Questions of breeding were very important to Myles, although an innate modesty usually prevented him mentioning how extraordinarily well connected he was with the great families of Europe and beyond. When enemies questioned the aristocracy of even some of his ancestors, however, all restrain could be cast aside - FRANK McNALLY.
WE ARE now entered into the murk of autumn. I do not apprehend this fact by espying the customary carpet of brown loaves (nay, leave it, printer – it is a pretty image of yours) as I ride in the bois. The fact is that the Knights are drawing in, now is curtain close drawn, now doth the viper tongue renew his talent.
For truth to tell, the customary autumn campaign of whispered calumny and detraction directed against my person by beings eaten up by self-interest has again opened. I am not unaware of what these creatures say, not ignorant that they have launched an attack, as baseless as it is dastardly, on the good name and reputation of my family.
The Irish people will by now be well aware of the custom, observed scrupulously by me over the last couple of decades, of studiously ignoring the cowardly and bullying menaces of the hired thugs and desperadoes, commissioned – nay, even equipped with cudgels – by parties in high places to reduce or to endeavour to reduce by every means in their power, be these fair or fowl (stet), the spirit, the high courage and resolve which none can attempt to deny have always characterised not only my public life but my conduct of those more personal affairs where honour, delicacy and the sanctity of the home tend rather to be luxurious pleasures than the stern duties they inevitably become when applied to the conduct of the affairs of state.
Just men throughout the length and breadth of this fair land must know how consistently I have wrapped the incorruptible flame of my probity and virtue in a mantle of unaffected indifference; all must bear testimony to the unassailable quality of my conduct throughout these years.
But, in spite of obvious temptations, I have always refused to regard myself as being other than ordinary flesh and blood; I have conceived this foible to be my right and my privilege, small guerdon for my not inconsiderable services to the dear land of my adoption – and so, the time has come when my mere human nature asserts itself so strongly that I can no longer pretend not to be affronted.
I can not long stand calmly by. Insults levelled at myself must, I hold, of their very nature be false and ridiculous, but offence offered to my family is another matter and I have the humility to regard it as a matter even graver.
This then is the occasion when I no longer choose to disdain the challenge, to reject the smarting affront of the caitiff’s glove, to deny myself, to deny the shades of those who have gone before me, the satisfaction of entering the lists to break a lance in a cause which I am pleased to regard as being lofty, worthy and glorious.
My people have settled in this town of Dublin (and I do not exclude the financial connotation of “settled) for the past four or five centuries, but that is not to say that the unity of the family, the close association with our cousins the Gaplinsteins in Luxembourg, with the Sicilian Marchese Coplinino, the duc de St Gauplain in Caen, the Earl of Cruiskeen and Llawn in Scotland and the Duke of Copeland in England – that is not for a moment to suggest that the close communion has ever for a moment been disturbed.
We are all part of the one great European family – our common ancestor we hold to be that stalwart hero of pre-Imperial Rome, T. Coplinius Miles, four times consul, seven times censor and subsequently, with his uncles Romulus and Remus, deified under the emperors.
The exploits of collateral branches of the family under the Comnenan dynasty, with the Ming people, with Genghis Khan, with Ivan the Fourth, these are details which must await their due meed [stet] of praise in another place and at another time.
But that, in brief, is the story of my family. What then can I say about the muttered accusation which was brought to my ear last Friday, that my grandfather’s people – forsooth! — were tinkers in the Liffey Valley! I can but cry: it is a lie, my lords, and I do not for a moment hesitate categorically to stigmatize it as such. These boys were not tinkers – they were thinkers. Of my link with the Great O’Neill, more anon.
To celebrate the work of Myles na gCopaleen, The Irish Timeswill print one of his Cruiskeen Lawn columns each day during October