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Title: The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent
Author: S.M. Hussey
Editor: Home Gordon
Release Date: August 5, 2005 [EBook #16450]
Language: English
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[Illustration: S.M. Hussey]
THE REMINISCENCES
OF AN
IRISH LAND AGENT
BEING THOSE OF
S.M. HUSSEY
_Compiled by_ HOME GORDON
WITH TWO PORTRAITS
LONDON
_DUCKWORTH AND COMPANY_ 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
1904
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
PREFACE
Probably the first criticism on this book will be that it is colloquial.
The reason for this lies in the fact that though Mr. Hussey has for two
generations been one of the most noted raconteurs in Ireland, he has
never been addicted to writing, and for that reason has always declined
to arrange his memoirs, though several times approached by publishers
and strongly urged to do so by his friends, notably Mr. Froude and Mr.
John Bright. If his reminiscences are to be at all characteristic they
must be conversational, and it is as a talker that he himself at length
consents to appear in print.
In this volume he endeavours to supply some view of his own country as
it has impressed itself on 'the most abused man in Ireland,' as Lord
James of Hereford characterised Mr. Hussey. How little practical effect
several attacks on his life and scores of threatening letters have had
on him is shown by the fact that he survives at the age of eighty to
express the wish that his recollections may open the eyes of many as
well as prove diverting.
Possessing a retentive memory, he has been further able to assist me
with seven large volumes of newspaper cuttings which he had collected
since 1853, while the publishers kindly permit the use of two articles
he contributed to _Murray's Magazine_ in May and July 1887. To me the
preparation of this book has been a delightful task, materially helped
by Mr. Hussey's family as well as by a few others on either side of the
Channel.
HOME GORDON.
13 OVINGTON SQUARE, S.W.
CONTENTS
PREFACE v
CHAP.
I. ANCESTRY i
II. PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 10
III. EDUCATION 20
IV. FARMING 30
V. LAND AGENT IN CORK 38
VI. FAMINE AND FEVER 50
VII. FENIANISM 60
VIII. MYSELF, SOME FACTS, AND MANY STORIES 71
IX. THE HARENC ESTATE 82
X. KERRY ELECTIONS 93
XI. DRINK 101
XII. PRIESTS 115
XIII. CONSTABULARY AND DISPENSARY DOCTORS 127
XIV. IRISH CHARACTERISTICS 140
XV. LORD-LIEUTENANTS AND CHIEF SECRETARIES 162
XVI. GLADSTONIAN LEGISLATION 179
XVII. THE STATE OF KERRY 194
XVIII. A GLANCE AT MY STEWARDSHIP 202
XIX. MURDER, OUTRAGE, AND CRIME 212
XX. THE EDENBURN OUTRAGE 235
XXI. MORE ATROCITIES AND LAND CRIMES 248
XXII. COMMISSIONS 268
XXIII. LATER DAYS 281
INDEX 305
ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF S.M. HUSSEY _frontispiece_
PORTRAIT OF MRS. HUSSEY _at p. 71_
REMINISCENCES OF AN IRISH LAND AGENT
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY
'My father and mother were both Kerry men,' as the saying goes in my
native land, and better never stepped.
It was my misfortune, but not my fault, that I was born at Bath and not
in Kerry.
However, my earliest recollection is of Dingle, for I was only three
months old when I was taken back to Ireland, and up to that time I did
not study the English question very deeply, especially as I had an Irish
nurse.
There is a lot of Hussey history before I was born, and some is worth
preserving here.
It is a thousand pities that so many details of family history have been
lost, and to my mind it is incumbent on one member of every reasonably
old family in this generation to collect and set down what should be
remembered about their ancestors for the unborn to come.
My contribution does not profess to be very exhaustive, but it will
serve for want of a better.
When a man claims to be descended from Irish kings, it generally means
that his forbears were bigger scoundrels than he is, for they were
cattle-lifters and marauders, whilst his depredations are probably
disguised under some of the many insidious forms of finance. Just as
every Scotsman is not canny and every American is not cute, so every
Irishman is not what the Saxon believes him to be. But there can be
little doubt what type of men these ancient Irish sovereigns were, and I
regretfully confess I cannot trace my descent from them.
The family of Hussey was of English extraction, according to that rather
valuable book _The Antient and Present State of the County of Kerry_, by
Charles Smith, 1756--the companion volumes dealing with Cork and
Waterford are much less precious. Personally I always understood that
the Husseys hailed from Normandy, as will be seen a few pages on, but
tradition on such a point is not of much value.
Anyway the family of Hussey settled in very early times at Dingle, and
also had several lands and castles in the barony of Corkaquiny.
Dingle was the only town in this barony, and it was incorporated by
Queen Elizabeth in 1585, when she granted it the same privileges which
were enjoyed by Drogheda, with a superiority over the harbours of Ventry
and Smerwick. The Virgin Sovereign also presented the town with £300 for
the purpose of making a wall round it.
The Irish formerly called Dingle Daingean in Cushy, or the fastness of
the Husseys. One of the FitzGeralds, Earl of Desmond, had granted to an
ancestor of my own a considerable tract of land in these parts, namely,
from Castle-Drum to Dingle, or as others say, he gave him as much as he
could walk over in his jackboots in one day. That Hussey built a castle,
said to be the first erected at Dingle, the vaults of which were
afterwards used as the county gaol.
There is mention of this in the grant of a charter to Dingle by King
James I. in the fourth year of his reign: 'The house of John Hussey
granted for a gaol and common hall to the corporation.'
A grim interest lurks in the fact that the dedication of Smith's
_History_ to Lord Newport, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, recites that
'this Kingdom, my lord, is a kind of Terra Incognita to the greater part
of Europe.'
Is it not so to this day?
Do I not meet scores of people who tell me they would love to go to
Kerry, but they have never been nearer than Killarney.
That is the sort of speech which makes me wonder how geography is
taught.
It is on a par with the remark of a prominent Arctic explorer, that he
had never been to Killarney because it was so far off.
People, however, who go there apparently like it.
The chief Elizabethan settlers in Kerry were William and Charles
Herbert, Valentine Brown, ancestor of the Kenmares, Edmund Denny, and
Captain Conway, whose daughter Avis married Robert Blennerhasset, while
a little later, in 1600, John Crosbie was made Bishop of Ardfert and
Aghadoe.
To-day the descendants of those settlers are still among the principal
folk in Kerry, though that is more due to their own selves than to the
support they had from any British Government.
This Valentine Brown, who was a worshipful and valiant knight, wrote a
discourse for settling Munster in 1584. His plan was to exterminate the
FitzGeralds and to protestantise Ireland; but by the irony of fate his
own son married a daughter of the Earl of Desmond and became a Roman
Catholic.
In the Carew Manuscript it is recorded that he estimated that one
constable and six men would suffice for Cork, but for Ventry, 'a large
harbour near Dingle,' one constable and fifty men were necessary; so he
evidently had a clear apprehension of the villainous capabilities of the
men of Kerry.
It is also recorded that in the parish of Killiney is a stronghold
called Castle Gregory, which before the wars of 1641 was possessed by
Walter Hussey, who was proprietor of the Magheries and Ballybeggan.
Having a considerable party under his command, he made a garrison of his
castle, whence having been long pressed by Cromwell's forces, he escaped
in the night with all his men, and got into Minard Castle, in which he
was closely beset by Colonels Lehunt and Sadler. After some time had
been spent, the English observing that the besieged were making use of
pewter bullets, powder was laid under the vaults of the castle, and both
Walter Hussey and his men were blown up.
Prior to this, 'on January 31, 1641, Walter Hussey, with Florence
MacCarthy and others, attacked Ballybeggan Castle, plundered and burnt
the house of Mr. Henry Huddleston, and did the same to the house and
haggards of Mr. Hore, where they built an engine called a saw, having
its three sides made musket-proof with boards. It was drawn on four
wheels, each a foot high, with folding doors to open inwards and several
loopholes to shoot through, without a floor, so that ten or twelve men
who went therein might drive it forwards. These machines were set
against castle walls whilst the men within them attempted to make a
breach with crows and pickaxes.'
Infernal machines are, after all, not confined to our own times, and
this same rascally ancestor of my own appears to have had predatory
habits more likely to be appreciated by his followers than by his foes.
Dingle is now a somewhat dilapidated town, but that was not always the
case, for it is mentioned in my dear old friend Froude's _History of
England_ that the then Earl of Desmond called on the ambassador of
Charles V. at his lodgings in Dingle. The old records of the place would
be worth diligent antiquarian research, a matter even more difficult in
Ireland than elsewhere. Should all be brought to light, I fancy the part
played by my family would not grow smaller.
The Husseys spread away over the county, after having their lands
forfeited under both Elizabeth and Cromwell, which was the most
respectable thing to suffer in those times. In the reign of Queen Anne,
Colonel Maurice Hussey sold Cahirnane to the Herberts, and there is a
garden still called Hussey's Garden in the property. He built a mortuary
chapel for himself on the top of a small hill just outside the gates of
Muckross, where his own grave near that beautiful abbey can be seen to
this day.
This Colonel Maurice Hussey resided for some time in England, and
appears to have married an English lady; and it is odd that though a
Roman Catholic he was trusted by the Governments of both William and
Anne. There seems to have been something versatile about his rather
mysterious career, the key to which may be found in the surmise that
until the accession of King George he was a Jacobite at heart; which
throws some doubt on his assertion in a letter that there are very few
Tories--or outlaws--in Kerry, where the Whig rule was never enforced
with great severity. He was, however, committed to 'Trally jail' (_i.e._
Tralee) on the fear of a landing by the Pretender, whence he wrote
pleading letters, in one of which he mentions that his son-in-law,
MacCartie, has taken the oaths of abjuration; and later, when released,
he seems to have been disturbed at the large number of German
Protestants, driven out of the Palatinate by Louis the Fourteenth, who
settled at Bally M'Elligott.
Any one who rambles about Dingle and investigates the older buildings,
so carefully examined by Mr. Hitchcock, will notice how frequent is the
emblem of a tree; and that is a conspicuous feature of the Hussey
armorial bearings.
With reference to the allusions made in Smith's book to my ancestors, it
may be pointed out that he repeated the popular tradition at the very
time when the Husseys, like the rest of their fellow Catholics all over
the country, were disinherited and depressed, and when he could gain
nothing by doing them honour.
As for my name, it seems to have really been Norman, and to have been De
La Huse, De La Hoese, and later Husee, Huse, and, finally, Hussey.
Burke in his extinct _Peerage_ states that Sir Hugh Husse came to
Ireland, 17 Hen. II., and married the sister of Theobald FitzWalter,
first Butler of Ireland, and that he died seized of large possessions in
Meath. His son married the daughter of Hugh de Lacy, senior Earl of
Ulster, and their great-grandson, Sir John Hussey, Knight, first Earl of
Galtrim, was summoned to Parliament in 1374.
Moreover, the State Papers in the Public Record Office, quoted in the
_Journal of the Royal Society of Irish Antiquaries_ for September 1893,
p. 266, prove beyond question that Nicholas de Huse or Hussy and his
father, Herbert de Huse, were land-owners of some importance in Kerry in
1307. Stirring times they must have been, of which we have no fiction
under the guise of history, though then men had to fight hard to
preserve their lives and maintain their dignity. We can imagine the
tussle, even in these degenerate days when no challenge follows the
exchange of insults, even in the House of Commons, and when the
perpetration of the most cowardly outrage in Ireland has to be induced
by preliminary potations of whisky. Of course, those old times were bad
times, but the badness was at least above board and the warfare pretty
stoutly waged. There is some sense in fighting your foe hand to hand,
but to-day when a battle is contested by armies which never see one
another, and are decimated by silent bullets, the courage needed is of a
different character, and the wicked murder of such combats is obvious.
But let us quit war and confiscation for the equally stormy region known
as politics, wherein it may be noted that in 1613 Michael Hussey was
Member of Parliament for Dingle.
Now for a coincidence in Christian names.
Only two Husseys forfeited in the Desmond Rebellion, and they were John
and Maurice.
In the Irish Parliament of James II., when Kerry returned eight members,
two of them were Husseys, and their names were John and Maurice.
My grandfather's name was John, and his father before him was Maurice,
and I christened my two surviving sons John and Maurice.
We do not go in for much variety of nomenclature in our family.
My grandfather, John Hussey, lived at Dingle, his mother being a member
of the well-known Galway family of Bodkin. He was an offshoot of the
Walter Hussey who had been converted into an animated projectile by the
underground machinations of Cromwell's colonels. He was a very little
man, who had a landed property at Dingle, did nothing in particular, and
received the usual pompous eulogy on his tombstone. I never heard that
he left any papers or diaries, and I do not think that he ever went out
of Kerry--he had too much sense.
A rather diverting story in which his sister was the heroine may be
worth telling, if only because it was so characteristic of the period.
In those days, as now, Husseys and Dennys were closely associated, and
both my great-aunt and Miss Denny, known locally as the 'Princess
Royal,' were going to a ball. At that time it was the fashion for the
girls of the period to wear muslin skirts edged with black velvet. The
muslin was easily procured; not so the velvet, which was eventually
obtained by sacrificing an ancient pair of nether garments belonging to
my great-grandfather.
After the early dinner then fashionable, each of the damsels was
departing for the Castle, with a swain at the door of her sedan-chair,
when our kinswoman, Lady Donoughmore, who was on the door-step watching
them off, enthusiastically shouted:--
'Success to the breeches! Success to the breeches!'
Imagine the horrified confusion of the poor 'Princess Royal,' not then
eighteen.
This episode reminds me of the modern Scottish story of a tiresome small
boy who wanted more cake at a tea-party, and threatened his parents with
dire revelations if they did not comply with his demands. As they showed
no signs of intimidation, he banged on the table to obtain attention,
and then announced:--
'Ma new breeks are made out of the winter curtains.'
An incident connected with one of the earliest private carriages in
Kerry is worth telling. The vehicle in question had just been purchased
by a certain Miss Mullins, daughter of a former Lord Ventry, who
regarded it on its arrival with almost sacred awe. A dance in the
neighbourhood seemed an appropriate opportunity for impressing the
county with her newly acquired grandeur, but the night proving wet, she
insisted on reverting to a former mode of progression, and rode pillion
behind her coachman.
The result was that she caught a violent chill, which turned to
pneumonia, and as her relatives were assembled round her deathbed, the
old lady exclaimed, between her last gasps for breath:--
'Thank God I never took out the carriage that wet night.'
CHAPTER II
PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS
My father, Peter Bodkin Hussey, was for a long time a barrister at the
Irish Bar, practising in the Four Courts, where more untruths are spoken
than anywhere else in the three kingdoms, except in the House of Commons
during an Irish debate. All law in Ireland is a grave temptation to
lying, and the greatest number of Courts produced a stupendous amount of
mendacity--or it was so in earlier times, at all events.
Did you ever hear the tale of the old woman who came to Daniel
O'Connell, outside the Four Courts, as he was walking down the steps,
and said to him:--
'Would your honour be so kind as to tell me the name of an honest
attorney?'
The Liberator stopped, scratched his head in a perplexed way, and
replied:--
'Well now, ma'am, you bate me intoirely.'
My father had red hair, and was very impetuous. Therefore he was
christened 'Red Precipitate' by Jerry Kellegher.
This legal luminary was a noted wit even at the Irish Bar of that time,
a confraternity where humour was almost as rampant as
creditors--irresponsible fun, and a light purse are generally allied;
your wealthy fellow has too much care for his gold to have spirits to be
mirthful.
The tales about him are endless. Here are just a few I have heard from
my father's lips.
Jerry had a cousin, a wine merchant, who supplied the Bar mess, and a
complaint was lodged that the bottles were very small.
To which Jerry retorted:--
'You idiot, don't you know they shrink in the washing,' which satisfied
the grumbler. And that always seemed to me the strangest part of the
story.
In those days religious feeling ran pretty high--I will not go so far as
to say it has entirely died down to-day--and the usual Protestant toast
was:--
'The Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender.'
Now, Jerry was a Roman Catholic, none the less earnest because he had a
merry way with him. On a certain Friday he was seen to be fasting by a
very foppish barrister, who thought a great deal of himself.
He remarked to Jerry, with unnecessary impertinence:--
'Sir, it appears you have some of the Pope in your stomach.'
To which Jerry, quick as a pistol-shot, retorted:--
'And you have the whole of the Pretender in your head,' after which
there was the devil to pay.
There was a certain Chancellor in Ireland who was born a few years after
his father and mother had separated. As he did not like Jerry, he used
to make a great fuss about how he should pronounce his name. At last in
Court one day he burst out:--
'Pray tell me what you wish me to call you--Mr. Kellegher, or Mr.
Kellaire?'
'Call me anything you like, my lud, so long as you call me born in
wedlock.'
The Chancellor did not score that time.
At one time there were grave complaints made about the light-hearted way
in which Jerry handled his cases, and his practice fell off. He was
conversing with a very stupid judge, lately elevated to the Bench, and
observed:--
'It's a very extraordinary world: you have risen by your gravity, and I
have fallen by my levity.'
He had a son who, in my time, had a large practice at the Bar, but I
never came across him, nor did I ever hear that there was anything
remarkable about him, except that he was not so witty as his father,
which was not wonderful.
After all, as Jerry was before my own experience, I must not delay over
him, so I will only give one more tale about him, and pass on.
When Lord Avonmore got his peerage for voting for the Union, he had his
patent of nobility read out at a dinner-party, and it commenced,
'George, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.'
'Stop,' cried Jerry, 'I object to that. The consideration is set out too
early in the deed.'
This long digression over, I revert to my father about whose respectable
practice at the Four Courts I know nothing except that he allowed others
to become judges, and did not find solicitors putting his services up to
auction.
By the death of his elder brother, he succeeded to a property, near
Dingle, on which he went to live and then got married, which was the
wisest thing that he could do.
My mother was Mary Hickson, and her descent was this wise.
The Murrays were said to have come to Scotland from Moravia in the first
century; and a pretty bulky history of the clan reveals as much truth
about them as the author cared to put in when tired of inventing less
probable facts. Sir Walter Murray, Lord of Drumshegrat, came to Ireland
with Edward de Bruce and was killed in battle, leaving three sons, one
of whom, christened Andrew, settled in County Down. Some of his
descendants migrated to Bantry, where, in 1670, William Murray married
Ann Hornswell, and was succeeded by his third son George, who was in
turn succeeded by his eldest son William, who married Anne Grainger. Of
the marriage, there was only one daughter Judith, who married Robert
Hickson, heir to the property.
They had five sons and two daughters, the younger of whom married Sir
William Cox, and the elder my father.
The superior of my dear mother never drew the breath of life. She lived
until I was twenty-five, and I never met any man who could say more than
I could for my mother, though equalled by what my own sons could say of
theirs, and she too came of the same stock, for I married my first
cousin, Julia Agnes Hickson. It is said no man is thoroughly happy until
he is suitably married, an opinion I absolutely endorse; but happiness
so great as my married life is not of public interest, and if it were, I
should not wear my heart on my sleeve for general inspection. Any
tribute from me to my dear wife would be superfluous; the devoted love
of our children has been the endorsement by the next generation of the
feelings which I have always felt towards her.
She was the daughter of my mother's eldest brother, John Hickson, called
the Sovereign of Dingle. He had powers to collect customs, to hold a
court, and to try cases in much the same way that a lord provost had.
On one occasion when a case was to be tried, two attorneys appeared from
the town of Tralee, about thirty miles off. Now John Hickson had his own
ideas about the attorneys of those days--ideas such as all honest men
had, but dared not express. So he sent a crier through the town to say
that the court was adjourned for a fortnight. When the appointed day
arrived, the attorneys arrived also, so again the melodious tones of the
crier proclaimed through the town that the court was adjourned for yet
another fortnight, Captain Hickson remarking to his wife that he was not
going to be helped to administer justice by those who earned their
living on injustice. The attorneys gave it up in despair, leaving
Captain Hickson to lay down the law as he liked, and to do him justice,
his ideas were more conducive to peace and order than the arguments of
Irish attorneys generally are.
He was loved and revered by the people, so that when the cholera raged
in 1833 and 1834, and the constabulary were ordered to go into the
houses to remove the corpses (this to prevent the people 'waking' the
dead, and so spreading the contagion), they dared not enter the cabins
unless Captain Hickson went with them, as the people were so enraged at
their dead being molested that they would have killed the police.
Fortunately Captain Hickson had enough moral influence to make the
people obey the law.
In the eighties he would have been shot in the back by some scoundrel
who had primed himself with Dutch courage from adulterated whisky.
He raised a Yeomanry Corps at the time of the Whiteboys to guard the
country against these lawless bands, and against the dreaded French
invasion. This regiment was called the Dingle Yeomanry, and the tales
about it are many.
On one occasion when Captain Hickson was in London, the general from
Dublin inspected the corps. In the absence of the commanding officer,
his brother was ordered to parade the battalion, and being a nervous
young man, he completely forgot all the words of command, so to the
unconcealed amusement of the old martinet from the capital, he
shouted:--
'Boys, do as you always do.'
It says well for the discipline of the regiment that they did not
implicitly obey the order.
His mother, this Mrs. Judith Hickson, was the only one of my
grand-parents I ever saw, and very little impression she has left on my
memory, except a notion that she had less sense of humour than pertains
to most Irishwomen by the blessing of God and their own mother wit.
My father was a Roman Catholic, and my mother a Protestant. By the terms
of the marriage settlement, we were all brought up in her faith, which
occasioned a tremendous row at that time, and nowadays would never be
tolerated by the priests.
All the same my father was an obstinate man, not disposed to care much
for the whole College of Cardinals, and indifferent if he were cursed
with bell and book. Of course he was not a good-tempered man, or he
would not have justified his nickname of Red Precipitate, but he spared
the rod with me, and failed to keep me in order. I was the youngest of a
pretty large family and the pet into the bargain.
My eldest brother, John, was drowned at St. Malo. He was unmarried, and
his profession was to do nothing as handsomely as he could.
James was in the 13th Light Dragoons, and subsequently in the 11th. He
saw no service, and was an excellent soldier at mess and off duty. I am
not qualified to speak with authority about his fulfilment of the
trumpery trivialities which fill up garrison life, but here is one
anecdote about him.
Soon after Lord Cardigan took command of the 13th Light Dragoons, a
great many of the officers left the corps, and a man wrote to the papers
to say that this was chiefly due to the great expense of the mess.
My brother retorted in print that for his part the reason was due to its
being 'incompatible with my feelings as a gentleman to remain in the
regiment as it is equally impossible to exchange out of a regiment that
has the undeserved misfortune to be commanded by his lordship.'
Edward lived at Dingle, and was much liked by the people there. He was
an active magistrate and a conscientious man. He married and left two
sons, one in the Horse Artillery and the other a colonel in the
Engineers. They have all joined the great majority.
Robert, who chose to be an army surgeon, died in India, leaving me
without a relation in the world of my own name.
It reminds me of the story in _Charles O'Malley_ about the old family in
which it was hereditary not to have any children. However, I altered
that by having eleven of my own, two sons, John and Maurice, and four
daughters being alive, at the present time. More power to them say I, in
the current phrase of good-will in Kerry.
My sister Mary died at Bath when I was born. It was her health which
prevented me from being by birth what I am at heart, a Kerry man.
Ellen was married to Robert, elder brother of the late Knight of Kerry,
and her grand-daughter is married to Colonel Thorneycroft of Spion Kop
fame.
Ellen's sister, Julia, married Sir Peter FitzGerald, Knight of Kerry.
The two therefore married brothers, and if there had been any more they
might have done the same.
I suppose I ought to give the date of my birth, but despite all the
efforts of those in Ireland, who loved me so much that they became
active agents to convey me to heaven, I cannot yet give you the date of
my death.
My friend, Mr. Townshend Trench, is, I believe, writing a book to prove
the world will come to an end in about thirty years' time, but that will
see me out, and those then alive may discover that the Great Landlord
has given the tenants an extension of the lease of the earth.
I was born on December 17, 1824, and I have none of those infantile
recollections which are such an insult on the general attention when put
in print.
Still my earliest memory is so characteristic of much that was to follow
that I set it down.
The very first thing I remember is being placed on the seat of a trap
beside the local R.M. (Resident Magistrate), and thus going out,
escorted by a party of soldiers, to collect tithes.
I clapped my hands with glee, but an old woman by the road-side said
that it was a shame to take out that innocent babe on such bloodthirsty
work.
I could ride before I could walk, and was always fond of the exercise.
What Irishman is not?
My taste for this was fostered by my father, who had broken his leg when
young, and not only disliked walking, but had a slight limp, which did
not prevent him being in the saddle for many hours each day.
As a child, I led a fresh, natural, out-of-doors, healthy life, exposed
to wind and rain, and all the better for both. There are very few trees
about Dingle, and I quite agree with the remark of an American that it
was the most open country he had ever seen.
I was always bathing, but I never got drowned, not even in liquor,
although I have sat with some of the best in that capacity. I have
myself been pretty temperate in everything, to which I attribute my
longevity. And yet I am not sure that any rule can be laid down in this
respect, for I have known men who saturated themselves in alcohol until
they ought to have been kept out of sight of all decent people live
longer than those that have kept straight in every way.
In proof of this, let me quote the delightful account of a centagenarian
out of Smith's _History of Kerry_, a book already referred to, and which
can now be finally put back on its shelf, dry as dust, as Carlyle might
say, 'but pregnant with food for thought, ay, and for grim
mirth,'--those are not exactly the words of the Sage of Chelsea, but
just have the rub of his tongue about them.
'Mr. Daniel MacCarty died in February 1751,' as the account said, 'in
the 112th year of his age. He lived during his whole life in the barony
of Iveragh, and buried four wives. He married a fifth in the
eighty-fourth year of his age, and she but a girl of fourteen, by whom
he had several children. He was always a very healthy man, no cold ever
affecting him, and he could not bear the warmth of a shirt at night, but
put it under his pillow. He drank for many of the last years of his life
great quantities of rum and brandy, which he called _the naked truth_;
and if, in compliance to other gentlemen, he drank claret or punch, he
always took an equal quantity of spirits to qualify those liquors: this
he called a wedge. No man ever saw him spit. His custom was to walk
eight or ten miles in a winter's morning over mountains with greyhounds
and finders, and he seldom failed to bring home a brace of hares. He was
an innocent man, and inherited the social virtues of the antient
Milesians. He was of a florid complexion, looked amazingly well for a
person of his age and manners of life, for his use of spirituous liquors
was prodigious, a custom that much prevails in these baronies.'
Indeed, no one who was slightly acquainted with the characteristics of
the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kerry would suggest that total
abstinence was even to-day their predominant virtue.
It is the fashion to say that it is a good thing to be one of a large
family. From a financial point of view I am quite certain that the
reverse is preferable, and as I was the youngest of nine--two others
besides those I mentioned, James and Anne, coming to early demises--I
received as many kicks and cuffs from my brethren as I did halfpence and
affection from my parents. So, like Thackeray, as a child I sympathised
with Lord MacTurk who wished to cut off the heads of his brethren. Now I
have survived them all, and I fondly regret the sounds of voices that
are still.
But as I sit in my arm-chair and ruminate over the past, which every old
man must do in the intervals of reading the _Times_, going to the club,
or losing his money by careful attention to speculation, I have the
consolation of remembering that I did as much mischief as any other
child. To be a really good child means that the animal is a prig or
unhealthy. To-day I am fond of all my grandchildren, but the one I like
best is the one which proves himself or herself the naughtiest for the
moment.
This is a hard saying for parents, and not a good precept for the young,
but there is solid truth in it and a bit of common-sense too, for it is
best to get the original sin out in the years of innocence.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION
Perhaps the biggest wrench in life is going to school. It may not seem
so very much afterwards--as the boy said of the tooth when he looked at
it in the dentist's forceps--but the wrench is really bad.
I learned my letters from my mother, and picked up a few other
smatterings before I had daily lessons from a tutor at Dingle. Strange
to say, a very good classical education could have been obtained there
in the thirties, better, so far as I can estimate, than could have been
expected from a town double the size at the same period in England.
At the age of ten I was sent to Huddard's, then a very sound school in
Dublin. I was well enough taught, not caned enough for my deserts,
though more than sufficed for my feelings, and sufficiently fed, but at
the end of two years I had to leave owing to ill health.
An apothecary, who selfishly recollected that the more medicines I took
the better for him if not for me, converted me into a human receptacle
for his empirical abominations, but another surgeon, who was rather
tardily called in, packed me off to the country.
One of the leading Dublin physicians certified that I had only one lung;
but as the other has served me faithfully for sixty-nine years, I am
rather sceptical as to the accuracy of his diagnosis.
I remember very little about Huddard's, except that it was in Mountjoy
Square, and about a hundred boys were herded there in unsought
proximity. We boarders always fought the town boys, but also had to
cajole them in humiliating ways to smuggle us in contraband articles of
food. The meals at Huddard's were fairly good, no doubt, as school fare
goes, but the sugary stick-jaw stuff for which the soul of a boy longs
was naturally not part of the official bill of fare. The bullying was of
a reasonable nature, or at all events I could hold my own with the best
of them, being indifferent to punishment so long as I could hit out
effectively from the shoulder. One of the ushers, a dwarf of malignant
disposition, was an awful tyrant, and we always had an ardent desire to
tar and feather him, only we did not know how to set about the operation
even if we had ventured to attempt it.
After a happy interval of convalescence at home, I was sent to a smaller
school kept by Mr. Hogg at Limerick. One of the boys there subsequently
became that illustrious ornament of the Bench, Lord Justice Barry.
He was a very eloquent man, counted so even at the Irish Bar, where a
certain high-flown loquacity is pretty prevalent, and had a great
repute. He arrived at Cork once, and had to fight his way through a
dense throng to get into court. On inquiring the reason of the crowd, he
was told that everybody wanted to hear the big speech that was expected
from Councillor Barry.
'Well, unless you make way for me it's disappointed every mother's son
of you will be, for I am twin to Councillor Barry, and I never heard
tell he had a brother.'
He carried on the old-fashioned habit of after-dinner conviviality, and
used to sit drinking three hours after the wine had been put on the
table, which was why I never accepted his hospitality in after years,
for, as I said before, I am a man of moderation.
In my young days it was the regular thing to bring in whisky-punch after
dinner; and for many years I regularly took one tumbler and never had a
second, not once to the best of my recollection.
There is a good deal of change in the habits of life. When I was a boy
coffee was unknown for breakfast, cocoa had not become known as a
beverage, and tea was regularly drunk. We seldom took lunch, nor did the
ladies, and afternoon tea was unheard of. Instead, tea was brought into
the drawing-room about eight in the evening, and was always drunk very
weak and sweet. In those times it was invariably from China and pretty
costly.
We dined at five. Dinners were very solid. Soup was a pretty regular
opening, but could be dispensed with without comment, and it was almost
always greasy. At Dingle fish was pretty plentiful, but sweets were
regarded as a great extravagance.
I remember, when grown up, dining with an elderly man near Cahirciveen,
who had a turbot for which he must have paid at least eight shillings,
but he apologised for not having a pudding on account of the necessity
for economy, though a pudding would not have cost him eightpence.
Made dishes were very few and badly cooked. The food was chiefly joints,
and, in nine cases out of ten, roast mutton. Vegetables were not so much
eaten as now, always excepting potatoes, which were consumed in large
quantities. There was practically no fruit, except a few apples and
oranges at Christmas.
Men sat very long over their wine. Sherry used to be served at dinner
and often claret afterwards, but the great beverage was port. I am
inclined to think that port has sensibly deteriorated since my young
days. It was as a rule more fruity then, but we never talked of our
livers, as subalterns and undergraduates do nowadays.
Port used to come direct to Dingle. It was an easy harbour 'to run,' and
there was some smuggling.
On one occasion some soldiers were sent to protect the gauger, who was
bent on making an important seizure. A few of the inhabitants of Dingle
took the opportunity of entertaining the officer, and whilst he
slumbered from the effects of their hospitality, the opportunity for
making the seizure was lost.
There is no particular reason why I should tell the following story
here, but it is worth recording, and I don't know any other part of my
reminiscences where it is more likely to slip in appropriately.
In Kerry in 1815, the farmers had been an extra long time fattening up
their pigs. After the Peace, prices all fell, and though the farmers
were reluctant, they had to yield to circumstances. One day the dealers
were buying at extremely low rates in Tralee market, when the postman
brought the news that Napoleon had escaped from Elba.
Instantly all the farmers broke off their bargains, and proceeded to
start homeward with their swine, shouting:--
'Hurrah for Boney that rose the pigs.'
My mother often told me of this scene, which she herself witnessed.
There was always a distinct sympathy with France, owing to the smuggling
from that land, and after the English had prohibited the exportation of
wool, it was smuggled into France, whence were brought back silks and
brandy.
The geography of Kerry is ideal for landing contraband store, and I
should say even more was done in this respect locally than on the coast
of Scotland.
There is a certain amount of good-will between people whose mutual
interests are similar until they fall out, and the hope of a French
landing in Ireland, though never very serious, always fanned the native
disaffection to the Government in the West.
The veracity of an Irishman is never considerable, for as a rule he will
say what he thinks likely to please you rather than state any unpleasant
fact. Of course the gauger--excise officer--was an especially unpopular
personage, and I doubt if a tithe of the lies told to him were ever
considered worthy of being confessed at all.
O'Connell's family made much money by smuggling, which was a pursuit
that carried not the slightest moral reproach. Indeed 'to go agin the
Government' in any sort of way has always been an act of
super-excellence.
The most lucrative side of the commercial enterprises of Morgan
O'Connell was his trade in contraband goods. In Derrynane Bay, he and
his brother landed cargoes which were sent over the hills on horses'
backs to receivers in Tralee.
Of O'Connell himself most stories have been told, but it is difficult to
indicate the enormous influence he had over the lower classes in his own
country.
Years before George IV. had aptly expressed the situation amid his
maudlin tears over Catholic emancipation.
'Wellington is King of England, O'Connell is King of Ireland, and I
suppose I'm only considered Dean of Windsor.'
As an advocate, the Liberator had many of the attributes of Kenealy, and
his popularity was so great that he was often briefed in every case at
an assize.
There is no doubt that he bullied judges, was allowed enormous laxity in
browbeating opposing counsel and witnesses, and, like Father O'Flynn,
had a wonderful way with him, so far as the jury was concerned.
When I saw him in Dublin, I at once realised how true must be the bulk
of the stories of his great conceit. He has been elevated into a
superhuman being by the posthumous praise of hundreds of blatant mob
orators.
Dan had two brothers, John and James. The latter was the first baronet,
and noted for his witty sayings.
He presided at a dinner given for the purpose of presenting an address
to the manager of a bank. On the toast of the Army and Navy being
proposed, the only man who could return thanks for the former was a
solicitor named Murphy, who said that if he were forced to respond to
the toast, it clearly proved what a peaceful community they lived in,
adding:--
'It is such a long time since I laid by the sash and the sword, that I
have forgotten my drill.'
'But you have never forgotten the charge,' observed the chairman, who
had a long bill from Murphy in his pocket at the time.
On another occasion, a lady spoke to James about subscribing to the
Roman Catholic Cathedral at Killarney.
'For my part,' she observed, 'it's little I can do in my lifetime, but I
have left all my money for the good of my soul.'
'I believe, ma'am,' says James, 'you were an original shareholder in the
Provincial Bank. The shares are now quoted at eighty and they pay six
per cent. That is very much like twenty-one per cent. on the original
capital.'
'I am not a clever man like you at making these calculations,' replies
the lady; 'I have higher and holier things to think about.'
'Don't say that again to me, ma'am,' says he. 'I put my money into
farms, and I get five per cent, from a grumbling and unsatisfactory set
of tenants. And what are you getting? Twenty-one per cent. in this world
and salvation in the next. It's the most damnable interest I ever heard
tell of, either in this world or any other.'
Yet another tale about him.
He had received an unconscionable bill of costs from an attorney, and
happening to meet a Roman Catholic bishop in Cork, he asked him if an
attorney could ever be saved.
'Why not? Even an extortioner can be if he make ample restitution in his
life-time, and dies fortified with the rites of the Church.'
'May be so, my lord,' replied Sir James, 'you know more about these
things than I do, but if it is as you say, you are taking a confounded
amount of unnecessary trouble about the rest of us.'
The bishop was not a bit disconcerted.
'I am an honest labourer striving to be worthy of my hire,' he
explained.
And at that Sir James left it, because he said it was not respectful to
ask too many invidious questions about a man who had the making of your
soul at his own will.
All this is a digression from my education, which was as desultory as
these reminiscences.
After a spell at Limerick I was again sent home ill, and for six months
I really had to be treated as an invalid. I was always very fond of
books, notably history, and I think I have read pretty well every book
published upon the history of Ireland. It was at this time I began
teaching myself a bit, and that is the teaching which is better than any
other, except what one has to learn against one's own will and for one's
own advantage in the school of life. Like a good many other people I was
led to history not only by a shortage of lighter books at home, but also
by curiosity aroused by the novels of Sir Walter Scott. In the way of
promoting better reading, I believe Scott has been far more beneficial
than any other writer of fiction in English.
I was for a short time at school in Exeter, and then at a rather rough
establishment at Woolwich, where my father wished me to have the tuition
in mathematics which could be obtained from the masters in the Academy
at irregular times. By all accounts the fagging and bullying in that
establishment were appalling. The headmaster of the school I was at was
an able fellow, and many of the cadets used to come to have a grind with
him. Some of their tales were 'hair-erectors,' as the Americans say.
One new boy had the misfortune to sprain his ankle, and to incur the
fury of the head of dormitory on the same evening. The latter tied his
game ankle up to his thigh, and fastening him by the wrist to the bottom
of the bed, made him stand the better part of the night on his bad
ankle.
This reminds me of the story of a certain royal prince going to an
educational establishment and being asked who his parents were. On his
reply, the senior--or 'John'--gave him a terrific _cuff_ on the side of
the head saying:--
'That's for your father, the prince.'
And before the half-stunned boy recovered, he received a stinging blow
on the other ear with:--
'That's for your mother, the princess, and now black my boots.'
His Highness could say nothing, but in time he grew to be the biggest
and the worst bully.
Then the younger brother of his former tormentor came, and the prince
sent for him, and telling him what his brother had done some years
before, made him bend down and flogged him so unmercifully that he had
to go into hospital.
Years after, when in an important position, he met his former victim,
now a general, and congratulating him on his career said:--
'Perhaps I made your success by giving you that tanning at Sandhurst.'
I wonder whether there was murder in the heart of the grim old warrior
at the recollection. Of course that would not be strange, for many a
time officers have been actually shot in action by their own men.
Here is a perfectly true story, only neither the men nor the officer
need be specified.
A colonel who had grossly mismanaged the regiment knew his fate was
sealed.
So when the men paraded for the engagement, he said:--
'I know you mean to shoot me to-day, but for God's sake don't do so
until we have won the battle.'
This was greeted with a cheer, and he came back safe to be decorated and
to play whist at his club as badly as any member in it.
I am not sure that cards ought not to be considered part of every lad's
training. If a man goes through life without touching a card, he
probably loses a good deal of innocent amusement, and debars himself
from much pleasant society. If he learns to play when grown up, he may
find it a costly and unsatisfactory branch of education. But if he is
taught to play reasonably well as a boy, and is shown that excellent
games can be had without gambling--I do not consider an infinitesimal
stake, in proportion to his means, gambling--he will have an extra
amusement made for him and a relaxation after his day's work.
A near relative of my own gets his club cronies to play bridge with his
son, aged eighteen, and pays his losses, in order that he may be
thoroughly grounded in the game. The lad is a capital boy, and all the
better for his early association with elder men on their own level.
One of the resources of my old age is three games of picquet every night
after dinner with my wife, and very much I enjoy them. There is often
the fashionable bridge played in the room by my children and their
friends, but I have never taken a hand, though in younger days I derived
a fair amount of diversion from whist.
CHAPTER IV
FARMING
My years of schooling having come to an end, I was back in Ireland in
full enjoyment of youth, high spirits, and thoughtless carelessness.
These holiday times were delightful. I could be in the saddle all day if
I liked, was free to shoot or bathe as I pleased, had dogs at my
disposal, could pass the time of day with all sorts and conditions of
men--a thing which I have relished all my life--and in fact led the gay
existence of the younger offshoot of an Irish squire.
In those days things were not so impecunious in Ireland as they
subsequently became, but there was always a vivacious Hibernian scorn
for false pretension, and a determination to have the best possible
time, such as you can read in Lever's novels of old, and the capital
tales of those two clever ladies, Miss Martin and Miss Somerville,
to-day.
It is perfectly true that there are many Irish landlords in sporting
counties who cannot have three hundred a year, and yet all their sons
and daughters manage to hunt four days a week.
This would be impossible out of Ireland, and is absolutely
incomprehensible even there; but the fact remains that it is done, and
all one can remark is to echo the patter of the conjuror:--
'Wonderful, isn't it?'
I, however, was not destined to be left a derelict at home, as falls to
the hapless lot of far too many good fellows in Ireland.
There were a good many family counsels, and the authorities could not
make up their minds what to do with me. However, I thought farming was
the idlest occupation, and suggested it should be my profession--an idea
hailed with rapture, principally because it saved everybody the trouble
of racking their brains about me.
Personally, I have often regretted that what in modern phrase may be
called the 'Stevenson boom' did not coincide with my search for a
career. Big posts were in due time going for engineers; and those young
men who had the stamp of apprenticeship to, or association with, the
great man could get almost anything in the days of the fever for railway
construction.
Even later than the period I am now recalling, the journey from Dublin
to Dingle would take more than two days, and, so far as I can recollect,
it certainly took five from Dingle to London. Those coaching journeys
were terrible experiences in wet weather, for you were drenched outside
and suffocated inside, whilst you paid more than three times the present
railway fare for the miserable privilege of this uncomfortable means of
transit.
The old posting hotels used to be uncommonly good and comfortable,
whilst they did a thriving trade. The coach purported to give you ample
time to breakfast and dine at certain capital hostels, but by a private
arrangement between mine host and the guard and driver, the meals used
to be abruptly closured in order to save the landlord's larder.
On the way down from Dublin, a thirty minutes' pause was allowed at Naas
for breakfast; but on the occasion of my story, as well as on every
other, after a quarter of an hour the waiter announced the coach was
just starting.
Everybody ran out to regain their seats, except one commercial
traveller, who picked up all the teaspoons and put them in the teapot
before calmly resuming his meal.
Back came the waiter with:--
'Not a moment to spare, sir.'
'All right,' said the traveller; 'which of the passengers has taken the
teaspoons?'
The waiter gave one glance of horror, and then proceeded to have every
one on the coach examined for the missing articles.
By the time that the commercial traveller had calmly finished a hearty
meal there was nearly a riot, and then he emerged from the coffee-room,
and suggested that the waiter had better look in the teapot.
By the way, I don't fancy that he regularly travelled on that road, for
he would have been a marked man at Naas for years to come.
I was seventeen at the time when I had decided, with parental
acquiescence, to be a farmer, and I was sent to learn my profession to
the south of Scotland, to a farmer named Bogue.
I there acquired, at all events, one curious fact, which has stuck in my
head ever since, and it is thus:--
Scotland and Ireland are governed by the same Sovereign, Lords, and
Commons. Scotland is the best farmed country in Europe, and Ireland
about the worst.
One pair of horses in Scotland were then supposed to cultivate fifty
acres of tillage, and in Ireland the average was one horse to five
acres. Indeed it is in both cases much the same to-day.
In reality a farm is a workshop from which you turn out as much produce
as possible. But on an Irish farm it is the habit to squeeze out the
last possible ounce without putting anything in, for it is not run with
an eye on future years, but only in a hand-to-mouth, beggar-the-soil
kind of way, without a thought beyond contemporary exigencies.
There were several other pupils with Bogue, but I stuck to the business
more than the rest, who were perpetually gallivanting into Kelso, or
even going up to Edinburgh, where they learnt nothing which taught them
their trade or put money into their pockets. Therefore it happened that
I was selected by Bogue to have an excellent practical demonstration of
farming, after this wise. He had a pretty sharp illness, and left me for
a short time full management of all his six hundred acres, and that bit
of responsibility made a man of me once and for all. I stepped out of
boyhood instantly, and became an adult in feelings and bearing; but to
this day I hope my sense of fun is only keener than it was as a lad.
I acquired a good deal of common sense in Scotland, and learnt to
observe for myself, a thing many men never acquire, and on their
deathbeds they will never be able to enumerate the opportunities they
have consequently lost.
As I was to be a farmer, I thought it was no use to confine my attention
to the one I was on, but contracted the habit, when work was at all
slack, of going about to pick up what wrinkles I could from other
proprietors, as well as to make observations on my own account.
Subsequently I have made two agricultural tours through Scotland for the
same purpose, getting as far north as Sutherland, in order to find out
how the Highland farmer dealt with more barren soil under a less
propitious climate. I have noted more improvement in farming in Ayrshire
in the interval than in any other county. Yet there is a letter in
existence by Burns in which he observes that Ayrshire lairds are getting
English and East Lothian notions about rents, and raising them so high
that it will soon be a wilderness.
The fact is that the Scotsman is a farmer by nature, but the Irishman is
a farmer by inclination.
An Irishman tries to exist on land cultivated by the minimum amount of
labour, and does not farm a bit better if his land is cheaper.
Every farmer in Scotland and England is laying down his land in grass,
and giving up tillage as fast as he can. It is notorious that Ireland is
more suitable for pasture than tillage, and yet the Government have
constituted a Board to break up the rich grazing lands in Ireland and
divide them into small tillage farms, on which the tenants could not get
a decent living even if they had it free of rent and taxes.
Old Bogue was a bachelor by profession, and his polygamistic tendencies
were duly concealed, though pretty generally known, as most things are
in the country. He had as housekeeper a woman so skinny that it made you
feel cold to look at her, and her disposition was on a par with her
appearance. Of course, it suited the national thrift, particularly
congenial to Bogue, to feed us meanly, but we did not relish her
parsimonious economies.
There was one thing none of us might shirk, and that was regular
attendance at kirk on Sunday. I have been a church-going man all my
life--in my late years in London I have especially appreciated the
beautiful services at St. Anne's, Soho--but the kirk has always been the
breaking of precious ointment over an unworthy head, so far as I am
concerned. The improvised prayer, that is always so carefully prepared,
and is often one delivered in regular rotation, always seems to me
rather humbugging for that reason, and the tremendously long sermons,
which have a minimum of three quarters of an hour, no matter what the
text or the ability of the preacher, are to me a vexation of spirit. I
have occasionally heard good sermons in kirk, but I think the standard
of Scottish preaching has always been overrated.
Moreover, I agree in the main with the American critic of sermons, who
said if a preacher can't strike ile in ten minutes he has got a bad
organ, or he is boring in the wrong place. It is always unfair to bore
in the pulpit, because the congregation have no means of retaliation
except by subsequently staying away, and in the country that is not
compatible with the public worship of their Maker.
We have all heard the traditional stories about the divines who, having
found the sand of the hour-glass exhausted, calmly reversed it and
continued for a second spell, to the complete satisfaction of the
congregations. But in my experience only one preacher could have done
that without unendurably provoking me, and he was Archbishop Magee, of
whom I shall have something to say when I am dealing with County Cork.
For the Scots in character I conceived much respect and little
enthusiasm. If there is anything more remarkable than the hard-working
powers of the Scottish farmer it is his capacity for hard drinking. But
that only makes him offensive in his brief conviviality and morose in
the long subsequent sulkiness. Whereas I defy you to be seriously angry
with a drunken Irishman, if you have a due sense of humour--and without
that you have lost the salt of life. To my mind there is something
austere in the better characteristics of the Scot, and also something
hypocritical about his morality. You always hear that professed in
Scotland, and never in Ireland. But in the latter fewer illegitimate
children are born than in any other country in Europe, and in
Scotland--notably Glasgow--the high percentage has become sadly
proverbial. Yet, despite these adverse points, the Scottish character
has a native grandeur which must provoke admiration, though all my
warmth of feelings goes to my own oft-erring countrymen.
I returned to Ireland in 1843 with the intention of farming in Kerry on
the scientific system I had learned in Berwickshire. However, I found
the land so subdivided that it was not only difficult, but impossible,
to obtain a farm of sufficient size to return a reasonable percentage on
the necessary outlay. The population of Kerry was then 293,880, and the
land was divided into 25,848 farms, the holders of which, I may say,
entirely depended for existence on 26,030 acres of potatoes. To give an
example of the intense love of subdivision, I knew a case where one
horse was the property of three 'farmers,' and as they differed as to
who was to pay for the fourth shoe, they sold the horse, which was
bought by an uncle of mine.
Few farmers ate meat except at Christmas. They wore homespun flannel and
frieze, and their only luxury, whisky, was obtainable at a quarter of
its present price. A young couple were considered ready to start in
married life when they had obtained a 'farm,' consisting of a couple of
acres for potatoes and a mud hovel for themselves; and thus a
population, dependent on a precarious root, increased very rapidly. It
was thicker near the sea coast than inland. The rents then were about
double what they are now (though half what they had been at the
beginning of the nineteenth century), yet, with good potato crops,
people seemed content and times were fairly good. I should say there was
not such general drunkenness as in later times, and very little porter
was consumed in those days--at all events outside Dublin. What schools
there were were shockingly bad, and reading, not to say writing, was an
exceptional accomplishment, not only among the labouring classes, but
among those who held their heads much higher. This of course impressed
me coming straight from Scotland, where a really grand education has
been the national birthright for generations.
I began to farm about sixty acres near Dingle, and gave my entire time
to it, an assiduity I have compared in my mind to that of the Norwegian
reclaiming the little arable spots on the mountain. We both worked
pretty hard for very scanty results. I did not even live on my tiny
property, but with my mother--my father had died after I returned from
my English schools and before I went to Kelso.
Still matters were not long satisfactory, owing to the failure of the
potato crop in 1845, when the mortality became fearful in consequence.
So at the very end of the year I migrated from Kerry to become an
assistant land agent in Cork, and thus really embarked on the profession
of my life--one which, on the whole, I have most thoroughly and heartily
enjoyed.
I hoped then that I had not done with my beloved Kerry, and my
association with that great kingdom has indeed been lifelong. I have
always understood the feeling of the Irish emigrants who have had sods
of their native earth sent out to them to the New World. _Heimweh_ is
after all a good thing, and Kerry to me would always seem to be
appealing, however far I had roamed.
CHAPTER V
LAND AGENT IN CORK
Had I been able to obtain a reasonably large farm near Dingle, I should
never have become a land agent, and I most certainly should never have
given evidence before any Commission.
In default of adequate land accommodation, I embarked on my profession
by becoming assistant land agent to my brother-in-law, the Knight of
Kerry, who was agent to Sir George Colthurst. I lived with the Knight at
Inniscarra in County Cork, not far from Blarney.
From that time onward I worked steadily, and as I take my ease at the
Carlton to-day, I really feel I have done as much honest labour in my
career as has any man.
In proof I may cite a day's record some years later, taken almost at
random from my diary.
I began with an hour in my Cork office, went by train to Killarney, a
journey of three and a half hours, where I spent three hours in my
office, and then by train on to Tralee, a further one and a quarter
hours, where I had an hour and a half in my office in that town, and
then drove out to Edenburn, seven miles, to sleep. That done fairly
often makes a decided strain on endurance and mental concentration,
because the affairs at each place were of course for different landlords
and needed the memorising of a fresh section of business all absolutely
intrusted to me, whilst the train service in Kerry then and now is not
calculated to promote mental tranquillity or facilitate business.
Having alluded to my diary, I had better explain that I kept no journal
until 1852, and subsequently to that year it consisted merely of bald
memoranda of my movements; therefore it has not been of the least use in
preparing these reminiscences.
In 1846 I became a Government Inspector of Land Improvements and
Drainage Works, and in that capacity went to Bantry, where I saw the
appalling destitution caused by the famine, with which I shall deal in
the next chapter.
I had made application for this post before I left Kerry, directly I had
found my farm too small for my requirements, and I received the
appointment from the Chairman of the Irish Board of Works. Practically
speaking the pay was about a pound a day with allowances.
This post in no way interfered with my duties as a land agent then, but
I afterwards resigned it owing to the increasing exigencies of my
profession.
It may be as well to detail for readers other than Irish what are the
avocations of a land agent, especially as the class in Ireland will
probably soon be as extinct as the dodo.
The duties of an Irish land agent comprise a great deal of office work,
drawing up agreements with tenants, receiving rent, superintending
agricultural and all landlords' improvements, sitting as magistrate and
representing the landlord when the latter is absent at poor-law
meetings, road sessions, and on grand juries.
With very rare exceptions the salary has been five per cent, on the
rents received. So the agent has been paid five per cent, on all the
money he has put into the landlord's pockets, whilst an architect has
always received five per cent. on all he took out of them, an
arrangement which in the latter instance has not worked at all well for
the landlords.
The tendency has gradually been to consolidate and amalgamate land
agencies, for as the difficulty of getting rents increased, more
competent men of experience and judgment were needed by the landlords.
As a proof of the trust reposed in me, I may mention that at one time I
received the rents of one-fifth of the whole county of Kerry--and that
in the worst times.
Such a task is not one to be envied, however joyously a man may take up
the burden of his daily toil, and of course the agents as the outward
and visible signs of the distant or absentee landlords obtained the
greater share of the hatred felt for the latter.
In the worst period Lord Derby received threats that if he did not
reduce his rents, his agent would be murdered.
He coolly replied:--
'If you think you will intimidate me by shooting my agent you are
greatly mistaken.'
That is exactly the reply the agents desired the landlords to make, but
it did not conduce to making their own existences any the more secure or
enviable.
Of course in the due working out of the Wyndham Act, land agents will be
utterly ruined.
There are no openings for them because they are too old to commence
learning another profession, and they will not get employment under the
County Council because they belong to the landlord class and have
unflinchingly fought the battles of the landlords.
The agents are a class who have devoted their time and risked their
lives in order to get in the rents due to their employers, and there is
not the smallest chance--save in a few isolated and exceptional
cases--of their being kept on when the landlords will have only their
own demesne in their own hands and employ some underling, such as a
bailiff in England, to collect the stray rents of the few cottagers who
may still chance to be tenants.
Judge Ross stated that there was no more deserving or painstaking class
in Ireland than the land agents, and he considered it a great hardship
that under the Wyndham Act they obtain no compensation.
By agreement in most cases they receive three per cent. of the purchase
money, but that is a very poor sinking fund to provide for a middle-aged
gentleman, who has probably a family to support; and absolute bankruptcy
must be the result if there is, as on several large properties, an agent
with a couple of assistants.
When the Ashbourne Act was passed in 1885, it was never contemplated
that the purchases would be on a wholesale scale. As a matter of fact
only a few estates were sold, and on the purchase price of one of those
for which I was agent I received two per cent. It should be also borne
in mind that the profession of a land agent in Ireland is on a far
higher social plane than in England. In many cases the younger son or
brother of the landlord is the agent for the family property; and in
some instances this has worked uncommonly well. In other cases,
gentlemen by birth conducted the business, or else the administration of
several estates was consolidated and carried on from one office.
In every case the billet was regarded as one for life, only forfeited by
gross misconduct, and the relations between landlord and agent have been
nearly always of an intimate and cordial character. Each agent began as
an assistant, obtaining an independent post by selection and influence,
and few entered the profession unless they had reasonable prospects of a
definite post on their own account in due course.
In my time the landlord was the sole judge of the agent's
qualifications, but the profession has become a branch of the
Engineering Surveyor's Institution.
As may be imagined, there are now remarkably few candidates for the
necessary examinations, because it is virtually annihilated.
Things were very different when I embarked without mistrust on a career
which has landed me comfortably into my eighties, although under
Government every appointment has to be compulsorily vacated at the age
of sixty-five. No one starting now could anticipate any such result in
old age, and so without affectation I can say _autres temps autres
moeurs_, which may be freely translated as 'present times much the
worst.'
More pleasant is it to turn to a few brief memories of Cork. It was a
cheerful place at the time I am speaking of, for there was plenty of
entertaining and truly genial hospitality. The general depression caused
by famine, fever, and Fenians hardly affected the great town, and after
those funereal shadows had once passed, Cork was as gay as any one could
reasonably desire.
The townsfolk are very witty and clever at giving nicknames, as the
following little tales will show.
When a citizen in Cork makes money, he generally builds a house, and the
higher up the hill his house is situated, the more is thought of him.
Mr. Doneghan, a highly respectable tallow chandler, built a fine
residence early in the nineteenth century, which he called Waterloo.
The populace said it should have been named Talavera (_i.e._
Tallow-vera), and as that it is known to this day.
Mr. Maguire, who was Member for Cork, and Lord Mayor of the City into
the bargain, was very influential in the promotion of a gas company.
With the money he made out of it, he reared a rather lofty mansion,
which was promptly christened the Lighthouse.
All butter in Cork is sold at the wharves, and the casks are branded
with the quality of the butter they contain. One man made a fortune out
of the first class butter on its merits, and out of the sixth class
butter, which he put in the first class casks and sold on the testimony
of the brand on the wood. This became in time notorious to most people
except the more unsophisticated of his clients, and when he embarked on
bricks and mortar his house was generally known as Brandenburg.
One more and I have done with these baptismal sobriquets.
A lady on a Queenstown steamer had put her foot down the bunker's hole,
and broke her ankle through the accident. She brought an action against
the company, duly proved negligence on the part of the employés, and
obtained substantial damages. These considerably assisted her in
erecting a rather attractive mansion, which she decidedly resented being
called Bunker's Hill.
Some people have their own ideas about the definition of a gentleman, as
a certain rather diminutive racing man found to his cost.
It was at a meeting close to Cork, and he was standing next a burly
farmer close to the rails when the horses were nearly ready to start.
Pointing to one disreputable-looking ruffian about to mount, he
observed:--
'That fellow has no pretensions to be a gentleman-rider.'
The farmer caught him by the collar of his coat and the seat of his
breeches, and shook him as a mastiff would a rat.
'Mind yourself, small man,' said he, 'that's a recognised gentleman in
these parts.'
There was a mighty shindy, and when the farmer was told his victim was a
prominent English peer, he retorted:--
'Well, that won't make him a judge of an Irish gentleman.'
In the last chapter I mentioned that the preacher I most admired was
Archbishop Magee. I had the privilege of frequently hearing him in Cork,
where he drew crowded congregations to a temporary church--the cathedral
being under repair.
I never heard any one who so magnetised me from the pulpit, and I am by
no means prone to admire sermons. There was a sort of mesmerism in the
very eloquence of Magee which kept my eyes riveted on his lips--rather
big, bulgy lips in an expressive, sensitive face. An hour beneath him
sped marvellously fast, and more than once in Cork I have heard him
preach for that length. The impression he made on me has never been
effaced, and it was with no surprise I learnt in due course that he
became Archbishop of York.
The late Lord Derby said that the most eloquent speech he ever heard in
or out of the House of Lords was Magee's speech on the Church Act, the
peroration of which--quoting from memory after many years--ran:--'My
Lords, I will not, I cannot, and I dare not vote for that most
unhallowed bill which lies on your Lordships' table.'
Have all Magee stories been told?
I am afraid so. Yet in the hope that a few may be new to some, though
old to others--who are invited to skip them--here are just a small
batch.
When he was a dean, he one day attended a debate on tithes in the House
of Commons, and was subsequently putting on his overcoat, when a Radical
Member courteously assisted him, whereupon he remarked:--
'I am very much obliged to you, sir, for reversing the policy of your
friends inside, who are taking the coats off our backs.'
This was equalled by the wife of an Irish landlord who lost her purse in
the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons.
Mrs. Gladstone, who had been sitting next her, after kindly assisting in
the ineffectual search, observed:--
'I hope there was not much in it.'
'No, it was a nice little purse I had had for a long time, but thanks to
your husband there was nothing in it.'
An Irish story of Magee's concerns an Orange clergyman in Fermanagh, who
asked leave to preach a sermon by Magee. Now, this clergyman, who was an
ambitious man, was rather ashamed of his mother, and would not let her
live at the parsonage, but had taken lodgings for her in the town.
Magee, moreover, always a moderate man, did not like Orange sermons, and
most certainly had never composed one. As he good naturedly did not want
to offend the other, he said he would give him a capital sermon to
deliver if he--Magee--might select the text.
'Of course, of course,' assented the other; 'what is it?'
'"From that time His disciple took her to his own house."'
Even this was hardly so cutting as his remark, when a bishop, to a
clergyman of whom he did not think highly, but who upbraided him for not
giving him a living.
'Sir, if it were raining livings, the utmost I could do would be to lend
you an umbrella.'
Mention of Magee suggests an ecclesiastical tale concerning a most
convivial attorney--George Faith by name--who had rather a red nose,
which he explained was caused by wearing tight boots.
His father in old age got married a second time, and George was asked
why his stepmother was like Dr. Newman.
The answer was because she had embraced the ancient Faith.
Among old time Irish members, Joe Ronayne, M.P. for Cork, was among the
most diverting.
He was a railway contractor, and much wanted some additional ground at
the terminus of the line, which the proprietor, Lord Ventry, would not
sell.
The size of the coveted patch was only seven feet long by three broad.
Mr. Ronayne grimly retorted:--
'That's very strange, for it is exactly the amount of ground I'd like to
give him,' i.e. for his grave.
Another experience of Ronayne's was to the following tune.
He had obtained advances from a local bank for his railway contract to
the satisfaction of both parties, and when asked by the manager for some
wrinkles about the making of a railway, replied:--
'The best thing is to run it into a soft bank.'
He was a plucky chap as well as a witty one, for owing to some internal
malady, from which he died, he had to have his leg amputated, at the
same time resigning his seat for Cork.
Addressing the surgeon, he observed:--
'I cannot stand for the borough any longer, but I shall certainly stump
the constituency as a county candidate.'
Poor fellow, he was all too soon an accepted candidate for his passage
over to the great majority.
A certain attorney named Nagle used to do most of his work.
Speaking of another attorney this Nagle remarked:--
'He has the heart of a vulture.'
'I know what's worse,' was Ronayne's comment.
'Indeed!'
'Yes; the bill of an aigle' (which is the broad Cork pronunciation of
eagle).
This Nagle was not remarkable for the extent of his ablutions.
At one period, when he was becoming an ardent Radical, an obsequious
toady said:--
'You'll become a second Marat.'
'There's no fear that he will die in the same place,' promptly came from
Ronayne.
On another occasion the two were waiting for the judges outside their
lodgings during the Assizes.
Suddenly Ronayne, in the hearing of a number of acquaintances, called
out:--
'You had better come away at once, Nagle.'
'Why should I?' indignantly.
'If you stop five minutes longer there's a shower of rain coming on and
you might get washed.'
On a third occasion, Nagle told Ronayne he was going to invest some
money in a mining exploration.
'Explore your own landed property, my dear fellow,' was Ronayne's
advice.
'But you know I have not got any.'
'Good Heavens, you don't mean to say you have cleaned your nails?'
Though he was an out-and-out Fenian, Ronayne was as honest a man as I
ever met, and he was considered one of the most amusing men in the House
of Commons.
The attorneys in Cork at one time formed quite a small coterie, who
divided all the business until it grew too much for them, one, Mr. Paul
Wallace, being especially harassed with briefs.
At length a barrister named Graves came down from Dublin, and was
introduced to Wallace by another attorney with the remark:--
'Counsel are very necessary.'
'Yes,' said Wallace; 'as a matter of fact, we are all being driven to
our graves.'
At Kanturk Sessions, Mr. Philip O'Connell was consulted by a client
about the recovery of a debt. He at once saw that the defence would be a
pleading of the statute of limitations, so he told his client that if he
could get a man to swear that the debtor had admitted the debt within
the last six years, he would succeed, but not otherwise.
O'Connell went off to take the chair at a Bar dinner to a new County
Court judge.
As the dessert was being set on the table, a loud knock came at the
door, which was immediately behind the chairman.
'What is it?' cried O'Connell.
A head appeared, and the voice from it explained:--
'I'm Tim Flaherty, your honour, as was consulting you outside, and I
want you to come this way for a while.'
'Don't you see I am engaged and cannot come?'
'But it's pressing and important.'
'I tell you I won't come.'
Then at the top of his voice Tim yelled:--
'Will a small woman do as well, your honour?'
The members of the Bar present, quite unaware of the previous
conversation, exploded in a shout of laughter, and it was long before
O'Connell heard the last of the invidious construction they put on the
affair.
One of the interesting people I came across in the vicinity of Cork was
Mr. Jeffreys, who up to his death in 1862 was the most enterprising and
experimental landed proprietor in the county. He imported Scottish
stewards, and people from far and near came to see his farms.
I should say that in the fifties he did more for agriculture than any
other one man who could be named in Ireland.
He often said to me:--
'The system of small farms will not last long in Ireland, for the
occupiers are sure to strike against rents.'
He did not live to see the fulfilment of his prophecy, but its effects
were felt by his grandson, Sir George Colthurst, who inherited his
property.
Most of his stories were very improper, but their wit excused them.
In the Kildare Street Club one day he saw a very pompous individual, and
asked who he was.
'That's So-and-So, and the odd thing is he is the youngest of four
brothers, who are all married without having a child between them.'
'Ah, that accounts for his importance--he is the last of the Barons.'
Finding him very meditative in the County Club at Cork one Friday, I
asked him what was the matter.
'I am making my soul,' said he. 'I began my dinner with turbot and ended
with scollops.'
CHAPTER VI
FAMINE AND FEVER
It is now necessary to revert to that terrible page of Irish history,
the famine, which culminated in what is still known as 'the black
forty-seven.'
I have often been asked, 'How is it that Ireland could formerly support
a population of eight millions as compared with only five now?'
The answer is simple: Eight millions could still exist if the potato
crop were a certainty, and if the people were now content to exist as
they did then. But to the then existing population--living at best in a
light-hearted and hopeful, hand-to-mouth contentment--there was a
terrible awakening.
The mysterious blight, which had affected the potato in America in 1844,
had not been felt in Ireland, where the harvest for 1845 promised to be
singularly abundant. Suddenly, almost without warning, the later crop
shrivelled and wasted.
The poor had a terribly hard winter, and the farmers borrowed heavily to
have means to till a larger amount of land in 1846.
Once more the early prospects were admirable, and then in a single night
whole districts were blighted.
This is how Mr. Steuart Trench described the catastrophe:--
'On August 1, 1846, I was startled by a sudden and strange rumour that
all the potato fields in the district were blighted, and that a stench
had arisen emanating from their decaying stalk. The report was true, the
stalks being withered; and a new, strange stench was to be noticed which
became a well-known feature in 'the blight' for years after. On being
dug up it was found that the potato was rapidly blackening and melting
away. The stench generally was the first indication, the withered leaf
following in a day or two.'
The terrible sufferings which ensued were complicated by some blunders
of British statesmen.
In 1845 Sir Robert Peel was Prime Minister. He imported Indian meal, and
established depots in the country, where it was sold to the people at
the lowest possible price, thus putting a complete check on private
enterprise.
In 1846 Lord John Russell was Premier. He declined to follow the example
of Sir Robert Peel, because he considered that it interfered with Free
Trade, and, reversing the policy of his predecessor, announced that he
left the importation of meal to private enterprise.
But capitalists having been alarmed, meal was not imported in sufficient
quantities, with the result that Indian corn rose to eighteen pounds a
ton, when it might have been laid in at the rate of eight pounds a ton.
Had Lord John Russell's policy come first, and that of Sir Robert Peel
subsequently, the result would have been very different.
The fight over the Corn Law question in England at the time was
decidedly an injury to Ireland, because the Protectionists minimised the
danger of famine in the winter of 1845 for fear of the calamity being
made a pretext for Free Trade.
Dealing with an unforeseen calamity of such stupendous magnitude at long
range from Downing Street entailed delay; and public relief, waiting
until official investigation had tardily reported the hardships,
suffered in the truly distressful country.
The state of things round Bantry, of which I had accurate knowledge, was
appalling. I knew of twenty-three deaths in the poorhouse in twenty-four
hours. Again, on a relief road, two hours after I had passed, on my ride
home I saw three of the poor fellows stretched corpses on the stones
they had been breaking.
The Registrar-General for Ireland, Mr. William Donelly, officially stated
that five hundred thousand one-roomed cabins had disappeared between the
census before the famine and the one after it.
Whole families used to starve in their cabins without their plight being
discovered until the stench of their decaying corpses attracted notice.
Some superstition also prevented even the children from eating the
myriads of blackberries which ripened on the bushes.
Directly the calamity was comprehended, the English poured money into
the country with unbounded generosity, but the management was bad.
The relief works organised by the Government took the form of draining
and road-making. This entailed delay, owing to the preliminary
surveying, and when employment could be given, the people were too
emaciated and feeble to work. All over Ireland unfinished roads leading
half way to places of no consequence are to-day grass-grown memorials of
that ghastly effort of State assistance.
Almost the earliest of the private soup-kitchens for the relief of the
sufferers was that opened at Dingle under the joint initiative of Lady
Ventry, Mrs. Hickson, my future mother-in-law, and Mrs. Hussey, my
mother. So as not to pauperise the people, subscriptions of one penny a
week were asked from every house in the town. At ten in the morning
those who wanted it could get a pint per head of really excellent soup
for themselves and their families. Those who were known to be able to
pay had to contribute a penny; the really destitute had gratuitous
relief.
So bad was the famine that people coming in from the country fell in the
street never to rise again. One woman was found lying on the outskirts
of the town almost dead from starvation, her three children having
succumbed beside her, and had she not been carried to the soup-kitchen
she would not have survived them many hours.
My wife well remembers another case. One day her mother emerged from a
cabin carrying what looked like a big bundle of clothes. It was the form
of an emaciated woman, whose four children and husband had all starved.
My mother-in-law took her to her own house, fed her at first with
spoonsful of soup, and kept her there until she had rebuilt her once
vigorous constitution.
My wife subsequently recollects her as a hale, buxom, young widow coming
to say good-bye before emigrating to America.
Very soon all the coffins had been exhausted, and in many places the
dead were taken to the graves and dropped in through the hinged bottom
of a trap-coffin.
After soup had been introduced, Indian meal stirabout proved
efficacious, and it was distributed from large iron boilers set up by
the roadside to the gaunt, cadaverous wretches who scuffled for the
sustenance.
Even more terrible than those privations was the fever which supervened.
Apart from the lack of food, a great cause of mortality lay in the
change of diet. Potatoes form a bulky article of food, and stirabout,
unless very carefully made, used to swell after it was consumed. Many,
too, ate raw turnips from sheer destitution, and these also caused
swelling of the stomach as well as a dysentery almost always fatal in a
few days.
Numbers of starving Catholics had gone to Protestant clergymen and
offered to become converts in return for food, and when some of these
sickened with the fever, the priests declared it was a judgment on them,
and religious hostility became intensified.
At Dingle Lady Ventry and her helpers were denounced from the pulpits as
'benevolent sisters bent on superising the poor'--to superise being the
improvised verb for Protestantising, a thing they decidedly did not
attempt.
A very early instance of the open-air cure never before recorded took
place at Lismore. When every possible place in the hospital had been
filled with fever patients, a number had to be lodged in a disused
quarry near the Blackwater, and of the latter not a single sufferer
died, though the mortality within doors was excessive.
I remember one rather quaint incident.
A large amount of sea biscuit was brought into a house for distribution
by a benevolent gentleman. His daughter, aged seven, surreptitiously
stole a biscuit for the purpose of eating it. But at the first attempt
to bite the tough thing, out came a loose tooth. She howled with fright,
thinking it a judgment on her for her misdeed, and went in tears to tell
her mother.
I have always hoped the latter had enough sense of humour to laugh at
the incident, but my shrewd suspicion is that she improved the
occasion--an error for which there is always temptation, and on which
there is often the retribution of the few words having the opposite
effect to that intended.
The conduct of the landlords during the famine and fever has been much
discussed and variously represented. But many of the Nationalists
themselves have declared that the diatribes of their comrades have been
thoroughly undeserved. Absenteeism apart--for which no excuse need be
attempted--the Irish landlords did their best, gave of their substance,
and imperilled their own lives for the sake of the sufferers. Mr.
Richard White of Inchiclogh, near Bantry, fell a victim to the fever.
Two other landlords who gave their lives for others were Mr. Richard
Martin, M.P., and Mr. Nolan of Ballinderry. The conditions of tenure did
not admit of lavish financial generosity, but as one of their sharpest
critics in later times admitted, the vast majority 'went down with the
ship.'
The survivors of this terrible time numbered heroes drawn from all
classes of life; and it would have been well if the lesson of universal
charity then practically demonstrated had been allowed to sink into all
hearts.
Instead I will quote the following extract from John Mitchel's _History
of Ireland_, a thick, paper-bound volume, which, at the price of
eighteenpence, has circulated enormously among the Irish, not only at
home, but in Glasgow and America.
On page 243:--'That million and a half of men, women, and children were
carefully, prudently, and peacefully _slain_' [the italics are those of
Mitchel] 'by the English Government. They died of hunger in the midst of
abundance which their own hands created; and it is quite immaterial to
distinguish those who perished in the agonies of famine itself from
those who died by typhus fever, which in Ireland is always caused by
famine.
'Further, this was strictly an _artificial_ famine--that is to say, it
was a famine which desolated a rich and fertile island that produced
every year abundance and superabundance to sustain all her people and
many more. The English, indeed, call that famine a dispensation of
Providence, and ascribe it entirely to the blight of the potatoes. But
potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe, yet there was no famine
save in Ireland. The British account of the matter, then, is first a
fraud; second, a blasphemy. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato
blight, but the English created the famine.'
Such pestilential perversion of truth is freely circulated and firmly
believed, for contradiction never penetrates to those gulled by these
lies. In America the gutter press section of journalism is esteemed at
its true worth, and is as harmless as a few squibs. In Ireland what is
seen in bad print is always believed, and is corroborated by the lower
class of priest. When I say so much I am simply indicating a national
sore, but it needs a wiser physician than myself to apply a successful
remedy.
Perhaps with the spread of education may arise the same power to
discriminate between the true and false published in the papers that is
a characteristic of both the English and Scottish. As it is, the
Irishman believes whatever he reads in print; and in most cases the
solitary paper that he reads is one full of treason and untruths.
When the famine took place, the Irish fled as from a plague to America,
and when they landed there both men and women were the prey of every
blackguard without a single person to advise or protect them.
Had the Government taken the movement in hand and employed agents at New
York to provide for them until they obtained employment, and to direct
them where to apply for it, England would to-day probably have had a
grateful nation on the other side of the Atlantic. Instead, we have a
hostile multitude which neglects no opportunity of voting for any
politician hostile to Great Britain; and this disaffection sadly
militates against that union of Anglo-Saxon hearts, which is so freely
accepted by journalists and politicians as a sort of millennium.
Miss Cobbe related a story about a steady-going girl who had received
money from her sister who was doing well in New York to pay her passage
money out.
She told Miss Cobbe how she had been to an emigration office and booked
her passage.
'Direct to New York, of course.'
'Well no, Miss. But to some place close by, New something else.'
'New something else near New York?'
'Yes; I disremember what it was, but he said it was quite handy for New
York.'
'Not New Orleans, surely?'
'Yes, Miss, that was it, New Orleans, quite near New York,' he said.
The scoundrelly agent had taken her passage money and sent her off
absolutely friendless to New Orleans, where she died of a fever in less
than a year.
Many of the three million emigrants after the famine must have been as
easily duped.
A considerable time ago (but if I were in Kerry I could give the date
from my diary, because I met the man at a dinner given at the St.
James's Club by Lord Kenmare's son-in-law, Mr. Douglas) one of the big
New World railway companies sent over an emissary to the British
Government.
He was charged to offer to take every distressed man in Ireland, with
his priest--if he would go--piper, cat, wife, sister, mother, and
children, to the land through which the great railway ran. Each man was
to be given a log-house with three rooms, one hundred and sixty acres,
ten of them under cultivation, and no residence was to be more than ten
miles from a railway station. All that was asked in return was a loan
for ten years without interest to cover the expenses of transportation.
I rather think Mr. Chichester Fortescue was the Chief Secretary. Anyhow,
whoever occupied that post urged the Cabinet to accept the offer. The
conclave wavered, but Mr. Gladstone firmly vetoed the idea. He was
afraid the plan would be unpopular with the priests, who would see
themselves bereft of the favourite members of their congregations.
Instead of this admirable scheme, we have ever since had the pitiable
sight of the parents, the sisters, and the sweetheart crooning over the
emigration of the best able-bodied young men from Ireland.
No one who has heard the keening and wailing, say at Limerick Junction,
over Paddy going over the water will forget the appealing sorrow of the
scene, the sound of which rings long in one's ears after the train has
gone out of sight.
The emigrant has been the theme of song and story. He has also been one
of the finest recruits of the United States, whilst he is a stigma on
English politics, and a drain on the land which in all Europe can least
afford to spare him.
Mr. Wyndham's new Act will not arrest emigration, indeed it will
probably increase it.
At present the landlord is often able to put pressure on his tenants to
give employment to respectable men. But the small farmer is certain to
use as few men as possible. You can see the analogy in contemporary
France. Therefore more families will see the pride of their cabins
starting for the New World.
Perhaps what I am proudest of, was being called in an address in Kerry
'the poor man's friend,' for it is what I have always striven to be.
But if I were to be a young man to-morrow, instead of a day older than I
am to-day, I should be powerless to merit such a title in years to come.
And the reason, as I have just indicated, is the fault of the
Government.
I sometimes think the canniest man of whom I ever heard was the old
Scottish minister who was accustomed to preface his extempore petition
with the words:--
'My britheren, let us noo pray that the High Court of Parliament winna
do ony harm.'
CHAPTER VII
FENIANISM
I am quite aware the opinion I am about to deliver will cause great
surprise, but I give it after mature consideration, supported by all my
knowledge of Ireland.
It is this:--
The old Fenianism was politically of little account, socially of no
danger, except to a few individuals who could be easily protected, and
has been grossly exaggerated, either wilfully or through ignorance.
Matters were very different after Mr. Gladstone, by successive acts, of
what I maintain were criminal legislation, deliberately fostered treason
and encouraged outrage in Ireland.
Irish agitation would never have reached genuine importance unless it
had been steadily assisted in its noisome growth by the so-called Grand
Old Man, at whose grave may be laid every calamity which has affected
Ireland since it had the misfortune to arouse his interest, and the ill
effects of whose demoralising interference will bear fruit for many
years to come.
This is set down in sober earnest and in as unprejudiced a spirit as it
is possible for any sincerely patriotic--using the word in its true and
not in its debased meaning--Irishman to feel when he is thoroughly
acquainted with all the niceties of the national history for the past
sixty years.
I am far from saying that subsequent British cabinets have always
understood the Irish questions, but they are at least only reaping the
whirlwind where Mr. Gladstone sowed the wind.
I would broadly characterise as Fenian every Irish outbreak or
ebullition in the nineteenth century up to the time of the baneful
influence of the man who conducted the Midlothian campaign.
Half the tumultuous efforts of the earlier movements would have been
rendered ridiculous had it been possible to have them contemporaneously
examined by a few special correspondents. I can imagine the
representative of the _Daily Mail_ finding material for very few
sensational headlines in the Whiteboys Insurrection.
As for the tales of single-handed terrorism, these in Ireland did
nursery duty to alarm imaginative children, just as the adventures of
Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard or the kidnapping of heirs by gipsies
serve as stories to thrill English little ones.
Of course in 1789 to have killed three Protestants was counted a
passport into heaven in the vicinity of Vinegar Hill. But Father
Matthew's temperance crusade was worth more salvation to the nation, and
mere threatening letters count for nothing. I have had over one hundred
in my time, yet I'll die in my bed for all that.
My father-in-law had a pretty solid contempt for the Whiteboys--not the
original breed, but those who assumed the title in Kerry early in the
nineteenth century.
He was told that these miscreants had a plan to surround his house that
night and to shoot everybody in it, and at that very moment they were
confabulating at a certain farmhouse.
Refusing to be escorted or guarded, he made his way to that farm, and
walking into the kitchen, rated the lot of them in unmeasured terms.
Cowed and abashed they listened to him as he threatened the law, hell,
and the devil alone knows what beside. Finally, pistol in hand, he bade
them produce their arms and put them in his dog-cart.
This they actually did--for they had imbibed no liquor to give them
false pluck--and, with a final curse, he whipped up his horse and drove
away 'with all their teeth' to the barracks, where he left a very useful
arsenal, and was never troubled by one of them again.
To thus obtain complete immunity by sheer coolness is as much a matter
of personal magnetism as anything else. An instance of this, which
impressed me much, occurred in a coiner-ghost story told by Mr. T.P.
O'Connor, which I venture to quote.
'The hero was no less a person than Marshal Saxe. One night, on the
march, he bivouacked in a haunted castle, and slept the sleep of the
brave until midnight, when he was awakened by hideous howls heralding
the approach of the spectre. When it appeared, the Marshal first
discharged his pistol point-blank at it without effect, and then struck
it with his sabre, which was shivered in his hand. The invulnerable
spectre then beckoned the amazed Marshal to follow, and preceded him to
a spot where the floor of the gallery suddenly yawned, and they sank
together through it to sepulchral depths. Here he was surrounded by a
band of desperate coiners who would forthwith have made away with him if
the Marshal had not told them who he was, and warned them that if he
disappeared his army would dig to the earth's centre to find him, and
would infallibly find and finish every one of them.
'"If I am reconducted to my chamber by this steel-clad spectre and
allowed to sleep undisturbed until morning, I promise never to relate
this adventure while any harm can happen to you by my telling it."
'To this the coiners after consultation agreed. He was led back to bed,
and next morning ridiculed all spectral stories to his officers. It was
not until the world of coiners was finally broken up that he related his
experiences.'
In that story I wonder who went bail for the Marshal's truth. Veracity
and gallantry may not have gone hand in hand, or perhaps they were
affianced, and therefore took care not to come near one another.
Another sort of gallantry was noteworthy in what was known as Young
Ireland, for in 'the set' were several ladies, Eva, Mary, and Speranza,
all prone to write seditious verse. Eva was Miss Mary Kelly, daughter of
a Galway gentleman, who promised her lover to wait while he underwent
ten years penal servitude, and kept her word, marrying him at Kingstown
two days after his release. 'Mary' was Miss Ellen Downing, whose lover
was also a fugitive after the outbreak; but he proved unfaithful, and
she was one of the last I heard of who died of pining away. It used to
be much talked of in my young days. Perhaps now that it is not, it more
often occurs. 'Speranza' was Lady Wilde, a fluent poet and essayist, who
survived her husband the archæologist. One of her children inherited
much of her talent, but bears a chequered fame. I always thought the wit
of Oscar Wilde anything but Irish, and was always glad it possessed no
national attributes--unless impudence was one.
At one of his own first nights in London (I think it was on the occasion
of the production of _An Ideal Husband_ at the Haymarket) he was
summoned before the curtain by the customary shouts for 'Author,
author.'
He stood there for a moment amid the cheering, and then, in response to
cries for a speech, calmly took a cigarette case out of his pocket,
selected one of the contents, and, having very deliberately lighted it,
said:--
'Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know what you have done, but I have
spent a very pleasant evening with my own play. Good night.'
His brother, known as 'Wuffalo Will' among his friends, is the hero of
many stories.
Once he went up to a policeman and said:--
'Which is the way to heaven?'
'I don't know, sir; better ask a parson.'
'What do you think I pay taxes for? It's your business to be able to
tell me the way to heaven. As for the bally parsons, they don't
understand.'
A broad smile came over the constable's face.
'Were you asking where you could get blind drunk comfortably, sir?
because if so--'
And out came the hint with a wink.
Wilde was fond of that tale at one time.
The affair of ''48' was a farce. Stimulated by the French Revolution,
John Mitchel wrote rabid sedition, but received short shrift at the
hands of the Government, who arrested him, sentenced him to fourteen
years' transportation, and almost from the dock he was taken manacled in
a police van, escorted by cavalry, and put on board a steamer, which at
once put out to sea.
Smith O'Brien was the leader of this feeble insurrection. He had boasted
he would be at the head of fifty thousand Tipperary men. Instead his
army consisted of a few hundred half-clad ragamuffins, which attacked a
squad of police who took refuge in a farmhouse, and easily routed the
rabble.
Smith O'Brien proved himself an arrant coward. He hid in a cabbage
garden, and is still believed to have made his temporary escape from the
police in the habit of an Anglican sisterhood, of which his sister, Hon.
Mrs. Monsell, was Mother Superior.
The bigger outbreak was not a bit more serious. It was all trumped up by
the Irish in America, and their reliance upon help from American
soldiers was destroyed after the war. This agitation was the one known
as the work of the Phoenix Society, and the object was the separation of
Ireland from England and the confiscation of Irish property.
The leaders were James Stephens, who had nearly escaped being shot by a
policeman in the Smith O'Brien campaign, and that indomitable scoundrel
O'Donovan Rossa. It was at this time we began to hear of mysterious
strangers. In this case it was Stephens; later Parnell wrapped himself
in strange isolation; and subsequently Tynan, who was known as 'Number
One.'
Cork and Kerry were the chosen parts of Ireland for the new Fenianism to
come to a head, and a certain amount of enrolling and drilling did take
place.
I was then residing within two miles of the city of Cork, and one night
the Fenians came out and encamped all round my house, without offering
the slightest molestation or injury to anybody.
Two Fenians walked into the house of my stableman, about a quarter of a
mile from my own, and asked for food, saying they were ready to pay for
it.
The woman replied that she had no food in the house, but the breakfast
of her brother Charles, which she was about to take to him in the
stables.
They wanted to pay her a shilling for it, but she declined, and then
they went away quietly.
The principal outbreak was to be in Killarney, and they plotted to
attack the police barrack at Cahirciveen, because they had an ally in
the son of the head constable.
But a man in the town, to whom he had shown kindness, warned the head
constable of the attack, which in the end consisted of a few shots fired
by a ragged rabble of about three hundred, half of whom were
half-hearted, and the other half half-drunk.
The coastguards manned their boat and rowed off to a gunboat in the
harbour to ask for some marines; and the moment this was known to the
besiegers they dispersed. Some of them marched rather downcast towards
Killarney, and on the road they met a mounted policeman riding to warn
Cahirciveen of the attack which was to be made against the barracks, for
every movement of this silly rebellion was known to the Government.
They called on the man to stop and deliver up his despatches. He
declined to do so, and so soon as he had ridden on they shot him in the
back, wounding him badly.
He recovered, but was very shabbily treated by the Government, who only
awarded him a miserably small pension, a niggardly act which aroused
much dissatisfaction.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killarney, Doctor Moriarty, protested
strongly against the cowardice of the Fenians, who were afraid to face
one armed man, and waited until his back was turned before they shot
him.
However, as I have indicated, the Fenian movement was very
insignificant, and was known in all its aspects to the Government, which
dealt pretty roughly with it.
It is a singular fact that in the Fenian councils Killarney should have
been selected for the outbreak.
This is a town where nearly all the landed proprietors were Roman
Catholics, where there was a Catholic Bishop, a monastery and two
convents, while one half-ruined Protestant church sufficed to
accommodate the few worshippers who sat under a dreary, inoffensive
vicar on a very small salary. All reasonable folk, moreover, know that
Killarney is the town to which, more than any other in Ireland, it is
important to attract British tourists.
It was well known that some of the promoters and instigators of the
movement betrayed it before its very inception to the Government; and
Bishop Moriarty, from his pulpit, in his sermon alluded in no measured
language to those criminals who instigated the innocent peasants to play
a part in this mock insurrection, and then betrayed them.
He concluded:--
'It may be a hard saying, but surely hell is not too hot nor eternity
too long for the punishment of such villainy.'
Yet the whole of Irish history is disfigured by the poisonous trail of
the insidious informer.
I was in Kerry at the time of the Cahirciveen fizzle, in the
neighbourhood of Dingle, and it was rumoured that the insurrection was
to be general.
That was not my opinion, for I travelled on an open car by myself, with
a large quantity of money, and no other weapon than an umbrella.
It was a very different state of affairs in the distress caused by Mr.
Gladstone's legislation, for then I never travelled without a revolver,
and occasionally was accompanied by a Winchester rifle. I used to place
my revolver as regularly beside my fork on the dinner-table, either in
my own or in anybody else's house, as I spread my napkin on my knees.
And yet it is strangely difficult to see any other cause than Mr.
Gladstone's Acts for such ill-feeling.
As my sworn evidence, on which I was cross-examined in the Parnell
Commission, showed, I had only ten evictions in six years among two
thousand tenants.
I should like to ask, in what class of life is there not more than one
in twelve hundred that gets into financial troubles in a year?
In the insurance world such a ratio of claims to premiums would make a
perfect fortune to the companies.
The tenants were not associated with the Fenian movement at all, the
outbreak being solely confined to the townsfolk, which, in Ireland,
helped to make it a feeble affair. I did not know one _bona fide_ farmer
that was connected with the movement, and though the arms were mainly
smuggled in from America, mighty little hard cash came to the pockets of
any but the leaders.
Stephens was the original 'Number One,' and he was let out of Kilmainham
by the chief warder's wife. No one knew where he was to be found, but
the police, who were well aware that he was devoted to his own wife,
kept a strict watch on her, and eventually caught him through his
opening communications with her.
When the hue and cry was loudest, it was reported he had come to Cork to
foster the Fenian movement, and that he was disguised in feminine garb.
One day my wife found her steps dogged by a man in the most aggravating
way, for he followed her into three shops without attempting to speak to
her, his only desire being to shadow her, which he was doing in the most
clumsy manner.
I was away at Dingle for the day, so my wife went into the establishment
of the leading linen-draper, and sending for the head of the firm, asked
him to speak to the man, who was then pretending to buy some tape.
It turned out that he was a detective fresh from Dublin, who had taken
it into his head that she was Stephens, and was most apologetic, as well
as crestfallen, at his error.
Some time after this Fenian fizzle, my coachman saw a number of people
being chased by the police for drilling; and about two years later, when
I sent him to the Cork barracks on private business, he told me that he
there noticed some of the very people who had been routed by the
constabulary, but this time they were being drilled by the Government as
militia.
I have always had a theory that Ireland was created by Providence for
the express purpose of bothering philosophers, and preventing them or
politicians from thinking themselves too wise.
At the time when the Fenian scare was damaging Killarney as a tourist
resort, Sir Michael Morris--as he then was--was staying at Morley's
Hotel in London, and saw in the American paper lying on the table a
vivid account of how the Fenian army had attacked a British garrison,
and would have easily captured the stronghold had not an overpowering
force of English cavalry and artillery hurried up to deliver the
besieged.
Of course, the facts were, that in County Limerick several hundred
'patriots,' led by a man in a green calico uniform, attacked a police
barrack in which were five constables. Keeping as much out of range of
the constabulary fire as possible, they had exchanged a few shots when a
District Inspector of Police, who resided some eight miles off, arrived
with ten constables on a couple of cars, at the sight of which
stupendous relieving force, the whole corps of young Irishmen bolted.
Morris gave the waiter a shilling for the paper--and took it off his tip
at leaving, no doubt--and carefully treasured the journal until he went
to hold the next assizes at Limerick, when he found the bulk of the
attacking army in the dock before him.
When the D.I. was giving evidence, Morris asked him:--
'Where were the British cavalry?'
'What cavalry, my lord? Why, there was none.
'Oh ho,' says the judge. 'And where was the artillery?'
'Faith, my lord, there was as much artillery as there was cavalry, and
that would not get in the way of a donkey race.'
Then Morris, with appropriate solemnity, proceeded to read out the
newspaper account for the benefit of the audience. The whole Court was
convulsed with laughter, in which the prisoners in the dock heartily
joined.
After the trial was over, a parish priest came to congratulate Morris,
and said to him:--
'My lord, you have laughed Fenianism out of Limerick.'
[Illustration: Mrs. Hussey]
CHAPTER VIII
MYSELF, SOME FACTS, AND MANY STORIES
In 1850 I became agent to the Colthurst property, which consisted of
most of the parish of Ballyvourney, one estate alone containing about
twenty-three thousand acres. The rental was then over £4600. There were
only three slated houses on the property, hardly any out-buildings, only
seven miles of road under contract, and about twenty acres planted.
By 1880 the landlord had expended £30,000 on improvements, there were
over one hundred slated houses, about sixty miles of roads, and over
four hundred acres planted.
Under the Land Act of 1881 the rent was reduced to £3600.
That was the encouragement officially given to the landlord for
assisting in the improvement of his property.
From the time of Moses downwards, the policy of all Governments has been
to give relief to the debtor. By the Encumbered Estate Act, which was
passed just after the famine, special relief was given to the creditor.
What the English view was may be taken from the _Times_--
'In a few years more, a Celtic Irishman will be as rare in Connemara as
is the Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan.'
That is to say, English capital was at last to flow into Ireland for the
purchase of encumbered estates, but the anticipation of course was
erroneous.
English capital was placed for preference in Turkish and in Egyptian
bonds, to the great loss of all concerned. As for Ireland, out of the
first twenty millions realised by the new Court, over seventeen was
Irish money; and at the outset there was an inevitable downward tendency
of prices which involved heavy depreciation.
Credit was destroyed in Ireland, and every man who owed a shilling was
utterly ruined. Had the Government given loans at a reasonable rate of
interest, which would have amply repaid them, all this could have been
saved. As it was, properties were sold like chairs and tables at a
paltry auction, and in thousands of cases the judge expressed himself
satisfied that the rent could have been considerably increased.
I knew one unfortunate shopkeeper who paid £6000 for a property under
these circumstances; and in place of an increase of rent, the
confiscators--that is to say the commissioners imposed by Mr.
Gladstone--took a third of the rental off him.
Those purchasers who were English conceived when they bought properties
that they would get as much from them as the solvent tenants were
willing to pay. The legislation of Mr. Gladstone in coalition with the
blunderbuss soon put an end to the pleasing delusion. It was one more of
the English mistakes about Ireland, where, when the tenant is content to
pay, the British Government and the Land League both combine to prevent
him from offering a reasonable rent to a landlord.
As a matter of fact, even the most seditionary organs confessed that the
tenants gained little and lost much by the change from the old type of
landlord to the new, for the latter, being practical men, had no
sympathy for the man who was permanently behindhand with his rent. And
no one can say that this habitual arrear was a healthy stimulus to the
moral wellbeing of the tenant himself, though he felt aggrieved at its
being checked.
There is not the least need to sketch how I gradually became one of the
largest land agents in Ireland. It has been published in other books,
and would only prove wearisome if set out in detail in this volume. So I
will merely observe that only two years after the big Fenian rising, as
it was called--which I should describe as being composed of a rabble of
less importance than the ragamuffins led by Wat Tyler--so little was I
impressed by its magnitude that I went to live at Edenburn. There I laid
out a lot of money in rebuilding the house, spending over £2000 in
additions. This was most idiotic of me, because I had not counted on the
infernal devices of Mr. Gladstone to render Ireland uninhabitable for
peaceful and law-abiding folk.
When I first settled down there, labourers were working at eightpence or
tenpence a day. Now the lowest rate is two shillings. The labourer
rectified this rate by emigration, and if the farmers, who could more
advantageously have emigrated, had done so, the cry for compulsory
reduction would never have arisen.
Thus far I have dealt with facts and myself as concerned in them, but I
propose now to relate a few stories, a thing more congenial to my
temperament than any other form of conversational exercise. Whether it
will equally commend itself to the reader is a matter on which I, as an
aged novice in literature, though hopeful, am of course uncertain.
Indeed I am in exactly the predicament of a farmer's wife who was asked
by the Dowager Lady Godfrey, after a month of marriage, how she liked
her husband.
'I had plenty of recommendation with him,' was the reply, 'but I have
not had enough trial of him yet to say for sure.'
There is a story about a honeymoon couple at Killarney which is worth
telling.
The bridegroom had a valet, a good, faithful fellow, long in his
service, but talkative, a thing his master loathed. He said to him:--
'John, I've often told you to hold your tongue about my affairs. This
time I emphatically mean it. If you tell the people in the hotel that I
am on my honeymoon, I'll sack you on the spot.'
So John promised to be as silent as the grave, but on the third
afternoon, as the happy pair were ascending the stairs of the Victoria
Hotel, they saw by the giggles and smirks of the chambermaids that their
secret had been discovered.
The bridegroom rang his bell and went for John in a towering passion,
but the fellow held his ground.
'Is it not unfair the way you are taking on? Sure the other servants did
ask me if you were on your honeymoon, but I was even with them, for I
told them "devil a bit, your honour was not going to marry the lady
until next month."'
I do not know how that alliance turned out, but the happy pair left the
hotel early next morning.
I can tell rather more about the matrimonial experiences of an
Archdeacon at Cork, who married firstly a woman who was very fond of
society. She died, and he then married another, who grew very stout. She
also died, and the indefatigable cleric married as his third experiment
a widow cursed with a very violent temper.
He was one day chaffed on the practical demonstration he had given to
the Romish doctrine of the celibacy of the Church, when he said:--
'After all they were a trial, for I married the world, the flesh, and
lastly the devil, and now I tremble whenever I think of recognition in
eternity.'
This Cork story comes naturally, because at that time I was living near
Cork and very happily too.
Now and again we took trips up to Dublin when I had business there.
I am not much of a playgoer, but in Dublin we always went to the theatre
on the chance of hearing some of the proverbial wit of its gallery.
On one occasion, a lady in the play, when her lover had had some doubt
of her fidelity, exclaimed:--
'Would there were a mirror in my side that you could see into my heart.'
Whereupon a voice from the gods shouted:--
'Would not a pain [_i.e._ pane] in your stomach do as well. I have one
myself.'
Lord Chancellor Brady was of a notoriously convivial temperament, which
did not prevent him being an admirable lawyer when he would allow his
wits to get their heads above water, so to speak, though it was little
enough that he used to dilute his spirits.
When Jenny Lind sang in some Italian opera, he occupied a seat in the
vice-regal box, and gazed at her through a portentously enormous
_lorgnette_.
This was too much for a wag in the gallery, who yelled:--
'Brady, me jewel, I'm glad to see you're fond of a big glass yet.'
At the time of the Crimean War, John Reynolds, a very energetic citizen,
was perpetually raising the question about the dangerous practice of
driving outside cars from the side instead of the box--in which he was
undoubtedly right.
When he went to the theatre, a gallery boy shouted:--
'Three cheers for Alderman John Reynolds the hero of Kars.'
The Lord Mayor of the period who sat beside him was a tallow chandler,
and the same spokesman shouted out:--
'Three cheers for his grease the Lord Mayor just back from the races at
Tallagh.'
That sort of thing seems to be particularly indigenous, the only
parallel being when undergraduates or medical students get gathered
together.
The eloquence of Irish members in the House of Commons has really
nothing to do with my reminiscences, but I remember one occasion when it
was uncommonly well excelled by a stolid Englishman.
Fergus O'Connor--an Irishman, as his name betrays--was an ardent
Chartist, and before the Reform Bill was introduced he said in the House
that he had been accused of being a personal enemy of King William's.
This was quite untrue, for if there were only good laws he did not care
if the devil were King of England.
Sir Robert Peel replied:--
'When the honourable member is gratified by seeing the sovereign of his
choice on the throne of these realms, I hope he will enjoy, and I am
sure he will deserve, the confidence of the Crown.'
Whilst I am anecdotal, perhaps I had better say something about books
into which my stories have been pressed. I was always given to telling
tales, but of course my great time was when Lord Morris and I would sit
trying to cap one another. If he were ever too idle to remember an
anecdote of his own, he would reel off one of mine: as for his own fund
of stories and humour ever approaching exhaustion, that was not to be
thought of. He was far and away the wittiest man I ever met, and if I do
not quote one of his tales on this page it is because no single sample
can show the superb richness of his vintage, and more than one of his
brand will be found scattered in the present volume.
I gave a good many anecdotes to my dear old friend Mr. W.R. Le
Fanu--cheeriest of fishermen, kindest of jolly good fellows--for his
garrulous book. He observes in his preface that he makes his first
attempt at writing in his eight-and-seventieth year. I am nearly
twenty-four months his senior when thus far on the road of these
reminiscences. I also echo another phrase of his:--
'I trust I have said nothing to hurt the feelings of any of my
fellow-countrymen.'
Just one quotation--and only a little one--which is not mine, but the
warning which Sheridan Le Fanu, author of that capital novel _Uncle
Silas_, gave in the _Dublin University Magazine_ against matrimony:--
'Marriage is like the smallpox. A man may have it mildly, but he
generally carries the marks of it with him to his grave.'
And very true too in his division of an Irishman's life into three
parts:--
'The first is that in which he is plannin' and conthrivin' all sorts of
villainy and rascality; that is the period of youth and innocence. The
second is that in which he is puttin' into practice the villainy and
rascality he contrived before; that is the prime of life or the flower
of manhood. The third and last period is that in which he is makin' his
soul and preparin' for another world; that is the period of dotage.'
Shakespeare's seven ages of man may have been more poetical, but it does
not betray a closer grip of the Irish temperament.
My other appearance as a literary ghost or rather as an anonymous
contributor was when I supplied Mrs. O'Connell with stories for _The
Last Count of the Irish Brigade_. That was about twenty years ago, and
therefore long after the death of the hero who was uncle to the
Liberator.
The writer was a daughter of Charles Bianconi, the originator of all the
mail-cars in Ireland, who owned at one time sixteen hundred horses, and
always laughed at the idea of any violence on the part of the peasantry,
pointing out that though his cars daily covered four thousand miles in
twenty-two counties, no injury was ever done to any of his property.
Mrs. O'Connell was married to a nephew of the great Dan, and he
represented Kerry in Parliament for nearly thirty years. He was an
intimate friend of Thackeray's, and gave him all the idioms of his
delightful Irish ballads. This O'Connell was a clever, amusing fellow,
and precious idle into the bargain.
I remember one story he told me.
Mrs. MacCarthy, near Millstreet, had a son, a small proprietor, and he
got married. The mother-in-law lived with the daughter-in-law, who had
rather grand ideas, and set up as parlour-maid in the house a raw lass
just taken from the dairy.
One afternoon old Mrs. MacCarthy saw the parish priest coming to call,
and told the girl if he asked for Mrs. MacCarthy to say she was not in
but the dowager was.
Now the maid had never heard the word dowager in her life, but thought
she would make a shot for it, so when his reverence asked if Mrs.
MacCarthy was at home, she blurted out:--
'No, sir, but the badger is.'
And to her dying day the relic of deceased MacCarthy went by the name of
'the badger.'
Now it is really time I related how my own beauty was spoilt, by
breaking my nose in 1858.
I was racing the present Knight of Kerry and a young gunner named
Hickson--no relation--on the Strand, when the horse of the latter
collided with my own, and they both fell at the same time. He was a
loose rider, and being shot off some distance from his animal picked
himself up unhurt. I had always a tight grip, so I got entangled in the
saddle which twisted round, and my mare almost literally tore off my
face with her hind hoof.
I walked back a quarter of a mile, trying to hold my face on to my head
with my hand; and in a month's time I was able to get about again, which
the doctor said was one of the quickest cases of healing he had ever
known.
But I was absolutely unrecognised by my acquaintances when I reappeared,
and Mr. Dillon the R.M. actually took me for a walk in Tralee to see the
town, thinking I was a stranger, a situation the fun of which I heartily
appreciated.
Before that infernal gallop I had a hooked nose like the Duke of
Wellington; and it's lucky I got married when I did, for no one would
have had me afterwards, though my own wife always says 'for shame' if I
make the remark in her presence, God bless her.
When I went to the Abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, I told the verger I
was very anxious to see the likeness of the saint who had walked for six
miles with his head in his hand, because I was the nearest living
counterpart, having walked a quarter of a mile with my face in mine.
Hickson was universally congratulated on his lucky escape. He went out
to India and was dead in eighteen months, and here am I at eighty with
half my face and some of my health still in spite of the attentive care
of my family and the doctor.
My present doctor is a capital fellow, and when he comes to see me he
laughs so much at my stories that I always think he ought to take me
half price. Instead of that he regards me as an animated laboratory for
his interesting chemical experiments; but I had the best of him last
time I was laid up, for I made him take a dose of the filthy compound he
had ordered for me the previous day.
First he said he wouldn't, then he said he couldn't, but I said what was
not poison for the patient could not hurt the physician; and in the end
he had to swallow the dose, making far more fuss over its nasty taste
than I did. But I noted that he at once wrote me a new prescription,
which was as sweet as any advertised syrup, and further, that he
arranged his next visit should be just after I finished the bottle.
However, that is years and years after the time of which I am treating.
Yet I am tempted to anticipate, because the mention of Edenburn earlier
in this chapter suggests a quaint individual about whom a few
observations may be made.
Bill Hogan was our factotum. He was stable-boy, steward, ladies'-maid,
and professional busybody, as well as a bit of a character, though he
possessed none worth mentioning.
When we were packing up to leave Edenburn, my wife was watching him fill
two casks, one with home-made jam, the other with china.
Called away to luncheon, she found on her return both casks securely
nailed down.
'Oh, you should not have done that, Bill,' she said, 'for now we shan't
know which contains which.'
'I thought of that, ma'am,' replies Bill, 'so I have written S for
chiney on the one, and G for jam on the other.'
Bill's orthography was obviously original.
So was the drive he took with a certain cheery guest of mine one Sabbath
morning.
The said guest desired more refreshment than he was likely to get at
that early hour at Edenburn, so he drove into Tralee, ostensibly to
church, and told Bill to have the car round at the club at one.
'Well,' narrated Bill afterwards, 'out came the Captain from the club,
having a few drinks taken, and up he got on the car with my help, but at
the corner of Denny Street he pulled up at the whisky store, and said we
must drink the luck of the road. Well we drank the luck at every house
on the way out of the town, and presently in the road down came the
mare, pitching the Captain over the hedge, and marking her own knees, as
well as breaking the shaft. At last we all got home somehow, and there
in the yard was the master, looking us all three up and down as though
he were going to commit us all from the Bench. Then a twinkle came into
his eye, and he said as mild as a dove to the Captain, "I see by the
look of her knees you've been taking the mare to say her prayers."'
CHAPTER IX
THE HARENC ESTATE
So large a part has the purchase of this estate made in my more public
appearances, owing to the fact that I have been brought into general
notice through offensive legal proceedings, that a brief account of the
matter must form part of my reminiscences.
Prior to 1878, a gentleman named Harenc, the owner of a large extent of
landed property in the north of Kerry, died.
Who the estate subsequently belonged to I am uncertain. Anyhow,
according to the title-deeds, it was somehow divided among ten or twelve
individuals before the property came into the Land Estate Courts for
sale.
This circumstance suggested to a large number of the tenantry that it
might be an opportunity to avail themselves of the provisions of the
Bright Clauses, and become pretty cheaply the owners of the land on
which they lived.
After they had offered the sum of £75,000 for the estate, for the
purpose of splitting it up into small holdings, it was found that the
trustee had privately agreed to sell it to Mr. Goodman Gentleman, the
agent for the late Mr. Harenc, for £65,000.
The tenants were not going to be frustrated by that--being Irishmen and
litigious, which is one and the same thing. So they appealed to the
Landed Estates Court, and induced Judge Ormsby to make an order
annulling the deed of sale, and directing that the property should be
put up in lots suitable to the purposes of the tenants.
Several of the tenants who did not want the property split up approached
me to suggest I should buy the property, and appeared by counsel--the
present Judge Johnson--in support of me.
I met the tenants, and stated that if it fell to me I would give each of
them a lease of thirty-one years, and indemnify myself for the
purchase-money by a rise on the entire rental of five per cent, on the
valuation of each estate, according to current estimates, at which they
showed every sign of satisfaction.
I then offered £80,000 for the whole estate, and was declared the
purchaser. A large bonfire was lighted on February 20th, 1878, by the
tenants at Aghabey, near Luxnow, on their being apprised I had become
their landlord.
Another section of tenants, however, were anxious that the property
should be bought by Messrs. Lombard and Murphy, private individuals I
never met.
The judge of the Landed Estate Court, Judge Ormsby, gave them the
property.
I appealed against this decision, and the Court of Appeal unanimously
reversed the verdict of Judge Ormsby, the three judges being the Lord
Chancellor of Ireland, the Master of the Rolls--who said it was one of
the most important cases decided since the foundation of the Land
Court--and Lord Justice Deasy. I have been told on most excellent
authority that Lord Justice Christian declined to sit because, as he
told the Lord Chancellor, he felt so strongly in my favour that he could
not hear the case with an unbiassed mind.
There had been a demonstration at the previous decision, but it paled
before the great rejoicings over my success among all the tenantry over
whom I was agent. There were more than fifty bonfires blazing that night
in Kerry, so that the county looked as though it were signalling the
advent of another Armada, as in the fragment Macaulay left. The only
place where any opposition was exhibited was in Castleisland, whence the
Lombard family originally sprang; and there the lighted tar-barrels,
which had been placed on the ruins of the old castle, were extinguished,
to avoid unpleasant contact with a gang of rowdy roughs.
Messrs. Lombard and Murphy had stated that they were buying on behalf of
the tenants. So I served them with notice that if they undertook to sell
to every tenant his own holding they might have the property.
This they very wisely declined, and left me in the position that in 1879
I finally purchased a property on what was called an indefeasible
Parliamentary title, under the approval of Her Majesty's Judges, and in
1881 an Act of Parliament practically took one-third of it from me.
In 1881 I wrote a letter to Mr. Gladstone, asking him to take my
property and give me back my money.
To this he returned an evasive answer, declining my offer.
If the tenants had themselves bought the Harenc property at that time
they would by this time all be paupers, for they could only get
two-thirds of the money from Government, and would have had to borrow
the other third at a heavy rate of interest.
One man, Mr. Hewson, bought one of the farms for £13,500, and under Mr.
Gerald Balfour's Act of 1896 it was compulsorily sold to the tenants for
about £6000. I have the exact figures at Tralee, but these are
approximate enough for the purpose of demonstration.
Several of the other tenants took me into Court.
I had a piece of reclaimable ground on my own hands which I let for
eight shillings an acre. The adjoining tenant, with exactly the same
nature of land--which he swore on oath he had paid more than the
fee-simple in improving--had his rent fixed by the County Court at four
shillings an acre.
To be sure, if the County Court valuer had not done so, he would have
quickly lost his employment. The position is one incompatible with
honesty, and the value of land, apart from what you can get for it, is a
very disputable matter.
My relations with my Harenc tenantry were always good.
After the purchase in 1879 I had no trouble with them, and on the
contrary received the warmest thanks from the parish priest for my
conduct as a landlord.
I drained soil and imported seed potatoes, besides executing other
improvements. The estate was not in good order when I purchased it, and
I know from other sources that the tenants were well satisfied with me.
I may as well mention, that having no agencies on the Listowel side of
Kerry, I was never on the Harenc property before the question of
purchasing arose, and it had on it no house in which I and my family
could reside.
Until 1881 no tenant made any hostile move, but one fellow, who took me
into the Land Court after the Land Act, presented a very curious case.
This man, whose rent was sixty-five pounds a year, applied to the Court
for reduction. There was a press of business at the time which
necessitated an adjournment, but in the end the Court fixed the new rent
at the same amount as the old rent.
The tenant appealed; but though the Appeal Court valuers attested that
it was worth seventy-five pounds a year, still the rent was unchanged.
In other words, the Government sold me a farm and parliamentary title at
sixty-five pounds a year which one set of Commissioners thought fair and
the other thought cheap, and yet I had to spend more than half a year's
rent in defending my title to it.
There is no appeal as to value, except to the head Commissioners. They
appoint two other Sub-Commissioners to inspect the land, and they of
course avoid disagreeing with their brethren.
It is very like Mr. Spenlow in _David Copperfield_, who said, 'If you
are not satisfied with Doctors' Commons you can go to the delegates,'
and being asked who the delegates were, he replied that they came from
Doctors' Commons.
I bought the Harenc property as a speculation, and it turned out a
confoundedly bad one.
Once I had a conversation with a Land Leaguer on the subject. He said:--
'You bought a stolen horse, and must take the consequences.'
'If that were so,' I retorted, 'I would have an action against the
Government which sold me the horse.'
I had a correspondence on the subject with Mr. Chamberlain, which
elicited some remarkable letters; but as he marked all of his private
and confidential, they of course cannot be published.
Now for a few anecdotes, just to show that I have not exhausted my
stock.
It would be cruel to specify the individual of whom I can truthfully
say, he was the biggest fool that ever disfigured the Irish bench.
He had been tutor to the children of a great peer, and his patron
subsequently pressed the Prime Minister to do something for him.
'I can't make him a County Court judge,' said the Prime Minister, 'for
he would never decide rightly.'
'Well,' said another Minister, 'we are going out, and have not the ghost
of a chance of ever getting in again in our time. Let him be
Solicitor-General for Ireland during the last weeks we hold office.'
So this was done out of sheer good-nature; but after the election the
Government found themselves saddled with him, for in those days holders
of high office were not shelved at the caprice of Premiers, whilst the
country had unexpectedly returned the old gang to power.
It has always been averred by the Irish Bar that an office was specially
created for the purpose of shunting this legal luminary into it, but as
an historical fact I will not vouch for the truth of the sarcasm. The
account of the Cabinet conclave came to me on excellent authority.
When Chief Justice Monaghan died, Lord Morris, who was then a Puisne
Judge of Common Pleas, observed that he himself had a good chance of the
post.
'What about Keagh and Lawson?' asked his acquaintance, they being
brother judges.
'Very good men,' replied Lord Morris, 'but as they were not appointed by
the Tories, I don't think they'll promote them.'
'And how about Ormsby?' continued the other.
'Ah now,' said Morris, 'you are getting sarcastic.'
There is a cheery story about Judge Keagh, who has just been mentioned.
A number of brothers were before him, charged with killing a man at
Listowel.
The judge was most anxious to ascertain from an important witness what
share each of the accused had in the murder.
'What did John do?'
'He struck him with his stick on the head.'
'And James?'
'James hit him with his fist on the jaw.'
'And Philip?'
'Philip tried to get him down and kick him.'
'And Timothy?'
'He could do nothing, my lord, but he was just walking round searching
for a vacancy.'
Which reminds me that fair play is not always recognised as essential in
these matters, as the following anecdote shows.
There was a faction feud between the Kellehers and Leehys near Sneem.
One of the Leehys had a bad leg, and was therefore bound apprentice to a
shoemaker in Sneem.
On a fair day a solitary Kelleher ventured into the town, and very
speedily the Leehys had half-killed and beaten him as well as their
numbers would allow.
Suddenly there was a shout, and the poor lame Leehy came hobbling down
the street as fast as his wooden leg would permit.
'Boys, for the love of mercy,' says he, 'let a poor cripple have one go
at the black-hearted varmint.'
One of the counsel engaged in the Harenc case was Mr. Murphy, who was a
near relative of Judge Keagh, and he was a man of ready wit into the
bargain.
There was a company promoter from London, who had induced several people
to take shares in a bogus concern, and was consequently defendant in an
action brought against him in Cork.
He thought he would make an impression on the wild Irish by being
overdressed and gorgeously bejewelled.
When Murphy arose to address the jury, he said:--
'Gentlemen of the jury, look at the well-tailored impostor without a rag
of honesty to take the gloss off his new clothes.'
Another counsel in the case was Mr. Byrne. He was always in impecunious
circumstances despite his legal eloquence, but the lack of a balance at
his banker's never troubled him.
Once he took Chief Justice Whiteside to see his new house in Dublin,
which he had furnished in sumptuous style.
'Don't you think I deserve great credit for this?' he asked at length.
'Yes,' retorted Whiteside, 'and you appear to have got it.'
Lord Justice Christian, who had declined to sit on the Appeal, was
considered one of the soundest opinions in Ireland. When he ceased to be
sole Judge of Appeal, he had addressed the Bar after this fashion:--
'As this is the last time I sit as sole Judge of Appeal, it is an
opportune time for me to review my decisions. By a curious coincidence,
I have been thirteen years in this Court, and I have decided thirteen
cases which have been taken to the House of Lords. Eleven of my
decisions were confirmed, one appeal was withdrawn, and the last was a
purely equity case. The two equity lords went with me, the two common
law lords were against me, and when I inform the Bar that my judgment
was reversed on the casting vote of Lord O'Hagan, I do not think they
will attach much importance to the decision.'
Judge Christian's allusion to the Land Act is most noteworthy, for he
said:--
'The property of the country is confided to the discretion of certain
roving commissioners without any fixed rules to guide and direct them.
In fact, we have reverted to the primitive state of society, where men
make and administer the laws in the same breath.'
Reverting to the Harenc estate, a rather amusing account was once
perpetrated by a Special Commissioner.
'Never heard tell of Ballybunion?' said his carman to the journalist as
on the road they met the carts laden with sand and seaweed from that
place. 'Why it's a great place intirely in the season, when quality from
all parts come for the sea-bathing.'
As he evidently regarded it as the first watering-place in the world,
the Special Commissioner thought he had better see the place, and here
is his description:--
'A village perched on the summit of a cliff, an ancient castle of the
Fitz-Maurice clan, wonderful caves, and a little hotel are the leading
features of the place.
'The morning after my arrival, I experienced a wish to see the cliffs
and caves, and no sooner were the words spoken than a figure bearing an
unlit torch appeared at the door.
'It was Beal-bo (which may be translated into a somewhat Sioux
cognomen--the Yellow Cow). A figure in rags with an inimitable limp, and
a fashion of closing one eye that reminds one of Victor Hugo's Quasimodo
of Notre Dame. A more intimate acquaintance proved there was much
instruction, and a good deal of amusement, to be derived from this
strange character.
'The grand cave is Beal-bo's special source of revenue. He regards it as
his own property, and takes a pride in it accordingly. This is the
theatre of the many wiles he practises upon unsuspecting strangers. When
he has lured them into the bowels of the cave, he turns down a gallery,
and informs them that they cannot get out unless they cross a pool about
five feet wide. When he has his victim upon his back, he seizes the
opportunity to levy blackmail, for the pool is a quicksand and he
suddenly affects great fear. After he has sunk to the knees in the
yielding sand, the tourist is glad enough to give him a shilling to
hurry across.
'In another gallery it is necessary for the stranger to cross a pool on
a plank which Beal-bo provides for the occasion, and on this he charges
a toll. He used to let the water in to deepen the pools before the
tourists came through, in order to bring his plank into requisition.
'Suspended on a cliff between heaven and sea, one hundred feet above the
water, on all sides were piled the immense masses of masonry, the ruins
of which are all that remains of the once proud Castle of Doon. Gazing
in awe down the horrid depths of the "Puffing Hole," Beal-bo informed
us:--
'"Twas there Brian used to sleep in the day, and come out at night to
milk the cows up in the Killarney hills, he and his dog."'
The Special Commissioner looked incredulous, but Beal-bo was
confident:--
'"May I never be saved, sir, if I haven't seen him meself, many a night,
sir, as he climbed the cliffs backwards to rob the hawks' nests."'
How can even a Special Commissioner dispute an eyewitness?
Still the knowledge that I own a harbour of refuge for Brian will hardly
repay me for all the expense and anxiety the Harenc property has caused
me.
Before quitting the subject, I can conclude with a more gratifying fact.
At the time of the Tralee election, when I stood as a Conservative, a
small clique of mob orators and amateur politicians tried to make
political capital out of the history of the Harenc estate, and a priest,
Father M. O'Connor, rode the jaded topic to death. The unkindest cut of
all to him was the direct contradiction by the tenants themselves of
every assertion that their self-constituted champions made on their
behalf.
'We, the tenants of the Harenc estate, think it our duty to state that
since Mr. S.M. Hussey became purchaser of the above estate, he has in
every respect treated us kindly. He was good enough to give us seed
potatoes for half the price they cost himself; he also drained our
portions of the land at two and a half per cent., employed all the
labourers, and paid them good wages while so employed by him. As a
landlord we find him liberal and generous.'
To this were appended fifty signatures, and the best part of all is that
the whole of the manifesto was absolutely unsolicited by me, proving an
unexpected source of pleasure.
CHAPTER X
KERRY ELECTIONS
An election in most places is an occasion for breaking heads, abusing
opponents, and other similar demonstrations of ardent local
philanthropy. Such opportunities are never lost by Kerry men, whose
heads are harder and whose wits are sharper than those of the average
run of humanity. If you are a real Kerry man of respectable convictions,
and self-respecting into the bargain, you will never let the man who is
drinking with you entertain any opinions but your own at election times.
If he contradicts you, it's up with your stick and a crack on his skull,
and as that only tickles him up--having much the effect of a nettle
under a donkey's tail--you then go outside and mutually destroy as much
of each other as can be effected in a fight. Some weeks later, when the
vanquished is able to crawl away from the dispensary doctor, and so save
his own life amid the dire forebodings of that physician, who refuses to
answer for the consequences, you begin to drink with him again just to
show there is no ill-feeling; which of course there is not, if you and
he are both real Kerry men. Naturally, if you get a sullen, revengeful,
calculating Protestant from the North, it's another matter, for he'll be
far too friendly with the constabulary and won't hold with the good old
local ways approved by every Kerry Papist and tolerated by most of the
priests.
In 1851 there was a Kerry election. A Protestant candidate stood, and so
did one who in those days was a Whig. I went stoutly for the
Protectionist, but the priests plumped for the Free Trader, and their
congregations have been regretting it ever since.
One tenant was driving in a gig with me to the poll when a priest passed
me on the road and said to my tenant:--
'May the blast of the Almighty be upon you, for I know you are being
taken to vote the wrong way.'
The tenant got very nervous, for in those times it was generally
believed that the priests had power to change men into frogs and toads,
a superstition by no means obsolete even now in lone districts. However,
I took him along very easily, giving him the benefit of the roll of my
tongue as to what he should do, and before he reached the polling-booth
he recovered and voted for the Tory.
A Mr. Scully from Tipperary was the Whig candidate, and the family was
not popular in its own county.
A Cork man, making inquiries of a Tipperary man about him, was
answered:--
'I don't know this gentleman personally, but I believe we have already
shot the best of the family.'
Mr. Scully was a very amusing man, and in the House of Commons he used
to go by the nickname of 'old Skull.'
Lord Monk accosted him by this name one night, and Mr. Scully replied:--
'If you have taken the "e y" off your own name, my lord, it is no reason
you should do it off mine.'
Here is another story of him.
Mr. Dillwyn said to him, a Roman Catholic:--'I have lived sixty years in
this world, and I don't yet know the difference between the two
religions.'
'Bydad,' retorted Scully, 'you will not have been five minutes in the
other without finding it out.'
Shortly after the franchise was enlarged--which threw Imperial
Parliament at the mercy of the ignorant--old Lord Kenmare died and the
present peer was called up to the House of Lords.
Lord Kenmare was the most popular landlord in Kerry, and he selected a
Roman Catholic cousin of his, Mr. Dease, to stand for the county, Mr.
Roland Blennerhasset, a young Protestant landlord, being started against
him in support of Home Rule principles.
The Roman Catholic bishop and most of the priests backed Mr. Dease, but
the Home Rule candidate beat him by three to one. Some of the priests,
who were very obnoxious to the people, supported Mr. Blennerhasset, and
were then idolised, whilst a very popular parish priest, who canvassed
for Mr. Dease, had to run for his life.
From thenceforth no one but a Home Rule candidate had any chance in
Munster, and Mr. Roland Blennerhasset, having seen the error of his
ways, afterwards became a Unionist candidate in England. He is a very
clever man, who was quite young then, but has now blossomed into a K.C.
in London, and is mighty shrewd about speculations.
The election was great fun except for the stones and bricks, of which
enough were thrown about to build a city without foundations. Mr. Dease
got a blow on his ribs at Castle Island, which told on his health, and
he died soon afterwards. He was a brother of Sir Gerald Dease, and a man
very much liked.
It was during this election that I was fired at one night at Aghadoe,
returning from Puck Fair at Killorghin. A rumour was started that it was
the work of one of the tenants on Sir George Colthurst's Cork estates,
and the Tralee correspondent of the _Examiner_ telegraphed his belief in
this, adding 'so repugnant are Kerry men to these dastardly outrages.'
They took to them as greedily as a duck to water in later times, as all
the world knows; and in the light of subsequent events it is delightful
to remember that the _Freeman_ stated, 'All condemn this dastardly act,
for Mr. Hussey is universally respected.'
It atoned for this lapse into truth by subsequently taking my name in
vain hundreds of times in the bad periods that were ahead.
There had been a libel case between the Rev. Denis O'Donoghue, parish
priest of Ardfert, and myself. The address of this cleric in proposing
Mr. Blennerhasset at the nomination had annoyed those he assailed
intensely. Up to that point I had been utterly indifferent, but after
that I strained every nerve to defeat Father O'Donoghue's nominee.
This is an extract from his speech at Ardfert:--
'Sam Hussey is a vulture with a broken beak, and he laid his voracious
talons on the consciences of the voters. (Boos.) The ugly scowl of Sam
Hussey came down upon them. He wanted to try the influence of his dark
nature on the poor people. (Groans). Where was the legitimate influence
of such a man? Was it in the white terror he diffused? Was it not the
espionage, the network of spies with which he surrounded his lands? He
denied that a man who managed property had for that reason a shadow of a
shade of influence to justify him in asking a tenant for his vote. What
had they to thank him for?'
A voice: 'Rack rents.'
'They knew the man from his boyhood, from his _gossoonhood_. He knew
him when he began with a _collop_ of sheep as his property in the world.
(Laughter.) Long before he got God's mark on him. It was not the man's
fault but his misfortune that he got no education. (Laughter.) He had in
that parish schoolmasters who could teach him grammar for the next ten
years. The man was in fact a Uriah Heep among Kerry landlords.
(Cheers.)'
The result of this and other incentives to irritability was that the
voters for Mr. Dease had to be escorted by troops and constabulary.
The sporting proclivities had already been shown over a race. In the
County Club at Tralee there was an altercation between Mr. Sandes and a
leading 'Deasite' as to the rival merits of a bay mare belonging to one
and a chestnut horse owned by the other.
Quoth Mr. Sandes:--
'I'll run you a two mile steeplechase for a hundred guineas if you like,
and I'll call my horse Home Rule--do you call yours Deasite; each to
ride his own horse.'
No Kerry man could refuse such a challenge, and the race excited more
interest than the election.
Mr. Sandes won, leaving 'Deasite' nowhere, and this helped Mr.
Blennerhasset to head the poll.
More than one man is asserted to have voted for:--'Him you know that me
landlord wants me to vote for.'
But I should say several dozen voted for:--
'Him you know that the priest, God bless him, tells me to vote for.'
The libel over which the action arose was alleged to have been published
in the _Cork Examiner_, and the words complained of were pretty sturdy.
The jury returned a verdict of one farthing for the plaintiff priest,
and I do not think he derived as much advertisement out of it as Miss
Marie Corelli obtained from a similar coin of the realm.
Of course all this should have shown me that I had in my own interests
better keep clear of Kerry politics, but after I had bought the Harenc
estate, I stood for Tralee as a Tory against The O'Donoghue, who was a
Nationalist. I never supposed I was going to get in, but I really had a
capital run for the Parliamentary Handicap, though I was weighted by
political convictions and penalised by my creed. The priests made a most
active set against me. There were only fifty Protestants on the
register, and yet I managed to get one hundred and thirty votes, for
which suffrages some eighty honest men must have been well worrited in
the confessional.
The O'Donoghue polled one hundred and eighty votes, and I believe a good
many of his supporters had strong views on the currency question, and he
was backed by a wealthy merchant. The constituency is now merged into
the county, and the remotest chance of returning a rational member is
now at an end.
The O'Donoghue did not stand after the merging of the constituency,
though he was well used to electioneering work and had fought me very
pleasantly, with as much devil about him as would make an angel
palatable.
I did not much care for the whole thing. Still I was always a bit of a
stormy petrel rejoicing in a gale, and my capacity has not waned even in
my eightieth year.
The mob indulged in some lively work. A good many windows of houses
belonging to my supporters were broken and a man stabbed.
The polling day was made the occasion of a public holiday, which meant
that the bulk of the population was imbibing a great deal more than was
compatible with the laws of equilibrium. Some amusement was caused by
the panic of The O'Donoghue's supporters at the votes I was getting, and
presently they brought up in cars one poor man in an advanced stage of
consumption, and another unable to walk from old age.
It was a wearisome day to me; but before its close it became abundantly
evident that if the electors were allowed to exercise a free discretion
and vote according to their consciences, I should have headed the poll
by a large majority. However in Ireland man proposes and the priest
disposes.
At a meeting of the Conservative electors in Cork, Mr. Standford read a
telegram announcing the return of The O'Donoghue in Tralee, which was
received with hisses. He said the reason I had stood there was a
requisition, signed by Sir Henry Donovan, in the presence of nine grand
jurors of the County of Kerry, calling on me to do so. Sir Henry Donovan
had since turned over to The O'Donoghue from the man he had forced into
the field. Now that would teach them not to be fooled by Liberal
promises. It almost made him believe no truth, no honour, and no
sincerity existed among their opponents.
This was received with applause, which was renewed with laughter when
Mr. Young observed:--
'I will make one remark. I think Sir Henry Donovan and The O'Donoghue
are well met.'
To show that strong views in my favour were not confined to Protestants,
I may quote the following letter written from the Augustinian Convent in
Drogheda by J.A. Anderson, O.S.A.:--
'If the electors of Tralee return Mr. O'Donoghue (_alias_ The
O'Donoghue) as their representative in the coming Parliament, they will
be false to Ireland, false to the men that galvanised the dead body that
Gavan Duffy left on "the dissecting table" before starting for
Australia, and they will have the honour (?) of returning to Parliament
the greatest political renegade to Irish nationality that this
generation has known.'
A lady has recently drawn my attention to a footnote in Mr. Lecky's
_History of Ireland_, where is quoted from a letter of my ancestor,
Colonel Maurice Hussey, the following opinion:--
'It--i.e. Tralee--was a nest of thieves and smugglers, and so it always
will be until nine parts of ten of O'Donoghue's old followers be
proclaimed and hanged on gibbets on the spot.'
So when O'Donoghues have troubled me, it is a case of history repeating
itself, and if the percentage of the followers of the modern chieftain
had been 'removed'--as the modern phrase in Ireland ran--according to
the manner advocated by my ancestor, I could have voted in Parliament
against dismembering the Empire to gratify the eagerness of an old man
to truckle to the traitors of the country intrusted to his care.
CHAPTER XI
DRINK
Of course one of the great troubles in Ireland is drink. I am no
advocate for teetotalism, for I think a man who can enjoy a moderate
glass is a better one than his brother who has to drink water in order
that he may not yield to the overpowering 'tempitation'--to quote Mr.
Huntley Wright--to get drunk! But for my fellow-countrymen I can see
that drink is a terrible curse, one which is the cause of half the
crime, half the illness, and more than half the misery that exists
there.
Of all Irish benefactors, possibly Father Mathew was the greatest; but
in my boyish days, when it became known that men, not yet in a lunatic
asylum, had taken up the notion that human life was possible without
alcoholic drinks, the wits of Kerry and Cork were heartily diverted at
the bare idea.
It used to be the stock joke after dinner, even when Father Mathew was
in the zenith of his triumph.
In Cork if you laugh at a thing you can generally suppress it, for,
whereas all Irishmen are keenly susceptible to ridicule, the Cork folk
are even more so.
The cold water business furnished endless jests, but it survived them.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all was the clergyman who preached
against it as being irreligious, taking as the text of his sermon,
'Wine, that maketh glad the heart of man.'
I like a man who is disinterested, therefore I wish to remind the
present generation that Father Mathew came of a stock of distillers, and
his family was among the first to suffer by his preaching.
It was probable there would be a reaction after his death; and when that
event took place, after the famine and fever, none really took his place
to warn the diminishing population, in sufficiently effective fashion,
of all the ills that drink was laying up for them.
Wherever, in my work, I found Government relief works, within a stone's
throw of every pay office a whisky shop started into operation.
New Ireland arose from the famine, and she has never since shown much
sign of temperance. Indeed, an excessive amount of money is, and has
ever since then been, spent on liquor in Ireland.
At Castleisland, the scene of so many outrages, the population of the
town is thirteen hundred, and the number of whisky shops is fifty-two.
Very nearly the same proportion can be noticed in several other towns.
There never was an outrage committed without an empty whisky bottle
being found close to the scene of the murder.
In the worst time a moonlighter slept for a fortnight close to the house
of an Irish landlord, who was well aware that he was there for the
express purpose of shooting him, but he never even attempted it.
'Time after time I lay in a ditch to have a go at him, but he would ride
by, looking for all the world as if he would shoot a flea off the tail
of a shnipe, so that, with all the whisky in the world to help me, I
dared not do it,' was his explanation before he left for America.
Did you never hear the parish priest's sermon?
'It's whisky makes you bate your wives; it's whisky makes your homes
desolate; it's whisky makes you shoot your landlords, and'--with
emphasis, as he thumped the pulpit--'it's whisky makes you miss them.'
There is as much truth in that sermon as in any that was preached last
Sunday between Belfast and Glengariff.
As a matter of fact, the profits to the drink retailer are not so
enormous as might be imagined, owing to the competition.
In the neighbourhood of Castleisland there is one group of twelve houses
and nine of these are whisky booths. However anxious the population may
be to consume immoderate amounts of the fiery liquor, and however large
the traffic on the road--never a big thing in Ireland, except on
market-day--the division of the local receipts by nine is apt to
diminish the profits in each case.
It has been suggested to me by a lady who knows Kerry well, that the
consumption of drink might be diminished if a law were passed forcing
the publicans to sell food. As she very truly remarks, it is often
impossible for the country folk, even on market-day, when coming into a
town, to get food for immediate consumption.
However, I do not think this would have any effect. When away from his
cabin the Irishman and the Irishwoman want drink, not food, for there
are a few potatoes at home which will provide all the solid sustenance
most of them desire.
If her proposal were made law, each publican would keep a loaf in his
window, and there it would stay for a year.
That reminds me of the man who was waiting in Waterford Station on March
12th, and to pass the time had a ham sandwich at the bar.
After one mouthful he asked the astonished barmaid for another, made of
February bread, because he really felt that it was time January bread
might have a rest.
To give an example of how Irishmen crave for drink, I will relate an
incident connected with the Parnell Commission.
Three of Lord Kenmare's tenants had been sent over in charge of an
experienced and reliable man to give evidence, and on their return
journey, when they arrived at North Wall--the hour being 6 A.M.--the
conductor said:--
'There is cold meat, or bread and cheese. Now, what will your fancy be?'
Far from wanting nutrition after an all night journey, or even the
soothing solace of a cup of tea, it was half a pint of whisky apiece
that they all asked for.
Just as much drinking exists among the Protestants as among the Roman
Catholics, only there is a trifle more geniality in the bibulous
propensities of the latter. Much less affects an Irishman than a
Scotsman. The latter, when he has absorbed all the whisky he can
assimilate in a bout--and no bad amount it is, let me observe--will go
quietly to sleep. But an Irishman's joy is incomplete unless he knocks
somebody down, which may account for the fact that the Irish are the
best soldiers in the world.
One redeeming feature in the liquor traffic is the increasing
consumption of porter, for that at least has some nourishment in it, and
is reasonably wholesome, whereas the whisky is vilely adulterated, not
only by the publicans before it reaches the consumer, but also in some
of the factories.
Puck Fair is the great annual fête and mart of Killorglin; and it is so
called because a goat is always fastened to a stave on a platform, and
gaily bedizened. Formerly the animal was attached to the flagstaff on
the Castle. To this fair all Kerry for many miles congregates, and the
neighbouring roads towards evening are literally strewn with bibulous
individuals of either sex.
On one occasion a Killorglin publican was in jail, and his father asked
for an interview because he wanted the recipe for manufacturing the
special whisky for Puck Fair. It has been a constant practice to prepare
this blend, but the whisky does not keep many days, as may be gathered
from the recipe, which the prisoner without hesitation dictated to his
parent:--
A gallon of fresh, fiery whisky. A pint of rum. A pint of methylated
spirit. Two ounces of corrosive sublimate. Three gallons of water.
An Irishman's constitution must be tougher than that of an ostrich to
enable him to consume much of the filthy poison. Temperance orators are
welcome to make what use they like of the recipe of this awful
decoction, annually sold to a confiding population.
It is not considered etiquette to come out of Killorglin sober on Puck
Fair; and, judging by the state of the people in the vicinity in the
evening, this social custom is rigidly observed.
They are wonderfully particular in Kerry in attending to exactly what is
congenial to them, and if it were not for the thickness of their heads a
good many lives would be lost.
There was a gauger, in a central county in Ireland, killed by a blow on
the head from a stick.
The man who struck him, in his defence, stated:--
'I did not hit him a very hard blow, and why the devil did the
Government make a gauger of a man that had a head no thicker than an
egg-shell?'
Mighty few of the Killorglin folk have egg-shell heads, and the bulk of
these do not come to maturity.
The avowed fact that lunacy is largely on the increase in Ireland has
been pronounced by the committee which sat on the question in Dublin to
be mainly due, not only to excessive drinking, but to the assimilation
of adulterated spirits.
Though the foregoing recipe furnishes a pretty fair example, I certainly
would not wager that it could not be beaten elsewhere in Ireland.
For a long time the priests were entirely apathetic on the subject, but
latterly they are bestirring themselves, and are doing their best to put
down wakes, which simply mean one or more nights of disgusting
intemperance in the immediate vicinity of the corpse.
Keening, by the way, is dying out, and what remains of this curious,
mournful waiting is now almost entirely in the hands of old women who
are experts in the art, and get remunerated not only in drink but also
in cash.
It is, however, possible that when I am deploring the alcoholic
tendencies of the Irishman, that these may be due to his more vegetarian
dietary, and not to any undue natural craving for alcohol. This is borne
out by the fact that no Irishman will willingly drink alone, and that
his potations are in the shops where whisky and porter are sold for
consumption on the premises, or at fairs, markets, weddings, or wakes,
to the diminishing number of which I have just called attention.
The parish priest of Dingle recently stated in court that in a
population of seventeen hundred there were over fifty licensed houses,
and he rightly declared that all dealings in licences should for the
present be only by transfer, and that for five years at least no new
licences should be granted. The argument so often heard against stopping
licences is that then more illicit drinking will ensue, but this does
not convince me that the redundant licences should be renewed.
My remedy would be to increase all renewals of licences to fifty pounds
apiece, and to apply the difference as compensation to unrenewed
licences. If a man fits up his house as a shebeen, and has conducted it
tolerably, he ought to receive just compensation when his licence is
cancelled owing to there being too many in a district.
If this is not done, he would be the victim of as great a robbery as was
perpetrated on the unfortunate landlords by the Land Act.
I have a yarn or two on the subject of drink which may be appropriately
related here.
Old David Burus, the steward at Ardrum, County Cork, was a great
character who had got inextricably confused between the Council of Trent
and the Trant family in the vicinity, and no amount of explanation could
ever enlighten him. Directly he had begun to be jovial, he used to
say:--
'My blessing on Councillor Trent, who put a fast on meat, but not on
drink.'
And he proved the devoutness of his gratitude by conscientiously getting
drunk every Friday.
That recalls to my mind the case of the illustrious gentleman--also a
fellow-countryman, I regret to say--who committed burglary and murder
when there was an opportunity, but religiously refrained from eating
meat on Friday.
Reverting to David Burus: on one occasion I remonstrated with him on the
amount of whisky he drank.
'I did drink a great deal of whisky, and I would have drunk more.' was
his reply, 'if I had known it was going to be as dear as it is now.'
He evidently regretted not having thoroughly saturated himself with
alcohol. It was the only way in which he could have possibly increased
his consumption.
He was wont to say that if he had known the trick Mr. Gladstone was
going to play on honest, God-fearing men, with sound stomachs and a
decent appetite, by imposing a ten shilling duty on every gallon of
whisky, he would have drunk his fill beforehand, even if _delirium
tremens_ had been the penalty.
Such hard drinking as his, and so calmly avowed, must, even in the south
of Ireland, be fortunately rare, for few constitutions can stand
conversion into animated whisky vats.
There was a farmer at Kanturk railway station who confided to the
stationmaster that he himself on the previous evening had been as drunk
as the very devil.
A parson on the platform, overhearing him, said:--
'You make a mistake, my friend, the devil does not drink. He keeps his
head cool for the express purpose of watching such as you.'
The countryman replied:--
'You seem to be very well acquainted with the respected gentleman's
habits, your riverince.'
And then they walked off different ways.
Which reminds me of another clerical incident.
A parish priest within twenty miles of Tralee, who subsequently left the
Church--I will not say on account of his thirst, though, as that was
unquenchable, it no doubt conduced to his retirement--came into the
parlour of the manager of the bank with two farmers to have a bill
discounted.
The manager, having ascertained the farmers were good security, cashed
the bill and gave the proceeds to the priest. He was very much surprised
on the following day at the two farmers walking into his room with the
money.
'What's the meaning of this?' says he.
'Well, your honour, we could not stay in the parish, if we refused to
join his reverence in the deal, which was sure to be a very bad one for
us. So we thought the best thing to do was to get him a little hearty at
his own expense on the way home. And then we picked his pocket and have
brought the money to your honour, whilst he is cursing every thief
outside his parish, and will probably ask the congregation to make up
the amount next Sunday.'
And that is a true story, and as illustrative of the Irish peasant as
any you could ever get told to you.
A coffin-maker named Sullivan thrived in Tralee. He received an order
for a coffin for a man living about six miles away from the town. It was
not called for for a week, and so he went out to the house where the man
lay dead to inquire the cause.
When he came back to Tralee, he said to a friend:--
'Who do you think I saw, Mick, but that scoundrel of a corpse sitting in
a ditch eating a piece of pig's cheek.'
That reminds me of another coffin story.
A man who lived in Cork was notorious for being always behind time for
everything. He knew his failing, and was rather touchy about it.
One night, stumbling out of a whisky shop, he lurched into a yard, fell
against a door, which gave way, and finished his slumbers peacefully in
the shed, which was the storehouse of an undertaker.
In the morning he awoke, rubbed his eyes in astonishment at the strange
surroundings amid which he found himself, and after recollecting his own
pet proclivity, as he ruefully surveyed all the empty coffins,
ejaculated:--
'Just my usual luck. Late for the Resurrection.'
Which recalls another tale:--
A man was dead drunk, so some friends, for a lark, brought him into a
dark room, lit a lot of phosphorus, and made up one of their party in
the guise of a devil before they flung a bucket of water over their
victim.
'Where am I?' asked the fellow, looking round 'skeered.'
'In hell,' retorted the devil, with exaggerated solemnity.
'Heaven bless your honour, as you know the ways of the place, will you
get me a drop of drink?'
But a mere drop does not suffice as a friend of mine found out.
He was wont to reward his car-driver with a glass of whisky, and gave it
to him in an antique glass, which did not contain as much as cabby
wished for.
'That's a very quare glass, captain,' says he.
'Yes,' replied Captain Stevens; 'that's blown glass.'
'Why, Captain,' says the carman, 'the man must have been damned short in
the breath that blew that.'
This would no doubt have been the opinion of a Dublin carman who was in
the habit of bringing a present to an acquaintance of mine from a lady
living at some distance, and being recompensed with a glass of grog. By
degrees, however, the water grew to be the predominant partner in the
union within the glass, so at last he burst out in disgust:--
'If you threw a tumbler of whisky over Carlisle Bridge, it would be
better grog than that at the Pigeon House.'
Which being interpreted into cockneyism would read, 'If you threw a
glass of whisky over Westminster Bridge it would be better grog than
that at Greenwich Pier.'
Still all consumption of liquor is not confined to Ireland, and I well
remember when I was with Bogue in Scotland, that one night he had a
fellow-farmer of the very best type to dine with him, and about ten
o'clock, with much difficulty, my man and I hoisted him into the saddle.
An hour afterwards we heard a knock at the door, and a voice rather
quaveringly inquired:--
'Pleash, can you tell me the way to X., I have lost my way?'
The tracks next morning revealed he had been riding round and round the
house without once quitting the vicinity, which was almost as bad as
Mark Twain's famous nocturnal perambulation with his pedometer, when he
went on a tramp abroad!
Of potation stories I could tell scores more, and the Tralee Club has
seen enough whisky imbibed within its walls to drown all the members.
A quaint character named Mullane was at one time steward, and decidedly
astonished a member, who was a total abstainer, by charging him in his
bill for three tumblers of punch.
'Well,' explained Mullane, 'it's this way. Some take six tumblers, and
some takes none, so I strikes an average--and to tell you the truth,
it's mighty convenient for the great majority.'
A quaint member of the club was Mr. Edward Morris. He was extremely
diminutive, and he wore an eyeglass. One evening he was standing on the
first landing, pondering in a bemused state whether he could get
downstairs without falling, when a pursey little doctor trotted past him
without even touching the bannister.
This inspired Morris with courage, so he let go his hold of the
balustrade, whereupon he promptly fell on the physician, and both rolled
to the bottom of the stairs.
Thence in hiccuping tones were heard:--
'Waiter! Waiter, put the glass in my eye, and let me see who the
scoundrel was who struck me.'
On another evening in the club, when he had imbibed very freely, he
ordered an additional glass of grog, and began to moralise aloud,
addressing it after this fashion:--
'Glass of grog, if I drink you now, you'll cut the legs from under me.
And yet I want you, and I will not do without you. So I know what I will
do. I'll go to bed and I'll drink you there, for I don't care a damn
what you do to me then.'
The indifference of a drunken man to subsequent consequences was rather
quaintly shown by that weird individual Dr. Tanner, when he went up to
Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett in the lobby of the House of Commons, and
abruptly observed:--
'You're a fool.'
Sir Ellis fixed him with his eyeglass, and, in disgusted tones,
replied:--
'You're drunk.'
'I suppose so,' retorted the Irishman, 'but then I'll be sober
to-morrow'--in the most plaintive tone, then in a crescendo of scorn--'
whereas you'll always be a fool.'
Moreover as he slouched down the lobby, he was heard to say:--
'If I do get a headache, I've a head to have it in, not a frame on which
to hang an eyeglass.'
That is a political amenity on which I will not dwell.
Very little money-lending is to be heard of in the south of Ireland, and
in all my experience I only remember one case in Kerry. Tenants in
Ireland, however, have great horror of breaking bulk, and many of them
will do a bill for a neighbour when they have deposits in the bank for
themselves. As it is a point of honour never to refuse a friend in this
respect, you can easily imagine the amount of 'paper' which is
fluttering.
Even when a farmer has a tidy sum of money on deposit with the bank at
one per cent., if he wants to employ a sum for a short time, say for the
purchase of cattle, he prefers to raise the money on a bill at six per
cent.
That is to say, the bank is lending him his own money at five per
cent.--a truly Hibernian trait, which it would be difficult to beat
anywhere.
A bill for drink is not recoverable, but occasionally an insidious
publican will take a man's I.O.U. and sue on that.
One applied to me to help him to get the money from a tenant.
'You must show me the account,' said I.
As I suspected, there was whisky in it, and I declined on the spot.
All drink in Ireland is on cash down terms only.
If they gave tick, they would never recover the money, and if every
Irishman is a knowing scoundrel, the publican is a trifle more
knowledgable than the customer, whose brains are besodden.
A man, who had been a servant of mine, started a public near Tralee, and
thinking he would get customers from the other whisky stores, he gave
tick. His popularity lasted just as long as the tick did, and a week
later he was broke. I do not say so much about Tralee being able to
support one hundred and sixty liquor shops, because there is a little
shipping, but how Cahirciveen can enable fifty publicans to thrive is a
melancholy mystery to me.
I was animadverting once, at Dingle, on the topic, when one of my
labourers remarked:--
'It's the gentry does the drinking.'
'Now that's very curious,' said I, 'for as there are only two of us, and
as I never touch spirits, the other must have such a thirst that he'd
consume the bay if only it were made of whisky.'
In these democratic days, it is as well to resist any undue aspersion on
the upper classes.
To pass any aspersion on the bibulous propensities of a tenant of mine
named Flaherty would be impossible. When he was buying his farm, I told
him the Government ought to take him on very easy terms, when they
became his landlords.
'And for why?' he asked.
'Because,' I replied, 'the duty you pay on the whisky you drink is more
than twenty times your annual rent.'
I had, however, one personal illustration of the drinking propensity in
Scotland, which I think is worth preserving. It is some years now since
I went to see a certain farmer who, his wife told me, on noticing my
approach, was compelled to go upstairs to cool his head as it was after
dinner. She said this much in the same casual tone, as I should mention
that my wife had gone up early to dress for that meal.
Next, I heard heavy splashing of water, and then a crash which portended
that the farmer had fallen over the washstand, making a fearful clatter.
In rushed the drab of a servant maid, perfectly indifferent to my
presence, shrieking:--
'O missus, come up, come up, the maister is just miraculous among the
chaney!'
CHAPTER XII
PRIESTS
I have been asked, since my friends became aware that I am perpetrating
my reminiscences, whether I was going to write anything supplemental to
Mr. MacCarthy's _Priests and People_, and _Five Tears in Ireland_.
My reply was:--
'Certainly not.'
To begin with, I have many friends among Roman Catholics, and plenty of
cheery acquaintances among the priests. Secondly, the state of feud and
hostility on which Mr. MacCarthy dilates is more likely to be found in
Ulster and Leinster than in Kerry, where the Roman Catholics form more
than nine-tenths of the population.
On one occasion, when a distinguished Englishman was staying at
Killarney House, I told him that he should go to the north to see the
strangest sight in the world--two races hating one another for the love
of God.
It is not my business to estimate what would happen in Kerry if a few
thousand rabid Orangemen were plumped down among the present
inhabitants; but according to existing circumstances creeds are not torn
to tatters nor religion disfigured by strife and slander.
All the same, I am bound to say that the Roman Catholic priests, when I
was young, were much superior to those of to-day. They were drawn from a
better class, because, having to be educated at Rome, or, at least, as
far away as St. Omer, entailed some considerable outlay by their
relatives. Moreover, they brought back from their continental seminaries
broader ideas than can be acquired in purely Irish colleges. Their
interest had been stimulated at the most impressionable age in much of
which the farmers and labourers had no conception. Therefore the priest
could address his flock with authority, and was invariably looked up to
as well as obeyed.
The parish priest at Blarney erected a tower in commemoration of the
battle of Waterloo, and a public house in the vicinity bears the name to
this day.
What parish priest would raise a memorial to any English victory in the
twentieth century?
The greatest curse to the Irish nation has been Maynooth, because it has
fostered the ordination of peasants' sons. These are uneducated men who
have never been out of Ireland, whose sympathies are wholly with the
class from which they have sprung, and who are given no training
calculated to afford them a broader view than that of the narrowest
class prejudice.
As for the much discussed Irish university, I do not myself believe it
will be founded.
Should even an English Government be blind enough to allow it, an Irish
university could only become a hot-bed of treason, and practically all
educated members of the Roman Catholic community would avoid sending
their sons to such a seminary of sedition, where the influence would be
insidiously directed to make the undergraduates even more hostile to
England than they already are by inherited instincts and by all they
have been told in their own homes.
On the very day this page is written, I have mentioned the question of
an Irish university to two Protestants in the Carlton, both Members of
Parliament, and both approved of the idea in a languid way. I have also
mooted the topic this afternoon to two leading Roman Catholics, and both
vehemently disapproved, alleging that it will work endless mischief.
As far back as 1872 Dr. Macaulay wrote:--
'The Irish university question has been put off from year to year, and
at length presses for settlement.'
In the best interests of Ireland, may the same thing be written thirty
years hence!
If the Roman Catholics of England send their sons to Oxford and
Cambridge, why should not more Irish Roman Catholics send theirs to
Trinity College, Dublin? Only a very few do, although the education is
said to be quite as good as at either of the great English Universities.
A far tighter hold is kept, however, on the Roman Catholic laity in
Ireland than in England. It always surprises English people to learn
that, in Ireland, Roman Catholics are not allowed to enter Protestant
churches to attend either funerals or weddings. Nor do I think there is
much probability of these restrictions being removed.
Of course, in the years of outrage and terror in Ireland, many of the
priests from the altar denounced loyal members of the congregation, or
incited their hearers to deeds of wickedness by their inflammatory
sermons. These facts are among the blackest in the history of any creed,
and I do not hesitate to class the work of some of the priests who
disgraced their Church with the worst perpetrations of the Spanish
Inquisition.
Fortunately all priests were not, and are not, after this style. I have
known many good and worthy men among them, as well as capital fellows,
fond of a joke. Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church did not always take
the side of the Land League.
For example, the bishops and parish priests laboured assiduously to get
Lord Granard his rents from his estates in Longford.
Why?
Because Maynooth held a great mortgage on the property.
In the famous De Freyne case, the parish priest energetically assisted
the landlord in every way in his power, because the property was heavily
mortgaged with Roman Catholic charges.
These are two facts that occur to me on the spur of the moment, and
probably other people could supply similar instances.
As for the Episcopacy, it was the violence of Dr. Walsh, the Archbishop
of Dublin, which prevented him from obtaining the coveted cardinal's
hat. This was given to Dr. Logue, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate
of Ireland, a witty, capable, clever man, who had such an inveterate
habit of taking snuff that he did so even when conversing with Queen
Victoria.
'It prevents me from sniffing out heresy,' he explained, with a twinkle,
'and so gives me an excuse for shutting my eyes to the different views
of my neighbours.'
The Queen was much amused, but the remark conveyed a true view of Irish
Catholicism.
The fact is, his bishop can do very little with a treasonable man when
once he has been inducted a parish priest; and the curate who obtains
irregular fees, of course, panders even more to the taste of his
congregation. A bishop will haul up a tonsured subordinate mighty sharp
for any breach of ecclesiastical duty, but when it comes to politics and
instigation to crime, he finds it far more difficult to keep a tight
hand.
As a broad rule it may be stated that the bishops are well selected, and
are of a much higher type than the average priest.
Of the bishops of Killarney, Moriarty put down Fenianism with no light
hand, preaching, as I have already shown, in the most manly and emphatic
style--which could have been emulated with advantage in other
Episcopacies in my country. MacCarthy was a bookworm from Maynooth, who
played the deuce with the diocese, allowing all the priests to run wild,
and by his laxity becoming criminally responsible for much of the
terrible condition of Kerry. Higgins was the nominee of a friend of
Moriarty, and he worked hard to suppress outrages, by which course he
certainly did not add to his popularity among his flock. In his upright
and courageous conduct he has been worthily emulated by his successor,
Coffey, whose demise occurred only in the present year.
Kerry possesses one bishop, fifty-one parish priests and administrators,
sixty-nine curates, and eleven priests occupied in tuition.
There are six religious houses for males, and seventeen convents,
representing about five hundred inhabitants, as well as three hundred
students, which, with the occupants of subsidiary sacerdotal
establishments, is estimated to make up 1265 persons.
In 1871, when the population of Kerry was 196,586, there were 337
priests and nuns. In 1901, when the population had become reduced to
165,726, the priests and nuns had increased to 546.
And these statistics bring me to a salient point:--
The one reality above all others in Irish life is the grip of the
Church.
In the last book which I have received from the library--_Paddy-Risky_
by Mr. Andrew Merry--one of the stories is that of a poor widow
beggaring herself in order to provide the parish chapel with a bell, and
that is the kind of thing you hear of everywhere.
The Roman Catholic Church presides over every function in the life of
each member of its community, and the priest charges heavily for
administering the rites.
At a wedding he does not take a prescribed fee, but makes a bargain,
usually with the family of the bride. I have known as much as
twenty-five pounds paid to a priest at a small farmer's marriage; and
the sum obtained is very often out of all proportion to the dowry of the
bride, or even to the funds of the happy pair.
An example may be cited--the case of a labourer in my own employ, who
received forty pounds as his wife's fortune, and had to pay eight to the
parish priest.
It is the same thing with funerals, over which a ridiculous amount is
still spent, although the wake is falling into disrepute under the ban
of the Church, and women are now rarely hired to 'keen.' There is a
craze to have a number of priests attending the service, and a good many
of them do go, very well pleased, as to a picnic.
In parishes where the poverty is something appalling the members of the
congregation not only contribute Peter's Pence, but you cannot go into
the chapel without seeing some tiny candles lighted before the altar of
Mary, which must literally represent the scriptural mites of the widow
and orphan.
Before I relapse into a few stories, let me say something about the
Protestant clergy.
They are nearly always recruited from the ranks of the smaller Irish
gentry, and whilst, perhaps, richer in proportion than many of the
curates and incumbents in England, there are no 'fat' livings, and all
are distinctly poorer since the Disestablishment.
The average in Kerry, and over most of the south of Ireland, is a
stipend of two hundred pounds a year, which involves reading services in
two churches each Sunday, and therefore puts the clergyman to the
expense of keeping a horse and trap.
About 1820 the district around Castleisland was divided into three
parishes--Castleisland, Ballincushlane, and Killeentierna--the joint
revenues of which were eighteen hundred a year. These were vested in the
Lord Bandon of the time, who lived in the lovely cottage on the upper
Lake of Killarney.
He allowed a curate fifty pounds a year to do the joint duties, and I
hardly think the man was worth the money. He subsequently obtained a
Government living and was in the habit of asking his congregation, as
they went into church, whether they wanted a sermon or not. The general
concensus of opinion was a polite negative--to the relief of all
parties.
The method of electing a vicar in Ireland since the Disestablishment is
both sensible and practical.
Three parish nominators, one lay diocesan nominator, two clerical
diocesan nominators, and the bishop, between them, choose the new
incumbent. By the constitution of this Court of Election, it is certain
that no one will be appointed to whom the parish objects, whilst if the
parish desires the nomination of an incompetent man, that is checked by
the diocesan voters in conjunction with the bishop.
In fact it is an admirable system, far better than the patronage plan
still rampant in England.
The Irish bishops are also chosen by nominators drawn from the clergy
and laity of the diocese, provided a two-thirds majority be obtained for
any one candidate. If not, the Irish bench of bishops jointly selects
the new wearer of lawn sleeves.
This, again, works with perfect smoothness and never arouses the
ill-feeling aroused by the selections nominally made by the Prime
Minister. To-day the _Foundations of Belief_ may not be an essay which
causes confidence in the ability of the author to pick the best bishops,
and all the much-vaunted religious convictions of Mr. Gladstone did not
make his nominations to the Episcopacy particularly successful. It is
now no secret that Lord Cairns used to choose bishops for Disraeli and
that Lord Shaftesbury often was consulted by Prime Ministers who knew
more about sport than clericalism.
So far as I can recollect, among all the Irish clergy I have met not one
was an Englishman, though there are plenty of Irish in the English
Established Church.
All the Disestablished Church of Ireland is exceedingly
anti-ritualistic.
'I do not want Mock-Turtle, when I am so near real Turtle,' said Sir
George Shiel, when asked to visit St. Alban's, Holborn, one of the
Ritualistic temples--an observation which represents the feeling
animating clergy and laity in Ireland, though they are none the better
pleased that out of the funds of the Disestablishment, Maynooth should
have received a capitalised sum equal to the previous annual grant from
Government.
And now for just a few clerical tales.
A man was dying and the priest was with him.
'Ah, Father Philip,' said the poor fellow, 'I am sure the likes of you
would never be deceiving a poor man and him on his deathbed. Tell me
straight, is my soul all right?'
'It is, my son, and in a very short time you'll be in the company of the
Blessed Saints.'
'In that case, Father, I'll tell the devil he may just kiss my toe and
bad luck to him for all the trouble I have had to get out of his
clutches,' and the priest noticed his last sigh was one of complete
satisfaction--no doubt anticipatory.
Purgatory forms the foundation of many stories.
A certain very poor widow was paying the priest money for the soul of
her son, who was killed in a faction fight.
'And it's more masses you must have Mrs. Murphy, for Paddy has only got
his red hair out of purgatory.'
Later, when she was asked for further contributions:--
'It's his mouth which is out now, and he sends his mother on earth
messages to have prayers said to get him to heaven.'
A third time did Widow Murphy give the priest what she could not in the
least afford.
Yet again he reported progress.
'Now you must make a great effort, for his head and shoulders are out of
purgatory.'
'Then it's devil another penny of mine will go for masses, for if my Pat
has his head and shoulders out, I can safely reckon he'll soon wriggle
himself away entirely, God bless the poor darling.'
Another purgatory tale, this time concerning Father Batt.
A fellow-priest came to see him, and over a friendly glass:--
'And what's the news?' asked Father Batt.
'None that I know on earth, but I do hear tell that the floor of
purgatory has given way and all the inhabitants have fallen into hell.'
'Oh, the poor Protestants, that will be all crushed by the weight atop
of them,' was Father Batt's rejoinder.
Few priests in Kerry have been better known or more beloved than he,
almost the last of the old-fashioned school, and he was always warm
friends with his Protestant colleague in Milltown, where he resided.
Father Batt invariably took a few tumblers of hot whisky punch after
dinner, and having got ill was advised by the doctor to give it up and
take to claret.
When the bishop met him some time later, he said:--
'Well, Father Batt, I am afraid you do not like claret so well as the
whisky.'
'It's this way, my lord,' he replied. 'I don't object to the taste so
much as I thought I should, but I find it very tedious.'
It is with some diffidence that I venture upon a convent story. To begin
with, I am a Protestant, and secondly, in relation to one of these
ladies' clubs under sacerdotal patronage I feel like Paul Pry, always
apologetic when putting in an appearance.
Still, the tale is quite innocent and is absolutely true.
The convent is in Kerry and up to recently the order had been an
enclosed one. But a papal edict arrived one day, bidding the nuns go out
to teach, and to collect, as well as to relieve, the suffering in their
own homes.
The Mother Superior was exceedingly wroth.
'What!' quoth she. 'Does the Holy Father want to be interfering with me
after I have been within these walls for the last eight-and-twenty
years? I am not going to begin tramping the roads at my time of life,
not for the Holy Father himself, no, nor all the Cardinals too. A pretty
state of things indeed. Why, he'll be telling me to ride a bicycle
next!'
The county of Cork was at one time so notorious for cattle-stealing that
a Roman Catholic bishop went down specially to admonish them.
When telling one parish priest to be firm with his congregation on the
subject, the bishop observed:--
'Nothing is more clearly laid down in the Bible than that if a man has
possession of another man's property he can never enter the kingdom of
heaven.'
'The Saints preserve us,' exclaimed the priest; 'there'll be plenty of
empty houses there.'
It is not uncommon for a priest to get a bit of truth by accident or by
cunning from one of his flock.
The parish priest was congratulating a man who had married three wives
upon getting a bit of money with each, and received this answer:--
'Well, your reverence, I did not do badly at all, but between the
weddings and the funerals, your reverence took care it was not all clear
profit.'
There is plenty of hard barter about the terms of these ceremonies, and
on one occasion at Brosna, when the curate stood out for three pounds as
his fee for performing the marriage service, the would-be bridegroom
held out a thirty shilling note, saying:--
'Marry yourself to this, your reverence, and we'll be happy with your
blessing.'
As the persuasive eloquence of another man could not abate the price
which his priest demanded for a funeral, he blurted out:--
'Why, the blessed corpse in purgatory would shiver at the thought of
costing so much to put away, and we but poor folk, with the pig that
contrary we don't know whether the litter will survive.'
Here is a fish story connected with a member of my own family, Miss
Clarissa Hussey, who was my aunt, and also a pious Roman Catholic. She
used to hospitably entertain her confessor Father Tom, a priest with a
keen appreciation of the good things of the table. Among his
parishioners it was known that he indicated the value he put on the
coming fare by the length of his preliminary grace.
On a certain Friday in Lent he dined with her, and on a huge dish being
put down in front of his hostess, he expected a fine salmon, and
shutting his eyes proceeded to pronounce a benediction the length of
which greatly gratified my aunt. On the cover being removed, however,
his face fell, and in severe tones he rebuked her:--
'Was it for bake, ma'am, that I offered up the full grace?'
Nor could he be appeased all through the meal.
That leads me to relate the funeral sermon delivered by a clergyman on a
lady who had died suddenly at her morning meal:--
'You all, dear brethren, well know the loss we have sustained in our
departed sister. She was ever alert and kindly, ever bountiful though
without extravagance. To the last she preserved her characteristics. On
the fatal morning of her removal from among us, she rose as usual and
came to the family breakfast-table. With no premonition of what was to
come she took her egg-spoon and cracked her egg, an egg laid by one of
her own hens. In another moment failure of the heart transferred her to
a higher sphere. She began that egg on earth, she finished it in
heaven.'
CHAPTER XIII
CONSTABULARY AND DISPENSARY DOCTORS
An Englishman once asked me, if I could suggest any way by which all
Ireland could be made loyal. I inquired if he thought the Irish
constabulary a loyal body.
'Most decidedly,' said he, without hesitation.
'Then,' I replied, 'if you will pay every Irishman seventy pounds a year
for doing nothing, but look after other people's affairs--a thing by
nature congenial to him as it is--you'll have the most loyal race on
earth.'
That Englishman went away thoughtful, but I had shown him the solution
of one Irish problem which may be stated thus:--
Why do one half of the sons of farmers in Ireland, who have been or are
members of the Irish constabulary, represent a body of men unequalled
for their respectability, loyalty, and courage, while a large proportion
of the other, at least in the eighties, made up the bulk of the ignoble
army of moonlighters, cattle maimers, and cowardly assassins crouching
behind stone walls to shoot at an unsuspecting victim in the opening?
The answer is _£ s. d._, not an agreeable one, but truth is not always
composed of sweetstuff.
The constabulary are recruited from the sons of peasants and farmers.
They are drilled, disciplined, well fed, well clothed, well paid, and
show themselves well conducted. During all the bad times, there was not
a single case of a disaffected man, though every sort of inducement must
have been brought to bear on them. The prevailing characteristic of all
ranks has been the high sense of duty, so that they composed the most
mobile and the most effective corps in Europe.
As detectives, they have, however, proved quite ineffective, because the
peasant has everywhere been too shrewd for them; 'yet the relative
position of the police to the people, and the intimate connection with
America, marked it out as a force peculiarly adapted to the prevention
and detection of crime committed in Ireland, but often inspired from
America.' So wrote one of the most experienced resident magistrates, Mr.
Clifford Lloyd, afterwards Minister of the Interior in Egypt, and
subsequently Lieutenant Governor of the Mauritius and Consul at
Erzeroum, where he died at the age of forty-seven.
The constabulary are enlisted without any consideration of creed, but
when Sir Duncan MacGregor was at the head of the force he arranged that
of the five men in every police barrack, two should be Protestant, and
three Roman Catholic, or _vice-versa_. This check has subsequently been
swept away, by no means to the advantage of the service.
Very recently the Inspector General, and the Assistant Inspector General
retired, and their places were filled by an Englishman and an Irishman,
neither of whom had been in the force, which gave rise to great and
well-founded dissatisfaction. One of the pair is a warm friend of my
own, but that is no reason why I should approve of the appointment.
While the bulk of the officers are Irish gentlemen, educated in Ireland,
Englishmen are also to be found among them. Officers enter by nomination
after passing an examination designed to show that they are not
'crammed,' but the perversity of the examiners has always thwarted this
excellent intention. That is like the admirable purpose of Cabinet
Ministers, bent on reforming their different departments, but
dexterously 'blocked' by the permanent officials.
Before the reduction commenced by Mr. Wyndham, the Constabulary numbered
10,679, and cost £1,390,917. In my opinion it will be found necessary in
the future, not only to keep the force up to its full strength, but to
materially increase its number so soon as the Government becomes the
sole landlord in Ireland, especially now that they are going to have
Volunteers in the country.
The existence of this force merely means that landlords will be shot at
half price; so, for the sake of their own skins, the latter had better
get clear of the country before the recruits have had much musketry
instruction. The badness of the shooting saved many a landlord in the
eighties, and if that is remedied, why they will be popped as easily as
my grandson knocks over rabbits.
There is a story of an English tourist seeking for information about the
distressful country, he being at Tallaght near Dublin.
He asked his carman whether there were many Fenians about.
'A terrible lot, your honour,' replied the fellow.
'I suppose a thousand?' the tourist suggested, somewhat apprehensively.
'That is so, and twenty thousand more,' answered the carman without
hesitation.
'Are they armed?' was the next question.
'They are that, and finely into the bargain.'
'And are they prepared to come out?' the tourist being much perturbed,
and thinking it would be his duty to write to the _Times_.
'Prepared to come out in the morning, your honour.'
'And why don't they do so?' with English common sense.
'Begorra, because maybe if they did, the constabulary would put them in
jail.'
So the constabulary have some value after all, in spite of the sneers of
Home Rule members in the House of Commons.
Half a dozen Kerry priests screeched with laughter when I told them that
story in the train, having met them on a journey to Farranfore.
Here is another I also gave them on that occasion.
A couple of policemen were discussing the state of Ireland once upon a
time.
Says Dan to Mick:--
'Sure we'll niver get peace and quiet in the blessed country until we
fetch Oliver Cromwell up from hell to settle the unruly.'
Replies Mick to Dan:--
'Have done, you fool, isn't he a deal quieter where he is?'
Judge Keagh thought worse of his fellow countrymen than do other men
with less than his great experience, and although a Roman Catholic, he
had to be escorted by two constables wherever he went.
He was told that he ought to be guarded by four policemen, because the
two might be attacked.
But he knew the man that said it wanted to make the protection more
conspicuous, so he replied:--
'Sir, I have the most implicit confidence in the invincible cowardice of
my fellow countrymen.'
That recalls an observation of my own.
On one occasion, a telegram was sent from the Chief Inspector of
Constabulary in Kerry to the Scotland Yard authorities to say there was
to be an attempt to murder me in London, and in consequence a gentleman
from the department for providing traffic directors in metropolitan
streets called at my house in Elvaston Place, to inquire what police
protection I wanted.
'None,' said I, 'for if a man shoots me in London he'll be hung, and
every Irish scoundrel is careful of his own neck. It's altogether
another matter in Ireland, where Mr. Gladstone has carefully provided
that he shall be tried by a jury, the majority of which are certain to
be land leaguers.'
I brought out the same idea on a more important occasion.
Once, in Mr. Froude's house, Professor Max Müller--who was a great
admirer of Mr. Gladstone--remarked that after all I had not much reason
to complain, because I had had plenty of police protection in Ireland.
'I should prefer equal laws,' said I.
'What inequality of law have you to find fault with?' he asked.
'Well,' I replied, 'if a land leaguer shoots me in Ireland, he will be
tried by a jury of land leaguers. If I shoot one of them, I would
require that I be tried by a jury of landlords, and if that be granted
I'll clear the road for myself of all suspicious characters, and ask for
no more police protection than you require at Oxford.'
He subsided at that, and Froude laughed at him so heartily, that he had
not another word to say on the subject all day.
Did you ever hear the rhyme about moonlighting? It runs as follows:--
'The difference betwixt moonlight and moonshine
The people at last understand,
For moonlight's the law of the League
And moonshine is the law of the land.'
That would have clinched my argument beyond all dispute, but the
expressive poem was not written at that time.
Reverting to the topics of this chapter, it is needless to observe that
there is a bond of connection between constabulary and dispensary
doctors, for the latter are needed on many occasions to attend to the
wounds of those just arrested.
The dispensary doctors do not form a satisfactory feature of Irish life,
simply because the farmers elect individuals out of friendship.
A dispensary doctor had to be appointed at Farranfore, and I was most
anxious to get the best man for the position. So I proposed that the
candidates' papers should all be submitted to Sir Dominic Corragun, a
Roman Catholic physician of high standing in Dublin.
I could not even get a seconder to my motion, which therefore fell
stillborn, and I wrote to Lord Kenmare that if Gull or Jenner had been
suggested, neither of them would have obtained three votes.
Virtually the appointment of the dispensary doctor is vested in the
dispensary Committee, which is a local body, usually consisting of one
or more guardians, and four or five specially elected ratepayers. In the
same way are chosen all the local sanitary authorities, who are of
course under the District Council.
You remember that _Punch_ called the sanitary inspector the insanitary
spectre, but the beneficent climate of Ireland fortunately averts all
the evils his authority would not be able to arrest if it came to really
checking filth.
I remember the occasion of the election of another dispensary doctor,
when I was curtly told that only a moonlighter could hope to be
appointed.
My reply was:--
'I suppose it is easier for him to poison people when he is drunk than
to shoot landlords when in an inebriated condition.'
I do know that a dispensary doctor not thirty miles from Killarney was
thrown out of his trap, because he drove the horse through his own front
door, when he was under the intoxicated impression he was entering his
stable yard.
He broke his leg, and as there was no one to set it, he told his nephew
to get a pail of plaster of Paris, and he himself would tell him how to
manage the operation.
First they had a glass of whisky to fortify them for the ordeal, and
then another, and after that a third to drink good luck to the broken
leg.
Finally, when they set about it, the nephew spilt the whole pail of
plaster of Paris over the bed in which his uncle lay, and then fell in a
drunken stupor into the mess. There they both stayed all night until
they were hacked out with a chisel in the morning.
It is strange that the Irish, who are brimful of shrewd sense, use no
more discretion about appointing schoolmasters than dispensary doctors.
The petty pedagogues, who are the Baboos of Ireland, are drawn from the
small-farmer class. There is great competition among the incompetent to
get lucrative posts in my native land: they probably appreciate the
Hibernian eccentricity of giving important positions to the men whose
claims in any other country would never obtain a moment's consideration.
There was a schoolmaster near Castleisland, who died of sparing the rod
but not sparing the potation. His family were anxious his nephew should
be appointed.
As he was an utter ne'er-do-weel, the parish priest justly considered
him unfit for the situation, and brought from a neighbouring county a
schoolmaster highly recommended by the National Convention.
They had a quiet way of expressing their feelings in Kerry in those
days, and the moonlighters fired by night through the windows of every
one who sent their children to the nominee of the parish priest.
The District Inspector thought he had better look into the matter
himself, for it was stated they had always fired high with the sole
purpose of intimidating the occupants of the various cabins.
However, when this inspecting authority found a bullet-hole in a
window-sill only three feet from the ground, he observed:--
'Well, that shot was meant to kill.'
One farmer standing by remarked:--
'It was not right to fire into a house where there were a lot of little
children.'
'Begorra,' cried another, in a tone of virtuous indignation, 'the
careless fellows might have killed the poor pig!'
That was sworn before me.
Here is another incident, also sworn to in my presence.
I must explain that the first poor rate was in 1848, and half was made
up by local subscription, while the rent was added by the presentment of
the county, and not paid out of the rates. It was in those days a common
practice for dispensary doctors to put down on the list imaginary
subscriptions from friends, so as to draw more from the county.
A young fellow, whose name had thus been used, fired into a Protestant
doctor's house, and threatened to murder everybody unless he was given
some money.
He obtained half a crown, with which he bought a pint of whisky and a
mutton pie; but just as he was putting his teeth into the crust of the
latter, he paused in horror.
'I was near being lost for ever, body and soul,' says he, 'this being
Friday, and me so close on tasting meat.'
The woman in the place where he bought the provisions proposed to keep
the mutton pie for him until the following day.
He thanked her civilly, and went away, but had the misfortune to mistake
the police barracks for the rival whisky store, and was promptly
arrested for threatening with intent to do injury.
The next day he asked to be allowed to eat his pie, which is how the
story came out.
The dispensaries are often worked with more attention to the pocket of
those on the premises than is compatible with the principles of honesty,
as recognised outside the legal and medical professions. At one
dispensary in Kerry the Local Government Board was horrified at the
consumption of quinine--an expensive medicine. Indeed, so much
disappeared that, if it had not been for the chronic aversion of any
low-born Irishman to outside applications of liquid, it might have been
surmised that the patients were taking quinine baths. The matter was
privately put into the hands of the police, who within a week arrested
the secretary getting out of a back window with a big bottle of quinine,
which he meant to sell.
That man, for the rest of his life, inveighed against the petty and
mischievous interference with private industry tyrannically waged by
public bodies.
I should like to claim for Kerry the honour of being the land where the
following hoary chestnut originally was perpetrated, the exact locality
being Castleisland.
A landlord, who had returned in a fit of absent-mindedness to his
property after a sojourn in England, was condoling with a woman on the
death of her husband, and asked:--
'What did he die of?'
'Wishna, then, did he not die a natural death, your honour, for there
was no doctor attending him?'
A not dissimilar story is that which concerns a Scotch laird who had
fallen very sick, so a specialist came from Edinburgh to assist the
local murderer in diagnosing the symptoms.
The canny patient felt sure he would not be told what was the matter, so
he bade his servant conceal himself behind the curtains in the room
where the doctors talked it over, and to repeat to him what they said.
This is what the faithful retainer brought as tidings of comfort to the
alarmed invalid:--
'Weel, sir, the two were very gloomy, one saying one thing and the other
another; but after a while they cheered up and grew quite pleasant when
they had decided that they would know all about it at the post-mortem.'
That recalls to my mind Sidney Smith's definition of a doctor as an
individual who put drugs of which he knew very little into a body of
which he knew considerably less.
There is a rare lot of truth in some witticisms.
For some illogical reason only known to my own brain--perhaps with the
desire of keeping up the fashion for inconsecutive and rambling
observations common to all books of reminiscences--the foregoing stories
suggest to my mind the excuse made to me by a wary scoundrel for not
paying his rent.
'I had an illegant little heifer as ever your honour cast an eye over,
and who is a better judge than yourself, God bless you? But the Lord was
pleased to take her to Himself, and it would be flat heresy for me not
to say He is not as good a judge as your honour's self.'
There was an action brought against a veterinary surgeon for killing a
man's horse.
Lord Morris knew something of medicine, as he did of most things, and
asked if the dose given would not have killed the devil himself.
The vet. drew himself up pompously, and said:--
'I never had the honour of attending that gentleman.'
'That's a pity, doctor,' replied Morris, 'for he's alive still.'
The Government introduced into the House of Lords an additional bill for
the complication and confiscation of landed property in Ireland.
Lord Morris said it reminded him of the bill a veterinary surgeon sent
in to a friend of his, the last item of which ran:--
'To curing your grey mare till she died, 10s. 6d.'
Never was the Irish question more happily expressed than in his famous
reply to a lady who asked him if he could account for disaffection in
Ireland towards the English.
'What else can you expect, ma'am, when a quick-witted race is governed
by an intensely stupid one?'
Lord Morris told many stories, but for a change, here is one told of
him.
A Belfast tourist was riding past Spiddal, and asked a countryman who
lived there.
'One Judge Morris, your honour; but he lives the best part of his time
in Dublin.'
'Oh yes,' says the other, 'that's Lord Chief Justice Morris.'
'The very dead spit of him, your honour; and I was told he draws a
thousand a year salary.'
'He has five thousand five hundred a year.'
'Ah, your honour, it's very hard to make me believe that.'
'Why don't you believe it?'
'Because when he's down here he passes my gate five days in the week,
and I never saw the sign of liquor on him.'
Evidently the bigger salary the bigger profit to the whisky distiller
was the rustic's theory.
I have forgotten how the story came to my ears, but I told it to Lord
Morris, who much appreciated it.
Another Kerry story, not unlike one narrated earlier in this chapter,
runs thiswise:--
Two men came to order a coffin for a mutual friend called Tim
O'Shaughnessy.
Said the undertaker:--
'I am sorry to hear poor Tim is gone. He had a famous way with him of
drinking whisky. What did he die of?'
Replied one of the men:--
'He is not dead yet at all; but the doctor says he will be before the
morning; and sure he should know, for he knows what he gave him.'
Sometimes, however, the patient is quite as clever as the doctor.
A physician in Dublin had a telephone put in his bedroom, and when he
was rung up about half-past one on a freezing wintry night, he told his
wife to answer it.
She complied, and informed him:--
'It is Mr. Shamus O'Brien, and he wants you to come round at once.'
The physician knew this to be purely an imaginary case of illness, so
not wishing to be disturbed, said to her:--
'Tell him the doctor is out, and will not be home till morning.'
Unfortunately he spoke so near the telephone that his remark was audible
to the patient. So when the wife had duly delivered the message, the
answer came back:--
'If the man in your bed is a doctor, send him here.'
CHAPTER XIV
IRISH CHARACTERISTICS
It's the proudest boast of my life that I am an Irishman, and the
compliment which I have most appreciated in my time was being called
'the poor man's friend,' for I love Paddy dearly though I see his
faults. Yes, perhaps one of the reasons why I love him is because I do
see the faults, for the errors of an Irishman are often almost as good
as the virtues of an Englishman, and are far more diverting into the
bargain. You must not judge Paddy by the same standard as you apply to
John. To begin with, he has not had the advantages, and secondly,
there's an ingrained whimsicality, for which I would not exchange all
the solid imperfections of his neighbour across the Irish Channel.
You would not judge all Scotland by Glasgow, and so you should not fall
into the error of judging all Ireland by Belfast. Kerry is the jewel of
Ireland, and it is with Kerry that I have fortunately had most to do in
my life.
Whilst I am alluding to the mistake of generalising, let me point out
how erroneous it is ever, historically, to talk of Ireland as one
country. When Henry II. annexed the whole land by a confiscation more
open but not more criminal than that instigated by Mr. Gladstone, there
were four perfectly separate kingdoms in the island. Now there are four
provinces which are quite distinct, and an Ulster man, or a Munster man,
or a Connaught man, knows far more, as a rule, of England, or even
Scotland, than he does of the other three provinces of his native isle.
For one Ulster man who has been in Munster, three hundred have been to
Liverpool or Greenock, and until lately there was no railway between
Connaught and Munster, so that you had to go nearly up to Dublin to get
from one to the other.
There is much that is incomprehensible to the Englishman who comes among
us taking notes, and not the least is that no one wants his
cut-and-dried schemes of reforming what we do not wish to reform. As for
conforming to his method and rule by vestry and county council autocracy
in a methodical manner, it is utterly at variance with the national
temperament. Very often, too, the stranger falls a victim to the
Irishman's love of fun, and goes back hopelessly 'spoofed' and quite
unaware what nonsense he is talking when he lays down the law on Ireland
far from that perplexing land.
'Don't you want three acres and a cow?' asked an enthusiastic tourist
from Birmingham, soon after Mr. Jesse Collins had provided the
music-halls with the catch-phrase.
'As for the cow I would not be after saying it would not be a comfort,
but what would the pig want with so much land?' was the peasant's reply.
And that suggests an opportunity to give as my opinion that the most
practical measure England could take to benefit Ireland would be to
drain the large bogs and so improve fuel. In some places the bogs are
likely to be exhausted, but in others there is plenty of turf (turf, O
Saxon, is not the grass on which you play cricket or croquet, but is the
Hibernian for peat). Indeed, there is ample for all the needs of Ireland
for a hundred years to come, but it should not be used in the shamefully
wasteful way so often noticeable. It is no excuse that the heat it
contains is not so great as in coal.
If coal were to run out in England, to what a premium would turf rise in
Ireland!
Formerly turf could be picked up free, and even now it is very cheap,
the chief expense to the consumer being the cost of transport from the
bog to the turf rick behind the cabin.
The mineral rights of Ireland are most deceptive. There are plenty of
indications of minerals, but they are of too poor a nature to warrant
working.
Personally, I tried working coal-pits near Castleisland for three
months, and silver lead was worked for six months near Tralee by a
company which was more successful in working its own way with the
bankruptcy court. I firmly believe the reputed mineral wealth of Ireland
to be greatly exaggerated, and should never advise any one to invest
money in a syndicate for its discovery. Smelting was largely perpetrated
in olden times in Ireland, which entailed cutting down the oak forests,
that then crossed the country, to obtain fuel, the ore being brought
from England. But the introduction of the coke process in the north of
England settled that industry, which was one of the earliest Irish ones
doomed to extinction.
An Irish industry which as yet shows no sign of losing its commercial
importance is the blessed institution of matrimony, a holy thing which
in Ireland is particularly beneficial to the pockets of the priest, who
pronounces the blessing, and to the distiller, who sells the whisky, in
which the future of the happy pair is pledged.
The matrimonial arrangements of Irish farmers in Kerry may sound queer
to an English reader, but are the outcome of an innate, though
unwritten, law that the whole family have a vested interest in the
affair.
For example, when the family is growing up, the farm is handed over to
the eldest son, who gives the parents a small allowance during their
lives, while the fortune that he gets with his wife goes, not to
himself, but to provide for his younger brothers and sisters.
Hence, if the eldest son were to marry the Venus de Medici with ten
pounds less dowry than he could get with the ugliest wall-eyed female in
the neighbourhood, he would be considered as an enemy to all his family.
A tenant of a neighbour of mine actually got married to a woman without
a penny, a thing unparalleled in my experience in Kerry, and his sister
presently came to my wife for some assistance.
My wife asked her:--
'Why does not your brother support you?'
And she was answered:--
'How could he support any one after bringing an empty woman to the
house?'
There was a tenant of mine, paying about twenty-five pounds a year rent,
who died, and his son came to me to have his name inscribed in the rent
account.
I asked him what will his father had made.
He replied that he had left him the farm and its stock.
'What's to become of your brother and sister?' says I.
'They are to get whatever I draw,' says he.
'That means whatever you get with your wife?'
'That is so.'
'Well, suppose you marry a girl worth only twenty pounds, what would
happen then?'
'That would not do at all,' very gravely.
'Is there no limit put on the worth of your wife?'
'Oh,' says he, 'I was valued at one hundred and sixty pounds.'
I found out afterwards he had one hundred and seventy with his wife.
A tenant on the Callinafercy estate got married, and the mother-in-law
and the daughter-in-law did not agree. So the elder came to complain to
the landlord of the girl's conduct, and after copiously describing
various delinquencies with the assistance of many invocations of the
saints, she wound up with:--
'And the worst of all, Mr. Marshall, is that she gives herself all the
airs of a three hundred pound girl and she had but a hundred and fifty.'
Filial obedience in the matter of marriage is as uniform in these
classes in Kerry as it is conspicuous by its absence in old English
novels and comedies. The sons never kick at the unions, the daughters
are never hauled weeping to the altar, while an elopement or a refusal
to fulfil a matrimonial engagement would arouse the indignation of the
whole country side.
Decidedly these marriages turn out better than the made-up marriages in
France. I will go further, and seriously affirm my belief that the
marriages in Kerry show a greater average of happiness than any which
can be mentioned. To be sure there is the same dash after heiresses in
Kerry that you see in Mayfair, and the young farmer who is really
well-to-do is as much pursued as the heir to an earldom by matchmaking
mothers in Belgravia. But the subsequent results are much more
harmonious in Kerry, and though the landlord's advice is often asked to
settle financial difficulties in carrying out the matrimonial bargains,
less frequently is he called upon to settle differences between man and
wife.
'Sure, he's well enough meaning, your honour, with what brains the
Blessed Virgin could spare for him,' is the sort of remark a wife will
make on behalf of her lazy husband.
Fidelity is the rule; so is reasonable give and take, though each, being
human, likes to receive better than to give. And one thing which
impresses a stranger is the rarity of illegitimate children out of the
towns. This is, of course, partly due to the influence of the priests,
but partly also to the innate purity of the Irish character, as well as
by the standard of respectability:--
'Ah, he's a strong man,' you will hear said of So-and-So.
'How do you prove that?' says I.
'Why, has he not his farm, and his family with one son a priest, and one
daughter in a convent, and he with a bull for his own cows?'
Could you want more to get him on the County Council if he has no
conscience and a convivial taste in the matter of whisky?
There can be no doubt that the Irish take better care of their children
than the parents of similar position in either England or Scotland.
Cases of cruelty, which so constantly disfigure the police courts in
both the latter countries, are very rarely heard in the sister isle.
It is true that in many cases they cannot do much for their offspring,
but what little they are able to do is done with a good will and
ungrudgingly.
I remember a Saharan explorer telling me that in the desert he came
across some tribe, stark naked, utterly poor, but all on apparently
affectionate terms. He was much impressed with the love shown by the
children of all ages for their parents, and inquired what the latter did
to inspire such enviable emotion.
'We give them a handful of dates, when there are any.'
It was apparently their sole form of sustenance.
The Irishman is very good to his wife, although the courting is a matter
of business, as I have shown. Wife-beating and even more ignoble forms
of marital cruelty are almost unknown.
This is surely a big national asset.
Furthermore, the Irish are a very moral people; and this in spite of the
close proximity and confinement necessitated by the crowded condition of
many cabins.
I was going to add that the light food may have something to say to
this, but as the Irish are not remarkable for their small families, this
would be an unwarrantable aspersion.
Of course in the big towns there are women of no importance, and Dublin
has always borne rather a lively reputation in this respect, though that
in no way affects the general high standard of morality.
The climate of the country, despite the moisture, is one conducive to
good health, owing to the absence of any extreme vicissitudes.
It may be asked why, considering the overcrowding and insanitary
conditions of living in the miserable cabins, there is not more disease,
and my reply is that the peat which is burnt is so healthy as to act as
a disinfectant.
Indigestion, like lunacy, is, however, largely on the increase.
Nearly any old woman--or old man for the matter of that--as well as a
sad majority of younger people, will tell you:--
'I have a pain in the stomach,' with the accent on the second syllable
of the locality.
This is due to excessive consumption of tea.
Nearly twenty times as much tea must be drunk now in Kerry as in the
early sixties, and so far as I can recollect tea was unknown, not only
in the cabins but among the farmers until after the famine.
Fairly good tea is obtained, for the Irish will never buy tea unless
they are asked a high price, and for that price they usually, owing to
competition, obtain an article not too perniciously adulterated.
What is highly injurious is the method of making the tea.
A lot is thrown into the pot on the fire in the cabin in the morning,
and there it stands simmering all day long, that those who want it may
help themselves.
This is in sharp contrast to the method employed by Dr. Barter, the
famous hydropathic physician at Cork, one of the cleverest men I ever
met and one of the very few who never permitted medicine under any
circumstances, relying on water, packing, and Turkish baths, with strict
attention to diet.
He used to make tea by putting half a teaspoonful into a wire strainer
which he held over his cup, and pouring boiling water upon the leaves,
the contents of his cup became a pale yellow, to which he added a little
milk and instantly drank it off, the whole process lasting but a few
seconds. I remember he equally disapproved of the Russian method of
drinking tea in a glass with lemon, of the fashionable way of letting
the water 'stand off the boil' upon the leaves in a teapot, and of the
Hibernian stewing arrangement alluded to above.
Personally I regard all hydros as so many emporiums of disease, an
opinion in which I am singular, but that does not convince me I am
wrong.
A bailiff once went to St. Ann's Hydro to serve a writ, and he told me
afterwards that he served it on his victim in a Turkish bath,
remarking:--
'And your heart would have melted within your honour in pity for the
poor creature not having a pocket to put the document in.'
Which observation recalls to my mind the story of a gentleman in a
Turkish bath asking a friend to dinner, and saying:--
'Don't mind dressing; come just as you are.'
Another misunderstood answer was that of the absent-minded man who
entered a hansom and began to read a paper.
'Where to?' at last cabby asked laconically.
'Drive to the usual place.'
'I'm afraid I have too much on the slate there, sir, unless you pay my
footing.'
'Oh, go to hell,' retorted the other in a rage.
'It's outside the radius, sir, and it will be a steep pull for my old
horse after we've dropped you.'
The light-heartedness of the Celt is another feature which strikes the
least observant stranger.
An Irishman has been described as a man who confided his soul to the
priest, and his body to the British Government, whilst he holds himself
devoid of any vestige of responsibility for the care of either.
Here is another tale, illustrative of his contentment.
A philosopher, in search of happiness, was told by a wise man that if he
got the shirt of a perfectly happy man and put it on, he would himself
become happy.
The philosopher wandered over the world, but could find no man whose
happiness had not some flaw, until he fell in with an Irishman; with
whom he promptly began to bargain for his shirt, only to find he had not
one to his back.
From philosophy to the deuce is not a big stride, according to the view
of those folk who jibe at political economy and all the abstract of
virtues and governments. So, on the tail of their fancy, I am reminded
of another story about the devil--a very large number of Irish stories
are connected with him, because in a very special sense he is the
unauthorised patron saint of the sinners of the country, and he has had
far too much to say to its government into the bargain.
An Englishman, in the witless way in which Saxons do address Irishmen,
asked a labourer by the wayside:--
'If the devil came by, do you think he would take me or you?'
The labourer never hesitated, but replied:--
'He'd take me, your honour.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Oh, he would,' says he, 'because he's sure of your honour at any time.'
The Irishman is not so black as he may seem to the Saxon, who reads with
disgust the horrors that mar the beauty of the Emerald Isle, and I
should say that his finest trait is patience under adversity. No nation,
for example, could have more calmly endured the terrible sufferings of
the famine, more especially as the high-strung nerves of the Celt render
him physically and mentally the very reverse of a stoic.
Again, in no other nation are the family ties closer.
The first thought of those who emigrate to America is to remit money to
the old folk in the cabin at home. So soon as the emigrants have
obtained a reasonable degree of comfort they will send home the passage
money to pay for bringing out younger brothers or sisters to them.
Did you ever hear the story of the homesick Kerry undergraduate at
Oxford, at his first construe with his tutor, translating _contiguare
omnes_ as 'all of them County Kerry men'?
It was a true home touch, though not exactly a classical reading of the
passage.
In the same way, in my boyish days at Dingle, we all of us firmly
believed that King John had asked in what part of Kerry Ireland was.
That question was our local Magna Charta, though what the origin of the
tradition was I have no idea.
But then things do differ according to the point of view, and ours of
history was not stranger than many others of far more importance.
As an example of lack of comprehension I would cite the following
incident.
An English gentleman was shooting grouse in Ireland. He got very few
birds, and said to the keeper:--
'Why, these actually cost me a pound apiece.'
'Begorra, your honour, it's lucky there are not more of them,' was the
unexpected answer.
This allusion to sport reminds me of the Frenchman's description of
hunting in Ireland, which was to the effect that about thirty horsemen
and sixty dogs chased a wretched little animal ten miles, which resulted
in seven casualties, and when they caught the poor beast not one of them
would eat him.
The French do not always appreciate our institutions. One of them
landing at Queenstown in the middle of the day asked if there was
anything he could amuse himself with between then and dinner-time.
'Certainly,' said the waiter; 'which would you like, wine or spirits?'
By way of amusing the reader, before going any further, I will give him
a chance of reading a genuine, but unique testament in which I figured,
and which is not a bit more queer than many which have been as formally
proved.
'I Robert Shanahan in my last will and testament do make my wife
Margaret Shanahan Manager or guardian over my farm and means provided
she remains unmarried if she do not I bequeath to her 2 shillings and
sixpence I leave the farm to my son Thomas Shanahan provided he conducts
himself if not I leave the farm to my son Robert Shanahan I also wish
that there should be a provision made for the rest of the family out of
the farm according as the following Executors which I appoint may think
fit Mr. Hussey Esq. Revd. Brusnan P.P. and James Casey of Gorneybee.
Given under my heand this 7th day of February 1872.
his
ROBERT X SHANAHAN.
mark
Witnessed by
JOHN O'BRIEN.
JEREMIAH CONNOR.'
I have a few tales to tell of Kerry landlords, a race who would have
furnished Lever with a worthy theme, men as humorous as they are brave,
as diverting as they can stand, loyal to the Crown despite much
disparagement, and proud to be Irishmen, though so unappreciated by the
paid agitators and their weak tools.
However, as I wish to be on good terms with all my neighbours in this
world, and with the ghosts of the departed ones when I meet them in the
next, I am not going to give many names or rub up susceptibilities.
Of Kerry landlords, Lord Kenmare naturally suggests himself to be first
mentioned. He has been somewhat unjustly attacked more than once about
the condition of Killarney as though the town was his private property.
As a matter of fact, he is utterly powerless there, as it was all leased
away for five hundred years by his grandfather. About the town the
following may be worth telling:--
A very neat plan was drawn up for improving it, which included a gateway
between every double block of houses to lead down to the stables and
garden, but as it was not thought necessary to put a subletting clause
into the lease, the actual consequence was that all these passages were
converted into filthy lanes. Outside the town Lord Kenmare has built
some nice cottages, but within its confines he could effect nothing.
To show you how short-lived is Irish gratitude, ponder over this:--
When Mr. Daniel O'Connell, son of the great Dan, stood for West Kerry as
a Unionist, he was warned by the police officer that he could not be
answerable for his life if he came into Cahirciveen, for he had only
twenty constables to protect him; and his wife--a most charming
woman--when driving through the town was surrounded by an insulting mob,
members of which actually spat in her face.
That reminds me of a similar experience which befell the wife of Mr.
Cavanagh, the man without arms and legs, who, until denounced by the
Land League, was exceptionally popular.
Mrs. Cavanagh was walking along the road in Carlow carrying broth and
wine to a poor sick woman, when she found herself the target for a
number of stones and had to run for her life amid a shower of missiles.
Despite his exceptional infirmities Mr. Cavanagh could do almost
anything. He used to ride most pluckily to hounds, strapped on to his
saddle. On one occasion the saddle turned under him, and the horse
trotted back to the stable-yard, with his master hanging under him, his
hair sweeping the ground, bleeding profusely; he merely cursed the groom
with emphatic volubility, had himself more safely readjusted, and then
rode out once more.
He always wore pink when hunting. One day a pretty child of ten years
old was out with her groom, who followed the scent so ardently, that he
forgot all about his charge, who was left behind, and finding herself
lost in a wood, began to cry.
Suddenly there swooped out on a very big horse, the armless and legless
figure of Cavanagh in his flaming coat, and seeing her predicament, he
seized her rein somehow--she never seems quite clear how--saying:--
'Don't be frightened, little girl, for I know who you are, and will take
care of you.'
He was as good as his word, but the high-strung, sensitive child, so
soon as she was in her mother's embrace, went from one fit of hysterics
to another, crying:--
'Oh, mummy, I've seen the devil, I've seen the devil.'
In after years they became great friends, and he often dined with her
after she married and settled in London.
Reverting to Lord Kenmare, the following story, which in another version
recently won a railway story competition in some newspaper, really
pertains to his son Lord Castlerosse.
On a line in Kerry there is a sharp curve overhanging the sea. An old
woman in a great state of nervous agitation was bundled at the last
moment into a first-class compartment.
Lord Castlerosse, the only passenger in the compartment, by way of
relieving her obvious agitation, tried to calm her by telling her she
could change at the next station.
'Is it me that can be aisy,' she replied, 'when it's my Pat is driving
the engine, and him having a dhrop taken, and saying he'll take us a
shpin round the Head?'
After all, to my mind, for sheer humour of a quiet sort, nothing beats
the observation of the late Sir John Godfrey, who never got up before
one in the day, and invariably breakfasted when his family were having
lunch. Being asked one day to account for this rather inconvenient
habit, he replied:--
'The fact is, I sleep very slow.'
I commend this to every sluggard who wants an excuse to resume his
slumbers when awakened too soon.
There was a gentleman who had rather a red nose, and some one remarked
that it was an expensive piece of painting, to which some one else
significantly added, that it was not a water-colour.
'No,' said Sir John, 'it was done in distemper.'
One night a landlord in Kerry, who shall be nameless, though he has
passed over to the great majority, went to bed without having much
knowledge how he got there.
Two of his sons crept to the neighbouring town, unscrewed the sign
outside the inn, and put it at the end of their parent's bed.
When he awoke, he looked at the sign for some time in a bewildered way.
Then he observed aloud:--
'I thought I went to sleep in my own bed, but I'm d----d if I have not
woke in the middle of the street.'
A certain roystering gentleman named Jack Ray got drunk and fell asleep
in the woods of Kilcoleman. Some of the Godfrey boys, seeing him
prostrate and with foam on his lips, ran to summon their father, saying
to him:--
'There's a man dead in the wood.'
Sir William hastened to the spot, and having put on his glasses to get a
view of the corpse, observed:--
'Come away, my boys, this man dies once a week.'
Another Kerry landlord, who was also a baronet, dealt with the National
Bank, the local manager of which was an arrant snob, who loved a title,
and bored everybody with his pretended intimacy with the impecunious
baronet. But at last even his patience was exhausted, and he sent the
squire a pretty stiff letter about the arrears due.
The other received the letter at breakfast, and showed it to his son
just come down from a University, who whistled and ejaculated:--
'O tempora! O mores!'
His father instantly retorted:--
'You get me the temporary, and I'll promptly see we have more ease.'
In the bad times, an old woman came into the office at Tralee to pay her
rent. Mr. Francis Denny was in a real bad humour with somebody else who
had defaulted, and he was raging along in a manner qualified to display
his intimate acquaintance with the florid embellishments of the
language. The old woman listened with evident admiration for some time.
At last she ejaculated:--
'Ah, the nate little man.'
And with that slipped out, without settling her account.
Mr. Francis Denny has the misfortune to be rather lame, and one day
another old woman, who liked him, observed:--
'If he had two sound legs under him, there'd be no holding him in
Tralee, but he'd be up at the Castle setting the Lord Lieutenant right
in his many errors, not to mention going over to London to give the
Queen herself a bit of his mind.'
In the bad times, one lady was left in her Kerry residence with her baby
boy and a pack of maidservants, her husband having been called over to
England.
She had sixty pounds of gold in her bedroom, and one night a housemaid
rushed in to say a party of moonlighters were in the house.
The lady threw a sovereign and some silver on to the dressing-table, and
hid the rest under her mattress.
In came the masked scoundrels asking for gold, and when she pointed to
the money that was visible, one replied that it was not enough.
'Very well,' she said, 'give me your name and I'll write you a cheque.'
On that they left precipitately, to her intense relief.
All moonlighters calculated upon the terrorism their appearance would
cause, and if this was apparently conspicuous by its absence they were
nonplussed, because they never felt over secure in their own hearts at
the best of times, and grew frightened directly others were not
frightened by them.
In all moonlighting affrays no one scoundrel ever became personally
conspicuous as a leader, and all the wisest leaders, such as Stephens,
Tynan, and Parnell, shrouded their movements in mystery. Fenianism in
Ireland since Emmett has never had one capable leader possessing the
physical courage to show himself in the forefront on all occasions.
On the other hand, it is a singular fact that nearly every general of
note in the army of the United Kingdom, since the time of Marlborough,
has come from Ireland. The Duke of Wellington was born in County Meath,
Lord Gough in Tipperary, Lord Wolseley in County Carlow, Lord Roberts in
Waterford, Sir George White in Antrim, General French in Roscommon, and
Lord Kitchener in Kerry.
The attempts of the English Government to manufacture an English general
in the South African war were a miserable fiasco. They only produced
one, Sir Charles Tucker, and he did his best to atone for the accident
of his English birth by marrying a Kerry lady.
I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Redvers Buller in Killarney, and after
he had been there a couple of days he proceeded to describe Kerry to me,
who had been managing one fifth of it for several years. His
agricultural reforms would have been as drastic as they were ludicrous
had any one attempted to carry them out, but when expatiating on them to
me, he was not even aware that there was any difference between an
English and an Irish acre. When I heard that he was taking charge of the
whole army in South Africa, I mentioned that as he had been unable to
command three hundred constabulary in Kerry, I was sceptical of his
ability to manage the British army. He was without exception the most
self-sufficient soldier I ever met, and his subsequent career has not
made me change my view.
Here is a soldier story which is mighty illustrative of Irish traits.
A peasant's son in Limerick enlisted in the militia for a month's
training, for which he received a bounty of three pounds. With part of
this money he bought a pig and gave it to his father to feed up. When
the pig was fattened, the father sold it and declined to give him the
price. So the son was seen by the police to take his father by the
throat, saying:--
'Bad luck to you, old reprobate, do you want to deprive me of my pig
that I risked my life for in the British Army?'
Everywhere I like to slip into this book instances of the injuries
suffered by Irish landlords, so here is another case _à propos des
bottes_, if you will forgive it.
The Knight of Kerry let nine acres of land to a tenant for a rent of
forty-five pounds. Having expended a large sum of money in roadmaking
and fences, at the tenant's request, he also borrowed thirty-five pounds
to build a small house for which he has to pay thirty-five shillings per
annum. The commissioners cut down the rent so heavily, that it has
resulted in the landlord having to pay five shillings a year for the
pleasure of looking at the man in occupation of his land.
Reverting to my reminiscences--or rather to what are for myself less
interesting portions, for I am a land agent by profession and an
anecdotist only by habit--I remember that an Englishman subsequently a
Pasha commanded the coastguard at Dingle in 1856, and then had an
encounter with a local Justice of the Peace in which he came off second
best.
Captain ---- occupied the Grove demesne. The J.P., who had been a Scotch
militia officer, had been in the habit of shooting crows over the
demesne, and continued to enjoy the sport, to which the Captain strongly
objected. After an angry correspondence the J.P. sent a challenge, which
the other did not seem to stomach, for he sent an apology by a
subordinate with full permission to continue the immolation of the
birds. If a cruiser had to capitulate to this bold blockade runner, the
Captain himself had to endure a similar humiliation at the hands of an
indignant Kerry man, though he was very popular in Dingle.
There is nothing pusillanimous about the Irishman, except when in cold
blood he was expected to attack an agent, or landlord, or policeman,
armed to the teeth. In such cases, he remembered that his parents, by
the blessing of the Holy Virgin, had endowed him with two legs, and only
one skin, which latter must therefore be saved by the discretionary
employment of the former.
In other cases he is very brave, especially in verbal encounters.
Fighting is in his blood. That is what makes the Irish soldier the best
in the world, and that was why he used to revel in the faction fights.
As a paternal Government now prevents the breaking of heads, at all
events on a wholesale scale, the pugnacious instincts of the nation have
to be gratified by litigation, and certainly there never was such a
litigious race in history as the contemporary Ireland.
I know of a case on the Callinafercy estate, where a widow spent fifty
pounds 'in getting the law of' a neighbour whose donkey had browsed on
her side of a hedge. She took the case to the assizes, and when the
judge heard Mr. Leeson Marshall was her landlord, he said:--
'Let him decide it. He's a barrister himself, and can judge far better
than I could on such a subject.'
To this there are literally hundreds of parallels every year. Readers of
_La Terre_ will remember how much of the funds went into the hands of
the lawyer who thrived on the animosities of the family, and that sort
of thing is constantly reduplicated in Kerry.
'I'd sell my last cow to appeal on a point of law,' I once heard a
Killorgin farmer say; and that is typical of all the lower classes in
the South and West.
As for the solicitors, I am not going to say a word about them, good or
bad: there are men no doubt worthy of either epithet in a profession
that preys on the troubles of other folk. But I will tell one very brief
story on the topic.
Outside the Four Courts, a poor woman stopped Daniel O'Connell,
saying:--
'If you please, your honour, will you direct me to an honest attorney?'
The Liberator pushed back his wig and scratched his head.
'Well now, you beat me entirely, ma'am,' was his answer.
He had more experience than me, being one.
Talking of the Four Courts reminds me of Chief Baron Guillamore, who had
as much wit as will provoke 'laughter in court,' and a trifle over that
infinitesimal quantity as well.
A new Act of Parliament had been passed to prevent people from stealing
timber. A stupid juryman asked if he could prosecute a man under that
act for stealing turnips.
'Certainly not, unless they are very sticky,' retorted the judge.
His brother was a magistrate, and committed a barrister in petty
sessions for contempt of court. An action was brought against him, but
the Chief Baron raised so many legal exceptions, that it had finally to
be abandoned through the fraternal law-moulding. This action was pending
in the civil court, when a lawyer was very impertinent to the Chief
Baron in the criminal. Instead of committing him, the Chief Baron said
very quietly:--
'If you do not keep quiet, I shall send to the next Court for my
brother.'
Another judge had applied for shares in a company of which a friend of
his was secretary. Meeting him in Sackville Street, he stopped him to
inquire what would be the paid-up capital of the concern.
The other forgot whom he was addressing, and blurted out the truth by
replying:--
'Well, I really cannot tell you just yet, but the cheques are coming in
fast.'
The judge withdrew his application by the next post, and confidently
expected to see his friend in the dock. I believe in less than six
months he was not disappointed.
The poorer class in Ireland do not appear to be business-like in the
ordinary sense, however much they may develop commercial instincts after
emigrating. It is to promote the latent capacity obviously within their
power that creameries and other assisted promotions have been started in
various parts of the country, sometimes with great success. Sir Horace
Plunkett and others have dealt with all this in the most serious spirit.
I prefer to allude to it, and add one anecdote.
A lady asked a respectable old woman how her son was getting on as
manager of the creamery, and the reply came after the following
fashion:--
'Whisna the poor man and all the trouble he has, and him never able to
make the butter and the books scoromund,' which, being translated, is
'correspond.'
Another example I can cite of the difficulty in getting people to put
their intelligence to practical use in the south is to this effect:--
There was a certain widdy woman in a neighbouring parish who was making
great lamentation over her 'pitaties' to the priest, and in consequence
he lent her a machine for the purpose of spraying them. She professed
the profoundest gratitude as well as interest in the implement, but the
task speedily became too big an effort, for she subsequently informed me
that she had sprayed 'half the field to plase his Rivirence, but left
the rest to God.'
And that is the kind of negative piety which is distinctly a
characteristic Irish trait.
CHAPTER XV
LORD-LIEUTENANTS AND CHIEF SECRETARIES
Any Irishman who has reached the shady side of threescore years and ten
must remember many Lord-Lieutenants--the pompously visible symbols of
much vacillating misdirection.
To analyse them would be the work of an historian, to criticise would be
superfluous. They have been so many Malvolios, all alike anxious to win
the favour of that capricious Lady Olivia Erin, and not one of them has
succeeded, though several have merited better fortune than they met with
on Irish soil.
The first Lord-Lieutenant I personally met was Lord Carlisle.
He was a gentleman, but not otherwise remarkable. He had come into the
Government on the resignation of the Peelites, and his popularity in
Ireland was greater than any other holder of the post in the century,
possibly owing to his negative qualities, and also to a charm of manner
more effusive than usual among Englishmen.
He had a habit of dropping his state, and going about Dublin, if not
like Haroun Alraschid, at least with the independence of men in less
august positions.
On one occasion, needing some local information, he went to see the Lord
Mayor of Dublin, but finding him out, was given the address of an
alderman who could tell him what he wanted to know.
The alderman was not in either, but his wife was, and begged him to stop
to lunch, which was just being served.
Lord Carlisle told her he hardly ever ate lunch, and was not in the
least hungry.
But under pressure he sat down to the meal, and got on very well with
it, whereat the lady remarked:--
'You see, your Excellency, eating is like scratching: when you once
begin it is hard to stop.'
His predecessor, Lord Clarendon, had been in office when Lord John
Russell, the Prime Minister, urged on the House of Commons a bill for
the abolition of the Lord-Lieutenancy. The great point that he made was
that the Chief Secretary might become a mayor of the viceregal palace, a
thing that has now long been the case, for the Lord-Lieutenant has to be
a plutocrat of high descent, and the Chief Secretary is the virtual
administrator of Ireland--a thing unknown, however, until the advent of
Mr. Foster. The second reading was carried by a majority of over a
hundred and fifty, but it was then dropped.
The story went that the Duke of Wellington had suggested to Prince
Albert the possible diminution of respect for the Crown in Ireland
without a visible representative, and the Teutonic mind could not endure
such a notion.
Lord Clarendon upheld the dignity of his position, though he was liked
by neither party in Ireland. He is the only Lord-Lieutenant who ever
administered sharp discipline to the Orangemen--who regard their loyalty
as permitting them a good deal of licence--for he removed the name of
their leader, Lord Roden, from the Commission of the Peace because he
encouraged a turbulent procession at Dolly's Brae. With his pompous
manner he made a very Brummagem monarch, quite indifferent to his
unpopularity. As a matter of fact, some allege that all Lord-Lieutenants
are hated by the disloyal section of the populace, and if they go
through the farce of currying popularity, they can only do so by largely
patronising about a dozen shopkeepers, who eventually curse because yet
more has not been spent. But this is altogether too limited to be true.
Lord Kimberley followed Lord Carlisle. In those days he was Lord
Wodehouse, and the Fenians used to issue mock proclamations, in ridicule
of his, signed 'Woodlouse.' He was an experienced parliamentarian--a man
who held office for many years, and worked conscientiously, according to
his lights.
In Ireland he always appeared to be a naturalist, perplexed at not
understanding the species among which his lot was for the time cast.
His mother was subsequently married to Mr. Crosbie Moore, and she ran
away with Colonel Fitz-Gibbon, afterwards Lord Clare.
Mr. Crosbie Moore had not much sense of humour, as the following tale
will show.
He was presiding at Ballyporeen Petty Sessions, when a village tailor
was summoned for having his pig wandering on the road.
The fellow pleaded that it was due to great curiosity on the part of the
pig, who saw some constabulary passing by, and rushed out to see what
they were like.
He made this explanation in such humorous fashion that most of the
magistrates were for letting him off; but Mr. Crosbie Moore said it was
scandalous that they had directed the police to summon people on that
very ground, and they wanted to acquit the culprit because he had made a
joke.
The rest of the Bench had to acquiesce, and the tailor was fined one
shilling.
He paid his shilling, and said:--
'I have no blame to you at all, gentlemen, except to Mr. Crosbie Moore;
and, indeed, if he reflected, he should have known that no live man
could keep a woman or a pig in the house when she wanted to be off.'
A subscription raised for him outside the Court realised twenty-three
shillings.
Tradition goes that when Lord Kimberley, Lord Carlingford, and Lord
Granville were all in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain--then at
the Board of Trade--in a moment of vexation called them 'Gladstone's
grannies,' and if the phrase is not his, it most certainly was apt and
truthful.
Lord Kimberley was known as 'Pussy' among a gang of disrespectful
subordinates. He really did as little to earn respect as he did to
forfeit it; in fact he was a pre-eminently respectable mediocrity of the
kind that, towards the close of the mid-Victorian period, clung like
barnacles to office, and he was a Whig during the period that Whiggism
was growing obsolete.
The Duke of Abercorn certainly had no tendencies towards the lavish
extravagance by which a modern Lord-Lieutenant has to pay his footing. A
short time before he was chosen he had claimed the Dukedom of
Chatelherault in France, and was known in consequence among the
malcontents as the 'French Frog.' His wife was the daughter of one Duke
of Bedford, and when another came to stay at the viceregal, it was for a
time called the 'Dukeries.' The A.D.C.'s, who were particularly
good-looking, were at once known as the 'Duckeries.'
The Duke of Marlborough settled down well to his work. He was frankly
the friend of the landlords, and did his best for them. But he brought
no English politicians in his train; he never thought he could settle
every Irish question after he had smoked a pipe over it; and he was
never inaccessible.
He came on a visit to Muckross when Sir Ivor Guest had the shooting, and
I dined there to meet him. He visited Killarney on several occasions,
and on each of them I had long talks with him. I always thought him a
painstaking, well-meaning man.
Lord Cowper was an honest nonentity who left the country in disgust
because he was not backed up by the Government. Several modern
figureheads would be very much surprised at any Government expecting
them to do more than 'understudy Royalty.' But Cowper thought himself a
diplomatist; was fond of authoritatively laying down the law on
continental affairs, as though he had the refusal of the Foreign Office
in his pocket; and felt he ought to have as much support as Palmerston
obtained from the various Cabinets he burdened with European embroglios.
However, Lord Spencer, on being reappointed for a second term, took up
the thankless task at an especially black moment. He was as brave as a
lion; and if his red beard gained him the nickname of 'Rufus,' the Red
Viceroy was as fearless as though his life were absolutely secure,
instead of depending wholly on the vigilance of those surrounding him.
We all admired Lord Spencer for his firmness; but this was soon
discovered to be due to the fact that he absolutely followed the sage
advice of Sir Edward Sullivan, the Lord Chancellor, and after the death
of the latter, Lord Spencer's weakness was quite as remarkable as his
previous firmness.
He was seen on one occasion with his hands pressing his back.
Said one man:--
'I fear his Excellency has lumbago.'
'Not at all,' replied his friend; 'he is feeling for his backbone.'
The state of Westmeath was really the worst feature of the period of his
rule, yet Lord Spenser was in the country all the while, and allowed
matters to degenerate with his eyes open.
He rode hard to hounds, in spite of countless threats, and might have
had a less uncomfortable time had the head of the Constabulary been as
thoroughly capable as his subordinates.
Lord Carnarvon very nearly ruined the Government by his communications
with Mr. Parnell. He meant well, and struck out a patriotic line of his
own, which failed because it was made in absolute ignorance of the Irish
character. But he never intended to involve his colleagues, although
numbers of people chose to regard him as a Tory Home Ruler. His previous
action in resigning the Secretaryship of the Colonies in Lord Derby's
third administration, owing to a difference of opinion on parliamentary
reform, and his subsequent resignation because he disapproved of Lord
Beaconsfield's Eastern action in 1878, showed him to be a man of marked
and fearless opinions. Lord Salisbury ought to have known that he was
thrusting a brand into the fire when he sent him to be the official
bellows-blower of the Hibernian pot.
Lord Aberdeen will always be remembered as the husband of his wife. Lady
Aberdeen was a more ardent Home Ruler than even her brother, Lord
Tweedmouth. On one occasion Lord Morris was next her at dinner, and she
said she supposed the majority of people in Ireland were in favour of
Home Rule.
'Indeed, then, with the exception of yourself and the waiters, there's
not one in the room,' was his answer.
'Of course, not in the Castle,' she replied with dignity; 'but in your
profession, and when you are on circuit, surely you must meet a good
many?'
'Occasionally--in the dock,' he drily retorted, after which she
discreetly dropped the subject.
Lord Aberdeen was most exemplary during his brief tenure of office, and
certainly it was not in his time that the folk christened the royal box
at the theatre the 'loose box,' in allusion to the rather dubious
English guests of the vivacious viceroy.
Lord Londonderry and Lord Zetland may be both briefly bracketed together
as having done their duty admirably in times less out of joint than
those of their predecessors. Lord Londonderry always drank Irish whisky
himself, and recommended it to his guests as a capital beverage--a thing
which the licensed victuallers did not mind mentioning to Paddy and Mick
when they were having a drop, despite their vaunted contempt of all at
'the Castle.'
No other Lord-Lieutenant ever had such a mournful experience as Lord
Houghton. Son of Monckton Milnes, the 'cool of the evening,' he needed
his father's temperament to enable him to endure the boycott which Irish
society inflicted on him as the representative of the Home Rule
disruption policy. With no class did he go down, and on a crowded
market-day in Tralee not a hat was raised to him.
One of his A.D.C.'s was subsequently on the veldt, and when asked if it
was not lonely, he replied:--
'Not more than Dublin Castle, when Houghton was the king.'
On one occasion some people were officially commanded to dine. Not a
carriage was to be seen as they drove up to the Viceregal Lodge, so the
gentleman told his coachman to drive round the Phoenix Park, as they
must be too early. There was still no sign of any gathering as they
again approached the official residence, and when they entered they
found they were the only guests, and the infuriated Lord Houghton, as
well as all his household had been kept waiting twenty minutes by this
hapless pair.
Another story, which was much enjoyed in Ireland as showing the
pomposity of his Excellency, may be recalled. Whether true it is now
difficult to say, but there is no doubt that the tale was started among
the very house-party who were at Carton at the time.
The beautiful _châtelaine_, the lovely Duchess of Leinster, was walking
through the fields one Sunday afternoon with Lord Houghton.
They came to a gate, which he opened, but to her astonishment proceeded
to walk through it first himself.
The indignant Duchess haughtily remarked:--
'The Prince of Wales would not think of passing through a gate before
me.'
'That may be; but I represent the Queen,' replied Lord Houghton, with
unruffled imperturbability.
Lord Cadogan and Lord Dudley come so absolutely into contemporary
history that on them nothing can here be said, except that their
munificence has rendered it impossible for any peer of moderate private
means to hold the office.
In sober truth, however, the administration of Government really rests
with the Chief Secretary in recent times, although it was not so before
the advent of Mr. Foster. Men like Lord Naas, Sir Robert Peel the
younger, and Mr. Chichester Fortescue--afterwards Lord Carlingford--were
mere official cyphers, but after Mr. Gladstone's 1880 ministry this has
never been the case.
Of Sir Robert Peel it was wittily said that when Chief Secretary he went
through the country on an outside car, which made him take a one-sided
view of the Irish question.
Lord Morris said to an inquiring Scottish M.P.:--
'Did you ever know a Scottish Secretary who was not Scottish, or an
Irish Secretary who was Irish?'
'No,' said the Scotsman.
'Well, go home and moralise over that as a possible solution of some
Irish difficulties, for may be, if an Irishman was sent over, by
accident, to be Chief Secretary, the official would not fall into the
mistake of trying to reconcile the irerconcilable.'
And to my mind Lord Morris had the last word in every sense.
Mr. W.E. Forster was far too honest to be the tool of Mr. Gladstone's
Hibernian dishonesty. He was perfectly fearless, but, beneath his rugged
exterior, deeply sensitive. He winced under 'buckshot,' and many other
epithets; but abuse and danger alike never prevented him from doing what
he had to do to the best of his ability. His earliest acquaintance with
Ireland had been in the famine, when he was one of the deputation of
succour organised by the Society of Friends, and everybody who has read
Mr. Morley's _Life of Cobden_ will remember the appreciation of their
efforts by the great free-trader.
Mr. Forster did not think the Irish administration should be all 'a
scuffle and a scramble,' and he inaugurated a reversal of the old
balance between Lord-Lieutenants and Chief Secretaries which has never
been subsequently changed. Indeed, it is often only the latter who has a
seat in the Cabinet. He was the victim of many misapprehensions--the
bulk of them wilful--but one which worried him was a widespread
conviction that he was a slow man. His delivery was slow, his manner
deliberate, and he did not lightly give an opinion. Yet emphatically he
was not a slow man, and as an instance may be stated the fact that he
elaborated his scheme of decentralising the powers of the Irish
Government in a single evening in December 1881. I know he was harassed,
nay, martyrised, beyond endurance, through the evasive volubility of Mr.
Gladstone, which, both by mouth and letter, formed a heavier burden than
all the Irish attacks; but he was a just and conscientious man, and I
never heard of a case where appeal was made to him on which he did not
act as reasonably as was compatible with loyalty to such a Prime
Minister.
His courage in walking unarmed and without police escort in Tulla and
Athenry was as great as ever was displayed by a knight-errant of old.
The Nationalist papers, no longer able to taunt him with cowardice, took
to declaring him to be a person notorious for ferocious brutality.
Sir Wemyss Reid said that in the House of Commons his fellow-members had
literally seen his hair whiten during those two years of patriotic
martyrdom in Ireland, and I always feel that the inner life of this
reticent, commanding statesman would have made a wonderful human
document. His capacity, if not his forbearance, has been inherited by
his adopted son, Mr. Arnold Forster, the present Secretary for War, who
acted as his private secretary in the latter years of his life.
When I read Lord Rosebery's speech advocating a Cabinet of business men,
I instinctively thought of the late Mr. W.E. Forster, and it is his heir
who is the first illustration of the Liberal Peer's theory. Since
Cromwell cleared out the House of Commons, no one has done so much as
Mr. Arnold Forster, for he upset the seats of the mighty in the War
Office three months after he kissed hands. I wonder how he would have
dealt with Parnellism and crime.
Mr. Forster's predecessor, Mr. James Lowther, was an uncommonly capable
man, and gifted with a fund of humour which prevented him from taking
the Irish too seriously. In 1879 I heard the Irish members in the House
of Commons vituperating him after a manner that subsequently became
unpleasantly familiar, but was then regarded as a gross breach of the
conventions of debate. 'Jim' lay back on the Treasury bench with his hat
over his eyes, and to all appearance sound asleep. Never once did he
show sign of hearing their verbal tornado; but eventually he sprang to
his feet, and with infectious gaiety literally chaffed them to madness.
I have often thought that the long-limbed Tory member for Hertford, who
was then private secretary to his uncle, Lord Salisbury, must have taken
note of the methods of Mr. Lowther in dealing with the Irish party, for
it was absolutely on the same lines that he subsequently developed that
superb flow of sarcasm which made him, Mr. A.J. Balfour, the popular
idol ten years later.
It has been a practice for many years to appoint a man Chief Secretary
for Ireland in order to see if he is fit for anything else. This plan
turned out well in the case of Mr. A.J. Balfour, for he knew Ireland
better than any other Chief Secretary, and when he came to know it
properly he was removed.
His brother did as much harm in Ireland as Mr. Arthur Balfour did good.
Indeed, in the whole nineteenth century no other incompetent Chief
Secretary misunderstood Ireland with such complete complacency, and if
it had not been for the supervision which 'A.J.' undoubtedly gave, Mr.
Gerald Balfour would have a still worse record.
There was a poem, not particularly brilliant, which may be quoted
because it is not widely known:--
'If I had a Balfour who wrong would go,
Do you think I'd tolerate him?--No, no, no!
I'd give him coercion in Kilmainham jail,
And return him to Arthur, who'd laugh at his wail.'
In fact the impression prevailed that Ireland was then sacrificed to the
nepotism of Lord Salisbury, who had inflicted the least capable of the
House of Cecil on the distressful country.
When the Duke of York was in Ireland, he stayed with Lord Dunraven, and
Mr. Gerald Balfour as Chief Secretary was one of the house-party, and
the mother of the Knight of Glin was also there.
A short time before, a chemist from Cork, who had been appointed
sub-confiscator, and desired to secure his own position, had heavily cut
down the Fitzgerald rents.
Mr. Balfour, by way of making polite conversation, observed to Mrs.
Fitzgerald:--
'I believe your son's property has been a long time in the family.'
'Yes,' she said, 'we got it in the reign of Edward I., and held it until
last year, when the Government sent an apothecary from Cork to rob us of
it.'
The conversation dropped.
Mr. Arthur Balfour was very plucky, not only personally, but in his
legislative efforts, and he did wonders for Ireland--the light railways
relieving numbers from starvation, and opening up the country.
An English journalist went down to the West, and tried to make inquiries
about the popularity of the Chief Secretary.
He came to the cabin of a man who had been rescued from starvation by
getting Government employment, and had thrived so well that he had
become possessed of a pig.
This pig, on the appearance of the Englishman, escaped into a
potato-field, and he heard the woman of the house shout to her son:--
'Mickey, look sharp and turn out Arthur Balfour before he does any
mischief.'
The name of the pig showed the gratitude of the family.
When alluding to Mr. Lowther I omitted to mention that he was always of
opinion that a well-planned scheme of education was the best panacea for
the Irish troubles, and it certainly would have brought up a generation
less keenly sensitive to the exaggerated wrongs of the country to which
both sexes are so frantically attached. During his not very lengthy
tenure of the office of Chief Secretary it was asserted that Sir George
Trevelyan also had some such idea; but whether he went so far as to
draft his plan, and it was consigned to some forgotten pigeon-hole by
Mr. Gladstone, I cannot say.
When the Duke of Argyll described Sir George Trevelyan as a jelly-fish,
he made a comparison which, from my personal experience, I should call
particularly apt.
Ireland had very little use for such a flabby politician, and it may be
added, he had very little use for Ireland.
He was in such a devil of a fright at being forced to succeed poor Lord
Frederick Cavendish that it was some time before the pressure put upon
him sufficed to make him accept office, nor would he be induced to go
over to Dublin Castle at all until he had been given Cabinet rank. As
for the Cabinet, they were so anxious to settle upon a living target for
the Home Rulers to practise upon, and so afraid that through his default
one of themselves might have to undertake the unpleasant office, that
they would have given the prospective victim almost anything he liked,
on the principle of letting the condemned criminal choose what he
prefers for his final meal before that brief interview with the hangman.
Directly after the formation of the following Radical Government, I met
an Englishman of considerable political importance in Pall Mall, and he
observed:--
'The new Cabinet is quarrelling among themselves.'
'Who are fighting?' I asked.
'Chamberlain and Trevelyan,' he replied.
'What about?'
'Chamberlain says that he brought the party back into office, and he
wants the Colonial Office; but Gladstone insists on his being content
with the Local Government Board. Trevelyan says that, as he has for
years had experience in naval affairs, he ought to be made First Lord.
But Gladstone, though he cannot prevail on him to be Chief Secretary,
has sent him to the India Office.'
'And may give him free lodgings in Kilmainham if he is refractory,' I
chimed in. 'And so these two are like pigs with their bristles hurt,
poor things. There's a pity.'
Some time later, when I heard Messrs. Chamberlain and Trevelyan were so
disgusted with the Home Rule Bill that they were leaving the Government,
says I to myself, 'I wonder if Mr. Gladstone in his own heart thinks if
he had gratified their wishes about office he could have retained them.'
But as a matter of fact both are patriots far above such demeaning
insinuations.
Mr. John Morley was a very well-meaning Chief Secretary, but a very
misguided man.
In a conversation with me, Mr. Morley observed that, owing to the
agitation, he saw no alternative but to make Parnell Chief Secretary.
I said that would be no use, for if he attempted to do his duty he would
be shot, even more readily than I should.
Mr. Morley retorted:--
'He is the leader of the Irish nation.'
'I admit it,' I replied, 'and he is the only man you can make terms
with.'
'How?' says he.
'You had better ask him,' says I, 'to nominate some foreign potentate to
appoint commissioners who will say to Mr. Parnell, "Let Ireland pay her
share of the national debt and buy out every loyal person who wishes to
leave the country," and then, if Mr. Parnell says, "We are not able to
do that," let them retort, "We will then disfranchise you, for this
humbug has been going on long enough."'
'That's about it, according to your lights,' replied Mr. Morley.
Was I not right?
It is a singular fact that Ulster and Alsace-Lorraine have about the
same acreage--5,322,334 to 3,586,560--and about the same
population--1,581,357 to 1,719,470. The French and Germans are each
willing to spend a hundred millions of money and half a million lives,
the one to recover, the other to retain, the province, and yet Mr.
Gladstone proposed, not only to abandon Ulster, but to put it under the
rule of the people the Ulsterites hate most on earth.
It is also remarkable that at the time of the Union the population of
Belfast was 35,000, and Dublin 250,000. Now Belfast is 335,000, while
Dublin remains at a quarter of a million. Belfast, in point of customs,
is the third largest city in the British dominions, coming next after
London and Liverpool, whilst it is the finest shipbuilding town in the
world.
Yet its inhabitants were to be sold as though they were African slaves,
for the sole purpose of getting votes for the Liberal Government.
I was one day invited by Froude to come to his home to argue out the
Irish question with Mr. Jacob Bright and Mr. John Morley.
I counted on having Mr. Froude on my side, knowing his strong views, but
as host he would not interfere. However, Miss Cobbe was there, and to my
mind was equal to any of the company. With her on my side, I flatter
myself we were too many for the others; but the worst of all arguments
is that the arguing rarely serves any purpose except to make either
party more obstinate.
I knew John Bright very well.
He was far and away the most honest man of all the Liberal party, and he
fully realised the fact that a visible concentration of property and
universal suffrage could not exist together. He was therefore anxious to
enlarge the number of proprietors, but he did not countenance it being
done entirely at the expense of the English Government without the
tenants having to find such a sum of money out of their own pockets as
would give them an interest in paying off the Government charges.
He was a very broad-minded man, with a simplicity of character which was
admirable. I liked him much, and my one complaint against him was that
he would never accept my invitations to come and pay me a visit in
Kerry.
I never heard him make a speech, but with his beautiful voice it was a
great treat to hear him read Milton. On one occasion he took me to the
House specially to see Mr. Gladstone, but after nearly an hour he had
reluctantly to tell me that the Prime Minister could not find leisure
for our conversation that day owing to pressure of business, and another
opportunity never came.
Although I regret not having met Mr. Gladstone, I yet feel glad that I
never shook him by the hand. I may here mention that I never met Mr.
Parnell, though I have seen him in the House.
From my point of view Mr. John Morley has a dual existence. As man and
as historian he is Jekyl, but as politician he is Hyde.
There is a well-known story about him, so familiar to some of us that it
is possibly forgotten in England, wherefore I venture to relate it once
more.
He was on a car, and asked the driver:--
'Well, Pat, you'll be having great times when you get Home Rule?'
'We will, your honour--for a week,' replied the man.
'Why only a week?' inquired the politician.
'Driving the quality to the steamers.'
CHAPTER XVI
GLADSTONIAN LEGISLATION
Although the exact measure of my appreciation of the Irish policy of the
most dangerous Englishman of the nineteenth century has already been
clearly indicated by casual remarks in previous chapters, that will not
absolve me from duly setting forth some sketch of the inestimable amount
of evil which resulted from the interest he unfortunately took in my
unhappy land.
If Napoleon was the scourge of Europe, Mr. Gladstone was the most
malevolent imp of mischief that ever ruined any one country, and I am
heartily grieved that that country should have been mine.
It is so difficult to get English people to take any interest in Irish
topics that I fully expect this chapter will be skipped by most of my
readers east of Dublin. Yet if any will read these few pages, they will
get as clear a view of the harm one man can do a whole land as by wading
through hundreds of volumes, for I am giving them the concentrated
knowledge I have accumulated by years devoted to profound study of the
subject.
The course of history may be taken up almost on the morrow of the
famine, for potatoes began to be a scarce crop again in 1850, yet the
country was improving rapidly, and the relations between landlord and
tenant were as cordial as in any part of the world.
So they continued in absolute amity until what is virtually universal
suffrage was introduced and the ignoramus became the tool of every
political knave.
Mr. Gladstone stated that he brought in the Irish Church Act to pacify
the country in 1868, when the land was as peaceful as English pastures
on a Sunday evening. He must really have done so to propitiate English
dissenters, for no one in Ireland appeared to want it.
By this Act a resident gentleman was taken away from every parish in
Ireland, whereby the evils of absentee landlordism were gravely
enhanced.
Mr. Gladstone called it an act of sublime justice from England to
Ireland. Previously, in virtue of ancient treaties commencing as far
back as the reigns of William and Mary, the English Government was
giving Presbyterians a grant--called Regium Donum--of £70,000 a year,
and by a more recent arrangement was giving Maynooth a grant of £24,000,
but that Whig Government actually paid them off out of the spoils of the
Irish Church, thereby saving the British Exchequer £94,000 a year.
And if this be an act of justice, then Aristides can be classed among
hypocritical swindlers.
It must be borne in mind that when William Pitt caused the Act of Union
to be passed in Parliament, the union of the Churches was a fundamental
feature, and this, indeed, was the main inducement held out to
Protestants to promote the Union.
Surely it cannot be held to be a valid Union when the principal
consideration in it is set aside, to say nothing of increasing the
taxation by two million sterling a year more than was ever contemplated
by the Act. This was clearly borne out by a Royal Commission composed
mostly of Englishmen and presided over by Mr. Childers, an earnest
politician and an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The Catholic priests who expected that their Church would be established
were disappointed, while the landlords, who were generally Protestants,
had henceforth to support their clergy and at the same time to pay
tithes to the State.
As Irish taxation increased 50 per cent, while that of England only
increased 18 per cent., the Irish people did not find Mr. Gladstone's
Act soothing or profitable.
His next perpetration was the Land Act of 1870, whereby he provided that
no landlord could turn out his tenant without paying him for all his
improvements (even if these had been done without the knowledge or
sanction of the landlord) and giving the tenant a compensation in money
equal to about one-fourth of the fee-simple.
This Act might have been all right in principle, but it was useless in
practice, and the compensation made to the County Court Judge for
adjudicature came to far more than the amount awarded.
This is easily accounted for, thus:--
You might as well bring in an Act of Parliament to prevent people
cutting off their own noses.
No sane person does such a thing, and no landlord ever turned out an
improving tenant.
But the Irish tenants, having almost the sole representation of the
country in their hands, returned a body of representatives pledged to
the confiscation of landed property; and in order to keep his party in
power by securing their votes, Mr. Gladstone brought in the Land Act of
1881.
I heard him introduce the motion in the House of Commons, and his speech
was a truly marvellous feat of oratory. He was interrupted on all sides
of the House, and in a speech of nearly five hours in length never once
lost the thread of his discourse.
As far as I could judge, he never even by accident let slip one word of
truth.
When the Act passed, Mr. Gladstone anticipated that eight
sub-commissioners would do the work. This number very soon ran up to one
hundred sub-commissioners and more than twenty County Court valuers.
The result is that every tenant has been running down his land and
letting it go out of cultivation, for the tenants know the commissioners
value the ground as they find it, and a premium is thus, of course, put
on neglecting the soil.
To show the system on which the valuation was done, many cases have been
known of the commissioners arriving to value a property after three
o'clock on a December afternoon.
It is a positive fact that there are professional experts who obtain
substantial fees for showing tenants the speediest methods of damaging
their own land.
All the same I cannot help thinking their services are a matter of
supererogation, for a recalcitrant Irish tenant in the South and West
needs instruction in no branch of villainy.
On one of Lord Kenmare's estates, I executed drainage works costing over
£200. These were dependent upon sluices to keep out the tide at high
water. A few days before the land was to be inspected, the tenants put
bushes in the sluices, let the tide in and flooded the whole land.
And then a prating, mendacious local schoolmaster began comparing these
villains to the patriotic Dutch who flooded their land rather than
permit it to be conquered by the national foe.
I could give scores of such instances of wilful destruction of property
for the purpose of obtaining a reduction.
Here is one.
A tenant near Blarney, in County Cork, was seen to be ploughing up a
valuable water meadow.
When asked by a gentleman why he was injuring his land, he replied
without hesitation that he was going to get his rent fixed, and
immediately afterwards he should lay it down again as a water meadow.
It is scarcely credible how great was the amount of perjury that this
Act brought into the country.
A tenant on a property to which I was agent, whose rent was £6 a year,
swore he expended £395 on improvements and all that it was worth
afterwards was £4, 10s. He received the implicit credit of the court.
According to the laws of the Roman Catholic Church perjury in a court of
justice is a reserved sin for which absolution can only be given by a
bishop or by priests specially appointed for that purpose.
One priest applied to the bishop for plenary powers, and said the bishop
to him:--
'Are the people so generally bad in your parish?'
'It's the fault of the laws, my lord,' replied the priest.
'What laws?' asked the bishop.
'Firstly, under the Crimes Act, my poor people have to swear they do not
know the moonlighters that come to the house, or they would be murdered.
'Secondly, under the Arrears Act, they have to swear they are worth
nothing in the world or they would not get the Government money.
'Thirdly, under the Land Act, while they have to swear up their own
improvements, they must also swear down the value of the land, or they
will get no reductions.
'So you see, my lord, the sin lies at the door of those who made the
infamous laws which lead weak sinners into temptation they cannot be
expected to overcome.'
The bishop said nothing, but he gave the priest all the powers he
desired.
I myself heard this story from a parish priest who was present, and as I
have several times told it to different people, it may have found its
way into print, though I have no recollection of ever seeing it in black
and white.
Allusion having just been made to the Arrears Act, it may be here
opportune to point out that this was the next step in Mr. Gladstone's
long sequence of Irish mismanagement. This iniquitous measure provided
that no matter how great the arrears owed by the tenant, by lodging one
year's rent another could be obtained from the Government, and the
landlord was compelled to wipe out the balance. So that if Jack, Tom,
and James were all tenants on town land, should Jack be an honest man he
obtained no redress, whereas if Tom and James were hardened defaulters
they obtained the complete settlement of all their arrears.
To obtain the grant of a year's rent from Government, the tenant had to
swear as to his assets and also as to the selling value of his farm.
Here is an illustration which came under my own observation.
A tenant named Richard Sweeney, whose rent was £48 a year, owed three
years' rent. He paid one year, the Government provided another, and the
landlord had to forgive the third.
To obtain this result, Sweeney swore that the selling value of his farm
was _nil_, and he received a receipt in full.
A few weeks later he served me--as agent for the landlord--with notice
that he had sold his interest in the property for £630.
That is not the end of my story.
The purchaser was a man named Murphy, and a very few years afterwards,
upon the ground that the rent was too dear, he took the farm for which
he had paid £630 to Sweeney into the Land Courts and got the rent
reduced to £36.
The absurdity of this system was well brought out before the Fry
Commission, when one high-commissioner and a sub-commissioner both said
that in valuing the land they took into consideration the tenant's
occupation interest.
The reader will see the way this works out, if he will accept the very
simple hypothetical case of two tenants holding land to the worth of £40
each, and one of them only paying £20 a year rent. When they both took
their cases into the Land Court, the man paying the lower rent of £20
would obtain the larger reduction, because he had the greater
occupation.
These facts will show that a Purchase Bill was an absolute necessity.
Lord Dufferin truly remarked that landlord and tenant were both in the
same bed, and Mr. Gladstone thought to settle their disputes by giving
the tenant a larger share than he had ever had before. But the tenant
considered that as he had obtained that concession by fraud and
violence, if he could only give one effective kick more, he would put
the landlord on the floor for the rest of the term of their national
life.
When introducing the Land Act of 1870, Mr. Gladstone proved himself if
not an Irish statesman, an admirable prophet, for he denounced in
anticipation exactly what the effect of the Land Act of 1881 would be.
In 1870, he prospectively criticised such an institution as the Land
Court, which in 1881 he proposed, with its power to give a 'judicial
rent.'
'But it is suggested we should establish, permanently and positively, a
power in the hands of the State to reduce excessive rents. Now I should
like to hear a careful argument in support of that plan. I wish at all
events to retain at all times a judicial habit of not condemning a thing
utterly until I have heard what is to be said for it; but I own I have
not heard, I do not know, and I cannot conceive, what is to be said for
the prospective power to reduce excessive rents. If I could conceive a
plan more calculated than everything else, first of all, for throwing
into confusion the whole economical arrangements of the country;
secondly, for driving out of the field all solvent and honest men who
might be bidders for farms; thirdly, for carrying widespread
demoralisation throughout the whole mass of the Irish people, I must say
it is this plan.'
And again:--
'We are not ready to accede to a principle of legislation by which the
State shall take into its own hands the valuation of rent throughout
Ireland. I say, "take into its own hands" because it is perfectly
immaterial whether the thing shall be done by a State officer forming
part of the Civil Service, or by an arbitration acting under State
authority, or by any other person invested by the law with power to
determine on what terms as to rent every holding in Ireland shall be
held.'
This categorical denunciation of the principle which he was then asked,
and which he peremptorily refused to sanction, was not enough for Mr.
Gladstone, for the records of debate show he went farther, but enough
has been cited to show that never was prophecy more fully fulfilled.
Outrage followed outrage with a rapidity unequalled in Europe, and that
in a country which previous to his remedial measures had practically
been unstained by an agrarian outrage for fifty years.
It would certainly be both remiss of me, and altogether below the
character which I trust I have acquired for honest plain speaking, if I
omitted to give my views upon Mr. Wyndham's Act, for those readers who
regard my book as something more than a storehouse of anecdotes--and
since it is written at all, I maintain it claims to be more than
that--having noticed the freedom with which I have spoken of previous
English legislation for Ireland, may very naturally think I should be
begging the question of the hour, if I did not offer a few observations
on the latest development of the Irish question.
I must emphatically repeat what I have already asserted:--that the Acts
of Mr. Gladstone rendered a Purchase Bill inevitable, and it fell to Mr.
Wyndham's lot to formulate the scheme which has now become law.
Mr. Wyndham's Act is a great one for Ireland, because where a tenant
previously paid £100 a year rent, all he will have to pay--even at
twenty-four years' purchase--is £80 a year, and at that rate with the
bonus the landlord obtains twenty-seven years' purchase. But this scale
is a little halcyon in most instances.
It should prove a boon to the country, and it is the necessary outcome
of the Land Act of 1881, by which rents were cut down by commissioners,
whose means of living depended on the reductions they made.
And to make this state of things yet more remarkable, there were two
courts established for fixing rates. The one consisted of
sub-commissioners, who were paid by the year, and the other was that of
the County Court judge, who was wholly dependent on a valuer paid by the
day.
So, whoever cut down the most earned the most.
A valuer in Limerick was remonstrated with for cutting down local rents
so low, and he replied:--
'It is all for the good of trade, for it will bring every tenant into
the Court.'
And so it actually did, for that Court very shortly afterwards was chock
full of cases.
My own opinion is that the Wyndham Act would have been far more
beneficial, if the Government had given the tenant a free grant of some
of the purchase money, and insisted on his finding some more of it
himself, whereby would have been created a deeper interest in his land
than is now inspired in his breast by the mere transference of his lease
from his old landlord to the Government.
I made this remark to an Englishman at the Carlton Club, and he said to
me that, according to his view, England should lend whatever money was
wanted but give no free grant.
I replied:--
'A poor man from Kerry came to my house in London, and asked for the
loan of a pound. I declined to lend him the sovereign, but I did lend
him half a crown, and as he bolted to America the very next day, I think
I had the best of the bargain.'
My friend accepted the analogy and dropped the subject.
That was far more tactful on his part than the conduct of the English
Government, for the different Acts of Parliament relating to Ireland
have had the effect of rendering the feelings between landlord and
tenant much worse than they were before.
And the Act of 1881, which provided that landlord and tenant should have
a lawsuit every fifteen years, brought the feeling up to boiling pitch.
Now the Government inherits all this hatred by proposing to be the sole
landlord in Ireland. Therefore, England is reaping the whirlwind where
Mr. Gladstone sowed the wind.
This does not appear to me to be sound statesmanship. An open hatred of
the Government has been instilled into the brain of thousands of Irish
children side by side with a more hypocritical hatred of the landlord.
Now that these two are to be combined in one passion, and that directed
against the receiver of rent, matters do not present a promising
outlook.
If the Government sell up those tenants who do not pay rent in years to
come, no Irish occupiers of the property will be obtainable.
If English tenants be imported, the latter had better insist on coats of
mail for themselves, and on life insurance policies in favour of the
nearest relatives they leave behind in England.
That reminds me of a story.
Sir Denis Fitzpatrick and his daughter were making a tour of the Kerry
fjords some years ago, and the lady asked a boatman on Caragh Lake, what
would happen to a tenant who took an evicted farm.
The reply was:--
'I don't think he'd do it again, Miss, leastways it's in the next world
alone he'd have the chance of making such a fool of himself.'
This may be commended to any unsophisticated English who contemplate
Hibernian immigration as a prospective way of cheaply obtaining that
once popular bait of Mr. Jesse Collins, three acres and a cow.
Here is another aspect of not paying rent to Government, which would
occur to no one unacquainted with Ireland, but is quite
characteristic:--
Suppose twenty men were tenants on a townland; one would pay, and the
other nineteen after being evicted would also squat down on his patch.
Unless caretakers at a cost of about three times the rent were put in
under excessive police protection, all the nineteen farms would promptly
become derelict.
It would have been far better if the Government had given a free grant
of one quarter of the purchase money, had compelled the tenant to
himself find another quarter, and had lent the remaining half for a
comparatively short term, say twenty-five years.
Then the tenant would have had genuine interest in the redemption of his
own property.
But, asks the English tourist impressed by the apparent beggarliness of
all he sees, how could the tenant procure a quarter of the money?
Naturally it would be alleged by the agitators that he could not. All
the same you may confidently contradict any such denial as that.
It is clear that almost any tenant could get the money, if you bear in
mind that though rents are so reduced, the most unimproving tenant can
get from ten to twenty years' purchase for the good-will of his farm.
Of course, just now the old order is changing considerably in Ireland,
but the loss of their old landlords is not appreciated by the better
class of tenants, though the good have of course to suffer for the
bad--a thing even better known in my country than elsewhere. I heard an
interesting confirmation of this from a lady of my acquaintance, who
having asked a respectable woman what had become of her son, received
the reply:--
'Ah, for sure, he has got a situation with a farmer.'
'Well, that's a good start in life, is it not?' asked my friend, to
which the woman retorted in melancholy accents:--
'That may be, but my family have always been rared (_i.e._ reared) on
the gentry until now,' thereby expressing a feeling very prevalent in
Ireland to-day.
The Home Rulers allege that these high prices which are paid for the
good-will of land are attributable to two causes:--
_(a)_ Excess of competition for land.
_(b)_ Irish returning from America.
Both these reasons are absurd.
When the population of Ireland was nearly eight millions, these prices
could not be obtainable, nor anything like them, while to-day the
population is only four millions. Unless the returning emigrants thought
they were obtaining good value for their money, they would hardly
abandon a country--the United States--where they can get land for
nothing.
The enormous increase in the Irish Savings Banks, as well as the
deposits in other Irish Banks, must be almost entirely derived from the
savings of the farmers. The landlords have been ruined by the Land Act;
labourers have no money to spare; and traders will not leave their money
idle at the small rate of interest credited.
If the farmers thought they had better means of using the money, they
would withdraw it, and they are without doubt as well aware as I am how
they can do the English Government in the future, for if there is any
roguery unknown to them, it is infinitesimal.
I cannot say that I think many landlords will leave Ireland in
consequence of the Wyndham Act. The few who will go are those who are
glad to be quit at any price, and to be free to pack out of the country.
But many a landlord will be far more comfortable on his own estate, when
he has rid himself of all his tenants.
One feature of this curious Act is that the Geraldines have got rid of
the last of their property, and escaped all the forfeitures.
As for the sporting rights, far too much fuss has been made over them.
Except where there are plantations or good fishing, they are of very
little value one way or the other. The Act will not affect the hunting.
Small Irish farmers like to see the hunt almost as much as the hunting
set themselves like to participate in it.
Of course, too, the Act ought to be popular in Ireland, because it is
taking so much money out of England.
A point I wish to emphasise is one about which there has been a great
deal of misconception.
A considerable amount of capital has been made out of the depreciation
of agricultural produce in Ireland as compared with England. But Ireland
is a stock-producing country and not an agricultural country in the
strict sense, for the cultivation of wheat in Ireland has long since
ceased to exist. The true relation may be seen in the fact that in
England the difficulty of getting store-cattle was a loss to farmers,
whereas it has been a decided gain to farmers in Ireland--though they
are not best pleased when you impress the fact on them.
Mr. Finlay Dun in _Landlords and Tenants in Ireland in 1881_ cites some
examples which may be apt to-day when we are considering Mr. Wyndham's
Act.
He writes on page 64:--
'Kilcockan parish between Lismore and Youghal was in great part disposed
of in the Landed Estates Court thirty years ago. It was bought, some of
it by occupiers, some of it by shopkeepers and attorneys. Rents have
been raised, and there is not much appearance of prosperity. Newtown,
for several generations the fee-simple property of a family of the name
of Nason, after the famine of 1846, was cut up and sold; the family
residence is in ruin. At Lower Curryglass, a few miles east of Lismore,
a good farm of five hundred acres, belonging to a family who have been
obliged to leave it, bears sad evidence of neglect; the good old
deserted manor-house, the farm buildings, and a dozen cottages in the
village are falling to pieces. Contrary to what might be anticipated,
some of the smaller proprietors in this district have been strenuous
supporters of the Land League, although it is to be hoped that they
repudiate the destruction of the cattle on the land of Mr. Grant, which
were stabbed, and some of them drowned in the river. Mr. Grant had come
under the ban of the League for evicting a dissipated bankrupt tenant,
whose debts to the extent of two hundred pounds he had paid, and who
would have been reinstated, if there had been the remotest prospect of
reformed habits or of getting clear of his difficulties. Such acts
appear to justify the statement, "that Irishmen don't know what they
want, and won't be satisfied until they get it."'
God knows we have waded knee deep in blood of men, and domestic animals
since that was written, yet to-day are we any nearer the final solution
of the Irish difficulties? In my opinion, certainly not.
CHAPTER XVII
THE STATE OF KERRY
It has been stated that it is only within the last forty years that the
bulk of the people of Ireland, long outside the pale of the ballot-box,
have actively entered political life. This is quite true.
The whole of the Home Rule troubles followed the presentation of
practically universal suffrage to the half-educated and
over-enthusiastic Irish, who are easily led away, apt to believe
mob-orators, and, by inherited instinct, to go against the Government.
What the effect of universal suffrage in India would be it is not my
business to estimate. Still, the analogy of what the ballot-paper
provided in Ireland, if applied to the teeming population of our
Oriental Empire, suggests a pandemonium to which the horrors of the
Mutiny are but a mere scream of agony.
The ballot transformed Ireland; or rather, it permitted the worst
passions of the most ignorant to be played upon by interested
adventurers, when the political power of Ireland had passed for ever out
of the hands of the restraining classes. Democracy spelt anarchy, and
the word patriotism was degraded in a way that had no parallel since the
French Revolution.
The first outward and visible sign was the creation of the Irish Home
Rule party, which constituted itself separate and distinct from the rest
of the House of Commons, the standard of which the new gang was to
debase. Nor did they rest content until it became the scene of faction
fights and organised obstruction in combination with the flagrant
violation of all decencies of language and behaviour.
Members were returned for Irish constituencies who had been convicts;
others came who richly deserved imprisonment for life. They instigated
murders, and clamoured because the murderers were not regarded as
heroes; or if they were hung, canonised them as martyrs. They attempted
to prostitute the law to their own base standard of political morality.
They assiduously laboured to render life valueless in Ireland and
property worthless, whilst no deed was too cowardly, no atrocity too
barbarous, for them to praise. They alone in modern times warred against
women and children. Animals were the dumb victims of the inhuman
ferocity they in no way tried to check, and they effectively taught the
receptive Irish millions that a British Government could be coerced into
giving what was demanded provided a sufficient number of crimes created
a holocaust large enough to intimidate the weak-kneed at St. Stephen's.
But Mr. Parnell and the Land League would all have been promptly reduced
to the pitiful unimportance from which they had so noisily emerged if it
had not been for Mr. Gladstone.
The root of English politics has been party government--'where all are
for a party, and none are for the State,' to reverse Macaulay's famous
line. Now the Irish vote of sixty was a solid asset, capable in many
cases of weighing down one side of the political scale. It was obvious
that the votes would be unscrupulously given, and Mr. Gladstone bid
higher than the Tories. Literally the necessary parliamentary machinery
for the government of the United Kingdom was clogged by the
Nationalists, who brought obstruction to a fine art, and it was Mr.
Gladstone who always gave in when the Irish outcry would have stimulated
an honest man to avail himself of all loyal forces which law and the
common weal provided.
Long before this the Irish political agitator had set himself to
embitter the relations existing between landlord and tenant. An
Englishman goes into Parliament for various motives; an Irishman for his
living. If he did not outshout his neighbour, if he were not implicitly
obedient to Mr. Parnell, if he did not arouse the worst passions of the
worst people in his constituency, he was promptly dismissed.
To do them justice, the Irish members gave such an exhibition of
blackguardism as has no parallel on earth, though it earned but the
mildest rebuke from their obsequious ally, Mr. Gladstone.
In 1869, for example, before this balloting away of all that was
creditable to Ireland, the relations between landlord and tenant were of
the most kindly nature. The leading landlords of Kerry generally
represented the county in Parliament with uniform decency and occasional
brilliance, while larger sums were borrowed and expended by the
landlords under the Land Improvement Act than were spent in the same way
in any other county. I can prove that the principal landowner in
Kerry--Lord Kenmare--expended a greater sum in ten years on his estates
than he received out of them, though I cannot say he ever found out for
himself that it was better to give than to receive.
For fifty years prior to what Mr. Gladstone was pleased to call his
'remedial legislation,' Kerry was unstained by agrarian crime; all
things went on smoothly, and a number of railways were constructed with
guaranteed capital, half of which was contributed by the landlords,
although they received no benefit from the increased prices of farm
produce caused by railway communication. The Board of Works returns show
that the money borrowed by Kerry landlords under the different Land
Improvement Acts amounted to almost half a million, and yet the
deductions made under the Land Act were greater in Kerry than in other
counties.
Here is an instance from my own experience.
I purchased from the Government in 1879 an estate, the rental of which
was £517, 2s. 4d.; it was considered so cheaply let that the majority of
the tenants offered twenty-seven years' purchase for their farms. I
borrowed from the Government and expended on drainage £1120, 14s. 11d.
Then the Commissioners under the Land Act reduced the rental to £495,
10s. 6d., and the Government which sold me the estate continued to
compel me to pay interest on the amount borrowed, although by its own
legislation I was deprived of any advantage resulting from the outlay.
The rental of Kerry in 1870 was considerably less than it had been forty
years previously, and higher prices were paid for the fee-simple of land
than were offered in any other part of Ireland. But Mr. Gladstone's
'remedial manoeuvres' changed the country and the people.
Demoralising bribes to the Irish nation frittered away the proceeds of
the plunder of the Irish Church. A notable instance was a million under
the Arrears Act, the principle of which was that no honest tenant who
had paid his rent could derive any benefit from it, but that any
drunkard or squanderer who had not paid his rent might have it paid for
him by the Government on swearing that he was unable to pay.
Here is an instance that occurred on an estate under my management.
A tenant, whose yearly rent was £48, had one year's rent paid by
Government and another year's rent given up by his landlord, on his
swearing that the selling value of his farm was _nil_; ten weeks
afterwards he served me with a notice, as required by the statute, that
he had sold the interest of the farm for £670.
Again, there was a tenant who swore that he had expended £513, 14s. 6d.
in permanent improvements, and that after this expenditure the fair
letting value of the farm was only £17, though the original rent was
£26, 4s.
How could I blame an ignorant peasantry for making false statements,
when laws were framed by the leaders of public opinion in England which
released the Irish tenants from every moral obligation, and made their
assumed responsibilities and agreements a dead letter; while orators,
living on the wages of patriotism, were allowed to preach sedition and
plunder to an excitable people? The result was that the work of
demoralisation made rapid progress, perjury became a joke, assassination
was merely 'removal,' and men who had been brutally murdered were said
to have met with an accident.
I have already shown how apt a prophet Mr. Gladstone was in his forecast
in the House of Commons in 1870, and one more quotation adds testimony
to his inspiration--though from what direction it came I will not linger
to inquire:--
'Compulsory valuation and fixity of tenure would bring about total
demoralisation and a Saturnalia of crime.'
Exactly.
Mr. Laing, formerly M.P. for Orkney, in a magazine article defended the
'Plan of Campaign' as an innocent attempt to defend the weak against the
strong, and as having been adopted only on estates where rents were too
high, in fact, as the result of high rents. As a matter of fact, in
Orkney the rents advanced 194 per cent., and during the same period in
Kerry they dwindled. He also asserted that the Irish tenants'
improvements had been confiscated by the landlords as the tenant
improved.
Certainly the law did not prevent them increasing the rent; but,
unfortunately for the reasoning of Mr. Laing, and his taking for granted
imaginary 'confiscations,' figures most decidedly prove that the
landlords did not use any such power. The rentals have steadily
decreased while the landlords were borrowing and expending nearly half a
million in my own county.
This fact is conclusively demonstrated by the Government returns.
As to the National League--with all its paraphernalia of boycotting,
shooting from behind a hedge, merciless beating, shooting in the legs,
and other similar variations of Irish Home Rule, on which I shall dwell
in a later chapter--being only a protector of the weak tenant against
the hard landlord, I think one fact will prove more forcibly than any
argument the fallacy of such an assertion.
There were two estates in Kerry let at a much lower rate than any others
in the county--those of Lord Cork and Colonel Oliver.
Colonel Oliver's agent was the only one fired at in Kerry in 1886, and
Lord Cork's agent was the only one obliged to employ over two hundred
police to protect him in endeavouring to recover in 1887 rent which was
due in 1884. This rent was due on land let at considerably under the
Poor Law valuation, and the rents were only half what was paid in 1860.
These cases afford a decided proof that the Land or National League
carries on its government irrespective of high or low rents, and the
'Plan of Campaign' is worked according as the local branches of the
League have disciplined or terrorised the inhabitants of a district, the
orders from 'headquarters' depending on the probability of success.
I should like to retort on Mr. Laing that, while the evidence before the
Land Commissioner proved the rental of Ireland was diminishing, that of
the country where his own property lay increased to an unusual degree. I
do not say the landlords confiscated the tenants' improvements, possibly
they made none. But figures are hard facts, and they prove three
things:--
First, that Kerry landlords spent £453,539 on improvements. Secondly,
that the rental of Kerry was lower in 1880 than in 1840. Thirdly, that
the rental of Orkney increased 194 per cent. during that time.
On the south-west coast of Kerry lie the Blasquets, a group of islands
the property of Lord Cork, one of them inhabited by some twenty-five
families. The old rental was £80, which was regularly paid. This was
reduced by Lord Cork to £40, the Government valuation being £60. Now
this island reared about forty milch cows, besides young cattle and
sheep, and at the period when might meant right in Ireland the
inhabitants, having some surplus stock, took possession of another
island to feed them on.
This island was let to another man, but he was not able to resist the
tenants any more than the mouse nibbling a piece of cheese is able to
fight a cat.
For ten years up to 1887 those tenants paid no poor rate. They
successfully resisted the payment of county cess, to the detriment of
their fellow taxpayers, and they only paid one half year's rent out of
six, and that not until they had been served with writs. And these
people, in the year 1886, sent a memorial to the Government to save them
from starvation.
This is a remarkable case, and proves that poverty and the cry of
starvation are not always the result of rents and taxes, as the Irish
patriots and their English separatist allies so frequently assert.
I am going to quote a colloquy overheard at a Kerry fair to show how
deeply the teaching of Messrs. Parnell, Gladstone, Dillon, Morley,
Davitt, Biggar, and Company has taken root in the Irish mind.
Jim from Castleisland meeting Mick from Glenbeigh, asks:--
'Well, Mick, an' how are ye getting on?'
'Illigant, glory be to the Saints.'
'How's that, Mick? Sure, prices is low.'
'True for you, Jim, prices is low; but what we _has_ we _has_, for we
pays nobody.'
And to that I will add another observation.
Somebody asked me:--
'If Ireland were to get Home Rule, what would become of the agitator?'
I replied:--
'He would be called a reformer, unless it paid him better to clamour for
a fresh Union. He'd sell all his patriotism for five shillings, and his
loyalty could be bought by a few glasses of whisky.'
And that's the whole truth of the matter.
CHAPTER XVIII
A GLANCE AT MY STEWARDSHIP
Davitt called the generation after O'Connell's 'a soulless age of
pitiable cowardice.'
I should call the generation that was active in the early eighties 'a
cowardly age of pitiless brutality.'
Times had begun to mend in Ireland from 1850, and had continued to do so
until the ballot made the country a prey to self-seeking political
agitators.
Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him
into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager
accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime.
Yet this happened after Fenianism had practically died out in the early
seventies.
I myself heard Mr. Gladstone say that landlords had been weighed in the
balance and had not been found wanting, for the bad ones were
exceptional.
None the less were they and their representatives delivered over to
their natural opponents, who were egged on by the Land League and by its
tacit or active supporters in the House of Commons.
Emphatically I repeat the assertion that neither Mr. Parnell nor the
Land League would have been formidable without the active help of Mr.
Gladstone.
Before 1870 Kerry used to be represented by gentlemen of the county. The
present members in 1904 are an attorney's clerk, an assistant
schoolmaster, a Dublin baker, and a fourth of about the same class.
This was no more foreseen by the landlords when the ballot was
introduced any more than we anticipated the way in which we were to be
plundered. Many considered that the confiscation of the Irish Church,
which had been established since the reign of Elizabeth, was an inroad
into the rights of property very likely to be followed up by further
aggressions, but we never looked for such a wholesale violation as
ensued.
By the Act of 1870 no tenant could be turned out without being paid a
sum averaging a fourth of the fee-simple in addition to being paid for
his improvements, and there the most observant of us thought the worst
had been reached.
When the Act of 1881 was passed, I met Lord Spencer, one of the authors
of it, and said to him:--
'This Act will have as much effect in settling Ireland as throwing a cup
of dirty water into the Thames would have in creating a flood.'
My words were soon proved right, for the tenants, having obtained half
the landlord's property by it, thought that by well working their voting
and shooting powers they would get the remainder.
I have been getting away from my own experiences to give my own
convictions. When you have meditated for twenty years amid the ruins of
what you had been building up all your life long and know that it is due
to Irish outrage and English misrule, there is a temptation to speak
plainly on breaking silence.
The year 1878 was a wet year and yielded a bad harvest; 1879 was worse.
The prosperity of Ireland depends on its harvest, and starvation is the
opportunity of the lying agitator.
On July 8, 1880, I gave evidence before the Royal Commission on
Agriculture, being mainly examined by the president, the Duke of
Richmond and Gordon, others on the board being Lord Carlingford, Mr.
Stansfeld, afterwards Lord, Mr. Joseph Cowen, and Mr. Mitchell Henry.
Here are some of my statements on a then experience of thirty-one
years:--
'The expenditure by landlords on farm buildings is as great in Ireland
as in Scotland.'
'In the exceptional state of things I strongly disapprove of
tenant-right in Ireland, which, as Lord Palmerston said, is landlord
wrong.'
'Small holdings are a very bad thing in Ireland where they are not mixed
with large holdings.'
'The distress in Kerry is considerable, but has been considerably
exaggerated.'
'Every tenant in Ireland has six months to redeem after he is evicted.'
'I have never known a man leave a farm unless compelled.'
'I contradict the statement that tenants make improvements which tend to
increase the letting value of the land.'
'You pay four times as much for spade tillage as for ploughing by
horse.'
'Bad farming in Ireland is due to want of education and to the enhanced
subdivision of the land. When the farmer gets higher up the social scale
he will have more sense than to make beggars of his children by
subdivision.'
'Distress has not produced the discontent.'
'Almost more land has been sold in Kerry than in any county in Ireland.'
Three months later, in my evidence before the Irish Land Act Commission,
in answer to the Chairman, I stated that in my opinion it was simply
impossible to arbitrate on rent. I had two tenants of my own whose
yearly rent was £20 and whose valuation was £20. One of them in 1880
sold £135 worth of pigs and butter, and the other man's children were
assisted in charity from my house, though both had equal means of
success.
I also pointed out that there were then 300,000 occupiers of land in
Ireland, whose holdings were under £8 Poor Law valuation, and these
occupiers when their potatoes failed had nothing but relief works,
starvation, or emigration. To give them their whole rent would not meet
the difficulty.
I submitted a scheme of purchase, in which Baron Dowse was greatly
interested, and I suggested that all holdings under £4 a year should be
ejected at Petty Sessions, because it was a great hardship for the
tenant of such a holding to have £2, 10s. costs put upon him.
I ended with:--
'There is a case in this county in connection with which there is likely
to be very considerable disturbance. A man had a farm put up for sale
and a Nationalist bought it at a very low figure, on the understanding
that he was to keep it for the man's family; but as soon as he got it he
turned Conservative and kept it.'
BARON DOWSE--'Turned what?'
MYSELF--'Conservative.'
BARON DOWSE--'Rogue, I would say. You would not say that Conservatives
are rogues?'
Since that was a debatable point on which the Commission had no
jurisdiction to inquire, I returned no answer.
As the distress was alluded to above, I may lighten the recent
seriousness of my observations by an anecdote on the topic.
In 1880 the Duchess of Marlborough organised a fund for supplying the
people with meal. The Dublin Mansion House did the same, but their meal
was of a coarser description.
A Blasquet Islander was asked how he was getting on, and made answer:--
'Illigant, glory be to the Saints. We're eating the Duchess, and feeding
two pigs on the Mansion House.'
This recalls the story of the Englishman who inquired of a Kerry man
which measure of English legislation had proved most beneficial for
Ireland.
'The Famine (of 1879) was the best, beyond a shadow of doubt,' was the
reply, 'for I fattened and sold ninety fine turkeys on the strength of
it.'
In 1880 some Kerry men did a very good stroke of business. They sent a
cargo of potatoes from Killorglin to Scotland and brought them back as
imported Champion seed, selling them for six times the original price.
About this period Mr. Leeson-Marshall, who had been away from Kerry and
coming back found some cottages near Milltown still only half built,
observed:--
'Good God, aren't those houses finished yet?'
'Well, sor,' was the reply, 'the contract's finished but the houses
aren't.'
And it has been my life-long experience that ninety-five per cent, of
all the penalties in contracts are worthless, as the contractors
themselves are only too well aware.
Being a land agent, I wish to provide some account from another pen of
my stewardship, for which said stewardship I was falsely called 'the
most rack-renting agent in Ireland.'
Out of Mr. Finlay Dun's book, from which I have previously quoted, I
condense the following from the chapter he devoted to the estates for
which I was agent.
He observes that in 1881 my firm had the supervision of eighty-eight
estates, upwards of three thousand farming tenants, and annually
collected rents to the value of a quarter of a million sterling. From
the particulars I furnished him he deduces:--
'So recently as the end of November the Lady Day rents had been well
paid up; old arrears had been reduced; on two estates in the Court of
Chancery £6000 had been collected with only a few shillings in default.
Dairy farmers prospering had been particularly well able to pay rents
and other claims. More recent rent collections, unfortunately, were not
so satisfactory. Tenants generally had earned the money, but had not
been allowed to pay it over.
'Many of the low-rented estates were badly farmed and the tenantry in
low water. On the higher rented, the struggle for existence had brought
out extra industry and energy and led to fair success.'
The following provided an apt illustration:--
'Mr. Gould Adams of Kilmachill had a small estate on the north side of a
hill rented at 20s. an acre; the rents were paid up, the tenants doing
well. On the southern aspect of the same hill, with better land, at the
devoutly desiderated Griffith's valuation, which was 16s. 4d., the
tenants were invariably hard up, some of them two years in arrears. All
tenants had free sale, averaging five years' rent.
'The larger proprietors, as a rule, were most helpful and liberal to
their tenants. Where improvements were not effected or initiated by the
landlords, they were seldom done at all. There had often been
considerable difficulty in overcoming the prejudice and "the
rest-and-be-thankful" spirit both of landlords and tenants.
'On Sir George Colthurst's Ballyvourney estate, twenty miles east of
Killarney, under Mr. Hussey's auspices about £30,000 had been expended
in draining, building, and roadmaking. The economic value of many
holdings had been doubled, although the rents had only been increased
five per cent., and subsequently the Commissioners fixed the rents at 25
per cent. less than they had been fifty years earlier.
'The extending village of Mill Street had been in great measure
reconstructed by his exertions.
'The Land League having enforced non-payment of rent, the obligation to
meet other debts was weakened. Although there was more money than usual
in the hands of the farming community, shopkeepers were not so willingly
and promptly paid as formerly. Want of security checked the improved
business which should have set in after a good harvest. The Land League
agitation generally originated with the publicans, small shopkeepers,
and bankrupt farmers, rather than with the actual land occupiers. For
peace and protection, many pay their subscription to the League and
allow their names to be enrolled. The intimidation and 'boycotting,'
which was so widely had recourse to, rendered it dangerous for either
farmers or tradesmen to make a stand against the mob. With Sam Weller it
was regarded expedient to shout with the biggest crowd.'
Thus wrote a critical visitor keenly surveying the situation in no
prejudiced spirit, having gone on a visit to Ireland to inquire into the
subjects of land tenure and estate management.
In his next chapter is a tribute to Lord Kenmare, 'a kind and
considerate landlord, united to his people by strong ties of race and
creed, residing for a great part of the year on his estates, ready with
purse and influence to advance the interests of his neighbourhood. On
his mansion and on the town of Killarney, since his accession to the
property in 1871, he has spent £100,000. At his own expense he has
erected a town hall, and improved and beautified Killarney. Within the
last twenty years £10,000 of arrears have been written off. From last
year's rents ten to twenty per cent, was deducted. During the last few
years of distress, £15,000 has been borrowed for draining and other
improvements; regular work has thus been found for the labourer; on such
outlay in many instances no percentage has been charged. Since 1870,
three hundred labourers have been comfortably housed and provided with
gardens or allotments varying from one to three pounds annually.'
I could not myself so tersely put the situation to-day as by quoting
this contemporary narrative, the facts for which I supplied.
Once more let me draw upon Mr. Finlay Dun. 'Unmindful of all this
consistent liberality, ungrateful for the great efforts to improve his
poorer neighbours, popular prejudice has been roused against Lord
Kenmare; it has been impossible to collect rents; threatening letters
have been sent to him. Mortified with the apparent fruitlessness of his
humane endeavours he has been compelled to leave Killarney House.
'His agent, Mr. Hussey, who for twenty years has been earnestly and
intelligently labouring to improve Irish agriculture, to bring more
capital to bear on it, to render it more profitable, and has, besides,
most energetically striven to elevate and house more decently the
labouring population, has also brought down on himself the odium of the
powers that be. For months he has had to travel armed and guarded by a
couple of constables; now he has thought it discreet to leave the
country.'
This, however, is erroneous. I only took a house for my family in London
for the winter, and was backwards and forwards between Kerry and the
metropolis.
Against all this let me set another quotation. In _New York Tablet_ for
1880, a letter from Daniel O'Shea, who stated that for a large number of
years he was a resident in Killarney.
'Among the most prominent tyrants was Lord Kenmare, who has so recently
surpassed himself and his antecedents in despotism. He is a lineal
descendant of the original land thief, Valentine Brown, who was a
special pet of 'the Virgin Queen' Bess, and strange to relate, this
descendant of that Brown is a much-favoured pet of John Brown's Queen.
Let me explain that he lives with the Queen in London where he holds the
position of chamberlain (_sic_) ... At Aghadoe House now resides that
ruthless Sam Hussey. Allow me to give you an outline of this heartless
fellow's antecedents. This Hussey is of English origin and was formerly
a cattle-dealer, and practised usury as far back as 1845. If all Ireland
were to be searched for a similar despot he would not be found. He is a
regular anti-Christ and Orangeman at heart, and, in fact, he acts as
agent for all the bankrupt landlords in Kerry. An English-Irish landlord
is an alien in heart, a despot by instinct, an absentee by inclination;
and all the foul confederacy of landlordism in Kerry is always in direct
opposition to the cause of Ireland.'
There is a copious mendacity about that effusion which makes me think
the real mission of the writer should have been to become an Irish
Member of Parliament. His powers of misrepresentation would have raised
him to an eminence among obstructionists.
After all, scurrilous denunciation never affected me. His life by Sir
Wemyss Reid reveals how Mr. W.E. Forster flinched under the vituperation
levelled at his head. But he was not an Irishman, least of all a Kerry
man, and so he never felt the fun of the fray, the grim earnest of the
fight which made me set my teeth and give as good as I received. Indeed,
I'll take my oath no man had the better of me, either in bandying words
or yet in acts, so long as they were open and above-board, but it has
always been the way of sedition and conspiracy to hit below the belt.
CHAPTER XIX
MURDER, OUTRAGE AND CRIME
Once launched upon memories of those horrible perpetrations by so-called
Christians, which disgraced alike my native country and all Christendom
(because the criminals nominally worshipped the same God, and professed
reverence to Him), I could enumerate instances until I had filled a
volume.
You know how the Ghost told Hamlet that he could a tale unfold, whose
lightest word would harrow up his soul. Why, I could tell five score,
and still not have exhausted the roll of crime.
As my experience is mainly connected with Kerry, it is
characteristically Irish for me to start with an example from County
Cork. The outrage was on the Rathcole estate of Sir George Colthurst.
The rental was £1500, and the landlord had expended £10,000 on
improvements, so that it was not to be wondered that the labourers
should meet to celebrate their employer's marriage.
Nor to any one knowing Ireland was it surprising that the Land League
should have despatched one of their well-armed bands to fire on them for
so doing.
This was apparently a challenge to Kerry not to be outdone in barbarity
by Cork, her neighbour and rival.
Kerry was quite equal to current demands on her inhumanity.
A labourer of the M'Gillycuddys was visited by another Land League
detachment and had his ear, _à la_ Bulgaria, cut clean off to the bone,
because he worked on a farm from which a tenant had been evicted.
The next night a small Protestant farmer near Tralee found his best cow
tortured and killed because he had sold milk to the police.
On the same night a farmer's house was sacked because he had bought some
'boycotted' hay.
Still on the same night, at Millstreet, another Land League gang
attacked a house, one of the Land League police being killed, and one of
the Crown police wounded.
In fact, all law save Land League law was for a time at an end in
Munster.
At one Kerry Assize, a criminal caught by four policemen in the very act
of breaking into a house, was acquitted, and at the Cork Assize the
Crown Prosecutor, after half a dozen acquittals, announced he would not
continue the farce of putting criminals on their trial.
I mentioned boycotting just now, but I am tempted to pause, because a
new generation that knows not Parnellism, nor the extent of crime in
that unhappy period, may not be aware of the origin of the term.
Captain Boycott was agent for Lord Erne's Mayo estates, and laid out the
whole of his capital £6000, in improving and stocking his own property.
Because, in the course of his duty, he served some ejectment notices, he
was denounced by the Land League, his farm servants were terrorised into
leaving his employment, and when he imported fifty labourers from the
north of Ireland to save his crops, the Government had to despatch a
small army corps of troops and constabulary to protect them. So great
was the power of the League, that even in Dublin the landlord of a hotel
declined to let him stop more than twenty-four hours in the house, as he
was threatened if he ventured to harbour him. For the protection of his
life and no more, the unfortunate gentleman had to leave the country.
Baron Dowse said in charging the Grand Jury of the Connaught Western
Assize, that this case had 'excited the wonder and amazement of a great
part of the United Kingdom and the sorrow of a considerable portion of
Ireland.' Very soon the name of Boycott was given to the approved method
of actively sending a man to Coventry, or threatening his life and
property as well as refusing to permit him to be supplied with even the
bare necessities of existence.
Baron Dowse, a man who had no fear of unmanly criminals, justly styled
this a reign of terror.
Kerry is divided into six Poor Law Unions, three of them--Kenmare,
Cahirciveen and Dingle--are very poor districts; but there was
practically not an outrage in them. Killarney, Tralee and Listowel are
rich by comparison, Tralee being the richest of the three, and
Castleisland the wealthiest portion of the district. There were nearly
as many outrages there as in the whole of the rest of the country, which
shows that poverty was not the cause.
I was in and out of Castleisland, but though I had a sheaf of
threatening letters, I never met with any insults or received a threat
to my face.
Only once did I overhear any hostile mutterings. This was when I was
driving out of Tralee, and my coachman stopped to give a message in the
dusk at a house on the outskirts of the town.
Suddenly two or three men came up, and one said:--
'Now's the time to settle old Hussey.'
Old Hussey--to use their accurate nomenclature--popped his head out of
the window, and also his right hand which held a most serviceable
revolver and invited them to come on.
They did not. In fact they scattered with a rapidity which proved they
had not imbibed enough whisky to affect their legs or give them courage.
This will show that my business--to collect what was due to the
landlords I represented--was not always agreeable work or always easy.
But my duty was to get in rents, and so I got them, whenever I could.
The tenants did not all pay direct, for many were far too frightened.
Quite a number, even of the Roman Catholics, used to send the money
through the Protestant clergy.
How they settled this in the confessional I do not know, possibly it was
a trifle they did not consider worth troubling the priest with.
Three tenants on Lord Kenmare's estate came into my office on one
occasion, and said they would like to pay their rent, but were afraid of
the Land League.
I treated their fears as arrant nonsense, but told them to come and
argue it out with me in my own room.
So soon as they could not be seen by any one they paid up.
Within a few days an armed party went to their houses and shot the three
in their legs.
One man's life was despaired of for some time, but finally they all
recovered.
This outrage was a rather late one, because the Land League latterly
decided to shoot objectionable characters only in the legs, because
though a fuss was made at the time, if a man was killed it was soon
forgotten afterwards, whereas a lame man was a lifelong testimony to
their power.
There is a man hobbling about Castleisland to this day, who was peppered
in this comparatively humanitarian way. I am quite sure he would say
such a comparison had proved odious.
Judge Barry very truly said that a thatched cabin on a mountain-side was
not much of a place of defence, and if the tenant was supposed to have
paid his rent, he would be told to run out with probably three men
standing at the door to shoot him. That was terrorism as inculcated by
the so-called friends of Ireland.
Mr. Forster in his plucky speech to the crowd at Tullamore, said:--
'I went when I was at Tulla to the workhouse, and there saw a poor
fellow lying in bed, the doctors around him, with a blue light over his
face that made me feel that the doctors were not right, when they told
me he might get over it. I felt sure that he must die, and I see this
morning that he has died. But why did that man die? He was a poor lone
farmer. I believe he had paid his rent--I believe he had committed that
crime. He thought it his duty to pay. Fifteen or sixteen men broke into
his house in the middle of the night, pulled him out of his bed and told
him they would punish him. He himself, lying in his death agony as it
were, told me the story. He said, "My wife went down on her knees and
said, 'Here are five helpless children, will you kill their father?'"
They took him out, they discharged a gun filled with shot into his leg,
so closely that they shattered his leg.'
Now there were dozens of instances of that kind of thing in Kerry.
Mr. Parnell started the whole vile crusade, when at Ennis he gave the
advice to shun any man who had bid for a farm from which a tenant had
been evicted.
'Shun him in the street, in the shop, in the marketplace, even in the
place of worship, as if he were a leper of old.'
His words were implicitly obeyed, and outrage followed mere boycotting
till the rapid succession of crimes prevented each one having its full
effect in horrifying civilised Europe.
A very bad case occurred in Millstreet.
Jeremiah Haggerty was a large farmer and shopkeeper. There was no
objection to him, except that he declined to join the Land League, for
which his shop was boycotted, which he told me meant the loss of a
thousand a year to him, but the League failed to boycott his farm,
because he was too good an employer.
He was fired at coming into Millstreet, and the outrage had been so
openly planned, that it was talked of on the preceding evening in every
whisky store.
On another occasion he was leaving Millstreet station, about a mile from
the town, and when about twenty yards from the station he was fired at
and forty grains of shot lodged in the back of his head, neck, and body.
As it was twilight, a railway porter obligingly held up his lantern to
give the miscreants a better view of their victim.
He was a man of most honourable and upright character, who had worked
his way up, and he has now regained his popularity. He started as a
clerk in quite a small way, and must now be worth a very large sum of
money. I was instrumental in getting him made a magistrate, and I have
the greatest respect for him.
I regard this as a decidedly serious example, because of the popularity
of the victim, and also because he had offended no one by word or deed.
Still, there were, of course, many instances which were even more
outrageous.
A farmer, name of Brown, was shot at Castleisland. Two men were arrested
for the murder, and were twice tried before Cork juries. The first
disagreed, but the second found them guilty.
A subscription was made up for the families of the two murderers, to
which contributions were made by the leading shopkeepers of several
neighbouring towns. For several years afterwards, Mrs. Brown could not
get a man to dig her potatoes, nor a woman to milk her cows, although
she had tendered no evidence at the trial, and it was clearly proved
that Brown had given no cause of offence.
But, as a Land Leaguer said to me, it was suspected that he might be in
a position to do so.
Red Indians, or any other barbarians you can think of, would not have
been guilty of wreaking vengeance on the widow of an innocent murdered
man, nor of endowing the wives of his assassins.
Here is another murder story.
A caretaker on an evicted farm on the property of Lord Cork, near
Kanturk, was murdered for taking charge of it.
The evicted tenant had owed eleven years' rent.
Lord Cork had agreed to accept one year's rent in full acquittal, and so
good a landlord was he, that the neighbours of the debtor offered to
make up the amount to that sum.
The tenant firmly declined to pay, because he said another year would
bring him within the statute of limitations.
So then he had to be evicted.
Two men were clearly identified as having perpetrated the unprovoked
crime of assassinating the temporary occupant of the property, and were
arrested.
The Gladstonian Attorney-General, in order to curry popularity, declined
to challenge the jury, when the first man was put on his trial.
Consequently three cousins of the prisoner were impanelled, the jury
disagreed, and the wretch bolted to America that same night.
The second man, though less guilty, was duly tried before a challenged
jury, and not only sentenced but hanged.
He was the organiser of outrages for Cork, and his brother held the
similar delectable office for Kerry. A good deal of the impunity with
which crime was committed was due to the change in the jury laws, by
which so low a class of man was summoned into the box, that criminals
began to consider conviction impossible. To my mind it was quite worth
the consideration of the Cabinet of the time, whether trial by jury
ought not to be abolished in Ireland--indeed, even to-day, I can see few
reasons for its retention and many for its abolition.
Anyhow in the bad times I am now dealing with, to send persons for trial
before a jury was but to advertise the weakness of the law.
Two men at Tralee were suspected of having paid their rent to me, and in
spite of their assurances that they were quite innocent and had not paid
a farthing for two years, it was necessary for the police to escort them
after nightfall to their homes about four miles away, and to advise them
not to venture into the town for a long while after.
One of the worst features, however, of all this terrible period was that
helpless girls and women were victims as well as men, I know of a case
where some ruffians entered the house of a family at night, went into
the bedroom of one of the girls, seized her violently, forced her on her
knees, and held her in that position while one of the gang cut off her
hair with shears, and then poured a quantity of hot tar on her head
before entering the bedroom of her sister to do the same.
A similar fate befell two girls named Murphy merely because they were
suspected of speaking to a policeman.
A man named Finlay was boycotted and then shot dead, and the neighbours
jeered and laughed at his wife, when in her agony she was wringing her
hands in grief.
The poor woman went into the street and knelt down crying:--
'The curse of God rest upon Father ---- for being the cause of my
husband's murder.'
The priest had denounced him from the altar on the previous Sunday.
'Carding' has always been a favourite Irish form of physically
insinuating to a man that he is not exactly popular. It consists of a
wooden board with nails in it being drawn down the naked flesh of a
man's face and body. This foul torture was often heard of, and it has
been whispered that women and even girls have been the victims of this
atrocity.
The merciful man is proverbially merciful to his beast, and those who
showed mercy to neither man nor woman had none on the dumb animals owned
by their victims.
A valuable Spanish ass belonging to Mr. M'Cowan of Tralee was saturated
with paraffin, set on fire, and horribly burned.
A farmer named Lambert found the shoulder of a heifer had been smashed
by some blunt instrument like a hammer. I myself had a couple of cows
killed and salted.
Indeed cattle outrages became incidents of nightly occurrence. Tenants
in all disturbed counties, besides having their houses burnt, saw their
cattle so horribly mutilated that the poor dumb creatures had to be
killed to put them out of their misery. The Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals would have no chance of obtaining general support
among the lower classes in Kerry, where beasts belonging to your enemy
are simply regarded as so many goods and chattels, to be as badly
damaged as possible.
It is a curious thing that the Irish and the Italian are the two most
poetic and most sensitive races of Europe, and also are the two which
exhibit the greatest indifference to the sufferings of dumb animals.
The distress in Kerry, of course, in the winter of 1879 had been as
great as in the more famous famine, and I have heard the theory advanced
in a London drawing-room that physical suffering renders uneducated
people indifferent to any torture endured by animals. Personally, I
should have thought a fellow feeling made us wondrous kind.
Reverting to matters with which I had more personal connection, an
interesting episode occurred in June 1881, when The O'Donoghue moved the
adjournment of the House of Commons to force a debate upon the subject
of Lord Kenmare's estate, and I wrote a letter in the _Times_ in reply,
from which may be condensed the following facts:--
On the Cork estate, from 1878 to 1881, the evictions did not average one
for each year for every two hundred tenants.
On the Limerick estate for five years there have been no evictions.
On the Kerry estate, since he succeeded (in 1871), Lord Kenmare has
expended £67,115 on drainage, road-making, and building cottages. The
evictions have been about one in five hundred in every half year. The
abatements, allowances, and expenditure in 1878, '79, '80, and '81,
exclusive of what was spent on the house and demesne, were, £33,645, and
I am under the mark when I say that, altogether, for these years of
distress, Lord Kenmare spent more on his Kerry estates than he received
out of it; yet for this, Land League meetings were held on his estate,
and he was denounced in Parliament. The week that the Land League
compelled Lord Kenmare to discontinue his employment to labourers, the
weekly labour bill was £460.
There is no need to trouble readers with any further correspondence on a
topic on which no one could answer me except by abuse, which is no
argument; nor will I inflict any of the letters in which Mr. Sexton was
clearly proved in the wrong when he misrepresented the case of Pat
Murphy of Rath.
As an example of the state of affairs, in Millstreet--a mere
village--there were thirty cases of nocturnal raid in the month of
August 1881, even while it was engaging the attention of Mr. T.O.
Plunkett, R.M., Mr. French, chief of the detective department, two
sub-inspectors, thirty-five constabulary, and fifty men of the 80th
Regiment.
In the _Daily Telegraph_, with reference to the murder of Gallivan, near
Castleisland, this remark appeared in a leader:--
'Horror-stricken humanity demands that an example be speedily made of
the truculent and merciless ruffian who perpetrated this outrage.'
I quoted this in a letter the editor published, adding:--
'A few weeks after that occasion an old man named Flynn was shot within
two miles of the place, because he paid his rent. His leg has since been
amputated.'
Then I gave the following horrible case:--
On Sunday night the Land League police went to the house of a man named
Dan Dooling, who lived within a mile of Gallivan's house, and within one
mile of Castleisland, and because he paid his rent on getting a
reduction of thirty per cent., he was taken out and shot in the thigh.
His wife, who was only three days after her confinement, pleaded for
mercy on this account, but these lynch law authorities were deaf to the
appeal for mercy, and she did not recover the shock of the entry of
these 'moonlight' Thugs. This man could have identified his assailants,
but he did not dare.
A good fellow called M'Auliffe, whose arm was shot off, could have done
the same. The poor chap could be seen walking about with one arm,
deprived of the means of earning his bread, and no doubt moralising over
the state of the law, which would compensate him for the loss of his
cow, if he had one, but gave him nothing for the loss of his arm.
On Friday, November 18, 1881, two tenants, named Cronin and one O'Keefe,
holding land from Lord Kenmare, came into my office in Killarney.
O'Keefe, an old man of seventy, was the spokesman, and said:--
'If you plase, sorr, we have the rint in our pocket, and would be glad
to pay it if it were not for the fear that we have of being shot.'
To my lasting regret, I replied:--
'There is no danger. You must pay.'
They did, and on the Sunday week following, a band of marauders, headed
by fife and drum, went to the houses of these men, and shot them in the
presence of their families. All the flesh on the lower part of O'Keefe's
legs was shot away, one of the Cronins was shot in the knee, but the
other in the body.
Everybody in the neighbourhood knew the perpetrators of this ghastly
outrage, but said:--
'What use would there be in our telling, as the jury would acquit them,
and we should be shot?'
Then came this announcement, which caused great excitement in
Killarney:--
'In consequence of the difficulty of getting his rents, the Earl of
Kenmare has decided to leave the country for the present. All the
labourers employed on the estate are discharged, as well as some of the
gamekeepers.'
My own opinion was that he showed great wisdom in abandoning the
ungrateful locality where only man, debased by the Land League, was
vile.
Outside my own folk, I found the people stiffer and less affable than
formerly; but at no time had I any difficulty in obtaining or keeping
domestic servants, though my wife got the majority from the
neighbourhood of Edenburn.
I used to sit, on and off, on the bench as regularly as most of the
other magistrates, whenever, indeed, my business permitted me to do so,
and to my face no one ventured to abuse me.
Quite late in the bad times when I wanted a decree of ejectment against
a fellow, the chairman, desiring to make peace, explained that his
hesitation was entirely on my account, to save me from danger.
I replied that I had not quailed all those years, and I was too old to
begin; so I had my decree, and that fellow's threats were as
contemptuously treated as all the rest.
The Bank had a decree against a tenant of mine, and, having sold him
out, entered into possession and put in a caretaker.
He was in occupation about eight hours, when he grew so frightened that
he ran away. The tenant then went back into possession as a caretaker,
whom nobody dared dislodge, and he promptly went to the Tralee Board of
Guardians to obtain a pound a week as an evicted tenant.
At that time two-thirds of the poor-rate was paid by the landlord. When
the tenancy was over £4 a year, they had to allow each tenant half the
rate he paid; when it was under this sum, they had to pay the whole of
it, and, of course, all the rates for land in their own occupation.
Thus the Board of Guardians were utilising the money of the landlords in
order to remunerate the men who were robbing them of their property.
If a tenant--who generally had some money--was evicted, a notice was
served on the relieving officer to provide him with a conveyance, in
which he was taken to the poorhouse; but if a farmer evicted a
labourer--who had, perhaps, nothing but the suit of clothes in which he
stood up--he was allowed to walk to the poorhouse as best he might, and,
when he got there, he obtained no special relief.
It is true that the passing of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act offered
another opportunity to the Government for striking a severe blow, but it
was frittered away, although, before it became law, many of the leaders
of disorder left the country, dreading its provisions.
Instead, the isolated arrests revealed that the criminals were provided
with special accommodation and superior fare.
A district officer, asked by Lord Spencer for his views on the Coercion
Act, replied:--
'The only coercion I can perceive, your Excellency, is that people
accustomed to live on potatoes and milk are forced to feed on salmon and
wine.'
The last outrage I intend to mention in this chapter was a very
remarkable one.
There was a contest for the chairmanship of the Tralee Board of
Guardians. The Land League put forward a candidate who was at the time
an inmate of Kilmainham gaol. The landlords, who at this earlier stage
still had some power, conceived that the residence of the Home Ruler
would not facilitate his control over the Board, and chose a candidate
whose abode was not only more adjacent, but whose movements were
unfettered.
The voting was even, until Mr. A.E. Herbert came into the room and gave
his casting vote against the involuntary tenant of the Kilmainham
hostelry. For this he was murdered three days later, and by the crime
they hoped to ensure that on the next occasion the landlords would
abstain from voting at all.
That murder of Mr. Arthur Herbert on his return from Petty Sessions at
Castleisland was one of the worst, and as an exhibition of infernal
hatred and vengeance it transcended the murders of Lord Mountmorres and
Lord Leitrim. It cannot be denied that Mr. Herbert committed acts of a
harsh and overbearing character. He was a turbulent, headstrong man,
brave to rashness and foolhardiness, and too fond of proclaiming his
contempt for the people by whom he was surrounded. As a magistrate,
sitting at Brosna Petty Sessions, he expressed his regret that he was
not in command of a force when a riot occurred in that village, when he
would have 'skivered the people with buckshot,' language brought under
the notice of the Lord Chancellor and the House of Commons.
He was the son of a clergyman, and lived at Killeentierna House with his
mother, a venerable old lady over eighty, he being himself forty-five.
His income was estimated at about four hundred a year, and as his
relations with tenantry were not harmonious, he never went out without a
six-chambered revolver in his pocket. Physically he was very
robust--over five feet ten in height, and very corpulent. In his own
neighbourhood he always was known as 'Mr. Arthur.'
Leaving Castleisland about five in the afternoon, he was accompanied for
about a mile by the head constable, who then turned back. Mr. Herbert
had not proceeded a quarter of a mile further when he was felled by the
assassins. The spot chosen was singularly open, no shelter being visible
for some distance. Several shots were heard by a labourer at work in a
quarry, and when he came up he found Mr. Herbert lying on his face in
the road, quite dead, the earth about him being covered with pools of
blood. The body was almost riddled with shot and bullets.
That night a further illustration of the vindictive ferocity of the
outrage was given. The lawn in front of Killeentierna was patrolled
regularly by some of the large body of police which at once occupied the
house. On this lawn eleven lambs were grazing. At half-past two these
were seen by the police to be all right. At daybreak the eleven were
found stabbed with pitchforks--nine of them killed outright, and two
wounded to death. This act, as wretched as it was daring, added a new
horror to the crime.
Mr. Herbert's murder was received with such exuberant delight in Kerry
that my steward said to me:--
'You would think, sir, that rent was abolished and the duty taken off
whisky.'
Constabulary had for a long while to be told off to prevent his grave
being desecrated.
That is a pretty tough outrage for optimistic philanthropists to
consider when they are addicted to announcing how far our generations
have progressed from barbarism.
The price of blood in Kerry was not high. For example, the men that
murdered FitzMaurice were paid £5 for the job, and they had never seen
him before. His family had to be under police protection for five years,
and I managed to get £1000 subscribed for them in England, Mr. Froude
taking an enthusiastic and generous interest in a very sad case. The
victim left two daughters, who both married policemen.
One young and cheery Kerry landlord was very proud, about 1886, at the
price of forty shillings being offered for his life by the Land League,
whereas nearly all the others were only valued at half a sovereign
apiece.
As a matter of fact, almost any one could have been shot at Castleisland
if a sovereign were offered, for they cared no more for human life than
for that of a rat. Parnell himself would have been shot by any one of a
couple of dozen fellows willing to earn a dishonest living if a
five-pound note had been locally put upon his head. A patriotic
philanthropist, destitute of the bowels of compassion and of every
dictate of humanity, might have saved a great deal of undeserved
suffering if he had made this donation towards his 'removal'--a pretty
euphemism of Land League coinage.
Most of that generation are dead, in gaol, or have emigrated. It would
take the deuce of a big sum to tempt any Castleislander to-day to commit
murder, except under provocation, and the same improvement is observable
all over Ireland. I believe a hundred pounds might be put on the head of
the least popular agent or landlord, and he might walk unscathed without
police protection.
All that has been set forth in this chapter might be regarded as a heavy
indictment of crime and disorder, but I cannot avoid adding one
confirmatory piece of evidence, as eloquent as it is accurate. This is
the fearful description of the state of Kerry which appears in Judge
O'Brien's charge to the Grand Jury at the Assizes, founded, of course,
on the report of outrages submitted to him. It is impossible to guess in
what stronger words his opinions would have been expressed if the total
number of outrages committed had been laid before him; but it is well
known that only a few of those committed were reported, as, if the
criminals were taken up and identified, the victims would be likely to
be shot in revenge, while the guilty persons, tried by a sympathising
jury, would obtain acquittal and popular advertisement.
The charge was as follows:--
'COLONEL CROSBIE AND GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY OF KERRY--I requested
your permission to defer any observations I was about to make to you, in
order that I might have an opportunity of examining certain returns
which had been made to me containing materials for forming a judgment
upon the state of things in this county of which I was put in possession
upon my arrival, and I was desirous of being afforded an opportunity of
examining these materials to try if I could discern whether, in the
considerable lapse of time that has happened since the last Assizes, I
could see any reason to conclude that an improvement had taken place in
the state of things that has now so long existed in the County of Kerry,
and other counties in the south of Ireland, to try if I could discern
whether lapse of time itself, the weariness of that state of things, if
the law and influences that lead persons to avoid violations of the law,
or to follow the pursuits of industry, had led in the end to any
favourable change in the state of things; but I grieve to say that it is
not in my power, unfortunately, to announce that any change has taken
place. On the contrary, all the means of information that I possess lead
to the unhappy conclusion that there is no improvement, but that, on the
contrary, there exists, even at this moment, a most extraordinary state
of things--a state of things of an unprecedented description--nothing
short, in fact, of a state of open war with all forms of authority, and
even, I may say without exaggeration, with the necessary institutions of
civilised life.
'These returns present a picture of the County Kerry such as can hardly
be found in any country that has passed the confines of natural society
and entered upon the duties and relations, and acknowledged the
obligations, of civilised life. The law is defeated--perhaps I should
rather say, has ceased to exist! Houses are attacked by night and day,
even the midnight terror yielding to the noonday anxiety of crime!
Person and life are assailed! The terrified inmates are wholly unable to
do anything to protect themselves, and a state of terror and lawlessness
prevails everywhere. Even some persons who possess means of information
that are not open to me, profess to discern in the signs of public
feeling, in the views of some hope and some fear, the expectation of
something about to happen, something reaching far beyond partial, or
local, or even agrarian, disturbance, and calculated to create a greater
degree of alarm than anything we have witnessed, or anything that has
happened.
'When I come to compare the official returns of crime with those of the
preceding period, I find that the total number of offences in this
county since the last Assizes is somewhat less in number, even
considerably less in number, than in the corresponding or the preceding
period of the former years. But the diminution of number affords no
assurance or ground of improvement at all, because I find that the
diminution is accounted for entirely in the class of offences that
acknowledges to some extent the power and influence of the law, namely,
in threatening letters and notices, while the amount of open and actual
crime is greater than it was in the former period, showing that there is
an increased confidence in impunity, and that menace has given place to
the deed. Within not more than ten days from the time that I am now
speaking, not less than four examples of midnight invasion of houses in
this county have occurred, accompanied with all the usual incidents of
disguises and arms, and the firing of shots, and violence threatened or
committed; in one instance the outrage having been committed upon the
residence of a magistrate of this county, a man living with his family
in his home, in the supposed delusive security of domestic life, of law,
and respect for social station; and in another instance committed upon a
humble man, and encountered, I am glad to say, in that instance, with a
brave resistance, giving an example of courage which, if it were widely
imitated, many of the evils that this country suffers from would no
longer exist.
'I need not dwell upon the most aggravated instance of all which this
calendar of crime presents--one that is quite recent, and within the
memory of you all--the murder of Cornelius Murphy, a humble man, but one
enjoying apparently the confidence and respect of all his neighbours,
who had done no harm to any person, who was not conscious of any
offence, whose house was invaded at a still early hour of the evening,
and before the daylight had departed, by a band of men that is shown to
have traversed a considerable distance of country, giving opportunities
of recognition to many, and with hardly the pretext of an offence on his
part, and in reality with the object of private plunder or private
hostility--one of those motives that always take advantage of a state of
disturbance in order to gratify private ends--slain in his own house in
the presence of his own family. Certain persons, it would appear, have
been arrested on a charge of complicity with this crime, and it may be
that this cruel and wicked crime may be the means of discovering other
crimes, and of leading in the end to the detection, if not to the
conviction, of persons who have been connected in them, and those who
rest in the supposed confidence of impunity may find the spell broken,
may find the light of information to reach them, and may find in the end
that the law will be able to prevail; because it must be in the
experience of many of you that it is unhappily in the power of a few
persons who engage in this system of nightly invasion of houses to
multiply themselves, apparently by means of terror and intimidation,
although at the same time there can be no doubt that, on account of
interval of distances, and for many such reasons, there must be many
such combinations in this country, acting entirely independent of each
other.
'No person can be at a loss to understand the misery and suffering that
arises from a state of crime; but perhaps all persons in the community
do not equally understand one form of consequence to material prosperity
that results from it. I have before me a document that contains most
terribly significant evidence of mischief, alike to all classes of the
community, that results from crime and a state of social disturbance. I
have a return of malicious injuries which form the subject of
presentment at these Assizes, in number, I understand, exceeding all
former precedent. There are no less than eighty-six presentments,
representing all forms of wicked outrage upon property, a tempest--I
might say without exaggeration, a tempest--of violence and crime that
has swept over a considerable portion of this county. The claims amount
to £2700, with the result that the Grand Jury had presented upon a
certain part of this county £1250, exercising apparently the greatest
care and discrimination in reducing the amount of the claims, and this
£1250 was not put upon the whole county, but on certain parts of the
county, and the amount at the very least aggravated in a most serious
degree the weight of taxation that falls upon the ratepayers of the
County Kerry, deepening the difficulties that all classes alike must
experience from the depression of the times, and from the other burdens
they have to meet in providing against the demands that are made upon
them.
'But, of course, you can easily understand that these things do not at
all give you any idea of other forms of material injury that arise from
crime and disturbance, in the loss of employment and the discouragement
of capital, the injury to trade, and the multiplied consequences of all
kinds detrimental to the community that arise from insecurity to
personal property and life. And to all those evils we have to add
another, and perhaps the worst of all--that of which you are all
conscious, of which experience and observation reaches you every day in
all the forms of social life--a system of unseen terrorism, a system of
terror and tyranny that the well-disposed class of the community ought
to detest and abhor, and in reference to which, on all sides, I have
heard, in this county and other counties, one universal expression of
desire--that some means should be found to put an end to it.
'I possess no power myself to effect this state of things, and I cannot
say that in the relation to the law which you fill as members of the
Grand Jury, or in any other relation to the law, you possess the means
to effect it. The duty of providing against so great an evil existing in
the community--the duty and the obligation rests with others. My duty is
simply confined to representing to you the state of things that exists,
and, indeed, in that respect I know that I am doing what is entirely
unnecessary, for the state of the County Kerry now, and for a period of
five or six years, in all its essential features, is known far beyond
the limits of the county, to every single person in the country. I will
merely make use of one general observation--that I by no means share in
the opinion that has been expressed as to the inability to deal with
this state of things. On the contrary, I entertain the most perfect
confidence that it is in the power of those who are intrusted with the
duty of maintaining the public peace to re-establish order and law and
peace in this county. And as my duty is confined to representing that
state of things, that duty does not carry me to indicate to those on
whom the responsibility rests the means to attain that object.'
CHAPTER XX
THE EDENBURN OUTRAGE
In the early part of the winter of 1884, so bad did the state of Kerry
become, and so menacing was the attitude of the Land Leaguers towards
myself, that I felt I had no right to endanger the lives of my wife and
daughters by any longer permitting them to reside at Edenburn.
In all those years, from 1878 to 1884, be it noted that I gave more
employment in Kerry than any one man, a fact which has been testified to
by different parish priests, but at the same time I was agent for a
great many landlords, and tried my level best to get in rents for my
employers.
For this cause my life had been repeatedly threatened, and now, in
November 1884, dynamite was put to my house, the back of it being badly
blown up. There were sixteen individuals in the house, mostly women and
children, and an attempt was therefore made to murder them all in the
effort to take the life of one individual they were afraid to meet in
the open.
The house was repaired and I received compensation in due course from
the County, but my family did not think after what had occurred that
Edenburn was a desirable place of residence. So I henceforth resided
much in London, and therefore spent a great deal less money in Kerry.
Perhaps, however, I had better be a little more diffuse about what was
known all over the British Isles as the Edenburn Outrage, but the bulk
of this chapter will be drawn from observations by members of my family
and newspaper accounts, for the episode left considerably less
impression on my mind than it did on that of my womenfolk, and indeed on
the public, at the time.
To show how matters stood, one of my daughters reminds me that I gave
her a very neat revolver as a present, and that whenever she came back
from school she always slept with it under her pillow. Moreover, she
recollects that the customary Sunday afternoon pursuit was to have
revolver practice at the garden gate.
There had been several episodes of an ugly nature; for example, one of
my sons competing in some sports at Tralee was advised to make an excuse
and to go home separately from the womenfolk.
He took the hint, and my wife with the governess and several children
went back without him in the waggonette. About a mile and a half from
the town, just where the horses had to walk up a steep hill, a number of
men with bludgeons and sticks came out of a ditch, peered into the trap,
and seeing it contained nothing but women and children let it pass on
with a grunt of disgust, whilst they trudged back to Tralee.
One of my daughters, years after, on being taken in to dinner in London,
was asked by her companion if she was any relation of mine.
She having confessed the fact--one I hope in no way detrimental, though
I say so, perhaps, who should not--he mentioned that he had been to a
most cheery dance at Edenburn, which had made a great impression on his
mind, because for seven miles along the road by which he and his friends
drove there were pickets of constabulary, and the hall table was piled
so full with the revolvers brought by the guests, that all the hats and
coats had to be taken to the smoking-room.
It may be as well to again mention that my wife during the very worst
periods had never any difficulty in keeping or obtaining domestic
servants. No doubt the maids liked having two or three stalwart
constables always hanging about the place, and capital odd job men they
made.
A constable neatly humbugged a footman, and I may here mention the
incident, though it is subsequent to the episode of this chapter.
One house we took in London was in Glendower Place, and when the
servants arrived, my wife found that the footman's face was covered with
sticking-plaster. He was a regular gossoon, though shaped like a fine
specimen of the pampered menials who condescend to open the front door
of large mansions to their betters.
A constable had hoaxed him into believing that he could never walk in
the London streets without using firearms, and having advised him to
learn to do so, the idiot put the weapon against his cheek, and the
first kick had knocked away a voluminous portion of his countenance.
At the end of November 1884, we were packing up to leave, and all the
big cases were in the stable-yard ready to be carted away. There were
five policemen at the time in the house, and two of them were on sentry
duty all through the night.
None of us had had good nights for some time past, but on the evening of
November 29th I came back from the meeting of the Board of Guardians at
Listowel, and said to my wife as we sat down to dinner:--
'After all, we are starting for England to-morrow morning without any
necessity, for I do believe the country is beginning to settle down.'
This is the only occasion on which I ever ventured on a cheerful
prophecy since Ireland came under the baneful spell of Mr. Gladstone,
and it was the most foolish remark I ever made.
That night came the explosion, but I prefer to let the press tell the
tale.
The _Manchester Guardian_ relates:--
'The explosive matter was placed under an area in the basement story,
dynamite being the agent employed for the outrage. A large aperture was
made in the wall, which is three feet thick. Several large rents running
to the top have been made, and it now presents a most dilapidated
appearance. The ground-floor, where the explosion occurred, was used as
a larder, and everything in it was smashed to pieces, the glass
window-frames and shutters being shivered into atoms. On the three
stories above it, the explosion produced a similar effect. To the right
of it, one of Mr. Hussey's daughters was sleeping, and the window of her
room was entirely destroyed. Mr. J.E. Hussey, J.P., slept in another
room about thirty feet from the scene of the explosion, and his window
and room fared similarly. The butler slept in a small room on the
basement, which was completely wrecked, the windows being shattered to
pieces, the lamp and toilet broken, and the greater part of the ceiling
thrown on him in the bed. The length of the house is about fifty yards,
and the windows in the back, numbering twenty-six, have been altogether
destroyed. Mr. S.M. Hussey and his wife slept in the front, and they
were much affected by the explosion. Three policemen who had been
stationed in the house for the past couple of years slept on a
ground-floor in front. The coach-house and stables near the house were
considerably damaged. In the garden two greenhouses, one about 120 yards
away, and the other fully 150, were injured, the greater portion of the
glass being broken and the roofs shaken. In several houses at long
distances the shock was plainly felt. The dwelling-house subsequently
presented a very wrecked appearance. On looking at the back of it, there
are several rents or cracks to be seen in the solid masonry, and the
slates are shaken and displaced. Everything shows the terrific force of
the explosion. In the yard a large slate-house was much damaged, the
slates being displaced and the roof shaken and cracked. A large stone
was found here, having been blown from the dwelling-house.'
From the _Times_ may be culled these additional particulars:
'There is a fissure some inches wide in the main wall from the ground to
the roof, and a little more force would have effected the evident object
of making the residence of the obnoxious agent a heap of ruins. The
damage done is estimated at from £2000 to £3000, but this is only a
rough conjecture.'
The _Cork Constitutional_ throws further light in a somewhat badly
expressed article:--
'The most extraordinary circumstance connected with the outrage is the
secrecy and stealth which must have been resorted to in order to avoid
detection. It was well known in the neighbourhood that not alone were
three policemen constantly at Edenburn for Mr. Hussey's protection, but
that a number of dogs were also kept on the premises, and it is,
therefore, astonishing the care and caution which must have been
resorted to in order to successfully lay and explode the destructive
material. Some idea of the force of the explosion as well as the
stability of the building which resisted it in a measure, may be
gathered from the fact that it was distinctly heard in the town of
Castleisland four miles away. Mr. R. Roche, J.P., who lives a mile from
Edenburn, also distinctly heard the explosion, which he describes as
resembling in sound that caused by the fall of a huge tree in close
proximity. Those who were at Edenburn at the time state that between
four and half-past four a low rumbling noise, followed by a sharp
report, was heard. The house trembled and shook to its foundations. The
inmates, some of whom were only awakened by the shock, were seized with
an indescribable terror. All the windows were smashed to atoms, the
furniture and fixtures in the interior were rattled, and some lighter
articles disturbed from their position. The suddenness of the alarm, and
the darkness of the night, coupled with an indefinite idea as to the
nature and extent of the explosion, made the occupants of the house
afraid to stir, and it was not until some servants living adjacent
arrived that the consternation caused in the household subsided
sufficiently to enable them to examine the house, and judge of the
narrow escape they had had from a violent and horrible death.'
The consternation most decidedly did not spread to the master and
mistress of the establishment. The _Kerry Sentinel_ quickly had an
allusion to 'a report that Mr. Hussey turned into bed after the outrage
with one of his laconic jokes--that he should be called when the next
explosion occurred.'
As a matter of fact what I did say was:-"My dear, we can have a quiet
night at last, for the scoundrels won't bother us again before
breakfast."
And I can solemnly testify that within ten minutes of that observation I
was fast asleep, and never woke till I was called.
But perhaps the best impression of what occurred can be obtained from
the recollection of my daughter Florence, now Mrs. Nicoll, who was an
inmate of Edenburn at the time.
'I was awakened by a terrific noise, which to my sleepy wits conveyed
the impression that the roof had fallen in. It was then between three
and four in the morning. I lit a candle and ran out into the passage
where were congregating my family in night attire. My father was
perfectly calm.
'"Dynamite and badly managed," was his laconic explanation. We all asked
each other if we were hurt, and began to be alarmed about my brother
John, who, however, put in an appearance in a singularly attenuated
nightshirt, with a candle in one hand and a revolver in the other, with
which he was rubbing his sleepy eyes.
'"Singular time of night, John, to try chemical experiments without our
permission, is it not?" said my father.
'Then John and my mother went downstairs to inspect the premises; of the
back windows, thirty-four in number, there was not a bit of glass as big
as a threepenny piece left. Our brougham was in the yard; the window
next the explosion was intact, but the one on the further side was blown
to smithereens.
'The servants were very scared, and one maid having rushed straight to a
sitting-room, was there found hysterically embracing a sofa cushion.
'We received one odd claim for compensation. An old woman living half a
mile off complained that the force of the explosion had knocked some of
the plaster off the wall, and that it had fallen into a pan full of
milk, spoiling it.
'Whilst we were all chattering about the outrage, father said:--
'"Don't be uneasy about a mere dynamite explosion; it's like an
Irishman's pig, you want it to go one way and it invariably goes in the
other."
'And with that he went off to bed again, with the remark about having a
quiet night which he has mentioned earlier in this chapter.
'The only other thing which I now recall is, that a detachment of the
Buffs in the neighbourhood had found us the only people to entertain
them.
'On being told that Edenburn had been blown up, one of them said:--
'"They were the only neighbours we had to talk to, and the brutes would
not leave us them as a convenience."'
The Cork correspondent of the _Times_ wrote:--
'Among the general body of the people of Kerry, the news of the attempt
to blow up Mr. Hussey's house at Edenburn caused comparatively little
excitement. In the County Club at Tralee, the announcement was received
with something like a panic. Hitherto, persons who considered themselves
in danger were careful to be within their homes before darkness had set
in, and when going abroad had a following of police for their
protection. Now it is shown that their houses may prove but a sorry
shelter, even when a protective force of police is about, and it is no
wonder that, with the terrible example furnished in this instance of the
daring of those who commit foul crimes, the class against whom the
outrages are directed should be filled with fears for the future. The
people generally show but small interest in the occurrence.
'The attempt to blow up Mr. Hussey's dwelling is the first of its kind
in Kerry, and the third that has been made in Ireland. Within the past
few years the districts of Castleisland and Tralee have been
distinguished for the number and ferocity of the outrages that were
committed there.'
I am also tempted to quote from the 'Leader' in the _Times_ on the
outrage:--
'Mr. Hussey has a reputation, not confined to Ireland, as an able,
fearless, and vigorous land agent, the best type of a much abused class
of men who have endured contumely and faced dangers, by day and night,
in order to protect the rights of property intrusted to them.
'It appears that, owing to the disturbed state of the locality, he
intended to leave it for the winter; and this probably being known to
his enemies, they made an effort to destroy him before he got beyond
their reach. He, at all events, seems to have been under the spell of no
pleasing illusion as to the supposed tranquillity and the reign of
order. On the contrary, he is alleged to have stated that more outrages
than ever are committed, and that but for the deterrent force employed
by the Government, there would be no living in the country, ... This is
the opinion of the majority of Englishmen. They are not all satisfied
that the spirit of lawlessness and disorder is rooted out; and they will
find only too strong confirmation of their doubts in the reckless
violence of the National Press, and in the attempt--marked by novel
features of atrocity--to destroy Mr. Hussey's household.'
As for the National Press, it indulged in an ecstasy of enthusiasm over
the perpetration, combined with intense disgust "at the miscarriage of
justice" of my having escaped without hurt or more than very temporary
inconvenience. On my departure, one eloquent writer compared me to
'Macduff taking his babes and bandboxes to England,' a choice simile I
have always appreciated.
The _United Ireland_ of December 6, 1884, in a characteristic
leaderette, headed 'A very suspicious affair,' observes:--
'We should like to know by what right the newspapers speak of the affair
as "a dynamite outrage"? A very curious surmise has been put forward
locally, namely, that the house had been stricken by lightning. The
shattering of a building by lightning is by no means phenomenal, and the
absence of all trace of any terrestrial explosive agency, gives colour
to the hypothesis that the destruction was due to meteorological
causes.'
With one last quotation I cease to draw upon what may be termed outside
contributions, and it is one which gratified me at the time.
It is taken from the _Cork Examiner_ of December 12, 1884:--
'Dear Sir,--Authoritative statements having been made in the Press and
elsewhere, that some persons living in Mr. Hussey's immediate
neighbourhood must have been the perpetrators of the horrible outrage,
or, at least, must have given active and guilty assistance to the
principal parties concerned in it; now we, the undersigned, tenants on
the property, and living in the closest proximity to Edenburn House and
demesne, take this opportunity of declaring in the most public and
solemn manner that neither directly nor indirectly, by word or deed, by
counsel or approval, had we any participation in the tragic disaster of
November 28. The relations hitherto existing between Mr. Hussey and us
have ever been of the most friendly character. As a landlord, his
dealings with us were such as gave unqualified satisfaction and were
marked by justice, impartiality, and very great indulgence. As a
neighbour he was extremely kind and obliging, ready whenever applied to,
to help us, as far as he was able, in every difficulty or trial in which
we might be placed. The bare suspicion, therefore, of being ever so
remotely connected with the recent explosion, is, to us, a source of the
deepest pain, a suspicion we repudiate with honest indignation.
Furthermore, the singular charity, benevolence, and amiability of Mrs.
Hussey are long and intimately known to us. We witness almost daily her
bountiful treatment of the poor, and tender care of the sick and infirm.
Her ears never refuse to listen with sympathy to every tale of distress,
nor will she hesitate with her own hands to wash and dress the festering
wounds and sores of those who flock to her from all the surrounding
parishes. With such knowledge as this, we should indeed be worse than
fiends did we raise a hand against the Hussey family, or engage in any
enterprise that would necessitate their departure from among us:--
'Richard Fitzgerald.
Denis Daly.
John Reynolds.
Cornelius Daly.
William Hogan.
Darby Leary.
John Mason.
Jeremiah Dinan.
J. O'connell.
John Neligan.
Daniel Neill.
John Daly.
Thomas Connor.
Jeremiah Connor.
Thomas Shanahen.
Michael Moynihar.
Widow Aherne.
James O'sullivan.
John M'elligott.
Henry Gentleman.'
As for those really concerned, people tell me that the three implicated
in the dynamite business are all dead in America, and if the information
is accurate no local person was connected with the explosion, though the
miscreants were, of course, housed in the immediate vicinity.
There was one delicious incident.
The local branch of the Land League at Castleisland refused to pay any
reward to the dynamiters because we had not been killed, and the leading
miscreant actually fired at the treasurer. Eventually the passages to
America of all the triumvirate were paid, and they thought it discreet
to quit the country, cursing their own stingy executive even more deeply
than they blasphemed against the Law and execrated me.
A man from the neighbourhood subsequently wrote to me from London that
he could tell me who perpetrated the Edenburn outrage.
I told him to call on me at the Union Club, of which I was then a
member, and informed him--his name was O'Brien--I would arrange with the
Home Office, in the event of his information being valuable, that he
should get a reward.
He replied that his life was in danger in London from another Fenian.
I went to the Home Office and saw Mr. Jenkinson on the subject. He asked
me to send O'Brien down to him and he would settle matters, adding that
he had reason for believing that the story of threats from another
scoundrel was true.
I saw O'Brien and told him to call on Mr. Jenkinson.
He answered that he would go, but he never did, and Mr. Jenkinson
subsequently told me that the Land League scented he was going to prove
a troublesome informer, so they practically outbid the Government by
paying O'Brien a large sum, which was handed to him on the steamer as it
was starting for America.
From that time, until I have been recalling the incidents of the
explosion for this book, I have never given a thought to the affair and
not mentioned it half a dozen times in the twenty years that have
elapsed.
CHAPTER XXI
MORE ATROCITIES AND LAND CRIMES
I brought my family back to Kerry in the following summer, and after I
had rebuilt Edenburn I lived there until I gave it to my elder son, who
has it to this day and resides there in peace.
Matters were very different to that state of idyllic simplicity in the
critical times on which I am still dwelling.
One night, while in London, I was at the House of Commons, and the
London correspondent of the _Freeman_, being presumably extremely short
of what he would term 'copy,' he proceeded to make observations about me
after this fashion:--
'Over here Mr. Hussey is something of a fish out of water. It would be
hazardous to say that if he was to begin his career as an agent again he
would eschew the system that has made him famous, but his present frame
of mind is unquestionably one of doubt as to whether, after all, the
game was worth the candle.'
That young man will go far as a writer of fiction.
I received, among more pleasant welcomes on my return to my native land,
the following delightful blast of vituperation from the _Irish Citizen_,
and beg to tender the unknown author my profound thanks for the
diversion his ink-slinging afforded me:--
'Here is something about a man who ought to have been murdered any day
since 1879--indeed we don't know that he should have been let live even
up to that date, and as for his family, their translation to the upper
regions by means of a simple charge of dynamite, which nobody of any
sense or importance would even think of condemning, has been most
unaccountably deferred to the present year. This man is Mr. S.M. Hussey,
the miasma of whose breath, according to a well-informed murder organ in
Dublin, poisons one-half of the kingdom of Kerry. Let any man read the
speeches delivered in Upper Sackville Street, and the articles in
_United Ireland_ against Mr. Hussey, and he must ask why the fiend
incarnate has not been murdered long since. The infamy of persistently
turning hatred on a man like Mr. Hussey, and then escaping the
consequences of having thereby murdered him, has no parallel in any
country in the world. Inciting to murder is practically reduced to a
science in Ireland. That Mr. Hussey has not been murdered years ago is
not the fault of the scientist, but the watchfulness of the police.'
My experience while in England had been that few people I met really
appreciated what boycotting was like, so how are my readers of twenty
years afterwards to do so? Yet when I went back to Ireland, it seemed to
me even more cruel than when I had grown comparatively accustomed by
sheer proximity to it.
Mr. Parnell had himself given the order in a public speech:--
'Shun the man who bids for a farm from which a tenant has been evicted,
shun him in the street, in the shop, in the marketplace, even in the
place of worship, as if he were a leper of old.'
This was done with the thoroughness which characterises Irishmen when
back-sliding into unimaginable cruelties. Should a boycotted man enter
chapel, the whole congregation rose as with one accord and left him
alone in the building. Considering the sensitive and pious disposition
of the average Irishman, such ostracism was even more poignant than it
would be to an Englishman.
Only two families in Kerry, possibly in Munster, at Christmas 1885, had
the courage to resist the National League police, commonly called
moonlighters. These two were the Curtins and the Doyles. The Curtins had
to be under constant police protection, were insulted wherever they
went, and their murdered father was openly called 'the murderer.' As for
the Doyles, the Board of Guardians was urged to harass his unfortunate
children, who were both deaf and dumb.
The same Board of Guardians was most lavish in its relief to any man
evicted for declining to pay his rent. In one case they gave a man
fifteen shillings a week--or treble the ordinary out-of-door relief--for
over six years.
Sir James Stephen, a man of acute discriminations, who has done more
justice to the Irish problem than any one else, wrote:--
'The great difficulty the Land League and the National League have had
to contend with is that of hindering the neighbouring farmers, peasants,
and labourers from frustrating the strike against rent by taking up
vacant farms, however they came to be vacant. Boycotting never succeeded
unless crime was at its back. The Crimes Act cut the ground from under
the feet of the boycotters, not so much by its direct prohibitions of
the practice as by making it unsafe to commit outrages in enforcing the
law of the League. The Land League and the National League were nothing
else but screens for secret societies whose work was to enforce the
League decrees by outrage and murder.'
Whenever the 'History of Modern Ireland' comes to be written, that
glowing outburst of truth ought to be quoted.
There were some evictions carried out at Farranfore on the estate of
Lord Kenmare, by the sub-sheriff, Mr. Harnett, and a force of military
and police numbering about one hundred and thirty.
During the eviction of one Daly, horns were blown and the chapel bell
set ringing. These appeals drew about three thousand people to the
place, who groaned and threw some stones, besides growing so menacing
that the Riot Act had to be read, upon which the whole crowd moved off.
This brought a characteristic effusion from _United Ireland_:--
'We remember the time when Kerry was a county as quiet as the grave,
when its member, Henry A. Herbert, in the debate on the Westminster Act
of 1871, was able to rise in his place and boast that in purely Celtic
counties like his there was no crime, and that agrarian outrages was
confined to districts infused with English blood, like Meath and
Tipperary. What has changed it? Principally the malpractices of a couple
of agents ruling over half its area, whose bloated rentals grow swollen
under their hands with the sweat of dumb and hopeless possessors.'
Whatever else he possessed, that writer had not one vestige of truth
with which to cover the indecency of his misrepresentations.
He did not mention that Mr. Matthew Harris, a Member for Galway, had
publicly observed that if the tenant farmers of Ireland shot down
landlords as partridges are shot in the month of September, he would
never say a word against them.
It is a fact that the convulsion of horror at the murder of Lord
Frederick Cavendish alone prevented an organised campaign for the
'removal' of Irish landlords on a systematic and wholesale scale.
By the way, according to his son, it was quite by chance that Professor
Mahaffy--that illustrious ornament of Trinity College--was not also
murdered. He had intended to walk over with poor Mr. Burke after the
entry of the Viceroy and Chief Secretary, but he was detained by an
undergraduate and so found it too late to catch the doomed victim before
he started. Had he walked with them, it is questionable if the murderers
would have attacked three men: on the other hand, he might, of course,
have been added to the slain.
There was a meeting of Lord Kenmare's and Mr. Herbert of Muckross's
tenants at Killarney addressed by Mr. Sheehan, M.P., who advised them,
as the landlords refused 70 per cent, only to offer 50 per cent., and
nothing at all in March (1887), as by that time the new Irish Parliament
would have allotted the land free to the present holders, without any
compensation to the landlords.
Despite the efforts of traitors on both sides of the Channel, that Irish
Parliament has not yet been summoned.
The parish priest, Mr. Sheehy, stopped the Limerick hunting, and so took
£24,000 a year out of the pockets of the very poor. That man did more
harm than the landlords, who alone gave the poor work, and there is no
doubt that many of the worst crimes were instigated and indirectly
suggested from the altar.
At this point I want to interpose with one word to the reader to beg him
not to regard this as either a connected narrative of crime, much less a
regular essay with proper deductions--the trimmings to the joint--but
only a series of observations as I recall events which impressed me, and
which I think may come home with some force to a happier generation that
knew neither Parnellism nor crime. To write a consecutive and connected
history of these atrocities would be to compile a volume of horrors. I
prefer to give a few recollections of outrages, and to let the direct
simplicity of these terrible reminiscences impress those who have bowels
of compassion.
A gentleman named Nield was killed in Mayo, simply because he was
mistaken for my son Maurice. This was in broad daylight, in the town of
Charlestown. It was raining hard at the time--a thing so common in
Ireland that no one mentions it any more than they do the fact of the
daily paper appearing each morning--and the unfortunate victim had an
umbrella up, so the mob could not see his face. They shouted, 'Here's
Hussey,' and tried to pull him off the car, but the parish priest
stopped this. However, before he could reduce the villains to the fear
of the Church, which does affect them more than the fear of the Law,
they gave poor Nield a blow on the head, and, though he lived for six
months, he never recovered.
Another time, when returning to his house in Mayo from Ballyhaunis, on a
dark night, my son Maurice found a wall built, about eighteen inches
high, across the road, for the express purpose of upsetting him. It was
only by the grace of God--as they say in Kerry--and his own careful
driving, that he was preserved.
In those same Land League times, my son was a prominent gentleman rider.
At Abbeyfeale races he rode in a green jacket and won the race, which
produced a lot of enthusiasm, the crowd not knowing who it was sporting
the popular colour. They only heard it was my son after he had left the
course, whereupon a mob rushed to the station, and the police had to
stand four deep outside the carriage window to protect him, to say
nothing of an extra guard at the station gates.
The cordiality of my fellow-countrymen also provided me with another
disturbed night at Aghadoe, which I had leased from Lord Headley.
To quiet the apprehensions of my family, and also to relieve the mind of
the D.I. from anxiety about my tough old self, there were always five
police in the house, and two on sentry duty all night.
On this particular date, about two o'clock in the morning, we were
aroused by hearing shots fired in the wood below the house, the plan of
the miscreants being to draw the police away from the house. As this did
not succeed, a second party began a counter demonstration in another
quarter. The theory is that a third party wanted to approach the house
from the back in the temporary absence of the constabulary, and
disseminate the house, its contents, and the inhabitants into the air
and the immediate vicinity by the gentle and persuasive influence of
dynamite.
However, the police were not to be tricked, and soon the fellows, having
grown apprehensive, or having exhausted all their ammunition, were heard
driving _off_. Signs of blood were found on the road towards Beaufort
next morning, so the attacking force suffered some inconvenience in
return for giving us a bad night.
Lord Morris, among a group of acquaintances in Dublin, pointing to me,
said:--
'That's the Jack Snipe who provided winter shooting for the whole of
Kerry, and not one of them could wing him.'
'Mighty poor sport they got out of it,' I answered, 'and I have an even
worse opinion of their capacity for accurate aiming than I have of their
benevolent intentions.'
Other people know more of oneself than one does, and I was much
interested to hear that, in this year of grace, the editor of the _Daily
Telegraph_ said of me:--
'Sam Hussey, yes, that's the famous Irishman they used to call
"Woodcock" Hussey, because he was never hit, though often shot at.'
I always thought 'Woodcock' Carden had the monopoly of the epithet, but
am proud to find I infringed his patent.
I was benevolently commended by a vituperative ink-slinger, Daniel
O'Shea, in his letter to the _Sunday Democrat_ in 1886, but none of
those he blackguarded were in the least inconvenienced by 'the roll of
his tongue,' as the saying is:--
'A vast number of the Irish have been heartlessly persecuted by the most
despotic landlords of Ireland, such as Lord Kenmare, Herbert, Headley,
Hussey, Winn, and the Marquis of Lansdowne, all of whom are Englishmen
by birth, and consequently aliens in heart, despots by instinct,
absentees by inclination, and always in direct opposition to the cause
of Ireland. Poor-rate, town-rate, income-tax, are nothing less than
wholesale robbery, and is it any wonder that some of the people who are
thus oppressed should be driven to desperation? It is deplorable to
learn that they should have had any cause to commit what are called
"agrarian" crimes. Why not turn their attention to these landlords, the
police, the travelling coercion magistrates, not forgetting the
emergency men? These are the people to whom I would direct the attention
of the men of Kerry.'
I have given a number of examples of how I have been genially
appreciated in the hostile Press, but my family are of opinion that it
would not be fair, considering how many kind things were published in
loyal journals, not to render some tribute to them too. I was sincerely
obliged when I received a good word, but, frankly, the bad ones amused
me much more. However, I am not ungrateful, and I have specially prized
one able description of my attitude which appeared in the _Globe_, the
manly strain of the writing of which is in healthy contrast to the
hysterical effusions tainted with adjectival mania of those who wanted
me shot, but were too cowardly to fire at me themselves:--
'Mr. Hussey is admittedly fair and just in his dealings with his own
tenants. But he is only just and fair, which, in the ethics of Irish
agrarianism, is equivalent to being a rack-renter and a tyrant. He
refuses to let his own land at whatever the tenants think well to pay
for it. He persists, with exasperating obstinacy, in refusing to
sacrifice the interests of the landlords for whom he acts. In short, Mr.
Hussey is one of the most determined and formidable obstacles to the
success of the Land League. While such men have the courage to face the
agrarian conspiracy, that grand consummation of patriotic effort--the
rooting out of landlordism--must be a somewhat tough and tedious
business. He has lived in the midst of enemies, who would have murdered
him if only they had the opportunity. His life, it may be safely said,
has had no stronger security than his own ability to protect it.'
And yet some one ventured to call Irish land agents 'popularity-hunting
scoundrels.'
'Popularity and getting in money were never on the same bush,' as I told
Lord Kenmare, and if I had stopped to think how I should make myself
popular, I should have bothered my head about what I did not care
twopence for, and provided an even more easy target for firing at at
short range.
Drifting from a man who paid no heed to scoundrels, I am led to allude
to the attitude of a profession, the members of which profited by their
amenities--I, of course, mean solicitors--because some one put a
question to me on the subject only the other day.
My answer is, that none of the solicitors were in the Land League, and
they did not instigate outrages; but they drew comfortable fees for
defending the perpetrators.
Swindlers and murderers never agree, for they practise distinct
professions.
We were fighting a Land War, and though I have kept back land questions
as much as I can, in order not to weary the reader with what never
wearies me, I have one or two examples to give which cannot be omitted
if I am to portray the true facts.
My firm was agent for an estate in Castleisland, the rent of which, in
1841, was £2300. I exhibited the rental, showing only three quarters in
arrear. By 1886 it was cut down by the Commissioners to £ 1800, and the
landlord sold it for £30,000, for which the tenants used to pay four per
cent, for forty-nine years, to cover principal and interest.
There was a tenant on that estate named Dennis Coffey. He took a farm at
£105 a year; the Commissioners reduced that rent to £80. He purchased it
for £1440--eighteen years' purchase, for which his son has £42 a year
for forty-nine years. The father had purchased a farm for fee-simple of
equal value for £3000, which he left to two others of his sons. So that
one son, by paying half what he had covenanted to pay, and which he
could pay, gets a farm equal in value to what his father paid £3000 in
hard cash for. The man who is paying rent has his farm well stocked; the
others are paupers, and one died in the poorhouse.
That may belong to to-day, and not to the period of outrage with which I
have been dealing; but it duly points the moral, and is the outcome of
those times.
At the Boyle Board of Guardians in 1887, upon a discussion over the
Kilronan threatened evictions, Mr. Stuart said:--
'There was one of these men arrested by the police. His rent was £4,
12s. 6d., and, when arrested, a deposit-receipt for £220 was found in
his pocket.'
This case had been freely cited at home and in America as a typical
instance of the ruthless tyranny of Irish landlords.
My friend and neighbour, Mr. Arthur Blennerhassett, addressed the
following letter to Mr. W.E. Gladstone, then Prime Minister:--
'Sir--I beg respectfully to call your attention to the following
statement. In 1866, Judge Longfield conveyed to my uncle, under what was
called an indefeasible title, the lands of Inch East, Ardroe and Inch
Island, and previous to the sale, Judge Longfield caused them to be
valued by Messrs. Gadstone and Ellis, and in the face of the rental, he
certified that the fair letting value of Inch East and Ardroe was £230,
and that the fair letting value of Inch Island was £75, now in hand. On
the strength of will, my uncle purchased the lands valued at £305 for
£6200, and your sub-Commissioners have just reduced the rental of Inch
East and Ardroe at the rate of from £230 to £170 a year.
I therefore request you will be pleased to take some steps to recoup me
for the £60 a year I have lost by the action of the Government, and I
may say this can be partially done by abandoning the quit rent and tithe
rent charge, amounting to £34, 5s. 4d., which I am now forced by the
Government to pay without any reduction.
A. BLENNERHASSETT.'
The Right Honourable W.E. Gladstone.
The oracle of Hawarden was as dumb to this as to my effusion to a
similar purport already mentioned. Not even the proverbial postcard was
sent to Tralee, so the verbosity of Mr. Gladstone was strangely checked
when he found himself pinned down to facts by Irish landlords.
Whilst landlords and their families were literally starving, and agents
were collecting what they could at the peril of their lives, the real
land-grabbers, the no-renters, were accumulating money, and investing it
in land.
I sent the following series of sales to the _Times_ to show the real
value of land:--
(1) The interest on Lord Granard's estate, the valuation of which was
five guineas, was sold for £280, and the fee-simple subsequently
bought for £80.
(2) On one of his own farms for which the tenant paid £65 annual rent,
the tenant's interest fetched £750 and auction fees.
(3) A farm at Curraghila, near Tralee, annual rent £70, Poor Law
valuation, £51, 10s., area stat. 73 acres. The tenant's interest was
sold for £700.
(4) Tenant's interest on a farm in County Tipperary, on Lord
Normanton's estate, at yearly rent of £30, was sold for £600, and the
fee-simple purchased for £450.
(5) Tenant's interest at Breaing, near Castleisland, held at the
annual rent of £51, 10s., was sold for £550.
(6) At Abbeyfeale, County Kerry, tenant of a small farm, at annual
rent of twenty-four shillings, sold his interest for £55.
All the sales, save the Tipperary one, were in a district in which,
prior to the Land Act of 1881, tenant-right was unknown.
Poetry is always congenial to an Irishman, probably because it has
licences almost as great as he likes to take, and has a vague,
irresponsible way of putting things, much akin to his own methods.
Here are some lines from the 'Irish Tenant's Song' which express a good
deal of the popular emotion:--
Oh, Parnell, dear, and did you hear the news that's going round?
The landlords are forbid by law to live on Irish ground.
No more their rent-days they may keep, nor agents harsh distrain,
The widow need no longer weep, for over is their reign.
I met with mighty Gladstone, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, 'Hurrah for Ireland! 'tis now the happy land.
'Tis a most delightful country that I for you have made--You
may shoot the landlord through the head who asks that rent be paid.'
We care not for the agent, nor do we care for those
Who come upon us to distrain--we pay them back in blows.
And when hopeless, helpless, ruined, these landlords vile shall roam,
We'll hunt and hound them from the roofs they've held so long as home.
I don't say that was sung in Castleisland, but it might have been the
local hymn and verbal companion to the brutal misdeeds of the benighted
inhabitants.
As if matters were not bad enough, that Apostle of outrage Mr. Michael
Davitt came to Castleisland on February 21, 1886, and in a pestilential
speech, inciting to crime, he showed that, at all events, he appreciated
that for sheer blackness and turpitude Kerry was bad to beat. He said:--
'For some time past Kerry has attracted more attention for the
occurrences which have been taking place here, than the whole remainder
of Ireland put together. I am not without hope that henceforth, until
the battle with landlordism and Dublin Castle is triumphantly over, the
people of Kerry will be towers of strength to the national cause. The
hope of Irish landlordism is now centred in Kerry. Elsewhere it has
none, it is a social rinderpest, since the National League was started
1600 families have been turned out in this one county.'
Captain M'Calmont in the House of Commons, three weeks afterwards,
called attention to Mr. Baron Dowse's address to the Grand Jury of the
County of Kerry in which he stated:--
'That this county is in a very much worse state than it has been for
years: that there are no less than three hundred offences specially
reported to the constabulary since the Assizes of 1885, consisting of
two cases of murder, eighteen cases of letters threatening to murder,
thirty-nine cases of cattle, horse, and sheep stealing, eleven cases of
arson, eighteen cases of maiming cattle, fifty-two cases of seizing
arms, seventy-four cases of sending threatening letters, and twenty-four
cases of intimidation.'
You will observe that this is the same picture from two different points
of view.
Almost the worst case in which I was personally interested, was that of
the Cruickshank family.
The father, an industrious, respectable, elderly Scotsman, supported his
family at Inch by the proceeds of a rabbit-warren which he rented. He
had no farm, and therefore might expect to live in peace, even in Kerry,
in those times; but, as he was a Scotch Protestant, and had arms, he was
a marked man.
Having been threatened, he was partially guarded by the police who
patrolled the district. However, in April 1885, when the Prince of Wales
visited Ireland, and the constabulary from country districts were
drafted into the towns through which he had to pass, a number of
disguised Nationalists entered Cruickshank's house at night. They gave
him a frightful beating, even breaking a gun on his head, which was
seriously injured. This was done in the presence of his wife and
daughters, and of a young son who, with one of his sisters, went off in
the night to a police station four miles distant, to obtain assistance
for his father.
Between the fight and the chill received that night, the boy fell into a
decline of which he died in May 1886. One daughter, not strong at the
time of the outrage, became a chronic invalid. The father, as soon as he
was able to move after the perpetration, applied for compensation under
the Crimes Act, but as it was then to expire in about a fortnight, the
Lord-Lieutenant refused to consider the case. The poor fellow continued
to suffer from the wounds on his head, and so affected was he by the
shock of his son's death, that he became insensible and only survived
him a few weeks, leaving his widow and three daughters without any means
of support.
My wife and the former Archdeacon of Ardfert appealed for subscriptions
and obtained £120, which enabled the unfortunate survivors to return to
Scotland.
That was the settlement of the land question that suited the
Nationalists, namely, to cause the death of the head of the family, and
to get the rest out of the country. It did not say much for the
civilisation of the nineteenth century, but after the brutalities of the
spring of 1871 in Paris, there can be no doubt how thin is the veneer
over the barbarity of even the most civilised; those deeds were
perpetrated in the heart of the European capital specially devoted to
amusement: what I describe took place in the most distant portion of
Europe, where Nature is lovely and man, alas, the creature of impulse,
the prey of those who lead him into the worst temptations.
Another settlement was suggested by an anonymous writer who concealed
his identity under the pseudonym of Saxon. He observed:--
'Two hundred millions of English money are now (1886) to be spent buying
out Irish landlords, but would it not be surely better and more in
accordance with reason and justice to buy out the tenants? At a very low
calculation, two hundred millions would put a couple of hundred pounds
in every Irishman's pocket, and there is not one of them that would
refuse to leave his beloved country, and bless America or Australia on
these terms. The island could be populated with Scotch and English
settlers, and our difficulties be at an end. The Irish must not have
their own loaf and ours too. I commend this scheme to Messrs. Gladstone
and Morley. It is quite as just, quite as reasonable, and more forcible
than their own.'
Hear, hear! say I, but our grandchildren's grandchildren when grey old
men will still be trying to settle the Irish question, which can never
be settled until there arises a big man strong enough to force his will
on the Empire and fortunate enough to be able to hand over the reins of
political dictatorship to an equally enlightened and powerful successor.
It is hopeless to expect Irish matters to go well, when the balance of
parties in the House of Commons is held by hirelings and traitors, men
who debase patriotism and would to-day encourage outrage as much as they
did in 1884, if it was worth their mercenary while.
I had a word to write myself a year later to Mr. T. Harrington, who
thought he could tell as many lies about me as suited his own purpose,
and I addressed my reply, published on August 29, 1887, to the Editor of
the _Times_. It ran as follows:--
'Sir--I have just read the speech of Mr. T. Harrington in the debate on
Mr. Gladstone's motive relating to the proclamation of the National
League, in which he states that I invented and gave to Mr. Balfour the
particulars of the boycotting of Justin M'Carthy. I beg you will allow
me to state that I never wrote to Mr. Balfour, or to any member of the
Government, on that or any subject. Had I supplied the information, I
would have mentioned some facts which Mr. Balfour omitted, for instance,
that a man named Andrew Griffin was nearly murdered because he brought
provisions to Justin M'Carthy, that four men were put on their trial for
the outrage, but notwithstanding a plain charge from the judge, the
jury, fearing the vengeance of the League, acquitted the prisoners. I
would also mention a fact that would seem almost incredible to your
English Catholic readers, that the old man cannot attend his place of
worship without being hissed at in the church, and that his aged wife,
while partaking of the sacrament of the Holy Communion, was hissed at
and jeered. These things can be proved on oath, and are not to be set
aside by frothy declamation. Neither can the fact be disproved that one
of the offences for which Justin M'Carthy has suffered was that he
purchased his farm from me under Lord Ashbourne's Act, a proceeding
which (as it is likely to settle down the country) is considered a
deadly crime; and for committing the same offence another man in the
same barony had his cows stabbed.
Your obedient servant, S.M. HUSSEY.'
There is yet another case I cannot forbear from handing on to a
generation that knows no outrages nearer home than Macedonia. Six
ruffians, having their faces covered with handkerchiefs, and armed with
heavy cudgels, entered the house of a farmer named Lambe and began to
beat him. To save his head from the blows, he ran the upper part of his
body up the chimney and held on by the cross-bar. His wife, on coming to
his assistance, was beaten so severely that her skull was fractured,
while an aged female--stated to be in her ninety-seventh year--was not
only roughly handled, but also beaten. A most discreditable episode
indeed, in a land formerly renowned for respect for womanhood, and for
the warm-hearted generosity of her sons.
In only one instance in Kerry was police protection being regarded as
necessary up to the present summer, and all who know the contemporary
condition of affairs will at once recollect that Mrs. Morrogh Bernard is
the lady in question.
The late Mr. Edward Morrogh Bernard of Fahagh Court, Bullybrack, was a
Roman Catholic, who had resided in Kerry all his life, and some
five-and-twenty years ago he built on his property the residence in
which he died in the spring of 1904. He and his wife, an English lady,
who was justly beloved for her wide charity, were one night, after
dinner, sitting in their drawing-room, when a party of masked
moonlighters walked in. One of them held a pistol to her head, and told
her not to scream or move, else he would shoot her. Another performed
the same kindly office for Mr. Bernard, whilst the rest ransacked the
house for arms and money.
Mrs. Bernard noticed that the hands of the man who was threatening her
with violence were not those of an agricultural labourer, because they
were small and white. On the strength of this clue, the police arrested
a little tailor in the village, and she courageously identified him in
court, though every possible pressure was brought on her not to do so.
He was sentenced to several years' imprisonment, and his friends vowed
they would make it hot for Mrs. Bernard, and ever after she has been
protected by two or three constables. The police did not live in Fahagh
Court, but in a hut specially built for them a few yards off, and at
night they always came into the house. To the very last days of Mr.
Bernard's life whenever he and she went to pay a call on a neighbour,
two policemen followed them either on a car or on bicycles, and I have
never heard any reasons advanced to show that these precautions were
superfluous.
Meeting this little party on the highway was the only thing in the
twentieth century which brought home to the British tourist the terrible
deeds which blackened Kerry in the eighties.
I have always looked on the light side of life, even when it has seemed
blackest, and so I will not close this chapter without a more cheery
anecdote.
There was a good deal of friction among Land Leaguers over the amount of
relief money and other remuneration doled out by the rebel authorities.
This seldom reached a more droll pitch than in the complaint of a girl
at Rossbeigh, who wrote to a prominent member of Parliament--since
deceased--that another girl had been awarded a pound for booing at a
sergeant, 'while I, who broke a policeman's head, never got so much as
would pay for a candle to the Blessed Virgin.'
Sometimes the crafty Paddy utilised the agitation for his own purposes,
as the following example will prove.
A farmer's house was fired into, but no one could tell the reason why,
for he had not paid any rent and was a good Land Leaguer. He was asked
if he could account for it himself, and after some shuffling under
promise of strict secrecy, made the following revelation.
'Well, it was this way, I married a dacent girl from the North, and all
went well with us until her mother came along, and she had the divil's
own tongue, and nothing could get her out of the house. I would say "the
North has fine air, would not a change back there get you your health?"
'To which the old Biddy would reply:--
'"Where would I live except with my only daughter and her husband?"
'And this sort of thing made me desperate, and I promised the "bhoys"
five shillings if they would fire round the house on a certain night. On
the evening that had been agreed upon, I began reading on the paper how
farms in Castleisland were being fired into, and the old woman said that
if these things were so, County Kerry was worse than County Cork, and I
thought to myself "maybe you'll find it so, you ould divil."
'Well, they came and did their work in grand style after we had gone to
bed, and there was the mother-in-law screeching and bawling, and every
hour too long for her until daylight, when I put her in the cart and
drove her to the station.'
The sequel is that the couple left to themselves lived happily ever
after, a thing more likely to happen to people in England and Ireland,
if it was no one's business to make bad blood between them.
CHAPTER XXII
COMMISSIONS
I have probably given evidence to as many Commissions as any living man,
for I have been before seven, and never once was asked a question that
posed me.
I enjoyed the experience of being asked about what I knew by those who
knew nothing on the subject, and if the legal mind was a little more
obtuse than the civil, well, it was only the choice between a grey
donkey and a black.
The earliest Commission I gave evidence before was one on Agriculture.
Professor Bohnamy Price was one of the Commissioners, and he knew what
he was talking about, others being Lord Carlingford, the Duke of
Buccleuch, and the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who presided. The peers
were all used to big parks, obsequious bailiffs, and huge demesnes. I
think they metaphorically picked up their coat tails and stepped
carefully away from the Irish potato patches and acres of turf.
It was alleged that prosperity of nations was a good deal owing to
tenant-right.
'I do not think so,' said I, 'because Donegal and Kerry have
approximately the same value and area, same number of miles of road and
sea frontage. There is extreme tenant-right in Donegal and none in
Kerry, yet the prosperity of the farmers in Kerry is extremely superior
to those of Donegal.'
'There is too much tenant-right in Donegal,' said Mr. Chichester
Fortescue, who was examining me.
'Not if it is a good thing,' I replied, 'for then you could not have too
much.'
Mr. Shaw Lefevre's Commission on the housing of the working classes in
Ireland was very uninteresting. 'Oxen are stalled, pigs are styed or
take possession of the cabin, but what is done for the Irish labourers?'
asked a passionate mob-orator, and in many cases it might have been
answered that a good deal more has been done for them than the idle
ruffians deserve. I had no difficulty in showing that landlords were
always willing to give assistance in housing labourers, and when an
ex-mayor of Cork on the Commission seemed to doubt my assertions, I
might have retorted that though he was used to factory hands, yet he had
never bothered himself how they lived out of work time.
The Duke of Devonshire was on this board. He has obtained his great and
honourable reputation by conscientiously slumbering through many duties.
His tastes are for racing and shooting, but from sheer patriotism he has
devoted himself to politics with all the energy of his lethargic manner,
which successfully conceals abnormal common-sense. It was he, more than
any other man, who saved Ireland from Home Rule, though as an Irish
landlord he has not come much to the fore, because his vast English
estates are immeasurably more important than those situated round
Lismore. This picturesque town was once called the abode of saints, but
only antiquarians remember that its university was once so important
that Alfred the Great went there to study, and that in the old castle
Henry II held a Parliament. The Cavendishs rebuilt the latter, and both
in appearance and position it much resembles Warwick Castle. It has not
very many bedrooms, and when the King was first expected, among various
extensive alterations, a bathroom was put up. The Duke has generally
visited Lismore twice a year, and has never stood unduly on his dignity,
but been approachable by all, and reasonable about everything, which has
also been characteristic of his political views.
Lord Bessborough presided over a Commission on Irish Land Laws. He was a
very kind, very lean man, who was wont in old age to walk about London
wrapped in a black cape, and was idolised at Harrow, where twenty
generations of boys knew him and his brothers and valued their unabated
interest in school cricket. Baron Dowse, a judge I have already
mentioned, the O'Conor Don, and Mr. Shaw, were the members who put
questions to me. I remember the O'Conor Don was much impressed when I
mentioned I had made six tours in Scotland, and had been in Holland, in
Belgium, in France, in Germany, in Italy, and just before in Spain, to
inquire into the state of agriculture. I said that if a man persisted in
farming badly I would serve him with notice to quit even if he paid his
rent, and I pointed out that there were three hundred thousand occupiers
of land in Ireland whose holdings were under £8 Poor Law valuation, and
these occupiers, when their potatoes fail, have nothing to fall back
upon but relief work, starvation, or emigration, and I further laid
before the Commission a purchase scheme. There would be twenty years'
purchase-money to be lent by the State, two years' purchase to be found
by the tenant and two years more at the end of ten years. Thus the
landlord would get a price for his property that would induce him to
sell (reductions had not then been wholesale) and the tenant would get a
lease for ever with abolition of rent at the end of thirty-five years by
paying a fine of two years' rent down and two more at the end of ten
years.
They would not have it. Who ever expected that Justice would lift the
bandage from her eyes for the sake of fair play to the landlord?
Lord Salisbury had a Commission on the working of the Land Act of 1881.
Lord Dunraven, Lord Pembroke, and Lord Cairns were on it, the latter
being chairman. He was so austere that, when he was made Lord
Chancellor, it was said he had swallowed the mace and could not digest
it. His law may have been profound, but it was never relieved by a gleam
of humour, and his ecclesiastical proclivities were of the lowest Church
type. For some time he nominated Tory bishops, and it was declared he
was so evangelical that he would have suggested any clergyman for a
vacant bishopric who promised to forego the ecclesiastical gaiters. His
horror of Anthony Trollope's novels was notorious, especially his
dislike of Mrs. Proudie and her attendant divines.
I said the working of the Land Act was ruin to Irish landlords, and
cited a case. A Kerry gentleman had an estate of £1200 rent roll, with a
mortgage of £8000 which involved charges of £400 a year, a jointure
tithes and head rent took £400 more. The Commissioners by so cutting
down the rent by £400 made a clean sweep of what that landlord had to
live on. Fortunately, he had his mother's fortune of £40,000, which his
grandfather had wisely provided should not be invested in Irish lands,
having, in fact, established a contingency in case his grandson should
be dispossessed of the property he had held for generations, by a
Government truckling to blustering 'no-renters.'
Before Lord Cowper's Commission on the same subject, I said much the
same thing over again and realised that Royal Commissions are most
valuable for the purpose of shelving pregnant topics. The only good
derived from these official inquiries is that the witnesses get their
expenses and the Government printers have a lucrative contract.
There is a story told of a witness who was being brought over to London
to give evidence.
'Patrick,' said the priest, 'you'll be having to mind what you're saying
over there. Perjury won't help you no more than I can, my poor fellow.'
'What happens if I get a bit wide of the truth then, father?'
'You won't get your expenses, my son.'
'Holy Mother, to think of that! I'll be so careful that I won't know how
many legs the blessed pig has that's round the cabin all day long.'
Sir Edward Fry's Commission had none of the tinsel of big names nor the
tawdriness of aristocratic apathy. Sir Edward meant to find the truth,
and so did his colleagues--all practical men. What they did was to
strike against the hard rock of party government which was too adamant
to receive the evidence sown by these gardeners. Dr. Anthony Traill, who
was one of the Commissioners, has in this very year of grace been made
Provost of Trinity, and from what I saw of him I am certain he will be
the apostle of fair play between undergraduates and dons.
I answered over five hundred questions and rammed home one or two
points. For instance, I expressed my disapproval of a system by which a
man who is a sub-Commissioner at the hearing on the first term may
become the Court valuer on the next.
In valuation, it is wrong that men from the north should be sent to
value in the south, or _vice versâ_, and to prove that I cited the
example of my tenant, Anne Delane. Her rent was fixed first term in 1883
for £34, 10s. In 1896, for second term, the sub-Commissioner fixed it at
£23, 10s., and on appeal it was raised to £25. Mr. O'Shaughnessy, who
was one of the sub-Commissioners on the first term, acted as a Court
valuer on the second. On the first time he allowed £103, 6s. 9d. for
drains and buildings, and on the second omitted it.
In the case of Hoffman, who held a farm at a rent of £30, I reduced it
to £20 in 1881. In 1896 he went into court, and the County Court judge
reduced it to £15, and on appeal he got it again reduced to £13.
On land which came into my own hands after 1881, I was able to get rents
over 50 per cent. in excess of those fixed by the sub-Commissioners. In
the case of Patrick Quill, the farm on which the rent was cut down from
£20 to £16 was sold for £300 with a charge of £9 on it.
In the case of Michael Callaghan, Colonel Hickson expended £300 and
Callaghan £100 on the farm, for which the rent was £70, and he sold his
interest for £700.
This perpetual wrangling and litigation is ruinous, for every man is
farming down his land and letting it deteriorate as fast as he can; and
there is a most marked difference in the county between those who have
bought their land and those who are tenants. When a judicial rent was
fixed and a tenant came into Court for a second judicial rent, I think
the landlord should have been at liberty to stop him by tendering the
farmer twenty years' purchase; that would give him a reduction of 20 per
cent, and make him a proprietor in the course of time.
In 1850 at Milltown Fair, yearlings were selling for 30s. apiece. The
same cattle now are selling for £5, and Kerry is a great stock-breeding
country.
It is very hard to define a landlord, and you will hear of some being
landlords who do not get a shilling from their estates. Under these
circumstances they would be like the fox in Æsop's fable who had lost
his own tail.
To show how the Land Act works, on the Harenc estate I was offered
twenty-seven years' purchase before the Act for a holding, and at the
time of the Commission they offered me sixteen years' purchase on
two-thirds of the rent.
One other Commission besides that of the _Times_ remains to be
mentioned. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a dour Scot with a lot of gumption
in his head, was chairman of one on Imperial _versus_ local taxation. My
easy task was to show the excess of the latter in Kerry, which is the
highest taxed county in the three kingdoms.
When a man thinks of the vast amount of information buried beyond all
probable excavation in the Blue Books of the last fifty years, he may
well break into Carlyle-like diatribes against the waste of the whole
thing--which is paid for out of the taxpayer's pocket.
Alluding to all these Commissions reminds me that there were three Land
Commissioners--Mr. Bewlay, who was very deaf; Mr. FitzGerald, who was
rather hasty; and Mr. Wrench, who consistently absented himself to
attend the Congested Board.
So they were respectively, though not respectfully, called, 'The judge
who could not hear, the judge who would not hear, and the judge who is
not here.' This was one of the witticisms of my clever friend, Mr.
Robert Martin--'Bally-hooley'-one of the very few men who can write a
good Irish song, and sing it well, into the bargain.
I appeared in the witness-box in the case of O'Donnell _v._ the _Times_.
I suppose people buy newspapers to obtain information, or else to get a
pennyworth of lies to induce equanimity in bearing the income-tax, the
weather, and all other ills that an unnatural Government is responsible
for; and I further suppose a halfpenny paper has to condense its
inaccuracies, and serve them up in tabloid form for mental indigestion.
However, that is as it may be; anyhow, I had a hearty laugh at the
_Star_, which wrote:--
'A look round the Court again this morning brought the strange
impression which one now always feels on entering the Court. The space
is so comparatively small, but one feels as though it were all Ireland
in microcosm. You see representatives of every class in the terrible
conflict of war, of rival passions, hatred, and traditions. This man
with the large nose, the large and disfigured face, is Mr. Hussey, and
those scars that you see, and the distortion of the features, are
perchance marks left by some desperate and homicidal tenant avenging his
wrongs.'
That 'perchance' is good, considering my riding misadventure in County
Cork, of which I gave an account earlier.
As for the Parnell Commission, it was the outcome of superb patriotism
on the part of the _Times_. That great organ, in the spirit of purest
devotion to the best interests of England and Ireland, honestly
attempted to expose treachery, and to denounce treason. Hundreds of
columns of the valuable space at their daily disposal, as well as
thousands of pounds earned by the highest journalism of any country,
were freely lavished in this tremendous denunciation, known as
'Parnellism and Crime.' The crime of Pigott eventually saved Parnell and
his followers. But the last word on that has not yet been spoken.
Another pen than mine may, perchance before long, tell the whole truth
about that tragic episode, and explain what is still an unsolved riddle
in all dispassionate minds. Without challenging and exciting the
strongest racial prejudices, it will be impossible to lift the veil, and
I have no intention of affording even the slightest preliminary peep
behind the scenes of that dramatic affair. The wheels of God grind
slowly, and they ground exceeding small almost before the absurd
exultation of Nationalist relief over the Pigott episode had abated. It
is almost time to treat the whole affair from the historical point of
view, and then the idol of Home Rule will be pulverised. However, that
is another story in which I have no chapter to write.
My own share in the Parnell Commission was on November 29, 1888, on the
twenty-third day. I was examined by the Attorney-General, the present
Lord Chief Justice, and the most popular and most honourable of men. At
that very time, I have heard, he sang each Sunday in the surpliced choir
of a Kensington church, and I suppose he is the very best chairman of a
committee or of a public meeting of our own or any other time. A
Parnellite once said he had the unctuousness of a retired grocer, but
was contradicted by a more reverent English Radical, who said, 'No, he
has the unction of grace,' whereas, the truth is, he has the platform
manner with him always.
I told the Court I had been a Kerry magistrate for the previous
thirty-seven years, and, after deposing to the earlier state of my
property, I insisted that moonlighting and 'land-grabbing' were unknown
terms before 1880. My examination under the Attorney-General was, in
fact, too practical and useful to provide amusement for latter day
readers.
My cross-examination was begun by Sir Charles Russell, who led off with
a sneer about my being the most popular man in the county, and, when I
adhered to other statements, he added, 'Well, a very popular man. I will
not put you on too high a pinnacle.' (Laughter.) Then for an hour and a
half he plied me with the best balanced statistical questions I ever
heard put in a hostile spirit, and without a note I could answer every
one. After considerable hesitation I admitted on consideration that
there was in Kerry one farmer benefiting by the Act of 1870. I have
never heard since that he was caught and exhibited as the solitary
outward and visible sign of the inward and legal benefit of the
legislative force of Imperial Parliament.
Mr. Lockwood, to whom, as artist, I had been serving as a model,
evidently preferred to handle me with pencil rather than with questions,
for he was almost as brief as Mr. Reid. It is my view that they both had
consigned me to petrification under Sir Charles Russell, and finding me
alive and kicking, thought me too tough to expire under such _coups de
grace_ as they could inflict.
We came to banter when Mr. Michael Davitt suggested that the young men
of Castleisland took part in nocturnal raids because there was no such
social inducement to keep them quiet, as a music-hall or a theatre; but
I told him there ought to have been no inducement to them to shoot their
neighbours, and that Castleisland was past redemption.
He blandly alluded to my popularity with the tenants before 1880; but I
only said that I got on fairly well with them, for I do not think that
any agent was ever really popular.
'Relatively?' insidiously.
'Yes.'
Then came this curious question, put with a gentleness that would have
aroused the suspicion of a babe:--
'Did you ever say, in reply to a question put to you by Mr. Townsend
Trench as to why you were not shot, that you had told the tenants that
if anything happened to you he would succeed you as agent?'
'Yes, I did say so; but it is not original, because it is what Charles
II. said to James II.'
This historic reference, which elicited laughter in Court, did not seem
intelligible to my questioner, but some better informed person probably
soon quoted it to him:--
'Depend on it, brother James, they will never shoot me to make you
king.'
From the kid-glove amenities of Mr. Davitt to the aggressive harshness
of Mr. Biggar was a sharp contrast. He heckled me vigorously, and I
retorted to him pretty hotly. A great deal had been expected of this
cross-examination, but the general opinion was that I gave rather better
than I received. Coolness is the despair of cross-examiners, and I think
mine made more impression on the Court than the impulsiveness of a dozen
inaccurate Nationalists.
Mr. Biggar asked:--
'You said you were popular in the district up to 1880?'
I retorted with emphasis:--
'I never had a serious threat until you mentioned my name in
Castleisland, and then people told me, 'Get police protection at once,
or you will be shot!'
That made the Court laugh. Mr. Biggar did not appreciate the humour. He
returned to the charge viciously:--
'Did not some of your sympathisers light a bonfire in 1878 at
Castleisland on account of the triumphs of your buying the Harenc
estate? and did not the population of Castleisland, who knew your
character, scatter that bonfire, and put it out?'
'I heard they had a row over it. There were nine bonfires lighted in
Kerry after I succeeded. I was fairly popular until you held up my name
as a subject for murder in Castleisland. You said Hussey might be a very
bad man, but you would take care of one thing--that if any person was
charged with shooting him, or any other agent, they would be defended,
which meant they would be paid.'
Mr. Biggar did not appear to relish the line he was on, and shunted to
another topic; but he could not shake my view that the rents of 1880
were, on the average, twenty-five per cent. lower than in 1840.
'You bought the Harenc estate over the heads of the tenants?'
'No, I did not.'
'You spoke about an address which you received from the tenants when you
were a candidate for Tralee?'
'Yes.'
Then, with the snarl of a wild beast, Mr. Biggar blurted out:--
'Have you any idea whether this was got up by the bailiffs on your
property?'
'I am quite certain it was not, because I had no bailiffs on the
property. I gave an immense deal of employment, and I believe that had
something to do with it.'
Mr. Biggar presently sat down, having made less of me than he and his
friends hoped.
On re-examination, the Attorney-General observed:--
'You say one of the bonfires, lighted when you succeeded, was put out. I
suppose the Irish people are not very averse to a row at times?'
'Oh no.'
'And bonfires do produce rows at times?'
'Certainly.'
'Your popularity did not depend on one bonfire?'
'No.'
Nor did my life, fortunately, depend on the good will of Messrs.
Parnell, Biggar, and their associates.
With reference to my freedom in telling the truth, an application was
made against me, in July 1891, for an attachment of the Land Court. It
ended abortively, and permitted me to continue with perfect impunity to
give in letters to the _Times_ evidence I was debarred from giving in
Court.
I certainly did not miss a chance of pointing out the proper path to the
Commissioners, and I have taken an even affectionate interest in every
department of the Land Commission. Sarcastically, a Home Rule paper
politely christened me as the fatherly patron of the Court, and informed
me that my own conscience had given up communication with me, in
consequence of the many snubs it had received.
The intimate knowledge of my most private affairs that this purports to
represent proves the empty-headedness of the writer, and when he added
that the strong indictment rebounded off my hide because I had heard
myself a hundred times denounced in language equally eloquent, I can
only agree that he was a mere lisping babe in comparison with some
adjectival denunciators who, to their regret, find I am still alive and
equal to them all.
CHAPTER XXIII
LATER DAYS
With advancing years comes a change in the point of view, for
anticipation contracts even more than retrospect expands. Associates of
early days have passed away, and where I was once one of a battalion,
to-day I am only a survivor of the old guard. This is not a cause for
sadness, but an incentive to take the best of what remains of life,
though at times chills and other ills, including doctors, drugs, and
income-tax, do their best to depress the survivor. It has been said to
be a characteristic of Irish humour that tears are very near the
laughter, and sometimes the unshed tears over lost opportunities must be
the chief bitterness of age--one which I have been mercifully spared.
After all, youth may round the world away, as Charles Kingsley wrote;
but when the wheels are run down, to find at home the face I loved when
all was young is the blessing of life, and when, at our golden wedding,
our children called us Darby and Joan, I am sure my wife and I were
quite willing to answer to the names.
This was happiness very different to that of George IV., who, when the
death of Napoleon was announced to him in the words:--
'Sir, your great enemy is dead,' exclaimed:--
'Is she? By Gad!' thinking it was his wife.
I remember an amusing case that occurred in our own family. One of my
kith and kin, who had been married in the year of the battle of
Waterloo, died at the ripe old age of a hundred and three.
There was a faithful old fellow on the estate who was much attached to
her, and this was his view, just before her end:--
'I am sorry to hear the old mistress is dying, very sorry indeed, for
she's been a good mistress to us all. Maybe if she had taken snuff she'd
have lived to a good old age,' which suggests wonder as to what his
conception of longevity really was. Probably the famous Countess of
Desmond, who died from the effects of a fall from a cherry-tree in her
one hundred and fortieth year, would have satisfied him.
I have already observed that much of my later years has been spent, much
against my will, in London, and no portion of this period was so
satisfactory to me as my friendship with Mr. J.A. Froude, which I regard
as one of the privileges of my life.
My first acquaintance with him was in consequence of reading his
_English in Ireland_, which I found so accurate and informative that I
wrote to ask him for an interview. I came to like him very much, not
only because he was the most gifted writer I have met, but also because
he understood Ireland better than any other Englishman.
My first conversation with him was in his house in Onslow Gardens, and
there I very frequently sat for hours with him, and he also presented me
with copies of all his books, with an autograph letter on the fly-leaf
of each. I think the recent Land Purchase Act, having been followed by
increased agitation for Home Rule in Ireland, bears out what he said
about the folly of trying to reconcile the irreconcilables, and also
bears out what Lord Morris called the 'criminal idiotcy' of attempting
to satisfy eighty Irish members, forty of whom would have to starve
directly they were satisfied.
So far as I am aware, Mr. Froude never contemplated standing for
Parliament, which would not have been a congenial atmosphere for him,
though I am convinced he would have made more mark at Westminster than
his friend Mr. Lecky, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting.
People to-day seem to regard Mr. Froude simply as the Boswell of
Carlyle, and, forgetting his own great services to historical
literature, degrade him to the mere chronicler of the bilious sage of
Chelsea. This is absolutely a distortion of fact, and one calculated to
do injury to the memory of both these famous men. Therefore it may be of
real utility to state that during my long and very intimate acquaintance
with Mr. Froude, he never mentioned the name of Carlyle to me but once,
and that was to describe a conversation between Lord Wolseley and
Carlyle, which dealt with the contemporary situation in Ireland. There
was, therefore, nothing to show me that my friend 'was utterly absorbed
in the Carlyles, and had no thought for any one else.' On the contrary,
he was a man full of keen interests, of which they were only one, and,
as far as I saw, an entirely subordinate one. He was a broad-minded man,
who hated petty misconception or a narrow view of anything, and he would
have been horrified at the prurient indecency with which the most
private affairs of the Carlyles have been exposed and distorted to
please a public which really has a higher moral tone than is possessed
by those who have gibbeted the defenceless dead.
Mr. Froude was not addicted to talking much about his own works, but I
remember his telling me that _Oceana_ had paid him best of them all, and
I think his view therein that the colonies will recede from England when
they are strong enough, following the example of the United States, is
accurate. Just tax Canada as Ireland has been taxed, and see how long
the Canadians will be contented. The ministers of George III. tried that
policy on the United States with the result that, before many years,
George had to receive the Plenipotentiary Minister of dominions over
which he himself had once reigned. It is absurd to compare Ireland with
Yorkshire, as has been done, for Ireland once had a separate Parliament,
and the Union was a matter of agreement, the outcome of which was that
Mr. Childers's Commission found she was taxed three millions more than
she should have been. The colonies are on the alert, with all the rather
irritable uppishness of youth on the verge of manhood, and their younger
generations are sure to take full advantage of any tactless conduct of
the British Government. Such was Froude's view, and nothing has happened
since his death to shake its inherent probability. The waves of Imperial
patriotism in war time go for very little, for Ireland is admittedly
disloyal, and yet Irish soldiers and Irish regiments were absolutely the
most successful in South Africa.
When the Government was introducing some quack measure into Ireland,
Froude wrote to me:--
'I see they are putting some fresh sticks under the Irish pot, so it
will soon boil over.'
Which it did, with a vengeance.
To the end of his days Froude was a great reader, but his interest in
Church affairs and in ecclesiastical differences had completely died
away. He told me that the most accurate man of business of any period
was Philip of Spain, and that his notes and memoranda were a marvel of
practical aptitude. He derived the chief information for his _History of
England_ from Spanish despatches, and would to-day have benefited
considerably by the translations of Major Martin Hume.
Personally Froude had no cranks; his disposition was most urbane, whilst
he was very neat in his appearance and also in his handwriting. It would
certainly be of interest to give a few of his racy letters, too often
undated, which I have preserved. Unfortunately, his executors firmly
refuse the necessary legal consent, so that I am compelled to make my
book irreparably the poorer by omitting what should have been one of its
most attractive contents. In justice to Froude's memory, I ought to add
that there was nothing in his correspondence with me that would have
diminished his high repute. I mention this because otherwise busybodies
might have misinterpreted the arbitrary action of his executors to the
detriment of his fame.
A later friendship than that with Froude also must have a sincere
allusion in these pages, for I have derived much pleasure from my
association with Sir Henry Howorth, a ripe old lawyer of Portuguese
extraction, who has rendered valuable political service by his polemical
letters to the _Times_, on which I can pass a most favourable opinion.
His histories of the Mongols, the Mammoth, and the Flood are possibly
more permanent, but they are not of such contemporary note. At any rate,
I respect them from a distance, whilst I admire the political effusions
as the capital work of a comrade under arms, and one who is not afraid
to verbally bludgeon any formidable contemporary Hooligans.
Sir Henry Howorth occasionally breaks out into a story, though he is
more frequently a listener to mine. This is one of his that I happen to
recall:--
The Mayor of Richmond gave a dinner, at which a distinguished Frenchman
sat next the Mayor's son, and on replying for the guests in imperfect
English, observed:--
'I am vary happy to be here, and to meet my young friend, who is a sheep
of the old bloke,' meaning, of course, a chip of the old block.
I plead guilty to have materially increased the interest felt by Sir
Henry in Irish affairs, which is not diminished by the fact that a niece
of Lord Ashbourne is married to his son.
I think it was to him that I recommended another panacea for the evils
of Ireland, namely, that it would be a good plan to exchange Ireland for
Holland, for the Dutch would reclaim Ireland, and the Irish would
neglect the banks of Holland, with the eventual result that the living
Irish question would be washed away.
Just now I alluded to a mayor, which reminds me of a story about an
Irish mayoress. As his Majesty has by this time been entertained at
several Corporation luncheons, it is not invidious to give the tale.
The Mayoress, who was the heroine of the festal occasion in question,
felt completely overpowered by the royal society in which she found
herself, and when seated at the meal next to the King, was absolutely
unable to articulate any reply at all to the observations he addressed
to her, so eventually he gave her up, and turned his colloquial
attentions to the lady on the other side.
After a while, fortified by the champagne, the Mayoress grew more
courageous, and, admiring the gentleman in full uniform on her right,
said to him:--
'Might I be so bowld as to ask whether you are Lord Plunket?'
'No,' he replied, with a smile, 'I am not.'
'Would you mind telling me who you are, for I'm sure I don't know?'
'I am the Duke of Connaught,' complaisantly replied her neighbour, upon
which she gasped:--'Oh, God in Heaven, another of them!' and subsided
into unbroken silence for the rest of the repast.
Another amusing case of mistaken identity occurred when Mr. Gladstone
was concocting his treasonable Home Rule Bill. He had been informed that
Lord Clonbrook would be able to give him invaluable information, so he
told his wife to ask him to luncheon. She, however, mistaking the name,
invited the late Lord Clonmel, a jovial sportsman known to his friends
by the nickname of 'Old Sherry.'
Somewhat surprised at being thus honoured, Lord Clonmel consulted a few
cronies, who all advised him to accept, and in due course he proceeded
to Downing Street, where he found the French Ambassador was the only
other guest. It is possible that Mr. Gladstone thought him a little odd
and his attire somewhat demonstrative, but he was prepared for any
eccentricity in an Irish peer, and hardly noticed how excellently his
guest was doing justice to the meal, whilst preserving impenetrable
silence. Directly it was over, the Prime Minister took him apart, and
said:--'Now I want you, privately and confidentially, to give me your
view of the exact relation between landlord and tenant in Ireland.'
'Absolute hell, my dear boy, absolute hell,' was the emphatic reply of
the old sportsman.
That confidential conversation went no further; but I have never been
sure that Lord Clonmel in the least overstated the case.
This renewed allusion to the lower regions that appears so closely
connected with Irish affairs reminds me of an amusing incident which
took place in a Dublin tram. Two members of the fair sex were discussing
their plans for the summer in the interior of a car, and one of them in
a mincing brogue said to the other:--
'I think I shall go to England this summer; it is so difficult in
Ireland to get away from the vulgar Irish.'
'Faix,' screamed in much indignation an old Biddy sitting opposite, 'if
it's the vulgar Irish you want to avoid, and the English you want to be
meeting, it's to hell you must go, and you'd better go there this
summer.'
That's the sort of quick retort which a Scotchman calls Irish insolence,
but then, who expects appreciation of real wit from any one canny? Wit
is irresponsible, a truly Irish propensity.
The two mincing young women were almost as much disgusted as another old
lady who found herself opposite a stalwart working man, who incensed her
by his frequent expectoration. Gathering her skirts round her somewhat
ample form, she called the conductor and asked:--
'Is spitting allowed in this tram?'
'By all manes, me lady,' was the gallant reply, 'shpit anywhere you
like.'
While alluding to trams, I cannot forbear relating one other Dublin
tale, which Lord Morris picked up from me and was fond of telling. Its
brief course runs thus:--
'Would you tell me, if you plaze, where I'll find the Blackrock tram?'
asked a fussy little old woman of a policeman, busily engaging in
manoeuvring the traffic of a crowded street.
'In wan minute you'll find it in the shmall of your back,' was the
laconic reply.
The mere allusion to a query suggests how the British tourist invariably
starts trying to discuss the Irish question directly he is across the
Channel, and the insoluble part to any Saxon is that half the Irish do
not seem to desire a solution at all.
'What a fine country this would be if it were peaceful,' observed a
thoughtful Britisher, with a Cook's ticket in his pocket, on Killarney
Lake.
'Peace! What would we do with it?' was the scornful reply of his
boatman, surprised for once into ejaculating the truth.
Some landlords know how hopeless it is to attempt to prevail against
these sons of our epoch.
'It has been of no use to hold up a candle to the hydra-headed devil,'
said one landlord to me about his tenants, 'for affability is more
expensive than absenteeism. If I say, "Good morning, Tom," the fellow
expects twenty per cent. off the rent, and "How's your family?" is
considered to imply forty per cent, abatement'--and that cannot be
called putting a premium on good fellowship from the landlord's point of
view.
I have not said much about the way in which the Irish in America foster
insurrection, because it does not come within my own province. But I
have before me the type-written essay on the subject composed by a Kerry
landlord, who, in his lifetime, had exceptional opportunities of judging
of this in New York, and from it I am tempted to take a few sentences as
the manuscript is never likely to see the light of print.
'There are three distinct types of the Irish-American Home Ruler, who
have been and are even now supporting with their dollars or their
eloquence, the "Irish Cause" as it is somewhat vaguely termed
throughout the United States. They can be distinguished as follows:--
'1. The American--born Irishman of immediate Irish descent.
'2. The native Irishman who has emigrated from Ireland.
'3. The American Irish-American of long American descent, who, though
not inheriting a drop of Irish blood, is yet a vigorous if not
obstreperous ally of the Irish party in America. This last is the most
striking of the three, as on the face of it, he would not appear to
have any logical _raison d'être_ as a political entity, but in reality
exerts a powerful influence in favour of "the Cause."
'One phase of the methods favoured by Irish-American Home Rulers is the
ingenuity with which cable reports, as printed in the newspapers, are
utilised for platform purposes. Let an account be flashed under the
Atlantic descriptive of some agrarian demonstration in Ireland, which
having been declared illegal, is dispersed by military. Forthwith the
opportunity is seized, and on some public platform or at some big
banquet, the fervid orator poses as the champion of human liberty.
"Another British outrage upon the Irish people! A brutal and licentious
soldiery let loose to gag free speech and prevent, at the point of the
bayonet, the exercise of the rights of freeman. Thank God, that you and
I my Irish-American fellow-citizens, are living in this glorious
republic, where such things are impossible!"
'After hearing this amazing outburst, it is well to recall actual facts,
and compare the methods of suppressing riots in the United States and
the United Kingdom. For example, on July 12, 1871, a number of Orangemen
had organised a procession through the principal thoroughfares of New
York, which was resented by a large contingent of Catholic Irishmen, and
on a violent collision ensuing, the State militia was called out to
restore order, a task they most effectually accomplished by firing
volleys into the crowd of belligerents. The citizen soldiery of America
are accustomed to adopt summary measures with impunity. They possess the
resolution of the Irish constabulary without the uncomfortable
vacillation of Dublin Castle to thwart their efforts.'
In the past the Irish vote in America has been hostile to England, and
has had much to do with that measure of ill-feeling in the United States
which has deterred that Union of the Anglo-Saxon races that would enable
them to lick creation.
An example may be cited in the case of Egan. This man was an ex-Fenian
leader, who wielded much influence in Nationalistic circles as far back
as the seventies, and when he was Treasurer of the Land League, he is
described by Mr. Michael Davitt--who ought to have a fine capacity for
discriminating degrees of scoundrelism--as the most active and able of
the Nationalist leaders in Dublin. Some time after the Phoenix Park
murders he settled in the United States, and whilst distinguishing
himself by the exceptional violence of his appeals on behalf of
outrageous Ireland, he was actually sent as American Minister to Chili.
This would not have caused me to notice him here but because it is
necessary the community should be warned that, unlike a good many of his
contemporaries and comrades, he is not an extinct volcano. On March 10
of this current year, when still the chief Nationalist in the States, he
had a long interview with Count Cassini, the Russian Minister at the
Russian Embassy at Washington, just before a meeting of all the
diplomatic representatives, and the American correspondent of the
_Morning Post_ does not hesitate to accuse Russia of financially
assisting the cause which Egan fosters. This sort of thing ought not to
be ignored in England. As an international action, it is hitting below
the belt, and when bad times come again to Ireland the Nationalists will
look to the Ministers of the Great Bear for funds, and are not likely to
be disappointed. Still it is curious that a Government which, at home,
exiles Nihilists and other bomb-throwers should, abroad, give
contributions to the cause that instigated the blowing up of my house,
and the outrages which rendered Ireland so notorious.
Not many years ago my wife was once more seriously alarmed at Edenburn
by the formidable proclivities of a man P----, who sat all day at my
gate with a gun, which he said he used for shooting rabbits: but we all
knew I was the rabbit he wanted to put in his bag. However, he has gone
to another sphere, and I am spending the present summer of 1904 very
happily in the same county.
A couple of letters addressed there showing the way in which an old
widow expresses herself, when after great labour she has delivered
herself of an epistle, may not prove undiverting. The point is the
amount she can obtain from her children.
'Samuel Mr. Hussey Esq.
Sir--I hope you will be good enough to speak to Downing to give me
Justice. They have any amount of cattle, 2 horses, and my son-in-law's
wife carried 78 pounds book account before Mr. Downing got the case in
hands I would get 2 hundred pounds. I think it little for me according
to the means that was theirs. Now sir, two daughters very ritch sir
minding milk and butter and the one taking it away and selling it. My
son is not wright in his health or mind. They turned him against me and
he is more foolish than your Honour would believe. He says he will give
his uncle that ran away long ago to America mortgage, that Mr. Downing
gave him power to do what he like and those two daughters are very well
off and they will not allow me to do anything. Sir I am shamed of the
way they are treating me. My health and mind is very good, thanks be to
God and to you two Sir. They would not give me the price of the habit
that was berried with their father. Sir it would not pay my debts and
support me long. My father lived 100 years. The Judge said I would live
longer. Sir three hundred pounds is little enough for me according to
the means that is theirs. If I went into the workhouse I would not take
what they wish to give me. £160 they are giving me and I have my
Confidence in God and in your Honour's charity that you will be good
enough to speak for me. If the land don't sell to 5 hundred pounds I
will give it back to the attorney. Will your Honour tell them and I'll
pray to God sir ever to bless you.
Faithfully,
MARY LUCY.'
And the same dame favoured me with this further effusion:
'Mr. Hussey Esq.
Sir--100 pounds was offered to me before the purchase, a foolish priest
making little of me, himself trying to get it for his friends. The
Bishop, Sir, is kind to me always. For he knows I was wronged and he
don't like the foolish priest, and when I complain of him he is very
good. Sir some good people tell me that anyone at all have no claim but
myself and I wish it was true as all is very valuable. Mr. Connor is
very truthful and nice to me Sir when I will see him I am very sure he
will wish me well and all the good Honourable Gentlemen and yourself are
the best of all to my equals. I know it very well and I will for ever
pray to God in Heaven for you.
Faithfully,
MARY LUCY.'
So a landlord and agent, even in 1904, still has a few of the
patriarchal attributes in the eyes of the tenants. But to sift wheat
from chaff is easier than to sift truth from the lying blandishments
employed on such occasions.
The reference to the priest shows that though always feared, when the
land-passion seizes a parishioner, he is set at as much defiance as
possible, should he be moderate, and these are the only occasions when
they venture to tell their confessor unpleasant truths to his face, for
in some country districts they are still convinced that the priests have
power to transform them into frogs and mice.
A priest once threatened a bibulous parishioner, that if he did not
become more sober in his habits, he would change him into a mouse.
'Biddy, me jewel, I can't believe Father Pat would have that power over
me,' said the man that same evening as the shadows fell, 'but all the
same you might as well shut up the cat.'
Over elections the priests have paramount influence as I have already
shown, but may cite an example at the last County election in Kerry,
when three candidates stood, Sir Thomas Esmonde (Anti-Parnellite), Mr.
Harrington (Parnellite), and Mr. Palmer (Conservative). The last-named
out of a poll of six thousand obtained seventy votes. One of them was
given after the following fashion.
An illiterate voter at Killorglin being asked in the polling booth how
he wished to vote, replied:--
'For my parish priest.'
'But he is not a candidate. The three are Esmonde, Palmer, and
Harrington.'
'Well, then, I'll vote for Palmer, because it is more like Father Lawler
than the others.'
Naturally all concerned were convulsed with laughter, but the vote was
duly recorded.
It is no uncommon thing to see priests carefully teaching illiterate
voters the appearance of the name of the candidate for whom they are to
poll, and also giving them printed cards merely containing his name, so
that they can recognise it on the voting-card.
Of course an Irishman would take a bribe one way and calmly vote
another. But even this diplomatic tendency is outwitted by the priests,
for nowadays, when they have any doubt of the political sincerity of a
man, they insist on his declaring himself an illiterate voter. Then the
whole question of who is to be voted for is gone through audibly and
verbally, so that the honesty of the voter is known to those hanging
round. In the parish of Milltown, the education is as complete as in any
in Ireland, but at the last election, one third of the voters confessed
themselves illiterate, with the result anticipated by the priest.
If the priest understands his parishioner--a thing which admits of no
possible shadow of doubt--it is equally certain that the Englishman does
not, as is shown by the following frivolous tale, always a favourite of
mine.
'Paddy,' said a tourist at Killarney, 'I'll give you sixpence if you'll
tell me the biggest lie you ever told in your life.'
'Begorra, your honour's a gentleman! Give me the sixpence!'
No one would have thought of making such an offer to an English loafer,
and no English loafer would have had the wit to so neatly earn his
emolument.
It is the assumption of simplicity that does the trick, and so well is
that put on that it comes close to the real thing.
The other day, when the King and Queen were at Punchestown, a Britisher
chartered a car at Naas to drive out to the course, and on the way
remonstrated with the carman on the starved condition of his horse,
whose ribs would have served for an anatomical study.
'Well, your honour,' the jarvey explained, 'it's an unlucky horse.'
'How unlucky?' asked the Englishman.
'Well, it's this way, your honour. Each morning I toss with that horse
whether he shall have his feed of oats or I have my glass of whisky, and
would your honour credit it, the horse has lost these ten days past.'
I am reminded of the reply given by Lord Derby to a gentleman who sent
him a dozen of very light claret, which he said would suit his gout.
Lord Derby subsequently thanked him, but said he preferred the gout, and
I have no doubt that that horse, had he been able to give tongue, would
have been an ardent upholder of teetotalism when it ensured him a feed
of oats.
One more story of Lord Derby, as I have just mentioned his name:--
A worthy trader had bothered him to let him stand for a certain borough
on the Tory ticket, but the Whig was returned unopposed on the day of
the nomination, and the candidate was subsequently attacked by Lord
Derby for not coming forward as he had promised.
The man was almost as shaky in his aspirates as in his political
propensities, and his reply was:--
'I would have stood, my lord, but there was a 'itch in the way.'
'It was the more necessary for you to come to the scratch,' was the
immediate retort.
I always find that story popular at the Carlton, where I spend my
afternoons when in London. I was proposed by Mr. James Lowther and
seconded by the Duke of Marlborough, and very much obliged have I been
to them both, for I have many acquaintances there, and it has all the
conveniences of a comfortable hotel, without having to pay extravagantly
for the privilege of looking at a waiter.
In the intervals of reading the papers and listening to other people, I
have there, as elsewhere, endeavoured to impart what I know to others
who know nothing about Ireland. They know much more about China or the
aboriginal tribes of Australia, in London, than they do on the topics
dearest to me.
An English Radical member, after a long chat with my son Maurice,
observed:--
'You actually mean to say that if Home Rule were given to Ireland you
would not be allowed to reside there?'
'Certainly not,' replied Maurice, who knew what he was talking about.
The member replied that he could not believe him, but that if he had
known that that was the real nature of the Bill he would never have
voted for it.
I could not desire a better example of English wisdom on this
subject--one which Lord Rosebery has consigned to a distant date in
futurity, foreseeing that if the Opposition are to be handicapped with
Home Rule they will not stand a forty to one chance at the next
election.
That election will, of course, turn on Protection, and I am therefore
tempted to quote from an article I contributed to _Murray's Magazine_ in
July 1887, entitled 'After the Crimes Bill, What Next?' for I feel my
forecast of over fourteen years ago may serve a useful purpose to-day.
It ran thus:--
'In my next suggestion I feel that I am treading on dangerous ground;
still, having undertaken to suggest a remedy for Irish discontent and
anarchy, I must not shrink from offending the prejudices of some of the
wise men of England.
'Ireland is an agricultural country. There are in Ulster, as in England
and Scotland, factories which support the greater portion of the
population, and cause the prosperity of the province; but outside of
Ulster, cattle and butter are the staple products. And how does Ireland
stand in her only market, England, as compared with other nations? She
enjoys free trade in butter, no doubt, but so do France and Holland; but
these countries, while they find an open market in England, tax all
English and Irish productions, and being manufacturing countries
themselves they can afford to sell butter at so cheap a rate as to swamp
Ireland's market. A slight protective duty on foreign butter would be
hailed with gratitude in Ireland, and do more to allay discontent than
any further acts of so-called "generosity."
'Again, the great thinly peopled countries of the West find in England a
free market for cattle and flour, and America taxes very highly all
English goods. Why not place Ireland on a par with America, by levying a
slight protective duty on American beef and flour? Every little village
in Ireland formerly had its flour mill, which worked up the corn grown
in the country as well as imported grain. These mills are now generally
idle and the men who worked them ruined. A small duty on manufactured
flour would restore this industry, and enable men with some capital to
give employment to labour, and to work up in small quantities for the
farmer, at a cheap rate, their home-grown corn, as well as to grind
imported grain. Our own colonies may have, no doubt, a right to object
to our taxing their goods, but not so foreign countries.
'The Free Trade system of England would, no doubt, have been successful
if reciprocated. But the question is worth considering, whether the
English people do not now lose more by taxation resulting from the
chronic state of rebellion in Ireland than she gains by bringing in
American beef and flour, and foreign butter and butterine, free, to the
impoverishment of Ireland, and of the agricultural portions of England
and Scotland? "Remedial measures" for an agricultural country are
certainly not those which spoil its market.'
Don't dismiss that as pre-Chamberlainese Protection for it is sheer
common-sense on a matter of national importance, and what I wrote in
1887, after many years, has become part of the political convictions of
a great and an increasing party.
I wonder what the Protective party will be like when it eventually comes
into office. Promises out of office are often the whale which only
produces the sprat of legislation when the time of fulfilment arrives.
This is an impartial opinion on most Cabinets of the last fifty years.
One of the few occasions on which a recent British Government has
recently shown some signs of appreciating a really keen and capable man
was when they made Mr. Ellison Macartney, Master of the Mint.
I wrote and congratulated him, observing that I hoped he would never be
short of money, but if that was his plight all he had to do was to coin
it for himself.
I have a bad recollection for faces, and one day in Dublin his father
came up to me, and seeing I did not remember him, recalled a story with
which I had amused him in the lobby of the House of Commons.
It was to this effect, and may prove new to others:--
Coming out of Glasgow one evening two Irishmen waylaid a Scotsman for
the sake of plunder. He was nearly enough for them both, but numbers
prevailed, and when they had mastered him, after searching his pockets,
they only found three halfpence.
Said one Hibernian to the other:--
'Glory be to the Saints, Mick, what a fight he made for three
halfpence.'
'Oh,' replied the other, 'it was the mercy of the Lord he had not
tuppence, or he'd have killed the pair of us.'
Killing suggests the Kerry militia, the corps in which no one dies
except of good fellowship, one which has done a good deal to unite the
divergent interests of north and south Kerry, and which provides fine
physical development for soldiers of all ranks.
Last year the militia received a grant of £120 from Government to be
expended on route marching with the band through the county in order to
promote recruiting. The net haul in the Milltown district was the
village idiot, who promised to enlist after the next sessions if the
jailer did not take him--he being apprehensive of committal to prison.
But even this was not enough, for his mother came to a neighbouring
magistrate, weeping and praying for his remission, because--
'It was a drunken freak on Patrick, for if the lad had kept his senses,
sure, he would never have done it.'
Another Kerry man being asked why his son did not enlist, replied:--
'Ah, Jamsie was not a big enough scamp for the militia, because you have
to be a great blackguard before you can get in there.'
Which shows that the camel and needle's eye trick is easier to perform
than to induce a country-bred man to enlist in the King's militia;
though once in, every fellow loves it.
This intimation of an army suggests an anecdote of the past war-time.
The militia was being embodied, and several landlords who held
commissions were going under canvas with the corps at Gosport. One of
his tenants stopped a popular landlord on the road and asked:--
'What do you want to go to be shot at by them Boers for, sir?'
'To be sure, Tim, my tenants have the first right to shoot me, have they
not?' was the prompt reply.
The fellow roared with laughter at the retort, and after shaking hands,
wished him luck.
It was also characteristic of Irish proclivities for a soft-voiced woman
on the estate to say to Miss Leeson Marshall:--
'When the war broke out first we were all praying that the English might
be beaten out of South Africa. Then when Mr. Marshall went away to the
army, we thought we should not like his side to lose, so we changed our
prayers round by the blessing of God and His Saints.'
If any real impression has been given in these pages of the inconsistent
Irish character, the genuine character of this sentiment will be
comprehensible. It has been said that an Irishman will tell the truth
about everything except one thing--that, of course, is a horse. When not
engaged in shooting his landlord, the tenant is by no means disaffected
to him, whilst the female appurtenances, mindful of all the small doles
they obtain, are much more voluble in their cordial protestations.
Sometimes the women are enigmatical: one does not know if they are
acting out of kindness or from duplicity. For example, not so long ago a
girl came up to one of my daughters in the road and said to her:--
'For the love of God tell your mother to order your father's coffin for
he'll need it, the Saints preserve us.'
And with that she started away before there was time to reply.
Nothing came of it, of course: nothing ever has, of real importance.
Nothing, alas, also seems so often to be the verdict on life when
looking back. Mine, however, has been too full a one, not only with
griefs and trials but also with happiness and fun, for me to dismiss it
thus. There has been so much more to live through than to write about,
and yet, in these pages, has been told something which would have gone
for ever untold if I had not in old age become garrulous. Things
forgotten have been recalled to my mind and may prove suggestive to
other people who read them, and it is my hope, in concluding, that I
have provided diversion and a little food for reflection.
I feel that a critic may consider too much that has been set down here
is disconnected, yet if he will let a gramophone record an animated
conversation, he will find that it ebbs and flows with the uncertain
babbling of a brook--and so it has been with me. Only the other day, in
the preface to Camden's _History of the British Islands_, I came across
the phrase:--
'bookes receive their doome according to the reader's capacitie,'
and that alone emboldens me to hope for some measure of success for the
present volume. Readers do not always want serious subjects, and it is
in an hour when they desire a little diversion that I hope my
reminiscences may commend themselves, for in a phrase not unknown in my
native Kerry, this book consists of 'little things, and that away.'
THE END
INDEX
Abbey of St. Denis, Paris, 79.
Abbeyfeale, 253, 259.
Abercorn, Duke of, 165.
Aberdeen, Earl of, 167-168.
---- Lady, 167-168.
Acts--
Arrears, 183, 184, 197.
Crimes, 183, 262.
Encumbered Estate, 71.
Habeas Corpus Suspension, 225.
Irish Church, 44, 180-181.
Land, _see under_ Land.
Riot, 251.
Union, of, 180.
Westminster, of 1871, 251.
Adams, Mr. Gould, of Kilmachill, 207.
Aghabey, 83.
Aghadoe, 3, 95, 254.
Agriculture, Commission on, 268.
Albert, Prince, 163.
America, Irish dissatisfaction fostered in, 289;
Home Rulers in, 289-290.
Anderson, Rev. J.A., O.S.A., 99.
Ardfert, 3.
Argyll, Duke of, 174.
Ashbourne, Lord, 286.
Athenry, 171.
Avonmore, Lord, 12.
Balfour, Mr. A.J., Chief Secretaryship of, 172-174.
---- Mr. Gerald, Chief Secretaryship of, 172-173.
---- of Burleigh, Lord, 274.
Ballincushlane, 121.
Ballot, effects of introduction, 194.
Bally M'Elligott, 6.
Ballybeggan, 4.
Ballybunion, 90.
Ballyporeen, Petty Sessions at, 164.
Ballyvourney parish, 71,
Bandon, Lord, 121.
Bantry, 13, 39, 52.
Barry, Lord Justice, 21-22, 216.
Barter, Dr., of Cork, 147.
Bartlett, Sir Ellis Ashmead, 112.
Batt, Father, 123-124.
Beaconsfield, Earl of, 122, 167.
'Beal-Bo,' 90-91.
Beaufort, fenianism in, 254.
Belfast, population of, 176.
Bernard, Mr. Edward Morrogh, 265-266.
---- Mrs. Morrogh, 265-266.
Bessborough, Earl of, 270.
Bewlay, Mr., 274.
Bianconi, Mr. Charles, 78.
Biggar, Mr., Parnell Commission on, 278-280.
Bishops, nomination of, 122.
Blarney, monument at, 116.
Blasquet Islands, Lord Cork's property in, 200.
Blennerhassett, Mr. Arthur, 258.
---- Mr. and Mrs. Robert, 3.
---- Mr. Roland, K.C., 95, 96.
Bodkin, Galway family of, 7.
Bogs, need for draining of, 141-142.
Bogue, Farmer, 32-34, 110.
Boycott, Captain, 213.
Boycotting, 213, 214, 249, 250;
Mr. Parnell on, 216-217.
Brady, Lord Chancellor, 75.
Breaing, value of land at, 259.
Bright Clauses, the, 82.
Bright, Mr. Jacob, 177.
---- Mr. John, 177.
Brown, Valentine, 3-4.
Buccleuch, Duke of, 268.
Buller, Sir Redvers, 157.
Burke, Mr. T.H., 252.
Burns, David, steward at Ardrum, 107.
Byrne, Mr., 89.
Cadogan, Earl of, 169.
Cahirciveen, fenianism at, 66, 152;
drink traffic at, 113;
poverty of, 214.
Cahirnane, sale of, by Hussey family, 5.
Cairns, Lord, 122, 271.
Callaghan, Michael, 273.
Callinafercy estate, 144, 159.
Carden, Woodcock,' 255.
Carew Manuscript, the, 4.
Carlingford, Lord, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, 165, 169, 204, 268, 269.
Carlisle, Earl of, 162-163.
Carlton Club, 117, 188, 297.
Carlyle, Mr. Thomas, 283.
Carnarvon, Earl of, 167.
Cassini, Count, 291.
Castle Gregory, Walter Hussey, owned by, 4.
Castleisland, opposition to Mr. Hussey at, 84, 214, 215;
Mr. Dease assaulted at, 95;
drink traffic at, 102, 103.
Castle of Doon, ruins of, 91.
Castle-Drum, land owned by Hussey family at, 2.
Castlerosse, Lord, 153-154.
Cattle, outrages on, 220-221.
Cavanagh, Mr., 152.
---- Mrs., 152-153.
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 174, 252.
Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, 86, 165, 175.
Characteristics of Irish nature, 140-161.
Charlestown, Land League outrage at, 253.
Chatelherault, dukedom of, claimed by Duke of Abercorn, 165.
Chief Secretaries--
Balfour, Mr. A.J., 172-173.
---- Mr. Gerald, 172-173.
Forster, Mr. W.E., 170-173.
Fortescue, Mr. Chichester (Lord Carlingford), 169.
Lowther, Mr. James, 172, 174.
Morley, Mr. John, 175.
Naas, Lord, 169.
Peel, Sir Robert, 169, 170.
Trevelyan, Sir George, 174-175.
Childers, Mr., Royal Commission, on, 181, 284.
Christian, Lord Justice, 83, 89.
Clare, Earl of (Col. Fitzgibbon), 164.
Clarendon, Earl of, 163.
Clergy--
Protestant, 120-122.
Roman Catholic, 115-120.
Clonbrook, Lord, 287.
Clonmel, Earl of, 287.
Cobbe, Miss, 57, 177.
Coffey, Bishop, 119.
---- Denis, 257.
Colthurst, Sir George, 38, 49, 96;
Ballyvourney, estate of, 208;
Rathcole estate, outrages on, 212.
Commissions on Land Question, Mr. Hussey's evidence before, 268-280;
Parnell case, 275-280.
Connor, Jeremiah, 245.
---- Thomas, 245.
Constabulary, the, 127-132.
Conway, Captain, 3.
---- Miss Avis (Mrs. Robert Blennerhassett), 3.
Corelli, Miss Marie, 98.
Cork and Orrery, Earl of, 199, 200, 218.
_Cork Constitutional_, Edenburn outrage, on the, 239-240.
---- _Examiner_, the, 96, 97, 244.
Corkaquiny, barony of, castles of the Hussey family in, 2.
Corn Law question, 51.
Corragun, Sir Dominic, 132.
County Club, Cork, 49.
---- ---- Tralee, 97, 111, 242.
Cowen, Mr. Joseph, 204.
Cowper, Earl, 166;
Commission of, on Land Act, 271-272.
Cox, Sir William, 13.
Creameries, establishment of, 161.
Crime in Kerry, Judge O'Brien on, 229-234.
Crosbie, Bishop John, 3.
---- Colonel, 229.
Cruickshank family, the, 261.
Curraghila, land value at, 259.
_Daily Telegraph_, the, 222, 255.
Daly, Cornelius, Denis, and John, 245.
Davitt, Mr. Michael, 202, 260, 277, 278, 291.
De Bruce, Edward, 13.
De Freyne case, 118.
De Huse, Herbert, 6.
---- or Hussy, Nicholas, 6.
De la Huse, family name of Hussey, 6.
De Lacy, Hugh, Earl of Ulster, 6.
Dease, Mr., assault on, 95, 97.
---- Sir Gerald, 95.
Deasy, Lord Justice, 83.
Delane, Anne, 272.
Denny, Edmund, 3.
---- family, 8.
---- Miss, the 'Princess Royal,' 8.
---- Mr. Francis, 155.
Derby, Lord, Land League, threats from, 40;
Archbishop Magee, opinion of, 44;
anecdote of, 296.
Derrynane Bay, smuggling at, 24.
Desmond, Countess of, 282.
Devonshire, Duke of, 269.
Dillon, Mr., 79.
Dillwyn, Mr., 94.
Dinan, Jeremiah, 245.
Dingle, Hussey family settled at, 2;
present day, 5, 6;
yeomanry corps of, 14;
poverty of, 214.
Dispensaries, 135-139.
Doctors, dispensary, appointment of, 132.
Dolly's Brae, Orange procession at, 163.
Don, the O'Conor, 270.
Doneghan, Mr., 42-43.
Donelly, Mr. William, 52.
Donoughmore, Lady, 8.
Donovan, Sir Henry, 99.
Douglas, Mr., 57.
Downing, Miss Ellen, 'Mary,' 63.
---- Mr., 292.
Dowse, Baron, land purchase, opinion on, 205;
boycotting on, 214;
Grand Jury of Kerry, address to, 261;
commission on the Land Law, on, 270.
Doyle family, 250.
Drink, prevalence of, 101-114.
Dublin, population of, 176.
Dudley, Lord, 169.
Dufferin, Lord, 185.
Duffy, Mr. Charles Gavan, 100.
Dun, Mr. Finlay, 192-193, 207, 209.
Dunraven, Lord, 173, 271.
Edenburn, home of Mr. Hussey at, 73, 80-81;
outrage at, 235-247.
Egan, Patrick, 291.
Elections in Kerry, description of, 93-100.
Emigration, agents' treatment of emigrants, 57;
American offer to, 57-58.
Emmett, Robert, 156.
Engineering Surveyors' Institution, 42.
Erne, Lord, 213.
Esmonde, Sir Thomas, 294.
Evictions, number of, on Lord Kenmare's estate, 221.
Faith, Mr. George, 46.
Famine, the, 50-59.
Farms, sub-divisions of, 36.
Farranfore, evictions at, 251.
Fenianism, 60-70.
FitzGerald, family of, 3.
---- Lady (Miss Julia Hussey), 16.
---- Mr., member of Land Commission, 274.
---- Mrs., 173.
---- Mrs. Robert (Miss Ellen Hussey), 16.
---- Richard, 245.
---- Sir Peter (Knight of Kerry), 16.
Fitzpatrick, Sir Denis, 189.
FitzWalter, Theobald, 6.
Flaherty, Tim, 48.
Forster, Mr. Arnold, 171.
---- Mr. W.E., Chief Secretary, 163, 169, 170-172;
criticism, sensitiveness to, 211;
quoted, 216.
Free Trade, 51, 299.
_Freeman_, the, 96.
French, Mr., 222.
Froude, Mr. J.A., Mr. Hussey and,
friendship between, 5, 177, 227, 282-285.
Fry Commission, the, 185, 272.
---- Sir Edward, 272.
Gadstone and Ellis, Messrs., 258.
Generals, famous Irish, 156-157.
Gentleman, Mr. Goodman, 82.
---- Mr. Henry, 24.5.
Geraldine family, the, 192.
Gladstone, Mr.--
Irish emigration, attitude towards, 58.
Legislation, effects of, 60-61, 67, 108, 131, 179-193.
Letter to, from Mr. Arthur Blennerhassett, 258-259.
Mr. Hussey and, 84, 177-178.
Mr. W.E. Forster and, 170, 171.
Nationalist party, attitude towards, 195-196.
---- Mrs., anecdotes of, 45, 287.
Glasgow, morality of, 36.
_Globe_, the, 256.
Godfrey, Dowager Lady, 73.
---- Sir John, 154, 155.
Gough, Lord, 157.
Granard, Earl of, 118, 259.
Grant, Mr., 193.
Granville, Earl, 165.
Graves, Mr., 48.
Griffin, Andrew, 264.
Guest, Sir Ivor, 166.
Guillamore, Chief Baron, 160.
Gull, Mr., 132.
Haggerty, Jeremiah, outrage on, 217.
Harenc estate, the, bought by Mr. Samuel Hussey, 82-92, 278;
Land Act, effect on, 274.
Harenc, Mr., death of, 82.
Harnett, Mr., 251.
Harrington, Mr. T., 263-264, 294.
Harris, Mr. Matthew, 251.
Headley, Lord, 254, 255.
Henry, Mr. Mitchell, 204.
Herbert family, the, 5.
---- Mr. Charles, 3.
---- Mr. A.E., 252, 255;
murder of, 226-227.
---- Mr. William, 3.
Hewson, Mr., 84.
Hickson, Captain John,' Sovereign of Dingle,' anecdote of, 13-14.
---- Colonel, 273.
---- Mr., 79.
Hickson, Mr. Robert, 13.
---- Mrs., 53.
---- Mrs. Judith, 15.
Higgins, Bishop, 119.
Hitchcock, Mr., 6.
Hoffman, tenant of Mr. Hussey, case of, 273.
Hogan, William, 245.
Hogg, Mr., 21.
Home Rule Bill, 282, 287, 297.
---- ---- Party, the, 194-195.
---- Rulers, Irish-American, 289-290.
Hore, Mr., house and haggards of, burnt, 4.
Houghton, Lord, 168-169.
Howorth, Sir Henry, 285-286.
Huddard's School at Dublin, 20-21.
Huddleston, Mr. Henry, house of, burnt, 4.
Husse, Sir Hugh, 6.
Hussey, origin of name, 6.
---- Colonel Maurice, 5-6, 100.
---- Miss Anne, 19.
---- ---- Clarissa, 126.
---- ---- Mary, 16.
---- Mr. Edward, 16.
---- ---- James, 15-16, 19.
---- ---- John, brother of Mr. Samuel, 15.
---- ---- ---- son of Mr. Samuel, 16.
---- ---- Maurice, 16, 253, 297.
---- ---- Michael, M.P. for Dingle, 7.
---- ---- 'Red Precipitate,' 10, 12, 15.
---- ---- Robert, 16.
---- ---- Samuel, M., parentage of, 10-12;
early life and education of, 20-29;
farming, 30-37;
land agent in Cork, 38 _et seq._;
to Colthurst property, 71;
candidature of, for Parliament, 96, 98;
Irish Land Act Commission, evidence before, 205-206, 268-280;
press criticisms of, 209-210, 248, 255, 256, 275;
Land Leaguers, threats from, 214, 224, 235-247;
Edenburn outrage, 235-247;
'Woodcock,' 255;
land sales, series of, letter to the _Times_ regarding, 259;
_Times_, letter to, _re_ Mr. Harrington, 263-264;
Parnell Commission, evidence before, 276-280;
Froude, friendship with, 282-285;
Sir Henry Howorth, friendship with, 285-286;
Protection, opinion on, 297-299.
---- ---- Walter, 4.
Hussey, Mrs. (Miss Mary Hickson), 53;
descent of, 12-13.
---- ---- Samuel (Miss Julia Agnes Hickson), 13.
---- Sir John, Earl of Galtrim, 6.
Inch East and Ardroe, 258.
---- Island, 258.
Industries, 142.
Inniscarra, 38.
_Irish Citizen_, the, 248.
Irish Land Commission, Mr. Hussey's evidence before, 205, 270-275.
Iveragh, barony of, 18.
Jeffreys, Mr., 49.
Jenkinson, Mr., 246.
Jenner, Mr., 132.
Johnson, Judge, 83.
Kanturk, 108.
Keagh, Judge, anecdote of, 87-88;
opinion of Irishmen, 130.
Kellegher, Mr. Jerry, anecdotes of, 10-12.
Kellehers, the, 88.
Kelly, Miss Mary, 'Eva,' 63.
Kenmare family, the, 3.
---- Earl of, succession to title, 95;
expenditure on estate improvements, 152, 196, 209, 221;
anecdote of, 153;
criticisms of, 209, 255;
House of Commons, debate on estate of, 221;
departure from Ireland, 224.
---- district, poverty of, 214.
Kerry, population, etc., of, 36-37;
clergy and churches in, 119
_Kerry Sentinel_, Edenburn outrage, on the, 240.
Kilcockan parish, land value in, 193.
Kilcoleman, woods of, 155.
Kildare Street Club, 49.
Killarney, crime in, 66, 214.
---- House, home of Lord Kenmare, 115, 209.
Killeentierna House, home of Mr. A. Herbert, 226.
---- parish, church revenue of, 121.
Killiney parish, property of Hussey family in, 4.
Killorglin, Puck Fair at, 95, 104, 105;
voting at, 294.
Kilmainham gaol, 68.
Kilronan, evictions at, 258.
Kimberley, Earl of (Lord Wodehouse), 164, 165.
Kitchener, Lord, 157.
Laing, Mr., M.P. for Orkney, 198-199, 200.
Land Acts, Wyndham, the, 40, 41, 58, 187-188, 192;
Ashbourne, the, 41, 264;
Balfour's, of 1896, 84;
Gladstone's, of 1870, 181, 185-186;
of 1881, 71, 181-189;
effects of, 196-200, 274, 282.
Land League--
Church and, 118.
Effects of, 199-200, 202, 208.
Outrages of, 199, 212-222, 246, 248, 267.
Le Fanu, Mr. W.R., 77.
----Mr. Sheridan, 77.
Leary, Darby, 245.
Lecky, Mr., 100, 283.
Leehys, the, feud of, 88.
Lefevre, Mr. Shaw, Commission of, 269.
Lehunt, Colonel, 4.
Leinster, Duchess of, 169.
Leitrim, Lord, 226.
Limerick, Mr. Hogg's school at, 21.
Lismore, famine fever at, 54;
agricultural depression in, 193;
estate of Duke of Devonshire at, 269-270.
Listowel, crime in, 87, 214.
Lloyd, Mr. Clifford, 128.
Lockwood, Mr. Frank, 277.
Logue, Dr., Archbishop of Armagh, 118.
Lombard and Murphy, Messrs., 83.
Londonderry, Marquis of, 168.
Longfield, Judge, 258.
Longford, clerical help for Lord Granard in, 118.
Lord-Lieutenants--
Abercorn, Duke of, 165.
Aberdeen, Earl of, 167-168.
Cadogan, Earl of, 169.
Carlisle, Earl of, 162-163.
Carnarvon, Earl of, 167.
Clarendon, Earl of, 163.
Cowper, Earl, 166.
Dudley, Earl of, 169.
Houghton, Lord, 168-169.
Kimberley, Earl of, 164.
Londonderry, Marquis of, 168.
Marlborough, Duke of, 165-166.
Spencer, Earl, 166-167.
Zetland, Earl of, 168.
Lower Curryglass, agricultural depression in, 193.
Lowther, Mr. James, 172, 174, 297.
Lucy, Mary, letters of, to Mr. Hussey, 292-293.
Luxnow, 83.
Macaulay, Dr., 117.
Macartney, Mr. Ellison, 299.
MacCarthy, Bishop, 119.
---- Florence, 4.
---- Mr., 115.
MacCarty, Mr. Daniel, 18.
MacGregor, Sir Duncan, 128.
Magee, Archbishop, 35, 44-45.
Magheries, the, owned by the Hussey family, 4.
Maguire, Mr., M.P. for Cork, 43.
Mahaffy, Prof., 252.
_Manchester Guardian_ on the Edenburn outrage, 238-239.
Marlborough, Duchess of, 206.
---- Duke of, 165-166, 297.
Marriage customs, 142-146.
Marshall, Miss Leeson, 301.
---- Mr. Leeson, 144, 159, 206;
anecdote of, 301.
Martin, Miss, books of, 30.
---- Mr. Richard, M.P., 55.
---- Mr. Robert, 274.
Mason, John, 245.
Matthew, Father, 61, 101-102.
Maynooth, 116, 118, 122, 180.
M'Calmont, Captain, 261.
M'Carthy, Mr. Justin, 264.
M'Cowan, Mr., of Tralee, 220.
M'Elligott, John, 245.
Merry, Mr. Andrew, 120.
Milnes, Mr. Monckton, 168.
Millstreet, crime in, 217, 222.
Milltown, voting at, 295.
---- Fair, price of cattle at, 273.
Minard Castle, 4.
Minerals, 142.
Mitchel, Mr. John, 55, 64.
Monaghan, Chief Justice, 87.
Monk, Lord, 94.
Monsell, Hon. Mrs., 65.
Moore, Mr. Crosbie, 164-165.
Moriarty, Dr., Bishop of Killarney, 66, 67, 119.
Morley, Mr., 170, 175-176, 177, 178.
_Morning Post_, 291.
Morris, Lord, anecdotes of, 69, 76, 87, 137, 167-168, 170, 254-255, 288.
---- Mr. Edward, 111-112.
Mountmorres, Lord, 226.
Moynihar, Michael, 245.
Muckross, 5, 166.
Müller, Prof. Max, 131.
Mullins, Miss, 8.
Murder, encouragement of, 227-228.
Murphy, Cornelius, murder of, 231.
---- Mr., 88.
---- Patrick, of Rath, case of, 222.
Murray, George, 13.
---- Judith, 13.
---- Mrs. William (Miss Anne Grainger), 13.
---- ---- (Miss Ann Hornswell), 13.
---- Sir Walter, Lord of Drumshegrat, 12.
---- Mr. William, 13.
_Murray's Magazine_, 297.
Naas, Lord, 169.
---- posting arrangements at, 31.
Nagle, Mr., 46-47.
Nason family, 193.
National League Police, 250.
Nationalists, the, 196.
Neill, Daniel, 245.
Neligan, John, 245.
_New York Tablet_, the, 210.
Nicoll, Mrs., 241.
Nield, Mr., 253.
Nolan, Mr., of Ballinderry, 55.
Normanton, Lord, 259.
O'Brien, Judge, address to Grand Jury on state of Kerry, 228-234.
---- Smith, 64-65.
O'Connell, Mr. Daniel, anecdotes of, 10, 160;
family of, 24-25.
---- ---- ---- (junior), 152.
---- ---- John, 25.
---- ---- Morgan, 24.
---- ---- Philip, anecdote of, 48.
---- Mrs., 78.
---- Sir James, 25-26.
O'Connor, Father M., 92.
---- Fergus, anecdote of, 76.
---- Mr. T.P., 62.
O'Conor Don, the, 270.
O'Donnell _v._ the _Times_, 274.
O'Donoghue, Rev. Denis, 96.
---- the, 221;
election of, 98-99.
O'Hagan, Lord, 89.
Oliver, Colonel, 199.
Ormsby, Judge, 82, 83.
O'Shaughnessy, Mr., 273.
O'Shea, Daniel, 210, 255.
O'Sullivan, James, 245.
Palmer, Mr., 294.
Parliament, Irish Members of, 194 _et seq._
Parnell Commission, 68, 104, 275-280.
---- Mr., fenian leadership of, 65, 156;
Lord Carnarvon and, 167;
Land League and, 195, 202, 216;
speech quoted on boycotting, 249.
Parnellism and crime, 275.
Peel, Sir Robert, 51, 76.
---- ---- ---- (the younger), 169.
Pembroke, Earl of, 271.
Phoenix Park murder, the, 252.
---- Society, the, 65.
Pigott, Richard, 275-276.
Pitt, Mr. William, 180.
Plunkett, Mr. T.O., 222.
---- Sir Horace, 161.
Price, Professor Bohnamy, 268.
Protection, Mr. Hussey on, 297-299.
Puck Fair, 95, 104-105.
Punchestown, 296.
Quill, Patrick, 273.
Ray, Mr. Jack, anecdote of, 154-155.
Regiura Donum, Presbyterian grant, 180.
Reid, Mr., 277.
----Sir Wemyss, 171, 211.
Reynolds, Alderman John, 75-76.
----John, 245.
Richmond and Gordon, Duke of, 204, 268.
Roberts, Earl, 157.
Roche, Mr. R., 240.
Roden, Lord, 163.
Ronayne, Mr. Joseph, M.P. for Cork, 46.
Rosebery, Earl of, 171.
Ross, Judge, 41.
Rossa, O'Donovan, 65.
Rossbeigh, Land League at, 266.
Royal Commission on Agriculture, 204.
Russell, Lord John, 51, 163.
----Sir Charles, 276-277.
Sadler, Colonel, 4.
Saint Alban's, Holborn, Church of, 122.
Saint Anne's, Soho, Church of, 34.
Saint James's Club, 57.
Salisbury, Lord, Commission on Land Act of 1881, 271.
Sandes, Mr., 97.
Savings Banks, increase of deposits, 191.
Saxe, Marshal, anecdote of, 62-63.
Schoolmasters, appointment of, 133.
Scottish character, 35-36.
Scully, Mr., 94.
Sexton, Mr., 222.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 122.
Shanahan, Robert, 151.
----Thomas, 245.
Shaw, Mr., 270.
Sheehan, Mr., 252.
Sheehy, Father, 252.
Shiel, Sir George, 122.
Smerwick Harbour, 2.
Smith, Mr. Charles, historian, 2, 6.
----Sidney, 136.
Somerville, Miss, 30.
Spencer, Lord, anecdote of, 166-167;
Land Act, opinion on, 203;
Coercion Act, opinion on, 225.
Spiddal, 137.
Standford, Mr., 99.
Stansfield, Lord, 204.
_Star_ newspaper, 275.
Stephen, Sir James, quoted, 250-251.
Stevens, Captain, 110.
Stephens, James, 'Number One,' 65, 68, 156.
Stuart, Mr., 258,
Sullivan, Sir Edward, 166.
_Sunday Democrat_ newspaper, 255.
Tanner, Dr., 112.
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 78.
Thorneycroft, Colonel, 16.
_Times_ newspaper, the--
Edenburn outrage, on the, 239, 242-243.
Encumbered Estate Act, quoted on, 71.
Mr. Hussey's letter to, on land values, 259;
Lord Kenmare's estate, 221.
O'Donnell _v._, 274-275.
Parnell Commission, Mr. Hussey's evidence before, 276-280.
Traill, Dr. Anthony, 272.
Tralee, drink traffic in, 113.
--County Club, 97, 111, 242.
Trant family, the, 107.
Trench, Mr. Steuart, famine described by, 50-51.
----Townshend, 17, 277.
Trevelyan, Sir George, 174-175.
Trinity College, Dublin, 117.
Tucker, Sir Charles, 157.
Tulla, outrage at, 171, 216.
Tullamore, Mr. Forster's speech at, 216.
Tweedmouth, Lord, 167.
Tynan, 'Number One,' 65, 156.
Union Club, 246.
_United Ireland_ newspaper, 244, 249, 251.
University, Roman Catholic, for Ireland,
Mr. Hussey's opinion regarding, 116-117.
Ventry Harbour, 2, 4.
---- Lady, famine, help in, 53, 54.
---- Lord, 46.
Wallace, Mr. Paul, 48.
Walsh, Dr., Archbishop of Dublin, 118.
Wellington, Duke of, 157, 163.
White, Mr. Richard, of Inchiclogh, 55.
---- Sir George, 157.
Whiteboys, 14, 61-62.
Whiteside, Chief Justice, 89.
Wilde, Lady, 'Speranza,' 63.
---- Oscar, 63.
Winn, Mr., 255.
Wolseley, Lord, 157, 283.
Wrench, Mr., 274.
Wright, Mr. Huntley, quoted, 101.
'Wuffalo Will,' 64.
Wyndham, Mr., 58, 129.
York, Duke of, 173.
Youghal, 193.
Young Ireland Party, 63.
---- Mr., 99.
Zetland, Earl of, 168.
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