Castle Rackrent

Monday Morning.

Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose estate, praised be Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free time out of mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the Memoirs of the Rackrent Family, I think it my duty to say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have always been known by no other than “honest Thady,”⁠—afterwards, in the time of Sir Murtagh, deceased, I remember to hear them calling me “old Thady,” and now I’ve come to “poor Thady”; for I wear a long greatcoat winter and summer, which is very handy, as I never put my arms into the sleeves; they are as good as new, though come Hollantide next I’ve had it these seven years; it holds on by a single button round my neck, cloak fashion. To look at me, you would hardly think “poor Thady” was the father of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what poor Thady says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year, landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady; but I wash my hands of his doings, and as I have lived so will I die, true and loyal to the family. The family of the Rackrents is, I am proud to say, one of the most ancient in the kingdom. Everybody knows this is not the old family name, which was O’Shaughlin, related to the kings of Ireland⁠—but that was before my time.

The very morning after they came home, however, I saw plain enough how things were between Sir Kit and my lady, though they were walking together arm in arm after breakfast, looking at the new building and the improvements. “Old Thady,” said my master, just as he used to do, “how do you do?” “Very well, I thank your honour’s honour,” said I; but I saw he was not well pleased, and my heart was in my mouth as I walked along after him. “Is the large room damp, Thady?” said his honour. “Oh damp, your honour! how should it be but as dry as a bone,” says I, “after all the fires we have kept in it day and night? It’s the barrack-room your honour’s talking on.” “And what is a barrack-room, pray, my dear?” were the first words I ever heard out of my lady’s lips. “No matter, my dear,” said he, and went on talking to me, ashamed like I should witness her ignorance. To be sure, to hear her talk one might have taken her for an innocent, for it was, “What’s this, Sir Kit? and what’s that, Sir Kit?” all the way we went. To be sure, Sir Kit had enough to do to answer her. “And what do you call that, Sir Kit?” said she; “that⁠—that looks like a pile of black bricks, pray, Sir Kit?” “My turf-stack, my dear,” said my master, and bit his lip. Where have you lived, my lady, all your life, not to know a turf-stack when you see it? thought I; but I said nothing. Then by and by she takes out her glass, and begins spying over the country. “And what’s all that black swamp out yonder, Sir Kit?” says she. “My bog, my dear,” says he, and went on whistling. “It’s a very ugly prospect, my dear,” says she.

Her honeymoon, at least her Irish honeymoon, was scarcely well over, when his honour one morning said to me, “Thady, buy me a pig!” and then the sausages were ordered, and here was the first open breaking-out of my lady’s troubles. My lady came down herself into the kitchen to speak to the cook about the sausages, and desired never to see them more at her table. Now my master had ordered them, and my lady knew that. The cook took my lady’s part, because she never came down into the kitchen, and was young and innocent in housekeeping, which raised her pity; besides, said she, at her own table, surely my lady should order and disorder what she pleases. But the cook soon changed her note, for my master made it a principle to have the sausages, and swore at her for a Jew herself, till he drove her fairly out of the kitchen; then, for fear of her place, and because he threatened that my lady should give her no discharge without the sausages, she gave up, and from that day forward always sausages, or bacon, or pig-meat in some shape or other, went up to table; upon which my lady shut herself up in her own room, and my master said she might stay there, with an oath: and to make sure of her, he turned the key in the door, and kept it ever after in his pocket. We none of us ever saw or heard her speak for seven years after that: he carried her dinner himself. Then his honour had a great deal of company to dine with him, and balls in the house, and was as gay and gallant, and as much himself as before he was married; and at dinner he always drank my

“It’s all over with our poor Judy!” said I, with a heavy sigh, making bold to speak to him one night when he was a little cheerful, and standing in the servants’ hall all alone with me as was often his custom. “Not at all,” said he; “I never was fonder of Judy than at this present speaking; and to prove it to you,” said he⁠—and he took from my hand a halfpenny, change that I had just got along with my tobacco⁠—“and to prove it to you, Thady,” says he, “it’s a tossup with me which I should marry this minute, her or Mr. Moneygawl of Mount Juliet’s Town’s daughter⁠—so it is.” “Oh, boo! boo!” says I, making light of it, to see what he would go on to next; “your honour’s joking, to be sure; there’s no compare between our poor Judy and Miss Isabella, who has a great fortune, they say.” “I’m not a man to mind a fortune, nor never was,” said Sir Condy, proudly, “whatever her friends may say; and to make short of it,” says he, “I’m come to a determination upon the spot;” with that he swore such a terrible oath as made me cross myself; “and by this book,” said he, snatching up my ballad-book, mistaking it for my prayerbook, which lay in the window; “and by this book,” says he, “and by all the books that ever were shut and opened, it’s come to a tossup with me, and I’ll stand or fall by the toss; and so, Thady, hand me over that ‘pin’ out of the ink-horn;” and he makes a cross on the smooth side of the halfpenny; “Judy McQuirk,” says he, “her mark.” God bless him! his hand was a little unsteadied by all the whiskey punch he had taken, but it was plain to see his heart was for poor Judy.

She was dressed like a mad woman, moreover, more than like anyone I ever saw afore or since, and I could not take my eyes off her, but still followed behind her, and her feathers on the top of her hat were broke going in at the low back door, and she pulled out her little bottle out of her pocket to smell to when she found herself in the kitchen, and said, “I shall faint with the heat of this odious, odious place.” “My dear, it’s only three steps across the kitchen, and there’s a fine air if your veil was up,” said Sir Condy; and with that threw back her veil, so that I had then a full sight of her face. She had not at all the colour of one going to faint, but a fine complexion of her own, as I then took it to be, though her maid told me after it was all put on; but even, complexion and all taken in, she was no way, in point of good looks, to compare to poor Judy, and withal she had a quality toss with her; but maybe it was my over-partiality to Judy, into whose place I may say she stepped, that made me notice all this. To do her justice, however, she was, when we came to know her better, very liberal in her housekeeping, nothing at all of the skinflint in her; she left everything to the housekeeper, and her own maid, Mrs. Jane, who went with her to Scotland, gave her the best of characters for generosity. She seldom or ever wore a thing twice the same way, Mrs. Jane told us, and was always pulling her things to pieces, and giving them away, never being used, in her father’s house, to think of expense in anything; and she reckoned