Dawson Street to Rathmines

ROUTE III.

Dawson Street - Molesworth Street - Kildare Street - Leinster Street - Clare Street - Merrion Square - Holles Street - Denzille Street - Lower Mount Street - Percy Place - Upper Mount Street - Merrion Square - Upper Merrion Street - Ely Place - Lower Baggot Street - Fitzwilliam Square - Leeson Street - Charlemont Place - Portobello Harbour - Rathmines Road.

With College Green for our starting point we pass by the front and side of the Provost’s House in Grafton Street, into **

DAWSON STREET. **

At No. 64 lived in 1840 and later **Patrick Brophy, **by profession a dentist, but, says Bayle Bernard *(Life of Lover) *“he was just as famous for extracting his clients’ laughter as their teeth… His ‘Blind Beggar of Carlisle Bridge,’ known in Dublin by the name of Zozimus, was a notable achievement, and so was his ‘King of the Carmen.’”

He gave, too, a marvellous imitation of Paganini. A writer in *Temple Bar (1868) says: “Whenever the Marquis of Anglesey, who was a *martyr to *tic doloreux, *was more than ordinarily afflicted, he sent for Pat, who, attending very little to the immediate seat of the malady, addressed himself to the noble patient’s imagination. After treating him to a merry *quart d’heure *with Zozimus, or some other eminent public character . . he left his Excellency as free from pain and as ready for dinner as ever he was in the course of his life.

Pat’s attitude or look, like Liston’s or Buckstone’s, was enough, without a word from him, to throw a Quaker into convulsions**.” Mr. W. J. **Fitzpatrick, in his *Life of Charles Lever, *says: “Some pleasant evenings were passed in the little dining-room of that old Huguenot house in Dawson Street, filled with historical memorials of Ireland’s worthies, when, round the hospitable board of Brophy, sat Griffin, Bishop of Limerick, Dean Butler, Lord Rossmore, O’Donovan and O’Curry, the great Celtic scholars; Mortimer O’Sullivan and Father Tom Maguire, opponents in controversy, but friends socially.”

“In the course of a speech in court one day in a case where the name and evidence of this most amusing of Irishmen turned up,” says the writer in Temple Bar.* *“Chief Justice Whiteside, then at the Bar, observed that there was not a man in the upper ranks of Dublin life for twenty years before who had any pretensions to wit, humour, professional or artistic talent, who had not been a guest at Brophy’s table.” The house has been refronted, and the ground floor-formerly reached by a flight of steps, with an exterior “area “-has been reduced to the level of the street. **

At No. 46, James Henry, M.D., **who afterwards relinquished his profession on inheriting a fortune, and became a wanderer in Europe in search of rare copies of Virgil and works relating to his favourite author; was living in 1836-40. He attained great eminence and a large practice, but his sceptical and independent ways of thinking, combined with his adopting a five shilling fee, is said to have estranged him from his professional brethren - the latter cause being probably the most potent of the two.

At No. 21 on the west side, **Felicia Hemans **died in 1835, having removed hither from Stephen’s Green. It is said that her death was hastened by a chill contracted through sitting too late over a book in the gardens of the Royal Dublin Society, while a mist or fog was gathering.

It was while lodging here that, as recorded in her Life, a strange gentleman called one day upon her and “explained in words and tones of the deepest feeling that the object of his visit was to acknowledge a debt of obligation, . . that to her he owed in the first instance that faith and those hopes which were now more precious to him than life itself; for that it was by reading her poem of The *Sceptic *that he had been first awaked from the miserable delusion of infidelity.”

Mrs. Hemans’ health was for a time before her death very bad. “I have been in a state of great nervous suffering,” she writes and “I am obliged to write in a reclining position, and can only accomplish it by these means without much suffering.”

She was only forty-one years of age at her death.

Close to No. 21, standing back from the street and looking bright and cheerful in its coat of chocolate coloured paint, is **The Mansion House, the official **residence of the Lord Mayors of Dublin, which may be indicated in passing, though no remarkable men or events are associated with it.

Mr. Fitzpatrick, in Ireland befpre the Union, tells of how one of its “worshipful” tenants was induced to rush out one morning “with his face in a lather and his mouth in a foam,” being informed while shaving that “the foot was off one of the horses in Stephen’s Green.” The Green was then used as a paddock for the Lord Mayor’s horses; an inspection of the stud, however, resulted in the discovery that the allusion was to the metal horse of George II., **which had been shamefully neglected. The house was built by Dawson about the middle of last century, and sold to the Corporation before completion. **

MOLESWORTH STREET.

No. 33 **on the north side, now devoted to trade and with a vast warehouse filling the area of the long garden and including the stables of olden times, was *Lisle *House, **erected by Lord Lisle about the middle of the last century.

But its interest is of much later date. Robert Charles Maturin came a-wooing here to the daughter of Dr. Thomas Kingsbury, Vicar of Kildare, who occupied it.

In 1830, and much later, it was a fashionable boarding-house, among its *habitues *being Charles Lever, who frequently used it while studying for his degree as Bachelor of Medicine; Surgeon Cusack Rooney - the Surgeon MacCulloch of Lorrequer, “Miss Riley in a bird of paradise plume and corked eyebrows, Mrs. Clanfrizzle, some old ladies in turbans? Mrs. Cudmore, a doctor in blue ‘winkers,’ and several ancient vestals.” Fitzpatrick’s Lfe Of Lever.

No. 13, now the Eye **and Ear Infirmary, was from 1781 the residence of **James Fitzgerald, a **distinguished lawyer and Prime Sergeant of Ireland, of whom it was said that he never “gave up a case whilst it had a single point to rest upon or he had a puff of breath left to defend it.”

Barrington says of him: “He was the first who declared his intention of writing the history of the Union. He afterwards relinquished the design and urged me to commence it. He handed me the prospectus of what he intended, and no man in Ireland ]knew the exact details of that proceeding better than he.”

Fitzgerald died, at the great age of ninety-three, in 1835.

At **No. 27, **according to tradition, Lord Edward Fitzgerald had his last interview with his wife before he was arrested. **

KILDARE STREET.

Leinster House, **now the centre building of the group of elegant structures belonging to the Royal Dublin Society, and having its garden front on Merrion Square, was built by James Fitzgerald, first Duke of Leinster, who owed his popularity td a spirited remonstrance to the king relative to the disposition of the large unappropriated surplus of the Irish revenue.

When reminded that be was building in an unfashionable part of the town he remarked, “They will follow me wherever I go.” The house was described by Thomas Malton in 1794 as “the most stately private edifice in the city.”

The first duke died here in 1773, his successor being William Robert, the second son, of whom Lord Cloncurry says: “Although deeply imbued with the liberal and patriotic feelings which have ever distinguished his family, he was in no way connected with any of the secret projects of the National party.

When Lord Edward became obnoxious to the law, Leinster House (pictured, below right) was ransacked in the most insulting manner in a search for criminatory documents.” *(Personal Recollections.) *In 1791, while attending his place in the House of Commons as member for Kildare, Lord Edward writes that he and his brother Henry had been “living quite alone in Leinster House, Leinster House.gif (7923 bytes)whence they generally rode out to Blackrock;” and in 1794, after his marriage with Pamela, he writes to his mother: “I confess Leinster House does not inspire the brightest ideas. By-the-bye what a melancholy house it is… A poor country housemaid I brought with me cried for two days and said she thought she was in a prison.” Joining the United Irishmen organisation, Lord Edward held various conferences here with Thomas Reynolds, then in the pay of the Government.

In March ‘98, he was here with Lady Edward Fitzgerald, and on the 12th an attempt was made to arrest him here. Not having been found among the delegates arrested at Bond’s, on March 11, a separate warrant was issued for his apprehension. He was about to enter Leinster House when he was told the soldiers were then in the mansion.

Lady Sarah Napier, aunt to Lady Edward, writes in her journal: “The servants ran up to Lady Edward*,* who was ill with a gathering ill her breast, and told her : she said directly, ‘There is no help, send them up.’ They asked very civilly for her papers and Edward’s and she gave them all… They left her and soon returned to search Leinster House for him, and came up with great good nature t to say, ‘Madam, we wish to tell you our searrh is in vain, Lord Edward has escaped.”’

Soon after these events Lady Pamela removed from Leinster House, and it is doubtful if it was ever revisited by Lord Edward, although reported in the city that he was sometimes concealed there.

Pamela appears to have jilted Sheridan, to whom she was engaged, for Lord Edward (though Moore, in his *Life of Sheridan, *casts a doubt on the sincerity or *bona fide *nature of the engagement), whom, Madden *(United Irishmen) *says: “she casually met at a theatre in Paris for the first time, and by whom she must have been proposed for the same night, for on the following day they [she and Madame de Genus] set out for Tournay, and were joined at the first port by the accepted lover, Lord Edward Fitzgerald.”

Lord Edward is described as of “a cheerful, countenance, an artless gaiety of manner, without reserve but without intrusion, and a careless yet uneffusive intrepidity both in conversation and in action.”

It must be admitted, however, that the portraits extant do not indicate strong character or mental power. Leinster House was rented to the Royal Dublin Society by the Duke in 1815. The present conversation-room was formerly the dining-room, the board-room was the supper-room, and the library, about to be deserted for a new and more commodious structure, was the picture gallery and drawing-room. **

No. 39, **formerly 35, is memorable as the residence **of Lady Morgan, **or, as she claimed to be called,. Sydney Lady Morgan. “It is a long and showy house exteriorly,” writes Mr. Fitzpatrick in *Friends and Foes of Lady Morgan, *but, not possessing any back rooms, the imposing appearance of size which it presents to the passer-by is in a great degree deceptive. The small *portico *which still shelters the ball door was erected by the Morgans.”

“We have at last got into a house of our own,” writes Lady Morgan, May 17th, 1813. “We found an old dirty dismantled house and we have turned our *piggery *into a decent sort of house enough; we have made it clean and comfortable, which is all our moderate circumstances will admit of; save *one little *bit *of a room, *which is a real *bijou, *and it is about *four inches by three, *and, therefore, we could afford to ornament it: it is fitted up in the gothic.”

In 1829 Lady Morgan brought a new carriage with her from London. “In shape it was a grasshopper, as well as in colour. Very high and very springy, with enormous wheels, it was difficult to get in and dangerous to get out. Sir Charles, who never in his life before had mounted a coach-box, was persuaded by his wife to ‘drive his own carriage.’

He was extremely short-sighted, and wore large green spectacles when out of doors. His costume was a coat much trimmed with fur and braided. James Grant, their ‘tall Irish footman,’ in the brightest of red plush, sat beside him, his office being to jump down whenever anybody was knocked down or run over, for Sir Charles drove as it pleased the gods. The horse was, mercifully, a very quiet animal, and much too small for the carriage, or the mischief would .have been more.

Lady Morgan, in the large bonnet of the period, and a cloak lined with fur hanging over the back of the carriage, gave the crowning grace, as she conceived, to a neat and elegant turn-out.” (Hepworth Dixon’s Life of Lady Morgan.)

Sir Charles was a close student and Lady Morgan complains of the difficulty she had to “get him out at two o’clock,” and that “after dinner he reads till bedtime. He is inherently shy, timid, proud, and anti-social.”

Here in 1830 at breakfast one morning, one of the letters which Sir Charles assumed to be from one of her “d—d dandies” proved to be a grant of a pension of £300 a year in recognition of her literary merits.

Writing of 1829 Hepworth Dixon says: “She and Sir Charles were much mixed up in the movement for Catholic Emancipation, and Lady Morgan’s drawing-room in Kildare’ Street was the *foyer *of Liberalism; her influence over the young men who frequented her house was great, and all the leaders of the Liberal party recognised her as a staunch and effective ally. Her saloon was a rally-point where people of all sects and shades of opinion met.”

“With her irrepressible vivacity,” writes Bayle Bernard, in his *Life of Lover, *“her humour, that indulged in the most audacious illustrations, and her candour which had small respect for time or place in its expression, . . by the side of her husband she suggested the notion of a Barbary colt harnessed to a patient English draught horse.”

“Feb.17, 1831,” she writes: “I had a little dinner got up in a hurry for Moore yesterday; it was got up thus: I threw up my window and asked the inmates of the cabs and carriages of my friends as they passed the windows, and sent out some penny porters and lighted up my rooms. Moore was absolutely astounded when he saw my party.”

On Aug.14, 1835, she records, “My soiree was very fine, learned, scientific, and *tiresome. *Fifty philosophers passed through my rooms last night.”

We conclude with an entry in the same diary of April, 1831, of a “battle royal” with Sir Charles on the subject of a greenhouse she wanted to erect on the open space at the back of the stairs; “Morgan vows I shall never have it, and is gone out in a passion, but I don’t despair. Upon this occasion I am a bore and he is - a bear.”

The Morgans removed to London in 1837. Sir Charles died in 18435 and Lady Morgan celebrated her eighty-first or eighty-second birthday by a dinner party at her house in London in 1859, and died a few months later.

At the northern end of Kildare Street, on the right is **

LEINSTER STREET.

No. 5** - Now Messrs. Panter’s place of business - had formerly two windows on the right of the door, and one, lighting the hall, on the left. A double celebrity attaches to it. **Lord Kilwarden, **who was killed by the mob in Thomas Street, on the evening of Emmet’s insurrection, by mistake for Lord Carleton - the judge who had hanged the brothers Sheares - resided here, and to a large room in the rear, still existing, he was brought, after his death, from the watch-house in Vicar Street. When visited there by Major Sirr, the latter exclaimed, “I will hang a man for every hair of his head.” Hearing the words the dying judge replied:“Let no man suffer for my death, unless by the regular operation of the laws.”

In** **front of the house on the left will be observed a figure of Hibernia. This was placed there along with a figure of a Danish wolf-dog at the opposite side by **Archibald Hamilton Rowan, **who occupied the house from 1818 to 1826, and built a circular ballroom in the rear; his stables, cow-house, and other offices extending far beyond.

Condemned and imprisoned, in 1794, on a false charge of writing and distributing an address to the volunteers from the United Irish Association, of which he was secretary, Rowan escaped from Newgate by the involuntary connivance of the under-jailor, and became a fugitive in America.

Pardoned by the king, in I 805, he returned to Ireland, and became notorious and popular by his chivalric defence of Mary Neal. “Rowan survived many years in the enjoyment of an ample fortune,” says Phillips *(Curran and his Contemporaries), *“and of all the blessings which domestic happiness could bestow… Many there are who still remember his majestic figure, a model for the sculptor, with a native oaken sapling in his hand, and two gigantic Danish wolf-dogs at his heels.”

“In private life”, says Drummond, “he was social and domestic, an early riser, temperate in his habits, and when not provoked to choler, bland, courteous, amiable, and caspable of winning and retaining the most devoted friendship” (Life* *of Rowan).

Lord Cloncurry, writing of him late in life, says, “His appearance then could scarcely convey a notion of what he was some five-and-twenty years earlier, when he and I made a pedestrian tour of England together, and when, as I well remember, his practice at starting from our inn, of a wet morning was to roll himself into the first pool he met in order that he might be beforehand with the rain ” (Personal Recollections).

Rowan died in 1834, at the age of 83. In 1826 he removed to Holles Street. **

No. 10 **was the residence, 1830-40, of **Francis Blackburne, Lord **Chancellor of Ireland in 1852, before his elevation to the bench as Lord Chief Justice in 1846.

A continuation of Leinster Street is **

CLARE STREET.

At No. 18 **lived **Thomas Leland, D.D., **collated to St. Anne’s Vicarage, Dublin, in 1773. “The eloquent translator of Demosthenes,” as he was called by Isaac Disraeli, and author of the *History of Ireland, which the Authologia Hibernia *pronounces to be “a dull monotonous detail of domestic convulsions, a weak government, and a barbarous people.” Rose *(Biog. Dic.) *says “he was the most admired preacher of his time in Ireland.”

He died in 1 785, at the age of 63. **

MERRION SQUARE.

No. 1, at **the corner of Lower Merrion Street, was the house of **Sir William R. W. Wilde, **the eminent oculist and antiquary, and his talented wife, the Irish poetess “Speranza”. Mr. Fitzpatrick, in his Life of Lever, gives the following anacdote, communicated by the nephew of the novelist, Mr. John Lever. “On one occasion he (Lever) wanted Wilde to come and meet at dinner some friends he had assembled, and calling at his house, was told that the Doctor could not possibly appear. Being denied several times, my uncle at last put his handkerchief in bandage form over his merry twinkling eyes; this expedient brought the oculist to the door in a moment; the *rencontre *ending in a hearty laugh at the success of the trick, which continued that evening to afford much amusement at Templeogue.”

Wilde died in 1876, at the age of sixty~one. **

No. 5 **was the residence of **William Stokes, the **eminent physician and Regius Professor of Physic in Dublin University. “He attained to one of the largest practices ever enjoyed in Ireland, and for fifty years held a prominent position in the medical profession” (Webb’s Irish Biography).

A self-taught man, who left his school the day he joined it after resenting a blow from his master by throwing a slate at his head-and hitting it; and studied his Latin grammar “lying in the fields with his head pillowed on the neck of a cow.”

Dr. Mahaffy, in *Macmillan’s Magazine, 1875, says he was “the greatest physician in Ireland; whose books on the chest and heart have been for a generation standard books all over the world. I have heard a Californian doctor, fresh from the west, beg to be introduced to him as the beacon of modern medicine. I have heard a Greek doctor, in the wilds of Arcadia, and who did not know how to pronounce his name, say that all his knowledge was derived from the works of Stokes. When I first came to know William Stokes, in 1858, *his house had been for years the resort of all the intellect, of all the wit, of all the learning which Ireland possessed. He kept open house, and, in addition to his large family, some learned foreigner, or some stray country wit, would be met almost daily at his simple but most hospitable table… At dinner he would not sit at the head of the table, or carve any dish, but devote himself wholly to conversation, seconded by a very brilliant and witty family circle. If his guests were particularly sober and prim, he would astonish and mystify them with the most outlandish and violent theories… On gala. nights he would act in charades, when his curious solemn face, and his wonderful wit would elicit roars of laughter. He was particularly fond of enacting the part of an old woman of the lower classes, though I have seen him appear as a young lady in fashionable attire… In his con-suiting room in Dublin he was a very different being-grave and solemn; nay, even so gloomy that many patients read in his face their coming doom, while he may have been thinking of something far removed from the case before him.”

“To Stokes,” says Mr. Fitzpatrick, in his *Lift of Lever *”

• a man of gloom to patients, but a Rabelais of humour when freed from the restraints of professional pomp and mystery - Lever owed not a few of his good stories. One of them was the scene in the canal boat, where Father Loftus eats all the salmon at dinner and makes an apology that it was a fast day in his Church. ‘Do you think nobody has a soul to save but yourself?’ exclaimed Standish O’Grady, coming behind his chair, and helping himself freely to the fish.”

Stokes was the recipient of degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. He wrote the *Life of George Petrie, *from which several quotations are made in this work.

His death occurred in 1878: he was seventy-four years of age. **

14 Merrion Square.gif (7899 bytes)No. 14 **(pictured, left) was the residence of **Sir Philip Crampton, **Surgeon-General. “His fame,” we read in Webb’s *Irish Biography, *“was almost European, and he enjoyed an immense practice. The brilliancy of his conversational powers was remarkable, and the amenity of his manners made his company universally desired… . His activity may be judged from a boast once made by him in advanced life, that he had swum across Lough Bray, ridden into town, and amputated a limb before breakfast.”

He had a small estate on the margin of Lough Bray. Mr. Fitzpatrick (Life of Lever) says that among his intimates he was known as “The General of the Lancers,” and tells us of a “practical joke played late one night, when a messenger aroused Crampton from his bed, to say that a great personage had fallen from his horse in Stephen’s Green. On arrival he found King William’s statue blown by gunpowder from his charger.

Crampton’s weakness was fondness for swells.” O’Flanagan tells how, in 1820, “some estrangement separated for a time Plunket and Bushe. A mutual friend, Sir Philip Cramp ton, always ready to heal sores, was bent on re-uniting the dislocated members of the Irish Bar. He asked Plunket if he would have any objection to come to his house and meet Bushe at dinner. Plunket replied that he would be most happy to meet any of Sir Philip’s friends.”

A similar enquiry of Bushe met with a similar reply. Bushe on arriving found Plunket romping with the juvenile Cramptons. “Plunket continued his game with the child, but placed his hand behind his back, which Bushe no sooner saw than he grasped it eagerly . . and the estranged friends were foes no longer.”

Crampton died, at the age of 81, in 1858.

At the end of the north side of the square on the left is **

HOLLES STREET.** **

At No. 1, Archibald Hamilton Rowan **lived at the close of his life, removing hither from Leinster Street about 1830. He died in t834 at the age of 83.

** 

23 Holles Street.gif (5354 bytes)At No. 23, **(pictured, left) in 1816, lived **Richard Lalor Sheil. **In Webb’s *Irish Biography *we read: “The years between 1814 and 1823 were largely devoted to dramatic authorship. His plays of *Adelaide, The Apostate, Bellamire *and *Evadne *were remarkably successful, more from the acting of his countrywoman, Miss O’Neill, than from their intrinsic merit.” *

Adelaide *was performed at Covent Garden Theatre in 1816 and *Evadne *in 1819.

Sheil was called to the Bar in 1814. “His appearance in his Bar costume was striking,” says O’Flanagan. “The horse-hair wig covering hot only his head but also his shoulders, the gown fluttering loesely about his slight frame, his voice shrill and somewhat squeaking … was of great power and volubility.”

O’Flanagan quotes a French writer: “Were I commissioned to take down the *signalement *of Mr. Sheil this would be very nearly the result - height five feet four inches, eyes quick and piercing, complexion pale, chin pointed, hair dark, mouth middle-sized.”

Here is Madden’s description of him in the House of Commons: “Hah! up he springs, like an Irish volunteer rushing to the breach. What a voice! what vehemence of’ gesticulation! what* *furious passion! *Passion! he *never was in better temper during his life: for he is excellently made up, and he is sure of producing an effect most brilliant though very transient in its nature.” (Irish Bar.)

Sheil was Minister at Florence at his death in 1851, aged 59, and his remains were brought to Ireland annd interred at Long Orchard.

Holles Street leads into **

DENZILLE STREET. **

Of **No. 18½ **(formerly numbered 19½) it is sufficient to record the fact that it was the residence of the informer James Carey.

Returning by Holles Street to Merrion Square we pass down **

LOWER MOUNT STREET. **

At No. 1, **Sir Frederick Shaw, **for forty-eight years Recorder of Dublin – 1828- 1876 - was living in 1830. “It was always a matter of surprise” says the writer of his memoir in Webb’s *Irish Biography, *“that his splendid abilities never secured for him a higher judicial position. His decisions were marked by great perspicuity and comon sense, and he often lightened the tedium of litigation by brilliant witticisms.”

He died in 1876 at the age of seventy-seven.

Across the bridge the row of houses on the right, fronting the canal, is **

PERCY PLACE.**

At No. 1, was living in 1839 a certain Signor Sapio, and to him, as a resident pupil in that year came Catherine Hayes. In Wills’ Irish Nation we read that by the kindness of the Bishop of Limerick “she was in 1839 placed under the care of Signor Sapio, a singer and teacher in Dublin, in whose family she resided for three years. With him she studied with such success that she soon rose to fame as a concert singer.”

The number of the house is obtained from the Dublin Directory of the year named. In 1842 Catherine Hayes went to Paris to pursue her studies under Garcia.

Warrington Place, on the northern side of the canal, brings us to a street or place in which stands Saint Stephen’s Church. Passing round the church, we enter **

UPPER MOUNT STREET. **

At** No* .17, *Charles Kendal Bushe, **Chief Justice, lived during the last year of his life, having removed hither from Ely Place. He retired from the Bench a year or two before his death. It is said that the excitement consequent on the circumstances attending his retirement seriously affected his health.

He died from erysipelas following a slight surgical operation, in 1843, aged 66. Shiel, in his *Sketches, Legal and Political, *gives a very minute word-portrait of Bushe. He describes’ his complexion as “too sanguineous and ruddy,” his forehead as “more lofty than expansive,” the eyes “large, globular, and blue . . not much brilliancy or fire;” the nose “slightly arched,” and the mouth, in its combined characteristics of “force, firmness, and precision,” at once “affable and commanding, proud and kind . . the most remarkable feature in his countenance.”

Barrington gives his testimony to the “incorruptibility” of Bushe’s character, and’ says he was “as nearly devoid of public or private enemies as any man.”

Proceeding onward we re-enter, at its south east corner, **

MERRION SQUARE.

To No.42 **(formerly numbered 8 on the east side) **Sir Jonah Barrington **removed in 1793 from Harcourt Street. In his *Personal Sketches *he says:

“In 1793 I purchased a fine house in Merrion Square and here I launched into an absolute press of business, perhaps justly acquiring thereby the jealousy of many of my seniors.”

In this year Barrington “took silk*” - i.e., *became king’s counsel, and was, moreover, appointed, as a reward for supporting the government of the day in the Irish House of Commons, to a sinecure in the Custom House - “a good sinecure . . the emoluments payable every Sunday morning by the deputy ” - worth a thousand a year.

The reference above to his parliamentary career reminds us how he tells of having on one occasion given offence to Mr. Toler, afterwards Lord Norbury, in the House, and proceeding to leave it in his company in response to a silent invitation to the arrangement of preliminaries for a hostile meeting, how he was followed by the sergeant-at-arms and his attendants, and, proving refractory, “brought like a sack on a man’s shoulders, to the admiration of the mob, and thrown down in the body of the house;” Toler having also been captured with the loss of the skirts of his coat while struggling through a doorway.

The stories of Barrington’s life here remind one of those related of Sheridan. Dr. Townsend Young, in his Memoir to the third edition of the *Sketches, *says: “He extricated his plate from Stephenson, a pawnbroker, by asking him to dine with the grandees, and mortgaged his official salary, sunk three times over, to one Collins, a saddler.”

Barrington lost his sinecure and all prospect of professional advancement in 1800 by opposing the Union, though, with apparent inconsistency, he was instrumental in buying over others to the Government side.

His Personal Sketches were published in 1807. Two years before he had commenced paying his own most trouble some creditors out of money paid into his court, as judge in admiralty, but it was not until 1830 that these and later peculations came to light, and his deprivation of office was followed by retirement to Versailles, where he died in 1834 at the age of 74.

At No. 54 (formerly 34 Merrion Square South), Francis Blackburne was living at the time when he filled the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, a period extending over less than a year; the appointment, received on Lord Derby corning into office in 1852; having been resigned by him on the formation of a coalition government under Lord Aberdeen in December of the same year.

A second appointment under Lord Derby in 1866, was also, owing to the opposition he encountered, followed by an early resignation.

As Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench he delivered the charge in the prosecution of Smith O’Brien and his confederates, who were convicted of high treason. Referring to this charge, Lord Monaghan said: “I never in the course of my experience read a more able and satisfactory argument in every respect.”

Blackburne was for some years Vice-Chancellor of Dublin University. “in private life,” says the writer of his Memoir in the Dictionary of National Biography, he “was generous and urbane. As a lawyer he possessed extraordinary power of mental concentration, wide experience, and profound acquaintance with every branch of law and equity. He had a dignified and courteous manner, a style nervous, terse, and perspicuous, a distinct melodious voice and fluent delivery.” He died at Rathfarnham Castle in 1867 at the age of 83. **

No. 58** (formerly 30 Merrion Square South) is especially noteworthy as the residence of Daniel **O’Connell. **Writing of 1823, W. H. Curran, in *Sketches of the Irish Bar, *says: “If any one of you, my English readers, being a stranger in Dublin, should chance as you return upon a winter’s morning from one of the ‘small and early’ parties of that raking metropolis - that is to say, between the 58 Merrion Square.gif (9708 bytes)hours of five and six o’clock - to pass along the south side of Merrion Square, you will not fail to observe that amongst those splendid mansions there is one evidently tenanted by a person whose habits differ materially from those of his fashionable neighbours. The half-open parlour shutters and the light within, announce that some one dwells there whose time is too precious to permit to regulate his rising with the sun. Should your curiosity tempt you to ascend the steps, and, under cover of the dark, to reconnoitre the interior, you will see a tall, able-bodied man standing at a desk, and immersed in solitary occupation. Upon the wall in front of him hangs a crucifix. From this and from the calm attitude of the person within, and from a certain monastic rotundity about the neck and shoulders, your first impression will be that he must be some pious dignitary of the Church of Rome, absorbed in his matin devotions. But . . no sooner can the eye take in the other furniture of the apartment, the bookcases clogged with tomes in plain calf-skin bindings, the blue-covered octavos that lie on the table and the floor, the reams of manuscript in oblong folds and begirt with crimson tape, than it becomes evident that the party meditating amidst such objects must be thinking far more of the law than the prophets. He is unquestionably a barrister, but, apparently, of that homely, chamber-keeping, plodding cast, who labour hard to make up by assiduity what they want in wit… . . Should you happen in the course of the same day to stroll down to the hall of the Four Courts, you will not be a little surprised to find the object of your pity miraculously transformed from the severe recluse of the morning into one of the most bustling, important, and joyous personages ill that busy scene.”

In Cusack’s *Life of O’Connell *a vivid picture is presented of the scene in the vicinity on the occasion of the reversal of the judgment against him and his release from prison in 1844. “All through the long route from O’Connell’s house in Merrion Square to the prison thousands had assembled and kept perfect order… Such a scene was never witnessed in Dublin… There was not a single policeman seen or needed in all that vast multitude… When O’Connell reached his house in Merrion Square he addressed the people.”

He died in Genoa in 1847, aged 71. **

At No. 70 **(formerly 18 of the south side) **Joseph Sheridan Lefanu **died in 1873. The author of *Uncle Silas *and many other popular novels is described in the obituary notice in the *Dublin University Magazine *(1873) - of which he was both editor and proprietor for several years - as leading “a secluded life, mixing little in society, from which his handsome and distinguished person was missed.”

This seclusion dated from the death of his wife in 1858. “He was a man who thought deeply, especidly on religious subjects. To those who knew him he was very dear. They admired him for his learning, his sparkling wit, and pleasant conversation, and loved him for his manly virtues, his noble and generous qualities, his gentleness, and his loving and affectionate nature.” He was fifty-nine at the time of his death. **

At No. 83 (numbered, formerly, 5 of the south side) lived Baron Richard Pennefather **from 1850 till his death. He “was neither popular as an advocate or strong and brilliant on the bench,” says a writer in the *Dublin University Magazine *for November, 1859, but, “it may well be doubted if for the long period during which he adorned the bench of Ireland Baron Pennefather was ever surpassed by any one in soundness, learning, and piety, and in the quality which, in the words of Lord Cole, make up ‘a sage and reverend expositor of our law;’ who prided himself less in fine conceits than in sound discernment and gravity of manners.”

He died in 1859 at the age of 76. **

At No. 84 **(formerly 4 Merrion Square, South), lived **Robert Graves, M.D., **who has been ranked with Stokes for eminence in his profession. His reputation rests chiefly on his great work on Clinical Medicine’. A writer in the *Dublin University Magazine *(1842) says:

“To a remarkable person he added great powers of arresting attention in the very outset of his discourse, his ideas were conveyed in a bold, fluent, and classic style; in his language he was always forcible and elegant.”

In Fitzpatrick’s *Lord Cloncurry and His Times *we are told: “A certain physician, now at the head of his profession in Dublin, numbered Graves among his most intimate friends. ‘Ah!’ said he to us within the last ‘few months, ‘no one appears to know what a loss that man has been to the medical profession… I can compare those he has left after him to nothing save so many little children.”’ Graves died in 1853, at the age of 56.

At the end of this side of the square is **

UPPER MERRION STREET.

No.24 **(pictured below) is especially memorable as the birthplace of **Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington in 1769. His father, however, Garnet, Earl of Mornington, **merits a preliminary mention as a celebrated glee composer - his most popular composition being “Here in cool grot” - an accomplished violinist and musical enthusiast, leading the amateur performances in the Music Hall in Fishamble Street in 1741.24Upper Merrion St.gif (12128 bytes) In Webb’s *Irish Biography *we read: “Perhaps he was in some degree indebted to the musical ear of George III. for his advancement, as the Earl was a composer of no ordinary merit, and excelled in the species of composition most pleasing to the King.

In no other way does he appear to have benefited by the royal favour, as his means were scarcely adequate to maintain the large family which grew up around him in the style suited to their position.”

Lady Mornington is described as “a cold an d severe woman,who had a difficult struggle to bring up her family on a small property heavily encumbered.”

Sir Bernard Burke (*Vicissitudes of Families) *assigns 1765 as the year of Lord Mornington’s removal from Grafton Street, where he had “antecedently to 1764 become possessed of a residence and extensive piece of ground opposite the Provost’s. ”

Having in 1764 taken a longer lease from the city, and undertaking to build a mansion at a cost of £3,000, “it seems that he almost immediately changed his mind, for in the following year he sold the lease to a Mr. Wilson, covenanting to indemnify the purchaser against the consequences of his not building the grand mansion he had undertaken to erect.”

The Earl of Mornington died in 1784.

That Arthur Wellesley was born in Upper Merrion Street was put beyond dispute by the researches of Sir Bernard Burke, on the evidence of the announcement of the birth in Upper Merrion Street in the *Exchange Magazine, *and an entry in the day book of an apothecary in Dawson Street who supplied medicine for the mother and the new-born child. “From this,” he says, “it is clear that the Mornington family were then [April, 1769] living in that street, and I find that within a very brief period of the birth of Arthur, Lord Mornington purchased from the Earl of Antrim the lease of the house No. 24 Upper Merrion Street. The date of this lease is 16th of August, 1769 - a date no doubt subsequent to the birth that took place on the 29th of the preceding April; but it is very easy and natural to suppose that the Earl of Mornington was resident there some time previous to the purchase of the lease.”

Passing by the young Arthur’s school days at Eton, “where he passed for a slow boy - too dull for learning and too quiet and moping for football” (Wills’ *Irish Nation), *we find him in 1790 in the Irish -Parliament, and sitting on the same committees with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, “ruddy-faced and juvenile in appearance,” according to Barrington, and “popular among young men of his age and station.”

Barring-ton’s assertion that “his address was unpolished and that he never spoke successfully” is not in accordance with other testimony. He was Captain Wellesley and aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant at this time, and, again to quote Wills, “spent probably the happiest years of his life in the then gay, dashing, and reckless capital of Ireland. He was, however, by no means up’ to the mark of such a life in point of income, and at one’ time was obliged to accept a loan, kindly and delicately offered from his landlord, who was a prosperous boot maker on Arran Quay.”

Gilbert *(His/ory of Dublin) *says that “when Colonel Arthur Wellesley was about leaving Dublin [1794] to commence his brilliant career, he committed to Thomas Dillon, a wealthy woollen draper who opened a shop in this [Parliament] Street in 1783, the care of discharging the numerous debts which he had contracted while in Ireland.”

We are far from having exhausted the interest attaching to Mornington House, which in 1791 passed into the possession of **Robert Lawless, Lord Cloncurry **(father of the more notable person of that title), who rose through a baronetcy to a peerage, and made his fortune as a woollen draper.

In *Sketches of Irish Political Characters *(1799) it is told how “Mr. Conroy, an ingenious gentleman of the Irish Bar, presented the world with a comedy in which occurs a very laughable scene, where the *Squire, *who is the hero of the piece, excites much risibility by being tossed in a. blanket. His lordship [Cloncurry] sat in one of the boxes, but as lords are now more frequently met with than in the niggard days of old Queen Bess, he passed unnoticed in the above unlucky scene, and would probably have so continued during the whole representation, had it not been for the unseasonable address of an enraptured female in the adjacent box who, transported with what was passing before her, could not forbear crying out:

“Cloncurry, Cloncurry,

Come here in a hurry,

And see my comical squire.

Though tossed so high,

Yet ‘twixt you and I,

The blankets have toss’d you much higher. ”

Lord Cloncurry is said to have voted for the Union against his conscience in the hope of obtaining his son’s release from imprisonment. He died before that release came and then the son discovered that his imprisonment had cost him £70,000, which his father had left away from him lest it should be confiscated. **

Lord Castlereagh **is the next eminent occupant of Mornington House. The Honourable Charlotte Lawless writes to. her brother, Dec. 5, 1801, at the time of his release from imprisonment: “We are at present very busy emptying Merrion Street house, which is let to Lord Castlereagh at £800 per annum. We pay taxes. Traineau has taken a complete catalogue of the library, which is packed in cases, and sent to Merrion Row, where it will remain safe until its dear owner arrives.”

In the *Personal Recollections, *from which the last extract is taken, Lord Cloncurry says: “Mornington House was rented from my father by Lord Castlereagh during the course of the Union debates, and in it were concocted those plots that ended in overturning the liberties and arresting the prosperity of Ireland. There also were celebrated, with corrupt profusion suited to the occasion, the nightly orgies of the plotters…

The house alluded to, which cost my father £8,000 in the year 1791, was sold the year after the Union as a part of his personal property, for £2,500*. *Although still in the best and most fashionable quarter of Dublin, it would not now, in all probability, fetch the odd £500.”

Mornington House was afterwards occupied by the Ecclesiastical Commission and is now the office of the Irish Land Commission.

A reminiscence of Lord Edward Fitzgerald lends yet another element of interest to Mornington House. Lord Cloncurry says:” At the time of Lord Edward’s arrest, his wife (the well-known Pamela) had taken refuge with my sisters, and was, at the time, in my father’s house in Merrion Street, though without his knowledge. She was pursued there by the police in search of papers, and some which she had concealed in her bedroom were discovered and seized.” **

ELY PLACE. **

Four houses, consecutively numbered, here claim our attention. **No. 3, **formerly numbered 13, was leased to **Barry Yelverton, Lord Avonmore, **about 1785, and he lived here until 1789. He was raised to the Bench and received his title in 1800. In the *Memoirs of Gratan we read: “Yelverton was a first rate speaker-nearly the most powerful one in his day. His style was short and strong: he never wandered from his subject either to the right or to the left. He was *endowed with a masculine understanding, and saw the strong point of everything; but his fire was so ardent that it quickly consumed the fuel which fed it. He was deficient in his tones and manner, and wanted taste; yet without these accomplishments his speeches were superior and even sublime orations. Unfortunately nothing almost remains of them that could give a just idea of their excellence… ‘He was too fond of conviviality, and that not in the most elevated society. He grew attached to a strange character, who assumed the garb and air of a foreigner, and chose to call himself *Achmet, *but who was, in fact, a *mere Irishman, *wearing a long beard, and pretending to be a Turk.”

“In the common transactions of life he was an infant,” says Barrington. “in the varieties of right and wrong a frail mortal; in the Senate and at the Bar, a mighty giant… Frugality fled before the carelessness of his mind, and left him the victim of his liberality.

His passions were open, his prepossessions palpable, his failings obvious, and he took as little pains to conceal his faults as to publish his perfections” *(Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation). *His devotion to the study of the law, for which he relinquished the teaching of the classics in the house of a Doctor Black in North King Street, is said to have been due to the parsimony of Mrs. Black, who wished to put him and the other tutors oil the scholars’ diet of bread and milk for breakfast, and Yelverton’s resentment of the insult which he conceived to be implied by her limiting the supply of tea, eggs, and ham to the Doctor and herself

“As a judge,” says O’Flanagan, “Lord Avonmore’s fault was that he jumped too quickly at conclusions.” Curran demonstrated this fault to his lordship one day in court. Excusing his delay in attending to conduct a certain case, he referred to the necessity he felt of recovering from the distressing effects on his mind of a scene he had just witnessed.

The kind-hearted old judge enquiring what it was, “I** will tell your lordship as calmly as I can,” said Curran, “On my Way to court I passed through the market.” “Yes, I **know, the Castle Market,” struck in his lordship. “Exactly, the Castle Market; and passing near one of the stalls I beheld a brawny butcher brandishing a sharp, gleaming knife. A calf he was about to slay, was standing, awaiting the death-stroke, when, at that moment - that critical moment - a lovely little girl came bounding along in all the sportive mirth of childhood, from her father’s stall. Before a moment had passed the butcher plunged his knife into the breast of -” “Good God! his child!” sobbed the judge, deeply affected. “No, my lord, but the calf,” rejoined Curran; “but your lordship often anticipates.” Lord Avonmore died in 1805, at the age of 69. **

4 Elyt Place.gif (9654 bytes)At No.4, **(pictured, right)formerly No. 12, lived the most famous member of the Irish Bar, **John Philpot Curran, **in the early part of his career; having removed hither from Hog Hill in 1780. The defective address and utterance which had earned for him, when a student of Trinity College, the sobriquet of “stuttering Jack Curran”, were now, by constant declaiming before a glass and studying Shakespeare and Bolingbroke, entirely overcome.

As ” the wittiest and dre~iest, the most classical and ambitious.” of his associates there, he was still worthy of his reputation. Barrington *(Personal Sketches) *says his “person was mean and decrepit, very slight, very shapeless-with nothing of the gentleman about it; on the contrary, displaying spindle limbs, a shambling gait, one hand imperfect, and a face yellow and furrowed, rather fat and thoroughly ordinary. But his rapid movements, his fire, his sparkling eye, the fine and varied intonations of his voice-these conspired to give life and energy to every company he mixed with.”

“He possessed great courage, personal as well as political, ” says W. H. Grattan, and in evidence of the former recounts his duels-with Mr. St. Leger, Mr. Egan, Major Hobart, and Mr. Fitzgibbon (Lord Clare). “He was not sufficiently select as to his company, neither was he a very happy man. In private he was unfortunate and full of sores. His griefs, too, were frenzies. He had moments of rapture, but few of repose.”

“His talk was rich in idiom and imagery,” says Crabb Robinson *(Diary), *“and in warmth of feeling. He was all passion - fierce in his dislikes, and not sparing, in the freedom of his language, even those with whom he was on familiar terms,” and records that when he was visiting Madame de Stael “he was melancholy, and said he never went to bed in Dublin without wishing not to rise again.”

He spoke of the other world and those he should wish to see there - which elicited from Madame de Stael the remark that, “after she had seen those she loved, she should enquire for Adam and Eve, and ask how they were born.” In the Life, by his son, we are told that “he did not sit in his chair like other persons; he was constantly changing his position… It was the same when he walked or rode, long before his features could be discerned his friends recognized him from afar by the back of the hand firmly compressed upon the hip, his head raised toward the sky, and momentarily turning round, as if searching for objects of observation… In his diet he was temperate - he ate little and was extremely indifferent respecting the quality of his fare… From his attachment to the pleasures of convivial society, he was supposed to have been addicted to wine; but the fact was that a very small quantity excited him, and whenever he drank to excess it was rather mechanically and from inattention, than from choice.”

Curran removed from Ely Place to a house in Harcourt Street, and from thence to No. 80 Stephen’s Green, since rebuilt. There he remained, except when at the Priory, until the last year or so of his life, which was spent, in broken health and spirits, in London, and different English watering-places.

He died in London in 1817, at the age of 67.

5 Ely Place.gif (8538 bytes)At No. 5, (pictured, eight)** Charles Kendal Bushe** lived during the third decade of the century. In 1822 he was appointed Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. As an advocate, a writer in the *Dublin University Magazine *(1841) says of him: “It was said of Bushe that he charmed the verdict from the jury by the fascination of his eye.’ His manner was calm, dignified, and grand. Kemble pronounced him with truth the most perfect actor off the stage. We do not believe that Erskine, the great glory of the English Bar, could for a moment, as an advocate to a jury, be placed in competition with Bushe.”

“His imposing figure and deportment,” says W. H Curran *(Sketches of the Irish Bar) *his graceful, persuasive gestures, his manly, pliant features, so easily seduced from their habitual dignity by a love of gentlemanly fun, his fine sonorous ~I I voice, his genial laugh ter - were some, though not all, of the ingredients in that combination which made Bushe the most fascinating of companions.”

Grattan said of him that “he spoke with the lips of an angel.” Among his social qualifications was a strong talent for repartee. One illustration may be given.

Being asked by an acquaintance not very clean in his person if he would give him a remedy for a sore throat, he told him to “take a pint of hot water, put in it a pint of bran, and rub his leg well for a quarter of an hour.”

“Why,” replied the other, “that is nothing more than washing my feet.”

“I admit,” said Bushe,. “that it is open to that objection.”

When Sir Robert Peel was Chief Secretary of Ireland he met, on one occasion, an Irish country squire remarkable for his vulgarity. Bushe was a neighbour, and the squire was loud in his praises of the Irish orator. Peel asked “what was Mr. Bushe’s forte?” “His what?” asked the squire. “What is he most remarkable for?” “Ha! I understand - the jury.” “And how does he manage the jury?” “Troth, this way, he blarneys them. He first butthers them up., and then he slithers them down.” Bushe removed from Ely Place to Upper Mount Street.

He died in 1843 at the age of 66.

Another occupant of No. 5* *was John Doherty, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1830. As Crown Prosecutor in the Donneraile conspiracy he had the previous year encountered O’Connell, who was retained on behalf of the prisoners, when, according to one writer, “he received a verbal bastinadoing from the great tribune, under which he obviously winced:’

Like Lord Clare, at an earlier date, in the adjoining house, he appears to have been apprehensive of an attack from without; some holes being shown in a staircase to the left through which muskets could be fired on the invaders, while an iron gate protects the approach to the upper storeys.

Doherty had the personal advantages of a commanding figure, a fine voice, and fluent speech. Moore, in his diary, notices his buoyant and almost boyish heartiness of manner. He was considered to bear a striking resemblance to his kinsman, Canning. He died in 1850, at the age of 67. **

At No.6 (formerly No.10, pictured, right) lived and died John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, Attorney-General and **Lord High Chancellor of Ireland; whose “career,” says O’Flanagan *(Lives of the Lord Chancellors), *displays dauntless courage, the highest intellect, the utmost selfishness, and unrestrained arrogance.”

6 Ely Place.gif (9119 bytes)When a boy he is said to have displayed the imperious spirit which marked his manhood. Being ordered to attend his father to receive reproof for some childish fault, and told that he must go to him instantly, he replied, stamping his foot, “‘Orders ’-’ must!’ Such language suits me not, nor will I stir an inch. *Decretum est.” *His father, amused at the boy’s spirit, penned a note requesting “the honour of an interview with Mr. John Fitzgibbon,” which received due attention.

Contrasting the younger Grattan’s account of him as the basest of men, without one redeeming virtue, and Mr. Froude’s picture of him as unsullied patriot, thinking only of his country’s good, the writer of his memoir in the Dictionary of National Biography says: “The one picture is as false as the other.

In Clare’s cold and unemotional manner there was a deal of affectation, and his friends claimed for him that he was kindly and true… He was ambitious, not very scrupulous, vain and intolerably insolent; but whether he used his power for good or evil, he acted with uniform courage, and in point of ability stood head and shoulders above all the other Irishmen of his time who sided with the Government.”

Barrington *(Historic Memories) *says, “he was naturally dissipated and for some time attended but little to the duties of his profession, . . warm but indiscriminate in his friendships, equally indiscriminate and implacable in his animosities, . . an indefatigable and active friend, a kind, affectionate master - liberal, hospitable, and munificent.”

“A friend once said to Grattan of Fitzgibbon,” writes Phillips *(Curran and *His *Contemporaries), *‘I think he is a very dangerous man.’ ‘Very,’ said Grattan, ‘a very dangerous man-to run away from.’”

Barrington, in his *Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, *thus describes him : “In person he was about the middle size, his eyes-large, dark, and penetrating - betrayed some of the boldest traits of his uncommon character.”

Phillips states “on the authority of his eldest son, the late Lord Clare,” that when nearing his end, and told that all hope was over, he sent for his wife. “I have but one request to make of you,” he said, “it is that you will burn all my papers; should they remain after me *hundreds may be compromised;” *and remarks that “his kind solicitude for others has left him without a biographer.” He died from the effects of a fall from his horse.

O’Flanagan says, “the intensity of the national hate for the man who, in the opinion of the people, had deeply injured his country, was displayed at his funeral in yelling and shrieking and ribaldry, disgraceful and disgusting. They followed the mournful *cortege *to Saint Peter’s Church and with difficulty were restrained from heaping filth and mud upon the lid which covered the face of the dead.” He died in i802, at the age of 53.

The house, now the offices” of the Valuation and Boundary Survey of Ireland, is of great size, extending far in the rere, with a handsome stone staircase, also in the rere portion, and tasteful wall and ceiling decorations. In one room the empty sockets of several medallions in the mantelpiece are seen. It is said that before their removal to the Castle, when the property changed hands, a visitor to the building offered £50 for one, under the impression that it was a genuine “Wedgwood.” When he saw it after removal he valued it, as *not *being the great masters work, at less than £5.

The basement of the house is built on groined arches, and traces of the covered way which led to the isolated kitchen in the rere may be seen. One or two iron gates also remain which were put up by the Earl as a protection against the hatred and violence of the people.

In an interesting paper on this house and its associations, by Mr. J. P. Prendergast, in the *Daily Express *of January 17th of the present year, we are told how Lord Clare sent to a builder, Tom Brown by name, to come to him privately one night, “and told hint that he was warned that his house would be attacked that night or the following, and he wanted the hall-door secured privately. This Brown did by placing three-inch planks of timber from the hall-door to the cross wall, a very strong one, so that to burst open the hall-door it would be necessary to break down the cross wall.” **

At No.25 **lived at the commencement of the century **John Wilson Croker, **editor of Boswell’s *Life of Johnson, *and among the earliest of the contributors to the *Quarterly Review, *the writer of an article in which, July, 1876, while protesting against Macaulay’s splenetic outburst in his diary (see *Trevelyan’s Life of Macauley), *that Croker was “a bad, a very bad man, a scandal to politics and letters,” admits that “his sarcastic sallies and pungent wit made him many enemies,” and that “he was himself aware that he was too frequently betrayed into too great severity towards literary and political opponents.”

It is known that he gloried in his efforts to “tomahawk ” - his own phrase - Miss Martinean and her works, and cast base and unfounded aspersions on the characters of those whose opinions differed from his own.

Croker was born in Galway. After completing his college course in Dublin and taking his degree of B.A. he** **went to London and was entered as a student of Lincoln’s Inn, but spent a portion of each year in Dublin.

Afterwards he practised as a barrister on the Munster Circuit. In a satirical work, published in 1804, entitled, “An intercepted letter from J—T—, Esq., written at Canton to his friend in Dublin,” he gives an amusing account, under the disguise of Chinese names, of the local politics and society of Dublin. It passed through seven editions within a year.

Croker died in 1857, at the age of 77.

Returning to the top of Ely Place we pass, on the right, into **

LOWER BAGGOT STREET**

At** No. 128**,** **the brothers **John **and **Henry Sheares **resided; and received as an intimate friend the treacherous Captain Armstrong, who betrayed their connection with the United Irish party to the Government.

Henry was arrested here; Barrington *(Historic Memories) *describes him as possessing “a competent fortune,” and an “exceedingly domestic character; personally he was not remarkable except that a mark of red wine nearly covered the left cheek.”

He addressed an urgent appeal to Barrington to solicit the Lord Chancellor in his behalf, a facsimile of which is given in Barrington’s work.

The younger brother, John, is described as tall, fair, handsome, and of gentlemanly address. They were inseparable as brothers, and they went to death on the scaffold hand in hand: though John alone exhibited firmness at that awful crisis.

Lower Baggot Street leads, by Upper Fitzwilliam Street, into **

FITZWILLIAM SQUARE.

No. 2 **was the town residence of **William Dargan, **the famous railway contractor, who expended £10,000 of his fortune in bearing the deficit of the Industrial Dublin Exhibition of 1853.

In Webb’s *Irish Biography *it is recorded that “from 1853 to 1865 he was among the most honoured men in the country, and was supposed to be one of the wealthiest. But a terrible reverse was impending. In 1866 he was severely injured by a fall from his horse, and soon afterwards, overstrained by numerous undertakings, became bankrupt, and died broken in health and spirits.” Wills *(Irish Nation) says : “Prompt, sagacious, clear-sighted, and far-seeing, he estimated character by instinct, and was *thus seldom mistaken in those whom be selected to carry out his plans.

Two appellations by which he was known will illustrate his character:- ‘The work-man’s friend,’ and ‘The man with his hand in his pocket.’ The former he well merited by the justice and wise liberality of his dealings with the artizan class; the latter, while it originated in Jones’ celebrated statue (in which he is represented in that attitude) and perpetuated by a not infelicitous poem, is indicative of his readiness to spend his money freely when his judgment or his patriotism suggested it.” He died in 1868, at the age of 69.

At No. 5 lived Chief Justice Edward Pennefather. He died in 1847 at the age of seventy-one. **

At No. 6, **in the intervals of his continental wanderings, 1840-50, and subsequently, lived James Henry, M.D., whom we find in Dawson Street thriving, to the disgust of his professional brethren, on five shilling fees.

In 1840 he inherited a large legacy which made him independent, and for twelve years be travelled about Europe accompanied at first by his wife and daughter, latterly by his daughter only, to make researches on his favourite author, Virgil.

“After the death of his wife,” says Dr. Mahaffy *(Academy, *August, 1876) “in the Tyrol-where he succeeded in cremating her and carrying off her ashes, which he preserved ever after-he continued to travel with his daughter who emulated him in all his tastes and opinions.

It was the habit of this curious pair to wander on foot, without luggage, through all parts of Europe, generally hunting for some rare edition or commentator…

Seventeen times they crossed the Alps, sometimes ill deep snow, and more than once they were obliged to show the money they carried in abundance, before they were received into the inns where they sought shelter from the night and rain.”

The result was a work entitled *Twelve Years’ Journey through the Aeneid of Virgil, *and a versified account of his travels, and other poems privately printed at Dresden, and entitled, *My Book. *Here are the prefatory lines, which the printer will probably be unable to present as in the original, where, like the rest of the book, the accented syllables are marked:-

“My book is to myself so like

And there ‘s so few myself who like,

I fear there’s few my book will like,

If I had cared to paint less like

Unadorned nature and such like;

Daubings of Boz, Phiz, and such like

Caricaturists, more would like

Me and my book, few ‘d dislike.”

With half-a-dozen lines from “The Poet’s Autobiography” - so entitled - reminiscent of his cremated lady, the reader will probably have had enough of My Book.

“Four years two months ago this day

In South Tirol a corpse she lay,

Wreathed round with lily and with rose,

In yonder marble vase repose

The relics of her funeral pyre,

The cinders that survived the fire.”

By the south side of the square and Upper Pembroke Street we pass into **

LEESON STREET.

No. 29 **was one of several houses in this street, in which resided “the Goldsmith of the Irish Bar,” **Peter Burrowes. **In 1811, according to the Directory, he was living at No. 89; in 1814, at No. 29; in 1817, at No. 39; and in 1825, at 57.

Burrowes was called to the Bar in 1785; by a fortunate accident escaping from falling a victim to the duelling practices of the time on the only occasion on which he submitted to them - a ball from his adversary’s pistol striking some coins in his waistcoat pocket.

Burrowes owed his lack of promotion to his intimacy with Wolfe Tone, and his cordial friendship for the exiled Emmet; the interest and intimacy, however, were purely personal.

“He was a most singular personage,” says Phillips, *(Curran and his Contemporaries) *“uniting to an intellect the most profound, the most childish simplicity.

As he rolled his portly figure through the streets, his hands in his breeches pockets and his eyes glaring on his oldest friend as if he had never seen him, it was plain to all that Peter was in the moon.

It is recorded of him, that on circuit a brother barrister found him at breakfast time standing by the fire with an egg in his hand and his watch in the saucepan.

Devoid of every grace and every art, ungainly in figure, awkward in action, and discordant in voice, no man more invited the attention of an audience, or more repaid it. His mind was of the very highest order, and his arguments were clothed’ in language chaste and vigorous.”

Phillips further records the following amusing incident in court:

A murder, which caused much excitement, had been committed, and he had to state the case for the prosecution. In one hand - having a heavy cold - he held a box of lozenges, and in the other a small pistol-bullet by which the man met his death.

Ever and anon, between the pauses in his address, he kept supplying himself with a lozenge, until at last, in the very middle of a sentence, his bosom heaving, and his eye starting - a perfect picture of horror, Peter bellowed out “Oh-h-h, gentlemen-by the heaven above me-I ‘ve - I’ve swallowed the bullet.”

“No member of the Irish Bar,” says O’Flanagan, “is held in more affectionate remembrance than Peter Burrowes… his amiable disposition, unbending patriotism, and the excellent and humane manner in which he discharged his professional and official duties have embalmed his name in every Irish heart” (Irish Bar).

His last appearance in public was in 1840, when he was in his 87th year. Having gone to London to consult an oculist in 1841, he died there the same year. **

No.18,** now a convent, was the residence of *Thomas Langlois *Lefroy, **Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench from 1852 to 1866, at the time when he passed sentence on John Mitchell in 1848. He had previously lived at Nos. 12 and 16. Wills *(Irish Nation) *says: “The closing years of the aged Chief Justice were spent in retirement, but not in apathy or indolence. He was essentially of domestic tastes, and gathered round hint at his country seat at Carrig-glas and in his town-house at Leeson Street, his children and children’s children, especially at the genial seasons of Christmas and Easter.

He was of a deeply religious cast of mind, and left behind him a collection of meditations on sacred subjects.” Shiel *(Sketches Legal and Political) *says of him: “As a judge he was remarkable for the quickness with which he apprehended the essential features of the cases submitted to him, while his comprehensive grasp of legal principles and his skill in the application of them, have never been surpassed.”

Lefroy removed from Carrig-glas to Bray for the better air, and died there in 1869, at the great age of 93. Lord Ardilaun was living here in 1883.

Turning down Hatch Street (by No.24) the second lane on the left leads us almost in a direct line to the bank of the Canal; following this to the right, and passing under the railway bridge, we reach **

CHARLEMONT PLACE.

No. 7** was the residence in his last years of George Petrie, LL.D.** **(see Great Charles Street, Route 111). His name appears in the Dublin Directory at this address from 1858 to 1864. He died at Rathmines in 1866, at the age of 77.

Stokes, in his *Life of Petrie, *says of him: “He often declared to the writer that though always a poor man, his life bad been one of great enjoyment, greater than that which falls to the lot of most men, and that his chief happiness was in the society of so many loving, lasting, and intellectual friends.” He describes him as “a rare example of purity and gentleness of character, almost feminine, although when called upon he could exhibit the greatest energy, firmness, and determination.”

Crossing Charlemont Street, and passing the front of the Portobello Hotel, we reach a row of small houses designated **

PORTOBELLO HARBOUR.**

Here, in the rere, approached by a narrow entry between Nos. 4A and 4B, stands a long, low, buck house with a plastered annexe, occupied in 1798 by Mrs. Dillon, in which Lord Edward Fitzgerald **was concealed on two occasions. Madden *(United Irishmen) *says::

“Lord Edward was removed, disguised, from Harold’s Cross on the Tuesday after the arrests at Bond’s, to the house of a widow lady of the name of Dillon, an acquaintance of Surgeon Lawless, residing close to the Canal at Portobello Bridge… . . Lord Edward, while he remained in this place of concealment, visited Lady Fitzgerald, who was then residing in Denzille Street with her children, attended by a female servant and her husband’s trusty valet, the faithful ‘Tony.’”

Thomas Moore, in his *Life of Lord Edward, *says: “The name he went by while at the house of the widow lady [her name is carefully suppressed in Moore’s work] was Jameson, and an old and faithful man-servant of the family was the only person allowed to wait upon him… . . A pair of his boots having been left outside the door to be cleaned, the man-servant to whom they had been given for that purpose, told his mistress afterwards that he knew who the gentleman upstairs was, but that she need not fear, for he would die to save him.

He then showed her Lord Edward’s name written at full length in one of the boots.” When told that Lord Edward, having been informed of this discovery, wished to have some talk with him and express his gratification at the man’s devotion, he answered, “No, I will not look at him - for if they take me up, I** can then, you know, swear that I **never saw him.”

“He remained there nearly a month,” says Moore, “and used to walk out most nights along the bank of the Canal, and accompanied generally by a child… So light-hearted, indeed, and imprudent was he at times that Mrs.---, who, during his absence on these walks, was left in a constant state of anxiety and suspense, used often to hear him, at a considerable distance, laughing with his young companion.”

The second occasion of his coming here was in the first week of May, when the pursuit of him was becoming very active and eager. He arrived covered with mud, having been induced by his escort, Lawless and Cormick, to lie down in a ditch - with a laughing protest against the proceeding - by the road- side, until some people had passed by.

Mrs. Dillon was visiting a neighbour, and Moore says that when the news was brought to her that a “Miss Fitzgerald, of Ally,” had arrived, she was so agitated that she fainted. Moore further says that “he no longer preserved any guarded privacy here, and scarcely a day elapsed without his having company - sometimes six or seven in number - to dine with him.”

About the 13th he removed to Dublin to concert measures for the rising on the night of the 23rd (see Route I.) The wall at the farther side of the yard in front of the house has taken the place of a hedge of former times. Two houses of the same period still exist in immediate proximity to Mrs. Dillon’s house, having their front in Lennox Street, and the hedge referred to forming the boundary of their gardens.

The present tenant of one of these informs the writer that her landlord has told her that when a boy and living in the house at present occupied by her, he had often seen across the hedge a strange gentleman leaving Mrs. Dillon’s after nightfall, and afterwards came to learn that it was Lord Edward starting for his evening stroll.

We terminate the present excursion by crossing Portobello, or, more properly, Latouche Bridge, to the **

RATHMINES ROAD.

On **the right, a short distance from the bridge, a desolate-looking path, entered through stone gateposts, leads to a large red-brick house standing far back from the main road. This house is interesting as having been presented, with the adjacent land, to **Henry Grattan **by the citizens of Dublin in lieu of the gift of money which he declined.

He is saod to have occupied it for a** **short period only, preferring the residence which he purchased at Tinnahinch. As the house in St. Stephen’s Green, in which Grattan lived when in Dublin in his later years, has been removed for the erection of Saint Vincent’s Hospital, a few notes on one of the most famous of Irishmen may be fitly recorded here.

“Grattan was short in stature,” says Phillips *(Curran and His Contemporaries) *“and unprepossessing in appearance. His arms were disproportionately long. His walk was a stride. With a person swaying like a pendulum, and an abstracted air, he seemed always in thought, and each thought provoked an attendant gesticulation.”

When upwards of sixty he is described as “a thin and delicate-looking little man, but his eye full of fire and genius. Sir James Mackintosh described him as one of the few individual men whose personal virtues were rewarded by public fame,

“One as eminent in his observances of all the duties of private life as heroic in the discharge of his public obligations.”

After the Union he went into the Imperial Parliament. He was dying when he left Dublin for the last time to attend the session of 1820, resolute to speak in the cause of Catholic Emancipation.

His son writes, “The people assembled round his carriage, and the quay was lined with crowds cheering him. When he got on board, Burrowes, Humphreys, Mr. Rothe, Lord Meath, and a number of friends were there. Mr. Grattan asked for some wine, and drank the health of the citizens of Dublin.” *(Life of Grattan.) *Mortification set in on the journey, and he expired a few days after his arrival in London. His age was seventy-six.

We are now on the direct tramway route for a return to College Green.

To Route IV. To Memorable Houses Content. Home.