BELFAST
IT had been on a Saturday evening that we first saw Dublin, and it was
on a Saturday evening that we reached Belfast; and we had thought the
streets of Dublin crowded, but compared with those of Belfast, they were
nowhere. Even in our first ride up from the station, along York Street
and Royal Avenue, it was evident that here was a town where life was
strenuous and eager; there was no mistaking its air of alert prosperity;
and when, after dinner, we sallied forth on foot to see more of it, we
found the sidewalks so crowded that it was possible to move along them
only as the crowd moved.
It was a better-dressed crowd than the Dublin one, but I fancied its
cheeks were paler and its bodies less robust. Indeed, I am inclined to
think the average stature in Belfast an inch or so under the average
elsewhere. Great numbers of the men and women we saw on the streets that
night were obviously undersized. I am by no means tall; five feet eight
inches is, here in America, about the average; but when I walked among
that Belfast crowd, I overtopped it by half a head. It was this strange
sensation--the sensation of being a tall man, which I had never before
experienced--which first drew my attention to the stature of the crowd.
There must be several regiments of British troops stationed at Belfast,
for soldiers were much in evidence that evening, and in a great
diversity of uniform. They, too, for the most part, seemed undersized,
in spite of their erect carriage; and they were, as is the way with
soldiers everywhere, much interested in the girls; and the girls, after
the fashion of girls everywhere, were much interested in the
soldiers--and there was a great deal of flirting and coquetting and
glancing over shoulders and stopping to talk, and walking about with
clasped hands.
Next to the crowd, the most interesting feature of Belfast is the shops,
which are very bright and attractive. The Scotch have a genius for fancy
breads and cakes, and the bakers' shops here were extremely alluring.
There seemed to be also an epidemic of auction sales and closing out
sales and cut price sales, announced by great placards pasted all over
the windows; but there were so many of them that I fancy most of them
were fakes.
One notices also in Belfast the multiplicity of bands. It seemed to me
that night that a band, playing doggedly away, was passing all the time.
Sometimes the band would be followed by a body of marching men,
sometimes by men and women together, sometimes it would be just playing
itself along without any one behind it. Nobody in the crowd paid much
attention, not even when a big company of boy scouts marched past,
looking very clever in their broad hats with the little chin-straps, and
grey flannel shirts and flapping short trousers showing their bare
knees.
What I am setting down here are merely my first impressions of Belfast.
I do not allege that they were correct impressions, or that they fairly
describe the town, but, as we were fresh from many weeks in the south
and west of Ireland, the sense of contrast we experienced that first
evening is not without significance.
We went back to the hotel, finally, for we had had a strenuous day; but
for long and long we could hear the bands passing in the street below;
and then the martial rattle of drums and scream of fifes brought us to
the window, and we saw a great crowd of children march past, with
banners waving and tin buckets and shovels rattling. It was a Sunday
School picnic, just back from a day at the seashore; and the air which
the fifes and drums were playing with a vigour that made the windows
rattle was "Work, for the Night is Coming!" I had never before realised
what a splendid marching tune it is!
* * * * *
I am sorry we did not go to church, next morning, for the pulpits of
Belfast were thundering against Home Rule, as we saw by the Monday
papers. Instead, we walked down to the river, for a look at the harbour
and custom house, and then about the streets to the city hall, with its
dome and corner towers oddly reminiscent of St. Paul's Cathedral; and
then we took a tram to the Botanical Gardens. The tram ran along a
tree-embowered street, lined on either side with villas set in the midst
of grounds so beautiful that any of them might have been the gardens;
but when we reached the end of the line, we found we had come too far.
The conductor was greatly chagrined that he had forgot to tell us where
to get off, and sternly refused to accept any fare for the return trip.
The gardens, which we finally reached, are very attractively laid out,
but far more interesting than the flowers and the shrubs was the crowd
which was coming home from church. There seems to be a church on every
square in Belfast, and I judge they were all full that day--as they no
doubt are every Sunday, for church-going is still fashionable in the
British Isles; and the crowd which poured along the walks of the gardens
was as well-dressed and handsome as could be seen anywhere. It was a
crowd made up of people evidently and consciously well-to-do, and one
distinctive characteristic was a certain severity of aspect, a certain
prevalence of that black-coated, side-whiskered, stern-lipped type which
was much more common in America thirty years ago than it is now. Our
type has changed--has softened and grown more urbane; but I should judge
that the cold steel of Calvinism is as sharp and merciless as ever in
Belfast.
The men walked slowly along in twos and threes, talking over the sermons
they had just listened to; and the sermons, judging from the newspapers,
were all cast in the same mould; and that mould gives so clearly the
Orange attitude toward Home Rule, that I shall try to outline it here,
quoting literally from the newspaper accounts.
Home Rule, then, according to the Belfast preachers, is a Papal-inspired
movement, whose object is "to thrust out of their birthright over one
million enterprising, industrious, and peaceable citizens, whose only
crime was their loyalty to Crown and Constitution, and to put them under
that Papal yoke from which their sires had purchased their liberty.
Their beloved island home had never been more prosperous. They were
grateful and they were satisfied, but their Roman Catholic fellow
countrymen seemed to have no sense of satisfaction or gratitude. The
Irish Nationalists had entered into a movement to sacrifice
Protestantism upon the altar of Home Rule, but Orangemen and Protestants
had entered into a covenant the object of which was the maintenance of
their rightful heritage of British citizenship, of their commercial and
industrial progress, and of their freedom. In the same spirit of
patriotic Protestantism as was displayed at the siege of Derry, they
would go forth to combat the onslaughts of Rome, and they would show
that the same spirit lived in them as in their illustrious sires." Some
of the services concluded with singing a new version of the National
Anthem:
Ulster will never yield;
God is our strength and shield,
On Him we lean.
Free, loyal, true and brave,
Our liberties we'll save.
Home Rule we'll never have.
God save the King.
That last line is so perfunctory that it provokes a smile.
I am anxious to state the case against Home Rule as fairly as I can, the
more so because, as the readers of this book must have suspected before
this, I have little sympathy with the die-hard Unionists. I do not
believe that they represent Ulster in any such absolute sense as they
claim to do, for in the first place they hold only sixteen out of the
thirty-three Ulster seats in Parliament, and in the second place, even
in the four counties which are largely Protestant, there is a very
strong Nationalist sentiment. My own conviction is that the Orange
Societies are being be-fooled by a clique of politicians and aristocrats
whose quarrel is not with Home Rule but with the Liberal party. Nobody
denies that the funds for the organisation and equipment of the Orange
army have been supplied by the Conservative party, whose campaign chest
has been sadly depleted by the immense sums needed to keep the agitation
going. Certain leaders of that party have done their utmost to foment
religious and racial hatred, not because of any religious convictions of
their own, nor because of any special sympathy for Ulster, but in the
hope of overthrowing the government and stopping the march of social
reform. They might just as well try to stop the march of time--and some
day, perhaps, they will realise it!
And yet--
These fighting preachers, these uncompromising, wrong-headed, upright
old Calvinists, are undoubtedly in earnest. The congregations which sat
in grim-faced silence that day listening to this oratory, were in
earnest, too. But I cannot believe that, in their inmost heart of
hearts, they really dread the subversion of Protestantism. What they
dread is, in the first place, some diminution of their supremacy in
Irish politics, and, in the second place, some diminution of their
control of Irish industry. In other words, the attack they really fear
is against their pocket-books, not against their creed. And it is not
impossible that their pocket-books may suffer; indeed, I think it
probable that when the Home Rule Parliament has made its final
adjustments of revenue, Ulster will be found to be bearing somewhat more
of the burden than she now does, though perhaps not more than her just
share. But this doesn't make the situation any the less serious, for
ever since the world began it has been proved over and over again that
the very surest way to drive men to frenzied resistance is to attack
their pocket-books. As for the religious bogy, I personally believe most
sincerely that it _is_ a bogy. Such danger to Protestantism as exists
comes, not from the Irish Catholics, but from the politicians who are
using it as a football.
There was a sentence in one of the sermons preached that day to the
effect that Irish Protestants laboured to help Irish Catholics to civil
and religious liberty, when Irish Catholics were unable to help
themselves, and this is a fact which I am sure Irish Catholics will be
the last to forget. A century ago, Ulster was as fiercely Nationalist as
she is fiercely Unionist to-day; it was in Belfast that the Society of
United Irishmen was organised, and its leader was Theobald Wolfe Tone, a
Protestant, and its first members were Presbyterians, and one of its
objects was Catholic Emancipation. And, as a close to these disconnected
remarks, I cannot do better than repeat an anecdote I saw the other day
in the _Nineteenth Century_. Some sympathetic neighbours called upon the
mother of Sir David Baird to condole with her over her son's
misfortunes, and they told her, with bated voices, how he had been
captured by Tippoo Sultan, and chained to a soldier and thrust into a
dungeon. Baird's mother listened silently, and then a little smile
flitted across her lips.
"God help the laddie that's chained to my Davie!" she said softly.
And anybody that's chained to Ulster will undoubtedly have a strenuous
time!
* * * * *
The _News-Letter_ is the great Belfast daily, and while I was looking
through it, Monday, for fear I had missed some of the pulpit and
platform fulminations, I chanced upon another article which interested
me deeply, as showing the Protestant attitude toward control of the
schools. The article in question was a long account of the awarding of
prizes at one of the big Belfast National schools, as a result of the
religious education examination, and it was most illuminating.
The chairman began his remarks by saying that "nothing is pleasanter
than to hear a pupil repeat faultlessly the answers to the one hundred
and seven questions in the Shorter Catechism, without a stumble, placing
the emphasis where it is due, and attending to the stops," and he went
on to report that these one hundred and seven questions had been asked
orally of each of 396 children, that there was not a single failure, and
that practically all the children were in the first honour list--that
is, had answered faultlessly the whole one hundred and seven.
And then another speaker, a clergyman, of course, like the first, told
impressively of the meaning of education. It was, he said, the duty of
every child to store his mind with all manner of knowledge and to seek
diligently to gain information from day to day. But religion was the sum
and complement of all education. Without it, all other acquirements
would be little better than the beautiful flush upon the consumptive's
cheek, the precursor of sure death and decay. He reminded them that even
the very youngest there was guilty in the sight of God, for that awful
word sinner described them all.
Then a third speaker remarked that while the staff of the school was
doing a fine work in teaching the boys and girls to read and write and
cast up accounts, that that wasn't nearly so fine as teaching them the
catechism and encouraging them to study their Bibles. And then a fourth
speaker emphasised this; and then there was a vote of thanks to all the
speakers, and the prize Bibles were distributed, and everybody went away
happy--at least, the adults were all happy, and I can only hope the
children were.
From all which it is evident that the Presbyterians will fight for their
schools as hard, if not harder, than the Catholics will for theirs. But
to me, the thought of those poor children being drilled and drilled in
the proper answers to the 107 questions of the Catechism, until they
could answer them all glibly and without stopping to think, is a painful
and depressing one. I suppose that is the way good Orangemen are made;
but the Catechism has always seemed to me a rickety ladder to climb to
heaven by.
* * * * *
I was fortunate enough to witness another peculiar symptom of Belfast's
temper, that afternoon, when I went down to the Custom House, which
stands near the river. It is a large building occupying a full block,
and there is a wide esplanade all around it; and this esplanade has,
from time immemorial, been the platform which any speaker, who could
find room upon it, was privileged to mount, and where he might
promulgate any doctrine he could get the crowd to listen to.
There was a great throng of people about the place, that afternoon, and
a liberal sprinkling of policemen scattered through it; and then I
perceived that it wasn't one big crowd but a lot of smaller crowds, each
listening to a different orator, whose voices met and clashed in the air
in a most confusing manner. And I wish solemnly to assert that the list
which follows is a true list in every detail.
At the corner of the building, a reformed drunkard, with one of those
faces which are always in need of shaving, stood, Bible in hand,
recounting his experiences. At least, he said he had reformed; but the
pictures he painted of the awful depravity of his past had a lurid tinge
which held his auditors spell-bound, and it was evident from the way he
smacked his lips over them that he was proud of having been such a devil
of a fellow.
Next to him a smartly-dressed negro was selling bottles of medicine,
which, so far as I could judge from what I heard, was guaranteed to cure
all the ills that flesh is heir to. The formula for this wonderful
preparation, he asserted, had been handed down through his family from
his great-great-grandmother, who had been a famous African voodoo
doctor, and it could be procured nowhere else. The open-mouthed
Belfasters listened to all this with a deference and patience which no
American audience would have shown, and the fakir took in many
shillings.
Next to him, a company of the Salvation Army was holding a meeting after
the explosive fashion familiar all the world over; and at the farther
corner, a white-bearded little fellow was describing the horrors of hell
with an unction and exactitude far surpassing Dante. I don't know what
his formula was for avoiding these horrors, for I didn't wait to hear
his peroration.
Just around the corner, two blind men were singing dolefully, with a tin
cup on the pavement before them, and straining their ears for the rattle
of a copper that never came; and farther along, a sharp-faced Irishman
was delivering a speech, which I judged to be political, but it was so
interspersed with anecdote and invective and personal reminiscence,
that, though I listened a long time, I couldn't make out who he was
talking against, or which side he was on. His audience seemed to follow
him without difficulty, however, and laughed and applauded; and then a
little fellow with a black moustache advised the crowd, in a loud voice,
not to listen to him, for he was a jail-bird. I saw the constables edge
in a little closer; but the speaker took the taunt in good part,
admitted that he had done twelve months for some offence, and thanked
the crowd with tears in his voice because they had raised two pounds a
week, during that time, for the support of his family. The crowd
cheered, and the fellow who had tried to start trouble hastened to take
himself off. Thinking over all which, now, it occurs to me that the
speech may have been a labour speech, and not a political one at all.
I gave it up, at last, and moved on to where a man was making an
impassioned plea for contributions for an orphan asylum. He had a
number of sample orphans of both sexes ranged about him, and he painted
a lively picture of the good his institution was doing; but how he hoped
to extract donations from a crowd so evidently down at heel I don't see.
Next to him, a frightful cripple, who could stand erect only by leaning
heavily upon two canes, was telling the crowd how exceedingly difficult
it was for a rich man to get into heaven. Next to him, a lot of women
were holding some sort of missionary meeting; and just around the last
corner, a roughly-dressed man, with coarse, red-bearded face, whose
canvas placard described him as a "Medical Herbalist," was selling
medicines of his own concoction.
He had no panacea, but a separate remedy for every ill; and I listened
to his patter for a long time, though obviously he didn't welcome my
presence. He proved that slippery-elm was harmless by eating some of it,
and argued that plantain, "which ignorant people regarded as a weed,
made the best medicine a man could put into his inside," and he proved
this proposition by saying that it must be so because plantain had no
other known use, and it was inconceivable that the Lord would have taken
the trouble to create it without some purpose. He also proved that he
was a capable doctor because he was not a doctor at all, but a
working-man, and it was the working-man who made the world go round.
Inconceivable as it may seem, this ignorant and maudlin talk was
listened to seriously and even respectfully, and he sold a lot of his
medicines. Medicine seems to be one of the dissipations of the Belfast
folk.
The largest crowd of all was gathered before a man who held the centre
of the fourth side of the esplanade, and who was talking, or rather
shouting, against Home Rule. He was garbed as a clergyman, and he wore
an Orange badge, and he was listened to with religious attention as he
painted the iniquity of the Catholic church and the horrible dangers of
Catholic domination. His references to King Billy and the Boyne and the
walls of Derry were many and frequent, and he had all sorts of newspaper
clippings in his pockets, from which he read freely, and though he was
very hoarse and bathed in perspiration, he showed no sign of stopping.
He intimated that, once Home Rule was established, the revival of the
inquisition would be but a matter of a short time, that no Protestant
would be allowed to own property, that no Protestant labourer could
expect employment anywhere until he had abjured his religion, that their
children would be taken away from them and reared in Catholic schools,
and he called upon them to arm and stand firm, to offer their lives upon
the altar of their country, and not retreat a step before the
aggressions of the Scarlet Woman. I don't know how much of this farrago
his audience believed, but their faces were intent and serious, and I
fear they believed much more than was good for them. I happened upon a
song of Chesterton's the other day which brought those strained and
intent faces vividly before me:
The folks that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their mouth;
They see us making murders in the meadows of the South;
They think a plow's a rack, they do, and cattle-calls are creeds,
And they think we're burnin' witches, when we're only burnin' weeds.
Those lines are scarcely an exaggeration; and after I had stood there
listening for half an hour, I began to feel uneasily that perhaps, after
all, there is in Ulster a dour fanaticism which may lead to an ugly
conflict. Those political adventurers who have preached armed resistance
so savagely, without really meaning a word of it, may have raised a
Frankenstein which they will find themselves unable to control.
[Illustration: THE CITY HALL, BELFAST]
[Illustration: HIGH STREET, BELFAST]
As I turned away, at last, sick at heart that such things should be, I
passed close by a little group of men who were standing on the sidewalk
opposite, listening to the denunciations of Rome with flushed faces and
clenched hands.
"Let's have a go at him!" said one of them hoarsely; and then he caught
my eye, as I lingered to see what would happen. "What do you think of
that, anyway, sir?" he asked.
"I think it's outrageous," I said. "But I wouldn't raise a row, if I
were you boys; you'll just be playing into his hands if you do."
Their leader considered this for a moment.
"I guess you're right, sir," he agreed, at last. "Come on, boys," and
they slouched away around the corner.
But perhaps, afterwards, when they had got a few more drinks, they came
back again. It is a peculiarity of Belfast that the public houses are
allowed to open at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, and they are crammed
from that time forward with a thirsty crowd.
* * * * *
There is nothing of antiquarian interest at Belfast, and its public
buildings, though many and various, are in no way noteworthy. The
sycophancy of the town is evidenced by a tall memorial to Prince
Albert, not quite so ugly however, as the one at London; while in front
of the city hall stands a heroic figure of Victoria. There is a statue
to the Marquis of Dufferin, and one to Harland the ship-builder, and one
to Sir James Haslett; and many militant divines, in flowing robes, are
immortalised in marble. But search the streets as you may, you will find
no statue to any Irish patriot or Irish poet.
Nor will you find a street named after one--yes, there is Patrick
Street, but it is a very short and unimportant street, and may easily
escape notice. The shadow of the Victorian Age lies deeply over the
place. The greatest quay is Albert Quay, and the ship channel is
Victoria Channel, and the square at the custom house is Albert Square,
and a little farther along is Victoria Square, and just around the
corner is Arthur Square, and the principal avenue is Royal Avenue, and
the broad street which leads into it is York Street, and the street next
to it is Queen Street, and leading off of that is Kent Street, and a
little distance away is Albert Street leading up to Great Victoria
Street, and I am sure that somewhere in the town there is a Prince
Consort Street, though I didn't happen upon it!
The churches are all modern and uninteresting, though, strangely enough,
the Catholic ones are as large and ornate as any. You wouldn't think it
from the way Ulster talks, but about a fourth of the population of
Belfast is Catholic. There are two small museums, neither of which is
worth visiting; in a word, the whole interest of Belfast is in its
shops, its factories and its commerce.
The shops are wonderfully attractive, especially, of course, in objects
made of linen. For Belfast is the world-centre of the linen trade, whose
foundations were laid by the Huguenots who found a refuge here after
Louis XIV banished them from France. It was the one Irish industry which
England did not interfere with, because England produced no linen; and
consequently it prospered enormously, until to-day there are single
factories at Belfast where four thousand people bend over a thousand
looms or watch ten thousand spindles, and the annual value of the trade
is more than sixty million dollars. There are great tobacco factories,
too, covering acres of ground; and the biggest rope-walk in the world;
and a distillery which covers nineteen acres and--but the list is
interminable.
The most interesting and spectacular of all these mighty industries will
be found along the river banks, where the great ship-building yards are
ranged, where such monsters as the _Olympic_ and the fated _Titanic_
were built and launched, and where the rattle and clangour of steel upon
steel tells of the labour of twenty thousand men. And surely the clang
and clatter of honest toil which rises from Belfast on week days must be
more pleasing to the Almighty than the clang and clatter which rises
from it on Sunday! I should think He would be especially disgusted with
the noises which emanate from about the Custom House!