| Title: | John Mitchel, Tennessee to Miss Thomson, Dublin. |
|---|---|
| ID | 1780 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | Mitchel, John/26 |
| Year | 1855 |
| Sender | Mitchel, John |
| Sender Gender | male |
| Sender Occupation | unknown |
| Sender Religion | Protestant |
| Origin | Tennessee, USA |
| Destination | Dublin, Ireland |
| Recipient | Miss Thomson |
| Recipient Gender | female |
| Relationship | friends, relatives? |
| Source | T 413/1: Obtained from Mrs F. Dawson, 26 Windsor Park, Belfast. |
| Archive | The Public Record Office, Northern Ireland. |
| Doc. No. | 8809137 |
| Date | 01/11/1855 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Document added by JM 21:10:1993. |
| Word Count | 2626 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | Tucaleechee Cove, Tenn. [Tennessee?] Nov. 1, 1855. Dear Miss Thomson, The gentle reproach conveyed to me in your letter to Jenny of Sept 7th (received only a week ago) in form of a question whether I was so VERY much occupied that I could not write, has goaded & stung me into taking the decided step of being your correspondent, this turn, instead of my wife. I need not begin to excuse myself, which wd [would?] only make matters worse, but in fact so long as your pleasant letters came periodically to Jenny, without my earning them by my own exertions - & I got the reading of them - I was willing to evade my own share of the writing; this, you may say if you like, was not honest. But you are not to imagine that I was indifferent to the correspondence. You & Mr Pigot are the only two persons in all Ireland who ever write to me (save a very rare note from one of my sisters), and I could by no means dispense with the letters of either. You have already some idea of our remote & solitary wigwam at the back of the Alleghanies, eleven hundred miles from N. York - & in the present state of communications, eight or ten days from that city reckoning by the Post Office, though only five of actual travelling - And you wonder at my having taken my family to such a place. To SOME such place I was obliged to bring them, or else submit to a species of life in New York which (without some near hope of a grand success) is to me the most wasting drudgery. It happens, indeed, that the particular spot I have lighted upon, though certainly one of the most beautiful, is about the most barbarous in the United States. I never, in any part of the world, met so ignorant people, except in Tahiti. Their long isolation from the rest of the country for want of railroads or any good roads, has kept them at about the stage of "progress" in which the country parts of the North of Ireland were forty years ago - or indeed worse - for there are no people of education or refinement anywhere near. And an emigrant to the new territory of Kanzas away between the Missouri & the Rocky Mountains would from the very first have a far better chance of meeting men & women of some cultivation. Yet I rather like all this. I have contracted (owing to an exaggerative habit) a diseased & monomaniacal hatred of "progress", & would like rather to go back & see people going back. Besides I suppose the five years of my exile, most of that time passed in living among remote forests, have given me if not a taste, at least a habit, #PAGE 2 and I feel at home in the woods. You see I do not altogether triumph in, or so much as entirely defend, this way of life. It is not natural - Society is natural to us, though this sort of thing was natural to the Cherokees. In fact those red savages, as well as the tribe of white, or sallow, savages, who have succeeded them, had society. Like sought & found like. Cherokee smoked the pipe with Cherokee & Hoosier with Hoosier enjoys life at Cornshuckings, & Swaps horses & ideas at Camp meetings. Now I don't pretend that we have exactly found our place - And when I resolved to leave New York if I had possessed independent means I should certainly have crossed the sea to la belle France, with all my household. But what avails repining? Who does find his place? And being here among the Hoosiers (Tennesseans are called Hoosiers as the people of Ohio rejoice in the title of Buckeyes, & Kentuckians I believe are Red Horses) it remains to make the best of it. For the family, or at least for Jenny & the little girls, this is a dernier ressort. It is bad enough - But then it is better than dependence - it is better than living as you first found them. And on the whole it is necessary to admit that it is a misfortune to a family to have its head transported, even though it be in the most patriotic & glorious manner, - though it makes a "sensation" & be alleviated by plenty of honourable mention. Reading over what I have written, I find it looks dreary, & will give you too dismal an impression of our lot, & of our endurance thereof. But there is also a bright side. Imagine a most lovely valley five miles long, varying in breadth from a quarter of a mile to a mile & a half, lying among the parallel folds of the great Alleghanies. Through it gushes & flashes one of the brightest & most crystalline of rivers, a river about thrice the size of the Bray river, whose banks are some- times cornfields fringed with trees, sometimes shelving beaches of sand, sometimes precipices twice the height of St. George's Steeple, crowned & plumed with oaks & pines, & whose waters here dash & rave over broken rocks, there ripple gently over a pebbly bed, & there again lie in a still black pool almost hidden from the sun by over- arching boughs of great trees. Into or out of this valley, you must go through a glen seven miles in length where the river has cut its way through the Chilhowee Mountains, travelling sometimes on one bank sometimes on the other & fording the river five times (for bridge there is none) And in short if you multiply & magnify the Dargle by about six in all its proportions, you will have some faint #PAGE 3 notion of the form of the glen. But then who is to give you a notion of its colours? Of course all those mountains, & all the hills round about & far & near, are covered with unbroken forest of vast timber trees - Oak, beech, maple, sycamore, chestnut, pine, cedar, poplar, hickory & forty other sorts; and at this "Fall" season, these trees robe the hills with a mantle of many colours. You have heard of the splendour of American woods in the Fall. Then bethink you that we are here in the most luxuriantly timbered region of all America, & under a Southern Sun. Golden yellow, deep orange, burning scarlet, blood-red, Turkey-red, crimson, up to Imperial Tyrian purple, the weft & the woof of this grand forest mantle shews them all, & relieves them so cunningly with dark masses of pine & green boscages of cedar & hemlock that there is nothing glaring or dazzling. But even the autumn foliage is eclipsed by the spring & summer flowers, azaleas, kalmias, rhododendrons & multitudes of others which I am not botanist enough to be able as yet to identify or name. Now young lady, at the very head of the above mentioned valley, up in the nook where the river first bursts out from its mountain solitudes & its pine-shaped ravine expands into the vale of Tuckaleechee - up so high that my only neighbours, (going up the river) are the bears & deer, I have pitched my tent or wigwam. I am the highest man in the valley - so that your little French teacher truly said I was tres ambitieux - & the hoosiers can no more muddy the water flowing past my door than the lamb could disturb the wolf's drinking. Here we have 132 acres of land 80 of those acres clean & very fertile - a log-house which I am just about to enlarge by a good addition - & a good large barn just now full of the fruits of the earth. Two horses, three cows & that indispensable part of a Tennessean's stock, a multitude of pigs. Now if we had our house once enlarged and made comfortable - & if we could but persuade even one family of our acquaintance to come & settle near us, don't you think life might be endured? Moreover this East Tennessee is in a state of transition. Railroads are pushing into it in all directions. The original hoosiers of these parts (as always happens in such cases) will infallibly retire further west, & people from the more eastern states will press in bringing with them all the improvements & elegancies of life, wherein you know this Yankee nation whips the airth [Earth?]. Indeed it is an amusing people, or as it frequently says itself "a peculiar people". I will give you an anecdote quite characteristic. About 16 miles from this place stands #PAGE 4 one of the great watering-places of the South, Montvale Springs, a vast wooden house with accommodation for three or four hundred boarders, where many families from Georgia Alabama, Louisiana &c. spend some time in summer, & drink the sulphurous water. About six weeks after I had come to Tuca, a well-dressed stranger on horseback made his appearance. I was standing at my own gate. He looked curiously at me, & then at the wigwam, & said he guessed I must be the gentleman he was in search of - thereupon he pulled out of his pocket a packet of papers, whereby I learned that the inmates of Montvale, Southern judges, members of the legislature & no end of Colonels, on learning that I was near at hand had convened a public meeting of the guests male & female, appointed a chairman, named four Secretaries, & having read the requisition proceeded to business. Five Resolutions previously prepared were then moved & seconded with appropriate speeches - to the effect that having heard I was settled in Tennessee they welcomed me to the South - that they sympathized with me as a patriot & martyr, & admired me as a scholar & a gentleman - that they warmly approved my "conservative" principles (in the matter of slavery) - finally that actuated by all these feelings, & having a strong desire to see me & make my acquaintance - they thereby invited me to go "together with my esteemed lady" and partake of the hospitalities of Montvale Springs at such time & so long as might suit my convenience - that is to say, go & stop at that hotel at their expense. Then, the chairman having been moved from the chair & thanked for his dignified conduct, the four secretaries dispatched the Courier to find me out at Tucaleechee. I think you will laugh. We laughed, but not in the ambassador's face, & I wrote a very curt answer saying I was compelled by engagements at home to decline their more than polite invitation - & besides that I was not a martyr but a farmer. In fact so curious are these people - such an appetite have they for new faces & making what they call acquaintance with all persons whose names are familiar to them, & hearing them talk, & testing their capacity for public speaking - a thing for which there is a devouring passion here, that I knew very well what they wanted was to set me up upon a platform & by pretending monstrous enthusiasm & sympathy & all that, to set me a vociferating there for their amusement. We have an excellent neighbour on one side of us, I mean the Mountains. The principal chains of the Alleghanies, which are here very high, rise just #PAGE 5 behind us, & there is a tract of twenty five miles across, all covered with mountains heavily timbered & swarming with bears, wolves, panthers & deer. When you descend into low country on the other side you are in North Carolina. Some of the peaks near this are very lofty, 6000 feet high but the average height of the Alleghanies in Tennessee is not above 4000. A pack of six wolves was traced lately to within a hundred yards of our house, & one night being upon the mountains pretty late James & I within a mile & a half of our own door came upon three well grown bear-cubs, as large as big black mastiffs. Deer have been killed at least to the number of two dozen within a mile of us since we came, & they very often trot past the house or through my fields. We have seen but one rattle-snake & killed it, but other snakes are numerous & some venomous ones. So much for America & Tucaleechee. Now for Ireland. You think nationality is dead - "What does Mr Mitchel think?" Why there is no trusting to appearances in judging of popular feeling ESPECIALLY in Ireland. I believe, or rather I know, that the disaffection of the great mass of the people against English law & governmt [government?] is just as profound & intense as ever. The meaner & more abject is their pretence of loyalty, or tacit allowance of that law & governmt [government?]. What is more, disaffection amongst the upper, the landed & Protestant classes, is by no means rare, & this will shew itself the more boldly & decidedly (so chivalrous are the upper classes) as England's power & prestige wane more & more. Wane they will, young lady, & very soon. And the Revolution, which was ready & ought to have broken out IN ENGLAND forty years ago, but was forcibly & unnaturally stifled & smothered then, will come. Probably this will happen to England BEFORE there is any great sign of Irish Nationality reviving - & then I will tell you what I think may very possibly happen. While a sweeping Revolution rages over England & a violent end is put to Church & Crown, to noblesse, rent, primogenition & the funds, - then the Aristocracy, many of them being connected already with Ireland by property, may make their final stand for "Law" & "Order" & Monarchy & Christianity IN IRELAND. The Catholic Clergy are already on the side of all that - the Aristocracy of England already hankering greatly after the Ancient Church. And in such a case it would be the obvious policy of that Aristocracy to become enthusiastic Catholics, & determined Nationalists, with Erin go bragh & first gem of the sea & all that. And #PAGE 6 they would do it - & THUS you know the attachment of our poor people to high descent & gentle blood & the "old stock" - And you can fancy the zeal & unction of the priests - then would Ireland be the VENDEE of the British revolution, & would not be conquered so easily as La Vendee - & so should we achieve our nationhood & get our Parliament in College Green, THE WRONG WAY. Not that even this form & method of re-establishing the nation would not be a great blessing. ANY other arrangement than that which makes Irish laws be made in London would be a blessing. There is another programme of Ireland's destiny which sometimes I think may be the right one. It would suit, in case of a war happily breaking out between England & America. But after all, you know this is mere guessing. There will probably be plenty of war in the world, & how that may tumble nations against one another it would be hard to predict - but of the main fact I am well assured - there is as deep disaffection now in Ireland as there was in 48 [1848?]. This letter must close some time. So adieu - And whether we have our Parliament in College Green or not be assured that I am & shall continue with great regard and respect. Your friend John Mitchel. |
