14. CHAPTER XIV.
A VISIT TO DUBLIN ABOUT THE TIME OF THE QUEEN'S
MARRIAGE.
The usual directions for costume, in the corner of
the court card of invitation, included, on the occasion
of the queen's marriage, a wedding favor, to be worn
by ladies on the shoulder, and by gentlemen on the
left breast. This trifling addition to the dress of the
individual was a matter of considerable importance to
the milliners, hatters, etc., who, in a sale of ten or
twelve hundred white cockades (price from two dollars
to five) made a very pretty profit. The power of giving
a large ball to the more expensive classes, and ordering
a particular addition to the costume — in other
words, of laying a tax on the rich for the benefit of
the poor, is exercised more frequently in Ireland than
in other countries, and serves the double purpose of
popularity to the lord lieutenant, and benefit to any
particular branch of industry that may be suffering
from the decline of a fashion.
The large quadrangular court-yard of the castle
rattled with the tramp of horses' feet and the clatter of
sabres and spurs, and in the uncertain glare of torches
and lamps, the gay colors and glittering arms of the
mounted guard of lancers had a most warlike appearance.
The procession which the guard was stationed
to regulate and protect, rather detracted from the romantic
effect — the greater proportion of equipages
being the covered hack cars of the city — vehicles of
the most unmitigated and ludicrous vulgarity. A
coffin for two, set on its end, with the driver riding on
the turned-down lid, would be a very near resemblance;
and the rags of the driver, and the translucent leanness
of his beast, make it altogether the most deplorable
of conveyances. Here and there a carriage with
liveries, and here and there a sedan-chair with four
stout Milesian calves in blue stockings trotting under
the poles, rather served as a foil than a mitigation of
the effect, and the hour we passed in the line, edging
slowly toward the castle, was far from unfruitful in
amusement. I learned afterward that even those who
have equipages in Dublin go to court in hack cars as
a matter of economy — one of the many indications of
that feeling of lost pride which has existed in Ireland
since the removal of the parliament.
A hall and staircase lined with files of soldiers is not
quite as festive an entrance to a ball as the more common
one of alleys of flowering shrubs; but with a
waltz by a military band resounding from the lofty
ceiling, I am not sure that it does not temper the blood
as aptly for the spirit of the hour. It was a rainy
night, and the streets were dark, and the effect upon
myself of coming suddenly into so enchanted a scene
— arms glittering on either side, and a procession of
uniforms and plumed dames winding up the spacious
stairs — was thrilling, even with the chivalric scenes of
Eglinton fresh in my remembrance.
At the head of the ascent we entered a long hall,
lined with the private servants of Lord Ebrington, and
the ceremony of presentation having been achieved the
week before, we left the throne-room on the right, and
passed directly to St. Patrick's Hall, the grand scene
of the evening's festivities. This, I have said before,
is the finest ball-room I remember in Europe. Twelve
hundred people, seated, dancing, or promenading,
were within its lofty walls on the night whose festivities
I am describing; and at either end a gallery, sup
ported by columns of marble, contained a band of
music, relieving each other with alternate waltzes and
quadrilles. On the long sides of the hall were raised
tiers of divans, filled with chaperons, veteran officers,
and other lookers-on, and at the upper end was raised
a platform with a throne in the centre, and seats on
either side for the family of the lord lieutenant and the
more distinguished persons of the nobility. Lord
Ebrington was rather in his character of a noble host
than that of viceroy, and I did not observe him once
seated under his canopy of state; but with his aids
and some one of the noble ladies of his family on his
arm, he promenaded the hall conversing with his acquaintances,
and seemingly enjoying in a high degree
the brilliant gayety of the scene. His dress, by the
way, was the simple diplomatic dress of most continental
courts, a blue uniform embroidered with gold,
the various orders on his breast forming its principal
distinction. I seldom have seen a man of a more
calm and noble dignity of presence than the lord lieutenant,
and never a face that expressed more strongly
the benevolence and high purity of character for which
he is distinguished. In person, except that he is
taller, he bears a remarkably close resemblance to the
Duke of Wellington.
We can scarcely conceive, in this country of black
coats, the brilliant effect of a large assembly in which
there is no person out of uniform or court-dress —
every lady's head nodding with plumes, and every
gentleman in military scarlet and gold or lace and
embroidery. I may add, too, that in this country of
care-worn and pale faces, we can as little conceive the
effect of an assembly rosy with universal health,
habitually unacquainted with care, and abandoned with
the apparent child-like simplicity of high breeding, to
the inspiring gayety of the hour. The greater contrast,
however, is between a nation where health is the
first care, and one in which health is never thought
of till lost; and light and shade are not more contrasted
than the mere general effect of countenance
in one and in the other. A stranger travelling in our
country, once remarked to me that a party he had attended
seemed like an entertainment given in the convalescent
ward of a hospital — the ladies were so pale
and fragile, and the men so unjoyous and sallow. And
my own invariable impression, in the assemblies I
have first seen after leaving my own country was a
corresponding one — that the men and women had the
rosy health and untroubled gayety of children round a
May-pole. That this is not the effect of climate, I do
most religiously believe. It is over-much care and over-much
carelessness — the corroding care of an avid temerity
in business, and the carelessness of all the functions
of life till their complaints become too imperative to
be disregarded. But this is a theme out of place.
The ball was managed by the grand chamberlain
(Sir William Leeson), and the aids-de-camp of the
lord lieutenant, and except that now and then you
were reminded by the movement around you that you
stood with your back to the representative of royalty,
there was little to draw your attention from the attractions
of the dance. Waltz, quadrille, and gallop, followed
each other in giddy succession, and “what do
you think of Irish beauty?” had been asked me as
often as “how do you like America?” was ever mumbled
through the trumpet of Miss Martineau, when I
mounted with a friend to one of the upper divans, and
tried, what is always a difficult task, and nowhere so
difficult as in Ireland, to call in the intoxicated fancy,
and anatomize the charm of the hour.
Moore's remark has been often quoted — “there is
nothing like an Irish woman to take a man off his
feet;” but whether this figure of speech was suggested
by the little bard's common soubriquet of “Jump-up-and-kiss-me
[3]
Tom Moore,” or simply conveyed his
idea of the bewildering character of Irish beauty, it
contains, to any one who has ever travelled (or waltzed)
in that country, a very just, as well as realizing description.
Physically, Irish women are probably the finest
race in the world — I mean, taller, better limbed and
chested, larger eyed, and with more luxuriant hair,
and freer action, than any other nation I have observed.
The Phœnician and Spanish blood which
has run hundreds of years in their veins, still kindles
its dark fire in their eyes, and with the vivacity of the
northern mind and the bright color of the nor hern
skin, these southern qualities mingle in most admirable
and superb harmony. The idea we form of Italian
and Grecian beauty is never realized in Greece and
Italy, but we find it in Ireland, heightened and exceeded.
Cheeks and lips of the delicacy and bright
teint of carnation, with snowy teeth, and hair and eyebrows
of jet, are what we should look for on the palette
of Appelles, could we recall the painter, and reanimate
his far-famed models; and these varied charms, united,
fall very commonly to the share of the fair Milesian
of the upper classes. In other lands of dark eyes, the
rareness of a fine-grained skin, so necessary to a brunette,
makes beauty as rare — but whether it is the
damp softness of the climate or the infusion of Saxon
blood, a coarse skin is almost never seen in Ireland.
I speak now only of the better-born ranks of society,
for in all my travels in Ireland, I did not chance to
see even one peasant-girl of any pretensions to good
looks. From north to south, they looked, to me,
coarse, ill-formed, and repulsive.
I noticed in St. Patrick's Hall what I had remarked
ever since I had been in the country, that with all
their beauty, the Irish women are very deficient in
what in England is called style. The men, on the
contrary, were particularly comme il faut, and as they
are a magnificent race (corresponding to such mothers
and sisters), I frequently observed I had never seen
so many handsome and elegant men in a day. Whenever
I saw a gentleman and lady together, riding,
driving, or walking, my first impression was, almost
universally, that the man was in attendance upon a
woman of an inferior class to his own. This difference
may be partly accounted for by the reduced circumstances
of the gentry of Ireland, which keeps the
daughters at home, that the sons may travel and improve;
but it works differently in America, where,
spite of travel and every other advantage to the contrary,
the daughters of a family are much oftener
lady-like than the sons are gentleman-like. After
wondering for some time, however, why the quick-witted
women of Ireland should be less apt than those
of other countries in catching the air of high breeding
usually deemed so desirable, I began to like them better
for the deficiency, and to find a reason for it in the
very qualities which make them so attractive. Nothing
could be more captivating and delightful than the
manners of Irish women, and nothing, at the same
time, could be more at war with the first principles of
English high breeding — coldness and reténu. The
frank, almost hilarious “how are you?” of an Irish
girl, her whole-handed and cordial grasp, as often in
the day as you meet her, the perfectly un-missy-ish,
confiding, direct character of her conversation, are all
traits which would stamp her as somewhat rudely bred
in England, and as desperately vulgar in New York
or Philadelphia.
Modest to a proverb, the Irish woman is as unsuspecting
of an impropriety as if it were an impossible
thing, and she is as fearless and joyous as a midshipman,
and sometimes as noisy. In a ball-room she
looks ill-dressed, not because her dress was ill-put-on,
but because she dances, not glides, sits down without
care, pulls her flowers to pieces, and if her head-dress
incommodes her, gives it a pull or a push — acts which
would be perfect insanity at Almack's. If she is of
fended, she asks for an explanation. If she does not
understand you, she confesses her ignorance. If she
wishes to see you the next day, she tells you how and
when. She is the child of nature, and children are
not “stylish.” The niminy-piminy, eye-avoiding,
finger-tipped, drawling, don't-touch-me manner of
some of the fashionable ladies of our country, would
amuse a cold and reserved English woman sufficiently,
but they would drive an Irish girl into hysterics. I
have met one of our fair country-people abroad, whose
“Grecian stoop,” and exquisitely subdued manner,
was invariably taken for a fit of indigestion.
The ball-supper was royally sumptuous, and served
in a long hall thrown open at midnight; and in the
gray of the morning, I left the floor covered with
waltzers, and confessed to an Irish friend, that I never
in my life, not even at Almack's, had seen the half as
much true beauty as had brightened St. Patrick's Hall
at the celebration of the queen's marriage.
