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Parnell
and his
Island
BY
GEORGE MOORE
AUTHOR OF
A  IMUMDIER'S WIFE ' DRAMIA IN MUSLIN ' ETC.
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY, & CO.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1887




PRINTED BY
SPOTTIS'WOODE AND CO., INEW-STREET SQUARE
LO NDON0-\




/ 3-10 l o
CONTENTS.


DUBLIN
THE CASTLE
THE SHELBOURNE HOTEL
THE KILDARE STREET CLUB
MRS. RUSVILLE
AN IRISH COUNTRY HOUSE
THE HOUSE OF AN IRISH POET
THE LANDLORD.
"'1i  THE TENANT FARMER
THE PRIEST
NV   THE PATRIOT.
A CASTLE OF. YESTERDAY
A CASTLE OF TO-DAY
v'I ) AN EVICTION,'    A HUNTING BREAKFAST
CONCLUSION
4 --.A.


PAGE
1
20
27
31
~  32..  35. 55, *   77.  94.    113
-.. 134
*.  150. 173..  189
*     *.  212. 233








PARNELL AND HIS ISLAND.
DUBLIN.
THIS is Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin. From
where I stand I look down upon the sea
as on a cup of blue water; it lies two
hundred feet below me like a great smooth
mirror; it lies beneath the blue sky as
calm, as mysteriously still, as an enchanted
glass in which we may read the secrets
of the future. How perfectly cuplike is
the bay! Blue mountains, blue embaying
mountains, rise on every side, and amorously the sea rises up to the lip of the land.
These mountains of the north, these
Turner-like mountains, with their innuB




2       Parnell and his Islancd.


merable aspects, hazy perspectives lost in
delicate grey, large and trenchant masses
standing out brutally in the strength of
the sun, are as the mailed arms of a
knight leaning to a floating siren whose
flight he would detain and of whom he
asks still an hour of love. I hear the
liquid murmur of the sea; it sings to the
shore as softly as a turtle-dove to its mate.
I see white sails scattered over the grey
backgrounds of the sky, and through
the dissolving horizon other sails appear
and  disappear, lighter than  the large
wings of the sea-gull that floats and
plunges, sometimes within a few feet of
the cliff's edge, a moment after there are
a hundred feet between it and the sea.
My thoughts turn involuntarily to the Bay
of Naples, which I have never seen, but
perfect though  it be-Nature's fullest




Dublin.


3


delight above which no desire may soar
-it cannot be more beautiful than the
scene which now lies blue and translucid
before me.
I am two hundred feet above a sea
striped with purple and violet; and above
my head the rocks rise precipitously.
From   every side the mountains press
with voluptuous arms the voluptuous sea:
above my head the villas are perched
like birds amid the rocks. There I see a
bouquet of trees, here I see a green sward
where the white dresses of the young girls
playing tennis float this way and that.
From villa to villa a white road winds, like
a thread leading through the secrets of a
labyrinth; sometimes it is lost in a rocky
entanglement, sometimes it vanishes in the
dark and long shadows ofa pine wood;
sometimes it is suspended, it is impossible
B 2




4


Parnell and his Island.


to say how, out of the mountain-side, and
higher still spread out on the clear sky,
and crowning the mountain-brow is the
imperial heather.
In the exquisite clarity ot the day
every detail is visible; and as my glance
passes from the highest heights down to
the depths of the shore I see women in
long bathing-dresses crawling up the
strand far away: they appear like flies:
the naked flesh of some boys bathing
shines in the sun ray, they are climbing
up the black sides of a boat,-that one
on the prow joins his hands above his
head and disappears in the purple of the
waves. On the terrace by me stands a
fat man, the type of commercial prosperity
(he is a distiller); his family is about him,
enjoying the delicate listlessness of this
summer afternoon. Now I hear tie rush



Dublin.


5


ing rumble of a train, the strident whistle
tears the air and is repeated high and far
through the sonorous distances of this
strange mountain. The eye follows the
white steam across the bridge; then the
train is lost in a tunnel; now it re-appears
and turning and twisting it scuttles away
like a rabbit through the rocks.
No town in the world has more beautiful surroundings than Dublin. Seeing
Dalkey one dreams of Monte Carlo, or
better still of the hanging gardens of
Babylon, of marble balustrades, of white
fountains, of innumerable yachts, of courts
of love, and of sumptuous pleasure places;
but alas, all that meets the eye are some
broken-down   villas!  The white walls
shine in the sun and deceive you, but if you
approach you will find a front-door where
the paint is peeling, and a ruined garden




6       Parnell and his Island.


And in such ruin life languishes here!
The inhabitants of the villas are, for the
most part, landlords whom circumstances
have forced to shut up their houses and
to come here to economise; or, they may
belong to the second class of landlords:
widows living on jointures paid by the
eldest sons, or mortgagees upon money
placed by them or by their ancestors upon
the land. For in Ireland there is nothing
but the land; with the exception of a few
distillers and brewers in Dublin, who live
upon the drunkenness of the people, there
is no way in Ireland of getting money
except through the peasant.
The socialistic axiom that capital is
only a surplus-value coming from unpaid
labour, either in the past or in the present,
is in other countries mitigated and lost
sight of in the multiplicity of ways




Dublin.


7


through which money passes before falling into the pockets of the rich; but in
Ireland the passage direct and brutal of
money from   the horny hands of the
peasant to the delicate hands of thie proprietor is terribly suggestive of serfdom.
In England the landlord lays out the farm
and builds the farm-buildings. In Ireland
he does absolutely nothing.  He gives the
bare land to the peasant, and sends his
agent to collect the half-yearly rent; in a
word lie allows the peasant to keep him
in ease and luxury. 'I am an Irish landlord, I have done this, I do this, and I
shall continue to do this, for it is as impossible for me as for the rest of my class
to do otherwise; but that doesn't prevent
me from recognising the fact that it is a
worn-out system, no longer possible in the
nineteenth century, and one whose end is




8      Palnell and his Island.


nigh.' In Ireland every chicken eaten,
every glass of champagne drunk, every
silk dress trailed in the street, every rose
worn at a ball, comes straight out of the
peasant's cabin.  A  few  years ago this
tribute (for in Ireland rent is a tribute
and nothing else) was accepted without
astonishment, without an after-thought,
absolutely-as in other ages the world
accepted slavery and feudalism.
But one day, suddenly, without warning, the scales fell from the eyes of the
people, and the people resolved to rid
themselves  of  this  plague.    Visible
hitherto only to a small number, and they
denied its existence save in the poorest
districts, this plague-spot is apparent today to every eye; it is visible everywhere, even in the heart of the slums as in
the most elegant suburb; it was as if a




Dublzn.


9


veil had been drawn revealing the boils
with which the flesh of Ireland is covered.
You see that coarse, common man
dressed in a greasy, worn-out tweed jacket,
smoking a black pipe at the end of the
weed-grown terrace of the dilapidated
villa which he has hired for the season?
He is speaking to his daughter, a sad-looking girl dressed in a long red cashmere
buttoned down the back; she tells him
that she wants a new dress to go to a
tennis party in the neighbourhood. He
grumbles, he thinks she had better not
accept any more tennis parties this
year. Does he want her to remain an old
maid? Nothing is done for her that she
may get a husband; no parties are given
for her, never is there a young man
invited to the house. Finally he draws
from his pocket a roll of bank-notes black




ro      Parnell and his Island.


and greasy, notes with worn-out edges,
notes cut in two and stuck together, notes
which smell of the smoke of the cabin,
notes that are rancid of the sweat of the
fields, notes which have been spat upon
at fairs for good luck, notes which are
an epitome of the sufferings of the peasant
of the west of Ireland.
The young girl runs away skipping
with three or four of these notes to buy a
dress, to dream of the husband which she
will never get; the man sinks into gloom,
dreaming of the Land League and of the
possibility of getting out of the tenants in
the autumn what they refused to pay in
the spring; and I dreaming of the banknotes, of the husband-hunting girl, of the
ruined proprietor, of the villa in ruins.
I read in all this, as in an epitaph upon
a tomb, the history of a vanished civilisa



Dublin.


I I


tion.  Then as my thoughts return to
the beautiful landscape-with its broken
rocks full of lights and shades, its bits of
white road and the strange railway suspended as if by magic above the blue bay,
and the violet mountains standing out
against the silver clouds, I dream of Paris
and of what Paris would be if within
a few miles of so beautiful a panorama.
Paris would sing in this bay; Paris
would dance on these terraces; columns
and palaces, balustrades, arches and
cupolas would extend from height to
height the enchantment of their architecture. The calm and sombre waters of
the bay, illuminated by gondolas coming
and gondolas going-white beneath the
moon, yellow and gold beneath the lamps
-would be a floating dream; fireworks
darting from the abrupt hollows of the




T 2     Parnell and his Island.


dark hill-side, would jewel the forehead
of the night, detonations of champagne,
cries of the dancers, blaring of the cors
de chasse and the sonorous mountain echoing with the various sounds of festival.
And still dreaming of my Irish France
I listened to the monotonous cry of a
broken barrel-organ, and, looking at the
poor devil of an Italian, I know well
that nobody here, except perhaps the
distiller, is rich enough to throw him a
penny.
Far away those are the Wicklow
mountains. Bound about Dublin like a
blue scarf, they are as bright notes of joy
in the pale monotony of the pale dim
streets.
The character of Dublin is the absence
of any characteristic touch.  Dublin is
neither ugly, nor pretty, nor modern, nor




Dublin.


13


ancient, but all these qualifications might
be applied to it as to an ' old-dlo' shop.'
Yes, Dublin reminds me of an old-clothes
shop where ball-dresses, dress coats, morning trowsers, riding habits, Wellington
boots, lace shawls are to be let or
sold. Nothing seems really to belong to
anyone. Everybody might have owned
everything-language, dress, and manners
-at one time or another. The streets are
built of pale brown bricks, a pale poor
brown-poor but honest. Nor are they
built at hazard, improvised like London
streets, but set out artificially in squares
and monotonous lines, like a town that a
tired child might have improvised out of
a box of bricks. Here you find no architectural surprises, like in other towns; no
alleys or curious courts filled with life
strange, picturesque, and enigmatic; none




I4     Parnell and his Island.


of those singular byways with reft of sky
in the brick entanglement, sometimes bulging out into courts; where shops of fried
fish, coal shops, shops of old iron and old
paper, lean one against the other in giddy
confusion; sometimes slipping into passages narrow and twisted, where bands
of little children dance joyously to the
sound of a friendly organ.
'We are poor but honest,' the houses
cry aloud, and in their faded elegance
they bend and bow like ladies who have
seen better times.  Others who would
give themselves fashionable airs trail their
finery like a middle-aged coquette in a
provincial town. The flower-boxes rot in
the windows, the rose-coloured windowblinds are torn, the railings rot with rust,
the areas exhale the foetid odours of unemptied dust-bins; add to this the noise




Dublin.


I 5


of a hundred pianos; imagine a society of
ill-bred young girls, making love to a few
briefless barristers, their clerks, the employes in the breweries; beat this all up to
waltz music from four o'clock in the afternoon till four in the morning, with an
interval of three hours or so for dinner,
and you will have realised the exterior
aspect of Dublin society.
The following conversation which I
overheard in ' the best society,' will give
an idea of the general culture and the
normal esprit of Dublin girls.
Scene, a ball-room. Dramatis personae,
two officers and a charming girl. First
officer: ' By Jove, what a pretty girl you
have been dancing with! She is really a
Juno, she is superb. You must introduce
me to her.'
Second officer: 'She is not ugly, but




i 6    Parnell and his Island.


I don't think you would care about her,
she's rather common.'
' Common with that face, impossible!'
The two men approach the beauty.
He who thinks her common leaves her
with him who considers her divine. I
listen to see how this acquaintance, so
happily begun, will end. Overcome with
emotion the lover seeks for words; should
he begin by speaking of the weather,
or of the excellence of the floor? Important question! At last the young girl breaks
silence, and whilst her admirer is still seeking for a transitional phrase to lead up to
more important matter, she says, after having examined him from head to foot: ' Ah
Captain, what a little foot you've got!'
In the sombre and sad streets of
Dublin there are two open spacesStephen's Green and Merrion Square.




Dublin.


I 7


The first-which has lately been reclaimed
from its Indian-jungle-like state and
decorated with mounds and bridges and
ponds, and presented to the city by a rich
nobleman-resembles in its present state
a school-treat for charity children; the
other still flourishes in all its ancient
dilapidation; rusty iron railings, decrepit
trees, and a few lamentable tennis players;
in the deep ruts of the roads two or three
outside cars lie hidden-that singular
vehicle which defies description, two
wheels with seats suspended on either side
and from which you will certainly be
thrown if you don't hold on with all your
might.
On every door in Merrion Square
there is a brass plate. For there are more
doctors and lawyers in Dublin than any
other city in the world. Dublin is a town
C




i 8    Parnell and his Island.


of officials. Every man wears the red
ribbon of the Castle in his button-hole;
and more than one woman wears it instead
of a garter.
Nobody reads, nobody thinks. To be
considered a man of the world, it is only
necessary to have seen one or two plays
in London before they are six months old,
and to curse the Land League. In the
' best society' I have met with young men
who have never read 'Vanity Fair' and
young women who have never heard of
Leonardo da Vinci. Once I was dining
with a Mr. Ryan; on the club table there
were two photographs, one was of Richard
Wagner and the other was of Beethoven.
Mr. Ryan: 'Who is that?'
I: 'That is Wagner.'
Mr. Ryan: 'Who is Wagner?'
I (recovering myself with an effort):




Dublin.


19


'Don't you know? Richard Wagner, the
great breeder of shorthorns!'
Mr. Ryan: 'Begorra 'tis strange I
niver came across him in Ballinasloe; and
who is the other?'
I: 'That is Beethoven.'
Mr. Ryan: 'Who is Beethoven?'
I: 'Don't you know?  He is the great
breeder of cobs.'
Mr. Ryan: 'And I niver met him at
the Dublin horse show; does he niver go
there? Tell me-are you listening to me?
-what sort of stock does he go in for?'
Dublin is in a barbarous state, and,
what is worse, in a retrograde state.


c 2




20     Parnell and his Island.


Dublin is divided into four parts: The
Castle, the Shelbourne Hotel, the Kildare
Street Club, and Mrs. Rusville the fashionable dressmaker.
THE CASTLE.
To describe the Castle it is only necessary to compare it to an immense police
barrack. It is devoid of all architecture,
and the brick walls are as bare and as
bald as an official document; everything,
even to the red coats of the sentinels,
reminds you of the red tape with which
these documents are tied.   The Castle
rises like a upas tree amid ruins and
death; the filth of the surrounding streets
is extreme.  The Castle dominates the
Liffey-a horrible canal or river flowing between two stone embankments.




Dublin.


2I


Curious and characteristic details: between
the bridges great sea-gulls fly back and
forwards with a mechanical regularity,
diving from time to time after the rubbish which the current bears away to the
sea.
On either side there are sombre and
sinister streets, aged and decrepit buildings filled with old books rotting in dark
and foetid confusion; dark holes where, in
Rembrandt chiaroscuro, you see the form
of a hag groping amidst heaps of something-something that may be clothes;
shops where suspicious-looking women
pretend to sell cheap cigars; others where
placards announce the excellence of
obscene goods manufactured on the premises; then the perspective floats in a
slight curve, and is lost in the smoke
of breweries and distilleries, an appro



22      Parnell ancd his Island.


priate horizon for this town of miserable
vice and hideous decrepitude.
From the Castle the law in Ireland is
administered, and it is there that the
Viceroy holds his mock Court; every sort
of religious ceremony may be turned into
ridicule, but it is certain, when a man
not a king is forced to mimic royalty
as far as possible, that everything that is
grotesque in the original becomes in the
imitation a caricature. The Viceroy is
not an actor who consents to play a part,
nor a Messiah audacious enough to declare himself God, but something indefinable between the two that says: ' Of
course you know that I am not a king,
but I hope you will consider me one, and
you will address me as such.' Such an
anomaly necessitates a multitude of situations which are very suggestive of a Palais




Dublhn.


23


Royal farce. Although the Viceroy plays
the part of a king, his wife is not authorised to play that of a queen.
How, therefore, is a drawing-room to
be held? It is clear that the ladies who
are presented cannot kiss the hand of the
Viceroy as they kiss the hand of the
Queen in Buckingham Palace. A difficult situation of which this is the solution:
the Viceroy must kiss the ladies. It is
impossible to imagine anything more absurd than this Viceroy, an English nobleman, chosen for the post by the Government actually in power, standing upon a
daYs surrounded by red guardsmen, all
the ladies of the household behind him
upon an estrade, kissing an interminable
procession of women, young and old, fat
and thin, as they are announced by the
Chamberlain who reads out their names




24      Parnell and his Islacnd.


like a Doge's secretary in an opera
bouffe.
And then how are all the innumerable sinecures of the Castle disposed of?
Underlings, hirelings, of all sorts, swarm
about this mock Court like flies about a
putrefying carcass. A sight indeed it is to
see them marching in procession through
the drawing-rooms after the presentations.
The A.D.C.'s, the Medical Department, the
Private Secretary, the Military Private
Secretary, the Assistant Under-Secretary,
the Gentleman-in-Waiting, the Master of
the Horse, the Dean of the Chapel Royal,
the Chamberlain, the Gentlemen Ushers,
the Controller, the State Steward walking
with a wand, etc... It is easy, therefore,
to understand the hatred of the people for
the corruptions and injustices of the Castle.
The Castle is for the National party



Dublin.


25


to employ a comparison whose success is
unquestionable-what a red flag is for a
bull.  This mock    Court is considered
as an absurdity by all classes of society
except fashionable women to whom the
fetes of the Castle are of all importance.
There are no mothers in Ireland as there
are in France; it is not in the circle of
their friends that they search for possible
husbands for their daughters. As soon as
a young girl has left school she is taken to
Dublin, kissed by the Lord-Lieutenant,
and let loose of the ball-rooms of the
Castle to flirt as extravagantly or as discreetly as she thinks proper. In France
the chaperon has a meaning; in England
and Ireland she is a nonentity: from the
moment a chaperon enters the ball-room
till the time she leaves it she sees nothing
of her charges.   Still, nevertheless, the




26      Parnell and his Islanzd.


young girl passes four or five hours dancing; or, when an occasion presents itself,
searches for a favourite corner hidden at
the end of a dark corridor. The young
girls without any great moral conscience
make their way at the Castle, and those
who are well introduced may amuse themselves, but for the majority it is a place of
torture and despair. The girls outnumber
the men in a proportion of three to one,
the competition is consequently severe;
and it is pitiable to see these poor muslin
martyrs standing at the door, their eyes
liquid with invitation, striving to inveigle,
to stay the steps of the men as they pass
by.   But although these balls are little
else for the young girls than a series of
heart-breaks, nevertheless the most abject
basenesses are committed to secure an
invitation.




Dublin.


27


THE SHELBOURNE HOTEL.
The Shelbourne is a large and commodious hotel. On entering, a winter garden
on the first floor strikes a pleasant note of
green, and a little fountain murmurs pleasantly amid grey stone frogs. The pen of
B3alzac would be necessary to describe the
Shelbourne Hotel; it 'is the pension of
Madame Vauquier placed in aristocratic
circles. For three pounds a week you
can live there; and this liberality on the
part of the proprietor is singularly appreciated by widows and old maids of all
sorts. The ladies' drawing-room is on
the right, and Flaubert's celebrated phrase
may be applied to it, ' It was the moral
centre of the house.'   The walls are
decorated with Swiss landscapes-mountains, chamois,  cascades, and   lakes.




28     Parnell and his Island.


About the chimney-piece there are a
great number of low chairs, chairs for
invalid ladies, chairs made for novel reading and for wool-work.    Nothing  is
spoken of but men and marriages; it is
here that all the scandals of Dublin are
laid and are hatched.
At this moment the drawing-room
wears its most habitual air.  Two old
ladies are seated on the sofa knitting.
Two old maids who come up every year
husband-hunting, are sitting artlessly advancing their little slippered feet; between
them is the chaperon who has brought
them to Dublin for the Castle season.
'Oh, so you have all come up to the
Castle, and are going to be presented!
Well, you'll find the rooms very grand
and the suppers very good, and if you
know a lot of people, particularly the




Dublin.


29


officers quartered here, you will find the
Castle balls very amusing. The best way
to do is to come to town a month before
the drawing-room and give a ball; and in
that way you get to know all the men.
If you haven't done that I'm afraid you
won't get many partners. Even if you
do get introduced they will only ask you
to dance, and you will never see them
again. Dublin is like a race-course, men
come and speak to you and pass on. It is
pleasant enough if you know people, but
as for marriages there are none, I assure
you. I know lots of girls, and very nice
girls too, who have been going up for six
or seven years, and have not been able to
pull it off.'
' And ah,' said a girl speaking with a
terrible brogue, 'the worst of it is that
the stock is for iver increasing; ivxery year




30      Parnell and his Island.


we are growing more and more numerous,
and the men seem to be getting fewer.
Nowadays a man won't look at you unless
you have at least two thousand a year.'
At the Shelbourne the fashionable
world stays during the Castle season.
The hotel is then as full of girls as a
beehive of bees; their clear voices are
heard in the corridors, and the staircase is
gay with passing and rustling silk; and
then, too, is made manifest the morality
which is so characteristic of all Englishspeaking countries where young girls have
acquired the same liberty as men. Complete freedom of speech is granted them.
In Dublin a virgin is scarcely a favourable
specimen of virginity: scandals, divorce
cases, and invitations to the Castle are the
sole themes of her conversation.




Dublin.


3 I


THE KILDARE STREET CLUB.
The Kildare Street Club is one of the
most important institutions in Dublin. It
represents in the most complete acceptation of the word the rent party in Ireland;
better still, it represents all that is respectable, that is to say, those who are gifted
with an oyster-like capacity for understanding this one thing: that they should
continue to get fat in the bed in which
they were born. This club is a sort of
oyster-bed into which all the eldest sons
of the landed gentry fall as a matter of
course. There they remain spending their
days, drinking sherry and cursing Gladstone in a sort of dialect, a dead language
which the larva-like stupidity of the club
has preserved. The green banners of the
League are passing, the cries of a new Ire



32     Parnell and his Island.


land awaken the dormant air, the oysters
rush to their window-they stand there
open-mouthed, real pantomime oysters,
and from the corner of Frederick Street
a group of young girls watch them in
silent admiration.
MRS. RUSVILLE.
To this sympathetic dressmaker all
fashionable figures are confided, and all
highbred griefs and scandals.
When the giggling countess leaves, the
sighing  marchioness is received  with
genial sympathy.
'My dear Helen, I can bear up no
longer; my husband is a brute! It is
only here I find any comfort; you only
are kind.' Overcome with emotion the
women fall into each other's arms and they
kiss fervently. Finally, they retire to Mrs.




Dublzin.


33


Rusville's boudoir, a delicious little retreat
hung with Japanese draperies. Reclining
gracefully, sometimes hand in hand laid
gently, they drink their afternoon stimulants. In delicately cut glasses gin loses
much of its vulgarity, but when sportswomen are announced, brandy and sodas
are ordered, and telling of adventures and
disappointments they watch with dreamy
eyes great crabs crawling through the
long sea-weeds, and a flight of wild geese
that hide with their wings the silver disc
of the moon.
As may be supposed, the business
could not but suffer by these long hours
passed in drunkenness and scandalmongery,
but Mrs. Rusville had three daughters to
bring out, and she hoped-when she had
disposed of her shop, and her feet were set
on the redoubtable staircase of Cork HillD




34


Parnell and his Island.


that her aristocratic friend would extend
to her a cordial helping hand. Mrs. Rusville is one of the myriad little schemes
with which Dublin is honeycombed.
The Castle is the head, the Shelbourne
Hotel the body, the Kildare Street Club
and Mrs. Rusville's Shop the members
of the miserable creature covered with
bleeding sores that is called Dublin
Society. To-day it trembles with sullen
fear, and listens to savage howling of the
pack in kennels set in a circle about the
Castle, the Hotel, the Club, and the Shop;
and as Gladstone advances, the barking
springs to meet him; the fierce teeth are
heard upon the wood-work. Will he lift
the latch and let the hounds rush in on
the obscene animal?




35
AN IRISH COUINTRY IHOUSE.
YES, I am in an Irish country house —
in a real Irish country house; there are
hundreds like it.  A  square box-like
structure approached by stone steps. On
the right and left are the drawing-room
and dining-room. The walls are papered
with a hideous French paper, red flowers
on a gold ground. The windows are
curtained with bright red curtains, scarlet
curtains.  My host remarks that when
they were bought that red was the fashionable colour.  There are two flagrantly
modern rosewood cabinets nailed against
the wall and a few exquisite Chippendale
D 2




36     Parnell and his Island.


chairs, the value of which no one even
remotely suspects.  In the dining-room
there is a beautiful Chippendale sideboard; the walls are hung with pictures
of horses whose histories and fortunes are
being constantly related to you.  Here is
the hunter that carried the present squire
twenty-five years ago over a six-foot wall;
there is the race-horse that ran second for
the Chester cup half a century ago; and
the present mortgaged condition of the
property is owing to the losses sustained
on that occasion.
From either side of the house long
woods extend like the wings of a theatre,
and they embrace a green lawn on which
cattle feed. The drive is covered with
cow-dung. At the back of the house is a
stable-yard with falling roofs and broken
doors-an unpaved stable-yard full of pools




An Irish Country House.


37


of water whither pilgrim ducks direct their
processions; and further away ensconced
in an open place in the laurels is an iron
hut in front of which two policemen sit
cleaning their rifles. They have been on
guard all night and have just been relieved; and their comrades are now walking up and down in front of the house. I
can see them as I lean forward to tie my
cravat. Mine host has long been under
police protection. There is probably no
one in Ireland whose life the Land League
is so determined to have as his; but being
a wise man he never stirs out except when
preceded by a car, full of policemen armed
to the teeth. These clear the way, and a
second car, likewise full of policemen
armed to the teeth, follows and guards
against his being attacked in the rear.
Mine host's unpopularity is easily ac



38      Parnell and his Island.


counted for. His own property amounts
to no more than a thousand a year, and
it is mortgaged to the extent of seven
hundred a year.   The seven hundred
must be paid and all reductions must come
out of the remaining three hundred. The
sins of the fathers descend on the children,
and my host's property exists upon paper
only. But he has another source of income, he is a land agent and he collects
rent to the extent of fifty thousand a year,
for which he is paid at the rate of five per
cent. To collect so vast a sum from poor
people necessitates the serving of writs,
evictions, seizures of cattle, etc.; and mine
host's pecuniary difficulties force him to
do all this remotely. Hence his unpopularity, hence the desire of the National
party to remove him. (Remove him is the
euphemism in the West for to murder.)




An Irish Country House.


39


My host's family consists of a wife,
three girls, and a son. Two of the girls
are tall, strong, ugly young women from
three to four and twenty years of age.
They think nothing of riding fifteen miles
to a hunt, hunting all day and riding
home in the evening; and next day they
are ready to play a tennis match or to
drive thirty miles to a ball. The third
girl is a pale little thing with golden hair.
She spends her time painting flowers on
the panels of the doors and helping her
mother with the housekeeping. The son
is a type very characteristic of Ireland,
and of the present ordering of things in
Ireland. We will call him Tom. Tom,
after having been in London, where he
spent some years in certain vague employments, and having contracted as much
debt as his creditors would permit, and




40      Parnell and his Island.


more than his father would pay, he had
returned home through the Bankruptcy
Court and returned home to wearily drag
through life, through days and weeks so
appallingly idle that he often feared to get
out of bed in the morning. At first his
father tried to make use of him in his
agency business, and it was principally
owing to Mr. Tom's bullying and insolent
manners that mine host was now unable
to leave his house unless accompanied by
police. Tom is about thirty years of age.
His legs are long, his hands bony, and
stable-yard is written in capital letters on
his face. He carries a ' Sportsman' under
his arm, a penny and a halfcrown jingle in
his pocket; and as he walks he lashes the
trousers and boots, whose elegance is an
echo of the old Regent Street days, with
an ash plant. Given a certain versatility




An Irish Country HIouse.


4I


in turning a complimentary phrase, the
abundant ease with which he explained,
not his ideas, for he had none, but his
tastes. which although few were pronounced; add to this the remnant of
fashion that still lingers in his wardrobescarfs from the Burlington Arcade, scent
from Bond Street, cracked patent leather
shoes and mended silk stockings-and it
will be understood how the girls in this
far-away country built something that did
duty for an ideal out of this broken-down
swell.
After breakfast he begins to chatter.
He curses Ireland as the most hideous
hole under the sun; he frightens his
mother by reiterated assurances that the
Land League will leave them as beggars,
and, having established this point, he proceeds to develop his plan for buying




42


Parnell and his Island.


young horses, training them, and disposing
of them in the English market. Eventually he dismisses his audience by taking
up the newspaper and falling asleep with
the stump of a burnt-up cigarette between
his lips. Nothing more is heard of him
for an hour; then he is seen slouching
through the laurels on his way to the
stables; and, whistling to their dogs, his
sisters rush after him, their hands thrust
into the pockets of their cotton dresses,
the mud of the yard oozing through their
broken boots.   Behind the stables there
is a small field lately converted into an
exercise-ground, and there the three stand
for hours, watching a couple of goat-like
colts, mounted by country lads, still in
corduroy and hob-nails, walking round
and round.
The great argument against the doc



A n Irish Country House.


43


trine of eternal punishment is that human
nature habituates itself to all things;
ample proof of this has been given of late
years in the West of Ireland. You would
not think it an easy matter to enjoy a
shooting party with a policeman walking
behind you to prevent a Land Leaguer
shooting you while you shot the pheasant!
You would not think it an easy matter to
enjoy a flirtation, with a policeman watching to see that your kissing was not interrupted by a Land Leaguer sticking a
knife into you from  behind-you who
spend pleasant lives in the Row, think
that it would be impossible to enjoy love
or sport under such circumstances, but
you are wrong! Notwithstanding the precautions absolutely indispensable if you
would preserve a whole skin, the gentry
in Mlayo enjoy themselves very well indeed.




44     Parnell and his Island.


And now I hear nothing talked of but
a picnic-an afternoon dance which the
people I am staying with are getting up.
It is, I hear, to be given at a house on
Lough Carra- 'a house with a splendid
floor for dancing,' cries one of the girls.
'And to whom does this house belong?'
I ask. 'Oh! to a fellow who lives in Paris
-he never comes here. Pa is his agent,
and we can do what we like with his
house.'
As we drove to the picnic we caught
glimpses of the lake, the grey light of the
beautiful mere-like lake flashing between
the broken lines of rocky coast and the
sloping ridges of the moorland; and then
there are the blue waving lines of the
Clare Mountains drawn in a circle about
this landscape, this barren landscape, so
suggestive of savage life and rough and




An frish Country Hozse.


45


barbarous minds. For in Ireland you
think of border forays, wild chieftains, and
tribes dressed in skins.  The graft of
civilisation the Anglo-Saxon has for seven
hundred years striven to bind upon the
island has never caught, but whether the
Celt will be able to civilise himself when
he gets Home Rule I do not pretend to
say. At present he is a savage, eminently
fitted for cattle-lifting, but ill-suited to ply
the industry of farming which the law
forces as the alternative of starvation
upon him. Down in the wet below the
edge of that bog lies the village. The
cabins are built out of rough stones without mortar. Each is divided into two,
rarely into three, compartments; and the
windows are not so large as those of a
railway carriage. And in these dens
a whole family, a family consisting of




46     Parnell and his Island.


husband and wife, grandfather and grandmother, and from eight to ten children
herd together as best they can.   The
cabins are thatched or are roofed with
green sods cut from the nearest field.
About each doorway there is a dung-heap
in which a pig wallows in the wettest and
the children play on the driest part. The
interior of these cabins can be imagined:
a dark place from which exudes a stink;
a stink which the inmates describe as a
warm smell! Around the walls are vague
shapes-what, you cannot quite see; like
high boxes pushed out of sight are the
beds. The floor is broken in places and
the rain collects in the hollows, and has to
be swept out every morning. A large pig,
covered with lice, feeds out of a troughplaced in the middle of -the floor, and the
beast from time to time approaches a-nd




An Irish Country House.


47


sniffs at the child sleeping in a cot by the
fireside. The old grandmother waves her
palsied hands and the beast retires to his
trough. As we have seen the pig, let
us see the family at dinner. Of cookery,
they have no idea whatever; there is
not a single plate or kitchen utensil
of any kind in the hovel except the
black iron pot that hangs over the fire.
The father and mother enter, followed by
the brood. The mother, a great strong
creature fit for work in the fields, dressed
in a red petticoat which scarcely falls
below her knees-you see the thick shapeless red legs-lifts the black pot off the
fire and carries it to the threshold, one of
the children holds a sieve and the water is
strained off. Then the pig is hunted under
one of the beds, and the family eat their
dinner out of the sieve. Cold water from




48


Parnell and his Island.


the well washes down this repast; sometimes well-to-do families keep a cow and
there is a little butter-milk. These people
are called small farmers; they possess
from three to ten acres of land, for which
they pay from twenty to five-and-twenty
shillings an acre. In their tiny fields, not
divided by luxuriant hedges   like the
English fields, but by miserable stone
walls which give an unspeakable bleakness to the country, they cultivate oats
and potatoes. With the former crop and
the pig they pay the landlord, with the
latter they live. As Balzac says, 'Les
beaux sentiments fleurissent dans l'ame
quand la fortune commence de dorer les
meubles;' and never have I observed in
these people the slightest aesthetic intention-never was a pot of flowers seen in
the cottage window of an Irish Celt.




An Irish Country House.


49


You want to know what Ireland is
like? Ireland is like the smell of paraffin oil! The country exhales the damp,
flaccid, evil smell of poverty-yes, a
poverty that is of the earth earthy. And
this smell hangs about every cabin; it
rises out of the chimneys with the smoke
of the peat, it broods upon the dung-heap
and creeps along the deep black bogholes that line the roadway, and the thin
meagre aspect of the marshy fields and
the hungry hills reminds you of this smell
of poverty-the smell of something sick
to death of poverty.
Driving along the bleak roads suddenly we see trees, and through the
foliage the grey lake glitters, and its
many aspects are unfolded; long wooded
promontories, islands, ruined castles, and
wide expanses of white water. This is
E




50      Parnell and his Island.


Lake Mount, the property of the mysterious being of whom nothing seems to be
known, except that he lives in Paris and
writes French poetry. The park is handsome; it is adorned with trees more than
a century old, but even here the bitter
smell of poverty lingers. The gate-lodge
is in ruins, the drive is weed-grown and
covered with cow-dung, and herds of
cattle wander through the woods and.
feed along the terraces. The house is
very much like the one we have just
left: but it is handsomer.  Four large
pillars support a balcony; the hall door is
approached by a wide and imposing flight
of steps, and over all there is a huge tablature, on which is written the family motto
and the date of the building of the house.
Around the gravel-sweep in front of the
house. carriages and vehicles of all de



An Irish Country Houzse.


5I


scriptions are collected, and the protecting policemen and soldiers are talking
as naturally of their charges as the nurses
do in the Champs-Elysees of their babies!
Now a couple leave the group, and,
apologising for the intrusion, a policeman
reminds a pair of lovers of the danger of
pursuing their flirtations into the darkness
of the trees.
The day dreamis tenderly, and in the
genial sunlight the pink dresses of the
girls are sweet spots of colour, and the
wide lake, with all its reeds and islands
and shallowing shores, sparkles like a handmirror in the sun. Some of the company
stand on the steps feeding their eyes on
the summer prospect, others are dancing
in the drawing-room to the slangy jingle
of a piano; and the gaiety of the day
proceeds without interruption until sudE 2




52      Parnell and his Island.


denly appears a singular individual-a
young man in a long green coat. His
tiny hat, his long hair, his Parisian-cut
clothes and his Capoul-like beard give
him a very strange and very anomalous
air. On the Boulevard he might pass
muster, but where he stands he is un etre
de feerie. He is evidently very angry at
something; and he rings impatiently.
The aged servitor appears.
'What are all these people doing
here?'
'This is Mrs. So-and-so's afternoon
party, sir. Mr. --  lent the house. I
should be very happy to show you over it,
but they are dancing in the drawing-room,
and lunch is laid out in the dining-room.'
'Show me over the house indeed!
Don't you know me; this is my house? I
have just returned from Paris.'




An Irish Country Housc.


53


'Goodness, gracious, sir! I beg your
pardon; will you go and speak with
Mrs. -?'
It is easy to imagine the embarrassment of this worthy woman. She could
not very well ask the proprietor to give
her the pleasure of his company at an
afternoon dance in his own house, and on
the other hand she could not very well
call her guests together, pack up her
luncheon, and be off. But the Parisian's
heart was one of pity, and seeing how
matters stood, he went upstairs, changed
his clothes, and begged to be allowed to
join in the dance-a permission that was
graciously extended to him.
Soon we became friends; soon I was
invited to spend a few days with him.
He told me his story-that on the refusal
of his agent to supply him with any more




54      Parnell and his Island.
money he had come over from Paris with
a few pounds, and a volume of Baudelaire and Verlaine in his pocket. Of all
the latest tricks that had been played
with French verse he was thoroughly
master; of the size, situation, and condition of his property he knew no more than
I did. Indeed, he hated all allusion to be
made to it, and he looked forward with
positive horror to meeting his tenants, and
discussing -a reduction of rent with them.
This type of man is not unfrequent in
Ireland.




55


THE HOUSE OF AN IRISH POET.
HERE we find traces of the riches of other
generations-traces that in themselves
are characteristic of Ireland. The original
design as it shows through the wreck and
ruin seems to indicate that from the first
all had been undertaken on a scale a little
above the fortune of the owner; and this
in Ireland! The western Celt is a creature
quick to dream, and powerless to execute;
in external aspects and in moral history
the same tale is told-great things attempted, nothing done; and the physiology
and psychology of his country is read in
the unfinished pile.




56      Padinell and his Island.


Ireland is a country of abandoned
dreams. Here are a few-see this room,
it is forty feet square.  The floor is of
choice French parquet-the walls, stucco
of course replaces marble, but in every
other respect the room is an exact copy of
a Greek chamber.    The panels are in
mauve and straw colour; and painted in
the centre of each panel is a neo-Greek
picture.  But no curtains fall from  the
Greek cornices, and the room is furnished
with a few bits of heavy and meaningless
furniture that would do violence to the
taste of a retired soap-boiler.  Outside
there are terraces and pleasure-grounds
laid out according to Italian rule, and the
great woods extend from either side down
to, and along the shores of, the pale, mild,
mere-like lake-a lake that smiles as
wearily in the weak sunlight, to use a




The House of an Irish Poet.


57


Balzac simile, commrne une beaute de keepsake dessinee par Westhall, and this lake
is surrounded by amphi-theatrical mountains, and is covered with islands on
which you perceive a corner of an old
castle, a remnant of the brigandage of
old time. But to-day as well as yesterday
is in ruins. The great stables once filled
with thirty or forty race-horses, are now
for the most part but formless masses of
brick and mortar: here a bit of roofing
still holds on, and there a young ash-tree
forces its way through the rack out of
which the winner of the Chester cup
once drew his hay. And the great wide
green path of the race-course that wound
in and out through the woods and fields is
now overgrown and lost; and the garden
where several generations of children
played and grew amid everchanging ideas




58     Parnele and his Istand.


and desires from childhood to manhood, is
now but a wild, a sad, and savage placea strange place where strange weeds overtop the apple closes, and where the roses
have returned to the original eglantine.
Pulshing my way through the jungle I
come upon a sun-dial that the sun has not
seen these many years, and as I brush
away the leaves and earth, and read the
markings on the dial, I experience the
sensations of awe felt even by him who
strives to decipher an inscription upon a
lost and forgotten Brahmin tomb. And
upon the tall and morose walls, wet
with the rain that drips from the overhanging beeches, a peacock-the last of
the many generations of peacocks that in
gladder days decorated the terraces and
the long lawns-now cries dolorously for
the pea-hen morte d'antan.




The House of an Irzsh Poet.


59


And amid these ancient sights my
host and I wander: he with his pockets
filled with back numbers of ' La Vogue,'
from which he occasionally reads sonnets
by Mallarme and Verlaine.    And our
poetic discussions are prolonged till the
hour when in the baronial hall-sad, like
the drawing-room, with the sadness of
incompleted things-we dine on trout
taken that day from the lake, and tiny,
half-starved chickens that the vieux serviteur procured for us in the village; then
in the long evenings we turn over the
books in the library-a library to which
not a book has been added for the last
fifty years: and so the days pass until the
hour comes for my friend the Irish poet
to go through the dreaded interview with
his tenants.
The agent, having lived all his life




6o      Parnell and his Island.


among bullocks, partook of their animality.
His thick legs are encased in gaiters, and
he wears a long ulster.
' How do you do?' he exclaimed.
' Do you know that things are getting
worse instead of better?  There's been
another bailiff shot down in Mayo, and
we have had a process-server nearly beaten
to death down our side of the country.
Gad! I was out with the sub-sheriff and
fifty police trying to serve notices on Lord
's estate, and we had to come back as
we went, such blowing of horns you never
heard in your life. The whole country
was up, and they had a trench cut across
the road as wide as a canal.'
'Well, what do you think we had
better do with these fellows? Do you
think they will take the twenty per
cent.?'




Thie House of an Irish Poet.


6i


'Tis impossible to say. Gad! the
League is getting stronger every day.
But they ought to take it; twenty per
cent. will bring it very nearly down to
Griffiths'.' [Griffiths' valuation is a valuation that was made thirty years ago by
order of Government for purposes of
taxation.]
' But if they don't take it? '
' Well, I don't know what we will do,
for notices it is impossible to serve. Gad!
I will never forget how we were pelted
the other day, such throwing of stones,
such blowing of horns! I think you will
have to give them the thirty, but we will
try them at twenty-five.'
'And if they won't take it? '
'What, the thirty? They will take
that, and jumping, you needn't fear. Here
they come.'




62      Parnell and his Island.


Turning, the two men watched the
forty or fifty peasants, who, with heads
set against the wild  gusts, advanced
steadily up the avenue. The peasants lift
their hats, and the interview begins:'Now  boys,' cries the poet, who
thought that a little familiarity would not
be inappropriate: 'I have asked you to
meet me so that we might come to some
agreement about the rents. We have
known each other a long time, and my
family has been on this estate I don't
know how many generations. Therefore
-why, of course, I should be very sorry
if we had any falling out. I don't know
much about farming, but I hear everyone
say that this has been a capital year; and
now... well, I think I cannot do better
than to make the same offer as I did
before through my agent-that is to say,




The House of an Irish Poet.  63
of twenty per cent. abatement all round
-that will bring your rents down to
Griffiths' valuation.'
The poet intended to be very impressive; but feeling that words were
betraying him he stops short and waits
anxiously to hear what answer the peasant
who steps forward would make. The old
man begins by removing a battered tall
hat, out of which falls a red handkerchief;
the handkerchief is quickly thrown back
into the crown, and at an intimation from
the poet hat and handkerchief are replaced
on the white head.
'Now, your honour, the rents are too
high; we cannot pay the present rent,
leastways without a reduction. I have
been a tenant on the property, and my
fathers before me for the past hundred
and fifty years, and it was in '43 that




64


Parnell and his Island.


the rents were raised-in the time of
your father-the Lord have mercy on his
soul!-but he had an agent who 'was a
hard man, and he raised the rents; and
since then we have been living on yellow
meal and potatoes-potatoes that are
watery; there's no diet in them, your
honour, and if your honour will come
and walk the lands yourself, you will see
that I am speaking the truth; we ask
nothing better than that you should walk
the lands yourself. There are two acres
of my land, your honour, flooded for three
months of the year, and for that same
land I am paying twenty-five shillings an
acre. I have my receipts paid down to
the last half-year.' And, still speaking,
the old man fumbles in his pockets and
produces a large pile of papers, which
he strives to push into the poet's hand,




The House of an Irish Poet.  65
alluding all the while to the losses he had
sustained. Two pigs had died, and he had
lost a fine mare and foal.
'I should be delighted to give you
thirty per cent. reduction,' cries the poet,
as soon as the question of reduction, that
had been lost amid schemes for draining
and bad seasons, had been re-established.
'But you must remember I have to pay
charges, and my creditors won't wait any
more than yours will. If you refuse to
pay your rents, and I get sold out, you
will ruin me, but you won't do yourselves
any good; you will have some Englishman here who will make you pay your
rents.'
'An Englishman here!' cries a peasant.' He would go back quicker than he
came.'
' Maybe he wouldn't go back at all,'
F




66      Parnell and his Island.


cries another, chuckling.  'We would
make an Irishman of him for ever.'
'Begad! we would make hin wear
the green in real earnest, and a fine sod it
would be,' shouted a third.
The witticism is greeted with -a roar
of laughter, and upon this expression of a
somewhat verdant patriotism, the dispute
concerning the reduction was resumed.
'Give us the land all round at the
Government valuation,' says a man in the
middle of the group.
'Why, you are only fifteen per cent.
above the valuation,' cries the agent.
For a moment this seems to create a
difference of opinion among the peasants;
but the League had drawn them too firmly
together to be thus easily divided. They
talk among themselves in Irish. Then the
olk&man says:




The House of an Irish Poet.  67
'We can't take less than thirty per
cent.; the League would not let us.'
'I can't give you more than twenty.'
'Then let us come home; there is no
use our wasting our time here,' cries a
sturdy peasant, who, although he spoke
but seldom, seemed    to  exercise  an
authority over the rest. With one accord
they follow him, but rushing forward the
agent seizes him by the arm.
'Now then, boys, come back. He will
settle with you right enough if you'll only
listen to reason.'
Then after a great deal more discussion
during which the poet, intensely wearied,
strove to recall the tercets of a sonnet by
Mallarme, a bargain was struck, and the
tenants agreed to take twenty-five per
cent.
But this arrangement by no- neans
2




68      Parnell and his Island.


ended our poet's troubles. That very
evening the agent said, in a pause in the
conversation, 'You must see the tenants
on all your different properties.'
' On all my different properties? And
where are my different properties?'
'You have several properties in the
north of Mayo.'
' And where is the north of Mayo?'
'About thirty miles from here. And
there you will have an opportunity of
visiting the tomb of your ancestor, the
man who built this house.'
The poet glanced at the portrait above
his head and relapsed into reveries. He
seemed however determined to meet his
fate. On the following morning a car is
waiting for us at the door, and we start
on our pilgrimage. During the first eight
or nine miles the country presents its usual




The House oj an frish Poet.  69
sad aspect of servitude and poverty. We
see on our right and left the same miserable cabins stuck here and there under the
potato-fields that feed the family; poor
miserable cabins built of loose stones
without a tree or a bush to hide their
nakedness or shelter the inmates from the
wild wet winds-wet with Atlantic surges
-that howl up and down the bleak roads
and sterile uplands. The children play
and pigs wallow on the dung-heap, the
woman with her worn red petticoats blowing about her thick red legs, gathers the
peat in the brown bog that strikes through
the scanty fields, and along the hillsides
the woods of the domain lands extend in
curving lines, and I see the square white
houses ot the landlords gleaming at the
end of the vistas-handsome square white
houses-each is surrounded with a hundred




7o


Parnell and his Island.


or so of filthy tenements that Providence
and God have decreed shall unite and
keep the master in affluence and ease.
Soon after we enter a small town; the
market-place is filled with peasants; a
platform has been erected, and, amid a
number of green flags, a village orator
explains that the landlord whose house he
indicates with his finger must not be paid
a shilling until he agrees to accept thirty
per cent. reduction; the orator is followed
by a fat priest who draws subtle distinctions between the different kinds of
murder.   Two kinds are    peculiar to
Ireland, he   declares: behind-the-wall
murder, and eviction murder, and the
law of self-preservation is the first law of
life. We listen for a few minutes, and
then we climb on to the second car that
has been prepared for us. The agent sits




The Houtse of an Irish Poet.


7I


with a policeman on one side; he thinks
if he brought his whole escort it might
excite the tenants to refuse to come to
terms; the poet and myself sit on the
other, the driver sits on a small seat
perched over the horse's tail; we are all
armed to the teeth. So we enter on a
new country, a country bleaker even than
the one we left. No landlords live here,
they only come here to collect rent.
And to find the tenant face to face with
nature, removed from the perhaps refining
influence of his terrible task-master, is a
mournful sight-the mournful grey of
these western skies, the morose sterility
of these desert hills. We do not readily
understand that a cab-horse may find
pleasure in life, nor any more do we
understand what hopes or aspirations may
animate the peasants who live here striv



72     Parnell and his Islana.


ing to cultivate this arid land. Now the
hills have been left behind and we are
passing through an interminable stretch of
bog land; and even into this wilderness
eviction has forced the peasant. Out in
this swamp there are huts, and in the ooze
and mud the procreation of the human
race is continued. We pass a dwellingplace that strikes me as being the farthest
possible limit to which human degradation
may be extended. Into the bank formed
by the cutting of the peat a few poles
have been thrust, and on these poles sods
of earth have been laid, the front and
sides are partly built up with soft black
mud. And in this foul den a woman
has brought up five children, and in
the swamp a few potatoes are cultivated, but the potato crop has failed this
year and the family are living on the




The House of an Irizsh Poet.


73-1


yellow meal the parish authorities allow
them. They are boiling it now in the
black iron pot, and will probably eat it
out of the pot, for the hut contains nothing
but the pot and the straw on which the
family sleep. The man in a torn shirt
looking like a wild beast is climbing out
of the bog hole. 'Whose tenant are
you? ' I ask. 'M    ' he replies, mentioning my host's name, 'but I have received notice to quit.' 'Is not that the
best thing that could happen to you? ' I
ask. ' Why don't you apply to the Tuke
fund to be emigrated?'
' My wife likes the old country and we
might be worse off in America.'
' But you could not be worse off.'
' Oh, times may mend,' he replies!
How times can mend for him I know
not, and I leave him with a picture of




74 -


Parnell and hzs Island.


most awful poverty burnt for ever in my
memory.
Then, as we drive to the end of this
region of bog, we see a man approaching.
It is the bailiff. IIe tells us that the tenants are waiting to meet us behind that far
hill, and there we find ourselves in the
presence of thirty or forty men.   The
agent and the poet get off the car and
address them; but it is clear that their
minds are made up; they will accept
nothing less than thirty per cent. Hoping that the news of their refusal to
come to terms will not reach the next
property before us we proceed, and
some miles farther on a similar scene
is re-enacted  and with  almost similar
results.
'It was here your ancestor lived
before he went to India and made his




The House of an Irish Poet.


75


fortune,' says the agent. ' The old house
is in ruins, and the chapel where he is
buried is likewise in ruins; but would you
like to see his tomb?'
'Yes, I think I would,' replies the poet;
and followed by a group of nearly naked
peasants all chattering  together, some
explaining  their differences with their
neighbours and begging the landlord to
interfere; others insisting on a reduction
of rent, because their crops have failedbecause 'the potatoes are watery, there
is no diet in them' —we approach a
ruined chapel.  With some hesitation,
the reason of which we do not at first
understand, one of the peasants shows
us the gravestone almost hidden from
sight beneath a monstrous growth of
nettles.
After two hundred years the grave




76     Parnell and his Island.


has been violated by the peasants for the
leaden coffin, and the bones of him who
created  all that has been wasted-by
one generation in terraces, by another in
race-horses, and by another in dissipation
in Paris, lie scattered about the ground
trodden by chance of the passing feet of
the peasant.
Notwithstanding his cynicism my
friend was touched to the heart. Three
days afterwards he began a poem on
the subject, the chief merit of which
lay in the ingenuity of rhyming Lilith
with lit.




77


THE LANDLORD.
MR. BLAKE lives in a great square boxlike house, placed in the centre of a wet
lawn, set about with melancholy trees.
The lawn is let to a grazier, and herds of
cattle feed even to the hall door. The
beasts tramp through the laurels across
the terraces, and the walks are covered
with cow-dung; every ornamental fence
has been broken down; the cut stone has
slipped out of the corner walls of the
stable and garden, and in slush, neglect,
and ruin the aspect of these places is that
of a decaying farmyard. If you pull the
shaky bell-handle you will hear a mourn



78     Parnell and his Island.


fill ringing far away down in the distant
corridor; you will be kept waiting a long
time, but eventually the butler, an old,
shabby, and decrepit creature, whose life
has been passed in ever-humbling servitude,
will open the door to you. He is now
dressed in his master's old clothes-they
are three sizes too large for him, and the
sleeves of the coat are turned up some
five or six inches. Like everything else
in Ireland he bears signs of better days;
and, through all the shabbiness and all the
poverty, you see the fashionable London
servant. He is the rat that has not left
the sinking ship, and he has starved even
to this. Still there is an air of fashion in
the way he shows you into the drawingroom-a fadingly furnished room- heavy
antique- chairs and sofas, a broken piano,
and  some lamentable -pictures iof 'dogs




The Landlord.


79


going after birds. This was good enough
for yesterday, it is good enough for to-day,
and to-morrow we may not be here. You
sit on a sofa which seems to be stuffed
with the national potato, and you seek
for something to read. There is nothing
but the ' Freeman's Journal,' and mechanically you glance through the daily list of
outrages until a worn and uninteresting
lady enters. Platitude is read in every
gesture, trouble in every look; she introduces you to her six children, and asks
you to have a cup of tea. An effort is
made to speak of London, but in a few
minutes the conversation has lapsed into
the usual and never-ceasing wailing concerning the prospects of the countryin other words the chances of collecting
rent.
The story of Mr. Blake's life is as




So      Pasnell and his Island.


follows:-When he came of age his father
made him an allowance of three hundred
a year, and sent him to London to see
the world and if possible to pick up an
heiress.  He took a couple of furnished
rooms in Duke Street, St. James's, and
then came the whelming desire to eat of
the fruit and gather the flowers of lifeto dine in fashionable places, to feel delicately dressed, to be chic, to avoid the
public road of dust and heat, and choose
a pleasant by-path adorned with flowers
and where but few are seen... All Irish
gentlemen are sportsmen. Mr. Blake has
a friend in a hunting county, and to bring
a couple of horses and go and stay with
him is the first step. Mr. Blake is a firstrate rider, the horses turn out well, and
he sells them for twice as much as he gave
for them.   He buys some more and




The Landlord.         8
disposes of them on equally advantageous
terms.  He repeats the trick again and
again, with varying success, until at the
end of the season he returns to London
crazed with the money he has made, with
pleasure, with flattery, and a prospect
of gay life. Having some hundreds of
pounds in the bank he henceforth pays a
pound a day for a handsome apartment
and he goes to the Gaiety Theatre...
At the Gaiety Theatre he meets Maud.
Maud, who sings in the chorus or dances
in the ballet, delights in supper parties, and
is insatiable as regards the number of her
admirers. For some months he enjoys
the privilege of paying Maud's bills and being constantly at her side. About August
Mr. Blake begins to look anxiously to the
hunting season as a means of replenishing
his exhausted exchequer.  This time he
G




82     Parnell and zis Istand.


goes down to Northamptonshire with five
horses, but the horses fall lame, he loses
his money at cards, everything goes wrong,
and there is nothing to do but to have
recourse to the Jews. Luck comes again
and luck goes again, but the expenses
remain the same, and at last the end
comes, and there is the usual storm of
sighs and bitter recriminations. Nevertheless at his club that evening Mr. Blake
comes to the conclusion that after all it
was perhaps for the best, indeed a glance
at his bank-book convinces him that the
rupture came not one hour too soonand marriage loomed above the horizon.
Henceforth Mr. Blake is a reformed man.
He calls on the Jesuits in Farm Street, and
he is seen at various luncheon parties in
Bayswater; and for a year he made love
to every girl he met in the hopes she




The Landltord.


8.3


might be the heiress whose fortune would
pay off the mortgages that 'to a certain
extent crippled the property.'  But the
heiress never came, and if she did she was
invariably engaged to some one else; and
the money-lenders were pressing, so pressing that after five years' dissipation Mr.
Blake had to return home to economise;
and soon after his broken-hearted father
-who had lived in London and returned
home some thirty years ago in exactly the
same way-died, leaving his son to get out
of the money-lenders' clutches as best he
could.  But six thousand pounds is a
large sum, and press the tenants as he
would, though he might demand premiums
for the letting of every farm, Mr. Blake
found that if he wanted to make both
ends meet he would have to deprive
himself of every pleasure-that is to say
G 2




84


Parnell and his Island.


he would have to live in Roscommon all
the year round; at the most he could not
hope to spend more than a fortnight in
London. He can still keep a couple of
horses, he can get as much shooting and
tennis-playing as he desires, and for six
months his longing for London is neither
bitter nor profound.  There is only one
thing that troubles him, and that is a
haunting and irritating remembrance of
Maud, not perhaps of the Maud he knew
and admired in the Strand, for his love once
so personal has now become catholic....
A young unmarried landlord is an
object of the keenest interest to the
peasant women of Ireland; so soon as he
settles down to live at home, the drama
commences. The mother and the comely
daughter are loitering at the hall-door.
The door opens, and the young master




The Landlord.


appears. He admires the girl's rosy cheeks
and takes an interest in her. Three days
after when he is out shooting he meets the
girl. She tells him she wants to go out to
service, speaks of going to England. He
easily dissuades her, and takes her in as
housekeeper. Biddy's brothers are transferred from the fields to the stables, and
some become grooms, bailiffs, and gamekeepers.
Five years bring five children.  Mr.
Blake is weary of his numerous dependents,
and he is harassed by debts. The moneylender has been paid, but other debts have
been contracted and are pressing on him
sorely. How is he to relieve himself? There
is no way but marriage. A neighbour has
an elderly daughter whom he has never
been able to get rid of; he is a rich grazier
and he can give her seven thousand pounds




86     Parnell and his Island.


down. Seven thousand pounds is Eldorado to embarrassed M[r. Blake, and he
proceeds at once to come to terms with
Biddy and Biddy's family. The father-inlaw declares that he could not hear of
their remaining in the country, to America
they must go if the marriage is to be, and
to America Biddy and her five children
are sent, the brothers elect to start for
England, the father and mother are given
twenty pounds, and Mrs. Blake takes the
place vacated by the discarded Biddy.
About every landlord's house in Ireland traces are found of immorality with
peasant women, and it is curious to note
the proportion of tenants that bear the
landlords' names, and often at a petty
sessions the magistrate will not convict
the prisoner because he knows Blake to
be his half-brother or his son.




The Landlord.


87


Sometimes, before the birth of her
eleventh child, the landlord takes Biddy to
church, and puts the ring on her finger,
and the baby who is born two months
after is legitimate and heir to the property
-and title, if there be one in the family.
The young landlord grows up amid his
illegitimate brothers and sisters, for whom
the father is striving to lay by a few thousand pounds. I know of no novelist who
has touched this subject, and yet how full
it is of poor human nature: vice, degradation, pity, hard-heartedness, grow on
its every branch like blackberries in an
autumn hedge.
The first three or four years that succeeded his marriage were happy ones;
Ireland was quiet, rents were paid, and
his wife's fortune had relieved Mr. Blake




88      Parnell and his Island.


of his personal debts. But in '77 came
the periodic failure of the potato crop,
and the people starved.   Enactments
were issued by the thousand, and the
country was about to be depopulated
again as it was before in '49.   He
who knows Ireland knows what it is to
pass from a region where the hovels are
plentiful, and the gaunt hill-sides are
divided into  patches by walls-loose
round stones piled one on top of the
other-to a region of wide pasture lands
where herds upon herds of bullocks graze.
Look at the fragment of ruined cottage,
and think of the misery and woe. Family
after family were dug out with crowbar
and pick, as if they were rabbits, and
were driven forth to die or to find their
way to America. Many died, but the survivors and their sons are now wealthy




The Landlord.


89


men in New York, Chicago, and Boston;
and it is they who supply Parnell with
money to prosecute to exile and ruin the
war against landlordism.
I am a landlord to-day, but I will
recognise it as a fact that had not Davitt
organised the Land League in '78, a great
clearance of peasants would have been
again made in '78. Mr. Blake is not a
hard-hearted man, but in Ireland we are
accustomed to evictions, and no doubt he
would have cleared his property of as
many tenants as possible, and have reorganised it on a system of grazing. For
since '49 every good landlord regrets his
goodness; when we pass the great tracts
of pasture land with the fragment of
ruined cottage we say in our hearts: ' Oh
that I had, or my father had, evicted like
the others in '49!'




g90      Parnell and his Island.


Mr. Blake's estate is one of the worst
in the West of Ireland; Mr. Blake has
two hundred tenants, there is not a man
on the estate who is worth a hundred
pounds, and most of his tenants live out
on the verge of the bog, where they till a
few wretched acres of land, and for which
they pay on an average from four to five
pounds a year. Mr. Blake's rental stands
at two thousand a year, but his father who
kept race-horses put a mortgage of five
per cent. on the estate, for which five per
cent. interest is paid a year. Then the
widow is in receipt of three, and the
younger children of two, hundred a year;
Mr. Blake's agent takes five per cent. of
the gross rental, for Mr. Blake must have
an agent, it is the custom in Ireland to
have agents, and this is so partly because
the landlords are too fine gentlemen to do




The Landlord.


9 I


their own business, partly because a third
person can deal more summarily with the
tenants than the landlord. In '81 the Land
Act knocked three hundred more off his
income, leaving, when taxes and bad debts
are deducted, something about four hundred a year for our typical landlord to live
on. For, mark you, all losses must be
borne by the unfortunate Mr. Blake-all
bad debts, and the forcible reduction of
rent ordained by the Land Act of '81 come
out of his pocket-the mortgagees, the
widow and the younger children lose not
one penny, no matter what disastrous
seasons time may bring; no matter what
Radical Land Bills Mr. Gladstone or Mr.
Parnell may force through the House of
Commons; and yet they, mortgagees,
widow, and younger children all draw
their income from the same source as the




92     Parne/ll and his Island.


landlord. Herein lies, it seems to me, the
great injustice of the Land Bill of '81 and
likewise of the Bill on which Mr. Parnell
is speaking as I write this very line;
if rents are reduced by State intervention, no distinction should be made in
proprietorship-mortgagees, widow, etc.,
should bear a proportional loss.
But will the margin that the Land Act
of '81 left to the proprietor, will it continue to be paid? This is the terrible 'To
be or not to be' that now gnaws at every
landlord's heart, and most of all at Mr.
Blake's; for he has six children to support,
and he- is now forty and incapable of earning a shilling unless perhaps as a common
labourer. Is it possible that the entire
upper class of a country will be deprived
of all its worldly goods and turned adrift
out on the world to starve, and that




The Landlorad.


93


we shall soon have a country composed
exclusively of peasants? Never has the
world seen, no not even France in time
of revolution, such a reversal of fortune as that which is threatened in
Ireland. And it is far from certain that
this change in the affairs of men will not
come to pass. Ireland is now quiet; at
the sign of Mr. Parnell murder and
violence have ceased, but when he finds
that he and his party are powerless to
obtain Home Rule he will say, like Pilate,
'I will wash my hands of the blood of
these men;' and then outrage and murder
will again make the land horrible, and the
tenant-farmers will again dictate their
terms to the landlords and those of this
already enfeebled class, whom the assassin
scare will gradually starve to death or
exile.




94


Parnell and his Islana.


THE TENANT-FARMER.
MICKY MORAN is a tenant-farmer.    His
holding consists of tel acres of land, not
set in one compact flat about the cabin
which he built himself by the roadside,
but scattered here and there through the
surrounding farms: to get at his oat-field
he has to cross his neighbour's potatogarden, and this right of way is conducive, as may be easily imagined, to fierce
disputes.
The sun is setting behind the blue
band of mountains, the islands with their
hanging shadows shove their black noses
like fish through the motionless silver of




The Tenant-Farmer.


95


the lake, and now the pale elusive distance
floats away in long curving lines, in tones
of grey and rose; the quacking of the
ducks in the reeds adds an exquisite stillness to the scene.   But suddenly the
sonorous shores resound with oaths, and
the tranquil evening is rent with screams
for vengeance; women rush for pitchforks
and spades, the children crowd out of the
filthy hovel, and Micky Moran has much
difficulty in escaping with his life.
Micky Moran is a strong-built man of
forty-five: a pair of corduroy trousers, a
frieze coat, a dark discoloured skin with
scanty whiskers, a snub nose, blue eyes
set deep under a low forehead, receding
temples and square-set jaws. His face is
expressive of meanness, sullenness, stupidity; he is obviously nearer to the earth
than the Saxon; he reminds me of some




96      Parnell and his Island.


low earth-animal whose nature has not
yet risen  from  out the soil.   He is
evidently of a degenerate race-a race
that has been left behind-and should
perish, like the black rat perished before
the brown and more ferocious species.
Micky is not a Celt, he is a Fin. Ages
ago the Fins were defeated by the Celts
and driven into the outlying districts of
Connaught; there they should have died,
but owing to their extraordinary power
of reproduction  they are now making
headway against the superior races.  If
pestilence or war do not intervene, families
of ten will win the battle of existence for
the most ill-favoured race that ever trod
the earth. And Micky's and his wife's
philoprogenitiveness is quite up to the
average; they are ten in family. His
eldest son and daughter are in America,




The Tenant-Farmer.


97


the two next are working in different
employments in Manchester, at home
there is a baby in arms, three children,
three, four, and six years of age, a boy of
seventeen and Mary a girl of eighteen.
Poor Mary! She went in for making a big
catch and got herself into trouble.
The Irish peasants are the most moral
people in the world. Their morality fails
only when their landlord covets their
daughter, and that custom  being a survival of the serfdom of the past is rapidly
dying out. But in certain parishes where
the ruling of the priest is feeble, the young
girls in order to get husbands allow themselves to be seduced, counting on the
influence that will be brought to bear
on the young man that he will marry
them afterwards. In all other ways they
are as I say the most moral (using the
IT




98     Parnell and his Island.


word moral in its limited, not its general,
sense) people in the world.   And this
special morality is necessitated by their
mode of living, their ignorance, their
superstition.  For to save their flocks
from sin-I mean the sin the most generally hateful to the spirit and teaching of
the Catholic Church-the priests encourage early marriages; in Ireland you
seldom  see a young   man who is not
married, and there is in all classes a very
general absence of any practical theory of
life, and much dull acquiescence in the
belief that God does not bring life into
the world without providing for it.  If
you bear this in mind, and if you take into
account that the Irish peasant has lived
for centuries in a damp, black, miserable
hole from which he was expelled if he
did not give up his daughter, if he did not




The Tenant-Farmer.


99


vote as the agent told him, youl will begin
to understand why he is grossly superstitious and stupidly improvident, and why
he breeds blindly like a newt in the wet
and the slime. The Irish race is one that
has been forgotten and left behind in a
bog hole; it smells of the wet earth, its
face seems as if made of it, and its ideas
are moist and dull, and as sterile as peat.
A dim idea floats in the minds of the
young men that they had better leave
home, that there is not much to do, not
much to hope for in the plot of ground
that they till on a hill-side of this far
western land; but the agitator comes along
and declares that Ireland is for the Irish,
that her children must not go away. The
young man thinks over what he has heard
at the meeting, and as he walks home he
stops to speak to his neighbour's daughter.
n 2




100oo  Parnell and his Island.


He admires her rosy cheeks, and her
hideous thick red legs do not strike him as
abominable, for he has never seen others;
he meets her the following evening and
they pass from the lane into the shadows
of the fields. Why detail the' sequel?
Mary knows that in due time her father,
mother, and above all the priest, will
intervene, and that the young man will be
forced to marry her. In ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred these tactics prove successful, but Mary is the exception that
proves the rule. Actuated by the laudable desire to do as well for herself as possible, she made eyes at the best parti in
her village-a young man whose father
farmed something like thirty acres of land.
Up to a certain point everything went as
well and as successfully with Mary as the
most hopeful. Irish maiden could desire.




The Tenant-Farmer.


I01


As to the present there had been nothing
extravagant or eccentric in Mary's conduct; she had proceeded on the most
approved principles, and her father and
mother looked upon her with love and
respect, seeing in her the wife of their rich
neighbour, and they waited anxiously for
the time to come when she would throw
herself into their arms and confess her
sad condition. When this occurred about
three months after, like good parents that
they were, they took immediate steps
to rehabilitate their daughter in the
opinion of the world. They went round
to see the father of the young man, who
declared his son to be as innocent as the
new-born babe, or rather as the babe unborn. The priest was applied to; but he
was of the old school, a quiet man who
loved his Latin authors and his glass




102


Parnell and his Island.


of punch, and his denunciation of the
young man from the altar did not seem
to change anything in the young man's
determination, and the publication of the
banns seemed as far off as ever. Threats
and violence were then resorted to, the
outraged parents summoned their cousins
and their uncles, and a moonlight expedition was spoken of; but the young man
was a prominent member of the League,
and the project had to be abandoned.
The young man continued to deny the
seduction, and when at last it became clear
that he could not be forced into marrying,
the fallen woman was driven from the
hearth she had disgraced, and told to
make her way to the workhouse, the
proper place for her to bring her bastard
brat into the world.
I shall not forget the last time I saw




The Tenant-FarIner.


103


Mary. She was living on the confines of
the village in a hollow in the hill-side
built about with rough stones and covered
with clods of earth; a still more horrible
dwelling-place than the one she had been
driven from, with an old woman who had
been a priest's servant. There she had
been delivered of her child.  No one
speaks to her; and in the morning and
evening you see her sitting under the
hawthorn tree, sole tree of that wild
landscape. She nurses the child, and her
thighs and bosom are bare, and the wind
is full of her wailing, and as you turn and
see her sitting-lonely, oh! so lonely-she
is as touching a picture of human misery
as the mind of man can conceive.
I have said that Micky Moran's farm
consists of ten acres of land.




I04


Parnell and his Island.


For these ten acres he used to pay a
yearly rent of nine pounds five shillings,
but the Land Act of '81 reduced his rent
to seven pounds. An acre and a half is
devoted to potatoes, three acres and a
half to oats, and the remainder is in grass
on which he feeds a few sheep and a
yearling calf. The sheep generally die,
and the calf often dies, and if the milk
does not fail the family lives upon yellow
meal which is bought with the money the
daughter sends home from America, where
she works as kitchen-maid, and the money
the son sends from Manchester, where he
works as barman in a public-house. And
here I must say a word in praise of the
conduct of the Irish children towards
their parents.  Never do they forget
them; I have known sons and daughters
who have been away in America for ten,




The Tenant-Farmer.


I05


yes and fifteen, years, and who regularly
send home their savings to the old couple
in Ireland. But how does Micky Moran
pay his rent? Some of the rent comes
from America and Manchester, some from
the sale of the pig, and then Micky
Moran goes to England every year to do
harvest work, and if he is lucky he returns with half-a-dozen pounds. The farm,
although it be not a profitable concern,
is at least a plot of ground where the
wife may bear children and the pig may
wallow. From our point of view Micky
Moran's life has been neither pleasant nor
successful. He was born in the darkness
and damp of a hovel, and excepting the
months of the year when he goes to
England to earn the rent, he has lived in
it. Moreover he and his fathei before
him have lived in daily and nightly fear




10o6    Parnell and his Island.


of being evicted from their horrid home;
for the possibility of the Moran family
being able to supply the yearly demands
of the agent has never been even at best
of times more than a bare possibility.
Since his name was substituted for his
father's in the agent's books, he has received innumerable notices to quit, and
his sheep and his pig and his calf have
been seized for rent on many occasions.
But by making great sacrifices he has
always been able to keep a roof over his
head.
It was however a very bad year for
poor Moran; everything went against
him: the potato crop had failed, his pig
and his sheep had died. Then he wrote
to his sons in Manchester, and to his
daughter in New York, but the young
people could not make up the money, and




The Tenant-Farmer.


I07


the sheriff's officers were at the broker's
door. Micky Moran threw himself into
the arms of the League that were extended to save him. Moran was saved.
The agent was fired at, and when the
sheriff's officers, protected by a hundred
police, came to evict, they were met by
some thousand people who pelted them
with stones and forced them to retreat.
Henceforth Micky Moran understood his
power; in company with the other
tenants he attended and told him flatly
that they would pay no rent unless they
were allowed a reduction of twenty-five
per cent. 'We do not expect the land
for nothing,' they said, ' but we must have
it at a fair rent.
So it was that Micky Moran first
defied the law; but his connection with
crime did not end here. The son who




108     Parnell and his Island.


remained at home now goes out every
night for a walk on the road; and not to
meet a girl, but half-a-dozen young fellows
like himself, varying in age from eighteen
to twenty-six. Sometimes they go to the
public-house which Balzac in his novel,
' Les Paysans '-that most wonderful
anticipation of all the phenomena of the
Irish crises-calls' the people's parliament,'
but more often they go to each other's
houses, where they sit and talk till midnight.  Now they are at Moran's.   A
great peat fire is blazing on the hearth,
and the licking red flames and the heaps
of white ash are a picturesque decoration;
and then the sheep-dog curled up in
beautiful attitude, the sharp nose resting
on the paws, his long coat glistening.
The chins and hands of the speakers stand
out in trenchant contrast, and the squalor




The Tenant-Farmer.


o109


of the background is concealed in romantic shadow. The mother and younger
children have gone through the hole of
the dividing wall, and the bed in which
the girl sleeps is vague and shadowy.
The men speak in Irish and in undertones; they sit round the fire on logs of
wood, and they are drawn close together.
Micky smokes in the chimney corner, and
sullenly acquiesces in what is said. The
young men are bolder than he, and he
fears that there will be, as he puts it,
'Bad work done before long.' In truth
the conversation does seem a little dangerous. They are talking of their landlord's bailiff.
'If it weren't for that son of a —,
Ferick, Mr. Blake would give us the thirty
per cent.'
'He would; but Ferick can do what




I10    Parnell and his Island.


he likes with him: hasn't he got the best
land in the parish?'
' Wasn't it only ten years ago that he
took up five acres from which Widow
Flanagan was evicted?'
'And he would do the same again if
he had the chance.'
' He thinks he'll be a landlord one
of these days in the parish. Don't they
say that he has five hundred pounds put
away in the bank?'
' And haven't you heard that he has
an ejectment decree out against Patrick
Murphy, your uncle? and if he gets him
put out he will take up the land.'
' He nor the likes of him will never
take up Patrick Murphy's land, not as long
as there's lead to be bought in Ireland.'
' He would walk on us all if he
could, but I think his time is nearly up.'




The Tenant-Farmer.


I I I


' It is if he has taken out a decree
against Patrick Murphy, and no mistake.'
'I will for one, and I think there are
a couple of boys in the parish.'
' Begorra, he must be got rid of! We
can stand him no more.'
' We might get some help from the
League; leastways we might ask what the
League thinks of him. We will speak to
Daly after mass next Sunday.  I don't
think he knows that there is a decree out
against Patrick Murphy.'
This conversation caused Micky Moran
much anxiety, and had he been able he
would have prevented his son from attending Mass on the following Sunday.
But the boy was obstinate, and then
Micky reflected that to lose MassInherited beliefs and customs, profitable although their rejection may be, cannot




I 12    Parnell and his Islana.


be put aside at will by force of will, and
some years will elapse before Micky and
his likes will say that the land they till is
theirs, and will by force of numbers-by
that force that having nothing to lose brings
-will gradually terrify the mortgaged
landowners into bankruptcy; but sooner
or later this will come to pass, and then,
when the estates are put up for auction,
Micky Moran and his like will terrify,
with assassination and threats of assassination all intending purchasers awaywill, in fine, by an intermittingness of
effort, win back to the Celt the land that
was taken from the Celt.




I3


THE PRIEST.
FATHER TOM SHANNON is the son of a
village grocer. Having shown more than
ordinary intelligence at school it was hoped
that he would devote himself to patriotism,
but being of a sober, mild, and retiring
disposition, it was eventually decided that
he was more fitted to be a priest. Priesthood and patriotism are the only ways of
advancement open in Ireland to those who
are not landlords. Father Tom was therefore sent to Maynooth. (Maynooth is a
college subventioned by the State for the
education of those who intend to enter
the Irish priesthood.)  There he remained
I




I I4    Parnell and his Island.


six years learning Latin and theology.
He was ordained when he was twentythree, and immediately after he was
allotted a curacy among the mountains,
and when he had served God for about
ten years in this humble position the
bishop gave him  a parish, and this is
the highest position lie may hope to
attain to.
Let us look at his house. It is a long
cottage, whitewashed and solidly thatched,
and stands in a green field: it faces the
high road.   The door is painted, the
windows are three feet by four, and a
spray of woodbine clambers about one
corner; there are a few trees and a paling.
It is clean-it is, in a word, inhabitable;
it is the one point in the vast abyss which
lies between the hovels of the peasants
and the large square houses of the land



The Pries/.


I I5


lords. There is a little brass knocker on
the door; you knock, and the priest's
servant-they are all the same, nondescript women of fifty-dressed in a red
petticoat-barely covering her naked legs,
her shoulders are covered with a shawl,
opens the door, and saluting you with a
curtsey, asks you to walk into the parlour.
You are in the very narrowest of passages,
and you are conscious that there are all
sorts of rooms about you-rooms run up
hurriedly with ill-fitting boards and rudely
papered. These arrangements were necessary, for Father Shannon has three sisters
dependent upon him for support, and the
promiscuity of the cabin is not possible in
the priest's house. The shutting of doors
and the flying steps you heard as you
waited on the doorstep were the three
sisters leaving the parlour.  For mnore
i 2




I 16   Parnell and his Island.


than all else the Irish priest is diffident of
his female relations, and he anxiously keeps
them out of sight as much as possible.
The lot of these poor women is a hard
one: they cannot associate with the
peasant women, and if the Catholic landlord would strain a point and invite them
to an occasional lunch party, their brother
would not allow them to accept.  And
the same scrupulousness pervades his entire conduct in his relations with women.
Shakespeare says: 'For one chaste man
I will show you twenty lascivious turtles,'
but this was because Shakespeare did not
know the Irish priesthood. They may,
and they no doubt do, occasionally get
drunk, and it cannot be denied that their
utterances on the altar savour strongly of
incentive to murder, but of other immorality they  know   nothing.  Their




The Priest.


II7


behaviour on this point is most curious
indeed, and how so large a body of men
can live so free from reproach would prove
an interesting subject for physiological
and psychological analysis. That they sin
and elude discovery, no one who knows
the country, no one who knows how they
live apart, every eye fixed upon them,
would believe for a moment. It is said that
they undergo a fortifying discipline for
two years at Maynooth, which exceeds in
severity that endured by the early Fathers
of the Church.
In Father Tom's parlour there is a
fragment of ragged carpet, a small bookcase, some dilapidated chairs, and a piano.
Father Tom is a large, heavy man, he
walks with his stomach advanced-there
is much ostentation in his walk, there is
treachery in the long warm squeeze of his




I I8    Parnell and his Island.


hand, and dissimulation in the unctuous
words of welcome with which he greets
you. But Father Tom is' better than the
first impression would lead you to believe;
he is no doubt arrogant, vain, and his intelligence, notwithstanding the parade he
makes of it, you soon perceive is limited
and of a common kind. He affects an
interest in literature, he alludes to pictures
he has read or is acquainted with through
the medium of engravings, but it is not
until the conversation becomes political
that Father Tom comes forth fully fledged
in all the glory of patriotism and priesthood.
He speaks of all the principal Members of
the House of Commons by name, and on
the slightest provocation he will explain
to you their views and the arguments
with which they uphold their views. He
astonishes you with his knowledge of Free




The PriesI.


II9


Trade, and he bewilders you with the
reasons that may be adduced for the
adoption of sonme sort of protection tariff;
and his lengthened discourse is broken
up by ' Now do take a glass of wine...
let me run and get you a glass of wine...
now you must take a glass of wine...
do you prefer port or sherry? After
your walk I am sure you would like a
glass of wine'.. and even when you
have taken up your hat and stick he will
hold your hand in his large fat paw, and
continue to press you to drink, and as you
walk away you hear him crying after you.. ' I wish you would, you must not go
away without having bad a glass of
wine.'
You have talked a great deal with
Father Tom, and you saw that he was nervously anxious to prove to you that he was




120     Parnell and his Island.


in no way behind time, that he was in
every sense of the word up to date.
Father Tom was very anxious to convince
you of his modernity, and curiously
enough this is the very quality that he
is lacking in. Ireland has moved rapidly
in the last eight or nine years, many have
been left behind in the race, and Father
Tom, although he is far from suspecting it,
is one of these. Father Tom is a compromise between the priest of the last
generation-the benign old man who loved
his Horace and prepared his favourite
landlord's sons for a public school in
England, and the drunken demagogue of
the present day who preaches assassination
from  the altar. The majority of the
priests of Ireland are of Father Tom's
persuasion. He believes in nearly all that
is supposed to represent progress: peasant




The Priest.


121


proprietors, fair rents, and Home Rule; he
will denounce land-grabbing-(land-grabbing is willingness to take land from
which another has been evicted)-but
Father Tom is a little diffident about
accepting the principle of boycotting.
And here I must beg leave to make a
digression and explain the meaning and
the origin of the word boycotting. Captain Boycott is a friend and neighbour of
mine in the West. He is as fine a
sportsman as I ever knew, a fearless
rider and an excellent shot; a man who
never bestowed a passing thought on immorality of any kind, and when it was violently thrust upon him, strove to the best
of his power to shirk the responsibility.
It was in the autumn of 1879, that Captain Boycott, who was then Lord Erne's
agent, declared, in spite of all warning, that




122    Parnell and his Island.


he would collect his lordship's rents if
there was law in the land. When his
determination to evict at all cost and all
risk became known it was reported
through the county that the Captain had
been to London, and had strongly advised
Lord Erne against giving any reduction
whatever. This was not to be borne,
and when the news reached the head office
of the League, in Dublin, advice was sent
to Mayo that pressure should be put on
the people, that Captain Boycott's servants
should be forced to leave him, that no one
should sell him bread, food, or wine; that
his crops should be left to rot in the fields.
These counsels were received with enthusiasm, and acted upon vigorously.
Soon it required a hundred police to save
the Captain from assassination, and when
labourers came from the North to save




The Priest.


I23


his crops the anger of the peasants waxed
louder, and their resolution not to miss
their vengeance became more and more
marked. I shall never forget when I saw
a regiment of soldiers encamped on the
poor man's lawn, and he, looking like a
hunted animal walking up and down
between the huts, a repeating rifle under
his arm, two revolvers and a long dagger
in his belt. Like a comet the verb 'to
boycott' appeared, it was passed from
mouth to mouth, it was caught up by the
reporter, and passed on to the leader
writer; soon after it appeared in magazines
and books, and within two years of its
birth it was as firmly established as any
word in our language, and every future
lexicographer will have to include it.
To-day it is not considered slang, and would
be used by our most elegant writers. The




1 24    Parnell and his Island.


ready adoption of this word seems to
indicate the rapid advance of the Irish
struggle and the inevitableness of Irish
idea in the future.
It is Sunday morning. High up in the
cold air the chapel-bell is clanging harshly,
and the reverberation travelling over
stony upland and boggy plain summons
the villagers to Mass. They are coming
along the grey roads, and they stand
against those endless grey stone walls to
let the landlord's carriage pass. The women and girls carry their boots and stockings in their hands; from long custom they
prefer to walk bare-footed.  Presently
they will find a quiet corner where they
will finish their toilet.  The very old
men are dressed in the traditional tailcoats and breeches; they pass, mumbling
their toothless gums, evidently a little




The Priest.


I 25


troubled by the new ideas and the new
action of Ireland of to-day. The chapel
gate is plastered with bills announcing a
Land League meeting; and, standing on
the grave-stones, the young men watch the
great lumbering carriage of a neighbouring landlord drive up to the door. They
guess how annoyed he will be at the sight
of the proclamations calling on the tenantfarmers to assemble in thousands and put
down the land-grabbers, and the landthieves. And they are right; the landlord
looks abashed, he seems ashamed of his
fine carriage, and hle is terrified like
someone who knows his d(oom is written, although it has not been spoken
judicially.
The young men we saw talking round
Micky Moran's fire are now grouped
round a tombstone, and in veiled words




126    Parnell and his Island.


and covert insinuation they discuss the
necessity for Ferick's 'removal.' Apparently they are asking the advice of
Daly, a tall young man who stands by,
one foot on the tofmb, listening attentively. In dress and manner he seems a
little superior to the others. He is careful
not to answer any of the questions that
are put to him, and he advances no
opinion except that if all they say is true,
and he has heard as much in another
quarter,' that Ferick ought to be boycotted.' He leans to the opinion that
boycotting is better than ' removal.' As
he speaks he turns to cast a contemptuous
look at the priest who is passing towards
the door of the sacristy.
Father Tom is proud, ostentatious,
overbearing, and it is maddening to him
to know that there exists anyone in his




The Priest.         12 7
parish who dares to sneer at his authority.
It has been whispered that young Daly
does not believe in God, and thinks priests
should be prosecuted under the Vagrancy
Acts. What evil so poisonous as this?
The flame of Father Tom's hatred is
blown red; he will crush this viper, he
will stamp out this impudent upstart;
there shall be no followers of Voltaire
in his parish; to pervert the minds of the
young from the truths of the Holy Roman
Catholic Church. What was this upstart
talking of? No doubt preaching infidelity
or plotting outrage on man or beast.
Ferick has been threatened, and it is well
known that his life is in danger; murder
is forgiven in the confessional, but for wilful infidelity there can be no salvation.
Then the agitation against rent is exceeding its natural limits, for now the tenant



128    Parnell and his Island.


farmers refuse to pay the village shopkeepers as readily as they do the landlords
-Father Tom's parents     are  grocers.
Alarmed at the steady increase of outrages in his parish, and indignant at the
opposition that was offered to the shopkeepers when they attempted to enforce
their claims by law, Father Tom for some
time back had been considering the Land
Question from a different side.
He who has not attended Mass in an
Irish Chapel cannot judge of Irish life;its three or four aspects are strangely
reflected and sharply epitomised in that
fugitive hour. You have the Irish landscape well in your mind's eye-the grey
sky and blue mountains in a ring, the
hovels, the grey stony uplands, and the
miles of brown bog where the curlews are




The Priest.         I29
flying. Say then, if it is not parcel of this
gaunt white chapel, through whose broken
windows the swallows fly circling? In the
middle of the earthen floor there is a rude
font for holy water, and in their haste and
devotion the peasants splash the water so
that it seems like an abreuvoir where
cattle have been lately drinking. There
are a few pews; those next to the Communion rails are reserved for the landlords. The fluff on the bended neck of
the girl is gold in the beam of white light
that falls across the chapel, she prays
gracefully, with refinement, addressing
God in sweet and conventional phrases,
and the delicate odour of verveine rises out
of silk and fur and evaporates; the peasant
women wrapped in their long black cloaks
are bent double over the pews; their thin,
long, yellow hands extended beyond their
K




130


Parnell and hzs Islarnd.


faces clutch a rosary feverishly; some of
tle mnen are down on their hands and
knees grovelling, some kneel with straight
backs, chins lifted, breasts advancedposes that recall those of martyred saints;
they groan they strike their breasts, their
hearts are full of the gross superstition
of the moment, they address God in the
coarse language of the cabin; out of their
torn shirts, revealing the beast-like hair of
their breasts, rises the rancid sweat of the
fields; and the sour smells of frieze and the
heavy, earthy smells of the cabin are as an
almost palpable dust in the intense morning light as it flows through the windows.
They cough and groan as they pray, and
the spittle splashes on the floor.
Father Tom continues his murmurilng
at the altar, and as he mumbles through
the well-known Latin, he chews the ctud




The Priest.         131
of his vengeance: once for all he will
stamp out the evil thing that has grown
up in his parish. And as he turns round
to preach as is customary before the last
gospel, the peasants, like a herd advancing, tramp up the church to get well
within hearing. He begins by deploring
the outrages that have lately taken place
in his parish, he dwells on the terrible
punishment that awaits those who commit
murder, and then, resolved to strike a
severe blow, he says, taking a piece of
money from his pocket, ' Give unto C-esar
what belongs to Csesar, and to God what
belongs to God.' But the people do not
understand, and when, to explain himself,
Father Tom tells them that they should
pay their lawful debts, they walk, Mr.
Daly at their lead, out of the chapel.
Father Tom's pride suffered terribly; it
x 2




I132


Parinell and his Island.


was a sore blow to be thus rebuked in his
own chapel, and it was a worse one to be
told that his congregation did not care
to hear politics preached from the altar.
And a few days after he was asked to take
the chair at a Land League meeting; he
refused, urging that he could not stand on
the platform with menl who were in the
habit of impressing on the tenant-farmers
that they should pay their landlords with
lead and not with gold; whereupon he
was politely informed that if lie (lid not
attend the meeting he would be paid no
dues that year.
Father Tom knows that the Land
League is Socialism, and that Socialism
is atheism, but the need of the moment
is the greatest need of all, and he goes to
the meeting striving to arrange a middle
course, striving to adapt murder to his




The Priest.          133
cloth. He declares that murder is unnecessary, and then he says that it is against
the law of God, and then lie argues that
there are two kinds of murder: the murder committed by the landlord when he
turns a whole family to die in the ditch
in the middle of winter, and the murder
committed by the father of that family
when he hides behind a wall and shoots
the landlord as he drives past in his
carriage. Father Tom does not like land
meetings, his heart and conscience revolt
against them; the landlords pay him well,
it would be a great loss to him to lose
them, and he would miss his Sunday
dinner in the ' big house;' so considering
all these things Father Tom strives, as we
say here, to sit on two stools-as they say
in France, de meinager ix chevre et les choux.




134


Parnell and his Island.


THE PA TRIOT.
JAMES, when he was ten years old was
running bare-footed to the National School,
and as he ran he touched his little cap
to every landlord who passed him on the
road. But he was a sharp lad, and he
soon attracted the priest's attention. The
priest was one of the last generation-a
kind old man who loved his Horace and
did not interfere, save when begged to
intercede with the landlord in favour of a
penniless tenant, or when he threatens to
denounce a young man from the altar if
he does not marry the girl he has seduced.
It amuses him to teach his beloved Latin;
he has prepared two or three of his favour



The Paoltbot.


135


ite ]andlord's sons for the public schools in
England, but they are away now, and he
sees no outlet for his charity but little
James. The boy is called in, and henceforth he spends his mornings with the
priest. And although he does not make
much progress in Latin-(lhe is of that
temper which disdains all which it does
not see can be turned to practical and immediate account)-he profits largely by his
relations with the priest. Father Pat was
a great talker, and sitting by the little fire
in the parlour he spoke to him not only of
Horace and Virgil, but of Shakespeare and
Milton, the histories of Greece, Rome, and
England. And then a good many books,
newspapers, and magazines found their
way from the landlords' houses into the
priest's parlour. All these, and especially
the newspapers, the boy devoured greedily.




136


Parnell and his Island.


This was in '70, when Ireland was
peaceful, and the tenants came trooping in
on rent day and paid their rents to a man.
The oldest inhabitant could onlyrecall one
agrarian murder, and the cutting off the
tails of the cattle was a crime unknown.
All the servants, butlers, footmen, coachmen, gamekeepers, and bailiffs had been
ten, fifteen, or twenty years in their various
employments; the labourers too came to
and fro daily till they died, and then their
places were taken by scarcely less faliliar
faces. This was at a time when Ireland
was a land of peace, and we loved and reposed so much trust in each other that we
could not believe the news that Sir A
had dismissed his favourite bailiff Daly
for stealing, insolence, and drunkenness.
Daly, the man we all knew so well, had he
stolen? Daly, whose son James had been




The Pairiot.


I 37


educated under our eyes by the priest?
Too true that it had been rumoured lately
that James was misconducting himself:
that he was always in the country town,
that he was often seen talking with the
proprietor of a Radical print; that he read
Darwin, had ceased to believe in Christ,
and, worst of all, that he was the writer of
some very unpleasant articles which had
lately appeared in the ' Clare Telegraph.'
We did not wish to believe ill of James,
and we avoided as much as possible speaking of his. Darwinism and his friendship
with the editor, etc. But we were, alas!
soon forced to admit that these rumours
were not without foundation, for next
week an article appeared in the ' Telegraph,' denouncing Sir A —    as a rackrenter and an exterminator of the people.
There was at first some doubt as to the




I38    Parnell and /zs Island.


authorship of this article, but James,
whom   we had petted and spoilt, now
threw off the mask; and going from public-house to public-house, feeding on flattery, his vanity and his patriotism grew
together. For a moment it seemed as if
James would degenerate into a common,
drunken, village ruffian; but there was
more than that in James, and he soon
began to see that Ireland was still a
country where you would have to do
something besides talking to get a living.
There is no way of earning a livelihood
except by farming, and there is only one
kind of farming that is profitable-and
that is to fatten cattle. Nothing can be
simpler.  You hire a farm, say a hundred acres of pasture land; you buy yearling bullocks at the nearest fair, you allow
them to eat the grass for some months,




The Patriot.


I39


and then you drive them to another fair
and sell them. If the price of cattle goes
up, you make money; if it goes down,
you lose money.    Of course a certain
skill is required to choose the cattle that
are likely to fatten best, but that is soon
acquired; and if it can't be acquired the
herdsman supplies the requisite judgment.
But James did not require any herdsman
to point out to him the difference between
good and bad bullocks; he had lived all
his life among them, and knew the beasts
that were likely to suit him.  And for
three years he attended the fairs buying
and selling cattle, making his way steadily
upwards; but, notwithstanding his good
fortune, le did not cease to speak on all
occasions of his country's wrongs. In the
afternoon he was always at the railway
station with a newspaper under his arm,




140    Parnell and his Island.


in the evening in the bar-room of the
hotel, and in. 1877 when the failure of
the potato' crop threatened famine, and
Davitt and Parnell came down to Alayo to
start the Land League, James was at once
appointed president of the local branch.
Then he did not cease to call landlords
land-thieves in the 'Telegraph,' and he
became the special correspondent of the
' Freeman's Journal,' and supplied that
excellent journal with much information
concerning the distress prevailing in the
West. In a few months he was removed
to the head of the League in Dublin,
where he continued to work to obtain his
country's freedom, until he was thrown
into prison under Mr. Forster's Act: and
once an Irishman has been in prison for
a political offence-and in Ireland any



The PaIriol.


141


thing and everything is a political offence
-he becomes at once an immortal.
James, on his release from prison, was
of course elected Member of Parliament;
a few questions were asked as to what he
would live on, and the usual answer was
given-j ournalism.
Imagine, therefore, this Celtic peasant
-for James is a pure unadulterated peasant; chance has given him an intelligence
a little sharper than his cousins who remain in the Western bogs, but he is of the
soil as they are; he is cunning, selfish,
cruel, even as they; his blood is thin with
centuries of poverty, damp hovels, potatoes, servility; his passions are dull and
sullen as an instinct. And this half-animal
walks out of Euston Square into London.
He is dazzled, bewildered, and a little
cowed; he steals out of the splendour and




I42


Parnell and his Islaznd.


turmoil to his lodging in Lambeth. He
cannot realise the city yet, all is vague, uncertain; but the low peasant nature ferments, and foul imaginings of gross gratifications bubble and burst in the brain.
He knows the women who pass are demimondce, though they appear like houris in
some Mahomedan paradise; they are so
wonderfully dressed, so beautiful, so bewitching. The long colonnade of Regent
Street turns round against the pale blue
sky, the telegraph wires come out distinct
on the rose tints. The evening is breatlhless; the street is swept clean as a ballroom; the pungent odour of the cigarette
rises, and from the cloaks of the women
passing are wafted whiffs of patchouli;
women looking exquisite in white fur and
silk come down the steps of a restaurant,
while their companions, tall young English



The Pa/riot.


I43


men, with fashionable capes hanging from
their broad shoulders, and pale aristocratic
faces, escort them.   The poor savage
Celt steps out of the atmosphere of a
flower shop, the strong perfume of the
gardenias, the fine wine-like fragrance of
the roses sickens him, for his nostrils are
filled with the rank smells of the dungheap, the pig, the damp cabin, the dirty
paraffin-oil odour of the West. His brain
is shaken, his throat is dry, and with a
feeling akin to nausea his heart seems to
come up to his mouth; his eyes grow
dim; but he revolts against it; he turns
like a dog from  a vanille ice, he turns
from this glitter and refinement of passion
-as well strive to feed a hyena on chocolate creams; a plainer, coarser food is
what he longs for; he is savage with envy
and rage; he cannot seize a.ny fragmnent




144


Parnell and his Island.


of this scintillating elusive life that passes
him; he dare not yet aspire to be one of
that gay throng. And that terrible thick
brogue-how ashamed he is of it.    He
strives to bite off the end as he speaks
in the vapoury, greasy eating-house at
the end of his street.  There he can
devour beef and pudding and drink of
beer till he is heavy and torpid with
undigested food; he can take home a
bottle of whisky and drink himself drunk.
The plain satisfaction of his instincts is
to this peasant a mighty joy; all the centuries of fasting find a vent in these cheap
orgies and patriotism  is apotheosised in
pudding. He looks forward to night, and
he counts the hours of the afternoon, and,
standing on the grating outside he exhales
the odours, excites his eyes, and lashes his
appetite with the thong of anticipation.




The Patrio/.


I45


The House is sitting.    The Irish
Members are talking of some Bill of
vital importance. One after another they
get up, maddeningly irrelevant are their
remarks, hideous is their English. It is
James Daly's turn to speak. He looks at
the clock, half-past one. Heavens! the
streets will be empty when the House
breaks up.  His thoughts are far away
from Ireland and her wrongs. He would
give his life to get away, but the eyes of
Parnell are upon him, and he mumbles
along with his rattletrap sentences grown
lame in longing and disconnected in
despair.
James Daly is one of the numerous
servitude that Parnell has enlisted and
that America supports.   In Clare he
seemed to have some little ability, but
in the House of Commons his platitude
L




I46


Parnell and his Island.


is painfully apparent, and from his vulgarities the leaders of his party shrink.  Still
he is malleably facile, quick to observe
and correct his deficiencies, and in two or
three years the most obvious marking of
the peasant origin will be rubbed away.
The thick, greasy brogue will remain, the
soul. of the soil, of the bog, will still be
reflected in his face, but when he has
edged his way into some Bayswater drawing-room you will be surprised at how
quietly he speaks and the tact he shows.
And his tastes have refined.   I-e has
learned to despise the cheap eating-house,
he frequents fashionable restaurants, sips
champagne and chats fluently with the
actresses. What will eventually become of
him?   Will he go back to Ireland and
continue cattle-farming?  No. He will
either marry a girl with money, or he




The Patriol.


I47


will go to America and lecture to the potboys and housemaids on the wrongs of the
old country, or he will continue to live
mysteriously in London - how, nobody
can tell. On the subject of the landlords'
incomes the Parnellites are glib enough:
concerning  their own they are mute.
There is, of course, a great deal of talk
about journalism, but in the case of
those who cannot even write a letter
intelligently, much less an article, other
expedients are resorted to.  The most
common of these is to fill half a dozen
wash-tubs with chemicals, and when a
friend calls to turn a handle and ask him
to notice the bubbles that rise to the top
and then... inventions... patents,
etc., for there is no sorer subject with
these political parasites than to suggest
that they live on the nursemaids in




148


Parnell and his Island.


America.   But in the midst of all this
lying there is a truth to be recognisedthese Irishmen love their country. The
Parnellite party is to-day so strongly knit,
but to-morrow it may be bankrupt, or it
may wax stronger and mightier and force
England to surrender; one solution is as
likely as another, but in either eventuality
James Daly's love of Ireland will remain
the same as it was when he advised the
peasant lads in the West to boycott and
not to murder Ferick. Life will make
him  humble, and when he has settled
down, when he has children about him,
he will begin to grow conscious of the
fact that the weak must submit to the
strong; that some are born to live in
obscurity, others in glory. He will have
learned that he personally is not great nor
noble, but he will never learn that his




The Patriot.


I49


country is neither great nor noble. He
may even betray his country by accepting
some government appointment, but he will
never cease to believe in her, to laud and
to love her. I am a close observer of life,
and am, I think, as free from prejudice
as any man, but this I am bound to admit
-that it is impossible to over-estimate
the patriotism of Irishmen, ' L'amour de
l'Irlande est chez eux commne un vice de constitution que rien ne peut ni pourra jamzais
deraciner: ' Their love of Ireland is, as it
were, a sort of constitutional vice that
nothing can, that nothing will be able to
uproot.




I 50    Parnell and his Island.


A CASTLE OF YESTERDAY.
To awake in the vague, cold darkness;
to awake with the brain filled with all
the hallucinations of midnight-I am in a
large four-posted bed... the room, yes,
I know it all, but how cold are the white
curtains of the bed, and the windows are
draped in white, and how strange is the
shadowy servant moving about with the
candle that burns, ohl, so brightly, in the
cold dark! There is something of a
funeral in the room, and I am pained with
a blurred and confused, but none the less
a very real, impression of illness, of
death.




A Castle of Yesterday.   I 5
It is nearly five o'clock, sir, and Mr.
Dacre said he would be here about that
time; it won't do to keep him waiting.'
The dreams are torn and fall into the
void of night, and again I grow alive to
the realities of the hour. Of course, how
stupid of me I had forgotten, but now I
remember, I am going out duck-shooting
with my friend Dacre; he sent the boat in
a cart overnight, and I sent it on a couple
of miles up the lake, and we shall drive
there, and then we will row out a mlile or
so to a point that lies-I think he told
me somewhere near Castle Burk      But
here my retrospect is interrupted by the
grating of wheels on the gravel and a loud
whistling.  ' Open the window,' I cry,
'and tell him I shall be down in five
minutes.'
A rush of cold air that causes me to




I52


Parnell and his Island.


disappear under the bedclothes, but even
there I hear a loud young voice speaking
as if out of the heart of the night.
'Down in five minutes? I'll see he
is down in one minute; tell him I am
coming upstairs.'
A few moments after a loud trampling of feet comes resounding along
the corridor, and a tall, dark, well-built
young man strides into the room. He is
dressed in knickerbockers and a Norfolk
jacket; a thick comforter is wound round
his throat.
' Now then, lift your leg, shake your
leg,' he cries, laughing uproariously the
while, 'we haven't a moment to lose, it
is on the stroke of five; we have three
miles to drive and a mile to row, and if
we aren't there before daylight it is all up
with us. Now, then, do make haste. No




A  Castle of Yesterday.


I53


bath, no shaving, no breakfast. Take a
hunch of bread if you like. Now then, pull
on your clothes; you'll wash yourself when
you come home, or perhaps we'll get as
much washing as we want in the lake,
for it is blowing pretty strong, I can
tell you.'
' I hope you didn't forget to load some
cartridges with number two shot last
night, and some with number four?'
'That's all right, I have fifty cartridges
in the bag; if we fire all that away we
won't do bad, I guess. But do be quick
and lace up those boots.'
Soon after we are on the car. The
horse trots briskly. It is not very dark,
but the sky, how grey it is, and how cold
the wind is! We draw the rugs round
our feet and discuss the prospects of sport.
There will be no mistake about the boat.




154    Parnell and his Island.


none; it was left in charge of the shepherd; we have only to knock at the door,
he'll be up in a moment, he will take care
of the horse and help us to launch the
boat.  Then we lapse into silence, and
each lays plans to outdo the other. The
horse trots into a village. There is tle
priest's house; see its white walls and green
door; see the grey gaunt chapel and its
tolllstones. Facing them there are some
hovels; one is licensed to sell spirits and
tobacco, another has fallen and only a
fragment of roof covers the sleepers; and
a little farther on there is a cottage that
looks cleaner and more respectable, and
there is a forge at the corner of the road.
Thinking of the ducks I talk to Dacre
about his farming.   He declares that
things are going from bad to worse, and
that if there is not a rise in the price of




A  Castle of Yesterday.


I55


cattle he will be bankrupt. He did not
sell his bullocks last October because the
price was so bad, but he will not be able
to keep them beyond Mlay; go they must.
Dacre is a young Scotchman who came to
settle in Mayo some eight or nine years
ago. The Scotch farmer is a characteristic
of Ireland. Here and there you find these
strong, thrifty Northern men, forming, with
their neat farmyards and their richly
ploughed fields, a striking contrast to the
desolate  hillsides which  the peasants
scratch rather than  till with wretched
spades and   hoes.  But Ireland   is a
country of failure and ruin, nothing
succeeds there but patriotism, and after a
few years of trial even the hard-working
Scotchmen left in despair. Some few remained, and, surrendering gradually their
civilised agriculture, sought to win back




I56


Parnell and his Island.


some part of their lost fortune in adopting
the aboriginal and native cattle-rearing.
Mr. Dacre is one of these. He farms
three hundred acres of land, keeps a subscription pack of harriers, and is the best
rider and the best shot in the county. A
strong handsome young man whose life is
passed in the saddle or on the moor with
his gun; jovial and genial he is, and we
laugh heartily as we tell the tale of a girl
or recall a sporting reminiscence. The
horse trots briskly, the country is veiled
in shadow, the cattle are sleeping in the
fields, and as we pass out of the night of
some overhanging trees we come in sight
of the stormy lake.
'This is the place,' says Dacre, pulling
up in front of a hut by the roadside,' do
you get out the guns and I'll go and wake
the fellow up.'




A  Castle of Yesterday.


I57


The flaring peat-fire, with tongues of
red flame darting into the darkness, and
the heaps of white ash; the sheep-dog is
sleeping, his fine nose is thrown up as we
approach the door, and barking violently
he challenges our entrance.
' All right, your honour,' cries a voice
out of the darkness, and struggling into
a pair of trousers a man appears. He
warms his hands, and a moment after he
is with us helping to take the horse out of
the car, and as he leads him into the hut,
and ties him up by the fireside, he tells us
that we shall find the boat on the shore.
We shoulder the oars, and the peasant
comes down to help us to get afloat. A
wild wind is blowing; the headlands are
but vague shadows seen like clouds upon
the grey sky, and the dim expanse of
water breaks into waves, whose crests are




I58


Parnell and his Island.


treacherously white. And the boat that
looked so large in the cart last night
now seems the veriest cockle-shell. The
peasant notices this, and he speaks about
the lake being a little rough. But we do
not listen: I seize the bow oar, Dacre
takes the stroke, and kicks the spaniel into
his place in the stern, and we are shoved
into deep water. Now pull away! But
the boat is like lead, and it seems almost
impossible to force her through the waves:
heavy waves are breaking sharply about
us, and the oars are buried in them. Our
arms are strong, our will is as iron, and
we get half a mile from the shore; we
round the headland and the dark lake is
all about us,-unutterably dark and chill.
Our difficulties now increase tenfold, our
little boat can hardly rise above the wallowing waves, and the oars are buried




A  Castle of Yesterday.


I59


deeper than ever. On our right are the
vast ruins of a feudal castle, before us
there is nothing but the lake. Pull, pull,
but the boat makes but little way, and
the spaniel is jumping about, striving to
avoid the waves.
I hear them as they splash against the
bow, as they fall about my back. Then
the chill of water strikes through my big
shooting boots. I look down, but it is so
dark I can scarcely see.
' There seems to be a lot of water in
this boat, Dacre.'
'Nonsense,' he replies, 'row on; if
we don't get there before daybreak we are
done; the ducks coming from their feeding-ground alight there at daybreak, and
they remain a few minutes pecking and
pluming their feathers: row on.'
It seems to me impossible it could be




i 60   Parnell and his Island.


right for so much water to be in the boat,
but yielding to Dacre's superior knowledge
of boats, I stick my feet against the seat
in front of me, and pull doggedly. The
minutes elapse slowly, and again I feel
conscious that the water is rising about
my legs. I put my hand down; it seems
to me the boat is half full of water.
'I don't care what you say, but it
can't be right that the boat should be half
full of water. Put down your hand and
try.'
'By God, it is up to my elbow!
have we anything to bale her with? No,
there is a hole in the saucepan..  Here,
give me up your oar and get into the
stern, and bale out with your hat... that
infernal dog will upset us..  lie down,
sir, lie down. My God, there is a lot of
water in the boat! I think you had better




A  Castle of Yesterday.


i6i


be getting off your coat and shoes, we'll
have to swim for this...
'Swim! that's all very well for you,
but we're four hundred yards from shore,
and I can't swim fifty yards.'
' Then bale, I tell you-bale like mad!'
One glance before I go to work: a
dreary expanse of a dark Irish lake, vague
shores shadowy as death, a tiny boat half
full of water. How sharply the thought
cuts; a severing with all things, no further
progress; projects and friends, all suddenly stand and look at you... and
what a pity, the novel I am writing will
never be finished-never!
' Bale, man, bale!' cries Dacre, as he
pulls towards the shore, and hatful after
hatful of water is thrown over the side.
How awful the lake's loneliness! how
strangely tense a moment of peril! a
Al




162     Parnell and his Islaznd.


moment or a few minutes have been wondrously prolonged; magically each second
has dropped out of the glass of time, and
yet it is but physical pain, there is none
of the sickening sorrow, the dull, aching
despair of men who suffer with life before
them empty and vacant, only a thrilling
sense of severing, and soon even that is
lost in work.
But the boat does not leak, and when
her head is turned from the waves she
ceases to take in water.   But we do
not perceive this, and Dacre puts all his
strength into one oar for the waves
are driving shoreward; I bale fast and
furiously; at last the keel grates on the
pebbles.
Thank goodness! I was about done
for.
' Where are we?




A  Castle of Yesterday.


I 63


' At Castle Carra. Get the cartridges
out of the boat, I hope they aren't all
wet; we may get a duck or two on the
off side of the headland.'
'But I am wet through-I don't know
if you are-and my hlat is'Not up to much,' he replied laughing; 'you had better tie your handkerchief round your head. We can't get out
of this place till daylight, these rocks are
slippery and full of holes, and I would
prefer to catch a cold than to risk breaking my leg cown one of these infernal
crevices '
As far as I see we are on a neck of
land paved as it were with enormous
rocks; out of the space, there grows a
dense growth of stunted hazel; on the
height at the back there are some tall
trees, and the ivy-grown ruin is ringed
3 2




I64     Parnell anld his Island.


about with bunched bushes. Under these
we sit, striving to forget time in the discussion of our narrow escape. But the
moon passes out of the trailing wrack into
a clear space of sky, and dawn seems far
away. Then to escape the bitter bleakness of the wind we propose, now that
there is a little light, to get into the
shelter of the roofless castle. Dacre says
he'll be able to find the way, and after
much scratching amid the bushes, and
one cruel fall on the rocks, we reach some
grass-grown steps and climb through an
aperture into what was once probably the
great hall. A  high gable shows black
and massy against the sky, and tall grass
and weeds grow about our feet, and
farther away the arching has fallen and
forms a sort of pathway to the vault
beneath.  Centuries of ivy are on the




A  Castle of Yesterday.


I65


walls, and their surfaces are broken by
wide fissures, vague and undistinguishable in the shadow and cold gloom. But
as the moon brightens I see, some
fifteen feet above me, a staircase-a
secret staircase ascending through  the
enormous thickness of the walls. What
were these strange ways used for? who
were they who trod them centuries ago?
Slender women in clinging and trailing
garments, bearded chieftains, their iron
heels clanging; and as I evoke the
past, rich fancies come to me, and the
nostalgia of those distant days, strong days
that were better and happier than ours,
comes upon me swiftly, as a bitter poison
pulsing in blood and brain; and regardless of my friend's counsels, I climb towards the strange stairway, as if I would
pass backwards out of this fitful and




I66


Parnell and his Island.


febrile age to one bigger and healthier and
simpler. These walls have been touched
by hands that trembled not as mine, and
I shall never touch those hands, and the
eyes that looked down through this loophole on wild foes will never be known to
mine. Ah! I should have known those
men, should have fought out my life with
them, and not grown sick with grief in
this querulous age. And those women
of early Ireland I should have seen holding their robes from their feet as they
ascended this stair to the battlements, to
watch for their husbands and brothers
coming back fresh from border forays
with beeves and prisoners..
And when amid the beeves and prisoners they saw a stretcher whereon the
wounded or dead man was laid, they sat
on these very steps where I am standing,




A Castle of Yesterday.    167
and wept.   And when the castle was
besieged they fled down    the passage
through the gable through which I am
now passing.  The stair descends to an
embrasure in the wall, and the moonlight
is streaming through, and there is something there —a soft low snoring in the
moonlight; tie staircase descends before
me, but I cannot follow it, I cannot pass
this ghostly ray of moonlight.
And then the thing ceases to snore in
the moonlight, and a white form passes
softly down that length of stair, softly
away; and then the large and beautifully
soft white form  comes back, comes up
softly, so softly towards the moonlight and
me. That moon ray is not so chill as I,
and this bloodless agony is more terrible
than mortal death. Death that is darkness
were sweet, but this cold white spirit of




I68


Parnell and his Island.


death dreadful to behold; this icy death
of wandering white is a terrible death
to be taken in.
And where has it passed to, is it about
me, will it come back to me again? There
is sweat upon my brow, there is death in
my heart. Full of the wild water's tune
the gaunt castle rises; the secret ways
curl up to the savage ivy, and the sky is
ghostly pale. Oh, the lapsing tune of the
lake! oh, the masses of stone, damp and
smooth with the dews of a thousand years!
Sickness and terror to look back, terror in
the neck and shoulders, like a spirit
escaping through a shadow-land, I grope
my way do-wn these ancient walls.
I hear a voice calling in the hall
below; my heart bounds to the living
world. But not at once do I dare make




A Castle of Yesterday.


I69


answer, and trembling I make my way
to the aperture whence I came. Time
seems to have stood still since I left
Dacre sitting with his spaniel amid the
weed-grown banqueting hall, and I have
to ask him to help me down. The place
is still ghostly and strange in the grey
dawn, but it is natural and homely compared with the minutes of torture I have
suffered up in those ancient walls, wet and
smooth with age.
'What is the matter with you-you
seem frightened out of your life?'
'No, I am only a little cold-wet and
cold.'
'Well, then, look alive, I think day is
about to break. Let's make haste and
get down to the corner before the ducks
come in.'
Night gathers her blue garments about




I 70   Prnell and his Island.


her, and the yellow skirt of dawn appears above the mountains, but it is
not yet day, and as we scramble through
the rocks and bushes, a strange white
form swoops through the twilight. Dacre
fired, and, through what seemed a sudden
shower of snow, a great snowy owl falls
at our feet. This, then, was the spirit of
the castle whom I had heard snoring in
the wintry moonlight.
'I am sorry. The great snowy owl
is almost extinct; a couple have been
known to frequent the castle for years.'
As we made our way through the
castle gateway, we saw the traces of the
moat that once divided the neck of land and
completed the isolation of the castle. It
once covered the entire promontory. The
ruins of the outlying fortifications extend
to the edge of the lake: a barbaric




A   Castle of Yesterday.


I 7I


chieftain and a numerous servitude once
lived there: and now far down the shores
of the lake the silhouette of another
castle appears through the lingering twilight, and on the island far away there
still stands a corner wall. Ireland, land
of brown bog and fabulous ruin! On
every commanding height, generally on
a wild   promontory harassed    by  the
waves of these tideless inland seas, we
find remains of the castles of Irish chieftains-remains full of penetrating poetry,
and silent suggestion of turbulent life and
the glitter of battle. We dream of border
forays and cattle-lifting, but all is vague,
and of the inner economy of these tribal
people we know less than of the Babylonians or the ancient Egyptians.  That
they once were is all we know. And now,
passing to the mainland, I find the ruins




172     Parnell and his Island.
of what is almost a modern house; there
is a vast courtyard, and in the centre a
colossal stone fox, and farther away is the
ruin of the great gateway, and on the hill
stand colossal foxhounds.  It was here
that the descendants of the castle's chieftains came on the decline of brigandage;
it was here they drank, swore, hunted,
and fought duels at twelve paces.




I73


A CASTLE 01 TO-DAY.
A  FEW days after our return from the
north-west, my host said, throwing a letter
across the table:
'This is from Lady Ardilaun, a neighbour of mine, asking us on a visit to
Ashford.'
All who do not live more than ten or
twelve miles apart are next-door neighbours in Ireland, and as the jolting-car
pursued its way along the interminable
roads, my friend told me all he knew of
the people we were going to stay with.
Lord Ardilaun is a man of immense
wealth. It is said that he sold his share




I74    Parnell and /is Island.


in the great brewery (Guinness's brewery)
for a million of money. This money he
has invested in different securities all over
the world; his landed property, although
large, is only a small part of his income;
he is the only man in Ireland who is in a
position to defy the Land League. Hence
his unpopularity.
'Is he unpopular? '
'For the moment; and it is a shame
that it should be so, for no man ever lived
who behaved more generously to Ireland
than he. Others may be accused of drawing money from Ireland, and spending it
on the banks of the Thames and the Seine,
but not he. When he was member for
Dublin, he bought Stephen's Green; it
was then a savage waste; he spent thousands of pounds planting trees, making
artificial water, and inclosing it, and pre



A Castle of To-day1.


175


sented it to the city.  He bought the
Rotunda, made it into a beautiful winter
garden, where the people might go of an
evening, walk and listen to the band
playing.  At first everybody thought it
delightful; but sooner or later, like everything else in Ireland, it was sneered at,
and when the people finally refused to go
near it, it was sold. Lord Ardilaun was
then member for Dublin, and at the next
general election he was beaten. And the
same want of sympathy is shown to him
at Ashford. Would you believe it, lie is
guarded by policemen in a place where
he has spent thousands and thousands of
pounds, where he has done more real
good-that is to say, good in the sense of
encouraging industry, good in the sense of
relieving suffering-than perhaps any Irishman that ever livedl?  At the present




176


Panell and his Island.


moment I hear that his labour bill is over
two hundred a week.    Any other man
who had been requited as he has been
would have left the country long ago; but
when people are naturally good, they go
on being good in spite of all opposition.'
' Then how do you account for his
unpopularity?
'First his large fortune enabled him
to successfully resist the Land League,
secondly he is a Protestant, and thirdly
he is a Conservative. In Ireland popularity is bought with hatred of England;
if you are a Catholic so much the betterindeed it is a distinct advantage to be a
Catholic, but the first of all things is to
hate England.'
While speaking we grow gradually
conscious of certain changes in the aspect
of the country: it seems more orderly,




A  Castle of To-day


I77


and it wears an air of well-to-do-ness that
we had not before observed. The rickety
walls built out of loose round stones piled
one on the top of the other have disappeared and are replaced by handsome
stone and mortar walls; and the cottages
of the peasants are less dirty, and here
and there the landscape is marked by
small cleanly-built slated houses. Upon
questioning our driver we learn that we
are now entering upon Lord Ardilaun's
estate, and as the panting horse drags the
car to the top of a high hill he says,' That's
Lough Carrib, the largest lake but one in
Ireland; thirty miles long by ten wide.'
And the view as it now appears over the
verge of the long line of sloping green
sward is full of an august and visionary
beauty.   Below us, falling in sweet inclining plain, a sea of green turf flows
N




178    Parnell and his Island.


in and out of stone walls and occasional
clumps of trees down to the rocky promontories, the reedy reaches and the long
curved woods which sweep about the
castle-such a castle as Gautier would have
loved to describe-that Lord Ardilaun has
built on this beautiful Irish land. There
it stands on that green headland with the
billows of a tideless sea, lashing about its
base; and oh! the towers and battlements
rising out of the bending foliage of ten
thousand trees.  The lake from  where
we stand looks like a girdle of pale grey
silk bound about the green garments
of the Emerald Isle: the long line of
mountains upbreaking in jagged outlines,
through a drift of clouds-now dark with
storm, now resplendent with sunshine!
And we lift unsatiated eyes from. this
rapture of scenical loveliness.




A  Castle of To-day.


I79


We are still two miles from    our
destination, and as we advance signs of
wealth and industry increase. We pass
large roads, domain walls in process of
construction, and a large archway upon
which at least a hundred men are at work.
And as I gaze I ponder on the crookedness of the Celtic mind; it would put an
end to all I see around me, and would
willingly relapse into dirt and patriotismwhich are apparently but two words for
one and the same thing. On either side
of us the park now spreads. Through the
hillocks hundreds and hundreds of fallow
deer move away at our approach, and
over the crest of a hill the broad bluff reddeer raise their antlered heads and gaze
at us steadfastly as lions. From the deerpark we go into the drawing-room-like
beauties of the pleasure-grounds, and
- 2




180     Parnell and his Island.


skirting by the laurel-filled nooks and
rhododendron-covered slopes, overhung
by the dark branches of cedars, we find
ourselves facing the river, and it is only
after some little difficulty that our horse
is induced to trust himself on the picturesque wooden-way which in drawbridge
fashion spans the inky   stream  which
whirls round the point on its way to the
lake.
Those who love life welcome new
impulses, and desire the emotion of unexpected impressions.  I am such a one;
and the simple pleasure of sitting at a farm
window, watching the villagers strolling in
bands and couples and single figures across
the darkening green, listening to the chattering voices of loitering women, to the
howl of a distant dog, to all the vague
sounds and shadows that mark the sinking




A Castle of To-day.


I8I


to rest of the world, have never failed to
thrill my heart with happiness.    ' The
poetry of the world is never dead,' and to
me it is now an exquisite delight as I stand
in long shadowy saloon brushing my hair
for dinner to see the moon shining on a
vast lake, to watch the weird darkness of
the buttresses and the romantic enchantment of the battlements, now standing
out sharp against a silvery cloud, from
which the moon slowly passes-as Shelley
would say,
like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain.
And after a week spent in the thin,
mean poverty of the north-west, amid the
sadness of ruined things, this strangely
beautiful castle renders me singularly




i 8 2


Parnell and his Island.


happy. The sight of the long drawinrgroom, full of refined faces glowing upon
the warm shadows, and lights of the
shaded lamps, comes with a sense of
welcome relief. And to awake in the
cool spaces of a bedroom, beautiful and
bright with Indian curtains, and musical
with the rippling sound of the lake's
billow, is also full of gracious charm and
delicate suggestion of poetry to him who
is alive to the artistic requirements of
to-day. And then there are the pleasant
morning greetings to look forward to, and
the sitting down to breakfast in the oak
room within sight of the fountains that
foam so lovely and so white upon an
endless background of mountain and lake.
Here we are almost shut out of the storm
and gloom of crime and poverty that
enfolds the land, but even here the shadow




A Castle of To-day.


I83


of murder and outrage falls across.our
way. For as we sit at breakfast we hear
the smothered detonation of the dynamite
exploding in the huge moat which our host
is having cut through the solid rock, and
sometimes small splinters of stone strike the
windows. Fifty or sixty men are engaged
upon this work; and, after breakfast, as we
walk down the grounds, we examine this
new fortification, which when finished will
separate the castle from the mainland. It
is thirty feet deep by twenty feet wide.
' You see,' says our host, ' I have a
taste for the picturesque. The moat will
be protected by battlements, and cannon
will be placed at convenient distances. I
shall be able to defend myself in case of
invasion, and as the drawbridge will be
raised nightly it will be difficult for the
dynamiters to get at me.'




184    Parnell and his Island


But the day I shall remember best
of the four days passed in this beautiful
western retreat is the last day. It has
been arranged that we are to go in the
yacht (she now rides at anchor, her steam
up, under the castle walls) to picnic on
an island some miles down the lake-an
island famous for some late pagan and
some early Christian ruins. The day is
breathless, but the sky is full of a soft
grey light; and in the fairy-like silences
of the lake, when nothing is heard between
the pauses of the conversation but the
ripple of the water along the vessel's side,
and the subdued panting of the machine,
the many aspects of this noble wilderness,
the wild outlines of the guardian mountains, the dark promontories covered with
rough wood, the marshy shores where the
heron stalks, arise as supernaturally still




A  Castle of To-day.


i85


and calm as the visions of an Icelandic
god, and in the exquisite clarity every
detail is visible; the shadows of the pines
fall like ink into the smooth mirror. And
now the chain rattles through the porthole, the steamer swings at anchor, and,
we are helped by the sailors into the small
boat. The island, ma foi, is a large one
-some sixty or seventy acres-and on
the side we landed on it is cultivated by
three families, and the land has passed
from father to son, so it is said, for the
last thousand years. In any case the island
has never been without its three families
-there is the boat in which they transport
their farm produce, there are their cottages,
there is the grave-yard, and here is the
church that St. Patrick's brother (the
hermit) built in the fifth century; and the
paved path leading from it to his cell is dis



I86     Parnell and his Island.


tinctly visible along which he walked fourteen hundred years ago, and along which
we walk to-day; and here are the pagan
remains, but we cannot look farther back.
Behind this stone is the savage darkness
out of which we, who now     examine
this mute record with gloved fingers,
slowly and painfully crawled. This island
is a little world complete in itself-a little
world lost and forgotten in the midst of a
greater world. But lost though it be and
forgotten, it is strangely present in our
minds to-day, and the poetry it evokes is
strongly intense and penetrating; and the
nostalgia of the past holds me in tether,
and I cannot escape it even when quaffing
champagne on the tower built for picnicing
purposes, nor when looking over Lady
Ardilaun's shoulder while she sketches
with a free and certain hand a long range




A  Castle of To-day.


I87


of jagged mountains -one of the mountain
prospects she loves so dearly, and with
which her London drawing-room is so
beautifully decorated. The scene is now
supernaturally still. The day dies in pale
greys and soft pink tints, and harmonies
in mauve more delicate and elusive than
the most beautiful Japanese water-colour;
the lake hangs like a grey veil behind
the dark pine-woods through which we
wander, making our way to the yacht;
and at the vistas we look on the long wavy
lines of mountains that enclose the horizon,
and they seem now like women sleeping
the sleep of enchantment, and the mountains whose precipitous bases rise out of
the lake are as fabulous creatures in a
northern legend guarding the solitude.
Our eyes follow the black flight of the
cormorant along the smooth greyness of




I88


Parnell and his Island.


the water, and our souls are filled and
stilled with a sadness that is at one with
the knowledge that the dear day we have
lived through is now a day that is over
and done; and as we think of this lonely
island, its ruined church, its grave-yard
and the endless generations that lie there,
we must fain dream of the lightness of
life, of the oblivion that awaits us, of
those eternal and simple truths of which
even the centuries of barbarous dust lying
beneath our feet has in its day dreamed
of even as bitterly as we.
On the following day I started for
Dublin. The carriage is full of Irish
Members and American agitators. They
denounce the injustice of England, and
proclaim the sweet Irish peace that will
follow on Home Rule.




189


AN EVICTION.
A STRANGE woman lives in the west of
Ireland; a sort of she-Nero besotted with
drink and maddened with lust of cruelty.
She is a woman with pale blue eyes, so
pale that they look like porcelain; she is
middle-aged, she is fat, she is dressed
in man's clothes. Iron-grey hair grows
thinly over large scabs of dirt, the red
flesh of the cheeks is loose and hanging,
and something shapeless moves beneath
the long, filthy jacket which falls like a
petticoat and is bound about her with a
leathern strap; her legs are covered in a
pair of corduroy trousers, patched and
greased and stained with abominable




190     Parnell and his Island.


stains; and the thick, coarse hand, which
looks as if it were all thumbs, twitches
at the hem of the discoloured jacket.
The judge (to the solicitor):  'You
might grant the tenant time if he promises
to pay.'
Miss Barrett (in a bellowing, halfdrunken tone): 'Certainly not. A decree
of ejectment is granted.'
And the pale blue eyes catch expression horribly indicative of cruelty and
rapacity, but only to fade a moment after
into the usual helpless semi-idiotic stare.
Other cases have to be heard, and Miss
Barrett consults with her companion, Miss
McCoy, at all, raw-boned Scotchwoman,
so tightly buttoned up in a brown, mudsmeared ulster, that it is difficult to say if
her undergarment is a petticoat or a pair
of trousers.




An Eviction.


I9I


The night is falling, and the people are
coming out of the court-house. The sullen
faces of the peasants are hardly visible in
the gloom, but their exclamations of
hatred are very audible: 'You dirty old
petticoated brandy vessels; oh, the filthy
animals!'
But paying no attention to these jeers,
the two women pass with their guard of
police and their bailiffs to the nearest
public-house; and from public-house to
public-house they go, drinking and cursing
with ever-increasing ardour until at last
the glass slips from their hands and the
oath dies on their lips, and they fall helpless on the ground. Then they are piled
up and tied on a car by the police and
driven home to sleep off the effects of
their drunken bout.
Many are the legends concerning Miss




192


Painell and his Island.


Barrett. It is said that she was once-a
quarter of a century ago-a pretty and
graceful Irish girl, whose blue eyes
and merry voice were the delight of
her friends, and particularly of a young
English painter -with whom she was
passionately in ]fve. It is suggested that
he painted her as Ophelia and that the
picture still exists in London; but her
father, so report goes, would not hear of
the marriage and sent his daughter abroad
in the charge of a companion. A few
weeks after he died, and Miss Barrett came
travelling back, as fast as express trains
could bring her, to bury her father and
marry her painter. But the painter had
already married another, and Miss Barrett
returned to her Western home and spoke
of founding a convent.   That there is
some truth in these stories is probable




A t Eviczionz.


I93


enough, for it is certain that Miss Barrett
was not only born, but once lived, as a lady,
but the cause of her decline into the sewer
of debauchery is not known, and it is
impossible to trace the steps by which
she descended into these lowest and most
horrible depths. Golden fortune has however always attended her; relative after
relative died, leaving her their properties,
which they could not will away from her,
and she is now possessed of vast wealth,
which she has no power or way of spending except in an occasional drinking-bout
with her bailiffs and caretakers in a county
town.
Her house and grounds once differed
nowise from those of the surrounding
gentry; but the same changes have taken
place in them as in herself. How dissolute, how degraded! All the trees have
0




194   Parnell and his Island.


been cut down, and the hewn stumps
show naked out of the great green field.
In large scabs the cement is falling from
the wall; the windows are broken and are
barricaded  on the inside  with rough
boards. The hall-door is nailed up, and
there are great beams of wood and stones
lying about; clearly the only entrance
used is the back one. Inside tlere is but
filth and barrenness. You canl tell which
was the drawing-room   by the broken
piano, by the gilt cornices that strew the
floor. A patch of carpet remains, a deal
table stands in the middle of the room.
Apparently washing was once done here,
for a wash-tub stands on a fragile Chippendale chair that somehow escaped destruction before the room was abandoned. In
the bedrooms only the huge four-posters
remain; foul earthy odours assail your




An Eviction.


I95


nostrils; damp, decay, and dust meet you
alternately and in combination. Bottles
and broken glasses grow more frequent
as you descend to the kitchen-now the
principal apartment of Miss Barrett and
her sister-in arms, Miss McCoy; and there
their herdsmen and bailiffs come of an
evening alnd are made riotous with whisky,
-and the lampless Irish night grows
shrill with shriekings, and the echoes of
orgie follow the traveller across the deso.
late bogs.
The house is surrounded by immense
pasture-lands-thousands of acres, from
which the tenants have been driven at
different times. These are stocked with
herds of sheep and cattle. Dressed as a
man, in her dreadful corduroy trousers and
felt hat, Miss Barrett attends the fairs, and
counselled by her herdsmen she buys and
o2




196    Parnell ana his Island.


sells, spitting and swearing and drinking
out of a flask, while she drives the bargain. The sexual economy of animals has
no secrets for her; she goes down before
the rams are turned into the fold, and it
is she who often passes the usual coat of
red paint over the animals' bellies. Miss
Barrett is delighted as little as she is disgusted by the procreation of beasts; she
merely declines to acknowledge the mystery with which we occidentals have surrounded such things, and having chosen
to become a herdsman she accepts the
duties in all their completeness. Against
her virtue not a word has ever been said;
she is execrated in the county in which
she lives, but it is for drunkenness and
cruelty that she is so violently and vehemently abused. To evict her tenants is her
one desire, to harass them with summonses




An Eviction.


I97


for trespass is her sole amusement.  She
watches them  collectively and individually, and when an unfortunate one is a
few months in arrear he is at once served
with a writ, law costs are run up, every
effort is made to render it impossible for
him to save himself from ejectment. If
by any chance the money should be
scraped together and the tenant saved
Miss Barrett is wofully disappointed, for
she looks forward to an eviction as men
did to cock-fights in the old days.
The streets of a county town are
swarming with police, they are driving in
on cars from all sides-great, big, brawny
fellows clad in black cloth and armed with
rifles and sword-bayonets. They come
thronging in from all parts of the country:
sergeant and constables fromnt Ballina,




198    Parnell and his Island.


Ballinrobe, Ballindine, Clarenorris, Kelimach, Louisburg, Newport-in fact from
every station in Mayo, for it is not
known if the peasantry will resist eviction. Three car-loads of police are now
crossing the railway bridge. The station
is deserted, the platform is empty, a single
grey line stretches to and is lost in the
interminable bog. Nearer the town there
are a few green fields belonging to a landlord who keeps a dairy farm. Then come
some filthy cottages where roofs are falling
and pigs run grunting from the horses'
hoofs. The road is flowing with mud.
Suddenly a pavement and stone houses
appear, then the market-place and the
court-house, and then the spire of the
church; and grey houses follow as untidily as dirty shirts and towels hung out
on a line in a back yard.   Dark and




Anz Evictzon.         IC 9
dingy goods, thick boots and shoes, coarse
clothes, etc., are piled up in the shop
windows, but nowhere is seen a flowervase, a balcony, a fantastic gable.
At the cross roads of Logafoil, about
a mile distant on the other side of the
town, we perceive long lines of policemen,
about a hundred    inl all.  They  are
drawn up in lines, headed by their different officers and commanded by Major
Murphy. Surrounded by a special guard
the gaunt hungry Scotchwoman, Miss
McCoy, gives her arm to Miss Barrettthat strange creature in corduroy trousers
strapped round her with a belt; fat and
bloated she is with drink, and her blue
eyes stare with the vagueness of coming
idiocy. But she wakes up a little when
the order to march is given, and as she
whispers to her friend an expression of




200   Parnell and his Island.


atrocious cruelty steals over the faces of
the women. On the other side there is
her bailiff-a man named Pratt, whom the
peasants assail, as we march, with the
bitterest reproaches concerning his birth
and the applications he had made for the
post of hangman.
' At all events I have gentleman's blood
in my veins, even if it did not come to me
through the marriage-ring, and that is
more than any of you can say.'
'The devil a drop, the Colonel disowned you, your -        of a mother was
caught by a policeman one night in a
ditch: that's more like it.'
And with such lively passages of wit,
varied with sarcastic allusions of a like
delicate nature, the tedium of our walk is
enlivened. Hundreds of people have
assembled, there is some blowing of horns




An Eviczionz.


201


on the hill-side and at first we think the
police will have to charge the people.
But having been fired upon lately they are
frightened, and allow themselves to be
driven back with the butt-ends of the
rifles, and the little army is posted about
the wretched hut from which a human
family is to be driven. So horrible is the
place that it seems a mockery, a piece
of ferocious cynicism to suggest that the
possession of it is about to be contested,
and that to restore it to its rightful owner
an army has to be gathered together.  It
lies under the potato-field, and the space
between bank and wall is a stream of mud
and excrement. The incessant rain has
rotted the straw of the roof, and at one
end it droops ready to slip down at every
moment. The weak walls lean this way
and that, and their foundations are clearly




202    Parnell and his Island.


sinking away into the wet bog. Hard by
the dung-heap, in front of the door, where
the pig strives to find a place dry enough
to lie in, the mud and filth have lapsed
into green liquid where some ducks are
paddling; under the thatch there    is
mould and damp, about the door and
window-holes blackness and ooze, mud
permeates and soaks through every crevice; the place seems like a rat's nest
built on the edge of a cesspool. Not a
tree is to be seen, not even a bush.
There is the brown bog far away, and
the flashes of water where lapwings are
flying; there are the tumble-down little
walls which separate the fields that the
peasants scratch rather than till; there
is the desolate lake where waves are
breaking and rushes are blown in the
wild wind. And this chilling landscape




An )Evictiozn.


203


is bound -with the usual sash of blue
mountains.
Only the voice of a child crying is
heard. Pratt and a one-armed man, upon
whom the peasants continued to shower
the strangest abuse, approach and ask for
admittance.
'I'll not open it. 'Tis not like the
last day, when you boasted you caught the
buck in tlie house.'
' Now, Thomas,' says Pratt, ' the easy
way is the best. If you don't open I'll have
to force the door.'
'You hang-in-bone dog! You may
thank the law, or you wouldn't come this
way to my door; I would scatter your
brains on the street, you dirty bloodhound
and nameless bastard! My father and
grandfather were reared here, and you
want to put me out of it-a fellow who




204    Parnell and his Island.


couldn't tell who was his grandfather.
When your old mother called you after
Colonel Pratt, to try and knock money out
of him, he always denied that you had a
drop of his blood in you, and you have
not, Billeen  Sollagh.' This speech is
received with roars of laughter, and Pratt
puts his shoulder to the door, but it does
not give way, and paying no heed to the
sarcastic suggestion that he might fetch a
long ladder and get down the chimney, he
seeks about for a stone. Selecting the
largest he can find he launches it against
the door. There is a cry from    the
children within, but the door has not
given way. The missile is hurled again
and again, and when he starts a plank he
levels his next throw at the same place;
a piece of wood snaps off short; he is
invited to put his hand inside, but he




An Eviczion.         205
wisely refrains. And all the while the
children are crying, and the mother utters
unceasingly that long wail traditional with
the Gaelic people and always used by
them in times of mourning; and on the
dung-heap and on the road there is jeering;
and wild curses are showered on the
extraordinary creature-the lumpy, wornout debauchee, who stands staring vaguely,
her bloated face now and then lighting up
in an expression of cruelty, her trembling
hand twitching nervously at the hem of
her abominable dress. At last the door
gives way, and Pratt, the one-handed
assistant, and a couple of police, force
their way into the black den. There is
the father, the wife and her six half-naked
children. The father, covered only with
a pair of trousers, his hairy shoulders
showing through the ragged shirt, rushes




206      Parnezt and his lslanzd.


out like a wild beast to strangle Pratt, but
he is seized by the policemen; and the
clearing of the house of furniture is commenced-an iron pot, a few plates, three
logs of wood that are used as seats, a
chair, a cradle, and some straw and rags
on which the whole family slept; Miss
Barrett looks on with manifest satisfaction.
Here are a few remarks snatched as it
were out of the crowd: 'McCoy, have
you anything in that flask? You ought
to give a   drop to your neighbours.
Barrett, you buy this old cradle, it was a
very lucky one! Who knows what might
turn up for you yet, in the shape of some
old devil of a husband as ugly as yourself
but not so great a drunkard?'
Then the family has to follow the
furniture. The father struggles, held fast
by two policemen, the children are soon




An Eviction.


207


shoved out of the door, but tle woman
offers a stubborn resistance. She is a
strong, stout, shapeless creature. A red
petticoat falls to her knees, a shawl is
wrapped round her shoulders, and shle
carries a baby in her arms.
'Al, you dirty illegitimate beast, I
dare you to lay a hand on ime; I am
at1 honest womanit and not a dirty slut
like your mother... on't touch mle!
Will you? you are breaking my back.
You are killing the innocent child. Leave
go of me! Is there no one here to save
me? '
'Now   you had better go for the
asking; we don't want to hurt you, but
out you must go.'
'You don't want to hurt me? I tell
ye you are breaking my back. The death
of the child be on your head; he isn't a




208    Parnell antd his Island.


dirty bastard like you. Will you leave
me go?'
Pratt pushes her from behind, the onearmed man pulls her in front, but she
always manages to evade the door-way.
It is a marvel how she jerks up the child
when it seems on the point of slipping
from  her. The woman writhes to and
fro; she shrieks and shrieks again, the red
petticoat is twisted round her waist, and
she appears, as she struggles across the
doorway in strong and savage nakedness.
But her strength is beginning to fail
her, and at last, uttering a wild cry, she
slips on the ground, screaming that Pratt
has kicked her in the stomach, that she is
dying. Leaving his shirt in the hands of
the police the husband slips out of their
grasp and he would have probably done
'for Pratt had he not been again seized.




An Eviction.


209


Howls and execrations! Pratt swears
he never touched her; the husband swears
he saw him; the one-armed man calls God
to witness to a number of things; and
Major Murphy orders his men to disperse
the crowd. Then many things happen:
Miss Barrett loses her brandy-flask, a
neighbour brings in a saucepan of milk,
and the wounded woman is consoled and
questioned.
' And where did he kick you, awornine?'
'I'm loth to tell you with all the
people about.'
It is infinitely pitiful and infinitely
grotesque. The woman, no doubt, hit
herself in her conflict with the bailiff, but
she is evidently pretending to worse injuries than she received. For her wailing is
more horrible than natural; and the suffering
p




21O    Parnell and his Island.


of the little children crying on the dungheap is more heart-rending. An hour and
a half passes. At last she allows herself
to be helped out of the house, and she is
laid down on some straw under a wall.
It seems as if it never could end. The
husband goes from group to group collecting evidence against Pratt; the wife
shrieks she is bleeding to death-' that she
can feel it running down her inside '-and
the little boys mock at Miss Barrett's
breeches, taunt her with her drunkenness,
and Pratt with his bastardy. At last the
doctor arrives. But how is he to examine
her? Those who after so much trouble
have possessed themselves of her house
refuse to readmit her even for a few
minutes on any pretext whatever. The
woman writhes on the straw, her red
petticoat twisted about her naked red legs;




An EvZictioZ.


211


and Pratt, still swearing that he never laid
a hand or a foot on her, suggests that the
Major should clear away the crowd so that
the doctor might examine her at once.
' The woman is not a sheep or a cow
and cannot be examined in the open
air..
'He is thinking of his old mother,
your honour; many a time she was
examined in the open air; and more is the
pity the wall did not tumble upon her
and the Colonel, ancl we wouldn't have
him here-Billy, the bad begot! '
Meanwhile a large hole is being made
in the roof, the rafters are being torn up,
and the woman in breeches and pot-hat,
who it is said was once in love with a
painter and sat for a picture of Ophelia,
puts a padlock on the door.




212    Parnell and his Island.


A HUNTING BREAKFAST.
'HALLO! Down already? Fall to-what
will you have? Here are some beefsteaks
and kidneys; you'll find a cold chicken on
the sideboard; or will you have a couple
of boiled eggs? '
'Thanks, I'll help myself to some
chicken and ham, and:do you pour me
out a cup of coffee.'
' All right, but don't dawdle, there's a
good fellow; remember we have a good
ten miles to ride.'
'The others aren't down yet; we
have lots of time, it isn't nine o'clock.'
'Lynch-is he up? What is he doing?
Did you look into his room?'




A HzunIing Breakfast.


2 I 3


'Yes, he was trying to tie a necktie.
I told him to hurry, and he said he would
not be long.'
'Is the coffee to your liking? '
'Yes, first-rate; I think I'll change
my mind and trouble you for a kidney.... Thanks, that will do! '
'Ten minutes past nine, and Sally
isn't down yet; goodness me-this is so
provoking! I must send up to hurry
her.'
' You needn't bother; I met the maid
in the passage, and she told me Miss
Sally was nearly dressed, and would be
down in a few minutes. Give me another
cup of coffee... What a fellow you
are! and for all the hunting we shall
have' Why, do you really think the hounds
will be stopped?'




2I4    Parnell and his Island.


'So they say. I hear that all the
county round Tuam    is placarded with
notices calling on the farmers to refuse to
allow  hounds or horses to cross their
lands, in consequence of the refusal of
the landlords to give twenty per cent.
reduction.  They say all the coverts are
poisoned, and that at an attempt to run a
fox the farmers will assemble in hundreds
and stone the hounds from the scent-and
us too, for the matter of that.'
' God, I should like to see one of the
dirty ruffians throw a stone at me! I'd
ride at him and flay him within an inch of
his life. Hallo! Down at last, Sally? we
must be off in a few minutes...'
' I assure you, Miss O'Neil, he has
not ceased to speak of the time since I
came down, and I was down at half-past
eight.'




A Hunting Breakfast.


215


'Oh, he is always like that; I don't
mind him   now; but where is MIrs.
Molloy?  Isn't she down yet?
'No, mother sent word     that we
weren't to wait for her.'
'What are you riding, Miiss O'Neil?'
'A young chestnut MAIr. Trench was
kind enough to lend me.    I have no
horses of my own: I depend upon the
kindness of my friends.'
' But of course they are only too glad
to have their horses ridden by so good a
rider as you, Miss O'Neil... I have
heard of you in Leicestershire. I hear
that we have no one who could touch
you-that if you were to come over,
you'd tail us all off.'
'Oh, not at all! I am sure I never
should be able to cross your double post
and rails... I sha'n't be able to ride at




2 6    Parnell and his Island.


all to-day from  nervousness, if you are
going to watch me.'
'Will you have an egg, Sally?  Are
you ready for some more coffee?'
' Thanks, I haven't finished this yet.
but tell me, is it really a fact that the
covers are poisoned, and that we shall be
stoned if we attempt to run a fox?'
'Impossible to say.  Hartley, who
came from   Tuam  last night, says the
country is posted with notices?
' Aren't you aftaid, Miss O'Neil? It
does seem so odd to one coming from
England to hear of poisoned covers and
hounds being stoned. I thought the Irish
were better sportsmen.'
'Until Parnell and Davitt came with
their Land League there wasn't a more
sporting peasantry in the world than the
Irish, but everybody who has anything




A Hunting Breakfast.


217


to spend has been driven out of the
country... The Empress of Austria isn't
coming to Meath this year on account of
the Land League-there's thousands of
pounds gone out of the country.'
' And if they don't let the hounds
hunt, what shall we do? '
'Nothing for it but to come back
again the same way we went... We
lunch at Mrs. Jack's-she is one of the
characters of the County of Galway.'
'Yes, she's got an heiress staying with
her; she is the girl's guardian. Now
there's your chance, Fleming: but it will
take you all your time to outwit the old
girl. She'll be down on you like a thousand of bricks if she even suspects you of
making up to the girl.'
' Why! Does she not want the girl to
marry?'




218     Parnell and his Island.


' Not she; if the girl, Maggie Jordan,
does not marry, all the money will go to
lMrs. Jack's relations. She is an orphan,
and the whole family watch her like a lot
of hawks. The aunt is ready to fly at any
would-be suitor, and Maggie is locked up
for days in her room if she so much as
dares to look at a man twice... The
whole thing is very sad.'
'But who is Mrs. Jack? What is she?
Surely a creature like that is not received
in society?'
'She was once a great gaunt ugly girl,
six feet high, and as strong as a policeman.   She had scarcely enough to eat at
home, and when she was introduced to
a man at a ball, the first thing she said
was, "Take me to the supper room,"
and there she remained gorging as long
as he would stop with her, and then




A Iuzinting Breakfast.


219


she put cakes in her pockets to eat in
the carriage going home. But her ballgoing was not of long duration; her
mother soon found that she was hopeless,
and Betsey remained an old maid till
she was fifty. Then she married Jack
Thorne, a pawnbroker, a county usurer
who built a villa residence for her and
left her all his money. He was a funny
old chap, a brown wig and a splendid set of false teeth. The teeth were
much admired by Mrs. Jack; she insisted
on his getting them before his marriage,
and when he died she did not forget
them.  She rushed at the coffin, crying,
"They are going to bury him in his teeth."
Pushing in her fingers, she pulled out one
set, wiped them in her handkerchief, and
then made another dive after the upper
jaw... She bought her mother's mourn



2 20    Parnell and his Island.


ing before the old lady was dead; she
had a whole drawerful of clothes, and
she used to show them to her friends,
and hoped that the fashions would not
change before 'poor mother passes away.'
When her brother died she would not
let the remains be taken into his own
house, and he had to be buried from a
lodging.'
' And this is the person with whom
we are going to lunch after we have been
well stoned by the Land Leaguers!... I
sha'n't go.'
'Yes, you will; I wouldn't for the
world that you should miss seeing Mrs.
Jack: and you must really go in for
mashing the niece. It will be splendid
fun: for Mrs. Jack hasn't the slightest
notion of behaving herself. Once I was
dining there and got into a dispute with




A Hunting Breakfast.


221I


her butler, and the man gave her warning
before the entire company.'
'And you say her niece, an heiress,
lives with this ignorant, coarse woman?
' Yes, there are many sad things in life,
and this is not the least sad. I assure you
the girl is very nice, and to see her brought
up alone with this savage creature, never
a sweeting influence, never the gleam of
light cast by a refining thought, nothing
to break the darkness of an animal
existence. 'Pon my word it is very sad;
to-day the girl is hopeful and pleasant;
she is young, but in a few years life will
be crushed out of her, and she will be as
degraded, and as dead to all the tendernesses of life as that vulgar brute who
bought her mourning before her mother
was dead.'
' Here you are at last, we can't wait




222


Parnell and his Island.


for you; we had better make a start at
once, what do you say? Sally, are you
ready?'
'I am quite ready; and I think we
had better be off.. What kept you so
long, Mr. Lynch?'
' Oh! I don't know; sometimes everything seems to go wrong. I could not
find my razor-strop, and I could not get
my boots on, and I forgot to unpack my
new coat last night, and it was in a portmanteau that they had forgotten to bring
upstairs. What do you think of the coat?
Does it fit all right?'
'For God's sake drink a cup of coffee,
and let us get off!'
' Now don't excite yourself, old man.
Ring and order the nags round. I shall
put a sandwich in my pocket.'
The scene is a breakfast-room  A




A Hunltig BrcaZkfasf.


223
3


silver urn hisses on the table, and over
the cups andl plates there floats a decided
odour of coffee and kidneys. The speakers
are Molloy-a tall, strong, fine-looking
man, some six feet high; Fleming —a young
man, thin and pale, with pale English hair
and blue eyes; Lynch-a stout-set man
with a heavy jaw and rough lhands; Miss
O'Neil, or Sally, as she is generally calleda little woman with light yellow   hair,
small features, tiny feet that move prettily
beneath her short riding-habit of green
cloth. The men are all dressed in breeches
and red coats. Presently they adjourn to
the stables, where the hacks are waiting
that will carry them  to the meet; the
hunters have been sent on overnight, and
are now munching the corn at a house ten
Irish miles distant (twenty kilometres).
The horses canter briskly; there is no




224     Parnell and his IAland.
time to lose.  At the cross roads they
meet Rose, Sally's sister, and Mrs. Manly,
a lady who has a child every year, rides
to hounds three days a week, and is said
to have jumped five feet four months
before the birth of her last. She joins her
admirer, Mr. Molloy, the two sisters ride
on in front, and Mr. Lynch tells Mr.
Fleming a great deal concerning the respective horsemanship of Rose and Sally.
It is difficult to say which is the better.
Rose's is a more determined and more
bullying method; she takes a horse by
the head and holds him as if he were in a
vice, pushes him  along by main force;
whereas Sally is quiet and clever, the
horse scarcely feels her light hands.  She
wants no one to tell her what line to
take, she decides immediately and very
often squanders the whole field.




A Hzntiiizg Breakfast.


225


It is a misty morning, and out of the
greyness the red horsemen come from the
right and left. They exchange with us a
hasty salutation and press forward.  A
little farther on we meet the master of the
hounds, his splendid pack about his horse's
heels, and his two whips trotting behind
him. Ominous rumours have reached him
that the peasants are determined to stop
the hunting, and Mr. Trench has received
several warnings that if he attempts to
draw the covers the tenant-farlers will
assemble and stone the hounds from the
scent. But to all our inquiries Mr. Trench
only replies that he has hunted the county
for thirty years, and he believes Irishmen
to be too good sportsmen to interfere with
horse or hound at anyone's bidding, even
that of the Land Leaguers.
'Anyhow I am going to put it to the
Q




226     Parnzell and his Island.


test. I shall listen to no warning, either
written or verbal,' he says, waving away a
respectably-dressed man who, touching his
cap, begs to have a word with Mr. Trench.
'I have hunted the county for thirty years.
I shall put the hounds in-yes, I would
put them in if you told me the cover was
poisoned, and if the tenantry. like to throw
stones at me and my hounds, they can.'
'They'd be very sorry to do it, yer
honour, but we have agreed among ourselves that unless certain  '
The rest of the speech is lost in the
pattering of horses' hoofs.  Opening a
gate with the end of his riding-whip,
MINr. Trench lets himself through, and
followed by his hounds and whips, who
lash out at the stragglers and call to them
to join the pack, he trots across a field
towards a large fir-wood.  We are all




A Huzting Breakfast.


227


very nervous, our hands twitch at the
bridles, and our lips grow dry, for we
know not but that the peasants may come
out armed with rifles and shoot at us and
the hounds; or perhaps they will choose
scythes to attack us; and involuntarily
we consider the respective advantages of
the weapons. Rifle bullets would follow
quicker than our horses' heels could take
us away, but there is something revolting
in the idea of being hacked about by
a scythe. There are only about thirty out,
and we beg of the ladies to keep back.
Quite unmoved, however, Mr. Trench
continues to draw  the cover.   'Now
then, there,' he shouts, ' hunt him out,
hunt him  out; get to cover, will you!
Admiral, get to him, get to him! Alh,
hark to Beauty, will you, hark to Beauty!
They have got him! Get to hiln there!
Q2




228     Parnell and his Island.


Hunt him out! hark to-hark to him there,
I say, hark to-  Now then, gentlemen,
don't ride round the cover, stop in one
spot, I beg of you'; you are driving him
back; tell that fellow there to come back;
if he is headed again he'll be chopped, the
hounds are close on him!'
At this moment the red varmint is
seen stealing across the field, and Beauty
and the hounds are getting through the
hedge, giving tongue. Mr. Trench blows
his horn: 'Gone away, gone away, away
again, again.' The blare of the horn rings
out over the grey sleepy fields-' gone
away.' 'Now then, gentlemen, I beg of
you wait until the hounds are out of the
cover.
We have forgotten all the Land
Leaguers, and, tense with excitement, we
watch the hounds crowding through the




A Hzunting Breakfast.


229


fence. Every horse is prancing. A moment more and we shall be riding at that
stiff piece of wall, four feet and a halfeven now Mr. Manly is advising his wife
not to risk the life of the unborn by
attempting it. But peasants are climbing
that wall: hands, heads, and shoulders
appear: they are standing on the top,
and are throwing stones at the hounds.
Bellringer has been struck, and has run
whining from the scent, then half-a-dozen
more have stopped short, surprised at the
strange interruption.
'Oh, the brutes! ' exclaimed Mr.
Trench, as he watched a tall thin peasant,
a young man dressed in a torn frieze coat,
with large pieces of the flannel lining
hanging out of the rents, who with a stick
is beating the hounds away as they attempt
to cross the wall.  Others armed with




230


Parnell and his Island.


pitchforks and scythes declare that they'll
scatter cur brains on the grass if we
venture to ride over their lands.  The
stone-throwing is kept up, and a sharp
piece of limestone has just struck Sally's
horse, and the frightened animal rears
violently. This is too much for Molloy,
and, regardless of consequences, he touches
his horse with the spur and makes for the
aggressor. The coward runs like a sheep,
and he howls for mercy when the heavy
thong of the hunting-whip circles round
his shoulders.
'Come on this way, Trench,' cries
Molloy, 'we can cross here, and we'll push
up to the scent farther on.'
'No, no, I have had enough of it; I
have seen Irishmen stone my hounds.
Well, I thought there was more sport in
Irishmen than that; I believe in the




A  Hzunting Breakfast.


231


country no more.' And blowing his horn
the old huntsman collects his hounds
round him..    his last illusions are
shattered, the bitterest blow has fallenIrishmen are no longer sportsmen. After
that come what will; he has seen the new
era in, he wants to see no more. It is
time lie should be gathered to his fathers.
He will not speak; the affront has sunk into
his heart like a dagger.. we ask him
to come with us, we laugh, we pooh-pooh
the whole thing, and declare we shall have
better hunting than ever next year, but
he shakes his head sorrowfully. And as
we go to Mrs. Jack's to lunch, we turn in
our saddles and we see the old man riding
away, his hounds about him, like one on
whom a great calamity has fallen.
'And now, Fleming, mind you, no
humbug! I and Sally separately and to



232    Parnell and his Island.


gether will engage Mrs. Jack's attention,
at least as much of her attention as it is
possible to engage, and you make love to
the niece. Try to get her to sit down with
you in a corner; anyhow, make the flirtation conspicuous, and we'll have Mrs.
Jack nearly mad with rage... She is
half a savage, you know, and we shall
be all probably turned out of the house.'
' But perhaps the girl won't flirt; she
may be too shy?'
'Never mind, try to draw her out.
Poor little thing, hers is a sad fate! Gee
up, old horse! Those brutes of Land
Leaguers, Gladstone and Parnell, ought
to be hanged'




233


CONCLUSION.
THE scenes in the pages of this book point
to no moral-at least to no moral that I am
conscious of; they were not selected to
plead any cause, or to announce the success or failure of Land Leaguers or landlords; they were chosen because they
seemed to me typical and picturesque
aspects of a primitive country and barbarous people.   Unconcerned with this
or that interest, indifferent to this or that
opinion, my desire was to produce a series
of pictures to touch the fancy of the reader
as a Japanese ivory or fan, combinations of
hue and colour calculated to awake in him




234    Parnell and his Island.


fictitious feelings of pity, pitiful curiosity
and nostalgia of the unknown.
Ireland is a bog, and the aborigines
(the Fins) are a degenerate race-short,
squat little men-with low foreheads and
wide jaws. But the bog, its heather and
desolation, and the Fins and their hovels
and dirt are as good a subject for brush or
pen as an English village clustered round
a green-red roofs showing against the
foliage of the elms, rows of great sunflowers flaring in the gardens, and quaint
windows overgrown with roses. Picturesque comfort or picturesque misery T'i"
vaut l'autre in art, and I sought the picturesque independent of landlords and
Land Leaguers; whether one picture is
cognate in political feeling with the one
that preceded I care not a jot; indeed
I would wish each to be evocative of




Coznchsiooz.


235
05


dissimilar impressions, and the whole to
produce the blurred and uncertain effect of
nature herself. Where the facts seemed
to contradict, I let them contradict.
Nevertheless, it does not strike me as
wholly foreign to, and incompatible with,
ily method to look upon that which the
world terms the serious side of things.
The serious side of things I take to mean:
first, the direct pecuniary loss or gain;
secondly, the indirect, or in other words,
the moral loss or gain. I will consider
what has been the moral loss or gain
to Ireland since she became, under the
Parnell reqime, a free country. Murder,
in the first place, is now recognised as a
fine art, a popular pastime, and an important factor in politics. Murder?  No
-boycotting and moonlighting, these are
the Parnellite equivalents.  'Murder is




236    Parnell and his Island.


unnecessary, cry the patriots. ' More boycotting, more moonlighting.' And at their
bidding, bands of dreamy youths wander
about the country at night, breaking into
the different cottages, pulling the occupants out of their beds, and shooting in
the legs all whom they suspect of wishing
to pay their rents, shooting through the
head all who might betray them. 'Moonlighting,' Mr. Parnell says,' is our only
preventive against eviction.'
Secondly, the tenants are told that
they must pay only a fair rent; and a fair
rent is defined as the sum that remains
when they have taken what they consider
will keep them and their families in
decency and comfort.   Imagine trying
to collect rents anywhere-even in the
Champs-Elysees, Parisian, Jovian, or Christian-on such a principle. In 1881 the




Conclusion.


237
j/


Irish rents were fixed by law, a fourth
was generally struck off, and then the
tenant was considered to be assessed at a
fair rent. The Coercion Act was then in
force, Ireland was profoundly quiet, and
the leaders waited. They had not to wait
long; party politics rendered its revival
impossible, and when the sword was raised
outrages began on man and beast. Then
in despair, but continuing his dream of
settling  the Irish  question, Gladstone
began to consider the probability of
Home Rule. Parnell ordered the outrages to cease, and they ceased.  But
Gladstone failed to carry his Bill. The
country was appealed to, and the country
by an immense majority decreed against
Home REule. What was to be done?
Decidedly moonlighting must begin again.
Parnell must feed and clothe his impe



238


Parnell and his Island.


cunious army. Each ragamuffin costs him
two hundred and fifty a year-seventeen
thousand five hundred a year-and the potboys and nursemaids will want something
for their money. Something must be done.
No better plan than to bring in a Bill to
still further reduce the — rents. — Say that the
judicial rents are not fair rents, that's
the idea. Open up the whole questionGladstone is- on his last legs and will
vote for anything. The Bill will be
thrown out, of course, but it will consolidate us with what remains of the Liberal
party and will be a brilliant start for a
campaign against rent in Ireland-a campaign against rent, that is to say plenty of
moonlighting and boycotting.
Murder and repudiation of debt, such
is the doctrine of the League, and insidiously in veiled phrases, in euphemisms of




Coniclusion.


239


all sorts, the doctrine is preached at land
meetings and brooded over, as we have
seen, by the cottage fireside. Imagine the
ferment produced by these teachings in
the minds of a.primitive people-and
worse than primitive, a people in a retrograde state. Imagine the disintegration
of all simple associations of belief, the discarding of all familiar ideas and usages; it
is as if all the fibre and nerve of a body
were destroyed, pus oozes, and the gases
of decay are exhaled, and all the phenomena   of dissolution begin-such was
Ireland in 1882. Murder had begotten
murder, agrarian with political assassination had bred like snakes in dark places,
the landlords were forgotten in private
animosity, individual hatreds, family misunderstandings had bred in and out and
back again to the original stock with




240    Parnell and his Island.


riotous longing and brutal lust of cruelty.
In  1882 Irish  society was coming to
pieces like a rotten sponge; the Phoenix
Park murders brought the disease to a
head; and the Crimes Act came as a
saving and a blessing to the poorer
tenants who lived in terror of their lives.
Tortured and intimidated by the moonlighters, it fell like manna in the desert
of their afflictions. Here is one instance
which, like one pustule brought under
the microscope, reveals the depth of the
disease. There are two sisters who do
not get on very well together. In the
words of the survivor, ' they found it
difficult to live in the same house.' One
morning, after a quarrel with her sister,
Bridget goes out into the potato-field,
where a man is digging.   She asks him
if he can do nothing for her he scratches




Conclusion.


241


his head reflectively-and says that he is
going to see some one that night, and will
speak to him on the subject. On the
following day Bridget again goes to meet
her friend in the potato-field-of whom,
mark you, she knows little or nothing.
He says he talked the matter over last
night and it can be done for. a pound.
But Bridget cannot make up so much
money and a bargain is struck, and she
pays fifteen shillings to have her sister
murdered.  A  night is chosen, Bridget
asks if she may absent herself, she does
not care to be in the house on the night
her sister is to be murdered; but the
man says it might arouse suspicion, and
Bridget's scruples are overruled.  The
murder itself is executed in the latest
and most approved fashion.  One man
mounts on guard, the other enters the




242    ParnZe/l and his Island.


hovel at midnight, revolver in hand and
shoots the woman dead.
This murder took place at Mullingar,
but a jury courageous enough to convict
the murderers was not forthcoming, and
they escaped. At the time I am speaking of
murders and mutilations of man and beast
were of daily and nightly occurrence, and
I could easily select one for physical barbarity infinitely more repellent, namely,
the Maamltrasna murders, which for sullen
debauchery and lov liquorish cruelty stand
unrivalled and unapproached even in the
great charnel-house of Irish crime; but
the simple Mullingar tragedy, so simple
and so free of all melodramatic interest,
seems to me more than anything else
illustrative of the decay and final dissolution of the moral nature even in its most
elementary and original forms.




Conclusion.


243


The priests at first attempted to stem
the tide of outrage and murder, but when
religion found it was imperilling its own
existence it strove to compromise with
murder on the Land League platform
as it does with the Darwinian theory in
the laboratory.
And now to money matters. Let us
see if the tenant has benefited pecuniarily
by his devotion to Parnell, and to what
extent. The Land Act of 1881, by reducing the Irish rents by one fourth or
one fifth, puts something like three millions
annually into the pockets of the tenants. This is no doubt a very substantial
gain, but it is not all gain. First, the
lawyers' fees and the cost of the Land
Commission ran into a great deal of
money; then there were subscriptionsforty thousand pounds had to be collected
R 2




244    Parzell and his Island.


to pay Parnell for the services he had
rendered the Irish tenantry; then there
is a continual subscription to the Land
League, the ordinary subscription and
supplementary  subscriptions; subscriptions for the supplort of the Irish members;
subscriptions for the support of evi,:ted
tenants, etc. The addition of this is no
doubt a good round sum, but it is far from
t]ree millions sterling: where does the
balance go to?   In idleness and drink.
Attendance at Land League meetings and
political conversations prolonged into the
small hours of the morning are not conducive to industry: the land is therefore
more neglected than ever, and the tenant
is so much more out of pocket.
Since he has become part-proprietor of
his holding he has borrowed money at the
)bank. The bills fall due; they are re



Conclusion.


245


newed; the interest keeps running on.
In the past he was rendered improvident
and thriftless by the uncertainty of his
tenure, and the certainty that if he made
any improvements they would be confiscated-(I remember when they would
not thatch their houses for fear of being
evicted)-now having passed from servitude through land meetings and murder,
plans to murder and mutilate, he is at
once afforded facilities for borrowing of
all kinds. Is it possible to conceive a
state of things more calculated to destroy
whatever remnant of morality political
agitation may have left to him?    His
passions are awakened-but for food, for
drink, for dress.  Never was an Irish
peasant known to spend a penny of his
newly-acquired fortune in improving his
house, in relegating the pig to a stye, in




246    Parnell and his Island.


planting a few flowers that would relieve
the intolerable bleakness of his cottage.
He spends his share of the money in the
public-house, his wife and daughters spend
theirs on hideous millinery-dreadful hats
with ostrich feathers and shapeless mantles,
and tea and eggs for breakfast. Dissoluteness, subscriptions to the Land League,
and borrowing money at the banks, have
in five years reduced the tenantry to the
verge of bankruptcy, and headed by
Parnell they again come to their landlords and demand large reductions. And
this will occur again and again until the
landlords are ruined, and the tenants
become sole proprietors of their holdings.
Nor will it then cease; the banks will
insist upon payment of their bills, and
worse than the banks, there will be the
county usurers (a class of men that




Conclusion.


247


13alzac has more than once depicted with
terrible eloquence), and several generations will pass before the Irish peasant
will be able to hold his own against these
men and the temptations they will hold
out to him; and were an Irish Parliament
sitting in Dublin, unless, indeed property
were abolished and a Commune established,
I am convinced that in five years' time
there would be more evictions carried out
by order of the banker and the usurer
than there are by the landlords to-day.
The Irish peasant has been left a little
behind in the march of civilisation: he
will have to first conquer the landlords,
then he will find himself outdone by
banks, usurers, and centuries of inherited
idleness and filth, supplemented by ten
years of the most infamous moral teaching
possible to conceive. When he has over



248    Parnell and his Island.


come. these dangers and difficulties he may
then be able to take his place as an equal
by the side of his Saxon neighbour.
But this is looking very far ahead: let
us confine ourselves to considering the
issues of to-day's combat. The Parnellite
party consists of eighty-five members
vowed to render all govern ment in Ireland
a farce, and all legislation in England impossible, until England has surrendered
autonomy to the Irish people. Eightyfive votes are a terrible weight to be able
to throw into either scale; it has already
overthrown three Ministers, and with our
system of party government, it is impossible to anticipate how many more may not
fall before it: and to come to terms with
it seems out of the ken of all possibilities:
England has been asked the question, and
has decided to maintain the Union at all




Conclusion.


249


hazards. The fight will then be a terrible
unintermittingness of effort. Of Parnell's
leadership, it is unnecessary to say a word
-the world knows of it; of the ability
and courage of some dozen or twenty men
grouped around him, I can speak with
confidence-some of them are friends of
mine, others I know of through their
writings. The rest of the party is composed of Mr. Dalys, music-hall managers,
and publicans from Liverpool and Manchester.  This tagrag  and  bobtail is
supported principally by subscriptions
collected from the nursemaids and potboys of New York and Chicago; the immediate object of Mr. Daly is therefore
to prove his patriotism  by vehemently
abusing the landlords, and condoning
murder and outrage as ingeniously as his
knowledge of the English language allows




250     Parnell and his Island.


him. Abuse is his bread, and sophistry is
his butter.
This is certainly not very great or. very
noble, and yet the destiny of the British
Empire hangs upon it. For the whole question resolves itself into this:-Will the
American nursemaids and potboys continue to subscribe from fifteen to twenty
thousand a year to keep Mr. Daly in a
cheap lodging, and a cheap dinner, forlet us say a period of ten years? For it
is not too much to suppose that, after ten
years of obstruction, England would be
ready to concede anything? Or, on the
other hand, will England return Lord Randolph Churchill to the head of affairs with
sufficient majorities to outvote all possible
combination that may be brought against
him? In ancient times the Goths and
Visigoths held the destinies of the Romans,




Conclusion.


25 I


but it is the nursemaids who hold the
destinies of the British Empire. A text
to ponder on, but I will not ponder... I
will ask what measures will Lord Salisbury
and Lord Randolph Churchill adopt to rid
themselves of this terrible Irish incubus?
In the hopes that the peasant will become
Conservative when he is sole owner of
his holding, efforts will be made in the
direction of peasant proprietary... And
will the solution of the problem be found
in this?
It would be well in accordance with
my philosophy, with that view of life
which is constitutional to me, to deny
the existence of a race-hatred. It would
be comforting to hug the belief that if
the peasants were the owners of the soil
they till, that if the exasperatory yearly
tributes they are called upon to pay were




252    Parnell and his Island.


abolished, that patriotism would exist no
longer and that the Celt and the Saxon
would henceforth live together in brotherly peace and love. My special temperament inclines me to this view of the
question, but when I look Ireland in the
face, the face I have known since I was a
little child, I find myself obliged to admit
the existence of a race-hatred-a hatred
as intense and as fierce as that which
closes the ferret's teeth on the rat's throat.
The Saxon heart is a noble heart, a heart
that is ever moved by generous aspirations,
a heart that is full of a love of truth and
justice. It was these qualities that gave
the Saxon the greatest empire the world
has ever known, and it will be these very
qualities that will now shatter and destroy
that empire. The English heart to-day
throbs with an hysterical, with a theoretic,




Concz/uszIon.


253


love of justice.  For a moment under the
pressure of excitement we don the fierce
bear-baiting, prize-fighing, natulre that was
once ours; but we have sloutghed thlat
nature like a snake its skin, and    we
can wear it no longer; soon, very soon,
we must return to our second self, that
self which is now our real self —tlat self
which is now incarnate in Mr. Gladstone
and Mr. John Morley.     In two years,
certainly before the former is eighty,
this will be accomplished, and     amid
praise and   acclamation  a free Parliamlent will be given to Ireland.   Then
the  Irish-Americans, those who    have
subscribed millions of dollars to achieve
this, will flock to Ireland, and in seven
years all the traces of seven hundred
years of Saxon conquest will be effaced.
And, looking still farther into the future,




254


Parnell and his Island.


I see the inevitable war with Russia beginning on the Afghan frontier, and following on England's first defeat, be the
defeat great or small, the Irish Americans
who will then be governing       in Dublin
will declare the independence      of their
island.
PPINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET 8QUARE
LONDON




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