In July 1809 the Anglo-Welsh naturalist Lewis Weston Dillwyn (1778–1855) accompanied by his lifelong friend Joseph Woods and another companion named Leach, whose identity has not been positively established,1 paid a visit to Killarney where they spent some days exploring the town and its neighbourhood. Dillwyn kept a diary of his tour the original of which, contained in a small closely-written volume of pocket-book size, is today preserved in Trinity College Dublin (Ms. 967). From it can be reconstructed the following outline of his itinerary. Crossing from Milford Haven to Waterford on 6 July, between that date and 16 July he travelled, firstly, to Dungarvan via Kilmacthomas: from thence to Youghal via Clashmore and then on to Cork city via Castle Martyr and Midleton. He remained two days in Cork (which impressed him as ‘a large and handsome city’) and then travelled on to Clonakilty, Dunmanway and Bantry. From Bantry he proceeded to Kenmare and Killarney where he remained for one week. Leaving Killarney he proceeded by stages to Millstreet, Mallow, Clogheen and Clonmel, from which latter town he returned on 30 July to Waterford, and from there arrived back in Milford Haven on 1 August. His Kerry sojourn, therefore, though occupying the largest space in his diary comprises only a part of his total itinerary.
The following facts concerning Dillwyn have been gleaned from the Dictionary of National Biography.2 He was born in Ipswich, son of William Dillwyn of Highham Lodge, Walthamstow, and was descended from an old Breconshire family. His father was a member of the Society of Friends at whose school in Folkestone he was first enrolled before going in 1798 to Dover where he began his study of botany. His later publications included The natural history of British confervae (1802–9), The botanist's guide through England and Wales [a collaborative work] (1805), and A descriptive catalogue of British shells (1817).
In 1803 his father placed him in charge of a pottery which he had
Dillwyn and his companions were, no doubt, mainly interested in the flora and fauna of the south of Ireland in general and of the Killarney area in particular. Killarney was, of course, by this time well established as a tourist attraction. Its proprietors the earls of Kenmare had early recognised its potential in this respect and commencing around the year 1750 took steps to provide comfortable accommodation for visitors to the town and boats for hire on the lakes.3 The contemporary romantic movement in literature and the arts, with its emphasis on the rural, the rustic and the antique, provided a favourable climate for their efforts and during the decades that followed there converged on Killarney a thickening throng of misty-eyed romantics, weaned on a literary diet of Mac Pherson and Sir Walter Scott, all straining to catch among her lakes and dells the last dying cadences of Hibernia's perenially-broken harp strings. The doyen of the cult in Ireland, Thomas Moore himself, descended on the scene, was appropriately affected and penned in memory of his visit his Innisfallen fare thee well.
Fortunately, Dillwyn shared to some extent the fashionable tastes of his age. Thus, while his diary contains numerous botanical references, and may even provide the earliest record of certain plant species for Kerry, he tells us even more about the towns and villages through which he passed, the antiquities he visited and the condition, manners and customs of the people with whom he came in contact. He had the advantage of possessing a readymade introduction to the Killarney area in the shape of an account of a tour published two years earlier, by the Dubliner Isaac Weld, entitled Illustrations of the scenery of Killarney and the surrounding country (London 1805). It
There was, however, a less attractive side to Dillwyn. He was, unfortunately, a religious bigot and his references to the Catholic clergy and Catholic worship in Killarney, though of course he would probably not have expressed such views in public, betray a crudely sectarian outlook at odds with the well-deserved reputation for tolerance and philanthropy acquired by the Society of Friends in Ireland later in the nineteenth century.5 One must, of course, see his prejudice in the context of his age when sectarian bigotry on all sides was the rule rather than the exception. In addition, he displays certain other unattractive traits, typical of colonialists in every age. He arrived already well stocked with prejudices and, one suspects, found among those he encountered socially — land agents, attorneys, and officials — many who were anxious to reinforce and add to them. Nevertheless, his account, though unsympathetic, is no doubt often accurate.
Like many other visitors he was, for instance, forcibly struck by the lack of a middle class in Irish society. The people he encountered were, he remarks, either well dressed or in rags — their habitations for the most part either mansions or hovels. He complains like many other travellers of the Irish readiness to take financial advantage of strangers. The inns and hotels at which he stayed varied considerably. Some were excellent, others — like the inn he first put up in at Checkpoint, Co. Waterford — quite vile. The ingratiating manners of innkeepers, boatmen and jarveys apart, the abiding impression one receives from his account is of a sullen population smarting under many oppressions and in consequence chronically prone to violence. In the course of his short visit Dillwyn notes five murders (four of
It should be noted that while the text which follows is in the main a faithful transcript of Dillwyn's manuscript, some lengthy passages descriptive of the geography of the Killarney lakes as well as quotations from published works and one or two brief passages of botanical theorising have been silently omitted. (The botanical names of all plants noted by Dillwyn are, however, listed). In addition, the text has been broken into paragraphs — an arrangement not employed in the original diary.