THE question of whether personality is formed by nature or nurture has occupied psychologists and philosophers for generations. Personally, I’m hoping it’s the latter. Because if biology really is destiny, it seems that my fate is to be a violent, miserly, bad-tempered snobbish dog-killer – at least if the work of the 19th-century writer William Carleton is to be believed.
Like most people, my ancestry isn’t particularly glamorous. My father knows nothing of his family tree beyond his own grandparents, labourers from north Dublin. But my mother’s family, the Murphys, were a bit more well-documented. My maternal grandfather grew up in Phibsboro, but his father had come to Dublin from Co Louth, where the family had lived and farmed for generations. And in the 1980s, my great-aunt Peggy did some family research and discovered that in the early 19th century, the novelist William Carleton was briefly employed as a tutor by our Murphy ancestors.
It wasn’t until recently, however, that I read what Carleton wrote about them in his autobiography. The Murphys make their first appearance in Carleton’s memoir just after his detailed description of the local gibbets, which more or less set the tone for the subsequent account of his life with Piers Murphy and his family. The author was not impressed with Piers’s unnamed wife, my multiple-great-grandmother. “[She] was rather a fine woman, with a face which would have been a good one, were it not for the ludicrous expression of lofty and pompous consequence which was stamped upon it.” Mrs Murphy was apparently from “a respectable . . . though reduced family” and had been educated at a convent, which she boasted about constantly.
“To anyone of mind or intellect, her conversation, apeing the polish of a high-born lady, was an insufferable exhibition,” wrote Carleton. “I dreaded to meet her; the more so as she looked upon it as a high gratification to make me the recipient of her egregious vanity.” Mrs Murphy’s notions of gentility didn’t extend to treating all her relatives well; her young niece lived with the family and superintended the washing, and Carleton writes that “the business she went through was nothing short of slavery – and most inhuman slavery.”
But her husband was even worse. If she was a sort of Mrs Bennett, Piers was a cross between Heathcliff and a member of the Starkadder family in Cold Comfort Farm. He was, Carleton wrote, “the most overbearing and most brutally tempered man I ever met – in fact, a low-minded, ignorant ruffian. From morning till night his voice was never heard about the place or in the fields, except in a loud tone of abuse.” But roaring at his staff wasn’t his only bad quality. “Murphy became almost insane if any trespass was committed upon his property. He seemed like a madman during these paroxysms. If a strange dog, for instance, came into his farmyard . . . he would deliberately take down his gun and shoot him on the spot, even when he knew him to belong to some neighbour. This made him exceedingly unpopular, as it was but natural it should.” Indeed. At one stage in Carleton’s account Murphy shoots his own dog by mistake, which sends him into further tantrums.
Eventually Carleton had enough and announced that he was leaving. Murphy was enraged and refused to give him the last of his wages. “ ‘Not a penny,’ [Murphy] replied, ‘to any dishonest scoundrel who breaks his engagement – unless the amount of it might assist him to the gallows’.” Carleton “instantly knocked him down” and marched off, and that was the end of his association with my family.
I DON’T REALLY believe that any of us are defined by our ancestry. But I can’t help worrying that I might have inherited some of these people’s unpleasant qualities. I do have a hot temper, so is it only a matter of time before I’m going into paroxysms of rage if anyone walks into my garden? And I’ve been informed that when I’m not thinking of anything in particular, my face naturally looks a bit snooty. Have I just inherited my multiple- great-grandmother’s “ludicrous expression of lofty and pompous consequence”? Maybe she couldn’t help it either.
At least Carleton writes that “the children were amiable little creatures, and by no means deficient in intellect”. And I do genuinely admire my ancestors for educating their daughters, which certainly wasn’t the norm at the time. It’s undeniable, however, that the family doesn’t come out of Carleton’s writing well. But then, neither does he, as he mocks the idea of teaching girls and, with faux-humility, recalls all the wonderful things the Murphys’ tenants said about him, including their claim that “that neither Pierce [sic] Murphy nor his proud piece of a wife were fit to wipe my shoes.”
Luckily, my family tree isn’t all random violence and expressions of pompous consequence. Auntie Peggy also had a diary from the 18th century, which revealed that in January 1752, an earlier Piers Murphy married Kitty Smith of Corcreagh, Co Louth, “in the summer house in the garden of Corcreagh House, for then one of them, Miss Smith, a Protestant, and Piers Murphy a Catholic, whatever priest married them if he was known he would be prosecuted and the law at him that he would be hanged or transported for life for so doing [sic]”. I may be descended from a bunch of violent snobs, but also from a couple who were so determined to be together that they defied the penal laws. Of course, for all I know Kitty and Piers celebrated their 1752 nuptials by shooting a few neighbourhood dogs. But I hope not.