29 NOVEMBER 1935, Page 24

Lights on Ireland

Ma. PENJIALICON'S book is a squib " flung in the face of the Irish," a race—though Mr. Penhaligon denies them the right to be called a race—of whom he appears to have an

unqualified dislike. He has ransacked most of the •sources- antagonistic to the Irish to find opportunities for abuse :

the racial origins of the Irish, their political and social history, their literary achievement (or according to. him their lack, of it), their religiosity, their romanticism, their industries,

their language, their women—these are some of the main objectives of his attack. Some of the targets are of course easy to hit : the present censorship of books, for example, or the .efforts made during the last decade to resurrect the Gaelic language (of which incidentally Mr. Penhaligon's

knowledge is less extensive than one might assume from his cibuse of it), or certain of the quaint obiter dicta of Mr. de

Valera provide -.objects for the easiest kind of ridicule. At this level Mr. Penhaligon is generally effective. He has a good supply of malicious stories, he has no hesitation in twisting evidence to fit his theory, and he writes the kind of brisk journalese which is the best that one can hope for in works of this nature at a time when pamphleteering is no longer a literary art. It is a pity that he did not confine himself to the present day, for he has neither the scholarship nor the industry necessary to discuss the past, and his exultant

exhumation of tragic episodes in Irish history often leads him into a kind of blundering stupidity which, if he were a person of any public importance, would make The Impossible Irish a gesture towards another nation demanding something sterner than the mere condemnation on literary grounds of a

frivolous and worthless book. '

Some of Mr. Penhaligon's attacks seem to be undertaken only out of a sense of duty and a determination to leave nothing Irish unabused. The most perfunctory of all is the futile chapter on " Irish Womanhood," which after a page or so of jaunty preliminaries is absorbed by a tedious and entirely apocryphal anecdote about Lola Montez and the composer Liszt. Two other chapters devoted to describing the careers of Roger Casement and Richard Croker have little more point, except that they reveal more clearly Mr. Penhaligon's naive belief that a whole country can be indicted in terms of the shortcomings' of a handful of its Ieast reputable nationals. But these pages, however slight their relevance; have at any rate the merit of general accuracy, because Mr. Penhaligon is merely transcribing the opinions of other writers. When he comes to air his own views on more important questions he is less reliable. According to Mr. Penhaligon the Irish know nothing about their own history or their own literature, so he undertakes to instruct them. This is the kind of information which he provides :

" Remember James Joyce. James Joyce is the author of Ulysses and A Portrait of the Author By Himself. These books are not only banned in the Free 'State, they are hammed in Great Britain. No other work prohibited in the former country can compare With them, except perhaps Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, for freedom of expression and the entire abandonment of the literary decencies. And James Joyce is an Irishman."

In point of fact, of course, James Joyce is the author of no book called A Portrait of the Author By Himself. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, of which he is the author, is banned neither in Great Britain nor in the Irish Free State, and could be censured for " the entire abandpnment of the literary decencies " only by someone who had not read it.

But even this is surpassed by the assertion which Mr. Penhaligon has made, with a great air of discovery, a few pages earlier, that Edmund Burke and William Carleton are Ireland's only two great writers (or rather Ireland's only two possibly great writers, since he has not read either of them), all the rest of her poets, dramatists, essayists and novelists being claimed for England. There is little point in dis- cussing , this piece of jaded bigotry, which is typical of the kind of reckless assertion made throughout the book. But it

is perhaps worth -referring anyone who has not seen it demolished elsewhere to the Dublin Magazine for January,

1932, to which Mr. P. S. O'Hegarty contributed a brilliant and conclusive exposure of the absurd pretensions of this shabby theory.

When he proceeds to teach the Irish their history Mr.

Penhaligon has some equally original points of view to put forward. Thus (on page 61) he tells " the true story " of the invasion led by "Robert de Clair . • . known as Strongbow," relates that a supporting army " landed at Kilkenny," and

ends up by remarking that " about twenty years later Henry II himself came over . ." Strongbow was of course not Robert

de Clair but Richard de Clare, Kilkenny is about thirty-five miles from the coast, and Henry II's expedition was not twenty years but between two and three years later than the first invasion, Mr. Penhaligon is no less unreliable when he comes to put forward a general view of Ireland's earlier history. He paints' a lurid picture, of a country entirely absorbed, " until Shake- speare's time," by savagery and warfare, governed by ignorance and treachery, and quite without any culture or internal stability. This is of course the view put forward by Froude, whom Mr. Penhaligon . quotes whenever possible, more than sixty years ago. The work of later and more scientific historians has not confirmed it. It is perhaps worth

quoting a few sentences from a recent work,. Professor Cecil Martin's authoritative Prehistoric Man in Ireland :

" During the early Christian era Ireland again attained to a very high standard of civilisation. Her monasteries and schools acquired a European reputation. Examples of her metal-work and book illumination still persist to testify to her artistic and technical skill. Her peaceful life passed on without a break from outside until the Norse invasions burst on her."

The examples which I have quoted by no means exhaust the list .of errors in The Impossible Irish ; but there is no need to

discuss any more to arrive at an estimate of its value. Students. Of modern publishing methods will find refreshment in the 'fact; that on the dustwrapper of this book Mr: Penhaligon is com- 'pared to Swift

Mr. Lynn Doyle's The Spirit..of Ireland is a very pleasaiit and informative essay. It would be. of little use as a gui6- book, but there is no book which riiight. be read with more profit by anyone proposing to visit Ireland for the first time and wishing for a general commentary on Ireland and Irish Its illustrations (about 150 of them, and all of theirs excellent) alone make it a valuable possession.

For Miss Pamela Hinkson's rather breathless little book it is rather difficult to see a reason. It has no exact subject 'and jumps in a somewhat arbitrary manner from climate to Catholicism, from the Shannon Scheme to Dr. Gogarty. It has been provided---in Ireland's honour no doubt with. 'wrapper and binding of contrasted but equally hideous greens, and a blurb rich in sentimental stupidity.