Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
Home News, and Interviewing a Nationalist.
About ten days after their arrival at Killarney, Lesbia received from her mother a reply to a long letter of her own narrating the previous events. A few extracts from Mrs Newman’s answer will suffice.
‘My Darling Lesbia,—I was delighted to get your interesting letter at last, and to know that on the whole you are enjoying your trip, in spite of the parting from your Yankee friend, whom I do not dislike, although I should not care to resemble her. What a lovely place Killarney must be! I have seen many paintings of it, but nothing which comes up to your description. Now I must tell you, dearest, that a certain part of your letter startled me very much, and that is your description of your picnic from Queenstown to Roche’s Tower. There is nothing extraordinary in your having seen an old lighthouse on a high hill by the sea, but then you go on to say that an absorbing and painful interest, which there was no reason for, took possession of you while you walked over the ground. It is this which forces me to connect the real place you have come upon with that terrible day-dream you remember my having more than a year ago. God forbid there should be anything in it, but if there is, what more natural than that you, my child, should feel by sympathy some of its effects upon me? I shudder as I recall that fearful scene; it is better not to think of it, and to be thankful that the great catastrophes of the future are not wielded by our feeble and clumsy hands.
‘What a volte-face, as you say, this outcome of the general elections and the accession of the Bunglers to power! And our excellent friend Lord Humnoddie Prime Minister, too! I could not help telling his wife what you said about him. She took it good-naturedly, as she does everything, and said that, entre nous, her own opinion of her husband’s capacity as helmsman of the ship of state is much the same as yours.’
(Here followed some talk about the gossips and squabbles of Dulham village and neighbourhood.)
‘There was a great to-do here last Saturday evening with that poor mad woman Topsy Wriggles. I’m very glad they are going to remove her, because the demon of drink seems to get more and more hold on her. But it is curious that the madder and the more tipsy she gets, the more she falls to quoting scraps of Scripture in her fits. What a pity her propensity is! because she has evidently been well educated for a person in her station. I happened to be near the garden gate when she was in the thick of it, and could hear what she was saying, all the way from the public house. “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision; for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.” This I must tell you, Lesbia, made me feel very uncomfortable. I’m glad she’s going, and I hope she'll do better; we don’t want any more such mad women here.’
(The rest of the letter was occupied with domestic affairs.)
Mr Bristley was standing at the edge of a terrace by the lake side, looking up with his binocular at Mangerton mountain, when his niece came to him and put her mother’s letter into his hand.
‘You see, Uncle Spines,’ she said gravely, ‘mamma has at once recognised the Background of the Dream in my description of our day at Roche’s Tower.’
‘Why, of course, my dear girl; what else could you expect? If Jane had never had the dream at all, the way you go on about your own fancies would have been enough to give it her.’
‘Well, never mind, uncle, leave the dream alone; here’s Mr O’Logan, the gentleman we talked with at the table-d’hôte yesterday; I should like to know more of his views on the political question.’
O’Logan was a prominent member of the National party, who had come to the lake scenery for a few days for the benefit of his health, and happened to have his place next to our friends at the hotel dinner table. He raised his hat to Lesbia as he approached saunteringly, and the three were soon engaged in an animated discussion, of which we need only give that part which embodied this gentleman’s views.
‘No, sir,’ he continued; ‘you would be very wrong to imagine that the Irish people hate the English people. We do not, whatever a few ranters may be found to say. On the contrary, it’s my belief, sir, that the sensible and reflecting among us are aware that Ireland has derived greater benefits on the whole from the English connection than she has sustained damage. But, in any case, it is absurd to pretend that the Irish of to-day owe a grudge to England on account of ancient history. Bosh! What do we care now what wrongs Cromwell or Arthur or Noah or Adam or the first gorilla may have inflicted on the former inhabitants of this island? Our grievances are practical, sir, not romantic; we do not want to discuss history, but to be let alone to manage our own affairs. And from this point of view, we say that it is time the English nation at large came to realise the fact that peoples, like individuals, outgrow the period of their tutelage. As the young man of eighteen cannot be expected to stand from his father the hectoring which he took as a matter of course when he was a boy of eight, so a nationality which feels that it has grown competent to take care of itself socially and politically, cannot longer acquiesce in being kept in leading-strings and debarred from following its bent and realising its own modes of life and thought. Political coercion, used against a people like the Irish, can only produce resentment, and, eventually, determined resistance. The first we have already seen bearing its fruits in boycotting and moonlighting outrages, not to speak of the dynamite scare; but it remains yet to be seen whether a stupid prejudice will be fostered to the extent of producing a resistance which would bring in sight disintegration of the Empire such as could not result from a grant even of quite unlimited Home Rule.’
‘What do you allude to as determined resistance, Mr O’Logan?’ asked Mr Bristley—‘civil war?’
‘Civil war? No, sir, foreign war. Civil war would be nonsense between the soldiers of England and the sparse, untrained, almost unarmed Irish peasantry. What I mean, sir, is that where a powder magazine exists, it needs that everybody in the neighbourhood should be unremittingly careful how they carry fire of any sort about near it. If there be one person among the neighbours who is watching his opportunity with a box of cigar-lights, sooner or later he will explode the magazine, let his neighbours be as careful as they may. Europe is still such a magazine, notwithstanding the growing dislike of war and the endeavours which have lately been made by diplomacy to remove the danger of an outbreak. It needs unanimity on the part of all civilised peoples, to back up those endeavours successfully and keep the peace. We do not want—and I still hope that we shall never have—one people among them saying, What hast thou to do with peace, get thee behind me. But if that state of things should unfortunately come about, it needs no political genius to surmise that a single naval battle lost by the British fleet-—and such a contingency is possible, however the naval estimates may be increased—would mean the landing of an allied army, in overwhelming force, on these shores, and the rising of three-fourths of the people to aid it with heart and hand. That is what I mean by resistance.’
‘But what a terrible thing that such a spirit should exist between two peoples who ought to be one and indissoluble, and stand shoulder to shoulder against all troubles from within and from without!’ said Lesbia sadly. ‘Aid a foreign invader!’
‘Well, Miss Newman,’ he answered, ‘I have not said that such a spirit does exist. I hope, as sincerely as you can, that there never will be any occasion for its existing. On our side, we are quite ready to listen to reasonable arguments and proposals, especially if they are put forward as matters of business untinged by political passion. Undoubtedly a large amount of English capital has been invested in Ireland, under the belief that commercial integrity and stability are as sure here as elsewhere. And stakes in the country, no matter by whom held, ought not to be confiscated; because once admit the principle of simple spoliation, and who can say where it will stop? That line of contention is all right, and it is for statesmen on both sides to put their heads together and see how our national aspirations can be realised, alike with the least possible injury to vested interests and with the least possible sacrifice on the other side in fairly compensating them. None of our recipes are infallible, but in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom, and it surely cannot be but that a satisfactory solution of such a problem can be peacefully worked out. Still the contingency of a lack of sufficient wisdom to bring about the consultation should be faced; and I have only said that in that deplorable event, a struggle would mean something very different from the silly spectacle of an Irish mob armed with shillelaghs and fowling-pieces and a stray revolver or two, going out to be mown down by a few regiments from Aldershot. I feel certain that the most filibustering among our party will know how to be quiet and patient while the demand for Home Rule is under bona fide treatment; but I feel equally certain that any attempt to force upon Ireland continuance of the present form of connection, so far from maintaining the greatness of the Empire, will eventually knock the whole boiling into smithereens.’
‘Yes,’ said Lesbia; ‘it happens unluckily that the Bungling party have got the reins at this critical time. I try not to be a partisan, but it does seem to me that while there’s something to be said for Toriosity, and something for Radicality, there’s nothing to be said for Whiggery-piggery: it possesses the faults of both, and the virtues of neither.’
The two men laughed.
‘And you call that not being a partisan, Lesbie!’ said her uncle.
At this moment a boatman came up to speak to our two about a row on the lake, which gave a turn to the conversation, and O’Logan nodded au revoir. About another week of bright, warm weather passed pleasantly enough, before they made their way home viâ Dublin and Holyhead.