'Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn!
Slainte, and slainte, and slainte agin;
Pow'rfulest preacher and tenderest teacher,
And kindliest creature in ould Donegal.'
Alfred Perceval Graves.
Coomnageeha Hotel,
In Ould Donegal.
It is a far cry from the kingdom of Kerry to 'ould Donegal,' where we
have been travelling for a week, chiefly in the hope of meeting Father
O'Flynn. We miss our careless, genial, ragged, southern Paddy just a
bit; for he was a picturesque, likable figure, on the whole, and easier
to know than this Ulster Irishman, the product of a mixed descent.
We did not stop long in Belfast; for if there is anything we detest,
when on our journeys, it is to mix too much with people of industry,
thrift, and business sagacity. Sturdy, prosperous, calculating,
well-to-do Protestants are well enough in their way, and undoubtedly
they make a very good backbone for Ireland; but we crave something more
romantic than the citizen virtues, or we should have remained in our own
country, where they are tolerably common, although we have not as yet
anything approaching over-production.
Belfast, it seems, is, and has always been, a centre of Presbyterianism.
The members of the Presbytery protested against the execution of Charles
I., and received an irate reply from Milton, who said that 'the blockish
presbyters of Clandeboy' were 'egregious liars and impostors,' who meant
to stir up rebellion 'from their unchristian synagogue at Belfast in a
barbarous nook of Ireland.'
Dr. La Touche writes to Salemina that we need not try to understand all
the religious and political complications which surround us. They are
by no means as violent or as many as in Thackeray's day, when the great
English author found nine shades of politico-religious differences in
the Irish Liverpool. As the impartial observer must, in such a case,
necessarily displease eight parties, and probably the whole nine,
Thackeray advised a rigid abstinence from all intellectual curiosity.
Dr. La Touche says, if we wish to know the north better, it will do us
no harm to study the Plantation of Ulster, the United Irish
movement, Orangeism, Irish Jacobitism, the effect of French and Swiss
Republicanism in the evolution of public sentiment, and the close
relation and affection that formerly existed between the north of
Ireland and New England. (This last topic seems to appeal to Salemina
particularly.) He also alludes to Tories and Rapparees, Rousseau and
Thomas Paine and Owen Roe O'Neill, but I have entirely forgotten their
connection with the subject. Francesca and I are thoroughly enjoying
ourselves, as only those people can who never take notes, and never
try, when Pandora's box is opened in their neighbourhood, to seize the
heterogeneous contents and put them back properly, with nice little
labels on them.
Ireland is no longer a battlefield of English parties, neither is it
wholly a laboratory for political experiment; but from having been both
the one and the other, its features are a bit knocked out of shape and
proportion, as it were. We have bought two hideous engravings of the
Battle of the Boyne and the Secret of England's Greatness; and whenever
we stay for a night in any inn where perchance these are not, we pin
them on the wall, and are received into the landlady's heart at once. I
don't know which is the finer study: the picture of his Majesty William
III. crossing the Boyne, or the plump little Queen presenting a huge
family Bible to an apparently uninterested black youth. In the latter
work of art the eye is confused at first as the three principal features
approach each other very nearly in size, and Francesca asked innocently,
“Which IS the secret of England's greatness--the Bible, the Queen, or
the black man?”
This is a thriving town, and we are at a smart hotel which had for two
years an English manager. The scent of the roses hangs round it still,
but it is gradually growing fainter under the stress of small patronage
and other adverse circumstances. The table linen is a trifle ragged,
though clean; but the circle of red and green wineglasses by each plate,
an array not borne out by the number of vintages on the wine-list, the
tiny ferns scattered everywhere in innumerable pots, and the dozens of
minute glass vases, each holding a few blue hyacinths, give an air of
urban elegance to the dining-room. The guests are requested, in printed
placards, to be punctual at meals, especially at the seven-thirty table
d'hote dinner, and the management itself is punctual at this function
about seven forty-five. This is much better than in the south, where
we, and sixty other travellers, were once kept waiting fifteen minutes
between the soup and the fish course. When we were finally served with
half-cooked turbot, a pleasant-spoken waitress went about to each table,
explaining to the irate guests that the cook was 'not at her best.' We
caught a glimpse of her as she was being borne aloft, struggling and
eloquent, and were able to understand the reason of her unachieved
ideals.
There is nothing sacred about dinner to the average Irishman; he is
willing to take anything that comes, as a rule, and cooking is not
regarded as a fine art here. Perhaps occasional flashes of starvation
and seasons of famine have rendered the Irish palate easier to please;
at all events, wherever the national god may be, its pedestal is not
in the stomach. Our breakfast, day after day, week after week, has been
bacon and eggs. One morning we had tomatoes on bacon, and concluded that
the cook had experienced religion or fallen in love, since both these
operations send a flush of blood to the brain and stimulate the mental
processes. But no; we found simply that the eggs had not been brought in
time for breakfast. There is no consciousness of monotony--far from
it; the nobility and gentry can at least eat what they choose, and they
choose bacon and eggs. There is no running of the family gamut, either,
from plain boiled to omelet; poached or fried eggs on bacon it is,
weekdays and Sundays. The luncheon, too, is rarely inspired: they eat
cold joint of beef with pickled beetroot, or mutton and boiled potatoes,
with unfailing regularity, finishing off at most hotels with semolina
pudding, a concoction intended for, and appealing solely to, the taste
of the toothless infant, who, having just graduated from rubber rings,
has not a jaded palate.
How the long breakfast bill at an up-to-date Belfast hostelry awed us,
after weeks of bacon and eggs! The viands on the menu swam together
before our dazed eyes.
Porridge
Fillets of Plaice
Whiting
Fried Sole
Savoury Omelet
Kidneys and Bacon
Cold Meats.
I looked at this array like one in a dream, realising that I had lost
the power of selection, and remembering the scientific fact that unused
faculties perish for want of exercise. The man who was serving us
rattled his tray, shifted his weight wearily from one foot to the other
and cleared his throat suggestively; until at last I said hastily,
“Bacon and eggs, please,” and Salemina, the most critical person in the
party, murmured, “The same.”
It is odd to see how soon, if one has a strong sense of humanity, one
feels at home in a foreign country. I, at least, am never impressed by
the differences, but only by the similarities, between English-speaking
peoples. We take part in the life about us here, living each experience
as fully as we can, whether it be a 'hiring fair' in Donegal or a
pilgrimage to the Doon 'Well of Healing.' Not the least part of the
pleasure is to watch its effect upon the Derelict. Where, or in what
way, could three persons hope to gain as much return from a monthly
expenditure of twenty dollars, added to her living and travelling
expenses, as we have had in Miss Benella Dusenberry? We sometimes ask
ourselves what we found to do with our time before she came into the
family, and yet she is as busy as possible herself.
Having twice singed Francesca's beautiful locks, she no longer attempts
hair-dressing; while she never accomplishes the lacing of an evening
dress without putting her knee in the centre of your back once, at
least, during the operation. She can button shoes, and she can mend
and patch and darn to perfection; she has a frenzy for small laundry
operations, and, after washing the windows of her room, she adorns every
pane of glass with a fine cambric handkerchief, and, stretching a
line between the bedpost and the bureau knob, she hangs out her
white neckties and her bonnet strings to dry. She has learned to pack
reasonably well, too. But if she has another passion beside those of
washing and mending, it is for making bags. She buys scraps of gingham
and print, and makes cases of every possible size and for every
possible purpose; so that all our personal property, roughly
speaking--hair-brushes, shoes, writing materials, pincushions,
photographs, underclothing, gloves, medicines,--is bagged. The strings
in the bags pull both ways, and nothing is commoner than to see Benella
open and close seventeen or eighteen of them when she is searching for
Francesca's rubbers or my gold thimble. But what other lady's-maid
or travelling companion ever had half the Derelict's unique charm
and interest, half her conversational power, her unusual and original
defects and virtues? Put her in a third-class carriage when we
go 'first,' and she makes friends with all her fellow-travellers,
discussing Home Rule or Free Silver with the utmost prejudice and
vehemence, and freeing her mind on any point, to the delight of the
natives. Occasionally, when borne along by the joy of argument, she
forgets to change at the point of junction, and has to be found and
dragged out of the railway carriage; occasionally, too, she is left
behind when taking a cheerful cup of tea at a way station, but this is
comparatively seldom. Her stories of life belowstairs in the various
inns and hotels, her altercations with housemaid or boots or landlady in
our behalf, all add a zest to the day's doings.
Benella's father was an itinerant preacher, her mother the daughter of
a Vermont farmer; and although she was left an orphan at ten years,
educating and supporting herself as best she could after that, she is as
truly a combination of both parents as her name is a union of their two
names.
“I'm so 'fraid I shan't run across any of grandmother's folks over
here, after all,” she said yesterday, “though I ask every nice-appearin'
person I meet anywheres if he or she's any kin to Mary Boyce of Trim;
and then, again, I'm scared to death for fear I shall find I'm own
cousin to one of these here critters that ain't brushed their hair nor
washed their apurns for a month o' Sundays! I declare, it keeps me real
nerved up... I think it's partly the climate that makes 'em so slack,”
she philosophised, pinning a new bag on her knee, and preparing to
backstitch the seam. “There's nothin' like a Massachusetts winter for
puttin' the git-up-an'-git into you. Land! you've got to move round
smart, or you'd freeze in your tracks. These warm, moist places always
makes folks lazy; and when they're hot enough, if you take notice,
it makes heathen of 'em. It always seems so queer to me that real hot
weather and the Christian religion don't seem to git along together.
P'r'aps it's just as well that the idol-worshippers should get used to
heat in this world, for they'll have it consid'able hot in the next one,
I guess! And see here, Mrs. Beresford, will you get me ten cents'--I
mean sixpence--worth o' red gingham to make Miss Monroe a bag for Mr.
Macdonald's letters? They go sprawlin' all over her trunk; and there's
so many of 'em I wish to the land she'd send 'em to the bank while she's
travellin'!”