FICTION.
JOURNEYS WITH JERRY THE .TARVEY.I.
Taw word "jersey " is a curious example of specialization. Nowadays it is applied nine times out of ten to the driver of an Irish car. But its origin was English, and a hundred years ago it was used as a colloquial synonym for a hackney coachman or hackney coach. The invaluable Murray tells us that the term is a by-form of Jarvis or Jervis, a proper name, en the strength of a reference in Grose's Dictionary of Vulgar Terms, and quotes a curious passage from the Experiences of Serjeant Ballantine, who says that " the driver of a hackney coach was called a jarvey, a compliment paid to the class in consequence of one of them named Jarvis having been hanged "—a decidedly left-handed compliment! Jarvis, by the way, was the name of the faithful servant in The Gamester, an eighteenth-century play, and Mrs. Jervis was the virtuous housekeeper in Pamela. But whatever was the character and end of the eponymous hero of the tribe, it has long out- grown any sinister associations. For the last fifty years or so the term "jersey" has been inseparably connected with Irish ear-drivers, and at once calls up an assemblage of qualities in which great conversational powers, geniality, and a remarkable gift for euphemism predominate. This is, after all, as might be expected. Until the arrival of the motor, the " jarvey" was perhaps the chief intermediary between the visitor and the native in Ireland. Ireland is, or was, notoriously the "most car-drivingest " country in creation. Tourists, sports- men, publicists, and politicians probably derived more informa- tion from the "jersey" than from any one else. As his earnings were largely dependent on the custom of strangers, it was natural that be should take a roseate view of the country and its attractions. Hence his optimism and euphemism. His great aim was to tell his passengers what be thought it would please them to hear—that the fish were "shouldhering one another out of the river," or that the bog was "polluted wid sbnipes." If it poured cats and doge it was only a "small dhrop of perspiration out of the clouds." Sometimes, it is true, this optimism was varied by momenta of candour, as when a stranger, arriving at a favourite golf resort, asked the jarvey which was the best hotel and was told: "Whichever ye goes to, yell wish ye had gone to the other." Only a few years ago it fell to the lot of the present writer to drive across Dublin on a car with a small but extremely lively horse. After an exceptionally spirited cars, ask, the driver ingenuourdy owned that this was the first time • vie AP Platip fikeitea. By Samuel Hardy, dB. Reprinted from the Edition of 1712, with an Introduction hi Norman Moore. London, Illunpluey
*Word. rte Jerry tit Jamey. By Alexia Boas. London Smith, Elder,
the horse had ever been between the shafts. The Dublin " jarvey" was a type apart. He had a reputation to live up • to, and it was said that he spent the 'slack months making up stories to tell the tourists in the summer season. But with all his accomplishments and his traditions, the Irish "jarvey" is, if not extinct, like the lamplighter, at least in process of extinction. The " taxi," in spite of the strenuous opposition of the Dublin Corporation, is bound to prevail in the long run, and motor-cars and chars-a-banes are already employed on the chief tourist routes. Taxi-drivers may ultimately develop conversational powers, but not for some time to come. They are still too busy driving. The inevitable disappearance of the "jarvey" is one of the penalties that we pay for the speeding up of traffic, and Mr. Roche has there- fore done well to record these monologues of one of the most remarkable of the profession—monologues which are all the more illuminating because they were addressed not to a stranger, but to one who could meet him more than half-way. What they lose by the absence of the accommodating, con- ciliatory, blarneying element, they gain by their outspoken candour, which borders at times on the Rabelaisian. Jerry is not talking to please, because he knows that it is no use. Mr. Roche is no credulous visitor, but a native and a resident, and he meets Jerry as augur to augur. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of Mr. Roche's memory. Many of the episodes are too strange to have been invented, and the tern of phrase and choice of metaphor are reproduced with a fidelity worthy of the authors of the B.M. But as we gather that these chapters are largely based on conversations held a good many years ago, it would be a mistake to regard them as typical of the realities of contemporary Irish life. Jerry is essentially a laudator temporis aril, and his standpoint is only too clearly indicated in his comments on the more temperate habits of the present generation .— "Bad luck to it for Tay, 'Us it I have blemt for half the 716, fortune. in the counthry. There's ould women in the town wit stomachs that would make good boots, they're so well tanned from it, an' look at the state of the club below on account of it. God be mid mild times; 'Us many the fine decent drunkin' gintleman I see comin' down them steps. An' what would you see there now? Tay-pots. Tay-pots an' more tay-pots agin, wid maybe two or three relicts of mild times sated wid a jug of wathcr an' an empty glass before 'ern waitin' for some person to come in an put the whisky in it for 'em. An' I'm Unit 'tie the same way at balls an' parties. Tay an' coffee an' gruel, God help as, in place of punch for the gintlemen an Nagus for tho gerruls like it used to be."
Thus whatever be the theme, whether the vagaries of modern gentility—which he happily describes as "a kind of top-dressing of grandeur "—or the aggressiveness of our modern Amazons, the working of the marriage market, the methods of dispensary doctors, funerals and fairs, sport and diversion, the whisky-bottle is nearly always in evidence; and although Jerry declares that "decency is dead and gentility givin' it but a hungry wake," one cannot share his lamenta- tions over the passing of an age in which hard drinking was regarded as a sign of good breeding, and country life escaped dulness by the aid of dissipation and eccentricity.
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