Note 12 — GEORGE HARTPOLE.
Reading edition
The country authorities were very wise, very grave, and very grim on this subject; but, after all, I suspect the most natural way of accounting for the fatality alluded to is, that the old gentlemen were commonly among the hardest livers in the country, and consequently, the gout was certain to be their companion, and generally their executioner.
If wood be kept alternately in and out of moisture, it rots soon:—if it is always in water, it never decays. A man’s constitution and rum-punch may to a degree resemble wood and water in this respect. The hardest incessant drinkers I ever recollect lived to a great age, were generally healthy, and usually made their exit, at last, by apoplexy, without troubling either doctor, parson, or apothecary: while, on the contrary, most of those who were only intermitting boozers, died much earlier; their finisher being, nine times out of ten, gout in the head or stomach: a cause, however, occasionally varied by a broken neck by a fall from a horse, when riding home from a housewarming, or drowning in a ditch, whilst watering their horses after the dogh à dourish. A few were smothered in shaking bogs, whilst attending the turf-cutters, &c. &c.
It required at least three days and nights incessant hard going to kill a drinker of the first class. It cost Squire Luke Flood of Roundwood, a place situated in Queen’s County, five days and nights hard working at port before he could finish either himself or the piper. Old Squire Lewis Moor of Cremorgan died, by way of variety, at seventy-six, of a violent passion, because his wife became jealous of his proceedings with the kitchen-maid. A few died of Drogheda usquebaugh, and several of sore ancles. I recollect, in fact, many of the most curious deaths and burials in Ireland that ever took place in any country under heaven. None of them were considered as being melancholy events, since every hard going squire then generally took his full turn in this world, and died by some coup de grace, as stated: however, he was commonly regretted by all his acquaintance and family, except his eldest son.