Wicklow

“ Among these emotions of the night one cannot wonder that the madhouse is so often named in Wicklow.
Many of the old people of the country, however, when they have no definite sorrow, are not mournful, and are full of curious whims and observations. One old woman who lived near Glen Macanass told me that she had seen her sons had no hope of making a livelihood in the place where they were born, so, in addition to their schooling, she engaged a master to come over the bogs every evening and teach them sums and spelling. ”

“ Wicklow in 1771. He took part in the insurrectionary movement of 1798, joining Joseph Holt with a band of twenty or thirty insurgents from the Wicklow mountains, where he subsequently pursued a sort of bandit career on his own account. He is described as a handsome, intelligent Wicklow man, possessed of some fine traits of character. In 1803 he was concerned in Robert Emmett's insurrection, bringing five hundred men with him to Rathfarnham, but he refused to concur in Emmett's attempt upon Dublin. ”

“ And perhaps had not the Abbey Theatre grown to be a theatre for folk-drama and for poetic drama of court romance alone, Synge would have made Wicklow the background of dramas of a high life of yesterday. Certain it is that in these passages he is thinking of it:—
Every one is used in Ireland to the tragedy that is bound up with the lives of farmers and fishing-people; but in this garden one seemed to feel the tragedy of the landlord class also, and of the innumerable old families that are quickly dwindling away. ”

“ We fortified Sterne with pretty ample powers, and told him to use his best endeavors to find out Wicklow's "other method" of communication. We meant to play a bold game; and to this end we proposed to keep the spies in an unsuspecting state as long as possible. So we ordered Sterne to return to the stable immediately, and, if he found the coast clear, to conceal Wicklow's letter where it was before, and leave it there for the conspirators to get. ”

“ In America and Australia, and on the Atlantic Ocean, you have all sorts, good people and bad people, and murderers and thieves, and pickpockets; but in this place there isn't a being isn't as good and decent as yourself or me.'
I saw he was one of the old people one sometimes meets with who emigrated when the people were simpler than they are at present, and who often come back, after a lifetime in the States, as Irish as any old man who has never been twenty miles from the town of Wicklow. ”

“ While he was thus reflecting, the clatter of hoofs sounded on the track behind him, and Wicklow rode up, stopping for a moment as he passed.
"Hullo, Graeme," he said; "rotten job they gave you this morning, no man living could have done it. Funny, though, at one time I thought you were going to pull it off, but I think my reserves might have got there in time. They hadn't started for the passes when you headed for my centre. There was only a picket of six men on top, but of course I knew you wouldn't do an unsound thing like that; besides your horses couldn't have got over." ”

“ HERE and there in County Wicklow there are a number of little known places—places with curiously melodious names, such as Aughavanna, Glenmalure, Annamoe, or Lough Nahanagan—where the people have retained a peculiar simplicity, and speak a language in some ways more Elizabethan than the English of Connaught, where Irish was used till a much later date. In these glens many women still wear old-fashioned bonnets, with a frill round the face, and the old men, when they are going to the fair, or to Mass, are often seen in curiously-cut frock-coats, tall hats, and breeches buckled at the knee. ”

“ He tried it on in secret before a glass, and minced hither and thither to see what the figure would look like that was to storm the Castle and kill Cornwallis in his bed. Yet, for all these childish pranks, none could be more earnest than he, or more genuinely prepared to do or die. The hordes of banditti which still infested Wicklow were taken into partnership. On the signal of a rocket they were to rush to their posts. Some were to seize the desecrated Senate-house; others to attack Chapelizod; others to secure important streets. ”

“ After a while I stopped at a lonely public-house to get a drink and rest for a moment before I came to the hills. Six or seven men were talking drearily at one end of the room, and a woman I knew, who had been marketing in Wicklow, was resting nearer the door. When I had been given a glass of beer, I sat down on a barrel near her, and we began to talk.
'Ah, your honour,' she said, 'I hear you're going off in a short time to Dublin, or to France, and maybe we won't be in the place at all when you come back. There's no fences to the bit of farm I have, the way I'm destroyed running. ”

“ When they meet a wanderer on foot, these old people are glad to stop and talk to him for hours, telling him stories of the Rebellion, or of the fallen angels that ride across the hills, or alluding to the three shadowy countries that are never forgotten in Wicklow—America (their El Dorado) , the Union and the Madhouse.
'I had a power of children,' an old man who was born in Glenmalure said to me once; 'I had a power of children, and they all went to California, with what I could give them, and bought a bit of a field. Then, when they put in the plough, it stuck fast on them. ”

“ She must know Wicklow well, at any rate; so that you can talk about it away over there in America. I wish I were going myself to see all the fine churches and schools and institutions that they tell me are there."
"You have never been in America, Father?" I inquired.
"Nor ever will, I'm afraid. My old bones are too stiff for traveling."
"They're not too stiff, though, to climb the mountain in all weathers," I put in. For the landlord had told me how Father Owen, in the stormiest nights of winter and at any hour, would set out, staff in hand. ”

“ But he had given up at last; courage and hope were both gone. If he could enlist, nobody could be more thankful; if he could not get in as a soldier, couldn't he be a drummer-boy? Ah, he would work so hard to please, and would be so grateful!
Well, there's the history of young Wicklow, just as he told it to me, barring details. I said,--
"My boy, you are among friends, now, -- don't you be troubled any more." How his eyes glistened! I called in Sergeant John Rayburn, -- he was from Hartford; lives in Hartford yet; maybe you know him, -- and said, "Rayburn, quarter this boy with the musicians. ”

“ Emmet made his way into Wicklow with {329} the main purpose of stopping the intended outbreak of insurrection there, as he saw now that no such attempts could, under the conditions, end in anything but useless bloodshed. His friends urged him to make his escape to France, and he might easily have escaped but that he went back to Dublin with the hope of seeing once again Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter of the great advocate, with whom he was devotedly in love. ”

“ To be quite plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are variations; but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all his ugly crew in the arts, are freaks only.
The Oppression of the Hills
AMONG the cottages that are scattered through the hills of County Wicklow I have met with many people who show in a singular way the influence of a particular locality. These people live for the most part beside old roads and pathways where hardly one man passes in the day, and look out all the year on unbroken barriers of heath. ”

“ That was Wickwire. Not a bad fellow, either; he can talk pretty straight and shoot pretty straight. How do I know? Because he has told me the story and I’ve seen him shoot. There, you see, is one friend that you never reckoned on. He used to be a cowboy, and I got him a job working for Sinclair on the Frenchman; he has worked at Dunning’s and other places on the Crawling Stone. He hates Sinclair with a deadly hatred for some reason. Just lately Wickwire set up for himself on Little Crawling Stone. ”

“ Wickfield, with a desperate air. ‘Why should I not be in all the world’s power if I am in yours?’
‘Mind! I tell you!’ said Uriah, continuing to warn me. ‘If you don’t stop his mouth, you’re not his friend! Why shouldn’t you be in all the world’s power, Mr. Wickfield? Because you have got a daughter. You and me know what we know, don’t we? Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse ‘em? I don’t. Can’t you see I am as umble as I can be? I tell you, if I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. What would you have, sir?’
‘Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!’ exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands. ”

“ His correspondence with Castlereagh during the Irish rebellion fills a considerable part of the first two volumes of the ‘Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh,’ and portions of it are also to be found in Ross's ‘Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis.’ Wickham was also private secretary to the Duke of Portland. He returned as envoy to the Swiss cantons and the Russian and Austrian armies in June 1799, while still retaining his post at home, and was entrusted with very extensive powers of negotiating treaties and arranging supplies for the anti-revolutionary forces. ”

“ Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall, and a girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On her face, I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of the lady whose picture had looked at me downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original remained a child. Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquillity about it, and about her—a quiet, good, calm spirit—that I never have forgotten; that I shall never forget. This was his little housekeeper, his daughter Agnes, Mr. Wickfield said. ”

“ The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no wine, and I desiring none, we went up stairs; where Agnes and her little charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the children left us; and we three sat together, talking of the by-gone days.
"My part in them," said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, "has much matter for regret—for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you well know. ”

“ Very respectable old gentleman; interested in leather; been to Asia Minor; no family, no assets—and a tongue, my dear Wickham, sharper than a serpent's tooth.'
'Cantankerous old party, eh?' suggested Wickham.
'Not in the least,' cried the other; 'only a man with a solid talent for being a bore; rather cheery I dare say, on a desert island, but on a railway journey insupportable. You should hear him on Tonti, the ass that started tontines. He's incredible on Tonti.'
'By Jove!' cried Wickham, 'then you're one of these Finsbury tontine fellows. ”

“ Wickham's table-linen.
"Roll him up in the tablecloth," was The Freak's next order, "and set him on a chair."
This time Jebson found his tongue.
"Gentlemen all," he gasped between revolutions--the Master of the Bloodhounds and Baron Guldenschwein were swiftly converting him into a snowy cocoon--"a joke's all very well in its way between pals; but--"
"Put him on that chair," continued Dicky, taking not the slightest notice.
Willing hands dumped the mummified and inanimate form of Jebson into an armchair, and the unique collection of Sports sat round him in a ring. ”

“ It looked into a garden, and had an iron safe let into the wall; so immediately over the mantel-shelf, that I wondered, as I sat down, how the sweeps got round it when they swept the chimney.
"Well, Miss Trotwood," said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon found that it was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward of the estates of a rich gentleman of the county; "what wind blows you here? Not an ill wind, I hope?"
"No," replied my aunt, "I have not come for any law."
"That's right, ma'am," said Mr. Wickfield. "You had better come for anything else." ”

“ I was not feeling quite comfortable myself. The atmosphere seemed a trifle oppressive; perhaps we had done wrong in having a fire after all. Lady Wickham appeared to notice it too. She sat very upright, fanning herself mechanically, and seemed disinclined to lean back in her chair.
After the song was finished I said:
“I am afraid you are not quite comfortable, Lady Wickham. Let me get you a larger cushion.”
“Thank you,” said Lady Wickham; “the cushion I have is delightfully comfortable; but I think there is something hard behind it.” ”

“ John Clayton was a currier, or skinner, living in the parish of St. Anne's, "Aldrychgate." In those days few tradesmen could read, and he was not an exception. But he had at an early period formed a very favourable opinion of the new doctrines; the preaching of Wickliffe's followers, or, it may be, of Wickliffe himself, had made so deep an impression on his mind, that nothing could shake the firmness and constancy of his belief to the day of his death. ”

“ The cry wrenched from him as he searched our faces. It was very necessary to him that we should believe; he had all a boy's eagerness to keep the illusion—some illusion. And this was natural too, though even the kid prank as he told it came to the same stark and gratuitous horror. For Chris Wickwire had dropped out of life from that gangway!
Captain Raff chewed his cheroot for a space in silence. You would hardly expect him to have the subtlety of a donkey engine, so to speak, but he might surprise you at times, and he had learned to be very patient with the mate. ”