JUSTIN McCARTHY
I first met Justin McCarthy in the schoolroom of a little Gloucestershire
village. It was during the short-lived “union of hearts” between the
General Election of 1886 and the general upset which followed the Parnell
divorce case. Justin McCarthy was appearing on the platform of a popular
county member of that time, one Arthur Brend Winterbotham, a fine
specimen of the more hearty type of middle-class Liberal. Winterbotham
had the reputation of a shrewd man of business; he was a Stroud Valley
weaver in a highly comfortable way. But on the platform one would imagine
that he had no thought but for the People—“the People, Lord, the People,
not Crowns, not Kings, but Men”; to use one of his favourite quotations.
In politics he was a perfect Lawrence Boythorne of a man, irresistible
in his frank good-humour; his silence was one expansive smile, and
his speaking one melodious roar. His strong and splendid voice had a
wonderful trick of falling when he spoke of the tears Liberalism intended
to dry if it could only get hold of an official pocket-handkerchief; it
vibrated with splendid scorn when he exposed the democratic pretences of
the Tories. He was never more effective than when reading a newspaper
extract; he seemed to be able to impart the dignity of Isaiah to
something in the _Daily News_. To hear him quote an enemy’s speech, and
add, “‘Loud cheers,’ gentlemen! The newspaper says ‘loud cheers’—but were
they the cheers of agricultural labourers?” was a liberal education in
platform style. And each of his chins—he had a number—was worth hundreds
of votes.
[Illustration: JUSTIN McCARTHY.]
On this occasion he gave a real rousing speech on Ireland. He remarked
several times that his blood boiled. His voice trembled when he spoke
of evictions. It rose to bugle tones when he denounced Mr. Balfour’s
“bayonets and battering rams.” He spoke of Home Rule as the one great
Liberal policy. And then the Chairman called on Mr. Justin McCarthy with
a certain embarrassment, as if he had an idea that he was a celebrity of
some kind, but did not quite know his claim to fame (which was probably
the fact), as “one who had fought and suffered for the cause of tortured
Erin.” And Mr. Justin McCarthy, a gentle-mannered little man, with timid,
spectacled eyes, a scholar’s diffidence, and one of those beards which
give the impression that their purpose is less to advertise virility
than to conceal a feminine softness which might be too apparent with
a clean-shaved face, delivered, without a gesture or an exaggeration,
the most moderate speech I have ever heard on the Irish question. It
had no perceptible effect, except that the blacksmith in the back
benches, who had fiercely interrupted Mr. Winterbotham—he was a Tory, as
became a shoer of the horses of the nobility and gentry—began to snore
heavily about half-way through. But, whenever I have since heard people
talk about the emotional and unreasonable Irishman, and the strong,
passionless, unsentimental Englishman, I have always seen in my mind’s
eye the strenuous Gloucestershire cloth-weaver and the mild Irish scholar
side by side. And I have never been able to acquit the English Liberal
of those days of a great responsibility. It was not, perhaps, wholly his
fault. Assuredly he meant no harm. But he did nevertheless a mighty evil.
His well-intended sentimentalities were taken in earnest by an intensely
earnest people. Then awkward things happened, and it appeared exactly
how much clear thought and sincere conviction lay beneath all the loose
talk about “living to see the day, when the clouds should pass away, and
the sun of freedom shine again on Erin’s land.” It was seen that Parnell
was in essence right—that the Liberals would do exactly what they were
forced to do, that when the Irish question was “up,” Home Rule would
be “practical politics,” but that when Ireland was out of the picture,
Home Rule would be out of the Liberal programme. On the other hand, the
Conservatives, when they promised coercion, invariably fulfilled their
promises most conscientiously. So the fatal legend grew up that the
English could only be trusted to “deliver the goods” when they took the
form of handcuffs.
Englishmen often think of the Southern Irishman as a clever child. I
will not discuss that view. But those who held it would have been wise
to consider how logical children are in their own way, what an awful
sense they have of the nature of a bargain, how hard it is to restore
their faith when once shattered. You and I may quite easily forget
that we have promised wide-eyed innocence, aged five, an elephant for
Christmas. But wide-eyed innocence will not forget the fact, or accept
our lame explanations that we really could not get the elephant, because
some still wider-eyed innocence had thrown itself on the floor and
screamed till it was black at the mere suggestion of such a present.
Half the Irish trouble is this exaggerated logicality on the part of
the Irishman, child or no child, and this happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth
spirit of compromise and procrastination on the part of the undeniably
mature and businesslike Englishman. We, as a practical people, seldom
set our hands to a business document without intending to carry it out.
But we have a nasty habit of signing intellectual promissory notes
without the smallest idea of meeting them. When it is a question of
money, our undertaking to pay “this first of exchange” in ninety days
is the best security of the kind in the world. But an English Minister
will cheerfully say, “We are all Socialists now,” or tell Labour to be
“audacious,” or speak in favour of nationalisation of the coal mines,
or give his “personal pledge” that food shall not cost more, without
the smallest sense of responsibility. Now, the Irish are not the best
people in the world with whom to do money business; but they do take
ideas seriously. And if they have been promised an elephant, they expect
an elephant. It is no use arguing with them that the elephant would be
a white elephant, that an elephant in Ireland would not be nearly so
well suited to the bogs as a stork, that so dangerous a brute is no fit
plaything for children of the flighty Celtic temperament. They keep
repeating (with some passion) that an elephant they have been promised,
that an elephant they will have, and that they won’t be happy (or let
anyone else be) until they get it. And they become noisier than ever when
told that they “only do it to annoy,” and that everybody knows the last
thing they really want is the elephant.
I have chosen Justin McCarthy, from a knot of Irishmen who occupied a
considerable place in the politics of the Nineties, because he seems
to me a figure worth the study of those Englishmen who are inclined in
their haste to dismiss Irish agitation as an insincere and artificial
thing. There could hardly have lived a man less inclined by nature for
the rough-and-tumble of politics. His every instinct was literary. A good
library satisfied almost every craving except that for an occasional
quiet little dinner with people capable of talking interestingly about
Shakespeare and the musical glasses. His love of humane learning was
proclaimed at an age when the ordinary boy of his position—he was born
in “genteel poverty” which grew in poverty and lost in gentility as his
easy-going dilettante father, who had occupied the post of clerk to the
Cork City magistrates, came down in the world—was chiefly engaged with
marbles and whip-top. “We were nearly all poor,” he says of his school
set, “but we all belonged to families in which education counted for
much, and where scholarly studies found encouragement.... We could read
our Latin and make something of our Greek, most of us could read French,
some few Italian, and many of us were taking to the study of German.”
It was natural that a lad whose own degree in such a circle is indicated
by Lord Moulton’s statement that “McCarthy was the best all-round scholar
he knew” should drift into the literary career. Long before he was
twenty McCarthy, on whom the support of the family now depended, was
working as a reporter on the staff of the _Cork Examiner_ at a salary of
£1 a week. But Irish journalism was then—possibly still is—too hungry
a business to detain long an ambitious and capable man, and it was not
many years before McCarthy left it behind. Establishing himself first in
Liverpool and afterwards in London, he soon attained a certain position
in the republic of letters. In 1868 he went to America, had considerable
success, and was told, by one who had power behind him, that he might
have the post of United States Minister to London if he would remain
and be naturalised. By this time, however, he had decided that his main
business in life was to work for Irish Nationalism, and he decided that
this could be better done as a British subject.
In 1879 he was returned for Longford, and shortly after was elected
Vice-Chairman of the Nationalist Party. He entered the House of Commons
with a “profound respect” for its constitution and history. Unlike those
Irishmen who saw in the House only an alien instrument of oppression,
he had always regarded it as a “powerful agency in the development of
constitutional and religious equality,” and his “main desire” in public
life was “to see the establishment of such an institution in Ireland for
the government of the Irish people by the Irish people.” The vision of
Irish independence never floated before his mind’s eye; he was content
with “a compromise which should give to Ireland the entire management
and control of her own legislation while she yet remained a member of
the British Imperial system.” That there was perfect sincerity in these
professions may be inferred, not only from the character of Justin
McCarthy’s public career, but from the tone of his _History of Our Own
Time_. An English Unionist might possibly be as fair in writing a history
of Ireland; probably he would not. But it would be miraculous if such a
man could dwell on the deeds of Sarsfield with enthusiasm equal to that
which inspires Justin McCarthy in paying tribute to the splendours of the
British Army. But this same man, with his gentle and peace-loving nature,
took his part in the drudgery of obstruction under Parnell, and had his
turn in being “suspended.” “It was not very pleasant work,” he admits,
“for one who had been for more than a quarter of a century a resident of
England, and had formed many very close friendships and some relationship
there, and had been doing his best to win for himself a position in
English literature and journalism.” But, however unpleasant it might be,
every Irish member had to take his fair share in the work of obstruction;
and he did it knowing that it was only a means to an end. Under the
leadership of Isaac Butt an Irish night had been simply a Scottish night
with a brogue. Obstruction forced the Irish question on the attention of
the English people.
Just before the Parnell divorce suit came to shatter so many things,
McCarthy had come to believe that the main trouble was over, and that,
in his own words, “an Irish Nationalist member was henceforward to be a
welcome associate in the great progressive work of English politics.”
But the Liberal conversion, like all wholesale conversions, was not much
more than skin-deep. At the best it was a conversion of sentiment; at the
worst a conversion of expediency. There was a good-natured acquiescence
on the part of the rank-and-file, an acquiescence not always good-natured
on the part of the subordinate leaders. Mr. Gladstone was in earnest; one
or two of his lieutenants were in earnest; the party generally was like
the Roman masses under Constantius and Julian, ready to deride the gods
or stone the saints as the people in authority wished. The foundations of
the policy were laid in sand, and it could not stand the stress of the
storm caused by the O’Shea divorce suit.
It was a curious example of the irony of circumstance that brought the
cold and silent Parnell into conflict with the genial and chatty man of
letters who had been hitherto his devoted factotum. But when the issue
was joined McCarthy showed that he also could be inflexible. Parnell
bitterly described him, on his election as chief of the Nationalist
Party, as “just the man for a tea-party,” and assuredly he was the last
person to enjoy an atmosphere of vendetta. But, while it was a “cruel
stroke of fate” that compelled him to stand forth as the opponent of
Parnell and John Redmond, his resolution was firm from the moment that
Parnell issued the manifesto which he believed would be fatal, unless
counteracted, to the Home Rule cause. And if it was ironical that
McCarthy should be pitted against Parnell, it was still more ironical
that Parnell should be defeated by McCarthy; that he was defeated was
made evident some time before his stormy career ended.
But the struggle was scarcely less disastrous to the victor. Writing
was McCarthy’s only means of living, and the demands on his time made
writing difficult. His work for Ireland, moreover, involved him in
serious financial loss, and when he resigned the chairmanship he was
virtually ruined both in health and estate. His last years were spent in
invalidism in Westgate, with the pressure of want driving his tired brain
and enfeebled physique to a too copious output of novels, historical
studies, and newspaper articles. An act of political generosity on Mr.
Balfour’s part at length lightened the burden, and from 1903 to his
death in 1912 he enjoyed a Civil List pension of £250 a year. McCarthy
was greatly touched by this tribute from one whom he had consistently
attacked. But the attacks, however trenchant, had never been marked by a
tone of personal bitterness. That was not in McCarthy’s nature. But for
the cursed spite of politics he could never have indulged a more serious
quarrel than those which arise between amiable scholars over a disputed
reading or a historical doubt. And even in politics he could combine
perfect firmness of principle with a certain large charity. Nothing
further from the stage Irishman of English fancy could be imagined than
the modest and agreeable man of letters, courtly after the older manner,
soft in step and gentle in voice, with only a slight and agreeable trace
of brogue, who was so often to be met with at all sorts of neutral
dinner-tables during the Nineties. But he was in his way as indomitable
an Irish Nationalist as any of those unhappy fellow-countrymen whose
death on the scaffold it was his mournful duty as a historian to
chronicle. His sacrifices would have been little felt had the cause
triumphed to which he devoted the best years of life; things being as
they were, he could not but think that talents which might have given
him a much higher rank in literature had been frittered away in a great
futility.
It is only necessary to compare the Irish Nationalist represented—at
the best, it is true—by Justin McCarthy with the Irish Nationalist
represented to-day by “President” de Valera in order to realise the
mischief wrought rather by levity than ill intent. The impotence of
the Nationalist Party in the Nineties made it a negligible ally and
a negligible enemy, and both English Parties hastened to forget that
there was an Irish question. Thus the opportunity of a settlement in the
absence of agitation passed, and when, with restored Irish unity, a new
demand arose, the atmosphere was in the nature of things unfavourable
to statesmanlike handling. The “Union of Hearts,” had it been a real
thing, might well have worked a cure for Irish ills. Being in the main an
unreal thing, it but added to Irish embitterment. And to-day we know the
greatness of our gain.