Wills and Will Making/4

by Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald

MORE OF WILLS AND WILL MAKING.

THE COCLOUGH BATTLE. IN TWO PARTS.

Part I.

In the county of Wexford are the ruins of a fine old abbey, converted into a country-house, with a wall, here and there many feet thick, and a little window or two so deeply embayed, that the stranger opening them fancies he is plunging his arm into some deep hole. Round it economic modernisers have crusted little rooms and additions, but the abbey portion was held a sad drawback, the country gentlemen about considering it a sort of "rat-hole." It was full of curious panelling, recesses, &c., on the existence of which the present owners might well congratulate themselves. It is called Tintern Abbey. The rental was about ten thousand a year, and towards the end of the last century it was enjoyed by a Sir Vesey Coclough, a dissipated gentleman of the old Irish school. He had three relations, one named Cæsar, known among the people there as "The Barrister," or, more correctly, as "The Counshillor," who later became Chief Justice of a colony; Dudley, a clergyman; and Sarsfield. Sir Vesey was exactly the "bold, bad man" that figures in melodramas—a true roysterer, and so partial to the society of ladies other than his wife, and so scandalously noisy in the enjoyment of their company, that the lady was driven from the house, and obliged to live in a neighbouring country-town with barely the necessaries of life, where she struggled to bring up her children. But for friends, she would literally have starved. Meanwhile the brothers and other relations held carnival at the family mansion, and succeeded in obtaining from Sir Vesey advantageous leases and other benefits, keeping his mind all the time duly inflamed. The career of most members of his family was in keeping. Every one was in difficulties. The Rev. Dudley's "necessities," as they were called, were always pressing; and the Chief Justice became speedily much embarrassed in his circumstances. "His salary as Chief Justice," says the brief, gently enough, "being inadequate to support the dignity of his office; as it would appear that a Colonial Chief Justiceship was at that time regarded with more consideration than at present." The later career of this gentleman was very trying to him, as he had to live in retirement in London.

The "Counsellor" was cousin to the owner of Tintern Abbey, and both were called Cæsar—a favorite family name. By and by, the two cousins had a falling out, and as it was always handsomely understood that near relationship should be no bar to an arrangement, they went out and fought a duel. This, instead of producing "satisfaction," strange to say, completely estranged the relations; a permanent breach took place between them, and it was believed they never could be reconciled. This, however, is anticipating a little.

Sir Vesey's eldest son, Cæsar Coclough, thus disowned, and thus brought up in privation, determined to seek his fortune away from his native land, and began a career that is almost picturesque. He went to London first, about the year 1790, where he tried to support himself by writing for the press. He was a man of refined tastes, with a turn for mechanical inventions, engineering, chemistry, and music—accomplishments which were to be developed by foreign travel and practice. About the year 1792, being then about twenty-six, he ran over to Paris full of spirits, and prepared to enjoy his expedition. His impressions of the place at that time were gay, and told graphically. "I can now manage pork tripes, and I take breakfast à la mode Français, without cloath or butter, and dine at one, two, or three o'clock off nasty, stinking stews; in fine, I am quite a Frenchman, except that I drink much and talk little. I have as yet had no tidings of my shirts, and really have had but four these two months; but that is full enough for Paris, where dirt, parade, pleasure, and politics are the springs of action. Overstreet and Betty saw the king and queen this day, and one of the twenty-three playhouses, and were quite sick of it before half was over." He naturally took a fancy to the lively city, had his lodgings there by the year, and was there again in August of the same year. There was a general nervousness then in Paris, when many were inclined to quit it; but all the ports were strictly guarded, and no one allowed out. "When all the conspirators are taken, then the passports will be renewed, and then I intend going to Rouen, ready to pass into England in case any affraca should take place. Something is wanting much here; really there is too much licentiousness." In October he was unable to get away, and was heading his letters enthusiastically, "Fourth year of liberty, and the first of Equality and the French Republic." He had quite caught the new enthusiasm, had a conversation with "Roland, the minister of the Intérieur," and told him of the necessity for sending arms to Ireland. Everything was growing dearer by one-half from what it was the year before. The exchange on England was about twenty. At the ordinary where he dined they cut off a dish, but the price was still only fifteen-pence. He was at a curious dinner in November, where the English, Scotch, and Irish, with other strangers, met to celebrate the victory of the French Republic. Lord Edward Fitzgerald proposed a toast that all hereditary titles should be abolished, and Mr. Coclough sat opposite to Tom Paine, and talked with him on the state of Ireland, It was agreed between them that there ought to be an address to the English people, "to prevent the court circulating poison about the Irish." On his birthday he was going to make all his friends drink to the health of "Good citizen Coclough." But in January he wrote a curious letter, in a whisper, as it were, which speaks the awe-tirring character of the times: "Say not one word of politics in future. There will be no war except one particular thing takes place. Before this is ten miles, Louis the unfortunate will be no more. I attended his process for eleven hours yesterday, and he was condemned to death in the space of twenty-four hours by a majority of (I counted) thirty-two. Adieu. The king is going." In March, he went to the theatre one Sunday night, "and it was as full as if all France was in the state of riches and luxury that usually accompanies a continued and profound peace. The natural levity is such that I could find numbers of characters like my father here: in fact, my father, as a Frenchman, would be called a galant et honnête homme, for vices here of the most enormous kind are not considered such." Things, however, were growing dark for the English. Money was not to be obtained. The future French emigrés were bidding with each other for bills on England, but the difficulty was to get them into the country, and by writing four letters, there was a chance of one arriving. A speculating Englishman could make fifty per cent of his bill on London. Rare articles were selling by auction, and he was buying until he became, as he said, "like a caravan." But with the war with England all these residents were converted into détenus, and sent to St. Germains, where Coclough was put into the story over the room where James the Second died. Every degree of humanity was shown to them.

His life during this anxious period must have been a strange one. At times all his supplies were cut off for months, and then the generosity of friends in France aided him. At other seasons he was cast into prison, and once was very near being included in one of the death-lists of the Reign of Terror. It was surprising that, with such recollections, he could have wished to linger in the country. But all the while he was laying up a store of grudges against his father and other relations at home, who were treating him ill, taking advantage of his absence, and perhaps praying that some bonnet rouge would denounce him, and hurry him up to the nearest lanterne.

In 1794 Sir Vesey died, but his son and heir was a prisoner of war. Relations of his, however, took charge of the estate for a time, and one of them got the abbey newly roofed, having some three years before got a hint to do so, from the dining-room cornice and ceiling tumbling in, and smashing his bed to pieces. The exile was allowed to make his way down to Lausanne, where he lived under surveillance, and found it so attractive that nothing could tempt him home. A prisoner of fortune in those days would not have found it hard to obtain release. His friends informed him that it was intended to lay a tax of sixteen per cent on old Irish absentees, but the news did not stir him. He went on to Ulm.

It was now the year '98, and the Irish gentleman, who was a democrat in Paris, was to feel a little acutely the result of those doctrines nearer home. The rebellion was drawing on. In June, the brother, who was in Ireland, was writing over sketches of rebellion as graphic as those he had received. He had gone up to Dublin, and found himself under martial law. There was no business doing, and every one had to be at their homes by nine o'clock. He accordingly left, and set sail for Wexford in a little sloop, and found every thing there in consternation. Only the night before some four thousand of the insurgents had assembled outside the town, and he relates, very graphically, the engagement between them and the two hundred men of the North Cork Militia, in which the rebels killed every one of the party but four. "I should have told you," he adds, in an oddly placed way, "that my mother is in Dublin. The whole country became later at their mercy, and Tom M'Cord and I, and all the Protestants, retreated into Duncannon; not that I was a bit afraid of our own people, for there was nothing they dreaded so much as being forced, through dire necessity, to join the insurgents." So he and Tom M'Cord sailed in a little sloop and got over to Wales. In his next, he begins that he takes up his pen "to write the saddest letter you ever did, or, I hope, you ever will, receive." He gives a little vignette from this bloody chronicle. "My Uncle Tom was killed at Arklow charging the rebels at the head of his troops; but now to freeze your very blood; my unfortunate Uncle Cornelius was surrounded and kept a prisoner in his own house by the rebels, when, in order to save his life, he supplied them with provisions; for doing which, when the army was victorious and retook Wexford, they tried him by a court-martial for aiding the rebels, and he was hanged this day week. John Coclough, of Craig, was also hanged; but he was always suspected of being a United man. William Hatten, John May, and many others are hanged, and, I suppose, all the papist merchants and gentlemen of Wexford also suffered. There were many Protestants, who, to save their own lives, were christened by a priest, and pretended to side with the rebels: such as my Uncle Cornelius, Tom Yokes, Tom Richards, and many more. The women were not injured anywhere, but were christened." His brother replied: "Judge of the horror of this perfidy that condemned the innocent, while two others were losing their lives in the service; but, my dear John, this is familiar. I fear the tears that we have already shed are not to be so soon dried, for the passions once roused to the point they are, mutual vengeance and ferocity produce long-continued effects." But, presently, the Irish brother had to write that he was in confinement at Dublin, for there had been "several attempts made by Tottenham of Ross and the Protestant ascendancy party to suborn witnesses to swear against me, but in vain." He had twice asked to be tried by court-martial; and Tom M'Cord, the owner of the sloop, was included in the same warrant, but had escaped to London. His vessel was seized and detained.

The exile travelling about the Continent took these disastrous events very philosophically. He was sure that justice would presently "rise from the troubled surf."

The Irish brother was at last enlarged, and, of course, after such an escape, returned a frantic loyalist. "I have been here," he writes, "three weeks, and can't bear almost to look out, on account of my meeting the villains of this place, for such a horrid set of hellhounds never inhabited any country; they were intent on nothing but blood and murder—the greatest savages of Africa or America were civilisation itself compared to them. You cannot, nor did I, conceive it possible that man could be so ferocious; as it was, B. Harvey Keogh and J. C. were repeatedly in most imminent danger, and Keogh was taken out to be piked."

A little scene in Dublin. "Last Monday I met Chas. Tottenham at Waddy's door. I told him he was the greatest rascal in Ireland, but I knew he would not take the notice of it a gentleman ought; he never made the smallest reply; and on the Friday following I met him in the same place, and told him the same story, when he mustered up passion enough to call me a rascal. I told him he should hear from me; but he was resolved he should not, for he went to Judge Downs himself and gave information, and that evening I was taken into custody and brought before the judge, and bound in six thousand pounds to keep the peace for three years." This abortive attempt at a rencontre is amusing, but the ingenious mode of giving a challenge, because the other was goaded into using the word "rascal," is highly characteristic. Here is a sketch of the two maidservants: "Katty and Kitty are at lodgings. Moll is at present at Solmestown, but she is to go to Tintern. She is fallen to drink again, and is not perfectly in her senses. Katty and she can't agree at all. Katty takes the drop sometimes herself, and then is rather saucy." The sale of a borough in these pure days, and the terms of sale: "It is at length sold to Lord Lismore and Sir William Meadows—acceptances for eight thousand pounds payable in ninety-one days, and five thousand pounds payable with interest in one year." We get glimpses of all sorts of strange arrangements, as "Lord Lismore wants to sell the corporation of Enniscorthy; he asks five hundred pounds, probably he would take four hundred pounds."

It was now the year 1806, so that the Lord of Tintern bids fair to become a regular foreigner. Nothing could draw him homewards, he was so absorbed in study and science. He was once more a détenu, for the war had broken out, and he seemed to have grown to dislike the notion of returning. He was devoted to his inventions. "Such pursuits," he wrote when they were pressing him to become a candidate for his county, "excite neither envy nor gratitude," which was something in the shape of an epigram, "and to them I owe my present tranquillity." For the silk manufacturers of a town memorialised the government, with the legal authorities of the place, that he should be allowed to reside on parole, an exception to the treatment of the other English, whom Napoleon treated with a scandalous rigour. In return he taught them the economy of pit coal, and its use in that part, wood being so scarce as to be sold by the pound. He enjoyed himself so much and was so happy, that he protested his apothecary's bill during three years was but ten shillings. The "only canker" that disturbed him was the loss of his dear relatives at home; and rather touchingly, and even poetically, he complained how his friends "are in turn, at different hours of the night and day, present to my heartfelt remembrance, a new face or voice enchains the ideas of resemblance to one or other, and the momentary eve of a night's sleep transports me amongst you, and following dreams let me enjoy the momentary happiness of your visionary society." Still, when we think of his many years' absence, in a great degree voluntary, one is inclined to recal the rough cynic's answer, in Boswell, to the anxious father, who was mourfully bewailing the possible condition of his son at school: "Then why don't you take a post-chaise and go to him?"

At last, however, in the year 1814, and after the death, in a duel, of the faithful and affectionate Irish brother who had so long managed his affairs, the exile returned to his native land and to his estates, after an absence of nearly thirty years. He was a thorough foreigner, and some said a perfect French atheist. He had passed through a deal of privation and had borne some imprisonment. He was now re-established, and in 1818 was married and returned member for his county.

The surprise of meeting after that long interval approached the dramatic. The great Irish brothers—one was about six feet three in height, rude, rough, boisterous, noisy, trained in the wildest school of wild Irish manners—were ready to burst with laughter at the strange Frenchified relation who had returned to them. A small, dandified, perhaps "mincing" petit maître, that read French poetry, and was powdered à la mode. They came on him with quite the shock of a cold shower-bath. He shrank away from their noisy roysterings, which to him seemed "low," coarse, and even appalling, while they, with a good-natured contempt, determined to make something "like a man" of him, teach him to drink to his tenth tumbler, like other Irish gentlemen, to fight duels, pass through roaring elections, and the other agrémens of Irish life. These well-meant attempts succeeded only partially, and their rough education and rude jokes seemed to have had the effect only of inspiring him with a lasting horror and a rooted dislike.

The lady he selected for his wife was a woman of strong will and purpose, "of a haughty, irritable, and violent temper," "sometimes approaching to phrensy," "jealous of the slightest interference, disappointment, or control;" in short, precisely the sort of ambitious heroine who ought to figure in a will case. And here it may be noticed that a little consideration of will cases, and indeed causes of other descriptions, often discover an almost Sallustian tone of description, etching out characters, &c., in most unexpected quarters; witnesses and letter-writers frequently describing features of human character and human incidents with a graphic power and an unaffected force of language that many a professional writer might envy.

This heroine, then, who possessed great attractions, it was insisted, laid herself out from the day of the marriage for the one aim of being mistress of Tintern Abbey during her husband's life, as well as after his death. The game was rather a difficult one: there were innumerable relations to play against—squireens, clergymen, all watching and eager. To the future heir—a nephew—she had a special animosity; and there were, of course, the usual schemes to reach the well-watched testator—ambuscades with the assumption that he was under intimidation, and before her, dare not exhibit his feelings. Such a situation, from its very uncertainty, from the speculation as to the contents of the coming will, which, after all, their fond hopes led them to believe would be in their favour—a situation protracted through many long years—must be one painfully dramatic. But as time wore on, and he grew old, she took some measures of jealous precaution. He was not allowed to read one of his letters without her previous permission, and frequently, perusal. Some she burned. She gave him her orders haughtily, and, it was said, used to strengthen her behests by such bold language as, "By G—d it shall be done!" But this and much more duly sworn to, may have been an invention on the side of the inflamed relations, driven frantic by what was impending. Her favourite theme to him was a harsh disparagement of their merits, "frequently (but falsely) stating to him that they were swindlers, drunkards, and blackguards, in order to lower them in his estimation," the naïveté of which inuendo is highly characteristic. It was charged, too, that she commenced her nefarious plot by setting her husband against his mother, a poor old lady of ninety-seven, who was ordered out of his house in Molesworth-street, where she had long lived rent free, at the suggestion, it was said, of her imperious daughter-in-law.