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Brady with the company there, and my cousins, or some of them, and
the kindness of my uncle, with whom I became a prodigious favourite.
He bought a colt for me, and taught me to ride. He took me out
coursing and fowling, and instructed me to shoot flying. And at
length I was released from Mick's persecution, for his brother,
Master Ulick, returning from Trinity College, and hating his elder
brother, as is mostly the way in families of fashion, took me under
his protection; and from that time, as Ulick was a deal bigger and
stronger than Mick, I, English Redmond, as I was called, was left
alone; except when the former thought fit to thrash me, which he did
whenever he thought proper.
Nor was my learning neglected in the ornamental parts, for I had an
uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in
accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and
a fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her power,
and she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus
laid the foundation of my future success in life. The common dances
I learned (as, perhaps, I ought not to confess) in the servants'
hall, which, you may be sure, was never without a piper, and where I
was considered unrivalled both at a hornpipe and a jig.
In the matter of book-learning, I had always an uncommon taste for
reading plays and novels, as the best part of a gentleman's polite
education, and never let a pedlar pass the village, if I had a
penny, without having a ballad or two from him. As for your dull
grammar, and Greek and Latin and stuff, I have always hated them
from my youth upwards, and said, very unmistakably, I would have
none of them.
This I proved pretty clearly at the age of thirteen, when my aunt
Biddy Brady's legacy of L100 came in to mamma, who thought to employ
the sum on my education, and sent me to Doctor Tobias Tickler's
famous academy at Ballywhacket--Backwhacket, as my uncle used to
call it. But six weeks after I had been consigned to his reverence,
I suddenly made my appearance again at Castle Brady, having walked
forty miles from the odious place, and left the Doctor in a state
near upon apoplexy. The fact was, that at taw, prison-bars, or
boxing, I was at the head of the school, but could not be brought to
excel in the classics; and after having been flogged seven times,
without its doing me the least good in my Latin, I refused to submit
altogether (finding it useless) to an eighth application of the rod.
'Try some other way, sir,' said I, when he was for horsing me once
more; but he wouldn't; whereon, and to defend myself, I flung a
slate at him, and knocked down a Scotch usher with a leaden
inkstand. All the lads huzza'd at this, and some or the servants
wanted to stop me; but taking out a large clasp-knife that my cousin
Nora had given me, I swore I would plunge it into the waistcoat of
the first man who dared to balk me, and faith they let me pass on. I
slept that night twenty miles off Ballywhacket, at the house of a
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