| Title: | John Mitchel, Connecticut, USA to Miss Thomson, [Dublin?]. |
|---|---|
| ID | 1778 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | Mitchel, John/23 |
| Year | 1854 |
| Sender | Mitchel, John |
| Sender Gender | male |
| Sender Occupation | unknown |
| Sender Religion | Protestant |
| Origin | Stonington, Connecticut, USA |
| Destination | Dublin, Ireland |
| Recipient | Miss Thomson |
| Recipient Gender | female |
| Relationship | friends, relatives? |
| Source | T 413/5: Obtained from Mrs Florence Dawson, 26 Windsor Park, Belfast. |
| Archive | The Public Record Office, Northern Ireland. |
| Doc. No. | 8809139 |
| Date | 26/08/1854 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Document added by JM 27:09:1993. |
| Word Count | 1348 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | Stonington, Connecticut. Aug. 26, 1854. Dear Miss Thomson, Your letter to Jenny of 29th, 31st July has come to us here, where we have been all sojourning for two or three weeks, enjoying the seabathing. She commissions me to reply - saying that I cannot plead want of leisure here, as I always do in New York. Well, then, I suppose you have no notion of what Stonington is. Imagine the southern coast of Connecticut, cold, bare & granitic, indented by bays & river-mouths & faced here & there by granite rocks & islands out at sea. On a bleak tongue of land running out between a bay on one side, & the Pawtucket river on the other stands a town of the neatest, whitest, trimmest wooden houses, the streets shaded by maple-trees; fishing vessels at the Quay & a huge Noah's ark of a steamer, without mast or sail, but with two funnels, that goes up to New York every night meeting another coming down, both full of passengers, three or four hundred, discharged here twice a day from New York per steamer, bound for Boston per Stonington Railroad, or from Boston per Railroad, bound for New York per steamer: for here passes one of the three routes that bring daily, nightly, & hourly a full stream of people tearing along from both ends as if the Devil were chasing them. This people is eternally travelling: according to the old Hebrew imprecation they are "made like unto a wheel" - and in this New England, at least, they do appear to be dreeing this locomotive penalty under a curse, or as atonement for sin, so solemn, so grim, so penitential, look these sickly-looking thin men & grim, meagre, hard women of dismal intelligence - for intelligent they are, clear-eyed, high-browed petrific to Gods & men. Churches, there are, Baptist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Episcopal, in this Stonington, and about two thousand dreary inhabitants. We live (as all people at watering-places in America do) in a large Hotel, with a public table - the guests almost all descendents of the Pilgrim-fathers, with a righteous horror of "the South". They looked at me with a sort of obscure & grave horror at first for I am an hissing to New England. Yet I have conciliated some of the dismal folk and as for Jenny she is a favourite. Amusements boating, driving in lurid conveyances to the neighbouring Connecticut villages - all clean, prim wooden as Stonington, bathing, for which the beach is not very favourable; and by way of variety there was last night a "fair" in the #PAGE 2 Schoolhouse attached to one of the churches - the sort of thing which in Ireland is called a Bazaar, for selling knick-knacks to raise money for some congregational purpose. On the whole I like Virginia much better than this region - and if I had only a good plantation there - but I will not shock you. About the "war". In your last letter before this one, you said our enemy's troops were employed at least this once, in a righteous cause. What think you now? Believe me, it is quite impossible for the British Government ever, by any accident, to be on the same side with justice - until British aristocracy, that is to say the whole structure of society in Britain shall have been destroyed by a revolution. Never in all her series of wars did England make so foul & hateful a figure as she makes in this - the only comfort being that she makes a helpless figure too. You will have seen ere now that I am at open & deadly war with the Catholic priests, or at least the hierarchy. Undoubtedly they have taken their stand with all the tyrannies of the earth; and though they dislike British Power, they hate Revolution worse. There is no use in keeping up a hollow true with them: and the cause of Ireland (if there be any cause of Ireland yet extant) must be advanced through their alliance, but over their fallen power. If that may not be, then there is no cause of Ireland at all. We had a letter yesterday from John Martin, date 24 May. The three prisioners had heard by that time, through the newspapers, that the Queen of England was to extend "clemency" to them: but the authorities there had received as yet no instructions to that effect. I am still convinced that when the instructions do arrive they will be such that our friends cannot avail themselves of the "clemency". And so it is with a good deal of anxiety I await the next news from Australia. Our prisoner friends are well. Jenny was ill about a month ago, & was confined to her bed when your last letter but one arrived. She says that her illness, and the hurried preparation for the shore afterwards prevented her from sooner replying. She has now become strong and well again with the seabathing, and the children are all flourishing. The "baby" you enquire for is no other than Rixy. There is no later candidate for the post of Baby. It would have given us all most excessive pleasure if you had told us you were coming over to see America. You would probably like a visit to the country very much; but residence in it is another matter. In fact few ladies brought up in an old country do like it. But to me it is a sort of Eden after my years of bondage. The real genuine freedom of the people is intoxicating. Then we have #PAGE 3 a sort of home-circle here (besides many agreeable American acquaintances) which enables us often to spend an evening in Ireland. In Stonington for instance, we have had the Dillons living in the same house with us, and they are both of them very choice Irish. Mrs Dillon would be, I conjecture, very much to your taste. She is clever, lazy, accomplished & quiet in manner. A Catholic, but not an ultramontane papist - and nearly as familiar with Germany, France & Rome as with Ireland. Then O'Gorman has lately married his cousin, a Miss Fox, of Dublin, very agreeable too. And they as well as my mother, brother & sisters, live in Brooklyn quite near to us. The boys have been at school, said to be the best in New York, and the little girls are schooled by one of my sisters. We have had a broiling summer here, and a winter before it perfectly polar: yet with all its unreasonable extremes of climate New York is very heathly. Yet we often pine for the country. Beyond the Alleghanies are beautiful shady vallies, & cheap land. And if this War turn out an imposture, & no brightening soon appears in the prospects of Irish Revolution - do not be astonished if you hear of our flying suddenly from the Atlantic coast, & burying ourselves in the umbrageous West - Yet not farther than two days railway journey from this coast; because a chance of Revolution in Europe may turn up any day when least expected. I am glad you liked my Address at the University of Virginia. It is a splendid institution, the peculiar work of Jefferson's latter days, & with splendid buildings all visible from Monticello. When I say splendid you are not to suppose I mean that they approach Trinity College in magnificence. There is nothing in all this country equal to that. But yet in Philadelphia there is one college - Girard College - whose central building, a stupendous peristyle Greek temple, of white marble, is finer than any one building in Trinity, or in all Dublin. Virginia University however has nearly five hundred resident students, the very choice of the South - that is of America. It stands in a lovely country near the base of the "Blue Ridge" - a fine wooded range reminding me of Van Diemen's land. Wife and children commend themselves to your kind remembrances & I to your indulgent interpretation & construction - So adieu, J. [John?] Mitchel. |
