BOOKS.
MR. LE FANU'S REMINISCENCES.0 lv has been said that the Nationalist agitation has been the death of Irish humour; and certainly credence is indirectly lent to the assertion by the volume before us. For Mr. Le 14'anu, who has compiled one of the most wholly humorous books of anecdotic reminiscences since the memoirs of Sir Jonah Barrington, is careful to assure us that he has "never taken any part in politics." Like so many typical Irishmen, Mr. Le Fanu—to judge by his name—comes of a mixed stock, his patronymic being unmistakably Huguenot. At the time of his birth, in 181G, his father was chaplain to the Royal Hibernian Military School in the Phcenix Park (when he often acted as peacemaker on that once famous duelling-ground) ; but ten years later, he was appointed to the Deanery of Emly, and took up his residence at Abington, in the diocese of Limerick. He had two sons, the elder of whom, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, afterwards became famous as the author I YE Uncle Silas and other novels, though perhaps his best work is to be found in his inimitably humorous short Irish stories and two brilliant narrative-poems, "Shamus O'Brien" and Phandrig Crohore,"—both written for his brother, whose incomparable gifts as an amateur reciter and raconteur, as all those who have had the good fortune to hear him will readily testify, rendered him one of the most attractive figures in Dublin society for many a long year. One of Mr. Le Faun's earliest recollections is of George IV.'s visit to Ireland in 1821, when the King made a speech from the steps of the Viceregal Lodge which proved him to be a past master in the art of blarney. Of his own life at Abington, where he and his brother were the pupils of an amiable but eccentric old clergyman, noted for his skill as a fisherman and performer on the Irish bagpipes, Mr. Le Fanu gives a delightful picture. Faction-fights were then in full swing, and Mr. Le Fanu, who saw some of them, tells us that they invariably began in the same way. The coat-trailing business is a myth. What happened was as follows One man wheeled,' as they called it, for his party; that is, he marched up and down, flourishing his blackthorn, and shouting the battle-cry of his faction,—' Here is Coffey aboo against Reaskawallahs ; here IS Coffey aboo—who dar strike a Coffey?'—' I dar,' shouted one of the other party ; here's Reaskawallah aboo,' at the same time making a whack with his shillelagh at his opponent's head. In an instant hundreds of sticks were up, hundreds of heads were troken." Thanks to the efforts of O'Connell and the priests, reconciliations were gradually effected and faction-fights practically stamped out, though the feud of the " Three-year-olds " and the " Four-year-olds " has never been wholly healed. The frequent and deplorable "battles of the buryings," which occurred when two funerals were held on the same day, had their origin in the strange super- stition that the last person buried in a churchyard has, in addition to other troubles, to carry water to allay the thirst (in Purgatory) of all those previously buried there. As this duty was supposed to involve much walking, peasants often put hoots into the coffins of their deceased relatives, one farmer going the length of enclosing two pairs along with his wife. Of his neighbours, gentle and simple, in the thirties, Mr. Le Fanu has no lack of diverting reminiscences. Thus he tells us of the foreman of a jury in a libel case, in which the libel consisted in a statement that the plaintiff had stolen a goose, who returned the verdict, "We find for the plaintiff with damages,—the price of a goose." Another delightful anec- dote is of a wild retainer, whom Mr. Le Farm afterwards helped to emigrate, and who expressed his gratitude in the following characteristic letter :— "Honoured Sir,—God bless you for what you sent me. If gets on I'll send as much back ; but if I dies, plaze God I'll meet You in the Lizzum fields and pay your honour there. But any way, you always have the prayers of your humble servant, Michael Brien. P.S.-•-ls there any one here that ever done anything to injure or offend you, that your honour would like anything done Somenty Your$ of Irish Lifo, By W. IL Le Fan% London ; !Edward Arnold, to ? I'd like to do something for your honour before I goes, to show how thankful I am."
The sexton was another great " charaether," and once when Dean Le Fanu spoke to him of the terribly sudden death of a parishioner, " Ah, your raverence," said he, " the Lord gave that poor matt no sort of fair-play." " Dean" is always pronounced " Dane " by the Irish peasantry, and when some old coins were dug up in a neighbouring field, Mr. Le Farm tells us that his old nurse expressed the opinion that they must have been hid by the bishops. "What bishops ?' I asked her. The bishops that conquered Ireland long ago,' said she. On my telling her that bishops had never conquered this country, Well,' said she, it must have been the Danes (deans), or clergy of some sort,'" With the tithe war of 1831, the friendly relations of the Le Fanu household with priests and people were abruptly severed. Even their visitors shared their unpopularity. Dr. Anster, the translator of Faust, came to spend a few days with them, and was groaned at all the way from Limerick, but being slightly deaf, he misunderstood the salutation, and remarked at dinner,—" Mr. Dean, I never knew I was so well known down here, but one's fame sometimes travels farther than we think. I assure you, nearly the whole way as I drove from Limerick I was loudly cheered by the people." In 1832, Dean Le Fanu was placed on a Commission on Tithes, and removed for a while to Dublin, where his two sons entered at Trinity College. The celebrated Dr. Barrett—equally famous for his miserly habits and his scholarship—had recently died, and Mr. Le Fanu tells several ludicrous stories illustrative of his eccen- tricities. The only time " Jacky " Barrett was ever known to have been out of Dublin was when he had been summoned to give evidence in a lawsuit tried at Naafi :— " As he stood in the stable-yard of the inn he saw a cock on the opposite side of the yard, and addressed the ostler thus ;—'My good man, do you see me now ; what is that beautiful bird over there ? ' —Ostler. 'Ah, go away with you! you know what it is as well as I do.'—Barrett. Indeed, I do not; and I'll be greatly obliged if you'll tell me.'—Ostler. Ah, get out; you're a-humbugging me ! you know well enough it's a cock.'—Barrett. Is it, indeed ? I thank you exceedingly.' After his death, in the margin of the page in Buffon's Natural History where the cock is described,
there was found in Barrett's handwriting these words The ostler was right ; it was a cock.'"
The stories of Whately are interesting but not agreeable, and only serve to illustrate a sort of brutal brusquerie which he affected in his intercourse with his social and intellectual inferiors. Passing over Mr. Le Fanu's amusing descriptions of Dublin watchmen, country improvisatores, and bathing at Kilkee, we come to an interesting chapter on the conditions of peasant-life in the forties. Apropos of the rare occasions on which the country people ate meat, he tells a story of an elderly woman whom he met on the road from Limerick with some pigs'-feet which she had got for Christmas Day for the price of a goose :— • "'Wouldn't the goose,' said I, have been better for dinner than
the pigs'-feet ? Av course it would, your honour, if we could ate her.'—' Why couldn't you ?' said She was too ould and
tough, your honour. I'm married twenty-five years ago last Shrove, and she was an ould goose then ; and I'd never have sold her, only she was stoppin' of layin' by rason of her ould age.' She then began to laugh heartily, and said, It's what I'm laughing at, your honour, thinking of them that bought her, how they'll be breakin' the back of their heads against the wall, to-morrow, strivin' with their teeth to pull the mate off her (mid bones ! ' " A fascinating digression on the subject of old customs and superstitions brings Mr. Le Fanu to the subject of fairy. doctors, and thence to ordinary practitioners. Of the latter he tells several excellent stories. Thus, when a gentleman asked a country lad who attended his father in his last ill- ness, " Ah, sir," said the boy, "my poor father wouldn't have a doctor ; he always used to say he'd like to die a natural death ;" while Dr. Nedley, the physician to the Dublin Metro- politan Police, told Mr. Le Fanu that he once heard a voice from the crowd cry out, "Three cheers for Dr. Nedley ! He killed more policemen than ever the Fenian& did !" After entering the engineering office of Sir John McNeill, Mr. Le Fanu spent a good part of every year in London, where he foregathered with many of his compatriots, amongst others an eccentric namesake of O'Connell's, known as " Kilmallock," of whose controversial methods he gives some ludicrously comic examples. Thus, exasperated by the action of a well- known Tory Protestant Member of Parliament in demanding a Government inspection of nunneries, he sat down to write a furious letter to the Times, in which he instituted invidious comparisons between the "pious, virtuous ladies, the Catholic nuns," and Mr. ----'s "own old card-playing, scandal-monger- ing, dram-drinking mother." When a friend to whom he read the letter, expostulated, and asked him, "Are you quite sure she is so bad?" Kilmallock replied, "What would I know about the old devil. I never heard of her in my life. But if he has a particle of manly feeling in his composition, it will eut him to the quick." In dealing with the question of religious intolerance, Mr. Le Fanu displays an admirable impartiality. He has no belief in proselytising, witness his stories of Mr. A—'s converts. One of these, an old widow, on being asked by Mr. A— why she wished to change her religion. replied: "Well now, I'm told your raverence gives a blanket and a leg of mutton to every one that turns."—" Do you mean to say," rejoined Mr. A—, "that you would sell your soul for a blanket ?"—" No, your raverence," said the widow, "not without the leg of mutton."
The readiness of Irish wit is illustrated again and again in these pages in the happiest way. As the author tells us, anything suggests politics. Thus, when an actress, shortly after the Union, was singing a popular song, with the refrain, "My heart goes pit-apat, pit-a-pat," a man from the gallery ericd : "A groan for Pitt and a cheer for Pat!" Bullying cross-examiners have often been floored by countrymen. Thus, when a well-known counsel once remarked to a witness, "You're a nice fellow, ain't you ?" the man replied : "I am a nice fellow ; and if I was not on ray oath, I'd say the same of you." Of 'bulls' Mr. Le Fanu gives us a goodly budget, old and new. We have only space for the following :—" In the coffee-room at an hotel in Dublin, an Irish gentleman said to a friend who was breakfasting with him : I'm sure that is my old college friend W— at that table over there?— ' Then. why don't you go over and speak to him ? ' said his friend.---' I'm afraid to,' said the other ; for he is so very shy, that he *would feel quite awkward if it wasn't he." Another enchanting ' bull ' is that perpetrated by a barrister who was defending a prisoner in Limerick : "Gentlemen of the jury, think of his poor mother—his only mother ! " Equally delicious is the remark of the old lady on being told that oil would be altogether superseded by gas : "And what will the poor whales do ?"
It must not be thought that Mr. Le Fanu is a mere jester. He can be wise as well as witty, and his closing retrospect is marked by some luminous generalisations based on the expe- riences of a long life spent in constant contact, professional and social, with every class in the country. Mr. Le Fenn evidently does not believe in Home-rule. Even more re- assuring is his statement that he sees no reason to despair of the future of his country. In conclusion, we have only one serious complaint against Mr. Le Fanu, and that is that he should have waited till his.seventy-eighth year before putting pen to paper. All who love a wholesome laugh, and all who desire to gain insight into the complexities of Irish charac- ter, will join in wishing him health and length of days to repent of his decision, as expressed in the preface, to make this his first and only book.
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