THE SEETHING POT.*
TEE name of Mr. George A. Birmingham is unfamiliar to the general or the novel-reading public, but there are two good reasons for believing it to be a pseudonym. First of all, the book betrays none of the crudities or inexperience of the novice ; and second, it is to so considerable an extent a roman a clef that only a very bold writer would have cared to advertise his connection with a work in which living persons are dealt with in so uncompromising a spirit. Mr. Birmingham's resort to the disputable methods of portrait fiction is all the more to be regretted, because he could so easily have dispensed with what is, after all, the refuge of the unimaginative and the spiteful ; and though his vitriolic study of Mr. Dennis Browne will doubtless give exquisite pleasure to a good many Irish readers, it is an excrescence on a very brilliant and detached study of Ireland of yesterday and to-day.
Sir Gerald Geoghegan, who is the central, though not the most striking, figure of the story, is the son of an amiable visionary of good family—" the last and the most ineffective of the long line of those who have drawn the sword for Ireland "—who was condemned to death as a rebel at the time of the Young Ireland movement, but was reprieved and trans- ported to Australia. After his death, Gerald, his only son, returns to Ireland to succeed a cousin in the baronetcy and estates, which have been administered by a just but uncom- promising agent in the spirit of Protestant ascendency. Sir Gerald is torn in two or more directions from the very outset A Protestant, a landlord, and a man of culture, he is strongly drawn towards class and caste ; on the other hand, reverence for his father's memory and a natural sympathy with the
• Th. Sulking Pot. By George A. Birmingham. London: Edward Arnold. 1-63.1
the magnetism of the Irish leader, John O'Neill—a partial portrait of Mr. Parnell—and is drawn, a reluctant and passive adherent, into the vortex of the struggle between his chief and the clergy. Mr. Birmingham, it should be mentioned, does not trouble to follow the historic course of the Home-rule movement, or to reproduce all the leading traits and incidents of Mr. Parnell's character or career. His version of the " last phase" of the Irish leader is shorn of all painful domestic details, and ingeniously provides an alternative and entirely adequate motive for the hostility of the priesthood.
The Seething Pot suffers to a certain extent from the absence
of a hero, for Sir Gerald, though an engaging character, is sadly lacking in persistence and tenacity, while John O'Neill, while commanding our admiration, is more of a political engine than a human being. It is a curious point about this curious book that although the balance of sympathy is enlisted on the side of the Nationalists, the representatives of the " garrison " or the non-political personages are best con- trived to appeal to the affections and prejudices of the reader.
Mr. Birmingham plays the role of the candid friend to admiration, or perhaps we should say to exasperation, for there is hardly any party or faction which does not come in for the lash,—the priests for their greed, Protestants for their bigotry and snobbishness, the patrons of the industrial move- ment for their fussy philanthropy, the Celtic revivalists for their affectation, Ireland for her lack of culture, and England for her stupidity. On the whole, the character to whom we are most drawn is the semi-Nationalist, Desmond O'Hara, the
whimsical editor of an eccentric newspaper called the Critic, priced at twopence weekly, but given for a penny to any one who could not afford more. The Critic, so we read- " was accustomed from time to time to wander into the regions of archaeology for a week or two. Sometimes several numbers wore devoted entirely to Irish folk-lore, or the industrial revival, or the Irish language. Once it seemed likely to turn into a kind of almanac for amateur gardeners. It always returned, however, to the subject of landlords, their prospects and duties. Its true position was that of candid friend to tho unfortunate class whom England in self-defence is being obliged to squeeze out of existence."
If, however, we have no hero, Hester Carew, Lord Clon- fert's daughter, comes very near being a heroine. It is true that she, too, fails when called on to translate her principles rigorously into action, and is content, with her husband, to sink back into the position of a looker-on instead of a fighter in the arena. Yet still she is a lover of Ireland and a true Irishwoman, a remark which, mutatis mutandis, and in spite of his merciless exposure of the inconsistencies and weak-
nesses of the Irish of all classes and creeds, applies to the author of this brilliant but unsatisfying book. Of its literary quality and suggestiveness no better evidence can be given than the epilogue, which at once justifies and explains the title, and, as far as one can judge, reflects in a somewhat fantastic guise the half-Nationalist, wholly idealistic outlook of the author :—
" Desmond O'Hara had a playful habit, not always appreciated by his friends, of answering his private letters in the columns of his paper. In this way he added a personal interest to The Critic, and knit his circle of readers into a kind of largo house-party. He frequently accepted invitations, for instance, in this public way, and it was amusing to read that he intended to spend a week with Mrs. R. in Donegal, or three days with 'dear F.' in Wicklow, with the proviso that he was not to be taken out for picnics on wet days. Thus, it happened that it was in the columns of The Critic that Sir Gerald found the answer to the appeal for advice which he had sent the day before the disastrous fiasco on the road to Ross. Dear G. G.,' he read, ' I can sympa- thize with you in your present position. I am on the whole inclined to think, as you evidently do, that at present politics are no game for a gentleman to play. Do you ever read the prophet Jeremiah 7 Probably not. I read a few chapters last night, and came across a verso which seemed to me to apply to the present condition of Ireland. "I see a seething pot, and the face of it is towards the north." I remember, dear G. G., that, when I was staying with you in your beautiful West, wo one day took shelter from a shower in a peasant's cabin. Although it was summer, there was a great fire of turf piled up into the wide chimney. A pot, a real iron caldron, the like of which one does not see in tho degenerate kitchens of civilization, hung over the fire from an iron book. It boiled—" seethed," Jeremiah would have said— violently. Now and then it overflowed, and some of its contents fell hissing into the fire. I remember that the smell of it did not strike us as savoury. I understand that it is the least pleasant portion of the contents—the scum, in fact—which boils over the edge of these pots on to the feet of the unwary. The recollection of that pot helped me to understand the vision of the prophet, and gave me an illustration of Ireland and hor politics. For we are a seething pot—we, the Irish people. Just now it is the scum which is coming malodorously to the surface, and perhaps scalding your hands and feet. Yet within the pot there is good stuff. It may bo dinner "for the childer," to make them grow into men and women ; it may be food for the mon to make them strong ; it may be fattening for the less honourable beasts of the field. It is, at all events, the raw material of life. Far bettor it is to be sitting beside a soothing pot than a stagnant pool. Dear G. G., lot us keep the pot seething if we can. Let us do our little part in this dear Ireland of ours to stir men into tho activities of thought and ambition. If wo get our toes burnt and our fingers grimy, let us put up with it bravely. If there is a nasty smell, we shall remember that there is good food in the caldron. Do you remember the first time we mot each other, nearly a year ago now ? I fancy that it was I who first showed you how the Irish pot was soothing. I think that you regarded some of the things I said to you as very foolish. No, dear G. G., yon did not say so. You wore too polite for that. I only guessed that you thought so. Among these foolish things there were two especially. I said that Ireland wanted her gentlemen, and that Ireland wanted a King. Do you still think me foolish ? Perhaps I am. But I am surer than ever now that it is only a King, a King with an aristocracy to help him, who can deal with our seething pot. Only he must really be a King, and ho must be brave enough to take off the spectacles which official people put upon the eyes of Kings, and look straight at us with tho good clear eyes that God has given him. And he must surely be the King of Ireland, not a foreigner looking curiously at a strange people. Shall we over find such a King? Sometimes I am not very hopeful, and the pot seethes very confusedly. Yet I think, dear G. G., that we ought to hope. You will not be angry with me for my parable of the seething pot. It is not mine, you know, but the prophet's. I have only fitted it to Ireland—our dear Ireland, which we love best of all things, in spite—Would wo love Ireland so well as wo do if wo had not got to love her in spite of her breaking our hearts ?'"
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