Notebook
Cork, Ireland Climbing at teatime over a drystone wall, by a group of remote farm buildings, I was observed by a tiny, solemn child, who asked me where I was heading. 'If you're making north, you'll be taking the way by the fir trees, past the bridge over the stream with the watercress growing'. She spoke with an air of pert confidence, totally unawed by my years. Indeed, when I noticed that the farmhouse where she presumably lived had no television aerial — very unusual in these parts — she riposted: 'And if we had television, what do you suppose I'd be doing here at all, talking to you?' Yet again I found myself wondering at the charm and ease and fluency of the Irish of all ages. Part of this is doubtless due to their Celtic heritage, but this rather begs the question. May it be that the Irish, like other races long subject to foreign dominion, developed their outstanding gifts of language because it was thus that they could most effectively disarm, outwit and bamboozle their masters? The English working classes, by contrast, seem for the most part to have neglected the art of speech. These reflections were nudged further by a book which my host and dear old friend Oliver Knox, the novelist, insisted I should read. It was a biography of the great educator Vittorino • da Feltre, who taught the humanities five hundred years ago in Mantua. I should explain that Oliver, who is fortunate enough to have a house in Urbino in Italy as well as the one here in West Cork where I am staying, is at present starting work on a book about the great Duke of Urbino of the broken nose, immortalised by Piero della Francesca. Federigo had gone to Vittorino's school at the age of 11. What struck me most about his education, which in many essential respects was remarkably like that of a 19th century English public school — for example in its reconciliation of classical learning and Christian piety, in its aim of turning out the balanced man and dutiful citizen — was the central role accorded to rhetoric. I came more fully to appreciate how this word, normally used rather disdainfully today, embraced every aspect of speaking well — argument, declamation, conversation. What use was there in gaining knowledge without acquiring the art to express it? Rhetoric, so the great humanist educators believed, was the essential means to worldly success in every field; the key to politics, administration, law, business, the Church. It brought into focus all learning, gave form to every experience. It touched men to the heart, and spurred them to action. Such an elevated idea of rhetoric would not, I am sure, be taught in the modern schoolrooms of Eton as they were in the Renaissance ones of Mantua. Nevertheless, one of the greatest practical advantages which a good education can confer must still be a skill in the discipline and art of verbal expression. It is through the powers of persuasion, through diplomacy in administration and finesse in committees, rather than by means of money or old-boy networks or conspiracies, that the middle classes — or Celts such as Lloyd George or Nye Bevan — have succeeded in infiltrating, and rising to the top of nearly all bodies politic, including the far Left. Language is power. Educating all the people in rhetoric (which the Irish have been taught by centuries of oppression) leads for better or for worse to a classless or egalitarian society more surely than indoctrinating them in marxism.
Yesterday I had the brief impression of inhabiting that corner of Anthony Powell's Music of Time where figures from literary and more raffish worlds — Dicky Umfraville and St John Clarke, for example — meet, mingle, part, reassemble in their eternal and improbable minuets. Running into an old Irish acquaintance, I mentioned a delightful hotel in nearby Bantry Bay, Ballylicky House, run by Michael Graves, nephew of. . . My companion did not wait for the name. He jumped in with . . . Graves, eh? Graves? That wouldn't be old Tommy Graves the bookmaker's boy, would it?' Since I was about to say Robert Graves, the mistake entertained me as an example of Irish culture. (The turf before poetry.) A couple of days later I repeated the meprise to an English couple, over a drink in their stately home near Glandore, expecting them to share in my faintly scornful amusement. To my surprise the wife, though well read in the poet's work, was uninterested in my point. Indeed, she herself well remembered old Tommy Graves the bookmaker, whom as a young girl she was never allowed to meet without a chaperone. Further to confound me, her husband reached for an old copy of Debrett. It transpired that Tommy had not only been the Royal bookmaker, but was also the seventh baron. Only then did I remember that his son was my old friend Peter Graves, the distinguished actor who has for years played the lead in No Sex Please, We're British. Thus it is that in the intricate steps of these islands' social dance, even stumbles are part of the rhythm.
Lunch today at the seaside retreat of the Ryans, Ireland's most successful hoteliers, who triumphantly show me the news on the front page of the Cork Examiner of their purchase of the magnificent Bishop's Palace at Cashel for a quarter of a million punts. This is already a hotel well-patronised by travellers between Dublin and Cork; the Ryans now intend to turn it into a compulsory stop or stop-over for gourmets. They richly deserve their success so far, for their Arbutus Lodge in Cork City enjoys the reputation (Egon Ronay et al) of being the best place to eat in the Republic, with a fabulous cellar. Weary travellers off the ferry from Pembroke can also be much refreshed by their breakfasts. One extra mark in their favour: they make a speciality of using local resources, rather than relying wholly on French recipes. Try their nettle soup. This admirable practice brings them into competition with my host, who himself likes to scour the autumn forests for cepes, the spring meadows for sorrel, and the estuaries for mussels. He made me put on my waders, crawl underneath bridges, and haul up clutches of the barnacled creatures, dripping with dark, fetid tidal mud, and festooned with seaweed. Within five minutes two bucketfuls, or about 200 mussels, are collected. To be fair, he himself then takes an hour to scrape them all free of barnacles, and clean them out in sink after sink of running water where they purge themselves overnight. Another less exotic holiday treat is the abundance of fresh free range eggs, made more delectable by the name the local Irish give them — 'wild eggs' so much more exciting for Easter than any tame chocolate replicas.
A small fishing-boat, piled high with renovated lobster-pots, making its first venture of the season, has just sailed out of the bay beneath us. There is talk of crab for dinner when the boat comes home. How rich the English language is in nautical metaphors, greatly to be preferred to those derived from motor-cars. Give me, any day, the image of ships of state beating up to the wind, steering clear of shoals and shallows, even being driven on the rocks. The word government itself, I am reminded, derives from gubernator, Latin for helmsman, and surely (pace Mr Heath) the arts of governmeat are far more akin to tacking to port and starboard than to driving up or down some damned motorway. Roll on the day when U-turns sink beneath the waves.
Peregrine Worsthorne
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