NOVELS.
BENEDICT KAVANAGH.*
SINCE the appearance of Mr. Birmingham's last book he has become something of a public character ; questions have been asked about him in the House of Commons, and the late Chief Secretary was moved to express an opinion as to the merits of his work differing widely from that of Kr. Healy. These unsolicited testimonials, however, have not caused him in any way to modify his standpoint as a commentator on the Ireland of to-day. In Benedict Kavanagh, as in The Seething Pot and Hyacinth, he preserves the same curiously detached attitude, combining with an unmistakable sympathy for Nationalist aspirations a fearlessly impartial criticism of the foibles and faults of all parties and denominations. It has been said that there is no room in Ireland for a moderate man. Whether that be the case or not we are not concerned to argue in this column, but the candid friend is never popular, least of all when he is the friend of all parties, and unites to his candour a very pretty turn for irony.
As in previous novels from the same pen, little reliance is placed on plot. The story is rather a series of illus- trative episodes, or even tableaux, extending over a period of twenty years or more. Benedict Kavanagh, the titular hero, is the son of a follower of Parnell who dies in poverty while still in the prime of life. His mother, a woman of good family, had left her husband and eloped with Kavanagh, dying at the child's birth. Benedict, by a sheer coincidence, is taken by the clergyman who attends his father's deathbed to the house of Lady Beauford—his grand- mother—who would have brought him up herself but for the protest of her son, an ambitious, worldly young barrister. Accordingly he is entrusted to the care of Canon Hamilton, an old friend of the family, a Protestant clergyman in the North of Ireland. The curtain is dropped for fifteen years or so, during which Benedict has remained in Orange sur- roundings, and then by the influence of the Beauford family he is given a clerkship in a law agency office at Dunbeg, a small provincial town. Here he remains fora while, until his associa- tion with the local Gaelic League and the Irish-speaking movement puts him in so embarrassing a position that his employers transfer him to the Dublin office. Again the curtain is dropped, and four years later we find him consorting with clerks and medical students, frequenting bars and music. halls, and playing with indifferent success at being a man about town on a hundred a year. The death of his old guardian, Canon Hamilton, brings him face to face with the secret of his parentage, Lady Beauford settles upon him a small property in the West, and he leaves Dublin to start life in earnest as a humble worker in the regeneration of Ireland.
It is easy to pick holes in the structure of the story. A more serious defect is the infirmity of purpose which is the besetting sin of the central figure. But this is characteristic of the honesty of the author, who, much as he loves his country, is never beguiled into panegyric of her sons. All classes and creeds come under the lash of his impartial censure. "Hardly any one in Ireland," he observes on one page, "has a sufficiently robust belief in the superiority of his own creed to run the risk of allowing it to come into close contact with its rivals." In this context we may note the significant assertion that "there is no such thing in provincial Ireland as a public building which is not under the control of one church or other." He comments at length on the incivility of Irish as compared with English officials. He does not acquit his fellow-countrymen of snobbishness. Indeed, he goes so far as to assert that the passions to which social distinctions give rise in Ireland are more potent than either religions or political differences to keep Irishmen estranged from each other. He indulges his pungent irony alike at the expense of the Irish Parliamentary Party and their
• Benedict Kavanagh. By George .11. Birmingham. London t Edward Arnold. Da]
constituents when he notes that the people "who dread this tune [' God Save the King'] as if it were an infectious disease gladly pay those whom they deem wisest and worthiest to go to Westminster and there swear an oath of allegiance to the same King for whose honour the hated music exists." From this he argues that it is the tune, and not the words, which is to blame, and in a vein of restrained satire discusses the results of fitting the text to a new melody. The popu- larity of the Dublin music-halls impels him to observe that "it is an evidence of the all-conquering majesty of true art that in the presence of the great musical comediennes the lions and lambs of Irish political strife" are capable of lying down together. A propos of the strange combination of political activity and poverty in small provincial towns, he notes that "the passing of resolutions is fast becoming, instead of fox- hunting and horse-racing, the most popular kind of sport in provincial Ireland," and develops this theme in one of those witty digressions which form not the least attractive feature of an engrossing book. Yet it would be most unjust to Mr. Birmingham to regard him solely or primarily in the light of a destructive critic because he is not always able to keep his ironic faculty under complete control. His capacity of seeing both sides of the question is quite remarkable. He emphasises the weaknesses, while whole-heartedly supporting its moral value, of the Irish-speaking movement. There is perhaps nothing finer in the book than the touching exhibi- tion of generosity shown by Benedict's rowdy and rather coarse-fibred chums in the moment of his sorrow and abase- ment. Nowhere have we read a more striking tribute to the great qualities of the dour Orange North than is to be found in the portraits of Canon Hamilton and his parishioners. Though his hero has a good deal of Hamlet in his nature, an to that extent inspires misgivings as to the efficiency of his service to his country, there can be no doubt of the under- lying optimism of the writer. When Benedict goes to visit his grandmother after his guardian's death, she bids him "always speak the truth and be brave, always be ready to help others." Benedict's comment on this advice probably gives the best exposition of Mr. Birmingham's hopes for the future of Ireland :—
" Benedict was struck by the wonderful way in which this identical ideal of life was presented to him, urged upon him from so many different directions. Going through the streets of Hillard and listening to the men who spoke to him of Canon Hamilton, be had realised the greatness of it. Than O'Murehadha, the Gaelic Leaguer, had spoken of this same ideal. And Father O'Meara said that Ireland was to be made great by way of it. Now this old, white-haired Lady Beauford, who found comfort in. such strange chapters of the Bible, also told him to speak the truth and be brave. To Canon Hamilton honesty and courage were the virtues of the sincere Protestant ; to O'Murchadha and. Father O'Meara they were necessary to the good Irishman. Lady Beauford thought of them as the marks of a gentleman. He found himself led into a strange way of thought. If the northern Protestants, democrats at heart, if the Gaelic Leaguers and priests like Father O'Meara, if the gentlemen of Ireland were all of them devoted to this same ideal, if all of them wanted to speak the truth and be brave, would they, could they, long remain apart and estranged from each other?"
Mr. Leaky once said that the giving or withholding of Home- rule was primarily a question of confidence and character, and, whatever one may think of the political and social views expounded in this eloquent and brilliant book, one cannot but welcome the fearlessness with which its author enforces the lesson that without truth and honesty Ireland will never work out her national salvation.
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