any Capital, or where is its future capital to be? Perhaps Glasgow or Liverpool is its real “capital city” just now! Here are no longer lords of any kind; not even the sham-lords with their land-revenues come hither now. The place has no manufactures to speak of; except of ale and whisky, and a little poplin-work, none that I could hear of. All the “litigation” of Ireland, whatever the wretched Irish people will still pay for the voiding of their quarrels, comes hither; that and the sham of Government about the Castle and Phoenix Park, - which could as well go anywhither if it were so appointed. Where will the future capital of Ireland be! Alas, when will there any real aristocracy arise (here or elsewhere) to need a Capital for residing in! –

About 4 p m as appointed, Macdonnell with his car came.[11] “Son of a United Irishman”, he too. Florid handsome man of 45, with grey hair, keen hazel eyes, not of the very best expression: active, quick, intelligent, energetic, with something smelling of the Hypocrite in him, disagreeably limiting all other respect one might willingly pay him. Talis qualis, with him through the Streets. Glasnevin toolbar, woman has not her groat of change ready; streaks of irregularity, streaks of squalor noticeable in all streets and departments of things. Glasnevin Church; woody, with high enclosures, frail-looking old edifice, roof mainly visible: - at length Glasnevin model-farm – nearly the best thing, to appearance, I have yet seen in Ireland. Modest slated buildings, house, school and offices, for real use, and fit for that. Slow-spoken heavy browed schoolmaster croaks out sensible pertinent speech about his affairs: an Ulster man (from Larne, I think; name forgotten), has 45 pupils, from 17 to 21 years; they are working about, dibbling, sorting dungheaps, sweeping yards. Mac. speaks to several: coarse rough-haired lads, from all sides of Ireland, intelligent well-doing looks thro’ them all. Schooling alternates with this husbandry work. Will become National schoolmasters, - probably factors of estates, if they excel and have luck. Clearly, wherever they go they will be practical missionaries of good order and wise husbandry, these poor lads; antichaos missionaries these: good luck go with them, more power to their elbow! Such were my reflexions, expressed partly in some such words. Our heavy-browed croaking-voice friend has some 30 cows; immense pains to preserve all manure, it is upon this that his husbandry turns. A few pigs, first-rate health in their air. Some 30 acres of ground in all; wholly like a garden for cultivation: best hay, best barley; best everything. I left him and his rough boys, wishing there were 1,000 such establishments in Ireland: alas, I saw no other in the least equal to it; doubt if there is another. Mac. talking confidentially and with good insight too of Archbishop Whately & c, set me down at the Hôtel, to meet again at dinner. Hasty enough toilette, then Sir Dn Mc Gregor’s close car, and I am whisked out to Drumcondra where the brave Sir Dn himself with wife and son, and a party including Larcom and two ancient Irish Gentlemen & c are waiting.

Pleasant old country-house; excellent quietly genial and hospitable landlord: dinner pleasant enough really. McDonnell sat by me, somewhat flashy; Larcom opposite, perhaps do. but it was in the English style. Ancient Irish gentn. were of really excellent breeding, yet Irish altogether: these names quite gone (if ever known according to the underbreath method of introduction), their figures still perfectly distinct to me. In white neck cloth, opposite side, a lean figure of sixty; wrinkly, like a washed blacksmith in face, yet like a gentn. too, - elaborately washed and dressed , yet still dirty-looking; talks of ancient experiences, in hunting, claret-drinking, experiences of others his acquaintances, all dead and gone now, which I have entirely forgotten; high Irish accent; clean-dirty face wrinkled into stereotype, of smile or of stoical frown you couldn’t say which: that was one of the ancient Irishmen; who perhaps had a wife there? The other, a more florid man with face not only clean but clean-looking, and experiences somewhat similar; a truly polite man in the Irish style: he took me home in his car. Sir Dn. had handed me a general missive to the Police Stations “Be serviceable, if you ever can, to this Traveller,” – which did avail me once. At home lies Kennedy’s letter, enjoining me to accept the Lord Lieutenant’s dinner, whither he too is going; which I have already refused! What to do to-morrow night? Duffy is to be off to Kilkenny; to lodge with “Dr. Cane the Mayor”; who invites me too (Duffy, on the road to O’Hagan’s breakfast, shewed me that), which I accept.

Saturday 7^th 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.

Sunday 8^th 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!

Monday 9^th July

Tuesday 10 July

Tuesday 10^th 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 11^th 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 12^th 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?

Friday 13^th 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 14^th 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 monk