WANTED—AN IRISH SIR WALTER.
In "Across the Plains" Stevenson describes the character- istics of the emigrants who accompanied him to the West.
"There were," he writes, "no emigrants direct from Europe—save one German family and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by themselves, one reading the
New Testament all day long through steel spectacles, the rest 'discussing privately the secrets of their old-world mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed she could make some- thing great of the Cornish; for my part I can make nothing of them at all. A division of races, older and more original 'than that of Babel, keeps this close, esoteric family apart from neighbouring Englishmen. Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign in my eyes. This is one of the lessons of travel—that some of the strangest races dwell next door to you at home." Could the attitude of Englishmen towards Irishmen and of Irishmen towards Englishmen be better summed up—of course mutatis mutandis— than by that passage written by a Scot of men who speak the English language and are born in English homes ? The average Englishman knows nothing, practically, about
Ireland and Irishmen. He ought to know something, no doubt, but he does not. Chiefly, his ideas on the subject of ,Ireland are formed from the behaviour of the Irish Members in the House of Commons; or he remembers with a smoulder- ing fury of indignation the Phcenix Park murders ; or he hears and tells amusing stories of Irishmen and Irish "bulls," always laughing at Irishmen, and always also in a certain way admiring them, yet never understanding the character and the traditions of the men whom he regards almost as children, to be kept in their places and told what to do by grown-up people who really understand grown men's business. It is, indeed, chiefly the worst side of the Irish character that Englishmen have seen, and upon that they have formed their judgments. This is not the place for political dis- cussion, but Mr. Kipling's poem "Cleared," written in refer- ence to a well-known event, perhaps represents very nearly the attitude of the majority towards Irish "agitators," who still in the minds of many Englishmen embody the character- istics of the Irish race :— "They never told the ramping crowd to card a woman's hide, They never marked a man for death—what fault of theirs he died ?—
They only said intimidate,' and talked and went away,—
By God, the boys that did the work were braver men than they 1" Of course, that comment does not represent the whole trend of English thought about the Irish considered apart from politics; no one could believe that who knows what Englishmen think, for example, about Irish soldiers. They were Englishmen, perhaps, who were most deeply moved on bearing the story of Pieter's Hill. But if all Englishmen honour Irishmen on other than political fields—where a man is compelled to know, cannot help knowing, and is honoured by knowing his comrades—may it not be possible that some day even in political matters they may be brought to understand and to honour something of the spirit which governs the activity of Irishmen?
And if so, would that understanding be brought about in the best way by a poet ? Is it not something plainer and clearer and simpler than poetry that is needed? Is it not just possible, after all, that the real solution of the Irish problem might be found in the writing of a novelist,—in the writing of a man who would let Englishmen into the secret of the hopes and fears of the Irish race; who would write not only of the aspirations—sometimes great, sometimes ex- tremely petty—of the party politician, but would pour great masses of light on Irish character considered as a whole? As yet we have had no such writer. For Englishmen Tom Moore is the Irish poet, and though he wrote much that is haunting and charming, he delivered no lasting message. As for Irish novelists, there are Lever and Lover and the rest, but their rollicking taproom stuff is not representative of the best of what is Irish ; if it were, there would be no need for serious study of Land Act problems,—it would only be necessary, so to speak, to be sure of the efficiency of the Dublin Castle Guard. What is it, then, that is wanted? Is it not an Irish Sir Walter Scott ? He, rather than an Irish poet, is needed at the psychological moment of to-day, when it is at least on the cards that the Irish difficulty may be solved in a sane manner by British politicians. And when you come to think of it, it is a strange thing that the story of Ireland has never occurred to the novelist—never, that is, in a large and satisfying manner—as a field for the writing of romance. The field open to historical novelists is, after all, limited ; why is it that the story of Ireland has hardly been touched? American novelists have written reams about the war between North and South ; their novels dealing with that hard story have been read by millions, and the reading of them has led to a fairly clear understanding of the motives which actuated those who went to war. How is it that the English or the Irish novelist has never been able to write of Ireland as Sir Walter Scott wrote of Scotland? Could there be a wider or a more interesting field for the writer of novels ? There is no need to go back even as far as the days of Cromwell to come to an era in Irish life which should be at least as interesting to Englishmen as the story of the Army of the Potomac is to Americans. If an Irish Sir Walter Scott began the story of Ireland with the Rebellion of 1798, would he not find material for as many novels as Scott him- self ever contemplated ? Scott wrote in his preface to the first edition of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" that the poem was "intended to illustrate the customs and the manners which anciently prevailed on the borders of England and Scotland. The inhabitants living in a state partly pastoral and partly warlike, and combining habits of constant depreda- tion with a rude spirit of chivalry, were often engaged in scenes highly susceptible of poetical ornament." If the "rude spirit of chivalry" of the Scottish Border raids was able to inspire Scott to write not only his poems, but novels which are greater than his poems, what could not be made by a second Scott out of Ireland? Apart from the "rude spirit of chivalry," at least as characteristic of Irish as of Scottish warfares, look at the public careers of Irishmen which might be made the foundation for great novels. Scott wrote a great novel round the personality of Helen Walker, the prototype of Jeanie Deans ; what kind of a book could not another Scott make out of Grattan, or Curran, or Emmet, or O'Connell? Grattan, disinherited for his adherence to Flood, and afterwards voted £50,000 by an Irish Parliament; Emmet, spending his whole fortune of £3,000 on rifles, hiding in the mountains of Wicklow, and hanged the day after his trial, leaving Sarah Curran to pine in Sicily,—" she is far from the land where her young hero sleeps," as Moore wrote of that sorrow-stricken lady ; O'Connell, inventor of the epithet "Saxon," with his marvellous Irish eloquence and wonderful voice ; John Sadleir, politician and forger and suicide; Wolfe Tone ; the Fitzgeralds,—it is strange that no writer of fiction has arisen to do them justice. And beyond all the politicians, and the political positions—the 'Ulster Garrison, the priests, the moonlighters and boycotters, the " bhoys" that "get drunk on rhetoric and madden at a word "—behind all there is the Irish peasant, with his pigs and his fowls and his hovel and his hospitality; Dennis, happy, discontented, courageous, obedient, shiftless ;—why has not the character of the Irish peasantry inspired a novelist to something great before now, something heroic and romantic in Sir Walter's sense,—something different from the sorrow-laden stuff which now pours from the Press as Irish fiction ?
The Irish Sir Walter will come some day. He will write of Irish Rob Roys and More °amorous; he will give us an Irish Domini*, Sampson, with the Irish equivalent of the verdict
Ero-di-gi-ous" ; we shall have an Irish Caleb Balderston, providing for an Irish Master of Ravenswood—" It was not for him to speak before their honours; the brandy —it was weel-kend liquor as mild as mead and as strong as Samson—it had been in the house ever since the memor- able revel, in which auld Micklestob had been slain at the head of the stair of Jamie of Jenklebrae "—you can only speculate as to what could be made out of a confidential Irish family servant. When an Irish Sir Walter has given Englishmen this and more—Irish fighters and plotters and heroes and peasants and priests—Englishmen may perhaps understand Irishmen as they understand Scotsmen. "I knew a very wise man who believed that, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation," wrote Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun to the Marquis of Montrose. Ireland no longer needs a ballad- maker ; she is waiting for her Sir Walter Scott.
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