BANTRY.
The village of Bantry, in County Cork, some forty miles from Cork, is
owned and controlled by My Lord Bantry, who is, or, at least, ought to
be, one of the richest men in Ireland. Whether he is or not depends
entirely upon how expensively he lives in Paris, and how much
extravagance he commits there and in London. He certainly screws enough
money out of the unfortunates born upon the land stolen from them by
English Kings and given to him, to make him a richer man than
Rothschild, if he has taken care of it. But I don't suppose he has.
Probably the magnificent estate, robbed from the people, is mortgaged to
its full value, and he supports himself by keeping his so-called tenants
down to a point, in food, shelter, and clothes, that a Camanche Indian
would turn up his nose at. Indeed, were the most degraded Piute
compelled to accept life on the terms that My Lord Bantry imposes upon
the men he robs, he would paint his face, sing his death song, go out
and kill somebody, and die with great pleasure.
[Illustration: A STREET IN AN IRISH VILLAGE.]
[Sidenote: BANTRY VILLAGE.]
Bantry is a pleasant village; that is, some of its streets are pleasant,
and it has the most beautiful bay on the coast. Sailing across the most
lovely body of water I have ever seen, is the famous watering place,
Glengariff, which is the most delicious spot of land in the world. And
Bantry itself has much in its favor, all marred by the abject poverty of
nine-tenths of its inhabitants.
Leaving the main street, which is, like all the streets of Irish
villages, made up of small stores, or shops, as they are called, you
walk up a rather steep hill, pass through a crooked street, and you find
yourself in the midst of the regulation Irish cabins.
[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE.]
Miserable structures of stones piled one upon the other, not even daubed
with plaster, with no windows, as a rule, though the more pretentious
ones have a single pane of glass in the wall somewhere. However, as that
pane is almost invariably broken, its principal use is the extra
ventilation it affords.
The cabin is the same size as those on farms, say from ten to twelve
feet wide by fifteen or sixteen in length. In the country, however, they
do have the space above, to the thatched roof, but land is more valuable
in the villages, and My Lord Bantry's expenses in London and Paris are
enormous. He must get more money out of the villagers, and he makes two
stories out of the wretched hovel, and by crowding in two families makes
double rent. The first floor is not above five feet six inches in
height, and the upper is a good foot shorter. In neither floor can an
ordinary man stand upright.
We went up the miserable stairs in one of them, and gained the still
more miserable den above. It was more like a coffin than a room, and the
idea of a coffin was brought forcibly to the mind as you glanced at the
wretched occupants. On a miserable bed of dried leaves, covered with
potato sacks on the one side, was the emaciated form of a man dying of
starvation and consumption. He had about forty-eight hours of life in
him. Upon my word I felt happy to see he was so near death. For having
an excellent reputation, having always been a good man, he is certain to
go, after death, where there would not be the slightest possible chance
of meeting My Lord Bantry or his agent. In the other corner was a flat
stone, upon which a consumptive fire of peat was burning, the smoke
filling the room. Huddled around this fire were five children, under the
watchful eye of a very comely woman. The children were barefooted and
stockingless, and clad in the most deplorable rags, while the mother,
also barefooted, was clothed in the regular cotton slip, without a
particle of underclothing of any kind or description. And into that
garret, poor as it was, came other women, not clothed sufficiently to be
decent, to boil their potatoes at the wretched fire. They have a
practice of exchanging fires in this way, that none shall be wasted.
"What do you pay for this apartment?"
"Ten-pence a week, sor!"
"Are you in arrears for rent?"
"Yis sor. He (pointing to her husband) has been sick, sor, for months,
sor, and cud not worruk."
"What will you do if he dies?"
"We shall be put out, sor."
This with no burst of anguish, with no special tone of anger or
manifestation of emotion. To be "put out" is the common lot of the Irish
laborer, and Irish wife, and they expect it.
[Sidenote: HOW MY LORD BANTRY LIVES.]
And within a mile of that wretched spot, of that dying man and starving
children, My Lord Bantry has a most beautiful castle, luxurious
furniture, filled with pampered flunkies, his stable crowded with the
most wonderful horses, and his table groaning under the weight of the
luxuries of every clime.
[Illustration: FREE SPEECH IN IRELAND--INTERDICTING A LAND LEAGUE
MEETING.]
Surely, not for ten pence a week will he tear this woman from the side
of her dead husband, and throw her, with her helpless children, out into
the cold and wet street?
Yes, but he will, though!
For this family is but one of many thousands on the land which a bad
King stole from the people who owned it. Were this the only case he
might relent; but should he do it in this case he would have to do it
for others, and ten pence a week from thousands aggregates a very large
sum, and My Lord Bantry's expenses are very high, for it costs money to
run a castle, and there is his house in London, his house in Paris, and
his house in Rome, and his houses the Lord knows where; and then his
yacht is rather expensive, as his officers and men must be paid, to say
nothing of the larder and wines necessary to entertain his friends; and
then there is the terrible expense of entertaining his friends from
London during the shooting season, and occasional losses at play, and
all that.
Clearly, the Widow Flanagan must either pay her rent or be pitched out
into the street to make room for some other widow who can pay, for a
while at least, and when she can't pay there are others who can.
It is needless to add that there is in Bantry Bay a splendid English
gunboat armed as in time of war, with burnished guns, with bombs of all
sort of explosive power, rifled guns, which would knock poor Bantry into
a cocked hat in ten minutes, with fine looking marines, armed to the
teeth, which, with the military on shore, would make it very warm for
the widow Flanagan and her friends, should they presume to interfere
with My Lord's land agent, and the bailiffs and the soldiers behind
them. The widow has nothing to do but to bow her head and submit, and
pray that some relief may come to her from somewhere. But where is it to
come from? Not from My Lord, for, as I said, he has his private expenses
to meet; not from his agent, for he was selected for his especial
fondness for pitching women and children into the street; not from
England, for England looks upon every country it has anything to do with
as either to be plundered or traded with; not from the peasantry about
them, for they are in the same boat with the widow.
[Sidenote: A LITTLE PATHOS.]
What becomes of her finally, I don't know. I am altogether too
soft-hearted to stay any length of time where such things are to be seen
every hour.
[Illustration: IN A BOG VILLAGE.]
A pathetic little scene took place in the widow's loft, which
illustrates something of Irish character. As I said the husband and
father was lying upon his wretched pallet, dying of consumption. The
youngest but one of the children was the most beautiful child I have
ever seen, a sweet little fairy, with long curly, blonde hair and black
eyes, built from the ground up, and with a face that a painter would
walk miles to sketch. She was a delicious little dream, a dainty bit of
humanity. True, she had nothing but rags upon her delightful little
figure, and true it was that her sweet little face was smeared with
dirt, and her little hands were as grimy as grimy could be, and her
little shapely bare legs were very red and somewhat pimply. But why not?
Clothes cannot be had for the children when the father works for ten
pence a day and is sick half the time, and nickel-plated bath-tubs and
scented soap are not to be expected in the top of a cabin in which you
cannot stand upright; and how can a child's face be kept clean where
there is no chimney, and where the room is so thick with peat smoke that
you may almost cut it with a knife, and a child that never had a pair
of shoes and stockings could hardly be expected to have white legs and
feet. The cold prevents that.
In our party was an American gentleman, who was blessed with an
abundance of boys, but no girls, and he and his wife had been
contemplating the adoption of a girl. Here was an opportunity to secure
not only a girl, but just the kind of a girl that he would have given
half his estate to be the father of. And so he opened negotiations.
An Irishman who knew him, explained to the father and mother that the
gentleman was a man of means, that his wife was an excellent, good
woman, and that the child would be adopted regularly under the laws of
the State in which he lived, and would be educated, and would rank
equally with his own children in the matter of inheritance, and all
that. In short, Norah would be reared a lady.
Then the American struck in. She, the mother, might select a girl to
accompany the child across the Atlantic, and the girl selected should go
into his family as the child's nurse, and the child should be reared in
the religion of its parents.
The father and mother consulted long and anxiously. It was a terrible
struggle. On the one hand was the child's advantage; on the other,
paternal and maternal love.
Finally a conclusion was arrived at.
"God help me," said the mother, "you shall have her. I know you will be
good to her."
Then the arrangements were pushed very briskly, and, with regular
American business-like vehemence. The girl selected to act as nurse was
the mother's sister, a comely girl of twenty. The American took the
child, and rushed out to the haberdasher's, and purchased an outfit for
her. He put shoes and stockings on her, which was a novel experience,
and a pretty little dress, and a little hat with a feather in it, and a
little sash, and all that sort of thing; and he procured shoes and
stockings for the elder girl, and a tidy dress, and a hat and shawl, and
so forth. And then he brought them back, instructing the mother that he
should leave with them for Cork the next morning at eleven, and that the
girl and the child should be dressed and ready to depart.
[Sidenote: A MOTHER'S LOVE.]
The next morning came, and the American went for his child. She was
dressed, though very awkwardly. The mother had never had any experience
in dressing children, and it was a wonder that she did not get the dress
wrong side up. But there she was, and the mother wailed as one who was
parting with everything that was dear to her, and the father lay and
moaned, looking from Norah to the American. Time was up. The mother took
the baby in her arms, and gave it the final embrace, and the long,
loving kiss; the father took her in his arms, and kissed her; the other
children looked on astounded, while the girl stood weeping.
[Illustration: "DROP THE CHILD!"]
"Good-bye!" said the American; "I will take good care of the baby," and,
taking her from the mother's arms, he started for the door. There was a
shriek--the woman darted to him just as he was closing the door, and
snatched the baby from him.
"Drop the child!" said the father. "You can't have her for all the money
there is in Ameriky."
"No, sor!" ejaculated the mother, half way between fainting and
hysterics. "I can't part wid her!"
And she commenced undressing the baby.
"Take back yer beautiful clothes--give me back the rags that was on
her--but ye can't have the child!"
And the girl--she commenced undressing, too; for she did not want to
obtain clothes under false pretenses. But the American stopped the
disrobing.
"It's bad for the child," he said, "but somehow I can't blame you. You
are welcome to the clothes, though."
And he left as fast as he could, and I noticed he was busy with his
handkerchief about his eyes for some minutes. And I am sorry to say he
indulged in a very profane soliloquy, 'till he got out of the street,
and his objurgations were not leveled at the father and mother.
What became of the clothes I know not, but I presume that, when the
husband died and went where landlords cease from troubling and the weary
are at rest, the widow pawned them to pay the rent, and save the dead
body of her husband from being pitched into the street with herself and
children; and that when My Lord Bantry saw her name on the list, as
paid, he remarked:
"Ah! the Widow Flanagan has paid her rent. I thought she would! What is
necessary with these Irish, is to be firm with them. By the way, is she
paying enough?"
And after ascertaining that the wine had been properly _frappéd_, he
went to his dinner, and the gunboat, and the royal constabulary felt
relieved.
It is a pleasant thing for all concerned to have the Widow Flanagan pay
her rent promptly, and make no fuss about it, except, of course, for the
Widow Flanagan. But she, being an Irish widow, is not to be considered.
But if there is a God of justice and mercy, there will come a time when
she will be considered, and then it will be made very warm for My Lord
Bantry, his agent, the captain of the gunboat, the officers of the
soldiery, and the whole brood of oppressors. There is a Court at which
the Widow Flanagan can appear on equal terms with her landlord, but it
is not in Ireland.
[Sidenote: A RELIGIOUS OPINION.]
[Illustration: NATURE'S LOOKING GLASS.]
If I ever leaned toward the doctrines taught by the Universalists, a
contemplation of the system of Bantryism has entirely and completely
convinced me that they are erroneous. If there is not a lake of fire and
brimstone, a very wide and very deep, and very hot one there ought to
be, and when the British House of Lords meet there, there will always
be a quorum. And My Lord will lift up his eyes to the widow Flanagan and
beg for a drop of water to cool his parched tongue. But he won't get it.
He don't deserve it.
It is impossible to make an American comprehend the width, depth and
breadth of Irish misery until he has seen it with his own eyes. No other
man's eyes are good for anything in this matter, for the reason that
nothing parallel exists this side of the water. And besides this the
writers for the stage and of general literature have most woefully
misrepresented the Irish man and woman, and very much to his and her
disadvantage.
The Irishman of the stage and novel is always a rollicking,
happy-go-lucky sort of a reckless fellow, with a short-tailed coat, red
vest and corduroy trowsers, woolen stockings and stout brogans; with a
bottle of whisky peeping out of his pocket, a blackthorn shillelah in
his fist; always ready for a dance, or a fight, or for love-making, or
any other pleasant employment. There is always on his head a rather bad
hat, worn jauntily, however, and though he may be occasionally rather
short of food, he manages always to get enough to be fat, sleek, and
rosy. And then he always has a laugh on his face, a joke on his lips,
and he goes through life with a perpetual "Hurroo."
[Illustration: THE IRISHMAN OF THE STAGE AND NOVEL.]
[Sidenote: THE REAL AND THE IDEAL.]
And Katy--she is always presented to us clad in a short woolen gown, her
shapely legs enclosed in warm red stockings; and she had a bright red
handkerchief about her neck, with good, comfortable shoes, and a
coquettish straw hat--a buxom girl, who can dance down any lad within
ten miles, and can "hurroo" as well as Pat, and a little better.
The Irish priest is always represented to us as a fat, sleek, jolly
fellow, who is constantly giving his people good advice but who
nevertheless is always ready to sing "The Cruiskeen Lawn," in a "rich,
mellow voice," before a splendid fire in the house of his parishioners,
with a glass of poteen in one hand and a pipe in the other, the company
joining jollily in the chorus. He is supposed to live in luxury from the
superstition of his people, and to have about as rosy a life as any man
on earth.
All these are lies.
The Irishman is the saddest man on the surface of the globe. You may
travel a week and never see a smile or hear a laugh. Utter and abject
misery, starvation and helplessness, are not conducive of merriment.
[Illustration: THE EVICTED IRISHMAN.]
The Irishman has not only no short-tailed coat, but he considers himself
fortunate if he has any coat at all. He has what by courtesy may be
called trowsers, but the vest is a myth. He has no comfortable woolen
stockings, nor is he possessed of the regulation stage shoes. He does
not sing, dance or laugh, for he has no place to sing, laugh and dance
in. He is a moving pyramid of rags. A man who cuts bog all day from
daylight to dark, whose diet consists of a few potatoes twice a day, is
not much in the humor for dancing all night, even were there a place for
him to dance in. And as for jollity, a man with a land agent watching
him like a hawk to see how much he is improving his land, with the
charitable intent of raising the rent, if by any possibility he can
screw more out of him, is not in the mood to laugh, sing, dance or
"hurroo." One might as well think of laughing at a funeral. Ireland is
one perpetual funeral. The ghastly procession is constantly passing.
There is unquestionably a vast fund of humor in the Irishman, which
would be delightful could it have proper vent. You hear faint tones of
it, as it is; but it is in the minor key, and very sad. It always has a
flavor of rack-rent in it, a taste of starvation, a suggestion of
eviction and death, by cold and hunger, on the road-side. It isn't
cheerful. I had much rather have the Irishman silent, than to hear this
remnant of jocularity which is always streaked with blood.
[Illustration: TO MARKET AND BACK FOR SIXPENCE.]
[Sidenote: SEVERAL DELUSIONS.]
The Irish girl is always comely, and, properly clothed and fed, would be
beautiful; still she is comely. Irish landlordism has not been
sufficient to destroy her beauty, although it has done its best. But she
has no gown of woolen stuff--a cotton slip, without underclothing of any
kind, makes up her costume. The comfortable stockings and stout shoes,
and the red kerchief about her neck, are so many libels upon Irish
landlordism. Were My Lord's agent to see such clothing upon a girl, he
would immediately raise the rent upon her father, and confiscate those
clothes. And he would keep on raising the rent till he was certain that
shoes and stockings would be forever impossible. Neither does she dance
Pat down at rustic balls, for a most excellent reason--there are no
balls; and, besides, when she has cut and dried a donkey load of peat,
and walked beside that donkey, barefooted in the cold mud, twelve miles
and back again, and sold that peat for a sixpence, she is not very much
in the humor for dancing down any one. On the contrary, she is mighty
glad to get into her wretched bed of dried leaves, and pull over her the
potato sack which constitutes her sole covering, and, soothed to sleep
by the gruntings of the pigs in the wretched cabin, forget landlords and
rent, and go off into the land of happiness, which to her is America.
She finds in sleep surcease of sorrow, and, besides, it refreshes her to
the degree of walking barefooted through the mud twenty-four miles on
the morrow, to sell another load of peat for sixpence, that she may pay
more money to My Lord Bantry, whose town-house in London, and whose
mistresses in Paris, require a great deal of money. Champagne and the
delicacies of the season are always expensive; and My Lord's appetite,
and the appetite of his wife and mistresses, and his children,
legitimate and illegitimate, are delicate. Clearly, Katy is in no humor
for dancing. She has her share to contribute to all these objects. And
so she eats her meal of potato or stirabout--she never has both at
once--and goes into sleep and dreams.
[Illustration: THE REAL IRISH GIRL.]
As to the priest, there never was a wilder delusion than exists in the
minds of the American people concerning him. I was at the houses, or
rather lodgings, of a great many of them, but one example will suffice.
Half-way between Kenmare and Killarney, in a wild, desolate country,
lives one of these parish priests who are supposed to inhabit luxurious
houses, and to live gorgeously, and to be perpetually singing the
"Cruiskeen Lawn," with a pipe in one hand and a glass of poteen in the
other.
He is a magnificent man. In face and figure he is the exact picture of
the lamented Salmon P. Chase, one of the greatest of Americans; and I
venture the assertion that had he chosen any other profession, and come
to America, where genius and intellect mean something, and where great
ability finds great rewards, he would have been one of the most eminent
of men. A man of great learning, of wonderful intuitions, of cool and
clear judgment, of great nerve and unbounded heart, he would, were he to
come to America, and drop his priestly robes be president of a great
railroad corporation, or a senator, or anything else he chose to be.
But what is he in Ireland? His apartments consist of a bed-room, just
large enough to hold a very poor bed, and a study, in a better class
farm-house, and for which he pays rent, the same as everybody else does.
His floor is uncarpeted, and the entire furniture of his rooms, leaving
out his library, would not invoice ten dollars. His Parish is one of the
wildest and bleakest in Ireland, and is twenty-five miles long and
eighteen wide.
[Illustration: A SMALL, BUT WELL-TO-DO FARMER--COUNTY CORK.]
[Sidenote: "I WAS CALLED TO IT."]
Now, understand that this man is the lawyer, the friend, the guide and
director in temporal as well as spiritual matters of the entire
population of this district. If a husband and wife quarrel it is his
duty to hear and decide. If a tenant gets into trouble with his
landlord he is the go-between to arrange it. In short every trouble,
great and small, in the Parish is referred to him, and he must act. He
is their lawyer as well as their priest. He is their everything. He
supplies to them the intelligence that the most infernal Government on
earth has denied them.
But this is a small part of his duties. He has to conduct services at
all the chapels in this stretch of country. He has to watch over the
morals of all the people. But this is not all. No matter at what hour of
night, no matter what the condition of the weather, the summons to the
bedside of a dying man to administer the last sacraments of the church
must be obeyed. It may be that to do this requires a ride on horseback
of twenty miles in a blinding storm, but it must be done. Every child
must be christened, every death-bed must be soothed, every sorrow
mitigated by the only comfort this suffering people have--faith in their
church.
What do you suppose this magnificent man gets for all this? The largest
income he ever received in his life was one hundred pounds, which,
reduced to American money, amounts to exactly four hundred and
eighty-one dollars. And out of this he has to pay his rent, his food,
his clothing, the keeping of his horse, and all that remained goes in
charity to the suffering sick--every cent of it.
When the father dies his nephews and nieces will not find good picking
from what is left, I assure you.
"Why do you," I asked, "a man capable of doing so much in the world,
stay and do this enormous work, for nothing?"
"I was called to it," was the answer, "what would these poor people do
without me?"
That was all. Here is a man capable of anything, who deliberately
sacrifices a career, sacrifices comfort, sacrifices the life he was
fitted for, sinks his identity, foregoes fame, reputation, everything,
for the sake of a suffering people!
"I was called to it--what would these poor people do without me!"
I am a very vigorous Protestant, and have no especial love for the
Catholic Church, but I shall esteem myself especially fortunate if I can
make a record in this world that will give me a place in the next
within gun shot of where this man will be placed. I am not capable of
making the sacrifices for my fellows that he is doing--I wish to Heaven
I was. I found by actual demonstration why the Irish so love their
priests. They would be in a still worse way, if possible, without them.
Ignorance of the real condition of the farming Irish is almost as common
among the better class of Irishmen, I mean the dwellers in the cities,
as it is among Americans. At one of the fine hotels in Glengariff, a
watering place, I made the acquaintance of an Irish lady, a resident of
Cork. Her husband is a wealthy citizen, a thorough Irishman, a Land
Leaguer and all that, and she is a more ardent Land Leaguer than her
husband. She is a more than usually intelligent lady, with a warm heart,
and she realized, she thought, the wrongs Ireland was suffering, and was
doing, she supposed, all she could to aid the oppressed people.
Now in Glengariff suffering is not permitted to be seen. The hotels are
magnificent, the servants well-clothed and well fed, and it is so
arranged that the people in rags are seldom seen in that vicinity.
But two miles across the bay and you may see all the misery you can
endure. I had been over there and had gone through a dozen or more
cabins, and on my return I expressed myself to the lady in as strong
terms as my command of language permitted.
"Are you not exaggerating?" asked she. "I have never seen such misery as
you describe. It cannot be."
"Because you have never sought it out. But it is there. Fifteen minutes
in a boat will take you to it. Will you go over now, and see for
yourself if I have exaggerated?"
She went. It was a lovely morning; the waters were smiling, and the
Glengariff shore, with its beautiful buildings, its long hedges of
fuchsias along the winding street, the background a mountain of flowers,
was a fairy scene. From this side the mountains on the opposite in the
delicate brown of Autumn, were beautiful. Distance showed you only the
beauties of Nature; it mercifully hid the squalid poverty the mountains
contained.
[Sidenote: THE CONVERSION OF AN IRISH LADY.]
We landed and began the ascent. The land was, as everywhere, bog and
rock, with here and there a spot reclaimed, which smiled in green. We
approached one of the regular hovels.
"How far have we to go before we come to one of the houses you spoke
of?"
"We are at one now."
The woman stood petrified.
"Do people live in such places?"
"Madam, that cabin holds a man, his wife, six children, the wife's
father and brother, pigs, calves and poultry. But you must see for
yourself that I did not exaggerate. Come in with me."
The lady entered, wading pluckily through the slush and mud that
surrounded the cabin, and saw all and more than I had told her. There
was the cold earth floor, wet and slippery, the two wretched beds on
which these people slept, the pigs, the calves and the poultry, which
must be sheltered and grown and fattened, not for their eating, but that
My Lord may have his rent. There was the flat stone in one corner, with
the smoky peat fire, no chimney to carry away the smoke; there were the
half-ragged men, the half-naked women and children, shoeless,
stockingless, skirtless, less everything; in short, there were all the
horrors of absolute destitution, without one single redeeming feature.
"Take me out of this place," she gasped.
It was not a pleasant sight for a lady delicately nurtured and daintily
kept, whose hands had never been in cold water and upon whose face cold
wind had never blown. These people were of her own blood, her own race,
almost her own kin. She said never a word on the way back, but that
afternoon she left Glengariff for Cork. But before she went, a boat went
over the bay, and a dozen families had at least one square meal, and
more money than they had ever seen before.
It is to be hoped that they ate the provisions, but the money--that went
to My Lord's agent for rent, beyond a doubt. And if My Lord's agent was
certain that he could depend upon the lady from Cork as a permanent
almoner, he would ascertain to a penny just how much she intended to
give, and raise the rent to that amount.
My Lord's agent is as ravenous and insatiable as a grave-yard--he takes
all that comes.
The lady from Cork is spending her entire time and a great deal of money
in the interest of her people. It requires actual sight to understand
the condition of the Irish.
[Illustration: SKETCHES IN GALWAY.]