Early education. Rev. P. Crowley.

Chapter IV

My Education.

My godfathers - Lord Maryborough - Personal description and extraordinary character of Mr. Michael Lodge - My early education - At home - At school - My private tutor, Rev. P. Crawley, described - Defects of the university course - Lord Donoughmore’s father - Anecdote of the Vice-Provost - A country sportsman’s education.

My godfathers were Mr. Pool of Ballyfin, and Captain Pigott of Brocologh Park; and I must have been a very pleasant infant, for Mr. Pool, having no children, desired to take me home with him, in which case I should probably have cut out of feather a very good person and a very kind friend - the present Lord Maryborough, whom Mr. Pool afterwards adopted whilst a midshipman in the navy, and bequeathed him a noble demesne and a splendid estate near my father’s. My family have always supported Lord Maryborough for Queen’s County, and his Lordship’s tenants supported me in my hard-contested election for Maryborough in 1800, he did not abet the degradation of his country.

No public functionary could act more laudably than Mr. Pool did whilst secretary in Ireland; and it must be a high gratification to him to reflect that, in the year 1800, he did not abet the degradation of his country.

Captain Pigott expressed the same desire to patronise me as Mr. Pool, received a similar refusal, and left his property, I believe, to a parcel of hospitals; whilst I was submitted to the guardianship of Colonel Jonah Barrington, and the instructions of Mr. Michael Lodge, a person of very considerable consequence in my early memoirs, and to whose ideas and eccentricities I really believe I am indebted for a great proportion of my own, and certainly not the worst of them.

Mr. George Lodge had married a love-daughter of old Stephen Fitzgerald, Esq. of Bally Thomas, who by affinity was a relative of the house of Cullenaghmore, and from this union sprang Mr. Michael Lodge.

I never shall forget his figure! - he was a tall man with thin legs and great hands, and was generally biting one of his nails whilst employed in teaching me. The top of his head was half bald; his hair was clubbed with a rose-ribbon; a tight stock, with a large silver buckle to it behind, appeared to be almost choking him: his chin and jaws were very long; and he used to hang his under jaw, shut one eye, and look up to the ceiling, when he was thinking or trying to recollect anything.

Mr. Michael Lodge had been what is called a matross [A soldier set to help the gunners in an artillery train. KF] in the artillery service. My grandfather had got him made a gauger [An excise officer whose business is to gauge or measure the contents of casks containing excisable liquors. KF], but he was turned adrift for letting a poor man do something wrong about distilling. He then became a land-surveyor and architect for the farmers: he could farry [Shoe and/or cure the diseases of horses. KF], cure cows of the murrain [Foot and mouth disease. KF], had numerous secrets about cattle and physic, and was accounted the best bleeder and bone-setter in that county-all of which healing accomplishments he exercised gratis.

He was also a famous brewer and accountant - in fine, was everything at Cullenagh - steward, agent, caterer, farmer, sportsman, secretary, clerk to the colonel as a magistrate and also clerk to Mr. Barret as the parson; but he would not sing a stave in church, though he ‘d chant indefatigably in the hall. He had the greatest contempt for women, and used to beat the maid-servants; whilst the men durst not vex him, as he was quite despotic! He had a turning lathe, a number of grinding-stones, and a carpenter’s bench in his room. He used to tin the sauce-pans, which act he called *chymistry; *and I have seen him, like a tailor, putting a new cape to his riding-coat! He made all sorts of nets, and knit stockings; but above all he piqued himself on the variety and depth of his learning.

Under the tuition of this Mr. Michael Lodge, who was surnamed the “wise man of Cullenaghmore,” I was placed at four years of age, to learn as much of the foregoing as he could teach me in the next five years; at the expiration of which period he had no doubt of my knowing as much as himself, and then, he said, I should go to school “to teach the master.”

“This idea of teaching the master was the greatest possible incitement to me; and as there was no other child in the house, I never was idle, but was as inquisitive and troublesome as can be imagined. Everything was explained to me; and I not only got on surprisingly, but my memory was found to be so strong, that Mr. Michael Lodge told my grandfather *half learning *would answer me as well as *whole learning *would another child. In truth, before my sixth year, I was making a very great hole in Mr. Lodge’s stock of information, fortification and gunnery excepted; and I verily believe he only began to learn many things himself, when he commenced teaching them to me.

He took me a regular course by *Horn-book, Primer Spelling-book, Reading made Easy, Aesop’s Fables, *&c.; but I soon aspired to such of the old library books as had pictures in them, and particularly a very large *History of the Bible *with cuts was my constant study. Hence I knew how every saint was murdered; and Mr. Lodge not only told me that each martyr had a painter to take his likeness before death, but also fully explained to me how they had all sat for their pictures, and assured me that most of them had been murdered by the *Papists. *I recollect at this day the faces of every one of them at their time of martyrdom-so strongly do youthful impressions sinlc into the mind, when derived from objects which at the time were viewed with interest.

[Formerly the chimneys were all covered with *tiles, *having Scripture-pieces, examples of natural history, &c., daubed on them; and here being a great variety, the father or mother, sitting of a winter’s evening round the hearth with the young ones, explained the meaning of the tiles out of the Bible, &c.; so that the impression was made without being called a lesson, and the child acquired knowledge without thinking that it was being taught. So far as it went, this was one of the best modes of instruction.]

Be this as it may, however, my wise man, Mr. Michael Lodge, used his heart, head, and hands as zealously as he could to teach the most things that he did know, and many things he did not know; but with a skill which none of our schoolmasters practise, he made me think he was only amusing instead of giving me a task. The old man tried to make me *inquisitive, *and inclined to ask about the thing which he wanted to explain to me; and consequently, at eight years old I could read prose and poetry, write text, draw a house, a horse, and a game-cock, tin a copper saucepan, and turn my own tops. I could do the manual exercise with my grandfather’s crutch; and had learnt besides how to make bullets, pens, and black-ball; to dance a jig, sing a cronane, and play the Jew’s harp.

Michael also shewed me, out of Scripture, how the world stood stock-still whilst the sun was galloping round it; so that it was no easy matter at college to satisfy me as to the Copernican system. In fact, the old matross gave me such a various and whimsical assemblage of subjects to think about, that my young brain imbibed as many odd, chivalrous, and puzzling theories as would drive some children out of their senses; and truly I found it no easy matter to get rid of several of them when it became absolutely necessary, whilst *some *I shall certainly retain till my death’s day.

This course of education I most sedulously followed, until it pleased God to suspend my learning by the death of my grandfather, on whom I doated. He had taught me the broadsword exercise with his cane, how to snap a pistol, and shoot with the bow and arrow; and had bespoken a little quarterstaff to perfect me in that favourite exercise of his youth, by which he had been enabled to knock a gentle-man’s brains out for a wager, on the ridge of Maryborough, in company with the grandfather of the present Judge Arthur Moore, of the Common Pleas of Ireland.

It is a whimsical gratification to me to think that I do not at this moment forget much of the said instruction which I received either from Michael Lodge the matross, or from Colonel Jonah Barrington, though after a lapse of nearly 60 years.

A new scene was now to be opened to me. I was carried to Dublin, and put to the famous schoolmaster of that day, Dr. Ball of St. Michael-a-Powell’s, Ship Street; and here my puzzling commenced in good earnest. I was required to learn the English Grammar in the Latin tongue, and to translate languages without understanding any of them. I was taught prosody without verse, and rhetoric without composition; and before I had ever heard any oration except a sermon, I was flogged for not minding my emphasis in recitation. To complete my satisfaction, for fear I should be idle during the course of the week, castigation was regularly administered every Monday morning, to give me, by anticipation, a sample of what the repetition day might produce.

However, notwithstanding all this, I worked my way, got two premiums, and at length was reported fit to be placed under the hands of a private tutor, by whom I was to be *finished *for the university.

That tutor was well known many years in Digges Street, Dublin, and cut a still more extraordinary figure than the matross. He was the Rev. Patrick Crawly, Rector of Kilgobbin, whose son, my schoolfellow, was hanged a few years ago for murdering two old women with a shoemaker’s hammer. My tutor’s person was, in my imagination, of the same genus as that of Caliban. His feet covered a considerable space of any room wherein he stood, and his thumbs were so large that he could scarcely hold a book without hiding more than half the page of it: though bulky himself his clothes doubled the dimensions proper to suit his body; and an immense frowzy wig, powdered once a week, covered a head which, for size and form, might vie with a quarter-cask.

Vaccination not having as yet plundered horned cattle of their disorders, its predecessor had left evident proofs of attachment to the rector’s countenance. That old Christian malady, the small-pox, which had resided so many centuries amongst our ancestors, and which modern innovations have endeavoured to undermine, had placed his features in a perfect state of compactness and security - each being screwed quite tight to its neighbour, and every seam appearing deep and gristly, so that the whole visage appeared to defy alike the edge of the sharpest scalpel and the skill of the most expert anatomist.

Yet this was as good-hearted a parson as ever lived - affectionate, friendly, and, so far as Greek, Latin, Prosody, and Euclid went, excelled by few; and under him I acquired in one year more classical knowledge than I had done during the former six, whence I was enabled, out of 36 pupils, early to obtain a place in the University of Dublin.

The college course at that time, though a very learned one, was ill arranged, pedantic, and totally out of sequence. Students were examined in Locke on the Human Understanding, before their own had arrived at the first stage of maturity; and Euclid was pressed upon their reason before any one of them could comprehend a single problem. We were set to work at the most abstruse sciences before we had well digested the simpler ones, and posed ourselves at optics, natural philosophy, ethics, astronomy, mathematics, metaphysics, &c., &c., **without the least relief from belles-lettres, modern history, geography, or poetry; in short without regard to any of those acquirements - the classics excepted, which form essential parts of a gentleman’s education.

[Mr. Hutchinson, a later provost, father of Lord Donoughmore, went into the opposite extreme; a most excellent classic scholar himself, he wished to introduce every elegant branch of erudition - to cultivate the modern languages, - in short, to adapt the course to the education of men of rank as welt as men of science. The plan was most laudable, but was voted not monastic enough - indeed, a polished gentleman would have operated like a ghost amongst those pedantic fellows.

Mr. Hutchinson went too far in proposing a riding-house. The scheme drew forth from Dr. Duigenan a pamphlet, called *Pranceriana, *which turned the project and projector into most consummate, but very coarse and ill-natured ridicule.

Doctor Barrett, late vice-provost, dining at the table of the new provost, who lived in a state of elegance attempted by none of his predecessors, helped himself to what he thought a peach, but which happened to he a shape made of ice. On taking it into his mouth never having tasted ice before, he supposed, from the pang given to his teeth and the shock which his tongue and mouth instantly received, that the sensation** **was produced by heat. Starting up, therefore, he cried out, and it was the first oath he had ever uttered, ” I’m scalded, by **G-d!” - ran home and sent for the next apothecary!]

Nevertheless, I jogged on with *bene *for the classics, *satis *for the sciences, and mediocriter for mathematics. I had, however, **the mortification of seeing the stupidest fellows I ever met at school or college, beat me out of the field in some of the examinations, and very justly obtain premiums for sciences which I could not bring within the scope of my comprehension.

My consolation is, that many men of superior talent to myself came off no better; and I had the *satisfaction *of knowing that some of the most erudite, studious, and distinguished of my contemporary collegians went raving, and others melancholy mad; and I do believe that there are at this moment five or six of the most eminent of my academic rivals roaring in asylums for lunatics.

When I seek amusement by tracing the fate of such of my school and college friends as I can get information about, I find that many of the most promising and conspicuous have met untimely ends, and that most of those men whose great talents distinguished them first in the university and afterwards at the bar, had entered as sizers for provision as well as for learning indigence and genius were thus jointly concerned in their merited elevation; and I am convinced that the finest abilities are frequently buried alive in affluence and in luxury.

[Sizer: - (Sizar), the name of an order of students at Cambridge and Dublin Universities, so called from the allowance of victuals made to them from the college buttery. KF]

The death of my grandmother, which now took place, made a very considerable change in my situation, and I had sense enough, though still very young, to see the necessity of turning my mind towards a preparation for some lucrative profession-either law, physic, divinity, or wan

I debated on all these, as I thought, with great impartiality: the pedantry of college disgusted me with clericals, wooden legs put me out of conceit with warfare, the horror of death made me shudder at medicine, and whilst the law was but a lottery-trade, too precarious for my taste, manufacture was too humiliating for my pride. Nothing, on the other hand, could induce me to remain a walking gentleman, and so every occupation that I could think of having its peculiar disqualification, I remained a considerable time in a state of great uncertainty and disquietude.

Meanwhile, although my choice had nothing to do with the matter, I got almost imperceptibly engaged in that species *of profession *exercised by a young sportsman, whereby I was initiated into a number of *accomplishments *ten times worse than the negative ones of the walking gentleman namely, riding, drinking, dancing, carousing, hunting, shooting, fishing, fighting, racing, cock-fighting, &c.

After my grandmother’s death, as my father’s country-house was my home, so my *two *elder brothers became my tutors, the rustics my precedents, and a newspaper my literature. However the foundation for my propensities had been too well laid to be easily rooted up; and whilst I had certainly for a while indulged in the habits of those around me, I was not at all idle as to the pursuits I had been previously accustomed to. I had a pretty good assortment of books of my own, and seldom passed a day with devoting some part of it to reading or letter-writing; and though I certainly somewhat mis-spent, I cannot accuse myself of having lost, the period I passed at Bladsforth - since I obtained therein a full insight into the manners, habits, and dispositions of the different classes of the Irish, in situations and under circumstances which permitted nature to exhibit her traits without restraint or caution: building on her foundation, my greatest pleasure has ever been that of adding to and embellishing the superstructure which my experience and observation have since conspired to raise.

It is quite impossible I can give a better idea of the dissipation of that period, into which I was thus plunged, than by describing an incident I shall never forget, and which occurred very soon after my first entree into the sporting sphere.

Barrington Index. Home.