tale taken from facts and from the manners of the Irish squires before the year 1782,it
purports to be an edited oral memoir of the steward of the Rackrent estate. Its editor
remarks in his Preface that
the race of the Rackrents has long since been extinct in Ireland; and the drunken Sir
Patrick, the litigious Sir Murtagh, the fighting Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy, are
characters which could no more be met with at present in Ireland than [Fielding’s]
Squire Western or Parson Trulliber in England. There is a time, when individuals can
bear to be rallied for their past follies and absurdities, after they have acquired new
habits, and a new consciousness. Nations as well as individuals gradually lose attachment
to their identity, and the present generation is amused rather than offended by the
ridicule that is thrown upon its ancestors.This historian-editor is R. L. Edgeworth, an enlightened County Longford
landowner who, despite his ‘new consciousness’, was attached to his Irish identity,
and in 1800 voted against the Union of the Irish Parliament (after a short period of
Irish independence) with that of Great Britain. When his eldest daughter Maria left
her English boarding school, he gave her Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. This gave
her the term Rackrent, a title which suggests both extortionate rent and the rack and
ruin of the estate. The ‘oral’ style was new.
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 is 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’m come
to “poor Thady”; for I wear a long great coat winter and summer, which is very handy, as
I neve r put my arms into the sleeves; they are as good as new ....Maria Edgeworth(1768–1849) took Thady’s idiom from the speech of her
father’s steward. To this passage is added a long note on the Irish greatcoat, and a
Glossary explaining customs and terms. Thus, ‘An English tenant does not mean a
te nant who is an Englishman,but a tenant who pays his rent the day that it is due.’
Successive Rackrents die of drink, apoplexy, gaming and drink, loyally helped by
Honest Thady, whose nephew buys up Sir Condy’s estate. The ‘long ... extinct’facts
and manners of the Rackrent squires have since formed the staple of Anglo-Irish
fiction, as has the illogical rattle in which they are reported: ‘not a man could stand
after supper but Sir Patrick himself, who could sit out the best man in Ireland, let
alone the three kingdoms itself ’. As for Sir Kit, ‘unluckily, after hitting the tooth pick
out of his adversary’s finger, he received a ball in a vital part, and was brought
home, in little better than an hour after the affair, speechless on a handbarrow, to
my lady’.
The anecdotes are in lively Irish English, the Notes and Glossary in dry Anglo-
Irish. Beneath the comedy is a sharp analysis of the supposedly stupid servile
Ir ishman and the feckless folly of the old squires.Castle Rackrent is, like Tristram
Shandy,a tale of sharp dec line,but with Swift’s command of perspective. It is also
the first of various kinds of novel: historical, Anglo-Irish, regional, colonial. With her
father, Maria Edgeworth championed the education of daughters, and wrote other
tales,but the Irish tales stand out:Ennui,The Absentee and Ormond.She sent Scott
examples of Irish talk; Jane Austen sent her a copy ofEmma.248 7 · THE ROMANTICS: 1790–1837