He also showed sympathy for others who had suffered losses. The following month he and a friend, Mr Singleton, donated money to the inmates of the Four Courts Marshalsea, a debtors’ prison, professing themselves ‘shocked at so many slaves in bondage, fallen victims to the folly of wrong-headed creditors’.30
At this time Whaley and Harriet were settling into a new property he had purchased in County Carlow: Font Hill, a country house and estate adjacent to the River Barrow.31 The house boasted several showpiece rooms including a scarlet room, a green room, a drawing room, a parlour and a billiard room. There were fine views across the country to the south, which along with the Barrow offered ample opportunities for hunting and fishing. However, Font Hill was in sore need of refurbishment and Whaley and Harriet were greatly discomfited by its ‘deplorable’ condition. Holes in the roof let in the rain and the walls were ‘running down with water’. There was only one dry room, in which the couple were sleeping, but this did not prevent them from catching bad colds. By the end of December work was underway, though Whaley was still waiting for the lead needed to repair the roof to arrive.32 Meanwhile he was keen to go hunting on his new estate and he asked Faulkner to send him cock shot, duck shot, partridge shot, snipe shot and buckshot.33 He also indulged a sweet tooth: the groceries ordered in by Harriet from Dublin included ‘three loafs of house keepers lump sugar … two stone of common brown sugar and three pound of the best chocolate and two pound of brown sugar candy’.34 But life at Font Hill was too sedate for Tom. Before long his mind was wandering elsewhere and soon his body would follow.
***
Thus far in his life Whaley had not done much to earn a place in the annals of history. He had gone on a chaotic grand tour, indulged in a series of liaisons, fallen prey to swindlers, become an MP, fought a duel, accumulated large debts and made a belated effort to settle down to the quiet life. While he had certainly had some adventures, his career was not so different from that of other moneyed and wayward young men in Ireland and Britain. But things were about to change. For years Whaley had longed to travel, not simply to the usual grand tour destinations of France and Italy, but to more remote and exotic lands. As a boy he had spent long hours drawing and colouring in maps of foreign regions and he seems to have immersed himself in tales of Captain James Cook, Sinbad the Sailor and other real or legendary explorers. Now, in early 1788, he began planning in earnest for his long-anticipated trip to the Mediterranean. Although he no longer owned a ship, that need not prevent him from securing a berth on a vessel. He had also decided to do more than simply visit the Middle Sea and its ports. He dreamt of travelling beyond its shores to a great walled city, the home of some of the world’s most ancient and sacred shrines. Like thousands of pilgrims, travellers and soldiers before him, Whaley was unable to resist the lure of Jerusalem.
Going by his own account, the whole thing originated in a simple quip over a meal ‘with some people of fashion’ at Leinster House, the Duke of Leinster’s magnificent townhouse on Kildare Street (see Plate 7):
the conversation turned upon my intended voyage, when one of the company asked me to what part of the world I meant to direct my course first, to which I answered, without hesitation, ‘to Jerusalem.’ This was considered by the company as a mere jest; and so, in fact, it was; but the subject still continuing, some observed that there was no such place at present existing; and others that, if it did exist, I should not be able to find it. This was touching me in the tender point: the difficulty of an undertaking always stimulated me to the attempt. I instantly offered to bet any sum that I would go to Jerusalem and return to Dublin within two years from my departure. I accepted without hesitation all the wagers that were offered me … (W, 34–5)
When exactly this happened is uncertain: it may have been as early as 1786, when the Freeman’s Journal remarked that ‘it would be well worth his while to undertake a voyage, even to Judea’ if he could get others to join in a wager with him.35 In July 1787 he had told his mother that he intended to set off for Jerusalem that autumn, but she feared he was too weak following his illness and hoped he would postpone the trip until the following year.36 She had got her wish, but by 1788 the expedition was back on the agenda with a vengeance and betting began in earnest.
The precise terms of the wager are unclear, but it seems that the odds were placed at two to one against Whaley completing the trip, so that he stood to gain £2 for every pound he staked.37 Also, the expedition had to be completed within a certain time. Whaley himself put it at two years (W, 35) but other reports suggest a more limited timeframe: twelve months, fourteen months,38 or that ‘he should visit Jerusalem in the space of 12 months … there is no limitation as to the time of his return’.39 The patrons of Daly’s Club were the heaviest subscribers to the wager but many other members of the gentry and nobility also put their names down, among them the Earl of Grandison. Known for turning himself out in fine velvet embroidered with jewels, Grandison was said to be ‘very ingenious in the art of wasting the most possible money in the least possible time’.40 Under the terms of his bet with Whaley, made on 22 February 1788, he promised to pay him £455 ‘upon his return to Dublin from Jeruzalem’.41 This was just one of many individual wagers and when all were added up the amount Whaley stood to gain ran into five figures. He put the total at around £15,000, but other reports specify a larger sum: anything between £20,000 and £40,000.42 Whatever it was, it was a huge amount, at least €6 million in today’s money. But then gambling was one of the great obsessions of the eighteenth century. Wagers were laid on all sorts of sporting events, from prize-fighting to horseracing, but in theory one could bet on the outcome of almost anything. ‘There were bets on lives … on politics, on others’ bets, on every vagary of public and private life.’43 The famous dandy Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674–1761) had once ridden naked on a cow for a wager, and in 1785 Lord Derby undertook to pay Lord Cholmondeley 500 guineas ‘whenever his lordship fucks a woman in a balloon one thousand yards from earth’.44 Whaley himself claimed that he once jumped from the second-floor window of a Dover hotel ‘over the roof of the mailcoach that was then standing near the door. By laying mattresses in the street to break the fall, I performed the feat and had the honour of winning the wager.’45 (W, 326–7)
Eccentric as these bets were, gambling on something as dangerous and unpredictable as a journey to Jerusalem was all but unheard of. This was despite the fact that the Holy City, once thought to be the centre of the world, had exerted a powerful magnetism for centuries. Christian pilgrims had flocked there since the early Middle Ages, and the Crusaders had captured and held the city for nearly a hundred years. But by the early fourteenth century the Crusaders were a spent force and over the centuries that followed the flow of European pilgrims to the Holy Land slowed dramatically. By the eighteenth century few Europeans – and even fewer Irish46 – were travelling to Jerusalem. In the present age of online booking it is hard to conceive just how out of bounds most people regarded Jerusalem. One might almost as well have proposed a trip to the South Pole. To travel there for a wager was unthinkable, but as ever Whaley was galvanised by the thought of doing something that had not yet been accomplished. Indeed it was a seminal moment in his life: had it not been for the bet and the expedition that followed, it is unlikely he would be remembered today. But his track record of shambolic misadventure and profligacy did not inspire confidence, and the journey that lay ahead was so fraught with hazards that many reckoned his chances of winning the bet to be slim indeed. They ‘never imagined that a young man of his volatile disposition, would seriously engage in such a distant expedition’.47
Other than his volatility and unreliability, there were plenty of reasons for expecting Whaley to fail. The most efficient way to get to Jerusalem was to sail through the Straits of Gibraltar and down the Mediterranean, but a voyage would take several weeks and was likely to be hindered by unfavourable weather. Violent storms were frequent and could easily wreck a ship and drown its occupants, while adverse winds and dead calms could hold up the progress of a vessel for days on end. Apart from that there was the lurking possibility of attack by pirates or the naval fleets of hostile powers. Even if Whaley survived the perils of the sea, dry land presented hazards of its own. As well as visiting Jerusalem he planned to make overland detours to other places of note, in particular the city of Constantinople (Istanbul). But most land routes were ill-equipped to accommodate travellers. Unfavourable terrain, bad roads and bad weather were to be expected, along with accommodation that ranged from poor to abysmal to non-existent. Meanwhile there