Life
1760-1834; b. Knapton, Abbeyleix, fourth of six children of John Barrington,
landowner in Queen’s Co.; ed. TCD; bar, 1788, silk, 1793, and admiralty
judge, 1798; MP for Tuam by purchase of seat, 1790-97; then Clogher, 1798;
[DIB Bannagher]; received sinecure of £1,000, 1793; declined to
repurchase his seat, 1797; reentered parliament, 1798, and voted against
Act of Union, rejecting Lord Clare’s offer of solicitor-generalship
in 1799; unsuccessfully contested Dublin, 1802; occupied end-house with
the bow window on mid-Harcourt St., where Lady Barrington used to overlook
the garden of Lord Clonmel, his chief adversary; bribed other members
on the issue; knighted 1807; moved to France around 1815 to escape his
creditors, but retained his office and emoluments; deprived of office
for appropriations of funds during 1805, 1806 and 1810, discovered by
parliamentary commission of 1830; d. 8 April, Versailles [var. Paris];
his Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (1833) provided the basis
for the idealisation of ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ taken up
by the Irish Parliamentary Party; Personal Sketches of His Own Times
(1827-1832), in which eccentric characters include Sir Boyle Roche and
Borumbad, the pseudo-Turk includes his ‘red’ and ‘black’
lists of the voters for and against the Union; a portrait of Barrington
appears, with Sir John Parnell tapping his shoulder and speaking to him,
in the engraving of the Irish House of Commons of 1790, now preserved
in Bank of Ireland (College Green) [as figure No.145 in key]; the British Library holds a correspondence
between Barrington and Rev. L. Battersby on matters of family finance
in 1810; there is an open letter to Sir Jonah Barrington in Walter Cox’s
National Asylum (July 1810). DNB JMC RAF DIW DIB DIH FDA OCIL
DIL WJM
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Works
Historic Anecdotes and Secret Memoirs of the Legislative Union between
Great Britain and Ireland (London: G. Robinson 1809); rep. with 2nd
vol. as Historic Memoirs, Comprising Secret Records of the National
Convention, the Rebellion, and the Union, with Delineations of the Principal
Characters Connected with These Transactions, 2 vols. (London: R.
Bentley & H. Colburn 1833 [1809-33]), ports & facs., 4o.; Do.
[3rd edn.] with memoir of the author, an essay on Irish wit and humour,
and notes and corrections by Townsend Young, 2 vols. (London: G. Routledge
& Sons 1869), 8o; Do. [another edn.] 2 vols (Glasgow &
London: Cameron & Ferguson 1876), x, 498pp., 8o; Personal Sketches
of his Own Times [3 vols. 1827-32]: Vols. 1 & 2 (London: Henry
Colburn 1827); Vol. 3 (London: Henry Colburn & R. Bentley 1832), and
Do., reissued as George Birmingham, intro., Recollections of
Jonah Barrington [Every Irishman’s Library] (Dublin: Talbot;
London: London: T. Fisher Unwin [1918]), xx, 485pp., frontis. port.; Historic
Memoirs of Ireland, 2 vols. (London: R. Bentley & H. Colburn 1833);
The Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (Paris: G. G. Bennis 1833),
8, xiii, 837pp.; Do. [another edn.] (Dublin: James Duffy 1853), xix, 26-399pp.;
Hugh B. Staples, ed., The Ireland of Sir Jonah Barrington: Selections
from His Personal Sketches (Washington: [Catholic UP] 1967).
Recollections of Jonah Barrington, intro. George Birmingham (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: Fisher Unwin [1918]) [in Every Irishman’s Library, Gen. Ed. A P Graves; with William Magennis, Douglas Hyde], port. of Barrington. CHAPTERS: My Family Connexions [1]; Elizabeth Fitzgerald [18]; Irish Gentry and their Retainers [29]; My Education [34]; Irish Dissipation in 1778 [43]; My Brother’s Hunting Lodge [51]; Choice of Profession [58]; Murder of Captain O’Flaherty [63]; Adoption of the Law [74]; Irish Beauties [79]; Patricians and Plebians [90]; Irish Inns [97]; Fatal Duel of my Brother [101]; Entrance into Parliament [112]; Singular Customs in the Irish Parliament [121]; The Seven Baronets [128]; Entrance into Office [139]; Dr. Achmet Borumborad [145]; Aldermen of Skinner’s Alley [154]; Procession of the Trades [161]; Irish Rebellion [166]; Wolfe Tone [173]; Dublin Election [177]; Election for County Wexford [187]; Wedded Life [195]; Duke of Wellington and Marquess of London-derry [201]; Lord Norbury [210]; Henry Grattan [218]; Lord Aldborough [227]; John Philpot Curran [231]; The Law of Libel [238]; Pulpit, Bar, and Parliamentary Eloquence [253]; Queen Caroline [257]; Anecdotes of Irish Judges [261]; The Fire Eaters [278]; Duelling Extraordinary [296]; Hamilton Rowan and the Bar [315]; Father O’Leary [322]; Death of Lord Rossmore [326]; Theatrical Recollections [335]; Mrs. Jordan [346]; Mrs. Jordan in France [365]; Scenes at Havre de Grace [373]; Commencement of the Hundred Days [388]; The English in Paris [398]; Inauguration of the Emperor [406]; Promulgation of the Constitution [422]; Last Days of the Imperial Government [432]; Detention at Villette [443]; Projected Escape of Napoleon [450]; Battles of Sèvres and Issy [456]; Capitulation of Paris [465]; The Catacombs and Père La Chaise [471]; Pedigree Hunting [474]. [See ‘Introduction’, infra.)
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Criticism
Donald T. Torchiana, ‘The World of Sir Jonah Barrington’s Personal
Sketches’, in Philological Quarterly, 45 (1966),
pp.321-45; Hugh B. Staples, ed. and intro., The Ireland of Sir Jonah
Barrington (Seattle/London: University of Washington press 1967; London:
Peter Owen 1968)
Pádraic Colum, ‘Landlords’ Ireland’, Éire-Ireland, 4, 1 (Spring 1969), pp. 109-1
George Birmingham, ed. & intro., Recollections of Jonah Barrington (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: Fisher Unwin [1918])
Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001, p.43
Willa Murphy, ‘A Queen of Hearts or an Old Maid?: Maria Edgeworth’s Fictions of Union’, in Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001, p.189
Kevin Whelan, ‘The Other Within: Ireland, Britain and the Act of Union’, in Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001, p.17
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Notes
Frank O’Connor, ed., Book of Ireland (London: Fontana
1959 & edns.), selects "Merry Christmas, 1778" [‘uninterrupted
match of hard-going till the weather should break up ... hogshead of superior
claret’ ... ‘the pipers plied their chants ... I shall never
forget the attraction this novelty had for my youthful mind’] (p.139);
"Sir Boyle Roche" ... the most celebrated and entertaining anti-grammarian
in the Irish Parliament’] (p.183); on duelling [‘Ough, thunder!
... how many holes did the villain want drilled in to his carcass?’]
(p.262); "Crow Street theatre" [‘immediately ... on being
struck, he reeled, staggered, and fell very naturally, considering that
it was his first death’] (p.278). See also under Thomas Sheridan,
Rx.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol 1, cites Personal Sketches (1827) as well as Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (1833), which Rafroidi calls the most literary of all his books in which the prose is clear, harmonious and well-balanced; also the ‘more technical’ Historic Records and Secret Memoirs of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland (1844). [97]
Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985) lists Historic Anecdotes and Secret Memoirs of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland (1809).
Roy Foster, Modern Ireland (London: Allen Lane 1988), ‘the racy Personal Sketches ... confirmed him as the chief historian of the "half-mounted gentlemen" of Ireland’ (p.169).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 1, 964 [a fine example of their rapscallion culture, redeemed them and himself for posterity by regarding them in the soft lights of nostalgia for an Ireland that had once been and had forever passed away with the Act of Union, the decline of Dublin’s influence and the rise of nationalist politics, acc. eds., Carpenter and Deane]; selection from Personal Sketches [1005-07, an early passage dealing with his place of birth, ‘an uncouth mass, warring with every rule of symmetry in architecture’, from which his ancestors with extensive estates in Queen’s Co. ‘had almost unlimited influence over its population’]; BIOG 1010 [as above].
[Emerald Isle Books] The Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (Paris: Bennis 1833), 494pp. orig. clth. bds.
Ulster Univ. Library, (Morris Collecton, holds Comprising Secret Records of the National Convention, the Rebellion, and the Union, 2 vols. (Henry Colburn, 1835); Personal Sketches and Recollections of his Own Times (1827), 498p.
British Library holds Correspondence of the Rev L. Battersby with Sir Jonah Barrington ... on the subject of Family Money, &c. (1810), 8o; Historic Memoirs comprising secret records of the National Convention, the Rebellion, and the Union, with delineations of the Principal Characters connected with these translations [sic, ?recte transactions], ports and facs., 2 vols. (R Bentley & H Colburn 1833 [1809-33]), 4o; with additional titlepage to vol. 1, engraved, Historic[al] Anecdotes and Secret Memoirs of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland (G Robinson 1809) [published in two parts]; 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Bentley & Colburn 1833); 3rd ed., with memoir of the author, an essay on Irish wit and humour, and notes and corrections by Townsend Young, 2 vols. (G. London: Routledge & Sons 1869), 8o; another ed., vols. 1,2 (Glas&Lon, Cameron & Ferguson 1876), pp. x, 498, 8o; another ed. 1, 2, Recollections of Jonah Barrington ... with introduction by George Birmingham, in Every Irishman’s Library ser. (Dublin: Talbot [1918]), xx, 485pp.; also Barrington, Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (GG Bennis 1833), and another ed., (Dublin: James Duffy 1853), xix, 26-399pp. [Chk orth.: historic/al]
Belfast Central Public Library holds Historic Anecdotes (1809) which includes Dobbs (q.v.); also Personal Sketches; Recollections; Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation.
Bonfire of fancies: According to Barrington, the MS of Personal
Sketches [1827; reissued as Recollections, 1918] was rescued
from a bonfire of ‘letters, papers, and fragments of all descriptions’
which he had decided to destroy, while in another place he calls it ‘a
rambling chronicle’ of things ‘which, from time to time, struck
my fancy’
W. B. Yeats: Mrs French, in the first section of Yeats’s poem ‘The Tower’, is a character from Barrington’s Recollections, where it is used to illustrate ‘mutual attachment between the Irish peasantry and their landlords’ [see A. N. Jeffares, W B Yeats, A New Biography, 1988, p.276; Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.189).
James Joyce: Leopold Bloom makes reference to Barrrington's Reminiscences [i.e., Recollections] in Ulysses: ‘Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington.’ (Bodley Head Edn., p.309 [‘Wandering Rocks’ episode]).
John Mitchel quoted Barrington in his History of Ireland: ‘Mr Pitt counted on the expertness of the Irish Government to effect a premature explosion. Free quarters were now ordered, to irritate the Irish population; slow tortures were inflicted, under the pretence of forcing confessions; the people were goaded and driven to madness’. (p.264; quoted in Rosamund Jacob, Rise of the United Irishmen, 1929, 251.)
Mary Cusack cites Barrington’s description of O’Connell in Personal Sketches, ii, p.452: ‘O’Connell, at that day was a large, ruddy, young man, wth a most savage dialect, an imperturbable countenance, intrepid address, et proeterea nihil’; comments that Sir Joshua [sic] was not gifted with much discrimination of character, or he would not have written the last sentence.’ (Life of the Liberator, 1872, ftn., p.321.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)