Tom Lefroy Quote Week 13

This week’s quote is taken from The Memoir of Chief Justice Lefroy (pp. 216-217) when he related the extent of a devastating hurricane of 6 January 1839 to his wife, Mary Paul. The excerpt showed how Tom always tried to see the brighter side of an event, for the hurricane indeed destroyed at least 4,600 trees in the park and the surrounding woods.

Carrig-glas,

April 3^rd, 1839

You will be glad to hear that I have recovered somewhat from my first anguish, and am suffering myself to be by degrees led into the dream that though Carrig-glas has decidedly lost all its peculiar beauty (at least what constituted its beauty in my eyes) new charms will be unfolded when the wreck and ruin which now strews the pleasure grounds shall be removed, for we shall get views of the distant woods that we had not before, and of the only mountain we can boast of in the county. You can form no idea of the desolation which the storm has made; I could not cross the pleasure-ground from the heaps of trees, but am obliged to walk round to survey the stupendous pile of ruin. A few solitary trees have been preserved by the shelter of the heaps which had fallen around them, but, strange to say, comparatively few of the single trees standing out in the more exposed parts of the demesne have been blown down, and almost all the destruction has been either in the woods or close to the house. I am glad dear A—is not to come here for some time. The new house will be all that a house need be, and I trust will be covered in this autumn, so as to make some compensation for the loss of other beauties before he sees Carrig-glas again.

As someone who had gone through a Category 3 Cyclone earlier this year, I can somewhat relate to what Tom experienced with the hurricane. Seeing the trees fell down like that was a sad sight indeed, my town lost almost 6,000 trees altogether. But Tom lost 4,600 trees just in one park, so Carrig-glas must have stored a huge amount of tree collection before the hurricane hit.

Pic: trees as the victim of the 1938 Hurricane that hit Long Island, USA (obviously I cannot find pictures of the 1839 hurricane that hit Ireland...)