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Created: by William Allingham (1883)
Beatrix Färber (ed.)
Beatrix Färber (ed.)
Beatrix Färber (ed.)
Beatrix Färber (ed.)
The little old Town where I was born has a Voice of its own, low, solemn, persistent, humming through the air day and night, summer and winter. Whenever I think of that Town I seem to hear the Voice. The River which makes it, rolls over rocky ledges into the tide; before, spreads a great Ocean in sunshine or storm; behind, stretches a many-islanded Lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue Mountains; and on the north, over green or rocky hills, rise peaks of a more distant range. The trees hide in glens, or cluster near the river; gray rocks and boulders lie scattered about the windy pastures. The sky arches wide over all, giving room to multitudes of stars by night, and long processions of clouds blown from the sea; but also, in the childish memory where these pictures live, to deeps of celestial blue in the endless days of summer.
An odd, out-of-the-way little Town, ours, on the extreme western verge of Europe; our next neighbours, sunset way, being citizens of the great New Republic, which indeed, to our imagination, seemed little if at all further off than England in the opposite direction.
I was born in a little House, the most westerly of a row of three, in a street running down to the Harbour. Opposite was a garden wall, with rose-bushes hanging over. If I can remember anything of this first house, which perhaps I cannot, it is the top of the kitchen stairs at the end of the passage, and the dark unknown abyss below. My first appearance in this odd sort of world was in the blustery month of March, two days after the festival of Ireland's patron saint. From the House that I was born in we moved to one somewhat larger, two doors eastward, when I was one year and four months
And when this state of mind is gradually overcome, it blends with the triumphant feeling of power in mounting and descending these difficult heights, and penetrating at will new regions in the remotest recesses of the House.
An early expedition of mine down the kitchen stairs led me into a piece of ill-luck, the consequences of which, trivial as it seemed at the time, have woven themselves into the whole texture of my life, have sensibly lessened its whole share of pleasure and added to it daily and almost hourly vexations. I had crept down the back-stairs to the kitchen, and was pattering across the stone floor, unnoticed by a woman busily engaged in getting up some of the household linen. She snatched a flat-iron which had been standing in front of the fire, and, turning quickly round to carry it to the smoothing table, encountered Little Me unlucky!nor was she able to check herself soon enough to keep the hot iron from touching my left eye. General agitation followed, no doubt. I had to spend some days in a darkened room, and compared myself (Aunt Bess told me afterwards) to old Isaac, whose eyes were dim, so that he could not see.
The effect of this accident on my sight was not discovered for years afterwards; its effects on my comfort and character no one knows or even suspects but myself.
While in this house, I received a small box of water-colour paints (I have it still) from my godmother, Mrs Jane Dixon. I was seated one day at the parlour table in my little armchair, screwed on to the top of its table to bring it to a proper height, and with paintbox, brushes, and cup of water, was dabbing and daubing away on various pieces of paper, to the envy of a playfellow, who was at the same table, but had only some bright coloured picture-books
It may easily have been among the first things to awaken a child's curious questionings. The notion of Death at this earlier time was not associated, as far as I can recall, with the slightest dread or awe, or feeling of any kind except that (which is perhaps one of the last we should suspect in a child of three years old) of the transitory character of all human possessions.
Later, at the age perhaps of six or seven, I was for a time fully possessed with the conviction that I should never die that I, for one, must in some way or other escape death. No reasoning led up to this idea, and no effort, voluntary or involuntary, was made to define the mode of exemption or the consequences. There was simply a perception of a fact which had become apparentas of a mountain on the horizon on an exceptionally clear day, new, dim, but undeniablethe fact that I should not die; nor did I take much notice of itthere it was; and when the mental atmosphere gradually changed, it was invisible again.
In my fourth year (autumn of 1827) our family changed house again; father, mother, myself, and a sister a year and a half younger. The move was only across the street, but the new abode, known as The Cottage, had a character of its own. It was an irregularly built house of two stories, with the general shape ofthe letter L, standing among gardens and shrubberies. The front and the south gable were half covered with clematis, which embowered the parlour windows in summer; and some wall-trained evergreen fringed the one window of the Nursery with dark sharply-cut leaves, in company with a yellow blossoming Pyrus
On three sides the Cottage looked on flowers and branches, which I count as one of the fortunate chances of my childhoodthe sense of natural beauty thus receiving its due share of nourishment, and of a kind suitable to those early years. Grandeur of scenery is lost on a young child; I doubt if any landscape impresses him, however impressionable. Little things, close at hand, make his pleasures and troubles. I was enchanted with our flower-beds and little shrubberies; and in a grass field to which we were sometimes brought, a quarter of a mile away, there was a particular charm in two or three gray rocks encrusted with patches of moss; but of the distant view of the Atlantic Ocean I took no notice at this time.
My Father was fond of flowers and we had a good show of all the old-fashioned kinds in their seasons. I loved the violet and lily of the valley, and above all the roseall roses, and we had many sorts, damask, cabbage, Scotch, moss, and white roses in multitude on a great shady bush that overhung the little street at our garden-foot. The profusion of these warm-scented white roses gave a great feeling of summer wealth and joy, but my constant favourite was the Monthly Rose, in colour and fragrance the acme of sweetness and delicacy combined, and keeping up, even in winter time, its faithful affectionate companionship.
Before the front door grew my dear Walnut Tree out of its little mound, beyond which the narrow drive curved in something of a figure of S to the stable and byre, its little shrubbery on either side shady enough with lilacs and laburnums to yield forest haunts to the childish fancy. Two or three fig-trees there were also, whose fruit swelled but never ripened; and their crooked boughs were chiefly interesting as perches, from which strange altitudes one could look down on the household traffic, horse and foot. Near the north shrubbery's edge grew tufts of
Our own more familiar outhouses were highly interesting, each in its own way; the stable for my father's one or two horses, where perpetual twilight reigned and characteristic odours, with its forks and curry-combs, slope-lidded corn bin, and trapdoor to the hayloft above; next the stable, the harness-room, and over this an apple-loft, of most memorable fragrancy; a little higher up the yard, the byre with its two or three deliberate-stepping, sweetbreathed cows, and another loft; and close by in a corner the little stable, wood with thatched roof, of Sheltie, the brownbear-like pony with long mane and tail, which I rode, and whose eccentricities gave birth to most exciting personal adventures. He was fond of standing nearly bolt upright on his hind legs, when I was fain to hug his thick mane. He often had views of his own as to the best road to take, and, suddenly refusing to move forward, would turn round and round like a wheel, then abruptly gallop off in the direction of his stable. One eventful day when I was riding Sheltie about our home limits one of the gates happened to be open, and we passed out unobserved into the street where the pony immediately quickened his pace and, taking the law into his own hands, carried me out of the town and along country roads into a wild unknown region. If I had any alarm or misgiving the joy of novelty overcame it, yet there was a sense of relief when my self-willed steed stopped before the field gate of a farm of my father's about two miles out, which I then recognised, having visited it in his gig once or twice before. The pony had been there at grass and recollected his good times. The cottagers ran out with many exclamations of wonder at sight of us, and one of them, holding Sheltie's bridle, brought me home again, full of a delightful sense of adventure and the importance of having been missed.
1 My Father had this small farm on lease, and also a large field near the town, called The Big Meadow, in which grazing was let
His business was that of a merchanta wide designation, and in his case applicable enough; he imported timber, slates, coal and iron, and owned at various times five or six ships, trading chiefly to Canada and the Baltic for timber. There were no exports, save now and again of human beings to Quebec. The emigration was small then to what it became in after years, but enough to make going to Ameriky one of the most familiar phrases in daily life. My father went out every morning to his office, which was on the other side of the street from our house, and seldom returned till dinner time, half-past four. This and other household facts I became aware of by their recurrence, but took little or no note of them. Every child rates things for himself. Curiosity, mixed with imagination and the love of beauty, was naturally strong in me; but even at this early age, unless I am mistaken, it sought its food in the interests and characteristics belonging to nature and life in general; or rather say that, while rapidly and vividly receptive of all kinds of novel impressions, I strove unfailingly and quite unconsciously to group them according to some principle, refer them to some idealthough it must be owned that, in the first decade of one's earthly career, principles and ideals are usually of an unsubstantial fantastic sort.
The persons moving around me were as personae merely, and in and for themselves individually interested me little or nothing. I intend all through this record to avoid philosophising, and give recollections and impressions as simply as may be. What it indicated (if anything special) I know not to this hour, but in these first years I do not remember to have felt any emotion of affection either for my parents or for anybody else. Caresses (if that is to be taken into account) I never had any share of from my parents; they were both undemonstrative in that way by nature, and my mother's constant invalidism and my father's hasty temper kept us children at a distance from both. Yet, coldness was never reckoned one of my faults, and later, say from twelve years old, my attachments to persons were warm and constant.
I dimly recollect my mother as thin, pale, delicate, gentle in voice and movement, with soft dark hair and an oval face slightly sun-freckled. She was kind, sweet, and friendly, and a great
William | born | 10 March 1824. |
Catherine | " | 25 March 1826. |
John | " | 12 December 1827. |
Jane | " | 25 August 1829. |
Edward | " | 22 August 1831 (who only lived a few months). |
She died on Tuesday evening, 2 July 1833. She was perhaps not made for longevity, but with more wisdom in its atmosphere her dear and sweet life might have been preserved for many years.
I only recollect her as an invalid, and we children were not allowed to be much with her. But now and again she sung a little to the pianoforte, and two songs of that time have still for me a charm not their own The Bonnie Breastknots, and It wasn't for you that I heard the bells ringing.
From my nurses and others I picked up a large number of tunes, for I had a decided ear for music, and Ireland is, or used to be, a country with its air full of singing, whistling, and lilting. Fiddlers abounded, pipers were not scarce; the fame of harpers lingered, but I never heard the Irish Harp till I went South.
My father (on the passage, in these years, between thirty and forty) was a short, active, black-haired man, with very light gray eyes, quick, impatient, curious as to the externals of objects, and easily amused, but disregardful of whatever did not immediately interest him. He had a turn for arithmetic, and was exact in the money part of all dealings; punctual also as to set hours, and letter-writing.
In continuation of unbroken family custom, he was an unswerving adherent of the Established Church; but in politics he had left the Radicalism of his early life for a kind of Toryism which consisted mainly in reading a newspaper on that side, and giving a vote accordingly at the county election.
Honesty, prudence, industry, regularity, conformityfew men will break down with these; and my father had these, under
Both mind and body were exceedingly active, and I was irresistibly drawn to pry into and examine all kinds of objects and places, climb up ladders, walls, gates, trees, sometimes no doubt committing breakage or causing alarm. But there was not the least tinge of malice in my nature, or capability of being pleased by the destruction of anything or the annoyance of anybody, and a wise and sympathetic senior could without special effort have done wonders for my education and happiness. I used often to wonder how it could have happened that I was so much wickeder than everybody else. I should have suffered much more hurt and harm by it but for certain compensations. My great curiosity and interest in outward things, and delight in their beauty and novelty, along with much activity of imagination, or rather fantasy, tended to save me; and at my Grandmother's housebut a little way off, and to which I went as often as I couldI found something of that atmosphere of affection and confidence which is so suitable to the free growth of any tender young soul.
My Grandmother (my father's mother, Jane Hamilton her maiden name) managed to live by a very few simple rules (without even knowing these, as rules), and managed to do it as well
I now know that my Grandmother's was a small house, but if I were to describe it from the impressions of those years it would be spacious and many-roomed, with a long, dim, lofty Entrance Hall, wide enough to be the scene of many fancied adventures. The stairs at its end mounted to a landing with flower-stands and a window, and thence to a Drawing-room with what I thought a large window to the street, a little room off this, and two bedrooms looking to the back. Another flight climbed to an upper lobby and the garrets. At the end of the hall, between the foot of the staircase and the kitchen door, was a door, generally locked, whence a few descending stairs led to a curious back-room with hen-coops, a smell of live animals, an ancient wooden partition, and a window dim with old crusted dirt; and, from this a dark flight of stone steps descended to a truly mysterious and almost awful region, a dim back-kitchen paved with rude flags, with a well of living water of unknown depth in a recess of the wall.
Into the Hall (where an old-fashioned lamp of elongated shape, which I never saw lighted, hung from the ceiling) opened the
The Kitchen was floored with square red tiles. Its one tall window, with thick window sashes, beside which was the washing-tub on its stand, looked out on a little backyard. Opposite the door stood a long dresser with its rows of plates and dishes, tin porringers and strainers; and under this, in the corner next the window, was the place of a large tub of fresh water which, with its clear olive depth and round wooden dipper swimming like a boat on its tremulous surface, used to give me great delight, judging (as I do in this and similar cases) by my distinct impressions of the forms and colours.
From my own experience I judge that a child's little camera obscura, however sensitive to the picturesque, cannot include it on a large scale. There were mountains in daily sight, where I lived, and a large cataract in the river close by; I must also have seen the ocean sometimes, which was but three miles distant, yet it was none of these that impressed me with a sense of beauty and mystery, but the water-tub and the well, flowers and leaves, and, very particularly, a heap of gray rocks, touched with moss and in one part laced with briars, in a certain green field to which the nurse used often to bring us.
No doubt I was a troublesome youngster, superabundantly active, and there were two things which probably helped to make me unacceptable. I was a peculiar-looking, and, no doubt in the opinion of many, an ugly little chap, with an odd cast in his gray eyes; secondly, I was never done asking questions, and hardly ever satisfied with the answers I received. I could read fluently at a very early age, and I remember nothing of being taught. But I do remember, before I could read, learning a sentence in the
With my sisters I was always on good terms, but I cannot remember that they ever seemed to count much then in my life. Places had more reality than persons. My mind was busy with imaginations which gave mysterious importance to every nook of house and garden; and when I began to catch glimpses of things in a wider range, and to overhear hints of a more wonderful world outside of this, magic pictures formed themselves within me of such heavenly beauty as no experience has matched. These had a consistency of their own, and recurred till they left impressions that resembled real memories, and have, I doubt not, made and do still make a large part of the scenery of my Dreams. Beautiful Dreams (I mean in sleep) have been no trivial part of the pleasures of my life. Certain Dreams show up again and again, like the opening of a familiar page. Sometimes there is an interval of years between two appearances of the same Dream. There are several Dreams, each distinct, of Lakes, of Rivers, of Mountains, of Woodlands, of Cities, of Great Buildings, of Strange Countries; a Dream of a Cave, and a Dream of a Gothic Ruin, a Dream of Flying, a Dream of Death, and many more. Dreamland has its own geography, of places wherein all strange adventures and experiences are possible.
My brother John and I had not much in common; but one Sunday evening, I remember (this must have been in our second lustrum, perhaps well on in it), we were on the stairs of the Church gallerya big boy quarrelled with me and suddenly made as though he would throw me over the railing. I was rescued quickly, but during the momentary struggle I saw John's face, who was some steps higher up, looking down with an expression of alarm and horror which I never afterwards forgot, and which gave me a new feeling towards him from that day. He never
The said Church (of the United English and Irish Establishment) was an important object in my childish life. To me it was a spacious and awe-inspiring Edifice, with windows of peculiar shape, and a square Tower which was the measure of height as high as the church steeple. The broad path curved up to it from a tall old iron gate, through grassy hillocks and ancient tombstones, some of them quaintly carved. The Church stood on the highest ground, and commanded a wide prospect, from its tower-top a panoramic one. Eastward you saw the river rushing down its rocky dell, and behind this some of the hilltops that guard the unseen great Lake out of which it flows. To the south, at a distance of some ten miles, a long range of blue Mountains takes wonderful colours from the changing skies, and in their foldings run up shadowy valleys into a mystical inner region. Between this range and the little gray Town with its long stone bridge, at your feet, spreads the Moy (math = plain)scene of many an ancient fight and foray, an expanse, sloping to the north, of rugged pasture, broken here and there with a rocky copse or farm-shading grove, and many low green rath-crowned hills. So one's gaze travelling round to the west, and over the sand-hills and foamy harbour-bar, gladly rests on the great line of the Atlantic Ocean, the nearest land out yonder being two thousand miles away. For north horn of the Bay rises the great rocky precipice called Slieve League, and round to the north and along the northern horizon peer up other blue mountain peaks above a middle distance of gorsy slopes and wind-swept sheepruns, sprinkled with gray rocks and boulders, and hinting to a familiar eye the green circle of a Rath on many a low hill. Mullinashee (Fairy Hill) this eminence is called on which the Church stands; and not only from it but many another height extensive prospects are visible, with a wide sky overhead, and a pomp and change of cloud-pictures such as I have never seen elsewhere.
Even the streets of the Town afford many a glimpse of green fields, blue mountains, or flowing waters.
The Town and its horizon-circle belonged to each other (in my imagination at least) and gave me a sense of large space and infinite variety, very different no doubt from the image of Ballyshannon in the mind of some passing traveller who sees the poor
When a stranger stan's on the Bridge and luks up an' down, mustn't he be delighted! said a native to me; and I never heard of any one going to live elsewhere who failed to think long for the ould place, and, for a time at least, cherish the hope of returning.
Travelling at the time I am speaking of was a rare adventure to poor and even to middle-class people. The journey to Dublin was long and costly, and England a strange country which few even dreamt of seeing, except two or three shopkeepers who went once a year to Manchester and Leeds to buy goods, and the harvest-men, who brought back home their wages, against the winter, and who like their neighbours invariably thought and spoke of the English as of a foreign people, though never, that I heard, uncivilly, unless when some disputation arose. Ameriky far off as it was, was a more familiar name and idea; nearly all the letters received and dispatched by the poorer people were from or to that land of promise. The passage-money was but a few pounds, very often sent over by those already in the West, and the emigrants could in many cases embark in their own familiar harbour. I never heard any one express the least fear of the dangers and hardships of the long voyage in an often tightly-packed and ill-found sailing-ship; but great was the grief at leaving home and the ould counthry, and vehemently, though not affectedly, demonstrative were the frequent parting scenes.
It has always been supposed that some countries have, so to speak, a peculiar magnetic attraction for the souls of their children, and I found plenty of reason, in the conduct of my neighbours as well as my own consciousness, to count Ireland as one of these well-beloved motherlands. This home-love is strongest in the dwellers in her wild and barren places, rock-strewn mountain glens and windy sea-shores, notwithstanding the chronic poverty in which so many of them live. In these remote and wild parts Erin is the most characteristically herself, and the most unlike to Saxon England. Her strange antiquities, visible in gray mouldering fragments; her ancient language, still spoken by
I never came back to the Ballyshannon country after an absence, without thinking that it looked to be the oldest place I ever saw.
This impression was aided by the character of its superabundant surface rocksgray gneiss, gray mica-schist masked with yellow lichens, dark gray limestone, weather-stained, or knobbly with mysterious fossils; and the fields too are commonly intersected with rude fences of loose gray stones picked from the soil. But hints and tastes of a richer scenery were not wanting, and all the more prized for their rareness. Productive gardens and orchards there were about the Town, plenty of flowers and fruit, few trees of any size (mostly sycamores and ashes), but here and there a little grove shaded the lawn and avenue of a modest country house, and a mile or two up the rapid River thick copses mingled with large trees embowered the waterside. A small well-wooded park in that region, called Camlin, seemed to me the very type of rich sylvan beauty, and my imagination no doubt soon caught rumours and formed pictures better than could ever be realised of the great Lake beyond, with its forested promontories and an island for every day in the year. In the opposite quarter, that is on the west, our landscape reached the extreme of bareness, rough rocky pastures, miles of rabbit-warren and seastrand, sward of Atlantic headlands shaven by the salt gale as by a scythe, with here and there a hawthorn bush or still rarer hedge, stretching wildly away to the eastward as though fain to flee altogether, almost the only arboreal things to be found far or near. The wild shore and boundless tossing sea, ebb and flow of the tide, ships, fishermen, wrecks, new lands beyond the sunset,
But of all the external things among which I found myself, nothing impressed me so peculiarly as the Sound, the Voice, which ceased not day or night; the hum of the Waterfall, rolling continually over its rock ledge into the deep salt pool beneath. In some moods it sounded like ever-flowing Time itself made audible.
The pool below the cataract was one of the chief scenes of the salmon-fishing, so important to the town, and summer idlers had an untiring pleasure in lounging on the high green bank to watch the boats swiftly casting out and slowly hauling in their nets. Angling on the upper waters brought us every year, from April or May till August, a succession of visitors, often English, and we were further and more permanently enlivened by the presence of troops, Ballyshannon being an important military post, the gate between Connaught and Ulster. At the beginning of the century it had Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery Barracks, fully occupied, I think, up to 1815. The Cavalry Barrack had been allowed to fall into ruin, and its black grass-grown walls had a strange and fascinating horror for the boyish mind; but the Infantry Barrack was always more or less occupied, and the marching of the redcoats (especially to and from church), the playing of the bands, and the various bugle-calls at their regular times of the day, made a great impression. The Officers too were an interesting and frequently varying element in society. Officers arriving were sometimes billeted on private houses, and I remember the presence of mysterious military guests in our house more than once, on these terms. These, no doubt, were occasions of emergency, when it was suddenly found expedient to strengthen the garrison on rumour of an intended rising, or in consequence of some unusual display of lawlessness. I came early to the consciousness that I was living in a discontented and disloyal country; it seemed the natural state of things that the humbler classwhich was almost synonymous with Roman Catholicshould hate those above them in the world, and lie in wait for a chance of despoiling them. Yet I never for a moment believed this of any of the individuals of this class amongst whom I lived. I used to fancy and sometimes dream frightfully of a swarm of fierce men seizing the town, bursting into the houses, etc.; of soldiers
Once there was something like an approach to realisation. It must have been at a time when our garrison was temporarily withdrawn or reduced to a detachment, that a rude army of Whiteboys actually marched through the town, armed with scythes, pikes, and I know not what. I was turned six years old then. I remember being at the corner of our lane, holding somebody's hand or lifted in somebody's arms, and have a most dim yet authentic memory-picture of a dark wild procession of men, crowded closely together, holding and brandishing things over their heads. It streamed past us up the long hill of the Main Street, and I daresay I was taken home before it had passed by, for in the dim picture it is always seen passing on and up interminably, a dark throng with pikes and scythes held aloft. I looked with curiosity unmixed with dread; but it was probably after this that the dread showed itself in dramatic forms in my dreams. I have been told that my Aunt Bess on this day was walking through the Purt (a long straggling street on the south side of the river) when she met the mad looking multitude with their pikes, etc. Someone said, That is Miss Allingham going to visit the poor and they opened a way for her to pass through.
No outrage at all, I believe, was done by the Whiteboys, or whatever they were; and in fact I have never, since I was born, known or heard of any political or secret society offence in our Town or its district. Ballyshannon was a sort of island of peace in my day, as it had been for generations, and I hope is carrying on the good tradition. We were far from centres of excitement and agitation; Dublin remote, the nearest considerable towns some twenty-five and thirty miles distant, and the scene of our county elections to Parliament (very seldom contested) still further away. We were a Borough (with two members) in old College Green days, but had luckily lost that privilege, which is a real curse to a small town. Newspapers were unknown to the humbler, and rare with the middle classes. All the country gentry and nearly all the well-to-do people were Protestants, having the ascendency naturally belonging to money and education, and their connection with a State-privileged Church was, I imagine, less noticeable; that is, there was little if any political feeling on this head, though plenty of theological aversion and contempt on
Along with other helps to a comparatively tranquil existence, Ballyshannon had a most peace-loving and peacemaking Parish Priest in Father John Cummins, whose big figure wrapt in voluminous coats, big stick, good-humoured big face crowned with reddish bob-wig and wide-brimmed hat, was one of the permanent institutions of our social existence throughout my boyhood and youth-hood, whatever curates might come and go. My father had no difficulty in exchanging many a neighbourly greeting and chat with Father Cummins, whose burly person standing on such occasions with legs apart, whose good-humoured brogue and hearty laugh that shook him all overUpon me conshince, Misther Alligham! I well remember. He told one day with a big laugh how grateful another Protestant neighbour was on getting back some stolen goods by virtue of the Confessional, saying earnestlyI protest, Mr Cummins, this restitution of property is a gr-rand fayture in your religion! and my Father too was sometimes advantaged by the same means. Father Cummins was nothing of a theologian, but he was duly proud of his great ancient Church, and used sometimes to ask an opponent with dignity the well-known questionWhere was your Church before Luther? Tell me that, sir! He lived in a neat thatched cottage at the top of the town, with an elderly housekeeper, and a boy who drove him to distant parts of the parish in an old-fashioned jaunting-car, the pony, fat and sleek as a mole, being seldom allowed to go at faster pace than a quick walk. The good priest's great dread was of taking cold. He believed in fast-shut doors and windows, huge fires, heaps of bedclothes, and nobody but his housekeeper ever knew how many coats, waistcoats, and other integuments he was accustomed to wear. In diet I believe he was moderate, and he lived to old age without ever making an enemy. His successor, a tallish, dark, lean, shy man, was no less peaceable in life and teaching.
The Rector, as he was always called, but properly the Vicar of Kilbarron, at the time when I appeared upon the scene in a very small part, was the Reverend Robert Packenham, brother to
I was probably about four years old when they began to take me to church on Sundays. The edifice appeared to me spacious, lofty, and venerable. It was cruciform, with round-topped windows, the ground floor filled with high pews. There were three galleriesthe Singing Gallery over the west door; the Soldiers' Gallery in the north transept; the Country Gallery in the south transept, used mostly by small farmers and their families. The townsfolk and the country gentry had pews in the body of the church; some very poor people sat on benches in the aisle, and, at the other end of the scale, two families had notably large and comfortable pews, the Conollys in the right-hand corner as you came in by the west door, the Tredennicks2 of Camlin in the left. The Tredennick pew was a place of mystic and luxurious seclusion to my fancy, a sort of imperium in imperio. Its woodwork completely partitioned it off from the aisle, but chance peeps showed a snugly cushioned and carpeted interior, and even a special little fireplace with its special little bright fire on winter Sundays. In later days I knew a high lady who deemed it proper to go regularly to church once a week, but evaded part of the tedium by taking with her a novel or other amusing book, decently veiled in a dark cover. With such a pew as this she could have made herself very comfortable; but if anything of the kind occurred there (which probably never did) I had no suspicions of it.
Essentially, neither service nor sermon had the very slightest interest or meaning for me, but the sense of a solemn stringency of rule and order was deeply impressed, and the smallest infraction, it was felt, might have unimaginable consequences. A child's prayer-book falling from the gallery astounded like an earthquake; and once, I remember, when the congregation suddenly started up in the midst of the service, pew doors were thrown open, and people ran out into the aisles (a lady had fainted)it was really as if the Day of Judgment had come. Connected with Church and churchyard was a thought, vague, vast, unutterably awful, of that Last Day, with Eternity behind it: yet it was definitely localised too, and it seemed that not only
A terrible thought of Eternity sometimes came, weighing upon me like a nightmareon and on and on, always beginning and never ending, never ending at all, for ever and ever and ever till the mind, fatigued, fell into a doze as it were and forgot. I suppose this was connected, though not definitely, with the idea of a state of punishment. The suggestion of eternal happiness took no hold upon my imagination; my earliest thought of Heaven pictured it as a Sunday street in summer, with doorsteps swept and the shutters of the shops closed. Later, there was a vague flavour of Church and psalmody.
Our Pew, painted like the rest a yellowish colour supposed to imitate oak, was halfway up the Church, on the right-hand side of the central aisle, and had the distinction of a tall flat Monument of wood (or it seemed tall), painted black in George the Second taste, rising on the wall behind it. Atop was a black urn with faded gold festoons; at each side a pilaster with faded gold flutings; and there was a long inscription in faded gold letters.
It seems to me very curious that, after sitting so many an hour, so many a year, in that Pew, and recollecting numberless little things around me there, I cannot find in my memory one word of that inscription, except SACRED in a line by itself at the top, in Old English lettersnot even the chief name, which was a lady's (a remote and very slightly interesting relation or connection of ours, she must have been), nor the import of those Roman symbols which so ingeniously disguise a date to modern eyes. The wording no doubt was highly conventional, as nearly as possible meaningless, and felt by the child to be a sort of dull puzzle which after some attempts it was better to avoid. Had it been verse, of even moderate quality, it would have fixed itself in my memory; with point, it would have stuck there for ever.
My usual place in the pew (habitude, or customariness, or whatever it may be called, being naturally strong in me) was the left-hand corner next the door, as you went in. Standing on the seat, I could look up and down the aisle, and sometimes rest my arms and head on a little triangular shelf that fitted into the corner. When I had, against the grain, to sit down, I kept looking at the faces of the people near to me in the Pew, and the countenance of a certain half-pay Army Lieutenant, ruddy, swarthy, with
Once or twice I was taken clandestinely to mass by a nurse, on some Saint's Day most likely, and stood or sat for a while just inside the Chapel door. It felt like a strange adventure, with some flavour of horror, but more of repulsiveness, from the poverty of the congregation and the intonation of the priests. I remember arguing with my nurse Kitty Murray (who only died this year, 1883, at the supposed age of ninety-threebut I don't think it was she who took me to the chapel), for the superiority of Protestantism because the Catholics, you see, are poor people; to which Kitty replied, It may be different in the next world. A good answer, I felt, and attempted no retort; being indeed at no time of my life addicted to argue for argument's sake, or for triumph.
Although very brisk in body and mind, my health from the
Aunt Maryanne, the youngest, or youngest but one, of my Grandmother's large family was, both in person and temper, short and brisk with nez retroussé and lively gray eyes. She was quick and excitable, spoke fast, and a troublesome child would pretty soon feel her hands as well as her tongue. She was a Poetess, and wrote much on local and family subjects, but her simple ambition never even dreamed of actual print, and contented itself with sheets of notepaper, and little stitched books, neatly written out in something like printing letters, and given away to her friends. I have in my desk a ballad of hers on my father's approaching weddingWill's to be married to Maggie, etc.O Time!
Aunt Maryanne was a voracious novel-reader. The winter
When I acquired, no one knew how, the art of reading rapidly, and at once applied it to every readable thing that came my way, I used sometimes to find my Aunt's novel in the daytime and take a run into the story in advance of the evening reading. On one or perhaps two occasions when I afterwards sat listening, I was unable to resist the temptation to give a hint of what was coming, whereupon Aunt Maryanne, starting up from her chair, clutched me firmly with both hands and bundled me out of the rooma very justifiable assault. Scott of course furnished the staple of the winter evenings' entertainment; but some minor story-tellers contributed to the amusement. I remember Galt's Laurie Todd, and Horace Smith's Brambletye House, with the catchword, Think of that, young man!
I think the Waverley Novels that most impressed me in those early days were Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, The Talisman, but there were scenes in Waverley, The Fortunes of Nigel, Quentin Durward, The Fair Maid of Perth, The Pirate, The Monastery, vivid as any real experience. In Poetry Scott again was first favourite, and the verse-novels of The Lady of the Lake and Marmion.
Here William Allingham's account of his childhood ends. The following reminiscences of his schooldays are given from two letters, the first written by his brother John in 1904, the second by an old schoolfellow, Mr Robert Crawford, the Engineer:
I can recall Willy since the thirties of last century, i.e. since he was seven or eight years old. In 1837 or 1838 he and I occupied the same bedroom in the old Bank House on the Mall. It had one window looking westa gable windowand off the room was a closet containing a number of books and pamphlets in the Norwegian and English languages. I remember the great storm of January 1839, and the window of our room being blown in, notwithstanding a feather bed being placed against it. Willy, I think, used sometimes to walk in his sleep at that time. He was very agile and expert at all juvenile games. He was then attending Wray's School in Church Lane, then the only school in Ballyshannon indifferently attended by Catholics and Protestants. Wray taught Latinnothing else. Willy left this school in the Spring of 1837 to go to a boarding-school at Killeshandra, Co. Cavan, kept by one Robert Allen, a commonplace person of the cocksure evangelical type. After a short time there my father got him into the Provincial Bank at Ballyshannon (of which he was Manager). This was in 1838, when Willy was fourteen years old: in December 1839 he was moved to the Armagh branch of the Bankand later to the Strabane and Enniskillen branches in succession.
He was a particularly bright and clever boy, and conquered the most difficult lessons with a facility that made him an object of envy to his less brilliant comrades. He devoted just sufficient time to his prescribed lessons to enable him to hold his own with Classwork, while he diligently pursued investigations on his own account in a far wider field of learning. As a result he frequently caused surprise to his seniors, by the fixed opinions he held upon many subjects usually supposed to be suited only to the comprehension of intellects of maturity, and by the clear manner in which he expressed his convictions concerning them. He was a great lover of Nature in all her phases, and particularly humane towards dumb animals, of which, however, so far as I know, he never made pets. Sports he abstained from, on principle, considering them cruel.
Allingham's recollections of boarding-school were by no means happy. He was still delicate in health, and an accident at this time to his sore finger produced severe inflammation of the arm, and necessitated surgical treatment. He was at Killeshandra for a year only; at the age of fourteen his school education was brought abruptly to an end.
His father, now married again, had been out of health for some time, and told by a doctor that he could not live very much longer: he determined, therefore, to put William, at once, in the way of earning his own living, and found him a place in the Bank at Ballyshannon.
Norfolk Hotel, Surrey St,
Strand, 22 July 1843My Dear Father
Here I am in a very quiet place, within twenty yards of the busiest street in London.I slept in Oxford, the night before last, and saw most of the city, the Bodleian Library, etc. I have seen no place equal to it, to please my taste. Old churches, colleges and halls at every step, and plenty of old houses with gables to the street and latticed windows.
I can find my way here capitally. I walked this morning, before breakfast, to St Paul's, round by Newgate St, Holborn, and Drury Lane. A matter of between two and three miles, I should think.
I write to let you know where I am. Of my journey I will tell you no more at present, except the following facts, which I thought rather droll
1st, then, at Stafford, in the neighbourhood of the great potteries, we had a horn vessel to drink from.2ndly, at Birmingham (the World's Toyshop) a large shop had no Chinese Tumblers.
3rdly, at the Angel Hotel, Oxford, the bedroom was supplied with a Cambridge Bibleand lastly, the first tune I heard in London was the Sprig of Shillelagh.
Yours, my dear father, truly,
W. Allingham, Junior
After seven years in the Bank, Allingham obtained, at the age of twenty-two, a post in the Customs. An account of this is given, as follows, in the few remaining pages of this first part of his autobiography.
1846
Heartsick of more than seven years of bank-clerking, I found a door suddenly opened, not into an ideal region or anything like one, but at least into a roadway of life somewhat less narrow and tedious than that in which I was plodding. My father was offered a place in the Customs for my brother; John was too young for the post; it could not be kept vacant and was offered to me. In the spring or summer of 1846 I gladly took leave for ever of discount ledgers and current accounts, and went to Belfast for two months' instruction in the duties of Principal Coast Officer of Customs, a tolerably well-sounding title, but which carried with it a salary of but £80 a year. I put up at a Temperance Hotel in Waring Street, slept soundly (O Youth!) in a small front room in that narrow noisy thoroughfare, trudged daily about the docks and timber yards learning to measure logs, piles of planks, and, more troublesome, ships for tonnage: indoors part of time practised Customs book-keeping, and talked to the clerks about literature and poetry in a way that excited some astonishment, but, on the whole, as I found at parting, a certain degree of curiosity and respect.
I preached Tennyson to them, hitherto an unknown name, and recited bits from Locksley Hall, meeting at first a cold reception, but afterwards better acknowledgment. One of the head clerks came up to me one morning with the greeting, Well, I've read Locksley Hall, and it's a very fine poem!
I don't recollect being at a theatre in Belfast. I went a few times to a music hall, but my spare time was mostly spent in reading and haunting booksellers' shops, where I venture to say I laid out a good deal more than most people in proportion to my income, and managed to catch glimpses of many books which I
I was the only Customs Officer in the district, which suited my mood perfectly, but no doubt helped to foster the feeling of isolation which is so strong in me. My district was officially in the Port of Sligo, to which I sent monthly accounts, and the collector visited me once a quarter, and I was also in some respects under the sub-collector of Ballyshannon; but there was seldom any interference. My family name was a guarantee in itself; I discharged my functions intelligently and conscientiously,
Yet I am reminded by old memoranda that there were sometimes overclouding anxieties, sometimes, but not very frequently, from lack of money, more often from longing for culture, conversation, and opportunity; oftenest from fear of a sudden development of some form of lung disease, the seeds of which I supposed to be sown in my bodily constitution. I can recall few details of my first year at Donegal.
I used to go over often to Ballyshannon in the evening and return in the morning, or from Saturday to Monday, sleeping at my Father's; generally travelling by the Derry and Sligo mailcoach, and kept up all my old intimacies with the places and people by the Erne.
I had for literary correspondents Leigh Hunt, George Gilfillan, and Samuel Ferguson; and for love-correspondent, F., whose handwriting always sent a thrill through me at the first glance and the fiftieth perusal. What a day it was when one of those letters reached me!all the more prized for the difficulties that beset their transmission. I loved an Ideal, angelically fine, impossible to hurt or destroy as a dream of Heaven; but it had a very sweet little human core, which (I am thankful) keeps its springflower-like tenderness in my memory. Appropinquity can breed love, it can sometimes sully or kill it. Fate kept us mostly separated in space even while we were one in spirit; our rare meetings were, to me at least, mystically sacred occasions.
The story of William Allingham's life, in strict autobiographic form, ends at this point. He wrote out, from his notebooks, conversations he had had with interesting men, evidently with the intention of incorporating them in his account, but beyond this date nothing was completed. The story is continued in diary form, the first entry being in June of the following year.