In his recently-published Irish Classics, Declan Kiberd quotes Louis MacNeice's remark that the Irish big house contained "nothing but an insidious bonhomie, an obsolete bravado and a way with horses". It is to Valerie Pakenham's credit that in her delectable anthology of writings on this subject, she does not shirk the reality that life in many country houses was - and sometimes still is - dull, uncomfortable and, perhaps as a result of these two characteristics, dominated by drink. The drunkenness of Irish landowners has long been noted, even if discussion of the subject can be cloaked in euphemism; Mrs Delaney, for example, preferred to speak of a certain "heartiness" among big house owners.
The development and maintenance of their properties was also not necessarily a priority. Arthur Young, that severe critic of Ireland in the 1780s, declared that the country held many men with an annual income of £5,000 "who live in habitations that a man of £700 a year in England would disdain." He added that an "air of neatness, order, dress and proprete" was also lacking in many big houses. Writing from Ireland to Karl Marx in 1856, Friedrich Engels opined of the landowners he met: "These fellows ought to be shot." While lack of adequate funds, particularly as the 19th century progressed, may be advanced as a reason why so many country properties remained short of creature comforts, in addition there does seem to have been an inclination towards hard living among the landed class.
Even as early as 1788, the Chevalier de la Tocnaye, seeing the classical perfection of Castle Coole, newly-completed in Co Fermanagh for Lord Belmore, felt that "comfort has been almost entirely sacrificed to beauty . . . a house that is comfortable appears to me to be preferable to a palace which is not." English brides arriving in this country for the first time were frequently shocked at the conditions under which they were expected to live; one woman who moved to Kerry in the 1880s discovered that every time she wished to use a lavatory an elderly servant was deputed to escort her to a series of earth closets concealed among laurel bushes.
So understandably great was her dislike of these conditions that the first present she received from her husband "was a w.c. from Cork, which he had fitted up in time for Christmas." Not everyone was equally robust, of course; Daisy Fingall's wonderful memoirs Seventy Years Young recall that when Lord Clonmell went to stay at the notoriously under-heated Moore Abbey in Co Kildare, one of his heavy trunks burst open on the stairs and was discovered to be filled with coal. Even when money was available, it might be spent in peculiar ways. Lord Clonbrock, despairing at nine unmarried daughters, built an extension to his drawing-room so that they could sit there concealed behind a curtain. Possibly induced by the climate, a sense of isolation and the aforementioned fondness for alcohol, Irish landowners often acquired a reputation for eccentricity.
Sometimes this found an outlet in such charming follies as Lord Orrery's "Ivory Palace" at Caledon, constructed entirely of ox bones set in lime mortar with the knuckles facing outwards, or the mirrors set into the ceiling of Sir Richard Levinge's dining-room at Levington Park in order that he could better observe the "natural beauties" of female guests. Still more bizarre was Sir William Ponsonby Barker's habit of taking to bed each night a human hot water bottle, usually a maid from among the servants at Kilcooley Abbey, Co Tipperary. On one occasion the body odour from the woman chosen was so powerful that Sir William got up in the dark to fetch his eau de cologne, which he then splashed over the sleeping form; on waking the following morning, he discovered the poor maid covered in ink.
Inevitably, tales such as these are the most memorable but, spread over 17 thematic chapters and accompanied by photographs by her husband Thomas as well as a variety of other illustrative material, Valerie Pakenham has covered every aspect of life in the Irish big house from family life and ill-health to the political and economic problems of the 19th and 20th centuries. Some of her sources - Mrs Delaney, Maria Edgeworth, Somerville and Ross - will be familiar. However, she has also trawled through a wide variety of family archives and it is the presence of this fresh material which helps to ensure that The Big House in Ireland is an unmitigated delight.
Robert O'Byrne is an Irish Times journalist. His new book, Hugh Lane 1875- 1915: A Biography, is published by Lilliput