IRELAND’S DISEASE.
IRELAND’S DISEASE
NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS
BY
PHILIPPE DARYL
_THE AUTHOR’S ENGLISH VERSION_
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
GLASGOW AND NEW YORK
1888
LONDON
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
PREFACE.
These pages were first published in the shape of letters addressed from
Ireland to _Le Temps_, during the summer months of 1886 and 1887.
A few extracts from those letters having found their way to the columns
of the leading British papers, they became the occasion of somewhat
premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat unfair conclusions, as
to their general purport and bearing.
A fiery correspondent of a London evening paper, in particular, who
boldly signed “J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to denounce the
author as “an ally of the _Times_, in the congenial task of vilifying the
Irish people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,” which charge was
then summarily met as follows:—
_To the Editor of the PALL MALL GAZETTE._
SIR,—
Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,
that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in _Le Temps_,
about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however, he has
actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still clings to his
hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or unsympathetic
with the Irish race, why then I can only urge upon his friends
the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a brace of mad doctors,
and an early berth in a lunatic asylum. I never heard in my
life of a sadder case of raving delusion.
Yours obediently,
PHILIPPE DARYL.
PARIS, _September 18, 1887_.
Thus ended the controversy. There was no reply.
Allowance should be made, of course, for the natural sensitiveness of
Irishmen on everything that relates to their noble and unhappy country.
But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment, the idea that everything is
right and normal in it? In that case there can be no cause of complaint
for them, and things ought to remain as they are. All right-minded people
will understand, on the contrary, that the redress of Irish wrongs can
only come out of a sincere and assiduous exposure of the real state of
affairs, which is not healthy but pathological, and, as such, manifests
itself by peculiar symptoms.
However it may be, a natural though perhaps morbid desire of submitting
the case to the English-reading public was the consequence of those
exceedingly brief and abortive polemics.
The Author was already engaged in the not over-congenial task of putting
his own French into English, or what he hoped might do duty as such, when
Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, the London publishers of his _Public
Life in England_, kindly proposed to introduce _Ireland’s Disease_ to
British society. The offer was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass
that the English version is to appear in book form on the same day as the
French one.
The special conditions of the case made it, of course, a duty to the
author to strictly retain in his text every line that he had written
down in the first instance, however little palatable it might prove to
some English readers and fatal to his own literary or other prospects
in England. That should be his excuse for sticking desperately to
words which, like Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended for
circulation in Great Britain.
PH. D.
PARIS, _Nov. 10th, 1887_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I.
FIRST SENSATIONS 5
CHAPTER II.
DUBLIN LIFE 17
CHAPTER III.
THE POOR OF DUBLIN 31
CHAPTER IV.
THE EMERALD ISLE 46
CHAPTER V.
THE RACE 60
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES 76
CHAPTER VII.
KILLARNEY 96
CHAPTER VIII.
THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK 109
CHAPTER IX.
A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET 139
CHAPTER X.
RURAL PHYSIOLOGY 157
CHAPTER XI.
EMIGRATION 177
CHAPTER XII.
THE LEAGUE 197
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CLERGY 215
CHAPTER XIV.
FORT SAUNDERS 234
CHAPTER XV.
THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 256
CHAPTER XVI.
SCOTTISH IRELAND 271
CHAPTER XVII.
LEX LICINIA 296
I.—The Gladstone Scheme 309
II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion 313
APPENDIX 331
IRELAND’S DISEASE.
INTRODUCTION.
It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease that Ireland is
labouring under. Twice within the last fifteen months it has been my
fortune to visit the Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the
apparently decisive hour when the die of her destiny was being cast in
the ballot-box, and her children seemed on the point of starting upon a
new life; then again, twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I
found her a prey to the very same local disorders and to the same general
anxiety that I had previously observed.
Last year it looked as if the solution was nigh, if Mr. Gladstone’s
spirited eloquence was going to carry the English nation along with
it. The seasons, however, have followed one another in due course,
bringing with them the usual run of unpaid rent, eviction, and reciprocal
violence; a new Crimes Act has been added to the long record of similar
measures that the British Parliament has scored against Ireland in
eighty-seven years of so-called Union; a few cabins have disappeared,
have been unroofed or burnt down by the arm of the bailiff; a few more
skulls have been broken; some hundred thousand more wretched beings have
embarked in emigrant ships for the United States or Queensland; some
more hunger-stricken women and children have swollen the list of obscure
victims that green Erin annually pays to the Anglo-Saxon Minotaur. But
nothing essential is altered. Things are in the same places and passions
at the same pitch. The two nations are facing each other with defiance in
their eyes, threats in their mouths, revolvers or dynamite in hand. The
problem has not advanced one step. Social war is still there, filling the
hearts, paralysing the action, poisoning the springs of life. It may be
read in the alarmed looks of mothers, in the sullen faces of men; it is
lurking behind every hedge.
Before such an unparalleled case of a whole race’s physiological misery,
how could one help being seized with an ardent curiosity mingled with
pity? Who would not wish to plunge to the bottom of the matter, to make
out, if possible, the secret of the evil, to deduce from it a lesson,
and, may be, a general law?
That want I have felt most deeply, and I have tried to gratify it by
personal observation; looking at things through my own spectacles,
without animus or hatred, passion or prejudice, as they came under my
gaze; noting down what seemed to be characteristic; above all, avoiding
like poison the contact of the professional politician on either side:
then drawing my own conclusion.
I need hardly add that for the intelligence of what I saw, I have always
availed myself of the printed sources of information, such as the
standard works on Irish history, Black’s excellent _Guide to Ireland_,
the Parliamentary Reports, the national literature, and last but not
least the graphic accounts of current events published by the English and
native press. Of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, especially, I must state that
I have found its files a mine of precise, well digested, and thoroughly
reliable information on the subject.
That my studies are above correction, I will not venture to hope. That
they are in every case founded on facts, and, to the best of my belief,
accurate, I earnestly vouch. As far as possible, I have made a point
of giving the names of the persons mentioned. When it might have been
inconvenient to them, however, or when delicacy forbade such a liberty,
I have either suppressed the name or substituted a fictitious one. It
should be understood that what I wanted, as a total stranger in the
country, and what my French readers wanted, were not personal but typical
instances.
CHAPTER I.
FIRST SENSATIONS.
DUBLIN.
Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown, than you feel on
an altogether different ground from England. Between Dover and Calais
the contrast is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty little place,
whose harbour is used by the steamers from Holyhead, and whither Dublin
shopkeepers resort in summer. Half a century back, it was only a
fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description. But George IV.,
late Prince Regent, having done that promontory the honour to embark
there when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion. In memory of
the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin raised on that spot a pyramid
which rests on four cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown
with the names of all the engineers, architects, captains, and harbour
officials who had anything to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up
round it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving. A splendid pier
bent round upon itself like a forearm on its humerus, makes it the safest
harbour in Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication with Dublin
in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a bay that could vie with the
Bay of Naples, did it boast its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals
which form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.
You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning after a four hours’
crossing, having started the evening before by the express from Euston
Station. And immediately you feel that you are no longer in England. The
language is the same, no doubt, though talked with a peculiar accent or
_brogue_. The custom-house officers are English; so are the policemen
and redcoats who air themselves on the quay; but the general type is no
longer English, and the manners are still less so. Loud talk, violent
gesticulation, jokes and laughter everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark
eyes: you could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.
The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train you get in, have
something peculiar, undefinable, thoroughly un-English. The old lame
newspaper-man who hands you _The Irish Times_ or the _Freeman’s Journal_
at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms while giving you back your
change, which not one of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits
himself along a British line. As for the passengers they are more
un-English than anything else. This lady with the olive complexion and
brown hair, may be termed an English subject; but for all that she
has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins. That
gentleman in the grey suit has evidently an English tailor, but the
flesh-and-bone lining of his coat is of an altogether different make. As
for the little man in black who is curling himself cosily in the corner
opposite to you, not only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest,
but you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea that he is a
Breton just out of the Saint Brieux Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious
complexion, small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is missing
from the likeness.
Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very heart of the town, and
there stops between a pretty public garden and the banks of the Liffey.
The weather is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars are
waiting for travellers and their luggage. _Waiting_, not contending
eagerly for their patronage as they do in London, where any possible
customer is quickly surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “_Hansom,
sir?... Hansom, sir?_” The Dublin cabman is more indolent. He keeps
dozing on his seat or leisurely gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble
oneself for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a cab, I
suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of these philosophers in the
Billycock hats.
This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous as any of
their fellow-drivers in any part of the globe, when it comes to settling
the fare. “How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you find that two
shillings is all the rogue is entitled to. You give the two shillings, he
pockets them and rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no more.
* * * * *
Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by wide thoroughfares,
provided with fine public gardens and splendid parks, which are here
called _greens_, and adorned with an extraordinary number of statues.
Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a capital. More
than a capital; the focus of a nationality. Everything in the streets
proclaims it: sign-boards, monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble
statues you see at every step are the effigies of the patriots who
fought for the rights of Ireland. That palace with the noble colonnade,
in the heart and finest part of the town, is the very building where
the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act of Union, held its
assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank directors meet in the room where once met
the representatives of the nation. But they seem to have been careful
not to change anything in the general arrangement, in case it was wanted
to-morrow for some _Assemblée Constituante_. You may enter it: the
door is open for every one. On the right you see what was the House of
Lords, a rectangular hall with an open ceiling, historic hangings, and
the statue of some royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here,
mahogany counters stand in place of the members benches, and where
sounded once the clash of argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold
coins.
Let old times come again; let Westminster give back to the Sister-Isle
the autonomy she mourns, and, as a stage machinery, the Bank will vanish
before the Parliament. It will be an affair of a night’s work for the
upholsterers.
In front of that building, which is the City Hall, it is not the British
flag (though perhaps the law should insist upon it) that is hanging
aloft. It is the green flag of Erin with the harp and the three towers.
Everywhere there are calls on the national feeling. _Hibernian House_,
_Hibernian Hotel_, _Erin Stores_, _Irish poplins_, _Irish gloves_,
_Irish whisky_. Above all Irish whisky! one could not get comfortably
drunk with Scotch whisky, that is evident.
If you visit a museum or picture-gallery you will find Art exiled in the
background, and patriotism shining to the fore. Bating a fine Giorgione,
a valuable Potter, a Van Steen of large size and extraordinary quality,
a rare Cornelius Béga and a few others, the collection is not worth
much, and would not fetch its million francs at the _Hotel des Ventes_,
in the Rue Drouot. It is only a pretext for a national collection of
portraits where are represented all the glories of Ireland, from Jonathan
Swift, Laurence Sterne, Steele, Sheridan, Edmund Burke to Moore, Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Wellington, and above all, O’Connell,
“the liberator;” and Henry Grattan, esquire, “true representative of the
people, father of liberty, author of the emancipation.”
Those things take hold of you as soon as you arrive at Dublin. Like a
flash of lightning they bring light upon many things about _Home Rule_
which had remained hazy to your continental heedlessness. A nation with
such memories kept up with such jealous care must know what it wants, and
will have it in the end. Such signs are the manifestation of a national
soul, of a distinct personality in the great human family. When all,
from alderman to beggar, have one sole aim, they are bound to reach it
sooner or later. Here, if the Town Hall has its green flag, the urchin
in the street has his sugarplum, shaped into the effigy of Parnell or
Gladstone. Never, since the Venice and the Lombardy of 1859, was there
such a passionate outburst of national feeling.
In the central part of the town, several streets are really fine with
their rows of large houses, their gorgeous shops and numberless statues.
The women are generally good-looking; well built, well gloved, well
shod. They move gracefully, and with a vivacity which is quite southern.
They look gentle and modest, and dress almost as well as Frenchwomen, of
whom they have the quiet grace. The youngest ones wear their brown hair
floating behind, and that hair, fine in the extreme, made more supple by
the moistness of an insular climate, is crossed now and then by a most
lovely glimmer of golden light.
Most of the men have acquired the significant habit of carrying large
knotty cudgels in place of walking sticks. Other signs show a state of
latent crisis, a sort of momentary truce between classes: for instance,
the abundance of personal weapons, pneumatic rifles, pocket revolvers,
&c., which are to be seen in the armourers’ shop windows.
But what gives the principal streets of Dublin their peculiar character
is the perpetual presence at every hour of the day of long rows of
loiterers, which only one word could describe, and that is _lazzaroni_.
As in Naples they stop there by hundreds; some in a sitting posture, or
stretched at full length on the bare stone, others standing with their
backs to the wall, all staring vaguely in front of them, doing nothing,
hardly saying more, mesmerised by a sort of passive contemplation, and
absorbed in the dull voluptuousness of inaction.
What do they live upon? When do they eat? Where do they sleep? Mystery.
They probably accept now and then some occasional job which may bring
them a sixpence. At such times they disappear and are mixed among the
laborious population; you don’t notice them. But their normal function is
to be idle, to hem as a human fringe the public monuments.
Some places they seem to affect particularly; Nelson’s Pillar amongst
others. Whenever you pass it you are sure to see four rows of loungers
seated on the pedestal, with legs dangling, pressed against each other
like sardines.
Numerous tramcars, light and quick, cross Dublin in all directions. Five
or six railway stations are the heads of so many iron lines radiating
fan-wise over Ireland. All bear their national stamp; but what possesses
that character in the highest degree is that airy vehicle called a
jaunting-car.
Imagine a pleasure car where the seats, instead of being perpendicular to
the shafts, are parallel with them, disposed back to back and perched on
two very high wheels. You climb to your place under difficulties; then
the driver seated sideways like you (unless the number of travellers
obliges him to assume the rational position), lashes his horse, which
plunges straightway into a mad career.
This style of locomotion rather startles you at first, not only on
account of its novelty, but also by reason of the indifferent equilibrium
you are able to maintain. Jostled over the pavement, threatened
every moment to see yourself projected into space, at a tangent, you
involuntarily grasp the nickel handle which is there for that purpose,
just as a tyro horseman instinctively clutches the mane of his steed. But
one gets used in time to the Irish car, and even comes to like it. First,
it goes at breakneck speed, which is not without its charm; then you have
no time to be bored, considering that the care of preserving your neck
gives you plenty of occupation; lastly, you have the satisfaction of
facing constantly the shop windows and foot paths against which you are
likely to be tossed at any moment. Those are serious advantages, which
other countries’ cabs do not offer. To be candid, they are unaccompanied
by other merits.
* * * * *
In that equipage you go to the Phœnix Park, the Dublin “Bois de
Boulogne.” It is a wide timbered expanse of some two thousand acres,
full of tame deer, where all that is young in the place may be seen
flirting, cricketing, playing all sorts of games, but above all,
bicycling. Bicycles seem to be the ruling passion of the Dublin youth.
I have seen more than a hundred at a time in a single lane near the
Wellington Obelisk. By the way, this was the very avenue where Lord
Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were murdered five years ago by the
_Invincibles_. A cross marks the place where the two corpses were
discovered.
The Castle, which the two English officials had the imprudence to leave
that day, is the Lord-Lieutenant’s official residence. It has not the
picturesque majesty of the castles of Edinburgh or Stirling. Instead of
rising proudly on some cloud-ascending rock and lording over the town, it
seems to hide “its diminished head” under a little hillock in the central
quarters. You must literally stumble over its walls to become aware of
their existence; and you understand then why the name of _Dublin Castle_
is for the Irish synonymous with despotism and oppression.
This is no Government office of the ordinary type, the dwelling of the
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is a regular stronghold, encircled with
ramparts, bristling with towers, shut up with portcullis, draw-bridge and
iron bars. In the inner Castle yard are situated the apartments of the
pro-consul, the lodgings of his dependants of all degrees, the offices
where decrees are engrossed, the pigeon-holes where they are heaped, all
forming a sort of separate city entrenched within its fortifications.
A very gem is the Royal Chapel, with its marvellous oak wainscoting,
which twenty generations of carvers have concurred to elaborate.
The reception-rooms, the hall of the Order of St. Patrick, where
_drawing-rooms_ are held, form the kernel of the fortress.
The barracks of the English soldiers and of those giant constables whom
you see about the town are also fortified with walls, and form a line of
detached forts round the central stronghold.
England is encamped at Dublin, with loaded guns and levelled rifles, even
as she is encamped at Gibraltar, in Egypt, and in India.