KILLARNEY.
I know no place to compare with Killarney: so soft to the eye, so
full of unspeakable grace. It is as a compendium of Ireland; all the
characteristic features of the country are united there: the elegant
“round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy outline of their conic
shafts; the soft moistness of the atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky,
the intense green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of peat,
and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the grit-stone and clay-slate
draw on the hill-side.
Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of Kerry, the Killarney
lakes succeed one another like small Mediterraneans, all dotted with
lovely islands, where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a
Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has its legend, its own
saint, buried under some old moss-grown mound; its ruined castle, its
ivy-clothed abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some _banshee_.
They are like large baskets of flowers floating on the clear, silent
waters, whose peace is only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish,
or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite to form a landscape
of almost paradoxical beauty. You think you have landed in fairyland,
outside the pale of ordinary life.
The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where the monks wrote in the
seventh century their famous _Annals_, the pride of the Bodleian Library.
In viewing this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to repeating
the beautiful lines of Moore which you used to bungle in your school
days, and of which you first realise the profound truth:
“_Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,_
_May calm and sunshine long be thine,_
_How fair thou art, let others tell,_
_While but to feel how fair be mine, etc._”
* * * * *
Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly domains display the
noble arrangement of their parks: one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare,
lord-lieutenant of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen during
the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs to Captain Herbert of Muckross,
late Member of Parliament. As far around as you can see the land belongs
to either of those two landlords. Just as in the tale, down to the
extremity of the valley, up to the very top of the far-away mountain,
land and water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis de
Carabas.”
Some restriction must be made, however. Changes have been introduced
lately. Only a few years ago it was a thing understood that of the two
members which the borough returned to Parliament one must be the heir
presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the other the chief of the house
of Muckross. That is over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr.
Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air of the parks is still
the property of the two owners; none may breathe it without their leave.
I hasten to say that the permission is most courteously given by Lord
Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less liberally) sold on the
Muckross grounds to anyone willing to pay one or two shillings, according
to his approach walking or on horseback.
The two parks are marvels, almost without other rivals in the world, for
their prodigious extent, their admirably kept shrubberies and avenues,
and the splendour and variety of the points of view which art has devised
on the lakes. Those lakes themselves, with their islands, bays, and
toy-peninsulas, their rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only
part of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to possess the old
abbey of the same name, and the Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen,
Ross Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of O’Donoghue’s
Castle, and a hundred other wonders. It is more regal than lordly, and
there are indeed few royal residences which can boast such gardens.
You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with verdure, ozone, and
poetic sights. You come back the day following, you almost wish to take
root there for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard any
heavier occupation than catching salmon, smoking endless cigarettes, and
reading over your favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being
pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I don’t know how much
ready money to Lord Kenmare if he would grant him five hundred square
yards of ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.
* * * * *
There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could scarcely be less
brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough of about four or five thousand
inhabitants, more miserable looking than words can express. Except in
the great hotels which English enterprise has raised for fleecing the
tourists attracted there by the beauty of the lakes, there is not a
vestige of ease or prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture is
to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few dusty wares which nobody
seems anxious either to buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness
about, and people look tired with doing nothing. The women, all more or
less “tattered and torn,” wear a poor rag of a shawl on their heads.
Half-naked children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all the
small alleys which open on the one street of the town. Only the Anglican
and Catholic churches rise above the sordid little dwellings with a
substantial and well-to-do air.
Go out of the village, follow the long walls which enclose the lordly
seats, and after three or four miles you will find again the Irish
country such as you have seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields,
thin pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side occasionally
is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in mud fraternally with two or
three bright-eyed urchins. Here and there a hovel with the traditional
dung-hill and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring a new
light on the agrarian crisis.
It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached its most acute
state, they all tell me. But you could not believe how hard it is to
obtain any definite information about those matters. People who really
know about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national wounds before a
stranger, and besides, the diversity of judgments makes it difficult to
draw something positive from them. Every man has his party feeling, and
is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with a good number of letters
of introduction, and everywhere received with perfect cordiality, I have
talked already with people of all conditions—landlords, agents, farmers,
doctors, priests, and labourers,—without having obtained as yet any but
individual views. Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear arguments
that I know by heart from having heard them repeated these last eight
years, ever since the crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the
thing we want: we want _espèces_, as they say in French law; specific
illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish disease.
And that is the difficulty. The habit of living among certain deformities
so familiarises us with them that we are no longer able to perceive them,
and still less to point them out. Moreover, when upon receiving a letter
from London, a man is kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce
you to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and trap, and to
empty for your benefit his store of ready-made opinions, is it possible
decently to ask him more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his
time running with you through hill and dale in order to help you to
unravel a sociological problem.
By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.
* * * * *
I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of Dunloe when, on the banks
of the river which waters the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed
a man of about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad, who was
walking in front of me and gave evident signs of wishing to enter into
conversation. I had been so harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones
and incompetent guides who crowd all ways to the lakes and sights around
Killarney, that I had grown suspicious, and pretended not to see the man.
But he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace, he began to
whistle _La Marseillaise_.
That was saying plainly:—
“You are French, and I am a friend of France like all Irishmen. You are
welcome here.”
Throughout the world it is the adopted form for such a declaration of
love. On board a transatlantic steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a
cosmopolite hotel, when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance
seats herself to the piano and begins to play the march of Rouget de
l’Isle, the French tourist can see his way: he is looked upon with no
unfriendly eye.
There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a bearded
pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the patent purpose of hooking me
at the rate of half-a-crown an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he,
suddenly making up his mind:—
“Well, _Sor_,” he said to me with a soft voice and the most enticing
smile, “how do you _loike_ our country?”
“Your country? I should like it a great deal better if one could go
about it without being pestered by guides at every turning,” I said, but
half-remorsefully.
“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the place. And if they
only knew their trade! But they are regular swindlers, beggars who steal
the tourist’s money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they are!”
The conversation then commenced, and to say the truth I have no reason
to repent it. The fellow is well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly
talkative, and in five minutes has given me really valuable information,
besides biographical details about himself. He is called MacMahon like
many others in this country, for I have seen that name over twenty
village shops already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No; he makes
no pretension to that. But after all it is not improbable that they come
from one root, for my friend is not, of course, without his relationship
with some of the numberless kings of Ireland.
“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier, a true Irishman. I have
his picture at home. I’ll show it to you if you do me the honour to visit
my humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”
* * * * *
My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a land surveyor’s, and he
knows many things. This, for instance: that all people here, from the
most insignificant farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.
“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a melancholy smile. “Do
you see that large expanse of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not
perhaps richer than I, and have not perhaps always as much pocket-money
as would be convenient for them. Their annual income goes to pay the
interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations which weigh on
the property, and the normal keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of
Muckross, had to emigrate to America, where he is now an attorney’s
clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling you give for entering his park
goes to the scraping of it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much
as the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let alone his being
forbidden his own grounds under pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare
lives there alone with her children under protection of a detachment of
the police.” So the masters of those two noble estates are exiled from
them, one by mortgage, the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!
“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?” I said to MacMahon.
“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in number, and there are
not three evicted in the year. I know personally twenty of them who owe
him four years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he has taken
position against the League—that is enough. And then, don’t you know,
sir, the best of landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants.
_They want the land and they will have it._ But this is my house. Please
come in, sir.”
* * * * *
Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had brought me to the entrance
of a small low house in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort
of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No carpet or flooring of
any kind but the simple beaten clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a
table, a few straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private museum
in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr.
Parnell, &c., and a branch of holy palm.
Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and emaciated, had risen without
showing any surprise.
“Mrs. MacMahon, _Sor_! Everilda Matilda, a French gentleman who honours
our house by stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my dear; the
gentleman will be pleased to see them, I think.”
A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself, then a boy between
twelve and thirteen years old, then a variety of younger fry. I am told
that Mary has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim has just
begun Latin with an ultimate view to become a priest “like his uncle
Jack;” then the “mountain dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made
whisky, not unpalatable.
At last mine host turns to his wife.
“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the French gentleman, to let
him see what you can do when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will
like to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney to his ‘lady.’”
I was caught.
Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing cuffs and collars
of Irish point, and all that remains to me to do, if I am not ready to
forfeit my rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a few
guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than MacMahon turns to the
future ecclesiastic—
“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman those sticks you polish so
well?”
Caught again!
If each member of the family has his own private trade, the
_mountain-dew_ threatens to be rather an expensive refreshment.
“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have got already a complete
collection of _shillelaghs_.”
MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.
“But we could perhaps make another arrangement, that would be more
advantageous,” I continued quietly. “You know the country well, you tell
me?”
“As a man who has lived forty years in it and never left it.”
“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead me for a couple of
days across field and country, and show me a dozen authentic cases of
eviction, agrarian violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this,
and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will take the whole lot of
lace.”
You should have seen the glowing faces of the whole family! The affair
was soon settled, and the day after we started.