ought to be put into Dutch as the national motto. Then as to
thoroughness. Take the most notable example of it first. We have been
driving all round for some days, and have only once come to a slope up
which our horse had to walk. When we got to the top, there was the sea
on the other side, obviously even to the untrained eye at a considerably
higher level than the green fields through which we had just been
driving. Of course it is an old story, the Dutchman’s long war with the
German Ocean, but one never realises it till one comes to drive uphill
to the sea, and then it fairly takes one’s breath away. I was deeply
impressed, and took advantage of a chance that offered of talking the
subject over with an expert, who, like most Dutchmen, happily speaks
English fluently. Far from expressing any anxiety as to the land already
won, he informed me that they are seriously contemplating operations
against the Zuider Zee, and driving him permanently out of Holland! And
I declare I believe they will do it, and so win the right, alone, so far
as I know, amongst the nations, of saying to the sea: “Hitherto shalt
thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.”
One more example,--their thoroughness as to cleanliness. Not only
the pavements of the main thoroughfares, but all the side-streets are
thoroughly well washed and cleansed daily. When you walk out in the
early morning you might eat your breakfast anywhere with perfect comfort
on the sidewalks. We had to look for more than a quarter of an hour to
find a bit of paper in the streets, and the windows in the back streets,
even of houses to let, are rubbed bright and polished to a point which
must be the despair of the passing English housewife. Why are Dutch
house-maidens so incomparably more diligent and clean than English? Can
it be their Puritan bringing-up? In short, ten days’ residence here--I
have never before done anything but rush through the country on my way
east--seems likely to make me review old prejudices, and to exclaim, “If
I were not an Englishman, I would be a Dutchman!” One may read and enjoy
Motley without really appreciating this silent and “thorough” people,
or understanding how it came to pass that by them, in this tiny and
precarious corner of Europe, “the great deliverance was wrought out.”
“Poor Paddy-Land!”--I--6th Oct. 1894.
Six weeks ago, when I was considering where I should go for my autumn
holiday, some remarks of yours decided me “to give poor Paddy-land a
turn” (the phrase is not mine, but that of the first housemaid I came
across in Dublin). When one has been talking and thinking for the last
eight years of little else than that “distressful country,” it certainly
seemed a fair suggestion that one might as well go and look at it when
one got the chance. So I have scrambled round from Dublin to Kerry, and
from Cork to the Giant’s Causeway, and can bear hearty witness to the
soundness of your advice. For a flying visit of a few weeks, though
insufficient for any serious study of a people or country, may greatly
help one in judging both of them from one’s ordinary standpoint at home.
Of course, the first object of an Englishman who has not lost his head
must be to ascertain whether the Irish people really long for a separate
Parliament, and a severance of all connection with the rest of
the Empire. Well, sir, I was prepared to find that the men in the
street--car-drivers, boatmen, waiters, and fellow-travellers on the
railways--would, to a great extent, adapt their opinions to whatever
they might think would please their questioner, but certainly was quite
unprepared for the absolute unanimity with which I was assured that Home
Rule is dead. It is only the American-Irish, and especially the “Biddys
of New York,” so my informants protested, “who want to break up the
Union.” I was warned, however, as to the man in the street. “You must
remember that our people are full of imagination, and you must take
off a large discount from all they tell you; but you’ll always find
a groundwork of fact at the bottom of their stories.” A good piece of
advice, which a professional friend in Dublin started me with, and which
I found to be true enough, except that where local politics or the land
came in, the groundwork of fact was apt to be too minute to be easily
discerned. Take, as an example, a story which was told me on the spot
by a thoroughly trustworthy witness. Towards the end of Mr. Forster’s
Chief-Secretaryship a sensation message was flashed to New York that a
Government stronghold had been taken by the Invincibles, the garrison
having surrendered with all the guns and stores. This announcement
produced a liberal response in dollars from the other side, particularly
from “the Biddys of New York.” Now for the “groundwork of fact”
underlying this superstructure. The Government have, it seems, on
their hands a number of Martello towers on the southern coast which are
useless for military purposes. A band of some dozen “bhoys,” headed by
a notorious Invincible, came out of Cork one summer evening and summoned
the garrison of one of these Martello towers. The garrison (an
elderly pensioner), who was at tea with his wife and children, wisely
surrendered at discretion; whereupon the patriots took possession of
the single cannon and some old muskets and ammunition, which latter they
carried off next morning, when they abandoned the tower and cannon on
the approach of the police. But though the groundwork of fact as to the
condition of the Home Rule agitation may be infinitesimal, there is very
serious apprehension still on the Land Question, upon which I found
it difficult to draw the man in the street. I was fortunate enough,
however, to come across several resident landlords and professional men,
both Catholic and Protestant, who, one and all, look with the gravest
distrust at the operation of recent land legislation. The Commissioners
who administer these Acts have, unfortunately, the strongest interest in
prolonging the present state of uncertainty. Their appointments will end
with the cessation of appeals by tenants for further reductions of
rent, which, under the circumstances, does not seem likely to come about
before the landlords’ interest has been pared down bit by bit till it
touches prairie-value. The present utter confusion and uncertainty is
at any rate a striking object-lesson as to the dangers of meddling with
freedom of contract by Acts of Parliament.
When I landed in Ireland, I was under the impression--for which I think
you, sir, and perhaps the late Lord Beaconsfield, with his dictum
about the “melancholy ocean,” were responsible--that there is a note of
sadness underlying the superficial gaiety of the Irish character, as is
the case with most Celts. Well, whether it be from natural incapacity,
and that each observer only brings with him a limited power of seeing
below the surface in such matters, in any case I wholly failed to
discern any such characteristic in Central or South Ireland, though
there may be a trace of it perhaps in the North, where, by the way,
they are not Celts. On the contrary, the remark of a friendly and
communicative Killarney carman, “Shure, sir, we always try to get on
the sunny side of the bush, like the little birds,” seemed to me
transparently true. And next to this desire for the sunny side of the
bush, a happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth temper struck me as the prevailing
characteristic, as Sir Walter saw it when he wrote “Sultan Solomon’s
Search after Happiness.” Look at the national vehicle, the outside
car--far more national and popular than our hansom. Did any race ever
invent a conveyance so easy to mount and dismount from, or which offers
the same chances of being shot off at every street corner or turn in the
road? If any reader doubts, let him go over to the next horse-show at
Dublin, and watch the crowd breaking up at the end of the show. The
roads into the city are certainly unusually broad, but the sight of a
dozen jaunting-cars coming along, two or three abreast, as hard as their
horses can trot, the driver lolling carelessly, with a loose rein, on
one side, and a couple of Irishmen on the other, is a sight to make
the Saxon “sit up,” though he may be accustomed to the fastest and most
reckless West End hansoms. Like one of your recent correspondents, I
could distinguish natives from visitors, as each of the latter had a
tight hold of the bar--a precaution which the native scorned. I managed
to extract from an enthusiastic admirer--a young Irish subaltern who
had ridden on them all his life--the confession that he had left a car
involuntarily (or, _Anglid_, had been shot out) three times in the last
eighteen months; but then, as he explained, he always fell on his feet!
I was touched again and again by the almost pathetic craving for
English appreciation,--quite as strong, I think, as, and certainly
much pleasanter than, that of our American cousins. I was exploring the
Killarney Lakes, in the first-rate four-oared boat of a cadet of the
MacGrillicuddy family, who, with his English wife, exercises a very
delightful hospitality almost under the shadow of “The Reeks,” which
bear his name. It was a perfect day, the changing lights and tints on
mountains and woods and lakes being more delicately lovely than any I
could recall, except, perhaps, at the head of the Lake of Geneva. We
had been talking of the Scotch lakes, and I could not help saying, “Why,
this beats Loch Katrine and Ellen’s Isle out of the field.”
“Ah,” said our host, with a sigh, “if only Sir Walter Scott had been an
Irishman!” and then he went on to speak of the neglect of Ireland by the
Royal Family and English governing people--e.g. Lord Beaconsfield had
never set foot in her, and Mr. Gladstone only once, for an hour or
two, to receive the freedom of Dublin. But why had the Queen made her
favourite home in Scotland, and left poor Ireland out in the cold?
Why did the English flock to Scotch rivers and moors and golf-links in
crowds every autumn when only a stray sportsman or tourist found his way
to Killarney or Connemara or Donegal? It was all owing to the Wizard of
the North, who had made Scotland enchanted ground.
Without ignoring other and deeper causes, I think one cannot but feel
what a difference it would have made if Sir Walter had been Irish. The
Siege of Derry is a more heroic and pathetic story than any in Scotch
annals of the struggle for the Stuarts, and the genius which has made
us intimate friends of the Baron of Bradwardine and Dugald Dalgetty, of
Dandie Dinmont, Edie Ochiltree, Jeanie Deans, Cuddie and Mause Headrigg,
and a dozen other Scotch men and women, would surely have found as good
materials for character-painting among the Irish peasantry. But the
speculation, though interesting, is too big to deal with at the end of a
paper.
“Poor Paddy-Land!”--II
I suppose every one expects to find Ireland the land of the
unlooked-for. I did, at any rate, but was by no means prepared for
several of the surprises which greeted me. For instance, the best
arranged, and for its size and scope the most interesting, National
Gallery I have ever seen. It is only forty years old (incorporated in
1854), a date since which one would have thought it scarcely possible to
get together genuine specimens of all the great schools of art, from the
well “picked-over” marts of England and the Continent. But the feat has
been accomplished, mainly, I believe, by the entire devotion and
fine taste and judgment of the late director, Mr. Henry E. Doyle. His
untimely death in the spring of this year has left a blank, social and
artistic, which it will be hard to fill; but happily his great work for
Irish art was done, and all that his successors will have to do will be
to follow his lead faithfully. Irish Art owes much to his family, for he
was the son of H. B., and the younger brother of the immortal “Dicky,”
while, I believe, Mr. Conan Doyle is his nephew.
But it is not the general collection of pictures, remarkable as that is,
which differentiates the Irish from other national galleries known to
me. It is the happy arrangement which has set apart a fourth of the
whole space for a collection of portraits, and authentic historical
pictorial records, comprising not only the portraits of eminent Irishmen
and Irishwomen, but also of statesmen and others who were politically
or socially connected with Ireland, or whose lives serve in any way
to illustrate her history, or throw light on her social or literary or
artistic records. I think I may safely venture the assertion--for I
spent the greater part of two afternoons in this historical and portrait
department--that there is Scarcely a man or woman, from the time of
Elizabeth to that of O’Connell and Lord Melbourne, of whom one would be
glad to know more, with whom one does not leave it, feeling far better
acquainted. And then they are so admirably and often pathetically
grouped, e.g. Charles I., Cromwell, and R. Cromwell, on a line, all full
of character, and Strafford hard by, with the look of “thorough” on his
brow and mouth as no other portrait I have ever seen has given. Then
there are “Erin’s High Ormonde,” Sir Walter Raleigh, by Zuccaro,
painted between his two imprisonments, and coming down later,
Lords Wellesley and Hastings, and groups of great nobles and
Lords-Lieutenant. For fighting men, William III. as a boy; Walker, the
defender of Derry; the Duke, the Lawrences, Lord Gough, and a score
of other gallant Irishmen. The terrible Dean stands out amongst the
literary men, and near him Sir R. Steele and Sterne, and (_longo
intervallo_, except on shelves) Tom Moore, Croker, Lever, etc. Then come
the “patriots” of all schools: Lord E. Fitzgerald, and Grattan, and E.
Hudson, Secretary of the United Irishmen in 1784; Wolfe Tone, and
Daniel O’Connell; half a dozen Ponsonbys of different ranks, and several
pictures of Burke, one of which especially (said to be by Angelica
Kauffmann) is, to my mind, quite invaluable. Burke stands upright, his
side-face towards you, sublime, as he looked, I am sure, when he was
making his immortal speech at Bristol. By his side, at right angles,
so that you get his full face, is Charles Fox, one hand on Burke’s
shoulder, the other on a table on which he is leaning. You can hear him
saying as plainly as if you were there one hundred years ago, “Now, my
dear Edmund, if you say that in the House, you’ll upset the coach.” Fox
has evidently dined well, and Burke is fasting from all but indignation.
The portraits of women are as interesting, such as Miss Farren,
afterwards Lady Derby; Mrs. Norton, by Watts, which is worth a visit to
Dublin to see, etc. But I must not run on, and will only note one lesson
I carried away. There are two portraits, and three engravings from
portraits, by N. Hone, R.A., an Irishman, but one of our original Royal
Academicians. You will remember what Peter Pindar says of that painter
in his _Odes to the Royal Academicians_”:--
And as for Mr. Nathan Hone,