S.M. Hussey - The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent

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[Illustration: S.M. Hussey]

THE REMINISCENCES

OF AN

IRISH LAND AGENT

BEING THOSE OF

S.M. HUSSEY

_Compiled by_ HOME GORDON

WITH TWO PORTRAITS

LONDON

_DUCKWORTH AND COMPANY_ 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.

1904

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

PREFACE

Probably the first criticism on this book will be that it is colloquial.

The reason for this lies in the fact that though Mr. Hussey has for two
generations been one of the most noted raconteurs in Ireland, he has
never been addicted to writing, and for that reason has always declined
to arrange his memoirs, though several times approached by publishers
and strongly urged to do so by his friends, notably Mr. Froude and Mr.
John Bright. If his reminiscences are to be at all characteristic they
must be conversational, and it is as a talker that he himself at length
consents to appear in print.

In this volume he endeavours to supply some view of his own country as
it has impressed itself on 'the most abused man in Ireland,' as Lord
James of Hereford characterised Mr. Hussey. How little practical effect
several attacks on his life and scores of threatening letters have had
on him is shown by the fact that he survives at the age of eighty to
express the wish that his recollections may open the eyes of many as
well as prove diverting.

Possessing a retentive memory, he has been further able to assist me
with seven large volumes of newspaper cuttings which he had collected
since 1853, while the publishers kindly permit the use of two articles
he contributed to _Murray's Magazine_ in May and July 1887. To me the
preparation of this book has been a delightful task, materially helped
by Mr. Hussey's family as well as by a few others on either side of the
Channel.

HOME GORDON.

13 OVINGTON SQUARE, S.W.

CONTENTS

PREFACE v

CHAP.
I. ANCESTRY i

II. PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 10

III. EDUCATION 20

IV. FARMING 30

V. LAND AGENT IN CORK 38

VI. FAMINE AND FEVER 50

VII. FENIANISM 60

VIII. MYSELF, SOME FACTS, AND MANY STORIES 71

IX. THE HARENC ESTATE 82

X. KERRY ELECTIONS 93

XI. DRINK 101

XII. PRIESTS 115

XIII. CONSTABULARY AND DISPENSARY DOCTORS 127

XIV. IRISH CHARACTERISTICS 140

XV. LORD-LIEUTENANTS AND CHIEF SECRETARIES 162

XVI. GLADSTONIAN LEGISLATION 179

XVII. THE STATE OF KERRY 194

XVIII. A GLANCE AT MY STEWARDSHIP 202

XIX. MURDER, OUTRAGE, AND CRIME 212

XX. THE EDENBURN OUTRAGE 235

XXI. MORE ATROCITIES AND LAND CRIMES 248

XXII. COMMISSIONS 268

XXIII. LATER DAYS 281

INDEX 305

ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAIT OF S.M. HUSSEY _frontispiece_

PORTRAIT OF MRS. HUSSEY _at p. 71_

REMINISCENCES OF AN IRISH LAND AGENT

CHAPTER I

ANCESTRY

'My father and mother were both Kerry men,' as the saying goes in my
native land, and better never stepped.

It was my misfortune, but not my fault, that I was born at Bath and not
in Kerry.

However, my earliest recollection is of Dingle, for I was only three
months old when I was taken back to Ireland, and up to that time I did
not study the English question very deeply, especially as I had an Irish
nurse.

There is a lot of Hussey history before I was born, and some is worth
preserving here.

It is a thousand pities that so many details of family history have been
lost, and to my mind it is incumbent on one member of every reasonably
old family in this generation to collect and set down what should be
remembered about their ancestors for the unborn to come.

My contribution does not profess to be very exhaustive, but it will
serve for want of a better.

When a man claims to be descended from Irish kings, it generally means
that his forbears were bigger scoundrels than he is, for they were
cattle-lifters and marauders, whilst his depredations are probably
disguised under some of the many insidious forms of finance. Just as
every Scotsman is not canny and every American is not cute, so every
Irishman is not what the Saxon believes him to be. But there can be
little doubt what type of men these ancient Irish sovereigns were, and I
regretfully confess I cannot trace my descent from them.

The family of Hussey was of English extraction, according to that rather
valuable book _The Antient and Present State of the County of Kerry_, by
Charles Smith, 1756--the companion volumes dealing with Cork and
Waterford are much less precious. Personally I always understood that
the Husseys hailed from Normandy, as will be seen a few pages on, but
tradition on such a point is not of much value.

Anyway the family of Hussey settled in very early times at Dingle, and
also had several lands and castles in the barony of Corkaquiny.

Dingle was the only town in this barony, and it was incorporated by
Queen Elizabeth in 1585, when she granted it the same privileges which
were enjoyed by Drogheda, with a superiority over the harbours of Ventry
and Smerwick. The Virgin Sovereign also presented the town with L300 for
the purpose of making a wall round it.

The Irish formerly called Dingle Daingean in Cushy, or the fastness of
the Husseys. One of the FitzGeralds, Earl of Desmond, had granted to an
ancestor of my own a considerable tract of land in these parts, namely,
from Castle-Drum to Dingle, or as others say, he gave him as much as he
could walk over in his jackboots in one day. That Hussey built a castle,
said to be the first erected at Dingle, the vaults of which were
afterwards used as the county gaol.

There is mention of this in the grant of a charter to Dingle by King
James I. in the fourth year of his reign: 'The house of John Hussey
granted for a gaol and common hall to the corporation.'

A grim interest lurks in the fact that the dedication of Smith's
_History_ to Lord Newport, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, recites that
'this Kingdom, my lord, is a kind of Terra Incognita to the greater part
of Europe.'

Is it not so to this day?

Do I not meet scores of people who tell me they would love to go to
Kerry, but they have never been nearer than Killarney.

That is the sort of speech which makes me wonder how geography is
taught.

It is on a par with the remark of a prominent Arctic explorer, that he
had never been to Killarney because it was so far off.

People, however, who go there apparently like it.

The chief Elizabethan settlers in Kerry were William and Charles
Herbert, Valentine Brown, ancestor of the Kenmares, Edmund Denny, and
Captain Conway, whose daughter Avis married Robert Blennerhasset, while
a little later, in 1600, John Crosbie was made Bishop of Ardfert and
Aghadoe.

To-day the descendants of those settlers are still among the principal
folk in Kerry, though that is more due to their own selves than to the
support they had from any British Government.

This Valentine Brown, who was a worshipful and valiant knight, wrote a
discourse for settling Munster in 1584. His plan was to exterminate the
FitzGeralds and to protestantise Ireland; but by the irony of fate his
own son married a daughter of the Earl of Desmond and became a Roman
Catholic.

In the Carew Manuscript it is recorded that he estimated that one
constable and six men would suffice for Cork, but for Ventry, 'a large
harbour near Dingle,' one constable and fifty men were necessary; so he
evidently had a clear apprehension of the villainous capabilities of the
men of Kerry.

It is also recorded that in the parish of Killiney is a stronghold
called Castle Gregory, which before the wars of 1641 was possessed by
Walter Hussey, who was proprietor of the Magheries and Ballybeggan.
Having a considerable party under his command, he made a garrison of his
castle, whence having been long pressed by Cromwell's forces, he escaped
in the night with all his men, and got into Minard Castle, in which he
was closely beset by Colonels Lehunt and Sadler. After some time had
been spent, the English observing that the besieged were making use of
pewter bullets, powder was laid under the vaults of the castle, and both
Walter Hussey and his men were blown up.

Prior to this, 'on January 31, 1641, Walter Hussey, with Florence
MacCarthy and others, attacked Ballybeggan Castle, plundered and burnt
the house of Mr. Henry Huddleston, and did the same to the house and
haggards of Mr. Hore, where they built an engine called a saw, having
its three sides made musket-proof with boards. It was drawn on four
wheels, each a foot high, with folding doors to open inwards and several
loopholes to shoot through, without a floor, so that ten or twelve men
who went therein might drive it forwards. These machines were set
against castle walls whilst the men within them attempted to make a
breach with crows and pickaxes.'

Infernal machines are, after all, not confined to our own times, and
this same rascally ancestor of my own appears to have had predatory
habits more likely to be appreciated by his followers than by his foes.

Dingle is now a somewhat dilapidated town, but that was not always the
case, for it is mentioned in my dear old friend Froude's _History of
England_ that the then Earl of Desmond called on the ambassador of
Charles V. at his lodgings in Dingle. The old records of the place would
be worth diligent antiquarian research, a matter even more difficult in
Ireland than elsewhere. Should all be brought to light, I fancy the part
played by my family would not grow smaller.

The Husseys spread away over the county, after having their lands
forfeited under both Elizabeth and Cromwell, which was the most
respectable thing to suffer in those times. In the reign of Queen Anne,
Colonel Maurice Hussey sold Cahirnane to the Herberts, and there is a
garden still called Hussey's Garden in the property. He built a mortuary
chapel for himself on the top of a small hill just outside the gates of
Muckross, where his own grave near that beautiful abbey can be seen to
this day.

This Colonel Maurice Hussey resided for some time in England, and
appears to have married an English lady; and it is odd that though a
Roman Catholic he was trusted by the Governments of both William and
Anne. There seems to have been something versatile about his rather
mysterious career, the key to which may be found in the surmise that
until the accession of King George he was a Jacobite at heart; which
throws some doubt on his assertion in a letter that there are very few
Tories--or outlaws--in Kerry, where the Whig rule was never enforced
with great severity. He was, however, committed to 'Trally jail' (_i.e._
Tralee) on the fear of a landing by the Pretender, whence he wrote
pleading letters, in one of which he mentions that his son-in-law,
MacCartie, has taken the oaths of abjuration; and later, when released,
he seems to have been disturbed at the large number of German
Protestants, driven out of the Palatinate by Louis the Fourteenth, who
settled at Bally M'Elligott.

Any one who rambles about Dingle and investigates the older buildings,
so carefully examined by Mr. Hitchcock, will notice how frequent is the
emblem of a tree; and that is a conspicuous feature of the Hussey
armorial bearings.

With reference to the allusions made in Smith's book to my ancestors, it
may be pointed out that he repeated the popular tradition at the very
time when the Husseys, like the rest of their fellow Catholics all over
the country, were disinherited and depressed, and when he could gain
nothing by doing them honour.

As for my name, it seems to have really been Norman, and to have been De
La Huse, De La Hoese, and later Husee, Huse, and, finally, Hussey.

Burke in his extinct _Peerage_ states that Sir Hugh Husse came to
Ireland, 17 Hen. II., and married the sister of Theobald FitzWalter,
first Butler of Ireland, and that he died seized of large possessions in
Meath. His son married the daughter of Hugh de Lacy, senior Earl of
Ulster, and their great-grandson, Sir John Hussey, Knight, first Earl of
Galtrim, was summoned to Parliament in 1374.

Moreover, the State Papers in the Public Record Office, quoted in the
_Journal of the Royal Society of Irish Antiquaries_ for September 1893,
p. 266, prove beyond question that Nicholas de Huse or Hussy and his
father, Herbert de Huse, were land-owners of some importance in Kerry in
1307. Stirring times they must have been, of which we have no fiction
under the guise of history, though then men had to fight hard to
preserve their lives and maintain their dignity. We can imagine the
tussle, even in these degenerate days when no challenge follows the
exchange of insults, even in the House of Commons, and when the
perpetration of the most cowardly outrage in Ireland has to be induced
by preliminary potations of whisky. Of course, those old times were bad
times, but the badness was at least above board and the warfare pretty
stoutly waged. There is some sense in fighting your foe hand to hand,
but to-day when a battle is contested by armies which never see one
another, and are decimated by silent bullets, the courage needed is of a
different character, and the wicked murder of such combats is obvious.

But let us quit war and confiscation for the equally stormy region known
as politics, wherein it may be noted that in 1613 Michael Hussey was
Member of Parliament for Dingle.

Now for a coincidence in Christian names.

Only two Husseys forfeited in the Desmond Rebellion, and they were John
and Maurice.

In the Irish Parliament of James II., when Kerry returned eight members,
two of them were Husseys, and their names were John and Maurice.

My grandfather's name was John, and his father before him was Maurice,
and I christened my two surviving sons John and Maurice.

We do not go in for much variety of nomenclature in our family.

My grandfather, John Hussey, lived at Dingle, his mother being a member
of the well-known Galway family of Bodkin. He was an offshoot of the
Walter Hussey who had been converted into an animated projectile by the
underground machinations of Cromwell's colonels. He was a very little
man, who had a landed property at Dingle, did nothing in particular, and
received the usual pompous eulogy on his tombstone. I never heard that
he left any papers or diaries, and I do not think that he ever went out
of Kerry--he had too much sense.

A rather diverting story in which his sister was the heroine may be
worth telling, if only because it was so characteristic of the period.

In those days, as now, Husseys and Dennys were closely associated, and
both my great-aunt and Miss Denny, known locally as the 'Princess
Royal,' were going to a ball. At that time it was the fashion for the
girls of the period to wear muslin skirts edged with black velvet. The
muslin was easily procured; not so the velvet, which was eventually
obtained by sacrificing an ancient pair of nether garments belonging to
my great-grandfather.

After the early dinner then fashionable, each of the damsels was
departing for the Castle, with a swain at the door of her sedan-chair,
when our kinswoman, Lady Donoughmore, who was on the door-step watching
them off, enthusiastically shouted:--

'Success to the breeches! Success to the breeches!'

Imagine the horrified confusion of the poor 'Princess Royal,' not then
eighteen.

This episode reminds me of the modern Scottish story of a tiresome small
boy who wanted more cake at a tea-party, and threatened his parents with
dire revelations if they did not comply with his demands. As they showed
no signs of intimidation, he banged on the table to obtain attention,
and then announced:--

'Ma new breeks are made out of the winter curtains.'

An incident connected with one of the earliest private carriages in
Kerry is worth telling. The vehicle in question had just been purchased
by a certain Miss Mullins, daughter of a former Lord Ventry, who
regarded it on its arrival with almost sacred awe. A dance in the
neighbourhood seemed an appropriate opportunity for impressing the
county with her newly acquired grandeur, but the night proving wet, she
insisted on reverting to a former mode of progression, and rode pillion
behind her coachman.

The result was that she caught a violent chill, which turned to
pneumonia, and as her relatives were assembled round her deathbed, the
old lady exclaimed, between her last gasps for breath:--

'Thank God I never took out the carriage that wet night.'

CHAPTER II

PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS

My father, Peter Bodkin Hussey, was for a long time a barrister at the
Irish Bar, practising in the Four Courts, where more untruths are spoken
than anywhere else in the three kingdoms, except in the House of Commons
during an Irish debate. All law in Ireland is a grave temptation to
lying, and the greatest number of Courts produced a stupendous amount of
mendacity--or it was so in earlier times, at all events.

Did you ever hear the tale of the old woman who came to Daniel
O'Connell, outside the Four Courts, as he was walking down the steps,
and said to him:--

'Would your honour be so kind as to tell me the name of an honest
attorney?'

The Liberator stopped, scratched his head in a perplexed way, and
replied:--

'Well now, ma'am, you bate me intoirely.'

My father had red hair, and was very impetuous. Therefore he was
christened 'Red Precipitate' by Jerry Kellegher.

This legal luminary was a noted wit even at the Irish Bar of that time,
a confraternity where humour was almost as rampant as
creditors--irresponsible fun, and a light purse are generally allied;
your wealthy fellow has too much care for his gold to have spirits to be
mirthful.

The tales about him are endless. Here are just a few I have heard from
my father's lips.

Jerry had a cousin, a wine merchant, who supplied the Bar mess, and a
complaint was lodged that the bottles were very small.

To which Jerry retorted:--

'You idiot, don't you know they shrink in the washing,' which satisfied
the grumbler. And that always seemed to me the strangest part of the
story.

In those days religious feeling ran pretty high--I will not go so far as
to say it has entirely died down to-day--and the usual Protestant toast
was:--

'The Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender.'

Now, Jerry was a Roman Catholic, none the less earnest because he had a
merry way with him. On a certain Friday he was seen to be fasting by a
very foppish barrister, who thought a great deal of himself.

He remarked to Jerry, with unnecessary impertinence:--

'Sir, it appears you have some of the Pope in your stomach.'

To which Jerry, quick as a pistol-shot, retorted:--

'And you have the whole of the Pretender in your head,' after which
there was the devil to pay.

There was a certain Chancellor in Ireland who was born a few years after
his father and mother had separated. As he did not like Jerry, he used
to make a great fuss about how he should pronounce his name. At last in
Court one day he burst out:--

'Pray tell me what you wish me to call you--Mr. Kellegher, or Mr.
Kellaire?'

'Call me anything you like, my lud, so long as you call me born in
wedlock.'

The Chancellor did not score that time.

At one time there were grave complaints made about the light-hearted way
in which Jerry handled his cases, and his practice fell off. He was
conversing with a very stupid judge, lately elevated to the Bench, and
observed:--

'It's a very extraordinary world: you have risen by your gravity, and I
have fallen by my levity.'

He had a son who, in my time, had a large practice at the Bar, but I
never came across him, nor did I ever hear that there was anything
remarkable about him, except that he was not so witty as his father,
which was not wonderful.

After all, as Jerry was before my own experience, I must not delay over
him, so I will only give one more tale about him, and pass on.

When Lord Avonmore got his peerage for voting for the Union, he had his
patent of nobility read out at a dinner-party, and it commenced,
'George, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.'

'Stop,' cried Jerry, 'I object to that. The consideration is set out too
early in the deed.'

This long digression over, I revert to my father about whose respectable
practice at the Four Courts I know nothing except that he allowed others
to become judges, and did not find solicitors putting his services up to
auction.

By the death of his elder brother, he succeeded to a property, near
Dingle, on which he went to live and then got married, which was the
wisest thing that he could do.

My mother was Mary Hickson, and her descent was this wise.

The Murrays were said to have come to Scotland from Moravia in the first
century; and a pretty bulky history of the clan reveals as much truth
about them as the author cared to put in when tired of inventing less
probable facts. Sir Walter Murray, Lord of Drumshegrat, came to Ireland
with Edward de Bruce and was killed in battle, leaving three sons, one
of whom, christened Andrew, settled in County Down. Some of his
descendants migrated to Bantry, where, in 1670, William Murray married
Ann Hornswell, and was succeeded by his third son George, who was in
turn succeeded by his eldest son William, who married Anne Grainger. Of
the marriage, there was only one daughter Judith, who married Robert
Hickson, heir to the property.

They had five sons and two daughters, the younger of whom married Sir
William Cox, and the elder my father.

The superior of my dear mother never drew the breath of life. She lived
until I was twenty-five, and I never met any man who could say more than
I could for my mother, though equalled by what my own sons could say of
theirs, and she too came of the same stock, for I married my first
cousin, Julia Agnes Hickson. It is said no man is thoroughly happy until
he is suitably married, an opinion I absolutely endorse; but happiness
so great as my married life is not of public interest, and if it were, I
should not wear my heart on my sleeve for general inspection. Any
tribute from me to my dear wife would be superfluous; the devoted love
of our children has been the endorsement by the next generation of the
feelings which I have always felt towards her.

She was the daughter of my mother's eldest brother, John Hickson, called
the Sovereign of Dingle. He had powers to collect customs, to hold a
court, and to try cases in much the same way that a lord provost had.

On one occasion when a case was to be tried, two attorneys appeared from
the town of Tralee, about thirty miles off. Now John Hickson had his own
ideas about the attorneys of those days--ideas such as all honest men
had, but dared not express. So he sent a crier through the town to say
that the court was adjourned for a fortnight. When the appointed day
arrived, the attorneys arrived also, so again the melodious tones of the
crier proclaimed through the town that the court was adjourned for yet
another fortnight, Captain Hickson remarking to his wife that he was not
going to be helped to administer justice by those who earned their
living on injustice. The attorneys gave it up in despair, leaving
Captain Hickson to lay down the law as he liked, and to do him justice,
his ideas were more conducive to peace and order than the arguments of
Irish attorneys generally are.

He was loved and revered by the people, so that when the cholera raged
in 1833 and 1834, and the constabulary were ordered to go into the
houses to remove the corpses (this to prevent the people 'waking' the
dead, and so spreading the contagion), they dared not enter the cabins
unless Captain Hickson went with them, as the people were so enraged at
their dead being molested that they would have killed the police.
Fortunately Captain Hickson had enough moral influence to make the
people obey the law.

In the eighties he would have been shot in the back by some scoundrel
who had primed himself with Dutch courage from adulterated whisky.

He raised a Yeomanry Corps at the time of the Whiteboys to guard the
country against these lawless bands, and against the dreaded French
invasion. This regiment was called the Dingle Yeomanry, and the tales
about it are many.

On one occasion when Captain Hickson was in London, the general from
Dublin inspected the corps. In the absence of the commanding officer,
his brother was ordered to parade the battalion, and being a nervous
young man, he completely forgot all the words of command, so to the
unconcealed amusement of the old martinet from the capital, he
shouted:--

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