eighteenth century it was a near universal pastime. ‘This obsession of the age played itself out most ferociously … in the drawing rooms and private clubs’, where members gambled feverishly over cards and dice.12 The most famous Irish club was Daly’s Club on Dame Street, a ‘mecca for gamblers’.13 Daly’s was frequented at all hours and its candles burned behind drawn blinds even in the daytime. It had become one of Whaley’s favourite haunts and his losses there were such that his brother John, hardly a paragon of restraint himself, declared himself ‘very sorry’ that ‘Tom’s itch for gambling’ continued. ‘I think if he goes on much longer he will not have a farthing left.’14 Yet even in the midst of his money worries Whaley showed compassion for others, notably his one-time bearleader William Wray, whose health and fortunes had declined steadily in the two years since the grand tour. In May 1786, when Wray was destitute and near death, Whaley had contributed a significant sum to support him. Then, in December, he provided a Miss Katherine Wray (probably William’s daughter or sister) with an annuity which he insisted on renewing even when he himself was in financial distress.15
The following year did not bring much change in Whaley’s fortunes. He was now in control of what was left of his inheritance but as expected it did not meet his needs and he still required around £2,000 to pay off his debts. Frustrated that rents due on his Carlow and Armagh estates had not been collected, he blamed Faulkner for procrastinating: ‘I cannot help remarking that those things are generally the agents faults.’ He even tried to borrow £1,000 from his sister’s father-in-law, Sir Annesley Stewart, who turned down the request unequivocally: ‘I could no more raise a £1,000 at present than I could a million. I was in hopes you were free from all embarrassments except the ship and am very much concerned indeed to find it otherwise.’16 Then, in May, there came a reprieve: all but one of his creditors agreed to give him ‘time sufficient, to raise the mon[e]y’ to pay them. Welcome as this was, the constant anxiety was making Whaley despondent. ‘Would to God, I were as old and as fat as you’, he remarked to Samuel Faulkner, in not altogether complimentary terms. ‘I am sure I should then be as happy[.] at present I am poor and miserable.’17 If he remained in Dublin frequenting places like Daly’s he would only add to that poverty and he decided, or allowed himself to be persuaded, to spend the summer with Harriet at Faulkner’s country retreat, Fort Faulkner in County Wicklow.
The three-bay Georgian house still stands in an idyllic stretch of rolling countryside near the small village of Ballinaclash.18 Faulkner had acquired the house and adjoining lands around 1780 and placed them in the care of his steward, John Donnelly. By early 1787 William Norwood had moved to Fort Faulkner, hoping the country air would help him recover from a bad cough (in fact he was in the early stages of consumption).19 Around the middle of May Whaley and Harriet arrived with an entourage of servants. Favoured by a spell of particularly fine weather, they were much taken with the place. On 22 May Tom reported that he and Norwood had gone ‘a ferreting, and we kill[e]d 6 brace of rabbits, and … all the trout in the river’. On another occasion he claimed to have ‘had the best sport I have yet had in the river’, catching ‘one trout eleven inches long’. It is easy to picture him holding up the trout in a classic fisherman’s pose, his still boyish (though pox-scarred) face radiant with pride. Harriet, too, was enchanted by Fort Faulkner, preferring it ‘even to London’ and on 2 June Whaley declared that they were getting comfortable there. ‘I think upon my soul that I have not been so happy these many months.’20 He seemed to be reaping the benefit of the improved diet and surroundings. ‘He takes the goats whey every morning and exercises greatly after it’, Norwood reported to Faulkner, ‘so that you would almost already say he has got a look quite different from that you have seen him have this five years past’. Even the habitually dour clerk conceded that ‘we all seem as happy as we could wish ourselves’.21
These blissful days would not last. At least one person was not happy: John Donnelly. The steward was irked by the damage that Whaley’s servants, horses and livestock (the servants seem to have brought along a cow) did to the land and complained that ‘the lawn is very much hurt with dogs and p[e]ople trampling it. also I have a most damnable heavy stock on my little pasture[.] theirs two mare … and one cow of Mr. Whaleys two horses and two cow of yours that is eight head all on the gorse bogg for I may be damd. if I suffer them in the waste land’.22 He also had little time for Harriet, who he referred to as ‘the English whore’. Whaley, however, had more serious things to worry about than the irascible steward. On 6 June he found himself suffering from ‘a very great pain in his head’,23 and soon afterwards he was laid up with a fever. Though he was prone to bouts of illness throughout his life, this was one of the worst. Following a prolonged period of indolence and self-indulgence, his system may have reacted to the sudden change in lifestyle and diet.
At first Whaley’s condition gave serious cause for concern. After someone wisely treated him with Peruvian bark, a powerful anti-fever medicine,24 he improved and by early July had ‘every favourable appearance of a speedy recovery’. Harriet hoped he would be able to leave his sickbed: ‘this day we mean to get him up, and have got an arm chair for that purpose … I am happy to say I believe all danger is now over.’ At first Harriet had not known that Whaley was ill: somehow, and for some reason, his ‘friends’ (meaning, presumably, Norwood, acting on instructions) had contrived to keep her in the dark about it. ‘What reason I was not inform’d of it I cannot tell,’ she exclaimed. ‘But … it hurt me much as Mr. Whaley is my only friend.’ She knew he was the only reason his family and friends tolerated her presence, and she was understandably exasperated that they saw her as his ‘whore’ and nothing else. ‘Had anything bad happen[e]d him, they need not have been allarm’d[.] I should not have been any trouble to them while I had my own free country to go to, where the people are not quite so illiberal in their ideas as they are in Ireland.’25 Harriet was a kind-hearted soul. She knew well what it was to be a woman in vulnerable circumstances and had tried to help others less well-off than herself. Before leaving for Wicklow she had asked Faulkner to look out for her maidservant, ‘a very sober honnest woman and the best servant I ever had in Dublin’, who for some reason had suffered opprobrium from the other domestics.26
Whaley recovered slowly and hung on at Fort Faulkner for a few more months, indulging himself at his agent’s expense. Despite this he believed that the salary of £300 a year he was paying Faulkner to look after his estates was too generous, and in August he told Norwood he was determined to reduce it. The clerk reported to Faulkner,
I asked him did he know what it was he paid you he said he did answering £300 a year. To which I replied Sir. look through all your accounts and see has my uncle ever charged you a farthing for traveling expences. and which every agent in Ireland is allowed. Now Sir said I considering all this he has not over £100 a year for his trouble. We have had a great deal of conversation on this subject and I find he is determined to deduct something off the am[oun]t. of what you have at present by the receipt of the rents. Now my dear uncle who is at the bottom of this I cannot say, nor is it possible for you or I to find out at present…
Norwood was convinced that some ‘deceitfull and ill minded people’, determined to harm Faulkner, had put Whaley up to this. ‘I realy am of opinion there is some one at his elbow underminding you.’ He advised his uncle to hold the agency even at a reduced rate rather than satisfy their malice. ‘Poor young man he is foolish and ill advised at present but that will have an end.’27 Whether it would or not remained to be seen, but Norwood was right about one thing: Whaley was indeed susceptible to the wiles of the ‘deceitfull and ill minded’, and they would cause him considerable distress in the years that lay ahead.
For the present, Fort Faulkner had given him a taste for the rustic lifestyle and he began planning to settle down as a country gentleman. Within the coming couple of years he hoped to put aside ‘ten or twelve thousand pounds with which please God I will settle at home and laugh at the world’.28 Anne Richardson was delighted to hear of her son’s new plan and hoped that he would start farming ‘and lead the life of an honest country gentleman, he will find more real satisfaction in it, than in all the scenes of dissipation he has already been engaged in’. She dreamily anticipated that he might ‘turn his thoughts to matrimony and get some thousands with a good wife’.29 Indeed Whaley seemed to be transforming into a responsible and charitable member of society. In November he cancelled his membership